Keith was carefully measuring out the right amount of pearl dust for his potion. Right now it was a little murky and not the pearly sheen it was supposed to be. Perhaps more pearl dust would change that. It couldn’t be too much or it would not react well with the moonstone. It had to be exact or the potion would just blow up or melt the floor or something.

“Keith!”

“Gah!” His hand jerked and tipped a handful of pearl dust into his potion. He held his breath, heart slow in his chest, as the potion bubbled in his cauldron. It didn’t have the pearly sheen or the swirls but looked more like a fizzing soup of soap bubbles.

He whipped his head around to glare at Lance, who slowly backed away, hands up, and a wry grin that definitely made it look like he did it on purpose. “Sorry, my bad.”

Rolling his eyes he picked up his cauldron to dump it and start again. “What do you want, Lance?”

He sidled up next to him planting himself down on the table to watch him gather new materials. “Do I have to want something?”

“With you? Probably.”

He brought his hand up to his chest, gasping in in mock-horror. “I am insulted. Insulted I say! You just weren’t there for dinner so I thought I’d check up on you.”

Keith felt heat crawl across his cheeks. “Oh.”

“I actually found you pretty easily, did you even shower after quidditch practice? You smell like a broom,” Lance added with a teasing grin.

The heat in his face turned up to an eleven. He stabbed him in the arm with the leftover thorns on a rose stem. “Sod off, Lance!”

Laughing, Lance batted him away while settling in next to him, declaring that he would watch him work to procrastinate on transfiguration homework.

Lance stayed with him for the next few hours while he worked on his new potion, occasionally passing him an ingredient between stories. He cracked jokes and rambled on about his day, telling him about how Hunk’s cuisine spell exploded or how Pidge accidentally half transformed Rover into a flying goblet.

Keith chuckled as Lance colored the story with wild hand gestures and dramatic voice retellings, only seeming to become more animated the more Keith laughed.

Keith didn’t dare look over at the Hufflepuff doing his best to get his attention. The logic in his mind telling him that the less attention he gave him the more he would try to earn it.

He ignored the soft, fuzzy feelings in his chest, floating around like dandelion puffs. The soft electric buzzing under his skin. The own thrill of excitement that he gets when Lance’s attention is for him and only him. It makes him feel almost greedy, wanting it all for himself, but he can’t exactly feel sorry for it either.

“Why are you even making a potion at seven at night anyway, mullet?”

Keith focused on measuring the right amount of pearl dust and counted three, four, five rose thorns to toss in. “Extra credit for potions. Professor Honerva said that I wouldn’t pass unless I make a perfect advanced potion.”

“Damn, that sucks.” Lance edged closer, craning his neck to peer inside of the cauldron, the clean scent of his facial wash drifting over. “Which one? It looks like swamp water.”

Pushing him away and straightening his hair Keith dumped in a bit of powdered moonstone, lightening the potion’s color into a deep purple. “That’s because it’s not done yet, dumbass.” He pointed to a little vial of clear liquid. “Hand me the peppermint oil.”

Lance slid it over, the vial almost spilling over the edge before Keith caught it. He spared him a single glare, to which Lance only responded with an innocent grin, and added a couple of drops of the pearly liquid.

Three drops hit the surface, the mother-of-pearl sheen spreading across the potion in ripples and swirls rising from the surface.

Keith paused for a second, worried that he made a mistake. It didn’t smell like anything at first. Only the clean smell of freshly washed laundry and soap before it gave way to the scent of earth and the air right before a thunderstorm. Threaded through the smells swirling around his head was the smell of soap. Soap that reminded him a little too much of the boy standing next to him. He purposely took a step back from the potion.

“It’s pretty, I’ll give you that.” Lance drifted closer to the gold cauldron, head dipping closer to the potion. ”What potion is it?”

Keith furrowed his brows. Lance might not have been that interested in potions but when he smelled the potion he should’ve known it was amortentia. Did he mess up the potion?

“Do you not smell anything?”

“Not… exactly?” Lance inhaled deeply over the cauldron, unknowingly drawing himself closer. Keith gently took his shoulder and drew him back. “It just smells like broom polish but I assumed that was you. Hmmm, wait, oh! Sea salt? A bonfire?” He looked over at him with questioning eyes, silently asking if he was right.

Keith could only shrug, stiff and awkward. “It’s supposed to be amortentia. So if those are the things you like I guess it worked?”

Lance jerked, almost knocking over the peppermint oil. Red crept up his neck as he tried to right the ingredients on the table but only knocking more over. Flapping his hands he leaped back from the table, hands firmly at his sides. “A-amortentia?”

“Yes?”

Lance stood there, stiff as a board, watching Keith with a focus that made him shift and want to look away. But he didn’t, Keith stared right back at Lance, face slowly warming under his scrutiny.

Lance must have not found what he was looking for, shoulders relaxing but his eyes seemed almost simultaneously disappointed and relieved. The red slowly receded from his face as he stepped over and swung an arm around Keith’s shoulder. “I think you nailed it, buddy. It’s definitely amortentia.” He tossed a cover over Keith’s potion and started to lead Keith out of the classroom. “Let’s sneak into the kitchens and get dinner because I highly doubt your Gryffindor ass ate anything if you didn’t even shower.”