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Matt never expects anyone to rescue him.
He certainly never expects his kid sister as well as Shiro and a few other humans to destroy a Galra ship with mechanized lions that are made up of technology that should, by all means, be impossible, but Matt doesn’t really know why he’s all that surprised, given his life the past two years.
The escape goes rather well, all things considered, and before he knows it, he’s flying through space while Katie mans a green lion-spacecraft-thing, and his biggest regret is how quickly the exhaustion overtakes him as he passes out for the entire journey home - wherever home is.
He has so many questions.
Waking up isn’t much better, given the fact that the first thing he sees is an orange-haired, mustached man that insists on a mandatory celebration due to his successful rescue. Shiro is his literal saving grace - not for the first time, Matt thinks wryly - as he calms the man (alien?) down and ushers Matt toward something he calls a healing pod.
Which, no fucking way.
But all of Katie’s - Pidge, she’s Pidge now - friends look serious enough that apparently mystical healing pods are a Real Thing, and so he climbs in warily.
The next time he wakes, Shiro is waiting, and quickly informs him that he’s been out for two days. What he does not mention, however, is that healing pods apparently have timers (like a kitchen timer or something, and oh, god, what has Matt gotten himself into?) and, in preparation of his recovery, the rest of the paladins are indeed holding a party. For him.
Matt is mostly stuck on the idea of his little sister being referred to as a paladin as Shiro places a hand - his human one, Matt notices - low on his back and directs him through the castle-ship they apparently reside in.
“You need some space juice,” one of his sister’s friends - Lance, maybe? - says upon his entry, and Matt is bewildered enough with his entire life at the moment that he actually accepts the cup being pressed into his hand.
His sister offers a disgusted noise as he stares down at the neon orange liquid, and offhandedly she says, “The stuff is gross, but Lance swears by it. You look like you need a drink, anyway, Matty.”
A quick look around at the other paladins knocking back the “space juice” informs him that the stuff is apparently not toxic, despite its noxious color, and after a moment, he shrugs. When in Rome, and all that. Or, in this case, when in gigantic, ancient castle-ships that house technologically improbable, sentient lion spaceships.
Three sips in, and Matt feels wonderful.
He’s not sure if his tolerance is shot from being a starving prisoner for years, or if space juice is just incredibly potent, but he’s grinning and it feels nice to do something relatively normal, after all that he’s been through.
Honestly, why couldn’t Matt have been held captive by friendly aliens with an ample supply of this alcohol? The universe is so cruel.
He drains the cup before approaching Shiro, because with everything that’s happened, they haven’t much had the chance to talk. The conversation will probably be a rough one, and Matt’s grateful for the liquid courage, even if the form it comes in is neon orange.
“I’m sorry,” Shiro says immediately when Matt’s close enough. “I don’t… entirely recall the details of my escape. I have no idea why I left you behind, and I’m not sure that any sort of reason will ever justify that I did.”
The words are honest, just like Matt’s always known Shiro to be, and he almost regrets finishing off his cup when the man looks like he needs a drink so badly. “You’ve never done anything without a reason,” he says, proud of the way his words don’t slur. “They told me you were dead, anyway, so it wasn’t like I blamed you.”
Shiro looks stricken at his words, as though escaping from Galran clutches was somehow a fate worse than dying at their hands because of what they’d ended up telling Matt.
“After Dad died,” Matt starts, and that’s still a blow that pierces his heart even through the haze of the space juice, “everything kind of felt hopeless, you know? Because you saved my life so that I could protect him, and I obviously failed at that. But every time I started to give up, I thought of you, and how brave you were to risk your life for us every time they made you fight in the ring, and I couldn’t disgrace your memory by doing something pathetic like dying. You were kind of… my inspiration for living, if that makes sense?”
It’s the truth, but he didn’t mean to actually say it. To Shiro.
The scar that cuts across the bridge of Shiro’s nose darkens, and belatedly Matt realizes it’s because he’s blushing. His normally unflappable pilot from the Kerberos mission, blushing like a teenager?
Matt figures his own face is flushed embarrassedly at his own words, but the space juice sloshing in his stomach demands that he explain further. It’s not like he could drunkenly say anything worse, right?
“That’s more than I meant to tell you!” he says with a laugh. “But sort of romantic, don’t you think? I thought of you every day, and then boom, you actually showed up and defied death and saved me for the trillionth time. Makes me think we’re kind of inevitable.”
Alright, Matt is going to have a stern talking-to with himself once he wakes up tomorrow and regrets this entire conversation.
He doesn’t regret it right now, though, because he’s alive, and so's Shiro. They’ve made it this far, against all odds, and although Shiro is still speechless and blushing, Matt feels nothing but contentment as he offers him a wide grin and wanders off to go find KatiePidge and make sure she is not drinking any space juice.