Chapter Text
The Castle of Lions hung in quiet orbit above the fractured moon, its hull still shimmering faintly from reentry heat. Inside, the war room pulsed with a dim, bluish light, the table at its center glowing with softly shifting projections. The Paladins filed in one by one—battered, bruised, and victorious—but the wear of the mission clung to them like fog.
Lance trailed in near the back, posture loose with practiced nonchalance, but the twitch at the corner of his mouth may have given him away.
He was trying really hard not to fidget.
Well, honestly, at first he hadn't noticed it.
His gloves creaked faintly as his fingers flexed—once, twice, again. Pop-pop. The repetitive motion sent little vibrations up his arms, grounding him and setting his nerves on edge all at once as he listened to Shiro. The man stood at the front of the room, posture straight despite the fading bruises along his jawline. Behind him, holograms of the battlefield flickered into view, suspended in the air like frozen echoes of chaos.
"Good work out there today," he began, voice low but steady. "We were outnumbered, but the element of surprise gave us the edge. Keith, great job taking out the command module. Pidge, excellent spotting on that cloaked minefield—saved us a lot of damage. Hunk, your shielding held the left flank longer than we’d predicted."
Shiro paused, eyes scanning the group.
"Lance. Solid formation work," he added. "But next time, don’t break from the V-shape unless you’re ordered to."
Lance nodded stiffly. Why is he the only one who gets the criticism?
The Pop that followed that thought is when he finally notices it.
His hand twitched again. Another Pop. The tiny sound might as well have been a firecracker in the room’s relative silence.
Shiro turned toward him slightly. "Also—whatever that noise is, can we cut it?"
The tone wasn’t harsh. Shiro sounded more tired than irritated. Even so, the words sliced through Lance with surgical precision. He winced and dropped his gaze, swallowing down the tightness gathering in his throat and blinking rapidly to stave off the creeping urge to do more.
Just a few more minutes. Just until this was over. He could hold out.
Luckily, the others didn’t react much. Pidge blinked behind her glasses. Keith frowned ever so slightly, something unreadable flickering across his face. Hunk’s gaze flicked to Lance for half a second, but he didn’t speak. Didn’t meet Lance’s eyes.
Lance clenched his fingers into a fist against his thigh, forcing the motion to stop.
It took him a second to realize that Shiro still hadn't resumed, that he was waiting for a reply from Lance. So he muttered a quick, "Sorry," voice barely audible.
Then the debrief continued. Charts rotated midair. Strategics were reviewed. The rhythm of Shiro’s voice blurred into background static. Lance sat rigid, shoulder muscles aching from restraint, jaw tight from clenching it too long. He forced his breathing to slow. One, two, three—inhale. One, two, three—exhale.
It was a routine he knew by heart.
Don’t move. Don’t draw attention. Don’t let it win.
When the meeting finally ended, Lance bolted upright. His chair scraped loudly across the floor, the screech turning heads. He muttered something about a shower, waving off any looks, and strode from the room before anyone could respond.
He didn’t go to the showers.
Instead, Lance walked the quiet corridors like a shadow, footsteps echoing faintly as he kept his head down and shoulders hunched.
By the time he reached his room, the burn in his throat was unbearable. The moment the door slid shut behind him with a quiet hiss, he lost the fragile composure he’d been clinging to.
His breath hitched. His chest ached. He stood in the center of his quarters, trembling, and let go.
His head jerked sharply to the left. Ngk. A strangled noise tore from his throat—half-cough, half-bark. His hands flexed again, quick, erratic spasms that rattled his fingers in his gloves. Pop-pop-pop. His breath stuttered.
It all broke loose like a shattered dam. The pain from holding it in had built behind his ribs like a pressure cooker, and now it exploded outward—his body spasming, muscles jerking, breaths coming in hiccupping sobs that left him dizzy.
He crumpled to the floor, landing hard on his knees, then dropped back against the bed frame. He buried his face in his arms, gasping, body wracked with twitches. The cool metal behind him grounded him only slightly.
He hated this.
He hated the feeling of losing control. Hated the tightness in his throat. Hated the way even his own body refused to listen to him.
He had thought space would change things. That by leaving Earth, leaving the Garrison, leaving behind every stupid chart and every whispered hallway rumor, he’d outrun it. That the grandeur of Voltron—the heroism, the legacy, the purpose —would finally push it into silence.
He thought he’d be too busy, too vital, too sharp to tic.
He was wrong.
He was still the same. Still stuck with this ticking time bomb in his nervous system. Still fighting a battle no one else could see.
And worse, that familiar sense of guilt gnawed at his chest once more. Not just because the meeting—though his tics had felt like lightning cracking in the still air, a sudden, embarrassing fracture in his carefully built façade—but for what it brought back with it.
It was a grim reminder of everything he’d desperately tried to bury: the countless eyes that had stared, the teachers who’d sighed and redirected him with forced smiles, the awkward silences in classrooms and cafeterias. It dragged the weight of shame back to the surface, every moment he’d been asked if he could 'just stop,' every sideways glance and whispered comment, every exhausting effort to be normal. All the progress he thought he’d made, all the distance he believed he’d put between himself and that version of him—crushed in an instant by a single twitch and a soft, traitorous sound.
Whelp, if history is doomed to repeat itself, clearly there's nothing that can be done to stop it.
- Age 9 -
The classroom reeked of dry-erase markers and old air conditioning. Dust danced lazily in the sunlight filtering through the half-shut blinds, and the soft hum of fluorescent lights filled every corner of the room. Lance sat near the back, hunched over his math test, legs swinging restlessly beneath the desk.
He tapped the end of his pencil against the wood. Tap. Tap. Ngk. Tap.
"Eyes on your own paper, Lance," Mrs. Moreno called from the front, her voice clipped and disapproving.
His head jerked up in alarm. "I wasn’t—" he started, but her glare silenced him. His cheeks flushed with warmth, the chilling heat of embarrassment breaking out across his chest. He hadn’t been looking at anyone’s paper.
Lance hadn’t even noticed his head turning. But how could he even begin to explain it? How could he make her understand? It wasn't like he really understood it himself. All he knew was that it was a reprieve; relief from the build-up, the burn in his shoulders, the pressure crawling up his neck, happening before his mind caught up to the fact.
Unintentional. Compulsive in the same way breathing was.
He forced his eyes back to the test. Fractions. Long division. His mind scrambled to make sense of the numbers, but his body had already launched into battle.
He locked his arms against the desk. Tried to sit still. Tried to breathe. His jaw clenched so hard it hurt. His knees bounced, and he stopped them. His hands wanted to twitch, they screamed at him to move like they had a mind of their own, but he held them flat against the desk.
His face felt like it was on fire.
The more he fought it, the worse it got.
The buzzing from the lights got louder. Or maybe it just felt that way. The air felt heavy and far too warm. And yet he felt cold.
The need to move surged up through his chest like static, itchy and electric. His throat burned from trying not to make a sound.
It felt like he was suffocating. It felt like he was on fire.
Lance was on fire.
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t hold it.
What was happening to him?
His eyes watered from the strain. A tear slipped down his cheek. He didn’t even feel it fall as his head gave a sharp jerk to the left. Then another. Ngk. His shoulder twitched. Then his neck. Then both arms.
Then he cracked.
The pencil dropped. His whole body lurched sideways, slamming into the desk beside him with a loud bang. His chair scraped back violently as he collapsed to the floor, limbs flailing in uncontrollable spasms.
Someone screamed.
He heard his name. A sharp gasp. The sound of someone running.
Then black.
The hospital room was cold and too bright.
The ceiling had a crack shaped like a crooked lightning bolt. He stared at it, trying not to cry again. His head throbbed, and there was a dull ache near his temple from where he’d hit the floor.
His mamá sat beside him, worry carved into every line of her face. Her hand moved in gentle circles against his back, soothing but firm, like she was trying to anchor him to the world.
The doctor—older, kind-looking, with gray streaks at his temples—was talking low and serious. Lance didn’t understand most of it.
"...not a seizure," the man was saying. "He’s got a mild concussion from the fall, but the episode itself wasn’t neurological in that sense. I believe there’s something else at play here. It’s not uncommon. It may be motor tics—possibly chronic. I’d like to do a more thorough evaluation."
His mamá nodded once. She grabbed Lance’s hand.
No one said the word, but it hung in the room anyway. Heavy. Unspoken.
Lance blinked up at the ceiling crack, breath shallow. He didn’t know what any of it meant.
He just knew it wasn't good.