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It’s the ugliest thing Shiro has ever seen but it reminds him of home. It’s the only thing that’s done that recently that isn’t violet eyes and a switchblade smile.
He decides to buy it. If anything, it’s because he knows that his grandmother would have loved it and that she would have put it next to the ones she already has. It helps to think that one day, if he’s lucky, he’ll be able to go back and give it to her.
When he tries to talk to the merchant – a small alien that only comes up to about his chest, with three hands, all holding money as he furiously makes a deal with another costumer – he is surprised when they decide to give him the chair for free, “For helping save my home,” says the merchant.
It takes everything in Shiro to not reply with, “Well thank you for helping me remember mine.”
Ignoring the strange look that he can see Pidge giving him out of the corner of his eye, Shiro throws the chair over his shoulder and quickly goes to put it in Black before anyone else can see him
. . .
“What the actual fuck is that?”
Shiro registers Lance’s voice as coming from the doorway, his back to the sound.
“No, seriously Shiro, where did that come from?” He asks again, voice dripping in obvious disgust.
Shiro looks at the chair – it isn’t that ugly.
The chair is plush – one of those chairs that the father of a sitcom always takes in the living room, beer in one hand, remote in the other – the cushions seems to be close to bursting. It has a pretty normal square back, standard plush arms and a button on the center of both the seat cushion and the backrest cushion.
What the real problem is though, is the fabric that covers the chair. Each section seemed to have a different fabric covering it, from the seat cushion’s black and white checkerboard pattern to the pale pink and green floral of the backrest cushion. The arms sported palm trees and sailboats, while the fabric hanging down and hiding the legs was a weird off-red gingham.
It wasn’t a pretty chair, but neither were the mix-match chairs and couches that filled his grandmother’s small living room. A bright turquois and yellow polka dot couch with a weird array of rainbow pillows, a red and blue plaid love seat, and a dark blue – almost purple – recliner that his grandfather favored. The chair would have fit right in.
“I found it at the market on the planet we helped yesterday, I figured the lounge needed a more… homely touch.” Shiro turned around to look at Lance, who had an equally confused Hunk standing next to him.
Lance opened his mouth, as if to protest the homeliness of the chair, when Pidge walked in, newly purchased space video games in hand.
“Ya know Shiro, I really thought you would’ve kept that monstrosity in your room,” Pidge said, going to set up the games, “I thought better of you.”
“You knew he bought this and you didn’t stop him?” There was a sense of betrayal in the question, betrayal that Pidge would let Shiro even think about buying the chair, as if it truly effected Lance, as if Shiro buying the chair dictated whether or not Lance lived or died.
Shiro looked back at the chair, then back at the group of disgusted paladins, “Technically, I didn’t buy it,” he said, as if that was going to make it even better.
Hunk shook his head and Lance continued to look disgusted, but neither said anything as they went to go sit next to Pidge on the couch – definitely not the chair, the three eyed it as if they were looking down a Galra solider – and started playing their game.
Shiro had thought that was the end of the Chair Debate.
Shiro was wrong.
. . .
It came up again at dinner that night, everyone sat around the table, quietly enjoying their food. While it hadn’t come quickly, after being in space for a while, the group were able to sit in comfortable silence every once in a while, each person quietly eating while they stayed in their own head.
But the silence was broken with probably the last topic Shiro wanted to talk about.
“Oh!” Allura said, looking up from her bowl of goo, “I saw that someone put a new chair in the lounge… it looks very, um… nice?” She was struggling to say anything good about it, Shiro could tell, but on principle she didn’t want to offend anyone’s interior design choice, she wasn’t like that.
“That was Shiro’s handiwork,” Hunk said, pointing an accusatory spoon towards Shiro.
“Oh, well, I’m glad you’re all beginning to feel more comfortable here,” it wasn’t what she wanted to say, but it was the diplomatic thing to say, so that’s why she said it. Shiro could see through her façade.
To his right Shiro felt a small shift and looked at Keith, who had his spoon filled and up towards his mouth, “It looks comfy…” he said, as if trying to placate Shiro.
Shiro smiled down at Keith as the other stuck the spoon in his mouth to take a bite, and around the goo in his mouth Keith smiled too, then looked back down at his bowl.
Well, at least someone liked it.
. . .
It was as if someone had put caution tape around the chair, declared it a vicious crime scene, and left it there in a chalk outline. Every time Shiro so much as got a peak into the lounge, people were sitting everywhere but the chair, even the floor seemed like a more popular spot.
He didn’t get it; the chair wasn’t dirty – he had deep cleaned it himself the day after they got back from the planet – and it wasn’t as if the patterns themselves effected the overall comfiness of the chair. The chair was comfy too, Shiro could attest to it himself, he found it to be a great place to sit and read through battle reports or the odd book he got a hold of. It was just that the chair wasn’t easy on the eyes even though it was easy on the body.
However, a couple weeks after getting the chair, Shiro wishes he wasn’t always internally complaining about being the only one that sat in it. In fact, Shiro wishes he could go back to thinking he was the only one that sat in it because right now he knew that this was not the truth.
Keith also seemed to sit in the chair.
No, actually, Keith seemed to sleep in the chair.
Shiro was frozen at the doorway of the lounge, he had thought that this was where he would find Pidge, and then he could ask them for help translating some Altean from a map he was looking at, but no, of course Shiro’s life couldn’t be that easy.
What he found in the lounge instead was Keith curled up in the plush patchwork chair, knees close to his chest, head on the armrest, little portable game system – a gift from Pidge to everyone after another trip to the space mall – almost falling out of his hands.
It was a lot to take in.
Now, it wasn’t that Shiro liked Keith, no he realized long ago that saying he “liked Keith” was a gross understatement. Now-a-days he was telling himself that he had feelings for Keith, feelings that involved wanting to hold his hand when they were walking around the castle together, feelings that involved wanting to kiss the frustration off Keith’s brow after a training bot was being particularly difficult, feelings that involved wanting to be able to wake up every morning to the exact sight he was seeing now. Shiro had feelings for Keith, and he was pretty sure those feelings were dangerously close to being ones of love.
So, it was safe to say that Shiro was having a lot of feelings about Keith falling asleep in the chair he brought back, the chair that reminded him of home, the chair that was now occupied by the only other home-like thing Shiro had on this ship.
It was a lot to take in.
Shiro walked a little closer and took it all in – the small opening of Keith’s mouth, the little tremble in his lip as air moved through his body, the way his hair was all pushed up and messy against the armrest, the slight shiver of his body.
Oh.
He was cold.
Shiro could fix that.
Moving as quietly as he could, Shiro went over to the couch and grabbed the blanket Hunk left on the end of it, shaking it out and then walking back over to place it on Keith.
He barely even took a breath, placing the blanket softly over Keith’s sleeping form and slightly tucking it so that it wouldn’t move.
Then Keith shifted.
Shiro stopped moving, stopped his limited breaths, and waited.
It started with the light twitching of his eyelids, and then Shiro was face to face with a half-awake Keith.
It took Keith a moment, he seemed to be gathering the energy to speak, but then he did, in such a small voice that it broke Shiro on the spot, “Hey, Shiro…”
There was a slow-growing, sleepy smile on Keith’s face and Shiro had to count to ten before he could say anything, “H-hey, just go back to sleep, okay?”
Keith’s smile seemed to pick up a little bit more before he shifted, getting into a comfier position on the chair, “Okay… g’night Shiro,” it came out more as slur than anything, Keith’s eyes falling shut again as spoke.
Looking over him one last time – he swore, this was the last time – Shiro moved back and whispered a small “Good night Keith.”
Then he turned back towards the door and ran.
. . .
If you asked him, Shiro would whole-heartedly deny that he spent the night after finding Keith dreaming about a soft voice wishing him good night before the owner of said voice fell asleep in his arms.
If you asked him, Shiro would whole-heartedly deny that he all he could think about two days later, when Keith was explaining how he maneuvered Red through such a small space earlier, was the small slur that Keith’s voice had after he had woken up.
If you asked him, Shiro would whole-heartedly deny that the only thing he’s been thinking about for the past week has been a sleep soft Keith and the smile he wore when he noticed Shiro standing above him.
He didn’t do any of those things.
He certainly didn’t think that his aforementioned feelings were now one-hundred-percent in love territory.
He didn’t think that at all.
. . .
A week-and-a-half after he found Keith in the chair, Shiro thought that he was over it. He could be around Keith now and not immediately think about what the sleep warmed skin of Keith’s cheek would feel like against his human hand. He could act normal again.
They were sparring, like they always did a couple times a week, finding the robots to only be able to give them so much of a workout.
Keith had been doing better, and was very close, more than once, at getting Shiro to the ground, but he still couldn’t get it. Shiro could see the look in his eyes that said Keith was about to lunge at him again, and he prepared, ready for a counter attack.
After a moment, Keith lunged down towards Shiro’s stomach, attempting to use his strength and weight to push the other down on his back – Keith was getting tired and just wanted it to end, Shiro could tell, he always got reckless when he was tired – it was an old-school wrestling move that didn’t have a place in combat, only in playful roughhousing among friends.
Before Keith could reach around Shiro to push him back, Shiro caught a hold of his right arm, and twisted it, pinning it behind Keith’s back while he lightly kicks his shins, bringing Keith down to his knees. Of his own volition, Keith falls to his back, bringing Shiro down to tower over him.
Keith is laughing by the time Shiro extracts his hand from behind Keith’s back, “You really just kicked my shins,” he says, and then launches into another fit of laughter.
There’s a smile on Keith’s face, it’s easy and it slips out the same way the smile had when he was half asleep.
Shiro’s brain short circuits.
“You look really cute when you sleep.”
It just comes out and Shiro doesn’t realize it until Keith stops laughing.
“I look…. What?” There’s confusion all over Keith’s face, his brow knitted.
Shiro can’t find a way to stop himself.
“And when you wake up and you just... your voice was so soft.”
That’s when Keith’s tone gets serious, “Shiro, what?”
“I… I’m sorry, but the other day,” Shiro looks away from Keith, and instead focuses on the very gorgeous and interesting piece of floor to the left of Keith’s head, “you were sleeping in that ugly chair that I bought and, you were cold so I put a blanket on you…”
Keith blinks. “Oh.”
Shiro doesn’t know what to say, he’s still leaning over Keith, hands on both sides of his shoulders, so he moves back and sits up.
Keith, still lying back, looks up at the ceiling, dazed, “So, that wasn’t a dream?”
Shiro sighs to himself, kind of wishing that it was, “No… it wasn’t a dream.”
There’s a moment of silence before Keith lets out a small breath and finally sits up. When Shiro looks over at him that smile is back on his face.
“I look cute when I sleep, huh?” He’s too smug, smugger than Shiro honestly thinks he has any right to be.
“Uh.. y-yeah.” All at once Shiro goes from forgetting how to speak, to speaking too much, “And I’m sorry, I’m sorry if that was weird – because it totally was weird, and I shouldn’t have said it at all and I’m just.. I’m so sorry Keith, I didn’t…”
Keith is giggling, honest-to-God giggling, by the time Shiro decides to cut himself off and save himself the embarrassment. It would take him less than five seconds to get up and get out of the training room and he’s seriously considering it.
“Didn’t mean to get you so flustered,” Keith says, leaning a little closer to Shiro, who is now amending his original plan and finding that he can actually get out in three seconds, which means two less seconds of embarrassment.
When Shiro comes back to reality, Keith is all but in his lap, having moved a couple inches since the last time Shiro decided to visit the present day. It’s becoming too much for Shiro, and he knows that if he doesn’t leave now he’ll do something way more stupid than he already did.
Keith looks over Shiro’s face, then meets his eyes, “Can I kiss you?”
Something like that, Shiro would do something stupid like that.
They’re a hair’s breadth apart and Shiro can see the slight freckles over Keith’s nose that only appear when he’s been out in the sun for too long, or on an alien planet with less protection in the atmosphere than Earth. He can see the slight flicker as Keith’s eyes move around his face, checking to make sure that he heard the question.
Shiro gives what he thinks is a nod, but he’s sure it comes across as one because then Keith’s kissing him.
It doesn’t register fully at first, it’s a light brush of lips that seems more hesitant than Keith’s earlier smugness would have suggested, and Shiro can’t have that. He wants to make sure that this is real, that this isn’t one of his dreams again.
He moves his hand to the back of Keith’s neck, and pulls him back in before he can get too far away, bringing their lips back together, firmer than before.
They break apart after only a moment, and before Shiro can pull back and second guess himself, Keith lays his forehead against Shiro’s.
“To be fair, you look cute when you do just about anything,” Keith says, a glint in his eyes that Shiro would move mountains to see again.
“I do, huh?”
. . .
The next day the chair had two occupants, curled up and asleep, against the clashing patterns.