Chapter Text
Week 1: The beginning
The world was coming to an end.
At least, that’s how it seemed. And honestly, that wasn’t exactly right , but it wasn’t really wrong either. Keith tried not to contemplate this as he stood in the middle of his dorm room, half packed duffle bags scattered around the floor. Lance was standing in the doorway of their shared bathroom, eyebrows drawn together in concern.
“You’re… not going home?” Lance repeated slowly, as if he were having difficulty getting the idea to sink into his head.
“No,” Keith sighed. He was frustrated. Not at Lance, but at the situation in general. “My family is on the other side of the country and all flights have been cancelled. State borders are closing soon, too. I’d get stuck somewhere in the middle if I tried to drive home.”
“So…” Lance doesn’t budge from his spot in the door and it’s weird for Keith to see him there. They share a suite which means that they have separate rooms but a shared bathroom. They’ve managed to work it out so that they’re never in the bathroom at the same time which means that it’s essentially like living alone. “Where are you going to go?”
“If I had any idea,” Keith tries really hard to reign his temper in. It’s not Lance’s fault that the virus has started to spread out of control and bring the world as they know it to its knees. It’s not Lance’s fault, Keith reminds himself, even if Lance is currently the one pushing his buttons. “I'd already be there.”
Lance doesn’t budge from his spot in the doorway and Keith briefly wonders what the hell he even wants. They’ve been suite mates for the last year and a half and yet, they barely know each other. The most intimate thing Keith knew about Lance was that he used really fruity shampoo. Which, truthfully, sounds like an intimate thing to know. But Keith only knows that because Lance has taken up over half of their shower with his different products. Other than that, Keith doesn’t know a damn thing about Lance. He doesn’t know his major, doesn’t know what color his room is, doesn’t know anything . And honestly, he was fine to keep it that way.
And then the virus came in and threw the whole world upside down— starting with the destruction of the clear boundaries the two of them have abided by for the last year and a half. Now Lance isn’t even just standing in his doorway, he’s crossing through it, stepping foot into Keith’s room. He’s existing in Keith’s space— existing in the place that Keith barely lets anyone else exist.
Keith doesn’t have anything against Lance, though, truth be told. It’s hard to have something against someone you don’t even know. He’s just a quiet and solitary person and he values his space. He’s sure Lance is a nice guy— he seems like a nice guy— it’s just that Keith isn’t particularly interested in friends. He’s interested in finishing his degree and getting on with his career. He’s interested in studying and getting perfect grades and he doesn’t have the time to be distracted by people like Lance, even if he is nice.
“Well, there’s really only one option, then.” Lance says as he steps further into the room. At least he looks equally as uncomfortable as Keith feels. At least he seems to know he’s broken their boundaries.
“Really?” Keith grinds out, but his anger is deflating. The stress of the situation is starting to wear on him and he just wants it to be over. “Because as far as I can tell, there are no options.”
“You’ll just have to come home with me.” Lance says and Keith balks. He physically feels the color drain from his face as he whips his head around to meet Lance’s blue eyes. He doesn’t even get the incredulous question off of his tongue before Lance is rushing on to explain. “My family visits Cuba every year at this time and since they closed the borders, they’re stuck there until this is over. So my home is completely empty which means there will be tons of room for you, too! And it’s only a couple of hours away, so we won’t risk getting caught anywhere in the middle. And it’s free.”
Well… damn. Lance has pretty successfully cut off any objection Keith could raise to the idea. Other than the obvious idea of it just being wildly uncomfortable. But truthfully, what about this situation was going to be comfortable? It wasn’t going to be a great situation no matter where he ended up, honestly. Plus, even though he and Lance hadn’t really lived together, they’d lived together for the last year and a half. At least they knew how to dance around each other and what to expect from one another.
“I—” Keith swallows. He feels unmoored. Up until this exact moment, the whole virus and the repercussions had been sort of an abstract idea to him— not quite affecting his life. But suddenly, everything is crashing down around him and he’s acutely aware of the strange situation the world is in, the strange situation he is in and he’s finally realizing that this isn’t about to end any time soon. “Are you sure?”
“Of course, man!” Lance says breezily, slapping Keith on the shoulder in a friendly gesture. Keith isn’t sure they’ve ever actually been close enough to touch before. “Absolutely, it’s no problem! Honestly, I have never stayed in the house alone and I really wasn’t looking forward to it so it’ll be a comfort to have you there.”
They lock eyes again and Keith realizes that even Lance’s eyes are kind. He takes a deep breath. He doesn’t like it, it makes him feel jittery and uneasy all the way to his core. He’s never actually lived with anyone— not in a way where they had a lot of common space. But Lance is right, it really is the only option and Keith can acknowledge that. So, with no better option, he agrees.
The drive to Lance’s family home isn’t bad, really. Keith doesn’t know what he expected when he finished loading his stuff in the car besides Lance’s— never having brought a car on campus himself, he is at Lance’s mercy— but it wasn’t, well, this . Lance sings as he drives, one hand on the steering wheel and the other moving all about to the beat of whatever song they are currently listening to. Keith supposes it’s his attempt at dancing, though it’s hard to call any of the movements Lance makes dancing .
Keith, for his part, stares out the window for the first little bit of the ride. Their school and Lance’s home are both in the Midwest which means that a lot of their drive is rural farmland. It’s not unpleasant to look at, especially not when there are cows or horses, but it’s also not exciting enough to keep his attention for long. Eventually it drifts over to Lance who is smiling broadly as he sings, glancing occasionally at Keith with his eyebrows raised in invitation. Keith never takes it. He’s not a singer, ever. Not when he’s in the shower, not even when he’s alone in his room. He enjoys music, sure. But he doesn’t sing.
What he does do, though, is draw. It’s the one thing very few people know about him. His sketchbook is in his backpack which is jammed down by his feet since they’d filled the entire back of the car with other stuff. He considers pulling it out, but hesitates. There’s a reason almost nobody knows that he draws— it’s not something he advertises. That being said, he’s not ashamed of it, either, and he figures Lance is bound to find out in the duration of this quarantine. It’s his hobby to kill free time and, as far as he can tell, he’s about to have a lot of that. So, in the end, he decides to go for it. He tugs the sketchbook out of his backpack and flips it open in his lap, pencil gliding effortlessly over the paper.
“You can draw while in the car?” Lance asks, glancing over.
Instinctively, Keith shifts so his sketch is less visible. “Yeah. I don’t get car sick.”
“That is a really useful talent.” Lance remarks, a distinctly impressed tone around the edges of his words. “I wish I didn’t.”
“Yeah, well,” Keith hesitates for a moment, taking in a breath before adding “My parents are divorced so I did a lot of traveling between households. So I guess I just developed an immunity to it.”
“Oh,” Lance says, but it’s not the response Keith is used to. It’s not full of pity or discomfort. It doesn’t make Keith feel like he just murdered the conversation in a few words. “Well, I’m less jealous,” Lance teases, “but not completely un-jealous.”
“Un-jealous isn’t a word,” Keith points out.
“Did you know what i meant?” Lance retorts immediately, his smile never faltering even a little bit. When Keith gives a begrudging affirmation, Lance’s smile only grows. “Then it counts.”
“I understand gestures, too.” Keith bites back, but it’s friendly and he’s surprised to find that he really wants to laugh at Lance’s jokes. “But that doesn’t make them words.”
“You know what, Kogane?” Keith glances up from his sketch in time to see Lance flip him off with the hand that isn’t currently steering. They both laugh. “Did you understand that, or do you need me to explain it to you?”
“You’re the worst,” Keith ducks his head to hide his grin. “These weeks together are going to be torture.”
“ You’re welcome ” Lance pretends to not have heard what Keith said. “For not only giving you a place to stay, but for also allowing you to be in my presence for so long. It’s a blessing I bestow upon very few people.”
“The worst,” Keith repeats as Lance goes back to singing loudly and definitely off key. He returns to his sketch, too, but the small smile doesn’t quite fade from his lips for the remainder of the drive.
Lance’s family’s home is gorgeous, even if it’s relatively unassuming. It backs up to the woods and the nearest neighbors are far enough away that Keith almost can’t see them. The yard is huge and the house is a mixture of brick and stone. The gardens are well maintained and the place just feels like a home from the moment they pull in the driveway. The inside is similar to the outside, well maintained but with little personal touches everywhere that make it more than just a house. There are pictures of Lance and his siblings displayed proudly on nearly every surface and something about it sends an ache to the depths of Keith’s heart.
Lance takes him on the tour of the house, showing him every room and explaining his room options to him as he goes. He tells Keith that he can have any room except his parents which is completely fair. That wasn’t a chance in hell that Keith was going to pick his parents room, anyways. In fact, Keith doesn’t feel particularly comfortable taking anyone’s room and is just about to suggest that he sleeps on the couch when Lance gets to the last bedroom— the guest room. It’s an easy decision for him at that point.
“This will almost feel normal!” Lance says as he demonstrates that their two rooms are, once again, connected by a bathroom. The irony of the situation isn’t lost on Keith.
Keith thanks him, feeling a little uneasy as he sets his backpack down in what is going to be his bedroom for the foreseeable future. Lance isn’t a stranger, not by a long shot. If he were out to murder Keith, he would’ve done so by now. He’d had a year and a half’s worth of chances. Keith wasn’t worried about that. He wasn’t even worried about sharing the space with Lance because he had at least a little bit of a baseline experience with that. Mostly he was just uneasy at the entire situation. Keith was, by all accounts, a creature of habit. And his habits and routines had just been ripped right out from underneath him.
Of course, he can keep some of his habits. There’s nothing stopping him from getting up at the usual time and going for a morning run before class. There’s nothing that will force him to stay up later than he usually does. And his classes have been switched to online so he’ll have the regular structure of lecture times. All of this was some comfort to him, but there was still the underlying uncertainty, the knowledge that this was all happening because of a global pandemic that made it impossible to feel completely at ease.
Still, despite the slow, constant roiling in his gut, he went and helped Lance unload the car and unpacked all of his stuff at Lance’s insistence. It was the least he could do. Lance was being incredibly generous to Keith, especially given the fact that they’d only had a handful of conversations in the year and a half they’d been suitemates. Lance wanted him to feel like he was “at home” — something he said probably a hundred times in the first two hours they were in the house together. It was a nice thought, but there were only so many times it could be said before Keith wanted to tear his hair out as the words stopped sounding like real words anymore. Lance finally stopped saying it after he cooked dinner and they sat down on the couch together, eating while a movie droned on in the background.
As the movie went on, Lance quoted the lines under his breath, pausing his bites to gasp or laugh at whatever was happening in the movie. He seemed so at ease, so calm with the whole thing. Keith knew Lance wasn’t taking it lightly— he sanitized everything they brought into the house and decreed that all clothes were to be washed tomorrow before anything could be worn— but he at least had the ability to look like he wasn’t bothered by it. Keith wondered if he came off anywhere near as collected as Lance did. He supposed that was unlikely, but he couldn’t know for sure.
“Didn’t know you were a romcom fan,” Keith teased as they headed into the kitchen.
“Really?” Lance smiled at him over his shoulder as he filled the sink with soapy water. “I love romcoms.”
“I know,” Keith laughed a little, hoping it would dissolve the tension from his shoulders. It didn’t work nearly as well as he wanted it to. “I was kidding. I can hear the movies you watch through our shared wall, you know.”
“Ah,” Lance draws out the word, “You’re welcome for allowing you to listen to such wonderful movies.”
Keith shakes his head as he hands his dishes to Lance, taking up the spot next to him with a towel, prepared to at least dry the dishes, even if he has no idea where they go after. “Sure, if that’s what you want to call them.”
Lance splashed soapy water on him.
Finally, the movie ended and the dishes were done and Keith excused himself to his new room under the guise of being tired. And he was tired, but he was also in need of some alone time to be able to recharge himself. He needed some time to try and let his life settle and to get used to these new circumstances. The only comfort he found was the knowledge that this was hard for everybody, not just him. He reminded himself of that as he fell asleep, the sound of Lance’s music through the walls a familiar comfort that he hadn’t ever really even noticed before tonight.