It has been many, many days since Lance has seen his bed.
Actually, heās not sure how many days itās been since heās seen his dorm, either. Probably more than four. What he has right now is the app Pidge made him for his birthday, where he can input several alarms in advance and thus set up reminders for every single one of his classes and assignments et cetera, and empty can of Redbull, and an equally empty wallet.
He looks blankly at the vending machine in front of him, in the dilapidated old hallway in the science building. The lights in the machine are long broken, so the clearest thing he can see in the dark glass is his own reflection. He looks busted as hell ā there are more bags under his eyes than actual eyes, his hair is a logic defying mix of flat and greasy and frizzy beyond gravity, his skin seems to almost sag, and thereās a grey quality to him, as if heās a cartoon in a black and white TV show. Tired does not begin to cover it.
āCāmon,ā he mutters, wrapping his hands around the sides of the machine and shaking slightly.
More people die per year from being crushed to death by vending machines then via shark attack.
Lance squeezes his eyes shut. The image of his Marine Bio II textbook and all its dorky fun fact graphics still burns behind his eyelids. Heās read it so many times at this point that heās not sure if heāll ever be able to forget it.
āPlease,ā he says again, half begging and half praying. To what he doesnāt know. The vending machine, probably. He honestly cannot remember the last thing he ate. It was probably takis, but. Still. He needs sustenance again. Preferably the kind that is less than two dollars and he can eat while filling out calculus problems.
He fumbles with the little flap at the base of the machine, managing to tug it open on the third try and stick his arm in it. He stretches, managing to brush his fingertip on the corner of a dust-covered Snickers, but canāt quite manage to tip it out of its little cell.
He sighs, resting his forehead on the glass. Heāll just ā close his eyes, maybe. For three seconds. His alarms will go off twenty minutes before class starts, so itās fine. And no one even comes into this hallway so itās not like heāll get robbed, or anything. Not that he has anything to rob.
Rest. Just a little one. If he canāt get snacks heāll rest. Itās fine. He doesnāt need to study for the next few minutes anyway. He can afford one or two percent on his midterm. Probably. Or not, but thatās a Future Lance problem. Present Lance needs to power off for half a second.
He registers, vaguely, the sound of rumbly growling accompanied by heavy footsteps coming from behind it, but dismisses it easily. Heās gone at least half a week without sleep. He knows science. Itās hallucination time. Itās not his first and it wonāt be his last. Heās been hearing pterodactyl roars periodically for the last six hours. Itās whatever. Itāll chill out by the time he opens his eyes again.
The footsteps stop, and Lance sighs a little, and then the vending machine moves as if shifted, and Lance thinks, huh.
Then the sound of glass shattering echoes in the dusty hallway, and Lance thinks, louder, h u h.
And then Lance opens his eyes, blinking away the grogginess, a ā person stands in front of him, dressed in the dweebiest GI Joe meets James Bond outfit of all time, seven foot four, covered in purple fur. Fangs protrude from his mouth. His ears are massive and fluffy. His sclera are yellow.
He holds out, in clawed hands, a bag of takis, pulled from a hole punched clean through the old glass.
Huh, Lance thinks, for the third time.
Slowly, because what the fuck, Lance reaches out and grabs the offered snack. In the three seconds it takes for the snack to travel from the strangerās hand to his, he decides, whatever. Itās been a long period of time. He is thinking half in math. He is starving. He did not, technically, steal these takis, so thereās not even an issue morally. Thereās not an issue anywhere, really. Itās a non-issue.
āThanks,ā he says, muffled from the eight chips heād immediately shoved in his mouth at once.
The person (heās a person, probably, right, he got him takis, non-people donāt generally get people takis) makes some kind of ā growling noise, at him, but not a scary one. A fairly neutral one, if Lance had to categorize it.
Or maybe heās wrong and heās about to get eaten. Who knows. Thatās an issue, once again, for Future Lance.
āIām Lance,ā Lance says, sticking out his non-chip dust covered hand to shake.
The person brightens, grabbing Lanceās hand and shaking it so vigorously it nearly pops out of its socket. He garbles something in what Lance assumes is French, too fast for him to make out. He must be an exchange student. Lance would usually try to strike up a conversation, ask how heās liking it here ā he knows how hard it can be, struggling with a new language in a new country ā and he even took a semester of French in high school, and itās decently similar to Spanish, so he could probably keep up with the guy.
But Lance is probably medically brain dead, at this point. Thoughts outside of practice exam questions are justā¦so hard.
āIām gonna call you Keith,ā Lance says (because someone at the local starbucks has a thing for Keith Richards so those are the only songs in his head right now. The matching mullets also come into play).
Lanceās alarm goes off in his back pocket, startling him. He pops the last taki in his mouth, wiping the dust on his jeans, and swipes open his phone, reading the notification. Physics tutorial in twenty minutes on the other side of campus. Oh, he knows that one. The TA is a ninety year old retired air force pilot who sits at the front of the classroom with a random tangentially-related-to-class-material wikipedia article open on his phone and reads out loud when he finds something interesting. Finally, Lance can nap.
āWell, Keith,ā Lance says, crumpling up his package and tucking it in his pocket. āI appreciate the chips. You cannot understand how much. Iām gonna head to class. See you around?ā
He pats the guyās shoulder as he walks past him. Or, well, tries, he ends up kind of tapping his upper bicep because lordie the man is tall. Keith doesnāt say anything back, but Lance isnāt really paying any attention to him anymore, as rude as that is. Thereās this one cupboard, in his physics class, in the very back corner, and thereās a space in between it and the wall that he just barely fits in between, right on top of a heating grate. Itās heaven. It might even be more comfortable than his dorm bed, not that he can remember what that feels like. Ha. Heās so looking forward to it. This nap is going to hit so hard. He can feel it in his bones. Heās gonna nap through physics, then stop at the cafe in between the building and the library, espresso up, and study until close. And then his last midterm at six thirty tomorrow morning. And then he can collapse in bed and stay there for four days. Freedom is so close.
As he hauls ass to the classroom, slipping and sliding on the icy November sidewalks, he catches someone following him out of the corner of his eye. Like the footsteps from earlier, this is not the first time heās seen this. When he looks heās sure thereās going to be nothing there.
Butā¦earlier there was something. With the footsteps. So. What does he know.
As he half-expected, Keith is following him.
āDo youā¦need something?ā Lance asks, tilting his head curiously. Now that heās had some food and is less out of it, Keith looks a lot more normal. Heās still absolutely stupid tall, but the purple fur and giant ears heād been convinced heād seen are no longer there. His skin is pale, now, fuzz-free, and while his nails are a little long, they certainly arenāt claws. When he smiles, his teeth are still sharper than what Lance would call normal, but not fangs. Probably.
Keith shrugs. He has a certain look in his strange, indigo eyes that remind Lance of his dog back home, following him to the door with her leash in her mouth, expecting to be taken along.
āItās a boring class,ā Lance warns. āAnd Iām gonna sleep, man. The whole time.ā
Keith doesnāt seem bothered. He simply takes a step forward so heās beside Lance instead of behind him, even reaching down and grabbing his hand.
Lance glances down at their clasped fingers. He asks his brain if it has to power to analyze how that makes him feel. It responds that it does not. He resolves to handle it later, deciding to just go with it for now.
āYouāre a strange guy,ā Lance mumbles, walking them both to the class. He wonders if this is how people regularly act in France. Probably. Heās never been. Regardless, though, Keith is nice enough to offer a shoulder for Lance to sleep on when he finds his beloved corner occupied with some kind of new equipment. His shoulder is quite soft.
Lance thinks he might be able to get used to Keith.
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