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Lance knew Pidge was looking for their brother. Knew that they wouldn’t give up until they either had him back home with them or they saw with their own eyes that he’d died somehow in the wide expanses of the universe. He knew that no amount of statistics or numbers would get them to stop, and he couldn’t blame them. He would be no better than them.
Except that he’d long since accepted the Kerberos team’s untimely passing.
He’d been there that day, at the memorial, he’d been witness to the families’ grief and the plenitude of ways they dealt with it. He had actually not seen Pidge that day as, apparently, they were off somewhere mourning in solitude – though Lance had suspected that Shiro’s twin brother, Akira, had accompanied them, as he also had not been present for most of the ceremony.
Lance had seen Matt’s smiling face staring back at him from behind a glass casing where he’d stay for over a year.
He had accepted that Matt Holt died up in space with his captain and his father. The fact that he wasn’t alone in the end kept Lance sane.
So, if all that were true, why was that same smiling face staring back at him, real and alive?
“Damn, I’ve seen the whole universe now, and yet you’re still the prettiest out there.” Matt, in the flesh, standing in front of Lance with his hand extended out and a playful smile stretched across his face, stared back at Lance, blinking, breathing, alive.
Lance didn’t quite know how he wound up in Matt’s arms, clutching at his shoulders and hiding his face in Matt’s chest. Lance did, however, know why his eyes stung and his throat clogged up. He let the tears fall freely, pressing his ears against Matt’s chest just to hear it; to confirm it, to make sure he wasn’t stirring up another daydream about what could have been.
And there it was; loud and erratic and messy in all the ways Lance loved. He laughed into the other boy’s scarf; the sound reverberated back at him. Satisfied, he breathed in deeply, taking in a nose full of what might have been the smell of sweat, space-grease or some mixture of the two.
“Can’t believe you just said that,” Lance whined, “it was so cheesy, oh my god.” He couldn’t help the small smile that crept up as he pulled away by an inch or two, just to take in the fact that it was Matt Holt’s hands wrapped around him like a safety blanket, that it was that same person smiling at him– soft and gentle like it had been on those rare, quiet nights they sat and watched the stars.
Looking at Matt, finally taking him in fully, had Lance wishing he’d never let him go that day. For one, there was a thin, sharp-edged scar trailing off from a little under his left eye to the edge of his cheekbone. The scar was small and aged, it looked as though it had long-since healed, and that was the only relief Lance found.
The rest of him wasn’t any better in that regard; his hair was longer, curtaining his ears entirely, and a few stray hairs wound themselves up in front of his eyes. It was unkempt, loose ends flying here and there– none of this surprised Lance; this was just how Matt functioned. The surprising part was the fact that he'd let his hair get so long. Matt had been adamant, back at the Garrison, that he hated long hair and that it was a hassle to deal with.
A lot could change in a year, Lance supposed.
And his eyes, Dios, his eyes were deeper, hollower in a way he would never have attributed to Matt. There was a depth to it, a darkness concealed well behind the mask of cheer he was most certainly going to put on. It was like a lonely, stormy sea; currents picking up and washing away any sign of hope, no land to be seen in miles, no lighthouse to reach out– nil, nothing.
Well, it's a good thing Lance was a strong swimmer.
Lance cupped the other boy’s face in his hands, touching his forehead to Matt’s.
“Ay, it's true, though! I told you nothing could compare,” Matt said, slowly moving their faces closer together. Lance didn’t necessarily think that a kiss right now was appropriate, not with the audience they had, but he found it really difficult to care.
Their lips met slowly, but the second they did, Lance was entranced; lost to whatever song Matt had been singing.
The ache in his chest– something he had grown unnervingly accustomed to –the longing behind every touch that could never be satisfied, the constant sense of letting him down, of not being enough; it all seemed to be whisked away in the wind. All that was left was Lance and Matt, both embraced and together and here.
He felt Matt’s arm slide down his back and pull him closer, pressing them flush against each other.
When they broke apart, they were giggling like schoolgirls, far too happy and content to care. Matt leaned his forehead onto Lance’s shoulder, trying to stifle his laughter if only a little bit. He took in a lung full of air, as if breathing for the first time, then laughed again. “You know we’re gonna have to tell ‘em, right?”
“Um,” as if on cue, Pidge’s dumbfounded stutter came from behind Matt.
“Just had to go and jinx it,” Lance grumbled as he fully leaned back, letting Matt pull himself together – he had apparently been leaking from the eyes as well, looking no better than Lance thought he himself did.
He glanced over Matt’s shoulder to see a slow approaching Pidge, eyes narrowed in curiosity and eyebrows knitted together in accusation. Lance swiftly wiped his eyes clear, plastered on a grin, and marched past Matt. “Hey, Pigeon! How’s it hangin’?”
“How’s it–– Lance, what the actual fuck?”
Lance tilted his head, blinking in his best impression of a doe. “Hm?”
Matt came up next to him, placing a hand on Lance’s shoulder. Lance turned to meet his eyes, smiling– because Dios, had he missed these small touches, and the soft smiles, and the bombastic laughs, and, well, everything really.
Matt met his smile, pursing his lips in a way Lance recognised all too well to be a sign of; talk later, alone.
He turned back to Pidge, grinning something akin to Lance’s own from a moment prior. “Oh, I’d like you all–” he addressed the entire group as they were now encircling the two of them, eyes filled with suspicion and confusion, “--to officially meet my – really, really hot – boyfriend, Lance!” He stretched out his arm in Lance’s direction, shaking his palm about excitedly.
Pidge seemed to share none of that enthusiasm. “Boy- boyfriend? You have a boyfriend?” Lance didn’t know which one of them Pidge was talking to, and he suspected that they themself didn’t either.
Lance shrugged, and Matt offered up a puppy-like nod. “Isn’t it cool that we get to reunite like this – all unexpected and romantic? We really are meant to be!”
Lance blinked, then beamed at his partner. “Oh, oh! Imagine the stories we could whip up!” He turned to find Matt mirroring Lance’s feelings, wide-eyed glee, and practically vibrating.
“Imagine the two-truths-and-a-lie potential! Or like fun-facts-at-a-party potential!”
“Oh, my god! I’ve already got lists going, we could totally double those with this!”
Matt nodded eagerly, and Lance nodded back with the same vigor. He went to pull out his tablet to show Matt his list when Shiro piped up. “How did– how did you two–” he trailed off, and there might’ve been some hand gesture there to emphasise Shiro's question.
Lance paused, staring up at their leader. He was still standing on the ramp up to the castle, staring between Matt and Lance, eyes searching but not judging– never judging. He looked more confused than anything, which settled something in Lance.
“How did we meet?” Lance shrugged as he pulled out the tablet, opened up the tabs with the lists, and handed it to Matt. “My sister was going to the Garrison, and I was in the process of registering myself, so I was there a lot.”
Matt hummed, scanning the tablet slowly, eyes sparkling with a kind of light Lance had never been able to replicate in his mind. “And I didn’t like being cooped up in the dorms, so I snuck out. A lot.”
“The rest’s history.”
“intergalactic history, now,” Matt said with a snort.
Hunk was at his side in a blink, beaming with the kind of joy only best friends could muster up for someone else. “He’s the older guy you were talking to?”
Lance nodded enthusiastically. “It was way more than talking, but you know.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Pidge asked quietly. Their eyes were on Lance, watching him for something.
Lance had to admit that the fact that they had yet to flip on him or Matt was something Lance had not expected. He figured they'd be upset with Lance for keeping stuff about Matt from them, or at Matt, out of pure sibling-spite.
“There’s no way you didn’t recognise me at the Garrison if you were...” They waved a hand in Matt and Lance’s direction.
Lance almost laughed at that. “Ha! Funny story; I actually didn’t know it was you, at first. I thought I was hallucinating a smaller, angrier Matt walking around! Sam had shown me enough of his baby photos for me to recognise a mini-Matt!"
Matt looked up at him, brows furrowed and eyes sad. He didn't say anything, and Lance was grateful for it– that particular chat was going to have to wait for a time when they didn't have an audience.
“Though, you are kinda shorter than Matt was when he started wearing glasses, so I pieced it together eventually.” He shrugged nonchalantly. He sobered his expression, smiling softly at Pidge. “I didn't tell you ‘cause I didn't think you needed someone else's shit to carry. You were already lugging around a whole family's worth of emotional baggage as it was.”
Pidge didn’t seem to appreciate the answer, but they didn’t say much. The rest of the team didn’t comment either. The conversation slowly turned towards what happened to Matt after him and Shiro were separated– something Matt didn’t seem too keen on talking about.
“I was taken to a labour camp, rescued alongside a bunch of other prisoners. I decided to join the rebels mostly so I could search for Dad and Shiro. And that’s about it.”
Lance saw through it, though. There was a part to that story Matt wasn’t sharing, but Lance knew better than to pry. He changed the topic, and eventually someone suggested grabbing something to eat.