Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Keith didn’t have friends at the Garrison. He had enemies. He had admirers. And he had Takashi Shirogane.

James supposed most people were a little bit of the first two.

Keith burned just too brightly to overlook, like a meteor raging across the backdrop of a night sky. He was equally as ephemeral - incandescent for an instant, then streaking away to a place James couldn’t follow.

There had always been something a little otherworldly about Keith. James knew it when he’d first set eyes on the unruly mop of black hair and stiff shoulders in the formerly empty desk by the window of his fourth grade classroom. It had been sunny, which James only remembered because the light shining in through the dusty glass highlighted Keith’s hair with the faintest shade of indigo. He’d thought it was an impossible color and that he was impossibly pretty.

Later, when the bell rang, their teacher had introduced the boy as Keith Kogane - transfer student - and he’d stood silent and still in front of the class without meeting a single gaze. Keith had a split lip and his eyes were violet. James, at ten years old, wasn’t sure which of these two things were more strange.

It had never been in James’ nature to seek out friendships. Instead, people came to him. Maybe it was because he was good at sports, or good at school, or was fortunate enough to be predisposed with a face that was just good-looking. But the other students flocked to him for companionship, for a seat next to him at lunchtime, for another player on their kickball team. It was easy to make friends, because it was easy to attract people.

From the very beginning, Keith avoided him.

It wasn’t just him, of course. But to James it felt personal. To him, it was an intentional slight because of the simple fact that no one had ever not wanted to be around him. Keith’s self-imposed isolation was immediate, and an indirect insult to everything 10-year old James Griffin thought he was. Popular. Admirable. Somebody that everybody needed.

From the very beginning, Keith Kogane made it clear he didn’t need him.

In those first few weeks after Keith’s transfer, James resolved to ignore him for as long as he was ignored. Keith was the loner that refused to join his dodgeball team during recess and looked like he never brushed his hair properly. He was a sullen classmate that wore the same red jacket to school every day and sometimes didn’t bother to return to class after lunch. He was a dark presence in the back of the classroom with violet-colored eyes.

Sometimes, though, James would get up to sharpen his pencil when the tip was already triangle sharp because the sharpener was in the back of the classroom by Keith’s desk. Sometimes, he’d kick the soccer ball off into the sidelines as his teammates groaned their disapproval because it let him kick up a distracting cloud of dust next to the spot where Keith sat on the bleachers with an astronomy textbook. The other boy would cough, then glare at him through the settling dust. It was worth the taste of dirt on his tongue to have those eyes turned on him.

James remembered things about Keith - little things he was certain nobody else would ever notice, and it felt to him like a special secret between the two. The fact that Keith would always pick the red velvet cupcakes whenever his classmates brought in desserts to celebrate their birthday. The way Keith’s hands would shake every time a fire alarm went blaring through the building during their school’s monthly fire drill. The rare sound of Keith’s laugh when James caught him playing with a stray dog in the bushes next to the bus stop one afternoon. He stashed away these facts like a hoarder, collecting priceless trinkets that were useless to anyone but himself.

The first time he saw Keith fight, they were both eleven years old.

It was after school, and James had volunteered to take the classroom’s weekly recycling out because that was what teachers expected of James Griffin. The recycling bin was on the backside of the school building, where the sun only reached at the ungodly hours of 7 a.m., and it was covered in shadows. That was why James had heard Keith before he’d ever seen him.

“Let me go!”

Rage, vocalized in Keith’s raspy tone. It was so immediately obvious it was Keith, and James found himself rounding the corner of the school despite his growing apprehension.

“Get in Kogane, it’s where you belong.” There was a raucous bout of laughter and the sound of a struggle. Fabric rustled against fabric. Someone was breathing hard.

As James’ eyes adjusted to the shadows, he could make out three larger figures clustered around a familiar head of tousled black hair. James couldn’t name them, but he recognized the older boys surrounding Keith from a grade above them at school. One of them held Keith’s arms behind his back in what looked to be a painfully tight grip while another tried to grab his legs to lift him into the dumpster along behind the school building. Keith was twisting in the vise grip of the older boy, his eyes blown wide and teeth bared.

Despite his ferocity, he was clearly outmatched, and not only from the simple mathematics of a three-to-one matchup. Keith was short, even amongst the boys in their own grade, and next to a trio of sixth-graders on the cusp of puberty he looked wispy enough that a bony elbow could topple him to the pavement. That didn’t stop him from struggling.

It wouldn’t have been Keith if he didn’t.

James was ashamed to admit he only entertained the idea of jumping into the fight for a moment. It may have been the heroic option, but it was also a bad one, for more than one reason. The obvious dilemma was his utter lack of practical experience in a fist fight. The other problem was, well, he was James Griffin. His dad was lawyer and his mom sat at the head of the PTA. And that meant he absolutely did not get into schoolyard fights on a Wednesday afternoon out of misplaced loyalty to a classmate that didn’t even like him.

Instead, James did what any sensible student would do. He turned to run and find a teacher, a security guard, anyone larger than five feet tall.

James had almost rounded the corner when the crunch of bone against bone and a splitting shriek had him whipping around to survey the scene he’d turned his back on.

Somehow, Keith had managed to slip out of his captors’ hold and forced the larger boy onto the ground. He was grinding the boy’s ankle into the asphalt with one well-worn sneaker as his friends looked on in horror. From this angle, James couldn’t see Keith’s expression. But whatever was there was enough to send one of the boys running off in the opposite direction while the other made a sudden valiant attempt to tackle him to the ground.

James spun back around and ran a little faster.

By the time he’d returned with Mr. Shepard, a third grade teacher that was decidedly taller than five feet, the boy was still sobbing into the asphalt while Keith now tussled with his friend on the ground. There was blood dripping out of Keith’s nose as Mr. Shepard pulled him off the other boy, painting his red jacket redder. When Keith turned his gaze to James, standing at the corner of the building with his forgotten box of recycling, he felt like he was staring down at a feral cat.

There were still the vestiges of whatever frantic energy had sent the third boy running that lingering on the edges of Keith’s face, and the sight of it made James breathless. Then, Keith seemed to curl into himself - retracting his fists and allowing the teacher to tug him away. When he swiped his nose with the back of his hand, it came away rusty.

Keith had a black eye after that fight that didn’t fade for two weeks, purple blending into purple. Comparatively, the sixth graders had fared much worse. One of them needed stitches down his forehead and had broken a thumb in an amateurish punch. The other, an ankle, which he claimed was the result of tripping during the fight. James remembered his scream, and the way Keith’s foot had forced bone against pavement with inhuman force.

He hadn’t tripped.

Certain aspects of Keith started to make sense after that - the nicks in his skin, the frequent bruises, the way he glared at everyone like they would turn on him at any given moment. James didn’t know whether he acted out of pure aggression, or defensiveness. He seemed to uphold a uniquely-Keith variety of defense that stipulated he hurt others before they had a chance to ever hurt him.

James supposed it could have made sense to someone that wasn’t him.

Word about the fight circulated around the school, and for the first time his classmates seemed to treat Keith with something close to sympathy. Teachers gave him a pass to the nurse when he showed up to class late, rather than a tardy slip. Everyone saw a fifth grader, bullied and bruised, with skinny wrists. And maybe that was Keith.

But.

But they hadn’t seen him railing fist over fist onto soft flesh. They hadn’t heard the snap of bone on cold asphalt. James knew better. It was his first lesson in the kind of things Keith Kogane kept hidden, and it wouldn’t be his last.

James learned Keith’s first real secret on the day he presented as an omega.

They were in seventh grade, which meant it hadn’t been long since Keith turned thirteen. He’d come to class late, which in itself wasn’t rare, but had had been breathing heavily like he’d sprinted across campus to get there. Perspiration had plastered his overlong bangs to his forehead. James, more distracted by the odd layer of sweetness to his scent then his frantic state, had assumed it was because he ran to class in an attempt to get in before the first bell. Nevermind that Keith had proven time and again he had no qualms skipping full class periods, let alone the first few minutes of homeroom.

Admittedly, James was distracted. Even his logic failed him at the worst of times.

He wasn’t the only one on edge from Keith’s uncharacteristically dishevelled appearance. More than once, he caught his fellow classmates shifting slightly in their seats during class to glance back at the smaller boy. It wasn’t until his teacher asked, midway through class, “Keith, are you alright?” that James finally allowed himself to turn around.

Keith was slumped over his desk, head on his hands and eyes clenched shut.

“I’m fine.” The words were mumbled into his sleeve, barely decipherable and wholly unbelievable.

The girl in the seat next to him raised her hand delicately. “I think,” she coughed, face faintly pink. “I think he’s going into heat. That’s what it smells like, anyways.”

It took James an absurdly long time to process the statement, to connect the dots into any semblance of a recognizable picture. Keith. His smell. The sweat on his brow. Heat.

Keith is an omega.

Keith’s head shot up as he turned to glare at her, looking thoroughly betrayed. She cowered back into her seat. The entire class was staring at them now, James included.

“Holy shit,” he heard, someone whisper, and the sentiment echoed around the classroom like a ritualistic chant.

“Keith’s an omega. Omega. An omega. Keith.”

“Keith, grab your things and head to nurse’s office. You’re excused,” their teacher said gently. She was a beta, but from the looks of her graying hair James expected she’d seen a number of untimely presentations in her career as a teacher. In any case, she didn’t seem alarmed by a pre-heat omega in her classroom in the least.

Keith, however, shook his head weakly and remained in his seat, as if denying the fact that he was presenting somehow made it less real.

“Keith,” she said warningly, and he let out a slight whimper at the rebuttal. It was such an uncharacteristically Keith sound it took James a long moment to even understand it had come from the other boy.

While it seemed to take a great deal of effort, Keith finally stood, and just as quickly collapsed against his desk when his knees gave out beneath him.

“I don’t think I can walk,” he whispered. In response, one of the classrooms’ alphas jumped to his feet with an eagerness that made James’ skin crawl.

“I’ll take him there,” the alpha began, and James could only breathe a sigh of relief when their teacher quickly shot him down.

“Absolutely not,” she said firmly. Her gaze flickered across the room and James knew the exact moment their eyes made contact he was, to be only slightly hyperbolic, doomed. “James! Please make sure that Keith gets to the nurse’s office safely.”

Of course he didn’t say no. He was James Griffin.

That was how he ended up with one of Keith’s wiry arms slung across his shoulder as he supported the other boy with a hand around his waist. James had never had so much contact with Keith before and it left him feeling uneasy somehow, like the storm he’d watched from afar was suddenly here at his doorstep and he realized he’d never had a plan for it reaching him at all in the first place. James was close enough to make out the individual droplets of sweat along Keith’s forehead. He could count each of his overly long eyelashes.

“I don’t,” Keith mumbled, and James shifted to support more his weight. The movement sent a fresh rush of sickeningly sweet scent into his lungs. “Don’t want…”

“Want what?” James asked tersely. “My help? Sorry, but I didn’t volunteer for this either.”

“Don’t want,” Keith continued breathlessly. “To be an omega. Don’t want it.”

“Sorry.” This time, when James said it, it wasn’t sarcastic. He couldn’t think of anything else to say after that.

Keith couldn’t either, or else was too distracted to, because he spent the rest of the trip to the nurse’s office breathing heavily into the fabric of James’ shirt.

When they arrived, the school nurse was quick to take Keith off James’ hands and lay him out against the thin mattress of the only bed in the cramped office space. Keith wriggled against the sheets, dark brows screwed together in frustration or else some other kind of uneasy emotion.

“Keith, honey?” the nurse prompted, her tone a practiced kind of soothing. “I know this feels scary but, it’s normal. Let’s contact your parents, and they can pick you up and get you sorted with a proper omega doctor.” The nurse smoothed Keith’s bangs back from his forehead gently.

Keith, however, bolted upright at the sound of her words, his head shaking frantically. With a guarded glance towards James he leaned forward to whisper something into her ear.

Whatever it was made her expression fall. “Honey, we have to tell someone,” she said and the sheer panic that transformed Keith’s face had James shifting awkwardly as he hovered by the door.

The nurse startled, as if having forgotten he was still standing there.

“You can go back to class now James, thank you,” she said with a painfully forced smile. “Keith is in good hands.”

“Ah, okay.” James shifted again nervously, uncertain whether to leave Keith with some parting remark of sympathy or not. No one had ever taught him how to comfort a newly presented, pre-heat omega that everyone had assumed was going to be an alpha. “I, uh, hope he feels better.”

Keith didn’t look at him, just continued his rapid breathes in and out from his nose as the nurse at his bedside looked on sadly.

Secrets in seventh grade didn’t stay secrets for long, and Keith’s unlikely presentation remained the topic of a lunchtime conversations for three days - a near record.

“I still can’t believe Keith is an omega,” came the grating voice of one of his classmates down the table, grabbing James’ attention with the sound of certain five-letter name. “With that attitude? I swear he pick a fight with a trash can if it would punch back.”

The group laughed as James pushed his fork listlessly across his tray. He supposed it was shocking, given the way Keith faced everyone and everything headlong like a kind of quintessential alpha stereotype. Why, then, did he feel overwhelming relief in place of astonishment. Something about the idea of Keith as an omega felt right, down to his bones. It felt like the other boy maybe wasn’t quite as untouchable as he made himself out to be. And maybe there was some part of him that needed people, and companionship, and by default, James.

In James’ 13-year-old mind, he thought maybe a Keith that was an omega might need someone else to look out for him.

Keith was absent from school for the rest of the week, and the following Monday. When he returned on Tuesday, he was wearing his typical red jacket zipped all the way up to his neck, looking like he wanted to do nothing more than disappear into the fabric like a fire-engine red invisibility cloak. As he strode past James’ desk, the change in his scent hit him like a wall burning fall leaves and fragrant cinnamon. Despite still not having presented himself, James had to force down the urge to swivel in his seat to face the boy who sat hunched in the back of the room with his arms crossed tightly in front of him.

His classmates were much less subtle, especially the alphas in the room. Eyes were trained on his slight figure and James could have swore he heard someone sniff the air. It didn’t take long for someone to approach Keith, despite the very clear scent of a distressed omega that was permeating the classroom.

The altercation came in the form of David, who had presented as an alpha over the summer and had spent the first two months of school reminding everyone of the fact as often as possible. He swaggered back to Keith’s desk, leaning casually onto the edge of it like the boy in front of him didn’t look like he’d rather jump out the window than acknowledge his presence. Keith was breathing into one red sweater-paw of his jacket, unsubtly leaning as far as possible from the other boy. Even James wanted to gag at the amount of alpha pheromones David was pumping into the air.

“So, Keith.” David leered down at him. “An omega, huh?”

Keith looked exceedingly ill. “Brilliant deduction. You figure that one out by yourself?”

“Your scent helped a little,” David said, bulldozing over all signs of “not interested” the other boy was sending his way. The alpha reached out to play with one dark strand of Keith’s hair and the smaller boy flinched backward, looking positively panicked.

James was on his feet before his brain could formulate a plan any more concrete than Stop this. He ignored the curious gazes of the classmates as the normal morning chatter died down to a hum around them.

“David,” James said, trying to keep the necessary friendliness in his tone. “Class is about to start. You should sit down.”

There was a tense moment of silence as the alpha stood, clearly weighing his options. Only the creaking of the classroom door as their teacher walked in prompted him to step away from Keith and back to his desk, though his movements were slow and he slouched into his seat with a certain amount of belligerence. James settled down into his own chair, releasing a shaky breath as he did so.

When James allowed himself to glance back at Keith as their teacher began roll call, he was startled to see his uncanny violet eyes already fixed on him. Keith’s lips were parted just slightly, as if he were about to mouth something across the room, before his brows pulled together and his jaw snapped shut. Keith jerked his gaze away to fixate on some point out the window, his posture clearly defensive.

And maybe, a little relieved.

It took five minutes for James’ pulse to settle down to a normal speed.

In retrospect, if James thought Keith’s presentation as an omega was dramatic, he was woefully unprepared for his own as an alpha.

He remembered waking up in a bad mood. It was unlike him, as James was one of the rare humans whose natural body rhythms coincided with the hours of sunrise and sunset. But on this day, he’d woken up feeling like he hadn’t slept more than a few minutes while simultaneously thrumming with an energy that made his skin itch.

When his mother had set down his plate in front of him at breakfast, he’d snapped at her for the simple reason that he could. She might have surveyed him carefully across the table with a knowing smile. If she did, James didn’t know, because he was too busy aggressively stabbing the scrambled eggs on his plate.

That morning, he ran to school rather than take his typical leisurely walk. It did little to burn off the jitters in his muscles, his limbs, his fingers. Everything around him seemed to be sharper - colors more vibrant, sounds more distinct, scents more potent.

When Keith walked by him to get to his desk during first period, James snapped his pencil in half.

He spent the rest of class breathing through his mouth.

Third period gym class was the beginning of the end. Locker rooms were a recipe for disaster in any case, and locker rooms full of thirteen year old boys were prime grounds for a Grade A catastrophe.

James had been aggressively toweling off his hair, somehow far from exhausted despite the way he’d pushed himself through each mundane exercise in a vain attempt to burn off his restless energy. The mix of sweat and deodorant and pheromones was especially cloying today in the musty space, and James nearly choked on it.

He was pulled from his angry stupor by the noise of an escalating argument. It sounded like Keith, and he sounded angry. But then, he always did.

James tried to ignore it, and whatever disagreement was happening at the other end of the locker room, but once his attention had been brought to Keith, it was pointless to do anything but succumb to it. He glanced over at the omega.

“Give it back.”

Keith was standing stiffly by his own locker, arms crossed tightly over his bare chest. There was a fading bruise on his shoulder blade. He was so skinny James could make out the ribs pressing against the skin of his chest on every deep exhale. For once, the smaller boy seemed to be trying to reign in his temper.

James, on the other hand, felt his own rage swell as he realized what the boy standing across from Keith had fisted in his hand. Keith’s shirt, familiar and rumpled and no bigger than a tennis ball in the larger boy’s fists.

He waved it at Keith tauntingly. “What, this?”

James slammed his locker shut.

“Stop fucking around.”

James didn’t remember the path to his own locker to Keith’s. His vision was red and shaky, and he had the terrifying feeling that if he would unclench his fists, he’d send their classmate flying back into the bank of lockers behind them. The thought of it was so satisfying James almost did.

Instead, he stepped closer to the boy, who looked pathetically cowed at his sudden appearance. Something in James was deeply satisfied with the sight.

“Give him the shirt back,” James commanded. The boy’s hand shot out immediately, an offer of peace, as he shoved the shirt into James’ chest.

“Did I ask for it?” he asked scathingly, then tossed the shirt to Keith who was staring at him, wide-eyed and red-faced. Up close, his smell was even stronger, and sweet enough to mask the stench of adolescent boys that hadn’t learned to shower more than once a week.

“Don’t touch him again,” James said finally, then kicked the other boy’s locker shut before he stormed out of the locker room. In his peripheral vision he saw his classmates collectively startle behind him at the violent clang.

The door hadn’t managed to fully swing shut before a short figure was scrambling out of the room behind him.

“Wait!”

James paused, turning to face the person, and ignoring the way his pulse pounded as he recognized the voice. Keith stepped towards him, allowing the door to close behind them with a soft click.

He looked dishevelled, clothes hastily thrown back on. The fabric did little to hide the imprint of his bare chest that was burned onto James’ mind.

For a moment, it seemed like there was a thank you hanging on the omega’s lips. His scent was softer than normal, more pliable, and James felt himself leaning towards him unconsciously to breathe it in.

But Keith only shifted from foot to foot awkwardly, avoiding his eyes. “You didn’t have to do that. I could have handled it myself.”

James stared at him, feeling oddly insulted. “Then handle it next time. You know, before he’s ripped your clothes off,” he snapped.

He wanted to fight. Maybe not Keith, but someone, and Keith was the only living body around in this hallway.

“You-!” Keith started, then let out a shuddering breath in a frustration. “This is so stupid.”

I was protecting you! James wanted to shout. Just let me look out for you!

“Fine!” he snapped instead. “If it bothers you so fucking much to have someone be nice to you for once next time I won’t-”

“Look,” the omega interrupted. Keith’s face was red, and embarrassment was such a foreign expression on his features it took James a long moment to even recognize the flush wasn’t from anger. “I wasn’t going to say anything because I know you probably don’t want to hear this from me, but I think… I think you’re, uh…”

His words trailed off into a mumble, and he still wouldn’t meet James’ gaze. It should have bothered him. But timidness on Keith was unexpectedly endearing and James felt himself soften at the sight. He had to resist the sudden urge to tuck an errant strand of black hair behind Keith’s ear.

“What?” His fingers twitched. Somehow, the longer he stood next to Keith, the more antsy he felt. He wanted to fill his space, to brush his fingertips along the line of his jaw, to skim his nose along the dip of his collarbone.

What?

“You’re going…” Keith bit his lip, and James eyes tracked the motion with laserlike precision. Then the shorter boy was moving forward, rising slightly onto his tiptoes to reach up to James’ ear. “I think you’re going into rut,” he whispered. The words were rushed and his breath danced along the back of James’ neck. All he could smell was campfires and spice.

Keith pulled back hastily, awkwardly stepping backwards without looking at him. “Anyways, I didn’t think you realized so I thought someone should tell you before it, uh, escalates. Gets worse. Yeah.” His hands sunk into his pockets. “You should probably go home or something.”

James felt like he was listening to him from the end of a long tunnel, or perhaps, underwater. He could make out syllables and words and sounds but couldn’t fixate any further than Keith, in front of him, smelling like an omega and treating him with the most fragile kind of kindness he’d ever known.

He reached out, the world around him blurry with an almost dreamlike quality, and brushed his fingers along the length of Keith’s bangs, allowing the strands to run between his fingertips. It was exactly as soft as it looked.

He realized faintly the Keith had frozen, and was staring at him with an expression of pure shock, violet eyes blown wide. But despite his bewilderment, James couldn’t smell any fear or revulsion in the omega’s scent. Only the curious blend of surprise and a reluctant kind of satisfaction.

“It’s okay,” James reassured him, and Keith either trusted him or didn’t trust himself to fight back, because he let James gently push the hair lying against his neck to the side. It seemed as if Keith titled his head then, to allow for easier access, and James took the invitation to step closer. He had to lean down to do it, but his nose brushed the column of Keith’s neck just lightly enough that he felt him shiver beneath him.

James’ hands came up to grip Keith’s arms on his biceps, which were narrow and wiry beneath his hands. This was the closest he’d ever been to Keith, the closest he’d allowed himself, or been allowed, and the realization was intoxicating. The smell of him was intoxicating, and his nose brushed against the skin of Keith’s neck with renewed fervor at the thought.

At first, he didn’t notice the humming beneath his touch. It started faint, barely a vibration beneath his ministrations, but grew in intensity until James couldn’t help but acknowledge it. Something inside of him reacted with visceral pleasure at the sound, even before he recognized it for what it was.

Keith was purring.

In his daze, he’d walked Keith back up against the wall of the hallway. The omega stood with his head resting limp against the wall, eyes-half lidded and hazy. His chest was rumbling with the soft sound of purring, a quality so characteristically omega James had never actually heard it firsthand.

I’m scent-marking Keith, and he’s purring. He’s purring, and I’m pretty sure I want to kiss him breathless against this wall. I want to kiss him, and bite him and… And. And I think I’m going into rut. I’m an alpha, and I’m going into rut.

Holy shit, I’m an alpha.

James pulled away from Keith in horror, staggering backwards frantically until his back hit the opposite side of the hallway. Without hands to support him, Keith slumped slightly against the wall, looking faintly stricken as he was pulled from his stupor.

“I’m so sorry,” James breathed, and even he didn’t know how much he was apologizing for. Keith was staring at him now, face even redder than his jacket and James felt equal parts shame and terror mirrored on his own expression.

Distress filled his nostrils, some combination of anger and hurt James couldn’t make sense of layered in Keith’s scent.

But he only gave a terse, “You should go home, Griffin,” before turning and walking so quickly down the hallway it was nearly a run.

James let his head drop back against the painted cement of the wall behind him as the itch returned to his skin with Keith’s fading scent.

“Yeah. I should,” he admitted to the empty hallway.

He did.

When James came back to school a week later, it was to congratulatory slaps on the back from the other alphas in the class and a chorus of “I knew it” from most everyone else.

Keith, he was keen to note, said nothing.

Days turned to weeks, weeks to months. And that nothing stretched between them, longer and longer, like their altercation in the hallway had never happened. James almost started to believe he’d imagined it all along. But then he would feel the presence of dark eyes on the back of his head, or catch Keith staring at him from across the cafeteria only to look away quickly when their eyes met, and he knew he hadn’t.

What happened between had irreparably shattered whatever vague kind of relationship they had with each other. What was once tolerance, became avoidance.

By eighth grade, James had resolved to cease caring about Keith Kogane.

His world was simpler without him and his constant presence at the back of the classroom to worry about. James met Keith’s sharp words with sharper ones, and when he stopped getting even those, he answered with silence. It was hard to be distant with someone who existed almost everywhere, whose scent seemed infinitely more potent than anyone else a given room, but James was trying. If nothing got James off faster during his ruts than the conjured image of a dark head between his legs, so be it. If he occasionally woke at night with the imprint of violet eyes on his consciousness, well, no one was perfect.

The process had to be gradual, like an addict weaning themselves slowly off a drug. It was painful, and at times seemed impossible, but he could do it.

He had almost convinced himself it was beginning to work, when there came the problem of Takashi Shirogane.

He would call Shirogane the catalyst of it all, the misplaced protagonist of a story that wasn’t his own. Or maybe it was, and it was only James who had mistakenly thought this was a story about him and Keith.

The Garrison officer came to their school at the closing of eighth grade, just a few weeks before the hallowed months of summer vacation would begin. He came with a recruitment pitch that had every student listening attentively, eager to test their luck in the portable flight simulator. Everyone but Keith, who James knew remained sullen in his typical window seat only because he’d chanced a glance back at the other boy during Shirogane’s speech.

Keith looked bored. He seemed apathetic. Which was why it felt like a horrible sort of cosmic joke when he sat behind the gears of the simulator and effectively made each of the students’ scores before him look like crash tests next to his mission to Mars.

It was humiliating.

It was Keith.

And just as quickly as he finished the simulation he was darting away, hopping onto the back of Shirogane’s speeder and disappearing into the afternoon light.

If Takashi Shirogane had been anyone else, the story of James and Keith would have ended here. James and Keith: rivals, or almost friends, or just a pair of two opposites caught in a reluctant dance of polar attraction. James would have went one way - the Garrison - and Keith another. Their paths wouldn’t have, shouldn’t have, crossed again.

But Takashi Shirogane was Takashi Shirogane, and if there was one solid truth in this world it was that Shirogane would fight for Keith, even amongst all his wrongdoings. James didn’t know it then, but he would learn it fast. And the knowledge would fester inside him.

The fierce, unadulterated joy in Shirogane’s eyes as he watched Keith tear away on his Garrison-issue vehicle was all the evidence James needed. The recruiter hadn’t been looking for top of the class, natural talent. He’d been looking for Keith, and his uncanny ability for everything involving speed and finesse and flight. For all his pleasantries, Shirogane had treated none of the students with anything more than a polite level of interest during their assessments. In the face of Keith’s brilliance, he was entranced. James knew it when he saw it on the other man’s face because he’d lived it every day for the last five years.

In an unsurprising turn of events, James and Keith were the only two students in their school to receive the much coveted acceptance letters into the Galaxy Garrison. Keith’s letter, James supposed, may have come as a surprise to everyone who watched him drive away on the Garrison recruiter’s vehicle. But then, everyone else had not seen Shirogane’s eyes. Or if they had, they had not known what they promised.

But James did. And he resented Keith for it.

James resented that Keith was accepted into Garrison, because it was an open admittance that the safety of rules and order and discipline could be entirely overlooked for something as unpredictable as Keith’s inexplicable, extraordinary talent for flying. James never liked being second place, but being second place to Keith was an even greater insult because there was no amount of practice that could ever justify the ease with which Keith handled the simulator controls.

Forget natural talent. Keith’s talent was of the unnatural variety, and it left him gawking and angry alongside the other students every time he was unfortunate enough to witness it.

Shirogane’s sickening amount of doting only made things worse. It was Shirogane’s favoritism that gave Keith a free pass after every illegal speeder joyride. It was Shirogane’s legacy that made it so impressive when Keith broke the first of his records. And it was Shirogane’s acceptance of Keith’s lies that forced James into the uncomfortable position of keeping the first of Keith’s secrets: his status as an omega.

Omega were not barred from applying to the Garrison. Keith had been accepted as one, after all. But they comprised a disproportionately small percentage of students, and were thus prone to be victims of harassment inherent in being such a small demographic of an aggressively alpha population. True, the omega and beta dorms were housed in a separate wing, but that didn’t make them any smaller targets for wolf whistles across the cafeteria and the occasional unwanted touch.

James didn’t blame Keith for wanting to hide his secondary gender under a layer of heat suppressants and scent-blockers. His lack of scent made him convincingly beta, even if his attitude didn’t, and with James as the only person from his past with any clue about his true nature he could start fresh amongst the other cadets.

The problem then, was the James was the only person from his past with knowledge of his omega status and that put him in the dangerous position of hiding a secret for a boy who hated him as much as James could hate him back.

It should have made him feel powerful, having the ability to send Keith’s carefully constructed beta image tumbling to the ground. Instead, he felt guilty. Uncomfortable. And, worst of all, protective. Defensive over this frustrating boy that wanted to push every boundary he came across without any regards to his own safety.

Shirogane, of course, supported Keith’s decision. He was too good, that man, too kind and too understanding. And he’d willingly supplied Keith with the necessary supplies to suppress his heats, and forge his identity on every scrap of non-confidential Garrison paperwork.

In a rare fit of belligerence, or maybe courage, James had once asked him why.

The officer had smiled, and despite himself James had felt proud to have that fond expression turned on him. Then Shirogane had spoken and the feeling was gone.

“This is his choice, Griffin.”

It may have been Keith’s choice, but its effects would weigh heavy on the bright yellow epaulets of James’ Garrison uniform for years to come.

And so Keith’s status as an omega became James’ own secret. It was the first one he’d unwittingly learned about the other boy.

It was far from the last.

Chapter Text

James could only make out the stark white of Shirogane’s hair from his position at the podium, even the faint glow of his prosthetic arm dulled by the distance between them. His voice echoed across the crowd of onlookers, the steady rhythm of it clear though his features were not.

Below him, the masses of people in attendance roared their approval, mood celebratory amongst the mix of humans and Coalition members alike.

All of it felt surreal. The noise, the tears, the gaunt faces of prisoners transformed by the miraculous feeling of relief as they finally reunited with their loved ones. Victory was in the air. James felt it.

But he didn’t feel it.

James sought out Shirogane after his speech. His MFE uniform, though not as conspicuous as the Voltron paladin armor, let him cut his way through the crowd with relative ease. He ducked beneath the flimsy barrier of tape that was more of a warning than any real divider between civilians and Garrison officials as he approached the platform where the captain of the Atlas had just finished speaking.

Shirogane’s height made him easy to spot, aided in part by the white forelock of hair that still didn’t manage to age him nearly as much as the shadows beneath his eyes did.

The captain was smiling as Griffin drew closer, though not at him. His human hand rested lightly on the shoulder of the Coalition member he was speaking to in a casual gesture of camaraderie. The pose was a familiar one, as was the tactile way Shirogane had always seemed to reassure those around him.

James stood by quietly, close enough to make his presence known but far enough that he wasn’t interrupting. When Shirogane caught his eye, James watched him say a polite goodbye to his companion before making his way towards him.

“Captain,” James greeted the older man respectfully. Even now, years later, he couldn’t shake the last vestiges of hero worship he’d held for the the officer. Back when he was a Garrison cadet, not an MFE pilot, and the world seemed to divide down the easy line of good and evil.

James knew brutality now, in the name of good. He’d seen selfless sacrifice for the advancement of evil.

It was hard to call anyone a hero now.

“Good to see you, Griffin,” Shirogane replied. “Though I assume you’re here for more than a courtesy call.”

James gave a wry smile. “Iverson wanted me to let you know you’re due for a briefing at thirteen hundred hours,” he admitted.

“It never ends, does it?” Shirogane said with a soft laugh. It was a dry sound, more of an exhale than any real proof of amusement. James could only agree.

“I can fill you in on some of the progress our engineers have been making with the Atlas in the meantime,” James offered. The ship was a miracle of science - maybe something more - and a group of technical professionals had been analyzing it down to the last rivet to better understand the baffling integration of Altean and human technology.

Every meeting James was forced to sit through about their findings left him increasingly grateful he was a pilot, and exceedingly tired of hearing engineers use four-syllable-words to argue about whether the Atlas should be considered an autonomous or telerobotic system.

As if that was that was humanity’s biggest concern right now.

“Actually, can we walk and talk?” Shirogane asked, not unkindly. “I’d like to check up on the paladins first. I haven’t had a chance to stop by the medical wing since the battle.”

He said it like James had every right to turn down the request, like there existed some universe where someone could say “No” to Takashi Shirogane, could even want to. That was just his draw - the quiet authority in his strange combination of gentle smile and eyes the color of cold steel. He couldn’t even chalk it up to the tangy scent of alpha that clung to him that made people want to bend to his will. It was just… Shirogane.

Not that James was particularly adverse to the idea of a visit to the medical wing, which he had pointedly been avoiding since the battle’s end. Though it wasn’t the hospital itself he’d been so determined to stay away from. Just a particular patient.

“Of course,” he said, ignoring the way his pulse throbbed with the implication of their detour.

The last he’d seen of the paladins - of Keith - had been strewn in the wreckage of their crash back to Earth’s surface. In the chaos, James’ gaze had gone instantly, uselessly, to the behemoth that was the Black Lion. Its jaws had opened to release the pilot inside, leaving a yawning hole where James waited for a familiar figure in red-and-white armor to emerge. But Keith didn’t appear from the smoking interior. He wouldn’t until he was pulled from the wreckage limp as a rag doll and paler than a porcelain one.

Blood had matted Keith’s dark hair even darker against his forehead and James forgot which direction oxygen moved to his lungs on an inhale. In that moment, James had thought with frightening certainty that Keith had died on impact. He’d shattered with the force of bone and brains against solid ground, tumbled from the sky that had always seemed a more natural home to him than any plot of earth.

But James discarded the thought of it just as fast. Because the idea of world without Keith moving in and out of his life, transient as a desert storm and just as hard to catch, was absurd. And maybe it was selfish, and maybe it was a childish ideal to cling to, but when he caught the subtle rise and fall of Keith’s chest beneath his armor he felt his own breath move again.

It wasn’t until he’d felt the soft tug of a hand gripping his elbow, pulling him backwards, that he realized he begun moving forward towards the crash site unconsciously.

He glanced down at the large hand resting on the fabric of his uniform with a detached kind of interest.

“Let the paramedics handle it,” Ryan told him, his tone placating. When James glanced up to his friend and fellow pilot, there was a knowing glint in his eyes. Kinkade was a quiet, calming presence but had the perpetual appearance of someone with something to say. In the years that forged their friendship, James came to realize Ryan Kinkade knew things - secrets, inconsequential events, the occasional rendezvous on the Garrison rooftop - simply because he watched people. He surveyed them with contemplative kind of patience, like an art critic in a gallery with a single painting.

James, with his breath still rattling in his chest and the scent of Keith’s blood cloying in the back of his throat, was on full display. His frame was crooked.

“Right.”

And so James hadn’t allowed himself to step any closer to the twisted metal that was the Black Lion. He hadn’t allowed himself to visit Keith’s hospital room either. Instead, he threw himself back into his role as leader of the MFE pilots with as much fervor as would let him forget about the unconscious figure strewn across the hospital bed of a room whose number he resolved not to look up.

And here it was offered to him by Shirogane like a cruel gift, an easy out.

All of James’ self control had been for naught, because he started right back at square one: doing his damndest to convince himself he didn’t care about Keith Kogane and stumbling right back into his life regardless.

“Are they awake?” James asked as the two men set off towards the medical wing.

“With any luck. As far as I know, Keith and Pidge were the only ones still unconscious by the time we pulled them out of their lions. They were expected to make a full recovery soon.”

The East Wing of the hospital was teeming with life when they arrived: halls crowded with nurses, metal carts being wheeled around mothers with children on either arm, doors sitting propped open to reveal their patients surrounded by flowers and Mylar balloons. Despite the frenzied rush of activity, there was a sense of optimism in the air - the kind of bravado that came fresh off a winning fight.

The two men stopped at every Paladins’ room, each one filled with family members and noise and the perfume of flowers to the extent that James felt a headache creeping up from the sheer energy of it all. As they finally shut the door on the chaos that was Lance McClain’s room, the niggling thought that had been circling James’ mind was voiced, though not by him.

“Where’s Keith?” Shirogane muttered, the question obviously rhetorical and disappointingly unanswered. They walked the length of the hall again, on the off-chance of having missed his name plate during their first circuit. But the name “Keith Kogane” remained notably absent.

“Maybe he was already released?” James suggested, the skepticism in his voice evident even to him. He’d seen the extent of Keith’s injuries, albeit from afar. If any of the paladins were to be hospitalized for the for the long run, it was going to be him.

“I don’t think so.” There was worry in Shirogane’s voice now, an anxiousness that only seemed to appear in the context of Keith.

I don’t either, James admitted. They continued their walk in silence.

When they happened across a nurse in the next hall over, the two men stopped.

“Excuse me,” Shirogane began, unfailingly polite even in the midst of a Keith Kogane-colored crisis. “Do you know where Keith is staying?”

The nurse’s gaze flickered uncertainly. “Who?”

“Keith Kogane. The Black Paladin of Voltron,” Shirogane prodded.

Recognition lit her eyes, followed by a shutter of wariness. “He’s being housed with the other injured Galra in the West Wing.”

What?

“Why?” James asked instead, the question coming almost unwillingly. “What do you mean with the Galra?”

He felt sluggish, like his thoughts were running backwards even as his mind was racing ahead.

“It’s just standard safety protocol. Precautions,” the nurse told him, seeming relieved to turn her attention away from Shirogane, whose posture had gone ram-rod straight. His human hand was fisted against his side. In the brief flash of alarm that had crossed the captain’s face after the nurse's explanation, there was only roiling anger.

“You’ve quarantined him.” James hadn’t known Shirogane was even capable of sounding frigid. “He’s injured, he was dying, and you’ve locked him away.”

The nurse sputtered at the accusation, but it was weak in the face of six and half feet of fury and taut muscle.

“This is sick,” Shirogane announced, and then he was turning and striding away with enough purpose in his step James didn’t need to guess where he was going.

James didn’t have to follow. Shirogane likely wouldn’t have noticed either way, agitated as he was. But he did, and he told himself it wasn’t because of the lingering sound of Keith’s name and the stark memory of blood against grey skin and black hair.

Shirogane’s long strides made their journey short, with only the briefest interlude to tersely ask for Keith’s room number at the front desk. The West Wing of the hospital was noticeably quieter - the hallways nearly vacant and the windows on each room shuttered closed. In the aftermath of a battle and the slow dispersal of labor camps, it seemed to James that he should have seen more people, more patients. But the only person they passed was a male nurse who gave a respectful nod to Shirogane and himself before hurrying down the hall wordlessly.

Something about the heavy silence put James on edge, like the building was holding its breath. It smelled like antiseptic and stainless steel, the stench strong enough that James could almost choke on it. He was no stranger to harsh fluorescent lightning and the frightening sterileness of government-facility labs. But something about this place felt different, darker.

It wasn’t right, keeping Keith here.

“This is it,” Shirogane said suddenly, stopping short in front of a door almost at the very end of the hall. It was the first thing he’d said to James since leaving the East Wing. And yet the words didn’t quite sound if they were meant for him.

James turned his attention to the door, unobtrusive as any other along the hall save the “K. Kogane” printed in block letters on the screen outside it. Beneath Keith’s name, in smaller red letters and flashing like a warning sign, read the phrase Phylum Alienum.

Shirogane didn’t hesitate to open the door, which slid apart under his touch with the faint wail of antiquated engineering. The brush of air at the motion felt like like an exhale against his skin, the building finally releasing its bated breath.

James smelled him before he saw him. But that was only because he’d been breathing the scent of cleaning chemicals and the acrid tang of Shiro’s anxiety like noxious fumes for the last half hour and Keith had always been… oxygen.

It was painfully familiar - the scent of burning cedarwood and that undertone of cinnamon, his characteristic omega sweetness. The smell was muted somewhat, dulled by the painkillers running through Keith’s bloodstream and his state of unconsciousness, which was obvious in the way he lay prone on the hospital bed before them.

James let out a single, shaky breath. Some part of him must have had doubted Keith was really alive, truly safe, after the events of the battle. He grudgingly recognized the thrumming of warmth in his chest as a cautious kind of relief.

Keith looked small against the bed sheets, nearly disappearing into their bulk and their austere whiteness. But then again James had never known anyone to look anything but ragdoll weak while lying on a hospital bed, conscious or not. The thick dressing of bandages that plastered Keith’s bangs against his forehead somehow made things worse, so much worse, and the unnatural calm behind Keith’s shuttered eyelids was contrary to all his characteristic flame and feral speed.

Shirogane let out a soft, vulnerable sound that had James flinching, pulled out of his own thoughts through the honest misery in the captain’s exhale. It was almost a reprieve to look away from Keith’s unconscious figure. But his eyes, rather than follow Shirogane’s movements forward, rested on the suddenly conspicuous presence of two enormous Galra soldiers across the room.

James tensed immediately - three years of learning to fight fur and claws and hungry yellow eyes had ingrained the reaction into him. Neither Galra leaped to attack, however. The shorter of the two, her figure distinctly feminine under the layers of fitted armor, sat motionless in the only chair in the room. It was pulled up next to Keith’s bedside and her hand, James was alarmed to see, was loosely holding one of Keith’s own. The contrast of her violet skin against the paleness of Keith’s human one should have been strange.

Somehow, it wasn’t.

The other Galra stood in the corner of the room, furthest from James’ position by the door and yet still managing to loom with his alarming height. A long braid wound down the length of his skull, which nearly brushed the ceiling of the room. He appeared more like a statue than a living being.

It was still an adjustment, being allied with Galra after years of fighting them and seeing Earth and its people transformed by their thoughtless greed. Strange, and stranger still to see two of them here at Keith’s sickbed when the rest of the paladins had been surrounded by their families.

James knew about Keith’s family, or the lack thereof. He knew they couldn’t be here, and the thought upset him more than it had any right to.

Who else would have come? He realized with a horrible kind of dread. Besides Shirogane? With the paladins hospitalized, who else would be here for him?

James self-imposed exile suddenly felt selfish, in the worst way imaginable.

“Krolia, Kolivan,” Shirogane greeted both of the Galra in turn, the edge of breathlessness in his voice doing nothing to hide the emotion there. “How is he?”

“The same.” It was the female on that spoke, her voice a dull monotone.

Krolia, James’ brain supplied helpfully. He tried to estimate across the room if their height difference actually exceeded more than twelve inches.

“The other paladins are all awake now,” Shirogane announced, something pointed behind the words. “They’re being housed in the East Wing. Everyone is in good spirits.”

It was good news, the kind of news meant to met with smiles and relieved sighs, but his words sank into the tiled floors unanswered. The only response was Keith’s own rattling breaths and the rhythmic beeping of hospital machinery.

“There is much reason to celebrate,” Krolia said finally. From the heavy silence that descended onto the room following the statement, James wouldn’t have known it.

The next minute stretched painfully long as James weighed the option of leaving, feeling increasingly like an outsider in this baffling exchange. Except seeing Keith had only skimmed the surface of his anxiousness. The alpha in him snarled at the idea of walking back out of the door to leave Keith unconscious and vulnerable and at the mercy of two aliens of a formerly hostile species and another alpha.

They were stupid, pheromones were.

He stayed.

“So he hasn’t…” Shirogane trailed off. “He hasn’t woken up yet? Not once?”

“Your primitive medicines are perhaps not the most effective means to treat his unique biology,” the taller, masculine figure said gruffly.

James’ head was starting to feel murky again, like he was lying in Keith’s place wrapped in bandages instead. What biology? Omega biology? Male omegas were a rare breed, true, but not different enough to require special treatment for a concussion. James had the intense feeling of forcing puzzle pieces together in a shape that barely fit, and would leave him with a picture of gaps and holes by the end of the conversation.

The alien’s - no, Kolivan’s - words had been nearly accusatory, but Shirogane sounded only tired when he responded.

“He survived seventeen years on this planet with that primitive medicine. I just hope they’re doing everything they can for him right now. He shouldn’t have been-”

The captain stopped abruptly, and James didn’t miss the way his eyes flickered towards him in the pause. James had seen a number of different expressions on Shirogane’s face in the time he’d known him. The wariness, the hesitation, evident there as the officer surveyed him was unfamiliar.

“He was,” Shirogane’s voice tightened, “in a bad way when we found him. At least he’s in stable condition now.” The steady blip of Keith’s heart rate monitor confirmed his words in the stillness that followed.

The longer the sound droned on, the more it faded to an indistinct buzzing that made the passing of time difficult to grasp. Was it a minute, or minutes before the silence of the room was broken by James’ own voice?

“Captain, we should head to the briefing soon,” James intoned, his first words since their arrival. It was only after he’d spoken that he realized he hadn’t really wanted to say anything at all. The quiet of the room had felt almost reverent - four pilgrims gazing upon the object of their tenuous connection to each other: Keith’s bones. And James wasn’t even sure he had a right to do that.

I’ve known him the longest, he thought defensively. Or maybe, desperately. The thought came with an undue amount of fear, a frantic need to belong to Keith as much as his past belonged to James. Shirogane may have been his mentor, his brother, but James was his history. James knew him back when Keith’s only visible scars were his perpetually scraped knees, courtesy of too many schoolyard squabbles and the occasional downhill bicycle race.

In any case, James belonged here beneath frigid blasts of air-conditioning, breathing the scent of antiseptic and autumnal spice. Or at least, he belonged here more than the Galra looming beside Keith’s bed like a pair of guardian Sphinx.

The pair of Galra he still hadn’t introduced himself to. Was that inconsiderate, in their culture? James wondered. Ignoring someone seemed like a fairly universal gesture of rudeness.

“I’m James Griffin,” he offered cautiously. He drew the line at extending his arm for a handshake, though he couldn’t help but glance back to where Krolia’s fingers still grasped Keith’s own smaller digits. “Leader of the MFE pilots.”

“A friend of Keith’s?” the female Galra asked. Her voice was so flat, it almost didn’t sound like a question.

Friend was a complicated word, when it came to Keith.

“We grew up together,” James said finally. It was the truth. It was also a gross understatement of any part of their relationship.

Krolia seemed to hear the significance in what he said, or what he didn’t, because her eyes narrowed. There was something vaguely Keith-like in the intensity of her gaze. But James had a tendency to look for traces of the other boy where others might see none, and shook off the errant thought quickly.

“I wish we could stay longer,” Shirogane said apologetically to the two Galra, as if the were somehow going to be slighted by their absence. Realistically, the only person who had any right to be bothered by it at all wasn’t conscious enough to be offended. “I’ll be back soon to check up on him.”

“He would want that,” Krolia said, and James once again startled at how intimate her words sounded. She wasn’t just saying it to appease Shirogane. Somehow, this Galra knew the captain’s presence meant more to Keith than a simple visit from a commanding officer.

James turned to look back only once as the two men said their goodbyes and headed out the door of Keith’s hospital room. Both Galra had turned their attention back to his sleeping figure, and the silence that fell between them felt heavy.

Why? James wanted to ask them. Why do you care?

Why did he?

By all accounts, James should have been the next Takashi Shirogane. In his first year at the Garrison, he was convinced of it.

To him it was evident in their mutual skill in the simulator, or comfortable position at the top of all of their classes, or their reputation as the pride of all of their professors. True, between Shirogane’s Japanese heritage and James’ own ancestry, there was little physical resemblance between the two. But both had the same kind of clean-cut, superhero good looks that only straight white teeth and the boyish suggestion of a strong jawline could imbue.

There was nothing clean or even about Keith Kogane - not the wild tousle of his impossibly black hair or the raw rasp of his voice or the delicate point of his chin. He was all angles and movement, jagged like the blade he liked to think he’d smuggled into the Garrison when James knew the only reason it hadn’t been confiscated was because Shirogane had been there to look the other way.

Keith walked with his body taut, tense like he was explode into action at any moment. He walked like the nearest bystander might turn and fight him in an instant. His confidence was brittle. What most people might have seen as cockiness, James knew was defensiveness - a warning as much as it was a tendency to lash out.

If James thought witnessing the pure physicality of Keith Kogane in a fight was something to behold, he was woefully unprepared to be on the receiving end of it.

It was, admittedly, his fault. He had been angry at Keith for not following orders, or at least that’s how he justified it later. If he was honest, he would admit he’d been simmering for weeks in the dawning realization that he would never come close to touching Keith’s scores, let alone accomplish it with the same lackadaisical attitude the omega had.

“I can outfly anyone in this building.”

James knew it. They all did. And he hated it. At the time, he thought he’d hated Keith. But it was only the idea of it, the easy confidence and the easier manner in which he breezed through every route on the simulator.

In a rare fit of a impulsiveness, he lashed out. James did, with words of course, because the last thing he’d ever planned to do was brawl with Keith in front of his instructors over something as petty as a bad grade on a group exercise.

He should have expected the punch that came swinging into the left side of his jaw. The impact was jarring, enough to send him to tumbling to the ground before the pain could even register. That blow, or maybe his reciprocating violence, also sent him to a conference room where he was suitably chastised by a pair of disappointed commanding officers after the fight.

It was his first offense, so he was given a warning and restrictions on off-campus privileges for a month. He nodded along wordlessly when Iverson announced it.

James could see Shirogane talking to Keith on the other side of the conference room window. The gentleness on the older man’s expression, the nauseating fondness, brought back all of his thinly suppressed anger from the fight. He tasted blood on his lip where Keith’s fist had split the skin.

“Cadet Griffin,” the officer said warningly, more than likely in response to the sudden swell of aggression in his scent.

He ducked his head, chin tucked further into his chest. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. James Griffin - the A+ student, the teacher’s favorite, the star cadet - being disciplined in his first semester at the Galaxy Garrison for his involvement in a schoolyard brawl.

“Sorry, sir.”

Shirogane entered the room soon after, and with a few whispered words to the other officers James was suddenly left alone with the other man.

Twisting his fingers in his lap, James refused to look up. It was somehow worse facing Shirogane, and not only because the other officer had gone to Keith first. Every fiber of his being wanted to be the other alpha, and follow in his footsteps, and uphold his Garrison legacy, and also maybe punch him.

“James,” Shirogane said, and even the way he said his name was kind. James still wanted to punch him. “I’d like to talk to you about something, if you’d listen.”

How could I not? he wanted to ask.

“Yes, sir,” he said instead.

The older man pulled out the folding chair across from James and made himself comfortable in the seat, elbows resting casually on the table like he was about to play good cop.

“It’s about Keith,” Shirogane continued, as if he’d expected James to resist.

Of course it is, James sneered.

“What about him?”

Shirogane sighed.

“I’m only telling you this because I doubt Keith will ever bring it up himself,” Shirogane said tiredly. He rubbed his face with his hand, frustration clear in the lines of his mouth. Despite himself, James felt his interest tweaked. “Keith has never mentioned his parents to you, has he?”

He listened.

James went looking for Keith at the campus gym first, the only place he knew the other cadet frequented regularly besides the mess hall. When he couldn’t make out his head of black hair amongst the sweaty masses of muscle scattered around the weight machines he searched for him in the only other place he knew to - his dorm.

In retrospect, it should have been his first choice. But Keith was never the type of sulk in his room when he could have been out wearing himself to exhaustion while railing on a punching bag or breaking the rules off campus. So it came as a slight surprise when he did find Keith in his dorm, although it appeared he was in the midst of preparing to do the latter.

When he knocked on the door, Keith’s roommate answered, a skittish beta that was just hanging on to the bottom ranks of fighter class. The boy took one look at James before scurrying out of the room, eyes wide and clutching his backpack to his chest. That left James standing in the doorway, suddenly alone with a Keith Kogane who was aggressively lacing up a pair of tattered sneakers from his seat on the bottom bunk of the bed. A ring of keys rested beside him on the mattress, evidence of what James could only assume was about to be a very illegal, very underage speeder ride.

“What do you want?” Keith asked flatly, not even bothering to glance up from his feet. James didn’t know how to feel about the other cadet so immediately recognizing his scent.

Silence hung in the dorm room for a moment before James stepped further into the room, allowing the door to close automatically behind him.

“I didn’t know.”

Keith tightened the laces of his right shoe with an savage twist. “Know what?”

“About your parents. I shouldn't have brought them up. I just didn’t...” James swallowed, words suddenly difficult. “You never said anything.”

“What was there to say? My dad’s dead and my mom didn’t stick around long enough to leave a single memory? Yeah, I’m not looking for that particular brand of pity.” He finally looked up at James then, and in place of the anger James expected in his gaze he saw only pain. “Especially from you.”

“How about compassion? Human decency?” Absurdly, it was James that was angry now, the ringing question of Why not me? Why can’t it be me? running through his head. “Look - I know we don’t get along but do you really believe I would have said-” James choked. “Said something like that if I knew you were-”

“Stop acting like you care!” Keith interrupted suddenly. “You never cared! You just like that you have one more thing you can hold over me!” He jumped to his feet, fire and fury and fists pulled tight at his sides.

I’ve always cared. I care too much, James thought.

“You think I like knowing all your secrets?” he demanded instead. ‘“Guess what? I don’t! I wish I didn’t! I’m so sick of being tangled up with you!”

Keith flinched backwards. The air was heavy with the scent of animosity and aggression and hurt and he couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from. Then, to James’ absolute horror, Keith slowly titled his head just slightly enough to reveal the pale column of his neck. It was a uniquely omega gesture - meant to appease, rather than show submission like revealing the back of the neck was. James face went violently red at the realization. He staggered away from the other boy until his back hit the door behind him.

Keith’s normally sharp gaze had gone hazy, somewhere between confused and consoling and the alpha in James couldn’t help but be placated by the sight, as much as he hated himself for it.

“I don’t. I don’t care,” he whispered to the boy he cared more about in that moment than he ever had before.

James bolted from the room, only the faintest whimper from Keith following him out the door.

And so he came into the unhappy inheritance of Keith’s second secret: he was an orphan. This, too, fit neatly into the narrative of Keith’s existence like a puzzle piece James had misplaced and was only now uncovering years later to complete the picture of him.

He remembered the woman who would show up to Keith’s parent-teacher conferences with a frizzy blonde bob and spectacles on chain - looking further from Keith’s sharp-edged beauty than Jupiter from the sun. Was she a foster parent, or a social worker? The owner of his orphanage? James hadn’t thought twice about it when he’d seen the two together in years past.

He did now.

What had Keith’s parents looked like, he wondered, to bring someone like their son into the world? Did he look more like his father, or his mother? Which parent had given him his impossible violet eyes? Who had he inherited his temper from? Questions rattled around his brain, and rattled him in a way no one else ever seemed to do.

James thought, then, that the puzzle hadn’t been completed. He’d only finished the border of it - the vague framework of Keith had been established with all of his other pieces in a jumbled pile on the side.

It wasn’t James place to finish that task. He could let Keith’s mysteries remain mysteries, let Shirogane sort through the pile with patience and the nurturing mind to piece together the other boy. James didn’t care to do it himself.

He didn’t.

Care.

Did he?

James and Shirogane had almost reached the conference room for the briefing when his self-control slipped.

“Who were those Galra?”

“Hm?” Shirogane hummed, visibly distracted. “Oh, Krolia and Kolivan? They’re Coalition agents and former Blades of Marmora.” The words were gibberish to James, and he had a feeling Shirogane knew it. “They’ve been active insurgents against the Galra empire for decades now.”

The James of a few years earlier would have let it go, unwilling to question the older, much more experienced pilot.

“What’s their relationship with Keith, then?”

Shirogane stopped, pulling up just short of the conference room door. James stumbled a little to avoid colliding with the other man in the abruptness of it.

“That,” the captain said finally, after a considering look down the scarred bridge of his nose, “is a question for Keith, I think.”

James flushed, feeling oddly chastised.

“What? Another one of his secrets?”

Are you going to make me keep this one too? he wanted to ask scathingly.

Not even the years that had tempered his fierce devotion to rules and the chain of command would make him push that boundary.

“It’s not a secret, per se,” Shirogane said. His gray eyes were unreadable, the bags beneath them even darker under the harsh fluorescent lighting. “But it's also not my place to tell.”

James wasn’t the only one who changed. He had to remind himself of this as he followed Shirogane through the doorway.

His prosthetic arm lit the way like a beacon.

Chapter Text

Keith startled awake.

It wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation. Keith’s body rarely allowed him the luxury of gradual - he slept like he fought, like he ate, like he breathed. Fast, and only because his survival depended on it.

Also unsurprisingly, it was a nightmare that jolted him awake this time.

The last vestiges of the dream were already disappearing by the time his eyes flew open. He could only remember the overbearing pressure of Black’s panic and the startling feeling of weightlessness. Pain, too. But from the way his head screamed in protest as he sat up that part felt a little too real to have been only imagined.

His hand went reflexively to reach behind his pillow to feel for his Marmoran blade. As his fingers scrabbled desperately for purchase on a knife that wasn’t there, he felt his arm tugged in the other direction by the tubes running from the inside of his elbow up to the pouch of an intravenous drip.

Hospital, he recognized slowly. I’m in a hospital.

The thought wasn’t nearly as comforting as it should have been. He felt trapped, caged in this tiny room with these tubes and wires and the heavy press of bandages constricting him with every movement.

He ripped the IV from his arm - panic buzzing in his head, his throat, his limbs - and the machine buzzed in tandem as it protested the action.

Was this how Shiro had felt waking up bolted to a lab table in the middle of the Arizona desert? But Keith had been there to free him, to pull him out from those bonds. Shiro wasn’t here now, and the realization hit him like a blow to the chest.

No one was here.

Not Shiro, not Krolia, not Kolivan or any of the other Paladins. Not even Iverson, or some nameless Garrison nurse to scold him about the mess he’d made of his IV. Was it selfish, in the aftermath of a battle he was only slowly starting to recall, to feel so hopelessly alone in an empty hospital room?

Were the other Paladins even alive?

Keith wanted to go back to sleep then, convinced whatever nightmare he’d woken up from couldn’t be worse than the echo chamber of silence he faced now.

Then the door opened.

And James Griffin walked through.

At first, he thought it was Lance, because his skin was tan and his hair was brown and he was tall and lanky and long-limbed. But Keith quickly realized his eyes were gray, not blue, and his shoulders were broader. His hair, longer.

Lance, also, never did anything quietly. But Griffin slipped into his hospital room nearly soundlessly - almost as if he was a thief rather than a visitor. The door he shut with a careful click, his body language as close to surreptitious as Keith had ever seen it. He had data-pad in one hand and a disposable cup of Styrofoam in on hand, steam and the acrid smell of instant coffee rising from its rim.

If there was one person Keith hadn’t expected to be the first face he saw when he woke up, it was James Griffin.

Griffin seemed to look everywhere in the room but Keith, as if assuming his steady-state unconsciousness. The other pilot’s eyes grazed the window, the corners of the room, the chair by Keith’s bed, before finally stopping on him. There was a moment of stillness as their eyes locked, and then Griffin’s blew wide with shock. Their shade of gray was only barely lighter than Shiro’s own slate-colored ones.

The MFE pilot stood frozen he stared at Keith, the dawning realization on his face quickly chased away by an expression Keith could only call panic. When neither of them made a move to speak, Griffin cleared his throat pointedly. Keith watched him school his features into something more controlled, a familiar kind of tension in the unfamiliar line of his chiseled jaw.

“You’re awake.”

Some biting remark was on Keith’s tongue. An “Obviously,” or just a simple “Why are you here?” But Keith realized there was only one question he actually wanted answered.

“Are the other Paladins alive?”

Griffin stepped closer to him, pulling back the chair from his bedside and taking a seat with exaggerated casualness. His posture was stiff.

“They’re fine. You were the last to wake up, actually. Everyone else is set to be discharged from the hospital today.”

Keith allowed himself to lean back against his pillows, relief making his limbs weak. When he spoke again, it was with his eyes closed.

“So we did it then? We freed Earth? We won?”

“Yeah.” Griffin’s voice was soft, and Keith wanted to curl under its assurance like a warm blanket. “We won.”

“And Shiro?” Keith asked, eyes still shut. “How is Shiro?”

Griffin gave a short exhale through his nose, that sound nearly derisive. “He’s fine. Busy, but then that’s no surprise.” There was a long pause. “He came to visit you, if that’s what your asking.”

It hadn’t been, but Keith was selfishly comforted by the news nonetheless.

He opened his eyes and let his gaze rest on the other pilot, only to realize he was already staring back. Griffin glanced away quickly when their eyes locked, taking a hurried sip of his coffee and grimacing immediately at the taste.

“How long has it been since the battle?”

Griffin’s brow was still creased when he answered. “Three days.”

You’ve been asleep for three days, remained unspoken, but Keith heard it just as clearly as if Griffin had said it aloud.

Did I dream for three days? Keith wondered. He must have, for all the mind-numbing exhaustion that still weighed on him. If his body was motionless for those seventy-two hours, perhaps his mind had been running on overdrive instead.

“It’s been hectic,” Griffin continued. His arms were crossed, the pose almost defensive, and Keith had the distinct feeling he was speaking more to fill the silence than out of any real desire to share information with him. “The labor camps are still being emptied, and we’ve begun restoration on some of the excavation areas. Thankfully the Coalition members having been doing the most to make the process go as painlessly as possible.”

He spoke like a leader. Like a soldier. Where was the gangly teenager Keith had left behind the walls of the Garrison compound? Or, the boy in button-up shirts who answered questions from the front row with an eagerly raised hand? He’d disappeared somewhere behind the man that sat before Keith now.

Keith remembered when Griffin used to be James. He remembered a time before the Garrison in a window seat of a tiny classroom, surrounded by faces that were all blurry in his mind now except one. Just one, for the simple fact that James Griffin had appeared next to him at the Garrison like some kind of apparition in an orange uniform. The creases of his sleeves had been sharp enough they might have withstood his Luxite blade.

Keith’s own uniform had been wrinkled within the first ten minutes of his first day. He hadn’t owned an iron. He didn’t know what he’d do with one if he did. The two boys couldn’t have been more different. But their shared history made them something to each other, an uneasy something that used to have Keith bristling in James’ vicinity like an attack was imminent.

His defensiveness was only exacerbated by the fact that, for most of Keith’s time at the Garrison, James was the only other student who knew he was an omega. It gave Keith the distinctive feeling of being at the other boy’s mercy, despite the fact that Griffin had never revealed even the slightest hint of Keith’s true dynamic. It made Keith grateful and frustrated and maybe a little wary because that seemed like something dangerously close to kindness.

If there was one thing Keith had learned while growing up it was that kindness was an illusion that bred attachments. And those attachments would ultimately only cause him pain when Keith was eventually left behind.

And so James became the more impersonal Griffin, in an effort to remove that vulnerability and create some false sense of distance. It didn’t make James any less James, nor did it make Keith any less omega. But it let him pretend he’d regained some semblance of control over that aspect of his life.

In the seat Griffin had taken next to Keith’s bedside, the MFE pilot shifted restlessly, posture still rigid. The movement caused the faintest brush of air to sweep towards Keith, and with it, Griffin’s scent. It was as he’d always remembered, only stronger and even more distracting, which is to say it wasn’t at all like he’d remembered. Griffin smelled like glacier silt and forest moss and it made Keith’s skin itch with how unpleasantly pleasant it was.

Keith wasn’t sure what about the other pilot always seemed to leave him so interminably shaken. Maybe it was the fact that, in all the years of Keith’s life being pushed away and in turn pushing others away, Griffin felt as close to a constant as anything could be. He was familiar, and that in itself was an unfamiliar situation.

He gave the other boy a considering look, one long enough that the part of his brain not muddled by medication reminded him he’d probably surpassed the typical extent of normal human interaction. Keith couldn’t be bothered to listen to it. A thought had just occurred to him.

He’d known James longer than Krolia. His own mother. This boy, who no longer looked like a boy, was as close to the longest tenuous relationship Keith had ever held and he didn’t even think it counted as a friendship.

It was a jarring wake up call, for more reasons than one.

“Where there any Galra here earlier?” Keith asked suddenly, cutting off whatever Griffin had started rambling about to counteract the awkwardness of his scrutiny. “A female one, named Krolia?”

Griffin paused, startled. “Y-yeah, actually. She was here this morning. Yesterday too, and the day before when I came to visit with Shirogane. There was one other Galra, Koli-something?”

“Kolivan,” Keith corrected automatically. He felt the tight knot of anxiety within him ease slightly. They were safe, well enough to come see him at least. And, they had come to see him.

That left only one question unanswered.

“How did you know she was here?” Keith asked.

Griffin froze, looking every bit like an overgrown deer in the headlights of Keith’s suspicions. “We... ran into each other a few times.”

“Here?”

Griffin nodded.

“In the hospital?”

Another nod, more reluctant.

“You were visiting my room.” This time, he didn’t phrase it as a question.

He could visibly see Griffin weighing the options of lying out of sheer stubbornness, or confirming his presence, like some kind of admittance of guilt.

Griffin had always been more moral than stubborn, so the sullen “I did,” came as a little surprise to Keith. The comfort he felt at the assurance, however, did.

“Why?” It came out weaker, smaller in Keith’s voice than he’d intended.

Griffin’s gaze shifted to the window, a stilted silence falling over the room as Keith waited for a response. He could see some internal debate in the tense muscle along the edge of Griffin’s jawline and he had the sudden urge to brush his finger against it.

“You’re the leader of the Voltron,” the other pilot said finally. “We needed you awake and clear-headed for negotiations. I was tasked with keeping HQ updated on your condition.”

“Oh.” Somehow that explanation, sensible as it was, gave Keith an irrational sense of disappointment. “Right.”

There was an awkward pause, and Keith wracked his brain to fill it. He’d never been good at this, the conversational niceties of human beings. Maybe it was the Galra in him, or maybe it was just him and his deficiency in human interaction. But it was so much easier to exist in a functioning unit of practicum and discipline like the Blades than carefully navigate the complexities of friendship.

Keith grasped at that idea, reminded once again of Krolia and Kolivan’s glaring absence. “You said my-” He faltered. “You said Krolia was here earlier? Do you know when she would be back?”

“I’m not sure. They were just called away for a meeting with Garrison leadership,” Griffin explained. “All of the Galra were. The, uh, good ones. I guess.”

Keith didn’t like the sound of that, any more than he liked the idea of his mother and Kolivan forced from his room to sit through a pony show of Garrison politics.

All of the Galra, Griffin had said. All of the able-bodied Galra, Keith corrected as he gingerly felt for the bandages around his forehead.

Griffin noticed the motion, and the corner of his mouth pulled down in a frown.

“You shouldn’t mess with that. Seems like you hit your head pretty hard in the crash.” Griffin glanced around at the mess Keith had made of his IV drips, as if only just realizing it was there. “And what did you do to your IV? How is it that you’ve been awake for five minutes and you’ve already started to actively sabotage your own recovery?”

Keith stared at him. “Are you… fussing?”

The other pilot flushed an angry red. “You nearly died, Kogane,” he snapped. “Maybe I’m just trying to stop you from picking at that until your brains bleed out.”

“I appreciate the concern,” Keith muttered, then gingerly swung his legs over the side of his bed. Griffin made another angry sound of protest at the motion. Keith ignored him.

The movement hadn’t hurt nearly as much as he expected, which was more than likely due to an exorbitant amount of painkillers in his system. But he was optimistic at the assessment nonetheless.

“How are the Lions?” he asked. If his body was in this condition, he couldn’t imagine what Black looked like, after taking the brunt of the impact. Pidge and Hunk were going to be busy with repairs, he predicted.

Griffin was still scowling, and had edged almost imperceptibly closer like he was preparing to force Keith back down against the bed with his good intentions. Keith didn’t want to dwell on that image.

“About as bad as you’d expect,” Griffin finally said. “Not so bad that they won’t be flying again soon.” He paused. “Probably. I’m not really an expert in semi-sentient robot lions.”

“No one is,” Keith replied, then made the reckless attempt to stand on shaky legs. They collapsed beneath him immediately, weak as they were from disuse. But the impact of his fall to the floor never came. Instead, he felt one firm arm catch him around his waist as his face pressed into the stiff fabric of Griffin’s uniform. He was suddenly enveloped in the alpha’s woodsy, glacier water scent.

“Easy,” Griffin warned, but his tone was painfully soft. Keith wanted to hate it, but he found his body responding to it in a manner that was exactly opposite of that. His fingers itched to wind into the sleeves of Griffin’s jacket, to grip his arms and pull himself closer.

It wasn’t fair, for James Griffin to come to him in a moment of weakness. In a moment of solitude, when he hadn’t wanted to be alone. A stronger Keith would have already pushed him away.

Keith was strong.

He steadied himself, then drew away from Griffin with only the slightest wobble in his knees. The other pilot let his hands drop to his sides awkwardly, and Keith felt the chill of the air-conditioner sweep away any of the remaining warmth of his touch. He shivered at the loss.

“Keith-” Griffin began hesitantly.

A nurse burst through the door of his room, causing Griffin to whirl around to face the intrusion as his scent went sharp with alarm. The nurse was flanked by two Garrison officers, a man and a woman both looking severe in their gray uniforms and matching lack of expression.

“Kogane,” he woman greeted him shortly. “Can you walk?

“What are you doing?”

Before Keith could answer, Griffin had moved between Keith and the two officers, his stance wide and distinctly defensive. Keith wondered how much of it was conscious on the other pilot’s part. Moreover, he wondered why the sight of it made him ease backwards slightly, despite the growing levels of animosity that was permeating the room.

“He’s clearly unwell. Can’t this wait?” Griffin asked.

“I’m afraid it can’t,” she replied tonelessly. “And I advise you to stand down, Griffin. You may be the head of the MFEs but these orders come from higher up than your possy of fighter pilots.”

Keith saw Griffin tense, the bitter scent of his anger in the air. He wasn’t sure what was more surprising: the fact that Griffin didn’t immediately stand down at the blatant use of rank or the fact that when he did, it was with an almost apologetic look towards Keith. A subtle shift in his eyes as he stepped away from his bedside, a downwards tilt to his mouth.

Keith was reminded of the night he attempted to slip out of the Garrison compounds with Hunk, on a reckless mission to rescue the Yellow Paladin’s parents. It had felt important then, giving Hunk back the family Keith knew exactly how much it hurt to miss. It still felt important now, even with the assurance of Earth’s liberation from Galra occupation.

But the mission had been one that was risky, almost thoughtless in the danger it placed them in. And it was most definitely against all orders from the Garrison leadership to not leave the compound. That was why when he had seen Griffin, backlit against the vacant darkness of the hanger with the headlights of his vehicle turning the tips of his hair gold, Keith had misunderstood.

Griffin’s pose had been casual, confident. All of their history told him it was the stance of a man who was gloating, proud for having caught Keith and any friend of Keith’s in the breach of protocol.

But Keith had been wrong. Griffin had been there to help, not to halt, and Keith suddenly felt like he was stuck in the uneasy place of not being able to predict the actions of a boy he thought was as predictable as the rising of the sun.

Time had changed Keith. He was still trying to understand if he’d lost or gained the two years he’d spent with his mother in the quantum abyss. But it was the Galra that had changed Earth, in their own interminable way, and James Griffin had not been spared.

The pilot in question stepped aside, and the two officers were immediately moving towards him. Keith’s second attempt at walking was only marginally more successful than the first, and he managed one hesitant step forwards before a wave of dizziness made his knees buckle. He caught himself, but Griffin was already reaching out again, hands seeking and steadying.

Keith tried to brush him off, but his attempts were as feeble as his willpower.

“Don’t be stubborn,” Griffin snapped. “You were nearly dead three days ago.”

Keith stopped his admittedly weak protests, more out of the uncomfortable knowledge that both officers were watching them with a pair of inscrutable gazes than any concern for his own wellbeing. He gave them a stiff nod.

“Let’s go then,” he said with a firmness he didn’t feel. They wordlessly exited the room, leaving Keith and Griffin no choice but to follow in their wake.

Griffin kept one hand around Keith’s waist on the walk to the meeting room, using the other to hoist Keith’s arm across his shoulder like he’d helped support Shiro in battle countless times.

Griffin didn’t feel like Shiro. Though nearly as tall, he wasn’t quite as broad - more lean where Shiro was muscular. The realization was enough to distract Keith from the sense of trepidation growing in his stomach as the four of them made a path through the Garrison compound.

They drew to a halt in front of a sealed door, the controls on the outside glowing a nearly Altean blue. Griffin made a move to open it, but was stopped by the clipped tones of the female officer.

“That will be all, Griffin. This meeting is authorized for Garrison executive leadership and our Galran allies only.”

Which one am I? Keith wondered.

Keith’s pulse was pounding in his head as he pulled away from the grounding warmth of Griffin’s support. The same kind of pre-battle adrenaline that shot his veins through with liquid fire was crackingly in him now, and he felt stronger for it.

He always did, when gearing for a fight. Only the pure physicality of the actual fight, the sensation of muscles pushed to their limits, of lungs gasping for air, could ever surpass the feeling.

Griffin made a move to reach for him, hands rising then falling just as quickly when he saw Keith steady on his feet.

“Keith,” Griffin began. At least, it sounded like a beginning, the precursor to some greater sentiment. But no further words followed and Keith was left staring at the other man with the sound of his own name hanging in the air like a warning.

“Thanks for the help,” he said finally.

Griffin opened his mouth to speak, but his words were effectively silenced by the clipped tones of the female officer.

“You’re dismissed, Griffin.”

The male officer pressed a button along the door’s control panel, and Keith was ushered forward without another word. Griffin was still standing there as Keith watched the door slide shut between them.

In the closing gap, Keith could make out the faint scent of river moss before the door made its impermeable seal.

Keith heard the news about the Kerberos mission’s failure at exactly the same time as the rest of the Garrison cadets. It was a Thursday morning, at seven hundred hours, in an assembly hall that was only ever used for award ceremonies and important announcements.

The suddenness of this assembly let everyone know this was a case of the latter.

Keith was at the front of the crowd of students, seated in a neat line alongside the other cadets in the fighter class. Griffin was next to him, for the simple fact that “K” follows “G” in the English alphabet. He could make out Griffin’s frown out of the corner of his eye, aimed at the Keith’s own vibrating knee as his foot tapped a restless rhythm against the polished floor.

He hated assemblies. He despised they way they forced him into stillness. He resented the droning voices, the pomp and the circumstance of it all.

That day had felt different, however. Different for its abruptness and different for the grimness on the faces of each of the officers on stage.

At promptly seven o’clock, the Commander Iverson took the podium. Silence descended upon the room, so immediate one would have thought he raised a hand to hush the crowd, rather the adjust the microphone.

When he spoke, the words came stiff and rehearsed, with a steady cadence that could only be practiced.

“It is with a heavy heart,” he began, “that I must announce the terrible news that reached us from the outer reaches of Pluto yesterday morning. At zero two hundred hours, what we believe to be a case of pilot error resulted in the fatal crash of the Kerberos shuttle onto the surface of the satellite. There were no survivors.”

Keith heard each word, but they seemed to slip from his mind like water, depositing only phrases of heavy sediment. Fragments of words, ingrained into his consciousness like a weatherbeaten stone.

Kerberos.

Pilot.

Pilot error.

No survivors.

“We are currently in discussions as to whether it would be in our best interests to send a recovery team to Kerberos.” The commander paused. “Samuel Holt, Takashi Shirogane, and Matthew Holt were pioneers in the field of space exploration. Their sacrifice will not be forgotten.”

A buzzing was growing around the room, murmurs and gasps and a strange kind of whimper Keith felt in his lungs more than heard from his ears.

“A public announcement will be made later today about the mission’s failure...”

Keith wasn’t listening anymore. Couldn’t listen.

He had been the only person to see Shiro off at the launch. It was supposed to be restricted to families and significant others, but with Shiro’s mother across the Pacific Ocean in Japan and Adam being needlessly stubborn, they’d taken pity on Shiro and let him bring Keith. Or maybe they’d taken pity on Keith, who grasped at every last second with Shiro with the kind of desperation that made it feel like it could be his last one.

Could be.

Would be.

There was a terrible pressure building in his chest, the urge to scream, or cry, or maybe just hold his breath until it disappeared from his body altogether. His hands were pale and shaking where they rested in his lap, and that unfamiliar noise from inside of him was only growing louder.

He felt someone stand up next to him then, a protective shield between Keith and the stares and the whispers. It might have been Griffin, but Keith’s eyes were blurry and his nose filled with the scent of his own distress. It was suffocating.

Keith was suffocating.

He opened his mouth to breath, to exhale the hysteria threatening to overtake him but what came out was a noise, a terrible sound that was so foreign to his ears he barely recognized it as coming from his own throat. It was high-pitched and wailing, and it cut through the murmurs of the auditorium like the knife edge being driven into Keith’s heart.

Someone grabbed his arm, was saying his name fervently, but Keith couldn’t stop. He was distantly aware of being shuffled out of the auditorium, and even less conscious of the hundreds of eyes that might have been turned on him.

Somehow he ended up in the infirmary, which he only recognized because a nurse was suddenly standing in front of him, trying to force him to lie back onto one of the beds. His body protested the action on instinct and he lashed out in a panic.

Keith’s nails raked someone's cheek and he might have been growling, but he also might have been crying. It was hard to tell when sounds were echoing around him like he was back in one of the training simulators that conditioned for the effects of space-walks outside of a shuttle.

Keith imagined Shiro, drifting outside the shuttle, the silence of endless space pressing against him.

He let his limbs fall still, his sudden ferocious rush of energy spent.

Keith was fairly certain he was crying now.

“What happened?”

“The Kerberos mission news just broke. He didn’t respond to it well.”

“Why’s he making that sound?” This voice was panicked and young, nothing like the professional tones of the nurse.

“He’s keening. It’s an defensive mechanism exclusive to omegas. Usually only occurs in times of immediate distress.”

“He’s an omega?” That was the nurse, sounding only faintly surprised.

“Yes. Must have been under a heavy dose of scent blockers though. You wouldn’t have known his dynamic by the way he acted around his classmates.”

“Extreme trauma can induce a hormonal imbalance in omegas, diluting the effects of medications like scent blockers and suppressants. The shock must have been too great for his system.”

“He was very close to Shirogane.”

Shiro.

Keith thrashed against the hands gripping him, suddenly wild with the urge to flee. He had to… to get to Shiro. To save him. Shiro was out there, he needed him!

Shiro is dead.

“We should sedate him. He’s going to hurt someone if he keeps this up.”

Keith was already hurting, an ache in his chest spreading outward to every last vessel of his body. His fingertips hurt.

“Are you sure?”

“He’s inconsolable in this state, and a danger to himself and others. Sedate him.”

Another voice cut in, this one more hesitant and more familiar. “Sir-”

“Out, Cadet Griffin. Thank you for your assistance, but the medical staff will handle this from here.”

Keith didn’t know if he left, because he felt a pinprick of pain against the inside of his arm and then the room was no longer a room.

Keith was not in pain.

Shiro was not gone.

It was just. Black.

If he dreamed, the images were fuzzy and incoherent. What he thought were voices became the rumble of a shuttle, rising from the surface of the Earth. The comfort of his father’s jacket against his skin transformed into the itch of the orphanage’s worn sheets. He couldn’t remember if he was six or sixteen years old and was content to never know.

When he finally awoke, it was with a pounding headache and a mouth full of cotton. It took him a long second to realize that was only his tongue, parched beyond relief and sticking to the roof of his mouth.

“Where…?” he began, before his voice cracked into silence. “What happened?” was his second, more successful attempt. He felt as if he’d just closed his eyes, but couldn’t seem to remember why he was asleep in the first place.

The nurse turned to face him, her expression just open enough to appear friendly but tense enough to to make him feel wary.

“I want to see Shiro,” Keith whispered. There was something about Shiro, something important he was trying to remember.

“Keith,” the nurse said carefully, “Don’t you remember? The Kerberos mission?”

Kerberos. He hadn’t cared about the word, when the mission had first been announced. Only when Shiro had been chosen as the pilot, did he start to resent it.

“He’s gone Keith. I’m so sorry.”

He’d been wrong all along. He should have feared it. Kerberos was a curse - a dark, ominous thing that had swallowed Shiro whole.

Keith didn’t cry again. He felt close to a shell, a husk of a human all dried and dusty. A gust of wind might have blown him over, or blown him away, left him disintegrated and drifting. His body curved inwards reflexively, some instinctual need to protect the broken pieces of his soul.

He was still sitting there, head in his hands and knees to his chest, when the door swung open and Montgomery stepped through. Keith wanted the man in his gray uniform to be Shiro so badly he felt the awful keening rising in his throat again, threatening to choke him. He forced it down, then forced himself to listen.

“I want to apologize, Kogane. We should have broken the news to you separately. I know Shirogane had a special relationship with you.”

Had. Already, they were slipping into past tense. Keith wanted to slip away too.

“We need to remember in times like this…” The professor trailed off, as if realizing Keith was barely listening. “What Shirogane did - he was a hero. All three of them were. They knew the risks of their mission, and we must be respect that.”

A hero.

Keith hated the word. That’s what they’d called his father, when they’d handed Keith a Medal of Valor across a freshly dug grave. He didn’t want a ribbon. He wanted a father. Like he’d wanted a mother. Like he wanted Shiro, back by his side, disproving the endless stream of eulogies dripping from the Garrison officer’s mouth.

Why did they all have to be heros? Why couldn’t Keith love someone a little more selfish, a little less willing to put their lives on the line for the sake of others?

“Can I go?” Keith asked dully. He was suddenly intent on being alone, on hurtling across the desert at death-defying speeds or maybe just curling beneath the covers of his bed and never returning for air.

Montgomery looked startled, only a few shades of sympathy away from being affronted at the interruption.

“If you feel well enough, then yes. But Keith, before you are dismissed.” He paused. “Look, I won’t ask how you got your hands on the type of medications you needed to mask your dynamic. But you have to know we don’t allow that type of dishonesty amongst our cadets. Given the circumstances, we’re only going to confiscate any scent-blockers currently in your possession and put you through a detox program. But there will be no more of this deception, and any Garrison leadership that looks the other way will be disciplined alongside you.”

It might not have been a jab at Shiro, but Keith knew that everyone knew no one else would have given him that amount of leniency. He stared at the officer through his eyelashes, determined to say nothing at all.

Montgomery cleared his throat. “Very well. You are dismissed, Kogane. Get some rest, and don’t hesitate to reach out to the counselling department if you feel that you require their services.”

It was about as insincere an offering of sympathy as Keith had ever heard, and that was fine with him. A “sorry for your loss” wouldn’t bring Shiro back, and it wouldn’t make Keith feel it any less.

In a way, nothing had changed. Yesterday morning, Shiro had been gone. Today he was also gone, but his absence carried a different weight now - a finality that made Keith’s throat ache and skin clammy. He left the infirmary like a haunted thing, silent and somber and pale enough to drift through a wall.

He felt eyes follow him curiously as he made the endless trip from the medical wing to his dorm room. It must have been midday, because the halls were lined with students as Keith travelled towards the housing wing. It seemed wrong to him, that people should be going about their lives and attending classes already. But if there was one thing Keith knew, it was that heros were forgotten as easily as they were made.

Only their loved ones, who saw them as something more human than a storybook protagonist, remembered.

He heard his own name, trailing after him in whispers and hushed tones. No amount of hiding behind his hair would dampen the sound of it, any more than the stiff collar of his uniform could mask the scent of him.

Keith knew only three things with any measure of certainty in that moment.

His charade was over, Keith was an omega, and Shiro was dead.

Keith only realized he was still in his hospital scrubs once the door had shut behind him and he was faced with the two rows of sharp-suited Garrison officials seated across from each other at a long rectangular conference table. He instantly recognized the other Paladins in the mix, their own uniforms bright spots of color amongst the swathes of gray. The color red was noticeably absent from the mix. Keith tugged at the sleeve of his scrubs distractedly.

The walls of the conference room were startlingly white, almost painfully so. Despite the brightness, the atmosphere in the room felt heavy, like the buzzing of a low pressure storm looming on the horizon. Keith used to wait for these storms in the desert eagerly, during his self-imposed exile to his father’s shack. He wanted to run from this one with all the unnatural speed of his Galra reflexes.

Across the room, Hunk beckoned him forwards with bright eyes, a clear motion for Keith to join the other Paladins where they sat near the head of the table. But Keith was instead nudged towards the long row of Galra standing along the back wall of the conference room - each varying shades of purple but with equally grim expressions. He caught his mother’s wild tousle of hair next to Kolivan’s imposing height, but not even their familiar figures could soothe his growing trepidation as he was marched forward.

His gaze gravitated back to the other Paladins, whose relieved expressions had transformed to a mix of shock and indignation as Keith moved to stand with the other Galra. Shiro’s lips were pressed into a tight line, his human hand a white-knuckled fist on the surface of the table. Even Lance was frowning now, and Hunk kept looking back and forth between Keith and the other Paladins in confusion.

The message couldn’t have been more clear to Keith: he was feared more as a Galra than he was valued as a Paladin of Voltron.

“We are members of the Coalition as much as any other foreign allies of Earth,” Kolivan said near the head of the group, and Keith realized he’d walked in on the midst of a tense discussion.

“We acknowledge that,” Iverson replied. His scar was even sharper under the unforgiving white lights bearing down from above. Keith’s fingers twitched with a memory, and the sudden urge to reenact it. “This would only be a temporary measure in order to filter out any Galra of questionable loyalty and ensure the Earth remains an autonomous planet in this war.”

“Humans have a difficult enough time unifying to trust other humans,” another officer explained. “To suddenly welcome a species that was once intent on our annihilation is to come with some trepidation.”

“Your petty squabbles are irrespective of our loyalties,” Kolivan said flatly. “Or do you wish to blame the Galra for the millenniums of violence you’ve wreaked upon each other as well?”

Iverson pinched the bridge of his nose, visibly agitated. “We can leave humanity’s shortcomings for another discussion. What’s important now is regrouping before we launch another frontal attack on the Galra Empire with the Atlas. The Earth is in chaos right now. We don’t need this division, or fear.”

“The Blade of Marmora has been fighting this war long before humans were ever touched by its destruction,” Krolia said, moving towards the front of the group. Keith was sure now that the Garrison’s neglect in providing seats for the Galra in attendance had been an intentional slight. But it only made them tower over the humans present, a physical manifestation of the very power these aging officers were trying to diminish. Despite his own diminutive stature amongst the group of Galra, he felt a bitter kind of satisfaction at the sight. “To hinder our efforts now and ignore our aid is to the detriment of your own people.”

“We are allied. We will continue to work together against the Empire. But you must understand, certain precautions will have to be made to ensure the the continuation of the human race.”

“So you’ll use us,” Keith said sharply, stepping forward. “But you won’t trust us.”

He welcomed the rage flickering beneath his skin, letting it burn away any of his natural instinct to soothe, to temper the hostile atmosphere of the room that threatened to choke him. Anger had always been his escape, and he let it take him away from this terrible reality.

“If you’re looking for an apology, Paladin, it will be long in coming. Forgoing a few pleasantries as a preventative measure is a necessary sacrifice. We had hoped the Blade would understand this.”

“Pleasantries?” Keith said in disbelief. “This is persecution! You’re targeting innocent-”

“Stand down, Keith,” Krolia cut in. Her voice was mild, eyes sharp. “We do understand, Commander. Within the limits of reason, we will accommodate your requests during our time here on Earth, so long as the safety of our members is not jeopardized by your people.”

“We assure you, none of the allied Galra will be harmed.”

The back of Keith’s neck prickled uneasily, a chill sliding from the crown of his head down his spine. His mother only inclined her chin in a graceful nod, then stepped back into the group of Galra. She caught Keith’s eye as she did so, giving him a barely visible shake of her head. There was something cautionary about the motion, and Keith forced himself to stillness, despite his uneasiness.

“With that bit of unpleasantness behind us, we’ll began the first stage of these operations within the next week. In the meantime, all Galra not currently being held as prisoners of war will be moved to pre-approved housing.”

“Meeting adjourned,” Iverson announced, and there was a rustle of fabric and the scrape of chairs being pushed back in response. Keith watched as the other Paladins were swarmed by Garrison officials, handshakes being passed around the group by the dozen. Shiro’s gaze met his across the room once again, relief and the reflection of Keith’s own frustration in his eyes. But his attention was pulled away by another officer before Keith could make a move to step forward.

“You should return to the medbay.”

Keith glanced up at Krolia, who had slipped through the crowd of Galra to stand next to him. Her voice lacked the concern her words conveyed, but Keith could recognize it in her eyes. It had taken him years, but he was learning to read her impassiveness for what it was - a carefully constructed mask.

“I feel fine,” he lied. The adrenaline of his argument had given him a fleeting kind of strength, and he felt it draining away the longer he remained standing. “I’ve been asleep for three days. I don’t need any more rest.”

“Then do it for your mother’s peace of mind.”

“Fine,” Keith waved a hand distractedly. “But only after I get a chance to talk to the other Paladins about this.”

Krolia brushed a hand along the side of his head, tucking an errant strand of black hair behind his ear. The motion was startlingly maternal, even after the two years Keith had spent adjusting to the idea of a mother that wanted him. His eyes fluttered shut, intent on breathing in the comfort of her familiar scent and the steady pressure of her thumb against his cheekbone.

“You are angry.”

It wasn’t phrased as a question, so Keith didn’t respond like it needed an answer.

“This is wrong,” he said instead.

“It is troublesome,” Kolivan announced, appearing with a manner of stealth none of his sheer size would imply. “But the humans’ caution is not entirely unwarranted, given the way they have suffered under the conquests of our people.”

Our people. The phrase set a divisive line between them - human and Galra. Mankind and monsters. The righteous victors of a battle for freedom, and the brethren of their fallen subjugators.

What do you do then, Keith wondered, when you are both?

It was a question without an answer. Or maybe, one with an infinite number of contradictory ones. He let it echo, a call with no response, until the question left only the drifting sensation of unrest in its place.

What do you do?

Chapter Text

Keith’s expulsion from the Garrison came in a series of violent strikeouts.

James Griffin was strike one.

In all fairness, Keith would have punched anyone that implied what Griffin had about his parents, sensitive as he was to the topic of mothers and fathers. But hearing it from Griffin was worse somehow, because besides Shiro, it felt like he was one of the only people that knew Keith in any way beyond Cadet Kogane: simulator whiz and bane of his teachers’ existence.

At the same time, it felt dangerous having someone from his past so close to him at the Garrison. Keith was hyperaware around the other cadet, defensive in instances that didn’t really warrant hostility, and perhaps that was why their already tenuous relationship deteriorated so rapidly.

The only time their mutual antagonism would ever become physical was that fight - a blaze lit by the single spark of Keith’s flying fist. It burned out just as fast, and Keith was left dusted in ash and more disappointed than validated. Or, vindicated. He hadn’t known which he was looking for when he threw the first punch.

That fight, Keith would admit, was unsatisfying for a number of reasons. One may have been that it felt horribly one-sided, as if each of Keith’s blows landed on Griffin not because of Keith’s own skill, but the other boy’s reluctance to hit back. The bruise along his jaw he got from a sharp elbow, deflecting an uppercut rather than dealing one to Keith’s face. His shoulder was sore from a stranglehold when Griffin tried to pin him down to the floor, rather than wrench it from its socket.

And so Keith had gotten none of his usual post-fight euphoria, just a few angry bruises and the disappointingly not angry admonitions from Shiro. Keith had felt chastised nonetheless - had wanted to run from the Garrison and Shiro and Griffin and escape all their suffocatingly upright expectations.

Almost as if their roles had swapped, it was Griffin that sat fuming and silent as the two boys waited for their sentences to be delivered. Keith could feel his eyes on him with the safety of two empty chairs the only barrier between them.

He wished Griffin would have stayed that way. Silent, at least. Because when Griffin came to find him later with regret in his eyes and the knowledge of Keith’s absent family, he had wanted to run from it all. The sympathy, the compassion. The apology and the accursed comfort Keith couldn’t help but feel with one less secret between them.

Keith had never intentionally hidden his parentage, or lack thereof, but he hadn’t advertised that he was an orphan either. There were few things more bitter than the sound of that sorry word on his tongue. But the words had been spoken - dead father, absent mother - and he couldn’t take them back. Keith had spat them out with a fury he didn’t even feel.

It was futile, anyways, because his biology betrayed him once again. James met his outburst with reciprocating anger that felt so much closer to fervent kindness Keith crumpled beneath it.

Instinct made Keith bare his neck, the primal urge to appease subduing any other rational thought. And James eyes had gone wide, the sweep of his bangs falling over one in an artfully dishevelled curtain of hair. His cheek was still marred by the bruises Keith’s own fist had placed there. Keith regretted it, but not as much as he regretted being responsible for the desperation, resentment, and that unshakeable bit of compassion on his face.

Keith blamed any sense of comfort at this newfound openness between them on the on the toxic strain of omega in his veins. As much as Keith hated exposing that vulnerability, his need to connect could only be stifled so much.

That was the mantra he chanted in the hours after James had fled from his room and the fog of his alpha command had finally faded from Keith’s consciousness. Biology, hormones - he used any excuse but loneliness. Or worse, some kind of tentative mutual respect that broached the dangerous boundaries of friendship.

Some nameless cadet was Keith’s strike two.

It came two months after the failure of the Kerberos mission was announced, just long enough that Keith had stopped waking up to a damp pillow and people had stopped whispering “Shiro” around him like the name itself could shatter him. Some days it felt like it might. Other days he wanted nothing more than to scream and yell that he wasn’t weak, wasn’t fragile, he wasn’t an omega stereotype shoved in a stupid omega body.

He was just heartbroken.

And, alone again.

Two months was also long enough that his sparingly-used stash of suppressants had run out, another constant reminder that Shiro was no longer there to hide that aspect of his identity. His omega scent had resurfaced with full force, and he hated it. He hated the sweetness he could smell on his own skin, the gazes that followed him as he brushed past his classmates towards his seat in the back of the room.

The second incident occurred in the Garrison cafeteria, surrounded by hundreds of other students, because the only thing easier than getting into a fight for Keith was getting into a fight in front of an audience.

For the first few weeks after the Kerberos announcement, Keith had been allowed to slip out of the cafeteria for his meals. But his professors’ sympathy was drying up as quickly as their memories of Shiro were fading, and with it, their leniency. And so Keith found himself forced to suffer through the hour-long lunch period at the end of a cafeteria table furthest from any of its other occupants.

Like a masochist, he chose the table he used to sit at with Shiro on the odd days the officer took his lunch at the same time as the Garrison cadets. Keith would chew his food mechanically and stare at the empty seat across from him like he could force the air there to form the living, breathing, laughing form of a visceral Shiro.

But air remained air, and Keith remained alone.

Alone, he found, was more often than not preferable to the alternative these days. With Keith unintentionally outing his status as an omega in the disastrous events of the Kerberos assembly, his already questionable notoriety on campus had taken an unexpected turn. An unwanted one. No longer was Keith the uncooperative ace of the fighter pilot class. He’d gained a new reputation for himself as the uncooperative omega ace of the fighter pilot class, except now nobody seemed to listen past the word “omega.”

It was exactly the reason he’d tried to stifle his dynamic in the first place. And the worst part of it was that he had no one to blame for the reveal except himself.

Well, maybe not the worst part.

The gossip didn’t bother him. Keith could care less about what other people said about him when he couldn’t hear it, when the two events of their conversation and Keith’s existence did not overlap. Their whispers didn’t fundamentally change him as a person, nor did his skill in the simulator suddenly disappear with the reappearance of his omega scent. But whispers eventually stopped being indecipherable. Keith began hearing words, and those words formed sentences, and then there was an alpha standing in front of his locker asking him out with a cocky smile. Keith had nearly sprinted away from that first dreaded encounter. He wished it was the last.

At best, his admirers were a nuisance. In one particularly heinous incident, one of his classmates had dropped a note on his desk as he was walking by. When Keith reluctantly peeled open the crumpled paper the only thing scribbled on it was a phone number and the words “put me on heat-dial” with a lopsided winking face next to it.

Keith had very much wanted to gag in that moment, but had settled instead for promptly balling the note up and lobbing it at the back of the other cadet’s head. The other boy had turned around with an affronted look and, when recognizing Keith as his assailant, sheepishly swiveled back just as quickly. Keith felt like he was mastering the art of an icy glare. More often than not, it was his greatest weapon against the terrible, repeated attempts at flirting.

But some days, the attention wasn’t quite as innocent, or as easy for Keith to ignore. His second disciplinary was one of these days: an uneventful morning interrupted by a lunchroom brawl and punctuated with Keith’s temporary suspension.

It had begun, as most of the worst things in an omega’s world did, with an unwanted touch. Keith hadn’t seen it coming, fixated as he was on the glaring vacancy of the seat in front of him. The din of the cafeteria had been an undecipherable, muffled buzz of voices that he’d only barely recognized around him. But he was pulled from his stupor with an icy jolt of revulsion as he felt the startling sensation of a hand against the nape of his neck.

Rough fingers brushed the sensitive skin there and Keith’s entire body tensed at the intrusion. An omega’s neck was one of the most sensitive parts of the body, and to touch it without permission was considered incredibly invasive. For good reason, Keith knew. It was nauseating, the sensation of that unwanted touch on his skin, and was mostly the reason he kept his hair so long besides the simple act of laziness.

Keith jerked his body away from the hand instinctively, swiveling to face its owner. Two cadets were sauntering past him, an alpha and a beta Keith vaguely recognized from two years above him. He’d never bothered to learn their names. He hadn’t bothered to learn most anyone’s names in his own year, let alone those above his who would be graduating soon.

Well, Keith didn’t need to know their names to know he wanted nothing to do with them. Except maybe the satisfying sensation of his knuckles against their jaws.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Keith snapped.

The taller of the two whistled, grin stretching is face into an expression that was nothing short of sickening to Keith. His eyes flickered tauntingly down Keith’s body and if the easy confidence in his stance wasn’t a dead giveaway for his dynamic, the overpowering stench of possessive alpha was.

“Careful,” his beta friend said with laugh that made the hairs on Keith’s arm stand upright. “This one bites.”

“I could go for that,” the alpha replied, and Keith didn’t miss the way his eyes fixated on his bare neck. He inclined his own neck at Keith, the pose clearly meant to be seductive. “Whad’you say Kogane? We could be a matching set.”

And this is why Keith hated alphas, and the easy way they threw their weight around with no repercussions to follow. This is why Keith hated his own dynamic, why he’d gone through all the trouble of hiding it in the first place.

“Not in your wildest dreams,” Keith said through gritted teeth. Maybe my nightmares, though. He steeled himself to sit back down in his seat, exhausted by the urge to retaliate combating with his own inherent instinct to avoid a confrontation.

Keith had a bad habit of making everything in his life complicated, even the simple act of existing in his own body.

“Still can’t believe Keith Kogane of all people was an omega bitch all along.” He heard the cadet guffaw as the pair turned to walk away. “No wonder Shirogane hung around him so much.”

Keith was out of his seat in an instant, snarling. The familiar sensation of rage, of hurt and pain in equal parts, washed over him and he welcomed it eagerly. It was comforting, that anger, that necessary urge to fight and tear and feel something that wasn’t a terrible aching emptiness.

The pair of cadets turned at the sound, a smirk still lingering in the corners of the the alpha’s mouth. When their eyes met, Keith couldn’t know what the other cadet saw in his face, but his expression twisted in response.

Keith’s vision was crystal clear now, the kind of acute sensory rush that he only seemed to capture in the heat of a fight.

“Take it back.”

A long time ago, Keith thought lewd comments about his secondary sex were the worst thing that could be thrown at him. But the insult to Shiro was worse, infinitely worse, and he would have taken every abuse in stride if he could only unhear that disgusting implication.

“Hit a nerve, Kogane?” the cadet asked, but for all the bluster in his voice Keith could scent the tension in the air. He reveled in it. “Guess we know what you were really up to during all those extra hours logged in the simulator.”

Keith swung wildly, but before his arm could make contact with the other cadet he felt a warm hand encircle his wrist from behind him, pulling the limb back to his side.

He twisted in the grip, turning to face whoever had dared to step between him and his undamped need for a fight.

James Griffin stood there, his bangs falling across his left eye but still not managing to cover the anger in them. From his gaze Keith knew instinctively the rage was not aimed at him, and only barely restrained by Griffin’s superhuman levels of self-discipline.

Well, the last thing Keith wanted right now was his sympathy, even a sympathy that took form in some sort of mutual distaste for the cadets in front of them. He made another unsuccessful attempt to pull out of the other boy’s grip.

“You want another round, Griffin?” he hissed when the cadet still refused to let go.

“Stop.” When Griffin spoke, it was clear but frustratingly gentle. He could smell the calming pheromones the alpha was subtly sending towards him. Keith hated it, but not as much as he hated his body for relaxing in response to his earthy scent. “Do you really want to do this?”

No. No, Keith didn’t want to fight Griffin any more than he wanted to acknowledge how grounding the pressure of his thumb against the inside of his wrist felt.

“Yes,” Keith forced out. “Yes, I really do.”

James was still looking at him, gray eyes as murky as Keith’s own muddled consciousness. “You’re better than this. Shirogane knew you were better than this.”

Keith inhaled sharply at the sound of Shiro’s name. He didn’t need James Griffin of all people to tell him that Shiro would have wanted to stop, to think. To choose words, or stillness, before violence.

But Griffin was wrong about one thing. Keith wasn’t better. So when Griffin finally let go of his wrist and took with it the solid comfort of his hand, Keith darted forward at full speed and tackled the offending cadet to the ground.

Shiro would have been disappointed in him.

Keith didn’t regret it.

He got two weeks of suspension for that incident, something that felt closer to house arrest on the Garrison campus. He probably only deserved one, but apparently a missing molar comes at a high cost for the Garrison’s liability policy for their students.

Keith’s fist was sore for the full duration of his suspension. He reveled in the pain as a constant reminder of his own brand of vigilante justice.

He caught Griffin staring at the wrappings on his hand a few days after the fight from across the mess hall. Keith had foregone his fingerless gloves to bandage the bruised skin, and his right hand felt bulky and awkward with the weight of the bindings. Feeling something dangerously close to guilt at Griffin’s gaze, he’d shifted the hand under the table, removing it from his line of sight. The other cadet had simply shaken his head in a response, a rueful, almost involuntary action that had Keith bristling.

He wore his gloves to dinner that night, and ignored the sharp rub of the split skin across his knuckles against the coarse leather. Griffin didn’t look at him again, and Keith ignored the disappointment at that too.

Iverson was the finishing blow, in more ways than one. His strike three, in the sorry game that was Keith’s enrollment at the Garrison.

It happened in an office, behind a soundproof door that Keith would eventually learn would be the root of the many rumors surrounding his expulsion. It was easy to be fantastical about the circumstances involving a cadet leaving the Garrison when an instructor walked away with a black eye.

“What do you mean, call off rescue attempts?” Keith had asked slowly. He could hear the disbelief in his own voice. The anger hadn’t reached it yet.

The grizzled officer’s voice was gruff when he spoke.

“Kerberos was the furthest deep-space expedition humanity has ever attempted. It’s true, we may have failed. But the sacrifice of Commander Holt’s team is for naught if we can’t learn from this and plan more carefully. Shirogane was our best. We’ve decided sending another mission now, with a group of ill-prepared replacements, is a death sentence. For Commander Holt’s team and the recovery effort.”

Keith stared at him in horror. The Garrison was giving up. They’d agreed Shiro was dead, as decisively as Keith had in those first terrible days after the news broke. Or they’d agreed Shiro wasn’t worth it, wasn’t worth the risk of another mission and another pilot and another crash on an empty moon.

He wasn’t sure what was worse: the thought of Shiro, stranded billions of miles away and waiting for help that would never come, or Shiro’s corpse, floating in the infinity of space amongst the wreckage of metal and miscalculations.

It wasn’t until later, when his fist was sore from the resounding crack of his knuckles against Iverson’s bones and he was stuffing the meager belongings of his dorm room into one Garrison issue duffle bag, that he realized it was the latter. A Shiro that was dead was lost to him, lost to the world. Just a body with the absence of breath.

A Shiro that was alive, however, and clinging on to hope on the darkest side of Jupiter’s moon, could be found. He may have been miles away, planets away, years away, but he existed and thus Keith could find his way to him. He would find his way to him.

Keith lost himself to the desert to find him.

Keith's legs were currently beginning to lose sensation, pinned as they were by a massive pile of cerulean blue fur on top of him. The weight of his wolf was familiar enough to bring flashbacks of the quantum abyss flickering across the backs of Keith’s eyelids, even in the unforgiving brightness of his hospital room. He’d gotten used to waking up in the abyss with the progressively heavier wolf draped across his body, as pliant and loving as a domesticated dog.

Keith had always considered himself a cat person, but maybe that was just because Shiro loved all cats unconditionally. His identity had for so long being tied to Shiro’s existence that somehow Keith’s own interests might have gotten a little mixed up along the way. Or maybe it was that Keith himself had the vaguely feline DNA of the Galra comprising such a significant amount of his bloodstream.

Maybe Keith didn’t like cats at all - maybe he only emphasized with them. Cats were small and resilient and defensive. More often than not, they were left on street corners to the mercy of a stranger’s goodwill.

Keith might have been Shiro’s stray, back then. It was comforting to know he didn’t feel that way now.

“So, when are you set to be discharged?” Shiro asked when the chatter of the team’s reunion in Keith’s hospital room had fallen to a comfortable lull. It was only the second day after Keith had woken up, but the first time the Paladins had finally gathered as team since the aftermath of the battle. Keith, still in his hospital scrubs, was the only Paladin not dressed in the new, personalized uniform the Garrison had issued.

“Not soon enough,” Keith replied. He was already growing sick of the inescapable stench of antiseptic and the flickering gazes of the nurses who would never quite look him in the eyes.

“I love hospital food,” Pidge announced, her tone already predicating some incoming demand. She sat at the foot of Keith’s bed, gaze expectant behind the glimmer of her glasses. “Can I have your pudding?”

Keith pushed his tray towards her. “How is it that you’ve only barely been released from the hospital and you’re already missing the dining options?”

“I’m going to take your compliments a lot less seriously now, Pidge,” Hunk said sadly from his seat by Keith’s bedside. “If this is your standard of good food.”

“My standard of edible food is actual goo,” Pidge said around a mouth of pudding. “Let me have this.”

“You’re looking much better Keith,” Allura said, delicately ignoring the petty culinary discourse around her with the poise of an Altean princess. Which, admittedly, she was. “We were quite worried when you didn’t wake up after the battle.”

She stood next to Lance, and Keith couldn’t help but notice the casual way her shoulder brushed the Red Paladin’s as she leaned back almost unconsciously into his space. They made cotton-candy colors, the pair of them next to each other. Keith realized the painkillers in his system might still have been making his head a bit fuzzy.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t be here,” Shiro said apologetically. “The moment the other Paladins were released they practically threw new uniforms at us and marched us down to that meeting.”

An uncomfortable stillness settled over the group at the mention of the meeting, and Keith’s gaze turned to where his own red uniform sat neatly folded on the table next to his bed. He stared at its golden epaulets with more than a little resentment.

It was Lance that finally spoke, breaking the silence, which surprised Keith even though he knew it really shouldn’t have. His relationship with Lance had gone from rocky to gravelled over the course of three years, but the current Red Paladin was still one of the few people that reciprocated Keith’s rare and unconditional trust.

“That stunt the higher ups pulled was pretty messed up,” Lance said, and there was an uncharacteristic seriousness in his gaze as he crossed his arms. “We wouldn’t be here today without the Blade, never mind the leader of Voltron.”

When Keith had first revealed his Galra heritage to the rest of the team after the Trials of Marmora, it had been Lance that had taken the news most quickly in stride. Lance was adaptable, the type of person to flow like water with a changing tide - moving between lions when the universe needed a new Red Paladin, switching from rifle to Altean broadsword with ease in fight. For all Lance’s childish complaints and painful attempts at flirting, Keith had to respect him for that.

He may have never considered Lance a rival, but Keith had learned to call him a friend.

“They’re just being overly cautious,” Shiro said, but his reply sounded mechanical and rehearsed, as if he’d been reciting the words in his head long before he’d said them aloud. His brow was drawn, the anger in his expression at odds with his unreadable tone.

“Well, let us hope this is temporary,” Allura said. “And that it does not delay our efforts to take back the galaxy from the Galra we actually should be fighting.”

The conversation soon turned to lighter topics, as Hunk carefully navigated them away from the dark atmosphere that had settled across the group. Keith felt himself smiling as he listened to the Yellow Paladin ramble on about the assortment of alien goods in the inter-species marketplace that had seemingly sprung up overnight, content for a moment to ignore the dangerous game of Garrison politics that continued on around them.

Eventually, the Paladins slowly filtered out of the room, some leaving in pairs like Allura and Lance while others were called away by their families. Finally, Keith was left alone with Shiro and the soft snores of his wolf that still lay sprawled across his lap.

It was quiet between them for a long time, but Keith knew Shiro well enough to discern that the silence was taut - poised for some incoming revelation. He could see it in the muscles of Shiro’s jaw, tense as the set of his shoulders.

Patience may have yielded focus but Keith, trapped as he was in the narrow walls of his hospital room, was running short on both.

“You should just tell me now,” he said reproachfully, and watched as Shiro startled at the sound of his voice.

“I-” His friend swallowed, looking conflicted. “You’re not going to like this. I don’t like this.”

Keith’s stomach clenched. “Why don’t you let me decide?” he replied with a nonchalance he didn’t feel.

Shiro exhaled slowly.

“HQ just set an additional protocol for all of the Galra inhabitants of Earth.” He wouldn’t look at Keith, and that hurt more than the words that followed. “They’ve mandated a tracking device be surgically inserted into every Galra on Earth, allied or not. The procedures started this morning.” When Shiro looked down at him finally there was a helplessness in his eyes, his gaze apologetic. “You’re… included on the list.”

“A tracking device,” Keith repeated, voice dull.

It was horribly invasive. And even more than that - degrading. They might as well have clipped a dog collar around his neck. At least that wouldn’t have been stuck beneath his skin.

“It will go in your upper arm. The operation is quick, relatively painless. You won’t even remember it’s there after a while.”

Except that Keith knew he would. You don’t forget something like that, stuck under your own skin. A layer of flesh wouldn’t hide half the shame he felt for being shunned for half his DNA.

“Right.”

It was was the wrong thing to say, because Shiro heard the disbelief in Keith’s voice as easily as if he’d tried to contradict him. His human hand came up to rest on Keith’s shoulder, but not even the familiar weight of it could ease the sting of his words.

“I don’t like this anymore than you do, Keith. I want you to know how much we fought against this. But humanity needs solidarity right now, and splitting loyalties between the Garrison and Voltron over this is the exact opposite of that.”

Tagging all of the Garrison’s Galra allies like wild beasts seemed like the opposite of solidarity to Keith too, but he remained silent.

Shiro sighed again. “At least you’ll be staying with the rest of the team on the Atlas. I guess even HQ has enough sense to realize that splitting up Voltron would be the quickest way to destabilize the Coalition's efforts to rebuild our forces.”

Special dispensation, Keith thought bitterly. He had a feeling him being the leader of Voltron was only the half of it. Was it because he was less Galra than most Blades? Or was it because he was more human? He had the sudden urge to find Acxa, who was as much of a Galra mutt as he was, just for the simple reassurance of another face with a lineage as blurry as his own. Shiro’s words did little to actually comfort him right now, not when the man himself had re-christened himself as the Garrison’s most beloved pilot in the span of a single battle.

Keith hadn’t expected the same for himself, nor had he wanted it. But the tentative optimism for an interspecies alliance he’d begun to develop since their arrival to Earth had been thoroughly smashed in the aftermath of Sendak’s defeat.

“I’m not asking you to like this. It makes me sick, the way they’re treating you. But if we just… cooperate for now, we can at least keep the team together. Voltron is more than a weapon at this point, it’s a symbol of peace. I don’t think the Garrison would want to jeopardize that.” Shiro rubbed on hand across his jaw, where a faint line of stubble was beginning to grow. “But I’ve been burned by them before.”

Keith remembered: a cold metal table and and sand stinging his face on a speeder ride across the desert. He didn’t know how Shiro ever found it within him to forgive the Garrison higher ups. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he’d just learned to work alongside them regardless.

“I’ll do it,” Keith said darkly. “But only for the sake of Voltron. The team needs me. The Garrison can burn for all I care.”

Shiro looked at him, expression painfully gentle. “You don’t mean that.”

Keith didn’t, and part of him was relieved that Shiro still knew him well enough that he could recognize it.

And yet, if Keith was forced into a hard decision, he knew where his true loyalties would lie. It was with the family he’d found, both in blood and in spirit, and not the stiff-collared officials that were as quick to treat him like a dangerous animal as they were to turn a sixteen year old boy loose to the unforgiving Arizona desert.

Keith didn’t think it would really be that hard of a decision after all.

Two days and one operation later, Keith was back in his hospital room with the addition of a small metal tracker secured beneath the skin of his left arm and the marginal loss of his human dignity.

It wasn’t long after Keith was returned to his room after the surgery that Krolia appeared in the doorway, her violet hair lit magenta by the sunlight filtering in. Keith’s arm was just beginning to regain feeling after the injection that had numbed it to the pain of the laser incision. He’d watch how the small chip had slid beneath skin and muscle and bone to nestle like a parasite inside his body. The surgery was quick, almost too quick, and the doctor’s efficiency sent a clear message that he was all too familiar with the procedure. The knowledge of it rankled him, but not as much as the the fact that Keith was now - in every way that mattered - a prisoner of the Garrison’s scrutiny.

Keith glanced at Krolia’s arm, where her bodysuit covered the wrappings of bandages that matched Keith’s own. Mother and son, each marked with a puckered red incision. Maybe that shouldn’t have been comforting, but if Keith was going to be a pariah because of the Galra in his veins at least it was alongside the one person who could never hate him for it.

“Walk with me?”

There was a small, manicured garden pavillion just outside the ground floor of the hospital wing. Keith knew it because he could see it from his window, which he’d spent most of his time gazing out of and wishing he was on the other side. Admittedly, it was the sky that called to him and not the carefully maintained shrubbery below whose only purpose was to provide some kind of aesthetic comfort to patients who cared about things living and green. But Keith had a very limited radius of directions he could currently travel. And with “up” not being one of them, he found himself wandering the gardens on the days he was allowed out of his hospital room.

It was nice, today, walking the familiar path with Krolia. But that was more due to the person he was with than the scenery around him. The silence between them was amicable, with neither being the type of person to demand small talk. But the longer it stretched the more it felt like his mother was waiting for him to admit something.

“I’m set to be released in two more days,” Keith announced finally, though he didn’t take his eyes of the indeterminate flowering bush in front of them. “I got clearance to move in to the Paladins’ quarters on the Atlas. Guess my role as Voltron’s leader counts for something.”

Keith kicked a pebble away from the comfortable place it lay nestled similarly smooth stones along the garden path, hating the ring of petulance in his own voice.

He knew all of the Galra, Krolia included, had been moved to separate housing on the Garrison campus shortly after Keith had woken up. It was bittersweet, being separated from his mother once again, but he couldn’t deny he was looking forward to falling back into the familiar routine of his team alongside the other Paladins. The Castleship was long gone, and Keith even longer, but he felt like this could be the return to normalcy he’d been longing for since he’d felt the burning edge of Shiro’s blade against his cheek on an unnamed outpost in the most vacant part of space.

“It’s where you are needed most,” Krolia said simply. “That is clear to all.”

Keith couldn’t understand how nonchalant she and Kolivan were both being about the Garrison’s mistreatment of Earth’s Galran allies. Every part of him still bristled at the injustice, and the stitching of skin beneath his bandages pulsed with his anger.

“I’m sorry you have to do this. Go through this,” he said instead. “I’m going to miss you.”

It was easier to admit this vulnerability now after the two years they’d spent together, but he still felt his pulse quicken as his body instinctively reacted to a dismissal he knew wouldn’t come. Krolia was his mother, Krolia loved him. Krolia wouldn’t abandon him again.

It had taken him a long time to believe it. It was taking him longer to learn how to say it.

Krolia stopped, and Keith felt his own body pulled to a halt to match hers. Her gaze was soft when she chucked his chin, turning his head to look him in the eyes.

“Kit,” she began, and the Galra term of endearment made him squirm. “Do not apologize for a distrust that is not yours.” Her fingers scratched the delicate skin behind his ear, one thumb rubbing through his unruly hair. It was a characteristically Galran form of comfort, something he’d witnessed on rare occasions during his time with the Blades. Keith may have lacked the set of overlarge, cat-like ears the motion was most often used for, but whatever amount of Galra in him was enough to be soothed.

“Besides,” Krolia continued, “It is not as if I will not see you after this. We are on the same side of this war after all. And I told you I will never leave you again.”

She tugged him closer then, and Keith felt himself nestled beneath her chin as his mother’s arms wrapped around him. He never felt smaller than he when he was next to Krolia, and yet somehow it was oddly comforting. To be dwarfed so completely in someone else’s arms.

It was Keith that pulled away first, but only because his eyes caught the flicker of a familiar pilot uniform over the curve of Krolia’s shoulders. His stomach dropped when he recognized the lean silhouette, a figure in gray rising to his feet from a bench along the garden path.

Griffin’s hair was strangely disheveled, as if he’d being running his fingers through the curve of his bangs relentlessly, and his other hand gripped a datapad like it could at any moment be ripped from his grasp.

Keith didn’t know whether he wanted to step forwards or backwards, away from the other pilot. When their gazes met he found that he could suddenly do neither.

Griffin was equally as still, as frozen as the last time Keith had seen him, caught in the open door of his hospital room. His expression was different now, not flustered so much as it was confoundedly hurt. His eyes moved between Keith and Krolia.

“Officer Griffin,” Krolia greeted him, her eyes lighting with recognition as she turned to see what Keith had suddenly fixated on.

Griffin nodded to her wordlessly in return.

“It looks like Keith is recovering well,” he said haltingly. The words didn’t sound like they were spoken for anyone in particular, offered to the air like a simple observation instead of an actual response to the conversation.

The roses on this bush are yellow.

This bench is in dire need of a new paint job.

Keith looks like he isn’t dying anymore.

“What are you doing here?” Keith blurted out.

Griffin hadn’t visited him since the day Keith had first woken up, and Keith had tried to pretend it didn’t feel like the the alpha was intentionally avoiding him. The thought of it made him inexplicably bitter, even after the years he’d spent hardening himself from an unending string of rejections.

“I was just-” Griffin stopped, and his eyes flickered upwards towards the hospital towering above them. Keith realized if he was back in his room, he could have looked down and seen the three of them standing below. “Sorry. I should go.”

“Wait.” The word came from Keith’s own mouth, of all places. Something about it was instinctual, almost desperate, to not have Griffin’s back turned to him.

Griffin froze, the overlarge whites of his eyes startling against his skin as he turned back to Keith.

Krolia’s gaze was scrutinizing as she looked between them and Keith suddenly wished he’d never said anything at all. That he’d never agreed to this walk in the first place. That he’d simply burrowed down beneath his thin hospital sheets and disappeared for a moment in time.

“I will see you soon, Keith,” Krolia said with briskness he’d grown accustomed to. “Goodbye, Officer Griffin.” And then she was walking away with the kind of soundless grace only the Blades were capable of.

Keith didn’t watch her go. His eyes were fixed instead on Griffin’s expression, which was shadowed by some unnamed emotion and the brightness of the noonday sun directly above them. Only when Griffin’s gaze turned back to him did he look away.

“That was Krolia. She’s one of the Blades of Marmora.” She’s my mother.

“I know. I’ve met her before,” Griffin said stiffly. “In your hospital room.”

“Oh. Right.”

When Keith glanced back at the other pilot Griffin was looking at him, really looking at him, and Keith realized the sensation of being so carefully scrutinized had become unfamiliar to him. His eyes had an odd glean to them, like stones beneath the clear glass of river water. Or maybe that was his mossy green scent doing strange things to Keith’s mind again. He shouldn’t have been able to detect it with the foliage around them, spiraling as high as the second story of the hospital. But it was impossible to ignore.

“We worked together for a couple of years on a Blade mission,” Keith offered as an explanation. Even to his own ears he sounded defensive. “It’s a long story.”

“Another one of your secrets?” Griffin asked, and the words were a little too sharp to be teasing. Keith couldn’t fault him for that. He wasn’t sure how the other pilot kept getting mixed up in the complicated series of lies and unspoken truths Keith had spun throughout his life.

“It’s not really a secret.” And it wasn’t. He’d made no effort to hide his lineage from the Garrison upon the Paladins’ arrival to Earth, though in retrospect perhaps he should have. But Keith was sick of hiding things, and stifling the reality of his bloodline, and feeling like he had to be ashamed that half his history was tied to a planet floating in pieces hundreds of galaxies away.

And yet, he couldn’t shake the reluctance of saying the words to Griffin. I’m Galra. Maybe it was the memory of Allura’s frigid anger, of Hunk’s nervousness, and Pidge’s scientist’s curiosity. Telling the team about the events of the Mamora headquarters had been harder than the Trials themselves, because the Blades hadn’t dealt the knife edge of hurt beneath his ribcage as the Paladins looked at him with new wary eyes. He had to prove himself all over again - that he was Keith, prickly and reckless and fiercely devoted to Voltron. Only half as human as before.

“Okay,” Griffin replied, and the word hung in the air with the expectation of an unanswered question.

When Keith failed to respond, Griffin glanced towards the ground, shoulders stiff.

“You,” the other boy began, then swallowed. Then coughed. Keith had never seen him so transparently uncertain, and that filled him with dread at the next words to come. “You two seem close.”

Keith was faintly ill at the implication. And yet he had the strangest urge laugh, tempered only by his mortification.

“Whatever you’re thinking,” Keith said, almost as a warning. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it? Griffin’s tone was sharp now, almost demanding, and when he stepped closer to Keith the strength of his scent made his head spin. “Why did she-?”

“She’s my mother!” Keith snapped, angry and defensive in the face of an emotion he couldn’t bring himself to understand. “Krolia, she’s my mom.”

Griffin was staring at him, and if Keith had thought his gaze was piercing before, he felt practically transparent beneath it now.

“What,” Griffin said slowly. “Are you talking about?”

It was a familiar precipice, standing on the edge of cliff that two words would send him plummeting over. He couldn’t see the bottom. Couldn’t read Griffin’s expression.

“I’m-”

Keith stopped, his fingers rising to brush the edge of the bandage on his arm. The incision throbbed once, briefly, a burst of pain in resonance with his pulse.

“Galra.”

Chapter Text

“I’m… Galra.”

The words came slowly, reluctantly. They came like an admittance of guilt, but James could only detect anxiousness in Keith’s scent as the words dropped from his lips, heavy as lead anchors.

That, more than anything, convinced him. Not the strangely familiar angles of Krolia’s face, or her unusual closeness with Keith, or Keith’s own track record of being a bearer of all manner of absurd half-truths. For all Keith’s bluster, James knew he wasn’t without fear. But he was always fearful with a reason.

And this reason seemed to be James himself, who could only stare back as the significance of Keith’s words set in.

Galra.

What were the Galra to James? Conquerors. Warriors. Conquistadors of the planet Earth.

Allies, too. Beings of muscle and mass, with reflexes as feline as the the swathes of fur that covered their dexterous limbs. They were a race of pilots and travellers - always in motion, traversing a universe wider than human beings could even begin to comprehend.

James laughed, once.

It bubbled out suddenly, unexpectedly, more of a bark than a breath. Keith flinched at the sound, hand dropping from the line of bandages wrapped along the swell of his bicep.

“Why are you-?” Keith started, then stopped. Stared. He gaped at James for a breath longer before his dark brows snapped together in consternation. “I said that my mother is Galra. I’m Galra. I’m only half-human.”

And then James was truly laughing, the kind of doubled-over, near silent mirth that left him breathless.

“Of course,” he gasped, “Of course you are.”

Keith was staring at him in a kind of abject despair, his expression torn between affronted and absolutely bewildered. It only made James laugh even harder.

But the bafflement on Keith’s face was quickly turning to anger as he defaulted to his steady-state condition of defensive. Prickly.

“It’s not a joke.”

“No,” James breathed, trying to slow the body-shaking laughs that still threatened to choke him. “I don’t think it is.”

Because if there was anything, any hidden truth in this world that could make the existence of a creature as baffling as Keith Kogane make sense, it was that half of him didn’t belong to this world in this first place.

An alien, James brain supplied helpfully. Only halfway human. The thought of it satisfied James, oddly, like the answer to question that had been niggling him in the back of his mind for years.

“Then why are you laughing?” Keith asked.

Because I should have known. From the first day in that classroom, Keith had been other. Different.

“I think I’m in shock,” James said instead, which might have been true, but also didn’t begin to explain the strange sense of glee that filled him.

Keith fixed his gaze on the ground. “You aren’t-” He stopped, choking on a word. “You aren’t... angry?” he finally finished, but it hadn’t seemed liked the question he’d started asking at all in the first place.

“I know it may be hard to believe, but not everyone’s knee-jerk reaction to any kind of shocking news is to snap at the person who delivers it,” James replied, crossing his arms.

“It is shocking, isn’t it?” Keith repeated, expression somewhat dazed. It was vacant and a little bit vulnerable and shouldn’t have been endearing. But it was. The tension was slowly draining from his scent, replaced by the warm, palpable tones of relief. James wanted to press his nose to the skin of Keith’s throat and breath it in.

“I mean, you don’t look all that Galra,” James opted to say instead.

Except Keith did, actually, in the wide purple lenses of his catlike eyes. His hair was that wild, otherworldly black. And the lines of lean muscle tapering to the delicate joints of his wrists and ankles were nothing less than impossible for a human to inherit.

“My dad was human,” Keith said awkwardly. “So... yeah.”

James didn’t particularly want to dwell on the mechanics of that piece of information. Keith must have seen it in his expression because his face colored red in an instant.

“Sorry,” the omega muttered. “You probably didn’t want to hear that.”

James laughed, again, because the flush across the tops of of Keith’s cheekbones was as rare as it was exhilarating. The idea of Keith being embarrassed, in any capacity, was almost more startlingly than the revelation of his Galra heritage.

Keith returned the smile tentatively, and it hurt James to witness how fragile the expression looked on his face. It was the expression of someone who had reached out before, only to flinch backward with burns across his hands. James could see it, in his hesitation. Smell it, in his relief. The news of his Galra heritage couldn’t have been accepted as readily by others in the past.

The thought of it sobered him, slightly, and James felt the smile on his face fall away as he looked at Keith.

“No, I’m sorry,” James said finally. “I’m not mocking you. It’s nothing like that. I just-” He stopped, frustrated that he couldn’t seem to find the words to match to whatever Keith’s bloodline meant to him. James shook his head. “I guess I’m just not as surprised as I should be.”

“Well it’s definitely not the reaction I was expecting,” Keith said carefully. Cautiously. Like James could at any moment fall into another fit of hilarity.

“Why? What did you expect?”

Keith hesitated. When he spoke, it was with a kind of plodding reluctance. “I only found out about my mother months after we left Earth. That she was Galra, I mean. I didn’t know. The team didn’t know. I didn’t know how they were going to react then.”

James couldn’t imagine that - suddenly learning half of you was the very thing you were fighting so hard to eliminate. To be the only Galra in a room full of people that had made it their mission to oppose them.

“The other Paladins were...” Keith trailed off. “Less accepting to begin with.”

“Even Shirogane?”

“Not Shiro,” Keith amended quickly. Because of course the captain would take Keith’s alien ancestry in stride. “Allura - the princess - she was… hurt. Her people had suffered unforgivably at the hands of the Galra. And the other Paladins acted like I was suddenly a different person.” He laughed darkly. “Galra Keith.”

“Galra Keith,” James repeated thoughtfully.

Keith glanced up at him. His eyelashes were so long they cast shadows onto his cheeks. Unearthly. “It doesn’t sound quite so much like a curse when you say it that way.”

“It’s not a curse,” James stated. “If anything, it makes so many things about you make way more sense.”

“What? The aggression? The fights?” Keith said bitterly.

“No.” James considered the other boy, the tips of his black hair stuck to his pale face like dark branches covering the moon. Keith was ethereal. “You just never seemed to belong here. Not the Garrison. Not even Earth, I guess.”

Keith stared at him like he’d said something profound. Or perhaps something insulting, because his face was curiously blank and James realized his words could have come off as less than polite.

But when Keith spoke, it wasn’t anger he heard in his voice.

“I thought so too,” Keith said softly. “It never felt right, being here. I think I spent more time looking up than anywhere else. At anyone else.”

That was true. If Keith had spent as much of his life staring at the people around him as James did staring at him, his fixation might actually have been noticed by the other boy.

Keith picked at a loose thread on the edge of his hospital gown, and James had to force himself not to speak to fill the silence. He had the unshakable feeling Keith was trying to say something, to form some sequence of words and then find a voice for them. All he could do was wait.

“I… ” Keith faltered. “Didn’t expect to come back.”

“To the Garrison?”

Keith glanced away. “To Earth.”

Didn’t expect. There was a lot of significance in those two words, and even more between them.

“Did you… want to?” James asked carefully. “Come back, I mean.”

Keith stared at him, eyes wide.

“No,” he breathed. “I don’t think I did.”

No.

“What about now?”

What about me? Did you think about me even once in the stars?

James thought about Keith exactly twice since his disappearance: once as he was speeding away in a dust cloud on a Garrison-issue speeder. The second time was every day after that until he reappeared on Earth.

Keith’s fingers traced the bandage on the inside of his arm again, the action almost compulsive.

“Now I feel like I belong even less,” Keith said. “But I don’t regret coming back.”

James didn’t want to a consider Earth’s future if Keith and the other Paladins had not returned. It was no future, after all. Just fragments of rock floating in space for all time.

“Is this a secret?” James asked. “You being Galra?”

It was strange how completely not strange those words sounded, the way they hung in the air between them with a kind of offhand nonchalance. It was harder for James to understand how he hadn’t heard about this until now, how he’d never made the connection between Keith and Krolia.

Keith offered his bandaged arm as an answer.

“If it ever was, it’s not anymore,” he said, and James finally realized what he was seeing. He’d overheard conversations about the surgeries, the trackers. The Galra being tagged like wild animals. The idea of it tasted like pennies in his mouth: cold and metallic and a little too close to blood for comfort.

“But I’ll admit I don’t go around introducing myself as the half-alien offspring of the race that tried to enslave Earth,” Keith finished.

James couldn’t tear his eyes away from the deceptively innocent swath of bandages, the injustice they obscured.

“You shouldn’t have to,” James said finally. “Hide it, I mean. After everything you and the other Paladins did for us. I can’t believe Iverson would- that the Garrison would allow-”

Frustration cut his words short, trapping his indignation in the tension of his throat.

Keith’s laugh was brittle. “You’re actually surprised the same people that strapped their golden boy to a gurney before asking him any questions are willing to segregate humankind from the species that tried to enslave them? Jesus, you really are an idealist, Griffin.”

James flushed, angry at the implication of naivety and flustered at the sound of his name on Keith’s lips.

“Well, considering you saved humankind I think a little common courtesy might have been earned at this point,” James snapped.

Keith laughed again, but it was less sharp, more like an exhale of amusement then derision.

“Never thought I’d see the day James Griffin argued with me about the undue respect I deserve. Guess things really have changed.”

There was something nearly fond, almost wistful in his scent. James wondered if he could remember the simpler days of their petty rivalry as clearly as he did.

Unlikely. Keith was nothing if not sentimental.

“People don’t change,” James said. In the open air, the words sounded more like a promise than he’d intended. “Not really.”

Keith gave him a long look, considering. It took all the steel in James’ nerves not to look away. The omega’s gaze was unapologetic, like Keith knew it stretched the comfortable lengths of human interaction and remained totally unrepentant at the fact.

“I’m being discharged tomorrow,” Keith said suddenly. He started walking towards the entrance of the hospital, leaving James no choice but to follow or be left behind. For a moment, James considered it. “Moving into the Atlas with the other Paladins.”

James felt a flutter in his stomach, reminiscent of the kind of jolt he used to feel during takeoffs as he steered his fighter away from the confines of gravity.

When they had both been cadets at the Garrison, omegas and betas had been housed in the opposite side of the housing wing from the alpha dormitory. The idea of Keith living so near to him now was jarring. Exhilarating, almost, if James would consider it longer than the second he allowed himself before pushing the thought to the back of his mind.

“That’s good,” he said with false nonchalance as they reached the doors to the hospital. They parted before them, and James trailed a step behind Keith as they moved inside. The viridian calm of the garden disappeared behind glass doors as the more sterile lull of the lobby surrounded them. “Voltron’s been dead in the water since you were admitted to the med ward. I’m sure the other Paladins will be happy to see you flying again.”

Keith’s mouth twisted, an expression James couldn’t read as either a grimace or a smile.

“Right.” He continued his walk forward, and despite Keith’s smaller stature James found himself taking longer strides to maintain pace with the other boy.

“Where are you going?” James asked pointedly. “The elevator bank is over there.”

“Stairs.”

James reached out to grab Keith’s wrist to stop him, but pulled back at the last second. He saw a flicker of violet as Keith tracked the movement from the corner of his eyes.

“You should take the elevator,” James said, careful to not make the suggestion sound like an order, though he was suddenly taken by the urge to plant himself in front of the door to the stairwell in a one-man blockade. “You just had surgery.”

Keith pulled up short, leaving them stranded in the middle of the hospital lobby. It was nearly empty, but the few patrons seated in the open area eyed them curiously. James wasn’t blind to how recognizable both their faces were on the Garrison campus.

“Why do you care? I’ll be cleared to start flying again tomorrow, right? A few flights of stairs aren’t going to hurt.”

“Call it a natural aversion to watching other people be self-destructive,” James said casually.

Keith scuffed one hospital-issue slipper against the linoleum, not looking at him. “You might not want to hang around me so much then. It’s kind of my brand.”

Before James had the chance to refute the accusation that he hung around Keith at all, a voice cut into their conversation.

“Kogane.”

Both pilots turned at the unfamiliar voice, though Keith’s shoulders went noticeably hunched at the interruption. A doctor stood nearby, a datapad in hand and a surprising lack of lines on the man’s face belying his age.

The white of the man’s lab coat had been a near camouflage where he leaned, or lurked, against the equally stark pillar of the hospital lobby. Still, James wasn’t sure how he’d missed the man, given the violently orange hue of the his hair, a color so striking it could only be natural. Everything about him seemed saturated - from his painfully white coat to the offensively bright hair to the pale chips of glacier ice that cut narrow eyes into his face. There was something a little too eager in his gaze as he stared at Keith behind a pair of frameless eyeglasses. But it was nothing like the attentiveness James instinctively turned towards him.

James wasn’t sure he could call it hostile, either, but it wasn’t exactly friendly. He shifted restlessly.

“Kogane,” the doctor repeated. “You’re scheduled for a few more routine tests before your discharge tomorrow. We weren’t expecting you to be up and about so soon after surgery.”

He used a royal “we” but was noticeably alone, and was still staring at Keith with an uncomfortable fixation. His posture made it so that he leaned towards them with a barely veiled eagerness, and James felt himself stepping forward just slightly to read the scent of the man’s dynamic.

Beta. It was faint, from where he was standing, but recognizably neutral in nature. Inherently nonthreatening. James relaxed slightly, shifting backwards. He’d stepped halfway in front of Keith without realizing it.

When he glanced down, James saw Keith’s hand had risen to hide the bandage on his arm once again. The motion was almost defensive in nature. The doctor’s eyes tracked the movement, unblinking.

“I’m fine, though,” Keith said. The inherent need to push back against others’ demands seemed to be instinctive to him. James suppressed a smile at that.

The datapad was waved haphazardly in their direction. “Oh, you know how Garrison protocol is. We have our boxes to tick.”

Keith stiffened next to him, and James realized they were standing so close he could feel the tension radiating from the other boy. He tasted the sharp bite of anger in the air, tempered only slightly by Keith’s naturally sweet scent.

James felt his lip curl. “Hey. He’s a patient, not some reminder on your calendar for you to check off.”

“Don’t.” James felt a tug on his arm and he glanced down in surprise to see Keith’s fingers gripping the cuff of his sleeve so tightly his fingers were white. “I’ll go.”

James waited silently for Keith to release him, and he did so slowly, as if not realizing he’d been holding his sleeve at all. His scent was dark with dislike as he edged towards the doctor.

Keith had made only a few steps forward when he turned to face James again.

“Thanks, by the way,” Keith said. He seemed to have trouble meeting James eyes, which was both a disappointment and a relief.

James could still feel the ghost of his fingers against his arm. If he looked down, he wondered if the fabric of his uniform would be wrinkled. “For what?”

Keith shrugged. “Not running away screaming, I guess? Or trying to fight me. You took the news surprisingly well.”

It hadn’t seemed liked James’ reaction to his Galra heritage should have mattered this much. Mattered at all. The fact that it did had James struggling to suppress all evidence of fondness that might be on his face.

“I did laugh at you,” James pointed out with forced nonchalance. He was very conscious of the doctor still standing silently in the lobby, watching their exchange.

“Your reaction was at least interesting.” The faintest evidence of a smile was tucked into the corner of Keith’s mouth. Then he was gone, leaving only the scent of cinnamon and burning woods to linger in the air.

It wasn’t until Keith had disappeared into the elevator bank with the doctor did James realize he’d mirrored the action unconsciously, a quirk in his lips.

Interesting.

He was oddly proud of the word. More than he was of “outstanding cadet” or “role model” or “Garrison’s brightest.”

Interesting.

James laughed again.

James was still smiling faintly as he made his way to his room in the wing that had been designated for the four MFE pilots in the sprawling expanse of Atlas’s interior. He probably looked half-mad, lips curled upwards as the door parted before him to reveal the common room that connected the four sleeping chambers of the MFE pilots.

His fellow pilots were in various positions of sprawl across the L-shaped couch of the common room. Nadia was hanging off the edge of it, her feet in the air and glasses askew as a steady stream of words poured from her mouth. Ryan looked equally as casual, if not quite as upside down. He was seated in the corner of the couch next to Ina though there was plenty of room for the two of them to have taken seats further apart. His arm lay stretched behind her on the backrest of the couch.

Ina’s posture was as ramrod straight as ever. James had a theory she had been trained to walk with a book on her head like some kind of medieval princess, leaving her with the most enviable posture in the entire Garrison.

She was a far cry from a princess, though her vocabulary may as well have been from medieval times.

It was Ryan that noticed him first, giving him a simple, “James,” by way of greeting.

“Hey, what’s up?” James asked, stopping at the threshold with an arm braced on the doorway. There was something expectant about the energy in the room.

“It’s Ina’s family!” Nadia shot up and turned to him immediately, before Ina herself could answer. Nadia’s eyes glittered behind the frames of her glasses, as excited as James had ever seen her.

“Did you find them?” James asked, smile stretching across his face even wider. His heart swelled at the idea, the possibility that Ina might finally be reunited with them years after the initial Galra invasion. The Leifsdottirs had been taken during the first wave of attacks, before any precautions could have been put in place, and had been sent to one of the highest security labor camps on the planet along the northernmost border of Canada. Surveillance missions had confirmed their survival over the duration of the humanity’s ongoing war, but the Garrison never had the manpower to breach that Arctic fortress. “Are they here?”

“Not exactly.” Ina’s fingers fluttered, a barely noticeable tic that evidenced her excitement in a way the calm smile on her face did not. “But an extraction team is to be sent out this week to begin transporting prisoners back to their homes. I’ve calculated their estimated arrival date to be within the upcoming fortnight.”

“That’s two weeks,” Nadia translated, nodding sagely.

“I know,” James told her snidely, then turned a much more sincere smile to Ina. “I’m so glad to hear that, Leif. I know you’ve waited a long time to see them again.”

“We’re all happy for you,” Ryan assured her.

James eyes flickered to his expression, trying to gauge the emotion there. Ryan had lost his parents in the horrific way innocents suffered in any war. They hadn’t even made it to the labor camps before his hometown had gone up in flames under the trigger-happy hands of one Galra admiral.

Most people would have crumbled beneath the loss. But Ryan Kinkade threw himself into his role as an MFE pilot with the same kind of steady determination he threw at most things in his life. It was only in the quietest moments of the night through paper thin dormitory walls did James know his best friend was never quite as unshakable as he seemed.

The warmth in his expression now as he looked at Ina seemed genuine, no bitterness or envy marring his face. His clean beta scent was markedly clear any emotion but happiness and the softness of shared relief. James smiled again.

As if sensing James’ attention turned on him, Ryan glanced at him curiously.

“What’s got you in such a good mood anyways?” he asked after a pause, shifting to cross his arms against his chest. “I mean, other than Ina’s news.”

“Yeah,” Nadia chimed in. “You were already grinning like a lunatic when you walked in here.”

“I was not,” he answered automatically, “Grinning. I was barely smiling.”

“I saw teeth, James,” Nadia said. “Teeth.”

James stalled, the difference between honesty and courtesy a sudden question.

Is this a secret? James had asked Keith. While Keith hadn’t said yes, his answer still wasn’t a decisive no either. And it felt wrong to speak on his behalf, even if James was loathe to guard another one of Keith’s unspoken truths.

If he was being honest, he was scared as well. Scared that the others would see Keith differently, or resent him, or reject him. Ryan, he knew, would never forget how his family suffered at the hands of the Galra, though he’d never been outwardly antagonistic to their Galra allies. And Ina’s family was technically still missing, despite the recent good news. She had always seemed too level-headed for grudges. But it wasn’t James' place to speak, nonetheless.

What’s one more of Keith’s secrets to keep? James thought wryly.

“I just enjoy being proven right,” he said instead, an answer cryptic enough to satisfy his conscience. Ina’s gaze was considering, Ryan’s exasperated. Nadia looked like her attention was already waning.

“You really are miserable to be around when you’re smug,” she said, sinking deeper into the couch.

“I’m mostly smug,” James said, just to irritate her.

“You’re mostly miserable,” she agreed.

Before he could snap back, Ina cut in with her analytical deadpan. “Griffin has been in a dire state of unrest lately. What with his self-imposed exile from the parameters of the medical wing most recently.”

“English, Leif,” he sighed, but he couldn’t hide his embarrassment at being called out for the obvious distress his inner battle to visit Keith in the hospital had caused him. “I went there today, anyways, so consider my exile over.”

He crossed the room to the small kitchenette in the common area, conscious of how quiet it had become behind him.

“Oh?” Nadia finally asked, her voice high and questioning and devious. “Must have gone well.”

“When’s Keith getting released anyways?” Ryan asked abruptly. “We should start running drills with Voltron soon.”

James was glad he’d waited to drink the glass of water he’d just finished pouring, because he was fairly certain he would have choked on it had he been mid-swallow.

“Ouch, Ryan, right in for the kill,” Nadia said, but when James whirled around to glare at them she was smirking.

“He’s getting discharged tomorrow,” James said shortly. “I’ll start setting up a training schedule soon.”

Nadia clapped her hands decisively “Excellent! Housewarming party tomorrow night then, in the Paladin dorms.”

James had mistakenly taken a mouthful of water in, believing the worst behind him, and he inhaled a lungful of it with a wracking cough.

Ina frowned her disapproval. “I do not think it would be appropriate to invite ourselves unannounced. Besides, the Atlas is hardly a house.”

Nadia brushed off her protests with a dismissive wave, already pulling out a tablet. “I’ll message Lance then and ask them. He’s the funnest one, he’ll agree.”

“Funnest is not a word,” Ina said immediately.

“That does not sound fun,” James rasped, having finally regained the ability to speak. “That actually sounds like the opposite of fun, and incredibly awkward, and something we absolutely do not need to do.” Nadia continued typing away blithely. James turned a pleading gaze to his best friend, the only other voice of reason he could rely on. “Ryan?”

Ryan’s expression was serious, save the amusement in his eyes, as he shrugged a noncommittal response. “Doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me. We haven’t really got much of a chance to do some team building since the Paladins arrived. And it’s been years since we spoke to most of them, outside of field commands.”

“Field commands are good.” Field commands are safe. Field commands won’t end with me staring at Keith across his dorm as my friends throw pointed comments every which direction and embarrass me. “I like field commands.”

“You also like five a.m. morning runs. I do not trust your judgement on fun,” Nadia said, still tapping away. “All right! Lance said yes. Tomorrow night at seven in the Paladin dorms. Hunk’s making food.”

“And what about Keith? Shouldn’t Keith also agree?” James asked, exasperated.

“You really want to give Lone Wolf himself a heads up to avoid this? I can see him ditching in an instant. He doesn’t let anyone without Paladin armor within a five foot radius of him, and we need to change that.” Nadia clapped her hands, once, decisively. “With a surprise attack.”

James remembered the warmth of Keith’s arm next to him, and the distinct lack of five feet between them.

This was still a very bad idea.

This was actually an even worse idea, the longer James thought about it.

“Can we really call him Lone Wolf now that he adopted an actual wolf?” Ryan mused.

“I think the question is more can we call him anything except Lone Wolf ?” Nadia threw her tablet down at the end of the couch dramatically.

“We can call him Kogane,” Ina replied flatly.

Nadia sighed. “Rhetorical questions, Ina-bean. We’ve been over this.”

James resisted the urge to scream.

The following evening came alarmingly fast, with the kind of speed only a dreaded type of thing can have. Not that James was exactly dreading Nadia’s self-proclaimed “housewarming.” But if he was, it was with the strange kind of gleeful dread that seemed to fill him in Keith’s general vicinity.

The Paladins’ quarters were only a few hallways away from the MFE’s own rooms, something James simultaneously noted and decided to forget as soon as he learned. Nadia was the one to knock on the door of the Paladins’ common room, a relentless pounding that half-convinced James she would have bruises on her knuckles the next day.

The door slid apart with an exhale of hydraulics and James’ team was met with the sight of Allura, whose bright smile showed how utterly unphased she was by Nadia’s aggressive knocking.The Altean princess was dressed casually, in the closest thing to human clothing as James had ever seen her in, and her hair was a loose white cloud against her back.

“Welcome!” she exclaimed, her voice a cheerful but more refined reflection of Nadia’s own energy. “You’re right on time. Come in, please!”

James had never met a princess before Allura, let alone an alien one. But he imagined there was some kind of biological default that made her just as regal in the comfort of a long sweater and leggings as she was in sleek lines of her Paladin armor. The four MFE pilots followed her into the common room with a chorus of “Hi,” “Hellos,” and one errant “Now the party can start!” from Nadia.

The layout of the Paladins’ common room was similar to their own - dimensions slightly larger, couches a little longer - but featuring the same bare bones structure.

It had been transformed, however, by an overgrowth of plants that seemed to have been placed haphazardly in any open corner and cranny and the soft glow of string lights that hung from above. The effect should have been chaotic. But there was something comforting about it - something inherently human in a space that was designed to be anything but.

James gaze went, helplessly, across the room as he searched automatically for a familiar head of unruly black hair.

In jeans and a dark gray thermal, Keith should have looked ordinary. But, in the way Allura remained royalty in the cramped space of what might have passed for a high-tech college dorm, Keith remained otherworldly. The string lights reflected off the top of his hair, turning it a bluish black. Even more striking was the way the glow was trapped by his eyes. James watched as Keith angled his head slightly, and his eyes shone with the strange golden reflection of a cat’s at night for an instant. Then he shifted again, and it disappeared so fast James might have imagined it.

It had only been a day since they parted ways at the medical wing, but James felt like he was seeing the Keith of three years past returned to him all over again. He was familiar in an unfamiliar way. Galra, but then he’d always been Galra.

James remembered the day Keith had returned to the Garrison - his sudden appearance in the wreckage of one of Earth’s destroyed cities. It wasn’t until they had reached the Garrison hanger that James finally let the knowledge sink in, that he acknowledged the reality that Keith was a very visceral arrangement of blood and bones in front of him. He’d fixated the weight of his stare on the other pilot, imploring Keith to search for him. To see him.

In retrospect, James wasn’t sure what made him do it. It wasn’t in his nature to be impulsive, or spontaneous. He’d chalk it up later to the fading buzz of adrenaline after the fight, or the sudden shock of seeing Keith Kogane standing there in the hanger of the Garrison like he had any right to appear without a warning, years later, as a pseudo-savior of man. Keith - who’d looked simultaneously older and yet not old enough, whose eyes were still that unearthly shade of murky indigo and yet dark with something James saw mirrored in flashes of own reflection.

His hair was longer, more black and more wild than James remembered from his Garrison days. It disappeared beneath the collar of the strange red and black armor that covered his lithe frame. There was faint scar across Keith’s cheek, a mark stretching from the elegant line of his jaw up the right side of his face. It did nothing to lessen his beauty, and James’ fingers inexplicably itched to touch it and read the story in the pinkish skin.

He resisted the urge by crossing his arms, leaning back against his fighter in what he could only hope was a deceptively casual stance. His pulse throbbed against his wrist, his vision suddenly sharp with the same kind of clarity that overtook him in the heat of battle. But there was no danger, only Keith, standing and speaking and decidedly more captivating than his consciousness had been able to dream up over the last three years. James’ memories had dulled him somehow, but time had only made the inexplicable draw stronger.

He felt that pull tighten, and then Keith was finally turning to look at him across the hanger floor. James found himself reaching up to pull off his helmet, unable to look away from Keith as he did so. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for as they locked gazes, the fiberglass of his helmet no longer a barrier between them.

Realistically, recognition was all he could expect for from the other boy, though resentment might have been more likely. Perhaps if James was more optimistic, he could have hoped for acceptance, for acknowledgement that he had also grown and changed in the years they’d spent apart.

But James turned to leave before he could read anything behind Keith’s reciprocating gaze beyond faint recognition. His body protested the action, the kind of incessant pull that always seemed to force his and Keith’s paths together calling him back even as he walked away.

Helmet tucked firmly beneath his arm, he could have sworn he inhaled Keith’s scent on his next steadying breath. But James was too far away to scent the other boy across the hanger.

Too far, he repeated to himself as a mantra even as the familiar smell of burning leaves and cloves made his teeth ache. He had to have been imagining it, the ghost of Keith’s markedly omega scent pulled from his memory after years of his absence.

James could taste it on the back of his tongue all the way back to his quarters.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Allura said warmly, pulling James from his memories and back into the increasingly crowded space of the Paladin dorm. The array of couches were already half-filled, Shirogane and the blonde Altean seated on opposite ends of one while Keith and Lance sat on another with the enormous space wolf at Keith’s feet.

Nadia wasted no time filling the gap on the couch as she plopped down next to the Altean, who James vaguely remembered was named Romelle.

“Nice plants,” Ryan deadpanned, brushing one stray vine from the armrest of an empty ottoman to sit. “Courtesy of Mrs. Holt?”

“You know it,” the voice of the Green Paladin replied. James had to glance down to find where it had come from. Pidge sat curled up at the feet of the couch Keith was seated at, petting the wolf that lay next to her with a steady rhythm of someone who had forgotten they were doing something. She looked so much like a child then that James felt nauseous - sick of the memory of her small figure in a hospital bed only days earlier, horrified at the circumstances that put her there.

What kind of people are we, he thought darkly, to use children as soldiers?

The Green Paladin met his gaze then, as if sensing James’ scrutiny. There was nothing childlike in the calculating glint in her eyes, something much more sentient than the simple reflection of her glasses. He looked away.

And directly at Lance, who was the closest person in James’ direct line of vision that wasn’t named Keith. The two paladins were caught in a casual conversation, too low for him to hear across the room. He watched Keith’s lips move, heard the indecipherable hum of his voice against the din of the common room. And then Lance laughing - white teeth against tan skin.

James remembered Lance, in the way he remembered all the vaguest things about Keith. There had been little remarkable about the other boy, except perhaps the unusually bright blue of his eyes and the way his addition to the fighter class reminded James every day during roll call that Keith wasn’t coming back. How he could no longer make out a head of messy black hair just to his left in his peripheral vision. How the soft rasp of Keith’s voice was replaced by an offensively chipper tone calling out “Present!” further down the line.

And so James remembered Lance, if only for the way his bumbling failures in the simulator made Keith’s absence even more glaringly obvious. But there was little to recognize in the Lance that had returned to Earth - not the easy confidence of his wide stance or the surety his his grip along the handle of a rifle. Gone was the boy that had spent his Garrison days chasing a pipe dream of becoming Keith’s rival, and then, becoming Keith. The man that took his place, in Paladin armor almost as blue as his peculiar eyes, was foreign to James.

Not, James thought, as foreign as the expression on Keith’s face as he looked at Lance. There was as softness there, a familiarity that made something inside James bristle. He recognized the affection in the easy way Lance slung his arm over Keith’s shoulders as the same kind of trust and partnership he had with Ryan, but the ugly swell of resentment still prickled the back of James’ neck at the sight of it.

The Keith he knew didn’t smile so easily - couldn’t - and that suddenly made him feel like maybe he didn’t know Keith at all. That maybe his own dreams of beating the former cadet’s sim scores or earning his coveted top spot on the ranking had made him just as much as a fool as Lance. That every derisive snort he’d given to Lance’s blustering back when they were students had been an added tick mark against James on the teetering scale of his own karmic balance.

There were two people laughing now. And James wasn’t one of them.

“Lighten up.” Ryan’s voice cut through his thoughts with its bemused tone. “You’re glaring lasers into Lance’s head.”

“I’m not,” James countered immediately, but he took the vacant seat across from Shirogane with more aggression than was perhaps necessary. Shirogane acknowledged his arrival with quiet smile over Nadia’s chatter.

“Don’t tell me they have the captain of the Atlas bunking in the dorms like a regular old pilot,” Nadia was saying. “I hope they at least gave you a bigger bed. Or an actual window.”

Shirogane’s warm smile twitched, a spasm so subtle James thought he might have imagined it.

“I’m not stationed with the other Paladins, actually. My quarters are much closer to the bridge.” Shirogane didn’t say it with any kind of pride, no trace of a brag in his voice. If anything, there was a tense note of forced cheer to his words. “I just came down today to help Keith move in.”

“If by ‘move in’ you mean dump his armor and a bunch of swords here and spend the rest of the day in an impromptu training strategy meeting,” Pidge drawled. “Sure.”

“Strategy?” James asked, interest peaked and unable to help himself. “As in joint maneuvers with Voltron and the Atlas?”

“We’d like to get some practice coordinating attack strategies with the two teams before we ship out,” Shirogane said, leaning forward onto his elbows. There was an eagerness in his posture that mirrored James’ own; not a thrill-seeking kind of abandon, but one with purpose. Focus.

“Count us in,” James replied.

“Hey there, Leader,” Nadia cut in testily. “There’s four of us here and we each have a mouth.”

“Spoken like an alpha,” Pidge said, and James balked at the teasing lilt to her voice.

“I mean- I just-” James faltered, suddenly very aware how most of the eyes room had now turned to him.

Very aware of a single set of violet ones.

Very wary.

“Reminds me of Veronica.” Lance jumped into the conversation with the ease of someone who spent more time talking than not. “I don’t know if it’s the alpha in her just that classic McClain charisma but she’s always making decisions like-”

James politely tuned him out, and practically leapt from his seat to help carry in the food from the kitchen when Hunk peaked his head around the corner. Keith still hadn’t said a word to him, which felt strange, but James felt even stranger for thinking that it was strange in the first place.

It wasn’t like he expected Keith to be happy to see him again. It definitely wasn’t the memory of the small smile tucked into the corner of Keith’s mouth in a hospital lobby.

James felt like he was back in the hanger, helmet off, caught in a direct line of sight.

Too far away from Keith to say anything.

Too close to look away.

Chapter Text

The concept of a party was something that had become somewhat less daunting to Keith since first leaving Earth - perhaps necessitated by the Paladins’ frequent appearances at formal banquets where diplomacy was spoken as a second language. He still didn’t look forward to them. But facing a six-course meal with utensils almost certainly not designed for a bipedal being was a much different experience than a casual get-together in the Paladins’ new dorms.

If he was entirely honest, Keith didn’t hate curling up next to Shiro on the couch of the common room as Romelle sandwiched him into the cushions on his other side. It was nice, in a way he was reluctant to admit, after the sterile walls of the hospital. He kind of wished someone would run their fingers through his hair. It was a thought he didn’t dwell on.

Lance, Pidge, and Rizavi were seated on the floor playing a game on an entertainment system the youngest Paladin had rigged up before Keith had even arrived. It was noisy and colorful, but the images looked flat and unimpressive on the projection of the screen. Keith had never understood the concept of 2D video games, not back when he used to spend every moment possible in the flight simulator and especially not now when he had the controls of a sentient ship at his fingertips. Virtual reality paled in comparison.

The rest of the Paladins and MFE pilots were spread out around the common room. Leifsdottir was discussing something with Matt, who’d shown up uninvited and unapologetic and still managed to be one of the friendliest faces in the room. The two of them were engaged in an animated conversation - or at least Matt was. Leifsdottir appeared to be listening with her usual blank-faced enthusiasm and only the occasional interjection to offer.

The couch shifted as Romelle rose suddenly, taking with her the body heat that had been warming the length of Keith’s right side. He used the newfound space to sit up, leaning over the coffee table that was still littered with the spread of snacks that had been set out earlier.

Keith shoved a handful of Hunk’s dubiously titled “space mix” into his mouth, in part because he was hungry but also because eating gave him something to do with idle hands and an empty mouth. But mostly because he was hungry.

He was ravenous, actually. The uncharacteristic gnawing of hunger in his stomach almost reminded him of-

“How’s the head injury, Kogane?”

Keith startled, instantly berating himself for being so unaware of his surroundings. Admittedly, he wasn’t used to playing buddy-buddy with a bunch of near strangers. The Paladins had long since passed that stage of necessary teamwork, and the presence of the four MFE pilots in the still unfamiliar dorm was disconcerting.

One of said MFEs was currently speaking to him - Kinkade, who was tall and broad and recognizably not Griffin. Keith refused to acknowledge the sour taste on his tongue as disappointment as Kinkade took the open seat on the couch next to him.

“It’s fine,” Keith said, hand rising instinctively to the place on his scalp where the bandage had lain. All that remained now was an angry-looking scab. “I think it looked a lot worse than it actually was.”

He had survived, so by Keith’s logic that was probably true.

“You gave us a good scare,” Kinkade said, and Keith wasn’t sure who the “us” in that sentence was. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “When the Captain pulled you out of there…” He shook his head. “It was pretty bad. James-”

“Ryan,” came a voice over Keith’s left shoulder, a little too loudly to be casual. It was immediately recognizable, Keith not even needing to turn around to know Griffin had come up behind him. Suddenly stuck in the awkward position of being unable to face both pilots at once, Keith twisted to the side.

Griffin’s voice had been level, but there was something in it that spoke of a hidden meaning. Maybe a warning, maybe something else. His scent was strong, nearly overpowering. Kinkade had gone oddly quiet.

“I need to talk to you about something,” Griffin stated plainly. It would have been easy to phrase it as a question, to replace the “I need” with a “Can I?” But he didn’t.

Keith glanced over at Griffin, and nearly wished he hadn’t because his arms were crossed over his chest and Keith was suddenly aware of biceps exposed beneath the short sleeves of his tee shirt. It had been a long time since Keith had seen Griffin in anything other than his uniform. The sight was nearly as unfamiliar as the new muscles that strained against his skin.

“Sure,” Kinkade said easily. Keith looked to him, then back at Griffin, just long enough to see the other pilot’s eyes flick away from him. There was something awkward about his stance, and his pointed avoidance of Keith’s gaze. Keith was immediately self-conscious in a way he hadn’t been when the MFEs had first walked through the door.

“Good to have you back, Kogane,” Kinkade said with a small smile. Keith returned it with a nod, still distracted by the scent of aggravation, or perhaps embarrassment, that was a steady barrage from Griffin. Kinkade stood to follow Griffin, leaving Keith to watch their backs disappear around the corner of the dormitory hall.

Without the two other pilots to distract him and a now-empty bowl of trail mix in front of him, Keith had no choice but to turn his attention to the conversation happening nearby. Rizavi had somehow moved from her seat in front of the TV to join Allura and Romelle who had begun some kind of impromptu Altean card game. Shiro watched the trio of women thoughtfully.

“Why not play Monsters and Mana?” Shiro suggested. From anyone else, it would have sounded petulant.

“You think Coran would allow anyone else to be the Game Master in his stead?” Allura asked. “Certainly not.”

Keith smiled a little at Shiro’s obvious disappointment

“Where’s Coran anyways?” Rizavi asked, looking around like she expected him to pop out from behind the sofa at the mere mention of his name. Knowing Coran, he might have.

“He tried to bring out a bottle of nunvill and Allura politely told him she thought Iverson might appreciate it more,” Shiro explained.

“What is nunvill?” Leifsdottir asked, looking intrigued.

“Nothing you want to try,” Lance said darkly, still hunched over his controller next to Pidge.

“I would have liked some,” Romelle said dejectedly.

It wasn’t long before their debate over the merits of the foul-tasting and suspiciously intoxicating Altean drink became a dull buzz around him. Keith drifted off with his knees curled up to his chest in the crook of the couch, unaware of the return of a set of steady gray eyes that surveyed him.

Keith woke the next morning feeling like he’d spent the night before at a much different party. He ached, but not in the way his experimentations with alcohol alone in the Arizona desert had resulted in. His limbs were heavy and every brush of fabric against his skin felt like sandpaper instead of cotton.

And he was still so hungry.

Pidge watched him over the rim of her glasses during breakfast like Keith was a particularly interesting science experiment.

“I didn’t know it was humanly possible to eat and breathe at the same time,” she noted. Keith declined an answer in favor of chewing on the second half of his second bagel. The pile of scrambled eggs and fruit on his plate had long since disappeared.

Even Hunk looked impressed from his seat across the cafeteria table.

“You do know we’re scheduled to be back from this morning’s mission before lunch, right?” the Yellow Paladin probed, awe coloring his voice.

“What mission?” Keith asked after he’d drained the glass of orange juice in front of him. He realized as an afterthought that it might have belonged to Pidge. But she looked on, amused, as he set it down empty.

“Shiro didn’t tell you? We’re taking the MFE pilots out to run some partner drills around our solar system,” Pidge informed him. “I’m with Leifsdottir. We’re going to Saturn!”

Keith frowned. “Partner drills?”

“Yep,” Hunk confirmed. “I’m partnered with Rizavi. Land and Allura are taking Kinkade. They’re headed out to Neptune, I think.”

It didn’t take a mathematician to calculate where that left Keith, but Hunk continued on anyways. “And you’re with Griffin again,” he announced cheerfully. “The two leaders!”

Keith set his bagel down, appetite suddenly abated.

“I thought we’d start training with the Atlas crew first,” he said. “Why are we taking the MFE’s off planet?”

“Well, it’s not like they’ve had the opportunity to leave Earth since the whole Galra occupation began,” Pidge said. Keith wondered if she intentionally coated her glasses with a reflective sheen to hide the sharpness of her hazel eyes. “Iverson thinks it will be good to give them experience before the actual launch date. The Lions are the fastest ships we’ve got.”

“Out to Jupiter and back before lunchtime,” Lance announced, coming up behind them to claim the seat next to Hunk. “Aw man, they were out of bagels by the time I got through the line,” he whined, eyeing the mostly untouched half of Keith’s bagel enviously.

“Take it,” Keith told him, pushing the plate away and standing up from the table.

“I didn’t mean to chase you off,” Lance said, but he took the offering anyways. Pidge’s fingers tapped a thoughtful rhythm on her chin as she watched the exchange.

“I’m not hungry anymore,” Keith announced, leaving both the cafeteria and Pidge’s bemusement behind him.

The awful thing about Keith and Griffin being the only occupants of the Black Lion was the way Griffin seemed to fill the space with his scent and his shoulders and his restless hands. His fingers tapped an uneasy rhythm on the dash all the way from Earth to Mercury, the planet the two pilots had been assigned to for the morning’s flight drills.

Griffin’s MFE fighter was safely stored in what was currently being used as a cargo bay in the open area of the Black Lion’s abdomen. A part of Keith wished Griffin had opted to stow himself away with his fighter. The quiet that settled between them in the much smaller space of the cockpit wasn’t comfortable. Even without the thrumming of Griffin’s fingers to remind him of his presence, Keith remained hyperware that he wasn’t alone.

Keith slowed his Lion to nearly a dead stop when the small, grayish planet finally appeared in front of them. Mercury was nearly a third of the size of the Earth, more like a small moon, and pockmarked with craters and stubbled rock. Despite its proximity to their sun, it looked cold and inhospitable.

A little like the atmosphere in here, Keith thought wryly. He set the Black Lion’s course for a slow orbit around the planet.

“Damn,” Griffin breathed. It was the first thing he’d said since the procedural exchanges of takeoff, and Keith turned in his seat slightly to read his expression. His face was open and unapologetically amazed, jaw slightly slack with what almost looked like disbelief.

Keith missed the little jump in his gut that used to come with the sight of a massive planet looming on the horizon. His time in the quantum abyss had tempered that awe, as if his brain could only process a limited amount of the fantastical before it stopped recognizing that something was absurd at all.

There was something heart-achingly familiar seeing that emotion reflected on the angles of Griffin’s face. Keith stared at him instead of the increasingly large silhouette of the planet, like he could see it through Griffin’s own eyes if he stared at him hard enough. The glowing purple lights from the dashboard illuminated the chiseled edge of Griffin’s jaw, but that wasn’t the reflection that lit his eyes.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Keith asked quietly. Griffin started at the sound of his voice and his expression shuttered, a stoic mask dropping back into place. Keith missed the openness that had been there - that kind of pure and unaffected awe - as soon as it was gone.

Griffin had been a fighter pilot like him, not training for exploration missions. But Keith imagined anyone who’d spent any time at all in the simulator couldn’t help the occasional daydream of seeing a real planet looming and up close.

“It’s something,” Griffin said finally. Keith snorted at his aloof tone.

“It’s okay to be impressed,” Keith said. “When we first left Earth-”

“Yeah, I know, you’ve seen it all before,” Griffin interrupted. The easy way he brushed him off stung more than Keith wanted to admit. Comforting people had always been a baffling thing to him; opening up to them was nothing short of terrifying. Rejection was at least a familiar sensation. “Let’s get out there and run some drills.”

The cockpit was suddenly much larger when Griffin left to board his fighter, and Keith was both relieved and disappointed to be alone as he opened the Lion’s bay door to allow the MFE’s release.

The next two hours were a series of maneuvers run around the diminutive planet, Keith having to consciously dial back the speed of his Lion to match the MFE fighter’s capabilities. His discussions with Griffin over the coms remained strictly technical, and Keith forced them through the most complicated maneuvers he knew as an excuse to avoid casual conversation.

When Griffin finally re-entered the cockpit of the Black Lion, Keith watched sidelong as he pulled his helmet off, leaving his brown hair slightly mussed. There was a light flush across his cheekbones and adrenaline scented the air of the cabin. Griffin’s expression was carefully neutral, but it was hard to be flippant when Keith could read his exhileration with a twitch of his nostrils.

But Griffin didn’t say anything to him, and it felt more awkward to initiate a conversation then sit motionless as the other pilot strapped into the makeshift seat behind him. So Keith let the silence stew.

“Charting a course back to Earth,” Keith said finally, when Griffin gave him a slight nod of confirmation. He wasn’t sure whose benefit the words were for.

At exactly the moment Keith’s fingers brushed the controls in front of him, intending to do exactly as he’d said, the cockpit went dark. Only the faint glow of the emergency lights illuminated the space with a ghostly iridescence.

Keith frowned. Black?

He prodded curiously at the mental link between them. Power supply was perfectly functional. Two hours of drills hadn’t even dented it, and the trip from Earth to Mercury was a dog walk for a ship as advanced as the Black Lion.

“What’s wrong?” Griffin asked, the darkness having stretched on long enough that even he seemed to sense this wasn’t normal.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Keith said, more reticent to admit a problem than actually be wrong.

It was another minute of ineffective key tapping before Griffin asked, “So why aren’t we moving?”

“She’s not responding,” Keith said, irritation now coloring his voice.

“What do you mean, not responding?” Griffin snapped.

Keith gestured towards the control panel exaggeratedly, the screens dark in front of him. “We’re dead in the water. The Black Lion won’t fly.”

“So what is it - some kind of mechanical malfunction?” Griffin sounded exasperated, which only went to further Keith’s anger. “Where? I’ll look at it.”

“It’s not that. All the systems are fine, she’s just not being…” he stalled, “receptive to my commands.”

“It’s a ship.” Griffin was staring at him like he’d spoken in the tongue of the Galra ancients instead of English. “You know - push a button, program some flight paths, steer with the controls? That kind of ship?”

“They’re sentient beings, not machines,” Keith bit out through gritted teeth. “I can only guide her. The controls are useless if she doesn’t want to respond.”

James stared at him for a long moment.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Then talk to it. Her. Whatever.” He waved a hand, brushing away the idea. Unimportant. “If she’s mad at you, apologize. Unless you want to be stuck in the center of the solar system with me until our oxygen runs out.”

Keith hated himself for how much he didn’t hate the idea. “The oxygen won’t run out,” he said instead. “The filtration system automatically recycles the-”

“Okay,” Griffin repeated, with distinctly more fervor. Keith scowled at him.

But he reached out to the Black Lion with his mind nonetheless, because this was a problem he couldn’t say he wasn’t responsible for. Keith eased along his connection with his lion for something wrong, something off. It only felt familiar and welcoming, like the sun-warmed rock of his favorite outcrop in the rocky hills of the Arizona desert. If anything, where Keith had expected to find disgruntlement fouling the bond between them he sensed only faint amusement. Black hadn’t shut him out. She’d just shut… down.

Please, he begged. I don’t know why you’re doing this, but let me back in.

“Nothing’s happening,” Griffin said, and Keith was struck with the sudden urge to eject him from airlock. “Are you sure you’re trying?”

“I’m trying!” he snapped, opening his eyes. His fingers carded through his hair in frustration.

Griffin shifted, expression halfway between uncomfortable and annoyed as his eyes flickered away from Keith. “Maybe you need to say it, out loud.”

“Maybe.” It was Keith’s turn to look uncomfortable. It felt odd, having an audience as he broached the connection between his Lion and himself. He’d never had to worry how strange the bond might seem to outsiders when he was surrounded by the other Paladins.

“Uh, Black, can we get moving? Please?” He almost winced at the sound of his awkwardness, but the feeling disappeared under the weight of his own desperation.

“Black, c’mon girl,” he coaxed, an edge of panic entering his voice. The controls remained unresponsive beneath his fingers. Instead, the metal walls around them rumbled with something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

“It’s useless,” Keith said finally, after minutes of alternating between pleading and nonverbal threats. “She’s playing with me for some reason. I don’t think she’s going to budge.” He banged his forehead lightly on the control pad in front of him. The impact was soundless. Black still didn’t move.

“So, what now?”

Griffin was standing stiffly, hands hanging at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them. Keith wasn’t sure what to do with him.

“I don’t know,” Keith admitted, sitting upright. He ran a distracted hand through his hair again, feeling the overlong strands tangle beneath his fingers. Griffin’s eyes tracked the motion. “I’m not tech-savvy like Pidge and Hunk.” Pidge would have already built some kind of short-range communication device from spare wires and a coffee mug by this point. “I guess we wait until someone notices we’ve been gone for too long.”

Griffin looked unimpressed. “And how long is too long?”

Keith laughed darkly. “Probably not long at all, given that I’m practically being watched like a high-security prisoner right now. They’ll probably assume I’ve kidnapped you and sold you off as a hostage to the Galra by the time people realize you’re missing too.”

“That’s stupid,” Griffin said in the painful silence that followed. Keith had meant the words to come out biting, snarky. But the self-deprecation felt weak, like an admittance of guilt. Griffin’s sympathy, however crude, softened it.

It wasn’t something Keith was about to tell him. “That’s the Garrison,” he said stiffly instead.

The quiet that fell between them felt less tense now. He had the sense that Griffin was thinking very hard about something, and Keith didn’t want to think very hard about that.

On Griffin’s next disgruntled exhale Keith watched a cloud of steam leave his a mouth, a fog of breath in a space he suddenly realized was dropping rapidly in temperature. Keith shivered.

Griffin seemed to have noticed his frozen breath as well, eyebrows drawing together in confusion.

“Does it feel colder to you, all of a sudden?”

“I think cutting the power did something to the Lion’s internal temperature regulating system,” Keith said. His words became mist in front of him.

“We’re too close to the sun for this kind of cold,” Griffin said.

Keith shivered violently in agreement.

He’d worn his newly-issued Garrison uniform instead of his Paladin armor, and the fabric was noticeably thinner. Even Griffin, in the sturdy material of his gray MFE flight suit, stood hunched against the cold. The temperature of the cockpit was still plummeting.

“I think your Lion is trying to kill me,” Griffin muttered. “With a slow and freezing death.”

Keith snorted, but it came out much shakier than he’d anticipated. “I’m stuck here too, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Alright, so it’s trying to kill us both” Griffin amended. “Or maybe just you, and I’m collateral damage.”

“Or maybe my subconscious is trying to kill you, through my Lion,” Keith tried to counter, with any amount of fervor. The effort it took to force back the sound of his chattering teeth made it difficult.

Rather than looking threatened, the other pilot appeared only thoughtful at the idea. “I wonder if-”

His words cut off as another full-body shiver wracked Keith, his teeth clacking together so loudly it startled even him. Griffin’s brows snapped together, the suggestion of concern on his face.

“Hey,” Griffin continued slowly. Keith shoved his hands as deep as they would go into his pockets, trying to pretend like his limbs weren’t quickly losing all motor function. “Are you doing okay there?”

“I’m f-fine,” Keith declared, sounding much less fine than he would have liked. His body was still riddled with the vaguely feverish ache he’d woken with, and the cold of the Black Lion’s interior only seemed to exacerbate the sensation. He slid to the floor to curl up against the front dash of the ship. Keith could feel the cold metal up against his back, but it was marginally more warm with his limbs curled in a nearly fetal position.

“That doesn’t look fine.” Griffin’s voice was tight, and Keith watch him step forward, closer to his position on the floor. It should have felt threatening, sitting there with an alpha suddenly standing above him, shoulders broad and blocking out the faint glow of emergency lights. But it didn’t.

Dangerous, maybe. But not threatening.

The next time Keith blinked Griffin was suddenly much closer, kneeling in front of him with eyes gentler than it seemed right to admit. His mouth still cut a frown into his face, at odds with his terribly soft eyes.

Gray eyes. Gray like the surface of Mercury hovering in front of them.

“Your lips are turning blue,” Griffin said, which probably should have concerned Keith. But he was concerned in an entirely different way with the fact that Griffin was staring at his mouth.

“I’m cold,” Keith said stupidly. Just speaking the words released a cloud of white mist into the air.

“Move,” Griffin ordered him, and before Keith’s foggy brain could realize what was happening, he was being gently nudged into the corner of the control panel. One of his shoulders pressed against the wall while the other was pressed against something much warmer. Griffin’s right arm, solid and heavy and warm and there.

“Omegas run lower in body temperature than alphas do,” Griffin said casually. Only it didn’t feel casual, because Keith being an omega was something he talked about even less than him being half-Galra. Griffin mentioning it felt like breaking an unspoken truce. And yet, Keith couldn’t deny the part of him that was strangely comforted by his words and the implication of thoughtfulness behind them. “This is the least I can do.”

He wasn’t looking at Keith, and that was good because it gave Keith a moment to study him from a place that was terrifyingly close. With his head slightly bent, Griffin’s bangs fell into one of his eyes. Keith resisted the sudden urge to push it back from his face.

“Thank you,” Keith said, voice smaller than he would have liked. Gratefulness still came as an almost acutely uncomfortable sensation, and it was somehow exacerbated by feeling it for James Griffin.

He wasn’t sure why he expected Griffin to gloat. He hadn’t before in the hospital lobby when Keith had thanked him. But Griffin didn’t say anything. The silence stretched between them until Keith felt he had no choice but to look at him again. When he did, Griffin was already staring back, something somber and gray in his gaze that wasn’t the slate-colored stone of his sclera.

“You don’t have to sound so guilty every time someone’s even remotely nice to you,” Griffin told him abruptly, and Keith forced back a wince.

“I’m not,” he protested, but it came weakly and through chattering teeth. “I don’t.”

“You do,” Griffin said. Rather than being admonishing, it felt more sympathetic. The force of his shoulder against Keith’s own was a counterweight to any harshness of the statement.

“Can I ask why?” the other pilot asked lightly, after a pause. The question was deceptively neutral, but Keith sensed that Griffin knew he was treading rocky ground.

“You can ask,” Keith said flatly.

“Okay,” Griffin said. “Why do refuse help from people who want to help you?”

“Do you want to help me?” Keith asked.

Griffin’s mouth was a flat line across his face, distinctly unimpressed. “A bit of an unoriginal strategy for avoidance, answering a question with a question,” he remarked.

“I said you could ask a question. I didn’t say I’d answer it.”

“Answer it.” Griffin’s voice was low, commanding.

That sounded like a dare. Like a challenge. Griffin was preying on Keith’s pride, on his innate need to rise and push back against any implication of weakness.

Or maybe he was appealing to the ugly side of him that wanted to curl into his warmth and tentative camaraderie and stop. Stop everything, for a moment. Stop fighting his instincts, stop ignoring his insecurities.

Something was very wrong with him.

“How can you trust people so easily?” Keith asked him. He felt more than saw Griffin relax against him, as if sensing this question was not avoidance but the prelude to an answer.

“Nothing comes easily to me,” Griffin told him slowly. “Not like you. Not being a pilot, not my role as a leader, not my relationships with my friends. People earn their trust from me as much as I earn it from them. But that’s the difference between us.”

Griffin paused. Keith heard him breathing, warm and even, and it was so quiet it felt like even the Black Lion had stopped to listen.

“I am actually willing to try,” he finished.

“I try,” Keith protested. “It’s not-” He choked, swallowed. “It’s not my fault I get burned.”

Griffin sighed, and Keith felt it like a humid breeze against his left cheek. The clean scent of river moss filled his lungs like heady oxygen.

“Everything is black and white to you. Hot and cold. Try for a little lukewarm sometimes,” Griffin said. There may have been a smile in his voice. “It might keep you from locking yourself away from the world in your little icebox.”

“You make it sound simple,” Keith whispered. He’d spoken so softly it was almost a surprise when Griffin actually answered.

“Try,” he repeated. Admonishing. Insufferable. Gentle and full of quiet understanding.

All at once, the interior of the Black Lion whirred to life - lights blinking on and the mechanical thrum of internal systems restarting filling the space. Keith leapt to his feet, unsteady and still with only minimal motor control as a wave of heat swept against his face. He staggered to the pilot’s seat.

“Speaking of icebox,” Griffin said with a dry laugh.

“Finally,” Keith muttered, frozen fingers stumbling over the controls even as he began charting a course back to Earth. Behind him, he heard Griffin rise much more slowly from his seat on the floor.

The rumbling of the Black Lion’s engine sounded suspiciously like an amused purr. Keith ignored it.

He ignored Griffin too, standing silently behind him as Mercury’s silhouette vanished in the blackness of distant space as they traveled back to Earth.

They were barely an hour late to their scheduled arrival, but an hour was apparently long enough to warrant a certain amount of apprehension. That came in the form of Shiro’s fussing, who met Keith at the flight deck with a wrinkle in his brow and a gentle “What happened?” on his lips.

Their lateness also warranted a reprimand, apparently, but that came later. Keith didn’t miss the way the eyes of the lieutenant tasked to discipline them stayed trained on him during the lecture. Griffin may as well have been a piece of furniture, sitting next to him in the office.

In all fairness, it wasn’t like Keith could blame the lieutenant for his scrutiny. Black’s refusal to fly had been his fault, even if it was in a way he couldn’t quite understand.

Collateral damage, Griffin had called himself. It was probably closer to the truth than he knew.

When the two of them were finally dismissed from the lieutenant’s office Keith’s irritation had escalated to levels that had him pushing his chair back with a loud screech as they stood to leave. Usually, he’d want to burn off the anger with the mindless exertion of sparring in the training center. But he was unusually and inexplicably exhausted. And in the stress of being stranded two planets away, Keith had been distracted from the hunger he was now conscious of gnawing at his gut. He wanted nothing more than to eat and curl beneath the sheets of his new dorm room on the Atlas and forget the entire morning.

“Kogane,” the lieutenant said, stopping him and his forthcoming plans at the open door. Keith flicked his eyes down to his nametag, only now taking the time to read it.

N. Fairfax. It suited him in a sullen type of way - something in the combination of the man’s flaxen hair and the stubborn lines that framed his mouth.

Keith noticed Griffin come to a halt just beyond the threshold as well, turning to look back at them curiously.

“Yes?” Keith asked, and tacked a “Sir?” on the end that was clearly an afterthought. The lieutenant’s frown pulled deeper.

“Doctor Halvorsen was looking for you when you were due back earlier. He seems to have taken an interest in one of the blood samples you provided recently. I told him you’d stop by his office later to speak with him. Make it sooner, rather than later.”

Keith forced back a shudder. The red-haired doctor put him on edge, in a different way than the brisk and efficient hands of the white-coated men and women of the medical ward usually did.

“Yes, sir.”

The door shut behind him.

Never would have been too soon to return to the Garrison’s medical wing, but Keith made the trek across campus nonetheless, more determined to get the ordeal over with than avoid one overly enthusiastic doctor.

He knocked once and didn’t wait for an answer before opening Halvorsen’s office door and stepping inside. If the doctor was going to demand Keith’s presence at his earliest convenience, his earliest inconvenience would have to do just as well.

Unfortunately, the man seated at his desk behind the translucent surface of his fiberglass computer screen looked nothing but pleased to see him when Keith appeared in the doorway.

“Lieutenant Fairfax said you were looking for me,” Keith announced without prelude.

“I was, I was” Halvorsen said eagerly. “Please, sit down, Keith.” He beckoned to the empty chair across his desk. “Can I call you Keith?”

Something about this man made Keith want to say no to his every demand, even the most seemingly benign of them.

“I’d prefer you didn’t,” Keith replied, voice as flat as the screen between them.

Ignoring his response, Halvorsen finished his last few keystrokes before turning his attention back towards Keith.

Keith had long since learned to differentiate between the gaze of someone fascinated by him, or fascinated by the idea of him. An omega training to be a fighter pilot had always put him in the realm of spectacle at the Garrison. His half-Galra biology had elevated that status to an even greater level of bizarre science experiment.

He could recognize it now, in this man’s eyes, that it wasn’t Keith himself that put the manic glint there. It was all clinical interest in the strange set of genomes that made him half as human as he was Galra.

“I’ve been analyzing the blood samples you provided us, comparing them to your mother’s and the other Galra we’ve tagged recently.” Keith flinched at the word, instinctively, but the doctor didn’t seem to notice. “We were interested in seeing just how different the genetic material was, given how your physical appearance is more reflective of the human genomes.”

“What?” Keith asked, monotone and uninterested. “You expected some kind of fifty-fifty split?”

“It’s more complicated than that.” Somehow, Halvorsen managed to sound dismissive even while smiling. The grin exposed a frightening number of faintly coffee-stained teeth. “Actually, it’s remarkable this slipped by the medical department when you first enrolled at the Garrison.”

That would likely have been due to Shiro, manipulating his records not to hide some kind of genetic abnormality but Keith’s omega dynamic instead. There was a kind of poetic irony to what that act of kindness might have cost Keith. Or would things really have been different if he’d known all along?

“That’s not actually what I called you here for,” the doctor continued on. Keith bit back the urge to tell him, You didn’t. You got a commanding officer to do it. “Your genetic makeup is unique, obviously, given your parentage. I didn’t expect anything different.”

Halvorsen steepled his fingers, elbows resting on his desk in a pose that was almost comically practiced. “What did surprise me is the foreign substance in your blood that is neither human nor Galra. And the way it shares an energy signature that is remarkably similar to the power source of the Atlas.”

“Quintessence,” Keith said. “It’s called quintessence.”

“Yes, well, I’ve never seen anything like it. I cross-referenced the signature against all of our other Galra samples, even other half-breeds, and couldn't find it in trace amounts in any other instance.” He leaned forward, and Keith forced himself not to lean away. “Do you know what might have caused this? Some kind of inciting event while you were off gallivanting around the cosmos?”

A muscle in Keith’s cheek twitched. He made it sound like the Paladins were on some kind of vacation in space instead of fighting a war.

Against his will the fragmented memories of nearly three years earlier rose to the surface - glowing cylinders of quintessence, the masked figure of a Druid, disappearing and reappearing liked a cloaked phantom. Keith’s own skin, purple and discolored and transforming before his eyes.

“I’ve had some exposure to pure quintessence before,” Keith said carefully. “It was a long time ago.”

“I can’t help but wonder what kind of effects this substance may have on a purely human body.” Then, as an afterthought, Halvorsen added, “Or perhaps a Galra one.”

Keith’s fists clenched against his knees.

“Believe me, it’s nothing good.” Images flashed before his eyes: Zarkon’s twice-reanimated body, the deep lines of Haggar’s wrinkled skin. He stood violently, too agitated for an official dismissal. “Don’t mess with this stuff. It’s dangerous.”

Halvorsen looked at him over his frameless glasses. “Oh, Keith. You are most definitely not a scientist.”

Keith said nothing to the unwanted use of his first name. “Neither are you, Doctor,” he replied coolly. “And I do need to leave now. So if that’s all?”

The uptick his voice was a question, but Keith wasn’t about to wait for an answer. He moved towards the door.

“I suppose you’ve told your team you’ll be out of commission for the next week,” the doctor said casually, a smile that didn’t reach his eyes on his face as he watched Keith.

Keith eyed him suspiciously. “Why would I?”

Halvorsen laughed. He hated the sound of it. “It doesn’t take a blood sample or eight years of medical school to read the symptoms of an omega in proestrus.”

Keith could only stare at him, not understanding. The sluggish feeling in his limbs seemed to have found its way to his brain.

“Flushed skin, glassy eyes. My nose is in working order too, and the smell of it is stuck to your skin. Subtle, but you won’t be able to hide that by tomorrow.”

Keith flinched backwards, equally as mortified as he was aghast.

He wanted to block it out, to feign ignorance to the doctor’s words when every sign was pointed towards their unwanted truth. The bottomless hunger, the feverish ache in his limbs.The way he’d craved attention from the only alpha in his proximity during this morning’s mission on the Black Lion.

It was finally coming, after the years of suppressants and then stress and then malnutrition that made it impossible to overtake him.

Heat.

Chapter Text

The morning after James and Keith’s mission to Mercury was a dull one. Maybe it was because the looming image of that craggy planet against the starry void was still imprinted on James’ eyelids. Or maybe it was after spending so much time with Keith yesterday his absence the morning after felt palpable, like waking to an empty bed after having fallen asleep in the tangled limbs of a partner.

They were far from partners, even further from mates. Allies, yes. Tentatively friends? It was dangerous to hope.

James hated how acutely conscious he was of Keith’s presence, how quickly he’d come to depend on the rush of adrenaline that accompanied the sight of the omega pilot. At least as the head of the MFEs James’ day was rife with opportunities to seek Keith out with nothing but innocent intentions of conferring with him, leader to leader.

He found Keith, not an hour after regularly scheduled breakfast, in the belly of the Atlas’ hanger.

It was a phenomenally large space, ceilings so high it hurt James to crane his head back far enough to squint at them. Keith, however, was easy enough to spot across the hanger. James comforted himself in the fact that it was for a perfectly valid reason this time.

The Black Paladin was in his new uniform, its vibrant red a beacon of color across the hanger amongst the collection of Garrison gray and orange. Red like a stoplight. Red as a warning. James had never run through a stop sign, not even when he was first learning to drive and his hands sometimes fumbled at the wheel. He had trusted in warnings, in regulations specifically designed to prevent disaster.

Heading towards Keith now felt a bit like plowing headlong into a traffic accident.

As James drew closer, he could make out Keith’s features in finer detail. The top button of his jacket was undone, against regulations, and his hair seemed somehow more wild than ever beneath the bright hanger lights. There was something disheveled about him, something distracting and elusive that James couldn’t put a name to. Maybe it was “rolled out of bed-syndrome.”

He didn’t want to think about the word “bed” within a two foot radius of Keith. With a few more long strides forward, he’d crossed that.

Keith glanced up at James as he stepped forward, the motion slow and deliberate. It took a moment for his eyes to focus on him, and when they did they were completely devoid of their usual sharpness. There was something almost hazy in his gaze, an unnatural softness.

“Hey.”

For a second, Keith swayed, and James was struck by the sudden fear that he was about to collapse forward. But then the omega was stepping backwards, the motion clearly intended to be casual, but putting a noticeable amount of space between them. James felt it like the jolt of his stomach bottoming out in a free fall from the sky. He didn’t move any closer.

“Oh. Hey.” When Keith spoke, the words were uncharacteristically slow. Perspiration faintly dotted the curve of his neckline, disappearing into the open collar of his uniform. He looked almost ill. It was a thought that was jarring when James realized in all his years of knowing Keith, he’d never actually seen him sick.

It reminded him of Keith’s departure yesterday, the way he’d been summoned back to the medical wing. James couldn’t help the twinge of worry that Keith’s return to the hospital had not been for the mundane procedures of a routine checkup as he’d first assumed.

“What did that doctor want yesterday?” James asked, as casually as possible. He still didn’t like the look of the man, the greedy way he fixated on Keith like a specimen he wanted to dissect.

Was that hypocritical, coming from him? After years of James’ own questionable tendencies to orbit around Keith? He brushed the thought aside.

Keith frowned.

“It was nothing,” he said.

Nothing, James had found, was almost always synonymous with something. Something important, something unwanted. James wanted to know.

“He just likes throwing his title around, using it to get me in for a few more tests,” Keith finished.

That, James acknowledged, probably wasn’t a lie.

“Is it because of,” James gestured vaguely at Keith, at the Galra-colored shade of his existence, “... you know?”

“Yeah. Maybe. I guess.” Each affirmative seemed to be equally true to Keith, though none truly were in agreement.

“You should be careful around him. And people that know about you, in general.” James shifted uncomfortably, finding it strange to give Keith advice but feeling the unshakeable urge to nonetheless. “Everyone at the Garrison seems to have some kind of ulterior motive when it comes to the Galra.”

Political posturing, political prisoners. Science experiments. The list was endless, and endlessly disturbing.

“What’s your motive?”

“Huh?” James glanced down sharply at Keith, startled.

“You know about me. My connection with the Galra,” Keith said plainly. “So what’s your motive?” His hands were limp at his sides, face strangely open. Curious.

Like a coward, James retreated behind his own defenses.

“No motives here,” he said, waving his datapad like a sorry excuse for a reason to talk to Keith. Which it was. “HQ just finished outlining the initial plans for the Atlas’ first launch. The files are classified - we aren’t allowed to send them over the Garrison intranet. Figured I’d transfer them over to you now while I had the chance.”

“Oh.” Keith looked down at his empty hands blankly. “I don’t have my datapad with me.”

James shrugged. “Stop by my room later today and I’ll give it to you then,” he said, as offhandedly as he could.

“I don't think…” Keith started, then trailed off as if he’d forgotten why he’d spoken in the first place. His eyes were glassy and distant, and a faint flush darkened cheekbones. “Can I get them from you some other day?”

“It’ll take five minutes,” James said peevishly. “Just be there.”

He left before he could hear a more definitive, “No.”

Which might have been an asshole move. And James might have cared more if his pride wasn’t stinging, salted by Keith’s obvious reluctance to meet with him. If he’d thought the mishaps in their mission the day before had lessened some of the uneasiness between them, Keith had brought it back in full force with his tenuous step away from James.

By late afternoon, James was mostly convinced Keith had decided not to stop by at all, or else he’d forgotten their interaction that morning entirely. But James was startled from his seat hunched over his desk with a halfway-finished set of training plans, by the unmistakable sound of a fist against his door. The metal frame resonated with a clang that seemed to send its vibration all the way to the sudden jittering of James’ nerves.

Keith made his presence known outside his door with only a single knock, like he couldn’t be bothered to rap his knuckles against the surface a second time. Maybe the natural human urge to follow one knock with another had somehow been swallowed up in the half of Keith’s DNA that was Galra. In the scope of all of Keith’s oddities, it would be far from the most mysterious.

When the door slid open Keith was standing there, staring towards the floor, stance strangely off-kilter. His hair looked even more wild than it had earlier, as if he’d been running his hands through it repeatedly.

Keith had also changed since James had last saw him, his uniform replaced by a long-sleeved tee shirt and dark jeans. It was the least guarded James had seen him look in a long time, which he found to be mostly disconcerting.

It took Keith a moment to look up and acknowledge James now standing at the threshold of his room. It was a moment too long, a moment heavy with dulled reflexes and glassy eyes.

“You look like shit,” James told him flatly. Except he didn’t, because this was Keith, and even an unkempt Keith with bangs stuck to his forehead with sweat was painfully beautiful to look at.

“I feel like it.” Keith’s hand came up to rest against the doorway, as if to steady himself. It took James a long moment to realize his hands were bare, devoid of the fingerless gloves that usually adorned them. Their absence made Keith’s fingers smaller somehow, his wrists narrower. James thought he could wrap his hand around one easily.

Keith’s admittance made him oddly vulnerable as well, the words sounding like the closest thing he had come to sharing weakness. Something in James tensed at the idea, and he was struck with the sudden urge to pull Keith into his room, to guard him from the invisible threat in his shaky pupils.

“Did you stop by the medward?” he asked, stepping closer slightly, the action mostly instinctual. It forced Keith to look up at him slightly with their proximity. “Maybe you were discharged before the worst of your injuries had healed.”

“It’s definitely not that,” Keith said with a dry laugh. His breath danced across the open collar of James uniform and the answer came to him in a sudden inhale of scent.

Sweetness, not cloying and oppressive like other omegas sometimes were, but intoxicating. James wanted to inhale it with his mouth against Keith’s throat.

“You’re going into heat.” James said it with equal parts horror and awe. It was every midnight fantasy he’d had about Keith come to life in frighteningly vivid color. And scent. His teeth ached so badly his eyes watered as he forced in a shaking breath from his mouth.

“Hm,” Keith gave in non-committal answer, but James didn’t need a confirmation he was right. This wasn’t the sporadic hormones of Keith’s first presentation so many years ago, this was Keith - mature and grown and violet-eyed and right there smelling like his biologic need to mate.

“You need to go,” James gritted out between his teeth.

“I know,” Keith was staring at him, and then staring over his shoulder into the dimly lit space of James’ room. His gaze was more murky than it was considering.

“Now.”

James tried to make the word forceful, but it came out choked, the result of his attempt to speak and not breathe at the same time. But Keith didn’t move, only swayed hesitantly to one side. Violet eyes flickered to James’ bed, still neat and tucked from when he’d made it with military precision earlier that morning. James fought the urge to leap in front of it and hide it from view.

He ignored the sudden, unbidden image of Keith falling on top of it.

“Kogane, get out.” His tone was firm. Perhaps too firm. Because Keith stayed rooted to where he was standing and, instead, reached up to delicately brush the hair away from his neck. James stomach lurched as he recognized the action as one that was unmistakably meant to be placating. Keith was staring off somewhere into the middle distance, face peaceful.

“Keith,” he intoned, a warning in his voice. The other man’s gaze drifted over to meet his own, looking perplexed at the sharpness of his words.

“What?” The omega’s voice was small, breathy. In their proximity to each other, James could smell Keith’s anxiousness growing with every exchange. It made everything inside him scream with the desire to comfort, to caress. An omega in distress would make the instinctual need to protect rise in any alpha. Keith in distress made him want to do nothing less than barricade the door to his own room and curl around Keith until his shaking stopped and his breaths fell soft against his chest.

“Leave. Now.”

Keith was no longer staring hazily into the recesses of James’ bedroom, instead having fixed his gaze onto James himself. He looked up at James through half-lidded eyes, slivers of violet and a dark pupils. James was fourteen years old again, floating in zero gravity for this first time.

Keith’s head dropped against the frame of his door, as if he’d suddenly lost all the energy necessary to keep it upright. His eyes didn’t waver from where they’d fixed on James’ own for a long moment. When they finally did move it was down, to flick towards his mouth and then the barely visible skin of his neck peeking out of his uniform collar.

“Can’t I stay?”

No, James wanted to say.

“You shouldn’t,” he said.

“Why not?” Keith murmured.

“You just shouldn’t.” A weak defense. A weak excuse? James didn’t know.

That was a lie. James did know.

Keith slumped a little further down the door frame, looking startlingly weak. Suddenly afraid he was going to collapse, James reached out on instinct - one hand pressing into the slender indent of Keith’s waist for support.

Instantly, Keith’s hand rose to grip the inside of James' wrist, some of his characteristic strength evident in the steel trap of his fingers. His thumb pushed up, under the cuff of James sleeve, to press into the inside of his wrist and the scent glands beneath the skin there. Keith shivered violently, eyes fluttering shut.

And James, unconsciously, muscles moving in a way his brain had decided not to, was pulling Keith towards him and into his room. The fingers along his wrist seemed to loosen as he did so, relief scenting the air as cloying desperation faded. And then the two of them were alone in the darkened recesses of James' bedroom.

The sound of his door sliding shut behind him automatically jolted him from the haze of his emotions. Logic cut through the id, sharp as the panic that followed. James was suddenly sealed in a narrow four-walled space that was steadily filling with the dangerously sweet scent of Keith’s heat, mixing with his own. It sent every nerve of his twitching fingertips alight, struck with the urge to gently lay Keith back onto the covers of his bed, to run his lips along the column of his bare neck until their scents combined so completely it was impossible to differentiate alpha from omega.

Instead, he maneuvered Keith into a seated position on the floor, his back pressing against the frame of James’ bed. The omega let one languid arm fall onto the mattress and his head quickly followed, pillowing onto the limb with a leisurely kind of slowness. Keith’s hair was a black halo around his head as he looked up at James silently through his one visible eye.

Any moment, Keith would say something, would ask something, and James was afraid he wouldn’t be able to say no. The omega’s lips were halfway open and enticingly red, and that was all the inspiration James needed to stumble backwards towards his door. His fingers fumbled against the keypad as he stared, unable to drag his gaze away from where Keith was now breathing heavily into the neatly tucked blankets of his bed.

The moment the doors to James’ chambers slid open with a mechanical whir he was backing even further away.

“I’m going to get Shirogane,” he blurted, already headed out the yawning entryway of the door. It should have been welcoming, an escape from the suffocating scent of heat and Keith, but all he wanted to do was turn around and bury his face in the other boy’s neck and breath like the soft skin there was his last vestiges of oxygen on a stranded ship.

He felt stranded, trapped at the threshold of his own bedroom, when Keith made a soft sound of protest at the disturbance. Delicate, pale fingers - strange in their lack of black leather gloves - made a feeble attempt to grab at him before falling back to mattress like the simple motion of it exhausted him. James wanted to smile, and he wanted to scream, and he wanted to run out of that room almost as much as he wanted to wind his own fingers between the narrow gaps of those hands and squeeze.

Not yours, James reminded himself desperately. Not yours, he’s not your omega and he shouldn’t be here. But he couldn’t ignore how fiercely happy the sight of Keith’s dark hair nestled in the mattress of his bed made him.

He took only enough time to seal the room shut behind him before he was sprinting off in the direction of Shirogane’s quarters.

James’ sides were aching when he arrived, having run through the entire labyrinth of the Atlas to get there as quickly as possible. It hadn’t felt fast enough, and every second away from Keith felt like his failure to protect the omega in his most vulnerable state.

“Shirogane! Shiro!” James yelled, his fist a hammer against the officer’s door. What was his rank again? James found that it didn’t matter. Couldn’t matter, not with Keith distant and desperate and waiting.

Why did he leave? James’ hand dropped to his side as he stilled. He was a terrible alpha. He’d left Keith, left him alone. James had abandoned him.

But he hadn’t wanted to leave, had he? Rather, he’d needed to leave because of how badly he hadn’t wanted to leave.

James head was spinning. His canines ached.

“Griffin.”

Somehow, without James noticing, the door in front of him had opened. Shirogane stood there, alarm evident on his face, in his voice. He had the barely elevated hands of a man trying to calm a small child. Or assuage a rabid dog.

“I didn’t know what to do,” James said, realizing as he said the words they sounded less like an explanation and more like an admittance of guilt. They came out shaky, his breathing uneven like he’d been sprinting down the halls of the Atlas.

He had been sprinting down the halls of the Atlas.

He had to get back to Keith.

“Do? Do what?” Shirogane stepped closer, one hand coming to rest on James’ shoulder like an epaulet of skin and bone. The solid reassurance was enough for James to pull a semblance of words together and speak.

“Keith. Keith, it’s Keith.” There was something ritualistic about the rhythm of his name, a spell cast on an innocent bystander. “He’s going into heat.”

Shirogane’s hand tightened against his shoulder, an iron grip he felt in a distant kind of way. It was a hand on a different body.

“Are you sure?”

James looked at him, baffled. He could still taste the burning sweet scent of Keith’s pheromones, the welcoming call to touch and satisfy and devour on the back of his tongue.

“I’m sure.”

“Where is he?” Shirogane stepped out of his room completely, letting the door slide shut behind him. That was good. That meant they were leaving, were going back to Keith.

Was that good? The alpha inside him chanted yes. The functioning part of his rational brain saying “no” kept him rooted in place.

“He’s in my room.”

Shirogane balked at the statement, mouth slightly ajar as he turned to look at James. They’d started walking down the hall but the captain - yes, he was a captain - pulled up short. James ground to a stop, restless that their progress had been halted so quickly.

“Why,” Shirogane asked slowly, “is Keith in your room?”

The question should have sounded accusatory. And maybe James wanted that, wanted a finger pointed at him so he could hang his head and back away. But Shirogane seemed only faintly amazed. It was an expression that reminded James of the captain watching Keith disappear in a cloud of dust on a stolen speeder, the kind of shock that was colored by a grudging type of glee.

It was the face of someone watching Keith do something vaguely extraordinary, or else completely unexpected. James had done nothing to deserve it.

“I don’t know,” James said finally. “Wrong place, wrong time.”

Shirogane smiled then, the curve of his mouth a sardonic line. He muttered something that sounded strangely like “right person” and James shifted restlessly, limbs still buzzing with adrenaline.

“He was looking bad this morning. Ill, I guess. I didn’t think it was- that he was…” James trailed off, distracted. He was an idiot for not seeing it then. And Keith was an idiot for still coming by his room.

Shirogane’s smile had fallen away and he was looking at James, expression serious.

“Hey.” There was a quiet concern in Shirogane’s voice. “Griffin, are you okay?” Shirogane shifted closer, eyes narrowing as he surveyed James’ face. “Your pupils are dilated.”

“I’m just, you know, it’s kind of-” Every second he stood here talking was a second he wasn’t next to Keith. “Keith’s alone right now and I don’t want-”

James stopped. What didn’t he want? The calculating look in Shirogane’s eyes meant he likely didn’t need to finish.

“Let’s go.”

The walk - almost near jog - back to the MFE’s dorms was simultaneously horrifically long and disastrously short. It barely gave James enough time to think seriously about what he was actually returning to. And yet he couldn’t shake how uneasy he felt being away from his room, from the omega he knew was there.

What if Keith had left? What if he was out wandering the halls of the Atlas, dazed and weak and vulnerable? James quickened his pace, hardly realizing he was pulling ahead of Shirogane as he did so.

When the two men reached the door to James’ room, a large hand grabbed his shoulder, pulling him to a gentle halt. James turned to face Shirogane, irritation and worry twisting his mouth into a frown as he looked at the captain.

“I think you should stay outside,” Shirogane said calmly, voice as steady as the weight of his hand.

James fought the urge to shake him off, to push back against the idea of leaving Keith alone with another alpha. He was only halfway successful.

“I just want to see him - to make sure he’s okay,” James protested. He ran a hand through his hair, thoroughly destroying whatever remaining neatness it had originally been styled into that morning. “Just for a second.”

“James,” Shirogane said meaningfully. The use of his first name might have been surprising in less distracting circumstances. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

James didn’t answer. But when Shirogane keyed open the door to his room, he also didn’t follow the other man in. The faint sweetness of heat scent brushed his face as the door slid closed. James bit back the rumble of a growl in his throat.

He stayed there, staring at the unobtrusive barrier of the door to his room like a sentinel statue, for as long as Shirogane was inside. It took all of his self-control to not go inside, but James lacked enough will to actually step away.

He waited.

It could have been five minutes. It could have been fifty. But when the door finally opened he lunged forward slightly, only to watch Shirogane slip out of the room and shut the door behind him so quickly he didn’t have enough time to make out anything beyond a few dark shapes in his bedroom.

“He’s staying there,” Shirogane announced.

James froze.

“Did Keith say that?” he asked, unable to move forward or backwards even as the captain stepped closer to him.

“I’m saying that. And Keith isn’t saying much, in all honesty. He’s starting to get into the throws of it.”

The word “it” hung in the air between them, and obvious and poor substitute for “heat.” James was acutely conscious how ridiculous this all was - two alphas casually discussing an omega’s heat like they had the faintest understanding of it.

“But he can’t stay there,” James said. “That’s not his room.”

Voiced aloud, he was suddenly aware how entirely unrelated those two sentences were.

“You absolutely do not want to move an omega during their heat once they’ve nested. It’s incredibly stressful for them,” Shirogane said with a frown. “Besides, he’s barely moved into his own room. He doesn’t have much to nest with in there anyways.”

“What, so he’s just going to live in my room for a week?” James forced as much incredulity into his voice as possible, despite the deep rumble of satisfaction the alpha in him was begging to release.

“I mean, we could move him and risk sending him into a full-blown panic. But it would be much healthier to leave him be.” Shirogane looked at him, considering. “In the end, the decision’s up to you. It is your room.”

It was a hardly a decision.

“I guess I’ll just crash with Ryan for a week,” James said with feigned disinterest. Shirogane smiled.

“Thank you, James. I’m sure Keith would be grateful too.”

Keith, who was currently sweating beneath the blankets of James’ bed, wrapped in his scent and the coarse fabric of Garrison-issue bedding. The thought prickled his consciousness like a nettle, scratching against his skin.

“Why do you know so much about omegas anyways?” James asked, in part because he was curious but mostly as a distraction from Keith’s presence on the other side of his door. He felt his eyes flick to the entryway, despite his every intention not to.

“I basically raised Keith through his teen years,” Shirogane explained. “Kid didn’t know a thing about what it meant to be an omega, since neither of his parents were there to help him deal with this,” he waved a hand vaguely, “before he came of age.”

James didn’t think he could imagine something more uncomfortable than explaining the birds and the bees to Keith Kogane. Shirogane was even more of a saint than he’d thought.

“Was he troublesome, at that age?” James remembered the schoolyard brawls, the bruises on pale, skinny knees. Keith hadn’t even hit puberty then.

Shirogane’s eyes were somber - contemplative - when he answered. “I don’t know if he was troublesome so much as he was troubled. Keith has a remarkable lack of self-preservation. That, coupled with his status as an omega, is a dangerous combination.”

James laughed once - a dry, humorless sound.

“That must be why he’d nest here then. We’re not even…” Friends. “...close.”

That calculating look was back in Shirogane’s eyes. “No, I don’t think that’s it at all. Keith must trust you more than you think.”

Satisfaction hit him, deep and primal and enough to make his hands curl into fists at his sides. The suggestion that Keith had chosen him to rely on. James couldn’t be in there with him - he couldn’t - but was here to help, in other ways.

That night, when James drove the hour-long trip off campus to the nearest department store to pick up the softest blankets he could find, he told himself it was only because he’d been planning to get new bedding anyways. The fact that Keith was currently being subjected to the uncomfortable acrylic blankets of his own bed was unrelated.

When James returned to the Garrison, he forced Ina to open the door to his bedroom and deposit the bundled fabric inside. He didn’t let himself watch the door slide open and shut again, an invitation and then a barrier. Instead, James shut himself away in Ryan’s room and swore the surge in the sweetness of Keith’s heat scent was his own imagination.

The next week was an exponential curve of stress and the growing desire to return to his room and ensure that Keith was still safely nested beneath a suitable amounts of blankets and loose clothing items.

James thought the first few days would have been the worst of them, thought that time would ease the burden of worry and the instinctive desire to protect and please. They weren’t, and James realized some things were just inescapably bad and could only worsen as time went on. Joint training between Voltron and the MFE’s had ground to an abrupt halt, leaving James with far to much time on his hands to spend in alternating bouts of panic and denial about the omega in his room.

The paladins stopped by daily, though it was mostly Shirogane and Pidge who visited Keith. Hunk came bearing food for the first two days until he realized the MFEs were keeping the room stockpiled with enough food and water to ration Keith through an entire year’s worth of heats, let alone a single week’s.

James recruited Ina as his eyes and ears for all things Keith-related, as the only omega on his team. She patiently made frequent deliveries to James’ - now Keith’s - room as he hovered anxiously in the common room, or lurked behind Ryan’s bedroom door. As soon as she would slip back out, arms occasionally full of empty bottles or trays, James would lunge at her with questions.

He’d cling to the vaguest detail of what was happening on the other side of his door, as is if piecing together enough information about Keith could allow him to see through the solid wall of metal and machinery onto the other side.

“Yes, he is drinking water,” Ina would reply, calmly.

“It appears that he is sleeping enough.”

“No, I did not touch his nest.”

“I will not answer that.”

On the third day of Keith’s heat, it was Nadia’s patience that had pulled thin. She’d stayed a mostly amused bystander through the first few days, offering an endless stream of quips and teasing remarks that James brushed off as best he could. It was easier to ignore her when he was fixated on the much more pressing issue of Keith’s health and well-being.

“You’re stockpiling food for him like he’s going to move in there permanently,” Nadia said petulantly one evening as the four MFEs sat curled up in the common room of their dorms.

“Omegas burn off a lot of energy during their heats,” James said without looking at her, speaking like he actually had the faintest idea about heat-induced caloric needs. He flicked aimlessly through the datapad on his lap.

“Okay, but you bought him cupcakes.” Nadia said it with the same kind of accusatory tone she used when James claimed her favorite assault rifle during drills. “Who eats cupcakes during their heat?”

“Excess consumption of sugar is perfectly normal behavior during heat periods,” Ina said calmly.

Nadia seemed appeased by her words, maybe because Ina herself was an omega. More likely it was because Ina was an encyclopedia in human form.

“Keith ate them, anyways,” Ryan said, amused. “So what’s it matter in the end?”

James, only somewhat smugly, couldn’t help but agree.

“What’s this?” James asked blankly. Day four, and still felt as completely out of his depth as he had when Keith had first appeared in his doorway.

Shirogane met the question with a smile, extending the stack of books in his arms forward like an offering.

“Homework,” the captain replied.

James eyed the books, doubtful. “Last I checked, I’m not a student anymore.”

The stack was unceremoniously dumped into his arms, James staggering backward slightly under the sudden weight.

“You don’t have to be a student to learn,” Shirogane said cheerfully.

James glanced down at the stack. The book sitting on top, staring him in the face with it’s unobtrusive gray cover, was entitled “The A-Z Guide to Omegas.” He shuffled the pile, reading the next title. “Mating Rituals of the Western World.” The book beneath it was simply called “Don’t Hate Your Heat.”

James looked up, baffled.

“What,” he asked slowly, “is this?”

“Homework,” Shirogane repeated. “These were some of the titles I read when I first met Keith. I wasn’t too familiar with omegas at that point. Wanted to get a better sense of what kind of things Keith might be going through that I didn’t understand. I thought you could use them.”

“No,” James said quickly, but he wasn’t even sure what he was disagreeing with. The idea that he knew next to nothing about omegas besides the fact that Keith was one and that sometimes tugged at some deep-rooted protective instinct inside of him. Or the suggestion that James wanted to know more about omegas, or heats, or heaven-forbid mating rituals.

Shirogane’s smile was wry now, and James almost resented him for it.

“Like it or not, he’s stuck in your care for the next few days.” That twist of his lips made it clear the captain knew which side of “like it or not” James stood on. “You might as well read up on this stuff.”

James throat worked to try and eke out another half-hearted protest, but he found himself staring down silently at the stack of books in his arms instead.

“I have some more information in digital form I can send you as well,” Shirogane said blithely as turned to walk away.

James didn’t bother to say no this time.

He fell asleep that night in the hallway across from the door to his bedroom, seated amongst a stack of books with a datapad clutched in one drooping hand.

“Omegas will purr out of an unconscious need to show their contentment. But it is a rare and celebrated occasion,” Nadia read aloud from the book she’d just snatched from the top of James’ makeshift mound of texts he’d situated next to him at the cafeteria table. He had Shirogane’s copy of “The Arcane Study of Omega Courting Behavior” open in front of him.

“Are you highlighting this shit?” she asked incredulously.

Because “no” would have been an obvious lie, and “yes” an encouragement for Nadia to continue her pestering, James said nothing. He shoveled another forkful of potatoes au gratin into his mouth instead.

“Where’s Ina?” James asked as he chewed, more to divert Nadia and Ryan’s attention than out of pressing concern for his teammate. Ina could lose herself in a spreadsheet like no one he’d ever met, and that sometimes resulted in missing meals due to missing time. Ryan would unfailingly bring her some food later.

“She flew out this morning to help with clearing out the last of the Galra labor camps, the one in Canada her family was being kept at. They’re supposed to arrive back at the Garrison within the next two days.”

James finally looked up from his book, smiling slightly. That was good news - the best news he’d heard in his hellish week of alternating bouts of panic, concern, and ill-placed smugness over Keith’s heat.

“You’ve never met Ina’s sister, have you?” Ryan asked him.

James hummed. “Katrin? No, I don’t think so.”

Katrin Leifsdottir, Ina’s little sister. James had seen pictures of her, a young girl equally as blond and freckled but with none of Ina’s stoic facade. In every photograph Katrin had been smiling. She was twelve when the Galra had taken the entirety of Ina’s family away to the labor camps in the first wave of invasion.

“She’s an omega like Ina. Maybe once Keith’s heat breaks the three of them can bond over it. Start a little club.”

James turned to Nadia, suddenly realizing what Ina’s absence meant for Keith. “Hey, will you bring some stuff into my room later? I think Keith might be running low on water.”

Nadia stared at him. “There’s a sink. In your room. I don’t think he’s running low on water.”

James blinked. “I meant water bottles,” he explained, faintly exasperated. Sometimes Nadia really was completely oblivious.

The MFE in question stared at him, pointedly silent, then slumped forward onto the table in defeat. Her glasses slid down the bridge of her nose like even they couldn’t be bothered to stay upright.

“Is it really only day six?” she groaned.

James turned back to his reading.

Breathe in.

Then out.

“I can’t go in there,” James proclaimed from his spot on the floor. His back was against his bedroom door, his head in his hands. He could smell it, even through the closed door. The scent of Keith. Of heat, and omega, and slick, and Keith.

He’d been told Keith had left his room early that morning, when his heat had finally broken on the eighth day. It was midafternoon now, and the ventilation systems had been running since. Nadia and Ryan had cleared out all evidence of Keith’s stay and, they claimed, cleaned until only the scent of antiseptic remained.

Which was a lie. Because James could still smell him, absurd amount of cleaning supplies be damned.

He couldn’t go in there.

“You can,” Ryan countered, equally as firm but not nearly as distraught. James cursed him and his beta genes.

And his tendency to not be hypersensitive to everything Keith Kogane.

“I don’t think you get it,” James ground out, “I cannot go in there. I’m going to-” He stopped. “I’m going to die. Ryan, I’m going to die, right now.”

“Don’t die,” Nadia said cheerfully as she walked into the hall, brushing by them to get to her room. “They’d make me leader of the MFEs and I’m not ready for that responsibility yet.”

“Stop being dramatic,” Ryan said, ignoring her. James ignored him. “The longer you wait, the more you’re going to work yourself up about it. Just go in there, rip off the bandaid. You’ll get used to the scent soon.”

“Yeah,” Nadia agreed. “We won’t even follow you in there, give you some time alone to work off some of that-”

James leapt off the floor with a snarl before she could finish. Already anticipating the outburst, Nadia disappeared behind her bedroom door with an infuriating cackle.

James loved his MFEs, he really did. But sometimes he also hated them.

Ryan clapped a hand on his shoulder, a gesture that felt like it came more from a place of pity than solidarity.

“You graduated top of your class at the world-renowned Galaxy Garrison,” Ryan intoned. “You can do this.” And with that he turned and walked into the common room, his intent to leave James by himself so obvious it made him flush.

“I can…” Do this.

He could, of course he could.

He wanted to, even.

And that was the problem.

With the reluctance of a pilot opening an airlock without a helmet, James keyed open the door to his bedroom. Immediately, when the door slid open, the wall of scent that hit James made him shudder with desire.

Maybe the scent was fading, but even the remnants of Keith’s heat were enough to send want spiraling through his stomach. James began breathing through his mouth almost instantly, only to find it was somehow worse when he could taste it with each inhale. Could imagine with horribly vivid accuracy a lithe black-haired figure wrapped in the sheets of his bed.

Nadia and Ryan had done a full excavation of the room, all evidence of an omega in heat having been visibly removed. James usually kept his room neat, his bed crisply made, but it was almost as spotless as the day he’d first moved in.

That is, except for one small, dark remnant of Keith that pulled James forward and across his room to stand at the side of his bed.

There, shoved against the gap where his bed met the wall of the ship, was the unobtrusive shape of Keith’s long-sleeved shirt. The one he’d been wearing when he’d first shown up at James’ door on the first day of his heat. Nadia and Ryan must have missed it in their sweep of the room.

The shirt faced him, as innocent as a wrinkled article of clothing heavy with the scent of Keith could be.

The right thing to do would be to take the clothing item to be laundered, then returned to its owner. He didn’t even need to do it himself. James could give it to Nadia, have her remove that final piece of evidence.

Hell, he could send it down the disposal chute to be incinerated and still feel less guilt than what he knew he was going to do.

James kept it.

He folded the shirt, neatly, with barely shaking fingers. When he tucked it into the back of his closet, as casually as if he was putting away one of his own pieces of clothing, he allowed himself only a single breath against the fabric, nose to rumpled collar.

It made his head spin.

He slammed the closet door shut.

Things were supposed to go back to normal.

It was the eighth day, Keith’s heat was over, and regular training could begin again. James hadn’t actually seen Keith yet, not since the week began, but that was normal. It wasn’t like he was avoiding him. The Atlas was a big ship. If their paths hadn’t crossed today, it was from the simple math of probabilistic statistics.

James was avoiding him.

He spent the rest of the day as busy as his schedule would allow - filling it with meetings and drills and impromptu lectures for the freshman class. By the time he finally returned to the dorms, it was late into the evening. So fixated on his thoughts of Keith and his efforts to avoid him, James didn’t immediately pick up on the sense of wrongness that he walked into as he shut the door to the MFE common room behind him.

It took a moment for it to sink in, the overwhelming scent of grief and despair. It was unrelenting, so strong the person was clearly making no attempts to hide it, or suppress it. James stomach tightened with worry as he stepped further into the room.

His gaze first came to rest on Nadia, seated at the edge of the couch like she couldn’t decide to sit back or leap to her feet. Her expression was drawn tight, almost as if she was fighting back tears. One hand was extended halfway towards the hunched figure across from her.

Which was Ina.

Her blond hair looked unbrushed, her civilian clothing irreversibly rumpled. James couldn’t see her face from the direction she was facing, but the downward slope of her posture said more than any lack of smile ever could.

Ryan was next to her, his expression as somber as James had ever seen it. He was seated as close to Ina as possible without actually touching her, but something about the tenseness of his shoulders made James think he desperately wanted to.

“What’s going on?” James asked with no precursor. This wasn’t an occasion for greetings, for a casual, “Welcome back.” Something was wrong here, so terribly wrong, and his heart was pounding with the steady rhythm of growing dread.

“They’re back,” Ina announced. Her voice was monotone, flat and emotionless in a way James hadn’t thought possible. “My family.”

James gaze snapped back to her. Ina remained hunched, as still as a statue in her seat on the couch. She had the vague look of an ancient totem, a motionless piece of rock poised to crumble at the slightest of touches.

“That’s great, Lief,” he said, but something about her characteristic apathy unnerved him in a way it never had before. James suddenly found that he didn’t know what to say, because what was the appropriate response to a friend that had just been reunited with their family after years of the terrible unknown. “How are they?”

Ina crumbled.

If she was a cairn, teetering on the edge of collapse, James’ words were the tipping point.

“She didn’t make it.” When Ina spoke, it was into her hands, as she leaned her weight onto her elbows like they could hold the entirety of the weight of her slender frame. Maybe they could. But James had the terrible feeling she was about to break. “Katrin, she never made it out. She died days before the camps were liberated. We were too late.”

It was silent, the ugly kind of silent that spawned not from people choosing not to speak, but being so completely distraught words had failed them. It was the silence of mourners.

The silence of cowards.

“Ina,” James began, then stopped. What could he say? I’m sorry? It was only the most useless, empty sentiment invented to counter the heavy weight of grief. It was a misplaced apology, the wrong words offered from the wrong person.

“I thought we’d defeated them,” Ina said, voice brittle. “I thought it was over for us, that we were safe and out of the front lines. The war was over here. She was supposed to be safe!” Her volume climbed louder, even as her words became tighter, more strangled.

And then a silence fell, covering the common room with its deadly quiet.

When Ina spoken again, her words were hushed. “If we’d only been faster. Acted sooner-”

“Don’t,” Ryan cut in, voice firm but gentle, “blame yourself. This was out of your control.”

“Can I blame them?” Ina whispered. The question was tear-streaked. “For what they did to her?”

Who? James wanted to ask. The Garrison? Or the Galra?

“You can blame me for all I care,” Ryan said, his thumb brushing along Ina’s cheek like a wiper chasing rivulets of rain. “But don’t turn this inwards. I know- I know it hurts right now.” Ryan did, in the worst way possible. “But you can’t do this to yourself.”

Ina nodded, but if she was convinced, it wasn’t evident in her expression. Her face was still damp when she spoke again, preceded by several long unsteady breaths.

“She was thirteen.”

Horribly, Ina had turned back to face James, her tone almost pleading. What was she asking for? Whatever it was, James throat worked uselessly to find some kind of meaningful response, some explanation.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally.

The words sounded just as hollow voiced aloud as when James had first thought them.

Chapter Text

Was there anything more humiliating than waking from a seven day, heat-induced daze with the sudden awareness of having spent the last week in alternating bouts of pain, fever, and ecstasy in the bedroom of your childhood rival?

Keith found the answer to be a resounding no.

It came to him slowly as he opened his eyes on the eighth morning, the artificial light of the room indicating some semblance of daytime and searing his retinas with its dull glow.

Everything seemed sharper after his heat. Brighter, louder. Scents - stronger. This room smelled like his own slick and sweat, and beneath it all, the comforting scent of Arctic pine that had soothed the burn of the last seven days of his heat.

The scent of an alpha.

More specifically, the scent of an alpha named James Griffin.

More horrifically, the scent of an alpha named James Griffin.

He bolted upright in the nest of clothing and blankets he didn’t remember building around himself. The motion sent his head spinning, but he was determined not to fall back against the fabric of his nest to curb the dizziness. He didn’t deserve that comfort.

Pathetic. He was pathetic, falling into James’ room like some adolescent omega in the throws of their first heat. Fragments of memories were slowly rising to the surface, hazy as his reflection appearing through a foggy mirror.

Griffin, telling him to come to his room to download a series of now irrelevant files to his datapad. Keith, feeling the itch across his skin that told him just how bad an idea that was to even consider. Also Keith, still deciding to make the stumbling walk to the MFE dorms as his heat came only closer and his self-control drew even more thin.

Keith was phenomenally stupid.

He’d shown up at Griffin’s door, hands empty, no datapad in sight, to do… what exactly? Show Griffin what a pitiful state he was in? Did he expect him to reach out with sympathy? With comfort?

What had Keith been looking for, beyond that threshold?

Whatever it was, it had landed him here - in an unfamiliar bed that had become all too familiar in the days he spent sweating beneath a pile of blankets and rumpled clothing. His fingers were still tangled in what he realized with a dull ache was one Griffin’s Garrison-issued workout T-shirts. His head had made an indent against a wrinkled swath of gray fabric he recognized as the alpha’s favorite sweatshirt. Keith had the faint memory of pulling it off the back of the chair it had been haphazardly tossed across as he stumbled around the room in his single-minded drive to build his nest that terrible first day.

With a snarl of disgust, Keith disentangled himself from the heap of fabric that had been his nest, ignoring the instinct to preserve its shape, its careful design. He hadn’t made the nest to impress anyone, hadn’t spent the first day of his heat in a panic, arranging it with a kind of frenzied perfection before realizing the scent around him was just that - a scent. He had no alpha to share his heat with. Keith, despite his every inhalation telling him he was with Griffin, surrounded by Griffin, was alone.

Keith’s face was a flaming red, a pointless color of embarrassment that no one else was present to bear witness to. His entire body ached as he pushed himself upright, standing with only a slight wobble to his knees.

Feeling a strong and sudden urge to flee like a criminal abandoning the scene of a crime, Keith quickly pulled on the first pair of jeans he saw. They were his own, fortunately. And had been neatly folded by someone that was most definitely not him and set beside the foot of the bed, as if waiting for their owner to wake with a mind lucid enough to know he needed them.

Keith had a vague recollection of the other MFE pilots moving in and out of the room - not Griffin, never Griffin - and thought shame would swallow him up entirely as made to push the door open. His hand hovered over the release button for a long moment before he steeled himself with a steadying breath.

You’re the leader of Voltron, he told himself as he stepped through the exit into the dim lights of the MFE dorm hall. You’ve faced down squadrons of Galra and Zarkon himself. You can do this.

What he wouldn’t give to be in Black now, hurtling toward a fully armed Galra cruiser with nothing but pure, animalistic survival on his mind.

Before Keith had even stepped into the dorm common room, the murmurings of a TV set to low volume was the only warning he needed to know he wasn’t alone.

Unfortunately, the only way out was through the common room. Fortunately, its only occupants were Rizavi, who was sprawled in an armchair Keith could have swore he hadn’t been there last week, and Kinkade. The male MFE was fiddling with a camera in his lap.

They both glanced up as Keith stepped gingerly into the light of the common room, shoulders taut with tension. Rizavi was smiling, as she usually seemed to be, but Kinkade’s expression was unreadable as his gaze rested on him. Keith fought back the paralyzing embarrassment of their scrutiny as he cleared his throat, which he now noticed was painfully dry.

Keith was suddenly aware that his dark hair was still stuck to his forehead with sweat and he was wearing a shirt that was conspicuously not his. Kinkade’s face remained carefully blank as his dark eyes took in Keith’s appearance with wordless judgement. Rizav’si smile widened an inch too wide to be comfortable, for either her own wellbeing or Keith’s dwindling sense of dignity.

Fortunately, the female pilot spoke before Keith could make a shambling attempt to broach the awkward silence.

“He emerges!” Rizavi announced, voice annoyingly chipper. “Omega defense squad, at your service.”

Keith immediately wished he had been the one to speak first after all.

“What day is it?” he asked, ignoring her previous comment entirely. His voice was mostly a croak.

Riizavi winced in sympathy while Kinkade stood and wordlessly offered Keith a glass of water. He gulped it down as the female MFE continued her aggressively upbeat approach to filling in the missing slots in his memory over the last week. It felt a little like being debriefed by a Jazzercise instructor that had just downed a twenty-ounce Red Eye.

“In conclusion,” she said, finally. “James is out running training drills with some of the fourth-year cadets right now. If you think your heat cycle’s run its course we can let him know and I’m sure he’ll-”

“It’s over,” he cut in darkly. He fought the urge to cross his arms over the stolen shirt. It felt too much like an admittance of guilt. “I’ll start cleaning now, then. Sorry, for the-” he paused, unable to find the right word. “Everything.”

Rizavi leaned back into the couch and crossed one leg over the other, her right foot bobbing a gleeful rhythm. Keith hated her a little for it.

“As much as we appreciate the offer, Kogane, I’m not sure James would,” she drawled.

Keith flinched back, slight enough he hoped it was imperceptible.

“I’m thinking it might be best if you leave that to us,” the pilot continued. “The longer you hang around, the more trouble it’ll be for his alpha… sensibilities.”

Impossibly, her grin seemed to stretch even wider across her face. Somehow her even row of white teeth was almost as frightening as the jagged shape of his own incisors that sometimes pricked painfully against his tongue.

“Right,” he said, his voice cracking on the single word. The corner of Kinkade’s mouth curled up, his expression more amused than scrutinizing now.

“Do you want someone to walk you back to your room?” When Kinkade spoke, his voice was a deep rumble. Keith resented the kindness in it.

“No,” he said quickly. “No, thanks. And thanks for…” Keith trailed off, words failing him.

Thanks for what? For letting him stay? For bringing him the food and water he knew must have somehow sustained him through the last week? For not calling him pathetic and weak-willed and desperate for coming here at all?

“...Everything,” he finished again, lamely. He was out of the common room door before the other pilots could try to respond.

His walk back to the Paladins’ dormitory somehow felt as long as the three years he’d spent in the Quantum Abyss. It made Keith wish he’d - accidentally, of course - absconded one of Griffin’s hoodies to hide his face with instead of a T-shirt. There seemed to be an unusual number of people moving up and down the halls of the Atlas, casting Keith curious looks as he tried not to stagger along the far wall on his path back to the dorms.

He was hyperware of the fact that he looked like he’d just rolled out of someone else’s bed, and rightly so. His limbs felt shaky, like they’d forgotten quite how to move in time with each other. Keith was already thinking of how many hours on the training deck he’d need make up for the lost time, lost muscle and speed.

Damn his heat. Damn his irrepressible omega hormones. Damn Griffin, and damn his friends, and their smiles that were as gentle as they were knowing. Damn his heat again, for good measure.

The Paladin’s dorm was empty, lights set to a faint glow in the common room and bedroom doors closed. The team must have been out, running drills or stuck in a conference room for the strategy meetings the Garrison’s top officers were so fond of.

He thought, briefly, of Kinkade and Rizavi who had been in the MFE dorms in what he now knew was the middle of the day. Their presence, he realized, was conspicuous. Had they stayed back to look after him? The thought was almost too terrible to consider.

Keith took advantage of the solitude to trudge across the room, grateful for the absence of the other Paladins at least for the moment. He gave the fridge a cursory glance as he passed the kitchen, decided he was more in need of shower than food, and made the short walk to his bedroom instead.

His door slid open with a whir, the lights switching on automatically as he stepped inside. His room was exactly as he’d left it a week ago. That is, as barren as the room he’d occupied on the Castle Ship and filled only with his own scent. But Griffin still stuck to his skin, to his hair and hands and his heart and Keith found himself standing frozen in the entryway with the sudden coldness of the place.

He stood there so long the lights eventually dimmed to a darkness that only his Galra vision allowed him to make out shapes in the gloom. There, an empty desk. There, a bed made with folded corners that were never quite sharp enough to meet the Garrison standard. Neat. Clean. Sterile.

With one vicious tug, Keith stripped the shirt off his chest in a motion that had the lights switching back on, flooding the room with a renewed brightness. He flung the shirt savagely into the corner of his room where it landed in a crumpled ball, unobtrusive and yet impossible to ignore. He kicked off his jeans next as he marched with steely determination to the private bathroom. Denied the violent satisfaction of slamming the door, he made do with scrubbing himself raw until his skin was red and stinging and he could only smell that inoffensive odor of the Garrison’s cheap, standard issue shampoo.

Keith had the sense of mind to message Shiro a terse “It’s over,” before falling into the cold sheets of his bed. Sleep had already swallowed him before darkness fell across his room once more.

Chapter Text

Keith successfully avoided Griffin for the next two days until the Garrison demanded Paladins and MFE pilots coexist in the same space for their weekly strategy session.

Keith had a natural habit of scanning any room he entered, the unshakeable instinct to vet any perceived threat and find the right position in the room to stage himself to face it. Almost immediately his eyes caught on the broad shoulders of the alpha swathed in the familiar slate gray of the MFE uniform.

He immediately wanted to step forward, then look away, as if avoiding Griffin’s attention would somehow also make it impossible for him to notice Keith.

But Griffin was already staring back, almost as if his eyes had been fixed on the door - waiting for the Paladins to enter. It was ridiculous. Keith was ridiculous. But his limbs seemed to suddenly disconnect from the nervous system that usually convinced them to work.

Keith froze, just long enough for Hunk to bump into him from behind and nudge him forward. Most of the other Paladins gravitated toward the MFEs instantly, their muted chatter echoing across the boardroom.

Maybe it made him a coward, but Keith silently made his way over to the group of Blades standing against the back wall of the room. The Blades were never sat at the main conference room table. And Keith could never be sure if it was because their larger bodies were simply ill-suited to the seating arrangement or they were being intentionally excluded.

As Keith watched the cold gazes around the room track his steps towards the other Galra, he figured it was much more likely to be the latter.

Keith couldn’t remember a single thing Iverson said during that excruciating hour, all of his concentration dedicated to keeping his gaze from even slipping towards Griffin’s seat at the conference table. He was going to blame it on the lingering effects of his heat - the strange, physiological echo of Griffin’s pheromones surrounding him during that most vulnerable time suddenly rising to the surface now that the alpha in question was physically present.

Griffin had taken a seat facing the wall Keith leaned against, a maneuver Keith couldn’t help but hate him a little for, no matter how innocently done. Keith would have preferred staring at the back of Griffin’s head than this inescapable urge to allow his gaze to slide slightly to the left and catch along the alpha’s jawline.

Keith only realized the meeting had ended when chairs were suddenly being pushed back, the murmurs of conversation rising around him.

Keith lingered in the back of the boardroom, listening to the low tone’s of Kolivan’s conversation next to him and giving the MFEs ample time to disperse. He nodded his acknowledgement as most of the Blades filtered out of the room before him, a few reaching out to brush a hand against his shoulder as they left.

When there were only a few stragglers left mingling around the room, Keith allowed himself to glance towards Griffin. He was relieved to see his chair was empty, the entire group of MFEs absent.

Murmuring a goodbye to Kolivan, Keith turned to leave as well. And froze, immediately, when he saw a tall silhouette lingering next to the exit door closest to him.

Because of course Griffin wanted to face this head on. He wasn’t like Keith, prone to making strategic exits when things were uncomfortable and reckless decisions when they were dangerous.

Keith couldn’t make out the granite of Griffin’s eyes from where he was standing but he felt it when their gazes locked, a silent acknowledgement.

He only considered for a moment how insane it would look to change his course and leave from the North exit door instead, before steeling himself to continue his strides to the door. Griffin was an uncomfortable sentinel just on the perimeter of his vision.

Maybe I can just walk past him, Keith thought, drawing closer. And we can both pretend like-

“Kei- Kogane, wait.”

To Keith’s credit, he didn’t immediately sprint out of the boardroom at the sound of Griffin’s voice. If he flinched slightly, he covered it by quickly turning to face the other pilot.

It was a knee-jerk reaction to want to snarl, “What?” in return. But the barest modicum of reason he still had allowed him to resist the urge.

In this sudden nearness, Griffin looked sharper somehow, as if sleeplessness had pulled his skin just a little tighter against the elegant bone structure of his face. The faint purpling around the edges of his eyes weren’t unfamiliar from Keith’s own evidence of a lack of sleep but they looked particularly wrong on the other pilot. Somehow Keith had always assumed Griffin’s image of the unshakable, iron-collared rising star of the Garrison could never slip, even the slightest amount.

But that wasn’t the only thing hardening his edges. There was an unnatural set to his shoulders, a tension that pulled them higher and had his long fingers drumming an irregular rhythm against the starched material of his flight suit slacks.

He was… nervous, Keith realized. And something about the sight of the alpha looking a little off-kilter set his own nerves right, resolved his panicky urge to make an immediate exit.

“Griffin,” Keith greeted him- neutral, careful. “You only came with Nadia today.”

It was strange to watch the tension leave Griffin’s body, as if Keith’s words had released a string, a rope that had been pulling tighter and tighter.

The alpha seemed to take the lack of immediate rejection as Keith’s permission to move forward, and Griffin stepped towards him - close enough that Keith now had to incline his neck just slightly to meet his eyes.

He didn’t really want to look Griffin in the eyes anyways.

Griffin was standing too close to him now, just near enough to be outside the comfortable distance of acquaintances. Close enough that Keith could smell him, the comforting scent of Arctic pine that he remembered permeating his sheets, his pillows. It was sharper somehow, an edge to it that hadn’t lingered in his bedroom.

“Yeah,” Griffin said tiredly. “She decided to take a leave of absence after all. She’ll be out for a while. Ryan too, he’s staying with her.”

“Kinkade?” Keith asked, surprised. “Are they-?”

He cut himself off, unsure of the direction the conversation was headed with that question.

“Mates?” Griffin finished for him. “No. Not officially, at least. Ryan’s been planning to start courting her for a while now.”

“Oh,” Keith said, awkwardly. “That’s, uh, good for them.”

He was still determinedly not looking at Griffin, but when he finally glanced up he felt his stomach tighten. The other boy was already staring back, the heaviness in his gaze something Keith realized he’d felt weighing on him the entire time they’d been trapped in this meeting room for the debrief.

“Yeah.” Griffin said, gaze unwavering. “It is.”

Keith refused to let the silence permeate, his pulse increasing the longer it did.

“You look tired,” Keith said instead, just to fill the gap in the stilted conversation. “And you smell stressed.”

Both statements were true, but he could gradually sense the alpha’s scent softening since he had stepped into Keith’s space - the frigid, anxious scent of pine transforming into something warmer. Keith wanted to taste it on the back of his tongue.

“I am tired,” Griffin admitted. “And I was stressed. Feel a bit better now though. I was worried you-”

Griffin stopped, abruptly - redness spreading along the slopes of his cheekbones.

“Worried I what?” Keith said suspiciously.

“It’s nothing. It’s stupid. It’s an alpha thing,” Griffin said quickly. “I was so convinced I needed to be back here, for aftercare when you-”

He seemed to catch himself rambling then, shaking his head.

“And then when you ran off, a couple days ago.” Griffin paused. “Anyways, it’s stupid.”

It was stupid, Keith wanted to say, but there was something traitorously soft inside of him at the thought of the alpha wanting to be back with him, after his heat. They hadn’t done anything, and he knew it was just the instinctual hormone response of an alpha reacting to an omega who had shared their space during such a vulnerable time. But Keith still wanted-

“I’m sorry,” Keith said suddenly - shutting down all possible directions of that train of thought. This is what had had to say, what he wanted to say since he left Griffin’s room at the end of his heat.

“Sorry?” Griffin looked genuinely confused, the expression twisting his brows together in an oddly vulnerable expression. “For what?”

Keith gritted his teeth, frustrated with the alpha’s incompetence to need the apology spelled out.

“Your room,” he bit out. When Griffin gave him only puzzled silence in return, Keith exhaled sharply. He felt his bangs rise in response, then drift back to rest against his forehead. “And my… heat.”

“Don’t apologize!” Griffin’s expression was startled, almost frantic - and Keith felt the alpha grab his wrist as if Keith was about to run away before he got the words out. “I told you, you have nothing to apologize for. I’m glad you- I’m happy you felt safe enough to stay there.”

“I didn’t say that!” Keith snapped. As always, anger was an easier emotion to reconcile with than guilt or humiliation.

“So you didn’t?” Griffin asked, hurt and confusion evident in his voice. “Then I’m sor-”

“Don’t you dare apologize again,” Keith said, more exasperated than angry now.

They both stared at each other - a strange, uncomfortable deadlock. Keith’s heartbeat was pounding like he’d just finished an hour of drills.

“Let’s just both agree not to apologize then,” Keith said finally. “And I guess I’ll just say,” he shifted slightly, “Thank you. Thanks.”

Griffin was still gripping his wrist lightly, unconsciously. But instead of freeing himself from his hand, Keith angled his wrist to bump his scent gland against the alpha’s. The motion was quick - one forward brush, then one back. But it was undeniable that he had just offered his scent to the alpha in gratitude - a gesture that was sometimes friendly but more often used with mates. Keith felt a frisson of heat along his skin with the gesture, startled by his own boldness.

Griffin’s eyes were fixed on him, pupils blown wide. He gently released his grip on Keith, so slowly Keith felt the brush of every fingertip leave his skin. Instead of moving back, away from him, the alpha raised the wrist he had scented to his nose. Keith watched him inhale, gaze unfocused and a dazed expression softening the corners of his eyes.

“Don’t do that!” Keith snapped, fury and embarrassment and satisfaction fighting in equal parts to come to the surface. “I was just- I’m just! I said thank you!”

But Griffin said nothing, and Keith was startled to realize with the alpha’s height he could somehow look down at him and also through his lashes at the same time.

“You were right to begin with - this is stupid!” Keith said finally.

He spared only a single glance back to the alpha as he left. The boardroom door was just whirring shut as he glimpsed where Griffin still stood - wrist to his mouth and watching him through hooded eyes.

Keith shuddered.

Stupid, he thought again. And then he resolved not to think.

The Atlas’s first off-planet mission was announced the next day. A trip to the closest allied port in a galaxy almost adjacent to Earth’s. Diplomatic stops along the way that Keith couldn't care less about. Science missions he only cared marginally more about. To him, this launch was only a promise of two months away from a planet that Keith could barely call home. And he couldn’t wait to leave.

The entire launch was clearly being framed not as an offensive maneuver towards the Galra, but as an exploratory endeavor. None of the Garrison brass would admit it outright, but the trip felt like an intentional moral booster - a strategic show of prowess for humankind after the crippling blow while freeing the labor camps.

Keith couldn’t care much either way, if it got him flying again. If it got him away from Earth, back among the stars, the half of him that seemed to make sense more every day. He was aching to open his eyes and see only the void of endless space - the comforting blackness that promised he disappeared into without a trace, only the rumble of Black’s engine filling the silence as he sped off into the unknown.

Keith felt the energy onboard shift, transforming into something a little more kinetic. Most of the crew had only dreamed of ever leaving Earth - and Keith could feel their eagerness in the same way he remembered first sliding into the cockpit of a flight simulator.

By comparison, Keith only felt grounded. It was as if something settled in him knowing he could finally, blessedly leave the planet he was fully prepared to abandon forever the second he first saw the Red Lion.

It was going to be a large crew onboard the Atlas - mechanics, medics, geoscientists, and Garrison officials. A ship as big as the Atlas demanded as much, but it still felt gratuitous to Keith. He liked it when it was just the Paladins, just him and his mother. He didn’t know half the people’s names on this ship and he didn’t care to. They would be strangers when they started the mission and no different when it ended.

The weeks preceding the Atlas’ launch were packed with endless safety drills and briefings. De-briefings. Flight plan descriptions and officer role explanations. Keith had to be pulled off of his Blade work completely, and when he managed to make it over to the Galra compound to visit his mother the last week before the launch, the atmosphere was… bleak.

The compound looked strangely empty, whitewashed walls still pristine in their newness but the freshly paved streets barren. The only evidence that the Galra hadn’t completely abandoned the place were the lights he could see flickering on in the buildings along the asphalt path.

“What’s wrong?” Keith asked Krolia by way of greeting as he slipped inside his mother’s home. Krolia’s lavender skin was dark beneath her eyelids and she seemed thinner, frailer. It was strange seeing her sturdiness vanish in what only could have been a few weeks' time.

“You shouldn’t be here, kit,” Krolia told him tiredly.

“Why not?” Keith asked, agitated. “You look sick, what’s wrong?”

“I’m not sick,” Krolia said. “But perhaps I shall be soon. The contagion that plagued young Nexia is spreading, it appears. Throughout the compound.”

“What?” Keith hadn’t heard anything from the countless meetings onboard the Atlas. None of the Blades who regularly attended gave any indication of a larger problem at the compound. Keith wondered if they were trying to still an oncoming panic.

“The human doctors are investigating. We had to inform them of Nexia’s condition, near the end.” Krolia said. She didn’t seem pleased with this information. “Apparently humans are not at risk for the contagion, but Galra are - unusually so. It’s unlike anything we’ve seen before.”

“How many?” Keith asked. Needing to ask, but not wanting to know the answer.

“We’ve lost three Blades so far,” Krolia said, somber. On anyone else, it may have seemed ambivalent. “All either very young, or very old.”

Three lives, taken in the span of a few weeks. Keith was frightened, suddenly, that he might not return to the same Blade of Mamora he was leaving now.

“You need to get out,” Keith said. “All of you. Deploy on missions or something, leave this solar system. They can’t keep you here.”

“It is difficult, when so many are currently in quarantine. If we do not care for them, we leave our own in the hands of the humans.” She looked at Keith, eyes narrow. “And you know they do not treat us kindly.”

Keith nodded, unable to think of an answer that didn’t disdain Krolia’s own concern for the other Blades. He cared for them, he did. But it would be an easy decision for Keith to choose his mother or Kolivan over any one of the other Blades. To him, the trolley problem had a singular answer.

“I am glad you will be leaving soon,” Krolia said, brushing her hand down the back of Keith’s head. It rested there for a moment before she let go, its comforting weight disappearing. “You will be safer away from this planet.”

None of the other Blades were on the Atlas’ first mission. Keith wondered if the only reason he’d been allowed on at all was his ability to pass as human at a first glance. Their Galra allies didn’t appear welcome on diplomatic missions, it seemed.

“I’ll check in with you regularly,” Keith said, unable to hide the concern in his voice. “And maybe… have one of the Blade’s doctors investigate.”

“We’ve already sent a sample to one of our microbiologists off planet,” Krolia said coolly. “Discreetly.”

Don’t tell the humans. Keith heard the message loud and clear.

“That’s good,” he said. Then, awkward with his goodbyes, he ducked his head. “Send me a message if you hear anything.”

Krolia smiled tiredly. “Come here, kit.”

Keith stepped forward, allowing his mother to pull him against her chest. She was so tall she was able to tuck him beneath her chin entirely - rubbing her neck against his hair to leave her scent.

“Be careful,” she told him, when she’d finally released Keith and allowed him to move away.

Keith’s throat was tight. “You too.”

He could feel his mother’s eyes fixed on him as he slipped out of her room.

Keith remembered the Castleship as a maze - a sprawling expanse of rooms and towers and pools that defied gravity and simple, straightforward logic. But the Castleship’s design had still felt purposeful, artistic even. At least, it wasn’t prone to changing shape on a whim. An elevator went up, and down. The most baffling thing about it was the Lions’ hangers being located at the end of a long and convoluted series of mechanisms that would have put Rube Goldberg to shame.

The Atlas was different, Keith realized, and he realized it quickly. The ship was vaguely sentient in a way that could only create problems when floor plans were subtly changing on a daily basis. He spent half an hour trying to make it back to the Paladins’ dorm rooms after a late-night training session only to find himself forcibly routed to the mess hall three separate times. It was only after he jammed open the door with a snarl and stormed across the hall to grab a protein bar did it allow him to make a reluctant path back to his dorm.

He had forgotten to eat dinner, admittedly. But that hardly gave the Atlas permission to meddle like an overbearing mother.

Sometimes, though, it truly felt like the Atlas was just determined to disorient him. It was on one of his late night meanders back after a training session that Keith found himself standing in front of a door that looked remarkably similar to the entrance to the Paladin’s dorms.

When it slid open in front of him however, he was not faced with the cozy interior of the common room, littered with Pidge’s gadgets and Allura’s houseplants. Instead, the room was small in diameter, closer to an alcove, and furnished only with a cushioned bench that curved the length of the outer wall. Where the chamber lacked in width however, it made up with the height of its ceiling, stretching so tall it disappeared into a darkness the small band of emergency lights on the floor couldn’t illuminate. There was a faint sheen on the outer wall, a glimmer that Keith took a moment to recognize as glass, or the proxy for it used on spaceship portholes. The little alcove was essentially that, the entire wall of darkness against the hull that would let in the stars.

It was peaceful, that space. But something about it also made Keith feel like he could disappear directly into the void above him, his edges fading the darkness that seemed to creep closer as the emergency lights dimmed. He left quickly, and two corner turns down the hall led him to the Paladins’ dorm.

It was weeks later when he stumbled across the room again, the day of the Atlas’s first launch. The launch was at 8 a.m., and Shiro had warned against any early morning training sessions beforehand.

Keith took the suggestion in stride, then promptly ignored it as he untangled his legs from his blankets before sunrise. The common rooms of the Paladins’ dorm was only faintly lit by a thin strip of lights lining the floor - unnecessary, for Keith at least. He knew his vision in the dark was nothing compared to his mother’s, but he could navigate much better than any of his human teammates in the blackness.

The trek up to the training decks was muscle memory at this point for Keith - he’d taken it so often he didn’t even have to count how many corners he’d round before he reached the elevator up to the deck.

Keith was stopped in his tracks then, to discover what he had thought with 100% confidence was the door to the changing rooms attached to the training center were in fact not that at all. Because the door opened to that same alcove, the one that should have only been a few corridors down from the Paladins’ dorms and not three decks above.

Maybe the ship has multiple alcoves, Keith reasoned with himself. Despite the complete lack of utility to them, the inherent empty space.

The windows were uncovered this time, and Keith could see the faint outlines of the Garrison headquarters across the launchpad, barely lit by the beginning of a sunrise.

If Keith could, he would have watched the launch alone - sequestered away in that alcove. Eyes fixed on a burning horizon, watching as the ground moved further away, how the curvature of the planet suddenly became visible. The desert landscape would disappear behind clouds, the spangle of stars would replace the magenta sunset. And he would finally be home.

But when the ship’s intercom chimed for muster for the launch, Keith was already back at the dorms with the other Paladins. Ready to obediently follow the group up to the bridge to buckle in alongside the rest of the mission crew for the launch.

The third time Keith stumbled across the alcove, it was barely a week into the mission’s time off-planet. And there was already someone sitting there.

Griffin had one arm resting casually against a propped knee, his posture so uncharacteristically relaxed Keith had to pause for a moment to revel in it. He let himself watch for one second, two seconds longer before he made a move to back out through the entryway.

Only the Atlas had a different idea, and decided to seal the entrance of the door with a whir of hydraulics while his heel was just breaching the opening. Keith yelped, making an unsteady move away from the door to stagger forward to where Griffin was no longer peacefully sitting.

Griffin had leapt to his feet at the sound, instantly stepping towards Keith as if to catch him. Keith immediately righted himself, the reflexes Lance liked to call “catlike” but were mostly just a symptom of being Galra catching him before he consciously made the decision to. Griffin was left standing frozen with his hands slightly outstretched. In an awkward readjusting of limbs, he moved backwards with his hands coming behind his back in what looked like an echo of parade rest.

Griffin’s face was neutral, only a slight flush across his cheekbones showing any sense of awkwardness from Keith’s entrance. But his posture was so rigid Keith found himself missing the loose tangle of long limbs that had been Griffin’s seated position before he stumbled in.

In the small, sealed space Keith senses were assaulted by Griffin’s heady alpha scent. He wasn’t sure if the other boy was consciously aware of it but there was this underlying agitation in his scent around Keith that made him simultaneously want to challenge Griffin to an impromptu sparring match and just throw himself down on the ground and let the other pilot do anything he wanted to him.

Which was nothing! Keith reminded himself, fervently. Absolutely nothing.

He wasn’t due for his heat soon, so it must be the vestigial memories of his last one spent in Griffin’s room making him this delusional.

“Nice cover,” Griffin said finally, once the beat of silence between them had stretched too long to be any semblance of comfortable.

“Thanks,” Keith said awkwardly. “It’s the tail. Helps me balance.”

Griffin’s eyes went wide, flickering back to Keith and away so fast they were only a glint of gray.

“Oh,” he said, sounding more uncertain than Keith had ever heard him. Keith felt a smile curling up unbidden in the edges of his mouth. “Sure, that makes sense I gu-”

“I don’t have a fucking tail,” Keith said, and then he was really laughing for real. It was the kind of wild laughter that only ever hit him right when he was at the edge of sleep-deprivation and delirium and he bent over, gripping his sides as he struggled to breathe. “Your face-!”

It was only Keith’s rapsing laughter that filled the small alcove as he tried to tamp down his amusement.

When Keith’s laughter had petered off he looked up, a grin still stretched across his face. Griffin was staring down at him in what looked like an impossible mixture of fascination and horror. His face was red as if he’d spent the last minute suffering from the same kind of body-shaking laughter as Keith.

“You’re impossible,” Griffin finally breathed, but it wasn’t exasperation in his voice. Incredulity, maybe.

“And you’re gullible,” Keith said, shrugging. “Stop believing every implausible thing someone tells you.”

“In my defense,” Griffin said, finally letting a small smile show on his face. He still looked a little shell-shocked, to Keith’s confusion. “You are not entirely human. So anything is on the table.”

“Sure, but I think you would have noticed a fucking tail after all this time. Especially if it’s sticking out of my ass.”

“That’s true.” The overhead exit sign made Griffin’s face glow even more red in the dim light. His eyes seemed pointedly fixed on Keith’s face. “I would have noticed.”

Keith wasn’t sure what the hell that was implying, so he looked away. “You’re gullible,” he repeated, just to say something. Any of his earlier humor had drained away, as quickly as it had come. The constant simmering mixture of doubt, and uncertainty, and rage lifted to fill its space. “You trust people too much.”

No, not too much. Too easily, that was the right word.

“I like to give people the benefit of the doubt,” Griffin said, nonchalant. Keith wanted to laugh at how absurd that sounded. How different his life would look if he subscribed to the same philosophy.

“Yeah, that’s why you’re the captain of the MFEs and I got recruited to an intergalactic civil war when I was 16. Fuck off.” Keith wasn't sure why he was suddenly so angry, so frustrated by the concept of this innate trust.

“It’s not naive Keith,” Griffin said softly. Something in Keith shuddered hearing his first name when it had only ever been Kogane, Kogane, Kogane with him.

Griffin seemed to have sensed the shift in Keith’s tone and the humor drained from his voice. His face was a sculpted mask.

“It’s not naive to wait for someone to live up to your expectations instead of shutting them out before you even give them a chance.”

So why won’t you ask me to give you a chance? The thought lurked, unbidden and unexplained at the base of Keith’s ribcage.

“You can’t honestly believe that,” Keith said instead.

“I guess I just think people are generally good,” Griffin answered with a shrug. “At our core, we are good.”

“And it's just the bad apples that make the mess?” Keith asked bitterly, letting a wry smile twist his mouth. “We can fix them? Even after all this? I just don’t believe it.”

“I’m not asking you to.” Griffin was still staring at him, gaze thoughtful now.

“I think people like to think they’re good,” Keith said finally. It was frustrating to argue with someone that wouldn’t argue back. “But your version of good and my version of good are not the same. Every single person is going to prioritize different things, love different people. You can’t just simplify that down to either good or bad.”

Griffin was quiet for a long moment. “No, I don’t think it’s that complicated. In the end, it’s there. Maybe it looks a little different on a fighter pilot than it does a nurse. But it’s there.”

“You say that, after what happened to Leifsdottir’s family?”

“Yes.”

When Griffin didn’t elaborate from there, Keith shook his head. “You're an idealist.”

Griffin looked at him thoughtfully, head tilted slightly. Keith shifted his gaze away to the window, unable to meet Griffin’s.

“You’re a good person Keith,” Griffin said finally. “It doesn’t matter if your idea of that is different from mine.”

The image of Nacxela flickered in his mind then, a Galra battlecruiser filling Keith’s vision as his fighter careened forward on its path of single-minded destruction. That hadn’t been heroics, not for Keith. It was an act of desperation, an acknowledgement that the only outcome he could live with when faced with the possibility of his friends’ deaths was that he couldn’t live with it all.

Keith hadn’t wanted to die then. But he hadn’t wanted to survive in a world where he didn’t make every attempt to save them either.

That didn’t make him good, it made him selfish - manifesting in a self-sacrificial way.

“Whatever.” He still refused to glance back at the other pilot. “Let’s just agree to disagree on this one. It’s too late to talk about this kind of metaphysical shit anyways.”

“It’s exactly how late it needs to be to talk about it,” Griffin said, a smile in his voice. “But I’ll take the hint. Why are you up so late anyways?”

“Training,” Keith said shortly. “Just some extra practice.”

“Every day?” The disbelief was obvious in Griffin’s tone.

Keith glanced at him suspiciously. “No,” he lied. “It was just for tonight.”

Griffin stared at him for a long moment, disappointment obvious in his gaze before shaking his head.

“I was talking to the night shift crew on the bridge. They say you’re usually up this late, wandering around.”

Keith hated that a ship this big now demanded a crew larger than the Lion ship. His nocturnal habits were never noticed by his teammates then.

“Well, I guess,” he said finally. It felt pointless to deny now. “Sometimes it takes some time to get back to the dorms after.”

“You don’t need extra training,” Griffin said simply. “And you don’t need it every day especially. You’re already the best fighter on this ship, so you're running yourself ragged for nothing.”

I’m fine, Keith wanted to say, but in this small of a space with Griffin he could smell the faint scent of concerned alpha - a steeliness that coated the back of his throat. He was overwhelmed with the sudden urge to comfort, to console. It’s fine, I’m fine, you don’t need to worry I’m-

“Are you having trouble sleeping?” Griffin took a step towards him as he asked it, interrupting Keith’s own spiraling thoughts. Keith resisted the urge to sway forward, closer to him. “You look tired, and you haven’t been out of the hospital that long.”

“No. It’s not like I’m an insomniac,” Keith said. “I just don’t need as much sleep as you at night. Biologically, you know.”

“I’m not sure I do.” There was genuine puzzlement in Griffin’s voice.

Keith glanced at him quickly, eyes flickering his direction and away just as fast. “Half Galra, remember? Got that weird alien biology going on.”

It was odd that anyone could forget, Keith felt so pointedly other as soon as he stepped into a room. The doubt in the humans’ gazes, the fear. The grudging acceptance from the Blades, the way Keith was convinced they were only ever comfortable around him with his face shield up - all human features covered behind a mask.

“How does that work then?” Griffin sounded so sincerely curious, Keith almost wanted to look back at him to see his expression. “You just don’t need as much sleep as a full human?”

“Kind of. Since the destruction of the Galra’s homeplanet Daibazaal, they’ve evolved with a more flexible polyphasic sleep schedule since they’re a nomadic race. My mom only sleeps four or so hours a night. When we were traveling through the quantum abyss she said I slept a lot, but not as much as my father. I guess I inherited some of that.”

“You said at night,” Griffin said pointedly. “What about during the day? Shouldn’t you be napping?”

“It’s fine,” Keith said, avoiding answering the question directly. The reality was there was nothing more he wanted to do at noon every day than curl up and sleep. But as that was not a socially acceptable means to catch up on much-needed sleep in the human world, it took all of his willpower to resist doing so.

Things had been easier when it was just him and Krolia, who understood the biological need to rest exactly when his body needed it and not with the rising and setting of the sun.

“Does Shirogane know?”

Keith shrugged. “He’s always known that I have a really crazy sleep schedule. We just never really knew why.”

“You should explain it. He can put you on a different training schedule so you can sleep during the day like you need.”

“It’s fine,” Keith repeated.

“Kogane.” There was enough exasperation in the word he almost wanted to smile. “If you don’t tell him, I will.”

That wiped any of the humor creeping onto his face off. Keith hated the idea of Shiro fussing, but fussing because Griffin overreacted to a non-issue was even worse.

“I’ll tell him! Don’t say anything,” Keith snapped.

“When?” Griffin asked, face unreadable.

“Soon.”

“Tomorrow,” Griffin said in response. “After the morning debriefing. Or I do.”

“Fine,” Keith muttered. Griffin would forget about it by tomorrow after he woke up anyways.

Griffin’s gaze finally softened, his scent shifting into something warm with satisfaction. Keith wanted to melt into it.

“Good. Now try and get some sleep. I’ll walk you back.”

“I don’t need you to walk me back,” Keith said peevishly.

Griffin smirked down at him, only one corner of his mouth tilting up in amusement. “You just admitted you have a track record of getting chronically lost onboard. While I have never lost my way once.”

“The Atlas must like you,” Keith mumbled, but he didn’t protest as Griffin laid a light hand against the small of his back and pushed him toward the door. It was so strange to feel his hand against the skin there without his armor on - only the thin fabric of his T-shirt a barrier between them.

Something inside Keith shivered when Griffin’s hand slid infinitesimally lower the moment before he let go. And then the steady weight of it was gone.

“Follow me,” Griffin said, and Keith absolutely hated the thing inside of him that jumped when the alpha commanded him, even over something so benign.

“I don’t need your help,” Keith repeated, even as he reluctantly followed Griffin forward down the hall, a half step behind.

There was a sudden, creaking groan of metal and the ship pitched right, throwing Keith against the wall. He caught himself just in time before Griffin came careening him, hands slamming against the wall on either side of him. He felt a knee slide between his open legs, pressing hard against his left thigh as Griffin swore above him.

“Jesus! What the hell was that?” the MFE pilot snarled.

The lights had flickered off in the turmoil but the hallway was immediately lit by the faintly ill color of the green emergency lights that kicked on instead.

Keith said nothing, could say nothing as he struggled to catch his breath. It took him a moment to realize it was not the adrenaline from the fall making him dizzy but the pressure of every one of Griffin’s joints against his own as the other boy pressed him harder into the wall, seemingly unconsciously. His hands were a cage around him, and Keith couldn’t remember the last time he had this much… body against him.

“Hey,” he heard from above him, and Keith forced himself to look up. “Are you okay?”

The words had a strange ringing to them, an unnatural cadence.

He wants you to… he’s asking you to… Keith thought vaguely, but he couldn’t quite figure out the end of that sentence. Instead, he shuddered, letting his head fall to the side, exposing his neck to the alpha above him.

He heard a sharp inhale above him, whatever words Griffin was attempting to say cut off abruptly.

“Sorry,” Keith muttered. He could not look at Griffin, would not look at Griffin. “It’s reflex.”

Around you, Keith wanted to add. He never wanted to bare his neck to Lance, when they were sparring. Or Shiro, when he was forcefully wrestled into a hug.

“You shouldn’t apologize,” Griffin murmured. He was staring down at Keith, except less at Keith and more at Keith’s neck. The omega shivered when he felt the gentle brush of fingertips against it, moving away the hair at the nape of his neck to fully expose the slope of skin.

Keith opened his mouth to say something, anything - an angry, defensive deluge of words on the tip of his tongue. But the only thing that came out was a long, loud whine.

He was so embarrassed, so painfully embarrassed but the instinctive sound only made him more panicked in response. The comforting weight of Griffin’s body pressing down over him was confusing the pleasure from his hindbrain with the alarm to this same response.

“Hey,” Griffin said. Keith could barely hear him from the way a faint echo rang in his ears, distorting the sound around him like he was underwater.

“Kogane. Hey, Kogane. Keith.”

He felt Griffin’s weight shift off of him, both a relief and a devastating loss, and then the alpha was crouching in front of him.

Keith’s vision was fuzzy enough that it took a moment for him to focus on the other pilot’s expression. His eyes were wide, gray irises lit green in the lighting of the hall and it gave his features an otherworldly vividness.

“Hey,” Griffin started, voice painfully soft. “I think you’re having a panic attack. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

“I’m already okay,” Keith said immediately, unsure himself if he really meant it.

“Okay,” Griffin agreed, and Keith hated him for it. “Is it the dark? I think the lights will come back on soon. We can head up to the bridge and see what’s going on.”

Keith wanted to laugh, but he thought he would have choked on it if he tried.

“It’s not the dark,” Keith said, but it was more of a sigh than a sentence. He didn’t want Griffin to press, to prod, to probe further with his questions. Trying to divert any more questions, he craned his neck to look around Griffin’s shoulder.

“What the hell was that? Did we hit something?” Keith asked.

Griffin stared at him a long moment, as if mentally shifting gears, before slowly pushing off the wall - relieving Keith of his weight and his warmth. The alpha stepped back, leaving a distance between them meant for acquaintances as Keith shakily stood upright as well. He kept one hand braced against the wall, halfway expecting another lurching maneuver sending him sideways.

In an instant, the emergency lights flicked back to their usual ambient white glow. It was strangely quiet, none of the blaring alarms and thudding footsteps Keith was used to in an ambush aboard the Castleship.

It didn’t feel like an ambush, that was the strange thing.

Griffin cleared his throat. “Whatever it was, it definitely woke up the rest of the ship.” His voice still sounded a little strange, just slightly off his normal steady cadence.

“I’m going to head up to the bridge,” Keith announced.

“Hold up,” Griffin said, grabbing his elbow before Keith could stride to the lift. “I’ll come with, just let me send a message to Nadia.”

Keith shifted uncomfortably as Griffin typed a quick message on his comms, the device strapped to his wrist. Keith hated wearing his, his own wrist incriminating in its bareness.

The walk up to the bridge was silent. Keith’s mind was churning, not sure whether to fixate on the potential of an ongoing attack or the frustrating way his body had just responded to Griffin. He could feel exhaustion setting in and it was making him weak, physically tired and unable to maintain the emotional distance he needed for mental clarity.

When the lift doors opened it was clear most of the crew had a similar idea to head upwards for answers. In the second it took for him to recognize the other Paladins - half in uniforms and half in sleepwear, clearly having given up even trying to get ready - Shiro was striding up to him.

“Where the hell were you?” Shiro shouted, not even waiting until the doors slid shut behind Keith before grabbing his arm.

The loudness of Shiro’s voice, the unfamiliar anger, made Keith freeze - unable to step forward. He’d seen Shiro furious before, but it still hit him every time with a sinking feeling in his stomach. He never cared when teachers would yell at him, when the Garrison higher-ups would berate him. But Shiro’s anger was different because Shiro was different, because Shiro mattered. And it made Keith want to retreat into himself in shame.

He resisted the urge like he did whenever the need hit him, by pushing outwards - letting his own frustration fight for precedence in the struggle of wills.

“Why does it matter?” Keith interrupted. “I’m here now. What’s going on?”

The other Paladins were silent, watching the interaction with wide eyes.

Shiro shook his head, a firm rejection of Keith’s nonchalance.

“No, Keith - we’re not going to just blow right over this. You weren’t there at the muster, and nobody could reach you on your comms, and now you’re just going to waltz in and pretend like you weren’t completely off-grid in the middle of an emergency.

He’s only angry because he cares, Keith told himself, but the words didn’t do anything to console him, to fix his tilting world. He felt the humiliation of the other Paladins’ eyes on him, wordlessly watching the exchange, the echo of voices further down the bridge from Garrison staff that were likely listening in as well.

That constant, simmering rage in him rose up as a barrier - a comforting fire to burn out the guilt and embarrassment.

“Christ, not even Krolia gets on my ass like you do Shiro,” Keith snapped. “I was coming back from the training center. I forgot my comms. Is this really the time for a lecture right now?”

“I’m not your parent Keith,” Shiro said, and he suddenly looked tired - tired in a way Keith barely remembered ever seeing on his face. “I’m your commanding officer.”

I thought you were my brother.

Keith hoped Shiro heard his unspoken words in the silence that fell between them.

“Enough.” It was Shiro who finally caved, turning from Keith as he did so. “We’ll talk about this later. Just stay on your comms from now on.”

“Kogane-” Griffin tried to say something next to him, but Keith brushed him off - striding towards the group of Paladins as they made their way down the bridge after Shiro.

It was Hunk that fell into step next to him, bumping shoulders in a companionable way.

“Don’t let that,” Hunk waved one enormous hand in the air vaguely, “Get to you. Shiro’s just worried. Nobody knows what’s going on. We woke up and couldn’t find you and I think he panicked a little.”

“I know, Hunk,” Keith said, resigned. “But he didn’t need to do that.”

“Maybe not.” Hunk shrugged. There was a comfortable silence between them for a few moments before the Yellow Paladin spoke again. “Anyways, what do you think hit us?”

Keith could always count on Hunk for tactfully reading the room, navigating away from a conversation he was unwilling to have.

“I don’t think we were hit actually,” Keith said after a moment, considering. He remembered the way the ship had been rocked. It was as if he and everything onboard had been pulled one direction before being violently forced upright. The Atlas was stable now, floor level and silently gliding on towards their destination through the void of deep space.

They stopped once they’d reached the front of the bridge. The other Paladins had clustered around where the night shift crew was seated, on duty for navigation.

None of the crew looked particularly alarmed, which Keith took as a good sign. Matt Holt, on schedule as the lead science officer - even waved furiously at Keith from his position at the center of the group. He certainly didn’t have the appearance of someone about to announce the Atlas was under attack, at least.

“What happened?” Shiro asked, his voice a few degrees less intense than it had been when Keith first arrived. He’d clearly also recognized the lack of urgency on the bridge from the crew. “Were we hit?”

“Not exactly,” Matt replied. “Though I guess you could say we got… tugged? Pulled, really. But not by another ship.”

That was exactly it, Keith thought, feeling slightly vindicated. Tugged was the perfect word for it, that strange kind of artificial gravity.

“I’m going to need a little more context there,” Nadia said. She’d taken up a position next to Griffin, looking half awake in a pair of Garrison issue sweats.

“And no big fancy words, Holt,” Lance warned. “It’s ungodly o’clock right now.”

“Well, with our current trajectory - we were planning for this. It just hit us a little earlier than we expected. We had to reset our systems and correct for the interference,” Matt said, tapping against the screen in front of him to pull up a visual of the Atlas’ current path towards the first planet that was a planned stop for their mission.

“There’s a feature nearby,” the woman next to Matt explained. She looked vaguely familiar, in a way that Keith thought he might have known her name at one point but it had easily slipped from his mind. “A large one that is disruptive to ships. We had to adjust our polarity slightly to avoid any additional interference.”

“Should be smooth sailing from here,” Matt said with a shrug. “Sorry for the fire drill.”

“So, just to be totally clear - we’re not under attack?” Nadia asked through a yawn. She didn’t seem particularly concerned either way.

“Nope,” Matt said, popping the “p” at the end. “Not a Galra in sight.” He glanced at Keith. “Well, except the ones we like.”

Keith couldn't stop his hands from curling into fists at his side, refusing to look away from the screen in front of the group to avoid meeting anyone’s gaze.

“Send an announcement out to the rest of the ship,” Shiro said tiredly. Relief softened his shoulders but Keith could still hear the tension in his voice, sensing the way the other man was still mentally preparing for a fight. “Let everyone know we’ll maintain operations as usual.”

“Current operations demand I go back to bed,” Lance said under his breath, and Hunk nudged him.

Shiro glanced at the new Red Paladin. “You’re also cleared to do that. Everyone’s free to make their way back to the dorms. We’ll have our usual debrief in the morning.”

“It is the morning,” Pidge said, rubbing her eyes. But the group was already dispersing, the relief blanketing the group palpable in the way the scents around Keith had softened. He turned to follow them out before a firm voice stopped him.

“Keith, wait up.”

Shiro. Incidentally, one of the last people Keith wanted to talk to right now.

He turned slowly, resisting the urge to cross his arms in a defensive posture.

Shiro stood in front of him, hands loose at his side. His face was serious but open, a more palatable version of the hard-edged captain image he’d been presenting to the group just moments before.

“Back for another round of lecturing me?” Keith said, maybe more snidely than Shiro’s inoffensive approach deserved.

He didn’t even feel angry at this point. The only thing ringing in his head was the echo of “I’m you’re commanding officer.”

“I’m not going to apologize for worrying about you,” Shiro started. “But I am sorry for how I approached you about this. I just need you to be more responsible when things like this happen.”

Keith stared at him. “You humiliated me. In front of everyone. I looked like a misbehaving kit.”

Shiro frowned, as if the word choice was just slightly strange to him and Keith realized he’d been using a term that the Galra used, not humans.

“I know.” The lines around Shiro’s mouth were emphasized under the harsh lighting of the bridge. “And I know telling you that I did it because I panicked is not an excuse.”

“Is your rut coming up or something?” Keith scuffed the floor with one foot, belligerent. “You’re crazy for pulling rank like that on me. It’s me, Shiro.”

Shiro pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut. “Let’s not go there, okay? We’re all on edge right now.”

Keith resented the use of “we” there, a bit. After all, he hadn’t started the fight here. For once.

“I get that you were worried,” Keith said instead. “And I should probably carry my comms with me more. But you have to loosen the leash a bit, Shiro. I’m not a kid anymore.”

“You know that’s not how I want to treat you,” Shiro replied, finally opening his eyes. “But you're not understanding the issue here, Keith. When we can’t find you… you could be anywhere. Anything could have happened to you. And you tend to not ask for help when something is wrong.”

Something is always wrong, Keith wanted to say. Not because it was true, but because it usually felt true.

“Is this an apology or not?” Keith asked, but he forced a small smile to curl in the edges of his mouth. He was too tired to fight Shiro any more on this, too ready to curl back up in the nest of blankets back in his room.

Shiro’s fists at his side loosened at the sight of Keith’s smile, a white flag offered in reconciliation.

“I am sorry,” Shiro admitted. Then, immediately: “Will you wear your comms from now on?”

Keith rolled his eyes.

“I will wear them more often, yes. Sir, yes sir.”

Shiro sighed. “You know I never like pulling rank like that. I really am doing it with your safety in mind.”

The problem was, Keith really thought Shiro believed that.

“We’re good, aren’t we?” Shiro asked, but he didn’t wait for Keith’s response before he reached out and gently rubbed the scent gland on his wrist onto Keith’s neck.

Keith wrinkled his nose, not because Shiro’s scent was offensive but the act made him feel like he was being mothered somehow.

“We’re always good,” he said, trying to duck out of Shiro’s grasp and the alpha laughed - wrangling Keith closer to their necks bumped together instead. Keith sulkily allowed it, in part because Shiro’s scent on him was imprinted in his hindbrain as a marker of safety and there was something comforting about knowing it would be on his skin for the rest of the day.

“Go back to the dorms and get a few more hours of sleep,” Shiro told him, once he’d finally let go. “I need to catch up with Matt on the system reset.”

Keith was nearly certain that could have waited until handover with the night crew in the morning but shrugged, waving a goodbye as he exited the bridge.

He stepped into the first open elevator behind Nadia, nodding a silent greeting at her as he did so.

Nadia stepped back from him in exaggerated surprise. “You reek of Shirogane. I take it you guys made up?”

Keith yawned, the last few hours starting to catch up on his sleep-deprived brain. The mixing of Shiro’s scent with his own wasn’t helping. It made him comfortable and sluggish, dulling the lingering frustration from their conversation.

“We weren’t really fighting,” he muttered. As the lift doors began to slide shut he watched a hand shoot between the gap, forcing them open again.

“Got it!” Lance crowed, sliding in wearing his definitely not Garrison-issued fluffy robe. Keith watched as Griffin wordlessly filed in behind him and stood next to Nadia.

Which was also, coincidently, next to Keith.

As the doors slid shut, Keith felt the weight of the alpha’s gaze on him. Letting Nadia and Lance’s chatter fill the elevator, he slid a glance upwards to confirm it.

Griffin had an odd expression on his face, halfway between surprised and affronted.

“What?” Keith asked, narrowing his eyes. “You look like you’re about to sneeze.”

“Nothing.” Griffin scowled, shifting his weight slightly. “You smell like-”

He stopped abruptly, glanced away quickly as the lift doors opened. “It’s your floor,” the alpha finished instead.

“Yeah.” Keith turned to follow Lance out. “G’night.”

Griffin was still frowning as the doors shut behind him.

There was a palpable energy on the bridge that morning when the group had finally gathered again at the usual 6 a.m. handover meeting. Shiro was sitting next to Matt when he walked in with the other Paladins, his knee pressing into the science officer’s in a way that was barely noticeable. Keith hadn’t heard Shiro return to the dorms earlier that morning, and the dark shadows below his eyes were evidence he’d likely spent the rest of the night on the bridge.

Despite that, Shiro seemed to be in surprisingly good spirits.

When the sleepy chatter had finally died down as people found various spots around the bridge to settle in for the morning debrief, Shiro stood up.

If Keith was given a choice, he would gravitate towards the back wall - trying to disappear into the shadows of the bridge like he did in the boardrooms back on Earth. Unfortunately, he had a designated seat on the bridge, chair stationed in a neat line next to the rest of the Paladins. The seat also, unfortunately, mirrored the MFEs in that Keith was directly facing his equivalent rank of the group. Which meant he was forced to avoid eye contact with Griffin for the entirety of every half-hour debrief.

Keith fixed his gaze on Shiro with laser precision, ignoring the flicker of gray eyes he could feel glide along his profile.

“As all of you are aware,” Shiro began, “We experienced a slight deviation from our planned trajectory early this morning. Our crew has corrected for this anomaly and we are back on trajectory with no anticipated delays to arrival. A big thanks to Matt and his team.”

Keith didn’t miss the warmth in Shiro’s gaze as glanced toward Matt, though he thought Matt might miss it. Pidge’s brother had the wide-eyed, slightly deranged eyes of someone two coffees too deep and a few hours of sleep too short of completely sane.

“We had a slight interruption,” Matt broke in eagerly. “But not an unexpected one. When we mapped this route we specifically tried to skirt this feature to stay out of its gravitational radius. Looks like we underestimated the forces here slightly, but it’s nothing we couldn’t quickly correct in our flight path.

“What kind of feature?” Allura asked. She didn’t at all look like someone whose sleep had been interrupted at ungodly hours of the morning, hair falling in a soft white cloud around her face.

“It’s an asteroid belt,” Matt announced, almost gleefully. “Known as Nona’s Lullaby.”

“Lullaby?” Lance asked. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Yeah,” he scoffed, “It’ll put you straight to sleep. That thing is a debris field for lost ships. ”

Keith leaned forward towards the screen, the still image a band of rocky shapes. It looked tight, in all fairness. But he doubted he’d have any issues with it.

“It’s tricky to navigate through, sure,” the geoscientist continued. “Plenty of ships have smashed into those rocks and never came out. But the bigger issue is the material of the asteroids themselves.”

Keith caught a glint of Pidge’s glasses as she edged forward, obviously eager.

“The material?” she asked, already pulling up her datapad for the inevitable researching hole she was about to disappear into.

“The belt is littered with fragments of the ancient moon Larunda. Nasty stuff, that rock. Does crazy things to ship systems if you steer too close to it - comms are usually the first thing to go. Forget trying to actually fly through it. You stay in there too long, you’re dead in the water.”

“And then, just dead,” Lance said, shuddering.

“Sounds useful,” Keith said, ignoring all the heads pivoting towards him as he broke his silence. “Having access to that kind of material.”

“Sure would be, if we could ever get close enough to retrieve it. Nobody’s been stupid enough to try it.”

“I could,” Keith announced. He fixed his gaze on Shiro, knowing there was really only one person he needed to convince on the bridge. “Retrieve it, I mean.”

From somewhere across from him, he heard Griffin make a guttural sound - low in his throat. Keith refused to turn around, crossing his arms instead to protect against the expressions ranging from mocking disbelief to blatant suspicion.

“Keith…” Not even the melodic lilt of Allura’s voice could hide the tiredness in it. She rubbed a hand down her face, the faintly glowing markings disappearing for an instant. “You’re not going to fly into the most dangerous asteroid belt in the quadrant. Absolutely not.”

“I’m not going to fly into it,” Keith argued. “Just next to it. If I can keep my systems stable enough to tether and go topside for a bit, I’ll grab a piece and bring it back.”

He was met with wide-eyed gazes across the bridge, as if the outrageousness of his suggestion had struck the entirety of the room into total silence.

“This is a research mission,” Keith drawled. The friction in the room felt good, like everyone finally had a good reason to pick at him and he was able to snap back. “With our current pace, I can meet you guys on the other side by skirting the outer edge in a few days. You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

“Emphasis on ‘stupid enough to try it,’” Lance said under his breath. Pidge elbowed him, a defense of Keith he was sure was purely driven by her ferocious need to run tests on the rock and not any respect for Keith’s actual intellect.

“I don’t generally like to send pilots off on suicide missions for the name of science,” their geologist said, that vaguely familiar woman Keith faintly recognized. “As much as I want to get my hands on this damn rock.”

Keith couldn’t help the slight flinch at “suicide mission.”

“So send another pilot to tail me, at a wider radius from the belt. If I lose comms or go dead, they can keep visual and report it back out of range.” His tone was sharp, sharper than he’d meant it.

“I’ll go with him.”

The words were offered casually, confidently. Keith watched, alarmed, as Griffin raised a hand. He wasn’t looking at Keith, only Shiro, and that somehow grated on his nerves.

“I can take one of the smaller cruisers, follow at a wider range. At the pace the Atlas is moving, we should be able to meet up on the other side at the rendezvous point in less than a week.”

Keith wanted to argue that he didn’t need a babysitter, but realized denying Griffin’s offer was probably not in his best interest in getting this mission approved.

“You won’t even realize we’ll be gone,” Keith confirmed. “In fact, we’ll probably beat you to the rendezvous point anyways.”

“Keith…” Shiro stared at him. “Do you really want to do this?”

“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t,” Keith said, imploring Shiro with his eyes to say yes. Maybe if he could convey the frantic, itching need to fly, to get off this ship into open space he’d understand.

Shiro frowned, but Keith could tell by the set of his jaw he’d already caved.

“I’ll ask the Garrison leadership for approval then. If it’s a no from then, it’s a no - and you won’t ask again.”

That was good, Keith thought, because he didn’t think the Garrison brass would care much either way if he survived a spontaneous science mission. If it was any of the other Paladins, yes. But not the half-Galra mutt, the one Paladin they were itching to replace in the Black Lion with its original Paladin.

“Yes, sir,” Keith said, tone carefully neutral.

His gaze slid back to Griffin, only to be startled by the slight smile curling in the edges of the other pilot’s lips. Keith couldn’t tell if it was a derogatory kind of amusement or genuine happiness - though he couldn’t understand what Griffin had to be pleased about.

It doesn’t matter, Keith told himself. Either way, he was getting his freedom.

The meeting continued with only a few wary glances tossed in Keith’s direction. But there were enough more important topics that Keith was able to avoid scrutiny simply by sitting back in his chair. He didn’t particularly care about any of the stops they were making at various formerly Galra occupied planets to form alliances. In fact, it probably would have been better for the Garrison to make these alliances without an actual Galra onboard. He was doing them a favor, in a way.

When the meeting broke, Allura caught Keith as he tried to slip away with the masses dispersing on the bridge.

“That was reckless,” she said without preamble. She was frowning, but not even her disappointment could make her any less beautiful. Keith even understood, a little, why Lance was so obsessed with her - in the way he could appreciate an expertly painted portrait hung on an art gallery wall.

“I’m reckless,” he told her flatly, tugging away from the hand she’d lightly placed on his shoulder. His relationship with Allura had never been easy, and her pivot from malicious to maternal worked even less now that he had an actual mother to fill that role.

She was, Keith had realized, unfailingly good. The type of person that could only seem to become a better one, and that left him feeling particularly inadequate in her presence.

“We need you here, with the other Paladins,” Allura told him. “Not out risking your life for a science mission.”

“It’s for a larger purpose,” Keith said. “You think I haven’t done worse with the Blades?”

“You’re not with the Blades right now,” Allura said sharply. “You’re a Paladin-”

“I’m both,” Keith interrupted, a hard edge to his voice. “And this is a Garrison mission. If the Garrison lets me go, I’m going.”

“Are you so determined to avoid a few diplomatic stops?” Allura asked, exasperated.

“It’s not about that,” Keith said, even if he hadn’t quite convinced himself that was true. “I just need to get out and stretch my wings. I haven’t flown for a while.”

“I’m sure Black would-”

“Sorry, Allura,” Keith said, noticing Griffin waiting by the elevator like a lifeline - an easy escape. “I need to talk to Griffin for a minute.”

He tossed a wave behind him as he jogged away, somehow able to feel Allura’s disappointed gaze on his back all the way across the room.

“Hey,” Keith said, watching in amusement as Griffin spun around to face him.

The alpha looked like he was pretending not to be startled, which made Keith smile as he pulled up short in front of him.

“You didn’t need to volunteer,” Keith told him.

Griffin was staring at Keith, a strange expression on his face like he’d been about to smile but changed his mind. Instead, his mouth pressed into a hard line.

“Someone had to,” Griffin said. “Thanks for the concern though.”

“No, you don’t get it. I’m not saying it to be nice,” Keith said, shaking his head. “I’d rather go alone. Tell Shiro you changed your mind and want to stay back.”

Griffin narrowed his eyes, shifting his stance so he now stood another inch taller than Keith. It was a weak intimidation tactic, Keith thought.

“I’m going,” Griffin told him, turning back to the elevator like their conversation had come to an end.

Keith tugged on his uniform, forcing the alpha to turn back and face him. Instead, Griffin’s eyes locked on where Keith’s hand gripped the fabric of his sleeve.

“There’s no reason for you to come with me. I’ll be fine,” Keith said. “It’s not like you’ll get any brownie points with Shiro, either. He thinks we’re both stupid for pulling a stunt like this.”

“I’m not doing this to get favor with the Captain,” Griffin said stiffly.

“Oh yeah?” Keith scoffed. “And what other reason would you want to come with me on a mission?”

Griffin grabbed his hand from where it still rested on his uniform, pulling it from his arm but refusing to let go. His skin was warm, nearly burning, where he held Keith’s fingers.

“I don’t know, Keith. What other motivation could I possibly have for coming with you on a solo mission?”

Keith stared at him, confused. “I’m asking you that.”

Griffin finally released his hand.

“It doesn’t matter,” the other pilot told him, not meeting his gaze. “I’m going with you.”

Keith watched the elevator doors close behind, the warmth of his hand climbing up his arm like it had somehow made a path directly into his veins.

The Garrison brass said yes, of course.

Shiro let both Keith and Griffin sit in on his daily call with the Garrison higher-ups. Keith watched silently as Shiro talked through the events of last night once again, trying to ignore the warmth of Griffin’s body heat in the seat next to him.

Did the alpha have to sit so close? Keith didn’t think so, but then, he also had strict boundaries on personal space around people that others didn’t seem to recognize as significant.

“Captain, if it was under anyone else’s command I would have said no,” the colonel said. Keith couldn’t remember which one he was - they all seemed to have the same rough jawline and protruding nose that made them indistinguishable. Except Iverson, but that was only because he’d been an exceptional pain in Keith’s ass.

“You’re either very fucking dumb for sending your two best pilots off on this or absurdly confident,” the man concluded with a laugh. He had the kind of face Keith would have liked to punch through the screen. “But I’ll give the affirmative.”

“Thank you, sir,” Shiro said. He did well to hide the flinch at the other officer’s words but Keith saw his hands clench into fists at his side. “I’m confident the two will be exceptionally careful and abort the mission if any elevated risk is recognized.”

As soon as the call disconnected, Shiro turned to the two pilots.

“Don’t make me regret this,” the alpha commanded, and Keith got a sense that this was Shiro’s real apology - the loosening of the metaphorical leash. “Either of you.”

Keith’s fingers flexed his side, feeling the buzzing of adrenaline.

He’d argued his way successfully, Shiro was finally learning to trust him again, and most importantly - he was getting off of this damn ship.

The only problem now was Griffin.

Chapter Text

James had one extraordinary problem right now and that was Keith Kogane.

“No,” James told him, the exasperation breaking through the veneer of calm in his voice. “For the last time, Kogane. I’m coming with you.”

They were in the docking bay of the Altas now, already dressed in their flight suits. And Keith was making what James would ensure be his final attempt at convincing him to step down from the mission.

“I’m not sure why you’re so against this anyways,” James continued, tightening the cuff of his flight jacket so he could appear disinterestedly busy and not smarting from the sting of Keith’s rejection. “You were going to have a tail on this mission no matter what. It’s the only way Shirogane would let you go. If I step down now, my spot is just going to be replaced by someone else.”

Keith looked increasingly frustrated by this fact, which was the only signal to James that his logic had finally dealt a blow to the other pilot’s stubbornness.

“Fine,” Keith snapped, the irritation in his voice transforming into something more like reluctant defeat. “But if something goes wrong, don’t complain about it. Or tell me you regret coming.”

I could never regret you, James thought, and the idea was pathetic enough that he couldn’t even gloat about Keith’s grudging acceptance.

James quickly turned to enter the transport ship he would be piloting as Keith’s shadow as they separated from the Atlas. Keith’s ship was identical, both furbished in sleek Altean white, and James could tell the omega was uneasy with the fact that he was leaving the Black Lion behind.

When James had entered the hangar that morning, Keith emerged from the Black Lion with an odd expression on his face - a careful mask of blankness that was too smooth to seem truly emotionless. James wondered if the other pilot had been saying his goodbyes.

As James cycled through the motions of powering up his transport ship, he watched through the translucent panel of the windshield where Keith was storming up the gangway of his own identical cruiser. At that, James finally allowed himself to smile.

They lost comms with the Atlas on the second day of flying.

The main ship had dropped them as close as they could to Nona’s Lullaby without starting to get signal interference from the asteroid belt.

James had been expecting it, so it wasn’t a shock to open the channel he shared with Keith back to the Atlas and hear nothing but static on the line.

Keith’s own comms clicked open a moment later.

“Guess we’re really on our own now,” Keith announced. His voice was low, throaty in a way that came from hours of flying in silence without a word.

He sounded pleased, not grim, and James had to remind himself that Keith wasn’t happy to be stuck out here with him in this dead zone. He was just giddy from being out of the punishing gaze of Garrison and the discerning eyes of Shirogane.

And James, well. His reasons weren’t much more noble.

He knew exactly why he’d volunteered for Keith’s rogue recovery mission, instinct acting before logic and reason could reign him in. That was Keith, Keith about to disappear into an unknown sliver of the universe. He’d never felt such a visceral sense of protective rage at the idea, a sound he didn’t know he could even make was ripped out of him at Keith’s announcement.

The suggestion that James had done it to curry favor with Shirogane would have been laughable, if it wasn’t so insulting. Keith really did still view him as the same teenager he’d been at the Garrison - so obsessed with grades and simulator scores he couldn’t have willingly volunteered himself for anything less than his reputation.

It wasn’t exactly as if James’ intentions now were totally altruistic, if he was being honest. He’d been given the opportunity to spend a week of uninterrupted time with Keith. Alone. His alpha hindbrain had acted before any reasonable sense of grounding doubt was able to take place.

“Yeah,” James answered across the line. “We’re on our own.”

It took another day of nonstop flying to get close enough to the belt that they could see it on their visuals. The Teludav technology the Alteans had helped equip the Atlas with wasn’t able to be used on the smaller, transport class ships they were flying - which Keith didn’t seem bothered by.

James almost suspected Keith had volunteered for the mission simply to fly, and he was getting exactly that. Even though this type of travel was hardly the high-stakes maneuvering James was used to in his fighter.

James heard the comms click on, opening his line to Keith’s.

“Damn. It’s huge.” Keith actually sounded impressed, which made James smile.

He wasn’t wrong, though. James had seen plenty of pictures of asteroid belts - most contained to the Earth’s solar system - and every one paled in comparison to the sheer expanse of fragmented rock ahead of them. It seemed to stretch on forever, infinite in a way that made James a little dizzy. He focused on the light of Keith’s engine in front of him.

“Take it slow on the approach,” James warned. Their communication line seemed unaffected right now, but he wasn’t sure how long it would last.

“Shit,” Keith said, the single syllable sharp across the comms. “It’s pulling me in already. Don’t get any closer.”

It didn’t look like Keith’s ship was moving at all, but James was far enough away he was barely a speck of light against the endless expanse of the asteroid belt.

“10-4, I’m parking it.”

It was quiet for a moment, James’ gaze fixed on Keith’s ship. His body was taut with tension - he’d never been one to fidget from nerves but he felt like he was about to jump out of his own skin.

“You still moving?” James finally asked, impatient as he waited for an update across the line.

He heard the buzz off the comms flick back on.

“Yeah. Turned off the thrusters, I’m just letting her drift. Rather not see how quickly this can drag us in with any more acceleration toward that.”

James was relieved to hear the “us” in that statement, the acknowledgement that Keith knew he wasn’t on some reckless solo mission with only himself to answer to.

“You see anything?”

James could only make out the shadows of the rocky surface of the belt, the sunlit sides that shone a faint greenish gray.

“Yeah.” When Keith replied, there was a faint note of wonder in his voice. “It’s kind of beautiful.”

James knew he’d been further than any other living human to the expanses of space. And yet there was something painfully endearing of Keith still being surprised, enthralled by the beauty of the unmapped universe.

He belongs out here. Something about the idea made James faintly sick. But “out here” didn’t necessarily mean “not with him,” did it? They could still-

James' rambling thoughts were cut off by a shaky exhale from Keith’s line.

“Really beautiful,” the omega repeated, and then he went silent.

Sometimes when Keith forgot to turn off his comms, James could sit for hours and listen to him breathe. It was always soft, quiet enough that he had to turn the volume up to its highest sensitivity just to catch the sound of his gentle inhale. The barely imperceptible exhale.

It was pathetic, James realized, in a distant kind of way. But the thought only struck him when Keith would finally speak, send a status update back across the line and the loudness would startle him from his stupor.

James could hear Keith breathing now, even without any adjustments to the comms. His breaths were short and rapid, either from exhilaration or fear - he couldn't tell.

“Are you feeling okay?” James asked, when the guilt of staying on the line to listen finally overtook his desire to.

“It’s okay,” Keith replied, which James thought was a strange way of saying “I’m okay.”

“Still moving though,” Keith continued, and it sounded like he was worrying his lower lip with his teeth.

“I can see that,” James said, feeling a jolt of fear at the realization. The lights of Keith’s cruiser were noticeably dimmer, evidence of the slow but steady trajectory away from him. “Shit.”

Keith laughed, a raspy kind of exhale that soothed James’ growing anxiety, if only slightly

“It’s not bad. Just started up the reverse thrusters to control the acceleration.”

James kept his gaze fixed on the smooth descent of Keith’s cruiser toward the belt, watching his lights slowly inch toward the intimidating barrier of orbiting rocks.

“Can you land on one of the asteroids?” James asked.

“Of course,” Keith scoffed, and James only wanted to throttle him through the line a little bit.

“Try to land on one of the larger ones at the edge of the belt. Hopefully that will stop the ship’s acceleration and you can take a sample,” James told him.

“Can you get close enough to latch on?” Keith asked. “I think I’m going to need you to pull me out.”

“Yeah, I’ll move in when you’ve landed,” James replied. He was proud of how firm his voice sounded, the anxiousness he felt undetectable to his own ears.

James was hyperaware that they didn’t know how quickly his own ship would lose its ability to leave the field. For all he knew, that moment could be now, and they were both already stranded in the belt’s radius.

To test that theory, James gave a slight nudge on the thrusters in reverse. To his immense relief, the ship immediately began to move backwards - albeit slightly slower than it usually would in open space.

Keith must have noticed the backwards motion and James heard a panicky screech of static across the line.

“Where are you going?” Keith asked, voice less scared and more shocked. “You’re leaving?”

“Kogane,” James soothed, trying to soften the unexpected edge of hurt in Keith’s tone. “I’m not going anywhere. Just testing how much the field would let me reverse.”

He heard Keith swallow across the line, but when he spoke his voice was still ragged. “Okay. I’ve landed, you can try and latch on now.”

James made his approach slowly, a little concerned with how little thrust he needed to drift towards Keith's direction. He had just under a mile of cable, thin and tightly wound on the underside of his ship.

He pulled the cruiser up short when the instrumentation showed he was within range to connect. To his relief, his ship actually stopped moving.

It took a few tries, but James watched the line tighten with tension between their ships as it latched - a string tying them across open space. Jame let out a shaky exhale of relief.

“Got you. Get your sample and let’s get out of here quick,” James told him.

“10-4.” Keith’s comms turned to static.

“Hey,” James said, concern making his voice sharp. “Keep the line open. You don’t have to talk, just keep it on if something goes south.”

“It’s on,” Keith said, sounding less annoyed than James would have expected after being commanded to do something. “You copy?”

“Copy,” James replied. Keith’s voice was a little less clear now that he’d exited the ship, strangely enough, but still audible. James flicked his front lights on to full intensity, illuminating Keith’s suited form, made tiny by the distance between them. He could barely make out the patches of red and white that made up his Paladin uniform, even at maximum brightness.

“See anything good?” James asked after a minute, just so he could continue to be reassured by Keith’s voice. Keith looked a little closer now, and with a jolt James realized his ship had been gradually drifting closer to the field. He put the thrusters in reverse once more, moving backwards until the tether was once more taught between their ships.

“Looks like a bunch of rocks to me,” Keith drawled.

“Don’t tell that to Matt,” James joked.

“I’ve said worse to Matt,” Keith said with an nearly imperceptible laugh.

“In all fairness, Matt has probably said worse to Matt,” James replied, smiling.

“I’ve got it,” Keith said, after a pause. “Headed back inside.”

James waited until Keith had sealed himself back inside his ship before making an experimental bump on the thrusters, in reverse. Nothing happened.

Trying to shake off a sudden sense of apprehension, James clicked his comms back on.

“You good? I’m going to try and tow you out now and need to kick up the engine. It might get a little bumpy.”

“I’m good,” Keith said. His voice sounded strange, almost a little slurred. “Packing the sample.”

James eased the thrusters gradually, watching the numbers on his control panel tick higher and higher. The ship remained stationary. He wasn’t moving, and Keith’s ship definitely wasn’t moving.

“I’m trying to tow you,” James said, an edge of panic in his voice. He had his thrusters on maximum now, but it was like trying to move an entire planet. He could see the tension on the line, stretching towards Keith’s ship. But there wasn't even an inch of movement.

“Well, it doesn’t look like it’s working,” Keith said. He sounded remarkably calm for someone stranded on an asteroid in the most dangerous belt identified in the known universe.

“Can you drop any weight?” James asked, voice tight.

The line between them was buzzing, but Keith didn’t answer.

“Keith?” James asked sharply. “Do you read me?”

“-copy?”

James nearly wilted in relief as he heard Keith’s voice across the line in a staticy burst. It took him a moment to recognize Keith was trying to say something else.

“Feels weird-” Static. “Kind of-” Static. “Dense…. really heavy-”

“Hey,” James said, unease twisting his gut. “I’m losing you, Kogane.”

“Do you hear-” Keith asked, and James shook his head violently, as if he could see the motion.

“I can’t hear shit. You’re as clear as Iverson’s lecture on differential equations in Year 3.” He was rambling now, something in him growing increasingly panicked as Keith’s voice continued to cut in and out.

“No!” Keith sounded urgent now. “Not… Can… hear that ri-”

There was a loud thud, an awful sound like a body hitting something with more force than it ever should. James could taste pennies in the back of his throat, a visceral sensation of panic freezing his limbs.

“Shit!” James heard over their private channel. And then- nothing.

No.

“Kogane,” James said, voice unsteady with the effort not to scream. “Kogane? Keith. Keith, can you hear me?”

He received not even static as a response, only the hum of machinery a buffer against the deafening silence from his line. A second later, the interior of Keith’s ship flashed an eerie fluorescence, as if every single light on the dash had turned on at once. And then it went completely, horrifyingly black.

James didn’t think. In an instant, he was out of his seat - pulling on the suit and helmet in storage as quickly as his shaking hands would allow.

He was topside in the next breath, attaching himself to the cable that was still strung between their ships. Hands gripping the line, it was frighteningly easy for James to turn the thrusters of his suit on and drift towards Keith’s ship. He could feel the way the belt was pulling him forward with an unnatural gravity, the same force that wouldn’t allow him to pull Keith from its radius.

He hit the hull of Keith’s ship feet first, the sudden impact soundless despite the way it sent shockwaves through his knees.

The airlock was still sealed, to his relief. Whatever had happened inside the ship, it had at least maintained structural integrity through its most vulnerable port.

Please, James begged, Please let him still have his helmet on.

He slipped inside, ensuring the port was sealed before sliding the door open to the main cabin. The cabin had depressurized, but only enough that it made him slightly lighter than he would have been in artificial gravity.

It was so dark inside James couldn’t find Keith immediately. Adjusting the angle of the lights on his helmet, he scanned the interior of the small cabin.

Keith lay in a crumpled heap, limbs a tangled mess against the floor. James let out a ragged gasp of relief when he saw the other pilot’s helmet still secured safely on his head. He knelt, gently turning the omega onto his back, surprised at how light Keith felt.

The air was thin but James could tell the ship was already almost back at atmospheric conditions. It was almost as if the life support system had reset when the ship had lost all power in that terrible flash of light.

James needed to get them out of here. James saw at Keith’s feet, the cylinder of strange Altean crystal that they’d been given to place the sample of rock inside. Keith must have sealed it only moments before he passed out.

It was a stupid thing to risk his life for, James thought, suddenly furious. But now was not the time to dwell on it.

He carried Keith’s limp body over to the exit port, the reduced gravity allowing James to ease the other pilot out of the door before slipping out beside him. He tethered Keith to him as they drifted out into open space, one hand gripping the cable and the other guiding Keith’s body.

They hadn’t made it more than a few feet down the line before James realized something was terribly wrong. Even with the thrusters on his suit, their progress was impossibly slow. It was like fighting an invisible wave - pushing their bodies back towards the asteroid belt - the puny force of his suit’s thrusters unable to overcome it.

After making only a hundred feet of painstaking progress, James’ thrusters died. Warning lights flashed on his helmet display - the battery was completely drained.

A sense of hopelessness washed over him as he looked out across the wide expanse of space - his own ship glowing in the distance, abandoned. Impossible to reach.

It was too easy to turn around and drift back down the line. James didn’t even need his thrusters on as he was tugged backwards, one hand gripping Keith's body next to him as they were forced to return to the ship.

He shrugged off the drained jetpack attached to his suit, fastening it to the top of the ship to recharge from the solar radiation. On the display of his helmet, he waited for the flashing red warning light to switch to a charging symbol. But as the minutes dragged on, it stayed an incriminating red.

“Fuck,” James annonced, a burst of static across a communication line nobody could hear. He had no choice but to open the airlock, carrying Keith back inside with him.

When they re-entered the main cabin, James gently laid the omega down on the floor next to him.

The oxygen levels in the space had returned to breathable, so James removed his own helmet. He gave an experimental inhale, watching as the emergency lights finally flickered back on around them - illuminating the small cabin. The hum of machinery around him was the sweetest song he’d ever heard.

He tried the line on the ship's centralized communications channel, sending out an SOS. If the Atlas could pick it up, they would respond. If another cruising ship heard it, they would at least recognize it was a foreign body attempting contact.

But it was deathly silent across the line.

No communications, no means of getting back to his own ship. James grabbed his now useless jetpack, using the set of emergency cables to plug it directly into the ship’s instrumentation. To his relief, he watched the red lights flashing across its display switch to a warm yellow as it finally began to charge.

James turned his attention back to Keith. Carefully, he pressed his fingers against the latch on Keith’s neck, allowing the helmet to unlock so he could gently tug it from the omega’s face.

His black hair was a disarray on the ship’s metal floor, face completely unguarded in either sleep or unconsciousness. James slowly maneuvered his hand beneath Keith’s head, gently lifting it to slide it over to his lap. His fingers brushed only the curve of Keith’s head, feeling for injuries but only getting the unimaginable silkiness of Keith’s hair against his skin instead.

It was the exact wrong time to be conscious of any opportunity to touch Keith, but as his careful inspection indicated Keith was uninjured and only sleeping off the effects of the sudden depressurization, James allowed himself to bask in the rare opportunity.

There were dark circles stained beneath Keith’s eyes, made only darker by the shadow of his hair falling across his face. James’s hand instinctively rose to brush it aside, his fingers carding through strands to expose the pale skin of Keith’s forehead.

He looked younger like this, his brows loose and relaxed - his forehead smooth instead of furrowed. A sudden vicious, protective urge overtook him and James had to pause and orient himself to the reality that they were alone out here. The only threat to Keith right now was their own isolation and… him.

Maybe it was wrong for James’ hand to continue its motion through Keith’s hair, dragging from the crown of his head down to his nape where the dark strands started to curl. His fingers were dangerously close to the scent gland on Keith’s neck, just hidden by the collar of his flight suit.

“It’s okay,” James announced, his voice barely a whisper. “You’re okay.”

When the faint, gentle hum started against his legs - James thought for a moment that he was purring despite no question in his mind that he was an alpha and lacked the vocal cords for it. But as he continued to gently card his fingers through Keith’s hair, he felt the tiny vibrations grow in frequency so that there was no doubt that it was Keith purring against his legs, still unconscious.

Keith didn’t wake up like James expected - a sudden gasp as he bolted upright, immediately on the alert. Instead, it was a slow start. James watched in amazement as the omega beneath him blinked once, twice before his eyes were opening - the full vibrancy of their strange violet hue on display. They were devastatingly beautiful in this close of proximity. If James thought Keith had been lovely in sleep, long lashes fanned out against his cheekbones, he had hugely underestimated the impact of Keith below him, meeting his gaze with hazy, uncertain eyes.

“S’going on?” Keith mumbled, eyes immediately falling shut again like the light hurt them. James stopped his ministrations, fingers freezing in between the strands of Keith’s dark hair. “Griffin?”

The way Keith offered his name up like a question warmed something inside of him, a giddiness he had to shake off to answer.

“Hey Kogane, you’re back,” James said. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Keith squeezed his eyes shut, not in pain but perhaps concentration.

“I was topside, I think,” Keith replied. “Talking to you but I couldn’t hear you very well. Then it was dark.”

“You made it back inside but that sample completely screwed up the ship’s instrumentation before you were able to seal it. You’re lucky you decided to keep your helmet on before you passed out when the cabin started to depressurize.”

That was the kindest way to say it, but even that made James faintly nauseous, the idea of how close he had come to losing Keith.

“Oh,” Keith said, sounding neither worried nor surprised. “Did I almost asphyxiate?”

Unable to stop himself, James began running his fingers through the strands of Keith’s hair once again, needing the reassurance of him warm and real beneath his fingertips.

“You made the right call and that’s all that matters,” James started, but felt Keith freeze beneath him.

“What’re you doing?” Keith asked. His tone was casual, but James could feel every line of tension in his body in the places their joints pressed together. He was fighting the urge to relax into the touch the way he could in his sleep, and something about that was unacceptable to James.

“Sorry, does it bother you?” James asked, still continuing his ministrations. “It seemed to help, earlier. When you passed out.”

“It feels weird,” Keith said, still frozen. But James could feel his body slowly losing tension as the seconds of silence stretched on.

“Weird isn’t bad,” James pointed out. By weird, he was almost certain Keith meant “foreign.” When was the last time someone touched him like this?

“It’s fine,” Keith said stiffly, but his scent had sweetened in a way that James noted as markedly pleased.

“You were purring earlier,” James said, unable to resist probing when the silence between them continued to drag out.

Keith started, brows pulling together in an expression that was characteristically defensive.

“I was not!” he said immediately.

James couldn’t help that laugh that escaped him. “Well considering there’s only one omega between the two of us, I’m pretty sure it had to be you.”

Alphas and betas couldn't purr, it wasn’t a capability of their diaphragms There was a flush of red high on Keith's cheekbones.

“No, that can’t be right. I don’t- I’ve never…” he trailed off, looking confused.

“Keith, it’s totally normal. All omegas purr, it’s like nesting. It’s instinct,” James said, frowning at the way Keith looked so startled by the insinuation.

“Not me- I never… purred,” Keith mumbled.

Oh. That was important to James. In a way that didn’t totally feel fair to Keith.

“It’s okay if you do,” James said, trying to not sound pleased with himself. “I find it really relaxing too, that’s kind of the point of you being able to do it at all. It lets everyone know you’re happy.”

“I am not happy,” Keith said, shoving James' hand away finally. He let it drop, limp at his side, with disappointment. “We’re kind of fucked right now.”

“The situation isn’t ideal,” James agreed. He felt strangely calm about the entire predicament, now that he knew Keith was safe. As if everything else was in the minor details, now that they were both alive and breathing together.

“Did you let the Atlas know we’re stranded?” Keith asked, struggling to sit up.

James tensed, resisting the urge to press a hand against the small of his back and help the omega rise.

“I tried to,” he said honestly.

Keith narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t ask if you tried to.”

“Comms are dead,” James said, simpy. “Completely gone. If I could make it back to my ship we might have a shot. But the charge on my thrusters couldn’t even make it to the edge of the field with the power they have right now.”

“You tried already?” Keith asked.

“Obviously. It couldn’t even carry me, let alone both of us back. And that’s using the tether as a grappling line.”

“I’m not waiting here until the Atlas notices we missed the rendezvous,” Keith said sharply. He didn’t ask what they were going to do, wasn't looking for answers from James.

James liked that a little, even though he liked giving the answers even more.

“We can try and recharge both of them from the ship’s battery,” James said. “It’s going to take a while though. I had one plugged in while you slept and it’s barely seen half a percent increase. At this rate it could take-” he paused, doing the mental math. “4, no- 5 days to fully charge? We’re sitting ducks until then. The Atlas will notice we miss the rendezvous in a week, but I wouldn’t bet on a rescue mission. It’s going to be like finding a needle and a haystack to trace our location. ”

“Days?” Keith demanded. His pupils were blown wide, nothing in his demeanor indicating fear - only outraged disbelief.

“It’s a bad situation,” James admitted. “These were designed to be solar powered by default - we should be able to charge them anywhere in the solar system. But there’s something with this field - it must be redirecting the solar radiation. I left mine topside and got nothing.”

“This is so stupid,” Keith groaned, leaning his head back against the ship's hull. It made a dull thumping sound, and James had to steel himself to avoid locking his gaze on the smooth column of Keith’s neck.

“It’s not stupid, we just miscalculated,” James said.

“Shiro’s never going to let me go on a mission ever again,” Keith muttered.

James almost wanted to laugh. “It’s not like he could stop you, if you really tried. You always do exactly what you want, Kogane.”

Keith considered him, head still tilted back. “Is that what it looks like to you?” Keith’s eyes fluttered shut. “Interesting. I rarely do what I want, though.”

“I don’t believe that,” James said, unable to hide the smile in his voice.

“It’s true.”

“Okay, then what do you want, Kogane?” James asked. “Since apparently you’re not doing any of it.”

Keith was quiet for so long, James was worried he’d fallen asleep - some remaining effect from an unidentified concussion when he fell.

“We have plenty of food at least,” Keith said finally. The unsubtle topic change was as tactless as Keith himself, but James chose not to press any further. “The stores on these ships should comfortably last for two months for a single person. We could stretch it close to that for two.”

“I said 4 to 5 days,” James emphasized. “We won’t need all that.”

The idea of spending two days with Keith in this space was earth shattering. Two months would have him fleeing into the depths of the asteroid field at their backs with no intent on ever returning.

“I’m just saying,” Keith said, chewing his lower lip. “In case the Atlas can’t sidetrack and make a rescue mission.”

“They are not leaving the Black Paladin in an undisclosed asteroid field,” James said, baffled by even the concept of the suggestion.

“They have a backup Black Paladin,” Keith said. “My role was never that… irreplaceable.”

“You’re really committed to the bit, huh?” James asked sharply.

Keith narrowed his eyes at him, sensing his sudden hostility. “I wasn’t joking.”

“Not a joke. You just seem fixated on this concept that you’re the outcast of your little Paladin group when they all seem to be clamoring for your attention at every chance they have.”

Keith's laugh rang out around the cabin, sharp and shrill against the metal hull.

“They almost ran me out of the group when they discovered I was half Galra. I hardly think that constitutes ‘clamoring,’” Keith said sardonically.

“They love you,” James said simply. “It’s obvious to see. I don’t know what happened before, but it’s clear now that you're irreplaceable to them.”

“You can love someone and not understand them,” Keith said, staring out the front window to the void of infinite space.

“They don’t need to understand you to want to rescue you,” James said, annoyed now with how fixated Keith seemed to be on the idea of his own worthlessness. “Let’s plan like we’re going to rescue ourselves, and assume the Atlas will if we can’t. Okay?”

“Whatever,” Keith said, echoing some version of Jame’s own annoyance back in his voice.

“We should take shifts,” James continued. “So someone can be available on the comms if we ever do get them back.

“That’s fine,” Keith said, shrugging. “The ship only has one bunk anyways.” He gestured to the sealed door behind them in the cabin, the one James knew enclosed the tiny, single-man crew quarters. “I guess we have to rotate.”

“Right,” James said, ignoring the fact that they would be sleeping in the same bed. At different times! It wasn’t the same thing at all.

Keith rose to his feet then, only a slight tremor in his typically catlike grace belying his previous injury. James resisted the urge then to press a hand against his waist and help him upright, watching wordlessly instead as Keith walked over to take the pilot's seat.

His fingers flew over the screen, trying the same SOS sequence James had used before.

“I already-“ James started, but Keith waved him off dismissively.

“I know,” Keith interrupted. “Just… want to try a few things.”

James shrugged. He wouldn’t pretend to be an engineer and he definitely wouldn’t pretend to be a better pilot than Keith. If one of them was going to figure out how to get a signal out of this impenetrable field, it wasn’t going to be James.

“Go for it,” James told him, then settled himself into a spot on the floor where he could observe Keith’s side profile in a way that wasn’t too obvious. His data pad was still tucked inside his flight suit, the one thing he’d carried over from his ship besides himself.

When he pulled up the mapping feature, as expected, their signal was entirely absent, even when he zoomed into the location of their coordinates. They were invisible.

If they couldn’t get out of here with James’ ship, they would be dead in the water until the Garrison realized they’d missed the rendezvous. Then they would be totally reliant on the Atlas’s ability to trace down the signal of their last ping back to the main ship and somehow find them on the seemingly infinite expanse of this accursed asteroid belt.

It seemed impossible that they would ever be found, if they couldn’t make it back to James’ ship.

James shook off the idea, uneasy.

They just needed to wait for the suits to charge. Then they’d be back in James’ ship and out of this dead zone for good.

He could survive 5 days with Keith, like this.

James glanced up, watching as Keith leaned over the glowing screens, the light reflecting in his eyes with an unnatural iridescence. His dark hair stuck to his cheekbones, still mussed from his helmet. From James’ hands tugging through the strands.

It was an effort to drag his gaze away from Keith’s mouth, his teeth caught in his lower lip - the skin darkening there to an inviting red.

James could survive this. He could.

Keith eventually retreated into the small crew’s quarters after snarling a yawn that exposed the overlong incisors on his top row of teeth. It was a quintessentially catlike expression, and James had to fight back a smile as he nodded him toward the back room.

“You should sleep. I’ll take first shift,” James said. “We’ve been up for a while now.”

“Thanks.” Keith rose to his feet, and even that motion looked choreographed as he stretched, wincing slightly. “I’ll set my alarm for a couple of hours. I just need a nap.”

James remembered his polyphasic sleep cycle then, wondered how that would allow James to get his own distinctly human eight hours of necessary sleep.

It didn’t matter, he realized, as long as Keith was healthy. Maybe he could use this opportunity to finally force him to get the sleep his body demanded.

“And, um-” Keith had paused in front of the open door to the quarters, his hand hovering over the keypad to unlock the door. “Thank you, I guess. For coming down here to check on me. You could have stayed on your own ship and been on your way back to the Atlas by now. But you’re not, you're here so- thanks.” Keith seemed to stop himself abruptly then, hand falling to his side limply.

James wished he could explain how outrageous the idea of leaving him behind was. How it had never crossed his mind. How scared he’d been when he heard the line of their comms drop, when he heard Keith drop, that sickening thud against the floor.

He swallowed, hard. It stung that Keith even assumed that would have been James’ first instinct, to abandon him.

“We’re teammates now,” James said, clearing his throat again. “I would be a shitty teammate if I left you for dead in the most unmapped asteroid belt in this quadrant.”

He thought Keith might smile at that, offer a rare grin after a series of such disastrous events. But his mouth pulled down at the corners - clearly displeased.

“Teammates. Right,” Keith repeated. “You were always doing things by the books after all.”

James only nodded as Keith disappeared into the crew quarters, leaving only the lingering scent of his pheromones in the cabin.

That, James thought, may have been the most dire part of this situation. Not the uncertain timeline or the nebulous chance of rescue. It was Keith’s scent growing more distracting and more inviting the longer it permeated the small space.

James shook his head sharply, fixing his attention back on the data pad in his hands. He was just going to force himself to focus on something else.

The alarm on James' wrist startled him from his reading a few hours later, a reminder to swap shifts with Keith. He waited a few minutes, but Keith never emerged from the back room.

Steeling himself, James rose from his seat to cross the cabin in two wide steps and knock on the frame of the door to the crew quarters. It was silent, and James felt a pang of unease. Keith might have a concussion - he didn’t have the medical expertise to confirm, and James had left him alone for hours afterwards.

Telling himself he was just going in to check and make sure Keith hadn't suffocated himself in his sleep, James slipped inside.

It was dark inside the crew quarters, lit only by the strip of emergency lights on the floor, but light streaming in from the cabin behind him was enough to illuminate the small space.

Keith was deeply asleep, only a sliver of his face visible beneath the dark mass of hair covering his forehead, drifting across his cheekbone. One of his wrists had drifted out beneath the blanket to hang limp, slender fingers dangling towards the floor.

He looked… peaceful. Completely unguarded, content to drift in the liminal space between wakefulness and dreams.

Did he look like this? James thought. When he was sleeping in my bed, in a pile of tangled sheets?

It seemed unthinkably cruel to wake Keith when he looked like this. James quietly shut the door behind him, sealing Keith in the darkness with a whir of pneumatics.

Trying to block the image of Keith’s sleeping face from his mind, James picked up his datapad with renewed determination - intent on continuing to read the thousands of hours of books he’d downloaded on it instead of fantasizing about the least attainable person he’d ever met.

James was only startled from his reading when he heard the door slide open next to him. Keith stepped out, looking faintly disheveled and only halfway awake.

His eyes were only a crescent of violet iris when he blinked down at James, and the alpha was struck by how completely unguarded he looked.

Keith - arms akimbo, asleep in a hospital bed had been one sight - a gut-wrenching display of fragility from a previously indestructible phenomenon. But Keith, barely awake and scent as soft as James had ever tasted, left him reeling. He wanted to nose into the crook of Keith’s neck exposed by the unzipped collar of his flight suit.

“You should have woke me up earlier,” Keith mumbled. “I slept through my alarm, twice.”

James dragged his gaze away, forcing his eyes onto the glowing dials of the dash in front of him. “Then you needed it, obviously.”

His voice was embarrassingly rough. James cleared his throat, pointedly not looking at Keith as he stepped up next to the pilot’s seat.

“Did the ship pick up anything while I was out?” Keith asked. “Or are we still dead in the water?”

James frowned, though he was relieved to focus on anything but Keith’s sleep-soft scent. “Nothing. But it’s not like we’re dead. It’s like we’re… stuck, like whatever field these asteroids are creating isn’t letting anything out. Life support looks good, communications are on, we just can’t… get anything out of this 3-click radius.”

“Damn,” Keith sighed. “Can’t wait to hear Lance’s ‘told you so.’”

“That’s hardly the biggest issue here right now,” James said dryly.

“Maybe not right now,” Keith acknowledged. “But you’ve never seen a smug Lance. He’s about as tolerable as a Garrison MREs on an empty stomach.

James rose from the pilot’s seat, motioning for Keith to take his place.

“Speaking of horrible food,” James said, watching as Keith dropped into the seat in front of him. “You hungry? We have plenty of flavorless non-perishables.”

Keith wrinkled his nose, the motion recognizably catlike in its petulance. James had to force the smile off his face, struck by a sensation of unbearable fondness.

“I’m good for now. I’ll grab something later when I’m really desperate.”

Keith pulled his knees up in the chair, pulling them flat against his chest so that he was a comfortable ball of leggy limbs in the pilot seat. He looked so soft like that, so incredibly small that it was an effort to look away from the vulnerable posture.

“You should get some sleep,” Keith said, oblivious. “You must’ve been awake for over 24 hours at this point.”

“Yeah.” James blinked, his vision slightly blurry from sudden exhaustion. Adrenaline had been carrying him since Keith’s voice disappeared across the comms, and his body finally seemed to relax enough - reassured that the omega was fine - that the tiredness was catching up with him. “I think I’ll take my shift now.”

“There’s only one cot in there,” Keith warned. “But I think there’s some extra sheets in storage if you want to swap the ones I used.”

Fuck, James thought. I’m actually going to hell.

“Nah, it’s all good,” James said, the fake casualness in his voice sounding comical even to himself. “It doesn’t bother me.”

Keith crossed his arms, suddenly looking awkward and James was struck by the sudden fear that he’d exposed himself completely.

“But you can change them after I sleep on them!” James rushed to say. “I know alpha scents can be a little strong if the omega doesn’t…” he trailed off. “Yeah, feel free to change them.”

“It’s fine,” Keith said quietly, his gaze fixed on some point on the floor near James’ feet. “I mean, if it’s you- it’s, uh, okay.”

The silence was so loud James could have almost sworn even the ambient noise of the ship disappeared. But maybe that was just the ringing in his ears drowning it out.

“Got it. I guess I’ll just-” James motioned awkwardly to the door of the cabin behind Keith.

“Right!” Keith whipped his head forward so fast, as if avoiding seeing James disappear into the crew quarters.

James couldn’t help but glance down at him as he walked past, but Keith had fixed his gaze on the floor - the top of his cheekbones stained a faint pink. James let his fingers brush the edge of Keith’s shoulder as he brushed past him, trying not to breathe in as he did.

“Wake me in a few hours,” James said. “Or if you get anything on the line.”

“Okay.”

James let the door to the cabin slide shut behind him, the whir of the pneumatics covering the sound of his heavy exhale.

On his next inhale, James stiffened - paralyzed.

The room was small, nearly airtight and obviously not intended for long-term habitation. It was compact enough that it already smelled faintly of Keith, that warm, sweet omega smell that was so much softer than anything Keith typically smelled like around other people. James knew Keith’s usual smell and his heat scent intimately now. But he realized with a start that the former always had an edge to it - a sharpness he was only now understanding was Keith’s natural barrier around other people - built from years of mistrust.

That sharpness was gone, leaving only Keith’s natural, unguarded pheromones. James' head was buzzing with them.

He was shaking slightly as he unzipped his flight suit, leaving him in his plain t-shirt and briefs before glancing at the fold out bed. Feeling like he would hate himself a little less, he grabbed a pair of clean sweatpants from storage and pulled them on before sliding beneath the covers.

It hit him the instant his cheek gingerly was laid against the pillow, even stronger than the way the scent lingered in the cabin air. Keith, Keith’s hair against this pillow. Keith’s scent gland pressed against the sheets. Keith’s skin on the cover on top of him.

It was awful.

It was perfect.

KEITH. Keith, Keith, Keith-

His alpha hindbrain was immediately frantic, the overwhelming scent of the omega surrounding him. His senses were telling him Keith was here, except Keith wasn’t here and the cognitive dissonance sent his pulse racing.

James turned his face completely into the pillow, mouth hanging open to try and breathe the scent in more completely. In a horrible way, he could almost taste Keith on the back of his tongue. His incisors absolutely ached, saliva gathering in his mouth.

He had to fight the urge to sink his teeth into the fabric of the pillow beneath him. It was humiliating.

“I’m a terrible person,” he mumbled into the pillow. “Fuck.”

James wondered how Keith usually slept - on his side, curled into himself to protect the sharp edges? He somehow didn’t think it was on his back. That was too similar to his unnatural posture in that hospital bed, the uncanny stillness.

If Keith slept on his side, James could curl around him - one arm sliding across his narrow waist to rest against his stomach, the other reaching up to tangle in the long hair at the back of his neck. He wondered how their limbs would slot together, if Keith would face the wall, allowing James to breath against his neck in total trust. Or if he’d curl into him, head against his chest.

With a groan, James turned over so that he was flat on his back. He could smell the pillow a little less this way, allowing him to swallow down saliva as he switched to breathing only through his mouth.

It was only the sheer sense of exhaustion that eventually pulled him to sleep, the sweet notes of Keith’s omega scent fading until he was encompassed in a blissful darkness.

Keith was hyperaware that Griffin lay on the other side of the cabin door, asleep. He knew his head should have been ringing with the alarm bells of “Alpha!” and “Small space!” but instead he was only consumed by the way Griffin’s scent filled the cockpit like a comforting blanket.

Mate? The niggling thought was there, not entirely his own but unshakeable in its persistence. Some part of him was utterly fixated on Griffin’s presence - not only as the only other living being in a thousand clicks, but as something… other to him. Something solid, and comfortable, and reassuring.

To distract himself, Keith resorted to fiddling with the comms until he grew frustrated with the continued drone of the empty line. Then he turned his attention to the sample of rock that had gotten them into this mess, the piece of asteroid safely stored away in the cylinder of Altean crystal.

Some curious, self-destructive part of Keith wanted to open the vessel again - just to see what the piece of rock would do to the ship's instrumentation again. But he couldn’t put Griffin at risk, even if it was something he’d test on his own. The faintly glowing crystal was a siren’s song, turning Keith’s gaze back to it no matter how hard he tried to focus on something else.

The only distraction he needed, he quickly discovered, was on the other side of the door in the crew quarters. When Griffin finally emerged, Keith’s first thought was that the alpha couldn't have slept the full six hours of his shift. Then Keith forgot how to think.

Griffin hadn’t pulled on his flight jacket, leaving him in a fitted t-shirt tucked into his stiff flight suit pants. Keith was suddenly aware of how foreign it was to see this much of Griffin’s skin - the lines of tendons stretching up his muscled forearms that were usually hidden by his uniform.

He wasn’t bulky, but his leanness and the faint swell of his biceps beneath the fitted material was impossible to ignore.

Keith swallowed, fingers tightening where they gripped the armrests of the pilot’s seat.

“Good morning,” he mumbled. Keith realized exactly how awkward that sounded the instant he said it, jerking his chin back around to face the ship’s main display.

“Is it morning?” Griffin asked, his voice low from sleep. The sound of it made Keith’s nerves light on end, anticipatory for something he couldn’t name.

Keith flicked the ship's exterior lights on nervously, then off again. From this angle, he could just make out Griffin’s abandoned ship on the port side of the bow - a glowing, reassuring speck of light.

One flick. Darkness - only the universe stretching across the front windows to swallow them whole. Another flick. The world was lit in a glow of yellow light, illuminating the tethered ship.

Flick.

Flick.

Flick-

Keith froze, his finger hovering over the button to switch the lights off once again. He’d seen something just in the corner of the front window, the brightness shining onto a sight that made his breath stutter.

Keith sat up straight in his seat, a sudden bolt of panic making his limbs rigid. In the next instant he was moving towards the flight suit hung abandoned on the wall, his body moving on autopilot to fasten the rigid plates.

“Kogane?”

Keith heard his name behind him, a question - heavy with that infuriating concern. He wondered if Griffin could sense the acrid stench of fear in his scent, a rising sensation of helplessness.

“I need to check something,” Keith said, his voice unsteady even to his own ears. “Topside. I’ll be out for just a minute.”

“Check what?” Griffin’s fine boned brows were twisted in confusion, but that was an emotion Keith didn’t have time for. “What’s wrong?”

Keith’s helmet fastened with a click, and when he replied his voice echoed around the ship - now broadcast on the coms.

“Probably nothing,” Keith said, but he couldn't even be convinced of his own words. “I’ll be back soon.”

He disappeared into the loading port and, to his relief, Griffin didn’t follow. Keith exited the airlock a moment later, one instant surrounded by the fluorescence of the interior of the ship and the next floating weightless in the expanse of open space.

The world around him was silent, a silence he usually loved in these infinite, limitless kinds of places. The threat of a constantly expanding universe had never felt like that - a threat. It felt like a possibility, an always endless list of places he could lose himself that wasn’t Earth.

But he wasn’t here alone. He wasn’t here with his mother, trying to work through a lifetime resentment and scraped knees that no one bothered to put bandaids on.

He was here with Griffin, James Griffin whose scent was already filling the cabin beneath his feet. Who had only volunteered on this mission out of an unshakeable sense of duty for his team. Who hadn’t signed up to be a victim of Keith’s wanderlust and his penchant for reacting with his instincts and never acting with his head. Griffin didn’t deserve to be stuck here with him, helpless in the most unreachable quadrant of their known universe.

They had to get out of here. Not for Keith’s sake, but Griffin’s.

Keith’s pulse was pounding as he scanned the ship's hull for what he’d seen inside the cabin. He saw the tether point of the cable, still securely tied. But the line of cable between the two ships was slack now, curling into loops in the dead air.

They hadn’t moved. Keith’s ship was still settled exactly where he’d landed it a day ago, latched onto an asteroid just at the edge of the belt.

If the line was loose, it was because Griffin’s ship had moved, had been pulled in closer by the field in the hours they’d taken to sleep and recharge their suits. His ship, their only means of escape - was now almost certainly within the grip of a gravitational field Keith couldn’t pretend to understand. And it was only moving closer.

Shit.

Keith immediately dropped back into the loading port, allowing it to repressurize before he pulled off his helmet. He re-entered the main cabin with a scowl, not bothering to fix the hair he could feel sticking out in every direction.

Something in his expression must have alerted Griffin of the dire situation they were in, because he immediately stepped forward, hand rising as if he meant to grab Keith. He didn’t.

“What’s wrong?” Griffin asked instead, voice right with tension. “Is the line cut?”

Worse.

Keith shook his head. “It’s not cut. It’s slack.”

Griffin paled, and this time his hand really did rise to grip Keith’s elbow - a reassuring weight. Something about the light touch of his fingers, even through the layers of suit fabric, cut through the buzz of panic in his head.

“Slack?” Griffin asked. “That means-“

“That it’s drifting closer, yeah,” Keith said.

This was another reason he liked Griffin. Their brains worked at the same frequency. He didn’t feel stupid around him, like Pidge and Hunk. Or like he has to explain why a line growing slack was so detrimental to being able to escape whatever uncanny gravitational pull this asteroid belt had caught them in, like he would have with Lance.

Keith crossed the cabin to take a seat in the pilot's chair, hearing Griffin shift to follow him across the small space. The warmth of his fingers lingered on Keith’s elbow, an imaginary sensation of touch.

“How much give was there, on the line?” Griffin moved to stand in front of Keith. It left Keith sitting and the alpha standing above him, which usually would have raised his hackles as he was forced to look up at someone. But somehow he didn’t mind it as much with Griffin.

“Too much,” Keith said. “Enough that even if we did make it back to your ship, there’s no way it's far enough from the field to pilot it out now. Both of the ships are useless.” Keith glanced up at the other pilot standing over him through his bangs. “We’re stuck here.”

He had just enough time to see Griffin’s face twist in horror before Keith looked away quickly.

Keith fixed his gaze instead at the empty void of space in front of them, the speck of light that was Griffin’s ship - now brighter than it had been just 24 hours before. No, not brighter - he reminded himself, that empty dread feeling in his stomach making him pull his knees to his chest. Closer. Not brighter, only closer.

“And we might be stuck here,” Keith repeated. “For a lot longer than we expected.”