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Pidge, Lance, and Hunk were smart. Crazy smart. The three of them and a lion could bring the world to its knees.
But they made a huge mistake.
Their first mistake was in challenging Shiro to a 'haunted' corn maze knowing he was easily spooked. What they didn't know was that under the fun-loving, anal-retentive, mother hen surface was no mercy. Shiro was viciously competitive; how else could someone make it to the outer edge of the solar system-- the farthest humanity's ever gone-- and be back in time to blow out the candles on their 25th birthday cake? Not by keeping your head down and making the grade, that's how.
No, he studied the competition, memorized their weaknesses, and used them to demolish scores and reputations. He was the guy hogging the sim, working on his evasive maneuvering until he was untouchable; the guy in the ER detoxing after some jock challenged him to beer pong. Shiro had no desire to settle, he refused to be second best.
Pidge, Lance, and Hunk's second and fatal mistake was insinuating Shiro would be too scared.
Now Shiro was out for blood. Keith just happened to like blood.
"Aw, Keith, you didn't dress up!"
Peeling his eyes from his news feed, Keith pocketed his phone and pushed off the split barn wall to blink out into the dark, spotting Lance along the shadows of the corn maze. "Not true. I'm a devil." A tug of his hoodie revealed a black headband with little plastic horns. It was disappointingly minimal compared to Lance's perfectly executed Barnacle Boy. Mermaid Man was parking the car no doubt.
"That's what you were last year." There he was, coming up the shallow hill to the barn. "I thought you guys were coordinating this yea--"
"Boo!"
Leaping around the corner of the barn was Shiro, covered head to upper thigh in a dirty sheet with two uneven eye holes. To Shiro's satisfaction Lance started, though it was short-lived; "God, you two are coordinating. I didn't think 'dollar bin' was a theme this year."
"Rude. Oh, Keith, you left your candy corn in the car..." Out from under the sheet Shiro dangled the little baggie, making quiet ghost sounds as it hovered over Keith's outstretched hand. "Where's everyone else?"
"Over here," Pidge ran out from the gloom decked in the Link costume they bought for her birthday, Mermaid Man wandering not far behind. Was Mermaid Man supposed to be so pale? There, now he and Shiro matched. "Oh cool, candy."
Link snagged a handful of candy corn from Keith's bag while Hunk set up beside Shiro. Got a 'boo' for his trouble which he laughed off nervously and swatted away. "Oh don't tell me you're scared, Hunk."
"Yeah, that's Shiro's job."
“Hardly,” scoffed Shiro, turning at last to the corn maze. “Well, we better get started before we’re caught for trespassing.”
The rule was that they all went alone— especially Shiro because his fear of all things that went bump in the night. Shiro, naturally, went in first, though not even Keith expected him to volunteer.
All in all, being in a corn maze at night was... underwhelming. There were so many other, better things they could be doing instead. Like play monopoly with real money and watch Pidge and Lance rip each other to pieces over hotels. "You do realize this is just petty enough to be passive-aggressive."
Shiro startled a bit, whirling around to spot Keith in the shadows between rows of towering corn. Hopping over the husks he yanked off his sheet and draped it over Keith's head, adjusting the eye holes with a devilish grin; "What's the point in having a demon for a boyfriend if I can't use it to scare the shit out of my friends?"
"I've taught you well."
Once he was deemed 'scary', or maybe just scary enough, Shiro clapped him on the shoulder and flashed him a silly half-salute. "You know your mission?"
"To stain the upholstery of Hunk's car?" Keith chuckled, strutting a couple feet to strike a pose. He felt silly as hell but his boyfriend looked especially pleased so he figured it wouldn't be so bad to play along. Hopping up onto his tiptoes he pecked a kiss on chapped lips through the thin bedsheet. "I guess you'll know where to find me if you need me."
His first victim was, of course, the stone-thrower himself: Lance. He was strolling around, scrolling through his phone, listening to some club music through one of his earbuds. Oh yeah, he'd be easy to scare; that bravado of his only went so deep. Keith was about to shake his glass house.
When he reappeared it was a few yards ahead. Lance's shoulders went up and his body went stiff almost immediately. "...Oh my god, dude, that's not scary at all," he laughed with a rush of breath. Keith watched amusedly, grinning under the sheet as Lance's expression cycled through shock, fear, relief, irritation, then anger. If Keith had tried to follow them any more closely he would have gotten whiplash from the trip. "Seriously, Shiro, that's not funny."
"I'm not doing anything!" Shiro yelled back, crashing through the corn, nowhere near Lance. His eyes never left Keith, going wide. Under his feet the corn crackled and crunched as he stepped forward, hand reaching for the sheet.
He was so close Keith could hear him breathing, uneven and racing like a cornered rabbit. Except Lance was the dumbest rabbit ever and was sticking his hand in the coyote's mouth. With a small sound he grabbed the sheet and yanked it off.
"AAHH!"
Hunk whimpered and whirled around in his dead end, peering through the corn with the hem of his shirt fisted tightly in his hands. "L-Lance? Buddy?" His response came in Lance's trailing screams and the whooshing of a thousand trees in a hurricane as he barrelled right through the corn maze.
"What happened?!" Shiro called out, a mock lining the edge of his voice. Right, they were here to scare him, weren't they. Somewhere far away to his left Pidge snickered and picked along the smoothed and quieter path.
Keith was silent. Perhaps that was what made him more nervous; Lance's screams were probably Keith's favourite thing about him and he never failed to tease him about it. As a joke for Keith's birthday, Hunk and Lance recorded a two-minute track of Lance screaming. Keith plays it whenever he ends up having to drive Lance somewhere and he starts to scream along. It doesn't help that Shiro and Pidge think it's hilarious.
To hear him silent was... unnerving. "Guys? I-I think we should stop now..." From deep in the shadows-- just close enough for Keith to see him without being spotted-- he could see the sheen in Hunk's eyes, hear the wobble in his voice and the way his teeth clattered. Damn.
He couldn't do it. Seemed like Shiro had done as good a job in teaching him too.
By his snickering and fumbling around in the brush Keith found his boyfriend almost right away; "Hunk's having a rough time out there," he gruffed, tossing the sheet back at Shiro. It was dirty where Lance threw it on the ground and trampled over it in his terror. Worth the dollar. "Congratulations, you've made me a big softie like you."
"Remind me to mark my calendar," Shiro said with a wry grin. "Where's Hunk?"
Keith nodded over his shoulder; "Chances are he hasn't moved."
And he hadn't. Shiro scuffled up the path, turning into Hunk's hideaway with cheesy "Ooooh! Hunk, I am the ghost of Halloweens future, you will bake Shiro a pie. Oooh!"
Though he heard Shiro coming a mile away he still stiffened at the sight of the dusty bedsheet and Shiro's long legs and muddy boots stomping up the too-narrow path. His tight lip melted into a goofy smile and he swatted at the sheet with a relieved laugh. "Sure, pal, what kind do you want?"
"Shiro likes strawberry-rhubarb. Oooh."
From afar Keith watched over his goofy friends, making sure his two biggest dorks were laughing and joking, deciding to be 'scared' together and find the damn exit before their noses went numb. The sound of them singing Britney Spears almost drowned out Lance's shrieks as his paranoid fear-riddled mind picked demons out of the dark.
It was then Keith turned his attention to Pidge.
For super-nerds like Pidge the maze was more a challenge of wits than a spooky little walkthrough. Ambiance and atmosphere often went over her head, so she would be the hardest to scare.
Start with the basics: what scares people in demon movies? Well...
Creeping up behind her he leaned in close to her ear, making sure to stay well hidden in the shadows and move when the clouds passed over the moon. Ambiance. Getting his mouth good and close to the back of her neck he made sure she'd feel his breath creeping down the collar of her jacket. Slowly the breaths turned into a low, guttural growls.
With a gasp she whirled around, eyes wide and searching. Scanning. But of course she wouldn't find anything there. Naturally, Pidge being Pidge, she shrugged off her fear and walked on. Chalked everything up to a trick of her mind probably. There wasn't a rational reason for anything as big and menacing as Keith sounded to just disappear. Right?
Keith bit his lip with a thoughtful grunt; what would get her attention...
Candy corn. Candy corn was both rational and delicious. Candy corn on the ground was delicious but just strange enough to catch her attention. Where did it lead? Why, to a Jeepers Creepers' style scarecrow of course. He knew for a fact that she'd seen that movie-- because she made them watch it with her and he had to act as shield for both Shiro and Lance whose tastes were Romcom and Disney respectively.
At the foot of the scarecrow she looked up just in time for the moon to peek out from behind the clouds, theatrically backlighting it like a goddamn cinematic masterpiece. Keith worked fast to untie the fasteners around its arms and body from behind until it slumped forward at her feet unceremoniously.
If she shrugged this off then he'd eat his entire foot and just walk out of this corn maze a failure.
For a long moment she simply stared down at it, lying in a motionless heap on the ground. Her genius hard at work; Keith could smell wood burning.
So close to giving up and she finally cracked; first a hiccup of a laugh, then the shallow shake of her head. And then, once she gave in to the doubt, she cracked. "What the FUUUCK!"
He could die a happy man, watching that wild mop of hair scrambling up the flattened path. Mindless and irrational the way fear and corn mazes were meant to be.
Lance was the victim the maze spat out-- literally. "Wow, man," Keith snickered, popping a couple more candy corn into his mouth, "You look like shit."
"I don't want to talk about," Lance panted back, collapsing against the wooden fence beside Keith. He offered him some corn but was aggressively ignored. "Where's Shiro?"
"I found him for, like, a second. But he ran off so I came here."
They waited in silence, listening to Shiro and Hunk chuckle and snicker their way up the path. "Oh, I think that's it!" Hunk exclaimed, running ahead only to fall to his knees and hug the ground. "God I thought I was going to die looking at corn."
Shiro stepped around him, carrying Pidge on his back where she clung and shivered like a dying woman to a buoy. He didn't seem to mind it that much though-- actually he looked quite smug about it.
"I won," Keith announced when Shiro and Pidge came up to check on the breathless and blessedly quiet Lance; Hunk poking his way back to the group once he'd evened out.
Shiro adjusted Pidge on his back and leaned in to kiss the big winner. Shockingly enough she didn't start gagging or burst into flame. It's a rare gift, and Keith took advantage of his friends' trauma to playfully pop a candy into Shiro's mouth; "You were right guys, that was fun! Let's do this again next year!"