Two days later, Shiro's added another ambiguous shell to his collection and something that's unmistakably the jaw of a shark, as long as Keith's arm. You don't have to bring me anything, Keith chides him, but Shiro smiles and ducks under the water up to the scar on his nose and it's a closed discussion. It's a look he's learned means both yes Keith, of course Keith and the opposite. Keith forgets it's Friday until he hears Kolivan's truck grinding down the dirt road up on the bluff.
They're in the middle of one of those heady, midday-heat naps. Shiro pulled himself up on his elbows to talk and watch Keith read and the waves and warmth lulled them both to sleep. He used to live for it at the Garrison—for finding some quiet spot in the desert and sun to spread out on their off days.
This is the first time he's done it with a friend. Shiro is too big to fit on the dock properly. Half of him is still in the water, drifting back and forth with the waves. Keith isn't fully asleep. The waves and heat are a heavy sedation. At some point, Shiro hooks an arm around his waist and presses his face to Keith's stomach for a pillow, and Keith lets himself pretend it's the accident of some dream that his hand ends up in Shiro's hair. It's a lazy day and even though he knows he's flirting with a sunburn, he can't bear to get up—until Kolivan shows up.
Shiro tenses against him and Keith marks the sound of a vehicle crunching down his gravel driveway a few seconds later. "Stay down," Shiro says and braces his arm over Keith like he thinks he's going to have to fight the truck in hand to hand combat.
He hadn't realized it was so late. Keith shakes himself awake and slides out from under him, dangling his legs over the edge of the dock to work some feeling back into them. "No, that's Kolivan. It's fine." It won't be if Kolivan sees, but Shiro is quicksilver and he'll be gone in a breath. "It's dinner," he clarifies. All he's really mourning is the loss of warmth, he tells himself.
Shiro relaxes a degree, blinking up at him. His bangs are all stuck up from where his face was nuzzled against Keith—and where Keith's hand pushed his hair into disarray. There's a cool spot on Keith's shirt that he realizes, with something not as close to disgust as it should be, must be drool.
"Dinner?" Shiro asks, a little plaintive.
It's not clear how he means the question. "It's… eating. We eat together."
"You can eat with me," Shiro says, working up a real frown. He slips off the dock but only far enough to rest his chin on Keith's knees.
That's debatable. The appeal of raw fish is still nebulous, at best. It's certainly not more appealing than the alternative. "They're friends. And they have pizza."
"Pizza..." Shiro says slowly, looking at Keith like he thinks it's a word he made up. The pout is still tugging at his brows and Keith is close enough to see the depth in the rubbed out charcoal shine of his eyes.
"I'll bring you back a piece," he promises and his body is operating on someone else's muscle memory because he reaches out and brushes his fingers under Shiro's bangs, over his forehead. He's sun-warm and beautiful and Keith wants to see if the skin under his hand tastes like salt.
It's an odd compulsion. He shoves it away and heaves himself up instead, ignoring the spots in front of his eyes and the way his breath catches. It's a beautiful day, the other side of too hot, but only just. He hasn't felt so good in months.
"Bye, Keith," Shiro says from the water, sinking backward.
"Bye Shiro," Keith mimics back and then tries to tamp down his grin before he gets up to the house and Kolivan sees.
Kolivan's already out of the truck by the time he gets there. Keith lets him in the house without thinking about it or remembering first that he's had a recent remodel in the style of every tacky gift shop within two hundred miles.
It doesn't go unnoticed. Kolivan stops inside the door, eyes unreadable. "You've been going out more," he says charitably.
The shark jaw is too big to hang off one of the nails in the white-washed slat walls, so Keith has it propped on the counter by the sink. There's an old green-glass bottle sitting by the television Keith hasn't bothered to turn on since he arrived and particularly fetching piece of driftwood leaning against one wall. Shiro's collection of odds and ends has light glittering off every windowsill and most flat surfaces in the place.
Kolivan doesn't say anything else, but his eyes settle on Keith and draw down to his neck where the double chain of shells and knotted twine rests over his shirt. His expression is unreadable. "Didn't know you were the type."
It is a little much. Keith fights the urge to push the necklace under his shirt. It's private, personal. The way Shiro looked at him when he saw it made him feel like he was in the water again for a moment, sinking in the push and pull of waves, and it's something he's almost ashamed to cherish as much as he does. Keith shrugs and lets that be his answer, but Kolivan doesn't let it drop.
"You've been feeling well?"
He has, and even if he hadn't, collecting shells isn't a symptom. The knee-jerk snap is on the tip of his tongue, but he stops himself. Kolivan has done so much and asked so little. "Yeah," Keith says instead. "Really well."
It's true. Maybe Shiro is a distraction, or maybe the clean air and sun are finally working. Maybe it was always that easy.
The drive to the station is quiet and long, only because the road twists and winds uphill in the slowest fashion. Everything takes time in this place. The old truck groans through most of the journey, eucalyptus trees flashing by the window, trunks white as bone. The station is for training more than firefighting, but near as Keith can tell it just means they get to sit around and drink beer and tell bad stories. There are grass fires out by the town every once in a blue moon—he's seen the smoke from one rising up over the hills and saw the truck barreling down the road, but never worse. Sometimes they get called out to the hills and mountains when they're needed, but it's still the right side of summer and there hasn't been anything big in months.
The station's not quite run-down, but it's but not new, either. It looks like someone was trying to go for stylish wood-siding and rustic appeal but hit more in ballpark of a barn. It's nestled between the trees and He remembers to hide the necklace under his shirt before he goes in, to spare himself the worst of it. Kolivan catches him doing it out of the corner of his eye and snorts.
Everyone knows him—or acts like they do. It's some borrowed affection, passed down from his Dad second-hand, but Keith doesn't mind it. The inside of the station is friendlier than the shack and newer. They're several drinks into the night by the time they arrive, but they saved Keith a spot at the long table, right in the middle of the row.
Antok goes to hand him a beer as he sits down and then pulls it back as he reaches for it. "Wait, are you old enough to drink?"
Keith grabs it out of his hand. He's still fast when he needs to be; defense was his best class at the Garrison outside of piloting. Antok laughs and lets him be and Keith lets the conversion sink into the back of his mind, drinking absently, only taking in half the conversation. It's good to be around people. He got used to it at the Garrison and took it for granted.
There's an uneasiness there. He doesn't know how to say the right thing or order his thoughts so they'll make sense to other people. His instructors tried to couch it in kind terms. He was abrupt or private or needed to put himself out there more. Now he knows what they meant. A hundred little mistakes pile up in his mind at night before bed and in every absent moment, a checklist of all the ways he's messed up before and all the ways he might again. The only thing he hasn't yet is Shiro.
They get along. He forgot what that was like. Shiro is an exception in his life; this strange, perfect thing, just for him.
"That's pretty, Keith," Thace says from across the table.
Keith looks up, confused, and then realizes he's pulled the chain of shells out from under the collar of his shirt and is running his fingers over it absently. Every eye at the table is focused on him. His mouth works on an excuse but none comes to mind and he knows every moment he can't form a snap-response is going to make it worse.
The best lies are the truth, he reminds himself, blood going out of his face. "I found—"
"Keith's been going out more," Kolivan answers for him. It shuts down the table before they can get going. Keith has to resist the urge to audibly sigh in relief.
"Oh?" Thace's eyes don't leave the necklace. "Meet anyone interesting?" He's smiling. There's no trick in it, even though Keith's heart kicks into overdrive. Thace gives it a moment and then laughs at his own joke before he reaches across the table and ruffles Keith's hair. "I'm glad you're doing all right." Thace has the kind of warmth Keith used to dream of having again, but in a half a dozen families it never panned out. "If you're getting bored out there, we could always fix up that bike."
Keith shakes his head. It was his Dad's—sleek red at its heyday, but chipped and rusted now from years lying fallow at the shack. The sea air isn't kind to beautiful things. The bike almost runs anyway, but the problem isn't the engine—it's the person piloting it. No—driving it, he reminds himself with a kick. Blackouts don't make for good piloting or driving. They learned that the hard way.
He gets to listen to the same argument he's heard three times before—the only thing worse than a fishing story is a who lifted more in training story and they're all full of both—while he puts away another beer and really three more pieces of pizza, ignoring Ulaz's quiet I don't know where you put all that. By the end of the night, he ends up asleep on the old couch by the wall, sandwiched between Antok and Kolivan. It's almost midnight before Kolivan rousts him.
"You can sleep here, if you want," he offers. Keith almost agrees, but there's a string tying him to the shack, looped around his second rib; he can't stay away now. He almost says so, but it's only because he's warm and the alcohol is still in his blood. He stops himself. The sentiment is too personal and Kolivan won't understand, but he wants to tell someone. He wants to talk to someone about it. The compulsion hits him again halfway there when they crest the ridge and can see the moon over the bay through one window and the lights of the distant city hazing the sky through the other.
Kolivan hears Keith's intake of breath before the question he doesn't know to form and glances at him.
"Do…" Keith swallows, tries to think of a way to say what he wants without saying too much. "Have you ever seen something you couldn't explain? In the—" he gestures to the view through the windshield before the truck bends around another turn and the moon and water disappear and then has to put his hand over his eyes, dizzy from the change.
Kolivan is quiet for so long, Keith thinks he isn't going to answer, and then he says less an answer and more a mutter, "Your Dad asked me that once."
He falls asleep waiting for Kolivan to say more.
The shack feels unaccountably cold after the station. The memories he has of childhood are written in every quiet corner and it's a frustration because he can't remember more than a voice and an image, but the yearning for it still swamps his chest.
There's a moment, caught in the silence of the room where he wants to go to the dock and knows he shouldn't. It's late and he's being stupid, but something in him is thrumming and his inhibitions are shot. He walks down to the beach like he's walking through a dream and waits by the water. The sand is still warm under his feet and the moon is bright even half-full, the sea almost still below it, caught between tides. He almost falls asleep there waiting, the last of the alcohol pulling him down.
Part of him thinks Shiro will know and be there. Part of him is sure, like Shiro is some thing summoned from the space between night and day, a thing he didn't know himself well enough to dream of wanting, made just for him.
He never shows. Keith drags himself up to bed and tells himself off for a fool every step of the way.
The ocean is empty in the morning. Not empty in true, but in the way that counts.
He can see birds out in the surf in the distance, a tiny sailboat miles and miles out, but nothing else. He waits an hour before he decides he's being ridiculous and that the nervous energy pulling his limbs tight and stealing his breath needs somewhere to go.
The bike is something, but he hasn't touched it in months and it still reminds him of a dozen things he wants to forget. His Dad's loss still bites at the oddest moments. There's enough else that needs doing, anyway. The shack is on its last legs so he busies himself trying to put things in order. There's a shed of tools and he's not exactly handy, but it doesn't take a full four years at the Garrison to learn how to nail two boards back together. It keeps him busy while the sun slips across the sky.
Shiro has a life. He must. Keith should have asked before. It's none of his business, but he would have asked if he'd thought about it, if he thought it would be welcome, if he'd known how. Shiro isn't some thing to be marveled at; he has quirks and wants and needs and Keith doesn't know the first thing about his life beyond their dock.
He's made a home in guilt by the time Shiro shows up. He's not expecting it, so the eyes on his back don't register immediately. Hammering the warped boards on the steps back to a semblance of order doesn't take much out of him and it's as good a way as any to work out some of his newfound regret; he almost doesn't notice, but then he feels the cold-sweat creep of a gaze down his spine.
When he looks up, Shiro is at the end of the dock, head on his hand, watching him lazily.
He slips off the dock as Keith gets closer, eyes tracking his movement like a predator. It sends a familiar shiver up Keith's spine, but it's not bad.
"I didn't think you'd come," Keith says.
Shiro looks—sheepish. He rises out of the water, one hand braced on the dock, and Keith sees.
There's a rent in his side from hip to rib. It's violent red but bloodless, long and straight and brutal. It'll scar, Keith thinks distantly, and even as he stares, there are other lines. They're light against the grain of his scales, little marks of disorder criss-crossed over his body.
Shiro follows his gaze and lifts his arm to show the wound better. The edges part and it's deep. Keith makes a little involuntary sound. He should be panicked, but it's a fascination. Keith wants to trace it and see it's real—that Shiro could take a hit like that and pretend it's nothing. His hands are shaking, he realizes.
"I fight in the arena," Shiro tells him softly. "It happens. Don't be scared."
Keith's mouth falls open but there's no hierarchy to his thoughts that he knows what to ask or say first. The light feels over-bright bouncing off the water and Shiro's arm. Somehow this, of all things, is the least real. He can't shape his mind around it. Shiro moves closer in an open offer that Keith doesn't know how to refuse. He lays his hand right above the mark, along his ribs. His skin is cold and rough and hard, not human at all, and Keith's hand looks too small against him. Something is pounding pounding against his tough; he can't tell if it's his heart or Shiro's or the waves lapping against the dock.
"You fight..." Keith says and tears his gaze away from the wound to stare at the hollow of Shiro's neck, trying to contend with the little thread of fear at having Shiro so close, an odd twin to the fear that Shiro is hurt. He has to do something. Shiro's done so much for him and he can't let this be. "Stay here," Keith orders and slips out from under his gaze.
He sprints back to the house, ignoring the little disgruntled sound of surprise Shiro makes behind him. He grabs his knife off the counter and one of his ratty shirts off the chair he tossed it on, knocking a little display of shells off the shelf next to it in his rush. There's a first aid kit under the sink in the bathroom, too. Halfway back out the door he thinks better of it and grabs a couple old, stained sack towels, too, and then because he's already been there so long and a promise is a promise, he goes for the tin wrapped pizza in the fridge as well.
Shiro is waiting for him when he gets back, looking more amused than concerned, but a little of both.
"Here." Keith tosses him the pizza. Shiro catches it like he's unsure if it'll explode as soon as he touches it, but it's a risk he's willing to take if Keith is the one throwing it.
Shiro doesn't speak. When Keith looks up, he's staring at the package in his hands. "You unwrap it. It's pizza." Shiro cocks his head at Keith and then picks at the foil delicately.
There's a way he has about eating that makes Keith think of a shark trying to use silverware. He keeps glancing at Keith while he chews eyes bright and interested and amused at the way Keith's tying together his makeshift bandage.
When he's done, he gestures Shiro closer, holding it out. "It's for—" Keith gestures at the wound he's been trying to ignore. If Shiro's in pain, he's good at hiding it, at least.
Evidently bandages and antiseptic are a new concept for him because he cocks his head before he moves closer, gripping the pilings to pull himself as far out of the water as he can, rising above Keith like something summoned. His body below the waist is a higher order of inhuman than the rest of him and it takes Keith seconds to remember how to breathe, eyes tracing the patches of black scales over his pale skin at the point of change, trying to learn it by inches rather than let the whole of it overwhelm him.
But he has a job. He regrets it already, embarrassed by how little he has to offer. Shiro flinches at the first touch of his hands and then bows over him to make it easier. The muscle of his abs tenses under Keith's fingers as they brush the edge between scale and skin. He fights the odd compulsion to repeat the motion and reaches around Shiro in a pantomime hug to start wrapping the wound, for all the good it will do. His arms almost almost aren't long enough.
The bandage only ends up wrapping it by half. It's probably stupid. Shiro's been through this before and lived and he didn't have Keith there to tie him up in rags. The evidence is drawn all across him. It might make it worse somehow, for all Keith knows.
Shiro catches his hand where it's still hovering over the knot and holds it. "Thank you, Keith," he says, and this time his voice is low and sweet and indulgent.
Keith doesn't touch. As a rule, he hasn't since his father died because a hug and a pat on the shoulder are still too close to home and no one was leaping to hand out better. He misses it in rare moments, but he never wants it enough to try and find it. He never needs it. He hasn't, until this moment. It's not the first time they've touched by a longshot, but this is the first time it's stopped Keith cold. There's a delicacy to the way Shiro handles him, like some long-toothed beast trying to carry around its young without hurting and as soon as the comparison occurs to him, it hits home. Keith's gone docile in the face of it.
He can't figure out what he wants out of it but to be close and be looked at like that. Shiro releases him and slips back into the water before he can embarrass himself more. Keith is torn between mourning and relief. They settle in their usual positions, Keith dangling his legs off the edge while Shiro lurks below him.
"How many of you are there?" Keith asks, because it's been weighing at him since he realized he knows nothing about Shiro's life. And now Shiro has wounds to show for it.
Shiro smiles at him, teeth points of white against the shadow. "How many of you are there?" he asks.
"A lot."
Shiro raises his eyebrows and ducks under part way, smile still playing at the edges of his mouth. It's a little nervous tick of his. It makes him look innocent and tempting and cute. Cute, as if anything like him could be. It's a trick, some part of him still thinks, and as soon as he touches the water he'll be gone. Keith doesn't realize he's smiling until Shiro glides closer, right between Keith's legs where they're suspended above the water in the middling tide and then loops his hand around Keith's ankle loosely.
He treats Keith like something precious, but he never got the memo on personal space. The claws on the scaled arm tickle over his skin as Shiro moves his leg to the side, inspecting it. Keith fights the urge to pull his legs together, blush rising, but Shiro's careful touch puts him at ease. Always smiling, always gentle.
"What's the arena?"
Shiro looks up at him, frowning. "A place for fighting."
Keith kicks at him with his free leg, splashing water in his direction. "I know. But what for?"
Shiro rolls his shoulder in a shrug and drags his fingers up to Keith's knee to push up the hem of his cuffed pants up over it. "For winning."
His eyes glint. He's smiling. He knows it's not a good answer.
"Do you enjoy it?" Keith tries to keep his voice level, but he's unprepared for the touch of cold scales to the soft skin behind his knee. Shiro doesn't answer for a long, quiet moment, letting the sound of the waves and Keith's breathing fill the space between them.
"I'm good at it," he says finally. For once, he can't meet Keith's eyes. He slinks back down into the water, but he doesn't let go of Keith.
The silver arm hangs at his side. He's always reluctant to touch with it. A prize, Shiro called it. Now he knows what for, but that doesn't explain what he did to get it. Keith tries to imagine how many fights Shiro's won to earn something like that. Keith tries to imagine the force and speed and weight of Shiro in anger, tries to weigh it against the fingers gentling their way up his thigh. He shudders at the thought and no—there's no fear in it anymore.
"Do you fight?"
He's starting to get used to the guttural cadence of Shiro's voice. He's starting to like it. It's soothing, the same rhythm as the sound of water hitting the rocks around them.
"No. Not in a long time." Self-defense at the Garrison and petty fights before that. Nothing meant to wound mortally. He misses it, sometimes, but it was nice to have a reason to stop and a couple years in the military were enough to calm him down. "I was going to be a pilot."
He says it without meaning to and then realizes he has to explain ships and planes and flight and machines. He tries to give it the bare minimum and put it in terms that won't bore Shiro, but the more he talks, the more delighted Shiro looks. He keeps his hand on Keith's leg, holding without intent.
"Like ships," Shiro says. It's a fair analogy; better than anything else Keith could come up with, so he nods.
"Yeah. Exactly."
Keith thinks briefly that if they stay out much longer it'll be dark, and Keith can show him the stars and point out planets and constellations, but he loses heart before that. It's hard to talk about the things you've lost, and get never remembers that until it's too late. His first night at the station they asked about his Dad and it wasn't until halfway into the conversation he realized it wasn't one he could have
He can't cry in front of Shiro, so he doesn't. He closes his eyes carefully, like the setting sun is what's getting to him. It almost works. When he opens his eyes, Shiro is a foot away, sunset light caught up in his hair. He doesn't speak, but he tugs at Keith's ankle lightly, beseeching.
Keith wants to slide into the water with him.
"I had to stop. I got sick. I kept losing my breath." It's the simplest way to put it. Losing it, little by little, until the last time. They had to drag him out of the simulator and send him to the hospital and an honorable discharge was the best they could do for him, with regrets.
Shiro inhales softly. He doesn't need to. It's like he's imitating some human peculiarity he's trying to learn by heart. "Like when I found you." He's less a foot distant and he smells like all the best parts of the sea. "I gave you breath," he says, as if it's that simple, pushing closer and pulling himself up. "I wanted to save you."
Keith would give anything to know why. There's no special thing Keith has to give that someone else can't; there are beautiful people on the beaches closer to the city and sights to behold. One boy on a beach isn't worth all this—gifts and time and the look in Shiro's eyes, like he's a marvel and if he turns his head just right and moves closer and breathes the same air, Keith will make some new sort of sense.
He doesn't understand what's happened until Shiro pulls away and his lips are left cold and wet. His breath stops in his chest. Shiro is still close, head still cocked, eyes still bright, lips parted.
A kiss, Keith realizes, heat racing up his spine. His first kiss, and it tastes like salt and cold water.
No, he realizes—his second. The first saved his life.
Shiro brings a hand to his lips, like Keith is the one that initiated it and Shiro is the one with cause to be shocked. Keith's mind catches up to him in fits and starts and the one overriding thought is that he wanted it.
Impulsive. That's another thing his instructors called him. They wrote it out on his reports as a flaw. Impulsive, but rarely wrong.
He leans forward and returns it. It's nothing—a brush against Shiro's fingers and cold mouth before he pulls away. It's nothing, and still, he knows he's ruined. Shiro pulls his hand from between them and with tedious care wraps his it around Keith's neck, pressing his thumb against the hinge of his jaw and keeping him close.
It's not what he thought a kiss would be like. It's softer, slower. He tries to deepen it without knowing how, but Shiro holds him back. They breathe the same air for a moment before he pulls away. His eyes are black as the water below him now that the sun's almost gone.
"I'll come back," Shiro breathes between them and then sinks beneath the water and merges with the dark.
That night is unreal. He walks back up the house and lays himself in bed over the top of the sheets. The room is cold, but it doesn't feel like it. He feels like he did hte night he left the Garrison for good; he's done something final, something he can't come back from, something that's changed his life for better or worse. But it's too late to go back on it and he wouldn't if he could.
He has a dream about the ocean and waves and wakes up in a sweat before dawn mad at himself for it. He falls back to sleep, restless, and wakes with a different dream pulsing through him. He runs outside in flip flops and sweats and one of the oversize cardigans that he keeps tossed over the back of whatever furniture is closest. It's embarrassing in retrospect. It's embarrassing in the moment, too, but less than the fear and excitement warring in his gut.
The taste of lips on his won't leave him or let him be. He wants, as a point of obsession. The feel of Shiro's breath against him, for him; the bone and muscle under skin and scale. He wants to be close.
It's new. It's something good, and nothing has been in so long.
Shiro isn't waiting for him at the dock—but he's been there. His stomach flips and bottoms out at the first realization, and then he sees what is waiting for him and wants to laugh.
There's a pile of shells in the middle of the dock.
It's a silly gift, but the amount makes it ridiculous, and then he gets closer and sees they're different from the previous offerings. They're mussels and clams and Keith's not usually a fan, but he's willing to change that for Shiro. Still, it's more than Keith could eat in a week—two weeks, maybe. It's going to take him an hour just to bag them all and get them up to the shack and the tiny freezer attached to the old fridge isn't going to cut it. He's not even sure if they're something you freeze. Part of him is almost annoyed, but it's a fond feeling. The image of Shiro studiously picking over the rocks is too good to stay mad at.
It does take an hour to haul it all up to the house. He shoves it somewhere cool, and then he calls Kolivan.
He picks up his cell on the third ring and Keith lies and explains his way through how he came into ownership of several pounds of shellfish and would Kolivan like some? Keith doesn't know how to cook them anyway.
The other end of the line is dead silence for a moment before Kolivan says quietly, "I'm on my way."
It'll take him an hour. Keith heads back outside, fighting off the chill with a blanket and cup of something hot as he settles on the dock and tries not to long. The breeze is soft and ruffles his hair; he needs to cut it, but he doesn't mind the way it drifts over his eyes. The thing in his chest is burning again.
It's somehow no surprise at all when Shiro appears. The tide is low; he has to reach to bury his hands in Keith's hair and pull his head down. The kiss bites in the sweetest way and when they pull apart, Keith is halfway down to the water and Shiro's eyes are black and heady.
He goes without a word.
Kolivan arrives sooner than he expects and alone when he gets there. Ulaz and Antok pile out of the truck after him. Ulaz has a nervous smile on his face, but Antok and Kolivan look like stone. Kolivan doesn't speak before he walks over. Keith takes an involuntary step back as Kolivan raises a hand to his forehead. He shakes his head, the motion curt, and then he looks at Keith with something close to disappointment. It cuts deeper than it should and there's no reason for it.
"I feel fine," Keith says, trying to sound offended more than scared, glancing at the other two. He shoves a bag at Kolivan, shells clinking against each other, bulging under the plastic.
"Where did you get these?" Antok asks. It has the wrong inflection for a question. He sounds—furious.
Keith isn't a child though, and they aren't his parents. "I told you—"
"They washed up?" Kolivan finishes for him. "Keith..."
He feels red rise up his neck, the heat of an embarrassment he hasn't felt since he was young. The fog is getting thicker and the longer he stays outside the further it's going to sink in. He pulls the cardigan further around his shoulders. "Do you want them or not?"
"We'll take them," Ulaz steps in. "Why don't you come back with us? We'll make it a night—"
"I'm fine," Keith repeats, done being polite. There's a breeze starting to kick up, blowing in from the ocean. It cuts right through the thin-cloth and he should have put on a shirt or shoes or something. He steps back toward the house, not running, but putting space between them because there's something off about all of this and he needs time and distance and to get out of the cold. "This—" he gestures at the bag Ulaz is holding, trying to steer the conversation back to waters he knows, "—isn't a big deal."
They're all staring at him. Ulaz's mouth opens and closes, his eyes wide and edged with an emotion Keith hasn't seen before and can't define.
"You're bleeding," Kolivan says quietly.
Keith doesn't know what he's talking about, but he sees where Kolivan is looking and it's not the fog wetting his lips. They still stings from the kiss. He raises a hand to his mouth; his fingers come away spotted with red.
"Keith." Kolivan waits until Keith is looking at him again. "You should stay out of the water."
