He's a friend of Katie's. He needs a place to stay. You'd be doing him a favor.
The boy on his doorstep is lethally handsome. Matt's introduction wasn't sufficient—his new renter shows up in leather and skinny jeans. There's grease on his neck, under the collar of his jacket, and it pulls Shiro's gaze like a magnet. According to Matt, he works in a body shop.
He's quiet. You'll like him.
Keith is at least thirty things at first glance and none of them are quiet—but the worst part is that Shiro recognizes him, and evidently so does Keith. The boy from the art show.
"You…" Keith's eyes—his blue, blue eyes—go wide and then slide to the space behind Shiro where the first painting he bought is hanging. Shiro wonders if he likes it any better now than he did the first time. "You…" he repeats, but trails off.
At least he isn't looking at the arm this time.
1
Shiro buys the first painting on a Saturday—he meets Keith, too, but he doesn't find that out for weeks.
The art show is Matt's way of conning him into going outside. Months post-Kerberos, he's left the house the exact number of times required by courtesy and an empty fridge. Adjusting to life on Earth is harder than it should be—harder minus an arm, though that's an afterthought compared to the empty house and the general malaise that's settled over him like a shroud.
Matt's concern is appreciated in spirit, but city college campus probably isn't the best place to start easing himself back into the world. Shiro's hair makes him stand out, makes him feel old, and the missing arm keeps drawing double-takes. At twenty-five, he's not the oldest person there by a longshot but everything he's been through is writ large on his skin like a beacon for anyone that looks twice.
The building they've repurposed as a gallery is calmer, quieter, at least.
Katie's sculpture is recognizable as soon has he walks in. It's a monstrosity of gears and wires that resembles something like a stylized Godzilla but looks much more like something that's going to come alive and eat everyone in the room—knowing Katie, it's not beyond belief.
It's drawing a crowd, so Shiro edges around it to the room behind it, and that's when he sees the painting.
The canvas is unframed, by far the biggest piece in the show barring Katie's. It's drawn in rough lines, but he recognizes the scene instantly—grey branches, electric purple flowers on a background of light—a tulip tree, of all things, and painfully familiar. He recognizes it because he grew up with one outside his window.
He loses time tracing over it. It's been minutes by the time he feels eyes on the back of his head.
The boy standing in the doorway is at least as beautiful as the painting. They have the same rough edges, the same fine lines—dark hair and long legs and a cropped leather jacket and boots, like he was going by on a bike and thought he'd stop in on a whim. He's out of place like Shiro is, and a thread of something warm winds its way up his spine at the cling of his shirt and the wired muscle of his arms where his sleeves are rolled up.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Shiro asks, needing to say something. It is. The painting is like a good memory he'd almost forgotten.
But instead of answering, the boy's eyes go wide, mouth falling half-open. He's staring at Shiro. He's staring at Shiro, like Shiro is missing an arm and his youth, like he can see the scars peeking out around the edges of the long sleeve shirt he took care to wear, right sleeve tied off at the elbow.
"Sorry?" the boy asks faintly.
Shiro turns back to the painting, exposed and embarrassed, but he repeats, "It's beautiful, isn't it?"
It takes the boy a moment to answer, and when he does, the words are soft. "I guess. You really like it?" The kid sounds skeptical, like he can't imagine why anyone would, and something in Shiro goes cold at the question. The kid is a stunner, and he can't even make small talk anymore.
"Yeah, I do."
2
On Saturday, Keith sees a man more beautiful than the entire art show combined.
It took Katie two weeks to convince him to submit anything at all and another to convince him to actually go. Art is private. He has sketchbooks full, front and back, spare doodles on every margin, and some part of him would rather burn them all than let another person see a single page.
It's the pastime of a lonely person. That's what someone told him once, not unkindly. He avoids his painting for as long as he can. Lance still thinks it's hilarious that he wanted to paint flowers of all things, but then, Lance didn't grow up in a shack in the desert where the plants grew in looking like they'd suffered through a hundred year drought.
But when he finally works up the courage to walk in, the painting is outclassed by the man in front of it in every way.
From behind, he's long legs and wide shoulders, the posture of someone used to carrying himself tall—he turns, and Keith forgets every rule and carefully memorized social cue because the man is the most beautiful person he's ever seen.
Sharp eyes and a sharp jaw, a mouth used to smiling. When he sees Keith, his lips quirk up in a polite grin—staring, you're staring—and his face is made for it. His whole demeanor goes from beautiful and distant to inviting. It's the difference between seeing something painted and seeing it in reality, having it close enough to touch.
And, for the first time in years, desire cuts through his gut at the sight. He doesn't register that the man has spoken until his expression goes aloof again.
"Sorry?"
The man turns back to the painting—his painting—and says softly, "It's beautiful, isn't it?"
Keith regrets his next words for weeks. "I guess... You really like it?" he asks before he realizes there's no way the man knows he's painted it, and he's insulted something he was busy admiring.
You're an idiot.
"Yeah," the man says, quieter, to himself, "I do."
Keith feels himself blush at the unwitting compliment and leftover embarrassment. The most beautiful man in the world loves his painting, and he ruins it, somehow, beyond luck and logic. Before he can apologize, before he can fix it, the man excuses himself.
As he walks past, their eyes meet for half a moment. That close, other details stick out—the scar over his nose, the high trust of his cheekbones. Keith couldn't look away if he wanted to. The man is missing an arm, too.
And he's perfect.
The show goes better than expected. Someone buys Katie's lizard man, which is a shock because Keith still can't figure out where its head is supposed to be. And someone buys the painting for two hundred dollars.
"What?" Keith asks, dropping his bag on the floor of the studio half shocked, half indignant.
"Yeah. Two hundred, man." Lance looks as surprised as he does, and a little chagrined. "It was right after you left."
He left in a rush; the memory of embarrassing himself is still insurmountable; it's tainted that entire side of the campus for him. Still— "Two hundred?" They were asking for fifty, and that was negotiable. There wasn't even a tag on it—it wasn't expected to sell at all.
"Yep. And he asked for your contact," Lance says, not looking up from his phone.
"Why? Wait, and you gave it to him?" Keith has email and a phone so old that Lance saw it once and almost had a hernia, and why anyone would need to get in touch is beyond him.
Lance doesn't look up from where he's tapping out a text. "For commissions? Just your email. Don't freak out."
He is freaking out. The concept of getting paid for art is alien and commission means he has to paint what someone else wants him to and he can barely work himself up to painting something he likes—
"Dude, if you don't want to do it then don't. It's not a big deal. I'll mail it for you and everything."
It feels like a big deal.
It's a week before he gets an email that isn't spam or school related. The message pops up on his phone while he's on break at the shop. It's short, clipped:
Would you be up for doing another painting? Same price as the last one, plus tip?
Plus tip. That's almost as much as he makes in a week working part-time at Kolivan's. That's rent money and maybe something better than ramen and cold pizza for dinner seven nights a week. He has to go wash the motor grease off his hands before he can thumb an affirmative back.
True to his word, Lance takes care of everything he doesn't want to—packing, mailing—the less he knows about his buyer the better, though there's something inherently intimate about it. He asks for what Keith wants to paint.
It feels personal.
3
Shiro asks for everything he missed about Earth and his anonymous painter becomes his favorite person in a month. Four commissions in, Shiro is down a thousand dollars but it's the best money he's had a chance to spend since he got back to Earth. The house feels livable again—warm, like it was before he left, when his Grandfather was alive. Like home.
He asks for something bright and gets a painting of an empty park at sunrise, the river at sunset, and tiny desert flowers growing up in the cracks of rock—little things he missed, almost without knowing it, drawn to perfection. The lines are always rough, but there's joy in them. They're the scenes he dreamed of a dozen times on the way to Kerberos—and a hundred on the way back, distracting himself from the pain and dark expanse. It's also the first interaction he's had that didn't belly-flop after the first conversation.
"Well, now it looks like a plain old art museum. How many are you planning on buying?" Matt asks when he comes over, and Shiro can't tell whether he's impressed or concerned.
Either way, as many as I can probably isn't the answer he wants to hear.
Matt cocks his head at the newest one. It's the rose garden at the local park—Shiro knows because he asked, and because he's saved every email they've ever exchanged. "This looks familiar…" Matt trails off, frowning. "Have you met the artist yet?"
"No." And he hasn't thought about it. There's something perfect about some distant person who can give him anything he wants, like they're dipping right into Shiro's head and giving him exactly what he needs most. Their emails are pages long—it's like having a pen pal, almost, and this way there are no questions. His new, unseen friend can't look at him and ask what happened?
And what if they met and they didn't get along? Or worse, what if they did? Kerberos left a mark on him. He's not settled in his own skin anymore. He can't hold up his end of a friendship. Matt's the only exception because he was there for all of it.
He's is still staring at the painting, still frowning, like he's thinking.
"Have you ever thought about getting a roommate?"
That's how he ends up with Keith on his doorstep, red and chagrined and beautiful.
"Sorry." Keith shakes his head, closing his eyes for a moment. "I remember you from the art thing. I was rude— I'm sorry." Bigger than the shock of the apology is the red dusting his cheeks. He looks several degrees more embarrassed than he should be given it wasn't a big deal to begin with.
"No, you weren't. I didn't take it personal." Only a small lie. Stares are part and parcel to being what he is, and he can't be anything else. Shiro holds out his hand, offering to take Keith's bag, but Keith looks surprised that he would bother and only hands it over when it becomes too awkward not to.
That turns out to be a theme. Every painting they come across gives him pause, like he's never seen art on the walls of a house before, and then they get to his room.
"No," he says when Shiro opens the door. Just that. Just no.
It's at the end of a long hallway and it has a door to the garden—privacy Shiro thought would be appreciated, but Keith stops on the threshold and doesn't take another step. "It's too big," he says faintly.
Shiro laughs, but something goes a little tight in his chest at the implication. Keith has a single bag, no transportation, and he thinks a guest room is too big.
"Get settled," Shiro tells him, not bothering to argue. "Stir fry okay for dinner?"
Keith's mouth opens, but all he manages is a little, stuttery nod, and there goes the thing in Shiro's chest again.
Matt's right. Keith is quiet, but that night over dinner Shiro works him out of his shell little by little. By the end of it, they're both full and content and Shiro realizes it's the first time he's had a meal with anyone in the house since before Kerberos.
"You live here alone?" Keith asks when Shiro is quiet for too long. It's the first personal question he's asked all night, and it's hesitant, like he doesn't really expect an answer.
Shiro nods and takes Keith's plate and his into the kitchen, savoring the distraction. "I was gone for a while. This was my Grandfather's house—there was an accident while I was away."
It's a sob story. Back from the worst mission of his life, to the worst news, but nothing he couldn't handle. The Holts tried to adopt him in spirit, but the last thing they needed was Shiro moping around their house. He has a standing dinner invite, but it seems crass to take them up on it. They've been too kind to him already.
"I'm sorry," Keith says and then quieter, almost himself, "My parents are gone too." He looks up after he says it like he's surprised by his own admission, and Shiro sees the moment his eyes settle on the streak of white in his hair, and then the scar across his nose. It paints a picture, and it's one they might as well get it out of the way early.
"The hair…" Sleepless nights and worry and the pain of a near-fatal injury on the other end of the space—wondering if he was going to make it, if it was worth it to try. "Stress. Unrelated to the arm." He cards his fingers through it, smiling in a way he hopes is self-deprecating. "Maybe a little related to the arm. There was an accident, off-world—I got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time."
That's not the full story—not even most of it. The accident was getting a hole in his suit a billion miles from Earth, tying off his arm, letting the vacuum take it while he tried to stay calm enough long enough to get back in the ship—and everything that came after. But before he can change the subject, Keith's eyes go wide, and he says the word Shiro wants to hear least.
"Kerberos… You were on the Kerberos Mission."
It's not well known. The Galaxy Garrison made sure of that. There's literally no reason for Keith to know—except Matt—and that's just Shiro's luck. Before he can change the subject, Keith reads his mood and looks away.
"Sorry," he mutters, scrubbing a hand over his face. "I wanted to be a pilot. I almost went to the Garrison, but I washed out—How was it? Other than the arm." He's got his face half hidden in the hang of his hair, almost embarrassed, like he thinks it's silly to ask.
No one does though. No one has. His Grandfather might have if he'd been around when he got back. And it was—
"Beautiful. It was really… calm."
The rest of dinner is spent in companionable silence, broken by Keith's occasional questions, like he can't help him himself, but nothing changes. He doesn't act like it changes anything. It's the first time Shiro's had a chance to talk about it with someone whose job wasn't to ask. It's a relief.
It seems small, but he amorphous mass of grief that's been building in the back of his mind for months shrinks by some small degree; by the time they're on the couch laughing at some ridiculous sci-fi flick that gets everything wrong in the best way, he's almost forgotten it was there at all.
4
Keith recognizes him as soon as the door opens—and recognizes the painting behind him. Matt's always had a shitty sense of humor.
Everything comes together in that moment—the man asking for his art, the man in the gallery, Matt's mysterious friend with a too-big house and a spare room. But the man has no idea who he is. Matt's dead, for several reasons—a growing list he's keeping meticulous track of—but above all, for not warning him about the paintings, about the house, about Shiro.
It gets worse. The house is huge and the room Shiro shows him to is nicer than any he's ever stayed in. He has half a mind to walk out right then, call it off, beg Kolivan's couch for a few days, but then Shiro smiles and offers him a home-cooked dinner. He's only mortal.
The strangest part of living with Shiro is how easy it is. Shiro doesn't go out much and he works from home doing god knows what for the Garrison. They end up taking meals together, courtesy of Shiro. When Keith tries to pay more rent for his effort, Shiro shakes his head and says, "I miss cooking for someone else."
He lets Keith help with dishes, and that's more a reward. All time spent with Shiro is, he begins to realize.
In spare moments Shiro gets a little, absent smile, like he's happy to be alive and doing anything, and sometimes he turns it on Keith. Between that and the width of his shoulders and the way he looks in the morning when he's dozy and sleep-tousled, Keith knows he's fighting a losing battle with himself. Then, two weeks in, he realizes that Shiro gets up when he does so they can have breakfast together, and he's lost. It was never a fair fight to begin with.
The only sticking point is the paintings. It's on the tip of his tongue to come clean about it the first day, but he gets another email from his buyer—from Shiro, he realizes, and his heart leaps to his throat when he opens it. If there's one thing he's sure of by then, it's that Shiro deserves it.
He can give the money back somehow. It won't matter, he tells himself.
As the weeks slide into winter, he falls hard and fast. They settle into an easy rhythm. Work, the eternal grind of trying to get his degree on nickels and dimes, spare moments spent in the school's studio, painting for himself and for Shiro. Matt makes himself scarce, but when he does show he smiles at Keith's glare and pretends he's stupid to the whole thing.
Every other moment goes to Shiro and nursing his inexorable crush. It's inevitable.
At first glance Shiro is too good to be true, but he has a bad sense of humor and a tendency to stray toward the snack aisle when they're out shopping. The second time Keith catches him up at night pilfering the fridge, they stay up talking until it's early more than late. Shiro isn't too good to be true, and that's worse. He's just Shiro.
Keith doesn't stand a chance.
"Saw you and your roommate at the store on Tuesday," Lance announces when Keith walks into the studio.
Keith's first reaction is to flip him off, but then he realizes that'll be worse than pretending he doesn't know what Lance is talking about.
"You could have just said you were dating. No one cares."
Across the room, Katie perks up and leans around her canvas to stare at him. "You're seeing someone?" she asks in a small, curious voice that's not half as innocent as she thinks it is. According to Matt, Katie's set to start at the Garrison next year because they could handle taking a fifteen-year-old but somehow fourteen was too young, even for them. Taking electives at the college is her version of cooling her heels, though no one has explained to Keith how fluid physics counts as an elective or cooling her heels.
Either way, she's the only reason Lance signed up to be the Art Club whatever-he-is, and Keith doesn't owe either of them anything.
"That's cool," Katie says when he doesn't answer, and then in the worst way, "Shiro's really great."
Of course she knows Shiro, because Matt knows Shiro, because that's how this started in the first place. Matt's the only one that knows he washed out of the Garrison; Keith spent the night before staring at the ceiling, wondering if he and Shiro would have met if it had gone differently. If he had been better.
"We're not dating," he says before either of them can ask anything else, past the rush of blood in his ears that means he's blushing. Dating is an esoteric concept, and dating Shiro is beyond him entirely. He's not worth what Shiro is worth.
Katie makes a speculative sound and Lance glances up at them both. "Yeah, I walk with my hand on Hunk's shoulder all the time when I'm at the store. That's regular," he scoffs.
Shiro is generous with his hands—it's a little life-ruining, but Keith is learning to cope. There's nothing un-innocent about it. Shiro is generous with everything. "It's not like that."
He wishes it was.
Lance lets him stew for minutes before he throws out, "Isn't he the guy that bought your painting?" Stillness settles over him like terror before he shakes it off, but Lance isn't done. "You should tell him, man. He's going to find out anyway."
There's nothing to say to that, because he's right.
The words echo in his ears through the rest of the evening and then chase him all the way home. No, he realizes—not his home but Shiro's. He's a tolerated guest and he already knows Shiro doesn't need his rent money. At least Shiro's started letting him pay half on groceries, but if he finds out about the paintings, it's hard to imagine he'll be anything but crushed. The vision of his expression—hurt, confused, disappointed—clouds his mind's eye the whole way home.
He should have come clean about it weeks ago. Panic plays around the edges of his mind at the thought of telling Shiro, though, and he has to stop at the edge of the bridge over the river to clear his mind. It's hours past sunset; the ice cold of the air is bracing, at least.
The sound of something mewling is so out of place it shakes him out of his funk in an instant.
After he figures out what he's hearing, it only takes a second and the flashlight on his beat up old phone to pinpoint it—a box on the edge of the embankment by the river, just under the bridge.
What kind of asshole leaves a cat out in the cold? He heaves off his bag at the edge of the road so he can inch his way down to it without risking a fall head-first into the river. It's not frozen over, but the edges are iced and steep, slippery with old leaf fodder.
"Hey there," he whispers when he catches the edge of the box with his toe, pulling it close enough to reach inside. The thing inside is more fluff than cat, black as the night around it. The second he gets his hand close enough, it tries to climb him like a tree, little claws pricking through the fabric of the jacket Shiro keeps telling him it's too thin. For the first time, Keith thinks he might be right.
Still, it's warm enough for the kitten. He settles it under the edge of his lapel, checks the box for any relevant information—none, of course—and heads back up the slope.
It goes wrong, immediately and spectacularly. It's hard to suss out how and where in the minutes that follow, but once one foot starts sliding, he's done for. He sees the water coming, and that makes it worse somehow. It's so cold it hits like a physical blow and he has a full ten seconds to contemplate his doom before he's up to his neck in it.
The only saving grace is that he manages to keep the kitten high and dry in one hand—which, in retrospect, is probably why he falls in the river in the first place. It's hard to climb one-handed.
He manages to pull himself out before the cold does any permanent damage, and he's gearing himself up for a pathetic call to Shiro and a nasty wait in the cold when he realizes his phone was in his pocket. His pants pocket. His soaking wet pants pocket.
Of course, that's the moment it starts snowing.
5
The first night Keith doesn't come home is the first night it snows.
Shiro saves dinner for him—it's habit by now to make enough for two—and tells himself not to worry. He's young, he's in college, and Shiro isn't his keeper. Still, worry gnaws at him. He calls once, but it goes straight to voicemail and he feels like an idiot for trying. He's spoiled by Keith's presence. After a month of living together, Shiro knows he's doomed. Keith's going to move on one day, and he'll be alone again, but at least Keith's gotten him closer to happy than he thought he could be.
By ten, he's settled into the couch and resigned to a night of trying hard to not dwell on loneliness, nibbling his way through the leftover pie Keith helped him make—which is of course when the doorbell rings.
He doesn't know what to expect when he opens the door but Keith, blue-lipped and soaking wet isn't it.
"Sorry. I couldn't work the key," Keith says through chattering teeth, high and breathless, which sounds like nonsense until Shiro realizes he means he's shaking too hard to get the key in the lock. At some point, the storm outside turned into a blizzard and Keith has been out in it the whole time.
"Oh my god," Shiro breathes, pulling him inside, mind already going a little panicked because Keith looks like he's seconds from turning into a human icicle and he walked home like that—
Keith's jacket meows.
Shiro is stunned into freezing while he watches Keith unzip his jacket, revealing what might be a kitten but looks more like a soot sprite from the movies he used to watch as a kid. Still, it looks drier and warmer and less miserable than Keith.
"He was out by the river and I had to get him."
That explains a lot, but it also hurts to hear Keith try to make words. "Tell me later, ok? Let's get you warm first."
Shiro takes the kitten and sets it on the carpet where it'll at least stand out enough to keep one eye on and then helps Keith out of his ice-crusted jacket and his clammy sweater and shirt, right there in the foyer. Keith can't do more than maneuver his arms in a helpful direction; Shiro doesn't think twice before he goes for Keith's shoes and pants, too. Modesty is for when hypothermia isn't on the table.
"Here." Shiro strips off his own sweater when Keith is naked, because it's wool and warmer than anything else within easy reach—and pulls it over Keith's head. It's comically large on him, but he still pushes his arms through and pulls the hem down, blushing.
At least he has some color back in his face.
Shiro bundles the kitten and him both into the living room and leaves them on the couch while he tries to decide how many blankets are enough—all of them, maybe? And he needs warm food—they both need warm food, and what do kittens eat?
Keith watches him all through his panicked back-and-forth, glassy-eyed and rapt, kitten cupped in his hands like precious cargo.
"Thanks," he whispers when Shiro is finished piling blankets over him. "Sorry. My phone…"
His teeth aren't chattering anymore, but his voice is a rasp. Shiro sits down next to him, already tallying up every cough remedy in the medicine cabinet.
"When you said the river, you meant by the school?"
Keith nods, ruffling the kitten's ears. "I slipped in. My phone got wet. Sorry."
That's three miles, soaking wet. It'll be a miracle if he doesn't get a fever; Shiro presses his hand to Keith's forehead to check, and Keith pushes into the touch absently. He's out of it.
"I'm sorry," Keith says again. "I know I can't keep him, but—"
It takes a second to understand what he's talking about, and when he does, Shiro laughs.
"I love cats." Shiro pulls him in closer. "Go to sleep."
The saving grace is that Keith's bag isn't wet. Shiro can't blame him for trying to save the cat, but at least he had the sense to take something off before he rolled into the river. The edges of the cloth bag are damp from the snow more than anything, so Shiro sets it out in Keith's room, spreading his books out under the warm air of the heater.
That's how he sees it—a sketchbook, the corners already wrinkled from the damp. It's a whim to leaf through it and unstick the pages.
A whim he instantly regrets.
The first thing he realizes is that Keith is an incredible artist. The book is full of absent sketches and doodles—scenes from his day, animals and people and a thousand small things Shiro would never notice on his own, rendered to perfection, and him.
That's the second realization; the book is full of him.
It wasn't a whim to open it, Shiro realizes, fingers shaking. It was a violation of Keith's privacy. Keith has been watching him, and drawing him, and this Shiro looks nothing like he should. It's not the version of himself he sees in the mirror. Lined in pen and pencil, he looks young, and handsome, and happy. He sets it back on the bed, swallowing back the emotion filling his chest and rising in his throat.
It doesn't mean anything, he tells himself. The bigger shock is that anyone could think he looks like that, after everything, like something worth memorizing and keeping and knowing.
The third realization dawns slower and hits harder. He has to sit down on the bed when it comes to him.
The sketches are familiar. He knows those lines.
When he gets back to the living room, Keith and the kitten are still curled up together, Keith under the massive pile of blankets with his head sticking out, the kitten on top beside him. With their hair sticking up, it's almost like seeing double.
Shiro checks his temperature with the back of his hand and settles on the coffee table in front of him, watching, calculating. It makes sense. Keith's bizarre insistence that he pay for groceries, making up for the commission money in small degrees; his odd, secretive school hours, and the art show—
The art show. Of course Keith was there. Of course he was aghast at Shiro admiring his painting. In the month they've known each other, that's the one thing that never fit—Keith would never insult someone else's art.
If Keith wants to keep this a secret, he can. He gives Shiro more than he deserves anyway.
Matt though… Matt is dead.
6
Keith wakes up sweating and hot, his face pressed into Shiro's neck, and it takes a long, sweet moment for him to remember that it's because he's an idiot.
They're still on the couch, the three of them, Shiro's arm around his back under the massive pile of blankets, the kitten settled on top in a tiny ball of fluff. Keith extricates himself and then remembers he's naked underneath the sweater, and whose sweater it is.
The sense memory of walking to the bathroom in nothing but Shiro's oversized clothes haunts him all day, and it's a long one.
Shiro takes them to a pet store and insists on paying for everything, and Keith decides it's not worth fighting when Shiro puts six flavors of cat treat in the basket. Six.
"What are you going to name him?" Shiro asks on their way out
...It hadn't occurred to him he could keep the cat—naming it seemed silly. "Kitty?" Keith tries.
Shiro gives him an indulgent smile. "That's a great name," he says tightly, and he's not that good at lying.
"Maybe—Black?"
This time Shiro's smile is fond. He hooks his arm around Keith's shoulders, staring down at the kitten. "Sure. We can get him tags and everything."
Owning a cat turns out to be an all-day affair and by the time they get home, Keith is exhausted; Shiro keeps looking over at him, concerned.
"Get some rest, ok? I'll get dinner." Shiro settles him on the couch in front of the fire, leaning over him to pull the comforter up, and then almost by accident it seems, presses a kiss to the crown of Keith's head as he pulls away. It's intimate and warm; Shiro freezes, hovering over him like he's realized what he did and doesn't know how to process it.
"Sorry… I didn't—sorry." He steps away, scrubbing a hand through his hair.
Keith stays stalk-still, trying to figure out what it means. Shiro keeps his distance for the rest of the night, but when he settles on the couch after dinner, Keith presses in close enough to share the blanket and Shiro doesn't move away.
That night in bed, Keith thumbs out an email to Shiro.
I'm not doing commissions anymore, but if there's anything you want it can be my Christmas gift to you.
It's weird to round the corner in the hallway and see a gallery of his own paintings, lovingly hung. Part of him wonders if that's what it would be like to have a family—would his parents have hung his paintings? Admired them? Been proud?
It hurts to think about, but losing his parents is an old wound. The part that hurts is being close enough to wonder. He's scared of losing it, scared of messing it up, scared of making it a lie. Scared of hurting Shiro, above all.
The reply doesn't come until the next afternoon.
Paint whatever you want. Paint something you love.
It goes easy. He's been sketching the man for months; putting color to him is a joy.
Still, it takes a full week of late nights at the school's studio to get it right.
When he's done and sure that changing or adding anything else will hurt more than help, he sits back on the floor and puts a hand over his mouth, because that's it. There's no more hiding after he gives the canvas to Shiro, and a small part of him wants to paint over the whole thing just to have an excuse to start over, put it off a little longer.
That night over dinner, Shiro reaches across the table and wipes a thumb under Keith's eye. "Paint?" he asks, smiling.
Keith feels his stomach flip. "From the shop," he lies, heart pounding.
If he senses the fib, he doesn't show it. "What do you want to do for break?" Shiro asks, pulling away.
Keith is too stunned to answer, still, because it really is almost like having a family.
"If you want. You probably already have plans, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"
"Can we stay here?" Keith asks. The thought of spending the holiday in a home with someone he loves is appealing in the kind of way that settles into his bones. He wants it once, at least, because he might not get another chance after he gives Shiro his painting.
7
"We're staying in town," Shiro tells Matt over coffee on Christmas Eve. The we slips out without him meaning it to, but Matt catches it and raises one eyebrow.
"No," Shiro tries to correct, shaking his head. "I just meant—Keith doesn't have any plans."
Outside it's starting to snow and all of him wants to be at home, with Keith. Want is a living thing inside him, gnawing him empty.
"You guys really get along, huh?" Matt smiles when he asks it and Shiro has half a mind to shove a handful of snow down his shirt the next time they're outside. He deserves worse, but then the question catches in his mind. Shiro opens his mouth to answer and can't. It would be a lie to say he likes Keith, and the truth is one he's too tired to run from anymore.
He hesitates too long and Matt goes for the kill.
"Are you in love with him?"
It hurts to admit, because there's no good end to it; saying it out loud is an admission of something he's going to lose. "Yes," Shiro says, focusing on the wall middle distance behind Matt, on the soft music playing in the background, on anything but the inevitability of loss.
But Matt laughs, "I knew it. That's great."
He expected pity, maybe, or sympathy, but not joy.
Shiro shakes himself out of his shock. "How is that great?"
"Because—" Matt stuffs another chunk of scone in his mouth and says around it, "—you deserve something nice, man."
That night when Keith falls asleep on him, as is tradition, Shiro carries him to bed without thinking about it too hard, his arm like a vice under Keith's thighs, holding him to his chest. He's heavy and warm and his breath against Shiro's neck is precious. Black chases him to Keith's room, biting at his heels the whole way there.
He tucks Keith in and loses a minute staring at him before he realizes what he's doing and gets out before he embarrasses himself any worse than he already has, cat in tow.
They didn't talk about exchanging gifts, but this is the closest Shiro has had to family in ages and he wants to give Keith something. Keith deserves something—everything, maybe, but it's not Shiro's place to give that much. It might never be, but there are moments when he thinks Keith might want it. Glances and touches and all the things he goes out of his way to do for Shiro, almost without noticing he's doing it.
It's a pipe dream, but when hope starts to spark up in the back of his mind, he doesn't smother it. Maybe he does deserve something nice. Maybe they both do.
Christmas morning dawns bright but overcast and deathly cold, the kind of uniform grey he used to dread because it meant a day cooped up with his own thoughts. He's surprised to find he's looking forward to it—it's a good excuse to spend the day with Keith and the cat, warm and lazy and quiet.
He wanders into the kitchen and starts coffee, half-focused. When Keith walks in, he's so quiet Shiro almost doesn't notice.
There are two surprises. The first is that he's fully dressed. Usually he shows up looking like his hair belongs to a separate dimension, half-clothed and bleary, but for once he looks like he put an effort in. He's fresh out of the shower, hair damp around the edges, and he looks—sick.
"Are you feeling alright?" Shiro puts his wrist to Keith's forehead to check, almost by habit, but Keith steps back. That's when Shiro sees: he has a package.
And he knows what it is.
8
It's a gallows walk, getting up that morning.
Keith doesn't remember getting to bed, which means Shiro carried him there, and even waking up with Black's nose in his face isn't enough to pull him out of his bone-deep chill. He can't lose Shiro. The painting is under his bed, rolled up and wrapped as best he could manage it—which wasn't much at all—and there's one manic moment where he thinks about throwing it out and pretending it never happened.
But no. As far as lies go, it's gone on more than long enough.
He takes a shower to calm down and warm up, trying not to let the anxiety of it bowl him over before he makes his way to the kitchen. Of course Shiro is already up. The morning light always hits him right—he looks so inviting that longing hits him like a blow.
Shiro sees him and frowns, touches his face out of habit and asks, "Are you feeling alright?" But then he sees the package and steps back, a little smile on tugging at the edge of his mouth. "You didn't have to get me anything."
"I wanted to," Keith makes himself say, and hands it over. By the time Shiro gets it open, he's a wreck of nerves.
Shiro spreads it out flat on the counter, as best he can one-handed; Keith is too scared to get close enough to help. At a few feet distant, he can see the exact moment Shiro realizes what it's a painting of—he goes still and then pulls his hand to cover his mouth, letting the painting curl back up around the edges, not looking at Keith or anywhere near him.
"I told you to paint something you love," Shiro says behind his hand, almost shy.
Keith nods before he realizes— "You knew?"
Shiro glances over at him from under his white bangs, wide-eyed, redder than he has any right to be. "I found your sketchbook that night you got turned into a popsicle, sorry. I thought… I thought if you were keeping it a secret it was for a reason. But—" He glances back to the painting and goes even more red. "It's me," he says, as if there's a question in that.
It's him, and Black, and the porch in the afternoon when the sun hits it right, the same scene he's watched a handful of times—enough to memorize it, to paint it from memory. That's some kind of love. It has to be. Keith tries to find words and can't. There's no excuse for it, no lie he can make. None he wants to.
But Shiro takes a breath and speaks for him, looking back at the painting. "You really think I look like that?"
He looks better real than anything Keith can paint, but as far as confessions go, it's the best he could do. "Yeah, of course you do," Keith says around the lump in his throat and then jumps because that's the moment Shiro comes at him in a flash. There's no anger in his eyes, no hurt; instead Shiro grabs his hand, pulling him toward the hallway. "What—"
"I want to give you your gift."
When Shiro finally stops, they're down a hallway, in front of a door Keith isn't sure he's seen before. The room it opens on is expansive, full of empty shelves and a long desk, wide windows across one wall.
Keith walks in and turns back to Shiro, uncomprehending. Shiro is leaning against the doorframe, looking how Keith felt giving him the painting, and he's still not sure what's going on or what any of this means.
"It's… a studio. I thought you could make it one, if you wanted." He pauses, smiling to himself, almost sheepish. " I thought you could stay, if you wanted."
A room to paint in. A room of his own. A space in a home, with a family he loves—small, but his, for the first time.
"I want to," Keith says before Shiro has the chance to take it back, but he won't, Keith realizes. He has the same smile that caught his eye the first time they met, inviting and warm.
"I love you," Keith hears himself say out loud, fond more than anything. It should feel like a confession, but it doesn't. It feels like this is the hundredth time he's said it—a truth they both already know by heart.
Shiro's smile breaks into a grin. "I love you, too." He says it on the edge of a laugh.
When Keith crosses the room and pulls him into a hug, he returns it like he needs it, keeping Keith so close that he can feel Shiro's fingers pressing in against the small of his back and the edge of Shiro's tank top against his neck, the bare heat of his skin beyond it.
He's the first to pull away, but only far enough to look up and meet Shiro's eyes, and see if he's overstepped—if going further would be too far. He still doesn't know what he wants to do beyond the nebulous desire lying heavy in his limbs, keeping him close, but he doesn't want to lose the heat of the hand over his spine or the steady weight of Shiro against him.
When he leans up, Shiro meets him halfway.