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Cause New York Sky Don't Get Much Brighter
For someone with a long history of making terrible decisions on impulse, Keith regrets surprisingly little. That being said, at the moment he is mildly regretting giving his neighbors blanket permission to use the dumbwaiter that connects their halves of the duplex.
“Wake up bitches, it’s Fourth of July!” Pidge velociraptor-shrieks as she takes a flying leap onto Keith’s bed and immediately commences bouncing like a small child.
Keith sleepily kicks his boyfriend, who has the audacity to sleep through this massive invasion of privacy. “Lance. Deal with your demented friends.”
Lance just steals Keith’s pillow (out from under his head) and snuggles it. Keith kicks him again. Pidge keeps bouncing. Keith is seriously considering just rolling off the bed to escape his problems.
“You know what’s great about the Fourth of July?” Pidge reflects.
Keith is trying to steal his pillow back from Lance in order to hit her with it and really can’t be bothered with guessing games at the moment.
“Only two of the founders actually signed the Declaration of Independence on July fourth?” Hunk offers from the doorway because apparently it’s party time in Keith’s room, “Most signed on August second?”
Pidge actually stops her bouncing for a moment to absorb this information. Lance’s eyes flicker open briefly, checking to see if the coast is clear and Keith, realizing he’s be awake the whole time, the traitor, tackles him, trying to get the pillow back. Pidge manages not to fall off the bed through what can only be dark sorcery or the fact that she’s on the foot of the bed and most of the struggle is taking place at the head.
“Does this mean I can explode stuff on August second too?” Pidge asks, “Because literally the best part of the Fourth is blowing shit up.”
“No more homemade fireworks!” Lance shrieks, trying to dodge away from Keith and getting tangled in the blankets, “We had a deal, Pidge!”
“The lawn wasn’t that damaged!” Pidge sing-songs, “Come on, it’s traditional!”
“It’s traditional to invade other people’s space to yell about a holiday that’s only relevant in one country?” Keith snarls, finally getting his pillow back and whacking first his significant other, then Pidge, then Lance again for good measure, with it.
“Well, the British kind of did, if you want to look at it that way,” Hunk offers from the door and Keith groans theatrically as he flops backwards, the pillow squashed over his face.
“Hey, everybody, pancakes are ready,” Shiro’s voice sounds from the general vicinity of the door and Keith makes the executive decision to kill his brother. Or at least get the extra house key back from him, the jerk.
…
The pancakes have red white and blue sprinkles in them and Keith can’t even process this level of suburban dad corniness right now. Lance is of course, over the moon about free pancakes, even if the source of said free breakfast food is a band of annoying home invaders masquerading as their friends and loved ones.
Keith decides he doesn’t want pancakes (even though they smell delicious) and passive-aggressively makes bacon and eggs instead. The fact that he makes enough bacon and eggs to feed a small army (or one boyfriend and three annoying home invaders) is beside the point.
Shiro of course ruins the passive-aggressive beauty of the gesture by reaching over and resting a gentle hand on Keith’s shoulder and saying “Thank you, Keith, this was very nice of you” in an aggravatingly heartful tone.
Keith raises a skeptical eyebrow and sprinkles salt on his pancakes.
(Yes, Keith salts his pancakes, this has been the source of much consternation on Lance’s part and results in the same old conversation being resurrected every time they have breakfast food.)
True to form, there’s Lance on Keith’s non-Shiro side, staring at his food in horror. “What are you doing to your poor pancakes?”
“Salting them.”
“I like it, it reflects your inner self brilliantly,” Pidge observes from across the table and Keith can’t tell if she’s kidding or not.
“But why?” Lance asks as he pours even more syrup on top of the heap of strawberries, blueberries, and powdered sugar already sitting on his patriotic pancakes (Shiro and Hunk went all out with the USA theme here, Keith’s actually a little impressed.)
Keith shrugs, “It cuts the sweetness.”
Lance shoots Shiro a look, “What did you do to him to make him like this?”
Shiro, who hasn’t even bothered with syrup, arranges his fruit and powdered sugar in a neat line down the side of his pancake before rolling it up like a burrito and taking a huge bite out of one end. He shrugs as he chews, “Wasn’t me,” he says around a wad of half-gnawed food because Shiro is secretly just as much a human disaster as the rest of them.
Keith decides his pancakes are salty enough and begins cutting them up into individual pieces. “Wasn’t Mom either,” he says absently, “She had a huge sweet tooth.”
Shiro nods, “She made a peanut butter poptart sandwich once.”
Keith picks up the thread of the story, “Because the filling in strawberry poptarts was ‘basically jelly, you know?’” He rolls his eyes, “That thing was disgusting.”
“You ate it anyway,” Shiro says archly.
“Yeah,” Keith shrugs, “She practically dared me to.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
They pause and realize everyone has paused in their pancake appreciation to stare at them.
“What?” Shiro asks.
Hunk clears his throat, “You know, uh, Shiro…you’re kind of, um, intimidating.”
“But then you’re such a giant nerd dork it’s kind of awkward, you know, actually being intimidated by you,” Pidge clarifies bluntly.
Shiro considers this and nods, as if to say ‘seems legit’ before reapplying himself to his pancake-fruit-burrito.
Keith cuts a glance at Lance, who’s raised both eyebrows as if to say ‘See, we’re bonding! Family bonding time! Yay!’.
Keith is pretty sure they’ve been together long enough that his heart should stop feeling all melty in his chest cavity whenever Lance does something cute. He doesn’t have much experience with weird, warm, melty feelings in the general chest cavity vicinity, but that seems like something he should probably see a doctor about.
He’s also a little unnerved by how easily he can read Lance’s more convoluted expressions now. But, like, unnerved in a good, warm, fuzzy sort of way.
It’s probably a good thing Keith doesn’t write greeting cards for a living.
He’s not sure what to do about his boyfriend’s stupid cute face so he does the thing the little voice in the back of his head is telling him not to do and wipes a smudge of whipped cream on Lance’s nose.
Keith would like it to be remembered that food fights are perfectly acceptable Fourth of July activities. As Pidge says when Hunk ultimately breaks it up half an hour later, “Anything can be patriotic if you just believe!”
…
They actually do grill out, but less because it’s Fourth of July and more because Hunk bought a new grill last weekend and really wants to try it out.
“Him, Lance, he has feelings.”
“Your grill has preferred pronouns?”
“Yes,” Hunk says serenely like this should be obvious, “he does.”
Lance decides to table the discussion re: grill feelings and just use the grill’s preferred pronouns.
Keith and Shiro have rigged up the world’s sketchiest-looking trampoline in the backyard and are daring each other to do increasingly complicated tricks on it because apparently Lance’s boyfriend wants to give him heart failure.
“Is Allura invited to our Fourth of July party?” Lance asks Hunk as Hunk slices peppers and onions and mixes marinade at the picnic table (which, despite having come with the house and possibly being older than Pidge, actually looks significantly more structurally sound than the contraption Keith has dragged out onto their lawn and is currently bouncing on).
“Yeah, of course, why?” Hunk asks, slicing onion at lighting speed and somehow not getting teary-eyed. Hunk may be magic.
“Because I’m seriously concerned my boyfriend is going to break his face doing something stupid and I have a vested interest in that face not being broken.”
Hunk coughs and mutters something that sounds distinctly like “Pot, meet kettle” under his breath.
Lance narrows his eyes suspiciously, “What was that?”
“Having a trained physician around in case of accident or injury sounds like a great idea!” Hunk says brightly.
Lance narrows his eyes suspiciously but lets that one go.
…
“Booze delivery!” Allura calls as she appears around the corner of the house, several bags strung along her arms, all clinking excitingly.
Coran, at her heels, follows this up with “I found Matt!” which, while reassuring in the moment, implies Matt was doing something that got him lost in the first place, which is never a good thing.
“I wasn’t lost,” Matt grumbles unconvincingly behind him.
“No shame in being a little turned-around, my boy!” Coran reassures him with a hearty pat on the back that from the look of Matt’s face; probably knocked his spine out of alignment, “A little walk-about’s good for the soul! Well,” he pauses, pondering, “Good for the soul as long as you haven’t antagonized anything big enough to trample you or small enough to poison you I suppose…”
Matt just grimaces and shoots a look over at the rest of them, “I swear, I wasn’t in trouble, I was just following a stray cat and Coran thought I was lost and kidnapped me.”
Pidge shrugs, and just says “Figures,” cryptically.
“Did you find the cat?” Hunk, focused on the real issues as usual, asks.
“Well, I actually pissed off the cat and Coran had to drag me away from it before it attacked so that was kind of a bust.”
“Matt,” Lance says, a little impressed in spite of himself; “your life is an inspiration to us all.”
“It’s a catalogue of interesting occurrances, that’s for sure!” Coran chirps as he and Allura unload her bags, swiftly turning the other side of the picninc table into an impromptu mini bar.
“Get kidnapped by aliens sometime,” Pidge advises as she sorts through Allura and Coran’s offerings, “I want to live the plot of Galaxy Quest.”
“NO.” Keith and Shiro shout in sync from the trampoline, tones leaving no room for argument.
“Not Trekkies?” Allura asks, hooking a thumb in the brothers’ direction.
Lance grimaces, remembering their friends weren’t around for That Time Their Yard Was Full of Alien Hunter Crap (i.e. when the rest of them met Shiro and learned the brothers’ Tragic Backstory™). “Not really into the alien thing,” he offers diplomatically, “Like, at all. Just…avoid the whole alien thing.”
Allura nods, although she’s giving him a look that clearly says: ‘I don’t know what’s happening so I’ll humor you.’
Luckily Matt forces a change of topic via a combination of supreme dumbassery and his own heinous luck.
Between the space of the first spring creak and Pidge’s shout (“MATTHIAS MATTIMEO MATILDA HOLT GET YOUR ASS OFF THAT TRAMPOLINE!”) something comes loose in Keith and Shiro’s death trap and it all comes crashing down.
A chorus of “we’re okays” follows the collapse but Lance’s heart doesn’t stop trying to beat it’s way out of his chest until Keith, grumpy cat face firmly in place, irritably untangles himself from the mess and helps an equally ensnared Matt to his feet behind him.
“I told you it wasn’t safe for more than two people,” Shiro, unscathed and apparently entirely untroubled by the contraption’s massive structural failure, observes blandly.
Keith, always mature, sticks his tongue out at his brother while a bewildered Matt asks the world at large “But what did I do?”
…
Lance has decided that, the risk of Pidge-related explosions and terrifying trampoline shenanigans aside; he quite likes the Fourth of July. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that he’s on his third glass of the margaritas Allura made and saying Allura is generous with the tequila is a massive, hilarious understatement. Also, he’s sitting under a tree in his backyard on a sunny day and Keith, on his fourth Allura-margarita, hasn’t so much as sat next to him as flopped against Lance’s shoulder and thrown his legs over Lance’s lap, tangling them together like discarded jump-ropes. He’s blinking drowsily now as Lance toys with his hair and they both watch Coran systematically kick everyone’s asses at some complicated game invovlving two Frisbees, a wiffle ball, hula-hoops of various size, and more ninja-rolling than any grown adults should ever attempt. Off to the side, a tipsy Shiro and utterly wasted Pidge, armed with colored pencils, hunch over a mess of napkins, presumably keeping score as Hunk, Allura, Matt, and Coran flail around in the name of glory.
“This is nice,” Keith observes, dark lashes casting starburst shadows against his cheeks as warm afternoon sunlight cuts through the branches of the tree above them.
“Yeah,” Lance agrees, a little surprised at the thought.
“I’m surprised…” Keith begins and then trails off, temporarily losing his train of thought and trying to catch it with furrowed brows and a slightly scrunched-up face.
“Yeah?”
“I’m surprised you’re not doing something with your family,” Keith says in a rush, trying to spit the thought out all at once before he loses it in a tequila haze again.
“For Fourth of July?” Lance asks skeptically.
Keith shrugs, “Seems like one of those holidays you’d like.”
Lance hums thoughtfully, “Honestly, never put a whole lot of thought into the Fourth of July. Like, it’s a thing, I guess, and when I was a kid we’d typically grill out and watch the fireworks if they did a show downtown but it wasn’t a big family thing. Pretty casual, I guess. Pidge’s family were the ones who’d do cool stuff for the Fourth. Since it’s a national holiday her parents would have the day off and they’d do experiments together.”
“Explosive experiments?” Keith asks because they know their friend well.
Lance nods solemnly, “Explosive experiments.”
Keith hums thoughtfully, “When I was a kid we lived in the desert,” he says bluntly, apropos of nothing.
“…Okay…” Lance doesn’t really want to discourage this sharing thing per se, Keith needs to know it’s okay to share, but this seems a little out of left field.
“By July fire warnings were typically in place so fireworks didn’t really happen for the Fourth of July. But Mom had these old film cannisters and we’d put water and seltzer tablets in them and launch them outside,” he smiles a little crookedly, “Tiny bottle rockets.”
Lance can picture it surprisingly easily; little Keith with messy, overgrown hair and huge eyes, preteen Shiro with a sunburned nose and skinny, too-long limbs, messing around with the safe kind of explosive chemistry in the desert. “That’s pretty cute, babe.”
Keith raises an eyebrow at him, “It’s basic chemistry and a film canister, what’s cute about it?”
“Not the film canister part, just the mental image of baby Keith and Shiro making tiny rockets in the desert. I bet you guys were cute kids.”
Keith rolls his eyes like this sounds ridiculous, but he tucks his head under Lance’s chin like a cat demanding attention so Lance just chuckles and combs his fingers through his boyfriend’s hair.
…
Shiro and Pidge are not keeping score for Coran’s bizarre lawn game. They aren’t even sure what the rules for Coran’s bizarre lawn game are. To be fair, they’re pretty sure Coran doesn’t know the rules either. No, instead they are attempting to plan the the wedding of the century, a process that is only somewhat encumbered by the fact that the couple getting married don’t know about the wedding and their wedding planners are both heavily intoxicated and only have colored pencils and cheap paper napkins with which to plan this exciting event.
“Llamas,” Shiro says sagely and Pidge wrinkles her nose at him.
“The fuck?”
“I dunno, seemed like the beginning of a good idea and then…nothing. Just llamas.” It bears repeating that at this point Shiro and Pidge have both lost track of the number and total alcohol content of the drinks they have consumed and are merrily hammered as Pidge scribbles blue and red stick figure Lance and Keiths on her napkin.
“Nope, no llamas,” Pidge says decisively, like this was up for discussion in the first place, “Too messy. They’re,” she hooks a thumb over her shoulder at the couple cuddling under the tree, “Already messes. Llamas would make it worse.”
“Definitely,” Shiro agrees very seriously and goes to take a sip out of his solo cup only to find it empty, “You have betrayed me,” he informs its’ vacant plastic depths solemnly as he sets it aside with all due ceremony.
“On a scale of one to toaster strudel, how likely do you think Keith is to agree to get married in the first place?”
“Toaster strudel?” Shiro asks, confused.
“Was that an answer or a snide comment?”
“Confused.”
“Oh, Keith hates toaster strudels now. He and Lance measured a bunch of them and measured a bunch of poptarts and did the math and apparently poptarts are more surface area for less money. So now we all hate toaster strudels.” That was a lot of words to say with a tongue that might be a little numb. Pidge is impressed with herself. She’s also impressed with Allura’s margaritas, but for different yet somewhat related reasons.
“Huh,” Shiro gives her a tired look, “I’ll worry about all of you later,” he decides aloud, “Can’t be bothered right now.”
“Good idea,” she tells him, then refocuses on the problem at hand, “So, how likely is Keith to want to get married?”
“To Lance? He’s totally into it. Marriage in general kind of freaks him out, though.”
“Weird. Marriage in general kind of freaks Lance out too,” Pidge reflects.
“They’re a mess,” Shiro observes.
“Totally,” Pidge agrees. A slight pause as she gathers her scattered thoughts, and then, “So I’m thinking Vegas for them. Kind of spring it on them.”
“Get them drunk and set them loose on the strip?”
“No, they need adult supervision.”
A lull in the conversation as they stare drunkenly off into the distance and accept the truth of those words, and then, “Elvis.”
“No Elvis.”
“Not actually Elvis…just…an Elvis-like thing. In Vegas.”
“Your brother will murder us if we let him get married by Elvis.”
Shiro thinks about this for a second, “Well, he’ll murder you maybe. I’m safe.”
Pidge kicks him because she can’t think up a better response.
“So we’re taking them to Vegas?” Shiro summarizes.
“If they don’t get their shit together on their own, we’re taking them to Vegas,” Pidge agrees.
“When?”
“What do you mean?”
Shiro shakes his head, the streak of white hair flopping in his eyes comically, “What’s the dealine? When do they need to get their shit together by?”
Pidge pauses, ponders and decides, “We give them a year. If they’re still dumb and in love in a year and haven’t locked that down, we drag them to Vegas and let nature,” she wiggles her fingers vaguely, “Do the thing.”
“Awesome,” Shiro feels good about this; this is a great plan. He’s also found another solo cup mostly full of margarita too, so things are looking up across the board. This has been an astonishingly productive Fourth of July.
…
Off to the side, under the tree, Lance squints at their friends, “Hey, babe, think they’re talking about us?”
Keith shrugs, “Probably not.”
Lance shakes his head, “Huh, okay,” and goes back to watching Allura getting increasingly competitive at Coran’s zany lawn game. It’s a happy Fourth of July.