Work Text:
As far as he was concerned, Lance had been born wanting to go to space. His entire youth had been spent playing with rocket ships and hooked on vintage cartoons that always seemed to feature improbably youthful but purposefully relatable protagonists who took the fact that they lived in space in their stride. He’d always understood the difference between fantasy and reality, though - known that though little Shotaro could just grab the side of Tetsujin and nyoom off to the great unknown, humanity had somewhat had its heyday when it came to space exploration.
That was, of course, until Lance was ten, and the Impulse Engine was invented, and suddenly, his childhood dream was back on the cards. He’d watched with bated breath as NASA had shot up as fast as he did, somewhat struggling similarly with its newfound size and purpose in a way Lance could identify at least partially with - his sense of purpose had never once wavered.
The day the Galaxy Garrison was opened, Lance actually cried.
High school passed in a blur of exams and credentials, Lance barely glancing anywhere that wasn’t ahead at the horizon, focused entirely on the explicit goal of one day wearing the uniform of a fighter pilot. All around him, his friends and peers alike chattered happily over the common hope most people shared - that of finding the one, their match. Their soulmate, the one for whom they would Change, and who would Change for them. People lived for the Change, for the day they found their role in life, but as far as Lance was concerned, the world could keep its knots and its wombs and all that bullshit - he lived for the sky and what lay beyond. He had even less of an interest when he discovered that the Garrison had followed suit with all other military institutions and did not permit Omegas to enlist, though this rule was lifted by law the year that he applied.
The day he opened his acceptance letter to flight school, his mother cried.
The day he opened his acceptance letter to the Galaxy Garrison, his father cried.
His entire family was a blubbering mess as they watched him take his first (but nevertheless practiced) salute in unison with the rest of his matriculating class, managing to gather themselves together as they waved their final goodbye for the year, following the other spectating families as they emptied from the stands and the opening display drew to a close.
After that, the assembled students were divided by year and ordered to different assembly halls, Lance following the rest of the freshmen into their designated wing and scrutinising an information packet as it was handed to him. Nothing could ruin his mood, not even the scoffing he heard from ahead of him as two other cadets pointed at a shorter third and giggled something derogatory about letting pussy omegas in (whatever the sentiment, it was rebuffed smartly by the smaller cadet, amusing Lance briefly as he shot a supportive grin their way). He found a seat and smiled up at the large boy next to him, who returned the smile in a manner that implied they’d each found a new best friend.
It was happening - he was here, he was finally here. His room designation was sitting in his hands, sitting atop his uniform, the material undoubtedly rigidly-pressed beneath the crinkling plastic wrap. Two older people in uniform, chests laden with gleaming medals, strode into the room and Lance couldn’t fight the thrilled grin on his face.
Behind them, then, a far more fresh-faced and beautifully handsome (the first person in his life Lance had ever noticed as being such) young man in the same instructor’s uniform walked in behind them, and in that moment, everything changed.
Lance sat up straighter in his seat, locked eyes with the new man and the rest of the room fell away. In fact, the rest of the world seemed to vanish, a hollow silence settling in as he felt the strangest, violent lurch in his belly. After a short moment, the other man broke eye contact and everything rushed back so quickly it was hard to believe it had happened at all.
And yet, he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the student instructor, before he was even introduced, was called Shiro, and he was an Alpha. How he knew that was somewhat beyond him, and perhaps he was being ridiculously gendernormative given Shiro’s tall, broad appearance, but he was certain.
Lance had never noticed anyone in that way before - his eyes had never been open to anyone else that way but he couldn’t take his eyes off of Shiro. The entire talk had been intended to be an inspiring ‘you can do anything now that you’re here’ message, lauding Shiro’s achievements from his student days and since, and, right when the audience were slack-jawed in wide-eyed wonder and ripe for the piéce de resistance, his upcoming part in the Kerberos Mission. At this revelation, there was outright pandemonium from everyone around him, but Lance barely even registered them - all he could do was focus on Shiro’s skin, Shiro’s unbelievably handsome face and earnest eyes and how the sound of his deep voice made Lance’s toes curl in his clunky, too-heavy boots. He was handsome and beautiful at once, breathtaking in a way that was far too literal and Lance felt a prickle of itchy warmth spread under the surface of his skin like wildfire until practically his entire self was covered in a strangely painless burning sensation; he’d have had no other way of describing it, if asked. Even when Shiro backed away to relinquish the floor to a senior staffer, Lance felt himself settle lazily in his seat to just… watch, taking in details without context, committing Shiro to memory with a complete lack of self-awareness; a fragment of which, perhaps, would have caused him to question what on earth was going on, and perhaps begin to understand.
Perhaps, that understanding could have changed much of what was to come, but then again, perhaps it wouldn’t. It was a thought Lance would have repeatedly over the next year.
Then Shiro was waving, he was standing and he was leaving, no, nononono, Lance had not even had the chance to speak to him but he was leaving, he was opening the door, no, please, he couldn’t leave, not before Lance could even say hi, right?
“Shiro…” Lance whispered, panicked, entirely under his breath and unheard by anyone around him.
…But he watched in stunned awe as Shiro paused midstep, tension going all the way up his spine until it reached stiffened shoulders. Shiro was frozen on the spot, hand clutching the door as he turned, looking around at the room until his eyes reached Lance’s and wow, wow, that felt like a complete shock to the system. Lance squirmed in his seat, uncomfortable, the sensation entirely too much. With a mammoth effort, he shifted and broke eye contact, entirely unaware of his stance, only how difficult it had been to tear his eyes off Shiro. As such, he missed the way Shiro reeled back like he’d been slapped, only hearing the door firmly close.
On either sides of the shut door, both Lance and Shiro blinked, staring at the steel that was separating them, unsure what had happened, the feeling fading with the barrier between them until it felt like a strange daydream, spell broken entirely by the gentle shove in his ribs that the big guy next to him gave him to tell him the lecture was over, and it was time to find his dorm room.
The next morning, now settled in, Lance caught the Kerberos launch on his phone as he ran to class, not sure he was able to believe his memory of last night. He nodded his way through lectures, finding it hard to focus on the introductory classes at first but as the day wore on, he found his concentration returning and clarity alongside it. He spent the first week prepping like crazy and revising for the streaming exam, somehow finding time to get to know a few of his classmates, still somewhat subdued from his normal self (not that anyone there would have known that) but maybe this was his new, more adult self?
The morning of the streaming exam, he woke up on fire. Every inch of skin was pure, white-hot agony, but he couldn’t even find it in him to kick the covers off - covers which had, somehow, multiplied in number overnight, as he seemed to be under a fucking metric ton of them. When Hunk knocked on his door to tell him they were running late for the exam and what the hell, dude, there was so little air left under the deadweight of the blankets that he could only struggle out a hoarse, inaudible cry in response.
The next Lance knew, he was waking up in the infirmary, fluids running fast into an IV cannula in his arm, trying to keep up with the astounding volume he was sweating into the light, absorbent sheets covering his naked form. It turned out Hunk had, in the first of many, many instances of caring for Lance through the heats that would go on to dominate the next year of Lance’s life, kicked the door open and carried him all the way to the infirmary. The resident medical team, entirely unused to heats and unable to find much advice for caring for one of this severity, had run around like headless chickens until they’d managed to get Lance stable, and Lance had listened to their recounting with gentle patience until the consultant doctor handed him a leaflet and beat an awkward retreat, leaving Lance with the reality that he’d Changed. He was an Omega, now, and he could feel it - could feel the dull ache in his belly of newly-grown pieces of himself that would be there whether he accepted them or not, the residual tingle under his skin of a Change Heat violent enough to knock him entirely unconscious (having already caused him to Nest in his sleep), and, worst of all, the new emptiness inside of him. The emptiness was the worst part - an unprecedented need for others, for love and affection that was equal in strength only to his previous need for the stars.
He needed his Alpha (and he knew precisely who it was, almost like he’d known his entire life), and he needed their children, and it made him feel ill all over again - he couldn’t have felt anything further removed from the dreamy speech given to him by the nurse who discharged him from the infirmary about his real life beginning now, how wonderful it was to have met his Alpha, and how lucky he was to be able to stay in the Garrison now that the law had changed. That was a chilling thought - up until this year, after this, he’d have been sent home the instant he was stable enough to be on an ambulance transport out of the Garrison, all his lifelong hopes and dreams permanently shelved.
It was the next day, back recuperating in his room when he found those hopes and dreams had taken a solid beating, as he received a letter from the Director informing him that because he’d missed his streaming exam, they were left with no choice but to allocate him a place on the cargo pilot program, which was the usual path for those who failed to achieve the required mark. The letter concluded that unfortunately, there was no provision for a resit in these circumstances, as this was the first time an ‘incident’ of this nature had happened in the history of the Garrison and, in the Director’s opinion, the cargo program would be less taxing on Lance’s new, more ‘delicate’ sensibilities.
The moment Lance finished reading, he folded it over carefully, sighed, and lay down on the floor, at the mercy of a thousand circling thoughts. Among them was the call towards his Alpha, the heartache that came alongside it knowing that could not be resolved for a long, long time, anger at having had all this happen against his will and without his permission, and overwhelming loneliness - there was no-one in the world who would ever have understood his feelings, because it was overwhelmingly likely that no-one had ever been in this situation as long as humans had existed.
Unable to find a way to wade through and resolve even a single one of these streams of thought, Lance shrank away from them and retreated inside himself, deep into a place where the immense sadness that threatened to ruin him could be held at bay - at least until the moment his Alpha returned from the furthest human reaches of space, and he could re-centre himself alongside his new, distant soulmate, if that was even where he wanted to be. He had a long time to prepare for that, now.
Which was where he stayed, throughout the next year - a year in which people commended his strength, judged him without knowing him, laughed at him for flunking downwards like a typical Omega, gossiped about who his mystery Alpha could be.
When the news of the Kerberos mission failure came through, Lance retreated deeper still - to the point that everything on the surface became a lie, and he wondered what the point of anything even was anymore, as he suffered pointless heats for a dead lover he’d never known, was unsure if he’d even wanted (though the memory of that one evening assured him he did), and now never would - not even the unexpected bump up into the fighter program could lift him - though he’d been top of his class, it was the dismissal of a hotheaded Alpha from the fighter program, leaving a very expensive opening which had given him the opportunity, a fact which one of his older, traditionalist (and thus, Omegas-in-the-military-hating) instructors never left him forget.
In the quiet of the night, Lance wondered why life was so determined to destroy him - Change him, inside and out, and then rip the source and reason away from him. If it hadn’t been for that chance meeting, that one evening in the same room, it may never have happened and he could have carried on his life, happy, pain free and knowing his purpose. Of course, as he told himself endlessly, if he’d just engaged his brain and spoken to Shiro, had run after him, maybe Shiro would have been feeling the same pull he did and reconsidered Kerberos. Another part of him told him not to be so presumptuous, idiot, Shiro was never going to drop the opportunity of a lifetime just for some skinny-ass Cuban kid, even if he was his newly-discovered soulmate and, in fact, it would have been socially expected for Shiro to drop everything and Fulfil their Bond.
Moot points, all of them. Shiro was dead. Lance was alone, in pain, and not living up to his potential, his dreams, and the new dream that life had in store for him thoroughly crushed.
Forever circling, never resolving, the year passed in that manner; to the point that in brief moments of clarity Lance considered ending everything until one evening, following a peculiar restlessness he couldn’t explain, he wound up on the roof of a Garrison building with Pidge and Hunk, watched a burning light fall out of the sky. The moment he spotted it, Lance heard the first whispers of sound, enough to confuse him. At the sound of the crash, the sound rose until he realised it was singing, singing that seemed to come from all around him, getting louder and louder. They watched as the Garrison troops headed out towards the crash site, constructing a temporary shelter. The singing soared higher it was deafening, a chorus of vibrant voices, but it wasn’t until he saw that Hunk and Pidge were entirely unaffected that he realised the sound was coming from inside of him, and, desperately hopeful, unsure of what for but a primal part of him knowing, he lifted Pidge’s viewer with trembling hands, cast about and waited for the zoom to focus on the emerging stretcher and there, there—
White-streaked, aged far more than a year and sleeping, but somehow, impossibly, there he was - Shiro.
The singing reached a crescendo and stopped abruptly as Lance stood to his full height, lips curving into his first real smile in a very long time. He patted Hunk on his shoulders, throwing a brash grin at Pidge and, gleefully, started for the setup, joyfully confident that nothing could possibly keep him and his soulmate apart, not even the infinite depths of space.