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“ Wow .”
Keith’s eyes are wide where they’re stuck to the broad, boundless landscape at the foot of their little shuttle’s loading ramp, watching snow fall from overhead. Everything as far as Shiro can see is a blank slate: sweeping waves of solid white that are cast into shades of hazy blue by the glow of the binary moons caught behind clouds in the dark night sky. The tiny speck of light glowing on the distant horizon–a city nestled far beyond the endless fields of crystalline snow–is the only indication of life on the almost-barren planet.
Months spent traveling through the infinite expanse of space have left the pair of them stir-crazy. As the days drag on, the emptiness around them makes Keith’s fingers itch to do something almost as much as it makes Shiro’s head spin. The only time the monotony changes is when they shift into hyperdrive, and the stars which burn blue-white and blinding in every direction are stretched into long, thin blurs of light as they speed by.
Shiro doesn’t mind though. In a million lifetimes, Shiro would never have thought he’d end up drifting across the universe with his best friend–the love of his life–by his side. He never gets tired of sharing every moment with Keith. Whether tangled up in sleep or exploring the farthest reaches of an unfamiliar universe, he has yet to feel the nagging itch for anything or anyone else.
Keith is more than enough for him.
“Shiro.” Keith murmurs his name like a prayer, soft and sweet and breathless around the edges as he breaks the peaceful silence between them. When Keith tears his gaze from the horizon, it’s to look over to Shiro with a little smile curling up the corners of his mouth and to sigh, “It’s beautiful.”
Shiro’s heart skips a beat, and the most he can muster is a hum of agreement and a nod of his head as he reaches out to tangle his fingers in Keith’s. Keith lets out a little laugh as he steps forward and the snow gives way beneath his feet, a sharp crunch accompanying the movement.
“Worth the detour?” Shiro asks, watching as Keith sinks to his mid-calf in crystal-white snow.
With a shout of joy, Keith bounds forward, his hand slipping from Shiro’s as he steps deeper into a drift. His face is wild, split apart by a grin when he turns to look at Shiro. “I’ve never seen snow before!”
“I know,” Shiro says. He can’t help the chuckle that leaves him when Keith stumbles over himself. The joy on Keith’s face makes him look like he’s still the same kid that Shiro had taken to the beach one summer. Nearly seventeen years old, Keith had only experienced sand scattered between yucca and desert grass for his entire life, but he had never seen it so blindingly brilliant as it was against the deep blue of the ocean. Back then, Keith’s hair had hardly curled around his ears, but now, after a year in deep space, it has grown long enough to rest in a thick, messy braid that is thrown over his shoulder, speckled by snow rather than seafoam and sunlight.
THUMP!
Shiro’s so distracted by the memory of Keith grinning at him from waist-deep waves that he doesn’t notice the ball of hardpack snow flying towards him until it hits him square in the chest. Shocked, Shiro hardly registers the hit before he takes a step towards Keith, almost tripping when he sinks deeper into the snow beyond the shuttle ramp. “ Hey! ”
A wild laugh bursts out of Keith, and he slips just beyond the reach of Shiro’s fingertips, dodging to the side when Shiro tries to grab at the hem of his coat. The black puffer is a spare–borrowed from Shiro’s closet–that is far too big for Keith, hanging down low enough to brush the tops of his thighs and swallowing his body in a cloud of down and warmth.
Shiro tries again to grab hold of a giggling Keith, but Keith dodges each advance nimbly. “I thought you’d never seen snow before?” Shiro mocks, giving up the chase and reaching down to scoop up his own handful of snow, packing it tight between his palms.
“I haven’t,” Keith affirms with a smirk.
Hardly a moment of hesitation passes before Shiro launches his snowball at Keith, who ducks to the right to avoid it.
“Is that the best you can do, oldtimer?” Keith taunts, gathering another snowball of his own and whipping it at Shiro with a quick flick of his wrist.
“Oldtimer!” Shiro splutters. The shock gives him just enough pause that Keith’s snowball clips his shoulder before disintegrating into the space behind him. “Really? Remind me again, didn’t you find your first grey hair just last week?”
“At least it’s just one hair, and not my whole head!”
“ Keith—” Shiro turns too quickly and stumbles just as Keith dances out of his line of sight, ducking behind the edge of the shuttle. Another snowball flies past Shiro’s head, close enough that Shiro flinches as it whistles by. “God, where’d this throwing arm come from?”
Keith’s voice is distant when he answers, “The Blades might have taught me a few things!”
Readying a snowball of his own, Shiro calls out, “What else did they teach you?”
“Oh, I can show you if you want.” Keith’s response comes from behind Shiro, eerie in the dark of the night. When Shiro spins on his heel, he hardly catches a glimpse of Keith’s wide smile illuminated by the dim glow of the moons overhead before a snowball, mostly hard-pack snow and ice hits his cheek, just below his right eye. There’s enough force behind it that Shiro thinks the snowball could’ve broken his nose had it hit just a few inches to the left.
“Keith,” Shiro gasps, hand shooting up to cover his cheek. It’s tender to the touch already, and Shiro hisses as the icy remains of the snowball melt beneath his fingers.
“Oh my god,” Keith crosses the scant space between them in the blink of an eye, reaching up with both hands to cradle Shiro’s face in his palms. “I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”
Shiro opens his mouth to reply, but no words come to him; instead he gapes at Keith, blinking in shock.
“I didn’t mean to hit you in the face, oh my god, I was aiming for your back but then you turned around and it just–god, it hit you right in the eye didn’t it? Shiro, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry, I didn’t—” Keith continues to babble as he wipes water and slush from Shiro’s face with his sleeve. His actions are frantic and uncoordinated as he fusses over Shiro, hands rough against the tender skin on Shiro’s face.
“Keith–”
Keith groans, cupping Shiro’s cheek again and tilting his face while he leans in close, as if to get a better look.
“Keith,” Shiro repeats, wrapping his right hand around Keith’s wrist. “It’ll be fine, I promise. I’m not even bleeding, okay? It’s just a bruise.”
“But–”
“Keith.” Shiro’s voice is firm and Keith finally stills under his touch, mouth snapping shut when Shiro offers him a meek smile. “It’s fine .”
A brief silence passes between them, and Keith blinks up at Shiro. He nods, lips parted around a breathy, affirming, “Okay.”
Shiro squeezes Keith’s wrist in reassurance. It’s warm beneath his touch, and without a moment’s hesitation, he reaches up with his other hand, cold where it’s filled with half-melted snow, and smushes it onto Keith’s nose.
Keith splutters through shock and the icy water on his lips before he lunges forward. With a half-muffled shout of, “Shiro!” Keith tackles his husband to the ground, hands firm on Shiro’s shoulders.
A giggle pushes its way out of Shiro’s chest as he tumbles into the snow, Keith looming over him with a glint in his eye. “You’re such a dick , ” Keith says through a burst of laughter. “I was worried about you!”
The snow is bitter cold as it knocks the air out of Shiro’s lungs, and he settles his palms on Keith’s hips to ground himself. Keith is warm and solid beneath his touch, even hidden beneath the coat that disguises the width of his shoulders and the curve of his waist. “All is fair in love and war.”
“It’s a snowball fight .”
“Same thing,” Shiro quips in response. “Since I love you, and the snowball fight is a war.” Keith’s face settles into something sweeter, something gentler as he leans down to Shiro, closer and closer until he’s near enough that Shiro could count each of Keith’s eyelashes, one by one.
Shiro cranes his neck up, pressing his lips to Keith’s for a quick kiss. It’s cold and wet from the slush on both of their faces, and he lets his head fall back into the snow with a dull crunch and a grin on his face. The shortest bits of Keith’s dark hair have fallen out his braid, framing his face with wispy, half-formed curls that are limned by moonlight and the stars dancing in and out of the clouds in the night sky behind Keith’s head.
Looking down at him with something akin to wonder in his eyes, Keith reaches out, curling a chunk of the hair that hangs across Shiro’s forehead around the length of his index finger. Leaning in a little bit closer, until his lips brush the corner of Shiro’s mouth, Keith whispers, “Your hair matches the snow.”
“Don’t get sappy on me now.” Shiro cocks his head, and moves so that he can pull another kiss out of Keith. Laughing into it, Keith presses his body to Shiro’s, a line of warm solid heat that serves as a counterpoint to the frigid cold seeping through Shiro’s coat and into his bones where he lie in the snow.
The insistent press of Keith’s mouth is enough to fill even the coldest corners of Shiro’s body with a hot, molten warmth–want and love rush through his veins with the brush of Keith’s fingers along the sides of Shiro’s face.
The two of them stay in the snow for far too long, with Keith’s thighs bracketing Shiro’s waist and Shiro’s hands on Keith’s face, holding him close. When they finally break apart, it’s with a sigh that slips out of Keith’s lips, kiss-bitten red and shining.
The clouds overhead have opened up again, letting loose fat, crystalline snowflakes that drift down from the star-filled sky. They gather in Keith’s hair and on his shoulders in fluffy white clusters.
“Hey, Keith?”
“Hmm?” Keith hums. He blinks down at Shiro slowly, letting his gaze flick down to Shiro’s lips before dragging his eyes lazily up the curves of Shiro’s face.
Shiro brushes his hand across the crown of Keith’s head, and swipes a spare snowflake from Keith’s forehead with his fingertips. “Your hair is gonna match mine if we stay out here much longer.”
“That’s fine,” Keith murmurs, leaning in to press his lips to Shiro’s forehead, then his cheek, the brush of his mouth gentle as it ghosts across the bruised skin where the snowball hit Shiro, before finally settling on the tip of his nose. “I don’t mind.”
“Even though we’ll probably freeze to death?”
Keith’s lips are feather light against Shiro’s own when he mutters. “Hmm … not likely.”
Shiro laughs into Keith’s mouth, a bright, silly thing that punches its way out of him, and he pulls Keith in close again. “You really love the snow don’t you?”
“No.” The curl of Keith’s lips when he smiles into the kiss that follows should be answer enough. Instead, Keith answers candidly, honest as always when he says, “but I do love you .”