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Shiro blinked awake in the simulated morning light of his bedroom on the Atlas to the sight of his husband’s naked back. It was one of the finer views in the universe, all things considered, but the sharp angular planes of his shoulder blades and the soft dip of his lower back were both annoyingly out of reach. He reached anyway, sweeping his blue veined prosthetic across the body-warm sheets of their bed. It was fairly unusual for his husband to be up before him.
“Keith...”
Between one blink and the next, Keith’s back vanished as he tugged up the long closure of his Blades uniform. Shiro frowned at the sight.
“Baby?”
“Hey.” Keith turned and shot him one of those star-bright smiles Shiro knew were reserved solely for him. “Did I wake you?”
“No, it’s OK.” Shiro sat up and caught his husband’s hand. “What’s going on?”
Keith pulled him across the bed for a kiss – lips firm and insistent against his own – before straightening up and handing over his PADD. Shiro scanned the incoming message and Keith’s response whilst his husband spoke.
“Kolivan got intel on a Galran sleeper cell; they’re still loyal to the fallen empire. It’s no more than a few vargas out from here. Thace will pick me up on their way past.”
“Who else is going?”
“Ulaz, and a couple of others, I think. Thace seems to think we can negotiate and talk them round.” Keith stretched, arms up over his head, and Shiro tracked the length of his finely muscled torso with obvious desire. He hadn’t had any specific plans for the morning, but his fervent adoration of Keith was always his highest priority. Keith caught him looking, and his grin then was a sly, wicked thing. “Sorry ‘Kashi, if I’d known you were in that sort of mood, I’d have woken you up earlier.”
“You got time for breakfast?”
“I’ll eat on the way.” Keith replied, holding out one grey-gloved hand. “Walk me to the hanger?”
*
Keith’s custom Blades viper, with its distinctive candy-apple red stripes across the side of the nose, lifted from the hanger floor in a smooth motion. Shiro was proud to stand witness, and he watched as his husband turned the craft on a wing tip before jetting out into open space, falling in alongside the other two black and purple spacecraft as they came zipping past. The formation lined up perfectly, and Shiro found himself grinning broadly as he made his way up towards the bridge.
Kosmo met him at the elevator doors with a bright blue smile and a wagging tail.
“Hey bud.” Shiro fluffed the space-wolf’s ears fondly. “I know, I miss him too. He’ll be back soon enough.”
They stepped through the doorway to the familiar sound of the head-staffer announcing ‘Captain on the bridge’. Shiro waved away the salutes as he took his standard position at the flight console. He wasn’t actually needed here for the day’s activities, and his paper work for the current populitarian mission could have been just as easily taken care of in his office, but he always felt more comfortable and in control on the bridge of the Atlas. As if reading his thoughts – and she was, Shiro could feel the soft thrum of energy in his mind when he thought of her – Atlas opened up a secondary window on the main screen. A rectangle of static was superimposed over the vistas of the asteroid belt which lay ahead of them. A little Altean-blue readout in the top corner alerted everyone to the fact that Atlas had sent a drone along with the Blades. No one said anything, but Shiro knew everyone’s attention would be turned to watch the negotiations when they took place. If anything went wrong, the Atlas could be there in a few doboshes, but nothing would go wrong, because Keith had gone with them.
The first few times Keith had gone to join the Blades on their missions after the war had ended, Shiro’s anxiety had been enough to send Atlas or Kosmo scurrying to find Matt or Hunk. Once, notably, it was Allura who had materialised with the space wolf in Shiro’s office – slightly perplexed by the fact she had previously been in bed on New Altea and had not been dressed – to calm him. He was better now, though. It had been a long time since Keith had encountered more than token resistance on a mission which involved former imperial soldiers. His most recent mission highlight had been a carnivorous plant which had discovered too late that Keith was not to be eaten by anyone except his husband. Keith had complained vehemently, and he had to replace his blades suit because the smell of the plant’s interior had refused to wash out.
So Shiro waited, drank the cup of coffee one of his crew handed him, and tracked the readouts of his ship as he waited for the drone to come online.
*
Pidge had been the one to sit patiently on the floor of one of Atlas’s hallways, a comms panel open and spewing wires next to her, as she talked through Shiro to the ship and tinkered around. She had been able to beef up the communication systems to allow them to watch whatever feed the drones and remote cameras were providing in something only half a tic behind real time. Sound was still an issue, and it was so jarring to have to listen the events of seventeen minutes previously with the action of now, that they had turned it off for the meantime.
But Pidge’s handiwork allowed Shiro to watch, both hands splayed on his console, as the three Blades ships landed at the meet point. The five Blades disembarked and went to meet the Galra who still wore the badge of the fallen emperor Zarkon. One of the other Galra raked Keith with his eyes, his small frame making him stand out despite his anonymous Blades mask, and Shiro tried not to feel hotly angry about it. Thace was leading the negotiations, and advanced to greet the leader of the other faction.
On the bridge of the Atlas, Shiro saw the exact moment the negotiations failed. It was like watching in slow motion as the lead Galra snarled, stepped forward, and their tight hand gesture became a stab. A short, concealed knife sank into Thace’s chest with astonishing ease. The remaining Blades reacted fast, their luxite weapons extending and swinging into defensive positions all in the same movement, but everyone watching could see they were heavily outnumbered. Shiro felt his heart smack into his ribs as several of their enemies advanced on Keith, and then everything was a blur of flashing luxite, limbs, and gunfire. Pulse whooshing in his ears, Shiro waited a dobosh, maybe two, and then he saw Keith in the top corner of the drone’s visual field, fighting for his life.
He was bleeding.
Shiro blinked, and felt something move in him with all the power of the tide being yanked back across the sands.
Keith was bleeding. His mask was missing, and there was a gash across his forehead. Shiro knew without question that even at the speed at which his husband was moving, he was not going to win unaided; and he couldn’t see any of the other Blades in a position to help.
“I’m going down there.”
His words were met by a cacophony of protest from his crew.
“Captain-!”
“No Shiro, wait-”
“Sir! You can’t-”
But Shiro heard none of it.
“Kosmo!” He barked, and the space wolf snapped into existence at his side, Shiro’s fingers already fisting into his fur. “Now!”
*
The moment he and Kosmo were fully formed, standing just fore of Keith’s viper, the space wolf leapt away, his teeth sinking into the arm of an enemy fighter, blood arcing through the air. Shiro scanned the scene before him. Years of training and fighting in space allowed him to filter the view, pick out his targets, and draw quick conclusions as to what actions he should take. The observation and decisiveness which had helped make him the Garrison’s best pilot – until Keith’s arrival – had always leant themselves well to combat situations.
Thace was down. One of the two Blades he wished he’d learnt he names of was fighting off a pair of enemies with their back against the wall and was bleeding from one thigh. Ulaz was obviously making his way towards Thace, throwing off enemies, though not all of them stayed down. The other younger Blade had their rifle in hand and was picking off Galra from behind a collection of boulders, but they were not a great shot.
“Keith…”
Keith was surrounded, barely visible with the number of far larger enemies between him and his husband, his blade flashing. There was blood on the ground, too much to have come from one person, and purple energy blasts from a laser rifle sizzled the air. Kosmo growled.
“Kosmo!” Shiro flung an arm toward where Ulaz had finally reached Thace, and was curled over, unprotected, as he cradled his partner’s head. “Get them out of here!”
The shout alerted the enemy to his presence, but that didn’t matter, because Shiro was already moving. He rolled to avoid the swing of the incoming sword, and came up well inside the Galran fighter’s long reach. They were not expecting the move, or for Shiro’s white prosthetic arm to strike up under their chin. Shiro didn’t stop to watch his opponent’s head snap back, though he knew it did. He grabbed the hilt of their sword, smashed open their clenched knuckles with his other fist, and span to face the next combatant.
He was in time to watch Kosmo flash into nothingness with Thace and Ulaz in tow, leaving Thace’s knife on the ground. There were enemies between him and it, but that didn’t matter. Keith was that way, and nothing was going to stop Shiro from getting through.
Champion…
Shiro deflected the barrel of a rifle with his sword, punched the soldier in the gut, followed through with a slash, and sent them tumbling with a sweep of the leg. A deft thrust of his sword made certain that they weren’t getting up again. He reached for Thace’s blade, crouching low, and it materialised fully in his hand, nicking the Galra who had advanced. The tip ripped through the material of his uniform between the armour plating, and the Galra snarled in surprise.
He could use Thace’s blade, because his clone body contained just enough Galran DNA for it to make a difference. It was a fact they had discovered completely by accident one morning when Keith had rolled quite literally out the wrong side of the bed and asked Shiro to pass him his knife. Shiro had nearly sliced the tip off his nose as Keith’s knife has transformed in his hand.
He span Thace’s sword in his palm, it was flashy move, designed to attract attention, and when his enemy looked, he stabbed with the other sword. For someone who wasn’t used to it, wielding two weapons on the battlefield was about as effective as trying to use a hoverbike in open space. But Shiro had spent years training himself to complete tasks left-handed, when his right arm was either missing or made from technology he didn’t altogether trust. He had two weapons, and he could kill with them both.
Champion…
Two more Galra faced him, then fell, bloody and broken, to either side. There was a cut somewhere on his left shoulder, but it was shallow and didn’t matter. The next soldier to face him growled, and Shiro snarled back, not waiting for the attack before he sprang forward. The enemy blocked well, countered, but his superior height made him crouch. Shiro used the opening, used the Galra’s thigh as a step – a move he’d learned watching Keith fight Kolivan – and his sword dug deep into the soldier’s shoulder before cutting him neatly up across the throat. Blood splashed up across Shiro’s face and chest and there was an unpleasant copper-salt taste in his mouth. He rolled as he fell with his enemy, eyes already seeking out his next target.
Champion…
No. Shiro pushed away the voice, forced it down and resisted the pull, the draw of that power. He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. There was still a knot of enemies around Keith, he couldn’t even see Keith, just the Galran’s reactions to his husband still fighting, and Shiro had to reach him. There was another enemy coming for him and he swung without thinking, without planning, muscle memory allowing him to know where and how to strike and giving him the understanding that his enemy had fallen without needing to look.
Champion…
Shiro growled. He resisted. He always resisted. It was a familiar voice, Zarkon’s voice, goading him back to that dark time which he’d once thought would never end.
Champion…
No. He was not that man. He wouldn’t be. The last time he’d given into those urges, Keith’s face had born the mark of his lack of control.
He killed an enemy in-between thoughts, and blood dripped down the blade of his stolen sword.
No. He was an astronaut who had been forged into a war machine, but that wasn’t who he was now. No, the Captain of the Atlas was not the Champion.
You will always be the Champion, Zarkon’s voice said in his head.
No!
He could see Keith. Keith wasn’t fighting. He was on his knees, his suit badly torn, his arm hung at an angle which screamed of wrongness, he was bleeding from the head, the shoulder and somewhere else low on his ribs. His hair hung in his face; he didn’t even know Shiro was there.
NO!
Whichever Galra was now the leader grabbed Keith’s braid and tugged him up by it. Keith grunted painfully, and then a sword was pressed under his jaw, the sharp edge on the smooth, pale skin of his throat.
Shiro was the only person who was allowed to touch him there. His teeth clenched.
You will always be the Champion. Zarkon’s voice in his mind was strong, low, compulsive. But now, you can be his Champion.
Shiro felt the hilt-binding on the sword creak in his hand as it flexed under the pressure of his fist.
You are the Champion. Now GO!
Swing, swerve, parry left, duck… He stabbed one of them through the foot, used his prosthetic forearm to block a blow meant to kill him; freed his sword from ground and muscle, flipped it, and lodged it into the abdomen of his attacker. All but the one holding Keith turned to him, and as a second solider fell under Thace’s borrowed blade, he saw fear leak into their expressions and their stances.
But Shiro didn’t need to think of that. He didn’t need to think of anything. He’d learnt to fight in the arena, to kill the enemies sent against him because if he didn’t, he would die. And if he’d died, he would never have gotten out or seen Keith again.
His sword slashed out blindly and blood spilled from somewhere. He caught a tail in his free hand, yanked it hard and sent the Galra solider sprawling onto the ground. A kick to the jaw broke his neck and Shiro couldn’t find it in him to care. He snarled, all his focus on the leader who still held Keith by the hair. Purple lips split and grinned evilly at him, showing fangs.
“You.” There was recognition in the single word, and Shiro felt every muscle across his shoulders bunch.
“You don’t get to touch him. He’s mine.”
The Galran dropped his hold on Keith, and Shiro saw his husband slump forward – conscious but incapable – like a puppet with cut strings. He threw Thace’s sword overarm.
Shiro was not Keith, and his knife throwing skills sucked, especially with a blade which dematerialised and shrank as it left his hand. The tip nicked the very smallest cut into the Galra’s skin, but the lack of injury didn’t matter, because Shiro was already running for him.
Whatever the lead Galra had been expecting, it was not to greet Shiro’s boot with his face. He was knocked prone, Shiro rolled, sprang out of it and span back around. He had no weapon now, but that barely counted as a disadvantage against his rage. He used his right hand to grab for the Galra before the other could roll, hooked a broad palm and all four fingers into his mouth and pulled. With his human hand, the long fangs would have sliced straight through skin and bone; though the pain ricocheted up his arm – fire playing along nerve endings fused to what remained of his bones – his prosthetic was undamaged. He pulled, kicked the arm which flailed for him with a sword, braced his foot on the Galra’s shoulder and wrenched.
His enemy’s jaw dislocated with a satisfying pop, his vertebra parted with a sickening crunch, and Shiro growled, grunted, and then pulled the top of the leader’s head clean off. He dropped it without ceremony, smeared the blood and spit from his prosthetic into the gritty surface of the ground briefly before surging to Keith’s side.
“Baby?” His voice cracked. “Keith. Baby. Please, please be OK.”
His heart hammered too fast in his chest. He took a breath. Shiro used careful fingers to sweep the hair from Keith’s face, trying not to transfer any of the blood from his hands to Keith’s pale skin. There was a lot of blood.
“Baby?”
“You saved me.”
Shiro frowned: Keith sounded almost surprised.
“Always.”
“Ha...” Keith’s lips twitched in a half smile, and then he slumped in Shiro’s arm, totally unconscious.
Eventually, Shiro raised his eyes from his husband’s face, and stared at the carnage which surrounded them. The only person still moving was the Blade with the rifle, and they were badly injured. The other Blade was dead, and so was every single one of the enemy Galra. The ground was red with blood, lumpy with broken bodies and spilled viscera. Shiro saw Keith’s knife lying in the dust not far away, knew that Thace’s was behind him somewhere and the sword he’d taken from his first enemy still stuck out of the belly of the Galra he’d killed with it.
There was a great deal of clean up to do, but Shiro decided in a heartbeat that it could be someone else’s problem. He knew that the crew of the Atlas would have already alerted Kolivan and the rest of the Blades to the situation, and help would be coming. He reached for Keith’s knife, stuck it in his belt, then hefted his husband up into his arms, and stood up.
The route to Keith’s viper was littered with the bodies of those who had had tried to best the Champion. And like each of those he’d faced in Zarkon’s arena, every single one of them was dead. Shiro felt a spark of pride flare in his chest, and quashed it deliberately.
No. He was not the Champion. He hadn’t been in a long time, and he wouldn’t be again.
Look at what you’ve done, the familiar voice told him, obviously pleased. Look at what you’ve done, for him. And you would do it again.
Shiro stared for a long moment at the corpse of the first enemy he’d killed, the one he’d taken the sword from, and sighed heavily. He knew that if he had to wade through a hundred soldiers to get to Keith, he would have. He’d go through anything to get back to the man he loved: he had done so already.
Keith’s viper opened for him, and Shiro went in and laid his husband down on the narrow cot which doubled as storage space and emergency accommodations in a ship designed to take one person in and out of a fight, then collapsed onto the hard metal floor next to him.
Help was coming. He had time to breathe.
*
It seemed like the next second that the hull of the viper was resonating with the knocking of one of the Altean medical staff from the Atlas, and then everything happened in a whirl. The still unconscious Keith was checked over, someone tried to move Shiro away to clean and dress his wounds, and Shiro was vaguely aware of snarling at them. After that, he was allowed to sit at the head of the cot, and let the staff fuss around him, scissoring away parts of his uniform to wash and disinfect him, close and reconstruct his wounds, and apply gel bandages to his skin.
Keith had suffered a dislocated shoulder, a broken arm, and a cut on one finger which had nearly severed it. He had a dozen or so minor wounds which the medic declared were ‘only minor in comparison’, and a blow to the head which warranted a mobile brain scan to check for intracranial bleeding. When the scanner’s icon came up green with a little positive noise, Shiro dismissed the medic with a look.
Despite knowing that the medics would have much rather moved both of them to one of the waiting shuttles, Shiro decided to fly. He strapped his husband into the cot, waited long enough to see the surviving Blade being taken care of, then took up the pilot’s controls and lifted them off the surface, flying Keith’s viper back to the Atlas. The ship under his command was now in low orbit around the proto-planet the Galran sleeper cell had been hiding out on, and Shiro hadn’t realised how comforting the sight of the Atlas’s sleek bulk would be until they broke through the thin atmosphere.
It was just as well that the Atlas was fast, because without him the crew would not have been able to wormhole their way across space. Shiro praised her silently as he landed Keith’s viper, feeling the consciousness of the ship unfolding alongside his own now that he was back on board, and Shiro didn’t like to think how long they would have had to wait for assistance and medical supplies if the Atlas had been much further away. He made a mental note to get Allura, Pidge, and Hunk together soon, to work out a way of getting Atlas to accept a proper second in command so that he could actually be completely off duty.
Champion…
Shiro scowled at the voice which crawled under his skin, shaking himself bodily before unbuckling the flight harness, swinging out of the pilot’s chair despite the protest of muscles which were beginning to ache from the amount of adrenaline still pulsing through him. He scooped Keith up, cradling the lanky young man in his arms, elbowed the switch for the main hatch, and stepped out into the hanger with his husband unconscious against his chest.
The first crew member who saw them blanched and froze in their tracks – right in the centre of the passageway – and Shiro bit back the growl which hovered in his throat. His glare was enough, and after that, every subsequent person who saw them backtracked very quickly the way they had come. When the door to their quarters opened automatically, Shiro sent a thought of thanks to his ship for taking such good care of them, and felt her answering trill of satisfaction as the door whooshed closed behind him.
Champion…
Shiro clenched his jaw tightly, but laid Keith down upon the bed with utmost care. He wasn’t the champion, not any longer. He was done with all of that, because there was no one left to fight.
There’s always someone left to fight, Zarkon said.
No. Shiro sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, and stopped himself the middle of smoothing his hand across Keith’s face. His hand… his white and grey uniform sleeve had been sliced up past the elbow by the medics, there was a bandage on his arm, and his hands were still bloody. But it wasn’t his blood. It was the blood of some nameless Galran solider who’d tried to kill him.
No. Not nameless. Shiro felt his shoulders bunch as his mind supplied memories of the crowds in Zarkon’s arena. So many faces shouting for blood and death – who's hadn’t been important – because Shiro knew that for a long time, he’d thought of all the Galra as one and same. They had been an amorphous mass he’d labelled ‘the enemy’ and tried to defeat at every turn. It hadn’t been until meeting Ulaz, Kolvian… and learning about Keith, that he’d allowed himself to realise each and every Galran solider he’d killed had been somebody.
He stared at the blood on his hands. Each of those soldiers had had a name, a family somewhere, each of them had been someone’s child once.
They were all people too, the voice in his head said smugly, every single one. But that’s why you’re the Champion; because to the Champion, who they are doesn’t matter.
Shiro shuddered, and gazed at the unconscious shape of his husband, wounded, obviously beaten and healing. It hadn’t mattered – not at the time, not now – who his enemies had been, because they had stood between Shiro and the man he loved. He knew he wouldn’t have done a single thing differently.
He stared down at his hands, the blood drying in the cracks of his knuckles and the grain of his palms, and swallowed down each and every image of battle his memory recalled as quickly as they surfaced.
It wasn’t until Keith’s leg twitched, thigh knocking softly into his hip, that he realised enough time has passed for the Atlas to have begun a night-cycle.
Keith came awake in the dim but comforting lighting of their room all at once, as was his habit. He woke and rose in one movement, hand reaching for his blade automatically, eyes suddenly wild and hard – searching for danger and chaos. Then he saw Shiro watching him, and his entire demeanour instantly softened.
“Hey.”
“Keith….” Shiro hadn’t realised how good it would feel to just say his name. “Are you alright? Do you hurt anywhere? The medics patched you up but they thought you might have bleedi-”
Keith stopped him mid-sentence with a soft squeeze of his hand. He smiled. It was a small gesture, which on another person might have been mistaken for something tight-lipped and affected, but Shiro knew how rare and precious Keith’s smiles were, and he felt his heart unclench somehow at the sight. Keith went to flex his broken arm, now splinted, covered by a high-tech cast, and held in a sling tight across his chest, and scowled.
“Well, that’s fucking inconvenient.” His attention was drawn to the sprayed-on bandage around his middle finger. “Oh, fun scars.” He bit his lip momentarily, and Shiro knew the flippancy was just a cover – not for him, but for Keith himself – to distance him from the recent memories of fighting for his life. “What happened to the others?”
Shiro reached across the bed for his tablet – no doubt brought down at some point by one of the bridge crew after their Captain’s unexpected exit from the ship – and glanced across the reports he’d been sent by the medical bay and the bridge, and the curt half-pleased, half-sorrowed message from Kolivan.
“Thace is unconscious still, but his vitals are strong and they think he’ll be fine. Ulaz is OK. They’re both back on base, Kosmo took them all the way home.”
“Kosmo… brought you to the fight?” Keith arched a dark eyebrow in surprise, but nodded for him to continue.
“Revner is awake in the med bay and complaining loudly.” Shiro wished he’d learnt the name of the other two blades before this moment. “Anaat is dead. I’m sorry.”
Keith took a breath, said something as he exhaled. Shiro didn’t catch it and didn’t ask, just reached for his hand. Shiro smoothed his fingertips over his husband’s palm gently, then winced as the action transferred flakes of dried blood, smears of fresher blood, and some kind of sticky leftover medical residue to Keith’s skin. Keith huffed a laugh.
“We’re kind of gross, aren’t we?”
“Do you feel up to a bath?”
“With you? Always.” Keith made to swing his legs over the edge of their bed and produced a drawn-out groan instead.
Shiro was there instantly to support him, hands spanning across his chest and shoulder, and Keith leaned against him heavily as they stood together. It would have been easier to simply carry Keith to the bathroom, but now that he was conscious, Keith was far less content to be manhandled. He winced when Shiro held his hip, but staggered when he was let go, bracing his weight with his less damaged arm on the side of the tub. Shiro busied himself with the taps and setting out the soap and body wash until Keith cleared his throat.
“Get in.”
“I’ll have mine after.” Shiro frowned. Keith was far too injured to be thinking with his crotch.
“You’re all sweaty ‘Kashi. Get in the damn bath.”
The medics had already divested him of his jacket and cut away part of his shirt, and Shiro winced as various small cuts were stretched by the action of him pulling off what remained of his clothes. He slid into the steaming water, then held both hands out for Keith. Watching his husband peel out of the undersuit of his blades uniform was usually both incredibly sexy, and something with which Shiro liked to assist. But now Keith just grunted through gritted teeth as he stepped from the fabric, glancing down at his battered body with a stony expression. His grip on Shiro’s hands was firm, even with the one finger Keith had so nearly lost in the fight. Keith didn’t quiver as he stepped into the water, slotting himself between Shiro’s legs with his back to Shiro’s chest.
The water rose to lap around their chests, and Shiro echoed Keith’s contented purr with a hum of his own as his husband settled against him.
“That’s the stuff.”
Shiro took up a sponge and began to wet and rinse at the various patches of grime, sweat, and blood littering Keith’s skin.
“I still can’t believe the other Blades prefer the sonic showers.”
“You have any idea how long it takes to dry all the fur on someone the size of Antok?” Keith snorted, then lay his head back on Shiro’s pec. “Or how itchy damp fur is under a flightsuit? Or how much they complain about it- Mmmmm….” Keith let his words trail off into a softly satisfied groan as Shiro poured warm water over the crown of his head. “Fuck ‘Kashi. I should get beaten up more often.”
Shiro tightened his arms automatically, every muscle suddenly just as tense as it had been when all that was within his grasp were two stolen swords. There was no voice in his head this time, no ghost of Zarkon urging him toward violence, but his body shook with tension regardless.
“Hey, whoa-” Keith tried to turn in his arms, pinned in place by the prosthetic, and wriggled in his lap. “I was kidding. Shiro? Hey… just breathe, okay? We’re safe. I’m safe. We’re fine.”
Shiro moved to follow his husband’s instruction, to simply inhale and exhale, and found he couldn’t even do that. His breath caught, something somewhere below his diaphragm dragged his voice away from his throat, and angry tears pricked at the corner of his eyes. He gritted his teeth, eyes screwing shut as he pressed his face against Keith’s shoulder, feeling against his cheek and forehead the long scar there. He hadn’t been able to protect Keith that time, hadn’t been able to protect him so many times. Behind his eyelids he saw again the lead rebel Galra tugging Keith up by the length of his braid, Keith near-unconscious and bloody and so small in his grasp. He reached out, the enemy grinned evilly, the knife at Keith’s throat was sharp and wicked and too far away for him to grasp. Shiro watched as his imagination played out the vision where he was moments too late to stop the movement between wrist and throat which would have killed the man he loved more than anything else in the entire universe.
The sensation of lips in the hollow between his collarbones made him blink.
Shiro glanced down, gaze unfocused as Keith smiled back up at him in-between kisses.
“There you are.” Slender fingers, strong despite the bandages, supple despite their callouses, reached up to trace the curve of his brow and the shape of his cheekbone before sweeping down to his chin. “You wanna tell me about it ‘Kashi?”
“I can’t lose you.” Shiro was vaguely aware that his voice sounded broken. “I can’t.”
“You haven’t,” Keith replied easily, softly. “You won’t.”
Keith’s damp thumbs swiped away the tears which had begun to spill down his cheeks and repeating the action until Shiro couldn’t tell the difference between them and bath water. He wondered if it made it count less, that he was crying in the bath with his husband in his lap, when he couldn’t actually feel the tears on his skin. He pulled Keith closer, crushing the lithe, battle-worn body against his own, and pressed his face into Keith’s hair as he sobbed.
Keith made a soft, wordless noise in his throat and then Shiro felt the weight of his husband settle more firmly over his lap as Keith repositioned his legs. Shiro was supposed to be helping him, but already Keith was cupping and pouring water over his hair and chest, undertaking the task with wordless competence and soothing sweeps of his elegant hands.
“Keith...”
“You don’t have to talk.”
Keith always knew exactly the right thing to prompt him into action, and Shiro found himself tripping over his words between hitched, gulping breaths, and clench-toothed groans of pain and anger.
“I didn’t even know their names, and I killed them. I’ve killed so many people just because they were standing in between me and what I wanted. And I never even met your friends, never saw their faces before they… And I abandoned the ship and the crew and I…” He opened his eyes to see his fingers trailing in Keith’s hair, his braid long fallen undone, and his memory supplanted the vision with the image of the last Galran rebel he’d killed. He watched blood spatter as he tore the top of the Galra’s head off in his inner vision half a dozen times before the insistent press of Keith’s hand low on his abdomen brought him back to himself. “-I’ve killed so many people, Keith. They all mattered to someone.”
“Yes.”
The lack of disagreement was almost as much a shock as a slap to the face. Shiro hadn’t realised how keyed up to press his point of view he’d been, until the need was no longer there. He sagged against Keith, supported by strong arms looping around his chest with practised ease.
“Baby?”
Keith drew back enough to look at him – properly look at him – and Shiro felt as though his husband was divining his thoughts directly out of the space between them somehow. No one could quite examine and understand him like Keith had always been able to.
“We’ve both- we’ve all killed people Takashi. We had to.” Keith traced the harsh line of the scar over his nose with one finger. “This is the lesser evil.”
“Is it?” Shiro felt his voice come out hollowly, even though he agreed with his husband. Even though he knew he wouldn’t have done a single thing differently in order to save him.
“Starlight… look at me.”
Shiro took his time meeting Keith’s violet gaze, prepared to find him disappointed. Instead, Keith’s expression was infinitely soft and understanding. Shiro had seen that gaze many times before, but the gentleness of the man who had whispered ‘we saved each other’ always felt like a blessing.
“We’ve never attacked someone without cause, never struck first. We don’t enslave people or destroy planets. Some death is inevitable. I know you know this.”
Shiro sniffed, wishing he sounded less pathetic. It wasn’t even as though he’d been hurt in the fight, or lost anyone he cared about. It certainly wasn’t right that Keith was the one washing his hair and shoulders and taking care of him.
“I didn’t even know the names of the other Blades you were with until… after.” Guilt threatened to sledgehammer him once more, but Keith pressed a warm palm to his cheek and brought their foreheads together with a soft bump.
“Anaat was a great strategist. They’ll be sorely missed. I feel bad for your medical officer though, Revner won’t like being away from base and his boyfriend if he’s injured.” Keith stroked the line of his scar again, lower lip held in his teeth. “You saved him too.” He sighed a laugh. “You’ll be Regris’s new favourite person for sure.”
“Regris?” Shiro questioned, frowning as his brain parsed the knowledge of Revner’s boyfriend with the image of the imposing, long tailed Galra. “Oh.”
“Yeah. We fight for what we believe in ‘Kashi.” Keith’s hand slid from his face to his throat, then across the broad expanse of his chest, fingers squeezing around one pec in an unmistakable gesture. “And I believe in this. Us. Together.” He punctuated his words with a soft roll of his hips, and Shiro felt himself blush.
“Baby… we shouldn’t be-”
Keith interrupted him with his tongue. It was very effective.
Shiro let himself slide into the kiss as Keith pressed at the line between his lips with his tongue, – warm, wet, and insistent. Shiro opened up for his husband and kissed him back until he was light headed and woozy from the lack of oxygen. When Keith leant back, his eyes were golden at the corners, and his cheeks were stained Shiro’s favourite shade of soft lilac-pink.
“You killed to save me. This is the reason we save each other.” Keith snuck his hand between them in the water and wrapped strong, agile fingers around his cock. He drew down the length and back up with torturous slowness. “This is what it means to be alive. You think Ulaz and Thace aren’t going to do the exact same thing the moment Thace recovers?”
Shiro frowned, and used his grip on Keith’s shoulders to move his husband backward, sitting him up properly and putting some space between them. Keith pouted, though Shiro knew if he ever pointed that fact out, Keith would leave him with uncomfortably visible bite marks which would last for many quintants. He scanned the blooming deep purple bruises and red grazes which littered his husband’s chest, then traced over the broken arm with his prosthetic fingers. The cast was slender, light, waterproof, and strong; but it was still holding Keith’s arm at a fixed ninety-degree angle.
“You’re not recovered,” he said pointedly. “We shouldn't be- you should be resting.”
Keith’s brow flattened into a decisive line, and Shiro knew it wouldn’t actually matter what words came out of his husband’s mouth next. He had already lost.
“‘Kashi, I’m fine. I have plenty of energy for this.” The fingers around his half-chubbed girth squeezed and Shiro had to remind himself that alongside the wedding band he could feel, was also a polymeric bandage repairing a finger which had almost been severed. But then Keith bit his lip, eyes suddenly half shuttered and soft as he looked at Shiro through his long lashes, and Shiro forgot how to breathe. “You’re going to take care of me, aren’t you husband?”
Shiro cupped Keith’s jaw with one hand, then used the other to shift his husband’s weight in his lap, bringing them together under the water. He replaced Keith’s fingers with his own as he wrapped a big hand around them both and Keith hissed as he balanced himself – broken arm, bandaged finger, and recently re-socketed shoulder joint – on Shiro’s wide shoulder’s. He stroked down, just to ease them into it, and Keith practically melted with obvious delight in his arms.
“Always.”
Keith pressed his forehead once more against Shiro’s own, eyes gold and purple, cheeks flushed, lips wet as he shaped his words.
“My champion.” The next movement of Shiro’s hand produced a drawn-out groan and a tightening of Keith’s thighs around his own. “Oh stars... ‘Kashi!”
Shiro cupped the back of Keith’s head with his other hand, threading prosthetic fingers through his hair, and began to mouth his way across his husband’s neck and collarbone. His title might still change a dozen times or more, but he would always be the man who would fight through anything for his husband.