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Keith is not used to this. He had never been apart of a circle on Earth, not for lack of interest or disdain for bud, he had just been wildly anti social and while he had been invited into one once or twice he had gotten to nervous about the idea of getting high with a group of people he barely knew and was not even sure if he liked. So when the invite had come down from Lance to crash in his room at the castle him, Hunk, and a joint Keith he had even surprised himself by agreeing to this.
Keith sat across from them his fingers nervously tapping on the floor as they pulled their supplies out. A pipe that was definitely bigger than Keith had anticipated it to be, a pretty big bag of green stuff that he could only assume they would be smoking, a plate of what looks like are teal brownies that Hunk had informed him were completely off limits, like six water bottles, and more snacks than he’s ever seen on the ship before. Talk about being prepared. He’s so busy staring all of the for lack of a better term shit laid out on the floor it takes him a second to realize that Hunk is speaking to him. “The brownies are for Shay and Allura. They’re supposed to be stopping by at some point.”
“That’s cool.” Keith did not know Shay very well as anything besides Allura’s girlfriend.He had seen her a couple of times around the castle hanging out with her and generally being cute but he’s gone out of his way to like avoid getting close to her on purpose. He’s not really ready to get attached to a friend’s girlfriend and then have to deal with her not being there suddenly. He’d gone through that too many times with Shiro’s boyfriends as a young teen. He’s wised up now. “So like when are we going to start?”
“Start with this.” Lance half pushes, half throws the bottle of water into Keith’s hand which he very expertly manages to catch and promptly drops as he watches Lance and Hunk share some kind of expression of mutual fondness that he does not really recognize. It’s not really surprising actually, Keith’s very aware about the fact that there’s something going on between the two of them and no not only because he keeps seeing them hold hands when he’s not supposed to be looking and it’s definitely not because he has a crush on the both of them. It has nothing to do with the latter at all actually. Because he doesn’t have a crush on either of them. They are his friends. His very good friends that were nice enough to invite him to smoke with them and he was not going to ruin this by being a useless gay loser.
Keith squirmed in his seat as he watched Hunk packing the pipe’s bowl with what looked like more bud than it could actually properly fit considering its size, which by Keith’s untrained eye actually looked like it was fairly oversized for three people. Watching Hunk search for their lighter for almost a full thirty seconds was doing nothing to soothe his first time smoking jitters. It look like Lance and Hunk had already developed a relaxed pre burn rhythm with each other, which did admittedly sting a little bit, which it probably should not have because hey it was his choice to leave with the blade of marmora for all those months and yeah they had been friends for years and were definitely dating also, so relax keith.
They finally find the lighter with a chorus of triumphant yeahs and the a pair of smiles that made Keith’s chest flutter like a butterfly. God he’s got it so fucking bad for the both of them, he was not going to survive this if he tried. Hunk lights it up first breathing for a couple of seconds before passing still smoldering piece to Lance with a grimace. Lance takes the deepest quiznking breath that Keith has ever seen until all of the red of the bowl has faded to a crispy black. Hunk breathes out first and it’s weirdly breathtaking, the smoke exits his mouth with a second nature ease it dissipates in the air slowly as he slowly but surely opens his eyes. It’s not until Hunk’s eyes are open again that Lance finally pulls the bowl from his lips. Still holding his breath he passes the piece to Keith who stares at him blankly for a second before finally taking it as Hunk chimes in. “Don’t be like him he’s showing off right now and if you try to take a pull like that you’re definitely gonna choke. Just breathe in I’ll spark you this time.”
Keith takes the pipe, watching as Hunk holds the lighter up. Weird. He breathes in as it’s lit up, and immediately coughs on the smoke. Which intern makes Lance, a cloud escaping his own lungs in a way that’s good looking to Keith in a completely different way. Where as Hunk and been purposefully slow letting him get a good look at how cute Hunk was. Lance is laughing, ugly laughing for Christsake but Keith’s pretty sure he’s never seen him look this good in his entire time knowing him and he struggling to keep his eyes open while he coughed up a lung to get a better look at Lance. What a love sick fool.
“I don’t think you got any from that.” Lance eventually manages to wheeze out as Hunk was passing Keith a water bottle which he sucked down greedily. Lance finally managed to get out enough breaths to calm down finally before adding.“You gotta slow down dude, don’t try live up to my years of choir pulls.”
They pull the piece from Keith’s hands as he drank some more, nectar of life honestly, passing it to each other once. Both times blowing into his face which was admittedly far too much for the his gay teenage sensibilities, they were kill him if they did again. Before offering it again to Keith who much more warily took it. This time he took a much smaller breath before pushing it away. This time he struggling to keep the air trapped in his mouth and managing to do for about two seconds before coughing again. Lance and Hunk exchanged a look with each other after he finally stops that Keith cannot really place. He’s pretty sure it’s a cross between gay adoration and genuine confusion, but he’s never been great about reading faces before so why would this time be any different then than. “Do you know what shotgunning is?”
“Like getting married when someone is pregnant?” Keith supplied, knowing immediately that was not the right expression that they were going for by Hunk’s soft snorts and a look from that Lance that definitely looked like are you fucking kidding me dude that he always reserved just for Keith. Great.
“Nah, nah, nah. It’s when someone like cprs smoke in your mouth. It’s what Hunk and I did when we were first starting out.” Lance looks to Hunk, who nods. Weird. “Cause like you might have an easier time with that. I mean if you want to do that.”
Oh. CPRs smoke in your mouth. Like mouth to mouth. With Lance or Hunk. Yeah, he could do this.“I mean we could try it.”
“You sure this is okay with you?” Lance asks again, Hunk nodding more vigorously next to him. Keith drummed his fingers nervously against his own thigh, his heart pounding in his chest. It was not really kissing, right? Just shotgunning which was definitely a perfectly normal platonic activity. Just guys being dudes? “Keith?”
“Yeah. I want to. It sounds fine.” Keith managed to keep his voice a lot more even than he really felt. Nerves bubbling up in his stomach Yeah, he could do this. This was going to be fine and he was not going to die from a broken heart if he never gets to kiss them again. This was going to go great. “If this isn’t going to make things weird between you two.”
“Why would it do that?” Hunk asked without hesitation, which of course he did. Their relationship was strong and this was a totally platonic activity, that was going to go absolutely fine. “Okay so I’m gonna take the next hit so if you wanna do this scoot over.”
Keith leaned pretty close to Hunk’s face trying his best not to crowd him, but also almost shaking with excitement. When Hunk pulls the piece away from his face he leans over to Keith, looking him in the eyes for a just a second before Keith leans forward all of the way. The lip contact isn’t the amazing stuff of fairy tales, but it does make Keith’s beat like a bass drum even before he’s breathing down smoke. Then they’re both not pulling back and his heart is beating faster than ever, It takes a couple of seconds before he realizes that this has passed from shotgunning to kissing and it takes a couple more before Hunk pushes him back a little. “You okay?”
“I’ve never been kissed before.” The words tumble out of Keith’s mouth with the smoke before he can actually stop them. He’s so embarrassed he wants to sink through the floor and die and Lance is? Lance is fucking laughing at him and it’s so gentle it makes his heart fucking feel so heavy. And Hunk? Hunk is smiling at him like he hung the moon and what’s going on.
“If you wanted to kiss me you could have asked me.” Hunk beams before turning a loving gaze to Lance for a second who nods again through his laughter and Keith feels very left out of some kind of lover’s telepathy loop. What was a happening? “We like you, you know.”
“April fool’s was like a week ago.” Keith tries to deadpan, but his voice cracks half way through. Most of him already dead set on this is some cruel joke from fate designed and desperately trying to squash the glimmer of hope that kept forming over and over again in his chest.
“Man, we’re not that mean. We both like you.” Lance is clearly trying his best to sound as calm and relaxed as he possibly could right now, but you can hear just the slightest edge of nerves in his voice. Ever ready to get his heart broken at literally every single opportunity that he could. “Trust me, we wouldn’t tell you that if we didn’t.”
“So you, like, me? Me?” They both nodded again. “You’re sure it’s me we’re talking about.”
“We’re pretty sure that we’ve both been crushing on you for a while, dude.” Hunk confirmed again, as Lance nervously intertwined their hands. Keith does not miss the gesture, and what a few minutes he might has mistaken for possessiveness was now clearly for a call for affectionate reassurance that this was not going completely horribly. The gesture is so soft it makes his heart ache, like he was staring at pieces of it had not known how much he had needed before.
Quiznak, Keith has more feelings than he has space in his chest for. He was slowly but surely moving towards them at his own pace. They probably will not want him for long. Maybe a few months, while they figured themselves out as a couple. They would stay together for the rest of the their lives and leave him in the dust with the knowledge he had gotten to be apart of their romantic lives for even just a moment.
A hand is on his shoulder. Lance’s warm hand, a grounding force in his gut just like it always had been. The slightest bit of affection. Enough to still the heart that had banging in the inside of his chest cavity. He looked up at them both, resting his own hand on Lance’s tawny fingers. The meaningful gaze that Keith has been trying not to read so much into for the past year. Wow, he had been right. “You good?”
“Yeah. I’m good. Better than ever.” The words tumble out of his mouth, an awkward jumble of syllables that in theory formed good words that would definitely move whatever this that he had currently fallen into, into some kind of tangible understandable shape because he really could not for the life of him figure out why these two people. The most wonderful people that he had ever met. Hunk who had smiled, laughed with, figured out more about the universe with in the past couple of months and watched it blossom into fresh soft friendship that had taken root in heart as something completely wonderfully different. Then there was Lance, Lance who drove him crazy, drove him to do better, to be a better person, a better leader, the purest contrast to his energy. Where did he really get around even being allowed in their orbits, let alone for his adoration to be something completely returned by. “I mean it, just give me a few.”
Keith takes a sip of his water bottle, trying to soothe the knots inside of his stomach, before looking at the both of them over again, Lance and Hunk have both shifted, a little bit farther away from each other and just a little bit more into his space. Lance leans over the grin he’s seen him give the people he flirts with a thousand times, now incredibly aware that it was being completely directed at him in ways that he really had not ever expected it to be. “You should kiss me.”
Lance laughs as Keith managed to barely get those syllables out. But he does press a kiss to Keith’s nose by way of answer and honestly more than anything else that has happened upon this night, nothing really got Keith emotionally ready for watching Lance take a breath longer than Keith had known him capable of taking, turning to face Keith again, gently lifting up Keith’s chin. Lance anchoring Keith to the situation wordlessly with his eyes before moving forward and pressing his lips to the others. This time Keith was actually able to keep the smoke in his body for a couple of seconds before sputtering out a miserable and probably unattractive puff of smoke. “You got it that time.”
Hunk and Lance exchange a high five before turning their attentions back to Keith, who after that is starting to feel a little bit of something else. He knows that he’s definitely going to be a lightweight, after all this was all new to him and to introduce it with kissing of all things. He’s definitely feeling a lot more light headed than he expected to be feeling already but he reaches one of his hands for Hunk and the other Lance sliding their fingers together. Yeah, he’s light headed but he’s definitely, definitely good right now.