slkhfsdkjfdfthis headcanon is the funniest fucking thing i’ve ever heard and i cant stop thinking about it so here have a fic just fucknfg TAKE IT
(dedicated to my friend Feña who turned 23 today) <3
The group had grown a lot since the day they left Earth in Blue. They had Coran and Allura, and Krolia and Romelle too and even a weird space dog whose relationship to the spacetime continuum not even Coran understood. So despite having lost the castle in their battle they were all okay. Better than ever, because Shiro was there now too.
The return of the real Shiro had an uplifting affect on the whole group. The first night of their long, long roadtrip was spent camped together on an uninhabited forest-covered moon halfway to the base where they would be picking up Matt, whiling the evening away around a fire in a small valley. For what they’d been through, spirits were surprisingly high. Maybe they were all still running on leftover adrenaline. The reality of the long road ahead of them back to Earth hadn’t quite had time to sink it yet–nor had the depth of Lotor’s betrayal.
For now they simply existed in this place between places. This time between times.
The return to life and the imminent return to Earth had Shiro in a rare nostalgic mood. It surprised Keith, because Shiro never talked about Earth. Never. Not even to Keith. He knew it was almost certainly because of Adam, but he never pried. But now all Shiro wanted to do was talk about Earth and the Garrison and the people there (though Keith still noted how he carefully skirted around Adam) and pretty soon everyone else was talking about the Garrison too.
“You think they told our families we ran away?” Hunk wondered.
“Doubt it,” Keith sighed from across the fire. They were all either in their sleeping bags or sitting on top of them, looking at the fire and the forest and the stars. “Not with the way they lied about Kerberos.”
The idea that the Garrison had told their families they were dead was something that had weighed on Hunk, Pidge, and Lance ever since they left, and nobody really wanted to revisit that sore subject. Not when the date of their return was actually set.
“We’ll be home soon,” Lance interjected when the silence had gone on a beat too long. “Whatever the Garrison said about us, we’ll be there with the truth soon enough.”
“Wait, do you think they’ll try and arrest us for breaking Shiro out?” Hunk wondered suddenly.
“I’d like to see them try,” Shiro laughed. “I’ve still got a bone to pick with them on that one. I can’t believe their reaction to that situation was to strap me down like some kind of alien–no offense to present company,” he added hastily, offering a rueful grin to the three Alteans, one Galra, and one overgrown space puppy on her lap, who were grouped together and listening curiously to the Garrison stories.
Pidge snorted. “I can believe that. What I still can’t believe is that Lance recognized Keith from a hundred yards away in the dark just because of his bad haircut, despite not having seen him in over a year.”
Lance sputtered on top of his sleeping bag as Keith looked his way in surprise. No one had ever told Keith THAT part of the story.
Eyes squeezed shut and face screwed up in irritation, Lance crossed his arms testily before shooting back, “Yeah, well, I still can’t believe Keith didn’t recognize me from two feet away in a brightly lit room considering we went to school together and shared classes and flight lessons for five years!”
Keith felt his eyebrow twitching. Not this again. “Look, I’m bad with faces, okay?”
“Whatever. Five years, Keith!”
“No, I mean it, I am really bad with faces, Lance. I thought you were someone completely different for a second when you guys barged in on my rescue mission.”
Hunk laughed. “What, really? That’s hilarious,” he laughed even harder, ignoring Lance’s expression of outrage. “Who did you think he was?”
Despite himself, Keith felt his cheeks heating. It probably wasn’t visible by firelight, right? Besides, it wasn’t like it was his fault he was terrible at facial recognition. “This kid named Taylor,” Keith admitted. “I think he was a cargo pilot? He must’ve been because we didn’t have any classes together anymore my last year before I dropped out.”
Hunk scratched his chin thoughtfully before turning to Pidge, who shrugged. “Taylor? I don’t remember a Taylor.”
Keith scoffed. “I don’t know how anyone wouldn’t remember him, he was so loud and obnoxious. He’s literally the only person I remember by name.”
Shiro hummed from his own sleeping bag, pushing himself up onto his one elbow so that it pooled around his waist. “Actually, I don’t remember a Taylor from your year either. Are you sure that was his name?”
Frustrated, Keith furrowed his eyebrows at Shiro, who was once known on campus for his weird ability to learn every student’s name within the first week of classes and never forget them, even years after their graduation. “I’m pretty sure,” Keith argued, although now he wasn’t quite so sure anymore. Shiro knew everyone. “He was always going on and on trying to get everyone to call him The Taylor–like, who even does that? If I’d told anyone at the Garrison to call me The Keith I would’ve been shoved into a locker.”
Lance made a weird squeaking noise while Pidge and Hunk simultaneously sucked in breaths.
“I know, right?” Keith responded, feeding off their reaction with a little more confidence. “He was ridiculous. I mean…”
Here Keith petered out for a moment, rubbing his fingers together. An old nervous tic he was never able to train himself out of. Maybe it was his happiness at having Shiro back. Maybe it was the way Shiro had finally opened up and started talking about Earth again. Maybe it was finding his mom and finally starting to understand himself as a person… Either way, these people were his family and they were always opening up to each other. It wouldn’t kill him to open up a little about himself, right? Just a little?
“I mean, it was kinda cute,” Keith admitted. “I guess I had a crush on him or whatever. Sorry I don’t remember you from the Garrison, Lance, I just didn’t pay much attention to other people back then–I don’t think I could name anyone else from our class.” He shrugged as casually as he could and then looked up to gauge everyone’s reactions, just a tad bit nervous considering he basically just came out to them.
What he wasn’t expecting was absolutely gobsmacked faces from Hunk, Pidge, and Lance–Lance most of all, who looked like he was two seconds from spontaneously combusting.
“What?” Keith said, jumping on the defense faster that light speed.
“Nothing!” Lance barked, talking over Hunk who had tried to respond first.
Hunk was grinning now like there was no tomorrow. “Are you–”
“Hunk, shut up!” Lance hissed, and promptly leapt from his sleeping bag to tackle Hunk to the ground.
Pidge, however, was totally in the clear to turn to Keith (who was now pretty thoroughly confused and sure he was missing something) with a maniacal grin. “I think what Hunk is trying to say is that are you sure you don’t remember Lance from the Garrison?”
Keith tried and failed to understand the evil look on her face. To her left Hunk was now pinning Lance facedown in the soil and staring at Keith like he had won the grand prize in a contest he didn’t know he’d entered. Keith looked to Shiro for help, but Shiro just said, “Nope, I’m checking out of this one,” and laid down and rolled over, leaving his back to the group.
A hundred separate times Keith had sat down and thought back on his old Garrison classmates, trying to find Lance somewhere in his memories. He’d been so offended that Keith didn’t remember him.. But he couldn’t force himself to remember! Nowhere in all those memories was a tall, lanky beanpole with shaggy brown hair, brown eyes like the reflection under midday sparkling pond water, smile like the sun. Nobody in his memories was.. for lack of a better word, big enough to fill the place in his life that Lance took up now.
“I’m pretty sure..?” Keith offered, but it sounded like defeat even to him. He had no idea what was happening. From underneath Hunk Lance groaned loudly into the dirt, mumbling words Keith couldn’t quite understand.
“Uhuh,” Hunk grinned, “and what if I told you that Lance grew almost nine inches in the time between when you guys stopped sharing classes together and Shiro’s rescue?”
Keith stared at him blankly.
Keith blinked again, looking at the back of Lance’s head as a seed of panic sprouted in his belly. No. No way.
Lance groaned into the dirt again, and Keith finally understood what he was saying: “I can’t believe I used to call myself that.”
“Oh my god,” Keith breathed, and Pidge leaned back on her hands in satisfaction.
(Suffice it to say Keith never lived that one down, and Hunk had a great story to tell at their wedding.)
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