Chapter Text
The first time Lance fell in love, it burned.
He was nine. A girl in his fourth grade class laughed at his joke. She had bouncing black curls framing her glasses-adorned face. Her name was Nicole.
She sat across from him in class and like every other boy in his grade, he had a major crush on her. Lance was determined to win her over. When she laughed at his joke, he knew: he was in love. But it wasn’t the feeling inside that made him realize it.
Heat, red and hot, blazed across the inside of his wrist. He screamed, doubling over in pain. Lance fell out of his chair as the fire spread through all of the nerves in his body. He cried out, begging for it to stop. The teacher hurried over to him, but then noticed the thick black line on his wrist. She stopped and pushed all the other kids back.
“He’s getting a mark,” she had said. “Let him be.”
Lance continued to scream and cry, his tears wetting the cheap carpet. The pain subsided after a few minutes, but he could still feel his flesh bubbling. He worked on calming down, trying to steady his breathing. Carefully, he turned his wrist around so he could see it, his eyes still blurry from his tears.
A black line glared back at him. It stood out on his tan skin, evil and menacing. Lance knew what it meant, and he hated himself for it.
He coughed, and sat up. The entire class was looking at him in shock, the teacher still trying to get kids back to work, like this was all part of the norm. She noticed he was sitting up, and smiled at him.
She walked over, and kneeled down. “How are you feeling sweetie?” She smiled at him.
Lance rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm. “It hurt, Mrs. Grey.”
She pouted comically at him. “I know, sweetheart. But doesn’t it feel a lot better now?”
Lance almost shook his head, no. Then he remembered what the parents and teachers had told him about the marks: if you fell in love with someone, a tally would spark across your wrist, and if they loved you back, you would be granted with a feeling of euphoria, the pain subsiding.
Lance smiles back at her. “It does,” he lied.
The next time he meets eyes with Nicole on the playground, he feels something on his wrist again. Not pain, but like cold water is trickling down his skin. He looks down and realizes that red was dripping down the mark and covering it like ink.
Over the years, his arm would become saturated in red, unrequited love.
- ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*
It’s been fourteen years since Lance got his first mark.
He now has marks covering the entire inside of his forearm, going all the way up past his elbow, and close to snaking around to his shoulder. Each and every one of those marks are a bright piercing red.
Each time he’s gotten a mark, it’s burned, and he’s never felt the sweet feeling of euphoria. Each time he’s been punished for loving someone. So he stopped. Or tried, at least. There would still be a mark there. And he’d still have to go through the burst of pain exploding across his arm and body. Lance hates it.
Lance is finished with college by now, proudly holding a degree in astrophysics. He lives in a small apartment with his best friends, Hunk and Pidge. Both were working together to start up a tech company, Lion.
Lance, on the other hand, isn’t doing as well as he had hoped.
He wanted to get a job in astrophysics, he really did. He just wasn’t good enough. Lance applied to what felt like hundreds of jobs after he graduated, but each had turned him down. They just all seem to have found another astrophysicist. There was just this other person who had the same degree, but went to Yale or Stanford.
Lance tried not to take it personally, but he couldn’t stop himself. Each time felt like a stab in the gut. Each time felt like the company was rejecting him for being himself. So instead, he got a job at a small bookstore, working as a barista in the cafe inside.
He is on his way there now, listening to the gentle hum of the radio as he drove. His uncle’s old truck coughed and sputtered everytime he tried to turn on the engine, and the heat didn’t work, but it’s the best he’s got.
The bookstore is not far from his apartment, only a ten minute drive if he stops at McDonalds for coffee. It was tucked away in a corner of a large shopping plaza. Altea Books was not a large bookstore, but Lance did love to browse the aisles in the winter, a scarf around his neck. He'd select a fat novel to read during the dredges of the snow storms, burrow himself in his apartment window seat, and read while the blizzards of Hartford, Connecticut raged outside . It was a tradition when he was younger, and it was still a tradition for him now.
He parks the truck as close to the front as possible. The neon sign in the front shines red, though the “t” in “Altea” was no longer shining as brightly as the other letters. Lance grabs his light blue apron, one he picked up from Allura a few days before, from the passenger seat, locks his car doors, and heads inside.
The door hits a bell and makes a slight jingling noise. Taking a deep breath, Lance can smell dusty perfume of hundreds of books filling the air, mingling with the bitter scent of coffee. He smiles.
“Lance!” an accented voice cries from the back of the store. “I’m in the back!”
Lance’s grin widens. The voice was sickenly familiar. The owner of that voice actually had her own stripe on his arm, number nine, toward the top. The line, like all the others, was oxblood red.
He passes shelves upon shelves of books, the eerie quiet disturbed by the slight clicking of his keys in his hand. Lance is walking down a particularly long line of shelves when he hears a loud crash at the back of the store. He jogs down the rest of the corridor of shelves, turning his head back and forth searching for the source of the sound.
“Allura?” he calls out. “You okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine!” she yells back.
There are faint footsteps before her head pops out from behind a cardboard box she is carrying. Her hair is stark white from heavy dye, and tied up into a high ponytail. Her blue eyes sparkle as she smiles.
“Hey Lance! Welcome to your first day,” she says, setting the box down by the nearest bookshelf. “Let me take you to the cafe and get you set up.”
Lance follows her as they walk past more bookshelves before getting to a large open space. The cafe is toward the back of the store. A few tables are scattered across the open space, with the cafe built into the back corner of the area.
Allura motions for him to follow her through a door next to the counter. “Come back here and I’ll show you how everything works around here. Throw on your apron, too!”
Lance tugs down at his yellow sweatshirt sleeves before tying on the apron and following her into the cafe. She shows him the works: the coffee grinder, how to take an order, and how the cash register works.
“He isn’t in right now, but Shiro is going to be your manager. If you need help with anything, feel free to ask him or anyone else working. Everyone else should be coming in a few minutes, so get ready!”
Lance nods in acknowledgement, and Allura runs off to clean up the cardboard boxes before the store opens. He sighs and rests his head on his elbows as he waits for customers and more baristas. He almost dozes off, his eyelids heavy from the lack of sleep he had the previous night. Lance probably would have fallen asleep on the counter if someone hadn’t slammed the front door when they came in.
Lance snaps awake, standing upright and to attention. He hears two voices approaching the back of the store, and scrambles to find something to do. He finds a rag and decides to clean the counters. As the two voices get closer, he can tell they have having an argument over something. Both voices are male.
“Honestly, I’m fine!” one voice says.
“You know I don’t trust you on that bike, Keith. You’re going to get hurt one day!” the second voice retorts.
The first voice, Keith, scoffs. “You’re not my dad, Shiro. I’m an adult. I can do what I want. Just trust me on this okay?”
The owners of the voices walk out from amongst the bookshelves. “Keith, it’s not that I don’t trust you,” sighs the taller of the two. Lance cranes his neck slightly to get wind of the conversation, but still pretends to scrub convincingly at the counters. The man has a shock of white hair at the front of his face, and a scar across his nose. “It’s that I don’t trust other drivers. You could get hurt! Or worse!”
The other man’s back is to Lance, Keith he presumes. “Listen, if something bad happens, then I’ll deal with it. Nothing has happened yet.” He sighs and runs his hand through his long black hair. “Can we drop this until after work?”
Shiro closes his eyes for a moment. “Fine,” he snaps.
Shiro walks towards the counter, just noticing Lance. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry you had to hear that!” Shiro gasps. “We didn’t notice you were here.”
Lance smiles and shakes his head. “No, no it’s okay! Don’t worry about it.”
Shiro holds out his right hand. “My name is Shiro, and that loser over there is Keith.”
Lance takes his hand and shakes it. “My name’s Lance. You must be the manager?”
Shiro nods in confirmation. “Yup! Allura trained you and stuff, right?”
“She did. I don’t have any questions right now, but if I do later, I’ll be sure to ask you.”
“Perfect.” Shiro turns around and beckons Keith over, who was still facing away from them, scrolling through his phone. “Keith, c’mon. Do you want your coffee or not?”
Keith groans, but turns around. And holy shit . Lance almost has a stroke. Keith was probably the prettiest dude he had ever seen, and Lance has to look at himself in the mirror every day. He had stunning purple-gray eyes which were slightly covered by a swoop of black hair at the front of his face. His skin was perfectly clear, not a single blemish or scar in sight, except for a small mole on his jaw. Keith’s lips were such a perfect pink, Lance could have leaned over the counter and kissed him right then.
Good thing he didn’t though.
Lance snapped back to reality as Keith’s purple-grey eyes glared at him through his hair. “What’re you lookin’ at?” Keith almost sneered.
Lance’s eyes widened in shock. Of course he’s pretty and a dick.
“I’m sorry, what?” Lance replies, confused.
Keith blinks for a few moments, seeming puzzled at his own words. “Nothing, nothing. Sorry.”
“Okay?” he draws out the word. Lance is super confused at what he just said.
Shiro glances between the two, sensing the weird tension. “So, Keith,” he finally interjects. “You want a small or medium coffee?”
“Medium,” Keith responds, and flicks back on his phone. “With sugar.”
Shiro nods, and heads behind the counter to make Keith’s order. Lance stands back, having never been more confused in his life. He is tempted to ask Keith about it again, but by the time he has the courage to, Keith is already walking towards the front of the store, coffee in hand and a scowl still on his face.
The rest of the day is uneventful. Lance has worked as a barista before, during his high school summers. And navigating around Altea’s cafe was not too difficult. He meets the other barista, Romelle, and they get along pretty well. Customers are surprisingly plentiful, due to the fact that there was a high school across the street from the shopping plaza. The large amount of books and the late hours of Altea made it a popular place to study.
Lance’s day ends around five. Right now he is still five hours before closing. Romelle had left an hour before him, and Shiro was helping Allura with something in the stockroom. He debated hanging around for a bit to browse books (and put his employee discount to use) but decided against it. It was probably best to just get out of here while he still had some money in his bank account.
He walked to the front doors as he untied his apron. His sweatshirt now smelled like coffee grounds and sugar. The smell was nostalgic, and brought Lance back to his high school days when he was younger, without a care in the world. Draping the apron over his arm, he pulled out his phone and scrolled through all of his unread emails as he walked. Lance was so tired and distracted that he almost walked into someone, just noticing when he saw a maroon sweater in front of him.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said the person. “Careful!”
Lance looked up, and lo and behold, the person he almost walked into was Keith.
Of course.
“Sorry!” Lance apologized. “Sorry, didn’t see you there.”
Keith rolled his obnoxiously gorgeous eyes. “Yeah, whatever.”
Lance was on the brink of snapping. This guy had been nothing but rude to him in the interactions that they’ve had (yeah, okay maybe it was only two, but Lance was tired).
“Dude, what’s your deal?” Lance snaps.
“Nothing!” Keith turns back to the shelf he was restocking. “Can you just leave me alone?”
“Fine!” Lance throws his hands up dramatically and pushes past Keith, bumping into him purposefully. “Mr. Lone Wolf,” Lance mumbles to himself. He can practically hear Keith’s frustration as he shuts the door behind him.
Lance slams his car door and sits in the driver’s seat, annoyed. He rests his head on the top of his steering wheel, closing his eyes. Lance wasn’t just annoyed at the whole Keith situation, he was annoyed at himself. This was the only job he could manage with a degree in astrophysics. It didn’t even have to do with his degree! Yeah, maybe he did go to a mediocre college. Yeah, maybe he is drowning in almost $45,000 of student debt. But he still has worth, right? Right?
Lance shakes his head, trying to snap himself out of it. If he keeps thinking like that, it’ll just keep going down, down, down, into a deep spiral that will definitely end in ice cream, tears, and no solutions.
Lance throws his apron into the passenger seat and starts the truck. The marks on his left arm ache as he puts his hands on the wheel.
He drives home in silence, not bothering to turn on the radio. On the way home, he stops by a Taco Bell to grab dinner. Lance doesn’t bother picking up food for Pidge and Hunk; they work late on Thursday nights.
The apartment is cold and empty when he unlocks the door. The light flickers for a moment before casting the joint kitchen and living room in a gentle yellow glow. Lance sets the plastic bag down on the counter, and throws his apron into his room haphazardly. Grabbing a plate from the top shelf, he puts the burrito on it and sits down in front of the TV.
Mindlessly, he watches Netflix and eats. The entire apartment complex is dead silent, making every small noise he makes eerie and uncomfortable.
But he’s used to it.