Chapter Text
“That’s the last of it.”
Keith plants a foot on the moving truck’s rear bumper and stretches high to grab the handle. The door rolls down with a metallic groan, grinding as the Atlas Moving logo slowly comes into view. He latches and locks it tight, ensuring none of his boyfriend’s belongings wind up strewn down the interstate.
A morning of moving heavy furniture and boxes down from Shiro’s sixth floor apartment has his skin damp with perspiration despite the January chill. Keith mops his forehead with the sleeve of his red hoodie— a Christmas gift from his dad’s buddies, emblazoned with the name of their firehouse— and waits for his boyfriend.
The exertion’s left Shiro’s cheeks a little red, the flush dipping down below the collar of his jacket. Underneath, his heather grey shirt is dark with sweat. He rounds the truck with a tired grin, the rental keys dangling in one hand and Kosmo’s leash in the other.
“Told you we didn’t need to hire any movers,” Keith says, vindicated as he thumps the back of the truck. They’ll be sore tomorrow, but it’s worth the satisfaction of having saved themselves a few hundred dollars.
Shiro hums as he steps in close, square jaw angled as he tilts his head. “Pretty lucky that I’ve got such a strong boyfriend to help me out, huh?” he says, taking one of Keith’s hands and pressing a kiss to knuckles left scraped and bruised in all the heavy lifting.
Keith can’t help but give a little flex, preening under Shiro’s praise. “Pretty damn lucky,” he agrees, giving the older man’s side a squeeze.
Shiro’s no slouch when it comes to muscle either, though he’s softened up a bit just in the time Keith’s known him. Exercise still helps manage his anxiety— Keith’s grown used to joining Shiro for pre-dawn push-ups and runs and yoga— but with Kosmo and Keith around, he’s more likely to relax. More liable to sleep through the night and into the morning, letting his usual vigilance slip for an hour or two.
And it shows. Keith sees it in the slighter fullness of his boyfriend’s cheeks, the rested look in his eyes. He can chart Shiro’s progress in peaceful slumber, fewer tension-born migraines, his willingness to return to places he’d once carefully skirted around. It’s only been a year for Kosmo and Shiro, but they’ve already made leaps and bounds that have Keith aglow with pride in the both of them.
They part with one kiss that turns into four or five, each softer and more lingering than the last. Shiro presses his keys into Keith’s hand and whistles low to Kosmo as they head around to the front of the Atlas rental.
Keith climbs into Shiro’s well-loved Jeep and gets the engine running, waiting with his wrists draped over the steering wheel while his boyfriend and Kosmo get situated in the oversized moving truck. It’s not the first time he’s driven the Jeep, but it’s the first time he’ll be behind the wheel without Shiro beside him and Kosmo sprawled in the backseat.
Keith rolls the Jeep up alongside the truck’s cab and rolls down a window, pausing to adjust the rearview mirror. “You sure you’re okay driving that behemoth?”
“A little late to second guess myself now,” Shiro says as he flicks at the fuel gauge and frowns. Beside him, Kosmo lets out a howling whine, tail swishing as he spies Keith through the open window.
“Hey, buddy,” Keith fondly returns, giving the enormous dog a wave. He asks Shiro, “Remember the way to my place? Got the address pulled up?”
“Yeah. But… it probably wouldn’t hurt if you took the lead,” Shiro adds as he arranges his phone on the dash and then starts the rental truck. It rumbles and puffs out exhaust as the engine turns over, loud enough to drown out the faint music coming from the Jeep’s speakers.
Keith nods and gives them both a thumbs-up before shifting gears and rolling ahead. Shiro’s no stranger to his woods-backed farmhouse, but it lies well off the beaten path, down a dozen narrow, winding roads barely marked with street signs. Better for Shiro to follow him than miss a turn and struggle with getting the moving truck reoriented.
A light turns yellow above him as Keith crosses an intersection. Reflexively, he presses a kiss to his fingers and then palms the roof of the Jeep— a superstition his father taught him as a kid, giving thanks for the good luck of making it through in time. In the rearview mirror, Keith catches sight of Shiro doing the same as he slips through the yellow light too, his prosthetic hand stretched up to the ceiling of the truck’s cab.
Keith’s smile spreads wider. Shiro picked that up from him.
Puttering down the interstate at ten miles under the speed limit is its own kind of agony for Keith, but he maintains a slow cruise for the sake of the lumbering truck behind him. His gaze flits to the rearview mirror more often than usual, keeping an eye on his boys as the city skyline shrinks away and the sun climbs higher.
It’s just after noon when they start taking the twisting, pine-strewn roads that lead to the quiet patch of land Keith inherited from his uncles when they decided to more or less live off the grid. By the time Keith pulls Shiro’s Jeep onto the gravel beside his battered red pickup truck, his stomach is rumbling and he’s thinking wistfully of the leftover pizza sitting in his fridge.
He jogs inside and grabs the cardboard box while Shiro inchingly backs the Atlas truck toward the farmhouse’s side door. He flips the grease-stained top up just as Shiro and Kosmo clamber down from the truck. “Cold pizza,” he offers, jiggling the box temptingly. “It’s mushroom and pineapple.”
Shiro’s nose wrinkles but he takes a slice anyway, delicately picking off pineapple pieces and tossing them back into the box for Keith to pile high on his own slice. “Thanks.”
Keith can’t help but feel a little guilty eating in front of Kosmo, who sits with his tongue lolling out as he expectantly looks back and forth between the two of them.
“No, people-food isn’t good for you,” Shiro tells the dog in between bites, tone all steadfast authority.
As if. Keith rolls his eyes as he chews. It’s an awful lot of talk coming from the marshmallow-hearted man who regularly sneaks dinner scraps to Kosmo, done in by those puppy-dog eyes every time.
“Don’t be like that,” Keith adds as Kosmo softly begins to whine— a byproduct of Shiro spoiling him rotten. “I have two pounds of meat fresh from the butcher inside for you, buddy. You’re gonna be eating better than we are.”
They start unloading as soon as the last slice of leftover pizza is gone. Keith is still staunchly confident in his decision to forego professional movers, but after hour three of lugging boxes up the steps into the house, he begins to wonder if they ought to have taken up offers from his mom’s family to help them move in.
He’s drenched despite the brisk winter chill and the faint twinge in his lower back reminds Keith that he’s not as young as he used to be. He’ll probably feel it tomorrow three-fold but at least Shiro will be his partner in misery. They can curl up together with ibuprofen and heating pads once the aches settle in, weary and sore in each other’s arms.
He’s getting the last of the boxes out of the truck when Kosmo trots up to him with a plastic bottle clutched in his jaws. Keith pats the dog’s head as he carefully draws the red Gatorade from his slobbery maw, giving the bottle a wipe against the front of his shirt to clean off the drool.
“Thought we could use a break,” Shiro says as he walks over, swinging a nearly-empty refillable water bottle by the rubber loop strung around its neck.
Keith hops down and follows Shiro to the steps of the front porch, where they both plant down with quiet groans. They take turns tossing an old tennis ball for Kosmo to bound after, quick as a lightning crack, and muse on all the things they still need to get finished this weekend. There’s no huge rush, honestly, but Keith would like to have Shiro comfortably settled in before his first day on the job at the university one town over.
It’s a lot to deal with at once: new career, new house, new relationship milestone together. Exciting, sure, but even thrilling changes don’t come stress-free. Keith absently twists the top of his empty Gatorade as he halfway listens to Shiro slipping into baby-talk as he scratches the giant dog trying to stand in his lap.
Keith wants this to be home to Shiro, just as much as it is to him. He wants his boyfriend to fall in love with these woods, this house, the life they could have here together. It’s a lot to pin his hopes on, Keith knows, but Shiro has a way of making him hopeful.
Kosmo has a field day blitzing around the wide yard and digging up the toys that Laika— Keith’s most recent dog to train and set up with an owner in need— left buried across the property like hidden treasure. The look on Shiro’s face as Kosmo dashes up and drops a grubby, dirt-caked squid in his lap is definitely worth the effort of scrubbing the dog’s snout and paws clean afterward.
They get all of Shiro’s things inside just as the winter sun begins to slip behind the surrounding forest. As shadows loom and stretch across the property, the interior of the house only grows brighter. Its rooms fill with the sound of ripping tape and cardboard, faint music from one of the three stations Keith can pick up out here on his dad’s old radio, and the click of Kosmo’s nails across the floor as he follows Shiro from room to room.
It’s a tight fit in some places, cramming Shiro’s life into his own. Having gotten by with three plates and a handful of mismatched silverware for most of his adult life, Keith has to wonder at the necessity of the full twenty-piece dinnerware set that comes along with Shiro. But it’s the two of them now, he reminds himself as the somewhat bare cupboards of his kitchen fill with orderly stacks of drinking glasses, elegant teacups, and unchipped ceramic dishes. Living together's going to be an adjustment, a meshing of lifestyles— his mom made sure to drive that point home.
Shiro also owns an awful lot of sauce pans and casserole dishes for a man who subsists almost exclusively on takeout, protein shakes, and microwave-based recipes. Not that Keith has a problem with Shiro’s occasional culinary adventures— it’s good to regularly test the fire alarms, after all, and more than once his boyfriend has even stumbled onto edible results (never to be repeated).
Keith is gentle as he draws a number of bubble-wrapped figures from the next box. Each one is meticulously assembled, painted, and fixed with custom details. They’re Shiro’s, all of them: the Orion capsule, the Calypso shuttle, high-altitude jets like the ones Shiro used to fly. With tender care, Keith carries them to the spare room he devotes to painting and unwraps Shiro’s meticulous packaging. He arranges the models along a shelf that holds only a few of his finished canvases, positioning them the same way he remembers them sitting on the bookshelf in Shiro’s bedroom.
“Keith? Keith?” Shiro’s head peeks around the doorframe before the rest of his body follows, a box filled with nothing but dog toys in his arms and Kosmo stamping at his heels. “Hey, there you are.”
“Uh, yeah. Just putting some of your stuff up.” He suddenly worries that maybe he overstepped. Maybe this is too personal a call for Keith to make; maybe they’re too tucked away in here, as if he doesn’t know or appreciate how much these mean to his boyfriend.
“You found my models,” Shiro observes, the corner of his mouth pulling back in half a smile. He stares past Keith, eyeing the neat line of painted aerospace figures on the shelf, lips just parting.
“We can move them, if you’d rather,” Keith offers, shrugging. “Anywhere you want. I just… I thought it’d be nice. Our stuff together. We could move a table in here. I’d paint while you work on your models. That kind of thing.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’d love that.” Shiro pauses to set down the box in his hands. He pays no mind as Kosmo immediately buries his face in the extensive toy collection, rifling through until he finds a particularly squeaky hippo toy.
“Are you sure you’re okay with them here, though?” Shiro asks, tapping his metal fingers along the full shelf. The lines of his shoulders are sloped with steady exhaustion from the flurry of packing and moving. “I know they take up a lot of space… and right in front of your art, too.”
“Well, yeah. I think they’re a perfect fit.” Keith adjusts the orange and grey Calypso shuttle until it’s lined up in front of a large starscape he painted last summer, during the Perseids.
Shiro likes the pairing so much he snaps a picture and makes it his lockscreen, apologizing to Kosmo as it replaces a shot of the dog wearing fuzzy antlers and chewing on a stuffed penguin. And Keith makes a mental note to make a few more shelves to put up. Both of their collections are bound to grow, and he wants plenty of space to see their work thrive side-by-side.
They spend another hour unpacking boxes. After multiple trips upstairs to their bedroom, Keith finally gives into the ultimate temptation.
With a sigh, he flops backward onto the bare mattress and spreads his arms wide, snow angel-like, and indulges in the king-sized extravagance of it. He’d spent the better part of his adult life sleeping on a worn out double with saggy springs, complete with cheap sheets and the same comforter he’d had since high school. Now, that Keith’s had a taste of luxury, though...
“Enjoying yourself?” Shiro asks as he leans against the doorframe, two bottles of beer in hand. He pops the tops loose with an aluminum-plated thumb and smiles as he takes his first sip.
The answer is so obvious that Keith feels no need to say anything at all. He’s made no secret of his love affair with Shiro’s bed. From his first glimpse of neatly tucked quilts and colorful pillows piled as high as the headboard over their video chats, he’d been intrigued. More so as he got to see Shiro sprawled the bed on his belly as they talked, squishy pillows tucked under his body or looped in his arms, the mattress large enough to fit Shiro and Kosmo with room to spare. Keith’s longing prayers had been answered that first night Shiro invited him to stay in and watch a movie, the two of them stretched out on his massive bed with Kosmo sprawled in between them for maximum petting potential.
When Shiro first floated the idea of applying for a new job and leaving the city behind a few months back, Keith had all but stumbled over himself offering to open up his home to his boyfriend. It only made sense— it’s an easy twenty-minute commute to the college town east of here, the utilities are cheap, and Kosmo would have room to run and play that apartment-living just couldn’t compare to. The opportunity to jettison his shitty double-bed and instead squeeze Shiro’s king-sized mattress into the master bedroom certainly didn’t hurt, either.
Keith pats the empty space beside him, beckoning Shiro to come lie down. After a full day of hauling boxes and furniture, they both deserve the rest. Shiro laughs, dark eyes squinting in the prettiest way as he grins, and he moves to set their beers down on the nearby nightstand first.
Kosmo bolts past and leaps up onto the bed before Shiro can, his furry bulk monopolizing the stretch of mattress meant for his owner.
“Alright, scoot over,” Shiro chides as he shoos Kosmo toward a void space near the headboard. He groans as he heaves himself onto the bare mattress and collapses next to Keith, his sigh sending wisps of Keith’s shaggy hair fluttering. “Oh, damn. I could fall asleep like this.”
“Same,” Keith murmurs. It feels good to lie down. Better with Shiro at his side and Kosmo nearby, gold eyes watching over the both of them.
Keith rolls onto his side and tucks his arm under his head as he studies Shiro’s scarred profile. “How are you feeling?”
Somewhere between them, Shiro finds his hand and lays his over it, square palm pressing into calloused knuckles. His hum turns into a murmured, “Lucky. Exhausted. Excited. Nervous. Hungry. ”
Keith gives a soft snort at the last one. His own empty stomach twists in kind. “My mom and Kolivan said they’d bring dinner. Ought to be here soon, too. We can eat, take a bath, and then pass out.”
“Sounds like a plan. Hopefully I can pull it off in that order,” Shiro laughs, subdued and sleepy.
Keith turns his hand over underneath Shiro’s so they’re resting palm to palm. His hand is smaller and thinner than Shiro’s, more delicately boned. While they relax in each other’s presence, he idly laces and unlaces their fingers.
They spent a year getting to know one another through video chats and phone calls; another year bridging the distance between them with weekend-long dates and dinners at restaurants halfway between their respective homes. But from here on out, Keith gets Shiro full-time, no matter the weather or the traffic or how tired they both are from long days at work. And Kosmo, too.
Eventually, Keith hears the crunch of a truck coming up the gravel drive and by the time he and Shiro plod back down the stairs with Kosmo padding after them, Krolia and Kolivan are already busying themselves in the kitchen.
“Whoa. Thought you were just bringing some dinner,” Keith says, eyebrows lifting high. The counters are stacked high with various pantry staples— boxed macaroni, baking mixes, canned soup and vegetables— and his mother is currently filling the freezer with vacuum-sealed venison and duck.
“Think of it as a housewarming gift, of sorts,” Kolivan says, tone measured and flat. He stares into the refrigerator— empty, aside from a few remaining beers and a jar of spicy pickles— and frowns. “I did not realize the situation here was so... dire.”
“I haven’t had time to hit the store recently.” At his uncle’s stony-faced look, Keith sighs. “It’s not that bad.”
“I knew I should’ve had Antok quadruple everything,” Kolivan mutters as he starts packing the fridge with at least a week’s worth of pre-cooked meals, puzzling over how to make it all fit.
With the faintest laugh, his mother lays her hands on Keith’s shoulders and turns him round, steering him back toward Shiro and the small table where a covered casserole dish sits. It smells like the roasted chicken he grew up eating, heavy on lemon and flecked with chopped herbs. “We wanted you two to have more than takeout and peanut-butter sandwiches while you get settled.”
Shiro sets out drinks and dinner plates for each of them, and Keith has to pause to admire his boyfriend’s taste. The matte black edged in silver looks good. Elegant. Leagues better than Keith’s old plastic dishes, riddled with slice marks and slightly warped from the dishwasher. Judging by the little look of pleasant surprise his mom and Kolivan exchange when they think no one is looking, they’re impressed with the change, too.
Keith carves the honey-gold chicken and spoons out roasted winter vegetables while Krolia and Kolivan ask Shiro about the move and his new job. It’s a good meal shared with family; it’s comforting, being tucked away in the warmth and privacy of a home kept in the Marmora family for three generations now. And somewhere in between Shiro bashfully ducking his head as Krolia congratulates him and Kolivan dryly recounting the house’s history, Keith realizes it’s his and Shiro’s first dinner here together, the both of them officially living under this roof.
He grins and pretends he doesn’t see Shiro subtly slip Kosmo a chunk of cooled chicken under the table.
The night deepens and soon it’s only the three of them. It’s not new to follow Shiro up the stairs to his bedroom, with Kosmo patiently waiting for them at the top. It isn’t new to squeeze into the narrow bathtub with his boyfriend and draw the curtains shut, cleaving close to try and fit both of their bodies under the spray. Falling together into a hastily made bed, surrounded by pillows and the fluff of Kosmo’s fur as the dog curls protectively at Shiro’s back, isn't exactly new, either.
What is new is knowing there’s no limit on it. He’ll see Shiro in the morning, all day, and then fall asleep beside him tomorrow night, too. And the next night. For weeks, for months. For years, he hopes, even as it feels like a tremendous thing to want for.
“I love you,” he whispers, thumb stroking the rise of Shiro’s cheek as the man yawns wide. His kiss lands on the corner of Shiro’s mouth, right where the curve of his drowsy smile starts.
“Love you, too,” Shiro murmurs as their noses bump, the full fringe of his lashes hanging over his dreamy, sleepy stare. Under the covers, his hand skims up the length of Keith’s thigh and over his hips; it slips beneath softspun cotton and comes to rest on the dip in Keith’s waist, holding him near.
A long snout suddenly appears over Shiro’s shoulder; Kosmo blinks down at Keith, wet nose twitching.
“We didn’t forget you,” Keith says with fondness, reaching up to rub the dog’s head. “Glad to have you back, buddy. And now we’ve got Shiro here, too.”
Shiro mumbles something unintelligible and contented, already given over to sleep. He doesn’t even wake when Kosmo gives him a goodnight lick across the ear— just squirms deeper into his pillow and reflexively pulls Keith in even closer, their legs already tangling under the layers of blankets and quilts.
A perfect night, by Keith’s imagining. He falls asleep in Shiro’s hold, one hand curled in Kosmo’s fur, and dreams of more nights like it.