Chapter Text
Everybody has a guilty pleasure and if they don’t, they’re lying. What's yours? Lance loves to ask it, in the loose moments when people start sharing because their guard is down. He learned early that his best friend, Hunk, has a secret stash of instant ramen, despite all of the lectures he was forced to endure about how “home cooked meals were medicine to the soul, Lance. Lay off the take out!”
It’s how he learned that Pidge, who came into the picture not too long after Hunk, has an addiction to raunchy reality TV. “ It’s the one thing I kept from girlhood,” they shrugged it off as Lance had gawked. As for him, he was a liar. “I’m a slut for a good party,” he’d spill naturally, and this was true. But it was not his guilty pleasure.
LA was such a different place than Cuba, sometimes it was hard to believe he belonged to either. It hit harder when he was drunk, like right now. The music was thumping, mingling closely with the percussive beat of his heart. He’d found a pretty girl around here earlier but she had disappeared into the crowd and left Lance on his own. He didn’t really care, not when a waitress was floating with more shots of tequila, and the dance floor was so hot he felt that buzz of a true party. The collective turns into one, living, breathing entity, and you either fall into it, or you let it run you over. His hands were up so he wasn’t really alone, that’s what he told himself, as the bass shook in his bones and hundreds of bodies jumped along with him. LA was something new.
The moment died as the DJ made his first hiccup of the night and played some lame line dancing song Lance did not know the choreo to. He stumbled over towards the kitchen only to find the host of the party standing and smiling, with Hunk, Pidge, and holy shit. Takashi Shirogane.
“Buddy!” Hunk calls out to him warm as ever, probably a few drinks in himself, “come here!!”
It was like every drop of alcohol Lance had ingested had evaporated out of him and left him dreadfully sober. His heart, no longer rhythmic with the music, fell down to his feet. This was the Inspacewithshiro. The first youtuber to ever record in space and document the existence of alien life. What the hell was he doing at a content creator party???
“Allura, you’ve graced me with your presence once more,” He found himself grabbing her hand to kiss it lightly, succumbing to the only muscle memory available. She laughs and swats him away playfully, “Now, now, Lance. You’re still not smooth enough.” She gives that sly, knowing smile, it was all banter of course. Teasing the distant past where Lance had genuinely, and embarrassingly pursued the beauty guru and failed miserably. They were good friends now, even collabed a few times on their respective channels.
“You fall for this ass one day, Princess.” He winks, and pulls her in for a hug. He would usually take comfort in the grounding nature of her presence, and the near celestial scent of her hair, but then she was moving and Shiro. THE Shiro!! Was in front of him with a pleasant smile.
“You must be LoverboyLance,” he said, holding out his hand. The real one. Well. The one that was not a prosthetic. It takes everything in the boy not to die on the spot. Both from embarrassment but also from sheer excitement. Distantly behind him he could hear Hunk and Pidge snickering to themselves. A phone was probably recording all of this and he had half the mind to buck up and make something worth posting about later but, then again, it was Shiro .
“Holy shit.” was the best he could come up with. Thankfully, the older, devastatingly handsome man just laughed, taking Lance’s hand in his and giving him a friendly handshake.
“Shiro gets this treatment quite often” Allura notes, very knowingly, from the side. So much so, Lance- still hand in hand with his idol- whips around to face her. Just as he suspected, Hunk had his Iphone out and Pidge, damn them , had Canon focused on him. “You KNOW him?” He exclaims breathlessly, and Allura actually laughs.
“Remember a few months ago when I told you I met this guy during my visit back home to London?” She tilted her head, looking elegant despite the red solo cup in her hand, “Well. Shiro was on a trip for vacation and we,” She looked up at the man with a glint in her eyes.
“We’re dating,” Shiro says, more bubbly than Lance had ever heard him before. And Lance has watched all of Shiro's content.
“HOLY SHIT!” He exclaims again, Pidge starts cackling and Hunk doubles over.
“Oh man, Lance,” he says in between fits of laughter, “we knew you’d be shocked but,” the wheezing gets to Hunk before he can continue. Lance turns back to the man, “I am so sorry.” He grabs hold of his own face in utter shock.
“You are like. The reason I started making videos as a kid and I have been watching you since I was little and I’ve always thought you were so cool and I just- holy shit! You’re Takashi Shirogane! And you’re dating one of my best friends! What the fuck?” He holds his hands out, stopping Shiro from speaking, “I'M NOT MAD! I sound mad. Really I’m just shocked, I mean. You’re like my Idol, I look up to you. I can’t even believe that you- wow . I’m Lance. take out the Loverboy, that's from wehn I made the account in middle school. It’s McClain, actually, Lance McClain, I- can I get your autograph? A picture? I’m so sorry, I think I’m still drunk I-”
“Lance, oh my god.” Pidge interrupts. Allura and Hunk have all but collapsed on top of eachother from laughter, and Shiro looked…amused, “Shiro is coming to Vidcon with us. He’s a part of the group now, stop being such a kiss ass.”
“HOLY FUCK!”
Still, Shiro was not his guilty pleasure.
Lance had never really been a good sleeper. His Mama tells him all the time that he came out of the womb wide eyed and hungry. He supposed this was true. As a kid, when all his siblings went to sleep, he’d stay up and be illuminated by his screen, exploring the vastness of the web and finding creators who turned into his favorites. In hindsight, having unrestricted access to the internet at such a young age had probably done some detrimental damage to his development, but then again, he was funny and familiar with the platform he made a living off of, so really how bad could it be?
The habit never died down really, even as the owner of a channel with 4.02 Million subscribers, his love for finding new creators (and his difficulty sleeping) grew daily. It’s how he found Shiro, of course, who hadn’t? But he’d found smaller creators too.
The apartment was quiet as always, Hunk was an early sleeper. Lance was tired of staring at the wall, so he lit a candle and tugged a blanket over to his desk and gaming chair. It was late enough to finally indulge in what he’d wanted all night, after getting over the initial Shiro shock, of course.
He scrolls through his private subscription list until he finds the channel he was looking for. He had stumbled upon it half asleep one night a few years ago, since then, there had only been three more uploads to join the six that make up the channel. The treat? Each video was around an hour to two hours long, something Lance would never do. The account was simply named “Keith” with a stunning photo of sand dunes as the banner and what might be a dog (or was it a wolf?) as the profile picture. While the account itself had about 2K subscribers, Lance had seen the creator’s videos reach up to half a million views. This was impressive of course, considering:
- Keith (lance assumed this was his name) never showed his face. Just his hands, on occasion
- There were no ads, tags, or collabs with other channels
- every video was simply named after the duration of time it depicts
- the editing was close to nonexistent
Curling up into his blanket, Lance is pleased to see the little blue dot by the photo of the dog. A new video! May 14, 2025 - June 12, 2025 is settled on the dashboard along the other dates, the thumbnail shows another beautiful view of what appeared to be some beach in the distance. Lance smiled, his show was on.
The video opens just as abrupt as always, the guy records on what has to be some vintage cam recorder. He never really starts with an intro, but instead throws the viewer right into the middle of his life. “I’m in middle of nowhere Texas right now,” Keith says from behind the camera. And this is why Lance can never share his guilty pleasure. Because he knows that it will be skewed immediately.
Was this mystery guy’s voice really, really , hot? Maybe! Was Lance only a fan of the channel for that reason? No! And so what if his heart fluttered while watching the man show his makeshift garden, and stick his fingers in the dirt to “feel if these guys are thirsty” (okay, and maybe he was.) But no, that was not the only reason he was a loyal subscriber, notification bell and all.
Keith was like… a gem of the internet. Lance wasn’t sure why or how he’d ended up on Youtube in the first place, but he certainly won’t complain. It was just. For all of Lance's manufactured storylines and crafted challenges, Keith simply existed with a camera. He documented close to nothing, and yet Lance couldn’t look away. These videos, he knew them like the back of his hand. On late nights in Cuba, when his heart ached from loneliness and all he had was his siblings and a screen– “ Keith” and December 4, 2017 - February 15, 2018 were there for him. He was entranced with the amateur cinematography of it all. How Keith managed to capture his life in a way that wasn’t quite clumsy but it certainly wasn’t poised. It was rough, a little blurry at times, but altogether beautiful. Lance loved especially, when Keith would wander to a waterfall, or some quiet place in the desert. He could hear the man settle behind the camera, speaking in the video like he was on a call. He was awkward, there was no Youtuber voice, or sparkle. Just a man, the desert, the rustling of a blanket and the gravely hum to his voice as he explained, “these sand dunes stretch out for miles,” Lance finds himself dozing to the rounded vowels of Keith’s western accent, “you can’t begin t’see the half of it. They go on rollin,”
Every so often, Keith would get a bit more talkative than usual and just go. Lance, half asleep in his chair listened with a slight smile as the man spoke about the best and worst dunes he’d seen, the treasured knife he’d lost to a thick tree trunk, the cold water in his little shack and how it made him want to poke into LA. Wait. Lance cracked an eye open, it was still the same view. Pale blue sky, no clouds, yellow sand carved by dramatic shadows. But Lance listened more intently, noting the hesitance in Keith’s voice.
“I uh. I’m not good at this whole video making thing but, you guys? Folks? Seem to like it, and. I did get one of those things, the invites. To the convention, I thought, why not go see a bit of city life. Gets me out of this dust bowl, yeah? Tell me what y'all think. I’ll read the comments when I post this. S’there anyone who wants to meet me?”
And maybe it was because it was near 3am and his heart was unguarded. Maybe it was because he felt he knew Keith on a personal level. Or maybe it was because he had gotten greedy, after meeting one idol and decided he deserved another favorite. But Lance scrolls down, types up a message and hits send before promptly slumping over on his desk, succumbing to exhaustion.
June 14, 2025 3:04 am
Loverboylance (✓) : holy shit dude please come to la i want to see you like. now.
He doesn’t wake up to any of the notifications on his phone. Only stirring when Hunk bursts in, holding his own device up, “DUDE! Who the hell is Keith and why are you guys trending on twitter?”