Keefe and Tam just being bros
Also maybe a hair competition
Keefe and Tam Hair Bro Headcanons? -t1sb
mmm yes
these two are idiots. hate each other for the longest time.
Something shifts, at some point, and one of them starts to notice how much they have in common. Maybe it's Tam singing a song Keefe likes to himself as he walks down the hallway. Maybe it's Keefe saying exactly what Tam was thinking in a meeting. Maybe it's them getting shoved into a situation where they have to get along. But whatever it is, they take a step towards each other, and then bam.
Bam.
This is friendship like no one else has ever seen it.
Fitz and Keefe were childhood friends, they based their friendship on liking the same things, going to the same school, all that jazz. As they got older, it took hard work to keep them on good terms, and their friendship took a lot of blows it couldn't absorb over the years. Keefe isn't great at communicating with Fitz, and Fitz is a wreck, who relies really heavily on his sister and on Sophie, more than he relies on Keefe. Mostly because Childhood friends aren't always the best adult friends. But Fitz and Keefe work at it, and their friendship survives, and gets stronger after Keefe starts dating Sophie, because Fitz finally figures out what the pain in his friend's eyes was.
But that's nothing like Keefe and Tam's friendship. They're a friendship of pure choice. It's a slow snowball effect into friendship, and the first time Keefe calls Tam when he wakes up screaming is the first night Tam realizes that he loves his friend. Like, really truly, wholly and platonically, he'd die for Keefe.
It's an odd character progression, but it's a good one. He talks his best friend through a panic attack, and Keefe's heavy breathing goes normal slowly. When Keefe hangs up, he realizes, almost wonderingly, that you can have two best friends.
Because Sophie's his best friend. He's known she is for years. She's been a constant support and someone he'd live and die for all at the same time. But there's a difference between that and how Tam is to him. First of all, he'd never want to kiss Tam like he wants to kiss Sophie. Second of all, Tam almost understands him in a different way. A way that boys understand boys, a straightforward, relatable, uncomplicated way. Just like girls understand girls, in a backhanded, complicated, fraught and dangerous way. Tam understood the workings of Keefe's mind like Fitz had, but stronger, almost.
Maybe it was just that Tam really, really, really tried to understand. Tried to meet him where he was at and say the right things. Keefe had noticed that. Tam was deliberate, with his words, and when he said something, he always thought it through and meant it.
Keefe could appreciate the honesty.
Tam invited Keefe over to Solreef, a lot, after Keefe had mentioned not liking his own house all that much. Tam hoped that Keefe didn't think it was pity. Keefe doesn't think it's pity. And besides, it's fun. There's food and laughter at Solreef, and there's his best friend. The third one he's ever had, one of the two he has right now, and it's great.
The two of them are idiots, together. They do stupid stuff, plan stupid escapades, throw things off of high places, climb trees and yell at each other. They're kids. They make each other feel like the kids they are, like the sixteen year olds they've always been. They don't have to grow up, be more than they are when they're around each other. What they are is enough.
There's inside jokes between them, and one of them is insulting each others' hair. The other always feigns horror, and it's just this funny routine the two of them do, and it's stupid and funny, and Sophie always rolls her eyes and Linh face palms and Biana laughs.
Tam really likes cooking, and Keefe is practically a pastry chef. They make first class food, and that's one thing the Keeper Crew really enjoys about Tam and Keefe getting along. Even when they're out on missions, the food is always amazing, and for some reason, it tastes better when two best friends work on it together.
Tam's been over to Keefe's house more times than Sophie has. Honestly, Keefe only really trusts Tam with being able to deal with the danger of being in his house. It's not that he trusts Tam more than Sophie, he just knows Tam can deal with hearing his father spit a few insults at him far better than Sophie can. Sophie would go on a murder streak. Tam just listens. Clenches his hands into fists. Watches his friend with a worried glance, but when Keefe doesn't talk about it, lets it slide. Tam knows exactly what it's like to love your parents but hate what they do to you.
Keefe went with Tam to Choralmere once. It was an experience, to say the least. Neither of them talk about how hard Tam's hands shook when he grabbed Linh's three books on Hydrokinesis she wanted, but was too afraid to go get herself. Neither of them talk about the broken glass of the family portrait that had clearly been on the floor of Linh's room for months.
Keefe does crack jokes about how bad Tam's hair looked in the pictures, though. Tam actually smiles, right as they leave. Miraculously, they managed to avoid his parents.
Honestly, Tam and Keefe getting over their hatred of each other was a huge step for both of them and self acceptance. Everything that they hated in each other was something they each hated in themselves, and to stop hating that in someone else made it harder to hate it in someone else. It made them better people, whether they wanted to or not, and the both of them love themselves more for loving each other.
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