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It starts with Adam and Veronica, seated side by side at the dining table, both eighteen years old and fresh out of the Galaxy Garrison as cadets, with their shiny new titles of junior officers.
“I have something to say,” Adam says, voice uncertain. Lance peers over from the “children’s table” with Rachel (until she turns thirteen, which is only a while away, then he’ll be alone at the table with no one else-) He stands, tugging Veronica’s hand in his. She stands too, looking anywhere but the table full of people.
“I want to let you know that nothing has changed,” Adam continues, voice shaking. “And I’m still the same person I was before. You just know a little bit more about me now.”
The room is silent and tense, but still, Lance pushes his chair back and makes his way to the main table, clinging on to his favourite brother’s chair in a show of silent support. It goes to show how tense things are that no one says anything about the squeaking noise the chair makes.
“I have a boyfriend,” Adam says, quickly, then elaborates. “I’m gay. I like boys romantically and am currently dating one.”
There’s silence - even tenser, even quieter than before. Lance barely dares to breathe, in fear of disturbing it.
“Rachel, Lance,” their father says, voice dangerously soft. “Go to your rooms.”
“But I’m not done yet,” Rachel protests, gesturing to her plate.
“Rooms.” There’s no room for argument in his tone.
They go to Rachel’s room, and are eventually joined by Marco when the screaming and shouting get too loud, way too loud, even for fifteen-year-olds who like to feel like the world is in their hands, and Luis way later, who comes in and tells them that he sent his wife back to their home a few houses down, who stays to provide emotional support. All four of them curl up on Rachel’s bed in Rachel’s room, not saying much because there’s nothing to say. Marco offers his Spotify account wordlessly, and they play it softly, no one bothering when it starts playing songs that they would normally complain and poke fun at him about.
The night ends with Veronica yelling, “If you kick him out, you should kick me out too, because I like boys and girls too; I’m bisexual!”
What must be the front door slams shut shortly after that.
The next morning, the remaining four siblings break into the twins’ room, pack some things that they think their siblings would want, and send it off with Luis so he can bring their belongings to them. If anyone notices Lance stealing the jacket Adam just recently grew out of, or Rachel borrowing one of Veronica’s bandanas, or Marco pocketing a pair of Veronica’s earrings, or Luis hiding one of Adam’s watches in his jacket, no one mentions anything.
The day after that, there’s no other trace of Veronica or Adam in the house anymore - their room turned into a spare bedroom, the chairs they used to sit at by the dining table gone, any photo of them hung in the house since disappeared.
If Lance squeezes his eyes shut and pretends hard enough, it’s almost like it’s just another semester where the twins are at the Garrison.
(Almost.)
*****
“Lance?” He hears Hunk ask, over their private comms. The space road trip is taking a lot more out of them than they’d expected.
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever think of what the Garrison told our families?”
Lance closes his eyes and thinks of Luis and Marco and Rachel, losing him after having lost Veronica and Adam to their parent’s close-mindedness. He thinks of Veronica, who’s lost not just her parents but contact with her siblings, and now, even one of the two brothers she still has contact with (and the other barely counts because Adam’s her twin!). He thinks of Adam, who’s probably grieved enough for a lifetime, who only has Veronica left, who taught him self-defence even though he was terrible at it.
He thinks of Veronica and Adam and how they weren’t high up enough on the Garrison ladder to receive any truth on the Kerberos Mission, even with Adam listed as the person of contact under Shiro’s name, even with Veronica as the second youngest appointed Senior Officer ever. Wonders whether the Garrison came up with something like “they died in a meteor crash” or something more like “they’re criminals and ran away”. Thinks of Adam’s desperation to find the story behind the Kerberos Mission disaster, his desperation to find his boyfriend’s adopted brother but would any of that apply to Lance?-
“All the time.”
*****
It continues like this:
Lance is twelve and a half when he tells Luis, tells his eldest brother, that he still wants to go to space and see the stars, despite how the Garrison is an unspoken and banned topic within their house. Luis pats his back, sends Nadia and Sylvio off with Lisa, and helps him sign up for the Galaxy Garrison.
He is going on thirteen when he gets the package from the Garrison, when his father find out that he signed up for it behind his back and gets yelled at for hours on end, not to mention grounded. A couple of months after that, his mother gives him a hug, hands him a bag and gets him to Luis, who drives him to the airport to catch a flight to the Garrison.
At the Garrison, the administrator gives her computer a glance and directs him to his dorm, though not with a “He doesn’t look like he’s related to Officer McClain-“ “-Do you really think he is?” “They have the same hair and name, it makes sense-” exchanged between her and her partner. It doesn’t escape him how it’s singular Officer, but he supposes it was probably a misspeak, or maybe she only knows one of them. He tries not to think about the alternatives.
Lance’s roommate is this nice guy who introduces himself as “Hunk”, with the explanation that no one can usually pronounce his name right. He greets Hunk back with a wide grin and an eager face. They’re going to get along well, no doubt about it.
The first weeks of classes are a blur of classes and lectures and studying and oh my god, we’re flying the flight simulator-
When he calls his family after the first week, his father is decidedly not there while Lance tells them all about the thrill of flying the simulator.
(No one asks about the twins.)
*****
The road trip back to Earth sort of equates road trip bonding games, at least when they aren’t being attacked by the Galra, captured by pirates, undergoing one of Krolia’s training simulations…
And, if not road trip bonding games, then at least random questions, like this:
“Who do you have waiting for you back on Earth?” Allura asks one night (? Time is weird in space, why would Lance of all people know what time it is?), all of them gathered around a campfire on a planet with a thankfully breathable atmosphere.
“My whole family,” Hunk sighs nostalgically.
“Mine too,” Lance adds, not adding the probably except for my father part behind it.
“My mom and dad,” Pidge says, then pulls a face. “I hope the Garrison didn’t pull one with him and strap him to a table like they did with Shiro.”
“I…” Shiro looks away. “I hope I still have my… uh… ex-fiancé? Boyfriend? Roommate?” He shrugs awkwardly. “I don’t know where we stand anymore.”
“You’ll have him,” Keith comforts his brother and Lance feels a pang of nostalgia and déjà vu and anger all at once; is reminded of him and Adam and Veronica after the infamous breakup, and then after the Kerberos Mission takeoff, and then after the revelation of the Kerberos Mission’s failure- “I hope not,” he mutters to himself.
From next to him, Hunk sends him a scandalised look, which Lance pointedly ignores, eyes on the ground. Keith growls - straight-up growls at him. It must’ve been the Galra super senses, because Lance is absolutely certain that there’s no other way he would’ve heard that. “Would you like to repeat that, Lance?”
“Would you like me to repeat that, Keith?” Lance shoots back, taking a sadistic sense of satisfaction in Keith’s anger and Shiro’s flinch at his next words. “Because I’d gladly announce it to the universe any day.” Louder still, he repeats his words - with a little elaboration. “I hope that Shiro doesn’t still have Adam waiting for him. It’s been years, after all.”
“I thought Shiro was your hero?“ Pidge asks with a start.
“Yes. But in this case,” Lance says, decisively. “My loyalty lies with someone else.”
“And why does it matter to you?” Keith demands. “Don’t you think Shiro’s suffered enough?”
“It’s always about Shiro with you. How about what Adam’s suffered? Adam deserved better than Shiro, and it’s not like you were there to find out anyway!”
“Who are you to talk on behalf of Adam?”
“Shiro’s right here, but you’re talking on behalf of him, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, well, whatever Adam’s been through can’t be worse than dying!”
“Some things are worse than dying!”
“Like what?!”
“Like losing everyone!” Lance screams, voice cracking. “Like losing your parents, then all your siblings but one, then your fiancé, then your fiancé’s brother, then your remaining brother, and then you only have your-“
He cuts himself off, choking on his words before they can escape him. It’s silent for a while, with everyone’s eyes on him. He blinks rapidly and raises his fingers, feeling a distinct type of dampness on his cheeks.
“You weren’t there,” he says softly, quickly wiping and hiding his tears with practised ease while grabbing his helmet, heading back to Red. “Neither of you were.”
“Who’s Adam?” He hears Allura ask, after a short break.
He also hears the lack of response.
*****
Surprisingly, it takes Lance a full school year to even catch sight of the first of his estranged siblings.
Even more surprisingly, it’s not even Veronica - who he hears about amongst staff members in “Can someone get Officer McClain here? We have some stats we need her to go through” or amongst cadets in “That’s Veronica McClain, youngest Senior Officer after Takashi Shirogane!” and ”Did you know that Officer McClain became a Senior Officer in three years?”
It goes like this:
In his first year, Lance fails miserably at Introductory Combat’s close-ranged section (aka, the only section). Therefore, he’s assigned to take supplementary self-defence courses alongside the originally given choice between long-ranged and close-ranged combat.
Lance, naturally, choose long-ranged combat. It’s not like he can mess that up too badly, right?
Back to supplementary self-defence.
So, Lance walks into his first supplementary self-defence class in his second year, and nearly trips over himself because it’s Adam standing next to a series of dummies. It’s Adam, standing there, but Lance checks his timetable again because he remembers supplementary self-defence being taught by the infamously friendly and easy-going “Professor Wright”, not a “Professor McClain”.
It still, in fact, has “Professor Wright” written just under “Supplementary Self-Defence”.
It’s not cleared up when Adam calls attention to himself, at the front of the class and promptly introduces himself as “Professor Wright - and, as you should know, I’ll be your supplementary self-defence teacher for the rest of the year.”
He’s able to catch the moment when Adam notices him amongst the handful of cadets in the training room, able to pinpoint - through experience and training and trying to avoid another potential blow-up at home and trying to avoid people picking on him in school - the exact moment of minute widening of eyes. He doesn’t think anyone else notices, Adam recovering quickly enough that the sudden slip isn’t noticeable to anyone not looking for it, if his classmates’ lack of reaction is anything to go by.
Adam’s teaching style holds true to the rumours about “Professor Wright”, but even if Lance can come to the conclusion that Adam is no longer a McClain but a Wright, that doesn’t mean he knows why.
Despite everything inside of him begging for answers, it turns out Adam is uninterested. There’s no second glance at him - in fact, it’s almost like Adam goes out of his way to avoid him - or any sort of acknowledgement that he - as Adam’s brother - exists while within and out of the classroom.
Lance leaves the classroom with a heavy heart.
(Better luck with Veronica.)
*****
Lance’s blow-up has decidedly ruined the mood in the Lions, and likely will continue to until addressed - the tension between the current Paladin of the Black Lion and the current Paladin of the Red Lion is practically tangible. Hunk and Pidge and Allura, along with any additional tagalongs, are very clearly confused. Shiro must see him in a new light now, likely drawing the connection between Adam’s given surname (Veronica’s surname) and Lance’s own.
No one seems willing to confront anything, and Lance is just fine with that. Lance couldn’t care less about what the others think of him now - he will always be loyal to his family above all else. It’s not like their Lions have enough energy to form Voltron anyway, so that won’t be affected anyway.
“Who’s Adam?” Coran asks, a couple of quintents after the big blow-up.
Lance laughs - a short, weak one. It’s not his usual laugh, and if Coran’s concerned look is anything to go by, the advisor thinks so too.
“Ask me again when we’re closer to Earth.”
*****
One day, a couple of weeks after his first encounter with Adam, Lance literally runs into Veronica. Literally.
“What’d you do to make Professor Wright hate you so much?” Hunk asks, but Lance promptly ducks and weaves his way through the growing crowd of cadets filling the halls. “Don’t run away from this Lance!” He hears from behind him, but a quick glance back reveals that Hunk doesn’t know where he is.
He ducks down a turn into a path he knows will eventually to his long-ranged combat class, and turns back to check that Hunk isn’t following him. When he turns back to his path, he jogs right into someone. The person’s uniform is that weird grey-green associated with anyone above cadet ranking, though not with the buttons, so he instantly ducks his head and salutes. “Officer!”
He doesn’t get a dismissal or a demand for an apology. He gets a weak “…Lance?”
He lifts his head slightly and oh- It’s Veronica. Slightly older, with her hair slightly shorter than before and slightly different glasses but still Veronica.
Lance doesn’t get the opportunity to react any further before he’s lifted into Veronica’s embrace.
The reunion goes much better with Veronica than with Adam.
(There’s a reason Veronica’s his favourite sibling, after all.)
*****
“What do you miss the most about home? I miss my dog.”
Lance appreciates Pidge’s attempt at a break from the tension. He’s just not sure if this is the best method to go about it.
“I miss actual food,” Hunk says, and yeah, Lance can behind that. It’s not what he misses the most, though.
“Juniberry flowers,” Allura sighs, melancholic as she always is when she remembers Altea.
“My brother,” Romelle adds, anger staining her tone.
“Some Altean traditions,” Coran says, unsurprisingly bright compared to everyone else’s solemn tones.
“Peace,” Krolia says, not sounding like she misses it at all.
“You already know mine,” Shiro says vaguely and yes, Lance knows exactly what - who - he’s talking about. That doesn’t mean he likes it.
“My hoverbike,” Keith forces out though Lance wouldn’t be surprised if Shiro was behind this forced answer.
“Lance?” Hunk asks.
Lance… Well, he has a lot of answers. There are the safe answers of “rain”, “the beach”, “the ocean”, but there are also the far more truthful answers of “singing Beautiful at Veronica when she does her makeup”, “swimming with all my siblings”, “my childhood before the twins were estranged” and such. He can tell the others are getting impatient, though, so he goes with humming Beautiful instead. It’s a layered answer, and they can come to their own conclusions if they will.
“Is that Heathers?” Pidge asks, after a while.
Lance makes a noise of agreement as Pidge starts singing to his tune. It turns into a full out jam session with confused aliens and a confused Keith. Lance lets his presence fade out by the time they reach Veronica’s induction into the Heathers, though Shiro’s tapering off as well and near-silent “oh” as Pidge and Hunk chant “Verooonica” doesn’t escape his attention.
Looks like someone’s figured it out.
When they’re done, Keith finally pipes up again, tone annoyed. “That was nice and all but Lance never answered the question.”
“Oh screw off, mullet,” Lance snaps, and switches off his comms.
*****
“Mascara, maybe some lip gloss,” Lance sings brightly, carefully applying the former on Veronica’s lashes. “And we’re on our way!” With a flourish, he finishes her mascara and picks up her blush, even as she moves to dab some lip gloss on her lips. “Get this girl some blush, and Heather I need your brush!” Veronica obediently hands over her brush as Lance moves behind her to do her hair, having dabbed the blush on with gentle and practised strokes. “Let’s make her beautiful…”
When he’s done, he passes Veronica a mirror eagerly. “Okay?”
“Okay!” Veronica grins, expressing her approval.
Someone knocks on the door.
“I’ll get it,” Lance insists, already heading for it. “You get dressed. I took the liberty of preparing a dress for you. It’s waiting for you in your room.”
“You’re a lifesaver,” Veronica says, darting in.
Lance grins at her retreating back, then turns back to the door, opening it. “Hello, you’re gonna have to wait for a while if you’re looking for Veroni- Oh. …It’s you.”
It’s Adam, who looks shifty and nervous and completely out of his element. Strange, Adam was always better at social interaction of the pair of twins. “Is she… in there?”
“Give her a while,” Lance says, blandly. “Would you like to come in?”
“Thank you,” Adam says, equally stiff, as he steps into Veronica’s apartment.
“Who’s at the door?” Veronica calls.
“Your twin!” Lance calls back, and doesn’t say our brother and hopes Adam notices that.
“Ha! About time, he was supposed to be here a while ago!” Veronica says cheerily, exiting her room and flinging herself onto Adam in an embrace. “Good to see you finally got your shit together.”
“Uh, thanks?”
“You’re welcome!”
“Don’t wrinkle your dress,” Lance chides, pulling the twins apart from each other and smoothing out his sister’s dress.
“Yeah, yeah. I gotta go for my date now. Thanks for the help, Lance!” Veronica calls over her shoulder as she heads out the door.
“Yeah yeah, we both know you’d botch your makeup without my help,” he says, feeling his lips twitch upwards despite himself. “Now shoo! Off to your date.”
“I can do lip gloss!” She yells as the door closes. “And try to get along this time!”
Lance glares at the closed door. He can’t believe he was fooled by a classic Veronica intervention. He can’t believe it. It seems he really doesn’t know his siblings anymore.
“So,” Adam says, and Lance squeezes his eyes shut and counts to ten. It does not calm him, so he opens his eyes again and avoids looking directly at Adam, instead opting to look somewhere above his taller (and older) sibling’s head. “I think I owe you an explanation.”
“Yeah,” Lance says, maintaining his lack of eye contact. “I think you do.”
*****
((Communication Log #8543 , Participants: Black Paladin’s Helmet, Yellow Paladin’s Helmet, Green Paladin’s Helmet))
(
“That was rude, Keith.”
“Was I wrong?”
“Most likely. The song clearly means something to him. Maybe it’s linked to a memory or a concept or a person or something, and that’s what he misses.”
“Then why doesn’t he just say it?”
“Shiro’s was really vague too, but you’re not jumping on his dick for that, are you?”
“Leave Shiro out of this!”
“How about YOU leave Lance alone?”
“Guys, calm down. Look Keith, all Pidge is saying, and I agree, is that that song is at least a part of his answer. If he’s not comfortable saying it to everyone, especially with that drama with Shiro going on, then leave him be. And Pidge? Calm. Down.”
“…oh.”
“Get it now?”
“…yeah.”
“…”
“I owe him a hell of an apology, don’t I?”
“Ha. Hell yeah you do, Keith.”
“Good luck!”
)
*****
“…So?” Lance asks, scuffing his foot on the floor at the awkward silence.
“I’m sorry for pretty much ignoring you in class, “ Adam says, words coming out in a rush. “You deserved better than that but I was shocked because I really wasn’t expecting your father to let you show up at the Garrison.”
“Oh, he didn’t!” Lance answers, false brightness in his tone. “Luis helped me sign up, and Mamá set up my transportation here. Papá hasn’t talked to me since I came to the Garrison, and we haven’t had a civil conversation since I got my acceptance package.”
Adam nods, like he expected that all along, like none of this came as a surprise to him. Something strikes Lance all of a sudden. “Veronica told you this already, didn’t she?” When Adam nods again, slower this time, more sheepish, Lance curses his oldest sister under his breath. “Traitor.”
“I’m not sorry for leaving,” Adam maintains.
“I know,” Lance sighs, plopping himself down on Veronica’s couch. “I had the same conversation with Veronica about this a while ago, so I’ll tell you the same thing I told her. I forgive you, but I can’t forget it, and we can’t just go back to how things used to be.”
“And that’s fine,” Adam says, seating himself on the same couch, a polite distance away. “We’ll just have to rebuild our relationship again.”
“Yeah,” Lance sighs, before a thought strikes him and he leans towards Adam eagerly. “Hey, tell me about your boyfriend!”
Adam throws a cushion at his face, but it’s worth every bit of it.
*****
Lance offers the incoming call a glance. He still can’t quite understand what the symbols are trying to convey, especially since Altean doesn’t function by any rules similar to any other language he knows, but from the black-purple glow of the call screen, it’s definitely from the Black Lion.
He contemplates the pros and cons of accepting it for a while, but it’s clear Red’s a little impatient or fed up or something, because the screen lights up with Keith’s face before he can come to a conclusion.
“Mullet,” he says, acknowledging the other.
“Veronica McClain is your sister,” Keith states, voice tinged in awe.
There’s a few seconds of slightly awkward silence, and Lance lets it settle uncomfortably on both their shoulders before he hangs up on the call. The display promptly lights up again and once more, Red accepts the call on behalf of him before he can decline it.
“That’s why that song was something you missed!” Keith continues, as if Lance didn’t just hang up on him. “Because there’s someone in the song whose name is Veronica and your sister’s name is Veronica and you miss her!”
Keith looks so happy to have come to that conclusion. “Nice try, mullet,” Lance scoffs. “But sometimes things are less straightforward than that.”
He hangs up again, but this time, Keith doesn’t call back.
*****
This time, Veronica joins him in his video call back home. Lance does the call in her home, with a generic Garrison wall as the background. At least in the unlikely scenario that their father shows up, he won’t look too out of place in Veronica’s apartment.
(He doesn’t show up. Neither does their mother.)
“Guys,” Lance says, looking up from the device. Veronica gives him a comforting grin from across the table, and he returns the soft smile. “There’s someone I think you’d like to see.”
He turns it to face Ronnie, and can hear the excited gasps from his siblings. It also seems that their luck absolutely sucks, because it’s at this exact moment that Veronica’s front door slams open.
“Ronnie, you would not believe what Takashi’s child did today,” Adam yells, bursting through them.
The both of them panic. Lance straight up leaps across the table to slam the laptop shut. Veronica tries to turn her chair around to block the laptop but forgets it’s not a swirly chair, promptly falling out of it.
“El idiota didn’t know that Takashi and I are dating!” He continues, oblivious to what he walked in on. “Has he been living under a rock or- Uh… What are you two doing?”
Lance looks at Veronica and Veronica looks at Lance. They look back at Adam.
“…Nothing?” Veronica offers.
Adam offers them the most deadpan look ever. One count, two counts-
“Run,” Lance stage whispers, and promptly leaps off the table, barely avoiding Adam in his bid to skid out of the room. Veronica follows close behind and Adam yells at them, hot on their heels.
It’s the most fun he’s had with them since they left.
*****
“Oh my god! Your sister is Veronica McClain?” Pidge gasps enthusiastically. “Matt talked about her all the time!”
Lance shrugs, thoroughly done with the train of conversation, even though it just started. He has no idea how she came to that conclusion. He doesn’t really want to know, aside from destroying the method of which she found out.
“Wait, really?” Hunk pipes up. “The Veronica McClain? The management and program analyst? The second youngest Senior Officer of all time?”
He shrugs again, contemplating the consequences of just… shutting off the comms and... not participating in the conversation, not like he is. Maybe not listening would be a better way to phrase it. Not having a presence. He doesn't have nearly enough mental energy to deal with this.
“Is that why you hummed Beautiful the other time? Because it’s something related to Veronica?”
If he just... doesn’t answer...
“Lance?”
“Not just Veronica,” he sighs. Maybe if he answers something they’ll back off? “Adam, too.”
“Adam? Like, Shiro’s Adam? The one you and Keith got into an argument over?” Hunk’s voice is cautious. Adam has been a taboo topic since the big argument, hopefully big enough to get his friends to back off, especially with both Shiro and Keith on the channel, though not actively participating in the conversation.
There’s a short silence before-
“Hey, hey wait, I knew I was forgetting something!” Pidge exclaims, out of the blue. “That’s Professor Wright, isn’t he? Matt said that he was Veronica’s best friend!”
“Twin,” Lance corrects instinctively, and promptly wishes he could take it back when the line falls silent.
“Twin?” His friends echo, both sounding eerily alike and probably inexplicably drawn to the new information due to their curious minds.
He sighs, putting together a quick explanation because he just knows they won’t stop until they get their answers. “Veronica and Adam are twins, Adam just changed his surname after he graduated from the Garrison. Lay off on business that isn’t yours.”
He shuts off the comms with a flick of his wrist that’s maybe a little harsher than necessary - which seems like something he’s been doing pretty often nowadays.
Huh.
*****
Lance takes a long look at the course divisions and finds “Keith Kogane” at the top of the list, under “Fighter Pilots”. He scans the names under “Fighter Pilots” rapidly, desperately, never finding his name, then reluctantly moves on to the next section: “Cargo Pilots”. There, at the top of that list, lies his name: “Lance McClain”.
He doesn’t head back to his dorm - doesn’t think he could face Hunk or anyone else in his year. He doesn’t head to Veronica’s room - doesn’t think he could face her disappointment. He doesn’t head to Adam’s room - doesn’t think he could stand in the room without comparing himself to fighter pilot Adam.
He heads to the rooftop.
It’s a quiet day in the middle of the desert. There are no jets in the sky, no rovers on the ground, no people out and about - nothing. It’s peaceful. Here, Lance can just… be himself, without fear of judgement.
Or, at least, he would be able to, normally.
Keith Kogane opens the door to the roof, engages in an awkward stare-off with Lance, and demands, “What are you doing here?”
“What do you think?” Lance shoots back, tone bitter and defensive. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing,” Keith answers, equally as defensive. “I just didn’t expect anyone else to be up here.”
They engage in an equally awkward round of avoiding eye contact before Lance gives up, patting the empty space next to him. “Just get here and sit down.”
Keith sits down. It's somehow even more awkward than it was before Lance invited him to. He isn't quite sure what to do or how to feel about it.
"So... Uh... Come here often?" Keith bites out.
Lance straight-up snorts because it's Keith Kogane and if the course allocations are anything to go by, the top pilot of their cadet batch, alongside with the fact that he's Adam's fiancé’s - Takashi Shirogane, that guy's a hero in the piloting industry! - mentee.
It's Keith Kogane and Keith Kogane? He is, apparently, surprisingly, completely awkward.
"More than you'd think, actually," Lance says, as a response. "I come up here whenever I need alone-time to collect my emotions."
"Oh, uh, sorry for interrupting?"
Lance chuckles weakly. "It's fine."
They sit in silence, side by side, for a while more before Lance gets up. "I-" He hesitates. "It was nice talking to you. See you around?"
It's Keith's turn to laugh. "Yeah, sure. See you around, Taylor."
Lance turns and leaves, grinning from ear to ear. There's only so much one boy can take, especially face-to-face with someone who's practically a legend in their batch. Keith's actually surprisingly cool.
He’s calm enough now, so he heads to Veronica’s room and prepares himself to break the news to his sister.
(It’s also nice of Keith to use his nickname!)
*****
Lance does not look at Keith. He does not look anywhere within the remote vicinity of Keith. He does not think of Keith, does not want to see Keith, has no interest in-
Who is he trying to kid?
Lance sighs to himself. It's a strange set of circumstances that he's fallen into. It's not like he can stop at the nearest intergalactic bookshop and find a book on what to do when your crush comes back from two years on the back of a space whale why trying to save a supposedly dead race but it's only been two months for you. Oh and he also brought home a member of said dead race and his long-lost alien mom. No big deal or anything. Makes perfect sense. Ha.
Clearly, Lance is coping very well.
He knows, objectively, that Veronica and Adam will be nothing but supportive over his discovery. He also knows, objectively, that Rachel and Marco and Luis won't treat him any different, assuming, of course, that they're ever allowed to meet again. Objectively, he knows all of that, but that doesn't mean that subjectively, he doesn't trust that they'll react positively. It's an irrational fear, and Lance knows that. That doesn't mean he doesn't fear, though.
Huh, this must have been how the twins felt in preparation for That Dinner.
"Bisexual," he tells himself, testing the word out on his tongue. "I'm bisexual."
“Nice to know? I’m gay.”
Lance startles, hand already drawing his bayard and said bayard glowing into his blaster, before the owner of the voice registers. Then, he groans, sheaths his bayard and arcs his back backwards, so that he can have a good look at Keith, albeit upside down. “It’s not nice to listen in on someone else’s private conversation you know, Keith?”
“Lance,” Keith says, similarly. “Are you not afraid you might snap your back?”
"...Snap my what?" Lance echoes, then snickers. "No, I know my capabilities."
Keith looks a little bit doe-eyed. "Yeah. So... You're flexible?"
Lance shrugs. "I... guess? I mean, can't you do this?"
Keith's face promptly goes horrified. "Absolutely not!"
"Oh."
They stay in that position for a while, silence awkward, and Lance is thrown back to the day he got his cargo pilot placement. They've known each other properly now, and they're on an alien planet, but it's strangely similar.
"Do you really not remember me from the Garrison?" Lance asks, patting the empty ground next to him in an unspoken invitation.
"I remember you," Keith admits, taking a seat. "I just... Well. I'm not good with people. I thought your name was Taylor. It was pretty confusing."
"I'm- what?" Lance laughs. "Taylor?"
"I don't know?" Keith flushes. “I must have heard it somewhere a-and it's not like we really talked much, aside from uhhh... that one time on the rooftop?"
"Heh, yeah."
It's silence for a little longer, but it's not awkward. It's a kind of companionable silence, a comfortable one.
“Hey Keith, just so you know, my name's Lance, not Taylor.”
"Shut up! I know that now!"
*****
“Hi,” Lance grins, all too cheerful for the situation. “Care to tell me why I heard from the rumour mill that Professor Wright and Senior Officer Shirogane broke up?”
Adam - who looks terrible, actually, and who really should thank Lance for not telling him that while he’s clearly in an emotionally unsteady state - stares at him for a slightly awkward one, two, three, four counts, then shuts the door in his face.
“Rude!” Lance protests. “It’s not even about the breakup itself, I’m just maybe slightly upset that I had to hear about it from Ina Leifsdottir, of all people. She doesn’t even do gossip!”
Veronica rolls his eyes at him when he waits for a couple of beats and gets no response. “Move aside, Lancey-Lance. Let the professionals do the work.”
Lance grumbles, but steps aside, letting Veronica do her Senior Officer thing and open the door.
In his room, swaddled by blankets, Adam somehow manages to look even more pathetic than before. He does look comfy though, and Lance voices that thought out. He receives twin glares from the twins for his trouble. "'s not my fault you two have no sense of humour," Lance complains, scuffing his foot. "Do you want ice cream?"
"What flavour?" Adam asks, from within his cocoon of blankets.
Lance scoffs, taking out the carton. "Cookies and cream. I know you don’t expect much of me at times but what sort of horrible brother would I be if I didn’t get you your favourite flavour of ice cream after a breakup?”
"Takashi's child can't eat ice cream," Adam says. "Keith's lactose intolerant. We don’t have any sort of lactose products in the apartment.”
"Yeah, well," Veronica says, handing her twin the carton of ice cream. Her tone brokers no arguments. “Neither of them are here, are they?" She hands him a spoon too. "Eat up. What do you feel like watching today?"
"I- I don't know?"
"Alright, Brooklyn Nine-Nine it is, in that case," Veronica says, and they all know Veronica's offering no other option. "Any specific season or episode?"
Adam has no opinions about the decision, so they just start watching from the first season.
“I feel like an asshole,” Adam admits, halfway through episode nine, nearing the end of their third hour. “I shouldn’t have given him an ultimatum.”
“Wait- You?” Veronica asks, shocked. It’s okay, Lance is equally shocked. “But I thought-“
“Yeah,” Adam agrees. “I thought so too. You know how Takashi’s muscles are degenerating?” Lance shakes his head in a negative, and Veronica gives her twin a deadpan look. “Yeah, yeah, don’t look at me like that. Well, he was invited to be the pilot for the Kerberos Mission.”
“That’s…. great?” Veronica tries.
“But he’s not taking care of himself!” Adam protests instantly. “Going for the Kerberos Mission, he might, I don’t know, his condition might worsen, his ship could crash, there might not be enough fuel to get back to Earth, they’re going further than any human being has gone- It’s dangerous! I don’t want to wait for someone who holds an unlikely chance of returning. So… I gave him a choice; the mission, or me.”
“You meant well, I guess, but that was an asshole move,” Lance agrees.
Adam groans. “You’re supposed to be supportive.”
“I’m being honest,” Lance shrugs. “That’s as supportive as I’ll get. You still have a significant amount of time before the mission, go apologise to him or something. Give him flowers and remember to lock the door if you want to make out in the living room, etcetera.”
“Besides,” Veronica adds. “If something does happen to him and you never apologise, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
“Yeah,” Adam grumbles. “You’re right.”
“Of course we are,” Veronica shoots back immediately. “Now shut up and continue watching the show.”
(“Honestly,” Veronica tells Adam. “It’s not even that high of a chance that he won’t return, not too significantly higher than normal missions. I would know; they called me in to run the numbers.”
Adam grumbles something under his breath.
“Want to repeat that?” She asks him, giving a not too subtle look at Lance.
“No, not particularly,” Adam says and Veronica turns to leave.
“See you!”
“You’re lucky tomorrow’s a Sunday,” Lance informs Adam once their sister is out of sight. “So you can’t be held responsible when I don’t get my healthy amounts of beauty sleep.”
“Shut up and get out,” Adam groans jokingly, nudging the younger lightly. “I just got my heart broken, your beauty sleep can wait.”
“Can’t have your heart broken if you don’t have one!” Lance bites back, laughing at the incredulous look on Adam’s face before darting back into the crowds of cadets in the halls.)
*****
“Adam’s your brother!” Pidge exclaims. “If Veronica’s your sister and Adam’s her twin, then he’s your brother!”
“Congratulations Sherlock,” Lance sighs. “You have a brain.”
“That’s why you were all overprotective over him, like Keith was over Shiro,” Pidge continues, like he never said a word. “And this whole weird tension thing? You two were pretty much having a lovers’ quarrel on behalf of your brothers!”
“Don’t you think they should be the ones having the argument?” Hunk raises.
“I think Hunk is right,” Keith agrees. “Can we please not fight anymore, Lance?”
“I don’t know,” Lance says, nervous and on edge because no one outside of Veronica has brought up the topic of Adam to him in a long long while. “I don’t think Shiro’s met the family yet. I think I should at least do something about that on behalf of my siblings.”
“Your family’s homophobic, of course I don’t want to meet them,” Shiro says, then there’s silence for a count of one, two, three, where everyone is either too shocked to respond or waiting for Lance to respond. “I didn’t mean to for you to hear that,” the ex-Black Paladin rushes to add, which honestly isn’t much better. "Sorry." Lance just laughs.
“…Lance? Are you okay there?” Allura asks.
“Peachy,” Lance says, taking deep breaths to quell his sudden bout of laughter. “You just judged the entire family based on two people’s responses. Three of us were minors when it happened. Luis had to stay behind to take care of us, plus he was newly-wed back then. We’re not homophobic, Shiro.” He breaks into another short bout of laughter again. “Keith, Keith, Keith.”
“What, Lance?” Keith asks, audibly exasperated.
“This is hilarious, don’t you think so Keith?” Lance grins when Keith sighs and doesn’t respond. “Guys, I can’t be homophobic, I’m bi!”
*****
Lance fiddles with the key Veronica shoved into his hands earlier. She’d walked up to him, pressed the electronic key into his hands and instructed him to “go see Adam - that’s a key to his room. I have a Senior Officer meeting I can’t back out off, not for any reasons short of family emergencies and apparently, this isn’t one.” There, she scrunches up her nose, then turns and walks away, though not with a hastily thrown “good luck”.
“I didn’t know you knew Senior Officer Veronica McClain!” Nadia Rizavi says enthusiastically. “Do you think you could introduce me to her?”
Lance gives her a look that he hopes conveys how dumb he thinks she is. The officers call him Cadet McClain like how Veronica is called Officer McClain. They share the same facial structure and hair colour and eyes. He thought everyone knew of his relation to Veronica. He barely knows Nadia. “No.”
Then he clutches the key tightly and marches to Adam’s room. He thinks he knows what this is about - not just because he’s an involved member of society who watches the news, but also because James Griffin decided it’d be a good idea to use Takashi Shirogane’s death to mock Keith Kogane. The beating James got was well deserved, but no one has seen Keith in the two hours since. The rumours are already circulating - the top pilot in the fighter track, the greatest pilot since Shiro, got expelled.
Lance sincerely hope that the rumours are wrong and that James gets into trouble for this. He’s an asshole.
Regardless of the James-Keith fiasco, Lance has a mission; one to comfort his brother over his ex-fiancé’s death. Even if the said brother is kind of an idiot who doesn’t want to take the advice he asked for and just communicate like a normal healthy person.
Lance sighs, swiping the key card on the scanner and stepping into his brother’s room. Adam may be a bit of an idiot at times (case in point: the surname fiasco) but he’s Lance’s brother after all. That’s enough, sometimes.
*****
“Well that was convenient,” Lance comments absentmindedly. “Survive who knows how long in an empty vacuum of space, complete with lack of food or water, diminishing air supplies and hallucinations, and then magically appear outside the Milky Way.”
“Don’t jinx it,” Hunk hisses at him.
“I’m not complaining!” Lance protests. “It’s just weird, that’s all. But you know, we fight purple cat aliens on a daily basis, got blasted three years into the future, fly magical sentient robotic lions in space, travelled to alternate universes, brought someone back from the dead, etcetera… This is low on the list of weird things that happened to us, yeah?”
“Not so convenient, guys,” Pidge’s voice crackles through the intercoms. “Turns out, Earth is under attack.”
*****
“Is that my jacket?” Adam asks as they head out for a siblings’ night.
“Uh yeah,” Lance says, pulling it tighter over his shoulders. “We stole some of your things before they got thrown out. I think Luis has your watch.”
“How about me?” Veronica asks.
“Uhhh I think Rachel has your bandana and Marco definitely stole your earrings.”
“Which earrings?”
“The spiky one.”
“You have like three pairs of earrings, Ronnie.”
“Aww, those were my favourite ones. Do you think I could get it back from him?”
*****
“Where’s Adam?” Lance finally asks, after managing to entangle himself from the family hug and getting some alone time with Veronica.
“He… well…” Veronica sighs. “He hasn’t taken kindly to the presence of the rest of the family back around here.”
“Oh,” Lance says. “That’s good.” When Veronica gives him a look, he quickly backtracks. “Not that his reaction to the family is good! It’s just… Worst-case scenarios, you know?”
“Ah,” Veronica responds similarly. “Though, the Galra launched an attack on Earth some time back. Adam was on the frontline fighting - that was before we deployed the MFEs. He’s alright though. Recently discharged from the hospital but alright.”
“Can we go see him?”
“Sure.”
**
“In his room?” Lance asks. “Has he seriously been hiding here this whole time?”
Veronica shrugs. “Pretty much.”
“Fun,” Lance says, not sounding like it’s any fun. “Do you still have a key, or do I have to knock?”
Veronica shrugs again. “Your reunion, your choice.” She turns, and heads back the way she came. “I’m gonna make sure the MFEs don’t do anything stupid again. Try not to blow anything up.”
Lance sighs, then raises a fist, knocks - three sharp thumps - and waits.
“I told you, Ronnie,” Adam bemoans through the door. “I don’t want to see the rest of them.”
Lance snickers as he presses his ear against the door, hearing Adam get up and move around the apartment. He doesn’t say anything else.
“Don’t laugh at me-“ Adam opens the door. His eyes widen in shock. “-Lance?!"
“Yeah,” Lance says. “Hi.”
“Hi?” Adam demands, dragging him in. “You! You disappeared in the middle of a lockdown! Your entire flight simulation team disappeared in the middle of a lockdown! Then I have to hear that you’re alive and who knows where in outer space?! You couldn’t have left a note or anything, just decided ‘Hey, you know what? I’m gonna disappear under mysterious circumstances and become a conspiracy theory-coverup!’”
“Actually,” Lance feels obligated to point out. “It went more like; Boom! Comet fell. Oh no, it’s not a comet, it’s an alien spaceship. Well, now we gotta see what it is! Oh it’s Shiro!-“
“What?! Where did Shiro fit into the equation?”
“Wait seriously?” Lance asks. “You didn’t know?”
“No one told me anything!” Adam complains, throwing his hands into the air dramatically. “Ronnie had to sign some stupid NDAs and stuff. Everything I found out, I had to find out from outside sources. I was literally just promoted to Senior Officer last week!”
“Uh,” Lance says. “Sucks to be you. Also, I think Shiro’s looking for you but before you go look for him- Aaand he’s gone.”
Lance stands in the middle of the empty room, Adam having straight up ran out of the room just seconds beforehand. Then, he shrugs and settles himself on Adam’s couch.
**
(“Takashi, why is your hair grey?!”)