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The sun was beating down, no wind at all, and at least ten different people were playing their music loud enough that Keith could try to guess the artists and songs. There were too many people in general, enough to be overwhelmed by their sheer mass. Keith almost regretted agreeing to go to their city's pride parade with Shiro and Adam. But only almost.
First of all, he liked going places and doing things with Shiro and Adam that made them feel like a whole family, because they were a family on anything but paper. It was still a little awkward, especially because Adam had left Keith and Shiro to go get something to drink, and now they were standing around in the middle of people having a good time.
And the second reason he didn’t regret going-
"Who's that guy you're staring at?"
"No one."
Keith didn’t have to turn around to know exactly what kind of look Shiro was levelling at him: The disbelieving one that he only wore when he knew he'd won already. There were a lot of guys - people in general - that he could have been staring at, but Shiro had most likely traced his stare back to the small group of friends just opposite of them. Keith gave in with a sigh.
"He's in my astrobiology class. Definitely straight though."
"You do realize we're at pride, right?"
"You do realize there are straight people here, right? I've never had a conversation with him and even I know how much he talks about girls. He's a friendly person and he's here with his friends. Look, there's his friend with the trans flag, and-"
Keith's throat locked up as he watched the guy's friend, the beautiful one with dark skin and long hair, spun her overlarge bi pride flag around both of their shoulders, laughing and dancing. He didn't reject it or look the least bit uncomfortable. He laughed along and raised the flag in the air with his friend, whooping in abandon.
"Definitely straight, huh?"
"Just shut up."
"Just go talk to him."
Keith heaved a sigh. It wouldn’t have been a problem for him, usually. He didn’t have trouble talking to people in class when he wanted something from them, and he didn’t have trouble talking to guys in clubs – or anywhere else - when he wanted something from them. But this was something weirdly in the middle of the two, no-mans-land, where he couldn’t predict the conversation further than hey and how are you.
He had exchanged a few sentences with this guy before, even though he couldn't quite remember his name. But he'd been in a regular shirt and jeans then, not in a low-cut top and shorts, sun gleaming off his bare arms and spinning gold in his dark hair. And if Keith was honest with himself – his long legs and tapping fingers had distracted him sometimes in class, and not in a bad way at all. It was still an in-between, still weird, but it was a chance he'd never thought he'd get.
"Alright."
"Great. Good luck."
Keith gently extracted himself from Shiro squeezing his shoulder in support and made his way over. He wasn't dressed much different than how he went to class every day, so he expected the guy to recognize him, but it still seized his stomach to stand almost exactly in front of him. He turned around from where his friend had finished tying the flag around his throat, and his eyes widened in recognition.
"Oh hey! You're in astrobiology too! What's your name – wait-"
"It's Keith."
"Right. I'm Lance."
They shook hands. Lance's smile was bright, his grip strong and warm, and Keith didn’t how he could have forgotten that name, if he had ever known it in the first place. Keith's eyes were constantly drawn to the flag around his shoulders - the purple complimented the blue in Lance's eyes.
Lance let go of Keith's hand, but continued talking to him. It was the opposite of awkward, Lance was enthusiastic and friendly and talkative enough for the both of them. But maybe it was still the wrong moment to notice that Lance was taller than Keith. Not by much, not enough to notice from a distance, but he was close enough to touch, and he wouldn’t have to tilt his chin at all for his lips to close perfectly around Lance's bottom lip, would only have to take a step forward and – he had just asked Keith a question.
"Uh, sorry, what?"
Lance raised an eyebrow. Keith ignored it the best he could.
"Are you here with someone?"
"Oh. Yeah, my parents, kinda. Dads."
Keith turned around to point them out. Adam had returned with the drinks, and him and Shiro were watching Keith talk to Lance as if they were a scene in a movie. They raised their glasses to him with smiles, completely unbothered. Keith took a deep breath – he loved them, but sometimes he did want to flip them off. Lance waved to them. They waved back, grinning even more now. Keith's cheeks were burning.
"They're cool. You're really lucky."
Keith looked at Lance with surprise, but his wide eyes were full of sincerity. And in a way, Keith agreed. He was definitely very lucky.
"They're not that cool. But, yeah, what they've done for me definitely is."
Keith's voice became softer, quieter, and he almost wanted to take it back, but Lance just smiled at him. The skin around his eyes even crinkled, and Keith was transfixed.
"It's great that you have someone supportive you can come here with. From your family, I mean."
"And you don’t have anyone like that from your family?"
Lance blinked. Maybe that was not an appropriate topic to breach with a cute guy you were maybe, kind of, trying to flirt with and who you would definitely see again.
"Oh no, I do, it's just, you know, in general."
Lance smiled, somehow tense, and Keith forced himself to smile back. It was clear that he wasn’t just talking in general, that there was something there, with family or friends or anything else – but there was. Keith wanted to ask what it was exactly that made Lance hesitate here. He almost did, the words clawing their way up his throat, but he swallowed them down again. Lance was special. Lance just had the kind of face, the kind of voice and presence that you couldn’t ever forget, and if he wasn’t ready to speak about that kind of stuff there and then, then Keith would just have to trust that there would be another opportunity. Or better yet – he could make that opportunity. He smiled at Lance, deliberately a little crooked, and lowered his voice.
"But you're already pretty lucky."
Keith dragged his gaze up Lance's legs, across his lean torso and the exposed skin of his collarbones, and by the time he'd reached Lance's face, his mouth had already dropped open and his cheeks were a few shades darker than before.
"You – you think so?"
"Absolutely."
Lance looked mildly embarrassed, but he wasn’t fighting his lips twitching into a smirk. It was almost easy after that. Lance still didn’t fall into one of the two categories Keith put most people in – he eschewed them, made them obsolete. He was both, and yet he was neither.
Flirting was the easiest part. They could exchange numbers under the pretense of schoolwork, even if they both knew that was less than half of the reason.
Later that day, after he'd been home and a flyer stuck to his shoe had told him about a party, Keith went to a party. He'd never been to one like this before, right after pride – and some people obviously hadn't gone home in the meantime - and he usually would have much preferred staying in, but something about this day was different. It was already the day he had gone to pride with his pseudo-adoptive dads, found out the gorgeous guy from his astrobiology class he'd been crushing on for months was actually into men, and consequently flirted with him, and gotten his number. It could become a day of even more wonderful, unbelievable things happening.
The club was sweltering and too loud, bodies pressed against each other tightly. Keith dug his way through the crowd, less because he wanted something to drink, and more because he wanted something to hold onto. An anchor. Sweat was gathering in his nape even though he had his hair up in a ponytail, no jacket, and regret gathered in his throat. Maybe he should have stayed home. He had Lance's number and a promise to see him again – even if unspoken, even if in class – and wishing for anything more was just excessive. Just because Lance seemed like the person to enjoy parties, didn’t mean he would be at this exact one.
The regret didn’t even have time to settle. Keith slid through a gap between two people, a step closer to the bar, now visible behind just a few swaying couples, and there he was, Lance, leaning on a stool and just turning his head in the direction Keith was coming from as he parted from the crowds. It was almost like that afternoon, when Keith had worked up the courage to just go talk to Lance. Only this time, Lance looked at him, startled, blinking, neon lights illuminating him from behind, and it wasn’t so much courage as an invisible string, pulling Keith forward.
"Hey."
It took all of his willpower to lean on the bar stool opposite of Lance's and not just walk right up to him and – do something. This party and its pulsing atmosphere weren’t good for Keith's impulse control or the kind of thoughts he was having. Lance wasn't better off, if the way he was dragging his gaze up Keith's throat to his lips was anything to go by.
"Hey."
He didn’t need to raise his voice, Keith heard him perfectly, and it was all the communication they needed.
Lance danced exactly the way anyone would expect him to, no matter which side he'd shown them – because he was always both, smooth and awkward, ideal and a little too much, charming but goofy. After he'd pulled Keith to the dancefloor, there was not a single song, not one bass drop that could capture Keith's attention more than Lance: taking Keith's hands in his, pulling him close and weaving in between all the sweaty bodies with poise and grace, letting him go suddenly to whoop and do the chicken dance, just swaying his lean hips side to side to the beat, encouraging Keith to lead him in a completely ill-fitting waltz, cutting through his own giggling with a snide remark about someone's outfit. Keith shouldn't have been able to keep up. But Lance never left him far behind, and he laughed, too, danced like he hadn't since he'd been thirteen, alone and angry in his room, only this time, he wasn't angry. It was the same kind of fire in his veins, but it bubbled in elation, made his heart beat faster and his whole body burn.
When they stumbled to the bar, exhausted and twice as sweaty as everyone else, it might have been an hour or it might have been five minutes, but Lance's fingers were threaded between Keith's, and that, at least, was proof that it had happened. And they might have already been drunk, with the way they were acting, sticking their heads together and giggling and just letting the time pass them by. A few drinks did find the way into Keith's hands and down his throat, but it wasn't enough to make him drunk. If anything, it made him more focused, let him shake loose of the clinging threads the dancefloor still held on him, the meaningless, unbelievably funny conversation Lance had him encased in. They locked eyes. It was a quiet moment, Lance's eyes clearer than anything he had seen that day, the music no louder than his pulse in his ears. A slow smile spread on Lance's lips, and he didn’t need to open them to say let's get out of here.
It was getting too loud and full anyway, and on the way to the exit, Keith didn't stumble at all, as if the outside air had already sobered him up. The absence of music drenched him once the club's door had closed behind them: in the city, even at night, it was never completely silent, car horns in the distance, partying stragglers giggling and arguing down the street, an interrupted bass thumping when a door opened and shut somewhere. But all of it was far away, not right next to his ear, beating through his veins, like it had been in the club.
Out here, there was just Lance.
But out here, the solid connection between them, where they didn't have to say the words out loud to know exactly what they meant to say, wavered a little, and when Keith turned to look at Lance and figure out what they were going to do now, there was a nervous smile on his face.
"It's not as late as it felt down there, huh?"
Keith nodded. The sky hadn't even passed its darkest point, maybe midnight was still a few minutes away.
Lance fidgeted, averted his eyes, as if he'd hoped Keith was going to say something else.
"Actually, my apartment isn't that far away."
"Cool."
Lance sighed. Keith blinked at his strained smile, and the implication of all of this was slowly catching up to him.
"And my roommates aren't there, so I was wondering if you maybe wanted to go back there and – uh…"
While Lance searched for the right phrase – not assuming too much but also not too misleadingly innocent – Keith took his hand where it was waving through the air and threaded their fingers. They'd been holding hands, had pulled each other by the wrist, touched waists and necks when they'd been dancing, lips against ears and fingers against pulse points. But it felt different out here in the quiet, just the two of them. It was as if they'd never touched before, and just by taking Lance's hand, Keith was promising something to him. Maybe he was. He didn’t know what he was promising, or what any of this meant, but he was still breathless and caught up in the night, and something lit up in Lance's eyes when he squeezed his fingers, so Keith wasn't going to ruin any of that by thinking about what he was doing.
"Where's your place? That way?"
"Nope. This way."
Lance pulled him down a deserted street. Keith opened his mouth to say something about the creepy vibes, attempt a joke about someone pulling him into a dark corner – malicious intent or not – when a car whooshed past them. Its windows were rolled down, and inside was a gaggle of fellow college kids, singing along to the radio loudly and very off key. They veered around the corner, one of them screeching somebody once told me into the night. Lance came to a stop under a streetlamp, staring after the car as it turned a corner and disappeared, music still wafting to them from a distance, and Keith bumped into his shoulder. It didn't take more than a glance at each other, and they were laughing. Full-bellied, loud laughter, almost indecent in the silent, nightly street, but Lance's shoulder shook against Keith's, and he was warm where he gripped Keith's other arm to keep from falling over, and his head was heavy on Keith's shoulder when he dropped it there. Lance was a solid, real weight. He was real.
Suddenly, that wasn't anything to laugh about anymore.
Keith blinked his eyes open. Lance was a lot closer than before, close enough that the tears still clinging to his lashes felt wet to Keith.
Their lips met. There wasn't any decision or movement between the kiss and the moment before, there was no time or reason for thinking, for a prelude. They just kissed. Soft at first, just lips meeting over and over, and it didn’t feel very new, it felt as if this was what they'd been supposed to be doing all along. As if the evening, the day, their lives, maybe, would have always ended up this way: with them kissing under a streetlamp in an empty street, with Keith pulling Lance closer by the waist and Lance tightening his grip on Keith's arms in turn, smiling into the kiss. He giggled a little, and Keith dove into the opportunity, deepened the kiss until Lance had to stumble backwards, hold tight to the lamppost, and wrench away from the kiss to take a breath and wheeze out –
"My place – please – only two minutes from here –"
The only reason it took them longer than two minutes was because they couldn’t let go of each other. When Keith thought it was fine to not be kissing, to just have Lance's thumb stroking the back of his hand, Lance would turn around and carry his smile in his eyes, and he'd be done for. And Lance would not let him let go of his hand, would spin Keith around as if they were still dancing, and laugh about nothing and pull him close again.
The door to Lance's apartment building was illuminated by another streetlamp, just around the corner from the one they'd kissed under for the first time, and once they'd arrived, it seemed like opening the door was the farthest thing from Lance's mind. Quick and with only a few fingers, he maneuvered Keith so his back was pressed against the wall, and in the sharp light of the lamppost, Lance's intense stare made his heart beat faster, before he leaned in and kissed him again.
It was the kind of kiss that left Keith struggling to think. Lance was so close, his shirt and his hair underneath Keith's fingertips and the taste of his lips so familiar that it seemed impossible today was the first day they'd even talked.
Their lips separated, but Lance's breath was still hot on his skin, chest heaving against Keith's, his hand clenching on the wall next to Keith's head. It didn’t feel threatening at all, or like Lance was caging Keith in, because he was so wide-eyed and flushed. He smacked his lips together, and Keith followed the movement with his eyes.
"Do you… I mean, are you only in this for tonight?"
"Uh-"
"Because, if you are, that's alright, but I'd be really disappointed."
Lance broke their eye contact to watch as his own hand twirled a stray lock of Keith's hair between his fingers. There was a smile on his lips, and in the minimal light of the streetlamp, it almost looked shy. It didn’t help Keith's inability to come up with an acceptable answer.
"Uh, are you-"
"I guess what I'm trying to ask is, do you wanna go out with me?"
Keith swallowed down all the lingering confusion, because there were a lot of things he wasn't sure about, questions he didn’t yet know the answer to, but this was definitely not one of them.
"Yeah, sure."
His voice was still a bit breathless, stuttery, but Lance didn't seem to mind. A grin spread on his face.
"Awesome."
He launched himself backwards and twirled to lock open the door, presenting the interior to Keith with a flourish, and there was nothing presumptuous about a roommate-free apartment anymore. It was just an empty, but lived-in apartment, with a stocked fridge and a couch and a TV. Keith and Lance settled in, no urgency anymore, just the couch, the open window, an old show on the TV with the volume turned down, and their arms touching where they were slouched down. Just the knowledge that they'd kiss, and they'd meet again in class, and they'd go on a date in the near future.
The day had been like a year, gone in a blink but still so full of change. With Lance's warm arm against his and his head sinking ever closer to Keith's shoulder, Keith remembered something he'd been curious about earlier. He cleared his throat.
"What was that about today, with the 'supportive family'?"
Lance shot upright again, and in the face of his startled, blinking eyes, it might not have been the right time to try to unlock his tragic backstory.
"Uh, what?"
"You know, today, when you said I was so lucky to have supportive family?"
Lance's eyebrows knit together, but he nodded curtly, said nothing.
"What was that about?"
Maybe Keith was overstepping it. Maybe this was a question for later – something he could've kept in a quiet corner for a third or fourth date, a curiosity that would keep him pushing forward. But it didn’t feel like he would need something like that, something to keep him wondering all the time, because even now, Lance felt like the kind of person he wouldn’t stop wanting to get to know more of.
"I do this thing where I – and that's not all of it, don’t get me wrong – this thing where I just love seeing gay couples together. And when someone tells me they have someone else in their family I just get super excited!"
Keith frowned at Lance's strained smile, just long enough for it to fall.
"I said that wasn’t all of it. I don't know. It's complicated."
He broke off to yawn into his hand. Keith cleared his throat, something ugly roiling in his stomach at the thought that maybe he had ruined it. But before he could open his mouth to apologize or do something equally stupid, Lance calmed him with a hand to his wrist.
"Why don't I tell you more about it next week over dinner?"
He'd said it with a hopeful smile, and Keith was nodding before he could even smile back. They were going to go on a date. He had known that before, but now, when they weren't in the middle of making out, just facing each other on a couch, knees touching and Lance's hand still closed around Keith's wrist, it was a lot more real. And maybe it was because he was tired, but Keith smiled back, big and bright.
"Can't wait."
He really hoped they weren't going to forget about it.
When Keith woke up, Lance was still asleep, half on top of him on the couch. And he still couldn’t wait for their date.