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Sometimes, Keith was a cat.
No, this wasn’t a play on the fact that Keith was part Galra and some of the Galra kind of resemble cats, Lance. Besides, the Galra part of Keith obviously wasn’t dominant enough to make itself known, seeing as he wasn’t purple and had ears just as normal as everyone else’s.
So, in conclusion, Keith was actually, physically, occasionally a cat. It was a curse. Or a “gift”, as the planet full of bird-like magical aliens had called it.
Keith had just been minding his own business, doing his paladin of Voltron duty where he stood around and tried to look important while Allura did the talking and got another planet to join the coalition. But then the dreaded words had been spoken, and the leader of the stupid bird people had decided she was so glad to be apart of the Voltron coalition that she wanted to bestow a gift.
“That is most gracious, your highness,” Allura had said, smiling that smile she’d perfected, the one where she looked polite and political all at once.
“As our kind is originally comprised of two different species, we wish to bestow our gift upon your own half-breed,” the queen had said, and Keith had held back a flinch, pretending that hadn’t been something he’d found offensive. The extent of Allura’s political training had been for them to nod, smile, and agree.
“How wonderful,” Allura had said, but her smile had seemed a fraction stiffer. You never really knew what to expect from an entirely different species with different idea of what gifts even were. “I’m sure he will be most pleased to accept your gift,” she’d added, glaring at Keith pointedly.
“I will be most pleased to accept your gift,” Keith had parroted.
The bird-queen had smiled grandly, waved her hand, and Keith had been a cat. Of course, at the time, he hadn’t really realized he was a cat. Or, he had, but he hadn’t thought there was anything wrong with it. He hadn’t really paid any attention to the commotion that had ensued, everyone breaking into action and drawing their weapons and demanding to know what had happened to Keith, where he'd gone — oh, he was a cat?
And, because the world hated him, the gift wasn’t a one-time thing. It wasn’t waking up in the castle, realizing he had indeed been briefly turned into a cat, and freaking out about it while being vaguely thankful it was over. Instead, it kept happening. He couldn’t control it, and he counted himself lucky that so far, he’d never been a cat when Voltron was needed.
Surprisingly, his now-frequent excursions as a cat, all involuntary, wasn’t even the worst of it.
No, the worst part was the fact that, for some reason, he couldn’t stop cuddling with Lance. Not as himself, obviously, but when he was a cat, his weird, altered brain deciding to seek him out and cuddle with him. It was driving Keith insane. Like, he might actually go crazy because of it, his face always red when he came out of it and realized what was happening. Plus, there was the teasing. You couldn’t just turn into a cat and decide Lance was your prime cuddle partner without being teased constantly, both by him and everyone else.
It didn’t help that Keith had a vague idea of why he might be seeking Lance out in the first place, either. There was the tiny, little — minuscule, really — crush he had on him. It definitely wasn’t anything to dwell on. In fact, Keith made sure not to dwell on it. He shoved his feelings into the very back of his mind most of the time, pushed and prodded until he could think without thoughts of Lance invading his mind. Like how his smile lit up his entire being. Or how his eyes had stolen their color directly from the sea. Or how, sometimes, Keith got to hold his hand, when Lance got excited and reached towards the person closest to him, or when he insisted on dragging Keith through a shopping center to see a space-cat, or when was shot with a laser and blood was been dripping between his fingers and Lance was dragging him along, panicked and muttering for Keith to hurry the hell up as he shot enemies one-handed.
Yeah, Keith didn’t think about any of that. Especially not when Allura tried to explain the whole reason the bird-queen had bestowed their “gift” upon him, after he woke up and everyone had fought to speak over each other, asking him questions and trying to explain everything that had happened once he’d informed them that his memories of being a cat were hazy at best.
“She said the gift isn’t any particular thing,” Allura explained. “It’s a peculiar kind of magic that is tailored to help the person it is bestowed upon.”
“How the hell is being a cat supposed to help me?!” Keith had demanded, still kind of in the midsts of freaking out at the time.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Allura had said, looking vaguely guilty. “However, I know the Pteromyl didn’t intend anything harmful, and their magic won’t end up having any negative effects because of this.”
“I think turning into a cat without a choice is kind of a negative effect,” Lance had chipped in helpfully. Keith had found himself nodding in agreement.
“Why don’t we all calm down?” Shiro had suggested. “We don’t even know if it’s going to happen again.”
Except it had, because of course it had, and everyone just seemed to be accepting it. There was no active search for a cure or a reversal, and no one seemed to think it was an issue worth panicking over any longer. No one except Keith, anyway.
Everyone was convinced that, since the magic was theoretically designed to help him, it wouldn’t end up interfering with their ability to form Voltron and fight the Galra. Because of that, it’d taken a back burner to literally everything else in the galaxy, and Keith was the only one still upset about it.
Namely, because he kept waking up half-naked cuddling with Lance.
“You okay?” Hunk said, looking up from his tablet to turn a concerned frown onto Keith. Keith didn’t bother to answer, too busy sitting there, cross-legged with his hands clenched around his ankles as he tried to maintain his breathing. He could feel it coming on. He hated it, God he fucking hated it so much, and he tried with every fiber of his being to fight it off.
“Wait — are you about to… Turn?” Hunk asked, lowering his tablet entirely and leaning forward. Stubbornly, Keith shook his head, refusing to so much as make eye-contact with Hunk, determinedly trying to keep himself human.
It felt like syrup was trickling through his veins, warm and sluggish and sending his insides into a sugar induced frenzy, one that made his nerves feel like they were jerking back and forth. It felt horribly uncomfortable, and it would only be moments before everything started to hurt. As if that wasn’t enough, it came with the added dread that Keith felt, knowing he would very soon be a cat.
Again, how the fuck was this any kind of gift?
“You know,” Hunk said conversationally, as if Keith wasn’t on the verge of an anxiety attack because his anatomy didn’t like to be what it was supposed to be, “I think you shouldn’t fight it. Maybe that’s part of the problem, you know? Maybe if you just embraced it, you’d be able to control it.”
Keith shook his head, clenching his eyes shut and curling in on himself, his nails leaving marks in the bare skin around his ankles. A breath shuddered out of him in the form of a gasp and his eyes flew open, practically sending lasers into the couch before him. And then —
Burning. All over there was burning, and pain. Everything squeezed, and between one blink and the next, he was much, much smaller than he was supposed to be. He was sitting beneath a pile of fabric. He felt incredibly light, entirely stress-free.
The weight of the universe was lifted from his tiny shoulders. In fact, nothing really mattered. Other than the fact that he was feeling starved for touch — he longed for gentle fingers in his fur. Long, expertful fingers, ones that would scratch beneath his chin and behind his ears.
With a chirrup, Keith fought his way out of the pile of fabric, sparing barely a thought for how he’d come to be underneath it in the first place, and sat up on the couch, shaking his head.
“Oh, Keith.” Keith’s ears swiveled before his head did, and he found himself staring wide-eyed at the other presence in the room. It was Hunk. He liked Hunk. When Hunk was in the kitchen, he gave Keith little bits of whatever food he was making. But he wasn’t in the kitchen — he, and Keith, were in the living room.
Keith meowed, and Hunk shook his head, a rueful smile on his lips. “I wish you could see yourself like this,” he sighed, his words, as always, completely meaningless to Keith. Worthless human jabber. “I think maybe then you’d understand.”
Bored of not being fed by the person who usually took the time to feed him, Keith hopped off the couch and padded down the hall. His home was large, but Keith knew it backwards and forwards, the hallways and shortcuts familiar to him, as they should be. There was a particular cluster of vents he liked to haunt, which were both useful for getting around and warm and nice to lay in.
For now, though, Keith just walked purposely through the hall, a single destination in mind.
“Oh, hey Keith,” said Pidge, stepping out of another hallway. Keith spared her a glance, registering his name, and kept walking. Pidge wasn’t really good for anything. She never bothered to pet Keith, sneezing whenever he happened to come too close to her, and she refused to let him explore her room of toys, getting upset with him whenever he tried to lay on the surface she was constantly moving her fingers over, the object warm and much better suited for naps than weird finger movements.
“Good to see you too,” Pidge scoffed.
Keith turned the corner, walked down another stretch of hall, and parked himself in front of a familiar metal door. He meowed loudly, staring up at it. He could smell Lance inside the room, the comforting mix of something that smelled a bit like the outdoors, like crushed leaves and rain. Keith meowed again, scratching at the door.
“I’m coming, I’m coming, you useless cat,” Lance said from inside. Keith’s ears perked up at the familiar voice, and when the door slid open, Keith hurried inside, meowing as he rubbed his side along Lance’s legs. That was before Lance scooped him up, and a surprised mew escaped Keith before Lance was settling back on his bed, Keith situated on his chest and Lance’s deft fingers working the underside of his chin, making Keith tip his had back and purr, his eyes sliding shut.
“Yeah, yeah,” Lance said, his tablet propped up against his knee as he continued to pet Keith. Keith liked it when he talked. He liked feeling the vibration of his words under his paws. “I know you like our secret cuddles.”
Keith dug his nose into Lance’s chest, and Lance’s fingers moved accordingly, scratching along his ears instead. “If only you liked to cuddle this much when you were a human, huh?”
Lance was always doing that. Talking. Keith didn’t bother to understand a word of it, besides when someone said his own name. Still, it wasn’t like he minded the talking. Lance, in particular, seemed to like to do it a lot of the time. It was a nice enough timbre to fall asleep to, anyway.
—
Waking up was slow-going. Some part of Keith felt a sense of urgency, a need to wake up and get up, but the rest of him felt immeasurably comfortable and warm. He breathed out a little sigh, burrowing deeper into the blankets. He was on his side, his leg thrown over something and his arms bunched up by his chest, his face pressed into something warm. There was a hand splayed on his bare back.
But.
Keith never slept without a shirt on. He always just fell asleep in his clothes, which made for less time wasted if they were attacked in their sleep.
All at once, realization hit Keith, making him suck in a breath through his nose and fly away from Lance, sitting up and staring down at him with wide eyes. Lance’s eyes blinked open slowly, Lance obviously having been woken from his nap, and Keith attempted to scramble backwards, face hot and a blush already creeping down his bare chest. He was just glad that the “gift” let him keep his underwear in the transformation.
Lance let out a groan, stretching out on the bed and dislodging the tablet that’d been laying on his stomach. “Sure would be nice if you didn’t freak out every time you came-to,” Lance muttered, his voice deep and scratchy with sleep. “Then I could still be sleeping."
Keith ignored him, fighting through the blankets in a mild state of panic. He threw them back onto the bed as his bare feet landed on the cold floor, and he was just about ready to bolt when Lance reached out, his fingers wrapping around Keith’s wrist. “Dude, seriously,” he said. “I keep telling you: it’s not a big deal.”
“Yes it is,” Keith argued, giving his wrist a useless tug against Lance’s grip, which had turned iron-tight. God, he felt ridiculous, standing practically naked in the middle of Lance’s room. That wasn’t even the worst part. Next, he’d have to walk through the halls like this, and anyone who saw him would know exactly where he’d been, if not by his state of undress then by his burning face.
“Seriously, it’s not,” Lance said. He was staring steadily at Keith’s face, but Keith was avoiding eye-contact at all costs. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about. Plus, you know I love a good cuddle. Just look at me and Hunk!”
“Let me go, Lance,” Keith said quietly, tugging on his wrist again, and Lance sighed, letting him go. Before Keith could take so much as a step, however, Lance was sliding out of his bed and crossing the room.
“Here,” he said, sliding open his closet door and handing Keith a pair of jeans identical to his own and a shirt that was most definitely Lance’s.
“I…” Keith said, staring at the clothes offered to him.
“Don’t question it,” Lance said stubbornly. “Just accept the favor.”
Keith accepted the favor. He snatched the pants out of Lance’s hands and jumped into them, and he was out of Lance’s room by the time he had the shirt in his hands, pulling it over his head as he walked out the door.
He was still tense all over. Still insurmountably stressed and wanting to disappear into his room for the next foreseeable future, to fret and worry and brood. To pretend like he didn’t know what it felt like to be pressed against Lance’s side. To pretend he couldn’t smell Lance on the shirt he was wearing.
Keith had no idea what the Pteromyl had thought, calling this shit a gift.
—
Aboard the Castle of Lions, Keith’s condition had become somewhat of a joke. Seeing as it wasn’t regarded as a problem and had yet to leave anyone in any sort of danger, the fact that Keith was sometimes inconvenienced by turning into a cat was found humorous. Bountiful joking material.
It always made Keith grouchy, resulting in him huffing and glaring and crossing his arms when it was brought up. He never wanted to spend his time as a cat, truly, and more often than not he could be heard telling his teammates to try spending their days forced into the body of a feline.
Still, despite the jokes, it was obvious that everyone was curious as to how exactly this was benefiting Keith. Lance said it was because he didn’t shower enough, which is why the Pteromyl turned him into a creature that groomed itself, to which Keith told him to shut the fuck up. It didn’t help that both Pidge and Allura wore matching knowing looks whenever the subject arose, as if they’d guessed just how exactly his cat curse was beneficial to him.
It also didn’t help that now, Keith was more tense than ever in the presence of Lance. Before, things with Lance had actually been going pretty good. They’d been training together pretty often and had even ended up having fun whenever they were paired together on missions. Their bickering was more for show than anything else, and Keith had silently applauded himself over the progress.
But now Keith was sometimes a cat, which meant he sometimes woke up sprawled across Lance, which meant that seeing Lance made him tense. It wasn’t just the embarrassment — though that definitely played a huge part in it — but also the fear that seeing Lance would somehow trigger the curse. That Lance would walk into the kitchen while he was making a sandwich and suddenly Keith would be there mewing at his feet.
Obviously, Keith realized that just seeing Lance wasn’t going to actually cause him to Turn. He’d been in his presence several times without spontaneously turning into a cat, but his fear was called 'irrational' for a reason. Although, it absolutely didn’t help when Lance happened to show up when Keith was in the middle of transforming in the first place. He was leaning against a wall in the corridor, having been walking through the halls when the feeling had hit him. He’d tried to rush all the way to his room, to lock himself in there before he could transform, but it was coming on too fast.
Sometimes, if Keith caught the feeling early on enough, he managed to make it to his room and lock himself in. Thankfully, he couldn’t actually open any doors as a cat, which meant that he woke up alone. It was good in that aspect, but whenever it happened he felt inexplicably exhausted afterward — more-so than usual.
Now, he was just hoping he’d somehow manage to make it to his room before his clothes were a puddle on the floor for him to discover later.
“Woah, Keith — are you okay?”
Keith groaned, dreading the recognizable voice. He leaned heavier against the wall, swallowing down a second groan.
“Wait, are you Turning right now?”
Keith shook his head in denial, always in denial, and then Lance was walking closer. There was a warm hand on his back, rubbing up and down and making surprise rush through Keith, along with a wave of warmth. He shuddered, another groan escaping him as his bones seemed to melt, liquid fire igniting inside them.
“Just let it happen,” Lance said, his voice low and encouraging. He was still rubbing his hand along Keith’s back, up and down and in circles between his shoulder blades. It felt good. Keith wondered if it felt this good when he was a cat.
“Fuck,” Keith bit out, doubling over and panting between his teeth. “Put me in my room,” he growled.
“What?”
“My room,” Keith gasped. “When it happens. Put me in my room.” And then there was pain, and fire, and he was gasping and melting before it was all over..
Lance stood there, staring down at the lump of clothes where Keith was supposed to be. He’d seen it happen a couple times before, but you never really got used to seeing your teammate shrink into what seemed like nothingness. But then there was a meow and Keith emerged from beneath his pile of clothes, shaking himself off. Lance crossed his arms.
“You’re causing a lot of trouble for me, you know that?”
Keith meowed, and he came forward to twine himself around Lance’s legs, looking up at him all the while. Lance huffed before bending down to scoop him up, trying to suppress the smile that fought to come free when Keith immediately burst into a bout of purrs, turning his face up towards Lance’s, his whiskers tickling his chin.
“You’re gonna be mad at me when you come to, Whiskers,” Lance continued as he walked towards his own room, having stopped first to carefully gather Keith’s clothes without dropping — well, Keith. “But you don’t really want to be alone, do you buddy?”
Keith was still purring, so Lance took that as a yes. He had his own theory for the whole Keith being a cat problem. He supposed it had something to do with Keith needing to bond with the team or something. Or maybe Keith needing touch and being too stubborn to ask for it. Honestly, Lance couldn’t remember the last time that boy had asked for a hug.
Anyway, Lance figured this was kind of his sacred duty. His bestowed upon by bird-people duty. Keith the cat wanted desperately to cuddle with him at all times, and honestly, Lance didn’t mind. It’d been far too long since he’d gotten to see a cat before the whole Keith fiasco, and there was definitely nothing wrong with ending up with Keith in his bed at the end of it all. The real challenge was getting him to stay.
Still, at least while he had him, he could talk to him. It was pretty therapeutic, being able to tell Keith anything and everything, seeing as he didn’t remember any of it when he was a human again. Telling your crush straight to their face that you liked them, that you wanted to be with them, was thrilling. Lance pretended he was practicing, that he was just working himself up for when he could do it for real one day. Maybe then, Keith wouldn’t find it such a problem when he ended up Turning. Then they could just appreciate all the cuddles they got to have together for what they were.
Of course, Lance was a giant chicken and had no intentions of actually telling Keith how he felt any time soon, if ever, so for now, telling cat-Keith was good enough for him. And he would appreciate what he could get.
—
Something was wrong.
Or not wrong, necessarily, but different. Keith was having vague… memories. Not that having memories were weird, but he was having them from his times as a cat. Always, his time spent on four paws was a wild and indecipherable blur in his mind. But recently, it’d been more than that. He could remember walking through halls with a single-minded determination. He could remember meowing outside Lance’s door. He could remember relishing in the feeling of Lance’s hands in his fur. He could remember Lance talking and talking and talking, though he couldn’t quite remember any of the words.
But what did this mean? It made him flush something fierce whenever he remembered these occurrences after they happened. And it wasn’t like he was turning into a cat every day, either. Just once or twice a week, usually. More if it’d been a particularly stressful one.
And so most days were normal, but then some days he’d turn into a cat and feel angry and embarrassed, and that’d be it. But now, these stupid memories were coming in. Memories of Keith acting in a way that he would never act by choice. Memories of him being insistent and annoying in order to get Lance’s attention. Memories where he laid down on Lance’s tablet so he’d pay attention to him instead. Memories of Lance touching him, of Keith never having felt so comfortable and relaxed before in his life.
Embarrassingly… the memories almost made Keith want to turn into a cat. And cuddle with Lance again.
It was absolutely ridiculous.
And the worst thing was, Lance kept trying to talk to him. Like, the human him. Keith was pretty sure he knew where it was going. Lance would likely try to get Keith to tone himself down somehow, or tell him that he was going to stop opening the door when Keith started meowing outside of it, and Keith couldn’t blame him. Still, he absolutely didn’t want to talk about it at all, and so he tried to avoid Lance instead.
It didn’t work.
His door slid open despite the fact that Keith was pretty sure he’d locked it, and Lance stepped into his room.
“What the fuck,” Keith said.
“Hey,” Lance answered.
“What the fuck,” Keith repeated, and Lance rolled his eyes.
“I know you’re avoiding me,” he said, and he came to stand beside Keith, crossing his arms.
“No I’m not,” Keith lied blatantly. Lance batted his legs aside and sat on the edge of his bed. Keith sat up and folded his legs underneath him.
“You need my help,” Lance announced. “I mean, this cat thing obviously has to do with the both of us.”
“What?”
“Oh, don’t act surprised,” Lance snapped. “There’s obviously a reason as to why you always come to me when you’re a cat.”
“I don’t think so,” Keith said, panic bubbling up in his chest. Oh God, had Lance figured it out?
“Don’t be stupid,” Lance said, brushing him off. “I’m sure we could figure out whatever it means if we put our heads together, you know? Maybe there’s something the Pteromyl want us to do together.”
And God, Keith didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t just outright deny it because then Lance would know that he had some other explanation for it all, some answer that he was keeping to himself. And then all Lance would have to do is figure out what Keith knew that he didn’t, and Keith couldn’t be having that. So instead, like an idiot, he said, “Fine,” and tired to ignore the way his lungs seemed to expand when Lance smiled and it lit up his face.
That was how Keith found himself spending more time with Lance. He hadn’t thought his time spent with Lance could increase — he was already cuddling with him for hours on end every week — and yet it did. Lance had preemptively gone down to the castle’s library and collected every book on the Pteromyl he could find, hoarding them all away in his room. This meant that he and Keith were frequently locked up in there with books spread open before them. Yes, Keith was doing an abundance of research while knowing he needed to do absolutely none of it. The lengths he would go to in order to avoid telling the truth about his crush.
Of course, being with Lance all the time also meant that he was usually with Lance when his transformations happened.
They’d both be in Lance’s room, sitting at opposite ends of the bed with several books between them, Keith reading some horribly boring one, probably about ancient Pteromyl rituals, when he’d feel it start to bloom in his chest. The feeling would extend throughout his body, climb down his arms and settle into his toes. He’d know it would only be moments before the discomfort and pain began and he’d tense up, hands clenched into his knees as the inevitable drew closer and closer.
The only upside was that finally, he wasn’t so embarrassed about it all anymore. In spending so much time with Lance to research the purpose of the “gift”, he’d inadvertently grown comfortable around him. He’d grown almost used to it, being with Lance before, during, and after the transformation happened.
Lance was in the middle of a story when it started to happen. This had been happening a lot recently — not Keith Turning during Lance’s stories, but Lance even telling them in the first place. They’d started hanging out solely for the purpose of their research, and yet Keith kept finding himself having fun. Lance would claim that his eyes hurt, or his brain hurt, or his fingers hurt (from turning the pages, Keith, come on), and they’d do something else instead. Twice, Lance had convinced Keith to go and watch a movie with him in the rec room, and more often than not he just got them both off track with conversation, unable to resist the temptation of a thought he wanted to share.
“— and I think you were off with Shiro or something during this mission, I can’t remember, but Hunk and I were underground on that weird planet with the slime all over the ground everywhere? And Hunk slips and the slime just sent him flying down the caverns! I tried to chase after him but I ended up slipping too, and —”
Keith’s mouth had been stretched into a grin all throughout Lance’s story. It was hard for it not to be, and, Keith was ashamed to say, Lance had wrung a few giggles out of him in the duration of the story. But now, his grin grew tight as his body stiffened. He tried to ignore it, tried to pay attention to Lance instead, but Lance was too intuitive for his own good.
“Dude,” he said.
“Lance,” Keith imitated, and Lance rolled his eyes.
“Seriously. You okay there, Whiskers?”
“Don’t call me Whiskers.”
“Oh? Did I hit a nerve?”
“You’re an ass,” Keith huffed. His fingers tightened in his jeans. He didn’t want to turn into a cat. He wanted to keep sitting here with Lance, talking and laughing and listening to enough of Lance’s stories for the both of them.
“And you’re turning into a cat,” Lance said matter of factly. Keith groaned, bending over himself and trying to breathe steadily. His insides felt like they were wriggling around.
Lance, predictably, scooted closer to Keith on the bed. He came up beside him, laying his arm across his back and bringing his hand up to Keith’s hair, which he then began to pet. Keith made a pathetic sound. “I’m not a cat yet, Lance,” he protested.
“Shut up,” said Lance. “And stop fighting it. I can tell you’re fighting it.”
Keith let out a breath, his body relaxing where it was doubled over, and he could feel everything happening a bit faster. It was getting closer, the heat inside him encroaching on burning. Abruptly, Keith sat up, turning and pressing his face into Lance’s shoulder, his fingers twisting into the front of his shift. Lance made a surprised sound, but he adjusted all the same, hugging Keith close to him and shushing him when he made a pained sound. “You’re okay,” he promised. “You’ve got this. You’re okay.”
Moments later, Keith was a cat and sitting in Lance’s lap. And by the time he came back out of it, it was the middle of the night. Lance was still awake, sitting up and leaning against the wall, a book propped open on his knee. It wasn’t any kind of textbook, just a regular novel from the castle’s library. Keith hadn’t known he liked to read.
“You awake?” Lance whispered, when Keith made a sound in the back of his throat as consciousness greeted him. He was sprawled out against Lance, his head on his stomach as the rest of his body curled around him, a hand twisted lightly in the fabric of Lance’s shirt.
“Yeah,” Keith croaked. He yawned as he pushed himself up, glancing around the room. His clothes were folded on the edge of the bed.
He blinked as memories returned to him slowly, his eyebrows furrowing as they refused to return to him in full. He could remember curling up with Lance. Could remember the low timbre of his voice, gentle in the quiet of the room. He could remember, “You like that, buddy?” as Lance had scratched his chin. And, “Lay down, dude,” as Keith has started walking along Lance, digging his nails into his chest in an effort to get comfier. He could also remember Lance talking to him for a while, but he couldn’t remember what about for the life of him.
When Keith said it, it surprised him as much as Lance. “Can I crash here? I’m exhausted.”
Lance barely spared a moment to look suitably surprised before he snorted. “You just spent several hours asleep and you’re still tired?”
Keith shrugged, already settling back into the bed, pulling Lance’s duvet over him. When had he gotten this comfortable around Lance? “Yeah,” Keith answered. “That transformation takes a lot out of a guy.”
Lance just laughed, sparing a moment to shove his hand through Keith’s hair, Keith tilting his head into it without thinking, before Lance slipped out of the bed. “I’m going to wash my face and all that. Feel free to fall back asleep.”
“Mhmm.”
Keith did indeed fall back asleep, but when Lance returned, Keith scooted closer and curled into his body automatically. He was too out of it to notice Lance’s lips pressing lightly against his forehead.
—
In the end, Keith made a lot of progress all at once. He couldn’t deny that he’d been making progress with Lance, having grown comfortable Turning around him, but he was still inexplicably turning into a cat all the time. And even though he was remembering parts and pieces, he couldn’t quite retain everything that happened to him when he Turned.
Of course, this all changed when, for the first time, he Turned on purpose.
They were in the midsts of a battle. They’d been caught totally unawares, seeing as they’d just been doing a little reconnaissance on a supposedly abandoned planet. None of them had their lions, nor were they even wearing their armor. By the time they were ambushed, all they had to fight with was Shiro’s robot arm and Keith’s knife, and that wasn’t nearly enough for the amount of Galra that surrounded them. In minutes, they were beaten, all tied up and thrown into the cells in the Galra’s ship. How the castle’s readings hadn’t alerted them to an entire ship on the planet was a problem for later — first, they just had to figure out how to get out of there.
“Does anyone have anything that could work in their advantage?” Shiro called from another cell, taking stock of the situation and asserting control like always. His voice, steady and calm, put the rest of them at ease as it always did. They were the paladins of Voltron. They’d find a way out of this.
“No,” Pidge said angrily, from what sounded like the cell beside his. There were stone walls on all sides of the cell except for the front, which was comprised of metal bars. Keith could see Lance across from him. “They took everything. I don’t even have a flash drive on me right now.”
“Same here,” said Hunk.
Shiro didn’t say anything, but Keith knew he was as disconcerted as the rest of them. The Galra had removed his arm, knowing its power and that it’d be able to break through the bars if he’d still had it.
“Keith can turn into a cat,” Lance chimed in, standing close to the bars with his hands wrapped around two of them. Keith was pacing in his own cell, adrenaline and stress still overly abundant in his body. He needed to move, needed to fight. “He could definitely slip between the bars like that.”
“We don’t have the time to just sit around and wait for me to Turn,” Keith muttered. “It could be days until that happens. The Galra could leave this planet any minute.” No doubt Allura was trying to reach them from the castle as well — even their ear-piece communication devices had been discovered and taken from them.
“We don’t have to leave it up to chance,” Lance insisted. “You can control it.”
“I can’t make myself Turn, Lance,” Keith snapped, growing frustrated. They needed to focus on a different solution, something that would actually work.
“I bet you can,” Lance pressed. “Besides, how would you know? You’ve never tried it before.”
“Because it hurts,” Keith said.
“You can’t endure a little pain to help us escape?” Lance taunted, and Keith felt anger and hurt flare simultaneously in his gut. Lance knew how much it hurt — he saw Keith transforming all the time. He’d held Keith as it’d happened.
“Fuck you,” Keith said, crossing his arms almost self-consciously. He felt weirdly betrayed. “I can’t control myself in that state anyway. Even if I could make myself Turn, I’d probably just end up in your cell with you.”
“You’re right,” Lance sighed. “It’s pointless. You can’t help us after all.”
Keith’s hands were clenched into fists by his sides. They were shaking.
“Lance…” Hunk said, sounding shocked and offended.
“What? It’s the truth,” Lance insisted. “Whiskers over here couldn’t make himself turn into a cat even if he tried — you heard him.”
Keith was glaring at Lance so hard it hurt. He felt his fear turn to resolve, wanting to Turn just so he could get into Lance’s cell and claw the shit out of him. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, willing it to happen, inviting the pain, and it came.
He gasped, the burning, the pain snaking its way through his body, his insides melting. Keith tried his best to hold in all the sounds that wanted to slip out of his mouth, unwilling to give Lance the satisfaction of knowing how much it hurt. He almost stopped, knowing he was the one controlling this pain, knowing that he’d invited it, but he was already so close.
Between one moment and the next, he was a cat, climbing out of his pile of clothes and snaking between the bars, much too wide to contain something his size. Keith felt weirdly alert. Completely in control. He knew without a doubt that this was him, that he would remember everything.
“You did it!” Lance cheered, squatting down inside his own cell, a hand held out towards Keith. Keith hissed at him, batting his hand aside, and Lance’s expression fell. “I’m sorry for what I said to you,” he said sincerely. “I didn’t mean any of it. It was the only way I could think to make you Turn.”
Understanding blossomed in Keith, but there was still the underlying anger from before. His tail continued to swish angrily behind him, and his eyes were narrowed into slits, but he allowed Lance to reach for him again, even taking a step closer so Lance could brush a knuckle against his cheek.
“No way,” said Pidge, Keith turning to face her as she spoke. “He seems lucid,” she noted. “Do you think he knows what’s happening?”
Keith hissed at her too, for daring to question him, and Lance laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “I think he does.”
“Keith,” Shiro said, commanding. Keith turned to face him. “You know what to do, right? Find some way to open our cells. Get us out of here.”
Keith tried to say an affirmative, but all that came out was a meow, and from behind him someone laughed. Embarrassed and still pretty angry, Keith’s ears laid flat against his head, but he obediently disappeared down the hallway of cells, on the lookout for some kind of override button.
He ended up having to sneak past several Galra, but that was made surprisingly easy when you were as small and lithe as he was. There were two guards outside the prison’s control room, but there was no one actually inside of it, and it was easy enough to get in. From there, it was the usual guesswork that they had to go through when confronted with things that had Galra writing on them. Keith ended up pressing the biggest, reddest button.
Alarms immediately started blaring, and people started shouting, and the door behind Keith flew open. He froze, still standing on the center of the control panel, and the guards froze as well, staring at the creature before them with varying degrees of confusion.
“What is that?” one of them said, gaping at Keith.
“Do you think it hit the button by accident?” the other asked.
Keith jumped off the table and streaked past them, wishing he had the vocal chords to laugh when they both shouted and jumped out of the way, clearly not knowing whether he was dangerous or not. Guess the Galra had never seen a house cat before.
The biggest, reddest button had apparently been the correct button, which Keith realized as he raced back the way he’d came, all the cells he passed with their doors wide open. He heard the rest of his team before he saw them, their feet thundering on the floor, and they almost trampled him when they both turned the corner at the same time, running in opposite directions. Keith yowled in surprise (and a bit of fear. Being this small made people giants, okay? It was terrifying) and darted between their legs on reflex alone, ending up a couple paces behind them. They realized what had happened at the same time as him, turning around to face him. Lance was holding his clothes.
“Keith!” the lot of them cheered.
“Perfect timing!” Shiro said. “You can turn back now and we can get out of here.”
Keith blinked. He… had no idea how to turn back. He’d only managed it in the first place because Lance had made him so angry, and at least then he’d known what it was supposed to feel like. But he was almost completely unfamiliar with being a cat. He’d never been awake when he’d changed back, or if he had, he hadn’t remembered it.
Helplessly, Keith meowed.
“Oh my God,” Lance said. “He doesn’t know how.” With that, he stepped forward and scooped Keith into his arms, ignoring his meow of protest, and the lot off them took off running down the halls again. Their exit from the ship was a lot louder and less secretive than they’d been planning, thanks to the blaring alarms and the fact that they burst into every room they passed, looking for Shiro’s arm.
By the time they’d found it, the whole ship was on the lookout for them, and Pidge was holding onto Shiro’s arm, karate chopping anyone who came at them out of their way.
Basically, they escaped Voltron style — totally unexpectedly and by the skin of their teeth.
Back in the castle, Allura was commending them for their bravery and quick thinking, everyone sitting in the living room as she did. Finally, she turned to Lance, who was still holding Keith. Keith had thought about climbing out of his arms and sitting on the couch beside him in an attempt to retain some of his dignity, but Lance was making it incredibly difficult to do so. He seemed to be petting Keith absent-mindedly, his hands feeling like magic against Keith, constantly scratching behind his ears and snaking around to pet his chin.
“It’s lucky that Keith happened to turn into a cat while you were there,” Allura said. “Any idea if he’ll change back any time soon, Lance?”
“Oh, he’s lucid right now,” Lance said. “He Turned on purpose.”
Allura looked dumbfounded. “He’s… lucid?”
Keith blinked at her. Lance, behind him, nodded.
“But…” Allura continued. “He’s purring.”
Keith abruptly stopped purring, not having realized he was doing it in the first place.
“Aw, Allura!” Lance whined. “You embarrassed him!”
“Sorry, Keith,” Allura said. Keith ignored her, standing up and stepping off Lance’s lap, sitting abruptly on the couch beside him. “Keith,” Allura continued. “Why don’t you turn back?”
“He doesn’t know how,” Lance answered for him.
“You should try,” Allura said, still looking at him. “If you can manage it, then you’ll know you can control it completely. Maybe then you’ll only change when you want to.”
And that… Well, it sounded nice. Keith stood up, still on the couch, and let his eyes fall shut. His tail twitched behind him as he tried to stay still, tried to concentrate. Normally, everything burned, it felt like he was melting, like he was being pressed into himself. Now, Keith tried to envision himself expanding, his heart and lungs and bones expanding, pressing outward, his fur shrinking into his body.
And then — it was happening. Surprisingly enough, it didn’t hurt, and Keith blinked his eyes open when he realized he was human again. A smile broke out on his face.
“Nice underwear,” Pidge said, and Keith’s smile disappeared, washed away with a wave of embarrassment. His boxers had little hearts on them.
“Asshole,” Lance said, tossing Keith’s jacket onto his lap. And then he swung his arm around Keith’s shoulders, pulling him into his side. “You did it!” he cheered, shaking him. “You Turned all on your own!”
“Only ‘cause I wanted to claw your eyes out,” Keith grumbled, although he wasn’t actually mad anymore.
“What can I say? I’m an inspiration,” Lance said, ignoring the way Keith rolled his eyes. Still, Keith couldn’t say that he was really annoyed with him. After all, he let him keep his arm where it was. And maybe he scooted a little bit closer to him, too. He appreciated it when no one mentioned it, though he couldn’t ignore the way everyone’s gazes seemed to linger on them.
—
It came as a surprise to approximately no one when Keith and Lance started dating. In fact, no one even noticed at first, as everyone was entirely too used to them spending all their time together. In the end, they had to announce it everybody, seeing as their subtle attempt at coming out as a couple wasn’t working.
“Oh, you weren’t dating before?” Pidge had said, when they’d announced it at dinner.
Despite her attempted lack of excitement for them, they could tell that she was happy for them, as was everyone else. Keith was extremely happy for himself, having never really expected for any of this to actually happen to him. He’d spent so long attempting to shove his feelings into a place where he wouldn't have to deal with them that he’d apparently missed all the signs Lance had been throwing his way, attempts to show him that he liked him as well.
Keith was so oblivious to it all, in fact, that when Lance first kissed him, the two having been laying in his bed together, he assumed it was a mistake. “Did… you mean to do that?” he’d asked, his voice whisper-quiet and his cheeks getting hotter by the second.
“What, you think I just kissed you on accident?”
“I don’t know!” Keith had said defensively, and in an attempt to prove himself, Lance had kissed him again, pushing Keith onto his back so that he could hover over him, dropping kisses onto his lips, his cheeks, his nose.
Also, maybe a little bit embarrassingly, Keith had kind of… lost control of his ability again. Like, for a short while, he’d had total control. No accidental Turnings for him, everything purposeful and intentional. But now, sometimes, when he and Lance were cuddling, or if Lance said something that made him particularly happy, Keith just… Turned. It didn’t hurt anymore, hadn’t hurt ever since he’d gained control over it, and now it was the funniest thing in the world to Lance.
He’d pull Keith in and press a kiss to his cheek, and Keith would feel so warm all over, so scarily in love and like his insides were melting, and then they would be melting, and he’d be sitting in a pile of clothes at Lance’s feet. It was infuriating. And humiliating.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Lance had said, when Keith had hastily turned back into himself and scooped his clothes off the floor, face hot. “It’s not your fault I’m so good at getting you out of your clothes.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Keith had said, shoving Lance before hastily re-dressing himself.
Despite the near-constant teasing, and Lance’s new and horrible fascination with telling Keith the worst pick-up lines, Keith was happier than he could every remember being.
So maybe the Pteromyl were right about the whole “gift” thing, after all. Not that he would ever admit that. It’d hurt like a bitch in the beginning, after all. It was just that the end result that was good. More than good.
He wasn’t going to be admitting that either.