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Shiro was surprised when Keith told him how he felt.
Not because he hadn’t known. He’d basically guessed. Keith was a good kid, and Shiro liked him a lot. He was pretty sure that one day Keith was going to make the whole world proud. Ha, one day probably Shiro would be the guy boasting about how he’d known Keith Kogane way back when. He had so much potential, and so much determination, and so much fire. He was going to be incredible.
Right now, though, he was – Shiro tried not to think it in these terms too often because he didn’t want to be patronising, didn’t want them to have that kind of friendship – but still, he was extremely sixteen.
So Shiro had twigged Keith’s crush on him from all the sixteen-year-old with a crush things. The gazing, the stuttering, the blushing, the showing off: these were pretty obvious clues. It was flattering, and a little cute, and kind of understandable. Shiro knew that Keith wasn’t used to getting much positive attention, so he could see how their friendship could come to mean a lot to him in that way.
“Also you’re hot and he’s sixteen,” said Adam, amused. “It’s not that deep.”
“Adam,” Shiro said.
“If you didn’t already know you’re hot then I am definitely doing something wrong,” said Adam, and then smoothly backed him against the counter to kiss him. Shiro laughed into the kiss.
What Shiro hadn’t expected was Keith coming out and saying it. He wouldn’t have dreamed of actually talking to any of his teenage crushes about his feelings – in fact, he remembered being sixteen as mostly consisting of everyone telling everyone but their crushes about their feelings. But it was only a couple of months after they first met when Keith squared his shoulders, met Shiro’s eyes, and said slightly belligerently, “I love you, you know.”
“I – Keith –”
“I mean I’m in love with you,” Keith said, as if it hadn’t been clear. “I know you’re going to say that I’m too young, and that it’s stupid, or whatever. I don’t care. I know how I feel. So.”
There was a pause.
“Keith,” said Shiro gently, “I’m not going to tell you you’re stupid.”
Keith said nothing. He didn’t look away. Shiro was honestly impressed by his nerve. Most people doing what Keith was doing would have been visibly embarrassed. Keith just looked determined. Already disappointed – because he wasn’t stupid, and he did know what Shiro was going to say – but determined.
“You are young,” Shiro said.
“You’re not that much older than me.”
“Six years.”
“Lots of relationships have age gaps.”
Shiro’s own parents did. But instead of trying to tell Keith that the six years between, say, fifty and fifty-six were very different to the six years between sixteen and twenty-two – he could tell that wouldn’t go down well – he said, quietly but firmly, “Keith, I’m flattered. I really am. But I don’t think of you that way.”
Keith folded his arms. He said, almost inaudible, “I know.”
“And I have a boyfriend. We’re serious about each other.”
“I know.”
“You’ll soon –”
“Don’t tell me I’m going to get over it, or that there are nice guys my age in the Garrison, or – just don’t,” said Keith. “Okay? I get it, fine. I wasn’t expecting – I wasn’t. I had to say something. I won’t bring it up again.” With a slight unhappy crease between his eyebrows he added, “You don’t have to avoid me or anything. I won’t be weird. We’re friends, right?”
He said it as if he wasn’t completely sure. “Keith, we will always be friends,” Shiro promised immediately, and meant it.
“Okay,” said Keith. “Okay, good.”
That evening Shiro told Adam, “Keith told me he loved me today.”
“Oh,” said Adam. “Oh, wow, that is one brave kid. I think I would rather have punched myself in the face than put myself out there like that at his age. Were you gentle?”
“I tried to be. I felt so sorry for him.” Shiro leaned into Adam’s side. “Do you ever think about how great it is not to be a teenager anymore?”
“Every day of my life,” said Adam. He turned his face up to Shiro’s for a kiss, and then another. “Every – single – day.”
It had surprised Shiro at the time, because he really hadn’t known Keith very well yet – not after only a couple of months. Later, of course, it made sense. Keith never backed down from something just because it was terrifying. He’d never seen a cliff that scared him too much to jump.
They stayed friends. Keith was obviously working hard at first to squash the remnants of his crush, and Shiro was kind about it, pretended not to notice the moments when Keith still couldn’t take his eyes off him. But it didn’t take long for any lingering awkwardness to vanish along with Keith’s gazing, blushing, and stuttering. The showing off kept happening, but that was just Keith. Keith loved his own brilliance, and he made sure Shiro knew about it every time he smashed another record that had once been Shiro’s. His smile was sharply competitive, not lovesick. It was a bit of a relief.
That was the one good thing about being a teenager, of course: you moved on from things fast, and stuff that was the deepest emotion you’d ever felt one day could be a distant memory by next month. Shiro could have wished for a little of that when his relationship with Adam blew up in his face.
It was like the bottom had fallen out of the world. He’d thought – he’d really thought – that they were the real thing. He’d thought they were forever.
He knew he’d stop feeling hurt eventually. Probably.
Maybe the trip out to Pluto and back would be enough time.
Of course Shiro never really made it back from the Kerberos mission. At least, not that Shiro: not the person he’d been back when the worst thing he had to feel grief and anger over was a bad breakup. It had been literal years by the time he did finally set foot on Earth again for longer than twenty-four hours. The brief chaotic madness of his first escape from the Galra, discovering Blue, and diving through a wormhole with the others towards a life none of them could have predicted, hardly counted as a homecoming.
When he looked back on the boy who’d been twenty-two and in love and thought that made him a grown-up, Shiro wanted to laugh. Now he was twenty-five – though the reflection in his mirror could easily have belonged to a man ten or fifteen years older than that, and not just because of the hair – and his old self sometimes felt like a dream he’d once had. Everything about being on Earth was surreal. He walked through the Garrison HQ and half expected the familiar corners of the corridors to dissolve. He met people he’d been friends with – some of them old classmates he’d known for more than a decade – and though he managed to exclaim and joke with them, ignore their shock at how he looked and schedule coffee shop meetups and lunches and bar nights – we have to catch up! it’ll be just like the old days! – it all felt mildly insane.
How did you say to someone who’d been your casual gym buddy when you were a cadet: I was dead. I was actually dead. It wasn’t so bad, I guess?
He couldn’t even say it to Adam, and the look on Adam’s face when they met for coffee said that he could tell there was something and he was willing to listen. He looked – rueful. Sorry. Shiro could remember how hurt he’d been when they parted, but the actual feeling was just gone. Adam was only one more person he’d known before the war.
“I want to say,” Adam said when they’d finished their coffee and were both lingering awkwardly, more because they both felt they should than because there was any conversation left, “I really – I really regretted the way I behaved to you when things ended, back then.”
“It’s okay,” Shiro said.
Adam half-grinned at him. “You were always so nice,” he said. “I was an ass, come on. I was terrified for you, but still an ass.”
“We were pretty young,” Shiro said, not disagreeing but turning it aside.
Adam snorted. “As opposed to now,” he said, “when we’re twenty-five, which is practically the same as being dead. I already went to your funeral, Shiro. Stop trying to have another one in front of me. You can be angry with me, come on.”
“I’m not,” Shiro said. He realised he was smiling. For the first time since he’d arrived on Earth it felt natural. Adam had always been easy to talk to. “I’m really – it was a long time ago, Adam. Maybe longer for me. I’m over it.”
“Shame,” Adam said. “I figured if you were still angry, I might actually be in with a chance.”
Shiro raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
“Because then I could grovel and you could forgive me and it would be romantic,” Adam explained. “Don’t pretend you’re not a sucker for romance.”
“You expect me to believe you want a piece of this,” Shiro said, grinning.
Adam looked earnest. “Who wouldn’t? The silver fox war hero look is really working for you.”
“Adam,” Shiro protested, starting to laugh.
“I missed you,” Adam said. “I really did. Thanks for not being dead.”
“It was pretty close,” said Shiro. More honestly than he’d managed to anyone else, he admitted, “More than once.”
“I guessed,” Adam said seriously. But Shiro saw him decide to change the subject and so he wasn’t surprised when the next thing that came out of his mouth was, “So, I saw you guys on the news.”
“Oh?”
Adam smirked. “Little Keith sure grew up, didn’t he?”
Shiro wadded up his napkin and threw it at him.
“What! I’m just making an observation! An observation that anyone with eyes could make. Last time I saw that guy he was so skinny he could hide behind a lamp post, and now,” Adam sketched a shape in the air, “shoulders. What is he, nineteen?”
“Twenty-one,” said Shiro.
Adam paused. “Does math work differently in space?”
“It does if you spend two years riding a space whale through a rift in time.”
Adam blinked, opened his mouth, closed it again, and finally said, “Your lives got weird, huh.”
“So weird,” Shiro agreed fervently.
“Is he still in love with you?” Adam asked, and at Shiro’s pained expression added, “Yeah, I’m being nosy now. Deal with it.”
Shiro couldn’t help laughing. “I don’t know, are you still into the person you had a crush on when you were sixteen?”
“It was Professor Vingel and if he called me up tomorrow I probably wouldn’t say no. I see you avoiding the question there, Shiro. Shirogane. Takashi.”
“We’ve been through a lot together,” said Shiro, which he was uncomfortably aware also wasn’t an answer. He sighed. The answer was – “I don’t think so, Adam.”
“You don’t think so,” Adam repeated, eyebrows raised.
“He sees me as an older brother,” Shiro said. “I’m pretty sure.” He had good reason to be sure. He remembered – through a haze of horror and blazing purple light – the fight at the cloning facility. Keith had said it then, hadn’t he?
“Oh, wow,” Adam said with sympathy, “sorry, I did not mean to poke at a bruise. That is – wow – that is pretty unfortunate timing for you, isn’t it.”
Shiro groaned. “Tell me about it,” he said.
“You know, when I saw you come in I could tell you were sad, but I thought it was silver fox war hero trauma sad,” Adam said. “I didn’t realise it was the boy I like doesn’t like me sad.”
“It might be a bit of both,” said Shiro.
“How would you feel about getting out of here and going somewhere where we can get actual drinks?”
Shiro thought about it.
“Please,” he said.
Adam knew a bar that was new since Shiro had last been on Earth. They got drinks and drank them and talked about nothing and everything. Altogether it was the most normal Shiro had felt in a long time. When it got late Adam hugged Shiro for several long moments before he got into the hovercab. “Listen, you take care of yourself, okay? One funeral was bad enough.”
Shiro hugged him back. “I’ll try.”
Adam pounded him on the back. “And you should talk to Keith. Grown-up Keith with the shoulders. You won’t know unless you try. It’s got to be worth a shot – that kid worshipped you back in the day.”
“That was a long time ago,” Shiro mumbled into his shoulder.
“You have got to stop talking like you’re an old man, Shiro. The hair suits you, but the attitude doesn’t.” Adam patted him on the shoulder one last time. “Don’t be pathetic.”
“Thanks,” Shiro said. He managed to let go of Adam and only lost his balance a little.
“You were always useless tipsy,” said Adam fondly. “Get home safe. Message me when you’re there.”
“It was good to see you,” Shiro said.
“You too.”
Shiro’s hovercab dropped him at the Garrison and a lean figure detached itself from the shadows near the gate and turned into Keith, waiting for him. “You didn’t have to stay up,” Shiro said. He wasn’t that tipsy, thanks Adam, so he didn’t say shoulders. He was looking at them, though. Keith was broad in the shoulder and narrow in the waist, and he gave Shiro a little amused smile and then abruptly was under his arm on his good side, so Shiro’s arm was draped over his shoulders. Shiro listed into him a little. Maybe he’d had one drink too many. That would be a pretty good excuse.
“How was Adam?” Keith asked.
“Good, good. We got drinks after coffee.”
“I figured. Did you eat?”
“At the bar,” Shiro said vaguely. Keith smelled like himself – sweat, metal, the desert, and the ozone edge of something alien. It wasn’t fair, Shiro thought petulantly.
“Yeah, you’re going to bed,” Keith said.
“I’m not drunk,” Shiro told him. “Just tired.”
He let Keith carry on supporting him down the corridor and up the stairs to the paladin quarters, though. Keith didn’t mind, and even looked pretty amused when he finally dumped Shiro on his bed. “Need some water?”
“Probably a good idea,” said Shiro.
“I didn’t really expect you back,” Keith said, when he reappeared a couple of minutes later to hand over a glass of water. Shiro drank some. “Thought you might have gone home with Adam.”
“And you still waited up for me?” Shiro said, looking up at him.
Keith shrugged. “Just in case,” he said. “Well, good night.”
“Keith, wait.”
Keith turned. He had one hand resting on the doorframe. The stance pulled his t-shirt tight across his chest, and he clearly had no idea and wasn’t doing it on purpose. He didn’t look, now, at all like that nervous belligerent adolescent who’d squared his shoulders and told Shiro he loved him – half a decade ago, in Keith’s timeline. He stood there waiting well past the point where Shiro should have already said something; like however long it took Shiro to say what he needed to say, Keith wouldn’t stop waiting for him.
When the silence had already lasted far too long Shiro began, “Adam and I were talking,” which was probably the wrong way to begin. Keith just nodded. Shiro grimaced. “I mean – about the old days.”
“You were good together,” said Keith softly.
“I – no. That’s over. That’s been over for a long time, no, he just – made me remember some things,” Shiro said.
“Like what?”
“Do you remember how you used to be in love with me?” Shiro blurted.
Keith looked at him, and then his gaze dropped for a moment, eyelashes casting shadows across his cheeks, and then he smiled like Shiro had said something funny and said, “Used to?”
“Maybe you don’t,” Shiro said. “It was a long time ago, and you were pretty young, I just – remembered –”
“You were my age,” said Keith. “Or just about. You were pretty good at acting like that made you old and wise, though.”
Shiro made a face. “If I was patronising –”
“You weren’t,” said Keith. “You really weren’t.”
There was quiet. Shiro stared at Keith. He had no idea how to get this conversation from where it was to where he wanted it to be. He didn’t even know if the place he wanted it to be had ever been possible. Maybe the timing was just always going to be wrong for them. They’d been through multiple kinds of hell, together and alone. The knowledge of how different things were now seemed to have opened up between them like a chasm. Shiro, who was no longer even able to pretend he was tipsy, sat hopelessly on his bed and stared across it at Keith.
He’d forgotten Keith had never seen a cliff that scared him too much to take a leap.
“It’s not used to,” Keith said, lifting his gaze to Shiro’s. “If that’s what you’re wondering. It’s not. I never stopped.”
“Oh,” Shiro said.
“I’m still in love with you,” Keith said, as if it hadn’t been clear.
“I’m,” said Shiro, “in love with you. Too.”
Keith’s breath caught.
Shiro abruptly couldn’t stand waiting another moment. He was across the room in two steps and he put his hand on Keith’s face to tilt it up and managed to remember to say, “Tell me if it’s not okay,” and then he just kissed him, finally kissed him. He didn’t know when it was in the last year that he’d crossed the line from never having even considered this to wanting it desperately. Keith’s mouth opened under his and he made a small gasping sound and grabbed at Shiro with both hands.
Shiro managed to tear himself away from the kiss after a second and ask, “Is this okay.”
Keith made an infuriated sound and bit Shiro just below his ear. Shiro shivered and said, pleading, “Keith –”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Keith said. “It’s so okay, Shiro, you don’t even know, don’t stop.” He pulled Shiro’s mouth back down to his. He was an aggressive, sloppy kisser, inexperienced and demanding, and going for too much tongue too fast. Shiro, who hadn’t kissed anyone since before Kerberos, couldn’t get enough of it. He stroked Keith’s hair and the side of his face and slowed it down, gentling it, lingering over Keith’s lower lip. Keith let out a little whimper that was the best thing Shiro could remember hearing in ages and pressed his whole body in closer.
Shiro had half-forgotten how good it was to have someone you cared for warm and alive and eager in your arms. He’d once had moves, though. He got a thigh between Keith’s legs and held him against the door. Keith rolled his hips helplessly, once, twice, and then froze.
“Keith?” Shiro whispered. He didn’t want to get this wrong. He pulled away so he could get a look at Keith’s face.
Keith’s face was flushed and his mouth was red and he was gorgeous. “I, I,” he managed. “I’ve never. Shiro –”
Shiro was really shocked. “Never?”
“I was chasing conspiracy theories in the desert, and then I was fighting evil, and then I spent two years on a space whale with my mom,” Keith said. “And I was sort of hung up on someone the whole time.” He reached up and twined both arms around Shiro’s neck. “Please,” he mumbled.
Shiro bent and kissed him, because he couldn’t help it, and at the same time made a snap decision. “Not tonight.”
Keith growled. “You know how I said you weren’t patronising –”
“You can’t take it back.”
“Can’t I.”
“I want to do this right,” Shiro said. “Keith, I want to do everything right with you.”
Keith was looking at him, and looking, eyes dark and amazed. There was a pink flush on his cheeks and spreading past his ears and down his neck. He had to swallow twice before he could get out Shiro’s name. Staring, blushing, stuttering. Shiro knew exactly how he felt.
“Stay, though,” he said. “Please.”
Keith nodded, and then he grabbed Shiro’s face and kissed him too hard for a moment before he seemed to catch himself and slow it down. Shiro breathed out hard when Keith’s mouth lingered on his lower lip.
“Okay,” Keith said.
In the morning Shiro discovered he had a string of messages from Adam.
Did you get home safe?
please tell me you’re not drunkenly contemplating your space hero sorrows on a clifftop somewhere I can’t have a cliche for an ex I’ll never live it down
Shiro?
ok shiro this is not like you & the only good excuse is you went straight home and took your chance with grownup spacehero keith so I’m expecting to hear exactly that from you in the morning
still can’t believe your mullet duckling got cute
Shiro looked over at Keith, who’d stretched out into a sprawl that took up most of the bed but none of the covers once he was no longer wrapped around Shiro, the way he had been when Shiro opened his eyes. He sent Adam a message that said, good guess.
! came the reply a moment later, but Shiro ignored it and settled in to kiss Keith awake.