Chapter Text
When he wakes, it’s like the first moments of his homecoming to Arus all over again: memories in bare pieces after tumbling to the Ariz Wastes’ red earth from the back of Ulaz’ mortally wounded dragon, mouth as arid as the desert, the unsettling slips in and out of consciousness, waking to find himself flat on a table with men he trusted muffling his words with a sleeping draught-soaked rag.
But as he blinks away the stickiness of a long bout of sleep, Shiro realizes he’s not in a tent, nor bound to a table for examination, nor lying immobile as masked druids carve him apart. His memory still returns in snatches— the view of the battlefield from the back of Ataashi, hands cradling him to the ground, concerned voices and the sweet note of Altean magic— but the gaps in his life don’t frighten him as much as they used to. Keith was there, this time. Keith was—
“Keith,” he chokes out as he lurches up, only to slip sideways unexpectedly, off balance from his missing arm. A pair of hands keep him from tumbling over completely, and Shiro knows it’s Keith before he even lays eyes on him. “Keith!”
“I’m here, Shiro.” He’s shed his Marmora outfit for something soft and comfortable, more akin to the clothes he’d worn during relaxed afternoons in the palace. The fabric is soft under Shiro’s cheek, and Keith’s embrace helps to slow the furious beating of his heart. “I’m right here with you.”
“Uh, so are the rest of us,” Lance yawns from somewhere else in the room as Shiro labors to sit up straight.
“We all wanted to be here,” Pidge says, Matt hovering close by her side. She has a thin scar now that almost matches her brother’s.
“We’ve all been waiting somewhat anxiously,” Allura says from where she sits on the edge of his bed, opposite Keith. “You gave us quite a scare, Shiro.”
It comes back in jarring, disordered flashes. Abandoning the field of battle and luring Keith away. Awful, terrible words put to his voice. Keith’s desperate pleas. Slicing into his face and leaving him that scar— incontrovertible evidence of his failure to protect his most trusted friend.
“I…” Shiro doesn’t know where to begin accounting for himself. A lump spawns in his throat, pinching tight until his eyes burn with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry.”
Keith’s hands pat against him in a frantic attempt to comfort while Allura blinks at him like he’s grown a new arm all on his own.
“I only meant— we were worried, Shiro, because you very nearly died. Between the blood loss and the quintessence that Galra arm drained from you, I wasn’t sure that— we didn’t know if you would…” Allura’s mouth parts a few more times, searching for the right words. “We’re just happy you’re alive and awake again. You’ve been sorely missed these last weeks.”
“Weeks?” Shiro asks, aghast.
“Just two,” Keith murmurs. Glancing away from Shiro for all of a second, he adds, “Hunk, could you go get some food started? Something good for him.”
“Nutritious and easy to digest,” Hunk says, chin poised in hand. “Filling, but not heavy. Hm, I know just the thing! Pidge, Matt, with me— I’m going to need some extra hands.”
They gripe and moan, but follow Hunk semi-obediently. Allura, Coran, and Lance take their leave together, each of them pausing at Shiro’s bedside to squeeze his hand or shoulder and give him their best.
And once the door slips shut, it’s just him and Keith.
“I did this to you,” Shiro says, drawing his hand up to Keith’s face. He doesn’t touch— too afraid of hurting him further, worried he’s not welcome to ever lay a hand on Keith again— but lets his fingertips trace the air over his knight’s skin. The scar is dark and only just healed.
“No,” Keith says, gripping his hand and very gingerly bringing the pads of Shiro’s fingers to his cheek. “You didn’t. Haggar did. And she took a toll on both of us.”
At Shiro’s questioning look, Keith turns and rummages out a mirror. When he holds it up, the prince finds himself facing a full head of silvery white hair, right down to his eyebrows and the lengths of his eyelashes.
“Allura and Lotor think it came from the shock of losing so much quintessence and then being flooded with Allura’s. You three are like a royal matching set, now,” Keith adds with a small and sideways smile.
“I look… old,” Shiro says, shifting awkwardly on the mattress. He tries to ignore his own blush as he takes the mirror from Keith and examines himself with a sharp eye. He’s whiter of hair than his grandfather was on his deathbed.
“No, you don’t,” Keith huffs. His hand works into the silky strands of Shiro’s hair. “You look as handsome as ever. Beautiful. Like you’re spirit-touched.”
“Spirit-touched,” Shiro repeats, softly amused despite his mixed emotions and snaking inner turmoil. It’s the way mysterious, ethereal lovers in romance stories are described, or the gods in disguise when portrayed on stage. He’d never thought Keith went for that kind of thing.
Keith nods, standing by his assessment. “Like starlight. Like you came from the moon. Like the heavens let you down to walk here with us.” He runs a thumb over the paleness of Shiro’s eyebrows, along the feathery ends of frosted lashes. “White suits you just as well, Shiro.”
Keith explains all that Shiro has missed, beginning with the outcome of the battle: Zarkon dead and Lotor now widely regarded as rightful emperor; Haggar escaping with half of the remaining imperial forces; Sendak still missing and unaccounted for, the only surviving high warlord. They’re threats for Lotor to address, though. Their fight is back in Arus, now.
With kind, soft fingers, Keith checks the bandages wrapping Shiro’s shoulder. He explains that they were lucky that day— that Lotor and Allura suspect it was only the luxite of Keith’s sword that managed to cleave through the intricate spellwork before the curse could react with a vengeance. The Marmora had long valued the rare material specifically for its resistance to the magic wielded by the druids and their acolytes, and if Keith weren’t a Blade— if his mother hadn’t been—
Shiro doesn’t like to ponder how things might’ve ended, had the strands of fate not been sewn just so.
As Shiro fitfully slumbered for a fortnight, Keith was constant, sleeping in the chair beside the bed and taking all of his meals in Shiro’s room. Lance tells him as much during one of the rare moments that Keith leaves to bathe and tend to his animals, with a knowing look that makes Shiro’s gaze slide away and out the window before he gets teased for it.
In those first weeks, it’s an effort to eat, to talk, to sit up. There’s no shortage of visitors to occupy him while he’s bedridden, though— a far cry from the heavy shroud of secrecy and solitude that had surrounded him any time he succumbed to bouts of illness while at the palace.
Hunk and Pidge visit often at first, taking measurements and carefully examining his shoulder. With their combined mechanical expertise, they intend to craft him a new arm— one free of any unsavory curses. Though busy with mediating relations between the coalition kingdoms and Daibazaal, Allura devotes time to studying ancient tomes from Lotor’s private library, poring over anything that might help her perfect the technique of grafting and animating a prosthetic limb. A handful of Marmora accompany her in her efforts— Blades assigned to copying and disseminating the trove of ancient knowledge to the few remaining libraries in Daibazaal proper, per Kolivan’s orders.
But the vast majority of Shiro’s time is spent with Keith, who more or less continues to live by his bedside, all of his duties to the Blade of Marmora apparently postponed. Kosmo accompanies him at all times, curling happily at the foot of Shiro’s bed or stretching out beside him so he wakes to the smell of wolf breath.
Keith begins teaching him the basics of the Galran language, perched beside him on the bed until their meals are brought in and they take a break to eat and tentatively test the prince’s strength. It’s a tongue unlike anything Shiro knows through his extensive education, filled with hard consonants and long vowels, but it’s lovely coming from Keith’s lips.
Hard to ignore the glaring signs of the damage Shiro has done to him, though. The scar distracts him when he ought to be listening to Keith’s pronunciation and committing new words to memory, and Keith only smiles when Shiro mumbles requests for him to repeat.
It’s a mirror of the past, in ways and moments that make Shiro’s heart swell within his chest— when he had helped teach Keith to read and write common Arusian, stealing time together in his study before the prince’s morning obligations called him to court. When they’d whiled away hours in their tent on the war trail by copying poems from a book Shiro’s grandfather had given him, practicing Keith’s letters. There’s nothing but patience behind Keith’s eyes as he coaxes Shiro through basic commands and greetings, and haltingly explains the structure of Galran speech.
Shiro’s only other tutor is Krolia, who soon takes Lance’s place in standing watch over him whenever Keith leaves to bathe or tend to Kosmo and Ataashi. She is a patient teacher and unfailingly civil, but guilt rakes at Shiro’s insides every time she shows him kindness. They’d been on good terms— friendly, even— but that was before he nearly killed her son and left him with a four inch scar across his cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he says during the third afternoon in her company, the steadily rising shame finally reaching a choking point. “A-about Keith. I’m— I can’t apologize enough for what I did to him—”
“You have already,” Krolia says, eyebrows lifting just barely as she turns a page and points to a string of symbols that Shiro now recognizes as qalabathari, a word that means someone who is as dense or slow as an ox.
“But I… I almost killed him. All because he was trying to help me. And every time I look at him and see it, I…” Shiro swallows down what feels like a lump of barbed cotton. “You must think as little of me when you see him, too.”
“I do not.” Krolia sighs and snaps the book shut, turning it so that it rests in her lap. “Shiro, you did not intend to harm my son. No one here thinks that you did. Least of all Keith.”
“Intent or not,” Shiro says, looking away, “it was my hand that did it.”
“Your hand?” Krolia questions, looking pointedly at the ruined remains of Shiro’s upper arm, where a limb ought to be. “Funny. I thought it was a cursed arm crafted by the druids’ blood magic.”
He huffs, eyes slipping shut. “I mean, I saw it like I was the one doing it. The memory of it is… it’s mine. If it haunts me, then I can only imagine how it plagues Keith. And the scar, too. He’ll never be able to forget…”
Krolia hums softly, as if considering his words. “Among Galra, scars are often considered a mark of honor and distinction. A sign of prowess or resolve. The scar he now bears wasn’t gained in cowardice or defeat, Shiro. Fighting to save someone you love is noble.”
Shiro sinks back into the dense mountain of pillows against the headboard; it grows every time Keith returns, something newer and softer in hand, fluffing them until the prince feels like he’s sunken into a cloud. “I don’t deserve him.”
“Qalabathari,” Krolia says as she lays a long-fingered hand against his head, sharp claws delicate as they pass through his hair. She smiles faint as Shiro’s jaw slips open at the mild insult. “Oh, so you do know that word?”
Shiro’s lips remain parted as Krolia pries the heavy book open again and moves on to something new. She draws a claw under a series of symbols that remind Shiro of the hexagonal shapes in honeycomb. “You would do well to learn this one as well: kadan-asala. I recommend you ask Keith what it means.”
The corner of Shiro’s mouth twitches. He stifles any further spilling of his guts and nods to let Krolia know that he’ll do as requested.
The lesson resumes with no small amount of awkwardness, at least on Shiro’s end. He feels hot-faced and squirmy nervous under the covers, wrestling with the disbelief that Krolia could be so forgiving of him. She’s a little more direct than Keith when it comes to Shiro getting distracted by his own thoughts, quick to lean in close and cluck her tongue to recall his attention.
By the time they wrap up, Shiro’s not sure he’ll remember a single word of her lesson. Other than kadan-asala. Whatever that means.
A pointed ear twitches as she picks up the sound of Keith’s approach, and Krolia neatly stacks the books back on the nightstand and rises to her full and considerable height. “Rest easy, Shiro.”
“I’ll try,” he says, giving her a brief smile. “And… thank you. Um, for being so understanding.”
She’s worlds apart from Shiro’s own mother. And though Krolia was torn from Keith by the demands of the Marmora and her mission outside of the empire, absent for so much of his life, there is so much of her nature in Keith that the similarity is unmissable.
“You were worried about what goes through my mind every time I see Keith,” Krolia says, pausing with her hand on the bronzed doorknob. “Know that when I look upon my son, I think that he is very brave, very loyal, and very much in love.”
The following weeks give Shiro much to think about and a great deal of time to do it.
Keith is there each step of the way. Literally, even, when it comes time for Shiro to gather his strength and take his first steps in nearly a month, his legs weak as a newborn foal’s from disuse.
He lets Shiro lean heavy on him as they pace back and forth through the expansive bedroom, an unshakable pillar of support no matter the situation. For maybe the thousandth time, Shiro wonders what he ever did to win Keith’s heart so fully.
By the time they settle back on the bed, Shiro is exhausted. But he’s growing in strength by the day— he can feel it in the cords of his muscle, the itch he has to get up and move. By now, he’s almost used to the asymmetry of his upper body, though seeing his own reflection still takes him by surprise at times. What he’s not used to is the phantom pain that makes him feel like his fist is still clenched all through the night, aching.
“I think tomorrow we ought to go down to the paddock again,” Keith says as he draws up his legs onto the bed and tilts his head toward Shiro. “Shabrang is almost healed enough to ride again. And I can tell he misses seeing you.”
“He’s sweet. Clever,” Shiro says, half-absent. From this angle, in this light, Keith’s scar seems… harsh. Its edges are jagged, like the one across Shiro’s nose.
“You’re still upset about this, huh?” Calm and assured, he takes up Shiro’s hand and presses it over the discolored mark that reaches up from his jaw.
Shiro doesn’t know what to say. Under his fingers, he can feel the texture of a healed over burn, skin still rough and uneven. He does. This is his fault, but so is so much else. “About all of it,” he whispers.
Keith sighs. “All of what, Shiro? Saving my life?”
“No! Not that, never—”
“Sticking your neck out to give me the opportunity of a lifetime? Knighting me despite everyone protesting it? Believing in me when no one else gave one single shit whether I died in an alleyway? Leading me here to find my mother? My family?” He’s almost exasperated. “I don’t regret anything, Shiro. None of it. I’d hoped you’d feel the same.”
Shiro’s eyebrows pinch tight. “How, Keith? The things I said to you, the things I did. Gods. I see it when I close my eyes, worse than anything I remember of the arena. I fought you like a monster.”
“I didn’t fight you, Shiro,” Keith says, softly. “I fought Haggar. I fought the control of that cursed arm. But not you,” he adds, shaking his head as he skims his free fingers through the shaggy white hair above Shiro’s ear. “I fought for you.”
Keith is still holding his hand. Has it drawn into his lap, clasped between his palm and his thigh, fingers laced through Shiro’s to keep him from drawing away. Rather than hating him— even by a fraction, even for a moment— Keith only holds onto him tighter.
“I told you already.” Keith licks his lips, nervous as he summons his voice. “Shiro, when I said that I loved you, I meant it. I mean it, still. I always will, because loving you is just another part of me.”
Echoes of that moment in the forest clearing come back to Shiro— those words that broke through the haze of blood magic and reached into Shiro’s soul. The sentiment behind them that he’d steadfastly refused to put too much stock into, afraid to believe.
“I understand if you don’t regard me the same way,” Keith adds a moment after. His words are soft, timbre wavering and tender. “I’m happiest by your side, no matter what. I just… I’ve realized a lot about myself this last year, and I don’t want to keep anything secret from you. I needed you to know.”
“Keith,” Shiro sighs out, marveling at the man next to him. He reaches out to palm Keith’s cheek, thumb running gently over the scar that lies there. He thinks of Krolia’s words. “How could I not love you?”
How could anyone know him and not fall in love? It’s a mystery Shiro couldn’t unravel if he had lifetimes to consider it.
“You’re the star that guides me home, Keith. Always. You’ve held my heart for a long, long time, though I’ve tried to live on and pretend otherwise.”
Keith draws in a deep breath, eyes slowly opening wide. His gaze darts from Shiro to the hand resting on his cheek and then back to Shiro, like he can’t believe this is happening. “I-I thought you were hung up on Prince Adam—”
“Adam? No, no, no. It would’ve been a smart match, politically-speaking. All of the royal advisors were pushing hard for a betrothal, but things between us… got tense. I’ll admit he is pretty handsome, though.”
“No,” Keith disagrees at once, nose wrinkling. “He’s just okay.”
Shiro snorts out a laugh, taken aback by Keith’s audible jealousy. “No one who ever courted me holds a candle to you, Keith. You’re brighter than the sun.”
“Wish you’d said something sooner,” Keith nearly grumbles, smiling despite the hint of sourness in his tone. He peeks over at Shiro. “Why didn’t you?”
He could sit here for an hour listing the reasons that have dogged him from the palace to Daibazaal.
“I feared that if I told you how I felt, you would go along with anything to make me happy,” Shiro whispers into his hair, picking the one that had worried him most. “Out of some sense of… obligation. Loyalty. Indebtedness.”
Keith snorts and knocks his knee into Shiro’s. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it, though?” Shiro questions, squinting at him. “You stomached a banana daily for half a year before you admitted that you hated them—”
“Because I didn’t want to be ungrateful,” Keith stubbornly argues.
“That’s exactly my point,” Shiro nearly laughs. It fades, and the prince presses into his bottom lip with his teeth. “And I worried. About you, about my family and the court, about how it would work against you if I died young. About ending up married to someone else and… and what position that would leave you in. I racked my mind, Keith, and found a hundred reasons to never hope for more.”
Keith nods. He’d no doubt found just as many incentives to bite his tongue.
“And I do wish I’d said something sooner,” Shiro tells him last, smiling ruefully. “Glad one of us is brave.”
Keith grins and ducks his head, glancing off out the window. There’s color high on his cheeks as he slowly sinks back onto the bed, his hands folded over his middle and fingers laced. He twiddles his thumbs. “So… what do we do now?”
With a grunt, Shiro lays down beside him. “I… don’t know. Honestly, I never thought I’d get this far.”
Keith hums and glances over. He looks at Shiro with a shyness that the prince hasn’t seen in years. “Me either.”
Shiro feels Keith’s fingers against his palm, light as they trace over its creases and scars and calluses. Blindly, he takes hold of his knight’s hand as it slides against his own— loose, easy to break from if Keith desires it, their palms a little clammy where they meet.
“This is nice, though,” Shiro says after a moment. He feels Keith wind their fingers together and squeeze tight.
“Yeah,” Keith agrees, soft as the distant beat of dragons’ wings. Soft like sweet dreams and wolves’ fur and everlasting affection. He smiles and closes his eyes, the picture of satisfaction. “This is nice.”
“What does kadan-asala mean?”
Keith chokes a little on his qalaba stew. He takes a moment to wipe his chin on his sleeve and finish chewing. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Your mother, a week back,” Shiro says, poking at his own bowl without much appetite. The meat is incredibly tough on human teeth, even after being simmered slow for hours. Qalaba are known for being hardy and stupid, and in thanks for their assistance to the Galra, Kolivan has gifted a herd of three-hundred of the enormous oxen to Arus; they’ll be good feed for Ataashi, if nothing else. “She told me to ask you about it.”
Keith’s cheeks are a brilliant scarlet, and he swallows deep before speaking. “Well,” he says, pausing to fiddle with his spoon, “it’s used for someone… special.”
“Special?” Shiro tears little pieces off of his half-loaf of bread and dunks them in the dark broth for flavor. It’s rich and meaty— as many Galra dishes tend to be— and has a faintly burnt taste from the way they intentionally scorch the roux here, according to Hunk.
“It means ‘where the heart lies’,” Keith says softly, almost squirming in his seat. “It’s hard to translate perfectly, but it’s sort of a romantic variant for someone you can’t live without. It’s, um, used between lovers. Like, really committed lovers. Soulmates.”
“Oh,” Shiro says as he taps the crust of his bread against the table, embarrassment turning his own cheeks warm. He isn’t sure how he’ll be able to look Krolia in the eye the next time he sees her. “Makes sense.”
“I feel like this is a conversation you two could be having in private,” Lance says from the other end of the table. Allura— apparently too well-bred to openly agree with the sentiment— dons a polite smile and continues eating as if she hasn’t heard a word of the conversation.
It’s Lotor who cracks. “Prince Shiro, Ser Keith, you are more than welcome to take this discussion to my library if the lodgings I have provided you both are in some manner unsuitable,” he suggests, very carefully. “Or perhaps a parlor somewhere. Ah, or the private gardens?”
“Literally anywhere but here, he means,” Lance translates, deadpan as he slurps his stew, for once finding some common ground with the newly coronated emperor, who winces and hides his face behind steepled hands. Allura, for her part, is trying very admirably to keep a straight face as she chews.
So they pick up their bowls and leave— Keith pointedly kicking the bench just as Lance has a spoonful of hot stew at his lips before he goes. They pace slow down one of the fine halls of Lotor’s palace as they soak their bread in qalaba broth and chew it down slow.
“Does it entail a ceremony or something?” Shiro asks, curious about everything that makes up the man he loves, everything important to him.
Keith’s spent more than half a year immersed in Galra culture, absorbing their ways and delving deep to find the threads that connect him to his mother and his extended family within the Blade of Marmora. His Galra heritage reaches well beyond the little fangs and preternatural night-vision, the keen sense of smell and stamina akin to a wolf. It runs in his blood, in his passion and his yearnings, in the intensity of his feelings and his fiery devotion.
“I don’t think so,” Keith murmurs back. “It just… is. That’s how it sounds like it was for my parents, at least,” he adds, almost bashful.
“Kadan-asala,” Shiro tries again, smiling at the way Keith draws in a breath and goes red along his ears. “Hm. Has a nice ring to it.”
- -- - -- ---- -- ----- - -- -- - - -- -
They don’t make it back to Shiro’s rooms. Instead, they stumble into a small study within the wing of the palace Lotor granted to the paladins. It’s heavy with the smell of dust and old books and the woodsy incense that the Galra are fond of using.
Keith’s hands are insistent, running over Shiro like he can’t decide where to palm first, where to squeeze, where to dig his nails in. They slip under the collar of his shirt and over his belly and into his hair, tugging just right. The prince barely manages to turn the lock in the door before Keith is moving against him, pressing him bodily into the heavy, solid desk that sits opposite a hearth bearing smoldering coals.
Their mouths meet with a hunger completely unsated by their earlier meal. It’s far removed from their previous kisses— chaste, soft, testing— and what little fumbling they’ve done in the dark these last few nights. The crush of their lips is forceful and needy, a sudden desperation come over them both. It’s a chain of kisses that never seems to break, leaving Shiro’s chest aching in a way that only heightens his arousal.
This is Keith letting loose. As Shiro trails his tongue along his knight’s teeth, he can feel the pointed tips of lengthened canines. That’s a Galra trait, he’s since learned, triggered by heightened emotion in sparring matches and battle. He didn’t realize Keith’s fangs could be coaxed out like this, with open-mouthed kisses and fervent touches.
“What do you want, Shiro?” Keith asks him, breathless as they part, both of their chests heaving.
“I don’t know,” he admits. He’s not entirely new to intimacy— adolescent exploration with a stablehand at the palace, a few trysts with Adam back when they’d been on good terms and headed for an engagement— but nothing has prepared himself for the prospect of being with someone like Keith.
Nothing’s prepared him for wanting someone so desperately.
“You. Just… you,” Shiro says, his hand trailing down Keith’s scarred cheek. “Any way I can have you.”
Keith cracks a smile. “It’d be far quicker to number the ways you can’t.”
The admission leaves Shiro flustered, half-babbling under his breath as Keith leans in for a nipping kiss, reckless with those pointy teeth. The knight soothes his tongue over the reddened spots under Shiro’s bottom lip, quietly apologetic, and presses soft, mouthy kisses down the prince’s jaw with the reverence of a monk laying offerings on a temple altar.
“What do you want, Keith?” he asks as he lolls his head to the side, sighing out contentment as his neck is peppered with kisses.
It gives Keith pause. His lips rest against the pulse strumming in Shiro’s throat. When he speaks, his voice is dark and roughened with need. “There’s… something I’ve thought about for a long time.”
He can probably feel Shiro’s pulse quicken. A long time. Keith’s been thinking of him like this for a long time. As long as Shiro’s pined for him? A thrill courses down along his ribs at the thought; the corner of his mouth draws up a hair, breathless and excited for what Keith has planned for them.
“Mm, do as you like, Keith. I’m all yours.” His breath hitches low in his throat as he thinks of something better. “Make me yours.”
That cuts something free inside of Keith. His dark eyes burn like fire on the water, glinting above fathomless depths. His hands settle firm around Shiro’s waist, tugging and twisting at the fabric until his shirttails come untucked and he can slide his palms over the bare skin underneath.
“Mine,” Keith purrs against his skin as he lips along Shiro’s jaw and nuzzles fondly against his ear. “My prince, my king, my kadan-asala.” He leaves a kiss in between every claim he voices.
There’s a series of pops in quick succession, and it’s only as Keith mumbles a hasty apology that Shiro realizes he ripped the shirt clean open. His quiet laughter cuts to a whimper as soft lips and a searing tongue plant against his chest, trailing a slick line of kisses from nipple to sternum, up to the hollow of his throat and across his clavicle, down to the muscle over his ribs. It’s slow, worshipful, Keith taking his time as he teases Shiro until his back arches and his body bows.
There’s no warning before Keith drops slow to his knees in front of Shiro, palms sliding down over his ribs, his stomach, his thighs as he goes. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, long lashes spread over the heights of his cheeks.
And Shiro is reminded of a time when Keith knelt before him ages past, knighted in the middle of a busy antechamber outside of the throne room, when a stubborn mood had stricken the prince and Keith happily obliged him. For months his requests for permission to knight Keith and appoint him as a royal retainer had been shunted aside, and it had culminated in this: Shiro drawing his sword to the affronted gasps of courtiers and the hushed murmurs of newborn gossip, all cares cast aside as he gave Keith his well-deserved due. Shafts of sunlight had fallen on Keith like the gods themselves were bearing witness, soft and many-hued as they filtered through high windows lined with dyed paper. Decked in well-tailored finery in the colors of the Shirogane clan, he’d looked a far cry from the thief who’d deftly sent Shiro sprawling in the capital streets. Keith had solemnly sworn an oath to him and let Shiro’s sword brush either side of his throat, then rose a knight by Shiro’s making—
But the only gasps in this room are Shiro’s, drawn out of him as Keith tugs down the waist of his trousers and drags the flat of his tongue over the sensitive skin just below the prince’s navel.
The prince claps his hand over his mouth and eyes the locked door, wary of the hallway on just the other side. Anyone could be walking past. A servant could try to come in—
Keith yanks the lacings of his breeches open and wastes no time in getting a hand around Shiro’s hardness, cradling the weight of him in his palm. His lips are featherlight against the head of his cock, the briefest touch enough to send sparks through the pit of Shiro’s gut. A kiss, and then another, dragging his lips down the length of Shiro before sucking softly at a spot along the prince’s inner thigh.
Keith trails his way back with agonizing slowness, even as Shiro buries his hand in his thick hair and pleads for more.
“Patience yields focus, Your Highness,” Keith tells him as he drags the tip of Shiro’s cock over his bottom lip, warm breath making the man above him shudder. He smirks, teasing like a minx.
“I’m going to remember this when it’s your turn,” Shiro whispers down at Keith, the words sticking in the panting dryness of his throat.
“Hm, I hope so.” Keith is still laughing softly as he finally slips Shiro into his mouth, inching slow down his length.
The abruptness of it has a response dying in Shiro’s throat, replaced by a keen that he keeps contained behind clenched teeth and tightly sealed lips. It’s still audible, though, and the prince can feel Keith’s smile and little huff of amusement. The heated sensation has Shiro’s hand clasped around the edge of the desk, nails raking uselessly over the sleek wood.
Keith’s mouth is a furnace, hot and wonderfully welcome. The study’s chillier air makes Shiro hiss each time Keith draws back, leaving the saliva-slicked length of him exposed.
“Oh, t-teeth,” Shiro murmurs as he feels the edge of one of Keith’s canines just graze him.
Keith doesn’t stop, but he does pat his prince’s thigh reassuringly. He’s even more careful after that, so attentive and courteous even as he’s swallowing Shiro down and giving him the headiest pleasure of his life. Maybe even overeager, given that twice he presses too close and chokes himself, shaking off Shiro’s concerned caresses as he immediately finds his rhythm again.
It can only be another minute or so that passes, but under Keith’s ministrations it feels like a blessed eternity. There’s a soft noise as Keith withdraws and instead wraps Shiro in his hand, his sword-calluses noticeable as they glide over his slick skin.
“It’s, uh… more than I imagined,” Keith says, easing back on his heels and looking up with a tilted little smile. His lips are dark and full and paired with the flush high on his cheeks, it makes a pretty sight. “Sorry. Bad at this.”
“You’re doing fine,” Shiro barely manages to rattle out, the last word clipped as Keith’s strokes turn quick and demanding. “Fuck, more than fine, Keith! Gods, you might have to carry me out of here after this.”
“Happily,” Keith says, cheeky as he turns his head and drags his tongue along the underside of Shiro’s length.
“Please, Keith,” Shiro begs after another indeterminable stretch of time with Keith’s lips around him, a knuckle held between his teeth to try and stem the worst of his moaning. His eyes flutter shut as the man answers by sinking deeper onto his cock, slow and deliberate, before returning to his previous manner; it leaves him sweating and flushed an uneven red from the tenacity and persistence of his knight’s affections.
Shiro’s not sure if it’s mercy when Keith looks up at him and quickens his pace, the slide of his hand working in tandem with the bob of his head. The knight’s free hand skims up over his thigh and hips to spread over the tense ripple of Shiro’s abdomen, fingers digging gently into his newly regained muscle.
Shiro covers Keith’s hand with his own, pressing the man’s palm harder into his flesh as he doubles over. Every panted breath feels as though it might be his last as Keith draws him to the brink of orgasm, holds him at the precipitous edge, and then drags him over.
The edges of his vision blacken as he comes, the taste of a little death as his lung seize and his heart throws itself against his ribs with abandon. His seed spills into the warmth of Keith’s mouth and drips messily down his chin, and the man himself couldn’t possibly look more smug as he rises up and wipes his face clean with the handkerchief drawn from Shiro’s pocket.
He lazily collapses forward with his arms looped around Shiro’s neck, draping himself against the prince’s front. Keith sighs happily as Shiro bows his head down until their foreheads touch. “Thank you.”
If Shiro had the strength, he’d laugh. “What are you thanking me for?”
Keith hums low in his throat, closed eyes suddenly blinking open and fixing on Shiro with mischievous intent. “For giving me the best sore jaw of my life.”
Shiro manages a laugh as his second wind comes. “I suppose it is better than getting one in the sparring ring. You don’t have to give yourself aches and pains on my account, though,” he adds.
“It’ll get easier with practice, like everything else. You don’t need to worry about me, Shiro. My love for you is no fragile thing, and I’m not fragile, either,” Keith huffs as he lips at Shiro’s jaw and grinds his hips against his front.
Gods, he certainly isn’t. Keith’s always been strong for his size, but a year of high stakes battles and training with the Marmora has made him a force to be reckoned with. While he kisses Shiro slow and sweet, Keith repositions him with a series of gentle, deliberate nudges until his prince is situated just as he wants him.
Shiro can feel the power in Keith as he straddles one of his thighs and rolls his hips, all lean and coiled muscle writhing up against him; he works his hand under Keith’s shirt and finds the dip along the smaller man’s back, damp with sweat, and presses him closer. Against his thigh, he can feel the hardness and heat of Keith pressing insistently though the material of his fitted drakeskin pants.
Shiro manages to slide his hand into the tight space between them, down Keith’s front, digits slipping into the snug waistband. It’s too tight a fit for his whole hand to squeeze in, and in a fit of impatience he tugs at the laces of Keith’s pants and yanks them loose. He drags the backs of his knuckles over the strained fabric, teasing, and as Keith mumbles a quiet please against his throat, Shiro chuckles and works his hand into his pants.
His knight gasps, breath hot against his ear, but doesn’t slow. His hips ride a little higher, Keith taking hold of Shiro’s broad shoulders to leverage himself up and into the first hint of a touch. It’s shameless, how he moves. Endearingly eager, too.
Keith is hot in his hand, already achingly hard from the act he’d committed on his knees and the friction of his lazy ride on Shiro’s leg. The prince circles his thumb around the head and finds it’s already sticky-slick from the excitement; even that little has Keith burying his face into his neck, fanged mouth loosely set against the tender juncture of his throat, moaning against kiss-marked skin. Meaning to tease out more desperate noises, he drags his thumb down along the underside of Keith’s engorged cock, feeling a span of pronounced ridges, and—
Oh… That must be another Galra thing.
Even with his hand crushed between the press of their bodies, Shiro still manages to work Keith in sporadic strokes. He imagines his palm is rough on Keith’s warm, soft skin, uneven from calluses and healed over scars. It doesn’t seem of any bother to Keith, at least.
And gods— he’s vocal, and Shiro didn’t anticipate that. A half-formed thought occurs in a more placid part of the prince’s mind: that it makes sense, given how loud Keith always was during their sparring matches, grunting with every block and snarling little roars for his stronger swings. Shiro can barely hear himself think over the sound of his own rushing blood and Keith’s labored panting in his ear, interspersed with labored grunts as he hikes his leg higher and ruts against his prince with abandon.
Keith moans low and long, eyes heavy-lidded under a mess of sweat-dampened hair, but even so, Shiro thinks he can see a hint of yellow behind his irises. He drives his hips into Shiro with enough force to rattle the ink and pens on the desk behind them, the hard edges of the wood digging sharp into the backs of the prince’s thighs. The only thing that quiets him is a muffled kiss, biting and needy, as he throws himself into Shiro in desperation.
A sudden jet of warmth spills across his finger and up his wrist as Keith cries out, head hung low and his teeth buried in Shiro’s shoulder. He gives a full-body shudder as the rock of his hips slows to something languid but insistent, not quite ready to stop despite the overwhelming of his senses.
Shiro immediately hooks his arm around Keith’s middle and hoists him close, supporting his full weight on one bent leg. They’re both a mess of sweat and panted breath, but Keith’s definitely the one looking worse for the wear. Or so Shiro assumes— there’s no mirror to make an accurate comparison, and on second thought, he’s fairly certain Keith’s littered a dozen possessive marks down his throat and across his collar.
Ah. And his shirt, ripped open and missing more than half its buttons. And with a dark stain dribbled across the front of his charcoal breeches. He licks his lips and feels the faint soreness of Keith’s earlier bite, too. Gods, we’re hopeless.
He has no idea how they were going to make it back to his room without being witnessed in their current disheveled state— the palace is full of eyes, not the least of them being the highly observant Marmora. But as Keith slumps heavier against him, warmly murmuring his satisfaction, Shiro finds he doesn’t much care who sees them.
He’s still getting used to the feel of his new arm— all sleek, smooth silverite and starmetal, bound together by Altean magic that burns white and sun-drenched gold within its joints— and it shows in his tendency to drop things without warning or vastly underestimate the strength of his grip.
It’s a vast improvement, and one that he still hasn’t been able to properly thank Pidge, Hunk, and Allura for. The new arm brings him no headaches or fatigue, no whispering curses that thirst for bloodshed. They’ve given him a hand with a drakeskin palm and fingerpads, textured for grip but soft enough to stroke Keith’s face without worry; no wicked talons to threaten the people he loves, no searing energy to forge new and terrible scars.
And as fine as the construction is— and it is a masterwork of artificing and engineering, to be sure— it’s Allura’s magic that breathed life into his new limb. It’s a wonder, a mystery. When Keith presses their hands together, palm-to-palm, Shiro can feel it all: the warmth of Keith’s flesh, the slight dampness on his skin, the quick tremble that runs through him.
It’s faint, but he can even feel the delicate strands as he sifts his new fingers through Keith’s hair, the feeling as light as gossamer spiders’ threads.
And it’s of immense use when it finally comes time for them to return to Arus, loading wagons with supplies and readying a caravan of rebel soldiers, refugees, and three-hundred dumb as shit oxen.
Lance confides that he feels a stirring of unease about Lotor, though he’s been nothing but a hospitable host and dependable ally, armed with practical plans to right the empire’s wrongs against a dozen conquered kingdoms. Shiro tries to weigh Lance’s judgment against his admitted jealousy over the new emperor’s closeness to Allura.
“We’ll keep an eye and an ear out,” he eventually says, though Lance looks far from pleased with the verdict. But they can’t question their alliance based on a feeling, a hunch. Not when they’re relying on Lotor to track down Sendak and Haggar, who’ve retreated east, and about to pursue another war back in Arus. “Allura is coming with us, at least.”
That much makes Lance smile. He’s excited to show her his home and introduce the princess to his family; she seems just as keen on the opportunity. And inwardly, Shiro is just as grateful to be keeping company with Allura. There’s no doubt that Lotor adores her, but…
He sighs.
Pidge and Hunk look to be loading half of Lotor’s artificing lab into the back of a covered wagon. Shiro keeps walking and pretends he didn’t see any of it.
In the stables, he finds Shabrang and starts saddling him, happier to do it himself given the horse’s… nippy tendencies. Kosmo dozes in the straw of Shabrang’s stall, curled in a tight ball, and the sight makes Shiro smile to himself. He’s pleased— and utterly, astoundingly shocked— that the two became such fast friends.
Perhaps his horse’s years are catching up to him, mellowing him at long last. Or maybe he just grew lonely in the weeks of Shiro’s long rest and recovery, and found Keith’s wolf was good company. It’s been a long journey for Shiro and Shabrang both, and he suspects the horse will be pleased to find himself back in Arus’ verdant fields, where apples and watermelon are bountiful and the streams run cool and clear. The ride to the Devil’s Divide is only about a day by the main road; by sundown, they’ll be back in their homeland for the first time in over a year.
He doesn’t hear Keith coming. It’s only by Shabrang’s excited snuffling and the quick flick of his ears that Shiro knows he’s near, padding along like a mountain cat. He slips the bridle over the horse’s head, smiling as hands suddenly come to rest on his waist and solid heat presses gently against his back.
Shiro leans back into it, turning his head the barest bit as he feels Keith rise onto his toes and touch his lips to his nape, breathing in deep through his nose. “Good morning.”
“You should’ve woken me,” Keith complains, hands roving up Shiro’s sides. His touch drifts to Shiro’s new arm, nails tracing down along a seam in the gleaming silverite that’s reinforced with starmetal, comparable to the kind that Alfor used to forge the paladin armor.
“You looked peaceful,” Shiro says as he guides the bit into Shabrang’s mouth. Peaceful and thoroughly exhausted from the previous night; Shiro wasn’t looking forward to spending a day in the saddle in his current sore state, but the discomfort was worth last night’s enjoyment. “Are you, uh, planning on saddling up Ataashi?”
Keith slips away and grabs an apple from the basket meant for the horses, chomping into it with a crunch that resounds down the nearly empty stable. “I wasn’t planning on it, no. Should I?”
“Oh. No...” Shiro answers at once, turning away to hide his disappointment. He runs his hand over Shabrang’s dark and lustrous coat before checking the girth strap of the saddle, sighing out long and low.
He can feel Keith’s staring. Can see him from the corner of his eye: arms crossed except for when he lifts the apple to bite out another chunk, brows furrowed as he studies Shiro intently.
“Is it a problem if I ride with you?” Keith asks abruptly. “I’d figured Shabrang wouldn’t mind the two of us for just a day.”
“You’re coming with?” He blurts it out, too eager in his surprise and desperate for confirmation of what he’d hoped.
“Am I— of course I’m coming, you— ugh, Shiro,” he groans as he tosses the rest of the apple Shabrang’s way, paying absolutely no mind as the mammoth horse snaps it out of the air and swallows it down in one bite. “Is this why you’ve been so quiet lately?”
Shiro isn’t sure what to say. All capability for speech vanishes as Keith removes any space between them and stands just shy of glaring at him.
“Why would you think I’d stay here? My place is at your side, same as ever. And yours at mine,” he adds, poking at Shiro’s ribs through his dark riding leathers.
“I didn’t want to assume,” Shiro answers, the words weak. “I thought you might feel called to stay here, with the Marmora.”
He’d feared it, more like, and had carefully skirted any words that might bring the topic to light. The mere thought of being separated from Keith gives him grief, but the last thing he’d ever wish is to pry Keith from everything he’d fought so long to find: his mother, his past, his people. A purpose entirely his own.
“The Marmora sends Blades outside of the empire all the time,” Keith says, shrugging one shoulder and flashing him an uneven smile. “It’s how I got here, after all…”
“Thank the gods,” Shiro mutters. And thank Kolivan assigning Krolia the task of keeping watch in Arus all those years ago.
“I’m as much human and Arusian as I am Galra,” Keith adds. He takes up each of Shiro’s hands and presses a kiss to each set of knuckles. “And my oath to you comes first. You come first.”
Shiro pulls his hands free only to bury them in Keith’s dark mane, fingers tangled as he runs a thumb under Keith’s jaw and tilts his chin higher. “I love you. And I’m… you have no idea how relieved I am, Keith. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
The admission turns Keith’s grin borderline smug, so quick to eat up praise when it comes from the right person.
Shiro feeds it, enjoying the way Keith blushes and preens in his hold. “Need you around to keep knives from finding my back. Keith Kogane, my protector, always saving me.”
Keith hums as he gently draws Shiro’s head down until their foreheads touch, his deep, dark, nighttime eyes slipping shut. “We save each other,” he mumbles, breath puffing warm over Shiro’s lips.
It’s true. Their lives have been twined around each other’s ever since that day, a back and forth of kindnesses and sacrifices that have culminated here, to this. Neither of them would be standing here if not for the other. They wouldn’t be who they are.
“Krolia is coming, too,” Keith says as they part, rubbing his sweaty palms down the dark fabric of his snug riding outfit. “Have fun figuring out how you’ll introduce two Galra in your upper command to a bunch of uptight Arusian nobles.”
Another hour and the caravan is underway, led by an honor guard provided by Lotor with an escort from the Blades of Marmora. There’s a measure of danger in crossing Daibazaal, as always, but the mood among the paladins is light— it’s a homecoming, after all, and they’ve earned it. Pidge is eager to see her family again and show off her work on Shiro’s arm, while Hunk is looking forward to having the time to sit down and make a written record of their exploits while the memories are fresh. Lance has Allura and Coran mesmerized with tales of the Varaderian Coast and its many festivals, absolutely thrilled at his family’s playing host to the paladins.
Meanwhile, Keith tortures Shiro by whispering about all of the foods they’ll get to eat once they’re back in Arus, reminding Shiro of things he hasn’t tasted in years. Even the thought of plain porridge made from the sweet rice that grows in the Vale of Narahir makes his mouth water.
“We’ll find an inn that serves fondue,” Keith murmurs, making him tip his head back and groan. His chin digs into Shiro’s shoulder, but he’s so comfortably folded around his prince that it seems a shame to mention it. “And hot chocolate. Golden cake dripping with honey. I can make zucchini pancakes just how you like them, if we find a farm. And once we’re on the coast, I’ll swim out and get you fresh sea urchins myself—”
“Keith, no!” Shiro laughs, the very idea of it ludicrous. Keith had refused to even set foot in the ocean when Shiro once took him to Narahir, instead worriedly pacing along the shore as Shiro swam and dove to find him choice seashells. “Why? How?”
“And squid, and all the eel your belly can hold,” Keith continues, undeterred. There’s a note of determination in his voice that has Shiro worried he’s going to wake up one morning to a soaked Keith holding an armful of sea creatures.
It’s a concern for later on, though. Trying to dissuade Keith right now won’t accomplish anything lasting, but just may set his determination in steel. Instead, Shiro spends a while teasing him in the same vein— Keith is weak for savory pies and the herby flavors of the Ariz Wastes, and audibly whines at the mention of fried sweet potatoes and other greasy street food of the capital. One word about his favorite dessert from the palace has him moaning against Shiro’s back, and the prince finally laughs and eases up. He has half a mind to buy out the first sweets shop they come across and let Keith lay waste to a mountain of sugar.
They eventually drift to talk of what comes next, and it’s clear from the way Keith wraps tighter around Shiro’s middle that he’s nervous of how Krolia and his own blood ties will be received by their allies. The Galra have been a feature in cautionary tales for hundreds and hundreds of years, living on in Arusian imagination as hulking monsters bred of wolves and dragons, ready to snatch children from their beds and eat them up.
“What will you tell them?” Keith asks, his hands fisting tight in the fabric and comfortable leather over Shiro’s front. “What if they… what if my being at your side makes them turn from you?”
“Then I don’t want them,” Shiro says simply, shrugging. It’s more complicated than that, of course, as politicking and courting lords and ladies and other nobility always is, but that’s the essence of it. He’ll not be groveling to keep anyone who would see Keith and sneer.
“But you need them. Their support.” Keith’s worry has an edge of fear to it. Afraid that he’ll be the division that will lose Shiro his army and his bid for the throne. Afraid of what will happen to them.
Shiro’s hands clench tight around the corded leather of the reins. It’s not as though he wants to see Arusians loyal to him spit and turn, insulting Keith and withdrawing their soldiers from his host, but it’s a cost he’s willing to bear. They have a promise of twenty-thousand Galra warriors from Lotor, if needed— a heavy foreign presence on Arusian soil isn’t ideal, but Shiro will make do if he must.
“I need you,” he says, turning to give Keith a pointed look. “No cost comes too steep if it’s for your welfare. And if anyone claiming loyalty to me has grievances regarding you as my royal consort, they can get fucked. Honestly.”
“Shiro!”
“What? There’s already a war on. Perfect opportunity to clean house,” he grouses, some latent sourness rearing its head. “I can always raise new nobility, and there will be a few notable houses without heads soon enough— I’ll find some deserving knights who wouldn’t mind land and a lordship.”
But that isn’t the part that caught Keith’s attention, apparently. He stammers something out that sounds like gibberish, and then tries again. “R-royal consort? As in married? To me? Officially?”
The question blindsides Shiro for a moment, and he inadvertently sets Shabrang on a crooked course that nearly has them bumping into one of the bull-headed qalaba docilely ambling along with the caravan. Absently, Shiro notes the blue collar around its neck and realizes it must be Lance’s pet, Kaltenecker. Better to keep Ataashi away from that one.
“Was it not obvious? What did you think you would be to me? A secret?” he asks, heart filling with guilt for not banishing such thoughts from Keith’s mind sooner. “I would never put you through that, Keith. I want you beside me as my equal in all things.”
“Didn’t want to assume,” Keith says, echoing their morning in the stables, his gaze cast shyly aside. “I mean, royalty doesn’t marry like this,” he continues, gesturing down to himself in the saddle. “It’s about families and alliances and heirs. And I’m—”
“The only person I’ll ever see myself with,” Shiro finishes for him, his jaw set.
“Half-Galra,” Keith adds, his eyebrows arching uncertainly. “People won’t trust me. Or you, by extension. They’ll say I’m whispering in your ear—”
“Oh, you’d better be,” Shiro grins. “At any rate, we now have alliances with two separate Galra factions and a written peace with the reformed empire. Our people are going to be… mingling. Good relations ought to be encouraged. And it’s my duty to lead by example, after all.”
“I’m glad to see you so confident again,” Keith huffs. By the feel of him, he’s a little more at ease. One of his hands drops to lay atop Shiro’s thigh, a thumb brushing back and forth over the finely woven fabric and soft leather. “But… I’m not sure your family is going to be pleased with you.”
Shiro snorts. “When have they ever been?”
Aside from his grandfather, that is. And a few warm aunts and uncles and older cousins who treated him less like the Iron Queen’s sole heir and more like the mischievous imp he often was. Even the moments of approval he’d won from his lady mother had been few and far between, most often coming on the backs of bloody victories that had secured or expanded Arus’ borders but left his conscious burdened.
“A number of them are displeased that I’m still breathing,” the prince adds, thinking of how many Shiroganes are currently aligned with his opponents. “I intend to keep them continually disappointed.”
After all he’s been through— after so many near scrapes and long nights in which he had reason to believe he wouldn’t survive til dawn- Shiro is more enamored of living than ever before. He’s overcome much, on his own and with Keith by his side, and he is loathe to waste his remaining time on trying to appease people who value him only for rank or blood or what he can do for them.
Keith’s true devotion deserves whole-hearted return in kind, and Shiro wants nothing more than to give it. He wants a life of love and quiet and peace with the man he loves most in all the world, his kadan-asala, his dearest friend and most beloved knight.
“I’m proud of you, Shiro.”
Shiro arches a brow as he turns to look back. “Of me? Why?”
“I’d be listing reasons from here to Arus,” Keith laughs. The morning light is wan, but comes through Daibazaal’s hazy skies with more strength than it did even a month ago. It highlights Keith’s features in the prettiest of ways, glinting in his deeply blue-violet eyes and catching on his beaming smile. “You’re going to be a wonderful king, Shiro.”
“Only with all of you around to keep me in line,” he replies. And it’s true. He wouldn’t be where he is now— who he is now— without them, too.
At the wide and jagged expanse of the Devil’s Divide, Allura rests and prepares to summon a portal that will spirit their caravan to the other side, where the Ariz Wastes await. Keith dismounts first, bouncing in place as he stretches his long legs, and immediately glues himself to Shiro’s side the moment he’s clear of Shabrang.
He clings close even as they stumble off toward a patch of scrubby brush to piss, and Shiro feels young and stupid in a way he hasn’t for ages as they shoulder each other playfully and then spend a few minutes picking up interesting rocks.
“I was wondering if you’d fly over with me,” Keith says casually as they compare their findings on the lazy walk back to the halted caravan, “on Ataashi.”
Shiro slips the glassy black shard Keith had given him into a pouch at his waist and glances up to the skies. Ataashi glides above them in lazy circles, riding the thermals that rise from the hard-baked soil that borders the Divide. She’s only grown bigger these last few months, her wingspan longer than some ships he’s sailed on and her appetite sized to match.
“I’d love to,” he says, giving Keith a little grin. The last time he flew over the Devil’s Divide, he was clinging to the back of Ulaz’s loyal and mortally wounded dragon, sick with fear; memories of it come back unbidden, but he’s nothing if not determined to keep the past from holding him back. There are few things as fantastic as the prospect of soaring with Keith. “Just don’t let me fall.”
Keith rolls his eyes at the teasing remark, but the way he grips Shiro’s hands— flesh and construct both, his grip as fierce as he is in all things— is a sincere promise. “Never, Shiro.”
Shiro entrusts Shabrang to Krolia for the ride through the portal. The willful horse trusts her well enough to be tied to her mount and pace beside her without snapping; Kosmo’s nearness helps, too, keeping Shabrang at ease even as his two favorite people take their leave.
Keith summons Ataashi with a ringing whistle, as casual with her as one might be a sheepdog. After readying her for flight, he helps Shiro climb astride the dragon’s back and secures him in a heavier and more comfortable saddle than the sort the Marmora typically use. There are buckles that fasten over his thighs and handle grips along leather edge, and once Keith is certain of his prince’s safety, he carefully situates himself in front of Shiro and takes up Ataashi’s reins.
He doesn’t give Shiro any warning before taking the dragon up into the skies, and as Shiro frantically slings his arms around Keith’s middle and grips him tight, the prince can feel his laughter.
“You did that on purpose,” he accuses in Keith’s ear, though it’s probably lost in the thunderous flap of beating wings and the rush of air across Ataashi’s scaled skin.
She’s only just airborne as they reach the edge of the chasm and the earth drops away, vanishing to depths that swallow up the light and return nothing but an ominous air of ancient destruction. Shiro’s stomach plummets even as he holds tighter to Keith, his nose pressed into the thick hair that whips around his face.
One of Keith’s hands reaches back and squeezes blindly along his thigh, comforting. The air around them is like the tide or a rushing stream, carrying them away and drowning out everything else. For now, it’s only the two of them— adrift in the skies together, soaring toward home, dwarfed by the sheer expanse of the land below and the unfathomable spread of the cloud-streaked heavens.
Ataashi’s wings shimmer with every beat, the sunlight here strong enough to drench her mottled red and black scales in a many-hued sheen that’s almost blinding. She shakes the long length of her neck as Keith guides her with a touch or a light draw of the reins, the cony spikes that run like a dorsal fin parting the air like a rudder.
Keith takes her on a meandering journey, banking wide and diving swift, giving Shiro a small taste of the tricky maneuvers he and the Marmora regularly pull. Ataashi climbs high at his behest, until they’re flying headlong through clouds tinted gold by the low-resting sun. It’s something out of a dream, and Shiro half-wonders if this is what Oriande looks like.
Keith encourages him to raise his arms and let his fingers streak through the damp and foggy fluff, and so Shiro does, trusting Keith and Ataashi enough to trade his viselike grip on his beloved’s waist with for something unbound and free. Like the hawks he raised as a child, let loose to roam the skies as he watched from well-guarded tower windows. If it were night, he might be able to reach up and scatter the stars with a touch, resetting the constellations to tell a new story.
Their story, maybe. The story of a lost and fallen prince, a bold thief turned noble knight, and how often and impossibly they saved each other— across years and foreign lands and the rift of cruel magic. Of how they and a band of friends and allies toppled an ancient enemy and ended a blight upon the world. Of love that blossomed and burned with the constancy of the stars in the sky, bright as full moons on clear nights, as enduring as the wind.
He certainly wouldn’t be the first Shirogane to write himself into the heavens, and if there’s anyone who deserves to be immortalized in the nighttime skies, it’s Keith.
By the time Keith finally wheels them back toward the Ariz Wastes, the sun is dipped low and it paints the desert earth bright in reds and oranges. They can see for miles, and Shiro even thinks he recognizes landmarks from his years of poring over maps and traversing the countryside: the petrified forest, the salt flats, the towering pillars of Thousand Needles. It’s beautiful, and every inch of it reminds him of Keith.
Further in the distance they spy the rest of the caravan, campfires already burning as they settle in for their first night back in Arusian territory. Ataashi roars in recognition and delight, and even from here Shiro can see the sound send people scrambling. They calm as the dragon banks breezily overhead, familiar and reassuringly uninterested in eating her beloved rider’s companions.
Keith draws out their ride, carrying Shiro far and wide, above pristine, greenery-studded mesas and low over salt flats that sparkle from the last remaining vestiges of daylight. The heavy beats of dragon’s wings ring in Shiro’s ears as they pull turns that make the horizon swim before his eyes, and he thinks that he could spend forever flying with Keith and still never tire of it— of the sky opened up for just the two of them, the solitude and warmth they share together, the thrill of sharing these sights with him alone.
As they circle back, Keith crooks an arm behind himself and Shiro can feel his knight’s gloved fingers wriggle, searching for a hand to hold. Shiro gives him both, folding Keith’s hand between his palms and weaving his mismatched fingers together around it protectively.
It’s good to be home.