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1.
Mother checks on him as he groggily rolls over. Everything in him hurts in an exhausted way: even laying in the bed is starting to hurt, even though he doesn’t have it in him to get up. Instead Taka stays still, allowing Mother to take care of him, because it feels good when she does.
“Still fatigued?” she asks and he nods. The doctors had explained but it hadn’t made sense what they said, mostly speaking to Father and Mother, so she had tried to explain after. That if he slept and felt better, that was being tired; if sleep didn’t help, that was fatigue.
“Why?” Taka asks and that makes Mother pause, something sad in her that’s become too common and he doesn’t like but that passes quickly as she leans down to kiss his head.
“Your body is doing extra work,” she explains. “It needs rest.”
Mother is much better than Father when he’s stuck in bed: Father has always been distant but he’s become more so since the doctors came into Taka’s life. He doesn’t know why but he loves Father all the same, because Mother says he’s trying and Father does other things for her, so she can be with him.
“Rest, my Taka-chan.” She kisses his head again.
2.
Ten years into his chronic illness yet Takashi is only now learning to deal with his flares on his own. He misses Mother tending to him, even Father at a distance bringing home food and a new book for him. At sixteen he wants to be independent but how can he be, when his body needs so much more than a healthy person’s?
“Hey,” someone says, and Takashi can just shift in his bunk to see Adam standing awkwardly by the door. All the other cadets in their group should have been at class, Takashi excused for his illness — he got ahead on his work when he was well, to try to quell the fear that he’d always be behind, that he’d never make the cut.
“Hey.” Adam is kind of awkward, glasses slipping down his nose, body not quite filling out his uniform. The orange is particularly unflattering against his skin tone. Takashi thinks he’s beautiful.
“Is there…” Adam takes a step forward, still leaving space. “Is there anything I can do, to… help?”
Let me tell you about my illness, he thinks. Tell me you’ll be my friend no matter what, a voice begs. Assure me I’m still worth it despite my body, he wants to cry out.
“Water?” Takashi asks instead. Adam blushes, and smiles, and nods.
“That all?” he laughs and Takashi finally, finally, admits to himself that he has a crush.
3.
He watches Adam from their bed, propped up best he can without taking any of his fiancé’s pillows, because to ask for them would be to admit to something he can’t. To add fuel to a fire that’s been ignited in their relationship, that they can’t stop stoking.
Adam is annoyed, once again, and Shiro gets it. He really does. He doesn’t like being chronically ill, he hates his fatigue flareups, these bouts of fatigue that leave him bed bound and barely able to get to the bathroom and back. But he’s nearly twenty years into this and it’s his life, there’s nothing to be done — he’s the one who has to suffer through it, the pain, the fatigue, the mental spiral. He’s the one going through this first hand.
He’s nearly ten years into this with Adam, yet the man can seemingly no longer handle his partner’s disabilities, can no longer be a cosurvivor to a chronically ill man. Every day Shiro asks himself, in at least one quiet moment, if today is the last day.
“But no,” Adam murmurs to himself, a one sided argument because he’s angry with Shiro for, yet again, being ill.
You’re always ill, he reminds himself because he can’t remind Adam. Even when you seem “fine” or “healthy,” you’re ill.
“No that would be too much,” Adam continues, straightening his jacket as he looks through the bathroom at the mirror. “You ask too much, Adam.”
“Stop,” Shiro groans, quietly, because his arm is barely there and all of his joints ache from laying in bed and he’s starting to develop a migraine and there is nothing healthy that can come of picking at this wound. “Please, Adam.”
He tries so hard to not need. He tries so hard to give. Yet, somehow, it’s never enough.
“Whatever,” and Adam leaves the room without a glance back.
4.
Keith emerges from the bathroom, Shiro watching him move about the room at ease. It hurts.
It hurts because he’s been left before, too ill to be loved, too much a burden to ask someone to share it with him. It hurts because so far he’s been able to hide most of it from Keith, to not need help bathing or making food or sitting up, the days he sometimes has to spend in bed because he can’t. He just… can’t.
His body is past expiration, even with an arm unaware of what it replaced.
The young man pulls out one of Shiro’s sweatshirts, pulling it over his own head, before looking around once more and nodding. “Aight.” Keith looks at him and smiles, just a little. “Doing better?”
Keith hasn’t left his side since getting to him on the planet they were stranded on. He’s stuck with him from when they got back to the Castle to the healing pod to getting him back to bed.
Just in time for one of Shiro’s flareups.
How can he express what he’s feeling? That he’s not doing better, that he’s never ever really doing better? That his mental health is spiraling out of control, he already had medical trauma, he didn’t need to be a prisoner of war as well, he didn’t need his arm taken but for the fatigue to still linger in his every bone and muscle and his soul, gripping at him–
“Hey,” and Keith is by his side, the bed dipping as he leans in close. So close he can smell his body wash on Keith fresh from the shower, can see the texture of Keith’s skin across his cheeks, can see the way his sweatshirt hangs from the man’s smaller body. “We’re going to get through this,” he whispers, taking Shiro’s hand, and that breaks him. That breaks whatever was left him, somehow unbroken.
Keith stays with him as he cries, laying beside him when he quiets, still there when he can’t fall asleep. Shiro doesn’t deserve another chance, and he certainly doesn’t deserve Keith.
5.
Shiro lays on the cot with his feet to the wall, because Keith knew he wanted to be able to see him in the pilot’s chair, see Keith flying the Black Lion and leading Voltron and being the officer Shiro had wanted to be but couldn’t, because his body betrayed him long before he could pronounce the words “Galaxy Garrison.” Shiro lays on the cot and watches Keith, always committed to everything he does, always ready to put himself in harm’s way for others, always willing to do whatever Shiro needs of him, even as he asks for too much.
He tries so hard to not need. He tries so hard to give. But he can’t, and Keith — somehow — doesn’t care.
Keith removes his helmet, rising to stretch and come stand in Shiro’s line of sight, a smile on his face like he’s so happy Shiro is here, the real Shiro, just his presence something wonderful instead of the burden it is.
The longer Keith watches him, the more Shiro feels like he shouldn’t be here, that he should have–
“Hey,” and Keith is at his side in an instance, as if he could read Shiro’s mind. “Hey, hey, come here,” and gently he gathers Shiro in his arms. He’s too exhausted to resist, sleep doesn’t help, he wants to go home to his childhood bedroom and Mother’s tender care– “Takashi,” Keith breathes, against his neck. “Takashi, please. Please: let me help.”
He doesn’t shake as the tears come, the way Keith is shaking, because he’s too drained for that much movement. Instead the tears fall from the artificial gravity of the lion, and Keith presses their wet faces together, and Shiro gives in because it’s too much work to fight.
In the end he knows Keith will leave him. He’ll realize Shiro is too much take and not enough give. And it’ll hurt so fucking much–
“Takashi,” and lips press to the corner of his mouth. “Takashi, I love you.”
6.
Takashi can hear someone but he’s too fatigued to process what it means, his body screaming for movement while also begging for stillness, his brain slowly trying to get gears turning that seem stuck. He recognizes enough that he’s in his bed, in the captain’s quarters, on Atlas, and that he’s having a flareup. Everything else is… questionable.
Part of him foolishly wants to call out Okan — Mama — but Mother and Father can’t be here. He’s alone on his ship, surrounded by his crew, no family in this quadrant of the universe.
The door to the bedroom slides open but the lights stay off, someone moving to his side so quietly that he can’t track where the person is. Then a hand touches his face and he knows, immediately, that he’s safe.
“Hey you,” Keith whispers, kissing him tenderly at the corner of his mouth.
“You–“ but he can’t think, can’t coordinate the muscles of his mouth to move let alone for his brain to send down words to say.
“It’s ok,” Keith soothes and Takashi relaxes into his hold, the way his partner checks him over. “Veronica called, let me know. Got here as fast as I could.” Takashi thinks that maybe Keith is suppose to be a whole lot farther away than he is. “Have you eaten?” The top thing, in a fatigue flare, he struggles to do is feed himself. “Let me go make you something then.”
Keith is at the door by the time Takashi manages to form a full sentence, regardless of how short it is. “Keith?”
His husband pauses and turns, looking at him. “Taka?”
“Thank you.”
He hears a sigh. “Of course.”
7.
Their bed is designed for his flares, which have become more common since he was put in this new body. Not that his condition is deteriorating or his muscles dying: just that his body still did too much work, as always. Sometimes there was pain, mostly it was just the fatigue.
So Takashi can’t complain all that much as he lays in bed, the mattress and pillows cradling him, the weight of the sheets and blankets soothing. Sunlight is soft where it makes it into the room, the TV across from him on low, an indulgence he’s glad Keith had convinced him of.
Outside the sliding door he hears whispers.
“Is he asleep?”
“Probably not,” Keith soothes, his voice deep in comparison.
“Is he in pain?”
“No, not right now.”
“Can I cuddle him?”
“Let’s ask and see, but he might say no.”
The door slides open, Keith ushering in two small children. Takashi smiles at the sight of them.
“Babies,” he manages and they stand at the edge of the mattress, waiting for Keith to lift them, placing them gently on either side. The older pushes against him immediately, the younger watching their other father.
“I brought you soup,” Keith says conversationally, checking to make sure Takashi has drunk water. “Is the air ok?”
“Yes,” Takashi agrees, shifting to wrap his one arm best he can around both his children. His eyes fall closed; maybe he’ll actually sleep for a bit.
One of the children shuffles a bit. “Be good for Daddy,” Keith half-warns, moving around the bed to adjust the blinds. “Daddy is good to you when you’re sick.”
He feels his children nod against his body, feels the dip of the bed as Keith sits.
He feels at peace with his illness, his fatigue.
He feels no fear of being alone, a burden too great for another to ever love.