Work Text:
His life was the textbook definition of sob story.
Keith's life started with his mother dying when giving birth. Ballet was something that ran in his family, and his dad was a choreographer, so soon after his birth, he took off and tried his best to keep as much a distance from Keith as he could.
He would choreograph in New York, leaving Keith at home with countless nannies, ballet boarding schools, until finally, he flew home from a convention in London, only to have his plane crash. That left five-year-old Keith with an inheritance of millions of dollars that would stay with his father's foundations until he turned fifteen. What topped it all off was that all his relatives had cut themselves from the family when his parents joined the dance world.
But of course, Keith didn't know any of that, that was only for his agent to know, and for Keith to always question.
So, he was a millionaire, orphaned, five-year-old child, and to make his story really unique, he started with symptoms of leukemia three months before his aunt finally got word from the negligent system that her five-year-old nephew might be dying.
She took care of him after that, made sure that he got the right treatments. Her son had gone off to some fancy college in Japan and she didn’t have any more birds in the nest and decided that helping Keith was more important than being a retired, divorced soccer mom.
It was surprising that even after all that, Keith refused to stop dancing. His aunt had told him about his mother, how she was a dancer, how his father choreographed, not how much money was to his name, but just enough to make him feel like he knew where he came from.
So, he danced or tried to when the chemo wasn't too bad, or his hips weren't too sore from the bone marrow biopsies.
It came and went, the cancer.
The throwing up was "annoying" as Keith put it. He said that he would be a very good drug dealer because he had so many pills. His aunt didn't question it and blamed the amount of TV Keith could watch because he basically lived in the hospital.
He remembered the long hours he spent, the months without practice where he would convince himself that just flexing his toes was an excuse for training. It continued like that, night sweats after night sweats, chemo round after chemo round. He remembered going to sleep each night and wondering if it was ever going to end. If he would ever be like the kids on the movies he watched?
Because his life had been being sick. He thought his whole life would be him in a hospital bed watching everyone around him grow up with every opportunity to do what he could only hope for.
Until finally, when he was eight, a clinical trial he was put in seemed to start working.
He thought his life was turning around, he thought that this meant he could start his life again; that everything would be better.
Then his aunt’s health started slowly declining. She tried to hide it but Keith knew first-hand that whatever was going on, it was close to terminal or hopeless as him.
It was like the world was against Keith's happiness. He wasn't sent back to the foster care system this time though, his aunt said that he had the funds to stay in the hospital even without her part-time jobs. She called in a caretaker to watch Keith while she couldn’t.
So, he stayed like that, in the trial, his body slightly getting better. He danced, even though his social worker would tell him to stop, but he would just ignore her, looking up videos on how to stretch, how to do certain moves.
One day when he was eight, there was a field trip for some school, "Altea Academy of the Arts" that visited a small theater that was in the radius of his hospital in New York. His caretaker brought it up to Keith and he almost shot up ten feet in the air from excitement. Of course, he didn’t, one because he had an IV line, and second because at that point he was settling into his role as the poster child for sickly.
Before they went, Keith did some research on his phone. He didn’t have anyone added, much less anyone to add except his aunt and caretaker and…yeah just those two. Maybe his doctor?
He learned they were an Arts School, not just dance, but he liked to believe it was just dancing.
Like as if it was special, just special to him.
So, he went to their show, an eight-year-old kid with a beanie, wearing a heavy cardigan and a surgical mask, in a wheelchair went to go watch some ballet. He got many eyes, lots of eyes on him. It was when he finally went out to the real world for the first time in months that he realized the world had blessed him with yet another blessing.
Being an extremely awkward person.
So, he didn't talk much, he just watched. Some of the students looked at him as they exited the stage, going to go greet the audience members, thank them for coming. He couldn't do that; firstly, cause he didn't like talking to strangers and second, he couldn't be around that many people without probably getting sick, so he was pushed out of the building by his caretaker.
He was stopped by a man who asked him if he liked the show. Keith didn't respond at first, whispering to his social worker that the man needed to sanitize his hands if he was thinking of being near him. The man laughed as he lathered his hands with the sanitizer that was handed to him and continued talking to Keith.
He asked him if he liked the show again, Keith nodded this time. He then told him how he was a dancer too, or more than he used to be, wanted to be one. The man gave him a smile and said that their school was in the city for a week doing shows. Keith nodded and said he would watch them at the hospital TV.
Next thing he knew, the man visited his hospital room every day for the next week. But he didn’t just visit Keith. He visited his aunt, and after quiet whispers and hidden peering into his aunt’s room in the same hospital, he learned this man was his cousin.
The next day he introduced himself as Shiro, formally his cousin, and explained what Keith was inevitably expecting: his aunt, and Shiro’s mother, was on the decline. He’d experienced loss to hope it wouldn’t hurt this much every time, but he still sobbed into Shiro’s shoulder.
Shiro was a much needed pillar of support, but his presence still creeped Keith out because he wasn’t used to a change so drastic in his social circle. He would make Keith smile. He stayed for a couple of months. He explained how he was a choreographer at the school for five years. How he had done so many shows.
How he wanted to move to London and stay there for a while, and he wanted to take Keith with him. That's when Keith started crying.
Keith refused to believe it for a while. That things were shaping up. That he actually could have aa stable life and in a way leave all the loss in this country.
He tried not to be excited when his chemo started working, or when his body didn't reject the bone marrow transplant. He tried to convince his cousin to not adopt him, that he could be doing something so much better than taking care of a dying kid at 27 years old.
But the man had simply said, "Keith, you aren't dying anymore."
It was hard for Keith to face that, the fact that for the first time in three years, he was healthy. He hated the feeling. Shiro, called it "happiness".
Keith said it felt weird. He kept saying it felt weird when the adoption was finally complete, and he was dragged all the way across the world to London.
It was beautiful.
Most of all, it was terrifying.
Shiro trained him, in all styles of dance. He always told Keith he didn't have to be the best, he just had to be happy and most importantly healthy. Keith didn't listen though, he had to be the best. He finally had the chance to do something other than lie in a hospital bed, and he wasn't wasting it on sitting back and watching others surpass him.
So, he went through his life, his auditions into ballet schools. Colds became the scariest things on the planet. Keith learned to love them though because if he just had a cold, it meant he his cancer hadn't come back. So, he danced away.
He learned soon enough that he didn't look like the other kids, they were taller, blonder, more carefree than he was. They all had a fancy accent that Keith couldn’t even begin to try to emulate. The boys around him were all taller; he was shorter, his hair was black, his skin was light, but his eyes weren't blue, they were more violet.
He tried not to let it bother him, but after a while, he started shedding his awkwardness and started building up resent for the kids around him. They were all so happy, complaining about not getting the latest toy from their parents, not having the best tutu, or being forced into prestigious dance classes.
To him, they didn't realize how lucky they were to even be able to dance. So, he stayed away from people, he didn't like talking to them because he would start yelling at them otherwise.
Soon enough, Shiro set up an audition for him to get into a boarding school. Shiro didn't like the idea, but Keith insisted that he let him audition for the 'Royal Ballet School'. He also told Shiro he would be fine, and the medical team and staff would be aware of his history, plus all his medical appointments were already all in London.
It also helped that despite the gaps in his technical skills, he had a natural born talent for dance that was evident in just watching him.
So Shiro did it, and Keith got in when he was ten years old. Everyone said he the natural gift Shiro always talked about. He knew he at least had talent because he hadn't practiced in so long due to his illness that it had to be something that made him at least scratch the surface at a professional ballet school. The rest was him pushing himself to be the best. Hours of working, dancing, stretching.
It all meant something now.
He came home on the weekends, Shiro living a few blocks from the actual school because he got a job there. He was good, just like Keith. They had a life there, Keith even started making a friend.
Singular, because he didn't even try to make the one. It was just an annoying kid who thought Keith was weird and was "too young to care so much about ballet". His name was Lotor, he was a real brit. He talked like one too, used big words that made Keith giggle. He had dark brown hair that he constantly complained was too dark, he said as soon as he got out of boarding school, he was growing it like Rapunzel and dying it the color of the clouds.
His skin was darker than Keith's, tan, while Keith's was like an actual vampire's.
They got closer; they were good, actually amazing, friends. They spent all of their primary years in the Royal Ballet together. When it came time to apply for their eighth year, Keith made it in and so did Lotor.
Because they were so close and Keith managed to convince Shiro to go to California to Altea Academy, Keith stayed with Lotor starting that last year of primary.
And god, it took a lot of convincing to get Shiro to leave, to do something with his life other than take care of Keith.
Keith told him his five years of remission were almost done and he would make sure to tell him if anything happened. So, Shiro had left, begrudgingly, but Keith said that he should do what he loves, just like he was telling Keith to do.
Lotor's family was nice too. His mother was a doctor, her name was Honerva, and she was from the Middle East. Whenever Keith tried to ask Lotor where that was he would tell Keith that “it was where the white people decided it should be”.
Keith laughed every time Lotor got riled up about politics, or as much politics as a primary school child could get into.
Lotor’s dad was never there though, and Lotor said it was because he was a real “dick who couldn't keep it in his pants”. Keith laughed when he told him that, he found himself laughing a lot more because of Lotor.
Then came spring of their eighth year, Keith was in Lotor's backyard.
They were just dancing and Lotor practiced his lifts with Keith because he was light enough for Lotor to carry him. They did it all the time, but that night Keith realized that the universe had fun making Keith stick out more in society than he already was because that night he truly realized,
He was very, very gay.
It had never really been a question he got to ask himself, not being around many people his whole life, only in a house with his caretaker, aunt, a hospital room with his nurses, and a school where he ignored everyone but Lotor. But ever since he met Lotor, he started getting this weird feeling that went beyond happiness and more into ultra-happiness.
The strong dosing of hormones and puberty wasn’t slowing down his discovery either.
And that night he just kissed Lotor as he lifted him, making Lotor stumble and fall, dropping Keith on top of him. Lotor didn't say anything and at first, Keith thought he had screwed everything up, but the boy kissed him back, running his hands through the short hair the boarding school made them maintain.
Everything was perfect just for that moment until Keith's nose started bleeding right on Lotor's face. Their smiles had faded and they both looked at each other with wide eyes. Keith quickly got off of him and rushed indoors, heading for the closest bathroom and grabbing a whole roll of toilet paper to stop his nose from bleeding.
"It's just a nosebleed, just a nosebleed." Keith had repeated to himself, but he knew it wasn't just a nosebleed. He tried to ignore it for the longest time, hoping it was just a prolonged, unique type of cold.
The way his body would sweat at night, how tired he was during the day, how random bruises were forming. He told himself he was fine, but this was the wakeup call he most hated, the wake-up call he knew he shouldn’t have waited for.
The one where he had to realize that his life wasn't ever perfect or normal or just static; that everything he thought was going to happen in the next years, might be taken away from him.
It hurt. It hurt that he had thought he could be like any normal kid.
Lotor had rushed after him, his mother as well, calling Shiro and putting him on speaker on the other side of the door. They were all scared, but Keith was terrified.
He didn’t open the door. Opening the door meant that he would be sent to a hospital. He would miss the recital later this month. He would lose his solo. Everything he worked for. He knew they would never let him dance like this, but those few minutes, seconds.
He had to choice to just freeze time for a while before he was hooked to machines that felt like they would be sucking all the life and hope out of him.
After Shiro’s multiple pleas on speaker phone, Lotor’s mother, and finally Lotor sobbing as he begged him to unlock the door, he finally opened the door after he ran out of toilet paper. He would never forget the look in Lotor's eyes as he looked at the bloody balls of paper around him, Keith's face in tears.
Lotor had hugged him, handed him toilet paper sections after sections as they drove to the hospital, held the phone for him as Shiro talked to him, saying how he was flying in from California, how Altea was giving him the days to come, for Keith not to worry.
He didn’t answer or make any noise outside of silent sobs, sniffles, and nasally inhalations. Once he was given drugs for some emergency procedure Keith needed, he told Lotor to kiss him before he finally died.
At that point, it was the drugs talking.
The doctors said that he could get a stem cell transplant from cells that were collected during his initial remission. If not, they would try chemo fully after that to see what would work. Keith cried when they listed his options. He squeezed Lotor's hand and angrily yelled at himself for how he was "stupid for getting cancer."
Lotor had consoled him telling him none of this could possibly be his fault and Keith just stopped crying. He stopped talking, he stopped doing much of anything after he calmed down.
Even when Shiro arrived, he didn't talk. He just nodded when asked questions and looked blankly at scans that were shown or doctors explaining to him what the next steps were.
He stayed silent when Shiro said he wasn't leaving him alone ever again, how he was careless, and nothing would have happened if he had just been with him to check for symptoms of his reoccurrence.
Keith only spoke up to tell him that, "it didn't matter anymore." That he didn't care anymore.
They tried the transplant first. He needed a high-dose of chemo before to "erase all the mistakes" as Keith had explained to Lotor.
It was stupid. They were thirteen and their last months in school were spent in a hospital instead of enjoying their eighth year in school. Instead of day trips and hangouts with friends, Lotor would come and watch him throw up, sleep, and cry from how utterly horrible the chemo made him feel.
Lotor stayed, Keith thought he wouldn't. Their relationship, or if you could even call it that, became about Keith getting better.
It was silly, they were thirteen.
Keith didn't know how much a person could make another person happy. How his whole life he had only really gotten close to four people, his aunt, Shiro, his doctor In New York, and his doctor here.
He thought the cancer would scare Lotor, but he came every day, stayed at the hospital sometimes. Keith told him to go practice ballet because "one of them had to become a prodigy". Lotor told him that was Keith’s job and he would do it as soon as he got out of the hospital.
Keith told him to stop making him hopeful or he was going to have to break up with him. Lotor laughed and Keith smiled. If he was going to die, he thought maybe this time he didn't want to do it alone.
Everyone told him to stop saying that, but Keith told them that it wasn't them on a table with a needle sunk into their hip.
They laughed; Keith was starting to become good at making people laugh.
The chemo didn't work at first, he developed pneumonia and his body wasn't strong enough to recover and have chemo at the same time, so they had to pause the treatment, meaning Keith would definitely not dance that year. It's not like Shiro would have let him, but he tried to believe that maybe there would be some type of miracle.
He stayed in bed for most of December, Lotor coming and telling him stories of the snarky people in the class, helping Keith stretch because Keith refused to take his meds unless he did so. Keith laughed a lot that year, even let Lotor see the face herpes he got, telling Lotor must have really loved him to want to see him like that.
Lotor said he did. And for the handful of times, Keith remembers believing him.
Shiro never left either his job in California being put on hold. They went back to doing the activities they did together when Keith was eight; when Shiro would visit him in the hospital with his aunt. They would decorate surgical masks, watch cringey ballet films, do the online classes for school because Keith refused to be left behind if he did make it out of the hospital one day.
Shiro told him he would, but Keith refused to believe it again until the day they told him he was actually cancer-free and allowed to walk outside of the hospital without tubes and feeling like he was going to collapse.
Not again.
Winter went by fast. Lotor had to be at school more for showcases and exams. It was around that time that Keith could start chemo again. He thought to be sick was bad but being on chemo was worse.
Having bone marrow biopsies topped the pain bar though. He had almost forgotten the pain of something drilling a hole in his bone. Lotor called him "a bloody stud", but Keith told him that he was "bloody in pain".
It was different than when he was a primary kid since he refused to be sedated, said that it was easier if he just recovered without the groggy feeling. Plus, he had the energy to at least flex his toes and he didn't want to waste more time than what was going to be taken from him.
Shiro gave in, holding Keith’s hand, letting him squeeze it as he silently cried each time they had to drill into his hip.
March of the next year came, and he was cleared.
He had the transplant, the stem cell one, bone marrow, it all meant the same thing.
It was successful, all that had to happen now was wait. Stay in the hospital for at least four weeks, no germs, no outside, no freedom.
Keith made Shiro cut his hair short, convinced that it wasn't going to work, and he didn't want to have to cut it when he needed to start chemo again.
It wasn't needed though, the chemo. Because there were no complications. After two months, everyone was still with him, the doctors saying that everything looked good. Keith told him to stop saying that, that everything looked good last time.
The doctor frowned as Keith said that, positioning himself for the doctor to poke him with some needle; To check his blood or immunity, or whatever, it wasn't going to show anything Keith wanted to see, or he didn't know.
He started viewing death, or the constant possibility of it, in a totally different way, seeing that the idea of dying wasn't scary, it was more the idea of dying without having done anything that scared him more. So, once he was cleared after two months, he forced Shiro to take him places. He had to wear a mask, of course, he had one in practically every design at this point, matching them to his outfits.
They went walking, for short periods because Shiro was paranoid and Keith didn't want to die too quickly.
Lotor came over a lot, basically getting in routine to act as if he had the plague when he visited. Showering, washing his hands, sanitizing them before he even thought of stepping inside their house.
Shiro had a barre installed in the living room, for Keith to just do simple ballet exercises, Lotor coming and doing it with him, complaining how even with missing a whole school year he was still better than him.
Keith knew he was lying; his technique was bad, and his stamina was close to nonexistent. They practiced though, little by little Keith got back into dancing.
When summer came, to apply for their ninth year, Keith managed to keep his place at the Royal Ballet after Shiro talked to the school and they worked around what had happened, but Lotor didn't make it in.
Keith learned after hearing that news that he was had been falling behind, and Keith said it was his fault for making him come to see him at the hospital and cutting into his practice time. Lotor refused to place any fault on Keith and admitted that he had other options.
Those other options were halfway across the world though, in California. He applied there too, and he got in, at the school where Shiro was teaching, or where his job was put on a very long hold. He got into Altea.
Shiro was beyond happy, but Keith was not. He was going to be alone when he went back to primary year if he was cleared by then to even start dancing at an elite level.
So, they spent the summer together, doing anything and dancing as much as they could. They were just thirteen, but it felt like the happiest moments in their lives. They were both mature in a way, emotionally at least. Even if Lotor made sex jokes every ten seconds and Keith had the most depressing humor.
Shiro brought up the idea that Keith could be better off doing his first secondary year in California, where his job was waiting for him, where he would be able to watch Keith more closely because he would be on campus with him. Keith didn't like the idea at first, but as summer ended, he agreed to the terms, telling Lotor that they would only be apart for a year; that they could tackle down ninth grade year in America together. They danced a lot that night and might have kissed once or twice, or a lot of times.
The time came though, for Lotor to go to California, to leave Keith to start at the Academy. They said their goodbyes and said they would meet-up soon; that a year would pass before they knew it.
That was the plan, until the doctor said that Keith couldn't travel for another year because his immune system was at risk; that he needed to be as close to a hospital that knew how to deal with his illness at all times. That's when Keith stopped writing. He sent Lotor a final email saying that everything looked good and that he would make it in time for the summer before he started school with him.
He never did though.
He got cleared to start his ninth year along with all his thirteen-year-old classmates. He was slow at first, told he had to do pointe because his technique was weak; he was weak, and apparently so were his ankles.
Guess cancer does that to you, he wanted to reply back to his teacher, but of course, he didn’t. He fought the urge a lot though.
At first, it was easy not to tell anyone why he disappeared the year before, but then he was told he had to wear masks to class and sanitize the barre where he danced.
Kids started picking up that Keith had been sick. They started treating him differently, the girls offering to help him, the boys teasing him, telling him his masks looked stupid. Not to mention the looks he got when he was a boy having to dance pointe because he was just that behind.
It bothered him, but Keith tried to not let it get in the way of his dancing. He ignored them, managing to be the best in his class.
It was a miracle that Keith even kept up; that's what everyone told him, but what people didn't know was he worked twice as hard, pushed himself as much as he could without warranting a hospital visit.
He stayed in London for another year, did what would have been his freshman year there, what would have been a year with Lotor.
He continued ignoring the emails from Lotor. He couldn't bring himself to speak to him when he got the doctor’s order, but by that time he didn't know how to start talking to him after a year of ignoring him.
So, he danced in the Royal Ballet, getting the all clear from his doctor to not have to take the precautions he did the last year, not having to wear masks or clean the barres. Secretly though, he would be early to class just to clean his section at the barre, making sure no one noticed.
He also realized he was a millionaire when he turned fifteen and had the longest fight with Shiro over how he didn't tell him his dad was "freaking loaded" in his quoted words.
He let his hair grow out, a bit over the summer after his first year, not being restricted by the school, or having to cut it. He wore surgical masks out everywhere because he said it was "stylish" and made him look more "Asian", but in reality, he was just paranoid that he would reject the transplant somehow and he would never be able to leave London.
When freshman year ended, it was time though, he had to go to California now. Shiro's job wasn’t letting him be out for longer, and his temporary work in London was done. Keith didn't fight him. He knew how good Altea was. It wasn't the Royal Ballet, but nothing ever could be that for him.
If he was being honest, he wanted to leave the place too. It was the place where his dreams had come crashing down and his illness had come back.
Despite all the memories it held, it still wasn't enough for him to rage all-out war on staying. So, he said goodbye, leaving Lotor's mother, his home for the past six years of his life, and packed his life up to a fresh start.
The flight to California was tedious. There were a lot of people at the airport and a lot of people on the airplane. In general, there were just too many people in the outside world outside of his ballet and Shiro bubble.
He went to Shiro's place first, getting the long speech on how staying in the dorms was an option, and he preferred if Keith stayed with him and they could just go to the Academy together.
Keith refused, saying that he would be fine, and it had been over a year since the transplant had taken place. He also said how he got the all-clear from his doctors in London, and Shiro gave in. Saying, he absolutely had to come on the weekends and a phone call every night was mandatory or he would come and carry him from his dorm all the way home.
Keith agreed, but not without rolling his eyes and grabbing his stuff. He said how he was going to go start his 'new life'. And how his lack of white blood cells wasn't going to stop him.
They also made the decisive decision to say they were brothers. They both agreed, mainly Keith pushed Shiro to agree, that it would lead to a lot less awkward explaining and annoying pity looks from people.
Shiro drove him all the way to the dorms the Saturday before the classes started and dropped him off, handing him a vanilla folder. Keith looked at it and sighed.
His medical checkup.
Shiro asked him for the millionth time if he wanted him to go with Keith and of course, Keith rolled his eyes in protest.
Shiro smiled nevertheless and got out of the car, getting his two duffle bags out of the car, giving him a kiss on the head and telling him to call him that night. Again, Keith rolled his eyes and agreed, telling him to get off him or people would think he was a pedophile.
Shiro lightly punched him and told him now that they were brothers no one could say that to him. Keith brought up the argument of incest and that was enough to drive Shiro back into his truck and wave goodbye.
Keith waved back and headed into the dorms, into a whole new life where he could start over.
Where he wasn't cancer kid anymore.