Premium Seats [Klance] ✅

22 - Bad News

A/N
well..

KEITH

Walking into the living room to find Shiro sprawled all over the couch was no surprise to Keith, considering he'd been up all night in his room. So really, he could hear everything; from Shiro's hastened footsteps going back and forth to him grunting profanities every few minutes. Not to mention breaking a mug at exactly 4:08 a.m., waking up Adam and leading to a mild argument about "Takashi, you've been on this for a week already – seriously, get some sleep" and "I'm not gonna kiss you for two weeks if you keep doing this".

Obviously slumber had betrayed Keith once again, leaving him to stare in the darkness with a pair of bags weighing down his eyes. And it happened on a school night too, as if his life wasn't already plunging into a chasm. It was nearing Christmas break, yet Keith had an inkling that his demons would he the ones celebrating the holiday.

Hoisting his bag over his shoulder, he approached his brother, who was still clad in his uniform. Someone – Adam, obviously – had removed his boots and thrown a blanket over his body. And judging by another set of pillows and a blanket on the armchair, next to which the coffee table was littered with open folders and an array of official documents and reports, Adam had camped out here too.

Keith couldn't blame Adam for initiating a quarrel. He himself had been at the verge of strangling his brother for not getting some rest. It was as if the man had taken sleep for granted.

"Morning, Keith," Adam walked into the room, already dressed for work, a mug of coffee cradled in his hand.

"Hey," Keith greeted, still studying Shiro's sleeping figure. "Did you knock him out or something?"

"I was this close," Adam held up his hand, bringing his thumb and forefinger together but barely making them touch. "Thankfully he passed out."

"Fatigue won after all,"

Adam tilted his head aside, surveying him intently through his spectacles. "What about you?" he asked. Did you get some sleep too?

"A lost battle," Keith shrugged indifferently, aware that the dark rings around his eyes were already hindering any lies from being bought. "As usual."

Knowing that any words of consolation wouldn't do anything except raise his hackles, Keith swept out of the room to pour himself some cereals. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate the solicitude (he really did), but the mere fact that they were repeated was starting to grow wearisome. It didn't have the effect it usually brought out, and it made Keith feel more pitied.

He hated that his mental illness acted like some kind of stigma to his whole existence.

Keith was on his fifth spoon of cereals when the doorbell rang. Twice. "Got it!" he shouted, leaving the kitchen before Adam could.

Krolia stood in the corridor as soon as the door swung open. Like the previous occasions in which they'd seen each other, she was wearing a suit, its collars barely obscuring her tattoos. Her businesslike mien quickly faded into one of surprise when she saw who it was that had opened the door.

"Keith," she spoke.

"Krolia,"

"May I come in?" she asked tentatively. "It's rather impor—"

He stepped back and gestured inside. "Yeah, I figured," he said. "Boutta head to school in an hour anyway."

She paused on her way in. "Would you like me to send you off?"

Keith opened his mouth, the "No, thank you" at the brink of his tongue. But then he suddenly reminded himself that Krolia, his only living parent, was trying to make it up to him – even if sending him off to school wasn't her initial plan when she arrived here.