#dont worry though i wont kill off keith im not THAT cruel

[confusedsiewmai]

Ocean Petals

Writer’s note: So this is my first fanfic EVER and I’m super duper nervous so here goes nothing! (Please don’t come to my house to murder me.) I’ll probably write a part 2 but in the end, I’ll also see how this ends up. I genuinely hope you guys will enjoy this. Enough! Shall we begin?

Special thanks to:

@suitboxers (Cos’ this only started because I saw this beautiful fanart of Hanahaki!Keith)

@flaming-potato-arson (For encouraging me and giving advice that did help)

@mrscarocat​ (For being there while I whined like an anxious kid and for reading this so many times to help me improve and calm my ass down)

Summary: Keith thought he had smothered those feelings for a certain blue paladin. But they had taken roots where they shouldn’t and began smothering him instead. That was how flowers bloomed within his chest.

(Or: the Hanahaki!Klance AU where Keith suffers)

The first sign was the difficulty breathing.

While practising in the training deck, Keith’s breathing grew laboured far too quickly but he ignored the weight in his chest. He would never allow himself to be defeated by a level 5 fight simulator just because he was feeling a little unwell. However, the longer he pressed on, the tighter his chest grew. Each breath sent a sharp pain through his lungs and every strike became harder and harder to deflect. He found himself reacting too slowly, too slowly.

Keith huffed, squinting in effort. The Gladiator bot’s movements merged into a distorted blur, its sword a confusing flurry of movements. When it pulled its arm back, he brought his shield to his left, blocking it.

Under the attacks rained down in rapid succession, Keith was left wheezing loudly, exhausted and dizzy. With a grunt, he swung his bayard. The bot parried it effortlessly and sent him reeling back.

The world spun into a kaleidoscope of colours. The paladin shook his head to clear it. His sight refocused and he saw the Gladiator bot bringing its sword down on him. He barely managed to step aside in time. In the process, he tripped over his own foot and stumbled. Before he could regain his balance, the bot made a stab at him. Keith dodged again but the sword had nicked his right arm and he was hissing in pain.

He needed to keep up. He has to keep up. He cannot-

Everything went black.

Keith was jolted back to his senses when his side slammed onto the floor with a resounding bang. His vision was swimming and he couldn’t even tell up from down. The bot charged towards him. Keith opened his mouth to speak but all that came out was a pathetic wheeze.

“End simulation! End simulation!” A voice pierced through the dark fog in his head. Relief washed over him upon hearing the sound of the bot deactivating. Then, he heard someone run towards him. “Holy crow! Are you okay?”

Shakily, Keith looked up and he saw patches of brown and blue. After blinking several times, he found himself gazing into a familiar pair of blue orbs, which were brimmed with worry. He avoided staring into those too-beautiful eyes and croaked an automatic response, “Yeah.”

His chest actually still felt tight. Or maybe it felt even tighter. His left shoulder was throbbing in dull pain and his mind was fuzzy and thick. Keith pressed a hand to the side of his head and groaned as he got up. A sharp pain impaled his chest and he fell back. He expected his head to slam onto the floor but Lance had caught him quickly enough.

Lance winced. “Nope. You’re not. We’re going to the sick bay.”

Grunting in extreme effort, Keith tried to sit up again and Lance supported him. Then, he was helped onto his feet. His legs were weak and wobbled like a newborn fawn’s and the world tilted this way and that, but firm yet gentle hands guided him as he swayed and pushed forward stubbornly.

An invisible yet impossibly soft pillow smothered the already suffocating boy when Lance sighed with a worried smile, his eyebrows quirking in a half-frown-half-smirk that only he could pull off. “Slow down, mullet man.”

***

Then, Keith knew he was screwed.

Blue petals sat wetly in his pale palm and he stared at them blankly before glaring at them. Hanahaki disease. The disease that leeched off unrequited love and made flowers bloom in your lungs, slowly, slowly clogging up your chest and suffocating you, leading you to your eventual, beautiful, tragic death. The world just loved finding ways to rub salt into Keith’s wounds and put him through torture. And the thing that pissed Keith off wasn’t that he’s going to die. He didn’t have anyone waiting for him back on Earth anyway. Instead, it’s the fact that just when he thought that he had, at long last, incinerated his useless feelings for Lance, shoved them into a hole, and buried them under sixty feet of dirt, they come back to haunt him in the form of flowers. Fucking flowers.

And of course they’d be blue. They could never be anything else but the colour of the sea. His ocean eyes were dark and deep, inviting you to sink into the cool embrace of their waters. Inviting even Keith. Keith, whose first experience with the sea was of nearly drowning in it. Keith, who did not know then that the sea was not his territory and was never for him to touch. Keith, who had been impulsive as usual and rushed right into the waters, not seeing past its surface, and plunging straight into the deep unknown.

But he wouldn’t allow himself to do that. Not again.

Crushing the petals in his hands, he threw them in the bin. Even as he trudged out of his room and made his way down the hallway to join the others for breakfast, the beautiful dark blue stayed like a stubborn stain in his mind. There was no way he would let others know about this because they would definitely keep him away from his paladin duties. Voltron needed its paladin and there was an entire universe for him to defend. He couldn’t let some flower disease stop him.

“Ah, Keith!” Coran said as he sauntered over, breaking Keith’s train of thoughts. “I was about to get you. It is rather unusual that you are late today.” After a second or two, his cheery smile turned to one of concern. “Is anything the matter?”

“What? No! Nothing at all!” Why was he so bad at lying? “Everything’s great,” Keith mumbled.

Coran looked at him and the boy deflated under his stare, squirming. At last, Coran shrugged. “I will not press you any further, Keith. However,” his eyes smiled, not unlike those of a concerned grandfather, “if you do need someone to talk to, you can always come to me.” He pat Keith’s shoulder and turned back around while Keith followed after. “We better hurry. Lance was incredibly determined to finish Hunk’s cooking before you arrived. Shiro may not be able to hold him off much longer.”

Keith stiffened. His chest tightened just at the mention of Lance and he didn’t quite know if it was just the flowers anymore. All he knew was that he was going to pretend that everything was fine and that he wasn’t dying from some flower-growing, unrequited-love illness. It would drag the team down and the fact that he had a crush on Lance in the first place will be the team joke for the rest of his short miserable life. And he wouldn’t be able to handle Lance’s cocky teasing. He would never let anyone know.

This stupid pining disease will have to kill him first.

***

Lance sang as he danced in joy. “Keith cannot swim! Keith cannot swim!”

From the opposite side of the lounge, Pidge yelled at him to shut up but Lance didn’t hear her over his triumph so she just groaned and put on her headphones, casting Keith a pitying glance.

In disbelief, Lance shook his head. “Why did you even go to the pool that time? You can’t even swim!”

Keith’s face was burning. In a useless attempt to hide his embarrassment, he crossed his arms and scowled. “So what if I can’t?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Lance said, flicking his head. “Except I’m a thousand times better than you because I can swim and you can’t. Just wait till we have a beach episode! I’ll be showing off my awesome moves while you hang onto your lame float.”

Keith couldn’t help but imagine floating idly in the sea with an inner tube while watching Lance in his swimming trunks, basking in the sea with a thrilled grin, his eyes bright with pure exuberance as sunlight glistens off his wet brown skin. Keith’s stomach fluttered and his lips quirked up. He caught himself and huffed loudly. “Why will there be a beach episode?”

“You know,” Lance said, his hands waving as he waggled his eyebrows. “The classic beach episode.” When Keith didn’t seem to get it, Lance sighed dramatically. “How can anyone be this uncultured! You can just bob around in the sea or whatever, I will be capturing the hearts of all my fans.” He made a finger gun and winked at an imaginary alien, clicking his tongue.

A crushing wave of bitterness crashed over Keith, overwhelming him. “You’re being an idiot. No one likes someone just because they can swim,” he said acidly, glaring, “Lance.”

Lance’s eyes widened for a second before they narrowed. “Oh, really? You’re just jealous because no one likes you and your stupid mullet.”

Keith opened his mouth to yell at him. But he couldn’t make a sound. He couldn’t breathe. His hands flew to his neck. Leaning forward, Keith’s face turned red with effort. He gagged and choked, unable to cough.

“K-Keith?!”

His chest was too tight, never relenting to allow his lungs expand. A hand grasping his neck and the other clenched in a tight fist, Keith keeled over. His body was quivering like a leaf and everything seemed to tumble. He had to breathe but no air was entering his lungs. Hunching over the floor, he lurched forward and felt hands catch him.

From the corner of his eyes, Keith saw Pidge rush over. “Keith! What’s happening?” Her voice was high-pitched and scared as she knelt beside Keith, shaking him violently.

“He’s choking!”

“On what?”

“I don’t know!” Lance shouted. Then, he was kneeling and hitting Keith’s back. “Cough it out! Cough it out!”

Desperately, he tried to gasp but the oxygen never reached his lungs. Face turning blue, he convulsed, his eyes wide with fear and alarm.

Pidge darted out of the room and screamed, “I’ll go get help!”

Lance continued to hammer Keith’s back. In his agony, Keith twisted and turned his body. Then, he managed a slight cough and tasted metal. Breathing should be easier but no matter how hard Keith tried, every breath was cut short by gagging. A violent barking cough tore through his throat.

A spasm of coughs rocked his body. At last, he could just breathe, even if just a little. But a single word Lance muttered was enough to rob the life that he was barely clinging to with his cold shaking hands. “Roses?”

Flowers had bloomed from his lips, blue petals now speckled with red, and had fallen to the floor. His stomach sank.

“Blood! Is this… Hanahaki? Keith?”

Mortified, Keith tried to push him away. But he was weak and his hands could only grasp Lance’s shoulder. He pressed his forehead against his own arm and squeezed his eyes closed. Lance massaged his palms and said, “You’re gonna be okay. Hang in there. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.”

Thin arms went under his body and he was raised slightly before being set back down clumsily when Keith began to writhe in agony. “Shoot,” Lance hissed through clenched teeth. As he whispered reassurances into his ears, he cradled Keith and rubbed his back in circles as the quivering boy gasped in short shuddering breaths.

Keith must have lost consciousness at some point because the next thing he knew, a cool metal hand against his cheek and someone slapping him awake. Like a man breaking through the surface of a stormy sea, he abruptly sucked in a large gulp of air.

“He’s breathing again!” Shiro shouted.

Pidge yelled heart-wrenchingly, “Keith!”

“Thank god!” Lance said from beside him. “You’re breathing! Hey, buddy. Breathe, okay? Take deep breaths. You’re gonna be fine.”

Although Keith tried to breathe deeply, his lungs could only take in shallow rasping breaths. Someone stroke his arm soothingly and he focused on the feeling of the warm hand against his cold clammy skin.

Breathing was a little easier now. His eyes fluttered open with effort. Tears blurred his vision (had he been crying?) and puddles of blue and red were scattered across the floor. He coughed feebly. A single blue petal floated down, tainted crimson. Then, his ribs wouldn’t move again.

Shiro’s arms wrapped around Keith and he was lifted. Air wouldn’t fill his lungs and there was no relief. The flowers and feelings clogged up his airway, and his chest tightened further.

Shiro was the first to notice this and shook him in alarm. “He’s not breathing again!”

Instantly, Pidge let out a scared whine and Lance’s panicked voice filled his head. “Quiznak!” A pair of ocean blue eyes looked into him and the lovesick boy found himself drowning in them again. Warm hands held his shivering ones and rubbed his knuckles and he gripped back. In spite of his apprehension, Lance forced himself to sound calm and assuring, “You’ll be okay. Breathe, breathe. Breathe for me—”

Finally, Keith managed to get a few breaths. “I-I can’t,” he whispered between coughs. “I can’t.” Sobs and hacks racked his drained, moribund body. His chest squeezed out a terrified whimper. “Lance…”

Darkness engulfed him once more.