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There wasn’t a lot of things to do out here among the desert sand where Keith’s friends were the cacti surrounding the little cozy shack, and a few coyotes who traversed the land at night. It was peaceful out here alone, it was a refuge for him. A place that still held a piece of his heart close to him even as the world tried to tell him otherwise.
Pilot error my ass.
After he’d been booted from the Garrison, there wasn’t anywhere Keith had wanted to go than right here to the place Keith and Shiro had first found back in their early days as cadets. They used to sneak out here on Keith’s hover-bike and use this place to study for their grueling exams, a safe place that was all their own to do as they liked. But this place was more than that. This place was home to Keith, both now and then, a place of many firsts.
The first time Keith had realized that he was beginning to fall for his older classmate. The first time he realized that Shiro actually reciprocated those feelings. Their first wonderful and warm kiss shared along the coarse sand and beneath the moon’s natural illumination. The first time they made love to Shiro’s favorite song, a song that was now embedded deeply in Keith’s heart as a fond reminder of their too short time together.
Nowadays, the bed was cold at night, Shiro’s smell and warmth having faded away along with his essence here on earth. It hurt Keith to wake up in this shack all alone every morning, but he did it anyway. He did it for the strange readings he’d been picking up from the caves, dark stories of a legend older than Earth itself trying to be heard with Keith the only one around to listen. He did it for Shiro, because he knew the older man would have wanted Keith to be happy again, as if it were that simple. Perhaps more selfishly, Keith did it for himself. Self-preservation was an instinct that was strong in Keith, a way of life he’d had to adapt to if he wanted to retain his mental sanity throughout the bruising orphanage that tried so hard to beat Keith down.
But Keith prevailed. He prevailed only to be hit with another meteoroid to his heart twenty-two years into his life. He couldn’t wallow, though, not this time, not anymore. He wasn’t eleven years old anymore. If he broke down and let the sadness consume him, he knew he might never get back up.
So, he got up each morning and made himself a bowl of cereal. He spent all of his free time trying to decipher the tale of the blue lion, and if he was lucky, he fell into a dreamless sleep at night.
Something was nagging at Keith today. He just couldn’t focus on his work, and when his eyes landed on a video camera that lay abandoned in the dusty corner Keith never bothered with, his heart lit up. They’d spent a lot of time with that camera making dumb home videos that they wanted to look back at when they were older and laugh at, cry at, reminisce about. They wanted to document as much as they could because Shiro said every moment was precious in its own right, and who was Keith to disagree?
The collection of tapes sat cluttered in a shoebox beneath the shelf the camera was resting on, and Keith dug around through the titled memories until he came across one that made his heart skip a beat.
Sunday Morning Solos xo
Keith smiled. His favorite.
He hopped back onto his bed and slid the tape into the camera and pressed play.
A steady stream of water jetting down from the shower head rang out loudly in the shack, and Keith started a bit, unused to any kind of sounds unless it was coming from him or the coyotes. He was just about to turn the volume down when Shiro’s bright face slid into view, and Keith let his hand fall back to the bed as he watched on in admiration.
“Keith!” Shiro said brightly, eyes blinking rapidly as the water from the showerhead hit against the side of his face. The camera was wobbly as Shiro held it as far away from the water as he could, and Keith got an eyeful of toned abs as Shiro fiddled around with the camera until he finally had it perched on something so that Shiro could step back fully into the shower and under the water’s spray. The camera was very modestly angled so that Keith could only see from the top of Shiro’s eight pack and up, his drenched hair making him look so adorable as he struggled to keep his eyes open through the shower’s rain.
“You’re sleeping right now, and so since we all know you sleep like the dead, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to do this. I know I kept promising how I’d let you hear me singing in the shower, but I just get so nervous when you’re right here in front of me,” Shiro was saying, a shy glint in his gray eyes despite his humorous smile. “But Kerberos is only days away now, and since this is our last time in the shack for a while, I thought I’d give you something to laugh about while I’m gone.”
Shiro began to shower as if it were normal then, as if a camera wasn’t posed right in front of the open shower and capturing Shiro at his most vulnerable. When Shiro finally massaged some shampoo into his hair, he picked up the sponge with the long handle and brought it up to his lips as he finally addressed the camera again, his eyes closed and mouth curved upward. He sang his heart into the sponge like a total dork, his entire upper body bopping from side to side as he got more and more into the song. The fact that he’d styled his hair upward in a mohawk fashion just made the video ten times funnier, and Keith watched on in fondness as he remembered that moment from his perspective.
Shiro hadn’t known, but Keith had been awake the whole time. From the very first, excited, “Keith!” These walls were thin, and when he’d heard his name, he’d lazily gotten out of bed to presumably answer Shiro’s plea to join him, but right before he could open the door, Shiro began speaking, and Keith listened, leaning his back against the wall. At the time, Keith had tried hard to keep his giggling to a minimum, but Shiro didn’t seem to hear him over the running of the shower, and then his subsequent singing.
It had been so beautiful to listen to with his sweet voice reverberating within the shower walls, making him sound even holier in its perfect pitch. When Shiro had given him the tape later, Keith had feigned surprise and promised not to watch it until after he’d gone. He’d kept his promise, and he’d watched it the night Shiro had taken off. Keith had come here after that emotional takeoff and sought out the tape immediately, wanting any little piece of his secret lover that he could get.
The video had made him cry then, but now as he watched Shiro singing into the camera for Keith’s ears only, his eyes only privy to his most vulnerable state, it made the burn in his chest simmer so good, a determined warmth glowing back into his heart.
Shiro finished his song—their song—with a gentle note, his voice going lower than the band’s itself as he finally opened his eyes. His hair was clear of any shampoo now, fresh and clean as water dropped down the ends of his hair and tinkled down his broad chest. He’d been rubbing all over himself with soap as a means of washing up and as he danced to the song in his head, but that was all done now. Shiro was just watching the camera, his chest rising and falling a little faster than normal, the softest of smiles on his face.
“That was for you, Keith. Now you can never say that I didn’t keep my promises. I may work my way around, exploit the loopholes, but I never forgot.”
Exploit the loopholes. Shiro had promised before he left that he would come back to Keith, that they would continue what they started right here in this shack merely a year ago on the night of Keith’s twenty-first birthday. For the longest time it hadn’t seemed like he would be able to keep that promise, but watching this just reminded him of how resilient they were, the pair of them. Their story couldn’t be done. It just couldn’t. Shiro was still out there, Keith knew it deep inside the rawest part of himself.
He knew Shiro would exploit the loopholes and find his way back from the dead to Keith. He had promised, and Shiro always kept his promises.
Shiro’s voice carried through the camera one last time as he shut the water off and lifted the camera in his hands. All he could see was above Shiro’s chest now as the water clung to his hair and dripped off the ends, sparkling like his entire aura seemed to do all the damn time.
“It’s in the song, Keith. My feelings for you are in this song in case you ever need reminding, because you’re it for me. And that’s enough. You’re enough.”
The video cut to black, Shiro’s warm gaze being replaced with Keith’s near identical expression reflected.
I’ll find you, Shiro. I promise you.