Chapter Text
"Leave the math to Pidge.”
Lance smiled gratefully and exited the room.
He slumped into a mess on the floor as soon as the door closed, and cradled his head between his knees.
You don’t understand.
You’ll never understand.
Because you’re not worthless.
--
When Lance went to sleep, it was all he could do to stop thinking. From staring up at the wall to mindlessly crying, those were his daily pre-sleep doings. It was an eternity better to be racked with sobs than to bear the burden of a thought. And in his dreams, he dreamt about better things, a better life, a better Lance.
“Lance McClain, you are one sexy doll,” he would say, looking in the glass in the common room, washed clean, new as his smile that seemed to sparkle on the surface. Everyone else snickered, slapping his back, joking around. He then soiled the window pane with his fingerprints as the pads of his fingertips were placed carefully on the surface. They were dirty with his touch, and as he looked wordlessly outside at the stars, he could only see all the stars and space dust being so together and close by yet looking so lonely. Even though they looked so mashed together, they were millions of lightyears away, just like he was so far away from everyone else.
So he wanted to stop thinking.
It was all he could do. That, and laugh with the dry air stuck in his throat like glue, or have salty tears drown his lungs and wash him away? As long as he didn’t think, it would be okay. All the while, he looked out the window and imagined looking at the trees with leaves dancing from the breeze that blew gently, the blue skies and clouds like cotton candy, puffy and white, the sight for sore eyes of his siblings playing in the yard, feet and hands all dirtied from building mud castles and huge, watermelon-sized smiles on their faces. To eat a slice of goddamn pizza on a beach chair out on his lawn with lush emerald-colored grass, to be able to look in the mirror knowing that you would be worth something the next day, to live without having the worry of the only people you could possibly love with you being shot in the head, or bleeding out from a mine blast, that would be the life.
What would it take to get back to your one home, the home where you could possibly belong, even if it meant your death was the next minute?
Sometimes, Lance woke up to Keith banging on his door like he depended on it, and his eyes opened suddenly, dazed, confused. He sat up, perspiration rolling down his forehead and bare chest, and scrambled to the mirror in his room, only to find his eyes bloodshot as if he hadn’t slept for a century. Tears were dried on his cheeks; they still stung with inner pain that flowed through his veins all the way to his beating heart like molten iron, and he felt he could never really scrub the pain of his tears off anymore. The floor was so cold, so cold beneath his feet, and he felt like the room itself was way too hot, steaming hot- he couldn’t even breathe with all the air stuffy and humid, so instead of responding to Keith, who was practically about to bust down his door, he dropped to the floor, where he wished he could just freeze and not have to worry about a thing after that.
“Lance! Lance!” Lance could feel Keith’s rage through his calls and the banging on the walls that were endless and endless with each pound.
He couldn’t wash away pain, he couldn’t wash away the blood on his hands. Not even in his nightmares.
He recalled the span of a thirty minute nightmare within five seconds.
“I’m fine, Keith,” he choked out.
Lance could hear the whisper.
“Lance, we need to talk.”
Did Lance scream during the nightmare? Did Lance start saying things? Did Lance fuck up somehow? What if he revealed his secrets? What if Keith hated him? What if Keith wanted to make Lance stop being a Paladin? What if Lance would never be good enough for Keith? The what-ifs and the questions, the unconventional approach to his own thought process overwhelmed him, so much that he just wanted to curl up into a ball and cry, melt into a puddle of tears.
Why did he care about Keith anyways? All he did was make Lance feel all weird, and Lance knew for a fact he wasn’t gay. That would earn Hell back home, back where he felt okay, and to feel okay, he couldn’t be gay, no, not on top of being useless.
Yet he felt okay, just a little, when he was around Keith.
That day, Lance stood up, and thought about dying for the first time.