(You Can) Drop Your Façade ; klance

first words

Lance woke up early monday morning, granted by his niece and nephew, Nadia and Sylvio.

They had jumped onto his bed and began to bounce on his stomach, emitting a disoriented 'oof' sound from Lance.

"Tío Lean! We're staying with mamá today!" Nadia yells into his ear, giggling madly. Lance tries to recorpriate the excitement, but can only groan in response. He sits up, gently pushing his smallest family members off his ribcage.

"Sí! No school for us today! Es un teacher day!" Sylvio exclaims enthusiastically. Lance wipes at his eyes and smiles groggily, he points at his desk. Nadia beams, crawling over Lance's body to run over towards it.

She picks at his cups, grabbing a red dry erase marker. She looks through the drawers at its sides and pulls out a small board. She skips back to the bed and hastily pushes them into Lance's hands.

Neither Nadia or Sylvio are mature enough to understand Lance's...predicament. They were just kids after all. But Lance felt guilty, who are they to suffer his 'silent treatment?'

So he started to write to them instead, insisting it was to help them get better at both spanish and english. Lance's family never commented on it, they played along.

Nadia and Sylvio thought it was a game of sorts.

De verdad? He writes, showing Sylvio the board. Sylvio was mostly fluent in english, needing a bit of help with spanish. Nadia was the opposite.

"De...ver...dad?" He pronounces slowly, squinting at the words.

"Oo! I know! Yo se!" Nadia grins. Lance presses a finger against his lips and Nadia giggles.

"Oh! For...verdad?...Real! For real?!" Sylvio asks. Lance nods and Sylvio grins. "Si, and Papi said to wake you up. Breakfast is ready,"

Lance nods and Nadia grabs his right hand. "Y tú bracelet? Donde está?" She asks. Before Lance could scribble down an answer, she asks two more questions.

"Y éste? De donde es? It's pretty," She twists at his middle finger. His ring spins. "Y estos! Tambien! Very pretty," She hums, her fingers reaching up to play with the matte finish of the gauges he had forgotten to take off.

Lance finds himself blushing as he writes down an answer. "They are...gifts? Son gifts?" Nadia reads. She huffs. "Son regalos? From who?"

"Tío! Have you a girlfriend?" Sylvio butts in, grabbing Lance's hand. Lance shakes his head furiously.

Nadia makes an 'aha' sound and takes Lance's hand back from Sylvio's, admiring the metallic spin ring. "Ah! Pues novio?! Yeah?! Is it?!" She asks.

Lance hesitates for a second too long and witnesses Nadia jump out of his bed and scream, "Mamá! Papi! Mami! Papá! Tío Leandro tiene novio!"

Lance sputters as Nadia runs out of his room, repeating the same sentence over and over. Sylvio laughs at Lance's expression and follows Nadia, yelling the same thing, only in english.

Lance groans in embarrassment and is tempted to just go back to sleep. He huffs, knowing that wasn't an option.

He gets dressed slowly, not yet wanting to face the eventual questions that will get thrown at him by the rest of his family. If Nadia and Sylvio were here, then so was his older brother Luis and his wife Lisa.

Lance grumbles as he shuffles to the bathroom, closing the door with his hip. He rummages through the shelves for his meds, knowing that he'll have two more people breathing down his neck about it today.