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Storms always made everything worse. They always made the dark thoughts come out and play for a while. Lance hated storms. He hated the thunder and all the darkness that came with it. Wrapped up in a blanket that made him feel like he was at home, he watched his best friend and roommate play his new game with running commentary.
Text books scattered across the dining table and the coffee table, laptops screen still lit up on the table, but left ignored as they had studied for the past 5 hours. Dishes were stacked in the sink, mostly Lance’s, and they honestly bothered him so much, but he didn’t have the energy to get up and wash them. Lance was grateful that they had invested in black out curtains as they blocked out the lightening, but even the music from the game couldn’t hide the sound of the thunder.
“Look at this guy, ‘I have come up with a new recipe!’ he sounds like me.”
Lance made a grunt of agreement as he curled further down into his blanket. He didn’t want to admit it, but Lance really liked watching Hunk play Final Fantasy XV, it was an interesting game and he liked the characters. And Hunk, he normally didn’t talk this much as he played, but he just knew. He knew what thunder did to Lance, he knew how much it affected him, so he talked as he played, even if Lance wasn’t listening he knew the mindless chatter helped to distract his best friend. Distract him enough that he feel asleep as Hunk was fighting a giant water snake thing. Hunk couldn’t help but laugh at his best friend as he saved his game and shut everything down, it was starting to get late and they both had a test the next day.
“Lance I swear if you don’t stop thinking that I will hurt you.”
Lance quickly turned around and stared at his best friend as he stood on the other side of the window to the kitchen of the Lion’s café.
“Hunk, my man, I don’t know what you are talking about.”
He is lying, Lance knew exactly what he was talking about. And the look he got from Hunk told him that he caught the lie. Lance just shrugged as he turned around and worked on cleaning the counter in front of him. They were at work, they had a test this morning, a very important test. One Lance is sure he totally bombed, even after studying for the last week and revising like he has never revised before. He has to pass this test, he had to get an A, he just had to. He wanted to prove to his family that he was doing okay…he didn’t want to let them down. He had to pass.
Lance quickly showed those thoughts from the front of his mind, locking them away in a box in his mind as he heard the bell over the door ring. That smile found its way onto his face he looked up to welcome the two customers that walked in.
“Welcome to the Lion’s café! What can…oh! Hey Pidge, what can I get you?”
“What, are you just going to ignore that I am here?”
Lance turned to the sound of a second voice with his perfectly executed customer service smile, of course he would walk in with Pidge, it was almost like you couldn’t have one without the other. Which honestly drove Lance up the wall most of the time.
“Of course not sir, what can I get for you?”
Pidge couldn’t help but laugh, trying to find it behind their hand.
“You know, this whole rivalry thing is ridiculous Lance. But whatever, hit me would a cappuccino with a triple shot, Keith and I got Iverson’s midterm today and I haven’t slept in two days.”
And Lance believed that, Pidge looked worse for wear, the bags under their eyes were visible from far away, and they looked like they would pass out at any moment. It was then Keith spoke,
“I’ll just have a black tea.”
“Like your heart.”
“What did you just say?”
Keith looked at Lance with a small amount of anger in his eyes, really, making the local hot head mad, what was Lance thinking.
“Oh nothing, just that your order matched your heart is all. But don’t worry, one triple shot cappuccino and one black soul tea coming up! Also, your total is $8.75.”
Keith looked like he was about to say something but Pidge shot him a glare that would make a rabid dog run for its life.
“I swear if you two don’t stop flirting I will kill both you. Give me my caffeine, and for making me mad Keith you pay.”
Pidge didn’t say anything else as they walked over their usual table, immediately sitting down and pulling out their laptop, they were going to be here a while. Keith grumbled under his breath as he basically slammed a $10 dollar bill on to the counter.
“Keep the change.”
Lance hummed as he paid the order out, it was then he noticed how tired Keith looked, almost like he hasn’t slept in about as long Pidge has.
“Go sit down dude, I’ll bring the drinks over. And the milk as you always tend to add some to your tea.”
Lane had turned away from Keith so he didn’t see the reaction on the others face when he finished talking, but he did hear Keith walk away. When Lance finally turned around with the tray full of the drinks he saw both Pidge and Keith, nose deep into their text books and notes. Iverson was the toughest professor at the school, he felt bad for the two. With a sigh Lance grabbed a couple of slices of cake from the cabinet and placed them on the tray.
“Please don’t pass out here.”
Lance set the try down in-between all the papers before walking back to counter to help the new customer who just walked in.
A couple weeks later
“Lance I swear to God, if you don’t give me my notes back.”
Lance barely looked over at Keith as he flipped through the note book in front of him.
“Dude, what language is this? How do you even take notes like this? I don’t understand any of it!”
“That’s because it’s in Korean dude, just give it back already.”
Lance gasped as he held a hand to his chest in fake shock.
“You understand Korean!”
Keith looked like he was about to punch Lance in the face before Pidge walked in-between them and took the notebook from Lance’s hands without effort. Lance knew better then to get on Pidge’s bad side.
“Korean is Keith’s first language dude.”
Lance looked at Keith with shock at Pidge’s words. Korean was his first language…that made English his second language. But, Lance has heard Keith speak Japanese on the phone with his brother once.
“I thought you spoke Japanese?”
Lance tried his best to hide the small shaking in his voice, if Keith spoke three languages that is one more thing he was better at then Lance. One more thing that made Lance feel second best, maybe not even that.
“I do. My parents were Korean, my adoptive parents are Japanese. So I learned both, aside from English.”
Lance just nodded at Keith’s words, he tried to ignore the weird look Keith was giving him.
“Oh wow! Look at the time, wow, I am so late for this thing I need to do for class. So Bye!”
Lance ran away, he wasn’t even afraid to admit it. He ran away with his tail tucked between his legs. He was falling behind again, he was losing to Keith, losing to his own mind. Lance took a couple deep breaths as he walked, he didn’t have time to deal with this so he locked the feelings away like he always did. He would deal with it later. He had to at some point.
“Lance would you stop walking so fast!”
Lance force in his steps at the voice, why was Keith following him? He quickly turned around with shock clearly written across his face.
“What do you want Kogane?”
Keith simply rolled his eyes and sighed before holding out a note book.
“You said you wanted notes from Slav’s class earlier.”
Lance looked at Keith for a second before he pushed the offered note book away.
“Dude, I can’t read your foreign language, no way your notes are going to help at all. Thanks but no thanks. See you.”
With a final grin Lance turned and walk off towards the front gates of the campus, he was ready to go home now. He was ready to curl up in his bed and ignore the world, he didn’t want to deal with it anymore.
And that is exactly how Hunk found him a few hours later. Lance had heard him enter the apartment and call out his name, but Lance didn’t respond, he just laid there staring at the ceiling in his room. Posters and pictures covered most of the wall space in his room, posters of his favourite movies and bands, and pictures of his family and friends. Those pictures kept him going, they helped to ground him and remind him why he is here in the first place.
“Lance, I brought you home some food from Panera. I figured you hadn’t eaten anything yet, but we stopped by after we finished studying.”
Lance would tell he was avoiding saying Keith’s name, he always did when Lance got into one of his moods. He just…Lance just couldn’t stand Keith most of the time. How could someone like that be so perfect, he always showed Lance up in their shared classes, and now he was showing him up in language skills. Lance himself was bilingual as Spanish was his first language.
Lance sighed as he sat up in bed, he knew if didn’t eat soon Hunk would just bring it into his room and make him eat. But Lance refused to let Hunk see his room at the moment, it was a disaster, dirty clothes were spread all over the room and his notes were disorganized all over his desk. His room reflected his current mental state more then he wanted to admit. With the last of his effort Lance stood up and left his room, closing the door behind him.
Two weeks later
Probability and Statistics class was the only time Lance had class with Hunk, Pidge, and Keith, and Dr. Slav was talking about a project where everyone would have to paid off. Lance quickly turned and pointed finger guns at Hunk, who just smiled and nodded and winked. Of course his best friend would never let him down. But Dr. Slav just had to open his mouth again.
“For this project, in this reality, I will pair you off with person who will have the highest probability of helping you through it! So let’s get started! Pidge, you will be working with Hunk in this reality.”
Lance’s face fell, first they couldn’t pick their partner, and now his main shoot to ace the project got paired with the child genius. Lance zoned out as Dr. Slav listed off the rest of the teams till be finally heard his name.
“Lance, you will be working with Keith in this reality!”
Lance shoot out of his seat at the same time Keith slumped back into his.
“What!? You want me to work with this hot head? Are you kidded me here professor?”
Dr. Slav looked like he was about to answer before Keith spoke
“Tch, like I want to work with a lazy ass like you.”
Lance turned and glared at him.
“Excuse me Mr. I show up to class late all the time.”
“And yet I’m still passing all my classes with honors.”
Lance felt like a truck just ran over his heart, and just as he was about to respond Dr. Slav cleared his throat.
“If you two would please stop arguing in this reality we will cover the project then you may leave to work on it.”
Lance and Keith glared at each other before going back to ignoring each other. Hunk and Pidge gave each other a worried look, they had a feeling this was not going to end well at all.
Three weeks, it took three weeks for Lance and Keith to work together enough to finish their project for Slav’s class. Three weeks of constant bickering, mostly on Lance’s end, Keith mostly tended to ignore him, Hunk and Pidge had both gotten pretty annoyed by hearing their friends whine about the other. But today was the last day of work before turning in their project, and Lance honestly wasn’t handling it very well.
The Library was quiet at the late hour the two boys were there, it was almost midnight and most students had gone to bed as the library closed at 2am.
“Come on Lance, this project turned out really well, better than I was expecting it to. Let’s both get some sleep so we can actually present it tomorrow.”
But all Keith got back from Lance was a grumble as he continued to type away on his computer, adding small bits of information here, taking out bits of information there. Lance was so hyper focused on the paper he didn’t even hear Keith get up, he barely moved his hands in time when Keith closed his laptop.
“Lance, seriously. You look like you haven’t slept in two days, you need to sleep man.”
Lance glared up at the other boy.
“What the hell man. I’m fine, just need to finish this project.”
“Lance, we have finished this project. You need to sleep.”
“Don’t tell me what to do! I said I’m fine! And no way we have finished yet, we still have a couple topics to cover.”
Lance heard the exasperated sigh from Keith.
“What, you want to fail Slav’s class? I can’t afford to man, no way. If I fail this class I can kiss my scholarship good bye. No way , nope.”
“Lance…”
“Keith I can’t fail this, why can’t you understand that!?”
Lance didn’t even realise his voice had risen, his heart was beating faster than it should be, and his mind was all over the place. He couldn’t fail this class. It was the one he was doing the worse in, and if he didn’t finish with at least a B his GPA would drop below what is allowed for his scholarship. He couldn’t fail, he had to pass. Why couldn’t Keith understand that!?
“Lance…Lance listen. You need to take a deep breathe. Lance, please, deep breathe.”
Lance barely heard the voice beside him, his mind was running in a thousand different ways at once, but always coming back to one thought.
“I can’t fail, I just can’t. I’ll let everyone down, I can’t fail.”
Over and over again, he just kept repeating the words. But it was getting heard to breathe, somewhere in the back of his mind Lance understood he was in the middle of a panic attack, but his anxiety was taking the best of him.
“Breathe with me Lance…in…and out…in…and out. Come on Lance.”
Lance tried, he really did try, the voice was familiar to him, so he listened to it. His breathing and heart rate slowly returned to that of a normal pace, all while the voice kept repeating the same thing. ‘In…and out.’
“Why do you even care Keith?”
Lance spoke quietly, Keith almost didn’t even hear him as he leaned back and looked at the boy in front of him.
“I care about you Lance. And not just because of this project, I care about you as a person. You are so much more then what you think.”
Lance looked over at the boy, his face showing every emotion on his face; confusion, disbelief, distrust.
“You think I’m lying, I can tell by the look on your face. I’m surprised you never picked up on it to be honest, but then again it doesn’t surprise me. Pidge said I was obvious, but Hunk said you would never notice.”
Lance couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You are an amazing guy Lance. Honest, brave, smart, even if you don’t believe it. You have a smile that tends to brighten up a room, and you just have this aura that just puts the people around you into a good mood. I wish you could see that.”
Lance was quiet.
“Anyways, look, the project for Slav, it’s done okay. We…we make a great team. Look, I’ll leave you alone okay, but please call Hunk to come and get you or something, okay? Just…don’t be alone tonight?”
Lance didn’t speak as he watched Keith grab his bag and notes and left the library. Lance sat there for a while before his phone beeped at him, it was Hunk asking if he was coming home, he almost didn’t respond but he remembered Keith’s words.
“Can you come get me from the library?”
Lance immediately got a response of Hunk saying he was already on the way.
The Next Day
“See, told you we make a great team.”
Lance couldn’t believe it, Dr. Slav had given them an A just from their presentation, and said it was a presentation he really enjoyed in this reality. He was going to pass this project, maybe even pass this class. Lance looked over at Keith and saw the smile on the other males face, and with that he felt his own face light up. Even with Keith’s words last night, Lance thought Keith’s smile was way brighter than his ever could be.
“Thanks Keith.”