“Keith Kogane, you magnanimous dumbass, would it kill you to ask me out like a man. Something like that.”
Hunk presses the pause button. He tucks his phone back into his pocket. He turns to Shiro, expectant, prepared.
Shiro stares at the space in front of him, fingertips pressed together and in front of his face.
“Your brother is kind of an airhead.”
“No offense to Keith. He has his smart moments. Probably.” Hunk’s mouth twitches. “Sorry. I said that to not be mean and then immediately thought of the whole Voltron cheer situation and laughed in my head. I promise I don’t actually think Keith is stupid.”
Shiro’s mouth twitches. He forces his face to remain neutral. It is a challenge.
“Keith refused to name his pet gecko as a child,” he shares. “He insisted the gecko would reveal its name when it was ready.”
Hunk bites his lip very hard. He looks deliberately away from Shiro.
The yellow paladin presses his hands to his eyes. He tries visibly hard to compose himself. He fails.
“My fiancé often said he must have been born blond.”
“Boy, do I have news for you.”
Shiro raises his eyebrows. “More news than your recording of Lance processing his love?”
“There was an incident beforehand,” Hunk explains. “You know how Lance does those leg stretches sometimes? When we have agility training?”
“Well, apparently last week he did them in front of Keith and Keith was so distracted he walked into a wall and broke his nose. He had to go into a healing pod.”
Truly, Shiro would love to say that he’s surprised. He’d love to say that his brother, known gay, was not so fixated on a cute boy that he walked into a whole ass wall hard enough to break his nose. He would love for that to be true.
But he knows his dumbass brother.
“And he still isn’t picking up Lance’s hints.”
Hunk nods, patting Shiro’s hand sympathetically. “We gotta do something, man. I can’t keep watching this.” He pauses. “Also, I really want to stop hearing about what Lance thinks about Keith’s Galra form. I really can’t hear any more talk about fangs in places fangs should not be placed. It’s not good for my mental health.”
Shiro sighs. Even he has heard Lance’s mutterings about Keith’s fangs, and Lance still gets all shy and star-struck around him. At this point it’s gotta be a human rights violation.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he promises.
He finds his brother in the training room, because of course he does, getting absolutely demolished by the training bot.
“You’re getting your ass kicked,” Shiro observes.
Shiro makes himself comfortable at the edge of the mat, sticking a straw in a juice pouch and sipping it leaisurely as he watches the twerp get pummelled. It’s amusing, in the way watching those test-dummy car crashes are amusing. Or videos of kids crying in fear of Santa Claus.
“Level failed,” echoes the pleasant voice of Space Siri, as Lance and Pidge have dubbed the disembodied robot voice of the training room. “Try again?”
“Fuck off,” Keith mutters to it.
Shiro stretches out and pokes him with his toe. Keith only half-heartedly tries to slice him about it.
Evidentially deciding he would rather vent in Shiro’s direction than fall for Shiro’s transparent attempts to goad him into a fight, he flops down dramatically, stealing Shiro’s juice pouch and rudely sucking back the rest of it. Fucker.
“He’s so confusing,” he says, free arm flailing. “Just — all the time.”
Shiro politely refrains from asking him to clarify. He knows who he’s talking about.
“Hm,” he says instead, supportively. “How unfortunate for you.”
“Right!” He throws his hands up in the air, sending his bayard flying in one direction and the empty juice pouch in another. Shiro watches it go with great sadness. “One second it’s — Keith, you suck so bad, ugh, you’re such a weird dweeb. And the next it’s I’m hanging out with Coran and you’re not allowed to come and also I hate you.” He looks at Shiro expectantly. “He’s so!” He gestures vaguely. Shiro assumes it’s meant to mean something.
“See, to me there’s no dichotomy there,” he says slowly. “You said that as if it was two different sentiments. But in fact that was the same opinion expressed twice.”
“The tone was different,” Keith insists. “The dweeb thing is affectionate. He says it in a friendship way. I’m sure of it.”
“Friendship,” Shiro echoes.
Shiro hums. He’s quite sure, now, that he is not going to explain to Keith in any words of his own how much of an oblivious dumbass he is. There is no sentence or string of sentences that Shiro can use to demonstrate just how obvious Lance is being, and how obtusely Keith is responding. He’s going to have to be clearer than that.
But. For his own amusement.
“Could you maybe explain how Lance shows his friendship to you? So I can better understand, of course.”
“Well, for starters, he says we’re enemies but always wants to pair up,” Keith says. “That’s friendship, right?”
“That’s certainly one way to put it, sure.”
“And the fact that we hang out so often.”
“And the clothes stealing, of course. Lance says I have gross mullet germs but he’s always stealing my jackets, so that doesn’t add up.”
Shiro purses his lips. That is — whew. Poor Lance is in the trenches.
Keith pouts. “I just don’t get why he flips around it all the time, man. I mean, one second he’s all smiles and nudging my shoulders, and the next he’s bright red and stomping away. He’s so confusing!”
Shiro can take this no longer.
“Keith, I am going to show you something,” he says, digging his phone out of his pocket and pulling up the file Hunk sent him. “Okay?”
“…Okay,” Keith says hesitantly.
Shiro stares at him for a moment longer. Then he sighs, shoves the phone into Keith’s hands, and presses play.
The video starts shaky, audio muddled, and when it clears Lance is lying sprawled on Hunk’s bed, pillow strewn dramatically to the side.
“I just wish I could get it through his fool head that he is loved by me particularly in such a way that I want to hold hands and kiss and generally be nuisances of the affectionate kind. You know, romance,” he is saying.
Keith goes still next to him. With every passing word his jaw drops lower and lower.
“You could also ask him out like a man,” Hunk is explaining.
“Choke and die,” responds video-Lance, and then the audio cuts. Shiro puts his phone away.
“I have to go immediately,” Keith says. He’s up and halfway out the door before Shiro can blink.
“Shower first!” he calls. “You just sweated it up with the training hot for God knows how long. Wash off before you do anything romcom-y.” Keith disappears around the corner. “Keith, do you hear me? Shower first! Keith!”
theartofmadeline
snowghoul
jbbartram-illu
jacobvanloon
dailybridgerton
romaincrisis
ellievsbear
