Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: Gen
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Relationships: Lance & Blue Lion, Lance & Red Lion
Character: Lance (Voltron)
Tags: Keith is mentioned but he isn't really a big part of it, you know other than in part to Lance's inferiority complex, Lance's reaction to being rejected by Blue, Trying to get used to Red, Drabble, poor baby
Just a short little drabble in response to season 3
Everything was wrong. All wrong. Red was hot where Blue had been cold. She rushed him where Blue would wait patiently until he was ready. She had her way, or the highway. Blue was flexible, she was fluid, she was reassuring. When they had gotten back from that first mission Lance had slinked off to his room quietly. It didn't feel right. Replacing Blue with Red didn't feel right. He huddled in on himself, his arms wrapped tightly against his core as the feeling of Blue's cold constant in the back of his mind faded. He couldn't help the broken sob that slipped from his lips, couldn't breathe under the intense heat that was taking that cold's place. It smothered him.
Fire.
Lance had never been fire. He was water. And Red was burning him alive, causing him to evaporate into nothingness. She had no time for his insecurities and she had no patience for his coping mechanisms. He still hurt from Blue's rejection. It wasn't even a goodbye. There was no wave of reassurance that washed over him, she never said anything about it only being temporary. She didn't send him encouragement, no; "I know you can do it, don't worry, you'll always be my paladin." no. It was just … Nothing. Lance had never felt that kind of complete rejection in his life. Something that hurt all the way down to his core, that made him feel like he was drowning and freezing both at the same time. He wasn't Blue's paladin anymore.
He was Red's.
Keith's replacement.
Again.
He shouldn't be this bitter over it. Should accept it for what it was. They needed someone to pilot Red, while Keith piloted Black. And normally, he would have felt a smug sense of superiority that Red had chosen him. Had hand picked him when Keith had had to nearly kill himself to get Red to even look in his general direction. But he felt none of that. Instead he felt empty and abandoned. Crushed that Blue had actually cared so little about him to not even tell him she wanted him to step up as Red's new pilot. It wasn't like her.
He could feel Red just behind his consciousness, telling him to "Shut up" and "Stop thinking about Blue" and that hurt too. Because Red was just like fire and her words burned him in ways he couldn't even begin to describe. And when they finally did get Shiro back, what then? Keith would want Red back. But Blue? Would she want him back? Allura, while a terrible pilot, and it physically hurt every time he watched her crash his baby Blue into some sort of space debris, but she had so much more potential than he did.
He was no stranger to feeling incompetent, and he had always known he was replaceable. But those fears had always been soothed down by Blue's constant mother henning. She had always told him that he was her paladin and neither heaven nor hell could tear them apart. And yet. Here he was. Lying on his bed, sobbing into his pillow, mourning her loss. Red's heat becoming more and more unbearable by the second. He wanted Blue back. He wanted her cold support back. He needed her icy reassurance to quell his nerves and numb his racing thoughts. Fire would only accelerate his self destruction.
So I'm sure a lot of other people have had similar ideas, but since I haven't gone through any of the new fics yet, I don't know for sure. I just kinda had to get this out of my system. Blue was brutal about that change, and it clearly devastated Lance. So, this came about.