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Lance would not often consider himself insecure, but he was feeling very insecure at the moment. He and Keith had been best friends since preschool and started dating when they entered middle school. Having a relationship count from when you are in middle school is debatable since you are so young, but nonetheless they had been exclusive with each other since then.
Keith would argue that they have been each other's person since they met, but Lance reminds him that in the fifth grade Tyler Muzzeli kissed Keith on the playground under the monkey bars. Keith always said that it didn’t count since he didn’t want to be kissed and made that apparent after punching Tyler in the face afterwards.
After all their time together, they were now in their senior year of high school and quickly approaching graduation. Lance had thought that things were going well between them despite the big change of graduating.
Throughout the entire relationship there had been weak moments of Lance’s self doubt knowing that his boyfriend was completely out of his league and gorgeous. Keith would smack some sense into him, quite literally, and tell him over and over that ‘there is no league idiot’. Lance’s self esteem still had problems accepting that but never once had Lance believed that Keith may stray away from the relationship.
That is until now.
1.
It had all initially started when they were hanging out at Hunk’s for a movie night. Lance had noticed that Keith had been staring at his phone consistently throughout the night, ignoring the movie and smiling the whole time. This made Lance curious. What had Keith’s attention so much and had him smiling at his phone?
Lance had tried to ask him but Keith wiped the smile off his face as if he had been caught doing something naughty and stuffed his phone back into his pocket.
“Why were you smiling at your phone?” Lance asked.
Keith blushed. “I wasn’t smiling, you’re imagining things.”
“But I saw you-”
“Drop it Lance. I wasn’t smiling.” Keith glared at him, cutting off the conversation there and then.
Lance was stunned for a bit. He knew that Keith was being defensive but he couldn’t figure out why. They had never kept things from each other. Lance believed that the two of them were open books. It had taken a lot of patience and years to get Keith to the point that he was not so closed off.
Lance definitely had a strange feeling in his gut over this and he did not like it.
2.
The second time that Lance witnessed Keith’s suspicious behavior was actually the next day. After their mutual sleepover at Hunk’s Lance knew that he had to call his sister to come and pick them up to go shopping.
Veronica had borrowed Lance's car the day before since hers was in the shop getting maintenance done on it. They made some idle chat in the car on the way to the mall when Veronica had picked them up, but Lance was still stewing.
A lot of his insecurity had come about from the fact that Lance was going away to college and Keith was not. Lance always made sure to have good grades because he wanted to be an engineer. He liked seeing how things worked and constructing things and he had managed to obtain a hefty scholarship to a big school two hours away.
Keith on the other hand struggled with school and had good grades with Lance’s tutelage but still did not want to funnel money into college, especially since he would not qualify for a scholarship. Keith instead had planned on attending a local trade school. He was on the fence between becoming a welder or an electrician and still had not made a decision.
The discussion of continuing their relationship long distance was a source of drama between the two of them. Lance felt guilty for leaving Keith to chase his dreams. Although it was only two hours away, Keith and Lance were rarely ever separated. Now they would be starting their adult lives in separate places and that seemed lonely to Lance. Keith reassured Lance over and over that he was not selfish for going after what he wanted and that he greatly supported him. He would tell Lance over and over how much he loved him and that he couldn’t wait until they were both out of college. He promised to visit Lance as much as he could as well.
The issue of remaining monogamous had never arisen, but Lance couldn’t stop the insecurity rising up inside him again that Keith deserved to move on to someone better.
Catching Keith in the lie of smiling at his phone still didn’t sit right with Lance at all. Keith’s smiles were rare and precious and he couldn’t understand what would have him smiling for so long.
When they entered the department store they made their way over to the section that was dedicated to dorm shopping. They were not there to buy anything today, but to make sure that they could see the things that were on Lance’s wish list in person to make decisions. Lance could not get anything until his paycheck from his job as a lifeguard at the indoor pool went through.
Lance had seen a sheet set that he thought was the one on his wish list, but he had to make sure that the skews matched. He recognized the shapes on the sheets but he wasn’t so sure on the color in person.
“Keith, my phone is at like 25%. Can I use yours to check the list? I wanna make sure that these sheets are the ones that I was looking at.”
Keith paled and looked down at the ground.
“No, uh mine’s dead too.”
Lance felt anger slightly rising.
“Keith, I know it isn’t dead because you were using my charger all night. That is why mine is dead.”
Keith was a terrible liar, they both knew this, especially because he always never had the ability to make eye contact when he was lying.
“No, mine wasn’t plugged in. It never charged. Just use yours.” Keith pushed.
“I know you are lying.” Lance narrowed his eyes. “Why are you hiding your phone? What are you keeping secret?”
“Nothing just- hold on.” Keith reached into his pocket to retrieve his phone and it took him quite a bit of time closing out of whatever he had on his phone. “Let me just check the skew myself.”
Lance frowned. “You’ve been very suspicious lately. What are you hiding?”
Keith blushed, “Lance, I’m not hiding anything, please just drop it. Now hurry up, my phone is going to die.”
Keith still wasn’t making eye contact. Lance felt sick to his stomach.
3.
The next indication that something was not right was when Lance had said that he wanted to run into the fancy soap store. Keith always hated it there because he claimed that the smells were too overwhelming. Lance could never get enough of all the smells and loved trying all of the products.
Keith had volunteered to wait by the usual bench for Lance to visit the store. Lance had just enough saved up to get the new limited edition mint body wash and he was definitely going to purchase it.
When Lance had grabbed the body wash and made his way back to their usual meeting spot he could see that Keith was on his phone pacing a bit, facing away from him.
“Shiro, I can’t get enough. She is the cutest thing I have ever fucking seen.”
She? Since when did Keith ever talk about girls? When would he ever admit to one being cute? Lance had always known Keith to be gay, what was happening?
“I know, I just want her so bad. Maybe to hug at night?”
Lance was completely confused. Who the fuck did Keith want to hold at night? When the fuck was Keith ever the big spoon unless Lance was going through something and needed some extra love and reassurance.
Was she who he was texting all this time? Who is she?
Keith turned around and jolted when he saw Lance, eyes wide. “Gotta go, Shiro.”
Lance frowned. “I thought you said your phone was dead.”
“Well, it is dying?”
“Keith, you are starting to make me really mad right now.”
“I swear it is nothing, I was just talking to Shiro.” Keith still looked like he was ready to bolt away from the conversation.
“Who is ‘she,’ Keith? Who were you talking about? What girl are you interested in? I didn’t think you were interested in girls ever anyway?” Lance was trying to keep his cool but he was getting increasingly upset.
“I’m not into girls. And I don’t know what you heard there is no girl.”
“There you go again, I feel like you are gaslighting me! First the phone yesterday then this morning and now! Telling me I’m imagining things. Are you cheating on me Keith?!”
“What?” Keith looked completely confused. “No!” he then shouted after his face turned mad.
Lance looked around and noticed that they were gaining attention from other mall goers.
“Let’s get Veronica to pick us up. We need to talk.” Lance could feel his icy words and he could tell that they were worrying Keith.
Good, Lance thought. He should be worried.
4.
The drive back to the house was very terse and quiet. Keith and Lance were in the backseat of the car while Veronica drove with her big bulldog, Chuleta, in the passenger seat. They were a block away from Keith’s house. Lance had decided to go there because he did not want his entire family sticking their nose into his and Keith’s relationship and he knew that Shiro was at work.
Keith’s phone was constantly vibrating indicating that he was getting numerous notifications. Keith never got notifications unless it was from Shiro or Lance. He had no social media to get notifications since he said he didn’t believe in that stuff. Who the fuck was texting him so much?
Keith turned his screen on and Lance could see the notifications.
“Instagram?! Since when do you have Instagram?!” Everyone in the car had flinched at Lance’s yelling.
“I don’t-”
“Keith don’t you dare lie to me! I saw it right on your phone! What are you hiding?!”
“It’s nothing I just-”
“I can’t with you. Why can’t you tell me the truth?! I have been trying to get you to use social media for years yet some girl comes along and you use it for her?!”
“What? No, Lance I-”
They pulled up to Keith’s house and Lance quickly got out, cutting Keith off. He made his way into the house after inputting the memorized code in the electronic lock and slammed the door behind him, quickly running to Keith’s room to try to find something. Something else to confront Keith over because his heart was breaking.
5.
Lance doesn’t know how long he spent in Keith’s room waiting for him. He sat on the bed after tearing apart Keith’s room searching for something. He knew that this was serious and that this was potentially a relationship ending argument. This was breaking him apart.
Keith still had not entered the room. Probably trying to figure out what he could try to gaslight Lance with next.
Lance thought that everything was fine between the two of them. Keith had always assured him that his insecurity was always false and Lance had never had insecurity over the exclusiveness of their relationship.
It felt like he was in a nightmare.
Lance heard a blip from a message incoming on Keith’s laptop that must have been connected to his phone.
What he saw turned his blood cold.
You need to tell Lance about Moo Deng.
Lance shot up off the bed and stormed out into the living room where Keith was sitting on the couch on his phone.
Lance didn’t give him a chance to speak and shouted, “Who is Moo Deng? Is she the girl you were talking about?!”
Keith gave him a funny look. Then smiled, which only made Lance angrier.
“Why are you smiling?!”
Keith laughed then sighed. “I don’t want you to judge me…please don’t judge me.”
Lance was losing it. “What? For cheating on me?!”
Keith laughed and said, “No. You don’t understand.” Before Lance could yell at him Keith had given Lance his phone.
+1
“What the fuck am I looking at?” Lance asked. Completely thrown off by the fact that Keith had decided to show him a picture of a baby hippo.
Keith chuckled. “That’s Moo Deng.”
That took the fire out of Lance and he crumpled onto the couch with the phone still in his hand. “What?”
Keith sighed and blushed. “I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you would make fun of me for being soft.”
“Keith, I have no clue what is going on. Why would I ever make fun of you?”
“I um- I like hippos.”
“What?”
“I like hippos.” Keith said while he blushed.
Lance felt like he was being pranked.
“You like hippos?”
Keith nodded, still blushing, “A lot. The only person who really knows about it is Shiro. Moo Deng is a baby pygmy hippo that was born in Thailand and she is really cute. They had a naming contest and she was called Moo Deng because it translates to ‘bouncy pork’ which is very fitting.”
“This picture is on Instagram. Are you telling me you got a social media account because of a hippo?”
“A baby hippo. She’s really feisty and the zookeepers put her on social media.” Keith then shuffled through the pictures before landing on a picture. “See, she bit the zookeeper's leg here and it's really cute.”
Lance burst out in a fit of laughter.
“I knew you would laugh…” Keith said dejectedly.
Lance knew he had to reassure Keith but he could not stop laughing. He continued to laugh until his stomach was sore.
“No- no, you idiot. I’m not laughing because you like hippos.” Lance said through a fit of giggles.
“I’m laughing because I thought you were cheating but it was a hippo this whole time?” Lance still laughed hard. Keith smiled and laughed a bit too.
“Keith the amount of shit you put me through the past 24 hours….was for a hippo.”
“Pygmy hippo.” Keith corrected.
“What was the deal of wanting to sleep with ‘her’?”
“Oh, there is a plush that I really want and it helps raise money for the zoo.”
Lance continued to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. “Ok, tell me all about this pygmy hippo.”