Work Text:
Lance had always fallen in love too easily.
That was all Blue was about anyway, wasn't it?
Being the Blue Paladin meant he felt for everyone, and he cared for them. Keeping the team together was what he was meant to do.
Growing up with a big family, especially being one of the middle children, Lance knew it all too well what it was like to take care of everyone else, he was used to it.
Mama had always said his heart was too big, but he didn't mind wearing it on his sleeve, not when it meant it made his family, the people he loved, feel better.
He was always the one bathing the twins, the youngest of the household, his nephew and niece. They loved Uncle Lance, and Lisa worked so hard every day to make money for them, he didn't mind babysitting for a few hours a day.
He was always the one taking Marco to school every day, and walking him back. He didn’t mind helping with homework, either, it felt nice to be the smart one even if for just a few hours.
He was always the one covering for Veronica's house tasks, too. She was constantly studying and doing her best to get into Garrison, it felt only right to help her out a little.
When Papa needed help with fixing the old TV in his room again, Lance was the one to be called. He was always happy to help, the old man loved watching the sports season on that TV.
When Mama needed someone to do the laundry after a tiring day of work, Lance would be there, a smile on his face, reassuring her she could go to bed already, she deserved the rest.
He was always the one fending for everyone else, but who had his back when he needed it?
Shaking the thoughts away, he tried to focus on better things. Things that mattered now.
It didn't matter that he spent less time with himself than with anybody else, when by the end of the day Lisa thanked him with a kiss on the forehead, her eyes soft and tired from working all day. He knew she was grateful.
The twins ran circles around him, hands in the air, yelling about how Uncle Lance was the best uncle in the whole world.
"In the whole world?" he asked with a big smile, not minding the dark eyebags on his face.
The kids giggled, laughed and danced as they left with his sister, and he couldn’t feel bad about it at all. If they were happy, he was, too.
It didn't really matter when Luis came up to him with a proud, wide smile and a report card in hands, all A's. He was so proud of him. His brother hugged him tight and thanked him for the tutoring, he was doing so much better at school now he even managed to get a girlfriend!
It didn't matter when Veronica, Mama and Papa looked at him with those eyes. The ones he only saw when they said they loved him, when they were proud, too. When they were happy.
If the people he loved were happy, there was no reason for him not to be as well.
That's what he told himself as he kept falling in love, over and over again, with people who'd never even know he ever existed.
Ever since he was little, his eyes always lingered too long on the beautiful things, the ones that made him feel funny inside.
And Lance found everything beautiful these days.
It started with the sky, as he stared into distant space one summer night when he was five.
"Does it ever end?" he asked his Papa, who rocked his swing back and forth in their backyard.
"The universe is a vast thing, son," the man said wisely, and his words seemed to sparkle in the air as Lance heard them. "The unknown is what makes it so fascinating– what we don't know and won't ever dream of knowing. It leaves it all up for imagination."
And so that's what Lance did. He imagined.
After that, falling in love seemed to become just one more casual feeling for him.
Nature came along with space pretty easily. Living close to the beach made it feel like an instinctive feeling to be amazed by the ocean.
Because the water kept going until he couldn’t see where it reached, the horizon being too far away for him to watch. And it left up for him to imagine what came next.
Lance imagined, as he swimmed and swimmed, for hours with no end, on a hot day during summer vacation, when he was six.
He imagined what it was like at the bottom of the ocean, all the corals he couldn’t see and all the fish he couldn’t catch. He imagined what it was like underwater far away, where it ended on another beach, and all the places he couldn’t find.
Being in love with water became part of who Lance was, after a certain point. Sometimes, he prayed to the ocean.
And after that came the rain, and the flowers that bloomed with it, the leaves that fell off the trees when fall started, the way the clouds moved across the sky when they were close to him...
He didn’t try to stop the way he fell in love with everything.
Until he started to feel funny and tingly around other people, too.
It would feel like a thousand butterflies inside his stomach, his ears would suddenly feel hot, and he would look away from their eyes if they caught him staring.
Sofia was the first one.
They were both eight, and she had come from a family of Cubans to America as well, so he felt familiar with her around in a place where he didn't know anyone.
She had wild, soft curls and her chocolate skin glowed when she was in the sun. Every time she turned her head to talk to him, her long colorful dresses would flow with the wind and Lance could swear she looked like an angel.
They were both just kids, though, and he didn't know what all those things meant. He just thought she was really beautiful and funny.
She ended up moving again before the year even ended and he only got to say a quick goodbye on her last day at school. If he quietly cried on a bathroom stall that day, nobody heard a word.
And then, when he was eleven, he met Johnny, who was just a year older than him, but he was so cool.
He had all the expensive games on his console and he even had a skateboard!
Him and Lance had become quick friends, because he knew all about the cheat codes from the game Johnny was playing. He taught him how to swim, and in return, the boy took him to a skate park and taught him how to use his board.
They saw each other almost every day, since they were only a block away from one another, and Lance still didn't know why he felt funky around his best friend.
He thought Johnny was very beautiful, too, but when he told him that, the boy had very insistently said, "I'm not beautiful, Lancey, that's for girls. I'm a handsome young man."
And even though that didn't sound right, he didn't try to argue, because Johnny was his best friend and he didn't want to fight with him.
Lance knew what the words meant, though, and he still thought that the boy was beautiful.
Because his Mama taught him that there was beauty in everything, you just had to look for it.
He thought the way Johnny's long eyelashes flopped when he blinked was beautiful. He thought it was beautiful how he had dimples on his cheeks when he smiled really wide, how his eyes would sparkle when he had his favorite ice cream, how he would flicker his toes when he was nervous, and how he made a funny sound every time someone touched behind his ear.
Lance thought it was just as beautiful as the way the sun shined as it rose through the morning, and the whole world would lit up alongside it.
Johnny eventually moved on from him, though, and found himself cooler friends with the rich kids at school.
He didn’t mind, really, he would watch from afar and practice with the skateboard the boy had given him for Christmas.
Lance knew that nothing lasted forever, so he learned to enjoy them while he had them, and appreciate the memories when they were gone. Mama made sure he'd remember that.
When he turned twelve, he didn't really have any friends at school, and things were messy at home, so he people-watched a lot.
That's how he fell in love with Peter, the nerdy boy from Biology, and Maria, the cheerleader, and Cindy, the girl he met in the library, and Kevin, the baseball player.
He didn’t know how, or when it happened, but every time he thought about them, his heart would skip a beat and it would feel fluttery inside.
He watched, and he imagined.
How Peter was a huge Star Wars nerd, and probably had lego sets of the franchise somewhere in his room. Or how Rachel liked painting her nails blue because she loved the sky. How Cindy loved true crime and wrote mystery novels in her free time. How Kevin secretly knitted, and that's how he got the christmas sweater he wore last week.
He would spend hours of the day purely daydreaming, because what else could he do, really?
And he fell in love with them, along the years, and they would fade away into the background, only to leave him behind with the memories that were never real.
High School came and it was the worst, but that's when he met his first boyfriend, Elliot.
Elliot was smart, funny, and the school's top football player. He loved Lance, and Lance loved him.
Except no one knew that.
Because his boyfriend could lose his scholarship, his parents would disown him, he would lose all of his friends and his life would be over!
It was fine, though, Lance didn't mind.
He fell in love with Elliot, even if he was never around, and they would only talk to each other out of school, on weekends because the boy had practice on school days, and he would sometimes talk to himself on the phone as his boyfriend was fast asleep on the other side of the call.
When Elliot broke up with him, a week before prom, Lance's Mama ran her fingers through his hair gently and hugged him tight as he cried.
She told him, "You were never in love with him, baby, you didn't know him enough. You were in love with the image of him you created in your head."
Despite what happened and what Mama told him, Lance couldn't stop himself from falling in love all over again.
He got into the Garrison, after his never ending dream of following the stars and his older sister's steps, but that didn't stop him.
Most people he met there were hard to see through, hard to understand and observe, but there was beauty in everyone, he just had to look for it.
And that's how he met Hunk.
Hunk was different from the others he'd fallen for, and Lance was never going to let him know he was ever in love with him, even though he'd always be in his heart.
The boy was soft, and everything about him was beautiful.
The way he cared for others, Lance mainly, was the most amazing thing about him. He empathized so easily, and he was so kind.
Lance fell in love with Hunk faster than he had with anyone else.
Because even though he still imagined and daydreamed, most of the boy was there. Hunk was there, right in front of him, rambling about difficult engineering stuff he was still catching up on.
Hunk didn't even care if he listened, he admitted one day, he just wanted company. And, oh boy, Lance would never leave his friend alone ever again after that confession.
He tried his best not to be overbearing, of course, but he couldn’t help the butterflies whenever Hunk held his hand as they walked through the halls, late to class, or hugged him tight after a sad movie, or looked at him with those gentle eyes whenever Lance was sad.
Hunk reminded him of his Mama, sometimes. He told both of them that, and they laughed at him, not maliciously, but amused at how he saw them.
He couldn’t help it, though, how caring they were, how they spoke in the same tone when it was about something they loved, or how they patted him on the head with a smile whenever they were proud.
Eventually, Lance realized he wasn't in love with Hunk anymore, and this time his best friend didn't need to leave for that to happen.
He still loved him, though, would probably always love, through memories and dreams, and that was fine.
Hunk was worth loving. He was worth the funny feelings, the daydreaming, the caring and the worrying, the laughing and the crying.
He was Lance's soulmate, he liked to believe. It didn't need to be romantic, but he was like nobody he had ever met before, and he was perfect with all his flaws.
Then Keith came along, and somewhere in between his anger and jealousy, he managed to fall in love, too.
The mullet head was distant, quiet, dare say even mysterious. Which left it all up for his imagination, and wasn't that a dangerous game for him to play.
"Come on, Lance, he's a jerk! You called him emo boy just the other day," Hunk complained, tired of listening to his pining.
He shook his head with a chuckle. "I know, buddy. I think that's part of the charm. Love myself some bad boys."
He made an idiot of himself trying to get Keith's attention, until one method finally, just kind of, worked. The rivalry trope.
The boy would stare at him for a little longer, trying to figure him out, and Lance would squirm under the piercing eyes. His stomach flipped and played acrobatics inside of him, and he tried his best to keep collected. It was an amazing feeling, as unnerving as it was sometimes.
That was, until Keith was gone.
It was just him and Hunk again. Or maybe not, because little Pidge came hopping from the hallway with a laptop in their hands and big, round glasses on their face.
Lance didn't fall in love with them, though, he just felt the strong urge to protect them and love them as he would with his siblings.
So he went ahead and did just that.
And then they found Shiro.
Of course, everyone that had eyes in the Garrison had had a celebrity crush on Takashi Shirogane once in their lives, and Lance was no exception.
Shiro was unreachable, though, and all he could see in that man was that he was beautiful.
Nothing he ever did seemed to be a mistake and there were simply no flaws. He was perfect, and Lance envied that.
Even through his imagination, he couldn’t find anything to fault Shiro with, and no matter how much he tried, he could never get over the man he never got to meet.
Until he did, that is.
And even with a missing arm, uncountable scars through his body, possible PTSD and a crazy story about aliens and weapons, Lance couldn’t find it in himself to see a single blemish in that man.
That's the story of how he got stuck in space with five giant, sentient, robot lions, two aliens (Alteans, he learned later), four people and a single picture of his family.
The word "beautiful" wasn't enough to describe the universe and all the galaxies he saw, however. It was breath-taking, and his Papa had been right all along, because the best things were the ones he didn’t ever dream of existing.
The stars, the planets, the landscapes, the people, all the different cultures.
Everything about space was beautiful, until he learned about the war.
There was nothing good about war, no beauty at all. There was destruction, misery, hunger, death, and so much anger. So much rage.
Lance would sit by himself on the hangar and stare into the stars outside. Imagining.
He would imagine a timeline where they didn't have to fight, where the fate of so many lives wasn't in the hands of child soldiers. On his hands.
He would sit and imagine what his family was doing back on Earth at that time. Did they already forget him? Lance really hoped they did. He didn’t want them to cry after him, he hoped they knew that. He hoped they moved on and found happiness in the memories they had together, that they appreciated the good things while they lasted, so they could look back at it with a smile now.
Because he would sit there and be absolutely convinced that he was never going back home.
Lance knew that because he would sit there for hours and there was absolutely nothing he could find beauty in anymore.
He wasn't in love with anything anymore.
Because every single star, every single planet his eyes could reach, was just another corpse of what once was something great. Remains of the war.
The view he had whenever he sat down by the hangar to think was just another battle field.
And the ship they were in, the people he fought alongside with, the friends he made there and loved so hard he would die to protect, were eventually just going to become more casualties.
Because you can't win an intergalactic, thousands of years old, war with two Alteans, three human children and one traumatized soldier. No matter they had robotic weapons shaped into lions, what did that matter when there were hundreds, thousands of armies of real living people out to kill them?
Lance knew he would die fighting this war.
He knew that because he couldn't bring himself to aim a killer shot whenever he was in battle, even if it was risking his own life for it.
Because whoever he was fighting against had their own reasons to be there. They could have a family, they could have a life, and they could just be trying to survive. There were no good and bad sides in the war, it wasn't all black and white, and he sometimes wished he didn't know that.
He was no different from them. In fact, he was the intruder here, and even after releasing so many planets from dictatorship and censorship, there were so many others he was harming by just being there.
How many soldiers had been killed for being at one of their battlefields? How many of them were innocent?
Lance found no beauty in the war he was fighting.
He found comfort in the Blue Lion's constant purrs of affirmation on the back of his mind, the presence of something soothing, the warmth of life.
But he didn't find himself falling in love with it. And he hated that.
He hated how he couldn’t ever find a way to show Blue just how much he appreciated her, just how much she was keeping him sane.
Because deep inside, Lance didn't know who he was anymore. He couldn't find himself.
He couldn’t find himself in between trying so hard to get Pidge out of their room to get some food because it's been like 36 hours, come on. He couldn't find himself in between patting Hunk on the back and helping him try to bake some cookies with the ingredients they had, because his friend stress-baked and it was his only way of letting off steam.
Lance couldn't find himself in between making sure Princess Allura had a beauty routine and some occasional sound sleep, because that was the only good thing she allowed herself to have.
Or in between hearing Coran's stories and tales from back when Altea was still alive, as he helped him clean the castle, because one single man couldn't do all this by himself without being exhausted to death.
Or maybe in between challenging Keith to a one on one after a hard mission, because the boy didn't know how to talk about his feelings and fighting it off at least made him feel better.
He couldn’t find himself in between walking Shiro around the castle and talking his ears off after a nightmare about the arena, either.
Lance was losing himself in between the war he was fighting, now not only against the Galras, but against himself, too.
Mama had always said his heart was too big, but he didn't mind wearing it on his sleeve, not when it meant it made his family, the people he loved, feel better.
The team had become his family, too, after how much they went through together. And he was doing everything he could to make it better, to make them smile, to make them happy.
But Lance knew there was no beauty in war.
So instead, he found beauty in Death.