Author's note: I know guys, I need to work on "Can I Really Be A Hero" and my insane Naruto fan fiction, but I've been hung up on this new cartoon (I cannot say anime because this one is actually a cartoon and not an anime… sadly, but it is so well done I can't IGNORE it. AT ALL! So, I've decided to put a twist on a canon scene and add a bit of my own twisted bull shit to the act and such. Make Keith break his mask during an early scene in the show. I've had this idea from many different fan fictions I've been reading and haven't found one done this way—one where Keith is a victim of abuse and rape and have it show so early in the canon—and have people confront him about it early on so no secrets could be held between any of them.
So yes, here's the new fan fiction in a brand-new fandom! I hope everyone enjoys this as much as I will! –insert excited emoji here—
Also, before anyone reads; a trigger warning is needed for depictions of abuse, both physical and sexual, rape is both mentioned and explained so if this will in any way trigger anybody then I am absolutely fine if you don't read.
Keith's eyes widened when suddenly his wrists were chained up. The cuffs emerging out of the armrests of the seats they sat in and magnetically attached to the arms of the people next to him. But that wasn't what was going through his head the moment he was unable to control his own movements while Lance, on his left, flailed his arms about, and Pidge holding still—well, not completely still, just not moving as much as Lance was. It made his whole body freeze but remain lax enough for Lance to move as much as he wanted.
His skin paled more as the seconds ticked by. Mouth dry and his throat constricted, eyes refusing to leave the bowl of food goo that was given to him as he tried to center himself. Remind himself that they wouldn't do this to hurt him.
Lifting his eyes from the bowl, he sees that everyone's lips are moving, but he can't hear what anyone's saying. The looks on their faces show that they're possibly yelling at each other. Suddenly he lurches forward when Lance grabs his bowl of food goo and launches it at Allura. The sound of everyone yelling filling his ears until they rang. Food goo flew from all directions for a few moments before Pidge realized that Keith wasn't responding to the food fight and that he wasn't moving much.
"Hold it guys." She said loudly, but no one could hear her. "I said stop!" She finally yelled, causing everyone to finally get quiet and turn towards her.
"What's wrong Pidge?" Keith heard Lance ask over his rasp breathing as he fell back into his chair.
"He's hyperventilating!" Pidge said, but Keith couldn't focus on her words. The edges of his vision becoming blurry and fading into black. He wanted to curl in his seat, cover himself with his arms, but he still couldn't move his arms the way he wanted.
The yelling around him became muffled as everyone around him scrambled. Somehow in the mess the cuffs were deactivated, but the damage had already been done. Keith no longer saw the dining hall, the mess of food goo everywhere, couldn't hear his team calling out to him. Keith couldn't see Shiro standing before him, trying to get his attention. It wasn't Shiro's face that he saw looking at him with concern; it was a man with the same build as him, a man with a five-o'clock shadow, a man with a cigarette resting between a pair of snarling lips, a man with rage hiding behind electric blue eyes that promised pain and nothing more.
"I'll show you what happens when you steal from me." A man yelled as he slapped Keith's face. He couldn't block the hit as his wrists were bound by duct tape to the arms of a simple dining chair along with his ankles to keep him from kicking out.
A grunt pulls from his throat at the contact of skin on skin and when the chair toppled to the floor of the cement basement. His head smacking the hard surface before he was righted up again, this time a hand closing around his throat, blocking off all his attempts at getting air into his lungs through his nose. Keith would open his mouth to protest, but there was tape to keep him quiet so the neighbors wouldn't hear his screams and cries.
Keith wouldn't even deny what the man complained about. He hadn't stolen anything!
"Didn't think I would find out that you stole that book from the book store, did you?" The man hissed, letting Keith's throat go so he could drag in much needed air into his abused lungs, choking on saliva with each breath.
To emphasize his words, Keith watched as the man took several steps back and turned to the table, picking up an astronomy text book and throwing it at him. A muffled cry tore from his throat when it hit him in the face, nearly causing his nose to spurt blood.
"Maybe this time I need to teach you what will start happening if I find out you're still stealing." The man said, his voice husky and gargled from screaming.
Keith didn't know what he was talking about, until suddenly the tape on his ankles and wrists were ripped off, causing him to scream because it had been on his bare skin. Suddenly, Keith was pulled out of the chair and shoved onto the ground on his stomach, his ankles being bound to his hands with more duct tape so his ass stuck out in the air. He may have been fifteen, but he wasn't innocent enough to not know what this man was about to do to him. It wouldn't be a first time, except it was the first time with these circumstances and being bound like this.
Keith wished he could escape, break the tape holding his hands and ankles together so he could run away and be taken from this place. Tears wouldn't help save him, but they still cascaded down his bruised cheeks as the man entered him try, no preparation whatsoever, causing Keith to scream into the duct tape over his mouth until his throat was raw.
So, with no way for him to escape physically, Keith closed his eyes tight and forced his mind to wander, taking his conscious mind with it so he couldn't feel the electric pain coursing through him anymore. He knew the man loved it best when he was like a lifeless doll that didn't struggle, so this was the best he could do.
Check out.
Take his mind to a dream world where he didn't face this every day of his life.
A world where his father was still with him, alive and breathing.
*#*#*
Keith's head pounded as his consciousness dragged him away from the comforting darkness that draped over him like a warm, but freezing blanket. It was always the only thing he could turn to that made him feel better. But when the darkness drifted to gray and then blinding white, he knew he couldn't stay there anymore. Fighting it would only cause his headache to worsen, he learned this the hard way.
He expected pain to course through his body the second he tried to move. Expected to be laying on the cement basement floor still taped like the garbage he was, but was surprised to find that he was definitely surrounded by warmth and laying on something soft instead of hard. It confused him until he finally opened his eyes to see dim lighting surrounding him and white fabric in front of his face. He remembered that he was no longer in that basement, had escaped that cesspool, a poor excuse of a foster home a long time ago when another child staying there called the police the day that asshole raped him over a stupid, fucking book. Keith remembered he was thousands of light years away from Earth, in a place where that man could no longer hurt him or look at him with those electric blue eyes that made him feel worse than dog shit.
"Keith?" A familiar voice called out, making him shoot up to his feet, hands reaching for his belt to get his bayard, only to find that he was no longer in his paladin suit but in his normal clothes minus his black skinny jeans, boots, and jacket.
"Woah, easy there. It's alright. It's just me, Shiro." The voice said, the dim lighting brightening due to the movement in the room, making Shiro's figure stand out more and causing Keith to release a breath he didn't know he was holding as he relaxed and fell back onto the couch.
"What… what happened?" Keith asked, voice hoarse like he'd been screaming for hours.
"Well… we were eating dinner where we were suddenly put into another bonding exercise… where we were chained to each other to find a way to work together." Shiro explained. Keith only nodded, but he didn't remember the part about it being a bonding exercise. "And you kinda… had a panic attack."
"How bad was it?" Keith asked, his gaze lowering to his bare knees as he spoke. Unable to look at the one person he thought of as a brother since just before he went to the Garrison to become a space pilot.
"It was pretty frightening. You started hyperventilating moments after a food fight started, then we couldn't get you to breathe for a few moments only for you to start screaming." Shiro explained as he sat down next to Keith on what he now recognizes as a couch in one of the common rooms. "You attacked Lance, but only punched him in the face, and then hid under the table where you kept repeating 'stop it' over and over again at the top of your lungs."
"Where is everyone anyway?" Keith wondered, his eyes leaving his knees to look around the room. Finally noticing that he and Shiro were the only ones in the room.
"They're somewhere else in the castle. It's only been about fifteen minutes since your panic attack. You'd passed out in the end when we finally got you out from under the table and out of the room."
"They want to know what happened, don't they?"
"I'm sure they do, but I told them that now would probably not be a good idea." Shiro answered with a small sigh. "They worry about you, Keith. Even Lance is worried about you. Allura and Coran are most definitely worried because they'd never seen a panic attack as bad as yours before."
"Was anyone else hurt?"
"No, and Lance is going to be okay, you just busted his lip a bit. He's not mad or anything, seems to understand that you weren't in your right mind at the time."
"I… I don't know if I can give you guys an explanation Shiro…" Keith sighed, bringing up the issue at hand that he knew he'd have to face sooner or later. "I've never been able to tell anyone unless they had to."
"Well, think of us as people that have to know so we don't hurt you like that anymore." Shiro suggested. "I know it's going to hurt to put it all into words, but think of it as telling us so we can help you."
"I've never been given help, Shiro, not until you took me under your wing and tried to make something out of myself." Keith said, his eyes stinging as he spoke. "If I couldn't tell you when we were back on Earth, before you left for the Kerberos mission, how can I tell a room of people I've never been able to connect with and barely know?"
"You don't have to give us the extreme details, but just enough to know what frightens you if that's as far as you can go."
Keith thought about Shiro's words for a few moments, finally bringing his gaze up to look at his brother figure for the first time since he first saw him when he came to from his panic attack and saw that Shiro was probably right. That Shiro was genuinely saying these words from the bottom of his heart and that he was saying it for everyone on the team. Steeling his resolve before his nerves got the better of him, Keith nodded.
"Alright… I'll tell everyone." He says. "But I'd like my pants back at least."
"They're right here. I had Lance go get them since he's got the longer legs and can run faster than the others."
Keith sighed, not liking that he'd have to finish getting dressed in front of Shiro, but there's no use in hiding the odd scars around his ankles as the older paladin passed him the black skinny jeans when he stood. Quickly, Keith slid his feet into his pants and pulled them up his legs, buttoning and zipping them into place just before Shiro turned on the com's.
"Hey guys, Keith's awake." Shiro announced. "We're still in the usual common room."
No one spoke back, but Keith knew they were on their way as he sat back down on the couch, hunching forward and drawing his knees to his chest. His arms shook against his shins and no matter how tight he wrapped them around himself they wouldn't let up or stop. Keith couldn't tell if it was due to the cold, his growing fear at how everyone would think about him, or both. It made his stomach drop as the seconds went by until the door slid open behind him. At the sound, his shoulders hunched and his head ducked as he tried to make himself smaller than he already was and felt.
"Keith!" Pidge yelped as she jumped over the edge of the couch onto the cushion next to him. Her arms wrapping around his shoulders tightly. He tried not to flinch at the sound of her yelling his name or the feel of her arms around him, but he couldn't help it.
"S-Sorry!" She squealed a moment later and let him go. Sliding away from him about a foot to give him some space. "I… I'm just glad that you're okay."
"Yeah man." Hunk said as he climbed onto the couch next to Keith on his left a bit further away than Pidge. "I mean, I feel horrible it took us so long to notice you weren't responding to the exercise positively."
"Don't… worry about it Hunk. It's not your fault." Keith sighed as the rest of the paladins, Allura, and Coran walked the rest of the way into the room and filed onto the couch and the other seats that littered the room.
"Hunk is right though Keith…" Lance sighed. "If we are to work as a team we have to be aware of everyone's strengths and weaknesses so we know what to avoid."
Keith couldn't disagree with him there.
"That's why I'm going to tell you guys why that happened." Keith whispered.
"Wait, you're… are you sure Keith?" Hunk asked, his voice cracking a bit before he started rambling so much Keith couldn't hear everything he was saying.
"Yes, Hunk, I'm sure. I've hidden it long enough not just from you guys, but I've been refusing to accept that it happened so I could try to move on from it all." Keith nodded, his eyes finally leaving the tops of his knees and looking at everyone in the room one person at a time. His eyes stopped at Shiro, who sat with Allura and Coran on the stairs leading up to the window wall and bit his bottom lip hard.
With a deep breath, Keith explained what most people don't know about him unless they had to; explained how he was stuck in the foster care system since he was five and had been pushed onto so many families he lost count after eleven and had stopped caring after seven when he realized no family would adopt him. Explained how his mother had abandoned him and his dad before he could remember her face. Explained how his dad died in some freak accident he doesn't have memory of except being told it was his dad dying by suicide.
Keith told them what he remembered of the first few families that took him in, how they treated him as part of the family, only to send him back to the state when they had another child of their own or when they deemed him "too difficult" to take care of because he had anger issues even at the age between five and nine. Keith told them about families that were so sketchy that he feared for his life and ran away multiple times until CPS took him back in. Told them of husbands and wives that abused him because of not being the perfect child they were looking for.
"There was one family I had when I was eleven, that would lock me in a closet if I didn't get perfect scored on my report cards. They would beat me if I didn't clean something the way they wanted which was usually with chemicals no child should be cleaning with without proper instruction on how to use it. One time they locked me in the bathroom with a Clorox and ammonia filled bucket for half an hour several times because I accidentally burned dinner." Keith said with a chuckle as if it were a funny memory. "It's one of the reasons why I have breathing problems and my voice is so raspy and cracks a lot."
He went on and told him how another family was actually nice to him and treated him like he was a human being, except that the oldest son who was twenty at the time and Keith was turning thirteen, raped him while they were home alone and Keith was doing his homework. How Keith took the threat on his life half-seriously and reported the asshole. That the guy was now spending fifteen plus years in prison for it. Keith went on and explained how bullies at school after the rape incident made fun of him because he was jumpy and refused to talk to anybody. How they cornered him in the locker room at school one day and gang raped him, called him a girl because of how small he was, and left him there stuffed in a locker for an entire weekend.
"Yeah… that foster family had so many children to look after they never noticed I never made it home." Keith laughed. "It wasn't until a janitor cleaned on Sunday to find me unconscious and barely breathing. Those four kids were sent to juvie and tried as adults because they were all seniors aged between seventeen and eighteen so they were able to be tried as adults. I was pulled from that family and they were charged with neglect for not noticing I was missing sooner."
Keith went on to tell them how the few families after that seemed to care about his mental state and took him to his psychiatrist appointments and made sure he took his medicine, made sure he wouldn't die after his many attempts at suicide failed miserably. But how they eventually gave up on him because of it and how he refused to open up to anyone.
"The last family, or home, I stayed in before the foster family decided enough was enough… was when I stayed with this one guy who was actually somewhat decent except for the fact that he was a unregistered pedophile and the kids that stayed with him couldn't report him out of fear." Keith choked out, only now noticing how blurry his vision was due to tears stinging his eyes and sliding gently down his cheeks, chin, and neck into his black t-shirt. "He's the reason why I wear gloves and pants and boots all the time. At first it was alright, but then he started getting aggressive when I brought home a fucking quarter I found on the sidewalk near school. Claimed I stole from him and ended up hog tying me with duct tape on my bare skin and threw me into a closet for so long I lost track of the days.
"It eventually escalated to the point he tied me to a chair in the basement with duct tape, tape on skin as usual, and beat me senseless in places that wouldn't be noticed and even started raping me. He was practiced… had enough of it on the three other children in the house plus however many that came before us. It was like a second profession. I couldn't fight back because not just because he taped my limbs up in such ways that made it impossible, but he'd choke me until I went limp like a doll. Eventually I gained a system where I just… stop existing to temporarily escape the pain and so he'd be done faster…
"The last day I was in that house… I had stopped at the library on my way home from school and noticed a bin that had free books in it. I was never allowed any money to buy a library card, and the library was always a place I could hide in until I couldn't avoid going back to that place any longer without getting hurt so it was a safe zone for me… I never planned on bringing a book home, but when I found something on astronomy I couldn't help myself. I had always wanted to go to space, was always fascinated by it and the possibility that we weren't alone in the universe that I wanted to learn as much as I could so I could get into the Garrison.
"Well… he found the text book that afternoon despite the fact that I hid it between my mattresses under the head of the bed when he was in a completely different part of the house. It was the middle of the night when he dragged me out of bed by my hair and threw me down the basement stairs. I was lucky that I didn't break anything, but it sure as hell felt like it did… Anyway, he tied me up to the chair as usual, duct tape on skin, wrists to the arm rests and ankles to the legs… a piece over my mouth and around my head so the neighbors wouldn't hear me scream. I was so used to this that I didn't fight back, not like I could… I think I had hit my head on the concrete in that tumble down the stairs so I can't remember that part much, or the fact that he constantly hit my head with his bare fists. Hit hard enough for the chair to topple over several times and my head cracked against the floor.
"Eventually he threw the book I brought home at my face before he untapped me from the chair and into this humiliating pose before raping me again… I learned later that one of the kids had called the police, along with a neighbor who heard him yelling… I think I had mentally escaped the situation… that part's hard to remember. I do remember waking up in the hospital several months later from basically a coma. I think they said I was in that coma for almost a year because of brain damage caused by the head injuries I sustained. It took a while for me to understand that they tried to tell me he's in prison… how the other boys in the house testified against him and how my sorry ass state got him stuck there long enough for five lifetimes."
After a pause to catch his breath, Keith finishes by telling them how he's unable to trust people, but more so can't trust himself. Tells them how he's able to handle small spaces as long as there's some sort of light. How he can't handle being restrained in any way possible. Tells how training is the only way he can force himself to escape his past and sometimes can't get himself to stop until he loses consciousness or someone forces him to stop. Keith tells them how he's managed to not cut himself, but how tempting it is due to the fact that he's not had anti-depressants or anxiety medication in over a year when he was kicked out of the Garrison and refused to return to the system until he turned eighteen.
"Personally I don't have a problem fighting people that I'm trying to kill because the anger from those people I told you about fuels me to keep going… but training with you guys is hard because sometimes I can't stop myself from going after anybody without killing intent. I feel more comfortable training with drones and the gladiator because of it." Keith explains, the tears on his cheeks dry and making his eyes and face itchy, but he refuses to reach up and get rid of that sensation. "To be honest, I didn't really care where I ended up anymore until I saw Shiro come to my school trying to recruit seniors into the space program at the Garrison. The two of us clicked, even though he's built like that asshole… I managed to make it through with you because your eye color is different… electric blue isn't your eye color. You don't have a constant five-o'clock shadow like him… but I still saw him before I lost it in the dining hall. And Lance… I'm sorry for hitting you… I don't even remember hitting you anyway."
"Keith, may we see these scars? I think we have something in the med bay that can help lighten them a bit, depending on how bad they are." Coran offered, the first person to speak when Keith finally stopped and caused the heavy air in the atmosphere to dissipate. "I mean, it's worth a shot."
He didn't say a word, only held his breath as he pulled up the hem on his pants legs as high as he could, revealing thick, jagged scars that held the distinct shape resembling duct tape. When he removed his double layered gloves, it revealed the same kind of scars. It was only now when everyone—Coran, Shiro, and the other paladins—huddled around him did they notice that he adorned slight cut scars. Scars from cigarette butts, and how they littered his skin all the way up his arms underneath the sleeves of his t-shirt.
"Yes, I think this cream will get rid of the lighter scars definitely, but it may take a long time to get rid of these other scars." Coran said with a small nod. "I'll go look for it. Be back in a bit!"
With that, Coran took off out of the common room.
"Are all humans this despicable?" Allura asked, her voice cracking.
"Not all of us are this bad… but a lot of us are at the same time. You're talking to a race that kills, tortures, and enslaves for either money or fun." Shiro sighed. "It's been like that for as long as we've had recorded history… some historians suggest much longer than that."
"Yes, humans are despicable… my father disowned my oldest sister because she was raped and ended up getting pregnant because of it… refused to get an abortion because she believes that she shouldn't condemn the child for the fault of the father." Lance said, his left ankle lifting to rest atop his right knee as he leaned back. "My oldest brother does drugs and my parents supply him with money, despite knowing how he'll spend it all. But that isn't all, my Abuela, my grandmother, is extremely homophobic and actually disowned my second oldest brother because he's pansexual and my cousin who's gay."
"My dad's brother suffers from paranoid-schizophrenia and refuses to take medicine… half the time he's yelling at everybody, threatening us with knives and stuff, but the laws state that he can't be accepted to a hospital's psych ward unless he's trying to kill himself and the police refuse to do anything to arrest him and get him the help he actually needs that's paid for through state taxes." Hunk said, his thumbs twirling as he spoke quietly.
"I'm Sam Holt's daughter and Matt's my older brother." Pidge announced, "After the Kerberos mission failed, I broke myself down trying to find out about the truth. Eventually I broke into the Garrison to hack into the computers… Had to change my identity and stuff just so I could go back as a student and work my through somehow to get more information without getting 'caught' and thrown out or into prison for treason. I lost so much sleep during that year and kinda refused to take care of myself a whole lot. I, several times, wanted to report Iverson for the lies he spread about the crew that I almost thought revealing myself wouldn't be a problem… until I remembered that the evidence I had was stolen property or words from what most would consider insane. Not everyone on Earth believes in life outside our planet. This is coming from a civilization that has technology so far beneath Altean technology that it takes us… what… several months to reach the last planet in our part of the solar system we're in?"
"Humanity is twisted." Allura concluded, and was agreed upon by every paladin in the room.
"Lets just say that when I crash landed on Earth… they refused to hear a single word I said and tried to experiment on me the second they restrained me." Shiro states. "And I'll be able to tell more if I remembered… it's hard to remember much more before I was captured other than I have no other family back on Earth."
"We're a culture that believes in action, such as experimentation and destruction, ask questions later." Pidge added. "That's why we've had so many world wars and wars in general."
Keith didn't mind the distraction as everyone explained their own personal circumstances. It was a wonderful pull away from his thoughts as he listened intently to everyone's words. Using them as a grounding point so he didn't have another panic attack.
"Hey, Keith. If we're able to get onto Earth without being detected, I can try to hack into the computer systems there to find out what your medications were and we can recreate those with materials we find out here. It's simple really, especially since we have Hunk who knows more on chemicals than I do." Pidge offered. "It's the least we can do for now, ya know?"
"Yeah! It'd definitely help if we learn the medicine name and it's components. Getting ingredients shouldn't be too hard out here anyway." Hunk said as he jumped off the couch in excitement.
"How will we get onto Earth without being noticed? I doubt that this Castle or any of the lions will be able to hide from the space probes that constantly monitor space movement or whatever leaves or enters our atmosphere." Keith said with a small shrug. "It's something I'd like to try too, but I just don't see how it's possible."
"Green has cloaking technology that I reverse engineered from the invisible walls on the training deck. We can use her to get to where we need, but yes, you're right about getting into our atmosphere."
"What if I activate a wormhole near the surface?" Allura asked. "I've done something similar to that once before, but it's tricky because I don't know the layout of your planet."
"We're mostly covered in water, so anywhere that there's water is perfectly fine. I'll be able to fly towards the states where we're from and hack into a database that way. It'd be much easier if I get into the Garrison, they have to keep record of that kind of stuff so students that have mandatory medications to take the Garrison knows what it is so they can get it when they're supposed to." Pidge says with a small nod. "It's a long shot considering what happened when we left, but that's the best option we got. I don't even have to go inside the building because I've already hacked them several times, but I do have to be within range at least."
"I found the cream!" Coran announced as he rushed into the room with a smile and a giddy atmosphere surrounding him. "Now, I know you can't read Altean all that well, but all you have to do is apply this to any surface that has a scar at least three times a day, but you can put it on at most five. Too much of this stuff in a day can actually harm you. It should start working within the next movement on the much lighter scars and more noticeably the darker, thicker ones in the next phoeb or so."
"Th-Thanks Coran…" Keith said, his body tense because he wasn't expecting Coran to be so close to him as he explained the medicine. He was grateful, though, that he was willing to help in the first place. That they were all willing to help.
"We have a course of action to take Coran. We'll be leaving within the next few quintants. There's a lot of maintenance work that needs to be done before we can leave and we need to get started." Allura announced, standing up from where she was sitting to walk out with Coran as she explained their plan.
"Guys…" Keith whispered, gaining the attention of everyone in the common room.
"Yes Keith?" Lance asked.
"Why… aren't you guys disgusted with me?" Keith asked, his voice low as he tried to keep his focus on his hands while his fingers picked and pulled at his nails until they bleed a little. "I mean… I've been violated by many people and—"
"I'm going to stop you right there, mullet head." Lance sighed. "First, we aren't disgusted, we're worried. Second, we care about you and not just because we're a group of people forced to be a team. Third, it's because you're one of us that we'll take action to help. The only thing we'd ask is for you to not kill us when we're training against each other in team exercises."
"Lance!" Pidge squealed. "You're so infuriating… that last bit was not needed."
"Hey, I'm not dissing him Pidge." Lance said. "Nor am I pushing him away… the last thing he needs is that."
"So… does that mean you won't get up in my face anymore?" Keith asked as he brought his gaze up to the Cuban.
"I won't be as harsh… but I won't stop being competitive with you if that's what you're talking about mullet head." Lance said with a small smirk, hands on his hips as he stood. "We're rivals ya know."
"Dude, it's a one-sided rivalry. I never knew I was being compared to everyone because he never did it with me around." Keith deadpanned.
"This is a different rivalry." Lance smirked wider. "I want to beat you in how many Galra we take down."
The whole room burst into laughter at Lance's announcement, even Keith couldn't help but laugh at his words.
"Just know that we'll be keeping a closer eye on you from now on. We'll be making sure you don't train yourself to an early grave, make sure you eat, sleep, and shower as well." Lance said with a small shrug. "And I'm good at making sure that list is fulfilled. I lived in a house with ten people and I was the only one besides my parents that made sure everyone was taken care of."
"We won't treat you different if that's what you're worried about." Shiro smiled. "Now lets go, you didn't get the chance to eat while we were throwing food at each other."
"Also… I didn't mention this earlier, but I do suffer from insomnia and a countless amount of nightmares." Keith mentioned, scratching the back of his neck with a gloveless right hand. "S-Sorry for not mentioning it earlier…"
"It's alright. I know the best thing to help with that." Lance smiled. "And no it does not deal with training until you die. I'll show you tonight when we go to bed."
"I'm getting this feeling I should be worried about what you have in store for me…" Keith deadpanned.
"It's harmless and won't hurt you." Lance chuckled.
Pidge and Hunk went into deep conversation with each other as Lance went into great detail about the yoga and meditation routine he does every night with Keith. Shiro watched the two, joining in when he had a question and sinking back into the background. He couldn't help the small smile that pulled at his lips when he saw that Keith look completely relaxed. More relaxed than when the two started hanging out at the Garrison three years ago.
End note: I enjoyed this story very much! I do think a second part may be welcomed later but if I get enough likes and reviews saying that it's absolutely needed. Please let me know how horrible or good this is because I'm still not used to doing third person, especially with this kind of stuff. I'm also much better with dialogue than prose when it comes to third person. Anyway, hoped you enjoyed! I'll be back and have another work of mine updated shortly!