Chapter Text
a u g u s t 2 0 1 7
It felt like Lance blinked without blinking. The world went dark, and in the next moment, that aching, dizzying sensation was due to the fact that he was suddenly flat on the ground. Above him there were figures silhouetted in godly light shining down from the Heavens. It was so blinding that he squinted and said, “Shit why is the sun so bright…? Wha happened—?”
His head felt like a magnet was heaving through the back of his skull when he tried to sit up. Someone pushed him down by the shoulders and said, “Lay down. You hit your head pretty hard.”
“Shiro—?”
“Shit, I didn’t mean to hit him that hard,” a familiar voice said. Keith. Wait—hit him? What reason would Keith have for hitting…
Oh.
Well, this is rather embarrassing, he had to admit.
o c t o b e r 2 0 1 5
It’s difficult to pinpoint where, exactly, Lance went wrong. It’s easy to blame it all on Keith because everything happened because of Keith. But who could he blame for meeting the guy in the first place? Pidge, probably.
And who could he blame for meeting Pidge? Allura, probably.
Before then he really had nothing else to blame aside from fun, recreational volleyball where he found himself oozing over the sight of Allura in Spandex shorts at the gym, killing it on the court. He never seriously considered volleyball as, like, a legitimate sport until he saw that ass diving for balls, or braced under the charged silence of her opponent preparing to serve across the net.
He was a freshmen in college at the time—when everyone and their mother insisted you try out anything and everything. Go to all the university sport matches, go to all the clubs, the parties… So Lance found himself at the gym more often than not when he had free time. That was all fun and great and happened to be where he met Hunk—his current best friend as far as he could consider anyone to be that close to him. It seemed college was either a place of constant socializing, or an island where he had to reach out to make friends considering he was roommate-less.
Sure, his floor buddies were fine and all, but really, they weren’t exactly “up his alley” in terms of hobbies. As much as Lance loved a good party, he couldn’t be bothered to go out on Thirsty Thursdays, or every goddamn weekend. After spending so much time in his dorm on the weekends, he grew fed up with their antics those nights. He’d lie awake furiously at two AM listening to Chance The Rapper blasting through the paper-thin dorm room walls, and loathe his neighbors all the more because of it.
So dorm life wasn’t the greatest, so he wasn’t in the dorm a whole lot as it was.
“If you want you could hang at my place?” Hunk suggested one time as Lance vented (yet again) while spotting Hunk on the bench press.
“Seriously? I mean, that’d be awesome, but you’re, like, on the other side of campus,” Lance confessed. “And shouldn’t I be enjoying the single life in a room all to myself?”
“From what I hear, you’re used to sharing a room,” Hunk huffed out, pushing the bar back onto its hanger. He ducked out from under it and sat facing Lance. “Sorry man, but… you’re just not used to being on your own it sounds like.”
Lance refused to blush under the comment. For whatever reason, being independent sounded like an accomplishment to him, but… he hated it. He hated to admit to Hunk that he literally called his Ma every damn night, or that he more often than not felt terrified of the tense, silent darkness alone in his dorm room. He thought it’d be a breath of relief to have a room to himself, but the price of a single room wasn’t worth the anxiety of being alone, it seemed.
“Maybe I just need to get a girlfriend or something,” Lance mumbled to himself.
Hunk rubbed a hand under his chin and shrugged. “I dunno. I mean, I always have my girlfriend over ‘cause she hates her roommate,” he confessed. Lance was quietly jealous of Hunk—the man was a year above him in the apartments already. He’d visited several times before on the weekends to play Battlefield, and so Lance already met Hunk’s girlfriend Shay.
“But I like having my own room. I hated sharing with a roommate,” Hunk continued. “Not exactly the same situation, but…”
“But you must like having Shay over, right?”
“Yeah, because I guess I get the option of saying ‘no’. You can’t exactly say ‘no’ to a roommate. Well—unless you’re a shit roommate,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Last year my roommate would kick me out if he had a girl over.”
“Yeah, no, not fun.”
“Agreed.”
Lance sighed, and leant over the bars to frown at Hunk. “Where do I find a girlfriend? Where’d you meet Shay?”
“The volleyball courts downstairs.”
After Lance demanded Hunk show him, they wandered down together where they could watch (among several other bystanders, mainly guys) from the other side of an entire wall of windows. The university girl’s team was at practice, and it was probably the first time Lance ever heard a spike echo like thunder against the walls. Even through the glass it gave the same sensation the bass did on speakers close to his chest. It was more thrilling than a swimmer’s buzzer when he realized that such an effect was capable of being conducted by a human’s palm spiking a ball with such force as to shake the insides of Lance’s ribcage.
And he fell in love with the harsh quickness of volleyball before he ever saw Allura’s pert ass on the court. It was nothing like the languid swim routines he was used to.
She was a senior when Lance was a freshmen, and she stuck around to co-coach-slash-manage the team. She was the sort of girl who both intimidated and inspired Lance with her impressive physique and strict voice. She could shout “Give me twenty!” in that coach-voice of her’s anytime and he’d be on the floor in a heartbeat. She prowled the sideline, aggressively calling out to each player rushing up to the net.
Lance first saw her after watching an impressive spike drill into the far corner of the court. He looked to see who the spiker was, and instead saw Allura standing beyond her, eyes on the next player, clapping her hands encouragingly.
“So Shay’s on the team?” Lance asked, and Hunk snorted.
“Fuck no. She hates competing. She just plays on the recreational team—mostly as a cheerleader of sorts,” he explained. “It’s just fun watching the official team do their stuff. They’re good, aren’t they?”
Lance’s gaze drifted up and down Allura’s short Spandex shorts, and that tight-fitted Nike tank top with mesh sides. And that hot pink sports bra…
“Hell yeah they are,” he breathed, already half-gone.
Hunk no doubt followed Lance’s gaze and gave an amused laugh. “That’s their co-coach, Allura. She’s a senior, and she messed up her knee or something so she’s out for the season. She’s kind of the manager of the team now—Shay knows her.”
“Wait, really?” Lance blurted out, attention temporarily drawn to Hunk.
“Yeah, she plays on the rec team for fun. She doesn’t go all out because that wouldn’t be fair, but…”
“I’ve gotta meet her. What’s the rec team all about?” he demanded, practically clutching at Hunk’s shirt, clawing for answers.
The recreational team didn’t meet up until that weekend, so Lance had to wait through three painful days after meeting Allura—wait, meeting Allura for the first time. That was an experience in and of itself. Lance had badgered Hunk to stay until the university team ended practice, and then they waited around the end of the locker room hall as Hunk murmured, “I mean, I’ve met her before and she and Shay hang out but I wouldn’t consider us friends—she might think it’s weird that—”
“Oh, hey Hunk!” one of the exiting girls said, hair damp from the showers and pulled back into a messy bun. Several other girls followed after, all buff, big calves and powerful thighs. Lance wished every last one of them would crush him with their thighs that couldn’t fit into jeans so they just wore athletic leggings. They all chirped, “Hunk!” “Buddy, how you doing?!” “How’s Shay?” “Hunk, my man!”
Lance gained secondary praise just from being associated with Hunk. He beamed like a puppy begging for treats, and accepted high-fives along the line of volleyball girls heading out of the gym. At the end of them was Allura, who Hunk stopped frantically.
“Allura! Hang on, I wanna introduce you to someone,” he called out, and seemed startled when Allura gasped at the sight of him, and reeled him into a bone-crushing hug.
“Hunk! My beautiful teddy bear!” she cooed, shaking him back and forth. It looked kind of like Hunk couldn’t breathe. Lance was starstruck being so close up to Allura, and to hear that accent. This was the woman wearing a hot pink sports bra on the court, shouting orders and making Lance weak at the knees.
So maybe she was a senior while he was a freshmen. Lance didn’t fucking care one bit.
“Allura…” Hunk whined, unable to escape until she finally released him, clapping a hand hard on his back. He coughed a little. “Um, so this is Lance. He’s interested in the rec team.”
“Really?” Allura said, eyebrows up as she surveyed him and asked, “So do you play volleyball?”
“Uh, no. Just sort of getting into it,” he confessed weakly.
That was probably where everything went wrong because he couldn’t admit that it was all because he fell head-over-heels for a woman like Allura.
n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 5
It was kind of a mistake for him to say he was interested in recreational volleyball because A) Lance had never played volleyball before, B) he completely underestimated the sport, and C) he was competitive as fuck. So naturally, recreational would turn into a competitive sport in no time.
At the time he figured it’d be worth the hassle to learn so long as Allura was the one shouting the orders, which was exactly what happened. That weekend Shay came to walk Lance to the open courts where they met with her recreational team. It was colder out those days so it required that they separate to the locker rooms before reemerging into the gym. Voices echoed across the walls, and the general buzz of socializing never ceased to spike Lance’s excitement.
Volleyball was much like swimming in that everyone got to know each other, and everyone was invested in the others’ progress. Only, volleyball was a team sport and he appreciated the proximity in which they stood as one in parts of six across the court. When Lance joined, they all started from square one so he could learn the simple math of actually hitting the ball.
The first time he punched the ball over the net (which worked, mind him) Allura called the play off and grabbed Lance by the shoulders, shaking him as she yelled, “We never do the douchebag volleyball-punch! We never do the douchebag volleyball-punch!”
“What? I got it over the net, didn’t I?” Lance blurted out, but apparently that was a major no-no in the art of Allura’s volleyball league.
She couldn’t play, but despite doctor’s orders, she drilled with them. She’d spike the balls ruthlessly at Lance, and when he saw everyone catching them so easily, he felt compelled to win. He needed to catch up because internally, he had to. It wasn’t a matter of winning Allura over anymore—he realized quickly, shockingly quick, that she saw everyone as a sibling of hers, nothing more. She’d clap them all on the back after a good play, and to the girls, she’d slap their bums and every time without fail Lance clung to his heart and pretended to choke on the sheer beauty of it. She whistled at him (the woman didn’t even need an actual whistle) and shout, “Eyes on the ball, Lance!”
After spending so much time after practice with Allura, he learned to be more ballsy, so to speak. He’d ask if she was doing anything later, to which she replied, “Why, you want a drink?”
He hadn’t yet realized that athletes, regardless of their partying habits, did not drink alcohol. So when he agreed, he hadn’t expected her to take him to a late-night coffee house where they sat at the bar stools at the window. At this point, he still thought he had a chance with Allura.
He didn’t.
She drank a regular coffee—no sugar, cream, nothing—because she had an essay due and a presentation to prepare for that night. It was already dark out.
“Why do you play rec on off-seasons when you have so much homework to catch up on? Couldn’t you just skip?”
“Theoretically, yes. But will I? No. What can I say? I love hanging out with you guys. And… quite honestly being alone in my apartment kind of freaks me out,” she confessed, and before Lance could even make a snarky comment, he was reminded that this was almost the exact reason he wanted a girlfriend. He didn’t want to be alone in his dorm.
“Well…” he started, forcing down immature comments about You can have me over… anytime chanting in his head. “If you ever need a study-buddy, I wouldn’t mind hanging out with you. My sleep schedule’s kind of weird now because my neighbors keep me up.”
“Oh,” she commented. “Oh. I forget you live in the dorms. You’re still a freshmen.”
“Yeah.”
“Kinda sucks that that’s a requirement, huh? Well. I can’t say either of us are prepared to hang out tonight, but… maybe after next practice if you want to hang out? I’m sure I’ll still have a shitload of work to do anyway.”
“I’ve been wondering what all your majors are, in the university girl’s team. Because I heard a lot of stereotypes about student athletes taking easy majors so they can focus on sports more,” Lance asked, hoping he didn’t sound ignorant because of it. He figured the best place to learn would be from Allura.
So he learned that she was in business—a difficult college to get into at their university. In high school she had to score pretty high on any of her tests if she even planned on getting into their university at the first go—which she did. She sipped idly at her coffee as she explained, hair dipping over her shoulder, that she wanted to own her own company one day. Maybe fashion, maybe not. She wasn’t sure.
“All I know is that I really like this area. I wouldn’t mind staying here,” she admitted.
m a y 2 0 1 6
And that was exactly what she did—except, not until after she thoroughly hooked Lance on the art of volleyball. They’d watch professional matches together, and Lance was suddenly surrounded by beautiful, beautiful buff girls every weekend because that happened to be the sort of gang Allura hung around—the university girl’s team. They suddenly greeted Lance like they had Hunk, and after realizing that Lance was Allura’s volleyball-charity-case, they spun their free time together into Destroying Lance Time. In other words, they worked him to the bone, starting from the ground up as if he were suddenly training to become The Best Of The Best.
Secretly, though, Lance loved the idea. He fell in love with it just like he had winning gold in high school for swimming matches.
Hunk kept Lance on track though, even if they weren’t gym buddies any longer. Freshmen year became tolerable because of the volleyball girls, and Hunk’s constant assistance with homework. Many of The Girls lacked the concentration Lance required to stay grounded during studying, while others were in such difficult majors that Lance couldn’t comprehend what they were saying, let alone help them study.
They all—Lance, Hunk, Shay, and Allura included—took to calling the university volleyball team The Girls. They weren’t the rec team, because it wasn’t limited to “girls”, but they were something else entirely. Lance had never seen a group of individuals so thoroughly woven together as they were. Their instincts paired with one another on the court. They were invested in each others’ lives. They had constant contact throughout the day in a group chat Allura dubbed The Girls in honor of Lance first calling them that.
Unfortunately, though, Lance wasn’t a part of The Girls. He almost wished he was, after spending so much time with them only to realize that he wouldn’t be invited to stay at such-and-such a cabin up north. He wouldn’t be invited to slumber parties over the summer break. He wouldn’t be invited to outings in the summer, or to camping or anything of the sort because they were “for The Girls—we can’t invite you along, sorry Lance. All our schedules are just synched up because of the summer season. Coach wants us to all be together over the summer.”
“That’s fine,” he confessed, but it wasn’t. “What do you guys do in the summer season?”
Allura glanced at the others and shrugged, saying, “Well, since I’m out of my brace now, and I’m done with recovery, I’ll be in the beach volleyball league. I do singles every year.”
“What’s that?” he asked, pouting against the couch cushions. “Would I be able to play?”
“It’s the women’s league,” one of them said. “You can’t—”
“There’s a mixed-gender league,” she said, perking up, only to glare at several of them. “Which, I know several of you are doing with your boyfriends.” The accused blushed. “It’s doubles beach volleyball, and your team can be whoever you like. I’ve done it before in high school with a few of the other girls.
“We should try it out together, Lance,” Allura insisted, pinching his knee. “It’ll be fun! And you can keep practicing. You could go into a co-op competitive team next fall or something!”
He considered competitive leagues across the city, but they never really interested him as much as The Girls inspired him to play.
One of them pulled out a computer and Allura retracted her name from the singles roster and signed up for doubles with Lance McClain alongside her. From that point on, he was taught doubles beach volleyball.
j u l y 2 0 1 6
Lance loved the beach. He spent his summers there constantly—not necessarily out of his own will, but because it was his job. All through high school he stood guard at public swimming pools and eventually found himself recommended a position as lifeguard during the morning shift. Normally it was at incredibly crowded, popular beaches for college students, and the water on the West Coast was always too cold where he came from for anyone to ever actually set foot in the water.
The temperature of the water was unseemly, but it didn’t stop men and women from donning bodysuits and hiking their surfboards over their heads. Those tended to be the people he watched from afar and fretted over—not so much the children who found their fun being chased by the waves rather than being in them.
He’d get ridiculous farmers’ tans that his siblings teased him about, but he always ended up being darker-skinned than them after the summer was over—even considering the lighter side of his farmer’s tan. He’d always been quick to tan, but he never considered how swiftly he turned dark spending hours out in the sand with Allura, Hunk, and Shay.
Hunk decided to take a stab at beach volleyball, but both he and Shay quickly found it difficult to cooperate with one another. That season nearly broke their relationship due to Shay’s never-ending competitiveness in volleyball—which took a lot to get through to. It surprised them all that Shay’s fuse became so short that summer, and her patience thinned with Hunk.
“My serves suck—Shay hates it, I can tell,” Hunk confessed dully after a practice match on Lance’s beach. The regular swimmers there recognized Lance even off-duty, and as they chatted together, he waved to several of the regulars down the beach.
“Yeah she’s kinda been a bitch to you, no offense,” Lance confessed, turning his attention back to Hunk, who only deflated more. “But I mean, when you two aren’t playing volleyball together, you’re, like, goals or something. I think it’s just when y’all play volleyball together, honestly.”
“You’re probably right… but we still have a month of summer left and I don’t want to ruin it just because I’m crap at serving and we have no coordination on the court together,” Hunk admitted. “I kind of wish I would have started when you did. You and Allura kill it out there.”
“You think?” Lance was thrilled to hear it. First semester had Hunk said that, Lance would have been thrilled because of their prospect of working together as a couple. But now he saw them as a team more so than a relationship.
“Yeah, Lance,” Hunk insisted. “Ever since that first practice you two had playing doubles, I figured you two would make it farther in the tournament than Shay and I would. Are you ready for it?”
The tournaments in that last month of the summer would be Lance’s first real competition in volleyball. Sure, they had scrimmages, but nothing where fame was on the line. The thrill of it was almost too much for him to bear. All through the nights he stayed up smiling at the prospect of winning with Allura. She was famous at the university for her skills. He’d be on a two-person team with a legend.
All through work he sat up on his high perch, watching people play volleyball in the sand and thinking about how great it would be to be down there now.
