Work Text:
Keith steps into the empty gym showers, reveling in the echoing silence and his deep breaths as his only company.
It pays to take his workouts at 03:00; the sun is still hidden and the campus is still asleep and dreaming, which almost eliminates his chances of running into anyone else. The hour normally leaves little time to sleep overall, but he figures that as long as his grades don’t slip, no one’s going to fuss.
And truthfully, if it means he gets in and out without anyone staring or making comments and then causing his dysphoria to flare, that all makes it more than worth it.
Keith’s an expert at this point.
After he throws his sweaty clothes into a locker close to the stalls, he takes his shower caddy and a deep breath and makes for the shower corridor. He averts his eyes from the mirrors just above the sinks that lead into the showers so that he can’t see his reflection. Back straight, shoulders back to broaden his shadow as he headed into a stall. Vision straight ahead.
Don’t think. Just focus on the task ahead.
Don’t remember. You’re here now.
Keith adjusts the towel around his chest and body and practically runs to a stall, with the ghost of his panic nipping at his heels.
He’s usually pretty good at keeping it together nowadays. Some memories will slip through, especially when he lets his guard down. They’re terrible, disarming memories.
His first two foster families had done little to nothing to help him or embrace him. Hell, the first one had almost successfully shipped him off to a conversion camp; he’d made off in the middle of the night and been found a few weeks later by CPS outside of the city and placed with another family. That one lasted a little longer, but they were more concerned with how much money they were getting from the state than the fact that their biological children bullied their adopted child for expressing himself differently. (The youngest didn’t respect closed or locked doors, so hello anxiety!)
There’s no one here now, he’s made sure of it, but it doesn’t keep him from feeling the prickle of paranoia.
It wasn’t until Shiro came to his school that lucky day, trying to find potential recruits for the Garrison, that Keith had gotten his first real taste of acknowledgment without preconceptions and an adult seeing him as just a man.
Keith felt like his heart was about ready to fly out of his chest. He remembers his ears were almost ringing with the man’s confidence, and it rocketed through him.
Shiro’s unending patience and loyalty had saved him, not just from himself, but from a future of nothingness. He would have been less than nothing, at the rate he was going.
The Garrison was a new foothold in the world for him.
Physicians who listened to him, albeit after a long slog through mountains of paperwork that had to be tracked through a half dozen other government agencies, the few foster families he had, and the old home that had been an in-between space for him.
The current physician he’s working with already has him on track for refills of prescriptions and connected him with a therapist on-site at the Garrison to help with the continued transition.
Most days it’s amazing, truly better than things have ever been.
Keith is free to live his life as the person he’s always been. The one he’d envisioned for himself.
That’s the mantra that he tells himself when it gets too hard to breathe and the room starts to get too narrow, and it feels like things are slipping away from his grasp.
A shaky hand reaches to turn the water on quickly, and Keith remembers to lean at the last moment toward the side of the stall to avoid the icy cold jet that always shoots out first, though it's more like a slap into the cold tile.
The water heats quickly, almost searing before he has a chance to gasp too long.
It’s just a relief to be able to turn his brain off for a second and wash the thoughts away.
Warmth rushes over his skin and he sighs, letting the tension in his bones finally release, head lulling to the side as he enjoys himself.
Somewhere between washing his hair and his body, something happens.
He’s letting the water sluice over his forearm, letting his fingers glide through the remainder of the soap, he can feel the muscles underneath and, today, for no reason, or maybe for just the right reason, he feels different.
Keith opens his eyes to the dim of the empty hallway. Even without the lack of light, he normally has his eyes closed so tightly, it takes a second for them to readjust without the tight pressure.
The hiss of the water crashes in his ears for too long a second and he takes a few steadying breaths, fighting off a flash of irrational fear at what he might see.
He runs the fingers of his left hand on the same path down his right arm and lets his eyes follow this time, greedy and terrified.
Desperate muscles flex, unaware they don’t need to.
He hasn’t pushed himself to his limit for weeks for nothing. He knows this. His sergeants and fellow cadets and teachers know this.
Keith allowed himself a moment to flex, to test his true strength.
The cut that runs down his upper arm appears in an instant, pushing strength into his forearm that molds itself into a firm wrist and hand.
Keith holds his hand up in the lights above him, twisting it over and back, staring like he’s never seen it before.
He laughs, just a little chuckle, disbelieving before he turns to the other hand to check - just to be sure. And surely, the other arm, forearm, and hand are just as defined. Just as strong. Just as masculine.
The heat from the showerhead feels invigorating then, like a velvet ribbon wrapping around every inch of him, enrobing his hair, his head, his shoulders and chest, his muscles, and every last bit of the person that was Keith.
And for once, he doesn’t feel like the goalposts are constantly moving, like he can’t do anything to feel like he fits in his damn skin.
He might never be as beastly as Shiro, or as sturdy as his classmate Hunk, or even as tall as his teacher Adam, but he can be excited by the small discoveries in himself and the ways that he became himself.