Work Text:
Lines Stitched Into Highways
"domestic/humorous klance au where they meet in high school" -requested by anonymous on Tumblr.
Further prompts can go to Aobajosighs on Tumblr. Thank you!
Keith wasn’t going to college.
Or, rather, not at the way that his sophomore year was going. Maybe it would have been alright if his schedule hadn’t gotten so messed up. Meaning, he’d signed up for study hall and had been given Spanish instead. It was a first year class, at the very least, so everyone in there knew as little as he did, both all of those people had at least signed up for the class. Keith could struggle through trigonometry, history and chemistry okay, but there was absolutely no way that he was going to be able to schmooze his way through a foreign language class. He’d never been good at languages. He may have only recalled a couple of things about his mother, but one of those things was how hard she’d tried to teach him her language. It had been important to her, “remembering where you came from.” But Keith had been so amusingly bad at remembering the long, foreign sounding words that she’d given up eventually. And while Keith was sure that had been awfully tragic for her, he really had tried his best.
(He could say a whopping total of twenty words in his home language, all with a flat American accent.)
One class would probably not be the reason that he didn’t get into college, but it would definitely lower his GPA a considerable amount.
The tables in the Spanish room were in clumps of threes, all facing the front of the room. There was already a seating chart at the front of the room, placing Keith in the back of the room where the weird kids flocked. Rather than two people sitting with him, Keith was alone with a boy whose name he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t a very big school, and the kid was probably new. That said, if he was one of the new kids who tried to make friends desperately on the first day, Keith was going to accidently drop a match directly in the middle of the Spanish room.
The other boy showed up ten minutes into class. He showed his pass to the teacher flippantly, sliding into the desk next to Keith. Keith kind of hoped that Lance knew what he was doing, because Keith was going to fail this class in a matter of days.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Lance knew what he was doing. Or, rather, he knew what he was doing, but didn’t necessarily act like it. When he’d be called on for something simple (which color is morado?), he’d think for a couple of seconds, then call it orange. And yet, when Keith glanced down at his paper to see if this kid was finding it that difficult, the right answer was written down in neat, careful print.
They were given simple writing assignments. Name, age, favorite color, favorite activity. Lance wrote a page and a half using vocabulary that they most definitely had not learned, and then said that café was yellow when he got called on. When he caught Keith staring at him in utter disbelief, he winked and flipped the hair out of his eyes like an asshole.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“How do you say na..nay? Nay-dee va ah—? That,” Keith jabbed his thumb on the paper. “What does that even mean?”
Lance glanced at it for half a second, already nearly finished with his own assignment. “Nadie quiere morirse en la escuela.” His voice even had the right accent to it, and Keith was having an awfully hard time believing this kid thought that playa meant basketball. “It means that whoever wrote this book never attended public school.”
“You’re so helpful,” Keith huffed, scribbling down some halfhearted answer. “Do you actually have any idea what you’re writing?”
“Yes, and it’s a masterpiece that’ll get me an A, which is all I’m here for.”
“This is a joke to you,” Keith muttered flatly, picking the book back up.
“Yep,” Lance agreed without missing a beat, popping his ‘p’ and leaning back in his chair. “And it’s a really great one.”
Keith squinted at him, eyes flicking down to his paper. He would call bullshit and say that Lance was just writing down nonsense, but he knew for a fact that some of those sentences were right, and he could assume the same about the others. But they hadn’t even learned half that stuff—
Keith’s squint turned into a glare. “Why would you take Spanish class?”
“I literally cannot fail this class,” Lance replied, sending him another wink when he stood up to turn his paper in.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Sitting next to a filthy cheater had its pros and cons, meaning it was good when Lance was feeling helpful, and it was bad when Lance was feeling like a flirtatious prick. Additionally, it was good when they worked on answering questions with their table partner, and bad when they had to do projects outside of class with their table partner. Meaning: having to spend time with the kid outside of school.
They picked the library, on those days. Keith required all the Spanish books that he could possibly get his hands on, and Lance liked to mess around with the magazines instead of helping in any way. The projects always got done, and, like everything else Lance turned in, came back with a 100% on the top in red ink.
Again, pros and cons.
Pros: Lance was not actually an asshole.
Cons: Lance was not actually an asshole.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
By some strange turn of events, Lance hassles Keith’s Snapchat out of him and becomes the second person to Snapchat him anything (the first being Pidge, whose sense of humor is sending pictures of strangers to Keith with no context).
So at one in the morning, Keith receives a Snapchat of Lance hanging upside down off of something with little to no context. The Snap reads “hey!”, and Keith doesn’t see how Lance took the picture when he’s using both hands to cling to whatever’s stopping him from falling on his face. The next message is of a girl who looks younger than him, and she’s laughing. There’s not any words, and Keith’s so confused that he regrets his agreement to give Lance his Snapchat even more.
There’s not any more messages until Keith’s getting ready for school the next morning. Without any siblings to mess around with it and make it confusing, they manage to hold an actual conversation which is vaguely based around the fact that it’s too early in the morning to have to be awake.
In Spanish, Lance translates dibujar to squirrel and vuelven to book, and then gets 100% on his test.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Keith does not, in all honesty, dislike Lance. He’s irritating, but there’s something about him that’s hard to dislike. He teases and flirts and acts as difficult as humanly possible, but he also grins and laughs and he’s helpful when Keith is genuinely ready to drink bleach over the Spanish assignment. They don’t need a reason to go to the library anymore, not after half a schoolyear of suffering, but they make up reasons anyway, calling it studying or help with a history assignment.
Sometimes they really do study (read: sometimes Lance pretends not to find it funny how much Keith is struggling and helps him with the Spanish assignment), but most times they just pull out stacks on magazines and try to figure out the dumb crossword puzzles. Other times they just sit, actually reading, and Keith thinks that maybe those are his favorite times. Lance isn’t being a pest, they aren’t working on that terrible, terrible Spanish homework, and it’s enjoyable to just sit.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The first time that Keith goes to Lance’s, it’s not what he’s expecting. He’s fairly sure Lance didn’t warn him ahead of time on purpose. Lance opens the front door with his key, dropping his backpack on the ground and calling an I’m home!
There’s so many children. Or, okay, there’s six children, but that’s still a lot. The youngest is probably three, the oldest somewhere around thirteen. Lance introduces them, and there’s a jumble of names that Keith definitely isn’t going to remember. The only names he remembers are Isabella, who’s the toddler, and Alicia, who’s the oldest after Lance.
Lance’s room is childless and quirky. The ceiling has glow in the dark stars stuck to it, there’s Christmas lights strung up, there’s a fish bowl sitting on the dresser, everything is colorful and painted, empty water bottles are piled around the garbage can but not quite in it, and a book shelf filled with old, tattered books is next to his bed. There’s not a desk, so they use their math textbooks as hard surfaces and sit on his bed. Lance plays some of his terrible music, but Keith lets it happen because Lance is attempting to teach him how to conjugate verbs.
Lance’s mom pokes her head in eventually, greeting Keith warmly. One of the girls squeezes in through the gap in the door and his mom offers them cookies. They decline, but let the little girl stay. She’s calm, content to just sit on Lance’s lap. (She also tells Keith that gato means cat.)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
They go to Keith’s house next time. Keith says that it’s because they’ve been to Lance’s, and of course it’s only fair to go to Keith’s. They both know it’s because of all the siblings, and Lance finds that absolutely hilarious.
When Keith’s key opens up the door, there’s not a mass of kids to greet them, and it’s just quiet. He flicks on the light switch and brings his bag up with him to his room. It’s not warm and personalized, not like Lance’s, but Keith thinks it’s the best one yet. There’s no sharing rooms here, which means there’s just one bed and one desk, pushed up against opposite walls, and a dresser next to the window. Everything is white or blue, but there’s a desk, at least. They bring up an extra folding chair from downstairs and sit at the desk. Keith takes his turn with the teaching, trying his best to explain chemical compounds to Lance.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Generally speaking, Keith’s never had a best friend. As a kid he’d done the same thing as everyone else, picking out some poor sap he barely knew and declaring them best friends for life. But there’d never really been friends, and there’d definitely never been best friends. There wasn’t a point in making friends, just to move once or twice a year to some new family with some new siblings. When Keith had been younger, he’d liked pretending that they were real families. The parents always insisted on being called mom and dad, anyway, so he’d wake up and pretend like that was really his mother downstairs making breakfast, really his dad sitting on the couch drinking coffee. He’d make up stories for every family, inventing fake memories for every foster home, to the point where his memories were a jumble of real and fake, and he really couldn’t have told you what things he’d really done as a kid.
But it was pointless to have a new mom every six months.
So far, the foster home that he was in at the moment was the record holder. He’d been there for a grand total of two years, and while he was sure he was going to be shipped off before his senior year, it was hard not to make a single friend, even by accident.
His foster mom was fond of Lance, anyway, so it wasn’t very hard to have him over at least once a week. They’d huddle in his room at the desk until they finished their work, and then they’d sit on the floor without anything to do. When they were at Lance’s, they do their homework on the bed and then go down to the living room to be harassed by children and play video games.
Quite honestly, Keith liked both. The quiet and the noisy.
And he’s not sure how to say it, not sure how to tell Lance that it’s only temporary, because nothing’s ever been permanent before. So he keeps letting Lance teach him Spanish, and keeps teaching Lance chemistry.
The schoolyear ends and Keith passes Spanish and Lance passes chemistry, and everything stays the same for a while longer.
The hot, muggy summer days are spent lying on the grass in their backyards. They put on the sprinkler at Lance’s and just lie down and let it soak them, and they go to the creek by Keith’s like they’re little kids, exploring uncharted territory.
Keith kisses Lance while they’re standing in the creek in the middle of a hot, muggy summer day, and they’re both sweaty and muddy. He knows he shouldn’t have, because it’s all only temporary, but he does anyway, and he can’t help but not regret it.
The summer is almost over, and Keith dares to say that he’s stayed in the same place for three years. It’s an accomplishment, and he celebrates it by telling Lance they’re going to do something for the end of summer. They go and get ice cream from a shoppe down the road from Lance, and Keith pretends for a while longer that he’s not going to have to pack up again, like he’s a little kid again.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Lance takes Spanish again the next year, and he makes Keith sign up, too. Keith obliges, but swears up and down that if Lance isn’t in his class then he’s going to drop out and take study hall instead. They get the same class, and Keith can’t tell if he’s glad or not to spend another year in Spanish. It’s harder that year—much harder—but Lance just winks at him and helps him to conjugate the verbs, like the year before.
It’s their senior year, and Lance has ideas for college like everyone else. Keith isn’t quite sure how much longer he’ll have before he’ll move again, and that makes it a little hard to make plans for the future. Not to mention, when he turns eighteen he’ll be out of foster care, which means he won’t actually have a way to pay for college, which means he’s probably not going to college either way.
Maybe he’ll find a way to draw for a living. He’ll let people buy his artwork for a couple of dollars and he’ll live in one of those art studio apartments that people in movies always have. It’s not a good plan, and Keith nearly wishes he could go back to pretending he’s going to stay in one place, like he did when he was a kid. Instead, he goes over to Lance’s and tries to relearn –ar words.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Halfway through their senior year, Keith goes to the coffee shop with Lance on a chilly, frost-bitten Saturday morning. Lance jokes about Keith getting a job at the flower shop across the street when he sees the help wanted posters in the window, and Keith shrugs and goes with it. Lance thinks he’s joking all the way up until Keith actually works his first shift there, and then Lance is a mix between irritatingly amused and amusingly confused. Keith saves up, and there’s not as much time to mess around with Lance anymore, but it’s necessary, and Keith enjoys working there.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Keith’s studying the way that Lance looks, bundled up in his atrocious amount of winter clothing, and he realizes that they’ve never spoken about the kiss from the summer. Additionally, it feels like he’s known Lance for eons, rather than a year and a half. Lance slides off his scarf, whining about how hot it makes his breath feel, and Keith kisses him a second time.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Fall starts, and they make the mistake of going into the creek thinking that it’s not going to be too cold. It is. It’s freezing cold, deadly cold, hypothermia cold. (Or, well, maybe cold enough to give them a bit of a chill.)
Keith turns around to wade out of the creek, and Lance kisses him instead.
Keith goes home with both a cold and a boyfriend, and one of those things is better than the other.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The school year ends, and Lance has shown up on his doorstep dressed in tight jeans and a flannel that look illegally good on him, and he’s grinning so widely that Keith doesn’t even question where they’re going, tugging on his shoes and following Lance to where he was going. They go to the ice cream shoppe, and Lance says it’s to celebrate the start of summer, in the same way that they’d celebrated the end of it. Keith doesn’t mention that it was secretly a celebration of staying in one place for three years, because it’s nice right now, happy and warm and with Lance grinning like an idiot.
But, of course, the school year is over and Keith’s going to be eighteen next week. Lance is excited, Keith is nervous. Lance, who’s already eighteen, has already applied and been accepted to a college. Keith’s accepted that he’s not going to college, and really, he’s fine with that. He never really wanted to, for all he joked about it.
Keith turns eighteen, and Lance drags him to spend a day doing the most cliché things they can think of. Lance almost breaks his next roller skating and Keith burns his tongue on the coffee that they get, but every other event is pain-free, and Keith really can’t imagine moving someplace where there’s no Lance after this. He really, really doesn’t want to move away from Lance and from the mass of children (whose names he’s learned) and from the smell of cinnamon and sugar cookies and from the hugs that come from Lance’s mom, because she hugs absolutely everybody, and Keith can’t say he hates it.
They talk, finally, and Keith tells Lance about the temporary-ness of everything and the fact that he will, inevitably, have to move now. Lance thinks for such a long time that Keith worries he’s forgotten they’re having a conversation and he’s spaced off, thinking about a TV show or something. Instead, Lance finally replies, “then just move near my college, and I’ll move too, because I’ve been looking into it and an apartment is better than the dorms there.”
Keith thinks, for all the idiotic things he does, Lance really is brilliant.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It’s nothing special, or even something good, it’s acceptable at best, but that’s alright. There’s two rooms, and they looked just how they had at their old homes, full and bright versus white and empty. Lance strings up his Christmas lights, swearing loudly enough that Keith can hear him when he topples off the chair. He fills up a smaller bookshelf with the old and tattered books and presses the stars onto his ceiling. Keith can’t imagine Lance with a starless ceiling. Lance puts plants on his windowsill and calls it good, his room looking just as comfortably cluttered as before.
Keith thinks they’re finished, but his door opens and Lance appears, holding a folding chair in one hand and a clump of lights in the other.
“Did you know we have like, hundreds of Christmas lights?”
So Lance drapes the white fairy-lights around Keith’s window, and Keith’s glad they’re white instead of colorful, like the ones in Lance’s room.
Lance develops a habit of trying to fill up Keith’s room. Keith’s perfectly content with his empty space, but Lance continues putting plants on his desk and a colored duvet on the bed and adding little colors here and there, until it’s not cluttered like Lance’s, but not empty like before. It feels homey.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Keith is aware of the fact that they will, eventually, move again someday. Whether they move apart, to different homes and different lives, because these things don’t always last forever even if they feel like they will, or whether that’s to a new home together. They’ll move again someday, but it feels more like home than it ever did before, and that’s enough for now.
They’re done with school, but Lance continues teaching him Spanish when he’s not busy with schoolwork. Keith tries to learn his mother’s language, because nearly the only thing he could remember was that it had been important to her. He uses Lance’s strategies when it comes to remembering the languages and doesn’t suck as badly as the start of his sophomore year. He knows logically, that this, too, is temporary. But it’s home for now, and it feels more like home than anything ever did before, because here’s where their cluttered, colorful rooms are, and here’s where the flower shop is, and here’s where Lance is.