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They’re always touching each other. Like, all the time. High fives, shoulder pats, back slaps, fist bumps, elbows in ribs…hugging, jumping on each other’s backs…sitting so closely that their arms brush against each other.
Keith doesn’t get it. Right now the three of them are in a literal pile on the couch, and they’re just…content there. Chilling, scrolling on their data pads. He feels like he’s suffocating just looking at them.
Of course, when Hunk randomly hugged him a while back, it wasn’t…that bad. And Shiro has patted his shoulder a few times, that was tolerable. He’d rather not be touched, though. It gives him an ugly, crawling feeling across his skin, makes alarms start going off in his brain like he’s about to get hurt, even if it is something completely innocent like a hug or a shoulder pat.
Maybe it’s because he has gotten hurt by people a few too many times. Bullies at school, a few foster parents, and now, of course, a whole Empire full of aliens. Maybe it’s because he spent a year completely on his own before this whole space adventure, and therefore the hug and shoulder pats were the first time he’d been touched since Shiro left for Kerberos, though of course touch wasn’t exactly his favorite thing back then, either.
He doesn’t really want to examine the why too closely. Those are all parts of his life that he’d really rather leave in a dusty corner of his brain, unbothered.
But the problem is, he sits there and he watches Hunk, Pidge, and Lance all piled on top of each other, and something deep inside of him…aches a little bit. He definitely does not want to join them. But he wants…something. It’s been happening more and more lately. At first he ignored it, until it started growing stronger and that became impossible. Just now it’s finally starting to occur to him what it might actually be that his body wants.
Keith is, frankly, appalled.
Abruptly standing, he leaves the lounge without a word - not that anyone pays him any attention, anyway - and stalks down the hallway, stretching his neck from side to side and shaking out his arms as if he can rid himself of the ache that way. It’s not going to work. He can pretend it will, though, because he has no idea any other way to get rid of it.
Well, okay, he can think of one way, but that’s not happening.
Lying in the bed that night, the ache grows nearly unbearable. It feels a bit like his body wants to turn itself inside out. Rubbing his own hands up and down his arms only helps for so long. It’s not just his skin, it’s his stupid brain, too. It won’t stop thinking about how it felt to have someone’s arms wrap around him and squeeze, and that feeling isn’t something that he can replicate on his own.
So he goes to the training deck, like he always does when he can’t sleep. And if he lets the bot get more hits in than usual in some twisted effort at being touched, well, there’s no one around to see it so it doesn’t matter.
Until Shiro shows up. He stays in Keith’s periphery, watching, and Keith is very careful to act completely normal. He finishes out the level, dismisses the bot, and lets his bayard return to its base form as he goes to sit against the wall. Shiro joins him just a moment later.
This is fairly typical for them. They both struggle to sleep, so Shiro will often find him here and they’ll sit - sometimes talking about what’s keeping them up, other times just existing in silence together.
So far tonight they’re quiet. Keith’s mind is whirling, though. The fight temporarily distracted him from the ache, but now it’s back with a vengeance, especially with another person sitting so close to him yet not touching.
He feels stupid. He feels…weirded out by this need. No, it can’t be a need, people don’t need to be touched in order to survive. It feels like a need, but it’s just a want. He can ignore it. He’ll get over it eventually.
“You okay?” Shiro asks eventually. “You seem…on edge.”
His shoulders bounce up and down stiffly. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.” Shiro will see right through that terse answer, but if Keith is lucky, he won’t press.
He doesn’t, and now suddenly Keith wishes he would. Talking about it is the last thing he wants to do, it’s stupid and embarrassing, but also he needs to figure this out because it’s really annoying him. He can’t keep going on like this, but he also can’t just walk up to a random member of the team and be like, “Hey, can you hug me so my body will stop freaking out?”
They’d never let him live it down. Keith, the ‘lone wolf’, the outsider, asking for a hug. He can just imagine the look on Lance’s face now.
Though…Shiro wouldn’t be like that. Shiro has always understood him in a way that no one else does, has always been patient and never ever made fun of him - not in a way that he really meant it, anyway, not unless it was mutual teasing.
Still, asking even Shiro for a hug is too much. He can’t bring himself to do it, can’t get the words to even form. Maybe he could just…
No, he can’t do it.
But it’s Shiro. He’s not going to judge him.
It’s ridiculous how much mental strength he has to muster for this when he can attack an alien twice his size without a second thought. Eventually, though, Keith manages to force his body to scoot over a couple of inches, and before he can talk himself out of it, to lean against his friend, arm to arm. The crawling sensation and the alarm bells immediately flare to life. He grits his teeth and makes himself stay, though, tense and waiting for the feelings to get worse or maybe for Shiro to start questioning him.
But none of that happens. Grey eyes glance over at him, a bit surprised, but he doesn’t say anything. In fact, he returns the gesture, putting some of his weight on Keith.
And it’s…good. It’s weird, it’s wrong, it’s hard to get used to, but the sensations on his skin do start to die down after a little while, as do the panicked streaks of thought. The pressure is nice. Not a hug, so not as much pressure, but not as constricting and scary, either. Just something small. It feels like they’re saying, “Hey, I’m here for you.”
The ache inside of Keith starts to ease a bit.