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Lance isn’t sure when exactly it is he falls into the unofficial role of team patch-up man for self-inflicted injuries… And wow, is that a mouthful.
Honestly, Lance would like to say they don’t have near enough self-caused injury, accidental or purposeful, to need a person in charge of the aftermath.
Well. He’d like to say that.
The reality of the matter, though, is that they’re a small group of people being asked to be adults and soldiers far too early in their lives (Not that any person, Lance thinks, deserves to be trapped in this duty), and the carnage and nightmares they’ve witnessed have very real consequences on their mental health. Consequences that result in Pidge occasionally poking about exposed wiring in one of their projects with far too little care for the potential effects, or Keith pressing himself just a bit too far on a level with the training bot he really shouldn’t be on without supervision.
And so Lance finds himself regularly in the business of treating burned fingers, dark bruises on skin left by the training bot’s staff, and occasionally guiding whoever has allowed themselves to be hurt into a healing pod when it’s serious enough.
Don’t ask him why. Someone had to take responsibility, Lance supposes, and by the luck of fate it ended up being him. In a way, he’s the obvious choice for such a job. Pidge and Keith are too often the recipients of his care, Coran is busy, Allura would not understand (never mind the fact he’s had to subtly mother her into taking a rest when she overworks herself more than a few times now), and Hunk… Well. Hunk has done enough patching up of others, most particularly Lance himself, for one lifetime.
That, he thinks, is the other reason this makes an appropriate job for him. Lance can’t do much, really. He’s always been a jack of all trades, a master of none, and barely semi-competent at a few specific tasks when asked. But this, clean-edged cuts on skin and thin rivulets of blood between fingers, this he knows, this he understands. Hunk, he lived through Lance’s childhood with him, has seen the aftermath and knows the art of discreet bandages and ointment to prevent infection, but only Lance understands the need. The urge to be a little careless, reaffirm your existence with a quick glimmer of pain.
He hasn’t caught anyone doing it with deliberation, with clear intent, at least. No razorblade lines or forearms held over lit stoves. Not that he doesn’t watch, just in case, but by now Lance knows pretty much every trick under the book (as does Hunk, for every time he caught him), and he’s fairly certain he wouldn’t miss anything.
Still, he keeps an even closer watch now, ever since Shiro disappeared. Losing their leader, their guide in the dark, terrifying void that is space, has been a blow to all of them. Allura tries, but while no one will deny she is a competent leader, what Shiro held in compassion and pacifism, she compensates for with an armor of pride and steely vengeance. Allura is a terrifying, incredible general, but she has not learnt yet to be a medic, a comforter.
…And the absence of that presence leads to situations like this.
It does seem oddly in-character, Lance thinks, that if any of them ever gave in to anger and literally punched a wall, it would be Keith.
Except Altean home… er, castle design is fucking weird, so while someone punching a wall would normally leave Lance dealing with bloody knuckles and a bruised hand, Keith had punched what was more like an Earth-building window… sort of. And now there is a jagged hole in the middle of said wall as himself and Keith sit on the other side of the room from it and Lance picks tiny shards of the glass-like material out of Keith’s skin with a pair of tweezers. Keith is sullen, sulking, and Lance would really rather avoid this conversation, but as it stands punching a wall-window is a new level of extreme for Keith, and Lance is very aware of the dangers of that spiraling path.
“I know…” He says carefully, feeling out his words as Keith’s head snaps up and dark eyes bore into him. “I know what you’re going through must be…. a lot, but this isn’t—“
“No, you don’t.” Keith snaps.
“…Excuse me?”
“You don’t know anything.” Keith mutters, voice tight with irritation. “You have no idea what I’m going through. Shiro was practically family for me, Lance, and now he could be dead for all we know. You’ve never lost anyone, never suffered being alone like this even once in your prissy little life with your perfect family and your happy-ass childhood you always brag about, so don’t you presume to tell me you know anything about what I’m feeling right now.”
“I…” Frustration surges through Lance, and he fights the urge to just get up and leave, abandon Keith to figure out how to bandage his own mess, cover up the evidence without assistance, like Lance did himself the first time he took a blade to his skin in a locked bathroom when he was barely eleven, grief and terror and loneliness and all the things Keith says Lance has never known boiling over. But… Lance knows Keith doesn’t mean to hurt him like this, anger and fear and exhaustion pushing him to be more irritable than usual, and he can’t in good faith leave Keith to do this alone, not when he knows that, even that first time he fell, his oldest sister eventually broke down the bathroom door and held him as he screamed and tried to claw at his own skin.
Lance always had help when he needed it, in the end. That much, he supposes, Keith has correct in his assessment.
Besides… Keith is right, in a way. This isn’t about Lance. His existence is miniscule up here, especially compared to Pidge, with a family to save, to Shiro, with the weight of worlds resting on him, and to Keith, with a legacy of alien blood under his skin. Lance means nothing, in the long run, not to the universe or to these people. He’s known that from the beginning, come to terms with it months ago, when they first fell into space at the blue lion’s call.
His history, his scars, his pain doesn’t matter up here.
Lance McClain isn’t a master pilot or a prodigy leader or a whip-smart genius, but if nothing else, he knows this. He knows how to pick glass from skin and how to prop up a heart made up of jagged edges.
And if he can offer nothing else, then… so be it.
So when Keith Kogane, the kind of pilot you see once in a lifetime and a hotheaded maniac and one of the most beautiful people Lance has ever seen, looks at him with fire in his eyes, and vibrating tension in every inch of his frame, Lance shrugs, bites his lip, and focuses on bandaging up broken skin.
He’s not here for arguments, to be reminded that for every grief he has felt someone else has experienced it tenfold.
He will do what he can. And that, hopefully, will be enough.