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Takashi Shirogane was standing five feet away. All Lance had to do was walk up to him and get an autograph...or at least introduce himself.
Takashi was Lance’s hero, had been since the first time he appeared on the TV in the McClain family living room one night after dinner. There was a news report on the youngest pilot to ever fly into space, and as soon as those grey eyes appeared on screen, Lance decided right then that he was going to save up money to attend the same Galaxy Garrison right after he graduated.
Over the next few months, his room filled with posters of space and rockets and constellations, but mostly of Takashi. He even had a small picture of the pilot taped right next to his pillow, so he could both wake up and fall asleep staring at the man he knew he’d soon meet.
But now that he was standing there, right there, within reach, Lance hesitated. What if Takashi thought he was strange to ask for an autograph? Maybe he should settle for an introduction. Or maybe he should just run back to his dorm room and faceplant into his pillow and forget the whole thing.
Lance was about to opt for the latter, when suddenly those same grey eyes that had led him here were fixed on him, waiting expectantly to hear what he had to say.
“Can I help you?” the man’s low timbre drifted into Lance’s ears and gently woke him from his stupor.
“Ah, I’m- I, uh- Hi. Lance.”
His arm shot straight out towards Takashi before the action had even processed in his mind. By the time he was aware that he’d just shoved his lanky appendage hastily at his hero and should probably pull it back, a bigger, warmer hand was grasping his, and he realized Takashi was shaking his hand.
Oh God, Takashi was shaking his hand.
“Nice to meet you, Lance.” Oh God, Takashi said his name. “Takashi Shirogane, but most people just call me Shiro.”
“Shiro,” the cadet heard himself whisper, and so did his hero, apparently, because the man smiled down at him and it nearly caused Lance to go into cardiac arrest.
“Are you lost? Do you need help finding your class?” Taka- Shiro asked.
He was so sweet. How was he so sweet? Lance had always heard of people meeting their heroes and regretting it because they turned out to be rude or standoffish. But not Shiro. He was the exact opposite, and he didn’t even act freaked out by Lance’s inability to form words in his presence.
“No, I- I just wanted to, uhm. Would you, uh, m-maybe want to, um...”
Lance fumbled with the little notepad and pen in his hands, trying his best to hold them up without shaking (too much).
“Would you sign this for me?” he finally got out, and hoped to all heavens that Shiro had heard his soft request so he wouldn’t have to ask again. Because, if he was honest, he didn’t think he could if he tried.
Somehow, Shiro did hear him, and he made a small sound in the back of his throat, some sort of half-hum, half-laugh as he carefully took the notepad and pen from Lance’s trembling hands.
As soon as Shiro’s fingers grazed Lance’s skin, his shaking stilled, as if Shiro was The Lord And Savior reincarnated and had just healed the tremor not only in his hands, but in his heart, too.
“Sure thing, bud,” Shiro casually nicknamed him, and Lance swiftly tucked it into a folder in his mind as if he wasn’t going to tell everyone back home that he and The Takashi Shirogane were Buds.
With a few strokes on a page that Lance couldn’t see (he was far too busy staring at Shiro’s face, this close, in person — wow, he really does have a freckle under his left eye — to see what he was writing), Shiro placed the pen and pad back in Lance’s still outstretched hands.
“Hope that’ll do,” he smiled, looking back up to Lance’s face and holding eye contact so intense it could physically lift someone and carry them off into the sunset.
Please carry him off into the sunset.
Lance swore if he was an anime character, his eyes would be wavering with admiration as he hopelessly held Shiro’s gaze.
“Y-Yeah, it’s great. You’re great,” he stuttered.
Shiro’s smile grew wider, if that was even possible, and if Lance’s thundering heartbeat in his chest wasn’t distracting him, he would have noticed the faint blush appear on Shiro’s cheeks.
“Thank you,” the man said, ducking his head slightly as he cleared his throat. “Well, it was nice to meet you, Lance. But if that’s all, I do have a class soon.”
“Oh! Right, yes. Okay. Thank you, sir,” Lance said, standing a little straighter than before.
“You’re welcome. But, just ‘Shiro’ is fine.”
“Alright, then. Thank you, Just Shiro,” Lance joked, and he wasn’t sure where this newfound confidence was coming from, but he liked it. Especially because it made Shiro laugh.
“I’ll see you around,” the man said, still chuckling under his breath as he slowly backed away. He sent Lance a wink before turning on his heel and disappeared down the hallway.
Lance was still recovering from being winked at by his hero and newly realized crush when his eyes finally fell to the autographed notepad in his hand. There, in Shiro’s loopy cursive, the paper read:
Lance
Space is cold, but I think you’re cooler.
Takashi Shirogane
Scratch the whole ‘crush’ thing, Lance was straight up swooning. The Takashi Shirogane thought he was cooler than space.
Space. The place that had made him famous for journeying to at such a young age, that he’d worked so hard to achieve and did it before he even turned 20. But somehow he thought that the super-fan who could barely get out coherent words upon first meeting was cooler.
If Lance was honest, he knew there were probably dozens of kids running around the Garrison with the same autograph in their most prized possessions. But whether Shiro truly meant it or just wrote it to be nice, Lance wasn’t really thinking about as he walked back to his room, carefully closing the notepad and placing it in the pocket of his uniform nearest his heart.
-
Years later, after leaving earth and joining Voltron, Lance and Shiro finally got to know each other. They’d become teammates and close friends, and Lance’s crush grew from hero worship into actual genuine feelings that thankfully, he was able to be cool about, unlike the first time they’d met.
Lance figured Shiro had long forgotten all about the stuttering fanboy who could barely ask for his autograph. At least, he appeared to, considering he never mentioned it to said fanboy.
It wasn’t until they were on a mission together, a dangerous mission that had a low survival percentage for both of them — even Shiro himself was nervous, which of course made Lance even more nervous — that the subject was brought up again.
“Lance,” the man stopped him before he could go out to save the day, and Lance had seen enough movies to know that this was the moment where the main characters (which were him and Shiro, as far as he was concerned) confessed their feelings for each other in case they never got another chance.
“If anything happens...”
Here it comes...
“It’s been an honor flying with you.”
Oh.
Lance tried not to look too disappointed, but then Shiro smiled with a mischievous glint in his eye and spoke again.
“You’re the only thing cooler than space,” he smirked, and Lance felt his own smile slowly curl up into his heated cheeks.
It wasn’t a love confession, but it meant so much more. It was a recognition, a shared memory just between the two of them, and it was the best this could be the last time we ever see each other, so I’m confessing my feelings before it’s too late sort of moment that Lance could have ever imagined. So he knew his reply had to be just as meaningful and legendary.
“I know,” he said, in true Han Solo style. And he promised himself that, should they make it out alive, he’d actually tell Shiro exactly how he felt.
(And he did.)