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Keith ran his fingertips unceremoniously against the teeth of his lower jaw, tongue tracing the skin desperately for purchase. It wasn't long before he found his mark—a ridge of dry skin peaking above the softer, pinker skin more recently exposed to the cool, sharp air—and after biting down, teeth held ajar by this barest sliver of skin, he pushed his lower lip upwards, into his finger.
The skin tore, barely, and the ridge shifted perhaps a millimeter from its last position.
Pathetic.
His fingers shifted, trading places between his lips, teeth scrambling for every uneven surface he could uncover and tugging and ripping and biting and moving on. Pushing the ridges along his skin, some climbing as far as the first knuckle of his fingers, some pressing in around his cuticles and making his eyes water in pain. When it was too much he pressed another finger into the raw skin, letting himself get used to the pain until he didn't feel it anymore.
He hated himself for the disappointment of a meager bite. He hated himself for the triumph that was feeling a long run of skin torn from its mooring, laid flay over his tongue, rolled between his teeth, ripped to shreds after shifting in his mouth until he finally swallowed the pieces that remained.
He hated himself, so he kept biting.
Shiro had caught him once before, lips crushed against the rough skin of his outside knuckles at an uncomfortable angle, teeth visibly crashing against a raw, pink area of skin and tongue hastily clearing any trace of blood even as he had no idea he was being witnessed in the act.
Keith would never forget the stare. Shock, horror, confusion, disgust.
Everything that a normal person thinks upon seeing another person devouring his own skin in a fit of mindless desperation.
He didn't mean to do it. He hadn't even thought about it, it just happened.
The placations comforted Shiro a little. They were all lies.
Sometimes he really didn't think about it. More often than not, the action was the most deliberate, calculated motion he could manage.
The gloves were a mandate. The wound on his hand had been from a fistfight months earlier, and Shiro decided that hiding it with fingerless gloves, just long enough to obscure his knuckles, would give Keith time to heal, and he'd forget the impulse to bite and scratch by forgetting this one wound, and he'd get better. Take away the temptation, and everything would go back to normal.
The wound faded into a scar in time, and Shiro was mollified.
By the grace of God Shiro never wondered at the short stubs where Keith's fingernails should be, never looked beyond that one gross scar to see the mottled patches of raw skin laced about Keith's body, never paid attention to the way Keith winced to wash his hands as the hot water seared into the reddest slivers of raw skin unearthed in his regular ministrations.
Keith paused, examining his handiwork. It was hard to see unless you were looking, but his fingertips ranged from the deep red of flesh torn too deep to the pale tones of otherwise healthy skin moistened by saliva. It wasn't as if he tore every scrap of skin away—some areas still looked normal, if he ignored the unilaterally blunt, ragged fingernails that always ended up short enough to expose tender flesh underneath.
He only managed to pause for a moment. A few more minutes of this, tugging away at the last few tags of dry skin, and he could rest.
He wasn't sure where he'd begun tonight. He was facing the gladiator on a low level with automatic respawn engaged, just enough activity to keep him on his feet and moving and thinking for a couple hours on end without overexerting himself. Then the outside of his thumb knuckle was at his lips, and he was tearing a piece of skin from the corner of his nail before he knew what was happening.
He paused the training sequence, then ended it. He wasn't gonna concentrate anyway, so he might as well avoid letting a level one simulation cause him any humiliating injury because of the distraction.
It was late, so it wasn't as if anyone was awake to catch him—the only reason anyone left their rooms at this hour was to sneak a bit of late-night goo, which Keith's rumbling stomach reminded him wouldn't be the worst idea in the world.
He wished the wound on the back of his hand would reopen—fingertips were accessible but agonizingly painful when torn too closely. Actual wounds had a tendency to bleed, which was messy, but they didn't hurt as much and they'd scab over, which wasn't an unpleasant sensory experience to peel away. To place a finger over the freshly exposed, depressed flesh, whether blood was coming or not...
One hand idly fell to his ankle, raising the cuff of his skinny jeans to brush a finger against a scar at his ankle. It was procured innocently enough; the friction of skin against the cuff of his boot during a mission with a lot of running gave him hives, which he was admittedly quick to let his uneven nails open into proper cuts.
The scab was fresh and pink, and he couldn't quite manage to break the skin with his currently-meager nails, try as he might. He sighed and rolled the cuff back down.
Again he sat for a few minutes, eyes unfocused and head lolling back against the wall.
When he first came to space, he thought that dumb shit like this could stay on Earth. Most people left this in their childhood, if they dealt with it at all.
A few families had tried to get Keith the help he needed. Nail polish that tasted bad, hands smacking his fingers from his lips, the odd verbal beatdown to remind him of how lucky he was that someone put up with him at all when he was like this.
But in space? He was sure he could let himself drift upwards and out of his body, forget his body, forget the skin he hates. He hates his skin, hates the punctures and the tears. He could just be a better person, concentrate on conquering the galaxy, and maybe someday remember the busted-up skin-sack filled with anxiety he used to be and tell his friends and laugh like he was sure they'd laugh at him now if they knew. That Keith, the one who let the wolves in his teeth loose to tear his own skin to pieces, could turn into a memory.
But being a defender of the universe wasn’t like that.
Keith sighed. He couldn't fundamentally change who he was as a person.
So until he let his self-destructive tendencies finally tear himself limb from ragged limb, skin splitting into ribbons to dance in the grasping fingers of the wind, Voltron would have to manage with a broken arm.