Lance has a secret, and he’s taking it to the grave –except, he didn’t think the ‘taking it to the grave’ bit would happen quite so soon.
When the team head planetside on a diplomatic mission, Lance can’t decide if he’s ecstatic about it, or about to endure an intense bout of homesickness. Sure, the planet looks cool, the aliens themselves are pretty chill considering they’ve singlehandedly fended off Galra attacks up until now. But thanks to Pidge making the team clocks that run on Earth time, Lance knows that it’s almost his nineteenth birthday.
Yeah, he’s gonna go with the homesickness.
Unfortunately for him, the aliens they visit have two distinct qualities that, in any other circumstance, Lance would find cool; the ability to sense emotions, and the complete inability to keep secrets. That extends to their allies, as well.
He probably would have continued thinking those were pretty amazing skills –until the aliens sense negative emotions between the Paladins, and demand that to secure an alliance, the team must heal the dissent brewing in the fine cracks between each other thanks to the secrets they’re keeping, no matter how trivial.
Yeah. Homesickness probably wasn’t the right way to go.
Written 2018, last remembered edit 2019.
Lance wakes up the morning before his nineteenth birthday floating a clear foot above his bed.
He probably would have gone on blissfully sleeping, totally unaware that his levitation was acting up while he was unconscious, again, if Allura’s voice hadn’t sounded over the Castle’s speakers and politely demanded that all Paladins promptly wake up for that morning’s training drills. He’s not quite sure if the sharp tone in her voice to pointedly call out his name can be considered polite, but that’s the thing about princesses trained in diplomacy; you have no idea when they’re being plain rude or if they’re just being fair.
Needless to say, blinking awake to find himself staring in befuddled confusion at his bed instead of being in it, should at least elicit some sort of surprised shriek. It doesn’t. He’s only confused about it for .5 seconds before he realizes what happened –and no, zero gravity is not the answer.
If only.
Lance wrinkles his nose and glares at the bed like it has personally offended his ancestors. “Ay, quiznack.”
He thought he had this under control. Maybe not the other stuff, he’ll admit, that stuff he barely has a chance to practice with so it just pretty much lies dormant most of the time, but at least this. This simple baby-level stuff should be in control, dammit*.* This is the fourth time this week, and –if Pidge’s calculations are right, which is a technical surety –it’s only Friday. Ish. Give or take a few hours.
He closes his eyes, brows furrowing as he searches inside himself, in his chest, looking for that invisible and constantly moving band of energy that wraps itself around his heart and is what’s currently the source of his predicament. His lips thin out in exasperation as the energy shirks from his reach, sensing his intentions.
“Ay, ay, no comiences con esto otra vez,” he scolds it, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at its antics. “We don’t have time for this, and it’s not fun waking up to the ceiling version of a face-palm every freakin’ morning. And talking to myself as if that’s a normal thing to do is not a normal thing to do, at all.” He ends in a grumble.
He can feel the energy very obviously grouching as it secedes defeat after some more of his aggressive prodding, and allows Lance to smother it in chains he has to put on it every time it manages to slip through the constraints. It’s tiring, and annoying, and he really wishes he didn’t have to do this at all, but…after so long of this, and hiding what he can do from the only other people he’s around on a regular basis for almost a year now, it’s sort of become a habit.
Step 1: Wake up (if he fell asleep to begin with, which is a toss of the coin on most nights unless training was particularly hard, or he was just plain wiped out from fighting Galra).
Step 2: If his powers don’t act up, congratulations are in order. If his powers decide to give him some hate, spend at least ten minutes first cleaning up its mess.
(One time he accidentally started a fire in his bathroom and didn’t realize it until the smoke was coming out of from the closed door. It was not fun getting rid of sticky bits of what he assumes used to be his towel from the floor.)