Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If there was one thing that Keith was good at, it’d be doing things out of spite. For example, going into fashion design of all things for college, rather than something like physics or business; the sort of things that his SATs told him would be a practical path. His original plan had actually been to move to Colorado and become a cliff diver at Casa Bonita— to put on a pirate costume and do fake sword fights with guys in gorilla suits and eat fake, terrible Mexican food on a discount and then spend all his tips in the arcade, topping all the Skee-Ball high scores.

Unfortunately, someone else beat him to the job, and so there went his almost lifelong dream of a whole six minutes.

Figuring that he might as well put some of the scholarships he’d received to use, Keith decided that, yeah, college was probably a good idea. So he rifled through all the acceptance letters from places he’d forgotten he’d even applied for and compared all the other offerings that came with each before finally ending up at this university like a normal eighteen year old who was straight out of high school. And majoring in fashion design. It wasn’t a major any of those college planning programs had anticipated. It wasn’t one that Keith himself had anticipated. He had simply chosen it because his high school counselor had told him any sort of creative and artistic career path would waste any potential for a more…practical profession that he would excel in.

This whole career in sewing had started as something spiteful to give the pessimistic woman a nice ‘fuck you’, but it quickly turned out that, it really was perfect for him. He got to study art, got to draw and be creative, to be challenged and do things beyond sitting and taking notes or reading a textbook every day. And so what if he had to talk to other people a lot more than expected; he was still undeterred.

Other people seemed to think so too, namely Shiro. Which was probably why he’d signed Keith up for this damn competition in the first place. He never should’ve left his mail sitting on the counter or let Shiro be his photographer.

“It’s basically like Project Runway,” Shiro told Keith after he had learned that his roommate had not only signed him up for the competition but that they had also accepted Keith. “Except instead of like, being on TV and shit and going to fashion week and all that, you get a scholarship to Voltron University and a spread in Marmora or something with your stuff in it.”

Keith only glared at him and tossed the piece of paper onto the table. “But you couldn’t have asked first? Why did they even send me that?”

“Because I knew that this would happen. Look, I’m sorry for not getting your permission first, but it’ll be a great opportunity. It’s super cool. Says here that it’ll cover your tuition and all that, and Voltron is one of the biggest art schools in the entire world. Also, you’re already one of the top design students at the Garrison, why would they not want you in this?”

Keith raised an eyebrow at Shiro, glancing at the digital portfolio Shiro had sent in and then back at him. He pointed to the lapel of the deep purple suit that he was wearing in one of the pictures. “You know I hot glued that thing, right?”

Shiro scoffed. “Just try it, okay? Who knows, maybe you’ll actually like it. Besides, if you end up doing that again, you can just play it off as resourcefulness, right?”

And now, only a week and a half later, Keith stared up at the sign for the Baku School of Art and Design. The email had said the competition was going to be here, because it was a smaller sister school of the Garrison School of Art and Design in LA. He couldn’t really care less about that right now though, not when he could feel his goddamn eyelids sticking with sweat and his legs burning through his black jeans under the harsh sun.

Shiro had pulled out of the school’s parking lot a few minutes ago— he’d unloaded Keith’s case of supplies and clothes for these next three weeks from the trunk of his car, gave him a side hug, and left, not bothering to help Keith carry his shit in. Oh well, it was fine. Whatever. The door was only about twenty feet away, he would manage.

He set the duffel bag on top of the case and pushed it towards the metal doors behind the sign reading ‘Voltron University Scholarship Challenge.’ It was eerie how similar the layout of Baku was to GU. The most notable differences were the colors— a pastel blue and green rather than the bold orange and gray that he was used to.

“Hey, can you hold the door?” a voice called from behind him. Keith paused and turned to see a tall boy in sunglasses lugging a giant suitcase and a girl with platinum hair, her own glittery suitcase running up the pavement. “Thanks,” the boy said with a grin as Keith propped open the door. “Would’ve been impossible to do that on our own.”

Keith nodded and followed them in. There was something almost familiar about that voice, almost like— no. That was stupid, there was no way that it was him. It was just really hot outside and his mind had gone jumping to conclusions for no reason.

Besides, Shiro had said that the people invited to this were design students from the Garrison, and Keith was mostly sure that he had never seen either of them in his entire life. There was something familiar in the mannerism of the boy that reminded him of someone else he used to know from what felt like eons ago now, but Keith brushed it off quickly. He’d stopped this kind of pathetic, wishful thinking years ago and it was time to stop.

Unfortunately, much to the trio’s disappointment, it was not much better inside except for the fact that they were out of the sun. It was stuffy in here too, and surprisingly dark for having so many windows. Keith sighed. Despite it being July, there was no air conditioning in here. Could they really not have found a better place to host this thing?

In the corner, two girls sat behind a card table with a poster board reading ‘CHECK-IN HERE’ taped to the front. They looked up as the door shut and the one with pink hair flashed them a smile that was far too bright for a place so moist and warm. It was unnerving.

“Hi,” her companion said, a girl with blue hair that was equally as bright. “You’re here for the scholarship competition, I’d assume? We can check you in right here, welcome and good luck!”

The girl with the sparkly pink suitcase stepped up first. “My name is Allura,” she told the one with pink hair, “and that is Lance.”

They looked down at the piece of paper sitting on the table until they found the two names, highlighting them in pink. “Alright, cool. The auditorium is just around the corner, you’re all set!”

Keith was frozen for a moment, staring after the pair as they turned for the auditorium and complained about the lack of air conditioning. It had to be a coincidence. It was just a really weird, cruel, fucked up little thing that the universe had conjured up. There were plenty of people in the world with that name. And that hair style. And that voice.

“Uh, hi?” the girl with blue hair said uncertainly, snapping Keith out of his panic. “You’re here for the scholarship too?”

“Oh yeah, I am, sorry. Uh, my name is Keith.”

The girl nodded sympathetically. “No worries, Keith. I totally get it, this place is a special kind of hell in the summer. I have no idea why they decided here would be the best place for this. It heats up like a goddamn sauna and it’s been making Florona crabby today,” she giggled. “Ah, here you are. Auditorium’s right around the corner, good luck!”

Keith nodded. “Uh, yeah, thanks,” he said and turned, following Lance and Allura to the auditorium. When they turned the corner, Keith was standing directly in the entryway for the auditorium. He was somewhat startled by it, the girl had not been kidding when she’d told him right around the corner. It was luckily cooler than the lobby, though it seemed big enough to fit hundreds of people instead of the ten or so competitors that were supposed to be here. Though it didn’t really make sense to him, Keith decided not to question it.

It seemed that everyone else was already here, judging by the other six others in the room who had stacks of luggage next to them. There was yarn blocking all the rows except for the first five, forcing them all into closer proximity. Lance and Allura settled into the fourth row to the left of the stage and Keith made a mental note to not sit in the fourth row.

But either way, they’d see him. And considering Keith’s history with Lance, they’d probably recognize him too. Except maybe there wouldn’t be any confrontation. Maybe by some miracle Lance wouldn’t recognize him, because a lot could change in a few years. Still, that didn’t make Keith want to take any chances.

The aisle seats in the fifth row were already taken up though, and Keith didn’t feel like pushing past people to get to the middle section. There were already people occupying the aisle seats of the first three as well, because of course it was, and the only easy aisle seat remaining was the one in the fourth row— right across from Lance. Keith grimaced and briefly considered just leaving altogether or taking a chance and scooting past someone to get to the center. Anywhere but next to Lance.

But a moment later, Keith realized just how stupid the whole thing was. It’s just a goddamn seat, go already, he scolded himself. He shuffled down the aisle quickly, plopping into his seat stiffly and not once looking up from the ground.

As he pulled out his phone, ready to text Shiro— to tell him he was inside safely or to bitch about Lance, Keith wasn’t sure yet— he heard Lance exclaiming lowly to Allura, “Of course it’s him, I’d recognize that goddamn mullet anywhere! What do you take me as, ‘Llura?”

“Well, why don’t you go say hello, then?” came Allura’s unphased reply.

Keith’s fingers stumbled over the keyboard, shoulders rigid.

Mullet.

There was no way they weren’t talking about him. Though Keith had worked very hard the past few years to suppress everything from high school— especially the people, which wasn’t that hard considering he’d gone through three different high schools, each with a copious amount of easily forgettable people and personalities— the memory of Lance and his love for making fun of Keith’s hair was something permanent.

Before he could really panic or hide, Lance was right there, grinning and bouncing on the heels of his red Converse.

“Hey.”

Keith looked up and froze, his eyes locking onto Lance’s. His voice was deeper than Keith remembered it to be, his shoulders broader, and face longer, but it was still undeniably Lance.

Suddenly he was back in junior and senior year. A moron who occasionally wore shorts in the winter and had the inexplicable idea that everything Keith did was to one up him. Warm brown skin, an irritatingly competitive smirk, and eyes that sparkled even under the most painful and bright fluorescent lights. Yeah, Keith remembered him alright.

Lance had not been the kind of person Keith would ever be able to ever forget. Whether it be because of how persistent and annoying he was or because Keith may or may not have developed a minor crush on him somewhere along the way despite it all— one of only around six guys that Keith had ever really, really liked— he was not sure.

During his first year in college, Keith had occasionally let his mind wander away from a lecture or a textbook and wonder what Lance was up to, how he was doing. But there were bigger things to think about here than a boy he used to know like some sort of love-sick teen in a Hallmark movie. It had been ages since that particular thought had crossed Keith’s mind. He was completely over Lance, though there was still a part of his brain that was in complete shock because what were the odds that he’d see him again— here.

When he said nothing, Lance’s eyes widened in what looked like hurt and shock. “Dude. Keith. Oh my god. Do you honestly not remember— It’s Lance! Ring a bell? We uh, we went to high school together, man.”

Keith blinked hard, snapping himself out of his shock. He opened his mouth to reply but Lance was shaking his head. He’d taken too long to reply and now Lance had the idea now that Keith had a shitty memory and didn’t know who the hell he was. Once again his mind whispered to him, oh god, you fucked up.

“You’re kidding, please tell me you’re kidding. There is literally no way that you just— forgot me like that. What the fuck.”

“Uh, sorry, I—” Keith began, but whatever he was going to say completely died in his throat. “I— Sorry.”

“Wow, I can’t believe you just… okay then. Uh sorry. I just thought that— nevermind. Sorry, this is kind of awkward now. You just uh, looked like someone that I knew from high school. Sorry, I’ll just uh…” Lance gestured awkwardly towards Allura again and scrambled back to his seat, shoulders hunched, as a man with bright hair and a handlebar mustache stepped onto the stage.

Keith felt dizzy. What the fuck did he just do? Lance thought he didn’t remember him. He’d looked hurt over that fact. And even more embarrassing, they’d been going to the same fucking college for two years now, and Keith had never noticed. Hell, they were even in the same goddamn program. He groaned. That was fantastic.

All he wanted to do right now was to run out of here, call Shiro to pick him up, and hide for the rest of his life until Lance was the one to forget he existed. Instead, Keith shoved his phone into his pocket and watched the man onstage walk over to the podium. Four others in business wear trailed onto the stage after him.

“Welcome, young designers!” he said loudly, voice projecting throughout the theater even without a mic. “My name is Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe, and this is my scholarship challenge. I have looked through all of your portfolios myself and I must say there is some brilliant young minds in this room. I look forward to working with you all as your mentor during this competition. I wish you all luck and hope you’ll learn something while you’re here as well. Here with me are my judges, who will be doing the actual analysis for each challenge.”

He pointed towards the first judge, a large man in a deep purple and black suit with a stoic and almost bored expression. “This is Kolivan, the editor of Marmora Magazine. The top three designers will each get a spread in the next issue. This is Sendak, one of the directors at Galra Modeling Agency, who has generously let us hire some of their models. This is Ryner, one of our professors at Voltron. And last but not least, Haggar, the current creative director at Zarkon, one of the top brands in the nation for the past few decades.”

The students applauded politely and Coran beamed. When the judges trailed off the stage and into the first row, he continued. “As you may have read from the email sent out earlier this month, this will be a three week competition. We will have three challenges for each week that you’re here— Challenges 1; 1.3; 1.6; 2.3; 2.6; 3; 3.3; 3.6— and for the final three, Challenge 4 starting the following day. For Challenge 4 you will get three days instead of two. At the end of every week there will be a runway show displaying your works, even if eliminated before the week is done. And now a few words from the president of Baku, the lovely Ms. Luxia!”

Keith heard Lance scoff even with the loud pop music suddenly blaring as the president stepped forward. “Couldn’t he have just called them challenges one to ten?” he said to Allura. She shushed him.

The music faded out again and the woman stepped forward. “Hello and welcome to Baku, it is truly an honor to have you here. Here at Baku, we pride ourselves for having a safe and warm environment for the students, and I hope that you’ll all come to feel it during your time here. You all have very bright futures ahead of you,” Luxia said.

This time it was Keith who rolled his eyes and snickered. “Warm is a bit of an understatement there,” he muttered, wiping his sweaty hands on his jeans. “It’s hellish and stuffy here that’s what we’re feeling.” Goddamn it was gross in here. He had the small hope that the dorms they’d be staying in would be a bit better, but deep down, Keith knew for a fact that they were just as un-air conditioned as this building. It was fucking July in Los Angeles, why couldn’t they at least have a fan in here?

The girl sitting two chairs down from him, Pidge, Keith was pretty sure, laughed a bit at his words, and the two made eye contact for a brief second before turning back to the stage where Luxia had now descended the stairs to the front row as well.

“Well that’s all from us for now!” Coran said. “We will take a short, two hour break for lunch in the dining hall, and you are welcome to go across the street to the residence hall you’ll be in, names and rooms are posted in there as well. If you ask one of the BSAD volunteers, they can show you to the work room where you can drop off your supplies. Have a wonderful lunch and I will see all of you in the workroom later for the first challenge!”

Keith stood immediately, following after two other students he didn’t know. He realized that he probably should’ve, considering they’d been his classmates for the past two years. During his time at GU, he should have recognized Lance at least.

He picked up some sort of ham sandwich from the dining hall and went straight for the residence hall. AC or not, he was not going to be lugging his suitcase and other shit around for the rest of the day. It was easy to find, mostly from the bright balloons and signs out front. There was only one other person there. Ryan Kinkade, the bright red embroidery on his sewing case. He didn’t say anything as Keith came up beside him and squinted at the clipboard.

When he found his name next to a room number and a floor, Keith sucked in a breath as he realized that next to it was also Lance’s name. “What the hell,” he muttered, taking a bite of the sandwich. This was a pretty damn big residence hall, why were they sharing rooms? And more importantly, why was the person he had to room with Lance?

Alright, being with a random stranger would have been uncomfortable too, but sharing with Lance made it about thirty times more awkward for sixty more reasons. Keith huffed a sigh.

From beside him, Ryan said, “It’s so we don’t take up too much space while we’re here.” There was a small frown on his lips as well. “There’s less to clean up and sanitize after we’re gone.”

Keith rolled his eyes. At least he didn’t have to room with the guy he had a crush on in high school who didn’t think that he remembered him. “Yeah I guess,” he replied tersely, before picking his bags up again and moving to drag them up three flights of stairs. There was something about aggressively lugging a bag meant for rolling up a few stairs that could really calm a person.

When he got to the room, two keys were dangling from a piece of pink ribbon on the door handle. There was a sticky note that read ‘Keith and Lance :D’ in dark pen. He scowled at it, snatching one of the keys and opened the door. The room was surprisingly large, and though there was still no air conditioning, in the far corner there was an electric fan clipped to the windowsill next to the slightly ajar door that led into a small bathroom. At least they didn’t have to use communal ones, a sure disaster even with only a few people living here. And they didn’t have to sleep in bunk beds either, which would be an even bigger disaster.

Keith dropped his bag on the closest bed and sighed, walking over to turn on the fan. It was stuffy for being in one of the closest residence halls, and it smelled like a goddamn retirement home. He was tempted to just stay here and take a quick nap, but if Lance were to come in while he was asleep it would somehow get even more awkward.

Wait a minute.

“Fuck,” he muttered, eyes widening. Sure, when he’d first seen it, it was unpleasant to know that they’d be roommates, but it was only now setting in what that really meant. They were going to have to share a room. And a bathroom. And workroom. Coran had never explained what exactly happened when someone got eliminated, but Keith was pretty sure that even if one of them got eliminated early on they’d still have no escape from each other except for maybe during model fittings and the runway shows. It was virtually impossible to avoid him here— and a small part of his brain didn’t really want to avoid him either, though it went heavily ignored— but damn if Keith wasn’t going to try his hardest to do it anyway.

In the end, Keith took the rest of his lunch and his materials bag to the work room. It was pretty open with several tables, mannequins, and other small supplies lying around— Keith nearly tripped over a French curve as he rolled his bag over to the workstation with his name tacked to it. The volunteer sitting in the room reading a book snorted.

At this point, he wasn’t even surprised to see that the station to his left was labeled as Lance’s. The other boy’s bags were already sitting there— his happy shark pin cushion already sitting out and personal fabric scissors sitting in the materials cubby. Fortunately for Keith though, Lance himself was not currently in the room.

Eventually more people began to trickle in, all of whom Keith ignored. And then Lance came in, talking to Hunk, who Keith vaguely remembered from pattern drafting in freshman year. At one point they had done a project together, and with it being so obvious that the two were friends if Hunk’s exasperated but fond and attentive smile was anything to go by, it just made no sense why Keith had never run into Lance. Maybe he had during that first year, and just brushed it off as sleep deprivation and missing him.

Lance waited until the very last moment to sit down at his station— something that was actually kind of pointless considering that their individual workspaces left at least fifteen feet between each person, but whatever— and Coran was striding up to the front of the large room with a clipboard and a large box with a tarp thrown over it.

His fellow competitors fell silent as Coran mounted the short platform and placed the box to the side. Keith didn’t really see why it was necessary to stand on a platform when he was already well over six feet, but he said nothing. He was quickly coming to realize that this man’s actions were best unquestioned.

“Hello there!” Coran exclaimed, loud enough that he could probably be heard two floors below. “I hope you all had a wonderful lunch and have introduced yourself to your workroom neighbors by now, I would like to get straight into your first challenge.” He paused, beaming at the mumbles of affirmation— though there was a scoff from Nadia Rizavi and Ryan Kinkade, who leaned over and did a quick but complex handshake of some sort— and strode back over to the covered box.

“Now, as you may know this is not the most traditional form of earning a scholarship,” Coran said. He twirled his bright mustache around his pinky finger as they scoffed. The most exciting things for scholarships was usually an interview, this was much different than any other scholarship any of them had ever applied for. “And so you should expect the unexpected, to know and learn how to adapt and make things work. Out in the field you’ll never know what you may run into and how much your intuition and resourcefulness matters. And that is why for your first challenge, you will be creating a design that uses at least two of these unconventional materials found in this box.” He tossed aside the tarp dramatically to reveal the box was full of random obscure materials— saran wrap, dried pasta, a pile of pillow pets.

Keith almost laughed. It was like they really were doing Project Runway. Coran was already fitting into the role of an especially eccentric and wacky version of Tim Gunn, that was for sure. Keith noted to tell Shiro later when he called.

Coran smiled again at the designers’ confused, scrutinizing looks at the box and the materials and clapped his hands. “Alright, you may begin in a moment. For this challenge and most of the others you will get exactly two full work days— that is, until ten thirty tonight and ten thirty tomorrow. I will be back for consultation later on, good luck to all of you!”

A few of the others lunged towards the box as Coran stepped away, quick and ruthless like a pack of middle aged women living in the suburbs stepping into Costco for a tray of shrimp on the morning before Thanksgiving. Lance and James were in the lead, shooting each other a glare as they piled stuffed animals and long boxes of saran wrap into their arms and kicked in the other boy’s general direction in the hope that he might drop something important— something like that one box of bowtie pasta everyone seemed to be after or an extra yard of muslin. Keith wasn’t exactly sure what James was going to use that much saran wrap for, perhaps he was going to wrap someone in six boxes worth and call it high fashion.

The only ones to remain in their seats were Keith, Hunk, and Ina, pulling out their respective sketchbooks as they watched the squabble from a safe distance. He wasn’t overly concerned about the others taking all the good stuff as he began to think of something interesting that he could add to the cropped jacket currently sketched out on his page— some sort of textured area on the sleeves from crushing up the macaroni, maybe? When everyone dove for that first box, they hadn’t noticed when Coran came back up and set another box a few feet away and winked at the remaining three designers.

Two or three minutes later Keith was somewhat satisfied with his sketch, reminding himself that it didn’t have to be perfect because there was still a mockup to do before the final version. He placed his pencil into the sketchbook and closed it, getting up to get his own supplies. Lance looked up for a moment and raised his eyebrows as Keith took two, then three of the jumbo pillow pets and only ten yards of muslin opposed to the thirty or so that his competitors had opted for. Quickly, Keith glanced at the clock and picked up the last of his materials then speed walked back to his station.

By the time that Coran came around for consultation, Keith was finished with his patterns and already a third deep into his mockup. He didn’t look around the room too much. It was quiet and everyone was hyper focused on their project, but from what he could see, everyone was doing pretty well. Truthfully, Keith probably wouldn’t have even realized that Coran had come in were it not for James’ sudden, indignant outburst.

“What do you mean I used mostly muslin?” he said in frantic incredulity. James waved towards his sewing machine, where a large, thick sheet of saran wrap was sitting under the presser foot. “Do you see those? Those are leggings! Made of saran wrap! Not muslin— saran wrap! With all due respect sir, I think that I’m following this challenge just fine, why should I adjust my design?”

Keith rolled his eyes but turned back to his own project. James was at the very far left end and in the front row. It would take Coran at least another half hour to get to where Keith was, in the complete opposite corner of the room. He was currently in the middle of skinning the fur off a jumbo panda pillow pet with a knife, attempting to hold in the laughter trying to surface as Lance not-so-subtly watched from his periphery. There had been a few weird looks from a few of the others too, mainly from Hunk and Allura, but for the most part everyone eventually had turned back to their own work. It was already five and they would have to go for dinner soon— there was not nearly enough time for watching other people work and get their critique right now.

Though his plan wasn’t entirely solid and he rarely did women’s fashion, Keith was pretty confident in his design. It might not have been enough to win the challenge, at least he wasn’t doing anything like James’ weird ass saran wrap leggings. He felt bad for the poor model who would have to wear that abomination.

Soon enough, Keith was finished cutting the last piece for his top. Lance had thought that it was the damn funniest thing in the world that Keith had done a full on mockup beforehand with his muslin fabric— nearly all of it, unfortunately— but he was still managing. The muslin was not going to be a main part of the outfit anyway. It was probably going to make it much better for the model that he would end up working with, but it could be easily replaced by magazine or more pillow pet skin in some places. There was a pile of intricately folded newspaper on the far corner of his work table, strung together by a single thread in what would become the overskirt once he was done with everything else. Beneath it was the hides of far too many unfortunate ladybug pillow pets, something that his competitors all seemed to be having a hard time grasping.

Hunk walked by with a snort, pausing to stare at the pile. “Woah,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Where’d the rest of them go?”

Keith shrugged. “Dunno,” he replied, though he knew damn well where it had ended up after he discarded the rest of the pillow pet carcasses. Upon seeing the sad looking pile, Lance had screeched and gave Keith an incredulous look before scooping up all the rest of the fluffing inside and tossing it onto his own table. From the looks of it, he was making them into cloud-like balls dangling at the bodice of the long dress slowly being pieced together on the sewing form. It looked pretty cool if Keith was being honest, but he said nothing.

“Well, it’ll look pretty sick on whatever you’re making, I think,” Hunk said. “Good luck dude!” With that, he continued to the front. Keith watched as Hunk dug around one of the boxes before pulling out some pipe cleaners with a small cheer. He had never seen someone so excited over pipe cleaners, but everyone had their own thing, Keith supposed. Hunk’s just so happened to be bright green pipe cleaners.

Quickly, Keith surveyed his work table. The skirt could probably be done now, but he’d have to wait on the models to come in so he could properly sew the top together. He wasn’t sure how well it was going to work out, but it was too late to change course now. Opening the fishing box that served as his supplies case, Keith pulled out the stuffed hippo pincushion— a gag gift from Shiro when Keith announced that he was going to pursue fashion design. He could hear Lance scoff again and looked up to meet the other boy’s eyes. Lance seemed to be using his sewing machine to make some sort of tarp out of gold toned magazine pages, somehow still able to manage steady, stable stitches as he stared at Keith.

“Don’t you have anything better to be doing with your time right now?” Keith asked, tilting his head and counting the T-pins in his hands. Six should be able to hold this for now, he decided. “Like, I don’t know, working on your own project or something?”

“Mine is going excellent, thank you very much,” Lance said proudly. He lifted the presser foot as his needle stopped moving and cut the thread, holding it out for Keith to see. “And it’s pillow pet slander-free. Unlike someone’s.”

Keith rolled his eyes, a sharp stab of frustration sparking. It was hard to think that he had actually liked this dumbass at one point. Looking at him now Keith could see nothing but an obnoxious, overconfident asshole. Sure, he had always kind of wanted to hit Lance in the face— mostly with a biology textbook, though on some days, shamefully, with his lips because fucking hormones or feelings or something— but it was much harder to resist the temptation at this current moment.

Before he could say anything, Coran strolled up, firmly grabbing Lance’s shoulder. He jumped in surprise, nearly tearing a corner of magazine still stuck under the presser foot and this time it was Keith’s turn to scoff. “Number Three, my boy! And how is your design going so far? I assume that you will have enough for when the models come in soon, yes?”

Lance nodded. “Yeah, I think it’s going pretty well so far. I was kind of thinking of using these as a sort of cuff and collar for the top of my dress, you know? And the wrap is going to be the base for this little cape-thing I’m making over here with these, though I think that I might be able to use it with pipe cleaners or something to make a cool little belt.”

Keith let his eyes linger for a moment, watching how Lance’s eyes lit up as he spoke, a small grin on his lips. His enthusiasm was undeniable and as obnoxious as a worktable partner that he was, Keith couldn’t help but huff in amusement before tearing his eyes away again.

But it was difficult when Lance was there, doing that. Obviously Keith didn’t like him anymore— it had been years and if he still liked Lance it would be completely pathetic and ridiculous— but damn was he feeling a bit light headed right now. Lance always had this weird aura that seemed to draw people in like moths, allured by his brightness and longing to stand within it. Perhaps that’s why Keith had let himself get close in high school. No matter that though, it seemed to grow stronger when Lance got excited; his pull was stronger and made it harder for Keith to stomp down that terrible, bubbly feeling that always taunted him whenever Lance was around. One would think that it would have dulled over time and years of not even seeing each other, but unfortunately for Keith, the universe was cruel, and it was proving to be near impossible.

No, he scolded himself. You need to fucking concentrate right now, you can moon over Lance later. Not that he was mooning over Lance, of course, because that was completely and utterly ridiculous. It was a motivator to get him to stop looking at Lance— because holy shit he just looked over at Keith again— and actually work on his damn dress. Nothing more, nothing less. He turned his body in the entirely opposite direction and focused on his work.

In Keith’s opinion, it was coming together rather nicely, despite being much less dramatic than what Lance’s plan seemed to be. He wasn’t entirely sure how the top would work— a cropped blouse made mostly of folded newspaper— but the mockup version he’d done with printer paper looked okay at least. The pants were going to be a mix of the pillow pet fur and butcher paper, sewn to be high waisted and hopefully going to about midcalf in length.

Keith rolled out the butcher paper now, a sharpie in hand. It would look plain just how it was, so scribbling a small pattern wouldn’t hurt anything. Despite being mid consultation with Coran, Lance looked over and grinned, shaking his head. “Fuck, dude, that’s so extra,” he said.

Instead of replying, Keith raised a finger on the hand that wasn’t drawing and continued. What this was going to look like, he wasn’t sure yet, but at least it’d get him creativity points, wouldn’t it? Coran laughed, saying one more thing to Lance that Keith didn’t catch and then he was walking up to Keith’s workspace.

“Hello there, Number Four,” he said cheerfully. “And what do we have here?”

“Uh, actually my name is— nevermind.” Keith decided that it probably wasn’t worth trying to correct him. It seemed that everyone was a number now, just another contender. He moved over a bit so Coran could walk around and look at his work, poking at small things and scrutinizing his table. He tried not to be too put off by it, continuing to draw on the paper, but it was hard. Coran was rather… eccentric, a very loud and interesting man, unlike anyone Keith had ever met before— almost like a weird, red haired, older version of Lance, really.

“Uh, this was my sketch,” he said, dropping the sharpie to pick up his sketchbook, giving it to Coran for him to look at. “Sorry the cover’s a bit, ah, fuzzy. I’m planning to use these for the pants here,” Keith explained sheepishly, pointing to the drawing. “And that my sketch overall isn’t looking too great. I can still make it but drawing clothing has never been my strongest suit.”

It had taken a while for him to stop focusing on the anatomical detail of his sketches and more on the clothing that he was drawing over it, but the lines were still neat and clean. The actual dress that he drew over it was not as nice. The lines were heavy and scribbly, as if the artist had been changing their mind on what to do every two seconds— which was not entirely untrue. It had taken a bit longer than Keith cared to admit for him to decide on a solid design without factoring in the what ifs immediately after, and even then, he continued to make minor changes. This might’ve only been the first challenge, but he wanted to leave a decent impression on the judges.

“This top is fascinating,” Coran commented, pointing. “How do you plan on executing this and making sure that it doesn’t clash too much with the vibrance of the pants?”

Keith capped the sharpie and pushed the butcher paper off to the side. “I’m going to have to measure the model a bit more specifically, but I was thinking of using this newspaper, folded kind of like this and sew or glue it together,” he said confidently. Gesturing over to the sewing form he continued, “Kind of like this here.”

“Hmm,” Coran mused. Keith watched as he stroked his mustache but remained still, taut with anxiety and adrenaline. He was pretty secure in his abilities, but what if it wasn’t enough? What if Coran and the other judges thought it was complete trash and he ended up dead last, James’s god-awful saran wrap leggings coming in first or something? He didn’t care too much about the competition in particular, obviously, who cared if he got the damn scholarship— it was more a matter of his pride. Coran never said anything specific, but he seemed to be pretty well respected in the fashion world, treated like a professional by the judges despite his unorthodox personality. Which meant that if he hated Keith’s work, everyone would probably hate it.

But he chose you to be here now, didn’t he? a quiet voice said. It sounded like Shiro, fond but exasperated. And yes, that was true, but still, Keith was unnerved. He designed for himself, no one else, so he wasn’t really sure how to handle this sort of scrutiny.

Another long moment stretched out before Coran was patting Keith on the shoulder again, beaming. “Amazing work, Number Four!” he exclaimed. “What you’ve decided to do with the materials is very creative, a nice surprise to see it. I’d keep the butcher paper pattern on the simple side so it doesn’t clash against the blouse too much, but I think other than that you’re on the right path.”

A breath Keith didn’t realize he’d been holding left him, shoulders sagging. So it was alright then, that was good.

“Uh, thank you,” he muttered to Coran. And because he was painfully weak, Keith glanced over to Lance. He felt his cheeks warm when he realized the other designer was already watching him, an amused grin on his lips that only widened when he noticed Keith watching. Quickly, he glanced back down to the butcher paper, trying not to read too much into it.

Lance could be pretty easy to read— it came from hanging out with him and staring at his face nearly every day for two years— and Keith had grown pretty familiar with nearly all of the other boy’s expressions. But this one— this amused and incredibly fond look that seemed to be only aimed towards Keith of all people, usually when he did something dumb, like when he claimed that there was no black ice on the pavement only to slip on black ice a moment later during their school trip to Seattle— he had never been able to decipher.

It meant something, but what, Keith wasn’t sure. What he was sure of though, was that it made his chest flutter every time he saw it. Not that he’d admit this time was no different.

Coran chuckled, patting Keith’s shoulder again. “Of course,” he said. “You have great potential, my boy.” And then he was striding back down the stairs to the front of the room, clapping his hands.

“Well done designers!” Coran said loudly to the entire room. “In five or so minutes you will be meeting your models, so make sure that you’ll have something ready for when they come in, please. After that you’ll have six more hours to work and then we’re off to dinner and sleep. I have a snack table in this corner in case anyone will need anything before then, however.” He paused, gesturing to the card table in the corner that seemed to hold the contents of an entire convenience store. “Good luck designers, and remember that if you don’t finish tonight that you’ll have before lunch tomorrow as well.”

“Your stuff looks really cool,” Lance said casually as Coran stepped down from the platform. Keith glanced over, raising an eyebrow. Where had that come from? “But of course, not nearly as cool as mine,” he finished.

And there it was. Keith rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay that’s fine, at least I’m not making a cape,” he replied, opening the cap of his sharpie again. It was a stupid reply, but Lance took the bait easily.

“Excuse you, capes are amazing,” Lance said indignantly.

“Uh huh, whatever makes you feel better about yourself.”

“Fuck you. That’s not even an original comeback.”

“You started it.”

“Well you— you— ugh.”

Keith snorted, watching Lance’s lips form a scowl that was more of a pout. Not that he was looking at his lips, obviously, it was just that Lance was petty, alright? He was handsome and adorable but obnoxious and basically a stranger and Keith did not even like him as a friend right now. Never would. Not in a million fucking years. He looked away and switched on the sewing machine. His things were a mess right now and it wasn’t possible to start the blouse, but the model needed to at least have a pair of pants ready.

Right as he was finishing hemming the bottom of the pants, a door at the front of the room swung open and Coran walked back in, followed by what Keith assumed were their models. “Greetings again! Feel free to continue working, but I would like you to meet your assigned models! They were kindly provided by one of our judges, Mr. Sendak, from Galra Models so I expect that you’ll give these ladies your utmost respect. For convenience’s sake, you will be paired with the same model for almost all the challenges, excluding a couple special ones.”

He didn’t pay much attention as the names were called out and instead focused on laying the pieces of his blouse on the work table. If the measurements he’d been given beforehand were right, the pants would only need minor adjustments which could be done later. The time that the model was here could be spent on the blouse.

A tall girl with short black hair walked up to Keith’s worktable and held out a hand. “I am Acxa. We will be working together for these projects,” she said tersely.

There was a slight frown on her lips, something that most people probably would find to be broody or condescending, but Keith didn’t mind too much, instead shaking her hand. That was fine, he wasn’t all that fond of small talk either, not in the way that Lance and his model— a girl with light brown hair and wearing a bright yellow hijab— seemed to be. But there was work to be done, absolutely no time to be thinking about Lance. Perhaps it had been a good thing they hadn’t seen each other in all the time that they’d been at Garrison if Keith’s thoughts kept straying to him this much. He had to focus.

“Hi, I’m Keith. There’s only the pants ready because I’ll need you to be here for me to properly do the top but you can try those on while I get this stuff ready. Just say if you need any help with them,” he said. Acxa nodded and Keith turned back to the table. He’d cut his mock up into smaller pieces that he would be able to trace and put onto the final top and numbered them, a trick that he’d picked up from his time working with cosplayers while on costume crew for the musical during his sophomore year of high school.

He nodded to himself, clearing his mind of outside distraction— which he probably should’ve done a while ago— and tried to relax his shoulders. Alright, it would all go fine and he was going to do better than James’s stupid saran wrap leggings. There was no other option but death if he were to be seen as lower than… that.

The time passed in a haze— Keith worked with Acxa and got about 80% of his blouse done before they were kicked out of the work room and into the dining hall again. Keith ate his sandwich there this time, sitting at a table with Hunk, Pidge, Allura, and unfortunately Lance. They were on opposite sides and Keith wasn’t even a part of their conversation, but it was impossible to ignore Lance’s presence. It had been nice that they had invited him to sit there as opposed to going to his room again, and perhaps they did think he’d want to be engaged in whatever they were saying, but Keith couldn’t help but still feel like a bit of an outsider. They were clearly all good friends and he didn’t want to intrude on that. He didn’t know how to even try to befriend them without becoming an obnoxious fourth wheel.

After finishing his food quickly and not really saying anything to the other designers, Keith excused himself and walked back to the residence hall lethargically. It was only after his shower when walking over to his bed that he remember he’d be sharing a room with Lance. Sometime while they were working, someone must have taken his stuff up from the looks of the bright blue gym bag with Lance neatly stitched into the side.

Keith groaned, turning his back to the other bed. He didn’t want to think about that right now. It was going to be inevitable interacting with Lance during this competition, no shit, but Keith was exhausted and not ready to put up with whatever bullshit Lance was going to pull as a roommate. Maybe he snored. Maybe he took two hours in the bathroom and sang Maroon 5 songs in the shower. Keith was already miserable imagining being woken up by some weird rendition of Sugar in a terrible Adam Levine impression. Shiro had done that once and resulted in Keith shoving him to his boyfriend’s dorm for a week. But there was no way to do that to Lance here.

The ideal plan was to go to sleep before Lance even left the dining hall and wake up and leave before he woke up as to avoid as much out-of-work-hours interaction, but he still had to call Shiro. He’d been insistent on Keith calling him every other day— which was honestly kind of dumb, but it was also thoughtful, so Keith decided to indulge him.

After two rings Shiro’s face showed up on Keith’s iPad, his hair pushed back by a fabric headband. There was some sort of TV show or movie playing in the background, but it was quiet enough that he could still hear Shiro. “Hey, Keith, what’s up?”

When he’d pressed the call button, Keith was hoping for a quick check in and then going to sleep early, but now, hearing Shiro’s voice, he realized that he actually did want to talk to him right now. There was no one here to talk to about this and Shiro would undoubtedly listen to Keith’s bitching because that was the kind of person he was. Well, he’d probably also try to do more about it, but it was a small price right now.

Keith took in a breath before beginning. “You will not believe who the fuck showed up here,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Lance. Fucking Lance McClain, the one from high school I told you about a while ago. He’s here and he’s my fucking roommate. What the hell am I supposed to do?” He said it all in a rush, and Shiro only stared for a moment before bursting out laughing. Keith narrowed his eyes. “Shiro, no, this is a big problem! I basically just fell off the face of the Earth and never talked to him again after graduation day for no goddamn reason. He’s probably been pissed off at me for the past two fucking years and this just makes it like sixty times worse. He’s—”

Speaking of the devil, the door opened and Lance walked in. Keith froze and watched him, no longer paying attention to whatever snarky thing that Shiro was saying. Lance nodded, looking like he wanted to say something but decided against it, turning away and heading into the bathroom and closing the door. The sound of the sink immediately filled the silence. Keith leaned over to the nightstand and didn’t bother untangling his headphones before sticking them into the audio jack and focusing back to Shiro.

“Wow,” Shiro mused. “Lance, huh? How’s that going to work out? Does he remember you?”

Keith grimaced at that. “Uh, yeah, but I may have accidentally let him believe that I didn’t recognize him so that’s… interesting.”

“Oh my god, you what? How the hell did that happen, every time you do anything it’s Lance this, Lance that, I’ve literally never met anyone who’s talked so much about the dude they were in love with in high school,” Shiro said.

“Woah, woah, woah, I was not in—” Keith paused, remembering that Lance was basically still in the room. “I was not in love with him,” he hissed, much quieter than before.

Shiro scoffed. “Yeah alright, whatever makes you feel better, I guess. But you could’ve fooled me from how much you liked to talk about him. One would think that you still liked him.”

Keith was silent a moment, eyes wide as he stared at his iPad. “God, I hate you so much right now,” he said finally. “Fuck this, I’m going to go to bed now, goodnight.” He tore his earbuds out of the tablet just in time for Shiro to smugly say, “You didn’t deny it!” and immediately slammed down on the ‘end call’ button, mortified as Lance decided to stride into the room.

Because the universe decided it absolutely hated him, Keith couldn’t help but notice that Lance not wearing a shirt. In high school, Lance had been on the swim team, so obviously Keith had seen him shirtless before, he’d known how toned and unfairly good looking Lance was for years, but still he felt himself freeze. It was clear that whatever workout routine he’d been following then was still going, and Keith— stupid, completely-and-utterly-fucking-over-Lance— still couldn’t say that he was displeased with that. As if this whole damn competition wasn’t already going to be hell.

Quickly, before Lance could notice again, Keith dropped the iPad on his nightstand and flicked the light off, very pointedly facing the wall. Sleep took him almost immediately, but that didn’t keep him from sensing Lance’s gaze linger on him for a moment before the room was pitched into full silence.

Chapter Text

The next morning was a blur of final touches and visits to the hair and makeup crew. It felt like Keith had only just gotten out of bed when they were suddenly sitting in the auditorium again before the nine models, stomachs full of turkey sandwiches that had been provided right before the small runway. Somehow his blouse had turned out as not complete trash, something that seemed to surprise Lance too.

“Designers!” Coran greeted. “I am very impressed with what you have all accomplished in this challenge, please enjoy and admire the mini show displaying everyone’s works. Also here are our judges, who will determine our first winner and the first to be eliminated. Just hope that it isn’t yours this time, you are professionals and will not be cut any slack for your age. Good luck!” He flashed a grin and hopped off stage.

The lights dimmed and the first model strutted onto the catwalk. She grinned as the newspaper fringe on her skirt lifted in the air, pausing to wink at Pidge before turning back. Keith glanced over to see Pidge beaming, two thumbs held up to the model. He had to admit that this was all pretty well organized and that the others had all done a really good job. Most of his time had been spent focusing on his own work or Lance’s, unfortunately, so it was nice to be able to see the other designs.

The next model stepped out, and Keith could hear Lance’s sharp intake of breath even with the loud music booming over the speakers. It was dark, but it was easy to see that Lance was leaning forward towards the runway, eyes tracking every movement of his model as she strode down the catwalk fiercely. As much as he’d made fun of the cape concept, Keith had to admit it worked well with the rest of the outfit, not even looking cumbersome with the girl’s dark blue hijab. Really well. Lance was incredibly talented, that much was clear.

He let his eyes linger on Lance in appreciation for a moment before turning back to the stage.

When Acxa turned around the corner wearing his design, Keith wasn’t sure why he was so surprised to see it. Somehow, miraculously, it actually looked good. Like really good. Acxa wore it well, her short hair was slicked back with a glittery gel and her eyeliner was a bright purple. The entire afternoon Keith was wondering if it was enough, if he should’ve used the pillow pets and the newspaper more sparingly, but holy fucking shit it actually worked. Lance whistled lowly from his right, and Keith snuck a glance to see his surprised— and impressed, perhaps?— expression. It seemed that others thought it turned out okay too, then.

After that he let himself relax, watching the models and trying to guess who made what. It was an amusing game, watching different designers’ eyes light up as their model entered the runway and glanced anxiously at the judges.

A few minutes later, Lance elbowed Keith in the side, leaning very close to him and whispered, “Is that saran wrap?”

Keith glanced up and realized with a grimace that it was indeed saran wrap— more specifically, saran wrap leggings. James sat with his arms crossed and a smug smile as he watched the poor girl make her way down to the end of the runway. Quietly, Keith snorted. He turned to Lance before realizing what a big mistake that was when their noses practically touched in the proximity. Keith tuned to face the stage again, cheeks burning. “He really doesn’t take constructive criticism that great, huh?” he replied.

“It’s literally 2/3 muslin, it’s like she’s just in a first draft mockup,” Lance said, luckily not noticing the slight shake in Keith’s voice. “Watch him get eliminated.”

Across the catwalk, one of the judges scribbled something down as the next model came onto stage, whispering something to the judge next to her. Keith leaned back in his seat, thankfully putting a bit of distance between him and Lance, and said, “Yeah, I have no doubt.”

As a matter a fact, James did end up getting eliminated. Keith had to hold back a laugh as he watched the other boy’s eyes flit between the judges and his model rapidly. If Draco Malfoy was an American, brunet, and a fashion student, this was probably an accurate representation of what Keith would imagine he’d be like. Wait until Iverson hears about this, Keith could practically hear him saying.

It didn’t matter that he would still be chilling out here for the rest of the week, James stormed off anyway.

Lance won the challenge— a very well deserved one, Keith would admit. He wouldn’t forget the way his eyes lit up when Coran announced it, the way that he’d looked over at Keith for a brief second before he stepped forward and was handed a round enamel pin with the challenge name etched at the top—”Hit the Books”, Coran had called it, a name Keith had scoffed at. Though there was no doubt in his mind that the rest of the challenges would probably have equally as dumb names Coran had thought of himself.

They were dismissed after that, and Keith quietly watched Lance practically dance out of the doors and into the dining hall. He laughed and grinned with complete sincerity through dinner, the new pin gleaming brightly on his dark green collared shirt. Even when he and Keith stood to head back to their room, there was a grin still on his lips. Keith watched it all with his own secret, quieter smile.

When they got to the door of their room, Lance turned to Keith, causing them to almost bump foreheads. “Woah, what the fuck,” he muttered, taking a large step backwards.

“You know this means we’re enemies again, right?” Lance said. “You got second place, this means that you’re my competition now. My nemesis.”

“Lance, we’re already kind of competing against each other to—”

“No. We are rivals now. I know you don’t remember me and all, but I really need this scholarship. The Garrison tuition is enough in itself and if I don’t win this Voltron scholarship, I’ll probably have to drop out overall. This shit means the world to me,” he said.

Keith’s chest suddenly felt heavy. Of course he remembered. There had been many nights during their senior year when Keith would be over and the power would go out and Lance’s parents would scream at each other, or he would see Lance and his siblings walking to the local soup kitchen, his head hung low in shame. And going to a big four university like the Garrison, even with a fuck ton of scholarships, it’d be…

“Lance…”

“I don’t need your pity, okay? I’ve seen it before and I’d probably thank you for your support and all back in high school if you actually remembered it but… Just… I’m not really here to make new friends with my roommate anymore. You’re kind of my rival now, so.” A pause, and then his voice gained a much cockier edge to it. “No hard feelings if I end up kicking your ass in the future, yeah? Not that it’ll be that much of an issue.”

With that he unlocked the door, leaving Keith in the hall for a moment to stare after him. What the actual hell was that?

Looking back on the conversation later, Keith would be thankful for the small announcement, however weird and honestly fucked up it kind of was. Lance was… something else. He still was cheerful and vibrant with his friends, he still laughed and joked. And, unfortunately, he did in fact sing Maroon 5 in the shower, which Keith discovered the next morning when he was woken to a terrible, off-pitch rendition of Payphone, but that was completely irrelevant, as was the fact Lance seemed to really like coming out of the shower without a shirt on, which, hey, what the fuck, universe. He was just as weird and kind and passionate as Keith had known him to be to everyone else, but to Keith he was just a dick.

He made everything a competition between them, every compliment backhanded, every single action a complete inconvenience for Keith in any given situation. During their next challenge— which Coran had dubbed as “Challenge 1.3: Light ‘Em Up” because of course they were named— it began with who could untangle their given Christmas lights the fastest. Then it was who could finish seaming their respective skirts the quickest. And then it was who could figure out how to fix Lance’s sewing machine presser foot the fastest, because of course he had already made his presser foot fall off. He didn’t even say thank you after Keith snapped it back on, which tempted Keith to rip it back off again and ask him to bother Allura instead.

As annoying as it was though, he had to admit it helped his productivity a lot. By the time Coran had come by for consultations, Keith was nearly two thirds of the way through his final dress, which had turned out decently, something that Coran seemed to agree on as well.

“Wow,” Acxa said when she came in a few minutes later, her eyebrow raised. “You actually have something for me to put on this time, thank you.”

Keith shrugged, helping to pull up the zipper on the back of the shimmering dress. “How’s that?” he asked, studying the folds in the dress. He was pretty proud of it, much less panicked than he’d been with the last challenge. They had access to real fabric now, not just muslin and paper, and incorporating the Christmas lights into his design hadn’t been much of a problem.

Acxa turned slightly, pointing towards the waistline ribbon that would hold most of the lights. “I think the pleat there look kind of weird, that could probably use a little bit more adjusting,” she said.

Keith nodded, moving towards his work table to grab the glue gun. Over the years, he’d learned that, as long as it didn’t look messy and it held shit together, hot glue worked just as well as a needle and thread. As he pressed the trigger and let a bead fall onto the small fold of fabric in his hand, Lance scoffed.

“Hey, Acxa, can you hold that for a second?” Keith asked his model. He pressed the fabric down and then looked up to meet Lance’s sour expression. There really wasn’t time for this right now. “What, Lance?”

“Are you shitting me?” he practically shouted, and Keith cringed. It seemed that Lance liked to choose the quietest times in the workroom to shout bullshit at him, something that would never fail to make Keith feel like jumping into a hole and hiding for the rest of his life. It wasn’t even just a quiet work time right now, the models were here.

Keith stretched his foot out to pull the chord of the glue gun from the wall. “What?” he asked. “Is there a problem?”

Lance didn’t answer for a moment, instead gesturing towards the pastel yellow sweater that his model— Nyma, she had introduced herself as earlier that morning— wore and then towards the skirt Keith had just fixed. Acxa didn’t seem bothered by it, undoubtedly used to things like this, and picked her phone up off Keith’s worktable.

“Are you shitting me? Is there a problem? Dude, you just hot glued a pleat. What the fuck. You better not get a higher score on this than me, I French seamed this fucking cardigan. French seamed it.”

Keith rolled his eyes and turned back to Acxa. “Good for you I guess.”

“You— do you know how long it takes to French seam and have it look this nice?” Lance continued on.

“I think I took the same sewing classes that you did, so kinda, yeah.”

Everyone was definitely staring now, most of them poorly holding back snickers. Honestly, Keith didn’t really blame them. This was completely and utterly fucking ridiculous. So what if he used hot glue? If they didn’t want him to hot glue it, why did they even give him a hot glue gun? And it wasn’t like Acxa minded it.

It turned out that the judges didn’t mind it too much either. In fact, Ryner had even complimented his craftsmanship during the close up inspection. Lance hadn’t been too pleased about that but Keith had only given him a small smirk, watching how the other boy’s eyes seemed to widen a bit before they both turned back around.

Ryan won the challenge, something that Keith thought was very well deserved— His design had been brilliant, something Keith hadn’t even thought possible for the challenge. When Coran announced it, Keith nodded. “Good job,” he said. “Your design was super cool.”

“Thank you,” Ryan replied, shock evident on his face. It took a moment, but he stepped forward to receive the little enamel pin from Coran.

“Your hot glued pleats didn’t win,” Lance whispered loudly, leaning over into Keith’s very close personal bubble.

He raised an eyebrow, eyes not moving away from Ryan, Coran, and his model. Much quieter, he replied, “Well neither did your French seamed cardigan, so.”

“It will next time.”

“Yeah, okay, sure.”

Ryan stepped back and Coran’s face grew solemn. “I’m afraid that the lowest score this round was from Hunk,” he said. Turning to the designer in question, Coran continued. “Though your concept was quite interesting, your product did not include the lights, a staple piece of the challenge, and your craftsmanship could have been far better.”

Hunk nodded. He frowned, but it wasn’t the dramatic spectacle James had given the other day. “Thank you for your feedback. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to perform better and appreciate you giving me this opportunity,” he said, voice steady.

“Thank you for being here,” Coran said, nodding. He paused for a moment then, with a gleam in his eye, continued, “However. Don’t leave quite yet. This is a non-elimination round and you will still be participating in the next challenge.”

Eyes wide, Hunk stopped mid step and spun around. “I— Wow, thank you so much, sir! I will not let this second chance go to waste,” he stuttered out.

By lunch, Hunk was back to grinning and smiling with Lance, though Keith could see there was still some exhaustion in his eyes. While watching Lance and Allura arm wrestle, Keith scooted over and casually said, “Uh, I’m glad that you’re still here. It’s kind of weird considering elimination now and you’re a pretty cool person.”

“Aww, thank you Keith! I’m glad I’m still here, too,” Hunk said, turning a softer smile to him. “You know, if it weren’t for Lance I probably wouldn’t even be here, but I’m so glad that I am. This is such an amazing opportunity just as a designer overall and without it I wouldn’t be able to talk to cool people like you as often.”

Keith nodded again, letting their conversation fade away, something that Hunk seemed content with, refocusing on Allura completely destroying Lance. It was honestly pointless for anyone to even try against her, though. The woman had absolutely no mercy with these sorts of things. Keith stared at them too but let his thoughts drift.

With James’ elimination, it had been more of a “Oh thank fucking god, good riddance” type of thing. But Hunk was someone who wasn’t an ass and was so far proving to be a pretty great person, even if they’d only really known each other properly for about five days. His near elimination reminded Keith that this was still a competition between more than just himself and Lance. People would quickly be getting sent home and not come back until the very last challenge to watch. Keith had never dealt well with quick change and even quick leaving— he’d practically had six mental breakdowns a week in his final weeks of high school which was proof enough— so this would definitely be interesting.

Challenge 1.6, “Costumed Courtiers”, as Coran insisted they called it, went by fairly quickly. It was basically a cosplay making challenge, where they all made some DnD looking costume out of EVA and worbla. Keith had done plenty of work like it and didn’t have too much trouble, earning the incredibly smart title of nerd from Lance.

Really though, it was him who was the real nerd. Lance had gone all out with this challenge, giving his concept character a stupid name and everything. “I call him Pike, he’s a thief,” he’d told Keith proudly.

“He’s a furry,” Keith had replied without looking up. Before Lance could say anything he continued, “For fucks sake, he’s even got furry ears you know. Are you sure Nyma will let you put her in something based off of that?”

“Oh fuck off, Keith,” Lance said, sniffing as he examined the EVA armor that Keith was painting before turning back to his sewing machine. If Keith wasn’t examining him so closely, he could have sworn that Lance almost looked… impressed. Though it was nothing that was worthy of being on the front page of a San Diego Comic Con blog, Keith knew to be pretty damn proud of himself. The only thing was that it seemed unrealistic for Lance to think he should be proud of it. “You’re just jealous,” he continued. “I bet your DnD character’s name is like Thunderstorm Darkness or some shit.”

Keith did not say anything after that, refusing to let himself fully succumb to the fight Lance was picking. He had a really stupid-but-not-stupid-as-Lance’s costume to finish, and besides, his DnD character’s name had been Yorak. Thunderstorm Darkness, that was fucking ridiculous.

Despite all of the hot glue burns and worbla failures and compromises he didn’t even realize he was capable of doing, Keith did not win the challenge. Still, it had been pretty fun anyway. It reminded him of his days of attending conventions and creating designs he really wanted to make and out of whatever was around. Though he was happy where he was as an almost professional designer, there were always limitations on his projects— something that seemed not to exist here, or if it did, it was very loose.

The costume won him second place, with Lance coming in right behind him and Ina in first place. Pidge, who hadn’t had enough time to finish her costume, came in last, but this time it was thankfully also a non-elimination round. Keith saw the way Lance’s shoulders lost all of their tightness when Coran had announced it, the same tint over his smile as there had been during the last challenge.

Keith couldn’t help but be worried about him, couldn’t help but notice how much anxiety the concept of elimination— his friends’ and his own— seemed to be bringing the other boy down. But still he said nothing. Every time it happened, Keith pretended not to know Lance as well as he clearly still did, pretended he couldn’t read his face like an open goddamn book.

Back then, Keith would reassure him. He’d find a way to motivate Lance to keep going and to comfort him, no matter how utterly shitty he was at words and emotions. But now, well, they were strangers now, right? Strangers— or rivals again. Like they had been in their earlier years of high school before the mutual trust and respect had been built between them. That was gone now, the slate had been wiped clean and they’d have to start again. So far, it wasn’t going very well. They could barely even look at each other without one of them picking a fight. The only exception was at night when they went to sleep in their shared room.

And so, no matter how much it pained him, Keith only turned away and continued on without a word. He wouldn’t get involved. He wouldn’t say anything. He wouldn’t try to comfort him or reassure him about everything like a friend would do. Keith was nothing more than a competitor and roommate now, Lance had new friends to lean on as emotional support.

But of course, things do not always go as planned, especially not when it involves Keith and Lance.

Over the past few days, Keith had learned that it was easier to step outside where there was still an internet connection in order to FaceTime Shiro instead of being in his room with Lance. There was always a chance Lance could accidentally— or not so accidentally— be listening in on a conversation while Shiro was saying something embarrassing that Keith would rather not have him hear.

One of Shiro’s new favorite subjects seemed to be reminiscing about Keith’s idiotic habits from high school very loudly, usually when Lance himself was also present. Namely the ones when he was pathetically trying to get Lance’s attention somehow, despite already being best friends. Keith was seriously regretting opening up to Shiro about how he had nearly fried some metal tongs over a Bunsen burner in chemistry trying to do the lab faster than Lance and maybe impressing the other boy. He hadn’t noticed that the tongs were on fire until his partner was screaming and dumping the deionized water over their slightly charred lab worksheets.

Tonight, the universe was not on his side. It never was, really, but tonight it seemed even less so. As Keith started to the doors, there was a small scoff from behind him. He turned to see Pidge sitting in one of the chairs, a white mug sitting on the table beside her chair and a large, thin sketchbook in her hands.

“I wouldn’t go out there if I were you,” she commented.

“What? Why?” Keith asked, stopping.

Pidge shrugged. “It’s like two fucking degrees out there right now. Also, there’s rain. If you wanna go out and freeze to death though, I’m not going to stop you.”

Keith glanced down at his phone and opened the weather app. After a moment, he looked at Pidge again, eyebrow raised. “It’s fifty-six.”

She put down her pencil and looked Keith dead in the eye as she said, “This is California, dude. That’s basically freezing, you know.”

Keith bit back a laugh. Having spent most of his childhood somewhere in the Midwest, Keith was used to being shoved outside by nuns even when it was snowing or if there was a tornado three miles away. But these SoCal people didn’t have the tolerance for hellish temperatures. However, he also didn’t own any real jackets anymore and the wind was also pretty fucking cold.

“Uh, alright,” he said, “thanks.”

Pidge gave him a nod as a small, amused smile made its way onto her lips. “Sure, no problem.”

He turned on his heel and headed back up the stairs. He could call Shiro another time. Maybe tomorrow, though they would be coming back late and—

Incoming call from: Shiro.

The decision was taken from Keith as the notification took over his iPad. He sighed, swiping towards the answer button. It was better to just answer it now. Okay, maybe this would work out, he told himself. He could make Shiro be quiet and try not to say anything too weird if he couldn’t find his earbuds.

“Hey!” Shiro said cheerfully. He was wearing a faded purple shirt with the words “I ain’t afraid of no aliens” printed on the front, white hair damp and unstyled. On his chest was a large, rather fluffy, gray cat. “Say hi to Keith, Black,” Shiro told his cat, pressing a small kiss to her ears. Black said nothing and continued to impassively stare at her owner’s face.

Keith rolled his eyes but smiled. “Hey, Shiro,” he said. “So uh, small change for tonight, I’ve got to go back to my room because it’s raining and I’m pretty sure I left my earbuds in the workroom today so it’ll have to be short. I can call you again tomorrow, though, if you want?”

The screen lagged a bit as Shiro shook his head. “No, don’t worry about it. I’m sure you’re tired anyway. And before you say what I know you’re about to say, don’t worry, I’ll behave myself. I promise that I won’t bring up anything overly humiliating for Lance to hear. You honestly don’t think that I’m that cruel, do you?”

“Thank you,” Keith breathed out in relief. He knew Shiro would be cool with it, but there was still a small part of him that was still absolutely terrified. Or maybe that was actually just the stupid fluttery feeling that came with even thinking about Lance being in the same room. Goddammit.

He approached the door and only hesitated for a moment before opening it, still listening to Shiro’s update on some weird thing Matt had done earlier. Lance was already lying on his own bed, typing something on his laptop. He looked up when Keith walked in, eyebrow raised.

“Do I maybe get a hello this evening?” he asked.

“Hello,” Keith mumbled, making to cross his arms before remembering that his iPad was still on. “I’m gonna talk to my roommate for a few minutes so just… don’t mind me, I guess.”

“I thought we were roommates,” Lance said, offended. He put a hand over his chest, frown deepening. “Betrayed by my own fucking roommate.” There was a pause and his frown became real. Keith tried to ignore the pang in his chest when Lance continued, “Actually, no. I should’ve expected it. Enjoy your night, stranger.”

Before Keith could say anything, Lance put on his headphones and turned back to his computer. Keith sighed heavily and vigorously stomped down on the heavy feeling of guilt as he laid back on his bed. When he looked back at the screen, Shiro was glaring at him with a look somewhere between disappointment and exasperation.

“Are you serious,” Shiro said, tone flat.

“What do you mean?” Keith asked.

“Don’t play dumb with me mister,” snapped Shiro. “You haven’t told him, obviously, but why? Wouldn’t it make things way easier for you two if you just… I don’t know, actually talked for a minute and got all this sorted out? If he’s just picking fights over hot glue seams and making comments like that, you have some serious shit to work out.”

Keith leaned back into the pillows and stared at the ceiling for a long moment before replying. “I know. I just… haven’t gotten the chance,” he said quietly. “And what if he doesn’t want to talk to me? I’m not going to push it.”

“Alright, but try to do it soon at least? Sorry if I’m being a little pushy with you but I just want things to work out for you,” Shiro said. The sincerity in his voice was clear, as was the pride. If he were actually here, Keith would have hugged him. A moment later, the moment was ruined when Black suddenly wrestled free of Shiro’s hold and decided to sit on his face instead. “Oomf,” Shiro’s muffled voice said from beneath her mass of fur.

Keith snorted. Black purred and settled in even more when Shiro tried to push her off, mumbling a threat that got lost in all the fur. Unable to help it, Keith let out a real laugh, heedless and loud.

“Hey,” Shiro said, face reappearing as he spit out cat hair. “This isn’t funny!”

“I dunno, it kind of is,” Keith replied, amused.

Before he could say anything else, there was a cough in the room. Keith looked up to see Lance staring at him, annoyance and something else shining in his eyes. Whatever he was watching on his computer was paused, headphones off, and Lance seemed frozen in place. When he met Keith’s eyes, it was like some sort of switch had been flicked and pink tinged his cheeks. A facade of annoyance took over his expression as he cleared his throat and said, voice sharp, “You good, man?”

There was a delay in Keith’s reaction, his mind completely blanking as he stared at Lance. He knew that look, he knew the quick covering of his emotions and his irritation was just artifice. He really shouldn’t have, and still he did. But Lance had every right to be irritated, so why would he have to pretend that it was irritating? They were no longer friends. Lance no longer strived to make Keith laugh or smile, only to annoy the shit out of him. They weren’t close enough for that anymore.

“Hello? This isn’t just your fucking room, just so you know,” Lance said snappishly when Keith didn’t reply. “Maybe be a little more quiet or something, yeah?”

Keith’s eyes narrowed. “Well, this isn’t just your room either,” he rebutted, the words leaving his lips before he could process them. “I’ll talk loud as I fucking want to.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

When Keith looked back down to his iPad, cheeks slightly red from anger and some embarrassment, Shiro seemed to be studying him. Black was now tucked firmly under his arm asleep, though there was light grey cat fur all over his black shirt. He had clearly witnessed the entire conversation and wanted to talk about it. Because honestly, when did he not want to talk about things that Keith wanted him to just ignore?

“What,” Keith sighed.

Shiro raised his hands. “Nothing. So how was your day? Make anything interesting today? Win a challenge?”

“Yeah, actually,” Keith said. He shifted so he was facing away from Lance and began to catch Shiro up on the last few days.

The call lasted for about an hour and after hanging up Keith felt like he was going to pass out the second he shut off the light. It was always nice to talk to Shiro, but like the last two challenges, all of the missed sleep was now hitting him like a pile of fucking cinder blocks. He was suddenly grateful they got Sundays off, and Keith could sleep for fifteen hours straight.

Lance had turned his own light off about five minutes after Keith ended the call. He’d been quiet, not even bothering to say goodnight, and Keith didn’t really know how to feel about it. Lance hadn’t really been saying anything to Keith during the evenings, both of them usually too tired to form a coherent sentence. The quiet seemed even quieter now, which made no sense at all. Goddamn, Keith really needed to sleep.

A few moments after Keith settled into bed and flicked off the lights, Lance said into the darkness, “Hey, Keith?”

Surprised, Keith opened his eyes and turned to face Lance. Rolling over and pretending not to have heard him would have been so much smarter, but there was something in Lance’s voice that had Keith replying hesitantly. “Yes? Is— is something wrong? I thought you were asleep.”

Lance let out a quiet sigh. “Uh… not really, I guess. Just— hey, do you remember— no, never mind, of course you don’t know, what am I talking about. So uh. I’m just not really used to being away from my family for long periods of time? Like, my sister actually goes to Garrison so I see her anyway during the week, but I go back on weekends and all that. And like, it’s just… really fucking quiet around here and I didn’t really think about what being here for a month would actually involve like an idiot. Sorry, I dunno what I’m saying, I didn’t mean to dump all that shit on you but uh… Can we just like— talk for a bit or something?” The last part was said almost shyly, like he was embarrassed for asking. “You don’t have to, of course, but it would— it’d be nice. I can even do most of the talking if you want.”

“Oh,” Keith said, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice. It meant nothing, he told himself as he continued to stare into the darkness. Keith knew Lance got homesick on trips. He recalled Lance bringing it up a few times, but he had never been away for very long periods of time, not a month. Of course he was homesick right now and needed a distraction. He hadn’t chosen Keith to talk about it with, he was simply the nearest person at the moment— it was completely impersonal. But that didn’t really matter.

After a moment, Keith blinked, realizing he was already doing a shitty job by not even replying.

“Uh, sure, I guess,” he said hurriedly before Lance could start another mini ramble. They were strangers at this point, and not very friendly ones, but that didn’t mean Keith wanted to lie here knowing how sad and upset Lance was right now. He wasn’t great at the whole comfort thing— Lance had been a first hand witness to that on several occasions, Keith recalled— but he’d try his best. It was the thought that counted, right? “No problem, yeah. So, what do you want to talk about?”

Lance snorted. “I dunno. How’d you get into fashion, I guess? When we were— uh, back when I knew you, I thought you’d want to go into, like, illustration or engineering or something. Sorry if that sounds kind of weird. It’s got to sound creepy as fuck to hear a guy you don’t know talk about you in high school.” He laughed quietly, but it was too stiff and very clearly forced.

Keith felt a new wave of guilt crash over him. Idiot. This was what Keith got for being a fucking moron, he guessed. He should’ve nodded, said yeah, of course I remember you, Lance instead of just staring like a goddamn goldfish.

But things seemed to be working out fine pretending, so why bother ‘fessing up now? The challenges had passed, and Lance was as much of an ass as ever, but then there were these small moments of strain when Lance would mention something from high school or look over to Keith with the expectation of getting a laugh out of him or something else, but quickly cough and turn away. Keith didn’t know what to do. Would it make it more awkward to mention casually, oh hey Lance, sorry about the past week but I actually do remember you, in fact I think I used to be in love with you! Anyways, see you around!

“It’s fine,” Keith heard himself say. “Actually I—”

I do remember you.

Say it. Say it, say it, just fucking say it. The words caught in his throat and he heard Lance turn again, as if sitting up to hear whatever Keith was going to say. Like a coward, Keith cleared his throat and switched tracks. “I actually don’t really mind. It’s fine. Anyway, I actually wasn’t really planning to do anything at all at first.”

After a painfully awkward moment, Lance said, “Oh damn, really? What were you planning to do then?”

“Cliff diving pirate,” Keith replied, unable to help the small smile forming on his lips.

“Bullshit. That is not a real job.”

“No, it actually is. There was an opening for it when I was looking, too. I was going to move to Colorado and work in this weird, pink, castle-y restaurant place. I think it’s supposed to be Mexican food but I went there once with my dad when I was little and their sopapillas taste like plastic and it’s just a really fucking weird place.”

He was sitting up at this point, watching as Lance’s silhouette rose and turned to face him. With some surprise, Keith watched as Lance crawled out of his bed with only a bit of hesitance and perched himself onto Keith’s bed.

They were sitting pretty close together, purposefully or not, Lance’s breath tickling Keith’s nose as he said, “Huh. Tell me more?”

Keith obliged and explained the rest with a small smile. Other obscure and stupid details about Casa Bonita. The sewing classes he sat through on Wednesday nights last summer with a bunch of old ladies so he could make women’s apparel instead of only men’s. The time he met Shiro’s boyfriend the first time and the shock that it’d been when Keith realized that “Dreamy Eyes Adam” also happened to be the fashion marketing professor who had given Keith a D on an assignment two days before.

Though Keith couldn’t actually see him, there was no doubt in his mind that he had Lance’s undivided attention. It was kind of nice. Lance rarely interrupted except for an occasional scoff or slightly exaggerated reaction. The whole thing was nicer than Keith thought it’d be.

At first, it had seemed like it would be a challenge to think of enough things to keep talking about until Lance felt better, but the words flowed out of Keith like they’d been pent up on the tip of his tongue, waiting to pour out at the first opportunity. And not to just anyone, but to Lance. He didn’t know how to feel about that.

“Thank you,” Lance whispered much later, on the verge of sleep. “I really needed that. It’s nice to have you back.”

Overall it was really nice, and it felt like they had taken a huge step in the direction of becoming friends. Which is why, of course, Lance completely denied that it happened the next morning when he woke up half draped in the felt blanket on Keith’s bed.

“Nope, don’t remember, didn’t happen,” Lance exclaimed quickly before Keith could say anything. He sprung up and pulled on his shoes in a single fluid motion. “I’m gonna go get some breakfast,” he said, pointedly looking anywhere but Keith’s face. “Catch you later, I guess.”

And with that, he was gone. The door slammed shut and Keith was still sitting on his bed in complete bafflement.

After a few minutes, Keith decided he should get up too and headed down to the dining hall. Luckily, there still seemed to be plenty of food. Keith easily found Hunk and Allura sitting at their usual table, watching something on Hunk’s phone as they ate. When Keith sat down with his croissant and cup of grapes, the two looked up with bright smiles.

Allura waved. “Good morning, Keith,” she said politely. Keith still wasn’t sure how to act around her. There was something almost scary about her, like she was royalty instead of another designer from his class. Maybe it was because she was friends with Lance that made Keith nervous, but Hunk was Lance’s friend, too, and he didn’t make Keith nervous. He nodded to her lamely.

“Hey, man! How’s it going?” Hunk said as he shoved his phone into his pocket.

Keith shrugged. “Eh, not much. You?”

“Just chilling,” he replied. “It’s really nice that Coran let us have today off, like, there’s so much that we can do today that isn’t thinking about sewing and competitions and scholarships and all that.”

“I think I slept for like fourteen hours straight last night, to be honest,” Allura commented.

Keith smiled a bit, nodding. “Yeah, same. I’m probably just going to go to the park and draw or something, but it’s probably going to be all trees and shit.”

Hunk let out a laugh. He reached over and put a hand lightly on Keith’s shoulder. “You know, you’re a pretty funny guy, Keith. I haven’t really properly talked to you ever and Lance is really biased, but you’re a super cool dude and I’m glad that you’re here.”

“Well that’s a bit of an understatement,” Allura muttered, to which Hunk only shrugged. “I agree, though, it is very nice to have met you, Keith. I know you don’t want to think about sewing or the scholarship at the moment, but you are a very skilled designer and I admire your work.”

Keith ignored the part where Lance had apparently talked to Hunk and Allura about him. It was to be expected, wasn’t it? Despite how much Keith was pretending to right now, it was impossible to forget he and Lance had been close in high school. Like, really close— I-won’t-ever-forget-you-after-high-school close. They were basically the stereotypical best friends from some cheesy YA novel from 2006 with shit grammar and a blander than bread plot, and no amount of memory blocking and denying could change that. Also, he probably bitched about having to be Keith’s roommate and supposed rival.

“Oh,” he said. “Thanks. You guys are also super talented. I never really talk to any of the other design people since they can be kind of… catty, but it’s been super cool meeting you guys too.”

Hunk let out a small, self deprecating laugh. “Eh, I don’t really know about that since I kind of almost got eliminated, but thanks.” There was a small frown on his lips as he reached for another blueberry from his tray and Keith couldn’t help but feel a pang of sadness and guilt. He was an idiot, he may not have been the one to bring the topic up, but he still felt like a complete fucking moron.

“Hey,” Allura said sternly. She glared at Hunk and crossed her arms, completely unblinking. “You wouldn’t even be here if you weren’t amazingly talented,” she told him, a faint accent surfacing as she said the words. “It was a bad day, you’re going to do better next week, and I refuse to let you believe otherwise. And if Lance were here right now, I know he’d tell you the same.”

Unsure what to say, Keith nodded in agreement with Allura.

They ate their breakfast in silence after Hunk gave them both a bright smile and a hug. Keith actually felt comfortable. Of course, that was ruined when Allura put her fork down and stared directly at him. He had a feeling he knew where this was going and tried not to wince.

“So,” Allura started casually. “Have you seen Lance today? He’s usually down here by now, he usually doesn’t miss meals unless he’s off being mopey or if he’s working. As his roommate, you’d have noticed something, right?”

Keith sighed, blowing a strand of hair out of his face as he took a bite of his croissant. It was cold now but he didn’t mind too much. “Yeah, sorry I can’t really help. He hasn’t really said anything to me and kind of ran out this morning so I dunno.”

Hunk raised an eyebrow. “Seriously, dude?” he asked. “Damn.”

“Yeah. Why do you sound surprised about it?”

Hunk shrugged. “I dunno, I thought you guys were getting along and like, you guys are friends, aren’t you?”

Keith held back another sigh. He was kind of hoping that after last night he and Lance could at least be acquaintances, too, but it had been made very clear they would not. Whatever though, that was fine. Wasn’t like Keith wanted to be friends with him again anyway.

“Not really,” he admitted. “I don’t think he even likes me all that much to be honest.”

There was a pause, and Hunk and Allura exchanged an amused look. Keith’s brows furrowed but he decided not to question it, knowing they probably wouldn’t have told him even if he had asked. But they knew something, and it probably had to do with Lance, and Keith couldn’t help but be curious.

“So,” Allura said again, breaking the moment. “I think I recall Lance saying something about you two being friends in high school, yes?”

Keith froze. Allura had been there for the debacle that was him accidentally acting like he didn’t know Lance, and letting Lance think he did forget their entire friendship. So what was he supposed to tell her? The truth? Some stupid lie that sounded convincing and realistic? She didn’t seem like the type who would immediately report back to Lance. The look she was leveling him with was kind of scary, so Keith shrugged again. Might as well tell the truth and pray that she wouldn’t tell.

“Yeah. We uh— he was my best friend,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Was a really great guy to have around.” He didn’t even dare look up from the table as he said it, bracing for Hunk and Allura’s reactions.

A long stretch of silence fell over the table, and Keith’s heart rate quickened with each passing second. But then Allura was laughing, pounding the table and shaking as she pressed her face into her hands.

“I knew it!” she exclaimed. “I am glad that you care to admit it now.”

Hunk joined Allura, smiling with fond exasperation towards the window. “You know, he used to talk about you a lot,” he told Keith. “For a while, I thought he had to be making you up. How the hell did you even end up at the same college in the same major but never talk to each other, anyway?”

Keith shrugged. “The Garrison wasn’t really my first plan. And I’m not really great with people so I never took the time to really talk to anyone.”

“Huh, that’s fair,” Hunk said. “Well, I promised I’d call my mom at twelve so I’m gonna head back, but I’ll see you two later!”

With that, Keith and Allura were alone. He pretended to take a sip out of his long empty coffee cup and cleared his throat awkwardly. He was normally content with silence— grateful, even— there was something about being with Allura that made him feel like there was some heavy expectation to say something.

“So. Uh, how’d you meet Lance, Hunk, and Pidge? You guys have been friends for a while, right?” he tried.

Allura nodded. “I met Hunk and Lance through a yoga class last year. It was quite the experience,” she said. “And you met Lance through high school, yes?”

Keith nodded. “Yeah. Did he actually, uh… talk about me before” He tried not to cringe at the question. It was pathetic that of all things, he was asking one of Lance’s best friends if he fucking talked about Keith, like he was some eight grader. Since when had Keith stooped so low?

Allura didn’t mind the question though, her lips quirked up in amusement. “Quite often, actually. Though I think if you want to know more that it’d be best to ask Lance. I don’t know too much about what your relationship was, but I’m glad that this has given you the opportunity to reconnect.”

Keith shrugged but nodded. “Yeah. I’m not really sure if he wants to become friends again but it’s still cool I guess. Even if I tried to befriend him again, I think I’m still just a roommate and nemesis or whatever to him.”

Allura stifled a small giggle but finished her tea and stood. “I wish you luck in this competition, Keith,” she said. “I look forward to seeing you at dinner. Also, perhaps keep an open mind, you can never make full assumptions about a situation.” There was a twinkle in her eye that Keith didn’t understand, but he nodded and stood. They parted ways outside the building. Allura headed for the parking lot and Keith to the park.

He spent the rest of the day there drawing, thankfully without getting rained on. At dinner, Lance still wouldn’t make eye contact with him, but he seemed to be back to normal. Keith wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about that but reminded himself it wasn’t any of his business.

Besides, it wasn’t like he even had the right to know. They weren’t friends. They weren’t going to interact much during this entire competition anyway. At least, that’s what Keith kept telling himself.

“Welcome back, designers!” Coran exclaimed the next morning, standing at the center of the auditorium stage as the eight designers sat in front of him only half awake. Keith hadn’t been happy about the seven a.m. wakeup call, but there was nothing to be done about it but grumble a bit and get himself a large coffee. It seemed that the others felt the same way.

“I hope that you enjoyed your little break, we’re going to get right into it today. This is Challenge 2.0— or Challenge Four for those of you who like solid numbering— Just in Bloom! For this, you will have access to all standard apparel materials, but of course there is a twist. Flowers must be a key component of your design! They can be plastic or real, but somehow they must be incorporated into your dresses. Heck, you can even base your entire dress off one of the flowers in the lovely garden behind the school.

“However, there is one more component for this specific challenge. We won’t just leaf you to your own devices for this, fashion is a group effort, so you will be working with another designer! The teams are as follows: Hunk and Allura, Ina and Nadia, Keith and Lance, and Pidge and Ryan!” Coran grinned and Keith froze. Of course he was going to be working with Lance, it was just his fucking luck. He was torn between irritation and full on panic.

Oblivious to Keith’s dilemma, Coran continued, “If you haven’t become acquainted with each other, please do so now, as you will be working together for the next three days, meaning that Challenge 2.3 will only be one day. You will have five minutes to consult each other before we go for our materials run and then it’s work time! You are now dismissed, I look forward to seeing your creations!”

Around him, the other designers began to stand and found their partners. Keith remained in place, staring at the empty space where Coran had been standing moments before.

Lance walked up and sat in the chair next to him, sighing. “So. Flowers, huh?” he said. “What do you think of something maybe kind of art deco-y with watercolors and shit? That would look cool. Or would you rather do something all emo and edgy with, like, black roses and shit to match your bright and cheery soul?”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Something with some of the brighter petals would be cool. We can weave together synthetic petals into hemming and a jacket or something,” he said. Lance’s brows furrowed and he opened his mouth to say something, though he closed it a moment later. Keith crossed his arms. “You got an issue with my idea?” he asked. “It isn’t really the 60’s anymore, it needs to look more modern.”

“Yeah, I know that, but are you really sure? That’s time consuming as hell.”

“And hand painting a fuck ton of flowers onto muslin isn’t?”

They stared at each other in complete silence, both stubborn as bulls and unyielding. It broke when Coran called them to the store room for materials. Keith couldn’t help but frown as they left the auditorium, especially when he caught Lance’s glower.

He sighed. This was going to be a long project, and he was not looking forward to any of it. At least it was a mutual feeling from the looks of it.

Chapter Text

“Hey, where’d you put that gold fabric?”

“Spandex or chiffon?”

“Chiffon. Why would I even use the spandex?”

“I dunno. Athletic wear?”

“But we’re making a dress! Why do we need athletic spandex?”

“I dunno. You’re the one who picked it up, you tell me, Lance.”

“Whatever, that’s not the point. Just tell me where the chiffon is?”

“It’s by the pin cushion.”

“We have like six different fucking pincushions here, dude. Which one?”

Keith finally looked up from the artificial rose petals he was gluing onto the muslin and sighed. “That one,” he said, pointing at the stuffed pink hippo sitting next to his bag. Next to it was the shimmering gold chiffon that, in his opinion, was kind of impossible to miss, but okay, Lance.

“Goddamn, no need to be prickly about it,” Lance said, making a face as he grabbed the fabric.

“I’m not being prickly, you’re just being an ass,” Keith replied. “And stop acting like it’s so important making chiffon roses, you’re not all that.”

It was already Tuesday, the second day of the challenge and everything was a fucking disaster. And not even just in a Keith-was-being-dramatic-because-he-was-tired way.

When they’d gone to the supplies room, since they didn’t have any real plan, it was a grab what you can type of thing, meaning Keith had ended up with a box of Mardi Gras beads and Lance had grabbed seven yards of bright yellow spandex. Ten minutes were spent trying to figure out what the hell to do with the utterly useless materials before they gave up and each did their own things with them.

As predicted, Keith and Lance could not work together for shit. This was the fifth time in the last goddamn hour that some stupid argument like this had happened, the millionth in the last twenty four hours. They still only had some fabric flowers and a few yards of muslin with artificial petals hot glued to it.

Everything they did was completely clashing and out of sync, every attempt was a complete fail. Keith didn’t know what to do. Sure, they’d learned to work together before, but things were different now— and they only had three days instead of three years to try to get their shit together. It was so painfully obvious that Coran had made a mistake pairing them together.

Keith sighed, dropping the glue gun onto the table and glanced over at his sketchbook. Lance looked up and quirked an eyebrow.

“Giving up already, mullet? Wow,” he said, crossing his arms. “God, this isn’t working at all.” There must have been something in Keith’s expression, though, because a moment later the sneer was gone and Lance was walking over, stopping directly in front of Keith. “Hey,” he said softer. “We’ll get our shit together eventually.  Yeah, we’re a hot mess right now but it’ll work out. It always does.”

Keith shrugged. “Yeah, we kind of are,” he said. “But I guess you’re right.”

“You know I always am,” Lance replied with a small smile.

“Whatever,” Keith said, rolling his eyes. “I guess we should actually start planning now though, huh? Actually get a sketch down and all that, maybe try to listen to each other or something.”

Lance nodded. “Yeah, sounds good, let’s do it I guess.”

“Uh, cool. Sorry for being an ass.”

“Ditto.”

They sat down at the table, Keith’s sketchbook open to a new page. “So,” he said, beginning to draw out the shape of a person, “since you spent a whole day and a half making all those goddamn flowers, we should probably use them somehow. I don’t really know how to execute it, but maybe we could put them here? And you can use that idea of painting maybe on the bodice.”

Lance nodded, grinning a bit as he leaned over to add something to the drawing. Keith ignored how soft his hair looked, how his eyes seemed to be lit with a new light as he added on a cape to the figure’s shoulders. He looked over to Keith and they made eye contact before Lance leaned back and began talking about how they could construct the skirt. Keith mentally scolded himself for getting momentarily distracted, and by Lance of all things.

An hour later, they were wearing matching smiles as they presented their sketch and mockup to Coran. “Hmm,” he said, “It’s very creative, indeed, and I’m happy you boys have finally done something that may lead to a final product, but I’m not sure how you’ll be able execute it. This looks rather complicated.”

“We’ll be fine,” Keith found himself saying without hesitation. “If anyone, Lance would be able to figure it out. Right, Lance?”

Lance turned to him, surprise evident. “Uh, yes,” he stammered out, “I will do my best and we’re going to win this thing.” He tossed on a confident grin and Keith stood there awkwardly for a moment, unwilling to look at either of them.

“Alright then,” Coran said. “I wish you luck then! Make sure to get some lunch sometime in the next hour, too.”

The moment he was out of earshot, Lance spun to face Keith. “Dude,” he said. “Did you, like, actually just compliment my work?”

Keith shrugged, already back to painting the muslin. They had agreed that he would do the finer details while Lance did the cutting and pattern drafting until they moved on to the sewing portion. “I mean, am I wrong?” he asked. “I can just take it back if you want.”

“Uh— Well I mean, yeah, but— Fuck.” He paused, taking in a deep breath before trying again. “Thank you? I just… wasn’t really expecting that, I guess. Do you really think that?”

Keith tried to ignore the warmth spreading in his cheeks, stomping down the light feeling in his stomach as Lance stared at him almost in a state of wonder. He was half tempted to deny it, but there was no real point in pretending if he was going to be actually working with him. Though group projects had never been his thing, Keith knew a good relationship was how to make a team work— it was something he hadn’t remembered and then they’d ended up wasting three hours of work time being petty and idle.

“Why would I lie about it?” he asked. “You’re a pretty talented designer, Lance,” Keith said casually. “I mean, that’s kinda why you’re here. It’s why any of us are here. You’re one of eight people chosen out of our entire class to be in this thing, that’s a pretty big deal.” He secretly relished the way Lance seemed to gape again. Did this boy honestly think no one paid attention to his skill around here? “Sure, I didn’t even know that I was being considered to be here because my roommate didn’t tell me that he sent in a portfolio for me, but…” He shrugged, unsure how to end the sentence.

“Oh,” Lance squeaked out, still staring. “Uh, I— You’re pretty good too, I guess.”

Keith snorted and beat back the fluttering again. “Wow, okay, thanks,” he said. “But better than nothing. Now, are you going to get those pieces done or what? There’s a fuck ton to do here.”

This snapped Lance out of his frozen state, and he nodded vigorously. “Yeah, totally I’ll just…” He motioned vaguely to his work table. “Yeah.”

Keith stifled a laugh and watched him trip on his way back over. Though he was much more graceful now, there were certain moments like this where the old Lance from high school resurfaced. The dorky best friend that Keith had loved so much who smuggled cupcakes into their AP exam room and ate them all when he got caught. Who once walked into a tree at the museum because he saw one of the statue people move and look into their tip jar and Keith laughed at for days afterwards.

Even when Lance was an ass and completely melodramatic, it was hard not to see why Keith had fallen for him back then. Not that he was now, though. This still doesn’t make us friends, he told himself.

Except maybe they were friends now; Lance was making it impossible to tell. When they got to lunch, Lance had stolen a fry off Keith’s plate but then held the door open as they left the dining hall. He joked— without malice— about Keith hot gluing yet another seam and taught him the “proper” method of French seaming, a lesson that felt far more intimate than Keith had been anticipating. It had been amusing because he’d taught like Keith wasn’t a near professional designer and more like he was a complete beginner with a needle and thread, though at the same time his pulse was beating fast and loud as Lance guided his hands.

These were all things that friends did, weren’t they? So why couldn’t Keith convince himself that they were actually friends? Perhaps it was the reminder that they were still competing for a scholarship that constantly hung over their heads, in every morning and every poster, every announcement and every challenge. Keith wasn’t one to really get attached to people or things and he wasn’t opposed to making friends like he’d been as a kid, but there was something specific about this competition that made him averse to it. Soon, more people were going to be eliminated. He was probably going to be one of them.

They had a small chance of seeing each other on campus again, but that was it, and even though everything had felt all fun and light so far, it was still a pretty damn serious competition. They weren’t here to make lanyards and best friends, they were here to get a scholarship to the most prestigious fashion university in the world. Keith couldn’t afford to get distracted.

Collaboration did not need to lead to friendship.

When they got back to their room that night, Lance collapsed onto Keith’s bed with a loud sigh. “Holy shit, I am so tired,” he groaned. “Can we not do this tomorrow please?”

Keith rolled his eyes, nudging Lance’s feet off of the bed and kicked off his boots. “I mean, if you want to lose, sure, I guess. But when we lose, you’re getting booted, not me.”

“Wow, rude,” Lance said. “Anyway, you going to call Shiro tonight? Because I don’t really want to move.”

“Uh, Lance,” Keith said, eyebrow raised. “You know this is my bed, right?”

He tried to keep his voice level as he spoke, ignoring the way Lance was completely sprawled out across his bed, his short brown hair fanned around him and his face almost glowing in the dim lamp light. He looked ethereal this way, like an angel that had ended up on Earth, in this stuffy and unairconditioned college dorm room that was Keith’s temporary home. It was like something he’d dream up in the middle of a Christmas sermon he had no real reason to be at. He wasn’t even religious for fucks sake.

Keith blinked out of the weird haze his mind was in and shook his head. He wasn’t even going to question that thought, he did not still like Lance. This was just his exhausted subconscious reminding him of a time when he did like Lance. Their re-found ability to work together must have triggered some sort of nostalgia trip. Either that, or he really needed to get some more sleep. It was probably both. And now that they were actually trying to be tolerable, Keith was seeing what he wanted to be seeing. Really, that’s what he’d been doing all along, but now he was seeing the good things too. It was shitty timing to want to make some friends.

“Okay,” Lance replied, turning his face to look at Keith. “And what about it?”

He rolled his eyes, though it didn’t carry all of the irritation he wanted it to because Lance grinned again. “Alright, I’m going to go get ready. Please be in your own bed when I come back,” Keith said. Lance mumbled something incoherent in response as Keith stood, hopefully meaning that he’d be gone by the time Keith was done.

Thankfully when he opened the bathroom door, newly clean and in his pajama pants, Lance was by his dresser, staring at a small worn piece of paper. His eyes were alert and his shoulders rigid, a peculiar half frown-half smile on his lips.

When Keith took a hesitant step into the room, Lance’s head snapped up and their eyes met. He quickly shoved the paper into his pocket and crossed his arms. “Huh, took you long enough, dude,” Lance said.

“Like you don’t spend two hours in there every morning and night blasting your music,” Keith replied, choosing not to say anything about the paper. That was none of his business, even if he was a little curious.

Lance made a face but said nothing and walked past Keith into the bathroom. The moment the door clicked closed the water began running and Keith made his way over to his side of the room.

Moments after he shut off his light, he was asleep.

Though they were on decent terms now, Lance still woke Keith up around five, this morning screaming along to Oops, I Did It Again by Britney Spears. He’d pitched his voice to be high and nasally in a way that somehow still stayed on pitch, the sound echoing out into the dorm room and probably the rest of California.

Keith groaned, rolling over and shoving his head into his pillow. Perhaps if he laid here long enough, Lance would think he was dead and go away and let him sleep. Unfortunately though, the singing continued, a new song starting up right after the last one ended, even after the water stopped and Lance walked back out into their room.

Seeing Lance casually stroll out of the bathroom with water still dripping all over the place— because he couldn’t dry his damn hair with a towel first, Jesus Christ the carpet was damp now— and in nothing but fuzzy pink pajama pants with kittens in wool sweaters on them was quite a wakeup though. He was humming to some rock song now but Keith couldn’t even think to throw a pillow at him like he would at literally any other time.

“You good?” Lance asked after a moment, raising his eyebrow at Keith’s silence.

He looked away quickly, attempting to mask his embarrassment with a tone of irritation. “You’re getting water everywhere on the carpet, don’t you know how to dry your goddamn hair?” he said. “Also, we aren’t allowed into the workroom until eight, why the fuck are you up at five?”

Lance shrugged but did grab a shirt from his pile of dirty clothes and tried to wring out some of the water. “Early start to the day and all that,” he said. Keith gave him an unamused look and Lance frowned. “You’re no fun, man. I’m meeting my sister for breakfast at six thirty since she’d probably kill me if I didn’t visit while I’m in the area. Would’ve done it in, like, the evening over the weekend, but this was unfortunately the only time that our schedules really lined up. D’you want anything from IHOP?”

“No?” Keith said, though it came out more like a question. He averted his eyes when Lance went over to his drawer and grabbed a pair of black skinny jeans and started looking for a shirt. Keith rolled over with the intent of going back to sleep, but Lance started humming that goddamn song again. “Oh my god, stop it,” he said, flipping the covers off of his lap and turning to face Lance again with a scowl. “Are you going to summon some birds with blink-182 or whatever to come and help you pick out a breakfast shirt?”

Incredulously, Lance said in a loud voice, “It’s not Blink, man, it’s All Time Low! Also, I think I can pick out my shirt just fine on my own.” He paused, pulling out a maroon shirt and a light green one, then turned to Keith. “Okay, which shirt?”

Keith scoffed at the irony but nodded towards the second one. “Green,” he said confidently. “The maroon one’ll just make you look like a weird hipster who drinks Starbucks seasonal coffee and actually likes it.”

“Well aren’t you a charmer,” Lance replied with false sweetness. He shoved the green shirt back into the dresser anyway.

Shrugging, Keith laid back down and turned on his side. “I’m a designer, not a poet.”

“You’re an impossible asshole, that’s what you are,” Lance replied. The words were said with a sigh, but even in his half delirious state, Keith could have sworn there was a touch of fondness. “Well, whatever. I’m headed out, later man.”

After the door closed behind Lance, Keith tried to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, his brain seemed like it didn’t want to. There was no pull of sleep tugging at his mind or his eyes, his body was filled with energy that was demanding to be spent, and it was clear that it was here to stay.

Keith sighed and flopped onto his back. He stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, watching as the room grew lighter with the rising sun. Finally, after he was completely bored, he gave up and sat up, rubbing his eyes. Keith tried to find his phone on the nightstand but found it empty except for a gum wrapper and his iPad and frowned.

“What the fuck,” he muttered and stood up. It was not on his dresser. It was not on the ground. It was not on the nightstand next to Lance’s bed because why the hell would it be there? But there was something on it that still caught Keith’s eye.

The paper he’d seen Lance holding last night.

Though curious, Keith knew it was something personal that he shouldn’t look at. It would be an invasion of Lance’s space and privacy. But at the same time, Hunk or Shiro or someone else must have been rubbing off on him because he was also nosy as fuck. Just poking it and seeing what it was— if it was, like, a picture or a note— wouldn’t hurt. And it wasn’t like Lance was here to get all pissy about it.

Just one look, and Keith would leave it alone.

Slowly, he reached towards the crumpled piece of paper and prodded it with his finger. The ball rolled onto its side and a third of the photograph was unfurled. Keith’s mouth fell open when he realized that it was his own face looking back, facing forward but caught slightly off guard. He was wearing a wrinkled black gown rolled up to the sleeves, a slightly askew graduation cap sat on his head, and his hair looked like shit.

Okay, actually it was almost exactly the same as it was now just with a little more hair in his face and a bleached streak on the left side, but it looked like shit. That was besides the point.

Well. If Keith was in the photo, that meant he could look at a little more of it, right?

He didn’t remember taking any pictures at graduation; there wasn’t really any point in doing it. On the day of the ceremony, his mom had been on a business trip to Colorado and neither were really the sentimental picture keeping type. Shiro was already in college and wasn’t able to go and pester him to take any. Keith had just gotten his diploma and walked out of there without any of the usual drama, sentiment, parties, or pictures that people like Lance would have done.

Or so he’d thought, anyway.

He carefully picked up the picture, unfolding it with care. The paper was soft and worn, as if Lance had touched it and folded it up countless times and still did. Before Keith could even begin to think about what that meant though, he caught sight of the entire image and all other thoughts dissipated from his mind.

It was a selfie of Lance and his sister Rachel in front of the school, Lance leaning back awkwardly so he could pull Keith into the frame, their cheeks squished together. He wasn’t looking at the camera like Keith and Rachel, instead grinning cheerfully at Keith’s expression of surprise.

There was a fond look in his eyes, like he’d just watched the other boy hang the goddamn moon for him or something. It made Keith’s chest tighten and his stomach fill with butterflies, but he pushed the feeling away quickly.

It meant nothing and he was currently invading someone’s privacy without him knowing. He folded up the paper again and took a step back, closing his eyes for a moment before turning back to his side of the room. He’d find something to do that wasn’t snooping through his roommate and almost friend’s shit for another hour before the dining hall opened.

He ended up gathering all of the stuff he’d need and wandering the BSAD campus for a little while before settling on a bench outside the dining hall. Keith mindlessly doodled in his sketchbook, enjoying the quietness of the morning. Though it came as a surprise to some people, he’d always loved the outdoors, and in LA and on the Garrison campus it was pretty rare to find a place that was quiet and had so many trees.

“Cool sketch,” someone said some time later, causing the led of Keith’s pencil to snap as he startled. When he looked up, Pidge adjusted her denim jacket awkwardly and gave him a sheepish wave. “Oh shit, sorry about that. Uh, hi. Mind if I sit here?”

Keith shook his head and flipped his pencil to erase the stray mark. “It’s a public bench, go ahead. And thanks, I guess,” he said. For the first time since he’d begun, Keith actually looked down and studied the drawing.

His eyes widened slightly when he realized that he’d begun to recreate the photo in his and Lance’s room, including the wrinkles in the paper. The Lance in his drawing looked more like the Lance he knew now— with a sharper jaw and broader shoulders and thicker eyebrows— but it was still very obviously the same picture.

“So,” Pidge started, setting her bag on the ground and pulling her knees up onto the bench. She leaned over slightly to look at Keith’s sketchbook and he subtly covered the lower half with his arm and began working on the background. Her tone was casual but somehow almost interrogative, so Keith braced himself for whatever she was about to say. “How’s your design coming? You and Lance are partnered for this challenge, right?”

Keith nodded. “Yeah, we are. It’s going… interestingly. We’re kind of behind right now but I think that we’ll be able to finish today if Lance doesn’t decide to fuck around.” He knew that Lance wasn’t going to fuck around when they barely had any time left, but he said it anyway. “How’s yours coming? You’re working with Ryan, right?”

Pidge shrugged. “Yep. We’re doing fine right now, might finish early. That guy really likes ball gowns. Anyway, I’m just going to get to my point now. You and Lance. What’s up with that? When he told me about you before, it sounded like you guys actually got along and were like, best friends or something. But now you’re all prickly to each other and he said you don’t even remember him? What the fuck dude, that makes absolutely no sense.”

Ah yes, there it was. Keith sighed, closing his sketchbook. “Yeah, it’s— complicated, I guess,” he started, wincing when Pidge gave him an unimpressed look. “We were friends and I do remember him— because why would I not— but there’s been some, uh, miscommunication, I think. He said hi, I panicked because I didn’t think that I would actually see him again, he jumped to the conclusion and got all hostile because I’m an idiot and fell off the grid for two years. So I just didn’t correct him.”

There was a moment of silence after Keith’s quick explanation, but then Pidge raised an eyebrow. “That is… absolutely ridiculous. It’s like a weird romcom or something. You’ve told him now, though, right? Then why didn’t he take you to meet his sister and stop calling you “Douchey McMullet” yet?”

Keith didn’t say anything, but he was intrigued about the breakfast thing. He’d never been overly close with Veronica, Lance’s sister who lived in LA, so why would he have gone along if he and Lance were on better terms? That was just a sibling reunion anyway, and bringing along a friend would just ruin that.

He glanced down at the bench and started to pick at some peeling paint instead. Pidge scoffed incredulously. “No. Keith, you can’t actually still be pretending that you got some deep rooted amnesia or some shit right now,” she told him. When Keith stayed silent, she laughed and elbowed his arm hard. “Jesus Christ, why? Would it be that bad if you came up to him and said something like ‘oh hey, old best friend of mine who I was only pretending to not remember even though it makes no sense. I still like you just fine so let’s stop being idiots and go make out in the sunset’ or something?”

“What?” Keith said, disbelieving. “Why would I ever say something like that to him? Yeah, we were friends back then, but that doesn’t mean he’ll tolerate me now, especially considering that he thinks I’m the dick who forgot about his best friend the moment he left for college. Also, what the hell is ‘go make out in the sunset’ supposed to mean?”

Pidge gave him a small grin and raised her eyebrows, nodding towards the sketchbook. “I think you know exactly what it means,” she said. Before he could say anything else, she hopped up and nodded towards the dining hall. “C’mon, let’s go get some food, I think that the doors are unlocked now. Since we’re here early the potatoes are probably still warm.”

The potatoes were, in fact, still warm when they stepped inside. They grabbed their trays and sat down on the other end of the table from Nadia and Ina and didn’t speak much until Hunk finally walked in. The conversation from earlier was forgotten for now, or so Keith thought until Lance came in around seven forty and plopped down next to Keith with a bright grin.

Pidge gave him a few odd glances after that, but Keith pretended not to notice.

As predicted when one wasted the first day and a half fucking around and being pissed off at his project-partner-slash-shitty-roommate, there was still a lot left for them to do for their design.

Though they’d actually made pretty good progress the night before, they weren’t done yet. To say the least, things were a bit stressful for Keith and Lance. There was no time for jokes or bickering or taking one last sip of coffee. It was work time.

The moment they got to the worktable, Keith flicked on his sewing machine. He didn’t give his eyes time to adjust before he was evening the thread ends and sticking a piece of fabric under the presser foot, picking up on hemming the section he’d been working on yesterday. The stitches were slightly less straight and neat than Keith would have let himself do, but the judges weren’t going to look at the hemming anyway. He didn’t have any time for perfecting miniscule details.

“Well,” Lance said, grabbing his fabric scissors. “Let’s get to it, I guess.”

Keith nodded somewhat awkwardly and didn’t look up. After the talk with, it was impossible to look Lance in the eye without remembering it. He wasn’t dumb, he knew what she was implying, but it had to just be teasing. There was no way Lance would ever think of Keith in any way like… that. At least not here, in this reality and now.

Every smile sent Keith’s way, every glance and terrible joke— that was just Lance’s way of becoming his friend again. He talked to Hunk, Allura, and even Pidge like that all the time, so why would it be much different if it was Keith of all people?

There was nothing special about him, especially not to Lance.

Unfortunately, even repeating this mantra over and over again in his head didn’t seem to mean much. Keith was quiet and stiff, self sufficient, and only answering in terse words or not at all when Lance said something.

Finally, Lance sighed and kicked the pedal from under Keith’s foot. The sewing machine came to a stop and Keith was forced to look up at where Lance was standing. He looked almost hurt as he scrutinized Keith’s face, but it quickly melted away when their eyes met.

“Look, man,” he began, crossing his arms. “I dunno what I did to piss you off, if it was the Britney Spears, I can try to be a bit less loud but—”

Keith’s eyes widened and he began to shake his head. “What? I’m not—”

“Hold on, let me finish,” Lance cut in. Keith shut his mouth gesturing for him to keep going. “I don’t care if you’ve still got some sort of grudge against me, but we’ve got to at least try to work together. This is kind of, like, the big challenge about teamwork and I can’t pull this design off without you. So can we at least try to get all this done? Then you’ll never have to work with me again, promise.”

Lance leaned forward onto the table, nose almost touching Keith’s as he held his hand out towards Keith, his fingers curled in except for the pinky. There was a small, teasing smile on his lips and he shook the hand again, nodding,

Keith stared at him for a long moment in silence and Lance raised an eyebrow. “Keith,” he said, drawing his name out into a whine. “Don’t leave me hanging like that, man. It’ll just be like one day and that’s it. After that, I’ll be out of your mulletey hair.”

He scoffed but nodded. “Okay, sorry, I will,” Keith muttered. He reluctantly lifted his left hand and mimicked the gesture, letting Lance hook his own pinky with Keith’s. It was completely and utterly ridiculous and he felt like an eighth grader— probably even more so than when he was an eighth grader.

A grin spread across Lance’s face and Keith almost regretted not agreeing sooner. He had a really nice smile, and this one seemed genuinely pleased. Something about that made Keith’s pulse begin to thump loudly in his throat. He tried to ignore it.

After the first few minutes of Keith trying and failing to communicate— to be an actual team with Lance— they finally got the hang of it. Now that he’d said it and threw external thought to the wind, he and Lance seemed to work together easily— like they could read each other’s mind and their actions stayed in sync. Every time Keith turned to grab the bodice pieces, Lance had just set them down on the table for him and was starting on whatever was needed next. When Lance needed a seam ripper, there was one conveniently sitting right in between them and easy for him to grab.

It became a routine— a pattern that they were able to fall into nearly as easily as breathing now. At first it was strange, but Keith went with it, accomplishing far more than he’d thought they would be able to get done, and with Lance of all people. He wasn’t going to go questioning it though, not when there was an actual goddamn dress coming together in front of them, one painful stich at a time.

Keith worked without thought for hours. Then, after what only felt like a single blink. Coran was walking into the room and shouting in his usual gameshow host manner, like he should’ve been hosting some weird alien version of Jeopardy in space. He clapped his hands together and the room fell quiet.

“Hello, designers!” Coran greeted. He got a few distracted mumbles in reply and a sup from Lance. “I hope you’ve been working hard and are approaching the end of your projects, because you are now going to be meeting your selected model in the makeup studio in preparation for the display runway. This would also be a great opportunity to think of any other accessories you’d like to add as well. This way!”

With that, he turned on his heel, leaving the eight designers to quickly drop their work and follow after him. Lance sighed as he pinned a piece of lace to the sewing form and then, much to Keith’s surprise, turned to him. Not Hunk or Allura or anyone else, he looked at Keith.

“You ready to go?” he asked, a new, quiet smile beginning to form on his lips. “So I was thinking maybe something like those feather headbands that people used to love in like 2012. But instead of feathers there, it’s spandex textured roses. I mean, all the corps can really profit off of anymore is nostalgic shit anyway, so it would be fine, right? If Hollywood can make a bunch of movies about seventies and eighties pop stars, we can make headbands cool again.”

Keith bit back a smile and scoffed, standing up and falling into step with Lance as they left the room. “Absolutely not,” he replied. “People actually care about Elton John, but feather headbands were never cool. How would that even work with Nyma’s hijab, anyway?”

Lance shrugged. “Clip ons? It’s an experience, though, dude! A challenge! Thinking outside the box a bit wouldn’t hurt you, you know.”

“God, you’re fucking ridiculous,” Keith said. It came out fonder than he’d been aiming for, though before he could start panicking, a subtle pink color began to spread over Lance’s face as he laughed. After a moment, Keith looked away and concluded that it was probably from the stuffy heat of the hallway. He wasn’t blushing, because that’d be ridiculous. “Anyway. For makeup, a more pinkish color pallet might work best for this. I mean, I’m no expert in this stuff, but—”

“Yeah,” Lance agreed. Keith startled at Lance’s easy agreement, stumbling as they turned the corner. “Don’t worry about it, dude, you don’t have to explain all that. I don’t really know makeup and shit very well— even if I have sisters and work in fashion, it’s kinda dumb— but I trust your judgment on it. If you think that it’s going to work well with this design, it’s going to work well.”

He said the words nonchalantly, clasping Keith on the shoulder for a moment with a small grin before turning back to the hallway in front of them like nothing had happened. After a moment of silence, Lance started talking about the waffles that he’d gotten with Veronica at breakfast this morning.

Keith barely paid attention.

Lance had just easily agreed and nodded along to something Keith had said— and it took nothing for him to do it. No debate or evidence or anything, he’d straight up told Keith that he trusted him. What was that supposed to mean, if anything?

Was Lance trying to confuse Keith? Or maybe they were friends now— had this made them friends? If it did, first of all, why, and second of all, was this trust and comradery going to last after the challenge ended this afternoon? The whole change was so sudden, so there was something that had to have encouraged it, right? But what?

Keith sighed quietly, stealing another glance at Lance, nodding as he said something. Guys were so complicated, and Keith didn’t even like Lance like that.

At least, he didn’t think he did. If he’d ended up liking Lance again because they were paired together for a challenge like two fourteen year olds in a chemistry lab, it’d be fucking pathetic. Which is why it was a good thing he didn’t like Lance.

Finally, they approached the makeup “studio”.

It was not very special, just an empty open room where they had set up a few card tables where some cosmetic students from BSAD sat and helped the designers out with hair and makeup for the models. This was one of the only places in the building with some semblance of coolness, being shaded all day by one of the oak trees outside the window. Unfortunately, that meant with all the extra floor fans— floor fans were literally in every single room, Keith had learned, even when there was nothing happening in there— it was basically Antarctica.

Keith tried not to shiver as they walked in, playing it off as scratching his arm. It must not have worked though, because Lance’s head snapped up and he frowned. “Keith, are you cold?” he asked.

Helplessly, Keith shrugged. What else was he supposed to do, vehemently deny it and freeze his ass off in silence because of his pride?

“You should’ve brought something, dude,” Lance said. “Like, a light jacket at least. It gets really drafty around here, whenever I visit my sister at BSAD the AC is blasting. Here, we’re going to be in here for a little while so you can take mine for now.” Almost before he was done talking, Lance started to pull the olive green jacket off his shoulders and shoved it in Keith’s face.

Reluctantly, he slipped on the jacket, grateful for the warmth. “Uh, thanks,” Keith said. “But aren’t you cold? I mean, isn’t that the point of wearing a jacket in the first place?”

Lance shrugged. “Whatever man, you obviously need it more. You can just give it back to me later, yeah?” he said with a small grin.

Keith was pushing the sleeves up so they weren’t falling over his hands, scowling as he did so. Despite being about the same height, Lance still had slightly longer arms and the sleeves of his jacket fell down to his knuckles. It was humiliating— even more so with the look their hair and makeup artist was giving him— but still Keith couldn’t deny the small, warm fuzziness blooming in his chest when Lance continued to give him that look every so often, amused and surprised and something else when he caught a glimpse of Keith in his jacket.

Even when they left a few hours later, heading back to the workroom, Lance didn’t mention the jacket again. Sure, there were a few pointed looks from not only their friends, but also one of the goddamn makeup artists, but Keith did his best to ignore it. He couldn’t help that he was cold, and what was he supposed to do when a real jacket was offered to him? Freeze? Hell no.

The moment they got back to their workstation, Keith and Lance began working again, finding their rhythm again quickly. There were few words said between them but speaking seemed hardly necessary and it wasn’t a problem.

By the time Coran came in to announce the end of the challenge and Nyma was standing in front of them in the finished dress, Keith couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride.

A missed work day or not, he and Lance had managed to create an absolutely stunning dress. He could hardly believe how well it worked out and it was bound to win at least third.

Most of the dress was a light purple, with an array of small flowers of different prints lining the bodice and intricate folds and pleats in the tulle skirt. Sequins were stitched into the fabric in a swirling pattern that had taken Keith several hours to construct, with some extra help from Lance at the end. Their fingers had brushed as their individual strands of sequins met and Keith could have sworn he saw Lance blush, but that was completely besides the point.

He glanced over at Lance and saw a grin on his face that probably mirrored Keith’s own and then Keith was being pulled into a hug.

“Let’s win this fucking thing,” he whispered, his breath warm against Keith’s ear. He prayed that his face wasn’t too red when they pulled apart and quickly followed Coran and the others out.

Though he was a designer himself and he loved his friends and believed they were all extremely talented, Keith did not understand the concept of high fashion. Alright, it was supposed to look more like art than something that a person would actually wear out in the streets, but why was it so elaborate and stupid looking sometimes?

He clapped politely as the first model strode down the runway, a ginormous hat shaped like a bowl full of spiky shaped green fabric sticking out sitting atop the girl’s hair. The craftsmanship was excellent— undoubtedly the work of Ryan Kinkade— and the colors worked well, but Keith couldn’t help the constant repetition of what the actual fuck inside his head as he stared.

The next model came out onto the runway, revealing a bright red fabric rose that covered her entire back as she turned. The dress itself was like a potato bag in all honesty, with several artificial flower petals along the hemming. It was perplexing, to say the least. And yes, maybe his and Lance’s design was also considered “high fashion”, but it was nothing like this. This dress was rather unique, like a pink tornado that had sucked up a Michael’s craft store.

From beside him, Lance began to cough, an extremely poor attempt to cover his laugh. Keith elbowed him and tried to suppress his own smile. “Jesus Christ, Lance, at least try to be polite,” he muttered. “Ina and Nadia are literally two feet away from us right now.”

“But Keith,” Lance whispered back, leaning in closer so his voice would carry over the loud music. “Look at the thing. It’s like a weird sculpture you’d find in one of those children’s museums. And why does it matter anyway, you had no problem dissing James’s stupid saran wrap leggings.”

Keith snorted. “But James is a dick and deserved it. These are two people who we know can actually do shit— Ina won the last challenge. Also, for the record, it’s more like a perfume ad with a carnival sideshow and ‘stain in my dress shirt’ theme.”

He turned back and tried not to smirk in satisfaction at the surprised look taking over Lance’s face. “Keith. My buddy my man. Did you just make a fucking joke at me? Oh my god. I can’t believe this.” Lance turned back to the stage, a hand splayed across his chest. “God, is that you?”

Raising an eyebrow, Keith turned back to him. “Yeah? It’s not even the first time, thanks for noticing though, I guess. And stop being so dramatic, I think Haggar is giving us some evil eye,” he said, swatting Lance’s hand down.

The other boy twisted his wrist and took Keith’s hand into his own, pulling him forward a bit. “I’m never dramatic, Kogane,” he said, “you’re just dull sometimes.” With that, he dropped his hands back into his own lap and really made an effort to watch the runway again.

Before Keith could even process what had happened though, Nyma stepped out onto the runway and Lance began to squeal excitedly again.

In the past few challenges, Lance had done excellent in finding a way to incorporate Nyma’s hijab into the design and this had been no exception. The one she wore with this dress was tied up in a turban style, with the tail end resting over her left shoulder like one might have a long ponytail. It displayed the purple and blue flowers that Keith had painted on open display and was as much part of the design as the rest of the violet dress. She was like a fierce walking garden mural, and not the type that would be in a carnival themed perfume ad.

Keith snuck a glance over at Lance. He was leaning forward in his seat, foot tapping and eyes shining as Nyma strode down the runway, hardly paying attention to the compliments murmured his and Keith’s way by their fellow designers. Unable to help it, Keith smiled a bit at him before turning back to face the runway. He was sure that there was some sort of look being sent his way by Pidge and Hunk, but that didn’t matter right now. Somehow, he and Lance had created an amazing dress that had the potential of winning the challenge, they weren’t fighting anymore, and despite the stress of the entire competition, Keith was feeling pretty content.

As Nyma stepped off stage, the last model stepped on. Ezor, Keith was sure was her name. She was Allura’s model for the rest of the challenges and had been chosen to wear the design she had done with Hunk for this challenge. The dress was a dark turquoise color with carnations running up and down the mid elbow length sleeves. A translucent shawl was fastened around her shoulders, also filled almost entirely with artificial flowers.

It was admittedly beautiful, and Keith watched the two of them high five as Ezor twirled around and headed back down the runway. There was a good chance that they would win the challenge— Keith would be surprised if they didn’t.

When the other three models came back onto the stage to do one more lap for the stoic judges, Lance leaned over to Keith again. “So, what do you think,” he asked. “Was pretty interesting, right? It’s wild what people do when they work together, yeah?”

Keith nodded. “They were pretty interesting. It kind of makes you realize how small this is though with only four teams total in this. From here, it’ll probably only be getting smaller.”

A shadow fell over Lance’s expression, and Keith immediately regretted his words as he watched Lance force a small smile and shrug. “Yeah. But there can only be one winner in the end, so it makes sense I guess. Hopefully I’ll still be here by the end of next week.”

There was an awkward pause, Keith unsure how to respond to Lance’s comment and Lance picking at a loose thread on his shirt hem. “Uh, so,” Keith tried, hoping in vain to salvage the conversation. “Who do you think will win?”

Lance seemed to perk up again as he replied, “In all honesty? Allura and Hunk. Did you see that shawl, it was so fucking cool. I’d love to win this but they totally deserve it too.”

“Aww, thanks man,” Hunk cooed, turning to join their conversation. He pulled Lance into a side hug and grinned.

“No problem,” Lance replied, turning to hug him back.

Keith shifted uncomfortably and turned back to the judges. They were in a pretty deep conversation from the looks of it, Ryner and Kolivan saying something to Haggar as Luxia and Coran examined each dress up close.

Hopefully it wasn’t anything bad about his and Lance’s dress, though he couldn’t be certain with the way that they kept pointing towards it and how Luxia was looking at every seam and stitch meticulously. Had Keith done something wrong? Had he lost them first place in this challenge? There was no real way to tell for sure and it was making Keith anxious.

Finally, their conversation wrapped up and Keith watched Coran clap his hands together and step away from the group. Keith nudged Lance lightly, nodding his head towards the older man when he got a curious look.

Coran stepped onto the runway and the rest of the designers fell silent. He turned to the models and smiled. “Thank you very much for your time, ladies, you may leave the runway now,” he told them.

The models filed off stage quickly and Keith almost wished he could join them. He and Lance were going to be fine, he was pretty sure of it, but there was still a nagging anxiety that they were about to get eliminated— or worse, only Keith was about to get eliminated for his mediocre idea.

“Now first, I’d like to congratulate you all,” Coran said to them. “Even with a few rough starts and awkward matches, I am very pleased with how all of your designs turned out. Though you may struggle with teamwork, this challenge has proven that it is possible for every single one of you.” There was scattered applause and he paused a moment. “As always, I would like to start with announcing the winner, who will be eliminated, and then it will be time for judge feedback. As this is a team challenge, the win will count for both designers who created the winning design, though only one person from the losing team with be eliminated. Let’s begin.”

Luxia stepped onto the runway with an envelope, handing it to Coran before she sat back down in her seat. Thanking her, Coran took the envelope and pulled out the piece of stock paper. He cleared his throat dramatically before saying, “The winners of Just In Bloom, with the lovely piece worn by Nyma, is Lance and Keith. Congratulations boys!”

For a moment, Keith didn’t move. From beside him, Lance whooped and pulled at his hand, forcing Keith up as he guided him towards the runway stage. “Oh my god, we actually won,” he said, practically vibrating with energy as he took both enamel pins from Coran. Keith blinked out of his stupor and their eyes met as Lance said again, “We won. I guess we do make a good team, huh?”

After that, time seemed to slow.

Keith’s mind had completely snagged on the softness and the vulnerability in Lance’s voice as he said those words, of the way his nose seemed to scrunch up a bit and how his smile was even more blinding than the track lights above him. He watched numbly as Lance pinned the enamel pin brandishing a fluffy white gardenia to the front of his coat, patting it once with a small smile before stepping back. The warm fluttering in his chest was too much to ignore, almost painful as he stared at Lance.

Perhaps it was the adrenaline of winning, or perhaps this had been building up, but when Keith’s eyes managed to land on Lance’s lips, everything suddenly made a horrible amount of sense. The glances and the smiles and the constant flopping in his stomach every time he saw Lance or heard about him— Keith liked Lance. Maybe he had never stopped. Either way, he was completely and utterly fucked.

Ina and Nadia were the challenge’s official losers. Ina was eliminated, something that surprised everyone considering she had been the last winner. It put Keith on edge too— he was tied with Lance at two points so far, but if he slipped up, it would mean absolutely nothing.

Still, he let himself celebrate their win the best he could and hoped for the best after the runway. And if he looked over to Lance a few more times than usual, he’d blame it on the shared euphoria of winning a challenge and direct praise from the judges.

When Keith and Lance finally got back to their room that night, neither bothered to even kick off their shoes and immediately collapsed on their respective beds. It was best to go to bed as quickly as possible if they didn’t want to feel like absolute death in the morning. There was sadly no break after this one.

The lack of sleep and panic about sleep deprivation must’ve completely shut off his brain-to-mouth filter, because as he tried wrestling off his shoes, Keith found himself mumbling, “Hey Lance. Guess what?”

He heard Lance snort a laugh. “Hmm?”

“Did you actually think I forgot about you? Like, after high school and all that,” Keith said. It came out slightly slurred with sleepiness, his eyes barely able to stay open and mind foggy.

“Uh, kinda,” Lance replied after a long moment. “Why, has your amnesia magically been cured and you remember how awesome I am?” His tone was joking, though Keith could hear the underlying bitterness in it too. It made him sad, and he hated seeing Lance sad.

“No,” Keith began.

“Oh. Then wh—”

“I never forgot it in the first place. That would kinda be stupid if I did, wouldn’t it? I mean, you were my best fucking friend, as much of a wreck that high school was, I wouldn’t want to forget you like ever. I’m actually sort of offended that you’d even think that,” Keith said. “I lied. Was sort of panicking and didn’t think that you’d be there. But that’s my bad. Sorry, Lance.”

It was probably one of the longest things he’d ever said to Lance while here. It was weird, but all of it was weird and he was mostly beyond caring.

There was a longer pause, and Keith teetered into unconsciousness when Lance replied, “Oh. Cool.”

Keith could’ve sworn there was something hopeful in Lance's response, but it was probably just more projecting. He could try analyzing it tomorrow though— his probably-kind-of-old feelings, what the hell was supposed to happen now that he wasn’t pretending not to know Lance at all— all of it. For now, though, sleep wouldn’t hurt anything.

Chapter Text

Things were different, but also very much the same.

During Friday’s challenge— 2.3: An Unlikely Evening— Keith made a cocktail dress out of burlap and a pleather fringe. The challenge had gone normal for the most part. They all knew the routine by now and there was nothing to be worried about except how to make their ugly fabrics appear slightly less ugly.

Lance sat down next to Keith during sketch time. Keith, not Hunk or Pidge or Allura or anyone else. When Coran announced their start time, Lance had simply walked up to the wall Keith was leaning against and sat down. He didn’t even say anything, only flipped to a new page in his sketchbook and began sketching. Keith said nothing, but there was no way he was imagining all those small glances that were sent his way and the small comments that were probably meant to spur conversation. Not that Keith let them go anywhere though— despite the fact he had somehow, inexplicably, kind of made some friends here, his social skills were still majorly lacking.

Keith won the challenge, even with all the distractions. He’d been surprised when Coran announced it, a bit dazed until Lance shouted excitedly in his ear. And then he hugged him. Not shouting indignantly that they were tied in points now or that he was going to beat Keith in the next challenge, not a simple pat on the back, no normal, logical reaction. No, Lance fucking hugged Keith— and not in a cool bro hug type of way, but rather in a full on, bear-like embrace like he’d just won the goddamn lottery or something. It made no sense at all.

Neither did it mean anything, though Keith couldn’t ignore the way his heart pounded, and his cheeks began to burn when Lance pulled him in, his hands electric against Keith’s arms. It wasn’t special, he knew. Lance hugged people all the fucking time. But for a brief moment, clouded over by shock and adrenaline and stupid hormones or something, he let himself pretend.

Ryan lost, though Keith was relieved when Coran announced it as another non-elimination round. They hadn’t talked much, but it was still cool to have him around. It wasn’t hard to see how skilled Ryan was— how skilled all of the people were here— and it would’ve sucked to watch him go.

Eventually all of us are going to have to go, a small voice reminded Keith. He ignored it and tried to enjoy the rest of his day.

So far, it had been fairly easy pretending he and his friends weren’t in a competition where everyone was always on the verge of elimination. Only two people had been eliminated up to this point, something that could be overlooked without much effort since Keith didn’t have much connection to either of them. None of his friends had been eliminated, that factor hadn’t fully settled into his mind yet.

Until the next challenge— 2.6: Scholarly Style, where they had to make designs based off of school supplies— anyway. It was pretty bittersweet overall. Hunk won the challenge, his first in the entire competition so far. Keith had done alright in it, his design was nothing special but wasn’t elimination worthy.

However, Pidge’s was.

The shift in her expression when Coran announced her as the loser and therefore eliminated was something Keith was having trouble forgetting. She had been smiling, nearly vibrating with joy at Hunk’s win and within seconds her expression turned shocked and devastated. Keith wanted to go over and say something to her, some sort of condolence or reassurance, but whatever he wanted to say dissolved the moment he opened his mouth. Instead he watched as Lance, Hunk, and Allura all turned to Pidge, pulling her into a comforting embrace.

Keith wondered if he’d get something like that when he was eliminated. Then he decided that was stupid and unrealistic to think even now and awkwardly joined their hug as well.

The next day was Sunday. Keith, Lance, Hunk, Allura, and Pidge went to the IHOP that Lance and his sister had gone to earlier in the week. He could almost imagine it was a normal morning of the five of them eating breakfast together and relaxing between “challenges. It should have been easy— he was sitting pressed against the window and next to Lance, after all. There was hardly any room between them and when the conversation wasn’t between the entire group, it was them two talking, admittedly the best result in any other situation.

But there were suitcases by their booth and redness in everyone’s eyes. A weight hovered over them no matter how hard Keith tried to ignore it.

This was the beginning of the end, one by one they were all going to be eliminated. Even if Lance, Hunk, and Pidge’s friendship lived on, there’d be absolutely no reason for them to talk to Keith again so he’d end up being pathetically alone again and—

“So,” Lance said in a light tone, breaking Keith from his thoughts. “What’s got you all broody again?”

Keith looked up from the table, tilting his head a bit. “When have I ever been broody?” he asked.

“Right now,” Lance replied. “Alright, yeah the reason that we’re here sucks if that’s why you’re being emo but this is supposed to be fun! We gotta enjoy each other’s company while we can and all that. I’ll even buy you a milkshake if you want.”

“I’m lactose intolerant,” Keith said, raising an eyebrow.

Lance mimicked the gesture, turning so he could face Keith directly. “And? That’s never stopped you before. I think I recall you eating like eight pieces of cheese pizza from Costco one time at a birthday party or something? If you remember that.” He paused, and Keith was glad that it was only a subtle jab this time. “Also, you’ve got like an entire can of whipped cream on your waffles right now.”

Keith watched Lance lean in even closer and stole a fork full of whipped cream from his plate, shoving it into his mouth with a grin.

Keith shrugged. “I don’t really like milkshakes anyway,” he said. “Also, you’ve got whipped cream on your nose now.”

“Bullshit. I think I’d know if I got whipped cream on my face, dude.”

“No, there’s actually whipped cream on your face,” Keith said. He stared at the white streak for a moment, noting the freckles on Lance’s cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Keith turned away, scooting closer to the window and away from Lance. He was almost entirely sure Lance could hear how his heart was beating erratic and fast in his chest. Nonetheless, he continued evenly, “But if you want to walk around the rest of the day looking like a moronic eight year old, be my guest.”

Crossing his arms awkwardly, Lance huffed in exasperation, a small smile forming on his lips. “Fine, maybe I will.”

Across the booth, Allura laughed. “You two are ridiculous,” she told them, shaking her head.

“When are they not?” Pidge replied.

“Hey!” Lance replied incredulously. “I am a very professional and mature fashion designer who makes professional, mature, and not ridiculous decisions.”

Keith leaned over this time, picking up the Oreo milkshake that was sitting in front of Lance. “Alright, Mr. ‘I ordered banana pancakes off the kid’s menu and have whipped cream on my face still just because I’m petty’,” he said, then took a large sip of the milkshake. It was admittedly pretty damn good, even if his stomach was going to fucking hate him for it in a few hours.

As the others laughed around them, Lance stared at him for a moment, partially incredulous, partially an odd look Keith still couldn’t decipher. “Oh my god,” he finally said.

Instead of replying, Keith only shrugged and took another long sip of the milkshake. If Lance let him drink the rest of it without complaint and only stole a few more sips himself, so what. It was just a stupid milkshake, even if it somehow managed to lift away the heavy dread for Pidge’s departure for a little while longer.

Pidge’s brother came to pick her up at noon. They walked out to the parking lot, exchanged hugs and goodbyes and promises to text her later. Then she was gone.

Somehow, things felt… empty afterwards. The cafeteria was too quiet and there was something essential missing on campus as a whole.

Keith tried to ignore the feeling. He tried adapting to it and accepting it even though his other friends didn’t want to. Perhaps it was justified, having known Pidge longer than Keith had, but he knew it was only going to keep happening.

Pidge’s elimination was only the beginning— this was the last week of the main competition before the final three would compete for the prize everyone came here to win. In the coming challenges, it was inevitable that at least one of them would be eliminated. They might as well get used to saying goodbye now.

Neither Keith or Lance said much as they made their way to the residence building and up to their room. Allura and Hunk had gone to explore some of the nearby shops, but Lance declined, claiming to be worn out and in need for a nap.

They were all very clearly concerned, but Allura and Hunk agreed anyway. Keith, for whatever reason, blurted out that he was going back as well. Hunk and Allura accept it with far less hesitance, probably thinking that Keith was trying to pull some suave alone time with Lance. That wasn’t his intention, but Keith had blushed anyway before turning back and following Lance in the opposite direction.

He did, however, want to confront Lance. With Pidge’s departure, Lance was off somehow. Everything he did looked forced, his jokes and comments about the suburban front lawns they passed by even became less frequent. What he needed was a distraction, something he’d rejected in favor of isolation.

But this point, Keith wouldn’t let him do that. He was going to be a friend again. He was going to comfort Lance and get him to open up about what was bothering.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be the same level as the spontaneous week-day sleepovers from their senior year of high school, but it would be a start.

Well, that’s what Keith would try to do, anyway. But initiating conversation was hard, and when they entered the dorm room and Lance turned to face Keith expectantly, all that came out of his mouth was, “Hey, you want this peppermint?”

Lance cracked a smile at that. When Keith reached into his pocket, producing the small candy, it became a giggle. Within moments, Lance was full on belly laughing, his eyes crinkled, and cheeks flushed as he looked from Keith’s face to the mint in his hand. It was probably the most genuine, loud laugh Keith had ever heard from him from the start of the competition, and for a moment he was frozen.

He should’ve protested, should have said something or just given Lance the mint and then go pretend to take a nap or something. But as he soaked up Lance’s beautiful, melodious voice, the downright ethereal way his nose wrinkled and lips stretched out wide, there was no way Keith could move.

At some point though, he must’ve snapped out of it because then they were both laughing, breathless and inexplicably filled with joy. Their eyes met and Lance managed a wide grin at Keith, whose heart leapt into his throat. He was grateful to have a very reasonable excuse for his red face and quick heartbeat, but the almost painful fluttering in his chest could be explained by nothing except the boy in front of him.

Lance looked up at him from under his dark lashes, smile turning into a playful smirk. He gasped dramatically, reaching out to grab Keith’s hand. “Aw, you shouldn’t have,” he cooed.

Keith shrugged, placing the candy into Lance’s palm. He let his hand linger and dared a look up at Lance’s face again, shrugging. “I kinda owed you one. Also, I like it when you’re happier.”

“Oh.” Lance looked surprised at his answer, a flush creeping onto his cheeks as Keith’s words settled. It was an amusing sight, and Keith tried to keep the fondness out of his look.

Keith took a deep breath then added, “Which is why I’m also here if you want to, uh, talk or something.” He paused then continued quickly. “I know you don’t have much reason to trust me anymore and I’m absolute shit with words, but I know how much friendship means to you and how much it sucks that Pidge is gone. So if you want, I’m all ears.”

Lance looked stunned for a moment, but the expression was quickly replaced with one that had far too much fondness and appreciation for Keith’s stupid, love-struck heart to handle. “Thank you, Keith,” he said. “Actually, yeah. I guess I’m just kind of… scared now. Stupid, right? But they’re starting to weed out everyone and I really don’t want to go. I only saw Allura, Pidge, and Hunk on campus before. It’s easy that way, but during breaks and stuff, it’s like we just… stop or something. They all go back to their better, cooler friends, and then I’m just left by myself. We were all together here and I got used to it. Seeing your friends out of school and knowing they actually want you around is really nice, even if the situation is stupid. It was nice. But now Pidge is gone, and it’s all just going to fall apart. I’ll become Lance-with-no-friends again, you know?”

Keith’s chest hurt as he nodded. “Yeah, I get that,” he said quietly. “I can’t promise you that everything will turn out exactly how you want it to, but that won’t happen. I’ve not known them very long, but I can tell that Hunk and Allura care about you a lot. And… I care about you a lot. So we’re not just going to abandon you now that people are getting eliminated, they’ll still be around afterwards.”

There was a long pause between them, Lance studying Keith curiously and Keith sitting patiently for his answer. He didn’t mind it too much. The silence was relaxed and open, the sort of calm that Keith hadn’t thought they could achieve in this room.

“Yeah,” Lance finally said, smiling softly. “I guess you’re right. Thank you, Keith.”

Before Keith could even think to react, Lance was pulling him into a hug. His breath was warm against Keith’s neck, and he was pretty sure he was going to combust.

“You know, if you don’t start hugging me back, this is gonna get really awkward,” Lance mused after a moment.

Keith scoffed but wrapped his arms around Lance’s waist, letting himself relax into his arms. Lance tightened his hold. If he heard the way Keith’s heart was pounding out of his chest, he said nothing.

The room was stuffy, and they were both disgustingly sweaty, but still they remained standing together for the next few minutes.

When Lance finally pulled away, his smile was brighter than before, a new, playful gleam in his eyes. “Now c’mon, enough of this sad philosophy bullshit,” he said, “I wanna listen to that “Cool Shit to Listen to While Showering” playlist of yours. I forgot how much you liked that “classic pop” stuff.”

“Wh—”

Lance laughed at Keith’s alarmed expression. “You have your Spotify connected to your Facebook, dude. You honestly think I didn’t look you up again at the beginning of all this scholarship stuff?” He shook his head. “Man, what do you think I’ve been listening to every morning? It’s a killer playlist, those three songs from the Pussy Cat Dolls you had right next to each other were a real throwback.”

“Unbelievable,” Keith muttered, grimacing. He honestly needed to change the name of that goddamn playlist. And the fact that Lance was listening to it? He should’ve known that something was off from the moment that he heard Brittney Spears, the only time that Lance had ever tolerated her music was when Keith had it on.

“Aw, don’t be embarrassed, NSYNC is nothing to be ashamed of,” Lance said, poking Keith’s cheek. He pulled out his phone and tapped at the screen a few times, a mischievous smile. Keith’s stomach flipped when their eyes met, a complete and utter betrayal. It was not attractive in the slightest.

A moment later, the beginning notes of One, Two Step were coming through his shitty phone speakers. Keith groaned, putting his face in his hands. “Lance, oh my fucking god, are you serious right now?”

From the first time that he’d admitted his affinity for 2000s pop music, Lance had never let it go. Somehow, he got Keith to tell him that, at one point, his favorite song was One, Two Step. Lance made a point to bring it up as much as possible, going so far as to writing the lyrics “automatic, supersonic, hypnotic, funky fresh” in Keith’s yearbook their junior year.

It seemed that he still was not willing to let that go. Keith wanted to be more annoyed, but something warm and nostalgic seeping into his chest as Lance tossed his phone on his bed and took Keith’s hands.

“C’mon, Keith, I know you want to,” he said, swaying a bit to the beat. “I mean, it’s a Jazze Phizzle Productshizzle.”

Keith snorted. “God, you’re such a dork.”

“I dunno man. You’re the one who knows all the lyrics to this garbage,” Lance said, shrugging.

“So do you,” Keith pointed out.

Lance raised an eyebrow. “And that’s your fault,” he said, letting go of one of Keith’s hands to poke him in the chest. “I used to have a good music taste, you know. Like, Elton John and Kansas and whatnot, classic rock. But then ruined me with your stupid Kesha ‘study music’.”

“It helped you stay awake when you were studying for that chem final, did it not,” Keith said, smiling complacently when Lance frowned. “Also, why are we doing this again?”

Lance took Keith’s hand again, pulling him forward. “Because it’s fun! Because we’re having a fun bonding moment! Because Bulletproof is next up in the queue and you’re going to dance with me like it’s Skate City or some shit!”

Keith was unimpressed.

“Look, you wanna be not-sad anymore? ‘Cause I do, and this is the best way to do that,” Lance said.

“You know some people just watch a Disney movie to do that,” Keith muttered but let himself be pulled along to the music.

At some point they started to sing along to the music, all other thoughts pushed off to the side for a moment or two. There was nothing but Keith, Lance, Cascanda, and some truly terrible background music. It was incredibly embarrassing— especially when Allura poked her head into their room a little while later, raised an eyebrow at their antics, then left without a word— but still the most fun Keith had had in a while.

And as he stared at Lance’s bright grin, what Keith already knew was once again confirmed— he was, in Shiro’s words, completely whipped. The thought weighed on his chest like the world’s heaviest cinderblock, but as their eyes met, Keith couldn’t feel lighter.

The next challenge began like all the others— Coran had a stupid name and number, Challenge 3.0: Get Your Romper On, and they were tasked to make a romper or jumpsuit inspired by a building somewhere in downtown LA.

Lance walked next to Keith during their outing, an easy grin on his lips. Keith still wasn’t sure why he’d been chosen over Allura or Hunk, but he just nodded anyway when Lance announced that they were going to be “sketch buddies”.

“Hey Keith,” Lance said as they entered the outdoor mall space, voice lilting. “What do you think if I choose to make something based off that building? Could make some badass looking shoulder pads or something with those… metal arch things. A She-Ra type thing maybe.”

“Lance, that’s a McDonald’s.”

“At least it’s creative,” he said, eyebrows quirked. “You just settled on the first goddamn office building you saw. It isn’t even a good looking office building, you have absolutely no style. Though I guess that’s to be expected given your taste in jackets.”

Keith elbowed him lightly, doing his best to suppress a smile. Lance was technically insulting his wardrobe right now, he reminded himself, looking away. This was not the time to be all dumb and mushy and smile at him or whatever.

Crushes were dumb. And distracting. And completely awful despite the giddiness that was filling Keith’s chest as Keith rebutted, “It’s not just a random ass office building. If it was, I wouldn’t have chosen it. There is definitely something to work with in those statues in the front, you missed everything but the ‘office building’ part in your rush to McDonald’s.” He paused, raising his eyebrows challengingly. “And besides, isn’t it more creative to make something cool out of a super plain building instead of just stealing the McDonald’s logo to make some shoulder pads that belong in the 80’s?”

Lance shrugged and veered Keith towards the fast food restaurant with purpose, going so far as to put a hand lightly on Keith’s back. Suddenly his skin felt hot. Yeah, whoever thought crushes were cute or fun and whatever the fuck else had never fallen for Lance McClain. Twice.

“Your hair belongs in the 80’s,” Lance quipped. “Maybe it is, though. Maybe not. Designing something based on McDonald’s still sounds hella fun, though, you’ve got to admit.”

“I don’t know, maybe?” Keith said, the end sounding more like a question than a solid answer. “But past the arches in the logo, there’s nothing you can really use except maybe shit colored floors and generic germ covered play area yellow. I never took you as a fast food tile aesthetic kind of guy, is that what you really want from this?”

“Always, Kogane,” Lance replied. “Never underestimate the power of the weirdly colored tile floor of a McDonald’s. However—” He paused, eyes wandering to the cropped leather jacket that Keith was wearing. “If I had someone like you modeling it, I’d get first place even using play area yellow. You could pull anything off with a face like that. Your ugly ass cropped jacket is proof.”

Their eyes met and he grinned, going so far as to wink before turning to go sit down at one of the tables.

It took Keith a moment to follow, brain short circuiting. There was something almost painful fluttering in his chest, pressing hard against his rapid heartbeat. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Lance was trying to flirt with him.

Keith pushed that thought away quickly. After all, hadn’t he gone and called his jacket— which he wore every single day because he had nothing else— ugly right after? Who insulted a person right after flirting with them anyway?

Hoping his face hadn’t turned completely red, Keith willed himself to move towards the table that Lance had chosen to sit at.

He’d pulled out his sketchbook now, entirely focused on his drawing. When Keith’s chair scraped loudly against the concrete, Lance didn’t even flinch. His brows were deeply furrowed and his nose scrunched was up as he muttered to himself.

If Keith was being honest, it was pretty goddamn cute. He managed to be cute most of the time, now that Keith thought about it, but was even more so when working.

Abruptly, Keith stood. “Uh, I’m going to get a coffee. You want anything?”

For a long second, Lance didn’t react. Keith was about to ask again when he said, “Hmm. Hash brown. Yeah, gimme a hash brown. Thanks, man.”

Keith snorted. “Alright, what’s the magic word?” he asked sarcastically.

“Uhh, potatoes.”

“Nope.”

“Open sesame.”

“Wow, creative.”

Lance looked up now, brows furrowed as he tried, “Sixty nine?”

“Dude, what are we, twelve?”

“Hippopotamus,” Lance said confidently.

“What? Where did you even get that one from?” Keith rolled his eyes, though a smile tugged at his lips. “Okay fine. When I’m not your butler but you want something, what do you say?”

Finally, Lance’s eyes lit up in understanding and he nodded. “Hash brown, pretty fucking please,” he said sweetly, batting his eyelashes for good measure.

And then he looked down went back to drawing.

“Why do I even bother with you? Whatever, good enough,” Keith said, laughing.

Fortunately, the line inside was fairly short— a small boon from the universe since it smelled like burnt hair, just like every other downtown fast food place— and Keith managed to get back outside in three minutes.

Not that it really mattered though; Lance hadn’t moved since he’d left him.

He slammed a hash brown and cup of coffee in front of Lance with more force than necessary, startling him as the metal rattled. “Straight from the greasy pan,” Keith announced and took a sip of his own coffee.

Lance dropped his pencil with a grin and took a large bite of hash brown. “Thanks, you’re a godsend. You didn’t want anything?”

“Just a coffee,” Keith said. “I don’t really like breakfast food.”

“Alright, fair,” Lance said, nodding. He took a swing of coffee and immediately made a face, like he just had a shot of whiskey instead.

Keith averted his eyes, knowing that he’d probably end up staring like a fucking weirdo again if he didn’t. Still, he had to laugh as Lance sputtered for a moment.

“Was there, like, any cream or something in there?” he asked. “Ugh, I hate the taste of coffee. All that talk about, like, acquired taste and whatever is bullshit.”

Keith shrugged, pulling out his sketchbook. “You can go get some if you want, I guess, but I think it’s fine.”

“Of course you do,” Lance said. “Gross taste in coats and beverages it seems.” Despite complaining moments before, he sipped at the coffee again, grimacing less this time.

“Fuck off,” Keith said, kicking Lance under the table. Lance kicked back immediately.

It escalated into their own weird, slightly more aggressive version of footsies when Keith kicked back. They went on trying to swipe at each other’s shins for the next few minutes, but then Keith made the mistake of looking up.

Lance was giggling, face flushed pink as he grinned at Keith. His chest ached as their eyes met, and Keith looked away quickly, pulling his ankle out of Lance’s foot’s hold.

He cleared his throat and asked. “Uh, weren’t you going to go turn your coffee into a cup of sugar or something?”

Lance shrugged. “Meh, whatever, I’m over it. We should probably get to sketching now.” He picked up his pencil again as if to demonstrate, then grinned at Keith. “Let’s see what you can make from a dull ass office building, mullet.”

“Let’s see how not-stupid and interesting you can make McDonald’s,” he replied, a small grin of his own forming.

Allura found them near the end of their free time and the three of them walked to Subway for lunch. When they sat down and compared ideas, she revealed that she was using Steak ‘N Shake as her building inspiration, Lance slammed his hand on the table, startling a few other customers and Keith.

“See, and you said it was a dumb idea,” he exclaimed, gripping Keith’s shoulder. “‘Llura’s doing it too though, so you and your dull office building can suck it!”

Keith sat there and took it, shaking his head with what was probably the world’s stupidest, most smitten smile. “Alright, whatever keeps you working, I guess,” he said.

He ignored Allura’s inquisitive gaze when their eyes met briefly. Whatever she thought she was seeing right now, Keith was all but sure that it was wrong.

The light mood followed Keith back into the workroom, where he began to draft his pattern and cut his muslin at least ten minutes earlier than usual. The challenge-induced anxiety didn’t plague him as much as he explained his pitch to Coran or when he started cutting his fabric. He was half distracted still, unable to ignore how significantly the workroom had shrunk but he worked on.

Keith managed to finish his romper before the official end of the challenge. He ended up just standing with Acxa for a few minutes while the other designers were bustling around frantically around them.

She was dressed in the crisp white and purple suit, metallic silver dusting her cheekbones and her hair twisted up into a tight bun, ready for the runway. It was not nearly spectacular as what Keith had been able to accomplish with Lance— something he still found hard to believe he was missing— but he was confident it would at least keep him from get him eliminated.

He wished that he could say the same of his other friends’ pieces, but it was clear that Hunk’s craftsmanship was off today. The seams of his jumpsuit sleeves were noticeably lopsided in a very clearly unartistic way, and some of the fabrics clashed jarringly against each other instead of his usual cohesive fabric matching. Hunk looked frantic as he talked to his model, but at this point, there was nothing that could be done except hope that it was enough to keep him in.

Unfortunately, the only other potential loser for this challenge that Keith could see was Allura, with her plain, generic looking firetruck red, floor length romper. Either way, one of his friends was going to get eliminated this round, he knew it.

The fear from the diner came back to him as a cold, constricting knot in his chest. He tried to steel himself, to remind himself that these were never his friends to keep in the first place and that he knew this was going to happen. Pidge was already gone, an admittedly still-fresh wound, what was one more? It was just the nature of a competition like this.

“So, what’s up with you and that other guy? That other designer over there,” Acxa said suddenly. “You seem to look over there quite often.”

Keith looked up, blinking back into the present. He saw Acxa nod towards Lance, because of course she was, and felt his cheeks warm. Lance was saying something to Nyma, pointing at some seam on the neckline, though Keith was too far away to hear them.

Attempting nonchalance, Keith shrugged. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“You two used to bicker quite a bit. There was that one time with the glue gun and French seams or whatever? Bickering was your thing, but when I came in earlier, your interactions seemed almost… congenial,” Acxa commented. “Did something happen?”

Yeah, Keith thought. I realized that I’m just the same as I was when we were seventeen and still have a big fat crush on him.

Nonchalantly, he said, “I guess so. We’re friends now, I think.”

She nodded and they fell into silence again. Keith was grateful for it.

They didn’t have to wait very long until Coran walked back in, announced the end of their creation period, and it was time to go out to the runway. Keith pointedly did not look at Lance during the runway show.

In the end, Hunk was eliminated. Nadia won, but Keith felt like he was submerged under water as he congratulated her. Instead, he watched Lance and Hunk.

Keith might’ve been Lance’s best friend nearly all of high school, but Hunk was, from what Keith could tell, the first one to make him feel welcome here. And now Hunk was leaving. Then Keith realized that he would miss him too. After these past few weeks, Keith could also safely say that Hunk was his friend now too. But all that would remain after this would be a nod if they saw each other on campus— if Hunk wanted to acknowledge him, that is. It would be just as easy to pretend that they’d never even met.

Alright, maybe that was a hypocritical fear. After all, hadn’t Keith done exactly that to Lance not three weeks ago? Granted, he didn’t mean to, but it still happened, so maybe he deserved to get that after all.

No matter what happened after the competition though, it still sucked in the present. A lot.

And for better or worse, Hunk stayed until the end of the week as a spectator.

Keith saw him with Allura at their usual table in the dining hall the next morning as usual, and it almost felt like normal if they ignored the fact that he was still in his pajamas and looking more relaxed than he had since they’d gotten here.

Hunk smiled widely when Keith and Lance sat down, and though there was still a clear note of sadness in his face, it still did not lack warmth. They ate their food and everything felt normal.

The big difference was after breakfast, when Keith, Lance, and Allura got up to head to the auditorium. Hunk did not move, instead giving them a small wave as he finished his cup of fruit.

“Later, guys!” he said. “Good luck out there.”

Keith nodded. “Thanks. Have fun… hanging out over here and stuff, I guess. Bye.”

Allura said something to Hunk as well, but Keith was no longer paying attention. When it was Lance’s turn, he didn’t say anything, instead giving Hunk a smile that looked more like a pained grimace before he turned for the doors. Keith tried not to be too concerned and followed him out

When they got to the auditorium, it felt smaller than ever. The end of the competition was coming close, with only this challenge and the next before the final, week-long challenge where the last three would be competing for the last time. At this point, any of them had a shot of winning.

Lance seemed to have recovered some of his energy by now, a slight bounce in his step as they made their way to the front row. Keith took the aisle seat and Lance moved past him to sit in the seat next to him. Because his brain was overreactive and melodramatic when it came to Lance, Keith glanced down the row.

Of all the seats he could’ve taken, Lance decided to sit next to him again. Alright, cool. There was absolutely nothing to read into on that. They were just two friends sitting next to each other as friends did.

But Allura put some space between herself and the others— as had Ryan and Nadia, who were probably as good of friends as Lance and Hunk— so why was Lance right here?

Thankfully, before Keith could think about it too hard, Coran stepped up onto the stage.

“Welcome back, designers! The room is getting rather small, eh? At the end of this week, only three of you will remain. The final three will be determined by who makes it through the week, and your wins from the other challenges will only be considered after that.” He paused and winked like he was telling them a secret. Keith was torn between laughing and rolling his eyes.

From beside him, Lance snorted. “He’s so dramatic,” he muttered.

“That was kind of obvious from the first day. I mean, he has a handlebar mustache,” Keith pointed out, eyebrow raised. Lance shrugged.

When none of the others reacted, Coran continued. “Let us get into Challenge 3.3. We’re going to start this one a bit differently. I will show you your materials first and then it will be up to you five to guess the challenge!” He sauntered across the stage and uncovered a table full of metal gears, artificial flowers, googles, scraps of lace, and a bunch of other seemingly random shit with a dramatic flourish. “Your main materials! Now, would any of you like to take a guess?”

The designers were quiet for a long minute. Coran didn’t seem deterred or the least bit awkward as he stood up there waiting, grinning widely like a gameshow host.

“So uh, what exactly are we looking at again?” Nadia said, breaking the silence.

Ryan shrugged. “Dollar store craft stuff?” he guessed.

“Nah,” Nadia said. “If anything, it came from Michael’s.”

“Is it some sort of historic theme?” Allura asked.

“Or a carnival,” Lance said.

Keith sat up. “Oh. It’s some sort of steampunk thing, right?” he said.

Coran jumped up, pointing at Keith. “Precisely, Number Four!” he said, and the rest of them muttered long oh’s and of course’s. “You will create a design that is innovative and unique using the aesthetic of the steampunk genre— innovation and invention. At least three of the items on this table must be used, and your time begins now! Good luck, designers, I look forward to seeing what you create!”

With that, he stepped aside and gestured for the designers to climb up onto the auditorium stage with him. Keith stayed in his seat a moment, watching as Nadia and Ryan laughed and elbowed each other as they ran to the stairs at the side of the stage. But then Allura and Lance were turning towards Keith and Lance was grabbing at his hand, tugging him until he stood.

“C’mon dude,” Lance said, “we gotta go get all the good stuff before they take it all!”

Keith rolled his eyes but followed after him. “Yeah, okay, whatever. I’m coming, see?” he said.

Up on the stage, Ryan and Nadia were trying to break apart a bundle of synthetic blue flowers, bickering like toddlers as they yanked at the ends. From that, Keith could safely assume there was still plenty to choose from.

Perhaps that was a good thing. Even if he’d guessed the challenge, that didn’t mean Keith knew shit about steampunk things beyond the fact that it existed and there was lots of bronze and gears involved. He had no idea what he was going to do with his dress or how to make it original.

Being so close to the end now, they all had to step up their work effort to prove they were worthy. And so, of course, this was the exact time that his brain decided to completely blank on ideas. He stared at the tubs in front of him, watching as Allura hoarded a few feet of lace and a bundle of flowers and Lance simply shoved whatever he could find into his arms.

“I think you’d best start grabbing your materials!” Coran said into Keith’s ear, suddenly standing right next to him. Keith startled, jumping away and ignoring the small laugh from somewhere else on stage, undoubtedly from Lance. “It is considered immediate disqualification if you don’t convey the theme or any of these materials in your design. It’d be a shame to see you leave for something so trivial.”

Keith nodded, willing his heart to slow down. Was this man a goddamn ninja? “Uh, yeah, I know. Was getting to that now, actually. Sorry. I was just— planning my idea out first.”

Coran nodded. “Of course. Well, better speed that up then, Number Four.” He slapped Keith on the back and strode off to bother Allura instead. Keith let out a small breath and turned to the boxes with fresh determination— which was undoubtedly sparked by panic and anxiety. He glanced around and finally decided that he could think of something later and started grabbing random things.

He was tossing his materials into one of the other empty cardboard boxes when suddenly the white feathered boa that he was picking up slip out of his grip and— unsurprisingly— ended up in Lance’s hands. Keith huffed at the grin on Lance’s lips. It was clear Keith couldn’t count on getting the boa back anytime soon.

And still, even with the frantic need to get everything that would be needed for a tolerable steampunk inspired dress before Coran’s timer went off, even with how distracting and obnoxious Lance could be, there was also a warm, growing feeling of fondness in his chest when Lance’s eyes met his own. Keith’s stomach did twirls and flips, aching with the urge to do— something.

“Aww, Keith, I had no idea you liked feathers,” Lance cooed. “Hate to break it to you though, I dunno if they’re very steampunky.” He paused, stepping forward to loop it around Keith’s neck. Keith wasn’t sure if he was about to sneeze or panic because of how close Lance was suddenly getting. “A shame, though,” Lance continued nonchalantly. “You look pretty good in feathers. Like a grumpy angel or something.”

Before Keith could think to reply, Lance pulled at the end of the boa and tossed it back at him. “Good luck on your design, dude.” Lance picked up his box again and headed towards the stairs. He didn’t seem to notice Keith’s stunned look or bright red cheeks, something that the other boy wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or angry for.

Keith had come to accept— and, possibly mourn and panic over— the fact that he liked Lance, just a little tiny bit. In doing so, he also realized that it maybe hadn’t been such a recent, quick thing. It felt the same as back in high school— where, half the time Keith had been a complete dumbass around Lance without even realizing— but even stronger. A dam had been unstoppered, one Keith hadn’t even noticed was there, and now everything was pouring out again.

Every little thought and feeling about Lance— about his eyes and his smile and his deft skill with a sewing machine and every other obnoxious piece of poetic bullshit that Keith could think of— they surged through Keith almost painfully as he stared at Lance’s retreating figure. And he fucking hated it.

Sighing, Keith tossed the boa into his box, blindly grabbed a few more things, and hopped down from the stage to follow the others out of the auditorium.

After Lance slung an arm around his shoulders in the hallway, Keith would neither confirm nor deny the fact that he leaned into Lance after jumping in surprise and accidentally almost elbowing Lance in the face when Allura asked about it later on when they went to lunch.

The moment Lance had gotten up to get a new fork after accidentally launching his own halfway across the dining hall— which he also went over to pick up like a considerate and respectable person, Keith’s brain seemed to find essential to remind him— Allura turned her entire head around like an owl to look at Keith, eyes interrogative and glinting with nosy mischief.

“So what was all of that earlier?” she asked him. “You and Lance are getting awfully close as of late, I wonder why that is. It’s quite odd, isn’t it? And your reactions seem to be rather strong. When we were walking to the workroom, if I recall, you looked at him fondly as you nearly broke his nose.”

Eyes bulging, Keith turned to face her. He coughed a bit, trying not to inhale the noodles he’d just put in his mouth and a million different reactions seemed to flash through his mind at once. She obviously knew something was up then, but how the hell was Keith supposed to react to it? After a moment of silence, he glanced over to see where Lance was, then whisper-hissed, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I— I’m— I was not— There’s literally nothing going on. That’s completely ridiculous.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Really?” she said, unconvinced. “I see then.”

“I might have told him that I kind of faked the whole ‘I don’t remember you’ thing, but that doesn’t mean anything is different now. And Allura, you weren’t even walking near us so it’s not like you knew what did or did not happen,” Keith said shoving a fork full of spaghetti into his mouth.

Allura and waved him off. “Ryan was walking right behind you two, so I think I’ve got a pretty credible source. And for the love of God, chew with your mouth closed. I do not need to see your food, thank you very much.”

Keith, who was scowling at her, closed his mouth, taking a moment to swallow his food. “Right, sorry. But why does Ryan even care?” He looked to the next table, where Ryan was sitting with Nadia, listening as she explained some sort of movie to him, somehow completely exasperated and incredibly amused.

“Well, for one, you’re not very subtle,” Allura said. She took a bite of her salad and gave Keith that knowing look again. “Truthfully, neither of you are. It’s almost laughable at this point.”

He was ready to ask her what the fuck that was supposed to mean when Lance’s chair screeched against the tile and he plopped back into his seat. Keith tried not to read into it too much when Lance’s knee bumped into his own and Lance flashed him a small smile. “Sup, guys,” he said. Casually, he reached over and picked a grape off of Keith’s tray, chewing it as he said, “Man, I’m pretty sure one of the serving ladies just gave me the nastiest look over there. I mean yeah, I accidentally threw a fork at her, but it was still safe! Oh god, these taste disgusting.” He picked up another one, swallowing it whole. “God, these suck. Why’re your grapes so sour, dude?”

Allura put her hand over her eyes, shaking her head as she stood up and grabbed her bag. “I swear, did neither of you learn how to eat with your mouth closed? This is ridiculous, I will see you both in the workroom.” She sighed again. “Boys,” she muttered under her breath, then disappeared through the dining hall doors.

Keith and Lance stared after her for a moment but then Lance snorted, taking another grape. Halfheartedly, Keith tried to swat at his hand. “Boys,” Lance mimicked, his voice rising in pitch into a British accent. “I’m not that bad, am I?” he asked, once again pulling Keith in by the shoulders.

Keith snorted. “Yeah, you are,” he said and pushed Lance’s mouth closed himself, biting his lip as he tried not to smile. “Also, you stole my grapes.”

Lance let Keith push him away a bit but pointed his new fork at him. “Well, I didn’t see you eating them. I’m not going to let all those grapes just go to waste, man.”

“You literally just told me that they were sour and sucked,” Keith said, raising his eyebrows. He watched as Lance took the rest of the container and picked one up, waving it at Keith in salutation.

“I dunno, man, the whole dark, mysterious, and kinda sour thing is growing on me, you know?” Lance replied. He tilted his head as he stared at Keith with that odd, indecipherable look again.

It made Keith’s heart stutter and suddenly it was impossible to look Lance in the eye. Was there something happening? What was that look supposed to mean, and why the hell did it throw Keith off his balance every single time?

“Oh. Alright then, that’s, uh, cool I guess?” he choked out in confusion. Lance looked almost disappointed at Keith’s response, as if there were some sort of underlying meaning that he was supposed to catch in the words. Or maybe Keith was reading way too much into it again. He really needed to get over this soon, there was no way that he wouldn’t end up finding an unintentional way to fuck up this slowly rebuilding friendship once again if he let these… feelings or whatever keep getting in the way.

Keith stood from the table abruptly, coughing awkwardly, and Lance jumped backward as if he’d been scorned. He could’ve sworn that there was a small blush on Lance’s cheeks, but it was probably just Keith projecting again. “Well uh, see you later I guess,” Keith said, nodding before turning on his heel for the cafeteria.

“Uh, alright then? See you later, man,” Lance called back in confusion.

Keith grimaced to himself. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he muttered to himself, trying not to look too flustered as he made his way back to the workroom early.

He didn’t even blink when he saw Coran already there, sitting up on the stage and whistling as he knitted what appeared to be a sweater with four sleeves. “Greetings, Number Four!” he called out.

Keith mumbled a hello and nodded, making a beeline for his station. He whipped his phone out of his pocket the moment he sat down, pulling up his texts with Shiro.

Shiro was good with this sort of thing sometimes, he’d know how to help, wouldn’t he?

As Keith should have realized earlier, Shiro was no help at all. He loved his roommate a lot, he really did, but sometimes he was an asshole.

“Why don’t you just… I don’t know Keith, talk to him about it?” Shiro offered sarcastically, not even bothering to look up from the textbook in his lap. Black was sitting on the pile of papers next to him and meowed. “I mean, you’ve already told him that you knew him the entire time, a little ‘sup Lance, I think I’m still in love with you and shit’ can’t be that hard now.”

Keith sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “First of all, be quiet, I’m not in love with him. And second, I can’t do that, Shiro! Not everything just works out unreasonably smoothly like some trashy Wattpad romance story.”

“I thought you said you didn’t read those, how would you know?”

“I didn’t! I didn’t, Shiro, don’t look all happy about this. Besides, that’s not the point here. The point is that this is all a fucking disaster and it’s going to end terribly and I’m going to fucking die,” Keith said, sighing loudly.

He glanced over to the closed bathroom door again and then— even though Lance was singing along to Keith’s stupid pop playlist, which he seriously regretted setting as public now, loud enough that far away aliens in space could hear him— he said in a quieter voice, “Can you just… give me advice? I mean you somehow got a boyfriend, so that means you sort of know how this love stuff works. Tell me what to do. But maybe like, something without confrontation stuff?”

Shiro glanced up and something in his expression softened. He closed the textbook and set it aside, instead turning to fully face Keith. “Hey, everything’ll be fine, okay? Who knows, maybe by the end of this you will feel confident enough to tell him. Like, with actual confrontation and everything. But if you don’t want to right now, I guess you can tell me. We’ve been roommates long enough for that not to be super weird, right? Unless you want to turn it into some emo Wattpad poetry or something? I heard it’ll get like sixty thousand more views and a publishing contract if you’re a gay guy doing it. Angsty preteens love that kind of stuff.” He paused. “Hey, maybe I should write emo Wattpad poetry. You think that Adam would mind if I pretended to break up with him then wrote some emo poetry on Wattpad about it?”

“Oh my god,” Keith muttered, leaning back to stare at the ceiling. “I mean, kinda? Didn’t you guys already breakup-breakup once? I think that makes it a sensitive topic, but anyway. I don’t know, Shiro! I’ve never really done all this… relationship stuff before. With sewing, I can just follow a pattern and wing it and everything will be fine, but I have no idea how people work. Ugh, and Lance, he’s just so… You know. He’s all cool and bright and talented and makes this stupid song sound less stupid. Why’s he got to be all pretty and nice all of a sudden? Especially after all that shit I pulled with the forgetting and whatever. I don’t understand—”

“Hmm?”

Keith’s head snapped up in time to see Lance walking out, his hair still damp and a yawn on his lips. He nodded to Keith. His eyes traveled lower until he spotted the iPad in his hands. Lance nodded again towards the screen. “Oh. Sup, Shiro. Anyway, what’d you say? I think I heard you wrong or something.”

“Uhh,” Keith began, glancing at Shiro with wide eyes. “Er, nothing, no one. I said that, um, you probably have lice and goodnight?” Lance’s face contorted into confusion and Keith mentally slapped himself. Hurriedly he corrected, “Wait. No. Fuck. I meant Shiro’s boyfriend! Yeah. Uh, Adam might have lice and you should probably get him to check that out?”

Shiro looked like he was about to combust but nodded. “Yes, definitely. Thank you, Keith we’ll look into the… lice problem as soon as we can.”

“Oh, lice?” Lance said, walking over to stand next to Keith. Up close he could smell the shampoo that Lance had used, in a totally not weird way, and feel the warmth radiating off of him. “I’ve got a bunch of siblings and know a few things about getting lice and shit on products and stuff. I’d be glad to help him out.”

“Well actually, Keith and I were discussing how you—"

“Nope,” Keith interrupted quickly. “Everything is fine here, no help needed but thanks Lance. Nice talking to you Shiro, goodnight!” He tapped aggressively at the end button before Shiro could say anything and sat back with a sigh.

Lance gave him a strange look but shrugged after a moment, turning to head towards his side of the room. Keith pretended not to see the way that he touched the photograph sitting on top of the dresser— the photograph Keith wasn’t supposed to know about— and focused on untangling his earbuds. He wasn’t sure whether he’d ever tell Lance about that. If he’d ask why Lance chose to keep that picture of the thousands that Keith knew he kept of his family. Hell, there had to be thousands just from graduation day itself, so why did Lance choose the singular one with Keith in it to carry around? It didn’t make any sense, but perhaps that was because it wasn’t supposed to. Not now or ever, it was just the way that the universe liked fucking with Keith.

They were silent in the following few minutes as they got ready to sleep and some of the tension finally began to drain from Keith’s shoulders. When he finally made it back to his bed, Keith was all but certain he’d sleep for three years at minimum, completely out the moment his head hit the pillow.

Except when he flicked off the lights, Lance spoke.

“So, what were you and Shiro actually talking about earlier?” he asked. Keith stopped breathing for a moment, his head whipped over to Lance and he was ready to object and make up some lie but then Lance added, “Not trying to be nosy and you totally don’t have to tell me if you want but— I dunno, it was stupid, nevermind.”

There was an awkward pause, and Keith was almost tempted to tell Lance what they were talking about, just to break this god awful silence. Then Lance said, voice teasing, “Oh, actually I’ve been meaning to ask you since the flower challenge. Do you remember—”

“I swear to god, if you say the twenty first night of September I will close and lock the window of this room so you’re stuck in stuffy hot misery,” Keith said flatly.

Lance was quiet a moment but then burst out laughing. “It was not, but now that you mention it,” he started. “Because you know, love was changing the minds of… pretenders while chasing the clouds away.”

Keith could hear the grin in his voice and sighed loudly. He regretted mentioning it even as he laughed a bit. “You’re not funny,” he said. “I hope you know that.”

“Whatever you say, man,” Lance replied. “What I was actually going to ask you was if you remembered that huge bouquet of flowers that my mom tried to give to you? The one with all the carnations and daffodils and stuff?”

For a brief moment, the picture on the dresser flashed through Keith’s mind again. Did Lance know that he’d seen it? Well, if he did, the best route was to play it dumb in case that wasn’t what this was all about. “I think so?”  he said. “I’m pretty sure that I tried giving them back to you guys because of all the pollen or something. Why?”

Lance hummed. “I dunno,” he said. “We kept the bouquet for a while you know, my mom wanted to try to give it to you again. But then you kinda disappeared so that didn’t really work out.” Keith grimaced in the dark, a new wave of guilt overcoming him. He said nothing though, sensing that Lance wasn’t finished. “My mom was pretty bummed out, you know. Like, more than me, I think, and I’m the one whose best friend fell flat off the face of the Earth. She was really excited when I told her you were here though, said she hopes that we stay in touch this time because otherwise it’s a waste of friendship potential or whatever. And I guess that it was, because we were friends, I think. And we are now, too, right?”

Keith said nothing for a long moment. Were they friends?

Friends didn’t run off without warning for two years and cut communication. Friends weren’t complete jackasses to each other and pretend to be strangers after reuniting. And friends definitely didn’t plan on disappearing from each other after they weren’t required to be in a space together for a month.

He’d never been a good friend, and yet Lance always stuck around. He tried to see the good in Keith and crack open his walls. That was what a good friend looked like— well, either that or a person with really shitty judgment.

“Uh, yes?” he finally said. “I think so. And I really am sorry for all of that. I know it doesn’t mean much, but y’know. It was dumb and I never realized that it’d hurt you or your family.” But not as sorry as I will be when I do it again in a few days. “You already knew that I was… not that great of a person at the beginning of high school or really before that. Parents are gone, relatives didn’t want to take me in, and I never really found the right foster family until the very end. I’ve never really had that many people care about what I did or where I went or if I was alive or not, so I never really expected anyone to at all, ever. When you came along and tried, I kind of just panicked because, as you can see, I’ve never quite known what to do in situations like that.”

Lance laughed quietly. “Look at that,” he mused. “The great Kogane has admitted to some of his faults. And yeah, it was bafflingly dumb, dude. Like, you literally just ran away from your angst and problems. It’s like one of those weird cowboy coming of age movies you find on Amazon for free.”

Keith sighed. “Yeah, not my proudest moment,” he mumbled. “I was an idiot and shouldn’t have done it.”

“It’s whatever now,” Lance dismissed. “I was also kind of mad though. You can’t just shut your friends out when you’re upset or something, man. Like, that’s what we’re here for, to help support you, but instead you just… left. It kind of fucked me up for a while when you left, and it’s been nagging at me the entire time we’ve been here. It sounds really bad, but I guess I’m just glad that you actually feel bad about the whole thing? I was pretty sure that you just thought everything that we had was meaningless dirt and just really wanted to move on from having to deal with me. But at least now I know we were both feeling shitty over the whole thing instead.”

Lance’s voice was light, but there was a tinge of bitterness and genuine sadness beneath his words.

Keith grimaced again. “Yeah,” he said, unsure how else to respond. “I’ve been trying to work on all that, I guess, but it’s hard. I’ll try harder this time to stick around, though, I promise.”

All thoughts of leaving, of distancing himself and disappearing out of Lance’s life again flashed through his mind. Because he was a fucking coward who was terrible at rejection and abandonment, Keith knew what he was going to do. It would hurt like hell and be yet another betrayal to Lance, but Keith had always been a shitty friend and an even shittier promise keeper.

After all, he was also a great liar.

Keith tried not to feel too guilty when Lance replied, “Good, you’d better,” and stared at the ceiling for a little while before finally falling asleep.

“Woah, man, that looks super cool!”

Keith looked up from the pile of gears and glue gun sticks to see Lance standing next to his work table, looking at the scattered materials around it. The sketch of Keith’s design was open next to him— a loose skirt, mid-elbow length sleeves and a high collar completely covered in these gears. Feathers from the boa were sewn into the skirt and the gears would hang off different parts of the dress and shoes like dew drops.

Most of the basic pieces were assembled, as well as the hat that Keith had quickly decorated for Acxa to wear, and now he was adding on the gears.

He raised his eyebrows. “Aren’t you supposed to be working on your own dress right now?” Keith asked. “We only have like an hour left.”

Lance waved him off. “Nah, I’m a fast worker and I needed a little break. Are you seriously planning to put all of those gear things onto this dress?”

Keith shrugged. “Well, that’s the goal. Dunno how well it’ll work out but it’s something,” he said. He watched Lance’s expression turn incredulous and reached blindly for another button, pressing it to the glue gun. He missed, pressing his finger to the hot metal instead. “Shit,” he hissed, dropping the glue gun on the table with a clatter.

“Jesus fuck, Keith, let me see that!” Lance practically shouted, stepping closer and wrestling Keith’s hand into his own. “You should work on your glue gun safety, dude. These things can give you serious burns. My sister has a permanent scar that’s basically just a hole from using one of these to make a cosplay once.”

He paused, then said with a smile, “You know, this is another reason why you should just stick to actually sewing things. A French seam would never do this to you.”

Keith rolled his eyes, blowing a strand of hair from his face, but didn’t move to pull back his hand. “Oh fuck off, I did better than you on that challenge so it doesn’t really matter.”

“Just saying,” Lance sing-songed. “Hold on, I’m gonna get you a band-aid.”

“No, it’s fine. That isn’t necessary—” Keith began, but the other boy was already striding towards the front of the room with what was probably too much haste for a band-aid. Keith stared after him helplessly, hand still tingling from where Lance held it and face impossibly flushed. He was disgustingly gone for him, it seemed.

Of all times, he had to become all flustered at the very end of this. Though perhaps it wouldn’t have been great for it to have happened at the beginning either. It sucked— a lot. How could something make him feel so light with anticipation and yet impossibly heavy with shame and guilt at the same time?

Keith sighed, turning back to the table. When he curled his fingers though, pain shot through his left hand. “Ugh,” he hissed.

“Perhaps you should be spending more time watching where you’re putting that thing instead of staring at Lance,” Acxa commented, amusement in her voice.

He’d almost forgotten she was there and had watched his entire humiliating encounter with Lance. Keith groaned. It seemed that he’d not yet reached the capacity for embarrassment because he scowled and crossed his arms, feeling his face burn. “I was not staring at him,” he protested, though it sounded whinny more than anything.

“You were,” Acxa said, snorting. “Not that it matters though, because he’s coming back up here now.”

Keith spun around as Lance strode up again. He watched dumbly as Lance grabbed his hand again and peeled back the band-aid— a bright red one with the picture of a robotic lion on it because of course that was the kind that Lance would find and choose for him— and wrapped it around his finger. Then, he gently pulled Keith’s hand up to his mouth and kissed the injured finger with a small smile.

“There,” Lance said, dropping Keith’s hand with a wink. He tried not to look too alarmed at that. “I even kissed it better for you. Now I’ve got to go finish my thing, but be careful, alright? You can’t be going out because of a glue gun now, man.”

Keith rolled his eyes, though his heart leaped into his throat when Lance clasped a hand onto his shoulder. “Wow, my hero,” Keith deadpanned. There was a small, fond grin on his lips as he said it though, and he quickly turned back to the table before Lance could see it.

He did, in fact, finish gluing most of the buttons on despite the incident with Lance and the glue gun. As with most of the things he made for this competition, it turned out much better than he’d expected. His craftsmanship could’ve been better— but not because he hot glued some seams and items, much to Lance’s disappointment— and it didn’t win the challenge, but at least he wasn’t eliminated either.

“The winner of the challenge is… Allura!” Coran announced. “Well done, the judges were quite impressed with your creative take and we look forward to seeing you in Challenge 3.6,” he told her with a wide smile, handing her the pin.

“Thank you, Coran,” Allura replied professionally, though she was clearly thrilled. “I look forward to it very much and I’m grateful that you have given me a chance in this competition.”

She stepped down from the stage and back to where the rest of them were sitting. “Congrats, ‘Llura!” Lance exclaimed, pulling her into a side hug. “Man, that’s such a cool pin, I’m so proud of you.”

Keith noticed that, at some point, their seating arrangement when receiving challenges had shifted. Allura and Hunk used to sit between Keith and Lance, with Pidge on Keith’s other side. Pidge and Hunk were gone now, of course, but Allura should have still been between them, just out of habit. But instead it was Keith pressed up against his side, Keith who Lance saw when he turned to his left to tell a stupid joke of some sort. Stop trying to overanalyze everything, he scolded himself. It means nothing.

“Yeah, congrats,” Keith added, trying to focus on the conversation. “Your dress looked cool.”

Allura grinned. “Thank you both, I hope to see you in the next round as well.”

There was only a moment’s pause for Allura to celebrate, then Coran said in a solemn voice, “Mr. Ryan Kinkade, please come up onto stage.”

They all knew what was about to happen. They all knew what Coran would say, how Ryan was going to react, and still something about the way Ryan’s face fell when Coran told him he’d not made the cut stung Keith as well. Nothing was wrong with his dress, it had been brilliant as the others, but not good enough to the judges. Ryan was not enough to them.

Keith stared as Ryan shuffled off stage numbly, and then they were all excused.

“Rest up for the rest of the day and make sure you rest, designers,” Coran told the four of them who remained. The room was smaller than ever with just the five of them— Keith, Lance, Allura, and Nadia plus Coran.

They were the only ones left, and three of them would be doomed with the title of runner up for the scholarship. “Tomorrow’s challenge will decide which of you is going home and which of you will move on to the final challenge,” he told them, probably in the most serious and eerie voice Keith had ever heard him use. Then, after a pause, Coran was back. “Rest up and I’ll see you bright and early, go on now! Shoo!”