Chapter Text
It didn't go unnoticed that something was up with Lance. It was sudden, and slow all at once; slow enough that it took a while to notice, but quick enough that people must've by now, although nobody pried. They waited patiently for Lance to come to them, though he never did, and now, they didn't know how to start the conversation with him; although it needn't be much more than a 'Hey Lance, is everything okay? You seem to be going through something right now, and we want you to know that we're here if you need us'. Or, maybe, they hadn't noticed like Keith assumed they must've done. Or maybe, they didn't pay as much attention to Lance as Keith did.
At first, it had been as simple as Lance being quieter- not necessarily withdrawn, but distracted. Which wasn't out of the ordinary in particular- Lance and focus weren't best friends at the best of times after all, but he seemed so deep in thought and so within his own head that it was unusual for him. Whilst it wasn't unusual for Lance to become so focused he forgot to drink water or move from his seat, it was unusual for Lance to be so much less... present. He seemed sad, or troubled somehow, although Keith couldn't directly pinpoint what was going through his head at the time.
And then it manifested in less time spent with the others, more solo training, less physical contact. The cuddle piles Lance used to love became something he seemed to be uncomfortable with- and when he seemed to allow himself that closeness, sometimes relaxing back into his usual smiles and jokes, he'd eventually seem to fade into insecurity. He'd go from laughter and jokes to a wavering smile, a fake yawn and a sad departure off to bed. Lance loved physical affection- he always sought out cuddles with Hunk, or lay himself across Pidge to start telling her how rough his day had been. Lance thrived in social situations, and struggled when he was isolated, so it wasn't healthy for Lance to be actively denying himself that comfort. It was a sign that something was wrong, but nobody seemed to notice that Lance was becoming withdrawn. Keith wanted to be annoyed with them all, for not paying better attention to their friend. Had they all pushed him away? Had Lance pushed himself away? What had happened? And why weren't they doing anything to help? Were they assuming he needed space? Because that wasn't like Lance, and it made Keith question if the others truly knew Lance at all. Hadn't they taken the time to get to know him better than this? Didn't they know that Lance needed people to support him and keep him company when he was going through it?
He stopped flirting with the women he met at planets they stopped at, even when they flirted first. There were no finger guns anymore, his hands stuffed rigidly in his pockets despite his constant need to move. The lack of finger guns made sense with the lack of flirting at first, although it was unusual for Lance to cut them out all together. It was something he seemed to do instinctively, and on occasion he'd begin to raise his hands, before abruptly stopping as if realisation burned him for doing so. It made no sense to Keith; finger guns were a Lance thing. Had Lance been told he was annoying and lame one too many times? Had he lost his confidence and self-worth when it came to women? Lance had craved female attention like his life depended on it, although Keith suspected he was missing something. Lance was never a fuckboy, never the type to use women, so why was he so... fuckboy-esque? Was he flirting for validation? Was he lonely? Did he need to feel like he could be wanted and loved because he had self-esteem issues and unresolved childhood insecurities? But why had he stopped? He loved flirting, craved the attention. He would seek out social interactions with women until Shiro warned him not to, and Lance would be blissfully smiling and recounting their smiles and giggles in a dreamy state for hours after. It made him happy, so Keith didn't understand why he stopped. What had changed?
He stopped taking care of his skin, acne scars more visible without the layer of foundation, and fresh acne painting his cheeks now he'd stopped doing his nightly skin care. There were no face masks; no moisturiser nor toner; no exfoliant nor cleanser. Lance had been so dedicated to keeping himself well cared for that Keith couldn't understand why he suddenly wasn't. No matter how bad things were, Lance stuck to his skincare routine like glue. He took good care of himself, but now he'd stopped. There wasn't anything wrong with not religiously applying fuck-knows-what to your face every night, and there certainly wasn't anything wrong with having acne and not hiding it under foundation, but it wasn't like Lance to neglect his skin and not freak out if he missed a day or two. It wasn't like Lance to stop taking care of himself all together.
Something was wrong with Lance, and he was excellent at putting on a mask. Keith wasn't so sure the others noticed their friend struggling. They seemed too wrapped up in their own duties and hobbies, but Keith noticed; and Keith was notoriously bad at understanding people, so this was a problem. Why hadn't anybody else noticed something was wrong? It was so painfully obvious, but then again, nobody ever noticed when something was wrong with Keith either. There must've been a pattern, a link to the social cues Lance stopped using- but this was Keith's weak point, and he didn't have access to databases on human culture up here, and he also didn't want to ask the others in case he overstepped, or the anomalous behaviour pointed to something Lance was trying to keep a secret.
○●○
The mirror had always been a safety net for Lance.
He remembered being five, happy, until the teacher gave the class an exercise to do, and one of the questions hit him harder than it should have done. "If you could change one thing about the way you look, what would it be?" And Lance left it blank. But the teacher insisted there had to be something. And it made Lance look too deep inside. He actively tried to look for that one thing he didn't like, because arrogance was bad, and not liking your appearance was normal, it seemed.
When he'd started to spiral, saying how he didn't like the way his nose curved up, or his freckles, his pointy chin or large forehead- Veronica sat with him, and told him that instead of focusing on what he didn't like, he should focus on what he did like. And the stuff he didn't like, he should imagine what he would think if they were someone else's face. And that's how Lance realised he liked the way he smiled, and the way his hair curled, and learned to love his freckles, and his nose was cute. And maybe his big forehead and pointy chin weren't bad things- he didn't have to love them. They were a part of his face. And beauty was subjective- he wasn't ugly, because ugly didn't exist. And even if it did, it sure as hell didn't define his worth. And maybe his chin was pointy, but he rather liked his jawline anyways.
When school got rough, and bullies would make fun of Lance- for anything from his threadbare clothes to his appearance to his self-confidence and his enthusiasm- he'd always go home and walk straight to the bathroom, lock the door- and look in the mirror. He'd tell himself his clothes were well-loved: Comfortable for him, even if he didn't own much. He wasn't ugly; he was okay just the way he was. It was okay to love himself, it was okay to be confident, he didn't have to beat himself up over it or feel guilty. He wasn't dumb and he wasn't annoying- he was passionate about what he loved, and they just didn't vibe with that passion and that was okay, because Lance was okay just the way he was and he shouldn't stop being passionate and energetic for others.
Sometimes, the mirror grounded him. When he felt himself denying his grades were slipping, he'd look in the mirror. He'd notice the dark circles under his eyes, and he'd go through his school grades in his head, and try to figure out why, why couldn't he focus? Why did he struggle to even clean his room of a morning? Maybe he needed a break, and maybe he could try a different approach to studying. Being mad at himself wouldn't help, because he wasn't purposely slacking off. Other times, he'd remind himself that maybe he did go a little too far with a joke he made, or maybe his flirting really had made that girl uncomfortable, and maybe he owed people an apology, and maybe he would learn and do better.
Sometimes he didn't have anything to think about. Sometimes, just staring into his reflection when things were rough was enough.
But right now… the mirror might be giving him answers he wasn't ready for, but the mirror was the one place that felt safe to confront himself by. The one place he felt he could go to when he really needed to think and reflect on himself, in an honest way. It was hard to lie to something that showed your true reflection, after all. Something that showed you just how false that painted smile really was, or just how exhausted you were when you'd been in denial.
And Lance was shaking. Lance was shaking because he couldn't understand- because he couldn't see it even though it was right there, but when he looked at himself deeper, it was obvious.
He didn't look like the stereotype. He looked like a regular person. He didn't look like the kind of person you'd look at on a sidewalk and immediately know that part of them. He didn't look gay. And Lance knew- he knew that was bullshit, that it was just a stereotype, or for some a purposeful choice. He knew that, and he never applied this kind of backwards thinking to others but… he looked like… your average guy. The average guy you'd assume to be straight, the type to get a girlfriend and only ever a girlfriend. As soon as Lance heard himself think 'I look normal', 'I look like… a regular guy', he knew he had to stop himself. He knew it implied that somewhere, he'd internalised gay to be different, other- and maybe that's why he'd never considered it for himself. Maybe that's why it was so hard to accept yet another way that he was different.
He couldn't stop noticing his behaviour. Finger guns were bi culture, cuffed jeans, tucked shirts and oversized hoodies and- a lot of his self care things were girly things, like face masks and skincare and-- that was deeply misogynistic. Lance had been so sure he'd worked through that, yet here he was, seeing himself as less masculine and less normal for liking nice skin, seeing femininity as less than- and as some kind of obvious proof that he was gay- that was problematic all of itself too. Where had all this come from? Why was it so deeply rooted? And… if he didn't hate gay people, why did it feel so… scary, to apply 'gay' things to his own appearance and behaviour?
He decided to take a deep breath- he'd noticed those biases now. and his own residual toxic masculinity, and he'd work through them more carefully when he was laying in bed before returning to the mirror again. For now, he wanted to focus on why this all bothered him so much.
He liked girls. He knew that, wasn't confused about it. He'd kissed girls, and he really liked kissing girls. They were beautiful, so beautiful, so breathtaking when they smiled at him that Lance's chest fluttered at the sight. Lance liked girls.
But… was he straight?
… he didn't want to look in the mirror anymore, but he wanted answers. He knew what attraction felt like, because he'd been attracted to people, but he hated that he knew it so well, because it meant he knew he was attracted to a boy, and that scared him, and he didn't know why it scared him so much. He'd never had an issue with the lgbtq+ community- he considered himself an ally. He wasn't uncomfortable when guys talked about their boyfriends and girls talked about their girlfriends or people talked about their partners- hell, he'd even seen two guys make out in the changing rooms and he'd cheered for them.
So why was he so scared?
… because it made him vulnerable. It was private, and scary- not because it was wrong to like boys, but because he'd internalised that hatred and fear. He was scared of rejection. He was scared of all the things that set him apart from the others. He was scared of all the times he'd heard homophobic comments in casual passing, not realising that they applied to him, not knowing why they hit him in the chest so harshly. And he'd taken it all to heart and let it bruise his love.
He was scared because people still got hurt for it. People still fought for their basic human rights. People still said slurs and people still rallied against equal marriage. People still turned it into a moral argument and people still oversexualised it and people still saw it as predatory and sinful and wrong. People still got rejected and shunned and worse. People still stopped being so touchy, stopped talking about partners around gay people, kept assuming people were flirting with them- or that bisexuals were all promiscuous cheats who wouldn't choose a side and were secretly one or the other in denial or trying to be special.
And Lance knew that all of that hatred was aimed at him.
It was hard enough adjusting to trying to figure out your identity, but it was even harder to do when you were just so scared.
His family, back in Varadero, had no idea. How would they react if they knew? How could he go about day to day life knowing he might be bisexual, knowing he'd have to come out of the closet, knowing that he didn't want to deny himself his own identity but that fully embracing it would mean being so vulnerable?
Would he be accepted like he always had been? Would he be cast out violently into the cold dark rain like he'd never belonged in the family before? Would they accept him, but not understand, worry for him, assume things, erase his identity, be uncomfortable about it because they didn't know how to approach him?
What about his team?
They were all he had, and this could change everything.
He didn't even know why he was thinking about this. He didn't even know for sure. He'd gone over and over things in his head now for months, and still he hadn't processed it at all.
What if he came out? What if he came out as bi, and everything went perfectly, but then he realised he was actually just straight? What if he put himself through potential rejection and homophobia, to turn out to be straight?
Lance shook his head. That wasn't the right way to think about it. Sure, he was strongly attracted to women, but that didn't make him straight. Bisexual for Lance included women too. He was definitely into girls. But… boys? In truth, Lance liked to dance around it in his head.
Sometimes, asking himself if he liked boys, he found the truth terrifying, so he shut it down. He told himself he was just confused, it didn't feel the same, and distracted himself from any thoughts about men by thinking of pretty women instead. He hadn't really… allowed himself the room to seriously consider that he might be bi.
His phone chimed softly, a gentle reminder that it was lunch time. Lance's mood felt heavy, low- and scared. It was as though an irrational part of him was convinced that people could read his mind, would find out he thought he was bi. What if he wasn't bi?
He walked to lunch, thoughts still fixated on his sexuality. He had tried to shift his focus- to set aside a set few minutes to think about it then stop- but Lance's brain wouldn't always comply. And sometimes, his thoughts would overlap, so changing subject didn't always work. It was such a weird experience, to be constantly thinking of his sexuality, especially when so many insisted that being gay wasn't all they thought about all of the time. But it was always there in Lance's head, to the point he couldn't recollect a time where he hadn't been so utterly consumed by his sexuality that it wasn't at the forefront of his mind.
He sat down, trying desperately to change his thought track through irrational fear that everybody could tell he was thinking he might be gay- bi- queer, in some way. Lance fought the urge to sit comfortably in his chair with a leg on the seat- gay people couldn't sit in chairs properly, so what if they guessed? So he sat as socially acceptable as possible, both feet on the floor, and trying his hardest not to bounce his legs. He failed the latter, drumming on his thighs with his palms and biting at his lip. All the weird energy building up needed an outlet, and right now, fidgeting was the only thing grounding him. He knew he was being ridiculous by refusing to 'sit gay', but he didn't have the mental energy nor the headspace to process it right now, so he added it onto the list of personal failures he'd work through later.
"Lance?"
"Hm?" It took a few seconds for Lance to register that, yes, he had indeed heard them ask him something, but his brain straight up refused to process it. "Sorry," Lance apologised, hoping he wouldn't have to bear the humiliation of asking Hunk to repeat himself. Hunk repeated his question, and Lance focused carefully- and yet again, his brain didn't process it. And now he was struggling to form words, so he just forced out an "okay" with a nod despite wanting to ask for clarification.
Which Lance came to regret when he got purple food goo instead of green. Of course, he whined about it, so everybody looked at him with some kind of displeased expression, and Lance felt himself shrink away under the pressure.
"Because you said 'okay' when asked if you wanted the purple," Pidge said, tone a little lower and slower than usual.
"But-" Lance sighed heavily, "I don't… I wasn't listening," he mumbled. He was listening, as best as he possibly could- but it wasn't enough. And he was overwhelmed and tired and stressed and distressed all at once.
"Why didn't you ask Hunk to repeat the question? I'm sure he wouldn't have minded," Shiro added kindly, and Hunk nodded in agreement, but it only served to make Lance more frustrated than before.
"It's not that easy…" Lance replied quietly, but he'd already given up in his head.
"I can get you the green if you-"
"No no, it's alright. I asked for this anyways," Lance replied quickly, picking at his food. Conversation resumed around the table slowly, and Lance wanted to join in- but his mood had dropped so drastically, so completely at the thought that he'd annoyed his friends, that he'd unintentionally been rude and nobody ever understood why he did this sort of thing. Keith probably thought he was an asshole. And the worse his mood, the harder it was to focus on what everyone was saying. And yet somehow, his brain still managed to focus on the volume and brightness of the room, the disgusting texture of food goo he tried so hard to ignore, and everything was too much.
Everyone was laughing and having fun, and Lance found himself on the outside of all of that. Everything was too loud, his thoughts were too anxiety-inducing, and he had no idea how to join in with everybody despite desperately wanting to. He'd interrupted so many times in the past, completely missing the social cues that he shouldn't. So now he waited to be prompted into conversation, except no one ever did. It was an isolating experience, to have a mind so full of thought it pulled you away from your friends and made you watch them laugh without you, without flashing you even the smallest opening to join in, like you didn't exist, like you weren't right there.
Getting up and going to his room right now would be rude, a social faux-pas that would only worry or annoy the others. And maybe there was reason to be worried, Because Lance was drowning in everything, but he was tired of being the burden to people who rarely remembered to include him. Hunk had grown closer to Pidge, spent most of his time tinkering with tech with her. Shiro often sought out Allura's company, and besides, Shiro was in that age category of still young and cool but too mature to want to willingly befriend people Lance's age. And then there was Keith, who Lance couldn't figure out. He was blunt and abrasive, but so quiet and isolated. Keith could cut in the middle of a conversation to correct Pidge on something, but would remain completely silent even when people talked about things he liked to prompt him to join in. Keith was constantly annoyed with Lance, but Keith matched Lance's energy like a tiny aggressive social chameleon, whilst everyone else would just tell him to go elsewhere and stop bothering them. Besides, didn't Lance have anything better to do than ruin everything?
Lance didn't even notice everyone leave until he noticed Keith staring and scowling. "What?"
"Lunch is over," Keith stated, looking as though he expected Lance to do or say something to him stating the obvious. Lance didn't have the energy for more fighting today. Not with Keith. Lance scowled.
"Yeah. I'm aware. So?"
Keith's frown deepened. "You seemed spaced out. I didn't think you realised. Also you're always the first to leave. But if you're gonna have an attitude with me, then fine. You stay here and fester. See if I care." Keith went to walk out, but Lance was already royally pissed off.
"Oh, so I'm the one with the attitude? You're the one who was just standing there and staring at me aggressively like a weirdo."
"Fine. Believe whatever you wanna believe, Lance. I don't have the time for this. I was just trying to help, but if you're gonna be a dickhead about it, fine." Keith walked out quickly, tense and angry-looking. Lance sighed heavily, having no idea how to interpret Keith's volatile moods anymore.
Rubbing his palms harshly over his face with an exhausted and tired-of-everything sigh, Lance headed back to his room, preparing for the inevitable overthinking he'd endure.