#gentronweek

It was understandable that Keith would be in a bad mood as of late. After all, now that Zarkon was out of commission, a lot of political matters across the galaxies were up in the air, and the paladins were constantly meeting with one planetary leader after another. They were still having to keep up with battles and missions, and although the Blade was lending its assistance wherever it could, it still felt like they were spread thin now that they were short one paladin, and battles were that much more difficult now that they couldn’t form Voltron.

And, of course, there was the matter of what Shiro’s absence meant for Keith.

The other paladins didn’t have a whole lot of detail about what Keith had gone through when Shiro had disappeared on the Kerberos mission, since Keith wasn’t exactly eager to share any details about his past with anyone, but there were some things he couldn’t hide, not when some of his teammates were witnesses to them. Like the fact that Keith had been expelled from the Garrison for disciplinary issues within a week of the news of Kerberos breaking, or the fact that he had been living in self-imposed isolation for a year afterward, with no sign of having had contact with any sort of family or friends or of any family or friends even existing, until Shiro had finally returned, whereupon he steadfastly took up the role of Shiro’s right-hand man while remaining stubbornly closed off to everyone else in the Castle of Lions.

So, some emotional regressing was probably inevitable, and the rest of the team had formed an unspoken agreement to let it slide when Keith was snappish with them, when he skipped group meals and bonding sessions, when he stormed out of meetings, when he’d take the Red Lion out on yet another fruitless search for any sign of Shiro without letting anyone else know he’d be gone.

It was understandable, sure, but that didn’t mean they weren’t allowed to be irritated by it. And Lance was accustomed to being irritated by Keith, so it wasn’t like this was anything new. Just more of the same.

And more of the same also meant more venting about his Keith-related frustrations to Pidge and Hunk, who were annoyingly not particularly receptive to hearing about it.

“Look,” Pidge told him during one of these rants, cutting him off right in the middle of a very impassioned tirade about Keith having rammed into his shoulder in the hallway earlier that day without even stopping to apologize, “I’d be annoyed too, but cut him some slack. He just lost his brother, again. He has the right to be in a bad mood.”

“A bad mood, sure,” Lance said. “But there’s a limit to mood badness we should be willing to tolerate. Not like he’s never been a grouch before, but now it’s at the point where it’s messing with public image and missions. And team morale.”

“Him shoulder-checking you in the hallway really screwed up your morale that badly?”

“There’s no fucking way he doesn’t know he owes me an apology,” Lance snapped. “He’s just intentionally being a dick.”

“You always say that when it comes to Keith.”

“It’s always true.” He sighed. “Come on, help me out. When you get into a really bad mood about the situation with your brother and dad, you still pull yourself out of it after a while. What’s the difference there, huh? What do you do that Keith doesn’t?”

Pidge bristled. “I don’t get into ‘bad moods’, it’s perfectly justifiable to be pissed the fuck off when a tyrannical empire kidnaps your family and - ”

“Hang on, whoa, I wasn’t saying it wasn’t justifiable!” Lance said hastily. “I was just - ”

“So, what, does it mess with your fucking morale when I get grumpy about - ”

“I think what Lance is trying to say,” Hunk cut in, “Is that, when you’re feeling extra upset about the whole setting, the anger still settles. It’s just not sustainable to stay so angry for a longer period of time, you’d completely burn out and wind up basically breaking down. You’re mad about the whole thing, and rightly so, but you temper it enough that it doesn’t keep you from functioning and interfere with daily life, right? Meanwhile, Keith’s temper’s been flaring a lot longer than is healthy. It’s no good for him to not be coping.”

“Yeah,” Lance said with a nod. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was gonna say.”

“Like hell it was,” Pidge muttered, but thankfully she let it go for now. “It’s not like I’m doing anything to work through the anger, really. Just, like you said, it burns out. Eventually I just gotta sleep it off, get some air, wait ‘til I can focus again.”

“Ah, okay, so Keith has to sleep it off,” Lance said. “I’m sure a nap will make everything all better again.”

“Hey, you asked how I deal, and I told you. Not my fucking problem if you don’t like the answer.”

“Well,” Hunk said slowly, “It… actually could help.”

Lance frowned over at him. “What do you mean?”

“It’s kind of a well-known fact that lack of sleep basically kills your mood, right? Just think of how cranky toddlers get after they miss a nap. I mean, I’m not trying to say Keith is a toddler or anything, or that this is a temper tantrum, nothing like that. But, well, he’s been really pushing himself trying to find Shiro, and he hasn’t really been recharging. He’s still up earlier than the rest of us, and a couple nights ago when I woke up halfway through the night and went to get a snack, he was up pacing the hallways.”

“Huh,” Pidge said. “Come to think of it, I’m usually the last one to bed, but I have heard Keith still moving around in his room a few times while I was heading to my room to sleep. And he’s been yawning a lot in diplomacy meetings. More than usual, I mean.”

“Oh!” Lance said. “And our last team training session, I was totally kicking his ass on reflex time against those drones! Normally he’s like, almost as fast as I am, but he was stumbling around like a drunk! Think that was because he was tired?”

“Lance, he normally has the fastest reflexes out of all of us,” said Hunk.

“No, no, we’re pretty much even. My reflexes just look slower to you guys because you’re more used to seeing them.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s how it works,” Pidge said, rolling her eyes. “But hey, the point stands. Bit of sleep would probably do him some good.”

“Well, if it means a possibility of a slightly less pouty Mullet stinking up the place? It’s gotta be worth a shot.”

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The next time Lance encountered Keith in the hall, he didn’t wait around to get brushed off or bumped into. Instead he strode straight up into the path of Keith’s stomping boots, earning himself a level glare that he pointedly ignored.

“Hey,” Lance said, “Cancel any plans you’ve got for tonight. We’re doing a sleepover.”

“... What?” Keith said, blinking uncomprehendingly.

Lance wasn’t sure if Keith was just taken aback by his abruptness, or if he actually didn’t know what a sleepover was. Just in case, he explained. “You know, we all gather together, have some quality bonding time, get as comfortable as possible, then pass out and sleep through the rest of the night and, if we did it right, half of the next day too. We’re all meeting in the paladins’ lounge, at - at half past, uh… fuck it, Altean clocks are stupid. Once you start seeing someone heading that way in pajamas, it’s time.”

“No thanks,” Keith grunted.

He moved to step around Lance, and Lance held out a hand to block him. “Wait, you gotta hear me out first. We’re all gonna put on our paladin pajamas and lion slippers - that’s all mandatory, by the way, sleepovers are very strict about dress codes - and gather up all the pillows and blankets we can find, and we’re going to basically transform the lounge into a massive blanket fort. And Pidge is gonna bring her caterpillars along to join, and they’re basically the softest things in all of existence, and we’re gonna taste-test some of Hunk’s new dessert recipes he’s trying out, get nice and stuffed before we go to bed. Basically, this is gonna be the best night’s sleep any of us have had in years.”

“I’ll pass.”

“No, look, you can’t pass. It’s team bonding.”

Keith huffed. “We do plenty of team bonding in all our battles and meetings. And speaking of which, we’ve got more important things to be focusing on than blanket forts.”

“Well, yeah, but how are we going to be able to focus on those important things if we don’t take some time to relax in between? All work and no play makes Keith a dull paladin.”

“All… what are you talking about?”

Lance sighed. “Okay, look, I’ll level with you. The whole team’s been kind of, uh, concerned, lately. About your mood. And Hunk noticed you haven’t been getting much sleep lately, and frankly it’s making you even more of a grouch than usual - no offense, I mean - so we figured - ”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Keith growled. “Yeah, I’ve been in a bad mood. Do you wanna guess why, Lance? Can you think of anything that might have happened lately that may be worth getting a little bit upset over? What could I be concerned about, huh? What could I possibly have going on that’s more important than a goddamn sleepover?!”

“See, this is exactly what I’m talking about,” Lance said. “Maybe if you got a decent night’s sleep, you wouldn’t be yelling at me right now.”

“I’m not yelling!” Keith snapped. “And I definitely don’t need you to be monitoring my sleep schedule!” He stepped around Lance, and this time, Lance didn’t stop him. “Have all the sleepovers you want, but leave me out of them,” Keith muttered as he left.

Lance slumped as he watched him go. He had figured that it would take a bit of convincing to get Keith on board for a sleepover, but he hadn’t actually expected him to get angry over it.

God, he definitely needed a nap.

“Stupid, stubborn Mullet,” Lance grumbled under his breath, scuffing his shoes against the floor as started back to the lounge.

-----------------------------------------------------

The sleepover may have been a no-go, but that didn’t mean they had to give up on Operation: Make Keith Actually Get Some Sleep quite yet, especially since, in the coming quintants, the dark bags under Keith’s eyes, the disheveled state of his hair and his clothes, and his irritability were all increasing before the very eyes of the rest of the team. If any of them had had any doubts over whether he was sleep-deprived, they were certainly dashed by now.

But since apparently Keith had some sort of issue with his teammates actively encouraging him to sleep, they agreed that they would have to try more subtle methods to get him past his insomnia, help him sleep without letting him realize they were doing it.

Lance initially proposed raiding the med bay for some sort of sleeping tonic and slipping it into his food, but that idea was shot down immediately by Pidge explaining that it would be too risky to use a medicinal sleep aid on someone when they didn’t know how it would react with his biology, and Hunk saying that drugging Keith without his knowledge and consent was just an extremely sleazy and messed up thing, and making it clear that he found it very disturbing that he even had to point that out to them.

But there were other things to try, discrete ways to try to make the Red Paladin a bit more susceptible to some solid sleep. Hunk planned out dinners over the next few nights that heavily featured poultry and whole grains, which he explained to Lance induced the production of some sort of sleep hormone - Lance honestly had sort of zoned out the moment Hunk started throwing science into the conversation. Pidge messed with the lighting in the living quarters to dim the lights in Keith’s room, just enough that he probably wouldn’t notice the difference, but would also have a slightly easier time falling asleep despite the light.

Even the Alteans got in on it, as it seemed the human paladins weren’t the only ones who had taken notice of Keith’s insomnia. Allura had them all do meditation shortly before the castle’s night cycle began, under the pretense of it being a training exercise for the paladin bond. Coran, who it turned out was an ardent advocate of aromatherapy, pumped some sort of faint fragrance into the air vents in the living quarters, which smelled a bit like lavender and vanilla, although with a certain tartness to the scent that was distinctly Altean.

And yet, even after all of that, they still weren’t seeing a change. It was frustrating, to say the least.

Lance decided to try his own hand at it a few quintants into their new subtle approach, figuring it couldn’t possibly hurt. He waited in his own room with the door kept open, until he saw Keith pass by in the hall and called him in.

“What?” Keith asked. The word came out sharp and tetchy, but lately that was how everything Keith said sounded, so Lance paid it no mind.

Instead, he simply held out his headphones. “Would you mind giving this a listen for me? I think something’s a little weird with the audio, like it’s scratchy or something, but it’s hard to tell. I wanna know if I’m just imagining it.”

“Wouldn’t Pidge be better with audio stuff?” Keith asked.

“With fixing it, yeah, but right now I just need someone to give a second opinion.” Lance bounced the headphones in his hand. “Come on, please?”

Keith let out a long, low breath, but he obliged, taking the headphones and sitting on the edge of Lance’s bed as he placed them over his ears. Lance gave him a thumbs-up and pressed play on his music player, watching Keith’s face carefully. This was a special mix he’d been using for the last couple of years, and the fact that he’d had his player in his backpack with him when they’d wound up in the Blue Lion was a godsend. A playlist of soft guitar songs and light Caribbean ballads with steady and melodic percussion beats, all interspersed with ocean sounds. It had lulled him to sleep every night since he’d been in the Castle of Lions.

The mix played for a few minutes before Keith moved one of the earphones aside and said, “I don’t hear anything weird.”

“You positive?” Lance said. “Listen real closely, all right? Close your eyes, it’ll help you concentrate.”

Keith did, and his eyes stayed closed for another few minutes before he shook his head. “It all sounds fine to me.”

“Well, that’s good,” Lance said. “Guess it was all in my head after all.” He accepted the headphones as Keith handed them back to him, then cleared his throat. “So, ah, did you like that music? You looked like you were enjoying it.”

“Sure,” Keith said with a shrug.

“Hey, that’s - that’s cool. Gives us something in common. You know, if you want, you can borrow my music player for a while.”

“That’s all right, you keep it.”

“No really, I think you’d like it. You could, like, give the whole mix a listen, let me know what you think. I bet you’ll enjoy it, I’m sort of known for having great taste in music.”

Keith narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” Lance asked.

“Since when are you so eager to let me borrow your things?”

“Uh, since always? I’m generous.”

“Lance, last week I accidentally used your toothpaste instead of mine and you acted like I had stabbed you.”

Lance huffed. “Our bottles look completely different, how could you possibly have - ? You know what, not important. Just, I’m up for sharing now, okay? So come on, just take the music. You’ll like it.”

“Not until I figure out what you’re trying to - ”

“Jesus fucking Christ, I’m just trying to help you, Mullet! This is supposed to be relaxing! So could you quit being so goddamn stubborn for once in your life and just take the stupid headphones already?!”

A pause of silence stretched between them as Keith’s expression slowly fell to a dark scowl. “Oh my god. Is this seriously about that stupid sleep thing again?!”

“Yes,” Lance said, rolling his eyes. “You know what, yes, it is. And honestly, we shouldn’t be having to go to this much trouble to get a grown-ass adult to actually take a nap, and this is getting really ridiculous - ”

“Wait a minute, ‘we’?”

“Well, it’s kind of really fucking obvious that you haven’t gotten half a dobosh of sleep in ages, but since apparently you’re too proud or something to admit you actually need help, the rest of us have had to intervene to keep you from just straight up dying of exhaustion.”

“For the love of - I don’t need anyone’s help to sleep!”

“Oh, like hell you don’t. Look at you, the bags under your eyes are so big I’d have to check them at the ticket counter. I don’t know why you’ve gone and decided that having trouble sleeping is something you’ve got to be ashamed or whatever’s going on in your head, but - ”

“I can sleep just fine! I don’t want to sleep!”

“What, because you’re being so damn productive in those extra waking hours you get when you don’t? You’re not exactly doing yourself any favors here.”

“It’s got nothing to do with that!”

“Well then what’s it got to - ”

“Do you know what happens every time I fall asleep?” Keith snarled. “You know what I see every single time?”

“Uh…” said Lance.

“I see Shiro.” Keith crossed his arms, his scowl deepening. “Every time I close my eyes to go to sleep, it’s Shiro. Sometimes I see him bleeding out in the hall of a Galra base. Sometimes I see that gladiator arena he told us about, and he’s in the middle of it, barely hanging in there. Sometimes he’s just floating out in the middle of space and he’s cold and he’s too far from anyone or anything to get help. And sometimes it’s just the Black Lion, getting shot to smithereens right in front of me in the middle of battle and I can’t do anything to stop. He’s hurt and he’s dying and I just do nothing.

“Because that’s what I did, didn’t I?” He choked out a dry laugh that was completely devoid of any humor. “He got taken, right under our noses, and we didn’t even know until we got back to the hangars. He could be dead, or being tortured; maybe the Galra have something in mind for him that’s so horrible we can’t even fathom it. And we could have prevented it, but we didn’t. And it’s all I can think about, and when I’m asleep, it’s all I can see.

“Hell, I got nightmares after the Kerberos thing too, imagined his shuttle crash-landing against that stupid moon and wound up with that playing over and over every night. But at least that time, it wasn’t like it was my fault. Not like I was there and could have done anything. Not like I’d ever seen Shiro hurt and scared before, so my stupid brain couldn’t use that for reference. This time, though?” He tapped his temple. “It’s all there. Just waiting to play out.”

He took a shaky breath. “If I stay awake as long as possible, though, just let my body pass out when it can’t handle being awake for one more second, I don’t dream. I guess I’m just, like, too exhausted for the subconscious to do anything but wait for me to wake up. So I can’t sleep until I absolutely have to, you know? Because if I don’t I end up - I have to see - ” He gritted his teeth and scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“... Shit, dude,” Lance said, slowly lowering himself onto the bed next to Keith. “I, uh… I didn’t know.”

“You weren’t supposed to,” Keith grunted. He lowered his hands and Lance could see the glistening of tears there before he brought his knees up, wrapped his arms around them and buried his face in them. “God, you’re not supposed to see this.”

“Why not?” Lance asked softly. “Keith, if you’d told us what you were dealing with, we could’ve helped you out.”

“How?” Keith snapped. “You can’t control what I dream about, you can’t undo what happened to Shiro. I just - I have to deal with this.

“Keith, you don’t need to - ”

“Yeah, I do.” He sniffed, wiping at his eyes. “Okay? And this isn’t me being stubborn or anything, I’m just stating facts. This isn’t something that can be fixed, it’s just something I - something I have to figure out. Somehow.” He coughed. “So, please, Lance. Stop trying to help. Tell the others to stop trying to help.” With one last sniff and failed attempt to blink away the now cascading tears, he stood and turned away. “I’ve gotta go,” he mumbled. “Should really get to the training deck.”

“But - ”

“Don’t - don’t tell the others. About this. It’ll just… make them worry.” And before Lance could say anything in response, Keith was out the door.

------------------------------------------------------------------

It was several vargas later that Keith finally stopped training and came back to the living quarters, and by then the castle was well into its night cycle. Keith was drenched in sweat, trembling somewhat from exertion as he trudged his way back toward his room.

So, the sight of Lance standing in front of the door probably wasn’t a welcome one, and Lance was unsurprised by the glare he received as Keith approached, which deepened further as he spotted the music player in Lance’s hand.

“What the hell are you doing?” Keith asked.

Lance took a deep breath. “I, uh - I had a bit of an idea. I know you said you don’t want me to, like, get involved in - in this whole thing going on with you, but I gave this a lot of thought, I really did, and I think you should hear me out. I’ve got something you really need to try.”

“Lance,” Keith sighed. “We already went over this. I don’t need you to help me fall asleep. And besides, the music, the beach sounds? They just don’t work for me, okay? There’s no point in - ”

“No, okay, I know we went over all of that,” Lance interrupted. “But this is different, I swear.”

“Lance - ”

“Look, this is either going to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done for you, or a stroke of absolute genius. It’s like fifty-fifty and we won’t know which one it is until we try it. So, here.” He held up the headphones. “Just give it a shot.”

Keith frowned down at the headphones, but slowly, he obliged, taking them from Lance’s hand and positioning them onto his head. “All right,” he said, closing his eyes. “Ready.”

Lance nodded and pressed play, then watched Keith’s face. At first he remained stoic, then, gradually, his brow began to scrunch in confusion. Lance held his breath as he watched, and after about a minute Keith’s eyes opened to look warily at him. “What… what is this?” He moved the headphones down, and Lance could just hear the sound of the playing track: a voice, soft and tinny at this distance from the earpiece but still confident and sincere. “We’re entering a new era of human exploration of the unknown universe, and every one of you has the ability to become part of history.”

“That,” Lance said, “Is a speech that was made about five years ago at my middle school, and probably a couple hundred others. By a certain Galaxy Garrison lieutenant I admired very much.”

“Yeah.” Keith brought the headphones off his head completely to stare at in his hands. “Thought I, um, recognized it. How did - how did you even get a recording of it way out here?”

“I downloaded a video of it that was on Youtube, converted into an MP3. Listened to it while I worked on my Garrison application, because that stupid application process was frustrating as shit and I needed the motivation. Guess I just never deleted it.”

“...Oh.” Keith kept staring at the headphones for a while longer before slowly moving them back up onto his head and closing his eyes again. Lance watched as he stayed still, for long enough that Lance was starting to wonder if Keith had forgotten he was there, when Keith finally opened his eyes back up and pushed the headphones aside again. “It’s… nice,” he said softly. “Hearing him talk. I’d… forgotten… how nice that was.”

Lance gave him a small smile. “Yeah. That’s the idea. See, I got to thinking, about the stuff I was having you try listening to before, and how you didn’t find it relaxing the way you were supposed to, and I realized, like, the reason that that stuff calms me and helps me sleep, is because it’s for me, specifically. Like, the Timba music is stuff I’ve been listening to my whole life, that I’d play in my room at home all the time, and the ocean sounds, they make me think of swimming and going to the beach with my family and laying down on a surfboard to watch the sun and stuff. And, you know, stuff like that, it makes me feel at home, right? It feels peaceful, and familiar, and safe, and that’s all good for getting a good night’s sleep, and for keeping the bad stuff away.

“But for you, well, none of those sounds are really home to you, are they? The music genre’s kinda niche, and I figure you’re more into… I dunno, punk rock? Post-hardcore? Some genre where your mullet might be considered acceptable. And as for the ocean sounds, I mean, you lived in the middle of the desert and you don’t even swim.”

“I can swim,” Keith said.

“Eh, you don’t so much swim as just ‘not drown’, but whatever,” said Lance. “Point is, they weren’t the right sounds for you. So I asked myself, okay, what sort of things would make Keith feel at home? Duh, explosions. But then I realized explosion sound effects would probably be hard to sleep through, so I went searching through my MP3s and found this. And, like, it works doubly well because if you fall asleep with this playing and Shiro shows up in your dream, then your subconscious or whatever might connect the two. So instead of him, um, going missing or - or stuff like that, dream-Shiro will start giving a motivational speech instead. You know, how sometimes when you’re asleep and dreaming and you hear a sound in real life and your brain just sort of incorporates it into the dream? I mean, it’s just a theory, but it has to be worth a shot, right?”

“Lance, I dunno if - ”

“Yeah, I don’t really know for sure either. Might be a little out there. But, you know. I just thought maybe this could be, uh - this could work. Here, you can set it to play the track on a loop like this, see.” He held up the player to show him. “And the whole thing is about an hour long, so it’ll probably only make it through one loop, if even, before you fall asleep, so you don’t need to worry about it getting super repetitive and driving you crazy. Now, the real motivational stuff is only at the beginning and the end. The whole forty-five minutes or so in the middle is mostly just talking about the Garrison’s programs and how to apply and stuff like that, but that’s still probably better than nothing, right? You can dream about Shiro in teacher-mode or whatever.”

Keith bit his lip in thought, eyes darting between Lance and the headphones, before quietly saying, “... Yeah. Maybe.”

“Try it, at least. For the team’s sake, yeah? ‘Cause we’re all kinda worried about your health at this point, and - and I don’t care what you say, you really need a good night’s sleep.”

“...Okay.”

“Okay?”

Keith nodded, reaching and hand out to take the music player from Lance. “I’ll try it, at least.”

“Great!” Lance said, face brightening. “Let me know tomorrow how it goes, okay?”

“All right,” Keith said. “And, um - just - for the uh, for the - I just - it’s, um, it’s nice to know that you guys all - ”

“Yeah, you’re welcome, Mullet,” Lance said. “Now, go the fuck to sleep.”

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For the first morning in a long time, Keith wasn’t the first paladin up and about. In fact, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge were all already halfway through their breakfasts when Keith finally showed up in the kitchen, blinking drowsily against the light. But it was a different drowsiness than usual. The sort of drowsiness that came from just having woken rather than from desperately needing to go to bed.

Wisely, none of them made any remarks about the change. They bid him good morning and asked if he’d like to join for breakfast, as casually as they would have on any given morning on the castle before Keith’s whole insomnia episode began, and he accepted, his focus entirely on the food in front of him.

Lance waited until Hunk and Pidge started their own conversation, distracted enough by each other not to pay the rest of the table any mind, before tapping the table near Keith’s plate and giving him a questioning thumbs-up. Keith nodded, and Lance smiled as what he had already suspected was confirmed: Shiro’s speech had worked.

Lance was a goddamn genius.

And in the following quintants, as Keith gradually grew less irritable and the bags beneath his eyes started to fade, it became easier to believe that maybe, the team could get through this. Keith could get through this.