Borderline

chapter six.

Something must have been wrong with me.

I didn't understand how I was thinking - perhaps a bolt inside my head had gone loose after Keith had slammed me against the ground, but either way, I was being more irrational than natural.

"No hide and seek today either?" Allura asked softly, poking her head into my room. Her dark hands gripped the door frame gently.

"Still feeling under the weather", I lied, trying to make my voice come out as rapsy and husky as possible, to give out the impression that I was, in fact, not feeling well.
Which was not a lie, either. But just not the kind of "not feeling well" that Allura must have thought. I wasn't feeling well emotionally, and hadn't done it in two quintants now. As soon as I returned from the cave and met Allura in the middle she had immediately noticed the disquietude on my face, and I was ashamed of my own cowardice. I hid my wounded arm behind my back as Allura asked me what was wrong, and my teeth rattled whenever I spoke. From there on I began telling the lie of how I was getting a flu. I spent a varga in the infarmary then, thanks to my dearest sister announcing the false news to our parents.

Since then, the remorse had chewed on my logic senses, making me almost cry at the dining table, and I blamed the sniffs and sobs on the illness whenever someone asked me if I was okay. I was just very empatic; Keith's pain was my pain, and the thought of my departure when he seemed to need company more than ever would forever haunt me until I did something to indemnify him, no matter how much I knew that his stubbornness would get in the way.

Did he have the right to be stubborn with me? Probably. And I had every right to deplore what I had done. So that's what I did all quintant.

۝ ۝ ۝

"You've already missed two lessons, Lance, it's time for you to get your bum out of that bed." Allura added a little timid smirk afterwards, probably feeling very courageous when using a word she saw as something inappropriate.

I flew up in a sitting position, almost making my pillow fall down to the floor. "What?! Absolutely not!"

My voice was high pitched and seemingly fine, and I immediately notice the little quirk of Allura's eyebrow, so I quickly added a very false and overdramatic cough after my sentence, making it sound rather uncertain. Her eyebrow rose higher.

"Ehm... I... How can I get a lesson on formal speech when my voice is barely to use?" I coughed again, the dryness in my throat making me grimace after, which hopefully added to the "under the weather" act.

"Your voice sounded pretty usable just now", she pointed out cautiously, putting her hand on her hip.

"The power of shock, that's all", I muttered, sinking deeper down into my bed, hoping that my blanket could shield me away from the feasibility of leaving my bedroom.

"Lance", she sighed, running a hand over her face, wanting to radiate annoyance. "You can't keep on avoiding your duties. You know that these lessons are preconditional. If you keep on circumventing them, you'll end up with even longer lessons."

As if I don't know that. "Avoiding? I am certainly NOT avoiding! What, I can't help being sick! Do you want me to barf on the preceptor, or something? Because I will do that. If you drag me out of this bed, to say." I pointed at the mattress under me.

"You won't barf, Lance." Allura rolled her eyes.

"Oh my Voltron, I think I'm going to barf!" I made loud vomit sounds, putting my hand over my throat dramatically. "Allura! I'm going to.... *cough*... Oh my, I'm going to vomit!" I fake choked, and slapped a hand over my forehead as if I was running a fever. "I'm barfing, Allura, I'm really barfing!"