{ TEA WARNING! Hope you all like it scalding }

Drama channels were like the vultures of the YouTube world, just waiting for scandals to develop with people and for drama to ensue. People suffered, they cashed in, and everyone moved on with their lives. It was like some documentary on Animal Planet, the YouTube world, and that week, Allura and Lotor were front and center.

Lance emerged from Keith's room as the other slept, the heat being on break after a few days. It was nearly over, but still... he wanted to let his omega rest as much as possible. He went and got himself some coffee from the kitchen, wondering where Romelle was. It was like he hadn't seen her for days, but then again... he'd also been down under the covers with Keith. He hadn't really seen anyone.

Yawning, the alpha trudged to the living room and sat down on the couch, flicking on the TV. He figured Keith would be waking up soon, hungry and clingy as always, and in the meantime, he could catch up with what was going on on YouTube. There was never any shortage of stuff there.

What greeted him on the homescreen was shocking, but it almost didn't sink in at first.

Allura and Lotor over? Lotor's a cheater? Allura exposes Lotor on a date with another omega? All the drama channels had their own take on what was going on, and it definitely got Lance's attention as he clicked a reputable video. He watched the intro and whatnot, and the person behind the channel had a video taken inside of the Starbucks, which they showed after summarizing what happened.

Allura's voice stung Lance's ears if he was being honest, but he didn't have time to focus on it for long. When he saw Romelle in the other side of the booth, he nearly spit coffee all over himself. He was beyond flabbergasted and choked on air soon thereafter, Kosmo running to see what the commotion was about.

Lance held his mouth and watched, only turning his head when he heard a familiar set of footsteps coming nearer to him.

" What's going on?" Keith groggily asked, rubbing his eyes. Thankfully he'd put on some clothes for the first time in days, and his cramps and lubrication had subsided for the moment. He was nearly out of the woods as far as heat went, but once he saw the expression on Lance's face, he knew he was in for so much more.

Lance had wide eyes and Keith turned his attention to the TV, which Lance paused.

" Did you know about this?" Lance asked, voice shaking somewhat.

" About wh-"

Keith read the title, then saw Romelle's face on the screen right by Lotor's. Um... NANI?! This had to be some sort of a mistake. Was he seeing things? Did the fever from heat fry his brain? Keith didn't know what to think.

Romelle's guy friend happened to be the man whom Lance's ex girlfriend cheated with. Talk about a mind fuck of epic proportions.

" No. I knew she had an alpha friend she'd been seeing but she wouldn't tell me who it was." Keith explained, limping around and sitting on the couch with Lance. His legs felt like jelly and he wobbled around on them, but this was no time for either of them to be laughing at that. This was serious. If Allura managed to find out who Romelle was, they knew that she would have a target on her back from then on out. That was just how petty the beauty community, along with Allura, were.

" I can't believe this..." Lance shook his head and pulled the omega snugly against himself, setting the coffee mug aside. He was sure that his Twitter would've been blown up by then about this. " She's pregnant now, too... if she breaks up with him there will be a custody battle." He closed his eyes and thought out loud.

" She's pregnant?!" Keith exclaimed, eyes bulging.

" Yeah, and from him." Lance replied in a low tone of voice. " I feel so bad for the kid. She's clearly going to keep it and there's going to be so much drama."

Keith looked around himself, then cleared his throat. His voice was scratchy from everything that Lance had done to him.

" Where is she?" He asked. With all of this drama swirling around, Keith couldn't help but worry about the mental state of his sister. She'd never really been in a scandal before. She just sort of did her own thing and got some Instagram followers from being related to him.

" I don't know." Lance said.

" Romelle!" Keith called out into the house, his voice giving out, being as it was so weak. It was almost like he had a frog in his throat, but really he'd just had too much Lance in his-... yep.

No answer.

It was the early evening by then and Keith had no doubt in his mind that she was awake.

" Do you think maybe she might've left?" Lance asked.

" I should call her." Keith got up, stumbling a little.

" You don't have to panic. I'm sure she's fine-"

" I know, but still." The omega was quick to check the guest room and find that she wasn't there, then grab his phone from the nightstand in his room. Just thinking about what Romelle must've been going through was making him nervous. Scandals were very taxing mentally and could do a lot of damage to a person, especially her, since she was new in LA and all.

He called her number and anxiously sat on the other side, waiting for what felt like an eternity.

" Hey, Keith..." She picked up.

" Hey. Where are you? Lance and I just saw-"

" I know. Everyone has seen it." Romelle sighed. " And I'm over at Lotor's place right now." There was no use in hiding his name any longer, as Keith surely would've figured out who he was by then. Romelle didn't even realize the implications of any of this, being as she'd only not told Keith who he was out of shyness.

" Okay... um... are you alright?" Keith asked. First and foremost, he needed to be sure that she was in a healthy spot mentally. He really was wondering about her motives for being friends with him or if she even knew the shit storm she'd caused, but he couldn't just go and lay into her about it. It wasn't like his sister would've started drama on purpose, so what right did he have to be angry about any of it?

" Define alright? I have thousands of hate comments on my Instagram and Twitter from Allura's fans and I don't even know what I did." Romelle sniffled. " I just came over here so I'd have someone to talk to about it and you had a heat to deal with so I didn't know what to-"

" Slow down, take a breath." Keith said. " We're going to figure this out. I'm on break from my heat for a while, so if you wanted to come home, Lance and I are here." He told her in a comforting tone of voice, not wanting to make it any worse. Her voice was already wavering and it was clear that she was upset.

The door behind Keith creaked and he glanced over his shoulder, seeing Lance coming into the room. The alpha crawled onto the bed with him and laid there, cuddling by him and listening in on the phone call.

" Okay... I'll see if he'll drive me back." Romelle murmured.

Keith leaned on Lance's shoulder, and once they knew she'd be coming home, they had a lot of thinking to do.

" I love you and be safe. See you soon." Keith said before hanging up. A loud sigh exited his lips. " Why him?! Out of any guy in the world it just HAD to be Lotor. And now Allura is going to bully her for this."

Lance let his face sink into the blankets as he growled to himself. As much as he wanted to hate Lotor, he just couldn't. Allura had lied to him about what was going on and he'd thought that he was doing the right thing. Okay... maybe he still resented him a little.

" I don't fucking know. It's just always us that this stuff happens to." He grumbled. " But on the bright side, we can put this in the series and make Allura look even worse, so she'll regret everything she's doing."

Keith raised a brow. He'd nearly forgotten that they were filming a multipart expository on James and the YouTube life they lived. Things were going to get messy. Very, very messy.

Still, though, this was a big issue they had to deal with whether or not the cameras were rolling. It was important that he stood up for his sister and their family, and not to mention Lance.

" Are you going to be able to handle seeing him when he drops her off or do you think you need to stay in the house?" Keith asked his alpha. He was asking him for his honest thoughts, since he wasn't sure how intense Lance's alpha instincts were right then.

Lance scoffed.

" What do you mean?"

" I mean... are you going to do something bad?" Keith asked. He was beginning to pick up a change in the other's scent, an angry shift that couldn't be denied. It wasn't directed at him, but clearly at the person they were talking about.

" He... makes me angry, I'll admit. But as long as he doesn't start with me, we should be fine." Lance replied. It was rare that his instincts got a hold of him like that, but with Keith's hormones all out of whack from heat, it might've made him more susceptible to them.

Keith knew that he had to trust Lance's judgement, even if he was scared of the other's temper. Normally he wouldn't have doubted him for a second, but Lotor and Allura were a very touchy subject for Lance and he was well aware of it. Hell, Lance had used his alpha voice on her at Vidcon after Allura started with him. What would happen if Lotor did the same?

Keith shook the thoughts away and snuggled against Lance, only needing to be close to him and believe him. Nothing else.

Lance perked up about twenty minutes later, having heard something outside the house. He was quick to get off the bed and head toward the front door, and Keith didn't waste any time while following in his footsteps. He needed to make sure Lance didn't do anything stupid in the heat of the moment.

Low and behold, the car had pulled up on the outside of Keith's gated property. Keith reached out and grabbed Lance's hand as they began to walk toward it, barefoot, and on Keith's smoothly paved driveway. He squeezed the taller male's hand tightly, as if to keep him grounded in reality above all else.

Romelle stepped out of the passenger side and saw that the couple was approaching, figuring that they wanted to have a word with she and Lotor both. That would've been the only reason they couldn't wait for her to get in the house, right?

Lotor got out of the car after that, and he had to admit... his heart was racing as he finally admitted it to himself. Keith. Keith Kogane was Romelle's brother, and he'd managed to get tangled up with her. And that meant he was now indirectly involved with Keith, and that meant... Lance.

What did he think of Lance?

Well, after all the things Allura had said about him, it was difficult to not dislike him. After he supposedly beat her and made her so scared that she had to run to her cameraman (himself), for help... well... who wouldn't have a problem with that.

But here Romelle was, living with them both and seeming as happy as could be with them. She didn't have bruises, and neither did Keith. It all seemed fishy.

" Don't unlock the gate yet." Keith whispered to his sister from the other side of the metal bars. He most likely still had the scent of heat lingering on him, and he didn't trust Lotor with that one bit.

" So... Romelle. Care to introduce us to your friend?" Lance asked, possessively pulling Keith to his side and wanting to make it clear that he wasn't sharing him. Yeah. Being around another alpha so soon after the heat's break wasn't a good influence on his instincts, not one bit.

Romelle cleared her throat, but as Lotor came up behind her, he figured that he could speak for himself.

" Lance, you know who I am." He stated. " And I'm sure that you've heard the gossip."

Lance kept his eyes narrowed at the other, not wanting to seem vulnerable at all. He even had his chest puffed up as a way of intimidating him, but as Keith saw that he doubted his alpha was doing it on purpose. He'd never seen Lance act like that. Ever.

" We have. So let me ask you this... is it true? Did you cheat on her?"

" No!" Romelle and Lotor exclaimed in unison. She turned bright red instantly and Lotor seemed to blush the tiniest bit. It was hardly noticeable, however.

" I know how this looks, but I assure you that we never did anything like that. Romelle and I are just friends and Allura got the wrong idea." Lotor added.

Lance scoffed to himself and looked to the side.

" Right. She gets a lot of those." He remarked.

Romelle looked between the two of them and tried to read what was happening.

" Do you two know each other?" She asked, looking between the two alphas. Keith grimaced.

" Oh, us?" Lance chuckled. " Yeah, he's the one who thought it would be okay to sleep with my ex-omega in my bed-"

" Lance, don't start this-"

" I thought you were on a break! That's what she told me! I've said this a million times..." Lotor exclaimed and grit his teeth afterwards, trying his best to rein himself in.

Romelle's eyes widened and she looked between them again. So Allura was Lance's ex? That made so much sense! But how the hell had she not realized the connection sooner? She felt stupid.

" I'm sure she told you about a lot of things. About how I beat her or how I'm abusive and an awful person, yeah, totally, 100%... you got me!" Lance growled. Keith felt the vein in his forehead about to raise from how pissed he was.

" Okay! That's it!" The omega yelled. " We're not gonna get into this! Allura is a manipulative bitch who played you both and it's just that fucking simple!"

Everyone stood in silence for a moment and Keith seethed. He couldn't stand to see everyone fussing over someone like her, stand to see all these painful memories trudged up for Lance. Hell, he even felt bad for Lotor.

" Well," Lotor said. " Take Romelle and make sure she realizes it's not her fault. Thinking of it now... there's no way Allura and I would've lasted much longer."

Romelle looked over her shoulder at Lotor with beading eyes.

" And what about you?" She asked. " Will you be okay?"

" I don't know where she is, but we'll talk about things later. For now, you just need to focus on you. Log out of everything and take a break. Text me if you want." Lotor told her.

" That sounds like a good idea. Come on, Romelle." Keith motioned, and Romelle punched in the code to head inside.

" See you..." She told Lotor, waving gently. He made his way back to the car after doing the same, and she went into the driveway. Tears began to stream down her face as she kept her back turned to him.

Lance and Keith stood there before her, Lance still shocked that Keith had yelled, and Keith still pissed that Lance had acted that way.

" Don't cry. It'll be okay." Keith told his sister as Lance loosened his hold on him, letting him go to hug her.

" I f-feel l-like it's my fault..." She blubbered.

" It's not."

" B-But what if it is?"

Things were definitely taking a turn in the world as of late. It only made Keith wonder... what came next? And even more importantly, would they make it through it all unscathed?

{ I know I make jokes about tea a lot but...

THAT'S THE MFING TEA SIS O-O !!! }