Chapter Text
When Lance was eight years old, he leaned too far over a firework he and his brother were lighting off and got a faceful of mild explosive. The result was a permanently dulled sense of smell, his most important sense as an alpha rendered down lower than what even the average beta could pick up.
At the time of course, he was still pre pubescent, and the only thing he noticed was that he couldn't tell which of his family members was which by smell alone anymore. It was only as he grew up he noticed how much he was missing, as everyone in class started presenting left and right and the only thing he could tell was different were their attitudes.
Lance wasn’t just scent blind to individual smells. He couldn’t even pick up the difference between an alpha and omega walking down the street, their entire society built on signals and rules he was realizing he was completely oblivious to. An alpha scent-marking his territory? An omega afraid and cowing? Not things he could smell. All Lance had to go off of was body language and voice, and those did not a complete story tell.
But Lance was confident his ability to read people by watching what he couldn’t smell would be to his benefit in life. Let’s face it, all of TV and music were designed to be consumed by people like him, since no one could beam scents via satellites yet. Yeah, not being able to smell like eveyone else sucked and would totally affect his social life, but all he had to do was work a little harder to get around that.
That’s why the Garrison was actually a perfect fit for Lance. Pilots needed perfect vision, but a sense of smell didn’t matter at all. In fact in space, if he went a step further and became an astronaut? It would be an advantage NOT to have a strong sense of smell while trapped in a small space with other mostly-beta space explorers.
It was just frustrating that he, you know, kind of sucked at all of his classes. Which was of course, where Keith Kogane came in.
Keith was cool, and confident, and good at everything he tried and he didn’t even care . Between his aggressively closed off body language and his rebellious attitude there was no mistaking he was an alpha even as thirteen year olds, and soon Keith represented everything in the world Lance wasn’t .
He might not have resented that so much if Keith wasn’t also so much of a dick he refused to get down off his high horse enough to make a single human connection. He had no friends, refused to acknowledge anyone as his equal, and worst of all, he didn’t even GIVE a shit about any of it. He was everything Lance worked so hard to be, and he didn’t even have to try to be better than him.
So, when he threw it all away and got himself kicked out of the Garrison because of a petty fight? Lance kind of took it personally. Going to space was his DREAM, and Keith just let an open scholarship guaranteed to get him there slip through his fingers because he couldn’t control his alpha hormones well enough to stop from attacking a teacher.
Lance knew he was at a disadvantage when it came to controlling his instincts, new his body could pick up pheromones even when he couldn’t actually smell them. Knew that since he couldn’t walk into a room and instantly smell when the occupant was upset that meant he had to work twice as hard to watch their body and listen to their voice, and had to watch HIMSELF for those same tics because he couldn’t tell when a nearby omega was riling him up. Keith didn’t have to run around doing whatever he felt like, not if Lance could figure out how a little control.
So, needless to say, when he finally got his chance to go to space and it was only because Keith Freakin’ Kogane led him to his destiny, and was also a direct part of it? Yeah, he was not pleased, and didn’t bother pretending to be. Keith was just as much of a closed off asswad as ever, and Lance was no reason to play nice… Until it they were forced to.
Yeeeaaaahhhhh. It turned out teamwork was not only vital to a successful mission, but even bringing their Lions together to form Voltron in the first place. So. Fine, Lance could deal. Alphas made friends with other alphas all the time. Look at how close Keith was with Shiro, right? Lance could totally do that, he didn’t even have to deal with territorial scenting crap.
Keith or not, space was still awesome, though. Alteans didn’t have secondary genders, so his disability had never come up as an issue even once in battle because none of space technology saw any use for transmitting scent, either. And it meant that Allura, the most amazing goddess Lance had ever laid eyes upon, would never never be able to be disappointed in Lance as an alpha because she had no idea what an alpha was supposed to be in the first place .
Basically, Lance’s life was going as amazingly good as he could hope it, barring Allura’s continued disinterest in his fabulousness. But he was a legendary space hero and he was GOOD at it, he was sure he was because no one had died yet and that was a total possibility so they must be killing it. Well, it had only been like two days so far, but it was a good start!
And um, then the castle was all under siege and Lance exploded a little bit in a spontaneous burst of heroism saving Coran. And also in a bomb. Mostly the bomb, is what exploded.
He didn’t remember much after that, mostly black with flashes of vague but incredibly painful memories. Seeing Sendak and thinking, ‘I have a clear shot. ’ Keith’s face, expression warm and relieved as he gripped Lance’s hand, eyes shining honestly as he looked into Lance’s. And, though he would not be ready to admit it to himself for a long time, Lance remembers thinking that Keith wasn’t so bad to be lost in space with, after all. Especially considering how beautiful he was…
The thought that he wanted to get to know Keith better as a friend was the last thing he remembered before he went into the healing pod, and everything changed forever.
—
When the door to the healing pod opened and fresh air flooded into Lance’s lungs, he bolted awake, so startled he stumbled out onto the floor. What the flying blue lion was going on? What was that overwhelming indecipherable SMELL, and why was everyone too preoccupied by clocks to notice it?
Hunk caught him, and everyone was celebrating his safe return from the wrong side of of a concussion, asking him how much he remembered and - yeah, he had some blanks in his memory, maybe they’d explain the smell when they caught him up. Post galra explosive smoke stains or something.
He got dressed and everyone herded him into the kitchen to get some nutrition into his system, telling the story of the Balmera and everything he missed while he as out. Also Keith referred to That One Time as a bonding moment and Lance was SO not prepared to deal with whatever was going on with that right now, like. No. Let’s just shove whatever alpha-on-alpha manly bro platonic feels may exist right down to the bottom of his gut where he could rightly ignore them.
And anyway, none of that was nearly concerning as the fact that no one had bothered to tell him what the fuck that super powerful STENCH was, and it was starting to give him a migraine. It was too... nuanced, too ubiquitous, it was everywhere at once and a the same time seemed to be like a million tiny little different smells mashed together, and it all changed depending on what direction his head was tilted. And if his broken ass was this bothered, shouldn’t normal alphas like Shiro and Keith be passed out right now?
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Lance said, brushing aside Hunk’s girl-centered monologue. “We can go back to the Balmera to go free your girlfriend any time, for right now is anyone gonna tell me what the hell kind of stink bomb went off in here? That smell is so strong it’s making my entire face hurt.”
Everyone exchanged glances that were, at best, confused. “Stink bomb?” Shiro frowned. “You know if you smell something that isn’t there, that could be a sign of a brain injury. Are you sure you’re feeling alright, Lance?”
Trying not to panic at the words ‘brain injury,’ Lance waved his hands. “N-no man, I’m fine! I feel great! I’m just a little…” He searched for an excuse. “Probably a side effect of the healing pod, I’m fantastic!”
“Healing pod…” Hunk looked Lance up and down. “Hey man, you don’t suppose that could have like… Fixed your Thing? Because none of us smell anything weird, and… Well I mean, maybe you’re just finally smelling…”
“...What you guys smell?” Lance finished for him, eyes wide and heart racing. No way. No way, that couldn’t be right, he’d been to like eighty different doctors as a kid! What he had COULDN’T be fixed, it was just… a permanent disability! “Disabilities don’t get HEALED! That’s not how it works, if it could be FIXED then I wouldn’t be disabled!”
“Disability?” Shiro’s look was deadly serious. “Lance, did you have a physical disability we need to know about? If it’s something that could come up while fighting the Galra…”
“It isn’t though, it’s nothing! I just have a really bad sense of smell, I got a bottle rocket up my nose as a kid, it’s nothing that’s even a thing.” He paused, still dizzy from the onslaught of smells as well as now kind of freaking out. “Or wasn’t even a thing, I guess.”
“Wait,” Pidge leaned in, examining Lance’s face. “Wait you’re telling us you’ve had a damaged sense of smell his whole time? Is THAT why you’ve been so oblivious to like… everything?!”
“Hey, I’m doing my best!” Lance slammed a hand on the table. “I’m like, a master observationalist, these perfect eyes see ALL, baby!”
“You… can’t smell?” Keith’s voice was quiet, head tilted curiously to the side. “So… you couldn't even smell an omega in heat if they were standing right next to you?”
“Well I don’t understand what the big deal is all about,” Allura sighed. “It’s just smell, and he has it all back now, doesn't he? I don’t see what impact not being able to SMELL would have on his skills as a paladin.”
“THANK YOU, Allura! No, it doesn’t! Not being able to smell my teammates hasn’t gotten us killed yet and I don’t see how it could start now, so. It’s all fine!”
“Except that you got it back,” Hunk pointed out. “At least, it seems like you did. Can you describe the uh, ‘smell’ that’s bugging you? Is it, is it like just one solid smell? I mean I’m a beta, so I wouldn’t know what you’re SUPPOSED to smell, but...”
Lance sighed, breathing a huff out through his mouth because he wa still trying to avoid breathing with his nose right now. Stood up and leaned in to sniff Hunk’s neck, pulling back with a gasp of “HOLY SHIT TOO CLOSE, TOO MUCH!”
Shiro’s forehead landed in his hands. “Lance, try not to overdose on your friends and pass out. I know you don’t know what it means to be an alpha yet, but sticking your face into people’s necks is generally ill advised.”
“I’m an alpha!” Lance defended weakly, collapsing into the table to hide his face in his coat. “I’m a good alpha, I swear!”
“I think,” Coran patted Lance on the back, and ohhh that was nice Coran barely smelled like anything compared to the others. “It might be time for you lot to explain exactly what an ‘alpha’ is, then? I’m afraid the princess and I are ah. A bit lost.”
What followed was an explanation of what everyone on Earth already knew about secondary genders while Lance plugged up his nose and buried his face into his own clothing to try and block out the deluge of information he couldn’t comprehend.
God what was happening, and why did he just feel bitter about it instead of grateful? He’d regained a lost sense, this should be awesome, not… overwhelming and kind of depressing. Maybe there was a way to go back. Maybe he could explode his face again and prove to everyone he could be a real alpha even without being able to smell.
“...And this is where Lance’s lost sense of smell comes in. Since alphas have the highest range of ability in his area, they’re the ones in charge of maintaining pack order, because they’re most attuned to the people around them by being able to smell changes in their body chemistry. Even subtle shifts like mood can be picked up, so alphas can walk into a room and be able to tell just from smelling the occupants, what gender and caste they belong to and a baseline mood of everyone there. Omegas have similar receptor functions, but since they’re built for childcare their sense of smell is always more attuned to their own pack and less useful in large social functions.”
Pidge rambled off scientific facts, not important enough to raise his head for. A hand came down to tentatively pat his shoulder, and when Lance lifted up enough to peek at who he was surprised to see an awkward looking Keith trying to give him a comforting half-smile. Huh. That’s not who he’d expected. Kinda nice.
Or maybe not, because the second his face lifted out of his arms a huge wall of scent slammed him in the face, so forcefully thick Lance squeezed his eyes shut to stop the sting of tears as he coughed out, “Jesus, is that all just you ? I think I’m gonna puke.”
Keith’s hand retracted like he’d been burned, backing away from Lance with a hurried apology.
“No, dude, I didn’t mean…” Lance’s mumbled apology was cut off, Pidge’s monologue having been interrupted by Allura.
“Ah, so a sense of smell is vital to human social situations. Lacking one must mean Lance has been unable to maintain pack order until now, yes?”
“OKAY,” Lance jerked up, hands slamming on the table to shove himself out of his chair. “I think we’re done here, I’m all caught up on what I missed in the explosion, thanks guys. Let’s never talk about any of this again, okay, that sounds fun!”
Shiro stopped him with a gentle hand on his shoulder, voice reassuring when he spoke. “Sorry Lance, this has to be overwhelming. Why don’t you get some rest, and we can see about helping you… adjust later on.” A small sigh. “I don’t suppose anyone else is hiding any disabilities that might get suddenly healed by super advanced magitechnology?”
“Um,” Pidge tugged nervously on a lock of blond hair. “Well I wasn’t gonna mention it since everyone was gonna notice when my scent blockers ran out, but my medical records have some slight lies regarding… Both of my genders. I’m not a beta male, I’m an omega… and a girl. So. Um, hi, guys.”
No one else particularly reacted, aside from Coran wondering that they were supposed to think she was anything else.
Lance blinked at… her? “You’re a what now?”
“Yeah,” Pidge apologized. “I did figure it was just you who wouldn’t notice.”
—
He could only spend so much time hiding in the sterile cockpit of Blue Lion, and eventually things settled down and Lance learned to distinguish individual scents instead of living in a giant miasma of chaos. Which was good, since Lance was a fan of being able to breathe without gagging on the air around his friends.
He’d never lost his entire sense of smell, so he still remembered had a sense of taste and memories to go with it. He was thankful of that now, because he’d have gone nuts with all these new smells around if he’d had no way to describe them and no past experiences to compare them to.
Having that background, once things settled down instead of terrifying it was actually like, super fascinating and awesome. Lanc basically went off like a bloodhound, investigating every possible scent in the entire castle with obsessive interest.
Altean technology smelled different from anything on Earth, the only scent Lance could liken it to was one he remembered from playgrounds in school: asphalt after a fresh rain. Something subtle and clean and almost electric, but not quite . The entire castle carried hints of this scent, but it was especially strong around any crystals, and when they went to the Balmera to liberate it from Galra control he found the massive symbiote smelled not just like asphalt and rain, but a thunderstorm over the ocean as well.
But that was just the smell of the technology. The castle itself a very clean uniform scent, not one artificially manufactured but a natural smell that Lance assumes it must have carried all the way from the air of Altea herself.
He suspected that because the two Alteans also had that same fresh laundry scent, apart from the natural individual smells Lance soon noticed they also had. Mostly Coran smelled like the crap he used fo moustache wax and Allura smelled like juniberry shampoo, and also the ‘male’ and ‘female’ type scents Lance was picking up from species to species, but after enough time there were even tinier nuances Lance could smell that he couldn’t even explain.
They smelled like cotton compared to the others, whose outrageous human scents blocked out anything even after they’d left the room. And yes, Lance was including himself. His nose was so sensitive he could smell his own B.O. at all times, and had ended up with an even more obsessive hygiene routine than ever in an attempt to escape what was beginning to feel like second puberty. He just smelled so BAD all the TIME!
And then everyone insisted he smelled like a Bed Bath and Beyond outlet store and needed to calm the fuck down and just let himself stop noticing it the normal way by getting used to it, which, FINE, but that meant Lance was gonna obsess over how everyone else smelled instead. Which was easy.
The most powerful scent belonged to Pidge by far, since she really WAS pubescent and her omega hormones were basically exploding all over the castle. A powerful vanilla mint, an explosion of candy that followed her like a cloud and grew more peppermint-strong like candy canes when she was deep in concentration.
By comparison, Hunk’s scent was so faint he might as well have been nonexistent. When Lance singled him out of the pack, easy enough to do just with his old habit of using his friend as furniture, Hunk smelled warm and comfortable and soft like fresh banana bread, and it quickly became the most comforting scent in the castle. Betas man, there was no better friend to have your back.
Alpha’s scents typically repelled one another and riled each other up, but since Shiro was their pack leader Lance wasn’t surprised to find he didn’t find the captain’s scent uncomfortable. It was manly and piney and when he got real serious you could smell the insanity so strong it sent tingles down Lance’s spine. And when he was actually angry or in the heat of battle it sizzled up like crackling firewood, intimidating and commanding and WAY scarier than he just looked. Lance had had no idea what kind of power a real alpha had until he regained his sense of smell, tell you what.
And then there was Keith .
Keith was… complicated. It wasn’t that he smelled BAD, in fact when that bizarre citric scent wasn’t clogging up Lance’s nose and making his eyes water and sting so bad he thought they’d fall right out of his head it was kind of a nice, potpourri kind of thing, but. My GOD, that ginger-spice lemon-orange citrus HOTNESS to his scent was so powerful, Lance couldn’t stand even being around it. He guessed this was what rival alphas had to put up with around each other…
Even though Pidge’s scent was the strongest, Keith’s was always the one easiest for Lance to pick out, so intense it was. He could still smell it in a room after Keith had left, could follow his whole trail through the damned castle and the one time Lance found himself wandering the trail from Keith’s room to Red Lion’s bay he realized this was what scent tacking was, and holy shit he had just done it on ACCIDENT how cool was that?!
So okay, tracking was a thing Lance had always felt he was missing out on. There were a lot of thing he’d always heard about but never been able to truly understand until now, and when he realized he was slowly opening doors that had been closed to him all his life… well. He wanted to play, obviously.
And by play, he meant literally. There may have, somewhere in between dodging Zarkon nipping at their tail, a forcefully arranged game of hide and seek so he could learn to track every one of his friends by scent, badgering Allura into it by arguing it counted as stealth training for all of them and the opposite of stealth training for him so everyone was learning how to navigate the battlefield better now go hide anywhere that isn’t a personal bedroom while I count to a hundred please.
Unsurprisingly, Keith was the easiest to find every time, the citrus scent so easy to follow Lance almost did it on accident. By contrast Allura herself was the hardest to track, only the sweetness of her perfume left after he picked through all the others overpowering human sweat glands.
Lance found it nice. Allura’s scent, that is. Everyone else was still stifling and overwhelming to be around for too long, and as much as Lance was getting used to it, he found that hanging out with Allura was a wonderful reprieve. Ah, beautiful, badass, AND calming to be around, Allura really was the perfect woman, wasn’t she~?
She wasn’t even the only badass alien Lance got to enjoy his new sense around. Every alien species and every planet all smelled different, and everywhere they went was an endless buffet of new experiences. Lance had thought space was fun and interesting BEFORE, this was like finding out he’d been seeing it all in black and white this whole time!
Good smells he wanted to share with Allura and Pidge and rancid awful bad smells he wanted to trick Hunk into getting a whiff of, hungry food smells and dirty mechanical smells and everything was so much FUN! Once everything stopped being dizzying and overwhelming, Lance was having the time of his life playing with all the amazing gofts space and his new sense had to offer.
It was amazing. But… there was one thing still kind of bothering him.
Lance had always been trying to prove himself, show that he could still be just as good as an alpha even when he was disabled. Now that he was no different than anyone else… there was this strange hollow feeling he got sometimes, like he had betrayed every other person who was still scent blind like he had been.
Lance didn’t really know what to do about THAT feeling, but. At least he didn’t feel directionless. He may not have to prove all the same things he needed to before, but every time he saw Keith he still remembered how much he wanted to prove that someone who worked hard could be just as successful and amazing and someone with natural talent leaking out of their ears.
Well. That wasn’t usually ever the FIRST thing he thought when he saw Keith anymore, but it uh, still showed up from time to time. Somewhere in there.
...Space was full of pretty people.