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vldkeith · 3 years

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keithtober💢🎃🔪 day 27: texas🤠

a/n: im texan so this is like really personal to me

🔗read on ao3

content included: making fun of texans, team "bonding" (bullying), little a broganes

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“So,” Pidge says, leaning back on the palms of her hands, glasses doing that mischievous glint, “Texas, huh?”

Keith groans, slapping a palm against his face while Hunk and Lance collapse into laughter in front of him, seemingly driven to tears of mirth just by the mere mention of that specific state in America.

Bad decision, Keith thinks, recalling morosely his response of, “Lance, I’m from Texas, I know what fucking roja means,” when Lance started saying something in Spanish. Really bad decision.

“Keith, Keith, can you say ‘y’all’ for me?” Hunk asks eagerly, recovering briefly from his laughing fit to ask Keith this ridiculous question. He’s gazing at Keith with stars in his eyes, though, the very picture of innocent eagerness, and Keith just cannot find it within himself to say no to that.

He heaves a great sigh. “Y’all.”

There they go again, falling over themselves with giggles. Keith gives them all a scowl—this is all just a joke to them! Texas is his heritage, and they’re making fun of it! The nerve!

“Now you gotta say it in a sentence, Keith,” Lance says breathlessly. “Go on, go on, say it!”

Why am I doing this? Keith thinks as he says, “Uh, y—y’all are really fucking annoying.”

Lance positively howls, and Hunk screeches, “Yes, exactly!”, locking hands with Pidge and bouncing with excitement, even though they’re both still sitting on the floor. Keith doesn’t get paid enough for this. In fact, he doesn’t get paid at all, and he certainly didn’t get paid to be a Texan.

Would he have chosen this life for himself, if he could have? Keith considers for a moment. Well, maybe he would’ve chosen to be born somewhere other than in a random Texas desert, but a Dallas hospital doesn’t sound too bad…

“Wait, Texan Keith,” Hunk begins, snapping Keith back to his torture fest. Keith’s hackles automatically raise at the new nickname—kill him now. “Did you ever ride a horse? Wear a cowboy hat?”

“Oh, he definitely wore a cowboy hat,” Pidge says, nodding wisely. “You like, have to to be Texan, don’t you, Keith?”

Lance scoffs. “A cowboy hat on a mullet? Jesus Christ, could you be any more like Billy Ray Cyrus, Keith?”

“I never even said I actually wore a cowboy hat!” Keith bursts out, annoyed. He quiets down immediately, though, a childhood memory flashing through his mind. “…I, um, did wear one, though. But it was only once!”

Shouts of “Noooo, he did NOT” and “Oh my GOD” greet him at that, and Keith decides then and there that he’s going to pull a Matilda and glue cowboy hats to all of their heads, see how they like it.

Are there cowboy hats in space? Well, there are cows in space, so, their hats shouldn’t be too far off…

Wait, what?

“Okay, okay, Keith, I need to know: have you gone to a rodeo?” Pidge asks, grin lighting up her face.

Thankfully, Keith can answer this one with confidence. “No,” he says firmly, “I haven’t.”

Hunk boos him, and Keith immediately shoots him a sharp glare.

“Texas is just another state, can you guys shut up?” he says, voice thick with offense. There are a lot of conceptions about Texas, sure, but these guys are reacting more to that than they did to Keith being half-alien! What’s the deal?

“It’s noooooot, though,” Lance whines, shaking his head. He gets up close in Keith’s space, making Keith swallow and glance away. “Like, when my parents were still in Cuba, I’m pretty sure Texas was one of the maybe four states they could place on a map. Texas, Florida, California, Hawaii. Oh, and Alaska,” Lance recounts, pulling a finger down with each state he names. Keith recovers from his momentary fluster, and glares.

“Then it’s the same as your state, Florida boy,” he says, tone icy. Lance rolls his eyes.

“I wasn’t born in Florida, though. Not the same.”

“Yes, it is!”

All Lance gives him in response is a doubtful, somewhat pitying look, which Keith turns away from in disgust.

“I hate all of you,” he declares, as Hunk and Pidge continue to snicker behind him. “I’m never telling you anything about my life ever again.”

“Wait, I have one more question, and then you can, you know, do that.” Hunk uses his knees to walk over to Keith and grabs him by the shoulders. Keith swallows, his brain short-circuiting into cuteboytouchingmewhatdoidoahhhh once again.

Hunk looks him dead in the eyes. “Do you guys really sell pickles at movie theaters?”

The room goes completely and utterly quiet, and all eyes are trained on Keith, who is looking studiously away. Tension courses through the air, palpable; Keith feels like he could gather it all in his hands and make it into a whipcrack if he wanted to.

Realizing that he can’t just stay quiet and deny the truth, Keith sags with a sigh. “Yes.”

Everyone goes absolutely ballistic. Lance starts screaming, Pidge bangs her hand on the floor, Hunk keels over and dies—okay, maybe not that last one, but Hunk does fall backward onto the floor from laughing too hard.

“It’s not real,” Pidge keeps saying over and over, shaking their head and banging their fist, “It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real—”

“Keith,” Lance gasps, having just emerged from a truly insulting amount of laughter, “that’s insane. Pickles in the—what the fuck?”

“They’re too loud!” Hunk cries, throwing his hands up. “And—And the smell? Of a pickle? In the movie theater?! Do you people not have noses?”

Keith has his head in his hands. Yeah. There’s just no excuse for this one, but it was a fact of life when he lived in Texas—go to the movie theater, idly browse the snacks, stare at a pickle for a while, etc., etc. Nothing remarkable.

Or, well, so Keith thought, until he moved to Arizona and Shiro tried to take him to the movies and Keith discovered that there were no pickles there. He’d then made the mistake of curiously asking Shiro if they were out or something—just as friendly conversation—after which Shiro took it upon himself to implant firmly in Keith’s mind that there are never pickles at the movie theater and Keith should not want there to be pickles at the movie theater and also Texas is really fucking abnormal for having pickles in movie theaters.

Keith learned to shut up about the damn movie theater pickles after that.

“I’m killing you all, I’m leaving Voltron, I don’t care, you all suck,” Keith says, finally standing and turning his back on the rest of them. They pay him so mind, though, too busy having therapy sessions about pickles in cinemas or weeping their sorrow at the reality of it or whatever other theatrics Lance specifically is getting up to. Keith is done with all of them.

He marches out quickly, only to run into Shiro, who was walking with a rather confused air down the hall.

Keith meets him with a glare. “I hate this team.”

Shiro raises an eyebrow. “What happened?”

Ah, well. Is mentioning it the best idea? Keith decides to skirt around the issue, just a little. “Well, I told them I was Texan—”

“Ohhh.” Realization dawns on Shiro’s face, and a smile unravels quick after. “They learned about the pickles, didn’t they? Freak.”

Keith throws his hands up and stomps away, leaving Shiro chortling behind him.

That’s it. Fuck the universe, Keith’s moving back to Texas.

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☕️ko-fi - so i can. so i can b. so i can buy movie theater pickles--*gunshots*

#keith kogane #keithtober2021 #klance #voltron #vld keith #renfic

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