Work Text:
The bright air hangs freely near your newly cut hair
It is so easy now to see gravity at work in your face
Easy to understand time, that dark process
To accept it as a beautiful process, your face
— From Peter Gizzi’s Lines Depicting Simple Happiness
+++
Shiro tells the check-in clerk that they’re just married when he confirms the registration and collects the keycard for the cabin. It is not, legally speaking, true: Shiro hasn’t even asked Keith how he feels about marriage, let alone if it’s something he wants to embark on alongside Shiro, but it gets them a late checkout time without any additional fees. Possibly Shiro could have achieved the same end by just asking for it, but he likes the subterfuge. Shiro figures you can take the guerrilla commander out of the intergalactic war, but it’s important to keep the skills up. Besides: Keith’s frugal, and when Shiro meets him back at the hover bike, he’s thrilled to hear that they aren’t paying any extra fees.
“Plus I checked the weather,” Keith adds, as if he didn’t hear the part where Shiro said I told her that we’re newlyweds. Just as well; Shiro’s got the idea in his head now and needs to mull it over before he brings it up again. “Forecast is predicting snow. I want to see it up close and in person.”
It’s true. Aside from a short infiltration on the surface of an ice planet, Keith hasn’t had much experience with winter weather. That’s the whole reason Shiro wrangled a leave of absence from the Atlas (she’s crooning sadly at Hunk, last he heard; none of the other paladins will take her calls, citing childcare manuals with chapter titles like teach your baby to self-soothe. Shows what they know: the Atlas is more like a teenager) and enlisted Krolia’s help to ensure Keith was unencumbered for the same span of time and at this particular season of the year. The little cabin they’re renting is nestled in a pocket of the former United States that somehow survived the war unscathed, and Shiro is hoping they’ll hit a bizarre jackpot of heavy storms and skies clear enough to take Keith stargazing.
Shiro can rationalize almost anything under the guise of giving Keith a new experience, but he’s being a little selfish about this vacation, too. The cabin’s reservation portal indicated that there’s an enormous synthetic fireplace in the bedroom, which means Shiro has a chance of laying Keith out on a furred rug and treating him some well-deserved praise and adoration. Shiro gets off on that, not to be crude, and so does Keith; but for all they’ve been through together Keith’s still shy about their relationship, and the privacy seemed like a good idea.
“Maybe we’ll get snowed in,” Shiro offers hopefully. It sounds nice in theory: cut off from work and responsibility, nowhere to go but back to bed. He’s brought the sheets from his own bed, Keith being a particular sleeper when he’s not on duty, and the thread count is decadently high enough to count as obscene.
It’s almost an hour to the cabin by bike, and when they arrive Shiro sets about examining the fireplace while Keith makes up the bed. Shiro is better at putting on flat sheets — Keith rarely bothers with them — and Keith has taken it upon himself to improve his hospital corners.
“I know how much you like feeling at home,” Keith had said, wry and a little flummoxed by the realization that Shiro’s sheets are all color-coordinated and monogrammed. They were a gift. “You love a hospital! I’ll learn how to do it for you, Shiro.”
Pidge thinks the two of them are sickening. That’s extremely true. For all that they’re private with their affection, Shiro knows the day-to-day devotions he and Keith exchange can be — a lot.
By the time Shiro’s determined that the fireplace is free of nesting animals and has laid out the kindling in accordance to the directions he followed to earn the relevant merit badge back in his impeccably scheduled youth, Keith has remade the corners twice and is stacking pillows on top of the coverlet. They sleep in a ridiculous nest of pillows. Shiro is selfishly glad they brought as many of them to the cabin as they did. He needs several to prop up his arm port, and Keith sleeps with one tucked between his knees, since he’s liable to bruise himself on his own bones if he doesn’t have some kind of buffer available.
They aren’t yet old, but the war has left them feeling tender and prone to seeking comfort.
“You gonna light that?” Keith settles down beside Shiro, his knees tucked under him so he’s nearly even with Shiro’s sight line. Hunk says that Keith’s a beautiful flamingo: all his height is in his legs, so Keith seems smaller when he sits next to Shiro, especially on the floor. Not a good thing or a bad thing, just a small realization about the bodies they live in. Shiro’s pretty sure this new body, the one Haggar mass-produced, is taller than his old one, anyway. That’s what comes from living and dying and living again, all in space. Something to do with gravity or the lack of it.
“Of course I’m gonna light it, that’s why we’re here,” Shiro says. He shoves his prosthetic into the pyramid of sticks and snaps his fingers. It’s a new trick: snapping his fingers produces negligible kinetic energy, but with a little nudge from the hand’s operating system, Shiro can generate sparks.
Whether or not they catch, though…
Keith looks at the sad smolder for a minute. “Is that it?”
“Don’t get cute,” Shiro warns, but a second snap fails, too.
“Everyone has performance issues sometimes,” Keith says solemnly. “It goes hand in hand with getting older.” He’s got such a severe and convincing poker face; if Shiro didn’t know Keith so well, he might take offense.
As it is, the remark is enough to inspire Shiro to remove his prosthetic from the fireplace and shove it under the back of Keith’s shirt, tickling fingers seeking the spot that makes Keith squeal like a startled guinea pig. He knows his hand is warm from the friction and the sparks; it increases the feedback he gets from Keith’s skin.
“Think you can do better?” Shiro grunts after the tickling has devolved into an impromptu wrestling match. He’s got Keith pinned in the least sexy position possible, if such a move exists. Keith’s inherently sexy. Shiro doesn’t make the rules, he just lives according to them.
“Yield,” Keith wheezes back, and undulates back into an upright position. “‘Course I can do better. I was the Red Paladin; my lion was as hot as it got.”
“Right.”
“She chose me,” Keith says loftily. He starts the fire with a miniature laser tool the resort has thoughtfully left in plain sight on the fireplace mantel. The kindling ignites at once, burning bright blue-green for an eye-watering moment before it subsides to the more traditional orange. “And it’s part of Blade training. I’ve probably done this more on missions than you ever did in Boy Scouts.”
“I didn’t think the Blade of Marmora was big on outdoor cooking,” Shiro says.
“Oh, they weren’t. It was mostly arson.” Keith avoids eye contact for a moment, replacing the laser and settling close to Shiro’s side; Shiro takes the hint and raises his arm so Keith can cuddle closer, melt into the available space like he doesn’t have any bones that might hinder proximity. He does this sometimes: acts like if he sits near enough, he won’t ever have to leave Shiro again, can just be absorbed into Shiro’s body.
“Arson makes a lot more sense,” Shiro agrees. “And look at that: you made a fire. This one’s cozy.”
“All we need now is some actual snow.”
“You’ll get it, baby,” Shiro promises. It’s a dumb promise, but Keith inspires fervent dedication. If Shiro has to make a furtive phone call to the resort operator to order artificial snow, he will make that call.
It’s a good fire. After a minute or so of the kindling catching, Shiro hefts a log atop the pile. It sends up a shower of sparks. That’s less good. It makes Shiro think of his arm blade scraping against Keith’s sword, and he’s pretty sure it makes Keith remember the way the Black Lion wrenched out of Voltron formation and fell back to Earth, the console crackling madly.
He breathes through the memory. Shiro is grateful that he’s had the chance to grapple with this trauma, even if the way it lingers and reappears is a blight on this vacation.
“The war shows up in the damndest places,” he says.
Keith grunts in agreement. “Don’t dwell on it,” he says, a pot calling the kettle black. Keith is a born dweller. It’s a cornerstone of his personality.
“I’m your loyal servant in this matter,” Shiro says, instead of starting up the tired argument. They’re alive, and together, and most days, that’s a hell of a lot more than he ever thought he’d get to have. “In fact, my liege,” — Shiro pulls Keith all the way up into his lap and then lets himself fall backwards onto the plush rug he’s been fantasizing about ever since he made the reservation — “is there any other arena in which I can be of service?”
Keith looks good like this, sitting astride Shiro’s hips with Shiro’s hands resting suggestively about each thigh. He’s been growing his hair out again, except now he’s friends with Lance, who frequently blocks off Keith’s meeting calendar for the express purpose of bullying him into getting his hair trimmed or styled or deep-moisturized. Shiro’s a little vague on the details, but it has the result of making Keith look stunning and composed. He always used to have little flyaways and split ends framing his face, and, yeah, a mullet. Under Lance’s tyranny, Keith’s hair is luxurious and glossy. It even smells good — not that Keith didn’t smell good before he started yielding to the mini-makeovers, more that now he smells like someone who knows they like to get fucked.
It’s a particular fragrance; Keith’s hair used to just smell like hair.
“You’re laying it on kinda thick,” Keith says. He shifts his weight in an exploratory manner, the way he does whenever he straddles a new-to-him hovercraft. Keith’s got an excellent seat no matter how you define the term, and Shiro’s no stranger to the way Keith’s hips flex and roll against his pelvis, figuring out what angles will most work in his favor. It’s not arousing, not yet, but Shiro appreciates the way it alters the pressure of Keith’s body against Shiro’s own. Keith even puts his hands on Shiro’s belly, palm-down, so he can keep his balance when he leads forward for a kiss. That extra bit of weight, the little curl of Keith’s fingers, is — endearing.
“Indulge me,” Shiro says. Tries to say: his mouth is occupied. “I’m on vacation.”
They lose some time like that, just kissing. It’s a wash of sensation. The rug is absolutely plush and is probably making a staticky mess of Shiro’s hair, but it feels good under his back. The floor of the cabin isn’t stone — probably some kind of sustainable laminate made to resemble wood and slate — and Shiro’s lain on worse, but he’s grown to appreciate hedonism. Keith’s mouth is warm and familiar. There is no other place they need to be and Shiro’s delighted to just lie back and indulge. They could even make some noise if they wanted to. The cabin is secluded and the walls are thick with insulation, plus the fire makes enough background noise to keep them from feeling self-conscious. As much as Shiro likes kissing Keith, sometimes they both need a little ambient noise to set the mood.
Somewhere around the time Shiro rolls onto his side so they can lie face to face — the change in position is mostly to give Keith’s neck a break — the fire settles into half-grey steady embers. The pattern of light and shadow through the cabin window starts to change: getting darker in a way the artificial lighting on the Atlas and on Keith’s Blade outposts doesn’t quite manage. It’s enough of a cue that Keith draws back, bleary and kiss-sweet, to check the weather outside.
“No snow yet, sweetheart,” Shiro says. He’s lost his shirt somewhere in all this and takes a minute to unrumple the rug from beneath them. It’s been propping up the small of his back. “Maybe in the morning.”
“Morning, huh,” Keith says. Then, considering: “Don’t put that back on. Maybe we should go to bed now.”
“It’s still early,” Shiro points out, even as he moves to shuck the rest of his clothes. The work Keith did on the sheets is a siren song in and of itself: and the cabin has taken on a deep warmth from the fire. It’s settled in Shiro’s bones.
“Definitely take me to bed, then,” Keith says. “If you work me hard enough, you can feed me a big breakfast in the morning.” And lure of sex aside, that’s an enticement. Shiro loves fancy breakfasts, adores the ritual and coziness of slicing fruit and making eggs and drinking an unwise amount of coffee-substitute (or actual coffee; Hunk’s been working with Colleen Holt to bring the plant back from the brink of extinction, and Shiro might have brought a test roast of the latest harvest along on vacation). Keith is, by contrast, one of those inexplicable people who will roll out of bed and get to work on whatever project has landed in his lap, forgetting to eat anything until he starts seeing dark spots in front of his eyes. If he’s stuck doing paperwork he might not notice for hours. One of the benefits of caring for Keith, of being Keith’s partner, is that Shiro’s allowed to feed him. It’s not a kink, or at least he doesn’t think it’s a kink, but it’s immensely satisfying to be the person Keith trusts to provide for him.
“Is that a promise?”
“Yeah, I saw the coffee beans in your bag, Shiro,” Keith laughs. “It’s your vacation too. We can sit together and try to solve a crossword or something, I know you like that kind of thing.”
“I love you,” Shiro reminds him. “Even if you didn’t want to eat a big breakfast. Although I hope you will eat something, because — ”
“— You’re a mother hen — “
“— I intend to wear you out,” Shiro corrects him. “You’ll need the energy.”
They do fool around for a while. It’s not enough for either one of them to get off, in part because the sheets are clean (some days Shiro thinks the strongest foundation of his and Keith’s relationship is how much effort they put into making their bed comfortable: fresh sheets are somewhat sacrosanct) and in part because the journey is more fun than the destination, when they have the time to slow down. It’s good nonetheless, in the way that kissing Keith is always good. They each tend to fixate on the other and the result is a little bit competitive. Shiro wants Keith to feel adored and overwhelmed and enthusiastic. Keith wants Shiro to feel incandescent, beloved and indulged.
There’s a lot of heavy breathing, and the top sheet does get thrown off the bed, but in the end: they still go about the little tasks that are important to cleave to when you spend a lot of time traveling aboard a giant spaceship devoid of timezones. Keith brushes his teeth and rinses with cinnamon mouthwash because mint makes him gag. Shiro applies his evening moisturizer and resettles the sheets on the bed.
“That’s cheating,” Keith informs him as he starts to tuck the ends of the flat sheet back in. “I said I’d take care of the bed, let me do it.”
“You did do it,” Shiro wheedles. “That means it’s my turn.”
“Aren’t you the person who told me it’s important to do something right?”
“No,” Shiro says, but he drops the linens and moves out of Keith’s way. “You’re the one who says inspirational shit like as many times as it takes. I’m sensible, you know I’d rather die than backtrack.”
Keith shoots him a withering glare as he takes over shaking the sheets smooth again. “I’m taking a vacation from your sense of humor,” he says.
The important thing is that the sheets are settled. Keith slips in first and presents his bare back to Shiro so Shiro can clamber in and be the big spoon, since that’s the best way for him to also avoid the lingering scent of Keith’s mouthwash. Shiro detests cinnamon.
Shiro wills his arm to power down for the night. After much experimentation: he’s figured out how to get the light to a less penetrating level. The first time he and Keith slept together, they ended up using Keith’s jacket like a tea cozy just to blot out the glare.
“I hope it snows,” Keith says. He’s left the blind half-drawn so he can still see the sky from the bed. Over the blade of Keith’s shoulder, Shiro makes a considering noise. It’s a supportive sound: I hope you get what you want.
They sleep. Small miracle: Shiro’s able to doze off easily, even though they’re in a strange place and he didn’t check the perimeter before they got into bed. Using their own sheets from home was an inspired move.
+++
It’s early when Shiro wakes up, earlier than he really wants it to be. Sleep is like this for him: sometimes it comes easy and other nights it’s a stop-and-start endeavor, something he has to wrestle with. Keith is the opposite. He usually stays up until he falls over, then sleeps like the dead for slightly less than the recommended amount of time. Despite all appearances to the contrary, Keith is the morning person in their relationship. Sometimes Shiro thinks of his insomnia as the only way he can get a head start. If Shiro didn’t have his unwilling and restless early hours, they’d never get to see each other in daylight.
Both of them have strange dreams, not anything that Shiro would classify as a night terrors or nightmares: more just memories. This time it’s less a flashback or a prickle of unease that wakes him and more the subtle change in atmosphere. Keith’s lying alongside Shiro in the bed — it’s not as big as the one they have back on the Atlas, which along with the excuse of them operating on the same schedule during this vacation makes for a nice cuddle venue — and the climate control must have kicked on after the fire died down to embers. It’s almost warm in the room and the blind isn’t quite pulled down over the cabin window, so a faint suggestion of light is coming in. The window is opaque to anyone who might approach from the outside (no one; it’s secluded out here, that’s why Shiro made the reservation), but Shiro appreciates having some kind of natural cue to go on.
It’s snowing, quiet and steady. Snow has a presence: it insulates. In a limited way, Shiro can tell that there’s a chance of accumulation, meaning his fantasy of getting cut off from the outside world… still won’t happen, probably, but they’ll be able to pretend. It looks like it’s going to stick. It was cold enough when they got to the cabin, anyhow, and the temperature will only have dropped with the sun.
Keith will be happy, Shiro thinks to himself, even though he knows that Keith would be happy even if he never actually got to see snow on Earth at all. It’s a marvelous thought: Keith is happy. There were days — months, entire years, really — where Shiro didn’t think he or Keith would ever be happy again. The notion that they have the time to pursue happiness now, that they’re alive and together, is enough to coax Shiro back down, curving like an open parentheses against Keith’s back. He adjusts himself, slips a knee in between Keith’s and dislodges the pillow Keith uses to cushion his joints. Cozy; no wonder Keith prefers to sleep in a bigger bed, since that’s about the only thing that allows for the pillows to stay on the mattress and not migrate to the floor.
He doesn’t manage to will himself back to sleep, but Shiro persists for a while in a dreamy state of half-awake. Keith remains still and warm against him, unmoving. It wasn’t difficult to adjust to sleeping together. One night they couldn’t stop themselves from kissing until they fell asleep and then the next morning they woke up, tangled together and sleep-sensitive. Ever since then Shiro’s made a production of welcoming Keith into his bed, and Keith has adapted beautifully. Keith’s the one who bought these sheets; they weren’t even on sale.
The light changes. Shiro nudges his prosthetic over to the window and hits the control that raises the blind enough that even supine he has a good view of outside. The sky is almost orange with the weather front. The clouds are luxurious, overstuffed and fluffing down snow in great heaps. It doesn’t look white outside.
“Is it morning?” Keith has the raspiest voice in the mornings after Shiro’s had his way with him, almost like his bones and cartilage have been reshaped and he needs a few minutes to grow accustomed to it. Like all the tension has been wrung out of him and his voice needs to take a longer journey to leave his throat.
“Nearly.” Shiro calls his hand back so he can use both of them to turn Keith away from the warm center of the bed and towards the window. “Special delivery, sweetheart, just like I promised.”
“Tell me you didn’t call in favor,” Keith says, but there’s no snark in it. He sits upright as soon as he glimpses the snow through the window, alert without any apparent effort. “I didn’t expect all the colors.”
“Pollution,” Shiro says sagely. There’s a lot of it in the atmosphere these days; war will do that. It looks pretty from a distance, anyways, like old recordings of the aurora light displays got projected out onto the ground. “Wanna have a fight? After I feed you, of course.”
“Pass,” Keith says. “If I’m going to roll around with you, I’ll stick to the indoors. As you keep reminding me, we’re on vacation.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” Shiro says, pleased and lazy. “Come back down here.”
“Been up long?” Keith slinks back down and eels his way underneath Shiro’s side, manhandling him so Shiro can rest his head against Keith’s thighs. He’s a good caregiver: once they’ve settled into the new arrangement, Keith begins carding his nails through Shiro’s hair, scratching his scalp and nape. It’s hypnotic.
“In and out,” Shiro says. “It wasn’t a bad night.” He means: I didn’t remember anything new, which is accurate.
“Hmm,” Keith hums. “Shiro?”
“Baby?”
“Wanna take care of me today?”
It’s a generous offer. Shiro rolls so he can rest his chin in the dip of Keith’s pelvis, right at the perfect level to start something if he were so inclined. “You know I do,” he says. “Any reason for the offer?”
“Well.” A huff, fond and packed with years of history. “I love you. And you went to all this trouble, giving me a snow day.”
And maybe Keith is feeling tender, as he often does with Shiro. It’s hard for him to lie back and allow someone else to lavish him with attention — Keith’s not great when it comes to his own care and feeding, Hunk likes to say — but every time Shiro asks him about it, Keith answers that letting Shiro adore him isn’t a hardship.
It really is a good morning to have brought coffee beans along. Breakfast is definitely in the cards, and from the way Keith hiccups when Shiro makes a point of kissing Keith’s bare stomach — maybe more.
“Are you hungry?” Keith asks. “Because I’m not yet, I can wait — “
Morning breath is hardly an obstacle when Shiro considers how much time he spent not having a body. It’s a charming novelty, really, licking into Keith’s mouth, biting until Keith opens up and Shiro can appreciate the slick tang of sleep furring his teeth. There are a lot of things about being with another person Shiro used to think were disgusting, but he’s matured.
Shiro’s own mouth is, he knows, nearly neutral. That was another surprise about waking up in a cloned body: Haggar filled it to the brim with quintessence, synthetic blood, and nanobots. The ‘bots help keep his arm port free from sores and overuse injuries, and they also — creepily, Matt says, and Shiro kind of agrees — polish his teeth in his sleep, eliminating bacteria and making him wake feeling fresh as a daisy.
Keith moans against him and tries to writhe his hips for a bit of friction, but Shiro has him too well pinned. “You had your turn on top last night,” he chides.
“That doesn’t count,” Keith whines.
“Always counting,” Shiro muses. “No one would believe it if they knew a Senior Blade was always going on about technicalities.”
“Didn’t hear you complaining when I got you out of being technically dead,” Keith says.
“I thought we were on vacation from jokes about my exaggerated demise.” He grinds down against Keith, teasing a little. “But I know you can’t help yourself. Look, you’re bringing me to life right now.”
+++
By the time Shiro finally gets up and sets about brewing a cup of coffee, it’s late in the day — almost time for brunch, probably. Brunch is for people who don’t dream about warzones, though, so Shiro settles for coffee that’s hot and dark and smooth in his mouth, hot enough that he’d burn his tongue if he hadn’t trained that weakness out of himself during his first month as a junior officer on the night watch. It’s hard enough to come by real beans that adding creamer or sweetener to his drink would be a crime. Again, Shiro has committed many crimes in his life, but in this case he’s willing to follow Hunk’s handwritten directions to the letter.
He arranges the outline of a meal picnic-style in front of the fire. Keith rebuilt it after he emerged from bed and before he left Shiro to putter around in the kitchenette. Keith has opted to wrap himself in layers and leave his mark on the snow outside, circling the perimeter. Keith’s watchfulness gives Shiro a sense of ease. He trusts Keith to keep them safe, and if something surprises them, Shiro can always destroy it with his bare hands.
Shiro indulges in watching Keith through the cabin window before calling him in to eat. Keith’s got a knit hat on, one that Lance made for Shiro’s last promotion. It looks stylish. Keith’s got his long hair tucked into the slouch of it, the brim highlighting the severity of his hairline even as it protects his ears. It’s not terribly cold out, so the hat is rounded out by a jacket zipped tight and a Blade uniform sash repurposed into a scarf.
Keith — doesn’t look like a little kid out in the snow. He’s too lean and lethal to give that impression, even when Shiro’s memory superimposes a recollection of how Keith looked when he was sixteen, seventeen. Instead he looks intent, like he’s debating between a sense of wonder and a concern for the unfamiliarity of his surroundings. The snow is kicked up in a wide circle around the cabin from all his pacing, likely a measure to gain confidence in the terrain. Trust Keith to make sure he knows how to fight the first time he encounters accumulated snow.
In response to the awareness Keith always has around Shiro, they exchange glances through the window. Keith starts trudging back to the door and Shiro eases himself down next to the fire to wait.
Pidge complains about how Keith and Shiro have a mind-meld going on, that it’s rude of them to maintain a conversation no one else is privy to. Shiro assumes this is because were he and Keith able to communicate telepathically, it would be a conversation that automatically eluded whatever monitoring Pidge has embedded in their communicators. It’s just a deep comfort with one another, the ease born of intensity. Someone might say it stems from the years they’ve known each other; but the mileage, Shiro thinks, is more influential.
“I’m hungry now,” Keith announces as he slips through the doorway. He kicks snow off his boots and then, glancing at the little picnic, bends to remove them entirely. Shiro makes an approving noise at this gesture towards civilization; encouraging feedback is something Keith always deserves to hear, and it’s barbaric to wear outside shoes on an indoor rug. Also: his backside is to Shiro and he enjoys the view.
“I didn’t save you any coffee.”
“Good, you like it more than I do.” Keith pads over to the fireplace and kneels beside Shiro’s thigh, hesitating until Shiro pats his lap companionably; then he climbs aboard. It’s a snug, silly fit. Keith settles his rump into the well of Shiro’s crossed legs and lets his own appendages dangle while Shiro wraps his left arm around him. Shiro’s right hand: it’s useful, having autonomy.
“I present,” Shiro says grandly, “the finest toast soldiers this side of the Galra Empire. I gave them pointy ears.” And he has: the rectangles of toast each have a notch clipped out of the top.
“Send them to their doom, I guess,” Keith says. He opens his mouth and permits Shiro to deposit one of the toasts inside, neatly biting the ‘ears’ off. He’s not showy about it, unlike Shiro, who’s the sort to eat the legs first if he comes into possessions of a person-shaped gingerbread cookie.
Feeding Keith takes an appropriate, lazy amount of time. It feels like an eternity, but this is part of Shiro’s own rehabilitation. In times of stress he’s still liable to bolt his food down before someone can take the precious calories away. The deliberate act of feeding Keith a bite at a time, waiting for Keith to chew and swallow and ask for more, is comforting to Shiro, who needs to see Keith’s pleasure, and it’s reassuring for Keith, who has a hard time asking for things when he gets too stuck inside his own head. It’s one of the overlaps in their relationship that makes Shiro think they were destined to watch out for each other. He could do this forever.
Outside, the snow keeps falling. It’s starting to come down at an angle, in a way that would read as torrential if it were a few degrees warmer and it could be called rain.
“Did you get enough?” Shiro’s asking about Keith’s earlier patrol around the cabin, wondering if Keith is satisfied with his one experience of walking on new snow and leaving clean, distinctive prints. If Keith feels safe here, where he can tell who has been walking outside (no one; the snow will keep them secluded). He could be asking about the toast, or even about any of the other finger foods he’d laid out for breakfast, but they’ve made a sizable dent in the spread.
Keith knows what Shiro means. “You haven’t given up on the idea of having a snowball fight with me, have you. I won’t go down easy, you know.”
“Oh, has your aim improved? Or were you hoping for some remedial training.” Shiro never lost a fight in the arena, and if Keith wants to spar in the snow, Shiro will put him on his knees. That’s just the way things are.
“Fuck off,” Keith tells him. It’s fond; he punctuates the obscenity with a kiss, tender against Shiro’s mouth. Keith even creeps his fingers up against the nape of Shiro’s neck, right where his hair blends from one length into the next. His nails aren’t as sharp as they can get, but the sensation still evokes a pleasant shiver. “I’m not as bad as Lance says.”
“You only like projectiles when you’re pretending to be one,” Shiro commiserates. “I keep saying, we should go out to the shooting range one of these days, see what kind of distance we can get if I throw you with my right arm.”
“If you make one more joke about going places — ”
“Relax,” Shiro tells him. He gives Keith a little squeeze, because Shiro likes hugging him and Keith has always melted a little when Shiro takes the time to wrap him up. Keith likes pressure. He feels safe. “I spent too much time courting you to throw it all away — “
“Ugh,” Keith says with feeling. “You’re so lucky I love you.”
Shiro really, really is.
+++
There’s only so much time they can spend luxuriating in front of the fire, even if they are recuperating from a thousand petty indignities inherent in, oh, being a card-carrying hero who has saved the universe. So they do go outside, Keith intent on playing in the snow — he’s so serious about attempting it that Shiro doesn’t have the heart to tell him he’s missing the point of play — and Shiro hoping to burn off some energy. Via snowball fight. He’s tenacious.
“Dress in layers,” he advises Keith as they don their coats. “You’ll warm up eventually.”
“You know, the desert gets pretty cold at night,” Keith retorts. “It wasn’t all sand and sun, I know how to dress for the weather.”
Shiro shrugs. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he says, and pointedly doesn’t remind Keith to wear gloves that have fingers. Or to at least top his standard fingerless gloves with mittens. Shiro’s above that kind if discomfort himself. His prosthetic hand doesn’t register the cold the same way skin and bone do. Of course, that means that if he wants to pack the platonic ideal of a snowball, he can’t wear a glove on his other hand, because he needs the unfettered body heat to melt the snow into the perfect projectile. War requires sacrifice.
The snow has drifted up high against the wall of the cabin, but the door remains clear. Shiro trudges a path away from their cozy little nest, across Keith’s earlier tracks and into a nearby clearing where the groundskeepers maintain an outdoor fire-pit for summer weather. The drifts undulate across the clearing, butting up against the fire ring and camouflaging the occasional stump-stool. It’s a terrible place to have a snowball fight. The potential for tripping over an unseen obstacle and breaking a toe is high.
Naturally, Keith decides to ambush Shiro as soon as they’ve entered the little ring. Shiro has to give him credit: Keith moves well in the snow, treating it like wet sand. He’s already in mid-air, about to land atop Shiro’s shoulders, when Shiro feels the little extra chill of displaced air against the back his neck and spins to pluck Keith before he can land. Then, of course, the real fun begins.
Keith is better at close-fighting because he treats himself as a thrown weapon. Even though he’s not coming at Shiro with a knife or a sword, he’s dangerous enough that the fight is fun. Shiro bares his teeth in a feral grin, relishing the way the winter air makes his incisors sting, and holds Keith aloft for a few seconds before allowing him to squirm free and land on his feet. Keith retaliates by scooping up a palmful of snow, hissing at the biting temperature against his bare claws. He tries to throw his ammunition into Shiro’s eyes.
But in this, snow is nothing like sand. Keith’s attempt isn’t even as invigorating as a face wash. Shiro barks a laugh and launches into a sweep kick, pushing Keith back out of immediate pouncing range and then dropping to one knee to scoop up his own handful of snow. He packs the ball in nimble seconds, cheating a little and using the temperature controls on his prosthetic to micro-melt and freeze the exterior. Not enough to injure Keith, but enough that the impact will actually hurt.
“Eye on the ball,” Shiro quips as he launches his projectile at Keith. It makes a resounding smack against Keith’s upper thigh and elicits a surprised yelp. “C’mon, sweetheart, this was your idea — try to keep up.”
“Oh, I’m keeping up,” Keith pants, and lobs an actual snowball this time. He learns fast: this one almost smarts, but it disintegrates upon encountering Shiro’s broad chest. “You’re an easy target!”
Shiro is an easy target, compared to Keith. They’re almost matched for speed and flexibility, but Shiro has more muscle. It means that when he mimics Keith’s signature move and throws himself right into Keith’s immediate zone, his momentum lodges them deep in a snowdrift, the motion only halted by crashing into the wall of a wood storage shed. The wall makes a hollow thunk noise as they hit it; Shiro’s got his prosthetic cupped around the back of Keith’s skull to cushion the landing.
Keith squirms free of Shiro’s hold and flops inelegantly away, only to land face-first in an unpacked mound of snow. Shiro takes the opportunity to push him into it, really scrub his face in the stuff. It’s a rite of passage.
The bout continues, Keith occasionally slipping free and dancing out of Shiro’s reach before coming too close again in an attempt to knock Shiro into a tree or another drift. He holds his own for long enough that Shiro feels hot with satisfaction, pleased with the effort he’s putting in. He has to remind himself that this is a game. Shiro’s better about competition than he used to be — for a while after the war ended he couldn’t train with another living being because it felt too much like fighting for his life, and Shiro made a point of winning that kind of fight, it was sort of his thing — and a big part of that has been the way Keith always spars with him, reacting with joy and not fear.
Besides. There’s the opportunity to channel his energies into more enjoyable activities once they call a truce, which finally happens after Shiro pins Keith belly-down on the ground and serenely tucks little pellets of snow down the loose neckline of Keith’s jacket, below where his scarf has come free.
“Fine,” Keith whines, making the effort to sound cranky and ill-used even though Shiro knows for a fact that he thrives on this kind of thing. Keith likes to move; sparring is a form of enrichment. “Mercy, all right? I’m freezing.”
“I told you to dress warm,” Shiro says, helping him up and brushing him off. Keith’s front is a mess of snow and the beginnings of mud from where they scraped the ground clear of its cover. He looks like he could use a bath.
“It’s not very attractive when you rub your advice in my face,” Keith says. “Or when you rub snow in my face. That stuff stings.” And his cheeks are a brilliant red, likely smarting from the combination of cold and exertion. Keith looks like he’s blooming. He’s alive and vital.
“Then pay attention when you fight with me and maybe you’ll learn something ,” Shiro retorts. But he doesn’t really mean it. “C’mon, let’s go back inside. Grab some logs for the fire, would you?”
Keith gathers a massive armload of wood and they head back to the cabin. He can carry the weight without effort, and that allows Shiro to walk ahead, hands free in the event of an ambush. There won’t be an ambush. The war is over, the grounds are deserted, he and Keith are the only two people in the vicinity. But it feels right to stay alert and prepared, especially in the wake of their play-fighting.
Again Keith manages building the fire from the start, tending to the ashes in the fireplace with studied care before piling on logs and kindling and setting them aflame with the laser. Shiro drags over the duvet from the bed and heats up powdered milk and fudge sauce to make cocoa, stirring his own drink in the same mug he used for coffee. The dregs are like a faint perfume, even through the smell of the chocolate. Adding milk and chocolate to the same mug doesn’t count as a waste, it’s practically recycling.
“Sound off,” Shiro says idly, dropping the end of the blanket over Keith’s head. Keith has stripped out of his wet clothes and covered up with one of Shiro’s discarded shirts, so he looks indecent before the fire, lots of pale leg exposed, the fine dark hair along his shins standing on chilly end. His cheeks aren’t quite as red, but he’s illuminated by the fire’s glow and he looks like the warmth is starting to flow back into him.
“Keith here,” Keith singsongs, reclaiming the turn of phrase from that time when he and the others were lost in space, separate from Shiro. “I like snow.”
“That’s not what you said when I was holding you down in it.”
“That had more to do with the giant lump of muscle crushing my spine, not the overall ambiance,” Keith says. “It’s pretty. I’ve seen pictures, and there was that one time the Blade had us run supplies to an agent on an ice planet, but I didn’t realize it could be soft.”
“Worth the trip?”
Keith sips his cocoa and makes a little mrrp sound, like he’s trying to hum or grunt in agreement but ended up sounding like a cat instead. Spending time with him mom and the other Blades has made him more likely to adopt Galra mannerisms, and Shiro enjoys seeing them. It’s nice to see Keith at ease; it’s nice to hear sounds that Shiro used to associate with captivity and think of them with tenderness.
“We could make this a tradition,” Shiro offers. He finishes his cocoa and sets the mug aside so he can slither under the blanket and resettle Keith onto his lap. “Try to get out here every winter, just the two of us. If you’d like.”
“Mmm… I like the idea,” Keith allows. “But you know we’d never find the time.”
“What if it was our anniversary?” Shiro asks. The word newlyweds echoes in his brain. “That might hold water with the higher ups, we just submit the requests in advance. After a few years, it would be a routine approval. I’m willing to play a long game.”
“Our anniversary’s in the summer.”
“Keith,” Shiro says, “we can have more than one anniversary. There’s when we got together, yeah, but that’s not the only important date for you and me. This could be to celebrate our engagement. That’s something people do.”
Keith turns in Shiro’s lap so they’re looking eye to eye, noses pressed to each other. Shiro’s not a fan of the vantage point; he feels cross-eyed. “We’re not engaged, though,” Keith points out.
“That’s what’s holding you back?”
“I mean, I think it’s a great idea, you’re a tactical genius,” Keith says, “I was just pointing out the flaw in your reasoning.”
“We can get engaged, Keith, that’s hardly a roadblock.”
“Oh, is that what we’re doing?”
Shiro laughs and turns Keith’s face to the side so he can lay a kiss along his neck (and so he can give his eyes a rest; he thinks he’s getting farsighted). “If you let me finish, yes,” he says. Keith’s skin is downy soft here, warmed by the fire before them and the blanket around them. There are softer places on Keith’s body — the skin inside his thighs, the slope of his chest, the curve of his hip, the slick plush inside of his cheek — but Keith’s neck is one of Shiro’s favorite places. He can nuzzle close and feel every word as it comes to life in Keith’s larynx. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Engaged, married, call it what you will — if going away and getting slowed in every winter is the best way to honor that, I say we go for it.”
“It’s worth honoring,” Keith says. He threads his fingers into Shiro’s hair and holds him close, even though the position is a little awkward. Keith has always been willing to tie himself into knots for Shiro, and Shiro cherishes both his intensity and his flexibility. Cherishes it enough to tie the knot. He’ll have to remember the pun. “You’re going to live forever, too, if I have anything to say about it, so it makes sense to have an annual celebration.”
“We’ve talked about this.”
“You think you’re going to die some day, I know,” Keith huffs. “But we’re the Black Paladins. Impossible is kind of our thing.”
Shiro lets this go. He has more important things to attend to. Namely, Keith’s feet are freezing — that won’t do. “Bed or floor?” He asks.
“You don’t usually let me pick.”
“It’s a special occasion,” Shiro informs him. “Clock’s ticking, make your decision.”
“Floor,” Keith says, low and excited. Shiro laps gently at the line of his throat, tasting the words that come next: “we’ve got the rest of our life to sleep in our bed. I want to be near the fire.”
Despite their plans to fashion this moment into an annual vacation, Shiro knows he and Keith will keep their agreement to themselves when they leave the cabin. So much of their lives are public knowledge, because being a hero requires you to give up your privacy. But there’s a selfish, indulgent part of him that wants to thank the check-in clerk — the late check-out time will come in handy, especially now that Shiro has even more of a reason to coax Keith into a state of incoherent bliss.
“Where’d you go?“ Keith asks from beneath him. And Shiro knows for certain that’s he’s right here, in this moment, and has been all along.