Chapter Text
The morning the arm is removed, Shiro screams awake in a cold sweat.
Keith, wrapped around him, grunts at the sudden noise and thrash, but doesn’t disentangle himself.
“Sorry,” Shiro says once he’s come back to himself.
He’d said, once, that stillness helped. Keith gets it: without movement to keep track of, his brain can focus on more than sheer survival. It used to make Keith feel hunted, small as a rat huddling under leaves, praying the silence will be his salvation..
Now, he feels more like a predator, waiting for its prey to tremble itself into complacency. Except instead of violence, he wants to bite Shiro back into his body, pin him here in the peace and safety of their bed.
Most days, it’s enough.
So he ignores Shiro’s apology and asks the question he hasn’t let himself voice in weeks. “You ready?”
Shiro heaves a breath and buries his face in Keith’s hair. He nods wordlessly.
The arm is heavy, heavy, heavy between them.
| | |
Allura takes the news neatly. “So you’re leaving again,” she says. She presses her lips together and taps out another in an endless stream of the space version of emails.
If Keith were a betting man, he’d say that she’s half-hurt, half-relieved.
Well, he is a betting man, and Allura is both of those things. She’ll be under an added strain, shouldering the Lions and the team and the alliances without two of the original members of her team. Without Shiro, who’s become one of her best friends.
The tension between them hasn’t completely died down, though. And she has to have known that Shiro was a stopwatch racing toward his own finish line.
He doesn’t forgive the team for not doing anything about it, but he does get it. There was a universe on the line.
Shiro is the one to tell the kids.
Hunk cries and hugs both of them, holding on until even Shiro’s boundless patience is tested and he starts to fidget. Pidge assures them that she and Matt will stop by or call with updates, new blueprints for them to look over, and invite them to test out new tech. Lance grouches and groans while holding back tears while Allura looks on serenely.
Keith tells them he’ll send along their address once they’ve decided on where they’re going, and warns them that he’ll make them into mulch if they give it to anyone outside of the room. Like fuck is he going to let the Garrison interrupt their retirement with some bullshit emergency.
Kolivan beams when Keith tells him that he’s officially out. The search for another paladin is well underway, he assures Keith. He promises to reach out to Allura in the coming days to coordinate candidates and chances for them to see if they mesh with Black.
Peace looks good on him, Keith decides. Kolivan seems lighter, smiles easier. He doesn’t demand Keith stay with the Blades; he doesn’t need every body he can get anymore.
Keith tells him the Blades can reach out any time they’d like, although he doesn’t promise to always answer.
“You never did,” Kolivan says with a rueful laugh. “And your mother?”
“Yeah,” Keith says after a handful of seconds. He’s already decided on this, but saying it out loud makes it real. “Let her know she can visit any time she wants. We’d be happy to see her.”
The Garrison takes the news with all the grace of a bird leaving the nest for the first time. Which is to say: Keith tells Iverson and the other top brass that he’s fucking off and taking their golden boy with him, they scream threats at his retreating back, and he refuses to contemplate if they’ll fall or fly without them.
It’s not his problem anymore. Now, he gets to rest.
| | |
They fit Shiro for a prosthetic arm. Low-tech. Just the shape; a hand, a wrist, an arm. Nothing wired into his nervous system. No weapons.
Keith and Shiro stare at it in puzzled silence for a long time once it comes in.
“You know,” Shiro says eventually, “I didn’t realize with was an option.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s … nice?”
“Very,” Keith agrees. Because it is a nice gesture; the Garrison paid for it, and prosthetics aren’t cheap. And it is a nice prosthetic, too. It matches Shiro’s skin tone for now, although that’ll change soon enough as they spend time in the sun again. It’s carefully made, heavy enough to be present, light enough to not be bulky. It checks the boxes.
“I’ll try it on?”
“I’ll help.”
And it’s good. Some days, Shiro seems more confident wearing it. Others, it’s banished to the closet, under the bed, tucked out of sight. Those days, Shiro has Keith pin the empty sleeve of his shirt to his chest and squares his jaw, daring anyone to ask about it.
It makes warmth sing through every nerve in Keith’s body.
Healing looks a hell of a lot like fighting, he’s learning.
| | |
Wind scrubs through the yard, finding little purchase on the sandy red dirt.
Two hoverbikes sit side-by-side under an open garage next to a worn-down truck with guts spilling out of its hood, like a tired tongue panting for water in this desert.
A dog, Kosmo, runs up to the fence Shiro and Keith had spent the better part of a week putting up. She lopes along it in a burst of energy before making her way back into the house where a mountain of toys teeters, on the edge of bursting out of their basket. She grabs a stuffed cat off the top gently, so gently, and brings it to a sunny patch of floor, curling up around it to nap in the late afternoon heat.
Wallpaper is peeling off the walls. They keep arguing over what to do—paint it or wallpaper it again. The argument is more fun than doing it, they’ve found, so the yellowing roses stay.
And in the bedroom, Keith strips Shiro out of his clothes with an aching slowness. There’s time.
He’s trying something new today. New to both of them.
Settling in has been an uphill battle. There were the frantic weeks of moving, realizing they don’t have a single mug or spatula between them. They’d needed to adjust to down time, and not reaching for a dagger or blaster every time they heard a noise they couldn’t quite place.
They’d had to problem-solve on the fly. Old shirts for potholders. Sharp bouts of phantom pain from Shiro’s arm that ibuprofen can’t exactly help with. Days where he can’t get out of bed. Days where Keith’s hip would give out on him. Days where Keith couldn’t get out of bed.
And then there was the time.
Hours and days and weeks of time stretching out in front of them, one after another after another.
Shiro deals with this by attacking the garden, planting and weeding and pruning and watering. Not much grows, but he seems to take satisfaction in the flowering cacti and hardy succulents. Goes on runs and tussles on the floor with Kosmo and Keith.
Keith deals with this by indulging his curiosity. Knowledge or death wasn’t an idle creed.
He reads everything. History books, mystery novels. A lot of romance novels.
And then … embarrassing things. He doesn’t mean to hide them from Shiro, exactly, but he does ask him not to open packages addressed solely to Keith. Shiro never really did that in the first place, but it’s nice to have the assurance that he won’t decide to one day, either.
He gets his hands on cowboy history, which he’d sort of figured was pretty gay but wow was really gay. Books about gender, which he’s sort of planning to leave on Shiro’s side of the bed by accident. Maybe it’s nothing, and maybe the way Shiro loses all brain function when Keith pretends he’s a girl or at least not a man is just a sex thing, and maybe it isn’t. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
And it’s sort of when he’s going down that rabbit hole that he reads the words “stone butch” and draws an absolute blank on what that means. Stone Butch Blues is as good a start as any, and it’s … good. Heartrending. Heavy and light at once, like a story told and retold in your blood.
And he’s thinking about it one day while Shiro does, in fact, eat tomatoes raw with only salt on them and Keith cuts up more for him to devour and Kosmo tries to get her paws on the counter to see what’s happening. And he’s thinking about cutting perfect slices for Shiro that Keith would rather die than choke down and he sort of. Goes offline for a second.
It really is just a second, and then he’s back to bullying Shiro about his food choices and slipping Kosmo a treat for being such a good girl. But the thought is seared into his brain. The key is turned, and now he knows what is behind that door.
A stone butch doesn’t want to be touched, or maybe doesn’t want to get off, and that’s not. That’s not a bad thing. And Keith went to high school, thanks, and was on the internet before he fucked off to space. He knows the other side of that is called a pillow princess , and that it’s supposed to be a bad thing.
It’s so hard, to navigate sex in this quiet, in the shattered peace of their lives. For every reason, but the one that’s a ragged gash in Shiro’s leathery armor the most.
Shiro doesn’t get hard often these days. Keith doesn’t care. Shiro does.
But Shiro is licking tomato juice and salt off his fingers and smiling up at Keith, eyes squinched almost close with the pleasure of it, and Keith wants to give him everything. Wants to wrap him up, warm and safe, fuck him until he comes and doesn’t feel like he has to provide for Keith, be a leader and a soldier and a man of the house or whatever. Wants him to know he doesn’t have to come for Keith even if they are fucking.
Keith wants Shiro to want to eat his heart and Keith doesn’t want to eat Shiro’s heart in return.
So, okay. Plan. He needs a plan.
Because Shiro is usually the one to take the initiative in bed. It’s honestly meant, earnestly given. Keith knows this.
But Shiro also shies away from compliments. The first time he’d asked if Keith would like him to wear something special, his face had been redder than the time he’d accidentally eaten one of Hunk’s ghost peppers, and he’s been sweating twice as hard from the nerves.
It starts with compliments. The normal ones at first, and then increasingly specific, intimate ones.
Once Shiro lets those go mostly unchallenged, he starts on pushing for the initiative.
That’s a resounding success. Some days, Shiro goes easy. Others, he fights him for it, tussling and shoving and pinning until they’re damp with sweat and grinding on each other like teenagers desperate to get off before they’re found out.
And then: today.
The bedroom. Stripping Shiro slow and sure. Settling him on his stomach on the bed, pillow under his head and his hips and more in easy reach for if either of them cramp up.
Sunlight turns the room butter-warm. Keith warms up lotion in his hands, and works it in broad strokes up and down Shiro’s back, along the ridge of muscle to either side of his spine.
“Uhm … Uh, Keith?” Shiro’s voice is slurred already. Tension is draining from his back, impossible to hold with so much pressure and skin. Touch-starved, one of the books had said.
“Hm?”
“What, hmmmm. What’s this?”
“A massage, Shiro. You know, the thing for your muscles. Good for you.”
“Hm. Yeah, but … ‘m naked.”
Keith moves on to the knots that hide just under Shiro’s shoulder blades. “You are. We’ll deal with that later.”
“Is this, like, some kind of doctor kink? Masseuse kink? I’m not mad about it but—”
“Shiro,” Keith cuts him off, kind but firm. “Shut up and enjoy this.”
“Mm.”
Keith works his way up Shiro’s shoulders, his neck, then back down to the small of his back, the swell of his ass and the plush of his thighs.
God, Keith wants to build a monument to Shiro’s thighs. Corded with muscle and padding out with fat in their retirement, they take up half the bed. He’s seized by the embarrassing urge to lick them and then remembers, hey, he can do that if he wants.
Shiro giggles as he pauses to lick a broad stripe up the back of both thighs, subsiding into a delighted gasp as Keith bites at the crease where his ass meets his thighs.
He sits up and admires the sheer mass of him before going back to work.
It feels good to work Shiro over like this. Kneading him out like bread, measured and careful. An investment in a meal, a table, a life. Keith tries and fails to ignore that he’s sporting a semi from this alone.
Shiro’s noises don’t help.
Moans and grunts. He leans up on his knees to get better leverage at one point and spots a small patch of drool staining the pillow.
“That’s it sweetheart,” he says, grabbing the lube this time and slicking up his fingers. “Just stay relaxed for me. There we go.”
“That is … mmh, not your dick.” Shiro’s voice is muffled by the pillow and adorably indignant.
“Fuck off, I’m spoiling you.”
“Taken you every day this week, don’t need any prep,” he sulks. “If you—” Shiro shifts until his face isn’t smooshed into the pillow. “If you want to spoil me, put your dick in my mouth before you fuck me.” Even the demand is too relaxed, a kitten playing at having claws.
How’s he supposed to say no to that?
Keith shuffles up, keeping a hand on Shiro’s spine to keep him in place, keep him from being helpful. He settles with one knee on the pillow and slots the other under Shiro’s shoulder, sliding a hand under his chest to help him move and twist enough to make the position work.
Shiro opens his mouth and sticks his tongue out. “Mm?” His eyes are closed.
“Gorgeous,” Keith praises, running a thumb over Shiro’s lip, stroking it over his tongue in a lazy circle. “So handsome, sweetheart.” Keith rubs his wet thumb over Shiro’s cheek, smearing his spit over the rough stubble there, and feeds him his cock.
It slips in easy as sin. Shiro’s mouth is wet and wanting.
When it’s halfway in, Keith stills. Shiro likes to fight through his gag reflex most of the time, but today feels like a day for indulgence.
Instead, Shiro licks gently at the tip Keith gives him, sucking softly. Keith pulls back a bit until Shiro is tonguing at the head, just under the crown.
Keith pets at Shiro’s hair, runs a steady hand over his cheek, his nose, across his eyebrow.
“So good for me,” Keith says. Mostly to ground him, anchor both of them here. It’s not enough to get him off, but it feels like molten gold pouring down his spine anyway.
After a few minutes, Keith pulls back. He pets Shiro’s hair again when he whines at the loss. “It’s okay baby, you’re so good.”
Shiro blushes and buries his face in the pillow again. “Go away.”
“I’m trying, I’m trying! Easy there,” he says, straddling Shiro again and slipping reapplying the lube. Too much lube, enough that it drips down Shiro’s ass, over his balls. He takes a second to rub his thumb along the cleft of him, smoothing it along the hair there.
He traces the same pattern with his cock, drawing it out until Shiro whines and tries to spread his legs further, only to be hemmed in by Keith’s knees bracketing his thighs. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, just relax.”
His cock slips in without effort, without discomfort, sinking home in one smooth thrust. Shiro stays loose under him, sighing in contentment when Keith bottoms out.
Keith shifts his hips a little, adjusting, focusing, before he leans forward, one hand tracing up the line of Shiro’s back, up his shoulder, over his arm until he can thread his fingers through Shiro’s, pinning him there. He flattens his free hand on the bed for leverage and lets himself stretch out on top of Shiro.
Shiro grunts at the sudden weight and then rumbles deep in his chest.
They grind like that, Keith working himself over Shiro’s back, in him and on him, mouthing at his neck and biting at his shoulders before he thinks, fuck it, who’s here to make fun of us for having hickies, and bites at Shiro’s neck, too.
“You feel so good around me. You’re so loud like this, sweetheart. So wet for me.” Shiro keens at the praise and melts even further into the mattress.
In this position he can’t tell if Shiro’s hard. It doesn’t matter. Shiro is grunting softly every few thrusts, rolling with the motion of Keith’s hips with the little leverage he has. The sun has slipped low on the horizon, painting them in amber.
“Shiro, Shiro. I’m going to—where do you want me to?” Keith’s too far gone to know what his voice is doing, but it doesn’t matter. Shiro is under him, pliant, exactly where he wants to be. Is Keith’s, only Keith’s, and wanting only for Keith.
Shiro pants into the pillow and shakes his head. Keith rubs circles into Shiro’s hand with his thumb. He gets like this, sometimes, when it’s good. Beyond words and unwilling to try.
“I’m gonna fill you up, sweetheart. Just squeeze my hand twice if you don’t want that, baby. Just,” he nuzzles in behind Shiro’s ear, licks along the line of his undercut.
His thrusts speed up, until Shiro is making encouraging little noises in the back of his throat.
Keith grinds in deep and stays there when he comes, serious about filling Shiro up, about giving it to him.
Shiro squeezes his hand twice, hard, when he shifts to pull out.
He pauses. “No?”
“Mm-mm.” An emphatic head shake.
Keith laughs. “I’m crushing you.”
The only answer is Shiro’s satisfied hum.
“D’you want me to?”
Another double squeeze. Not a day he wants to come, then.
This stupidly endearing man. Keith relaxes against him, mouthing at his shoulder and blissed out on the smell of sex and Shiro and satisfaction.
He rouses at a crash at the bedroom door once dusk settles. “We should get up.”
“Mm-mm.”
“Take a shower.” He lays an open-mouthed kiss on Shiro’s shoulder.
“No.”
“Feed Kosmo.” A nibble on his ear.
“Hmm.”
“Clean up before the kids come over.” A kiss on his neck.
“Absolutely not.”
“No?”
“Lance and Pidge are going to act like they’re in a hovel of a saloon no matter what.”
“True.” Another kiss to his neck.
“Allura will wrestle with Kosmo and ask about the wallpaper with so much confusion we’ll be too embarrassed to tell her the truth, and we’ll have to bullshit an explanation about it being an honored traditional decoration in Earth homes.” A squeeze at Shiro’s hand.
“Oh, definitely.”
“Hunk will just take over the kitchen and bitch at us about how gross our food is.”
“It’s a little gross,” Keith concedes. It’s a lot of beer and frozen pizzas with a sprinkle of fresh produce. He won’t apologize for that, though. Step fourteen of his retirement plan is to get Shiro to gain weight. A beer belly is going to look so good on him.
Keith is a man of luxurious tastes and precision planning. Hunk can deal.
Shiro just huffs into the pillow.
“I’ll make a deal with you.”
“Historically, those have served me well.”
“Let me get up to feed Kosmo, and I won’t make you shower until you want to. You can be jizz-covered in peace until everyone gets here and we have to pretend to be adults.”
Shiro lets out a loud, long sigh. “Only because Kosmo is such a good girl,” he relents, pulling one of Keith’s hands to his mouth so he can brush a kiss across the knuckles.