Title: Lance Sanchez
Summary: You're not supposed to have favourites within a family, it was almost one of the laws of the universe, but Lance could easily say that, without a doubt, Adam was his favourite brother in the world, in the entire universe, before the new space family he made during his time with Voltron, before any other member of his blood family who were left behind in Cuba.
Adam helped him to discover the stars, discover his dreams of deep space travel, discover who he was, even if it took some time. He helped him realise that not everyone is right, that sometimes family isn't right, that sometimes even brothers, who come before anyone else in the world, anyone else in the universe, are not right. He was there for him when nobody else could be, until he ran away and left Lance all alone.
So, yeah, Adam came before anyone else in Lance's eyes, even if he was an asshole.
A.N. - Hey guys, just a couple of warning. First of all, I started to write this about a week after the reveal of Adam as a character and before season seven's release, however, it may contain spoilers for it. Another thing, there is a homophobic character, and the use of some homophobic language as well as some internalised homophobia, so if this triggers you, then please be aware that it happens, and stay safe while reading please!
The Sanchez family was a very big, very traditional family.
They all live in three houses, all next to each other, on the coast of Cuba, meaning that they don't have to put any fencing in the back garden to block the other from coming in, didn't have to worry about any problems that the neighbours might cause, and the idea of trying to fit the entire family in one house during Christmas is something that has never had to cross their minds for they were all already there. They make the weekly trip to church every Sunday in their best, they all shared meals in their shared garden on a regular basis and they are all very close to one another. An ideal situation, working out well for a family as large and as loud as the Sanchez's.
Lance loves everything about his family.
He's the youngest in his generation, the youngest grandson, but he's years older than the oldest great-granddaughter, which makes him very special, in his own eyes at least. It means that everyone has the time of day for him, or at least one person in the three houses will. Between three grandparents, his two parents, two sets of aunts and uncles, four older siblings and six older cousins, there was always someone there for him, at least, in his younger years. There was always someone not busy who he could spend his time with, there was always someone free to bother.
His favourite person in the entire world, though? Adam Sanchez, his oldest brother.
He was the greatest! Adam was the best oldest brother anyone could ask for! He was eight years older than Lance, meaning that he was practically a grown up by the time Lance was seven, and he was perfect in everything. He had the perfect grades, the perfect friendships, the perfect body, the perfect attitude. There was nothing about him that seven-year-old Lance didn't look up to, even the way that girls looked at him was inspiring, even if Adam always looked surprised when he was told about all the crushes that people had on him. It always surprised Lance when Adam said that he was not interested in any of the girls in his school, but he never mentioned it to him, as their Papa did it often enough at the dinner table.
The best thing about Adam? He cared, a lot. He always made sure that he had time for everyone in the family, always made sure that he helped out at home. He let 13-year-old Veronica rant to him about boys and he always had time to play soccer with the 11-year-old twins, Luis and Marco. He babysat often for not only their parents but for their aunts and uncles, and he always had the time to spend with Lancey-Lance, as he often called him, much to Lance's joy.
Then, Adam got into his dream school in America, which only made him an even better oldest brother. Not only was he the perfect brother with the perfect grades and the perfect friendships and the perfect body (Veronica's words, not his, because, eww), but he got into the perfect school and was going to get a perfect job, something that Lance knew his brother always wanted. Going to the Galaxy Garrison in Arizona, America, was something that he talked about when they looked at the stars, and it sounded like he was on the track to be a fighter pilot, the best class there was at the Garrison.
He wanted to be just like his brother when he was older, he wanted to be just as brilliant and just as perfect as Adam, something that he boasted about to everyone, much to their joy and laughter.
So, imagine his surprise when Lance was 10, and Adam was 18, when Adam and Papa started to argue one night, seemingly out of nowhere, the day after Adam came back from the Garrison for the summer, causing Adam to leave the house again with his unpacked suitcase and tears down his face, Papa's voice screaming at his back and his Mama's and his siblings' sobbing as the backing track.
It made no sense to Lance for the longest times, why Adam left that night, why he refused talk to him on Skype like they used to or to pick up his phone when he called or texted or why he deactivated all his social media accounts.
After all, Adam was perfect in Lance's eyes.
(Three months after Adam ran away)
This was all Adam's fault.
The house was empty, somehow. The house was empty even though there was still six people living in the house, even though Veronica played her music loud enough for the house to vibrate and the twins had their friends over for sleepovers almost every weekend now and Mama had her friends over for a chat and Papa has his mates over for a pint, even though the house was always full of activity and noise, something was now missing. There was an unfillable void, and the timing of this void was strange.
It was strange, since it never felt this way when he was at school in the states, never feel this cold nor this big nor this scary when Adam was away, which was a good nine months of the year, but now that he was gone, it was horrible.
Lance hated it.
He hated how everyone talked about it, like a comment about the weather in passing rather than the eldest kid of the third generation in the Sanchez family had run away to a different country because he wouldn't 'change his ways' to quote his Abuelo, a bitter old man who only gained more bitterness after Abuela died, may her soul rest in peace. He hated how his Papa talked about Adam, how he said it was "Faggots like him who bad the world a bad place" or how it was "Homos like him that would make it so dangerous for kids, and we should just get rid of the lot". It's never "Look at my son Adam. He's my eldest child and he's doing so well in that space school of his", like it used to be. He was never referred to as "Adam" anymore, just "Him".
Lance hated everything about it.
He hated it because Adam said he'll be back. He hated it because Veronica has gone cold too and has dropped out of school and now she's either working or at her boyfriend's or in her room and not letting Lance in, just letting her music echo around the room, pop music instead of the fun musicals that they listened to together with Adam. He hated it because the twins agree with what Abuelo and Papa say about Adam and followed their words like it was the law and he hated how quiet Mama has gotten and how many hours she's picked up at work too and how even when she was home she was always so busy with housework or her friends and didn't have the time for him anymore.
So, Lance can only sit on the grass in a pair of shorts and a jacket that Adam left behind, a jacket that was much too big for it but he's going to grow into it, he just knows that he will, and stare at the horizon as the stars twinkle, and he can't bring himself to sing like he would have if Adam was here, because Adam wasn't here.
He hated it.
Adam left, he made a void in the house, and Lance hated it all too much.
(One year before Adam runs away)
Adam was leaving for the Garrison again in a couple of days.
It was fine, Lance had gotten used to Adam not being around anymore, having his own room for once was a nice change, and he was nine now, he was much too old to be missing his eldest brother anyway. But, Lance held onto this childish part of him even if he was nine and almost a teenager, Lance held on because he didn't want Adam to go.
He found it unfair that Adam could go but Lance couldn't go with him, but he never said it, because Adam looked so happy and he didn't want to spoil that for him.
So, here they were, in the middle of the field in the middle of the dark, far away from the beach this time, because this time they were actually camping, as Adam had gotten permission from their parents to go camping and either Veronica nor the twins wanted to go with them, because they were all teenagers and were all not fun to hang out with. Adam was the only teenager who was fun to hang out with.
Lance hoped that he didn't become that sort of teenager.
The ground was lumpy underneath his back, and the grass kept tickling his neck and the plaster on his nose was begging him to scratch it and the scab underneath off, but he resisted the urge, because Adam would sigh and make him put another one on and then he'd have a scar on his face from the scab and he couldn't have that, not when there were woman and men to charm with his beautiful face. So, the plaster, as god awful and itchy as it was, stayed.
The stars looked nice tonight, though there were more clouds compared to the first time Adam took him to see the stars, not that Lance minded. He had seen these stars so many times now that they almost unfazed him now. He didn't have to see them to know their beauty, to have his curiosity grow more and more and the urge to reach out and touch them was still there, he still wanted to follow Adam to space, even if that did mean he had to go to another country to learn all about it. It was going to be worth it.
"Admiring the stars, Lancey-Lance?" Adam asked as he laid down next to Lance, using the hood of his jacket as a pillow. Lance turned his head to his brother, looking at the way the glasses reflected the stars and how the moon gave it a glint that almost made it as if he was hiding something.
"Don't call me that, it's babyish," he moaned as he looked back up at the stars, his frown turning into a smile as the clouds slowly rolled away to reveal more of the night sky. Adam let out a laugh response, smiling at the sky like he knew something that Lance didn't.
"Okay, okay. I get it, you're all grown up now aren't you," Adam responded, and he went to open his mouth to say something, but then held back, closing it again before he could say it. There was a long pause, long enough for the crickets to start their cricketing and for the fireflies to come out of the grass and to fly between one another, becoming stars of themselves. It took some time, but Lance finally managed to mention the subject that they've been avoiding for a while now, something that happens every year, a conversation that seemed to hurt more the next year they had it.
"You're going back to the Garrison in a couple of days," Lance mused. There was no question about it, Adam went back every year since he was fifteen, so it really shouldn't hurt as much as it does, but Adam doesn't even seem to care about everything that he's missing. Veronica now had a boyfriend, and he was a jerk and Lance wasn't intimidating to chase him off, and the twins have joined a soccer team, and their team had won their league, something that the whole family had celebrated, the whole team except Adam of course, not that he didn't want to but because he was millions and billions of miles away from the family when it happened.
"Yeah, and you're going back to school in the next week, right?" Lance ignored the uncertainty in Adam's voice and instead nodded along.
"Yep, and I can't wait! I can't wait to talk to Finn- I mean, my friend's again, it's been ages since I've seen them!" Lance stumbled, his face beginning to flame up, and he hoped that Adam would just ignore it, just sail past it, and just talk about their friends. Alas, this was his brother, and that was just being too hopeful.
"Finn? My, does my little brother have a crush?" Adam teased, causing Lance to flush more and turn away from his brother, causing Adam to start laughing.
"I wouldn't call it a crush, I mean, Finn as really nice hair and is really kind to me and let me borrow a pen last year and Finn got really pretty eyes as well, and he's helped me wi-"
"He?" Adam asked, smiling while casting a side eye towards his younger brother, and Lance turned around to look at his worried eyes and the crook in his eyebrows. Lance felt as if someone has just chucked him into the sea and the placed a weight on his chest. He began to fill with guilt, but he wasn't sure why. Had he done something wrong? There must have been a look on his face, because Adam's smile fell off his face and he sat up, sitting in front of Lance before pulling him up into a hug.
"You haven't done anything wrong, don't worry," he started, and tears began to well up in Lance's eyes, though he wasn't sure why. What had he done wrong? "You are allowed to like and love anyone you like, whether they be a girl, boy, or anything in between, no matter what anyone tries to tell you," Adam said, before bringing Lance into a hug, and Lance gripped on tight, knowing that in a couple of days he wouldn't be able to do this, even if he wanted to.
"Just, don't tell Papa about it," Adam muttered, and Lance pulled back from his brother in shock.
"Wait, what? Why not?" he asked, and there was a sad smile on his face and something in his eyes that scared Lance more than he could think about.
"Some people are just not as understanding about these sort of things, you'll see soon, I'm sure," he responded, and then they keep hugging for a while, and then they get back to admiring the stars, pointing out their favourite constellations and talking about how cool it would be when they travel among the stars for themselves.
Years later, long after Adam ran away, and Lance was left alone, he remembered this night, this conversation, and wondered why he didn't see it before.
(Five years after Adam ran away)
There was a lot of things he didn't see before he lived it, but if anything was a prime example, it was the USA.
America was, quite frankly, weird, weirder than he thought it would be.
It was loud and huge and something that Lance could not have prepared himself for. Maybe it's because everything is in a different language, or it's the weird culture that revolved around fast food and skinny bodies and being proud to be American, or because he was alone, away from his family for the first time in his life, but it was very scary place to be. It was hot like home, but it was a different heat that he was used to, not like the moist heat of living five minutes from the beach but a dry, heavy heat that sits on your shoulders and reminds you of its presence, and the cadet uniforms were not helping with it.
It filled him with a lot of pride to know what he was dealing with it much better than others were dealing with it, as others in his class always seemed out of breath and were sweating up a storm, and rumours were spreading that someone fainted due to coming from a colder region of the world and weren't prepared to deal with this heat.
But, despite everything, despite the loudness and the vastness and the foreign language and the different food and the different people with their different beliefs and the huge variety of everything, from skin colours to food to religions to accents, he smiles when he gets off the plane and he can't wipe the grin from his face for a week because he's here!
He was here despite what Papa and his side of the family had to say about it, despite the discouragement that the twins sent his way, full of spite and anger and resentment, not because they wanted to come here, but because of what they've been taught by staying with their father when their parents got a divorce.
He can't believe that he made it, made it to the land of freedom, where he's going to learn to pilot spaceships and fly into space and be a cool fighter pilot. Here he was going to be Lance McClain, and they wouldn't know anything about his family and their anger and their divorce. They wouldn't compare him to his family because they didn't know Veronica or Luis or Marco or any of his cousins. They may know Adam, but he doesn't have his surname anymore, oh the pride that he felt when he filled the application and he was able to 'McClain' instead of 'Sanchez'.
But, Adam was still there, maybe. Lance didn't know, he didn't care that much anymore, his brother left him, he didn't contact him despite the amount of phone calls and emails that had been sent.
And, if he finds his brother after not seeing him for five years, well…
It's been five years since Adam left the family, it was his choice not to come back.
And that was the end of that thought process.
It was too painful to think anymore of it.
He took a deep breath before leaving his dorms, breathing out slowly as be began to pass his classmates as he started the new day, eager to learn.
(Three years before Adam runs away; Eight years before Lance joins the Garrison)
"Say there's this person you pass in the hall every day,
You've known him since seventh grade,"
Lance smiled as Veronica danced across the room that she had on her own, the volume of the music turned up to the max. This is her favourite musical, at the moment that was. It changed almost monthly, which meant that he had to keep up to date with what she like if he wanted to be able to sing with her like this. Veronica loved the fact that he did this for her, and he loved the way that she smiled and lit up every time he sung the ensemble parts for her, so she wouldn't have to sing five people's parts at once, even if it was impressive to witness when she did do it. He didn't know this song yet, but he was going to learn it before the day was up, that's for sure.
"You're used to thinking about him in a certain way,
From the persona that he displayed"
There's a knock on the bedroom door, but Veronica was too interested in the song to notice, so Lance got up and opened it, his eyes lighting up and his face splitting into a smile when he saw that it was Adam.
"Hey, Papa's going to be home in a about five minutes, and there's something that I need to tell you guys," Adam said, and Lance just ignored everything that his brother had just told him and the seriousness of the note of his voice and instead the seven-year-old dragged his eldest brother into the room, almost bumping into Veronica as she danced around without a care in the world.
"We're singing songs from 'Be More Chill', because Veronica's got a crush!" Lance exclaimed, which caused her to stop in her tracks and to start blushing. Adam just laughed at the interaction, sitting on the bed next to Lance, and rubbed Lance's hair.
"I do not have a 'crush', Lancey!" Veronica almost shouted, letting the music continue without her input. Lance went to stand up on the bed, either to shout that his name wasn't 'Lancey' or how it was most defiantly a crush, but Adam put his arm on Lance's legs to stop him from getting up, not that it too a lot of effort to keep the seven-year-old down.
"It's okay to have a crush Veronica," he started, but he paused, letting the sound of the music take over before asking, "Is this 'A Guy that I'd Kinda Be Into'?" Veronica nodded her head, and they listened to the music for a moment before Veronica started to sing again.
"Say there's this person that you never knew that well,"
"She is totally into you,"
Veronica twisted her body to stare at her older brother in shock, but he only shrugged and looked away, so Veronica went back to singing.
"You thought that you had him pegged,
But now you can tell,
He's gone from a -"
She was looking directly at Adam at this point, almost daring him not to sing the chorus with her. Adam sighed, before smiling and joining in when the chorus started, causing Lance to shout and to start dancing with Veronica.
"Guy that'd never be into,
Into a guy that you'd kinda be into,
From a guy that I'd never into,
Into a guy that I'd kinda be into-"
"What the heck is this?" the occupants of the room fell into a silence at the voice, at their Papa's voice, letting the music play in the background, loud and clear for the man to hear. The longer that it stayed on, the more angry he seemed to get, much to Lance's confusion.
"Were you singing that just now, Adam?" he asked, with his serious 'you're-about-to-be-told-off' voice that scared Lance than the monster under the bed did.
"Yes sir," Adam muttered, the fifteen-year-old going back to his quiet self like every other time he had a conversation with their Papa.
"Are you a fag, Adam?" Papa asked again, his voice becoming steel and scary, scarier than it normally would go, and Lance frowned at the question. What was a 'fag', exactly? Wasn't that the name of a cigarette? If so, why would Adam be a 'fag' in the first place?
"No sir," Adam muttered again, though, this time, the words seemed to come out a bit more quietly, and a bit more roughly than the previous time. Their Papa nodded, but didn't smile.
"It's a good thing that you're going to that Galaxy Garrison place, boy. I've had a look into it, and I approve. The military are just the thing to put you back on the straight and narrow," Papa said, before nodding and leaving the kids alone, in the quiet now that the song had completed, until Veronica broke the silence.
"Wait, you got into the Garrison!? Man, I'm so proud of you!" She almost screamed, going over and hugging their brother, "Lancey-Lance! Our brother's going to go to the stars!" Lance's eyes widened at the statement before cheering along with his sister and running over to his brother and catching him in a hug.
"Can I go with you, Adam?" He asked, only to frown at Adam's laugh.
"Not yet, Lancey. You have to wait until your older, and you have to study a lot before you can go in," Adam replied, and Veronica laughed again.
"just think about all the people you're gonna meet Adam! All the girls are going to be lusting over you and the boys are gonna have wet dreams about you," she cooed, causing Adam to flush brightly and Lance to stare at her in confusion.
"What's a wet dream?"
Lance was peacefully eating his weird space goo when he thought back to this, back to the good days, only to start chocking on the green substance, much to Keith's confusion and worry.
He refused to explain.
(Five years after Adam ran away; Five months after Lance joined the Garrison)
Keith Kogane. Resident bad boy of the Galaxy Garrison. With long glossy hair that reminds him of an English mullet that he doubted anyone else could pull off, and dark blue eyes that shine purple in certain lightings. An average height for their age and a 'couldn't give a fuck' attitude that made all the ladies swoon.
Lance hated everything about him.
He hated the way that he rocked up to class without a care in the world, hated how perfect his hair seemed even though it was way too out of date to be stylish, hated the way that he didn't take any notes of what the teachers were saying, hated the way that he didn't need to take notes. Everything came easily to this nice-looking kid, and Lance hated it with a passion.
Hunk, his roommate, tried to say to him that he was jealous of Keith's ability to breeze through the class, but every time Hunk tried to say something, Lance would brush him off. He wasn't jealous of Keith, there was nothing to be jealous of. Not of the confidence or the talent or the brooding air that makes all the ladies swoon.
Not of the way that it reminds him of his own brother, except in a darker, more emo, package.
"If I didn't know you any better Lance, I would say that you had a crush on him," Hunk laughed, causing Lance's frown to deepen and anger to stir unsettlingly in his stomach.
He did not have a crush on Keith 'I-steal-teacher's-cars-and-look-so-fucking-badass-doing-so' Kogane.
He wasn't gay.
He just… Couldn't be. Wasn't.
(Abuelo said that the Garrison would turn him gay the last time he visited Papa's side of the family to tell him the news about getting into this school. He said that it turned Adam gay too, he said that Americans are turning everyone sinful by legalising gay marriage, that it was going against God's plan for us.)
He couldn't be gay.
He wasn't gay.
That, however, doesn't stop him from knowing almost too much about the top person in their class, about how he was considered a 'disciplinary issue', how he got angry and stole a teacher's car that one time, how he didn't have any friends.
It's that last fact, that has him following him after one class, much to Hunk's disapproval, trying to build up the courage to ask if they could be friends, but as he turned the corner and the long glossy mullet come in view, he stopped in his tracks because he's talking to one of the officers, all dressed up in the grey uniform and thin mental rimmed glasses and neatly cut hair and a face he hasn't seen in years.
Adam… was here.
Adam was here.
Adam was here!
It's a strange mixed of feelings to have, the joy of seeing your brother for the first time in years, the hurt of being left alone and abandoned, the anger of this boy, who he defiantly does not like, seemingly knowing your brother more than you.
Lance sucked in a breath as he felt tears beginning to well up in his eyes, and he stayed rooted in his step, caught between a conflict of wanting to run over to his brother and hug him, or punch him in his face, or just running off down to his dorm and just scream about how unfair the world was that this kid was able to speak to his brother when he wasn't. So, of course, like anyone else faced in this situation, he does none of the previously mentioned things and just stared at the space where Keith fucking Kogane and Adam Sanchez, his that he hasn't seen in five years, having a casual conversation.
He's rooted there for so long he doesn't notice when the conversation ends, when Adam went back in his quarters (and he doesn't memorise his room number, nope, don't remember, didn't happen) and Keith started walking back towards him, and he didn't notice his dark blue almost purple eyes almost shine at his presence.
"Hey Taylor, are you okay?"
"Your mullet is stupid," Lance snapped, before stomping away, ignoring what Keith actually said to say to him and ignoring the look of confusion and ignoring what he himself said, to his not crush, because he was not crushing of Keith because he was not gay, and he quickly marched into his dorm, throwing himself onto his bed and staring at the ceiling with a deep frown on his face and betrayal in his soul.
Lance managed to avoid the rest of his year without running into his brother, and when his Mama picked him from the airport and asked about his year at the Garrison, he doesn't mention him either. Adam would be here, he would let them know where he was, if they wanted to know about him. Since he wasn't here, since Adam had left them and not the other way around, Lance wasn't going to spoil it for him, since he was enjoying his time at the Garrison, away from his family.
Instead, he says that he doesn't want to visit Papa. She tried to argue, to say that he missed him, say that there's a lot that they need to talk about. Lance doesn't give in, and thus she gives up.
After that point, Lance only saw him and his side of the family on Christmas Day and during Easter Mass.
(Six years after Adam ran away, one year after Lance joined the Garrison)
Of course, he couldn't avoid his brother forever, even if it seemed that his brother wanted to do the same to him and the rest of the family.
He knew this, of course he did, but as he looked at his schedule for the upcoming year and saw that he had a Mr. Sanchez for his basic defence lessons, his stomach instantly started turning with anxiety and he was finally greeted with the feeling that Hunk must have felt every time he stepped into the simulators. Hunk had tried to ask what was wrong, like the brilliant friend that he was, but Lance brushed it off, saying that it was just that he's never had defence class before (truth, if you didn't count all the roughhousing that his cousins made him partake in), that Hunk wasn't in his class due to being on a different course and it was making him anxious (slight truth, he was excited for the actual defence part of the lesson), that he had never met this 'Mr Sanchez' before, and was curious as to what he was like (lie, just a big fat bloody lie).
So, he filed into the room with other his age, and they all stand at the furthest wall from the door, and they started to chat between themselves while they wait for 'Mr Sanchez' to come in. It's a large, empty room, the floors covered in mats and not much else. Lance had read ahead, and found they were going to learn some basic hand to hand, something that would help them in a thug fight but nothing that could take down a professional, they didn't need it. It did make him wonder why those in the fighter class would need to know more than that, but he wasn't in the mood to think about the deep secrets that the Garrison was properly hiding from them.
There were probably a lot, now that he thought about it.
The door opened and Adam walked in, the room falling into a sudden silence as they all stood at attention, waiting for their orders from the elder; he was known to be one of the more stricter teachers, who gave out detentions at the slightest rule breaking that happened in front of him and was known for how intimidating he was, with his serious, frowny resting face that Lance remembered from childhood and the new framed glasses that were grey rather than black, but still reflected the bleaching artificial lighting light in the same way that it reflected the warm, natural summer's sun of years past.
Adam's eyes scanned the crowd of kids lightly, inspecting their uniform for faults, the shine of their shoes, the stances that they have put themselves in. It was hard for Lance to tell what Adam was thinking, something that hadn't changed at least, and as Adam's eyes swept over him before quickly on, Lance's pride of not being picked out for a mistake in front of the group was overtaken by a mix of sadness and disappointment that he was not recognised by Adam.
The second side eye glance that Adam sent at him just before he started the lesson said otherwise, but still, Lance didn't want to raise his hopes up anymore.
So, Adam started the lesson by showing each of the kids in the class a few defensive moves, a simple arm block and a simple leg block. The simple things, the basic things, the things that they probably would end up relying the most, which is why they were learning it, Lance supposed.
There's a think tension in the air, one that doesn't revolve around him and his brother, as they all waited for something to go wrong, all waited for someone to fuck up and get on Adam's bad side and see if the rumours are true and see if he is as harsh as people say he is.
It doesn't happen when they were practicing the defence moves, so the tension gets stronger as they learn an attack move, a simple jap that most people could perform without instruction, so there's underlining disappointment as well as anger added to the atmosphere, and as Adam started to pair people off into pairs, it feels like it's going to burst.
Lance is given a pretty blonde girl with a tight pony tail that almost made her eyes bulge. They run through what Adam told them to do. One person jabs and the other defends, with the idea that the jab has no power in it and it always gets blocked unless the other's defence is not strong enough.
Simple enough, right?
Adam proceeded to break up three fight fights and gave out almost ten detentions in the same five-minute period, which was simultaneously impressive and downright terrifying, gaining a new founded respect from the students, other than Lance, who remembered a time when Adam came home crying because a girl flirted with him and he told her that he had to go home in a panic.
There wasn't much one could do to fix their reputation after witnessing that.
Before long, the lesson was over, and the students were dismissed, all wonder struck with what they've learned in the hour and excited for the next lesson with the knowledge that they were not going to be getting away with messing around in lesson like they might want to. Lance was just about to leave through the door, his mind going straight to the conversation that he's going to have with Hunk and not the idea of quickly leaving to escape the word and painful tension his brother being his teacher gave out, before Adam said something.
"Mr McClain, could borrow you for a moment? It won't take too long." There was a snicker from the girl that he was paired with during the lesson as she quickly walked pass Lance's now still body, waiting for the class to leave before he even turned around to glare at his brother, who sighed before gathering his pad and leaving the room to go to the staff wing, Lance following a couple of paces behind, both in silence, both pretending that there was nothing to be said.
Adam opened the door to his room, the same room that he talked to Keith outside of, and Lance kept on eye as he inputted the code in, lowly taking in large breath in to calm himself down as he memorised Adam's password for his room. He could feel the anger beginning to build up inside him, years of sadness and hurt becoming an ugly monster, something that he had feared since he first saw Adam last year with Kogane, but something he knew he wouldn't be able to avoid.
Lance followed his brother into the room, the door automatically closing behind him but not locking, and while his brother took his boots off and left them on the floor near the door, and draped his jacket on the sofa and dropped the pad onto the cushion, Lance stood with his back to the door, his boots still on and his horrible cadet uniform looking out of place in the room.
Adam turned around to look at him, his glasses reflecting the artificial lighting above them that was almost always too blinding. They both only stared at each other for a minute, two minutes, five minutes, the silences growing quieter and the tension expanding until it was suffocating. Lance only sighed, rocking back on his feet, before opening his mouth.
"Is this it then? Because I have things to do, like eat my lunch in peace, and I can't do that if you want to play the silence game," Lance asked, folding his arms over his chest and tilting his head to the side in the same way that he knows Mama did when she wanted him or one of his siblings to admit something. Adam flinched at the reminder.
"What are you even doing here Lance?" he asked, sounding almost resigned with Lance, as if Lance had done something wrong this time, as if Lance was the one at fault here.
"I am getting an education Adam, there's no way that I would be in this uniform, a uniform for cadets of the Galaxy Garrison, if I had the choice, it doesn't flatter anyone," Lance replied tensely, his fist shaking in his arms, and he was glad that his brother could not see his weakness now.
"I'm surprised that your father let you," Adam said, his fingers tapperdy tap tapping on the top of his thigh, and he moved his head to look away from Lance to the pictures on his deck, one with him and another guy one of them was a family one, Lance noted. "I doubt he wanted on of his brilliant children following in the steps of a faggot," he muttered cruelly. And Lance was barely able to hold back telling Adam off for the word, a word that he hasn't heard for a good year now, since the last time he too saw their father.
"He didn't, though it's not like I have to put up with him anymore, not since I moved with Mama after the divorce," Lance mentioned offhandedly, and he took Adam's lack of questioning about their parent's relationship as a sign that he had read the emails that he sent him, and he took another long shaky breath to stop him from yelling at Adam, to explain how much pain Adam put him through leaving him behind.
They go back to a silence again, but it's somehow the tension was worse than the classroom and worse than when the first entered the room, because now they've mentioned what the problem is, which just left Lance to stare at Adam while Adam looked around the room like he's never been there before.
"You're never going to come back to Cuba, are you?" he asked, looking down at his boots, which were not as polished they should be, and the tear that lands on his right one sticks out like the first drop of rain when it rains.
"I'm sorry," Adam replied, but it feels forced, and for a second, Lance hated him. He hated him for running away. He hated him for staying at the garrison, for giving Lance the dream of space, he hated him for thinking that a simple sorry would make up for everything for it.
"I don't forgive you," he stated, and there's a hitch in Adam's breath, but he nodded, as if he would know what Lance went through without Adam there. As he knew what it was like to be too young to leave the house when the parents started to argue and when the others of the family got dragged into the arguing and the fighting. As if he had to deal with constant comparisons to his older siblings, as if he knew what it was like to have a family, one that was so strong and amazing as he family was six or seven years ago, crumble into pieces like a cookie that had been dunked into milk for too long.
As if Adam knew anything of what was happened to Lance after he left.
So, Lance pierced his lips together, before opening them again and singing a song that they both knew so well, but so different after Lance looked at the lyrics and decided that his version would be better than the original, because his one was based off a real event and not some fictional one. It was weird to hear, because there was no background noise and he knew that Adam would only really sing if the song was on, unlike Veronica would used to sing whenever she could.
But Adam's been away from the family that Lance began to doubt if he knew what Adam liked or disliked, what Adam did or didn't do. But he opened his mouth anyway, and started to sing anyway, and if he continued to cry because Adam didn't know what he went through then it's not something that he was going to mention to anyone else.
"It was an August afternoon
When you came back home, before running away
An argument with our father
The day that you left us behind
"I was told not to come downstairs,
But I saw you cry
It hurt to stand back
Then you were running onto the driveway
Mama stopped me going along
"Goodbye, Goodbye
Now it's just me, because you left me behind
And the house was empty
And I was alone
The house was empty, and I was alone-"
Lance came to a sudden stop, his breath now stuck in his throat, but if that was because his face was now wet with tears or because Adam had come forward and pulled him into a hug, holding him close like Lance had wanted him to since the moment he ran away, since the moment he left Lance to deal with everything by himself, he'd never know. All he knew was the fact that he was crying, and he was sad because he had missed his brother bring there for him
"I'm still not forgiving you, not yet, it's been too long and-" Lance cut himself off again, his voice broken and wet, and he felt Adam nod above him, accepting the truth of Lance's words, making Lance feel light and giddy, so he leant into his brother some more, taking in his warm but unfamiliar chest, the uniform scratchy against his wet cheeks and he knew that he was going to be late for his lesson, never mind having his lunch break.
"My door is always open to you," Adam muttered against the top of his head, pressing a kiss to the crown of his short brown hair, perfectly done by Veronica and free of any dead hear or split ends. Lance nodded, taking in his brother scent, something that he didn't think that he'll miss at all until he no longer had his brother there.
You don't know what you've got until it's gone. That was something that his entire family learned when Adam left them.
Lance found himself at his brother's door again a week later. It wasn't that his brother was forgiven yet, oh no. But, he had gone over with Ryan about this, even if Ryan only sat there and nodded while he ate his meal while Lance talked through a hypothetical idea that they both knew wasn't as hypothetical as he wished it was, and they both (Lance) came to the conclusions that there was no way for Adam to earn his forgiveness unless they spent time together to make up for the time that they've lost.
The lock on the door isn't activated, so Lance just scanned his hand on the pad, and felt his face flush at the scene that his walked in on. His brother, topless, making out with an equally half-naked man with a black undercut and some wicked looking eyeliner who looked vaguely recognisable to Lance for some reason.
So, Lance closed the door as quickly as he had opened it, making sure it was actually locked this time, walking down the hallway in a slight rush, feeling slightly guilty for some reason, but also with the impression that, when Adam had said to him that the door was always open to him, he meant it in the more literal sense of the saying rather than what it actually meant.
(Four years after Adam ran away, Two years before Lance talks to Adam for the first time in six years)
If living without Adam was similar to living in an empty house, then living in a two-bedroom apartment a mile and a half away from the sea and two miles away from his old house with only Mama was like living in the middle of the desert with only a ghost for company.
That was harsh, maybe. Mama tried her best, and he appreciated that from the bottom of his heart, but sometimes what she thought was best and putting 110% into that wasn't what was the best. For example, she picked up a second job, so now she worked an 8-4 office job of answering calls six days a week and then worked 5-8pm cleaning at a school nearby five times a week. Lance could see why she was doing it, he wasn't blind to the bills building up and it wasn't like she had a partner that she could rely on for anymore. It was also clear that she was saving up for something, as there was a look of satisfaction every month when she opened her banking app and saw her pay check.
The hours she worked also meant that she wasn't home until late, which meant that Lance often woke up alone in the flat, left for school, then came back to the house to see it untouched, and with the lack of personal items in the house, there just hadn't been time to do so when they moved in, it was like living with a ghost of someone he knew but could rarely speak to.
It was fine though, it just took some time to get used to, and he would never complain about it anyway, lest Papa find out and demand for him to move back into the house with him and the twins. He already had to visit every weekend, as per the court agreement, and sometimes that was too much, between Sunday Mass and the awkward family dinners in the garden dinners and the backhanded comments.
The lack of family contact during the week gave him a lot of tree time anyway, something he used to his advantage, as he laid out on the floor, surrounded by almost all of Adam's course books and leftover notes as he scrolled down the Galaxy Garrison's webpage, taking in the information about the different courses they did and the scholarships that could be earned for it.
There was a new course in the year that he was applying for, 'fighter pilot'. Apparently, it was for the elite of the elite, the cream of the cream of the coffee, and there was so many interesting modules in it too. Not only were there the state of the art simulations that could simulate pass and theoretical missions for not only pilots but the entire crew, something that the other piloting courses had as well, but there were things like 'advance defence', 'strategy and warfare' and even 'advance genetic and xenozoology' as an optional module for extra credit.
Of course, he couldn't apply for it. He was an overseas student, and because of that, he wasn't able to qualify for a scholarship as it was only available for students who were born in the states due to its popularity. He could always ask for the money, no, he couldn't. Papa would never give him that much money, not for the Garrison, and Mama, even if she said yes, she didn't have that kind of money, so this elite and awesome class that looked epic was a no go. A closer look at the other courses available showed that they didn't even offer the course that Adam did anymore, exploratory pilot, which makes sense since it's almost been ten years since Adam applied for the Garrison and there were rumours that, in the next couple of years, a team was going to be sent to the edge of the solar system, which meant that there was no real need for them until they were able to travel at the speed of light and all the hyperjumps that the moves talked about.
Ugh, what a time to be alive. Too young to explore the solar system but too old to explore the universe.
He opened the application page, scrolling through the requirements for the cargo pilot course. They looked easy enough, he made majority of the fighter pilot course requirements, all he needed really was a letter of recommendation from a teacher, and he was sure he would get that if he just down played the jokes and up played the 'I just want to be like my brother who I haven't seen in half a decade'.
So, he started the application process, putting in his predicted grades, his country, his address, his school, his ability in spoken English. When he gets to his name and his chosen name, he stopped, his cursor hovering over the blank bar. In the top one, he put 'Lance Sanchez', as it's his official name, but, when it gets to his chosen name, the name that would be on the register and on everything else other than his file or his certificates, he paused.
There… wouldn't be a lot of Sanchez's at the Garrison. Someone could look at his name on the register and go, 'Oh, wait, could that be Adam's brother or cousin or something?'. Lance was sure that Adam didn't want everyone to go up to him and remind him about family that he ran away from, and Lance didn't want everyone to come up to him and start talking about his brother like Lance knew him or anything, but he didn't know his brother, not anymore.
So, he clicked onto the box, and he wrote 'Lance McClain', Mama's maiden name, instead, because that makes a lot of sense. If someone asked, he'll just say that he's estranged from his father, but they just didn't have the money to change his birth certificate. Yes. Perfect.
He submitted the application.
Then he forgot about it.
It wasn't until a month later when he got a thick envelope in the post that he remembered about applying, and then he remembered that he never actually told Mama about it, which explained why she was yelling about it. She did say however, after all the yelling, that she was proud of him for applying and getting accepted in the pilot course, and then they had takeaway for dinner that night to celebrate and nothing about Adam was mentioned because this was about Lance for once, and not about the missing brother that always seemed to pop up everywhere he went.
(He didn't tell Papa and his side of the family until the weekend before he left for America, and it resulted in the first argument Lance ever had with a parent, the first time he raised his voice since he was about seven. It shocked them long enough for him to pack his stuff up and leave.)
(The envelope comes with a welcome package: a booklet with what to expect, a pen that ran out after writing a sentence and a p
oster of a guy called Shirogane Takashi that he shamelessly hung in his bedroom closet, only so Mama wouldn't walk in and tease him about it.)
(Six years since Adam ran away; One year since Lance joined the Garrison)
"Why did you leave?" Lance asked innocently as he sat upside on the sofa, staring at the almost silent holovision on Adam's wall while he swung his legs in time to the tapperdy tap tap of Adam's keyboard, because he was one of those people who had the system volume turned all the way up on his pad. His legs are still swinging as the tapping stopped, but they quickly became wildly out of time, so Lance stopped and rested his legs on the top of sofa, his odd socks causing a huge contrast between the cleanliness of the room and the neutral colours that it contained, something that was so typical of Adam that it reminded him of their old bedroom at Papa's place, now an empty room that he was pretty sure was untouched by their father, who was probably under the impression that if anyone touched something from in there they were going to 'turn gay' or something.
Ha, as if that was actually a thing.
"Please don't make it sound like it was that easy Lance," Adam replied, his voice thick. Lance sighed as he began to a rush of blood to his head, but he still hesitated sitting back up and letting the blood go back into his body, thinking about the positives and negatives to fainting on Adam before decided that he couldn't be bothered to deal with the hassle that it would surely bring, so he sat back up and turned towards his brother, who still had his keyboard up, as if he would be able to get back to his paperwork after being asked such a heavy question.
"I never said that it was easy," Lance stated, sighing loudly before continuing on, "After all, it couldn't have been easy to fun a flight to America by yourself and it couldn't have been easy to gain a permanent residence into America by yourself and there was no way living by yourself for the first time with no adults to help out and no proper job was easy in any way shape or form," Lance rambled, putting a finger up at each item he listed, and he ignored the way that Adam stared at him, instead flopping back against the sofa, his head now on the arm on the chair and a leg thrown over the back of it, his body not in fact long enough for him to reach the other end of the sofa.
"I'm trying to work Lance, so please…" Adam started, before looking lost himself and stopping where he was, his pad now having timed out, so his hand was not resting on a keyboard but mid-air, and Lance vaguely wondered if Adam would be able to give him a detention for asking a teacher personal questions.
"C'mon Adam, it was only a question," Lance moaned loudly as he stretched his arms above his head, ignoring the large sigh that his brother let out, "If you don't want to tell me, then fine. Really, you only had to say then I would have stopped," he continued, moving one of his arms underneath his head and he continued to stare at the celling and beginning to count the tiles on the ceiling.
There was a long silence, before the typing started up again but at a quicker rate, so Lance got up from the sofa without a word, walking over to the door, putting his boots on and quickly lacing them up, before leaving Adam and his tapping behind, practically stamping his feet as he left, only stopping as he got the door and needed to unlock it, looking back at his brother who didn't even look up at him to say goodbye.
"One day Adam, you're going to have a problem that you can't walk away from. And, then, when you think that the worst of it is over, they're going to leave you, and there's going to be nothing you can do about it." With that, he stomped out, not even closing the door behind him.
He watched his feet as he began to wonder around the building. Hunk had gotten used to the fact that he disappeared for hours on end, but since his best friend hadn't asked as to where he wondered off to, he never had to explain how one of the teachers was also his brother, which did make everything so much simpler. It also meant that he would be busy as of right now, which was also a good thing because it meant that he didn't need to come up with an excuse to hide in his dorm and play sad music loudly.
He started to speed his walking, making his steps longer and his paces faster, wanting to get to his room and away from his brother. Just as he thought he was free, he turned a corner and slammed into someone, causing him to fall backwards onto the floor.
"Are you okay?" Lance looked up, and he could feel his face beginning to flush as he stared at the man in front of him.
Shirogane freaking Takashi. The best pilot that the Garrison has ever had, and he was less photoshopped than lance originally thought. He was clearly of Asian descent, probably Japanese if his name was taken into consideration, and now that Lance had a proper look at his hero's face, he could see the perfect eyeline that he knew that other girls in his year was jealous off-
Prefect eyeliner, just like the guy who he had walked in on making out with his brother.
Lance quickly got up and began to almost run back to his dorm, internally screaming while Shiro looked back in confusion, wondering what he had done wrong.
(Seven years after Adam ran away, two years since Lance joined the Garrison)
When Shiro popped up on Pidge's laptop, tied down to a table and screaming about aliens and something called 'Voltron', Lance felt his eyes widen in shock, because this guy was supposed to be dead.
"Wait, that's Shirogane Takashi, that guy's like my hero!" Lance almost screamed, causing the other two to turn towards him, and frowned at his words. Maybe 'like my hero' wasn't the best way to word 'he's the motherfucker who broke my brother's heart and is probably the reason why he ran away from our family in the first place', but if his Mama taught him anything, it was that he should never speak ill of the dead, which was the main reason why he had stopped insulting the guy; out loud at least. It seemed that the habit had stuck, which wasn't surprising, and at least than he wouldn't have to deal with his friends finally realising that he was related to one of the flight instructors, which would expand to lots of unnecessary questions that they clearly didn't have the time for.
The next couple of hours afterwards are wild. Keith with his out of date but still nice looking mullet turned up out of nowhere (Lance couldn't wait to tell Adam about him moving into the middle of fucking nowhere after running way from the Garrison), and than they all help to break Shiro out of the Garrison's grip, (because, even if Shiro was a jerk, the people who work for the Garrison were assholes and he knew this because not only did they hire Iverson but they also hired Adam and Lance knew what that trend was right off of the bat), and they let Keith drive for some ungodly reason and then they're finally, finally, away from the Garrison, in the dusty little shack in the middle of nowhere that Keith has been living in for the past year or so now.
(Wow, it had been a year already?)
At this point, Lance should probably phone Adam, for many reasons, ranging from 'Hey, you're dead boyfriend's alive and we're all at his runaway kid brother's place' to 'Hey, I may or may not have been kicked out of the Garrison for reasons I shall explain in a second, however, could you make sure that Mama doesn't find out', but he does neither and instead sleep with the idea that he could just ring Adam in the morning, at a sensible, human, hour, though, it does make the chance of Adam being pissed at him increase. But, then he woke up to Keith and Shiro talking outside and they're now on their way in, so now wasn't really the best time to call Adam, because Lance was sure that Shiro didn't want to walk into the shack to see one of the kids who saved his life the other night talk to one of the people who had endangered it in the first place, let alone his ex-boyfriend.
So, he decided that he was going to call Adam either when they sat down to have something to eat (because that had to happen soon if Hunk's stomach was anything to go by) or if Adam called him first, if there was even any signal in this small shack in the middle of nowhere.
It's when he's on another planet, millions of miles away from Earth, flying a blue, mechanical Lion, that he realised that his brother was going to personally make sure that Lance's soul was sent to hell when (if) he got back to Earth.
(Six and a half years since Adam ran away, one and a half years since Lance joined the Garrison)
"Adam?"
"…"
"Adam?"
"…"
"Adam?"
"Oh, for fuck sake Lance, what do you want!?"
"You shouldn't swear in front of students Adam."
"You shouldn't bother teachers when they've got important work to be doing Lancey."
"…"
"…"
"Adam?"
"What do you want Lance?"
"I'm bored."
"Holy- I can't do anything about it!"
"Give me something to do then!"
"Okay, fine. I'll give you something to do. How about you mark 30 assignments about the history of the wedge formation battle technique and why we still use it that I gave to one of my classes because they wouldn't listen to a word I was saying in class?"
"…You know what Adam? I'm not bored anymore."
"That's what I thought."
(Three years since Adam ran away; Four years before Lance saves Shiro)
Dear Adam,
Hey, so it's been a while since I sent the last email, and I know that I said that I was going to stop sending them because they give me too much hope and stuff, but things have been a been crazy here, all because of you as well.
Life without you has been hard bad rough on all of us, you know? Not just me, though it may seem that I am the only person who cares about it. No, the rest of us care, I think? They all have their own way of dealing with you being gone. Mama's been working longer hours and Papa gets angrier in a shorter time frame. Veronica's practically moved in with her boyfriend at this point, you know, the one that I said is a jerk, she stays at his place 6 days out of the week; I barely see her now. Luis and Marco get into trouble all the time at school now, and Mama caught them smoking drugs the other night, and she almost hit them.
So, life's been rough lately. Or, has it? Is it just me going up and seeing everything? Who knows.
Remember the last email (if you even read them, I wouldn't blame you if you didn't), when I said that Mama and Papa have been fighting a lot? Well, the latest one was over you, and Papa was yelling homophobic comments while the news was on because of the whole gay marriage thing that is happening over in America and Mama wanted him to shut up, and then Papa mentioned you and blamed Mama about how you turned out and said that it was coddling that turned you gay, and said the same thing would happen if she continued to do so with me. , Mama said that, if he still felt like this all these years after you left then maybe she should leave him and he said fine, so now they're getting a divorce, which is pretty surreal, I guess.
So, yeah. Mama's leaving Papa, and I've decided to go with her. I can't stay at this house anymore, I can't listen to him keep badmouthing you in the way that he does. It happens way too often, and it hurts to not be able to tell him to shut his gob. Mama doesn't know that I'm coming with her yet, but that's because I don't want her to try and convince me that staying here would be better for me.
I think that, what I'm trying to say is, come back to Cuba, please? It would just be at Mama's new place and you would only see the people that you want to see, even if you only want to see Mama or Veronica or the twins and not me, that's fine. At this rate, just confirmation that you alive would be nice.
Please, just say something, even if it's telling me to go away. Please.
Sincerely, Lance
Lance clicked send on the email, resting his head on his arms as he stared blankly at the empty inbox of his email. The house was silent today, his parents were working, and the twins were out, Veronica was at her boyfriend's place, as per usual, and Adam didn't even live in Cuba anymore, leaving him all by himself.
He wondered if Adam ever actually read what he sent him, read all the emails that surely must be stacking up by now. He hadn't responded to any of them, so Lance had no idea if he opened them or not, if he listened to Lance's cries to come back home. Veronica said that he probably got a new phone, because every time they tried to call him it would ring but get no answer, and he never picked up on Skype, probably deleted the app, and he even deleted his Facebook account; he hadn't made a new one since, Lance made sure to check regularly.
Every time he tried to tell his twins about his problems, they would only just laugh at him and call him a sissy, saying that Adam left and way never coming back, so they shouldn't keep their hopes up about it. Veronica had mentioned that his actions were beginning to become stalkerish, and it probably isn't what Adam would have wanted, because if he wanted to talk to Lance or the rest of the family, then he would have come home by now.
Lance sighed at he rubbed the material of Adam's jacket between his fingers. It was still quite big on him, but Lance was still thirteen, he still had a lot of time to grow. Until then, he'll let the jacket swamp him, he'll tuck his leg into himself and zip the jacket around him, and stare at the screen until he gets an email from Adam, because Adam always said that he could talk to him about his problems, Adam always said that he'll always be here for Lance.
But Adam wasn't here anymore. He had, for all that Lance knew, dropped off the face of the Earth.
(Six and a half years after Adam ran away; One month after the Kerberos Mission was declared a fail.)
A week after Kogane seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth, Lance was called into Iverson's office, there was already a kid in a cadet uniform sitting on one of the chairs in front of the office.
He had short, choppy brown hair that looked self cut, and wore glasses that looked too big for him, if the way that they slipped down his nose. He was on his phone, looking to be texting someone fast and, if the expression of his face was anything to go by, Lance would say that he was partaking in a losing argument. There already seemed to be a meeting in the office if the low muttering seemed to mean anything, meaning that Lance would be waiting some time for whatever he was called in for.
He didn't even do anything wrong this week! At least, he didn't think that he had done anything wrong this week. He hadn't sworn or yelled in front of anyone of major importance for at least a month (unless you counted him yelling at Adam for his poor life choice, which Lance didn't), and he hadn't even had time to update his sweet stash between all the last-minute studying that he had found himself in.
Sighing, he sat himself down next to the kid, who, now that he thought about it, he had never seen around the Garrison, and lent back against the chair, slouching slightly as he closed his eyes and waited. He never saw the point of being called the office when it was clear that the Principle was already busy with something more important, but he didn't have anything better to do, except be in class learning about first aid, pointless in his opinion.
Maybe he'll have a nap while he waited.
It wasn't until he heard a distant sound of footsteps that he sat up straight and make it look like he was disciplined. Just as the sound came closer, Lance threw a look at the kid next to him and saw that he was still on his phone, still angrily texting whoever they were annoyed with. Quickly nudging him, the kid threw an angry glare at him.
"Put your phone away before they catch you with it and take it off you," Lance muttered as the steps got closer. The boy's eyes widened, and he hurried to put the device in his pocket just as the officer came around the corner. One look at him had Lance sighing and leaning back in the chair, much to the kid's confusion.
"Lance, what did you do this time?" Adam asked while Lance sighed again, but louder.
"I didn't even do anything this time," he muttered, crossing his arms. Adam rolled his eyes, doubt flowing from him faster than an object falling under Jupiter's gravity, and turned away from his brother, looking at the kid who was looking between Lance and Adam in confusion.
"Pidge Gunderson, correct?" Adam asked, he nodded, "Okay, so if you follow me, I can give you a quick tour of the grounds," he replied, and the boy, Pidge Gunderson, what a weird name, sounding like he made it up for himself on the spot, followed quickly behind, going back in the direction that Adam came from.
Lance was called into the office fifteen minutes later, and was offered a place on the fighter pilot course on the scholarship that only those who lived in the states were able to get, as he was the most able student on the cargo course who was on the scholarship program. He accepted, quickly forgetting about Pidge Gunderson and his weird sounding name until the next year and he was assigned to his team.
Months later, when Pidge revealed that he, no, she, is a girl, Lance was shocked that something like this went underneath his nose. Everyone else seemed to be taking it well, so Lance followed suit and laughed along. When Shiro asked about how she was able to make a fake identity without the Garrison knowing, she just shrugged and smile knowingly at him.
"I had some help from the inside, who wanted the same thing."
Ah, that explained why Adam got over Shiro's death as fast as he did; he was given the idea that he wasn't dead to begin with.
(Six years since Adam ran away; One year since Lance joined the Garrison)
"Why am I marrying him Lance?"
"I don't know, you haven't even introduced me to him yet."
"I watched him set fire to pasta yesterday Lance."
"… How did he manage that?"
"I don't even know."
"…"
"…"
"Wait, is that why we had the fire drill the other day? Because your fiancé wanted to cook something for you and he was just that incompetent?"
"Yep."
"…"
"…"
"Adam, you've got it real bad."
"Yeah, I know Lancey-Lance, you don't need to remind me."
(Five years after Adam ran away, four months before Lance sees Adam for the first time in five years)
Hunk Garrett is the first person that he meets during his time at the Galaxy Garrison.
Scrap that. He meets a lot of people at the Garrison before he met Hunk. Hunk, however, just so happens to be the first person he meets during his time at the Garrison that he likes, as there are a lot of… Interesting people, to say the least.
Maybe it was because he didn't grow up here in America, or because English was his first language, but he found the first couple of weeks hard. Not only was he learning really cool piloting skills (which was harder than he thought it would be), but he was having to do it in a different language that he wasn't the most confident in. Oh, he learned the language very quickly, quicker than a lot of the other international students did, but the fact still stood that he didn't learn it fast enough, and was now suffering immensely for it. In detention.
"C'mon, why is it so hard to believe that I didn't know that word?! I come from Cuba, we speak Spanish, y'know, the language where the adjectives are on the right side of the noun, there are barely any homophones, and we don't use the female name for a dog as an insult!" the teacher, who, as he learned later on, was Commander Iverson, was not pleased.
It was at that point, after the exchange with the dinner lady about chocolate milk with every meal, a yelling match between a Target cashier about tax and overhearing a lecture lead by a student to a class about how water was not in fact wet, that he decided to give up with all Americans, because clearly, they were insane and that he should have not come here at all, even if he did want to go to space.
(The only thing stopping him from going home was the empty house that awaited him and the sneers that he would receive if he did so empty-handed.)
So, he went to his detention, even if he thought that the reason was stupid, and that Iverson was stupider, and that America was the stupidest. He sighed as he collapsed in the chair, a silent sort of chatter filling the air that he wasn't in the mood to translate, making him want to sigh more, but louder. So, he did. Everyone ignored him, but that was okay.
"What did you do to get in here?" Lance turned his head towards the talker, tilting his head slightly as he ran the question in his mind again, slower, and then dissected it, then translated it into Spanish, then came up with an answer, then translated it into English, and then double checked it to make sure he 2would be using the right words and it was in the right tense and all the adjectives were on the wrong side of the noun. A long process, true, but he was getting faster, now down to about thirty seconds rather than the full two minutes it took when he first started at the Garrison.
"I said the word bitch really loudly when that person brought in that dog last week and talked about history of space travel or something. Apparently, it's also a slur of some kind in this godforsaken country," Lance replied, slumping in his seat as he studied the kid next to him. He was a darker skin shade than he was, but carried no accent on his voice that Lance could hear on his own voice. He smiled at Lance's words, and did not comment on his attack on the states, something that Lance knew could start someone off due to the large amount of patriotism that this country seemed to hold higher than the lives of other people that had a different shade of skin. Lance frowned at the lack of response, "Why are you in here then?"
The kid smiled bright, "Apparently, taking apart an engine so you can reverse engineer it and then plan to make it better is against the rules here? But, the thing is, I checked the rules before I applied here, I was so worried that I would make some huge fatal mistake and get kicked out before I even started here, but it wasn't in there, which should mean that I can do it, but apparently not? I even pointed this terrible flaw to the teacher telling me off, Mr Shirogane, who told me off pretty calmly now that I think about it, but then he said that he couldn't do anything about it, though he did have this look on his face so I think he's also going to read over the rules tonight…" the kid continued on with his rant for some time, not that Lance made any real effort to stop or interrupt him, except to find out the meaning of words that he hadn't come across before, something that the boy took with kindness.
He was keeping this one.
(It took him a week to realise that he didn't actually know his name because they didn't share any classes, and boy was that a great conversation.)
(Four years before Adam runs away; Eleven years before Lance finds the Blue Lion)
"Hey, Lancey-Lance," the six-year-old turned on his bed to look at his oldest brother, who was looking out of the window from his own bed. "Do you want me to show you something cool?" he asked, and Lance quickly nodded and jumped out of bed after him. They put jackets on, which only made Lance's excitement grow more, as the idea of leaving the house in the middle of the night without their parents knowing had a dangerous edge to it that sounded fun, and spending any time with Adam is a great time.
They were going to be doing something fun and cool and it was just going to be the pair of them, something that Lance thought didn't happen often enough, and that he should be able to spend all his time with his eldest brother. He had told Adam this thought, once. He had laughed and said that, as the eldest, he had to be shared with everyone in the family. Lance didn't like it, but he accepted it. There was enough of Adam to be shared around, even if he wanted the largest piece available.
He followed him out of the room, trying his hardest to be his absolute quietest, and even had to hold in a squeal as Adam picked him up to make sure that none of them landed on the noisy last step in their staircase. Adam quietly unlocked the door with his own keys, and locked it back up again once they were out of the house. From there, he followed Adam down the path, and held his hand as he started to lead him to the beach.
"What are you going to show me?" Lance asked, and Adam chuckled at the excitement and impatience in his voice, grabbing his hand tighter in a squeeze that made Lance let out a loud laugh, not that there was anyone around to hear it except the bright lampposts and the slight wind.
"You'll see," he replied, a small smile on his face and a knowing look in his eye, that made Lance smile brighter and bring more spring in his step. This is the reason why he loved Adam; this is the reason why he's the best.
They get to the beach quickly, they didn't live too far from it so it's not that surprising, but Lance feels a little put out by it. They could go to the beach whenever they wanted because of the close distance, and it seemed a bit silly to go to the beach now of all times, the sea looked too cold to swim in (not that they brought the clothes to have a midnight splash about anyway) and it was far too dark to build a sandcastle, he could barely make out the sand on his trainers now that they were away from the path, away from the bright lamp posts, leaving everything in a dull shadow.
"Now, we need to take off our shoes and socks, and then we need to roll up our trousers," Adam directed, and Lance was quick to follow, first the shoes, then the sandy socks going into the shoes, and then the pyjama trousers were rolled up, something that Lance still needed help with much to Lance's shame, even if Adam didn't raise any arguments to crouching down in the sand and folding them up for him.
Smiling still, Adam took Lance's hand again, and led him to the sea, causing confusion and curiosity to rise up in Lance. They weren't about to go for a swim, you didn't swim in your nightwear, but they were clearly going towards the sea, and they stopped at the point that the surf met the sand, and lance let out a loud gasp as he watched the cold sea washed between his feet.
"Lance, look up," Lance snatched a quick look at Adam, who was pointing towards the sea, so Lance turned his head to look at the calm sea, and he felt his eyes widen at the sight in front of him.
It was a clear, calm night, barely any wind and no moon nor clouds to speak of, but the lack of them only enhanced the sight in front of the six-year-old. There in front of Lance, was the stars, all sparking brightly and fearfully, brightening up the sky in a way that he knew the sun wouldn't be able to do and the mood would only hide. They seemed to make their own patterns as well, all having their own seat in the sky and just waiting for those on earth to look up at them. And, if that wasn't enough, the see was so calm that it acted like some sort of mirror to the sky, reflecting all that the stars had to give, so there was twice the number of stars, twice the amount on sparkling and twinkling, just like in the song that Adam sings to him when he gets scared.
It was beautiful.
"I'm going to visit the stars one day, Lance," Adam said at last, breaking the comfortable silence that they had fallen into. Lance couldn't bare to lose the sight of what was in front of him, so he nodded in reply, before frowning and looking towards his brother.
"Pretty, pretty please can I come with you Adam?" he asked, and Adam let out a laugh, making Lance smile.
"Of course, you can," he replied, and Lance let out a whoop in celebration, getting water all over their night clothes but by this point they cared little for it, "Of course, you must study a lot to get into the school, and then you have to study even more!" Lance nodded seriously, taking in his brother's words before letting out a big yawn, "C'mon, Lancey, let's get you home."
Lifting Lance onto his back, Adam slowly began the walk home as he started to sing and lull Lance to sleep, both with a smile on their faces.
"Estrellita, ¿dónde estás?
Quiero verte cintilar
en el cielo, sobre el mar.
Un diamante de verdad.
Estrellita, ¿dónde estás?
Quiero verte cintilar."
(? Years after Adam ran away; About one and a half decapheobs since Lance found the Blue Lion, whatever that means)
Space is just how Lance thought it would be, and, somehow, so much more.
The stars are somehow more beautiful out here in deep space than they were on Earth, a fact that, for some reason, surprised Lance. It's like being closer to them and being away from the light pollution has made them ten times better than he ever thought they would be. He was now so close to them that he could touch them, not that he was going to go around and start touching stars, no, of course not. He's not that stupid. The fact that they almost flew into a supernova because of a 'ghost' problem was enough times, thank you very much.
There were other parts of space that Lance enjoyed. There were the technologies that belonged in Star Trek and there were the beautiful planets that he knew he could never make up on his own, or even with the help of his nieces and nephews. There were the aliens they've met and were going to meet, and boy were there a lot of them, a lot of beautiful woman too.
Very beautiful... Woman? Or were they men? Did they even have genders? What if they had more than the two genders like they did on Earth? It's hard to tell in space.
(He's still not gay.)
(Well, maybe he was, a teeny tiny, itsy bitsy bit, because Keith's mullet had seemed to grow on him somehow.)
There's other things in space as well, things that are more of a shock to him, some things that were definitely not thought about nor thought through when he decided to follow in his brother's footsteps (much to his father's family upset). Like, for example, everything to do and about Voltron, being a Paladin, having a Lion or two, learning to fight with a Bayard that turns into two types of guns and a wicked looking sword, that kind of thing. It definitely was not in the Galaxy Garrison handbook with Shiro on the cover that they were given a couple of months before they started their first year, but it was pretty easy to pick up after a while and a good couple of explanations. Then there was that 10'000-year-old war that they decided to participate in because, yep, that was on his bucket list, and he really enjoyed it when he almost died every week or so to defend the innocent, and all that shebang.
He sighed as he began to pick at a loose thread of his (Adam's) jacket, looking at the map that he had gotten Coran to leave open, at the familiar part of the universe where earth was located.
Space was pretty cool, and it's nothing like Lance ever thought it would be.
It's strange, to think about what Lance had once dreamed space travel would be. Back when they thought that getting to Kerberos was a huge leap for humanity, when aliens were just bacteria in their minds. He often thought that, maybe, he would be leading a group of people to a new colony on the edge of the solar system, on Pluto or even Kerberos, and he would be doing long mission where dodging asteroids was a must and you were hailed a hero back on Earth for all that you've done to push humanity forward.
Sometimes though, his dreams would be less dramatic, and it would just be him and Adam, flying a two-man shuttle… somewhere. It never mattered where they were going, it didn't change anything. It would be just him, Adam, and the stars, just like that night years ago, when Lance was six and Adam hadn't run away, and he wasn't out in the middle of deep space fighting the Galra with huge robotic Lions.
"Lance, are you okay?" Lance turned around from where he was sat looking at the map, open at the system where Earth was located, because while the stars were beautiful he couldn't stand to look at them for too long without looking at home first, and stared at Keith, who was hanging around awkwardly from the doorway, looking ready to bolt at any moment. He turned back around and sighed, but something positive inside of him started bubbling when Keith entered the room, closing the door behind him, and sat down next to him, not close enough for their thighs to touch but close enough for their hands to reach one another.
Not that they were going to hold hands or anything. That would be super, mega gay, and something that Lance was just not ready for.
Maybe another time.
That sat in silence for a couple of minutes, simply basking in each other's company, which is something that Lance would have laughed at if he was told that six months ago. But, now, it just seemed natural for them to spend time with one another, from moments of fun and joy which involved jests and laughs to moments of peace and quiet, like now, where they would whisper small and quiet confessions to one another
"Somehow, space seemed to get more beautiful the longer we're out here," Lance commented as they stared at the familiar constellations light up in front of them in many colours, from reds to blues to purples.
"Yeah, I get what you mean," Keith quietly replied, as if he's almost afraid of lifting the spell that had been placed on the two of them. There's another silence, a longer silence, before Lance started to talk again, his voice cracking and his eyes watering as the words left his lips.
"I want to go home."
Almost instantly, he feels his left hand being picked up and held in Keith's right, and he vaguely noted that they seemed to be a good fit and the tears began to leave his eyes and a sob leave his throat. There's a small squeeze of reassurance, not even a fraction of Keith's strength being used to comfort him, and Lance turned and began to cry into the shoulder that was being offered to him, and he lent in deeper into the hug as Keith's other arm reached around and pulled him in.
Space is just how Lance thought it would be, and, somehow, nothing like he expected.
But, most of all, he just wanted to go back to Mama, back to Adam, back to his home.
(Seven years after Adam ran away; Two weeks before Lance is declared missing by the Garrison)
"I'm not speaking to her Lance."
"But-"
"There's no 'but' about it Lance! She let him say those horrible things, she let him kick me out, she let him push her around, even when she says that she didn't want to, she still did it!"
"Things are different now Adam, things are better now Adam!"
"I don't care how 'different' or 'better' things are now, the point is that it. Still. Happened. She could give me a million dollars on the spot and I still wouldn't go and see her Lance. What she did was unforgiveable and not something that she can just 'take back'."
"…"
"Lance? Lance, are you crying."
"… No?"
"Oh Lance, I'm sorry. Please don't cry-"
"Fuck off Adam."
(Six and a half years since Adam ran away; Two weeks before Pidge joins the Garrison)
Lance goes straight to his brother's rooms when he hears the news.
"The Kerberos mission, lead by the Galaxy Garrison, has been announced a failure late last night. It was announced that the crew on the mission, Samuel Holt, his son Matthew Holt and their pilot Takashi Shirogane were this morning. It is suspected to be a pilot error as the cause of their death. In other news…"
He doesn't bother knocking on the door, he was his little brother, he had every right to just walk right in (even if Adam was a staff member and he was just a cadet) and he doubted that Adam even remembered that the doors locked by this point, and walked straight in, blinking in surprise at the loud music that almost made the room shake. Lance noticed the way that Adam laid on the sofa, blankly staring at his TV that was turned onto the news station, not that it could be heard with the music playing so loudly.
"You left me, and I fell apart,
I punched the wall and cried-
Bam! Bam! Bam!
The I found you, changed my heart
And set loose all that truthful shit inside"
"Adam," Lance started sternly, ignoring the holovision and the music, standing at the open doorway with his arms crossed, glaring neutrally at his brother. He made no attempt to welcome his little brother into his room, instead he kept his eyes glued at the screen, as of he had the impression that, if he looked at it for long enough, someone will call hoax on it, that a presenter will appear on the screen and say it was a false alarm rather than keep going over the same information over and over and over again about the Kerberos mission, well, the parts that the general public were allowed to know.
"I was meant to be yours!
We were meant to be one!
Don't give up on me now!
Finish what we've begun!
I was meant to be yours!"
"Lance," Adam replied, his voice broken and wet, and he made no attempt to explain himself, so Lance just let out a large sigh, turning around and closing the door, then programming it to lock. This was not something that he needed someone walking in on, least they get the wrong idea. Once the door closed, Lance made his way to the sofa, moving his brother's legs in a way that forced him to sit up slightly, and sat down next to him. Adam quickly leaned into Lance's shoulder, his eyes not leaving the TV, and neither said anything when the fabric of Lance's uniform grew wet.
"I was meant to be yours!
We were meant to be one!
I can't take it alone!
Finish what we begun!
YOU WERE MEANT TO BE MINE!
I AM ALL THAT YOU NEED!
YOU CARVED OPEN MY HEART!
CAN'T JUST LEAVE ME TO BLEED!"
"This is all my fault," Adam quietly sobbed, and Lance brought his arm around his brother, bringing him closer to him. Lance tried to say that it wasn't, say that Shiro was going to go on that mission no matter his brother's support because that was his dream, but he was drowned out by the music, almost screaming at them.
"Veronica, open the- open the door, please,
Veronica, open the door!
Veronica, can we not fight anymore, please,
Can we not fight anymore,
"Veronica, sure, you're scared,
I've been there. I can set you free!
Veronica, don't make me come in there!
I'm gonna count to three!
One!
Two!"
"Fuck it!" Lance yelled as he angrily got up from the sofa, surprising Adam at his sudden absence as he walked over to the stereo, cutting the music out suddenly before turning to his brother.
He never thought that he would see Adam like this, red eyed and blotchy faced. It was weird to think that this was the same brother that showed six-year-old him the stars, who sung with him and his sister, who supported his twin brothers at every match he could make, who looked dead into their Abuelo's eyes, said what needed to be said and then walked away, acting as if nothing ever happened, even when Papa screamed at him red faced not even an hour later. Even when he ran away, he may have been crying but he had been brave and put on a strong face, at least, he had until he had left the family's eyesight.
The jealously and anger that Lance once felt towards the man who stole his brother from him simmered down tremendously. There's no point holing a grudge with a dead man, after all.
"It's not your fault that his happened Adam," Lance said as he sat back down, this time leaning onto his brother, "You could have never predicted this, nor could you have helped in anyway, even if you did know this was going to happen. This was Shiro's dream, nothing could have stopped him, he couldn't let anything, anyone, stand in the way." Adam let out another sob at the reminder of the break up.
"He did always feel like he had something to prove," Adam muttered wetly, and Lance let a smile lighten his face. He wasn't stupid, Adam wasn't going to get over it straight away, especially since the close relationship they used to have before the announcement of the Kerberos mission, before they called off their engagement.
"We were supposed to be getting married next month," Adam almost whispered before the tears started up again, and Lance pulled his brother pull him into a hug, muttering small reassurances as he felt his shoulder starting to become wet with tears.
No, this was not something that he would get over straight away, it would be strange if he did, so when Lance saw him the next week, sat on the same sofa but instead listening to Dear Evan Hanson and typing on his laptop, able to act as if the love of his life didn't die on him, he was suspicious.
"Adam, are you feeling okay?" he asked as he entered the room, door again not locked. Adam hummed without taking his eyes off of the computer screen, not even giving Lance the decency of being acknowledged.
"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?" he replied as he started typing slowly, frowning as he let the light of the tech make his glasses glow unnaturally.
"Well, it's just…" Lance trailed off before piercing his lips together, watching the way that Adam's fingers stumbled across the keyboard in a way Lance would describe as nervous anticipation, so unlike the way that he handled a gun with a cool levelheadedness, and Lance frowned as the keys began to tap in to the of the music, "What are you doing?" he asked as the current song came to an end
"Filing out the papers for a transfer student from Italy," Adam replied mindlessly, and Lance sighed as he leant against the wall, letting the sound of the music fill the room, and despite the catchy tune, Lance couldn't help but feel mellow, even as he muttered the lyrics underneath his breath.
"Cause all that it takes is a little reinvention,
It's easy to change if you give it your attention,
All you've gotta do, is just believe you can be who you want to be
Sincerely,
Miss you dearly,
Sincerely, Me!"
He didn't even like Shiro, though that might be because he was the little brother and they never seemed to like the boyfriend, just look at how he reacted to the first time that Veronica brought home her own boyfriend. Still he felt like he was morning Shiro more than his brother was, which was… concerning.
"Adam, you need to talk about this, not bottle it up like you're some emotionless robot," Lance started. Adam didn't look up from his pad.
"C'mon Adam, stop acting like a child about this!" Lance said sternly.
No response.
"This isn't heathy, you know this," he said, going for a calmer voice.
No response.
"Adam?"
"Hmm?"
"I'm the top of my class this year, just like I told you I would be," Lance tried, hoping that the change in subject would snap his brother out of it, and maybe he would look up and smile at him and congratulate him for being at the top of the class despite his struggles and to show that he did actually put the effort in to his education, despite what everyone else thought of him.
"That's nice for you," his brother muttered as the next song started playing, a darker, sadder song, not that Adam took any mind in it.
"Yeah, and I heard this rumour that Kogane was kicked out out, but some people said he dropped before he could be kicked-" Lance continued, but was interrupted when Adam finally looked up from his laptop with a look of shock etched into his face.
"Keith dropped out?" he asked, putting his laptop down on the sofa. Lance felt a smile grow on his face. Finally, he had his brother's attention!
"Yeah, apparently, he punched Iverson's eye out and- wait, Adam! Where are you going!?" Lance asked as he watch his brother grab his jacket and put his boots on.
"Takashi would be upset if I lost his brother," he replied as he quickly left the room, the door sliding shut behind him, leaving Lance alone with only the music for company.
"I will sing no requiem,
Tonight,
'Cause when the villians fall, the kingdoms never weep,
No one lights a candle to remember,
No, no one mourns at all,
When they lay them down to sleep,
So don't tell me I didn't have it right,"
Lance quickly went over to the stereo and punched in the commands to turn it off, leaving him in a room of silence.
Even dead, Shiro was able to grab his brother's attention more than Lance, Adam's youngest brother, was able to. Even Keith had more of Adam's attention than Lance did.
Lance hated them for it, even if one of them was dead and the other now a runaway drop out, but, at the same time, he doesn't know what he was expecting out of his brother anyway.
(Seven years since Adam ran away; One week(?) since Lance found the Blue Lion)
It doesn't take long for Lance to decide that space was defiantly not what he was expecting.
Was he expecting to go places that no human has ever reached? Yes, though that dream was looking less and less realistic the longer he spent at the Garrison, especially compared to the others in the fighter class, they were the top of the class for a reason, and the fact that there were no exploratory courses anymore, there was a reason for that, they just didn't need any at the moment. Was he expecting to pilot a pretty cool looking ship with an amazing crew? Well, that expectation had been blown out of the water thanks to having the Blue Lion, it was a true honour to fly. The team part was touch and go, sometimes they were great and sometimes he could scream because of them, but that was a complaint for another day. Was he expecting to have proper training before he actually left Earth's atmosphere, to know what the point of the mission was before they were light years away from Earth with no foreseeable future of being able to return again, to sit down with his family for the final time before then and give a proper goodbye? No. He hadn't expected this.
He hasn't expected to fly a giant Blue Lion, not that he didn't love that. He hadn't expected to fight a giant alien ship before flying through a wormhole while a bunch of people, with varying amount of friendships, argued about what to do and moaned about his abilities and tried to backseat pilot, even though they were clearly not the one with a mystic bond to a robotic, magical, majestic Lion that could probably be better described as a battleship. He hadn't expected to be told that he was going to save the universe with four other people, the other people being his best friend, his terrified and nauseous best friend, a kind of friend who clearly has been hiding things from them, his brother's ex-fiancé who had been announced dead for a good year now and his brother's ex-fiancé's kid brother with anger issues and a knife that he knew how to use.
He wasn't expecting any it.
He also hadn't expected to walk into a room and be moaned at for an alarm that he didn't even hear by a beautiful 10'000-year-old Altean Princess.
Said Princess then tells them that their planet was going to be targeted by the Galrans in the future if they didn't do anything about the Empire. So, not even ten minutes later (the aliens call minutes doboshes, how strange of them), he was in his Lion, waiting for his 'beloved' leader's orders.
That's not to say that Shiro is a bad leader, not by any means. He knew what he was doing, and he knew how to get the others to do it. He took what others said into consideration and he listened and planned and acted and reacted quickly to everything that was happening around him. He was basically perfect, could do no wrong, and it made Lance want to scream.
Though, he could also see why Adam, the perfectionist lover, fell in love with him, and even after a year of being some sort of weird warrior of some sorts has only given him a ruff, buff look.
But, even with Shiro's leadership skills, trying to form Voltron using the Lions didn't seem to be working, so after the forcefield went down and the shooting stopped, they all went in and had a break, catching a quick snack before Allura came in, shouted at them, before sending them on their merry way to Coran, who got them to a variety of 'teambuilding' activities, which included but were not limited to: flying blindfolded, an invisible maze and some weird sort of mindreading activity. So, by the time they were shoved back into the training deck, Lance wasn't the only person who was tired and very much done with everything they had gone through.
At this point, he just wanted to go home. Go back to Cuba and see his Mama and maybe finally convince Adam to come home for at least a day and get Veronica to abandon her boyfriend for the evening and steal the twins from the gang that they've probably joined at this point and maybe they can all pretend that there was nothing wrong in the universe.
But, no, he was stuck in space, training to fight in a war with his best friend, his kinda friend, his rival and his rival's brother who happened to be his brother's ex.
"Okay, so the point of this exercise is to learn how your teammates fight, and adapt to it to achieve a common goal!" Coran shouted from the intercoms, and Lance wanted scream. Loudly.
"Okay, doesn't sound too bad, but, err, Coran, I think the only people who can fight are Keith and Shiro," Hunk replied, looking up at the window that Coran was looking down at them through. Not that they could see him from this distance.
"I'm sure you'll do fine Number Two!" Coran replied as a robot dropped from the ceiling, which was a badass entrance, but also terrifying, as Hunk's point still stood as they all readied their Bayards and activated their shields.
Keith was the first one to attack, running head first at the robot with his sword and started to swing it, with almost all of it's attacks being thrown off by the robot until Keith himself was flung halfway across the room. Hunk decided at this point to try and help, starting to fire his gun before he aimed, making bullets fly everywhere, and still the robot managed to dodge every shot aimed at him, before running towards Hunk and shoving the blunt end of the spear into his stomach, causing his friend to be winded and fall, his Bayard deactivating and clattering as it hit the floor.
The robot turned and looked to see who was their next target, and the closest person happened to be Shiro, with Lance standing at an angle behind him. Shiro ran up to the robot while Lance aimed his gun at their opponent, frowning as Shiro moved too fast for him to put a proper target on him with out the high risk of hitting Shiro…
Eh, to hell with it. There were positives to both outcomes; if he hits the robot he's done something that the others haven't, which is good, great even, he'll finally have something to hold over Keith, and if he hits Shiro, well, lets just call that a god's honest mistake and not the revenge shot from breaking his brother's heart like he should.
He at least set the gun to sting before he took the shot that clips Shiro at the back of his head and caused him to shout and fall, giving the robot an opening to hit him in the stomach like he had done to Hunk.
Lance just smiled and shrugged, saying sorry before he too was taken down by the robot. Coran started to moan about them not completing the task like he said they had to and Allura just seemed done with them, yelling about how they were supposed to be the most elite team in the universe.
(Seven years since Adam ran away, one month before Lance left Earth in the Blue Lion)
"Hey Adam."
"…"
"Adam?"
"…"
"Adam!"
"Lance, shut up, I'm reading!"
"But I have a question for you!"
"Okay then."
"Why is the sky blue?"
"…"
"Adam?"
"You have three seconds to leave this room before I turn your body into a bruise."
"You wouldn't do that to your bestest brother in the entire world, would you?"
"One."
"Fuck."
(Six years after Adam ran away; One year before Lance became the Blue Paladin)
Lance is the first person outside of the staff to know about the break up between Shirogane Takashi and Adam Sanchez.
It's not surprising to him nor to Adam that he is the first student, but the other students call him a liar when he first tells them that they broke up and the teachers all looked surprised when he mentions is within earshot, all coming up to him and asking how on earth did he know about his information, only because they want to know who in the staff team blabbed to a 16-year-old about the most popular couple in the Galaxy Garrison.
Lance, however, never told anyone how he knew, and never said that his information came from the source himself, he just shrugged and said he overheard other teachers talking about it when they thought they couldn't be heard, and it wasn't like the break up was done in private, if Adam's version of the events was anything to go by. He also said that, since neither Mr Shirogane nor Mr Sanchez said anything about the rumours, then it simply just had to be true. The teachers who confronted him only blink before walking away, muttering how sad it is that their relationship is over, and over something that seemed petty in their eyes, which only made Lance scoff when their back was turned.
Sure, a love one leaving to go to space to discover the last place in the solar system didn't seem like much, even if they would be away for a couple of years. But, then again, their loved one didn't have a medical condition that could be considered fatal in outer space, as there were no space hospitals on Kerberos, and the mission was one that was considered high risk, even if they were just collecting ice to see if there were bacteria in it or not.
Adam didn't want Shiro to leave him behind, to be left behind all alone after they talk about a future after Kerberos was too painful in his mind, even with the chances of Shiro coming back alive. So, he broke it off, so they both could suffer the pain of being alone before Shiro completed his biggest dream and Adam watched from afar. He broke it off because he was a realist, Adam had told Lance the day after they broke up while he swirled a glass of whiskey in his hands, because the chances of Shiro not coming back at all were too high for him to ignore, and since Shiro put this mission above his love for Adam then they were clearly not going to last.
Lance kept his mouth closed as Adam went on about how painful it was going to be now that Shiro was not in his life like he wanted him to be. He kept his mouth closed as Adam started to cry, fearful of a future where he had no one and he kept his mouth closed as Adam started to go one about how life wasn't fair and how it should have never ended this way.
He kept his mouth closed, then took the now empty glass of his brother and then told him to go to bed like a parent told their five-year-old son, making sure he got dressed in the correct clothing and making sure he was tucked in, before turning the light off and leaving the room, making sure that his phone was on charge and a bucket was nearby if he felt the need to throw up the alcohol he had consumed.
He kept his mouth closed until he got to his room, punched the wall to his roommate's surprise, and then started to rant to Hunk on his phone about horrible brothers who never took their sibling's experience into consideration and how Mr Sanchez has split up with Mr Shirogane earlier that evening.
He kept his mouth close, because what would he know about being left behind by someone who he loved the most in the entire world?
(? Years since Adam ran away; ? decapheobs since Lance left Earth – Time was weird and non-linear in space, it seemed.)
Despite the time that they had spent from their home planet, despite all the planets that they've seen, visited, saved, despite small and puny and underdeveloped it seemed against the rest, planet Earth was just as beautiful as ever.
With a bit of quick negations form both Keith and Allura, they were able to gain permission to land their Lions in the desert near to where they found the Blue Lion, and they let Allura and Coran marvel at the carvings inside the cliff before they walk out again, hands high in the air as military men point guns at their heads.
"What is it with people and handcuff," Lance muttered as they had their hand put behind them and cuffing them there, but if the look on the alien's faces, the blank stare of Keith's and the bashful smiles of Shiro, it seemed that these cuffs would not last as long as the space cuffs.
The truck ride across the desert to the Garrison was uneventful and quiet, the soldiers having been ordered to silence and the Paladins having nothing eventful to say either, buzzing with excitement to be back home and in reach to loved ones for the first time in years.
Once they get to the building, they're escorted through a side entrance and through some security doors, away from the other working civilians and cadets, before each quietly being separated, each lead by an officer with a helmet on and each taken down different corridors. If it had been a different situation, if it had been in space and with Galra instead of on Earth with humans, them maybe Lance would have been scared, would have been worried about what would happen to him, to his team and to the friends that he had made. Now, thought, now he was more concerned about the people that would have to deal with them, and wondering if the Garrison had enough budget for the people who undoubtedly needed therapy after this.
It didn't take long for the hallways to become familiar, for the doors to be recognisable, and for a flash of orange to walk pass. They were entering the public area of the building, he was probably far away from the other now, far away from where he was supposed to be he guessed. He was quiet when he was pushed into a staff room, a room that he had spent a lot of time in, and once the door slid shut Lance turned around with a frown on his face, his hands still behind locked behind him.
"You know, I thought that you actually cared about your job," he remarked as the soldier took his helmet off and put his glasses on, having put them in a pocket for the helmet to fit on him properly, but he didn't bother to take his boots off as he walked further into the place, still as tidy as Lance remembered it.
The silence was stifling. Adam walked over to the table and placed his gun down on it. He emptied his pockets, his keys, another key that went into another pocket, some spare paper, a notebook and pen, and something that was old and folded. Lance didn't move from the doorway. He felt out of place. It was so much different than last time. Last time, he was a cadet in his uniform looking for his brother's acceptance. Now, he was in a Paladin uniform with his hands cuffed behind him, wondering what to do with himself.
"What, in the blazing pits of hell, were you thinking, Lance?"
His brother's words were knives, cold and hard to swallow. It was said almost as a whisper, almost as quiet as the wind but somehow twice as sharp and much harder to ignore. It made the silence afterwards louder. Lance felt a lump beginning to form in his throat. The knives had cut in deep. The tears were almost like blood.
Adam didn't give way to the silence for long.
"You went missing Lance! We woke up one morning and you and your friends were gone. No trace. No leads. No nothing." Adam spat, counting each on his finger, each making Lance flinch a bit more than the last. "Did it not even cross your mind once to think about calling me, sending me a text, telling me you're alive!?"
Lance's eyes widened at the exclamation, before growing dark, his jaw tense and his fists clenched.
"Yeah, and I bet you're just the person to lecture me on running away with no contact, aren't you?" Adam's eyes widen with shock, and Lance continued, "Do you know how many emails I sent to you? Do you know how many times I tried to get in contact with you, to tell you how bad things were without you, how much scarier and lonely it was without you, only for the others to tell me to stop?" Lance almost screamed, and he was crying fully now, he couldn't stop the downpour of tears now that they were coming.
"You can talk about me 'running away' all you want, but you were the first person to leave. You can yell at me for leaving all you want, but at least I came back!" In the back of his mind, it registered to lance that, maybe, someone in the hall or the rooms next door could hear them, hear their yelling, hear their arguing, hear their screaming. But Lance did not care anymore.
Seconds later, he was surrounded by the heat and the warmth of a body, one with broad shoulders and a solid chest and a familiar heartbeat, and the sobs just came tumbling out of Lance, pent up anger and sadness flowing out of him all at once.
"Y-You left me behind, and you never came back," he sobbed into the uniform, the itchy material scratching his cheek and rubbing salty tears on his face, but he paid no mind to it. He felt his hands be unlocked, but he had to heart to move them, his show of emotion making him feel weak in the knees.
Adam started to talk again, nothing more than a whisper again, in a familiar melody that made Lance sink into his brother's arms more as the sobs stopped but the tears kept coming.
"That day, when you were in my room
I will never forget how you looked up and said
'Are you coming back home with me in the summer?'
'Dad's not going to hurt you anymore'
"And you seemed too grown up, and I felt so scared
You seemed so mature, and I—
And I knew there had been moments that I'd missed
And I knew there would be space I hadn't filled
And I knew I had failed you a billion different ways
And I have
And I know
I was wrong
"But now that time has come and gone
I will hold on tight, and tell you why it's okay
It's me and you, and we're a two-part package-
Adam stopped suddenly, causing Lance to lift his head from his brother's chest and look at Adam's face, now tear streaked and eyes puffy. Adam smiled at him, pulled him closer (Lance didn't realise how much he had grown until now, being able to look into his brother's eyes without much of a struggle)
"Your brother's not going anywhere, your brother's staying right here," Adam sang softly, his voice cracking as he cradled Lance to his chest, despite the height that Lance had gained, unable to finish his promise.
"Your brother's not going anywhere, your brother's staying right here," Lance felt himself beginning to sob again after he finished the line, but now he wasn't too sure why, while Adam had gained enough composure to finish the song, in the lowest decibel that his voice would allow.
"No matter what, I'll be here," Lance could feel Adam's heart thumping in his chest as Lance's sobs began to finally slow down, and he smiled as Adam finished the song in a whisper, "When it all feels so big, 'till it all feels so small. When it all feels so big, 'till it all feels so small, 'till it all fills so small."
By the time that Adam had finished, Lance had stopped crying, his arms around his brother's chest. Adam was smoothing down Lance's hair, longer and littered with split ends that would make Veronica scream from his time in space.
"You're a terrible singer Adam," Lance muttered into Adam's uniform.
"Shut it you brat," Adam retorted, earning him a snort from the younger, but yet they did not move. After a long time, perhaps too long if the cramps that Lance suddenly gained from staying still for too long said anything, they went and sat down at the table and conducted the debrief that surely the other Paladins had completed by now, before leaving Adam's room, together, to join the others, wherever they may be.
You're not supposed to have favourites within a family, it was one of the laws of the of the universe, but Lance could easily say that, without a doubt, Adam was his favourite brother in the world, in the entire universe. He came before the Paladins, before the rest of his blood family in Cuba.
Adam helped him discover the starts, discover his dreams of deep space travel, discover who he was, even if that took some time. He helped him to realise that not everyone is right, that sometimes family wasn't right, that sometimes, even brothers who come before everyone else in the universe, are not right.
Adam had been there for him when he needed him, up until he ran away of course. But, as he looked at the man who walked him towards his friends, his team, his new-found family, Lance could find it inside it inside himself to finally forgive him.
A.N. It honestly scares me how fast I wrote this, but I have been non-stop after we were discussing the idea of Lance and Adam being blood related in a discord channel, so here we are I guess. A special thanks to hauntedwintersweets for being a huge inspiration and for all of the art that has been made for it currently! For those of you who are Tokyo Ghoul fans, I just want to let you know that I am helping out with a Tokyo Ghoul Reverse Bang! If this seems like something that you want to get involved in, or you just want to find more, then just find us on tumblr under tokyoghoulreversebang!