Chapter Text
The moon beams down on him even as the sun begins to sprout from the mouth of the horizon like a blooming flower. The water around him ripples gently with each breath he takes and sloshes against his ears every so often. Slowly do the clouds begin to shift and rest upon the stars that were sparsely laid out in the softly pinkening sky.
It’s nice to watch the sunrise like this, from what would be the perspective of the sea, and admire the warm tones from the east melding into the darkness of the west. Lance lets out a deep sigh, somehow failing to notice the quiet chitter of his teeth that follows almost immediately. September really was no time for swimming, and much less a time to float on your back listlessly for an hour or two, and for no real reason but to watch the colors in the sky and breathe.
Lance’s hands hover over the water, not quite breaking the surface, just feeling with his fingertips. It’s only the second week of the school year, but he’s already so tired.
“Lance?” A voice calls, and Lance can tell it’s Veronica even with water covering his ears and warping his hearing. She is always the one to bring him out of his morning trances so he wouldn’t miss the late bell at school. So, “Lance,” she calls again. But of course he doesn’t answer (he never does, because she knows exactly where he is).
Lance smiles to himself, amused by this routine they've come to perfect since the cheery spring.
And, as expected, his elder sister steps up to the edge of the poolside and peers down at him with crossed arms and a scowl on her face, looking just like their mother would if she wasn’t so busy preparing breakfast for five inside.
“Ma’s making pancakes,” she starts with, hoping that’d lure him out, “and your friends’ll be here in thirty. Mamá wants you to eat.” Veronica then drops to a crouch and holds out her hand, offering her aid in reeling him back to shore. But Lance rises, then dips his body back into the water. Veronica squints at him and drops her hand.
“I’ll see you later.” she tells him, promising, with her lips pursed just slightly and in a way that does something to Lance’s stomach. He dips further into the water, lips sloped into a frown, now aware of the fact that his action had made his sister upset though he didn’t mean to. Veronica rises and steps back from the pool, about to make her leave.
And Lance feels bad. He needs to reach out to her, say he’s sorry, ask for forgiveness, or do something, because she’s leaving, she’s leaving him, and he doesn’t know what he’d do without her, and can’t even begin to fathom what his life would be like if she weren’t here and…that’s too much of a hassle, isn’t it? There’s too little time for all that, and there’s a little too much to unpack there.
So at the last second, he springs forward hard and flails his arms into the water, generating a splash of water that sprays over the edge of the pool and onto the legs of Veronica’s denim pants.
Veronica squeals like a young schoolgirl and whips around with a shocked expression on her normally composed features, with her mouth quirking up on the left side, a telltale sign of that silly McClain Mischief that the entire family shares. She stomps her foot and her hair curls around her chin. “Oh I would so jump in if I didn’t have class this morning.” she swears at her youngest brother, narrowing her eyes. And Lance, despite himself, chortles, and then snickers gently into his hand. (He doesn’t miss the delighted glint in Veronica’s eyes, but he doesn’t understand what it means.)
He doesn’t say goodbye, but he wipes his smile away as best as he can and wiggles his fingers at her. Veronica still watches him with that weird glint, but grins back nonetheless, turning on her heel and finally walking back into their house. Lance lets his smile creep back onto his face as soon as she’s gone and sinks down further into the depths of the pool, blue eyes wide and aching against chlorinated water where he watches his own hands clench and unfurl in a mesmerizing dance.
Not seconds later, he’s suddenly hyper aware of his own body.
A wave of slow, delayed exhaustion comes up over him, swallows him whole, and then spits him out, leaving his limbs heavy and hurting and just like lead because oh my God, he’s sinking and there is nothing for him to grab onto, and there is no one there to give him a hand, look at him with carefully narrowed eyes and a curled lip that gives out an airy chuckle and says,
(Hush now, Lance.)
“Breathe.”
Lance gasps when he goes topside and heaves, finally cutting his lungs some slack and sucking in the cool morning air into them, desperate to breathe again. But he sputters, then coughs, and then, stupidly, nearly chokes on his own spit. And blood rushes up, and up, and up and his fingertips go cold and he reels his head back to the sky—to the stars—and shudders so violently it takes everything he’s got to not pass out right then and there.
But then his throat goes tight, then relaxes, and he burns, and slaps a hand on the base of his neck in relief because finally there was something to focus on and he’s able to bring himself down from that excruciating high, whatever it was, and then laugh at himself.
Well that was pathetic. He’s held his breath for longer than one minute and forty seven seconds.
Lance shakes his head, sighing hard. He wipes his face with his hands and shudders again, lightly, before slicking his hair back and finally swimming over to the edge. He carefully throws his arms over the poolside and lifts himself out of the water, brown skin breaking into goosebumps against the autumn breeze almost instantly. Lance shivers and regrets ever leaving the water just like he does every morning.
Sluggish and almost dazed from nearly drowning (because that’s what it was, really. Like he had forgotten how to swim or how to breathe altogether) (how do you forget something you love so much?), Lance makes his way over to the lounge chair where he laid out his towels earlier, in the dark and quiet of 5 am. He brings one of the towels to his face and it’s rough against his skin. He dries his hair off the best he can, leaving it damp and curling at the ends before grabbing the other towel and drying off the rest of his body.
The moon is still in the sky by the time he finishes, though a little faint amongst the shifting clouds. The sky itself was warming up with shades of peach and pink, softly forming the crown of the rising sun. Lance folds up the towels in his hands and sets them back onto the chair, squinting at the sight for a moment. It’s nothing special, and nothing to write home about, but maybe he’s been desensitized. To him it looks like it always does.
But that’s where the beauty of it lies, right? There’s solace and comfort to be found in routine, if he’s not mistaken. (Is he? Well, he doesn’t know. There’s supposed to be.)
Lance doesn’t quite understand the swirling feeling in his lungs every time he witnesses the sun rise from its sleep, with his face and chest numb and cold from the wind while the rest of his body lied engulfed in water, but he does know it’s not the solace or comfort he’s, maybe, supposed to get. From watching. From feeling. (Oh, does he want to feel something.)
Maybe that’s his fault. Maybe he’s not worthy of feeling.
He messed up. He took a wrong turn and ended up at a dead end. Ended up dead in a ditch somewhere. He was ignorant and arrogant all in the same and all of it has now come back to haunt him for the rest of his dead-end life where he watches the sky morph from black to blue and nearly kills himself in the process.
Then again, what was “all of it?”
Did “all of it” cause this repeated loop of a broken record player he called his life? This friction of needle twitching upon groove again and again, hitting the same crevice each time, hitting him where it hurts because damn, he can’t enjoy music like he used to because he had always sung outrageously off-key a little too much and a little too loud.
Did “all of it” cause the days to slowly melt together like ice cream between his fingers during the searing hot summer because the sun refuses to sleep and then something within Lance does too and if you stumbled across him at four in the morning and asked what he was doing up so early he’d duck his head sheepishly and you’d realize he hasn’t slept a wink since you bid him goodnight at 9 pm.
Did “all of it” cause this smothering something that bursts hot and sweltering in Lance’s lungs and has his mind and body and practically every fiber of his being absolutely swimming with it when he thinks about any of it for a little too much for a little too long?
Then again, he’s probably just overreacting. Maybe there wasn’t an “all of it” to be a bumbling idiot about, and there probably wasn’t anything that followed after. Maybe everything is actually all kinds of fine and sooner or later Lance is gonna realize he’s just being paranoid, or something along those lines. Overthinking things, focusing a little too much; it’s just the kind of guy he is.
His mind halts to a full stop when the back door suddenly slides open and his younger sister Rachel pokes her head out to say “Hey, Mami says to get your ass inside and eat something before you leave,” with her hair falling down to her waist in loose waves. Lance looks over at her and only nods in response, throat a little too tender to say anything (not that he would, that is, but you know, if he would). Rachel tips her head and taps the doorframe with her palm, the ring on her middle finger clicking against the metal and echoing in the morning quiet before she walks back inside.
Lance waits a beat before sighing quietly and following after her, shivering lightly when a cool breeze hits and ricochets down the notches of his spine. Once he steps inside though, his muscles relax and his shoulders slump. The air is warm and familiar and of course, filled with the scent of butter and cooked bacon wafting in from the kitchen. Not thirty seconds later Lance finds himself smack dab in the middle of their open kitchen instead of the bathroom where he was supposed to shower after his swim.
“Lance came inside.” Rachel announces loudly when she sits herself down at the table next to Veronica’s empty chair (Lance figures she’s probably already off to Northlove Community knowing her, adamant about making it to class on time), as if no one had eyes and he wasn’t clearly standing right there in front of them. Lance gives his eyes a roll and jokingly makes to smack her upside the head. Rachel only dodges, smiles weird (that glint in her eye is there too, the one Veronica gave him), and continues to shovel her syrupy pancakes into her mouth.
“Good morning. Bueno ver té, hijo.” Lance’s father Miguel greets in a teasing voice as he peers over the top of his striped coffee mug, the left corner of his lip quirked. And maybe that’s where they all get it from; the glint, and the mischievous sneer—those weird looks from Veronica and Rachel and even Mamá sometimes—maybe they’re all Papá’s and mirroring body language comes a little too natural for the McClains because Lance then smirks back at him, a mimic to a T, and crosses his arms, tipping his head up in a way that says “Nice to see you too,” in that same playful tone Miguel had challenged him with first.
The father-son duel is put on hold when his mother Rosa turns away from the stove and raises her eyebrows at her son, challenging him in a different manner, with a spatula in hand. “Vas a comer?” she asks right away, voice laced with an odd tone and paired with a different weird glint (and Lance can only place any of that as hopeful although he absolutely could not understand why) before she slowly looks him up and down and then deflates slightly. “O te vas a bañar?”
And Lance can’t stand seeing her look so upset, but his friends will be here in maybe twenty minutes and he needs a hot shower. So, rather sheepishly, Lance shrugs one of his shoulders, sticks out his thumb, and points it behind him.
Rosa huffs and waves her spatula at him disapprovingly. “Okay, dale pues. Báñate,” she grumbles before turning back to the stove, occupying herself with flipping another pancake. Lance pouts playfully and walks up to her, wrapping his arms around her waist and giving her a gentle squeeze.
“Aye Leandro, you’re wet. Ya vete.” Rosa bats at him, then shrugs him off, but Lance sees the little curl of her lip. So he grins, ducks her flailing hand, and quickly leaves the kitchen, heading off towards the bathroom while waving at his dad, knowing he’d be off for work soon.
It doesn’t take long to strip down and hop into the shower, but once the warm water begins to rinse him over, he finds himself not willing to do anything but just stand there and just feel. Water pours over his skin rhythmically, as if with a pulse of its own, and when he turns it trickles into his eyes and mouth and tastes so different from being engulfed by it all.
It’s weird tasting that difference on his tongue. Sensing that difference in his mind and body. He can almost breathe here. Almost feel here.
But it’s rather hard to do that when he no longer feels much of anything these days. And yeah, he won’t care to admit to himself when it crosses his mind, but he’d give just about anything to feel the way he knows he can. To feel the way that he used to. To be the way he used to.
Who he used to be, however, is perhaps what has brought him to this point in the first place.
The way he used to be, or more so the person he was, felt a little too much. About anything, and practically about everything. And he was always a little too this or a little too that. A little too much of something (it’s smothering, sweltering, and he’s swimming) with nowhere to go. Mind going a mile a minute and mouth running like an open faucet. Hands hardly ever still and eyes kept wide even in the dark hours of the night. Everything was a little too much. He was a little too much.
(Hush now, Lance.)
Maybe there’s something wrong with him. Maybe something is just inexplicably, undoubtedly, wrong with him. How does someone just stop like that? How does someone just forget how to feel? Or even worse, never know how to properly?
There’s a banging at the door and it startles Lance into a hard flinch, bringing him back from wherever his mind had wandered off to and forcing him to realize the water above him was running cold and had been for a while. “Lance! Hurry up! I gotta pee!” Rachel shouts from behind the door, voice muffled by the wood. Lance huffs and wipes his face, eyes aching as he presses his fingers against them. He sighs and shuts the water off, growing cold by the second.
Lance steps out of the shower and grabs a towel from the rack closeby, unfolding the material and bringing it to his body. He dries off quickly and ignores the dull feeling of exhaustion buried deep inside his muscles, down to his very bones.
After wrapping the towel around his hips he catches sight of himself in the foggy, blurred out mirror.
And he looks fine. He’s doing alright. His eyes are maybe a bit tender and there are light bruises under there if you look long enough, but he’s fine. He hasn’t really slept in the past week, and has only snagged a couple of hours here and there, but it’s more than he got the week before that. He’s fine.
Rachel then pounds at the door again, her knuckles rapping a heavy tune against the wood. Lance flinches and shakes himself out of his head, turning away from the mirror. (And he’s fine.) (Faintly, he thinks, if something is repeated enough it’s bound to hold some truth, and if something is repeated enough it’s bound to be true.) (Because there’s solace and comfort to be found in routine, if he’s not mistaken, and routine is good, and it can’t be broken.) (Hush now, Lance.)
He opens the door.
Rachel stumbles, rights herself, and then lowers her fist. “Finally,” she drawls in a specific kind of annoyance that holds no malice or truth, and then rolls her eyes to the side as she barges in. She flicks her hands at him when he stands dumbly in the middle of the doorway, a universal sign of get out. “Mami still wants you to eat something before you leave.”
And Lance only raises one hand in defense because the other is clutching the towel at his hips like some sort of lifeline (out of habit maybe, out of routine), and then gives a mocking hum paired with a playful sneer before walking out. Rachel does her own rendition of a weird hum and sticks out her tongue, eyes narrowed (glinting) before she closes the door right in his face. Lance snorts.
He gets dressed.
He’s five minutes into deciding between two floral patterned button ups of outrageously similar print in his jeans and shoes when he realizes that, actually, it would be better to just wear a sweater in this chilly weather. (It’s not past him to notice that the thought had a little rhyme to it so despite himself, he laughs under his breath, and then promptly snorts in surprise at it tickling him so much.)
He hooks the shirts back into the closet and makes a quick beeline to his dresser, where he’s sure his sweaters are tucked into, snug in the bottom drawer. It’s only when he discovers said drawer empty he remembers that his last clean sweater was thrown in the overstuffed hamper in his closet, not-so-clean ever since he and his niece and nephew, Nadia and Sylvio, had gotten into an overly enthusiastic food fight last time they visited, and all parties ended up smacked and smeared with a wide variety of sauces and creams.
Lance lets out an irritated huff and then scowls at himself for forgetting to do laundry yet again. He circles back to his closet, flicking through the plastic hangers until he finds the jean jacket he was looking for. It’s not the one he uses often, since that one is probably way at the bottom of his dirty laundry, but it’ll make do for today. It’s big enough to throw over his white Altean Academy hoodie (in which was just-clean-enough for him to shrug on though he’d already worn it the day before) so it doesn’t feel uncomfortable when he moves around.
He’s fumbling with the clasp of his necklace (a dainty little thing from his grandmother, golden and shimmery with a small cross that sits right under the base of his throat) when his door knob rattles.
“Lance? Leandro, ábreme.” His mother says when she realizes he had locked his door. She knocks, then tries the doorknob again, and says, “Lance, para hoy, hijo,” as Lance makes an indignant squawk and goes to the door, necklace hanging uselessly in his hands. His mother is about to repeat herself when he finally flicks the lock with his thumb and opens his door, letting her in.
Rosa appears slightly miffed at first, having been made wait in the hallway, but once her eyes fall onto her son struggling to put on his own jewelry, she caves, and a bemused smile crosses her lips. “Here,” she tells Lance, and all but shoves the yogurt packet in her hands into his. “Gimme that, I’ll do it.”
And Lance isn’t one to refuse Mamá, so he wills away his embarrassed blush as best as he can and sets his necklace into her awaiting palm, his own hands curiously wrapping around the Gogurt tube that was usually reserved for his niece and nephew when they stopped by to visit their grandparents.
Rosa is quick to clasp Lance’s necklace on and is more than happy to fix and rearrange the cross so it sits right side up where she tucks it safely into his hoodie. She then smiles up at Lance (por dios, that boy is getting tall) and then pats his hands. “Comete eso. Your friends are outside.” she tells him sternly and Lance nods rather absently as he stuffs his yogurt tube into the pocket of his hoodie and moves away to collect his things.
Rosa watches him carefully from the doorway, her dark eyes squinted as Lance moves about his room, picking school things from his desk and sticking them in his school bag before removing his cellphone from its charger and then pocketing that too. It takes no less than a minute for him to get his bearings and once he does, he stops in front of her and grins, big and toothy. Rosa fakes an exaggerated grin of her own before quickly dropping it. “Listo?”
Lance smiles at her again, smaller this time, and nods in affirmation, waving his hand at her in a back up gesture. Rosa softens, smiles back, and side steps out into the hallway as Lance leaves his room, closing the door behind him. He walks down the hall with Mamá on his heels and his phone vibrating in his pocket (messages from his friends, probably, that were not-so-patiently waiting right outside).
When he makes it to the front door, he whirls around and goes to grab his keys from the coat hanger only to find Rosa with his lanyard already in her hands, holding it out for him to take. Lance grins at her (the dimple on the left side of his chin pops out and Rosa swears he has never looked so much like his father) and snatches his keys out of her hands. Her eyes glint all weird, but it's probably a trick of light.
“I love you.” Rosa tells him when they’re out on the porch.
And maybe this is it. Maybe this time he can finally let it out of his system without feeling so bad about it afterwards. After all, he does love Mamá, and so much so it’s practically pure instinct making him want to say it back—shout it back—and repeat it over and over until his throat goes raw and his voice doesn’t sound like his anymore. (What does his voice sound like? It’s been a while.)
But he hasn’t eaten today.
Mamá had looked him up and down and weird, and he had left her. She had asked him gentle, with care, and with that soft Cuban lilt of hers that made his head swim (and he had considered for a second not leaving, but his body ached something terrible and he reeked of chlorine) and he had left. He saw her face fall, crumble, and then harden into something that pained him to see because it wasn’t the first time it had happened and still, he had left.
And he keeps doing that—leaving—even though it makes everyone (Mamá, his sister, you name it) so upset. (Faintly, he thinks, it’s becoming too much again. He can sense it, in his fingertips and in his mouth, but what is he supposed to do? Things have always been this way and they will continue to be this way because old habits die hard and it’s normal, it’s routine, and you can’t just break routine, right?) (There’s solace and comfort to be found in routine, if he’s not mistaken.) (Hush now, Lance.)
Before Lance could make up his mind, the van right at the end of his driveway goes off in a series of honks, so painstakingly loud this early in the morning (about half an hour till seven, but the street is still a bit sleepy) that he startles so hard his pulse stutters in his throat. He whips around to glare, but the windows are tinted and he can barely see the collection of shadows wavering behind the glass. He huffs and then pouts instead, turning back to smile at his mother in a silent I love you too.
Rosa seems to think nothing of it—his silence, but she suddenly looks so much older than she should, weary and wary all the same.
Lance turns and walks down the driveway.
The van door is already slid open when he makes it to the curb, a warm series of familiar grins greeting him on sight followed by the usual routine slew of Good mornings. It’s only until Lance is crawling over his friend Pidge he realizes that the van is just a tad more full than it normally is and no longer is this one of his usual mornings that replay and repeat over and over until he can’t distinguish them anymore because he spots Allura perched in the furthermost right seat and a definitely-not-familiar face sitting in his. Lance pales when they catch his eye.
“Hope you like to squeeze!” Matt, Pidge’s older brother, calls from the driver’s seat, tone teasing and chipper-like, before resuming his animated conversation with the other not-so-familiar face who sat on the passenger’s side.
Lance flushes instantly when he realizes he was going to have to sit himself between Allura and this other kid who was already eyeing him all weird for just standing there in the middle of the van like an idiot, head ducked to avoid hitting the roof. Lance pointedly avoids any more eye contact with the kid and instead warily stares at the slim spot between them and Allura where everyone expected him to sit.
Allura seems to catch onto his nervous hesitance because she smiles warm and pats at the small space beside her thigh. “Oh c’mon, Lance. He doesn’t bite.” she reassures kindly, though all it does is make him blush even harder and have his friends behind him snicker quietly. The “He” in question even snorts a little, as if he actively disagreed with her statement. And, por dios, if people could die of embarrassment Lance would be six feet under.
So without putting any more thought into it, Lance plops himself right in the middle of the two, effectively crowding their space with his lanky limbs and broad shoulders. It takes the three a few more minutes than necessary to rearrange themselves thanks to Lance fumbling to get his backpack off and nearly elbowing Allura in the face and then the sudden jolt of Pidge slamming the door shut that startles Lance so much he rocks forward and knocks heads with the kid to his left much to his growing mortification. He doesn’t even know this guy’s name yet and look at the impression he’s making for himself!
“It’s fine, it’s fine.” the guy says immediately after he hisses in pain (and right before Lance could even begin to think about talking himself up to apologize), holding his head with a bandaged hand. He glances over at Lance, who is a little more than beet red in the face and on the edge of woozy from their collision, and then glowers a little, much to Lance’s dismay.
“You dropped your keys.” the guy says curtly, short and clipped. He raises the hand that isn’t nursing his head and presents a blue lanyard that indeed was Lance’s, if the shark keychain with his name on it dangling at the bottom was anything to go by. Lance goes a little light headed.
Still thoroughly embarrassed by the everything about this, Lance snatches up his lanyard from the guy’s hand and shoves it into the front pocket of his jeans before crossing his legs, not thinking about how said guy isn’t even trying to mask his blatant staring. Por dios, Lance is making himself look like the world’s biggest moron.
To add more salt to the horrifically bleeding wound, Lance’s foot bumps right into Hunk’s cheek, earning a surprised cry of pain. Lance’s eyes go wide as he tries to take his foot back down and somehow try to convey how sorry he is for literally kicking his friend in the face, but Hunk laughs it off as he takes Lance’s foot in his hand and moves it over before spinning around in his seat with an amused smile.
“Keith, this is Lance,” he says, nodding his head toward him. “Lance, this is Keith.”
Keith, Lance thinks absently, and as if on cue Keith holds out his hand for him to shake, as if people actually did that anymore. Lance takes it anyway, just to humor him. His hand is clammy, but warm, and Lance doesn’t have any more time to think about it because Hunk is talking again, pointing a thumb behind him. “Shiro’s brother. You remember Shiro, right?” he asks.
At his name, the person in the passenger’s seat turns around and sends Lance a smile accompanied by a small wave and Lance is absolutely floored because oh, that’s Shiro in the front seat and oh, this is Shiro’s brother, and finally, Shiro has a brother my age? Since when?
Distantly, Lance realizes he’s still shaking Keith’s hand.
“Pothole!” Matt suddenly hollers over them all, sounding all too excited than he should be, and then almost instantly does the van bounce and jostle everyone inside, knees and shoulders knocking against seats and doors and in Lance’s case, Keith. He has half a mind to just curl up and die right then and there because courtesy of the damned pothole, Lance had been launched out of his seat and then painfully slammed back down directly onto Keith’s thigh, their hands still clasped despite it all.
“It’s fine, it’s fine.” Keith repeats with the same hiss he had given when they had bonked heads not a few minutes ago, squirming around in his seat before taking back his hand and gently maneuvering Lance off his lap like he weighed next to nothing. (Lance sees him flush all the way to his ears but only out of the corner of his eye because forget the thought of him ever looking Keith in the eye ever again.)
Lance sputters unintelligibly, ignoring the ache of his backside in favor of racking his brain for some kind of apology because oh my God, he’s making the worst first impression known to man right now and he deeply hopes that no one saw any of it.
The awkward quiet that settles in the van forces him to remember he should know better.
Lance closes his eyes and tries to block out everything; the itch in his fingers, the comfortable warmth pressed to his left thigh, and the fixed stare that he can practically feel boring a hole into the side of his face. He focuses on his breathing instead, wholeheartedly determined to snuff out the embarrassing flame growing in his cheeks.
There’s solace and comfort to be found in routine, if he’s not mistaken. Thanks to Keith, this is anything but.