"You look bored."

Lance shrugged his shoulders where he was sprawled on the couch.

"You spent the last couple nights studying. The exam is over. You should do something fun," Hunk prodded.

"I want a relationship."

"Not exactly what I had in mind —"

"No, I mean, I want someone to talk to at the end of the day. Someone who I can complain to about that shit exam. Someone to get excited when I tell them the story of that cat I saw earlier. We could make plans for the weekend, like couple plans. Someone to cuddle with at the end of a long day."

"First step to all that is generally to leave your apartment and go meet someone."

Lance flopped from his side to his back on the couch. "That takes soooo long, Hunk. Even if I go out and meet someone tonight, it'll either be a million dates from now before we reach the relationship stage I'm craving, or they're just looking to hook up for one night. I wish I could skip all that and already be at that comfort level with someone."

"I gotcha man."

Lance sat up quickly when he suddenly heard keys jingling in the lock of his apartment door. He didn't have a roommate. And while Matt and Pidge had a spare key, they'd still knock when they came over. He watched the door open and then Keith was entering the main room, pushing off his coat, and untying his scarf to toss on a chair like he lived here.

"Keith?"

Keith didn't answer, just beelined for Lance and climbed right on top of him, forcing Lance to lie back down on the couch as Keith made himself comfortable on top of him, face nuzzling into Lance's neck and arms squeezing his sides. His own arms instinctively wrapped around Keith's middle.

"Keith?" he repeated. He wasn't against an impromptu Keith cuddling session (he'd never pictured Keith as a cuddler before, for which past Lance was an idiot because this boy fit very nicely here on the couch with him). But the closest they'd ever gotten over the past few days of studying was some arm brushing when they'd sat next to each other.

"I spent my whole shift thinking about how awful that exam was," Keith griped, lips brushing Lance's skin as he spoke. "It had at least 5 questions that —"

"That weren't included in the study materials!" Lance jumped in.

"I bet you still did great," Keith murmured. "We studied for days."

Lance was going to accept the gift he'd been given. His arms hugged Keith a little tighter.

"Thanks. Gotta work hard to keep up with you," he teased.

Keith leaned his weight on one arm so he could push himself up, lifting his face from Lance's neck in order to press his mouth against Lance's mouth and —

Oh, they were kissing.

Lance's eyes slipped shut because Keith's lips were warm against his own and Lance could feel every point of contact between them heat in a new way as they continued to move their mouths together.

"I vote we stay on the couch all night and decompress," Keith was saying a moment later.

Keith didn't appear shocked about their kiss, or look like he wanted to talk about it. Probably because Keith wasn't thinking about how that had been their first kiss. Because they were apparently in immediate comfort relationship land. Lance tried to catch up to what Keith was saying.

"Huh?"

"What do we have that we can eat? So we don't have to go out?"

Lance thought about the contents of his pantry and then grinned. "The ultimate comfort food."

Keith raised an eyebrow.

"Mac n cheese."

Keith's smile was wide as he nodded in approval. He climbed off Lance and helped him up so they could head to the kitchen.

"Do we have any tuna?"

Lance scrunched his nose immediately. "Why?"

"Tuna mac."

Lance stared at him with a blank expression.

"You add tuna to mac n cheese," Keith helpfully explained. "Tuna mac."

"Keith, my man, why would you ever ruin the best cheesy comfort food ever by adding fish to it?"

Keith's lower lip protruded the tiniest little bit. Lance thought it was completely unfair.

"It tastes good."

"No, Keith."

"Plus protein and omega 3."

Keith's pouty lip began to protrude a little more. It was completely ridiculous.

Lance sighed in defeat and turned to his cupboards. "I guess I wish we had some tuna, then." He watched as thirty tiny cans of tuna appeared on his shelf, and then sent a glare over his shoulder at Hunk for the exaggerated response. "Oh, wait," Lance said dryly, "we do."

"Yes," Keith responded happily as he approached Lance and reached over his shoulder for two cans. "Oh, this my favorite brand, too, Lance." He dropped a kiss to Lance's cheek before moving to the counter to begin opening the tuna.

Lance resisted touching his cheek where the skin hummed from that brief contact from Keith's lips. He could definitely overlook the tuna smell if it meant reactions like that.

Still, he may have tried to bodily block Keith's attempts to actually add the tuna to the noodles when Lance added the cheese, of which Keith took good naturedly by first pouting that adorable pout and then pressing Lance against the counter and latching his mouth to Lance's neck until Lance sort of melted against him and Keith was free to reach around him and add the tuna.

"Dammit," Lance whispered without heat when he realized what Keith had done, not that he was pushing Keith away.

Keith moved his lips from Lance's neck up towards his ear. "Want to know what we're missing?" he whispered.

Lance hummed in response and didn't try to fight the shiver that resulted from Keith's warm breath against his skin.

"Peas."

Lance practically growled at the thought of sullying his comfort food with any more gross additions. He pushed Keith back a bit with his shoulder before scooping the other boy up and carrying him off towards the couch.

"No quiznacking way are you destroying this any further," Lance announced as he walked, refusing to let the squirming, laughing Keith escape from his arms. "Seriously, Keith, what's wrong with you? Next you're going to tell me you add spinach or some shit to your chocolate milkshakes."

"Actually —" Keith attempted through his laughter.

"Nooope. No. Don't want to hear it." He dumped Keith on the couch and turned his back to him as he walked back to the kitchen.

"You can't even taste spinach when you add it to shakes!" Keith finally managed to call after him.

"You're banned from my kitchen. Honestly, Keith. This place is off limits to you from now on."

"Our kitchen," Keith grumped from the couch.

Lance paused in his stirring of the mac n cheese at that and felt his lips pull into a smile. Our kitchen. He liked the sound of that. Then he quickly finished mixing everything together and returned to the couch with the large bowl of tuna mac, two drinks, and two forks.

"I can't believe we've never made tuna mac before," Keith said as he accepted a fork from Lance and waited for Lance to settle in next to him before he dug in for his first bite. "You're gonna love it."

Lance stuck his tongue out in protest, before he poked at the tuna mac with his own fork. He shoved some tuna away from some mac n cheese and did his best to only get cheesy goodness on his fork.

"You're such a baby," Keith tsk'd.

When Lance's mouth fell open to protest that very inaccurate descriptor, Keith shoved a forkful of noodles and plenty of tuna into Lance's mouth.

Keith pulled his now empty fork away and waited patiently for Lance to begin chewing. "Well?"

Even with those raised eyebrows and pretty eyes full of hope trained on him, Lance still wanted to complain.

Unfortunately, what he was chewing wasn't half bad.

It was almost good.

Not great.

But good.

"It's alright," he said around the mouthful.

Keith beamed at him and went back to eating out of their giant shared bowl. Lance began to scoop up real bitefuls as well, especially if he wanted any before Keith scarfed down the entire thing. When they were finished, Keith carried the bowl off to the kitchen sink and Lance turned on the television. Before he could even begin to scroll through the channels, Keith was back, pulling the remote from him as he tucked himself into Lance's side.

"There's a new F*rged in Fire tonight," Keith announced happily.

And that's how Lance found himself serving as a pillow to his apparent boyfriend as they watched a knife-making competition show. It was warm and comfortable and Lance learned quite a lot about how knives were actually created, even if he made a few side comments about how unbelievable it was that these competitors kept talking about blade hardness without laughing like thirteen year olds.

("You have to quench it at just the right temperature, Lance, or the edge doesn't harden and the knife won't be sharp!"

"Keith. Keeeith. He just announced to everyone in the room, in a completely serious tone, that his steel is long and hard. I'm dying.")

Lance didn't stop laughing until Keith reached over and pulled a hair tie Lance had never seen before off of Lance's own wrist and proceeded to pull his hair up. When he was finished, Lance let his fingers play with the small ponytail, though he was mainly focused on how sweet and easy their night had been. The familiarity of being in each other's space was exactly what he'd always wanted. And Keith's pouty faces and sly smirks and bright eyes and infectious laugh made this wish a thousand times better than anything he could've come up with on his own with some random person.

He found himself smiling softly at Keith and silently thanking Hunk before he turned back to the show.

It was when Lance's own eyes widened at the fire created from each quench, and a comment about how he'd like to try something like that himself, that Keith went after his neck again. The show was forgotten in favor of messy kisses and chuckles as Keith struggled to get Lance's shirt off when he didn't actually want to move far enough away to manage it.

"Come on," Keith husked. He practically jumped up from the couch and tugged Lance up as well in order to pull him back towards the bedroom.

Two minutes later, Lance skidded back into the main room and pulled at his hair as his slightly frantic eyes met with Hunk's again.

"He's getting naked," he hissed at Hunk.

"I don't really need a play by play," Hunk groaned.

"Like, one hundred percent naked."

"Okay? You want to see him naked, though?"

"How do you know that?" Lance whisper shouted.

"Dude," Hunk sighed the sigh of the long suffering. "I know way more than I should."

"Lance," Keith called from the bedroom, "where the hell did the lube go?"

"He wants to know where the lube went, Hunk!" Thank goodness he was still trying to whisper, or that would've been said in a very high pitch.

Hunk squinted at him. "Why are you freaking out? I mean… I know it'd be your first time with Keith, but it's not your first… Wait, you really like him."

"Hunk."

"Like, really like him. You want to do this properly with him."

"Hunk," Lance whined.

"You have to say the words, Lance."

Lance exhaled harshly. He glanced once more back towards his bedroom where there was currently a naked Keith sitting and waiting for him.

"Yes, okay? Yes, I wish I could do this the right way with him."

"I gotcha man. Don't forget the tuna."

Lance ran back to his bedroom and found it dark and empty. He was wearing a shirt again. In the kitchen he found the sink empty of dirty dishes.

The only thing that remained as a reminder that his time with fake boyfriend Keith even happened was the presence of tuna fish cans in his cabinet. He slid on his jacket, pocketed two cans, and bolted for Keith's place.

Keith had flopped on the couch as soon as he'd gotten home from work earlier, and he'd spent the last forty minutes trying to convince himself to get up and find something to eat for dinner. So he was confused when he heard a knock on his door, since he was currently very busy in the middle of his plans for the night.

But he was pleased to find a slightly out of breath Lance outside his door. As much as he valued his solitude, he always welcomed Lance's company, even if it was just for studying, which is how he'd managed to hang out with him for the past several nights.

"Lance?" he asked, although he didn't wait for an answer before he was moving aside to allow Lance to enter.

"That exam was the worst!"

Keith scowled as he agreed. "It had at least 5 questions that —"

"That weren't included in the study materials!"

Keith smiled as he watched Lance's long arms fly up dramatically as he spoke. "I bet you still did great. We studied for days."

Lance sighed, letting his shoulders relax. "Thanks, man. I gotta work hard to keep up with you after all."

Keith smiled, finally recognizing the tease for what it was — playful banter instead of a painful jab.

"You want to hang out?" Keith asked, about to retreat to his couch. "Forged in —"

"That knife competition?"

"Its not all knives," Keith grumbled despite the happy grin on Lance's face.

"Hey, I'd love to watch it with you. But first, we need some comfort food after that brutal exam."

Keith was about to ask if Lance wanted to order in (although they'd ordered pizza the past two nights in a row while studying and he never thought he'd be sick of pizza, but…) when he watched Lance pull two cans out of his jacket pockets.

"Are you carrying around tuna?"

"Do you have mac n cheese?" Lance asked.

Keith's eyes widened in awe. "You put tuna in mac n cheese?"

"Sure. Tuna mac. Protein and, uh, omega…"

"I love tuna mac."

"So, tuna mac, knives, and fire," Lance said with a grin. "Not bad for a first date."

Keith could feel his face warm, but he smiled at Lance instead of trying to hide. "Sounds pretty good to me." He reached a hand out for Lance to hand him the tuna, but got Lance's fingers in his own instead.

And Lance's hand fit so easily there. Keith took a moment to squeeze those long pretty fingers within his own before turning and tugging Lance towards his kitchen.

"But no peas!" Lance exclaimed out of nowhere.

Keith spun back around, his crestfallen expression completely visible to Lance.

Lance's arms flew up at his sides again. "You put that pouty lip back where it came from!"

A/N: My college roommate made tuna mac all the time and I hated the smell, but she'd always give me a bowl of just mac n cheese before she added her gross tuna. She was the best.

Forgotten tag: Guardian Angel/Part-Genie/Best Bro Hunk

F*rged in Fire is a real show and I am currently hooked on it, even if I giggle like a thirteen year old boy at some of the language.