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Look, Keith had really loved this rule when he was a freshman. Guaranteed on campus housing? Perfect. That meant he could worry about other things.
But here’s the thing – guaranteed freshman on campus housing was great when you were a freshman. Not so much when you were not.
So here he is, a sophomore, sitting in his shitty summer apartment, holding a letter from Garrison University that said we are very sorry but we are unable to provide you with housing for the upcoming year.
Great. Perfect. Splendid.
Keith needed to find roommates.
There are a decent amount of rooms available, but he’s having a hard time finding something that was within his price range and not with somebody who was completely fucking impossible to live with. The first person he met with was offering a room for a decent price, but he was adamant that his roommate be a non-smoker – not an issue for Keith, who didn’t smoke, but the guy seemed really fucking paranoid, and he kept doing this weird sniffing thing and staring at Keith as if he could see through him and inspect the state of his lungs. Another guy had five iguanas. One of them ended what had been a promising conversation with “as long as you’re not a fag hahaha,” and that had been the end of that.
He was starting to get desperate. Summer was coming to a close, which meant he had to find something soon, or else he needed to drastically lower his standards.
He settles for a little bit of both. He finds what seems to be a good place, and at a good price, but there were already three other people living there, which was a little much for Keith, who found it hard enough to live with one person. His freshman roommate had said he had an “attitude problem.” Keith thought he had a great attitude, thank you very much.
But he’s running out of time and options, so he agrees to meet with one of them to check the place out. The man he meets introduces himself as “Hunk” – Keith thinks that can’t be his real name, but he doesn’t bother to ask. Hunk is a big man, the kind of man who looks like he could rip you to pieces but probably never would. He shakes Keith’s hand and doesn’t even ask about the gloves. Keith thinks he could probably handle living with him.
“It’s a three bedroom,” he explains. “Me and Lance share a room. Pidge gets their own room. The other room used to belong to Shiro, but he went and moved in with Allura, so.”
Hunk talks as if Keith should know these people. “Why don’t one of you take the extra room?”
Hunk just shrugs and opens the door, showing Keith the room in question. It’s decent sized – maybe even a little big for Keith, who didn’t own much. He has a funny feeling it’s the biggest room in the apartment, although he has no basis for this knowledge. Maybe it’s just from the way Hunk had said the name Shiro. Like he was the leader.
Hunk just shrugs. “Rent’s easier with four people.”
“Isn’t it a little cramped?”
“Well, Pidge is pretty small, and they mostly stay holed up in their room hacking into, like, the FBI or whatever they like to do. Lance is – well. Lance is Lance.” It’s not much of an answer, but Keith thinks he understands – when you all got along, it didn’t matter much.
Keith doubts he’d ever be able to fit in like that, and even if it’s a little crowded, it seems like a nice enough place. He would like to meet the rest of them before he agreed to anything, but if what Hunk said about Pidge was true, he’s sure it won’t be much of an issue. He isn’t sure what Lance is Lance means, but he’s sure whatever it is, he can handle it. Certainly more than he can handle not having a place to live at the start of term.
Hunk gives him a few more of the pertinent details, and during that time Pidge comes home. They are small and androgynous, and gives him a small nod before disappearing into their room.
It might not be the best of situations, but Keith can definitely handle it.
Things Lance was hoping for in his new roommate: totally cool. Preferably a lady, but Lance has never been one to limit himself to just one gender. Liked lame jokes, liked eating spoonful’s of peanut butter, made bad puns. Firmly believed ABBA was God’s gift to man kind.
Preferably fell madly in love with Lance’s brilliant sense of humour and awkwardly endearing good looks.
Things Lance was expecting in his new roommate: probably a little lame, but in a good way. Like in a Hunk way. Normal sense of humour, but hopefully didn’t hate puns the way Hunk and Pidge did. Probably liked Dancing Queen and not much else.
Things Lance was not even remotely prepared for in his new roommate: Keith fucking Kogane.
“I can’t believe you didn’t even check with me!”
“When I asked if you wanted to be involved you said ‘pick someone who’s beautiful and likes ABBA.’”
“And you picked someone who is neither!”
“To be fair, you don’t know if he likes ABBA,” Pidge says from behind their computer. “I don’t know why he would, but you don’t know.”
“Uh, maybe because they’re one of the most popular and most successful musical acts in human history?”
“No one cares, Lance.”
“They’re in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!”
“Yeah? So is Madonna.”
Lance gawks at Pidge. “Don’t you ever –”
“Guys,” Hunk says. “We’re getting off topic.”
“There was a musical based off their music!”
“Lance.”
Lance grumbles incoherently under his breath but otherwise shuts up. About ABBA, at least.
“I can’t believe of all the people you could have chosen, you chose him!”
“How do you even know him?”
“Um? Hello? Don’t you remember last year? Astronomy? We were like, basically rivals. Constantly battling, trying to be best in the class –”
“Pidge was best in the class.”
“You two are not nearly supportive enough.”
“So, what, you had a made up rivalry with the guy and now you don’t want to room with him?”
“Okay, one, it wasn’t made up! And two, that’s not the point! The point is, Keith Kogane is an asshole!”
“Lance, you’re kind of an asshole.”
“Sure, but I’m the endearing kind of asshole.”
“Says who?” Pidge deadpans. Lance ignores them.
“Keith is just an asshole!”
“He can’t be that much of an asshole,” Hunk muses. “I don’t even remember him.”
“You two are the worst,” Lance mutters.
Despite Lance’s best wishes, Keith moves in a few days later. Everything he owns fits into two bags. And then, as if Lance didn’t not like him enough, he sticks his hand out and introduces himself to Lance.
Lance makes an inhuman noise. “We know each other!” He insists.
(“Have you ever heard his voice go so high?” Pidge whispers to Hunk.)
“Do we?” Keith studies him, but his face registers no recognition.
Lance makes that noise again. “Last year! Astronomy! Professor Zarkon!”
Keith crinkles his nose, eyeing Lance up and down as if trying to place him. “Were you the one who did your final project almost entirely in puns?”
“Yes, see, you do remember me!”
“I didn’t even realize we were in the same program,” Keith says. Lance sputters incoherently. Pidge grabs him by the arm and steers him away to let Keith unpack and set himself up in his room.
“Keith is the worst,” he mutters. Pidge just pats him on the back wordlessly.
Keith is beginning to understand what Lance is Lance means.
He does vaguely remember Lance as a loud mouthed class clown who flirted with everyone and glared at Keith a lot, but there’s no way he would have remembered him if Lance hadn’t pointed out that they knew each other. A few days after he moves in, he finds himself remembering those days with fondness.
The first morning Keith wakes up to Mamma Mia blasting through the apartment. He stumbles into the kitchen to see Lance shuffling about with actual, honest to God bunny slippers on his feet, buttering a piece of toast.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s called breakfast, Keith, maybe you’ve heard of it.”
Keith reaches out and turns down the speakers. Lance glares at him.
“Keith! You can’t just come into a man’s house and turn down his music.”
“A quarter of it is my house, now. Pass me a piece of bread.”
Lance does. Keith toasts it and then slathers it with peanut butter, licking the leftover peanut butter off the knife. Lance gives him a funny look, but Keith ignores it.
“Why are you even up so early?” Keith asks. Lance shrugs.
“My mother never let us sleep in later than nine.”
Keith groans and rubs at his eye. “Please don’t play your music so loudly.”
“Hunk has earplugs.”
Keith sighs and heads back to his room.
He does borrow earplugs from Hunk, because he learns very quickly that the only thing Lance loves more than himself is ABBA.
He isn’t sure if he will ever truly fit in with the three of them. Despite only having met their first year of college, they have a kind of ease around each other that made it seem like they had known each other for years; Keith has never had anybody like that. He doubts he ever will. But he’s starting to learn how to live with them. Hunk and Pidge are relatively easy to live with. Pidge kept mostly to themselves; Keith kind of gets the feeling that they’re basically a genius, and his hunch is proven when Hunk tells him that Pidge is a few years younger than them, having skipped a grade and graduated high school early. Hunk was easy to get along with. He was easygoing and a great cook, friendly where Pidge was shy and Lance was arrogant.
And Lance was – well, Hunk had said it better. Lance is Lance. Lance was loud and arrogant and obnoxious. He cracked jokes that weren’t funny and woke up too early and had horrible music taste. And Keith is pretty sure he still holds a grudge against Keith for Professor Zarkon’s class, even though Zarkon had been an asshole who didn’t know how to teach.
By the time school starts he’s gotten into a fine routine. He barely even notices the sounds of ABBA in the morning. Him and Lance are still mostly at each other’s throats, but other than that, Keith thinks he made a pretty good decision, all things considered.
Despite that, he still spends most of his time by himself. Keith has never been good at making friends, and he was fine with being alone. Keith had been alone for most of his life, and it was working for him. He wasn’t here to make lifelong friends, he was here because he needed a place to live.
Unfortunately, once school starts and they all have a set schedule, Keith’s plan of sticking to himself goes right down the toilet. His idea of living with people is everyone cleaning up after themselves and nodding at each other on the way to the bathroom; apparently the rest of the house does not feel the same.
For one, despite the three bedrooms it’s not a very big apartment, and there are only two bathrooms. Pidge got the room with an ensuite, which left the three boys to share one bathroom. This might not be too much of a problem, except it was impossible to fit two people inside it when one of them was Hunk, and Lance had an entire morning routine that Keith wanted no part of.
The first day of school he heads out of his room only to run into Lance also on his way to the bathroom. Keith gives him a nod and then does a double take.
“Are you wearing a face mask?”
“What, you think my skin is naturally this good?”
“I don’t even know how to respond to that.”
Five days after the beginning of school, Keith is introduced to another thing that means he can’t just stick to himself. He comes home after school and is about to head back into his room when Lance sticks his head out and says, “We have to get groceries.”
“Excuse me?”
“We’re on grocery duty because our classes end at the same time and we’re home before Hunk and Pidge.”
Keith briefly considers switching his schedule around.
“Seriously?”
“I’m not happy about it either, Keith! But Hunk makes dinner, we have to pull our weight too.”
“What does Pidge do?”
Lance gives him a funny look. “What, you think we’re paying for cable?”
Keith just rolls his eyes. “Fine, but I’m taking a shower first.”
“No, I already called the shower!” Lance says with a grin, sprinting past Keith to get to the bathroom.
“Lance! No you didn’t!”
“It’s not my fault you weren’t listening!”
“Lance!” Lance disappears behind the bathroom door and Keith bangs loudly on it. “If you take all the hot water I’ll kill you!”
He hears the shower turn on and lets out an irritated groan, kicking the door one last time for good measure.
Lance was going to be the death of him.
Once they are both showered they head out, and Lance leads him to the garage.
Keith knew Lance had a car, and he figured it wasn’t anything particularly fancy, but he had – mistakenly, apparently – assumed that it was a fully functional vehicle, maybe a little broken down. When he sees the machine that Lance calls a car, he stops dead.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“What?”
“I am not getting in that thing.”
“Oh come on, Voltron is totally reliable.”
“What did you just call it?”
“Voltron.”
“You named this thing Voltron.”
“It’s not a thing, Keith, it’s a car!”
“If you say so.”
Lance shoves him forwards lightly, and Keith distinctly hears him mutter “He didn’t mean it” to the car.
“Can we at least listen to the radio?”
“Radio doesn’t work. I’ll let you pick which ABBA album to listen to, though.”
Not for the first time, Keith wonders what he has gotten himself into.
Grocery shopping goes about as well as he had assumed it would. Lance appears to be allergic to any kind of vegetable, although he does load the cart with fruit. They get into a minor fight about when bananas were best to eat. Lance throws both crunchy and smooth peanut butter in, which Keith can’t help but wrinkle his nose at.
“What?”
“Crunchy peanut butter?”
To his surprise, Lance mirrors his expression. “That’s Pidge. The weird thing is they don’t actually like peanuts, just everything that has peanuts in it, even crunchy peanut butter. Geniuses, man. We don’t make sense.”
Keith snorts, and Lance laughs, not even able to force himself to look offended.
They load up on groceries and Keith can almost hear Lance’s car (he refuses to call it Voltron) wheeze in complaint at the newly added weight. Keith doesn’t believe in God, but when the car jolts suddenly, he starts to, just to give him someone to pray to.
“Don’t worry. It always does that.”
“Weirdly, that doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“You worry too much.”
“You worry too little.”
Lance just grins again. Keith crosses his arms and stares out the window.
It is on one of these grocery trips that the car breaks down.
“Why are you slowing down?” He asks Lance, who looks at the speedometer with concern.
“I’m not. The car is just… stopping.”
Keith throws his hands in the air. “Oh my God, Lance, did you forget to put gas in the car?”
“No! I just filled up!”
“Then that means – fuck,” Keith says, as Lance drives the car off the road and into a random parking lot. Voltron stutters to a stop and the two of them stare at the dashboard clock as it dies. They sit in silence for a minute before Lance eventually says, “I’ll call Hunk.”
Lance gets out of the car to talk, and Keith watches as he gesticulates wildly. Eventually he opens the door again and leans his arm against the roof, leaning in to talk to Keith. He swears under his breath in what Keith thinks is Spanish.
“What?”
“Hunk won’t be able to get here for another hour.”
“Why?”
“He won’t leave class early. He says we need to bond. And then he has to take the bus over here.”
“What do you mean, we need to bond?”
Lance sits back down and lets out a breath. “I don’t know. Fuck, it’s hot.”
“I told you your car was a piece of shit.”
“Shh! Not where he can hear you!”
Keith leans his head back against the seat and lets out a breath.
It was going to be a long hour.
Twenty minutes later Lance heads to where they had taken refuge in the shade of a tree and hands Keith one of the bottles of water he had bought at a convenience store.
“Thank you,” he says, downing half of it in one go. Lance sits down next to him; the tree isn’t as big as Keith would like, so they have to sit close together to make sure they both get the shelter of the shade. Lance leans against the tree and takes a drink from his own bottle.
“It’s hot,” Lance says unnecessarily. Keith makes a noise of agreement. He casts a glance at Lance. His head is leaned back against the tree, exposing the lines of his neck.
Keith looks away.
“I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” he says eventually. Lance’s eyes are closed, so Keith lets himself study his face.
Lance just shrugs. “I spoke Spanish before I spoke English.”
“Huh.”
“What about you? Do you speak any other languages?”
Truthfully when Keith was sixteen he taught himself how to speak Korean, because it was the only solid thing he knew about himself. He had had some kind of idea that learning to speak Korean would give him some kind of tether, some kind of idea of home, of identity. It hadn’t, but at the very least it looked good on his resume.
“Korean,” is all he says. Lance nods.
“Cool. Did your parents speak Korean?”
Keith looks away. “I don’t know,” he says. He doesn’t look to see what Lance’s expression looks like.
What he ends up getting is water splashed at him.
“What the fuck?”
“I’m sorry!” Lance says, sounding genuinely sorry. “What the fuck was I supposed to say to that?”
Keith actually laughs. “Jesus Christ.”
“I bet it cooled you down, though.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“But like, a cute idiot. An idiot all the girls and guys and everyone in between loves.”
Keith considers this. He doesn’t know what that means – if Lance isn’t straight or if he’s just arrogant enough to think he has that effect on any gender. Not that he cares about Lance’s sexuality. “If you say so,” is all he ends up saying.
“That doesn’t bother you, does it?”
Guess that’s his answer. “No.”
“Okay. I mean I figured it wouldn’t, since you haven’t even asked about Pidge, but a man likes to be sure.”
He knows this his opportunity to disclose his own sexuality, to give something back, but he’s not entirely sure how to go about just blurting out I’m gay to someone he still barely knows and still isn’t even entirely sure if he likes. Plus he’s already overshared enough today. Keith isn’t exactly good at making friends, and he’s spent so long alone that he isn’t entirely sure how, or if he even wants to. Life has been going just fine for him by himself. He came here for a place to stay, not to share intimate details about himself. If Lance wanted to flirt with the world and be open about it all the power to him, but that didn’t mean Keith had to.
So all he does is shrug. “I don’t care about that.”
Lance flicks water at him again.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry! It was getting awkward again.”
Keith snorts, takes another sip of his water, and then dumps the rest of the bottle on Lance’s head. Lance sighs.
“I would be mad at you if it weren’t so damn hot. Just like me.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Lance.”
“That would be the dulcet tones of ABBA.”
“And the face mask.”
“And the face mask.”
Keith shakes his head, a small smile curling at the edges of his lips.
Lance leans his head back once again and closes his eyes. “Wake me up when Hunk gets here.”
Keith considers this and takes a leaf out of Lance’s book, mirroring his position. They’re shoulders are pressed together, fighting to stay in the shade, and with the heat of the sun and a shoulder pressed to his, Keith falls asleep.
“That is adorable,” are the first words that Lance hears. He lifts his head from where it had been resting and looks up to see Hunk in front of him, his cell phone out in front of him as if he had just taken a picture. Lance looks at where his head had been rested and sees that it was Keith’s shoulder.
“You drooled on me,” Keith says in disgust, eyeing a dark stain on his jacket. Something complicated happens in Lance’s stomach, but he ignores it.
“See?” Hunk says, looking triumphant. “I told you that you guys would bond! Pidge owes me ten bucks, they said one of you would end up killing the other.”
“Who did they say would win?”
Keith gives him an incredulous look. “Seriously?”
“What? I want to know who they think is stronger.”
“Obviously I would be the one to kill you.”
“Says who?”
“I know martial arts!”
“Guys. Maybe we should figure out what’s wrong with the car.”
“I don’t know what happened, but I bet it was Keith’s fault.”
“Like that piece of shit needs any help breaking down.”
“Don’t talk about Voltron like that!”
“I refuse to call your stupid car that stupid name!”
Hunk drops his head in his hands and sighs.
“Lance!”
Keith storms out of the bathroom and into the living room, where the three others are sitting around the television. Lance looks up and blanches slightly at Keith, who is standing with nothing but a towel clutched around his waist.
“Yes?”
Keith glares at him, stalks over, and grabs Lance by the shirt. “This is mine.”
Lance glances down at himself in surprise. “Is it?”
“How do you not know what your own fucking clothes are?”
“I have a lot of clothes, okay!”
“Well I don’t! So stop taking mine!”
“It’s not my fault you’re, like, minimalist or whatever.”
Keith lets out an angry noise and stomps back to his room, but he makes a stop in the laundry room first.
This means war.
When Keith comes out for breakfast the next morning, the other three gape at him. Lance’s eyes look like they’re about to burst out of his head.
“Oh fuck no.”
“What?” Keith asks innocently, looking down at the shirt he’s wearing. “Is this not mine?”
Lance narrows his eyes. “You know very well it isn’t.”
Keith takes another look down at himself. The shirt he’s wearing is black, and fits nicely; for all intents and purposes it could be his, except for the ABBA logo written in large letters across his chest.
“Whoops,” he says, pouring himself a glass of orange juice and sitting down across from Lance at the table. Then, keeping eye contact the entire time, he raises the orange juice to his mouth.
And misses.
“Whoops,” he says again, as OJ spills over Lance’s shirt. Pidge and Hunk are both watching the two of them closely.
“Low blow, Keith,” Lance says. “Low fucking blow.”
“What else am I supposed to do if you take all my clothes?”
(“Is it just me or is this the most sexually charged fight you’ve ever seen?” Pidge whispers to Hunk.)
“Fine,” Lance says, standing up. “You want to wear my clothes? Wear my clothes.”
“That’s not –” Pidge starts, but Keith just snarls.
“Fine,” he says. Pidge is looking between the two of them with an incredulous expression.
“Are you two for real?”
Keith just stalks off to his room to change his (Lance’s) orange juice stained shirt. Lance follows suit, stomping off to his own room.
After what Lance will, for the rest of their lives, dub ‘The Orange Juice Attack,’ they reach what Pidge will, for the rest of their lives, call ‘The Gayest Truce Ever.’ Instead of just doing the easy thing and not wearing each other’s clothes, they each just grab whatever fits from the laundry and go on with their day.
And this works totally fine until Lance’s body is taken over by aliens.
That’s really the only logical explanation. That or a brain tumour. Nothing else could explain the weird stirring in his stomach whenever he sees Keith wearing his clothing.
At first he tries to brush it off as annoyance, but annoyance doesn’t really explain the way his heartrate speeds up whenever Keith walks out of his room, hair wet from the shower, Lance’s shirt on his body.
He’s pretty sure Pidge notices, judging from the way they keep smirking at him, but Lance is able to write it off as nothing more than a brain injury. And okay, logically he is aware that Keith is a good looking dude, but looks don’t matter when he’s a moody asshole who spilled orange juice on Lance’s ABBA shirt.
The worst is that, despite the washing, Keith’s scent seems to linger on shirts, and even when it’s his own damn shirt he’s wearing there’s that underlying smell of Keith, muskiness and boy, and Lance has always preferred girls but going to sleep every night with the scent of Keith Kogane around him is starting to fuck with his brain.
“Keith is an asshole,” he says to Hunk one day, as if trying to convince himself. Hunk gives an unconvincing mhm that gives Lance the distinct impression that he and Pidge have been talking about Lance to each other.
“He is,” he says again. Hunk pats him on the shoulder and makes another pacifying noise.
What the fuck is happening to him.
By the time Christmas comes around, there is good and bad news.
The good news – Keith has found his place in the house. It wasn’t something he ever wanted, but once it started happening, he found he didn’t much want it to stop. Even Pidge started coming out of their room more.
The bad news –
When Keith was eleven he had a crush on one of the other boys in his foster home. He hadn’t, at the time, known it was a crush, because boys were supposed to like girls, but in hindsight he knows what the butterflies in his stomach, the tightness in his chest, the clamminess in his hands all signified. The bad news, the super bad news, the why does God hate me I’ve been a good person I don’t deserve this bad news is that Keith is feeling all of that again, but this time it’s for Lance fucking McClain.
“What about you, Keith? Are you going home for Christmas?”
Hunk’s question is good natured, and there’s no way he would know about Keith’s past, but his heart speeds up and he clenches his fists. He can sense Lance’s eyes on him, and he immediately regrets that conversation they had had months ago, where Keith had more or less confessed that he was an orphan with no family.
“No. I’m going to stay here.”
“Are you sure? That’s gotta be lonely, are you sure you wouldn’t –”
“Hey Hunk, am I ever going to meet this hot sister of yours? I can’t believe you’ve kept me in the dark for this long.”
Pidge doesn’t look up from their laptop when they say, “Hunk loves his sister too much to introduce her to you.”
“Pidge, I am a gift to ladies everywhere.”
“I think they want a refund.”
Keith and Hunk laugh at the expression on Lance’s face, and at the sound Lance turns around and winks at Keith, who promptly looks away to hide the blush on his face. It doesn’t get past him that Lance changed the topic for his sake, not that that means anything. Lance, despite everything, was that kind of person. That didn’t mean anything. Nor did the wink.
Nor did the fact that he was wearing Keith’s shirt.
Yes. Very, very bad news indeed.
Lance was fucked.
Like, utterly, totally, completely fucked. Lance has been fucked very often (figuratively speaking; literally speaking he could count it on one hand and it wasn’t nearly as fulfilling as everyone always said it was), but this was astronomical.
The intensity of how fucked he is comes shortly before the end of term, when Hunk and Pidge are both still in class. Keith is sitting in the living room, bent over the table doing some kind of homework, when Lance comes home. Lance heads to the kitchen, grabs the jar of peanut butter and two spoons, and sits next to Keith on the couch, holding out a spoon.
Keith looks at it for a moment before taking it out of Lance’s hand and dipping it in the open jar of peanut butter. Lance watches him eat the spoonful of peanut butter with a tight feeling in his stomach and then says what he set out to say.
“Do you want to come to my house for Christmas?”
Keith pauses with the spoon still in his mouth, which is super, totally embarrassing but also really fucking cute and Jesus Christ Lance is so fucked.
“What?” He finally says.
“I just… I figured I’d extend the invitation. In case you didn’t want to be alone.”
“I’m always alone for Christmas,” Keith says slowly. There is no hint of self-pity in his voice, just the same strange way Keith tends to talk about his past, as if these were just the facts and there was nothing at all depressing about them.
“That doesn’t mean it sucks any less, Keith.”
Keith takes another bite of peanut butter before finally speaking again. “I –” He looks down at his lap. “I’m fine. I mean… thanks. But. I’m fine.”
Lance surprises both of them by laughing. “Dude, you are so bad at this.”
“At what?”
“At normal human interaction.”
“I don’t think being invited to a person you met four months ago’s house for Christmas while they’re wearing your shirt falls under normal human interaction.”
“I don’t think you would know what normal human interaction was if it slapped you in the face.”
“What does Christmas at the McClain house even involve? Waking up early and ABBA singalongs?”
“ABBA was banned at my house when I was seventeen.”
“God, your mother is my hero.”
Lance laughs and scoops another spoonful of peanut butter. Keith gives him an incredulous look.
“What?”
“You’re double dipping.”
“No one else eats this peanut butter.”
“I do!”
“Oh relax, Keith, I don’t have cooties.”
Keith rolls his eyes, but he grabs another spoonful of peanut butter anyway.
“You know we’re practically making out now,” Lance says. Keith starts coughing very violently.
“Why do you have to make everything weird?”
“What’s weird about two bros swapping spit while wearing each others shirt?”
Keith groans and stands up. “Goodbye, Lance.”
Lance watches him go with a very strange feeling in his chest.
He isn’t entirely sure what is more surprising – that both Hunk and Pidge hug him goodbye, that Lance gives him this weird salute and refuses to meet his eyes, or that he misses them all when they leave.
Keith has never had a problem with being alone. He liked it, most of the time, since most of his life had been spent living in a crowded foster home. But now that he’s gotten accustomed to living with these people, to Pidge and Hunk and even fucking Lance (Lance was a whole other story and Keith really didn’t want to think about that), watching them all go back home, to their families, while Keith was left behind, leaves a strangely bitter feeling in his mouth.
On Christmas morning Lance texts him: Look in my closet.
Please elaborate or else I’m not going anywhere near your closet.
Chill out dude it’s not like I’m hiding a dead body in there just fucking check it.
He does. Lance’s room is surprisingly neater than he had expected, although there are still clothes littered everywhere. He’s never been in Lance’s room before. He tries not to focus on that.
When he opens the door to Lance’s closet he sees a small box, wrapped messily. His heart is in his throat when he opens the tag and sees his name written.
When he opens the box, any nervous feelings he had are quickly gone.
You’re a fucking idiot, he texts Lance, who sends him three full lines of laughing emoji’s before sending, Never touch mine again.
I’m never wearing this, he says, looking in dismay at the ABBA shirt that perfectly matches the one Lance has, the one he spilled orange juice on.
Oh come on! We’d match!
You’re an idiot, he sends again.
Merry Christmas, Lance says, complete with a Santa emoji. Keith shakes his head.
Merry Christmas, he sends back, before sending the same text to Pidge and Hunk.
He looks at the shirt again. Lance really was an idiot.
He takes the shirt into his room anyway.
On December 31st, Keith is awoken far too early by the sounds of Waterloo filling the apartment. He lies in bed for a few moments, trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, because no one was supposed to be back for almost a week, but it’s not like anyone else would break into the apartment and play this stupid music.
Sure enough, when he wanders outside, blinking in the suddenly harsh light, he sees Lance sitting at the kitchen table, eating cereal. Keith turns the music down and then crosses his arms.
“What are you doing here?”
“I live here, Keith.”
“No, what are you doing here now?”
Lance just shrugs. “Decided to come home early. Pidge and Hunk are coming tomorrow.”
Keith narrows his eyes. “Why?”
“Because I fucking live here, Keith! Why aren’t you wearing your Christmas present?”
Keith rolls his eyes but sits across from Lance anyway. “I told you I wasn’t going to wear it.”
“I’m offended,” Lance says around a mouthful of cereal. Keith ignores this.
“You still haven’t told me why you came home early.”
“I didn’t know I had to have a reason,” he says, but he doesn’t meet Keith’s eye when he says this.
Keith isn’t an idiot, and he has a funny feeling that Lance’s early arrival – and the early arrival of Hunk and Pidge, too – had something to do with the fact that Keith was here, over the holidays, by himself. But for some reason, he doesn’t feel as upset about this as he thought he would have. Keith didn’t want to be pitied, but for some reason, this didn’t feel like pity.
It felt like friendship.
“Whatever,” Keith says, trying to keep cool and not give away the fact that his heart was threatening to beat out of his chest. “Happy New Years, I guess.”
Lance lights up. “Oh yeah!” He says, pulling a bag out from under the table. “I forgot! I bought horribly cheap wine that probably tastes horrible so we can have something to drink when we watch the ball drop.”
Keith stares at him. “You’re joking.”
“It’s New Years, Keith! Have fun for once. I can teach you, if you don’t know how.”
“I know how to have fun,” Keith says stubbornly.
“Could have fooled me,” Lance says.
Keith stands up and stretches. “Fine. I’ll watch the goddamn ball drop with you.”
Lance’s grin causes his stomach to flip over, and he quickly excuses himself.
Keith doesn’t wear his matching shirt, but he does drink some of Lance’s cheap wine, so he considers that a win.
“This is horrible,” he says, face screwing up in a way that should be hilarious but is, disturbingly, almost endearing. Lance shrugs, chastising himself for being such a lovesick fool.
“It’s wine in a box, Keith, I don’t know what you were expecting.”
Keith sighs and stretches out beside Lance, putting his feet up on the table. Lance holds up his glass, and Keith clinks his to it with a resigned sigh.
Almost an hour later and Lance is happily buzzed. Keith is, too, no matter how hard he tries to hide it. Lance can see it in the way he slumps against the couch, how he smiles lazily at him in a way that causes Lance to stare at the gentle curve of Keith’s lips.
Fucked, fucked, I am so fucked.
It’s when Keith asks him what he’s looking at that Lance realizes that getting happily buzzed and letting loose with Keith is probably a really bad idea.
“Nothing,” he says, hurriedly looking away from Keith’s lips and focusing on Ryan Seacrest on the television. Keith shrugs, and then, because God absolutely hates him and is punishing him for who the fuck knew what, he pulls his fucking hair back and puts it up using a hair tie that had been around his wrist.
Lance is literally going to die. He might already be dead. He isn’t even going to make it through the New Year. Cause of death: Keith Kogane’s hair.
What an embarrassing way to die.
Lance won’t stop looking at him.
Of course, the only reason he knows this is because Keith can’t stop looking at him, either. Half way through the box of wine Keith realizes that getting drunk and letting his inhibitions down around the stupid fucking idiot who he definitely had feelings for was probably a bad idea, but it’s too late now, here he is, and Lance is acting very, very strange. Like, he’s almost certain that when Keith puts his hair up, he squeaked.
The drunker he gets the more he finds himself looking, and the more he finds himself looking the drunker he gets, trying to hide his mortification. Keith’s alcohol laden brain doesn’t know what to make about the fact that Lance always catching him looking, because Lance is also looking. All he knows is that he is irrationally happy that Lance came back early, and he’s also irrationally happy that Pidge and Hunk aren’t home yet, and he’s also really drunk.
“I’m really drunk,” he says aloud. Lance nods.
“See? Boxed wine was a good idea.”
“I wouldn’t call it a good idea. I’d call it an idea.”
Lance suddenly gasps and grabs Keith’s arm. “It’s a minute to midnight!”
Keith looks at the screen in surprise. “Already?” It felt like he and Lance had only been sitting here for a few minutes.
“Count down with me!”
“No.”
Lance is still gripping his arm, and when they get to ten seconds, he leans in close to Keith and starts yelling in his ear.
“TEN!”
“Lance –”
“NINE!”
“Why are you so loud?”
“SEVEN! SIX! FIVE!”
Lance is so close, and his breath smells like cheap wine, and the warmth of his breath on Keith’s ear and neck causes him to shiver, and he desperately hopes the Lance didn’t notice as he tries to will the goosebumps away.
“THREE! TWO! ONE!”
The television erupts into cheers, and Keith looks at it, and he remembers, too late, what you were supposed to do at midnight on New Years.
When he turns to look at Lance, he sees that Lance is also staring at the television, head slightly cocked, hand still gripping Keith’s arm. He looks almost confused at all the kissing on the television, and when he turns his head to look at Keith, Keith leans forwards and kisses him.
Alarm bells start ringing through his head and the sober part of him is yelling at the drunk part of him, what the fuck are you doing, you have to live with him, you’re going to ruin everything.
But just as he is about to pull away, to abort, to make some excuse, blame it on the alcohol, do whatever to try and make this as painless as possible, Lance responds, and the feeling of lips moving against his surprises him so much that his mouth opens. Lance wastes no time in taking advantage of this, and they are both too drunk for this to be anything but messy, and part of Keith still thinks this is a totally bad idea, because Lance is drunk but then Lance’s hand comes up and pulls Keith’s hair gently out of the hair tie so it falls around his face again, and Lance buries his hand in it, still kissing Keith as if his life depended on it. When Lance pushes at him, gently, experimentally, Keith follows suit, leaning back and pulling Lance with him, and part of him is still thinking bad idea bad idea bad idea but the larger part of him is thinking there is absolutely no way this could possibly go wrong because I am kissing Lance.
Lance is the one to pull away first, but he doesn’t go far, leaning to bite gently at Keith’s jaw. “Think about how much better this would be if we were wearing matching shirts.”
“Don’t make this weird.”
“This is already weird, Keith.” But despite these words he kisses Keith again, straddling his waist, and Keith is almost certain he had a dream like this once, except this time it’s real.
“Your breath smells horrible,” Keith mutters into Lance’s mouth.
“That would be the cheap wine.” One of his hands skims underneath Keith’s shirt, brushing against his skin, and Keith lets out a noise that Lance laughs at.
“Don’t start with me, you literally squeaked when I put my hair up.”
Lance buries his head in Keith’s neck and groans. “I thought I was going to die.”
There is a warmth in Keith’s belly and he isn’t sure if it’s the wine or the weight of Lance above him.
As Lance kisses him, he finds he doesn’t really care what it is.
They kiss for longer than Lance has ever kissed anybody in his life, and then they lay together on the small couch, and Lance’s leg is sprawled across Keith’s body, and he’s pretty sure Keith is already asleep.
Hah. Sleep. As if Lance could sleep like this, head heavy with wine, lips red from kissing, lying on Keith fucking Kogane and feeling him breathe as he sleeps.
He has a vague idea that he should move, because if they stay like this Pidge and Hunk will walk in on them and God knows he would never live that down. He has a vague idea that he should wake Keith up and kiss him again before they both sober up and realize what the fuck is happening.
He has a vague idea that he should tuck his head into Keith’s neck and sleep.
He goes with Idea #3.
Lance wakes up to a very high pitched noise that turns out to be Hunk, who has both hands over his mouth as he stares at the scene on the couch. Pidge looks vaguely disturbed.
Also Shiro is there, because of fucking course he is.
His head hurts a decent amount but he barely notices it, because he is taking stock of where he is. And that is on the couch, arm slung across Keith’s chest, and Keith’s arm is around him, and when he lifts his head, there is definitely a hickey blooming on Keith’s neck.
Oh God.
Shiro clears his throat and this causes Keith to stir, too, and Lance really wants to leave before Keith realizes what the fuck is happening except Keith’s arm is still around him and also it’s a really small couch and Jesus, he can’t stop looking at that hickey.
“Happy New Year,” he says weakly, and it is then that Keith fully awakens, and he makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat as he disentangles himself from Lance and practically springs off of the couch, which, ow, that’s not exactly good for Lance’s self-esteem.
Keith looks at the people who are clustered around them and all but runs out the door.
Lance sits up and buries his head in his hands.
“So,” Hunk says eventually. Lance looks up.
“Did you have to bring Shiro?”
“I won’t take that personally,” he says.
“Like we knew that’s what we would be walking in on! What happened?”
“I think it’s very clear what happened,” Pidge says. Lance drops his head into his hands again.
“Oh God oh God oh God.”
“Lance.” Shiro takes a seat next to him. “What happened?”
“Do you really want all the gory details?”
“Are there gory details?” Hunk asks.
“No, I just – we just kissed, honestly, I bought cheap wine –”
“Figures.”
“And then it was midnight, and, well, you know what you’re supposed to do at midnight!”
“Somehow Hunk and I were able to get through the night without sucking marks into each other’s skin,” Pidge says. Lance groans. He was kind of hoping they hadn’t noticed the hickey.
“Lance,” Shiro says again, voice firm and steady and reassuring in the way that Shiro always was. “You’re freaking out.”
“Am I?” He asks, voice unnaturally high. “I think I’m quite calm, actually.” He stands up, needing to do something, but then he stops. Shiro must recognize the look on his face, because Shiro somehow seemed to know everything, and he lunged to grab the garbage can quickly enough that he could shove it under Lance’s mouth to give him something to vomit into.
“That’s what happens when you buy wine from a gas station,” Pidge says as Lance empties his stomach.
“It wasn’t from a gas station,” he says weakly, wiping his mouth and sitting back down shakily. Shiro looks at the garbage can and then heads into the bathroom to dispose of it. When he comes back he hands Lance a glass of water.
“Why did we ever let you move out?” Lance asks, drinking the water slowly.
“You seemed quite happy with my absence a few minutes ago.”
Lance resists the urge to run a finger over his lips. “I need to go lie down,” he says weakly. “Er – sorry, Shiro.”
“Feel better,” Shiro says, with a look on his face that says he has a funny idea what Lance is actually upset about. Sometimes he forgot how annoying it was that Shiro always had such a good grip on things.
Keith has had a few shitty New Years before in his life, but of all those New Years, he never spent any of them vomiting in a Starbucks garbage.
He looks up to see a few horrified patrons staring at him. “Um… I’m sorry,” he says weakly. The customers look horrified; the baristas look like this isn’t the first time this had happened.
He excuses himself from the Starbucks and sits down on a bench a few blocks away and takes a deep breath. He leans his head back and absentmindedly presses a finger to the bruise blooming on his neck.
Fuck.
God, he had fucked up. This was bad. This was so fucking bad.
He had kissed Lance. And, sure, Lance had kissed him back, but he had been drunk, and Keith had just… Keith had kissed him and pulled him down and fuck, fuck, fuck.
So he liked Lance, fine, he had accepted that, but this was something way worse, this was fucking up the only good thing he had ever really had, the only real sense of family and belonging he had ever felt. Plus there was the very important issue of where he was going to live.
God, he was so fucked! So fucked, because what he had done to Lance was unforgivable, and Lance was going to hate him, because Keith had taken advantage of him while he was drunk and Pidge and Hunk were going to hate him too, and Keith is pretty sure that had been Shiro, and Shiro would hate him, too, before even knowing him!
Keith runs a hand over his face and looks up at the sky. He could still taste Lance, that awful wine on his breath, the comforting weight of his body on Keith’s.
He hadn’t wanted it to be like this.
Lance sleeps his hangover off, and then he goes out to a late lunch with the other three. He doesn’t eat much, because he still doesn’t trust his stomach, but being around the others, and having Shiro there again, it’s comforting in a warm way, even though he still feels slightly mortified at the position they had found him in.
“So how long has that been going on?”
“It – nothing’s going on.”
At the incredulous look from all three of them, Lance sighs. “Why do we have to talk about this? Why can’t we talk about Shiro! And Allura! Let’s talk about them!”
“We already knew that Shiro and Allura are dating, and besides, we never walked in on Shiro and Allura asleep on each other.”
“Keith and I aren’t dating!”
“That hickey begs to differ.”
“I – okay, so maybe I have a minor crush on him, but Jesus, you saw how quickly he left this morning!” He tires to keep the hurt out of his voice, but judging from the looks the other three give him, he doesn’t succeed.
“I think maybe we just… surprised him,” Shiro says. Lance groans.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” he mutters. There must be something in his voice, because the other three exchange looks and then nod, and the subject is changed.
Keith is still not home when they get back, and he doesn’t come home all day. Eventually both Pidge and Hunk call it a night, but Lance waits up.
Keith doesn’t come up until late, and when he opens the door he doesn’t turn the lights on. Lance had been ready for that. He flicks the lamp on, and Keith’s head snaps up to look at him. Lance feels like a parent about to reprimand his child, except instead he’s about to chew out the idiot in front of him for kissing him all night and then running away.
Keith stops and stares at him, expression guarded. Lance grins at him.
“Hello darling.”
Keith flinches. “Don’t –”
“Don’t what?”
“Just… don’t. I’m sorry, okay, I shouldn’t have done it –”
Lance’s entire body sags. So he did regret it. He hadn’t meant it. It was just the wine.
“Fine, but you didn’t have to run away. You could have just told me you didn’t mean it.”
“I –” Keith’s eyebrows draw together in confusion. “Aren’t you mad at me?”
Lance mirrors his confusion. “Why would I be mad at you?”
“Because I – I kissed you! And you were drunk, and I… I took advantage –” He stops when Lance bursts out laughing.
“Oh my God, Keith, I literally left a mark on your neck and you think I’m upset at you?”
“Well, I… aren’t you?”
Lance stands, then, and although Keith looks apprehensive when he steps towards him, he stays in place. Lance reaches out and runs his fingers over the bruise on Keith’s neck and delights at the blush that spreads over Keith’s face, visible even in the low light. “Do I look fucking upset?”
“Kind of,” Keith says, voice a little uneven.
“Well, okay, but that’s just because you left! You didn’t even talk to me, you just kissed me and then left! What was I supposed to think?”
“I thought you didn’t want –”
Lance cuts him off with his mouth, which is a very effective way of shutting people up, and Keith kisses him until he pulls away. “You’re an idiot. I like you, you fucking asshole.”
“Oh.”
“Oh, he says,” Lance mumbles into Keith’s neck. “You –”
Keith kisses him. “Do you ever shut up?”
Lance pushes forward until he has Keith pinned against the door. He wants to say something, to prove a point, to annoy Keith, but that would involve using his lips for something other than kissing, which he’s really not all that eager to do. He loops his fingers in Keith’s belt loops and pushes him flush against him, feeling every line of Keith’s body. Keith kisses him like he’s dying for it, and Lance responds with equal fervor.
The lights flick on.
“Can you two maybe do this where I don’t have to see it?” Pidge asks grumpily, refilling their water. Keith turns red again, but Lance just grins into his neck, tugging lightly on the lobe of Keith’s ear with his teeth. Keith lets out a tiny moan of pleasure, and Pidge glares at the two of them.
“At least wait until I go back to bed!”
In response, Keith drags Lance into his room, “to talk,” he says, although Lance, for once, has plans that involve as little talking as possible.