Chapter Text
It started on a damp Tuesday afternoon in the Physics building, 6pm, room 3.02.
It, being Lance’s first lab of the year, and what was starting was him losing his goddamn mind.
He was on flight one of a six-flight journey up to the third floor, caught in an intense Lance V. Lance debate about the validity of his answers to the homework set only the day before. First of all, it was the second day of classes. Realistically, big picture, how hard can a person really fuck up on the second day. Wait don’t answer that, he snapped at himself only half joking. Second of all, he’d literally done the work yesterday, and it had been easy. It was just fucking vectors and all that shit.
5 flights.
But, a traitorous little voice replied, maybe he just thought they were easy because he’d fucked them up so hard.
4 flights.
Nope, no. He knew how to handle all of the questions, remember? His methods were logical. He wasn’t actually fucking up constantly.
3 flights.
But what if the prof made him read all of his answers out loud? And what if they were all wrong? Or even better, what if he’d answered the wrong questions by accident, and he was called up to calculate the real questions on the spot, in front of everyone...
2 flights
Whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, that was very unlikely to happen. He might get called on, sure, but there would almost certainly be no ritual humiliation involved.
1 flight
But, consider the following: what if he said something truly idiotic in front of everyone. He’d instantly be exposed as a total fool that got here through a series of bizarre accidents, and the prof would press the clown alarm button, alerting the dean, who would burst through the door and revoke his student ID on the spot. That could definitely happen.
His train of thought was interrupted when he arrived at the right room, a few minutes early.
He took out his homework and scanned it a few times, trying to convince himself that his answers were at least logical in approach. They looked kinda normal, and every subsequent repeat read he did manage to calm him in increments.
Thankfully his anxious mind had no time to offer a final rebuttal, because the prof had arrived, and the classroom in front of him was emptying of its previous inhabitants. Lance shuffled in with the rest of the students that had now crowded around the entrance, found a seat with an optimal view of the whiteboard, and waited. He spread his hands out on the table in front of him, focusing on the feeling of the grain of the wood as he curled his fingers. It would be okay. It would.
The prof stood at the front of the room staring hawkishly at his watch until the second hand hit, and it was officially 6pm, the room now silent and full of lethargic students.
He strode towards the door and closed it with a businesslike click.
Hell yes, an on-time door closer. Love those. What are the chances that he’s actually gonna be super chill?
“I’m Professor Montgomery, and I’ll be teaching you this semester in Classical Physics. I expect you all to participate in class, and I will be picking at random if no one volunteers.” There was an immediate palpable spike in the class’ blood pressure, as every student’s back straightened at once.
Montgomery then added, almost gleefully, “Don’t be shy about getting things wrong; it’ll be a lesson in itself, so we can discuss your process.” He perched himself on one of the desks at the front with the mocking casualness of a predator about to strike, his keen eyes dissecting the class for weakness.
So no chance at all. Nice. Jesus fucking Christ.
Montgomery made a show of scanning the class register at his own leisure, not at all phased by the sudden lack of oxygen in the room.
If Lance hadn’t already long reached terminal anxiety, every second that passed in this particular silence, would have brought him closer to diving headfirst through the window, or maybe just sinking lower and lower in his chair, until he could just slither down onto the ground, and then out the door like a snake...
His thoughts were cut short by a demonic, sharp sigh from the front of class. Montgomery shuffled his papers, having finally finished studying the list, and turned his attention to the questions. “Question one, any volunteers?”
The ensuing quiet was excruciating. Eyes were glued so hard to desks and papers, it was almost comical. The ticking of the clock at the back of the class crunched and echoed through Lance’s head. His mind was hazy with discomfort, so he tried to focus on the micro-tangible. On the ridges of faux-wood under his fingers, the lamination on the edge of the desk, and the sound of his shoe dragging against his chair leg as he shifted.
Somewhere in there, in a moment of clarity, he knew that he had to volunteer right now, right this second, humiliation or no. Because the thing was, he knew, he already knew how this kind of thing ended. If he let himself sink deeper and deeper into the beginnings of this feeling, it would only get worse. The coming hour would be unbearable, and he’d be trapped in this position, with sweaty shaking palms, and a brain running completely on static. He’d only get more anxious, and on top of that, there was the looming anticipation of Montgomery picking on him.
It took a white noise executive override, which he would never have managed a year ago to raise his hand with what he hoped was a self-assured flourish.
“Ah! A bold first candidate! Very good, Mr…?”
“McClain,” Lance replied, managing to keep his voice even.
“Let’s see if the substance matches the confidence then, Mr. McClain. Question 1, which shouldn’t be too difficult, take us through it,” Montgomery said, green eyes boring into Lance.
Pretty cool to be living out one of his topmost feared scenarios in real life, a part of Lance’s brain idly piped up, while the rest was being catapulted off a cliff.
Lance shuffled through the pages of his notebook, despite having been staring at the right page for the past hour at this point. He tried to focus, using the few seconds of rearranging to force himself to calm down. When he finally landed where he had started, and opened his mouth, his voice thankfully kept steady. He read out the answer he had written down the night before on autopilot, lacking any capacity to judge whether what he was saying made any sense. He was clinging to the hope that it did, because whatever it was that he’d written yesterday was coming out of his mouth right fucking now, and there was no stopping it.
“Good. Next?”
Lance tuned out a lot of what happened next for the sheer dopamine rush that shot through him. Euphoria. He spun a pen around his fingers and shifted around on his chair as an outlet for the gargantuan amount of energy that was now coursing through him. He needed to move, jump. He’d actually fucking done it. Hell fucking yeah!
He had to laugh at himself though. He’d spent literally an hour yesterday doing this homework. Obviously, he wouldn't have written some gibberish. He’d even double-checked the textbook from last year to be sure about his methods. Whosh. Holy crow. He couldn’t help but grin. He was killing it.
After his excitement had died down to a light simmer, he realized he’d missed the entirety of question two, and that they were in the midst of yet another uncomfortable silence in the wake of Montgomery’s call for question three. This time, Lance felt glee, and a kind of magnanimous generosity for the plight of the class. He’d put them out of their misery and answer a few more for the common good, he guessed.
Or he was about to, was it not for the sudden burst of noise when the door swung open, disrupting Lance’s sentence.
A guy barged in, his forward momentum delivering him right onto center stage at the front of the class. He recovered, and gathered himself up to his full height, standing tall and exuding an ineffable sort of presence. All eyes were on him—his bright red racing jacket, his dark hair curling around his neck and into his face, his eyebrows furrowed and gaze unyielding. He was stunningly handsome, cutting a vivid figure across the backdrop of the painfully mundane lab.
Sick hair, dude, Lance thought.
Montgomery pointedly looked at his watch, and then up at the guy.
He didn’t seem in the least bit contrite, however. In fact, he barely acknowledged the attention, flinging a breezy “sorry” Montgomery’s way, before throwing himself down into one of the empty chairs at the back.
The entire class followed his path with their eyes, before snapping back to the front.
He’s obviously the kind of guy that’s just naturally the center of attention, and he doesn’t give a single fuck. Lance hated people like that; he cared way too much, about most things.
“Mr. McClain, please continue.”
Lance turned his focus back to the front of the class, returning to his answer. He was actually getting into the groove now, and could feel himself gaining confidence with his second correct answer of the day.
The rest of the class passed with a combination of awkward silences and tentative volunteers, because despite everyone’s reluctance to offer themselves up, the looming danger of Montgomery picking at random seemed even worse. They wobbled through the question sheet, and the horror of being called out on errors, and made to work them out on the spot produced a weird sort of camaraderie in the room.
He almost forgot about the guy until Montgomery announced the last problem.
“Looks like we have time for one more, and I’m gonna give that honor to our friend at the back, who has yet to answer a question.” He gestured to him without waiting for anyone else to volunteer.
“Go ahead,” he looked briefly at the register sheet, “Mr. Kogane, number 7, the floor is yours.”
Lance, along with most of the class, felt their eyes drawn to the back once again. Mr. Kogane had nothing but a crumpled piece of paper in front of him, where he’d written some messy notes in the margins.
This guy probably thought he could just sail through without any effort ‘cause he was hot and cool or whatever. Lance was really gonna enjoy watching this shithead crash and burn.
“Uh,” he started.
There was a pause of about 10 seconds in which Mr. Kogane stared at his sheet intently, thick eyebrows tightly knit, eyes scanning, moving quickly.
It was starting to get awkward, the students audibly fidgeting to fill the silence. But Montgomery did not relent.
Then, finally, he said something: “It’s 7î- 2â + 9ê”.
Fuck. This guy just did the entire calculation on the spot. Lance felt an odd sense prickling over his chest, and he quickly rolled his shoulders to dispel it.
“Yep, that’s right Mr. Kogane, but would you care to take us through the steps?” Montgomery’s tone was kind of gleeful.
This time there was no hesitation. His voice was calm and deep. Not quite what Lance had imagined him sounding like.
He took the class through the main steps, skipping a few, which Montgomery pedantically held him up for.
“Ah, ah, ah! I think we’re missing a step there Mr. Kogane.”
He complied, but the irritation seeping into his voice was blatant, intense, and hilarious to Lance. He sympathized, though. Montgomery was a total dickhead on a power trip.
When the class was finally over, Kogane was the first up and out of the door, despite being the furthest away from it. He had barely slipped one arm through his jacket before he’d cleared the doorway and was away. Probably had an important Assholes Anonymous meeting to get to or something.
Lance had actually never seen this guy anywhere. The Physics cohort was quite large, so despite knowing a whole bunch of people in his classes, he didn’t know every single person by name, or even by sight. But, he guessed, he’d have remembered a guy like that, for sure. There’s no way Lance would have missed him last year.
Maybe this was someone going through a second-year identity crisis, reinventing themselves as a streetwear Instagrammer or whatever. He doubted it though, ‘cause there’s no way someone could fake that kind of attitude, and like, aura, convincingly. This guy had probably always been in the limelight. He was probably used to eyes following him, admiring him. Lance would put money on it.
—
Hunk was the first one back at their shared apartment on Thursday afternoon. He dumped a whole load of bags on the countertop, full of supplies for the meal he was about ready to begin preparing for the three of them.
Taking a glance at the microwave clock, he guessed Lance would be home in another half hour, and Pidge a little after that. Just enough time for him to start on his signature Bolognese, and have it well underway and smelling nice by the time they were back.
He emptied the ingredients onto the countertop, and got to work putting them away, noting all of the stuff they were still missing in the process.
Cinnamon. They definitely needed cinnamon if they wanted to survive, Hunk thought, closing the spice cupboard he’d made some inroads on filling with his haul.
Hunk knew they’d only moved in like a week ago, but still. He had to insist. Besides, moving around a fully stocked and lived-in kitchen felt good. It felt laden with potential, a vision of all the future good times he was going to spend with his best friends in this apartment. A place that was theirs to come home to.
He started on the onions he’d kept out on the counter, careful to breathe in and out through his mouth. With every onion diced, going through the familiar steps of the recipe, he felt the stress of his second day back at college fall off him, chop by chop.
There’d been an admin error, so his student ID hadn’t worked to get into one of his labs, leaving him floundering outside for a few minutes before the prof saw him through the door and let him in. So that kinda sucked—But it was mostly eclipsed by the fact that it was the lab he had with Shay. Seeing her again after the summer holidays had been the highlight of his day, and the smile that bloomed on his face when he saw her that afternoon still lingered on his face now.
If he was totally honest, the effort he was putting in wasn’t entirely for his own benefit. He’d seen the way Lance left the house early this morning. He knew he’d been quietly freaking out about this first lab, and the homework he’d only had one day to complete, and he wanted to make their apartment as cozy and relaxing as possible for him this evening. Hunk had seen him at his absolute worst last year, spiraling, beating himself up, obsessed with a certain phrase he’d said, or mistake he’d made. Lance had come a long way since then, but that didn’t mean Hunk would stop worrying for his friend. That didn’t mean Lance didn’t need support and love.
By the time Lance made it in, Hunk was midway through adding a whole bunch of vegetables to the sauce.
“Holy shit Hunk, you’re a fucking angel. You know you didn’t have to, though; it’s the first full day, so I was just gonna order us take-out.” Lance dumped his jacket and bag on the sofa with flair. Lance’s first lab had gone well, Hunk could just tell, and he couldn’t help but let a smile bloom on his face.
“Nah dude, we can’t have that three days in a row, something’s gotta give. Pidge isn’t back yet, and I thought I’d start so it’d be done by the time you all got home.” Hunk stirred tomato paste into the bubbling pot. Lance and Pidge would honestly survive on cheese puffs and raw carrots without his intervention, so he felt it was his sacred duty to make sure their diets didn’t veer off the rails completely.
“Whatcha making anyway?” Lance draped himself over Hunk’s back to watch him work, joy and affection evident in his movements. Lance’s emotions were so loud, and his heart couldn’t help but warm.
“Just your basic bolognese, nothing fancy.”
“Nothing fancy, huh? Then how’d you explain these…” He gestured expansively at the array of basic spices Hunk had left out on the counter. “I didn’t realize the apartment came with complementary,” he squinted at the words printed on the nearest item, “oregano and—” he picked up another jar, “—marjoram.”
“Lance. I love you, but I was nearing my limit on how long I could go on living in savagery without a properly stocked kitchen. I made the necessary purchases at lunch, while you and Pidge were watching that two-hour takedown video. And anyway, it’s just the bare minimum,” Hunk said with a sympathetic smile.
“O-kay, well you won’t catch me complaining, dude,” Lance smiled, “you do know you don’t have to do this though?”
Hunk jokingly grimaced, “Yeah, actually I do, Lance.”
Once Pidge arrived, they settled down on the sofa with their plates. Some types of savagery just couldn’t be trained out of Lance and Pidge, unfortunately.
“Dude, this is a top 5 all-time bolognese, Hunk,” Lance said between bites of food.
“Aww, thanks Lance. I think it’s the stock I used, it gives it a really deep flavor.” Hunk smiled.
“Well whatever it is, it’s awesome. Just what I needed after freezing my ass off in class today.” Pidge shivered in memory. “Speaking of class, Lance, did you finally get expelled for being too dumb?”
“Wow, Pidge. Snakes in this very house, huh?” Lance flipped from joking to serious, “You were right, though. My lab was fine today, I even answered some questions… so it was chill… it was good.”
“Uh, yeah no shit Lance, you get straight A’s and you’re one of the hardest workers I know.” Pidge never gave an inch when Lance fell into one of his anxious spirals, always hitting him with the cold hard facts. Not necessarily delivering them the way Hunk would, but it worked. Sometimes.
“Yeah! It’s actually because I worry!”
“You know you don’t need to put yourself through that Lance,” Hunk said, cutting in.
Lance took a moment to properly acknowledge Hunk’s sentiment. “Thanks, buddy, I know,” he said seriously, after a beat. And then, kicking back into his previous gear, he made a sound as if he’d just remembered something big, “but today the worrying was totally justified—guys get this—” he stopped to properly chew and swallow a bite of spaghetti.
“There was this guy in my lab, he came in late—in the middle of a question I was doing an excellent job of answering I might add—and he barely even apologized, which was a big mistake. The whole class was mesmerized when he came in, like he was a celebrity or something.” Hunk could tell Lance was playing things up a bit, feigning a bit more outrage than he really felt, setting the scene, getting into telling the story, and diverting attention from the previous topic. But Hunk would let him. He was obviously in excellent spirits.
“Was it maybe because he was late?” There was already a slight teasing edge to Pidge’s tone that accompanied her raised eyebrow.
“Wrong, Pidge.” Lance shot her a mock condescending raised finger, but she took no notice, in the middle of messily slurping up her spaghetti. “Well... yes actually, you may have a peripheral point.” He went on in a sage tone. “But you weren’t there… there was just something about him, you know, that people are just drawn to, I guess.” Then, hastily, “He was also wearing bright red, and everyone knows that catches the eye.”
“Sure, go on...” Pidge sounded amused rather than convinced.
“So this guy was totally unprepared for class, and Montgomery, our prof, is a legit demon and calls on us at random if we don’t volunteer—” Lance was spinning this as humorous, but Hunk could imagine that when Lance was going through it at the time, it hadn’t been as funny.
“—So, obviously this guy was called on—that’s karma for you baby—but just when it looked like he was gonna faceplant hard, he pulled the right answer straight out of his ass!”
“Very cool Lance, that’s interesting. Was this guy, perchance, attractive?” Hunk asked. Trust Lance to find a way to get hot and bothered about a random guy in class while also freaking out at the same time. It was impressive multi-tasking.
“I don’t know! I wasn’t looking that closely.” Lance said, a little too defensively. He clearly was. “I mean he had a freaking mullet, so I think you’ll find that means you’re officially classed as hideous by law, and you have to be tried at the Hague for crimes against hair-manity or something.”
“Medium-to-poor,” Pidge judged with a cackle.
“But actually, I think the theory checks out,” Hunk said, deciding to help Lance out, “I thought most of them had been culled by the 90s... but I guess some were still in hiding, disguised as ponytails. They must be getting bolder.”
“We live in dark times, guys.” Lance shuddered and got up, gathering their dirty dishes. “I literally don’t know what I’ll do if mullets come back. I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”
While Pidge followed Lance into the kitchen Hunk started rummaging in his bag for his laptop. “So what are we watching guys?” He called into the kitchen.
There was no immediate answer. Instead, the sounds of muffled scrambling and a particularly loud yelp reached Hunk in the living room. At this point, he didn’t even need to be in there with them to be able to conjure half a dozen scenarios that could have elicited the noises. He really hoped it wasn’t a repeat of the time Pidge tried to sneak old food into Lance’s sweatshirt hood last year. That ended with Lance throwing some nearby dirt from Hunk’s beloved herb pot at Pidge's face in retaliation, which then sparked the day-long does-dirt-cause-pink-eye debate. Hunk went through the seven stages of grief there and then, and called a ban on any kind of food or general loose-item-throwing in or around his kitchen.
After a few seconds of what sounded like peace, Lance answered, sounding slightly strangled, “A Bug’s Life? The Minion Movie? Gremlins? Pidgelet here misses her people.”
Hunk heard the faucet turn on, and then a second bout of frenzied fumbling and splashing, and a high-pitched shriek. He really hoped the kitchen wasn’t soaked again. Well, water was a step up from food and dirt at least.
“Or, what about 10-hour cringe compilation of Lance embarrassing himself in front of Allura last year?” Pidge was cackling.
“Wow, harsh!” Lance gasped, “and now my shoulder is wet!”
Pidge only giggled in response.
“Pidge!” Lance yelled, outraged.
“Or, what about we watch ‘ASMR nurse tends to your 3rd-degree burns’ on youtube, could probably help you out Lance,” Pidge was rolling.
Hunk had now actually booted up Netflix and was scrolling through the possibilities. “Any actual suggestions? Because otherwise, we’re watching Bake Off Australia.”
His token threat was not taken seriously.
“Yeah, I heard about this film called ‘Hacker Voice: I’m In’.” Lance adopted a comically deep voice, “ ‘— she can hack into the Pentagon… but can she go paintballing with her friends without a permission slip?’ It’s a tragicomedy based on true events.”
Hunk let it go. They seemed to actually be doing the dishes now, which was a relief. To be honest, he didn’t really want them to stop, at least not yet. Despite the ever-present danger of mess emanating from those two, he’d missed them so much over the summer. Hearing them joking around together for the first time this semester made him so happy, ‘cause despite the near-constant roasts, the affection and joy they were radiating was unmistakable. He might be far away from his family at college, but he was part of something warm and loving here too, something familiar and comforting.
“Hm... sounds cool, but not as cool as a documentary about Lance’s high school YuGiOh career,” Pidge argued.
“You fucking played Magic: The Gathering!” Lance spluttered as Pidge sauntered out of the kitchen, having apparently finished her part of the dishes.
“Holy shit, I know! A frame-by-frame analysis of Lance’s face that time that bird shat on his jacket,” she called back into the kitchen with an impish grin on her face.
“Playing dirty, huh, Holt? What about an infinite loop of Pidge smacking straight into the library doors ‘cause she was on her phone, and then remix that into a banger, and then play that at her funeral—” Lance emerged, on a roll.
“Guys! Focus!” Hunk finally decided to cut in, knowing this could actually go on for hours without intervention at some point.
“Jeez Louise, fine, how about we just watch some Star Trek then,” Lance said, his tone exasperated as if the preceding exchange had been full of only the most reasonable of suggestions.
“Good one, Lance,” Hunk said, already scrolling. Despite his joking, Lance was always the best at picking stuff to watch or listen to. He seemed to just instinctively always know what the vibe called for. That was Lance, Hunk guessed. He was sort of like clay; moldable, fitting around everyone’s edges, rounding and smoothing out every room he entered.
Hunk found what he was looking for and settled on the sofa beside Lance and Pidge as they started watching. Pidge was firmly lodged in the corner of the sofa, rolled up into a ball with a blanket over her head looking like a frazzled Russian grandma crossed with a small potato, while Lance sat cross-legged and was trying to surreptitiously weasel his foot into Pidge’s blanket roll.
They definitely reminded him of siblings. Lance subbing in as Pidge’s unofficial second older brother at college, being just another way in which he was able to be the piece of the puzzle that others needed him to be.
As the title sequence set in, Hunk glanced over at them again—now settled against each other—and smiled.
As the evening wore on, and Star Trek turned into aimlessly watching weirder and weirder videos on YouTube, Pidge and Lance managed to contort themselves into more and more blob-like positions. They bonelessly flopped onto each other and Hunk, nearly throwing them all off the sofa together, before they all decided on a general positional rearrangement, and Pidge ended up lying across both of their legs with her head in Hunk's lap.
“Who knew the coffee enema community was full of so much drama,” Pidge murmured, blinking blearily at the screen after a ten-video deep-dive.
“Maybe that’s our cue to go to bed then, huh?” Lance asked wearily, patting her mess of hair in Hunk’s lap.
“Yeah, probably.” Pidge dragged herself up reluctantly, somehow managing to maintain the burrow she'd created with the blankets. She was 19, but she looked like a cute sleepy kid blinking down at them, the blankets enfolding her like a burrito.
Her tone might often be blunt, and she might joke around and tease Lance, but underneath it all was an understanding, a connection and loyalty so deep Hunk could hardly fathom it.
“Love ya Pidgey, night,” Lance said, giving her shoulder a little nudge.
“Mhh, you too Lancey” she replied sweetly, slinking off.
There was a brief silence after Pidge’s departure, filled only with the jingle from the next video’s intro before Hunk turned off the TV and stood up. “I’m pretty tired too, so I’m gonna head to bed,” he declared, shuffling off towards his room.
Halfway across the room, he stopped. “But I also wanted to say that I’m really happy we’re back here together, I missed you guys! And uh, I’m so glad today went well, Lance.”
“Thanks, Hunk. I appreciate it. I missed you too,” Lance said, his voice gravelly and earnest, turning around to look Hunk in the eye. “Night.”
“Night, Lance.”
—
When Hunk left the room, Lance fell back onto the sofa with a thump. Minutes went by in which he stared at the ceiling, taking in the calm of an emptied room, breathing.
He yawned and the spell broke. He rolled off the sofa, landed smoothly on his feet, and sauntered through his bedroom to his bathroom to begin his nighttime routine.
Toilet, PJs, teeth, face, and a quick wink at himself in the mirror, and he was back in the bedroom, starfished on his back in bed, grinning up at the dark ceiling.
The day had gone better than Lance ever dared hope.
He took a deep breath of the lavender scent he always sprayed on his pillow, and let it out in a big whoosh. So maybe he wasn’t actually about to be drop-kicked into the failure pit. Maybe he was actually okay at this whole Physics thing. Maybe next time he’d actually freaking remember that, and not have to go through this whole thing. He laughed to himself at his own absurdity, elated.
He was happy and so insanely grateful that everything seemed to be coming together. His non-failure, his friends, this apartment. Everything was perfect, somehow.
He’d met Hunk and Pidge last year at a STEM mixer buffet table, bonding over the mediocre selection of sandwiches (sadwiches, as Hunk had called them). They’d compared notes on buffet strategies, and like magic, he’d felt like he’d known them for decades rather than minutes. Fast forward to now, and they’d moved in together.
They really were the perfect combo. Hunk was the mom-friend, Pidge was the goblin-friend, and he, Lance, was obviously the freakishly handsome, incredibly intelligent, cool friend. They were friendship-soulmates, Lance mused deliriously.
Maybe in a different timeline, he could have missed these guys in their first year. He’d been so desperate to establish himself, make friends, experience things, and so afraid of missing out.
Lance cut himself off. No dwelling on depressing alternate timelines.
The reality he was in right here was fucking awesome, there were so many other cool things he could think about instead of getting anxious about a thing that didn’t even happen—Like the fact that his first Cosmology lecture was tomorrow, which he was hyped for. Plus, it probably couldn’t get any worse than Montgomery’s teaching methods, so it should all be capital G Gucci from here on.
He’d managed to think himself down from the tangent he was about to take off on, and settled down into bed.
Before he drifted off, however, he wondered if Mr. Kogane from his first lab was going to make another flashy appearance in any of his other classes. He was probably the type of guy who came late all the time and thought he was real cool. Probably one of those types that never did any work and still aced everything, somehow.
Lance fell asleep thinking about the way the guy had looked when he was working out the answer to the question Montgomery had sprung on him. So deeply focused, eyebrows drawn, looking so severe, and definitely not like he didn’t care.
—
It turns out that Kogane, as he’d decided to call him, was not in any of his other classes. But that didn’t stop Lance from noticing his appearance in the one they did share. He was always swinging in from the front entrance, right as the prof was about to start, all 200 eyes on him and his totally unacceptable jackets.
Lance’s bad-boy theories were definitely borne out by the evidence. He always tried to sit somewhere close to the door, and he never took any notes. He didn’t even have a pen or paper or even a laptop with him. He came with nothing, like he wasn’t even gonna pretend that there might be something, anything to jot down.
When he caught Hunk and Pidge up on all of this incredibly important information that Friday, however, the sympathy was limited.
“Yeah, Lance, damn... he just exists so much all the time, huh?” Pidge said, trying her best to apply the charcoal mask to Lance’s face while he was ranting.
“Pidge, I don’t appreciate the implication. It’s totally normal to pay attention to someone who is so just… there all the time. It’s not just me!” Lance cried, trying to keep his mouth from moving too much, while also keeping up his indignant tone. “Everyone notices him!”
Hunk was fiddling about with the gaming console in front of him, and added,
“I definitely get that though, sometimes some people just have something about them, y’know? I have that with—”
“Shay, we know.” Pidge cut him off.
“Yeah, buddy, we know. I love you and appreciate your backup, but that point is totally void ‘cause we all know you have a huge crush on her,” Lance snickered robotically, respecting the mask.
“No, okay, we are just good friends that work on assignments together, and she’s a special and talented person,” Hunk said firmly, still engrossed in the cables behind the TV. This was neither the first nor the tenth time they’d had this conversation.
“Okay, Hunk,” Pidge said, unconvinced. “But back to someone else who isn’t convincing: Lance. Do you know your guy’s name?”
My guy. His mind went blank for a second.
“Um, yeah, actually. It’s Keith. Keith Kogane.” She didn’t need to know that he’d found that out by checking the register before Montgomery had had a chance to take it on the first day.
“So… do you wanna see if we can find any dirt on him?” Pidge’s eyebrows wiggled about on her forehead comically.
“Yeah, I wanna know what his deal is, obviously. He’s in some lame Facebook groups, I bet.”
—
They found absolutely nothing despite Pidge’s best efforts. This guy wasn’t even on Facebook.