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[ at least one of them's past the point of questioning the bewildering sequence that got them to each other. he slides into the shirt (overlarge, but at least it's something worn comfortable), tugs the drawstring of shiro's obligatory stupid dad-shorts around his hips, and goes hunting.

it isn't as if the apartment's that big anyway. ]

Shiro -- ?

Sorry, I just put another coin in the washer.

[ -- he says, as he wanders back through the doorway.

and sure. keith gets a Look from head to toe. ]

You fill them in better than I thought you would.

Maybe you're not as big as you think you are.

[ and then, belatedly - ]

. . . thanks.

Don't mention it.

[ as another mug gets passed into keith's hands. ]

It's cocoa. The powdered kind, so there's less of a chance I burned it.

[ he's shifting on his heels a little before he knows it -- less a matter of nerves than restlessness. when's the last time he even hung out with someone? what do you do when you're hanging out? are they even hanging out?? ]

Do you -- uh. Wanna sit?

[ it isn't as though he can't tell the signs.

he feels it, too -- restless and curious and maybe a little nervous because he might just be projecting his dream onto a stranger who is probably coincidentally experiencing the same side effects, the same new sickness that might be brewing out of some resistance scheme or secret company ploy.

but he's smiling to create some ease, at least, and gesturing to his

bed. Look, he doesn't have a couch. leave him alone. ]

[ funny how that doesn't even occur to him -- though that must be blamed, at least in part, on the way he keeps looking back to shiro, magnetic and inexorable.

in the end, he plants himself on the mattress, ignoring the squeak, with the mug cupped warm between his hands, and shifts backwards a little. only - ]

. . . I definitely get what you meant about the draft now.

[ at least he's settled himself against the wall. sipping grimly!! ]

. . . cold?

[ he's still bath-damp and wrapped in too-big shorts. what other answer would there be besides - ]

I'm fine.

. . . sit down already.

[ he is.

or rather, he's sitting on the edge of the mattress, offering keith a folded square of blankets to cover his legs. ]

Can you tell me something?

[ . . . draping them over himself, with a perplexed little furrow. ): ]

Yeah -- what?

[ it's a similar background: they're together on a bed, and for a second, he's back in that blue-tinted room again, inhaling the scent of iron-rich earth lingering on keith's curled form.

but there's still a foot or so between them. he doesn't bridge the gap. ]

You told me that you remember me studying to go to space.

What else do you remember?

Edited (icon repettiiititiitijgngnon) 2017-04-29 08:18 (UTC)

[ sand in his teeth, down his sleeves, and pulse all thunder. the surge and bristling of night winds whipping around them. open air and a chrome-sleek frame, body lean against his, wool crumpling gold-grey-gold between his fingers as he'd tugged closer, closer - ]

You raced me. We were out in a desert somewhere. It wasn't the area around Eulogy -- or it definitely didn't feel like it. We borrowed machines from the Garrison. They felt pretty old, but we really got them to run. And I was just --

[ it clumps on his tongue, static and stone in the same heavy twist as his eyes flick up, startled - ]

Happy.

[ it's always the same look.

keith looked at him the same way in the alleyway where they first met, and then again when he broke in, and then another time in a dream, and then here they are now. it's not a happy sort of look for all that keith is saying, because to him, it looks a little bit scared.

happy is a different expression on him;
happy had been the first time in a long time that he was able to throw him; happy had been the moment he climbed up shiro's fire escape, with grease streaked over his face, leading him down the rusty pipes to show him a - ]

No -- you built a bike.

[ it's a fixed sort of stare, unwavering even as his brow scrunches, as his fist opens and closes on his lap. ]

. . . didn't you?

[ didn't you?

the question tumbles, and keeps falling -- it doesn't stir a chord or strike some end in the darkness that seems to stretch behind all his shallow memories. abruptly he claps a hand to his hair, rumples it back in a furious scrub of a sweep. ]

I don't know. It --

[ shiro, wry and bright-eyed with caffeine, gaze drifting a little lower than his eyes. the clank of boots on railing. plucking at grease seeped into the corner of a sleeve. a sun-wide grin: thought we could go for a ride. ]

Maybe. I can't -- remember where mine came from. All I know's that you were there.

[ it isn't quite memory that's got him this time -- there's no excuse for the way he's leaned over to catch shiro's arm, as if proximity could answer what time and shiro haven't. ]

It sounds right. I know I wanted to show you something.

[ keith gives himself up to all of these vague inklings with such little pause, that it baffles shiro to even think about.

but then again, they keep getting chances to forget each other. the alleyway could've been a one time thing. and so could've been the break-in, and that same awkward night where the mobs took to the streets, and keith had huddled into his bed to wait it out. they keep coming back to each other in the end, and he keeps finding himself watching keith with his wild hair and lost eyes, thinking that eventually the mystery will unravel itself.

but it's stranger that there are moments like this, too. keith closes his fingers around his arm, and the weight is familiar; and nothing else matters, because at least they're together again.

i'm glad to be back. ]

. . . it's so strange.

[ he doesn't remember the race, but he remembers some suspended moment, the smoke burning acrid in his nostrils, and an engine's rickety breakdown.

the bike tipping over.

it isn't completely conscious, when he lifts a hand to press his palm to keith's knuckles. ]

The dreams that I had of you and me were so clear.

But these . . . images are all so foggy. And yet, how is it that we're having similar hallucinations?

. . . do you remember a crash, too?

. . . I don't -

[ but it's starry behind the drop of his eyelids, colors and grit flashing through the black. dune after dune. a guardrail's rusting curve silvered over. impact -- a shock singing up his bones. salt painted along the roof of his mouth, softer than blood or metal, and a name twisting in his throat like a live coal. i'm not counting that one --

and gone, leaving only his fingertips clinging to a sleeve, the metal-cool spread of a familiar hand. clear eyes staring, caught.

he swallows. ]

I don't know what I remember. I get -- flashes. When you talk about things you remember. But those could be anything. We don't even know if we're remembering the exact same things.

[ as his fingers tighten - ]

But I wanna test something.

[ it's a good tone, fixed and firm with resolve. for all that he doesn't know keith, not really, it's still the kind of determination that he can admire -- that he can trust.

but trusting this boy has always come easy from the very beginning. so he nods, spine straightening with his better stance, his rearranged seat. ]

Go right ahead.

What would you like me to do?

[ that's such a bad idea.

a hand lashes out, knuckles along his collar as keith lifts his head -- and his brows have snapped together, his mouth turned knife-sharp. hell if he knows what he's doing, hell if the idea's got anything behind it but pounding adrenaline, an unfamiliar taste, and spark after glancing, remembered spark at every point they've touched -- ]

Just hold still.

[ as he braces onto a knee, hauls him down into a kiss. ]

[ -- so much for trust.

not that he does more than lean in with the yank, when he's owl-eyed and thoroughly confused (and thinking hastily in the spurred moment, a little dreamily in that split second before collision, that keith's eyes are really a lovely color).

and as far as kisses go, he's never really been kissed so angrily before, hard enough to jar a breath into turning sharply out of turn. or rather, maybe it's not angry -- just fueled by inexperience, and by the same token, too much teeth.

it doesn't spark more than the same memory -- the bike underneath them, how he's winding his arms around keith's belly, and the dry desert air's whipping warm all around them -- but it shocks his heartbeat into thunder inside of his rib cage. he's not sure about this test. he's not sure about anything anymore.

but maybe he's not exactly thinking about the test than he is about the actual kiss, when he's leaning in and tilting his head at a better angle, just to avoid the edge of keith's teeth. ]

[ it's easy not to think.

in the blackened-early morning, shiro tastes like nothing but mint and the bitter edge of badly brewed coffee -- leans into him with puzzled, reflexive trust. like trust comes easy, like he doesn't need to think twice to be sure -- and proximity's churning static in the pit of his stomach as he grinds out a harsher breath through his teeth, as imagined memory saturates nerve and vein: the soft line of his shirt, how it'd feel to palm his shoulder and pull him closer. static's twisting hollow in the pit of his stomach, bright and stinging -- and a harsh, dizzy drop.

he doesn't remember this at all.

he can't. he won't. he could forget his first ride (a stingy customer's keyring snapped off the holder, a mechanic's shouts throttling their little garage as he'd cranked the engine to roar), lose the first dull fit of wire strippers gleaming red against his palm. but this -- the gentling shape of shiro's mouth beneath his, coaxing and yielding until he jerks, trembles with something a little worse than impact. no one would forget a kiss like this.

maybe he'd had an excuse to draw shiro down. he doesn't, now, for lingering, for tilting, shuddering, into a breathless kiss, and not pulling away. ]

[ to be fair, he doesn't try to think of what it means at first. it'd been that way from the start, rocky and too quick to really consider the logic, to do more than take second seat to some rough-and-tumble, street-smart killjoy who thinks he knows better, who probably doesn't, but knows he's fast enough to pick things up on the fly given the opportunity. keith stole his car at first, looked stiff and small at first when he laid a hand on his shoulder in the alleyway. it's different than all of the dreams and daydreams, but because of them, nothing seems all that sudden when they should be: the stalking, and the fixating, and every unfortunate sign that there's something just as wrong with his head if he's humoring everything that this dumb kid's trying to do.

but it's hard to deny the effect it has on him.

nothing really explains the blind trust, how they went from that missed beat on the streets with his hand on keith's shoulder to this, all racing heartbeats and searing relief, something that feels like what he felt in a dream last night, clutching keith to his chest and hoping beyond all unexplainable hope that he'd stay safe. it still knots in his throat.

he doesn't remember this, but nothing about the feeling changes at all. not the adrenaline rushing hot in his blood, and not the zero gravity of the giddy moment, the way keith yields, breath shuttering, and he'd like nothing more than to surge into the kiss, to hold on tightly and never let keith give him that lost-eyed look again.

don't go.

but that was a dream.

the reality is this: keith is a young boy he's met some few weeks ago. he broke his window and rummaged through his things, and now he's in his bed, wearing his clothes, and any moment now, he's going to spill hot cocoa on his sheets.

he knows all of this, clear-headed as ever, and he's still slow to pull back. ]

. . . that was -

[ nice, is on the tip of his tongue. but it's probably not the joke he wants it to mean. half-lidded and bleary-eyed, he doesn't really mean the breathlessness of the murmur when he eventually finds the words.

especially when they're still only an inch away. ]

. . . supposed to be a test?

. . . kind of. I thought I remembered -- something.

[ something like wanting, crackling beneath his ribs like coals -- like the twist of a body between his thighs, curling close enough to press his mouth to the juncture just above his collarbone. a laugh clinging to teeth and tongue: come on, shiro.

he pulls back, settles against the wall with a stolid stormcloud frown. ]

But -- whatever we were doing, I guess that wasn't part of it.

[ -- oh.

ice water. he can handle that, he should've expected it even, when keith had prefaced it with, i want to test something.

it'd be a little silly at this point, to ask, are you sure? ]

[ but he pulls back, too, in the end. he's a little warm, but the draft's taking care of that, and he's rubbing the back of his neck until the hairs there stop standing on end.

it takes a while, takes built metal nerves and military-bred composure, but he exhales and his breathing's even again. his smile's passable when he goes for a laugh. ]

I was starting to think after all of the attention, that you just developed an unhealthy crush.

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