#hunk!

“Keith are you okay?” Hunk asked, pressing an ear to the door. There was rustling and muffled cursing. Suddenly, the door flew open to reveal Keith, shirtless and flustered, but, for the most part, human looking.

“Sorry about that,” he said with a forced smile. “You can come in.”

Hunk stepped into the room, cluttered but, oddly, organized, and turned to face Keith.

“Are you okay? What were you doing in here?”

“Nothing,” he said too quickly. Hunk raised an eyebrow and he released a frustrated sigh. “It’s really nothing. I’ve just been practicing.”

“Practicing?” Hunk said, eyebrows pulling together. Keith gave him a pointed glance and Hunk’s expression fell. “Keith…”

“I’m getting better at it. I really am,” He said, gesturing to his torso. “Look how well I’ve held this.”

“Yeah, but how long did it take you to get there? And aren’t you exhausting yourself unnecessarily? There’s a reason Allura didn’t want you messing around with this—”

“Hunk, I’m not hurting myself—”

“We don’t know that! You got pumped full of druid energy and a week after recovering, this happens. This stuff messed with your DNA, and Allura and Coran wouldn’t tell you not to if it wasn’t important.”

“They don’t think it’s a danger to me, they just don’t want me to become obsessed with—” He stopped, choking on the words. “They don’t want me obsessing with my old appearance, because they don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get it back.”

“Keith…”

“But I can’t just look like one of them.” He looked down at his hands and found that during the argument he had returned back to purple. “I can’t just look like this forever.” Keith sunk down onto the floor with his back against the bed and hung his head in his hands. Hunk came and sat in front of him on the floor.

“Why not?”

Keith’s head snapped up and he fixed Hunk with a stare.

“What?”

“I mean, how you look doesn’t affect how good of a paladin you are—”

“It can in diplomatic situations.”

“Well, you’ll have us behind you.”

“But what about working with refugees—”

“There are galra refugees too.”

“But they aren’t used to seeing a galra as—”

“They aren’t used to seeing humans either.” Hunk sent Keith a smile. “You’re letting yourself get worked up over things that really aren’t an issue. No one cares what you look like, people care how you treat them.”

For a while neither of them spoke. Hunk watched Keith fidget, pulling at his gloves, sighing infrequently, worrying his lip. Hunk was about to ask what they were missing when—

“But it’ll matter to him,” Keith said, staring at the ground. “How could it not. Here we are trying to bring him home, but home is now infested with the very same thing that’s probably putting him through hell this very moment.” Keith scrubbed a hand through his hair and looked helplessly at Hunk. “Things were going so well, and in five minutes they all fell to shit. We were getting along, were getting closer. We were finally over the rivalry bullshit from the Garrison and were actual friends and now—”

“Keith—”

“He’s not even going to be able to look at me.” Neither of them said anything. Keith returned to his fidgeting.

“I mean,” Hunk started carefully, “we don’t know how he’s going to respond to any of us. We don’t even know if the Lance we’re looking for tomorrow is our Lance. Sure, they may look the same, but we don’t know what that much time in isolation or being… we don’t know how what happened will have changed him. We’ll all be starting from square one.”

Keith started to say something, then stopped. One of his ears twitched and he turned towards the door.

“Shiro’s coming.” Hunk looked to the door and furrowed his brow.

“You can tell all the way from here?” Keith shrugged. “Huh. Do you want to see him?”

“I don’t know. I think he’s still mad at me about the fight in the med bay. I was… I was lashing out at him.”

“Are you sorry?”

“Yeah, but I don’t—”

“Talk to him. He’ll understand.” Keith started to shake his head then stopped.

“Well, it doesn’t matter anyways. He’s not even—”

“Nope,” Hunk said, getting up. “You two need to talk. And like. Now.”

He went to the door and Keith heard him step out and begin talking to Shiro. He chose not to eavesdrop, instead taking a deep breath and focusing on his hands.