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Griffin hates Keith Kogane.
Griffin had known he wanted space and the garrison his entire life. He kept his record clean and his head low, had done everything possible to make sure he had the best shot at becoming a pilot. And then Keith Kogane had swept in having done none of the work that Griffin did and got the attention of Griffin’s hero.
It’s easy to hate Keith Kogane.
It should be easy to hate Lance McClain too. Lance might not excel the way Keith did, but he spits in the face of everything Griffin has worked for in the same way that Keith does. He’s too loud, too arrogant.
But… Lance McClain is hard to hate.
Lance doesn't get everything easily and effortlessly the way Keith Kogane does.
Instead he works for it with a single-minded focus that Griffin can’t help but admire.
Lance is a better pilot than any of them, there’s a reason he was at the top of the cargo pilots, but he’s familiar with a different kind of machine and an entire year behind the rest of them in training. And yet, despite his inexperience, he takes risks and tries moves that would save his crew. Or...they would if he could just figure out how to pull them off. His strategies and tactics are sound, are good, but Lance doesn’t have the experience to pull them off just yet. It doesn't help that Hunk, while a great mechanic, keeps puking in the middle of simulations and that Pidge, while a great communications officer, is rarely actually focused on communications.
But it’s obvious to anyone that pays attention that Lance is going to pass them all one day, is going to be a better pilot than most of them can even dream of being. Even Iverson knows it - compares Lance to Keith in a way that he never compares the rest of them and pushes Lance because Lance needs to be able to handle anything if he’s going to become the pilot he's capable of being.
Lance’s loudness should be off-putting, but instead it’s magnetic. He’s friendly and kind and charismatic. His pick-up lines are terrible for flirting, but they are great for bringing up someone that's feeling low. They laugh and they tease, because they're teenagers and sometimes they speak before they think, but the entire cargo class and half the fighter class is wrapped around his finger, pulled into Lance's thrall.
And Lance is loyal, almost to a fault. He should’ve gotten a completely new team when he moved into fighter class, but instead he refused to train without Hunk Garrett as his mechanic and only let their communications officer go when he said that he didn’t want to work on a fighter.
Lance is hard to hate.
He’s easy to love.
Griffin nursed a crush on him throughout their first year, watching the cargo pilot from across the cafeteria. Back then it was just a crush, an admiration for Lance’s gorgeous eyes and the soft beauty of his skin and the way he made lanky somehow look elegant. Back then it was about a boy who yelled absurd pick-up lines across the cafeteria to his friends, lines that Griffin couldn't help smiling when he heard, and whose friends had to walk a foot away from him because he was so absurdly passionate that walking any closer meant risking getting a hand slapped against their face.
It becomes much, much more when Keith gets kicked out of the program and Lance moves into Fighter class.
Once their in the same class, Griffin is directly exposed to Lance’s charm. Lance flirts with him endlessly and Griffin knows he isn’t special, knows that Lance flirts with everyone, but it’s easy to fall for pretty brown eyes, a soft smile, and a caring heart. It’s easy to fall for the boy who always seems to notice when Griffin is too caught up in his head, too focused on his dreams and frustrated they seem so far away, and always sits to talk to him despite Griffin being snappy, bad company.
It’s easy to fall for a boy like Lance, so Griffin falls fast and hard.
But Griffin has never been afraid to work for what he wants so he goes for it.
And when Lance says yes to a date, looking surprised when Griffin first asks and then relaxing when Griffin doesn't back down, he throws himself into planning for it.
Griffin's plans end up being a disaster - the bus from the Garrison to the city has some kind of malfunction and arrives an hour late which makes them miss their movie, so then try agree to eat early and catch a later showing but the late bus meant that they were trying to eat during the lunch rush and the restaurant they agreed on was packed. The whole thing sucks and Griffin is convinced that he’s not getting a second date out of it.
But then Lance takes his hand, laughing about everything, and picks up the pieces. He pulls Griffin to the Aquarium across the city and Griffin spends the hours admiring the way Lance looks when he’s smiling at sharks, face highlighted by the blue glow emanating from the tanks.
He gets a second date.
And a third and a fourth.
Before he knows it, a year has passed by since Lance joined the fighter program and the two of them have been together almost half of that time.
Then one morning Griffin goes to the room Lance shares with his teammates, because he always wakes up before Lance and picks up coffee for the two of them from coffee cart in the cafeteria and walks to class with Lance, only to find that none of them are there.
It’s not strange for Lance to sneak out without Griffin, usually they go together but sometimes Griffin is too stuck in his head to be much fun so Lance and Hunk go in town without him, but it's that Lance left without telling him. It's even stranger that Lance isn’t back yet.
He waits, for a while, but he doesn't want there to be something wrong. So he holds onto a tiny, feeble hope that Lance just got up early, or maybe never went to sleep, and forgot to tell him. He goes to class, hoping that he'll walk into the class and see Lance already sitting in their usual seats.
Lance is not in class.
Lance doesn’t show up for class at all that week.
He doesn’t answer any of Griffin’s text messages or phone calls either.
That weekend the Garrison announces that three of it’s students are missing - Hunk Garrett, Pidge Gunderson, and Lance McClain.