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Keith has terrible impulse control. He knows it, and so does everyone else. He tries to do what’s best for the team, but he’s never been good at separating feelings from logic. Act first think later is a motto he does his best not to follow, but ends up doing so anyway. Shiro did his best to drill patience yields focus into his head, and when he remembers to slow down and think, it really is good advice.
But bad habits built on emotion don’t disappear when he slows down and thinks. If anything, they get worse, because while he knows he’s probably endangering himself, it’s all still too tempting.
He’s not sneaky about covering up the marks he leaves on his arms and hips and legs. Covering it up feels restricting, and it’s not like everyone on the ship hasn’t seen a cut before. They all have their fair share of scars, he just adds his own.
Shiro’s been trying to talk to him about it since they were back at the Garrison. The problem to Shiro is that Keith doesn’t see it as a problem so much as an outlet.
“I’m just saying it’s not really all that bad,” Keith says as Shiro inspects his forearms.
The first time he’d tried to do this, Keith was scared and unsure of himself and refused to roll his sleeves up. It was his business, didn’t Shiro get that? It took a lot of coaxing and promising not to judge him before he gave. They weren’t even that deep then. Barely breaking the skin, hastily covered up with band aids and shirtsleeves. Keith thinks it’s ironic that his fourteen year old self was completely mortified with the idea of anyone finding out and now he stands there with his arms outstretched, completely uncaring.
It’s probably not a good sign, but he doesn’t actually care enough to think about it that hard.
“You say that every time, and every time they look worse.” Shiro says, brows furrowed. He presses his thumb on a particularly deep one, and Keith lets a hiss of pain escape his teeth. “My point exactly.”
Keith pulls his arms back and crosses them over his chest. “It could be worse,” he says lowly. “It could be way worse.”
Shiro ignores what he’s insinuating as best he can and tries to morph the topic. “What set off these?”
He shrugs and sits down, back against the bed. “Felt too big.”
Most of the time, he doesn’t have a solid answer, just wanted to, and Shiro has come to accept that over the years. But he always gets more interested if there’s actually a reason, like he thinks he can figure out what makes Keith’s brain tick the way it does.
“Too big?”
“Yeah, like everything inside me was too big for my body and I had to…l had to let it out? Ugh, no, that’s too flowery. That’s not right.”
He’s bad at describing how things feel, because they’re feelings, they’re momentary things that are fickle and unreliable and he can never use his words to describe them right.
“How did it start?”
“The inside of my head felt like it was shoving up on my skull, and it was like everything else followed. My heart and my lungs felt huge, like they were trying to get out, and I couldn’t… I don’t know.”
He purses his lips and presses a finger down harshly on that same deep cut from earlier. He can feel the phantom sensation of his heart slamming against his ribs and doesn’t really feel like dealing with it right now.
“Any more anywhere else?”
“No,” he says, rubbing over the scabs. “I wanted it to sting not ache.”
Shiro is quiet for a moment. “You know the others are worried about you?”
“You are too, but it’s not like it does anything.”
He sighs. “That’s not the point. I’m trying to say that maybe talking about it with someone else might be better.”
“We don’t really ‘talk’ about it. You check to make sure I haven’t done something seriously scary to myself and silently judge me while I make vague statements about why this time.”
“Keith,” he’s got that pity sound in his voice that Keith hates. “I’m not judging you.”
“Right, of course.”
He stands, brushes himself off, and turns to leave. “You should get some rest, Shiro. I know you haven’t been sleeping.”
The door clicks shut behind him. He needs to remember to bring that up sometime when he’s not in a bad mood, to actually focus on Shiro and give him the same treatment. Make him talk about it, even if he doesn’t want to.
Shiro’s been bottling up his feelings for way too long.
The training room is blessedly empty when he gets there. He choses a level lower than where he’s actually at. He’s trying to destress, not actually improve. The staff clangs against his sword. He has it beat in a couple of minutes. Just as he’s about to cue up another, the door opens.
“Mullet! I thought I’d find you here.”
He deactivates his bayard and turns toward Lance. “Yes?”
“What are you doing right now?”
“Uh, destressing?”
His face does something weird by going through what seems like all the emotions at once before settling on fake upset. “This is what you call destressing? Wrong, nope, that’s incorrect.”
“How, exactly, is it incorrect?” He’s walked over to where Lance is leaning on the door frame.
“Because it’s actual work. You’re not meant to exert yourself when you destress, dummy. Let me show you how to do it like a pro.”
He’s about to object when Lance interrupts him. “Come on,” he says, softer. He gestures to his arms, to his whole self. “Give yourself a real break for once.”
Keith knows for a fact that Lance won’t give up until he gets what he wants, and he really isn’t in the mood for fighting with him today. “Fine,” he mumbles.
Lance seems to light up. “Great! First, go take a shower. You’re a little sweaty, and you want to get sparkly clean for this.”
He does as he’s told, scrubbing himself off a little, washing his hair. There’s a pair of red pajamas on his bed when he gets out of his shower with a little note telling him to meet him at Lance’s room. He pulls the soft fabric onto his body, and it feels nice.
Lance has surrounded himself in just about everything Keith thinks he could ever need. There’s bowls and bottles and washcloths all around him.
“Keith! Are you ready to get your world completely rocked?”
“You haven’t actually explained what we’re doing here.”
“I am introducing you to self care. Like, physical appearance stuff, because I’m pretty sure you’ve never scrubbed your face with anything before.”
“I… what?”
“Exactly. Now come get comfy.” He pats his hand on the chair opposite him, once Keith doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. He sits in it and it feels like he’s sitting on a cloud.
“Where’d you get this chair?”
Lance tilts his head. “I got bored and went looking through storage with Hunk one day. Why, do you want one?”
He squishes the material of the chair with his fingers. “No, it’s just… it’s really nice.”
He lets out a confused laugh while grabbing some hair clips. “Alright then, if squishy chairs get you going that’s fine I guess.”
Lance clips his bangs back and smooths a hand over his face, eyes narrowed in concentration. “Your skin is surprisingly soft for how little you care about it. It’s kind of upsetting, actually. You don’t have to put any work in.”
Keith shrugs. “Lucky me?”
“Yes lucky you, that shouldn’t even be a question.” He picks up a bowl. “However, it is never too late to start caring about your face, and this’ll make it even softer.”
Keith screws up his face. “Do I want that?”
“Do you- do you want that? Of course you do! Has Shiro taught you nothing?”
“What does Shiro have to do with my face being soft?”
“Unbelievable. He wears the eyeliner like a pro, I can imagine he does the rest.” He scoops out some grainy looking goop from the bowl and Keith makes a face.
“That’s going on my face?”
“Um, yeah? Sugar scrub, Keithy-boy. Exfoliate.”
He rubs it onto his face and Keith almost flinches back at the feeling. It’s not bad, just really, really weird. Once he gets used to it, it’s kind of nice. And then Lance pulls his hands back.
“Hmmm, now that I think about it, it would have been a better idea to do this in the bathroom, seeing as we have to wash this off.”
“Can we bring the chair?” he assumes they’re moving in there now.
Lance laughs. “Sure, buddy. Whatever you want.”
Lance wipes his hands off on a towel and gathers his stuff while Keith moves himself and the cushy chair into the bathroom.
Lance wets a washcloth and beckons Keith over to the sink. He starts wiping the sugar scrub off, and Keith closes his eyes.
“You feel any better yet?”
“Yeah,” Keith says behind the washcloth. “A little bit.”
“Well good. That’s what I was going for. Now, facemask or no face mask?”
Keith doesn’t really think before he says, “Facemask.”
Lance pulls back the washcloth, finished, and Keith opens his eyes to see his delighted face. He rubs another, not grainy, thing on his face and holds up two little circle things.
“So there’s no cucumbers here, obviously, because we’re in an alien space castle in the middle of space, but cold packs work in a pinch. You leave all this stuff on for twenty minutes, okay?”
“Uh,” he says, because that was a lot. “Sure?”
“I’ll be right here, so you don’t have to worry about being all alone for twenty minutes with no one to talk to. Close your eyes for me.”
He does as he’s asked, and feels those two little circles go over his eyes. They’re cool, feel nice. He lets out a little relaxed sigh.
“Feel good?”
He nods slowly so as not to upset anything on his face. There’s some shuffling and he thinks Lance is resting his head against his leg.
“So… do you want to make this a regular thing? Like a once a week destress fest? Because you clearly need some other hobby than—”
“Shiro put you up to this, didn’t he?”
“What? No. Believe it or not, everyone on this ship cares about your well being. I just thought, maybe, that you’d want to relax for once. Or maybe more than once. Because you seem to be enjoying yourself.”
Keith hums. “I mean, if you’re offering, I guess so.”
“Well good, because I am.”
It’s quiet for a second.
“Do you… want to talk about it?”
Keith groans. “Please don’t try to scold me on what is and isn’t healthy for me. I get it. I get enough of that from Shiro that I understand. But it’s not doing anything, and I’m not concerned, so it’s fine.”
“Well then,” Lance says. It’s quiet again before he speaks. “You can just talk? About that if you want, I’ll just listen. We’ve still got some time.”
“I don’t get why Shiro thinks it’s such a big deal. Why any of you do, really. It’s not like I’m stupid. I know what I’m doing.”
It’s quiet.
“Please talk if you want to, just me speaking and not being able to see is really uncomfortable.”
Lance lets out a small oh. “Okay.”
“Shiro’s been hovering me about it pretty much since we met. It’s—”
“Wait wait wait. When did you guys meet?”
“When I was fourteen?”
He can feel Lance sit up and he sighs. This is why he hates talking about it. Because when people realize this isn’t a new thing they get all weird about it.
“I don’t… I don’t remember seeing you with cuts at the Garrison.”
It’s not the sentence he expected, but it works. “Well, you got there when you were sixteen, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Our uniforms had long sleeves. It’s not like it was hard to cover them up. And besides, more places than just arms exist.”
“Oh,” Lance says. It’s really small, and for some reason, Keith feels bad. “Were they this bad when you were fourteen?”
He snorts out a laugh. “Fuck no. They didn’t even scar they were so light. It’s actually kind of funny. I was so afraid of anyone finding out when I was fourteen that when Shiro tried to intervene I completely freaked out and refused to roll up my sleeves. I actually kind of thought he’d hate me for it, that he’d think it was to get his attention and he’d be disgusted.”
“Was he?”
“No. He was really, really worried. He still is, he just does a better job of hiding it.”
Shiro actually tries really hard, he thinks. Really, really hard. The novelty of him being there has worn off, but he might actually be dead if Shiro wasn’t there. That’s a weird thought.
“Keith?”
“Yeah?”
“How come you don’t cover them up? I’m not judging, I’m just asking. Because you said you were really afraid of people finding out, but it seems like you don’t care”
“Because I don’t.”
“But why?”
Keith lets himself think about it for a minute.
“Your only friend dying kind of shoves things into perspective. And there’s no one in the desert to judge you. You get used to not caring and when you’re finally around people again, it doesn’t matter as much.”
He hears Lance stand and then the cold circles are plucked from his eyes. He looks up.
“Twenty minutes are up,” he says quietly.
Lance washes his face off again and pulls out some lotion. “Final step to beautiful skin, my man.”
He rubs it into his face, smoothing it into his skin, and Keith has to admit, this is the most relaxed he’s felt in a while.
“There. Now you know the bare bone basics. There’s so much more we could do, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be dinner soon. One more thing.”
He holds out a jar “Coconut oil. Or, the Altean equivalent. For your arms. It helps with scarring and healing wounds and stuff. I know you don’t care, but we do, and I’m not sure how comfortable you are with people fondling all over your arms, so I figure you can keep it and put it on when you need to.”
“Oh,” he stares down at the jar, rolling it in his hands. “Thank you.”
“Any time.”
Keith touches his face, and it really does feel softer. He realizes he’s in pajamas again.
“I should probably, y’know, go change. And take this to my room. So, see you at dinner?”
Lance smiles. “See you there.”
He gets to his room and sets the coconut oil on the little table by his bed. His clothes come next, and he actually feels better. He puts the oil on his arms, just to test it out, and while it’s weirdly greasy, it soaks into his skin pretty fast.
He’s the last one to the table, which feels weird. He’s usually one of the first. He takes his seat between Pidge and Lance and stares down at his plate of goo. Pidge snickers on his side.
“What?” he asks, looking at them.
“Oh nothing,” they say, tapping their head. He’s not sure what they’re getting at and turns back to his food.
“I never took you for a hair back kind of guy, Keith,” Hunk says, and Keith is so confused.
“What are you talking about?”
“The pins,” Shiro says, smiling. “You’ve got pins holding your hair back.”
His hands fly up to his hair, and sure enough, there are the pins Lance put in his hair earlier. He sends a look to Lance.
“Why didn’t you tell me they were still there?”
“I assumed you knew?” Lance innocently takes a bite of his goo. “It’s not like you look bad with them in, it’s just different.”
He pulls them out and sets them on the table.”
“Wait, hold on, they’re Lance’s pins?” Pidge asks.
“Yup. I taught him how to take care of his face today. Because he may have perfect skin, but that doesn’t mean he should neglect it.”
“Perfect skin, you say,” Pidge grins over at him, and Keith’s more than just a little confused.
“Uh,” Lance falters and sends a dirty look to them. “Don’t twist my words, you little gremlin. His skin is just naturally, annoyingly, soft.”
“Uh huh, sure,” says Hunk, scooping up his goo with his spork. “Annoyingly soft.”
“Well I thought it was nice,” Keith says, taking a bite.
“Did you,” Shiro says from across the table.
“I did, actually. It was really relaxing.”
Pidge choke laughs on their food and Keith slaps a hand on their back. They laugh even harder.
“This gonna be a regular thing?” they choke out when they get enough air.
“I think so,” he takes another bite. “It was good.”
“Awww, Keith, I’m so glad you liked it.” He leans over next to him.
“Yeah, well, don’t get all smug about it, I don’t think I can deal with that.”
“No promises.”
---
They keep up the weekly schedule they’d been planning on. Each time, Lance teaches Keith a little more about caring for his physical appearance, and that taking care of your body outside can help it inside. He truthfully doesn’t do much of what he’s taught outside of Lance’s room, but he has started using conditioner in the shower. It makes it infinitely easier to comb through after.
He has painted nails, something he hasn’t had since he was nine. They’re red right now, shiny and smooth, and it’s weird that he kind of likes it. He’d hated painted nails as a kid, what it signified about him. He’s done his best not to let them chip, but there’s a chip at the edge on his pointer finger. Lance had assured him that it was fine, nails chip, even his. He knew that, he’s had his nails painted before, he just wanted to keep them perfect.
Lance thinks that’s really cute, going so far as to say so.
“That’s adorable, man. I think this is the first thing I’ve done that you’ve actually cared about. Tell you what. If it bothers you that much, I can repaint that one for you?”
He doesn’t say yes, even though he wants to. It’s too much, even for him, to be this upset about a chip in nail polish.
Lance has his nails a really pretty blue with gold at the edges.
“How’d you learn how to paint nails?”
“I have two sisters and a bunch of cousins. Good nail polish skills were a must. My little brother liked his painted too.”
Keith hums in agreement.
He’s been trying harder not to cut as deep. He realizes how hard Shiro is trying, how hard Lance is trying, and that scary self conscious feeling is creeping back into his brain. He wears his jacket a little more now, and he doesn’t think it’s a good thing.
There’s a day when the urge is so oppressive it hurts. Shiro’s told him that if it ever gets this bad, to come find him, and they’ll work through it so Keith doesn’t end up doing something he’ll regret later, but Shiro’s trying so so so hard and Keith doesn’t want to shove anything else onto him.
He makes them shallow, tries to get the urge out that way, but the little bits of blood set him off and his hands start shaking and he thinks he’s panicking as he cuts into himself deeper and deeper again and again and again until every empty space is filled up and then some. He switches arms.
He needs to be open and he needs to get this out and the blood is making him scared and elated at the same time he needs more to be out of him and on his arms and he’s dripping all over his bed sheets. This is terrifying and he can’t really breathe any more but he keeps going until the pain of the last one jolts him back into reality.
Keith throws the knife away from him and it hits the floor with a clatter. He’s shaking, but he feels numb. There’s no emotion left inside of him, he thinks it’s leaking out with all the blood. And there is so much blood.
There’s a knock on his door. He can’t stop staring at his arms.
“Keith? You’re late for our spa time, man. I’m teaching you how to paint your own nails today so you can stop freaking out every time you get a chip.”
He’s breathing so heavy but he can’t feel his fingers. They’re twitching but he can’t feel them. Everything feels like static.
“Keith?”
The door slides open and he’s still staring at the blood slipping don his arms.
“Oh my god,” he hears Lance breathe and he looks up.
“I- I can’t—” he chokes out, and he really doesn’t know what he can’t do because that thought slips away from him.
“Fuck,” Lance says and he rushes into the bathroom to grab some towels. “Okay, okay just, okay.”
He presses the towels onto his arms. “Hold those there. I need to, I gotta, uh, Shiro. I’m getting Shiro.”
He blinks up at him and presses the towels down. Lance nods, gives him a pained look, and rushes out the door.
Time moves slowly and he looks down at the towels turning red from his blood and lets out a giggle.
The giggle turns into a laugh, and the laughing gets louder and he can feel the pinpricks of tears in his eyes and it’s all so funny.
He’s laugh crying by the time Lance returns with Shiro. Lance is frantically rubbing his hands together and Shiro get up next to him and tries to pull the towels off. Keith stops him.
“Shiro,” he laughs out. “Shiro I did something bad.”
And it’s so, so funny and he lets the towels get pulled off and he’s still bleeding so much. Shiro lets out this panicked noise and looks him in the eyes.
The laugh crying turns into full sobbing and he can’t breathe, his arms don’t even hurt anymore and his fingers are still numb and unfeeling.
“Lance,” Shiro says, and it’s shaky. “Go get Coran.”
Lance leaves again and it’s just Shiro and Keith and Shiro pulls him into a hug and he’s bawling into his shoulder like some two year old and Shiro’s rubbing small circles on his back like he did the first time he found Keith bleeding and scared, but this time is so much worse.
Coran comes back and he’s immediately taken to the healing pods, because he’s still bleeding so much and they’re deeper than they’ve ever been.
The pods make it feel like everything is floating, like you’re stuck in a dream cloud that’s this cool cold place. It’s disorienting to get out of, because gravity returns to normal, and you’re no longer stuck in a cool cloud that makes everything feel better.
He sways his way out of the healing pod and Shiro comes over to steady him. He scrubs his hands over his face to get the tiredness out. He remembers getting freaked out enough by the blood that he went on a cutting frenzy on his arms and thinking that all the blood was the funniest thing he’d ever seen and then Lance and Shiro were there and he started crying.
Nice.
Shiro’s silent as they walk back to his room. The only words he says when he gets there are “You should get into something more comfortable.”
He takes the advice, changes into the pajama pants and his normal shirt in the bathroom. He looks at himself. The scars are there, stark against his skin, all over his arms, but they don’t hurt.
Shiro’s still waiting for him when he comes back out. He’s sitting on his bed, staring at the floor, and Keith sits at the other end of it.
“I told you to come find me when it got bad like that.”
“I didn’t want to burden you,” Keith tells the floor. He fidgets with his fingers.
“How many times have I said that you’re not a burden?” He can feel Shiro’s gaze on him and refuses to meet it. “You coming to talk to me so you don’t accidentally end up killing yourself is not a burden.”
“I… I’ve been trying to do better. And it hit and I thought if I did a couple shallow ones I’d be fine and it’d be over, but it got so bad so fast I couldn’t…”
Shiro sighs and scoots closer to him, pulling into a side hug.
“I don’t think you understand how scary that was. Lance came in with this face and he couldn’t get his words together and drug me down the hall until I figured out where we were going, and then seeing you just… laughing about it with all that blood all over you and the towels were soaked. It was…”
“I’m sorry,” Keith says small-ly.
“I’m checking up on you more. I’d take your knife, but I know how important it is to you. And it’s not like it would do any good. Your bayard’s a sword. I can’t control when you use that.”
Keith nods. “I’ll try—”
“Don’t just try, talk to me. Talk to Lance. Talk to anyone. You know it’s always worse when you don’t talk to anyone.”
He nods again and bites his lip.
“You should go talk to Lance. We’re going to talk later, but he’s been nervous since you got put in the pod.”
Shiro pats him on the back and stands. Keith does the same.
Lance’s room is eerily quiet, but it’s where Keith finds him. He knocks before entering.
“Hey,” he says.
Lance hugs him tightly when he gets close enough and all the air is shoved out of him. He pats Lance’s back awkwardly to get him to let up.
“I was so worried,” Lance rushes out when he lets go. “You weren’t answering a-and all of the blood and then you were laughing and crying at the same time and I-I just I—”
Keith shushes him.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Shiro said I should talk to you now, and just more in general about it, but I really don’t want to talk about it because it’s embarrassing and kind of scary for me to, but… if you’re still up for teaching me how to paint my nails, I’d like to do that?”
Lance looks him up and down, gaze lingering on the dark marks embedded in his arms, and nods.
“Okay. Yeah, we can do that.”
Lance turns the light on and pulls out his box of nail polishes.
“Pick your poison.”
Keith pulls out a greenish blue, heavy on the blue part and holds it out. Lance smiles. “That’s the best color.”
Keith can’t help but agree.