Chapter Text
Bills sucked.
Not that that was a huge revelation. Everyone knew that bills were awful, but Lance hadn’t gotten to see that firsthand until he moved out of his family’s house and in with his three closest friends after high school. He got to see exactly how much of his money went to food, water, electricity, and rent firsthand, which was why, when Shiro offered a chance to shed one of those financial drains, especially with the added bonus of extra space, the entire household was on board, Lance certainly included.
At least, he had been on board, until…
“Wait, the day ‘they’ died?” blanched Lance, leaning as far away from Shiro as he could while still remaining in the passenger seat of his truck. “As in, they died on the same day? How?”
Shiro sighed. “Lance, I told you already. They died in their sleep. Same night, same bed. They were found in each other’s arms, remember?”
“I...might have zoned out,” admitted Lance. “I thought you started talking about a movie or something! I didn’t realize we were still talking about your aunt and uncle! That doesn’t just happen to people! And by the way, ‘in their sleep’ is not a cause of death.”
“Heart failure,” said Shiro, slowing the truck to a stop. “They were old, Lance. Old, and very in love. One of them probably woke up in the night, realized that the other was dead, and died of grief. It happens. It’s called broken heart syndrome.”
Lance narrowed his eyes, unbuckling his seatbelt. “That’s not real,” he accused.
“Actually,” said Pidge, appearing just outside the open window on the passenger side of Shiro’s truck and eliciting an undignified squawk of surprise from Lance, “it’s very real. Stress-induced cardiomyopathy happens when part of the heart swells and fails to pump blood properly.”
“Yeah, like mine just did when you showed up out of nowhere!” snapped Lance. “Don’t do that!”
“Oh, can it, you big baby,” teased Pidge, reaching inside to tug on Lance’s ear. “Broken heart syndrome isn’t even fatal most of the time.”
“See!” said Lance, gesticulating with one hand and batting Pidge’s pinching fingers away with the other. “Not usually fatal! There’s something weird going on with your aunt and uncle’s deaths, Shiro. People don’t just die at the same time in the same place by chance.”
“Wow, Lance,” said Pidge, eyebrow cocked. “Do you even know what tact is?”
“I’m just saying.” Lance pushed open his door, nearly causing Pidge to fall from the step just beyond it. “It’s weird. No one can say it’s not weird.”
“Actually, we can,” said Pidge, looking rather disgruntled from the near-fall Lance had caused. “Now come help Hunk move the mattresses. I would, but these short, skinny arms are meant for delicate equipment, not furniture big enough for Hunk to sleep on.”
“Yeah, yeah,” sighed Lance, stepping out onto the grass and peering up at the three-story house he’d be living in until further notice. On the second floor, a curtain flapped in the wind, the motion catching Lance’s attention for only a moment before he turned around to head for the trailer full of mattresses he was supposed to be moving.
“...Wait.”
Eyes snapping open wide, Lance whipped back around to take a second look at the curtain he’d seen flapping just a moment before. It had stopped moving, and…
...the window was closed.
“...Hey, uh, guys?”
As far as Lance was concerned, the moving curtain was the first clue that his new place of residence was haunted by Akira and Hiromi Kogane.
The second was a box of comics that had somehow tumbled off of a coffee table and onto the floor in a heap of bent covers and crinkled pages.
“They didn’t fall on their own, Lance,” grumbled Pidge, carefully stacking each volume back in its box in a clearly predetermined order. “All you have to do is apologize.”
“It wasn’t me!” protested Lance. “It was them!”
“‘Them’ who?” asked Pidge, honey-brown eyes narrowing over the circular frame of glass spectacles. “Oh, God, Lance, not--”
“Shiro’s aunt and uncle!” insisted Lance.
Pidge sighed emphatically. “Why would the Koganes want to hurt my comics?”
“Why would I?” demanded Lance.
“Because you’re an idiot who doesn’t watch where he’s going,” said Pidge, attentions back on reorganizing.
“Maybe they’re clumsy, too!” insisted Lance. “Besides, I was in the kitchen the whole time!”
“By the way, Lance?” Hunk poked his head around the kitchen doorway. “Thanks for, uh, ‘helping’? But I totally had to rearrange everything, so can you, like, not be in the kitchen anymore? You have no idea where anything goes.”
“Nothing goes anywhere!” said Lance, the target of his frustrations switching quickly. “We just got here! We decide where stuff goes! It’s a blank slate!”
“Yeah, well, now the plates go in the cabinet by the sink,” said Hunk, raising his voice as he slinked back into the kitchen. “Not the one over the stove. That’s where shortening and oil goes in, like, every house ever.”
“You tried to put the plates in the cabinet over the stove?” asked Pidge, looking up at Lance incredulously.
“The point is,” said Lance, “I was in the kitchen. Hunk just vouched for me.”
“So you probably knocked them over on your way into the kitchen,” said Pidge. “Someone had to have knocked them over.”
“Yeah!” exclaimed Lance. “The ghosts!”
“Everyone, just calm down,” said Shiro, appearing from the stairs like some peacekeeping god of justice. He put his hands on his hips, looking mildly disappointed, but mostly just calm. “Look, we’re all tired from driving and unpacking all day. We just need a break. I’m thinking lunch. Who’s with me?”
“Ooh!” Hunk appeared again, looking almost childish in his glee. “I saw a Balmera on the way here. Can we have that? A turkey club wrap sounds so good right now.”
“Sounds great,” said Shiro, smiling his usual relaxed smile.
“Okay, while Hunk is making the call…” Pidge grunted and stood from the floor, switching the box of comics for a box that was unopened. “Lance, you take this into the basement.”
“The...basement?” Lance’s eye twitched. “As in this basement? In this house? The one that’s haunted?”
“Yes,” said Pidge, shoving the box into Lance’s arms. “What’s the matter? Scared of the dark?”
“In a house that’s totally haunted?” Lance’s eyes widened. “Yes!”
“You won’t be in the dark,” said Shiro, who seemed to be completely ignoring any possible mention of his family’s house being haunted altogether. “There’s a light switch by the door.”
There may have, indeed, been a switch, but the lights were dim. Apparently, there were supposed to be three lights that turned on in the surprisingly large basement beneath the house, but the center light was out, and it made everything else seem darker.
Lance was on edge from the second he took one step on the basement stairs, and the dim lighting and the concrete floor did little to ease his worries.
On one wall was a series of shelves. Some were occupied, probably harboring items that Shiro chose to keep when he and his parents cleaned out the house together. Some of the shelves, however, were completely barren. Lance quickly lowered the box onto one of the unburdened shelves, eager to leave, but just as he was about to bolt back upstairs, something in the corner of his eye caught his full attention.
It was a box. White, with black markings, and surprisingly devoid of dust, despite everything around it being absolutely covered with a thick blanket of the stuff. Lance’s first thought was that it must have been brought into the basement recently, but he didn’t recognize it at all. It didn’t belong to Pidge or Shiro or Hunk, and Lance knew it definitely didn’t belong to him.
His terror temporarily forgotten, Lance reached out, as if hypnotized, and unlatched the box.
Inside was a set of simple ceramic sculptures. So minimalistic they were in design that it took Lance several seconds of squinting before he realized what they were. Lions. Or lionesses, maybe. Tigers without stripes? Some kind of big cat, regardless.
The figures themselves were small, lean, with each cat sitting atop what looked like a pedestal. They reminded Lance of the chess set his oldest brother and his dad used to play with when he was younger, to the point where Lance most likely would have thought he’d found replacement pieces for a chess set if not for the colors.
There were four lions. Blue, black, green, and gold, though judging by the dip in the velvet padding between the blue and black lions, it seemed like there had been one more at one point.
Lance had just begun to wonder what color the fifth lion might have been when the light at the far end of the basement flickered out.
His head jerked upright, all of his previous terror returning to him at once. A beat passed, and the light over Lance’s head went out as well.
He slammed the case shut, locked it as quickly as his trembling fingers could move, and booked it for the stairs.
“I’m sorry!” he cried out.
Something grabbed his ankle.
What felt too sharp not to be claws snatched at his ankle, but when he looked down, all he saw was darkness.
“I’m sorry!” he whimpered again, kicking at the invisible thing that grabbed his leg. “I was just looking!”
Whatever it was that hooked itself into the cuff of his jeans released its grip and Lance flipped onto his front, scrambling the rest of the way up the stairs, climbing as much with his hands as with his feet, and slamming the door behind him.
“It looks like you just got it hooked on the stairs,” said Pidge, inspecting the tear on Lance’s jeans as they waited for Hunk to stop shamelessly flirting with the delivery girl. “I took a look at them earlier. They’re old and metal. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some sharp parts pointing out here and there. We should probably file them down once we get settled just in case, but that doesn’t mean you were in danger. Maybe of a bad cut if you’d been wearing shorts, but—”
“It wasn’t the stairs, Pidge!” insisted Lance. “Something grabbed me. Something with claws, and probably teeth. I swear, I almost died because you made me go in the spooky basement with the creepy ghosts!”
“I’m pretty sure Shiro’s aunt and uncle didn’t have claws, Lance.”
“I—” Lance raised a finger in protest, but stopped short. He had to admit, Pidge had a point. “...Maybe they’re new. Maybe they got them when they died. Ha!”
The second that sharp laugh escaped Lance, a shelf on the wall by the door collapsed out of seemingly nowhere, making a thud that the now-very-skittish Lance would have had to have been deaf to miss. A candle—thankfully unlit—slid down the now-slanted shelf, bumping into a plastic figure of a snail-like extraterrestrial on the shelf below, which fell off entirely, landing on a stack of board games, causing Settlers of Cataan to tumble from the top of the stack, continuing the Rube Goldberg sequence of events that lasted until Shiro’s multi-purpose workout bar flew with surprising aerodynamic agility right into the back of an unstocked bookshelf, which was now headed straight for Hunk’s head.
“Look out!” screamed Lance, who had just snapped out of the awed stupor that bizarre series of events had put him in, just in time to alert his friend to the possible injury heading his way.
Hunk, wide-eyed, turned around and threw his arms up, managing to do something he would never willingly do in the process and actually throw the food.
Lance snatched both rustling plastic bags out of the air in the exact instant that Hunk caught the top of the toppling bookshelf.
“A-Are you all right?” yelped the delivery girl, golden eyes wide.
“Who cares about me?” said Hunk urgently. “Is the food okay?”
“Right here, buddy,” said Lance, wide-eyed and breathless, scared somber.
“Nice,” said Hunk, pushing the bookshelf upright again. “Man, what do your ghosts have against books, huh, Lance?” He laughed.
Lance didn’t.
The day continued much in the same way, starting with the shattering of a lightbulb in the bathroom.
Then came Lance walking into his room to find his lucky jacket and all of his shirts lying out on his bed as if someone had gone through them. Harmless though it may have been, it was still weird when Lance asked the others if any of them had gone into his room and they all insisted they hadn’t.
Then there was the old handheld system that not only started by itself, but booted up a racing game Lance hadn’t touched his years. Then the book lying open and spine-up, as if someone had been reading it and set it aside. Pidge would never leave a book like that, Shiro didn’t mess with Lance’s stuff, and Hunk would have hated something with that much blood and gore far too much to want to keep his place. Then, when Lance swore he’d just turned around for a moment, he’d turned back to see all of the action figures on his desk facing the same way when he was sure he’d just set them down haphazardly before.
And then...there were the footsteps. Loud, rushing footsteps clambering down the hallway outside his door, thankfully away from his room rather than toward it, but that didn’t change the fact that the footsteps belonged to an apparently invisible person.
By the time night had fallen, Lance had crossed the point of insanity and delved deep into the realm of paranoia. He trembled at the foot of his bed, rubbing his arms, still fully dressed despite the fact that everyone he knew was already deep asleep.
“Okay…” he muttered, eyes darting around the room, looking for any further signs of the spirits that had made his day hell. “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay…” He took a deep breath, squeezing his arms tight to his chest.
“I know you’re there,” he said warily. “And I don’t like it. This is our house now, so you can just...pass on or whatever! No one wants you here!”
Lance peered around the room, searching for any sign that the ghosts had heard him.
One of Lance’s drawers opened.
Lance screamed.
All Keith could say was that he was happy he was able to protect his parents for as long as he did. Even with the Galra seeping in through every dark crack, he’d still been able to give his mother and father the natural death they deserved. And for one guilty moment, Keith thought that maybe he could rest.
Then the doors opened, and he realized how stupid he’d been.
Of course his family would want to keep the house. It was a nice house, and they didn’t know it was Galra-infested. Takashi—regardless of how much he’d grown; Keith did a double-take when he heard Auntie Shirogane say the name because there was no way that could possibly have been his baby cousin—was young, in his twenties, and eager to make his mark on the world. And he apparently had friends who were just as eager. The house had four rooms, Takashi had three friends… It all made sense.
And Keith was ticked that he didn’t see it before.
Alfor had warned him that the job would always be harder than it seemed.
Keith should have listened.
Whether he was prepared or not, Takashi arrived, along with his friends. They pulled up in two vehicles, bringing with them roomfuls of new furniture and belongings to protect, lives to protect.
Keith peered through the window from his old bedroom on the second floor, recently emptied thanks to the Shiroganes, trying to get a look at his new wards.
Unfortunately, one of them also seemed keen on getting a look at him.
“Shit,” mumbled Keith, ducking behind the curtain, then immediately feeling like an idiot yet again.
They couldn’t see him. Of course they couldn’t.
But that didn’t stop that scrawny, brown-haired tree of a kid from trying.
Keith made his way into the foyer. The closer he was to Takashi and his friends, the easier he could protect them from the Galra.
As much as Keith knew he should have been watching out for Galra, he still found time to eavesdrop on his new roommates. It didn’t hurt to at least learn their names, after all.
The first thing Keith noticed was that no one called Takashi by his given name. Instead, they all referred to him as Shiro. Keith wasn’t sure if it was a diminutive of his surname or if it was due to the new shock of white hair that definitely hadn’t been there when Takashi was a little kid. Perhaps both. Regardless, Keith was honestly grateful. He was sure, ghost or not, that he would get a brain tumor if he continued to associate his baby cousin with someone who seemed more like a cleaned-up version of Conan the Barbarian.
Of Shiro’s friends, there was a big guy, a tiny...person...and there was the tree from earlier.
The big guy was aptly named Hunk. Keith doubted it was his real name, but it suited him well, so there was no reason not to use it. Hunk seemed obsessed with food, and it definitely showed in his size, but there was still no mistaking the definition of muscle in the tight sleeves of his shirt. At least he would be able to hold his own if Keith managed to slip up, and with the number of people he protected having doubled over the course of a few weeks, that was likely to happen.
The little one—Keith couldn’t figure out if they were a boy or a girl to save his life, even if he had a life to save—was Pidge. Pidge seemed...smart, if a little bit of a hothead, and very protective of their belongings.
Which was why Keith was already wincing when Lance managed to knock over a box of comics that had Pidge scrawled across the side in large letters.
“Your buddy is not gonna be happy with you,” Keith muttered unheard, following Lance into the kitchen, where most of the household was.
Lance was the problem. Keith wasn’t sure if he’d done something during the day to be spotted so quickly, but Lance had clearly seen something, whether it was Keith’s fault or that of one of the Galra. Lance was convinced that it was the spirit of one of Keith’s parents, but Keith didn’t know if that made things better or worse.
Regardless of who Lance thought was bothering him, his continuing attempts to tell his friends about the “ghosts” were attracting Galra attention. The freakish purple things kept crawling into rooms where Lance was, headed straight for him.
The Galra weren’t anything new for Keith. He’d been fighting them off for nearly two decades. Not nearly as long as Alfor had before him, but still more than long enough to know how to keep them at bay when battles were one-on-one. The real problem came when more than one came out of the woodwork at a time, but that rarely happened in broad daylight. As long as Lance stayed above ground, where the sun was out, it wouldn’t be a problem.
“Okay.” The small one, Pidge, stood up, lifting a cardboard box in their tiny arms and pushing it toward Lance. “While Hunk is making the call…”
Keith froze. “No.” He could already tell what was going to happen. “No, don’t you dare say it. Don’t you dare, you little button-nosed—”
“Lance, you take this into the basement.”
Keith roared through his clenched teeth, throwing his head back. His life was never easy. Why should his afterlife have been any different? He reached for the bayard at his belt, gripping it less like the lifeline it really was and more like he was trying to strangle it.
Lance was going to be the end of him somehow. He was already sure of that.
Opening the door to the basement was not like opening floodgates. It was better to say that it was like jumping off of the edge of a boat into lethally cold water. It was still cold above the surface, and jumping in didn’t make the water suddenly rise up and flood the boat, but it was definitely a stupid thing to do.
And Lance had just plunged himself into the Arctic Ocean.
Keith had to rush past him to get a head start, clearing a path the best he could for Lance’s safety. Turning on the lights did make a difference, thankfully. It lessened the amount of space the Galra could crawl into their world through, but it didn’t deplete it completely. They were still out for blood, and artificial light did nothing compared to the light from Sol.
Every Galra that came for Keith was cut short by the edge of Keith’s bayard, and if Keith were just fighting for himself, they would be a challenge, but not impossible.
But he wasn’t fighting for himself at all. He was protecting Lance. Not only did Keith have to fight off every single soldier that came at his own back, but he had to chase after the ones that were retreating from him, straight for Lance.
They came one after another, like a line of ants through a hole in the wall. Some went for Keith, but most realized that Lance was the smarter target. With so many to deal with at once, Keith was quickly wearing down.
“What are you doing?!” he shouted in frustration while he pushed against a sword aimed for his throat, knowing that Lance would never be able to hear him. “Just put your stuff on the shelf and—” Keith looked over his shoulder, and he froze.
Lance had found the Lions.
He’d opened the box.
If Lance touched any of them— No, if the Galra did—
“Get away from that!” shouted Keith in vain, struggling to get away from the Galra that surrounded him, to close it with his own hands, but before he got the chance, one of the lights went out.
No, a Galra had broken the bulb. He was making room for more.
Horror dropped a cold, heavy stone in Keith’s stomach. He couldn’t handle more Galra. Not when he was already struggling so much.
But, with the curse came a blessing, as that light going out—the fucking light, compared to everything around it that he was blissfully ignorant to—pushed Lance from nervous to outright terrified, as he should have been from the start.
Screaming, Lance slammed the box shut and shot like a bullet to the stairs, unknowingly pushing past tens of Galra on his way there. Keith, grateful that Lance had finally realized that he was in danger, tried his hardest to follow, but the Galra were too many. They grabbed his arms, his jacket, his hair, anything they could reach to hold him back.
There was a loud, painful clang of bone and flesh on metal, and Lance fought to look at the stairs.
Even in the dark, he could see Lance whimpering, terrified, trying his hardest to fight off a threat he couldn’t see.
Keith had never seen any Galra come so close to taking a life.
Something stirred inside of him. Fear, rage, adrenaline, he wasn’t sure, but something clicked into place, and Keith felt a new strength flow through him.
He yanked his right arm free and shoved the Galra back. He used his bayard to cut away the rest of the Galra holding him down, and he sliced through any that stood between himself and Lance.
With a cry of fury or exertion—he wasn’t sure—he pierced through the back of the Galra that had Lance by the ankle, and it dissipated into the darkness, just like the rest.
A relieved, hysterical laugh bubbled up Lance's throat and he tore up the rest of the stairs, Keith hot on his heels.
They both slammed the door behind themselves the second their feet crossed the threshold, and Lance leaned against it, chest heaving, sweat sticking his hair to his forehead.
“Never do that again!” snapped Keith instinctively.
Lance didn’t hear him. Of course he couldn’t. It would take a miracle for that to happen, a miracle Keith had only seen happen once before, and never to himself.
Huffing, exhausted, Keith pressed his back to the wall beside the door and slid to the linoleum under his feet. He just prayed that the Galra would take it easy on him until nightfall.
They didn’t.
One was waiting for Keith the second he and Lance went back into the foyer. Keith, tired from fighting nearly an entire army of Galra in the basement, fought sluggishly, but was able to eventually take the soldier down. Unfortunately, in his fatigue, Keith failed to notice that the Galra had set up a trap, one that he activated during the fight without Keith noticing.
It wasn’t until Lance screamed that he realized something was wrong.
“Hunk! Look out!”
Keith whipped around so quickly that his hair hit him in the face, but not quickly enough to stop the bookshelf from falling.
Thankfully, Lance’s shout had kept the situation from becoming lethal, and Hunk was able to defend himself.
Keith was so relieved that he collapsed where he stood, feeling as though his muscles were screaming out in agony.
It didn’t take long to realize that the Galra were targeting Lance almost exclusively after that. They seemed to realize the same thing that Keith did, that if one of the living members of the house was aware, he was almost certain to stop any indirect Galra attacks that Keith missed. He was an extra pair of eyes and ears, something that hadn’t been in the house since Alfor was still around, and the Galra didn’t seem too excited about it.
They broke the light in the upstairs bathroom, taking advantage of Keith’s attempt to give Lance a moment of privacy, and Keith had been forced to enter the bathroom the hard way to keep Lance from getting attacked while he was washing his hands.
They tried to set up a trap in Lance’s own bedroom, one that Keith was quick to fix, though he was sure Lance had noticed when his action figures moved of their own accord. Better that than for them to fall like dominos right into Lance’s paperclips and start a fire.
Keith had actually been forced to chase one Galra out when he’d decided to just bite the bullet and try to take Lance out directly.
Attempt after attempt was made on Lance’s life, and it was exhausting trying to keep up with them all. It wasn’t until night began to fall that Keith started to relax a little. After all, it was much easier to protect someone when he had a partner.
When the first stars of the evening pierced through the light of day, a specter appeared in Lance’s doorway as invisible to his eyes as Keith himself was.
The specter, a bright red lioness, stretched out, yawned, and plodded under Keith’s arm, forcing him to set down the game he’d been inspecting while Lance unpacked.
“It’s about time you showed up,” sighed Keith, wrapping his arms around the creature’s neck and pressing his face into her scarlet fur. “You have no idea what I’ve been through today.”
The Red Lion growled low, the closest to a comforting purr that she could manage, unspoken permission for Keith to continue.
“One of Shiro’s—Takashi’s—friends is some kind of Galra magnet,” explained Keith, relieved to be able to lower his guard for once; the Galra didn’t dare come out when Red was awake. “They won’t leave him alone. Do you know how many times he’s almost died today? It’s been a nightmare just trying to keep him alive, not to mention how paranoid I’ve been about the Galra going after the rest of the house while I’ve been distracted with him. And don’t even get me started with the time he decided it would be a good idea to go into the basement in the middle of—”
Lance appeared in the doorway, catching Keith’s attention mid-sentence. Immediately, he seemed to notice the change in his room, and he rushed to the desk where Keith had left the game running.
“Whoops…” mumbled Keith, pulling a hand out of Red’s fur to run it over his face. That made three times Keith’s curiosity got the better of him only for Lance to notice immediately. He’d noticed the book Keith had been looking at, too. That, and Keith’s moment of weakness when he noticed that he and Lance wore the same size of clothing; it had been years since Keith had seen a shirt his size, and he couldn’t help looking through Lance’s clothes and wishing he could try them on, just for something different. He hadn’t even thought about the possibility that one of the Galra could have attacked before he put the clothes back.
The few short weeks Keith had spent in an empty house must have left him careless.
Red flopped in Keith’s lap, allowing him to comfort himself by running his fingers through her fur.
“I’m gonna mess this up,” sighed Keith, watching Lance frantically put the game away. “Even if the Galra weren’t after Lance, I’d be in over my head. There are so many people here now. It’s hard to protect them all.”
Red sent him another “purr”, an attempt to keep him from becoming as jittery as Lance already was.
Keith folded himself forward, pressing his chest to her back; he needed all the comfort he could get.
Even after Keith had decided to sit on the floor and keep his hands away from Lance’s belongings, Lance was still visibly worried. His eyes were constantly darting around the room, searching for anything out of place, and he kept muttering under his breath.
“I haven’t even touched anything in the past three hours,” mumbled Keith; Red growled in agreement.
Lance sat at the edge of his bed, arms wrapped around himself, eyes narrowed.
“I know you’re there,” he called out. “And I don’t like it.”
Red lifted her head curiously.
"Well, good for you." Keith cocked an eyebrow, unimpressed. “If I wasn’t here, you’d be dead.”
“This is our house now—”
“Yeah, I get it—”
“—so you can just…pass on or whatever! No one wants you here!”
Keith frowned, exchanged a brief irritated glance with his Lion, and looked back toward Lance, meeting his eyes the best he could with someone who couldn’t see him. Then, slowly, Keith reached behind his head to the top drawer of the dresser he’d been leaning against, slid his fingers behind the knob, and pulled it out languidly, a metaphorical middle finger for the “no one wants you” comment
Lance, of course, screamed. Keith had been fully expecting him to.
What he hadn’t been expecting was for Lance to rush out of the room and drag Hunk back inside with him.
“Oh, come on,” groaned Keith, who thought Lance would have hidden under his bed or something. “Leave the big guy out of this.”
Hunk and Lance both stood over Keith, shadowing him and Red from the overhead lights as they inspected the drawer.
Hunk’s brow furrowed, and he looked at Lance in clear frustration.
“Lance, I have no idea what you want me to say.”
“Say I’m not crazy,” said Lance, moving away from Hunk to grip the foot of his bed, his eyes moving from the sock drawer to the rest of the room, clearly searching for anything else that was amiss. “Say that drawer opened by itself.”
“Well…” Hunk scratched the back of his head, looking helpless. “The drawer’s...open? But I’m pretty convinced you opened this yourself.”
“I didn’t!” protested Lance in an annoying squeak that grated on Keith’s ears.
“See, you say that?” replied Hunk with a sigh. “But those… Those are just words, buddy. I don’t know what to tell you.”
Lance groaned and pressed his face between his hands, squishing and pulling in every which direction. Then, abruptly, he threw his hands down and pointed at Hunk with so much accusation that the change in mood gave Keith whiplash. “You’re gonna see,” he snapped. “One of these days, something really bad is gonna happen in this house, and you’re gonna see that I was right, but it’s gonna be too late, and everyone’s gonna be dead.”
“Don’t worry,” mumbled Keith, nestling into Red’s fur again, absently scratching her back. “That’s the one thing that won’t happen. I promise.”
“I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” said Hunk, retreating dismissively. “See you in the morning, Lance.”
“What?” yelped Lance. “Don’t leave me here! I can’t sleep alone!”
“Sure you can,” called Hunk. “Just curl up on your bed and forget about all the spooky, scary stuff. That’s what I do when I watch a scary movie.”
“This isn’t a scary movie, Hunk!” snapped Lance. “If I try to sleep now, I’m gonna mysteriously die in my sleep like Shiro’s aunt and uncle.” Deep down, though, he knew that Hunk had a point. What else was he supposed to do, sleep outside? Get a hotel?
Grudgingly, Lance allowed Hunk to leave the room, and he got ready for bed, grumbling to himself all the while.
“You better not watch me sleep, you freaks,” he mumbled, sliding under the blankets.
It took a long time for Lance to find sleep, but once he did, he dreamed.
He dreamed about a knight, sword and all, black hair tickling his shoulders as he frantically fought off an entire army of angry spirits all on his own. One man against hundreds. He never turned his back on the spirits. Not even once.
Lance woke early the next morning, feeling more tired than he had when he’d gone to sleep, frustrated that he’d never seen the knight’s face.
Grumbling at the sunlight streaming through his windows, though slightly less wary of every little creak of the wooden floor beneath his feet, Lance made his way downstairs.
Hunk wasn’t awake yet, which meant no breakfast from the culinary genius, but surprisingly, there was one person who had woken up before Lance.
Shiro was on the couch that still hadn’t been properly moved from the foyer to the living room, his legs crossed, the top leg balancing what appeared to be a large scrapbook.
“I see you survived the ghosts,” said Shiro, not looking up.
“Ha,” said Lance bitterly. “What’cha got there?”
“It’s a photo album,” explained Shiro, flipping backward through it. “I found it in the basement. Guess this place wasn’t as cleaned out as I thought.”
“The basement, huh?” Lance slinked down the rest of the stairs and leaned over the banister, feigning nonchalance. “And you didn't have any...problems with that?”
“Well,” said Shiro, “I had to change a few lightbulbs. No ghosts, though.” He finally lifted his head, smiling the almost fatherly smile that never seemed far from his features. “Come look through this with me.”
Noting that Shiro rarely asked anything of his friends but peace, Lance decided he could carry out this tiny request and made his way to the couch, taking a seat where he could look over Shiro’s shoulder.
The picture Shiro had flipped to was a family portrait. Clearly an extended family portrait. Each member stood in shoulder-to-shoulder rows, mostly in order of height, though there were some older family members kneeling with the children in front.
“Here are my grandparents,” explained Shiro, pointing to a couple on the far left. “Here’s Uncle Akira and Aunt Hiromi—your ghosts.” Lance nudged Shiro in the side, earning a soft, playful laugh in return. “My parents are here,” continued Shiro, pointing out two people in the back row. “And…” His finger wandered to the bottom of the page. “Here’s me.”
Lance squinted at little Shiro, frowning. “I can barely see any resemblance. You don’t even have the scar yet.”
“It was a long time ago,” agreed Shiro.
“Hm…” Lance’s eyes wandered to the boy kneeling beside Shiro. He looked roughly the age then that Lance was now. He had soft, somber eyes, though Lance couldn’t tell the color in the picture, and he had long hair that barely touched his shoulders.
Lance swallowed, remembering his dream from the night before.
Well, at least he hadn’t needed to suffer long before finding out what his knight looked like.
“What about mullet-head here?” said Lance, tapping the boy, trying to keep himself from squeaking.
“My cousin,” said Shiro, sounding cautious, even reverent, like he was afraid of speaking too loud. “His name was Keith.”
“Was?” echoed Lance, just as cautious. He knew what “was” meant. “What happened to him?”
“Suicide,” said Shiro, matter-of-fact. “A long time ago. It couldn’t have been more than a year after this picture was taken. I…” He shook his head, frowning. “I don’t even really remember him. Not as my cousin, anyway. I just remember a lot of memorial pictures and my family saying his name in hushed voices. My family didn’t even let me go to the funeral because I had school that day. Maybe I’d be able to remember him more if I did.”
“You can’t help stuff like that,” said Lance softly. “It was a long time ago, and you were little. Everyone forgets childhood stuff after a while. Even important stuff like that.”
Shiro managed a half-smile and peered at Lance through the corner of his eye. “You’re being awfully mature.”
“Family is serious stuff,” said Lance, shrugging, his eyes still on the photo.
“Shiro,” he continued warily. “You...said your aunt and uncle were kind of hermits, right? When did that start?”
“Right around when Keith died,” said Shiro, nodding in the corner of Lance’s vision. “I’m surprised you put that together so quick.”
Lance narrowed his eyes.
Why did he ever think that an old couple would want to see his old copy of F1 Race? Why did he ever think that an old couple would be into Battle Royale?
He’d been wrong this whole time. The house wasn’t haunted by the spirits of Hiromi and Akira Kogane.
It was haunted by their son.