When Keith approached him a week later, willing to strike up a conversation, it came as a pleasant surprise. Well, not like pleasant like 'oh boy he's coming to talk to me', more along the lines of, 'okay so he doesn't entirely hate me'.

Lance had been sitting in the dining hall working on an English paper, when Keith had stood there awkwardly. The poor guy looked like he was a step away from a meltdown, but before he could even ask, Keith spoke.

"You were drunk and I fell on top of you, but then you were in bed-"

Lance's eyebrows would have reached his hairline if they were able to. He'd been smashed in more ways than one at that Halloween party, evidently, and he regretted not remembering the popping of his metaphorical cherry. There was a plus side, though...

"At least I won't have to remember that mullet." Lance remarked idly, and Keith's embarrassment slid into a scowl. Without another word, he stalked off to his own seat on the other side of the dining hall, leaving Lance to shrug to himself.

His English paper since being forgotten, he began to wonder why Keith had even approached him in the first place. The king of jumping to conclusions, the first thing that crossed his mind was that Keith was trying to build a legitimate relationship off the foundations of a drunken adventure in doing the do. It was a nice sentiment, and Lance realised that he probably just screwed things up by insulting the poor dude who had just been a stuttering mess.

So over the next few weeks, Lance was a bit nicer.

Sure, there was still teasing and unamused frowns from both parties (mostly Keith), but Lance gave the guy some space and tried to hint at the fact that he was apologetic for getting off on the wrong foot and making fun of his roommate's hair incessantly. Keith continued to just give him odd looks, but never said anything. It wasn't exactly bonding, but it wasn't exactly hatred.

Baby steps, Lance kept telling himself.

But it was hard to keep thinking about slowly moving into things without scaring Keith away, especially when he came in one day and the mullet was gone. As in, it had been chopped. Vamoose. Gonezo. Fin. Done. Nonexistent.

Lance wanted to make a comment about 'No Shave November' but under the 'Being Nice(r) To Keith' rules, he wasn't allowed to pass the quota of mullet-related jokes. So Lance just lay in bed on his laptop, occasionally catching glances at Keith. Being Stealthy led him to notice that besides the mullet part being gone, nothing else had really changed. It was just same old Keith but without the vendetta of the Billy Ray Cyrus curse.

"Is there... something wrong?"

Lance blinked, snapping himself out of his trance. Keith was staring directly at him, an eyebrow quirked, but his mouth still remained a flat line.

"Sorry, staring off into space."

"You keep staring in general."

Okay so maybe Lance wasn't being as discreet as he thought. No matter. This was when he could use his Smoothness and crack a joke. He'd brushed off worse things than this before.

"You chopped off the bane of my existence."

Lance immediately wanted to facepalm himself. Of all the things he could have said, he had to over exaggerate and potentially fuck up his decent not-hating-one-another-ship with his roommate. As it was, Keith's lip twitched.

"I was forced into it."

"Sure." Lanced nodded, some sarcasm evident in his placating tone, and Keith narrowed his eyes, but turned back to his own laptop without another word.

Lance considered it a win.

What wasn't a win, though was the amount of times Keith would catch him staring. Pidge had calculated that for every twenty times that Lance stared at his roommate, Keith would catch him twelve out of those twenty times. So there was always a 60% chance that Lance would be caught.

But it was worth it.

It was like he was finally seeing Keith for the first time. Besides the pale skin and the messy black hair (without a mullet!), he had the most stunning eyes Lance had seen. They a blue-grey like the ocean on a cloudy day. When he smiled (a rare sight), he was always with Shiro, and his eyes crinkled a bit at the edges. His lips would blossom into an endearing grin, and Lance always found himself smiling softly along with him. Lance was once even blessed with the sound of an almost-laugh from Keith, and it made his heart want to burst.

"Lance, you're smitten to the point where even Shay is sick of it, and she lives three states away."

"This utter stupidity makes me so glad that I have no romantic desires." Pidge muttered, rolling their eyes and poking at whatever goo was being served.

Lance chose to ignore them, instead, still finding great joy in watching Keith. He began noticing his roommate's quirks. Keith would tap the back of his pen idly against his lips when studying. He was left handed, but opened things with his right hand. He always avoided anything with tomatoes that was served in the dining hall, but seemed to like pizza and spaghetti with tomato sauce.

"So, when are you going to make your move, Lover Boy?" Pidge grumbled, not even bothering tho glance up from the murder mystery they were reading.

"Uh..." Lance rubbed the back of his neck and glanced at his plate sheepishly. Pidge let out an audible groan, and Hunk just sighed.

"Dude, you gotta do something. Anyone with eyes can tell you're basically fawning over him, and frankly, they're probably waiting on you to make a move, too."

"Be simple; you wouldn't want to scare the guy away."

"Yeah we don't want a repeat of Number Thirteen." Hunk shuddered, before placing a beefy hand on Lance's shoulder. "Make him a meal or something. Everyone knows that the way to the heart is through food."

"Insider intel tells me that Keith is rather picky, so I'd play it safe and make him something that he loves. Like a mixtape. Well, maybe not that cliché."

So on the way back from dinner, Lance considered what his friends had told him. He had to be forward, but not too forward. He had to approach Keith with his cards on the table, but that wasn't hard, right?

Lance reconsidered his options, and decided that maybe some alcohol would help him think of something.

Author's Note: Hi, wow, it's been a hot sec. I've been finding it hard to write because I kinda left the VLD fandom because of some of the toxic fans + also falling behind on the seasons (only to hear that they were queerbaiting the whole time + making people mad). I've only seen up to (barely) halfway through season three? But I'm determined to finish this with my limited knowledge + the love for Klance in my heart. So thanks for reading + I'll try to be more active!

xoxo,

Crash Cola (noahcomemidnight)