Betrayer. Deceiver. Double-crosser. Fink. Turncoat. Rat —
“You are the biggest drama queen,” Hunk says in fond amusement. He even pats Lance’s head patronizingly.
Lance bats his hand away, turning to glare at his best friend and making a high, angry noise in the back of his throat so Hunk understands that Lance is still name-calling him in his mind even if he’s out of synonyms.
“I cannot believe you’re doing this to me.”
Hunk doesn’t even look a little bit phased, which is extra insulting. He should be wracked with guilt. How dare he. “I need to go study, Lance. I can’t stay any longer.”
Lance skids his board to a stop for dramatic effect, then throws his hands out to the side and scoffs as derisively as he can manage. “You can study here! With me! And watch me occasionally! So I am not here alone! And lonely and miserable and sad!”
Instead of immediately pledging to never leave Lance’s side again, Hunk only shakes his head at him in something like awe.
“You are truly something else,” he says. “If you told me you weren’t a graduate of dramatic arts at Julliard, I’d be shocked.”
Lance opens his mouth, then closes it again, trying so hard not to laugh and failing.
God, he fucking hates it when Hunk makes him laugh when Lance is trying to be mad at him.
(Even when he’s not really mad. But still.)
“You’re the worst and you don’t love me,” Lance informs him. Hunk just smiles, shaking his head, and starts to pack up his things. He’s been trying to study while Lance skates, but if Lance is being entirely, one hundred percent, no word of a lie, completely honest, then he can admit that perhaps he is a little tiny smidge distracting.
He can’t admit defeat, though. He and Hunk have known each other so long that the lines between friends and family blurred long ago, and if there’s one thing Lance knows, it’s that you never admit when your siblings are in the right.
He huffs as loudly and melodramatically as he can, flopping on Hunk’s back with a hand over his eyes to slow the man down. He even squirms a little, determined to be extra irritating and at least knock a pencil out of his hand. Unfortunately for him, however, Hunk is well beyond used to his shit, and has no issue holding Lance up and still easily and neatly putting everything away into his backpack.
“I am going to start a mean rumour about you,” Lance tells him when he stands, gingerly removing Lance from his person.
“You are not,” Hunk dismissed easily. He doesn’t even look a little concerned, which is rude. Lance could totally be a massive evil douchebag asshole if he wanted, and it’s very cruel of Hunk not to support that path for him.
“You come to the skatepark by yourself every single day,” Hunk reassures, patting him a little more lovingly on the cheek than before. “You’re just being clingy because you’re bored now that you’re done school. But it’ll even out, Lance. Promise.”
Lance sighs, relenting. “Alright, fine. I suppose my heart will only break a little at your betrayal. I’ll probably heal.”
Okay, well, he relented a little.
Hunk grins, wrapping his big arms around Lance and giving him one of his patented ‘Hunk spontaneous spinal rearrangement’ hugs. “That’s the spirit! See ya, buddy. Love you.”
“Love you too,” Lance says, watching to make sure Hunk makes it to the bus safely. One his bus pulls away, he sighs again, to himself this time, and turns back towards the skatepark.
It’s not empty anymore — it was mostly just Hunk and Lance in the early afternoon, but by now school has let out and homework is done, so it’s pretty crowded. People of all ages are doing all sorts of tricks, using equipment and things that are very much not equipment to show off and dick around and generally have fun. Even more people are sitting and chatting around the edges of the grounds; parents supervising their kids, non-skater friends coming to watch, people taking a break, or just people enjoying the atmosphere. It’s always pretty packed by now, and will be for the next couple hours.
But Lance has shit else to do, since Pidge is away at her internship thingie, Veronica is on yet another date with the girlfriend of the month, Marco is a poser who thinks skateparks are stupid, Luis and Lisa and the kids are at hockey practice, and he and Rachel don’t hang out (they just occasionally accidentally show up at the same place, because they are rivals and Lance would not be caught dead asking her to come to the skatepark with him. That would be humiliating).
But that’s cool. Lance likes his own company. He’s cool as shit.
He chucks off his shirt — it’s only gotten hotter over the past couple hours, as the late spring sun peeks through the clouds — then kicks up and grabs his board, jogging over to his forgotten backpack to stuff his shirt inside. He digs around for his earbuds, now that Hunk’s gone home, and shoves them in his ears, scrolling through his playlists until he finds one to fit his mood — nothing too upbeat, but nothing in-his-feels; something chill that will fade into the background. Once he finally finds one that works, he takes off, hopping on his board and pumping his leg to get it rolling the second he hits the concrete.
He skates around for the next half hour, mouthing along to his music as he dodges random uncoordinated children and stoners alike, randomly doing tricks for no one in particular (but that are cool enough to get scattered “Nice, man!” comments from other skaters, which he will admit makes him preen).
Deciding that he can use more strangers thinking he’s cool, he sets his sight on the bigger rail of the two at the park, pushing on his board to get it to roll as fast as he safely can, curving around on of the pits, and flipping the edge of one end of the board at the last second to glide it along the end the rail. The impact shooting up his shins makes him grin sharply, loving the familiar ache of it, and he curves to keep his balance with the momentum coming off of the grind.
Only, the edge of the rail is too close to one of the short walls at the edge of the skatepark. And Lance was too busy basking in the feel of a successful trick to properly clock his surroundings to curve sharply enough to avoid heading straight for the wall. And there’s a guy sitting in the wall, looking intently at his sketch pad, right in Lance’s path.
He tries in the split-second he has to grind his board to a stop, putting all his weight on one foot to force the wood and wheels to scrape to a stop. It works, kind of, but his body keeps its momentum, sending him crashing for the guy. At the last second the guy notices Lance’s falling at him, and yelps, twisting away slightly as Lance hits the ground, sprawled on his ass, phone knocked from his pocket and earbuds ripped from his ears.
Brain tipping out of his ears, too, because the guy Lance has nearly hit is cute as all hell, and holy shit is Lance losing his ability to think at frightening speeds.
“Hi,” he says, putting an arm behind him to balance and untensing slightly.
The guy smiles, which softens his whole face; big indigo eyes sparking with amusement and pierced lip quirking up slightly.
“Hi yourself,” he says. He puts his ripped-jean clad legs back down on the ground now that Lance is not at the risk of slamming into them at top speeds, resting his sketchbook on his knees. If Lance had his good sense he’d make an emo joke, what with the black skinny jeans, black and white striped shirt under a band t-shirt, fingerless gloves, beat up black Chucks, choppy black mullet, and more chains and studs than he can actually count, but unfortunately this boy is quite possibly the prettiest person he’s every seen and Lance is always kind of a goober around pretty people.
“You’re hot as hell,” he blurts.
Luckily for him, Cute Emo Boy doesn’t roll his eyes and stomp away — well he does roll his eyes, honestly, but it’s more of an amused thing, so Lance isn’t counting it — and even laughs a little. He glances Lance up and down, slowly, making it abundantly clear that he’s checking Lance out.
“You’re okay,” Cute Emo Boy teases. “I mean, for a shirtless skater boy.”
Lance scoffs. He is great for a shirtless skater boy, thanks very much. High above average, even. “Not everyone can pull off the cute emo boy look.”
Cute Emo Boy laughs again, and before Lance can stop himself Lance pumps his fist in success.
(Step one to making people fall in love with you — have them think your dumbass tendencies are funny.)
Cute Emo Boy shakes his head, still grinning, and returns to his sketchbook, lining something lightly with a pencil. “You’re something, Skater Boy.”
Lance narrows his eyes. He knows what Capitalised Letters sound like. He is doing the same thing in his own head, which means Cute Emo Boy has also given him a nickname, which means he is as interested in knowing Lance’s name as Lance is in knowing his.
“The name’s Lance.” He doesn’t bother sticking out his hand to shake, because he honestly finds handshaking to be kind of disgusting, but leans back on his hands and tries to summon his smoothest, most player grin. He imagines Cute Emo Boy trying to hide flushed cheeks and a swoon (look Lance is tired of being the only red-cheeked one here, okay, time to even up the score) in the face of Lance’s loverboy scale turned up to eleven.
But Cute Emo Boy doesn’t even look up from his sketchbook.
Lance freezes. Shit. Does he somehow know Cute Emo Boy? Has he forgotten he name? He never does that! He’s very good with names and faces!
“Your babysitter said it lots of times earlier,” Cute Emo Boy continues. “Often with varying levels of exasperation.”
Lance is confused for a second, then he realises what Cute Emo Boy is implying and his jaw drops in indignation.
“Hunk is not my babysitter! I am twenty one years old!” he squawks. “Meanie!”
The corner of Cute Emo Boy’s mouth is twitching, again; Lance’s main clue that he is very much flirting and not just clowning Lance for no reason.
(Would Lance be any less attracted to this man if he was being mean for no reason?
…Well. Lance has never claimed to have good, healthy taste.)
“Could have fooled me. With all the —” he looks up from his sketchbook briefly to imitate Lance’s presumable expression from earlier — “‘Hunk! Hunk! Hunk! I’m doing a trick! Watch!’ I thought you might have just been part of the after-school crowd.”
Lance pouts. Cute Emo Boy pats his knee condescendingly.
“Hunk is childish too,” he grumbles, conceding to the point that he was, perhaps, acting like a child forcing a parent to watch them do a flip every three seconds. “I had to bust out the Drunk Hunk Backpack Leash on Friday because he kept trying to run away from us.”
The story startles another laugh out of Cute Emo Boy, which Lance relishes. “Sounds fun. And a little embarrassing.”
For a moment Lance scrambles for something to say — he can’t let the conversation end, he has to keep talking to this man who smiles and laughs at Lance’s jokes and who finds his ridiculousness endearing, apparently, and who is also lowkey hot which doesn’t hurt — but then something occurs to him.
Cute Emo Boy has been watching him. For some time, obviously, or he wouldn’t be able to tease Lance about Hunk.
Cute Emo Boy is into him, concretely, and has been for longer than Lance has even noticed him, which means Lance has the upper hand in this scenario and might be able to tease a blush out of the hottie yet.
“It was,” Lance agrees, letting some of the cockiness bleed into his voice. Cute Emo Boy hears it easily, finally looking up from his sketchbook to look at Lance with a raised eyebrow. Lance pauses a moment for dramatic effect, because yes, okay, he’s a bit of a drama queen. “Almost as embarrassing as watching someone skate for two hours without bothering to try and talk to them.”
Just as he predicted, Cute Emo Boy flushes, completely caught out. He sputters for a moment, trying to come up with an excuse, and Lance goes for a double whammy.
“I didn’t spend that time trying to put their likeness to paper, either.”
It’s honestly just an estimated guess, that Cute Emo Boy has been drawing him, and it’ll be super humiliating if he’s guessed wrong. But Cute Emo Boy’s jaw snaps shut with an audible click, and he goes even redder, turning his gaze back to his sketchbook.
“…Point to Lance,” he concedes after a moment of silence.
“I’ll trade in my point for your name, I think. Can’t keep calling you Cute Emo Boy if I’m going to take you out on a date.”
“Keith.” Cute Emo Boy grins wide enough to show off crooked incisors. “And I guess I wouldn’t mind spending some more time getting to know you. It’ll be good drawing practice, at least. I can’t quite seem to get your eyes — they’re a shade of brown I haven’t seen before.”
Pleased, Lance leans closer to Cute Emo Boy — to Keith — and opens his eyes a little wider, catering to his unspoken request.
Maybe, in hindsight, he can forgive Hunk’s betrayal.
