Keith woke feeling raw.

His head pounded, his bones ached, and his stomach churned forebodingly.

He felt downright ill, but that would have been fine - he'd dealt with much worse physical discomfort before - if it wasn't for the way he felt.

As in, emotionally.

Most of the time he kept unpleasant thoughts locked away in a deep dark corner of his brain, never to be taken out to see the light of day, not even for dusting.

In that deep dark corner lived most of his childhood memories, even the happy ones from before his dad left. They were tainted because remembering the happy times inevitably led to thinking about why he hadn't seen his dad since he was a child.

His lack of memories of his mother was a painful absence that mocked him. Thinking of her was like picking a wound that had scabbed over poorly and would never heal properly.

There were a lot of memories of the myriad of foster families Keith had lived with, faces, names, and places a mixed up blur, but those details weren't important. They weren't the painful part. It was the despair of being rejected over and over, of never being quite good enough to keep.

There was a whole shelf in that deep dark corner dedicated to the Garrison and Shiro.

For a while, the Garrison had been one bright spot in an otherwise dim, dark life, and then he met Shiro and that bright spot became blinding because he'd never had someone before.

Someone on his side, someone willing to stand up for him, someone who genuinely seemed to want to spend time in his presence.

But then Shiro had been taken away from him too, and suddenly all the Garrison did was remind him that everyone always left him. Even the people who wanted to stay got taken away, and just like that the unpleasant things that hadn't bothered him when he had someone in his corner, suddenly bothered him a great deal.

He lashed out, got into fights, got kicked out, and then he'd had nothing.

Now, Keith felt like that awful deep-dark corner had suddenly ballooned in size to fill up his whole head, the words from the worst moments of his life playing on a continuous loop;

"Your suspension is effective immediately, and you are prohibited from entering Garrison property once you leave today-"

"Mission was lost due to pilot error-"

"Something not right with that child, he's so vicious, shouldn't be allowed around others-"

"Sorry kid, your father isn't coming back for you-"

A tapping on his door knocked Keith out of his spiralling negative thoughts, dragging him back to himself. He sat up, determinedly ignoring how it made his head spin dizzily, but embracing the throbbing ache behind his temples.

He'd be okay if he could just focus on the physical pain and ignore… everything else.

The door swished open and the person Keith least would have expected, and indeed, least wanted to see, waltzed in like he owned the place.

Lance.

Why couldn't it have been Shiro?

Shiro didn't say mean things. Shiro might even have noticed that he wasn't feeling too hot and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder, might have given Keith just a little of the human contact that he always craved. He was always careful not to be too greedy because Shiro was the best thing that had ever happened to him. The last thing he wanted was to drive him away, because if Shiro rejected him at this point, honestly didn't know what he'd do with himself.

Hunk was always nice, and Hunk had hugged him once before. If it were Hunk, maybe he would have gotten another hug.

Even Pidge was preferable; she could be blunt sometimes but then again so could he. The two of them understood each other quite well, and she was never purposefully hurtful.

Not like Lance.

Lance only said mean things to him. Keith pretended that it didn't hurt his feelings because pretending was his only defense against it. Well, that and firing back whatever acerbic rejoinders occurred to him in the heat of the moment.

Keith didn't think he could muster up the mental fortitude to pretend or fire back in that moment.

He'd probably start crying, and Lance would never let him live it down.

So he opened his mouth to tell Lance to go away, to fuck off and leave him alone because he wasn't in the mood but he barely managed to croak Lance's name before he started coughing up his lungs.

His throat was so dry and itchy and he couldn't get any words out because he could hardly breath through how hard he was coughing.

He doubled over and covered his mouth with one hand as he fought to get himself back under control.

He heard Lance curse, there was a sound of porcelain clinking against metal, and then the mattress dipped as Lance sat next to him.

"Here, drink this-" said Lance, laying a warm hand on his shoulder and thrusting a glass into Keith's watery view; his eyes had teared up from the force of his coughs.

Keith grabbed the glass and immediately brought it to his lips to gulp down the liquid desperately.

Cool fresh water soothed his itching throat, and once he had drained the glass dry he found himself able to breathe easy. The aching in his temples eased as if the water had doused it.

At some point Lance had moved his hand from Keith's shoulder to the back of his head. Lance kneaded gently, warm fingers easing the tightness in the muscles of Keith's neck.

For a moment Keith forgot himself and melted into the touch, letting his head tip forward limply and his shoulders relax. It just felt so so good.

But then he remembered who it was sitting next to him on his bed, so close that he could feel his radiating body heat, and Keith stiffened right back up.

"Oh," exclaimed Lance, sensing the shift in mood, "Should I not have-? Sorry, just, you seemed to like it yesterday…" he said, stilling his fingers but leaving them there, lightly cupping.

Sorry? Yesterday?

"What?" said Keith intelligently, utterly confused.

Lance ducked his head to peer into Keith's face, and his eyes narrowed as he considered the other boy.

"Hang on a minute, what can you remember from last night?"

Keith cast his mind back with difficulty.

Everything was crystal clear up until the toast. After that, all he could remember were flashes and impressions.

Red grass between his fingers. Two shimmery moons in the blue lake. That couldn't be right, could it? His hands looking wrong under the violet sky.

Someone stroking his hair… that definitely wasn't right.

"So you don't remember us talking? Down by the lake?" prompted Lance impatiently.

"No," replied Keith honestly. Lance sighed.

"I guess that's karma for you," he muttered.

"What happened? Why I can't I remember? Did-did something happen?" asked Keith.

Did they get attacked by the Galra? Did he get injured? Was everyone alright?

Apparently Lance could read his thoughts from the frantic look on his face because he quickly said, "Nothing much happened. Everyone else is one-hundred-percent fine. How… how do you feel?" he tacked on awkwardly.

It was weird for Lance to ask him that which made Keith feel defensive. Was it a trick question? It had to be, there was no way Lance actually cared how he felt.

"I feel like being alone," Keith snapped pointedly.

For some reason that made Lance wince. He drew back his hand from Keith's neck and Keith couldn't suppress a shudder at the loss of warmth.

Even though it was Lance, the touch had felt nice.

"Right… I'll just, uh, go then..." said Lance, getting up.

He paused just in front of the door.

"Oh, one more thing," he said turning back, "Allura said we could have the day off, so free time until the tomorrow, yay."

"Great," Keith snapped impatiently.

"Oh, actually, there were two things-" Keith ground his teeth, willing Lance to just leave, "I, um, brought you breakfast 'cause you missed it and I thought you might not be feeling too great after… well, it's there if you're hungry," said Lance, gesturing to a bowl he'd set down on Keith's bedside table.

Keith could only blink.

Lance had… brought him food. No, Lance had brought him food and water.

"Get some more sleep, you look like you could use it. If I catch you on the training deck, I'm telling on you to Shiro," said Lance, pointing two fingers at his owns eyes before pointing them sharply at Keith.

With that Lance swept out of his room leaving Keith dumbfounded about what had just happened.

It was almost as if… as if Lance didn't hate him.

Lance had been… nice.

It left Keith feeling off-kilter and confused, so he decided to ignore it for the time being and go ahead and eat the food Lance had brought him.

Where the water doused his headache, the food took care of the dizziness and his churning belly.

He almost felt human again and for some weird reason he owed it to Lance.

Even all those bad thoughts and memories that had been consuming his brain were safely locked away again in the deep dark corner.

A short while later someone else came by and knocked on his door. Keith knew it wasn't Lance again because they actually waited for him to called out "Yeah?" before opening the door.

This time it was Shiro.

"Hey Keith, how are you feeling? Lance said you left the party early yesterday because you weren't well," said Shiro, his brown eyes warm with concern as he came to stand by Keith's bed.

Keith couldn't remember. He felt alright-ish now though and he didn't want to worry Shiro needlessly; Shiro had more important things to worry about, so he said "Yeah, but I feel better now."

"You still look a little rough. Are you sure you're not coming down with something?"

Shiro reached out with his metallic arm as if to lay it against Keith's forehead to check his temperature, but aborted the movement sheepishly halfway when he realised that limb wasn't human anymore.

"Shiro… It's fine-" said Keith in a low voice, but Shiro waved him off with a smile and reached out with his left hand, slipping it under Keith's bangs. Shiro's hand was dry and cool to touch.

"You know your arm doesn't bother me," continued Keith stubbornly.

"I know, but it would have been redundant to try checking with this hand seeing as it can't really feel temperature," said Shiro placidly, waving the hand in question.

"That makes sense. I guess if it did, it'd hurt you every time you activated it to fight."

After a beat, Shiro withdrew his arm.

"Right, you don't have a temperature. That's good. Maybe we should have Coran scan you in the med-bay-"

"Shiro, no," deadpanned Keith.

"Alright, but if you get any worse-"

"It's not going to get any worse because I'm fine, it was probably just food poisoning" dismissed Keith flippantly.

"But if it does-"

"Yes Shiro. I'll tell you."

Keith would never admit it out loud, but he kind of loved it when Shiro fussed over him like this, no matter how much he rolled his eyes and huffed outwardly.

He loved it because it meant that Shiro cared, about him, but at the same time it terrified him.

Terrified him that one day he might go too far. One day he might say or do something that was too much for Shiro to worry about, too much effort to deal with.

When he was difficult, everyone else in his life had left him without a backwards glance, so he tried to be as easy as possible with Shiro.

It was hard because he wasn't an easy person by nature, but Shiro was patient and Keith would always be endlessly grateful.

"So, Lance brought you breakfast?" asked Shiro, gesturing to the empty bowl sitting on Keith's lap. Keith's eyes narrowed in calculation.

"Did you make him-"

"No, I didn't actually. I said I was going to check on you and he jumped up and offered to go instead."

Keith stared down at the bowl. He… didn't understand.

"It's a good thing Keith, he's trying to be friends," said Shiro gently, leaning down to give Keith's shoulder a comforting squeeze.

"I guess…" he replied.

"Get some more rest. I better not see you on the training deck today."

This is dedicated the the guest that reviewed, I like the way you think ;) More character stuff and feelings, but uh, still not much plot either, sorry.