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Years ago, a Galra soldier fell down, injured, to the Earth.
A young woman, Soo-min Gyeong, discovered him in the cornfield on the farm belonging to her family. She pulled him into the barn and managed to maneuver him up into the loft, where she nursed him back to health.
The Galra was called Marlox and, in exchange for Soo-Min’s help, he helped with labor on the farm for the summer. Her family, of course, was skeptical and a little scared, but she was fascinated by him. And he by her as well, it seemed.
Their romance lasted the whole of the summer, and when Soo-min discovered her pregnancy at the end of the season she knew her parents would never be able to accept her child.
She escaped in the night. The only person she told she was leaving was her cousin, Ichiru – and she didn’t even tell him where she was going.
It took half her savings to get far enough away from home, and the other half to buy a cheap lot of land with a shack built on it.
She took on a job as a waitress at a diner at the only gas station for miles on the highway. The nearest hospital was nearly an hour away by car.
She was lonely, but she felt safe. She had no phone, so her only way of keeping in touch with Ichiru was to write him letters.
She was seven months along with Marlox finally found her.
He built a proper crib and helped Soo-min get the house ready.
She had to give birth in the shack, with no doctor around – just in case the baby came out looking more like Marlox than a human.
It was a baby girl. Kyong-hui, Soo-min named her, after her mother – who she missed dearly but dared not return home to see.
The three of them lived comfortably until the baby’s first birthday when Marlox, who had putting off leaving for far too long, had to admit to his superiors that his ship was in well enough condition for him to return.
Soo-min was heartbroken, of course, but heeded Marlox’s warning that his people would come after him, if they thought he was a deserter.
“I just want to protect this planet for you,” Marlox told her. “And for her.”
“Do what you must,” Soo-min replied. “I’ll be waiting for you to return.”
Keith was still called Kyong-hui and still wore a dress and pigtails when he asked his mother where his father was.
The shack was small, but a comfortable enough size for the two of them – with the air conditioning off because it only goes on when the temperature goes over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. His mother looked at him, as she often did, and smiled.
She didn't know how to explain it. She had been trying to raise him bilingual, but even between two languages she didn't know an explanation that wouldn't hurt her baby.
She told him his father was kind and strong. She told him he had gone far away so he could protect them.
She told him his father might come back, someday.
Keith, the only kid in his class who hadn’t had his mother and father there for parents’ day in Kindergarten, had no choice but to believe her
Soo-min and Keith’s teachers worried for him. He wasn’t very social and almost seemed to dislike the other kids in his class. They worried something might be wrong, but he passed their tests just fine. He was choosing not to engage much. What didn’t know is, maybe even then Keith knew he was different.
Soo-min worried it was because they were all alone in their shack in the desert.
But then, when they were home at night, Keith would talk her ear off about his class and his teacher and draw pictures for her, and she almost didn’t have the heart to share him with anyone else.
Keith was six when Ichiru and Minami – his mother’s cousins – came to visit with their son, Takashi.
Takashi was fourteen, but he was very kind to Keith.
Keith can remember how Ichiru told strange jokes and how Minami had smelled really nice, though not very much like Keith’s mother. He remembers wishing he could play with Takashi forever.
After two weeks, they went back home.
A day later, Soo-min received a call that Ichiru and Minami had been in an accident and Takashi was staying with his grandparents for now.
As soon as Takashi was old enough, he applied for the Garrison – only a few miles from Keith and Soo-min’s shack in the desert.
Keith was nine when his mother told him she was sick.
She told him she would stay with him as long as she could, but she would probably have to leave him soon.
Keith held onto the hope that this would be about the time his father came back.
Keith was eleven when he was washing blood off his sheets and his thighs all by himself for the first time.
He still went by the pretty, feminine, name his mother gave him – but it was just beginning to feel too cramped for him. Yet, he was unsure that night, scrubbing his legs, if he would even ever start calling himself Keith.
He was tired and felt lonely in a way he hadn’t since his mother was taken away in the ambulance. He kind of wanted to throw up at the feeling that consumed him when he thought about asking Takashi to buy pads for him.
He wished he could just wear tampons - so he didn't have to think about all the blood in his underwear like urine in a diaper - but that night was only the fifth time he had gotten a period and he was not any more comfortable touching his girl parts.
He wished his mom was still here, like the first time this happened, to stroke his hair and help him with the laundry and tell him about the first time this happened to her.
He remembered how sick she was then, but she helped him anyway.
All he had left of her were memories.
He remembered gentle hands helping him dry off after a bath when he was little. He remembered kisses on his forehead, and lullabies in a language not even Takashi knows, when he was falling asleep. He remembers a protective figure over him while they waited in line at soup kitchens.
He remembered them not having much. Not even a camera for him to have visual proof she was ever with him.
He sat on the closed toilet seat lid and cried and Takashi peeked in, probably woken up by the noise.
Takashi was still young - only nineteen - but he couldn’t bear to let Keith go back to their family’s farm. He’d known Keith well enough for long enough to know he would be eaten alive by their relatives out there. They wouldn’t be so understanding when they saw a purple, furry creature taking Keith’s place when he fell asleep at night.
So, Takashi give up his room in the dorms at the Garrison and started living in Keith’s shack with him.
He called Keith by the name Keith didn’t want anymore, noticed the bloody sheets hanging hang out of the sink.
Takashi was gentle, but seemed about as nervous as Keith. He got the soap off the shelf Keith couldn’t reach. He offered to buy Keith pads without him needing to ask.
He told Keith it was okay to ask him for help. He told Keith to call him Shiro, like his friends did.
Keith really started to consider Shiro his friend.
“My name is Keith now.”
Keith was all of fourteen and his hands were shaking. Shiro had a spaghetti noodle hanging out of his mouth. “You want me to call you “he” now too?”
“Please.”
Shiro looked back down at his dinner. “Alright.”
Shiro helped him cut his hair and helped him save money for a binder. He gave Keith his hand-me-downs. Since he was officially working now Shiro put Keith on his health insurance and helped get the doctors on Keith’s side when he wanted to start hormone replacement. He helped Keith with his injections until he could do it himself.
He wrote a letter of recommendation for Keith when he wanted to join the Garrison.
The two of them were close. Keith even really loved Matt Holt, when Shiro started bringing him around. It was a little bit lonely, watching Shiro be so close with someone else, but he knew it was for the best. He had daydreamed, vaguely, that he’d find someone to love him one day.
He was just a little afraid no one would, once they knew who he really was.
Keith was sixteen when Shiro didn't come back.
He had only been in the Garrison for a year when it happened.
He hadn't taken it well.
Keith managed to last another year before they finally kicked him out.
He went back to his shack in the desert.
Alone.
He discovered strange lion markings. He spent his days investigating them.
He spent so much time alone, he began to forget the sound of his own voice. He refused to talk to himself. He heard people who did that were crazy. He really didn’t want to be crazy.
Being a lonely hobo wasn’t much better though.
Especially since, because he didn’t have health insurance anymore, he had to stop taking his hormones.
He felt awful all the time, his periods had come back. He missed Shiro. He missed his mother.
He just wished someone else missed him too.
Keith rescues Shiro.
The two of them, with the others, take off in the blue lion.
The group of them begin living in the castle.
Keith takes the first chance he can to privately ask Coran if he can synthesize testosterone for him so he can start taking it again.
Coran was sympathetic, but told him it might take a little while.
This was one of few things Keith would be patient for.
One day, what feels soon but also ages later, after Keith sees part of himself turn purple, he hides out in his room to test himself.
If he concentrates, he can turn himself completely purple. His ears can expand and his eyes can turn yellow.
He can become a Galra.
He doesn’t know what to make of this.
He’s afraid but his body is telling him this is alright.
He just knows he has to hide it.
Five months into their space journey, it is the middle of the night (for the paladins, at least, even though they have no sense of Earth time out here) when Keith comes across Pidge carrying sheets toward the laundry chute.
"You alright?" He asks, feeling a little awkward.
Pidge shrugs, even after so long she's still pretty closed off with everyone but Shiro and sometimes Hunk.
Keith sees red stains on the wad in Pidge's arms as she tries to shove them in the chute. "Do you -" he cuts himself off, unsure if he wants to engage with this. "Do you want me to ask Allura where you can get new sheets?"
Pidge looks a little surprised he asks. "I can ask her myself," she replies.
Keith nods, feeling a little awkward from his decision to talk to her. "I just..." he trails off. "It just sucks, not knowing what to do when this happens."
Pidge seems to peer through him, quiet for a moment. "You're speaking from experience," she says, and it isn't a question.
Keith nods.
"This is the first time for me," she tells him.
Keith can't help the smile that breaks his face. "You're already handling it better than me," he replies. "I cried until my mom came to help me because I didn't know what happened."
Pidge laughs a little, but it isn't a full laugh, it seems a little sorrowful. "My mom got hers when she was almost twelve so on my thirteenth birthday - when I still hadn't gotten it - she sat me down and she told me what I should do when I did finally get it. It not quite the same, being away from home though."
"Allura gave me pads last time, if you want to borrow some until you can ask her."
Pidge smiles, and it's the first time the two of them have genuinely connected since they came up here. "Thank you."
When Keith and Pidge start seeming a little closer, Lance is the only one who thinks it's weird.
Lance has given up on his imagined rivalry with Keith, but the two of them still get under one another's skin sometimes. Lance wants to be friends with Keith, he’s really a pretty cool guy when you get to know him. Except, Lance’s affinity for Keith is a little stronger than he’s used to. It’s like he wants all of Keith’s attention, all the time. It’s a little weird. But he doesn’t fight it. He watches Keith any time he thinks the other isn’t looking.
On the day Coran finally has testosterone for Keith to test out, Keith doesn't know Lance is eavesdropping from around a corner - unable to hear clearly.
He goes about the rest of his day, not totally understanding why Lance keeps giving him looks. When the two of them are sparring later, he finally snaps, swiping Lance's feet out from under him.
"Why do you keep looking at me like that?" Keith asks, irritated.
Lance still looks startled from his fall. "Like what?"
Keith cocks an eyebrow. "You look like you've got something to say to me."
Lance is quiet for a moment, getting back up. "I do, actually."
"Say it then," Keith replies, crossing his arms.
"What did Coran give you earlier?"
Keith feels an embarrassed heat creep up his neck. "What did you see?"
"Syringes," Lance replies.
"It's none of your business," Keith says.
Lance rolls his eyes. "As though we don't do that weird mind meld thing when we form Voltron."
Lance says it passively, but to Keith - in this context - it feels almost threatening. Keith grabs the taller boy by the collar. "If you go and try to snoop around in my head, I will make your life miserable."
With that, Keith storms off to be alone.
Lance, confused and vaguely concerned, goes to talk to Shiro.
Shiro tells Lance that, yes, he knows what Coran gave Keith but, no, he also won't tell him what it was.
"Why don't you ask him yourself?" Is all Shiro says.
Lance assumes, then, that whatever it was is safe - he's just so damn curious.
He can't let it go.
He watches Keith even more than before - if that's possible, he watched Keith a lot before too - and tries to pick out behaviors that might point to what the syringes were for. Lazing around, watching Hunk tinker with something for Pidge, Lance goes on about all his research.
All Hunk has to say in reply is, "Why don't you just ask him?"
"He yelled at me when I asked him, I just told you that.
Hunk shrugs. "Ask again? Be nicer about it this time?"
"I was plenty nice last time," Lance replies, indignant.
"You're not as nice as you think you are sometimes, buddy."
Lance sighs.
He finds Keith reading some information the castle has on a planet they're going to see later on. "Hey Keith?" Lance says.
"Why do you want, Lance?"
Lance wants to frown, it's almost like Keith is purposely antagonizing him.
"I wanted to say I'm sorry."
Keith flicks his eyes up briefly, then looks back down. "Did we also find food that's actually good? Or is that the only miracle for today?"
Lance actually does frown this time. "C'mon man, I'm trying to be nice here."
"What're you sorry for?"
Lance clasps his hands behind his back, unsure what else to do with them. "I didn't mean to sound like a dick when I asked what Coran gave you."
"Well you did."
"And I'm sorry."
Keith looks back up at him. "If you're trying to get me to tell you what it was, I still won't."
Lance swallows his frustration. "That's fine, I just wanted to apologize."
Keith cocks an eyebrow. "Then what's the face for?"
Lance screws up his face, annoyed. "Stop reading my face!"
Keith smirks. "Then stop shoving all your thoughts into it."
"You know what?" Lance crossed his arms and turns, muttering to himself in Spanish.
Keith smiles. "Apology accepted," he calls after Lance as he leaves.
Shiro wanders in after Lance leaves. “What was that about?” he asks.
“Idiot’s trying to creep on my personal information,” Keith replies, looking back at his book.
Shiro sits beside him. “It would do you good to connect with everyone here. It would do all of us good, really.”
“What do you want from me? Pidge knows, who else do I have to tell?”
“Ideally, everyone.”
Keith makes a face. “Shiro.”
Shiro raises his hands defensively. “Pidge told all of us everything. I think it would be good, to be more open.”
“Says you. You can’t remember enough to open up about but you want me to expose myself for someone like Lance.”
“He’s not a bad guy is all,” Shiro says. “I think you two could be good friends.”
“If you can get him to slow his mouth down maybe.”
“I think he’s just a little unsure of what he should say to you.”
“Shiro, we both know how bad I am at starting conversations.”
Shiro breathes what could’ve been a laugh and gets back up. “Just try,” he says.
It's only about a week and a half later that a mission goes a little sour.
Lance and Keith are hiding out behind a makeshift barricade, both clutching their bayards like lifelines. Keith mumbles something to himself in a language Lance doesn't know. "What was that?" Lance asks.
Keith turns to look at him, he didn't realize he said that out loud. "It's just something my mom used to tell me."
"You're related to Shiro, right? Was that Japanese?"
Keith shakes his head. "Most of our family is Korean. Shiro's grandfather and parents are the only Japanese people in our family."
Lance nods, hoping he can actually remember this in detail later, he tends to forget information he receives under stress. "What you said, what did it mean?"
Keith shakes his head. "It's stupid," he says. "She only ever said it because I was so impulsive as a child."
Lance rolls his hand, as if to say, "Go on."
"Okay, just don't laugh," Keith says. "Watch it, Kyong-hui, or you'll wind up with a hole on your guts one day."
Lance holds back a snort. "Kung he?"
Keith shoves his shoulder. "Kyong-hui," he corrects. "It was my birth name. My mom wasn't around to get to know me as Keith."
Lance furrows his eyebrows. "What do you mean get to know -?"
Suddenly the door on the other side of their barricade slams open and the two of them have to scramble to get back to back again.
Lance, to his credit, is not one to complain about dragging an unconscious body through a battleground. He just wants some goddamn recognition for his efforts when it's over.
He does not, even after having to carry Keith – on his lap while piloting Blue – back to the castle.
As he carries Keith, with Shiro and Allura's help this time, to a healing pod, he thinks wryly that Keith really did almost end up with a hole in his guts today.
While the three of them try to peel off Keith’s armor, and be careful of the sizable injury from his ribcage down to his hip, Lance sees Keith’s binder for the first time. His injury broke part of the hem and the seam on that side. To Lance, it looks like a weird cropped tank top that's almost too tight. "What is he wearing?" Lance asks.
“Doesn’t matter right now,” Shiro says, starting to maneuver to pick him back up. “He needs to get in the pod.”
Allura stops him. “It’s too torn, we need to take it off of him too.”
Shiro eyes the broken seam, how it keeps pulling looser with each unsteady breath Keith takes – it’s open enough already that it isn’t doing its job anymore. “He’s not gonna be happy about this,” Shiro says, holding him up so Allura can remove the article.
“At least he’ll be alive to be angry about it,” Allura says. “Lance, get a medical suit for me.”
Lance fumbles around looking for where they even keep the medical supplies. He finds everything in a strange closet. When he walks back over, suddenly he understands what the weird shirt was for. Keith has breasts. Tiny ones, small enough that Lance can remember his sister getting picked on for hers halfway through middle school, but the small deviation in his otherwise incredibly skinny form is enough. Allura glares at Lance for staring and tears the folded cloth out of his hands. “You will not mention this to him when he wakes up,” she warns.
Lance is just scared enough of her that he knows he’ll at least try to listen.
Once Keith is in the pod, Allura is rushing off again to help Coran. Shiro rests a hand on Lance’s shoulder. “Hey Shiro?” he asks, quietly.
Shiro cocks an eyebrow at Lance’s unusual – for him – tone. “Yeah?”
“Is Kyong-hui a girl’s name?”
“Did Keith – “
“He said something in Korean earlier, and I asked him what it meant. He told me that was his name before. He said his mom never “got to know” him as Keith.”
Shiro sighs, and nods. “It was his grandmother’s name.”
“So the stuff Coran gave him –“
“Lance,” Shiro says gently. “This is a conversation you need to have with him, not me. Just wait for him to wake up.”
Lance is not a patient man.
When Keith wakes up, the infirmary is empty. He feels a knot form in his throat when he realizes his binder is gone. The white suit is tight, sure, but he feels like anyone who sees him will notice. Oh god, he thinks, who changed him into this thing?
He makes the decision to rush to his room and hope no one sees him.
His arms are locked around his chest as he walks, he decides being barefoot in the castle hallways feels weird.
The relief floods him like a balloon was just deflated in his chest. Putting his spare binder on – despite making his chest feel tighter – almost makes him feel like he can breathe easier. Sitting on the edge of his bed, with his cropped jacket zipped up for his personal comfort, he thinks about himself as a child.
He thinks Kyong-hui and Keith should never have been the same person. He thinks that if he could somehow meet his past self, he would hug her and try to reassure her that as long as she’s comfortable, it doesn’t matter what the outside world sees in her physically.
Maybe if he had had that when he was her, the fear that gripped him at the thought of people seeing his chest might not be making him cry right now.
Nearly a month later, Lance still doesn’t know how to approach Keith with his question without scaring him off.
He’s tried to be a little kinder, and his efforts are paying off, he thinks. He’s actually getting Keith to laugh with him instead of just at him when he does something dumb.
Originally, he told himself it was just because he wanted Shiro to stop scolding them for how poorly they can get along. Lately he’s been thinking that maybe he wants to be closer to Keith just for himself.
Keith – for as difficult of a time he can have socially – is pretty funny himself. He’s willing to help out when Lance asks and they have more in common than either of them thought.
They’re the two that got tapped for cleaning duty today (after another pretty rough food fight) and instead of actively cleaning, they’re chatting instead. “So you’re Korean, right?” Lance asks. “My mom’s parents are from Columbia and my dad came from Brazil.”
“Who was the first generation in your family to immigrate?” Keith asks.
“My mom’s parents came here right after they got married,” Lance replied. “They found out they were pregnant with my uncle right after their green cards were approved. My dad moved here on his own, when he was nineteen, met my mom within his first month here.”
“I don’t really know how my parents met.”
“Your dad isn’t in the picture either?”
Keith shakes his head. “He left when I was a baby. My mom always said he would come back, he never did though.”
Lance starts focusing on scrubbing the floor again, doesn’t look Keith in the eyes. “My dad left when I was eight,” he says. “My mom always told us he used to be really great, but he wasn’t always so nice to us.”
Keith stares at him. “Did he like… hit you?”
“Not my siblings and I,” Lance says. “When he drank too much he got a little violent with my mom, though. But then, one time he disappeared for a week and when he came back he was acting really weird, he wasn’t drunk, but he tried to hit my sister. My grandfather stepped in and threatened to call the police if he wouldn’t leave. He got sent to jail not too long after that. When I got a little older my mom told me he had hurt his back at work and got addicted to painkillers. And then when he couldn’t get a new job he turned to alcohol. And then when they stopped giving him his medication, he started looking for street drugs. She kept telling us he wasn’t a bad guy, but that was all I ever saw of him.”
Keith isn’t sure what to do with this information, but he kind of wants to give Lance a hug. He won’t, because he would feel weird doing that, but he wants to. He thinks passively that this is someone he’d like to protect. Someone he wants to be around for a long time. Someone he wants to know everything about and wants to have know everything about himself.
“My mom,” Keith begins to say. “My mom ran away from home when she found out she was pregnant with me. That shack we brought Shiro back to, I grew up there. We could barely afford to eat; we were almost exclusively living off whatever leftovers she could scrape together from the diner where she worked.” Keith licks his lips, getting a little bit lost in the memories. “I was happy though, being with her. And then she died.”
“How?” Lance asks.
“Cancer, I think,” Keith replies. “We couldn’t afford treatment so she let it kill her.”
Keith looks up at Lance, to see the other boy almost looks like he’s going to cry. “I can’t imagine that,” he says. “Watching my mom…”
“I was eleven,” Keith says. “And then Shiro came to take care of me until Keroberos. And then I got kicked out of the Garrison and I was alone for a year.”
Lance is watching Keith closely. “I wish we could’ve been friends sooner.”
“We couldn’t have been,” Keith says, scrubbing the floor. “After Shiro disappeared I wasn’t letting anyone else in. Especially not someone like you.”
“What’s wrong with me?” Lance asks.
Keith looks at him seriously. “You would’ve made me too optimistic,” Keith says. “I wasn’t ready for that yet. I think if Shiro hadn’t been there, I would’ve crawled into the hole in the ground with my mom. And then when he was gone – I don’t know how I survived.”
There is silence as Lance lets that sink in.
“I’m sorry,” Lance says eventually.
“I’m sorry for you, too,” Keith says, sincerely.
It’s the middle of their night, some time later, when Coran receives a transmission from a one-person ship that has stopped nearby.
In the video is a Galra, he isn’t wearing the soldier’s uniform but he’s scarred like he might have been one once. His voice in surprisingly gentle but his words seem slightly desperate.
Coran has Allura watch the transmission and then she wakes up Shiro to have him watch it.
“Does Keith know?” Allura asks.
Shiro runs a tired hand through his hair and shrugs. “When he was younger, he used to turn into one of them sometimes,” he says. “I always assumed his mom told him.”
“Should we show him?”
Shiro wakes Keith up.
Keith cries when he sees.
“This is Marlox Khull. As a former Galra soldier, I understand your hesitation in engaging with me. However, I have a personal matter of incredible importance I was hoping you could assist me with. Some time ago I crash-landed on Earth, injured, and a human female called Soo-min Gyeong assisted me until my injuries were healed. We had a hybrid child together, one of the only Galran-Earthian children not currently on record with my people. Her mother called her Kyong-hui. I could not find her when I went back to Earth but I fear if she is found she will be in danger. If you have any way to assist me in my search, please respond.”
“Keith?” Shiro asks.
Keith shakes his head, looks at Shiro. “Did you know?”
Shiro swallows thickly. “I did.”
Keith runs frustrated hands through his hair. “Damnit Shiro! Why didn’t you –“
“I assumed your mother would’ve told you. You always looked like them when you were asleep.”
Keith shakes his head. “I knew I had something to do with them,” he says. “But my father?”
“I don’t know why she wouldn’t have told you, Keith,” Shiro says. “I’m sorry.”
“Keith,” Allura says gently. “You’re still one of us. This isn’t your fault, you know.”
Keith cries harder, shaking his head.
Shiro lets Keith go back to bed. They don’t really start to worry about him until he doesn’t even come back out for dinner the following evening.
“Where the hell is he?” Lance asks, finally addressing the elephant – or lack thereof – in the room.
“Give him a little time, Lance,” Allura says.
“For what? Nothing happened yesterday,” Lance frowns.
“Alright,” Shiro says. “Team meeting. Pidge come over here for a minute so we can talk.”
Pidge looks up from where she’s fiddling around on a computer. “Is Keith alright?” she asks.
Shiro takes a deep breath. “Probably,” he replies. “But he doesn’t feel great right now.”
“Last night,” Allura begins. “We received a transmission from a Galran man asking if we could help him find Keith. He was Keith’s father.”
All of the energy is sucked out of the room. Hunk gets his thoughts together first. “Keith is –“
“Part Galra, yes,” Shiro says.
Pidge’s face screws up with a frown. She looks betrayed. She walks out, going to hide out in her room.
Shiro sighs.
Lance is still frozen.
Nobody talks for the rest of the night.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Keith?”
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Go away, Lance,” Keith mutters, back against his door.
It’s the next morning, not even time for breakfast yet. But Lance couldn’t sleep, and he’s worried.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Go away, Lance!”
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Keith gets up and swings the door open. “What?!”
Lance doesn’t flinch, he barely looks affected by Keith’s attitude at all. He steps forward and Keith is the one to flinch back. Lance closes the space between them, hugging Keith. “You’re Keith,” he says into Keith’s shoulder. “You’re my friend. I don’t care what else you are.”
Keith doesn’t cry again, but he wants to. He hugs Lance back.
Lance can’t get Keith come out for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, so he brings them to him.
Keith is grateful, of course, but he really wonders why Lance would consider someone like him a friend. “I never thought people outside of my family would ever like me,” Keith admits, quietly.
Lance looks at him. “Too bad you got a whole gaggle of us, huh?”
Keith snorts. “Before Shiro disappeared, when they were getting ready for the Keroberos mission, he and Matt would hang out a lot. He would bring Matt over and I would watch them together and think about how much I wished I could have that.”
Lance cocks an eyebrow. “Just hanging out? Or were they, like, hooking up?”
Keith blinks at him. “Hooking up?”
“You know,” Lance says. “Actually, you might not know. I mean, like, were they dating or sleeping together or whatever?”
Keith shrugs. “They would kiss sometimes.”
Lance looks excited. “I knew it!” he says. “I knew he had a thing for Pidge’s brother!”
“How would you know?”
Lance shrugs. “I just had a feeling.”
Keith cocks his head. “Have you ever been like that with someone?”
Keith is a little surprised when he sees Lance’s cheeks go pink. “No, not really,” he replies. “People think I come on too strong.”
“I can see that,” Keith says.
“Hey!” Lance whines. “I don’t wanna hear that from you, hobo.” Keith laughs and Lance shoves him. “I’ve kissed people before, just never, like, dated.”
“I haven’t even done that.”
“I figured.”
Keith can’t help staring at Lance. He almost wants to ask about every crush Lance has ever had. He wants to know how Lance imagines himself romantically. “Lance?”
“Yeah?”
Keith pauses. “Nevermind.”
Keith voluntarily comes out for breakfast the next morning.
Pidge still looks upset, but she approaches Keith anyway. “I know what you are isn’t your fault,” is all she says, before going back to her computer.
Hunk shakes his head, but doesn’t press her to be nicer. He approaches Keith next, sits right beside him. “She’ll get used to the idea soon,” he tells Keith. “She’s mostly just upset Shiro and Allura didn’t tell us right away.”
“They didn’t tell me right away,” Keith replies. “Which I think I understand. I think.”
“Lance and I wanted to get some sparring in today, if you wanted to join us.”
“Sure,” Keith replies.
Pidge turns. “I want in, too.”
They both raise their eyebrows. “You never want to join in,” Hunk says.
“Today is an exception,” Pidge says, looking back at her computer. “I have to kick Lance’s butt to make myself feel better.”
Allura sends a transmission to Marlox after lunch that day, when they’re busy sparring. She asks to meet with him, to ask if he has any information they could use for their mission.
Marlox agrees to meet with Allura right away.
Everyone woke up in a good mood the next morning, but then they found out he was coming and they all started getting nervous. Most of the concern was on Keith’s behalf, but he made a plan up with Lance. If he couldn’t handle being there all he had to do was squeeze Lance’s hand and Lance would find a way to get him out of there. Lance told Hunk and Pidge the same thing, in case one of the two of them was closer.
All five of the paladins stood together as they waited for Marlox’s ship to dock. Allura turns to send Keith a thumbs up but mostly he’s just trying not to feel sick.
Lance and Hunk are just surprised a Galra is living on a ship small enough to dock in the castle.
When Marlox disembarks, he is bigger than Keith thought he would look – but also tired.
Allura puts herself at the center of attention, before he can say anything. “Greetings Marlox,” she says. “I am Princess Allura, of Altea. These are the Paladins of Voltron: Shiro, Lance, Keith, Pidge, and Hunk.”
Keith’s heart is racing as Allura speaks. Lance keeps looking at him and Keith doesn’t really know what to do with himself. He starts inching back, away from them all.
And then Pidge grabs his wrist and looks at him.
So he takes a deep breath.
And a second one.
And Pidge lets go again, when he nods at her.
Marlox looks over the line of them. “You told me my daughter was one of your paladins. I only see young men here.”
“The red paladin, Keith,” Allura says. “Was born your daughter, but he grew into a young man, as great a soldier as any I’ve ever seen.”
Marlox peers through Keith, and Keith swallows thickly. “You look just like Soo-min,” he says. “Only, if she had been an Earthian male instead.”
Keith doesn’t know what to say. “Shiro said so too.”
“I was expecting an Earthian female,” Marlox says. “I’m sorry I missed when you changed.”
Everyone looks at Keith, who feels his face and ears and the back of his neck getting hot. “I’m sorry too.”
Marlox cocks his head at Keith. “I know who have your duties here,” he says. “But I was really hoping when I found you, you might want to come with me. Especially when I discovered what happened to your mother, I –“
“I’m staying here,” Keith says. The room is entirely silent. “If you had come two years ago, maybe, but I already have a new family.”
“Your new name is Keith?” Marlox asks.
Keith nods. “Yes sir.”
“Well, Keith,” he says. “I will wish my friends luck if they come across the Red Paladin. If you really are like your mother, they’ll need it.”
With that, he turns his attention back to Allura and they have their discussion.
Keith’s heart is still racing. But he’s okay.
Almost two months later, they’re on another mission.
In the thick of it, the team is separated and no one can reach Lance.
Keith, feeling concern and panic gripping his heart, almost wishes his was still alone in the desert so he wouldn’t have to feel like this. He thinks it every time something like this happens now.
They are successful, ultimately, but everyone is pretty beat up. Lance is conscious but probably shouldn’t be when they get back. His face is a mess, beaten bloody, his nose is definitely broken.
Keith is there when Shiro has to hold Lance still when Allura resets his nose.
All five of them have to spend at least a little time in the healing pods.
Even when they’re all physically healthy again, they’re all exhausted.
Keith finds himself wandering into Lance’s room. Lance is in bed, maybe trying to nap, with headphones on. Keith sits himself on the end of Lance’s bed, which makes Lance open his eyes. “Hey,” Lance says.
“Hey,” Keith replies.
Lance takes his headphone off. “Wanna lay down?”
Keith crawls up and lays beside Lance. They face one another, several inches between them.
“I was born a girl,” Keith says.
“I know,” Lance replies.
“It was testosterone injections Coran gave me that day.”
“I know.”
“I wanna kiss you.”
Lance’s ears go red. This close up, Keith can see the bump on the bridge of his nose where it was broken. They all have funny scars like that now, he thinks.
“I didn’t know that,” Lance says.
“Well I do. Want to, I mean,”
“Do it then.”
They continue staring at one another, Keith can’t bring himself to do it. “It’s not weird that I’m not really a boy?”
“You call yourself a boy?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re a boy.”
“It’s not weird that I’m Galra either?”
“I already told you I don’t care what you are.”
“Okay.”
Everything is silent. Keith leans forward and barely presses his lips against Lance’s.
“You can do better than that,” Lance whispers.
Keith frowns. “I resent that.”
Lance leans forward and kisses him more firmly. Keith doesn’t realize when he whines into it, making Lance chuckle.
“Shut up, I’m new to this!”
Lance continues chuckling. “I know,” he says. “We’ll get more practice, it’s alright.”
“Yeah?”
Lance nods. “Definitely.”
Keith wonders, idly, as Lance kisses him again, if this is how his mother felt about Marlox.