Work Text:
“Aside from being sexy, what do you do for a living?”
Keith stared blankly at the tollbooth operator for a moment before trying to stifle a groan. Somehow, he always managed to get the booth with the flirtatious attendant, a lanky brown-haired man with clear blue eyes and a confident grin. It didn’t matter that he changed what lane he went through—at least three times a week on his way home from work, Keith was forced to suffer through the horrendous flirts that this man tossed his way.
Instead of deigning to reply, Keith handed over his ticket, resolutely pressing his lips together. He had learned that this man, this LANCE, as his nametag proclaimed, would use any excuse to try to converse with him. He’d held up the line more times than Keith cared to count, and finally he decided to bear with it in silence. It made things move more quickly.
“Aw, c’mon, don’t be coy,” Lance grinned, though he ran the ticket through so that Keith’s dues—$4.50—displayed on the little screen below the window. The same price as usual, which would explain why he was already offering exact change. Anything to get away from this window more quickly.
Still, he pressed his lips together. And finally, the blue-eyed tollbooth attendant sighed a little and opened the gate. Keith started to roll his window up, but he couldn’t block out the last line that Lance threw his way.
“You must be one hell of a thief, because you stole my heart through this window!”
As he pulled away, Keith pointedly ignored his burning ears. He was so frustrated, and that man was just so insufferable! Every single time they ended up face to face across the tollbooth window, Keith found himself accosted by new lines, new flirts, suggestive looks, and anything else the attendant could possibly spout. Did that Lance guy practice his shitty pick-up lines on everyone who went through his line?
After a long day at work, was it too much to ask for just a nice relaxing dinner back in his apartment, a nice beer, and maybe some shitty reality TV? No flirty tollbooth operator, no dashing grins and artfully unkempt brown locks to accompany his many quips and teases. Just a normal man who would take his money and let him get home in relative peace, please and thanks. That was all Keith wanted after working security up in the city throughout the afternoon and early evening hours, but he couldn’t even manage that much.
He couldn’t remember how long he’d been dealing with Lance and his usual behavior. It had been at least two months now, since he’d started working with Shiro as a guard for the Altean Embassy. That first week had been an experience, and the first time that Keith had ever been hit on quite like that. But while the first time had been mildly uncomfortable, he hadn’t expected the habit to continue.
Keith remembered taking a toll free route once, solely to avoid Lance, even though he told himself it was to save money, but after spending an hour and thirty-five minutes driving home when he could get home in thirty by taking the toll road, he had decided that it wasn’t worth it. He could cope with pick-up lines, and losing less than an hour’s pay, but he was far too impatient to go the long way around.
And he was still dealing with those lame flirts, spewed from the ever-grinning lips of a tollbooth attendant named Lance. He had no idea whether they were a special sort of hell reserved only for him, or whether the blue-eyed man spread his punishment to other unsuspecting toll payers.
He didn’t know why, but the thought that it wasn’t just him made him even more annoyed.
As the weeks passed, Lance’s attempts to hit on him only grew more ridiculous.
The security guard started to suspect that the tollbooth attendant spent all of his free time looking up the shittiest, cheesiest pick-up lines he could find on the internet. After all, why else would he hope to flatter someone with the line, “You look like trash, can I take you out?” and then be flabbergasted when Keith made a face at it?
If he thought calling someone trash was the best approach, Lance was even more dense than Keith had already believed. And that one hadn’t even been the worst of them.
One day, Lance had leaned out of the window to take Keith’s ticket and dropped a small screw in his hand. With a wink, he’d asked him, “Wanna screw?” and Keith had been very tempted to tell him where he could shove his fucking screw, but instead he’d handed it back with his payment without a word.
He’d almost retorted, “I can get my own, thanks,” but then had remembered that he was trying not to answer the tollbooth operator when he spoke. It made the lines move faster, and it gave Lance fewer chances to pull out more than one or two lines in an encounter. Lance was already great at shoving as many flirts into their nonexistent conversations as he could, including when Keith first pulled up, when money was exchanged, and when Keith prepared to drive off.
Really, the attempts at flirting that he came up with were growing so outlandish, Keith was starting to wonder if Lance could even feel embarrassed. Some of the things he said would have caused the security guard physical pain.
In fact, they were so bad that when the lanky man asked, “Do you know what this shirt’s made of?”, Keith made the mistake of answering, breaking his personal rule to stay silent.
“No. What?”
The shit-eating grin that spread across Lance’s face made Keith grimace, and the enthusiastic flirt responded, “Boyfriend material,” with a wink to top it off.
The off-duty security guard groaned audibly and forced his toll fee into Lance’s hands, reminding himself that this was exactly why he usually kept his mouth shut. As the tollbooth operator laughed at his own brilliance—or, in Keith’s personal opinion, lack thereof—the bar started to lift and Keith wasted no time in pressing the gas, zipping away as quickly as his acceleration rate would allow.
His neck burned, and he tried to channel his frustration to something more productive, like crushing Shiro in an online racing game while the brotherly older man groaned and asked him to have mercy.
“Is something wrong, Keith?” Shiro asked over the headset after the third race, where Keith had once more exercised his ability to find shortcuts on any map. “You’re always quiet, but you’re even more quiet today.”
“It’s nothing,” he said simply, ignoring the blue eyes that flashed through his mind as he waited for Shiro to accept the next challenge. “Just some idiot on the highway.”
“Mhmm,” Shiro hummed in acknowledgement, though Keith could tell that he didn’t quite buy the excuse.
Excuse? Keith caught himself and shook his head quickly. It wasn’t a damn excuse, after all. Lance was an idiot, and Keith met him on the highway. Shiro could buy it or not, but that didn’t mean the statement was any less true. Lance was a tall, lanky, flirtatious idiot that he happened to run into at least three days a week at the same tollbooth out on the highway. And it wasn’t like Keith was trying to hide it from Shiro, his coworker and old friend—he just didn’t think it was all that important. It wasn’t as if Lance was an irreplaceable constant in his life, after all.
He could come and go and Keith would be perfectly fine with that.
...right?
“I can’t believe him,” Keith grumbled to Shiro on break, poking absently at the pasta he was supposed to be eating. It was about three and a half months since the first encounter with his flirtatious tollbooth operator, and he had finally confided in Shiro not two days prior to their current conversation. Not two days, and already a portion of their lunch now seemed dedicated to Keith’s complaints about Lance, and Shiro listened with calm curiosity, one brow raised. “I mean, at first I was willing to ignore him, because I thought it would be a one-time thing, or that he’d get over it, but after a while I realized he wasn’t going to stop. And then last night…!”
Keith cut himself off, grumbling under his breath as he picked and prodded at his lunch, and Shiro exhaled slowly. Finally, he prompted the younger guard, “Last night…?”
“It’s nothing,” Keith shook his head quickly, exasperated. “Just...forget it.”
“It’s not nothing if you’re so worked up over it,” Shiro pointed out, taking a bite of his ham sandwich.
“Ugh, fine,” the other man groaned, leaning back in his chair and abandoning his fork in his food. “It’s just...he’s always harassing me with all these flirts, and last night he pulls the worst pick-up line I’ve ever heard. Well, really, it’s hard to say it’s the worst because he’s an awful flirt, but seriously? Let’s face it. I’m hot, you’re hot, and we both know you’ve got a crush on me? What kind of pick-up line is that even supposed to be?”
Shiro furrowed his brow, thinking about it, and then he seemed to come to some sort of realization, but Keith wasn’t done speaking yet.
“It’s not like he hasn’t had technically worse lines, because he’s terrible. But, I mean, sure, harass me with random bullshit, but don’t assume things?” he tossed his hands up a little, brow knit in frustration. “I swear, I’m going to report that little shit.”
“Keith…” Shiro said slowly, first to get the other guard’s attention. When Keith looked up at him, Shiro continued, “...does he really bother you that much?”
Keith’s eyes widened, and then he answered, almost incredulously, “Of course he does! Haven’t you been listening to all the stupid lines he’s put me through?”
“So...you want him to be fired?”
“W-well, no, it’s not that, it’s just…” Keith’s eyes skated about the room, trying to figure out what to say. It wasn’t like he had a particular reason for trying to defend Lance, after all. He couldn’t really explain it, though, so finally he snatched at a random thought and blurted, “I don’t want him to get fired, or anything like that, I guess? I-I mean, I’m sure if he did that shit too often, someone else would have already reported him, or something? He’s just kinda annoying, sometimes, because he’s always got that goofy smile, like nothing could possibly go wrong, even when he’s spouting ridiculous lines he probably got off of the internet in his spare time.”
His words weren’t very convincing, even to his own ears, and Keith had absolutely no idea why. He certainly didn’t have any reason to defend Lance, or to worry about his job, so why hadn’t he reported him before now? Why was he trying to reason with himself that Lance wasn’t as completely horrible as he’d already proved to be, with his shitty flirts and pick-up lines?
“I might be reading the signs wrong,” Shiro said softly, putting his sandwich down for the time being with a serious look in his eyes, “but this doesn’t sound like you’re feeling harassed. It sounds like you’ve been enjoying it, and maybe you’re a little bit envious of how happy he seems all the time. It kind of sounds like you want to keep running into him so you can share just a little bit of that goofy smile you say he’s always got.”
“I-I-I...what?” Keith couldn’t form a coherent sentence, his face starting to burn at Shiro’s insinuation. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You like this Lance’s flirting with you, Keith,” the older man pointed out simply, “and you just haven’t come to terms with it yet.”
“But, th-that means—”
“You like Lance.”
Keith spluttered for a few minutes, unable to come to terms with all that Shiro had just accused him of. Shiro was a levelheaded, brotherly figure in Keith’s life, and he had not been at all prepared for this conversation when he’d started to complain about Lance. But Shiro was calm and accepting, and from his expression, he was willing to wait until Keith had puzzled through this observation.
The idea that he actually liked those awful pick-up lines? The flirting? The way Lance’s blue eyes sparkled as he delivered a new line, as if he was being incredibly clever—no, no, no, no, no!—but it was too late. The thought was there, and it wouldn’t go away.
“Th-that’s not possible,” he finally shook his head. “He’s just a guy who laughs his way through his problems and pretends that everything’s okay by flirting like there’s no tomorrow.”
“And if he’s being genuine?” Shiro prodded, quirking an eyebrow.
The younger guard sighed and murmured, “Shiro, I know you’re my friend and you’re trying to help me out, but there’s no way he’s being serious.”
“All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t judge him before you know him,” Shiro leaned back, watching Keith with a calculating stare. “You don’t like it when people judge you before you know them, either. So just give him a chance.”
Keith sighed, but his mind was filled with scenes from the last few months. Those blue eyes, that brown hair, that infuriating grin.
When Lance had teasingly said, “I lost my teddy bear, would you sleep with me instead?”, Keith remembered feeling a lurching sensation somewhere in his stomach, and he’d been completely at a loss for what to do. And he’d briefly imagined snuggling with the tollbooth attendant, it was true, before he’d forced the image away and shoved his money at Lance, as usual.
One day, when Keith had been through a particularly stressful set of rounds at the embassy and on high alert because of a bomb threat, he’d come through the line to Lance’s seductive, “I like the way you’re wearing that shirt, but babe, it’d look better on the floor,” complete with husky tone and come hither eyes, he had felt completely refreshed. He had felt better than refreshed, now that he looked back on it. He had been interested.
Oh my god, the realization was dawning, and the burning feeling was creeping up his neck. I like that idiot. I actually like him! I like the idiot that works in a tollbooth and flirts with me when all I want to do is pay my toll fee and go home. What the hell is wrong with me?
“Shit,” Keith cursed, and Shiro retrieved his sandwich from the table, taking another bite while the younger security guard groaned and ran his fingers through his already unkempt hair. “I can’t believe—why him? There’s no way he’s being serious, so why…?”
In a soothing tone, Shiro tried to comfort him with, “You can’t help who you fall for, Keith. It just happens.”
Keith was barely listening, though, still trying to puzzle out what parts of Lance had attracted him in the first place.
He was still struggling with those thoughts when he found out, halfway through his shift, that he would have to work the late shift as well because his replacement would be unable to show up. Working a double was never fun, but it paid the bills, and he couldn’t exactly refuse when he’d only got the job on Shiro’s recommendation those few months ago. So as he headed back to work after being informed of his sudden extra time, he found himself almost equal parts disappointed and relieved.
Disappointed, because that meant there was no chance of meeting Lance at the tollbooth, but relieved because of the very same thing.
Keith Kogane was always a quick-tempered man. Even as a teenager, he’d been in one too many fights and had been suspended a few more times than he was proud of, but he felt his anger was fully justified tonight. After a day full of revelations—many that he was still trying to ignore, thank you very much—and an added shift on top of those, he was ready to be home.
The universe had decided to play a few dirty tricks on him.
It was just past midnight, and he was sitting on the side of the toll road, with the tollbooth just barely in his sights in the distance, with his car silent and still around him. With no warning, no flashing check engine light, his car had just died. All power had ceased, and the automobile had slowed to a halt. He’d managed to pull to the side of the road, but there was nothing else he could do.
“Fucking hell,” he grumbled, slamming a fist against his dash. He repeated the motion for good measure, unable to contain his anger. “Of course this damn thing would die on me. Of fucking course.” He continued muttering, reaching for his cell. But fate was not on his side, because just as he opened his contact list to give Shiro a call, the device blinked once, flashing an empty battery at him, and died in his hand. He felt it vibrate as it shut down, and he couldn’t help but curse again. “Fuck.”
As he stared at the lump of useless metal and plastic in his hand, he groaned and looked at the lights in the distance. He couldn’t call for help, and he sure as hell didn’t want to stand and try to flag someone down in the dark, so making his way to the tollbooth was his only option.
No, Keith was not a happy camper.
He had started to suspect that his battery had died, since not even his hazard lights would work, but this road was fairly empty in the wee hours and he wouldn’t hold his breath for someone willing to help to come along. Grumbling darkly, he climbed out of his car and started walking, fervently hoping that no one would be driving so recklessly that they’d hit his car or him as he walked. He cursed his car, his job, and even his dead cell phone under his breath as he walked.
It didn’t do anything, but it made him feel a little better.
The only sounds on the nearly deserted highway were the sounds of his combat boots thudding solidly against the pavement on the shoulder, and the swears he muttered as he continued forward. It seemed as if the tollbooth would never get any nearer, and he was inwardly cursing fate and anything else related as he stalked forward. But it did get nearer, and he tried to take a few calming breaths so he’d be able to explain what had happened without too much swearing involved.
His trek seemed to last ages in the silent night, with only two cars ever driving by and neither of them even slowing down. Keith didn’t know if they just hadn’t seen him or if they were just willfully ignoring him, but he took a deep breath and forged onwards.
It didn’t keep him from muttering, “Bastards,” under his breath.
As he drew nearer to the tollbooth, he saw some motion around it. Keith started cutting across the lanes, making sure there was no traffic, on his way to the open booth. There was only one, at this time of night. One man shuffled out of the booth and a bulkier man started shuffling in, and Keith overheard part of their conversation.
“—sucks that you had to work a double! New guy quit already?”
“Yeah, the asshole just called in and said he wasn’t gonna come anymore, can you believe it? Hunk, I’m not cut out for this late shit. I need my beauty sleep!”
“C’mon, bro, you’re fi—” the big man broke off with a high pitched shriek and only when his coworker turned around did Keith realize that it was because of him. It probably was unusual to see a man come out of the darkness, walking down the highway to your tollbooth. He was a little too frustrated to care, though, as the burly attendant struggled for words, “W-w-w-what are you doing? Who are you? Do you have any idea what time it is you could have totally been run over by someone why aren’t you at least wearing reflectors or something oh my God—”
“Holy shit,” the other attendant spluttered, not nearly as rambly as his friend. Keith nearly sighed, hoping for the taller man to be more reasonable, but as he turned to him his hopes were shattered by the way that Lance was pulling himself to his feet, blue eyes wide and staring. “Why are you here so late?”
“Dude, Lance, why are you so calm?! He just like, appeared out of nowhere and you’re just—oh. OH. Is this the dude you keep talking abo—”
Lance lunged faster than Keith had ever seen him move to slap a hand over the bigger man’s mouth with a loud smack. And then he laughed nervously and turned his attention back to the security guard. Keith fidgeted a little nervously as the lanky man’s eyes trailed from his head to his toes and back up, and Shiro’s suggestions in the back of his mind didn’t help matters. To try to erase the thoughts and the revelations of the day, Keith cleared his throat awkwardly.
“My, uh, car died about half a mile back,” his voice was slightly rougher than he would have liked, and the two tollbooth operators seemed to relax a little.
“Dude, isn’t it safer to just call someone?” Lance raised a delicate eyebrow.
“Yeah, bro, it’s dangerous to walk on the highway like that,” the other man, whose name tag proclaimed HUNK, agreed with his friend.
With a heavy sigh, Keith retrieved his phone and showed it to them as he pressed the lock button. When nothing happened, both of them let out a soft, “Oooooh…” in unison, and Keith shoved his phone back into his pocket.
“Kind of impossible,” he said instead, glancing down the way he’d come. There were still no other cars approaching, and he shifted awkwardly. “Any way I can call someone from here? I think the battery might be dead.”
“Oh, shoot, if it’s just that, I can help out,” Lance offered, grinning. “My car’s just over there, in our parking lot. I can give you a ride around and back to your car, and we can get ‘er started back up.”
“Lance,” Hunk interjected, “you don’t know anything about cars.”
“Well, that’s why I’ve got you on speed dial, Hunk,” the lanky man grinned, clapping the other guy on the back, and Keith suppressed an amused snort. He definitely wasn’t thinking about how funny it was that this guy who apparently didn’t know about cars was offering to help. He absolutely didn’t think it was kind of cute, either. That would be positively ludicrous.
“I have jumper cables?” Keith spoke up before he realized what he was doing, and then bit his lip. Lance’s face lit up and he turned triumphantly to Hunk.
“Look, all I gotta do is let him use my car, right?” he looked between Keith and Hunk. “It should be a piece of cake! Ooooh, or a slice of pizza. Yeah. Damn, I’m hungry. Anyway, easy-peasy, right, my man?” he sidled nearer and dropped a friendly arm around Keith’s shoulders.
“Should be quick,” Keith agreed, ducking out from under the arm. “You said your car was near?”
Lance stretched and then clasped his hands behind his neck casually, as if Keith hadn’t just shrugged him off. “Yeah, buddy. It’s just across the way,” he gestured off one side of the highway. “Why they make us risk life and limb to come to work, I’ll never understand! Be very wary of this deserted highway, it’s quite dangerous this time of night.”
He started to walk off, and with an exasperated glance that was shared by Hunk, Keith turned to follow the lanky man.
As Lance showed the off-duty guard to his car, he kept up a steady stream of idle prattle. Nothing particularly piqued Keith’s interest, but he didn’t stop the other man. The way he could just keep talking without encouragement had to be either a result of his ignorance or years of learning not to care what others thought. It was both admirable...and a little annoying.
“Oh, yeah, the name’s Lance,” he finally broke his stream of chatter as they pulled from the parking lot. He glanced over and offered Keith his hand. “Lance Mclain.”
Eager for Lance to put his hand back on the wheel, Keith went against his better judgement and took Lance’s hand. “Keith Kogane.”
“Keith! Man, I’ve been wondering what your name was for months now,” the blue-eyed man laughed, and thankfully his hand returned to the steering wheel. He was going over the speed limit and not really paying too much attention to the road, so Keith was a little concerned about his safety. “You come through the booth all the damn time and I never got your name! You always paid with cash, never a card. Which, yeah, it’s easier that way, but most people don’t carry cash anymore so it was kind of a surprise.”
“You said it yourself,” Keith shrugged, “cash is easier.”
“You’re not one for talking much, are ya?” Lance observed as the neared the first toll exit. Lance pulled around the booths, probably some sort of employee privilege, and then looped over the overpass to turn back onto the toll road heading back the way they’d come. He avoided the booth that way, too, and zipped back onto the highway.
“Not really,” the guard answered, glancing at the driver from the corner of his eye.
“The quiet type’s good too,” Lance quipped, a playful tone in his voice. Keith looked out the window, trying to ignore the way his ears started burning. “So, your car’s about a half mile from the booth, right?”
“Mhmm,” Keith hummed in agreement, not quite trusting himself to speak.
“Alright, then we’ll keep an eye out when we get a little closer. Got a few miles to go, anyway!”
Lance started humming then, an upbeat tune that Keith didn’t quite recognize. And, despite himself, Keith glanced over at the cheerful tollbooth operator in the driver’s seat. He watched the way Lance bobbed his head in time to the imaginary beat, how his eyes shined in the moonlight that only just touched them in the confines of his small car, how he seemed so genuinely happy and energetic despite the hour and apparent double he’d had to work today.
“You had to work a double today, too?” with the thought on his mind, Keith hadn’t been able to stop the question. Lance’s humming ceased and he glanced over at Keith, surprised.
“Too? Oh, no wonder you were later than usual! That’s probably why your phone died, too. You had to work longer than usual, huh? What do you do, anyway? You an actual cop or security or what?” Lance indicated the uniform that Keith still wore. He’d been too tired to change into his civilian attire before he’d left, after all, and it wasn’t the first time it had happened.
“Security at the Altean Embassy,” Keith replied simply, then realized he could have just left it at security. Lance didn’t need to know where he worked, after all.
“Oh, shit, really? I’ve got a friend who works there. Actually, pretty much her whole family works there, ‘cause they’re great diplomats. She’s actually got a really strange friendship with the Altean princess too? I don’t really get it. They don’t seem like they get along, ‘cause Pidge isn’t really the girly type and the princess is a fashionista, but it just works somehow.”
Keith wanted to ask what kind of name Pidge was, but after a moment he asked slowly, “Are you talking about Katie Holt?”
Lance snorted, and then recovered to answer, “Yeah, that’s her! We went to school together, her and Hunk and me, and I don’t quite remember when she got that nickname. It just...stuck?”
Against his better judgment, just like this whole escapade had been, Keith chuckled. When he pictured the mousy woman, with her flyaway hair and snarky comments, he could understand why she was friends with Lance. Her older brother was apparently a former classmate of Shiro’s and still a close friend of Keith’s almost brother, so she also happened to come by while the duo was performing routine patrols more often than was strictly professional.
“Unique nickname,” he finally remarked.
“Yeah, I don’t really remember where it came from,” Lance brushed it off with a laugh. “It kinda fits her, though. She’s just a ball of sass, really, but she’s got some great brains on her. Anyway, we should be getting pretty close to your car, so I’m gonna start slowing down some.”
Please, Keith pleaded silently. In the one glance at the speedometer he’d dared, they’d been going nearly fifteen over. Yet somehow he’d been perfectly at ease with Lance’s easygoing conversation and cheer. It was something he wasn’t exactly used to, and while it was kind of a pleasant change, it also made him a little uncomfortable.
Maybe Shiro was right. Maybe Keith was just a little envious of how happy Lance was all the time.
They pulled up beside Keith’s car just a few moments later, in the grass off of the shoulder. Both of them were miraculously still in one piece, and Lance flipped on his hazards before they clambered out of his car. Keith rounded the back of Lance’s car and opened his trunk to pull out the jumper cables before popping his hood and he heard rather than watched as Lance popped his own hood.
“Okay, now might not be the best time to admit it, but Hunk was totally right about me and cars,” Lance spoke in the most sheepish tone Keith had ever heard him use. “I know the basics of jumping a car, and I can totally change a tire because I’m not completely useless, but I don’t actually know where to put the things to jumpstart a car so, uh…”
Keith snorted again—and it had absolutely nothing to do with how adorable Lance’s admittance was, not at all—before glancing down at the old cables in his hands. He could only just tell the colors apart, and then with a sinking feeling in his gut realized that all the instructions he’d once had memorized were rubbed off from age. And as he glanced at his battery, and Lance’s, he realized that he’d also forgotten which clamp went where.
It was color coded, but he’d totally forgotten if there was an order to things, and he felt the heat rising to his cheeks.
“Keith? Buddy?” Lance waved a hand in front of his face and the guard jerked his head up, surprised. “What’s up?”
“I…” there was no helping it, and he braced himself for the ridicule as he, too, admitted, “...I forgot exactly how to hook them up, too.”
It was something simple, and it was prodding at the back of his mind, just beyond his grasp. He knew it was simple, because he’d done it hundreds of times before. At one point, he would have laughed at anyone who struggled with jumping a car, but now that person was him and Keith couldn’t believe it.
How could I have fallen so far?
And here Lance was, staring at him for a few moments, and then—he started laughing. The man who straight up admitted he could only change a tire started laughing at him! Keith was affronted. He’d expected it, of course, but Lance hardly had room to speak. And while Keith cast his thoughts around for anything that would serve as a good retort, the tollbooth attendant continued laughing, wiping at the corners of his eyes as if he were in tears.
It’s not that funny, Keith wanted to say, but he bit the words back.
“Ha...haha!” Lance righted himself, struggling to collect his breath, and then held up his phone. “This, haha, is why I keep Hunk on speed dial!”
Wait...so he wasn’t just laughing at Keith? It was more the fact that he was laughing at both of them, right? Or maybe the situation? Whatever it was, the guard was completely baffled by this reaction, and just watched as the lanky man took a few deep breaths to recover from his laughing fit. It took a few long moments, because Lance broke into laughter at least twice more while trying to compose himself, but then he rolled his shoulders and pressed a couple of buttons, lifting his phone to his ear.
“Yeah, Hunk, it’s me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re at his car—no, we haven’t got it started yet—no, I didn’t screw with anything yet!” Keith snorted at the indignant tone. “Nah, we just both forgot which thingy goes where. Whaddaya mean, ‘which thingies’? The ones that hook to the battery or whatever. The clamps, yeah! How does that work again?”
Keith watched in amusement as Lance bickered and tried to speak with Hunk until finally he groaned and sat the phone down. The next minute, Hunk’s voice came out on speaker.
“Did you put me on speaker? Oh, yeah, I can kinda hear myself. Okay, so other dude, I didn’t catch your name, what was it again?”
“Keith.”
“Okay, Keith! This idiot—” Lance’s hey! went completely ignored by both parties, “—doesn’t understand what I’m talking about, so I’m gonna walk you through it. I’m trusting that you know more about cars than Lance does, because you might be there a lot longer if you don’t. And if you screw up too bad, you’ll both be stuck out there because you could kill Blue, too.”
“Are you threatening my car?!” Lance nearly squeaked. “Blue hasn’t done a thing to you!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hunk’s voice was bored. “Anyway, Keith…”
As Hunk explained the process, it all flooded back. Keith groaned a little at how simple it actually was, and as he smoothly followed the instructions, Lance just watched with surprise. He occasionally asked Hunk for confirmation, and after just a few short moments, he was fairly confident he had all the cables hooked up as they should have been.
The process was nearly complete, just ready for the final touches, when Lance cleared his throat. Keith glanced up and was caught by surprise at the familiar, flirtatious expression on his companion’s face.
“Is your battery dead?” he quipped, and then followed it immediately with, “‘Cause I’d love to jump you.”
Keith felt his entire face growing warm, including his neck and his ears, and by the sudden trembling of Lance’s confident smirk, it was apparent that he’d just realized what he’d done.
There was no window between them. No car separating them. There were still a few steps before Keith could climb in his car and drive away. It was the first time that Lance had been able to deliver a line in a situation that Keith couldn’t immediately escape from, and neither of them really knew how to take it. So the silence stretched, and Keith felt like Lance would say something soon to break it. It was more in his character than Keith’s, after all.
But instead, it was a slow, “Weeeell then,” from the phone that both of them had temporarily forgotten about. Hunk cleared his throat and then said, “You should be ready to jump it now. Keith’s car, Lance, not Keith.”
“Not now, Hunk,” Lance groaned, and in the flashing of his hazard lights, Keith liked to believe that Lance was as red as he felt.
“Wanted to make sure you knew,” Hunk retorted. “Anyway, just try letting it charge a little and then try starting ‘er up, Keith. You should be good from there. Call me back if you’re not, but I’m gonna hang up now.”
Keith couldn’t form a response before Hunk hung up, and Lance snatched his phone quickly and tossed it in the window of his car, avoiding eye contact with Keith. With a slow breath, the guard managed to calm himself and pretended to be busy so he wouldn’t have to look directly at the other man. His heart was beating a strange rhythm in his chest and he tried to rid himself of the teasing cadence in Lance’s voice as he had delivered the line.
‘Cause I’d like to jump you.
As the words replayed in his head, Keith nearly choked. He managed to break it into a cough, his face burning as he cast a quick glance over at Lance. He was leaning in the window of his own car, phone in his hand as he furiously tapped out a message. Keith wondered if he was texting Hunk, or if he was texting someone else about coming home late.
The thought that he already had someone to go home to stung a little more than it should, and Keith cleared his throat.
“I’m going to try starting my car now,” he announced, and Lance jumped a little before turning to face him.
“Y-yeah, sure!”
When he slid into his driver’s seat, Keith felt a slight sense of relief wash over him. He was out of Lance’s direct line of sight, and he felt the lump in his throat recede ever so slightly. It didn’t stop him from casting a glance through the passenger window, where he could only see Lance from the center of his torso down, and he felt his ears start burning.
What is with me? I don’t react like this.
Keith shook his head, a little more violently than was absolutely necessary, and reached to put his key in the ignition. Another calming breath, and he turned it forward.
The car spluttered for a few seconds, but then roared to life, the dash lights blinking on even as the radio’s soft sound filled the air. As the car idled around him, Keith sagged back in his seat with a sigh. He heard a soft sound to his left, toward the road, and when he glanced up, Lance was leaning on his car, glancing in at the dash.
“Well, looks like you were right,” he said, patting the roof of Keith’s car. “The battery just gave out on ya, huh?”
“Looks that way,” Keith managed, trying not to stare up at Lance’s jaw.
He hadn’t noticed it before, but the lanky man had a very well defined jaw, and it perfectly suited the perpetual grin he always wore. It was hard not to look, now that he had noticed it, but Keith pulled his attention away to look at some of the lights on his dash. His check engine light wasn’t on, but there was a little battery symbol glowing. Probably to warn him that his battery was still hooked up to something.
“Tell you what,” Lance laughed, standing tall and stretching as Keith peered up at him. “I’m so glad I don’t work tomorrow. A normal shift on top of this double? I might actually fall asleep on the job!” Keith chuckled along with him and agreed, and Lance glanced back down at him. “Huh? Oh, jeez, please tell me you don’t have to work tomorrow! That would suck!”
“No, I don’t work,” Keith didn’t know why he was answering, but maybe it was to see Lance’s exaggerated expression of relief, as he wiped the imaginary sweat on his brow.
“Phew, that’s good news. Workin’ security at the embassy on no sleep would have been hell.”
“You’re telling me,” the guard snorted, leaning back in his seat once more.
A strangely comfortable silence descended between them, as Lance leaned on Keith’s car once more and Keith just relaxed in his seat. Only the rumbling of their cars, nearly deafening in the night, broke the serene feeling, and after a few minutes like this, Keith realized that he should probably unhook the cables.
He just...didn’t want to leave.
Before that thought could stick, he started to pull himself from the car, barely giving Lance enough time to step away. As he stretched a little, he remarked, “It’s probably charged enough. Let’s get everything unhooked, and then we can get out of here.”
“Yeah,” Lance agreed, though Keith felt like his usual gusto was diminished just a tiny bit.
And a few minutes later, Keith was shutting the cables in his trunk and Lance was slamming the hood of his own car, rolling his shoulders shortly afterwards. He’d never admit to watching the lanky man, not in a million years, but he couldn’t deny that he was. He’d never really been able to fully appreciate Lance, with the tollbooth separating them, and while he resented himself for it, he kind of wished he could see him more often.
Keith sighed softly and stepped up between their cars, offering a hand for Lance to shake. Blinking stupidly for a second before grinning widely, Lance took the hand. His grip, while firm, was surprisingly gentle, and Keith kind of liked it.
“Thanks for tonight,” he managed, tugging his hand back before he got too attached.
“No prob, buddy!” Lance laughed again, and it made a pocket of warmth bubble in Keith’s stomach. His laugh was just so infectious. “Go home and get some rest, man, I’m sure you’ve earned it after the hell you’ve been through today!”
“You too,” Keith chuckled dryly, but he nodded as he rounded his car to climb in. When he closed his door, it seemed to slam with a weird sense of finality, and Keith pointedly ignored the way that the bottom of his stomach seemed to drop out.
He pulled away before Lance did, and saw Lance’s car pull back onto the road not thirty seconds later.
Days off were supposed to be for relaxation.
Keith, however, found himself roaming around his house, mind full of bright blue eyes and the type of laughter that filled him with warmth. And while he was being irrational, Keith fully blamed Shiro for all the tossing and turning he’d done when he had finally returned home at nearly two in the morning. He blamed Shiro for pointing out that what he felt toward the tollbooth operator was a little more than friendly and a little less than hatred.
He only had himself to blame for actually liking the idiot in question, though.
Pick-up lines were one thing. The fact that they varied from cute to obnoxious to cheesy to dirty was another. And then there was the fact that Keith was kind of into them, which was an entirely different beast altogether.
Lance had been the first person to brazenly, unabashedly flirt with Keith, and it had been flattering to say the least. And while Keith hadn’t really given it much thought before, he’d always known on some level that he was into Lance’s type. Tall, lithe, cheerful, with sparkling blue eyes and a grin that could melt even Keith’s toughest exterior. Lance was goofy and outgoing and was rarely at a loss for words—everything that Keith wasn’t—and it was kind of cute.
And he had to admit that Lance was a very honest kind of guy. He hid himself behind shameless flirting and stupid lines, sure, but everything he did belied the truth in his actions and words. Keith was starting to hope, for the first time, that Lance was being completely genuine.
“It’s all your fault, Shiro,” Keith found himself grousing over the racing game they sometimes played together. “I wouldn’t be thinking about him like this if it weren’t for you.”
“I didn’t put the idea in your head,” Shiro’s calm voice retorted. “You always liked him, you just hadn’t admitted it to yourself yet. I only made you realize that sooner rather than later, so don’t blame me.”
Keith groaned, and he heard Shiro chuckle.
“Besides,” the older man cut in again, “it sounds like he’s really into you, especially since he offered to help you last night. You won’t lose anything by trying, right?”
The younger man stayed silent, but he knew that Shiro would understand. And maybe...maybe Shiro was right. Again. Maybe he could put himself out on the line to see just how real Lance’s advances were.
A few days later, with his heart beating wildly, Keith hoped he had chosen right. He hoped he was in the right lane as he waited for his turn to pull forward and pay his toll fee. For the first time, he was consciously praying for Lance to be the operator in the booth, but he couldn’t tell. It was a kind of dreary day, and the windows were slightly fogged, so he couldn’t be sure that he had chosen the right one.
His phone sat in his lap, open to a particular page, and he sucked in a steadying breath.
This was the first time Keith had ever done this, so he was hoping it wouldn’t turn out completely awkward and that he wouldn’t make a fool of himself. It was also the first time he’d wanted to do something like this, so he really wasn’t sure what to make of it. It was a new feeling, and it was sending nervous flutterings through his gut, but he rolled his shoulders and tried to prepare himself for whatever might come next.
The car in front of him wheeled away and he inched forward in its place, rolling his window down as the booth’s own window slid back open. Every painful inch made his heart leap into his throat as he waited with bated breath to see if he had made the right decision.
At Lance’s brightening expression, and the way he started opening his mouth, Keith swallowed his anxiety and spoke before the blue-eyed attendant could.
“It seems I’ve lost my number,” he put his toll ticket into Lance’s hand, but placed his phone on top of it. “Can I borrow yours?”