Chapter Text
The team’s rules are as follows:
- Play your fucking heart out.
- You should try to come to practice.
- Everyone gets a nickname. You get no say in your nickname.
- Rookies must do what they are told.
- Saturday’s a rugby day. It’s also a drinking day. Drinking before, during, and after the game is permitted and encouraged.
- You cannot change out of your uniform after the game. Your hard-earned dirt and blood belong at the afterparty. Wear them with pride.
- You must pledge your undying hatred for the Sigma Phi Epsilon fuckbois. Associating with the fraternity is forbidden. May those self-righteous, cooler-than-thou bastards choke on their red Solo cups and die a slow and painful death.
Keith glanced up at the ragtag group of guys that comprised the Garrison Tech Rugby Club and back down at the rules in his hand. Unlike high school, fighting was sort of frowned upon in college. Unless you attended frat parties where testosterone flowed like Natty Light and each party was inevitably broken up by a bro-brawl. Keith would never ever join a fraternity. He couldn’t stand the type of people they attracted or the fact that they were essentially buying friends. It was just a way for the popular kids to easily find each other in college. A fucking continuation of high school.
But a rugby club? A gathering of like-minded guys who were rough around the edges and enjoyed a little blood and controlled violence in the form of a contact sport? And who would supply him with shitty but free beer? Keith could get behind that. He signed the paper and joined the team.
The reason for the rugby team’s hatred of fraternities, or at least one particular fraternity, was that the poorly-maintained rugby field butted up against Sigma Phi Epsilon’s backyard. The fraternity would have parties and throw trash and crushed Solo cups onto the rugby field. The rugby team would clean the field before practice or a game and then get shitfaced and toss their beer cans over the fence and onto the fraternity’s property. And this battle had raged on since the beginning of time. Or at least since the history of beer that resembles piss both in appearance and taste.
After a grueling Thursday night practice, the team captain, a sixth-year senior the team called Ballsac (yes, that was his nickname), drove his pickup onto the field and blasted Johnny Cash while the team drank and discussed the lineup for their first home game on Saturday. They polished off a bottle of bourbon and a disgustingly obscene amount of Milwaukee's Best, tossed their empty tallboys over the fraternity's fence, and graciously returned a trash bag containing the cups and condom wrappers that they had collected off of the field prior to practice.
-----
As was expected of a rookie, Keith arrived on the field an hour before their first home game on Saturday. Ballsac was already there, lining what he could of the absolutely-trashed field.
“Must’ve been one hell of a party,” Keith mused.
Ballsac was fuming has he walked over to join the small gathering of rookies. “I am so beyond pissed! I can’t even see straight. They just keep saving their trash and they’re dumping it all over the field. I hate Sig Eps!”
Keith grabbed a trash bag and looked at the daunting task in front of him. He didn’t want to overstep his boundaries but… “Would they stop if we stopped? Like, we could just be bigger than them and not dump our beer cans in their backyard.”
“They will never stop! And they started it! They’re privileged little bitches and this is just what they do. They shit on people they think are below them. And if this field were used for cheerleading practice they’d have no goddamn problem and keep their trash to themselves!”
Keith quickly conceded and nodded in agreement even though he thought his idea was worth a shot. But he’d only been a part of the team for a meager four weeks.
A fellow rookie—Keith couldn’t recall whether Hunk was his nickname or his actual name—collected bottles and flattened cups next to him. “I sort of agree with you,” he quietly offered. “Maybe when we’re seniors and in charge of the team, you know?”
However, Keith’s mind was quickly changed during the game when the frat boys proceeded to hang over their fence and cheer for the away team. Glaring at the whooping bros and their stupid snapback hats, Keith’s blood boiled as he tried to watch the game from the sidelines. Oh, bitch, it’s on.
Keith finally got the chance to unleash his fury with fifteen minutes remaining in the second half. He was relatively small but scrappy and he loved the look of surprise on his opponent’s faces after he tackled them. On the sideline closest to the frat house, the teams organized themselves for a scrum and Keith couldn’t believe that the frat guys were still standing there, booing and heckling their own university's team. Granted it was a Division Three club sport and not varsity. And the team really was terrible. But still.
The team lost possession of the ball again and as the scrum broke apart, Keith could hear one member of the fraternity trying to convince the others to stop booing. He stole a quick glance over his shoulder. The “nice” frat guy was well-muscled like the rest, maybe even more so. And yes, he was pretty damn cute. OK, so there’s one guy out of the entire house that’s ten percent less douchey than the rest. Big fucking deal.
“Look alive, rookie!” Ballsac shouted.
Keith pushed the cute guy out of his head as he prepared for a collision with the opposing team’s offense rushing at him. He watched the winger with the ball shift his weight for a fake-out to the right. Anticipating the move, Keith dove at the player, but took a cleat to the face as they tumbled to the ground. He heard both his teammates and the frat guys gasp and cringe as they watched.
Shit, that hurt.
After helping him up, Ballsac clapped Keith on the back. “Fuck yeah, rookie! That was rockstar! You all right? Get cleaned up, I’ll put Trash Stache in for the rest of the game.”
Keith nodded and looked over at the frat guys again, who were all staring with shock at the amount of blood gushing from Keith’s nose, lip, and… well, face in general.
The “nice” frat boy leaned over the fence. “Are you OK?!” he called, eyes full of genuine concern. He, too, wore a backwards snapback; a long wisp of white hair spilled out of the opening and flowed in the light breeze.
Yeah, Keith was probably showing off, but he wanted to make this boy flinch. He blew his dark, sweaty hair out of his face and, in the process, spat a plume of blood in the frat boy’s direction. “Never better,” he said with a grin before turning to sprint across the field. Once on the other side, he peeled off his number 2 jersey, handed it to his replacement, and then wiped the blood off of his face. Glancing back at the fence, the same boy was still standing there, looking as if he was unable to tear his eyes away, mouth hanging open. Keith told himself it was probably because of the copious amount of dried blood on his face, but liked to think that it might be for other reasons.
-----
As was customary, the away team stuck around for beer and drinking songs immediately following the game. They took turns launching their empties over the fraternity’s fence, but as they became more inebriated, they began hurling full beer cans. After putting a few holes in the fence, they continued on to drink at the house that Ballsac, Stone, Swamp Thing, and Marshmallow rented just off of campus.
-----
Each practice made Keith hate the fraternity even more. They would show up to practice and find the goalposts painted neon pink. And then the rugby team would return the favor by spray-painting penises all over the sidewalk in front of the fraternity house. There was one particular day where the field was covered in bras and the fraternity had left a friendly note taped to the goalpost:
Probably the most action you guys will see all year.
Had they literally thrown a “support our cause by taking off your bra and donating it to throw onto the rugby field” party?
At this point, Keith wouldn’t put it past them. Assholes. “We spend more time cleaning than actually practicing!” he griped to the other rookies.
Hunk picked up a zebra-print bra and held it at a safe distance to deposit into a garbage bag held by Pidge, the rookie fullback.
Pidge wrinkled their nose. “I don’t want to know where that’s been. Careful, Hunk, don’t get hand herpes.”
“That’s- that’s not a thing is it? Hand herpes? Maybe I’ve heard of that before. Oh man, I should get gloves.”
Pidge smirked with amusement and let their roommate take off in a panicky search for latex hand protection.
The team’s most senior tighthead prop, Stone, ripped the love note off the goalpost and crumpled it. “They’re taking it way too far, way too early in the semester. What the hell are they going to do at the end of the year? Just blow up the damn field?”
“Probably would be an improvement on the current field,” Ballsac observed. The team was lucky if the university mowed the field once a month. And there were divots so deep that Hunk could easily hide himself by lying in them. He’d actually tried and had almost succeeded in evading his rookie initiation.
The university wouldn’t spare a dime until the team could actually win a game or draw a significant crowd. Last year’s game day attendance average was three people. Three. And that always included at least one injured player who dragged himself out of bed to cheer for the team. The remaining balance of attendees usually depended on how well the members of the team could maintain a romantic relationship. It was a rugby club, not a “we’re charming, freshly-showered, and good at dating” club.
“One of these days, I’m going crash one of their parties after practice and get blood all over their stupid date-rape couch,” Stone seethed.
Keith kind of liked that idea. “We could all rush in and leave muddy handprints everywhere on the walls. It would be a bitch to clean at the very least. Grind dirt and blood into the carpet.”
“Yeah, Dorothy! I like the way you think!” Stone high-fived Keith.
“Please don’t tell me that nickname is going to stick,” Keith complained.
“Already done, amigo.”
Dammit.
Keith had purchased his cleats at the nearby Goodwill and had opted for a pair of lightly-used, red Adidas. Unfortunately, being the only one on the team with red rugby boots, the team’s seniors started calling him Dorothy almost immediately. Being from Kansas didn’t help either.
“So what do you boys think? This Thursday? It’s their annual toga party...” Stone was obviously into this idea, eyes almost maniacal as he rubbed his hands together.
Ballsac sighed with resignation. “I’ll make an announcement once everyone gets here and see what the rest of the team thinks. Now let’s get all these… unmentionables cleaned up. If the director of club sports rides by on his shitty little golfcart, I’m going to get my ass chewed out at the next meeting.”
-----
The team got blitzed after Thursday night’s practice before crashing the infamous annual Sigma Phi Epsilon toga party. There weren’t any injuries so many resorted to arming themselves with fake blood or just good old plain mud from the field. But Stone ripped a scab off of his knee just for the occasion.
They snuck around the fence and to the front, waiting behind the shrubbery while a sorority entered, donning their draped togas.
“I think the Delta Gammas didn’t have any clean sheets so they resorted to pillowcases,” Pidge observed.
After the barely-dressed gaggle cleared, the team ran up to the porch and burst through the front door, tracking in dirt, and immediately started smearing their muddy hands on the framed composites on the wall. Stone successfully marked the upholstery in his immediate vicinity with his own blood. Most of the attendees shrieked with disgust or stared open-mouthed at the disruption. Or maybe because the team had the gall to attend a party dressed in their ripped and soiled practice gear. Probably a combination of the two.
As the newest rookies, Keith, Pidge, and Hunk were looking to impress the senior players, so they snuck toward the kitchen to deliver a particularly devastating blow. Hunk and Pidge planned to destroy the keg pumps so that the party had almost no alcohol supply. Plus, no kegs meant less cups thrown onto the field. Acting as the lookout, Keith peered around the corner and watched the fraternity president storm into the main room and tantrum at the destruction the team had caused in less than thirty seconds.
“No!! No! You cannot- Oh my god. Gross! Leave!”
More fraternity brothers arrived on the scene, one quickly getting in Ballsac’s face. “Bro! How did you get in here?”
“The front door, fuckboi. Get out of my face. We’re just returning your trash,” he spat, dumping out the garbage bag of padded bras in the middle of the room while the team’s largest and most intimidating forwards all gathered around their team captain.
Keith smirked. The frat boys knew they were outmatched and wouldn’t dare try to fight the entire rugby team. Nevertheless, the others finished their mess-making and quickly left. Hunk and Pidge successfully sabotaged all three keg pumps and dashed toward the front door. Keith followed, still looking around for the best use of the mud covering his hand. He spotted the “nice” frat guy who appeared to be trying to talk the president down from whatever revenge he was already plotting.
OK, so he’s being nice again. And he’s even cuter up close. But he’s still a frat guy. Fuck him.
Keith ran past and smacked the guy on the ass, leaving a “Keith Kogane was here” mud handprint on the white sheet.
While the majority of the team stumbled off to their usual dingy tavern, Keith walked back to his dorm, laughing to himself the whole way. He hoped those were actual sheets the frat boy used and that the mud stain would remind him of the rugby team everytime he crawled into bed.
Although, the boy had sort of left his own mark as well. Keith’s entire hand stung like hell and the pain radiated up his forearm for almost ten minutes. It literally felt like he’d slapped a brick wall.
-----
The rumor around campus on Friday during Keith’s physics lecture was that the Sig Ep toga party was a complete disaster; the worst in the history of toga parties. Apparently the frat house was repulsively dirty and there was a severe alcohol shortage.
-----
Rookies had the unenviable task of taking turns to wash the rugby uniforms. After a horrifically muddy away game on Saturday, Keith and Pidge found themselves knees deep in funky rugby gear at the laundromat on Sunday afternoon.
“This is such crap,” Keith complained, holding up a disgusting pair of shorts. “Although I think I figured out the reason for Swamp Thing’s nickname.”
“Swamp ass,” Pidge stated without even looking up at the offending garment.
Keith shuddered an affirmative and tossed the shorts into the industrial washer.
After cramming the jerseys, shorts, and socks into four machines, and depositing the appropriate amount of quarters, Keith dug his calculus homework out of his red backpack.
“You’re staying here?” Pidge asked, shouldering their bag.
“Yeah, by the time I walk back to my dorm, I’d just have to turn back around to change the laundry.”
“My dorm is close by. You’re welcome to hang there.”
Keith shrugged. “Nah, it’s OK.” He was gradually becoming more comfortable around his teammates, but socializing outside of team-related activities still felt a little strange for him.
Pidge didn’t push the issue. “All right. I’ll be back in thirty to help you switch everything out.”
Keith posted up at the long table that ran down the center of the establishment for laundromat-goers to fold their laundry. Immediately burying his nose in his work, he paid no mind to the people that came and went. And came and paused.
And stared.
And collected their clothes from the dryer, constantly looking over their shoulder in Keith’s direction.
And began folding their clothes next to Keith. Very closely. Very meticulously. Eventually grating on Keith’s nerves. There's plenty of room on the other side of the table. And no one folds laundry that slowly!
Keith eventually peered up at the person standing dangerously close to his wider-than-socially-normal interpersonal space and immediately recognized the streak of white hair. Uh-oh.
The “nice” frat boy. With glutes of titanium.
Keith quickly buried his face in his book again. Maybe frat guys were like big, dumb T-rexes. If you don’t move, they can’t see you. Wait, wasn’t that debunked? Why would Jurassic Park lie to me like that? Whatever. Maybe they’re more like bears? If you play dead, they get bored and walk away.
While Keith considered the logistics and feasibility of silently slumping to the ground and hiding under the table, a flying pair of black boxer briefs stopped him mid-thought as they landed on his text book. “Ugh, control yourself!” the frat boy gasped dramatically, snatching back his undies.
“Um… what?” Keith looked up with confusion and saw the boy giggling at his own embarrassing situation.
“Sorry. There was… static. And airborne underwear and…” the boy explained, chuckling and trying to shake one staticky sock from another. “Apparently I really need to invest in some dryer sheets.”
Taking a longer look at the boy, Keith quickly realized why his laundry folding seemed more deliberate than usually called for. He had an above-elbow amputation. How had he not noticed that before? Regardless, Keith just looked back down and chose to ignore the cute boy. And his own discomfort. He still doesn’t realize who I am, right? Don’t engage.
“ θ = π /3.”
“Huh?” Keith looked back up from his homework.
“The answer. You’ve been staring at that problem for a while. Multivariable calculus?”
“Oh… yeah. I thought you were talking, I don’t know, fraternity stuff or something.”
The guy laughed. “Calculus fraternity! Theta Pi Cosine!”
Keith suppressed a snicker. “You have a terrible sense of humor.”
“Can’t take yourself too seriously.”
Keith shrugged awkwardly and tried to hide his grin.
“Sigma Chi-squared,” the boy said, brainstorming more names for math fraternities.
“Stop,” Keith said, laughing this time. “And that’s statistics.”
“Ooh, I love a boy that knows his math,” the frat guy purred, folding his boxers surprisingly well with one hand.
Is it getting warm in here?
“You’re an astrophysics major, right?”
“Uh, yeah.” How did he-
“I’ve seen you around the building.”
Keith paused. The guy had noticed him? No. Impossible. “You’re one of those people that remembers every face he sees. And you know everyone’s names, right?” That’s one of those weird skills that popular people have.
“No. I remember seeing your face. It’s pretty memorable,” he said with a goofy grin.
Memorable? Keith’s ears suddenly felt hot as he tried not to watch the boy fold yet another pair of underwear. Is he hitting on me? He’s just messing with me. Why is he folding all of his underwear right how? Can’t he do that at home? And who folds underwear?
The boy continued. “And I don’t think I ever got your name. I’m Takashi, but everyone calls me Shiro.”
Shiro. He’d definitely heard that name around on campus. Keith had actually wondered how people went about making a name for themselves among a college campus of twenty thousand people. Fraternity brother, star student, good looks, outgoing personality. Shapely, rock-hard ass cheeks...
Too complicated for me .
“Do I get to find out your name? The suspense is killing me.”
Keith looked up with a raised eyebrow, but there wasn’t a shred of ridicule in the guy’s voice. “Um, it’s… It’s Keith.”
“Keith…” Shiro repeated, rummaging in his laundry basket. “Keith… Now I know who’s handprint I’m sleeping on.” Shiro held up a white sheet with a faded, Keith-sized handprint. “I don’t think it’s going to come out.”
His stomach suddenly felt queasy. I knew I shouldn’t have told him my name. Quick. Insult him. “Well, you’re an idiot because you don’t sleep on top of the loose sheet. That’s what the fitted sheet is for.”
Shiro just played along. “Oh, man. You mean your handprint will just wind up crumpled on the floor next to my bed every night? I need a re-do and I’m going to wear a fitted sheet next time.”
Keith snorted. “That would look ridiculous.”
“Yeah, it would look like a nightgown my grandmother sleeps in. Although, wearing bedding for a party is pretty ridiculous to begin with.”
“You could say that,” Keith replied, trying to sound judgmental.
“Well, that whole thing the team pulled was a pretty good prank,” Shiro offered. “The guys deserved it and that couch needed to be replaced anyway. But beating dirt and grass out of the shag rug from the living room was not fun.”
Keith didn’t reply and went back to rereading the same calc problem that he’d been staring at since this whole interaction had started. He didn’t have anything more to say. And this is where the conversation starts getting awkward. This is why I hate talking to people. No matter how hot- No. Cute- No. Completely average. No matter how completely average-looking they are.
“You should come to a normal party some time.”
“Like… the whole rugby team?”
“Well, I meant you. We can take baby steps with the rest of the team.”
My ears aren’t red, are they? Don’t act excited. “Um… maybe... I guess.”
“Keith, you’re not leaving me with a lot of confidence here.”
“That must be a first.”
Shiro just laughed off Keith’s snark-asm. “Seriously, come to our party this Thursday.”
“Maybe,” Keith responded, desperately trying to keep his eyes glued to his book.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Shiro piled folded laundry into the basket and picked it up. “Don’t disappoint me.”
“I disappoint quite often, actually.”
Shiro ducked his head closer to get Keith to look him in the eye. “You got into the astrophysics program at Garrison Tech. And you can take down people twice your size on the rugby field. Give yourself a little more credit.” Shiro then headed towards the exit. “See you Thursday!” he called over his shoulder.
-----
As Keith approached the field for practice on Tuesday, he spotted Hunk and Pidge hunched down among hundreds of little white handles sticking out of the ground.
“Sporks!” Hunk called, holding a plastic utensil up just in case Keith wasn’t sure what a spork was.
Keith’s shoulders sank as he surveyed the damage. “This is going to take forever. There’s hundreds of them. Ballsac’s going to have a conniption.”
“I just feel bad that they wasted such a great utensil, you know?” Hunk lamented, admiring the spork in his hand. “I’ve seen people use forks to do this sort of thing. And plastic knives are worthless, no one would miss those. But sporks… They’re so efficient and- it’s just… such wasted potential. I wonder if the café in the student center is completely wiped out. What am I going to eat with?”
Pidge just looked annoyed. “Hunk… A normal fork will suffice.”
“But it’s not the same!”
Gritting his teeth, Keith considered knocking on the fraternity’s door and giving them an earful. Maybe even shiv the bratty president in the ribs with a spork. That was feasible, right? If he did it hard enough?
But instead, he knelt on the ground and helped his fellow teammates remove sporks from the much-abused turf. “I guess the field needed aerating anyway,” Keith reluctantly offered.
“I think the massive craters were doing the job just fine,” Pidge replied.
Keith then recognized the rattling of Ballsac’s truck as it pulled up to the field. The door creaked open and he heard a shout. “What the fuck ? Are those sporks?!”
-----
On Thursday night, Keith finished studying. And then he paced. And checked the time. And contemplated his limited wardrobe by blankly staring at his closet. And then Keith… wait for it… did not got to the party.
He couldn’t ask Pidge or Hunk to come with him. What would they think? They’d literally signed a sheet of paper stating that they wouldn’t associate with Shiro’s fraternity.
And he hated the idea of showing up alone. Shiro would maybe talk to him for fifteen minutes and then run off to socialize, leaving Keith to finish his terrible beer by himself. That’s what popular guys were like. Keith would sit on some nasty, stained couch and pray that no one was noticing that he was drinking alone. And then he’d leave the party and Shiro probably wouldn’t notice anyway.
So Keith stayed in his dorm and thought about the boy’s smile as he drifted off to sleep. Actually, he thought about how hard the boy’s ass was and what the rest of him must be like. But his smile was nice, too.