Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Keith was eleven years old, he learned to crochet.

He was in a temporary home at the time with two other kids. His guardians had dropped them all off at a local library for a kid’s programs, and there was some kind of club going on to create giant blankets for the nearby nursery home. Keith had wandered over to it, curious. He was drawn to the idea of making things all of his own, and was promptly adopted by the women running the group. They cooed over his cute face and worn clothes, shoved a hook and yarn into his hands and taught him how to make a chain, and then a double stitch, and then the granny squares that made up the blankets they were donating.

Keith came back every week and sat in quiet with the other members, slowly learning how to manipulate yarn into different shapes. The women looked the other way when he snuck his borrowed hook and yarn home, unmaking and remaking the granny squares at night when he got stressed out or upset. The repetitive motions calmed him down, and soon he begun to take more and more yarn home, returning to the club with as many squares as he could carry.

Still, the home was, at the end of the day, temporary, and he was forced to leave the program. He kept his hook and yarn, stuffed at the bottom of his bag. He didn’t know when he would next be allowed to get more, so he was careful with it. He kept his unwinding gentle, and when a kid dug through his bag and asked what the hook was for, Keith decked him out of panic.

His access to both yarn and Youtube tutorials waxed and waned, depending on the home, but his love of crochet never did. It was different than his affection for the stars, or his love of sport. Crochet kept him cool, helping get the itching out from under his skin that didn’t end in blood on his knuckles, on his wrist.

He made socks for himself, ugly and lumpy. He made fingerless gloves, so he could still use his old, cracked phone when wearing them, and they were uncomfortable, and too small. But these things were his, and he felt proud whenever he wore them. It was silly, but they made him feel like he wasn’t just some orphan kid, or an angry dumbass the system failed who was gonna end up dead before 25 . He could make something simple, and physical, and a little bit ugly. But a little bit useful, too.

—

It wasn’t until Shiro that Keith wanted to make something for someone else. Sure, in abstract terms, he had daydreamed about having someone to give people he cared about. Someone who he could give something, and who would wear it and smile at him when they did. The caretaker he was with the longest, maybe. The teacher who would let him hide out at lunch in the teacher’s breakroom, the guardian who gave him his first copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

But Shiro was the first time Keith really, truly sat down, with a ball of yarn and a hook, and had made a gift.

It’s a scarf. A plain black one, with no pattern - if Shiro asks, or rejects it, Keith can just claim that it didn’t take any time. It didn’t take much time - the simple stitch Keith uses means he finishes it in a couple of days. An uncomplicated piece of work. Something that Keith doesn’t have to be invested in.

But by God, he is. And when Shiro does exactly what Keith always wanted, wears the scarf whenever he can and brags to everyone who sees it about the famous cadet Keith, and he made the scarf, and did you know he can crochet? Can make things, like a simple black scarf?

So Keith makes him more. A lumpy beanie in Shiro’s favourite colour, a bag for carrying fruit (because Shiro’s a real whole adult, and he uses stuff like that), a pair of fingerless gloves to match Keith’s. And Shiro keeps and uses every single one, and every time Keith sees them laying around Shiro’s house when he goes over, he feels a lump in his throat. Here it is. Proof that he matters to Shiro, in the shape of a hat left on the rack, bag by the door. Tangible. Real, hard proof that he and Shiro mean something to each other. It’s a gut punch that never gets softer, but they’re the sweetest kind he’s ever gotten.

—

When Shiro disappears and Keith get’s expelled, he grabs his bag and books it out to the desert. The bag’s got his wool and hook packed at the bottom in the way Keith never really grew out of, and he uses the red yarn he was going to make into a pair of arm warmers as string on his conspiracy board. Shiro couldn’t just go missing, he was the best pilot in the goddamn Garrison, so Keith’s projects fall to the wayside as he plans and hides and tries to figure out exactly what happened to his best friend.

But the desert’s quiet and lonely and pretty fucking cold. And Keith keeps remembering how happy Shiro always looked whenever Keith presented him with a new crocheted gift. How it gets pretty cold in space, and on Kerberos. And who knows what temperatures aliens keep their alien spaceships at.

So Keith keeps some of the yarn set to the side. When he’s exhausted himself from hunting through the desert and feeling and tracking whatever he knows is out there, he settles down with his hook and starts a blanket. It’s a big project, but Shiro’s been gone for months now, and Keith’s come to terms with the fact that he’s got months of work ahead of him to get him back. And it’s not like there’s anything else to do in the desert.

Keith’s got time.

When an alien spacecraft crash lands just outside the Garrison, Keith doesn’t bother to grab his half-finished blanket or hook. He grabs what he needs to infiltrate Garrison property, hops on his hoverbike and drives out as soon as it gets dark. This is big, he can feel it in the same part of him that knew this desert’s special, the right place for him. He needs to get out there now.

He’s coming back soon, with new information on Shiro. One step closer to getting his best friend back. One step closer to giving him the blanket he’s making, a dozen different shades of white. His own little joke.

Soon, he thinks, kicking his bike out of parked mode and into overdrive. Soon, he’s gonna have a brother again. Soon.

—

Four months later, Keith sees a yarn store at a local space mall. It’s got everything, from simple to fuzzy to what looks like balls of satin. Keith wants to move his feet but he just keeps staring. He can’t afford it and the knife he wants to get, he tells himself, and the knife would be probably be more useful. It would be selfish to pick up crochet again when it’s time that could be better spent on the training deck. Lance would find it and make fun of it, probably, and then Keith would have to punch him, and he really does not need more reasons to hit Lance.

But he hasn’t made anything in months, and everyone else on the ship has their hobbies. And Keith’s never been very good with affection. The rest of Voltron throws it around like candy, and Keith can’t do that, but he can do this.

Keith thinks, fuck it, and he grabs as much of the yarn as he can carry in the pouches Allura gave them. He’ll probably carve a hook out of some alien wood later or something on the next planet they visit. Or, worst comes to worst, he can just give them to the mice to play with.

—

He doesn’t end up giving the yarn to the mice. Instead he keeps it all to himself, running his hands reverently over all of it, from the rough pink to the soft, fuzzy orange, and resolves to carve a hook as soon as he can.

Chapter Text

Now that Keith’s crocheting again, he remembers why he was obsessed with it as a kid. Whenever Voltron gets too much, instead of always going straight for exploding or working himself half to death, he grabs some yarn and angrily crochets until all the fight goes out of him. He would be more worried about his performance, but the smiles Shiro send him when he shows up to dinner quiet and calm instead of covered in sweat and swaying on his feet are too nice to resist after a year without them.

He gets on better with the rest of the team too. They still have problems, obviously, but Keith’s actually been in a pretty good mood, and he finds it reflected back on him. He even cracks a joke at his own expense at a dinner, and instead of Lance trying to ramp it up or Hunk and Pidge gaping at him, they all laughed. He felt like he was walking on clouds after that.

Soon, Keith finishes the project he was working on. A patterned black bandanna for Shiro, and when Keith presents it to him he lights up like a Christmas Tree. Shiro wears for the whole day after Keith gives it to him, smiling so hard his face has got to hurt. It doesn’t quite cover Shiro’s white streak the way Keith had wanted it to. But Shiro doesn’t seem to mind.

Contrary to what Keith expected, the rest of Voltron don’t mock him or Shiro for the bandanna. Instead they spend the rest of the week nagging Keith for their own gifts.

Lance sprawls over Keith’s back whenever he finds him in the lounge, complaining about him not being busy crocheting away for the gift he’s obviously going to make Lance, because ‘Come on man, we bonded didn’t we! That means I get at least three new clothing items and/or accessories. At least three Keith!’

Hunk drops completely unsubtle hints every time he sees Keith about how his grandmother used to crochet, and how it would just be so nice to have something to remind him of her, and how his favourite colour is yellow, like his lion, remember, and -

Keith fails to suppress a smile whenever Hunk starts talking about it, much to his surprise.

Pidge, in contrast, never explicitly states that she wants anything. She’s not usually shy about demanding whatever she needs or wants in any other occasion, but this she only ever alludes to, turning it into a joke the same way Lance usually does. Keith resolves to focus on her gift next, if only not to reward Lance or Hunk’s demanding behaviour.

Allura too, never says anything. She stares at Shiro’s bandanna whenever he wears it, then sneaks glances at Keith when she thinks he isn’t looking. The glances are pretty hopeful - Keith thinks the mice have been sneaking around his room again, and told her about the glittery lace he got for her project. Normally he would be pretty annoyed at the violation, but no one has ever looked at him quite like this. All quiet expectation and innocent excitement. He decides he’ll let it slide, just this once.

Coran is anything but quiet about Keith’s crochet. He exclaims loudly and curiously about Shiro’s gift when he first wears it out, and every time afterwards. Coran asks Keith to teach him crochet, and while the first attempt is an absolute disaster, Keith has fun. Though Coran couldn’t be farther from preteen Keith, the whole incident reminds him of the older ladies who taught him crochet in the first place. He’s grateful to Coran for the reminder of those memories, and decides that his gift to the Altean would be twofold - something he makes, and Coran’s own hook and yarn.

Keith was already planning to make something for everyone in the Castle. But that was planned for Christmas or something. He didn’t expect them to be so…………………………….excited for them. Its exactly what he wanted when he was a kid. Or, not exactly, because they’re a group of people binded together by giant robotic lions, and they’ve all probably got some form of Stockholm syndrome, and they’re trapped in fucking space. But, yknow. Beggars can’t be choosers.

Keith picks out some yarn and gets to work.

—

Amongst the yarn Keith has bought was a light pink skein that looked soft but was tough as rope. It would be horrible for a garment, which was fine. Keith weaved it together into solid rectangles, and then weaved the rectangles into the shape of a bag. Usually, crochet was terrible for making bags unless you had something to attach the crocheted pieces to, as the yarn usually became stretched out and simply couldn’t carry anything too heavy. This yarn must have been made out of something completely different though, because when Keith was finished he had a bag strong enough to carry and protect Pidge’s computer, as well as any other bits and bobs she found around and wanted to keep.

Pidge launched herself into Keith when he gave it to her. Small hands wrapped around his middle for a few seconds before Pidge pulled back to examine the bag further, and Keith felt himself smile impossible soft at the scene of her so excited over something he had made and given her.

—

Allura’s gift was more complicated. It took Keith a few tries to get the pattern right, since he hadn’t tried anything like it since he was thirteen. The glittery, thin white yarn he had picked out for her gift was delicate. Unwinding it was always a bitch. Eventually though, he settled into a pattern and a rhythm. The shawl he was making unfurled in front of him, as beautiful and elegant as the woman he was making it for.

When he presented it to Allura, she held it reverently, as if one good yank would cause it to fall apart. She draped it carefully over her shoulders, turning to see how it looked in a nearby window. She seemed to lose her breath for a moment before a smile that could’ve outshone any sun lit up her face. Allura twirled around before grabbing Keith’s hand and rushing off to find Coran and the rest of Voltron. In front of them her grin became even more radiant. She insisted on showing off Keith’s work to each of them, much as Shiro had done with the first ever scarf Keith made him.

The demands for clothing, accessories and crochet lessons doubled, but when Keith remembered Allura giggling as she strutted around in front of Hunk and Lance in the style of the Earth models they insisted on demonstrating for her, he couldn’t find it within himself to mind.

—

Coran was next in line, and Keith plucked some light blue that reminded Keith of his Altean suit. It was similar to Pidge’s yarn in that it was tougher than he would use for clothing. Coran had always reminded Keith of one of his old caretakers, who was always wearing cat ear slippers that were worn almost all the way through. They were both loud, always spouting random stories and both had picked Keith up after fights and ensured he was fed, watered and cleaned up. Keith hoped that the similarities would extend to taste in footwear, and started working on a pair of slippers that mimicked one of the Altean pets Coran had showed him.

Going off of the way Coran fawned over them when Keith, he was right. Although Coran initially seemed more interested in the process of creation than the product (’What stiches did you use for this? And, uh, how exactly is that different from a double? Oh, that tells me nothing, Keith!’), the way he wore the slippers even to training showed that he really did like them. Keith felt warm when he saw that in a way that had him smiling the whole session.

__

Fluffy yarn was never easy to work with. Stitches were almost impossible to see, mistakes went unnoticed until the very last moment, and if the wool was cheap (which Keith’s almost always was), fluff would get absolutely everywhere.

Apparently though, Keith had gotten the good stuff at the mall, and the thick orange skein he picked up was so nice he couldn’t resist using it. Socks were some of the first things Keith had made, he remembered the pattern easily, and this yarn would be perfect for a pair of them. It was a little simple, especially compared to the shawl he had made Allura, but he hoped Hunk wouldn’t mind. Socks were practical, wouldn’t get ruined in Hunk’s workshop, and would remind the yellow paladin of his Nan - a winning combo, if all went to plan.

Hunk was the kinda guy who hugged everyone over everything, and Keith had resigned himself to getting the absolute shit squeezed out of him. So he made sure to be prepared when he gave Hunk the socks, and sure enough, he got swept up in a hug that lifted him off the ground.

Hunk immediately ran off to shove the socks in Lance’s whining face, and Keith smirked as he watched it happen. Then felt his face soften as he realized that this was his first long-term inside joke with the two. Yeah, he thought, giving his gift to Hunk first was definitely the right decision.

—

Keith really didn’t know that much about Lance. He and the other paladin just weren’t close, not in the way Lance was with the rest of the team. Lance would probably appreciate anything wearble Keith made him just because it wasn’t the clothes he was forced to wear everyday by the sheer impracticality of the Altean clothes Allura had provided. But Keith didn’t know many wearable patterns that he wouldn’t have to spend an inordinate amount of time on - and he could already hear the cries of favouritism if he did make Lance something that took too long. He had used all he knew on the other paladins. (Except for his fingerless glove pattern that he made himself. But if he gave Lance a pair of fingerless gloves, he would never be free of the emo accusations.)

Lance’s ramblings didn’t provide as much information on the what the Blue Paladin wanted as he thought they would (demands for a handmade bathrobe or socks with Blue’s face on them did not count. Keith was not doing that). Lance was never shy about what he wanted. But what Keith learned, from Lance’s ramblings, was that Lance wanted, more than anything, to go home. And Keith couldn’t give him that. Nothing even close, not like he could with Hunk.

So Keith was completely and utterly stumped on what to make him. Until he accidentally walked in on Lance doing his morning ‘pampering session’ for Blue and overhead the paladin speaking to her

“Yknow, I’m glad I met you Blue. I don’t know if I could do the whole ‘defending the universe’ thing if you weren’t here with me. I mean, obviously I couldn’t, because you’re the giant lion I use to fight, but. You know what I mean,” said Lance softly to his Lion, his voice only just loud enough to Keith to hear.

Keith still wasn’t going to make him Blue-patterned socks, but maybe something Blue themed wasn’t too far off.

When Keith handed Lance a terrible amiguiri approximation of his Lion, with a head too big for it’s little plushie body and visible stitching that Keith cringes at but simply can’t improve, he half expects Lance to throw it out and go back to bugging him for a real crocheted gift. Instead, Lance’s mouth drops open and he holds the toy close to his chest.

“It’s Blue,” says Keith, like the blue yarn and lion’s ears left any doubt.

“I know,” Lance replies, looking up, his face screwed up in a grin so big it had hurt his face. “I love it.”

“Can you make me Yellow? She’s gonna be so jealous if Blue get’s a handmade lion teddy and she doesn’t” declares Hunk, barging into the common room.

“Green too! I need a tiny Green Keith, and I need her now,” demands Pidge, and what the hell, Keith had hunted Lance down at this time because he thought no one else would be in the common room. Why were they all here?

“Hey! This is my gift, you vultures, you can’t just barge in and demand Keith make something for you,” cries Lance.

Keith is shocked he doesn’t choke on the hypocrisy.

“That’s literally exactly what you’ve been doing for the last few months,” points out Pidge, saying exactly what Keith was just thinking. God bless Pidge.

“Whatever,” Lance grumbles, before brightening up and saying, “Hey Keith, do you wanna stay for movie night?”

Keith looks at his friends, the first he’s ever had appreciate his gifts, laugh at his jokes, invite him to fucking movie night, and feels his face crack open in a smile that hurts.

“Yeah, I think I do.” says Keith

He really, really does.