Wish You Were Here

Wish You Were Here (Oneshot)

"It's a hard time for everyone," Coran says with a tight smile. He adjusts in his seat on what looks to be a brown couch, which is the only thing visible in frame besides a framed picture of what Keith can barely decipher to be three mice, since the quality of this call is fairly poor.

The pixels of Keith's laptop screen try desperately to swim through the thick of a spotty connection to keep up with Coran's movement, and despite the effort being somewhat delayed, this is something Keith needs right now. Although it's hard to recognize the priority of his mental health over the last bunch of assignments before school's end, his therapist is here to remind exactly that. Well, so long as he has a stable enough internet connection to understand the gist of their sessions.

"But," Coran continues, and gives one last tweak to his bright orange mustache before pointing to Keith— or, uh, the camera. "It's especially difficult for people like you."

People with depression, he's basically implying. Depression, or struggling with another mental illness to the degree that the isolation everyone has spontaneously been thrown into during this time is comparable to their normal, and it's not exactly something to be proud of. Keith would've basked in having little to no interruption thanks to quarantine— and he did at first, really, but now there's less basking and more...

He just feels like a bowl of soggy cereal with no purpose besides being poured down a drain and forgotten about.

Where he was once able to tell each day apart, they've all bled into the same mindless routine, or lack thereof. He's no longer swept up in any motions, following his school schedule or being dragged into whatever hangouts the group has set up. He almost misses that struggle because now there is none. There's no struggle to stay above it all, on top of a tapering slope that his social, personal, school, and once work life have scraped together.

He can't be bothered anymore. A certain string of events has led to his body being turned to a useless lump of clay, and the world is none the wiser. And where his heart would once pump determinedly on, perhaps with a little relief, it's taken to a slower beat that he himself just can't spring a burst of life into.

It beats.

one.

two..

three...

A certain kind of consistent tiredness has crept over him. It repeatedly fractures his bones, every last one, until the crushed grains have taken on the same density as heavy, heavy sand. Shuffling around his apartment has become a task in itself, and it feels like there are several little punctures in his body from where the grains spill out like a broken hourglass or splintered bag of rice as his energy dies away.

"Make sure to get fresh air," Coran has reminded him during every appointment.

one.

two..

three...

It's been two months since everything began, since their state senator announced official quarantine measures and his life took a turn for the worse. Two months of not seeing any of his friends, (save for Shiro since he conveniently lives in the neighboring apartment building); of making his own meals as often as his energy allows; of burning out his fuse over schoolwork; of taking gradually less and less frequent walks with Kosmo; of becoming so drained that making it past a simple "how are you?" text without abandoning it for another, much later, time has turned into an exhausting battle.

It's quite cruel how easily sabotaged his relationships are at the expense of this. But Coran has told him to take things one at a time, and Keith, ever so desperate, has changed it to taking it one text at a time. Because there's no denying the way his heart makes a genuine pulse when Lance's name shows up on his phone screen. He'll be damned if he doesn't somehow keep his head in this for as long as his friend's flirts and affection will go on.