Walking the Line Between "Hobby" and "Mental Illness"

Through a lot of trial and error, this is what Keith has learned: the more random and casual Lance is being, the closer Keith needs to be listening, because it means Lance is trying to tell him something important.

When he opens the email, all it says is Saw this and thought of you, happy birthday buddy, followed by a link to a video hosted on a Google drive. Keith gives it a long look, weighing suspicion against curiosity, the fact that he knows the sender of the email against the fact that he knows the sender, and then shrugs suspicion aside. He's probably about to get rickrolled, but whatever. He clicks the link.



It's not a rickroll.

"Shiro. Buddy. I swear on everything I hold holy—"

"You're an atheist," Shiro points out.

"—I swear on the grave of Carl Sagan and in the name of Neil deGrasse Tyson," Matt says, not missing a beat, "that if you go home alone tonight, it'll be your own personal decision and not because you won't have other options."

It's ridiculous that it took so long for them to get to this place, but if there's anything Keith has managed to figure out, it's that other people always seem to make things more complicated than they actually have to be.

"Okay." Lance's palms were sweaty with what he was about to say. He was about to break so many rules. "Cards on the table, guys. We got any omegas sitting here?"

Lance pushes everything, like he can't help himself. In retrospect, Shiro has no idea why he expected anything else from him in bed.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?”

Shiro has an excellent poker face; it doesn't even flicker when he says, "Demonstrating the male version of the human reproductive system. Why are you doing it on my lap?"

So the thing Lance has learned about Keith is that he has a long, long memory. It's selective as hell, but if Keith cares enough about something to notice it in the first place, he'll never forget it. And because it's Keith, he'll usually remember whatever it is at the worst possible time.

Lance really isn't sure what they're doing, and that's confusing the heck out of him.

Okay, he knows what they're doing right now, which is sitting in Shiro's room, piled together on his bunk and trying to watch a movie on Shiro's Pidge-brand laptop, because Shiro had said he wanted to spend more time with the two of them. That much he gets. Except for the fact that Pidge and Hunk aren't here, it could be just another Paladin Bonding Night.

It's the larger scheme of things he's not getting.