Hearts don't break around here

Chapter 1: snickers

Present Day

Nobody believes Keith when he tells them that Lance's hair used to be wild when he was younger. Like, crazy wild. The curls were untamable. They fell into his face and bounced and tangled and grew at an alarmingly fast pace. They were more golden than brown, more frizzy than tight, and got caught in his eyelashes. Keith's hair was always short and choppy, cropped very close to his hairline, so he was fascinated by the creature that seemed to be sitting atop Lance's tiny head. Lance was always self conscious about his hair. One time, when he was six, he gave his older sister twelve cents to straighten the curls down, and was thoroughly disappointed when it didn't turn out how he wanted it to. It stuck out in every direction and completely covered his eyes like a shaggy carpet.

Keith remembers it like it was yesterday. The constant struggle with that wild, bushy mane of hair. Of course as Lance grew older, the hair eventually straightened out. He got it cut differently throughout the years, naturally. And now, Keith is scrolling through his phone and sitting on his bed while Lance runs a comb through his short, wispy brown hair for the thirtieth time, nervously biting his lip and trying to get it into place.

"Lance." Keith says, throwing his phone to the side and watching Lance's worried face in the mirror. "Lance, your hair looks fine."

"No! It doesn't!" Lance pouts. "It always looks the worst when I have somewhere important to go! God, I hate it."

"I'm telling you it looks fine."

"Well I don't believe you." Lance snaps back. "And besides, even if it did look good, which it doesn't , I still wouldn't be worthy of this girl." He groans frustratedly and chucks his comb. It clatters as it hits the mirror and falls to the counter.

"She's not that hot." Keith says. "You guys are like, both eights." A pause. "Eight point fives."
"Eight point--did you see her?" Lance whirls around, flabbergasted. "I accept that I'm an eight but her ? I don't even know why she agreed to go out with me! I can't screw it up."

"You won't. You literally never do. There has been a girl here, like, every weekend for the past year." Keith says, rolling his eyes.

Yes, he lives with Lance. He wishes he could say that it was a complete coincidence, ending up in the same city after college. But it wasn't completely a coincidence, because Keith deliberately applied to jobs where Lance would likely be. Lance doesn't know this, of course, because even after all these years of being best friends, Keith will never admit to him that he is one of the most important people in Keith's life. It's just that Lance has so many...friends. So many important people. But Keith really only has Lance. So, it's not something that he likes to advertise, his complete dependence on this stupid, annoyingly charming boy. But yes, they share an apartment, and yes, they have never gone more than three months without being in the same place. But that's just how it is between them, how it always has been. And there's never been a problem with it before.

Their apartment isn't anything to write home about. They did just graduate from college after all, and both of them have entry-level jobs with little pay, so it's not like they were expecting royal treatment. Keith loved it just as it was when they moved in two years ago; white walls and beige carpet and dim lights with very little room for anything else. Lance, however, was horrified by it, and spent the first six months of their time re-painting the entire living room and buying cheap prints from Target to hang on the walls. He once visited a thrift store and came back with a rug to "dress up the space" that ended up being infested with bed bugs. They had to live at Lance's parent's place while their entire apartment was quarantined and cleaned out.
Needless to say, Lance was not as happy about the apartment as Keith was, because Lance has always been somewhat of an 'extra' person. Beige is his sworn enemy. It's been almost two years now and their apartment barely looks anything like it did when they moved in, thanks to all of Lance's obnoxiously hard work. But the bare bones of the shitty architecture are still there; a tiny kitchen with cracked, ceramic tile, a living room with space for only one fold-out futon and a coffee table that used to be a cardboard box. A cramped, musty bathroom and two very pathetic bedrooms. Keith actually thinks his room is supposed to be a closet, but his bed fits in there just fine. He doesn't need any extra stuff anyway. Besides, in college, their shared dorm room was much, much worse.