Work Text:
“Keith, please just- we can talk this out, just get out of the water.”
Stop. Breathe.
Where are you?
You are currently in your bed, pressing soaked through tissues to your forearm. You’re not quite sure how you got to this point, but it’s not as surprising as it should be.
You’ve been losing time like this easier.
Your lungs are spasming under your ribs and you can’t pull a full breath in. Not the best thing to come back to, but you can deal with it. There’s a routine for when you can’t breathe like this to minimize the amount of blood you get on your clothes. Pull the tissue off and immediately pull off your shirt. Take a second to see what you did while you mind was elsewhere before pressing a different tissue to your arm for a second before giving up on that and pulling up your binder. Replace the shirt and tissue, and breathing comes easier.
The pressure behind your eyes ebbs away and you suck in deep breaths. The bleeding’s going down, and you let the blood scab over in open air. Most of them are relatively shallow, you note. They’ll heal in just a few days if you can keep yourself from ripping them back open. A couple others look deeper but not bad. A few weeks and you’ll be fine.
Pidge is playing some weird distorted version of All Star in the living room while they work on their project. You have the sudden urge to hug them until they realize how much you care about them. Instead of doing that, you shove the urge down as best you can and pull on a jacket. They don’t need to see this.
You open your door and it’s only when you’re assaulted by light that you realize it’s completely dark in your room. You squint and walk out into the brighter parts of your apartment. Pidge lifts their head.
“What’s up, fucko?” they ask, turning back to their work. That urge is back, and you can’t stop yourself from walking over and wrapping your arms around them from behind. It’s kind of awkward and you have to fold yourself over the back of the couch to make it work, but you do it. They stiffen and you tighten your arms.
“Um,” they start, clearly confused. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. I just feel like you don’t get how much I care about you.”
They turn towards you, breaking your death grip. “Keith, are you sure nothing’s wrong?”
They’ve always been able to see right through you, but you nod your head anyway. They don’t need to hear you bitch about your life.
“O…kay.” They turn back to their work. You shuffle your way into the kitchen and open the fridge, staring blankly at how empty it is. You need to get groceries.
“What are we having for dinner?”
“Really?” they say around a screw in their mouth. “It’s pizza night, our turn to go to Hunk and Lance’s. How’d you forget?”
You’re not positive, but it probably has something to do with the way your days have been blending together recently. Everything feels the same, the monotonous, brain numbing schedule that you've been following recently. The cuts help, but not much.
You look at the clock. Five thirty. You’re going to need to leave soon, so you leave Pidge’s question unanswered, retreating to your room to change your clothes and replace your binder.
They’re waiting and ready when you go back out.
“Seriously, if there’s something wrong, you can talk to me about it.”
“Really Pidge. I just got the urge to hug you. It’s really not that big of a deal.”
They go off ahead of you grumbling about how it’s more than just the hug, but you keep your focus on locking the door, getting in the car.
They chose to drive today, which means you get the pizza. You stand in the line for what feels like hours until you’re up at the counter. You’re blanking out, staring at the menu.
“Ma’am?”
It takes you a second to realize he’s talking to you, and when you realize, you narrow your eyes. You give him your order in a low tone and snatch your receipt back. He gives you the pizzas and you leave briskly.
“What? What is it?” Pidge asks when you slam the door getting into the car.
“He called me ma’am.”
The wrinkle their nose and spit out an insult you don’t care to remember. “Fucking cissys.”
You’re quiet for the rest of the drive.
Hunk greets the two of you with open arms, and a Hunk-Hug actually brings your mood up. Lance smiles at you and takes the pizzas. You’re not really sure what to do with your hands, so you go with him into the kitchen.
“Pidge says something’s up with you.”
You sigh, scrubbing at your face. “Nothing’s up with me. I hugged them today and they got all weird about it. That’s it.”
Lance’s hands are soft on yours. “Are you sure?”
“Yes Lance, I’m sure.” It comes out snappier than you’d anticipated, but Lance kisses your forehead nonetheless.
“Get yourself some pizza then and let’s get this party started.”
You all crowd on the small couch that was never meant to sit four people, but you sit on Lance’s lap, taking up as little room as physically possible.
When Pidge is passed out under the spare blanket, and Hunk and Lance are getting ready for bed, you slip outside, light a cigarette.
They know you smoke occasionally, that you only smoke frequently when your headspace gets bad, but it hasn’t been this bad in almost two years. You want to feel the split of your skin as you go too deep not deep enough.
Lance comes out behind you, pulls the cigarette from your fingers, and puts it out. It’s a habit he hates, and you’re not actually sure why you’re doing it on his balcony of all places.
“Keith,” he says gently. “What number is that?”
“Two,” you say honestly. There’s no point in keeping this from him, he always figures it out.
He hums and wraps his arms around you from behind. You melt back into him. The October air is chilly, but not quite cold enough for a coat yet. You run hot and briefly wonder if lance is using you like a human furnace. One of his hands slips around your wrist, and you feel yourself stiffen.
Lance’s thumb rubs circles in the middle of your forearm, knows your patterns at this point. You shudder, he kisses your cheek.
“How many?”
“Seven,” you say quietly. It’s honestly a low number, considering. He knows this. You know this. No one questions anything.
“Deep?”
“No,” and the words feel like relief between you. The air is so tense, thick like butter, the phrase you never really understood. You still don’t fully get it.
“What about you?” you ask. “Focus problems?”
He hums a little against your neck. “I had a lot of trouble paying attention in class. It was… really difficult today, I don’t know why. Hunk’s letting me copy down his notes, but…”
You turn around, press a kiss to his lips. “We should go inside, get some sleep.” Lance doesn’t want to talk about it, and you won’t push him.
He pulls the jacket off of you in bed, kisses your fingertips until you’re numb again, and you fall asleep against his sternum.
---
You reach five cigarettes a day, and Lance gets worried. You tell him not to focus on it too much, and immediately regret your choice of words. He just laughs.
“No, no it’s good. I want to use that, thank you.”
He doesn’t check your arms if you tell him not to, but he knows they’re there, aching into your skin.
You make the joke that you rivalled raw meat at one point, and he laugh uncomfortably. You make a joke about dying later when you’re in bed, and he’s quiet, doesn’t say anything back.
You think it’s funny, this little inkling in the back of your head to down the bleach bottle, cut vertical into your arms, take a trip to the riverbed and not come back. It’s absolutely hilarious.
Pidge is on a self deprecating bender, and you joke with them constantly in front of the other two.
“It’s like the world woke up and said, ‘I’m gonna fuck with Pidge today,’ and that’s what it did you guys. My brain’s gone to shit.”
“Don’t you hate the way your arms just constantly burn? Anyone? Just me? Cool.”
The two of you high five, even if you’re both incredibly worried about each other, this is how you deal with it, in self hate jokes and laughing until you feel like crying together.
Lance kisses you silly and tries to reassure you that he loves you, and you know it, you really do. And you love him so fucking much. But you up your smoke intake, cut yourself to shreds anyway.
You get a letter from Shiro in the mail, and you don’t realize you’ve burned it until the ashes are sitting on your balcony. You wonder what it was about, realize you’ll find out when it comes to fruition. You pass out from blood loss that night and you don’t mention it to the others when you finally wake up.
You smoke while you bleed and put out the cigarettes on your still open cuts, informally cauterizing them, and it’s fucking hilarious.
Lance sees the burn marks over the knife marks when you pull your shirt up one night and the tears that dot his eyes seems so out of place directed at you. You let him do what he wants that night, clean your wounds, wrap you up in blankets, play with your hair, kiss you until he falls asleep.
You have a panic attack when you wake up the next morning and see how fucked up your arms look. You start scratching at the scabs, and the blood makes you freak out more, but you can’t stop. Hunk and Pidge come in when they hear yelling and find Lance with his forehead pressed to yours, trying his best to calm you down. Hunk takes over for him, because you love Lance, but he gets just as freaked out as you do when he tries to help you. Hunk puts one of your hands on your own chest and the other on his. It takes a couple minutes to match his breathing, but you manage.
Pidge is standing there, shell shocked, staring at your arms. They don’t like blood, hate injuries in general, and they’re just staring at you, mouth opening and closing. You can see their hands shaking, and they let out this tiny noise. Lance comes back to himself and drags them out of the room.
Hunk pulls your focus back to him. He’s staring at your arms, biting at his lip, before he pulls you into a hug. Your breath hitches, and you will your tears away You are not going to cry. So you sit there, limp armed as Hunk holds you lung-crushingly tight. You think he’s maybe crying, but you’re not paying attention to sounds all that well right now.
The morning is awkward and you avoid any and all questions by shoving cereal in your face. Pidge still looks entirely too freaked out for you. Your arms are wrapped and covered. Lance doesn’t leave your side for pretty much the entire day. They should all be going to class, but no one does.
It irks you that they feel the need to stick next to you so closely after seeing these ones, and this batch wasn’t even the worst you can do.
Around five in the afternoon, you get so overwhelmed by the people surrounding you that you get up to go to the bathroom and make a mad dash for your bedroom. The door locks shut behind you, and you sink against it, taking in a shaky breath. Lance is knocking at your door almost immediately.
“Keith? Buddy, please open up.” He shakes the handle. “Please, Keith, just come back out.”
You’d just wanted a second, but oh god your arms are itching for relief. The skin splits over scabbed over places and it stings and you love it. You go deep deep deep horizontal in the middle of your forearms and the blood feels good as it cools on your skin.
You make your way to the window, ignoring the slamming of hands against the door and door handle, and climb down the fire escape. You’re woozy as you slip into your car, and it takes your shaking hands a couple of times to turn the key in the ignition.
You should not be driving.
It’s dark by the time you swerve your way into the river park. Half an hour drive across town and you’re here, you’re here. You walk down to the dock, and your arms still haven’t stopped bleeding, and you let out a giddy laugh.
You didn’t realize you never put shoes on until you dip your feet in the water. It’s cold, freezing outside, and you don’t have a coat either, but who needs a coat when they’re dead?
You sit at the dock, dip your feet in the water for a while. The blood coats your palms, and it’s probably all over your car, but again, that doesn’t matter.
You’re going to die.
When you slide down from the dock, the water is chest level. Your feet still touch the ground. The blood washes away from your arms. You stand there for a second, letting the frigid water numb your senses, shock your breath out of you.
The current pushes at you, and you’re so ready to let it wash over you, to feel the burn in your lungs until you die die die. The water reminds you of Lance, and for a brief second, you think you can hear him somewhere in the back of your mind.
You can hear the rest of them too, which is weird.
“Keith!”
Shiro’s voice breaks the fog in your mind, and you spin around to see him standing precariously on the dock. Lance and Pidge and Hunk are back by the car, and you assume he told them to wait there.
“Keith, please just- we can talk this out, just get out of the water.”
Everything’s so so cold, and you are so dizzy. You’re pretty sure your arms are just free bleeding into the water right now.
“Shiro?” You ask quietly. He nods quickly, sticks an arm out.
You’re so tired and so dizzy you feel like you could fall asleep right there. Shiro must see this because he gets a little more frantic.
“I will come in there and get you, please just take at least one step towards me, let me know you’re still with me right now, come on, Keith.”
You don’t want to, oh god, you want to just slip under this water and go to sleep and fill your lungs with water, but he’s here, and he’s never here, Shiro’s here and your fogged up brain decides that waterlogging your body can wait.
You move to take a step forward, and he relaxes just a bit, but the moment you pick your foot up, the current picks up, and you get swept under.
Water fills your mouth, and you are much too tired to fight your way back up. Everything’s dark and your arms feel like lead. You’re sinking down further into the deeper parts of the river, and you think in your hazed state you try to inhale. It hurts. You’re so fucking scared, but your eyes are slipping closed. Something warmer than the cold numb of water wraps around you, and then you’re being drug up onto the bank, coughing water out of your lungs on your side.
Someone sits you upright, and you think you vomit more water into the muddy grass. You’re still so tired, and you look up at the person holding you, and Shiro’s face is red and wet from more than just the river. He’s holding you around your middle and even though you were both in the river, he’s warm against you.
You hear sirens in the background, see light flashing in reflections. Lance is next to you, and you think he’s crying too. You give him a wobbly smile, all you can manage when you can’t really feel anything, and press a sloppy kiss to his lips. He cries harder after that, and that’s the last thing you see before you and Shiro get in the ambulance.
It’s a blur of lights and shining metal before you finally pass out.
---
They let you out of the hospital a couple days later, when they’re pretty positive you won’t try to kill yourself again anytime soon. Shiro’s still here, and he picks you up.
It’s awkward.
It was awkward in the hospital when you woke up surrounded by everyone and Lance was crying again. He looked exhausted, and you’d felt so goddamn bad. Shiro wouldn’t look you in the eye for the first day. He broke when you broke down into a sobbing mess about how sorry you were when everyone but him was out of the room.
You stare out the window as he drives. You’re so ready to sleep in your own bed. Hospital mattresses suck.
Lance greets you at the door, and you let yourself be sucked up in a hug. Your arms are pressed between the two of you, resting on his shoulders, and he’s holding you so tightly you think you might burst.
Your stitches ache and you shove the pain out of your mind. Lance kisses your forehead so softly you feel like you might cry. You think you do start crying, and he holds you impossibly tighter.
When Lance finally lets you go some ten minutes later, Hunk grabs you up next.
“You really scared us, man.”
You nod, and Hunk crushes your lungs all over again.
Pidge is curled up in a corner of a couch, and Shiro is talking in a hushed voice to them. They won’t look at you. You sit down next to them, just let yourself be there.
“I took all your sharps. And your stupid fucking cigarettes.”
Shiro gives you a look, and you don’t feel like feeling like a disappointment, so you don’t look at him. Instead you nod for Pidge.
“Okay,” you say quietly. “Okay.”
They accept this and rest their head on your shoulder. Lance sits on your other side, and Shiro looks a little miffed at being cut off like this. Pidge just stands up, shoves him into their seat, and drapes themself over both of you. Hunk sits on the other side of Lance, though you can tell he’d like to be closer.
Lance turns on a movie, because no one wants to talk about it right now. You couldn’t care less about the plot, you’re just focusing on the warmth around you, ignoring the itching in your body.
“You smoke?” Shiro asks at some point.
You clam up, because you’re not actually sure how to answer that question. Under normal circumstances, no, you don’t smoke. But now is not normal circumstances.
“He does when his brain gets bad,” Lance supplies. “So for the most part he doesn’t, but right now his brain’s acting like a piece of shit, so occasionally.”
Shiro accepts this answer with some thought, and you hope you don’t have to explain it more later. It’ weird. It’s a nasty habit that for most of your life you hated, and you still do hate. But the burn feels good sometimes, and it heightens your risk of dying, so you do it when, like Lance said, your brain gets bad.
You are incredibly tired, and you end up being the first person to fall asleep, a title that usually never goes to you. You half wake up when Lance is tucking you into your actual bed. You lightly grab his wrist before he turns to leave. He looks at you with soft eyes.
“Stay?” you ask.
“Okay,” Lance says, before he pulls off his pants and slips into your bed in his t-shirt and boxers. He pulls you close and warmth encompasses you.
“I love you,” you mumble against his collarbones.
“I love you too,” he says just as you slip back into sleep.