Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"I can't believe you're doing this to me, Hunk!" Lance laments dramatically, flinging his free hand around as he talks on the phone.

"Okay buddy, listen. I know you are frustrated, but hear me out. Maybe this is for the better? You always said that you're an extrovert, and that you love meeting new people, right? Well now you get to meet another new person, even live with them! A whole new friend, buddy! Think about it!"

Lance scowls at a cute little blue fish that swims around in its tank beside him, and almost immediately feels bad for taking out his frustration on such a cute and innocent little creature. It's his job to be around these adorable little fish, and he had just been scowling at one like it murdered his abuela. His coworkers would be ashamed. Lance attempts to wipe the scowl off of his face, but it's becoming increasingly more difficult the longer he thinks about it, considering Lance has to leave Hunk and he's telling him to be happy about it!

"Okay, but Hunk, now that Shay's moving in with you—which, man, I'm so proud of you for finally asking her if you guys could have an apartment together, that's really fantastic—there's gonna be no more movie marathons on Saturday nights! No more awesome lasagna for me! No help in chemistry for you! Man, our Sunday morning bake-offs aren't going to exist anymore! Not to mention snuggle-morning-Saturdays! I can't be happy about leaving you, bro. We've been best friends since, what, eighth grade? I've been living with you since junior year of high school!" Lance says.

He catches a few people looking at him like he's crazy, with his crazy hand gestures and the like, but he can't really bring himself to care.

"Lance, bro, we can still do all of that stuff together. You're always gonna be my best buddy and I'm always gonna have time for you, okay? I love you, man," Hunk says, his voice catching in his throat.

Lance feels his eyes burn, but Hunk's right, and that's a comforting thought. They'll still do stuff together, definitely. Hunk and Lance, best buddies for life. Not even Hunk's girlfriend moving in with him can get in the way of what they have! Best buddies for life!

"Okay dude, you're right. But what am I gonna do about the whole living situation thing?"

"Well, you can move back into the—"

"No way, Hunky," Lance says, adamantly shaking his head even though Hunk can't see him. "I'm not moving back to the dorms. No way, buddy. Not in a million years."

"Then that narrows down your options," Hunk says calmly. "Either you get your own apartment off campus, or you move into an apartment with someone else."

"Hunk, you know I can't afford my own apartment," Lance says, sighing.

From the corner of his eye, Lance sees his dickwad of a boss—Sendak—point at his watch insistently. Break's up, Sendak mouthes with a sneer.

"Then you'll have to room with someone else. Pidge is out, because for some god awful reason they want to move back into the dorms, so—"

"Sorry to interrupt, bud, but I gotta get back to work. I'll meet you at our apartment, okay?"

"Yeah man, it's all good. We'll talk later."

"Love you, bro."

"Love you too, buddy."

Lance hangs up, sighing deeply and trying to rub out the headache that's forming behind his eyes.

"Hey, McLain! Break's been up for two whole minutes! Get back to the gift shop you lazy bum!" Sendak yells from across the aquarium, causing people to give them both even more weird looks than before.

Lance gives his boss an amiable smile that's probably more of a grimace at this point, and turns to wander back to his spot behind the counter at the aquarium gift shop. He scrunches up his face into a bad impersonation of Sendak and mimics something about "lazy bums" and "break's up". As if this day wasn't already stressful enough, Lance sees a tour bus pull up outside, and he sees his coworker's face go pale, as if the life was sucked out of them at the sight of a little more than twenty elderly people all over the age of 75 disembarking a shoddy grey tour bus.

Well, at least Lance wasn't suffering alone.

*****

When Lance gets back to his and Hunk's apartment—it's his for now, he reminds himself—Shay and Hunk are talking quietly in the kitchen as Hunk dices up carrots. It's stupidly domestic. Lance can't help but grimace when he sees how moony-eyed they both look.

They're so cute it's gag worthy.

Lance wipes the grimace off of his face and plasters on the best smile he can manage, chirping out a greeting.

"Hey man," Hunk says, not turning around. "We're having hotdog soup tonight!"

"Awesome," Lance mutters.

Hotdog soup is Lance's comfort food. It sounds kinda gross, but it's actually one of his favorite dishes. Normally, he'd be ecstatic that Hunk was making the stew-like soup, but he knew that this was the way that Hunk delivered bad news. The process usually went something like this:

Hunk carefully brought up the subject, preferably over the phone so Lance could have his mini-meltdown far, far away from Hunk so that they didn't have a repeat of The 2015 Incident. Then, Hunk prepared a delicious meal (preferably one that Lance loved). The meal was to pacify Lance, sooth Hunk's anxiety, and hopefully have Lance shoveling food into his mouth long enough to allow Hunk to say his piece without being interrupted. Just as Lance would be ready to lash out, Hunk would serve dessert (hopefully with ice cream). The sweets would allow Lance to drown his sorrows/anger in sugar and buy his brain enough time to calm down and look at the situation rationally so Lance wouldn't say something he'd regret later. Finally, they'd talk about whatever the problem was, and then find a way to solve it.

Needless to say, when Hunk, Shay, and Lance all sat down at the table to eat, things were pretty tense. But Lance was going to be rational about this from the start.

Hunk was a grown up. Hunk was a man who had a girlfriend. Hunk was always going to be Lance's best buddy in the whole world. Hunk and Lance would not be living together forever, despite what Lance wished for. Lance was going to be happy for them and move out as soon as possible. Lance was not going to freak out. Lance was calm. Lance was cool. Lance was rational.

Hunk smiled at Shay as he blew on his soup. It was sickeningly sweet and it sorta made Lance want to throw up. If he ever looked at someone like that, he wanted to be slapped in the face, because that was super cute and super gross. And if Lance thought it was so cute that it was gross, then that was bad news, because Lance was a romantic at heart.

"So Lance, how was work?" Shay asks sweetly.

The whole "calm, cool, and rational" thing lasts about as long as expected.

"Hell, as usual," Lance snaps, pushing his soup away. "Don't pretend you care, Shay. I'll be out of your hair before you know it. No more "stupid Lance" to take up your precious lovey-dovey time."

Lance pushed his chair out and storms into his room, ignoring the stunned silence that follows his enraged footsteps. He slams his bedroom door shut like an overly emotional teenager for good measure and launches himself face first onto his bed.

He's not crying.

He's not.

He shakily manages to wrap a hand around the stuffed lion Hunk got him for his 20th birthday last year. He lifts his head up and curls around Blue protectively, burying his face in her fur. As he cries, he realizes that part of what he feels is shame. He knows he shouldn't act like a child whose favorite toy is being taken from him, but he can't help it.

Hunk is his best buddy, and some stupidly perfect girl is driving a wedge between them. He's properly ashamed of how he's acting, but he's more ashamed of how much he hates Shay right now. She's so kind and sweet and smart and she could probably bench press Hunk if she wanted to.

Ugh. He feels ridiculous.

He makes a futile attempt to press further into Blue's fur. He genuinely feels bad for how he acted towards Shay, just a little bit. Actually, she's not even the one to blame. Lance could stay if it weren't for her annoying brother. Rax is a major douchecanoe who won't even let Shay and Hunk sleep in the same room together. And even if they got a three-bedroom apartment (or Lance slept on the couch or something), Rax said he wasn't comfortable with Lance even being near his precious Shay.

So yeah, maybe he overreacted. Most of this isn't even Shay's fault. She can't be blamed for how much of a controlling (yet a little sensible, in a way) asshole her brother is.

Lance feels like he should apologize, or at least go back out there and snatch his bowl of hotdog soup from the table, but he knows he needs to wait a while before going back out there so he doesn't freak out again.

Instead of leaving the safety of his room, Lance lifts his face from his stuffed lion in order to locate his phone. It's charging by his bed, so he wiggles close enough that if he stretches really far, he can reach it. Upon retrieving his phone, Lance stares at Hunk's number. Usually, when he's upset about something, he talks to Hunk. But with that stunt he pulled during dinner, he figures it's best to leave Hunk and Shay alone for now.

His eyes flicker to another contact, the contact with the devil emoji right beside their name. Lance decides that little baby Pidge is better than nobody at all, and decides to text them.

Good King Lancelot ---> Pidgeon

Good King Lancelot: hey

Good King Lancelot: r u busy

Pidgeon: I'm always busy

Pidgeon: What do u want

Good King Lancelot: meet me @ castle of lions cafe in 20?

Pidgeon: Fine

Pidgeon: Ur buying tho

Good King Lancelot: k

*****

Lance arrives at Castle of Lions Cafe to find Pidge in their normal meeting spot, looking about 5 seconds away from bolting out the door. He puts on his best smile and saunters over to where his small friend is seated, flashing a wink at a pretty blonde waitress as he passes by. Pidge sees him, and rolls their eyes when the waitress giggles cutely at Lance.

Lance slides into the booth Pidge is seated at and Pidge raises their eyebrows.

"So, what could you possibly want at—" Pidge checks their phone "—8:33 at night?"

"It's 8:33 already?" Lance realizes.

"Yeah, dummy," Pidge says kicking Lance under the booth and causing him to wince. "What's up?"

"You know how Hunk's moving in with Shay as soon as I move out?"

"Yeah, so what? You agreed to the terms and conditions," Pidge points out.

Lance looks guiltily at the little dark brown specks in the table. Pidge glares pointedly at Lance's head, like they're trying to make it explode or something.

"You have to move out. You said you would before the school year started! It's September, Lance."

"I know," Lance grumbles, still examining the dark spots on the table. "I just... What if we grow apart? He's not going to have time for me now that he's got a girlfriend..."

Pidge kicks him under the booth once more, except this time it hurts. What are they wearing? Soccer cleats?

"Lance if you keep this up, I'm going to keep kicking you. You two aren't going to grow apart! You won't see each other as much, but you'll still be best bros or whatever you call yourselves! You're being ridiculous! Man up! I'll even help you find a roommate!" Pidge says.

"Really? Do you even know people other than me and Hunk? Plus, who's looking for a roommate this late in the year?" Lance asks, perking up slightly.

"I have my connections," Pidge says cryptically, pushing up their glasses for the added dramatic affect.

"Seriously? You know someone?" Lance asks, leaning across the table.

"Yeah, sure. I know a certain someone who moved out of his brother's apartment and can't afford an apartment for more than a few months on his own."

"Is he hot?" Lance mock-whispers.

Pidge gives Lance a Look that says 'is that really important right now?' Yes, Lance thinks back, it's super important.

Pidge sighs defeatedly and rubs at their forehead.

"I don't know, maybe? I don't really pay attention to that sort of thing. All I know, is that he needs a roommate this late in the year, he's got a cat, and he works at the little bookstore just off campus. I don't really know the guy."

"Then how do you know he needs a roommate?" Lance asks, lifting an eyebrow.

"My brother's boyfriend is his brother. They've been living with him until now. You remember Takashi Shirogane?" Pidge asks.

"Do I remember Takashi Shirogane?" Lance asks, incredulous.

The one thing Lance knows about Takashi Shirogane is that he's a legendary frat boy. Lance remembers going to one of his parties back in his junior year of high school (he'd gone with his sister and her friends). Not only was Takashi Shirogane legendary at beer pong and could hold his liquor like a champ, but apparently he was also super nice too.

Takashi Shirogane had been a hit-em-and-quit-em type of guy back in the day, but apparently he always made his one night stands breakfast after he woke up and never once forgot their names. When they had a raging hangover, the guy even offered to drive them home. Takashi Shirogane was so great, he was known as the champion by pretty much the whole university.

"Takashi Shirogane?" Lance repeats, only a tad bit embarrassed with the way his voice squeaks.

Pidge just looks confused.

"Yeah? What about him?"

"How did your brother—nerdy little Matt Holt—meet Takashi Shirogane, legendary frat boy from like, four years ago?" Lance squeaks.

Pidge looks like Lance has given them an epiphany.

"Shiro was a frat boy?" Pidge says, their eyes lighting up. "That explains so much! I should have known! At New Years he drank so much I thought he was going to die, but he just kept going!"

"Yeah!" Lance exclaims. "That guy was legendary at holding his liquor! Like, he could out-drink pretty much everybody! That guy is my hero! How did he even meet Matt? They have, like, nothing in common!"

"You remember two or three summers ago when Matt broke his scrawny leg jumping off of our roof trying to get his kite back?" Pidge asked. "Well, Shiro was doing a tour of a hospital when it happened. Shiro's going to become a pediatrician, and the lady at the hospital thought Matt was under 18, so they happened to bring to the wrong part of the hospital, and that's where he met Shiro."

"Holy shit!" Lance laughs, practically vibrating in place. "Why haven't you told that story before?"

"No clue. I guess it was one of those things that I just was going to use for blackmail towards Shiro at a later date," Pidge admits.

"Well that's true gold. I'm going to tell that story to, like, everyone I meet. Hey, do you think you can arrange for me to, like, meet Shiro or something? The guy's awesome!" Lance says excitedly.

"Probably. Shiro will probably be there if you decide to move in with his brother. The guy's super protective over Keith," Pidge says.

"Awesome!" Lance exclaims. "Do you think you can arrange for a meeting or something? And by the way, who names their kid Keith? That's such a Texan name. So unoriginal."

"Who names their kid Lance?" Pidge snorts, rolling their eyes. "And yeah, I'll think about telling them you want to be roomies with Keith. What day works for you?"

Lance mentally checks his schedule, only slightly pouting over the fact that he has no dates scheduled this week.

"I guess I can meet them tomorrow? I have work at 2, so anytime before then works."

"Awesome," Pidge says, typing on her phone.

Lance nearly jumps out of his skin when his phone vibrates in his pocket. When he checks it, Pidge has sent him a message. He lifts an eyebrow curiously at them while Pidge snickers under their breath.

Pidgeon ---> Good King Lancelot

Pidgeon: 653-XXX-XXXX

Pidgeon: There's Keith's number

Pidgeon: U guys figure it out

Lance glances up at Pidge, who's slinging their book bag over their tiny shoulders.

"I thought you were going to arrange a meeting," Lance says pointedly.

"Nah man, you do it yourself. I'm not your babysitter. I've got a calculus test to study for," Pidge says, shrugging and walking away from their booth.

"No! Pidgey! I don't know him! It'll be awkward!" Lance calls out.

"Don't be a little bitch!" Pidge calls back before flipping Lance the bird and walking out of the cafe.

Lance groans and flips them off even though he knows that they can't see him. He lets his head fall to the table and he decides to just lay there until Pidge magically comes back, or he dies, one or the other.

"Sir?" a pretty waitress asks sweetly. "Are you alright?"

Lance immediately perks up and flashes her his best flirty smile.

"Are you a cat? Because you're purrfect," he says, grinning.

He tries not to feel too disappointed when she giggles but walks away all the same.

*****

Lance doesn't want to meet this Keith guy. At all.

"Come on, Lance," Hunk says, patting Lance's shoulder comfortingly. "It won't be so bad. Think of him as just another friend!"

Lance wants to glare at Hunk, but he can't bring himself to because he guy's just so perfect. He ends up leaning his head against Hunk's shoulder and glaring at the phone in his hand instead.

"But, if I text him, it means I'm officially trying to move out. I don't want to, Hunk," Lance laments, curling closer to his best friend.

Hunk pats his head soothingly.

"Buddy, I know you're nervous, but you just gotta do it, okay? I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to. Because I don't want to pressure you. And I mean my whole offer still stands where I just won't have Shay move in and we can still live together, because I don't want to pressure you, but I feel like I'm pressuring you, and all of this is—"

"Hunk, buddy," Lance says quietly. "It's alright. I know you love her, man. So I'm going to do the right thing."

Lance looks at the phone in his hand like it's the enemy, but he types out a message to a new contact instead of chucking it across the room like he wants to.

Good King Lancelot ---> 653-XXX-XXXX

Good King Lancelot: is this Keith? The guy who needs a roommate?

Lance is reluctant to press send, but he does it anyway.

Foolishly.

No! He wants the message to come back!

"HUNK WHAT HAVE I DONE!" Lance screeches, and this time actually chucks his phone across the room. "I DON'T WANT TO MEET HIM! I DON'T WANT TO LIVE WITH HIM! HELP ME GET THE MESSAGE TO COME BACK!"

Hunk slaps a hand over Lance's mouth, muffling his cries of nervousness.

"You'll be fine, buddy. Calm down."

"WHAT IF HE THINKS I'M A STALKER? WHAT IF PIDGE HASN'T TOLD HIM THAT THEY TOLD ME THAT HE NEEDS A ROOMMATE! WHAT IF—"

Hunk's hand slaps over Lance's mouth again.

Oh god, Lance screams internally, what if he's a serial killer!

Chapter Text

Lance stands outside apartment 209 with something akin to absolute abject terror on his face. Pidge stands behind him, reading something on their phone. Or maybe texting someone, though Lance has no clue who they would be texting.

Lance's future roommate stands behind this door. This meeting could make or break whatever friendship they could possibly have.

Of course, this wouldn't have been a problem if this guy would have actually met with Lance two days ago instead of sending his big brother to do his bidding. But, well, Lance can't get too mad because he got to meet his hero: Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane, the legendary frat boy who has passed into history as Altea University's own Champion.

Shiro was... well, he was a lot more mature now than he had been in the past. Four years really changes a person, apparently. Though Lance was always a fan of the saying "You can take the boy out of the frat, but not the frat out of the boy" or whatever the saying actually is.

"Are you going to knock, or stare at the door until you gain magical telepathic powers?" Pidge snorts.

Lance turns his head to glare at them with as much annoyance as he can muster.

"I'm just... mentally preparing. Who knows what lies beyond that door?"

Pidge gives Lance an incredulous look that immediately makes him feel silly.

"What lies beyond that door is an emo 20 year old with a mullet who's wearing half of a jacket. Somebody buy that poor boy a real coat," Pidge mutters, rolling their eyes.

"What?" Lance shrieks.

A mullet?

The door opens without Lance knocking. Maybe he does have telepathic powers.

Lance's first reaction is to be horrified for that poor boy's hair. A real life mullet. What fresh hell is this? The 80s?

Lance's second reaction is more like holy shit because holy shit. Lance really needed more time to mentally prepare because wow, that boy is pretty, bad hair style aside. He looks like the dark and brooding type with his all-black attire that clings to obvious muscles. Oh god, Lance thinks, he could snap me in half like a twig. And if that thought isn't arousing, Lance doesn't know what is. Not to even mention that guy's eyes. Who even has violet eyes?!? It's inhuman! What if this guy was an alien!?!

"Why are you hovering outside my apartment like a creep?" the guy deadpans.

"Keith!"

Lance sighs in relief as he hears Shiro's blessedly familiar voice from inside the apartment. Seconds later, Shiro appears behind Keith with a brilliant smile that almost blinds Lance with its contrast to Keith's grumpy frown.

"Keith," Shiro repeats, placing a hand gently on Keith's shoulder. "This is Lance McLain, the guy who needs a roommate. I met him a couple of days ago."

Keith's frown turns into a glare directed at Lance, and Lance smothers the urge to point out that Keith looks like some broody emo teenager who listens to way too much MCR. But if Lance needs a roommate, then he's going to have to be nice to Mr. Broody and Emo.

"Hi," Lance says smoothly, trying not to grimace under Keith's glare.

"Hi," Keith grunts back.

They share mutually awkward eye contact for about three seconds before both looking away and shuffling uncomfortably. Oh boy, this is going to be a delight.

"Well this is awkward as hell," Pidge says, rolling their eyes.

"Pidge! Language!" Shiro exclaims, looking affronted.

Lance raises his eyebrows at Keith in a way that hopefully asks Is he always this way? Keith gives him a Look accompanied by a small smirk that makes Lance's heart flutter slightly. So yeah, Lance takes that to mean Yeah, he's always this way.

"Well," Shiro says, turning back to Lance after flashing Pidge a scolding look that they brush off. "Would you like to come in? I'd offer you something to drink, but I'm not sure that Keith's paid his water bill and I know for a fact that all he has in that fridge over there is some sort of energy drink."

Shiro chuckles at his own half-joke, but from the look of the place, Lance isn't entirely sure if Shiro's actually joking. There's barely anything in the apartment, just the normal stuff, but nothing close to even mildly personal.

"How long have you lived here?" Lance asks, surveying the emptiness of pretty much everything.

"Keith's lived here for a little over a month now," Shiro answers.

Shiro motions for them to sit down in Keith's untouched living room area. It's pretty awkward considering Lance takes the left side of the couch and Keith takes the right, leaving Pidge to flop down between them. It shouldn't be awkward, but the whole situation gives Lance some weird vibes, like he doesn't belong in this apartment or in Shiro and Keith's lives.

Shiro flashes Lance a comforting smile as he takes the only available spot left in a worn-looking, pale blue rocking chair. Shiro sits in it like it's a normal chair, but Lance gets the vague impression that the rocking chair is meant to be curled up in with a cat and a good book. It's the only visible part of Keith's apartment that looks like it's actually a part of someone's home.

"So," Lance says awkwardly to Keith. "I heard you have a cat?"

Keith raises his gaze from the thread he was picking on the couch cushion to frown at Lance, like he wasn't supposed to know about the cat or something.

"Yeah, so what?" he snarls.

Lance immediately tenses, wanting to bite back some sort of angry remark about how Keith shouldn't be so hostile towards his guests, but Shiro beats him to it.

"Keith," Shiro says sternly. "Why don't you go get Red and show her to Lance?"

Keith removes his glare from Lance and settles it on Shiro, though the elder boy looks unfazed. That decides it, Shiro is officially Lance's roll model and third favorite person (sorry Pidge).

Keith (surprisingly) does as he's told. He slides off of the couch and wanders off to one of the three closed doors, which is presumably his room. At least Lance now knows where he'd be sleeping if he moved in: somewhere to the right side of the apartment, right beside the bathroom. He's not sure how he feels about that fact, though.

"I'm sorry about Keith," Shiro says quietly. "He's not normally this way around new people."

Pidge snorts at that, causing Shiro to glare at them.

"He's actually always this way," Pidge points out, unperturbed. "He just doesn't meet enough new people for anybody to make a general assumption about how he reacts when he's uncomfortable."

"I thought you—and I quote—"don't really know the guy"," Lance says, flicking Pidge upside the head. "You could have warned me!"

Pidge punches Lance in the shoulder, hard. For not having any muscle, their punches hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

"Where's the fun in warning you?" Pidge cackles evilly.

Keith chooses that moment to re-enter the room, cradling a rust-colored feline in his arms like a baby. The cat squints suspiciously at everyone in the room like they're her enemy. Lance isn't sure who makes him feel more threatened: Keith or the cat.

"This is Red," Keith says, sounding almost not-mad for the first time since Lance arrived at the apartment.

"Who names their red cat Red?" Lance can't help but snort.

And oh, that was a mistake. Now Red and Keith are both glaring at him like he set their loved ones on fire. Oops.

"That coming from you," Pidge snorts.

It takes Lance a moment or two to realize what Pidge is talking about.

"Do not bring Blue into this," Lance hisses, slapping his hand over their mouth in an effort to stop them from explaining to his possible-future-roommate and personal-hero that he still sleeps with a stuffed lion.

"Blue?" Shiro asks.

Lance looks mortified and Pidge simply cackles some more.

"He still sleeps with a stuffed blue l—"

Lance slaps his hand over Pidge's mouth once again, trying to keep them contained and hopefully not spilling all of his embarrassing habits. He shouldn't have brought them along. He was foolish to think Pidge would help win over his possible-future-roommate.

"Well..." Shiro says, awkwardly glancing between Keith, Pidge, and Lance. "At least you two have something in common. You both like naming things after the primary colors."

Pidge cackles even more and Lance removes his hand in defeat. Well, at least someone is enjoying his misery.

Pidge cackles a little bit more, their laugh drawing a chuckle from Shiro, before everyone returns to the matter at hand.

"You aren't allergic to cats, right?" Keith asks, cuddling Red protectively to his chest.

Keith finally sits down on the arm of the couch furthest away from Lance, eying him with suspicion.

"Nah. I love cats. They're so cuddly!" Lance says, motioning to how Red has curled up against Keith.

"If you try and cuddle my cat, she'll kill you," Keith deadpans, stroking a hand over Red's fur.

She emits a purr, but keeps watching Lance with her seemingly resting bitch face. Yeah, Lance can probably see the cat killing him in his sleep if he so much as looks at her funny.

(Kind of like her owner.)

"When can you move in?" Shiro asks Lance, causing everyone in the room to look at him with surprise.

"Really, Shiro? How do you know this guy isn't a serial killer or something?" Keith asks, frowning at his older brother.

Shiro waves off his question nonchalantly.

"It'll be fine. You have over a half dozen knives in your room, I think you can hold your own," Shiro says.

"I'm not a serial killer!" Lance squeaks out. "But maybe you are! Who has that many knives in their room!?!"

"Me," Keith says, twisting his frown back into a glare. "And why do you want him to move in so soon? This guy's weird."

"I'm weird?" Lance squawks, throwing his arms up in the air with exasperation.

"It's not like you're going to find anyone else to move in with you," Shiro says, ignoring Lance. "And Lance isn't going to find anyone to move in with this late in the school year."

Keith and Lance both frown at Shiro, but Lance knows Shiro has a point. It's not like there's any other choice for either of them, no matter how much they dislike each other.

"So, Lance," Shiro repeats. "When can you move in?"

All eyes shift to Lance, and he feels a bit uncomfortable with the fact that two out of the four of them are glares. Well, one's a glare. One's a cat staring angrily at him.

"Uh... I can move in next Wednesday. That's my day off of work," Lance answers.

"Where do you work?" Keith asks suddenly.

"The aquarium. Mostly the gift shop but sometimes I get to help with tours and stuff," Lance explains.

For some odd reason, Keith looks fairly pleased. He's still not smiling, but he's not glaring and he's not frowning as hard as he was. Lance takes that as a win.

"Then it's settled," Shiro says happily. "You'll move in next Wednesday. Keith will give you the short tour of the apartment. Pidge, can I see you in the kitchen for a moment?"

Pidge scrambles off of the couch to join Shiro, whispering suspiciously to him when they're out of earshot.

"Are you coming or what?" Keith huffs, already standing.

"Yeah, yeah," Lance scoffs. "Don't get your panties in a twist."

*****

"You owe me ten bucks, Pidge, pay up," Shiro whispers, sticking his hand out.

Pidge rolls their eyes. They can't believe they lost a bet to Shiro of all people. They slap the money into Shiro's outstretched hand, frowning slightly at the pleased smile that stretches across his face.

"Do you want to make another bet?" Pidge whispers, flashing Shiro a twenty from their pocket.

"Sure," Shiro says, grinning. "But you're only going to lose again."

Pidge smirks. There's no way they're losing twice.

"I bet twenty dollars that Keith and Lance won't survive a week with each other. I'm talking, Keith is going to either punch or actually murder Lance within a week of his moving in. Lance will play some sort of prank to get revenge for something before a week is over," Pidge says confidently.

Shiro hums thoughtfully to himself, stroking an imaginary beard.

"I'll take that bet. I bet twenty bucks that Lance will make it work with Keith. No punching, no pranks, one week. Deal?"

Shiro offers up his hand for shaking, a challenging glint in his eyes. Pidge considers this for a moment before making their decision.

"Okay deal, one week. They're going to have killed each other. You're foolish to bet against me, old man," Pidge taunts.

"And you're foolish to bet against me, young whippersnapper," Shiro jokes, ruffling Pidge's mop of hair. "They're totally going to kill each other, but I know my brother's limits. He can last a week. I'm counting on it."

"Sure, old man, the bet is on."

Chapter Text

Lance sneaks into the kitchen stealthily, as to not wake the sleeping cat curled around the paper towel roll. He's in full ninja mode, sliding around in his blue cat socks across the laminated floor in the kitchen to decrease the sound of his footfalls.

Normally Lance wouldn't be up this late, but he's got a wicked craving for caprisun juice pouches, as is normal for 2 AM on a Saturday morning, his first Saturday morning away from Hunk. This is officially the third day that he's lived with Keith.

Arguably, the best part about living with Keith so far is how little he cares, in general. Hunk used to always scold Lance for his late night eating habits, but Keith hasn't even taken much of an interest in Lance at all. Just left him little notes telling him to clean up stuff when he spills it. But really, Keith is fairly uncaring about pretty much everything.

Juice spilled on the couch? Nobody cares because nobody sits there, just clean it up. Accidentally break a lamp? As long as it's paid for, nobody cares. Leave your dirty socks around? Well, Keith doesn't like that, but he's made it his personal mission to just generally avoid Lance at all costs so Lance rarely ever gets scolded. And if Lance has a craving for juice pouches he can just run to the store and get them. Keith doesn't really care.

It's nice, because no one is acting as a surrogate mom for Lance, but it also kind of sucks because Keith doesn't care what happens. In the two days that Lance has lived in the apartment, he's seen Keith once. Keith was shoveling pop tarts into his face at 3 AM like a maniac while making a disturbing amount of eye contact with Lance the whole time as he stole away the box of pop tarts before stumbling back to his room. Lance still wonders what that was about.

Despite that odd interaction, Keith seemed like the kind of roommate that you'd get during your first year of college in the dorms that never stayed over and always came back high at 8 AM before class. It was kind of lonely, and a little awkward, but other than that things were about as good as they could get. Neither of them were dead yet, so that was a plus.

Lance made his way over to the fridge and pulled out a juice pouch, frowning at the overall emptiness of the fridge. Amongst his roommate's weird pop tart habits, the guy also seemed to have a thing for pasta. Last night, when Lance had snuck out of his room for a midnight snack of some gushers that were probably expired, he had noticed the odd number of containers in the fridge.

Due to the suspicious number of dishes drying overnight, Lance suspects a few things. 1) Keith has some weird food habits. Maybe he has a pasta kink, but whatever. Lance isn't gonna judge. 2) Keith can't cook pasta, at all. After some snooping, it seemed that Keith had burnt not one, but two batches of pasta whenever he had made it. 3) Keith eats pasta without sauce, like an animal. There was no evidence of heating up sauce (if some had magically appeared in a cabinet overnight) nor any evidence of parmesan cheese.

Yeah, Lance is sort of freaked out by Keith. Just a little bit. Was he an axe murderer in secret or something? Lance wouldn't put it past Pidge to know an axe murderer.

Lance sighs and closes the refrigerator door, sneaking a glance at Red to make sure he didn't disturb the cat (who became grumpy whenever Lance entered the room). Red glares at Lance from her spot by the paper towel roll, but thankfully doesn't start yowling bloody murder like she did yesterday.

Lance quietly slinks back to his own room, ready to slurp his caprisun in peace, when he hears another door open. A stream of light floods the apartment when Keith opens his bedroom door, appearing to not have even gone to sleep. He looks dressed and everything!

Lance watches curiously as Keith shuffles over to Red and picks up the cat, who meows in an irritated manner at her owner. Despite looking ready to take on the day like it wasn't 2 AM, Keith looks pretty disheveled and almost... upset?

Lance isn't sure what to do with that information.

Keith snuggles Red to his body, murmuring something softly as he buries his head into her fur. Lance watches intrigued as Keith shuffles back to his room, shutting his door way to loudly for Lance's liking.

Well that was weird.

He looks at Keith's door, wondering if he should go see if he's alright or not. Keith had looked kind of... strange, like he had a nightmare or something. Lance isn't a stranger to nightmares himself, so he wonders if he should check up on his roommate.

We aren't exactly friends though...

Lance almost convinces himself to go to the other boy's room and talk to him, but he chickens out before he can even take a step in Keith's general direction. The other has made it clear that they don't need to interact with each other, so Lance decides he's going to just leave Keith be. It's not like the guy matters to him or anything. Nope, no, never, absolutely not.

Despite knowing that Keith would refuse his help if he offered it, Lance still feels guilt ridden as he lays in his own bed, staring at the ceiling. Maybe Lance can subtly offer his assistance. At least be a roommate who doesn't completely ignore the person he lives with like a certain mullet-stricken emo he knows.

Lance decides he's going to figure out how to be Keith's acquaintance in the morning. Maybe he can offer to cook him something that isn't three containers of plain pasta.

*****

Keith awakens to the sound of humming, and he's almost immediately annoyed. He's leaning against the headboard of his bed with Red purring contently in his lap. He's been dozing on and off since midnight, not bothering to get comfy because it's not like it'll help him sleep anyway. He's slept off and on for about six hours, which is more than he normally gets.

Keith decides that if he just lays in bed, he can give himself the illusion that he's actually resting for a few more hours.

But then a knock comes at his bedroom door, causing Red's purring to stop and an angry growl to rise in her throat. Keith agrees with her and decides to ignore the knock, closing his eyes and resuming stroking Red's fur.

And then the knocking comes again, this time with a voice that grates on Keith's nerves.

"I made waffles! Do you want some?" Lance asks, sounding way too chipper for 6 AM.

"Fuck off," Keith responds.

Can't he just live in peace? Can't Lance just mind his own business and leave Keith alone? Can't they just keep their interactions to a minimum?

"Dude, you need to eat something other than plain pasta," Lance insists.

Red stands up and hisses at the door. Keith agrees with her silently.

"Fuck. Off."

"I'm serious. All we have in our fridge is, like, five caprisun juice pouches, a jar of pickle juice, a singular piece of sketchy looking beef jerky, and three containers full of assorted pasta. Do you literally eat pasta for every meal of every day?" Lance admonishes.

Keith ponders that. He knows he eats a ton of pasta, but he also eats other stuff... sort of.

"I eat pop tarts too!" Keith decides to respond.

"Dude. Roomie. Mullet man. You can't just eat pasta and pop tarts. You'll, like, die or something," Lance tells him through the door.

Keith just frowns at the door. Maybe if he ignores him then he'll go away.

After a few moments of silence, Lance starts talking again.

"Like dude, I would know. There was this one time when my parents went on vacation and it was me in charge of all of my little siblings since my other siblings were in college, and so like, I didn't know how to make anything. And I mean, all I knew how to make was microwaveable dishes. So for, like, five days all we had was microwave dinners and turkey sandwiches. You wouldn't believe how disgusting turkey sandwiches can get after you've eaten them for five days straight. I mean, I had to pack all of the younger kids' lunches so I couldn't put any mayonnaise on the sandwiches or anything in case it spoiled or something. So it was just plain turkey. Gross."

"Oh my god," Keith whispers to Red. "Does he ever shut up?"

The answer is no, and Lance keeps on talking.

"So mamá and papá definitely came back home a week later and apparently when you don't have a balanced enough diet, you get really sickly looking and sleepy? So my parents come back to my siblings and I looking like we were fresh out of hell. So, like, every day after that we were forced to take vitamins and stuff because mamá worries that we'll all die or something without her constantly there making sure we eat right."

Keith gives Red a look that says 'can you believe this guy?' Red looks just as annoyed as Keith does.

"Dude, if you don't come out of there and eat some waffles, I'm going to keep standing here and talking. I don't have work until 2 PM. That's close to 8 hours of me bothering you. And I grew up with a house that had seven other kids in it, so I can get pretty annoying," Lance says.

Keith almost feels threatened, because he does not doubt Lance's bothersome factor can get higher than a simple story.

"Okay fine, it looks like I'm going to be here a while."

Lance then proceeds to say "Mullet man" in quick succession for about ten minutes before he starts rambling again. By that point, Keith is ready to do anything to get him to shut the hell up.

So Keith carefully places Red on his bed before storming over to the door and flinging it open. The only problem with this plan was the fact that Lance must have gotten tired of standing at some point and decided to sit down against the door, so when Keith opened it, Lance came tumbling down and smacking his head against the floor.

"Fuck!" Lance exclaimed loudly from the ground by Keith's feet.

Keith just blinked at Lance and shrugged, moving around the fallen boy. Keith walked around Lance, making his way over to the kitchen with Red at his heels. He notices that Red hisses at Lance when she trots past him and he can't help but feel pleased.

Keith discovers that—true to his word—Lance has made waffles, two plates of waffles. Lance had obviously made waffles with the intention of making Keith eat some too. Keith couldn't help but feel warm at that thought. Other than Shiro and Matt, nobody really had gone out of their way to do much of anything for Keith. It was... nice of Lance to do that for him.

But that didn't mean Keith wasn't annoyed with him.

Keith picks up a plain waffle off of one of the plates and waves it on Lance's direction to say you see this? I'm eating something other than pop tarts and pasta.

Keith takes a small bite out of the waffle and decides that yeah, for a store bought waffle it's pretty good. He hasn't had waffles since he moved out of Shiro and Matt's apartment over a month ago. He picks up one of the plates and starts to head back to his room.

"Don't you want butter or syrup or something?" Lance asks from the floor.

"No," Keith says curtly.

He doesn't eat his waffles or pancakes with syrup that often, and never with butter. Also, he doesn't have any in the apartment. But that's not the point.

He steps over Lance's outstretched legs and waits for Red to follow. She glares at Lance as she steps over his legs and hisses quietly when he reaches out to pet her. Lance recoils his hand and shifts so that he's stretched out from wall to wall in the middle of the doorway. Keith's pretty sure he did that on purpose because now Keith can't close the door without moving Lance.

Keith just mentally shrugs and sits cross legged on his bed, ignoring the fact that Lance is obviously staring at him. He unplugs his phone from its charger and decides to play that one cat game Pidge had made him get a few months ago. Hopefully if he ignores Lance for long enough, the guy will leave him alone.

Red seems to get the same idea and curls up next to Keith, eying his waffles hungrily. Keith alternates between tearing off bits of waffle for himself and tearing off pieces for Red.

"You've trained her really well," Lance says abruptly, startling Keith.

When Keith looks at him in a confused manner, Lance decides to elaborate.

"She doesn't eat the waffles unless you give her the pieces. That's pretty impressive," Lance explains. "Cats are hard to train because they're stubborn."

"I didn't train her. She's just smart," Keith admits, handing Red another waffle piece.

Lance hums to himself, and Keith isn't sure what that means so he decides not to comment on it.

Keith switched to another game for a while, and when he glances at where Lance is sitting, he notices the other has pulled out his phone too. Keith finds himself relaxing once he notices that he's not being scrutinized like before.

For a moment, the silence feels less awkward and tense and more like companionable silence. Keith thought that Shiro was the only person who could make silence comfortable, but apparently he was wrong.

But then Lance has to open his big mouth.

"Do you wanna go grocery shopping with me?" Lance asks, breaking the ease that was beginning to settle between them.

Keith frowns and tenses up again.

"No."

"Why not?" Lance asks. "It'll be fun!"

Why not?!? Keith wants to scream. Because we don't know each other! Because we're just roommates! Because I'm a generally awkward person and you don't seem to be the type that ever shuts up and that's definitely going to make me uncomfortable!

Instead of yelling his thoughts at Lance, he decides to take the indifferent roommate approach.

"Because I don't want to," Keith answers.

"Come on! It'll be good to get to know each other! Plus, I definitely can't pay for all of the groceries we desperately need by myself."

Keith thinks Lance might be joking about that last part, but he can't be sure. It wouldn't surprise him if it were true. They're both college students with minimum wage jobs, so money is a little tight in general. Not to mention the fact that Keith admittedly has very few edible food items in the apartment other than pop tarts and noodles, so they'll need a lot of food to have full cupboards and a full fridge.

When Keith takes too long to answer, Lance starts talking again.

"You can't survive on pasta and pop tarts alone, dude. I'm going shopping, and you're coming with me," Lance tells him.

Keith decides to be logical about this.

"What good would me helping you buy groceries do? I can't cook, so either way I'll just be eating pop tarts and pasta," Keith says.

"I'll teach you to cook! I'm so much better at cooking than I used to be, thanks to my old roommate!" Lance says.

Dammit, Lance seems even more excited now.

After indifference and logic fail Keith, he goes with Plan C, the C stands for childish.

"I'm not going and you can't make me," Keith pouts, turning his attention back to his phone.

From the corner of Keith's eye he sees Lance stand up, and for a split second he thinks he's won. But then Lance snatches up his wallet from the dresser beside the door and Keith realizes he's made a terrible mistake for letting Lance live with him.

"If you don't come with me, I'll just spend all of your money on whatever I want, and let me tell you, I'm a distracted shopper. One time, Hunk made me go get stuff for lasagna and I came back with two eggplants and a box of strawberries three hours later. You do not want me shopping with your money by myself," Lance says, sifting through Keith's wallet threateningly.

Keith is about to tell him to go for it, but then he realizes he went to the bank yesterday and took out roughly 100 dollars because he had to pay his water bill manually instead of online.

Fuck.

Lance smirks like he knows he's won, and Keith begrudgingly admits to himself that Lance won, this time.

Lance and Keith leave the house at 7 and Keith's pretty sure he's been blackmailed. Who the hell does Lance think he is?

*****

As soon as they enter the nearest Walmart, Keith wants to be dead. Lance almost immediately stops to talk to a woman and her kids while getting a cart. Keith stands awkwardly in the background while the woman's husband looks at Keith with the same miserable look that Keith's pretty sure is on his own face.

Once Lance is done chatting up the lady, he immediately sprints towards the Halloween candy that's for sale in the front aisles. Keith just pushes the cart after him while feeling like a babysitter. After ooohing and aaahing over candy and costumes for ten minutes, Lance finally starts heading towards the grocery section.

Sadly for Keith, Lance wasn't lying about getting easily distracted. They pass by the section with movies and video games and Lance just has to look at some new movie that came out last month, which then turns into Lance sifting through the gigantic bins of five dollar movies that are basically giant, annoying pits of despair.

Keith wants to cry.

He lets Lance sort through the bins for twenty minutes while one of the Walmart helpers on duty that keeps walking by looks at him with pity. After the fifth passerby to look at Keith with pity in their eyes, he finally snaps.

"Okay, that's it!" Keith all but yells.

He wraps a hand around Lance's arm and forcefully tugs him away from the movie bins.

"Dude, chill out," Lance says, looking annoyed.

"No!" Keith snaps. "I won't chill out because we've been here for over a half hour and the only food items we've seen has been Halloween candy! Get your ass in gear, get your stupid groceries, and let's get the hell out of here!"

Lance huffs angrily and tears his arm out of Keith's grip to fold his arms defensively over his chest, but at least he has the decency to look properly cowed.

Keith breathes a sigh of relief when they finally make it to the grocery section of the store. He's so happy they've made it that he wants to cry. But then Lance sees the bakery and sprints away from Keith's side like a hyperactive child.

Keith feels himself shrivel up and die on the inside.

He lets out a string of colorful curse words as he makes his way over to the bakery, causing some moms to glare at him and cover their children's ears. One kid about ten or eleven years old gives Keith a thumbs up that lifts his spirits a little bit.

By the time Keith has made his way to the bakery area, Lance is gone. Like, completely gone. No trace of him is left here except an exhausted looking baker guy whose name tag says Justin who looks completely overwhelmed.

Keith can relate.

He sighs to himself and decides that Lance is probably just going to keep wandering off and not actually get any groceries. So, by default, Keith has to get groceries. Plus he has the cart, so that helps.

He decides that normal people often get bread while going to the store, so he heads over to grab a loaf. But there's way too many choices. There is literally a whole wall filled with different types of bread. Why do people need this many types of bread? It's just bread!

Keith stares at the words whole grain, white, and wheat for a while before settling on wheat bread. But then the real question is: what brand of wheat bread? As a poor college student, Keith decides he's just going to pick the cheapest one. He doesn't think there will be much of a difference between brands anyway.

After picking up some flour, sugar, crackers, and four packages of pasta, Keith realizes he kind of likes grocery shopping by himself. He feels like an adult.

Feeling quite proud of himself, Keith heads over to the vegetable and fruit area. He's made considerable headway in the decision between pre-cut carrots and whole carrots when a familiar face startles him out of his own head.

"Hey, buddy! What are you doing here?" Matt Holt asks.

"Uh..." is Keith's intelligent response.

Keith clears his throat and glances around to make sure Shiro isn't here. His words from when he had come back from that stupid meeting with Lance are ringing in Keith's ears.

He'll be good for you, trust me. Lance is a good guy and he's really social. Something tells me he'll help you get out of the house more often.

And dammit, that meant Shiro was right. Because here Keith was, out of the house and in the world.

But thankfully it appeared that Shiro wasn't around to gloat right now.

"I'm here with my roommate. He blackmailed me into going grocery shopping with him," Keith admits.

Matt smiles and points to the carrots in Keith's hands.

"Get the whole ones. You have to cut and peel them yourself, but the pre-cut ones taste like chemicals," Matt says.

"Thanks," Keith says, his mouth quirking up into a small smile.

He tosses the whole carrots into the cart and feels satisfied that he's being an adult and making adult choices.

"Is Shiro with you?" Keith asks, examining the lettuce.

"Yeah. He found somebody he knew and started talking. I walked away."

Keith snorts at that. He is no stranger to shopping with Shiro. Everybody knew him, either from his frat boy days, school, his residency at the nearest hospital, or just from being out and about. It was honestly easier to walk away and do most of the shopping while Shiro chatted with various people than stand there and wait for him to finish talking.

"Hey, Matt!" Shiro's voice carried through the store, causing Keith to cringe and turn around. "Look who I found!"

"Hey, Shiro!" Matt calls back playfully, pointing to Keith. "Look who I found!"

Shiro's eyes flick over to Keith who's doing everything to avoid looking in Shiro's general direction. As Shiro brings Lance forward, Keith notices that Lance actually has collected a few items while he ran loose around the store. In his arms, Lance has Halloween Oreos, two boxes of caprisuns, and a carton of orange juice.

When they get close enough to real conversation distance, Lance smiles apologetically to Keith and drops the items into Keith's cart.

Shiro looks at Keith and smirks.

"I believe this one belongs to you?" Shiro says, pushing Lance forward.

"Where'd you find him?" Keith deadpans, going back to examining the lettuce.

"For one," Lance interrupts, "don't talk to me like I'm not here. Two, I was looking for you."

"He was flirting with one of the ladies at the checkout," Shiro says.

Keith sighs deeply and rubs at his forehead.

"Why doesn't that surprise me," he says.

"I'm just surprised you're here, honestly," Matt says, and Keith kind of wants to punch him in the face for that.

"I told you, Keith," Shiro says smugly. "I knew he'd be a good influence."

"He's a terrible influence," Keith mutters loud enough for them all to hear.

"Hey! I'm a great influence! You'd be eating nothing but pop tarts and pasta if it weren't for me!" Lance exclaims, flinging his hands around dramatically.

Shiro gives Keith a disapproving look and opens his mouth to start lecturing.

"Sorry, gotta go!" Keith says too loudly, tossing a head of lettuce into the cart.

He latched on to Lance's arm and practically sprints away as fast as he can while pushing a cart.

Once they're far enough away, Keith slows down his pace and notices that Lance is staring at him again, except this time with a brilliant smile that makes Keith's breathing stop for a minute.

"Siblings, am I right?" Lance says, grinning brightly.

Keith finds himself returning Lance's smile, even if it is more microscopic than a full blown grin like Lance's.

"Yeah," Keith says. "You got that right."

*****

Shiro and Matt continue their shopping through the fruits and vegetables. They really don't need much, but they had ran out of apples the other day and Matt had a craving. Honestly, Matt was so glad that he got an apple craving because that meant he got to meet Lance! That guy was going to be Keith's boyfriend some day. Matt had a sixth sense for that kind of thing.

"So," Shiro begins. "What'd you think of Lance?"

"He seems like a good guy. The two of them mesh really well together, I can tell. I'm surprised you picked up on it at all," Matt said.

"What do you mean?" Shiro asks, looking at Matt with confusion. "What did I pick up on?"

Matt snorts at his boyfriend's innocence and rolls his eyes. Seriously, he's know five year olds with better observation skills than Shiro.

"Honey, you know I love you, but sometimes you're super oblivious," Matt says, shaking his head.

"What?" Shiro asks innocently. "Do I need to be worried?"

Matt just smiles and pulls Shiro down into a chaste kiss.

"You're so cute. It's nothing to concern yourself with though."

For now.

Chapter Text

Despite the fact that they had been getting along better since the whole shopping incident, Lance still got the impression that Keith didn't exactly like him yet. They did occasionally talk to each other now, but Keith still was mysteriously absent from Lance's life.

Not that Lance cared or anything.

He didn't.

It was just annoying! Lance had thought they'd bonded over older siblings and food! But apparently that hadn't mattered as much to Keith as it had to Lance. Which really sucked. Because now that Lance knew about that stupidly adorable smile that Keith rarely brought out, he had a craving to see it more.

It was like a caprisun craving at 2 AM, one of the worst cravings to have when you lacked caprisuns. And wow was Lance lacking exposure to that tiny and awkward little smile.

It made perfect sense to Lance, but apparently Hunk didn't get it.
"Man, I'm telling you! I need to get his attention like I did in Walmart!" Lance exclaims into the phone.

He's on break again, and lucky for him, Sendak isn't here to ride his ass about break times, so he's safe to talk as long as no one tries to buy anything from the gift shop.

"Dude, you're the king of getting attention. What's the problem?" Hunk asks.

"Well, Hunky Pie, he's never around, for one! And when he is, he immediately goes and hides in his room! He has a TV in the living room! I don't know why I'm the only one who ever watches it!" Lance exclaims, flinging his free hand around wildly.

"Then ask him to watch TV with you or something," Hunk suggests.

"I can't do that! If I asked him to watch TV with me, you know what would happen? Outcome One: He says no. It embarrasses me, and despite how little I know about him, it'll probably make things even more awkward between us. He's the actual epitome of socially awkward. Outcome Two: He says yes. If he says yes, then he'll probably come sit by me," Lance explains.

"... Okay? He sits by you. What's wrong with that?" Hunk asks.

"Why what a good question, Hunky Poo!" Lance exclaims. "In that case, he brings his damn cat, that hates me by the way! I mean, he brings her everywhere. I'm also fairly sure he cuddles with her at night. And that's fine, I mean, I love cats! But Red hates my guts. She's so temperamental and standoffish!"

There's a moment of silence on the other end of the phone, and Lance is concerned he accidentally hung up again. Lance tends to accidentally press the end call button with his cheek when he gets hysterical over the phone. Finally though, after a moment, Hunk responds.

"Then get the cat to like you? I don't know, man. You said he wasn't around a lot, right? Then just try to win her over while he's gone," Hunk suggests nonchalantly as if he hasn't opened the heavens and given Lance the gift of wisdom.

"Buddy," Lance breathes. "I love you so much, bro. You're my whole world. Thank you for blessing me on this beautiful day! Your wisdom is infinite and I believe you have touched the stars of knowledge."

"Uh, thanks buddy? Love you too. Honestly, I'm so glad you're actually sort of getting along with this guy. I was kinda worried that you'd hate it there. I'm happy things worked out. Maybe, when you guys get a chance, you can bring him to for Sunday Brunch sometime? I'd love to meet the dude you won't stop talking about," Hunk says.

"Bro, I'll introduce you two soon, though I'm not sure how it'll work out. You're so different. But yeah, Sunday Brunch. Maybe if I make some progress with bonding with Keith, then I'll see if he wants to come with, chill?"

"Awesome, dude."

"Anyway, I should probably get back to work. It's nice here without Sendick being an asshole all the time. Maybe somebody finally got sick of his shit and poisoned him or something. I wouldn't blame them," Lance says, rolling his eyes.

"Honestly I wouldn't blame someone if they poisoned him either. The dude seems like a complete douchemonkey."

"You're not wrong. I'll call you tonight? We can discuss Operation Red Kogane: How to Win Over My Roommate's Cat from Hell."

"Totally. Love ya, bro!" Hunk says.

"Love ya too, Hunky!"

*****

When Lance gets home at 6 PM, Red is sitting on the armrest of the couch, lazily flickering her tail back and forth as she watches Lance with suspicion.

Remember your training, Lance thinks, carefully approaching Red.

"Heya, kitty," he says quietly.

If anything, Red only narrows her gaze. You're an idiot, her eyes say.

Lance waves the bag of cat treats he picked up on the way home in front of her face.

You've ascended beyond idiocy, her gaze scoffs.

"You don't even have to like me, just tolerate me. I need Keith to not hate me, and your judgement is basically an extension of his, so please love me," Lance begs, opening the bag of cat treats.

Red's gaze does not change from a glare, nor does she stop swishing her tail across the armrest. Keeping begging, you plebeian, her gaze scoffs. I know how important I am, and I refuse to bow to your mere tricks. I am not a dog.

Lance offers Red a cat treat with an outstretched hand. She looks at his hand in disdain before sniffing at the treat. Please take the treat, please take the treat, Lance chants in his head.

Red does not take the treat. She does bite his thumb though, and he lets out a string of curse words. Red looks smugly upon the sight that she has created, Lance's thumb gleaming with blood.

"Devil cat," Lance hisses at her.

Red flicks her tail and practically sprints off of the couch. Before Lance can register where Red is heading, she is launching herself into Lance's bedroom through the open door.

Lance hurried after her, clutching his bleeding thumb. He hopes that she doesn't have rabies or something. That'll be a great conversation starter with Keith tonight.

Hey dude. It's me, your roommate. So, yeah. I was wondering if your cat has rabies? Why, you ask? Because she mauled my hand, thanks for asking. What? You want me to move out because your cat hates me? Looks like I'm going to be homeless! Oh hey look, there's a dead body! It's mine because I died of hypothermia in the night because my roommate's cat hates me!

When Lance enters his room, Red is sitting perched atop one of his many pillows, her claws making notches in the pillowcase.

"Put your claws away!" Lance pleads.

Red does not. Instead, she trots over to Lance's stuffed lion.

"No," he begs.

Red looks him straight in the eye, raises her paw, and—

"Red?" Keith's voice echoes throughout the silent apartment.

This isn't over, Red's eyes say.

Lance gulps loudly.

She retracts her claws and jumps gracefully off of Lance's bed, trotting proudly towards her owner. Lance follows her out of his bedroom, closing the door all the way this time. He feels properly threatened by Red, who is currently scaling Keith's leg like a tree.

Keith gathers his cat in his arms and cuddles her to his chest. Her small pink tongue darts out to lick the tip of his nose when he brings her up to his face.

"What're you doing back here so early?" Lance asks curiously.

The small smile that Lance hadn't noticed had been growing on Keith's face disappears, and suddenly he's doing that resting bitch face thing again.

"No one was around. Coran told me to close up early," Keith says, not meeting Lance's gaze.

Instead, Keith looks at Lance's thumb, brow furrowing in confusion.

"What'd you do?" he asked, still staring at Lance's injured finger.

"Uh..."

Lance really doesn't want to explain that he'd been trying to make Red love him and she had decided to bite his thumb.

"You know what? It doesn't matter. Go wash it off. I'll get the disinfectant and the bandage," Keith says, gently setting Red down on the couch's armrest.

"Uh..." Lance oh-so-intelligently says again.

Keith rolls his eyes and mutters something about "Always having to do everything myself," before walking up to Lance (oh god, this is the closest they've ever been, Lance realizes) and taking Lance's hand with more care than Lance thought Keith would be capable of.

Keith examines Lance's hand for a moment before gently tugging him to the kitchen sink.

"I need to get a bandage and stuff. Wash off your hand, with soap," he commands.

Lance stares dumbly at Keith's back as the other disappears into the bathroom.

Red's meow startles him enough to reboot his brain, which had short circuited somewhere between Keith's concern and when Keith had grabbed his hand. Red looks oddly pleased with herself, and Lance sticks his tongue out at her childishly.

Red lays down and starts licking her paw clean.

Shit, Lance was supposed to be cleaning his hand. He sends a mental thanks to Red for helping restart his brain as he cleans the blood off of his thumb.

Keith appears a few seconds later with a tube of Neosporin and a bandaid that Lance can't help but notice is black.

"I can't believe you're so emo that you even have black bandaids," Lance mutters.

Keith gives Lance a glare and for a moment Lance is afraid that he's messed up, but then Keith is gently taking Lance's hand and he somehow knows that Keith isn't really mad.

"What'd you even do?" Keith asks as he peels the plastic off of the bandage.

"Red bit me," Lance pouts dejectedly.

Keith laughs and oh wow, Lance has never felt this gay in his life, and he's done some stuff with a guy that would make Pidge blush. But to be fair, Keith's laugh is probably the cutest sound he's ever heard. He's been blessed. Lance can't wait to text Hunk about Keith's adorable laugh. If Lance wasn't comfortably Bi before, he would have been having a gay crisis.

"What'd you do to her?" Keith asks after a moment.

"Nothing!" Lance says, mock-offended. "I was just trying to get her to like me!"

Keith shakes his head at Lance.

"You can't do that. She has to come to you," Keith explains.

"But she hates me!" Lance exclaims.

"No, she doesn't," Keith says. "If she did, she'd ignore you. You wouldn't even know that she was in the room. Plus, Red doesn't really like anybody except me, and even then she's kinda an asshole."

Lance considers this for a moment.

"Does she like Shiro?" Lance asks.

Keith snorts.

"She actively tries to tear up his pant legs if he gets within two feet of her, and he's known her for three years," Keith says.

"Oh," is Lance's response.

"Yeah," Keith says back.

Keith steps away from Lance, and only then does Lance realizes how close they had been. Be still, my raging bisexual heart, Lance thinks.

"Well, uh, thanks for, you know," Lance lifts his hand when his words fail him.

"Uh, no problem," Keith says awkwardly.

Great, back to square one.

"Do you want to watch Cake Boss with me?" Lance blurts out.

Only when Keith's eyes widen in surprise does Lance realize he's probably made a mistake by asking that.

"I mean, you don't have to. I can just watch it by myself. I just thought that, you know, you might wanna watch it too? Or maybe not? Because I don't know what I was thinking! I'm sorry, I shouldn't have offered. Now things are super uncomfortable and I'm going to stop talking now," Lance stammers.

"Uh..."

Keith seems overwhelmed by Lance's distressed rambling and Lance is pretty sure that if a truck were to hit him right now, he'd be doing the Universe a favor. Lance hasn't messed up this bad since... well since yesterday when he asked that married woman on a date.

"Okay," Keith says after a moment.

"...What?" Lance asks.

"I'll, uh, watch Cake Boss with you, I guess," Keith says, looking only slightly uncomfortable.

Lance takes a few seconds to process what just happened before a bright grin overtakes his features.

"Awesome! I love Cake Boss! I always used to watch it with my mamá and papi! All of my siblings and I would crowd around the TV and watch it every night! We always thought mamá would make a great baker, so we'd tease her about becoming the next Cake Boss!" Lance says excitedly.

He practically sprints into the kinda-sorta living room and takes the seat on the far left side of the couch, which has kinda become his chosen spot to sit in. Lance grabs the remote and searches through the TV guide, trying to find what channel Cake Boss is on.

Keith slowly makes his way to the couch, and when he sits down, he immediately pulls Red into his lap like Lance assumed he would. But Red doesn't spare Lance a second thought. She happily curls up on Keith's legs and starts purring when he scratches her ear.

"Aha!" Lance yells when he locates the correct channel.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lance thinks he sees Keith's tiny smile that makes his heart flutter, but he can't quite be sure. Lance also thinks he sees something smug in Red's eyes when he meets her gaze.

This was all my doing, Red's eyes say.

Lance thinks Red looks pleased with herself.

(She is.)

(You're welcome, Lance.)

Chapter Text

"Come on! We're going to be late!" Lance yells excitedly at Keith.

Keith gives Lance a half hearted glare as the other boy practically jumps up and down with glee.

"Why did I agree to this?" Keith grumbles, pulling on his boots.

He really doesn't know why he agreed to wake up at 7 AM on a Sunday to go have "brunch" with Lance and his friends. This isn't even brunch! This is regular breakfast time! But at least he knows basically everyone attending.

Lance's best friend Hunk is be the one hosting along with Hunk's girlfriend Shay, but other than that Keith knows everyone. Pidge is invited "like they always are", which makes Keith wonder if that's where they've been every Sunday for the past two months. Shiro and Matt are invited because at some point in time it seems that Shiro gave Lance his number "in case of emergencies".

Shiro's probably regretting doing that if his "I want to die" phone calls are any indication. Apparently Matt and Lance are fellow "memers" and now torture Shiro day and night. Serves him right.

It's Shiro's fault this loser is in their lives now, so Keith doesn't feel sorry for Shiro at all.

"Come on! Come on! Come on!" Lance urges, pushing Keith out the door.

Okay, so Lance is a good guy, and actually an alright human being, but waking up this early to get out of the apartment is pure torture. Needless to say, Keith isn't in the best of moods.

"Shut up!" he snaps, yanking his arm out of Lance's grip.

"No can do, Mullet Man! I'm just too excited! Man, you're going to love Hunk! He's the nicest person I know!" Lance exclaims, flinging his hands around excitedly as they walk.

Keith rolls his eyes and shoves his hands in his pockets. He really shouldn't have agreed to this. He normally wouldn't have, but after spending a significant amount of time with Lance, the guy kinda grew on him. It was almost like they were... friends.

But what was the requirement for friends? Didn't they have to hang out outside of their regular places (aka the apartment)? Didn't they have to know stuff about each other? Well, in that case Keith was Lance's friend but Lance wasn't Keith's. He knew all sorts of stuff about Lance, considering the guy didn't shut up, but it was kinda nice just being around someone other than his boss, his brother, and his brother's boyfriend.

But Lance still didn't know anything about Keith.

Keith wasn't sure what exactly that made them. Acquaintances? Roommates? Friends? Hell if he knew, and he sure wasn't asking Lance if they were friends, that could turn out to be all sorts of awkward regardless of the answer.

"Here she is!" Lance says proudly, throwing his hands out dramatically and almost hitting Keith in the face.

Keith's not sure what he's supposed to be looking at. It's just a blue car. A fairly dinged up blue car.

"What am I looking at?" Keith asks.

"This is Sapphire! My pride and joy!" Lance announces rounding the car to get into the driver's seat.

"It's... just a car," Keith mumbles, getting in the passenger's seat.

"Sapphire is a beauty! She's my first and only car!" Lance says, slapping his dashboard happily.

"Um... okay?"

Lance twists the key and the car makes a sort of dying noise that immediately makes Keith wary of the state of the vehicle. Apparently his discomfort shows on his face because Lance laughs and slaps the dashboard again.

"It's fine. She just gets like this when it's too cold, or too hot, or it's raining, or it's going to rain, or sometimes when it's humid," Lance chirps happily.

Keith makes a show of glancing outside to the perfect autumn day with all sun and no clouds of any sort in sight. He raises his eyebrows at Lance in judgement.

"Shut up!" Lance says, slapping Keith's arm in a weirdly friendly way.

"Does it—"

"She," Lance says pointedly as he backs out of the parking space.

"Fine," Keith huffs. "Does she always sound like you've dropped a toolbox full of screws in the engine?"

"She does not sound like there's a toolbox full of screws in her engine!" Lance grumbles.

He pats the dashboard in a way that Keith thinks is supposed to be reassuring to the car. He'd judge, but he does the same thing with his bike, Scarlet. Lance doesn't know about Scarlet, but if he ever found out Keith doesn't want to deal with the 'you treat your bike the same way I treat my car so why'd you mock me?' conversation Lance would probably rope them into having. So Keith keeps his mouth shut and does nothing but cringe when Lance puts on the most irritating pop song ever known to man.

What did Keith do to deserve this at 7 AM?

*****

"Stop fidgeting, Allura, it's going to be fine," Pidge says, rolling their eyes.

Allura nervously fidgets with her fingers, examining the pink and blue swirl designs on her nails. It was Pidge's idea for Allura to go to brunch and meet their friends, but Allura was admittedly nervous. What if they hated her? What if they made Pidge get a different dorm buddy? What if they thought Allura was stupid?

After all, Allura was three years older than Pidge, yet Pidge was a junior as well! Plus, Pidge had said that their friends were geniuses or something! Oh god, what if they were all smarter than her and made her move out because Pidge was too smart to live with someone so dumb!

Allura nearly jumped out of her skin and Pidge placed a hand on her shoulder.

"It's alright, they're nice people," Pidge says.

Allura forced her shoulders to relax and made herself take a deep breath and calm down like her father taught her.

"I am sorry. I am just worried that they will think less of me compared to you," Allura admits.

"Well that's stupid to worry about," Pidge scoffs. "I'm always the smartest one in the room and the only one who's even close would be Matt, my brother. And he's going to hero worship you when he sees your nails anyway."

Pidge rolls their eyes when Allura gives them a questioning look.

Pidge leans in close and whispers secretively, "He's a whore for nail polish."

Allura giggles a little at that.

"And as for the others? Hunk's too infatuated with Shay to even glance at everybody else. Lance is bringing his new roommate Keith, so that's going to be all everyone talks about because wow, talk about UST," Pidge says.

What's UST? Allura wonders. Is it some American thing nobody told me about?

"And Matt's so head over heals in love with Shiro and vice versa, they're going to be making heart eyes at each other the entire time," Pidge continues. "If you wear brown and stick to the couch, they might not even notice you're there."

"Really?" Allura asked hopefully.

Pidge nods.

"Now woman up and let's get going. We're going to be late, though I don't see Keith and Lance being on time either."

*****

The second Lance walks into Hunk and Shay's apartment, his world becomes 100% more beautiful. And not just because he can smell Hunk's pancakes and bacon right now, though that is a contributing factor. It's because of her.

Gorgeous white hair. Beautiful blue eyes. And look at that bod!

"I think I'm seeing the future Mrs. McLain," Lance says to Keith, who frowns at him.

"Lance!" Hunk exclaims, drawing Lance in for a hug.

Shay looks shyly up at Lance before they both go in for an awkward embrace.

"This must be Keith!" Hunk exclaims, eyes falling upon Mr. Mullet himself.

"Yup. He can introduce himself. I gotta go work my Lance McLain magic," he says, wiggling his fingers at Hunk.

"Uh, buddy?" Hunk says, sounding strained.

"Not now, bud. Gotta introduce myself to the future Mrs. McLain," Lance answers back.

He puts on his best smile and tries his best to saunter confidently to the beauty sitting on the couch beside Pidge.

"Hello there," he says, flashing a grin. "Did you fall from heaven? Because you're an absolute angel."

The beautiful woman frowns deeply at Lance and scrunches her nose up in a cute way that makes something in Lance's chest flutter.

"Your ears are ugly," she growls.

Lance makes an embarrassing squeaky noise and slaps his hand over his mouth in mortification.

"Lance," Pidge says dryly as if Lance hasn't just gotten wrecked by the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. "This is my dorm buddy, Allura. Allura, I'm so sorry. I thought with Keith here, Lance might keep it in his pants. I guess I underestimated how horny he is."

Lance flounders for a second and makes some unintelligible squawking noises. His whole everything just shut down. That was the fastest he's ever been turned down. That was the weirdest insult he's ever come across. All of this was delivered by the most beautiful woman he's ever laid eyes on.

Thankfully, a hand slaps down on his shoulder, making him flinch in surprise and definitely not because the hand on his shoulder is squeezing so hard that it hurts.

"I can't believe you just left me with them," Keith hisses angrily in his ear.

Lance is suddenly a lot less thankful for the hand on his shoulder.

Lance ignores the way the feeling of Keith's breath on his skin makes his cheek and neck burn pleasantly and turns to face the other boy. That is a bad idea by the way because now they're standing nose to nose and wow, Keith's eyes are really purple, what the hell?

Right, pretty girl, think about the pretty girl. She's the target here.

"Someone beautiful caught my eye and I couldn't help but wander over," Lance says, turning to wink at Allura whose frown deepens.

Keith's frown also deepens.

"It's rude to just leave someone when they're talking to your friends which said someone doesn't know," Keith growls.

Lance is about to retort something, what exactly, he's not sure of, but then he realizes that Keith's kinda right, and he feels like an ass. He deflates a little bit at that thought. He knows that Keith, Hunk, and Shay are all awkward people, and he just left them there together.

"Sorry," he mumbles.

Keith sighs deeply and releases his death grip on Lance's shoulder.

"Don't do it again," Keith mumbles back. "The big guy asked me if I preferred white, chocolate, or strawberry milk and then I had to explain to him and his girlfriend that I'm lactose intolerant. It was awkward as hell."

Lance snickers at that and leans forward enough that he bumps his head against Keith's, causing them both to take a step back with blushes strewn across their faces. He had forgotten that they were so close for a second.

"UST, am I right?" Pidge mutters to Allura.

"What is UST? I've been meaning to ask," Allura says to Pidge.

Lance's eyes widen, because he knows what Pidge is talking about and there is no unresolved sexual tension between him and Keith. No tension. None whatsoever.

"Uh, guys?" Hunk calls out, cutting Pidge off before they can say any more. "Food's ready!"

"Yes!" Lance cheers, both because thank god, he really wants some pancakes right now and thank god, Pidge isn't going to start explaining what UST means.

"Hey, has anybody seen Shiro and Matt?" Keith asks Pidge quietly.

"Nah man, they're probably making out somewhere."

"You're probably right."

*****

"OH MY GOD WE'RE SO LATE!" Shiro screeches.

Matt mumbles something incoherent and pulls the covers further over his mess of brown hair.

"MATT WAKE UP!" Shiro yells, yanking the covers away from his boyfriend. "MY LITTLE BROTHER IS IN A SOCIAL SITUATION WHERE HE MAY GET EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE AND WE'RE LATE!"

"Shiro, I love you, but shut the hell up," Matt groans, tugging the blankets back up over his head.

"MATT! GET UP! WE'RE LEAVING IN NEGATIVE THREE MINUTES!" Shiro screeches, rummaging through the dresser to find a pair of pants for himself.

"Oh my god, calm down," Matt grumbles. "I've been a physics major for six years on my way to a doctorate and you used to be pre-med. We've been permanently late for everything since 2011."

"YOU'VE BEEN LATE! I HAVEN'T!" Shiro screams, throwing a shirt at Matt's head. "NOW GET UP!"

"Ugh," Matt protests, burying himself underneath the covers again.

"MATT!" Shiro screeches at an unholy decibel.

Matt grumbles something incoherent and holds the covers over his head in case Shiro tries to tear him from his blankets again. But Shiro has learned all of Matt's tricks—which aren't really tricks, Matt likes to argue, just common sense—so Shiro heads for the foot of the bed. Matt is just starting to get comfortable again when something warm brushes his foot. Matt's eyes startle open as a hand wraps around his ankle, and yanks.

Matt practically flies out from underneath the covers and into Shiro, who falls to the ground with an umph noise.

"It's so fucking cold," Matt grumbles, curling into Shiro's warmth.

"Come on, come on, come on," Shiro sing-songs, lifting Matt off of him and onto the cold hardwood floor.

"Shiro," Matt whines, closing his eyes and curling into a ball.

"Matt," Shiro mimics back.

Matt cracks his eyes open again and eyes Shiro with contempt. He feels like an angry cat, like Keith's cat to be exact. Shiro is rushing around, hurriedly pulling on his socks while hobbling to the bathroom in order to probably brush his teeth or something of the sort.

Matt groans and slowly lifts himself off of the floor, slowly stretching his aching back.

"HURRY UP MATT! PUT ON SOME PANTS!" Shiro screams.

Matt huffs and rolls his eyes, "The things I do for love."