Work Text:
It would take the lions five quintants to get back to Earth without a wormhole. They divided up supplies as best they could: food rations, canteens of water, backup energy sources that Pidge and Hunk taught everyone in the group to use through an improvised but painstakingly detailed presentation. They packed and re-packed everything they had haphazardly thrown into boxes as they evacuated the castle: clothing and food and weapons, of course, and tools that the engineers could use to repair their equipment, but also: a copper-colored pendant necklace set with a bright green gem presented to Allura as a symbol of allegiance by the bird-looking people of some planet Keith had instantly forgotten the name of, or perhaps had never known to begin with. A finely carved three-foot-tall totem of Voltron ceremonially gifted to all the paladins by the inhabitants of another planet Keith barely remembered. A leather-bound book with thick cream-colored pages full of intricate illustrations recounting the half-mythological stories of Voltron’s triumphs against the Empire. And a blue-tinted diamond, only just larger than Keith’s fist, pointed on both ends, darkly sparkling, nearly fathomless when it was his turn to hold it and he tried to look into its depths. The Castle. After only a moment with it in his hands, warmed from the others’ skin, Keith passed it to Lance.
“Keith,” Krolia said, and she twitched her fingers to signal him away from the group. He followed her to where she stopped, next to the right paw of the Black Lion.
“Yeah?”
Krolia smiled softly at him for a moment, long enough that he shifted uncomfortably under her gaze. He crossed his arms and uncrossed them again.
“It makes more sense for us to split two-to-a-ship than three,” Krolia finally said, putting Keith out of one misery and into another.
“Sure,” he said, heart suddenly dropping for no reason he could discern.
Krolia put a hand to Keith’s unscarred cheek. Her fingers and palm were rough with calluses but the pad of her thumb felt infinitely tender as she brushed it over his skin. “I can ride with someone else. Shiro should be with you.”
Keith felt his mouth open and he took a breath to speak, but “Oh” was all he could manage.
“And Yorak, too, of course,” Krolia said, a full smile breaking across her face that Keith couldn’t help but echo. Before he could say anything else, Krolia pulled him into a hug, tight and familiar, and he turned his face into her neck and exhaled against her skin, closing his eyes when her prickly bluish-purple hair brushed his forehead and the bridge of his nose. “I’m so proud of you,” she murmured.
“Thanks,” Keith said weakly.
Krolia pulled away and headed back toward the group. Lance was directing Pidge and Hunk to load boxes of supplies into their lions, Kaltenecker lingering close to his side, chewing on something though there appeared to be no grass in sight. The three Alteans huddled close together, their heads bent, though Allura looked up as Krolia approached them and began speaking. As Keith watched, Shiro bent to pick up one of Pidge’s smaller supply boxes with his one hand and Lance immediately darted over to him, shooing him away and berating him with a voice raised enough for Keith to hear bits and pieces of what he was saying: “…nearly DIED and your GHOST was in a LION for AGES and n…” his voice faded and then came back, stronger than before, “MANUAL LABOR WITH YOUR ONE ARM.” Shiro backed away with his arm raised in defeat. Keith considered rescuing him, but Lance was right.
Yorak had been sniffing around Green but when Keith snapped his fingers he raised his head to fix Keith with a piercing stare. With a familiar blue flash he disappeared from his spot and appeared just beside Keith, still attentive, ears perked. Keith scratched his head fondly and Yorak made the low-frequency humming noise that Keith and Krolia had learned meant he was content, his space wolf version of a cat’s purr. “All right, come on,” Keith said, and Yorak followed him back to the group.
With Allura exhausted from transferring Shiro’s spirit to his body, but clearly trying to hide it, and Coran still grief-stricken from the loss of the castle (also trying to hide it, but with far less success than Allura was having), Krolia had efficiently dispersed the group across lions: Romelle would ride with Pidge, Coran with Lance, and Krolia herself with Allura. Yellow would take the bulk of supplies so the rest of the lions had as much cockpit space as possible.
“You’re sure you’re okay with Shiro and Yorak?” Hunk asked Keith.
“We’ll be fine.” Keith’s voice came out icier than he had intended and Hunk flinched back just slightly; Keith belatedly tried to soften his tone by smiling and patting Hunk on the arm, though from Hunk’s expression the smile may have come out more like a grimace. “Really.”
To Keith’s surprise, Hunk’s whole face softened. “I was talking about taking Yorak, not Shiro,” he said.
“Oh—it’s—he’s kind of attached to me,” Keith stuttered, feeling caught off-guard the same way he had during his conversation with his mother.
“Yeah, it’s cool,” Hunk said. “Good luck.”
“You too?” Keith said as Hunk went back to loading boxes into Yellow’s mouth.
Keith felt Shiro approach before he even turned around. Shiro’s fully white hair was a surprise all over again, but the way he looked at Keith was familiar and dear. The spike of fear that Keith felt every time he remembered how close he had been to losing Shiro—losing this—arose again in him, sharp and awful, closing his throat for a tic before he quashed it ruthlessly and made himself smile at Shiro.
“What’s wrong?” Shiro asked.
“Nothing,” Keith said, too quickly. “We going?”
“Yeah, but—” Shiro gestured to a medium-sized crate on the ground. “I don’t think I can carry that.” He gave Keith a little self-deprecating smile like it hadn’t been Keith who had sliced off his prosthetic arm, feeling the catch and slide of the black bayard’s blade through the casing and the complex metal insides, the release as it came out the other side and Shiro’s arm clattered across the floor. Keith swallowed hard.
“Yeah, I got it.” His voice sounded raw and he quickly turned to pick up the box. It wasn’t as heavy as he had expected and the force with which he lifted it almost threw him off-balance. He steadied himself with the feeling of Shiro’s eyes still upon him.
Although Yorak immediately settled himself beside the box Keith placed on the floor of the cockpit, Shiro came to stand just behind the pilot’s seat as Keith initiated the takeoff sequence, his remaining hand braced beside Keith’s head. The paladins confirmed that they were ready to launch and Keith placed his hands on the controls, feeling Black come alive with power around him. The hum of the lion filled his mind, quieting his fears and overpowering the memories that always seemed to seep in through his cracks. He felt clear and bright with purpose.
Black led the group, crouching and leaping off the barren rock surface of the planet they had landed on, extending its front paws as a burst of power rocketed through its legs to launch the massive ship away from the planet’s (albeit weak) gravitational pull. Keith felt more than saw the other lions follow him, a surge of energy pulsing through the faint psychic bonds that linked the paladins when they were piloting the lions. They breached the planet’s atmosphere and the wide expanse of space yawned before them.
Keith input the coordinates for Earth, checking and double-checking the location, the bearing, the course the ship’s computer plotted. He called up the coordinates in the the other ships’ systems, checking their courses against Black’s. He tuned out Lance and Hunk’s chatter as he looked over the star maps.
“The course is fine,” Shiro said gently.
“It doesn’t hurt to double-check.”
Shiro hummed, then Keith heard him back away from the pilot’s seat. He abruptly missed the presence of Shiro’s hand on his seatback.
“Okay, course laid in,” Keith said over the comm system. “I’m switching off comms; contact me on emergency frequency if you need me.”
The other paladins confirmed the order and Keith switched his communication system to emergency only. Lance and Hunk and Pidge’s voices suddenly cut out, leaving the cockpit in silence. All Keith could hear were the distant roar of Black’s engines and the hum of all its complex internal mechanisms working in unison as it flew.
And a soft little animal snore, as Yorak had apparently fallen asleep.
“They’ll be all right,” Shiro said from somewhere behind him.
“I know.” Keith didn’t turn around just yet. He felt acutely the close space of the cabin. There would be enough space for both of them to sleep, probably, but just barely. Keith was used to Yorak sleeping mostly on top of him, fortunately, and they could stack the boxes to create a little more space, but it would be tight. He closed his eyes. He was too tired even to be anxious about spending five days in such a small space with Shiro, Shiro who he had missed, Shiro who had turned out to be an evil clone (!) of the man he knew and loved, Shiro who he had fought and hurt and saved.
Shiro who he had saved. He was facing away from Shiro, toward the control panels of the lion and the screen that showed the vast star-flecked expanse of space, but placed his hands over his face anyway, letting his hair fall forward to obscure what it could, willing himself into stillness. Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, Keith had been so close to losing him. Keith had lost him.
Sometimes when Keith looked back at his life it seemed like an endless series of times he lost Shiro. To space, first, while Keith had been left at the Garrison, sending daily messages into the relentless black void until finally he stopped receiving replies: the second loss. The third, after they thought Zarkon was defeated and they realized no one was in the Black Lion. (Shiro was dead, then, Keith thinks, Shiro died. Shiro died.) Maybe that was what made it easier for Keith to finally do the leaving, for once, though he could never stray far: tethered to the team; to the Black Lion; to the memories of how heavy Shiro’s limp body had felt as he had dragged him off the useless Galra fighter, the greasy mass of hair that half-obscured his face, the desperate heaving breaths he took once safely inside the lion. His hands clutching weakly at Keith’s arms.
But the last time had been the worst. To have Shiro, to be able to touch him and speak to him, and for him to be a stranger—worse, an enemy—well.
It crashed through Keith like waves, one after the other, as he stayed perfectly still in the pilot’s seat and pressed his hands uselessly to his face, feeling the weave of the fabric of his gloves against his eyelids as the pressure of his fingertips sent sparks arcing through the darkness behind his closed eyes. He felt as though if he released the tension in any one of his muscles his whole body would shake apart so he ground his teeth together and weathered the storm. Shiro had tried to kill him. Shiro had been dead. Shiro was back.
After a brief but hideous eternity, Keith finally felt as though the belated grief and hideous panic had abated enough for him to rotate the pilot’s seat to face the rest of the cabin: the few boxes of supplies his ship held, the smaller box of his own belongings (mostly clothes), the sleeping wolf, and Shiro. Shiro was dozing, or pretending to doze, sitting on one of the storage boxes with his head tipped back against the wall and his hand loosely draped over his lap, palm up, fingers half-curled. His lips were slightly parted and his breath slow and even: actually asleep, then. His scar seemed brightly prominent against his pale skin and white hair, his eyelashes newly dark, his lips so pink.
Keith looked away from him abruptly. Yorak stirred and huffed and lifted his huge body off the floor, coming over to Keith in a long stride and pressing his face between Keith’s knees, gazing up at Keith with his liquid eyes as Keith stripped off his gloves and delved his fingers into Yorak’s soft, dense fur. Yorak turned his face this way and that as Keith rubbed behind his ears and over the top of his head and beside his mouth, under his chin, and Yorak panted with his hot breath and gently drooled all over Keith’s armor.
“He really likes you, huh,” Shiro said.
Keith looked up too quickly. Shiro had barely moved other than to open his eyes but he was looking fondly at Keith and Yorak, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“We found him when he was just a puppy. I raised him.” Keith directed his attention back at Yorak, who had never left him, never died.
“It’s so—so strange that you were gone for two whole years.” Shiro shifted, rolling his good shoulder. “I thought I remembered you one way and you came back,” he huffed a little laugh, “pretty different.”
At this Keith did look at him again. “So you do remember.”
“Yes.”
Keith’s hands had stilled on Yorak and the wolf pressed his face into Keith’s palm. Keith ran his hand over Yorak’s head automatically. “You—you remember everything.”
Shiro’s pale eyebrows drew together, a pained look breaking across his face. “Yes, and I’m so—Keith, I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I ever did anything to hurt you—”
“It wasn’t you.”
“Wasn’t it?” Shiro leaned forward, swaying slightly and bracing himself with his hand on his thigh. He looked as though he felt off-balance without his metal arm. “I know I would never do those things, but I still—I still did them. I still tried…” He took a shuddering breath and looked away. “I still tried to kill you.”
“It wasn’t you!” If it hadn’t been for Yorak’s solid presence in front of him, Keith might have leapt off his chair toward Shiro, but Yorak kept him pinned, a physical presence between them that Keith was glad for. He wouldn’t have known what to do with Shiro once he got there, pressing him to the wall or kneeling in front of him, bare hands splayed on the smooth white plates of Shiro’s armor. Instead he tightened his hands in Yorak’s fur.
“I still remember what… what it felt like.” Shiro looked at Keith again, racked with guilt. “I don’t think it matters.”
“It’s all that matters,” Keith insisted fiercely. “You didn’t do those things. You would never.”
Shiro hung his head and his body heaved with a sigh. Between the hum of the ship and the soft whines of Yorak, frustrated that Keith had stopped petting him, it was impossible for Keith to tell whether he actually heard Shiro say, “But I did.”
In the silence that followed, Keith held his hand up to get Yorak’s attention, then directed him over to Shiro. Dutifully, Yorak crossed the small distance between them and nosed against Shiro’s leg like he had against Keith’s. Shiro hesitated, like he wasn’t sure exactly what to do, but he gingerly held his hand out and Yorak butted his face against it.
“Oh,” Shiro murmured, softly, as though surprised. “You’re soft.”
Shiro carded his fingers gently through the thick ruff around Yorak’s neck, his black-gloved fingers barely visible when engulfed in Yorak’s black fur but dark when they passed through his gray-blue streaks. Yorak hummed. Shiro jerked his hand back.
“That means he likes you,” Keith said. “Like how cats purr.”
“I don’t know what that means?” Shiro replied, but he sank his hand back into Yorak’s fur.
“You don’t know what purring is?”
“Is that an alien thing?”
“No, it’s a cat thing. Like, earth cats. Nevermind.” Keith spun the chair around again and checked the lion’s control panels, both internal and external system statuses, switching comms back on just for a moment to see what everyone else was doing. The comms were silent, though, for perhaps the first time in Keith’s memory. Most of the paladins had someone else to talk to, though.
“Hey, Hunk?”
Hunk’s voice was bright over the communication system as his face popped up on Keith’s display panel. “Hi, Keith! How’s it going over there?”
“Fine,” Keith said reflexively. “Hey, listen. All the rest of us have company. You’re the only one alone in your lion. So if you… if you need to talk, feel free to comm me, okay? Direct line. Don’t worry about it.”
Hunk’s face softened into a sweet smile. “Thanks, Keith. I really appreciate it.”
Keith signed off and put his comms on emergency frequency again, looking over his controls one last time before facing Shiro again.
“That was great, Keith,” Shiro said immediately. “Really thoughtful.” But Keith heard what he meant: you’re a good leader. It warmed his whole body.
“Learned from the best,” Keith shot back, offhand, but he couldn’t resist finally going over to where Shiro was sitting. Even before he had ever met Shiro properly Keith had felt drawn into his orbit, acutely aware of the pull Shiro’s mere existence exerted upon him, fighting it and helpless to it in turns. But they had been so far apart, for so long, and he couldn’t stand the distance anymore.
Keith knelt behind Yorak on the pretense of petting his back but as he got close, Shiro pulled away as much as he could, nearing the wall again, sliding his hand around from Yorak’s shoulder to the end of his snout. Keith’s pulse skyrocketed as panic swept over him.
If Shiro remembered everything, he remembered what Keith had said to him to try to get him back, trapped under the weight of his body on a space station that was tearing apart around them, desperately holding Shiro’s blade away from his throat. He had thought, in retrospect, that “you’re my brother” might have given him some plausible deniability. But they had both known what he meant. Shiro had to have known, after all he’d seen. And this was how he felt.
As smoothly as he could, Keith stood and knelt beside one of the supply cases. He fished through it until he found a bag of some kind of jerky and he broke off a palm-sized piece.
He already had Yorak’s attention, so holding it out and asking, “Hey, buddy, you want a piece?” was all Yorak needed to teleport across the tiny distance between them and snatch the meat out of Keith’s hand, still surrounded by a mist of sparkling blue energy.
“Holy shit,” Shiro said.
“Oh, yeah. He does that.” Yorak tried to stick his nose into the open bag and Keith ineffectually tried to push him away. “Hey, you want some jerky?”
“Is that not dog food?”
Keith shrugged and pulled out a large piece before tossing the bag to Shiro. It was only after he had instinctually thrown it that he realized—but Shiro caught it easily, one handed, and tucked it between his knees to extract a piece. Keith busied himself with splitting his own between himself and Yorak.
Keith sat cross-legged beside Yorak, leaning against the wall as he chewed on the jerky. It wasn’t as bad as he had expected, though growing up at the Garrison and then living with Allura and Coran’s bizarre, goo-based Altean cuisine had skewed his sense of taste somewhat. Yorak flopped down beside him and rested his head in Keith’s lap, one heavy paw draped over Keith’s foot.
“It’s not as bad as I expected,” Shiro said, “though the last few years might have changed my standards,” and Keith laughed. It was okay. He was okay. He could act normal, and some day maybe the aftermath of what happened would be far enough away that Shiro would sometimes press a comforting hand to Keith’s shoulder, or Keith could grab his arm to get his attention and leave his fingers there just a moment too long, feeling his warmth and strength.
(Just after Shiro had awakened, his soul back in his body thanks to Allura’s alchemy, hair shocked white, he had jerked up toward Keith and Keith had caught him in his arms without even thinking, scrabbling his hands over the sleek panels of his paladin armor to haul him up, to affirm to himself that Shiro was alive and here, here with Keith again. That was—well. Best Keith didn’t think about it too hard.)
The hum of the lion’s engines was less apparent in the cushioned pilot’s seat, but sitting on the floor with his back against the wall Keith could feel it in his bones, the continuous buzz of the ever-moving systems as familiar to his body as his own. Keith closed his eyes and tipped his head back.
When Keith awoke Yorak was gone and his legs were completely numb. He hissed as he unfolded himself and waited for his body to respond, hands pressed flat to the cool metal floor. From where he was sitting, he could see most of the control panels of the lion, and all systems seemed to be functional. More than that, the lion felt functional, purring contentedly somewhere in the back of his mind.
Shiro and Yorak were curled up on the floor together, Yorak’s back pressed to Shiro’s chest. Shiro had shed his armor and was wearing just the form-fitting black undersuit that Keith had long since trained himself out of looking at too closely. His right shoulder was folded under him and, with Yorak in the way, Keith could almost forget the feeling of the shock traveling up his arm as he activated bayard’s blade and it connected with the metal casing and broke through. Keith had done many worse things than that in his life but the memory still rocked sickly through him when he allowed it to rise up.
Keith looked between Shiro and Yorak and the pilot’s chair and the small space left between Yorak and where Keith’s legs were already stretched diagonally, nearly touching Shiro’s tucked-up knees. He should check on the other paladins and their passengers, their laid-in course, the coordinates of Earth…
Keith removed his armor with clumsy fingers, separating the plates manually and stacking them in an uneven heap between two of the storage boxes. His clothes were in some box, and he could probably find his jacket and use it as a pillow, but it seemed like a prohibitively gargantuan amount of effort, so Keith just curled up on his side on the floor and tucked an arm under his head. He was close enough to feel the warmth from Yorak’s body and when he extended a hand, he felt against his fingers the fine, soft fur of Yorak’s belly. He fell asleep.
The space station was collapsing; it wasn’t the station, it was the Castle of Lions, but each hall was lined with orange-tinted cryopods and when Keith peered into the nearest one he was confronted with Shiro’s slack face. There was a thunderous boom and the walls cracked and began to shift and move apart. The floor quaked. When Keith steadied himself with a hand splayed against the cool glass of the cryopod, a siren began to wail. Shiro’s eyes opened; the eyes of all the Shiro clones opened, blank and yellow. They lifted their Galra arms and slammed their fists against the inside of the glass in unison with another bone-jarring boom. A spiderweb of cracks erupted below Keith’s hand. Shiro pulled back his fist and when Keith looked up at his face it was twisted with rage. The glass vibrated as Shiro punched it again, its surface splintering from top to bottom. It wouldn’t withstand another hit. Keith couldn’t move his hand. Shiro opened his mouth and pulled his arm back one more time.
Keith awoke with a start, stifling a gasp only with long practice. He was half-curled against the warm, familiar mass of Yorak’s body, one of Yorak’s massive paws braced against his thigh, two others tucked against his chest. One of his hands was pressed into the fur of Yorak’s side, and—and Shiro’s hand was splayed on top of his, warm and broad, the callused expanse of his palm a little damp with sweat where it rested over the backs of Keith’s fingers.
With the memory of the dream still a fist around his throat Keith began to sit up, forcing his tingling limbs to respond. As gently as he could, he began pulling his hand away from Shiro’s. Not gently enough: Shiro’s eyes blinked open.
“Keith?” Shiro mumbled with his first waking breath, voice rough with sleep and unspeakably tender.
Keith jerked his hand back, immediately scrambling upright.
Shiro seemed to realize what was happening and he, too, pulled his hand away abruptly, curling it against his chest. Yorak stirred, whuffing softly.
“It’s okay,” Keith said to both of them. He stroked Yorak’s head and Yorak pressed his wet nose to the inside of Keith’s wrist. “I… should check on the others,” he said, not quite able to look at Shiro.
“Keith, wait, I’m s—” Shiro began, but Keith interrupted him.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a rush.
“You’re sorry?” Shiro said in disbelief. “What do you h—I’m sorry.” With his one arm he pushed himself into a sitting position, unsteady in a way Keith had never before seen, almost clumsy. Keith felt nauseated, still only watching out of the corner of his eye as Shiro settled with his back against the wall. “Keith,” Shiro said softly.
“I cut off your arm,” Keith replied desperately, voice tight.
“You had to,” Shiro said immediately. “Is that what you’re… Keith. You saved me. I will never be anything but grateful.”
Keith stared at the floor, unable to respond.
“Keith. Please look at me.”
Keith closed his eyes for just a tic, just long enough for his hideous guilt and sharp longing to rise up like a tide within him and then subside again. He felt his jaw clench and spasm as he finally forced his eyes open. He looked at the smooth gray floor, Yorak’s familiar fur, and then finally he dragged his gaze up: Shiro’s crossed legs, his waist and broad chest and (the tide of guilt rising again) the empty space where his arm was (the feeling of the blade catching in the metal), his shoulders, his vulnerable throat. The whiteness of his hair was still a surprise, the way it paled the rest of his face except for the bright slash of the scar across his nose.
“You saved my life. You’ve saved me so many times I don’t even know how to thank you anymore.”
“You don’t have to,” Keith said.
“I do. I asked you, once, how many times you were going to have to save me before everything was over. And you said, ‘As many times as it takes.’ But you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t have tried, this time.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Keith felt like he had been slapped.
“I could have killed you! I would have!” Shiro said, softly but with such vehemence, such self-recrimination. “I know you said earlier that it wasn’t me who hurt you. But I still remember it. I gave you that scar, Keith, and I can’t forget it. I won’t. I can’t—you can’t trust me.”
Keith would die for him. Keith would spend the rest of his life fighting, hurting, feral and desperate, to give Shiro a single moment of peace. Keith would take to the whole galaxy with his knife, ship by ship, creature by creature, feeling hot blood burst over his fingers again and again if that was what it took for Shiro to be happy. But what Shiro needed wasn’t more blood.
There wasn’t much space between them but Keith rolled onto his knees and crossed it, a shuffling genuflection, until his knee butted against Shiro’s ankle. Shiro tried to pull back but Keith moved closer still. He remembered his dream, Shiro’s fist against the failing glass, the popping sound of cracks erupting through the surface. He took Shiro’s hand in his. Shiro’s skin was warm and Keith could feel, under his fingers, the planes of skin stretched between bones, the topography of tendon and vein. He pressed his palm to the backs of Shiro’s fingers like Shiro’s hand had held his when they woke up an eternity ago.
What Shiro needed wasn’t blood, but it would feel like cracking open Keith’s own ribs and extracting his heart.
Shiro’s fingertips were callused when Keith finally brought them up to his cheek. The newly healed tissue of his scar was both insensitive and oversensitive, the thick slick center a strange sensory void hemmed by too-tender edges. Keith tried not to shudder but a sigh still punched out of him at the gentle touch of Shiro’s fingers over it, feeling far away and too close by turns. Shiro did shudder, his broad body wracked with it, fingers twitching against Keith’s scar and the smooth skin over his cheekbone, but he didn’t pull his hand away.
Keith pressed his face into Shiro’s palm entirely, his lips to the heel of Shiro’s hand, Shiro’s fingertips sliding up into Keith’s hair. One of them was trembling. When Keith closed his eyes he felt his eyelashes brush the tip of Shiro’s thumb. He splayed his hand over Shiro’s to hold it in place, exhaling softly against the inside of Shiro’s wrist, and Shiro’s fingers tightened, tugging at the caught ends of Keith’s hair. Shiro’s hand fully covered Keith’s scar, the uncanny insensitive parts over which Shiro’s touch and warmth ghosted and the unbearably sensitized edges that sent bright tingling sparks skittering under Keith’s skin, across the orbital of his eye and down his spine.
“Keith,” Shiro said weakly.
Keith opened his eyes. Shiro looked like Keith felt: like he was about to break apart. Keith’s voice was raw and unsteady when he spoke:
“I trust you.”
Shiro just barely swallowed a desperate, gasping noise, his eyes closing as he practically shattered in front of Keith. His fingers tightened against Keith’s hair, his arm bending at the elbow as though he wanted to pull away but couldn’t bring himself to. Keith’s hand was still locked over the back of his, holding it against the side of Keith’s face. Keith reached out and slid his free hand around the back of Shiro’s neck, pulling them toward each other. Shiro allowed Keith to guide him forward until their foreheads touched.
They breathed together, Keith’s bangs flattened to his forehead, intermingled with Shiro’s coarse white hair. Shiro’s skin was warm where it touched Keith’s and in the close intimate space between them. Being so close to and so far from what he wanted was a kind of torture for Keith, even accustomed as he was to existing in Shiro’s space and looking but not touching, wanting but never having. There was a complex calculus that Keith did every time he was around Shiro: how close he could get without arousing suspicion, how much he could touch without giving himself away or giving into the bottomless greediness that he always felt lurking dangerously within him, wanting more than he could ever have.
This shattered all Keith’s previously established boundaries, though, this unimaginable intimacy, the sight of Shiro’s dark eyelashes fluttering against the pale skin just above his scar, the curve of his cheek and his pink lower lip. Keith closed his eyes but he could still feel the soft hot puffs of Shiro’s breath against his skin. It was not even wanting, what he felt, nor the excruciating closeness of almost-having. He was so used to controlling his own desire that he had almost forgotten the encompassing, overwhelming force of his love for Shiro. It was a separate entity inside him, a force of nature that he could only weather when it roared up within him. It felt like a free fall, one hand clutched in his, out of the shadow of the satellite and into the bright view of some alien sun.
“Hey,” Shiro breathed in the close space between them, and his fingers carded gently through Keith’s hair, dragging Keith into the present.
“I’m okay, it’s okay,” Keith said, feeling the tension in his muscles, the slight tremors that wracked his body, his quick breaths. Somehow his hand had become tightly curled around Shiro’s wrist and he loosened his sore fingers.
After a few steadying breaths, Keith finally pulled away far enough to see Shiro again, sitting back on his heels. Shiro’s hand fell away from Keith’s head to drop between them, Keith still clutching his wrist. Shiro was looking at him warmly and without impatience. Keith’s gaze involuntarily flitted to the still unfamiliar armored rise of Shiro’s right shoulder and the abruptly empty space below it. Shiro also glanced down at his shoulder, then back up at Keith.
“I don’t know why it’s like that, but it doesn’t hurt,” he said.
Keith nodded. Shiro had said it was okay, he wasn’t to blame, not really, but he still felt the black bayard manifest in his hand, the electric pull of quintessence as it formed his blade, the catch of metal against its cutting edge.
Shiro gently detached his wrist from Keith’s loose grip and caught Keith’s hand just as Keith had only a few minutes before. A little sound like “Oh” issued from Keith’s throat as he realized what Shiro was doing.
“It’s okay,” Shiro said. He smiled softly. “I trust you.”
The metal casing enclosing Shiro’s shoulder was warm and smooth, comprised of long panels separated with almost imperceptibly indented joints. Keith ran his fingertips over it gingerly, aware both of its uniform metallic sleekness and of the uneven human topography of the palm of Shiro’s hand where it was laid against the back of his, the rough protruding lines of his calluses and the dips of the creases in his palm and at the joints of his fingers.
“Can you feel it?” Keith asked.
“No,” Shiro said, somewhat sheepishly. “I think it’s meant as structural support for when the arm—well, you saw what it did.”
The purple spark and crackle of energy wreathing Shiro’s arm, burning cracks through the Altean armor until it splintered and shattered. Shiro’s pained scream as he fell to the floor, the arm glowing, warping grotesquely as it split and grew.
“I saw.” Shiro’s bodysuit was singed around the shoulder. Where it had jaggedly melted away Keith could see the border of the armor and, below it, a pale glimpse of Shiro’s skin. He skated the tips of his fingers over the line between metal and skin, feeling Shiro tense his body against the tremor that threatened to overtake him at the touch. Keith wanted to put his mouth there, to open his lips against the smooth human skin of Shiro’s shoulder, to breathe the scent of him and taste him, drag the flat of his tongue over the sweat-sweet curves of skin over muscle and bone.
Instead Keith touched the warm metal again, spreading his hand nearly flat over its smooth, broad curve. Shiro sighed. Keith looked almost involuntarily up at him: white hair, dark eyes, skin softly flushed around his scar.
The first time they met, Keith felt like an asteroid pulled into orbit around a star: some jagged, bare object hurtling through the vast void of space, aimless, inhospitable, finally caught by the inexorable gravitational pull of this bright beautiful thing. But even then, it was only temporary. Nothing in Keith’s life was meant to last.
If the primary object in a system in orbital decay has no atmosphere, the smaller, orbiting object strikes its surface. If the primary object has an atmosphere, the smaller body breaks or burns up slowly upon descent when it encounters the primary object’s atmosphere.
When the primary object is a star, the only end is incineration.
It was always going to end like this.
Keith lifted himself on his knees, slowly pressing forward into Shiro’s space, telegraphing his movements so Shiro could extend his arm to hold Keith back. But Shiro kept his hand over Keith’s even as Keith moved his hand from the metal slope of Shiro’s shoulder to the plane of his chest, splaying his fingers across the subtle rise of his pectorals and the soft dip over his sternum. Shiro’s pale eyebrows were furrowed, his eyes wide and dark as they flicked across Keith’s face to catch on Keith’s scar.
Keith braced his other hand on the wall beside Shiro’s head, fingers splayed against the cool metal. This close he could feel the warmth of Shiro’s body. Shiro looked up at Keith as though Keith were a precious thing. Keith didn’t feel worthy of that gaze, he felt achy and exhausted, hair greasy, the skin of his throat and the small of his back and the insides of his thighs sticky with sleep-sweat, but he had wanted for so long.
Shiro’s eyes fluttered shut, his eyelashes dark against his cheeks and his mottled pink-red scar. Keith’s breath caught in his throat. Shiro tilted his chin up.
The first press of their lips was soft and gentle, almost hesitant. The curve of Shiro’s lower lip fit to the space between Keith’s. When Keith’s lips parted Shiro’s did, too, a gasp of air shared between them before the kiss formed again, surer this time, Shiro’s mouth warm and insistent against Keith’s. The only sounds Keith could hear were the thundering of his pulse in his ears and the close, intimate sounds of the kiss breaking and forming again, new and revelatory each time his lips dragged against Shiro’s.
Keith pulled away just enough to look at Shiro, his flushed face and pink lips, and Shiro followed him with one last kiss, straining toward Keith before falling back. Something so bright unexpectedly unfurled within Keith’s chest at Shiro’s reluctance to let him go, like the end of some desperation that seemed to have lived within him so long he had forgotten what it was like to hope. It felt as though he was looking at Shiro for the first time: his dark eyes; the uneven way his blush edged his scar; his still-new white eyebrows and hair; his lips, parted, pink and wet. The tenderness with which Shiro looked at Keith was both familiar and new.
With a shy little smile, Shiro said, his voice only a little rough, “I hope you’re not sorry about that, too.”
Keith gaped at him for a moment. “No,” he said, a hysterical bubble of laughter rising in his throat.
“Good,” Shiro said, and he brought his hand up to the back of Keith’s head, fingers threading through his hair, and pulled him forward.
Their mouths slid together hotly, slick and damp, and when Keith tentatively licked at the seam of Shiro’s lips they parted for him, deepening the kiss. Keith tried to breathe evenly but when Shiro’s tongue slid over the plush rise of his lower lip and into his mouth he had to choke back the desperate noise that threatened to spill from him. Shiro’s cheek felt soft where his nose pressed into it but when he tilted his head slightly the scratchy beginning of stubble on Shiro’s chin scraped his; he could feel the insistent warmth of the secret inside of Shiro’s mouth, the movement of his tongue, the straight blunt line of his teeth.
Years of wanting, of holding himself back while watching hungrily, of cataloguing each touch and glance; years of absence, alone in the barren desert or with his mother and Yorak on the lush back of the cosmic whale, time slipping impossibly away to either side of them, wondering in his darkest moments whether they would return to a universe shattered or to Shiro gone, again, permanently, now, because Keith couldn’t be lucky a third time; all the years separating them, triumphant years and desperate years alike, collapsed into the now of feeling, Shiro’s hand in his hair, his warm mouth on his.
If he wasn’t an asteroid incinerated in the blinding brightness of Shiro’s star maybe they were both stars, a binary system, orbiting one another for eons, drawn ever more closely together to finally form not a black hole but a new neutron star, the collision visible at every wavelength, reverberating throughout the universe.