Work Text:
We are one thing:
desire. Isn't that what all gods are?
More green, more grow, more grass.
- https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/154890/what-dna-knows”>What DNA Knows, Charlotte Pence
+++
The fact of the matter was, the Earth Coalition should have sent a botanist on the mission, or at the someone whose knowledge of genetics extended past the Punnet square, or, at the very least, a farmer. But in the end, Shiro had made so many puns about cloning and growth chambers that no one wanted to deal with him for however long it took Keith to break into the Colorado Seed Vault, so he was awarded the privilege of the assignment.
“Have fun storming the castle,” Matt hollered as Shiro loaded the last of the empty crates into the car. He’d been on a Princess Bride kick, playing the movie on an incessant loop, and the dialog had bled into his everyday speech. Yet another reason for a change of scenery, Shiro thought.
Keith, who had never sat through a feature-length film in all his adult life, let alone a quotable classic, said, “it’s not a castle, Matt, it’s a vault.” He was already sitting in the drivers seat, armored window rolled down and one elbow resting on the edge of the door. Keith was wearing the disreputable, off-duty outfit he gravitated towards when he wasn’t on a Blades mission: a black tee shirt with faded writing on it, cargo pants, hiking boots, and the sunglasses Shiro had bought him as a gift. Keith’s hair wasn’t even braided: it was pulled back in an awkward, bedhead-reminiscent tail, a side effect of having flown in late the night before and sleeping on the other half of Shiro’s bed.
“You deserve each other,” Matt told Shiro. “Bring me back something nice.”
What could be nicer than the continued existence of Earth agriculture, Shiro wondered. “That’s the plan,” he said, because Matt’s subject area was not and had never been on solid ground. Then he hauled himself into the passenger seat. If they had taken this mission even month before, he would have clapped Keith on the shoulder to signal their departure; but thanks to the new intimacy between them, the way they were on the mutual precipice of being together, Shiro squeezed Keith’s thigh instead. And they were off.
Even with this new almost thing: It was like old times, the two of them companionably bickering back and forth as Keith drove the utility vehicle through a mountain pass that could not, even charitably, be called a road. Shiro opined that it was yet another holdover from the war, which wasn’t so much in the rearview mirror as it was metaphorically shoved under a lot of coats in a disorganized hall closet: out of sight, but not remotely put to rights.
“I don’t think we can blame this on the invading occupation,” Keith said, navigating the bulky vehicle around a rockfall with nimble, casual ease. He didn’t even have both hands on the wheel; Shiro half expected him to let the wheel go entirely and steer the car by shoving his knee against the wheel. “This part of the mountain range is pretty typical.”
A pebble the size of a small boulder clonked against the reinforced cab, as if to emphasize Keith’s point.
“I bet you can’t clear the next ridge,” Shiro told him, playful and obnoxious about it. He clamped his good hand down on the armrest and let his prosthetic hover obnoxiously at Keith’s chest-level, like Shiro was a soccer parent preparing to break a little fast at an intersection.
Keith scoffed and took approximately point-three seconds to glance at the side mirror before zipping up a slanted rockface and launching them over the gap as though it were a mere pothole. Shiro felt the bottom of his stomach flip over, the way it always did when he caught any kind of air, and laughed out loud on the landing. There was enough dust in the air that Keith choked and coughed before he could laugh with Shiro, but there was a laugh. Shiro relaxed into the sound and the dust, feeling young for the first time in years.
+++`
“For some reason I didn’t think it would be an actual vault,” Shiro said when they had reached the seed vault entrance. The door was wedded to the mountain in a way that was, frankly, reminiscent of a fantasy novel from Matt’s collection: the metal and stone looked woven instead of welded, more organic than an exposed tree root system. Maybe it was an effect of climate change. He examined the locking mechanism for a few moments while Keith paced off the length of it. When Shiro punched the lock, speculatively, without much windup or weight behind his prosthetic, he was unsurprised when the door didn’t budge. “Did you bring any explosives?”
Keith shrugged, a non-answer. So, probably. “I have a door code.”
So helpful. “You could have said.”
“Maybe I like seeing you in action,” Keith said. He removed his sunglasses, revealing the start of an incredibly endearing tan line at his temples. “Want to punch it again before I try the code?”
What Shiro wanted: to put his arm around Keith’s shoulders and slip his fingers under the edge of that insufficient tee shirt, just far enough to feel the curve of Keith’s bicep, and haul him in close enough to kiss. He settled for stepping into Keith’s personal space — which had always accommodated Shiro anyway, even before they’d started telling each other they loved each other with words as well as actions — and leaning down so their heads were even over the folded notecard Keith unearthed from a cargo pocket. “I’ll save my strength,” Shiro said. “Maybe I can carry some boxes later.”
“Roger that.” Keith jabbed his thumb at the lock, entering in the code sequence. He had a little more color in his cheeks than usual. It was enough to make Shiro preen.
+++
The vault, once they made it inside and met with the few resident scientist who had camped out during the entirety of war, did not meet expectations. For one thing: it was freezing inside, literally freezing. Shiro had zipped his tac-vest up to the throat and upped the heat on his prosthetic as a stopgap, and Keith was sporting an oversized fleece retrieved from a hook in one of the office areas. Shiro wasn’t a huge vintage video game fan, but even he could recognize and appreciate the Bulbasaur embroidered on the breast.
Sindhu, the botanist tasked with retrieving the seed samples, was equally unimpressed with their presentation. “Did you think there would be plants?” She had donned a snowsuit that was so puffy it resembled the Michelin Tire Man prior to the corporation’s slimming down of the icon in 1998. “We’ve got the potatoes in soil for the year, but everything else is in envelopes and crates. Dormant. Good thing you brought a big car, but it looks like you were expecting plants.”
“We’re moving in together,” Shiro explained, “and he already has a dog, so we thought we’d try our hand at shared greenery.” Keith started minutely at that. It was only natural to take one of Keith’s cold hands in his own warm one.
It was hard to tell if Sindhu was amused or charmed by this development — Shiro himself was charmed at how Keith threaded their fingers together and tugged the sleeve of his borrowed fleece over them, like a clammy swaddle — but she put on her protective eye gear and dove through the airlocks to retrieve the requisition. It was strange to watch her shunting materials back and forth, but without marshmallow-y PPE of their own, there was little they could do to assist. Shiro and Keith ended up waiting in the marginally-warmer outer office. It was an educational wait: Keith didn’t let go of Shiro’s hand, and every flat surface was covered in informative dioramas that had been evacuated from the surrounding county school district during the Galra invasion.
“Are we moving in together?” Keith asked, somewhere between a description of the humble legume and a portrait of Nikolai Vavilov made entirely out of macaroni products. His palm was sweating against Shiro’s own.
“I want you to,” Shiro confessed. “But Keith — I thought you moved in before we left on this mission.”
Keith blinked. “I always leave a duffle bag at your place.”
“Sharing a bed was new.” It wasn’t actually new, in the strictest sense, but Shiro was making an effort to take their relationship beyond the way they’d occasionally slept back-to-back during the war. The way Keith had slunk into the open half of Shiro’s bed had a different energy, more tender and casual than the tiny bunk in the Black Lion. “Did you like it?”
Keith let out a little tsk of air, dismissing Shiro’s question. The answer was obvious, because Keith had slept. He didn’t do that when he was uncomfortable. “And the plant?”
“That depends on Kosmo,” Shiro allowed.
“She wouldn’t eat a houseplant, Shiro, she’s got manners — “
“No, it depends on if Kosmo can water it,” Shiro interrupted. “I can’t keep anything alive. I need her to keep it going. You’ll have your hands full taking care of me.”
“That isn’t new,” Keith scoffed, but the corners of his mouth turned up and stayed that way. “I’ve been taking care of you for years.”
Shiro’s cheeks ached from the force of his own smile. “I’m not about to let you off the hook.”
+++
In the end, despite Sindhu’s warning that the seeds would take up a lot of space, there were only four crates to load up. The crates, Shiro thought, made up for the lack of quantity by being heavy as fuck. It took all his strength, Keith’s leggy alien tenacity, and three botanists who were so muscular it was clear they practiced deadlifting in between experiments, to load up the utility vehicle. Even the front passenger seat had been shoved up, garnering a few extra inches and promising hell to whoever wasn’t driving on the way back to the Garrison.
Keith tightened the last loading strap and looked critically at the cargo area. The vehicle sagged on its axels under the weight. “I think we’re at capacity,” he said with his usual flair for understatement.
Sindhu glanced at Shiro, as if to say, is he serious? Because he loved Keith, and because pretending there was leftover space for anything up to an including the comfort of his kneecaps was a fool’s errand, Shiro offered his blandest smile in return. Keith was absolutely serious. Sometimes Shiro forgot that the average scientist hadn’t had the opportunity to appreciate Keith at his natural, earnest best.
“Thanks for the fuel cell recharge,” was all he said.
The drive back down from the mountains was markedly different from the journey into them. For one: Shiro drove the first leg (because of his literal legs: “You’re not going to fit in the passenger side,” Keith had observed, and had then — as the greatest gift Shiro could ever hope to receive — folded himself into said passenger seat, pretzel-ing his hips and legs to avoid impinging them in the narrow space. He really was flexible). For two: Shiro had to coax the vehicle’s overloaded carapace out of automatic pilot-mode and into what passed for manual, just to take the strain off the brakes. The downhill grade would have been fun to race down if the crates in the cargo storage hadn’t shifted ominously every time a wheel hit a rut.
“If Hunk were here,” Keith said wistfully, “he could probably convince the transmission to stop wheezing every time we hit a nine percent decline.”
“Or make this thing hover-capable even when it’s loaded to capacity.” Technically, Shiro could do that one. It was a specific technique, referred to as during the war, we ignored all vehicular safety regulations.
But best of all: during one gnarly hairpin curve, Keith slouched his spine somehow deeper than it already was and leaned over to set his palm on Shiro’s thigh. It wasn’t prurient, even if Shiro might fantasize about Keith that way later, once he wasn’t wrangling their car back to base; Keith’s hand had warmed up since they’d left the vault, so his fingers were faintly warm through the synth-weave of Shiro’s driving joggers. It was comforting. It was less heartbreaking than the sensation Shiro could just about recall from the Astral Plane, when he had set his own insubstantial fingers over Keith’s and helped pilot Black, but it had that same half-tangible comfort.
“Glad to be heading back?” Shiro asked.
“‘Course,” Keith said. “The best part of any mission: heading back with you.”
Without taking his eyes off the road, Shiro could tell Keith was staring at Shiro’s jawline. Once they pulled over for the night — Shiro had plotted the route to a campsite just far enough outside of the Garrison shields that he could lie to the mission coordinator and say he and Keith had needed to rest instead of gutting it through the rest of the drive — Keith would touch Shiro’s jaw, maybe with his hand or maybe with his mouth. They hadn’t kissed yet, but there would be time.