Keith sighed, closing the locker door after grabbing his bag. The game against the Altea Lions had been long, hard, and frustrating. In the end, the Marmora Crows had managed to pull out an incredibly narrow lead. 

He was amazed they had won. Altea had put up a good fight. But in the end, Marmora beat them out, and that was what mattered. 

Every muscle and joint ached, and dragging himself out of the hot shower had been a test of his will, but Keith was already the last one in his team's locker room as it was. So he forced himself to head out, ducking into the back hallway and bracing himself mentally for the chilled air on his still-wet hair. 

"K-keith?" a voice to the side of him asked, stopping him in his tracks. 

Keith turned to look at the source in time to see none other than Takashi Shirogane stepping out of the opposing team's locker room, his Altea University sweatshirt somehow managing to be tight on him in all the right places. 

"N-no way… Shiro?" Keith gawked, eyeing the man up. 

Shiro looked… different than the last time Keith had seen him. His hair was all white, where before it had only been white at the front in a deliberate forelock, and he looked older, more worn-in by life than he should have gotten in the two years since they had last seen each other. 

But fuck, he was still the most gorgeous man Keith had ever seen. 

Two years, it had been two years since Keith had blown up at Shiro and cut off contact with the man he considered his best friend and closest confidant. It wasn't even a good reason, the logic behind the fight, but Keith had been… He had been jealous, jealous of the stories he kept hearing about Shiro's new college boyfriend. It should have been him. 

Ever since Keith's freshman year of high school when then-sophomore Shiro had been asked to show him around, Keith had been drawn in by Shiro's inexplicable gravity. They became fast friends, bonding over their mutual love of space and old science fiction movies. Keith excelled quickly, motivated to try to keep his grades up by Shiro's guidance, aiming for the same schools, the same programs. 

When Shiro got into Altea University, Keith redoubled his efforts. He was a year behind his best friend, but Keith was determined that this wouldn't separate them, that soon enough he would be following along in Shiro's footsteps. 

Except… 

Altea University turned him down.

Keith's world collapsed the night he came home to that letter. He wasn't going to be going to school with Shiro. He wasn't going to be… 

It was only then that he had realized he'd developed feelings for his best friend, feelings that were… very much not of the platonic variety. How could he tell him now? He couldn't. He just… couldn't. 

So Keith had suppressed the shit out of his feelings, constantly feeling hypervigilant that his gestures and closeness would be seen through and that somehow Shiro would know that Keith was in love with him, that he would push him away for it. 

Then Shiro had gotten a boyfriend and things had only gotten worse from there. Keith's jealousy had taken root, their busy schedules had been a convenient excuse to reduce their contact, and… then Keith finally stopped answering Shiro's messages. 

But here he stood, two feet from Keith's face and… and oh god Keith's heart was doing somersaults just seeing him. 

Fuck. 

Shit, Shiro was talking. What was— 

Keith forced his ears to start working again.

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Too much. It was all too much noise and sound and cheering… He just needed to get some air… Or… whatever it was you excused yourself to go find when you were at a beach party in the middle of the afternoon.

Shiro sighed, giving another glance at the party before turning and heading for the rocky outcropping covered by small, tidal pools. He let himself get lost in the sound of the rolling waves and the small patches of frothy seafoam sighing their last breaths as they faded back into the water.

“Everything alright, Shiro…?” a soft voice came from behind him.

Shiro startled, losing his footing and narrowly avoiding landing on his butt as his foot went straight into the nearest pool. A hand gripped his bicep suddenly and firmly, holding him upright.

“O-oh… Allura… I… didn’t see you…” Shiro offered with a nervous chuckle, standing properly and trying to shake some of the water out of his shoe. “I… yeah, just… needed to catch some air, y’know?”

“Catch the… that seems… kind of a futile thing to do. We’re surrounded by air…” Allura remarked, frowning.

Shiro laughed, shaking his head as the warmth of laughter filled him. Oh… that felt nice. “No… no, it’s just an expression… It just means… I had a lot of my mind and I needed to get away a little bit… To think…”

Allura nodded in understanding, giving a small hum. Shiro was constantly thankful for the way his friends usually managed to know when to speak and when he just needed silent companionship.

“Is… there anything I can do to help?” Allura asked gently.

“Mn… I think I just needed to be away from… crowds for a while? All the bustle… It’s nice out here… calm.”

“I see…” Allura nodded. “Did you want me to leave?”

“...No. No, you can stay,” Shiro said with a smile.

Allura nodded, settling beside Shiro as they wandered between the tide pools.

A while later, Allura spoke up. “Oh! Look at that one!” she said, gesturing to something in the tide pool before scooping up a shiny, curved shell. “Look how shiny it is…”

Shiro blinked at the shell before chuckling with a small smile. “Lance mentioned that you like shiny things…”

“O-oh… he did?” Allura asked, blinking.

“Yeah… He really wants to impress you,” Shiro offered with a smile. “He likes you a lot, you know…”

Allura smiled, picking up another shimmering seashell. “He’s… very sweet… We could get a collection of shells for the castle, you know… decoration?”

“Lance kind of grew on you, huh?” Shiro asked with a knowing smile, fishing out a shell that was a glistening pure black and staring at it with fascination.

“I… I suppose he did…” Allura agreed. “That one looks like Keith… Black and with rather… rough edges…”

Shiro blinked at the shell before barking out a laugh. “I guess it does… He’s not all rough edges, you know… Once you get to know him, he’s… he’s really a sweet person who…”

“Who loves deeper than it seems on the surface?” Allura finished for him, a knowing twinkle in her eye.

“...Yeah,” Shiro nodded with a sheepish smile. “He definitely does do that.”

“...Perhaps we should try to find shells for everyone, ones that remind us of them?” Allura suggested. “Then we can bring them back for everyone?”

Shiro hopped across to another outcropping and paused before nodding, offering a hand out to Allura. “That sounds… that sounds like a really good idea.”

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Being hopelessly in love with your best friend was enough of a problem. Being hopelessly in love with both of your best friends was just fucking tragic.

Unfortunately for Keith, that was exactly the situation he’d managed to find himself in. To make matters worse, said best friends were also currently his roommates and that was just territory he was never going to cross into.

Besides that… It wasn’t like either of them felt the same way about him, after all. Shiro was the funny, handsome, guiding hand. Lance was the outgoing, goofball, daredevil. Keith was… Keith, the weird cryptid who’d only started coming out of his introverted shell around these two very specific people largely because they’d been cohabitating six hundred square feet for two years. You kind of learned to be less awkward around someone sometime at or around the twentieth time having to return a pair of their underwear that wound up in your wash somehow.

And Keith had managed to fall hopelessly head over heels for not one but both of them. As the holiday season approached, Lance went into overdrive with his holiday preparations. Christmas was a big deal for him and Lance loved to host a good party or four. It meant the tree had to be up on time every time for the tree decorating party. Which also meant Shiro and Keith going to the storage unit for their apartment to go drag the tree out and get it upstairs into their apartment despite the snow falling down outside.

“...Is it just me or does this tree feel like it gets heavier every year?” Keith groaned, tugging the plastic-wrapped green thing out from behind an assortment of boxes of crap they’d collected throughout the year. They would go through their storage unit the week after Christmas, like they always did, and organize and sort and get rid of crap they didn’t really need, but for the moment it was just a mess.

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‘Come and see what I do.’

That was the entirely innocuous request Keith had presented his boyfriend with when Shiro finally reached the end of his first semester as a professor at Altea University. They’d been dating for nearly two months and Keith had extended the invitation more than once already but Shiro’s workload trying to survive grading coursework for the first time had gotten the best of him every time.

Keith hadn’t faulted him for it, of course. Shiro was busy and Keith himself was still up to his eyeballs trying to finish studying for his GED so that he could take it in time to submit the application for Altea.

But now the semester had come to a close and the students were on break which meant that—aside from meetings about his upcoming semester’s classes—Shiro was free until the new semester started. Keith had every intention of making the absolute most of that.

So he had decided it was finally time for Shiro to meet Cherry Bomb, Keith’s drag personality for the club he worked at. He’d broached the topic as he draped on Shiro’s bed, head hanging upside down over the edge as he watched his boyfriend grading final exams.

It had taken a bit of discussion and finally climbing into Shiro’s lap to convince the man that he deserved a break and a night off. In the end, it had been decided that Shiro would finish grading his finals and then come see Keith that Saturday night.

Saturday seemed to come ringing in at a doubletime pace. Sitting backstage and doing his makeup, Keith couldn’t tell if he was nervous, excited, or just nauseous.

There was no way Keith had a chance. Not with Takashi Shirogane. The dude was the poster child of best behaviour. He was the literal top of his class overachiever honor student purity ring-wearing Catholic boy. He went to youth group after church every Sunday for years and now he taught the thing. From what Keith had heard, the guy barely ever even kissed his cheerleader girlfriends. He probably couldn't even masturbate without Catholic Guilt.

Objectively speaking, Keith should have had exactly zero shot at Takashi Shirogane. So why was he marching across the guy's lawn and debating climbing his trellis at well past eleven at night?

Well, because sometimes you just have to go for it.

That, and the fact that there was a very good chance on Monday he was going to be expelled. There was a 'disciplinary meeting' scheduled for him and with how many times he'd gotten in trouble already, it would be a fucking miracle if they gave him another shot. But so what? So he would be sent to some kind of correctional school to try to turn him into a 'functional and successful' member of society.

So maybe, just maybe, he wanted to prove just how fucked up 'functional and successful' society was. And if he could screw his crush in the process, well that would just prove he didn't need to prove himself to them because they were just as fucked up as he was.

He had a countdown clock on his head but that didn't mean he was going down without a fight.

Thirty hours to live, how shall I spend them?

The lyric blasting through Keith's earbuds fueled his motivation and his dedication to his cause.

It wasn't like he didn't know where Shiro lived. More than a few parties had happened at the Shirogane house. Sure, he'd never been the one to technically *throw* the parties as far as Keith had heard but his parents were frequently out of town and his girlfriends 'decided' that Shiro was going to host.

Keith wondered if they only did it hoping to get him drunk and take his v-card. Idiots. They didn't know a damn thing about Shiro if that's what they thought.

Keith's plan was far more simple than that. Takashi Shirogane was a good guy, a kind man, and Keith had suffered from holding a torch for the guy for well over a year since he was a fourteen year old freshman and Shiro had stepped in on his behalf to tell some jerks to back off of harassing him.

Now he was two years older, fresh on the other side of his sixteenth birthday, and determined to seduce the most unattainable guy in school, and a senior, at that, not to mention… straight. But hey, an ass was an ass, right? It wasn't like he needed to date the guy—nice as that would be, Keith wasn't totally delusional to think that Shiro would be into him like that. He was straight. And that was fine. But at least Keith could be his first.

If tonight went the way he hoped it would.

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 Shiro was gone, just a dream, just a sweet memory that Lance could feel warm his heart sometimes when the sun kissed his lips like Shiro had, just that once.

 Lance just needed to accept that and move on. Well, now that he was home, at least, he could start going out to bars and clubs again and trying to meet people. He wondered how things had changed in the time he'd been away from home. Had things become more open for people like him? Had things become      less     open? Was his favourite queer bar still in business or had they succumbed to the pressures of the wartime economy?

 Lost in his head, Lance lost track of where he was going, stumbling as he stepped up onto the ramp down from the ship. Catching himself, Lance closed his eyes to try to ground himself, taking in the feeling of being      home     for the first time in a long time. He breathed in the clean, fresh air, damp with the freshly fallen rain that still lingered in scattered puddles on the ground.

 It smelled like home.

"Lance, if you're gonna be a smartass and text me, at least don't do it right before you ring the—" Pidge gulped as she opened the door, blinking up at Allura herself standing in her doorway. "...doorbell," she finished lamely.

Well fuck.

"U-uh… Allura… H-hey. What… what brings you here…?" Pidge asked, stumbling back in her scramble to let her in.

"Mm… I think we both know why I'm here, Pidge…" Allura said simply, tone disapproving and stern. "Why don't we both have a seat." It wasn't a question.

Nodding mutely, Pidge headed for the kitchen table, the closest sitting space that wasn't the intimacy of the absurdly plush couch Hunk had gotten from his mother.

They sat. Allura sat. And the silence stretched between them.

"So. I hear you've been inquiring about certain… pictures of me?" Allura's question broke the silence of the room after what felt like hours and Pidge looked away with a flinch. She was just… getting right to it then.

This was it this was the part where Allura was going to tell Pidge off and dismiss any interest and it wasn't like Pidge didn't know Allura wasn't interested, but knowing it and hearing it were two very different things and that was going to hurt. Pidge couldn't help but fidget under Allura's watchful gaze, not finding the words to respond. How did you even go about saying 'hey yeah I asked my friend to get me pictures of you in a bikini so I could perv on them like a total creep'? There was no good way to say that.

"Pidge. Look at me," Allura said, tone serious.

Pidge couldn't help but comply, forcing a halting laugh. "I think looking at you is what got me into this mess…"

"Those photos… I'm guessing your reasons for asking for them weren't… especially platonic?" Oh, that was a… tactful way to put it, even if the answer was obvious. How could her interest be platonic? It wasn't like you asked for the ability to to ogle someone platonically.

"...Not especially. ...Not remotely. ...No." There was no point in beating around the bush. It wasn't like Allura didn't already know now.

"...Oh." That was it? Just 'oh'? What did that mean? Was she trying to figure out how to best chew her out?

"...Yeah."

Keith had always been fascinated by tattoos and had desperately wanted one. But his adoptive parents, a kind but rather… devout couple, had objected to the idea adamantly. They'd objected to a lot of things about Keith, actually, although the others they were more willing to turn a blind eye to. Not the least of which was how very very gay he was. As long as he didn't bring any boys home and wasn't 'visibly' gay, they just pretended that it wasn't as important an aspect of his personality as it was. Whatever, he could deal. Other kids had it worse. That was just life being… different. Everyone else always just seemed… stuck in the past.

But having ink or metal in his skin was the one thing they couldn't overlook, apparently. They said it was a sign of hooliganism, that people shouldn't be tattooed like cattle. Keith wasn't even entirely sure who still used the word 'hooliganism' outside of his household. Still, he was fascinated by tattoos and body modifications in general.

By the time Keith was ready to move out when he turned 18, he was certain of one thing: With his first paycheck, after his rent was paid, he was going to get a tattoo.

What he hadn't counted on was becoming a snack for a vampire only a few days before that day came.