Chapter Text
Moving out of his languid, slow life in his hometown was something Lance figured he’d regret, but for now, he marveled in the new scenery. A change of space was something he needed to get out of the clusterfuck of his life. There wasn’t anything terrible about living at home, it just… got crowded. He wasn’t even a middle child and he was stir-crazy with the mindset of one.
Not enough attention. Not enough love. Not enough people to talk to.
He was starting to feel and sound desperate. He hated it.
But… that seemed to be the general attitude of freshmen in college around here.
After the disaster of moving in—in which the elevator crashed a total of three times within the last two days—he was ready to sit and observe for… an hour or two. So perhaps he spent a little too long loitering around the garden area in the center of the campus, but who wouldn’t? Especially if they could see what he saw.
The shimmering, almost holographic red lines webbed out around him, from the varying heights of the buildings, to the plain of grass at his eye level. The threads were almost indistinguishable unless he sat still enough to notice them, and to train his eye to focus. It was almost like… adjusting his vision to look beyond his normal boundaries. And sure, there were tons of people out there who could use magic, but his was a different kind.
His parents almost didn’t expect his magic to show until a trip to the eye doctor’s told them that not only was his vision impaired, but it was also enhanced with magic. It channeled emotions on a visual landscape between the fabric of existence—connecting one person to another. Lance could see the line connecting perfect pairs of two.
“So… you can see soulmates?” his roommate, Hunk, asked. Lance nearly forgot that they were there for studying—not people watching.
“Yeah,” Lance said, squinting as he searched for the ends of peoples threads. He rarely ever found them. It always depressed him to see lines fall through the ground—cutting through to some other continent where their soulmate was.
“Can you see mine?” Hunk asked, leaning over the table to grin hopefully at Lance.
Lance had to refocus his vision to see the slim, shimmering line protruding from Hunk’s chest. Lance followed it past his own, and through the courtyard. “Whoever they are, they’re definitely on this continent. Congrats,” he laughed, turning back to where Hunk scowled at him. “What?”
“That’s not helpful.”
“I didn’t say I was gonna be helpful!” Lance laughed, leaning back in his chair as Hunk moaned and flopped over his laptop keyboard. “I told you. It’s just, like, lil’ wires that connect people. I can’t actually see who it’s connected to.”
“That’s not very helpful…” Hunk whined, his heavy, frizzy bun the only thing Lance could see beyond his laptop screen. Eventually, Hunk popped back up with a huff. “I just… I think that’s so cool, you know? It’s not like… bullshit physical magic we see all the time.”
“I can’t exactly prove it, though, which kinda sucks,” he sighed, propping his chin up on his hand. “I’ve only ever paired one couple because they happened to be in the same town.”
“And?”
“They’re still dating. I paired them up in high school…” Lance sighed. He thought about them often, mainly because Shiro used to be the swim coach assistant and they still kept in touch. That was… five years ago, before Shiro graduated high school and flew off to attend the same university as his girlfriend, Allura. They weren’t exactly looking to break the bank on a wedding so early on in life, especially with the amount of college debt they’d be in after all was said and done.
Hunk seemed to lose interest and went back to work on his computer. Lance trained his eyes on a girl passing them, and it must have been complete coincidence that Lance decided to look up at that exact moment to catch the shine against her thread reaching—
—An end.
“Holy shit,” he gasped, practically lunging out of his chair.
His feet were moving before he could stop them. Hunk cried out from the table as Lance shouted, “Hey! Miss—hang on!” The girl stuttered to a halt, frantically turning back to him. Her hair was long and braided, and Lance was momentarily floored by her sheer beauty. Holy shit, he was not prepared for this.
“What? What is it? Did I drop something?” she asked frantically, looking around her feet when Lance didn’t hesitate twice in grabbing her by the arm. “Hey—!”
“Just trust me for a second,” he said, hurrying past his table where Hunk was still stuttering about what the hell was going on.
The girl squeaked as they wove through the crowd of students on the main drag of the courtyard. Lance loosened his grip as he caught sight of the thread again, connecting to the heavy black fabric of another girl’s hoodie.
“Excuse me!” he shouted, and pretty much everyone had their eyes on the two unlikely individuals holding hands. The longhaired girl’s dark skin flushed, and she looked about ready to scram.
Thankfully, though, the girl in the black hoodie turned around, and Lance gestured immediately to her. Her hair was dyed blue, dark eyes wide and quite honestly horrified at the attention.
“I swear I’m not insane,” he promised, drawing the two of them together. Man, he really should have strategized this, but even his first and last paring went as disjointed as this. He wasn’t exactly practiced.
“What’s this about?” the blue-haired girl demanded, “Let her go—”
Lance grabbed her by the hand and fit the girls together, clasping their hands together. “I see soulmate lines,” he started, reassuring himself that the thread was still connecting them. It glimmered silver. “Your lines connect, so I just—I figured you two might want to meet. Or something.”
“Our—what?” they blurted at once. The blue-haired girl went positively red, and bit back a smile as the other girl giggled.
“My name’s Lance,” he started, grinning as the three of them laughed. “What are… your names?”
“Ezor,” the longhaired girl said, biting her lip as she looked between Lance and her… soulmate. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? Lance thought to himself, giddy with the adrenaline of paring them together.
They had a bit of a crowd watching them since the moment Lance shouted to the girl who said, “Acxa. My name’s Acxa.”
“Nice to meet you,” Ezor said, and promptly shook her hand. Lance let go, clasping his hands together. “Do you… have a number or something? So I can call you sometime?”
“Uh—yeah! Yeah, hang on.” Acxa twisted her bag around and let go of Ezor’s hand to pull out her phone. They swapped numbers before Ezor turned to Lance, who hadn’t realized he was standing there like an idiot watching soulmates talk for the first time.
“Can I get your number too? So I can tell you how all this goes?” she asked, and Lance stammered for a moment before accepting the phone to type in his number.
They talked for a few minutes longer until people started coming up and asking Lance about the magic he used to see the soulmate lines. Acxa was on her way to class at the start of the fiasco, so she hurried off, still blushing like mad as she hurried up the steps of the courtyard and disappeared around the corner of a building. Lance was flustered by the attention, but that was why he was here, wasn’t it? To have the attention he always wanted?
Whatever the case, Lance was riddled with new phone numbers by the time he returned to his table with Hunk. Someone from the group of bystanders came over, and it was at that time Lance met a total tech wizard that made just about anything possible. They weren’t expecting anyone to join them until the sound of a metal chair screeched across the concrete and landed on the free side of their table fit for three.
Lance jumped a little, still recovering from the adrenaline high, and looked to a small little thing with oversized glasses.
“Hey,” they said, dropping into the chair and swinging their backpack to the floor in front of them. “I just—I saw what you did over there. I thought it was pretty cool.”
“Uh… thanks? It was nothing?” Lance said, and Hunk snorted, rolling his eyes.
“This is Pidge,” Hunk said, pointing to the person who joined them. “We sat next to each other during one of the orientation lectures.”
“So you’re one of the computer science nerds,” Lance commented, feeling slightly more oriented when he realized this wasn’t a complete stranger at all.
“Yeah. And I have a proposal for you,” they said, adjusting their glasses. “I mean, this campus is like a city. It is a city, let’s be real. And I was thinking, like… that’s more people who could wind up as soulmates, right?”
“Right…” Lance drawled, squinting at Pidge.
“And I’m not saying I’m super into the ‘soulmate’ idea, but—what if you, like, made a business out of it? And I’d help you figure out the logistics of it, and how people would pay you, and your website and stuff. People would come to you and I don’t really know exactly how your magic works, but if you could… like, pair them up with their soulmates if they’re on campus?” they suggested, looking everywhere but Lance until their proposal was made.
“I feel like that would be a lot of wasted money,” he confessed with a frown. “The chances that their soulmate isn’t on campus is huge.”
“Then they don’t pay unless their soulmate is found,” they suggested.
“Then that’s a lot of wasted time,” Hunk said. “But I mean, what if the price isn’t that huge? Like, five dollars to follow the line to the edge of the campus, if they’re past the edge of the campus? I mean, think about how many people pay money to go to palm readers and shit!”
“At least they’re accurate,” Lance said. “And they get something out of it.”
“Trust me, um, what’s your name?” Pidge asked.
“Lance.”
“Trust me, Lance, you’d be surprised by how many people would want in on this,” they insisted. “We’ll use Hunk as an experiment, and I’ll get one of my guys to post an article about the whole thing that just happened in the school newspaper, and people will be on this within a week.”
“… Your guys…?” Lance said.
“They have connections,” Hunk said.
“Ah,” he hummed, even though that didn’t help at all.
“So do we got a deal?” Pidge said, holding their hand out. Lance glared at it, and then up at Pidge’s expectant gaze. What’s the harm in it? he thought to himself, and clasped hands with Pidge.
Pidge had a working website up within the week, an article in the newspaper, and an audience flocking in to get information about Lance’s accidental business. Secretly, he was thrilled that people were so interested in his magic. After his success with Shiro and Allura, kids all over his high school started to ask him about his magic, and the threads, and whether or not their soulmate was the person they were crushing on. It never was. Eventually kids got the hint that their soulmates were more or less impossible to find, and people grew tired of listening to Lance stammer out, “No—I don’t know who your soulmate is. I can’t find them for you.”
So secretly, he was afraid all of this would fail miserably.
But by the end of the week, after the article came out—with quotes from both Acxa and Ezor—the girls met up with him at a coffee shop off campus to talk about it.
“I mean, whatever happens, at least you had fun trying, right?” Ezor said, and Lance shrugged over his mug of chai with a sigh. Ezor looked over at Acxa, who was slouched back in the booth beside her. Acxa shrugged helplessly, and Ezor gave a shake of her head.
“It’s normal to feel anxious about stuff like this,” Acxa offered, voice quiet as she glanced out at the rest of the coffee shop. “You never know if it’s gonna fail miserably…”
“Acxa.”
“Or be a complete success,” she finished, smirking at Ezor. The two of them laughed a little before Acxa turned to Lance and said, “Honestly. Don’t sweat it. You have bigger things to worry about than finding other peoples’ soulmates. Like your school work and shit.”
“That’s what Hunk keeps telling me. We tested out the campus-radius thing the other day and we didn’t find the end of his thread,” Lance confessed. “Pidge is basically working on a thesis project at this point. I think they want to turn my magic into a computer program that covers the entire world.”
“Jesus,” Ezor gasped. “That sounds… impossible.”
“I know! But apparently Pidge is a genius and has ‘connections’ and claims to not be interested in this at all,” Lance explained, scratching at his brow. “And on top of it! I find it really bizarre because Pidge’s thread is basically nonexistent. It’s, like, not even there. We both have to be as still as goddamn statues to see it.”
“Interesting,” Acxa hummed. “Why do you think that is?”
“Maybe their soulmate is dying,” Ezor gasped, and earned a nudge in the arm from Acxa. “What! I’m just being realistic.”
“That’s what Pidge thinks it is anyways,” he confessed, rubbing his hands over his tired eyes. “But I’m sure it’ll be fine. Everything’ll be fine.”
The three of them left the coffee shop not long after, and Lance watched Acxa and Ezor cruise off on their moped back to campus. They hesitated on the curb, asking if Lance was all right walking back alone. He said he was, and spent the entire walk thinking, and thinking, and thinking about all the shit that could go wrong.
None of it went totally wrong.
He got his first call almost immediately after the website launch, and met up with a group of freshmen college students who had apparently witnessed the pairing. They walked across campus for each of them until Lance recognized one of the threads was shifting depending on how far they walked on campus. They skipped straight to her thread, and were practically running with the certainty Lance had that her soulmate was on campus.
He was so sure of it that they crossed the campus border and straight into the random conglomeration of off campus housing. They trekked the sidewalks together like they were navigating by compass until the thread led directly to the living room of someone’s house.
The girl looked to Lance and asked, “So this is it?”
“Yeah. Do you… want me to go up with you?” he asked, and she nodded quickly, smiling giddily at her friends as the two of them walked up to the front door.
As they waited for an answer to the knock, the girl said, “Thanks for helping me out.”
“I wouldn’t thank me yet,” he said.
“But I trust you. I think this is gonna work out,” she insisted, and right then the door opened.
The girl’s silver thread moved with the man who walked across the foyer to go into another room as his roommate asked, “Uh… can I help you?”
“Who’s that right there?” Lance asked, pointing past him to the guy who just left to the other room.
That was Lance’s third success.
The semester went on like this. Every three weeks after a pairing, Pidge got in contact with the couple and photographed the success for the website. Articles started going up across campus about Lance’s unique magic that he was sharing with the campus. Three more successes later led to Lance being dubbed the Campus Cupid, which he honestly thought was a bit extra, but Hunk thought it was cute.
“You’re Cupid, Lance,” Hunk cooed from the other loft where Lance was groaning about the title of the latest article.
“Stop calling me that…”
“Campus Cupid, Campus Cupid, Campus Cu—ow!” Hunk shrieked after having flung his leg in the air and promptly kicked the solid concrete ceiling. Lance gasped, sitting up as Hunk screamed like he was being murdered. He nearly toppled straight off his loft trying to grab the first aid kit.
Lance was wrapping gauze around Hunk’s skinned shin when his phone started going off. He blindly reached for it on the floor as Hunk whimpered about how tight the bandages were. He nudged his glasses up with his shoulder as he said, “Hello, this is the Soulmate Line, Lance speaking.”
“Soulmate Line, huh?” Lance gasped, dropping everything except his phone.
“Shiro! Holy shit, what’s up?” he demanded, jumping to his feet as his old swim instructor laughed on the other line. Hunk perked up at the name, and watched as Lance paced the room. “How’s school? How’s Allura?”
“Allura’s fine,” Shiro laughed, deep voice mesmerizing just as always. Lance would be lying if he said he wasn’t still crushing big time on Shiro. Seeing that man nearly-shirtless every goddamn day the week was the recipe for every crush on the swim team. “And classes are… crippling. What about you? How’s your semester been?”
“Fine! Fine. Just… busy. As expected,” Lance confessed, pressing his hand to his cheek to calm to heat there. “But, ah, what’s up? Why are you calling?”
“Straight to the point, huh? Well, I just wanted to let you know that I’m visiting your school next weekend. My cousin’s considering transferring for next semester and so we’re touring the campus. Not officially, but—well, you know what I mean.”
“That’s exciting,” Lance said, looking over at Hunk’s expectant face as he said, “So you’re coming to SoCal?”
Hunk all but jumped up in excitement. Lance talked about Shiro far too often considering that they weren’t best friends or anything. Lance really had no reason to rant about Shiro’s… perfect… face… Shit.
“Yeah. I was actually wondering if you wanted to lead the whole tour? We’d treat you to lunch or something.”
“Yes. I am always down for free food,” he said.
“Perfect! So… I’ll text you when we get there next Friday. Probably late morning. Sound good?”
“Sounds great. I’ll see you then.”
Lance was almost too excited to function during his last class on Friday. Forget about notes—he had a lot of emotional training to go through to prevent himself from fawning over Shiro’s gorgeous bod all weekend. Hunk wasn’t exactly helpful in dissuading Lance from throwing himself at Shiro, especially after all the picture evidence Lance gave him of discrete, blurry snapchats he used to take in high school.
“Climb that man like a tree or else we aren’t friends anymore,” Hunk said.
“Shiro literally has a soulmate, Hunk. I can’t even exaggerate that point,” Lance insisted. “She would murder me if I climbed Shiro like a tree.”
“I’ll be there to pick up your pieces,” Pidge said, scrolling through their phone on the walk across campus. They passed the main drag where the Soulmate Line all started, and continued across the center of the garden area as Pidge said, “I’ll harvest your body parts if I have to to make this goddamn program work.”
“Jesus,” Lance said, shuddering. “Now I’m definitely not climbing Shiro like a tree.”
“It’s for the greater good,” they insisted.
“I feel like Pidge will just use your magic for pure evil,” Hunk confessed. “I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could toss ‘em.”
“Thanks Hunk. For being my friend forever and always,” Pidge droned.
“For whatever reason that sounded like a threat to me,” Lance admitted, frowning at Pidge, who glared up at him past the rim of their glasses. He felt his entire being freeze in terror.
They accompanied Lance to the main building where he could already spy Shiro’s tall, buff figure in the distance, standing outside his car. It really wasn’t Shiro who was the most notable, but really it was Allura’s pure white hair tugged into a half-braid that let the rest of her hair poof out in a cloud of white. Lance hurried down the steps to the parking lot where they stood loitering around the trunk of their rental car, and shouted, “Shiro! Allura!”
They turned, just in time to collide with one of Lance’s massive bearhugs. He gathered them up in a group hug, laughing as Allura said, “Lance! Nice to see you again! How’s the semester treating you?”
“Good, I guess. Can’t complain too much,” he said, pulling back to straighten out his shirt, looking between the couple that looked as though they flew straight out of a Greek mythology tale. Shiro was an absolute god and Allura was an absolute goddess, which left—
—Lance to categorize Shiro’s cousin, who stood farther back, watching the interaction play out.
“Oh—Lance, this is Keith. Keith, you know Lance,” Shiro said, gesturing between the two of them. Oh, a cue for a handshake, Lance thought, reaching out to Keith, who did the same.
“More or less,” Keith said, grayish eyes studying Lance up and down. His fingers where lithe and smooth, pale just like every other part of him that wasn’t concealed in those heavy black sweatshirts Lance saw Acxa wearing more often than not. His hair was jet black like his cousin’s, and Lance could see the similarities in their sharp eyes, flat noses, and perfect, straight smiles—even… if Keith didn’t smile all that much yet.
Keith’s attention diverted over to where Pidge and Hunk were approaching. Lance blinked fast and glanced over at them, and back at Shiro. “Uh… Shiro! This is my roommate Hunk, and our friend Pidge.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, and after shaking hands with Hunk, Hunk practically fanned himself from where Lance migrated towards him, the two of them snickering to one another.
“We just came to walk Lance over,” Pidge said. “Hunk, c’mon big guy.”
“Aw… I don’t wanna study…” he whined.
“Your term grade says otherwise,” they insisted, grabbing him by the arm and starting to walk off. “It was nice meeting you guys!”
“We’ll see you later, I guess,” Allura said, giggling as they watched Pidge and Hunk meander back up the steps. “They seem lovely.”
“They are,” Lance admitted, smiling at them, and feeling his ears heat up at the fact that Keith’s eyes were still on him.
“Pidge is the one that helped you with that website, right?” Shiro asked, and Lance nodded, ducking his head as he suggested they start walking. As the four of them headed for the main building, Shiro said, “I think it’s cool that you’re using your magic for other people.”
“I’m not sure why else I would use it,” he confessed with a nervous laugh.
“So you see peoples’ soulmates?” Keith’s voice sounded, slightly behind him. Lance moved to the side, falling into step with Shiro’s cousin. Keith turned a bit pink in the cheeks, reaching up to scratch the back of his head. “Shiro… told me about how you set him and Allura up.”
“Oh,” Lance said, and laughed a little. “It was just coincidence. I didn’t think soulmates tended to end up in the same town. But it seems more common to find your soulmate in college. I’ve paired up… eight now? I think?”
“That’s impressive,” Allura said. “I was reading the articles on your website during the drive over here.”
“You were!” Lance squeaked, clasping a hand over his mouth as Allura laughed, nudging Shiro in the arm. “Don’t read that stuff! God, it makes me feel like a goddamn… one of those advice columns you find in the newspaper!”
“You should start one, Lance,” Shiro joked.
“No way!”
“So you see the soulmate lines all the time?” Keith asked, and Lance shrugged. “Can you see mine?”
“Sure, I can try,” he said, and switching focus was becoming far easier than before Pidge started his Soulmate Line.
The silver line jutted out from Keith’s upper arm, and Lance followed it past himself to—
—It disappeared.
Lance frowned, looking back to the line linking Allura and Shiro together. It was the satisfying silver line that the red turned to when soulmates were at a closer range. Lance felt the adrenaline spike again, excited that he found yet another silver line, but it wasn’t something to go anywhere other than through Lance—
He was suddenly spiraling like a dog chasing his tail, which caused them to fall back a few paces from Allura and Shiro until Lance was able to gain control of his scramble of thoughts. Sure, he saw his own line plenty of times—it was always East that it never really processed that it moved at all until it was following Keith wherever they went.
Keith stood there, waiting for an answer as Lance pushed his fingers against the bridge of his glasses and cleared his throat. You can’t seriously tell someone you just met that you’re their soulmate, Lance thought, clearing his throat as he prepared an answer at random.
“It—Sometimes it’s hard to… um, focus. On the threads, I mean,” he confessed. It’s not a total lie, he told himself, hoping Keith couldn’t tell how panicked his eyes were when they met gazes, and Keith shrugged, starting to walk off again and taking his silver thread with him.
Jesus fucking Christ, Lance thought, clutching at his chest where it was starting to hurt from how loud his heart was screaming at him through it.
Keith caught up with his cousin and glanced back momentarily to see if Lance was coming. His feet stuttered back into motion, but he couldn’t stop staring at Keith for the life of him. Is this what it feels like being paired up? he thought, realizing that he didn’t know a single thing about Keith. Is this what it’s like being paired with a total stranger?
Lance tried his best to channel his energy into talking about the campus he loved so much. He tried his best to ignore the people he met and knew and was approached by on the sidewalks they walked down, and wished his reputation would just leave him alone. He couldn’t stop thinking about goddamn Keith and what he must think of Lance. He must think I’m a partier or something or a social butterfly, he moaned internally. There wasn’t anything wrong with being a social butterfly, but that certainly wasn’t who he was. Sure, he could talk someone’s ear off if he wanted, but he didn’t thrive off of party energy like a lot of college students did.
Taking money for finding soulmates suddenly felt cheap and ridiculous, and gaudy because he wore it on his sleeve the few times people came up to him and said things like, “Dude! I love your website!” “I keep up with your stories every week!” “Campus Cupid! How’s it goin’?”
Keith stood next to him all those times, curiously, and seeing that silver thread was all it took for Lance’s thoughts to shift dramatically from “Oh, this is just Shiro’s cousin” to “Holy shit look at how perfect my goddamn soulmate is! Look at him!” He wanted to slap himself every time for thinking it. He also wanted to slap himself every time for wanting people to know that he was completely taken by someone who didn’t know it yet.
Thankfully, the campus really was a city, so he spent far more time than anticipated talking to Keith and walking next to him. Shiro and Allura were off in their own little world, always several paces ahead of them, so Lance was free to ask Keith any questions he wanted.
“So… you live in Texas?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah. San Antonio, actually. My parents own a tech company there,” he said.
“Tech company?”
“Coding softwares and stuff. They make antivirus softwares—it’s why I’m majoring in computer engineering so I can work for them in the future,” he explained.
“My two friends—the ones you met earlier—are into computers and stuff. If you… end up going here, I bet they could introduce you to a bunch of computer nerds.” God, now you’re insinuating he’s a nerd, Lance moaned internally, regretting everything and life itself as he was about to stammer out some excuse to take the subject away from that.
Instead, though, Keith laughed a little and said, “Yeah, that’d be cool. I’m kind of introverted, so it’s hard going out and making friends. My social life at my other school is basically… nonexistent.”
“Oh—well, if you enroll here you’ll have me. A-And Hunk and Pidge. And everyone they introduce you to, so your social life would definitely not be nonexistent here,” he said quickly, clutching at his hair as he realized how fucking suggestive that was. “You’ll have me”—stop being such a sap.
They got as far as the engineering buildings and Lance had been to the computer science building enough times to know the layout, even if it wasn’t his major. He showed them the best study spots where he often met up with Hunk and Pidge, and since all the computer labs were locked, they merely peered in through the window of a class that was still going on before they were spotted by the professor talking at the front of the class. Lance yelped and hurried off with Keith giggling behind him.
They lost Allura and Shiro somewhere on the first level—they got distracted by the vending machines—so Lance was acutely aware that it was just the two of them. Walking around. Alone. With no one to… interrupt them.
“I can’t stop thinking about something,” Keith confessed as they approached the stairwell that would take them back down. “About my soulmate line. I mean, it’s probably ridiculous and I’m not really concerned about it, but… do you think you could find it now?”
Convenient that you didn’t have to bring it up, Lance thought to himself. Now you can’t exactly avoid it.
“O-Oh,” Lance stammered, clutching his hands together over his stomach as he looked down at them, and cleared his throat. “I—It’s actually not that hard to see your’s.”
“Oh, cool. I was kind of afraid you didn’t tell me because I didn’t have one,” he confessed. “That would be some depressing news. Though, with there being, what? seven billion people on the planet? Chances of meeting a person’s soulmate is pretty slim.”
“I have a theory that a lot of it has to do with location, too,” Lance confessed. Stop dragging this out, you idiot. “I think the threads know that at some point you’ll come in contact with them, or be in the same city as them. So you could have a dozen different soulmates, but some are closer than others and so the thread picks them.”
“Oh,” Keith hummed, starting for the stairs.
Don’t—
“And… I think the soulmate lines knew you were gonna come here,” Lance said, cursing himself with every word of it.
Keith hesitated at the stairs, and laughed a little, saying, “So, what? So you’re saying my… soulmate or whatever is at this school? That’s a killer incentive to get me to go to this university.”
Lance stared helplessly as Keith turned back to the stairs and started down them, not even waiting for Lance to follow. But of course, Lance did, and each step was yet another mental kick to his rationality. Just—fucking-grow a pair and tell him.
“I was serious, though,” Lance continued as they reached the third floor of the building. “I just—I think it’s jarring being told your soulmate is a complete stranger.”
“Yeah, I guess it helped that Allura and Shiro sort of new each other already. Honestly, Shiro was crushing hardcore on Allura, and you pairing them together was just destiny—if you believe in that sort of thing,” he said.
“But… don’t you want to know who it is?”
“I don’t know. I guess if I end up going here, I’ll probably meet him sometime,” Keith said, and Lance tried not to lose his shit when Keith confessed to liking a ‘him’. One less thing to worry about, he thought to himself. And one more reason to just. Fucking. Tell. Him.
“But he’s right here,” Lance said. He totally thought he was being smooth until he practically tripped at the way Keith whipped around to face him as he stumbled down the last step, and managed a smile that looked more like a grimace.
Keith looked at him, his eyes, and skimmed his attention down and up, back to Lance’s most-likely beet red face.
“H—You—What?” Keith blurted out.
Lance swallowed hard, steadying himself on the railing on that half-landing on the stairs. “I—Um—I didn’t want to freak you out. And Shiro and Allura where there and I didn’t—want—to see… presumptuous or whatever. I guess,” he confessed, putting his hands on his face then and looking away with a groan. “God, I’m so sorry. This is—awkward—”
“You’re my soulmate?” Keith asked, and Lance couldn’t look at him without dreading some look of complete disappointment.
“I—”
“Lance—” They both started, and Lance immediately shut up at the tone Keith used. He tucked his hands against his chin, covering his mouth as he looked over at where Keith held himself back from touching him.
They both hesitated, and Lance gestured for Keith to go first, shoulders still bunched up to his ears like he was preparing to curl in on himself until he imploded.
“Lance,” Keith started, closing his eyes for a moment to gather his thoughts back, “ever since you paired Allura and Shiro up, and I met Allura—I just—I think it’s so cool that you can see peoples’ soulmate lines. And… the fact that you’re helping other people find their soulmates is really fucking cool.”
Lance felt the heat in his face swell up again. “It was Pidge’s idea…” he said quietly.
“Well—regardless, I don’t think it’s presumptuous,” Keith said, and when Lance looked over at him, his face was red and Lance felt like kissing every bit of it. “And… there are definitely worse people to be soulmates with.”
“Really?” Lance squeaked, and Keith laughed, saying, “Yeah, really. As if Shiro would befriend a serial killer or something.”
They both laughed, and with the tension gone, Lance figured it might have been presumptuous, but he couldn’t help himself from flinging his arms around Keith’s neck, still laughing. His insides were a giddy, vibrating mess the second Keith wrapped his arms around his torso and held him back.
They stood there for a few more seconds until Lance said, “Not to pressure you or anything, but… I really hope you decide to enroll here. I want to get to know you better.”
Keith released a breathy laugh, tucking his nose into Lance’s neck and said, “Yeah, I wan’t to get to know you better too.”
That was all Lance could really ask for, considering he never expected to find his soulmate at all.