Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Keith’s heats have always been unpredictable. 

They come and go with little rhyme or reason. Weeks late, a few days early, lasting for two days or a full week. It isn’t unusual for him to miss one entirely. The doctors at the Garrison told him that some people are more irregular than others. They also assured him that it would likely balance out with time. Likely being the key word in that sentence. It never did balance, Keith just got used to never quite being prepared for the day he would wake up with stomach cramps and slick leaking out of him. He just applied scent blockers, put a pad in his underwear to soak up any spillage, and went about his life like every other Omega in existence did when their heat came. 

(Really, Keith didn’t understand the stereotypes about Omega’s not being able to control themselves during their heats. It was something that Alphas must get off on. And sure, some played it up more than others, to get care and attention from the Alpha’s and Beta’s around them. But for at least 90% of the population, heat really wasn’t that big of a deal. Uncomfortable, yes. Incapacitating, no.) 

(Keith never let himself play up his heat for attention. No matter how much he wanted to when he was all alone at night, suffering through the pangs of want and heat and slick with nothing but a toy for company, and nothing but fantasies of a strong Alpha to comfort him.) 

(Those fantasies definitely aren’t of Shiro, with his broad shoulders and calming scent, with the dashing scar across his face and the way his touch sets Keith on fire even on a good day. Definitely not.) 

The point is that it isn’t unusual for Keith to miss a heat. So he doesn’t note it when the time for his monthly cycle comes and goes with little fanfare. He doesn’t note it the next month, either. Time became strange in space, he thought. When everything shifted from hours to vargas, from years to deca-phoebs, it became harder to keep track of things like that. On a team of alphas and betas, no one else notices either. 

It isn’t until the Paladins settle in on Earth again that Keith realizes something is wrong. By all accounts he should have noticed before then, if not by his missed heats than by the tenderness around his chest and the abnormal bloating around his stomach and the strange ups-and-downs in his mood. Something in Keith has been changing. He doesn’t put two and two together to make four until he’s being handed blankets and heat-supplies by a well meaning Garrison doctor for the first time in years. 

Oh, yeah. He thinks, with absent acceptance. Heats. 

Oh, no. He thinks, with mounting horror. Heats. 

He doesn’t say anything to the Garrison doctor, even though logically that would be the smartest thing to do. He dumps all of his supplies in his room instead, takes his hover bike into town, and buys six different pregnancy tests from a judgemental looking convenience store clerk. Keith gets it. He’s unmarked and unmated and potentially knocked up six ways from Sunday, but that doesn’t give anyone the right to judge him. He’s already peed on all six sticks before logic reintroduces itself to his brain and he remembers that he can’t possibly be pregnant. Keith hasn’t had sex with anyone in what feels like forever. Not since his first stint with the Blades. 

Unless this is some kind of immaculate conception situation, Keith is fine.

Except all six tests agree, mocking him with their little pink lines, or the scrawling of the text that appears beneath them. 

Positive, positive, positive. 

This is when Keith really should go see the doctor. He curls up on his bed and does some frantic googling instead, searching through every omega forum he can think of. Apparently this is a thing that happens sometimes. Apparently theres a word for it. A phantom pregnancy. When an Omega is very stressed, or in an unusual amount of danger, sometimes their hormones shift around and convince their body, and everyone else around them, that there’s a baby on the way. People are statistically a lot less likely to hurt a pregnant omega. It increases their chances of survival by an insane percentage. It makes people more likely to go easy on them, to give them extra provisions, to treat them with kid gloves. 

Keith throws his tablet off the side of his bed and huffs. 

“Fuck.” He says, and tries to will his body back to normal. It’s wrong, he thinks. It’s manipulative, and gaslighty, and he doesn’t have time for something like this to happen. He doesn’t need this to go on for long enough that other people will notice it. If they notice it, they’ll think he’s pathetic. One of those hysterical omegas who can’t even control their own body, who need to cry out for attention and special treatment, someone unfit to be a soldier or a Paladin of Voltron. He’ll basically be baby-trapping everyone around him. 

He has to swallow back tears at the idea, rolling onto his stomach so he can use his pillow to drown out the sound of his frustrated scream. He hates this. He hates himself for being this way. Not for the first time in his life Keith thinks that everything would be easier if he had been born an Alpha. 

And it’s stupid, is the worst part, the thing his mind gets stuck on. His body is doing this because it wants him to have a weapon, a way to protect himself. That would be fine if Keith was living back in caveman days and trying to get his tribe or clan to look out for him a little more, of if he was dealing with normal human problems like muggings by random guys on the street. The Galra don’t even have secondary gender dynamics, they can’t tell that Keith is different, and the ones on their way to Earth to destroy all of them in the name of the Empire aren’t going to care if one of Voltron’s Paladins got knocked up. It isn’t going to work. 

The problem is it does start to work on nearly everyone else on base. He has one or two weeks before the others start to pick up on it, but once they do Keith is sure that he’s dying of embarrassment. His cheeks flush red when the first Alpha side steps him in the Garrison hallways, careful not to get too close. His heart skips a beat when all of them start doing it, nostrils flaring a little bit when they take in the definitely-pregnant-omega smell of him. 

(Keith has tried scent blockers, okay? He has. But even when he used them for heat-scent they had never been one hundred percent effective. His Galra DNA must mess them up somehow. Pregnancy scent is different anyway, a full body phenomenon, an inherent change that’s difficult to hide behind the artificial blankness of blockers.) 

I am very small and full of babies, you must be very gentle with me, his traitorously manipulative scent must be screaming at everyone with a working nose. I’m good, I’m a precious mother-to-be, and you wouldn’t hurt me or my baby, would you? 

He pouts about it at his very own table in the cafeteria, shoveling mashed potatoes into his mouth like he really is eating for two. He’s gaining weight around his stomach, still. A baby bump, except there isn’t any baby at all. If it gets any bigger he might actually go and throw himself off the roof of the Garrison. 

His friends are silent around him as he contemplates his future death. Silent, but cautious. Silent, until Lance slides a pudding cup in his direction. Silent, until Hunk offers to take his tray back up to the front for him. Silent, until Pidge mentions that they have one too many blankets in their room, and asks if Keith wants it. 

(He does. He does want it. His room smells sterile and Garrison-issued. It doesn’t smell like his pack, or his family. It would make a terrible nest. Not that he’s going to make a nest in there, but the point stands.) 

He eats the pudding cup, he lets Hunk take his tray, and he agrees that Pidge can drop the blanket off for him later. They know, he thinks, with dawning horror. Someone must have filled Allura in too, because she’s acting as strange as the rest of them. Shiro smiles at him and it’s as warm as the sun, but there’s an awkward edge to it, and with even more dawning horror Keith realizes that they don’t know at all. They just think hes going to have a baby. 

Most of them have scattered before Keith can correct them on their assumptions, before he can fill them in on what his traitorous body is doing to him and take responsibility for its actions. Part of Keith is relieved that he doesn’t have to say the words and explain the science of it, that he can just drag himself back to his room and curl up on his bed until responsibility calls him back out. That’s what he means to do when he pushes his chair away from the table and gets up himself. 

Shiro has lingered, however, and he mirrors Keith’s movement in an instant, pushing his own chair back a little too quickly. The flimsy thing topples right over and Keith watches with embarrassed eyes as Shiro scrambles to set it to rights again, shooting a bashful smile at everyone around him. 

“I’m going to take a nap.” Keith says, hoping with all of his heart that Shiro will take that as the excuse that is and leave him be for now. Keith is already stepping away from the table and towards the door. Shiro, of course, doesn’t leave him be, and his footsteps follow Keith toward the door and all the way into the hallway. 

“That’s a good idea.” Shiro says, “You look like you need the rest.” 

It isn’t quite a glare that Keith sends in Shiro’s direction, but it’s close enough to get Shiro looking bashful again. The flash of unhappiness in his scent clearly doesn’t go unnoticed by Shiro. “Not that you look bad.” Shiro stumbles to correct. “You never look bad, you just — Right, I’m going to shut up now.” 

And he does, going quiet beside Keith, but still walking with him. Keith feels comforted and annoyed in turn by Shiros’s presence beside him. On the one hand: a strong, sexy Alpha is escorting Keith to his room, and oh boy, who knows what might happen when they get inside? On the other hand: Shiro is clearly escorting Keith to his room, like he’s a weak little baby who needs looking after. Keith crosses his arms over his chest as they walk, and then regrets it, because the flesh there is so tender it makes him want to cry. 

“I can walk on my own, you know?” He says through gritted teeth, scent still bleeding uncomfortable unhappiness, not directed at Shiro anymore, more pointed toward the world at large. 

“I know.” Shiro says, voice slow and even softer now than it was before, arm brushing against Keith’s as they walk. His touch is electric, as it always is. Keith wants to reach out and hang on to him. Shiro doesn’t offer any more of an excuse than that, just confirmation that he knows exactly what Keith is capable of. 

Keith lets him stay, lets Shiro walk him all the way to the door of the cold and sterile room that he gets to call his own now. He hesitates there at the doorway and wishes he could pull Shiro inside with him, force Shiro to scent every inch of the room so it doesn’t smell so sad and lonely inside anymore. 

Shiro is hesitating too, and Keith can’t be sure why.

“Well,” He says, a way to start the goodbye and prompt Shiro into action, into leaving Keith alone like he thought he wanted.

“Right,” Shiro says, sounding just a little lost. He shifts, hesitates, hopeful when he locks eyes with Keith again. “You know you can talk to me about anything, don’t you Keith? You can tell me anything.” 

Keith stares at him for a long moment and he knows that he should come clean, that he should admit what’s going on. He will, he decides, soon. He just can’t bring himself to do it right now. So his shoulders slump out of their defensive position and he nods his head, slow and careful. “I know.” He says, the same two words of assurance that Shiro had given him only minutes before.

Shiro doesn’t argue and doesn’t push for more, just nods his head. “Okay.” He says, taking one step to back away from the door. “Sleep well, Keith.” 

The Paladins continue to act weird around Keith, and Keith continues to ignore the fake-baby sized elephant in the room. His stupid manipulative biology is in cahoots with his stupid manipulative brain, the squishy omega parts of him that just want to be taken care of by the people around him.

The Paladins are, you see, taking care of him. 

When he woke up from his nap Shiro actually had scent marked his doorway. It wasn’t the kind of thing that had ever been done around the Garrison, where propriety and control had been expected from every cadet and officer on base. On the castle ship, they had given in a little more to their instincts when it came to things like that, but everyone had been very careful not to challenge Keith’s space. Shiro’s scent mark on his door is showy and nearly indecent, warning every other alpha on base to stay far, far away from the omega that was inside the room. 

They treat him gently during the day. At the planning meeting Keith is forced to attend before dinner he finds himself crowded in between Hunk and Lance, all of the difficult questions fielded out of his way and back towards Shiro. When he does have a point to make, they all listen with rapt attention and the respect befitting the Black Paladin. It’s almost sweet.

Even sweeter is the fact that when he returns back to his room that night, he finds blankets and pillows piled just inside his door. No one has entered the room, just opened it enough to leave their offering. It isn’t just Pidge’s spare blanket, with their calming Beta scent worked into the fabric. There’s one from Hunk as well. Spare rations in a bag that smells a little bit like Lance and Allura, granola bars and a clearly contraband can of Keith’s favourite soda. The pillow is the thing that stops his heart a little bit, because it smells like Shiro. When he piles them all on his bed he feels like he’s home for the first time in years, with the smell of his entire pack filtered through his space. With his face pressed against Shiro’s pillow he can imagine how good it would feel to actually fall asleep with his head resting on Shiro’s chest.

Chapter Text

The Paladins of Voltron are nothing if not creative. They know that Keith is a flighty creature at heart, that Keith has never been comfortable with being cared for — you can’t be comfortable with things like that when you spent most of your life in harsh and inhospitable condition. Keith’s formative years as an omega were spent being passed around the foster care system before he got stuck in a group home, the last bastion of lost causes. Keith knows that his friends instincts are driving them crazy, prompting them to coddle and baby him. They know that he won’t let them. So they get creative instead.

They put Keith in positions where he’s technically an equal. For instance, tonight Lance is forcing all of the Paladins to have a sleepover. This means all of them piling into Shiro’s quarters with pillows and blankets and creating one big communal den. It’s a hollow excuse to surround Keith with softness and warmth and pack. It’s an excuse that works, because as much as Keith doesn’t want to be babied, he also doesn’t want to be the asshole who refuses to hang out with his friends during their downtime. 

So there he is, surrounded by Shiro’s duvet and blankets and dozing, mostly asleep, with his head on Hunk’s lap. 

Keith is a heavy sleeper. Everyone knows this. 

So they must assume he’s fully knocked out right now, because their conversation gets more candid by the minute. No one could blame them. His body is still and his breathing is even. His scent is telling all of them that he is safe and happy and extremely, extremely pregnant. 

“You should ask him.” Lance’s voice carries to his ears. It’s pitched low and quiet. They’re all making an effort not to disturb Keith, to keep him safe and happy and asleep. Hunk’s fingers are threading gently through his hair in a way that makes Keith tingle with contentment. 

“Why me?” Hunk asks, tension and surprise in his voice. 

“Why you? Cause you’re all big and comforting like a teddy bear. Keith likes you. Look, he’s practically a sleepy kitten in your lap right now.” 

“Keith likes me because I don’t ask him invasive questions.” 

It was true, in a way. Hunk never pushed Keith too far, took only what Keith was willing to offer. He was a kind and patient alpha. It had surprised Keith at first that Hunk was so easy to be around, so easy to get along with, so entirely non-threatening to him. He really is a teddy bear, and Keith really does like he because unlike Lance, Hunk knows when to keep his mouth shut. 

“There’s no way I’m ruining Keith’s happy-soft-omega mood just so you can get an answer about…all of this.” Hunk continues, a low rumble. “If you want to get him pissed off and anxious, you can do it yourself.” 

“I kinda agree with Hunk.” Pidge says. “The boy is one massive ball of tension and we worked hard to get him here. Why should we ruin it by prying?” 

Keith loves Pidge too. Beautiful, sensitive, wise Pidge. 

“Because he’s pregnant.” Lance interrupts. High strung and a little sharp. “There’s going to a baby. A tiny Keith. That’s kind of a massive deal, and I for one am dying to know the who-what-when and where of it all.” 

Keith really should let them know that he’s not really asleep. He should. There’s a fear in him that is more powerful than common sense, however, and it tells him to stay exactly how he is and not move a muscle. If he’s awake, Lance might actually ask him the question that he’s dying to know. They might all confront him about his fucked up biology, and he’ll have to admit that his hormones and pheromones have been gaslighting them into taking care of him all week. If he has to tell them that, he might actually die of embarrassment.

No, Keith is going to stay exactly as he is, and not say a word. He’s just hoping and praying that this mess clears up on its own, that his body puts itself back the way its supposed to be and everyone forgets that this happened in the first place. 

“Mathematically speaking, the when is actually fairly clear.” Pidge says. They don’t sound happy about their little fun fact, though. There’s a hesitation in their voice, a scent in the air that tells everyone about their worry. 

“Oh, yes. You used your lab on the Castle of Lions to fabricate some for him.” Allura’s voice is cool like water. That’s how her scent has always seemed to Keith as well. It isn’t as strong as the others because she doesn’t have a designation. The Alteans and Galrans were blessed to miss out on that aspect of human biological development if you asked Keith. He wishes he had taken after his mother in this regard. She never had to worry about heats and scents and all of the strange things that came with being an alpha or an omega. 

“What do you mean?” It’s Shiro who asks, his voice deep and curious. Keith has always loved the sound of Shiro’s voice, especially when he’s calm and relaxed and surrounded by his family. He sounds strange in that moment however, like he’s reaching for something he isn’t sure that he wants to touch. He is cautious because Pidge is concerned. 

“I mean…” Pidge trails off, and the silence lingers. The hesitation in their speech tastes like dread in the air. “His last heat was pretty much right before he went to that cloning facility and saved you. I remember because he needed suppressants and obviously the Blades don’t have any, so he asked me to hook him up with some.”

“Oh.” Lance says, and he sounds… like he regrets even bringing it up. 

“Oh.” Allura, a second later, with sadness laced in her voice. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Shiro, slightly more tense. Keith can almost see the way his face will have shifted at the implication, the tightening of his eyes and the slight wrinkle to his forehead. Everyone in the room knows what it’s supposed to mean, what Pidge is trying to say here. 

Keith had a heat. Keith faced off against Kuron. Keith came home pregnant. It makes him want to scream again, because he isn’t pregnant at all. It’s all an awful lie and a terrible misunderstanding. It’s all fake. 

“Just that he must have gotten pregnant pretty soon after that.” Pidge says, a little bit softer, but it doesn’t help.

Shiro’s pheromones take a dive downwards from calm contentment into something much worse, a harsh dip into unpleasantness. I am unhappy, his scent is screaming. I am upset and angry and I hate all of this. 

Keith can’t help but feel himself sink too, a feeling of fear and unhappiness that mirrors Shiro’s rising up in him. A soft whine escapes him, and he presses his face harder to the plush expanse of Hunk’s thigh. Hunk’s fingers freeze in his hair finally. Everyone falls silent around him at the sound. It feels as if they’re all holding their breath. The game could be over now. Keith could open his eyes and wake up, and leave this place and all of them behind. 

He doesn’t move. He’s tired and comfortable and he wants to be here, he just doesn’t want to listen to this. He wants to fall asleep instead. He huffs out a breath and nuzzles closer, and lets his breathing even out once more. 

Hunk breathes, thinking he’s asleep again. “Sounds like a nightmare.” 

“Sounds like it.” Shiro says, rough and still a little tensely miserable. His hand reaches out and touches Keith’s bare ankle, a comforting stroke against the skin there. “We should drop it for now. Keith knows he can trust us. He’ll talk about it when he’s ready and no one is going to push him on it. Agreed?” 

“Agreed.” 

Their conversation shifts, and after a while, lulled by the soft hum of their voices, Keith really does fall asleep. 

All of the Paladins are protective and attentive, but Shiro is going above and beyond. His eyes watch Keith now all the time. They track him across rooms and down hallways, they seek him out at every moment. Keith can’t help but do the same in turn. Shiro is strong and brave. Shiro being in the same room as him means that he’s safe. Their eyes meet and its lightning, every single time. Lightning and then gentle warmth.

Keith has to blame himself for the way that Shiro seemingly gets fixated on food. 

Even without the phantom pregnancy, Shiro worried about him. Keith had come into his life as a skinny teenager with not nearly enough flesh on his bones. Half starved. His living situation up to that point had not exactly made him feel secure when it came to food. In the early days of the Garrison, Keith hid protein bars under his pillow and got jumpy when he was late for lunch.

His fake baby comes complete with fake nausea, for a while. Once that passes though, Keith is starving all the time. Along with the mood swings it’s probably the worst part about this experience. He can’t seem to eat enough. 

The mistake comes when he lets Shiro know it. The two of them are sitting together in near silence, both working on the kind of admin that came with needing to save the world a hundred times ever month or so. The soft silence is broken only by the grumbling of Keith’s stomach as it asks him for something to eat. 

He blushes at the sound of it, and Shiro’s eyes are on him in an instant.

“Hungry?” Shiro asks, voice gentle and a little teasing. 

Keith nods his head. There isn’t any point in denying it. Isn’t any point in lying, when it’s just the two of them there. He tells himself its okay, because this isn’t an omega thing. Shiro has always been attentive to him when it comes to food. 

“Little bit.” He admits. 

Shiro quirks a smile in his direction. It should be an easy thing to fix, Keith imagines. He’ll finish up his work and go to the mess hall, and then he’ll eat. Maybe his body will be happy with him then, and stop telling out to everyone around him that Keith needs help. 

“Do you remember that ramen place we used to go to, before…” 

“Before you left for Kerberos?” 

“Yeah,” It’s rough, and a little longing. Keith knows that Shiro longs for those days sometimes. Everything was easier back then. The weight of the universe wasn’t resting on their shoulders, and all they had to be were each others best friends. “I checked. It’s still there.” 

“Oh.” Keith says, and finds himself smiling too. He likes the idea of that little hole in the wall persevering while their lives are falling apart. “Well… that’s nice, I guess.” 

“Yeah, nice.” A moment, Shiro tilts his head and looks at him, a spark of mischief in his eyes. “Lets go.” 

“We have work to do.” 

“Work can wait.” 

Keith squints at him. “Who are you, and what did you do with Shiro?” 

Objectively, it isn’t a funny joke. Shiro has actually been replaced by perfectly cloned look alike one too many times for it to be a funny joke. And he thinks that if anybody else had made it it would have landed worse, would have inspired a tense set to Shiros shoulders and a frown on his face. Shiro smiles wider instead, huffs out a breath, and gets to his feet. His paperwork lays forgotten on the desk before him. 

“We’re going.” He says, amused but firm. “Are you gonna get up, or do I need to carry you there?” 

So Keith gets up, and Shiro drives them to a hole-in-the-wall ramen bar, and they order too much food. Shiro carries the leftovers home for him in brown take out containers and doesn’t stop arguing until the food is safely stored inside the tiny fridge in Keith’s bedroom. It’s nice. It’s normal. 

It doesn’t stay normal. 

Shiro drags him to breakfast every day and loads his tray up with far more than his fair share. Shiro leaves boxes of his favourite candy bars inside his quarters, so that they’re always there when Keith needs a sugar hit. When Keith insists he isn’t hungry, Shiro gives him a look that could only truly be described as puppy dog eyes. 

It isn’t fair, really, because Keith can’t resist that look on Shiro’s face. 

He hasn’t even had the chance to feel hungry for days. 

The damning thing is that it makes Keith feel so happy. He feels safer than he has… ever, actually. Warm and protected. Well provided for. It makes Keith think awful things, completely out of the blue. Like how Shiro is a good man, and he’s going to make an amazing father to their pups someday. 

His pups, Keith has to correct himself. His pups, not theirs. If Shiro found a mate and had pups someday, he would be a good father. And if he did that, it almost certainly wouldn’t be with Keith. Keith was nothing like Shiro’s past romantic partners, you see. Adam had been an alpha too, just like Shiro, and from what Keith could gather Shiro had liked that about him. Shiro probably didn’t want an omega, and even if he did… he wouldn’t want one like Keith. 

He would want a strong omega, not an omega that was so pathetic that their body needed to create an entire fake baby just to get some attention. It made Keith the worst kind of cliche, and exactly the kind of person Shiro would never waste his time on. 

Keith is pretty sure that his hormones are trying to ruin his life. He prayed and prayed for what felt like weeks that this mess would go away. He tried to ignore the phantom baby in the hopes that it would make it not exist. It didn’t work. The weeks go by and Keith stays exactly the same. His pheromones still make Atlas soldiers jump out of his way. No one outside of his immediate pack can stand to be in a room with him alone, as if they’re afraid they’ll scare or hurt him. 

His belly gets a little bigger and a little softer with every week that passes. It can’t be helped by his new Shiro supplemented diet, either. It gets harder and harder to hide in his blade or paladin armor, so when Keith isn’t literally working he takes to wearing larger hoodies and sweatshirts, largely stolen from the other Paladins. 

None of them have mentioned it to him, not yet. They’re keeping the promise they made to Shiro and not pushing him. He can see their questioning and curious expressions sometimes, and the guilt inside him grows as slowly and steadily as the little baby-bump. 

Shiro gets more tactile, on top of everything else. Shiro and Keith are no strangers to each others touch. They’ve always been that way, slightly more connected than anybody else. They’re no strangers to hugging, or the firm hand that Shiro places on Keith’s shoulder sometimes. 

The new touches are different. 

They make Keith feel flushed and horrifically, a little bit horny. He’s used to Shiro touching him, but he isn’t used to the way that Shiro will sometimes put a hand on the small of his back to guide him through a group of people now. It’s careful and proprietary, as if he’s guarding Keith, as if he’s making sure that no one else can touch him. 

In all honesty it makes Keith want to jump him. 

It makes him want Shiros hands in other places. Firm on his hips, tight at the back of his neck, pressing against scent glands and leaving bruises with how hard he grips Keith. He wants Shiros fingers inside of him, stretching him open. He wants Shiros hands flat on his stomach while he coos to a real baby, a real pup that they made together. 

Keith could choke on how badly he wants it. 

He should make Shiro stop. He should tell Shiro not to touch him at all anymore. He should hiss and push Shiro away. It would be the right thing to do. Keith leans into Shiro’s hands on him instead, practically purring when Shiro pulls Keith in to lean against his side. 

“Can I put my arm around you?” Shiro asks, so honorable and so patient. 

Keith nods his head, and melts against Shiro when the well muscled arm slips in place. It cradles Keith against him, a shield against Keith and the rest of the world. Shiro’s scent gets all over him when they press together like that and Keith can’t even feel guilty, because Shiro’s scent is nothing but pleased, gently happy. He smells like the cat who got the cream, like he’s won some kind of prize just by getting to hold Keith close. He smells like sunshine, and Keith can’t get enough. 

So yeah, he doesn’t make Shiro stop. 

Chapter Text

Shiro’s newfound obsession with touching Keith doesn’t fade over the next week or so. If anything the sensation of Shiro’s hand lingering somewhere on Keith’s body has become commonplace and expected. His hand on Keith’s shoulder, or the small of his back. His arm brushing against Keith’s arm as they walk down a hallway or sit together and eat dinner. His arm around Keith’s shoulders when they settle down to watch a movie together in their downtime.

Shiro hugs Keith at least once a day, too. Not a quick brotherly hug, or a friendly greeting. He does it with a purpose and intent that feels unknowable to Keith, wrapping his strong arms around Keith and holding him there for long and lingering moments. Keith should really talk to him about it, or put a stop to it — but honestly, he can’t bring himself to. The hugging does wonders for both of them. It’s the quickest way to make his brain calm the fuck down and stop beating itself up. A tight squeeze, and his body is producing all those happy chemicals that make Keith — and everyone else in the room with him — blissed out and happy. 

It’s practically biological warfare. 

It’s manipulative. 

It means that people smile at Keith more now. It means that people never really have arguments when he’s in the room, too scared of ruining the happy omega pheromones by making Keith annoyed or angry or anxious. They much prefer the way Keith’s scent practically screams: Baby On Board, isn’t it great? Look at me, I’m a perfect tiny pregnant omega, who is going to have an actual real life totally not pretend baby! Treat me with care, I’m more delicate than I look! 

Or maybe they’re just scared of pissing off the Paladins. Shiro in particular. He’s always been protective, hasn’t he? He’s always been the person who looked out for Keith, and who was ready to step into the line of fire in the effort of protecting Keith from danger. Keith is used to Shiro wanting him to be safe. The difference is now that Shiro is showing it in all of those horrible and embarrassing Alpha ways. 

Take the day Shiro catches James Griffin with his arm around Keith’s shoulder, for example. Exhibit A — Shiro’s pheromones radiating: I am very big and very strong and very angry with you right now, back off before I hurt you. By all accounts Shiro looked like he was a step away from making the Kosmo teleport Keith as far away from James as possible. 

Kosmo, for his part, is a blessing. He’s the only one treating Keith like everything is completely normal. The same silent, stoic, loyal companion. Though Keith did have the sneaking suspicion that Kosmo was pleased with their current lot in life: Keith’s fake pregnancy meant that Kosmo got at least 70% more treats, head scratches from the Paladins, and blankets to lay on in their bedroom. There was also a massive uptick in the praise Kosmo was getting from the group at large.

(Like Shiro, leaning down to scratch behind Kosmo’s ears after Kosmo growls at James Griffin. Low voice murmuring: “Good job, buddy. You sure showed him. You and me gotta keep Keith safe, right?”) 

Lance, predictably, is the person who calls him out on the Shiro thing. 

They’re on the Atlas today and Keith is almost seasick with the hum of the ship under him — his fake baby doesn’t like spaceships, which is how Keith knows that his body really is betraying him. He would never grow a kid who didn’t feel comfortable zooming through space at the speed of light. Shiro is on the bridge, busy dealing with all of the issues that arise when you’re the captain of the most technologically advanced spaceship in Earth’s collection. 

Keith, on the other hand, is kneeling over one of the most technologically advanced toilets in Earth’s collection, throwing up the massive lunch that Shiro forced on him because his fake baby and his stupid omega body hates him. 

Lance, who had been walking down the hall side by side with Keith when his stomach decided to turn itself inside out, is kneeling beside him and rubbing soothing circles on his back. Keith thinks that the attention is almost worse than the vomiting. Not because he doesn’t like it, but because he likes it too much. Keith has always been touch starved. Attention starved. Affection starved. And as he kneels there with Lance attending to him, brushing sweaty strands of hair off his forehead for him, it occurs to him that nobody has done this for Keith since his father died. 

No one has ever been there to hold him when he was sick. 

It makes tears rise up and sting behind his eyes. He’s grateful that he can blame it on the sting of bile in his throat. 

“Do you want me to get Shiro?” Lance asks, cautious and careful, hand still resting on Keith’s forehead. 

Keith shakes his head. A stubborn and certain movement. There’s half a moment of consideration in Lance’s eyes before he nods his head in agreement, before he nods his head in agreement. There was really no need to bother Shiro just because Keith couldn’t keep food in his stomach today. Instead of running off to tell on Keith’s keeper, Lance lowers himself to sit properly on the ground of the Atlas’s bathroom, seemingly content to keep Keith company for as long as he feels the need to stay there. 

Silence lingers between them for a little while. It’s surprisingly comfortable even after all this time. Back in the old days, back when they first found the Lions and got to space in the first place, Keith and Lance wouldn’t have known how to spend more than 30 seconds alone together before they started fighting. They still squabbled, they still gave each other shit, but there was an ease and an understanding between them now. Mutual respect. Mutual care. 

They loved each other. 

They were practically brothers. 

They were connected by the Red Lion, who loved them both so well.

Silences between them aren’t forced and strained things anymore. They don’t have to fight when one of them is vulnerable and hurting and in bad need of friendship. 

Of course, Lance never met a long silence that he didn’t want to break. 

So he asks, out of nowhere, and in a gentle voice: “How’s that going, anyway?” 

Keith gives him a baffled, questioning look. “The vomiting? It sucks.”

“No. Not the spew, gross.” Lance looks at him like he’s an idiot, like the train of thought that Lance is happily riding on is obvious. “The Shiro thing. How are things going between you guys? I haven’t seen an alpha/omega pair draw out the courting stage for this long since my cousin Carla. Everyone is dying for the deets. Especially Allura, weirdly. I think she’s got some kind of anthropological fascination. She wants to study you guys and make you a museum exhibit.” 

Keith looks at Lance. Blank, until his face twists with confusion. 

“We’re not courting.” 

“What?” 

“Me and Shiro. We’re not courting.” 

“Shiro and I.” 

“What?”

“Your grammar is as fucked as your logic, Keithy cat.” 

Keith’s eyes narrow. He leans his elbow on the rim of the toilet bowl and rests his head in the palm of his hand, wishing that another wave of nausea would come along to force Lance to shut the hell up. 

“We’re not.” He insists, voice tense. 

“He walks you to your room at night.” Lance sounds like he’s laying out a trump card, like Keith should really know what he was talking about. 

“Yes.” Keith agrees, because of course Shiro does that. Shiro is a good friend, and they have a lot to talk about. 

“He leaves his scent all over you.” 

“Mhm.” 

“He gives you gifts and buys you food, and growls at other alpha’s who get too close to you like he’s a caveman. That’s courting, Keith. Come on, what kind of omega doesn’t know when an alpha is —”

Keith’s face must have shifted. Must have closed off, or crumpled, because Lance cuts himself off quickly. Keith wishes he wouldn’t. He was only saying what Keith already knew: that he was the kind of omega who couldn’t do anything right, that he was broken enough to warp everything about the typical experience. He swallows around the wave of sadness. 

“Shiro is into you. That’s all i’m saying.” Lance says, voice softer again. “He’s like, head over heels stupid crazy for you.” 

Keith frowns and turns the comment over in his mind. He’s wanted Shiro for what feels like a small eternity. He can still remember the first day he looked at Shiro and thought: Oh. Oh fuck, I want to see this man every day for the rest of my life. He’s always known that he would always love Shiro. It had never really bothered Keith that Shiro didn’t love him back. He wanted Shiro to be happy, to have someone who could make him happy, and that person had never been Keith. Shiro didn’t love Keith romantically, and that was okay. Keith has always been low maintenance anyway. He’s always been willing to take whatever he can get from Shiro. 

Except now he was getting a lot more from Shiro. The affection, the attention, the lingering closeness. Walks home and thoughtful gifts. Could Shiro really feel the same way that Keith does? 

“He would have said something.” Keith insists, voice quiet in the room between them. He feels torn open and vulnerable. 

Lance wrinkles up his nose, thoughtful. “I think the ‘I’m a strong Alpha who will protect Keith from all the non-existent dangers roaming the halls of this secure government facility’ act is him saying something.” 

“Oh,” Keith says, dull, and promptly throws up into the toilet bowl again. 

“Ugh,” Lance says, emphatic, but he’s already reaching out to rub soothing circles on Keith’s back again. There There, his scent is saying, Poor Clueless Little Thing. 

Lance lets them sit quietly again when Keith is done. He examines the cold white exterior of the Atlas bathroom as Keith rinses his mouth out with water. He watches Keith with careful and considering eyes, too, and it’s only because he’s paying attention that he catches Keith shivering slightly. 

“Are you cold?” Lance asks, suspicious, eyes narrowed in Keith’s direction. 

Keith shrugs his shoulders. It’s a little chilly on the Atlas today. He knows that he could go and complain to Shiro about it — and oh, wouldn’t that be so stereotypical, whining and leveraging his fragile omega status to make Shiro raise the heat on the entire ship? He doesn’t. It wouldn’t be so bad if his body wasn’t turning against him, leaving him nauseous and shaking as well as cold. He’s resigned himself to putting up with the chill until he can get back to his bedroom and burrow into the pile of pillows and blankets that he has fashioned into the most lavish nest Keith has ever had access to. 

(It’s a massive step up from the two think scratchy blankets that he had gotten used to when he was a child. It really is.) 

“A little bit, I guess.” He admits, and then he rolls his eyes, because Lance is already unzipping his blue hoodie and shoving it into Keith’s arms before Keith can argue about it. Keith holds onto it, the fabric that smells pleasantly warm and utterly like Lance. He stares at Lance for a long moment, eyebrow arched. 

“I’m too warm anyway.” Lance says, with a shrug of his shoulder. “You know me. I run hot. Cause I’m so se—” 

“Shut up.” Keith says. 

He puts on the hoodie, though. Of course he does. It smells like pack-brother, and he really was cold. He lies to himself when he hypothesizes that Lance might have given it to him regardless of his manipulative hypothetical baby gambit. Looking at Lance’s smugly pleased face, he can almost believe it. 

Keith and Lance barely make it to the meeting that they’re scheduled for on the command deck of the Atlas. Keith is still wrapped in Lance’s blue sweatshirt when they arrive there and he pulls the sleeves down over his hands when he moves to sit beside Shiro. 

Shiro smiles blindingly at him as he approaches. It’s only when Keith gets close enough to sit that the smile dims. Shiro looks at Keith, looks at the blue, and looks at Lance. Anyone who wasn’t familiar with Shiro down to the bones of him wouldn’t notice him subtly scenting the air, and definitely wouldn’t catch the tiny twitch of unhappiness in his face. His scent shifts, just slightly, from relaxed and open to Tense and Unhappy. What everyone does notice, unfortunately, is that Shiro has far less patience for Lance’s thoughts and ideas today. 

Lance doesn’t seem bothered by it. He gives Keith a significant, if not slightly smug, look. Keith is the only one who sees him mouth “I told you so” silently in Keith’s direction. 

Chapter Text

Keith spends a long time mulling over Lance’s words. The implication that Shiro might love him as more than a friend or a brother, that Shiro might want to be with him romantically, still seems almost mind-numbingly impossible. But the more he thinks about it the more he can see how Shiro’s behaviour is out of the norm. Keith begins to catalogue every strange moment and every shift in their dynamic. He stands in his bedroom and frets over the nest of blankets piled atop his Garrison issued bed as he does it. None of the fabric is laying quite right today, not since he had to throw his favourite red blanket into the wash basket, an unfortunate side-effect of letting Kosmo teleport onto his bed from anywhere. Muddy paw-prints are not conducive to a relaxing nest environment, no matter how well meaning the creature that put them there is.

It’s Shiro knocking at his door that takes him away from his thoughtful consideration. It’s as if Keith has summoned him by lingering too long on the recollection of his touches, or the look on his face when he smelled Lance all over Keith. Keith knows that it’s Shiro knocking and not anybody else almost instinctively. Shiro always knocks on his door in the exact same way — the same rhythm in the same pattern every single time, comfortingly familiar. 

The look on Shiro’s face when he opens the door is perplexing and enthralling all at once. It looks like Shiro has worked himself up into some kind of half-frantic, nonsensical state. It looks like Shiro was ready for bed before he came down to Keith’s room. He looks disheveled and physically relieved to see Keith standing before him. Even more perplexing than the look on his face is the bundle of fabric cradled in his arms. Several lumps of black and white, soft cotton and softer fleece. 

The thing about it is that none of the Paladins have been brave enough to give Keith nesting material face to face. He was too skittish, too shy about it. They were probably half certain that he would refuse them on principal, so they simply left the blankets where Keith would find them in private, safe in the knowledge that no one would have to acknowledge the trade at all. Keith flushes, knowing that Shiro can see the mess of his nest behind Keith. 

Keith’s heart beats a little faster as he takes in the sight. Shiro looks as bashful and worked up as Keith has ever seen him, shy and intense all at once. 

“Hi,” Keith says, useless, struggling to find anything else to say. 

“Hi,” Shiro replies, a sigh of a word. 

Keith’s eyes flicker down to the bundles of fabric in his arms again. Shiro is only wearing a t-shirt, arms uncovered, wrists and scent-glands touching the fabric openly. The stuff is bound to absolutely stink of Shiro. Looking now though the fabric seemed far too small to be blankets. 

“I think I’m good for blankets,” He says, regardless of that fact, and regardless of the fact that he wants to snatch Shiro’s gift right out of his arms so that Shiro can’t change his mind and deny it to him after all. 

Shiro’s face twitches, half ashamed, half fond. He looks even more bashful then. “They’re not blankets.” He says, slowly, and holds them out for Keith to take. It’s only then that Keith notices the shiny silver of a zipper on the black sweatshirt that Shiro has balanced on the top of the pile. Shiro swallows, nervous, waiting for Keith to accept the gift.

The gift of clothing. Shiro’s clothing. 

Shiro’s sweatshirts and hoodies, all the most comfortable ones. Keith can recognise them now. The black one that Shiro wears like its his second skin when he’s off duty. The old grey fabric of a Garrison sweatshirt that someone returned to Shiro when they got back to Earth. The white one that combined with Shiro’s hair makes him look so pure and untouchable that it almost breaks Keith’s heart. 

Shiro was giving him clothes that would be instantly recognizable as his, a visual mark for anyone who couldn’t catch the way that Shiro’s scent was baked into every strand of fabric. It would be a claiming thing, an all encompassing mark that proved to everyone that Keith belonged to someone.

Belonged to Shiro. 

It was, undeniably, a courting gift. Keith absentmindedly cursed Lance’s name in the back of his mind. With his heart lodged firmly in his throat he reached out, laid hands on the gift, and pulled it out of Shiro’s hands and into his own. The sweatshirts ended up cradled against his chest, against the hummingbird fast beating of his heart.

He can see the pure relief on Shiro’s face once the sweatshirts are firmly in Keith’s hands. They’re hovering there, the both of them, Keith on one side of the doorway and Shiro on the other. It’s another way that Keith should have known what Shiro was doing for weeks — he hasn’t come inside Keith’s room since this all started. It wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t be proper for him to invade Keith’s safe space, not unless they were… 

Not unless Keith was going to drag him into his carefully constructed nest, where they could decide to really and truly belong to one another. 

Standing in the doorway now, Shiro looks almost hungry, like he wants nothing more than to take a step over the boundary line.

“They’ll be more comfortable than Lance’s.” Shiro says, satisfied and gruff and gentle all at once. He looks curious, too. There’s a hint of hesitance in his eyes. Uncertainty and almost-vulnerability. “He said you were cold earlier. Said that was why he gave it to you.” 

He thinks about Lance. Lance claiming that Shiro liked him, or maybe even loved him. Lance claiming that Shiro was putting on a big strong Alpha act, that he might be jealous of any other Alpha that got near Keith. Lance was technically another Alpha. Lance had smothered Keith in his scent earlier, between touching him and giving Keith his clothes. Lance had been trying to take care of him, yes, but he had almost certainly also been trying to piss Shiro off just so that he could prove a point. 

Shiro was jealous. 

Keith felt like he had died and gone to heaven. He softened a little, letting his shoulders slump and his arms clench tighter around the fabric in his arms, the movement enough to let him catch a fresh wave of the Shiro-scent baked into the fabric. He wants, suddenly, to give into the omega urge to mollify his jealous Alpha.

(Not his alpha yet, he had to remind himself. But maybe soon. Maybe, maybe, maybe. The words were like a prayer in his mind. He was not above begging the universe for this.) 

“I was cold.” He admits, voice soft. “He said he does it for his sisters all the time. I guess it’s the same thing.” 

Shiro looks relieved at that, just a little bit. He nods his head. “Lance is a good friend.” He says, and it only sounds partially strained. “I’ll try keep the Atlas warmer next time. And if you’re cold you can — you can wear mine instead?” 

Keith nods his head in agreement. “They do look more comfortable.” 

The silence between them lingers for a moment. A beat where neither of them knows what to say. Keith has never considered courting before. He always rolled his eyes at the movies. He never took notice when other people did it. He always figured that no one would ever want to do it with him. He had been a scrawny child with an attitude problem. Keith wasn’t the kind of person that you put time and effort into. He certainly wasn’t the kind of omega that people wanted to mate. 

“You shouldn’t feel bad about the cold.” He says, finally, another effort to make Shiro feel better. “I was space-sick, mostly.”

Shiro’s eyebrows shoot up at that. Keith loved being in space a hell of a lot more than he loved being on the ground. He was always itching to get on a ship, or into his lion, and feel the rush of movement in his gut. Shiro frowned just a little bit and nodded his head. 

“No more meetings on the Atlas.” He declared, perplexingly. “I don’t care what reasons people give. It’s not good for the —”

Shiro cut himself off before he could finish the statement. Still, even half of the words were enough to make the elation drop like a stone into the pit of Keith’s stomach, turning into something sickly instead of the light and tender joy he had been feeling only moments before. 

It’s not good for the baby. Those were the only logical words that Shiro could have been about to say.

It brought reality crashing down around his ears. 

Shiro thought he was going to have a baby. Shiro thought that someone had knocked him up. That was when all of this had started — the extra attention, the extra concern coming from Shiro. It made sense in a certain way. Shiro was always protective. Shiro had the kind of ideals that wouldn’t let him leave a pregnant omega in need alone and mateless. It had always been his duty, in Shiro’s mind, to protect Keith from the rest of the world. That didn’t mean that Shiro wanted him. That didn’t mean that Shiro needed him, or loved him.

It didn’t mean that Shiro would be doing this if it wasn’t for the baby.

The baby that didn’t even fucking exist.

Keith swallows roughly, and his face must fall, because Shiro’s face falls as well. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I know you’re not ready to talk about —” And of course, that made sense too. Shiro had ordered the Paladins not to push Keith, and all of them had followed those orders. He was trying to coax Keith closer this whole time and get Keith to open up about it. 

Keith purses his lips and has to fight against the urge to cry. He can’t cry, because he can’t be any more of the stereotypical hysterical omega than he already is. It’s mortifying enough already that he’s made Shiro feel like he has to do this. His fingers clench in the fabric of Shiro’s gifted sweatshirts one last time before he pushes them away and back into Shiro’s arms. Shiro has to scramble to take them, careful not to let them hit the floor. 

“There isn’t going to be a baby.” Keith admits. Voice tense and laced with shame and frustration and guilt. Cheeks red with his own mortification. His scent is choked with sadness, because he can’t believe it’s come to this, he can’t believe he has to say it to Shiro’s face. This will be the end of all of the good things. No more touching. No more thoughtful gifts. No more long nights spent tucked up between Shiro and the rest of the Paladins. 

They’ll know him for what he is. A fraud. Someone so broken that he can’t control his own biology. They’ll resent him once they realise that all of their efforts have been for nothing. 

Part of him is expecting Shiro to be angry with him. He’s braced and ready for the fallout. Shiro doesn’t look angry though. He looks — stricken, devastated, on Keith’s behalf as well as his own. Shiro’s eyes glance over Keith’s face, reading his expression. He glances down at Keith’s stomach too, at the tiny bump there that should have held a tiny child. His face crumples a little in a grief that Keith can’t understand for a long moment. 

“No baby?” Shiro says, devastated. “Oh, baby.” 

(It’s strange, isn’t it, how the same word can have two different meanings? How Keith can hear the difference when Shiro is talking about the hypothetical child and when he’s talking about Keith.) 

Keith understands after that. He flinches away from Shiro’s words, from the sadness in them, from the misunderstanding. Shiro thought he lost it somehow, that something had gone wrong. Of course he would think that. It was the only logical conclusion to jump to, because anybody who wasn’t going to have a baby would have said it from the start, wouldn’t they? Keith could have laughed this off a long time agi. But he had been selfish instead. He had wanted too much for the Paladins to just care about him the way he needed so badly. 

Keith takes a faltering step away from Shiro and shakes his head. He’s furious at himself. He’ll never forgive himself for doing this. 

“There’s no baby.” He says, and he sounds as angry as he feels. He feels hysterical. He feels like he’s going to choke on his own pain. He’s not ready for Shiro to hate him. He can’t possibly draw it out any longer. “There was never a baby. It’s not real, okay? It’s some kind of stupid cry-for-attention omega self defense thing. My stupid broken body got scared and it made up a fake baby so people would be nice to me, but it isn’t real.” 

Shiro’s forehead wrinkles in thought. “No baby.” He says, again, ineloquent. Not a question this time. A statement of fact. Terrible, awful fact. 

Keith swallows again and fights back against the tears crowding into his eyes. “It’s not real. So you don’t have to do this worried thing anymore, okay? It’s fine. I won’t hold you to any of it.” 

The sweatshirts drop out of Shiro’s hands and hit the floor with a soft thunk. It’s devastating, and Shiro is going to storm away now and tell everyone how broken and useless and weird Keith is. They’ll never let him live it down. He’ll never be able to show his face to the Paladin’s again after the way he’s used them. The thing is… Shiro doesn’t storm away. In an instant and a flash of movement, Shiro has stepped into Keith’s bedroom and his arms are wrapping around Keith’s body.

Shiro pulls him into a tight hug. His arms are a vice-grip yet he somehow still manages to make Keith feel safe and kept and quiet inside of them. There’s a moment where Keith tries to fight it, where he tries to squirm out of Shiro’s touch. He doesn’t deserve it and Shiro shouldn’t be bothering with him anymore. He’s taken enough from Shiro already under false pretenses, more than Shiro would have ever offered him if Keith hadn’t decided to gaslight the entire Garrison into seeing him as something worthwhile. It only makes Shiro hold on to him tighter. 

“Are you stupid?” Keith asks, surly and choked up from the weight of his own preemptive grief, the sense of loss settling into his bones already. “I’m not pregnant. You don’t have to waste your time coddling me. None of you do, not anymore, it can all go back to normal and —” 

“Keith.” Shiro says, rough again, intense with a feeling that Keith doesn’t understand. His hand has found the back of Keith’s head, fingers rubbing soothingly through his hair and against his scalp as Shiro guides him to rest his head against Shiro’s shoulder. “Shh. It’s okay, baby. Just let me take care of you. Can you do that?” 

The request is so earnest that it takes Keith off guard, and before he knows it, he finds himself settling into the comforting warmth of Shiro’s touch. 

Chapter Text

Keith stays safe in the expanse of Shiro’s arms for what feels like hours. Shiro is content to hold him there, with cooing comforting sounds spilling out of his mouth. Shiro is content to let Keith cry, frustrated tears spilling out of his eyes and down his cheeks. Keith has always hated crying in front of other people. It was a weakness he could never allow himself — that was a fact he had learned at a very young age. Crying meant that you were someone who could be broken, someone who could be hurt by words or actions. It made you a problem case sometimes, or someone who was looking too hard for attention 

Shiro, though. Shiro would never judge him for crying. Shiro has never judged him for anything — even now, when Shiro should be giving him shit and calling him out for this extended lie, there is no anger or judgement in his voice. So Keith lets himself cry, silent, angry tears flooding over his face. He lets himself mourn the life he’s had for the past few weeks and lets himself worry about how this is going to change everything, his relationship with every single Paladin. 

When the tears dry up and his hitching breaths even out into something more steady, he feels Shiro’s hand at the back of his head. Shiro holds him close, even as he shifts so he can look down in Keith’s eyes. Shiro is opening his mouth to say something comforting, something heartbreaking in its softness, and Keith cuts him off before any words can escape.

“I’m sorry.” He says, the one thing he should have said at the start of this. Maybe that would have gone smoother. I’m sorry, there’s no baby, I was faking it. 

Shiro’s expression shifts again, once more saddened by the news, by the words leaving Keith’s lips. Saddened at the subterfuge maybe, disappointed in Keith for letting this go on for so long when he could have been honest from the start. 

“Don’t,” Shiro says, firm and commanding, a tone that brokers no argument. “Don’t be sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong.” 

“I lied.” Keith argues, despite Shiro’s tone. His own guilt and shame is a monster that sits heavily on his chest — these are the kind of negative feelings that Keith has never been able to chase away. His mind is always fast to tell him the ways that he has messed up, the ways that he is more broken and more damaged than other people. When it comes to his own biology in particular. His strange body, the little quirks that make him distinctly different: heats that get messed up and eyes that flash Galra yellow when he’s angry. 

“You never said anything. I assumed.” Shiro is gentle, a hand coming up to wipe one last stray tear away from Keith’s cheek. “We all assumed. That doesn’t mean you did anything bad. You don’t have to stay anything that you don’t want to.” A beat. A moment of hesitance. The lull in a conversation that appears when Shiro is deciding if he wants to push Keith or not. He seems to come to the conclusion that pushing will be helpful, because he takes a small breath and carries on: “Not that I wouldn’t like to know, exactly, if you wanted to explain.”

Keith stays sullenly silent for a long moment. He has to do this. He has to say the real words that offer a real explanation. He concedes and pitches forward, pressing his face to the sturdy muscle of Shiro’s shoulder so that the other man won’t be able to see his face when he says the words. “It’s a phantom pregnancy, or something like that. Omega self defence mechanism. Some doctor online said that it was like…a holdover from caveman times? So that your clan would protect you from rabid tigers or foreign warlords and shit. I dunno why it’s happening now — something must have flipped a switch, shoved me over the line.”

“Oh, baby.” Shiro says, and Keith’s stomach squirms at the term of endearment. 

“Yeah.” Keith says, a heavy and shaken sigh escaping from his chest. At least its out there now. At least Shiro knows. “So… you don’t have to waste any more time coddling me anymore.”

“Keith,” It’s a gentle and scolding tone of voice, mirrored by the way Shiro wraps his arms around Keith’s body again, holding him in a warm embrace. “You have to know I haven’t been acting like this just because of the baby.” 

Keith tries to squirm away. “It was fake, though.” 

“It was fake, so no hugs for you?” Shiro asks, letting Keith pull back far enough that he can see Shiro’s face again. Shiro’s warm eyes and hesitant smile, far too kind and far too gentle. He should hate Keith. He should never speak to Keith again. He doesn’t look anything even close to angry. “Your body doing things outside of your control isn’t a reason for me to stop taking care of you, Keith. All of us just want you to be safe.” 

A frown spreads across Keith’s face. Confusion is thick in the air and thick in his scent. He doesn’t understand that, and he shakes his head just the slightest bit. 

“I mean it,” Shiro carries on. “We would have been doing all of this for you before too, if we thought you would accept it. The baby was just a breaking point where we decided it didn’t matter if you were flighty about it or not.” 

“Really?” 

“Really.” A warm hand finds its way to his shoulder. “I definitely haven’t been courting you just because I thought you were pregnant.” 

Keith blushes bright red and it makes Shiro smile – a wider, happier smile than any of the others that have graced his beautiful face since Keith broke the news. He looks like a benevolent god, like a storybook hero. Shiro has always been the textbook definition of a knight in shining armour, and Keith’s stomach squirms at the idea that Shiro might want him.

“You weren’t?” It sounds stupid, and it isn’t what he really should be asking. But Keith has to make sure, he has to double and triple check that Shiro hadn’t been doing all of that stuff out of a sense of misplaced duty. 

Shiro inches a tiny bit closer, bumps his nose against Keith’s in a way that makes his breath hitch in his chest. “I wasn’t. I’m not.” A smile, delicate. “I’m doing it because I’m in love with you. Though I do have to admit that the thought of some other jerk of an Alpha touching you kicked my ass into gear.” 

“Oh,” Keith can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. His mind grinds to a halt for a second. Objectively he’s always known that Shiro loved him. They’ve been friends for years. Shiro has always been willing to go out on a limb for him, they’ve always had a deep connection that some people couldn’t understand. He hasn’t been brave enough to imagine a world where Shiro would love him as more than a best friend, a world where Shiro would be in love with him and choose to pursue that love. 

“Oh,” Shiro says, fond, amused. “As long as its okay with you, i’m going to keep courting you, and taking care of you — I’ll do it for as long as you let me, Keith.” 

Keith nods his head, a quick movement. He wants it. He wants it so badly. He had been ready to accept it before, when Shiro arrived at his door so openly frantic for Keith to wear his clothes and smell like him instead of Lance. He trusts Shiro enough to know that he wouldn’t be offering this if he didn’t mean it. Shiro would never play with his heart like that, he would never mess Keith around if he wasn’t absolutely certain it would end well for the both of them. Shiro was too good a person for that. 

“Good.” Shiro says, nodding his head in turn. “That’s settled, then.” 

Shiro stays with him for the night. Shiro with his gentle hands. Nothing happens more than Shiro gently holding him, pressing gentle kisses to his forehead. He makes it clear to Keith that they don’t need to rush into anything — they have all the time in the world. 

Keith falls asleep in Shiro’s arms, wearing one of Shiro’s sweatshirts, safe in the knowledge that no one is going to hate him for his subterfuge. 

He wakes up gently and slowly to the sound of voices. It seems like all of his friends have piled into his room in the hours since he’s fallen asleep. And fuck, Keith is grateful for it. He’s grateful for the scent of his pack in the air, the fact that his room finally feels completely un-clinical, more like a pack-den than a standard issue Garrison officer’s bedroom. 

He’s even more grateful that Shiro has taken on the burden on filling the rest of the Paladins in. Keith keeps his eyes closed and feigns sleep as he lets their voices wash over him again. Shiro’s fingers are brushing gently and soothingly through his hair, and he doesn’t want to move for fear of the movement stopping. He doesn’t want to move until he knows none of the Paladins are angry with him. 

He should be strong in the faith that they won’t be — but Keith has always been flighty, frantic and insecure. He’s no stranger to the tables turning in his relationships and no stranger to being labelled as a lost cause. The odds of him being abandoned are never zero. 

The Paladins don’t abandon him. They don’t even sound upset. They take the news calmly, with gentle confusion yes, but also with complete and utter understanding. 

“I think that happened to one of my aunts once.” Lance says, in a low tone. It almost makes Keith smile. It seems that Lance always has some relative or another who has experienced something similar to whatever problem a Paladin might come to him with. The perks and the burdens of having more family than Keith can even conceptualise. “She wrecked her car and then boom, imaginary baby. It freaked her mom and dad out something awful.” 

They discuss it further, the ins and outs of it all. Keith doesn’t flinch at their sympathetic tones. He tries not to feel condescended to because objectively he knows they don’t see him as a stupid, silly omega. He’s proven time and time again that he isn’t weak. He’s claimed his rightful place as a leader in their world, and just because they have sympathy for his pain doesn’t mean that they respect him any less. The longer that they talk about it the more relaxed he feels, the surer he is that his life isn’t going to crumble around him. 

Eventually, they even make him feel safely amused. 

“It’s a relief to me.” Pidge says. “Matt kept worrying about what we were going to do with a Voltron Baby and it really threw a wrench in his productivity.” 

“Yeah,” Lance agrees. His voice is just a little bit longing beyond the words, as if he has something on his mind and he isn’t sure how to say it. He finds the word after a lingering moment. “I mean. It’s one less thing to worry about? I dunno, though… I can’t help but be kind of sad. No baby blankets? No onesies? No tiny mini-Keith with a tiny baby mullet?” 

“No spit up on our armour.” Pidge says, amusement thick in her voice. “No endless crying.” 

“But baby socks, Pidge. Have you seen baby socks?” 

The very idea of them makes Keith’s stomach clench. Baby socks, tiny things, smaller than anything you could imagine. He’s never pictured himself with a baby, but now that the idea has overtaken his entire life, now that his body is play-acting at growing life… he has to stop and consider it. He doesn’t think he would hate a baby if his life was settled and steady enough. He doesn’t think he would hate a baby if he had one with the right Alpha. 

Shiro would be a good dad, he thinks to himself once again. Weeks ago that had been a damning thought, one he had to shove out of his mind the second that he had it. He wasn’t allowed to imagine it back then, but now… Now, Shiro was courting him. Now, Shiro had made it abundantly clear that he intended to mate and marry Keith at some point in the future. Now, he’s allowed to acknowledge that Shiro was made for fatherhood. 

“Griffin thought it was kind of hot.” Hunk says, out of the blue. There is a moment of hesitant silence in the air around them. Keith is distracted from it by the slight unhappy huff of air that leaves Shiro’s lungs. Keith can only really hear it because Shiro is sitting so close to him. Keith is laying there, head tucked against his pillow, back to the room. And Shiro is sitting beside him, arm extended so he can pet through Keith’s hair. He’s close enough to catch the slight possessive hint to Shiro’s scent at the very mention of James Griffin thinking Keith was sexy.

“I mean…” 

“Lance.” Allura’s scolding voice. 

“Sorry, sorry. It’s alpha hindbrain shit, babe. We’re programmed to think knocked up omega’s are hot. It’s not my fault.” Lance’s voice is defensive, and it almost makes Keith blow his cover. He has to physically force himself not to laugh. Lance never met a hole he didn’t somehow dig deeper for himself. 

“Shut the fuck up, Lance.” Shiro pitches in, finally, sounding strained, his fingers stopping their gentle movement in Keith’s hair. Keith is glad that he’s turned away from the group, that his face is obscured by the soft hood of Shiro’s sweatshirt and pressed against Shiro’s leg. He’s glad that none of them can see him blushing at the jealous tone of Shiro’s voice, the alpha rumble of it that says: back off. 

“Jesus, really with the death glare, Shiro? Okay, fuck it. I take it back. Your boyfriend has zero hotness, are you happ— why are you glaring more??” 

“Once again: Shut the fuck up, Lance.” 

Hunk and Pidge are laughing, sounds of pure joy at Lance’s expense. Keith can perfectly imagine the look on both of their faces. He wishes that someone would take a picture of this scene so he could frame it on his wall. 

“You’ll listen if you know what’s good for you.” Allura tells him, half-annoyed, but Keith can hear the laughter she’s barely holding back. Apparently Jealous Shiro is something that all of them can find joy in these days. 

“I can’t win with you guys.” Lance complains, his voice louder than anyone has been before that moment, and Keith hears the thunk of someone finally reaching out to slap the back of his head. 

“Shh,” Hunk objects. “You’re gonna wake him up.” 

Keith considers staying quiet, but the moment is really too good to pass up. Plus, he’s been so tense for the last few weeks that it’s been hard to properly joke around with his friends. “You woke him up five minutes ago.” He says, voice low and gruff. “Thank’s for the compliments, Lance.” 

A beat of silence, before Hunk and Pidge and even Allura burst into laughter again. 

“No!” Lance objects. “Fuck! You’re never gonna let me live this down.” 

“Nope,” Keith says, and means it. Everyone can hear the smile in his voice. When he twists to face the room, his eyes meet Shiro’s among the masses of them, and Keith feels safer than he has in months. 

Chapter Text

There is a brief moment between slumber and wakefulness where everything feels perfect. Keith is surrounded by golden warmth and everything is okay, nothing could possibly be wrong. The bed beneath him is soft, blankets all around, and there are strong arms holding him close. 

Shiro’s strong arms. 

Keith smiles, still mostly asleep. He feels squirmy and flushed as he breathes in Shiro’s scent. He feels horny, wet and slick and well-kept. Shiro’s hand, the flesh one, is resting on top of his stomach. His strong alpha is keeping him and their pup so safe. He’s reaching down to twine his fingers with Shiro’s, practically purring, when reality hits him. 

Their pup? 

Keith makes a punched out, embarrassed sound, pressing his face into the pillows. Stupid manipulative body. Stupid fake baby. Stupid omega hormones. He hates this. He hates himself. He hates everything about this — save, maybe, for the fact that Shiro is here holding him through the awful mess of it all. 

“I can hear your cogs turning.” Shiro says, breath against Keith’s neck, sleep rough — Which doesn’t help the wet-slick-horny feeling. 

Keith makes another sound, embarrassed, frustrated with himself. 

“What did I tell you yesterday?” 

“I didn’t do anything wrong.” Keith grumbles, unhappy with it. 

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Shiro confirms, a kiss against the bare skin of Keith’s neck. “And I’m in love with you.” 

Keith tries to keep his head held high, despite it all. It’s hard, when he walks through the halls of the Garrison and people are still looking at him like he’s a prime example of omega fertility. Nothing has changed, really, now that the Paladin’s know — because no one is telling on him and embarrassing him in front of the entire Garrison, thankfully. 

No, the Alpha’s that roam the halls still give him as much distance as they possibly can, without turning and running in the other direction. The scant few omega’s on base look at him with both fondness and jealousy as Lance, Hunk and Shiro dote on him. 

And oh, they do still dote. 

Keith is flustered by it, annoyed, a feral cat whose newfound masters are trying fruitlessly to domesticate it. 

Pidge and Allura aren’t all that much better. Pidge at least tries to treat Keith like they always have, but they’ve got this idea in their head like Keith needs to be protected, and they’re the one to do it. He’s caught them several times now researching his condition on their computers, researching ways to make an omega feel cared for and at ease during war time. 

It seemed like an impossible idea to him.

At ease? How was he supposed to be at ease when there was a literal evil empire coming to destroy his entire planet? And Keith, manipulative useless Keith, was supposed to be in charge of the people stopping them. 

Pidge and Allura are the ones who drag him to the Garrison medical center. 

It takes them two tries — the first time, Shiro came with them, and they all had to leave because he couldn’t stop growling at the Alpha doctor that kept touching Keith. Baby or no baby, Shiro was in the over-protective and over-posessive stage of courtship. 

(Keith wasn’t much help, when it came to Shiro’s protectiveness or posessiveness. One hint of a growl and Keith’s inner-omega started preening, pheramones telling the entire room how much he needed to be protected, what a big strong sweet alpha Shiro was. He was practically swooning by the time the doctor threw in the towel and told them to come back the next day, sans agressive alphas.) 

“I just want it to stop.” Keith told the doctor, the next day. He was desperate. He was at his wits end, still awfully embarrassed and pulling his hair out at the idea that this could keep happening forever. 

Pidge rubbed a comforting hand over his back, as he said the words. 

“Aren’t their drugs you can give me? Horomone correctors?” 

The doctor gave Keith a sympathetic, but not pitying, look. 

“I’m afriad that trying to reverse this process with more hormones might only throw your body into overdrive.” 

Keith groaned, he put his head in his hands, he tried not to cry. 

“Mr. Kogane, I know this isn’t what you want to hear — but the best thing you can do for yourself is exactly what you’re already doing. Try to relax, and let your pack take care of you. Things will sort themselves out when they’re ready to and not a minute before that.” 

If Keith glared at the doctor after that, Pidge and Allura were tactful enough not to mention it to the other boys. 

Keith tries to keep his head held high, and tries to let his pack take care of him. 

He sinks back into Shiro’s arms when he leaves the doctors office, lets Shiro pick him up and spin him around in a happy greeting — as if Keith has been away at war for weeks now, and not sitting 200 feet away for 45 minutes. Shiro scents him, nuzzling against his neck, soaking him in the aura of strong-protective-loving alpha. 

“Ew.” Lance says, while they hug. “You know, when I was rooting for the Keith/Shiro love train, I didn’t anticipate actually having to witness their PDA.” 

Keith shifts enough to glare at him. 

“Seriously, it was better when you guys just pined and made gooey-eyes at each other.” 

“Shut up, Lance.” Pidge tells him. 

“I’ll second that.” Allura agreed, though she did link her arm with Lance’s as they all walked down the hallway, away from the medical center. 

Shiro relaxed the further they got away from the doctor. His shoulders slumped, a happy smile spread on his face. 

“I don’t know,” Hunk half-whispered to the others. “Shiro is kind of funny when he gets jealous. Like a growly puppy.” 

“Hunk.” Shiro warns.

But his hand is wrapped around Keith’s, and his scent is all over Keith, and he had made an ass out of himself for the last day and a half because he didn’t like the idea of another man touching Keith. It was adorable. It was so sweet. It made Keith feel like there was an entire swarm of bees in his stomach, lightheaded like he just drank jet-fuel. 

“Puppy.” Keith muses, soft. A smile spreads across his face when Shiro looks down at him, eyebrows knit tight. “Hunk’s right. You’re just a puppy.” 

Shiro lets out a small, unhappy growl. 

“Such a puppy.” Lance agrees. 

“Maybe you should get a collar for him, Keith.” Pidge, voice sly and joking and lovely. “So all the other omegas know who he belongs to.” 

Keith smiles at that idea, bright and warm. Yes, yes. He likes the idea of Shiro belonging to him. This thing between them still feels fledgeling soft and fragile. They’re only just getting started — and yet somehow Keith feels safe in it, feels sure that Shiro really does want him, really does love him. Shiro wouldn’t have acted like this if it wasn’t true. Shiro wouldn’t have said the words if he didn’t mean them. 

If there was one thing Keith was sure of, it was this: Shiro would never lie to him. If he had only started the courting because of the baby, fake as it was, he would have admitted that. It would have been awful, and it would have been painful, but he would have come clean in the end. 

No. Shiro wanted him. Shiro was in love with him.

Shiro belonged to him, and soon Shiro was going to mate with him and mark him and they would belong to each other, only to each other. 

“Can you guys cut it out?” Shiro doesn’t quite snap the words out. No, they’re a little strained, but fond all the same. Maybe it’s the lighting, but Keith is pretty sure he sees a blush on Shiro’s cheeks, creeping out around the edges of the scar that spans across his face. 

Allura insists that the doctors instructions must be taken seriously. This means that the Paladins need to spend every spare moment pampering their omega, their brother, their packmate. 

Lance insists that this means they need to have another sleepover. 

Packs are at their safest when they den down together. It allows everyone to find balance, equilibrium. It wasn’t as common as it used to be, big communal dens with an entire pack-group together. But god, if Keith didn’t love the idea. It was exactly the kind of thing he had imagined and longed for when he was a kid, watching old sitcoms on TV with dysfunctional but happy family units. He had always wished he could have something like that. 

He ends up purring in a communal nest in Shiro’s room. His head on Allura’s lap, her fingers massaging his head until he’s purring from it. Happy, happy, happy. That’s the only thing his scent seems to be able to say. The proximity of him in this state must be giving everyone else a contact high, because they all smell happy too. Happy and safe. Happy and loving. Happy and warm, laughing as they discuss anything and everything over Keith’s head. 

All Keith has to do — or so they tell him — is let himself get all blissed out. All he has to do is let his body unwind for the first time in years, let go of the tension in his shoulders and the knotted mess of worry in the pit of his stomach. No thinking about the Galra, no thinking about Voltron, no thinking about the weight of the world that rests heavily on all of their shoulders.

There will be time enough for that in the future. 

For now, all the need to do is love each other. All they need to do is let Lance start streaming shitty rom-coms, and eat Hunk’s cooking. All they need to do is listen to Pidge info-dump on the dymanics and history of phantom pregancies in cave-man times. 

“How fascinating,” Allura keeps saying, entirely earnest.

“I have to admit, Keith, your fake baby is kind of metal.” Lance tells him, at one point.” 

“I’m grateful for it.” Hunk tells him. “We all needed this, you know? The excuse to wind down and practice some self care.” 

So, yeah. Keith is happy. Keith is finally relaxing. For the first time in weeks, Keith isn’t worried about everyone thinking he’s weird or manipulative. For the first time in weeks, Keith isn’t plagued by secrets and shame. For the first time in weeks, he’s feeling good. 

“You alright, baby?” Shiro asks him, during a lull of quiet. His fingers take Allura’s place in Keith’s hair, petting through the expanse of dark strands. 

Keith nods his head, smiles at Shiro. 

“I’m getting there.