Chapter Text
“Shiro you didn’t.”
“I did.”
Keith gapes at the forgein object taking up space in their tiny garage. It’s lean and cherry red, glaringly bold against the classy black of the bike next to it. “I don’t even have my license yet.” Shiro smiles and puts a hand on his shoulder, fingers digging foundly into the fabric. “Yeah, but that gives you time to learn.” Keith takes the time to glare at him before the awe is back. Shiro chuckles, but his eyes light up in fondness and his happiness leaks out in the pink that dusts his ears.
“You’ll teach me?”
“I’ll teach you.”
Keith doesn’t have room for self-doubt. He can’t feel anything but the anticipation, the pounding drive to learn, the joy that comes with the freedom Shiro just handed him. For the first time in a long time, Keith doesn’t have room to hate himself. The sky is black, when Shiro takes him to an empty parking lot and they practice. It’s black when they get home. His cheeks burn pink in the night air. Keith is a little dirty, the palms of his hands a little sore, and the gloves Shiro gives him are black. His hands don’t hurt anymore.
The first person he calls is Lance. Obviously it was just to brag, but it felt more like gushing and Lance was almost excited as he was. The sky is blue out of the window two stories up, as Keith watches the lazily drifting clouds, tending the fizzling spark that jumps along his ribs and he knows Lance has one too. Soon the conversation devolved into desperate attempts to convince Lance that no, he couldn’t come over right now and see it, and that no he could absolutely not borrow it to go pick up chicks. Keith doesn’t mind, because it’s Lance and that’s how he is. Keith doesn’t have the heart to tell him riding bitch kind of sucks as he smiles into the phone and listens to Lance plan out their highschool experience, filled with blue summer skies and grey waves that smell like salt.
There is room eventually, a few late nights, a few more failed tests, a few hard classes, a few more papers smeared in red ink. The doubt and hate come crawling back, and Keith can’t do anything but let it out in lunchroom brawls and slamming classroom doors. He sees red on busted lips and broken fingers. Freshman freedom, as Lance proclaimed it with an arm slung over his shoulder, was the exact opposite of what Keith felt. Sometimes he wonders if hate will always be the standard, if the emotion had made a permanent home in his heart. And right now, waiting outside another closed door as Shiro talks to faculty in lowered voices, he doesn’t know if he can handle anymore of it.