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Lance sniffled wetly for what seemed like the hundredth time in the hour-long training session.
It wasn’t like Keith was trying to be cruel about it–he knew that Lance had a cold, and he knew he couldn’t help it. But that didn’t erase the fact that it was still unpleasant to hear someone coughing and sniffling into his earpiece, and the fact that it was Lance made it all the more irritating, since he knew that a lot of it was likely for show.
“Can you stop that?” Keith snapped. “It’s gross.”
Lance cleared his throat. “Stop what?”
“Ugh, never mind,” Keith huffed.
“What did I do?” Lance asked irritably. “I can’t help it; I’m sick.”
“Yeah, we know,” Pidge rolled her eyes. “We can hear you.”
Lance’s face flushed pink. “Oh,” he said in a soft, sheepish tone. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine, Lance, just–try to be a little quieter, yeah?” Hunk placated. If even Hunk was agreeing, albeit a lot more kindly than the others, then Lance really must be grating on everyone’s nerves, he thought.
“Sure,” he nodded. For the rest of the training exercise, he muted his mic when he had to sniffle or cough. Shiro noticed that the stretches of radio silence from Lance were becoming longer and more frequent, and sighed.
“Okay, this was good work today, everyone,” he conceded, “let’s head in.”
“We haven’t even been training for half an hour,” Keith objected.
“Well, not all of us are in fighting shape,” Shiro explained. Lance unmuted his mic.
“I’m fine,” Lance interjected in a voice that had gotten infinitely more rough in the span of half an hour. “I can just stay on mute.” He coughed harshly again, this time with no time to turn off the headset. It lasted several seconds and rumbled deeply enough in his lungs to make him groan in pain when it was over. “Sorry,” he rasped.
“I don’t like the sound of that cough,” Shiro hesitated, eliciting an annoyed huff from Lance.
“Yeah, that seems to be the consensus,” he bit back, “but I don’t know what you want me to do about it.” He started coughing again, blindly reaching out for the mute button and turning off his sound output halfway through the fit of coughing that tore through his lungs. Every fit seemed to hurt more than the last.
“Lance? You good?” Hunk verified. He continued coughing for several more moments, not coming off mute, which caused Hunk to repeat his name with more anxiety lacing his tone. “Lance?”
Lance unmuted his headset for a moment and managed to choke out an unconvincing “I’m fine,” before muting once more.
Keith rolled his eyes. “He’s fine, Hunk. He’s just being a drama queen, but what’s new there?” He waited for a rebuttal and was slightly put off when he didn’t get one. He chalked it up to Lance throwing a hissy fit.
Shiro made the executive decision to land early. They had a big day tomorrow anyway, so he decided it was for the best to end practice: preferably before Keith killed Lance.
Lance was silent through dinner, pointedly trying to ignore the glares his teammates sent him every time he sniffled or coughed. After barely picking at his food, he rose from the table and told everyone he was going to bed.
The next morning, Allura assembled the team very early. Lance woke up to his alarm and immediately wished that he hadn’t. His room was freezing, even under his blankets, and he couldn’t stop shivering. The constant, violent trembling irritated sore, tired muscles, and his head was positively throbbing. He took a deep breath to calm himself, to try to get ready for the day, and felt a twinge of anxiety nestle into his gut when he found that he felt like he was breathing through a coffee straw.
“I thought rest was supposed to make things better,” he muttered to himself, dragging his tired, shivering body out of his bed and dressing in the warmest clothes he could find. He paused at his door to cough, deeper and wetter than even yesterday, and gripped the door frame with white knuckles when he found that he couldn’t stop. Every time he felt like he was breaking up whatever fluid had decided to make a home in his chest, more seemed to bubble in to fill it back up. His mouth filled with a thick, slimy substance and he gagged once dangerously before collapsing to his knees and spitting it into his trash can.
By the time he composed himself enough to get to the common room, the others had already filed in and sat down.
“Nice of you to join us,” Keith muttered. Lance didn’t acknowledge him in the slightest, opting instead to sit as far away from the others as he could, tucking his arms tightly around himself. Clearly, they were still irritated with him, and with an important mission today, he really didn’t feel like making them more angry. Lance wasn’t sure he could handle several hours of his teammates berating him, not when he already felt half dead.
As Allura began to brief them on the mission, Lance could barely focus on her. Breathing was difficult enough as it was, and trying to make it quieter was really starting to take a toll on him. His head felt fuzzy, like he wasn’t getting enough air with every breath, which made him breathe faster. Inhaling through his nose was not an option–it was too stopped up at this point to even be runny as it had been yesterday. He felt as if all the mucous that had been merely inconvenient yesterday had solidified into a thick, concrete mess, leaving his chest heavy and his sinuses painful.
The controlled breathing could only last so long, however, before his packed lungs got the better of him and he realized that he wasn’t going to get another breath in until he coughed out whatever was blocking his airway. He surveyed the room quickly to ensure everyone’s attention was on Allura before releasing a few muffled coughs into the sleeve of his sweater. He kept his mouth closed to try to contain the sound, but it didn’t seem to work, as everyone’s attention flickered to Lance as soon as he began to cough.
However, the energy from their stares didn’t feel as angry as it had yesterday. In fact, when Lance finally opened his teary eyes from the muffled fit, he met Shiro’s concerned gaze. Lance flashed a small smile to Allura when he realized that she’d stopped talking at some point during his fit.
“Sorry,” he rasped painfully, so softly that it was almost a whisper, “Continue.”
“Lance, that sounds really bad,” Shiro noted. When Lance looked to the other paladins, expecting to see a semicircle of irritated faces, he was surprised to find that everyone–even Keith–looked more worried than angry. But his fevered brain didn’t get the message.
“M'sorry,” he slurred, “Trying to be quiet.”
“Lance, I don’t think that’s the issue, here,” Hunk assisted. He sat up straighter in his seat, looking ready to move toward Lance. The blue paladin tried to respond, but his words rode on congested air, and he couldn’t get them out until he could breathe again. Through tightly closed lips, he tried to clear his lungs without disrupting the briefing, stifling it into his sleeve.
“Hey, don’t do that,” Shiro reprimanded, “stop holding it back.” Lance’s face was turning an alarming shade of maroon.
“Mad,” Lance choked, pointing vaguely at Pidge and Keith.
“We’re not mad; quiznak, Lance, you need to breathe,” Keith bit. He stood and crossed to Lance, straightening his back from his hunched over posture and slamming it with his palm.
That was enough to put Lance’s coughing fit out of his control. He was barely able to even gasp any air into his lungs between coughs, and Keith could feel heat radiating from his back.
“Pidge, water,” Shiro instructed, stepping forward to stand next to Lance. Shiro rubbed small circles into his back, frowning at the fever and the rumble that he could feel even through Lance’s thick shirt. Lance’s breathing arrested for a terrifying moment before he started to choke and finally hack up a thick stream of mucous onto the floor. Keith helped him sit back and Lance felt the straw of a water pouch pressed to his lips when Pidge returned.
“I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” Keith lamented. Lance chuckled carefully, wary of setting off his still quivering lungs.
“You didn’t know.”
“That doesn’t matter; who gets mad at someone for being sick?”
“S'fine, Keith,” Lance reassured, squeezing his hand lightly.
“Alright, let’s get you to bed,” Hunk interjected.
“The mission,” Lance objected.
“You’re not in any shape to fight,” Keith almost laughed at the ridiculousness of the assertion. Lance’s panicked face made him feel even more guilty about assuming he was milking a cold to get out of training.
“Not gonna let you go without a sharpshooter,” Lance argued, fever-driven tears starting to form in his eyes. “You gotta take me. I can do it. M'not weak. Not useless. Gotta protect you.” He was wriggling against Keith and Hunk’s grasp.
“We’re going to put off the mission for a few days, okay, Lance?” Allura offered in a gentle voice. “So you don’t have to worry about anyone being unsafe without your protection.” Lance seemed to calm down, or at least lose his energy, because the wriggling stopped.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Allura said confidently, meeting Lance’s eyes. Her cool hand touched the side of his face earnestly. “I can’t let my paladins take off without a sharpshooter, now can I?” Lance shook his head weakly, pleadingly, and she stroked his hair.
“Shh. Don’t worry, okay? We’re all going to stay here until you recover.” That was enough reassurance to allow Lance to let Hunk and Keith walk him to the couch, where they could keep an eye on him while he slept, and to fall asleep as soon as his head met the cushions.