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“Matt, I think I can safely say that this is the dumbest idea you’ve ever come up with, including the time you thought you could put marshmallows in your hot chocolate

before

microwaving it and it exploded.”  Katie said flatly.

“Come on, Katie, please?”  Matt clasped his hands together in front of him.  “I will pay you in jars of peanut butter.  A lifetime supply of cookies.  A trophy that says ‘best sibling in the world’.  Whatever you want.”

“It’s not going to

work

, Matt.”  Katie sighed.  “Everyone’s going to know I’m not you.”

“But that’s the thing, I don’t know anyone at that school yet.”  Matt said.  “No one knows me, so no one will know that you’re not me.”

“And what happens when we switch back after two weeks and you’re suddenly different?”  Katie asked.

“...We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”  Matt said after a few moments.  Katie gave him a withering look.  He flapped a hand at her.  “We have two whole weeks to come up with a reason.  It’s fine.  It’ll work out.”

Katie let out a heavy sigh.  “Fine.”  She arched an eyebrow up at the way Matt threw his hands in the air with a victorious

whoop!

“Your alien nerd camp had better be damn worth it.”

“It’s not an alien nerd camp, it’s a real excavation dig led by professional archeologists at Durrington Walls.”  Matt said, eyes bright.  Katie looked at him blankly.  He frowned.  “A huge Neolithic settlement?  Was briefly the largest settlement in Neolithic northern Europe?  The one that’s

really close

to Stonehenge?”

“Which you think was built by aliens.”  Katie reminded him.

“I said it was

one

theory and technically nothing has been able to conclusively rule it out.”  Matt corrected.  “And yes, it will be damn worth it.”

Katie sighed and crossed her arms.  “Remind me again why Mom and Dad didn’t want you to apply?”

“Their only reason was that the program started the same week as school, so I would be getting to Altea U two weeks after term had started.”  Matt spread his hands.  “But come on, is participation in an academically-enriching course in the field of work I want to be in really worth less than a couple of absences?”

“In what world is skipping class every day for two weeks equivalent to ‘a couple’ of absences?”  Katie asked.

“Tomato, tomahto,” Matt said.  “Semantics.”

“Incorrect usage of linguistics terms,” Katie snorted and turned back to her laptop.

“I’m an anthropology major, not a linguistics major.”  Matt said.

“Huh, and here I was thinking you were just majoring in parental deceit.”  Katie said.

“Rude.”  Matt poked her cheek.  She batted his hand away.

“Anyway, that brings up another issue.” She looked up at him.  “I’m a senior in high school.  How am I going to get through your college-level classes?”

“I’m mostly taking gen-eds the first semester, and you’re the smartest person I know,” Matt said.  “You can handle it.  Besides, I doubt much will happen in the first couple of weeks.  Just show up, collect the syllabuses, and take some notes for me.  If you need help, you can always ask Shiro.”

Katie’s fingers stilled over her keyboard.  “Who?”

“My roommate.”  Matt said.

“You have a

roommate

?”  Katie asked.

Matt blinked.  “Yeah?”

“Matt!”

“What?”

“Do I

look

like you?”  Katie asked, gesturing to herself.

“Pretty much, yeah.”  Matt said, not getting it.

“

Without

the clothes?”  Katie pressed.

Matt made a face.  “Didn’t really want to picture that.”

“Exactly.”  Katie looked at him pointedly.  “It doesn’t matter if I wear my binder and layer up my clothes to hide my figure during the day, I’m pretty sure your roommate is going to notice if his ‘male’ roommate has

boobs

.”

“So don’t walk around the room naked,” Matt said, looking confused.  “Is that really so hard?”

“That’s not the point.”  Katie rubbed her hands over her face in exasperation.  “Somehow or other, he’s going to notice something.  I can’t be a boy every second of the day for two weeks.”

“But you’re genderfluid,” Matt said.  “Can’t you just… fluid your way over to that side of the spectrum for a while?”  He made a flowing gesture with his hands.

“That’s not how it works, you ding-dong!”  Katie flicked her eraser at him.

Matt sighed heavily.  “Just… please do this for me, Katie?  Please?”

“I already said I would.”  Katie crossed her arms.  “But this is still the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard of.  You had better bring me back a rock from Stonehenge.”

“It’s a national monument, I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.”

“Yeah, well, so is identity theft and impersonation, but we’re not letting that stop us.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

A couple of weeks later, Katie told her parents she was going to stay at a friend’s lake-house for two weeks before her senior year of high school started.  The friend in question was one that Katie trusted enough to confide in (at least the bare details of the plan; essentially that she was covering for Matt with something), and she knew she would cover for her if her parents called to check in.  After all, this particular friend regularly snuck drinks out of her own parents’ liquor cabinet, which Katie knew about, and that turned out to be a nice little piece of blackmail.

Katie “offered” to help Matt move into his dorm that weekend before “leaving for the lake-house” with the excuse that they both needed the car.  In actuality, Katie went to the airport with Matt, dropped him off, and then drove straight to his college.  While she was stopped for gas, she checked her phone and saw she had a new message.

Unknown Number:  Hey, I’m going to buy the microwave off a friend.  It’ll be ten bucks each.  That okay?

Wondering why this person needed validation from a stranger in order to purchase a microwave, Katie sent back a very articulate “

who is this?

”  She went inside to pay for the gas, then checked her phone again.

Unknown Number:  Shiro.  Your roommate.  You said you got a new phone, and this is the new number you sent me.  This is Matt, right?

Ah.  Matt must have given him her number.

And so it begins…

Katie thought to herself as she typed out a response.

Katie: Oh, yeah, sorry about that.  Yeah, this is Matt.

She added the unknown number to her contacts list under the name Shiro.  It occurred to her that she didn’t even know the name of this guy she was going to have to be living with for two weeks.  ‘Shiro’ didn’t exactly sound like a first name.  It would probably be weird to ask him, though, especially if he had already told Matt his name.  She would just have to text Matt and ask him.

By the time she had finished adding him to her contacts, Shiro had sent another message.

Shiro:  So does the microwave thing sound good?  I know we decided to rent from the school earlier, but this will actually be cheaper.

Katie: Sounds good

. Matt would just have to owe her ten dollars when he got back.

An hour and a half later, Katie was pulling into the crowded parking lot of Kerberos Hall, Matt’s dorm building.  Haggered-looking parents and frazzled-looking freshmen were running back and forth from the parking lot to the building, carrying suitcases, boxes, and stacks of heavy textbooks.  Katie got out of the car and shouldered her backpack as she walked over to a table with a big sign on the front that read ‘freshmen check-in’.  A pretty lady with dark skin and silver hair pinned up in a bun smiled at her when she approached.

“Hi, um, I’m Matthew Holt.  Kerberos Hall, room 336.”  Katie said.

“Hello, and welcome to Altea University.”  The woman smiled.  “Can I see your student ID?”

“Uh.” Katie belatedly realized Matt hadn’t given her any of his IDs.  She should have at least asked to borrow his driver’s license, since he wouldn’t be able to drive in England anyway.  “I, um, I have my student ID number.”  That, at least, he had given her.

“That’s good, but I’m afraid I need to scan your student ID and add it to our database so you can get into the building this semester.”  The woman said.  “You can tell your number to the people at the registrar’s office and they can print you an ID card.”

“O-okay.”  Not knowing what else she could do, she headed in the direction the woman had pointed her in.  Matt would just have to deal with having Katie’s face on his ID card for the semester.  Unless he conveniently “lost” it and would need to get a new one made, which hopefully would have a new picture on it.

At the registrar’s office, Katie felt jumpy and on-edge as she handed over Matt’s registration documents to an indifferent-looking staff member.  She could feel herself sweating as the bored, middle-aged woman entered the information into the computer, as though she was afraid she would suddenly jump up, declare her an imposter, and blow the whole operation.  Luckily, though, the only thing she seemed to care about was getting Katie in and out of there so she could go back to her crossword puzzle, so Katie was smiling tightly for the camera and handing over five dollars in exchange for the ID card in no time.

Now officially registered at Altea U as Matthew Holt, Katie headed back to the dorm building and checked in again.  The woman from before, who introduced herself as Allura, checked her in and gave her the welcome to campus booklet, a packet of dorm policies, and a map of campus, along with a key on a blue lanyard.  Stuffing all the papers into her backpack, Katie went back to the car and got Matt’s large duffle bag and her own smaller duffle bag out of the trunk.  Matt had given her about half of the clothes he intended to take to college, and the other half were in his other suitcase with him in England, probably getting covered with dirt and dust from the excavation camp.  She would mostly be dressing in his shirts and pants to help look the part, but in her own duffle bag were some necessities for her, such as her toothbrush, underwear, sports bras, a couple of binders, socks and shoes (her feet were much smaller than Matt’s).

She sighed heavily as she settled the bags on her shoulders and locked the car.  Sure, she was genderfluid, but that didn’t mean it was going to be easy to pretend to be a guy every day for two weeks.  She usually hovered somewhere between sort-of-feminine and agender, and generally preferred to dress on the androgynous side.  But even on her more masculine days, she still didn’t put a lot of effort into pretending to pass as male.  She got the feeling this wouldn’t be as easy as Matt claimed it would be.

She hauled the bags up to the third floor and found room 336.  The RA had decorated everyone’s doors with nametags shaped like rocketships -- Matt was going to love that, when he got there -- and Katie learned that mystery Shiro’s name was actually Takashi.

Shiro must be his last name, or at least part of it

, she thought as they stuck the key in the door.  She took a deep breath, steeling herself before she opened the door.

Oh yeah, Katie realized.  This was going to be a

lot

harder than Matt said.

Shiro -- Matt’s tall,

very

attractive roommate -- turned around when he heard the door open.

“Oh, hey,” he smiled, and Katie hoped to every god in the known universe that she wasn’t blushing.  “You must be Matt.  I’m Shiro.”

“Yeah,” Katie said, stepping into the room and setting down the heavier bag before shaking his hand.  “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.”  Shiro was still smiling, but his eyes were carefully roaming over her face, studying it.

Katie arched an eyebrow at him.  “Something wrong with my face?”  She asked.

“No, no,” Shiro looked away and rubbed the back of his neck.  “You just look a little different than your facebook pictures.”

“Been facebook-stalking me?”  Katie asked.

Shiro tilted his head, looking confused.  “No?  We’re on the same Kerberos Hall roommate match-up page.  That’s how we ended up as roommates, remember?”

“Oh, right,” Katie laughed uneasily.  “Well, um, I need to get a haircut pretty soon.  It’s, uh, a little longer than when I took my profile picture.”  Her hair was short, but was just a bit longer than Matt’s.

“Yeah, that must be it.”  Shiro went back to setting textbooks on the shelf above his desk.  Katie set the other duffle bag on the bed and unzipped the one full of Matt’s clothes.  Goodness, there was no logical system to how he had organized these… and he called himself a scientist?

Katie started putting the clothes away in the closet, figuring that if Matt didn’t like the way she had organized it, he could just change it when he got there.  Serves him right, for making her room with his ridiculously-attractive roommate, whom she would now never have a chance with.  She shoved all his shoes underneath the bed and put her own in the bottom of the closet.  Hopefully no one would notice how ‘his’ feet magically grew three sizes two weeks from now.

Shiro cleared his throat.  “So, what classes are you taking?”

“Bio I, English for non-majors, Anthropology 113, Intro to physics, and Astronomy 1.”  She had memorized his class list in preparation for this.

“Oh, which Astronomy 1 class?”  Shiro asked.

“Uh,” she hadn’t memorized

that

much, but what freshman remembered all their classes without a schedule to look at for the first few weeks?  She dug the schedule out of her backpack.  “Monday-Wednesday-Friday, 10 to 10:50 with Dr. Coran.”

“That’s the one I’m in, too.”  Shiro said.  “Well, at least we’ll each know someone in the class.”

“Yeah,” Katie didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, in this situation.

“Hey, it’s about dinner time.”  Shiro said, checking his watch.  “Want to get lost together trying to find the dining hall?”

“Oh,” Katie thought quickly.  “I, uh, already ate on the road a while ago.  I think I’ll just work on unpacking.  But thanks for the invite.”

“Oh, okay.”  Shiro sounded slightly disappointed.  He cleared his throat again, grabbed his phone and keys from where they sat on his desk, and headed for the door.  “Well, have fun unpacking.”

“Thanks.  Have a nice dinner.”  Katie grimaced internally as the door closed behind him; could that have been any more awkward?  She dug her phone out of her pocket and texted Matt.

Katie: I hate you.  You didn’t mention your roommate was hot.

She tossed her phone on the bed and unzipped her own duffle bag, hiding her necessities in the bottom drawer.  Her phone let out a

ding

behind her.

Matt: Because I didn’t think he was!

Katie frowned and tapped out a response.

Katie:  Even as a straight man, you should at least be able to appreciate his aesthetics.  And aren’t you supposed to be on an airplane right now?

Matt:  We’re delayed.  Luggage cart crashed on the tarmac.

Katie:  The aliens will have to wait, then

Matt:  They’re not going to be there /now/.  I missed them by a couple millennia (T.T)

Katie:  You owe me $10 for a microwave and $5 for a student ID, by the way

.

Matt:  Alright, alright, just make a tab for me and I’ll pay you when I get back.

Katie:  Have a safe flight, and tell the aliens I say hi

~~~~~

When Shiro came back from the dining hall, Katie deflected his offer to hang out by using the excuse that she needed to go to the bookstore.  Again, he looked a bit disappointed, but helpfully told her that the used bookstore across the street from the student center stocked the same books as the university bookstore, but for cheaper.

While she was out, she got dinner at one of the dining halls (she had lied to Shiro, before, and was starving by the time she had finished unpacking).  She tucked herself in a back corner of the dining hall and cracked open her newly-bought (well, newly-used bought) anthropology book, since she knew nothing about anthropology other than whatever Matt told her about (which, admittedly, she sometimes tuned out during).

She found herself staring in a dazed way at a picture of the pyramids on page two of the introduction for several minutes, instead thinking up a strategy to deal with the situation she was in.  Okay, Shiro was hot, but she was pretty sure him being Matt’s roommate made him Off-Limits™, at least while she was pretending to be Matt.  If she flirted with him, he might develop a crush on

Matt

, and that would just be messy and a terrible situation for all involved.  But she couldn’t even use the excuse of “hey, I’m actually not my brother, I’m his sibling, surprise!  But I still like you” because he would probably feel betrayed and hate her for tricking him this whole time…

Katie sighed and set the book down, picking at the rest of her overcooked pasta and thin marinara sauce (only the finest for college dining halls).  Well, this really sucked.  She supposed the only thing she could do was to avoid him as much as possible, to try and stomp down on this crush she had on him.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Avoiding Shiro turned out to be surprisingly difficult.  Perhaps it wasn’t so surprising, since they did live together, but Katie hadn’t been prepared for just how difficult living with him would be.  She managed to wake up before him the next morning and escape to breakfast without having to talk to him, then hid out in the library for nearly the whole day, working on her own summer reading essay (in retrospect, leaving the assignment that was due by the start of the semester until two weeks before the due date, especially when those two weeks she was supposed to also take care of Matt’s coursework, was probably not the best idea), but the library closed at 9:30 during summer hours, which technically lasted up until the first day of classes, so she eventually had to go back to her dorm room.

She didn’t know what she was expecting when she opened the door to room 336, but Shiro with a towel around his waist and drying his hair with another towel was definitely not it.  Luckily, he was bent over and rubbing the towel over his head, so he didn’t notice her standing in the doorway openly staring at him for a moment, and she was able to shake herself off and look away by the time he straightened up again.  She kept her eyes trained on the carpet as she quickly walked over to her side of the room.

“Oh, hey.”  Shiro said.  “I thought you said you wouldn’t be back until late.  Something about an essay?”

“Apparently the library closes at 9:30 before classes start.”  Katie kept her back to him as she toed off her shoes and kicked them into the corner.  She was going to

murder

Matt for putting her through this torture.

Shiro was quiet for a few moments behind her, then she heard the rustle of fabric.  Oh god, was he getting dressed right behind her?  She didn’t think she would be able to handle that.  But then she heard the sound of the door opening and closing, and when she took a chance and looked over her shoulder, he was gone.  Huh, that was weird.  She shrugged and went back to taking her laptop out of her bag to keep working on her essay.

She didn’t look up again when she heard Shiro come back, but he passed by her field of vision anyway -- these rooms were pretty small -- and she saw that he was fully clothed in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt with a lion on it.

“So, is Astronomy your first class tomorrow?”  Shiro asked, hanging up his towel on a hook next to his closet.

“No, I have Bio at eight.”  Katie said, glancing at the schedule she had taped to the wall near the desk to confirm it.

“Ouch.  I’m really glad I didn’t end up with any eight AM classes this semester.”  Shiro said.  He paused, then cleared his throat.  “Then, um, are you planning on showering tonight?  Or just getting up really early?”

Katie’s fingers stilled over the keyboard.  Crap.  She hadn’t considered that.  “Um, I haven’t decided yet.”  She paused, then realized something.  “Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Shiro said casually.  “Was just… wondering if you were going to need to turn on the light early tomorrow morning.  I mean, you can, if you need it.  I was just wondering.”

Oh, okay.  It seemed a little odd that he would think of that.  “I’ll, um, try to be quiet, and keep the light off.”

“Alright.”  He paused, and Katie had just started typing again when he spoke up once more.  “What time do you usually go to bed?”

“Kind of a weird question to ask someone you just met, don’t you think?”  Katie said.

“We’re living in the same room, with one light.”  Shiro said.  “I’m just wondering when that light is going to be turned off.”

“Oh.  Yeah, I suppose that makes sense.”  Katie said.  “Well, I guess I’m more of a night owl.  Pretty hard to get up in the mornings.”

“And you thought an eight AM class would be a good idea, why?”  Shiro asked.

“No idea.”  Katie sighed.  She had no clue what Matt’s reasoning was when he signed up for the courses he had.  Maybe it had been the only one offered, or maybe he just hated himself.

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to shower at night, then?  You wouldn’t want to be late to your first class.”

Katie frowned and turned around to look at him.  “Why are you so interested in my showering habits?”  She asked.

Shiro’s ears turned pink and he looked away, shrugging.  “I just… noticed you didn’t do it last night, or this morning.”

Katie blinked.  He was right.  She had been avoiding that.

“And, for the record, I think the showers are pretty empty right now.”  Shiro said, turning away to straighten a few things on his desk.  “At least they were when I was in there.”

Katie turned back to her laptop and stared absently at the keyboard for a few minutes, mulling it over.  Yeah, she would have to shower eventually, she couldn’t go two weeks without showering.  And if the showers were empty now… “Just, out of curiosity, what’s the shower situation like here, anyway?”  She asked, trying to sound casual.  “Is it those big open communal showers like in movies?”  If that was the case, she might have to sneak down to one of the girls’ floors and hope that no one spotted her.

“Oh no, don’t worry, there are stalls with curtains.”  Shiro said quickly.

“Oh, good.”  That was a relief, at least.  “I mean, not that there’s a problem with the other kind.”  She tried to project as much self-assured, macho manly-man into her voice without sounding too obvious.

“No, no, I get it.  I think most people prefer some form of privacy, these days.”  Shiro said.

“Yeah, those kind of seem like a thing of the past.”  Thank goodness, too.  She gathered up her pajamas, towel, and Matt’s shower caddy.  She couldn’t think of an appropriate thing to say when departing for the shower, so she simply said nothing as she left, opting to not even look at Shiro as she did so.  She cringed as soon as she was out in the hallway; she was two-for-two on awkward conversations with Shiro, and if this was how the next couple of weeks were going to be, she was

not

looking forward to them.

Katie was relieved to find the bathrooms empty when she got there.  She paused at the line of sinks and pretended to check the non-existent stubble on her cheeks (guys did that, right?) while she snuck looks at the bathroom set-up; she still hadn’t been in here yet, preferring to use the one gender-neutral single-stall bathroom on the fifth floor of the library rather than taking a chance and walking in on a dick whipped out at a urinal.  The dorm bathroom was large, with three sections to it.  The section closest to the door was an open, square room lined with sinks and mirrors.  Some idiot had left a sink on, and Katie rolled her eyes as she walked over to turn off the thin stream of water.  Honestly, was it really that hard to just turn it all the way off?

Off to the left looked like another room with toilet stalls and urinals.  She could probably change her clothes in one of the toilet stalls, if she was sneaky about it.  Off to the right of the sinks was another room, this one lined with about six shower stalls covered by curtains that looked a bit too flimsy for her taste, given her situation.  It was better than nothing, though, and it would have to do.

She hung her pajamas up on the hook next to the shower in the furthest corner and hung her towel up over them, hiding them.  Checking one last time to make sure the bathroom was empty, she stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain shut.  She undressed quickly and reached one arm out of the shower to hang her clothes up under her towel, then turned on the water.  It was freezing cold and the consistency of hail, and she stifled a high-pitched yelp and scrambled to adjust the temperature.  When she had gotten the temperature to be more bearable, she showered quickly, hoping no one would come into the bathroom.  Matt’s shampoo actually smelled pretty nice, she thought, making a mental note of the brand.  She personally thought gendering inanimate objects like soap and clothing was a little bit silly; as long as someone liked it, they should be able to use or wear it.

Once she was done, she turned off the shower and reached out to grab her towel.  After drying off quickly, she got dressed, trying very hard not to bump into the flimsy curtain and jostle it open.  Her clothing choices were strategically planned out; boyshorts-style underwear (ha), a sports bra to help flatten her out, a t-shirt that was a bit big on Matt so it would definitely hide her form, and a pair of Matt’s flannel pajama pants.  Once she was dressed, she rubbed the towel over her hair, wrapped her hair in it and straightened up, then thought better of it and took it down.  Guys probably didn’t do that.  She sighed as she draped the towel over her arm and left the shower.  She didn’t like having to think about what if she was doing was a ‘guy thing’ or a ‘girl thing’.  She liked it much better when she could just say a big ‘screw you’ to gender norms and do whatever she wanted.

There was a big guy with dark hair and an orange headband tied around his head washing his hands at the sinks when she left the shower area, so she put her head down and quickly walked past him before he could say anything to her.  Back in the room, Shiro was lounging on his bed reading a book.

“Have a good shower?”  He asked, not taking his eyes off his book as he spoke.

She gave him a weird look as she hung up her towel and put the shower caddy on the shelf in the closet.  “You’re not very good at small talk, are you?”

He sighed.  “Not really.  Sorry.  I’ve never had a roommate before.”

She shrugged.  “I haven’t either, at least not in a long time.  I used to share a room with my b-- sister, with my sister, when we were really little.”  She corrected herself quickly.

“You have a sister?”  Shiro asked, looking up from his book.

“Yep.  She’s great, just the best”  Katie paused, then figured it was worth a shot to try.  “She’s also very single.”

Shiro gave her a weird look.  “Um.  Okay?”

Too sudden!  Abort mission, abort mission!

“So, uh, do you have any siblings?”  She asked, running a comb through her hair and glancing at him in the mirror.

“No.  I’m an only child.”  Shiro said.  “I have a cousin who’s the same age as me, though, and we’re pretty close.  He’s also going to this college too.  Oh, he’ll be in our astronomy class.”

“Nice.”  If he looked anything like Shiro, she was going to be screwed.  “Hey, we don’t have anything due for that class by the first day, right?”

“Nope.  Didn’t you get Dr. Coran’s email?”  Shiro said.

“Oh, I, uh, forgot to check my email.”  She made a mental note to ask Matt to give her his password for the next couple of weeks.  Or she could just hack into it; he used the same two passwords for everything.

“Well, you didn’t miss much.”  Shiro said.  “He just said to bring the textbook, something to take notes on, and ‘a mind as open as the Andromeda galaxy is wide’, in his words.”

“Sounds like a fun guy.”  Katie snorted.

“He seems interesting, at least.”  Shiro said.  “What made you want to take that class?”

“Uh,” Katie dropped the comb she was holding and used the few seconds it took to pick it up to think of an answer.  “I… like space…”  Matt liked space as a science, and alien theories were his self-described guilty pleasure, but she didn’t exactly know about either of those things to make up a better reason than that.

Shiro blinked, then chuckled.  “I’d say that’s a pretty good reason to take astronomy, yeah.”

“Yeah.”  Katie finished combing her hair and put the comb away.  “I don’t know much about it, though, so… Astronomy 1.”

“Good place to start.”  Shiro agreed.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

In retrospect, she probably should have changed her morning alarm to something a little more… gender-neutral.  As it was, Katie was woken up promptly at seven-thirty in the morning by AOA’s

Short Hair

blasting from her phone.  Nothing like a little girl-group K-pop to get you up in the mornings.

“Aurgh, shut up shut

up

…” she muttered, scrambling to turn off the alarm before it could wake up Shiro.  After hitting ‘dismiss’, she gripped her phone and lay perfectly still, listening carefully.  Across the room, Shiro let out a sleepy-sounding grunt and rolled over, then started snoring softly.  She slipped out of bed and glanced over at his side of the room on her way to the closet.  Uh oh, that was a mistake.  Shiro was on his side facing her, one arm dangling off the bed and the other curled around a pillow, and his face looked open and adorable as he slept.  She felt her ears heat up and firmly turned her back on him.  No, he was off-limits.

She grabbed her binder, a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a green flannel button-down and snuck off to the bathroom to change.  Luckily, no one else seemed to be awake this early, and she was able to change her clothes in a bathroom stall without anyone coming in and wondering what she was doing.  Back in the room, she shoved her pajamas in the bottom drawer, grabbed her backpack and a granola bar, and high-tailed it out of there.

Her first experience with a college class proved to be delightfully easy, although she could have done with a cup of coffee.  The professor began by saying “I know you’re all just taking this class because you have to -- some of you because the university requires it and this will be the only biology class you take, and some of you because you actually care about biology and will go on to take more specific and interest-oriented classes, and might I suggest Biology 2 with yours truly next semester, as it is the best class of those provided…”  He paused for a couple of the students to chuckle, then went on.  He talked about the syllabus and the university’s policies on absences and late work, apologized for the cost of the textbook, recommended that they rent the textbook for cheaper instead of buying from the university, had them all sign up for an online lab website (Katie registered using one of the two passwords she knew Matt used), and then ended class fifteen minutes early “because I have a doctoral degree and I can do that once in awhile if I feel like it.”

Katie used the extra time to head to the dining hall and beat the lines that were sure to form as soon as classes got out, since she hadn’t had breakfast yet and was in dire need of some coffee.  She hung out in the dining hall for the hour between classes, sipping her coffee and leisurely eating a bowl of Reese’s peanut butter puffs and a slice of apple pie (hey, who was she to judge if the dining service wanted to put out desert this early?) while she hacked into Matt’s email, downloaded all the syllabuses the professors had sent out, and checked her tumblr.  She went and found Matt’s blog and scrolled through some of the pictures he had posted, smiling fondly at his sunburn-reddened nose and wide-brimmed khaki hat, taking selfies with old, half-excavated stone houses in the background and pointing very excitedly at a large slab of rock standing upright in a field.  That last one was captioned

how did it get there?

followed by several alien emojis.  “Nerd…” she chuckled and sent him a message that she had checked his email for him and reminding him not to post any photos on facebook, where their parents could see.  She herself hacked into his facebook account (same two passwords for everything, when would he learn?) and posted a generic “first day of college!” status, just to keep their cover in case their parents checked it.  She also went over to his friends list and typed in Takashi Shiro.  One result came up -- Takashi Shirogane, friends since one month ago, no mutual friends -- and she may have spent a few minutes looking through his profile.  She told herself it was just because he and Matt had probably gotten to know each other at least a little, so of course she needed to do it.  There’s a difference between ‘facebook-stalking’ and ‘research’.

When it was about ten minutes to ten o’clock, she gathered up her things and headed back to the science building, this time going to the third floor.  She found the classroom set up in grouped tables rather than lecture hall style, and was about to take a seat in the back when she heard a voice call out “Matt, over here,”

She looked around and saw Shiro waving to her from a table near the front.  He was sitting with three other people, and there was an open seat next to him.  Resigning herself to the mental torture of having to sit next to a cute guy and not being able to do

anything

about it, she took the empty seat and set her backpack on the ground next to her.

“This is Matt, my roommate,” Shiro told the others.  “Matt, this is Keith, my cousin I mentioned, and Lance and Hunk.”

“Hey,” Katie lifted a hand in greeting.

“Hey, you live in Kerberos Hall, right?”  Hunk asked.  “I think I saw you in the bathroom last night.  Not that I was looking at people in the bathroom, that is, I just noticed you when you walked past.”

“Oh, yeah.”  Katie laughed nervously.  “Yep, that was me.”  She recognized the orange headband around his head.

“How was your first class?  Bio, wasn’t it?”  Shiro asked.

“Fine.  Surprisingly easy.”  Katie said.

“Man, I’m switching from Chem to Bio.”  Lance groaned.  “Dr. Haggar started us off with a pop quiz, like right off the bat!  And the points counted, too!  She’s a witch!”

“Don’t be rude.”  Keith elbowed him.

“Hey, at least I didn’t call her a bi--”

“Good morning, students!  Welcome to the wonderful world of astronomy!”  An orange-haired man with a moustache clapped his hands, getting their attention.  “Now, I hope you all liked who you decided to sit down with, because those will be your groups for the next couple of months!”

Some people groaned and others grinned at their friends.

“Now, let’s jump right into it, shall we?”  Dr. Coran picked up a stack of papers.  “If you haven’t already downloaded the syllabus, I’ll pass them out to anyone who needs one.  If you’ve already got one, please don’t take another; conservation of this planet is just as important as the study of other planets…”

This class turned out to not be as easy as the previous one.  After briefly going over the syllabus, he handed out an assignment page for their first group project.

“Each group will need to plan, program, design, and build a vessel that is capable of reaching at least twenty meters of altitude when launched.  You will have two weeks to plan and do test runs, and on the fourteenth, we’ll have a class-wide competition to see whose rocket can go the highest.  There’s a catch, though; you’ll have to assemble the rocket from scratch on that day, so you’d better practice in the coming two weeks!  Remember, this project isn’t just about astronomy, it’s also about teamwork and creating a cohesive work environment with your group members.”

“Um, professor, don’t you think this is a little… ambitious, for an entry-level course?”  One student asked, raising his hand.  “And it sounds more like a physics project than astronomy…”

“Ambition is the very essence of astronomy!  We certainly didn’t take a leisurely stroll out to the moon in 1969, you know.”  He put his hands on his hips.  “No, you lot are just beginning to take your first steps into the nebula of astronomic studies, so the sky's the limit for you!”

“Well that’s reassuring.”  Katie muttered, looking down at the assignment sheet.

“Now, discuss with your groups who will be in what positions, and if you have time after that, begin brainstorming ideas for your vessel.”  Coran clapped his hands.  “Begin!”

“Alright, so who is good with computers and stuff?”  Lance asked.

“I am,” Katie said.  Matt wasn’t, but the due date was her last day masquerading as Matt, so she figured she might as well do something she was good at, while she was here.

“You want to do data programing?”  Lance asked.

“Sounds good.”

“Alright,” he wrote ‘Matt’ in the blank provided.  “Hunk, you want to take engine design?”

“Yep,” he nodded.  “Unless someone else is an engineering major.”

“I’ll do external design, and-- no wait, I want test flight analyzer.”  Lance wrote his own name down.

“You’re just going to crash it.”  Keith said.  “You do design,

I’ll

take care of the test flights.”

“No way, mullet, I want the cool job.”  Lance said.

“Keith, if you do external design, you can make sure the rocket is built in a way that Lance can’t crash it.”  Shiro suggested.

“Hey!”

“Good point.”  Keith nodded.

“Why does everyone think I’m going to crash it?”  Lance asked.  “I’d be a great pilot!”

“You ran into a stop sign five minutes after you got your license.”  Keith said.  “You were barely out of the DMV’s parking lot.”

“That was

not my fault

and you know it.”  Lance huffed, then turned back to the sheet.  “So that leaves Shiro as the team leader.”

Shiro made a face.  “Don’t make me the leader; I’m only a level two adult.  Hunk can cook, he’s at least a level three adult.”

“Level two adult?”  Katie asked, smirking.

“Luckily there’s no cooking involved in this.”  Lance said, writing Shiro’s name down.  “You just have to compile all the reports we send you and turn them into one big lab report, and submit it to Coran.  And keep us on task and stuff.”

“Oh, by the way,” Coran got their attention again.  “Did I mention that this a model rocket project?  Only about this big,” he held his hands a couple of feet apart.  “Please don’t actually send any of your team members up in the rocket.  That might be a tad too advanced for you at the moment.  Maybe a project for next semester.”

“So I don’t get to actually fly it?”  Lance looked disappointed, but Hunk sighed with relief.

“And don’t forget to come up with a team name!”  Coran reminded them.

“Team name, got it.”  Lance turned to them, grinning.  “The space cases.”

“No.”  Several of them spoke up in unison.

Lance crossed his arms.  “You guys are no fun.  It should be a pun, at least.”

“It should not.”  Keith said.

“Team Rocket?”  Shiro suggested.

“Or Team Voltron.”  Lance added.  “We can even make up a cheer.  When I say Vol-, you say -tron, Vol-...”  He turned to Keith expectantly.

“Voltron?”  Keith arched an eyebrow.

“No, you’re supposed to say -tron.”  Lance told him.

“I got that.  I’m asking what Voltron means.”  Keith said.

“Some cartoon from the eighties,” Katie said.  “My dad used to watch it.”

“I guess Voltron does sound cooler than Team Rocket.  Or the space cases.”  Hunk said.

“So it’s settled.”  Lance wrote

Team Voltron

in big letters at the top of their group’s paper.

~~~~~

After Astronomy got out, Katie had to turn down an offer to get lunch with her new team and run clear to the other side of campus for intro to physics.  It turned out that Dr. Haggar taught both chemistry and physics classes, and Katie got the same joy of a pop quiz as Lance had.  She hoped Matt wouldn’t kill her for the low grade, but to be fair, she never taken a physics class before (she had one lined up for her senior year, but hadn’t started it yet) and thought she did pretty well guessing the answers on the quiz despite her lack of familiarity with the subject.

After that, she only had one more class, as the English for non-majors professor cancelled the first class and just sent them the syllabus along with a reminder to read chapters one through three for the next class.  The anthropology of human variation professor spent five minutes introducing the class and then the next forty-five minutes talking about the importance of milk.  Katie decided that college classes were a mixed bag compared to high school.

~~~~~

“Staying out again, Keith?”  Allura asked as he passed by the Arus Hall front desk.  “Tell Lance I say hi.”

“Yeah, will do.”  Keith paused, then looked back at her.  “Hey, Allura?  How would someone be able to live in Kerberos Hall?  With a male roommate?”

She thought about it.  “Well, Kerberos is the co-ed dorm on campus, but with a male roommate… I suppose if they were registered as male on their school paperwork, that would work.”

“What kind of stuff do you need to register?”  He asked.

“Things like high school transcripts, IRS forms, birth certificate or formal government documents…” she smiled sadly.  He sighed.

“Yeah.  Okay.”  He shouldered his backpack.  “See you later, Allura.”

“Night, Keith.”  She smiled at him.

He pushed open the door decorated with painted flowers and the words “Welcome to Arus Hall!!!” in pink across the glass.  Lance was waiting outside for him, leaning against the wall.

“Hey, ready?”  He asked, taking Keith’s hand.

“Yep.”  Keith threaded their fingers together as they headed across campus for Lance’s dorm.

“What’s up?”  Lance asked.

Keith shrugged.  “Just thinking about how Matt gets to live in Kerberos and I don’t.”

“What do you mean?”  Lance asked.

“You didn’t notice?”  Keith raised an eyebrow.  Lance blinked.

“Ohhh…” he thought about it, then turned to Keith again.  “Really?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

“Huh.”  Lance said thoughtfully.  “Well, I guess he must have his paperwork together, or whatever.”

“I would too, if I could.”  Keith muttered.  “If only my grandparents wouldn’t threaten to stop helping me pay for college, I could.”

“Hey, the important thing is that you’re still able to go here.”  Lance reminded him, squeezing his hand.  “And you know you’re always welcome in my and Hunk’s room.”

“Bet my roommate likes that.”  Keith sighed.

“She still giving you a hard time?”  Lance asked, worried.

“She’s graduated from name-calling to giving me the cold shoulder, so I’d say we’re getting along.”  Keith said flatly.

“You can tell Allura if she starts giving you shit again.”  Lance reminded him.  “She’s not allowed to call you anything derogatory.  It’s against the student code of conduct.”

“For now, she’s not calling me anything, since she’s not speaking to me at all.”  Keith said.  “Have to admit, that’s an improvement over the hissy fit she threw when we met.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Could you stop making orgasm noises while eating mac-and-cheese?”  Keith asked, looking unamused.

“Sorry,” Shiro didn’t look too apologetic as he scooped up another spoonful of gooey mac-and-cheese.  “It’s just so

good

…”

“Wow, I don’t care.”  Keith said tonelessly.

“I can confirm that it is the only food the dining service doesn’t make taste like crap.”  Hunk said, taking a sip of water.  “That, and those paninis from the cafe behind the library.”

Lance was frowning at his own plate, lost in thought.  Keith nudged his knee under the table with his own.  “What’s up?”

Lance looked up.  “If I drank a glass of milk and then made out with you, would you get sick?”

Keith stared at him, lost for words.  “What the fuck, Lance.”

“What?”  Lance spread his hands.  “It’s a legitimate question when you’re dating someone lactose intolerant!”

“Hey, isn’t that Matt?”  Hunk pointed toward the doors.  They looked over and saw a familiar auburn-haired person handing their student ID to the person at the register to swipe a meal in.  Hunk waved.  “Hey Matt!  Over here!”

~~~~~

Katie had just taken her ID back at the register when she heard a voice call out, but didn’t realize it was her they were speaking to until they called out again and she realized

oh right, I’m Matt, they’re talking to me…

She smiled and waved at her Astronomy project team before making her way over to them.  “Hey, you guys finishing up lunch?”

“No, we only just started a few minutes ago.”  Hunk said.  “Grab a plate and sit down.”

“Yeah!  Team bonding lunch!”  Lance declared.  Katie laughed and set her backpack on the empty seat between Shiro and Hunk.

“Alright, I’ll be right back.”  She waved at them and headed off to get some food.

~~~~~

Hunk peered at the backpack on the chair next to him, reaching out to pick up a keychain on one of the zippers.  It was a green circle with black monogrammed initials on it.  “KMH?”

“Maybe Matthew is his middle name?”  Shiro guessed.

“Or KMH was the initials of his birth name.”  Keith said quietly.

“Then why would he still have the keychain?”  Lance asked.

“Sentimental value?”  Hunk let the keychain fall against the backpack again.

“I didn’t keep anything with my deadname on it.”  Keith shrugged.  “Everyone’s different, though.”

They let the matter drop, and by the time Matt came back, they had moved on to a discussion about which Star Wars movie was the best.

~~~~~

“

The Empire Strikes Back

is clearly the most superior movie.”  Hunk was saying when Katie returned to the table.

“But

Return of the Jedi

has Ewoks.  They’re cute.”  Lance pointed out.

“You’re going to value cute fuzzy creatures over the epic cinematography, battles, and all-around better characterization?” Hunk asked.

“Hunk is right, Lance is wrong.”  Katie said, setting her plate down and moving her backpack onto the floor next to the chair.

“I still like Star Trek better, personally.”  Shiro said, taking another bite of his food.  Lance reached across the table and took the cookie off the corner of his plate.  “Hey!”

“No cookies for Trekkies.”  Lance said.  Katie reached across the table and plucked the cookie out of Lance’s hand, giving it back to Shiro.

“There’s nothing wrong with liking Star Trek

and

Star Wars.”  She said.  “They’re both good series.”

“Matt is officially my favorite member of Team Voltron.”  Shiro said, taking a bite out of his cookie before anyone else could steal it from him.  Katie felt her heart skip a beat and couldn’t help but grin at that.  Shiro noticed, and gave her a small smile in return.

“You know what we need to settle this?”  Lance pointed at all of them.  “Movie marathon.  Me and Hunk’s room.  Tonight.  It’s happening.”

“How are you going to movie marathon two series that have at least a dozen full-length films between them, plus a television series?”  Keith asked.

“We’ll watch one every night.  Start with the Original Trilogy and then vote from there.”  Lance shrugged.

“I think that sounds like a fun idea.”  Hunk said.  “And it’ll be great team bonding.”

“What is it with you guys and team bonding?”  Katie groaned.

“One, Coran said we were supposed to bond as a team--”

“I don’t think he meant this much.”  Katie said.  It was just a class project.

“And two,” Lance went on.  “This is college!  We’re supposed to be making new friends!  Heck, I didn’t even know Hunk before we became roommates, and now we’re best friends!”

Hunk put a hand to his chest.  “You think we’re best friends too?  I’m touched.  I haven’t had a ‘best’ friend in years....”

“I thought we were best friends?”  Keith regarded Lance with a raised eyebrow.

“You’re my

boyfriend

!”  Lance drew out the word and booped him on the nose.

Katie snorted.  Keith rolled his eyes but couldn’t resist smiling.

“I like the idea of a movie night.”  Shiro said.  “It’ll be a nice way to unwind after classes.”

“Then it’s decided.  Movie night, our dorm, eight o’clock.  Be there or be square.”  Lance said.

~~~~~

After her last class of the day, Katie went back to her dorm room and worked on homework until that evening.  She was finding that college classes didn’t have the worksheets of high school, but instead assigned an absurd amount of reading, and she was not looking forward to this when she got to college herself next year.  Luckily, though, it was pretty easy to skim the readings and jot down a few notes about the content to give Matt when he came back.  The only one she struggled a lot with was English; facts and figures, she could do, but subtleties like theme and symbolism?  Nuh-uh, give her a book of code over Hemingway any day.

At eight o’clock, she closed her books, turned off her desk light, stretched her arms above her head, and she and Shiro headed to the room across the hall from them, to Lance and Hunk’s room.  The other three were already there, setting up a couple of chairs facing a small flat-screen TV perched on the window-ledge.

Hunk plugged his laptop into the TV and everyone took a seat; Lance and Keith on a bean-bag chair, Shiro on the floor leaning against Lance’s bed, Hunk in his bright yellow folding dorm chair, and Katie on the floor next to Shiro.  They dimmed the lights, and got about thirty seconds into the movie before the commentary started.

“God, this opening… it’s just so… so

iconic

.”  Hunk said, gesturing at the yellow letters scrolling on the screen.  “And that

music

…”

“Did you know John Williams hasn’t actually watched any of the Star Wars movies, despite writing the music for them?”  Katie said.

“What?!”  Lance squawked, outraged.

“The guy who did the music for the original

Godzilla

movie didn’t know anything about the movie when he wrote that music, either.”  Keith said.

“You like Godzilla?”  Katie asked.

“The original movie is my favorite.”  Keith replied.  “The Japanese 1954 version, not that 1956 re-release disaster with Raymond Burr.”

“Oh god, tell me about it.”  Katie agreed.

“Guys, we’re trying to watch a movie here!”  Hunk complained.  Shiro laughed.

They quieted down, but occasionally someone would speak up with a comment or a request to pass the bag of popcorn Lance had brought out.  About halfway through the movie, someone’s phone let out a series of chimes.

“Ugh, that’s mine.”  Keith rolled over and reached over Katie to grab his phone from where it sat next to Lance’s pillow on his bed.  Katie caught sight of the words “binder reminder” before he dismissed the alarm.  Keith put his phone next to the bean bag and flopped down across Lance with a groan.  “I don’t wanna…”

“I know, babe, but you gotta.”  Lance rubbed his back.

“We’ll pause the movie for you.”  Hunk reached over and tapped the spacebar on his laptop, making the battle on screen freeze.

Keith let out a heavy sigh and stood up.  He walked over to Lance’s closet and pulled out a black sports bra from the top drawer, then left for the bathroom.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think that this was Keith’s room.”  Shiro said.  “He’s got his own drawer and everything.”

“It only makes sense,” Hunk shrugged.  “He’s here more often than his own room.”

“Ooh, lovebirds can’t bear to be apart?”  Katie teased, poking Lance with her foot.

“It’s more than that.”  Lance’s expression turned dark.  “Keith’s roommate is a bitch.”

“Lance.”  Shiro said, reprimand in his tone.

“What?  She is!”  Lance said.  “She called Keith a dyke and a faggot.”

“Among other words.”  Hunk sighed.

“I know, but fighting profanity with profanity is not the way to go about it.”  Shiro said.  “You could say she’s very rude and inconsiderate.”

“You can’t deny she’s a bitch.”  Lance said.

Shiro frowned.  “No, I can’t.”

“See?”  Lance said.  Shiro sighed and rolled his eyes, but let the matter drop as Keith came back from the bathroom, binder in hand and chest slightly more prominent under his t-shirt.  He folded the binder up and put it away in the closet.

Lance cleared his throat.  “If, uh, anyone else needs to, you know… do anything, now’s probably a good time to do it.”

Katie said nothing for a few moments, her mind whirling for an excuse.  Keith’s alarm had reminded her that she needed to take off her binder, too.  She probably should have done it a couple of hours ago, in fact.  She reached into her pocket and pressed the volume up button on her phone several times to make it sound like a ringtone.  “Oh, someone’s calling me.  Sorry, I’ll take this real quick,” she jumped up and headed for the door, phone pressed to her ear.  “Hi, Grandma!  How are you?”

~~~~~

The rest of them watched in silence as the door closed.

“Does he think we don’t know?”  Hunk asked quietly.  Shiro shrugged.

“Let him do what he wants,” Keith said.  “He might have reasons for not wanting to tell anyone.”

~~~~~

Back in the safety of her dorm room, Katie dropped the act and took her phone away from her ear.  She locked the door and peeled off her shirts and binder.  After taking a few deep breaths and stretching, she pulled on a sports bra, her two shirts she had been wearing before, and a sweatshirt.  She checked her profile in the mirror and nodded, satisfied that the bulky sweatshirt hid her figure well enough.  If anyone asked, she would just say she had gotten cold.  She grabbed her phone again as she went back across the hall.

“Sorry about that, it’s my grandmother’s birthday today.”  She lied, sitting down again.

“No problem,” Lance tossed a piece of popcorn up into the air and caught it in his mouth.  He tried to do the same with a second piece, but Keith snatched it out of the air and popped it into his own mouth.  “Hey!”

Keith just grinned devilishly at him.

“Everyone ready to keep watching the movie?”  Hunk asked, hand over the spacebar.  When the rest of them nodded or made affirmative noises as they got settled, he unpaused the movie and sat back again.

About a half hour later, Katie was beginning to find it difficult to keep her eyes open.  The battle on-screen was the climax of the movie, and one of her favorite scenes, but she kept nodding off every few minutes.  She was tired from a full day of classes and getting up early -- that eight AM Bio class would be the death of her -- and she couldn’t help just resting her eyes for a minute or two…

~~~~~

Near the end of the movie, Shiro felt a weight settle against his shoulder.  He looked down and found that Matt had fallen asleep and was leaning against him.  His face looked open and unguarded in his sleep, oblivious to the flash of light sabers and spacecraft blasters on the screen.  Shiro turned back to the movie, but he remained very aware of the warm weight leaning against him, and was careful not to move at all for fear of waking him up.

He had been surprised, when he met his roommate on move-in day.  He had contacted Matt through facebook before they met, just to discuss things like who was bringing what and to decide what they would do about the minifridge and microwave, yet Matt had never made any mention of being transgender.  Shiro supposed everyone dealt with things like that differently, but it seemed odd not to bring it up at all.  Keith had even mentioned it to his roommate, just so she wouldn’t be surprised when they met (she had acted dismissive at his message, and then had the gall to be outraged when she met him, sparking what was probably the first roommate conflict of the semester that their RA, Allura, had to negotiate).  Didn’t Matt see it as a safety concern, living with a guy that he hadn’t asked about his opinions towards such things?  Shiro was just glad it had ended up being him that Matt was rooming with, since he was most definitely understanding about things like that, rather than someone else.

Matt’s head slipped a little down his bicep, and Shiro subtly shifted his body so that Matt’s cheek was propped up on Shiro’s shoulder.  He didn’t know when it had started, but he was beginning to think he might be developing a bit of a crush on Matt.  It hadn’t been right off the bat, of course, but as they got closer and became friends, he was noticing it more and more.  Maybe it had started when he witnessed his sarcastic wit in action against Lance, or when he spotted him doodling tiny UFOs in the margins of his Astronomy notes, or that intent, focused concentration that Matt had when he worked on coding for the team’s rocket, or when he laughed so hard he clutched his sides and rocked back, kicking his feet while a grin stretched his mouth wide.  Whatever point it had started at, the crush was well underway by the time Matt dozed off against his shoulder, and that certainly didn’t help quench it.

Lance, too, had fallen asleep during the last few minutes of the movie, curled up on the bean bag with his arms around Keith’s middle and a leg thrown over his lap, drooling a bit on Keith’s shirt.  Keith didn’t seem to mind; he had tuned out the last few minutes of ending dialogue in favor of combing his fingers through Lance’s hair.

Hunk reached for the computer when the credits started rolling, but then caught sight of his friends sleeping.  He smiled.  “Should we watch the credits?”

Keith hummed quietly in agreement.  Hunk chuckled and left the movie on.

When the credits finished and the movie went back to the menu screen, Shiro sighed and reached down to gently shake the sleeping figure beside him.  “Matt, come on, the movie’s over.”

Matt groaned and pulled himself upright with a yawn.  He didn’t make any indication that he was aware of how he had been sleeping, so Shiro said nothing about it either.

Lance proved to be a bit harder to wake up.  He hugged Keith tightly around the waist and refused to open his eyes.  “Th’ zombies’r comin’…. Gotta tell Coran…” he mumbled out nonsense from whatever he was dreaming about.

“Why is he dreaming about our Astro professor?”  Shiro asked, bemused.

“Lance, get up, your bed is literally three feet away and I can’t carry your heavy ass to it.”  Keith said, stroking his hair.

“I’ll get him,” Hunk chuckled.  He turned to Shiro and Matt, the latter of whom was hiding a yawn behind their hand.  “You guys heading back?”

“Yep.  This one needs to get to bed for his eight AM class tomorrow.”  Shiro said, patting Matt’s head.

“Ughhh don’t remind me…” Matt groaned.  “I’m never taking eight AMs ever again.”

“Get back safe,” Hunk said, extricating Lance’s arms from around Keith.

“Wha’s that supposed’ta mean, we live like ten feet awa-- whoops,” Matt wobbled and nearly walked into a wall

“That,” Shiro chuckled, catching his arm.   “Come on, sleepy-head.”  He steered Matt out the door and across the hall, and reminded him to at least take his shoes off before falling into bed.  Matt was out like a light before his head even hit the pillow.  Shiro tore his eyes away from his sleeping face as he turned off the light and crawled into bed himself, realizing that he was so, so very screwed.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Hey Matt, can I see your laptop for a sec?”  Hunk asked.  Katie pulled her laptop closer and shot him a pointed look.

“No.  What do you want now?”  They were in astronomy class, and she could barely get a line of code in without Hunk pestering her.

“I changed the internal hydraulic stabilizer from four centimeters to three-point-seven centimeters.”  Hunk said.  “Did you take that into account with the code?”

“Yes, Hunk, I did that the first time you told me.”  She reminded him.

“Okay, but did you change all the other codes that one affects?”  Hunk pressed.

“

Yes

.”

“I really doubt point-three centimeters is going to make that much of a difference.”  Lance said, folding a sheet of notebook paper into a paper airplane.

“That is not what I want to hear from someone who is supposed to be helping build the rocket.”  Hunk told him.

“Relax, me and Keith have this covered.”  Lance said, aiming the paper airplane at the group sitting at the next table over.  It hit one of the Team Galra students in the back of her dyed-purple hair and she turned around, glaring at him.  Lance just winked at her. “See?  Flies perfect.”

“Considering our rocket isn’t going to be built out of notebook paper, I’d say your piloting skills leave a bit to be desired.”  Keith said, cutting out a wing from the sheet of teflon in front of him with an xacto knife.

“I leave

you

a bit to be desired.”  Lance winked.

“Lance.”  Shiro said, looked up from the trajectory calculations he was working on, his tone warning.  “Stop messing around and help Keith, or at least start thinking about how you’re going to even control this thing.”

“Easy, we just take a transmitter out of a remote-controlled airplane toy.”  Lance said.

“Uh, negative on that,” Dr. Coran spoke up as he passed their table.  “For this project, you’ll have to build everything yourselves.”

“Fine.”  Lance sighed and waited until Dr. Coran was out of earshot.  “We’ll just build something based on the transmitter from a remote-controlled airplane toy.”

Katie snorted and Shiro looked mildly disappointed, but he chose not to argue with it.

“Ooh, hey, I just got the best idea.”  Lance said, putting his hands on the table and looking around at them all.

“Unless it’s an idea for getting a two millimeter carbon-fiber rod into a one-point-nine millimeter hole, no offense, but I really don’t care.”  Hunk said, frowning into the magnifier.

“Lots of lube.”  Lance smirked.

“That’s disgusting.”  Hunk told him bluntly.  Keith snorted into his hand.  Hunk turned to him, frowning.  “Don’t encourage him.”

“Anyway,” Lance went on.  “My brilliant idea is this: team t-shirts.”

Katie rolled her eyes.

“No, think about it.”  Lance said.  “They could really bring us together as a team.  And isn’t that what Coran wants from us?  So he would be impressed, right?  Might even slide a couple extra points our way.”

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt, and it does sound fun.”  Shiro tapped the paper in front of Lance.  “Provided that you first draw up a schematic for that transmitter.”

“On it.”  Lance said, grabbing a piece of graph paper and a pencil.

“Your need for external motivation as a driving factor is fascinating to observe.”  Katie remarked.

“It really is.  He’ll do just about anything you tell him to, given the right reward.”  Keith smirked at Lance, who went bright red.

“Could you all stop making innuendos?”  Hunk said.  “And I need someone with tiny fingers to help put rods in holes.”

They all burst out laughing, even Shiro.

“

Axle

holes, you idiots!”  Hunk told them.

“Ass-cle holes.”  Katie snickered.  Lance reached across the table to high five her.

“I’m switching groups.”  Hunk muttered.

~~~~~

It was only a week into her first college experience, and Katie had already decided college was leagues better than high school.  Her classes were more spread out and they were fewer, but they were more challenging and interesting.  She was even starting to see why Matt liked anthropology so much; the class was actually pretty neat.  She was sure she would like physics much more if Dr. Hagger didn’t seem so evil all the time, but she supposed that couldn’t be helped.

By far, though, the most interesting and exciting class was astronomy.  Dr. Coran spent about half the class period going over astronomy theories, but he managed to turn even the most dry and dull content into something lively and worth remembering.  The second half of every class period was spent working on their rockets.  They usually ended up needing to meet up outside of regular class hours to do everything they needed to do (even Dr. Coran admitted that the project may have been a bit too ambitious), but she didn’t mind.  She genuinely liked her teammates, and they all became friends very quickly.  Pretty soon, she found herself meeting up for lunch or dinner (or sometimes both) with them, hanging out between class periods, having study sessions together, and of course movie nights, which took place almost every night.  She made sure to always get her homework done before evening, so she could fully enjoy the movie and the witty commentary they all raised during it.

She usually always fell asleep by the end of the movie -- not for any lack of interest in the movie, but usually because she was just tired -- and more than once woke up to Shiro shaking her shoulder and reminding her that they had to go back to their own room.  That seemed to happen a lot, actually; the nights they didn’t watch a movie, she usually fell asleep at her desk leaning on a stack of books, only to have Shiro wake her up by patting her back and telling her to go to bed.  A few times, she had tried to just stagger over to her bed immediately, but he always stopped her and reminded her that she needed to change before going to sleep.  “You can’t sleep in your clothes,” he would tell her.  She found it odd that he seemed fixated on this -- what did he care if she wore jeans to bed? -- but his words did always remind her that she needed to take off her binder before sleeping.  She wondered, sometimes, if he knew about that, especially since his words and tone were very similar to Lance’s reminders to Keith and because he never asked why she took her pajamas to the bathroom to change, but she was usually too tired to give it much thought.

After a while, Katie found that she was beginning to forget that she was supposed to be Matt; she was just supposed to be here to go to his classes so he didn’t get marked as absent.  She wasn’t here to make her own friends.  She wasn’t supposed to be slipping back into herself, letting her own personality show through the disguise.  She kept forgetting this, though, and only remembered when someone would call her by her brother’s name; it was like a jolt of cold water reminding her that things weren’t as simple as they seemed here, and that she would eventually have to leave these friends and go back to her old life.

And

why

did that thought make her so sad?

~~~~~

“You’re kidding.”  Katie couldn’t believe it.  Neither could anyone else, if the groans from the other students were anything to go by.

“Unfortunately, no, I’m not.”  Dr. Haggar smirked, leaning on the podium.  “Your first unit exam will be on the fourteenth, eleven to noon, and yes, it will take the entire hour.”

“Aren’t you contractually obligated to end your classes ten minutes before the hour?”  One student asked, raising his hand.

“What is that silly rumor?”  Dr. Haggar laughed.  “There is no such rule.  You can even check the student handbook.  I can make my exam periods as long as I need to, given the amount of content you’ll be tested on.  You’re lucky I’m giving you an entire hour.”

“But I have a baseball game that starts at noon, and I have to be there for practice beforehand,” another student piped up.

“I have band practice,”

“I have to get to my part-time job!”

“I have another class that starts at noon, across campus!”

“Pity.”  Dr. Haggar smirked.  “Suppose you’ll just have to fail the exam, then.  Too bad that’s ten percent of your final grade.”

Katie grit her teeth and bit off a frustrated growl.  The astronomy competition was supposed to start at noon, all the way on the other side of campus.

When she told the rest of her team later, Lance winced in sympathy.  “That sucks.  And I just had one of her unit exams; they’re brutal.  It really does take the entire hour.  Some people didn’t even finish it.”

“Well, I’m just going to have to do it as fast as I can, and then…” she sighed and laid her head on the table.  “I don’t know, teleport over here.”

“You could train us how to do the beginning sequences and then leave your laptop with us.”  Shiro suggested.  “That way, even if you’re late, the rest of us can still start on time and you can just jump in when you get here.”

“I guess we’ll have to do that.”  She sighed.  “I’ll teach you the sequences next class, though.  Gotta clean up my laptop a bit first.”

“Ooh, whatcha got hidden on there?”  Lance elbowed her.  “Porn?”

“You wish.”  Katie stuck her tongue out at him.  Considering her background picture was her and Matt trying to shove each other off the pier at their grandparents’ house on a lake, she should probably change that before she let anyone look at her computer, lest they notice that the guy looked an awful lot like the person on “Matt’s” facebook page and the person in a bikini looked an awful lot like the “Matt” on their astronomy team.  Plus, you know, gotta password-protect the folder of smut fics downloaded from AO3.

“Oh, hey, that reminds me,” Lance reached into his backpack.  “The t-shirts I ordered came in!”

Keith looked up from the rocket nosecone he was sanding.  “How did your brain go from ‘porn’ to ‘t-shirts’?”

“My train of thought likes to jump tracks.”  Lance said, pulling out several t-shirts wrapped in plastic.  He called out each of their names as he handed the shirts out.

“Why are they all different colors?”  Katie asked, unfolding the green one he handed her.  On the front was a thin, wide, stylized V that stretched across the chest, with the word

Team

written above it and

Voltron

below it.

“Don’t question my genius.”  Lance said.

“These look great, Lance.”  Shiro said, admiring his black one.

“I actually like the colors.”  Hunk said, unfolding his yellow shirt.  “It’s cool.  We’ll be like a rainbow.”

“Gaaaay…” Keith said tonelessly.  Lance shot him a look.

“

You’re

gay!”  It sounded like it was meant as a retort, but Keith just arched an eyebrow.

“Yeah, and?”

Hunk looked up thoughtfully.  “Hang on, are we all gay?”

“Everyone’s a little bit gay.”  Lance shrugged.

“I thought you said you were ace?”  Keith asked Hunk.

“I meant ‘gay’ as in ‘not-straight’.”  Hunk said.

“I’m pan!”  Lance’s hand shot up in the air.

“We

know

.”  Keith elbowed him.

“Shiro?”  Hunk asked.

“Bi.”  Shiro said.

“What about you, Matt?”  Lance asked.

Katie froze.  Matt was straight, so should she say that…?  Should she give her answer or her brother’s?  Because those were two

very

different answers.  “Um… I, uh, I don’t really know….”

“That’s fine.”  Lance said.  “Everyone figures that stuff out differently.”

They heard a snicker come from the next table over and saw the purple-haired Team Galra girl sneering at them.  Lance frowned.  “You’re asking for another paper airplane to the head,” he warned her.  She rolled her eyes and went back to whispering with her group, occasionally looking back at their table.

“Ignore them.”  Shiro said firmly, as it looked like Lance was ready to jump up and start a fight.

“They’re just jealous that our rocket it going to leave theirs in the dust.”  Katie added.  They didn’t seem to have this rivalry with any of the other teams in the class; it was just Team Galra that, for some reason, had decided to antagonize everyone else in the class.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Matt was certain he had texted Katie about picking him up at the airport.  He was positive.  Why, then, was he standing at the doors to the airport, watching car after car stop and pick up other travellers, and yet never see his sister’s?  After a few minutes of waiting, he checked his phone.  Huh, no new messages from her.  He opened his messages and was about to text her when he noticed the last message he had sent her.

Matt:  So my flight is on the fifteenth.  Can you pick me up at the airport?

Katie:  Sure thing.  Do you know what time?

Matt:  Scheduled to land around 9:30 AM.  I’ll text you if there are any delays.

He looked at the time stamp.  Before, it had said “sent yesterday”, but now it said “sent two hours ago”.  He had most certainly not sent it two hours ago; he had been over the Atlantic Ocean two hours ago.

After some mental gymnastics that should not have taken as long as it did (he was jet-lagged and exhausted), he realized that he had completely forgotten to take the time change into account.  Yes, he had left Heathrow Airport on the fifteenth, but he had arrived in America on the fourteenth.  Katie wasn’t scheduled to pick him up until

tomorrow

.  He pressed the phone against his forehead, letting out a heavy sigh.  He was about to call her and ask if she could come to the airport now, but a quick check at his schedule showed that she was in the middle of his classes at the moment.  The whole point of this operation was to avoid getting marked absent, so he couldn’t just ask her to skip now.  With another heavy sigh, Matt put his phone in his pocket and dragged his suitcase over to the information desk to find a greyhound bus from the airport to the city the university was located in.

Two hours, fifty dollars, and the loss of his sanity at trying to sleep on the bus next to an old lady who had insisted on eating not one but

two

tuna sandwiches, Matt finally made it to Altea University.  As he passed by the student center, he noticed it looked like they were setting up tables on the green.  He wondered if it was some kind of student involvement fair or something.  He dragged his suitcase across campus, map in hand, and managed to find Kerberos Hall without too much trouble.

He didn’t have his student ID yet (Katie had said she got it for him), but Kerberos Hall seemed pretty busy, and it wasn’t hard to grab the door when another group of people was leaving.  Matt found his way to room 336 and smiled when he saw the rocketship-shaped nametags on the door.  His jet-lagged brain didn’t really question it when he found the door unlocked with no one in it; he was just glad he could finally stop lugging the suitcase around.  He instantly found which side of the room was supposed to be his, since the bed had his comforter on it and Katie’s sweatshirt was thrown over the desk chair.  He stowed the suitcase in the closet and peeled off his shirt, the back damp with sweat from dragging the suitcase around in the hot sun.

Matt tossed his sweaty t-shirt in the hamper next to his closet.  After traveling all day, he couldn’t wait to take a nice, long shower.  As soon as he found his clothes, that is.

“Where the

hell

did you put my boxers, Katie?”  He muttered, opening drawer after drawer in the closet.  This was

so

not how he would have organized everything.  Matt was standing on his tiptoes, trying to reach the highest shelf in the closet, when he heard the door open behind him.  Shiro -- Matt recognized him from the dorm match-up page on facebook, even though he hadn’t formally met him yet -- stood in the doorway for a moment, just staring at him with his mouth open in shock.

Crap

, Matt thought.

He can probably see the difference between me and Katie…

Shiro seemed to come back to himself, and he tore his eyes away from Matt, coughing uncomfortably.  “Did you, um… start T?”  He asked, not looking at Matt as he took his backpack off and set it next to his desk.

Start… what?  Matt had no idea what he was talking about.  He couldn’t just

ask

, though; no one was supposed to know he and Katie had switched places.  He would have to just go along with it until he figured out what was going on.  It was a yes or no question, though, he could tell that much.  He had a fifty-fifty shot at getting the right answer.  “Um… maybe?”  Best to take the middle road, he guessed.

Shiro’s ears were bright red and he was absentmindedly straightening some things on his desk.  “Oh.  Wow.  Didn’t think it would work that fast.  You, um… you look good.”

Well,

that

certainly didn’t clear anything up.  If anything, Matt was more confused.  “Uh… thanks?”

Shiro cleared his throat.  “So, are you ready?”

Uh-oh.  “For…?”

Shiro lifted his eyes to give him a confused look.  “The competition?”

Big

uh-oh.  “Competition?”  Matt asked, his voice coming out a bit higher than usual.

“For Astro?”  Shiro checked his watch.  “You should hurry, we need to leave soon.”

“Oh.  Um.  Yeah.”  Matt grabbed a random shirt out of the drawer and started to pull it on.

“You’re not going to wear your team shirt?”  Shiro asked.  Matt looked at him.

“Team…?”  He noticed that Shiro’s shirt said

Team Voltron

on the front.

“I mean, it’s not required,” Shiro said.  “But Lance worked hard on them.”

“Yeah, sure, just… uh… give me a minute…” Matt dug through the drawers until he found a shirt that also said

Team Voltron

on the front, in the bottom drawer along with some of Katie’s clothes.  This shirt was green, though, and Shiro’s was black, so he hoped it was the right one.  It seemed to be, though, because Shiro nodded.

“Let’s go, everyone’s waiting.”  Shiro said.

“Yeah, coming.”  Matt grabbed his shoes and put them on quickly, hurrying after Shiro.  While they walked, he sent a text message to Katie:

What the heck is going on?  What’s this competition you got me involved in???

~~~~~

Katie was convinced Dr. Haggar had actually strategically planned for her class to be in the most isolated part of campus, just for the joy of locking out students who were late.  She herself had just made it to the classroom moments before Dr. Haggar stood up and strode over to close the doors.

“B-but professor, I--”  A more unfortunate girl was trying to get inside the classroom.

“Sorry,” Dr. Haggar smirked and slammed the door shut in her face.  The lecture hall was silent as she dusted her hands off and strode back up to the front of the room.  “Now, shall we begin our first unit exam?”

Katie gripped her pencil and sat on the edge of her seat as Dr. Haggar handed out the thick exam packets and answer sheets at a glacial pace.  She was being slow on purpose, and she knew exactly what kind of torment she was causing in her students, especially after repeatedly warning them that they would need every second of their allotted hour to complete the exam.  The rest of the students tried to make up for the slack by handing the papers back to the other students as fast as they could.

Katie’s heart sank as she read the first few questions.  This was going to be a

very

difficult exam.

She read and filled out the answers as quickly as she could, and guessed on the ones she was clueless about while silently apologizing to Matt for the low grade she anticipated earning him.  The minutes ticked by, and she managed to fill in the last question just as Dr. Haggar called time.  She practically vaulted over another student to hand in her exam, then bolted out of the building and ran through campus as fast as she could, checking the time on her phone as she went.  Shit.  It was already past noon.  Below the time, she saw she had a message from Matt.

Matt:  What the heck is going on?  What’s this competition you got me involved in???

She broke into a sprint.

~~~~~

“Hey, look who decided to show up,” a voice called out.  Matt looked up to find that they were back by the student center, where the tables he had seen before were set up.  Each table seemed to be covered with what looked like a pile of something a robot might throw up; tools and wires and chunks of machinery.  The guy who had called out to them waved.  He was wearing a blue shirt, and standing between a guy with a red shirt and a larger guy with a yellow shirt.  All of their t-shirts said

Team Voltron

.

“Sorry, Matt couldn’t find his shirt.”  Shiro said as they drew closer to the table.

“Hey, I lovingly designed these and ordered them,” the boy in the blue shirt frowned at Matt.  He guessed that was Lance.  “Don’t go losing that shirt.”

“S-sorry,” Matt was still trying to get a grasp on what was going on here.  The guy in yellow tilted his head, studying Matt.

“You look… different.”  He said.

While Matt was reeling desperately for an excuse, Shiro just cleared his throat.  “He, uh, started getting a certain kind of shot.”

“Ah,” the other three made sounds of understanding, but Matt was just even more confused.  He could practically

feel

the question marks hovering over his head.

“Wait, it doesn’t work that fast.”  The boy in red frowned.  “We just saw you yester--”

“Alright, students, listen up,” a voice cut him off.  They all turned, and Matt saw a man with bright orange hair and a bushy moustache speaking from the center of the green.  “We are about to begin the competition.  Remember, this is what you’ve been working on for the past two weeks, and now it’s time to test your skills.  On my mark, you will have thirty minutes to assemble, program, prep, and launch your rockets, and the one that records the highest altitude will be given the highest grade, which will create the grading curve for this project.  My lovely teaching assistant is stationed on the roof with a camera to record the photo finish.”  He pointed up at the roof of a nearby building, where a small figure waved.

“Wait, what?”  Matt balked.

“You’ll have thirty minutes.”  The man looked at his watch.  “Ready?  On your mark, get set… GO!”

Every student in all the groups sprang into action, the sudden movement making Matt jump.  The guy in yellow was calling out what sounded like tool names, the guy in blue was handing them to him with all the precision of a surgeon’s assistant, the guy in red and Shiro were methodically putting together shapes of some sort of thick plastic material, and everyone seemed to know exactly what they were doing besides Matt, who was just standing there.

Shiro turned and looked at him.  “Matt, what are you doing?  Get on that data sequencing.”

“D-data…?”  Matt shakily opened the laptop on the table -- he recognized it as Katie’s, and stared blankly at the blinking cursor opened up to some program with a lot of numbers in it.

“Here, you wrote them down before.”  The guy in blue tossed him a notebook.  “Just enter them.”

Matt caught the notebook and did as he said, entering numbers into boxes without a clue what he was doing.  The guy in yellow leaned over and looked at the screen over his shoulder.  “What the hell is wrong with you?!  Are you trying to explode our fuel main?!”

“I… no?”  Matt stammered.

The guy gave him a weird look, then shook his head.  “Switch with Shiro.”

Matt wordlessly went around the table to where the guy in red was assembling what looked like a small rocketship.  Shiro peered down at the screen, pressing the delete key.  “Jesus, Matt, what’s gotten into you?  You swapped the fuel main and trajectory codes?”

Matt didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about.  The boy in the red shirt handed him two large batteries.  “Put these in the launch lug.”

“The what?”

“Next to the goddamn radio.”  The boy frowned.  “You’re acting like you haven’t done this a hundred times.”

Matt tried to fit the batteries into the space next to the radio in the center of the rocketship, but one of them slipped out of his hand and went crashing to the ground.  “Oops.”  He scooped it up.  One of the sides was dented

“What are you doing?!”  The guy in red exclaimed, stopping him from putting it back in.  “You can’t put damaged alkaline in this thing; it’ll explode!”

“Get it together, Matt!”  Shiro said, his voice sharp.

“I…” Matt didn’t know what to say.  He felt like he was trapped in a nightmare.  He was half-expecting to suddenly be naked in front of a large crowd.

“Go get another battery from the lab.”  The guy in red said, snatching the damaged battery away.

“The lab?”  Matt had no idea where that was.

“The astrophysics lab, right next to the gigantic telescope mounted on the roof of the science building!”  The guy in yellow told him impatiently.  “The door is literally twenty feet away from you!”  He pointed to the building behind Matt.

“R-right,” Matt ran inside the building, then paused at the directory long enough to locate the Hendrick Astrophysics Laboratory before sprinting up the stairs to the third floor.  He opened drawer after drawer until he found batteries, then grabbed two of the biggest sizes since he couldn’t remember which type it had been.  He accidentally turned right instead of left leaving the lab, and it was only after running down the stairs that he realized he was on the opposite side of the building.  Muttering a curse, he took off running.  He had barely made it around the corner of the student center when someone grabbed him by the arm, pulling him to a stop.

“What the hell are you doing here?!”  Katie hissed angrily.

“Katie!  Oh thank goodness!”  He threw his arms around her.  “I had no idea what I was doing or who those people were and there was something about a shot and building a rocket  and batteries and, and-- what are you doing?!”  He yelped as she tried to pull his shirt off.

“Give me your shirt!”  She took off the short-sleeved t-shirt she had over a long-sleeved shirt and thrust it at him.  “Switch!  Now!”

“What are you--?”

“Switch now, talk later!”  She hissed.  He pulled his shirt off, earning him a wolf-whistle and twittering laughter from a group of girls passing by with Greek letters on their sweatshirts and leggings.  Katie snatched the battery out of his hand, switched their shirts, and pulled on the Team Voltron one as she ran away.

“Wh--?  Katie!”  He started to go after her, then realized they probably shouldn’t be seen in the same place, or else it would blow their whole cover.  He looked around for a few moments, then ran for the university bookstore in the student center.  He emerged five minutes later with a “Go Lions!” baseball cap and a pair of cheap sunglasses.  Disguise in place, he ran back to the competition to watch from the sidelines.

~~~~~

Katie had only just barely pulled the Team Voltron t-shirt on over her long-sleeved shirt when she made it to the competition.  “I’m here, I’m back, what’s the damage?”  She panted.  Keith shot her a glare like she had just kicked every kitten in the universe.

“Just try not to fuck anything else up.”  He snatched the battery out of her hand and jammed it in place.

“Wha… Shiro, why are you doing the code?”  She asked, bewildered.

“Because you apparently forgot how to do your job.”  Shiro said tersely.

Katie seethed.  Just

what

did Matt do?  “No, I’ve got it now.  I’m fine, I can do it.”

He looked up, one eyebrow raised and a question on his lips, then blinked when he caught sight of her.  “Wait, you…?”

“Five minutes to lift-off!”  Coran shouted.

“I’ll explain later!”  Katie hissed, nudging him away from the computer.  He frowned at her for a moment longer, then went to go help Keith again.  Her fingers flew over the keys, typing in codes and sequences she had practically memorized after so much practice.  Pieces clicked into place like gears in a watch, and the five of them

finally

were able to move in synch, calling out commands and status updates to each other as they readied their rocketship.

“Alright, students, time’s up!”  Coran shouted.  “Everyone take two steps away from your tables.  I don’t want anyone touching your rockets at this point.  You’ve had your half hour.”  When he was satisfied that everyone had stepped back, he cupped his hands around his mouth again.  “Pilots, ready your launching devices!”

Lance picked up the remote control they had and turned it on.

“Launch in T-minus-five seconds!”  Coran called.  “Four, three, two,

ONE

!”

Lance flicked the switch, and their rocketship went flying into the sky.  The team to their left had to watch their rocketship sputter a few feet into the air, then burst into flames, and one of the TAs ran over with a fire extinguisher.  There was a flash as another TA, stationed on the roof of the science building, snapped a picture to mark who had made it to the twenty-meter mark at the top of the building.  Coran shielded his eyes against the light and peered up at the sky.

“Well, it looks like Team Voltron, Team Galra, the Astronutz, and the Blue Angels all passed.  Sorry, Group 2, looks like you were a little short.  And

you

,” he turned to the group that had just put out the fire from their rocket.  “We’ll talk later.”  He turned back to the rest of them.  “I will examine the photo finish and assign points based on altitude.  Great job, everyone!  Remember to return your materials to the lab!”

Katie jumped as everyone on her team rounded on her.

“What the

hell

happened?” Lance asked.  “You were a total space case back there for at least half of that!”

“I’m sorry--” Katie started, but Shiro cut her off.

“What I want to know,” he said, crossing his arms.  “Is how this morning you gained three inches, your voice dropped, you hair got shorter, and now you’re back to the way you were before, plus you put on an extra shirt.”

They all looked at her.

“I…” She looked around at all of them.  “I don’t know what to say…”

“Generally, the truth is a good thing to go with.”  Hunk said, his voice flat.

Her stomach clenched, twisting itself up in knots.  She knew he was right, though.  “I’m… I’m not Matt Holt.  I’m Katie Holt.”

“Yeah, we got that you’re trans, that’s not what we care about.”  Keith said.

“We meant all the weird stuff that happened today.”  Lance added.  Katie stared at them.

“I--?  What?  Trans?”  She rubbed her hands over her face, frustrated and angry at herself for even going along with this idea in the first place.  “I’m not trans.  I mean, I’m genderfluid, but that’s not the point.  Matt Holt is my brother.  I switched places with him so he could go on some excavation thing that our parents didn’t want him to do.”  She sighed, and looked around for her brother.  She found him hovering by the edge of the green, and walked over to him.  Grabbing his arm, she dragged him back.  “

This

is the real Matt Holt.”

Matt took off his sunglasses and gave them a sheepish wave.  “Um, hi,”

“So you’re the one that fucked everything up.”  Keith frowned, recognizing him.  Matt and Katie both flinched.

“Yeah, I’m sorry.”  Matt admitted.  “I don’t know the first thing about rocketships or computers.”

“So you lied to us?”  Shiro turned his piercing gaze on Katie.

“I… yeah.”  She said quietly.  “I’m sorry, you guys.  I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not her fault.”  Matt stepped forward.  “I asked her to do it, just because I wanted to go on the dig without racking up a bunch of absences.  This is all my fault.”

“You couldn’t have just emailed the university and explained?”  Hunk asked.

“Or even if you lied to the university, did you really have to hide it from us?”  Keith asked Katie.  “I thought we were a team.”

“H-hey, isn’t this just a class project?  Don’t-- don’t be so hard on her...”  Matt said, trying to diffuse the tension.  They all looked at him, then at Katie, the weight of their gazes pinning her where she stood.

“Sure.”  Shiro said flatly.  “Just a class project.”

He turned away and started picking up their materials.  The rest of them followed suit, completely silent.  They left without a backward glance.

~~~~~

Shiro was back in the room by the time Katie got there to collect her things.  He was sitting on his bed against the wall, a textbook balanced on his legs, and he didn’t look up when she entered the room.  She paused, opened her mouth, then closed it, not knowing what to say.  There weren’t words to express how sorry she was and how bad she felt.  She turned away and grabbed the small duffle bag, shoving everything from the bottom drawer into it carelessly.  Zipping the bag closed, she picked up her backpack and headed for the door.  She hesitated at the door, wanting to say something, but she didn’t know what she could say.  She ended up leaving without a word.

Katie made it to the stairwell before she started crying.  She sat down on the landing, her feet a few steps down, and buried her face in her folded arms.  Her shoulders shook, and she tried to keep quiet but her stifled sobs could still be heard, bouncing off the concrete walls of the stairwell.  She felt awful about what she had done.  This wasn’t supposed to happen.  She wasn’t supposed to make friends doing this, friends she would have to lie about every aspect of herself with.  Keith was right; she shouldn’t have hid it from them.  She should have been honest with them.  They wouldn’t have turned her in to the university.  If anything they would have helped her, because that was just the kind of people they were.  They

had

helped her; she didn’t know how many times in the past two weeks one of them had reminded her to eat something when she was studying for too long, to sleep, to take her binder off (and she realized now that they had known about that, if they had thought she was trans).  They all looked out for each other.  They were all good people, kind and smart and loyal… and she had taken their trust and used it against them.  She deserved every bit of hatred they had towards her, she knew that.  But knowing it didn’t make it hurt any less.

She cried for a few minutes, then forced herself to pull it together.  Scrubbing at her eyes, she went downstairs and walked out to the parking lot next to Kerberos Hall.  Matt was there, leaning against the car.  She thrust the lanyard with his dorm key and student ID bearing her face on it toward him.  “Here.”

He took it, then pulled her in for a hug.  “I’m sorry, Katie.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Katie went home and started her senior year, trying and failing to pull herself out of the funk she was in following the events of the astronomy competition.  She had one weekend to mope in her room, then it was back to the grind of high school classes.  They seemed dull and broad, after getting a taste for the interest-specific classes she had been taking at Altea U.  The one saving grace was that her physics teacher was by far an improvement over Dr. Haggar; he was a plump little man who was pleasantly surprised that she already had a basic understanding of quantum mechanics, if a bit confused by her answer of “a witch taught it to me” when he asked where she learned it.

After a week, she gave up trying to cut herself off from the world and ended up calling Matt.

“Hey there, Katydid,” her brother said when he picked up the phone.

“Hey,” she laid back on her bed, looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars that had been stuck to her ceiling since she was seven years old.  “You sound tired.  Everything okay?”

“Just had physics.”  Matt explained, and Katie winced in sympathy.

“Ouch.”  She said.  “She really is awful, isn’t she?”

“Yeah.”  He agreed.  “Thanks for all the notes you left me, though.  They’ve really helped a lot.”

“Probably because they aren’t scrawled in chicken scratch.”  She teased him.

“Hey,

I

can read my handwriting.”  Matt said defensively.  She giggled, and realized that might have been the first time she laughed since everything had happened.

“So… how is everything?  Everyone?”  She asked, almost afraid of his answer.

There was a rush of air over the speaker as he sighed.  “You mean those people from Astronomy?  I don’t really know.  They don’t talk to me much outside of class.  I think they’re still mad at me for messing up their rocket.”

She winced.  “It’s probably me they’re mad at.”  She said quietly.

“Well, based on the fact that they’re hesitant to let me touch anything in the lab without asking if I’m going to break it, no, I think their beef is with me.”  He said.  She sighed; she knew he was just trying to make her feel better by shifting the blame to himself, and she didn’t doubt that they were mad at him too, but she knew better than to think they had just forgotten about what she had done.

“How’s Shiro?”  She asked, her heart feeling tight.  “Is he in the room with you?”

“No, he spends most of his time with those guys across the hall.”  Matt said.  “I don’t really see him a lot in the room, other than when he’s sleeping.  Sometimes not even then; I think he sleeps over there a lot.”

She rolled onto her side and curled up into a ball, feeling her gut churn anxiously.  “Does he seem mad?”

Matt was quiet for a long time before answering. “I mean, I don’t really see him enough to be able to tell… but he doesn’t seem

mad

, exactly.  More like… sad, I think.”

She had expected him to be mad.  She didn’t know if this revelation made it better or worse.

~~~~~

Another month passed.  Katie studied, laughed with her friends, did her homework… but she still felt an emptiness settled in her heart, held their by guilt and regret.

One evening while she was working on homework, her phone lit up and buzzed against the desk.  She grabbed it and unlocked it without looking at the screen, still copying down the answer to a calculus problem.  When she looked down at the screen, her heart jumped as she read the message.

Shiro:  Hey

That was it, just one word.  Katie suddenly hated text messaging with a burning passion; she had no idea what he was thinking with just one word and not even any punctuation.  Was he angry?  Upset?  Happy?  Her fingers hovered over the screen for a full two minutes before she finally typed back a simple

Hi

, then she stared at it for another full minute before working up the courage to press ‘send’.

She forced herself to put the phone down and go back to her homework, but non-linear equations were the furthest thing from her mind at the moment.  She grabbed the phone as soon as it buzzed again.

Shiro: Do you want to get coffee sometime and talk?

She bit her lip and texted back

Sure

.  She didn’t bother trying to go back to her homework this time.  Two consecutive messages came.

Shiro:  Want to meet tomorrow afternoon at Commons?

Shiro:  Oh wait.  You can’t get into Commons if you aren’t a student, can you?

She tried to pretend that didn’t sting, because he probably hadn’t meant it to.  For two weeks, it had been normal for them to meet up at the Commons dining hall.

Katie:  How about GG’s?

It was a little coffee shop near campus that was decorated with entirely too much galaxy print, but their caramel mocha frappuccinos were out of this world.  If she was going to get chewed out, at least she would have something good to try and distract herself with afterwards.

Shiro:  Sure.  3:30?

Katie:  Sounds good.

Tomorrow was a Saturday; she would be able to drive there.  Altea U was about an hour drive away from her house, but she was willing to drive an hour for coffee in this situation.  Her fingers hovered over the screen for a few moments more before typing again.

Looking forward to it.

She didn’t get a message back.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Katie frowned at her closet the next morning.  She didn’t know what she should wear.

You’re being ridiculous

, she told herself.

It’s not like it’s a date.  It’s the furthest thing from a date, in fact, since he probably hates you.

Still, she felt like she was at a cross-roads.  Should she dress the way she had during those two weeks when she had been pretending to be Matt, how Shiro had known her?  Or wear a skirt and be radically different?  In the end, she settled on a middle ground; a black V-neck, a flannel shirt, jeans, and orange Converse high-tops.  Not that different from before, but without the binder.

She told her parents she was going to visit Matt, then got on the road.  It turned out that blasting the radio and singing along loudly kept her mind off of the fact that every minute she was getting closer and closer to meeting up with Shiro, and kept her from thinking too hard about what he might want to talk about.  She had a feeling it was going to be something along the lines of an interrogation, but she really, really hoped not.

A little before 3:30, she parked the car at the curb near GG’s cafe and went inside.  She looked around, but he didn’t seem to be there yet, so she ordered a caramel hot chocolate and sat down at a table in the corner.  She wrapped her hands around the mug, letting it warm her up.  It was finally starting to get cooler out, and the leaves on the trees outside were beginning to turn colors.  She watched the steam rise from the cup and focused on the way the whipped cream on top was slowly melting into the hot drink, trying not to think about how nervous she was.

“Hey,”

A familiar voice next to her made her look up.  Shiro was there, his face as carefully blank as his text message had been.  She managed a small, friendly smile.

“Hi,”

His mouth curved up just the tiniest bit, a hint of a smile that didn’t quite touch his eyes.  “I’m going to grab a drink.  I’ll be right back.”

“Okay.”  She nodded.  He turned away, and she took a deep breath.

He came back a few minutes later with a steaming cup of coffee and sat down wordlessly.  A few seconds passed with neither of them knowing what to say, then Katie spoke up.

“Shiro, I’m so sorry--”

“I know.”  Shiro said.  He looked down, slowly rotating his cup against the tabletop.  “I, uh… I heard you, in the stairwell.  When you were…”

Crying my eyes out?

She wanted to say, but didn’t.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a green ipod.  “You left this on your-- his-- ...on the desk.  I went out there to give it to you, but I heard you, and… I just couldn’t.  I realized I needed some time, to process everything.”  He set the ipod on the table between them.  “Sorry it took me so long to get it back to you.”

“Oh,” her heart sank.  Was that all he wanted to do?  Why couldn’t he have just given it to Matt to take home one weekend?  “Um, thank you.”  She reached out and picked up the ipod, tucking it into her purse.  The two of them sat in silence for a few more seconds.  “Was that… all you wanted to do?”  She asked.

“No,” he said, looking up.  “I wanted to talk a little.  Try and clear the air a bit, you know?”

She nodded, looking down at her cup.  “I really am sorry.”

“I know.”  He said quietly.  “No one spends a solid five minutes crying alone in a stairwell for the fun of it.”  He let out a heavy sigh.  “I was confused, and, I’m not going to lie, really hurt.  But at least I knew you were sincere when I saw that.  And Matt explained; he said it was his idea that he talked you into, and he’s really sorry that everything got so out of hand.”

“I should have told you the truth from the beginning.”  Katie said softly.

He nodded.  “That could have prevented a lot of misunderstandings, yeah.  But there’s nothing we can do to change what happened.  All we can do now is move forward.”  He took a sip of his coffee, then looked up at her as he went on.  “I think the thing that hurt me the most is that…that I really liked the person I got to know during those two weeks.  And then, to be told that the person I had gotten to know and like was suddenly someone else... I didn’t know what was real anymore.  Was the person I talked to, who I watched movies with, who I ate meals with, who I studied with… was that you, or you pretending to be your brother?”

“Me.”  She said quietly.  “At first, I just tried to be Matt.  But after a while, I started being myself more and more, until I was just being Matt in name.”

“How soon did that happen?”  Shiro asked.

She rubbed the back of her neck, feeling self-conscious.  “Probably… the second day or so.  When I realized that the Astro project was due my last day as Matt -- or, it was supposed to be -- I figured I could do something as me and not have it affect him, since it was supposed to be over by the time we switched back.”

He nodded thoughtfully.  “I think I noticed it was around that time that our conversations seemed more genuine.  At the time, I thought it was just getting over the awkwardness of first meeting.”

She took a sip of her drink, then set the cup down again.  “How soon did you figure out that I… that I wasn’t male?”

“Oh.”  He looked a bit embarrassed.  “Um.  Pretty much immediately.”

She groaned and dropped her head into her hands.  “Aw man, I thought I was doing so good…”

He chuckled.  “Don’t be so hard on yourself.  I’ve gotten a fair amount of experience with that, because of Keith.”

“So I didn’t pass at all?”

“I mean, you looked pretty androgynous, but not quite male.”  Shiro said.  “But like I said, I’m fine with that.”

“I bet it probably made living with me awkward.”  She muttered, embarrassed.

“A little, at the beginning.”  He admitted.  “And it was probably awkward for you to live with me, too.”

“A little, at the beginning.”  She echoed his words.

Mostly because you’re so darn cute

.

He smiled.  “So, like I said before, I really liked the person that was my roommate for two weeks.  And, if it’s okay, I’d like to get to know them better, for real this time.  Can we start over?”

She returned his smile, the knots in her stomach beginning to unclench.  “Yeah. I’d like that.”

He reached across the table and held out his hand.  “Hi, I’m Shiro.  What’s your name?”

She giggled and shook his hand.  “Hi, Shiro.  I’m Katie.”

“Katie, that’s a nice name.” He smiled.  “So, what are you into, Katie?”

“Um, well, I like computers.”  She said.

“Computers?  Fascinating.  Tell me,” he propped his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand.  “Have you ever programed a rocket before?”

She laughed.  “Me, Katie, program a rocket?  Hmm, can’t say I have.”  She leaned her chin in her hand, imitating him.  “But it sounds like a

blast

.”

He stared at her for half a second, then burst out laughing.  “Oh man, you should meet my friend Lance.  You guys would get along great.”

She felt a pang in her heart.  “Only if you think he wouldn’t hate me.”  She said quietly.

His smile slipped and he sighed, dropping the charade.  “He doesn’t hate you.  None of them do.  They’re just hurt, the way I was.  All of us really liked the person we hung out with during those two weeks, and to be told that was all a lie…” he trailed off, then shook his head.  “But no one hates you.”

“You’re sure?”  She asked, still worried.

“I promise.”  He gave her a small smile.  “In fact, they’re probably looking forward to getting to know the real Katie just as much as I am.”

She smiled.  “Okay.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“I can’t believe my baby sister is all grown up and going off to college.”  Matt wiped an imaginary tear away.

“I can’t believe you’re acting like we haven’t already done this before.”  Katie rolled her eyes.

“Oh hush, let me have my big brother moment.”  Matt said.  He gestured out the car window.  “We’re here!  Altea University!  Oh this is so exciting, I can show you around--”

“Matt, I’ve been here a million times.”  She reminded him, turning onto the road that led to the dorms.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot you already know

everything

about campus.”  Matt said.  “Do you know where the geology classroom is?  Hm?”

“I have to admit, I do not.”  She said.

“Well, looks like you don’t know everything.”  Matt reached over to ruffle her hair as she drove.  “It’s in the basement of the science building, by the way.”

“I’ll keep that in mind in the unlikely event I ever take a geology class.”  Katie said, pulling into the parking lot of Kerberos Hall.

They had just gotten out of the car and were discussing how best to remove their suitcases from the car-tetris Matt had forced them into while packing that morning when they heard a familiar voice call out behind them.

“Hey look, it’s a freshie!  Let’s haze ‘em!”

“Lance, come on, don’t be mean.” Hunk elbowed him.

“I know, I know,” Lance said.  “I’m just kidding.”

Keith smiled and held out his fist.  “Sup, roomie,”

Katie bumped his fist with her own.  “Sure you’re okay with rooming with a freshie?”

Keith shrugged, grinning.  “I only room with cool freshmen, so it’s okay.”  It had taken a lot of convincing, but Keith had finally managed to talk his grandparents into letting him live in Kerberos Hall for his second year.  The requirement was that his grandparents had to meet the friend who he wanted to live with, and of course it had to be a girl, since they still refused to acknowledge Keith’s gender.  So, Katie had put on her nice dress that she usually only wore to church and turned up promptly on time for her interview (well, they joked it was an interview.  It was supposed to be a luncheon) with Mr. and Mrs. Kogane, senior.  She was surprised when Keith answered the door wearing a skirt and a scowl, but she had hardly missed a beat before quietly whispering “well, don’t you look handsome today” to Keith and entering the house with a cordial smile to greet his grandparents.  She had found it a bit unnerving to intentionally misgender her friend for the duration of the lunch with him sitting right next to her, and had apologized after and gave him a hug, but they both knew it was necessary to get Keith to be able to move out of Arus Hall.  She played her part well, and Mr. and Mrs. Kogane deemed her to be a suitable roommate for their grandchild to live with.  As soon as the roommate paperwork was signed, Katie and Keith quickly agreed that their room, regardless of being on “the girls’ floor”, was a gender-neutral zone.  They were only one floor away from their friends; Shiro and Matt were rooming together again, and Hunk may have used his baking skills to persuade a certain head RA into assigning his and Lance’s room to be next to Shiro and Matt’s again.  They couldn’t have asked for a better set-up.

“Do you guys need any help carrying things in?”  Hunk asked.  “We already got all our stuff moved in this morning.”

“If you don’t mind, yeah, that would be great.”  Matt smiled.  It had taken a little while to earn the trust of his Astronomy group after the disaster at the rocket competition, but once he proved himself to be very skillful at drawing up engine schematics and memorizing astronomy facts, they gradually began to forgive him and let him into their friend group.  He and Keith bonded over conspiracy theories, especially anything to do with aliens.  They even managed to turn the competition disaster experience into a bit of a running joke, asking Matt to do something with a clearly made-up equipment name and then dramatically saying “god, Matt, you don’t know what that is?  How could you possibly forget the flibbitigibbit; it’s not like it’s rocket science!”

Hunk took one of the larger suitcases from Matt and the two of them chatted about the biology class they were both taking as they headed for the building.  Katie attempted to extricate her own bag from the legs of the desk chair that Matt had

insisted

on bringing, because “those chairs that come in the rooms are the least comfortable thing I have ever sat upon, Katie, and I am not going through another year of that torture,” (in Matt’s words).

Keith’s eyes slid over to the car parked a little ways away from them.  “Lance, your car isn’t parked straight.”

“

I’m

not straight.”  Lance shot back, picking up a duffle bag.  Keith laughed and shook his head fondly, picking up a box and following him inside.

“Need some help?”  Shiro asked, coming up behind Katie..

“Yeah, hold this for me for a sec,” Katie held out her empty hand.  Shiro chuckled and took her hand.  She grinned and pulled him down for a kiss.  The two of them had started dating after about five months of Katie coming down to Altea U on weekends to visit her friends, although the majority of their dates so far had been over skype, as she had been busy finishing up her senior year and applying to college.

“Now that we have the important business out of the way,” Shiro said when they had pulled back.  “Do you actually want any help carrying anything?”

“Sure,” Katie said, smiling and handing him a suitcase. She was really looking forward to starting college, this time as herself.