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There’s the faint sound of a steady beeping at the back of his consciousness, growing louder and louder in his head as he’s pulled further from sleep. Keith flings himself upright with a gasp, panic kicking in when he stares at the white walls of a room he doesn’t recognize. Pain shoots up the left side of his waist, over his ribs, and something stings sharply at his inner elbow when the needle of whatever thing he’s connected to is pulled out of the skin.
Next thing he knows, the machine next to the bed goes wild.
“What’s happening?”
Keith would recognize that voice anywhere. He snaps his head up to stare at the doors right as they slide open, and Shiro, along with three people in Garrison orange hospital staff outfits, barge into the room.
“It would seem he has—”
“Keith!” Shiro cuts off whatever the nurse next to him was trying to say. The panic across his face quickly settles into relief when his eyes land on Keith’s face. “Keith, you’re awake—”
“Shiro?” Keith says, holding out a hand for him on instinct. He tries to move, but his leg protests the motion when it hurts too much, and he ends up wincing instead. “What happened? Where—where am I?”
Shiro hurries over to him, gripping Keith’s outstretched hand with both of his own, Keith's whole fist disappearing as the metal of Shiro’s prosthetic curls over his fingers. “You’re at the hospital, we—”
Keith gasps in shock, letting out a noise like a wounded animal when he’s hit with a wave of memories washing over him. Fear tightly grips his heart and wraps around it, squeezing hard enough to make him feel crushed as Keith tries to make sense of it all, everything that’s flashing before his eyes. “Allura! She died, she—”
“What? No, no,” Shiro stops him and leans closer. “Keith, hey, relax, Allura’s fine, you’re all fine, I promise. All of you survived.”
“Wh—no? She—how?” He’s still breathing raggedly, but Shiro strokes a hand down the side of Keith’s face, pushing his hair back to cup his cheek. Keith leans into it, closing his eyes for a moment before he stiffens, pulling back wide-eyed with a small hiss. “You—”
“What’s wrong?” Shiro says, hurt and worry flashing across his handsome face as he lets his hand drop, looking—
…a lot younger than the last time Keith had seen him.
Keith blinks up at him, staring at the skin around Shiro’s eyes. The small lines Shiro had started to get there are missing, and instead of the form-fitting black and white Admiral’s jacket Keith would have expected to see him in, Shiro is wearing the dull grey fabric of a standard Garrison uniform. “Where—where are your clothes?”
Shiro looks horrified for half a second, eyes flicking down to his own chest before he looks up at Keith again. “I’m—not sure if something happened to your eyesight as well, Keith, but… I’m not naked?”
“No, I mean,” Keith tries. “Your Admiral uniform. The one matching us, the Paladins, with the—the colours?”
“Admiral?” Shiro furrows his brows as he reaches for Keith again, carefully placing his palm over the back of Keith’s hand and keeping it there when Keith doesn’t pull away. “You hit your head pretty badly, Keith. I should go get the doctor again, let them have a proper look at you.”
“What do you mean, I hit my head? Where—what happened? When is this, exactly?” Keith hadn’t even noticed that the hospital staff left the room at some point, but he suddenly stops his questioning. Instead he stares wide-eyed at Shiro’s left hand where it’s resting on top of Keith’s own. “Shiro,” he whispers. “Where’s your ring?”
“My what?”
“Your—your wedding ring.”
“Keith, baby, what are you talking about?”
His eyes flick back up to Shiro’s in shock at the pet name. “What? ‘Baby’? You can’t call me that!”
“What?” Shiro parrots, sounding equally offended.
“Shiro.” Keith’s starting to have trouble breathing by now. “You got married.”
“I can assure you,” Shiro says, looking very solemn, “in the roughly three weeks that my boyfriend has been comatose, I’ve been pretty busy spending any of my free time waiting for you to wake up. I did not go out and get myself another man just because you needed to catch a few winks in order to recover.”
“No, but I—” Keith swallows, trying to get the words to sink in. Three weeks? Since what? “You… you married Curtis.”
“Curtis?” Shiro stares at him. “The guy on my crew, Curtis, that Curtis?”
“Yes. You broke up with me before we left for space again, and then—Allura died, and you—you—”
“Keith,” Shiro says again, voice soft and gentle around his name. There’s a small smile on his face; weirded out and amused and confused all at once. He sits down on the side of the bed, lifting Keith’s hand to press a kiss to the back of it. “I didn’t break up with you, baby. Allura’s definitely not dead. We’re all back at the Garrison. Everyone survived, both the fight against Sendak and the robeast.”
“Wait,” Keith shakes his head, both out of disbelief and because he feels a little dizzy trying to process all of this. “It’s only been three weeks since we fought Sendak?”
“Yeah.” Shiro keeps smiling, but his expression stays worried and a little sad. “Longest three weeks of my life, waiting for you to wake up.”
“Oh.” Keith looks down at his hand in Shiro’s grip, trying to figure out if he really can allow himself to feel relieved over all of this. “So… no Curtis?”
Shiro chuckles, cupping Keith’s chin when he leans in to press his lips to Keith’s. “He’s a nice guy and all,” he says, teasingly adding, “pretty cute, too, I guess—but I’ve got everything I’ve ever wanted right here. Why would I ever break up with you?”
Keith pouts. It had all made so much sense at the time, when Shiro had pulled Keith aside to tell him that they needed to ‘talk’ before the ATLAS launched. It might have broken Keith to pieces, yes, but what was he supposed to say when Shiro told him that this thing between them wasn’t working out for him anymore?
“You said you thought it’d be better if we just stayed friends,” Keith whispers.
“Um,” Shiro says. “I think we’re way past the point of ever being ‘just friends’, wouldn’t you say, buddy?”
Keith stays quiet—because it had been weird, and apparently they really couldn’t go back to being just friends, since Shiro kept acting so oddly distant, fading into not much more than another one of Keith’s co-workers. Even the memory and how real it had all felt, despite the absurdity of it, hurts too much to think about.
“I love you, Keith,” Shiro adds, like a reminder, like he knows how badly Keith needs to hear it.
Keith bites his bottom lip, still feeling the ghost of Shiro’s lips against his. He sniffs to hold back his tears, and says a little pathetically, “Even when I have horrible breath from apparently being knocked out for almost a month?”
“Love you,” Shiro repeats and holds Keith’s face firmer when Keith tries to turn away. “Horrible breath and all. Don’t care about that when I’ve been waiting so long to be able to kiss you again.”
“Three weeks is a long time for you? I waited for you to even like me back for, like, half a decade. Who’s the one really needing to learn a thing or two about that sweet patience you’re always going on about?”
Shiro laughs, leaning in again, kissing Keith harder this time. “God, I’ve missed you so much. So, so much. I’m so glad you’re okay, baby.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” Keith whispers and kisses him back. It feels like he’s been without Shiro for an eternity, pain lingering in his mind from being so certain that he’d never get to have this again; of watching Shiro want to share his life with someone else. Keith carefully tries to wrap his arms around him, but Shiro catches his wrists in his hands to stop him from moving too much. Keith looks up at him and says, “I’m so glad you didn’t marry someone else.”
“The only one I would ever want to marry is you,” Shiro says and presses a kiss to the inside of one of Keith’s wrists, where he freezes. A beat passes before Shiro pulls back and they both blink, staring at each other while Shiro goes a little flustered. “I mean, not that—I know that’s not something we’ve talked about, or should talk about now, but I—”
“Shiro,” Keith cuts him off, and Shiro’s breath shakes out of him. “You’re the only one I want to marry, too.”
“Right.” Shiro bites his lip, cheeks bright red, blushing all the way up to his ears. Keith can’t hold back his own happy grin while Shiro glances at the door. “Nice. Um—I mean, we should—I’ll, uh… definitely bring that up some other time, in some more romantic way, I swear. But now we should—I mean as much as I’d like to stay here and kiss you until I’m sure you believe me about that and how there’s really, really nothing going on with me and Curtis from my crew, we should let a doctor get a look at you.”
“Oh. Right. Sure.” Keith nods in agreement. “And hey—can we maybe go visit Allura after? I really just. Wanna see her. Make sure that she’s okay.”
“Yeah, of course.” Shiro straightens up as he stands, looking at the door before smiling back down at Keith. “She’s probably with Lance. Guess who just had their first official date, if the gossip around base is to be believed?”
“Wait, really?” Keith smiles back and Shiro laughs.
“Mhm. She asked him out after he woke up. He bumped his head pretty badly too, was out for two days. So—I guess it made them realize some things.”
“Aw.” Keith keeps smiling, his heart feeling a lot lighter when Shiro angles to press a button next to the bed that Keith assumes is meant to alert the doctor. “Um. Shiro?”
“Yeah?” Shiro turns back to him with lifted eyebrows.
“I’m really glad we’re okay. All of us, I mean, but—you and me.”
“Of course we are, sweetheart.” Shiro bends down again, pressing another kiss to Keith’s lips, lovingly and long. Keith cranes his neck up for him to push into it harder, opening his mouth and getting lost in how much he’s missed this, sighing happily against Shiro’s lips when he’s kissed back with just as much want.
They’re still kissing once the doors to the room slide open again, both of them blushing as they pull apart when the doctor walks inside.
“Good afternoon, Sir,” the alien standing there with a tablet in their hand and a pen tucked behind their ear says with a wide smile, amused gaze flicking between the two of them. “And greetings, Captain Shirogane. I’m glad to see the leader of Voltron has finally decided to join us back here in the real world.”
The laugh huffs out of Keith, and he tangles his fingers with Shiro’s, who’s still standing next to him, and squeezes them hard. “Yeah,” he says, relaxing with a sigh when Shiro bends down to press a kiss to the top of his head. Keith closes his eyes, happy and careless again. “So am I, doc. So am I.”