the night reeks of old pine and termite shit and the faint bitter layering of old cigarette ash. in the dark, there's nothing but your own lungs at work and the cot creaking metallic beneath you, noisier than any barracks-issue. constellations smear the windows of your little cabin like crushed flies; moonlight steeps the dank floorboards blue, blue, blue-green-blue, flecking shadows across a ragged plank, magazines stacked on folders, the old workstation you used to bang on as a kid, all clacking keyboard, a heavy-headed monitor, and a system that coughs static and dust every time it boots up. in the still and the black outside, things are scuttling and slithering and prickling needles high; but nothing dreams out here but you.
close your eyes. press your palms flat against the bed. military routine does something to you -- files you down to gristle and grim conviction, works you until your bones grind through patterns in reflex. tomorrow's chores: collect water. check the generator at dawn, before the day goes bone-bleaching. track the weather report for the week to measure out your next restock in town. carve open one can of soup or beans to take with the bread before it goes bad. read the new magazines out on the porch 'til just before noon. there's a fleet's worth of stories buried in this state: warped little skeletons pulled out of the thin, glassy lakes up where civilisation clusters; radioactive coyotes bounding out of the canyon where they used to dump nuclear waste; a man with the wings and head of a moth who defends hitchhikers on the backroads.
they say the egyptians believed that the sky wasn't real space -- it was a woman, a goddess, who covered the planet with her body. according to the mythology, the stars were just a part of her skin. they still made pretty good progress on working through star tables, though -- and they tracked the nile's flooding based on an astronomical calendar. don't ask me how that fits together.
this is not a desert story, nothing to clip out of a newspaper or a magazine's gloss. you are not dreaming the easy curling voice, the railing's clank beneath your knotting fingers, the history of a people who watched the stars and crumbled away to dust. the dream is that there's someone else to tell it to you.
but it isn't the story that matters -- rumors come and go, but how many times have you heard that voice? a hundred. a thousand, in countless ways -- through daylight, yawning bright; echoing down the barracks halls, tugging at your rucked-up collar (take it easy, cadet); skimmed across the library's rooftop through sand-scrubbed shadows and silence. i should've known i'd find you up here. a laugh, warm as a firing engine, and the press of his palm against your spine. sorry i'm late.
that's a story too. here is the dream: the way you close your eyes. how your hands bunch tight like there's a railing out here to hold onto.
[ when he wakes to the deepest silences of the desert night, a stray coyote barking, or the winds kicking up the red grit and sand, it feels a little bit like waking up from a dream. tonight, the sensation is different. the world doesn't seem to settle for it, to reorient itself with this empty frustration he can feel inside of himself. he feels small.
there's old wood and a reek of something like oil, a scent like the earth that surfaces from the cot every time he rolls over and rustles dust. but no, that isn't him. he feels like an intruder, he feels like he lives here, and there's static in the air, the world sitting strangely blue behind the quiet folds of cloth covering the windows; he thinks about the radios and the machines tucked away in the corner of the little room, and then he remembers that they've been off for years.
it's a strange mix of feelings. the nascent tension, the wrong words forming in his mouth. he remembers the stories of the pyramids, and the cats, and the constellations. he remembers feeling the scrunch of his smile, hearing them come from a voice that sounds oddly like his.
it's the middle of the night, sitting in a cabin that feels like his, that still feels unfamiliar, looking at the dark silhouette of someone he thinks he knows. there's relief, maybe, and something that feels like a long time coming. whatever it is, it feels right for a moment, because whatever the case might be, he's just glad to see him. ]
Hey.
[ quiet, gentle. anticlimactic for a reunion, but devastating for how it jolts and settles him in a single star-falling instant. ]
a heartbeat and the double-vision of it comes apart. there's a moment where the world's a single image -- clouds racing and curdling from the brightening stars behind barred, dirt-smeared glass -- and then there's two of them: a stranger with his hands settled along the rusting cot, keith with his whole frame twisted to meet that single voice, steady as a compass needle swinging true north. ]
Was I loud? [ in contrast, the syllables drop like coins into the dusty hush, one after another; around them the house hangs still. ] I think I was -- dreaming.
[ and there goes reflex again, an absent traitor in the way he reaches out to clasp shiro's arm for some slight sign. be here with me. just be here. ]
[ there's not much he can say to that, feeling a bit out of place in keith's cluttered, empty house, and comforting him with company only. kerberos is a recent thing, but a distant memory in this little sliver of time shared between them. he doesn't remember the details past the long flight it would've been, the return that took longer than any of them ever expected.
but there's a cracked television screen somewhere in old memory that flickers with blue and green static, and a reporter's bland voice mechanically rehashing the same old news. pilot error, the headlines say. and if they look at all of the cut-outs strewn along the floor, if they read the worn paper and along their ripped edges and bleeding ink, they'd both remember that he's still lost in space. ]
Must've been some nightmare. [ but he's smiling at least, his tone warm and fond and hushed in the nighttime. his arm is solid, both of them made of flesh and blood and his fingers are tangible where he's reaching forward to brush back keith's hair.
ruffling and familiar. just like how they both remember. ] You should go back to sleep. I'll be here.
[ a fleck of a sound, not quite disagreement, as he bows his head a little -- doesn't lean into the touch, but can't quite shift away, either, from the brush of shiro's fingertips, flicking warm through all the blue shadows. there's a clipping running to grey and dust in a shaft of moonlight, a thousand betraying signs around them -- but his eyes turn up beneath the fringe: he isn't looking anywhere else. ]
[ and that's honesty enough to rip the illusion open for a singular second -- remembering the sleepless nights in the days that followed after; how he'd train instead, sweat running down his brow as the fluorescent lights shone brightly overhead; zarkon is attacking, paladins assemble, and he's already out the door, rushing down the halls with keith keeping steady by his side.
but they're in the middle of a desert in the middle of nowhere, and he's sitting on the edge of keith's uncomfortable bed, feeling a little guilty. it's almost -- relaxing. peaceful. all that he knows is that he's glad to see him, that for now, this is enough. ]
Not that I'm complaining about the accommodations.
[ a shrug, like motion could slough the memory. talking trails his knotted fists across the sheets, restless -- and he's shifting to follow through after all: dropping into a slouch at the very edge of the bed, side-by-side with bare centimeters between them under the arid night. ]
[ it's not a good question. he can feel it long before it forms on his tongue, before it chokes out the strange familiarity that settles in their proximity, that creates distance yawning wide until they're lightyears away again.
he's not sure why he asks it. somehow, he thinks keith's been dreading the question -- he thinks they'd rather get it over with. ]
[ there's a sheer, blank silence: the empty tolling of a boy who hadn't thought of the question at all. hadn't thought past the slight dip in the mattress, moonlight dusting silver across shiro's knuckles and the familiar shock of hair.
next to this, the history behind it seems to wither. it hadn't mattered -- but he can't say that. ]
I had to.
[ a half-truth, told sidelong. ]
After you left -- they weren't going to let me on a real mission anyway.
but he's bumping their shoulders, and the bed springs creak with the motion. motes of dust make up constellations in the blue darkness of the room, but that's not real space, it's inconsequential. ]
You're good, you know that. [ it's not disappointment. not really. just a moment of could-have-been, would-have-been, should-have-been. nothing really worth mourning when it feels like keith has something better now. ] Even without me. A few more years, and you'd probably go into flying missions solo.
[ another little silence, weighed down with all the rust in his throat, copper and salt knotting thick enough to catch in his teeth. guilt's a spun haze around the answer -- because if there'd been any part of the loss that'd mattered, it might have been this: that shiro wouldn't have wanted him to go.
but the bump has its impact, shoulder to shoulder, and he leans back against the contact hard as his head bows -- just for a moment, where no one can see it. ]
. . . but we don't exactly need the Garrison if you just want to see me fly.
[ the weight's comfortable to take, as familiar as a phantom limb, as the fingers of his right hand where they flex restlessly against the sheets.
it's only them, and it's only his heartbeat that he can hear in the cabin's din. the static of a radio's playing in the distance, some old folksy tune that he thinks he likes, that keith doesn't like. but he's laughing, wry and a little tired. ]
Not anymore, huh.
[ but for some reason or another, he can't remember why that is. there's some kind of nervy energy in the air, something that pushes tension into his bones in the next second, that's still not quite enough to inundate this feeling of content that's keeping the two of them right here. together.
there's something they need to do. but every impulse in him is saying, no, not right now. just stay. ] Maybe in the morning, we can fly out together.
sand in his teeth, keith's arms wrapped around his abdomen, the way his heartbeat had notched up long before the speed dial ticked past fifty, sixty, seventy for the first time in what had felt like too long. liberating. there's the thrill of it, the fondness making its way into his smile as he'd fit the helmet over keith's head, and his hair had mussed out of its shape.
looks like you won. and he laughs, helplessly nostalgic. ]
That's a lot of big talk for someone who's got a long way to grow.
he blinks in turn, snorting quick through his nostrils. he's laying a hand over keith's sleep-mussed hair and leaning down to tap their foreheads together, to test their heights. ]
Ah, looks like we've got at least three inches left.
[ there's a breath, a sigh for all of their lost time. it's going to be a year of it -- because he knows this can't possibly last, whatever this is, and keith's going to turn over on his cot to an empty room.
and then what? ]
. . . hey, Keith.
eat dick, motherfucker. in fact, eat exactly 1.75 testicles.
but he's smiling, wry as ever and tired already. they're going to wake up only to forget everything again, and frankly, he's exhausted with being exhausted. ]
[ it makes him laugh, soft and quiet into the blue, static-ridden space still left between them.
the springs creak. the desert breeze slips into the crack beneath the door until all they can smell is the sand, not the cosmic dust clinging to his shadowy frame, not a canyon's stillness lingering along keith's limbs after a day of excavation. ]
[ it's a deep hush, all shadows and dust and pearling light -- it feels as if they're caught on the cusp of something, a moment that might startle and fly if he so much as talks too loud. so he doesn't move; his voice runs low --
and yet there's still a little judgment involved. ]
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w7d1, night
the night reeks of old pine and termite shit and the faint bitter layering of old cigarette ash. in the dark, there's nothing but your own lungs at work and the cot creaking metallic beneath you, noisier than any barracks-issue. constellations smear the windows of your little cabin like crushed flies; moonlight steeps the dank floorboards blue, blue, blue-green-blue, flecking shadows across a ragged plank, magazines stacked on folders, the old workstation you used to bang on as a kid, all clacking keyboard, a heavy-headed monitor, and a system that coughs static and dust every time it boots up. in the still and the black outside, things are scuttling and slithering and prickling needles high; but nothing dreams out here but you.
close your eyes. press your palms flat against the bed. military routine does something to you -- files you down to gristle and grim conviction, works you until your bones grind through patterns in reflex. tomorrow's chores: collect water. check the generator at dawn, before the day goes bone-bleaching. track the weather report for the week to measure out your next restock in town. carve open one can of soup or beans to take with the bread before it goes bad. read the new magazines out on the porch 'til just before noon. there's a fleet's worth of stories buried in this state: warped little skeletons pulled out of the thin, glassy lakes up where civilisation clusters; radioactive coyotes bounding out of the canyon where they used to dump nuclear waste; a man with the wings and head of a moth who defends hitchhikers on the backroads.
they say the egyptians believed that the sky wasn't real space -- it was a woman, a goddess, who covered the planet with her body. according to the mythology, the stars were just a part of her skin. they still made pretty good progress on working through star tables, though -- and they tracked the nile's flooding based on an astronomical calendar. don't ask me how that fits together.
this is not a desert story, nothing to clip out of a newspaper or a magazine's gloss. you are not dreaming the easy curling voice, the railing's clank beneath your knotting fingers, the history of a people who watched the stars and crumbled away to dust. the dream is that there's someone else to tell it to you.
but it isn't the story that matters -- rumors come and go, but how many times have you heard that voice? a hundred. a thousand, in countless ways -- through daylight, yawning bright; echoing down the barracks halls, tugging at your rucked-up collar (take it easy, cadet); skimmed across the library's rooftop through sand-scrubbed shadows and silence. i should've known i'd find you up here. a laugh, warm as a firing engine, and the press of his palm against your spine. sorry i'm late.
that's a story too. here is the dream: the way you close your eyes. how your hands bunch tight like there's a railing out here to hold onto.
how you pretend you're still waiting. ]
no subject
there's old wood and a reek of something like oil, a scent like the earth that surfaces from the cot every time he rolls over and rustles dust. but no, that isn't him. he feels like an intruder, he feels like he lives here, and there's static in the air, the world sitting strangely blue behind the quiet folds of cloth covering the windows; he thinks about the radios and the machines tucked away in the corner of the little room, and then he remembers that they've been off for years.
it's a strange mix of feelings. the nascent tension, the wrong words forming in his mouth. he remembers the stories of the pyramids, and the cats, and the constellations. he remembers feeling the scrunch of his smile, hearing them come from a voice that sounds oddly like his.
it's the middle of the night, sitting in a cabin that feels like his, that still feels unfamiliar, looking at the dark silhouette of someone he thinks he knows. there's relief, maybe, and something that feels like a long time coming. whatever it is, it feels right for a moment, because whatever the case might be, he's just glad to see him. ]
Hey.
[ quiet, gentle. anticlimactic for a reunion, but devastating for how it jolts and settles him in a single star-falling instant. ]
Are you awake?
no subject
[ a star falls.
a heartbeat and the double-vision of it comes apart. there's a moment where the world's a single image -- clouds racing and curdling from the brightening stars behind barred, dirt-smeared glass -- and then there's two of them: a stranger with his hands settled along the rusting cot, keith with his whole frame twisted to meet that single voice, steady as a compass needle swinging true north. ]
Was I loud? [ in contrast, the syllables drop like coins into the dusty hush, one after another; around them the house hangs still. ] I think I was -- dreaming.
[ and there goes reflex again, an absent traitor in the way he reaches out to clasp shiro's arm for some slight sign. be here with me. just be here. ]
Almost felt like you were still gone.
no subject
but there's a cracked television screen somewhere in old memory that flickers with blue and green static, and a reporter's bland voice mechanically rehashing the same old news. pilot error, the headlines say. and if they look at all of the cut-outs strewn along the floor, if they read the worn paper and along their ripped edges and bleeding ink, they'd both remember that he's still lost in space. ]
Must've been some nightmare. [ but he's smiling at least, his tone warm and fond and hushed in the nighttime. his arm is solid, both of them made of flesh and blood and his fingers are tangible where he's reaching forward to brush back keith's hair.
ruffling and familiar. just like how they both remember. ] You should go back to sleep. I'll be here.
no subject
[ a fleck of a sound, not quite disagreement, as he bows his head a little -- doesn't lean into the touch, but can't quite shift away, either, from the brush of shiro's fingertips, flicking warm through all the blue shadows. there's a clipping running to grey and dust in a shaft of moonlight, a thousand betraying signs around them -- but his eyes turn up beneath the fringe: he isn't looking anywhere else. ]
Why're you even still up?
no subject
[ and that's honesty enough to rip the illusion open for a singular second -- remembering the sleepless nights in the days that followed after; how he'd train instead, sweat running down his brow as the fluorescent lights shone brightly overhead; zarkon is attacking, paladins assemble, and he's already out the door, rushing down the halls with keith keeping steady by his side.
but they're in the middle of a desert in the middle of nowhere, and he's sitting on the edge of keith's uncomfortable bed, feeling a little guilty. it's almost -- relaxing. peaceful. all that he knows is that he's glad to see him, that for now, this is enough. ]
Not that I'm complaining about the accommodations.
Cozy place you've got here.
no subject
[ a shrug, like motion could slough the memory. talking trails his knotted fists across the sheets, restless -- and he's shifting to follow through after all: dropping into a slouch at the very edge of the bed, side-by-side with bare centimeters between them under the arid night. ]
And it's still got power.
no subject
[ it's not a good question. he can feel it long before it forms on his tongue, before it chokes out the strange familiarity that settles in their proximity, that creates distance yawning wide until they're lightyears away again.
he's not sure why he asks it. somehow, he thinks keith's been dreading the question -- he thinks they'd rather get it over with. ]
Why'd you leave?
[ the garrison. ]
no subject
next to this, the history behind it seems to wither. it hadn't mattered -- but he can't say that. ]
I had to.
[ a half-truth, told sidelong. ]
After you left -- they weren't going to let me on a real mission anyway.
no subject
but he's bumping their shoulders, and the bed springs creak with the motion. motes of dust make up constellations in the blue darkness of the room, but that's not real space, it's inconsequential. ]
You're good, you know that. [ it's not disappointment. not really. just a moment of could-have-been, would-have-been, should-have-been. nothing really worth mourning when it feels like keith has something better now. ] Even without me. A few more years, and you'd probably go into flying missions solo.
I would've liked to see that.
no subject
[ another little silence, weighed down with all the rust in his throat, copper and salt knotting thick enough to catch in his teeth. guilt's a spun haze around the answer -- because if there'd been any part of the loss that'd mattered, it might have been this: that shiro wouldn't have wanted him to go.
but the bump has its impact, shoulder to shoulder, and he leans back against the contact hard as his head bows -- just for a moment, where no one can see it. ]
. . . but we don't exactly need the Garrison if you just want to see me fly.
no subject
it's only them, and it's only his heartbeat that he can hear in the cabin's din. the static of a radio's playing in the distance, some old folksy tune that he thinks he likes, that keith doesn't like. but he's laughing, wry and a little tired. ]
Not anymore, huh.
[ but for some reason or another, he can't remember why that is. there's some kind of nervy energy in the air, something that pushes tension into his bones in the next second, that's still not quite enough to inundate this feeling of content that's keeping the two of them right here. together.
there's something they need to do. but every impulse in him is saying, no, not right now. just stay. ] Maybe in the morning, we can fly out together.
It's been a long time since we've raced.
no subject
At least that means it's been a long time since you lost one.
no subject
sand in his teeth, keith's arms wrapped around his abdomen, the way his heartbeat had notched up long before the speed dial ticked past fifty, sixty, seventy for the first time in what had felt like too long. liberating. there's the thrill of it, the fondness making its way into his smile as he'd fit the helmet over keith's head, and his hair had mussed out of its shape.
looks like you won. and he laughs, helplessly nostalgic. ]
That's a lot of big talk for someone who's got a long way to grow.
wow???
You don't look that big to me.
what
he blinks in turn, snorting quick through his nostrils. he's laying a hand over keith's sleep-mussed hair and leaning down to tap their foreheads together, to test their heights. ]
Ah, looks like we've got at least three inches left.
WHAT!!!
Shiro, if you think three inches is big, then I've -- got some pretty bad news for you.
i don't know why you're being all rowdy, they're just staring into each other's eyes
[ there's a breath, a sigh for all of their lost time. it's going to be a year of it -- because he knows this can't possibly last, whatever this is, and keith's going to turn over on his cot to an empty room.
and then what? ]
. . . hey, Keith.
eat dick, motherfucker. in fact, eat exactly 1.75 testicles.
Don't go.
no subject
but he's smiling, wry as ever and tired already. they're going to wake up only to forget everything again, and frankly, he's exhausted with being exhausted. ]
You already know I come back.
no subject
[ there's rust on the words still, crackling heavy; but if he's sure of anything, if there's any doubt worth working through, it must be this. ]
. . . but it's been a long time since we've done this -- and I get the feeling we're about to be pretty busy for a while.
no subject
the springs creak. the desert breeze slips into the crack beneath the door until all they can smell is the sand, not the cosmic dust clinging to his shadowy frame, not a canyon's stillness lingering along keith's limbs after a day of excavation. ]
Don't you need to sleep?
no subject
and yet there's still a little judgment involved. ]
Not any more than you do.
no subject
[ it rings in a low note, murmur-soft. ]
Let's do it, then.
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