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Keith may be 6, but he isn’t stupid.
He’s been told plenty of times by plenty of people that he’s exceptionally smart for his age. He may have some slight behavioral problems , they’d say, but he’s a very bright boy .
Behavioral problems .
Keith has never liked those words.
They say it as if he has no idea what it means. They never look at him as they explain the situation to Shiro, who always smiles back politely and apologizes for his brother’s problems. They never talk to Keith, never ask him if they can help. They always just sit him down, tell him that he was bad, and send him somewhere else. As if he were some broken toy that could be shoved off to a another place to be fixed.
Keith knows he’s angry. He has been for years, and he doesn’t exactly know why. But he knows that he’s mad, he knows that he doesn’t get along well at school, and he knows that he doesn’t have very many friends.
He has the other daycare kids, though, and they like him a lot.
Or at least Hunk and Pidge do , he thinks, pulling out a red crayon from the box in front of him. He inspects it a bit under the light, making sure it’s the right shade, and proceeds to hum to himself as he begins filling in the lion’s mane on the coloring sheet in front of him. Lance scoffs from across the table.
“Lions aren’t red, Keith.”
Keith frowns a bit, gripping his crayon tighter. “Mine is. Like Red.” He uses his free arm to pull his stuffed lion closer, tucking it under his arm as he makes sure to keep his coloring inside of the lines.
“Well Red is stupid. She should know that lions don’t have red hair.”
“Red is NOT stupid!” Keith says. The crayon snaps in his fingers. “YOU’RE stupid!”
“You’re stupid!” Pidge echoes from next to him, and Keith flicks his glare in her direction.
“No, Pidge. You can’t say that. Shiro will yell at me.”
“Well then you need to watch your mouth better, Croc-boy,” Lance sneers. “Pidge is smart enough to pick that stuff up.”
“I know that,” he says. “But you made me angry.”
“You’re always angry.”
“So?”
“So stop it,” Lance says simply. “It’s not hard.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Keith fires back almost immediately. “You’re always happy.”
“Yeah. Because it’s a lot funner to be happy, Keith. You should try it sometime.”
Lance sticks his tongue out, and pulls a blue crayon out of the box, proceeding to color in his own lion’s mane the same color as the ocean. Keith debates starting another argument, but decides against it.
Keith wishes that it really was that easy, to just be happy like Lance.
He hears it first in a whisper.
“- sick .”
He’s on his way down the hallway to the kitchen after hours, when Hunk and Pidge are already gone and Allura stands in the front foyer, struggling to fit Lance into an overly puffy coat that he thinks is ugly. He doesn’t think he’s meant to hear this conversation, so he stands behind the wall of the hallway, palms flat against the wall and ears straining to pick up what’s being said.
“She’s not getting better?”
“ Allura !” Lance’s voice cuts over Shiro’s whispers. “This jacket is the wrong one! You know I hate this jacket!”
“Lance,” Allura’s voice is next, and Keith feels his stomach flip at the exhaustion in her tone. He knows that tone. “It’s the only one I could find. Please just put it on.”
“But it gets all caught in the seatbelt and it makes it press against my neck and it hurts!” Lance whines, and Keith frowns. Allura was only trying to help. He should be grateful-
“Fine,” she says instead, and Keith can hear the muffled sounds of Lance whining as the jacket is unzipped and pulled off of him. He hears the shwip, shwip as Lance’s arms flail in the sleeves. “Freeze then. I’m talking to Shiro, don’t be rude. Go wait in the car.”
Lance grumbles to himself, but Keith hears the sound of the front door opening, and then the bang of the screen door as it closes behind Lance. Allura doesn’t bother lowering her voice this time.
“The doctors aren’t sure how much longer it’ll be.”
“Is she at home, or the hospital?”
“The hospital for now. Though they say that if she isn’t making progress by the end of the month, she’ll go on hospice. They want to try another surgery, but she isn’t very happy with the idea.”
“Do you think she’ll do it?”
“It’s ultimately her decision, because she’s still lucid. And she’s very adamant about reminding us of that fact. So it could go either way.”
“Has Lance seen her yet?”
Keith holds his breath at the mention of Lance’s name.
“Yes. He’s actually there almost as often as I am. He’s very insistent on coming with me.”
“Is he doing okay?”
Allura sighs, and Keith’s chest tightens.
“He’s remaining optimistic. He keeps her room clean and replaces the flowers by her bed at the house every day. He says it’s for when she comes home. He wants her to have something pretty to look at while she gets better.”
Allura’s voice breaks off at the end of her sentence, and it sounds like a sob. Keith frowns. Allura shouldn’t cry. That’s not right.
“Have you explained-”
“We have. But I don’t think he really wants to think about it?” She sniffs, and Keith can hear rustling, followed by another, slightly more muffled sniff. He risks peeking around the corner.
Shiro holds Allura to his chest, one hand cradling the back of her head as the other winds around her shoulders. His chin rests on top of her head, and Keith can tell by his posture that he isn’t very happy.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and Allura cries even harder.
“I don’t know how he’s going to take it when it happens,” Allura chokes out, and Shiro nods.
Keith pulls back behind the wall, and retreats to his room, hands curled into fists at his sides.
Keith may be 6, but he isn’t stupid.
He notices it in actions, next.
He can see Shiro dodge mentions of family, avoiding using words like “grandma” and “sick”. Keith knows that the terms “dialysis” and “surgery” and “failing kidneys” don’t turn up in many conversations with 6 year olds, but he hears the way he whispers the terms when talking to Allura or Matt, as if the other kids have any idea what it means. Even Keith isn’t sure what most of it means, himself.
But he notices Shiro treating Lance a bit better. He gives him the bigger cookies, lets him sit on the big bean-bag chair when they watch movies, lets him use the iPad for just a bit longer than the others. Lance doesn’t really pay it much mind, but Keith does.
The terms not going to make it and he remains optimistic echo in his head. The idea of hospitals and tubes and surgery and infections makes his insides squirm.
One day as he watches Lance playing with molding clay in front of him, the question slips out.
“What does the word ‘optimistic’ mean, Shiro?”
Shiro pauses in his creation of a small green pig, and thinks of the best way to describe the word.
“It means, like...” He lets his eyes drift to the ceiling, as if the definition suitable for children could be found above him on the ceiling fan blades. “You’re staying positive. Like... happy, kind of. Seeing the bright side of things.”
“So not Keith,” Lance snaps, and even though Keith has heard the insult before, Lance has never added this much bite to it. He can feel the teeth of the words dig into his chest. It burns.
“I... I can be optimistic,” Keith says, crushing the star he had made a few minutes earlier. A lump forms in his throat. He didn’t mean to do that.
“Sure,” Lance says. “And I’m the queen of England.”
“I can!” Keith cries, and he grips the molding clay a bit tighter. Some of it squeezes out from between his knuckles. “I can. If you can be, then I can be too.”
Shiro raises an eyebrow, but says nothing. Lance scoffs as he rips off the head of the person he’d been attempting to make.
“Yeah. I can be.”
There’s no real heat behind his words. They come out dull, practiced, and Keith feels unsettled by the lack of light in Lance’s eyes. He doesn’t realize he’s asked the question until it’s settled itself on the table in front of them.
“Are you still being optimistic? Or do you know?”
No one speaks. Shiro stills in his molding, and the atmosphere is heavy enough that even Hunk and Pidge decide against saying anything. Keith can hear the radio in the far end of the kitchen, playing some Taylor Swift song that he hates.
Lance watches him from across the table as he slowly kneads the dough in his hands. His eyes are cold.
“Know what, Croc-boy?”
Keith shakes his head.
“No, please,” Lance says, crushing the clay onto the table. He stands a bit, letting his weight flatten the blue dough like a pancake. “Enlighten me. What do I know?”
Keith shakes his head again, the lump in his throat growing.
“Nothing,” he says, standing quickly and backing away from the table. “Nothing. Uh, Shiro, I’m going to the bathroom.”
He can feel Lance’s eyes follow him as he leaves the room.
He notices when Lance goes missing from the daycare for almost 2 weeks.
When he asks Shiro where he is, his brother only shakes his head, saying that it’s complicated.
Keith doesn’t think that it’s very complicated at all.
“Behavioral problems .”
Keith has always hated that phrase.
But as he watches Lance break down over a lack of blue sprinkles on the cupcakes Hunk made earlier today, it’s the only phrase that comes to mind.
“I’m sorry, Lance,” Hunk says, twisting his hands in the front of his shirt as he watches Lance cry. “I forgot.”
“You forgot!” Lance cries, throwing his arms in the air and letting his body crumple to the floor. He plops onto the tile of the kitchen, letting his arms fall heavy at his sides. “You forgot. Of course you did. No one ever remembers.”
“It’s just sprinkles,” Pidge says above him. She leans over, offering him another cupcake, this one topped with green. “It’s okay, Lance. You can have mine, if you want it.”
“I don’t want it!” Lance practically screeches, smacking the cupcake out of Pidge’s hand so it lands frosting-side-down on the tile. “It’s stupid! I hate it! I don’t want green! I don’t! I want blue sprinkles! Green is stupid. It’s stupid and I hate it and I just-” he sobs, his body quaking, and he throws himself forward, his cheek resting against the tile as he cries. He curls in on himself, tugging his knees to his chest. “I don’t want people to forget. I don’t want anyone to forget.”
Tears well up in Pidge’s eyes as she stares at her fallen cupcake. Keith watches Lance, a familiar uneasiness settling into his stomach. He drops to the floor beside Lance, cross-legged and calm.
“Do you want a cupcake without any sprinkles at all?”
Lance shakes his head. Keith nods.
“Okay. Do you want to lay here?”
Lance shakes his head again. Keith nods.
“Okay. Do you want to go to the fort?”
Lance pauses for a second, and then nods. Keith nods, too.
“Okay. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
Keith stands, looking at Hunk and Pidge and motioning for them to follow. They all make it to the living room in silence, where Keith turns to them, hands on his hips.
“Pidge, you get all of the pillows you can. Hunk, find blankets.”
They both nod, running in opposite directions to accomplish their goals. Keith crawls into the fort behind the couch, and waits.
They’d built the fort almost two months ago, but Shiro never had the heart to take it down. Half of the sheets are pinned to the wall behind the couch, and the other half draped over the cushions, held down with books. Keith holds the makeshift door open while Hunk and Pidge pile blankets and pillows into the small space, and once he adjusts it all properly he climbs out and makes his way back to the kitchen.
Lance hasn’t moved, so he lowers himself onto his hands and knees, tilting his face down so his forehead presses against the tile and he can look directly at Lance.
“The fort is ready. Do you want me to help you up?”
Lance shakes his head, and Keith nods.
“Okay. Just come when you’re ready.”
Hunk and Pidge edge around Lance’s balled-up form to the backyard, where they slip out the sliding glass door as quietly as possible. Keith heads out of the kitchen, striding down the hallway and into his room.
He frowns to himself as he gathers up Red, along with the rest of his stuffed animal collection. He hugs them tightly to his chest, careful not to let any of them fall.
“You have to be good,” he tells them, and they all listen closely, their wide eyes trained on Keith’s. All except Mr. Puggles, but that’s only because he was born cross-eyed. He could never help it.
“You have to make Lance feel better, okay?” He says, and he shifts the animals around a bit in his arms. “It’s important. Remember how I felt with Mom and Dad? Well Lance feels that way right now too. And we have to help.”
One of Mr. Puggle’s eyes holds Keith’s gaze in question. Keith rolls both of his own, very not-crossed eyes in return.
“Yes I know he’s a jerk sometimes, Puggles. But that doesn’t mean we can just leave him out to cry.”
That’s not the correct phrase , Puggles thinks, but doesn’t say anything. Because he’s stuffed.
“Oh, shut up,” Keith says, and he marches back down the hallway toward the pillow fort.
By the time he gets back, Lance is already inside. He’s curled beneath a pile of blankets, and drowning in pillows. Keith tosses his stuffed animals inside and crawls in after them. Lance stares, but says nothing.
Keith doesn’t say anything either, not as he crawls over Lance and begins tucking the blankets beneath him. Lance frowns, but makes no objections. Keith uses the same technique Shiro would use on him whenever he was sad or sick: just tuck all of the blankets underneath legs and torsos and feet, making the warmest, biggest blanket cocoon you possibly can.
It works, though, and Lance settles in even more, sniffling.
Keith rolls off of Lance, laying next to him on the empty floor. He has no blankets, but that’s fine with him. Lance is the one that is sad. He needs them more.
He scoots forward a bit so his head rests on the pillow beside Lance’s, and he stares.
Lance stares back.
And then he starts to cry.
Keith is used to tears. He’s used to Pidge’s, if she gets her iPad taken away, or if Shiro refuses to let her take apart a new xbox controller. He’s used to Hunk’s, over... practically anything. He’s used to Lance’s tears whenever Nyma steals his lunch money, or whenever he falls off of the jungle gym in the back yard.
He’s used to his own, hidden from others in the silence and the darkness of his own room.
But what he’s not used to are Lance’s tears of grief. He’s not used to the sobs of a broken child, of someone who’s lost one of the most important people in their lives. He’s not used to someone who is normally so happy, so optimistic , crying like he’ll never see the sun again.
At least, he’s not used to seeing it in someone else.
So he scoots closer, reaching out a hand and putting it on the blanket cocoon that surrounds Lance. His voice comes out near a whisper.
“It’s going to be okay.”
Lance chokes on a sob. “Y-you don’t kn-know that.”
Keith nods. “I do.”
“H-how?”
Keith rolls over, reaching for Red in the near dark of the fort. He finds her, pulling her close and rolling back over to face Lance. He lets his chin rest on the top of Red’s head, and he clutches at her helplessly.
“I didn’t know my grandma and grandpa.”
Lance calms down enough to hear Keith, only the sounds of his occasional sniffs and whines left. Keith stares at a stain on the top blanket.
“Really?”
He nods. “I never knew my real grandma and grandpa. And Shiro doesn’t have his anymore, so I never knew them either.” He pauses, and then frowns a bit. Not out of anger, but out of decision on what to say next. “I’m sure that your grandma is happy now, since she’s not sick anymore. And she can be with your grandpa, too.”
Lance sniffs, and when Keith looks up, his eyes are wide, tears welling along the inside of them, but not enough to fall. He nods once, sniffing again. Keith clutches at Red tighter, but holds her out a bit.
“Do you want to cuddle with Red? She’s pretty good at it.”
Lance stares at the stuffed lion, and nods. Keith passes her over, pulling up Mr. Puggles into his own arms as a replacement. Lance scoots to the side, the blanket cocoon scooting with him. Keith gives Lance an awkward hug, letting Lance cry into his shirt. He hopes Red won’t be covered in drool and tears by the time this is all over.
Lance cries until he has no real tears left, and eventually Hunk and Pidge crawl into the fort with them, throwing themselves on top of the pile and tugging on the cocoon until all four of them lay together, tangled in blankets and limbs and stuffed animals. Pidge passes around her iPad as they talk and yell and laugh, and Lance even accepts one of Hunk’s cupcakes. The sprinkles are an odd shade of purple.
"Behavioral problems” , Keith thinks, need to be talked out sometimes, with blanket forts and good friends.
It’s two days later when Keith stops Lance at the door.
Allura is halfway off the porch steps, tugging on her coat as she pulls it on. Lance is shuffling behind her, zipping up his own jacket, when Keith grabs his arm. Lance turns, and Shiro raises an eyebrow from the door.
Keith takes a step forward, keeping his head down.
“If you want you can take home some of my stuffed animals.”
He looks up to Lance’s wide eyes, frozen for a second before he smiles.
“Can I really?”
Keith nods, disappearing through the door again. When he returns he’s juggling his entire stuffed animal collection -- Shiro has to catch a few as they tumble out of his arms. Lance looks like he might cry.
Keith begins dumping the animals into Lance’s arms, rattling off names and specific bedtime requirements.
“These are all of my favorites,” he says, stacking a disgruntled Mr. Puggles on top of his stuffed zebra Joey. “They can have a playdate at your house tonight. They were all asking about you.”
“Really?” Lance asks, and Keith nods.
“Mhm. They want to make sure you’re not lonely. Plus Puggles has been asking to get out of the house for weeks.”
Lance laughs, and the corners of Keith’s mouth quirk up.
“They’re good animals, so they’ll behave. They always made me feel better after Mom died.”
Lance freezes, squeezing the stuffed animals a bit tighter. Joey slips out of his hands, but Keith catches him. He sets him next to Puggles.
“They’re the best at hugging. Maybe they can help you too.”
Lance adjusts his arm.
“Your mom died?”
Keith nods. “And Dad. That’s why Shiro takes care of me.”
“Shiro?”
“Yeah,” Keith says. “I didn’t know my dad. And Mom died when I was 3. So I was given to Shiro’s family. But his mom and dad died, too. So we’re a family now. Me and him.”
Lance nods, hugging the stuffed animals to his chest.
“Thanks, Croc-boy. I’m glad your animals can have a sleepover with mine. I’ll bring them back tomorrow.”
Keith nods. “Bring back Red too okay? She’s never left me before and she’s scared.”
“She doesn’t need to be scared,” Lance says, grinning. He turns on the porch, stepping towards Allura and the car. “She’s with me! It’s always awesome at Casa de Lance.”
Keith smiles. “Okay. She’s optimistic.”
Lance smiles over his shoulder at Keith.
“Me too.”
Keith smiles back.
“Good,” he says. “Me three.”
The next day, Lance brings Red back to Keith.
He brings along his own matching lion named Blue, as well.
