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Lance was very… particular about things, Keith noticed. And it wasn’t just him, obviously. Their whole team was pretty particular. Hunk, for example, had to have all his tools organized and straightened before he could work on something. If they weren’t, he’d stop whatever he was doing to straighten them out again. Keith had taken to polishing his knife (and other small tasks like that) in Hunk’s workshop, so he could straighten the man’s tools for him, and then he wouldn’t have to start over. (As an added bonus Hunk had all the drama — Keith would rather make friends with the business end of Pidge’s bayard than admit it, but he enjoyed listening to the gossip now and then.) Allura was very particular, too. Her holoscreens and data files for the Coalition were so meticulously organized and colour-coded that they were beautiful even to Keith, who didn’t much care for folder organization.
All of them had their quirks, their strange hills to die on. But Lance? Lance had a particular way of doing everything, it seemed. Which made sense, given who he was as a person — aka someone who could, in one word, be described as ‘extra’. (And, yeah, Keith is well aware that he’s telling on himself by having noticed all Lance’s quirks at all. He knows damn well that the only reason he knows that Lance is — and he’s saying this with all the fondness in his heart — a weirdo, is because he watches Lance, all the time, and does everything he can to be around him. He knows. He’s had his embarrassing realization. He’s accepted the L. He likes watching Lance, because he likes Lance. A lot. It’s whatever.)
One specific thing that Keith noticed is that Lance plans out who he’s going to sit next to at dinner in advance. There’s no real real rhyme or reason to it — Keith spent a while trying to figure out a pattern, but gave up after about a week of complete randomness. He seems to sit next to whomever he pleases, for very specific reasons that only he knows.
Hold on, now, you might be saying. It really sounds like you’re just reading into it, and Lance just sits at random places every day.
And, yeah. That would be a fair assumption.
If it weren’t for one small thing.
See, no matter what time Lance arrives in the dining room, he’s the last to sit down. Always. Even if he’s the first there, even if he’s the one to cook. He’s somehow the last one to sit down. He waits for everyone else to sit, looks at the table for a moment, visibly makes a decision, and then sits beside whomever he’s chosen. It’s because of this that Keith’s sure he’s right. (Again. Keith knows it’s a stupid thing to put so much effort into observing, but he can’t very well turn it off. His brain focuses on things it finds interesting. It follows the dopamine. And, as humiliating as it is, Keith’s brain has decided Lance is a great source of said chemical.)
There is some pattern, Keith supposes. If Lance knows someone has had a rough day, or looks tense, or hasn’t been taking care of themselves, he sits next to them. He does it when Allura is particularly homesick, so he can subtly steer the conversation into happy memories of Altea to cheer her up. He does it when Shiro is tense and shaking from a day of bad memories, so he can joke and tease until Shiro is laughing so hard he sprays milk through his nose. He does it when Coran is weary and exhausted, making sure everything Coran needs is in reach so the advisor feels a little less drained at the end of the meal. He does it when Pidge hasn’t done anything but code for several days, quietly scooping extra portions on her plate and nagging her into an early bedtime. He does it when Hunk is fidgeting anxiously and shivering, keeping a constant hand on Hunk’s person and telling wild stories from home until Hunk’s smiling again.
He does it for Keith, too, although it took him a while to realise. Whenever Keith is snappy and irritable or blank and sad, Lance will invent some stupid game where he’s ‘definitely better at than you, Mullet, so eat that!’ until Keith has perked right up and started arguing right back and playing along with so much intensity that he forgets why he was so upset in the first place.
Yeah. It’s definitely one of the many reasons why Keith likes him so much. He’s always had a soft spot for the kind ones.
Most of the time, though, everyone’s feeling pretty good. There’s no one who needs Lance’s strength or wit or humour to go to bed with a weight lifted off their shoulders. No one Lance needs to care for.
On these days, Lance sits with whomever he carefully chooses. (Keith is pleased to note that, on a good chunk of these occasions, Lance sits with him, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Today, Lance is sitting with Hunk, who’s deep in conversation with Shiro. To entertain himself, he’s taken to playing out some dorky drama, using his utensils as action figures and silently mouthing out dialogue. (Keith wants to repeatedly bang his head on a wall, because holy shit, that’s such a dweeb thing to do and it shouldn’t be endearing but it is and Keith wants to kiss his stupid face so badly.)
Suddenly Coran sneezes across the table, one of those great big dad sneezes, and Lance startles, his fork going flying.
“Aw, man,” he mutters, immediately bending down to grab it.
Without breaking away from his conversation, Hunk reaches over and covers the corner of the table with his hand, so when Lance shoots back up, he only brushes Hunk’s fingers instead of braining himself on the hard edge or the table.
Keith blinks. As soon as Lance is upright, Hunk pulls his hand back, and Lance goes back to playing with his utensils like he never dropped one in the first place.
Hunk looks completely unchanged. Lance doesn’t offer thanks, or even acknowledge what Hunk did in the first place.
Neither of them noticed the reaction. At all.
Keith hides a smile in his hand. It figures that Lance is so clumsy that Hunk has security measures in place for something as harmless as eating dinner, and even more so that Hunk has to do them so often that he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it. It figures that Lance spends so much time watching other people and anticipating their needs that he’s completely oblivious to any of his own.
“What’s funny?” Pidge asks, squinting at him.
Keith shrugs, but the smile stays firmly on his face. “Nothing.”
Pidge squints harder. “There’s definitely something. You look all… squishy.”
“It’s nothing,” Keith insists, but can’t quite stop himself from flicking his gaze towards Lance.
It does not escape Pidge’s notice, unfortunately.
“Oh, I see,” she says with a smirk.
Keith rolls his eyes, ignoring the flush on his cheeks. “Whatever. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, nothing, nothing. Just embarrassed on your behalf. Personally, I can get through a meal without making painfully obvious heart-eyes at my super embarrassing middle school crush, but to each their own.”
“It’s not a middle school crush,” Keith says, elbowing her in the side. “It’s — whatever. He’s just kind of cute. That’s all. I can just — I’m just saying, objectively.”
“Uh-huh. Sure. Loser.”
At the very sound of ‘Keith’ and ‘loser’ being spoken in the same sentence, Lance perks up. “Why’s Keith a loser? Besides all the regular reasons.”
Keith cuts a slightly panicked look to Pidge. He swears to god, if she even implies to Lance that Keith maybe kind of admitted he finds the blue paladin a little tiny bit cute in, perhaps, certain lighting —
“He drinks all of his water before touching his food,” Pidge says instead, and Keith lets out a sigh of relief before registering what she said.
“Hey, that doesn’t make me a loser,” he argues.
“It kind of does,” Allura interjects gently. “Sorry.”
Lance laughs, and Keith is so caught up in the sound that he forgets to defend himself.
He scowls at Pidge’s widening smirk.
Whatever. It’s — it’s just a crush. A measly, tiny, itty-bitty crush. Keith’s sure he’ll get over it soon.
He risks a quick glance over to the crush in question, who has abandoned his utensil telenovela in favour of enthusiastically explaining the intricacies of Terran marine biodiversity to the Alteans. His smile is so wide it crinkles his eyes, almost completely hiding the warm brown irises.
Keith huffs, shaking his head at his own audacity. Get over Lance? Who’s he kidding?