warnings: mentions of smut but no actual smut, hazardous stimming, eating disorder/high metabolism/not realizing the disorder, vomiting, general foodstuff hate, swearing, general angst. all characters are of age (theyre like 20ish in this)
(it does have a happy ending, and lots of fluff.)
hello yes it is i, the person who self projects their autistic traits and things i struggle with onto keet with hunk as the voice of reason. vent fic (like vent art only it's a fic)
"Bae please, ya gotta eat somethin' that ain't your finger skin."
"I don't want to." Keith mumbled, shoving his hands in his pockets and turned away from Hunk. "Food is gross."
"I can make it not gross."
"I know you can! It's just-" Keith closed his eyes and let out a huff. "I don't want my mouth to touch food. It's the aftertaste and the texture and even the fucking smell. It doesn't smell like anything!"
He let out a breath. "'Sides, I barely ate anything on earth too. These is like my normal eating habits."
"That can't be healthy." Hunk frowned. "Galra Keith needs to eat too."
Keith cracked a smile at the old joke. "I was always Galra Keith. Galra Keith just doesn't like to eat."
"What did you eat on Earth, then? You had to eat something at some point." Hunk's arms snaked around Keith's thin belly and tugged him close, burying his nose in Keith's soft hair.
Keith stiffened, and Hunk loosened his arms. "That okay?"
"Yeah." Keith paused. "Goldfish. Cheezits. Cheese sticks too. And those shitty chocolate donuts. Beef jerky. Vitamin pills for the rest because I'll notice my hands gettin' shaky."
Hunk crinkled his eyebrows together. "That's it?"
"Lettuce too. Sometimes I'll make broccoli or boil soybeans because it was easy."
"No raw meat for Galra Keith?" Hunk's tone was sincere, but his eyes were laughing.
"I would prefer to Not," Keith laughed, sinking into Hunk's warm arms. "I eat enough of your ass every day to comphostate for my lack of protein."
"Babe!" Hunk blushed extremely red and buried his face into Keith's shoulder. Keith laughed again, pressing a kiss into Hunk's temple.
"Well, I wouldn't say that that ass isn't raw. I'll say it's finely done-"
"Stooooooop, Lance or Pidge could hear us!"
"That was so not your philosophy last night." Keith smirked.
"OKAY, back to your weird ass eating habits-"
"Did you say ass,"
Hunk let out a growl of frustration and buried his face in Keith's neck while Keith howled with laughter.
Hunk was the one person who could get him to laugh like that, to make him feel truly free to express his emotions and thoughts and weird eating habits.
He didn't want that to change.
Maybe he should eat more, anyway.
Urgh.
"I won't let you have sex with me until you eat this entire bowl."
"That won't work on me, Hunk." Keith replied, lazily leaning back on the pillow that was propped up on the window of their bed. "I don't need sexy times when there's cuddling with my perfect boyfriend."
"No cuddling either."
"Nuh uh!" Keith's eyes widened. "That's it. Tossin' my skinny ass out of the airlock. Farewell."
Keith pushed himself upward but Hunk pushed him back and sat down, tossing a leg over Keith's skinny girth.
"Ain't none y'all tossin' no one out 'em airlock." Hunk imitated Keith's slight southern accent, still prominent after nearly three years in space. Then his eyes softened. "Please? It doesn't have to be the whole thing. Just half."
Keith sighed. "Alright. Just stop lookin' at me with them puppy eyes."
He delicately took the spork and gave himself a generous spoonful (sporkful?) of the food goo. His eyes widened.
"It tastes like goldfish crackers!" He exclaimed. Hunk grinned.
"I know the texture is a bit weird because it's goop, but yaknow how the ovens are with cooking this shit-"
"No, no! It's delicious." Keith swallowed another spoonful, then smiled shyly though his bangs.
"Thank you, Hunk."
Hunk somehow resisted the urge to kiss him until Keith set the bowl down.
Keith retched again, but nothing but spit and the taste of bile came up and he forced himself to breath, in and out through his nose, Hunk's worried hand rubbing his lower back.
"I think I knew how you felt when we first went up in space." Keith joked, his stomach feeling like he had swallowed acid. "I firsthand apologize for Lance's piloting."
Hunk forced a smile at the joke, his eyebrows still worriedly crinkled. If Keith didn't had the taste of vomit in his mouth he would kiss that little wrinkle away, to reassure Hunk that he was alright.
Instead he stood, grabbing a towel and wiping his mouth, before turning on the sink and sticking his face under it. He felt Hunk's eyes on him.
Then it struck him. Hunk felt guilty.
He whirled around fast, almost knocking over a bottle of shampoo that was resting on the sink, startling Hunk.
"It's not your fault, dude." The bathroom was small enough that he only had to lower himself to grab Hunk's face, whose mouth was opening in apology.
"I don't want to hear it." Keith placed a finger over Hunk's soft lips, his other hand on his hip. "It's not your fault that you were worried about me, not your fault the goo just disagreed with my stomach."
"But it is my fault!" Hunk cried. "I added flavors and sodium to get it to taste like goldfish, and it had different ingredients than the normal goo! It was upped in nutrients and had a lot of carbohydrates in it so you'll get hungry later-"
"And it's alright!" Keith hushed. "You were just looking out for me. I'll never be mad at you for that."
He pressed a kiss to Hunk's forehead, brushing his bangs back. "And you made it taste delicious. I almost forgot what real food tasted like."
He pulled himself to his feet, holding out his arm for Hunk to grab. "Now you wanna go back to bed and cuddle?"
"Yeah."
"Just let me brush my teeth first. You go back to bed."
Later that night, running his hands over Keith's thin body, he promised himself that he'll help him with his sensory issues with the Castleship food, promised himself that Keith didn't have to go another day gnawing the tips of his fingers to satisfy his stomach.
He's seen eating disorders firsthand from his time on earth. Sometimes the person didn't even know they were starving themselves, just thought they were a picky eater and never realized how thin they got.
He didn't want that to happen to Keith.
The Ga'hoks were tree like creatures that used water to move their bodies, twisting it in their veins like a skeleton and, when threatened, would form whips of water that were razor sharp down to the very molecular structure. They could cut through anything of basic matter without even thinking about it.
Pidge jokingly called them Bloodbenders. They liked that name.
(No one told them it was from a Earth entertainment show called Avatar: The last Airbender. Even when they declared themselves master bloodbenders. They were scary enough on their own.)
The Ga'hoks also took their food seriously. In between missions Hunk would beg Allura to let him shop in their markets, their first GAK earned when Allura cut her hair and sold strand by strand to get money.
Aliens go crazy for mementos like that. Allura didn't see the point when they could get nearly four thousand GAK a strand, five thousand when Lance haggled.
Allura thought the hair got in the way, anyway. She liked the short style that was easier to wash and allowed her to fit in with the humans a bit more.
(She didn't know that lots of humans had long hair, her example was the male and one nonbinary demographic. But damn, she looked amazing.)
It meant Hunk had money. And it was a free day for him.
He grabbed his boyfriend away from Pidge's video games ("I almost beat their high score, man!") and buckled him in the passenger seat, smiling at Keith's whoop of delight as they shot from the hanger at top speed, only in their civilian clothing and a mobile communication
They've flown in robotic alien lions on a daily basis for the past four-something years and it still makes Hunk's heart flutter when Keith gets excited over going faster than twenty kilometers an hour.
"Shopping?" Keith asks, his hands flicking in excitement.
"Fuck yeah!" Hunk turned the ship towards the series of moons inhabited by the Ga'hoks, the gas giant a gleaming beacon of yellow and green.
"The Ga'hoks? The bloodbender guys?" Keith's nose crinkled up in confusion.
"Just the trading moon. I want to look for ingredients and such." Hunk replied.
Keith sent Hunk a sideways look. "This isn't about me throwin' up, right?"
"Well, not fully. This is also about getting spices and foodbase for meals and such. I'm still looking for a corn like item or possibly rice, because I worked with those a lot back on Earth. And it's a good opportunity to see if the bloodbenders have anything that you'd like and agree with your stomach."
When Keith still looked unsure, Hunk shot him a smile. "And it's a date. A date that won't get interrupted by Galra or Lance and Pidge's water gun fight or that time we had a leopard alien thing aboard and it wouldn't stop cuddling with you-"
"It sounds great." Keith said shyly. "I'll love to do this with you. Without the giant alien cat that I was allergic to."
Landing was easily once they were identified as paladins of voltron. The Ga'hoks had amazing facial recognition software that was able to detect even the hint of a disguise.
And off they were, weaving through shops and streets that were crowded with vendors and aliens of all races and color, little kiosks of freshwater that the locals used to move their bodies. A few tiny Ga'Hoks were splashing in the shallow pools, safe and protected.
Keith had a knack for pinning down the best vendors with human like rolls of bark that smelled like cinnamon ("Bark from the powdered snowcaps of Gho'ast'atire!") or shops with bipedal clothing for a cheap price. Hunk's arms will filled with bags and jars before they spotted the food court.
It must have been a free sample day (Hunk made sure to ask, especially after what happened when he ate Galran food at the space mall once) because several samples of meats, cheese-like substances, drinks, and grains were on floating plates, wafting delicious smells over the shoppers.
"That one." Keith pointed to something like a plain cracker and the cheese-like substance. "Looks good."
"You want me to try it first?"
"Sure. Describe the crunch and the taste to me."
Hunk grabbed one of the crackers and covered it in cheese. "Cronch."
Keith giggled. Hunk's heart soared.
"It has the same texture as a cracker, but it has a spice in it. Light, cinnamon-ey? And this isn't cheese, more like mayo. Interesting combination."
Keith nodded, and reached for the crackers, ignoring the mayo cheese. Hunk smiled.
They continued down the asides, Hunk cracking jokes and trying his best to describe the food, buying the food that Keith wanted and enjoyed. Soon their hands were full with wrapped parcels and bags.
"You wanted to shop for other things, right?" Keith asks after purchasing a dozen pastries that looked like muffins but tasted like apples.
"Just some sort of staple grain. I didn't see any that looked like what I wanted, though. You wanna shop for clothing?"
Keith's eyes lit up. "Hell yes!"
It was later that week when Keith had a painful stomach ache so awful that he had to skip training and sulked in the medical bay cots, angry that Lance had forced him to take a break after seeing him double over in pain and forcing him to explain.
Lance may act cocky and tough but Keith could tell Lance loved him just as much as he loved his teammates. He saw the other paladins as brothers and sibling, and he had an eye for when someone was trying to hide something.
In this case, it was a stomach ache that felt like Keith swallowed glass.
(he did that once for a dare back in texas and it was just as painful as it sounded.)
So he swallowed the altean painkillers that were deemed safe by a hungover Shiro ("Shiro, it might kill you!" "Thank god.") and turned over, hands on his belly in a shallow attempt to sooth the pain.
He pulled his pad from his pocket, trying to distract himself with a game Hunk programmed from broken altean coding, his belly still fluttering in pain.
He must have drifted off at one point, because he woke up in someone's thick arms, brain feeling like it was filled with cotton and pad clicked off and on the stand.
"Go back to sleep, babe." Hunk pressed a kiss into the nape of his neck, tightening his arms around Keith's middle, warm hands soothing on his aching tummy.
Keith closed his eyes, breathing in the freshly-washed smell of Hunk's skin and sinking back into unconsciousness.
"Lance, can you be my taste tester?" Hunk leaned on the doorway into the rec room, where Lance and Shiro were battling each other for first place at the altean equivalent of mario kart.
"Yeah! Keith, avenge me!" Lance threw the controller at Keith, who caught it without even glancing up from the screen and instantly boosted Lance's car in speed.
Lance stepped out of the room, following Hunk to the kitchen with a spring in his step. "What didja make this time, big guy?"
"Got these beans that sorta tasted like soybeans but I wanted to make sure. I boiled them, added some spices, a bit of hot sauce, and salt. You think it'll be good for Keith?"
Lance hummed in thought. "Maybe. Soybeans are normally good foods for people with autism because of the bland taste and the texture, and the spices would be good for Keith. He likes that type of shit."
"Yeah, he really does. Remember that time he ate those spicy acorns as a trial for those aliens and didn't even flinch?"
"I was gonna say he likes spicy things because he's into you-"
"Stooooop, you're just as bad as him!" Hunk elbowed the door to the kitchen open, covering his face with his free hand. "I gotta deal with his pickup lines all the time. He's horrible, both of y'all horrible."
Lance made his way over to the pot of cooling soybeans, before pulling up short. "Did you just say y'all? Unironically?"
"Eat your damn soybeans."
"Chill spicy man."
"LANCE."
It was nearly midnight when Hunk finally came back from working with his lion, Keith already half asleep and body curled up for warmth against the wall.
"There you are," he mumbled, reaching out his hands, wanting Hunk in his arms. "C'mere I missed you."
"Lemmie take a shower first?" Hunk pleaded. "Five minutes."
"Fine," Keith said, his eyes closing again. "Hurry."
Hunk didn't even shield his body from Keith's eyes, although he might have when they first started dating. He was rather shy and embarrassed about his body for so long, but now it felt natural to show himself like this in front of Keith.
Keith thought he was beautiful. So did Lance, but Lance once got so drunk he got into a flirting competition with Pidge, and tried to woo a tree. In Lance's defence, the tree did look rather humanoid.
(Pidge insisted that they won over the tree in the end, and therefore won.)
He quickly showered, washing the day's grime off with ease and running shampoo though his hair, which sudded up with soda-like bubbles and left his hair silky and smooth. Then got that special soap that Lance created especially for Hunk to get grease stains off his hands and clothes and smelled like flowers.
Then he dried off, threw his grease-stained shirt in the sink with the soap and added a bit of water, and pulled on a fresh pair of boxers.
Keith was still awake, but barely. His eyes kept drooping and his hands were still, gripping his hair and another fisted in the sheets.
Hunk crawled into their bed, kissing the top of Keith's head and he signed as Keith melted into him, hands gripping his sides and slowly moving up and down, skin on skin.
Hunk shifted his hands so they rested on Keith's chest, then on a whim bought them on his tummy.
His eyes widened.
He pressed his fingers against Keith's belly, feeling the thin layer of fat and those strong and powerful abs underneath.
He didn't have that before. Well, he did because everyone had a little bit of a tummy, but this was definitely thicker than it was before.
Hunk smiled, thinking of that morning when Keith ate a bit more then usual and in that moment, felt so proud of him. Pride flared in his chest like a fire, and he hugged Keith close, breathing in the citrus-like smell in his hair and smiling happily.
Keith only let out a lovely sigh and they held like that, only the two of them in the entire universe, intertwined and knotted together.
They were perfect.
Chips. Chips were good.
Keith placed another one in his mouth, the lemon and salt flavor relighting the aftertaste and crunching wonderfully in his mouth.
(Wasn't the same as goldfish crackers but they're on the list of "okay foods")
He watched Hunk's character on the screen go up in smoke, before transforming into a worm-like creature with several blinking eyes and wings, devouring Shiro's character. Then both of them exploded, shot down by a sniper up on the mountain.
"This game makes no sense." Shiro said, tossing his controller to Lance.
"It's altean. And you got no right to say that, I know you and Matt played Overwatch back on Earth." Pidge said, grabbing the controller from Hunk and began customizing their character.
"You can't prove anything."
"I will dig up the fucking logs Matt left on my laptop when he borrowed it for a week." They replied, making their character look a bit like a pigeon made out of rocks and vines, but with fire breath. "Over thirty hours, and he had college. In a week, Shiro."
Keith placed another chip in his mouth. No negative reactions. He chewed. This one tasted a bit like barbecue sauce.
Hunk sent a warm smile at him, and Keith scooted closer to his boyfriend, snuggling up just under his chin, closing his eyes as Lance and Pidge fought on screen, avoiding shots from attackers while attacking themselves.
He wouldn't want anything more. He didn't want anything more, because it was perfect being in Hunk's arms and his stomach full of food and his skin not feeling like it was about to jump off and his family around him, safe and sound.
based off of my actual experience combined with autism, my picky eating due to sensory input, and indirectly becoming seriously underweight.