make you a star in my universe
Cheesy power ballads, refrigerator light and dark, unruly hair across taupe eyes. A study of gold in repose. Keith doesn't want to admit that it's everything he's ever wanted. An end-game.
Years later, through the fire, the blood and betrayal, it's the only truth he can still cling to.
if you love me, with all of your heart
if you love me, I'll make you a star in my universe
you'll spend every day, shining your light my way
-For You; Angus & Julia Stone
It starts with a touch – a light pat on his shoulder. Light enough not to notice. Light enough not to care. But he does. Keith does. It's impossible not to – not when, well…not when it's him.
Shiro gives him a smile, just a curve at the end of a line – miniscule, cast in sunlight – and it's enough. Understanding. Sympathetic. Kind. Enough for Keith to loosen the tension of his shoulders, enough for him to release the breath he's been holding. There's this little thing – a little, tiny, funny thing – about holding your breath in until you're teetering off the edge of explosion, and a small touch – an outside force with the gentleness of rain – is enough to deflate you from the inside.
It's a startling, not so startling epiphany – how Shiro's smile is a knife-sharp point on rubber stretched thin.
There's a rumor – a sibilant hiss slithering through the cracks and holes, over cutlery and impeccably-buttoned uniforms – of an escort mission, to Pluto's far side, on the small moon. Keith would be deaf not to have heard of it. The idea has some merit, some small grain of truth – the Galaxy Garrison was good at aiming for past excellence, after all.
The tuft of Shiro's hair – angling forward and into his eyes, rebellious – shifts in the wind, the golden glimmer of the setting sun painting shadows across his face. Greyed-out cuts and lines, tinged in scarlet. Keith's clumsy with words, stringing metaphors, crisscrossed, in his mouth. All that comes out is a whiff of air, the best he can conjure today or on any other day.
He wishes he could even voice one – a sentence or a clause, maybe even a fragment. The thought is feather-light, sinks into his stomach with the weight of a planet. He wishes for a lot of things, he surmises. It's not something he wants to admit.
There are a lot of things Keith doesn't want to admit.
"Wouldn't it be great, though?" Shiro asks, baritone edging off the cliff of a note. Keith looks up at him, meeting his gaze and the flailing of his blood echoes in the skip of his heart beat. The sand dunes beyond sift, the winds trailing, glittering in the afternoon light across a fire-touched sky. The curve of Shiro's lips are hopeful, the crinkles by his eyes brimming with want. Overhead, invisible, a million stars reach down with gentle hands. "Not everybody gets to go on escort missions. Imagine how it'd feel like."
The excitement is simmering, Keith notes, as Shiro tilts his head up and looks upward. The curve of his jaw runs to draw lines downwards, the prominence of collarbones peeking over the neckline of his shirt. His skin is tanned – warm, invigorated, alive – painted amber, the slight bulge of veins moving along with every breath.
"Yeah. Imagine." He agrees – it's enough. The spark. Those two words. Infinitesimal. Short. Unremarkable. The grin Shiro throws his way, in response, blinds him.
Adventurous. Bright. Argent. Those are things Keith uses to describe Shiro. Words beyond the things he wants them to mean, the things Keith struggles to say, to put into action. Always reaction. He wonders how long until Shiro grows tired of the silence, the absence of a response. He's stayed far longer than most – far longer than anything he's ever had.
Don't go. The crimson of Shiro's speeder turns to vermillion in the setting sun light. The lapels of his jacket sway in the wind. Keith presses his thumbnail against his finger hard enough to hurt. I don't want you to go.
Leaving is something Keith's used to.
Rejection is something he's learned to be content with.
Orphaned, he's learned to get by with nothing else but the skin on his back and the mindless, almost-insane mantra he's taught himself to recite in his head over and over and over. This is enough.
"He's quiet and he keeps to himself. He's never been good being with people." It's the same thought, typed out in synonyms, dull – monotonous. The same look of dissatisfaction, glaring from different eyes and Keith simply glares back, as his hair grows longer, his limbs grow thicker and the years grow shorter. The children at the orphanage do not stay long, the faces change almost by the month. Keith remains, the only constant fixture next to the rickety cabinet with the broken leg and the molding door jamb with too many cuts, illegible writing and numbers by the side. "It might be…difficult to get him to open up. I wouldn't recommend, unless you're willing to see it through."
He flicks the pages, eyes noting the words but not really reading them. The edges of the paper are torn and folded, grubby finger prints and nonsensical ink marks in the margins. He's read the book so many times he can recite it, word-for-word, off the top of his head. It's not something that most people look for in a possible adoption.
Most want for bright-eyed laughter and sing-song voices. Nobody wants to hear him talk about celestial mechanics and gravity.
He's weightless in his own space, uncomfortable even in his own skin.
The rumble of an engine pulls his attention away from Kepler's laws of planetary motion, and he squints through the sheer fabric of the curtain and spies crimson. The man that steps in a few minutes later is tall, barely fits through the small door. The low light paints his eyes grey, and they gleam when he smiles.
Something catches fire in Keith's chest.
"Elbow." Shiro says, his voice short, slightly strained. Keith grunts and steps back, turning his body to the side and using the momentum to swing the bo staff at the other's head. Shiro nods in approval, raising his forearm and catching it by the nook of his guard. "Good."
Sweat is dripping into Keith's eyes, sharp, and his hair sticks to his skin. He's not panting yet, but he will be soon. Shiro uses the pause to counter with a sweep of his foot. He jumps, teeth gritted, and raises his staff as the other follows up with a jab of his wrist to the side of Keith's face.
Shiro is relentless, intense, during training. He doesn't allow a second of respite in the middle of a spar, giving it his all. Keith breathes and breathes and grunts as he tries to keep up, the Training Room silent save for the sound of skin against wood. Shiro doesn't slow down, doesn't pull his punches – he trains Keith like a man, allows him to know what it really is like in a fight – when it's not rough-housing and hallway brawls over a throwaway comment on dead parents and orphans. Keith can barely pin him down, strikes three out of ten and falls flat on his back, his own bo staff at his neck.
There's a grin on Shiro's lips – wolfish – and this close, with Shiro on his knee over Keith, it's almost sharp enough to cut him. The bead of sweat over his top lip glows under fluorescent, and Keith knows his ears are red for an entirely different reason altogether.
"Good." Shiro grunts, leaning back and standing up. He sets the staff to the side and reaches a hand out for him. Keith clears his throat and sits up, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. Shiro's bare hand against his feels like a furnace. "You're reacting a lot faster. Just don't forget to—"
"Focus." Keith answers, rolling his eyes as he wipes the sweat off his face with the back of his hand. The corner of Shiro's lips pull up in a lopsided smile and he feels the other's fingers in his hair, ruffling them. Shiro's shirt is dripping with sweat, and in this lighting and angle, the shadows play off the panes of his arms.
He blinks, and feels Shiro's hand on his face, pushing the hair away from his eyes. The box in his chest trembles, and the lid creaks open a bit. The look on his face must be humorous – it'd be the only explanation for Shiro's twinkle-eyed laugh.
"Your hair's a bit long." The other notes, and Keith stills, unsure of what to do as Shiro's index finger threads through the hair at the side of his face, slowly pushes it away until it's over his ear. The ghost of a touch arcs through the skin and his tense jaw. "You want me to cut it for you again?"
Keith doesn't know what to make of the hopeful look on Shiro's face. It was just hair. When he rolls his eyes and says 'fine', he pretends to ignore the twinge of something painful, something wondrously – beautifully – painful in his chest as Shiro tilts his head, his smile returning. The hand by his ear turns to an arm around his shoulder – and Keith should complain about the sweaty limb over his neck, or the scent of sweat and rubber mixed with cedar—
He doesn't admit that he wants to press his face against the seam where Shiro's arm meets chest.
Icarus and the sun, all over again.
"Look, I know I messed up, okay? You don't have to fucking tell me." Keith bites out. He doesn't look up from his shoes, ignores the line of neatly pressed slacks and the concerned gaze he knows he'll see the moment he allows himself to be weak.
He doesn't know what's thrumming in his veins – if it's disappointment or rage, bitterness or just the deep-seated aching left by every person who's walked out on him, starting with mommy and daddy.
It was just…so stupid. It wasn't something he hasn't heard before. The sad, lonely orphanage boy that nobody wanted. The little crybaby with the dead parents. It's not like they were untrue.
He doesn't need to hear what went on inside the cadet colonel's office – he can already guess, remembering the frigid glare she sent his way. The cadet across him – some asshole named Jenkins – gave him the finger when he dared to look sideways and Keith glowered back, but he remembers the look of worry and concern on Shiro's face when he arrived at the call of the colonel, and Keith suddenly feels sick to his stomach.
Now alone – Jenkins inside the office – it's all he can do not to notice Shiro's presence beside him, tall but not overbearing, willing to respect the peripheries of what Keith can handle at any given moment and Keith's surprised the shame and disappointment hasn't started seeping off his skin like acid.
It was just—
He knows. He goddamn knows how the only reason Keith was here was because of Shiro, because Shiro took a chance on him and saw something – and he has no idea what that something is and it fucking terrifies him.
"Keith—" Shiro starts, voice low, consoling. There's no harshness to the way his name sounds on Shiro's lips, no bite. He's grown so used to it thrown as a curse, a repugnance, streaked in rage. Shiro clothes his name with gentle hands and feather-light touches. Keith digs his nail deeper into his skin until he feels scarlet bloom.
And maybe because he's biting his lip too hard.
Or it's because the hair is in his face and it stings his eyes and he surreptitiously tries to get them to move away.
Or maybe it's because it's Shiro – the only person who ever seemed to have look past the surface and saw something worth keeping, regardless of how hard and impossible it is for Keith to believe.
There's movement – smooth, lithe – and Shiro's kneeling, a hand over Keith's – the one trembling, the one bleeding.
Shiro is silent and Keith has no idea what expression is running across those features, but the fingers over his are slowly – tenderly – prying them open, inspecting the damage. Shiro's thumb traces the edge by the line of red and it takes Keith a moment to note how smaller his hand is compared to the other, the color of his skin against the tan, the wispy motion of the thumb on the abused skin and each stroke sending tendrils and lines of heat and lighting to every nerve in his body.
"You should just send me back." The words are spoken through gritted teeth, and Keith bites his lip and tries not to blink – not even when the lines of his shoes and everything else starts to blur. Shiro's hand stills in its ministrations. "I'm just gonna fuck up again."
"Keith…" Shiro says – no, whispers, and—just—God, does he have to do that? Does he have to say his own name like it's some prayer? He can't stop the gooseflesh running up his arms or the tight, too-tight squeezing of his chest or the sharp sting behind his eyes.
I'm sorry. He wants to say. He knows he has to. He doesn't know what the colonel said, but it's no secret that only Shiro's outstanding reputation kept Keith in the Garrison.
But the words are stuck in his throat, frozen. He's long lost sight of how to scrounge them up from the glacial depths.
"Hey, hey, look at me." Shiro starts, his other hand on Keith's chin, the thumb sweeping along the line of his jaw and circling about the growing bruise. He forgets to breathe, fights the ache – the urge – to press his face against Shiro's hand and forget everything – every ugly, hateful thing said about him, every reminder of his parents' death, every mark that pushed him down a road all by himself. "Keith, please."
And it just takes two words – Keith, please – for all his walls, his defenses to come tumbling down, allowing Shiro to angle his face to meet his gaze.
And—
Oh, God, the look in those eyes—the worry, the utter heartbreak, the wide-eyed rose-taupe gaze roving over every plane, every valley of his face. The hand moves from his chin to his cheek, and it's just—
The intimacy. The wonderful, wonderful pounding of his heart. The image is permanently emblazoned, engraved, embossed – things that start with 'em' that he can't care to find out – across his mind and over his heart because it's the closest thing, the closest he'll ever get to Shiro. A sun sewn into the tapestry of gentle smiles and scarlet-tinged taupe.
"I'm not giving up on you." The admission is quiet, but true. The surety – the confidence – is riveting. Factual. Shiro's eyes aren't hard – they're unblinking, but not unkind. Unflinching. Unfaltering. That's what they are.
His lips are drawn into a determined line, immovable.
And it's that—most of all. It's that faith, Shiro's faith, in him, of all people. Fuck-up, orphan, failure. Keith is every one of those and Shiro chose him – believed in him and it's not possible—or it is—because Shiro is looking at him with steel. It's not just something he said for the moment, to dull the blow. It's—
When Shiro says it like that, then he must – if only a little – believe it. When Shiro says that he's not giving up, then, just for a bit – a small part – must be true. And…that's just stupid, right? Stupid and—
You're what I believe. The thought comes to him – comet-fast, sun-hot and plain fucking honest. It hits Keith like a ton of bricks, an entire avalanche and it causes the first – the very first fall, the line of liquid warmth down his cheek. That's all Shiro, the capacity, the tenacity. The strength to believe in others, in spite of all their failures, in spite of all the times they've disappointed, in spite of all the times they've made lead out of glass-brittle faith.
Shiro's thumb wipes the tear away, and his brows make this weird dance, like he doesn't know what to feel and the rush of emotions across his face is too fast for Keith to decipher—if he could, at all. The delicateness, the tender stroke over the skin under his eye, the fact that Keith's hand is still cradled by the other—he can only swallow, and hope that his heart hasn't exploded in his chest.
"Don't give up on yourself, Keith." Shiro continues, his hand moving from cheek to shoulder and, suddenly, he's leaning in and Keith could only stare – wide-eyed – as the line of Shiro's uniformed shoulder is pressed against his nose, his cheek against the skin above the collar and the hand on his shoulder now threaded through his hair.
Shiro's breath against his skin, the press of his own nose against Keith's neck—
His blood-stained hand, cradled like a prize in Shiro's other hand, pressed against his chest where Keith could feel the stiff texture against his skin and the beat of a too-big, too-kind, too-gentle heart—
Without his permission, Keith's eyes close, tight, as he digs his nose deeper against the collar and he pretends that the almost-silent sobs are not from his own lips.
His first flight simulation scores set tongues wagging. Shiro is still top dog, but Keith's managed to close in at second. The only difference is in three measly seconds.
The moment Keith exits the training room — the last one, as always, when everyone had gone — and steps into the empty hallway, he's suddenly swept into an embrace.
Shiro's eyes are glowing with pride, and Keith's heart is beating three times their normal speed.
The smile on his own face, though — it's so bright, so ecstatic, it might as well power the entire Garrison.
"You wanna take a ride?" Shiro asks, out of the blue, and all Keith does is tilt his head to the side. It was liberty, and the way the aviator glasses sit on Shiro's face do things to his stomach that he's half-sure aren't healthy. When he manages to pull his gaze away from Shiro's face, he notices the raised thumb pointing towards the speeder.
He wants to. Keith wants to, so bad.
Except—he's never asked. It wasn't his place. He knows a thing or two about keeping your own space, about things that you don't want other people to know – sometimes, not even your best friend with a too-handsome smile – and he respects Shiro enough not to encroach on where he's not wanted.
What if he's what you want? A traitorous voice croaks, beneath the lock and key of everything he pretends not to want. Keith bites the inside of his cheek as Shiro removes his sunglasses and leans forward, hands on his hips. "C'mon, you promised me a ride."
What else can he say to that but 'yes'? When the light hits Shiro's eyes in the right angle, they flash gold and Keith's lost the battle before he even knew he was in a war.
The child-like grin on Shiro's face offsets the way his stomach feels like it's in zero gravity, watching as he climbs over the speeder, the sleeves of his jacket furrowing as he reaches for the grips. Keith hesitates only for a moment before following suit, carefully settling himself behind the other.
This close – oh, God – being this close, Keith could smell cedar off Shiro's skin, distinct and singular. The expanse of Shiro's back – the width of his entire frame – pulls at Keith's blood, and the casual way Shiro says 'hold on to me, alright?' over his shoulder as he fastens his helmet on, like it's normal, it's common, as if they've done this so many times it's textbook—
Would you let me hold on to you forever?
The engine under comes alive, an awakened beast. He could feel the hum in his legs, up his arms and an arc of excitement cuts through his thoughts. Slowly, he wrapped his arms around Shiro's middle, feels the cloth of his undershirt and the firmness of his stomach. Keith swallows, and if he was just a bit crazier, he'd think the cadence of Shiro's breathing jumped for a moment.
And they're off—
The rush—
The wind lashing out at him, them—
The pressure in his ears, the flapping of Shiro's jacket, the exhilaration pumping in his veins—
He doesn't know how to describe it, how the endless desert before them and the hum of the engine under him and just the repetitive, incessant freedom—
And it's just gravity and physics, isn't it? Motion and velocity and the rush towards something—
Sun up, sun down.
Shiro's smile.
Somehow – the metaphor – the idea, the constant of it all eases the rigidity of his chest and he allows himself to relax, to drape himself over Shiro's back and let the speeder dictate the direction of his body—
The unmistakable tightening of his arms around Shiro's middle, the press of his fingertips against his sides—
We could be like this. Over and over.
It's almost sad how happy the thought makes him.
There's a house. Dilapidated, run-down. Abandoned.
The sight of it – in the middle of the dunes – open door, boarded windows, a hole in the roof – the irony isn't lost on Keith.
The speeder slows down, and he raises his head from its rest in between Shiro's shoulder blades. The curiosity is ignored for the moment, content to memorize the way Shiro's chest feels under his hands, the expanse of it as he breathes – outward and over and it takes everything he has in him not to curl his fingers into hooks and embed them into Shiro's skin. He takes into account the hitches and grooves, over the pectorals and down under, for the nights that were too long – a reminder for him to imagine and dream, and hope that—one day—he'll learn to think of Shiro and not feel the gaping maw in his chest.
When they stop, Keith reins in the disappointment and slowly extracts his arms from Shiro—and gets to removing the helmet, combing his fingers through his hair. Shiro does the same thing, and Keith holds back the smile threatening to burst out of him at the sight of that runaway hair flat against his forehead, Shiro's look of irritation, glaring at it as if offensive.
"Hey, it's not easy when your hair doesn't agree with you at all," Shiro mutters, a bit peeved — and the slight irritation, the pout growing on his lips, just the picture of a somewhat disgruntled cat has Keith biting back from grinning wide. The other rolls his eyes, but the dimpled smile he throws Keith's way has him looking to the house and away from bright taupe eyes, before the red spreads across his face and not just his ears.
"What are we doing here?" He asks, eyeing the empty structure. There were some traces of recent occupation: an old pair of boots by the corner, near the low wall, a shovel. A welcome mat that had obviously seen better days by the door. Not the kind of things that would remain had this house been left all by its lonesome for any extended period of time.
"Exploring?" Shiro prodded, leaving their helmets hanging by the grips. He walked up to Keith and leaned a forearm on his shoulder, surveying the outside litter. Keith ignores the rapid-staccato beating in his chest.
He turns to him, raising a brow. "Seriously?"
Shiro gives him a look of betrayal and pouts again, ruffling his hair. "You wound me, Keith."
"You'll live," Keith smiles, crossing his arms. The arm on his shoulder lowers until Shiro's hand grips him instead, squeezing lightly and cocking his head towards the open door. Keith raises both hands, a dragged-out 'fine' following after.
It's not like he doesn't feel special, when Shiro chooses to spend his rare days off with him.
The inside of the house is exactly what Keith expected it to be - not entirely devoid of items, a few traces of habitation — there were plates and utensils in cabinets, old sofas without their covers, a few books here and there — and that was just the living room, it seems. There's a kitchen, he thinks, to the side, past an open arch and he can make out a table and the counter, and two other doors.
"Bathroom and bedroom, I reckon," Shiro hums, bending down to pick up a fallen photograph. Keith follows his gaze and he looks at the grainy picture - an old couple, and guessing from the clothes they were wearing, emphasis on the old. "Sweet."
Typical of Shiro to say something like that, as Keith turns away and heads to the closed doors. Shiro was right - one opened to a bathroom, mostly working, if you can stomach the somewhat moldy looking tiles. The other was a bedroom and, well, if it were a bit cleaner and if the lights were working and there were some decorations, it'd be a really nice room. The walls were painted a dark shade of brown - mahogany or maple or something - and the woodwork of the windowsill looked neat from where he was standing.
There's an old bed in the center of the room, set against the far wall, the mattress still on it. The covers had been removed, and so were the pillows, but it looked stable enough. Keith plopped himself down on the bed, felt the springs digging into his butt and frowned. Replace the mattress and fix everything else and it'd be a cozy bedroom.
It'd be a cozy house, to be honest. Not too big to make it feel cold and spartan, but enough for a small family...or a couple.
He hears Shiro rummaging in the living room, and his mouth dries.
It's not that—
It's not like he's ever gotten what he's wanted. It's not like every thought in his head that has his chest glowing warm, blood singing and his cheeks reddening, ever came true. So, what if he thinks about it—about them? Aren't his thoughts his own? Wasn't he allowed to pretend to want something? Even if none of it came true, was it so wrong to allow himself a moment to wonder, dream, and hope?
To—what exactly?
To wake up with Shiro's arm digging into his side? To roll over in the middle of the night and complain about Shiro hogging all the blankets? To fall asleep with Shiro's arm over his, long fingers locked in the spaces between his own?
To step through the door, finally comfortable in his own skin and find Shiro already waiting, leaning by the door jamb, smiling at him?
And he gets it. He totally gets that some things just don't fall into your lap the minute you want them, that some things take time - take time, dedication and blood - and he gets that, sometimes, not even all that is enough. Some things aren't just meant to be, and you can spend your entire life waiting and wanting and wilting and nothing changes. You're left with the shadow of everything you gave up—all for nothing.
There's this voice—barely there—but it prods at him, makes him think. What if it doesn't have to be that way?
What if wanting doesn't have to feel like falling without a parachute? What if it doesn't have to feel like running after a long gone train and two seconds past zero?
What if it's just as easy as reaching out and—maybe hold Shiro's hand? Wrap his arms around him, until he learns the sound of each beat of the other's heart?
There's a click - a flash and Keith blinks, looking towards the door.
Shiro is slowly lowering what seems to be a really old camera - one of those cameras that print out the image and let it form. Polaroids, he guesses.
He frowns. "What are you doing?"
The other shrugs. "Making memories? I mean, it was still working. Seemed like a waste to leave it out there."
The camera makes a noise and slowly prints out a thin piece of paper, watches as Shiro delicately pulls it out by the corner. He doesn't know what to do, clasps his hands together and looks up at the man beneath his fringe — he hates having his picture taken. Hates seeing his own face on print. Hates having to go through Recruitment every six months to renew his ID at the Garrison. He hates sitting there, facing the camera — he feels transparent, grotesque. Every flaw on display.
He doesn't stand and reach out to grab the picture in Shiro's hands, to rip it into shreds and set them afire. Not when Shiro's smile grows small but gentle — and Keith's heart is up in his throat and past his lips and out in the desert, flayed and dead because that's the only reason for the lightheadedness and the heated thrum he feels after.
"You mind if I keep this?" The other asks, and—yeah, scratch that. His heart beats once more then gets turned into vulture food. His shoulders do some motion thing that could pass off as a shrug, the tilt of his head as if nodding. Not necessarily yes or no, but the only thing Keith can come up best in the moment.
There's the sound of footsteps approaching, and the bed dips by his side and cedar wafts up his nostrils and he grips the edge of the mattress tight enough, telling himself not to turn his nose up and follow the scent like a dog. Shiro's elbow bumps with his, and he turns to the other just in time as Shiro holds the camera in a weird manner, with the glass facing them and…
Flash. He blinks again, raising a hand to rub at his eye as the camera prints the picture.
"Are you trying to blind me or something?" He grouches, ignores the chuckle from his side as an arm wraps itself around his shoulders. Shiro's always touching him - on one side or the other, and he's still not sure if it's something he wants or if it's just another way for him to torture himself.
"And miss seeing those eyes of yours? Not a chance in hell, buddy." The words are bullets against his skin, except the pain he expects to follow turn into frissons of scarlet and vermillion, wrapping around his heart, throat and eyes. The loss of air isn't a problem, the anticipation in his veins that come after the declaration is, instead, the root of it.
He doesn't say anything — until Shiro shows the photos to him. The first one is them, the one Shiro just took and it's...haphazard, to say the least. His own face is staring back at him, somewhat blank, unprepared for the shot. His hair is askew, not helped by Shiro's constant ruffling, and it's falling into his eyes. The light plays off them, and they're not as weird as he thinks they actually are.
Shiro's grinning wide - and it's funny how the photo fails to capture the entirety of the energy, the sunlit gleam and stardust that Shiro was - but it's the closest thing, to be honest. Half of his hair is out of frame, but the rebellious clump is still there, the taupe eyes crinkled at the corners, curved lips stretched out in that one beautiful smile.
God, he's so beautiful.
He flips to the next one - before he blurts something without thinking, like always - and he's looking at his own photo, the sole subject. He's staring, somewhere off to the side, and the light hits his face in a manner that casts shadows across his cheek. The color of his eyes stand out, the only saturation in a field of monochrome. It's something that he can almost consider artsy, but he doesn't really know what's in the picture important enough for Shiro to want to keep it.
He has an idea, an inkling — but it's too hopeful, too idealistic, too impossible—
And he doesn't allow himself to continue the thought.
They stay like that — quiet, contemplative — and Keith hands back the photos, both of them, except Shiro only takes the one of him and hands the other back, placing the photo in his hands and closing them, Shiro's skin warmer on his than anything else. "Please keep it?"
And—
Of course, he does. He wants to. Keith wanted to. He just didn't ask, didn't know if it was allowed, if he was allowed to hold on to it—
He doesn't hold on to a lot of things. No photographs on the walls of his bunk. No old Christmas cards or birthday wishes. The only thing he ever wants to hold on to is sitting beside him.
"Okay." Thank you.
Shiro smiles - always that smile - and squeezes his shoulders with his arm. Keith looks at him, at the palettes of brown and grey in his eyes, mid-noon light cut into squares over his face. This close, he can almost count the number of Shiro's lashes — or the flecks of gold scattered across the field of taupe. He flicks his eyes downwards, to the slope of Shiro's nose and the curve of his lips - reddish, almost vermillion, almost scarlet, chapped - and he—
"Did you mean that?" He asks, instead. He looks away from the lips and back at Shiro, who is looking at him with this...heat in this dangerously intimate manner, enough to ignite him into burning himself out.
"What?" Low, hoarse. A rumble by the throat. Keith represses the urge to shudder.
"What you said...a while ago." He continues, unsure if he can get the words out. "About my...eyes?"
Shiro's eyes widen a bit - just a slight movement of his lids, an almost invisible tensing of his facial muscles, the slight parting of his lips in surprise and Keith feels the twitch of his thumb against the other, over the photo—
"Yes." Shiro answers, almost silently. "Yes."
Gravity doesn't reverse, and motion still continues on. He doesn't float, and the heart pumping blood across his body hasn't upended. It's funny, because he feels like all of that is actually happening.
Keith doesn't know how to respond. He ducks his head and does something stupid — something he'll probably regret once he gets his head back on and he's not feeling like someone's exchanged the oxygen in his chest with helium.
He leans his head against Shiro's shoulder—
—and Shiro holds him close, leaning back.
The photo isn't taped to the wall. It's resting inside the top drawer of his cabinet by his bunk, carefully placed amidst his paperback books and his wallet - everything he owns, all in that one drawer.
He doesn't think about how often he pulls the photo out just to look at it.
At sunrise and sunset.
The next time they head to the shack, there's already an unspoken agreement — like they've just decided, Keith realized, on their own and together without consultation. First, it was Shiro's jacket over the sofa's arm. Next, it was one of Keith's books by the bedroom window sill. The dingy mattress disappears, replaced by a thinner but definitely better one from the local market. The front door ends up with a new lock, a key finding its way mysteriously into the back pocket of Keith's jeans. The boarded windows remain as they are, but the curtains hanging over them is obviously a new fixture. The toilet actually starts flushing, now. Somehow, the thought has Keith chuckling to himself, Shiro following after until they're both giggling.
Keith accidentally bumps into the bedroom light switches one time, tripping over his own feet and it was really not because he was reading while walking. His shoulder flicks the switch up, and he blinks as the overhead lamp glows amber - followed by the rest of the room.
He sees the boxes, empty, in the kitchen garbage can and ends up flicking every switch in the house, each bulb lighting up. Shiro grins at him from his spot on the sofa, feet propped on a rickety table as he reads through one of Keith's novels — Anthem, Ayn Rand — and, after a moment, maybe too long a moment, of consternation, Keith follows him and sits next to him, propping his own book on his knee, feels the arm around his shoulder, the fingers pressing against his arm in appreciation.
The shack is quiet, and it's not like he and Shiro talk a lot - but it's cozy and it's peaceful and he feels comfortable...in his own skin.
Once, Keith falls asleep on the couch while waiting for Shiro to get back from an errand in town. When he wakes up, it's dusk, the outside sky painted in mauve, juxtaposed against the russet of the sand dunes. The door is closed, but he sees the speeder outside. A noise in the kitchen has him standing, the blanket over him falling back to the couch seat. It wasn't there this afternoon, Keith knows.
The living room lights are off, save for one lamp by the kitchen, and when he enters, Shiro turns to greet him, a beaten-up but serviceable refrigerator just lighting up beside him. "Hey."
"Hey." He answers back, raspy. He clears his throat, just as Shiro stands and closes the fridge door.
"Give it half an hour and it'll be fine." The other assures Keith, wiping his hands on his pants. The old plates inside the cabinets have long been cleaned and placed on their rack by the sink — this is what happens when you put two military men in a messy house, or one tidy military man and the other who could not refuse him — and there's an old song playing softly from the radio.
He feels sleep gunk in the corners of his eyes, the indent of his book still warm against his cheek. A box of pizza sits on the table, alongside Shiro and Keith's helmets.
"What's up?" Shiro asks when Keith finally stands before him, still blinking the sleep away.
He yawns, shaking his head, before leaning forward and pressing his face against the black cloth of Shiro's shirt, somewhere above the right side of the man's chest. There's a chuckle, belly-deep, and Shiro's arms around him, keeping him steady. "Still tired?"
Keith makes a noncommittal sound that has Shiro chuckling again, the reverb of his laugh both clear and muted out on the chest he's laying his head on.
One of Shiro's hands start drawing rubbing shapes across his back and he makes another sound, not in the right frame of wakefulness to realize how needy it is.
Shiro leans down, pressing his nose against Keith's cheek, his lips by his ear. "Let's go to bed?"
This isn't real. He knows it's not. Just a dream, a figment of his imagination, just one more wish branching out towards a possibility he'll never chase after—
And because it's not real, Keith agrees.
He looks up at Shiro and nods, raises his arms to wrap around over the other's shoulders. The hands on his back settle at his waist and he makes another sound, buying his face deeper against Shiro's skin because the hands are warm, big and he feels safe, they feel good on Keith.
"C'mon," Shiro hums, and slowly - like he was nothing - the arms pull him up, one moves from his waist to his butt, the other over his shoulders and the change of direction doesn't alter the way Keith clings to him. Had he been awake, had he been more in control of his mental faculties, being carried by Shiro would have given him an aneurysm on the spot—that is, if he survived the automatic self-combustion he'll experience at this actually happening.
"Don't let go, alright?" Shiro murmurs, lips pressed against his ear and Keith knows that it's only in this dream, only here, is it possible for Shiro to trace the lobe of his ear with those lips.
The light alters from amber to grey and back to amber as Shiro moves through the rooms, the shadows shifting across his face and Keith doesn't stop himself from staring, from engraving the image into his brain. The press of the mattress against his back allows him to loosen his hold - just a bit - and he groans when Shiro starts to turn away from him—
The man laughs, wide, eyes shining. He leans close, his hands on Keith's cheeks—"Just a sec, alright? Just getting my boots off. You should, too, you know."
"Dun'care," is his response and Shiro chuckles again as Keith turns over and presses his face against the pillow. He feels hands on his legs and he peeks an eye out, Shiro winking at him as he unties Keith's shoelaces and pulls the boots off and sets them on the floor.
When both his feet are free, he slides them against the mattress, and—honestly, how long is it going to take for Shiro to get his ass in bed, anyway?
He might have blurted some of that out, Keith's not really sure but it'd be a good answer to the blown-out laugh Shiro gives, before the mattress dips and he feels a warm, too-warm body next to his.
Keith peeks at him, and although the lights are off, there's enough moonlight from outside to seep in through the crevices of the boarded windows and the curtains, enough for him to note Shiro lying on his back, face turned to him. Gold-lined taupe.
Suddenly, it dawns on him that this is real.
That this wasn't a dream.
And maybe it shows on his face — the fragile hope, or maybe the tension in his shoulders, or the widening of his eyes, because Shiro is on his side, closer, and arm on his waist. "Hey, you alright?"
There's really no appropriate answer to that — really, it's hard to find any sort of good response to that when there's not only fear bubbling in his chest, but the tangible, the almost physical hope and the possibility that—
If he lets himself believe and hope.
If he lets himself go after this.
If he lets himself.
The arm around his waist tightens, and that's it—that's what breaks the chains and the allows the waters to come rushing through. He'll blame it on being half-asleep, and he'll blame it on a moment of irrationality. He whispers Shiro's name and presses forward, carving himself deep into the other's side and, God, it feels so good—
To have Shiro's arms around him and pull him flush and tight against his body.
To put his hand up on his chest, bunched into a fist over the man's heart and press his face against the cloth and know that, beneath, is the seam where arm meets chest, where cedar blooms against his skin.
To tangle his legs with Shiro's, the spike of not just arousal, but satisfaction — content, and the honey-warm rushing down his throat and into his chest that he'll never be crazy enough to define as something whimsical, something fortuitous as lov—
"'loser," he says, hums - he's not sure which verb, he's barely awake enough to function, let alone look up for words to describe the way his voice has become. Shiro doesn't disappoint, pulling him in - half on top of him and half beside him and it's just—
The warmth, the safety, the lock of Shiro's arms around him—
Cheesy power ballads, refrigerator light and dark, unruly hair across taupe eyes. A study of gold in repose. Keith doesn't want to admit that it's everything he's ever wanted. An end-game.
And that's what he wants—
The most.
End of the line.
And knowing Shiro's going to be there.
Shiro's lips are against the skin of his forehead, inches away from his hair and suddenly too-close to the cavities in his chest, and Keith couldn't find it in him to care, to keep away, to guard himself.
The scent of cedar is heady, and something intrinsically Shiro - something reminds him of rubber training mats and freshly-laundered bed sheets, oscillating from engine grease to morning mess hall coffee. It's addictive—tantalizing.
He tries not to read too much into the way Shiro breathes him in, the way his muscles quiver, and his arms tremble a bit. He'll overthink and overanalyze and jump to conclusions in the morning where he has the rest of the class drills to compartmentalize all the shitty things that come with feelings.
For now, he's content to just breathe, and wonders if this is what home feels like.
The north star is warm in his arms.
In the morning, when he finally opens his eyes—
His arms are still tucked between him and Shiro; sleep-laden limbs are still settled on his waist, legs tangled.
Ochre and taupe greet his gaze the moment he looks up, and Shiro is still beautiful the moment he wakes up.
Keith stares a little too long at Shiro's lips, and maybe Shiro does too, as he leans close in—
And feels the edge of his nose against Keith's own, forehead to forehead.
This could be forever. He thinks. We could be forever.
It starts with a light touch. Nothing too heavy, just a mere bump of their shoulders. A hand on his cheek. A thumb on his chin. Keith hopes he doesn't have to look up — not because he doesn't want to, but it'd mean looking into Shiro's eyes and knowing that every rational cell in his brain flies off the edge at that — but his hopes are dashed as Shiro angles his head upwards.
There's a small smile on his face, the russet in the taupe strained, worry tracing their edges. Keith bites his lip before giving him a smile, even if only half of it is real. He doesn't want Shiro to worry — not today, on this special day.
"Sorry," he says. "I just...I'm gonna miss you."
The admission isn't as difficult as he had imagined. There're no glasshards and sand in his throat.
Shiro's eyes grow despondent for a moment, the arm around Keith's waist tight, the thumb on his chin pressing meaningfully against his skin. "If you want...I could—"
The thought cleaves through Keith, and he holds Shiro's face in both hands. "No. This is your moment, Shiro. You don't get a chance like this too often, you know that."
Shiro nods, the military beret covering his hair moving with him. He's dressed to the nines, in full military regalia, a requirement for the Kerberos press conference. He looks so goddamn good—sharp, professional, purposeful. Everything Keith's ever wanted, everything he's ever wanted to be—
Except, now he realized, it's to be with.
Because Shiro is more than the fancy hats and the form-fitting, medal-adorned coats. He's more than flight simulation scores, recruitment posters and inspirational speeches.
Shiro scratches his jaw when he tries to lie. Shiro sings cheesy love songs in the bathroom. Shiro doesn't hog the blankets at night but stubbornly wraps himself around you, arms and legs and all. Shiro doesn't snore, but he does mutter nonsense in sleep. Shiro separates laundry items by color and texture. Shiro writes his A's in cursive form than in block. Shiro rests his weight on his right leg when he's waiting, and rests it on his left when he's irritated. Shiro burps twenty minutes after he's eaten. Shiro doesn't like pineapple on his pizza and puts them all on Keith's slice.
Shiro is taupe and mauve and ochre. A study of gold in repose.
"And, you'll be back." Keith says, and hopes that the almost-crack of his voice on the last syllable was too faint for Shiro to notice. "Just a year. Twelve months and you'll be back. A hero."
Long ago, that would have made him envious, would have left his mouth tasting bitter.
"It's almost too long," A pained expression runs across Shiro's face. Keith takes a deep breath and presses their foreheads together. This close, he can see the conflict in Shiro's eyes. "Too long to be away from you."
Shiro is unfailingly honest, unrepentantly generous with his kindness and too brightly-lit to remain on the ground like a fallen star. He's a comet ready to streak across the expanse, cut through the night sky.
"You have the photo, right?" Keith jokes, grinning. He still doesn't see what Shiro sees in that one picture - they've taken a lot, since that day. In moments of light, and in the evenings spent in each other's arms. There's an album, somewhere in the shack, that's filled to the brim with polaroids.
Shiro smiles back, just a bit - genuine. He doesn't know what to do with himself, with his body, the urge to contort himself towards Shiro, to envelop and be enveloped and even that, Keith will admit, doesn't make sense.
"Not the same thing." Shiro answers. "Twelve months being away from you, not being able to hold you and be near you."
His heart is somewhere beyond the stratosphere, and Keith tries not to—
Fuck. He's about to cry.
"It's not forever." It's all he can say, without feeling like he's about to come apart at the seams. Shiro doesn't look to be faring any better, his head angled, his nose against Keith's cheek, their breaths mingling. A tilt — an inch beyond his own capabilities — just one step, one more push of strength, of courage he's not actually feeling—
"It's not forever." Shiro repeats after him, trying to convince himself and, damn it. The hope running beneath the worry, the sorrow — the squeezing of his chest is enough for him to want to say the words, to whisper them, curve his lips around them, line the planes of Shiro's skin with them—
Thank you for choosing me. He thinks, just at the edge of his tongue. Thank you for saving me.
It's not enough, too shallow to cover the extent of what presses on his chest from the inside out. When light breaks into myriads of colors in the reflection of sunlight over ochre, barely anything is honest enough.
I love you. That's all it takes. A mere breath in, the hitch up his voice and ten lifetimes' worth of courage. Come home soon.
Shiro looks at him like he's so important, the way his thumb runs over the skin of his chin resembles the loving caress of a painter on a canvas—
"Wait for me?" Shiro asks, hope teetering at the edge, broken into a great many shards, each painted in ochre.
Keith takes one breath, and another, and another.
And it's not like Shiro doesn't know, like Shiro hasn't seen with a startling intimacy on who and what Keith is. It's not like Shiro doesn't know better—truer—than most people. It's not like Shiro wasn't there at the beginning, it's not like he hasn't seen Keith surrounded by the ghosts of what he's lost and what he'll never have. It's not like Shiro hasn't seen the bowed head of the lonely too old boy in a run-down orphanage who never realized he's been so desperate for someone to be there for him. It's not like Shiro hasn't seen the scrapes and the blood across his skin and knuckles over a sneer, a jeering comment meant to cut him deep. It's not like Shiro hasn't seen him at his worst—not just the astronomy books, the paper-planets hanging off the ceilings, and the little moments that helps him forget, sometimes, what he really lost.
And it's not like Shiro doesn't know what Keith looks like, when the anger and the sarcasm falls away — when the hastily-bandaged wounds are bare for the crowd to see, when the regret and the self-disgust is ready to implode from the inside, looking up at an impassive sky and wondering if disappearing was kinder.
What Keith is, and what he really isn't.
He swallows, and he nods.
Shiro looks at him for a long, long moment more, long enough for Keith to know that he saw it; that he gets it—he understands that it's all part of this same fucking game Keith's been playing his whole stupid life, where the shallow end is the only place he ever starts to drown.
And he knows — when the time comes, Shiro will fish him out of the ocean.
Keith is suddenly crushed against Shiro, arms too tight, breath too short. His hands are clawing at Shiro's back, just as intense as the way Shiro breathes out and Keith knows that he's not just missing a limb, or a person. Just his entire universe.
"I'll be home soon," Shiro whispers, traces the words with his lips against Keith's ear. Home. Not the Garrison and its cold bunks and the million, greyed-out apathetic faces. Home. Polaris in his arms. The shack in the middle of the desert. Ochre dipped in taupe. "I promise."
I'll be waiting, Keith swears. He's spent his entire life waiting, and he'll wait for his life to come back. No matter how long it takes.
AN: More Sheith nonsense from me. It's a two-chapter work. Chapter 1 is pre-kerberos and Chapter 2 is post-canon season 6!