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Since he was five years old, Lance McClain dreamed of falling in love.
Luis was seventeen when he said he knew he would marry his girlfriend, and Lance’s future sister-in-law, Maria. They met when they were fifthteen and in high school, like something out of a movie. Lance wanted that. He wanted to feel those sparks that he saw for his parents and his brother and every couple on tv.
As he got older, the wish stayed the same. When you fall in love, that other person, your
soulmate
, takes everything you hate about yourself and turns it into something beautiful and lovable. His corny humor? She’ll always find it hilarious. His big ears? She’ll say they’re cute. His giant, rowdy family? She’ll want to join it, add to it. And he’ll remind her that she is perfect every single day.
Lance could not wait to fall in love. Now he just had to find her.
13 years old.
Or him. Finding
him
would be nice too.
Lance had been perfectly aware that girls and boys were equally nice to look at and laugh with since he was little, but, for some reason, he just never put the pieces together that maybe there would be a boy out there who would want to marry him, put up with him. He supposed it made sense. Most boys were so
messy
, so at least then they could be messy together. Lance just couldn’t put up with that as much.
Lance first met Captain Takashi Shirogane when he came to inspect possible new recruits for Galaxy Garrison, which Lance had already been gearing up to applying to, but the extra presentation certainly gave a push to get all the entrance exam's studying done.
Capt- or, well, just Shiro, as he insisted to be called by everyone- he was extremely welcoming towards every student to come through the Garrison's doors, no matter their background. In his first year, Lance learned that Shiro was actually the faculty adviser for the school's equivalent of a GSA, which definitely piqued the boy's interest. The first time Lance showed up to a meeting, it was to accompany his new roommate, Hunk Garrett, a pansexual who was having a lot of anxiety during their transition into boarding school. Lance knew about bisexuality - Veronica had explained various labels to the family when she came out to them as a lesbian - but he never really worried about his identity before he actually reached dating age. Some people were cute and he was fine with that fact (Shiro was cute. Actually, he was a living definition of the word “gorgeous,” so Veronica certainly gave him some silent eye communication when Lance added some of the Garrison’s recruitment posters starring the captain to his bedroom decor).
But meeting Shiro, meeting all of the staff and upperclassmen who were proud with having their community, made him see that he wanted that confidence too. No matter who Lance’s soulmate was, he wanted to be ready to stride out into the world with the. That little spark inside of Lance grew stronger every time he ran into Shiro and his partner, another officer named Adam Wilde, a voice that told him to be proud.
Yeah, Lance was alright calling Shiro his bi-awakening, helping him understand that whenever Lance thought to himself “okay, but guys” he meant “
okay
, but
guys.
” Shiro was the ideal. Lance wanted to reach his level, possibly even make him proud.
And then Shiro was gone.
And then Shiro came back.
And, yes, it was somehow possible for him to get hotter.
15 years old.
His first girlfriend was Jenny Shaybon, a classmate on a track in Communications with dark, wild hair and electric blue eyes. She laughed at all his jokes and her friends were nice enough, all adding a nice change of pace to Lance and Hunk’s cafeteria table after some of the guys from their first year became a little too full of themselves for the roommates’ tastes.
Jenny liked when Lance braided her hair, just like his sisters had taught him, after a long day of exams and she would make him cute and colorful notes of encouragement for his piloting classes in return.
He would always take her out to the Garrison’s courtyard and greenhouses, where the desert surrounding them was able to have something resembling an oasis with plenty of grass and varying plants. They lie under a tree, Lance’s back up against the trunk and Jenny’s head pillowed on his rolled up uniform jacket, and he would strum out tunes on his old guitar, some old, some new, and many written by Lance, just for her.
There was an innocence, a simplicity to them. They were young, no future to really consider, just individual dreams as they worked through their school’s long hours, a focus on the present unlike any hyper-fixation Lance would ever know again. This feeling was not necessarily because he thought it was true love, but they did not really have anything else to compare it to at the time.
So they held on tight and grinned through it all.
Until the course-loads started getting more serious. Until Jenny wouldn’t want to video chat or call on their stretches of leave at home, and Lance wouldn’t either. Conversation and dates seemed repetitive after a while, because, as they went through adolescence, the two saw they did not have that much in common after all, and not every romance would be like the ones the couple saw on screens.
And that was okay.
17 years old.
Love at first sight? Oh
hell
yes, Lance believed in that. So, naturally, when a pretty alien with sparkling eyes and a chime-like laugh would sweep him right off his feet. Fate (via a broken spaceship) practically brought her right into his arms.
Nyma. What a name!
The idea of being a dashing hero for the universe sounded great in theory, but it was actually still leaving much to be desired for Lance. None of the team knew how long it would take to bring down the Galra, but he was sure it was going to be more than some weekend getaway to shove in a scrapbook down the line. The longing for his family and his house already ate away at Lance, and he needed some kind of normalcy.
What’s more normal than having a cute girl on his arm? Apparently, outer space has just as many romantic options as Earth, considering he’s only been out here a week and he already has Allura and, now, Nyma in his sights. So yeah, this whole hero thing would actually be more entertaining than it was stressful if they kept finding damsels to remind Lance that he was strong, brave, and a force to be reckoned.
Her flirting style occasionally left a sour taste in his mouth, though. Lance was not the biggest fan of Nyma’s constant mentioning of Keith.
“Keith is so a shoot-first-ask-questions-later kinda guy,” he explained. “Misses out on the finer points of life, like talking to you.”
His wink at the end brought out her little laugh again and Lance decided that he would be totally happy hearing that laugh for a long time to come.
Then he got tied to a tree. aND Blue was taken. A hero and a lion thief? Maybe not the best match after all.
Oh well, there would be others, Lance was sure. Next.
17-19 years old.
When she fell into his arms, Lance knew she would change his life forever - more than being shot into space by a weird, blue, robotic lion already had, anyway. There had always been something about Allura that just was so magnetic to Lance. It was hinted right there, in her name.
Allura
. Alluring, some mysterious force was pulling him into her orbit and, given everything else that had happened to their little group, Lance liked to believe it was fate.
She dragged him into the life of a hero and, while he needed to fake a smile that matched that imposing armor for a time, he grew into it. There were no real words to describe the impact she had on his life. A princess from outer space took him out of high school and into an intergalactic war. It was a fact that he could never go back the same.
He saw her learn to trust the team, learn to trust those she judged without evidence. He saw her mourn for Shrio, her partner in the captain’s chair. He saw her push away, choosing to walk with someone new rather than the rest of their group, which stung like a million hornets on his heart all at once. He saw her learn that you could face hardships and still be young, still have a life, whether it was a mall trip, a dance on stage, or a game of Monsters & Mana.
Sometimes, though, things became too heavy. And everything suffocated the whole team. That’s what the two of them were, a last bit of innocence trying to survive in the struggles, but forgetting how.
He would never regret loving her.
He just wished it hadn’t left such brutal scars.
It was weird to have all his belongings back, after only having a cellphone, a single set of clothes, and his memories as his only pieces of life on Earth for the years on Team Voltron. So, when Lance was able to return home, see that old bedroom again, covered in chipped, blue paint and Garrison posters, he felt like a child again.
And that hurt.
Lance spent
years
in space. He was a soldier. It was all he really knew anymore and, now, he was once again surrounded by the memories of a boy that Lance barely knew anymore. There were polaroids on the wall with old classmates of whom he couldn’t remember the names.
And Lance knew that in the top drawer of his desk, mixed in with folders and post-it notes, there would be a small, leather-bound journal that has seen better days, the pages within covered in multicolored tapes, photos, and doodles, and “Lance McClain” curling along the inside cover.
In seconds, but also slowly, so slowly, Lance approached the drawer, opened it, and reached inside, and then that little book was in his hands for the first time in who even knew how long anymore.
Opening it up, Lance’s eyes quickly took in his sloppy scrawl from what was probably fifth grade, in blue pen, of course, all of his notes had to be, by his own laws. Everything was here. Elementary and middle school crushes. Jenny Shaybon and their polaroids at Plaht City’s Holiday Festival.
Way
more gushing about Shiro than Lance would ever care to admit after actually becoming friends not only with him, but with his
little brother
.
Years and years of his life existed on these pages, long before he had to grow into a warrior, a survivor. Lance was holding a history of his heart, except it not everything had been written down yet.
Scrambling for a pen - couldn’t find blue so he had to use
red
, Lance flopped onto his childhood bed, sunlight streaming onto it through the window, and flipped pages until he reached the untouched portions of the journal. And he wrote. About everything he felt, all the people he met. Nyma, Plaxum, the Blades, and more, trying to draw them all to the best of his feverish ability at the time.
Until he only had one person left to mention.
Lance’s cheeks might as well have been on fire with how much he wanted to scratch at those damn markings in the moment.
The photo sat on his nightstand, placed there the moment he got home, before he took in everything else in the house. It was a nice picture; however, no matter how beautiful they looked, no matter how much they smiled, Lance knew that picture would forever be bittersweet. He could still feel her out there sometimes, when he looked up at the stars for long enough, connected to her and the lions through whatever quintessence she shared with him during their goodbyes.
Goodbyes. They would not see each other again, not for a long, long time, at least. She may have been his girlfriend for a time, but they were friends, part of their little found space family, for a long time before, and that felt just as important to Lance.
Slowly, with tenderness, he reached out for the picture frame, and gingerly removed the photo, giving it one last glance of longing before securing it on a fresh page in the diary-turned-scrapbook. He briefly stood to search through his duffel bag on the floor to pull out an envelope containing several photos Pidge printed from their adventures out in Team Voltron. He found a good one rather easily and placed it in the frame.
It wasn’t from the group’s little reunion on this new Altea, with that monument in the background that would never get her grace
just
right. This picture was the team at its prime, every together in the castle’s lounge, attempting to play some indecipherable, alien board game, before the siege on Zarkon’s HQ, before they had enough allies for a coalition, before they had any real credit at all for the heroes they were quickly becoming. A lot of trust still needed to grow between them, but Lance knew now that they got there. And it was beautiful to remember.
Then,
red
pen in hand, Lance wrote their story, starting with a name as elegant as its owner.
Allura.
The next day, Lance would call up Shiro and Pidge at the Garrison, after finishing planting Earth’s first Juniberry seeds, and ask if they could take one last swing at the flight simulators. Of course, Pidge was all for it, and made sure Hunk was in on the memo. A week later, Shiro got them into the sims and the Garrison Trio sat in those chair from so long ago, when overcompensation and nausea ran rampant. Shiro had Keith on a video call so he could watch them too. It was the Kerberos Rescue Simulation. The three barely had to speak, it went so fluid. As Lance thread the needle, he felt Blue
and
Red
and
what could only be the others from a million miles away.
The team talked for hours, about absolute nonsense, stuff like Kaltenecker trying to eat a shovel and Pidge and Matt’s new robot, Chip, learning how to dab. Shiro talked about his couple of dates with Curtis, and, for the first time ever,
Lance
gave
Shiro
the I’m-proud-of-you shoulder touch. Keith made Hunk promise to come by the Blades HQ soon so that the other agents could understand what
real cuisine
tastes like. And then he said that if Lance waits too long to get back out to space he would come drag him onto a ship himself. And they laughed.
Listening to everyone, Lance knew everything would be okay. They looked at him, and he felt love. A pure love that filled him like nothing else and all the worries flew away.
In that moment, drinking cocoa snatched from the Garrison’s instructors’ lounge in the middle of the night, sitting cross-legged in a circle on the floor, Lance felt so young again - God, he was only
twenty
, there’s so much time left! The present was okay. The present was pretty great. They’ve all lost, but they’ve loved. And if he can feel so loved by so many people all at once, people who dropped everything at his simple call with a childlike urge, then he can focus on loving himself, too.
Soulmates don’t have to be a husband or a wife, don’t even have to be a couple. It can be five kids out of their depth, holding each other’s broken pieces together and filling it with gold.
Suddenly, the present felt beautiful again, and Lance couldn’t wait to see what came next.