disclaimer: I do not own VLD.
a/n: set in Lance's POV, circa episode one, so he pronouns for Pidge.
He doesn't care.
He adamantly does not care.
In fact, he's angrily staring out the window of Keith's freaky control center for conspiracy theories and watching as that stupid mullet walks up to Shiro because he doesn't.
At all.
Care.
It wasn't on Lance that Keith couldn't cut it at the Garrison and dropped out of pilot class because of it. That point was made abundantly clear when he took over as leader of the Save Shiro mission, they had the rivalry and then, Keith was Splitsville so Lance was bumped from cargo pilot to major leagues piloting and it was great.
It wasn't on him that Keith had left the base camp to pitch his shack up in the middle of a nowhere desert that had nothing to offer but the nasty leftover grit of sand in his mouth.
And maybe he does kind of feel for the mopey loser, clearly the only person he could deem important enough for words was prisoner on an alien slave ship for a year, had his name dragged through the dirt for a failed mission gunked over in a seriously crappy coverup story, and more-or-less pronounced dead.
There were plenty of times he, Pidge, and Hunk needed breaks from each other to do their own things for a bit (mostly because he learned Pidge and Hunk were the worst wing men. Ever.), but they always came back around to hang a few hours or, at the most, a day later. It was hard to imagine going through his day without his teams' quirky nuances or rambling chatter.
Now that Lance thinks about it, he had never been around an extended period of peace and quiet and where clearly Keith liked to wallow in angst-ridden silences. To each his own.
He can't recall a time where siblings weren't shoving him around or stugging his pant legs for his attention. Doesn't know what it's like not to have his mom sing along to the radio and have enough breath for the chorus and a windy lecture about how he's not pulling his weight and she could think of at least twenty things for him to be doing other than lounging around with his headphones on with the volume up too loud for him to hear her speaking to him. But he doesn't mind it so much.
The weird, hallow tension permeating the wood panels of the wall is eating at him. There's not one damn thing in the place to suggest that a teenager with one helluva knack for flying lives here and not some cantankerous old guy that hates literally everything and would shuffle bitterly after you swinging a cane to get off his lawn.
Keith was an insufferable ass and he didn't care.
"Why do you have that weird look on your face?"
Pidge's sudden appearance at his side startles him enough that he flinches, his arms flying up to hit the corner of the window he'd been standing by. He catches Shiro and Kieth begin to turn toward the house and Lance quickly shoves himself and Pidge out of sight.
"What's the matter with you, dude?! You don't just sneak up on people and ask stuff like that. It's rude!"
Pidge tips his head up at him innocently and mutters, "But you-"
Lance shoves his hands into his pockets and stomps his way toward the kitchen. "And I did not have a weird look on my face."
Because he doesn't care.
He adamantly doesn't care.
a/n: originally posted to my tumblr: alluran.