[fic] VLD - Fault Lines (Money 'verse)

[lysapadin]

Title: Fault Lines

Characters/Pairings: Shiro/Keith

Summary: Shiro runs into his ex. Yeah, that ex.
Notes: Another installment for All the Things Money Can't Buy 'verse. Blame this one on @sol1056 and @ptw300. 4735 words.

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Fault Lines

Nothing was as small a town as a college town could be, especially once you moved up from being a student to being faculty, and it got even smaller once you threw a few exes into the mix. Chad hadn't even been back in town for a week before he ran into Takashi, which wasn't a surprise at all—it was bound to have happened sooner or later. Takashi had impeccable taste in restaurants and probably wasn't any better a cook now than he'd been last—Jesus, had it been that long already? Time flew when you were doing a guest professorship, didn't it?

In any case, he'd figured he'd run into Takashi sooner or later, probably at Uptown or something. It'd been more than a year, he'd processed, he was cool, no big. He wasn't expecting to run into Takashi on campus, of all the places—on the front steps of the library, no less, with his arms around someone else and his tongue halfway down that someone's throat. Chad wouldn't have paid the couple any attention—undergrads were always hanging off each other and impeding the flow of traffic, it was just one of the hazards of campus life—but Takashi was a striking figure and was still leaving that shock of white hair uncolored. Uncovered, too, even though it was below freezing.

But then, it looked like he had someone to keep him warm these days, didn't it? There was nothing but easy familiarity in the hands Takashi had resting on the guy's hips and the way he rested his forehead against the guy's, exchanging a few words with him, too quiet to overhear.

The guy stole another kiss from him and broke away, scooping a battered backpack up from where it rested at his feet and slinging it over his shoulders. He smiled at Takashi and turned to lope up the rest of the steps. Takashi watched him go, his whole face lit up by the way he was smiling.

Well, huh. Chad had a lot of good memories of Takashi, but he couldn't remember Takashi ever smiling at him like that. He was over it, he really was, but—damn. A man was allowed to have his regrets.

He shook them off just in time, because Takashi looked away and caught sight of him standing there. He looked as surprised to see Chad as Chad had been to see him—more so, maybe, because his eyes went wide enough.

Chad came the rest of the way down the steps, smiling. "Hey, Kashi, long time no see."

He stuck his hand out; Takashi shook it, probably on autopilot. "Hi, Chad." He blinked and shook his head just a bit, discarding his surprise, and smiled. "I didn't expect to run into you today. Are you back in town?"

"Yeah, I am." For the time being, anyway, but that wasn't a conversation to be having out in the open on campus. Wouldn't want anything getting back to his chair prematurely. Chad struck his hands in his pockets and grinned at Takashi. "Guess I don't have to ask how you're doing. Looks like it must be pretty good."

Takashi went red enough to camouflage the band of scar tissue across his nose. "Things are… yeah, things are pretty good," he admitted, a hint of that soft smile sneaking back onto his face.

Things hadn't exactly ended very cleanly between the two of them, but there'd been a lot of water under the bridge since then. "Hey, I'm glad to hear that, Kashi. Really glad." He sighed, rueful. "I mean, I wish it could have worked out for us, but I'm glad you went ahead and did it after all, even if it wasn't for me."

Shiro stared at him, eyebrows drawing together just a bit. "Did it…?"

"You know." Chad flicked his fingers at Shiro's chest, which had been a nightmare of scar tissue the last time he'd seen it—damn, closer to two years ago than not. "I know how much it bothered you. I'm glad you got it taken care of." Chad couldn't resist; he waggled his eyebrows. "Especially if you're gonna start raiding our pool of hot undergrads."

Okay, one thing he definitely hadn't missed was the way Takashi could flip from normal to stiff as a poker (and not in the fun way) at the drop of a hat. Going on two years or not, Chad still recognized the expression—thick brows lowered, butting together, the way Takashi pressed his lips together and clenched his jaw hard enough to make the muscles at the corners flicker. "You think I went in for the reconstructive surgery."

"Well, duh, of course—" Chad stopped and looked closer. Takashi still had that scar across his nose, source of one of the worse buzz-saw snores he'd ever been subjected to and really a tragedy on a face as otherwise perfect as Takashi's. "Are you saying you didn't?" The way Takashi pressed his lips together tightly enough to turn them white was answer enough. "Oh. Oh, uh. Wow. Huh." Awkward. "Guess it's still the honeymoon phase, then."

"Keith and I have been seeing each other for a year."

Chad blinked. "Oh. Oh! Guess it must be love, in that case. Good for you, Kashi, I mean that." He grinned. "Hey, now that I'm back in town, we should get together for dinner sometime. You bring Keith, I'll bring Bryce, it'll be good times, yeah?"

Takashi opened his mouth and very visibly stopped himself from saying whatever it was he'd been about to say. He took a breath. "I don't know whether that's such a good idea, so maybe not."

"Oh, he's the jealous type? Fair enough." Chad shrugged. "No worries, man. Listen, it was great seeing you, but I gotta run, the semester's about to start and I need to go sweet talk the business department's secretary into making some copies for me. Catch you later, Kashi!"

"Later," Takashi echoed.

Chad grinned and headed off, quietly and privately amazed. Maybe it really was true what they said about there being someone out there for everybody. Looking at it that way, he got the warm fuzzies.

Mood significantly buoyed, Chad headed off to deal with the old battle-axe in charge of the business department, since he couldn't do without copies of his syllabus to hand out when classes started, and the office would be closing in a few minutes anyway.

 

 

Keith had his suspicions when Shiro picked him up from his work study shift in a completely different mood from the one he'd had when he'd dropped Keith off for his first work study shift of the semester. Shiro smiled to see him, sure, and kissed him hello like normal, but the smile had slipped off his face by the time he was pulling out of the library parking lot and navigating traffic. "You mind if we just order a pizza tonight instead of going out?"

On the one hand, pizza sounded just fine to Keith, who was already reaching for his phone to place the order. On the other hand, he was pretty sure that Shiro had made reservations at Farfalle, since he was constitutionally incapable of not attempting to spoil Keith given half a chance. "Sure, sounds good to me. The usual?"

"Yeah," Shiro said, so Keith called up Sal's and ordered the extra-large pepperoni and double breadsticks, still not really over the fact that they had a usual or that Laura said, "Oh, Keith, you guys want your regular tonight?" as soon as he'd given her the address. Funny how much could change in just a year.

"Be about forty-five minutes," Keith said after ending the call. "Friday night and students coming back from break, she said."

That roused Shiro from whatever it was he was thinking about so hard. "Oh—oh, right, I should have thought about that. If you don't want to wait—"

"I don't think I'll starve to death in the next hour," Keith said as lightly as he could, though he was adding that to the evidence pile for his Something Was Bothering Shiro hypothesis. "Besides, pizza sounds really good tonight."

Shiro stole a glance away from the road while he waited for the light to change. "Are you sure—?"

"Yeah, I'm sure." Keith settled into his seat a little more comfortably and changed the subject. "I know it's more money and all, but I must have been crazy to let Sharla talk me into being a supervisor for her."

It worked, thank goodness. "Tough meeting?" Shiro asked.

"No, the meeting was fine. We just had it six different times because no one showed up for it on time." And by the third time one of the new hires had wandered in well past the scheduled three p.m. start, Sharla had cheerfully handed the responsibility for getting them oriented to Keith, since, as she'd put it, he was going to be supervising them anyway, they might as well know what they were getting into from the start. "Whatever that's supposed to mean."

Shiro coughed—pretended he was coughing, since that sounded a lot more like a laugh than a cough to Keith. "Maybe she was talking about how high your standards tend to be?"

"Expecting a minimum of basic competence isn't a high standard," Keith muttered.

"That depends on how you're defining basic competence, doesn't it?"

"Let's try defining it as being able to match the call numbers on the book with the signs on the frigging stacks," Keith said.

"Oh," Shiro said. "That… that does sound pretty basic, yeah."

"And yet," Keith told him, which made Shiro laugh again, so at least something good had come from the afternoon's aggravation.

Venting about the new hires and their misadventures in shelving and filing got them the rest of the way home (Keith rolled that word around inside his head, still not quite accustomed to the tender weight of it) and managed to distract Shiro from his funk, so Keith permitted himself to hope that it was just a passing mood. Then there was Potroast to greet and take for a quick jaunt around the block. "I'll do it, I want to stretch my legs."

Potroast took his sweet time, wanting to stop every other foot to sniff at a leaf, a funny piece of grass, or a suspicious stick. Keith didn't bother to fight him on it, since hurrying Potroast only tended to make him get stubborn, and he probably had been cooped up all afternoon.

They made it all the way around the block just in time to see the Sal's delivery car pull away (Potroast made an earnest attempt to yank Keith's arm out of the socket by lunging after it), which was pretty good timing, anyway. Keith hauled Potroast (unresisting once the car turned the corner and was out of sight) inside and threw his jacket across the back of the couch after letting the dog off the lead. "I think we stopped to smell every damn leaf from here to Chestnut and back," he called to Shiro as he kicked his way free of his boots. The pizza and breadsticks were sitting on the coffee table and the television was powering up, so he headed into the kitchen just in time to take the plates and napkins out of Shiro's hands before he could try to juggle them and the beers. "Hey, let me get that."

Maybe taking the dog for a walk had been a mistake—half an hour away had let Shiro sink back into whatever bad mood had been bothering him when he'd picked Keith up. Though he smiled when Keith took the plates, raising himself up to kiss the corner of Shiro's mouth as he did, the lines around his eyes were tighter than they should have been.

Well, damn. Was it time to ask what was bothering Shiro yet or not? Keith pondered that question as he followed Shiro back into the living room. Maybe not; sometimes Shiro just had bad moods that passed off with enough time, or a night's sleep, and all Shiro needed was a little time.

Still, he waited for Shiro to choose a spot on the couch and then claimed the seat next to him before Potroast could and leaned against him. "What are we watching?"

Shiro hesitated. "Something stupid with lots of explosions?"

"Sounds like a good idea to me." Keith filled his plate with pizza and grabbed one of the foil pouches of breadsticks and made himself comfortable while Shiro browsed for a suitable candidate from among the list of new releases. He settled on something that looked like it wanted to be a James Bond movie when it grew up, and certainly met both criteria: it was very stupid and things exploded on screen roughly every ten minutes.

And Shiro remained tense next to Keith, not really relaxing as the movie wore on and the level of the beer in his bottle dropped.

Okay, maybe the move wasn't a good enough distraction. That was fine; there were some things well beyond the power of a schlocky D-grade movie to fix. Besides, there were other ways of distracting Shiro.

Keith tipped the last of his beer down his throat and leaned forward to deposit the bottle on the coffee table. When he settled back, he burrowed his way under Shiro's arm until Shiro took the hint and curled it around his shoulders properly. He even gave Keith a faint smile as he did, which was good. Keith made himself comfortable and draped his hand over Shiro's leg, hopefully casually enough that Shiro wouldn't think anything of it.

He didn't say anything, so Keith assumed that he'd pulled that much off. He left his hand where it was for the next scene—some kind of discussion between the hero and sidekick who Keith was pretty sure was gonna die in the next ten minutes, and then he stroked his fingers over Shiro's knee, back and forth, like absent-minded fidgeting.

Again, Shiro didn't seem to have noticed anything, or if he had, didn't connect it with any ulterior motives on Keith's part. He did cup his hand around the point of Keith's shoulder and pressed him a little closer, so Keith kept going, rubbing his thumb over Shiro's knee and his fingers over the dimple just next to the kneecap before dipping them lower to run them along Shiro's inseam.

There, finally, he got a reaction: beneath his ear, Shiro drew a deeper breath, quicker than usual.

Keith kept his grin to himself and toyed with Shiro's inseam idly, rubbing his fingers back and forth in tiny strokes that he gradually lengthened as the movie wore on. By the time the sidekick had met his demise in a predictably gruesome fashion, he was sweeping his fingers halfway up the inside of Shiro's thigh and back down again while Shiro held very still under his hand and—Keith glanced—was certainly feeling the effects.

All right, then.

While the hero had his big emotional meltdown, Keith said, "This movie is really stupid."

"Yeah, it is." Shiro's voice was pitched lower than usual.

"Mm." Keith ran his fingers down to Shiro's knee and dragged them up the inside of his thigh and kept going until he was palming Shiro through his slacks. Shiro uttered a groan. "Wanna turn it off and go upstairs?"

Shiro was silent for a beat. "You've been doing that on purpose." From the sounds of it, he didn't know whether he wanted to be outraged or amused.

Keith massaged the growing hardness of his cock and grinned. "Yeah. Seems to be working, too."

"Punk," Shiro breathed.

"Yeah, so?" Keith flipped the button of his fly open and worked the zip down so he could slide his hand into Shiro's slacks for a closer touch. "You weren't really watching the movie, were you?"

He fitted his fingers over Shiro's cock, rubbing it through the thin material of his boxers until Shiro groaned and relented. "Not really." He fumbled for the remote and turned the television off.

"That's what I thought." Keith twisted himself around so he could catch Shiro's mouth for a fleeting kiss. "Come on, this'll be more fun anyway." One last squeeze, then he drew his fingers free and pushed himself to his feet.

"The pizza—" Shiro began.

Keith laughed. "Yeah, I know, some people can't be trusted." Potroast thumped his tail against the floor like he knew they were talking about him and pricked his ears when Keith bundled up the pizza box and leftover breadsticks to put away in the kitchen.

Shiro was still on the couch when he came back, which wasn't great. Keith didn't like the distant expression on his face—it was too distant, too considering. Christ. He'd only been at work for five hours. What had happened while he was trying to hammer the basics of the Dewey decimal system into his new minions' thick skulls?

He leaned over the back of the couch and slid his hands down Shiro's chest. "Come to bed with me," he murmured against Shiro's ear. When Shiro didn't move, he nibbled the shell of it and got a reaction to that much, a little shudder for each tiny bite. "Please?"

Shiro sighed, the soft exhale of it trailing off into a low moan when Keith caught his earlobe between his teeth. "All right."

Whatever it was that was going on, one thing was for sure—leaving Shiro unsupervised was clearly not a good idea. But then, it wasn't a hardship to stay close as Shiro stood or to press himself against Shiro to take a kiss from him, one that he poured himself into as a promise of things to come, before tangling their fingers together and coaxing him upstairs.

And it was coaxing, by the time they made it to their bedroom. Shiro's steps had slowed to a near crawl as Keith gently pushed Potroast back out of the room and shut the door after him. When Keith turned to him, meaning to slide his hands under Shiro's shirt, Shiro froze.

Keith froze, too. On the one hand, he didn't want to push, but on the other, Shiro hadn't reacted like that in months. "Not good?"

Shiro closed his eyes and shook his head. "No, it's fine. I'm fine."

That was so patently untrue that Keith would have snorted had he not been so worried. He lifted his hands away from Shiro's waist and caught his hands instead, slotting their fingers together. "Come here." He coaxed Shiro over to the bed and sat, back against the headboard. Shiro followed him, every step reluctant, at least until Keith pulled him down into his arms, setting Shiro's back against his chest and clasping his arms around him. He rested his chin on Shiro's shoulder and kissed the corner of his jaw. "You know we don't have to do anything at all, if it's a bad day, right?"

Shiro flinched, tense against his chest. "It's not—I'm fine."

Keith laced his hands together over Shiro's stomach and settled into get comfortable. "Shiro, babe, I don't know what's going on and I'm not gonna ask you to tell me unless you want to talk about it, but whatever it is, you're not fine." He rested his cheek against Shiro's shoulder. "And I don't want you to force yourself into bed with me, not ever."

Shiro didn't say anything to that right away, but his stomach moved under Keith's hands with the deep breath he took and held for a count of eight before letting it out again. As he did, the curve of his spine softened as he settled against Keith's chest. Keith settled his arms around Shiro more comfortably and listened to the sound of Shiro's breathing.

Eventually Shiro stirred. "Sometimes I think I'm just waiting for the day you realize what a mistake this was."

Keith stomped on the reflexive flare of hurt, of anger, since it wasn't as though it would help. "What mistake would that be?"

"The one where you're living with me when you ought to be out there enjoying your college years. I'm a mess, Keith, inside and out."

"You're my mess, though," Keith said after considering and discarding half a dozen other responses. "I'm enjoying living with you way more than I ever liked sleeping with drunk frat bros, too, by the way."

"I really don't see how," Shiro admitted.

"Yeah, I know." Keith found Shiro's hand, the one made of metal, and wrapped his hand around it. "You think this is who you are." He slid his other hand under Shiro's shirt, finding the ropy scar tissue. "You think this is who you are. And yeah, they're a part of you, sure, but they're not all of you. They're not even the most important parts of you." He moved his hand up and laid it over the quick thudding of Shiro's heartbeat. "This is. And I wish you could see that. Believe that."

"I do, I just—" Shiro took another deep breath and held it. When he let it out again, he said, "I ran into Chad today."

Keith reviewed what he knew about Shiro's social history but couldn't place the name. "Who's Chad?"

"My last boyfriend."

Oh. "That Chad. I see." Keith kept his voice calm, though it took every bit of self-control he possessed. "What happened?"

"I guess he saw us together." Shiro's voice had gone quiet. Small. Keith didn't like it and liked what Shiro had to say next even less: "He thought that I'd had that surgery after all. Then he thought you and I were still in the honeymoon phase. Then he congratulated me because it had to be true love if you and I were still together even though I look like this."

"Does Chad have a last name?" Keith asked when Shiro had fallen silent again.

Whatever Shiro had been expecting him to say, that wasn't it. "Uh—why?"

"Because I'm going to need his last name so I can hunt him down and throttle him for saying that shit to you," Keith explained with what he felt was remarkable calm given the haze of rage that had settled over him. "How dare he."

"He didn't mean anything—"

Keith refused to let him finish that. "I don't care what he meant, not when he made you think that all that matters about you is the way you look. Not when he made you think all I care about is the way you look. I'm going to hunt him down and then I'm going to gut him." His voice was shaking by the time he got to the end of that, shaking at the very thought of those things coming out of someone's mouth to hurt Shiro, Shiro who already had enough trouble seeing the worth of his own heart. "No, first I'm going to feed him his own balls, then I'm going to gut him. I'm going to—"

"Keith." Shiro turned in his arms and caught Keith's face between his palms, stopping him short. He looked startled. "Keith, you can't kill Chad."

"Why the hell not?"

Shiro swept his thumbs along Keith's cheekbones. "You mean aside from the fact that murdering people is illegal?"

"I'll point to you and explain what he said to you. No jury in the world would convict me," Keith muttered.

"I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way." Shiro leaned forward to rest his forehead against Keith's. "And I don't want to find out the hard way that they won't allow you conjugal visits in jail."

"They'd still have to catch me first."

"Please don't kill Chad," Shiro told him. "As a special favor to me."

Keith scowled, for all the good it did him when Shiro was giving him such a beseeching look. "Can I maim him, then?"

"Better not," Shiro advised.

Keith groaned and tipped his head back, squeezing his eyes shut. "Fine, but only because it's you asking."

"Thank you." Shiro set his hands on Keith's shoulders. "That… that really made you angry, huh?"

"Furious." Keith cracked his eyes a bit to see Shiro's face; he looked—wondering. Or astonished.

That made Keith angry, too, but for an entirely different set of reasons. "I wish you'd let yourself believe it when I tell you how much you matter to me. You, not what you look like or how many zeroes you have at the end of your bank balance. I wish you'd let yourself believe that you deserve good things."

"I do." Shiro faltered when Keith opened his eyes the rest of the way and stared at him. "Most of the time. But sometimes I get knocked back a little." Keith snorted and Shiro ducked his head. "Or a lot." He paused there, staring at Keith's chest, maybe working something out in his head. "I'm sorry I let him get inside my head like that." He glanced up, smile rueful. "I did break up with him for a reason."

"A good reason, too." Keith lifted his hands and ran them up Shiro's arms and over his shoulders, tugging on them until Shiro curled sideways and leaned into him, much too large to really curl up in Keith's arms or lap in any effective way, not that it was going to stop either of them. He rested his cheek against Keith's shoulder, and Keith cupped the back of his head. "You sure I can't at least kick him in the balls for you?"

Shiro laughed. "I don't want to have to bail you out for assaulting Chad."

"Assault, hell. They can't charge you with assault if you can show it was self-defense."

"…do I want to know why you know that?"

Keith rubbed his fingers through Shiro's hair, fine against his fingers. "Ambient knowledge?" he tried, but Shiro didn't buy it—just waited him out in silence. "Okay, fine, practical experience. It really was self-defense, though, and I got lucky." Really damned lucky; there was no reason anyone should have taken his side and plenty of reasons they shouldn't have. He'd hardly realized that until after the fact, when his caseworker had sat him down for a few hard truths. It was probably one of the nicest things Iverson had ever done for him, though he hadn't thought so at the time.

"Well, no need to tempt fate a second time," Shiro said. "Chad isn't worth it." He went silent for a moment before adding, "He probably wasn't ever worth it, come to think of it."

"No," Keith told him. "I don't think he ever was."

"I'll remember that." Shiro settled into him more firmly. "Thanks, by the way."

"Hmm? What for?"

"For being you." Maybe Keith's confusion came through his silence somehow, because Shiro chuckled. "I don't think anyone has ever threatened grievous bodily harm on someone else for me like that before. Not and made me think they meant it." He raised his head from Keith's shoulder to smile at him. "So thanks for that."

Okay, if that was what it took to get Shiro to believe him when he was arguing against all his Issues, fine, Keith would take it and call it good. "You're welcome," he said, as deadpan as he could manage. "I'd beat assholes up for you any time, just say the word."

"My very own brute squad." Shiro leaned in and kissed him, still smiling. "What would I do without you?"

"You'd think of something." Not anything good, probably, but that was beside the point. The question was purely rhetorical, as far as Keith was concerned.

"Mm, I wonder." Shiro stole another kiss from him, this one slower, wetter. "So… is going to bed still on the table?"

Keith didn't even hesitate. "Going to bed is always on the table," he said immediately. "You interested?"

Shiro smiled. "Yeah. I think I am."

"Awesome," Keith said, reaching for him and letting Shiro spill him down to the sheets.

Honestly, he almost felt sorry for Chad, who could have had this for himself if he'd only had the brains to see it. Almost. His loss was certainly Keith's gain, and he fully intended to hold onto it with both hands.

end

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