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The flickering is the first thing Lance sees once he awakens and opens his eyes. Pale, yellow lights twinkle around him and even in the blurry state one is under after first opening their eyes, Lance can still see the faint outline of fireflies. A soft breeze swims across his bare skin and along with it, small leaves float past him. He is outside.
Something is nearing him; it makes a soothing, whistling sound as it does so. The sound glides across the air and surrounds Lance. No matter where Lance’s head turns, he can’t see a threat, help, anything. It’s just him. Lance and the many trees that extend across the hectares filling the forest with thousands upon thousands of plants. A ways across he knows he would spot his home but from his position on the floor, all he can see are the many sparkling fireflies.
Cautiously he rises — the sudden movement scaring the bugs. Now that the flashing of the insects is gone Lance is embraced by the blue shade the moon provides for him. Stars glitter around the moon trying to outshine it. They don’t succeed.
The whistling is getting closer. Still, Lance can’t see the source of the noise. It may be that Lance is hallucinating, or maybe his ears are ringing like they usually do when he is the name on the tip of his enemy's tongue. Regardless of what it is, the noise keeps getting louder and louder and he can't do anything about it. No magic seems to work on the noise, nothing he was ever taught by his parents and grandparents is assisting him in annihilating the sweet sound of a tune he has yet to become familiar with.
"Hello?"
Lance, despite his many attempts at creating the bulletproof facade that would — preferably — become the real Lance, screams. His voice goes to a new pitch he wasn't aware he could create. As soon as the noise leaves him he wants to bury himself in the sea bed and never have to face Earth ever again.
"Woah, sorry. I didn't mean to scare you." the same voice says from behind him.
Lance winces.
"Hey, nothing can scare me!" Lance spins on his heel to face the source of the voice. "I'm a strong guy and, if you couldn't tell, I can defend myself pretty well with these bad boys," he says this with a finger to his biceps.
When there is no response for approximately ten seconds Lance finally opens his eyes to look at the person. Shocked seems like an understatement for when he looks at the person he sees a God — or what he suspects one would look like if they were to come to Earth. Purple sparkling eyes pierce through Lance's own and the black hair flutters every which way the wind sways it. He find himself enamored in the way the stranger looks and even when he notices the smug smirk etching its way onto the stranger’s face, he can't pull his eyes away.
"What?" Lance says accusingly, all the while looking at the stranger’s face and mapping it in his mind.
The stranger chuckles. Lance feels himself sinking in the depths of the sea.
"I just don't seem to see any muscle on you."
The image of a God shatters and ,as much as Lance would love to get lost in the stranger's eyes, he fights against his urges in order to stand up for himself and argue with the stranger.
"I—" Lance steps back half a step. "What did you say?"
The stranger has the audacity to laugh again.
"What I said is that I, Keith Kogane, can not see any muscle on your body."
Lance gasps, then he smiles because the stranger — Keith Kogane — just told him his name.
"Keith, interesting. That doesn't sound like it would be a human name ... are you, perhaps, a wizard?"
Lance has always been told that he has no sense of personal space, that he tends to make people uncomfortable with the close proximity he tends to stand in. Lance, for once, can agree with everyone because, now that he is stood next to this stranger, he realises two things: he is mere inches from Keith's face and this Keith guy is a complete stranger and that Keith has silver speckles in his otherwise dark, matte eyes (but for the sake of what he is doing at hand, he will focus on the former rather than the latter) and Keith, who is a stranger, looks more than just a bit uncomfortable.
Keith steps back.
"Why do you care?" Keith says.
Keith's eyebrows furrow and his arms cross over his chest to distance himself from Lance both physically and — possibly — emotionally.
Lance laughs.
"Hey, dude, don't worry, I myself am a water specialising wizard so it's not like I'm going to kidnap you and experiment on you."
Keith looks him up and down, he looks sceptical, like he still doesn't trust what Lance is saying but it's not something Lance can hold over him. After all, they are still strangers.
"Prove it."
Lance isn't going to tell Keith that from the way he is acting, Lance can easily conclude that he is, in fact, a wizard (or any other magical creature for that matter) instead he extends his arms. His right palm is facing towards the sky while his left palm covers the right one. Focussing on the energy in his palms he feels the sparks. Inside his fingers he feels the movement of his blood and the vibration of his cells. From within the air, water molecules gather around his hands. Slowly, as to not ruin the show, he forms a sphere from the moisture in the air. It grows in size as he moves his fingers to twist and turn the water ball much like one would do with a snowball.
It takes a couple seconds for the ball to become stable enough for him to take away his left hand from the top. When he does, he smiles. The water sphere turned out better than he could have predicted. Rather than the usual, immediate slash it makes as it falls to the floor he finds that the ball keeps shape and he can even bounce it in his hand if he concentrates enough on it.
Grinning, he looks at Keith. Keith's eyes are open wide and his jaw hangs lose as he stares at Lance's hands.
"Impressive, right?" Lance says with a quirked eyebrow and a cocky grin.
"What if I was just trying to use you for experimentation? You would be knocked out at this point! Don't you think before you do?" Keith says, although his voice is raised and it sounds more like a shout than it does a statement. Keith also, even if they are strangers who met due to some sick twist of fate, seems worried.
Lance drops the water. "You don't have to worry, I only ever show that to the people I know possess magic. Don’t look at me like that, the way you were acting gave away that you were somehow related to magic."
Keith turns to walk away, clearly fed up of Lance, but Lance calls for him to stop. Surprisingly it works.
"What?"
"So, are you?"
"Am I what?"
"A wizard.” Lance has never felt the need to throw a football into someone’s face as much as he does now. “Are you a wizard?"
Keith looks at him for a long, silent moment. The moisture in the air sets onto Lance’s skin as his nerves build up with every uncertain second that passes. He has some evidence to back his hypothesis up but, in the end, he could have been hallucinating it all.
"You'll have to find out for yourself."
Keith starts to walk away to the exit of the forest. Lance jogs to catch up.
Keith shakes his head when Lance catches up with him. He clearly doesn't want Lance around any more than necessary but the last thing he said made Lance curious.
"Go away."
"No, you practically invited me to come with you."
Keith looks at him. He looks away. He looks back at him. Lance isn't sure what he is thinking but he looks ready to flee at any given point. Lance doesn't let him. Instead, he throws his right arm over Keith's shoulders and pulls him closer into his own side.
"Get off."
"No,"
Keith looks at him again. He looks away. He looks back. He looks away. From what Lance can see, Keith is about to go berserk on him, he will more than likely try to murder Lance and in doing so, he will reveal his magic. Maybe Lance's logic is somewhat flawed or maybe he shouldn't be so reckless with how he behaves around strangers especially if every look they give him burns.
And then it clicks.
"Fire!" Lance exclaims.
With the exclamation comes the end of the heat on his neck.
"What?" Keith tries to sound like he doesn't understand, Lance knows this, but it comes out more like a plea for the end of his suffering.
"You're a fire specialising wizard!" Lance says. When Keith doesn't respond but, rather, looks away from Lance and at a tree (which begins to smoke thus forcing Lance to quickly wave a hand and pour water onto the smoking area) Lance knows he’s correct.
"Stop setting things on fire!" Lance whines. "First my face now the nature? Hasn't anyone taught you anything?"
Keith turns his head towards Lance. Slowly and dangerously Lance begins to see Keith's eyes. If possible, they have gone a shade or two darker, silver no longer present as the eyes lock onto Lance. Unsure what else to do, Lance takes his arm away from around Keith's shoulders and takes two steps — albeit small ones — away from Keith.
It takes Lance a few minutes of walking before he notices that Keith has sped up so much that the two are jogging now.
"Hey, Keith, where are we going?" Lance asks.
"I thought I told you to leave?"
Lance laughs. Of course Keith told him to leave, that's why Lance is staying.
"I don't even know your name."
Gasping, Lance comes to a stop. Keith follows his example. Lance face palms then shakes his head. How could he be so stupid? And forgetful? He knows Keith's full name and what he specialises in with magic but all Keith knows about him is his magic? His mum would be extremely disappointed.
"We have to start from the beginning!"
Quickly Lance makes his best attempt of improving his appearance after the run. He straightens his clothing — clothes that are covered in mud from where he was sleeping not long ago — and runs his fingers through his hair to smoothen it out, picking out a few leaves here and there. When he is done fixing his clothes and hair he licks his pinky and his pointer finger then brings his hand up to his face where he then proceeds to stroke his eyebrows with the wet fingers simultaneously, resulting in the eyebrow look he's always aimed for.
"Hi, I'm Lance and it's a pleasure to meet you," as he says this he takes hold of Keith's hand and places a kiss against the top of it.
Never has Lance seen such disgust take over someone's face at one of his romantic gestures — forgetting Allura that is, but she's not even into men so he knows the reason behind that. Then it dawns on him.
"What's wrong?"
Keith shakes his head.
"You're so weird. You don't even know me; I could have killed a thousand people with this very hand and yet you are kissing it. Gross."
Subconsciously, Lance had been holding his breath for the landing of some kind of insult or maybe even shouting but when it doesn't come, his lungs expand at the welcome intake of oxygen.
"I bet you say that to all the strangers," Lance mimics a swooning girl from an old, cheesy, romance. With his magic, he falls back and catches himself so it looks like he is being held up by someone. He fans himself with his hands as though he is flustered.
Keith starts to walk again.
"Why did I find you in the forest with leaves in your hair at this time of night, anyway?"
Lance thinks over the question. The possibilities for the answer flood his mind but none of them seem to link with what he was doing yesterday. He could have been sleepwalking but he doesn't recall getting home. He could have been dragged there but that would suggest he was with someone that night, which he wasn't.
The only plausible answer would be that the full moon pulled him along with it like it does the tides.
"Magic." Lance ends up saying.
No one can argue with magic.
Much like no one can argue with fate. Within the same week, Lance hears the tune from the forest.
However, unlike last time when the moon was the only real light source and the only witnesses to the meeting were the trees, now Lance feels the heat of the sun biting at his skin and the sound of rushing cars overpowers the rest of the noise polluting the once natural town centre. By Lance's side is Hunk, by Keith's side is Allura.
"Allura?" Lance questions loudly over the sound of traffic.
"Lance? How peculiar that we met each other!" she laughs. "Hello, Hunk!"
Hunk smiles at her, "Hello, Allura."
The four of them walk into a coffee shop around the corner to "catch up" as Allura put it.
"This is my good friend Keith, he's Shiro's younger brother. You remember Shiro, right? My dance partner?"
"Hard to forget him," Lance says as he nudges Hunk with his elbow.
Hunk, bless the sweet guy, chuckles at the joke.
"And I just so happen to have already met Keith. Although I didn't know we had mutual friends. Must have been fate." he looks into Keith’s eyes as he says this and Keith, very predictably, glares at him until Lance feels the burn on his cheek.
"Oh?"
Ergo Lance replays the story of their meeting to Hunk and Allura. He skips over certain details such as the magic show and whatnot and replaces them with dramatic over exaggerations of Lance's "near-death experience".
When Allura declares that she has to leave (Keith also tries to leave but is stopped by Allura's insistent hand gestures that roughly translate into “you have to stay”) Hunk follows closely after her leaving only Keith and Lance in the practically empty coffee shop. Silence follows, as it does with many of their interactions, Lance notices.
"You didn't tell them about the magic?" Keith sounds surprised.
"No, of course not. They're not magical like us so why would I?"
Lance rests his elbows on the table and proceeds to rest his chin in his open palms.
"I thought you told everyone." Keith says with a smirk.
"I told you, I had a gut feeling about you! You're so disrespectful."
Keith shakes his head. Apparently he does that a lot. "I thought you said that you show it to people you know have magic?"
"Shut up! You were the first person I showed that to. And the first one I know that has magic."
After that, Keith starts to fall for Lance's taunts and in return, taunts Lance back.
When Lance asks if he wants to go somewhere else, Keith grumbles and follows him out of the shop.
They end up walking through the forest again. Now that the sun is out rather than the moon Lance can see his way better. With no destination in mind Lance heads West, away from civilisation as long as people are concerned. They talk for the majority of the walk. Lance telling funny anecdotes and Keith occasionally telling him some of his funnier moments. He learns that Keith once went to the cinema with his brother and their dad to see an action film but, due to seating limitations, they watched a romantic comedy instead and Shiro started crying. Though Keith doesn't share much about himself, he tells Lance enough about his family for Lance to guess what Keith is like as a person.
They carry on walking until they reach a stream. Lance crouches by its side.
"I remember when I first figured out I had magic, I was around ten and I went swimming with my older siblings. None of them had inherited any magical abilities so we all just assumed the magic in our bloodline had seen its end. Then at the swimming pool, I was drowning and all my siblings were messing around with each other and they completely forgot about my existence. Right as I felt my last breath try and escape, suddenly I was sat on the steps, breathing and no longer drowning. No one saw it, no stranger or family member and when I said that I almost died they all laughed." Lance doesn't know why he's telling Keith this. He's known Keith for under a week and already he's telling him stuff no one else knows of. It could well be to do with the lack of options to tell this to. He knows only one other person who has magic that isn't part of his family. Or maybe it's to do with the little self-control Lance has when around Keith. It's like, when Keith comes into the picture, Lance can physically see his self-control leaving his body.
Keith sits down beside him.
"When I figured out I could do magic my whole family was terrified. My mum was the magical one so none of us knew what was going on. I didn't get to learn from anyone else and I had to learn the hard way what responsibilities came with possessing magic."
Seeing Keith now, actually seeing him rather than simply looking at him, Lance realises that, maybe, he isn't alone in his feelings of loneliness and abandonment. Perhaps Keith is like him in a bizarre kind of way and that's possibly why Lance tagged along with him in the first place, because he felt the connection. Their first encounter could be explained as a coincidence but their second meeting can't be anything besides fate. If magic is real, who's to say fate is not?
Lance starts seeing Keith everywhere after that. He shops in all the same places, he is a regular customer at Lance's part-time job, he also attends a lot of the same events that Lance attends.
This time he sees Keith scavenging shelves of jam. His pointer finger plays with his lip as he searches for the jam he wants and Lance, with no self-control at all, walks over to him and completely forgets about any kind of shopping for himself.
"Hey, Keith," Lance says into Keith's ear.
"Crap," Keith exclaims as he drops his phone onto the floor.
Lance laughs.
"Dude, calm down, it's not like I'm going to kill you."
"Shut up."
Lance throws an arm around Keith's shoulders and pulls him into his side.
"Why are you analysing the jam shelf, if you don't mind me asking?”
Keith looks at him and for a split second Lance's face was burning like the last time. "Shiro said I have to get the good jam before I can step foot into the house again."
Around Keith, Lance can't control himself so when he bursts out laughing and his fingers stop playing with Keith's hoodie, he can't catch his breath.
"I think," Lance wheezes. "I think he was just playing with you."
"No, you weren't there. You didn't see his face when he threw me, and the jam out the door."
"What jam did you get?" Lance asks.
Keith hums, "Not sure about the flavour but the brand was called "Marmite". Maybe he doesn't like the brand?"
The arm holding Keith close to him drops. Lance, in his twenty-odd years of living has never heard something as tragic yet as funny as this. Marmite? A jam? Keith has to be joking because if he isn't then Lance might melt into the ground right now. Scratch that, he feels his feet sinking below ground level as he stands there with Keith. Keith the Marmite man.
"Keith are you messing with me right now?"
Keith looks over at him. When he sees the height at which Lance stands he begins to panic.
"Lance! Stop using your magic!"
"Tell me whether you are joking about the "Marmite" thing!" Lance whisper-yells.
"Why would I joke about that?"
Lance begins to fake cry. He jumps out from the ground and falls into Keith's arms with practised exaggeration. With his magic he forms beads of water on his forehead. If one didn't know what was happening — luckily the aisle the two were in is deserted — the picture would suggest Lance is dying.
Keith lets go and Lance drops to the ground.
"Ouch!"
"Your fault." Keith goes back to scanning the shelves of jam.
"Keith, "Marmite" isn't a brand of jam, it's a spread that is salty and hated by ninety percent of the world's population."
Not understanding, Keith asks, "Isn't jam just a sweet spread?"
Lance didn't intend to spend his evening educating Keith on the importance of jam, he did not even have the intentions of leaving the house until he realised he was short on milk. Yet here he is, with Keith, in a shop, explaining what jam truly means.
"So what flavour do I get?"
Lance, with very refined tastes and an excellent talent of matching flavours to personalities asks for Shiro's zodiac sign.
"Let me google it real quick,"
"You don't know your brother's zodiac sign? You're a disaster."
"Shut up."
Keith types into his phone’s search engine Shiro’s birthday.
"Pisces," Keith says, "What does that help you with, though?"
"Shush, let the genius do his thing."
Keith looks at Lance as though he grew a second head. His eyes look amused but his eyebrows suggest he is not, in fact, amused but rather, he is disappointed. Disappointed in who exactly? Lance isn't sure. But if he was expecting anything other than dramatics from Lance after the month of knowing him, he should only be disappointed in himself.
"Apricot."
"Wha—"
"Get the apricot one and ask no more questions. You will thank me later."
Surprisingly, Keith does as he is told. He takes the apricot flavoured jam and purchases it, waiting for Lance to buy his milk. They then both head out of the shop. Once they start walking, silence overcomes them again. It has become somewhat of a comfort to him, the comfortable silences that embrace him whenever he's around Keith. But more than anything, he likes when Keith laughs.
Quickly checking his surroundings to make sure no one is around, he drops his milk bottle only to catch it last second with his magic and makes it float around Keith's head. He unscrews the bottle of milk — still with his magic — and begins to tip it out. He controls the liquid before it splashes on Keith but then — Lance should have seen this coming because, after all, Keith is also a wizard — the liquid spills over Lance fully, soaking his clothes and his hair.
"You di—"
"Shouldn't have been messing around with it in the first place." Keith says.
Lance would be angry that he has to run back to the shop to buy a new milk bottle and suffer the judgmental stares from the shop keeper if not for the laugh that the scene elicits from Keith.
He may have to run back out of the shop after buying the new milk and run to catch up with Keith, but he's fine with that.
Running is something Lance enjoys doing. Results, though nice to see, don't matter that much to him. What he likes more than looking the way he does is the feeling of freedom he gets when he swims and runs. It's the way he feels his blood pumping through his system and the sparks he gets inside his veins that make him love it even more. The only other time he gets that sort of feeling is when he is doing magic but that is reserved for when he is alone. Now, however, he can add to the list of things that make him feel free, that make his heartbeat increase in speed and that make him want more . Now when Lance is around Keith, he gets the same feeling as when he is alone with his magic. Except now, he has someone to share it with.