#keitorweek2018

—

lotor joins the fencing club on a whim. he hears about it from a senior, and remembering how his father once sneered at it (“a gentlemanly sport,” he had snorted, “pah! a waste of time, that’s what it is”), impulsively grabbed a pen and printed his name on the signup list. it’s a tad immature of him, he supposes, to join a club just to spite his father, but it’s the only thing he can do to rebel, and he’ll be damned if he didn’t take it.

his father — he hasn’t called him that in years — zarkon is a much more fitting name for the man who had abandoned his family in his quest for power. well, lotor supposes, he got what he wanted in the end. galra corporation currently stands at the top of the industry, with their revolutionary technology becoming an essential part of many everyday lives.

as far as he could remember, lotor had spent his entire childhood preparing for the sincline entrance exams. many a night had been spent poring over textbooks several grades higher than him, solving equations no middle schooler should have been able to solve. it was a task he tackled with great pride, striving for approval from a father who never looked at him and a mother who cared about her research more than her son.

he would soon come to realise that his efforts would be in vain. for all the times he topped his cohort, his father had just snorted derisively and told him to “do better”, and his mother barely spared his schoolwork a glance before returning to the labs.

he gets into sincline anyway, even managing to net himself a scholarship, although the satisfaction from having made it through the entrance exams was significantly diminished by the absence of both of his parents during his graduation ceremony. he considers that one of his better life decisions — if it wasn’t for sincline, he never would’ve met zethrid, narti, ezor or acxa.

sincline academy, to put it simply, was for the best of the best the country had to offer. many of its students came from society’s cream of the crop. the children of ceos, politicians, government workers, professors… you name it.

contrary to popular belief, sincline scholarship holders were actually frowned upon for “accepting the government’s charity”. it wasn’t just the students — even the professors showed their preferences by turning a blind eye to any heckling that occurred because of a student’s scholarship status. it was only natural that he would gravitate towards the four other scholarship holders.

(he’d given up so many things in his journey to sincline, but ended up gaining a great many more.)

fencing was cathartic. lotor would often lose himself in it, hours of rigorous training making him forget about the empty house that usually awaited him, or the stony silence during the evenings his parents were actually home. in a twisted way, he supposes, it suits their dysfunctional sham of a family.

they declare him the top fencer in sincline. he doesn’t bother telling zarkon (hasn’t needed that man’s acknowledgement for a while, now).

—

ezor is the one who suggests that he take a trip to the next town, practically dangling the bait right in front of him with her casual remark of “there’s a really good fencer there! they call him the ‘champion’ or something.”

lotor has never been one to back down from a challenge.

unfortunately for him, ezor’s information proves to be a tad outdated. he realises, with disappointment, that the ‘champion’ was none other than takashi shirogane — one of the pilots who had been reported missing in action during a mission to kerberos. still, he figures he might as well make the most out of his time. he would get some training — at the very least, he thinks as he readies his gear in preparation for the tournament.

he, quite literally, gets more than what he signed up for.

throughout the course of his fencing career, lotor has seen many kinds of people. there were the ones who liked to talk big, the ones who thought fencing was merely trying to stab your opponent as fast as possible, and the rare opponents he genuinely respected. sincline fencers, given the elitist mindset of its student body, tended to make up the former. fencing in this small town, where no one knew him or who his father was, is like a breath of fresh air. he supposes he’ll have to thank ezor for this later, maybe buy her one of those gaudily decorated lattes he’d seen her eyeing the other day.

his next opponent is his last one, and lotor can immediately tell he’s the real deal. he practically radiates an aura of quiet confidence, as they size each other up from their respective starting positions.

then, the match begins, and lotor loses himself in the promise of a good fight.

—

they tie, adrenaline still humming in his veins as they move to salute the other. lotor wants to reach out, offer a handshake, do something — anything — to find out more about this ‘keith’.   

then, ‘keith’ removes his headgear, revealing dark, messy hair and an exhilarated grin that, quite literally, knocks the breath out of lotor’s lungs. he’d heard that his opponent was someone who had trained under the champion, but he hadn’t expected them to be someone around the same age as him. or for him to have eyes like… that. they were bright, brimming with leftover adrenaline and something else that draws lotor in like a moth to a flame.

scratch that, he decides, he’s buying ezor a week’s worth of those lattes.

dresses // sun shy you and me are company enough to make the sun explode

flor // where do you go i can see what you love, who you are i can see how you run for the stars all that energy that’s flowing through your veins is it your blood to blame?

shapes and colours // summer soul i’m so lonely i’ve been wearing a sad shade of blue but if i was your only all i’d ever wear would be you

the mowgli’s // say it, just say it been talking about it until i killed my voice but it didn't change a single thing it's that simple truth that always means the most to you and you know it, so just say it

petit biscuit // sunset lover

banners // someone to you the kingdom come, the rise, the fall the setting sun above it all i just wanna be somebody to you

jon bellion // guillotine the secrets you tell me, i’ll take to my grave there's bones in my closet, but you hang stuff anyway

vesperteen // it will never be enough i'm racing and running and chasing a pot of gold but i know it'll never be enough

coin // run something tells me that you're never gonna stop 'til you get what you want don't you tell me that you never even thought maybe we could run

smallpools // killer whales i keep my chest locked tight till the minute you come around how did you reach my soul? i called to say can you live with my mistakes?

—

if one was to ask keith about his pointed avoidance of the sports center, he would probably deny it — summer break meant that he had nothing better to do than take the longer routes to the grocery store and the library.

okay, so maybe he was avoiding the sports center (and consequently lowering his chances of bumping into lotor). keith sighs — lance made the whole ‘talking to people thing’ sound easier than it actually is. he knows next to nothing about lotor, other than the fact that his fencing skill is on par with, or even better than — much as he wants to deny this, his own.

—

at allura’s insistence (and repeated threats to come over and fix his mess of a life), keith goes grocery shopping. while he sees no problem with living on cup noodles and snacks, she thinks otherwise, and hell hath no fury than an allura on the warpath. shuddering as he remembers the last time lance tried to ignore one of her ‘nutrition talks’, he hauls himself out of bed and grabs his keys and wallet — the smiley face she had responded to him with was becoming increasingly ominous the more he waited.

as if on autopilot, he takes the long route — through the park and past the clinic. he knows the town like the back of his hand, so avoiding a particular area posed little inconvenience to him (aside from the nagging voice at the back of his mind that tells him to stop running away from his problems).

he nods a greeting to the few townspeople that call out to him as he walks into the blissfully air-conditioned store, pausing as he takes in a rack of ready-to-eat pasta. a small, devious smile creeps up his face. allura may have banned him from buying any form of instant noodles, but she definitely didn’t say anything about microwavable food. the smile turns into a full-blown grin as he proceeds to cram a week’s worth of various ready-to-eat carbs into his basket. keith — 1, allura — 0.

—

grocery shopping done, he hurries out of the store — the weather forecast mentioned that it would rain in the afternoon. keith clearly did not think this through, though in his defence — the threat of an angry allura tended to make people forget about inconsequential things like the weather.

he figures he’d take the short route home, after all, what are the chances that lotor would show up—

“fancy seeing you here,” a familiar voice comments.

keith looks up, and almost drops his lasagna. he only saw it once, but he’d recognise that long, silver hair anywhere. lady luck really liked messing with him, didn’t she? he wracks his brain for an appropriate response, but settles for the awkward ‘hello’ that makes its way out of his mouth. it is soon accompanied by a muffled curse as the first of many raindrops begin to fall. he doesn’t need to look to know that his umbrella is sitting… somewhere, most definitely not here.

within a few minutes, what seemed to be a light shower turns into a heavy downpour, and keith finds himself dashing towards a nearby park shelter. lotor, for the better part, doesn’t look any worse for wear as he falls into step behind him.

surprisingly, it is keith who breaks the silence first.

“where did you learn to fence?” he blurts out, before realising that it was probably not an appropriate thing to ask someone he barely knows, but he’s curious and keith was never one to doubt his instincts — especially not when they’re screaming at him to ask him first and worry later.

lotor blinks a few times, looking surprised (but not angry or uncomfortable, he notes), as if he had never been asked that in his entire life. it’s a good expression on him, keith muses idly, it makes him look a lot less intimidating and a lot more approachable. however, within seconds, he composes himself with an ease that almost makes keith jealous.

“sincline academy,” is his casual reply, and keith has to stop himself from visibly blanching. he’s heard many things about the prestigious sincline private academy —  how it was an elite school for the best of the best, how prospective students spent almost a year preparing for their entrance exams, and how anyone who got into the school was almost always guaranteed a successful career when they left it.

“isn’t that up north? what are you doing h—” he cuts himself off, “i mean, why are you… uh,” he gestures vaguely, “aren’t there better tournaments out there? most of the ones here don’t count towards official rankings.”

“a little bird told me that there was someone here with reputable skill,” lotor’s smile is sharp — very much like that of a hunter — and if keith looks close enough, he can still see the spark of excitement from their previous match still burning bright within them, “and well, what can i say? i do love a good challenge.”

“a good challenge, was it?” he shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be plunging headfirst into whatever this is, shouldn’t be doing anything other than look for shiro. there is still time to fix this, to take it back or laugh it off, but keith does neither of those things — instead opting to meet lotor’s searching gaze head on.

somewhere in his mind, he can hear lance’s voice lecturing him on how Not to talk to someone for the first time, but he can’t bring himself to care — especially not when lotor’s grin turns positively feral. it sends a shiver of anticipation down his spine.

“yes, very much so.”

they stand like that for a while, the irregular rhythm of raindrops pelting the shelter’s roof fading into the background as they size each other up like lions stalking their prey. keith remembers the lithe, quick movements that had so deftly evaded his frenzy of strikes. more, he thinks, i want to see more.

“i don’t suppose you’d fancy another round sometime soon?” unsurprisingly, lotor is the one who breaks the silence. keith finds himself agreeing, and before he knows it, the skies are clear and he is leaving the park with one more number in his phone.

he thinks about the ‘lotor’ sandwiched between lance and matt in his contact list, and doesn’t bother to hide the excitement that spreads across his face.

summer break was about to get a lot more interesting.