.
.
Winter in Keith's hometown never reaches them with any snowfall. Too muggy, too much humidity and dripping-hot conditions. They'll have an alien invasion with spaceships and tall, purple and furry creatures happen faster here than any freezing cold temperatures.
Loneliness creeps in, battering against the inside of Keith's chest and his skull. He drowns it out with a few, hearty sips of discounted cupcake flavored vodka stolen from the gas station.
None of his bullies wander out towards this direction, where the deep thick woods and marshes join together under the spindling, moss-covered trees and the open curtains of stars drenched in void. Local legends say that's how people disappear. Wandering around. Keith wishes several people in his life would disappear just as certainly as rumors spread about the subject.
His pop isn't around to defend him. He instead chose to defend other people, for a living, and then got killed for it. Keith's father had been the town hero when he rescued a two-year-old from a blazing fire started by broken electrical cords, only for her to die on the ambulance ride.
The mother had been a hysterical wreck, sobbing and vocally blaming his pop for not trying harder and not getting there sooner in his fire truck with his colleagues.
Not even a week after that, Keith found himself orphaned after the toddler's father and his friend got wasted and beat Keith's father within an inch of his life with a tire-iron. In a warm, dark alley. Left him to bleed out and be discovered an hour later by one of the bar's regulars.
That had been ten years ago. He's eighteen, silently sulking on a bottom rung of an overhead power line, the right side of Keith's face throbbing with a fresh, reddening welt.
Mouthing off doesn't end well. And yet… Keith can't stop feeling enraged.
All of the time.
This town has always treated him like garbage and resents him, even showing little to no sympathy about his own father's death. It was his fault. Everything's gonna be his fault. Keith's father should have been able to save the toddler. He should have not tried to comfort the grieving father while Mister Sincline had been stone-cold drunk, and left well enough alone. Keith should not exist and have been sent to another town.
Keith's feet dangle mid-air as he swigs back another mouthful of vodka, tossing the bottle. His black, featureless hoodie flaps around him as Keith leaps towards the ground. His balance is fucked, but Keith manages to stay upright, turning and clumsily unbuttoning his jeans.
He faces towards the soft, bright glow of his hometown, of the nearest civilization, and lets out a stream of hot piss into the grass, holding out his dick. Keith clears his throat, grunting and spitting sideways, zipping himself back into his underwear and jeans. He unceremoniously flips off a van driving ahead near the road, walking off further with stilted vision and pacing.
There's no more sunset painting the marsh-water colorfully. Keith wades through, soaking his boots, wishing he had another bottle of vodka or even a joint. Maybe if he blows Marshal Wade after chem lab, the shitass geezer will let him take a Q from the stash in his desk-drawer.
Somehow… Keith ends up in murky, rot-stench water that goes to his knees. He heads into the forest where there's less muddy ground. Shadowy, twisting branches crest the view high above.
Keith halts when he glimpses what appears to be a flickering, orange light bobbing and weaving. He's heard of atmospheric ghost lights. Electrical fields that cause visible discharge and ball lightning. Or maybe it's the fumes of the marshes messing with Keith's already hazy senses.
A twinge of panic and anxiety curdles up in his gut. For no good reason. The flickering lamp-light looks like it's gaining speed, chasing him. His pop used to tell him about the Lantern Man — a somewhat local legend and ghost story about an evil spirit that would draw its victims in and then capture them in the reed beds, filling their lungs with water until they're bloated.
You do not whistle in the marshes or the forest. You do not run.
You hide.
His brain tries to process what to do as Keith drops down, his palms smearing with dirt and leaves. He presses himself flat, Keith's lips opening and flattening too.
"Are you ill?" Keith's head shoots up as he gapes wide-eyed at a man staring solemnly down on him. Even in the poor, natural lighting, Keith recognizes that the man appears to be in his mid-twenties and burly and handsome. A conventionally masculine form of attractive with his large, muscular stature and those dark grey eyes. "What's the matter?"
Keith quickly rises to his feet, gazing around fearfully. "I… wait, did you not see that?"
"What is it you need me to see?"
The man's lips quirk up. Keith's cheeks heat with embarrassment. "Nothing… nothing, uh—" he mutters, squinting his eyes as the man holds up his old-fashioned lantern. "—Kinda tired. Seeing stuff or something," Keith explains dully, neutralizing his expression.
"It is easy to get confused and lost around here." A pale hand reaches out. "I'm Shiro," the man announces, chuckling and not seeming awkward about Keith smearing mud on his palm.
"Keith."
"Well, Keith… maybe you just need a guiding light?" Shiro points out with a smirking and an teasing note, motioning upwards with his glowing, yellowish orange lantern.
"Hilarious."
Despite his lame jokes, Keith follows him, taking a moment to examine his companion. "Did you come back from one of the old-timey cemetery tours?" Keith nods to the scratchy, woolen vest dyed in purple and Shiro's finely stitched trousers. "The uniform. It looks good."
Shiro's lips quirk again, and he doesn't say anything. Not at first.
"How did you get yourself out into the marshes, Keith?"
"Not really sure. I must have made a wrong turn," Keith admits, stumbling and feeling Shiro's arm lock around him, helping him up. God, this is too good to be true — some hot guy in the middle of nowhere who doesn't hate Keith? Unrealistic. "Good thing you showed up, huh…"
"Right," Shiro murmurs, rubbing a hand up Keith's lower back until the other boy steps forward.
Keith feels his tongue and mouth swelling up, drying up. "I probably would have ended up missing like the Holt siblings. You know? Around thirty years ago," he says impassively. "They never found those kids. Heard it was only the jawbone that belonged to Katie Holt that got left behind…"
Something in Shiro's features tightens or goes heavy with comprehension, but he doesn't move away from Keith. They continue to wind through the moss-covered, spindly trees.
"Getting darker…" Keith whispers, shoving his hands into his hoodie pockets and observing their surroundings more closely. He hasn't seen any path in the lantern's light but Shiro walks on like he's done this a hundred times before. Maybe he has.
"I didn't think you were someone who was easily frightened, Keith."
There's no harshness in Shiro's observation. He glances over his shoulder to Keith, smiling more genuinely and openly. Keith's insides does a spinny, giddy cartwheel, but without the nausea.
"For once… it's nice to be away from everybody else… my foster family doesn't give a shit what happens to me anyway," Keith says truthfully. He feels weird. Like Keith never started drinking at all that evening and his skin slightly cold. "Nobody does really…"
"Maybe they don't but I care." Shiro's proclamation comes off as throaty and benevolent. Keith stares up at him, going wide-eyed again when Shiro cups his face, his thumb touches gently over Keith's facial-welt no longer puffy. He feels just as cold as Keith is right in his core. "I really like you, Keith… I suppose that's the problem in all of this."
Keith finds himself unable to take a deep breath.
"We're… not getting out of here, are we?" he asks, somehow already knowing what Shiro may tell him. Keith should have realized it from the moment his body tumbled onto the ground, face-first into the mud and leaves and rocks hidden while he was exhausted and still undeniably intoxicated.
"There's only one way out…" Shiro tells him, going solemn once more and raising his glowing, flickering lantern. "But I would like you to stay. If that's what you want."
Keith only needs a split-second to process, before he grasps onto the lantern's handle with him.
"I want to stay with you, Shiro."
Shiro lets out a quiet, amused chuckle when Keith drifts against him, pushing his entire face childishly into his loosely-fitted vest smelling like lye and sun-soaked wheat. They embrace, wordless and tender, vanishing into the orange ghost light starting to flicker-fade.
And Keith has never been happier.
.
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Voltron isn't mine. It's time for the Sheith Halloween Exchange! Ahhhh! Excite! I was assigned to "floralegia" on Tumblr who wanted some supernatural/paranormal AU and lately I've really been getting into the lore about will 'o wisps and things similar to that and thought it would be cool to try it out! Nah we don't kill anyone in this and there needed to be specifically a happy ending so yayyy! Hope you guys enjoy this and any thoughts/comments on this fic are so so appreciated! Also what are you plans for Halloween? Staying in or going out? Trick or treating? Me personally I have no idea because I may go out to a pumpkin patch then go home and watch Halloween movies like Hocus Pocus and Halloweentown and Nightmare Before Christmas and carve pumpkins!