Work Text:
Keith grabbed his cup of coffee. He yawned and rubbed his right eye with the free hand. He had finally gotten the well deserved summer break that he had been waiting for since the spring spreak. He had 5 weeks of absolutely nothing else but relaxation planned. He had nothing that he had to do. Keith sat down at his computer, he had finally gotten time to continue developing the characters and settings for the next book he had planned. Usually he wouldn’t have time to do things that he wanted to, of course he wanted to go to college as well, but it was not like he screamed in joy over the many hours it took of studying everyday to keep up. Keith found his older character development sketches and started working on them, changing details here and there. He ended out adding another character. It was a young man with brown hair, broad shoulders and light tan skin. Keith sighed, without even thinking about it, he had drawn one of the most famous young actors. Lance McLain was an amazing actor, young, charming, nice, cute and extremely talented. Keith sighs, he may have had a bit of a crush on the actor in the past, but he was totally over him, but he was still obsessed with drawing him. Keith thought he had some nice features that were pleasant to draw.
Keith had been single for years. The truth was that he were never officially not-single. He hadn’t had an actual relationship other than a couple of flirts here and there. His first were a cute blonde boy who turned out to be an ass, and the last had been a sweet redhead girl, but they had come to the agreement that they’d be better off as friends. The flirt with the girl, which was the last he had had for a while, had ended a couple years back. Since then Keith had been single, not that that was a problem. But it was for him. He liked to be alone, but if he was allowed to be alone too much, then his behaviour could quickly turn self destructive. He was not very good at watching out for himself.
Keith thought about the single problem for a couple of hours while doing other activities as well. As the sun was beginning to set, he had reached a conclusion. He needed to set up a profile on a dating site. He didn’t care whether it would end out in a new friendship, flirt or relationship. All he knew was that he really just needed to talk with someone else than Shiro, Pidge and the students at his college. Keith found a free dating website that looked like there were genuine nice people on there, rather than self obsessed douches who only wanted to get in people's pants. He set up a profile, he aimed for making himself seem a little bit worse than usual, so that people’s expectations wouldn't be too high and they wouldn't end up disappointed.
He filled out the various needed details, and then came the hard part. Finding the right profile picture. Keith ended out going with a picture that had been taken at Shiro’s birthday party last year. Keith was smiling and his was in a little ponytail, the smile was very genuine. Keith took a deep breath and then he clicked the “save profile” button. The site flashed and then there was a site with a nice layout and Keith’s big smile to the left side. Keith minimized the browser, so he could still hear if someone had written to him on the dating site. He reached for his favorite book, which was lying on the table right next to the computer. The paperback book was very worn. The paper had yellowed over the years he had had the book, and the back of the book was all wrinkled from being opened so much.
He read for a couple of hours when a loud pling broke the nice silence. Keith looked up from his book and over at his computer. Had someone really written to him already? Keith reached for a random item to use as a bookmark, he ended up grabbing a magazine which he put between the pages of the book. Keith put the book down to the left of his computer, and reached out to touch the mouse pad. The screen lit up, and Keith clicked on the internet window. Keith looked at the site and saw a little red circle with a 1 indicating he had a message. Keith clicked the little icon of an envelope, and right there was a message from a user named Lance McClain.
Wait what?
Keith double checked, and sure enough, that was what the user was called. They had even used a picture of the actor as a profile picture. Keith had never seen the picture before (he had seen a lot of pictures of the actor, almost all of them actually) but it was clear to see that the man in the picture was indeed the actor that Keith used to have a major crush on. Keith sighed, his first message was from some dude who was trying to catfish him. He clicked on the profile, and all the details were spot on, even the description sounded like something the cheeky actor would write. Then Keith clicked at the message that had been sent to him.
Hi there Keith, how are you? :P
From: Lance McClain 11:28 am
Keith looked at the message, it was absolutely harmless. Keith sighed and shrugged. It wouldn’t hurt to answer.
Hello, I’m good. How about you, how are you doing?
11:31
I’m great! I just saw your profile and thought you sounded really nice from what you wrote in the description. Would you have anything against if we kept writing? Like is it okay that I write to you?
From: Lance McClain 11:37 am
Yeah that wouldn’t be a problem. You seem very nice too, from what you wrote in your description at least :)
11:40
Why did he put the smiley face? The hell, he hated smiley faces.
Okay, and thanks
From: Lance McClain 11:42
For saying I sound nice i mean
From: Lance McClain 11:42
No problemo
11:43
Keith wrote a bit more with the catfish during the evening. He did actually seem pretty nice, very polite but still funny. But that was probably just an act that he had put up, he was a catfish after all. Keith went to bed smiling, he had for once successfully held a conversation with another human being without screwing up. It did count even though they were a catfish. A person was a person no matter who they pretended to be.
Keith and the catfish kept talking for weeks, Keith wondered why the catfish stuck around. Keith practically took up all of his time, and the catfish knew very well that he was a college student, who had little to no money. If the catfish didn’t want money, then why were they even catfishing people?
Then one day, the catfish asked him if he wanted to meet at this fancy restaurant just 10 minutes from where Keith lived. Keith thought long and hard about it. What was the plan? Jump out of the window in the bathroom so Keith had to pay for the expensive dinner? Before Keith had thought about that the person wasn’t even real, he had asked if they couldn’t just go to McDonalds that was right under his miniature apartment. The Lance profile had accepted, and Keith was going to meet up with him in about an hour.
Keith went to get dressed, he had been lying around his flat for hours doing nothing, and had therefore not gotten dressed yet. It didn’t require clothes to lie in a bed. He took on his usual attire. The dark grey t-shirt, a pair of black skinny jeans, his belt and the easily recognizable red and yellow jacket. And of course the most important part of his outfit, the fingerless gloves.
Keith went to the bathroom and looked into the mirror. Should he wear his hair down or up. Keith held his hair up with his hands, then let go, he repeated the actions a couple of times before settling on putting his hair up. He got the hair tie and put his hair up in a pony tail.
Keith was very nervous, what if the imposter turned out to be mean and rude. What if they turned out to be dangerous? He calmed himself. It was going to be okay, if they had bad intentions then Keith could always get help from Shiro, who worked in the McDonald they were meeting at.
Keith went to his living room and sat down with a book to pass some time. He was always ready to leave for everything a lot of time before he actually had to be done. Then he would always sit down and read and then almost be late because he was so drawn into the book.
Keith swooped his phone out of his pocket to look at the time, only to discover that he was once again late. It was lucky that he had picked the place right under his apartment, because he had 3 minutes to get down there. Keith raced out into the hallway and put on his shoes, then he slammed the door open and ran out on the stairway. He turned around and slammed the door shut again and locked it tight. Then he jumped down the stairs, taking 3 steps at a time. He really wanted to be there on time, he didn’t know how the dude looked. Keith ran out on the street and took a sharp turn left and ran through the door to the McDonald. He sat down in the nearest booth, with his back to the door, so he wouldn’t assume that the guy he was supposed to meet was any of the people who went through the door.
Keith took his phone up and started scrolling through Tumblr. There was a certain video with Lance McClain on his Dashboard that he liked so he could see it later. He looked at the clock in the top of the phone, a couple of minutes had passed and whoever he was meeting was officially late.
Keith heard the door open and a cool wind blew his way. Keith kept scrolling through Tumblr, when he heard the footsteps going his way instead of going to order food. The footsteps came to a stop in front of his table. Keith looked up from his phone, and right there stood a guy with a cute mischievous smile playing on his lips. It was none other than the Lance McClain Keith was had once been crushing on.
If he had been in a cartoon, then his jaw would have been all the way down on the surface of the table. Had he really been talking with Lance for weeks? Lance furrowed his eyebrows and then giggled. Keith shook his head and closed his mouth. Gotta act cool, or at least try not to look like a total dofus. Lance waved at him.
“Hiya Keith” he said as he maneuvered into the stall Keith had picked out for them. Keith did a double take, was it really him or had he eaten something that made him hallucinate? No, it was really him.
“How are you even allowed to have a dating profile?” Keith said after a moment of silence. Lance broke out laughing, “I’m not someone’s hostage Keith, just an actor” Lance answered. “I’m allowed to do stuff” Lance said, “but I think a lot of people thought I was a fake, you’re one of the only people who didn’t write bad stuff to me when I contacted them” Lance shrugged. “Well now I’m glad I didn’t, you turned out to be a nice person after all” Keith said, then he added “though I was scared of being mugged on my way out of here after the date”
“Why would you be scared of that?” Lance said laughing, “it’s not like I pose a big threat to anyone”
“Well it could’ve been anyone than you who walked through that door”
“Well then you’re lucky that it was just harmless little me” Lance said smiling widely, his eyes crinkling in that way that made him look even more beautiful than he usually did.
And yes, for once, Keith had actually been lucky.
Very lucky.