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Shiro had wanted him when he was nobody - a nobody who didn’t know his place, a cargo pilot who walked like he was fighter class and talked like a playboy despite leaving a trail of eyerolling irritation in his wake. At first, Shiro had seen what others had seen, had written Lance off as the tryhard senior everyone else saw, but all it had taken was one glimpse of Lance on the other side of a crowded room, alone against a wall with all the acceptance of one resigned to his solitude, and Shiro had fallen for him so fast he’d actually felt his stomach lurch. Lance’s face had been slack with sadness, usually-wide mouth small. In that one moment he’d seemed so quiet, so soft and fuck, Shiro wanted to destroy him.
Shiro saw it before anyone else - long, skinny legs that looked like they would practically bend behind his head, lips that were made to spread around a cock and an ass that was just begging to be plowed. Shiro had spent an inordinate amount of time imagining fucking Lance through a goddamn wall, but knew that no-one else would even believe him - rising star first year Shiro, top of his class, head-hunted fighter class scholarship student on a fast-track program straight out of flight school, lusting after a no-name class clown cargo pilot, destined to graduate shortly into a nondescript hauling job and live a dead-end, underachieving life?
Not a chance.
...of course, that was before the Earther Movement decided that the best way to demonstrate their loving concern for humanity was to storm the world’s premiere youth space training facility and take a gymnasium full of students hostage, prompting an eight-hour standoff at the main and rear Garrison entrances while authorities scrambled to respond to their demands to cease all space-bound aspirations because God put us all on this planet, dammit, and that was where we were supposed to stay.
All the class streaming and all the related social hierarchy associated with fighter pilot status didn’t matter a damn when Lance blew a power breaker, broke thirty-four captive students out through the gym’s backstage door and flew them to safety in a stolen training cargo ship, allowing the authorities to safely end the standoff and forever guaranteeing military funding for every aspect of the Garrison’s syllabus, not just the combat and fighter pilot programs.
With stunning clarity, Shiro could remember the sound of surprised yelling, of panicked gunfire and then seeing Lance fall before picking himself up and collapsing against the backstage door, forcing it open and dragging himself out of the way to let the crowd run for it. He was also unlikely to forget Lance’s warm weight on his shoulder as he supported him, taking Lance’s directions and trying not to notice just how fucking unreal he smelled up close - a staggered race from incredible danger was not the time to muse on such things.
It wasn’t until after the ship had made a smooth landing on the far side of the surrounding mountain range and Shiro had watched the last student leave that he had realised Lance remained silent in the pilot’s chair, slumped forward, the only sound a steady drip, drip, drip of red pooling on the metal floor beneath him. Of all the flashing images Shiro recalled from the day, that was the one he recalled with alarming clarity.
The story garnered much media attention, and somehow, his prosthetic was fitted in far less time than it usually should have taken, privately sponsored after a public outpouring of sympathy. In no time at all he was back in his classes, prototype leg only adding to his usual bounce.
Lance was the hurt one, and yet it was Shiro was suffered.
Shiro had spent forever wanting Lance and had said nothing - afraid Lance wouldn’t take him seriously, and terrified by how Lance would react to exactly what he wanted to do to Lance. Even before he was back from physical therapy, Lance was a hot commodity and Shiro stood no chance - all of his own achievements fell by the wayside when he was just a freshman lusting after the most wanted senior in the school. The same girls who’d spurned Lance previously flocked to his side now - thankully, Shiro noted that they had about as much luck with Lance as he’d had with them only weeks before.
Lance had a long memory, it seemed. Shiro was oddly proud.
In fact, given the energy Lance had previously expended chasing sexual attention, Shiro was surprised to see the only company he willingly kept nowadays was Hunk, engineering student and Lance’s best friend since they were allocated a team in sophomore year. A rumour had gone around for a short while, but Hunk’s relationship with Shay had been so firmly ensconced in their social circle that that particular theory died out pretty rapidly. He smiled, he chatted; flirted, even, but there was an air of distance to him now - like he was playing the game without intent.
Three months. Three months until graduation, and then he’d be gone forever - there’d been talk of transferring credits, of recruitment into the black ops program that seemed to only exist on the grapevine but somehow everyone accepted it as gospel. Whatever happened, Lance would be gone and Shiro would lose him, lose that smile and that laugh and those legs, fuck. He’d go on to greater things and Shiro would still be here, on a different path to a different destiny.
Maybe if he wasn’t so chickenshit, he could do something about it, but Lance had no idea he’d liked him all along, and Shiro didn’t like playing losing odds.
The Garrison roof was peaceful - privately, Shiro reckoned that there were few things more breathtaking than the night sky here - far from civilisation, it was so full of stars and the moon was so bright than even now, in the wee hours, he was bathed in soft, old white light.
“Hey, hotshot.”
Well. Maybe one thing more breathtaking.
Shiro turned, shoulders tensed, to find a sight beyond his comprehension - Lance was leaning against the roof door, one foot flat against the dusty paint. His jacket was zipped up against the cold, and he stared at Shiro with a confident grin.
“Hi?” ’Great start, Shiro,’, he admonished himself.
If anything, Lance’s smile widened and he used his foot to push off the wall. “You come here often?”
The scoff died in Shiro’s throat as he realised that, tone aside, it was a genuine question.
“Sometimes?” he answered honestly. “It’s... quiet up here.”
“Pretty fuckin’ cold up here is what it is,” Lance laughed as he approached. Shiro swallowed and Lance stopped. He turned his head up to look at the stars, and Shiro followed his gaze for a moment. Venus blazed, incandescence second only to the moon itself. He let some of the tension go by rolling his shoulders a little, becoming more comfortable with Lance’s presence as the older man stayed quiet.
“Why are you here?” he asked eventually.
“Wanted to thank you,” Lance shrugged, fixing Shiro was a piercing stare. Shiro frowned, feeling his skin prickle as the hairs on his arms stood on end.
“Thank me?” he asked, confused.
“Dude you cannot be this oblivous. You dragged my ass halfway across campus under fucking gunfire and you think that doesn’t deserve a thank you?”
Shiro froze.
Lance paused, considering. “...You thought I didn’t remember. Or you thought I didn’t care. One of those I can handle but the other one I’m kinda insulted by, Shiro,” Lance said slowly.
“No! I just... didn’t... know how to talk to you,” Shiro admitted.
“I’ve always found ‘hi’ to be a good start,” Lance chuckled. “You can go out on a limb and follow up with ‘how’re you doing’ if you’re feeling crazy.”
Against all odds, Shiro gave a soft laugh. Lance’s stepped a fraction closer as he changed his stance, eyes glittering in the pale light. “Hi,” he said after a moment. “How’re you?”
“Kinda cold,” Lance answered, shuddering on cue. “Not important right now, because, funny story. My buddy Hunk just got engaged last week and there we were, celebrating in his quarters, and his fiancée is teasing me for being single like she always does ‘cos really it’s her way of showing she’s interested in how I’m doing. She’s nice like that - doesn’t make it too serious or awkward. Anyway, Hunk is all like ‘Yeah Lance, it’s weird ‘cos you got all these girls and you’re ignoring ‘em’, and I’m like ‘Yeah but I was nothing to ‘em before so they don’t give a shit who I am’, and then Shay comes out with ‘what about that freshman who saved you, he cared’.”
Shiro closed his eyes and held his breath, stunned still. He could hear the crooked grin as Lance spoke.
“So I’m like ‘which freshman’ and after she hits me, Hunk goes ‘the one who carried your bleeding ass all the way to the ship and then screamed blue murder for a medic on the other end’, and yeah, so I didn’t really think about what happened after I passed out that day, which was kinda rude but then I was a little busy and also on some amazing painkillers. Turns out the path to getting truly high is through amputation,” he went on.
Shiro’s eyes were saucers, which made Lance wave his hands in a large dismissive gesture that was somehow endearing.
“I’m kidding. Anyway, so then that sorta got me thinking that I’d never actually said thanks for you hauling me to the ship but then it turns out you stopped me from bleeding out, too? Dude, you’re my fucking hero. I was gonna hug your fine ass like the next day but then I couldn’t help but notice that you watch me a lot.”
The sound Shiro let out really could only be described as a cross between a squeak and a sharp intake of breath.
“Don’t worry I don’t think anyone else has noticed. Well, Shay did. And I think Hunk did. And I definitely did. It’s fine. I just had to wonder why the guy who saved my life twice by my count is giving me the mushy eyes when it should be the other way around.”
“Wh-what?” Shiro wasn’t usually this inarticulate, but sometime in between him hearing Lance’s voice and seeing Lance’s face his brain had short-circuited and he was still waiting for it to reboot and give him a coherent thought.
Lance didn’t seem to mind. “Shiro, have you seen you?” He stepped closer and gave Shiro a broad smile. “You’re the best pilot this school has seen in years, you’re gonna make student instructor by junior year, you’re hot as fuck and you’re three goddamn years younger than me and you’ve still got like an inch on me and man, I used to be the tall one at home and suddenly everyone here is taller than me and now the fucking freshmen are bigger than me and what the fuck is that?”
“But...” Finally, half a response entered Shiro’s head, and left it in short order, entirely circumventing his brain-to-mouth filter. “But you saved all those people...”
“We saved them. Then you saved me. I’m not the world’s greatest mathematician but I’m pretty sure I got basic arithmetic down and two was bigger than one last time I checked. Still not sure how you got left out of the story, I’ll be honest, but it had already run before I woke up, and it was good enough for them so they didn’t want to hear any more. Anyway, that’s not the point. Well, it is and it isn’t. Thanks for saving my life, Shiro,” Lance said, more seriously than before. “I owe you big time.”
“It’s... Can we call it even?” Shiro tried.
“I literally just said... Yeah, we can call it even,” Lance smirked, winking at Shiro and whoops, now Shiro’s pants were uncomfortable. Lance seemed to sense it - Shiro might have shivered, he wasn’t sure. “Or... the other reason I’m up here is to ask you what you keep staring at, but I think I just worked it out. I’d kinda like to hear it from you, though,” he asked, patience entirely unlike anything Shiro had seen from him before.
It was only right to tell the truth. Shiro stood straighter until he was eye to eye with Lance, and suddenly it was easy. “I like you,” he breathed, heart skipping a beat as he waited for a response in what seemed like a stretched-out moment.
“Yeah, that I could tell, but I get the sense that’s not it,” Lance drawled, and then Shiro took in everything about him - one hand on a jutting hip, lips pursed and mirth in his eyes and it was so painfully obvious that not only was Lance aware of how he felt, but he’d played up to it - Shiro was being seduced and he’d fallen straight into it. “Tell me what you want, Shiro,” he said, and that was it for Shiro - the tentative grip he had on his self control snapped, and Shiro took an impulsive step forward.
“To fuck you,” he whispered, or at least meant to - it came out far stronger than he’d intended, but he got to watch the effect the words had on Lance. Arousal pushed out the clamouring disbelief and nervousness, and the stark reality hit him as Lance’s smile lit up brighter than the moon.
“Well, now I’m glad I left the lube sitting on the heater,” Lance sighed, and Shiro surged forward to capture Lance’s lips and swallow his bubbling laughter.