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There’s a Galra bug in the system. Coran and Pidge found it earlier, and it’s already wreaked complete havoc on the Castle’s technology. And despite everyone’s best attempts to fight the virus in every way they know how, nothing seems to be working.
Parts of the Castle have already shut down. The swimming pool malfunctioned whilst Keith was swimming in it, and he and the water went plummeting to the floor. He broke his arm and hit his head real hard, but Coran can’t put him in a cryopod to recover, because the cyropods have malfunctioned too.
So now Keith is unconscious in the medical bay, with Coran fussing over him and Lance and Hunk regularly popping into the room to check up on him (and trying not to worry about him too much). And Hunk knows his anxiety is going up by the minute, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can fight off a panic attack.
But he has to hope he doesn’t have one, because panic attacks are so awful.
---
After checking up on Keith again, Hunk heads back to where he has set up a base with Pidge, wired into the main computer to try and hack the Galra virus. But the Castle is slowly shutting down, so getting there is difficult. In one place, the gravity settings have turned off, and he has to use the jets on his armour to fly until the gravity returns.
And to top things off, he never makes it back to Pidge. Because he is wandering through one of the many corridors when the lights go out. There aren’t even any emergency lights. The whole ship suddenly plunges into complete pitch blackness. And Hunk… and Hunk…
The panic hits him like a sack of a bricks. He curls in on himself, wondering how the darkness can be so all consuming and just so terrifying. And his heart starts to race and…
And he doesn’t know what’s going on.
All he knows is that he’s falling into a panic attack because of the dark and Keith and everything that’s totally screwed up. His heart rate gets faster until he can feel the palpitations, whilst his jagged gasps for air rapidly turn into hyperventilation. He tries to breathe, but his lungs don’t seem to want to work.
“Shit,” he mutters, his voice flat and shaky. He never swears, but he just feels so ill.
He wants the lights to turn back on. He wants Keith to be better. He wants Lance and Keith to be here. He wants the ship back to normal. And he just wants this panic to stop.
He doesn’t know how long he sits there, gasping for breath as his heart pounds and his chest won’t let him breathe properly and his head spins with fear and dizziness, but it seems like forever. He just feels so awful… and then he hears something that suddenly makes him feel a tiny bit better.
“Hunk!”
He turns his head, but he can’t really track the voice. All he knows is that it’s Lance. Lance is here!
But then he sees a beam of light, right off in the distance. Does he have a torch?
“Hunk, man! Where are you?”
He hears footsteps and the beam of light gets larger. Lance is getting closer.
His hands are sweaty and his body trembles with adrenaline, his fingers and toes tingling from hyperventilating. He wants to vomit, but he hasn’t eaten in ages. His hands are clenched into such tight fists that his knuckles actually hurt.
“Hunk!”
“Lance,” Hunk says weakly, struggling to get words out thanks to his uneven breathing.
“Hunk? Is that you?” Lance calls, and he swings the light in his direction. And he must be able to see Hunk’s outline in the darkness, because he breaks into a run. “Hunk!”
The light beam gets larger and larger, and then Hunk can see Lance and he can see the walls and he can see his own body again, and without the darkness trying to consume him suddenly the world seems so much safer.
And then Lance skids to a halt and collapses on the floor beside him. He looks desperately out of breath, but not nearly as much as Hunk still is. He puts the torch on the floor, the light shining towards them both, and then immediately pulls Hunk into a cuddle.
“I’ve found you, man,” he says, clinging to Hunk. “I couldn’t find you anywhere. and I knew you’d be scared when the lights went out and I’ve been trying to find you for a whole hour and… sorry, I’m rambling. This isn’t about me.” He looks at Hunk, studying his tear soaked face. “I’m so sorry you feel so shit. I wish I could’ve been with you.”
Hunk loves Lance’s words, but they aren’t enough to calm him down (nothing really does; he just has to let panic attacks run through on their own, and then go away on their own). But they still help, as does his presence. And Lance gives the best hugs.
“I was just… I was already freaking the fuck out and then the lights went out and…” he trails off, more tears spilling down his face. His words seem incoherent to him, but Lance seems to understand just fine.
“And you panicked?” Lance suggests, his tone soothing.
Hunk nods, still feeling almost ashamed to admit it. He knows it’s bad, but he still feels pathetic and like some sort of wimp for having a panic disorder, even though it’s not his fault. He hates himself sometimes, he really does.
“I understand,” Lance says. He takes one of Hunk’s trembling hands and carefully prises his fingers out of the fist he has been clenching. And then he carefully interlocks their fingers. “It makes sense, man.”
“And I’m so worried about Keith,” he sobs, his hands soaked in sweat. But Lance doesn’t let go. “What if he dies? We’re not even with him!”
Lance’s hands are in his hair, stroking his head in a way that’s actually quite soothing. He must be worried too; who wouldn’t be worried about their very injured boyfriend? But Lance isn’t having a panic attack.
“He won’t die,” Lance says, but his voice is shaking slightly. “We can fix his injuries. He’ll get better. I promise.”
He knows Lance doesn’t know this for certain, but his words still help a lot. Because he knows that his anxiety is often irrational, and he needs help from other people to reassure himself that there actually isn’t as much to worry about.
“Thank you,” he whispers, and then he can’t stop saying it. “Thank you thank you thank you…”
And he sobs as Lance cuddles him, sat together in a single beam of light as the darkness presses on him from all sides, and he feels so scared but not quite so scared with Lance here. And Lance presses a kiss to his sweaty forehead, and Hunk knows just how lucky he is to be dating someone like Lance.
---
The problems on the ship are solved, no thanks to Keith (when he mentions this later, Lance tells him to shut up; “It’s not your fault you were hurt, was it?”). Because he has spent the entire time unconscious, his head injured and lying on a bed in the sick bay. Apparently, once the faults were fixed, he was removed to a cryopod. Which is what he is being taken out of when he wakes up.
And he sees Hunk and Lance and Shiro and Allura and Pidge and Coran, all of his team who care about him so much. And Coran looks like he’s been crying and Pidge has the biggest grin on his face and Hunk looks poorly but is still smiling and holding hands with Lance, and they both yell his name and rush forwards.
“You’re better!” Hunk cries.
“Welcome back, man!” Lance says, just as loud.
And they both pull him into a cuddle, being mindful of how weak he feels, and Keith leans against his boyfriends. He can feel Hunk trembling and wonders if he had a panic attack earlier; he’s always jittery after a panic attack. And if he did, Keith wishes he could’ve been there to help him through it. But Lance must have been there, and Lance is wonderful with Hunk when he’s feeling poorly.
“We’ve missed you so much,” Hunk whispers, and his voice wavers slightly.
And Hunk kisses him and Lance carefully runs his fingers through Keith’s thick hair, and Keith is still a bit wobbly so he has to lean against them, but he doesn’t mind and they don’t either. This is just him hugging his boyfriends, the boyfriends he loves so much.
“I’ve missed you too,” he says, and he’s just so glad they’re all back together.