Chapter Text
Lance wasn't really the kind of guy to look too deeply into his dreams. If he dreamt about pink plastic shorts and yellow umbrellas against a gray background, he didn't go looking for a subconscious meaning behind it. Besides, dream analysis was lost on him years ago when he tried looking up a dream with various benign symbols and long dead Mr. Freud said it was dicks. Everything. Dicks with a splash of latent homosexuality. And while part of it was true in the long run, Lance didn't want to attribute his coming out to an old fart with a phallic preoccupation.
But when Keith showed up in his dream yet again, Lance was starting to get a little worried. Not only was each dream unsettlingly realistic in comparison to Lance's other dreams, Keith himself was realistic in a way random people in Lance's dreams never were. He sported a nasty looking black eye (still healing) and had his stupid mullet pulled back into a tiny ponytail; Lance figured only a dream would be such a lost cause. Besides, Lance just saw Keith walk out his dream through the bathroom door like it was nothing! His dreams were never that abrupt and out of his control; it was starting to become a cause for concern.
Lance pinched his arm to wake himself up and looked at himself in the mirror, staring down his reflection. He grabbed his phone from his pocket, barely glancing at three missed calls from Hunk and a series of texts from Pidge. He brought up google and searched what it meant to dream about a specific person over the time span of four months. The time slowly ticked by as he dug through website after website of pseudo occult articles and ignoring the steady flow of texts from Hunk and Pidge. Lance grimaced at the mixed results of general dream analysis and the messages behind recurring dreams; nothing could explain Keith’s appearances in Lance’s dreams. Lance was sure he had never seen Keith before his initial dream, even in passing like a stranger on the street or something, like dream analysts say happens a lot. So where had Keith come from?
Lance was content to stand in the bathroom to collect his thought as his sleep deprived brain slowly woke itself up. Despite the heavy crowds just outside, the bathroom itself was empty and quiet except for Lance’s hushed mumbles to himself. After a while, once Lance was fully awake and alert, he started to think the eerie silence was creepy and how strange it was that absolutely no one on the competition floor had come to use the restroom in the forty five minutes he had been standing there. He almost thought he might be dreaming again when the door to the bathroom swung open with a loud squeal and Lance shoved his buzzing phone into his pocket. He casually glanced over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of the newcomer. A tall man with black hair and a tuft of bleached bangs nodded at him before looking at him closely and giving him a curious crooked smile.
“Lance right?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“It's nice to meet you,” He stuck his out out to Lance. “I’m Shiro.”
“Oh!” Lance took Shiro’s hand and shook firmly. “Pidge has told me so much about you.”
“Hunk pretty much said the same thing,” Shiro chuckled. “I guess I'm kind of popular.”
“Yeah! The teachers back home always talk about you and how you work for NASA!”
“Well,” Shiro shrugged, “I don't
really work for NASA. They just request me from the police department sometimes.”
“But that's still crazy cool! I’d ask what top NASA scientists are like but I know Matt.”
“Yeah,” Shiro laughed. “Matt’s quite a guy. We went to school together back in Florida, you know.”
“Yeah, Pidge told me that's how they know you.”
“So uh, Lance…”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t mean to pry because obviously I’ve just met you, but you should give Hunk a call. He’d come to track you down himself but he’s busy-”
“Busy with the robot,” Lance sighed. “Yeah I know. I’ve just… been having a weird day.”
“I’m sure Hunk will understand. Just- give him a call okay?”
“Yeah alright. So uh, you live here in Texas right? What part?”
“Oh I live up north in Dallas.”
“Cowboys fan?”
“Occasionally. But the Dolphins are…” Shiro stopped and pulled his phone out of his pocket, eyes flicking quickly as he read whatever was on the screen. “Sorry, that was my friend. It's getting about time for us to leave and he's getting a little antsy.”
“Oh uh, yeah that's no problem. It was cool meeting you though.”
“Same to you!” Shiro offered his hand for another shake. “Have a safe drive back to Florida.”
“Thanks, you too.”
Shiro chuckled as he left the bathroom and Lance hit his hand against his head.
“You too? What were you thinking man?”
He sighed and checked his phone. Hunk was crying in the group chat. Pidge was surprisingly (and uncharacteristically) silent. He left the bathroom and wadded into the sea of people and dialed Hunk.
“Pidge?”
“Yes Hunk?”
“Was that the Keith…”
“The Keith Lance keeps going on about? Probably.”
“And how?”
“How did you or Lance meet him when he lives here in Texas? I’m still trying to figure that one out.”
“Ah.” Hunk tapped his fingers against their prep table in a beat of silence. “And uh, how exactly are you so calm about this?”
“Because I met him too. In the weird way, like you and Lance.”
“What? When? Why didn't you say anything?”
“I dunno,” Pidge shrugged. “I wanted to figure it out first.”
“Does Lance know?!”
“Pfft of course not. He wouldn't have believed me even if I had told him. Besides, he's the one so hung up about this; he should be the one to figure it out.”
“I see your point. I just feel kind of bad…”
“I don’t,” Pidge grunted. “As much as I want to figure it out, there's no way I'm helping those idiots out.”
The drive to the airport was like agony to Lance. Pidge and Hunk were gushing about their robot and he couldn't get a word in edgewise. He was happy for them of course- the S.S. Irony was their pride and joy after all. But his head was buzzing with thoughts of Keith. Lance was almost convinced he was real; the dreams were just too real to be normal dreams. He wanted his friend’s opinions about it though. He knew how crazy it sounded to claim that a real, live person was showing up in his dreams. Nothing about any of it made sense though! How would it even be possible for Keith to be real? Was he a dream walker? Was that even a thing someone could be?
Pidge sighed heavily as Lances finger tapping got too loud and annoying to just ignore. The rental car vibrated just enough for them to know that Lance was bouncing his leg violently. Hunk glanced away from the road and caught Pidge’s eye. He shrugged and twitched an eyebrow. It was a small sign but Pidge rolled their eyes in exasperation. They shifted in their seat to turn to Lance, who looked like a nervous ball of energy. Pidge knew they were going to regret this.
“What’d you think about the competition, Lance?”
It was like Lance exploded. Where just a second ago, only his leg was bouncing, now his whole body was vibrating. He looked animated with whatever conspiracy induced hype he had coursing through his head.
“I think Keith may be a real person I just don't know how to explain why I think that or even how its possible for him to be real but I keep dreaming about him and nothing makes sense and I couldn't find anything on the internet about this kind of thing -even though I only looked a little bit- I know it sounds crazy and impossible but I think he's real.”
Lance sucked in a deep breath to continue with his hair-brained theory but visibly deflated when he heard Pidge laughing at him. He pouted.
“Seriously guys… I can’t explain it but I know he’s real. His stupid hair was too ugly for me to come up with myself.”
“And have you ever really seen a black eye?” Hunk chuckled. “That doesn't really seem like something you'd dream about.”
“Yeah! Wait. When did I mention he had a black eye?”
Pidge only looked at him with a glimmer in their eyes, a sure sign of disaster. Lance had the overwhelming, but not unfamiliar, sense that they knew more than they let on.