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Keith Kogane was infuriatingly, annoyingly, and unbelievably good at everything. You can't blame Lance for getting into a fight with him at soccer practice, the dude was just asking for it.
Lance had been captain of the soccer team for the entirety of his junior and senior years, so when Keith waltzed in, a transfer from a different school who was always late to class, acting like he owned the field, it grinded his gears just a bit. Apparently, enough for their squabbling to land them both a few punches on each other and three days of detention.
It's important to note that the last time Lance got detention was in his freshman year after 'mouthing off' to his English teacher. He stands by the fact that he was in the right about that argument. Regardless, he didn't make it a habit.
Keith was the opposite. Of the full semester they'd been in school together, Lance saw him in class a total number of times that would make a school guidance counselor shudder. If he wasn't skipping class he was probably in detention.
The thing that annoyed Lance the most about him wasn't his disposition of vague annoyance and nonchalance, surprisingly. It was actually how good he was at everything, seemingly without trying.
His character analysis of Abigail Williams in The Crucible made their English teacher cry because of how beautiful it was. He was in AP World History, somehow. No one ever shut up about how his track meets went. He apparently had a secret motorcycle he rode around town on nicer days.
Of course, there was the problem of him commandeering Lance's soccer team. He'd ranted about that enough to Pidge and Hunk that you could fill a book with all the complaints he'd made at Keith. It wasn't even all of them, because he spent the entire first ten minutes of detention coming up with new ones.
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Detention, Day One:
Keith waltzed in late holding a bagel and a candy bar that he tossed in the direction of the librarian watching them.
"Kogane," she started, "is this a bribe to excuse your tardiness?"
"No, no. It's an innocent gift."
"I still have to tell the principal you were late."
He tossed her another candy bar from his jacket pocket. She raised an eyebrow. He tossed another one. She sighed and turned away from the email she was about to send, returning to her book.
Lance watched him sit at the detention table, on the opposite side and two seats down from him. He stared at the wall for a good five minutes while Lance mentally tried to figure out what the hell his deal was. Eventually, he stopped staring and pulled out a packet Lance recognized from their anatomy class.
Lance, currently writing in his drama script, realized he forgot his highlighter, and Keith happened to have one he stole from a nerd's backpack pocket.
"Can I borrow your highlighter?"
"No," Keith hummed, passing it over despite.
"Would it kill you to be decent sometime?"
"Probably."
Lance huffed, used the highlighter, and passed it back.
Keith held up his paper. "Are you in anatomy?"
"…Yes? I'm in your hour. I sit near you."
"Oh. Well, do you know how to do this page?"
"I thought you were supposed to be smart or something?"
"I thought you were supposed to be some kind of jock," he hummed, gesturing to the drama script. "Who on earth told you that?"
Lance didn't answer, but he filled out the paper for Keith and slid it back. They'd graded it in class a week ago, and he remembered most of the answers. He figured Keith wasn't much for due dates, and decided not to mention the tardiness.
When Keith took had paper back with a mumbled thanks, Lance spared a glance at the nasty bruise he'd given him on his cheekbone. Lance wasn't aiming for his face when they were fighting, but he didn't exactly pull his fist away when he realized its trajectory.
"Does it hurt?" Lance asked, pointing to his own mirrored cheek.
"Yes, asshole. Very much."
The librarian snapped her book shut. "Kogane, unless you have more candy bars in those pockets, I'd refrain from using such language in my library."
He huffed and rolled his eyes, looking back down at the paper.
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"Keith," Shiro sighed, putting down the knife he was chopping up their dinner with. "I thought you said you were out of the fighting phase."
Keith groaned over his copy of The Secret Garden. He really wished he had a magical place of his own to escape to right about now, if only to avoid the incoming lecture.
"He started it."
"Who's he?"
"Lance."
"Lance? The Lance you have a crush on?"
"It's not a crush. Crushes are dumb. It's an…interest."
"You sound like a child."
Keith groaned and bit into the apple Shiro had tossed him to satiate him until dinner was done slow slow-cooking on the stove.
"You got into Garrison High. I don't see why you're so intent on fighting people and skipping class when everyone knows how smart you are. You fought so hard to get in there, why don't you just…"
Keith knew he was choosing his words delicately here. He always had. He was a good older brother that way, in how he always did his best to gently avoid Keith's more explosive tendencies.
All Keith wanted was for someone to acknowledge that it was hard to fight your whole life, then suddenly be asked (told) to stop fighting. Shiro was not that someone, nor was Adam. So, he took another bite of his apple and flipped the page of his book.
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Detention, Day Two:
They were tasked with prying gum off the bottoms of the desks in the library. It would've been fine if Keith hadn't immediately started flinging gum directly at Lance at every opportunity.
"Can you stop?" he asked around Hubba Bubba number five.
"Stop what?"
"You know what?"
"I'm just cleaning the desk."
Lance took another hunk of gum between the eyes. He went back to scraping.
"Who's T-Freaky?" Keith laughed under his breath.
"What?"
"Someone wrote 'T-Freaky was here' on the desk."
Lance scooted over on the ancient carpet to look too. The writing was faded and scraped and probably as old as the gum beside it.
Lance hummed thoughtfully. "Tyler?"
"From soccer? No. He isn't a vandal."
"The girl Tyler?"
"I thought her name was Taylor?"
"You're the only one who calls her that."
Keith nodded and squinted harder at the handwriting.
"Oh my god," he muttered.
"What?"
"No way."
"What, dude?"
He ran a finger over the words like they could tell him themselves.
"I think this was my brother."
"I thought his name was Shiro."
"His first name is Takashi. This was totally him. Gross."
"Why's that gross?"
"He called himself T-Freaky, are you kidding me?"
Lance laughed. Keith stopped tossing gum at him, but Lance had a sneaking suspicion he still kind of wanted to.
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Shiro was working late, so it was just Adam when Keith got home. After a long discussion about what was for dinner, they agreed on pizza pockets and settled into their respective parts of the couch to silently play on their phones.
It wasn't that it was hard to talk to him, it was that they had nothing to talk about but Shiro. So, when Shiro wasn't home, they functioned more as awkward roommates than people who had known each other for years.
"Heard you got into a fight," Adam said tentatively.
"Yeah. Lance."
"Your soccer captain? I thought Shiro told me you liked him."
"Yeah."
"Did you win?"
"Kinda."
Keith didn't appreciate Shiro dishing out his secrets like that, but he'd let it slide because Adam never made anything a big deal.
When Shiro and Adam first started going out, Keith did everything in his power to scare him off. He lingered too long in the living room when Adam came over, gave him dirty looks, and pulled as many mean pranks as his child mind could come up with. Adam never faltered in the patient kindness he showed Keith, even now that he wasn't a snot-nosed kid anymore.
Keith looked up from his pizza pocket. "Did Shiro used to call himself T-Freaky?"
"Yeah, probably."
"Gross."
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Detention, Day Three:
They were supposed to be helping the custodian clean up the gym, but there was a soccer ball in the storage closet and they just couldn't help themselves.
"How do you do that thing?" Keith asked.
"What thing?"
"Where you roll the ball up onto your foot."
"The knee stall?"
Lance went through the motions of it slowly, popping the ball up onto his foot then spiking it down with his knee. He kicked it over to Keith and watched his botched attempt at the trick.
Finally, thank god, something Keith couldn't do.
The custodian poked his head around the corner. "Hey, quit goofing off! Pack up, you're done for the day."
They both groaned and kicked the ball into the storage closet, following after it to put up the mops they were supposed to be using. A bit more messing around, and they ended up rifling through the janitor's CD collection in the back of the storage closet.
They didn't hear the sound of the key in the lock until the janitor had already walked away, and they were officially, royally, fucked.
"Try the door again," Keith said while Lance paced around.
Lance reached for the handle, but stopped himself. "If it was locked the first time why wouldn't it be locked the second time?"
"I don't know! Maybe it just got jammed?"
"Can't you, like, pick the lock or something?"
"Why would I know how to do that?"
"I don't know!"
Ten minutes of banging on the door and yelling later, they concluded that no one was coming to get them out. They were alone in the school after hours with nothing to do but stare at the wall or talk.
They found an upside-down crate and a bucket to sit on, played rock paper scissors for who got the crate, and sat down in silence that Lance really hated. Watching Keith twiddle his thumbs, he decided on some conversation topics.
"You going to homecoming?"
Keith looked up, eyebrow raised. "No, not really my thing."
"Why not?"
"None of my friends ever goes. I'd just be alone."
"You could go with me."
Look, he wasn't asking him out. He would rather die than ask Keith Kogane out. He was, however, making an offer.
"What do people even do at homecoming?"
"Stand around and talk. Sometimes there's a dance circle where only football players do the worm, then a history teacher gets in and ruins it."
"Why do you even go to it? It sounds like you don't like it either."
"No, it's lame as hell. Still fun though if you go with the right people."
"Am I the right person?"
Lance just smiled at him and rolled the soccer ball back over to himself. He kicked it to Keith, who nudged it back to him.
They talked about soccer, school, family, and pretty much everything else under the sun.
Lance made a realization he wasn't fond of.
He liked Keith. A lot. He was funny and nice when he wasn't being a dickhead about soccer practice and upstaging everyone. Sure, he rolled his eyes a lot and made some snarky jokes, but Lance found that he kind of liked it.
Before he could do anything with the information, a key jiggled in the lock. The janitor swore them to secrecy because losing children on the job is generally frowned upon.
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"You are going to homecoming?" Shiro asked, leaning with his arms crossed on Keith's doorframe.
Keith looked up from the shirt he was currently totally not struggling to button.
"Yeah? Problem?"
Shiro put his hands up. "No, no. I think it's great. Quick question…why?"
"I got asked."
"By..?"
"Lance."
Shiro squinted at him. He stared until Keith threw a sock at him.
"I mean, you guys got in a fist fight, like, five days ago."
"Yeah? Your point?"
"I will never understand you. Be safe. Be home by eleven. Don't punch him…or anyone else."
"Anything else?"
"Wear a tie."
"I'm not doing that."
"Didn't think so."
Keith met Lance at the school, along with Hunk and Pidge who he vaguely knew from various school activities. They hung out all night, mostly standing off to the side by themselves and chatting over the music.
At the end of the night, Keith walked Lance home and received an awkward but very sweet kiss on the cheek.
Suddenly, Keith was very glad he got into a fist fight with his crush.