#but it physically pained me to use 'football' for the objectively wrong sport but they're american so what choice did i have

[lilflowerpot]

I’m so happy that you share my headcanon of Keith having a crush on James because honestly there was so much unresolved tension between them.

Also, can you please open your fruitful mind cave and please share some headcanons that you have of the two of them please? So i can sit here and giggle uncontrollably while staring at my phone🙃

[original]

I don't really have a whole lot in the way of concrete headcanons regarding Keith & James' past, it's more nebulous ~vibes~, but let me give it my best shot:

So first thing's first, they met upon starting middleschool at the ripe young age of 11 with that delightful hormonal cocktail and all the dysfunctional emotions it entails a-brewing.

Keith's dad had been dead some three years at this point, and his foster placements had gone up in flames enough times that he'd been recently, but rather permanently, placed in a local group home. That in mind, he's all but given up on making actual human connections because these things seem to just never quite work out for him; better that he give up trying altogether, and save himself the hurt, but then... there's James.

Keith's already snagged the desk by the window in the far back—the best spot, as far as he's concerned—and is as happy to ignore and be ignored by his classmates as they file in for sixth period physics, until- until he walks in, all loud laughs and cheeky smiles, with a gaggle of kids hanging off his every word and more effortless charisma than any pre-teen boy should ever really have the right to.

And then gunmetal eyes sort of slide across the room—like he knew he was being watched before Keith even realised he was watching—all lazy arrogance and stupid hair, and he's looking Keith up and down and raising an eyebrow and- Keith looks away, mouth drawn and shoulders tight. Kids like that like to fight kids like him, he knows, and he cannot afford to get chewed out on his first fucking day for god's sake.

But it's not just physics because why would it be, no, over the coming week Keith finds that James Griffin—and it's no surprise to learn he's from money with a name like that—shares at least half his classes, P.E. among them, which is where it truly beings.

"It" being their... rivalry, Keith supposes.

He's not even sure who started it, just as likely to be both of them as neither, but when they're put on opposing teams for a "friendly" game of football, what begins as Keith making the most of his natural dexterity—skirting around lumbering opponents, nimble as a cat—turns into Griffin hunting him and only him down across the pitch like a damn bloodhound. "That's the game kid" the coach tells him, as if, by the end of it, he hadn't been systematically cornered and corralled by the other team irrespective of whether or not he had the damn ball, entirely at Griffin's direction, "like it or lump it". Keith, still wheezing with ribs that protest every breath after a particularly rough tackle, finds himself quite particularly disinclined to lump it, and certainly doesn't like it one bit.

Definitely not.

So Griffin pushes, Keith pulls. Griffin hits, Keith kicks. Griffin scratches, Keith bites.

But it's not bullying, never that: Keith's known his fair share—a scruffy orphan with anger issues is an easy target, he supposes—and this simply isn't it. Griffin evens defends him, once, in the particularly chilly January of their first year when a meat-headed trio think it funny to soak Keith's shirt during gym and leave it out to freeze; without pause or hesitation, Griffin had quietly handled them with more snide diplomacy than Keith himself would ever wield, and though the details of that closing whisper-threat were known only to he who'd received it, the sudden pallor of face and contrition of manner had left quite the impression.

...As did the cozily lined sweater that James—with goosebumps rising on his arms and cheeks already pinking from the chill—had thrown into Keith's arms from across the changing room, citing the pinprick hole in the cuff as reason enough for him to have been planning to rid himself of it anyway.

They're not friends—how could they be? James is intelligent and popular and so annoyingly good at things he damn near makes an art out of breathing—but for the first time since he was orphaned, Keith finds himself with one singular constant that he can rely on to be infuriatingly charmingly stubbornly there: never shying from Keith's sharp edges nor being swayed by the cruel whispers that haunt him everywhere he goes, James is just... James. Disagreeable. Incomprehensible. Unwavering.

And maybe, just a little bit like Keith.

Oh, and I'm also inclined to believe that (both in this au and canon) that past altercation seen in s7ep01 where Keith goes "I can out-fly anyone in this building" and James fires back with "Oh yeah? Is that what mommy and daddy told you before-" [gets punched in the face] was a classic case of projection on James' part: he strikes me as a kid whose parents expect nothing less than perfection—not only that he could be the best, but that he should—so I think that Keith getting the group in trouble, coupled with James just outright projecting his own experiences, led to a cruel comment (and worse for the fact that I believe James didn't actually know Keith was an orphan until after this instance).