Chapter Text
Despite all of Matt’s high praise, Shiro remains skeptical about Westworld even down to the minute that they enter the theme park, ushered down long, blindingly white halls by a pair of attractive and well-dressed employees.
“The last time I came, I had the wildest time. It’ll blow your mind, Shiro. It’s all so real!” Matt says right before they part ways, guided into separate fitting rooms by their respective… hosts.
Shiro subtly studies the man helping him to pick an outfit out of dozens of pieces already perfectly tailored to his measurements—a white shirt and a black waistcoat to wear under his black jacket, custom boots, black gloves to hide the silver gleam of his prosthetic. He’s tall, dark-skinned, and handsome. Everything from his speech to the way he moves is seamlessly natural, but…
Shiro has to wonder.
“Can I ask?” He hesitates, balking at the thought of supposing wrong and causing offense. “Are you… real?”
The man’s hand hovers over the silver and mother-of-pearl pistol Shiro selected from a sleek white display case, smiling invitingly. “If you can’t tell, does it matter?”
Their fingers brush as the pistol changes hands. Shiro doesn’t doubt that it’s intentional.
“A word of advice, Mr. Shirogane,” the host says, eyes half-lidded as he steps forward and finishes buttoning Shiro’s shirt himself. “Spend less time worrying about how real we are and more time enjoying yourself. It’s what we’re here for. And if there’s anything I can do to help…”
Shiro draws back, putting space between himself and the warm hands lingering at his collar. “Uh, no. No. Thank you. I’d, um, like to meet back up with my friend, though. Matt Holt.”
The host gives him a perfect smile, unbothered by the swift rejection. “Of course. He’s nearly finished. All you need to do is choose your hat before you go,” he says, gesturing to a case filled with broad-brimmed hats straight out of a western film.
Shiro picks a black one, satin-lined, and fits it over his two-toned hair. With an awkward smile and absolutely zero eye contact, he slips through the door that the host opens for him. The first steps are a disorienting transition from sleek, white-paneled halls to a train car already bustling with people dressed in the styles of the eighteen-sixties. Same as Shiro wears, now.
A minute later, Matt stumbles out the door behind him, straightening his collar and jamming his hat down over disheveled hair. The train lurches into motion immediately, its horn bellowing as they finally depart.
Shiro eyes Matt’s mussed clothing and crooked smile, scoffing low. “We haven’t even set foot in the park itself and you already fucked one of them?”
“You didn’t?” Matt snorts as he and Shiro settle into a pair of empty seats. “Shiro, we’re not paying forty-thousand dollars a day to play it safe here. C’mon, live a little! That guy wasn’t even bad looking.”
“He was okay,” Shiro grumbles, chin in his hand as he stares at the black walls of the mountain tunnel, already regretting this whole trip.
And then there’s daylight, so bright that Shiro's eyes squint shut and he cringes away. Once he opens his eyes anew, it’s with wonder at the world outside. There are dusty plains, towering red mesas, buffalo watering in the nearby river. Blue skies streaked with cirrus clouds, hawks circling high above. Dusty brambles and tumbleweed. Cowboys on horseback herding cattle under the midday sun.
The wildest remaining parts of America haven’t looked like this in decades, well before Shiro was even born. This is—it’s pristine, like something out of an antique picture book or a Remington painting. No towering glass cities, no planes overhead, no pipelines or new development to bore through its natural beauty. Shiro leans closer to the glass, nudging Matt every time he sees something new, like leaping antelope or ambling covered wagons.
It’s the better part of an hour before the train draws to a stop at the station for a town called Sweetwater. Matt tugs at his sleeve as they jostle past the other passengers and disembark first, leaving a number of mildly ruffled hosts in their wake.
“Sweetwater is the heart of the park, the central hub,” Matt explains as they walk down the town’s main street, Shiro gawking all the while. “The further out you go, the more dangerous and violent it gets. But there’s plenty to keep us occupied around here, I promise.”
Sweetwater is like something lifted out of a movie. A hundred people mill its streets and storefronts, drinking, dueling, conversing. Horses stand at hitching posts. Wanted posters decorate the wall outside the sheriff’s office.
Matt slings an arm over his shoulders and steers him into the Mariposa saloon and hotel. Once inside, he tips his tan hat politely to each of the Mariposa’s working ladies.
Shiro follows suit, flinching away when one of the girls reaches out to run her hand along his jaw and sweetly murmurs, “You must be new. Not much of a rind on you yet.”
“Don’t worry about her,” Matt says as they find a table in the corner. He waggles his eyebrows as he pulls off his hat. “I’m sure they have a guy or two around, Shiro. We can ask. They’re very accommodating here.”
Shiro leans back in his chair, hands on his thighs and a sigh on his lips. “Matt, I know this is hard to hear, but not everyone who visits this park is out to fuck a robot.”
Matt meets his stare with a smug, pitying look. “Sure, buddy. Sure.”
He and Matt spend a few hours drinking and watching barfights before finally agreeing to split ways for the rest of their stay. Matt’s keen on staying in Sweetwater and getting to know their android hosts, the comfort of the park’s luxury hotel rooms just a train ride away. Shiro’s inclined to get out of town and explore the terrain he’d seen on the ride in—to adventure a little, if he means to get his money's worth.
“You sure you don’t want to come with? We’d be sleeping under the stars, Matt. There’s so much light pollution back home that we can’t even see the stars anymore. I bet it's gorgeous...”
Matt pats him fondly on the shoulder. “Shiro, that sounds beautiful and all but like most nerds, I was raised as an exclusively indoor child. Sleeping on the ground and getting shot at isn’t how I want to spend my week in Westworld. Sorry.”
Shiro groans as he stands and fits his hat back on. “They said it’s like getting hit with a paintball, Matt. You’d live.”
“If I’m going to go home with some aches and bruises, I’d rather they be from Clementine here,” Matt says, the Mariposa girl under his arm giggling softly. In a pointed whisper, he adds, “Shiro, you know how I feel about androids—”
“I’m more aware than I’d like to be, honestly. Have fun, Matt,” Shiro says, playfully tipping his hat as he backs away. “Don’t cause too much trouble while I’m gone.”
“You’re the one going looking for trouble,” Matt grumbles back, following to give him a half-hug before he goes.
It’s easy enough to find a horse in Sweetwater. Shiro picks a black mare, tall and glossy-coated. And as he pets her, it’s hard not to think of everything he’d heard from Matt and Pidge long before he stepped foot here—how even the animals are made in a lab, their skeletons 3D-printed and their synthetic flesh and organs pumped with artificial blood, all their behaviors modeled on real, living creatures.
She seems genuine enough, though, lipping at his palm for treats and stamping impatiently when she finds none. Born in a lab or no, Shiro’d hate to see her harmed.
He's never ridden before and it shows in how long he struggles to get astride the horse and steer her out of town, but within a few hours Shiro thinks they have something of a rapport. He smooths a hand down the side of his mount’s neck, already attached, and sets out to explore. Hours later, as he beds down beside his horse and stares up at the sweeping Milky Way and a sky full of stars, Shiro figures the experience might come close to being worth the ridiculous price tag.
He rides on further the next day, exploring shallow canyons and wildflower-strewn prairies, thrilled to see bison and wolves and foxes darting in the grasses. He encounters homesteaders hanging laundry, who eye his black silhouette warily as he rides past; he skirts wide around bandit camps arguing loudly over their campfires, skittish of starting a fight.
And it’s entirely by accident that Shiro stumbles upon a pack of soldiers on horseback in hot pursuit of a red-scarfed bandit scrambling through the brush-covered hills on foot—outnumbered and stumbling as the men giving chase whoop and holler upon their mounts. Shiro’s hands tighten around the reins as he watches while riding closer, heart beating fast as he sees the desperation in the bandit’s flight.
He doesn’t seek to get involved. It’s just a scene, and one that’s probably played out hundreds of times before as part of some quest chain triggered halfway across the park. It's an artificial conflict that he has no stake in. And there’s no point in risking his sweet black mare getting shot, but…
Shiro’s hand goes to his silver six-shooter anyway, black-gloved fingers drawing it from the holster at his hip. He’s still a good shot, even four years out from his honorable discharge, and he drops two of the soldiers before they even notice him riding sidelong, stomach lurching at the solid connection and the sudden bloom of blood.
It isn’t real. It isn’t, no matter how his senses and instincts read it as true. And despite the ugly slither in his gut, Shiro turns and shoots another soldier as he swivels to take aim.
Rapid shots drop four other riders in a heartbeat, but they aren't from Shiro's smoking gun. He twists and catches a golden glimmer from where the red-scarfed bandit stands his ground and takes aim, his leather-clad silhouette lean and striking.
A faint click draws Shiro’s attention: the cocking of a rifle, and close. He tears his gaze from the bandit and sees the last soldier circling on him, not more than twenty feet away, gun barrel leveled squarely at his chest. A clean, easy shot. But before the snarling soldier can get it off, there’s a gleaming flash followed by a meaty thud—and from his chest extends a long dagger, its hilt wrapped in pale linen, the silver of the blade catching the high noon sun.
Shiro turns back toward the bandit and finds yet another gun pointed at him. This one is golden, worn a little dull, but it matches the man holding it. Shiro slowly raises his hands and lets his own pistol hang loose from his thumb, in no position to shoot.
“Why’d you step in?” the bandit asks, taking a wary step closer. His voice is dry and crackling, like he’s been wanting for water. Sweat darkens the white shirt under his dull red vest; scrapes and dried blood ring his forearms.
“You looked like you could use the help,” Shiro croaks.
Every host he’s encountered thus far has been cordial and almost simperingly polite, or else mildly wary of a stranger in black. But this one is different, actively hostile and mistrustful. This host glares dark enough to cow Shiro, to almost make him forget that they can’t kill human visitors to the park. Their programming won’t allow for it—not that they know that.
The soldier with the dagger buried in his chest finally slips off of his mount, dust billowing where his oversized body falls. Shiro and the bandit both turn and stare at the same time, surveying the fallen bodies and loose horses. With a soft grunt from behind his patterned red scarf, the bandit spins his pistol and slips it back into its holster before stalking over to retrieve his dagger. He wipes the blade clean on the front of the dead soldier’s uniform before sheathing it and turning back to Shiro.
“You can put your arms down. I’ve no quarrel with you.”
“Oh. Oh, right. Thanks.” Shiro lowers them, hand trembling as he holsters his pistol, too. The bodies around them bleed sluggishly, the dead hosts as true to any corpse he’s ever seen.
“Hey. Stranger. You alright?” the bandit questions, taking a tentative step closer. He tugs down the bandana covering the bottom half of his face, baring rough-chapped lips and sharp, pretty features that could pass for delicate on someone with a gentler expression.
Not what Shiro expected to see, especially from a rugged, sharpshooting outlaw. “I—yeah, I’m fine. Just a little shaken up.”
“You look it,” the bandit says before whistling sweetly to one of the nearby horses, beckoning her close. He swings a long, lean leg astride her and comes round closer to Shiro and his dark mare. From under the shadowed brim of his dusty red hat, he squints and gives Shiro a languid once-over in the saddle.
“Keith,” he says after a few weighty moments, extending a calloused hand in fingerless gloves.
Shiro takes it, answering the surprising grip with one just as firm. “Shiro.”
“Why’d you help me?” Keith then asks, and for a moment Shiro wonders if it’s part of a limited set of questions worked into the outlaw’s branching dialogue, but…
There’s a guarded intelligence behind those dark, violet-tinged eyes that catches Shiro by surprise. A curiosity behind the wariness, interest under the distrust. The tiny microexpressions the programmers and designers have managed are remarkably complex, forming a perfectly believable expression as Keith tries to puzzle him out.
“Never had someone save me before,” Keith adds, the corner of his mouth tugging in an unfortunate little half-smile. “Not from anything.”
“I couldn’t just stand by and watch,” Shiro says, shifting uncomfortably in the saddle.
Keith blinks, jaw subtly working side to side as he digests Shiro’s answer. “You’re not much like the people around here, then,” he decides, nudging his heels into the bay mare’s sides and clicking his tongue.
Shiro urges his mount forward, too, keeping pace with Keith. “Where are you headed? Will more of them come after you? Do you need someone to watch your back?”
Keith laughs, the sound so hoarse that Shiro almost mistakes it for a wheezing little cough. Shiro grabs the waterskin from his saddle and offers it out to Keith, who eyes it long and hard before accepting.
He gulps down thirsty mouthfuls, with Shiro’s stare tracing the flex of his slender throat and the errant rivulets of water dripping down it. He wipes his mouth with the back of an arm and passes the skin back, expression guardedly grateful. “You’re something else, Shiro.”
“Not really,” Shiro snorts, his cheeks warming anyway. “Anyone could’ve done the same for you.”
“No.” Keith says it so certainly that Shiro’s well-meaning smile falls away. His dark eyes stay fixed somewhere ahead, gaze burning low. "They couldn't. Or wouldn't."
Shiro rides beside him in silence for a minutes more, putting distance between themselves and the dozen bloodied bodies they’d left behind. Someone’ll stumble across them soon enough and maybe they’ll have an army on their tail.
“I don’t really know where to go,” Keith admits as they bake under the sun's withering heat, his bay mare slowing to an ambling walk. His brows pinch as he looks over to Shiro. “I don’t… I don’t have much else left for me in this world.”
Shiro swallows, not sure what he’s asking for as he says, “I was headed west to see the sunset over the canyon. You could ride with me, if you like. Safety in numbers.”
Keith seems reluctant to follow at first, at times veering off a ways or gazing out at the horizon. But he remains in Shiro’s orbit, as if tethered to him now that he’s been snatched out of his usual doomed loop. They ride westward, Keith’s quickdraw more than useful as they come up against more bandit packs and bounty hunters the further they move from Sweetwater.
By the time they reach the canyon’s rim, it’s nearly dusk. The last little rays of sunset disappear over the distant mountaintops while the two of them make a small camp and settle down for the night beside their horses. Shiro talks about the stars, marveling at how vast and clear the skies are. He points out constellations he’d memorized as a child and names the far-off glimmer of planets. All the while, Keith is silent.
And when Shiro drifts awake the next morning, it’s to the immediate sight of Keith hunched over their dwindled campfire or mostly embers. Watching him.
“Morning,” Shiro mumbles, hurriedly wiping at the drying drool at the corner of his mouth. He sits up, straightens his clothes, and brushes the dust from the brim of his black hat.
Keith stirs what smells like a small pot of coffee. “You still haven't tried to kill me while I slept.”
“Um, no,” Shiro says, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Why would I try to harm you?”
Keith stirs faster, gaze flitting up to Shiro and then back down to the open flames. “I… most people have. I suppose I invite trouble.”
Nearby, the hobbled horses stir. They’re grazing on dew-covered grasses and drinking deep of the nearby creek. The sun is already breaking in the east but only barely, and the morning world around them teems with the kind of life Shiro’s only seen in zoos and outdated wildlife documentaries.
“Well, I won’t,” Shiro says, shuffling closer to the fire and settling cross-legged opposite Keith. “I’m not out to hurt anybody, least of all someone who’s such good company.”
Keith snorts at that, laughing quietly into the palm hastily brought up to cover his own mouth. “You’re a pretty good shot for a man who doesn’t mean to hurt no one.”
“I’m not—I never—it’s…” Shiro sighs and pinches at the bridge of his nose. “Part of my past. Not something I’m thrilled about putting to use again, to be honest.”
And that, finally, seems to click with Keith. His pretty eyes soften with sympathy. “Even so, you shot those soldiers on my account.”
“It was them or you, and I had to choose." The dawn light falls over Keith hazy, glowing, golden, catching on the heights of his finely-formed face. He'd been struck by Keith from first glance, truthfully, but he defends his choice with,“And I don't know what you might've done but it wasn't right, riding you down like that.”
Keith’s slim chest rises and falls a little faster under his dusty red vest and bloodstained shirt. He doesn’t meet Shiro’s stare as he pours out coffee into two tin mugs, no doubt taken from the saddlebag of the stolen bay mare. But as he hands Shiro his cup, their knuckles brush.
Shiro warms through before the coffee is even in his hands. He watches Keith over the brim of the mug as he takes his first sip and—
“Holy shit, that’s strong,” he says, mouth puckering around coffee so dark and thick he can still taste it on his tongue a minute after.
Keith laughs before downing the rest of his, unbothered. “My pa always said it’d put hair on my chest.”
“And did it?”
Keith’s eyebrows draw inward even as one corner of his mouth curls up. Confusion sits somewhere behind his smile, eyes sparkling darkly as he studies Shiro again, as if trying to suss out his intent. “Yeah. A little, anyway. Never as much as he had, though.”
They break camp, filling their canteens and waterskins in the nearby creek before saddling up and riding out. Keith knows the lay of the land better than Shiro does, naming the bluffs and rock formations they ride past, telling the history of the valleys they lounge in as they take lunch together. And this time, he doesn’t wander—not even for a moment, content to spend hours under the sun at Shiro’s side.
Days slip by. Shiro can’t remember the last time he felt so unburdened. He forgets about work and his family and even that this is still just a park meant to entertain the obscenely wealthy. They gallop over rolling hills and explore ravines, wading through rivers of cool mountain run-off. They sleep side by side under the stars, talking until one of them drifts to sleep first.
Keith only repeats himself a few times here and there, occasionally falling into repeated loops of speech until Shiro gives him something new to latch onto. And even then, Shiro suspects it’s only because Keith isn’t used to speaking with anyone so long or so extensively, his caginess and guarded words giving way to shy smiles whenever Shiro asks about his likes, his thoughts, his life. He learns that Keith never knew his mother and that his father was a cattle rancher further east. Their humble farmhouse stood by the river, and Keith would ride the cows out at dawn to graze and then herd them back at dusk.
Until the evening he returned home and found it burned to ruin and ash, his father still trapped within.
“Wasn’t any accident,” he tells Shiro over the fire on their fourth night together, leaned comfortably into his side. “He—his throat was slit, under all the char. I saw it myself.”
It was Keith’s determination to hunt down his father’s killers and punish the lawmen who had failed to give him justice that had led him down the path he now rode, alone against the world and bleakly accepting of whatever hardships were thrown his way.
The open fascination he shows gives Shiro a taste of why visitors like Matt are so taken with their hosts of choice. Keith makes no bones about his admiring of Shiro’s outfit, his gun, his fine hat and fine horse, all inquisitive attention and short-spoken compliments. He asks about his life, though careful to avoid prying too deep into the past Shiro’d hinted at. And he seems to take an awful lot of pleasure in teaching Shiro how to track, how to read smoke, how to tell which plants are edible and to follow the smell of clean water.
It grows harder and harder to remember that Keith is, at his core, a complex webbing of cascading if-then commands and patented generative artificial intelligence, all tucked away in a rebuildable body artfully rendered and constructed in a lab. His eyes are so dark and mesmerizing because a team of designers picked their hue from a color wheel, along with the palette for his dark hair and sun-tanned skin. He’s limber and lean because that’s how he was modeled to be, his cheekbones high and his face made pretty to appeal to some targeted demographic…
…to which Shiro unmistakably belongs. The more time he spends with Keith, the better Shiro understands him. Like a maze he’s working toward the center of, slight missteps causing Keith to bristle and close off while sincere gestures draw him in, swaying him to drop his guard. Once his trust is won over and his safety relatively secure, this supposedly hardened bandit is surprisingly tender.
Shiro can tell he wins a lot of points when he offers to trade hats with Keith, having noticed him admiring it so well and so often. And despite all of Keith’s blushing and grinning protests, he takes it, donning the dark hat with a smile, sitting tall in his saddle, and playfully teasing Shiro about how his new hat doesn’t match all the black he wears.
And as Keith tells him all manner of local legend one night before the fire, Shiro feels it—the little pang of longing in his heart and elsewhere, a waxing desire to keep Keith close and protected. To nurture this thing growing between them like a spark coaxed to full flame. To kiss him, to hold him, to share parts of himself with Keith that he’s scarcely felt comfortable sharing with anyone in years.
But he doesn’t know if Keith feels it, too. Or whether he’s even capable of returning such feelings. Or whether he’d be on the receiving end of them.
And there’s no time to dwell on it, as it turns out.
When Shiro wakes the next morning, it’s to the soft gold of dawn and a ring of masked outlaws circling their camp, a dozen pistols and rifles already trained on the two of them. For the sake of the beautiful wild, they’d wandered well out into the fringes of the park, where the game turns more bloodsport than anything else. And they’d managed alone so well for so long…
Until now.
One sideways glance at Keith and Shiro can tell. He can see it in the tension holding his slim body tight, a whipcord ready to pull, ready to scrape and fight like he has since he was just a boy defending his family’s herd from thieves. And he knows, heart already sinking like a leaden stone, that this time that same spitfire bravery will get Keith killed.
Keith draws his gun quicker than any viper can strike, pulling off one, three, six rounds before a volley answers back.
The spray hits Shiro, too, but no host’s bullet can kill him. He grits his teeth through the radiating ache in his chest, the pain faintly reminiscent of taking a shot through bulletproof armor. But it pales before what he feels when he sees Keith out of the corner of his eye, a trembling hand doused in red pressed to the ugly wound in his gut.
Shiro’s exhale comes out ragged, a scream with no power behind it. His heavy pistol feels like an extension of his prosthetic arm as he aims up and fires until the six-shooter is empty; and after that, he’s on his feet, falling back on his CQC training as he cracks limbs and uses the bandits’ guns against their own. And when every last one of them lies dead or dying around their small camp, he drops to his knees at Keith’s side and covers his slim hand with his own, adding pressure to the seeping wound under his ribs.
“Sh—Shiro,” Keith gasps, the word wet with the blood coating his mouth and sputtering to fleck his dry lips. He’s bleeding elsewhere, too, where the bandits’ bullets grazed or bored deep: his cheek, his shoulder, and straight through one thigh.
It’s too much. Too much to stop. Too much to live through, especially in the middle of fucking nowhere. Shiro can feel his own panic rising to a fever pitch, adrenaline coursing through him in volumes that make it impossible to remain steady. His shaking hand cups along Keith’s cheek, smearing blood over his skin, mixing it with the trails left by tears.
“I’m here, Keith,” he promises, hunching down low over him, his forehead touching Keith’s as he draws one last, guttural breath and then goes quiet, still, limp.
For a time, Shiro feels he might curl up from the brutal shock of it and die, too. His chest heaves hard, pulse thudding in his own ears, and he hovers on the edge of a panic attack that would force him to signal the park for removal. But he quiets himself just as he has so many times before, forcing composure where in lieu of feeling everything in full—at least for a time. Shiro eases his breathing, little by little, as he kneels beside Keith and closes his eyes, brushes his bare fingers through his hair, and tries to clean some of the blood from his face.
And after some length of time he does not know, Shiro rouses himself and starts digging with a nearby pickaxe. It’s a shallow grave—and unnecessary, a practical voice in the back of his mind whispers, given that the staff will no doubt come retrieve the bodies as soon as he leaves—but it’s enough. Shiro carries Keith to it, lays him down, and covers his almost-sleeping face with the black hat he’d so liked.
He’s tear-streaked and bleary-eyed by the time he wanders back to Sweetwater on his black mare, bloodstains mostly hidden in the black of his outfit. But it isn’t until Shiro enters the Mariposa saloon and the conversation drops to a murmur that he realizes what a figure he cuts—broad-shouldered and haggard, every step weighted with the emotion rolling around his stomach like a boulder.
“Shiro… what the hell happened to you?” Matt asks, leaving behind his company at the bar to grab Shiro by the shoulders and take him in from head to toe. “Shit! Are you alright?”
His mouth is dry, so he nods instead. And after Matt grabs a bottle of gin from the man at the bar, he brings Shiro up to his hotel room above the saloon and listens to everything Shiro spills out about his week with Keith.
“Shiro,” Matt murmurs, rubbing Shiro’s back while he quiets from crying. “I’ve heard of people falling hard for Westworld, but not like this... I'm sorry. That’s pretty intense for your first time here.”
“He was like no one else,” is all Shiro can say, letting himself lean into Matt’s comforting embrace.
Their time in Westworld is nearly up anyway. After a bath in a cramped porcelain tub, Shiro falls asleep in Matt’s bed, the softness of the mattress and his own exhaustion easing him into a deep and dreamless slumber within moments.
As they leave the Mariposa saloon the next morning and walk their way out of Sweetwater, Shiro’s eye catches something familiar. He veers from Matt and toward the sheriff's office, drawn by a face he remembers well.
It’s Keith. On a wanted poster.
“Keith the Red,” the sheriff’s deputy says to him, tapping against the weathered paper bearing a rather good likeness of him—dark hair and dark eyes, a delicate nose, a tapered jaw and a sharp chin. Not as pretty as he is in person but Shiro supposes that’s to be expected. “A horse thief and a murderer. His quickdraw’s one of the deadliest in these here territories. The Garrison has a bounty of five-hundred dollars on his head, if you think you can catch him before they do.”
Shiro looks to Matt, faintly pleading.
Matt in turn sags his shoulders and gestures to the waiting train. “Shiro, believe me, I wish we could go and find him again. But we’re out of time. And we both have meetings on Monday…”
Shiro’d almost forgotten there was still a whole world outside of this one. He barely wants to go back, especially with a gnawing, inkling of hope that Keith’s already been pulled from his grave and made whole again, returned to his place in the park to live and breathe and ride again.
“Hey. We’ll come back, Shiro. Alright?” Matt says, laying a hand on his arm. “You’ve still got your whole inheritance sitting in the bank, don’t you? And some pretty sweet bonuses headed your way, I hear. We’ll come back. And he’ll still be here, better than you left him."
He is, the next time Shiro is able to make time and buy his way into the park again. And this time around, he’s all the wiser. The moment he disembarks the train, Shiro makes a sharp beeline to the general store for supplies, takes the first horse he sees, and races to the same stretch of desert where he’d last met Keith.
It’s a wait, but eventually he hears the thud of approaching hoofbeats, the boisterous calls of cruel men riding Keith down like sport. And this time, there’s only white-hot certainty in Shiro’s gut as he picks half of them off from where he lays in wait behind a stone outcropping. Keith kills the other half himself, as lightning fast as ever. And then he turns to Shiro, pistol raised, the eyes peering out at him above the cover of his red-patterned bandana dark and mistrustful.
Shiro’s breathless grin falters. Without being asked, he raises his arms high, empty hands spread wide. “Keith. Keith, it’s me. Shiro.”
“Rings no bells for me,” Keith says, thumb drawing back the hammer as he takes aim.
The shot hits Shiro in the ribs, dead over his heart. It sends him sprawling back across the dusty earth, as much from surprise as from sharp, welting pain. He groans and writhes in the dirt, so taken aback he doesn’t even notice the dry crunch of footsteps until they stop beside him.
“How in the hell are you still alive? I know I shot you clean,” Keith murmurs, his red bandana pulled down under his chin, a note of wonder mixing with his irritation. But he brushes off the impossibility of it the way all hosts are programmed to, glossing over anything that might make them question too deeply the unseen rules of their reality. “That’s alright. I know how to deal with bounty hunters like you.”
Shiro’s hands grasp at strong thighs as he’s straddled, pinned to ground beneath unbudging hips. A hand catches him at the hollow of his throat, iron-palmed, and holds him still. Off to one side, Shiro catches a brilliant silvery gleam and recognizes Keith’s dagger unsheathed, its long blade drawn up so close that Shiro can see his reflection in it.
“Keith, please. I don’t want to hurt you. I won’t hurt you,” Shiro gasps, eyes trained on the wet shine of the dagger as it hovers over his chest, its tip aimed down. “We’ve met. In a—in a past life.”
Keith hesitates. One blink, and then his expression hardens like concrete. “There’s no life but this one, cruel as it is. That’s why I hunt for justice here rather than waiting on it to be handed down in the next, stranger.”
Keith can’t kill him, even with the blade in his hand. And Shiro has no heart in him to lay a hand on Keith when he’s so happy to see him alive again, risen up after he died trying to take down a posse to save them both. It’s not the thought of the dagger that pains Shiro but seeing Keith so closed again, so lonely, so sorely hurting for anyone in his corner.
“I know! I know, Keith. You told me about your Pa and the coffee he made and how you found him that night you rode home with the cows. Murdered. Not an accident.” He swallows thick as Keith’s eyes widen, glimmering under the shadowed brim of his worn hat. “I know you used to carry a sketchbook and draw while you grazed the cattle. And how much you love stargazing. And that your mother left you that dagger.”
“You do know me,” Keith whispers, pretty brows furrowed as he tries to make sense of a man he’s never seen before carrying so much intimate knowledge of him. He searches Shiro’s face for something, hunting for that little glimmer that’ll let him remember; he’s openly frustrated when no memory comes to him.
Because there aren’t any. None on Keith’s end, at least. Shiro’d known, in some practical and generalized sense, that the hosts don’t retain their memories once they’re recovered and reset. But it’s different seeing it firsthand, being treated like a stranger by someone he’d worked so hard to know.
“We were friends, once. I understand if that’s difficult to believe.”
Keith blows out a sharp breath of air. “It ain't difficult to believe. It’s… impossible. I think the heat has you talking nonsense, Shiro.”
A smile starts at one corner of Shiro’s mouth, quickly gaining ground. “It’s nice to hear you say my name again.”
Keith stares down at him, still conflicted. Puzzled. Moments trail by, his jaw flexing where his teeth grind tight. Then he sheathes his dagger, wordlessly stands, and allows Shiro to scramble up to his feet.
“Why’d you help me?” Keith asks, surveying him from a yard away.
“You looked like you needed it.” Shiro wants to say more. He wants to gush his heart out, to win Keith over, to pick up right where they left off last time, before—
Before Keith bled out beside him, his life drained, reset, played out dozens of times since Shiro left him. Before his memories had been wiped to make room for a new loop and new encounters.
“You’re thirsty, aren’t you?” Shiro asks, beckoning his black mare from her safe hiding place behind a nearby rise. She trots right over, now used to his spoiling her with apples, and Shiro grabs his canteen to offer to Keith like an olive branch.
Keith wavers like he wants to refuse it, and for a moment he looks as weary and worn as he must surely feel. And then he reaches out and grabs the water, drinking so deeply and hurriedly that some sluices down his neck and leaves wet trails over dust-dry skin.
Shiro holds onto his mare’s reins as he rounds the outcropping and starts whistling soft, the way he remembers keith doing the last time they were here. A pretty bay flicks her ears in his direction and curiously treads closer, speeding when she spies the apple fished from his saddlebag.
“Got you a horse,” Shiro says, holding her reins out to Keith.
“Why are you doing all this for me?” Keith questions as he curls his hands around the reins and takes her, deliberately avoiding any contact with Shiro. “What’s your aim?”
Shiro’s lips part. They’re dry, coarse from the sun and the dust in the air. “To ride with you again.”
Keith sighs, drawing the bandana up over the bridge of his nose and pulling his hat down low. “I can’t rightly tell if you’re mad or enlightened. Probably the former… but even so, we ought to take our leave before their comrades-in-arms come looking for them.”
Keith tolerates Shiro’s company as they ride parallel, a wary distance maintained between them. It takes longer to retread the same ground with Keith this time around. He’s naturally tight-lipped, guarded, and all Shiro’s talk of having known him before only sets him further on edge.
But there’s progress. They take meals together. They wash in the same streams. They fall into a few companionable rounds of conversation, and Shiro can feel Keith gradually growing comfortable with him again. On the third night, Keith even lets Shiro take watch, curling to sleep with his dagger and his pistol in each hand. They can’t travel inward, toward the mild safety of Sweetwater—not while Keith is a wanted man, at least—so they stick to the outer fringes, where bandits and mountain lions and Marmora hunting parties lie in wait. And Shiro is warier, more watchful, determined to keep Keith safe the whole of his stay. And after that… after he leaves, Keith will be on his own again.
Shiro’s gloves squeak softly as his hands curl tight around the reins.
They’re laid low by the evening fire on the sixth day of Shiro’s vacation when he rummages through his bag and hands Keith a fine sketchbook and a set of charcoals. He’d wanted to give it to him sooner—as soon as they met, even—but he didn't want to spook him.
Thankfully, Keith is now at a place where he believes Shiro might not have malicious and unfathomable ulterior motives.
“I—I can’t afford something this nice,” Keith says, waving the new sketchbook away.
“It’s a gift. Already bought and paid for.” Shiro offers it again. “Listen, it won’t do any good in my hands, Keith. Please. Take it.”
“It’s been ages since I drew anything at all,” Keith mumbles as he accepts the sketchbook and the small tin of charcoal. He flips back the leather cover, fingers trailing over its supple smoothness, and props the pad of paper against his bent knees. “Thank you, Shiro.”
“You’re welcome,” Shiro smiles. “But it’s a little bit selfish of me, honestly. I was curious to see your art. And I figure you might want to take down some of this sunset. Or that river.”
“Or you?” Keith chances, shooting Shiro a brief look, his tanned cheeks darkening a shade.
“If you’d like,” Shiro says, heart thumping as he sits up straight, chin lifted, and holds as still as he can.
“You don’t have to do all that.” Keith smiles down at the sketchbook as he begins to draw, a stick of charcoal scraping lightly over the paper. His eyes lift every so often to take Shiro in anew, committing some different aspect of him to the page. “Hard to get antelope or bison to stand still for a portrait. I’d gotten good at drawing from moving subjects.”
Shiro grins in anticipation as the scratch of charcoal eventually quiets and Keith shyly turns the sketch around so he can see.
He's taken aback by the reflection of himself done in Keith’s hand. It’s good, undoubtedly. A remarkable likeness, though Keith’s emphasized the growing shadows around him—and those cast by the brim of his even darker hat.
Shiro whistles low as Keith hands it off to him for a better look. There’s an emphasis on his square jaw, the length of his lashes, the curve of his lips. “Wow. You made me look so handsome here.”
“Just being true to life,” Keith says, his sweet smile vanishing the moment he realizes what he’s let slip. “I—I only—you have a good—it’s the features on you—”
“I think you’re handsome, too,” Shiro interrupts, hoping to stymy Keith’s flustered spiraling. “Even prettier than your wanted posters.”
“You saw those, huh?” Keith asks, immediately pulling his hat down to cover his face, shielding himself from Shiro’s fond, gentle teasing.
“Yeah. But I’d seen you in the flesh before, remember? I already knew you were the finest-looking bandit in the territory.”
Behind his dusty hat, Keith laughs. He peeks one eye out from the cover of its brim. “You—you’re a real flatterer, Shiro. Silver-tongued.”
“No. Just being true to life.” Shiro smiles, gentle.
Keith is quiet for a long time, his hat now perched on one bent knee. His fingers skim along its fraying edge, deliberating. “What do you mean when you say that? That you’ve seen me before?” he asks, quieter than the distant singing of the cicadas. “I’d remember if I met a man like you, Shiro.”
Shiro blinks away the unexpected tearing along his waterline. “It’s not your fault if you don’t remember. Like I said, it’s—it might as well have been another life, Keith. But I’m glad to spend time with you now. It’s now that matters.”
There’s a hush as dusk falls around them, the sunset lilacs and pale blues giving way to star-studded nighttime shades. The firewood crackles and pops. The rush of nearby water soothes. Shiro barely hears the rustle of Keith’s movements over it—quiet and sneaky as the outlaw can be—until he’s close enough to feel the heat off his body, the brush of his thigh against Shiro’s.
Shiro is satisfied with that much, thinking only that Keith is willing to sit right beside him again, their shoulders bumping companionably as they stare past the low burning fire. But when he turns his head to Keith to comment on the horses, his words run dryer than the surrounding hills and his mouth falls open, slack.
Keith is closer than he thought. And fixed on him. And beautiful, between the moonlight and firelight dancing over his skin. Shiro is even more lost for words as Keith’s hand settles on his knee, fingers brushing along his inner thigh, before leaning up and in to catch Shiro’s mouth in a sudden first kiss.
He tastes like water and smoke. Under all the chapped skin his lips are surprisingly soft and pillowy against Shiro’s own. And as Shiro slips his tongue against the seam of Keith’s mouth, there isn’t one iota of him that questions how true to life Keith is. The wet shine of his teeth, the tender softness of his inner cheeks, the slip of his tongue against Shiro’s: all of it feels real. All of feels right.
The dry grass crumples easily under him as he lies back, Keith’s lips chasing him as he goes. He’s born down sweetly but fiercely, Keith all too happy to pin him against the earth and kiss him hard, hungry, and demanding. Slender hands spread across Shiro’s chest, feeling him through his black vest and the white button-down underneath it. A leg sweeps across his hips as Keith straddles him again, clumsy in his haste to get atop Shiro.
Shiro doesn’t mind it. His hands squeeze their way up Keith’s lean thighs, thumbs dipping in low to trace the inner seam of his sleek trousers before arcing high, feeling out the jut of his hipbone. The layers of fabric make Keith’s figure a little squarer and broader, but the body underneath is slender, built of tight, compact muscle. Shiro’s hands settle on either side of Keith’s narrow waist, his fingertips almost brushing for how slight he is.
But still strong. So, so strong as he holds Shiro in check with just a single hand while smothering himself against him. Keith feels real in every way imaginable—the weight of his touch, the heat of his breath, the passion behind the needy kisses that miss Shiro’s mouth and land messily on his jaw, his cheek, his throat. He is wonderfully real to Shiro, no matter where he came from or how he came to be.
Shiro fumbles blindly in the sinking firelight to unfasten every button Keith wears; defter fingers do the same for him, throwing his shirt open to reveal a long column of scar-marked skin before working on his trousers next. His long, elegant fingers draw Shiro free, a soft noise hanging in the back of Keith’s throat as he weighs Shiro in his hand.
The fingerless gloves rub coarsely against him as Keith begins to stroke him to hard, aching fullness.
“Sorry, Shiro,” he apologizes after Shiro squirms under the touch. Keith bites each of his gloves at the wrist, peeling the worn leather off with his teeth. He catches Shiro’s hand after, making to remove his gloves, too.
“N-no. No. Leave it, please,” Shiro says, choked and frantic, worried what Keith might say if he sees metal fingers, all chrome and black.
“Of course,” Keith whispers, lifting Shiro’s gloved hand to his lips and leaving a feathery kiss on its knuckles.
Of the two of them, Keith’s shed more clothing. His shirt and vest have been shucked off, cast aside, baring a beautifully sculpted torso. His trousers are pushed down below his knees, caught on his boots. And as Shiro runs his leather-clad hands up Keith’s front, he imagines how smooth and supple the skin under his touch must feel.
There’s a sweetness to how Keith leans down over him again, a bare hand curled against Shiro’s cheek as he kisses him deep and breathlessly, languidly slow. Shiro writhes as the head of his cock catches on Keith’s skin, dragging stickily over the curve of his rear and bumping against his thigh. And he writhes more when Keith moans softly, almost fainter than the wind whistling through the grasses and sparse trees around them.
“You don’t have to be gentle with me,” Keith whispers in his ear, his nose buried in Shiro’s hairline and his teeth scraping along his skin. “But I haven’t been with anyone in a long, long time.”
“Me either,” Shiro whispers back. Excitement builds under his skin in a way he hasn’t felt in what feels like a lifetime, since before… since before a lot of things happened. It’s kinetic, a lightning hot thrill roiling through him as Keith’s palms cup against his pecs, calloused thumbs brushing over his nipples.
The breath in Shiro’s lungs catches as the flushed tip of his cock brushes up between slightly spread cheeks, over the delicate pucker of Keith's entrance. Nimble fingers guide him in at the just the right angle, Shiro’s hands curling tight into Keith’s hips as the first inch slips in. Keith flexes around him, impossibly snug, and Shiro is almost lost right then.
With a soft groan, Keith sinks down the rest of his length so swiftly and certainly that it tears a cry out of Shiro. No careful stretching, no gentle adjustment to his girth—just a smooth slide and the perfect press of tight walls all around him, the inside of Keith slick and warm.
Shiro’s head drops back as Keith starts to roll his hips, slow and sinuous, working strangled sighs and whimpers out of him. But it can’t be more than a minute before Keith begins to rise and fall on Shiro’s cock in earnest, riding him hard and eager. And Shiro knows there’s only so long he can last through the perfect constriction around him, that rippling of muscle tugging him forcefully toward a climax that has him seeing stars behind his eyelids—and then milking him dry.
“Fuck. Sorry,” Shiro gasps as soon as his head clears, a fresh wave of well-pleased exhaustion turning his whole body pliant, relaxed.
Keith is already raised halfway off of him when Shiro grabs his hips and eases him back down, keeping the length of his softening cock lodged deep inside.
“Wait. Let me take care of you,” he says, his hand wrapping around Keith’s pretty, slender cock, thumb swirling circles around its head.
“Y-you don’t have to,” Keith stutters out, even as his hips roll in a lazy circle, clearly enjoying the combination of warm, sticky fullness and the ardent ministrations of the hand clasped around him.
“I want to,” is all Shiro says. His lips part as he watches Keith’s expression, desperate to remember every detail: every little twitch in his upturned brows; the flushed darkness of his lips, his open mouth, his shallow, panting breaths; the way he clutches to Shiro’s wrist with one hand and touches himself with the other, fine fingers toying with his own chest.
Keith shudders above him as he comes, his whole body strung taut like a bow. His come shoots in spurts that catch Shiro across the chin and paint across his chest, the trails of it glistening under the rising moonlight.
“Sorry,” Keith apologizes, gathering the mess along Shiro’s jaw up on the side of his thumb, wiping it away.
On an impulse, Shiro rolls his head to the side and catches Keith’s finger in his mouth before he pulls back, sucking it clean. It tastes real, too.
“You really are something else,” Keith says after, full of some kind of admiration as he brushes the wet pad of his thumb over Shiro’s bottom lip.
They’re too sleepy with satisfaction to think of keeping vigilant watch. Or to clean up before they sleep takes them. And even as a distant whisper at the back of Shiro’s mind warns that they’re courting danger, being so lax this far along the fringes of the park, he can’t bring himself to object as Keith flops down against his side, half-dressed, his face buried in Shiro’s shoulder and his knee hooked around Shiro’s leg.
Dawn brings sunlight, the singing of birds, and the warm, sweaty tangle of Keith around him. Keith, who’s suddenly shy by daylight, his whole body on fire with a blush as he stretches up and presses a chaste morning kiss to Shiro’s cheek.
They bathe in the nearby river while the horses drink. With a deep breath, Shiro finally peels his shirt all the way off, exposing the sleek metal of his very modern prosthetic. The staff had assured him that its anachronistic appearance wouldn’t garner him any extra attention nor interrupt the immersion of his stay, but…
Keith turns where he stands waist-deep in the river, his dark eyes alighting on glimmering chrome and black synthetics. But they keep moving, settling on Shiro’s face instead, entirely unfazed. Or unaware. Hosts like Keith can’t notice what doesn’t belong in their world.
“You waiting for an invitation?” Keith asks as he works a rough bar of soap across his chest and down his front, under his arms. “Come here, Shiro.”
Shiro grins and strides the rest of the way into the water, relieved.
As they bathe, he takes account of the marks he left on Keith—the bruised impression of fingers along his slim hips, a little hickey along his throat—and the ones Keith left on him in turn. His back is sore where he was ridden into the rocky ground, too, but it’s a good ache. A happy reminder.
Shiro offers to clean Keith’s back, which turns into working the soapy lather through his hair, massaging gently over his scalp. It leaves Keith listing back against him, moaning almost as loud as the night before.
They kiss while they lounge on the riverbank to dry, and Shiro can’t remember the last time he was so at ease in his scarred, discolored skin, so comfortable naked in his own company—much less someone else’s. He and Keith only break camp when the horses lift their noses and scent something approaching on the breeze, their whinnying worry contagious.
They ride from safe haven to safe haven, stealing time where they can before some new threat approaches. A day-and-a-half in the life of Keith, ever on the run, only now Shiro’s there to stay by his side through it all.
But it’s doomed to end, either when it comes time for Shiro to board the train and return home or sooner, when Keith’s luck eventually runs thin.
It happens as they’re racing through Marmora territory the next afternoon, fleeing a drunken band of Confederados who hold no love for Keith the Red—or the newcomer riding by his side, almost as good a shot as the renowned outlaw he keeps company with.
Keith sees a camouflaged archer taking aim at Shiro and wastes no time in lining himself up to take the shot instead.
Shiro turns his head just in time to see Keith pierced through, an arrow bursting through his ribs as a well of crimson darkens his front. His empty pistol drops from his hand, which stretches out toward Shiro instead, fingers curling desperately in the air, the light in his eyes already fading. Shouts and hoofbeats tail them, and all Shiro can think to do is take Keith and run far, far, far from here. He veers in close, grabs Keith before he topples from his bay mare’s saddle, and pulls him onto his own horse without missing a galloping beat.
Shiro rides at full tilt until he hits a river, his poor horse lathered and heaving underneath him. He slips from the saddle with Keith in his arms, already dead. And this time hurts no less for having lived through it once before. It’s worse, even. Worse to know it was for his sake, Keith so quick to throw his own life away for someone who walks this world impervious.
He doesn’t bury Keith this time.
Shiro draws the arrow out from his chest inch by awful inch, sickened at the sight of the bright blood coating its wooden shaft. And once he’s empty of tears, he walks the riverbank and fills his upturned hat with wildflowers of carmine red, butter yellow, snowy white. Waist deep in pure waters, he spreads the blooms over Keith’s chest, covers them with his hat, and lets him go—to be carried away in the sleepy current, at least until the park’s staff come to recover valuable company property.
And though Shiro is just as heartbroken as he rides back to Sweetwater to find Matt, he bears it a little better this time. He drinks at the Mariposa’s bar, ignores the come-ons of its fine ladies and gentlemen, sidesteps a drunken brawl between a few of the men playing at cards, and then wanders around town while Matt’s occupied with Clementine, feeling forlorn.
Sweetwater bustles with a life all its own, and Shiro is freshly reminded what a rich world this is—though poorer with the loss of Keith.
He burns time perusing the local shops, smiling at keepers who take in his bloodied, disheveled state with a wary eye, as if he might make trouble. But Shiro only wants to distract himself for the time being, until Matt is done saying goodbye and they can take their leave. He’s reminded of Keith everywhere he looks—the art supplies for sale in the general store, the tins of Keith’s favorite cookies, the red-dyed leathers hanging in shop windows.
It’s while wandering that he crosses paths with a woman who looks about Keith’s age, her skin a warm brown and her hair a brilliant, cloudy white—an uncommon color to see in anyone under the age of thirty, as Shiro knows firsthand.
“Oh, thank you!” she says in a charming accent, grateful as Shiro stoops to pick up a tin of oil she’d dropped while readying her grey mare to ride. “I’m rarely so clumsy but Luna here has been giving me an awful lot of lip as of late.”
Shiro’s think smile solidifies into something real as the horse does indeed turn to lip at the woman’s fluffy curls. “Wish I had an apple left for her to chomp on. Do you mind if I pet her?”
“By all means,” she says, stepping aside so that Shiro might run his hand down Luna’s neck and silvery mane. “Forgive me for not giving my name sooner. I am Allura.”
“Shiro,” he introduces, patting Luna’s shoulder one last time before going in to shake Allura’s hand. He has no hat left to tip, so he touches two fingers to his brow instead, politely miming it.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Shiro. You must be new around these parts,” Allura says, her touch soft and her eyes kind. “If you’re in need of honest work, my father is always looking for some extra hands around the ranch.”
Shiro’s smile softens. In her pale blue dress and billowing curls, Allura is surely someone’s dream—not his, but someone’s. “I’ll be leaving town soon enough, but thanks for the offer.”
“Next time you’re in town, then,” Allura says, open and inviting and charming, through and through. She clambers astride Luna and clicks her tongue as she sets off toward home, waving goodbye.
Shiro raises a black-gloved hand and returns the gesture. And as he watches her disappear into the shrub-covered hills, he finds himself worrying about her, too.
With the backing of both a considerable inheritance and vast personal wealth, Shiro decides it’s time to start investing in Sincline, the company behind Westworld and its neighboring themed parks. It’s a sound move financially, though not without its risks—Sincline’s founders, Zarkon and Honerva, have something of a reputation for being difficult.
But Keith is worth the legal hassle and obligatory schmoozing with board members. He’s worth every minute of Shiro’s stored-up vacation time, which he burns through like kindling. He’s worth every last penny it costs to stay in the park and every snide, cold look from his relatives as he shuns their world in favor of Keith’s.
And Shiro’s goal is always the same: to find Keith, to pull him free of his doomed loop, and to lay his love down at his feet.
It doesn’t always work. The world is a living, breathing thing, ever-changing. A contained multiverse, the hosts always adapting to tweaked storylines or new characters, the tiniest improvisation able to ripple across multiple narratives.
There are times Shiro’s arrived too late, his stomach plummeting as he rides past the Garrison outpost and sees Keith hanging from a tree outside it, his front spotted with a dozen gunshot wounds, or just in time to see him ridden down in the desert, his last stand futile without someone else to whittle the soldiers down with him. There are even times he can’t find Keith at all, no matter how high or low he looks, from Sweetwater all the way out to Pariah and its wastes.
But this time, it goes off without a hitch.
He finds Keith being dragged back to town by a pair of bounty hunters, cuts him loose, and shoots the both of them for good measure. There’s a learning curve to it, but he’s a quicker study of Keith each time he visits, better and better at reaching out and convincing Keith to trust him enough to take his hand. They spend days riding together, wind-chafed and glistening under the beating sun, and it isn’t long before Keith comes at him with a yearning need that Shiro welcomes. It’s worth the wait, as all things to do with Keith are.
“Sometimes I hear a refrain in my head,” Keith says as they lie together in an abandoned barn afterward, lazing under the moonlight slatting in through the broken rafters, “in a voice I have no recollection of. A woman’s voice. I wonder if it might be my mother, singing me some lullaby. I wonder if maybe I haven’t forgotten her altogether after all.”
Shiro strokes slow through Keith’s hair, metal fingers lost in his mane. This is a new revelation, something Keith’s not yet thought to tell him in previous visits. “Maybe it is. What do you know of your mother?”
Keith stretches his arm, fingers brushing the dark sheath sitting atop his piled clothing. “I know she was a warrior of the Marmora tribe. I know my pa saved her once and they fell in love. She chose him over her people, for a time, and my father deserted the army to be with her. A hanging offense.”
Shiro swallows. The distant, aged hurt in Keith’s voice lingers with him, and underneath its hold he wonders if Keith’s parents are out there somewhere out in the vastness of the park, or if they only exist in his backstory and in lines of code—in notes of sadness in Keith’s rasping voice, a burden for him to carry through every life he lives.
“She stayed long enough to have me. And then she left,” he murmurs, rolling into Shiro’s side and burying his face deep in the crook of his thickly muscled arm. He constricts around Shiro with a strength born of desperation, as if they can cling together tight enough to never be parted. After a few minutes, his lips move against Shiro’s bare skin. “Don’t ever go, Shiro. Please don’t leave me, too.”
It’s enough for warm, silent tears to spill down the sides of his cheeks as he folds around Keith and nuzzles a kiss into the crown of his messy hair. Shiro’s already extended his stay twice, reluctant to leave Keith when they’ve reached such a comfortable place with each other, but tomorrow’s afternoon train back to the hotel is the absolute last chance he has to make a red-eye flight to Taipei for a meeting that’s been on the books for six months. A meeting he can’t miss, if he hopes to continue visiting Keith to the tune of a million dollars a year.
“I won’t,” Shiro whispers, a dreadful, sinking weight forming in his gut.
The only sorrow that approaches the sight of Keith dying is that of leaving him behind, which Shiro has had to do more than once. He always holds Keith's slight frame as he shakes and begs to come with, angrily questioning why they can’t just ride away together instead. He makes promises to return that Keith won’t live to see—promises he won’t remember, anyway. And then he sits slumped in his seat on the train afterward, bleary-eyed as he looks out the window and to see Keith and his mare on a distant hilltop, lingering outside of town just to watch him go, before retreating into the wilds once more. Alone.
They don’t make it that far this time, avoiding the heartbreak of parting while they both still live.
A patrol of Confederados stinking of whiskey and death finds them before they’re even saddled up the next morning, shooting their horses before they can think of fleeing, and Shiro knows this is where it’ll end. Keith rarely ever makes it through confrontations like this, his determination to protect Shiro overriding even his self-preservation; and there’s only so long Shiro can shield him, taking pelting hits from rifles and pistols alike, before a bullet or two slips through.
Once the last of the Confederado patrol lays dead, throat caved inward under the crush of Shiro’s fury-fed grip, he retrieves Keith and carries him somewhere safe, somewhere quiet. Somewhere peaceful—a hilltop crowned with blue cornflowers, his black hat laying atop the fresh grave.
“There’s a spark in him that’s different,” Shiro insists to Matt late one night in the Holt estate, after the dinner party has ended and Sam and Colleen have retreated to bed. On Matt’s nearby bed, almost completely hidden behind the enormous screen of her laptop, Pidge sighs. “Special. He—the things he asks go beyond planned dialogue and spontaneous sentence construction. The way he looks at me is different, and I swear he has feelings of his own—”
“The hosts are made to make you think that, Shiro,” Pidge reminds him, no doubt weary of listening to Shiro gush about Keith for, possibly, the thousandth time. “And they’re very well-programmed androids. While I think it would be fascinating if they possessed some self-awareness, it’s… it’s highly unlikely Sincline would ever let it get that far.”
“It doesn’t make your feelings for him any less real,” Matt chips in, offering a slightly sad smile. The wallpaper on his tablet screen sitting in his lap is a promo picture of Clementine in all her revealing, ruffled skirts and curled hair—the old Clem, before the model Matt had grown so attached to was abruptly replaced with a younger, fresher face.
“Yeah, I’m not saying that,” Pidge says, straightening her glasses. “Keith is special because you love him and you empathize with his plight. That’s understandable. Admirable, even, Shiro. God knows those poor androids deserve a few rounds with people who don’t just want to torture them.”
“They can’t remember it, at least,” Shiro muses, his voice a hollow whisper. He pinches at his bottom lip with synthetic fingers, torn between being grateful that Keith isn’t burdened with the memories of a thousand deaths and indignities and mournful that he has no recollection of Shiro’s love for him, either.
“It’s the least Sincline can do, really,” Pidge shrugs. “If the hosts had any idea what the guests do to them on a regular basis, I doubt they’d be nearly as welcoming of ‘newcomers.’”
"True enough." Even as one of Westworld’s less gleefully violent guests, Shiro’s dirtied his hands plenty of times for Keith, massacring whole bands of outlaws and lawmen alike if it meant keeping the man he loves safe. If the hosts were able to hold a grudge, he’d surely have as many enemies as Keith does.
Shiro spends long flights and boring meetings thinking of Keith’s smile, the squint of his eyes under the midday sun, the low, gravelly quality of his voice. He skims through the journal he keeps after each stay, reliving the slightly faded memories of their adventures together, their milestone moments, the anniversaries that only he can celebrate. And he keeps going back, again and again, year after year. Keith never notices the slow fade of his hair, more white with every passing season. He doesn’t notice the prosthetic upgrades, either, or the subtle shift in Shiro’s taste in clothing—more greys and pops of white than all black, now, though he always chooses the same hat.
He sneaks in small gifts, too, like miniature prints of seventeenth-century art, or new gloves, or vintage rings that inevitably disappear each time Keith dies, removed as he’s processed for return to service. It’s the joy in seeing his reaction that matters, though. Keith’s not used to getting anything at all, much less fine jewelry, and Shiro’s heart flutters to see a golden band fitted on his finger or worn proudly around his neck on a chain.
They ford rivers together and bask in sunsets that paint the canyons and mountainsides red, gold, orange. They steal a few nights’ comfort in the handful of sleepy villages where Keith is hailed as more a hero than an outlaw, though one risky to shelter. And once—only once, Shiro still unsure what he’d done differently to trigger it—Keith brings him home to the only surviving building on what was once his father’s property. It’s a simple shack, nothing more, but Shiro watches Keith run his hand along the dusty wooden walls and knows this one room holds more meaning to him than all the rest of Westworld.
Shiro blows off an invitation to holiday in the Virgin Islands (“With someone real,” his last surviving aunt comments, snippy, “but you’d rather run around and play pretend than put an ounce of effort into starting a family.”) to spend those precious days with Keith instead.
“I think,” Keith says as they stroll through the shrubland, the dust on the breeze sticking to the fresh blood splattered over their clothes, “now that I’ve gotten revenge on my late father’s behalf, I’d… I’d like to look for my mother.”
“Your mother?” Shiro asks, his eyes softening at the uncertainty in Keith’s posture. “The Marmora warrior?”
“I told you about her in a past life, did I?” Keith asks, smiling. He’d leaned into all of Shiro’s wild claims about having known him before easy this time around, and in fact seemed to take some comfort in it.
“Once or twice, yes,” Shiro says, his throat tightening at the memory. He wants to steer his mount closer and take Keith’s hand, but they’re not quite there yet. Not in this little lifetime, where they’re still navigating the border between close friendship and physical intimacy. So instead he lays his hand on Keith’s shoulder and gives him a gentle squeeze, encouraging. “We can look for her, Keith.”
Not that Shiro knows how. The Marmora nation are reclusive, confined to the fringes of the park, and openly hostile to any interloper through their lands. Going looking for Keith’s mother—a host who may not even exist outside of the scripted backstory he’s been given—might well be the equivalent of chasing a phantom into a hornet’s nest.
But Keith… if it’s what he wants, then it’s worth trying.
They ride further from Sweetwater and its surrounding homesteads, and after five years of visiting the park, Shiro has a decent grasp of the land. As they cross a vast, grassy plain that borders the desert, Keith asks if he sings.
Only in the shower or in the privacy of a karaoke room, but he can always make an exception for Keith. “Why? Is there something you want to hear?”
“Something about your voice makes me think you’d be a fine singer is all,” Keith shrugs. His expression takes on that hint of teasing Shiro’s grown so used to, a sly little uptick to the corner of his pretty mouth. “Unless you’re too shy, that is.”
Shiro laughs, licks his lips, and racks his mind for a song with lyrics he thinks Keith would appreciate. Something appropriately western, though his familiarity with country music is sorely lacking.
“Alright, alright,” he says, struggling to contain his nervous grin. He clears his throat, takes a deep breath, and starts singing low and soft to the slow plod of the horse’s hooves. “In the hushing dusk under a swollen silver moon, I came walking with the wind to watch the cactus bloom. And strange hunger halted me, the looming shadows danced. I fell down to the thorny brush and felt a trembling hand.”
Keith’s not smiling anymore. Not even a little. He stares at Shiro with a mouth fallen slightly open, his dry lips parted, and violet-tinged irises shaded dark under the cast of thick lashes.
“When the last light warms the rocks and the rattlesnakes unfold, mountain cats will come to drag away your bones,” Shiro continues, warmth rising under his skin at the way Keith’s eyes stay fixed on him, at the little flex down his slender throat as he swallows dry. Sharply self-conscious, his voice wavers as he sings out the last lines. “Then rise with me forever, across the silent sands. And the stars will be your eyes, and the wind will be my hands.”
There are a few beats of silence after it ends, the distant sounds of cawing birds and baying cattle suddenly louder and clearer. As is the huff of Shiro’s quickened breath and the hammer of his pulse in his ears. And the rustle of his clothing. And the sound of Keith unscrewing his canteen to take a deep swig.
“That’s real beautiful, Shiro,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. A little water still clings to his lips after anyway, noticeable under the bright sun.
“I didn’t write it,” Shiro confesses, lest Keith think he’s more talented with words than he is. “But I like the tune. And it seemed fitting.”
Keith grunts in agreement. “I was right. You do have a fine singing voice.”
Shiro ducks his head. “Thanks. I don’t—I’m not usually one to sing in front of other people.”
“Don’t see why not when you sound like that,” Keith mumbles, turning aside as he takes another swig from his canteen.
Shiro indulges him with a few more songs as they ride. Or parts of them, at least, that he imagines Keith will enjoy. And eventually he coaxes Keith into singing something, too—a brief song in soft, lilting Spanish. Something his father used to sing softly while he cooked, Keith explains after.
“I don’t rightly know what to make of you, Shiro,” Keith confesses over the fire that night, his legs stretched out long beside Shiro’s. He runs a hand through his hair and looks sidelong at Shiro, wonder and disbelief warring in his expression. “How’re you real?”
It takes Shiro aback. “How am I real?”
“A man like you,” Keith murmurs, his gaze gliding down the length of Shiro’s body. “Willing to devote so much time to a lowlife outlaw like me. I can’t fathom it, Shiro,” he sighs, arms folded in his lap as he pointedly stares up and into the night sky. “You could keep anyone’s company, if you so desired. Why mine?”
It’s not the first time Keith’s asked him this, though he’s chosen different words at different points in time. Slow as the crumbling of ash in the fire, Shiro reaches over and lays his gloved hand atop Keith’s. “Because I don’t want anyone else’s company. I’m happiest when I’m with you, Keith. You make me feel… free.”
“I feel free with you too, Shiro,” Keith says, turning his hand so that his palm presses against Shiro’s and winding their fingers together. “Like I’m… like I’ve been given a second chance. Like I can leave all the ugliness of my life behind and make a new one with you. A better one than I had been dealt before.”
Shiro’s heart twists at the way Keith’s voice breaks on his words and the faint tremble of his lower lip. He cups his other hand against Keith’s cheek, thumb brushing back and forth over tender, blushing skin.
“You have such a good heart, Keith, and it’s a crime so few people recognize it. You’re talented and handsome and so, so brave. So sweet. And too selfless, Keith,” he adds, smiling through the first warm tear to trail down to his jaw. “You’re not like anyone else in this world. Or anywhere beyond it, even. And you deserve better.”
“Shiro.” Keith turns and falls against him, his face pressed into the crook of Shiro’s shoulder and his arms thrown tight around his breadth. His tears dampen the rumpled fabric of Shiro’s collar; his muffled cries barely reach Shiro’s ears.
“Keith. It’s alright, Keith. I’m here for you. And only for you,” he quietly comforts, cradling him close, until Keith is halfway in his lap and his stifled weeping slows to a calm, contemplative silence.
“In all the time you’ve known me, Shiro, have I ever mentioned to you a… a voice?” Keith asks, his own voice shrinking small. Hesitant. “A voice that I hear sometimes in the dead of night?”
It throws Shiro for a moment, but it’s easy to see trace Keith’s little leap to this rare topic after how they’d spent the afternoon. “Yeah. The one you think might be your mother singing to you.”
“No. I—not that,” Keith says, shaking his head. “Another. A—a man’s voice, but not my father’s. One I’ve never heard before. It started as a whisper, I think, but more and more I hear him speak to me.”
Shiro has no idea what to say to that or how to soothe the troubled furrow in Keith’s brow, the worried look in his eye. “And what does he say to you?”
Keith wipes away the tear-trails down his cheeks and stares ahead. “Remember. He tells me to remember, but I… I don’t know what I’m meant to recall. My mother? I was so young when she left, I don’t…” He turns back to Shiro, eyes glimmering. In a trembling whisper, he asks, “Shiro, am I losing my mind?”
“No. No, of course not,” he comforts, smoothing his hand up and down along Keith’s spine. There’s a flicker of immediate tension, Keith’s muscles bunching tight under his touch, before it vanishes with a sigh. Keith sags against him like he’s been sapped of strength, trusting Shiro to support him instead. “You’re fine, baby. I promise.”
But Shiro is as much in the dark as Keith is. Is it normal for hosts to hear voices? Is it his programming? An error? The first sign of some new underpinning to his backstory? Shiro thought he’d made it clear Keith wasn’t to be touched again, inside or out; it’s bad enough that Design went ahead and slapped that painful new scar across his cheek for improved market-testing.
The night wears on and they both grow wearier. Shiro rolls out his bedroll, smiling as Keith wordlessly lays out side right beside it, so close they’ll be able to hold each other until morning. While Keith tugs off his boots, Shiro unbuttons his waistcoat and shirt, glad to be free of their snug confines for a while. He lays them to the side in a neatly folded pile, his leather gloves sitting on top.
He’s still getting comfortable on the thin cushion of his roll when Keith stretches out beside him and wriggles closer—and then freezes, the waning firelight catching in his shocked-wide eyes.
“Your—your arm,” Keith gasps, a shaky breath following. He reaches out and then draws up short, as if uncertain of touching it. “Shiro, what… what is this? What happened to you?”
“I…” A hundred thoughts race through Shiro’s mind, chief among them a panicked note of you aren’t supposed to be able to see it, you’ve never been able to see it. He swallows stickily, and when he speaks again it’s in a strangled, anxious whisper. “Shrapnel.”
He’d been following in his mother’s footsteps when he enlisted, eager to make a name for himself as a pilot—like she did, a record breaking pioneer in testing Shirogane Industries' experimental crafts—before manned flights became a thing of the past. In monkey’s paw sort of way, he had succeeded. His crash is the stuff of Air Force Academy textbooks, the last major incident before the military committed fully to AI and remote piloting.
“But I-I-I’ve never seen—why is it—how can you…” Keith’s mouth opens and shuts, going eerily silent as he labors to improvise a response to something he never should’ve noticed at all.
Worry clenches deep in Shiro’s gut. “It’s a prosthetic. A replacement. Does it bother you?”
That snaps Keith out of whatever jarring loop his programming is caught in. “No. No, Shiro. I don’t dislike any piece or part of you. I just… I never knew you had one. I didn’t even know things like this existed. I didn’t know they could be beautiful.”
Shiro smiles slow, a blush creeping up his neck and over his cheeks as Keith presses his hand to Shiro’s and matches his slender fingers up against longer, thicker ones formed of metal and circuitry and flexible, high-grade polycarbonate. It’s fascinating to watch Keith so captivated by the part of Shiro that’s most like him, in the most technical sense—an artificial construct perfected to perform just as well as its inspiration, if not better.
But even the marvel of Keith seeing him in full for the first time pales before the swooping, spine-tingling moment that Keith leans in close to kiss his plated palm, his metallic wrist, the joints of precisely articulated fingers.
“As beautiful as the rest of you,” Keith says, his warm affection riddled with glints of something purer, brighter, burning with intent. He leans in close, his breath ghosting over Shiro’s lips and the lupine purple of his eyes all that Shiro can see.
Keith kisses him and Shiro melts, heart and all.