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Flying Like a Cannonball, Falling to the Earth
Lance is having an asthma attack. Lance is having an asthma attack in a cleaning supply closet. Lance is going to die surrounded by Windex and bleach it is not because he drank any of it, thank you very much, Hunk, he only did that once, when he was two and mistook the blue for Kool Aid because two year olds can’t read labels and make poor decisions sometimes. (It scared his moms to death, though and got him banned from Windex until he was twelve because his mom has the memory of a freaking elephant.) No, it’s because his stupid lungs didn’t get the memo about needing air for the rest of his stupid body to survive and thrive.
Oh god, his tombstone is going to be embarrassing. ‘Here lies Lance, Defender of the Universe, he died in a cleaning supply closet because his lungs are goddamn traitors’.
The true injustice of it all is that he doesn’t even have asthma. So what’s the deal? He comes back from space, he’s totally fine and then suddenly, bam, the room is spinning, his heart is going a million miles an hour and there’s and invisible hand wrapped around his airways, squeezing out every last drop of oxygen?
Huh. Oxygen. How lucky was it that Arus had the right combination of gases to allow them to breathe the atmosphere? And that the Alteans breathed something similar to them? What a crazy coincidence. Wacky how the universe works sometimes.
Lance is pretty sure he doesn’t want his last thoughts to be this random and kinda stupid, but he both doesn’t have much else going on in his head right now, and simultaneously too much happening in his head right now.
Quiznacking quiznack, he’s going to die of oxygen deprivation on his home planet in a supply closet.
Just as Lance’s deranged brain is scrambling to find something cool to think about before the darkness creeping in on the edge of his vision takes him, the door opens, a slice of industrial lights cutting across his face, making him suddenly aware of the salty wetness sliding over his cheeks, stinging where it hits his cracked lips (didn’t he put lip balm on this morning? Has he been chewing his lips? Did he chew all the lip balm off his lips? He really needs to stop thinking about the word ‘lip’…lip. Lipliplipliplip – Keith?)
Keith. Keith is standing there, dressed in a very expensive suit he looks very uncomfortable in, his tie tied incorrectly and crookedly, and wearing his stupid red-black-white gogo boots instead of dress shoes. Lance can tell. He can see the bits of red and white from here. (Keith’s irritated voice whispers in the back of his head, “Oh my god, it’s not a mullet and they aren’t gogo boots, what the hell, Lance?” but that’s past-Keith and present-Keith is talking to him so he should probably pay attention.)
“Lance?”
Lance nods shakily. Yep. Lance. That’s his name.
“Lance? Oh my god, you’re a mess.”
Yeah, super helpful, Keith.
Keith’s suit rustles and the door clicks closed behind him and hey, there he is, crouching in front of him, crinkling his dress pants like a dummy. Hasn’t Keith ever worn formal attire before? They’re almost level like this. Lance is sitting on the floor, knees pulled up to his chin, arms wrapped around his knees, back to the shelf behind him. Keith is crouching in what’s probably an uncomfortable position, putting his eyes actually a few inches above Lance’s for once, which is…odd. Their knees almost touch. It’s not a very big supply closet.
“Hey, Lance, can you hear me?”
Lance has been in this stupid closet torture chamber long enough that his eyes have adjusted as far as they’re going to and he can actually vaguely make out Keith’s face in the gloom. Keith can probably see him perfectly clearly. Keith’s night vision is terrifying. His eyes even pick up a slight reflective sheen in the dark, like a cat’s. It’s actually unnerving when he comes around a corner later at night and you’re not expecting him to be there. His eyes seem to glow purple in the dark and his teeth flash when he opens his mouth to greet you and he honestly looks like an anthropomorphized jungle cat. (Keith says that’s ridiculous but Lance has Seen the Truth).
“Lance,” Keith’s voice has that ‘forced calm’ tone to it that typically implies he’s trying to sound like Shiro, “Lance. Can you hear me? Nod for yes.”
Lance nods.
“Okay, good. Um. Can you focus on my voice?”
Lance nods again. He’s already focusing on his voice. Keith’s so dumb.
“Alright. I’m going to start counting. Can you try to breathe on my count?”
Lance is getting really good at nodding. Lance is an A-plus nodder. The nodding champ.
“Cool. Um. One. Two. Three…”
And weirdly, it works? Lance is actually following Keith’s count and apparently Keith’s number-literacy is the cure for asthma because the fist around his airways is loosening.
“Okay, now that you’re, uh. Breathing. Which is good. Keep doing that.”
Keith is such a dork. Lance isn’t sure how he ever thought Keith was cool? Like, he is. He can totally kick ass and fly really well and does some crazy cool stuff…but he’s also Keith. And Keith is a first-class dork.
“So, um. This sounds so dumb, but it works. Uh, for me. At least,” Keith clears his throat awkwardly, “Focus on your fingers. Count your fingers.”
Count his fingers? Does Keith think he’s five?
But Keith’s been doing okay on the advice front and apparently has some kind of number wizardry going on, so Lance counts his fingers.
“Now your toes.”
Cool, now we’re counting toes. That’s fine, that’s whatever. Lance can count toes.
“Now your teeth.”
The fuck? Lance has lots of teeth. Way more teeth than toes. Lance has like, ten-plus teeth.
Keith must sense he’s doubting Keith’s half-Galra number magic because he offers, tentative, “Um. I can count mine with you?”
Sure. They can do that. Lance nods again. See? World champ of nodding.
It turns out Keith has more teeth than Lance? Which. Okay. Or maybe Lance miscounted his teeth? He counts again just to make sure. Nope. Keith just has extra teeth. What a weirdo.
“Now count your heartbeats and, um, imagine…” he pauses, “Uh, water. Imagine water. Flowing through your body. Imagine just…filling up with water.”
The quiznack is he talking about?
“The water starts in the center of your chest and it flows through your body, through every part. Across your upper rib cage, through your shoulders, into your biceps –”
And Keith walks him through the muscular/skeletal/cardiovascular system, making him imagine water flowing through, cooling everything down, bringing him back into his body. Lance hadn’t realized he’d wandered away from it, but he’s realizing all over again that hey, he’s got, like, pinky toes and fingernails and stuff.
They finish with the imagine-water exercise and Lance can breathe again and talk and of course the first thing he says is “Why do you have more teeth than me, man?”
Keith makes a strange little noise that might be a laugh or a surprised choke, “Extra canines,” he mumbles, “Because of the whole…not-human…thing.”
“That’s cool,” Lance offers because what the quiznack else do you say to that?
They’re silent for a long moment. Lance feels all shaky inside like someone just stuck all his organs in one of those things you use to separate our DNA in 9th grade biology. But better. Cleaner.
But he’s not 100%, not yet, so saying “Hey, can I have a hug?” isn’t so weird, right? Hey, he just had an asthma attack, he needs some comforting.
Keith blinks his weird, reflective cat-eyes at him (they’re kind of pretty, actually, they look a little like the rainbows you see in puddles of oil, but, you know, not gross? Wow, Lance really needs to step up his metaphor game.)
“Sure?” Keith sounds really…Keith-like. There is no other word for that particular blend of confused, guarded and just plain awkward. It shouldn’t be endearing, but there’s something very comforting about hearing something that ordinary.
Lance just rolls forward, crashing into his teammate and knocking him back on his heels. Keith gives a little “Oomph” of surprise but takes his weight easily, arms coming up hesitantly and kind of vaguely patting at his shoulders.
“Okay, step one of hugging, buddy, you have to use both your arms and squeeze gently but firmly.”
“I’m not very good at hugging,” Keith says uncertainly, but gives it his best effort anyway. It’s still kind of weak but hey, he’s learning.
“You’re not bad for a beginner.”
“…Okay.”
Lance feels a little bad burying his messy face in the shoulder of Keith’s suit, but Keith wasn’t treating that suit right anyway. It’s not like Lance can make it any worse than Keith’s boots already have.
“Soooo…what’s up?” Keith sounds like a robot. Not even a smart, near-AI robot. He sounds like SIRI from back in the early 2000s. Old and awkward.
“Oh, you know, just chilling in a closet, having an asthma attack.”
“That wasn’t an asthma attack.”
“Uh, I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing there.”
A few seconds of dead silence and then, “That was a panic attack, Lance.”
Lance wants to pull out of the hug, wants to shove Keith away and do denial jazz hands. He wants to say ‘Panic attack? This guy? Whaaaat? Have you been drinking, Keith because that’s craaaazy.’ But he doesn’t because he’s feeling a little tired and a little empty and Keith’s shoulder is warm and his body is very reassuringly solid and now that he’s become a little more accustomed to hug-position his arms are what would be considered ‘too tight’ in most hugging situations but are exactly right in this situation.
So instead of shoving Keith and his stupid perceptive purple cat-eyes away (and apparently extra canines? What the quiznack, really?) he buries his face even deeper in the shoulder of Keith’s poor abused suit and says…garbled grumbled nonsense, actually. Nothing of substance. At all.
“So. Um. Wanna tell me why we’re in a cleaning closet?”
“Well, we’re here because you followed me in here.”
“Shut up. Shiro says to use ‘we’ and ‘us’ when talking to distressed people, it makes them feel less singled-out or something.”
“Shiro has been giving you lessons on how to talk to distressed people?”
“Apparently I frighten alien refugees sometimes. I’m very blunt.”
Lance snorts wetly into Keith’s shoulder and yep, this suit’s a goner. “No kidding, space cadet.”
“I’m not a space cadet. I got kicked out, remember?”
“Right.”
“So. Wanna tell me why you’re in a cleaning closet?”
Lance sighs and absently rubs his cheek on Keith’s lapels. Keith’s hair got longer in space. It’s not really a mullet anymore. It tickles where it brushes Lance’s forehead. He kind of wants to push it away but he’s pretty sure if he did that he’d just end up playing with it. “I wasn’t a very good space cadet,” he finally mumbles.
He can feel Keith frowning. He’s not sure how, but he can.
“Don’t deny it,” Lance cuts him off, even though half of him is afraid Keith wouldn’t deny it in the first place. Shiro is right, Keith is pathologically honest to a fault. Well. He keeps secrets okay, but he’s no good at comforting half-truths. “I wasn’t a very good space cadet. I was…I was the Garrison screw-up, okay? I only got into fighter class because of you, y’know…”
“Being an even worse space cadet?” Keith offers. It’s unexpectedly generous of Keith I-wear-my-talent-like-armor-because-people-scare-me Kogane.
“Dropping out.”
“I got kicked out.”
“What?”
“I didn’t drop out. They didn’t want me.”
“Oh, yeah. That,” Lance clears his throat, sniffles a little, this aftermath-of-a-panic-attack thing feels a lot like having a cold, “Anyway, um. We’re back here. And I know we’re super cool defenders of the universe now and we hang out with a princess and Coran and save planets and stuff, but being back here…even though it’s a whole ‘event in our honor’ thing…I dunno. These people used to laugh at me. All day, all I’ve been hearing from my old classmates is ‘wow, can’t believe you managed to’ and ‘well, if they’ll take you I bet they’ll take anyone’ and ‘who are you again?’”
Keith tenses microscopically and Lance wonders if he feels bad for not remembering who Lance was way back when they rescued Shiro.
“And that’s crappy but whatever. They think they’re joking, even if it’s not very funny. But…our families are gonna be at this event. And I left them. I left them without a word. I begged and begged to go to the Garrison, this was a huge opportunity and first I nearly flunked out and then I disappeared off the face of the planet for years. And after this shindig I’m going back to space. They’re going to be so…I don’t even know.”
“They’re your family, though?” Keith stumbles a little on the word ‘family’, sounds wooden, like he’s not sure how to say it. Like he hasn’t said it enough. Lance remembers all over again that before Voltron Keith was a crazy hobo living in a shack whose only family was a knife. “You’ve missed them so much. Aren’t you excited?”
“Yeah, but what if they’re not excited to see me?”
“Lance, they love you.”
“It’s been years, Keith! It’s been two years since I disappeared! What if…what if they’ve y’know, grieved and everything and once all that was over they were like ‘you know, in hindsight, Lance was kind of worthless’.”
“That’s – ”
“I mean, I’m pretty replaceable – ”
“Lance.”
“And I have a lot of relatives – ”
“Lance.”
“What if they don’t even think about me anymore? What if they’re…kind of glad I’m gone? What if I was the problem child?”
“LANCE,” Keith barks and there’s Lance’s favorite hothead, “FIRST OF ALL,” Keith seems to realize he’s yelling and cringes, toning it down a bit to an irritated growl instead of a full-blown shout. Lance can feel the sound rumbling in Keith’s ribcage. “No one on the team is replaceable. And…” verbal stumble, awkward pause, “I’m sorry if I…implied that at some point? I’m not too good with…words and feelings and stuff. But we’re at war. And we need all hands on deck. And everyone on the team has their own talents…and…fuck…I’m fucking this up again. Um. Okay. Is Shiro replaceable?”
“What? No.”
“But I replaced him. I piloted the Black Lion. Does that make Shiro replaceable?”
“No! He’s…he’s Shiro!”
“Am I replaceable?”
“No!”
“But you piloted Red. Does that mean I’m replaceable? I mean, that’s all I’m good for, right? Flying stuff? If you can do that, what’s the point of having me around?”
“But…” But everything in Lance rejects that notion wholeheartedly? “You’re Keith! We need you…for your…Keith-ness!” Yeah, that was smooth.
“AND WE NEED YOU FOR YOUR LANCE-NESS!” Keith practically roars and Lance can feel the sound in his bones. It’s weirdly…nice? He doesn’t even know. Keith clears his throat, maybe a little embarrassed, “And so does your family. So there. You’re not replaceable because no one’s replaceable. Not in our space family.”
Keith is such a dork and Lance kind of wants to cuddle him forever.
“You’re not a problem child, Lance. And our classmates at the Garrison were assholes. I should know; I had to live with them too. My team was…relieved when I got kicked out, okay? This is not a healthy environment for…growth and shit.”
Lance has to bury his face in Keith’s shoulder again because there’s the awkward tomato he knows.
“They set us up to compete with each other day in and day out and then they turn around and punish us when we don’t work well with our crewmates. And maybe their methods are good for some people? Shiro and Matt did really well here. But,” his voice sounds almost conspiratorial, or at least as conspiratorial as Keith gets, “Shiro’s a teacher’s pet and Matt’s too chill to care about cutthroat competition.”
“Truth,” Lance says flatly and Keith chuckles a little.
They stay curled together for another long moment. Long enough for Lance to become away of how they’re a little too old and too tall to be crammed together at this awkward angle on the floor of a cleaning supply closet and hey, he’s pretty sure his knee isn’t supposed to bend that way.
“So are we okay?”
“Doing the ‘group we’ thing again?”
“Shiro says it’s comforting!”
“Oh, if Shiro says it, it must be true.”
Keith huffs irritably, “I’m trying.”
Lance pats him consolingly on the shoulder, “I know, it’s okay. I believe in you.”
Keith makes a growly frustrated noise that raises the hair on the back of Lance’s neck in a not-unpleasant way. “See if I let you hug me again.”
“Dude, this is full-on cuddling we’re doing right now. You’ve leveled up, bro.”
Keith just sighs.
Lance pats him on the head this time, and stands, pulling Keith to his feet behind him. He breathes deep. It comes a little easier this time. He imagines water, tidal waves moving through his body, following the rhythm of his heart. He’s still holding Keith’s hand when they’re both upright. It’s a good hand. Solid. Keith’s fingers are a little shorter than Lance’s, his palms rough with callous. Lance gives it an experimental squeeze and Keith squeezes back. In the dark it reminds Lance of those playground games where everyone stands in a line and holds hands and sends a pulse through the group one hand-squeeze at a time.
Lance takes one last deep breath. His thoughts are clearer now, and quieter. He’s remembering individual moments now. His mama’s smile (the same one he sees in the mirror every morning), his sisters’ teasing (the same jokes he uses on Pidge and Hunk), his mama’s hugs (he hasn’t quite mastered that one yet, but he feels like he’s probably doing her proud trying to teach Keith the Art of the Hug). And he feels a little silly for ever thinking they wouldn’t want him back. Yeah, there’ll be some rough patches but…but if he ever lost one of his sisters he’d never get over it. No matter that he had four others and nieces and nephews beside – it wouldn’t matter. There would be a Val-shaped hole in the world. Or a Jamie-shaped hole…or and or and or.
“Hey,” Lance’s voice is soft, but this is a soft moment, so sue him, “Thanks, Keith.”
“Yeah, of course. Hope it helped.” And Keith means it, too. Because Keith means everything he says, always. For good or for ill.
“Okay, let’s hit the bathroom, make ourselves beautiful and head for the party!” Lance’s voice is only at fifty-percent strength but that percentage is rising steadily. He’s pretty sure he’ll be ready for whatever comes his way in that ballroom. Even if it’s the sight of Coran in a musical, theme-song playing cape trying to teach Altean folk dances to Pidge, Matt and a very confused Shiro.
Keith follows him away from the panic closet and towards the party.
…
Lance’s family cries when they see him. There’s a lot of shouting and tears all the way around. And lots of hugs. An uncomfortable amount of hugs. Well. Lance seems really into it. Keith’s just feeling a little weird about it since, well, Lance hasn’t let go of his hand yet so somehow he’s part of this hug-fest too. It’s…nice, though. Yeah, it’s really nice.
And Lance sends him a bright, burning grin over his shoulder. Keith can feel something bright flare in his chest, right under his breastbone. This visit to Earth thing might not be so bad.