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— Day 2: Confessions
Hunk was honest-to-god whistling as he parked his car in his driveway and headed up to the front door. He had every reason to be! He’d been married for under a month and he was, according to his engineering co-workers, still in the “honeymoon phase”. Hunk hoped it never ended. He whole-heartedly believed that marrying Keith was one of the best decisions of his life.
The front door was already open; Keith was home today. Hunk knew that, because they were married, and living together. They’d been seeing each other, romantically, for a good five years now, and Keith had moved in with him three years ago. It was just little things like that; just remembering how long they’d been together… Hunk really was on top of the world.
Until he realised most of the rooms were dark, the only light coming from under the study door.
Hunk paused at that. The study was more Keith’s space (Hunk had his office in their bedroom upstairs, really), and Keith only ever shut the door when he was in a mood. Hunk slumped a little, concerned. It had been five years, yeah, but that didn’t mean smooth sailing. Hunk didn’t mind that it was like this, but he was always concerned.
He dropped his bag outside the living room doorway and walked across it cautiously, around the coffee table, past Keith’s bag of roller derby gear. He stopped in front of the closed door- he hadn’t been quiet about his footsteps, and he knew Keith was good at picking them up -and knocked.
“Keith?” He asked softly through the wood.
There was a curious sound; footsteps, but not Keith’s. These were harder, and quicker. Like Keith was wearing his roller skates and practising his toe-stop walking. Hunk glanced behind him. Keith’s Riedell’s were tucked under the side table his gear was on, like always.
“… Hunk. Welcome home,” Keith greeted, and it was Keith; Hunk knew the sound of his voice off by heart, would know it anywhere, he felt, but… he sounded different.
Hunk considered what to say. Keith didn’t continue; he knew Hunk well, and gave him time. “… You okay?” He finally settled for, frowning, concerned he might have finally said the wrong thing this time around, after all these years; it was a baseless fear, but it never went away.
“… I don’t know.” Hunk’s heart clenched in his chest, and he tried the handle. Locked. “It’s not that. I don’t know- I don’t-” Keith’s voice was deeper, more gravelly than Hunk as used to, even through the door. He sighed. “I don’t know how- to tell you.”
“It’s okay,” He said automatically, but Keith continued;
“No, Hunk; I need to. Tell you.” They were both quiet. Hunk didn’t try the doorknob again, but he didn’t move his hand, either. “It’s not- bad. I don’t think? I mean, it’s big, but it’s not- I love you,” Keith finally mumbled, after he couldn’t find a way to finish his halting sentence.
“I love you too,” Hunk said softly. Keith’s heavy, hard, quick footsteps again; nails scratched the wood under Hunk’s hand. Keith had come to stand at the other side of the door. “Are you hurt?” Hunk had to ask.
“… Not physically, no.” That was okay, then. He should have expected that. Hunk nodded to himself and took a breath in.
“Is it important for me to know now? Like, is there a time limit?”
“Guess not.” Hunk pressed his ear to the door at that, frowning a little. He was used to sort of hearing Keith- downwards. He was shorter than him, after all. He sounded higher up. Was he wearing some kind of shoes?
“Am I gonna be hurt? If you don’t tell me. In any way.”
“… I don’t- I think you’ll be hurt. Not physically, but… When I tell you.” Keith’s voice sounded so small. Hunk swallowed. He could hear it in the dimly-lit silence of the lounge room.
“I- I can’t say I won’t be, I guess,” Hunk acknowledged. He didn’t even know what it was, after all. Keith wouldn’t hurt his family or friends, and if they were hurt, Keith would be with them right now, or he would have called him at work, or something, so that was alright. The house hadn’t burned down. He’d just driven his beloved flat-bed ute, Yellow, home. Hunk couldn’t imagine anything he owned that he’d be devastated enough in Keith that his husband would feel the need to lock himself up in his study and torture himself over.
And that was what Keith was doing, too. Torturing himself over something. He was good at it, though Hunk personally thought it unwarranted. Still, Keith had his hang-ups, and Hunk loved him, so he tried to handle Keith’s hang-ups as best he could.
“Well, I guess you could unlock the door and try to tell me?” Hunk offered.
Keith didn’t do anything for a long while. Then, Hunk felt the lock click.
“Don’t open it just yet,” Keith said, and Hunk obligingly released the handle. Slowly, Keith turned the handle himself, and opened the door, just a bit. “… Hey,” Keith said. His mouth was much closer to the doorjamb now, and Hunk really did think that, for some reason, it was coming from above him; which was ridiculous. Keith was shorter than he was and hated wearing shoes indoors.
“I’m home,” Hunk said back, smiling a little. “You okay?”
“… I’m fine.” He didn’t sound fine; he sounded different, and Hunk frowned at how deep his voice was. When it was through the door it hadn’t been so strange, but hearing it in the open-air Hunk couldn’t help but really notice. “Really. I… I just have something I should tell you.”
“… Okay,” Hunk prodded him, after long moments of waiting lead to nothing but more silence.
“I’m not- there’s no one else. It’s not- money, or anything. Not drugs,” Keith hastened to assure him, and Hunk believed him. “It’s just- something about me. That I’ve never told you.”
Hunk thought again on what to say, on how to word what he wanted Keith to know. “… Honestly, you’ve never told me much,” He pointed out softly. “I know you never knew your mum, something happened to your dad, and… you got kicked out of Garrison Galaxy- wow I really don’t know a lot about you,” Hunk realised. He’d asked, of course, but Keith had gently refused to answer. ‘There wasn’t much to say,’ He’d tell him, or ‘I don’t remember much’. Gradually, Hunk realised that not everyone had a loving mother, four great older brothers and good memories of home. He’d stopped asking. Keith would tell him when he was ready to.
It looked like he was trying to be ready to now.
“Yeah. Yeah. I- I should probably tell you, huh.” Hunk couldn’t pick up on any tone, any emotional inflection in Keith’s voice, which was weird, because Hunk had gotten pretty good at telling what Keith was feeling from how he sounded.
“Are you feeling okay?” He asked, worry overcoming him. “You sound different.”
“I’m– it’s a part. Of it.” Through the open sliver, Hunk heard those hard, heavy footsteps again; Keith was walking away from the door. Hunk put a hand up to it- “Give me a second, okay?” -then dropped it again when Keith asked.
“Yeah. ‘Course.”
Keith laughed, and even just across a room it sounded echoed and far away. “I love you, Hunk.”
Hunk smiled, though his brows were still knit with worry. “I love you too.”
“… You do, don’t you?” It sounded more like he was talking to himself, but Hunk made a noise in agreement anyway. “Okay. Come in then. Slow.”
Hunk pushed the door open.
He remembered being younger, and secretly playing with his mother’s knife in his parent’s bedroom, thrilled to be touching it. It was just so cool, because it wasn’t like any other knife in the house; wasn’t like any other knife Keith had ever seen ever, and Keith loved it, even if his mother would be upset with him for touching it.
He’d only meant to touch the blade lightly; it was the coolest part of any knife, for sure, especially his mother’s.
He hadn’t meant to cut himself.
He remembered screaming, horrified not at the little trickle of blood, but the way his skin blossomed purple underneath it, running up his wrist, his arm; like it was infecting him. He remembered his father bursting into the room, remembered how the hope that all would be well again had turned to panic at his father’s ashen face, how he’d started to cry as he yelled for his mother.
“This is just from my side of the family,” His mother had said to him, frame so solid and strong, cradling Keith close, cleaning the small cut and having his watch in the bathroom mirror as his ears returned to normal, as his bones creaked uncomfortably small, as his normal colour returned.
“Thace, what was that?” Seeing his father as panicked as him had been scary, at first, until his mother had come, and made it all better. Keith touched at his finger- all healed already -and felt exhaustion in the wake of his relief.
“That’s a Marmora blade for you. It has- it’s called quintessence, but it’s of energy. Pure energy. It’s forged with it so we can test for things; one of them is Galra heritage. Some of it got in his bloodstream. Absorbed into it. It changed his chromosomes; his recessive Galra genes came to the surface.”
Keith had been nodding off by then, so tired, his head against his mother’s breastbone. “His genes? But it was so fast… will he be alright?”
His mother scoffed; he felt it. “Would I be so calm otherwise?”
Keith had been fine. He’d slept for a while- a whole 14 hours, and then his mother had made him eat something nasty, but had made his mouth water anyway (raw meat, he later learned), but there had been no cell damage, and no lasting effects on his genes. Just a memory of being a little bigger, his senses a little sharper than they ever really were again. He didn’t know if that was the adrenaline or not, but it was a fond part of the stressed, fearful memory. So long as he didn’t come into contact with such quintessence again, he’d be safe. Normal. Human.
But real life never worked out that way.
Hunk entered slow, just like Keith asked of him; he also had to, because the only light was the weak streams of it from the moon, and he didn’t go in Keith’s study a whole lot. The terrain was unfamiliar to him.
“Keith?”
“I’m just behind the desk.” Hunk crept around an armchair, a low table, a side table. He’d helped Keith put that bookshelf together. He’d made that glass cabinet across from it, too, and the glass display case above Keith’s desk; Keith had a knife he prized, a family heirloom from his mother’s side, and Hunk had made it for their two-year anniversary, and-
It was empty.
Hunk probably ducked around the desk a little faster than necessary, but for some reason, the sight of that empty case made him feel cold. “Keith,” He started, then stopped, because that couldn’t be Keith at all.
That couldn’t be human at all. Their head was bowed, and they were hugging their knees and Hunk didn’t recognise them. Long, thin limbs, joints angular, almost grotesque at the sharp outline of bone. Darker than Keith; darker than him, even, maybe, his eyes not quite able to process what colour he was seeing… purple? And his feet; they were long, too long, and there were only two large toes, with vicious, thick nails. They flexed under Hunk’s gaze, and he almost jumped.
They were covered with wide hands, larger than they should be and thin, tapering off to dark, sharp nails.
“Oh, Hunk, I’m so sorry,” They said, and looked up at him, and Hunk was surprised that, even through the unnatural-looking mutton-chops (Keith couldn’t grow those, anyway), the too wide, apparently lip-less mouth, and cheekbones too sharp and gaunt to be human, he could recognise Keith.
He wanted to ask if this was a joke, maybe Lance’s idea, maybe even Pidge’s (they had formed a one-a-month meeting around strange and rarely-seen creatures, after all), but looking at Keith’s face, he couldn’t. Keith wouldn’t pull something like this on him; he couldn’t, because Hunk could tell when Keith was lying, and the look of raw, naked terror in his eyes was real.
So Hunk crouched down and smiled. “Hey, Keith,” He said quietly, affectionately, and reached out, offering his hand, palm up. “I’m home.”
Keith stared at it in disbelief, then back up at his face, before glancing down at his hand again. Slowly, slowly, Keith’s face changed, his expression loosening with hesitant hope, and, tentative, he reached out too, and put his hand in Hunk’s palm.
Hunk didn’t flinch, but he did curl his fingers, loosely, and rubbed his thumb over the backs of Keith’s fingers. They were not as warm as Hunk was used to, and felt delicate against his palm. If he rubbed them backwards, he could feel short, spiky hair.
“Hey Hunk,” Keith said back, his voice deep and foreign and unknown to him, and Hunk felt affection bloom in his chest as a shaky smile crawled onto Keith’s face. His teeth were sharp. It looked awesome. “Come here often?”