Work Text:
Shiro never really used terms of endearment.
His parents never displayed affection in front of him: it just wasn’t how they were. They were prim, proper, modeling good behavior. His mother called him Taka-chan but that had felt different, separate. His family didn’t really use terms of endearment, the way Americans did.
With Adam, the closest he got was having the man call him Takashi when everyone else called him Shiro: if Adam had found that strange, he never said. Never asked Shiro to explain, why being called by his given name was a sign of love and trust. Shiro had assumed, somewhere along the way, that his boyfriend turned fiancé understood the meaning. It was a bad assumption, he realized his retrospect.
But even before the end with all its mess, the fight where he told Adam, “Don’t call me Takashi anymore,” terms of endearment had changed. Shiro had found a reason that made them make sense.
Keith made it easy, without ever trying, laughing as they raced through the desert until they stopped and he watched Keith pull off his helmet, face alight with blood rushing and that big smile. Keith’s eyes shone like Shiro had never seen them before, Keith free and happy for the first time in their friendship.
And then Keith had looked at him and laughed and asked, “Where’d you learn that, Captain?” and it did things to Shiro. Things Keith hadn’t intended and Shiro had never felt.
By the time Keith was easily beating him at races, finally taking the cliff jump better than Shiro thought he ever had, he knew he should miss Adam but in that moment he didn’t think of his recent ex. Instead he clapped Keith on the shoulder, grinning down at the man looking at him with wonderment, and said without thought, “Look at you, Spitfire.”
It had lit Keith up and Shiro wanted to remember that look for forever, on the way to Pluto and back. It was the moment he remembered most.
The warmth of the sun was something he’d missed soon after leaving Earth, and its morning rays feel like they burn but in the best way possible. In its light he sees the strangeness of what his body has become, inspecting the prosthetic like it was new, as if the sun might cleanse away what was jagged and broken.
A hand falls to the arm, Keith beside him.
“Takashi?” Keith asks, tentatively, and Shiro thinks his name has never sounded like that from a man’s lips before. He smiles and threads his fingers with Keith’s.
In the dark of the castle ship, far once more from the sun, the words come more naturally. Perhaps this is the environment where such expressions can reside in Shiro, terms of endearment for the person who calms him, settles him, matches his rough edges with his own.
Dearest has always been one Shiro liked in English, something gentle to it without being juvenile or feminine. It slips out without thought when Keith comes to him at night, slipping into his arms in bed to be held close as if they can keep Shiro from leaving again, if only they can hold each other tight enough. It is a word of comfort, gentle for both of them and their damaged souls.
Darling is an unexpected slip-up, after he breaks Keith down in the training ring, the two of them alone, things they’d never been able to say rattling free from them. And what else is he suppose to do when Keith confesses that he has never thought himself good enough for Shiro? That he lives in fear of Shiro leaving him, again, because everyone leaves Keith and Shiro deserves more? Darling falls from his lips as he presses his mouth to Keith’s forehead, cradling him close, because nothing can be farther from the truth than what Keith fears. He was always the one too good for Shiro, not the other way around.
Sweetheart is perhaps bordering on too much but it comes to him before he realizes it, Keith helping him move from the Black Lion. Because Keith is a sweetheart, to Shiro and Shiro alone, protecting him, fighting for him, devoted always to him, always at his side, even half way across the universe stranded on a desolate planet. It makes Keith blush and perhaps for his Southern boyfriend, it’s just the right word.
Babe has always brought about mixed feelings, somehow both infantilizing while also overtly sexual, though Shiro had liked it when men at the club whispered it to him while they ground against each other, the room dark and the music heavy. Its only other acceptable use comes as Keith lays in bed, bandaged and sore from his trials, looking at Shiro like he’d fight again if the man asked him. There’s something incredibly attractive to it, sexual to Keith willing to fight for him, beside him, without question, a loyalty Shiro has never known. Babe is whispered into the room, Keith’s eyes falling closed as if he’s memorizing the sound, and Shiro knows no one else will ever make him feel the way Keith does.
Baby is different, no thought, pure instinct. It only comes out in bed, during sex, Shiro balls deep in Keith’s ass, his boyfriend pliant beneath him, surrendering to him fully. His thrusts drive breath from Keith, begging for more beneath him, and Shiro can’t help the nonsense that falls from his mouth at that, “oh baby you’re doing so good,” no idea what he’s saying anymore. Keith pushes back though, and moans in pleasure, and demands more. Shiro obliges, because he’s a good boyfriend.
The Black Lion is quiet, the others sent away so Shiro can rest, and Keith is beside him on the cot, stroking his face that feels foreign after months without a body. Shiro wants to close his eyes but also wants to stare at Keith, so long without him that he almost can’t believe he’s back.
“Oh Takashi,” and Keith leans down to kiss around his face, his breath warm against Shiro’s skin, and his name gives him goosebumps when Keith says it, intimate like nothing else.
But he’s self conscious, of his missing arm, of his changed body, of his white all over hair–
“Look at you,” Keith whispers, brushing his hair, as if he can read Shiro’s mind, knowing just how to soothe him. “My beautiful starlight,” and when he catches Keith’s eyes, he knows this is forever. He knows no one else will understand him like Keith. No one ever has.
Which is how, when they land on some outcropping, Krolia and Keith whispering with Acxa, Romelle playing with the space wolf, Shiro feels more steady than he ever has. Keith returns to him, with a sheepish grin and a lovely flush across his cheeks, whispering into his ear, “They’re ready when we are, starlight.”
Galra wedding ceremonies are simple affairs, straightforward pledges made before comrades in arm. The team embodies a range of emotions from Allura’s knowing smile to Lance’s open mouth shock to Pidge’s smug look of having caught on a while ago, but Shiro does his best to ignore them. To focus on Keith, his Keith, before him, calling him Takashi like only he can.
Atlas chimes the hour quietly as Shiro sits with a start, breathing heavily and trying to clutch his chest with an arm he no longer has. Keith rushes in from the other room — Shiro must not have been asleep that long — to immediately wrap Shiro in his arms and hold him.
“You’re safe, Takashi, we’re on Earth in your ship and we’re safe.” The words soothe him, his name, his husband, reality coming back to him. “You’re safe, starlight, I’ve got you, I’ve got you, Tōsan,” and somehow that takes his breath away in the best way possible, the most intimate name Keith has ever given him, the only term of endearment Keith has for him in Japanese:
Husband.
Father of his children.