Polaris

by hiccstagram

Keith looks down at the stereotypical red solo cup in his hand, filled with some liquor he found in the fridge. Someone named Rolo had put in his hand almost an hour ago. At first, he hadn’t had any of the mystery liquid out of fear of the unknown, but the second he saw Lance he chugged half of it’s contents. It’s fruity, but sour.

The school cafeteria is large.

It's large, and it's loud, and it's crowded.

It's entirely too much.

Keith sits on the edge of his seat, bouncing his leg up and down continuously with no real rhythm or reason, cursing under his breath when his indistinguishable pattern breaks and he's forced to reposition his foot to start again. His left thumb picks at the broken nail of the pointer finger on the same hand as he stares straight forward. He stares not at the doors that separate the large, loud, and crowded cafeteria from the emptier hallway parallel to him, but through them. His thoughts, while jumbled and confused to the point of utter misunderstanding, scream the name of a boy he doesn't know the name of.

Blue eyes.

Brown hair.

Tan skin.

Tall.

Untouchable.

He sighs, and he considers leaving momentarily before a friend walks into his vision. A brother. A man he looks up to. The man's gaze flickers to his brother's face but his brother remains staring. He gives a tight-lipped smile and points over his shoulder, a silent question asking Keith if he'd like to get out of there. Keith shakes his head.

The school has just over 2,000 students, and just enough chairs to seat everyone. The boy at the forefront of his mind is two tables to the right and four tables ahead of him. To his left is a wall. He can't look any way but straight ahead, or he risks eye contact with him. The one who just can't seem to leave him alone.

His shaking leg loses its pattern and he's forced to reposition. Annoyed, he rolls his eyes as he sets his foot down again and continues. He wonders what the point is, why the constant movement calms his anxiety. Why he feels anxiety.

His right hand holds a spoon. In front of him is a sandwich. He doesn't know why he has a spoon. The boy looks in his direction, he sees it with his peripherals. Keith panics. His breath catches and his leg pauses but he doesn't dare look. To him, they're maintaining eye contact — having a moment. To the boy, Keith is just staring through the glass doors of the cafeteria. He swallows thickly and looks down to his hand. His finger is bleeding where his thumb had been picking at the nail. He sits up straighter, scoots so his butt is at the very back of the chair and his posture is perfect. He wipes the blood from his finger on his pants and he puts the spoon down away from him.

Keith's sandwich is half gone. He doesn't know when he ate it. He doesn't think he actually ate it. He blinks a few times, and chances a glance at the boy. He's not looking in his direction anymore, instead waving his own sandwich around while gesticulating a story to his younger friend who sits across from him. The bigger man who sits on his other side looks at Keith and they're making eye contact. Keith doesn't look away. The bigger man flicks his gaze elsewhere and then back to Keith, then shuffles as though he's uncomfortable. He probably is.

Keith looks back to his sandwich. Nothing has changed.

"This is bullshit." He mumbles to nobody. He lets his head fall back until he's staring at the ceiling. He never noticed the water stains before. He tilts and cracks his neck, exhaling at the pressure release. When he comes back into position, he flicks his gaze toward the boy and —

They're staring.

The three of them.

The boy, the big man, and the youngest.

He feels claustrophobic.

Keith's gaze flickers between the three of them rapidly. His expression doesn't change. Instead, he inhales strongly, holds it, and stands. The chair scrapes behind him. He looks to the boy, who is far enough away that Keith can look at his lips without it being noticeable that he's doing so, so he does. The boy's jaw is slack, his lips pink and slightly parted, and his expression unreadable. Keith keeps his gaze hard as he steps away from the table and straightens his Garrison uniform, but breaks eye contact as he walks toward the doors he'd been staring through. Everyone else looks away too, he assumes. He doesn't know for certain.

When he exits the cafeteria, he turns down the nearest hallway and leans against the nearest wall to ground himself. He thinks that maybe, if he smoked cigarettes, he would want one right now. But he doesn't, so he pulls out a pack of gum from his pocket and chews that instead. He doesn't know why looking at a boy makes his heart race and his blood boil and the hair on his arms stand on end. The only other time he feels such raw emotion, such adrenaline, is in the simulator. He decides the boy gives him anxiety. He decides the boy isn't worth his time. Not by a long shot.

A week later, he learns the boy's name is Lance McClain.

Keith etches the letters LM into his desk at home with his favourite knife, and then throws the knife at the wall across from him.

Keith is drunk.

He doesn't know how it happened.

Maybe that's because he's drunk.

He'd walked to the river, drank the beers he had in his backpack, and started the walk home. On his way back home, he found a 24 hour convenience store, and decided he wanted gatorade. He couldn't decide between red and blue, so he got purple. It was a mistake. He doesn't like purple, he likes red. He sits on the curb outside the store and drinks it anyway.

The birds start chirping and he hates them. He doesn't know what time it is, but the sun is starting to rise behind him, lighting the environment in front of him. The birds remind him of the new day starting, of the bags that are inevitably under his eyes, and the stern look his father will give him when he walks into the house, knowing he was supposed to be in bed all night. His father has never tried to stop him. Why hasn't he tried to stop him?

He fumbles the cap off the gatorade bottle again and tosses it, decidedly hating the noise it makes when it hits the pavement. He goes to check the time on his phone and it won't turn on. It takes Keith hitting the home button three times and the power button twice to realize his phone is dead. He tosses that a few inches in front of him as well, and doesn't hate the noise of it hitting the pavement quite as much. He stretches his legs and takes a swig from the bottle.

He hates purple gatorade.

When he stops filling his mouth with the drink and lets his head fall back into position, he almost chokes as he sees the boy from the cafeteria across the street.

Lance.

Why is he here?

Lance has his hands stuffed in his jacket and his hood up, walking at a considerable pace across the street and toward Keith.

Keith feels anxiety again. His heart is racing and his palms are sweaty despite the chill of the autumn morning. He clutches the gatorade and doesn't think to look away as Lance approaches him, is parallel to him, and then passes him, walking into the convenience store. Keith sighs, deciding he's safe for now and should really get up and leave, but he's not sure how to do that. His feet feel numb and his stomach is in his ass.

Get up and go , he chants over and over in his head for who-knows-how-long, until it's too late. Until Lance is leaving the convenience store, the bell above his head ringing and a carton of what looks like eggs in his hands. As the door slams shut, Keith stares ahead, refusing the look at Lance again. He expects Lance's back to be facing him as he walks away any second now, his figure fading in the distance, but it doesn't come. Instead, there's a strange and close warmth suddenly sitting beside Keith. He continues staring forward.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Lance's head go from facing Keith to facing where Keith is looking, and back again.

"Hey man," a voice says, and Keith stops himself from flinching. When he turns his head to his right to look at the boy beside him, he sees a hand extended toward him and a smile on the boys face. He wants to shake Keith's hand. "My name's Lance."

Keith doesn't really know what to do, so he says, "Okay." And shakes Lance's hand. It's warm, and soft, and Keith has to stop himself from saying something about that.

"You got a name?" Lance asks, and Keith darts his gaze between Lance's eyes.

"Kogane. Keith." He replies.

"Keith's your first name, right? Like a, 'Bond, James Bond' sort of deal?"

"Yes."

Lance closes his eyes and nods once, and in the second his eyes were closed, Keith wishes they weren't. His brain is fuzzy and he's regretting his words but his legs feel like jelly so he isn't going anywhere any time soon.

"Is there a reason you're out here drinking gatorade at," Lance pauses to look at his wrist watch, "quarter to six in the morning?"

Keith considers his options momentarily. The alcohol wants him to overshare, to say he couldn't sleep because he was thinking about a boy and every time he rolled onto his side he imagined another body there, heating his cold bed and breathing softly. He doesn't say this. Instead, he opts for snark.

"Is there a reason you're getting eggs at quarter to six in the morning?" Keith retaliates, and Lance smirks. There's a spark in his eyes. Keith hopes he never does that again.

"People to feed, my man." Lance says, raising the carton in his hands like someone would raise their whiskey at a statement they agree with. Keith nods, and then finally looks away from Lance's eyes to the gatorade in his hands.

He doesn't even like purple gatorade.

"I've seen you around school." Lance says blankly. Keith blinks but doesn't look at him. "That's why I sat here. I don't normally just…sit beside people." He chuckles. Keith hopes he never does that again, either. "You're a fighter pilot, aren't you?"

Keith almost lies. He doesn't know why. Maybe it's because he's drunk.

"Yes," He says instead. Lance nods again. "What are you?"

Lance inhales deeply and sits up straighter before letting the air out and his posture go again. "Cargo; Next in line for fighter, though. If someone would just, drop out already , that'd be great."

Keith considers dropping out, then and there, so Lance would be happy.

"Who knows though," Lance keeps talking. Keith realizes that Lance talks a lot, but he doesn't mind. "Maybe in a different timeline I'd be fighter-class."

Keith looks over at Lance again. He looks at Lance's arm, resting against his bent knee, and then follows that trail to his other leg, which is extended like his own are.

Keith notes that Lance has really long legs.

He wonders just how tall Lance really is.

Instead, he puts the purple gatorade between the two of them and says, "Want this?"

Lance looks between Keith and the gatorade a couple times, Keith isn't sure exactly how many times he does so, and then takes it. Lance swigs it, tilting his head back as he does so. Keith watches his Adam's apple and the traces the curve of his jaw with his eyes. He's convinced he's drunker than he originally thought, because he suddenly has the urge to kiss Lance's jaw. He doesn't, though.

Lance wipes his mouth on his sleeve when he's done. Keith shouldn't find that endearing, but he does anyway.

"Wait, you got your cootie shot this year, right?" Lance asks, face as serious as ever.

Keith panics momentarily and says, "No, I-" before Lance's face breaks into a smile and he realizes his mistake. "Don't do that," he says. Lance chuckles.

"That was too easy," he says between breaths. Keith wants to hear that noise forever. "But seriously, how much have you had to drink?"

"Not a lot," Keith replies, and thinks of the six — maybe seven — beer cans he chucked into the river. Maybe it was more than he thought.

"I can smell it on you. You have a way home?" Lance asks. Keith nods.

"M'brother's picking me up."

"Okay," Lance says unsurely. Then, in a stroke of what Keith decides is brilliance, Lance reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a ballpoint pen. He clicks it once, grabs Keith's arm, and starts writing.

About halfway through, Keith realizes it's a phone number. Underneath, he signs '-L.M'.

"Text me when you get home," Lance says, clicking the pen again. "Just so I know you're not dead."

"Okay." Keith agrees.

"Alrighty," Lance pulls his feet under him and stands in one movement. When he's standing over Keith, he looks eight feet tall. Keith doesn't mind this. "Like I said before, people to feed." He continues, and then raises the eggs again. "See you at school tomorrow."

Before leaving, Lance places the gatorade at Keith's feet and smiles so his eyes crinkle.

"See ya," Keith says quietly, and does a two-finger salute.

Once Lance is gone, Keith leans forward and picks up the gatorade again. He brings it to his lips, licking them quickly before drinking.

This is sort of like kissing , he thinks, but, indirectly.

He finishes off the bottle.

Keith decides maybe purple gatorade isn't so bad.

Lance is here.

Keith wishes he weren't. He'd promised Shiro he would come to this party under the condition that he only had to stay for two hours, and the way he keeps catching Lance's eye from across the room is making it more and more difficult not to send a text asking for more time.

But Shiro's a petty man, and Keith knows he'll throw it back in his face if he asks his brother to pick him up later.

Keith looks down at the stereotypical red solo cup in his hand, filled with some liquor he found in the fridge. Someone named Rolo had put in his hand almost an hour ago. At first, he hadn't had any of the mystery liquid out of fear of the unknown, but the second he saw Lance he chugged half of it's contents. It's fruity, but sour.

Keith looks up from the cup as he brings it to his lips again. His eyes, almost as if they're trained to do so, find Lance. Lance is speaking to the short girl — Katie, he thinks is her name, but he isn't positive — and the larger man he knows to be Hunk. He and Hunk have physics together. They've never spoken. Lance laughs at something Hunk says, and Keith finds himself smiling into his cup. He hates it and downs the rest of the cup's contents, and then grimaces at the taste.

Keith decides he needs a refill.

The walk back to the fridge is uncomfortable. He passes a couple actively making out against a counter, gross and wet noises invading his brain like an intrusive thought. He puts his cup on the counter. Maybe he wouldn't mind other couples and PDA as much if he had his own boyfriend to be gross with. He probably wouldn't be as gross, though. With a sigh, he finds Lance in the crowd.

Lance is, once again, laughing. Keith's stomach flips and for a moment he thinks it's the alcohol doing this to him, but then he feels his own smile and realizes that while the alcohol may not be helping, it's not the cause, either. This is all Lance, and his stupidly loud laugh, stupid hair, and stupid blue eyes that seem to stare into his soul. Keith hates it. He hates Lance.

Except, he doesn't.

He's staring again. He knows he is. He's still smiling slightly and he's watching Lance so intently that his surroundings go dark, so that the only thing that matters in the room, the house, and the world, is Lance. Keith wonders how he got to this point — mere weeks ago he didn't care for this boy or his flirty winks and his terrible jokes that forced Keith to hide his face in his textbooks to mask his own laughter; but now he's here, intoxicated on some level, and he just can't stop staring. He doesn't want to stop staring.

He wants to take a fifth of the vodka he knows is sitting in the fridge and leave the house for good.

The party is Matt Holt's. Matt Holt is friends with Shiro. Shiro isn't here because he has a term paper due Monday that he, predictably, has not started, so his only drinks for the evening are red bull and the occasional juice box. But because Matt knows Shiro, and Shiro knows Keith, Matt considers he and Keith to be best buds, and invited him to all the contents in the fridge. When Keith first opened the fridge, he almost said wow out loud at how much alcohol was in it. His own fridge has an opened king can of beer he started two weeks ago and never finished. He's not sure why he hasn't dumped it out yet.

Matt's fridge is as impressive as it is intimidating. Keith grabs a "fun-sized" bottle of tequila and a coke to wash it down with, and then thinks that the combination isn't ideal but he's certainly had worse concoctions. He sort of doesn't want to get more drunk like this, knowing that hard liquor always messes with his emotions, making him vulnerable emotionally and physically. He sticks the tequila in his surprisingly deep jacket pocket and cracks open the coke can, but doesn't sip from it.

Keith mentally declares the glass sliding doors that lead to the back porch his main target and then snakes through partygoers once again trying to reach it. He pointedly does not look for Lance a third time, because he can't trust that he wouldn't find himself at Lance's feet instead of the exit of the house. The bass from the speakers boom loudly as he mutters, "excuse me, pardon me, sorry," to everyone he squeezes past, eyes going from his feet (making sure he doesn't step on anyone or trip over the dark purple bra he finds on the ground) to the back door (making sure he's on track to his destination).

One girl pushes him slightly, another scoffs as he asks if he can pass between her and her boyfriend, and a big jock-looking guy glares at him for looking at him too long, but he makes it to the door and as he slides it open and stumbles out, he takes a deep breath as if he'd been holding his own the entire time. Maybe he had been.

He slides the door shut behind him much slower than he slid it open, staring straight ahead at the porch steps that lead to the grass, the weathered wooden fence around the perimeter of the property, and through the large tree with a tire swing attached to it. The door shuts and he stuffs his free hand in his pocket and looks up at the stars, clearly visible on a cloudless night, undisturbed by the club music or the alcohol or the boy with the bright smile. Keith wishes he could be like that, be like stars, but instead he's sat at a party he originally didn't want to come to with terrible remixes of the summer's top 10 hits playing on repeat, and just enough alcohol in his system that he can either decide now to get shitfaced or call it a night and be content either way.

As he walks mindlessly toward the porch steps and sits on the first one, he stares at Ursa Minor and decides to crack open the tequila.

He takes a shot, which is more a guessing-swig than anything else, and immediately drinks from his can of Coke to wash it down, but cringes either way. He's a beer guy, but he's looking to get drunk, not shoot shit by the lake.

He leans his elbow on his knee and can't keep his eyes off the stars as he feels the warmth through his body. He wonders, momentarily, what other life forms near the stars are doing right now, if they hold celebrations like these and drink poisons just for the fun of it.

Keith takes another swig-shot from the tequila and lets it burn on his tongue a little longer this time. He knows he should be inside, laughing it up and mingling with people, maybe even sharing the tequila he's acquired, but he wants to be selfish and spend some time alone with the stars.

He takes another sip of the coke and washes the burn out of his mouth.

The back door slides open again and Keith's first thought is that he wishes it wouldn't. He can hear a song sung in Spanish and he doesn't understand the lyrics but he'd heard it more times than he can count this summer and he'd rather die than hear it again, but the stars have another plan for him. The door closes much faster than how he closed it and as he hears footsteps on the porch come closer to him he seriously wishes whoever it is isn't going to ask him why he isn't inside. He supposes he could lie, say he came out for a cigarette or a joint, but he brought neither and smells like neither and anyone who knows him knows Shiro would never stand for either of those things, so he just panics instead.

His leg starts bouncing again, he's picking at the same spot on his forefinger that he'd picked at a couple weeks ago in the cafeteria and he's trying to remember how to breathe levelly. He takes a sip from the coke can but can taste the tequila residue on it and it shocks him, but he doesn't flinch.

The footsteps get closer and though the bass of the music was making his heart feel weird before, it's moving far too quickly now. He's not even sure why he's panicking. This person, whoever they are, can't hurt him. His knife is in his boot and he's got years of self defence classes under his belt, and he may be intoxicated but he's not fucked up yet and could at least hurt them enough to run away or call for help.

Feet stop beside him and a body crouches as it sits beside him, cross legged.

Keith looks at his face, his bright eyes and the smile that warms him just as much as the tequila does, and catches his breath.

"Hey," Lance says so casually, as if he weren't gorgeous in the lighting of the moon and various string lights that Matt's sister undoubtedly hung for the party, as if he weren't holding Keith's breath in his hands. "Matt said you had the tequila. Or, uh, one of the bottles, anyway. There was another one somewhere, but I think it's gone now." He waves his hand as he talks and keeps eye contact with Keith, who is still holding the small and plastic bottle of tequila in his hand. He swallows and says the first thing that comes out of his mouth.

"You got a chaser?"

"Nah," Lance replies with mock-confidence and even though Keith can see right through it, he admires his attempt. "Worst comes to worst, I'll just steal some of your coke."

Keith looks to the coke can in his hand.

"If-if that's cool, I mean." Lance finishes quickly. He looks up to the stars, clearly awaiting Keith's reply, and while the stars had shone bright before, nothing in that moment shone like Lance did.

"Yeah," he pushes out, "it's not like we haven't shared a drink before."

Lance lets his legs uncurl in front of them and Keith is suddenly reminded of how long they are, and how truly tall Lance is. He's not very short himself, 5'11 last time he measured, but he assumes Lance is an inch or two over 6 feet.

Lance reaches his hand out for the tequila bottle with an eyebrow cocked, a silent question Keith's glad wasn't really asked because he's not sure how well his words would work right now. He hands him the bottle without making eye contact and for a split second wishes their hands would brush, not unlike in the cheesy teen movies, but they don't and he doesn't let the disappointment show on his face.

Lance looks away as he takes a swig and stares up the sky and the stars, and not for the first time tonight, Keith wishes he could be among them. He wishes he and Lance could go and live on a new planet, one undiscovered by mankind thus far. Just the two of them to do whatever they want, no societal expectations or crappy $7 tequila to mess with them.

Keith notices that Lance cringes outwardly at the taste but he shakes his head and blows out roughly and he's done. He never asked for the chaser. Again, Keith finds himself disappointed when he rationally believes he shouldn't be.

His fingers and toes feel the drunk-warmth they get before Keith's beyond drunk and he decides he shouldn't drink anymore. Not here, not in front of Lance, and definitely not when the only thing he can think about is the man beside him. That's far too dangerous, and Keith may be impulsive, but he's not an idiot.

"So," Lance says, then clicks his tongue and shifts his body slightly so he can face Keith properly. Keith raises his eyebrows before Lance continues. "How come you never texted me?"

The question hits Keith and he's confused, staring at Lance's mouth for a moment and then back to his eyes. He feels his eyebrows scrunch forward and Lance rolls his eyes in return but there's no malice.

"Remember? That night at the corner store?" He waves his hand again while he talks and Keith follows it with his eyes. "I wrote my number on your arm and told you to tell me when you got home okay?"

"Oh," Keith says softly. He remembers that, remembers taking a photo of his arm, writing the number on some paper when he got home, etching the number in the wooden desk in his room with his knife, everything but adding the cell phone number into his own cell phone.

"Right."

"Right," Lance teases. Keith gives him a light smile.

"Sorry, I uh. I guess I forgot."

Lance nods. "It's cool, I saw you at school so it's not like I was convinced you'd died or anything."

Keith doesn't know how to respond, so he nods in return and stays quiet. He lets his head tilt back and sighs deeply as he looks at the stars. Lance leans in closer, close enough that their shoulders are touching and Keith can smell whatever else Lance had been drinking on him. Lance lifts a hand and points to a star cluster.

"That one's my favourite," he says quietly. Keith turns his head to look at him, their faces close but neither of them moving apart. Keith knows how peripheral vision works, knows that Lance can see him staring even if he's still looking at the stars. "See that one, the bright one?"

Keith looks up slowly to the bigger star, still not moving out of Lance's proximity.

"My sister once convinced me that was the North Star. You know, the one the Kings followed when baby Jesus was born."

Keith turns and watches Lance's face while he talks.

"Which, actually, the North Star isn't just a Christian thing. Lots of pagan religions had stories of one bright star that led the way."

Keith loves the way his mouth moves when he speaks.

"And technically, there is a North Star that astronomers look at-"

"Polaris." Keith cuts him off. Lance turns his attention back to Keith and his gaze bounces between Keith's eyes for a second while Keith stares at the two freckles on his nose.

"Yeah, that one." Lance whispers. "Obviously, that's not Polaris, but…"

Keith nods again. Lance lets out a breath and it bounces off Keith's lips. There's nothing behind Keith, he could back up and run as easily as he could lean in and kiss Lance, but he does neither. He sits there, admittedly realizing he looks a little angry when he isn't, and stares into Lance's eyes, just now noticing the hint of brown on the edges of his irises. He takes a deep breath in again, realizing how calm and steady his heart is, and how safe he feels around Lance. He shouldn't, he hasn't known him for long, yet he can't find himself to feel threatened in any way.

His mouth moves faster than his brain, which is expected at this point, and he asks Lance how much alcohol he's had. He struggles to maintain eye contact as Lance replies, "On what scale?"

He sees it then, up close and personally, the spark in Lance's eye. He recognizes it in Shiro when he asks if Keith wants to 'see something really cool'; he recognizes it in himself when he successfully pulls his bike up for a wheelie or jumps a ramp that his father would kill him over; he recognizes it from the first time Lance and he sat together outside, when Lance asked if he's had his cootie shot.

Keith smirks and thinks of the most ridiculous scale he can think of.

"Matt's little sister, Katie, to Matt, how drunk are you?"

Lance throws his head back and laughs, and before Keith's smile can falter or he can be disappointed in the increase in personal space, he says, "I understand where you're coming from, but Pidge has been drinking since noon, buddy."

"But isn't she, like-"

"15? Yeah," Lance wipes a tear from his eye. "Matt doesn't know she's been drinking, but she definitely has been. She went shot-for-shot earlier with Hunk just to prove she could."

"Jesus…" Keith whispers. Lance nods in agreement and slouches, getting closer to Keith again.

"I can't stop her. Trust me, I've tried. Kid's gonna need a new liver by the time she's our age, but," He clicks his tongue. "Live fast die young, I guess."

Again, Keith just nods wordlessly.

"So, yeah," Lance whispers. "Less than Matt, for sure. Like, I'm coherent, and if I had to I could go home right now and fake sobriety, but I'm also definitely drunk."

"You just used 'sobriety' in a sentence, I don't think you're too fucked yet." Keith says, and he sees the spark in Lance's eyes again.

"No more fucked than you are," he says. He raises his eyebrows in a way that conveys to Keith that he knows he's right, and Keith has to admit to himself that Lance is crafty.

Lance licks his lips and in a moment of weakness Keith glances at them, watches his tongue peak out as he sucks his bottom lip in. Keith brings his gaze back up to look into Lance's eyes again and the spark is still there. It's calling to Keith, almost asking Keith to just do something. To become the flame the spark ignites.

"You know," Lance is talking again. Keith thinks again that he does this a lot, and he doesn't mind. He likes hearing what Lance has to say. But right now, as Lance starts up another sentence so close to Keith's own mouth, he wants nothing more than to surge forward, to shut him up with his own lips, and to taste the words he'd like to say. Lance, instead, lets his own eyes drop slightly to what Keith thinks is his mouth. "I don't even like tequila."

Keith has nothing to say about that.

"Which, I know, defeats a stereotype or whatever, but," he swallows and looks into Keith's eyes again, "I just needed an excuse to talk to you."

Like a puzzle coming together but the last piece is inevitably missing, Keith figures it all out.

In the cafeteria, Lance and his friends had been looking at him.

At the corner store, Lance came and sat with him.

Here, on this porch with terrible tasting alcohol on their lips, Lance sits beside him and tells him he was looking for an excuse to talk to him.

Keith thinks of the gatorade, how it tasted terrible until Lance drank from it.

Keith thinks of the tequila, how it tastes terrible but Lance still drank it to talk to him.

Again, his mouth moves faster than the filter he places on it and he says, "I didn't like purple gatorade until it tasted like you."

He's not sure who moves first, or whether it was team effort, but the moment Lance's lips touch his own, he's euphoric. He's among the stars, looking down at himself at a party, kissing a boy who is, in his eyes, untouchable.

He is Ursa Minor, but Lance is Polaris. The biggest and brightest star.

He's drawn to him in all aspects. In the orbit he's stuck in around Lance, in the hand that grips onto Lance's bicep and pulls him in closer, in the way he feels Lance's smile grow as Keith kisses back, and in the way he feels Lance inhale and exhale against his skin as he deepens the kiss.

Keith's hand trails from Lance's bicep to his shoulder and stalls there momentarily until Lance moves his jaw, using the gaps between their lips to take a deeper breath — which they both needed — as the kiss itself begs for more attention. His hand slides to the base of Lance's neck, palm of his hand getting to know the collarbone beneath it well, and then raises slightly so Keith's thumb can trace the very edge of his jaw.

Keith feels Lance's jaw move in his hand, leading his own in a way that has his entire torso feeling the warmth his fingers and toes had felt earlier. His mind is clouded, his only thoughts being of Lance. Lance's soft skin under his fingertips, Lance's lips on his own, Lance's hair on his forehead, Lance's hand on his knee.

The recent shots of tequila start to hit him harder and he becomes hyper aware of his tongue, and how Lance's own is occupying its space in a way that is neither uncomfortable nor unwanted. He lets Lance take charge of the space, allows him any space in any capacity that Lance so chooses. If he wanted, he could live in Keith's mind and heart and soul forever, so long as they don't leave this porch step without one another.

He vaguely understands that the porch door slides open again, but he doesn't stop kissing Lance and Lance doesn't stop kissing him, so he chooses to ignore it. An unknown person laughs and walks toward them, and where Keith was anxious the last time footsteps came toward him, he is calm now.

Because Lance is here, and Lance is a safety net.

The brightest star, the leader.

Lance holds him together.

"Okay, guys, guys , break it up!" Comes Matt's voice through the laughter, and it isn't until Lance pulls back and asks what the hell Matt wants that Keith registers Matt was talking to them. He can't keep his eyes off Lance though, not when he's gorgeous under the moonlight and holding him together and the reason he likes purple gatorade.

"Shiro's here," Matt says, and although it's not the worst thing Keith's ever heard, it's sure as hell up there.

"Any chance he'd leave and come back?" Keith bargains. Matt seems to genuinely take pity and consider that option for a moment.

"Doubt it, dude just wrote a 12 page report on, uh. Well, I don't actually know what it was on, but he looked tired."

Keith nodded.

"I'd let you stay here tonight but we're outta beds and blow up mattresses."

"It's alright," Keith says. He straightens his back and feels it crack slightly. Matt nods and mumbles something about, Use the back gate, he's waiting out front.

Keith looks to Lance again, who happened to already be looking at him, and smiles tightly.

"Sorry, I gotta-"

"Don't worry about it," Lance replies, and the look in his eye is so sincere. The spark is gone, but not forever. Keith knows he'll see it again. He'll see it and know exactly what it means, know how to taunt it and see it grow into a flame all on it's own. "Just promise me you'll text when you get home. So I know you're safe."

" Just so you know I'm safe?" Keith teases. Lance smirks and rolls his eyes.

"Start with that and we'll go from there."

The car door slams shut and Keith can't stop smiling. It's stupid and he tries so hard not to, even going as far as deciding on his walk to the car that if Shiro asked, he'd blame the alcohol.

But when Shiro says, "What's got you all smiley?" He bites his bottom lip and thinks of the way Lance pinned him against the brick house on the backyard side of the gate he was supposed to leave from, hand in his hair and lips on his again as he gave his final kiss for the night. He thinks of how Lance, who so clearly already had him at his fingertips, still shot Keith a wink and said, "Call me!"

Keith doesn't know how to explain to Shiro in 10 words or less how Lance makes him smile so much it hurts because he's just not used to it, or how he feels drunk around him without a drop of alcohol in his system, or how the mere thought of seeing Lance again that following Monday put butterflies in his stomach and made his fingers shake — this time, not out of anxiety, but from pure excitement.

Keith clicks his seatbelt as he spits out, "Saw a friend from school," and leaves it at that. He doesn't have to look at Shiro to know that he's giving him an incredulous look, but he doesn't press it, so Keith decides he'll deal with that another time.

When he gets home, the first thing he does is sit at his wooden desk, with the letters LM etched in and a phone number etched underneath that, and he smiles.

From: Keith

To: LM

-Got home safely.

From: LM

To: Keith

-Miss you already

From: Keith

To: LM

-You'll see me Monday

From: LM

To: Keith

-Hell yeah I will ;)