VOLTRON ONE-SHOTS

Keith x OC - Numb Confusion

She sighed and stepped further into the room, shoving her hands deep in her pockets, and Keith could tell she was trying hard not to spew out everything she was thinking about in that one moment, "Maybe, you'd like to explain you walking off in the middle of our flight simulation?" At that question, Keith groaned again, trying to cover his ears, but he didn't feel like moving his arms. He caught her sigh a minute later when he refused to answer to her question and she stepped further into the room. "Come on, Kogane, Iversion was pissedwhen you didn't come back."

His neck popped a little as he craned his neck up to look at her, glared at his copilot, "Well, maybe I didn't want to deal with the flight simulator today, and quit calling me Kogane, its Keith, you know I hate it when you call me that."

"And you know I don't care," she crossed her arms, waiting for his typical reply to her prod, but instead, he buried his head against his knees again without a sound.

She frowned, catching that Keith wasn't in the mood for any teasing and that immediately strung up a red flag. Guilt washed up a little as he realized that she should have noticed it sooner. They weren't best friends for no reason and she mentally cursed for pushing at him.

"Hey," she tried, her voice a little more gentle, stepping over his bag that he had apparently thrown on the floor before she came in, "you okay? I'm not mad or anything, I'm just confused about why you stomped off like that."

He sighed and Amanda watched as his shoulders seemed to deflate before her eyes, making him look even smaller than before, and he wasn't really big to begin with. Worry began taking place of her irritation and she crept closer to the edge of the bed, stopping just shy of sitting on the mattress beside him, "what's up?"

He didn't answer back with anything audible and instead just mumbled into his knees.

She eased herself onto the bed after a few minutes of just silence, the mattress squealing under her as she sat down, watching the younger teen to make sure he didn't decide to suddenlyexplode and snap back at her, he didn't, making her worry even more.

"Hey," she poked his knees and he brought out a hand to swat her away. "Leave me alone," he repeated.

Playing with her hands in her lap, she decided to give him just a little more time to himself before she decided to bother him again with more questions. Instead, she looked around their dorm room.

There was a fine line between her side and his, even though he was a boy, Keith kept his side of the room surprisingly orderly, and her, being the middle child of five boys, she sometimes found herself trying to keep her side just as neat sometimes if she caught herself not bothering to clean up again.

She didn't mind having a guy as a roommate actually. Amanda was pretty sure Iversion picked her to be his roomie and unspoken babysitter more than anything not just because she knew Keith before his dad died and definitely not because she was equipped with keeping him in line. She was pretty sure she was picked as his copilot and roomie just because she was used to seeing her older brothers parade around the house in their underwear.

"Do you want to talk about anything?" She tried using the tone she usually reserved for bawling kids half her age as a way to get them to calm down, she hated kids and usually didn't interact with them unless she absolutely needed to, but this situation seemed worthy enough for that, and she lowered her voice to sound more understanding. It seemed to have the effect she wanted on him as well, he at lest relaxed a little more.

The younger teen sighed again, slowly uncurling himself from his balled up position on the bed and she was surprised to find his face red. Not like he had been crying, there wasn't any evidence of tear marks down his cheeks, but she was willing to bet that he had been close to it.

Keith rubbed his nose and sniffed, looking down at his hands as he clenched and unclenched them. "Do you ever notice anything, off about Shiro?"

Her eyebrows shot up at the question. Keith was worried about Shiro? The Garrison celebrity? The guy that didn't really offer him much attention during classes? The guy that usually doesn't interact very much with their class?That Shiro?

"Um, well, not really. I mean, he has broken Garrison records and has gone out to space multiple times-"

"That's not what I meant."

She sighed, reminding herself to be calm, Keith would open up in his own time, she's honestly surprised he was talking to her at all, most of the time he just shoves his problems aside and focuses on something else to get off the subject when he wanted to be left alone. "What do you mean then?"

He didn't answer right away, voting to just stare off for a moment or two before opening his mouth, "I think Shiro's dying."

He caught her surprised frown out of the corner of his eye and Keith immediately wished he could take his words back, hugging his knees to his chest tighter. It was just a theory after all, and he hasn't actually asked Shiro about it yet. Keith didn't really think Shiro even knew about eavesdropping on his conversation with one of the Garrison's higher ups, which was surprising since the guy seemed to know about everything else in his life.

"What do you mean?" He words, were slow, cautious and Keith didn't exactly blame her for taking that route.

"I mean-" he sighed again, "I overheard something," he finally added in a much quieter tone, and Keith gave her credit for not launching into a speech about the dangers of listening in on someone else's private conversations.

"Well, what'd you overhear?" She crossed her arms.

"Commander Holt, Shiro, and one of the other Garrison officers were talking about a mission being planned for Kerberos, and they brought up Shiro's 'condition'."

"Condition?" She echoed, "What kind of condition? Did they say?"

Keith shook his head as he went over the conversation again in his head, his brows furrowing. "I'm not sure what it's about, but it sounded like he was dying or something."

"Keith," Amanda sighed, rubbing her face with her hand, "you know you're never going to actually know what they were saying unless you ask him about it, right?"

"Yeah, but-"

He didn't want to be alone again, that's what he wanted to say. Keith wanted to finally admit to someone that he was scared of being left behind again, and there wasn't really anything to go against it either. His mom left, his dad died, he's been an orphan ever since he was six, and Keith didn't want to go through the pain of losing someone else he cared about again.

"But what?" She finally pushed, leaning her head closer into Keith's field of vision when he didn't say anything else after awhile. "You know you can tell me, Keith, I won't laugh."

"I don't want to get to know him, just for him to die." He finally forced out in a whisper, clamping down on the tears that threatened to spill at the thought, he was not going to cry.

She sighed, scooting closer and pulling the teen in a hug, he didn't pull away, just leaned closer to the touch. "Keith, he'll tell you in his own time. But in the meantime, try to stay out of trouble, please? You know Iversion only assigned me to be you copilot because you stole Shiro's car, right?"

He snorted, "Yeah, but I don't need a babysitter all the time, I know how to take care of myself."

"Yes, because hijacking someone's car and ending up un Juvenile Detention is definitely how you're supposed to take care of yourself."

He snorted, closing his eyes, "Definitely."