let me melt under the heat of your sun

by akaeijis, isteh (homeostesis)

Summary:

He begins to seek Keith out in a crowd without meaning to. Eyes occasionally following him like they were magnetized, looking for the familiar waves that barely brush the high uniform collars. He looks for dark hair and dark eyes, crossed arms and a silent frown, stark against the sea of enthusiastic, starry-eyed cadets.

He feels drawn to him.

(Or, Lance falls in love with Keith during the time they spent together at the Garrison.)

Notes:

title based off the poem, ‘kapag sinabi kong mahal kita’ or 'when i say i love you' which you can read in english here

which stacey (esbis) also drew a comic based on the poem on here!!!

thank u dan for help with spanish and thank you ate may for beta-ing!!

funfact: in my drafts this was pining lance (tm) bc this is it

Lance is eighteen and doe-eyed when he first sets foot in the Garrison. He’s fresh out of high school and miles away from home. It’s not his first time wearing the uniform since his mom forced him to try it on and wear it in front of everyone. It came in the mail along with his acceptance letter. The uniform is newly laundered, freshly pressed.

He got in. Somehow.

He’s always loved space. It’s fascinating to think about how big the universe can be: boundless, endless, eternal. He used to sneak out of his house to stargaze on the beaches. They always seem to call him, twinkling in hello.

(The universe is his second love.)

Exploring the universe, the chance to be a  part of something bigger than himself has always started a spark inside of him.

And now he’s here. The Galaxy Garrison.

All the new recruits were invited into the mess hall as soon as they were admitted into the faculty. Their luggage and other belongings were taken away to their dorms, kind of like a really fancy hotel service Lance notes. They were gathered to wait for one of the commanders to help them around their induction. The agenda that was sent with their acceptance letter said that the first day was going to be easy. Setting up their rooms, meeting their roommate, tour of the place, the works. It’s not exactly a military school, but close enough—they’re here to be honed and molded into engineers, space explorers, pilots.

Lance plays around with the edges of his sleeves. He already took a glimpse of the other recruits. All of them held a more regal air: sons and daughters of past pilots and engineers and scientists.

Himself?

He’s only a simple boy from Cuba.

He feels a tap on his shoulders so Lance turns to see himself face to face with a taller, stockier, guy with a yellow headband and warm brown eyes.

“Hey,” the guy sticks his hand out for a handshake. “I’m Hunk.”

Hunk has a smile that emits warmth and it immediately puts Lance at ease. “Lance.”

“Sooo, where are you from?” Hunk asks. Lance starts to reply, but Hunk keeps going. “Some guys recruited me because they saw my school records or something. Then they came to watch me work at my mother’s garage. I never thought about leaving Samoa, but I took the opportunity when they gave it to me. I thought maybe it would be some cool adventure.”

Hunk finishes his ramble with a deep exhale. He bites his lips when he looks back at Lance. “Sorry, I’m just anxious.”

Lance pats the big guy’s back. “It’s okay bud, me too. Cuban raised but moved to Florida. So, engineering?” Calming people’s nerves is a skill he’s honed throughout the years of being part of a huge family.

“Yup. My tina, oh wait, my mom, she probably gave birth to me in a garage. ” Hunk replies in a small voice and a small smile.

“That’s cool! I can’t process that aspect at all. I’m good with projectiles and stuff, but hand me wires and gears? No can do. They all look the same to me.”

“Thanks! I learned all about it from my mom, she’s great and—”

Hunk’s interrupted by the sound of firm footsteps on the metal ground, echoing throughout the area. Lance’s eyes stray to the setup stage in front of him. Induction was probably just about to begin. He keeps his eyes to the foot of the stage, eye level. He was never that hyped about people ordering him what to do.

“Welcome, cadets.”

The commander stops, military boots in a perfect position of attention. Lance looks up.

Takashi Shirogane.

It’s unmistakable, the set jawline, rough dark hair, kind eyes. Lance takes a deep breath, a second to recuperate himself.

This is the man Lance never thought he would see in person. A man who touched Lance’s whole soul without knowing. A figure on the posters on his wall, the posters he pointed at when he was twelve years old, shouting to his mom, ‘that’s my hero!’

He’s been the hero in all of Lance’s storybooks and he’s right in there. A few steps away.

“My name is Takashi Shirogane,” Lance’s own breathing is shallow, eyes enlarged and reverent. “I’m one of the leading commanders of the Galaxy Garrison. I’m here to provide a warm welcome and congratulations to all the new recruits.”

“As you all know, today is just a simple introduction. Getting to know our institute. We will be providing you your dorms and give you time to settle in. At around seventeen hundred we’ll gather for a tour and dinner after. Commander Samuel Holt is going to take the wheel and talk about skill classes and schedules.”

Lance’s eyes trail after Commander Shirogane as the man walks off the stage to the back of the podium. In the shadows of the backstage, Commander Shirogane raises one of his hands and curls his lips into a small smile. Lance feels his own hand twitch. A natural instinct. Possibly.

Lance stops himself from waving his hand like an idiot. Instead, he tries to find the person Commander Shirogane was acknowledging, but all Lance can see are unknown faces.

Lance pays half attention the rest of the time. Commander Holt talks about aptitude testing and general classes as well as specialized classes. Then he passes it to another of the staff, calling himself Iverson, who talks about the codes and conduct and everything else that was in the handbook that Lance studied at home.

Maybe Lance wasn’t paying enough attention, because Hunk grabs his left shoulder and says, “Hey man, we’re heading to our assigned dorms now. Are you alright?”

Lance quickly recovers, another finely tuned skill learned over time, “Of course! Never better,” and turns on his heels and follows the crowd.

But, apparently, he’s going too slow for some people (which makes zero sense since he’s right behind everyone else) because some assshole shoves his shoulder and stalks forward, mumbling, “Get a move on.”

“Hey!” Lance reaches out to grab the douche’s shoulder. Like,  what the fuck, he was only walking. “What are you saying? I was walking at a normal pace, cool-”

The guy’s hair is unruly and his eyes are an alarming dark color. It shuts Lance up. He feels shivers run down his spine. They aren’t a dark brown or black, even. “You’re going to fall behind if you continue at that pace. Let go of me.”

Despite Lance having a couple of inches over this guy, the guy seems to glare down at Lance. As if he’s better than Lance.  

(Maybe his eyes have a bit of a purple tint.)

The jackass tries to maneuver out of Lance’s grip, but Lance grabs the other’s wrist. “Hey, at least apologize.”

“Why should I apologize? You were the one that was walking too darn slow.”

“Uh? You bumped into me? Dude-”

“Is there a problem here?” A gruff voice interrupts them, a vague figure in a uniform that Lance can see through his peripheral. Lance swallows a lump in his throat and looks up.

Lance sighs in relief. It’s only one of the guards. Lance can deal with that. He knows how to avoid tough store clerks and suspicious mall cops.

“Hi, sir, ma’am. Nothing here! Me and uh,” Lance looks over to Mr. I’m Too Cool For You to fill in the blanks. Lance also notices he’s still holding the other guy’s wrist. He lets go.

He looks back at Lance with intense eyes. Lance bites his lip. “Vân Kiều. Keith Vân Kiều.”

“We were just talking. Yeah. About walking in halls.”

The guard makes a noncommittal sound. “Just keep walking. And you, son? Your name?”

Lance looks directly at Vân Kiều. “The name’s Lance.”

“Whatever,” Vân Kiều brushes past him, shoulders broad and proud.

Hunk prods at him, snapping Lance out of it. “Dude, I was trying to calm you down but you were getting so heated. What did the guard want? Are you okay? Who was that other guy?”

Lance shrugs, “Vân Kiều, apparently. He just needs to chill. I mean, I think I was walking normally?”

They both stop talking when a girl with pigtails shushes them. They’re led to a common area, with a large board with their dorm assignments. The walls are made out of cold steel like the whole area is the interior of a ship rather than a building.

Do people actually live like this?

Lance strolls up and finds out it’s not even a board. It’s a hologram. There are multiple search bars on both sides of the screen where they can just insert their name and Lance does so.

 

Lance Alvarez, Room C24, Pod Chip

ID: 72816

Roommate: Hunk Manuia

 

Lance looks around and Hunk-from-earlier is right next to him. Lance tugs on his sleeves, “Hey, big man, this is you, right?”

Hunk scans the words and nods, “Yeah!”

Lance raises his hand for a high five, “Alright, dude! Let’s check it out.” Lance lets Hunk lead them to their dorm and allows his own eyes to wander up to ceilings and back down to the floor. The footsteps from the crowd leave a clamor of metallic sound that echoes all throughout the hallways, joined with intermingling voices.

For a moment, he feels like a child again—like when his mother took him somewhere big and new and he was so small, spinning in circles with his mouth agape and eyes wide, trying to comprehend what he was seeing. The walls seemed as if they could go on forever in a giant space where the ceiling was practically the sky itself.

He almost pales in the vastness of it, until the area shrinks into a maze of intricate gray corridors.

When they finally reach the dorm, Hunk swipes his ID card and the door slides. The place is adequate enough, a bunk bed, two desks, plenty of storage. Lance spots their boxes and luggage all set up in neat piles set up by the side.

The downside is, they have communal showers.

(Not that Lance isn’t used to sharing spaces, being part of a family of seven, but this is a little different.)

Lance can’t believe he’s made it this far. Rooms with sophisticated technology and state of the art sciences. Ceilings that extend upwards to the sky and machines and simulators that are supposed to prepare them for anything that could happen. It’s all like a dream. There’s a sense of the impossible, as if everything is just an illusion and could be taken away from him He has to be gentle with his footsteps and touches because it could all be whisked away from him at any second.

The only sliver of the outside world is through the small window by the top bunk, showing the early afternoon rays.

“Can I take the bottom bunk?” Hunk asks him. “I never liked the hassle of the top bunk.”

Relief sweeps through the rest of Lance’s body. “No problem.”

Lance starts to climb up the ladder to have a feel of the bunk. The linens are fresh and he makes sure to dangle his feet since he still has his boots on and he doesn’t want to damage the sheets. The pillow is originally opposite the window, but Lance moves it in favor to the sun’s rays.

Then he flops on his back, facing the ceiling. The ceiling is gray as well. Perfect. Stainless. Unfamiliar. Cold. Unwelcoming.

He thinks of his room with the faint cracks that crawled across the ceiling, connecting faded glow-in-the-dark stars with spidery strings. He thinks of his window, the panoramic view filtered by sheer curtains; tries to find colorful blocks of houses carved into the walls of canyons in the distance. Warm quilts and ocean breeze. Cuba. Florida. Every home under the stars.

He continues to stare at the ceiling.

(When they’re finished with their agenda for the day, dreamlessness swathes over him like sea foam. Eventually.)  

 

 

 -

 

 

Lance is only walking to the mess hall for breakfast when he sees Vân Kiều again. Lance told Hunk to go on ahead because he was going to take a while with his morning routine. Foam cleanser, toners, moisturizer. It’s not as elaborate as his night routine or his Saturday routine.

(He's also forsaken sunscreen. There’s really no need for it anymore.)

That’s when he sees him. And Takashi Shirogane.

Lance first does a double take simply because Commander Shirogane is there. He seems to be talking to someone, so Lance decides against saying hi. He doesn’t want to make a bad impression and intrude. Instead, he tries to find out who Commander Shirogane is talking to. Then he finds out it’s the same kid from yesterday.

He’s at the end of the hallways, the one that connects the pods to the main areas. They’re talking in a corner, seemingly enraptured in their own world. They radiate a sense of comfort and fondness that looks all too familiar and foreign to Lance. He knows what affection is, he’s lived it at every nook and cranny of his own home.

It’s foreign in a way to see soft edges and laughing undertones from Vân Kiều, who has his arms crossed but still wears an eased expression.

He feels a sharp spike of spite rise like bile. Vân Kiều is in the same year as him and they’ve only been here a short while, but he’s already on such good terms with the higher-ups. Sure, Takashi Shirogane was known for being kind, more so than most authority figures, so maybe they just happened to have a normal conversation?

But the fondness: how does it tie in?

(A corner in his mind replies for him, ‘Obviously it’s because Commander Shirogane doesn’t want to talk to you. Why would anyone want to talk to you’ .)

Lance inhales and decides to speed up his steps. It’s no use to be thinking uselessthoughts. Breakfast is waiting for him.

Breakfast is two pieces of toast and a banana.

Hunk looks up at him, eyes knit in concern. “Dude, is that enough for you?”

Lance shrugs. “Not that hungry.” He doesn’t mention that he lost his appetite due to Vân Kiều.

“Are you okay?” Hunk asks, taking a spoonful of oatmeal.

“I’m fine,” Lance starts spreading butter on his toast. “What classes you do you have? I know general classes like Astrophysics are necessary but like have specialized classes for piloting.”

“Some structural mechanics for now. Getting familiar with Garrison technology and how to work with other technology in case of emergencies. You?”

“Flight school basics. We don’t get skill ranks until later.” Lance takes a bite into the toast and it’s stale.

They continue to talk more about each other, favorite color and food, as usual with roommates. They bring up the subject of decorating their dorm at some point in time. This is easy, this is normal. Having good-natured conversations with friends.

Lance leaves for his class with a smile on his face. He’s already forgotten about what upset him earlier. Vân who?

He’s feeling reenergized and steps into Room P51 with a flourish to his step.

Nevermind. Mood ruined. Vân Kiều’s sitting right there, center stage of the classroom. Lance has to clench his teeth down to prevent himself from saying anything. He trudges to the seat behind Vân Kiều, setting his bag down gently.

Lance knows his mouth is twisting into a frown, it’s a muscle position his sister would yell at him, saying he's going to get wrinkles. But he can’t help it. Vân Kiều already left a bad impression on him, then the conversation with Shiro. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

Then Lance notices the mullet.

Oh my god, this kid has a mullet. There’s no mistake about it. Lance can see Vân Kiều’s hair trail down the nape of his neck. Was hair that long even allowed at the Garrison? Lance tries to suppress a snort but gets weird looks from people sitting next to him.

Orientation passes by in a colorful blur: Lance paid attention and now he has names to match every face in the room in each class so far. It’s almost reminiscent of high school, minus the murky orange uniforms and the instructors having the ability to silence a class easily. There isn’t much to know besides their names, and for a moment he wishes he could at least know things like where they were from or why they decided to join, how they got in and what they wanted to do—

The person behind him tuts in annoyance as he leaves the roll call hanging. He replies with a “Present, ma’am,” a few seconds late. He flashes the person a quick grin before the period begins and turns back to the front.

 

 

-

 

 

He learns that Vân Kiều doesn’t even pay attention. Lance tears his eyes from the front and sees Gonzalez on the left taking down notes, Tenali on the right boring holes into the screen, his own handwriting jumping out at him from his paper. He watches as Vân Kiều’s head droop a little to the side and Lance wonders if he was used to sitting in the corners or back rows instead of the middle.

Lance flounders a little when he gets a 94 back on their last test—could have done better, but he paid attention in class and has zero regrets staying up to spend three hours studying for it, another half hour breezing through for a last-minute review—but then Vân Kiều, who sat half the period reading irrelevant pages at the end of the textbook then drawing straight lines down the margins of his notebook for the other half, just had to get the same score as him. He probably just studied in the evening, but, really. Lance knows how to read people, but it’s a little off-putting when everyone around him is visibly more enthusiastic about their education. It’s the Galaxy Garrison, not a nondescript university.

(Lance doesn’t want to admit how many times his eyes wander back to Vân Kiều.)

 

 

-

 

 

They're in their dorms before the commander has to mockingly shout "bedtime, children!" down their specific corridor again.

Lance patters around their room in a facemask, collecting stray containers and bottles of serums and creams he'd left here and there. Hunk sits on his bed, watching. The vents hum.

"What?" Lance says.

"Nothing, it's just," Hunk laughs softly, "I don't know, it reminded me of my sister. Intense skincare routine and all."

“You have a sister? Me too! She’s the one that taught me all about this,” Lance gestures to his own face.

Hunk nods, “Her name’s Penina—but we call her Penny for short. She has her hair bobbed and really likes flowers. She’s really interested in volcanic and sea based products? She’s only twelve right now, but she’s already getting really good at surfing. She goes out with her friends a lot. And there’s really nowhere to go since we live on an island.”

Hunk trails off and laughs sheepishly. “Sorry, I was rambling. Homesick, I guess.”

Lance looks down at his feet. "I didn't really expect to get homesick either. My sister said, ‘hey, you'll be too busy spinning around machines and flying to notice, and that I could call anytime, anyway.’ But it feels like forever since I've left home."

"I think we all miss home," Hunk smiles.

The vents keep humming. The steady, low hum cannot soothe them the way the rushing waves lap the shore. It’s as familiar as calloused hands, stroking them to sleep. "But I don't really regret it, you know? Joining the Garrison," Hunk says. "I know a lot of people don't see me as a risk-taker, but I had this opportunity, so I took it. And my tama was so proud he cooked up an entire feast for half the neighborhood right on the beach." Few nights spent with Hunk and Lance knows that tama means father and that Hunk embodies firelight and sand seeping through wooden boards, spices and aromas overpowering sea salt. "My mom looked up and said, 'when you come back, tell us what it was like up there.'"

Lance can almost feel the warmth.

Hunk laughs, cheeks pink and a little conscious. "And, well, I didn't really tell her I don't reaaaally plan on going up there, I'm not that fond of leaving the ground." He waves around a bit. "But, maybe." A sigh. "It was her old dream, and as a kid I had all those fantasies of making spaceships and helping people—helping her—get to space rubbed off on me. I want to make her proud."

Lance heads over to their dorm’s mirror and carefully peels off the sheet mask and starts to pat his face dry. “What was your first dream though?”

He can see Hunk’s confusion through the mirror. “What do you mean?”

“Like, when you were five years old and you wanted to fly like Superman. Or dance around like in Cinderella. Take your pick.”

Hunk ponders over the question for a while, resting his cheek on his palm, “I guess it would be something about cars? I know that sounds weird, but I grew up working with them. My favorite movie was Cars. Lightning McQueen was kind of my actual hero.”

Lance climbs up to the top bunk and starts to lay down. “That’s not silly! I wanted to be a mermaid. Merman? Mermaids sound prettier.”

“Why?”

“Before my family moved to Florida, we lived right on the coast of Cuba. And Hunk, oh my god, the water is the clearest I’ve ever seen. I can stay there all day long. My siblings would try to go in as deep as possible. I always wanted to explore the ocean, I mean, listen, Hunk,” Lance leans down to face Hunk upside down. “Almost the entire ocean is unmapped! Who knows what lives down there! It’s just so cool! Like sea worms! And how there are giant squids and turtles! It’s just. So cool.” Lance finishes eloquently.

(There’s an ache deeply buried in his chest.)

“Well,” Hunk says, “you’ll be exploring space soon. If it’s any consolation: scary creatures, uncharted territory, isn’t even moving through space kinda like swimming?”

“Like, space mermaids?” Lance chuckles, an image of some pilot wriggling through the stars in a one-legged suit coming to mind. “Well, we never know.” He pulls himself back from the edge of the bunk, but they don’t stop talking until well after midnight.

Sleep comes easier this time.

 

 

-

 

 

He begins to seek Vân Kiều out in a crowd without meaning to. Eyes occasionally following him like they were magnetized, looking for the familiar waves that barely brush the high uniform collars. He looks for dark hair and dark eyes, crossed arms and a silent frown. He feels drawn to him.

Sometimes he finds him, sometimes he doesn’t.

Lance notices the way he talks to higher-ups, “sir” and “ma’am” tacked onto the ends of his sentences like meaningless punctuation points, wasted breaths. Notices the way his eyes do not focus on any one thing during demonstrations, notices how his hands stiffen when a conversation with another student goes on for too long.

Notices how he only ever seems to soften when he’s around Takashi Shirogane.

He passes them both again in the hallway. Vân Kiều is fully turned to the commander unlike everyone else he talks to, like he has no intention of walking away once the conversation meets a lull. He sees him roll his eyes, but this time there’s fondness instead of exasperation alone; he sees Shiro laugh and watches their hands and shoulders move together in conversation. He catches a “good luck”, a pat on the back and a laugh before he rounds the corner to the classroom.

In the next few weeks, Lance watches him ace tests and avoid people. Distantly, he wonders if Shiro Shoulder Pats are the guy’s secret—if it didn’t fill him with a crazy intense drive to ace everything to make the commander proud, then it must be science. Vân Kiều probably absorbs information from around him like some weird osmosis thing. Lance brings this theory up in the mess hall when he sees him taking a nap with his head over a textbook, receiving some titters from the group he was eating with.

Hunk learns to deal with all of this, because when Lance isn’t talking about himself or his family he tends to focus solely on one person to talk about, be in about Keith, or Shirogane, or Iverson throwing an offhand compliment or chewing him out, or a pretty girl and a cute guy Hunk doesn’t share a class with.

Lance watches Hunk do homework, eyes following Hunk’s stylus as he draws a complicated network of something or other that he can’t really comprehend, but it looks awesome anyway.

He looks at how Hunk’s brows furrow in concentration, neon yellows and blues and reds reflecting in his eyes, how confident and sure he is when he’s working because he’s great and smart like that and Lance is really proud.

Then his phone beeps and he pushes himself from the desk and rolls over to another side of the room, knowing Hunk avoids outside chatter while working when he can.

“Lance!” the voice at the other end shouts, but Lance doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t have to look at the caller ID to recognize that voice.

“Maria! I missed you so much—”

He hears the din from behind his older sister, voices streaming into the speak, interlaced with distant barks and scraping chairs. “Are you talking to Alejandro?” “Tell Lance about my science project!” “Move over, I was going to wash the dishes tonight!” He hears this noise every other day through the phone, and it never fails to make him cozy all over.

“Wait, are you at home? In Tampa?” he asks, suddenly remembering who he was talking to. “I thought you went back to Cuba in January.”

“Yeah, well, I wanted to visit! Also, stop with the small talk, I’m always so busy we can only chat about important things. Did you finally talk to the space guy?”

“Mariaaa,” he whines, “his name’s Takashi Shirogane, and no, I have not talked to him, even though I see him like every week!”

“How come?”

“Well. He’s. He’s so—!” Lance spins around in his chair and makes an ungodly warbly noise in the back of his throat that makes Hunk look up, “you know? I know I have girls and guys falling over around me like all the time, but I can’t really go up to him like, hey did you know you were my idol since I was like twelve?”

“You said he was nice and talked to new cadets,” his sister pointed out.

“Yes! But it’s not like he’ll remember me, I bet he’s had people compliment him over and over again.” He ends up mumbling. Then images of dark hair and eyes flash in his head. “And like, there’s this guy—”

“Oooh, a guuy,” Maria sing-songs and Lance stops her right there.

“No, Maria, like, he’s always talking to Shirogane and never studies but still the top of the class and his hair is ugly and when he crosses his arms it looks flattering—”

“Lance, sweetie—”

“ But Shirogane’s going to be so blown away by me when we start flying the simulators. I’ve read up and even watched in on the higher classes and everything and we’re going to talk so much he’ll start calling me by my first name by the end of the week,” Lance exaggerates, amusing himself with the little pipe dream.

Maria laughs on the other end. “I know you’ll do great.”

“Of course! Who are you talking to?”

“My insufferable, incredible, talented little brother, no one else,” she answers smoothly. “Got any opportunity to show off that aim of yours yet?”

“I don’t know when, but I’m sure we’ll be handling projectiles at some point.” He’s still a little distracted from the praise, grinning and practically glowing.

“Good, because I didn’t let you ruin my posters with your darts for years for nothing.”

He briefly remembers holes torn into some supermodel’s eyes and Maria screaming at him and lisping through her braces a decade ago. Lance snickers into the phone, promising her he’d do his best.

 

 

-

 

 

“Guys, I swear, there’s something up with him.” Lance takes a bite of their dinner food. He thinks it’s a combo of mashed potatoes and green peas. “It’s not possible to be that good at everything. I bet he can’t ride even ride a bike.”

He’s talking to a group composed of the same kids from his pod. They barely look up or question who ‘he’ is.  

A girl he’s come to know as Rebecca shrugs. She’s the daughter of a retired airline pilot. “Naturally talented, I guess. We also don’t know the result of our private simulations, so,” She does a shrug. “So, you’ll never know how he did on that.”

Lance chews on a stick of broccoli, glaring at the said subject across the room. Vân Kiều sits with his pod, usually silent but does insert a jab here and there. He doesn’t seem as tense as usual, no frown, no crossed arms. The most Vân Kiều does is a small smile that makes Lance stop everything for a second.

Then Lance gazes across the cafe. Another thing that Lance adds to his reasons for disliking Vân Kiều: how he seems to have caught everyone’s attention. He only did a single sweep across the room and he knows at least half of the students are staring at him. Mostly girls, some guys. Maybe there’s a bad boy appeal. Rugged nature, gruff responses, disappearances out of nowhere. Lance doesn’t understand.

Top of the class, teacher’s favorite, class heartthrob, what’s next? Following the footsteps of Commander Shirogane?

Lance doesn’t want the answer to that.

“How do you think he does on the privates?” Lance asks. Vân Kiều has his arms resting on the table, listening to his own group’s chat. “If he truly is doing late night cramming, he might not do so hot on hands-on stuff. That’s how people are right? Great at tests, bad at application, vice versa.”

“Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t.” A guy named Eustace waves his hand. “But all we can do is acknowledge that Vân Key is--”

“Vân Kiều,” Lance mumbles.

“Yeah, that, is gifted. Maybe a prodigy. We still have our placement sims by the end of the week.” Then, Eustace points at him with a fork that’s stabbed with a carrot. “Maybe it’ll be a bit beneficial if you stop obsessing over him.”

“I — I do not !” Lance squeaks. His voice is a bit too high. “There’s just something sketchy about him!”

“Keep telling that to yourself, Lance.” Rebecca giggles and the others from his pod join in. Lance feels his cheeks heat up and pouts. He pointedly doesn’t talk about Vân Kiều the rest of the evening, at least for the rest of their dinner. He isn’t sure if he can stop himself back at his dorm.

Lance finds out that can’t stop himself and Hunk is the one to suffer.

 

 

-

 

 

“Attention!” Commander Iverson bellows at the gathered cadets. Lance feels his mind wander. Iverson isn’t his first pick for a flight instructor. He doesn’t do well when people tell him what to do. “This is your final simulator before we divide you into your skill classes which will combine your classroom grades and your simulator proficiency. We’re going in alphabetical order. Addison, get ready! At ease, the rest of you.”

Lance bites his own lip. He isn’t sure how he feels about the idea of everyone watching him. Of course, he shouldn’t worry—he’s not going to crash and burn.

Cheap shot, a voice in the back of his head says.

Lance barely looks up at the screen to watch how Addison’s progress was, too occupied in trying to control his own twitching nerves. He’s sure he’s only nervous because it’s the final simulator until they get placed in specialized ranks. Not because Keith Vân Kiều is somewhere in the crowd behind him.

He feels himself detach from his surroundings. The chatter from the rest of the class fades into nothing more than a white noise and the cold walls seem blurred in his vision.

“Alvarez! You’re up!”

It sobers Lance up. Steady breaths, his father used to tell him. So Lance does.

Lance side eyes Vân Kiều before he enters the sim.

His boots echo throughout the machine. He’s been in one of these a couple of times now but he feels a bit lost when he takes a seat. He looks back at the control panel. He isn’t good with this. With machinery. Wires. Gears. Like give him an elementary baseball and a bat, he’ll figure the velocity and acceleration at various intervals in no time. But wire a system? No siree.

Lance buckles his seatbelt, something important he’s learned from his mother. He double checks, triple checks the systems before he’s sure he’s ready to launch. A green light flashes above him, signaling that the runway is clear. “All systems ready, launching in five.”

Lance inhales, bracing himself for take off, counting until, “One.” He pushes the throttle lever and starts to speed forward.

He takes a moment to admire the levity that spreads all over his body. Even after all of the practices, he still feels a fresh shot of endorphins run through his blood. But a moment is all it takes to miss an incoming asteroid, Lance mutters a curse and swerves to the left.

It was only a single asteroid, but Lance sees the smaller space rocks barely the size of his hand start to pass his ship and Lance immediately knows it: Incoming asteroid belt. A flash by his hands signals him the heightened percentage of carbon.

Lance takes a second glance at his left-most screen. His mission is basic. Get to the planet known as Omodae. The navigation panel signals him to check his right and Lance does so.

That’s when he sees the planet. It’s a reddish-brown color, set against the background of foreign stars that aren’t from their galaxy. This is what Lance signed up for. Quenching his fascination of what was up above, treading through the endless universe. He wonders if this is a true planet out there or one that the Garrison ju—

“Hazard Alert. Hazard Alert.” The ship warns him and Lance whispers. “Fuck.” He lurches to the side, narrowly dodging one satellite after the other, only able to focus on what’s in front of and not able to think of the next step he has to take. There’s a foggy thought that runs in his head, the asteroid belt surrounds Omodae you idiot, and Lance veers to the side again, bringing his whole body with.

He finally evacuates out of the belt and spots a clear landing trail. Lance’s palms are sticky on the wheel, barely thinking as he lands. The lights turn off in the simulation and Lance takes that as his cue to get out

The hatch opens and Commander Iverson’s already waiting for him, frowning and arms crossed. “What did you do wrong this time, Alvarez.”

“Wrong?” Lance chuckles. “With my name in the same sentence? Impossible.”

“Pay more attention to your surroundings. Gruff, but still impressive how you maneuvered throughout the course. Beilschmidt, next!”

Lance strays to the side of the crowd. He plays with his fingers, mildly glancing at the walls and back at the projector. They’re spending the whole afternoon for this and there’s nothing much to do. They’re required to watch, something about learning from your fellow batchmates. There are no windows at the Garrison, except the small one at the dorms, so Lance has nothing to stare out to distract himself.

“Vân Kiều!” eventually rings out and Lance immediately perks up. He feels his breath catch, watching broad shoulders walk up to the simulator and disappear.

The moment Vân Kiều enters, as shown through a screen in front of them, something shifts. Lance isn’t sure if it’s him or Vân Kiều, maybe both, but it leaves the air charged and crisp with static. Lance watches him take a steady seat at the helm, taking a deep breath. It’s all cinematic, unreal. Gloved hands clench tightly over the control wheel, smooth voice resonating through the speakers: “Launching in five.”

Lance’s stomach drops and he feels like his own veins are aflame.

“Four.”

His own pulse speeds up, roaring in his ears.

“Three.”

Vân Kiều checks out the systems at the top of the helm, showing off his upper arms, and Lance swallows.

“Two.”

And then Lance sees ember eyes burst into brilliant, determined fire and he knows he’s a goner.

“One.”

Vân Kiều pushes the yoke forward, hands soaring over controls like he lives for it. He barely checks what buttons he presses as if he knows the layout by heart. The corners of his mouth lift into a smirk.

That’s dangerous, Lance thinks.

Lance feels a panic, the same feeling when half of your weight is off-balanced, the uncertainty, the rush, the exhilaration. The pit in his stomach changes into something that spreads all over his body. He feels like he can hear Vân Kiều’s own heartbeat or maybe that’s just his own. He feels as if he fell underwater on his back, watching the glare of the sun as the water rushes through his nose and water begins to drown him.

He feels the shore of Varadero by his feet, the gusts of Tampa through his skin, the imprint of stars that were left in his eyes when he was fourteen.

He sees the color red flash before his eyes.

Lance thinks that the smirk, the free expression, the way Keith Vân Kiều’s whole face lights up—could be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

(In the future, Lance will look back at this time and think that this was probably when he fell in love.)

When Vân Kiều lifts up, Lance feels himself move with him. Vân Kiều seems to go steady but Lance spots him bringing the yoke closer to his chest. There’s a ringing in Lance’s ears and Vân Kiều thrusts forward. Lance’s own breathing doesn’t appear to be breathing. It’s like trying to inhale during a free-fall. His own body is tingling and adrenaline rushes and his chest is weightless and Lance can’t help this is how he felt when he first took a spin at the sims.

The class watches in awe as Vân Kiều clears the asteroid field and manages to land safely, smoothly on the planet. Short breaths over the intercom. The simulation switches off, lights dimming for a second before a row of harsh white lights flash on overhead.

He lingers for a few seconds before unbuckling the safety belts and getting up.

Vân Kiều steps out of the simulator looking like another person. He’s breathing heavy, face slightly flushed with exhilaration, attempting to play it cool but unable to suppress the grin on his face. Keith practically glows—Lance can almost feel the rush of adrenaline thrumming through his veins from the platform. Like he was born to cut through the skies and fly and be everything Lance has ever wanted to be. Lance feels himself burning from the inside.  

“Great job in there, cadet,” Iverson says, nodding at Vân Kiều as he steps off the platform, the gleam of satisfaction in his eye almost foreign.

Lance feels his face light up when he notices Vân Kiều walking in his direction. He tries to push down the rising heat and his right arm twitches.

His eyes trail after Vân Kiều’s back as he brushes past Lance.

 

 

-

 

 

Here’s a funny secret: Lance takes the longer route to his classes. Sometimes. Said longer route may go through the hallways of Pod Robin.

The pod that Vân Kiều may or may not be a part of.

It’s a hassle. He has to walk to class ten minutes earlier than he should, speed walk to places he needs to be. Lance catches himself looking for people he’s seen around Vân Kiều and sometimes catching the prodigy himself. Lance is little frazzled with juggling thoughts of an icy tongue-lashing from Commander Myung, trying not to look too much like an outsider, and absently looking Vân Kiều himself.

It’s not even worth it. He’ll barely see Vân Kiều for more than a few seconds. But he still takes the trip. For some reason.

“Hey, Alvarez, right?”

Lance stops dead in his tracks to see another cadet coming up beside him. “Yeah?”

They look him up and down, chewing on their tongue, eyes narrowed in amusement. “You’re not supposed to be here, you know.”

“A little exercise is ne—”

“Yeah, right. Keith left earlier than most of us today. For the class ranks. His last class is Myung’s, by the way.”

Lance does not mention he’s been counting down the days to that ever since they started on training, but Vân Kiều leaving early for it was something he didn’t know prior. He cracks a faux confused smile. “Uhh, random guy and I have the same schedule. Cool, I don’t see why I needed to know that,” he answers in a rush as he starts to walk faster, heart thrumming slightly quicker.

“I’ll tell him you said hi!” they call across the hallway, and Lance power walks all the way to his classroom on the other end of the building with tense shoulders and buzzing ears.

Lance sprints into the room right on time and ends up in the seat closest to the entrance, far from anyone he knows, but Commander Myung doesn’t seem to see anything wrong, so he doesn’t complain. It’s the last class of the day, Friday, and Lance practically vibrates in his seat all throughout the history lecture waiting for the class ranks to be announced.

He sits up straight and listens more attentively than ever, mind a roiling mess of ‘whatever happens, we’re proud of you’ in six different voices, names of long-gone navigators and dates, I did my best so it’s okay and I have to be somewhere up there crashing against each other like ocean waves. He knows he isn’t alone—excited murmurs start washing over the class as Myung wraps up the lecture and the screen fades to black.

Six screens materialize in a scattering of cold blue in front, high over the heads of the students. Lance can practically feel his head throb in anticipation as Myung commends them for their work so far, presses a button, and suddenly names start flashing from the bottom up, letter by letter in rapid succession, from the twentieth best cadet, the nineteenth, the eighteenth, all the way up to—

 

16. Alvarez, Lance

 

Oh.

He feels his brain click off. The names mount higher and higher: Eigenmann, Wong, Jabari, Nguyen…

Sixteen. Sixteenth in the entire batch. It was good. He’s made it this far ( not far enough ) sixteenth was a culmination of all those 80s and 90s and almost but never 100s ( you could have done better ) he’s going to call his mother and tell her he made it to the top twenty, and he’ll take what words of happiness there will be. He isn’t sure at all of what to feel yet.

He recognizes the newest name: Rebecca’s. Tenth. He reaches over to give her a grin and a pat on the back in quick congratulations.

The voices grow louder as it comes down to the top five, words flashing just a little bit brighter than the rest.

 

5. Santos, Johanna
4. Rasidi, Mikhail
3. Wójcik, Aleksandra
2. Williams, Matthew
1. Vân Kiều, Keith

 

Vân Kiều straightens up in front of him. The last names flourish into existence and Commander Myung leads all of them into a round of applause. Lance feels lightheaded, teetering between a multitude of emotions, but the grin sticks to his face as he claps along.

“Remember that these ranks aren’t final and may keep changing through the months, depending on your performance, especially during private sims. Push yourself and you might even see yourself on the list next time, but the top twenty will have to do put in a lot of effort to maintain or climb the ranks.” Commander Myung pauses, sweeping the room with keen gray eyes, and softens a little. “Of course, in the long run, competition won’t be important. All of you are here to serve and make a contribution to space exploration. We’ll be posting longer lists that you can view on the announcement boards and in the lobbies.”

Myung dismisses them and they file out of the room. Lance stays towards the back. He tries not to notice how Vân Kiều is, and always is, the first one out the door. Once out in the hallway, he finds the closest path to the third floor lobby, not in the least surprised to see a crowd of at least sixty standing underneath the panels arranged in a circle overhead. There are lists of the top fifty in each division of the Garrison, hundreds of names casting harsh white light over curious faces. He looks for his batch among several other panels of cadets specializing in flight. Eye strain and too much white noise. Lance skims over what he knows and catalogs other names to talk to later on and stares for a long, long while at his own name from the edge of the crowd.

 

16. Alvarez, Lance

 

For a brief moment, it seems pretty high up on the list, especially from his place on the ground. He sighs, and smiles, and thinks, it’s enough, for now.

 

 

-

 

 

Lance eats dinner with a large group of people from his pod and others and it gets as loud as they’re allowed to. There’s no special meal or anything—Lance desperately misses the feast his parents cook up when someone comes home with an excuse to celebrate—but he’s satisfied with himself and happy for everyone else. There’s over fifteen crammed into a table for twelve, it’s the same scene in at least three other tables, different ways of saying congratulations repeated over and over again.

At some point, Vân Kiều passes by their table.

“Hey, Keith, flyboy, come sit with us!”

Lance feels approximately twelve peas sticking to the back of his throat in vivid detail and makes a mental note to stick twelve peas down Jones’ throat, too. Jones is looking at Keith expectantly, other people from the table are throwing him compliments as if he hasn’t already heard so much, and Lance doesn’t even know if he wants him there or not. He swallows.

Keith tenses, eyes darting from the face to the table to his food before he (honest to god, tries to) gives him a small, tight quirk on the mouth that will pass as a polite smile. “Uh, sorry, I was going to eat over there,” he tilts his head slightly, causing several pairs of eyes to turn to a table off the side with around five cadets seated. He turns away. “Thanks, though.”

“Alright then,” Jones says, looking a little dejected.

Lance breathes easier as Vân Kiều disappears from his line of sight and he consciously doesn’t look anywhere near the emptier tables for the rest of the night.

After dinner, he gets to the dorm first and calls Maria before he even takes his boots off.

“We got our ranks today,” he announces as soon as he hears her pick up.

A deeper voice than what he’s used to on these night calls answers. It’s not unwelcome, however. “Hey, Ale. It’s Sebastian, Maria’s in the shower now. Do you want me to tell you she called or?”  

“No, bro!” Lance feels himself grin, maybe straining the muscles in his jaw. “Put it on speaker! Who's at home right now?”

“Ma and Miguel. Fernie’s at her friend’s house, hold on--” There’s a muffled noise and a distant ‘Ma! Migs! Ven aquí! Alejandro’s on the phone!’ then Sebastian’s finally back to him. “Okay, they’re coming.”

“Mijo!” The sound of his mother melts his insides and he wishes he could be home. “How are you? Why are you calling? Is it late there? Have you eaten? Shouldn’t you be sleeping? It’s quite--”

“Ma, he’s got something to tell us.” Sebastian says and Miguel quips with a ‘Yeah, mama! ’ from the background.

“I’m sixteenth in my class!” Lance rushes out the news he’s been holding ever since he dialed Maria. “Sixteen, ma! Out of forty!”

“That’s like top half percent!” Miguel shouts and Lance knows he did a quick mental calculation. “That’s super cool, Lance!”

The admiration in his younger brother’s voice is evident and Lance thrives. “I know right! I’ll frame on my wall—Lance Alvarez, ranked sixte — ”

“What is this I hear about ranks?” Maria’s voice is distant, still sharp as ever. “And, Seb , why do you have my phone?”

“It’s Lance!” Sebastian shouts back. “He’s sixteen in his class!”

“What!” There’s footsteps and a shout from Maria herself, “What is this about my dumb brother being sixteenth? I am so proud of you—you estás viejo!”

“Language!” His mom shouts and he feels like he’s been transported home, like he’s sitting with them in their home with warmly painted walls.

He spends the rest of the time on the phone talking about classes and his progress. Seconds blend into minutes which almost reaches an hour and Lance can hear the sleepiness when his mother drags her letters and Miguel has already been sent to bed. Lance forgets about the time difference. “Ma, you should sleep.” Lance whispers, affection laced in his words.

“Thank you, but I’m waiting for your father to come home. Ha, Maria’s going to mad at me for using her phone this long.” Lance can see the image now, clear as before when he would spot his mother through the holes of the stair rail. How she would sit by the couch, a blanket on her lap, alternating glances from the television and the door. He likes to think he would be that devoted to his lover when the time comes. “You should sleep too.”

Lance sighs, knowing the call is at its end. A wakeup call from his fantasy. “Will do. Love you.”

“I love you too,” His mother’s voice is so raw and it’s as if she’s there with him right now, squeezing his hands. “I’m proud of you.”

Lance doesn’t feel his eyes water. Not at all.

“Call again soon, okay, mijo. Sleep well.”

Lance washes down a lump in his throat. “Yeah, night, ma.”

He leans back against the ladder on their bunk bed and busies himself with watching Hunk talk into his phone—his parents, most likely. Lance doesn’t understand anything but guesses it’s Samoan: quick and halting, like short waves, and Lance notes how Hunk’s voice is slightly higher in his mother tongue. Brighter, more at ease. He goes through old messages as he listens, occasionally picking up when Hunk switches to a heavily accented English for a while before switching back to Samoan smoothly.

“Fā soifua, tina.”

Hunk bids his mother goodbye and Lance looks up to his friend gazing down at his phone fondly. “You’re awfully cheerful tonight,” he comments as he plays with the steps of the ladder, tilting his head with a grin. “Did well in the ranks?”

Hunk ducks his head as he smiles. “Yeah, well…”

“Well?” he presses.

Hunk beams as wide as his face allows it, smiles like the sun splitting open. “I’m seventh in my batch!”

“What?!” Lance yells. “Seventh? Are you for real?”

“I wasn’t even sure I’d place in the top ten,” Hunk laughs as Lance practically tackles him, falling back against the pillows, high on his accomplishment.The laughter is contagious. “Hey, hey, no,” he yelps as Lance wraps an arm around his neck and tries to give him a noogie, laughing louder. “I can’t believe I might actually end up working with the fighter pilots. What about you, though?”

“Sixteenth!” Lance says quickly. “But I’ll catch up with you next time around. Anyway, we should celebrate, but the Garrison doesn’t even give topnotchers a decent dinner,” Lance sighs as if he isn’t almost sitting over Hunk’s chest.

“Hey, congrats man. Also, I would, if I had access to the kitchen,” Hunk admits earnestly.

“You like cooking?” Lance asks. It reminds him of Sebastian, all strong hands and kitchen scents imprinted into his skin, his cooking skills inherited from their mother and grandmother.

“Pretty much my first love,” he admits. “Mom pretty much gave birth to me in her garage, but pops raised me in the kitchen before I could start going back to tinker around with spare parts.”

“Didn’t expect that from an engineer.”

“Eh, engineering, cooking, they’re not really that different as I see it. Make stuff and experiment with it, blow some things up or amaze a bunch of people with it. Cooking was a lot cheaper, though,” he amends.

Lance laughs. “Okay. The first opportunity we get to visit each other, I wanna have some of your cooking. I can smell it now. Grilled kebabs, pork and rice—”

“—mahi-mahi and crock pot and smoked salmon and poke,” Hunk supplies, before he pauses and groans. “Eugh, suddenly those meat strips and carrot sticks from earlier feel a lot more unappetizing. But seriously, I can’t wait to cook again. Discipline and good food shouldn’t be exclusive.”

“You are so right,” Lance declares with a decisive nod of his head before he yawns. The numbers burn brightly on his screen. “Alright, it’s way past midnight. Better hit the hay now, buddy.”

“Right. Night, Lance,” Hunk calls as the other hauls himself up the ladder to his bunk.

“Night, Hunk,” he calls back down.

 

 

-

 

 

Lance holds himself as straight as he possibly can as Commander Iverson paces down the cadets before him and stops in the middle, clearing his throat to herald an announcement of utmost importance. Their next go in the simulators isn’t for another week, so Lance doesn’t know what to expect, but he listens attentively as Iverson briefs them on pilot divisions: private, cargo, fighter, all mentioned in past lectures.

“We’re expected to usher in a new generation of elite pilots, so you can expect that the Garrison is only taking the best cadets to qualify as fighter pilots. Specifically, the top fifteen of each batch under the flight division,” he emphasizes. Half the room tenses, half nod along, and for Lance, the world screeches to a stop on its axis.

Top fifteen.

16. Alvarez, Lance

Cargo pilot. Lance Alvarez, cargo pilot. Not a fighter pilot.

“So if you’re aiming for fighter class and you’re not up there, start putting in the extra effort.”

Breathing has never been more difficult.

A lump grows in his throat, a seed of dread and dark, noisy anxiety. Lance almost sways on the spot, heart lurching like a storm at sea, but Iverson continues on his spiel on other pilot divisions and details of the next simulator training but all he can hear is: fifteen fifteen fifteen.

“The rest of you will settle for places as private and cargo pilots.” Iverson looks pointedly at a few, more obvious expressions of dismay, and snorts. “Look alive, cadets, it isn’t the end of the world.”

Fifteen . Suddenly everything he’s heard from anyone last night doesn’t matter. Sixteen will never be enough. He isn’t yet enough for his dream.

It’s a sunny, summer day in a garden patch right outside his elementary school. Lance is ten years old and standing on a flat rock, grass stains up to his knees and hands curled into fists, glaring as his schoolmates who walk away laughing. That’s a stupid dream.

No it’s not, he said at eleven years old. I can do it, he said at twelve, clinging on to every word Commander Takashi Shirogane says onscreen. Adults were always so condescending. He dreamt of flying through asteroid belts and practiced shooting down target after target. He told the counselors he knows he’s going to be a fighter pilot in ninth grade and had a growing collection of astronomy books by fifteen, and started printing out applications at sixteen, Galaxy Garrison emblazoned all over the backs of his eyelids in all caps until he went to sleep.

At seventeen he stood in a long, long line of applicants, all of them flanked by broad-shouldered, intimidating parents with varying degrees of superiority in their gazes. At seventeen he gazed up at vaulting ceilings and the indigo sky, clutching his papers like he was never going to let them go, and said, I’m almost there.

And now Lance is eighteen and he is here, in the present: perfectly uniformed, in the middle of a Garrison lecture hall, training and studying and doing everything he wanted to do years ago, being told that he was a few points short of being worthy of making his dream come true.

Not there.

Fuck, he probably should have stuck to those mermaid classes.

The voice of night terrors finally reach him, whispering in his ear, not good enough, can’t fly a plane right, what’s wrong with you?

Not there yet, he reprimands himself, trying to tamp down another surge of despair coming to engulf him. He can do better. He will do better. The official sorting into divisions isn’t until the second year; he has time to prove himself by climbing up the ranks and make his way into the fighter class.

He will fight for it.

But first, Lance just really, really wants to cry.

He is silent for the rest of the lecture.

 

 

-

 

 

Lance stares at the cold ceiling. It’s slowly becoming familiar. It’s sometime past midnight but he’s hopeless and still deep in thought. What he could’ve done better and what he shouldn’t have done. He feels empty inside himself, wrung out. Eyes burning and head throbbing.

It’s exhausting.

Thinking of yourself like this.

During these kinds of times back home, Lance would allow himself to sneak out. Sometimes to the rooftop of his own house or down to the beach a couple minutes away. Rejuvenate himself. To remember why he chose this path instead of the other which had a clear end and no bumps in the road.

Lance cranes his neck to peer at the little slip of the outside world he’s able to see. The Garrison is in the middle of a desert and the stars shine so bright even through his little glimpse.

Duh, his brain thinks, just go to the rooftop here.

“Duh,” Lance repeats, turning his body so he can crawl out of the bunk. He’s learned that Hunk is a heavy sleeper and he knows he’ll never snitch on Lance, but he still doesn’t want to wake the big guy’s sleep with his problems.

He slips on some flip-flops and takes his ID card with him. It’s almost too easy.

(But he’s also bit high on the midnight oil so he fails to see the repercussions if he does get caught. The obvious solution is to not get caught.)

Lance walks down the hallways, knowing there are stairs that lead up to the rooftop. It’s not a closed area and the cadets are welcome to hang out there during free hours, but Lance isn’t sure if two in the morning is considered a ‘free hour’. He avoids any signs of flashlights, if one side of the hallway is brighter than the other.

He keeps his back to a wall, making sure he doesn’t leave an obvious shadow. While shuffling on his back, he feels a gap so he turns.

The words: To Rooftop glare at him a bit mockingly, as if it’s trying to say that Lance is stupid too.

He huffs out, “I’m not stupid,” and climbs up the stairs. It’s quite a walk and he’s still trying to make sure his steps don’t echo. Soon, only a door blocking him from the outside world. He prays the door doesn’t creak and steps out.

Lance’s breath hitches. It’s still beautiful, no matter how many times he’s seen it. A pallet of different hues of black and blue, stars twinkling on the canvas, the milky way a blinding streak. He feels his body move on its own as if he could be closer to the stars if he walks like a starved man. Maybe he is starving. He’s ravenous for this. For flying with way above the clouds can reach.

He finds a nice spot near the door to lay down on, thankfully the ground isn’t prickly, and Lance laces his hands behind his neck. It’s comforting. The night sky is something he’s been staring ever since he was splashing puddles in Cuba. He can see constellations he’s learned and the ones he made up too. It’s just so vast and immense and amazing. There’s something out there waiting for him, calling for him. He has to go up there.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been there, but at some point in time, Lance takes a glance at his left and sees a trail of smoke. He lifts himself up on his elbows, hoping it’s not a fire. He doesn’t know if he dreads a fire or being caught that he was on the rooftop when he tells the commanders that there’s a fire.

Lance squints, trying to make out the source of the smoke. It comes from a little spark in the dead dark. The clouds part, allowing the moonlight to shine. Dark hair, pale skin, a cigarette in between their fingers.

It’s Vân Kiều. No mistake about it. He stares at the back of his head every single day.

Lance knows that he’s watching. Watching the way Vân Kiều looks up with a relaxed body posture that’s unlike the classrooms but also unlike the day at the simulator, the way he takes a drag—bringing the other end of the cigarette to his lips. It’s so effortless and mundane but Vân Kiều looks so cool.

Questions run through Lance’s head: Does he go here often? Why does he go here? Where does he get cigarettes? How is he number one?

Lance takes a deep breath. He’s tired. It’s been at least an hour or two ever since he left and combined with the emotional turmoil and this new discovery, he needs sleep. Before the commanders realize he was never in his bed.

Lance dusts off his pajama pants, hoping that Vân Kiều doesn’t notice him. He walks back as quietly as he can. Then he opens the door and it does creak—

Shit.

Lance looks back. Vân Kiều seems to be hunched over in some sort of defensive position and his eyes are wide and his mouth opens when he spots Lance.

Lance laughs nervously and runs for it.

(Lance vows to never return to the rooftop again.)

 

 

-

 

 

Lance is a liar.

He goes up there the next night. This time, his feet are much quicker. He feels the blood rushing in his ears and a tremble in his hand.

When he climbs up the stairs, he allows his steps to echo, just a little. He opens the door with a little flourish, eyes scanning the rooftop. Sure enough, Vân Kiều’s there. Sitting at the same spot he was last night. No cigarette this time.

Lance walks a bit closer to Vân Kiều, trying to keep his heart at a reasonable rate while the logical part of his brain screams don’t do it at him . When he’s close enough, Lance raises his hand and prays his voice doesn’t crack, “Hey. Remember me?”

Vân Kiều arches an eyebrow, “Hey.”

“So, uh,” Lance starts, his heart pounding harder than it’s ever. “Do you come here often?”

Vân Kiều shrugs and probably wants to leave it at that. But Lance doesn’t let it and takes a seat.

“You were great in there.” Lance offers after a momentary awkward silence. ‘Great’ doesn’t even cover Keith’s performance. Lance isn’t sure he can describe it in a single word. “The sims, I mean.” Lance says when Vân Kiều doesn’t reply.

“Thanks.” Vân Kiều says.

Lance leans back, staring at the night sky. “How’d you even do that?”

“What?”

“When I watched you fly, you looked…” Lance trails off. “You looked like you were born to do it, you know? Like you could do it with your eyes closed, you just knew how to fly through that mess like you’ve flown through that asteroid belt a dozen times before.”

Vân Kiều still doesn’t look at him. Lance sees their shadows move as the other shrugs. “Instinct, I guess,” he answers like it’s the most natural thing in the world. In the dark, in this building, Vân Kiều looks like he has no trouble at all holding himself together; an unyielding façade of composure.

(In the future, Lance will know that that’s not really it: that Keith has spent his entire life on his feet and has trained himself to be agile and flighty, that he moves so fast and he avoids so well because he’s spent so, so long running away when he isn’t charging at conflict straight on.)

Right now, all Lance thinks is that this whole flying thing fits Vân Kiều more than anyone. “Well, whatever it is, it was good enough to impress even Commander Iverson.”

Vân Kiều only sighs, turning away. “I kind of came to the rooftop to get away from all the training stuff, you know.”

Oh. But a small part of Lance wants to scoff. Who does this guy think he is? Better than the rest of them that he doesn’t need any training? “That’s it? Hang out here to brood and smoke? Not even to admire all this?” Lance gestures to the whole night sky.

Vân Kiều looks up at him with a skeptical expression.

Lance takes his focus off of Vân Kiều for a second. “You’re probably not as interested in space as the rest of us are, but. It’s so big and who knows what’s up there, you know! There are so many amazing things that happen in it. And based on numbers, we can only see like, five percent of the total universe. Five percent! ” Lance’s voice is a bit too loud for the quiet night and he momentarily forgets who he’s talking to. “And stuff like dark energy? We don’t even know what it is!”

Lance grins and Vân Kiều is quiet.

“Like, look!” Lance points to where the star Alpheratz Sirrah is. It’s one of the brightest stars in the sky, directly above them. “That’s Andromeda, you know your constellations right? How cool would it be to fly in the path of it.”

Lance traces the constellation with his finger, allowing for the silence to be heard, just white noise echoing around them and the soft glowing of endless columns of windows from other buildings.

He lets out a huff of breath, taking all of it in. The stars seem to pulse brighter. “I want to be a pilot because I want to be able to experience all of that up close.” He glances at Keith from the corner of his eyes. “What about you?”

Vân Kiều stares into the horizon.

He waits for an answer, maps out a constellation with invisible lines as the space between them grows louder until Vân Kiều finally relents. “I just wanted to get away from this place.”

“You joined the Garrison only to get away from the Garrison?” Lance asks, mouth running before his brain can even think about Vân Kiều's words. He clamps his mouth shut, eyes dropping in embarrassment.

Vân Kiều's face crinkles like he’s torn between laughing in confusion or just making a face in incredulity. (Lance is slightly distracted by the nose crinkle to feel more embarrassed) “No, I mean all of this. Earth.”

“Wow, was my earlier speech really that convincing? Why’d you want to leave your own planet?”

“No, I made that decision without your influence. And aren’t you going for the same thing?”

“Uh, no?” Lance tilts his head, and Vân Kiều finally, finally looks at him—he breathes faster. “I wanted to be a fighter pilot to explore the universe and help people. But Earth is home to me, and that’s not gonna change. I don’t think I’d trade it for any other planet out there.”

Vân Kiều lets out a huff of breath, closing his eyes. He almost, almost looks amused. “That’s obvious. But I was answering your question earlier. You asked me why I wanted to become a pilot. I did it so I could get away from here.”

Lance, once again, is embarrassed for rambling. “Well, you could have said so earlier instead of just blurting it out of nowhere,” he says, holding his head high.

“Right,” the other replies with a roll of his eyes. “But really, I just didn’t want to stay down here anymore.” Why should I care about a world that doesn’t care about me? “And flying is better than ending up doing paperwork in a cubicle for days on end.”

“You’re right about that one,” Lance chuckles, stretching out. So maybe he isn’t at all fearless. Mediocrity and monotony are undoubtedly terrifying to people who thrive on adrenaline and adventure, after all. “I’m just thankful to be here.”

Vân Kiều doesn’t reply after that and Lance pretends it doesn’t make an ache in his heart. He feels smaller, maybe, like he’s clinging on to what he can to get to the top while Keith has everything at his fingertips. They sit in silence for a couple minutes, Lance pondering over his thoughts, trying to make his side glances to Keith subtle. He sighs.

“Well,” Lance clips his words, standing up. He fakes stretching his arms behind him. “I’m gonna go now. It was nice talking to you pal. I can see you enjoy your nights, so I won’t bother y—”

There’s a grip on his wrist. Lance looks down and Vân Kiều’s dark eyes stare at him with such intensity and Lance’s isn’t strong enough.

“You can come back tomorrow,” Vân Kiều whispers.

Lance feels a flame spread through his whole body and he feels himself nod.

When he’s back in the dorms, Lance splays across his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

Holy shit.

It’s already three in the morning and he’s been staring for two hours and he only has three hours left to sleep, if he even can, but whenever he tries to let his mind go blank it only keeps wandering.

His wrist is still a little tingly and he’s looking forward to the next night so much it almost feels like he’s nine again, over the moon with a childhood crush offering him a cupcake at recess. So it’s a little embarrassing.

But so what.

So what, he berates himself, flopping onto his stomach with so much force the bed creaks and Hunk starts sleep mumbling from the bottom bunk. Lance says a quick apology before stretching himself out and trying to think about nothing, again.

When morning rolls around, Lance goes through the day as fast as he can. He thinks of maybe talking to Vân Kiều in the classes they share, but the idea is crushed right at breakfast when he waves at Keith when he passes him in line, only to receive a blink and a belated, but acknowledging nod.

Right. Okay.

Lance isn’t very used to this kind of lack of enthusiasm from a person he’s want to be friends with, but it was Vân Kiều. Keith Vân Kiều, the mysterious brooding ace pilot who never said more than three sentences to anyone as far as he knows.

Except to him.

The thought is enough to put a smug, pleased smile on his face.

 

 

-

 

 

So Lance does come back that night.

He tiptoes through the corridors, shoes in hand, though he almost trips on nothing right behind a night guard passing at the ending of the main hallway. He thanks God their room isn’t that far from the staircase.

When he pushes open the door, he peers around the rooftop first.

Vân Kiều immediately turns around at the sound of the door, shoulders tense and face apprehensive.

“Dude, chill, it’s me,” Lance says, shutting the door softly, raising his hands. “I didn’t tell the night police if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Right,” Vân Kiều huffs. But the stiffness in his shoulders give way to something more relaxed, and as Lance makes his way to his side, his eyes are a little wide, like he can’t believe Lance really came back.

It gives Lance all sorts of fluttery feelings.

He turns his eyes to the sky, their shoulders only a few inches apart. Lance breathes in. “It really is nice up here. I’m surprised no other students come up here like we do.”

Vân Kiều shrugs. “They do. Just not at this hour. It’s usually only a group of freshmen that skip dinner, and the upperclassmen are probably already tired of the view.”

“They have view decks near their dorm buildings, anyway,” Lance shrugs.

Somehow, the thought of coming up here before midnight is a little strange. Lance imagines a lighter night sky, four or five people sitting on the floor, laughing and talking. It reminds him of the times his older siblings would let him come with them on the balcony past bedtime, with Sebastian strumming his guitar and Maria and him singing along.

“Where are you from?” Lance asks and when Vân Kiều quips an eyebrow at him, Lance says, “I don’t think you lived by the Garrison your whole life. Like my family’s at Tampa.”

“Oh.” Vân Kiều shifts his weight. “I’ve just been moving around a lot. You know, foster care system and all.”

Lance isn’t sure how to reply, but he says, “Uh. Then I guess you’ve been to a lot of different places.”

Vân Kiều smiles and Lance isn’t sure if it’s sardonic or not. “I guess you can say that.”

“What’s your favorite place that you’ve been?” Lance wants to hit himself, he really isn’t sure what he’s doing.

It takes a while for Vân Kiều to reply, but when he does, he says, “One of the homes I stayed in when I was like eleven maybe. The dad there had this neat garage so that’s when I started to tinker around. It was a pretty secluded area so it had a nice view.”

“Like here?”

“Yeah,” Vân Kiều whispers. “Like here.”

After a while, when Lance isn’t sure how long they’ve spent together, he says, “It’s getting pretty late. We should start heading back to our dorms.”

Vân Kiều looks at him with raised eyebrows, and for a moment Lance is worried that Vân Kiều thinks he’s lame or something, but there really isn’t anything condescending or mean in his expression. “You can go ahead if you want.”

“Um, okay? Wait, what time do you even leave here?”

“Depends,” Vân Kiều shrugs.

Lance wonders how many hours of sleep he even gets, how much time he has left to study, or if he studies up here. Though he did say he goes to the rooftop to get away from studies. So he doesn’t press it, not yet.

“See you tomorrow, I guess.” The words are out of his mouth before he can think, he can’t even backpedal.

But Vân Kiều gives him a nod and says, “Sure,” without even seeming to hesitate, eyes cast down to the floor.  

And that’s all Lance needs.

 

 

-

 

 

Lance comes back the next night. And the next. And the next.

He starts calling him ‘Keith’, instead of ‘Vân Kiều’.

He’s used to watching at least at an arm’s distance. He’s not used to sitting next to Keith, fingers millimeters apart. A little part in the back of his head and the bottom of his heart send signals that this isn’t going to end well, that it’s dangerous territory.

But he’s so captivated. Already labeled himself as hopeless. He likes the unsure feeling, not knowing what direction this is going. His drumming heartbeat, a shiver down his spine, make him feel so alive.

He sleeps on his side now, turning to face the glaring alarm clock that tells him when it’s sometime past twelve. He replays their past conversations in his head. Through the inane, random conversations he strings together he’s picked up on things like how Keith’s favorite color is red and that he’s probably broken over five bones on different occasions and that he likes cats a little more than dogs. He learns that Keith can make a brilliant imitation of Iverson, that he makes the most hilarious face when Lance does the thing where he turns his eyelid inside out. (Lance can still feel the swat at the side of his head, but it was worth it.)

Some things remain a mystery, like where he got those cigarettes and if he smoked every time he was there alone.

Like their unspoken agreement to stay the same during the daytime, holding no conversations in the classrooms or hallways. Lance still sits behind him in classes, and sometimes there’s even a subtle nod.

Chatter is omnipresent, as always, “Did you see the commander’s face when Williams flew through that asteroid field without even blinking?”

“Yeah, but you should have seen him yesterday when Van—um, K—-”

“Vân Kiều,” Lance supplies helpfully.

Eustace turns to him with a funny expression, looking like he has something to tell Lance, before deciding against it. “Dude, he was the only one in three pods who didn’t almost lose a wing from those rock formations all around the Themis simulation.”

“They’re calling him the best pilot of our generation!”

“He’s incredible,” Ali adds. Then pauses. “Wow, we’re starting to sound like Lance from last month.”

“Now I understand the hype,” someone across the table laughs, and Lance does a show of rolling his eyes and pretending to be annoyed.

 

 

-

 

 

Lance still takes the long route to pass the halls by Keith’s dorm sometimes.

He still sees him talking to Takashi Shirogane sometimes.

And he still can’t get to his level in any class.

But at least he knows Keith Vân Kiều isn’t so unreachable anymore.

(He wants to blame Keith: it’s his fault Lance doesn’t get enough sleep and deprived during lessons. But that’s not true. It’s his own fault he keeps coming back.)

 

 

-

 

 

“Do you ever miss your family?” Lance asks one night, seeking Orion’s Belt with his eyes.

Keith is too quiet so Lance turns to glance at him. His side profile is fascinating and Lance follows his jawline. Keith hangs his head back, resting against the wall. His eyes are bright, reflecting all the stars in the sky.

Lance decides to do the talking, for now, “I do. All the time. This is the farthest I’ve ever been from home, you know. My mom’s super chill, she owns a restaurant and makes the best empanadas ever! My dad’s a cop. He usually comes home late and she waits for him.”

Lance leans back on his elbows and looks at Keith. “So, hotshot, what about you?”
Keith looks at him with wide eyes, seemingly taken aback. “ Hotshot ?”

Lance feels the nape of his neck flush. “Just answer the question,” Lance pauses. “Bro.” He tacks on.

The corners of Keith’s eyes wrinkle. “I guess.”

“Guess what?”

“I guess I miss my family,” Keith says. “I only really knew my dad. Then he left.”

“Oh,” Lance mutters.  

“It’s not a big deal.” Keith shrugs. “I’m used to it.”

Lance suddenly perks up, “You can meet my family! They’ll love you! Maria’s a bitch sometimes but my parents love kids, I mean there’s five of us—I’m sure there’s room for you somewhere.”

Keith turns, looking incredulous and a little lost. Lance tries to imagine him at home, no more shadows, nothing but warm light streaming through the kitchen windows. A casual, loose shirt instead of their pressed uniform. Standing in the middle of a loud house with five siblings, surrounded by all Lance has ever known and loved. Lance imagines him, so out of place and yet so welcome there, that it makes him smile. Even if Keith doesn’t answer.

Instead, Keith goes for another direction. “This is going to sound stupid,” he starts. “But when I was really little, maybe under the age of five, my dad used to tell me my mom was somewhere out there,” Keith gestures to outer space. “And I believed him. I guess it’s like. I miss what I never had. A little part of me saying that there’s something out there for me.”

Lance’s eyes trail back to the sky. He understands, probably. Something’s calling him to go up there as well. His face contours into a small smile, grasping onto an ideal hope that maybe, one day, they can go explore the universe together.  

 

 

-

 

 

There’s a buzz underlying the usual business in the Garrison. News usually travels fast through the whispers of the hallways, but it doesn’t have to when everywhere, screens light up with news of one of the latest expeditions of the year. Some instructors start sending substitutes to class in preparation for the mission, security tightened exponentially around the launching pads, the Kerberos mission making headlines on papers and online articles.

But Hunk and Lance still sit together for lunch sometimes, no matter how busy, when flight and engineering divisions have their break the same hour on Thursdays. Lance is walking with him back to his lab today.

“Isn’t that the prodigy guy?”

Lance raises his brows and peers around Hunk, who motioned to the corner at the end of the corridor, and he’s right—there’s Keith, talking to Takashi Shirogane, who’s partially obscured by the wall.

“Who, Keith?” he asks, but Hunk’s already said a quick “gotta go,” and the doors are sliding shut in his face. Lance decides to wait by a post (he looks like an idiot, probably). From here he can only barely make out Keith’s expressions, but something is very, very different.

This time, he isn’t leaning against the wall or crossing his arms casually. Lance follows the tense line of his arm, the fists and his sides and the stiffness of his shoulders, and it feels like watching a calm before a storm over the horizon.

The fondness he’s so accustomed to seeing between them every time they’re together is gone—Shirogane is smiling, of course, but it’s wary around the edges and so close to giving way to another emotion entirely. He says something else, maybe some parting words as he puts his hand on Keith’s shoulder warmly. Keith doesn’t look at him.

Confusion and jealousy war in Lance’s head before getting torn apart by a voice that rings, it’s none of your business, run back to class before they see you and it gets awkward.

Keith pulls away from the hand on his shoulder.

Lance turns around and walks away, trying not to look back.

He goes through the rest of the day and is able to bury the scene in the back of his mind beneath a new load of information on astrophysics and history; he talks his worries away on the phone to wish Maria a safe trip back to Cuba and entertains Miguel’s dramatic reading of a poem he had to write for English. And then he waits for Hunk to fall asleep before he goes off with his nightly routine.

When Lance reaches the rooftop, Keith is sitting on the edge with his feet dangling off the building. Lance’s footsteps echo as he walks closer, taking a wary seat next to Keith. It’s a bit terrifying and sends tingles down his body and his hair rises but it’s eerily similar to how Keith makes him feel.

They sit for a while and Lance doesn’t know what to talk about tonight. The sky isn’t as clear as usual, clouds fogging around them.

“What if we just jumped?” Keith asks out of the blue, making Lance jerk and heart stop because he could fall at any time.

“What?” Lance asks, voice breathless as if the wind was carrying it.

“Haven’t you ever thought about it?” Keith continues and Lance wants to be like,  wow! Keith is actually starting up the conversation this time! but this is not what he wants. “I mean, the Garrison isn’t a skyscraper but it’s pretty darned tall.”

“Uh, why?” Lance asks dumbly.

“Why what?”

“Why are you saying this? Have you thought about this before?” Lance envisions a scared, preteen Keith Vân Kiều, tears streaming down his face with frightened eyes and a hand over his heart. He wants to scoop up his phantom of younger Keith and wipe all the tears away and hold him tight.

Keith shrugs. “I don’t see a point I guess, sometimes. I just want to leave.”

Lance thinks back to a couple of nights ago when Keith said, ‘I just wanted to get away from this place’ and he isn’t sure this is what Keith had in mind. “But if you leave now,” Lance says slowly, “You won’t be able to go up there,” and points up.

“But there’s no point,” Keith swings his legs. “What if there is nothing up there? It’s just dark and endless.”

“I guess, but you’ll never know. Like the ocean is dark and seems endless but at the bottom there’s a lot of cool stuff like bright fish with one eye. And there isn’t ‘no point’.” Lance bites his bottom lip. “You obviously love flying. You’re just too passionate and natural and wonderful in a way I can never—”

Oops.

Lance recovers, “I mean, I think, if you like the rush that flying gives you, just go all the way. You don’t have to go up there to explore, it’s not just about that.”

Keith stays in contemplative silence, the wind pulling on their shirts.

Then Keith starts talking. “Flying just feels so great. I feel like it was meant to be for me.” He pauses for a little and lets out a small, self-deprecating chuckle. “It feels like nothing else matters, you know? I can just forget and leave this place behind—everything seems so much smaller from up there. I’ve spent so long wondering where I belonged but, flying, it feels right. The adrenaline rush, you know.”

“But,” Lance says. “You’re not going to. You know.”

“I won’t jump,” Keith starts. “But do you think it would be like flying? Wind blasting in your ears and the feeling of weightlessness and everything else so loud you can’t hear your own heartbeat.”

Lance isn’t sure if he wants to tread in this territory, but there’s no going back. “If you had to choose a way to go, would it be falling?”

“I think so.”

“Cool,” Lance says and he wants to smack his own face.

“You? How’d you wanna go?”

Lance turns to face Keith, who's looking down below their feet dangling. He looks so pale. Deep breaths, Lance tells himself. Deep breaths.

“I don’t know. I don’t really want to think about it.”

They don’t say anything the rest of the time and Lance doesn’t feel too comfortable on the edge of a building, but he stays, because Keith is there.

When it’s time to go back, they gingerly bring their legs back in and Keith grabs his shoulder and says, “Thanks.”

 

 

-

 

 

As soon as Lance opens the metal door, he sees a familiar cluster of stars and immediately rushes to Keith’s side.

“Look! Look!” Lance points in the general direction of the constellation, tugging on Keith’s arm, “hotshot, look!”

Keith’s eyes are skeptical, “What am I looking at?”

“Leo!” Lance takes Keith’s hand in his and connects the stars together from Regulus to Zeta Leonis. “Don’t you see it?”

Lance turns to face Keith and suddenly, all he can see are Keith’s eyes. At this proximity, they seem to be the same color of the night sky.

Too close.

Lance laughs nervously, pulling away and not looking anywhere in Keith’s general direction. He gingerly lets go of Keith’s hand too. “Sooo,” Lance starts, “What’s your sign?”

There’s a soft noise and Lance looks up. Keith is laughing. A warm sound, something that Lance commits to memory and wants to hear again.

“I’ll take it you're a Leo?” Keiths asks and Lance nods, not trusting his voice. “That’s the constellation you were showing me right?”

“Uh,” Lance nods again and feels like an idiot, of course the top of the class would know something as simple astronomy. “Yeah, but you probably already knew that. Constellations are basic and stuff,” then Lance gestures to Keith. “And you’re number one—”

“Not really,” Keith says too quickly. “I’m not that good. At constellations.” Keith makes a pained face, frowning and fingers twitching. Lance wants to be offended, is he mocking him? As if the number one student doesn’t know simple constellations.  

“So you should, like,” Keith’s voice pulls him out of his stupor. “Show me. My sign’s Scorpio.”

Lance’s heart skips a beat. Oh. Oh . That’s not what he was expecting.

“Okay,” Lance breathes out and takes a grab for Keith’s hand again in his and leads it somewhere near the milky way. “Scorpius is right,” Lance edges his face a bit closer to Keith so that they’re almost cheek to cheek. It’s just so Lance can provide Keith accuracy, Lance reasons. “Here.”

Lance points from the star group Shaula and traces it to Dschubba. It’s really not that hard to locate Scorpius. It’s one of the brightest in the sky.

He takes a moment to notice how warmth seems to radiate from Keith’s body. Takes a moment to notice how rough and calloused Keith’s palms are. Lance has an urge to cradle Keith’s hands in his own and try to soothe the ridges by caressing them with his own hands.

Everything seems so still, so cautious. The stars seem to glow even more brilliant than before and it seems too difficult to say anything. Lance can hear Keith’s breathing and Lance hopes Keith can’t hear his heart.

“Thanks,” Keith whispers, breaking the spell, and Lance releases their hands. He inches away but the sides of his palms beg to be closer, needing the warmth and euphoria Keith gives him.

He resists the urge and they spend the rest of the night, fingertips barely touching but not close enough.

 

 

-

 

 

As Lance’s time at the Garrison stretch into months, gossip flood the corridors, whispers of ‘have you seen Vân Kiều today?’ ‘top notch, as always’ ‘he always looks so cool’ ‘his eyes are beautiful, do you think they’re natural’ ‘a guy like that has to have a girlfriend—”

The murmurs plague his already sleepless nights and lackluster classes and he rubs his eyes until they’re red. But he knows he means something to Keith. But even on nights like these, their nights alone, it still makes him blurt out: “Do you know how popular you are?” while he watches the sky on his back.

“Huh?” Keith asks, face blank and face scrunched and Lance has come to learn that it’s his face for being confused. “I guess I’m well known for my rank.”

“No, like, popular ,” Lance emphasizes on the syllables. “You know, how everyone seems to admire you—like during meal times, right? Everyone asks you to sit with them. People even stare at you all the time.”

“They do? Why?”

Lance’s face flushes, is Keith really making him do this, “You know, you’re cool and stuff. You have this bad boy appeal or something I guess. Dark eyes, pretty face, you know.” Lance mumbles the last part.

He would usually look away during a time like this, when heat crawls up his neck and he’s too scared to face Keith in fear that his entire face might combust. But Lance grasps a few straws of courage and decides to look up at Keith.

He feels his eyes brighten when Keith isn’t the one looking at him. Ha , Lance thinks, how the tables have turned .

Keith rubs the back of his neck. “Oh. Thanks?”

“Are you sure you haven’t noticed how at least half of our batch worships you?” Lance goes back to staring upwards while not saying that he’s part of the group.

Lance frowns, but he wants to think that he’s different from the rest of them. He doesn’t want to be just another one student who stares at Keith through a simulator screen or calls him across the cafeteria to eat. He doesn’t want to be just another faceless classmate.

He wants to be someone to Keith. Someone that knows why Keith became a pilot and what happened to his family and look at the stars all night long together.

They don’t love him like Lance loves him.

(A selfish part of him wonders if it’s because Keith makes him feel worthy and important and everything that he isn’t.)

“Not really,” Keith mumbles. “I don’t really interact with other students that much.”

I don’t want to be an ‘other student’.

“Come on, don’t you like a bit of glory?”

I want to be the only one to talk to you like this and sit close to like this and spend my nights like this.

Keith shrugs. “The only other classmate I talk the most to is you.”

Lance’s heart keeps still and he’s so, so gone and he can’t change his mind because he already took a leap.

 

 

-

 

 

Among other things, Lance falls asleep to the image of Keith burned into the backs of his eyelids, dreams of wisps of smoke on his lips, wakes up to phantom touches that leave trails of fire down his skin.

Suddenly the cautionary tales don’t matter anymore: he finally understands why Icarus kept reaching for the sun and why moths keep dancing around the flames. He watches him sit silent and tired-looking throughout lectures and watches him light up and blaze trails through the sky in simulations and he loves him all the same.

He watches him under the moonlight and listens for his words, files his answers into the crevices of his mind and thinks I can’t believe you tell me this and I want to believe you’re mine. He learns how to find answers in Keith’s silence and makes a wish every time he makes him laugh.

When Keith tells him he’ll do great on the next sim he plays this over and over again in his head in the simulator, even as the lights flash brighter and the rocks fly closer. He wants the same fire that Keith has. This time he’s more confident and flies and spins through every damned asteroid, hyper aware and giddy—in five minutes he touches down on a rocky surface, blue dust billowing under his ship, and Iverson has no reason to tell him off this time.

Lance walks out the room with a more visible spring in his step, grinning through the rest of the day. He practically floats up to the rooftop come midnight, where he tells Keith and Keith smiles and squeezes his hand and says, I told you so .

(He thinks back to some of the nights when Keith tried to help him with his swerves, it was about making them cleaner, more precise. When Keith knocked a fist to his forehead playfully with a soft smile.)

Lance follows him through every night shadow and moonlit path and he feels himself burn up in flames.

 

 

-

 

 

Their late nights become so regular and routine that Lance begins to bring in light cover and pillows, small things that he can easily carry in his arms as he makes his way upwards. He has to be more careful from now on—Hunk’s caught him a couple of times before, woken up to the sound of his footsteps, but he had always just said he was going to the restroom. It was going to be a lot harder to explain going to the restroom with a pillow.

He lays on the cover, head supported by a pillow. Keith decided to lie down as well and all Lance can think about is how if they moved a bit nearer, they would be touching. And maybe if they were together, they could wrap their arms and entangle their legs.

“What would you miss the most?” Keiths asks.

“About what?”

“About Earth. When we’re able to fly out of our atmosphere.”

Lance thinks, I won’t be able to.

“My family of course,” Lance replies without any hesitation.

“Besides them.”

“Oh,” Lance says. He isn’t sure what Keith could mean.

Then he can distantly hear the collision of surf and shore and trees swaying and the gentle breeze and he knows the answer. “The ocean.”

Keith turns to him, “Why?”

Lance isn’t sure how to describe how the sea has always felt like a second home. How the sand felt between his toes and how it felt to see foam on top of waves and how he read stories about Atlantis and mermaids until the sun set and how he experienced love for the first time. How the water laps at the shoreline and rocks a boat back and forth, gleaming golden under the setting sun, shining silver under a full moon. So cold and yet so comforting in its vastness.

Right now, Lance can almost hear the ocean calling him back home.

“I’ve always felt connected with it,” is what Lance settles for.

“Would you go back to it?” Keith asks while facing the sky but Lance is facing Keith and he’s so, so close.

“I think,” Lance wants to stretch over the couple of inches that separate them and run his fingers through Keith’s hair. “I would like to see it before I leave. Leave Earth.”

Keith hums. “We should go. One day.”

They should.

Lance thinks of him and Keith and the ocean and he should be happy.

And yet, Lance feels himself panic and break from the inside and it pains him to hear those words because Keith isn’t his and Keith is going to leave him. But he feels so much hope because they’ve traded secrets and promises that Lance clings on to before he sleeps.

“Yeah,” Lance manages to choke out. “We should.”

 

 

-

 

 

The day of the Kerberos mission, Lance finds himself standing among a sea of cadets, hundreds aligned in perfect, immaculate formation. Everywhere he looks the world is bathed in light: medals gleaming on the decorated officers on the podium, shining metal vaulting off the launching pad and into the sky as if reaching for the rocket. A tunnel of thick, white smoke cleaves the sky in half and the sky looks so, so blue.

He can almost see the ship breaking through the atmosphere, a gleaming pinprick of light somewhere through the clouds.

And the world stands still.

Five years ago, Lance would have watched something like this on the television, crammed between two other siblings on the couch in the little yellow living room. He would watch with the world as they send off another human to make history in space, all bright eyes and big heart, spinning under posters of astronauts and models of spaceships hanging delicately from the ceiling.

He remembers running through the boardwalk to a secluded area by the shore, wind whipping through his hair, the images burned into his mind. He watches the sky and tries to find a home beyond the stars. He is eleven years old and dreaming about being a part of something bigger, wanting to witness a miracle like that up close.

Right now, everything feels dreamlike.

After the ceremony, they file back into the barracks, later on, but Lance’s heart stays in the open space and the image of the crew standing on the steps to the ship is imprinted in memory. Takashi Shirogane, Samuel Holt, Matthew Holt. Beaming, helmets in their hands, and looking like the heroes he always dreamed of seeing up close.

The corridors are noisier than usual, Lance not hiding his enthusiasm for the mission for a second. The screens play whatever news there is on the mission, the faces of Shirogane and the Holts lighting up on panels in the lobbies. He looks for Keith from the corners of his eyes, as usual, but today their schedules don’t match up that much and Lance only sees him once or twice out in the halls beside the two classes they share. His face is perfectly neutral, but he’s more evasive than ever.

He wonders what Keith looked like during the takeoff, but their pods were placed far apart in the battalion and Lance didn’t have much time to look for him back then.

Back at the dorms, he spends a good hour talking about the Kerberos mission on the phone, listening to Migs and Fernie yell about it over the phone.

“You’re gonna go to space soon right Lance?” Fernie shouts distantly, before bellowing, “Mama, Migs won’t let me speak to Lance!”

Lance sits on Hunk’s bed, giggling through the scuffle on the other end and the loud stream of Spanish breaking through the fight. “Yeah, I’ll be in space real soon.” I have to .

“And you’re gonna be on TV like them,” Migs declares. “And then when you come back home you’re famous already and then I can tell everyone in school that my brother fought in space and I’m gonna be the next Alvarez in space!”

He feels warmth surging through him as he joins the raucous laughter in the background. Fernie grabs the phone. “He’s just buttering you up because he almost ripped your poster of the space guy when he jumped out the top bunk while playing.”

Lance’s stomach does a dizzying flop. “Migs?!” he wails. “Why the f—wait, am I on speaker?”

Sebastian takes the phone. “No, man, just let it all out.”

“Why the frick,” Lance manages.

Sebastian practically howls.

“He knows how much I love that, and I love him, but if there is one rip on that poster when I get home I am punting him all the way to the next solar system.”

“Alright,” his brother says cheerily. “Migs, Lance says if anything happened to his Shirogane poster he’s kicking your butt all the way to space.”

“And tell him I still love him.”

“Although he still loves you,” Seb relays to the youngest Alvarez boy.

Lance laughs softly as Migs yells promises from the background, carrying the conversation for a little longer—Seb teases him for still not having talked to Shirogane, to which Lance swears he finally will when he gets back from the mission—when his mother finally takes the phone to talk to him herself.

“You always did say you wanted to see it up close,” she muses fondly. “And today you did. The next thing we know you’re going to be out there flying ships yourself, fighting—oh, mijo, you’re all grown up.”

“Ma, please,” he tries to say lightly, pulling away to muffle a slight sniffle.

“I trust you to be able to make the right decisions. I know you’re young, but don’t get into too much trouble,” she says, and it’s the same tone he remembers from the first days of school, the nights before an outing. Lance bites his lip thinking of all his late night escapes with a certain someone. “Look after yourself.”

“Of course I will.”

“And know that you can call anytime, alright? We’re here for you, Alejandro, always.”

Always. Lance laughs tearfully, and the stars outside the window look like pinpricks of street lamp lights reflected in rain puddles on his old street. It’s almost midnight. “Thanks, ma. I love you.”

“I love you too. Sleep well,” she says softly.

“You too,” he replies. “Good night.” He smiles and holds the phone still, closing his eyes to the dead hum on the end of the line.

The vents hum. Hunk snores.

Silence.

Wordlessly, Lance sets his phone down and walks out of their dorm, following now familiar aisles all the way up to the end of the building and the staircase that leads up to the rooftop. It’s all muscle memory now—he knows when the guards pass and each loop of hallways. He pushes the door open and Keith is there, like he always is, sitting on a blanket with his knees to his chest.

“Hey,” Lance greets, plopping himself down on a pillow.

He gets a hum in return.

Lance stretches his arms over his head and takes in all the stars in the sky, like he does almost every single night. He closes his eyes and sees three smiling faces and a spaceship, imagines the feeling of tearing through the atmosphere and breaking into space. He imagines a silence like the bottom of the sea and nebulas shifting like slowly ebbing sea foam.

“They’re somewhere out there now,” he murmurs to no one in particular.

“Yeah,” Keith says, simply.

They lie in silence for a while, shifting on the blanket on the cold floor, staring up at the sky. Keith leans back and props himself up on his elbows, eyes finding crevices in between the twinkling stars.

Lance breathes out and poses a question. “So, what is Shirogane to you?” Lance prays that Keith hasn't caught him snooping around the hallways when he sees them both in a conversation.

“Shiro?” Keith’s voice is rough. “Well, he’s just always been there.”

“Oh.” And before Lance has the time to feel sorry for himself, Keith keeps going.

“He’s kind of been the big brother figure in my life. He was always putting up with me, despite me being a brat,” Keith sighs. “He’s the one that introduced the idea of going here.”

Lance wants to say, me too.

“He told me a lot about flying and space and he was always so enthusiastic about it. And he always believed in me. He was like the only one to believe me. Then I was like, alright, it’ll be cool. I’ll give it a shot. Then he took me to a prototype plane, took me for a spin, and everything just clicked.”

Lance imagines a smaller Keith, seating behind Commander Shirogane on a plane, hair flying and laughter bubbling while looking past the horizons. “So you guys have known each other for a while?”

“For about four years maybe. Neighbors of my foster parents.” Keith shrugs. “Why?”

I admire him so much and I love you so much, Lance thinks, and I’m so jealous because I wish I knew him like you did and you’re so perfect and everything I want and want to be.

“Curious,” Lance shrugs. “Are you going to miss him?”

Keith turns to the sky. “He’s the only family I got left.”

Lance thinks to how much his family might be missing him as he attends the Garrison. And if he does make it to fighter class, which he will , he thinks, how much he would miss his own family. He thinks to the day Keith will join Commander Shirogane in a future mission and how Lance will be on the ground, watching them go. This time, he’ll be the one on the rooftops, watching the sky.

He fiddles with his fingers. None of this is going to happen for at least three more years. It’s okay. He has time.

Tearing his gaze away from the sky, he turns to face Keith, wondering why he always feels like he’s watching Keith leave.

 

 

-

 

 

“Soo,” Sebastian says dubiously and Lance braces himself for the worst, “Maria told me there was a boy?”

Oh. Lance frowns. “I mean I’ve talked about Hunk plenty,” Lance nods at Hunk who looks up from his desk. “So you gotta be more specific.”

“She said it was like, at the start of the term and, her words, not mine, you said, ‘he’s always talking to the space guy and his hair is luxurious and beautiful—” Lance feels heat crawl up his neck and yes, he knows exactly who Maria told Sebastian about. “—and when he crosses his arms he looks so macho and I want him to lift me and his eyes are so mysteriou—”

That’s where he draws the line.

“Hey!” Lance shouts into the phone, a bit too loud because Hunk looks at him questioningly. “I never talked about his eyes! I never said any of that! And like I talked about him once, why did she bring it up before she left? And I do not sound like that!”

“Ooh! Who has a crush?” Lance sighs as he recognizes his father’s voice and he can feel everyone clamoring around the phone and ganging up on him. “Lance has a crush? Yuck!” He hears Fernie shout and Migs shouting back, “What does she look like? Does she look like Maria’s girlfriend? Or does she look like Sebastian’s girlfriend?”

“Shush, it’s a boy,” Sebastian yells at them.

“I don’t like him!” Lance insists and Hunk looks at him and Lance glares, trying to transmit the thoughts of, uh-uh buddy, not you too .

“Fine, you don’t like him. But humor us, buddy. Tell us about him.”

Lance sighs. “Listen, I barely talk to the guy. My roomie can back me up.” Lance winks at Hunk who rolls his eyes. “I sit behind him in a few classes but that’s the most I can tell you besides he’s also the number one student.”

“That’s it?” Migs is the one that replies and he sounds so crestfallen that Lance wants to spill all of his romantic adventures and stargazing because Miguel was always there next to him during his late-night romcom marathons.

He ends the phone call with his father talking to him while he cooks up ropa vieja, “So, there isn’t a boy?”

“No, pa, there isn’t.”

“I just want you to be happy,” He says and Lance is still. “I just want you to have a good bunch of friends you can one day call family and maybe someone to have special moments with. You’re young so things may not work out, things might now. But I just want to see you grow into the great man I know you’ll be.”

Lance smiles into the phone. “Please, I’m sure you’re going to hear about all my journeys and heartbreaks in the future. You know how our family is.”

He hears his father chuckle and Lance can picture that he’s sitting on the kitchen island and his father’s home for a change, laughing with his whole body. “I’m sure you should sleep soon. Love you.”

“Love you too.” And the line is gone.

Not even a few minutes of respite, Hunk is the perpetrator this time. “So, talking about Vân Kiều?”

“Huunk,” Lance whines. “Come’n dude, give me a break.”

“You’ve had a long enough break already,” Hunk points at him with a pencil.

“Uh,” Lance points back at Hunk. “I think you need a break mister, you’ve been working too hard. Go to sleep.”

Hunk raises both of his arms, “Alright, sleep police. I’m heading to bed.” Hunk starts to turn off his desk’s lamp and Lance gets off of Hunk’s bed.

(Of course, when the night is still with the exception of his own heart, he leaves their dorm.)

 

 

-

 

 

“Do you think the constellations will be the same when we’re up there?” Lance asks on their little bed of blankets and pillows underneath the stars. Lance likes to think it’s romantic.

Keith doesn’t respond. He’s been like that for a couple of days. Lance knows. He stares at how his head drops during lessons and he stops interacting with his podmates during mealtimes. During the sims he’s allowed in the fire that blazes in Keith is dimmer than ever.

“Actually, I take back that question.” Lance swallows, knowing he’s taking a chance. “I’m sure the Kerberos crew can see the same constellations as us. They’re still in the same solar system, not a completely different galaxy.”

Lance wonders that it would be like to see complete new planets and stars that have never been identified. It would probably be like finding a different color for the first time.

“You’re right,” Keith coughs out. “It’s just a regular mission. Nothing to be worried about.” And Lance feels like Keith’s trying to convince himself rather than answer Lance.

He doesn’t know what else to talk about that would help Keith forget, except his family. So he launches into a story of a time when Maria was in the second grade and she tried to tell a girl that she liked her, but she ran away. “When Maria got home,” Lance snickers. “She threw our mom’s phone in the garbage and locked Sebastian in a box for two hours.”

Lance is on his back and Keith is propped on his side by his elbow, looking down at him with wide eyes. “How did he—”

“He was trapped for like two hours. Migs found him later.”

“That’s…” Keith seems to trail off, trying to find the right words. “Awful. Sebastian is the oldest, right?” Keith asks and it fills Lance with butterflies to know that he seems to grasp Lance’s family tree.

“Yeah! And like, afterwards my mom was so stressed and yelling and my youngest sister—”

“Fernie, right?

Lance’s face splits into a grin, “Yeah, and she was like three and with the kitchen screaming for food right? Then we hear my mom’s phone go off and the whole house is in shambles. We’re all just screaming.” Lance lets out a laugh. “But, yeah, that’s my family.”

“I feel like I know them so well already,” Keith’s lips twitch upwards.

“With all these stories, you might as well be,” Lance’s heart pounds as if we ran ten miles in the scorching heat.

Keith falls down on his back. “Thanks.”

Lance smiles. If this is what he can do to help Keith, he’ll keep doing it.

 

 

-

 

 

“Attention, cadets,” Commander Iverson announce right at the start of class. “I’ve come to deliver a bit of, I should say, bleak news.”

Lance watches the stray specks of dust dance around the rays of the sun; light peeking through little windows that barely show him anything of the outside world.

“The Kerberos mission has crashed into one of the asteroids on the edge of our solar system, specifically 3 Juno.”

Lance looks up, unable to believe what he’s hearing. Gasps and murmurs around the room crash like waves and white noise.

He feels lightheaded and heavy at the same time. That’s not true , his mind riots, this isn’t the kind of thing you can joke about .

“We have failed to receive a stable communication link with the crew, but with our tracking data, their ship is immobile in the Kuiper belt.”

Three smiling faces. A gleaming white ship.

Torn to pieces somewhere in the depths of space.

Lance’s world shatters.

Iverson keeps talking about how it’s a high percentage that the crew did not make it, how it would take months, maybe years to safely retrieve the ship. The Garrison would have to go over safety precautions and new sciences for it to never happen again and they would, of course, pay their respects—

He thinks of Keith and his heart breaks.

“By the end of the day, we will gather for a commemorative ceremony. No classes for the rest of the day. More information later. Dismissed.” Iverson waves them off and people rush out but all Lance can think of is Keith’s name and dark eyes and how crushed he would be.

Lance pushes himself through the crowd and grabbing random shoulders and his legs know where to go. He hears a call of ‘lance !’ somewhere in the halls but his heartbeat is louder. He doesn’t have to watch where he’s going because there’s only one place in the world he can think of besides the ever present, blaring words that flash in his head, saying, shirogane is dead shirogane is dead shirogane is dead.

Gone. Nada. Zip.

He runs up the stairs two steps at a time and opens the door with both of his arms and Keith is there and the world stops shattering, just for a second, and becomes still.

“Keith?” Lance asks, voice too quiet he isn’t sure if Keith can hear him.

It’s different being up here in the middle of the day, the rays blinding and warm. Given any other day, Lance would love to embrace the bright blue skies.

But today, it just seems like a mockery.

Keith sits underneath the shadows of one of the walls and Lance steps closer, again asking, “Keith?” Lance doesn’t dare ask if Keith is alright.

“You know what I heard?” Keith spits out, voice cracking, and Lance kneels down, taken aback at how furious and spiteful Keith’s voice is. “One of the commanders was like, ‘yeah, it should be fine if we just tell the kids that it crashed’, ‘no use in telling them that we just can’t trace them’, ‘if we’re not going to continue searching there really is no point’ . What do they take us for? Idiots?” Keith moves with his arms and it pains Lance so much to see him like this.

“They could still be out there, Lance! How could they just stop searching? The best three astronauts the Garrison has, and they’re just losing hope?”

“I don’t know,” Lance whispers. He’s trying to process the new information Keith just gave him, but it’s too much to think about that the Garrison lied to them and that Commander Shirogane could be alive or dead and how destroyed Keith is.

Lance isn’t sure what to do, he’s always admired Commander Shirogane, always idolized from afar. But he never even spoken to him. He isn’t sure what’s there for him to do.

He considers leaving, giving Keith space. But when his eyes dart to the door, Keith turns to him and says, “Stay.”

 

 

-

 

 

“I came into their staff room right? And they were like, Vân Kiều, I’m sorry there’s nothing we can do—bullshit! The best crew they have and they’re not going to do anything about it?”

Keith is all in flames, looking like he could explode at any given moment. Lance always stays, trying to soothe it all with random, irrelevant stories of his family. But as time grows, Keith seems to be aggressive, more hurt. There are stories of him nearly crashing simulators and walking out of classes. Come the next rankings a few weeks later, Keith’s dropped down to fifth place in their batch. Lance remains at sixteen, still just out of reach of the fighter class.

He doesn’t care. There are more important matters at hand.

Lance watches him slowly crumble.

Lance starts sitting with Hunk during breaks whenever he can. The whispers about Keith warp into something almost entirely different. What used to be all praise is now tainted with disdain: the popularity must have gotten to him, he thinks he can talk back at instructors now, what a punk . The looks directed at him are colored with doubt and apprehension, like they’re all watching a darkening storm pass through the halls.

On the rooftop, he’s a hurricane, eyes like lightning and words crashing like a flood. Lance listens all throughout, facing towards the sky and hoping that Shirogane is still somewhere out there.

“He’s out there,” Keith says. “I know he is. I feel it.”

 

 

-

 

 

When Lance walks up to the rooftop a few days later, he can’t stop the nagging feeling in his brain that something’s off. But he pushes himself forward because there’s one person he has to see.

Right after he opens the door, Keith is there, wearing a loose shirt and sweats, but also a backpack and spinning something that looks like a key around his finger.

Lance’s first response is to say, “Where’s the pillows?” because Lance brought the blanket and he isn’t really sure what to do with it.

“We’re going to the beach,” Keith says. “Like we always talked about.’

Lance’s jaw drops. “What, Keith, we have class tomorrow and how are we going to get there, it takes at least six hours to the nearest coast. We—”

“Just trust me,” Keith says with blazing eyes and Lance can’t stop himself from nodding his head. Keith walks up to him and grabs his wrist and Lance is so terrified that he might hear his heartbeat.

Keith leads him through stairways and hallways that Lance has never been to. He leads them through better than Lance. Keith’s always going be one step ahead of him.

They leave through one of the backdoors and a dusty truck is waiting for them. Keith hops in the driver’s seat and starts to turn in the engine and Lance is gone, gone, gone. While he gets into the passenger’s side, he can’t help but notice that Keith looks perfect, as usual, even in a shirt and sweats and Lance feels his eyes go glassy and his heart sound louder than the start of the engine.

(Dark hair, dark eyes, dark clothes; how fitting it would be if he probably rode a motorcycle. He looks like the kind of boy Sebastian and his mother would raise their eyebrows at.)

”Ready?” Keith asks him, eyes carefully watching. Lance nods and Keith presses on the gas pedal. Lance hears himself yelp and he clings to the edge of the seat and the wind blasts in his face and through everything, he looks to Keith. Keith, with the wind in his face, easy smile, and so liberated.

Is this what it feels like to fly with Keith?

He appreciates Keith’s talent in such a different way now. It’s like magic, how he can feel weightless but still know he’s safe. Whispers of commanders, saying ‘ he’s the best pilot of our generation’ resurface and Lance can’t believe that he’s with Keith.

He lets himself relax, lessening his grip on his seat and lets himself breathe. The desert air is crisp and Lance wonders how he’s never noticed before. He looks back to Keith, back resting on his seat, and he feels himself rock to sleep.

Somewhere between the gentle rev of the engine and the whip of the wind, Lance can imagine he hears the gentle crash of the ocean. It’s what wakes him up. He feels a crick in his neck and he tries to soothe while rubbing his eyes. Then, he turns his gaze to Keith, who has one arm straight on the steering wheel, eyes focused, hair mussed, and Lance has never felt so fond.

But there’s something wrong. The way Keith’s grip is too tight that his knuckles whiten and how there’s a knot in his jaw and a tiny wrinkle in between his eyebrows. Lance has seen Keith fly before and this isn’t Keith. Worry eats away at him, noisy and dark; Keith has been so blatantly avoidant of anything concerning flying and Shiro after they had announced the incident.

Keith’s other hand is on the gearshift and Lance wants to hold it in his.

He’s been living a risk ever since he joined the Garrison, ever since he’s met Keith, what’s one more?

He reaches out and places his hand over Keith’s but then shit fuck, Keith flinches and Lance immediately pulls back.

He feels his heart drop in his chest and tucks his hand under his thigh, eyes snapping to the window beside him. Stupid, his mind whispers as the world flies by, give him some space. Lance pointedly keeps his eyes on the road, waiting for the sea to rise over the horizon. The roads are empty and the sky is so, so wide, stars omnipresent as always. It’s dark save for the moonlight and the headlights in front of them.

There is no music. There are no words.

Lance checks the time. 4:32 am.  

He should be in class in a few hours—both of them. The thought of his empty seat and his already too-low rank twists his stomach into knots; surely it wouldn’t be so easy to get out of this should the instructors call them out on it. The thought of his mother finding out makes him feel the foot stomps on his grave already. He forces the thoughts into the back of his mind to worry about later and looks back at the horizon.

He hasn’t seen the ocean in so long.

(The ocean is his first love.)

It only takes several minutes of driving until the sea finally comes into their line of sight, a pale gray band in the distance. Lance straightens up excitedly, fingers pressed to the window (he still doesn’t look at Keith). He wishes there was a sunroof like in their old car, remembering how he would look out of it as a child, Sebastian’s hands braced around his knees, laughing as the wind whipped through his hair.

It isn’t like the beach of his home—tan sands instead of white, no trees, no people. No boardwalk, of course, but Lance welcomes the scene as it unfolds before them.

Nothing but them, the shore, and the sea.

“We’re here,” Keith mutters as the vehicle rolls to a stop.

Lance pushes the door open and breathes in the scent of sea salt, nostalgia and giddiness washing over him. “Oh, wow,” he says breathlessly. He toes off his shoes and rolls up his pants before jumping off the seat, digging his heels into the cool sand. He turns to Keith then, making a face at his feet. “Dude, take those off, did you seriously wear boots to a beach?”

Keith simply gives him a bland look and a shrug, but he’s a little distracted by the view around them.

“Hey,” Lance grins. “Race you to the shore?”

“Wha—”

Lance spins around and takes off down the beach, laughing wildly as Keith struggles to get out of his boots. The salt from the sea is prominent and his eyes sting with it, but the air is cool and the ocean beckons for him and he runs, and keeps running. It’s freeing, even more so because the world is nothing but black and silver. He’s missed this, open space and fresh air. In the distance, the sky is turning lighter and Lance imagines he’s chasing the sunrise. Somewhere behind him, the wind tosses Keith’s shouted words around and Lance can hear him running too.

The sand begins to grow colder and darker under his feet, instantly soothing. Lance leaps into the water, still laughing loudly, too out of breath to yell out, “I win!”. Keith is hurtling into the sea right after him, almost falling forward when he trips on wet sand and Lance’s automatic reaction is to catch him, arm across his chest to prevent him from falling face-first into the shallow water.

“Whoa,” he exclaims as he rights Keith, almost swaying with the motion. “Competitive much?”

Keith huffs, rolling his eyes at him, but Lance takes note of the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. The pink of his cheeks and the sweat beaded at his hairline. The streaks from the sunrise illuminate Keith.

Then Keith clears his throat a little and Lance snaps back to himself, dropping his hands from Keith’s shoulders with a sheepish grin.

(He can still feel the rising of Keith’s chest, the thrum of his heartbeat like a phantom pulse on the inside of his arm.)

“Why did you bring me here?” Lance asks. “What are we going to do?”

“Whatever you want,” Keith replies smoothly. “What did you use to do at a beach?”

“Haven't you been to a beach before?”

“Not really.”

Lance tilts his head and thinks. “The boardwalk back home had a lot of shops and restaurants; performers, too. They used to sing all night. And I used to surf, but we can’t really do that,” he laughs softly. “We can just go for a dip or something.”

Lance immediately starts peeling his shirt off, something he feels is oddly intimate when it’s just the two of them, right as the sun breaks the horizon. A sudden thought rushes to his head, he isn’t sure if he’s ready to see Keith. But there’s no turning back and his shirt is already off his head.

He sprints into the water right then and there, feeling a little silly, but he feels more refreshed than he has in ages. Water splashes as he runs and salt tousles his hair. When he looks back, Keith is following him. The current carries sand to lightly swirl around their fingers and toes.

He grasps whatever emotions he has left and turns to Keith. He tries his best to not let allow his eyes to wander past Keith’s face, trying his best not to explore the outline of his collarbone and trail down his navel and map out the rest of Keith’s chest.

They spend the rest of the day splashing around the waves and napping in the sun and Lance giggles when he sees Keith turning pink instead of tan. There’s no one else around and no one telling them what to do and not to do and it’s just him and Keith.

He hasn’t felt this happy in ages. The infectious laughter that hurts your stomach and makes your muscles weak you can’t run or hold things. The giddiness of laughing out loud and being with the person you love the most in the universe. And you know you love them because not a moment is dull, not a moment isn’t worth it.

When the sun starts to dusk and the sky gradients seamlessly into a multitude of colors, they sit with their legs stretched out. Lance keeps his ankles crossed, surf barely touching his toes. Keith is millimeters apart; it’s a familiar position in a new territory. Lance starts to hum a song his parents used to dance to in the kitchen when they didn’t think he and his siblings were awake.

Their pants are rolled up and the sand is stuck to their feet, footprints left behind them just out of reach of the foaming tide.

(Maybe Lance wants to leave a mark.

They were here today; the beach was theirs, the day was theirs.

Here is where I loved you , his heart says. Like writing words into the sand.

The tide laps further up the shore.)

Before he knows it, Lance is up on his feet and motioning for Keith to join him. He’s still humming in a 3/4th signature, lyrics on the tip of his tongue. When Keith stands, Lance places his hand on Keith’s shoulder and on one on the other’s waist. Keith seems to catch on because he does the same thing and bubbles erupt in Lance.

“ Tiempo de vals tiempo para viajar ,” Lance mutters the lyrics, “ por encima del sol, por debajo del mar.” Their steps are a bunch of fumbles and miscalculations, not at all the lively, practiced dances he’s used to, but Keith is here. And it’s enough. Lance grins when he dips Keith, so low his hair is inches from the water and he grips Lance’s arm in warning, but the laugh that escapes him is so worth it. In this moment, everything is right in the world.

Bésame en tiempo de vals, Lance whispers the lyrics in his head like a prayer.

Keith is smiling and laughing and when he takes the initiative to twirl Lance, he feels himself fall in love all over again, dizzy with the feeling as he rights himself.

He stops, the world spinning just a little bit as the tides shift.

“Lance,” Keith murmurs.

The sky is red and pink and gold, and Lance realizes they’re still holding hands.

They stand ankle-deep in a golden sea, and as the sun dips into the horizon, Keith closes the distance between them.

Lance’s brain promptly short-circuits, but he presses himself into the kiss, fingers tangling into damp dark hair. Keith’s lips are chapped, but they yield and they welcome and Lance feels like the ground gives way and he’s trapped in a freefall in slow motion. It’s so warm, the sun in his hands—moths burn up in flames, Icarus hurtles to the ground in a blazing trail, nothing gold can stay—Lance allows himself to burn.

It feels grand, final. Parting.

When they start to pull apart, Lance thinks he can hear the words ‘goodbye,’ but it’s probably a figment of his imagination. But he refuses to let go, grinning as his hands are clasped to Keith’s face and shoulder, searching his face. Keith smiles at him, but his eyes are so far away.

And yet, Keith pulls him closer, wraps his arms around his waist and holds him there. Lance closes his eyes and lets his head drop to the other’s shoulder.

He tells himself it’s the saltwater that makes his eyes sting so much.

 

 

-

 

 

The hundred colors from sunset melt into a slowly deepening indigo as evening creeps back in; the heat gives way to cold once more. The sand is still rather warm when they trek back to the truck, and their clothes stick to their skin, gritty with salt.

They really try, but the sand gets into the car and sticks in between the crevices of the seats, but Lance assures them that they wouldn’t have guessed it was taken to the beach. The desert is full of sand, after all.

It’s so quiet.

The sea wants him back.

Lance closes his eyes and bids it goodbye one last time before shutting the door.

He turns to the front as the engine starts revving, staring at the darkness outside until the headlights flash on. He turns to Keith.

“Thanks,” Keith says quietly. This time, his eyes are a different kind of intense: not the searing kind Lance is so used to, the kind that pins him to place and makes nothing else around him matter.

This time, it’s warm, a kind of intensity that Lance knows—the kind that makes one feel like they can face whatever the future brings, the kind that comforts and soothes, that says, I’m happy and I’m grateful you’re here with me , and, maybe, just maybe, I love you.

“You’re welcome,” Lance says, beaming, no longer quite out of breath.

Twenty minutes into the ride, they find their pinkies linked together in the space between them and Keith no longer pulls away, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

 

 

-

 

 

Lance drifts between sleep and awakeness, but he does remember seeing a blurry image of a lit cigarette in Keith’s left hand, dusting off the ashes out of the window. The rushing of the world outside the window lulls him back to sleep.

From the driver’s seat, Keith listens to his even breathing.

He’s thankful for today. He really, truly is. He’s thankful for the rooftop and the beach and the truck. He’s thankful for Lance, for every single story and every single wish and moment they ever made under the stars. Even if he was loud, he was one of the only people who listened. One of the only people who kept coming back for him.

Keith doesn’t want to let go of the warmth and go back into the shadows, back into solitude, back into the open spaces and unfamiliar faces. He needs Lance, needs the laughter and the honesty and the warmth, but there are other concerns to be addressed right now.

But the hours of silence allow him to sink deeper and deeper into his own mind. He can’t distract himself now, not without Lance’s words to keep him afloat, not without those eyes to tell him everything will be fine.

The sky is so much darker out here.

He thinks about how dark space is. He thinks about Shiro and the Holts, somewhere out there, and hopes against all hope that they’re all still alive. He hasn’t told Lance about what he’s been doing after the other leaves to go back to bed — he isn’t sure he’ll ever get to — but the truth is that after Kerberos went wrong, he started going back to that old house in the middle of the desert, looking for anything that could help him get to Shiro.

The truth is that he’s never trusted the Garrison to be the ones to bring Shiro back. The truth is that he hasn’t slept properly in several days. The truth is that he hasn’t done as well on the simulators ever since and he’s falling behind on written work, his conduct grades are declining at an alarming rate, and that by now he’s sure he’s dropped outside the top ten.

The truth is that he doesn’t care anymore.

He thinks back to the time he still couldn’t find a point to go on yet, on that one night on the rooftop. When there had been nothing for him but the short-lived bursts of adrenaline that came with flying, when everything was still as could as things could be for someone like him.

Shiro had given him that. Shiro, his first friend, the first person who told him he believed in him, the first person that gave him a place in the world and showed him what flying felt like.

After Kerberos, after the crash, Keith only wants to bring him back. To save him when everyone around him just gave up on him like that, like Shiro had done for him in the past.

Keith hasn’t cried in a long, long time.

But right now, the moon looks like a blurry puddle of silver and his fingers tremble on the steering wheel and he can hear his own ragged, halting breathing within the confines of the truck.

He just wants to do something right, this time.

And he will.

He promises he will.

(Lance doesn’t fully wake up for another hour, so he doesn’t hear it, but in exchange for all those nights on a rooftop, those words of happiness and hope, Keith gives him three things:

A thank you, an apology, and a promise, all whispered in the dark.)

 

 

-

 

 

It should be dangerous to just drive the vehicle back into Garrison territory, but Keith has apparently found so many secret exits and entrances that he manages to bring the truck right back where he got it.

For a short moment, sitting there in the dim lot and the silence and the gray, gray concrete, Lance feels like he’s been taken back twenty-four hours. White noise swathes over them when the engine finally dies down.

It’s only a little past midnight.

Keith leads them through a very narrow staircase, a different one from last night, but it leads to their floor and they make their way to the main hallway without a problem. When Lance recognizes the corridors to be the one to his dorm, he has to stop, and Keith gives him a questioning look when he doesn’t go ahead.

“Are you gonna be okay?” Lance asks.

Keith is quiet for far too long.

They’re still holding hands.

Stop looking at me like that, Lance wants to cry out, but he swallows his fears, clears his throat and says, “Right.” And then adds, “see you.”

He should turn away and get back to the dorm. But something roots him to the spot, tells him that if he doesn’t do it now he might not be able to do it again -- so Lance shuts out all the warning signs that scream otherwise, takes a deep breath, and kisses Keith right there and then.

This time, Keith holds him tighter, kisses back harder, hand tangled into his hair like he can’t let him go again and tomorrow night is too far away.

But Keith’s still the one that pulls away first.

“Trust me,” Keith whispers.

Lance is still even through the tingling on his lips and the dread crowding around his heart. He swallows. “Okay.” And that was that.

Keith lets go and Lance walks back to his room in silence.

He just wants to go to sleep. Preferably dreamlessly, for at least an entire year.

But when the door slides open Hunk is sitting in the bottom bunk, wide awake. Lance hasn’t seen him stay up past eleven, ever. He’s got his tab in front of him, reading modules, but his head snaps up the moment he hears the door.

“Lance?” he blurts out. “Lance!” Hunk’s face goes from bright to worry in a matter of seconds as he stands up. “Dude, where have you been? I woke up and you were gone, I thought you were up earlier or something but one of your podmates asked me where you were at lunch, and I didn’t even see you at dinner.”

Lance walks to the bed without saying anything, even when Hunk puts a hand on his shoulder.

“You weren’t in any of your classes. I thought you probably felt sick this morning and were at the clinic or something—were you?” Hunk presses, concern evident on his face. “Lance,” he tries again.

Lance lets out a long, long sigh.

He doesn’t like lying, especially to friends, but.

“I’m just really tired, Hunk,” he says. He tries to smile, but it wavers at the edges. He can’t, yet. “Can we talk about this another time?”

Hunk scans his face, trying to look for a clue, before he relents with a sigh. “Okay.”

Lance thanks God for such an understanding roommate and friend and smiles a little wider and pulls him into a sideways hug. “Just go to sleep, okay? I’ll be here in the morning, don’t worry.”

 

 

-

 

 

The next day, Keith Vân Kiều is absent from class.

Lance stares at the empty seat in front of him, trying to push down the panic and anxiety in his chest. He looks for him at lunch, at dinner; he goes through the long route through the halls by Keith’s dorm, trying to look for long dark hair and dark eyes among the sea of other students.

He can’t find him anywhere.

He gets a lashing tongue from the commanders the minute he runs into them. ‘where have you been’, ‘you’re getting a notice back home’, ‘cross another line young man ’. Among themselves they share cold whispers of ‘ a disgrace of a cadet’, ‘waste of honed skill’, ‘up and gone never to return I bet’ , but Lance is sure those aren’t about him.

At night, he creeps back up to the rooftop, not wanting to hope, but still hoping. Lance breathes in and pushes the door open, another conversation bubbling at the tip of his tongue.

Nothing but empty space and a vast black sky. White noise engulfs him in a cold, cold wave. There is nothing on the rooftop.

He can’t stay.

Keith is still absent the next day. And the next. And the next.

Lance tries to continue with his days as normal, tuning out the whispers in the hallways that carry Keith’s name. Washed out, ran away, gone missing; jagged words connected by frail strings into an ugly, baseless constellation. The instructors speak of him like an asset, how unfortunate they’ve lost one of the most brilliant novice pilots they’ve had in years.

Hotshot, prodigy, trailblazer of the flight division, Vân Kiều. It hurts because no one talks about Keith as Keith.

It hurts because there is no one else aside from Lance to remember him as Keith. No family and no other friends who might have been that close to him too. Only Lance.

He wonders what the Garrison is going to do about reports of a student gone missing. Keith has no family he knows of, so it might not call as much attention, but Lance thinks of the Garrison lying about him, maybe saying he dropped out and ran away or got involved in a tragic accident, like—

Like—

(This is where Lance realizes why Keith left. the epiphany leaves him stock still in the middle of a busy lobby, two feet away from a plaque honoring the Kerberos crew in beveled words and shining metal. He understands.

It doesn’t make it hurt any less.)

Sometimes, he walks up to the rooftop out of habit. But of course, Keith’s not there, and all Lance does is stand in the doorway for a few moments, staring, before retreating back to his dorm. He still can’t stay.

Days blend into weeks then into months and before he knows it, he’s in his second year at the Garrison, top fifteen, and put into fighter class. He thanks Keith for helping him how to swerve a bit smoother on the left and diving headfirst. He thanks Keith for giving him this, even through all of his mixed feelings.

He’s tired spending his sleepless nights in his bunk and covered in sheets but it feels so foreign because he’s so used to blood pumping in his veins and the rushes of adrenaline. He’s so used to being so full of life, the dull grey ache burns his heart. He’s tried to forget. But Keith is in his thoughts whenever he closes his eyes.

Then the image of Keith always turns his shoulder, walking away.

Always leaving.

This is what Lance gets for being vulnerable.

(Lance thinks, even if he does forget Keith—he would probably find him again, one day in the future, and fall in love again.)

More time passes, and Lance occasionally goes back up. Sometimes he even stays. He sits the way they used to and looks for him in the distant valleys and the shadows and the night sky. In the middle of the night, when everything is asleep, he thinks again and again about how much he’s loved Keith, how it was the most frightening and most wonderful thing he’s ever experienced.

How it was worth every risk.

But Lance hopes, like how the sun never fails to rise again in the East, that Keith will come back.

To him.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all.

 

 

-

 

 

(Keith spends his days away in the little shack in the middle of nowhere.

He spends countless nights trying to find clues and patterns that could lead him back to Shiro. He takes photos of markings and snips countless articles, looks for any way he can reach him, even though the stars look so far away and the sky seems too endless. Everything is too fast and he gives himself no time for rest.

But when he does pause to look to the stars, he sees a bright smile. When he takes his bike to the beach, there’s an echo of a laugh that drifts with the wind. And when he does visit the same ocean they did, with the surf crashing at his feet, he thinks of a boy with bright blue eyes who taught him how to love.

Time stands still.)

 

-

 

 

When Lance does see Keith again, four seasons have passed, everything burns red like it always has been with Keith, and he falls in love all over again.

 

Notes:

the song is 'tiempo de vals' by charyanne and dan recommended it for this fic you can listen to it here !!

also their names are keith vân kiều which is from may's fic which im sure you all have read and lance alvarez bc it sounds beautiful

hi its hana (akaeijis) and esbis is a great writer and i love her and u should def check out her work and twitter bc shes so talented at everything and shes why this fic is so good

at the end of this fic me and stes were dead and made memes from this fic and thesse r taken right out of our dm
pidge: hey lance lets go to the rooftop
lance: im sorry pidge but this is where i confessed my undying love 300x in my mind to my not quite ex so if u dont mind

hunk, after keith left: lance lets go to the rooftop
lance: uhh no
hunk: but u always say we need to be more adventurous

fuckin jones: i find the rooftop to be very relaxing
lance: what the fu

anyway we hoped u enjoy this Monster me and stes put a lot of work into it!! kudos/bookmarks/comments are appreciated and loved !!

[[ hi hi it's stacey/esbis here!! can i just say i love hana for asking me to work with her on this oh my god??? get u a friend who inspires you out of writer's block so much you end up writing like 10-15K after years of nothing but drabbles.

also i know at least some readers are filipino so i might as well say this story is basically all the songs in kamikazee's romantico trilogy?? in order??? we didn't mean that but it fits SO perfectly it amuses me so much omg

i hope you guys enjoyed!! also if you can spot those devalier or at least the aph references yes you can fight us ]]

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akaeijis' twitter

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of a lifetime waiting for us