*Me and my little brother looking at pictures of Keef Kogayne*

My brother, joking: he looks like a potato

Me, drooling over my phone screen: he's the hottest potato I've ever laid my eyes on

That's legit what we said today.

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He woke up tangled in a blanket.

Which was weird, obviously, since he was fully aware that he had fallen asleep in the training deck, his plan being to only take a little nap before returning to his room before the other's could wake up and notice him. But that plan didn't work out, it seems, since someone must have clearly walked in here, and had even bothered to give him a blanket. Which smelled strongly of something like sweet sourness. He hated that he knew exactly who smelled like that, but it's not like you could miss a scent like that when that guy was practically reeking of it. Keith could tell whenever he showered, because that's when the smell would intensify.

Why would Lance give him a blanket? The only logical reason Keith had was that he wanted to suffocate him with the stench of his beauty products and shampoos, and decided that it was a perfect time to silently kill him in his sleep. Too bad it didn't really kill him, and he had to endure the horrible smell by waking up.

Or, the smell itself wasn't horrible, it was just the amount of it that ruined the chance of it being tolerable. Keith knew he would have liked it if he got to smell just a little bit of it. But now it was almost making his eyes water, and he quickly threw the quilt off of him, immediately shuddering once his skin came in contact with the chilly air around him. His disactivated bayard laid beside him, and with numb, cold fingers, he picket it up, letting it dangle from his belt. He flung the blanket over his arm, starting to march out of the training deck. His skin felt fissured from dryness, and it tasted gross in his mouth, which surprised him. That could only mean that he had gotten slightly more sleep this night. Maybe his hard training and very exhaustive thinking had eventually languished him enough to make him fall into a somewhat deep slumber. 

How much had he slept? Why wasn't anyone waking him up yet? Was everyone even awake, or was Lance just awake earlier than everyone, and happened to stumble up on Keith's sleeping body on his way to somewhere?

He got one of his questions answered when he walked into the dining room, immediately getting six pair of eyes on him, but one of those pair of eyes hastily looked away, staring down at the table. Those eyes belonging to Lance himself. 

"Good morning, Keith", Shiro greeted, the only one not diverting his eyes between him and Lance, and seemed to be the only one planning on speaking out of everyone. "I hope it's okay we began breakfast without you. Just grab a portion and sit down."

The red paladin couldn't help but to look over at the quiet boy at the table, waiting for him to look up, or say any snide remark in particular, but he kept stirring his spoon in his green mush, not planning on lifting his gaze. Everyone else kept looking from him, to Keith, and back again. Suddenly Keith wasn't so sure in his theory he had made up in the training deck; seeing Lance in person made his thought shift a little, and he didn't know what to think anymore.

Instead he took a step forward, walking up to him, situating himself beside his chair, waiting a few more seconds for any other reaction over his presence than the one he was receiving now.

When he didn't get any, he extended his arm holding the blanket and let it brush over Lance's shoulder, which finally made him look up, eyebrows raised.

"This is yours, right?" Keith prodded, extending his arm further, signalizing that the other should take it, but Lance remained still, and slightly gaping.

"How... How did you know?" Hesitantly, and very slowly, he finally took his belonging, and placed it even more slowly on his lap, not breaking eye contact with his the other.

Keith crossed his arms. "I could smell that awful smell of your beauty products from miles away. Why'd you give it to me anyways? Aren't you always on about not wanting to be near me in any way possible?"

"I think he wants you to keep it", Pidge said from across of Lance, gesticulating with her spoon in the air, letting the corner of her mouth turn slightly upwards. "To smell your amazing smell and all that sappy shit."

"Shut up, Pidge!" Lance shouted in his annoying pitchy voice, letting his hand sink into the quilt, pouting. "It's not that at all! I just gave it to him to make it comfortable enough for him to not wake up, so his ugly face wouldn't be able to ruin our breakfast." He pinned the teenaged girl with a serious look. "I don't know about you, but I want to keep my food inside my stomach, and not puke it out."

Pidge looked like she wanted to say something, but instead she just gave him a look that said so much more than she ever could put into words, and Lance glared at her.

Seemed like a fair reason, considering that they couldn't stand each other for a bit. 

Keith looked over at everyone else, his eyebrows knitting together. "Why didn't anyone wake me up?"

"Lance wouldn't let us", Pidge spoke up again, the corner of her mouth turning upwards even more. "He kept insisting on letting you sleep, so eventually his nagging tired us enough to comply." Her eyes twinkled, and it would have sparkled as much even without her glasses.

"Didn't you just hear my reason! All of you are so stupid!" He slumped into his seat, hugging his blanket tight to his chest, burying half of his face in it while glaring at his food.

"Okay everyone, calm down", Shiro said in a soft yet harsh tone, even if Lance was the only one causing commotion here. "Keith, sit down and eat breakfast. We have a lot of planning to do today."

Keith gave the grumpy boy one last glance, but then decided that he had got the most important stuff answered. He was also too groggy to think deeply into this anyways, so he decided to just give in to the leader's command. He didn't know what had happened with the seat arrangements today, but the only closest chair was the one beside Lance, and he would have walked to the other side of the table if it hadn't been for his overused legs. He didn't understand how he could have made yesterdays workout so exhausting; maybe some of it had to do with those current thoughts he had stuffed in his head. He had no other choice but to sit down next to Lance, moving his chair to the side as much as he could without bumping into the chair beside him. There wasn't much talking from there.

But then, if he listened close enough, there was another sound piercing through the monotonous silence around him, sounding like it was meant to be supressed but didn't succeed halfway through.

A sharp inhale, and when Keith looked beside him, he had time to see Lance breathing out again, into the blanket pressed against the lower part of his face.

⟴ ⛢ ⟴

Keith was in desperate need of a shower.

It was very understandable, since he was covered in dried sweat from yesterday, and his hair was turning greasy, not to mention that he hadn't even brushed his teeth yet, and he had avoided to talk at breakfast, afraid that his morning breath would somehow reach from across the table to the other's.

But what he also needed to do was to wash away his thoughts.

Those damn nonsense thoughts.

He pulled his black t-shirt over his head once he made sure he was completely alone in the washroom, and as the cloth was halfway off, he noticed a different kind of smell that wasn't his slither into his nostrils. He freed his head from the t-shirt but didn't immediately put it to the side. Instead, he let it linger against his nose, inhaling experimentally. 

The smell of Lance immediately tapped at his senses, not as demanding as before, but just the right amount of it. He's nonsense, Keith thought angrily. Everything about him is stupid. Lance is nonsense.

Keith unconsciously took in a deep breath again, and then followed by another, before realizing what he was doing, and threw the cloth to the side, growling as he pounded on the metallic wall beside him, letting his forehead rest heavily on the cool surface, trying to figure out where he was going with his life.

⟴ ⛢ ⟴

It was weird to see Lance after his little incident in the washroom. One side of him tried to make it seem less weird by telling him that it was normal to experimentally smell a different scent that stuck on your cloth, but then it was the other, more logical side of him that told him it wasn't normal to "experimentally" smell it three times in a row. But then the first side tried to take over by reminding him of Lance's little experimental smelling at the dining table this morning, but then again the latter side butted in to state a theory that Lance could have wanted to check if his smell was still present on that stupid blanket, and that Keith's fetor hadn't dispersed it. In short, a pandemonium was currently happening in his body, and he didn't know how to vanquish it.

"Man, can you just imagen all the hot alien girls that would be at the banquets we will attend these coming days? I'm sure everyone will chase me and beg for me to give them an autograph, and then I would be like..." Lance switched to a ridiculous dark voice, smirking "..."Oh, you want a picture? Anything for you, babe." And they all would swoon and fangirl over my awesomeness." He seemed contented with his own imagination, smiling helplessly.

Keith felt ashamed to hold his hand. "Wow, moving on from Allura that fast? Was this the last rejection you could handle from her?"

The smiling boy was not smiling anymore. "Of course not! On the contrary, actually! The girls all over me would just be the perfect jealousy-material to use on her! I'm sure she will come running to me once she realizes what a mistake she made i not wanting me earlier." The same contented smile was growing on his face again, and you could see how he was drifting off to his imaginary world again.

Keith tried to ignore the heavy feeling in his stomach. "Or you're just that horny."

Once again, the smile ran down his face like sand running down from the palm of a hand. "Shut up! You're just jealous that you can't get laid, like me!"

The red paladin couldn't help but to laugh bitterly, furrowing his eyebrows. "What's there to be jealous of, when you clearly haven't been laid and are at such a desperate point that you have to fight for it."

"I... You... I... S-shut your quiznack!" he settled for after some stuttering, turning crimson red. Now Keith was the one wearing a contented smile on his face.

"Still not using that word correctly", he sighed.

"Does it look like I care?" Lance snapped, looking like wanted to cross his arms, so Keith squeezed his hand to remind him of their task. He gave it a quick glance before continuing to glare at his rival. "So what if I can't speak Altean and use some English words correctly, I'd crush you in Spanish."

Keith knew he was up for a challenge, which he certainly did not want to be a part of, so he quickly needed to get his point across. "I don't care about Spanish."

"Well, obviously!" Lance rolled his eyes. "That's why you don't know shit. I'm sure you're that person to pronounce the 'h' at the beginning of a word and saying the dubble 'l' instead of turning it to a 'j' kind of sound."

The raven haired would never admit he had been just like that in early elementary school, and probably still were. The only thing he was sure of saying in Spanish were the plain old hola, but even then he would sometimes make it sound completely wrong, turning it into something more like houla, with a strong 'h'.

"What are you..."

"You're so bad at Spanish that would wouldn't understand if I said that tú eres el más molesta persona en todo el mundo. Y tú pelo es no bueno para las chicas. Todo lo que dices es estúpido." Something in his face changed, but Keith couldn't pinpoint what. Both sat very still, staring deep into each other's eyes. "No entiendes nada. No lo entenderías si dijera que tu ojos son ridículamente morados, que ellos agitan mis pensamientos. Tú agitan mid pensamientos. Me  confundes. Ya no sé lo que quiero. No cuando me miras así." Something swept across his eyes, but Keith was too baffled over the foreign language and the way Lance spoke it with ease to know exactly what was hovering over his face like a temporary shadow. He couldn't stop staring.

❗TRANSLATION WILL BE AT THE END OF THE CHAPTER❗

Lance didn't stop either, so it was kind of like a mutual silence, a mutual staring contest, without the whole contest thing. Just... staring. For a whole minute straight.

"What..." Keith found himself mumbling out, his mouth dry. "What did you... say...?" He knew that question would give in to Lance's challenge, but for the moment, he really couldn't care. He never found Spanish interesting, that's why it was going so bad for him in it, but something about this situation changed it a little. Suddenly he was determined to know what the sentences that was thrown at him meant, and he didn't have the urge to actually fall asleep while needing to learn them.

The blue paladin flinched like he'd been slapped in the face, and quickly leaned back, the crimson on his face remaining. Keith hadn't even noticed him leaning closer.

"Oh, I just talked about how annoying you are, and how your terrible hair aren't any good for the ladies. And just how stupid you are in general." He scoffed. "Not like you would understand any of that, anyway."

He was right, Keith didn't understand shit. But what he couldn't believe fully in was all the insults Lance claimed he had said in Spanish, at least not half of all the talk. You didn't look at someone like that when talking about how stupid they are, and if it was really all insolence, Keith would have noticed it. At least by his posture, or countenance, which were both way to placid to be anywhere near that. Maybe he was delusional and sleep-deprived, and maybe he was going crazy, by all means, but that didn't stop him from wanting to invest further.

So that was what he would do.

Starting with the banquet.

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I feel so sorry for those of you who actually speaks Spanish (‾◡◝　) I can gladly admit that all of that was Google translate, and no, I haven't learnt that it's stupid to use that for long sentences and yes, I'm too lazy to use any of my "knowledge" I've gathered at class.

AnyWHO, here are the translations we all need after that chaos of words:

"You are the most annoying person in the world. Your hair is not good for the ladies. Everything you say is stupid. You don't understand a thing. You wouldn't understand if I said that your eyes are so ridiculously purple, that they stir up my thoughts. You stir up my thoughts. You confuse me. I don't know what I want anymore. Not when you look at me like that."

👀☕❓