WARNING! RATED T FOR VIOLENCE, SELF HARM, AND MENTIONS OF SOME GOD AWFUL STUFF, ALL IN LATER CHAPTERS

IF YOU ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THESE TOPICS, THIS IS NOT A FANFICTION FOR YOU.

I DO NOT OWN VOLTRON: LEGENDARY DEFENDERS

Chapter One

In a small apartment lay a broken, bloody, cuban boy. Amidst the shards of glass and broken furniture, he cried.

Keith was not looking forward to seeing his brother and his brother's fiance. After all, Keith did just lose his scholarship and get kicked out of college for behavior issues. And he knew as soon as Shiro pulled up to his dorm entrance, that he was in for it.

"Honestly Keith, what were you thinking? So close to finishing your first year also." Shiro gave him a disapproving glare before helping him transfer Keith's suitcases from the curb to the car's trunk.

"I don't know, maybe 'I want to shut this jerk up and the only way to do that is punch him?'" Keith scoffed. Shiro shook his head.

"Keith, you sent him to the hospital. Why did you even to that? Your lucky they didn't send you to court!"

"He was being a jerk!" Keith started to raise his voice, then realized he was going to create a scene. So he instead tossed his last suitcase into the car and slammed the trunk hard.

Shiro muttered something along the lines of 'kids these days' before starting the engine. Handfuls of students observed them from the dorm windows. Keith was about to flip them all off as he drove away, but he didn't want to disappoint Shiro even more.

"How are things back home?" Keith asks, trying to break the silence.

"It's… good." His brother says. "Allura and I are still planning the wedding. Pidge and Hunk still come for Friday movie nights. Lance comes too, occasionally. Haven't seen him around lately."

"Do they know I got expelled?" Keith looks at his brother in a hopeful sort of way. He honestly didn't know if he wanted them to know if he got kicked out or not.

"Oh, they know. They were there when I got the call. Pidge has been waiting all weekend for you to come home so she can rub it in your face." Shiro smirked. Keith winced at the name of the little gremlin. Now he was really dreading going back home.

"I'm still really disappointed in you Keith. I know you got a full ride so we really didn't lose any money, but that was one of the best schools in the state. You had an opportunity Keith, and you blew it. I don't want you to end up like me." Keith looked down at his lap. He knew this already. Shiro originally had a full ride to a prestigious football college, but lost his scholarship after a bad car accident. He ended up skipping college entirely and enlisted in the military but lost his arm and now has PTSD.

"I'm sending a college application form to Garrison by the way." Shiro added.

Keith nodded.

Then he registered what Shiro said.

"YOU'RE DOING WHAT!?" He shrieked. "GARRISON? ARE YOU JOKING?"

"No, I'm not joking. You have to go to college. And what's so bad about Garrison? It's a great school. It's on par with your current- sorry, old college, in most of it's departments. Especially sports."

"I don't want to go to Garrison! That's where Pidge, Hunk, and Lance go! Thats where the entire town goes!"

"And what's bad about that? Lance, Pidge, and Hunk are your friends. Why not go to Garrison?"

"Because people know me there! I went to college half a state over to re-invent myself!"

"Yeah, you sure did a great job with that." Shiro rolled his eyes. "Besides, nobody is going to care about you being a hothead in high school. Even if you still are one. You matured, or at least they did."

"Ugh!" Keith slumped down in his seat and tugged his hood over his head. He hated his hometown. Everyone was either super boring, or just super weird. He was known for having a short temper.

Almost two hours later, Shiro and Keith arrived at Shiro's Cape Cod style home. Allura was waiting at the fence.

"Keith! It's been so long. How have you been?" Allura smiled. She scooped him up in a hug, then released him and kissed Shiro, who turned bright red. "You've changed so much! You have bangs now?"

"Yeah, I didn't want my hair slicked back all the time. It looked greasy." Keith grinned. Of all the people in town, Allura was by far the nicest. He was glad she was going to become his sister-in-law one day.

"I'll show you to your room." Allura said, lifting two of Keith's suitcases in one arm.

"You don't have to take that Allura, I can handle it," Keith started.

"No no, it's fine. Tell Shiro to get the rest of your stuff!" Keith nodded and looked back at Shiro, who was in awe and admiring his strong fiance while blushing more than humanly possible. He snapped out of it once he notices Keith giving him a 'What the hell are you doing?' look and grabbed Keith's stuff.

"Keith!" Hunk wrapped himself around Keith in a suffocating hug.

"Get off me!" Keith laughed.

"We can't help it! After all, it's been so long since we last saw you. What has it been, five months? I can't take these long distance relationships!" Hunk fake cried. Keith laughed and followed Allura to his new room, where she then left the two boys with all of Keith's things.

It was a pretty small room, just big enough for the two of them to be in there. Most of the houses ran small in their town. Keith sat cross legged on the bed, while Hunk took up the majority of the room sitting in a swivel chair.

"Did you bring back anything from college?" Hunk asked excitedly.

"Why would you want stuff from a college you don't even go to?" Keith asked.

"I don't know I just wanted to ask, like maybe you had food from some really good restaurant or something you brought back that I could maybe try."

"Dude I lived off of instant ramen the entire year."

"That's certainly going to change." Shiro appeared in the doorway. "Pidge is here, and we are having a proper dinner of spaghetti and meatballs. It's ready now."

The boys followed Shiro downstairs (Hunk almost trampling Keith at the mention of food), so find a tiny green gremlin swinging her feet at the table like a child.

"Hey Keith your back! How was your one year of college?" Pidge smirked.

"How was yours? Finally grew an inch or two?" Keith retorted. Pidge looked like she was going to throw something, but there was nothing to throw except the bowls of food. And Allura specifically stated that there will be no food fights in the new house.

"Where Lance?" Keith asked. He was sure he'd be here, being a wise-ass to Keith about being kicked out, but the boy was nowhere to be seen.

"I don't know, he's been acting weird lately." Hunk said as he sat down at the table. All of the chairs were filled except one: probably Lance's.

"I tried to get him to come but he couldn't." Pidge said softly, as if she didn't want to be heard.

"Why couldn't he?" Keith whipped his head towards Pidge.

"What? Why couldn't who what? I didn't say anything. I said that the spaghetti and meatballs are good." Pidge said franticly. It was obvious she was lying, but nobody but Keith heard what she originally said, so nobody cared to ask.

"So, will you join the soccer team at Garrison?" Shiro asked. Keith grimaced at the mention of Garrison. Keith constantly trained and did a bit of soccer for high school, but even though his former school gave him a soccer scholarship, he wasn't so sure he was cut out for it. It involved a lot of teamwork and foot skill, and Keith was more suited for solitary sports using upper body strength.

"No… I might join a sports club though. Not a team" He replied, poking at his meatball. Shiro could get by with his cooking skills, but Keith still preferred Hunk's cuisine. Allura perked up at the mention of sports though.

"Oh oh! Join the swim club! I used to swim for Garrison. They had a lovely pool. If you don't want to do the team there's always a club to accompany it. The swim club basically just used the pool for noncompetitive stuff." Allura's eyes were shining. "Isn't Lance on the team? Or is he swimming for the club?" Pidge started to feel uncomfortable.

"Neither. He quit a couple months ago." Hunk said. This caught Keith's attention. Lance lived to swim. When Keith came back for winter break, all Lance would talk about was swim.

"Why'd he quit?" Keith asked.

"Don't know. I think it was too much for him. He was very focused on his studies, and I think he realized if he continued, he would snap." They all went back to eating, leaving Keith with so many questions.

The next morning, Keith walked over to main street to grab some coffee, when a group of girls stopped him on the street. He recognized some of them from school.

"Excuse me, but do I know you?" The tallest girl asked. Keith knew who she was, Lily Mays. She was a popular back in highschool. Keith was a little surprised she didn't recognize him. He didn't change that much, did he?

"I think we do. My name is Keith? Keith Kogane? Your Lily right? Yeah I'm pretty sure we went to highschool together." He tried to sound as nice as possible, incase they still thought of him as a hothead.

"Oh my gosh! You look so different!" A different girl spoke this time. The group surrounded him, looking at how much he had changed. Keith knew he got taller (even though he was still below average height), and he knew he was slimmer, but the girls made it seem like he went from a zero to a straight ten.

Suddenly, one of the girls stopped talking and began nudging her friends and pointing across the street.

"Omg it's him…" The group was quiet, a whisper traveled through them.

Keith looked across the street to who they were talking about and nearly gasped. The person he saw was nothing like before.

He looked sickly.

He was bony.

He had matted hair.

He wore clothes that looked to big.

He used to be the very definition of beautiful.

He was Lance McClain.

End of Chapter One

Hello! Thank you for reading the first chapter of The Things You Hide! It may seem a little bland at first, but things will spice up later on, I promise! This chapter is fairly clean, but I make no promises for things that may occur in later chapters.

There are so many questions to be asked and answered. Why does Lance seem so out of character? Is Pidge hiding something?

In the next chapter, we have a mysterious taboo and some awful rumors, as Keith tries to improve his image and become a new person. But is it worth leaving some people behind?