[fic] VLD - A Common Misunderstanding (Misunderstanding 'Verse)

[lysapadin]

Title: A Common Misunderstanding

Characters/Pairings: Keith/Shiro; Lance, Krolia, Hunk, Curtis, Romelle, Pidge, Matt, Allura

Summary: Five times that Keith explained that he and Shiro aren't together (and one time Shiro explained why).

Notes: 13,181 words of making Keith and Shiro work for their happy ending. S8 compliant, but only until I start fixing things.

~~~~~~~~~~

A Common Misunderstanding

So the thing about Keith is that he's not even a little bit subtle. Lance knows the guy is grieving—hell, Lance wouldn't be surprised if there were Galra fleets that know Keith is grieving. Keith could be textbook for stages one and two of the Kübler-Ross scale, like no one ever told him that there was anything past that and so he's stuck oscillating between denial and anger. So when he's cooled down after being annoyed by Keith's everything after their latest argument, he feels bad for giving the guy a hard time and sets out to be the bigger man by apologizing.

That means waiting for Keith to get back from his latest attempt to find some trace of Shiro, of course, which, well, the denial is strong with Keith. A part of Lance wishes that he would go ahead and find something, a scrap of Shiro's armor, a gauntlet, anything that would put an end to the uncertainty. A bigger part of him feels guilty about that, like he's giving up hope too easily, but the fact remains that Shiro is gone and at this point, it looks like he's not coming back. If they had some kind of evidence, maybe Keith could go ahead and move on a little.

Lance laughs at himself for the thought, because based on past history, one thing Keith Kogane is not good at is moving on.

A giant magic psychic robot lion shouldn't be able to look dejected, but Red manages it somehow when the bay doors open. It's something about the droop of the tail and the posture of the head; even after Keith sets down, Red continues to look depressed. Like paladin, like Lion, maybe. When Keith emerges, every line of his body looks exhausted.

Then he spots Lance waiting for him and his posture goes stiff. Wary. "What," he says when he's close enough to Lance to have a conversation.

Maaaaybe ambushing Keith right after his latest fruitless attempt at finding Shiro wasn't the most brilliant idea he's ever had. Too late now. Lance shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. "Sorry about earlier," he says. "I was being a jackass. I shouldn't have been."

It's almost offensive how wide Keith's eyes get, like he doesn't believe what he's hearing. "What," he says again, this time less fuck off and leave me alone and more error processing data, please reboot.

"I'm apologizing," Lance says, doing what he can to be patient. "Mending fences. Building bridges. You know, that thing people do when they know they've messed up?"

The way Keith stares at him, he has to wonder if Keith does know. Well, that's kind of on him, a little. He's good at picking fights with Keith, less good about kissing and making up after. His mother would be ashamed of him.

"Okay," Keith says after a small eternity of staring at him. "Uh. Thanks, I guess." He might have been raised by wolves, but they taught him at least enough that after a brief pause he realizes he has a part to play, too. "Sorry for yelling."

"Forget about it," Lance says. "We cool?"

"Sure." Keith sounds dubious, but he usually does about most things that don't directly involve Shiro.

Since this doesn't, Lance figures it's as good as he's likely to get. "Cool. You hungry? Hunk made up a plate for you when you missed dinner."

"I'm… not really," Keith says after a moment. "Thanks anyway."

Lance squints at him, but no, he's pretty sure Keith's face is thinner than it used to be. He knows for damn sure Keith does tend to skip out on meals with the rest of them. "You need to keep your strength up," he says. "At least have a few bites."

Keith closes his eyes. "Not right now," he says. "I can't—not right now. Please."

He just finished apologizing, so it's much too soon to get into another fight with Keith. "Okay," he says, "just don't forget it's there later, okay? You don't want to hurt Hunk's feelings, right? Underneath that teddy bear exterior, there's a marshmallow heart, y'know?"

At least Keith cracks a faint smile. "Later," he says. "Right now I just need some rest."

"Fair," Lance allows, stepping aside to allow Keith out of the hangar bay. He moseys along with him, because Keith is tired enough to be moving slowly. "Just don't forget. My grandma, she was the same way after my granddad passed, you know? She nearly wasted away to nothing before she pulled out of it."

"Shiro isn't dead," Keith growls—legitimately growls, which is a lot less weird these days, knowing what they do of his genetics, than it was when he'd do it back at the Garrison. "He's out there somewhere, I just have to find him."

That is not a fight Lance is willing to have right now, no matter how good it might be for Keith's mental health in the long run. "Yeah, I know, I know, I'm just saying that it's not gonna make him happy if you pine away for him before he turns up again."

Keith gives him a baffled look. "If I pine away for him?"

Wolves comma raised by, Lance reminds himself. "You know, like a frail romance novel heroine, wistfully thinking of her true love?" Either Keith will make fun of him for the romance novel thing, blow up at him for being compared to a romance novel's heroine, or just be angrily confused by the whole thing. Any of those are good options for getting the bleak look off his face. Maybe he isn't as deeply in denial as he used to be.

What he isn't expecting is for Keith to say, slow and bewildered, "Shiro isn't my true love."

"No, I'm pretty sure he is," Lance says. "You're definitely the heroine pining for his manly arms."

Keith stops in his tracks and Lance braces himself to be punched, but Keith just looks at him, eyebrows scrunched together like he has no idea what language Lance is speaking. "I'm not—you're wrong, it's not like that. We're not like that. He's just my friend."

Okay, Lance knows that he misses things sometimes, it's a thing and he gets it, but come on, there's no way Keith can expect him to be that oblivious. "Hah hah, very funny, I am totally amused," he drawls. "Seriously, though, you—" Keith is still giving him that look, and the thing is, he's not subtle. "—you're serious?"

"He's just my friend," Keith says again.

Lance knows he's gaping, but anyone would be. "Uh. Dude. Keith. Hunk's my friend, and I know for a damn fact that he would be very kindly and gently telling me that he's got this rock he knows if he caught me looking at him the way you look at Shiro."

Keith goes red. "That's—it's not—" He pulls the helmet off his head and drags a hand through his hair. "That doesn't have anything to do with our friendship." He looks at the upward drift of Lance's eyebrows and scowls. "Shiro's—it's not like that for him. That's all that matters. He's my best friend. That's all."

There's a lot in there that Keith isn't exactly denying, but Lance doesn't see a lot of point in bringing that up. "Huh. Wow. Glad I don't have any money riding on the are they or aren't they question, 'cause I would have lost it for sure." He shrugs. "Sorry, man."

Keith's mouth tightens, and for a second, Lance is sure that he's going to say that he's sorry too. In the end he puffs out a breath and starts moving again. "Whatever," he says, and that's that.

In a sense, losing their ship upon entering the quantum abyss has been an unexpected gift, however frustrating it had been in the moment. It is the gift of time, time to spend with her son, to learn who he is and allow him to learn her in return, time for both of them to heal from the wounds her choice to leave had inflicted.

Krolia is still going to have stern words for Kolivan when next she sees him, because his sense of humor is utterly regrettable. She doesn't care that he must have seen it as a fair return for the shock he must have had when Keith turned up on his doorstep with her blade—at least he was not in an undercover posting on a base that was under direct bombardment from a rival warlord.

Still. It worked out in the end. (That is something Keith's father had been fond of saying, though surely he would never have imagined things working out quite like this.)

The greatest regret of Krolia's life has been the forfeiture of her son's childhood, and so she has savored every flash of times past that the quantum abyss allows them. Some are incredibly mundane, the sight of Keith's dark head bent of a coloring book as he painstakingly guides a crayon across the paper, a moment of watching him run a vacuum cleaner across the carpet of a foster home, the slow repetitive movement of his hands whetting their shared blade. Others are heart-wrenchingly significant: his small figure standing before a gravestone with bowed head and clenched fists, his laughter as his father tossed him into the air and caught him again, the first time he set his hands on the controls of a flight simulator, a young man telling him not to give up on himself, the Red Lion launching through space to scoop him up, a young man telling him to be the next black paladin, an empty seat in a cockpit.

That young man, she soon learns, is Shiro, the black paladin, also the Champion of the gladiator ring. That's a pair of facts that Krolia might have had more trouble reconciling had she not already known humans—a human, at any rate—and seen firsthand their capacity for mercy and for ruthlessness in apparently equal measure. She would question how this Shiro could have been so generous to her son and somehow managed to survive the bloody sands of the arena—and she would question the glimpse of the future that troubles Keith so.

Not that he tells her his troubles. No, that takes time, takes the slow building of trust between them, though she recognizes the trouble in his eyes long before the evening he sits with the cosmic wolf's head in his lap and says, "I just don't understand what could possibly cause me to fight Shiro like that. What could cause him to attack me like that."

"Sometimes people change," Krolia essays, not because she necessarily thinks that's the case here, but it provides Keith an opening.

He takes it, shaking his head. "No. No one changes that much. You don't know Shiro, he wouldn't—he wouldn't."

Krolia knows more of Shiro than her son realizes. She's an undercover operative trained to notice and retain the smallest of details. She has seen a great deal of Takashi Shirogane through her son's memories. What's more, she's seen her son and the echoes of Shiro in him. Has seen the way careless bits of advice and casual affection have shaped Keith.

She does not share these observations with her son, though she is grateful that the man who has influenced her son's life so deeply seems to be a good one. "No, not like you do." She watches Keith poke at their fire and feels compelled to try to ease his mind. "If these are glimpses of the future, then perhaps they are only possibilities. One path among many."

Keith glances at her, and the sudden flare of his hope hurts her a little, in that he is allowing her to see it and that he is so ready to seize on any explanation that might let him deny a prospect he dreads. "Do you think so?"

"I think it is a quantum abyss," Krolia says. "And I think even Earth's science is aware that observation has an effect on that which is observed."

"Hey, that's half of my heritage you're poking fun at," Keith says as the set of his shoulders eases still further.

"It's a very charming heritage," Krolia assures him. "I've always had an appreciation for the rustic approach to life."

Keith rolls his eyes at her; she has a sudden intense memory of his father trying to explain the nuances of that expression to her and must breathe carefully through the aftermath of it. He doesn't miss it; he sinks his fingers into the cosmic wolf's ruff and says, "Another Pop moment?"

They've grown accustomed to one another, know each other's tender places, and find it easier to speak of such things now. Krolia nods. "Galra don't roll their eyes at each other. He had to explain that one to me." She smiles. "There were a lot of things we had to explain to each other."

"He must have thought it was good practice." Keith smiles into a memory. "I was always asking him questions. Never realized how patient he was with that until—later."

That, Krolia has learned, is the kind of statement that means explanations will have her adding names to the list she is keeping just in case she's ever on Earth again and has the time to explain to certain people why treating her son badly was such a poor decision on their parts. "I'm sure he enjoyed every moment of it," she choose to say rather than pressing him for more. "And I hope that when you have kits of your own, I will be there to assist with their questions in his stead."

She's not certain why that causes Keith to gape at her so—humans do speak of and plan for the future, so she has not broken any taboo, and she had thought it established by now that she wishes to be present in his life henceforth in any capacity that he will permit. "When I have—I'm gay!"

That is not a euphemism Krolia knows. "I think that you haven't just told me that you are in good spirits," she says carefully. "Or am I mistaken?"

Her son stares at her and then buries his face in his hands with a groan. "Oh my God." Krolia says nothing, and eventually he realizes that she's still waiting for clarification. He raises his face from his hands; his eyes are wary. "It means I like other guys. For, um. Romantic purposes."

Krolia waits for additional clarification, but none is forthcoming. "I'm not sure how this precludes kits," she says. "There are many routes to that end, even if your biology is not as flexible as a full Galra's might be and you are not able to carry any kits yourself." A thought occurs to her; perhaps he has postponed finding out the specifics of what his hybrid nature will and won't permit. It's not uncommon for the children of cross-species unions to want to avoid having to know for certain that various opportunities their peers experience are foreclosed to them. "Have you talked to a medic about that? You should do so if you haven't, especially since your father wasn't able to tell you about the Galra side of your heritage before he died."

Keith drops the stick he's been using to poke the fire into the flames without seeming to notice that he's done so. "What—what?" he says. "What do you mean, flexible biology?"

This is not how her son jests, that much Krolia knows, which means—"I am going to gut Kolivan with my bare hands," she says once she realizes that Keith has no idea what she's talking about. "You came to him with my knife and no idea who you are, and he didn't take the time to make sure you learned what you needed to know? How dare he."

Keith stares at her, round-eyed; had he the ears for it, they would no doubt be pinned flat against his skull. "He—what—I don't—there was… there was a lot going on at the time?"

"Knowledge or death, Keith, that is the core of what it means to be a Blade. Kolivan owed you knowledge and withheld it, and because of that, he has earned death."

Keith holds his ground admirably. "Please… please tell me that you're joking."

Krolia exhales. "I am going to mop the floor of the training hall with him. Provided he apologizes properly for being so negligent with my son, I will spare his life. Probably."

Keith stares at her. "I still don't know whether you're serious or not."

"Never mind that now." Krolia sets aside the issue of Kolivan's doom for later consideration. "You really do need to see a competent medic for a complete work-up, but those are in short supply at the moment. For now, the basics: you've seen that there are a great many Galra hybrids in the universe by now, yes?" He nods, clearly wary of where she is going with this. "That is no accident. As a species, Galra have a very flexible biology. It allows us to be reproductively compatible with nearly any sentient species with whom we can contrive to complete the necessary acts."

Keith takes this in. "I did kind of wonder how that was possible," he admits. "It seemed weird."

"It's not, particularly, but the Galra are better adapted than most, at least in that sense." Krolia snorts. "It's why the purity of your lineage matters so much to certain types of Galra. If it's so easy to crossbreed with other species, then, to a certain kind of mind, it's all too easy to taint your clan's blood. Or so they say." Keith is frowning, so Krolia moves on. "Most people have the good sense to ignore those types. The thing that's important about being Galra, or part-Galra, is that many Galra can both sire and bear kits, depending on the situation and their partners. Your father and I weren't able to determine how much of that might end up applying to you, given the circumstances, but you should be aware that it might end up being a possibility."

Keith opens and shuts his mouth several times before he finds his voice. "I think I would have noticed having the equipment to bear children."

"And of course you've had all the comprehensive abdominal scans to verify the precise nature of your reproductive tract." Krolia is amused by the similarities to his father, who'd been equally baffled when she'd explained the matter to him as well. Keith opens his mouth, shuts it, and glares. "As I thought. Again, this is an issue for a qualified medic, one who is familiar with the complexities of hybrid biology. Until then, be aware of the potential and take precautions." She smiles and elects to lighten the mood. "I'm sure your Shiro will sire strong, magnificent kits, but such things are better done purposefully rather than as happy accidents."

The joke does not land as she means it to. Keith sputters. "What—Shiro? What the fuck, Krolia!" He shakes his head vigorously, the same way the cosmic wolf does when they try to bathe him and get water in his ears. "He's not my Shiro. He's not my anything!"

He is, as far as Krolia can tell, utterly in earnest. "But you love him," she says slowly, and watches his face go red. "And he appears to love you."

"Not like that!" Keith yelps. "Shiro is—he's—I'm like his little brother, not—not that." He stops and shakes his head again. "Anyway, you don't know—you haven't ever met him, all you've seen is from the flashes, and those might not even be real."

"Ah. I see. That's a fair point, of course." She does not point out how many things those glimpses show, since Keith seems to be rather distressed at the moment. "I apologize for the mistake, in that case."

Keith slumps and mutters something against the cosmic wolf's ruff. It sounds like Not the first time it's happened.

Krolia decides that he did not mean that for her ears and casts for a way to move on. "A pity, I suppose, because I expect he would sire strong kits, but just as well. I'm hardly ready to be a grandmother." She taps her chin. "Are there other prospects, though? The skinny, loud one doesn't seem all that promising, but the other one, Hunk? He seems strong and gentle. I imagine he'd make a good provider. Or the princess—I know you said you were, how did you put it? Merry?" The deliberate mistake in terminology makes him twitch. "But she's Altean, so that's hardly the difficulty it might be." By this point Keith is staring at her, horrified and incredulous, so Krolia presses on, warming up to the task. All the glimpses she's seen of the other Altean are ridiculous, which is frankly perfect for her purposes. "The other one, though, Coran? I would advise against it. He doesn't seem very stable, which of course is generally what one seeks in an older lover, is it not?"

"This isn't happening," Keith says blankly. "This is a horrible nightmare and I am going to wake up any minute now from the horror that is my mother offering me advice about Coran as a potential lover."

"It's very important to consider your choices carefully," Krolia informs him, invoking her memories of the pompous old man who'd delivered a similar lecture to her cohort when she was a cadet. "Choosing the other parent of your kit is a choice for life."

"Oh my God." Keith's laughter is horrified, but the important part is that he's laughing. "Stop."

"An older lover would be the best route at this stage of your life," Krolia continues, keeping her face straight through will alone. "A more senior Blade, perhaps—the younger Blades tend to take too many risks, though I'm sure you know nothing about that sort of behavior." She lifts a finger while Keith squirms. "I forbid you from choosing Kolivan, however, due to the extreme brevity of his projected lifespan. Raising a kit alone is not a choice I'd wish on anyone, not if there is a way to avoid it."

The horrified amusement slides off Keith's face when her tone wavers on the last. "I know it isn't," he says gently. Too gently.

"Yes, well, now you can't say I never shared any of my wisdom with you," Krolia tells him briskly.

"I guess I can't." He looks up at the strange half-light that makes up the sky of the quantum abyss. "It feels late, though. I think I'm going to get some sleep."

"Of course. I'll stand watch. Sleep well, Keith."

"Thanks," he says and makes his escape, the cosmic wolf following him into their shelter.

Krolia can't blame him for going; she needs some solitude and time to regain her own equilibrium after the wild ups and downs of that conversation.

Does her son realize that he never denied loving Shiro? She doesn't think he even noticed it.

Someday they will uncover the secrets at the coordinates at the heart of this quantum abyss, and they will make their way back to ordinary space. When they do, she hopes to meet Takashi Shirogane for herself and learn whether she truly has misjudged the man in Keith's memories.

Hunk has his opinions on a lot of things, but for the most part he keeps them to himself unless they have to do with critical engineering issues (like whether to single-modulate or double-modulate) or equally critical culinary issues. Obviously his opinions are objectively correct on every point, of course, but some arguments are really more trouble than they're worth (but the modulation argument is one-hundred-percent worth it and he will go to his grave on that one).

Still. Hunk has opinions, and his opinion about Shiro asking Keith to be his best man is that the whole thing stinks.

"Keith?" Lance had said when he'd found out, his surprise and outrage rousing him from his lethargy so effectively that Hunk had hated how grateful he felt. "He chose Keith to be his best man?! That's—that's—that's outrageous, Hunk, he's going to be lucky if he gets crêpe paper streamers and mixed nuts in the Garrison gym if he lets Keith help him plan his wedding!"

"I don't think that's what a best man does," Hunk had said, or tried to say, but Lance hadn't been listening—he'd already whipped out his phone and was telling Shiro to leave planning the wedding in his capable hands, and, well. They all had the same tacit agreement when it came to Lance, these days: if Lance demonstrated interest and energy about anything, the rest of them would do whatever it took to encourage him.

So being Shiro's best man ended up being about more than just holding onto the ring during the ceremony and making a speech at the reception. Hunk will be the first to say that Keith has actually done a really good job of keeping Lance from going overboard with things and has steered him in the direction of the kinds of things that seem like Shiro's style without squashing Lance's enthusiasm.

He's been on top of everything, actually, like making sure Shiro's wedding goes off without a hitch (hah!) is his job and he's getting paid for it. Which is great and all, just—well. It's Shiro's wedding, and Keith is going to be the best man and not the other groom.

Right now Keith is sitting at the table of Hunk's kitchen, his head bent over a basket of wedding favors that need the name tags tied on with fiddly little bows. He's keeping Hunk company as he works on the wedding cakes.

One of the great things about Keith is that he knows how to just put his head down and work on something in silence. It's restful. So of course Hunk goes ahead and ruins it by opening his mouth. "Hey, Keith? Can I ask you something?"

"If it's why anyone thought that putting name tags on a thousand wedding favors was a good idea, fucked if I know how Lance talked me into this," Keith tells him, tone absent.

Hunk snorts and eyes the cake he's currently icing. "I know exactly how he did it, dude. He told you that Shiro thought it would be a nice gesture and you caved." Wedding cake for a thousand sentients is a lot of cake; Hunk wants them all to be perfect. This one passes muster, so he slides it into its box and adds it to the cart that'll be going into stasis until the big day.

"Huh." Keith sucks on his teeth and nods. "Sounds about right, actually."

"Mmhmm, exactly." Hunk retrieves the next slab of crumb-coated cake and gets to work on icing it. "That wasn't gonna be my question, though."

Keith is quiet for a little bit before he finally says, "What did you want to ask?" There's a note in his voice that says he has an idea of what's coming, but isn't going to try stopping it.

It's almost enough to make Hunk change his mind about asking, to pick out something innocuous instead. But—no. He needs to know. If he knows, maybe there's something he can do. He focuses on smoothing the icing into perfect sharp edges and says, "How come I'm not writing your name next to Shiro's on these cakes?"

The kitchen is quiet enough for him to hear the way Keith sighs. "I don't know, really. I tried to talk to him once, tell him how I—but he shut me down. Then he started riding in Green."

Hunk is a damn professional, and that's why his hands stay steady and the cake he's working on doesn't end up with a huge dent in it. "He—turned you down? Why would he do that?" He'd thought that there'd been a miscommunication somewhere, maybe, or some kind of missed connection, not that one of them had laid it out there and the other had rejected him.

"I don't know, Hunk. I really just don't know." Keith sounds—God, he sounds so resigned. Like this is a question he's asked himself before, over and over, without ever coming up with an answer.

"I'm sorry, man," Hunk says after a moment, at a loss. "Just—I'm really sorry."

Keith sighs again. "Yeah. Yeah, so am I."

They finish their respective tasks in mutual silence. Hunk doesn't raise the issue again.

Takashi pops the question over dinner one night, completely out of the blue really, though in retrospect the candles and the catered takeout ought to have been a clue that something was up. Curtis says yes—of course he says yes. Takashi is the most amazing thing to ever happen to him, and he honestly has no idea what on earth he ever did to catch Takashi's eye. He's glad he did it, of course, thanks his lucky stars every day, because Takashi could have, ought to have, anyone in the world just for the asking, just given how gorgeous he is. It doesn't even account for the fact that he's a literal hero and that he's a genuinely good-hearted guy, though of course he's those things, too, and even more.

Yeah. Curtis says yes, enthusiastically, and drags Takashi off to bed for a round of just-got-engaged celebration sex.

The thing is, of all the someones Takashi could have had, there's one that stands out. And Curtis wonders. He really wonders.

There's only one thing he can do about it.

Keith Kogane, black paladin, hero of the battle against the Fire of Purification, senior Blade of Marmora, de facto Planet's Most Eligible Bachelor now that Takashi is off the market, looks oddly nervous when he shows up to meet Curtis for coffee. (The planet is recovering, and if some of Earth's Coalition allies question the prioritization of agricultural products like coffee and chocolate, at least they don't interfere.) Curtis hasn't had much chance to get to know Keith since he always seems to have missions that take him off the planet, but the handful of conversations he's managed to scrape up with the man are confirmed when Keith sits down across from him and hunches over this mug: this is not a guy who lets people in easily, maybe by inclination and maybe just because he never learned how. It might be both, given the stories Takashi has told him.

Those stories are why Curtis is here—that and the way he's seen Keith look at Takashi. "Well," he says after they've both tasted their absurdly expensive coffees. "Takashi says he's shared the news with everyone, so I guess you've heard?"

Keith's expression doesn't flicker, which is when Curtis realizes that the guy has really steeled himself for this chat. "Yeah, I'd heard." His voice is just a little rough. "Congratulations."

"Thank you." He doesn't know Keith, but he doesn't think any of that was feigned. "Takashi talks about you a lot, you know. Tells stories about you. The two of you. He says that you've saved his life so many times that he's lost count of them all." Keith shifts in his seat at that, restless. Curtis thinks there might be a trace of red dusting his cheeks—is he embarrassed? "The way I figure it, he's not one to exaggerate, so if he says that he wouldn't be here if it weren't for you, then it must be true. So first of all, I wanted to say thank you for that. We'd all be worse off without him, but—he means so much to me. So thank you. I wouldn't have known I could be this happy if I hadn't met him."

Keith opens his mouth, expression gone flat and blank, but no sound comes out. Eventually he looks away from Curtis and swallows some coffee. He's still looking out the window and his voice is distant when he says, "You're welcome. I'm glad—I'm glad you'll be happy."

Okay, maybe that wasn't what he should have led with. Maybe he should have just kept it to himself, given why he asked Keith to meet with him like this. He'd known there were feelings there, but not that they went so deep. Shit. "Sorry," he says. "That was a dick move, I shouldn't have said any of that to you. I'm sorry."

A muscle flickers in Keith's jaw; he's still staring out the window fixedly. "Oh?" It's a polite sound, devoid of meaning or intent.

"Because you love him too," Curtis says quietly. "Right?"

Knowing that Keith is part Galra is a very different thing from watching his skin take a lavender cast and seeing his nails lengthen and dig into the wooden tabletop. His sclera have gone yellowish when he turns to look at Curtis again. "What do you want?" he growls. Literally growls.

In retrospect, maybe this whole thing was a terrible idea. Too bad he's only just now realizing that. Curtis stiffens his spine and does his best to meet that hot yellow glare evenly. "Why are you letting me do this? You didn't try to stop Takashi from dating me. You meant it when you congratulated me. I know you agreed to be his best man. How can you possibly do any of that? This is Takashi we're talking about. He's one in a million."

"More like a thousand," Keith says. "Based on best estimates." When Curtis blinks at him, he says, "You know, the clone thing…?"

"That's… not very funny," Curtis manages to say after a moment.

"Shiro would have laughed."

Curtis can't actually argue with that; Takashi does have a weird sense of humor. "Anyway. Why didn't you try to fight for him?"

Keith just looks at him; his coloring is fading back to Earth-normal tones. Eventually he says, "Did he tell you how we met?"

"He was doing a recruiting event at your school."

Keith snorts. "I stole his car." He smirks at Curtis' shock. "Yeah. And then he bailed me out of juvie and told me the Garrison was where I belonged."

"He left that part out of the story," Curtis says, not really sure how else to react to that. Not sure where Keith is going with this, or why he's sharing this, or what it has to do with the question he asked.

"Did he?" Keith shrugs and has another sip of coffee. "That's the truth, though. When we met, I was in a group home for troubled kids, one step away from landing in juvie for good, and I was pretty sure I'd just taken that step. Then he bailed me out and told me there was somewhere else I could go. Something better that I could be. I didn't believe him, not at first. But he didn't give up, and he wouldn't let me give up, and that's how he gave me the sky." He sets his cup down precisely and leans across the table until he's invading Curtis' space. "Do you know what that meant to me? I was a kid that everyone was happy to throw away, and he gave me the sky. He says I saved him? He saved me first and I am never going to be able to repay him for that." He settles back in his seat, slouching into it as Curtis takes a startled breath. "You wanna know why I'm letting this happen? It's because he asked me to. He told me he didn't want that kind of love from me, so that's that. Happy?"

Happy isn't the word Curtis would choose, no. "Why are you telling me this?"

Keith gives him a sardonic look that lasts until Curtis feels his face go hot. "You asked." He picks up his coffee again, swirling it against the sides of the cup. "After it's done, I'm leaving. He's got someone else to watch his back for him now. I may owe him everything, but if he doesn't need me to stick around, well." His smile is the barest bitter twist of his lips. "I think I'm allowed to not want to have to watch, don't you?"

"More than allowed, yeah," Curtis says softly. "I—you know what, I'm sorry I—" He stops, trying to figure out how to apologize. "I thought the picture I had was the full one." Had thought Keith and Shiro were friends who never quite made it to being more, had thought the attraction between the two of them was something—tame. Whatever Keith is, whatever he and Takashi might have felt for each other, it isn't tame. "I didn't know—I didn't know any of that. And you didn't have to tell me any of it."

"You asked," Keith says again. "You got anything else you want to ask?" Curtis shakes his head, no, because there's nothing else he dares ask this man. "Great. I'm out. See you around. Or not."

He gets up while Curtis is still fumbling for some kind of reply, striding out with his head held high, and he doesn't look back.

"Jesus," Curtis says to the empty seat opposite. "Be careful what you wish for, I guess."

It's not until later that it occurs to him that Keith was challenging him to ask what else Takashi might have been eliding in his stories, but by the time it does, it's too late for it to make much difference.

Shiro is on his way back from checking on the installation of the seismic monitors when he overhears his name. He instinctively slows and silences his steps to get a better shot at overhearing whoever it is talking about him.

"Wait, I'm sorry?" Keith's voice, just around the corner from him by the sounds of it, surprised but not in a way that signals trouble. Shiro relaxes. "I'm sorry, I think I've misunderstood you."

Shiro identifies the rusty chuckle that follows as belonging to the leader of this clan of the Dohe. The sound is sly, full of innuendo, which is impressive for a species that puts Shiro in mind of Earth geckos. "Ah, now you're just being modest, Blade Kogane. Your relationship with Captain Shirogane puts me in mind of how things were between me and my third husband, bless his memory. Truly, you are very lucky to have met your heartmate at such a young age."

"Ah," Keith says while Shiro is torn between hilarity (the Dohe matriarch is over a hundred Earth years old if she's a day, so the thought of her and her third husband is hilarious, if also oddly sweet) and exasperation (this again?). "There's been a misunderstanding. Shiro and I have been good friends for a long time, but we're not, er, heartmates."

"Hmmm." The Dohe matriarch is silent for a bit after that sound of consideration. "You are not paired off with him at all? Are you sure?"

Shiro wonders what Keith will say to that—he's pretty sure they've left all that behind them, he hopes they have, but if the Dohe matriarch is picking up on something, then maybe it's not. He hopes it is, though. Hopes this isn't going to disrupt the easy way things are between them now.

"I'm very sure," Keith says firmly.

Shiro exhales, relieved. Good.

The Dohe matriarch makes another of those considering noises, creaking like an unoiled hinge. "I see. In that case, would you like to meet my great-grandson? He's an excellent prospect, and that's not me being partial just because he's kin."

Shiro covers his mouth to keep any wayward snickering from escaping. He can just imagine the look on Keith's face at the offer.

"I'm sure he is, Matriarch Dageda." Keith sounds calm about the prospect of being introduced to a gecko lady's great-grandson. "It's very kind of you to offer, but I'm not looking to settle down right now."

"Who said anything about settling down? The boy's still as flighty as a gefa flock in full summer. He won't be ready to build a family for a long time yet. But I'm sure he could show you a way to spend a pleasant evening, if you were inclined." She laughs again. "If I were just a little younger, I'd see to that myself."

"That's very flattering of you to say." Keith sounds so unruffled that a person would think he gets propositioned by elderly aliens all the time.

Come to think of it, he probably does. He's very much the public face of the Blade of Marmora, not to mention the former leader of Voltron, which still holds a lot of cachet even now that the Lions have left them for reasons unknown. He takes the lead on a lot of the Blade missions that blend peacekeeping with aiding planets trying to recover from millennia of Galra misrule (and, Shiro suspects, a certain amount of spying). Huh. Shiro hasn't considered that before.

Keith isn't done, either. "I'd be happy to be introduced to your great-grandson, if the opportunity should arise."

Wait. Seriously? Keith isn't actually thinking about going through with this, is he?

The Dohe matriarch laughs—cackles, really. "That's the spirit, Blade Kogane. Don't you worry about that opportunity, I'll see to that. Just you remember that the rest is up to you."

"I'll bear that in mind," Keith says; Shiro can hear the smile in his voice.

Right. He has definitely eavesdropped enough and really needs to get back to work. The seismic monitors are being installed, but he should check that the transfer of the medical equipment is proceeding, too.

Shiro sets his shoulders and heads off to check on that.

It's not like it's weird, though, right? Keith has been an adult for years and is absolutely capable of handling his own affairs (urk). Really, it's good, right? Shows everything really is behind them and all that. And there's nothing wrong with Keith taking some time to enjoy himself. The life of an intergalactic sort-of-secret agent is pretty nomadic, or so Shiro has learned in the months since he commed Keith and told him he needed to get off Earth, needed something to do. Keith had showed up the next day, no questions asked, and gotten him involved in the Blade. "It's a big universe," he'd said. "We can always use another set of hands to help out." Shiro hasn't seen him take a break since—well, he works with Keith, but he's not a Blade proper. Sometimes Keith disappears for a little while on missions that he's assumed have a lot more to do with spying than aid work. Now he wonders if they might have been opportunities for a little discreet dallying.

Jesus, what is wrong with his head? (Better question: what isn't wrong with his head?) This isn't any of his business unless Keith decides to make it his business. It isn't weird if Keith wants to sleep around or date or anything like that. It's only weird that Shiro hasn't even clocked that as a possibility until now, like he's just assumed that, what, Keith is still stuck on him? Which is stupid and selfish and completely implausible anyway.

Sometimes Shiro really does think that Curtis was on to something there at the end, when he'd told Shiro that he was the most self-absorbed person he'd ever met. It hadn't been meant to wound, that wasn't how Curtis had operated—it had been an attempt to get his attention.

Best all that was in the past, anyway. If Keith decides that the Dohe matriarch's great-grandson looks like a fun time, Shiro will be the first to congratulate him and tease him about doing a walk of shame back to their vessel after the fact. That's what friends do, right? Right.

"You okay?" Keith asks him towards the end of the day. The seismic monitors are in and the Dohe operators have them calibrated; the clinic has the healing pods set up and have already admitted the first patient, a young Dohe hunter who broke an arm when she took a tumble down a ravine. "You're quiet this evening."

"Yeah, sure, I'm fine," Shiro tells him, which they both know is a polite fiction.

Keith accepts it in the spirit it's meant, letting it go by without challenge. "Okay. Hope you packed a change of clothes, because it turns out the Dohe are the kind of people who like to have a big party to say thank you."

"Better than the we hate your faces and are convinced you're holding out on us kind," Shiro says.

Keith snorts. "Oh, yeah, definitely. I'll take the party kind over the hate-you kind any day."

Shiro squints at him. "Who are you and what have you done with Keith?"

Keith shoves his shoulder, grinning. "Shut up. I don't have to like parties to prefer them to getting shot at."

"No, seriously, where's the real Keith?" Shiro demands.

Keith just laughs at him. "Come on, even I can get tired of having to fight everything eventually."

Shiro looks at him, tall and broad-shouldered, strands of hair escaping his messy working braid, and smiles at just how far they've come. "Glad to hear it, buddy."

"Yeah, well, anyway." Keith knocks his shoulder against Shiro's. "Get cleaned up, yeah? We don't want to offend our hosts, right?"

"Right." Shiro follows him onto the Blade vessel without saying that the Dohe don't seem very inclined to take offense at much.

They do, however, know how to throw a party. Shiro might have his suspicions about how much of a hand Matriarch Dageda has had in arranging this impromptu celebration, but her clan pulls together a generous spread of food, including a roast animal of some sort that forms the focus of the feast, plus various delicious side dishes that Shiro doesn't ask about. (Hunk has trained them all out of asking what they might be eating, because there's always a risk of getting an answer.) There's also music, which doesn't sound anything like Earth's music but is still pleasant, and a bonfire, and a space for people to dance.

As it turns out, the Dohe are also a species that drinks alcohol recreationally.

This is his life, Shiro thinks at one point, looking up at the alien stars that shine down on a clan of celebrating gecko-people and Galra and one human. He's on a planet that may never have been visited by another human until now, looking at constellations no Earth map knows, drinking a sweet-sour alcohol that has him pleasantly buzzed. It's absolutely not the life he was expecting, but when he thinks about that life—that set of lives, heroic space pilot who overcame adversity to go farther into space than any human had gone before, heroic paladin who overcame adversity to defeat an evil empire, heroic captain who retired into blissfully normal domesticity—maybe that's for the best. He kind of likes how this ex-paladin-ex-pilot who travels the stars with his best friend to help people thing is shaping up.

He sees Keith across the way from him, holding a drink of his own and speaking to one of the Dohe. The pattern of stripes on the Dohe's guy's crest look familiar—oh, those are Matriarch Dageda's markings, only not dulled with age. So she made good on her promise, it seems. Huh. How about that.

Keith smiles at the guy in the friendly way, not the being polite to strangers way. The Dohe guy leans in a little closer, and Keith doesn't lean away.

So. Gecko-men, that's Keith's type now? Shiro doesn't know that he sees the appeal himself, though this particular gecko-man is tall and looks to be well-built. Maybe that's all it takes.

The guy says something to Keith, indicating the area of the village square where there are already some members of the clan and a few of the youngest Blades assigned to this mission dancing. The invitation is apparent even to Shiro, who can't hear a word they're saying—the body language is clear enough. Keith considers it and decides why not? He throws back the remains of his drink and nods at the Dohe guy, who flutters his crest in pleasure and sets a hand at the small of Keith's back, guiding him away from the bonfire.

Well, good for Keith, Shiro decides, turning away from Keith and his would-be partner for the night. His own drink is almost empty; he should do something about that.

And so he does.

Later, he's not sure how much so, Shiro becomes aware that there is a set of shoulders under his arm and someone's warm body pressed against his side—oh. Oh! They're helping him walk. Why are they helping him walk? He can do that himself, has done a perfectly good job of it for years.

"Yes, normally you do a great job of walking," the person—Keith!—tells him, humor coloring his tone. "But right now you are really drunk and the whole walking thing isn't working out so well."

Oh. That makes sense. Come to think of it, his feet don't seem to want to do what he's telling them to. "But why am I drunk?"

"Heck if I know, but it probably has something to do with how much of that aozu you drank," Keith tells him. "You are gonna have the worst hangover."

"That's Morning Shiro's problem," Shiro tells him, but absently, because there's something bothering him about the way Keith is helping him pick his way along the path from the Dohe settlement—oh, they're going back to the ship.

"I am going to make sure to tell Morning Shiro that Drunk Shiro said that." Keith sounds like he's on the verge of laughing. "I'm sure he'll appreciate it."

"Keith," Shiro says, protesting, and temporarily loses track of what he was planning on saying. "Keith. Keeeeeiiiiiiithhhhh." It's enjoyable to say, the percussive force of the consonant at the start of his name followed by the easy slide of the vowel and the trailing softness of the final consonant, like a sigh. Like Keith himself, the sharpness of his exterior and the softness he hides behind it. "Keith."

"I'm right here, Shiro," Keith reminds him.

Oh. Oh. That's the problem. "Keith! Why are you here?"

"Because I'm helping you get your drunken ass to bed?" Keith is very patient, and also very amused. Shiro doesn't mind that. "I think we've been over this already."

"No, no, no." Shiro plants his feet, which means Keith has to stop, too. He pats Keith's shoulder. Or paws it. Same difference. "No, you shouldn't be here, you're supposed to be with… with… whatsisname. The grandson! No, the great-grandson, that's it. That's where you're supposed to be right now, not with me."

"What the—how did you—never mind." Keith slides his hand up from its resting place on Shiro's hip and flattens it between his shoulders, pressing until Shiro has to stumble forward or risk falling flat on his face. "Don't worry about Relim, Shiro, he's not important. You come first. You always come first."

"That doesn't seem fair."

Keith snorts. "Since when is life fair, Shiro?"

"But that's not right," Shiro persists, fixating on the idea that Keith doesn't think life is fair. That Keith is putting him first again. Keith always puts him first. "You should be having fun with… with… whatsisname. You deserve to have fun, Keith."

"I wouldn't have a lot of fun if I knew I'd left you all by yourself when you're this drunk," Keith tells him.

"You're the leader of this mission," Shiro argues. "You should delegate these things."

"I'm not going to delegate this. Hey, here we are, time to go up the ramp."

Oh. They're at the Blade ship already. The cargo ramp is lowered and the cargo hold waits at the top, dark and empty. Shiro blinks up at it. "Ramp. Right."

"Here we go, one foot after another." Keith guides him up the ramp, one step at a time.

The process is arduous enough to demand all of Shiro's wavering focus. Then they have to get to the crew deck, and by the time they do, Shiro is focusing on something else. "I don't think I'm gonna keep the aozu down for much longer."

"Shit." Keith hustles him into the bathroom just in enough time to get Shiro to the head.

It's probably for the best that he's too drunk for the gory details of what happens next to linger in his memory for long.

Keith stays with him, rubbing his back while he heaves until there's nothing left in his stomach to expel. He helps Shiro back to his feet and gives him water to rinse his mouth before chivvying him into brushing his teeth and drinking some more water.

By the time he accomplishes all that and gets Shiro into his bunk, Shiro's head is spinning unpleasantly. "Why did I drink so much?" he groans.

Keith finishes pulling his boots off and sets them aside. "Don't ask me. I left you alone for a little bit and the next thing I knew, you were singing. Come on, pants off, you don't want to sleep in them."

"I was singing?" Shiro asks, appalled. "Oh my God." It's better to think about that than the way Keith is undoing his belt and fly and tugging his pants down his legs.

The light is dim in his quarters, but he catches the edge of Keith's grin up at him nonetheless. "You were singing. If you're lucky, Verdun won't upload the footage anywhere."

"God, just kill me now." Shiro flops backwards into his bunk and covers his eyes with his arm.

"Nope, not happening." He hears Keith moving around and then the clunk of something hitting the deck beside his bunk. "Trashcan's right beside you if you need to throw up again. You want that shirt off, too?"

"That would mean moving." Now that he's still, not moving seems like an excellent idea. The bunk is spinning enough around him as it is.

"You don't really want to sleep like that," Keith decides for him. The next thing Shiro knows, Keith has an arm under him and has hoisted him mostly upright. Shiro sags against him, and Keith gets to work unbuttoning the shirt to get it off him.

This isn't bad either; Keith's shoulder is warm under his cheek and it feels nice to have someone's arms around him. Shiro sighs and presses closer; he's drunk and that's his excuse.

Keith's breath hitches slightly, but he doesn't say anything. Doesn't move to push him away, either.

"Were you gonna sleep with whatsisname?" Shiro asks, even though it's none of his business.

"I don't know. Maybe." Keith's voice is hushed. "He was nice. Seemed fun." Even more quietly, he says, "Sometimes it's just nice to feel like someone wants you that way, you know?"

Shiro does know. "I messed it up for you. I'm sorry."

"You didn't mess anything up," Keith says, firm about it. "You don't have to apologize for anything."

But that's just it. He really does. "You're always taking care of me, and you never—you don't ever think about yourself, do you? Why don't you ever put yourself first?"

Keith sighs. "Shiro, you're drunk."

"That doesn't mean I'm wrong."

Keith's shoulder rises and falls under his cheek as he sighs again. "Does it ever occur to you that I do the things I do because I want to do them? No one's holding a gun to my head, Shiro. I'm here right now because this is exactly where I want to be."

"You want to be taking care of a drunk mess of a human being instead of getting laid?" Shiro asks. "C'mon, Keith, really?"

"Hey, watch what you're saying about my best friend." Keith thumps his fist against Shiro's shoulder lightly. "And yeah. I do. You're my best friend and you matter to me. Sex is just sex, it's not that important. You are."

"I'm a mess even when I'm sober," Shiro tells him. Confesses, really. "I've always been a mess, and I don't think—I don't think I'm ever going to get it together. You have to have realized that by now."

"So the fuck what?" Keith's tone is steely. Uncompromising. "You think I honestly care about any of that? Me? Shiro, practically the first thing I did when we first met was steal your car. I've always been a mess and that never stopped you from caring about me. How come you hold yourself to a higher standard than you do anyone else?"

"I—" Shiro stops there, because damned if Keith doesn't sound just like his last therapist. "I don't know. It's just how it is."

"Then maybe that's something you should work on once you start sobering up," Keith tells him gently. "I promise you, you're the only one who expects perfection out of yourself. The rest of us love you just fine the way you are, okay? Try to remember that for me."

There's a question hovering on Shiro's tongue, but he doesn't dare ask it, doesn't know which possibility terrifies him more—that Keith might say yes, or that he might say no. "When did you get so smart?"

Keith laughs and lifts his hand to rub it against the nape of Shiro's neck. "Now I know you're drunk." He ruffles Shiro's hair. "You think you're ready to sleep now?"

"Yeah, I guess." Shiro sighs. "Thanks, Keith. For everything."

Keith carefully eases him back down to the mattress. "It's nothing, Shiro." He pulls the blanket up over him and even tucks it in, too. "If you need anything, just yell, okay? I'll be around if you need me."

"I know," Shiro says, because yeah, he really does.

Maybe that's a place to start.

Way back when, Keith would have staked his life on the argument that Coran's various Altean traditions were just a bunch of nonsense that he was making up to make himself and Allura feel better about being the last of the Alteans, stuck ten thousand years out of time. He's lucky no one ever asked him to make that bet, because now that he knows a lot more Alteans, he knows that it really isn't just Coran. Alteans in general just really do like having traditions and celebrations.

Lance puts it more succinctly: "Anything for a party!" he proclaims while Allura looks on with an indulgent smile.

Well. Given the circumstances, Keith isn't going to begrudge Lance any of his parties. Romelle's engagement is a pretty good reason for a party, too, though Lance certainly has summoned them to New Altea for much more specious excuses than that. (To date, the loss of their oldest daughter's first milk tooth is Keith's choice for the most ridiculous Altean party he's attended, but he'll admit that Shiro has a strong argument in favor of Baby's First Haircut.) When the invitations to the engagement party go out, Keith is perfectly happy to hand the Signinian job off to a junior set of Blades—the experience will be good for them—and throw some things in a bag before heading to his personal ship. Shiro shows up with his own bag while he's doing the flight prechecks.

Sometimes Keith wonders whether they ought to talk about the way they always seem to be in sync about these things without even trying, but he usually decides he's happier not messing around with a good thing.

Besides. It doesn't make a lot of sense to head for New Altea separately, not when they spend most of their time working together anyway.

He remembers the beginning, when he'd been packing an overnight bag for the run to Earth, and Krolia had asked him whether he thought bringing Shiro on board was a good idea. He'd just shrugged and asked her what else he was going to do, and she hadn't been able to answer him. It's worked out pretty well, though.

Since the Alteans are so big on parties, he's really glad that their traditions don't generally require bringing gifts. For one thing, he'd go bankrupt and for another, he's a little scared of what kind of things might show up on an alien wedding registry. He and Shiro spend most of the trip to New Altea coming up with improbable wedding presents and make a pact to never mention any of them to Romelle herself. There's every chance that she might decide that she really does want a Futalian japarang, and frankly Keith will die happy if he never has to visit Futal's swamps ever again—he'd had to burn that suit, there'd been no saving it.

The other nice thing about Altean traditions is that the parties make great excuses for informal reunions. Lance and Hunk both make sure that they all stay in touch, mostly by sheer force of will, but comming someone is different from having to pry Pidge loose from his neck so he can breathe or from Hunk showing up with stacks of cookies to test on them all. Plus there are Lance and Allura's growing brood of kids to spoil (and teach bad habits to, maybe, not that Keith would know anything about that).

Romelle is transcendently happy, which Keith is glad to see, and her fiancée glows with quiet happiness (literally glows; the Resorials are bioluminescent and display their moods through the brilliance of the light they give off). Keith hasn't met Romelle's fiancée before now, but Romelle's said a lot about her and they seem to be suited to each other.

"Congratulations," he tells Romelle when the initial bustle of the party has mellowed somewhat and he's able to get a word with her one-on-one. "I'm really happy for you. She seems great."

Romelle beams at him and kisses his cheek. "Thank you, Keith, that means a lot to me." She grins at him then, cheeks dimpling, and oh, geez, here they go again. "So when are we going to get to celebrate your engagement, hm?"

She knows it's not like that and hasn't ever been like that, because he'd had to sit her down and explain it back before they'd even made it to Earth after losing the Castle of Lions. Keith doesn't dignify the question with an answer and moves on to see what Pidge is hassling Lance about this time and whether she wants any help.

Unfortunately, there seems to be something in the air, because the question keeps coming up. "So," Hunk says a little later, while Keith is too busy with a mouthful of some kind of little tart thing that Hunk had urged him to try. "You and Shiro sure are spending a lot of time together these days, huh?"

"We work together," Keith says once he's managed to swallow the mouthful of food. "Kind of hard not to spend time with your coworkers, you know."

"Sure, sure." Hunk nods wisely. "It's just, you know, I don't take my coworkers to parties as my plus one."

Keith rolls his eyes. "God, we were both invited, no one is anyone's plus one. Jesus." He grabs another one of the little tarts off the tray that Hunk is holding. "These are really good, what are they?"

Hunk waits until he's got it in his mouth to inform him that it's a pâté sucrée shell with a filling of Barapolian grubs, because he's evil that way.

Keith growls at him and takes the tray from him in order to make sure that Lance tries one.

It ends up with Barapolian grub spit out on his shoes, but it's totally worth it for the look of horror on Lance's face.

"You're the worst," Lance grumbles to him after he's finished rinsing his mouth out. "I hate you."

"Hunk is the one who thought they needed to be served up to innocent people," Keith points out.

"Yeah, but he doesn't tell you what he's done unless you ask," Lance argues. "If you don't ask, you can just assume you're eating some kind of weird alien berry and not have to know."

"I'm not really sure that's any better," Keith says, scanning the crowded ballroom for Pidge. His eye lands on Shiro first, who is talking to Allura and bouncing baby Melenor in his arms.

"Wow." When Keith glances at Lance, he's got a weird smile on his face. Weirder than usual, even for Lance. "You've still got it bad, huh?"

"Not talking about this," Keith says.

"Like you ever do?" Lance snorts. "I'm just saying. How long has it been now?"

"Dunno, there was this quantum abyss in there, fucked up my whole timeline." Keith eyes the Barapolian grub tarts, debating—on the one hand, they're made of grubs. On the other, they're really tasty. Also, diversionary tactics are always useful.

"After that long, you really ought to—oh, no, you did not just put that in your mouth." Lance gags. "What is wrong with you?"

"They're good." Keith shrugs. "And definitely not the worst thing I've ever eaten. That's still—"

"Nope, no more words from you, I don't want to know," Lance says hastily. "Oh look, someone needs me over there, gotta go."

So that gets Lance off his back, anyway.

Pidge and Matt barely blink when he tries the Barapolian grub tarts on them, which they explain with identical shrugs. "Have you ever tried our dad's cooking?"

"I… no?" Keith can't say that the opportunity has ever come up.

Matt shudders. "Yeah, well, don't." He picks up another of the tarts. "These are edible."

Yikes. "Good to know, I guess."

"Yeah, seriously, just say no." Matt inspects the tart and pops into his mouth. Once he's swallowed, he moves on to other topics. "So is Shiro still running around with you and the Blades?"

"Yeah?" Keith doesn't know why he's asking; he knows Shiro and Matt talk regularly.

"That's good. He's doing a lot better these days." Matt shakes his head. "I still don't have any idea what he thought he was doing when he decided to retire like that, but he swore that's what he wanted at the time."

Pidge elbows him. "Careful, Matt, you don't want to trigger the protective Keith reflexes." She just grins unrepentantly when Keith flips her the bird. "Don't even pretend like it's not a thing, Keith. Some things are constant, and you being ferociously overprotective of Shiro and his bad choices is just one of those things." She tips her head to the side. "You ever manage to get anywhere with him, or are you still pining?"

"I do not pine," Keith snaps.

It just makes them both laugh, because they're terrible. "Oh, buddy," Matt says. "You do so. It's like an evergreen forest around here whenever you look at Shiro. You are definitely pining."

"Nope," Keith decides. "Nope, I'm not having this conversation with you, either." He hands Pidge the sadly depleted tray of tarts. "Here, happy birthday."

Their laughter follows his retreat, obnoxiously identical. Ugh. Why does everyone he knows want to keep on beating this horse? The poor thing is dead, for fuck's sake.

He fetches up with Allura and Shiro, figuring that they're safe territory, and gets handed the baby for his troubles. That's fine. She's good-natured enough and doesn't fuss when Keith settles her into the crook of his arm.

Allura smiles at him. "You're looking well, Keith. Shiro was telling me you were just in the Ferror sector?

Thank goodness, a work conversation. "Yeah, we were. Water filtration systems, since the consortium holding the planets there were restricting access to potable water." He grimaces. "Not even Galra, either. They were all locals."

"I believe we've all seen enough by now to know that good and evil are not dictated by species," Allura murmurs.

Keith smiles back at her, wry. "Yeah, well, people who stomp other members of their own species down is a lot harder to swallow than Galra warlords, don't ask me why."

"Warlords are easy to explain," Shiro offers. "The others… not so much."

"Yeah, I guess. What about you, I hear the Coalition is moving towards exploring the regions out beyond Earth?" Keith says.

Allura nods, brightening. "Yes, that's one of the projects that the Coalition is hoping to launch soon. They've finished making upgrades and refinements to the IGF Atlas and would like to send her out now that things are more settled." Her gaze flicks to Shiro. "Of course, they'd like to secure a pilot who can command all of Atlas' abilities."

Oh. He's known this, or something like it, was coming ever since Shiro commed him and begged him for a way to get off Earth, for something to do, but somehow he still hasn't managed to brace himself for it. "Huh, are they? I wonder where they might find one of those. What do you think, Shiro?"

Shiro's ears are red; he rubs the back of his neck. "I think this is all pretty speculative."

That's not what Keith has heard. Before he can say so, Melenor stirs in his arms, grumbling, and Allura smiles. "Ah. I do believe it's time for someone to have her afternoon tea. Pardon me, gentlemen." She relieves Keith of the infant and sweeps away, leaving the two of them alone with their awkward silence.

"You didn't mention that the Coalition had offered you the Atlas again," Keith says after a moment. "That's fantastic, Shiro, congratulations."

"They asked me to think about it. I haven't accepted yet," Shiro says, still red.

God, this man. "Shiro, I know for a damn fact that you grew up wanting to serve on the starship Enterprise," Keith says with all the patience he can muster. "This is pretty much as close to that as you are ever going to get, so why wouldn't you say yes?"

Shiro—Shiro fidgets, shifting on his feet and not meeting his eyes. "Maybe there's something else I'd rather be doing instead."

"Like what?" Keith says, incredulous. "What could possibly top this?" God, he'd really thought they were past this kind of thing. Shiro has seemed so much more settled lately.

"I don't know, I'm pretty happy with what I've got going on right now," Shiro says, slow. "I'm not sure that anything else would be an improvement."

"An improvement—for fuck's sake, Shiro, you're just a volunteer with the Blade." Keith scrapes a hand through the hair that keeps falling in his eyes. "I can't even induct you as a full Blade because Kolivan won't let me. How is that better than being the captain of the Atlas?"

"I'm with you." Shiro finally meets his eyes. "That's how."

Keith—Keith doesn't have any idea how to interpret that. "What?" he says weakly, his exasperation with Shiro's stubbornness utterly derailed. "What? I don't—I don't think I understand."

Shiro rubs the back of his neck again, looking away. "Well, I mean, it's pretty simple, right? Right now I work with you. If I went back to Atlas, I wouldn't have that."

"Why not?" Keith asks after a moment of trying to figure out where that conclusion came from.

"What do you mean, why not?" Shiro frowns at him. "I can't ask you to leave the Blades. You love what you're doing there."

"I love you more," Keith says, very much in spite of himself. He flinches back from the statement, closing his eyes and swearing. "Fuck. I'm sorry. I know I promised I wouldn't bring that up again. Sorry. It just slipped out." Every last word of that conversation is still seared into him like a brand, from the moment he'd opened his stupid mouth to ask Shiro why they weren't together to the final way Shiro had asked him whether he understood why he didn't want that kind of love, not from Keith, because it was too heavy a weight for him to bear. He opens his eyes and smiles at Shiro, pretending not to notice the slackness in his jaw. "Sorry. Anyway. I'd go with you, if that's all that's holding you back. The Blades don't need me to hold them together, and honestly, I always thought boldly going where no one else has gone before sounded pretty badass."

"Keith," Shiro says, just his name, that's all, in an incredibly soft, gentle tone of voice.

Welp, he's definitely fucked this one up, hasn't he? "Or not, if you don't want, but you'd better send me postcards," Keith says desperately.

Shiro ignores all that, still looking at him with that surprise on his face. "Still?" he says, still gentle. "Really?"

He'd told Curtis once that if Shiro asked him, he'd do it. Yeah, he'd meant to hurt Curtis with it, the way Curtis was hurting him just by being the one Shiro had chosen, but that doesn't make it any less true. "Yeah." Keith rubs his face. "Yeah, of course, did you think I was kidding when I told you that you were it for me? Because let me tell you, I wasn't kidding." He lowers his hand and looks Shiro in the eye. "I also said I wouldn't bother you with it again, so yeah, sorry. I slipped up. It won't happen again."

Shiro opens his mouth and then stops, closing it and gripping the bridge of his nose. "No, not like this," he mutters. He looks around. "This isn't a conversation for the middle of a party. Can we go somewhere else?"

"Sure." Keith tries to be grateful for the sake of his dignity as he follows Shiro out of the ballroom and down a corridor that lets them out into a small garden. "So?"

There are benches; Shiro sits on one and gestures for Keith to do the same. Once Keith has, Shiro turns himself on the bench to face him. "Keith. When you made me that promise, I was… God, I barely knew which way was up, most of the time. Do you remember?"

Keith does remember. "You were going through a lot."

Shiro barks a short laugh. "A lot. Yeah. I'd been dead, I'd been my own clone, I'd been mind-controlled to try and kill everything I held dear, I wasn't dead, I had all those memories that weren't me—yeah. I was going through a lot."

Keith nods and keeps his mouth shut, letting Shiro find his own way through this.

"Yeah," Shiro says again. "And there you were—you'd saved me from myself over and over and over, you believed in me so utterly, you forgave me for everything, and you insisted you loved me." He shakes his head, turning his palms up. "It terrified me. You terrified me. And I couldn't handle it. Any of it, really. So I begged you to back off."

"I remember," Keith says, because he does. He hadn't known what was behind Shiro's anguish at the time, but he hadn't needed to know to respect that it was real. "I'm sorry I tried to put that on you."

Shiro shakes his head. "No, don't. don't apologize for that. You felt what you felt, and there wasn't anything wrong with telling me. With trying. It was, and is, incredibly brave. The problem was me and the mess inside my head." He holds up a hand when Keith opens his mouth. "No, I need to say this, okay? My head was a mess, and if I'd, I don't know, gone along with you back then, God. What a disaster that would have been." He smiles, rueful. "Worse than my marriage for sure, because I had no business jumping into that the way I did without straightening myself out first, and Curtis and I didn't have anything like the kind of history you and I do."

Maybe it would have been a disaster, maybe it wouldn't have been. Keith still aches with how much he wanted Shiro back then. Still wants Shiro now. "I would have been happy to try anyway. You know that."

"Yeah, I know." Shiro sighs. "I'm still glad we didn't. I could stand losing Curtis. I couldn't have stood losing you, especially not to my own stupid choices."

Well, there's that. Okay. Keith waits, but it seems like Shiro has said what he wanted to say. "You know you don't owe me any explanations," he says carefully. "I mean… it's good to know why, after all this time, but… seriously, you can say Let's just be friends. It's okay, you know I'll respect that." Maybe he'll have to take some time to mourn the last extinguished ember of hope, but he's had years to get himself used to the idea of only ever having Shiro's love in the platonic sense. It's enough. He'll be okay.

Shiro looks at him. The quiet stretches out between them, growing heavy, before he says, "What if… I don't want to be just friends?"

Keith freezes, going so still that he'd swear the heart stops beating in his chest. "Shiro…?"

"I'm still a mess, you know, but I think I'm the functional kind now," Shiro says quietly. "And I do love you—I've always loved you, even if I haven't always been in the place where I could show it properly—and I'd thought, well, you never brought it up again, maybe you'd moved on, but—if you haven't—if you really do still love me—maybe we could try?"

"This…" Keith wets his lips. "Shiro. Is this really, actually happening?" Honestly, it feels too much like the kind of dream he hates the most for it to be happening for real.

Shiro clears his throat. "Well. Yes, I'm pretty sure it's happening—hey!" He catches Keith when he lunges across the space between their benches to hurl himself at Shiro; he curls his hands around Keith's biceps, careful. "Keith?"

"Yes," Keith breathes, "yes, I still love you, yes, I still want you, yes, I want to try, please be real, please mean it, because there's nothing I want more—"

He stops there, but only because Shiro is kissing him, is cradling Keith's cheek in his palm and sliding their mouths together, welcoming him in. Keith wraps his arms around Shiro and flows into it, because it feels like coming home.

He doesn't know how much later it is when he rests his forehead against Shiro's, but his mouth feels tender and Shiro's lips are red and swollen. "Tell the Coalition we're taking the Atlas."

Shiro smiles at him, wide and sweet. "Yeah," he says. "Okay. I will."

end