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Pop’s cabin is smaller than he remembers.
Maybe that’s why it takes so long to find it again. Keith doesn’t have the latitude and longitude of the place, just knows how it’s tucked into the rolling desert, and the way the stars felt near in the darkest blanket of the desert sky. Maps— actual, paper maps? Yeah, he had those once, but they’re long gone. The way there is written in his memory; only now time has transformed the bold, square letters of certainty into slanted spindles of faded ink, transcribed with too light of a hand to make out every curve. Keith circles the desert in a lazy spiral, sweat dripping down his back and stinging his eyes. Stupid to wear black. He forgot how hot the Sonoran sun bakes down.
When he does find the cabin, it almost feels like it was chance that made it happen, rather than any action of his own. But Keith doesn’t believe in chance— not really anyways. He believes in patience. Focus. Not giving up. He steps down from the hoverbike and feels heavy. Gravity, and all that.
He approaches the door like the cabin is a wounded animal. Cautious. Placating— hey buddy, it’s okay, no, shh, it’s okay, I’m sorry I was gone — gaze flitting to the broken window and the yellowbrown brush growing up through the dried out wood of the porch.
Turns out the caution is warranted: one of the walls is caved in. The outer wall is split on the south side, one half of the cabin sunken in as if the structure is melting in the heat. Sand and red dirt is draped over the fallen wall, the wave of it organic as it crests up over the cabin, windswept, like a dune. The surface of the sand is pock marked with tiny ripples and holes. Desert termites, probably, working diligently to turn this place back into the earth. Evidence of other tiny creatures that call the desert home— skittering scorpions, the pale little lizards that dart out of sight— is here too, amongst the encroaching brush. This was the side he used as a ‘bedroom,’ though it was never really more than a cot in a closet’s space. On foot, Keith circles the collapsed side, studying the way the cabin hangs against the blue sky, tilted now.
Boots knock heavy and hollow on the two steps up the porch. He pushes the front door open, and it goes easily enough, though the wood of the door sweeps across the sandy floor with a warm, rough sound. Sunlight filters in through the broken window, and dust floats in the beams, dancing through the air in sworls now that he’s disturbed the place with movement.
It’s been long enough that crossing the threshold doesn’t feel familiar. Just as there’s no reprieve from the heat, there’s no welcome here, no nostalgia.
No one else has been here since he left. It’s obvious in everything: from the layer of dust over the heavy black boxes of radar equipment, to the neatly arranged stacks of cans left undisturbed next to his once-potable water tank. He lived on shelf stable food that year— for the first time in a decade, Keith remembers the woman at the food bank, some hundred miles to the east. She was unfriendly. Fat, soft hands, the kind that make rings disappear. He thought she hated him. Or, maybe, he just didn’t feel comfortable in the too-white washed walls of the tiny Catholic church, insidiously, strategically close to the rez. He can picture it, even now: the unnaturally pale building, the sharp angled roof adorned with a dour iron cross. So at odds with the generous, rolling land.
He lived on shelf stable food and garbled snatches of Garrison transmissions. A little red light tells him that the solar powered generator still works; Keith turns the dial on one of the black boxes. It snaps as it clicks on, and warm static crackles through the speakers. Obsessive, he’d listen for ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day, so sure that as soon as he turned away, that would be the moment some information about Shiro would drift over the radio waves. There were nights he slept with it on, arms folded across his chest, legs hanging over the couch’s armrest, eyes trained on the window’s top most pane of glass, his sliver of the stars. Listening. Those nights, he fought sleep as long as he could, listening, jaw clenched, listening. Laying there, listening, awake until sleep wrapped both hands around his neck and squeezed.
In the daytime, he kept his hands busy while he listened, usually. He liked the methodical, painstaking work of explosives. He liked the dark idea that this was preparation . That he could be ready when he needed to be, that he wasn’t powerless. He liked, too, the darker feeling of skirting close to death, cheating fire and fate. A singed wire, a misplaced core, a stupid move— all of this summed to a zing of adrenaline that colored his otherwise leaden days. It wasn’t that he wanted to die. Not seriously. Not if Shiro wasn’t waiting on the other side. Which he wasn’t. There were days, though, that the static told him nothing, and hope seemed so far removed, and Keith was angry instead of careful with the dangerous things he built.
A breath escapes him as he turns to the wall of his real work, the board of information he gathered. Charts. Data he collected. Ideas scribbled on pieces of paper under hot sun. Carefully drawn and detailed maps. Towards the end of that year, Blue spoke to him in dreams, but Keith doesn’t remember those now, only how it felt to wake up here, alone. He takes down a piece of paper— it has Shiro’s date of birth written on it, and the date they said he died, which was a lie — and remembers only a dizzying, constant need. That year, this work was everything to him.
He looks at the display now and sees it for what it is: desperation. Clean, cold, clear. Desperation. He was swimming in it, this awful, unrelenting need to not have lost the one person he couldn’t lose. Drowning, he clung to this.
Keith swallows. His mouth is dry. There’s a canteen latched to his bike outside, but he doesn’t leave the cabin to go get it. He pulls one of the maps from the board; the paper is dry, brittle with time. All the colors have faded in the sun. Now, it means hardly anything at all.
He pins it back in place, new holes in the dried, crumbling cork. Thread hangs limp between drawings. Admission, it’s killing me when you’re away , drowning. Loneliness was ocean deep.
Tears came years later— trapped in the too-big pilot’s seat of Black, curled there, heaving sobs against his fists, begging the whole of the universe not to lose Shiro, not again. Here, no. Here he was sprawled out over the dusty, worn rug, limbs akimbo, sweating. Here, he was too stubborn to grieve. Too lost to lose him. Too hot to cry.
The static hums in response, stretching out over the minutes.
Keith takes a breath. Shudders it out. The room is hot, and he feels hotter still.
Suddenly, he doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to think about what could have been, or how it was— what’s the point, anyways?
He exhales again, sharper now, impatient with himself, and scrubs fingertips over both his cheeks. One heavy swipe on either side, pushing the emotion aside. C’mon . Get in, get out.
The safe is bolted to the floorboards in the closet.
When he opens the door to the closet, he finds that all kinds of shit has fallen down— the shelves must have collapsed in time— leaving him with an avalanche of once folded blankets, and heavy cardboard boxes, and other junk in the way. It takes time to unearth the safe, sorting through once carefully inventoried items that he’s long since forgotten.
The safe is small, about the size of a shoebox. He squats and spins the dial and the thing moves freely, numbers flying past the needle smoothly with the slightest touch. Counterclockwise now, pass it three times, stop at ten. Clockwise, pass it twice, stop at twenty-three. His dad set the combination. The last number is the year he was born. He reaches it and meets resistance and then,
The heavy clunk of the bolt cuts through the soft fuzz of static.
He swings the small door open. Not much inside. No cash, definitely. No deed to land, no special papers, nothing like that. Tucked into the dark of the safe: what he came for. His hand dips inside, skirting over the cold bottom of steel. The cool-to-the-touch metal chain, whispering over the metal of the safe. Shiro’s dog tags. They clink against one another, a slight chime of noise as he pulls them out. And, then, the only other thing left in the safe: his pop’s zippo.
Keith rises to his feet.
He never wore the dog tags. They weren’t his to wear. Shiro’s full name is stamped into the metal, his ID, his blood type. Keith stole them, of course, one of the last things he did before they booted him from the Garrison for good— but he had to. It just wasn’t right to leave them there. If not for Keith, they’d be in a box somewhere, or worse, in the ground with Shiro’s other personal effects under a memorial in lieu of a body. The last place Shiro would want to be was grounded, and anyways, if Keith kept track of them, he could give them back to Shiro when he returned. Which he would .
Now, he does what he wouldn’t do then: ducks under the chain, lets it drop against his skin. It’s cool, just for a moment, a slip of touch against his chest. He feels it roll against the back of his neck as he tucks it under his tee shirt. The safest place for it to be.
The lighter has a nice patina on it now. Smaller than he remembers. A slight weight in his hand. Probably needs flint and fluid , Keith thinks, flipping it open. Thumb on the sparkwheel. He’s surprised when the flame jumps to place just as it should. Keith thinks about the smooth motion of his father flicking the lighter open straight from his pocket, or how he’d grin at Keith and make the flame disappear and reappear with a clever shake. In its own way, the memory burns.
He snaps the lighter shut and tucks it into one of the packs on his hip. There. That’s it.
He won’t come back here again.
Keith doesn’t believe in heaven, nor hell, nor god, nor ghosts, but he presses his fingertips to his mouth and then presses his hand to the doorframe. His father is more here than he is in any graveyard, and it’s a goodbye, of a kind. He steps back outside. In a few hours, the sun will set. In a few more, the stars will be visible— a vast blanket of cosmos, stretching out bigger than his eyes can see. A few more hours after that, and he’ll be back out there.
A wave of dust rises at the horizon. The sight gives him pause. There on the porch, Keith raises a hand to his forehead, squinting out under his palm. The cloud of dust skirts along the land, billowing, lifting, dissipating into the enormous blue sky. It’s not long before the smooth purr of a hoverbike accompanies it, and a glint of metal catching sunlight winks across the dry, rolling land.
“Shiro,” Keith murmurs.
“Shiro!” he repeats, lifting a hand as soon as the man is visible. Shiro slows expertly, elegant as the hoverbike arcs into place as smoothly as if following an invisible track. “What are you doing here?” Keith shouts over the wall of sound.
Playful, Shiro puts a hand to his ear, indicating that he couldn’t hear, and then cuts the engine. Next to Keith’s, the bike settles down to the ground with a sigh. Shiro pulls riding goggles down to his neck and smiles up at Keith— boyish, mischievous, self-satisfied. He sits back, body slung comfortably in the saddle of the bike, shoulders relaxed, hair swept out of place.
Keith swims in this too— this image that could be pulled directly out of Keith’s earliest memories of Shiro; gentler though, than the powerful currents that he’s been struggling against. Keith’s chest squeezes in familiar ache, an enduring, whole body feeling. Shiro .
“What are you doing here?” Keith asks him again. ATLAS is scheduled to launch in just a handful of hours. Every minute left is precious when the future hangs so near.
“Looking for you,” Shiro replies easily. He slings a leg over the seat and pops down to the ground. The ease of movement looks good on him— fresh soul-in-body, fresh uniform, fresh arm at his right side. The two of them have hardly spoken since the updated prosthetic was situated. Keith knows that Shiro said he liked it. He doesn’t know if he actually does.
“You found me,” Keith says, words full in his mouth.
Time ripples in the strange way that it can— the feeling people call déjà vu, a prickly sense of having lived this before. This pseudo precognition sometimes is close playmates with true memory; as Keith watches Shiro bound up the two stairs to greet him, noticing the sweat beaded at his temples, the warmth of his grin— as he looks up into Shiro’s face, he’s remembering, instead, a moment that was cold. A Shiro who had less light in his eyes, a face more gaunt:
Keith’s fingertips are cold. So cold his hands are stiff, creaking in leather gloves. He reaches forward to adjust the comm device— he’s using the screen of it as a mirror, but it’s not working very well. The angle is all wrong; no matter what he does, he can’t get a good look at the open wound. Jaw clenched, he tilts his face— still hurts, still raw— and dabs over the shredded skin with a wet cloth. The wound was made by a plasma blade, luckily (‘luckily’ —yeah, the smell of his own burned flesh will stay with him forever, lucky ,) and, because of that, self-cauterized. Probably won’t get infected, so that’s good, but there’s still a crust of blood at the edges to clean up and the whole thing is weeping exudate, enough to warrant a bandage when he finds one. Eventually. Probably.
He’s sitting with one leg pulled underneath him in Black’s cockpit, half leaning out of the pilot’s seat to get the best view in the comm as he can, teeth clenched together as he cleans himself up. He pauses.
He feels , rather than hears, or sees Shiro. A presence in the doorway behind him. Keith inhales through his nose and feels his shoulders relax. If Shiro is well enough to be out of bed— that’s good. He’s been asleep for a few hours, body still and silent in the bed they fashioned in Black’s hold.
Shiro doesn’t say anything. Just stands there, quiet. Watching. Keith can feel it. After a moment, he unlocks his jaw and wets his lips, the movement careful with his injury still so fresh. “Shiro. How’re you feeling?”
He finds that his voice comes out a quiet rasp in the thrum of Black’s low hum.
No answer comes; Keith’s leg slides out from under him, he shifts, turning in the chair to look at Shiro.
Shiro is barefoot— and it’s an odd thing to notice, the way his toes look bone pale pressed against the black floor, thick vasculature a soft ridge crisscrossing over the tops of his feet, knobs of ankle visible where sleep pants are rucked up his calves. Somehow it’s Shiro in a way that Keith hasn’t seen before. Worn, and sleep undone, but here . And it strikes him— suddenly Keith is so grateful that Shiro is alive he can barely breathe. Like a blow to the solar plexus, it knocks the air out of him, and Keith blinks against it. He can barely think, but he stands up and turns towards Shiro, a step closer,
“Shiro,” and he should be used to this, this overwhelming clench of feeling inside him, for how vast and frequent the feeling is. How easily he falls inside it. Keith swallows.
“Never better.” Shiro remarks, mouth twisted as he answers Keith’s question.
Keith doesn’t miss the way his eyes fall on the obvious wound of Keith’s cheek, and the way his twist of mouth goes flat. He says Shiro’s name again, quieter.
“How long was I out?”
Shrugging, Keith considers. “Couple hours?” He taps out a sequence on Black’s console, pulling up their location and flight path, just because he knows that’s what he’d want to see if their positions were reversed. A purple arrowhead spins in place.
Shiro’s gaze flicks over the read-out, but his eyes don’t linger there. He looks tired— a swipe of bruise under the blue gray eyes that Keith loves— as he finds Keith’s face. He nods toward the wound. “...Let me help with that?”
“You should be resting.”
Shiro’s brows lift— that benevolent ‘ fuck you ,’ that he’s so good at bestowing without voice, and Keith almost grins because it’s been so long since he’s seen that expression.
“Yeah, okay,” Keith agrees.
So, then, it’s Shiro who finds the med kit. The light is best in the cockpit so Keith stays where he is, leaning slightly against the back of the pilot’s chair, watching Shiro move, slow, but determined. Shiro returns with the kit a moment later, sets it down to open with his left hand. The contents are as alien as anything else, crinkling and unknowable in their individual packets as Shiro sifts through them. He’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay, a litany pounding in Keith’s chest.
He stands up straight as Shiro readies the material to clean and dress the deep cut.
“Alright,” Shiro murmurs, voice soft.
Standing in front of him, Keith looks up into Shiro’s face as Shiro gets closer. Close enough to feel Shiro’s breath on his face. Their eyes meet and their bodies are now so close— close enough to—
When Shiro’s hand comes up, it’s instinct, then, just instinct, that makes Keith jerk away.
He doesn’t even realize he’s done it until he hears the sound Shiro makes— a quiet, hurt noise— and finds Shiro pulling back.
“No—” Keith tells him, fumbling at the explanation because he’s not great with words and never has been. “It’s not — it was just a reflex.” He finds Shiro’s face again, hating the way Shiro’s mouth is pulled low now and his body is taut with hurt. “Okay?”
“Keith,” Shiro says. His voice shouldn’t sound like that, so thin, so strung with pain. “You flinched . I—” His eyes flutter and his jaw is set and he swallows. He looks out over Keith’s head. He looks far away. He looks so close to being undone it’s not like Shiro at all.
“Don’t.” Keith grabs Shiro’s hand and takes it, stepping into the movement, pressing broad palm against his broken face. Shaking his head against Shiro’s unsaid apology. “Don’t say that you’re ‘sorry.’ I don’t want it. I don’t need it. Just—” he lets go, relishing the warmth of Shiro as his hand lingers against Keith’s cheek. “Just. Just keep doing whatever you were gonna do.”
He feels blunt nails as Shiro’s hand curls against his cheek. Shiro’s expression shutters closed— features going blank as he nods. He’s silent as he prepares the gauze, medical tape, a small tube of antiseptic ointment for wound care.
Shiro is gentle when he touches Keith. His movements are careful, methodical. Slow enough that Keith settles into the touch, watching the focus in Shiro’s pretty eyes, the way the shadows play over his elegant features. His jaw is set in a way that looks much less gentle than his touch. The cords of his neck look tight with tension. Their eyes meet— briefly— and Keith’s cheeks grow warm from having all of Shiro’s attention. Looking away, Keith tries to stay still, worried that Shiro will hear the bound of his heartbeat and the thick sound of his swallow. So warm, so much. He could sink into this like a bath.
The two of them are close enough to—
It’s foolish, but Keith has the thought that Shiro could kiss him like this. He imagines it, a simple kind of thought usually reserved for simpler times: Shiro’s body against his, Shiro wanting him, holding him, Shiro’s breath in his lungs, Shiro moving against him, to be inside him, the two of them together, sticky skin, as close as two bodies can get. Heat rises in Keith’s cheeks, and he takes a breath, closing his eyes, tilting his face.
But, no.
The moment passes; Keith opens his eyes. Shiro’s expression is still tight while he finishes, careful touch smoothing the bandage into place.
“Thanks,” Keith says, straightening up. “I—”
The sound that Shiro makes cuts the word from Keith’s mouth. It’s a sob. It’s brighter, sharper, swifter than a sob, like a gasp of pain. His tight expression crumples as the emotion breaks free. He shakes his head, and moves as if to escape. A step back, a hand between them, a jaw clenched so tight.
“Shiro,” Keith pleads, every piece of him breaking at the sight of Shiro holding back tears like this. He wants to make himself open, a place for Shiro to rest. “Please,” he opens his arms.
A deep inhale.
Shiro steps into his arms. It crushes Keith, this embrace.
Shiro is shaking.
There, pressed against his chest, Keith can feel how he’s trembling.
No more sound comes— just that one bright, awful sob— but as Shiro holds him, and Keith’s hands press into his back, and Shiro curls ever closer around him, Keith thinks that he’s weeping. He thinks that he’s never seen Shiro cry, and that this tight, shuddering hold is Shiro’s way of making sure that he won’t see it now either. Keith presses his eyes together so hard that he sees stars. The pattern of constellations that lives behind eyelids, that one almost hurts. He won’t look.
Shiro’s breathing is haggard, oxygen shuffling around emotion in his lungs, sucking in and coming out in short, forced intervals instead of deep and full. The heavy thump of his heart feels close. Frantic. He’s holding onto Keith so tightly,
Keith hates how shattered Shiro feels, how all he can do is wrap arms around him in return, when really he wants to crack open his own chest and invite Shiro to stay inside—
“You’re okay,” Keith speaks into Shiro’s neck, an absolution, a promise. “Shiro, I’m here.”
The response comes in the heavy press of Shiro’s body into his, the squeeze of ever tightening embrace, a sharp utterance of Keith’s name. There were so many days Keith thought that he’d never hear it again, and so, even like this, Keith welcomes the sound. Collects it. Keeps it close.
When Shiro’s grip loosens, and he stands, it happens in intervals: first the release of his arm around Keith, then the steadying of his breath— Shiro making an effort to calm himself down, his hand heavy as it slides from the middle of Keith’s back to blanket over the nape of Keith’s neck, still touching him. Keith’s forehead tucked against him. In time, Shiro rises back to his full height and pulls away.
Keith watches as Shiro’s hand slips over his own forehead, covering his eyes, and his mouth works, soft flesh pressed against hard feeling. His hair is white now, all the color bled out into the black of space. Keith stands there, patient.
A moment passes, and then another, and Keith’s face still feels flush with emotion, and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands now that they’re not touching. He doesn’t know where to look so as not to embarrass Shiro, or make him go away. He settles his gaze on the floor, rolling a stray thread from his gloves between his fingertips while he waits.
“Keith.”
Keith looks at him.
Fatigue and sorrow still hang on Shiro’s features, even though he’s ushered the tears out of sight. Now the blue gray irises are set amidst tender red paths, and the dark circles look swollen with emotion.
Black’s engines are louder than the silence that folds over them, and the stars outside the cockpit are far away, grains of white sand in the long black of space.
Keith looks at him. “Yeah, Shiro? What is it?”
Shiro’s hand settles on his cheek again. The touch is heavy, but gentle still— a thumb pad resting at the edge of Keith’s lips, soft knuckles stroking under his jaw. A caress.
“I—” Shiro seldom seems to struggle with words. The pause here is as unknown as his bare feet on the floor, or his sleep mussed hair. He shakes his head slightly, then looks Keith in the face. Shiro’s voice is usually so smooth, confident, but here he’s stilted as if choosing words one-by-one. “You found me.”
Their eyes meet, and Keith’s lips part as Shiro’s thumb passes over the bottom one, a gentle weight. He sees Shiro close his eyes, take a breath. The touch withdraws, now replaced by a heavy hand on Keith’s shoulder. A squeeze.
Keith presses his lips together, blinking emotion out of his eyes. His throat feels tight. He nods.
Shiro embraces him again.
Keith thinks about how the feeling within him seems to be boundless. He closes his eyes and sinks into it, knowing that he could move in this forever and never find its limit.
“You found me,” Keith says with a smile on the porch as Shiro wraps him in an enthused embrace. Cologne— the same kind Shiro wore when Keith was a cadet, devastating in its familiarity— pricks at Keith’s nose as soon as he’s tucked in close to Shiro’s neck. Keith remembers sweating on the way here and grumbles into Shiro, “C’mon. I probably stink.”
He must turn beet red when Shiro’s response is to inhale against his neck. “Not at all. You just smell like Keith.”
Yeah, Keith’s face has never felt this hot. “What’s that even mean?” he mutters, glowering up at Shiro’s delight. “Did you really come all the way out here just to see me?”
“That’s what I said,” Shiro replies easily. More solemn, he adds, “Keith, if you need some time alone here, I’d understand. Just say the word and I can leave.” He touches the doorframe to his right, casual and reverent both. “But if there’s something you want from here before lift off, maybe I can help?”
Keith shakes his head and clears his throat. “Ah. Nah. I was just,” he shrugs. “Saying goodbye.” He reaches past Shiro to push the door open once again. Like before, red dust rises, and the cabin is desolate rather than welcoming.
Shiro crosses the threshold and Keith wonders what he sees— the equipment, the cans of food, the board with threads of evidence and speculation and desperate hope? Something else? He watches Shiro sweep the room with his eyes, pausing to study the pin board. The moment is long. Keith allows himself to wade into it, taking in how the sunbeam from the broken window kisses a line across Shiro’s back. How much he would have given at one point to see Shiro standing in this room like he is right now. He would have given anything. Everything .
“You never talk about that year,” Shiro finally says. His voice is low, as if he’s speaking to himself.
“Not much to say,” Keith says. Shiro turns to look at him and he shifts his weight.
The look that Shiro is giving him is tender with understanding. “I don’t think that’s true,” he says, after a moment, turning his gaze back toward the contents of the room. Maybe he’s seeing the quilt over the back of the couch, the rings left on the low coffee table, the lone fork in a cup next to the water tank. A life where he was gone.
“Keith—”
“You don’t want to spend your last night on earth with this old junk,” Keith says, clearing his throat. “C’mon,” he jerks his chin towards the horizon. “I was done here anyways.” The sun will be setting soon enough and he wants to feel it beat down on his face for a little longer. And Shiro looks so good with sunshine marking the tops of his ears. A flush of exertion.
He pulls the door shut behind Shiro.
“Well then.” Shiro’s posture is relaxed again. He shuffles, knocking shoulders with Keith, playful, a smile tugging at his mouth. “I’m guessing you don’t feel up to our old route, huh?”
Keith looks up at him. “You gotta be kidding me.” Shiro’s smile spreads. He tilts his head towards the hoverbikes as if inviting. “Yeah?”
Shiro lopes down the stairs, climbing back onto the bike with ease. “Yes. However. It’s imperative, Keith,” his hands are deft over the controls, prosthetic catching sunlight, “Remember: We should be careful to mediate risk. A nice, easy ride. Let’s not forget we have a big mission in the morning.” He looks serious for a split second, then Shiro winks at Keith— and slams the throttle on the hoverbike in one smooth movement.
The bike takes off like a shot, hurtling forward so fast that Keith can’t even attempt to shout over the noise. “Oh, you’re on ,” Keith breathes. He’s on his own bike, then, the rush of power washing over him as the machine roars to life and he follows Shiro.
For how long it took to find the cabin, it takes just a moment to lose it again— the place slips away and desert spreads around him on all sides. In the distance: low mountains, purple, ancient. Here: sharp rock and sharper drops, sprawling river beds made dusty dry with heat, collections of resilient cacti that claw upwards like pipe organs, saguaros standing sentinel, climbing rocks and rolling hills. Enormous, endless, cloudless blue stretches out above it all. Keith flies.
“You finally caught up!” Shiro shouts at him as soon as he spies Keith racing up beside him. He looks lazy with the way he’s flying, and affects a yawn, even as his bike rockets over the earth.
“Need a nap, old timer?” Keith goads, racing ahead of him and cutting into his path. He stands on the bike, the wind whipping at his hair, whole body leaning into the ride. Laughing when Shiro’s mock laziness morphs into real offense.
They race, crisscrossing through the landscape. Their old route is as familiar to Keith as if they were on the bikes yesterday, instead of prior to Kerberos. Back then, this happiness was new and precious. The feelings he had for Shiro were so bright. So much. Stinging sharp and wonderful. Today they’re worn in with familiarity, but no less all encompassing.
Keith watches as Shiro tips his bike over the edge of a canyon— both his arms up over his head, laughing into the freefall even as gravity grabs hold of the bike and his ass lifts off the seat. Dangerous. Insane. His delight is palpable despite the rush of speed swallowing up his voice. Keith loves him; Keith follows him past that edge, his stomach dropping and adrenaline lighting his body up like a noon day sun.
When they get back to the Garrison, there really is evidence of the sun on the tops of Shiro’s ears— they’re a searing red, a mismatch with the silver of his hair, and the pretty tilt of his smile. “Not a bad use of time,” he says, once again slouching in the saddle of the bike. Keith feels his gaze as he dismounts, sliding off his own bike to grab his canteen.
The water is lukewarm but a respite all the same. Keith swishes it in his mouth and feels grit from the desert wind. He swishes and spits it on the ground, then takes another long pull. Shiro is at his side, and Keith wordlessly passes him the water. Their hands brush. Keith nods at Shiro’s ‘thank you,’ before Shiro takes a sip.
They raced through the sunset. It’s twilight now, and the throngs of people coming and going have been reduced to shadows and snatches of far off conversation. Under the lights of the aircraft hanger, Keith watches a bead of sweat slip from Shiro’s temple down towards his neck. The collar of his shirt is soaked darker with perspiration.
Closer to ATLAS, on the other side of campus, there will be strings of twinkle lights strung up outside and a sending off party for the crew. Keith would have thought that Shiro would make an appearance at the very least. ATLAS is the finest that humanity has to offer— it seems fitting to Keith that Shiro will be the one to pilot her. And he’s proud to be at Shiro’s side, leading Voltron, flying Black.
He closes his eyes and reaches for each of the lions in his mind. Green’s bright curiosity, Yellow’s warm strength, Blue’s open generosity, the swift, sharp passion of Red. Black’s endless patience. He can feel Shiro there, even now.
“Keith.”
Keith opens his eyes and finds himself looking up at Shiro.
“Sometimes you go so far away,” Shiro says, mouth soft. He’s the lightest touch when he brushes hair out of Keith’s face. It tickles as Shiro slips the hair past his ear, fingertips lingering close to the sensitive shell of his ear. His thumb brushes over Keith’s jaw, warm, before he draws away. “Sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” Keith says, not far away at all, but here, entirely here, always here, so utterly fixed on Shiro’s hands, the warmth of his skin, the feeling of this. “Just. Thinking about tomorrow.”
Shiro squeezes his shoulder. “I understand.”
They begin the walk towards the barracks, Shiro easing them into relaxed conversation. Tomorrow there will be schedules and orders and obligation. Tonight, just this:
Keith pauses at the doorway to his room. A simple space— a bed, a desk, a few changes of clothes— unremarkable. Tomorrow they’ll both be leaving this place, but that’s not the important thing. For Keith, the important thing is that they’ll be leaving together.
“Get some rest,” Shiro is telling him. “I’ll see you in the morning.” His eyes soften, and there’s a moment that passes before he adds, “Thanks for indulging me today. I needed it.”
Nodding, Keith lingers. He lets the doorframe settle against his spine and the open door find a place at his shoulder, pausing there instead of ducking inside. He’s thinking of this feeling that buoys him, that sustains and ignites and drives him. This part of his soul that will always find a way back to Shiro no matter how far away it runs from the source. “Shiro.”
“Hm?”
“I don’t want to be far. I’m not— I could never want anything more than to be close to you.” It’s blunt honesty, inelegant in execution, but real; he watches Shiro’s expression, thinking of that moment in Black— the tightness, the hurt, Shiro holding him so desperately.
There’s no tightness in the Shiro who looks at him now. In fact, it’s as if his expression is unfolding— his eyes, the quiet drop of his mouth around Keith’s name— unfolding into a softness so complete that Keith could sink into it. He swallows and there’s searching there, but Keith holds his gaze, and there’s finding too. Maybe ‘unfolding’ isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s ‘understanding.’
“Keith,” Shiro says again, voice soft, expression soft, “That sounds like love.”
It feels like more.
“I missed you out there,” Keith says. Shiro asked him about the cabin, the desert, but what is there to say? “It was a hard year.” Shiro is looking at him, and Keith looks back, holding his gaze. The evidence of his own desperation was laid bare in every mote of dust. He knows that Shiro saw it too. “I would have searched forever.” He lifts his chin, daring Shiro not to understand, to interpret this as anything less than what he means: “I always will.”
And drowning is supposed to be fast, a frantic claw for air, but as Keith fills his lungs with this, it’s nothing but slow. The way Shiro touches his face, and bends close. The warm press of his lips. Tentative. The breath. The murmur of Keith’s name. The feeling of his mouth, again, closer, and Keith’s arms are around his neck, mouth dropping open as Shiro slips inside.
Keith wants to be closer— only ever closer— and he pulls himself into Shiro’s chest, even as Shiro presses him against the doorframe. They move, Keith falling into him, Shiro in his arms, past the doorframe, and the door clicks shut behind them. The room is quiet and dark and Keith can feel the heat of Shiro’s body under his clothes, and the blow of the air conditioning unit kicking itself on. He kisses himself breathless, swallowing down the slight noise that Shiro makes and the edges of his pretty smile.
“Sweetheart,” Shiro says, and he sounds out of breath too, chest rising and falling as his big hand splays across Keith’s skin. His mouth is searing as he kisses against Keith’s neck— so much that Keith shudders, pulse jumping under Shiro’s touch. “God,” Shiro says, voice low, textured in a way that makes Keith feel hot in a way that’s different than the desert sun.
He shrugs out of his jacket, even as Shiro’s hands find his waist, slipping under his tee shirt.
Keith kisses him, his pinky finger tucking itself under Shiro’s collar as he grasps at Shiro’s shoulders, feels the prickly undercut of his hair. His skin is salty with dried sweat when Keith puts his mouth to the underside of Shiro’s jaw, tasting him. Breathing him. This close, he finds that he can still smell the cologne that he used to think about so much as a cadet.
Shiro’s hands are heavy on his waist; he rocks Keith’s hips into his own. They exhale in unison, noses brushing, mouths dropping open as Shiro does it again, holding him, guiding him. Keith groans, already growing hard in his jeans, one hand curled around Shiro’s bicep. A glance passes between them, and Shiro’s smile is tilted and his eyes are dark and he touches Keith’s face, fingers sliding to curl in his hair at the nape of Keith’s neck, kissing him deeply.
Then, it’s both of them, Shiro’s hands at his own belt buckle, stepping out of his boots, breathless kissing, too many clothes between them. Keith works at his own tee shirt, pulling it over his head,
“Oh,”
Keith feels hazy, body too close to Shiro to think, blood too warm under his skin. He blinks, at first not understanding when Shiro lifts the dog tags from his chest. He looks up at Shiro, watching his eyes flick over the name Takashi Shirogane stamped there. Meeting those eyes when Shiro’s gaze lifts to meet his own.
“Where did you get these?”
“They were in the cabin,” Keith explains, his own voice low in his ears. The tee shirt is wrapped around his elbows; he pulls it off entirely, letting it drop to the floor. Shiro is so close to him; Keith’s chest heaves under Shiro’s attention, the silver tags hanging in Shiro’s hand between them. “I kept them for you… thought you might want them back.”
“Want them back? …they told you that I died, Keith,”
Hands curl into fists at Keith’s sides. Static filled days, too lost to name, too lonely to recount. Shiro, weeping in his arms. Shiro, whole and happy, standing in the cabin today, there to meet him. “Yeah, well. It wasn’t true.”
Affected, Keith’s mouth works around anything else he could add. He swallows. Looks away.
He feels the rise of Shiro’s chest, the breath that Shiro takes. He looks up and sees the tear slip down Shiro’s face. It catches at his jaw, hanging there for a moment before it drops away.
I can close my eyes, Keith thinks, like before. But he doesn’t. Shiro looks at him.
“You never stopped trusting me,” Shiro says, and another tear slides down, a wobbling path, a clear drop. It falls, a circle of wetness spreading out.
You are my world, my everything , Keith thinks, as Shiro tells him that he loves him.
He feels full with it— the feeling— as Shiro draws close again. To kiss Keith’s lips, his fingertips, his shoulders, following him with eyes as Keith folds them both into the military standard twin-sized bed. Much too small— like the cot in the cabin, like the makeshift bed in Black, like Keith’s chest for all he feels.
“I’ve waited to hold you for so long,” Shiro tells him, slipping the confession between Keith’s teeth with soft lips, wide splayed hands. His adam’s apple dips in his throat, and his eyes find Keith’s, and Keith realizes that this is Shiro’s way of being nervous. “I thought— I didn’t think you wanted this with me.”
What Keith wants with Shiro is tied to who he is— impossible to separate from himself. “It’s always been you,”
Affected, Shiro pulls Keith closer to him, shuddering, mouth pressed into the top of his shoulder. He shifts, strong around Keith, laying him back on the bed. Affected, Keith’s chest heaves as Shiro kisses down his sternum, his stomach, mouth hot as he kisses Keith, palming open his jeans. The dog tags drop past Keith’s shoulder, mingling with his hair on the pillow as Shiro noses into the hair below his navel, lifts his hips, murmurs direction and praise and soft, rounded expletives—
Keith thinks about looking up at the stars and listening to static, wanting so fervently for Shiro to be okay. He gasps, tight with emotion, body burning as Shiro takes Keith into his mouth.
“Ah-n—Shiro—” Keith has spent his life consumed, utterly, but never so willingly as this. He’s close as soon as Shiro’s tongue makes a home for cockhead, Shiro’s warm and rough calloused hand, his smooth prosthetic, skating along Keith’s thighs, hips, holding him, sucking him off.
Keith doesn’t know what to do with his own hands— and it must be obvious— because Shiro grins at Keith, tongue rolling past his lips in an obscene way after Keith has bit down on Shiro’s name and spilled, body jerking, into Shiro’s mouth. He takes one of Keith’s hands and unsnaps the glove at his wrist— a slight puff of laughter— tugging the leather away. He plants a kiss, mouth slick, into Keith’s palm, kissing him, smiles, kissing him,
Shiro is stoking himself and it’s the hottest thing Keith’s ever seen— how comfortable he is like this, how big, the shape his mouth makes as he finds pleasure, how dark his eyes are as he looks at Keith, body half tilted in this too-small bed.
Keith wants everything; he chews at a hangnail and watches and doesn’t realize he’s doing it until Shiro quips, “Still with me?” and Keith scowls and Shiro smiles, and they’re kissing again— Keith leans in, touching him, touching him, tasting Shiro and himself in Shiro’s mouth, wrapping a hand around Shiro and listening to the breath he inhales that sounds like Keith’s name, kissing him loosely with Shiro hard and hot in his palm.
Their eyes meet as Keith moves, directing Shiro back into his sheets, lightheaded with want, lube in hand. Shiro looks comfortable, relaxed as Keith maps Shiro’s broad back with his mouth, tasting sweat and scars, muscles shifting under once-broken skin.
“Keith,” he says, low and hot, when Keith tells Shiro, plain, that he wants to be inside him.
“Keith,” he groans, when Keith pushes slick, sure fingers inside, and the bed seems to dip with the way his voice hurtles into Keith.
“Okay?” Keith is thrumming with the heat of him and the way Shiro feels clenching around him, and how close they are— how close he wants to be. “Yeah?”
“I—” Shiro’s exhale is heavy. “ Yeah , Keith. Oh—”
“Oh, fuck,” Keith can’t be closer than this— inside him,
Mouth open as he rolls his hips, focused— yeah, focused— on Shiro’s body and the heavy, shuddering noises that he’s making.
The dog tags drop over Shiro’s back, hanging down from Keith’s neck as he drapes himself over Shiro, covering him, keeping him, kissing loosely at the tender line the sun left on the back of Shiro’s neck, above where his collar could reach.
Keith can feel the steady build of Shiro’s pleasure and he moves towards it, determined, his own body that same litany, you’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay,
When Shiro comes, it’s Keith who gasps, taken in by the feeling— all of it, Shiro’s hot skin, loose breaths, his voice and Keith’s name. He loves him; he can’t help but follow him, tipping over that edge with a fist curled tight over Shiro’s shoulder.
His eyes squeeze shut— a constellation there, and Shiro, his fixed point within it.
Shiro turns to find him when Keith is still reeling, catching his mouth again in a loose smile, fingertips brushing through the hair at Keith’s temples, lips warm as he presses into Keith’s neck.
He doesn’t say anything. He understands. Keith is glad for it— he gulps at air and doesn’t think it’d be possible to wrap words around what this is to him. The vast depth of this, the past and the now and the only future he’ll accept. “Shiro,” he says instead, and feels.
***