Work Text:
If I could fall into the sky
Do you think time would pass me by?
Cause you know I'd walk a thousand miles
If I could just see you tonight
A Thousand Miles - Vanessa Carlton
Shiro is technically a year older, but no one teases him about the fact that he’s repeating his junior year. Keith hadn’t even met him before this year — the accident that he’d been in was common knowledge, but it took meeting him and seeing the prosthetic to put the pieces together.
Still, Shiro is well loved by students and teachers alike. Even the people whose circles he doesn’t move in seem at least neutral about him — and that’s impressive, considering how teenagers are. And after they meet, Keith keeps running into him everywhere.
Shiro doesn’t know what to do with his crush, not really. He and Adam had dated his freshman year but that had been — not good for everyone involved, and after Adam had moved away it had been like a weight off his shoulders. Besides that, Adam had been the one to approach him. In fact, Shiro gets approached… a lot, really. It’s good for his self esteem, when he can convince himself that it’s not for the novelty of his disability, so about 40% of the time. But even then, those people are so brave — how could he possibly walk up to Keith, tell him that he thinks he’s beautiful, and would he like to go on a date? Shiro would sooner die.
Keith is noodling around on his guitar at Pidge’s house one afternoon, their science project finished. They’re on the computer, looking at — something, social media or some obscure coding site, it could really be anything, and the sound of an ‘oh!’ breaks him out of the trance of fingering through the chords for the song he and Regris have been working on. He knows better, by now, than to play while Pidge is thinking, but they don’t mind the sound of him running his fingers up and down the strings. Says it’s “like weird ASMR,” as if Keith knows what that is.
“What’s up?” he asks, and —
“You’ve got a show on Friday night?”
“Oh, yeah.” It’s the next town over; they’ve got a bustling music life, and there’s a venue that doesn’t mind letting more local bands play. It feels like good practice for the future, and he likes sticking around for whoever plays after they do.
“Do you mind if I tell Matt? He likes…” they wave their hand nebulously at his guitar. “That kind of music.” Oh.
“Yeah,” he says, can’t help but smile. “That’d be cool.”
“Shiro, dude, tell me you love me,” Matt says, appearing out of nowhere at his bedroom door. Admittedly, Matt lives just down the street. Admittedly, his moms somehow love Matt Holt. Not that Shiro doesn’t, but Shiro and his moms usually have wildly different opinions on people Shiro’s age. (He’s not thinking of Adam.)
“I love you,” he says easily, looking up from where he’s been looking through new builds for the character he’s been leveling up over the past few days. “Why?”
“Because I am about to make your freaking day, and you don’t even know it yet!” Matt bursts in the rest of the way, not even bothering to shut the door. The animal. He put his hands on Shiro’s shoulders and turns the whole computer chair with Shiro’s body, looking into his eyes.
“You’re making me nervous,” Shiro says, but he lets Matt work it out. Matt’s ideas are usually very good or very not good; anything could be happening here.
“Your boy Keith—”
“He’s not my boy,” Shiro quietly insists, even though he’s smiling —
“Has a show on Friday night an hour from here! And I already got your moms to agree that you can go!”
“A… show? Friday night?” Shiro has a raid on Friday night, from 6 to 9 server time.
“Yes, a show!” Matt is vibrating with energy, and it’s starting to rub off on Shiro, even though…
“What kind of show?”
“You know, dude. A show. Like, a concert?” Matt narrows his eyes. “I know you know he’s in a band.” Because you’re obsessed goes unspoken.
“Yeah, I knew. I just didn’t know…”
“The New Lily does this thing where they have a handful of local bands play a couple times a month. It’s actually usually pretty good. I’ve been there before.”
“And — we’re going?”
“Unless you give me a really good reason that you can’t, you are absolutely coming with me, dude. I’m not letting you self-sabotage.”
Shiro opens his mouth, considering bringing up his raid, but — even he’s not that much of a nerd. And clearly Matt is invested. He can be a good friend, especially since Matt has already done so much.
“Okay.”
Friday appears and Keith is making it through the school day, but he’s really only half present. He’s more excited about the show at the New Lily than he is about balancing equations or working out derivatives. Even quiz bowl practice doesn’t really keep his attention, and he ends up on Shiro’s side of the table, across from the Holt ‘dream team’. Coran, their history teacher and quiz bowl advisor, is tied up with student council… stuff. Allura’s with him, and Hunk volunteers to read questions for their practice.
It’s mostly unstructured, though, compared to how it usually goes, and Keith lets his mind wander. Tonight is Thace’s last show before he moves out east, and even though he knows he could keep in touch with him, he won’t. It’s not that they’re friends, they’re just bandmates. Finding the Abyss had been down a guitarist when he’d transferred, and Keith had been… missing playing with other people, just a little. But now, even though Keith knows Antok and Reg like Thace, he really just thinks they’re going to be out a singer.
Still, he’s gonna make the best of tonight. They’re going to have fun.
Allura and Lance and Coran come back from the student council meeting with only a few minutes left on lunch, but it’s long enough for Coran to give them the information he’s been sitting on all week. Shiro’s seen it in his face — he’s been vibrating with the desire to share, but the man takes the team aspect very seriously and wouldn’t want to leave anyone out of the news.
“Our first tournament is in six weeks! We’re going to the invitational at the community college north of here!” His excitement is contagious; even Pidge is smiling. “I’ll get the permission slips printed up and sent out with you soon, but I know you’ve been looking for a chance to compete! We—” The bell rings overhead, shrill and unmissable, and he cuts himself off. “Well, I’ll talk to you all again on Monday, if nothing else. Have a good weekend! Keep practicing with your flash cards!”
Three more periods. He can do this. AP Language, Astronomy, and Chemistry. It’s basically over. For all that his teacher is talking — about new vocabulary, terms like diction and allusion, about a paper they need to write — he can’t pay attention. In Astronomy, he’s a little more attentive — if only because Ms. Montgomery would hang him out to dry if he wasn’t, and he’s got to make it through her Chemistry class after.
Keith is distracted in Astronomy; Shiro can see it. Of course, this means Shiro is distracted too, but Ms. Montgomery has always liked him, and it’s not like he’s not paying attention. It’s just that in addition to the chapter she’s covering from the textbook, Shiro keeps glancing over to catch a sight of Keith’s glassy stare at the projector. Shiro’s gotten good enough at writing with his left hand that he can look at Keith in his periphery and still have intelligible notes. He’s not worried, and he’s got a seat near the back so it’s not like anyone is going to call him out.
The lights come back up and Ms. Montgomery passes out worksheets to do over the weekend, and… well. There are fifteen minutes left, and it’s only one sheet. Shiro can get it done before then.
And normally, Shiro would double-check his work; he likes being top of the class. But instead, when he’s done filling in vocabulary that he knows much more intimately than he might know something from biology or chemistry, he’s staring at the side of Keith’s head again. Doodling.
When the bell rings and he discovers he’s written Takashi Kogane and, then Keith Shirogane several times on the margins of his paper, his whole head flushes. He can feel it. At least Ms. Montgomery is nice enough to give him another copy; his shame is never going to come off of the first one.
School’s finally out and while there are a couple of hours between release and when the show starts, Keith is wound up tight. He’s got to head home, shower and change, and then meet the rest of the band across town. Reg’s mom has a van that she lets them use, which is very cool of her. And his mom has always supported his music interests — all she wants to know is where he is. None of the overbearing curfews that he knows some of the other kids have. He’s lucky, that way.
“Keith, is that you?” she calls when he bursts into the house, backpack only half-on his shoulders. She’s making something in the kitchen — he can smell the simmering vegetables — and he ducks inside instead of running up the stairs to his room.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he answers, coming around the island to hug her with one arm. Her other hand is holding a kitchen knife, and he’s heard more than enough lectures about kitchen safety. “What’cha making?”
“Not sure yet,” she says, and he snorts a laugh. His mom has always been like this — comfortable eating whatever. Family dinner is almost more like an experiment to test the boundaries of their refrigerator than it is working from a recipe.
“Whatever it is, smells good. Will you save me some?”
“Sure,” she says, then — “Oh, you’ve got that concert tonight.”
“Yeah, we’ve got a show at the New Lily,” he says, internally cringing as she calls it a concert. It’s just not the same, mom, but that’s a conversation that never stuck.
“Well, have fun, and be safe, okay? What time do you think you’ll be back?”
He steps back, going to take a tangerine from the bowl on the island. He’s hungry. “…starts at seven. ‘bout an hour drive? Maybe midnight?”
“Okay. Text me if you have any trouble or you get delayed, alright?”
“I will, mom. I don’t want you to worry.”
“Well, it’s my job to worry,” she argues with a grin, and he mirrors it on reflex. This isn’t a new conversation either.
“Matt, I am going to have a heart attack,” Shiro calls to his phone, sitting face-up, on speaker, on the shelf in his closet. “What am I supposed to wear? I don’t do this kind of stuff.”
“Dude, you are totally overthinking this,” Matt says. Shiro can hear him rolling his eyes.
“Dude, you are totally not helping me,” he whines, flicking through more hangers. Too bright, too ratty, too small… He needs to look cool, if Keith is going to notice him.
Matt sighs audibly through the phone. “At the risk of being a rom com side character, give me like… fifteen minutes, and I’ll come over and help you find something to wear. Have you had a shower?”
“No, I was — going to take clothes with me, and then I got twisted up in looking good and now here we are,” he admits, hanging his head even though Matt can’t see him.
“Shiro, you’re a mess and I love you,” Matt laughs. “Go take a shower, I’ll have clothes for you when you get out. Pretty yourself up for your man.”
“He’s not my man!” Shiro squawks, but the call has already ended when he reaches for the phone.
“Shiro, honey, are you alright in there?” his mama calls through the door, and he disengages from his clothes problems to go open it.
“Yes, mama, I’m okay,” he says, stepping back to rifle through his drawers for some underwear to take with him. Letting Matt pick through his boxers would be a step too far. “Matt was just teasing me.”
“That sounds just like him,” she agrees with a smile. When Shiro looks up she’s leaned against his doorway, arms crossed, watching him. “What are you so worried about, honey?”
“I just… Matt invited me to go to this with him, but it’s not usually my scene? What if I’m a loser? What if I don’t fit in?”
“Shiro, baby… You’ve never worried about fitting in before. What’s going on?”
He sighs. His moms know he’s not straight, but — mentioning a boy is different. “Keith is going to be there,” he admits quietly, unable to look up and see what she thinks of that.
“Oh, Keith will be there,” she says like she understands, and then she’s putting a hand on his shoulder. “Baby, you’re gonna be just fine. I can’t imagine you’ve gotten a crush on a boy that would make fun of you for being different. Especially if you’re trying to show interests in his interests?”
He doesn’t mention that it’s Matt’s idea; it’s not a bad idea. “Yeah…”
“Just go, and try to have fun, and don’t think about how it’s not what you usually like. Maybe try seeing if you can figure out what he likes about it. Or ask Matt for some help getting your feet wet; I’m sure he’d do that for you.”
“He’s already coming over to help me pick out something to wear…”
She laughs, then, and kisses the top of his head. “I love you, my son. You’ll be just fine.” He hums and she steps back and he stands up, towering over his tiny mama, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe he’s finally done having growth spurts. “Do you want me to go get your mom?”
“No, I — I’m gonna go get in the shower. Thank you, mama.”
“You’re welcome, honey.”
Finding the Abyss is the second band in the five-band lineup, and Keith is so ready to play that he can taste it. They’d shown up early, made it in good time, and have already unloaded their gear out of the van. Reg’s drums are always the worst part of it, but that’s nothing new. Keith still can’t understand how Regris lets other people help move his drums — he’d bite someone before he let them touch his guitar.
The other bands have their stuff backstage but most of them seem to be out on the floor in the Lily. He recognizes the drummer from In These Ruins, vaguely, and the girl that sings for — is it Black Moon? He can’t remember the band’s name. When he makes eye contact with her, though, she looks away.
If they were playing any later in the night he’d go out and make himself a part of the crowd, but he wants to warm up, first. Antok had teased him on the way over, but Keith couldn’t keep his hands still. Kept playing air guitar in the van, fingering strings and nodding along to music that definitely wasn’t what Reg was playing over the stereo.
On stage, the first band begins to play, and Keith takes a moment to close his eyes and just listen.
Shiro knows he’s out of his depth the moment they step into the New Lily. Not even for his clothes, though Matt doing his best still hadn’t done a lot. But it’s dim, and crowded with bodies, and the music that’s playing over the place’s PA system is, on its own, too out of his normal realm to be recognizable. Matt is nodding along, though, already having a good time, and Shiro sticks to his side.
“Oh, dude, we made it just in time,” Matt say-yells, pointing up toward the stage. The first band is making their way to their instruments, and just from body language Shiro is prepared for when their singer shouts into the microphone.
“What’s up, New Lily?” he shouts, and the people down on the floor, on the other side of the railing, scream in unison. Beside him, Matt is also shouting. “We’re The Silent Secret, and this is —” Whatever the name of the song that they break off into is, Shiro can’t understand it. Because the guy on stage had growled it. Oh, god.
On the floor in front of him, what Shiro can only term a ‘mosh pit’ has formed. There are dozens of people his age and older, crammed into that space, swinging their arms and stomping and jumping and somehow, not beating each other into pieces. Beside him, Matt seems one good riff away from headbanging, and Shiro elbows him to get his attention.
“Do you do that?” he asks, pointing at the pit, and Matt laughs. Shakes his head.
“No way, dude, my mom would kill me if I came home with a black eye or somethin’.”
“A black eye? And they’re doing this for fun?”
“Well, or a bloody nose!” Matt seems unconcerned. “And it’s like… You gotta let the music get into your bones, man. Maybe then you’ll feel it, you know?”
“But I can’t even understand it.”
“You don’t gotta know the lyrics to know that’s a sick bass line, dude.” Matt grins. “C’mon, close your eyes and let it like. Speak to you.”
The first band — Sendak’s band, which Keith refuses to learn the name of out of spite — finishes up their set, and he rolls his shoulders. He’s full of energy, and aching to release it. There’s still time where the first band is going to have to remove their stuff from the stage, but it’s almost their turn.
Thace, thankfully, does the polite elbow-rubbing with Sendak for the band. He doesn’t have anything to set up, really — not like how Regris does, anyway, and Keith and Antok only have to hook up a couple of cables. They’ve long-since been tuned and ready. And leaving Thace to talk to Sendak is the best thing they can do, because if Keith has to talk to him they might end up brawling backstage. There’s something about the guy that puts a bad taste in his mouth, and every smarmy line he speaks makes it worse. Keith likes mosh pits, is less interested in outright violence, but he’d deck Sendak if the stars aligned just right. Even though his mom would kill him.
He sets up his guitar and goes back to get part of the drum kit, nodding at Antok on the way. He likes this band. He might not be best friends with any of them, but — it’s a good vibe.
Sound check takes too long — every single time, Keith thinks sound check takes way too long, even though he is well aware of how worth it it is. He’s waiting for Thace’s shit to get put in order, stretching and bending his knees, pulling his hair out of the low ponytail it’s been in for the last while. Stage presence and the performance is half the point.
Thace is finally settled, and there’s some nodding between the four of them — a ‘you good?’ measure Keith likes. Much better than trying to yell over the crowd that’s already starting to circle up again; the people can tell that they’re getting ready to start again.
Thace begins to speak, giving the intro to lead into their first song. He gets comfortable, and the next time he looks up, he’s no longer in a headspace where he’s Keith. He’s Finding the Abyss’ guitarist.
Seeing Keith on stage is enough to send Shiro directly back to his panic from what feels like a lifetime ago, on the phone with Matt. Matt himself says something like “oh, there’s your boy on stage!!” as if Shiro isn’t fine-tuned to the shape of Keith.
Well, that’s creepy. But all the other guys in the band are bigger than Keith, broader, and Shiro has been well aware that Keith is playing second since they showed up. Of course if someone his size was on stage, it must be Keith. Really. That’s it.
He feels like he’s gaping. Or like he’s losing his grip on reality. The singer is at the front of the stage and Keith is off on the left, seeming to psyche himself up while they do their sound checks. He nudges Matt, with no subtlety, in that direction. He’s not brave enough to go down into the crowd but he wants to be closer.
Keith is dressed like something out of Shiro’s wildest, previously non-existent, bad-boy fantasies. He’s wearing dark jeans, ripped in several places at the knee, and high-top shoes. He’s got on a tanktop that looks like it’s seen better days, with too-big armholes. If he moved the wrong way, Shiro would see his chest. God, and that’s not to mention the way his hair is in a cute little ponytail — oh, no, he’s taking it out, and that’s even worse. Or better? Or both at once? His hair falls down into his face and Shiro presses his hand over his heart on nothing but reflex.
“Dude, this is a theatre and not a Victorian lounge, there are no fainting couches for you here, get it together,” Matt says, putting a hand on his elbow.
“But— Matt—”
“You guys alright?” says someone from Shiro’s other side, and he turns to see the owner of that raspy voice. It’s a girl, as tall as Shiro and just as broad, looking vaguely amused. Beside her is another girl, willowy and bebopping (is that even the right word for this genre?) along to the music playing over the PA.
“Oh yeah, my buddy here is just thirsty,” Matt says, and the three of them laugh around Shiro while he tries to come back from orbit over the sight of Keith’s fingers on the neck of the guitar. The water bottle in his other hand, procured during the last set, gives a weak crinkle.
“Keith’ll do that to ya,” the skinny girl says, laughing. “Don’t get too invested, though. He’s the most standoffish motherfucker I’ve ever met,” she says, and Shiro’s teeth grind together in his mouth.
“He’s not standoffish,” he insists, forcing himself to tear his eyes away. “Keith is great.”
Matt snorts, but the girls look interested. “Do you know him?” the tall girl asks, and Shiro nods.
“We go to school together,” he says, hoping Keith won’t mind that he’s made that revelation to these two girls he doesn’t know. “I’m Shiro, by the way. And this is Matt.”
“Zethrid and Ezor,” the small girl says, gesturing, and then invades Shiro’s space some as the crowd starts to get loud. “So tell me, Shiro from Keith’s school, why are you here lusting after him instead of taking him out on a date? If he’s not standoffish.” She looks smug, for reasons he can’t begin to understand, and then there’s the sound of a guitar being strummed and his head whips around in the direction of the stage.
He missed Keith’s first note! Fuck.
Keith is close to the front of the stage, fingers flying through his solo in Knowledge or Death when something catches his eye. There are half a dozen people reaching out, making themselves a part of the experience, even as the pit swings along behind them, but —
Is that Takashi Shirogane at the edge of the railing? What in the hell is he doing here? If that guy is into metal, Keith’s going to have to get his head checked.
He finishes his solo, struts his way further back into his normal place to stand, and puts his attention back on his music. There are maybe three people that know all the words to their songs, and they’re still smushed up at the front of the stage, screaming them along with Thace. It’s inspiring.
But the rest of the crowd has made their way back away from the stage, mosh pit reforming in earnest. Keith’s not ready to be done — and they have two more songs, anyway — but he’s ready to be in the pit when they are.
If Shiro wasn’t in love before he is now; that’s the only thing he’s certain of. Music in all its intricacies is a mystery to him, but whatever noise Keith had been making up at the front of the stage is going to be burned in his memory forever. Matt is still rocking out beside him, but the two girls that had been talking to them have disappeared. That’s okay. He doesn’t want a dedicated audience for when his heart bursts out of his chest. Keith looks so good and he is clearly so talented and — god help him.
The song ends and their singer — Shiro doesn’t know any of the other boys, maybe they go to school across town? but whoever he is — gives a shoutout to the band that came before them, to the bands coming after them. It’s very wholesome, Shiro distantly thinks, but he’s distracted by the way Keith is pushing his hair out of his face. He looks up, at one point, and Shiro freezes; god, what if Keith knew he was here?
“Matt, we’ve gotta go,” he says, leaning over to talk into his ear. It’s still loud in here; they’re moving on into another song. Between Dark Stars, it had sounded like, but everything out of their singer’s mouth has been largely incomprehensible to Shiro.
“What? Dude, are you okay? Did your mom text you?”
“No — yes, no, I’m fine,” he says, turns away from the stage. He’s on the verge of freaking out. “I think Keith knows I’m here! What if he knows! What if he talks to me after?”
Matt puts his hands on Shiro’s shoulders, rubbing them reassuringly. Matt is such a good friend. “Shiro, man, that’s the point.” Matt is a terrible friend.
“What!”
“I mean you didn’t think we were gonna come and you could just watch him in secret, right?”
“I—” No, but yes. Both at the same time.
“Besides, you talked to Keith before at school. I know you know he won’t bite you.” What if I wanted him to, the part of Shiro’s brain that’s stuck on his look thinks.
“But—”
“I promise, you’re gonna be okay. If he comes up and talks to you at all, you just gotta say that you liked their set. Which is at least some kind of truth, right?” Matt winks at him. Matt is a horrible friend.
“…okay.”
Backstage, putting his guitar back in the case and letting the tension out of his bones, Keith is not ready to be approached by anyone. Much less Ezor.
“Met your boyfriend out there during your set,” she says, smirking. She’s a real bitch, and shit like this is why Keith doesn’t talk to the other bands. They’ve had two conversations before and he’s hated both of them, but her girlfriend has decent taste in music.
“Don’t have a boyfriend, Ezor,” he answers, because he knows she’ll linger until the last minute if he doesn’t, and he needs to go help move Reg’s kit back off-stage. He’s sweating from the time under the lights, wipes his face on the hem of his shirt.
“You sure about that? He seemed very invested in your performance,” she teases, and Keith is saved by the singer of her band shouting for her from across the room. He’s talked to that girl a couple of times, but he can never remember her name. It’s something weird.
Still, he’s saved from following that train of thought by Reg coming around the corner with part of the kit — a reminder that Keith was doing something, before he was interrupted.
Back on the floor, the crowd has mellowed out. There’s something playing over the PA, but it’s not heavy enough to incite them. Most of the people have moved to the bar at the back, picking up drinks. Except — Shiro and Matt are still there, at the railing. Keith’s never seen anyone from his new school at any of these. Sure, he gave Pidge permission to tell their brother, but… It’s more weird than he expected.
The third band starts — it’s a quartet of girls, which Shiro can only find unspeakably cool, even though the drummer and bassist are the ones he’d been talking to during Keith’s set. It makes him worry — did they talk to Keith? Did they out him as being a creep? Something about the curl of the shorter girl’s lips tells him that she would.
He and Matt had walked around during the intermission, stretching their legs — Shiro is still full of nervous energy. He might be full of this nervous energy for the rest of the night, if not his life.
Their new spot is on the other side of the stage, closer to one of the speakers that the music comes through. The first bass riff that the big girl plays — Zethrid, right? — hums right through his bones. Even though he can’t understand any of the singer’s words, maybe Matt was right about appreciating the music.
They play a different genre. Shiro doesn’t know much but he’s convinced by it, mostly because partway through the lyrics the singer switches from that throat-tearing growl and into something high and comprehensible. He doesn’t get the lyrics on her first pass, but — he could, at least. Maybe he could like this.
There’s movement from behind the stage and one of Keith’s bandmates comes out. He’s built like a football player and a total stranger, but what he really does is reminds Shiro that he hasn’t seen Keith in a minute. And maybe that’s good? It’d probably be less freaky if he wasn’t obsessed with soaking up every single sight of him in this venue that he could, but…
Now that he’s looking again, he finds Keith quickly in the people in the mosh pit. He’s all swinging arms, hair flying as he… dances? To the music? Shiro might know every vocab term from his English class, but there’s nothing in his repertoire for what is going on.
All he knows for sure is that he’s mesmerized by it.
Beyond the Black Moon. That’s the girl band. Keith should really do better to remember their name — they’re a far stretch better than Sendak, and for all that Ezor gets on his nerves, they’re good performers. Antok had stayed in the back to talk to his mom on the phone — brave, considering the level of noise — but when Keith had filed out with the rest of the band, the pit was the first place he went.
He doesn’t wanna chit-chat; he wants to let every drop of rage in his body fill his limbs and get pushed out by the thrumming bass and drums, until he’s nothing but a wrung-out dishcloth of a person.
…maybe he’s been reading too much poetry for his AP class.
Still, it’s good. He loses himself in their set — the closest he gets to human interaction in it is the ‘sup’ nod that all guys do, or bouncing along shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the other people in the crowd. It’s perfect.
And then they break, for just a moment, for the singer to take a drink of water and do their shout-out, and Keith realizes that he is thirsty. He’s probably entirely sweat. He should go get something to drink; he doesn’t want to be a spectacle if he passes out from dehydration.
Keith makes his way to the edge of the pit, where there’s a ramp up to the rest of the venue. He could have hopped the rail but he knows too-well that the impression they make on the establishment determines whether or not they get to come back.
Most of the crowd parts for him, people standing around with their friends bobbing their heads along to the music, enjoying the show. He knows what he likes about shows isn’t what everyone likes. He’s not stupid.
And then he tries to push past someone that’s taking up just this side of too-much space, and when he looks up to say excuse me he sees — it’s Shiro.
Keith finds him in the crowd. It’s all his worst nightmares from the last hour come to life. Is Shiro’s face red? It’s dark, right, Keith won’t be able to tell?
“Oh, hey,” he says, putting a hand on his arm and stepping close, stepping around him. “You’re here.”
“I— yes. Yes I am.” Where is Matt? Why is it taking him so long to get that water? Across the room, his frantic eyes find Matt caught up talking to some girl that looks like a real fit for the scene, and his heart sinks. God help him.
“…are you okay?” Keith’s looking at him weird, which he absolutely deserves. And then Keith is pushing his long hair back from his face and wiping his own forehead with the palm of his hand, which Shiro does not deserve.
“Yeah, I’m fine, just…”
“Didn’t think I’d see someone like you at something like this,” Keith says, and he’s grinning. Tell him you liked his set, Shiro thinks.
“I, uh. Your music. It was good,” he stammers — what is wrong with him? Shiro can do public speaking and presentations all day, why can he not say a whole sentence to Keith Kogane?
Well, he knows why. But —
“You think so?” His expression has changed, minutely — Shiro can’t help but notice. There’s a smaller smile on his lips now, and he looks interested.
“I— I mean—” Oh god, he doesn’t need to dig himself into a hole. Be honest, Shiro. “I mean, I couldn’t… understand any of it… but I liked the music? You looked like you were having fun.”
“Thanks, Shiro. It is a lot of fun.” There’s movement, in his periphery, outside his Keith-shaped blinders, and —
“Matt! You’re back!” Save me he tries to blink in morse code.
“Sorry, dude, I got distracted,” he says, turning the awkward way that Shiro has been standing with Keith into a little cluster of three. He puts Shiro’s water bottle directly into his hand and there’s a sly expression in his eyes that Shiro doesn’t have the brainpower to read right now. “Keith, man, I loved your set. Where did you meet these guys?”
Matt makes talking to Keith look so easy.
It’s plain to tell that Shiro is, in fact, wildly out of his depth at the venue. But Keith thinks it’s kind of nice, that he’d been willing to come out to hang out with his friend — everyone knows Matt and Shiro are tightly knit, but he hadn’t known it was this close. And even though he’d been totally clueless, Shiro had been polite; something about seeing him outside of school had swept everything he knew about the guy out of Keith’s brain.
He talks to Matt for a couple of minutes — he’d had opinions on Keith’s solo, but also effusive praise for the lyrics in Uprising, which Keith will have to be sure to give to Regris, who did most of the writing for the song. It’s almost strange, talking to people outside the band about their music.
Then Matt brings up the water bottle he’s been holding and — Right. That’s why Keith had climbed out of the pit anyway. He should go do that, before the set ends and everyone mobs the bar.
“I should, uh. Hit the bar,” he says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. A shortage of talking to people in his life means he doesn’t know how to make a smooth exit. “It’s hot out here.”
“You can have my water, if you want,” Shiro says, the plastic crinkling in his prosthetic hand as he holds it out. Guy has a death grip on the thing; Keith is surprised it hasn’t exploded yet. He hasn’t even opened it yet.
It’s a nice gesture, but not one Keith is going to take.
“Thanks, Shiro, but I think you need it more than me.” He’s flushed even in the dim light, Keith can tell. He’s probably sweaty just like Keith is. And if he’s not used to these sorts of environments, well. “Take care of yourself,” he remarks, and then backsteps away from the offer and into the crowd.
“Take care of myself?” Shiro whispers, looking down at the water bottle in his hand.
“Dude,” Matt says, and Shiro whips his head around.
“Keith told me? To take care of myself? What does that mean?” he asks. His eyes might pop out of his head. How is he supposed to interpret that?
“Yeah, man, because you look like you’re about to pass out. Let’s go have a seat—” Matt is already taking him by the wrist, leading him toward one of the tables closer to the entrance of the theatre — “and then we can figure out… whatever.”
Matt is a good friend. Shiro doesn’t deserve him, which is a thought that sticks even after he’s chugged the entire bottle of water. When he tries to say as much, Matt just scoffs at him and drags him into the sweatiest hug of Shiro’s life.