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Chapter Text

December, 1993.

Snap! Whirrrr …  

Keith’s eyes open with a flutter of lashes, nose smashed into the scent of Shiro on the pillow. Sweet, warm, familiar. The bonelike early morning of December pries through open blinds cool and pale, caressing the tousle of Shiro’s bedhead, the slope of his shoulders in the oversized cardigan sweater that hangs open along his bare chest. He sits a few feet away from the bed, elbows propped on crossed knees, fingers still poised at the shutter button of the Polaroid camera. The fresh photograph sticks out like a tongue.  

Keith issues a little sigh somewhere between a grumble and a groan, turning his face deeper into the pillow as he shoves his arms up underneath, flops around limply in tangled sheets and hand-me-down feather down comforter.

“Can you not?” he croaks.

“No, I cannot not,” Shiro replies warmly, in that husky early morning voice of his. A smile curls behind the camera before he lowers it and plucks the photograph out, waves it around gently as it develops. Well-loved sweater sleeves bunch at his knuckles. Waking to his picture being taken is not something Keith appreciates but waking to that smile is. With a little sigh, he adjusts his face on the pillow, the shadows of his eyelashes encroaching upon sleepy morning blurred vision as he squints across the pale-lit room.

Shiro’s gaze darts away before he can meet it. He rolls to one hip a little, whisper of plaid cotton pajama pants as he reaches for his cigarettes and the ceramic ash tray — hand-painted, last year, deep indigo with stars and moons. Flick of a lighter, curl of silky tobacco smoke.

Keith snaps his tongue against the back of his teeth and drags himself out of bed one limb at a time. It isn’t too far a journey; there’s no box spring, just a double mattress with sheet wrinkling against carpet. He pulls the loose top sheet with him, trailing it like a cloak as he half-crawls to the window and fumbles to open it a few inches for fresh air flow. Winter dawn bites at his hands, whips at his bare thighs; he pulls them under the sheet, huddling there cross-legged and squinting out into the rich green of trees that stretch up behind Shiro’s apartment building, in a line along the fence at the back of the lot. Shiver of movement in the windowpane, shimmying reflection of Shiro as he abandons the camera and the photograph and swivels around to fold down over Keith from behind. Keith stays rigid for a moment, waiting as strong, warm arms close around him like a scarf, knees cage him in as bare toes curl against the wall under the window. Rise and fall and body heat of a firm chest through T-shirt and sheet and cardigan sweater. Tickle of breath as Shiro settles to perch his chin on Keith’s shoulder like the devil he is and then isn’t.

Keith yields back into the embrace. Shiro leans forward, squishing him between windowsill and tight arms. Keith smiles a little, a groggy grin, letting the sweet morning nuzzle tip his head to one side, send shivers down his spine for the warmth in the early chill. The cigarette burns between Shiro’s fingers. Smoke swirls for the window screen. And maybe Shiro can feel his heart like he can feel Shiro’s; maybe Shiro is lulled by the rhythm of his breath like Keith is his. Maybe Shiro doesn’t notice those things at all, but only the shell of Keith’s ear as target for tender lips and teasing teeth, the nape of his neck for a little sigh, the wave of his hair to brush aside.

Shiro lifts the cigarette; Keith wiggles a hand up out of the sheet to snatch it first. He smokes silently for a moment, before carefully placing it back between Shiro’s waiting fingers.

“Have you slept, at all?” Keith asks, pulling up the collar of his shirt to hook on the end of his nose — the December morning bites at it hungrily. He can smell Shiro on the cotton, tang of skin, faint laundry detergent, yesterday’s deodorant.

Into his shoulder Shiro mumbles back, “I was making sure you did.”

“Bullshit.” Keith smirks gently, tips his head the other way for Shiro to have his cigarette. He almost makes it to the ceramic before ash crumbles — on the sheet, on the carpet. “Oh, God damn it, Shiro,” Keith grunts, bouncing an elbow to flap at the mess with a corner of the bedsheet.

“Sorry,” Shiro murmurs, voice like burnt velvet, and he really does mean it.

Keith huddles deeper into the sheet, waiting for Shiro to return with his warmth. “Do you have work tonight?”

“Yes. You have class?”

Class, yes. He wouldn’t be up this early except for having not slept the night through. But it’s been a while since he hasn’t, and it’s been a while since it’s been Shiro waking him up early himself. Keith sighs, reluctantly rolling away and climbing to his feet with a little lift to his toes to stretch stiff calves. He drops the sheet on the bed and searches for his jeans — other side of the mattress, by his coat and shoes, his backpack with the little alien head keychain. “Yeah,” he sighs. “And I work late. There’s a poetry reading or something at the coffeeshop that goes until closing, so I probably won’t get out until midnight.”

“You need bus money?”

“Nah,” Keith says around a yawn, digging under his coat for his socks.

“You need a ride?”

“I’m okay.”

“You can shower here, you know,” Shiro offers.

“I need clean clothes.”

Shiro rakes a hand through his own hair with a playful nod. “So are you gonna wear my shirt home, then?”

Keith blushes, pausing halfway through tugging his pants up in a little jump and wiggle. With a flustered huff of breath, maybe probably definitely a dust of red across his face, he casts Shiro a glance and abandons the open button of his jeans to tug off the big white T-shirt.

Shiro laughs. The sound is like gold. “Just wear it home, babe. I’m giving you a hard time.”

Keith pouts at him over the edge of the shirt, nipples tingling from the assault of cold air on naked flesh, cotton tangled on both arms and hair a mess after pulling the collar up over the back. But he drops it back down and pulls himself into and through his own big sweater, sleeves nipping at his fingers. He’d swim in the one Shiro’s wearing; this one would probably fit Shiro just right.

Shiro climbs to his feet, crosses the room trailing a stream of cigarette smoke. Keith plucks the cigarette from Shiro’s fingers again as he passes and it dances on his lower lip as he sits down to pull on his socks and shoes. With his hand free now, Shiro strokes his fingers from Keith’s temple up over his hair, tousling it more, down the crown of his head to hold him in place at the nape of the neck so he can stoop down and steal a kiss to the forehead. “You better go before I make you late for class, Ginsberg. I’ll see you tonight at the Half Moon.”

Keith rolls his eyes, gives a little scoff. “Ginsberg,” he echoes. “Whatever. I need coffee.”

He stands. Shiro waits for him to shrug halfway into his Carhartt before snaking an arm around his side, half inside his coat, winding him in for a real kiss. Simple, quick, soft. Press of the arm to find the shape of the body beneath shifting layers of clothes. Heat at the small of the back, the soft place under the ribs. No words or tongue or teeth, just the close of lips and the sweet warmth of silence.

When Shiro pulls slowly away, Keith can still feel the ghost of his mouth, and he hates how cold his breath feels when there’s nothing to catch it anymore.

“I’ll see you later,” Keith murmurs, checking to make sure his house key is still in his coat pocket and casting his eyes elsewhere just in case he looks too in love.

“Be good today, Keith,” Shiro jokes.

“Always.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll see you later.”

“You said that already.”

“I know.” Keith lingers at the bedroom door, tapping his nails on the dull wood. The rest of the apartment is quiet, eerie morning quiet where nothing seems alive yet or even dead still. Allura, sleeping. Matt, probably out, because since he finally came home, it’s been hard to keep him home. Shiro hates himself for it –

Keith’s eyes flicker up and catch on Shiro sitting on the edge of his mattress, framed by wintry daybreak. He has one knee drawn up against his chest, cigarette smoldering. It gives Keith pause. It reminds him of the day he accidentally told him I love you, and Shiro had given him that look with the dark, hollow eyes and knotted brow, lips just gently parted as if the words had stolen his breath and left him helpless in a bad way. The same liminal quiet as this morning, they’d just stared at each other and something had felt half alive and half dead.

Shiro sets his cigarette in the ceramic tray and grabs the Polaroid camera – snap!

Keith blinks rapidly, a startled flutter of lashes. He sighs, throwing Shiro a flustered frown. A pout. A dark glance. “Come on, I’m not awake enough for this yet … ”

Shiro smiles at the picture as it emerges from the camera. It blooms, gradually, in the pale morning light. He sits happily on the edge of his mattress with arms propped on sagging knees, and there it is again, the slow, unraveling morning quiet. It makes Keith want to curl up in cool, sweet sheets again, fall asleep in the leftover smell of Shiro’s skin and hair and sex.

“Oh, man,” Shiro says, voice gravelly. “Yeah, this one’s going up on the wall.”

The wall – over the frameless bed – Polaroids tacked up and framed by string lights. Shiro smiles idly at the photograph for a moment longer, before the smile dimples into one of his big, warm grins, the ones that make him look as innocent and hopeful as a child again. He holds the picture up for Keith to squint at from the doorway. Tiny little Polaroid, still developing, just a bit longer – Keith, himself, in the bedroom doorway, slouched there against the frame with head tilted just gently to one side. Mess of dark hair, a shadow at his eyes that might be bags beneath them. Bulk of his coat and the collar of Shiro’s T-shirt where his sweater sags past the clavicle. Thick knit socks, peeking above the top of his ankle boots. Eyes hooded, but an absent smile ghosting across his mouth. Happy. Worn out, but happy. Looks like – I love you.

I love you. It sits on Keith’s tongue again now, a blackbird with a death wish clinging to electrical wires. Blushing faintly, his eyes dance up from the photograph to Shiro and they must be saying it in place of his tongue because on the mattress, Shiro wilts a little, and his smile softens into the one that makes Keith die inside in a million different ways, and his eyes say back: Yeah, I know.

Chapter Text

October, 1992.

Half Moon Records is quiet tonight. Around nine or ten, it always gets pretty slow, but Monday night an hour before closing, there’s just an emptiness about the shop, a tired, settled sort of feeling. It’s a strange silence that falls even with two or three little televisions around the place playing MTV and music videos – Nirvana. That new show Lip Service. From the shop’s stereo system, Pearl Jam’s Ten.

There’s a little shiver of movement at the corner of Shiro’s eye, where the shop door is propped open for fresh air and a space heater scooted up close to the hinges to balance things out. He looks up without really lifting his head as, with a few little clicks and a gentle clatter, he changes a tape out at one of the countertop TVs for the mix-and-match of music videos the shop owner pieced together himself – not the best recording job ever, but there’s really no way to work a VCR with perfect timing.

“Hey,” Shiro greets, but it sort of fades out on the tip of his tongue when he sees that the first customer in over an hour is Keith. Not out of resentment or disappointment, but a little sinking of guilt.

Keith keeps his head low at first, like he didn’t hear him, but Shiro knows him better than that. He moves straight to the vinyls, the furthest center shelf away. But after a moment – probably only a second or two delay; to Shiro it is forever – his owl eyes flicker up and as he thumbs through the records, cardigan sweater sleeves nipping at his knuckles, looking achingly young and disenfranchised in that parka coat, he says back, “Hey.”  

“Long time no see.”

“For sure.”

Shiro smiles a little, raising his brows. Hoping not to betray how his chest has instantly cinched – weakly, but still noticeably – how his gaze darts immediately to Keith’s mouth, his hands, his almost-indigo eyes –

Those dark eyes glance off Shiro’s, and Keith looks back to the vinyls.

He’s not actually looking at them, just sort of turning them through like the pages of a book he’s already read, slowly making his way along the shelf. He’s trying to figure out how to say something, Shiro knows. In that weird way of his, where he thinks very deeply about what to say before he says it. Not in the sense of saying it the right way – no, in that sense, he is the kind who doesn’t review what he wants to say before he says it – but in the sense of saying … well, anything at all. It’s not mean. It’s not harmless, either. It’s the counterpart to not really having a filter, Shiro thinks.

It’s not until Shiro is back at the counter, sitting cross-legged there behind it returning the TLC tape to the plastic bin and shuffling around to reorganize alphabetically, that Keith says, “Are we going to be okay?”

Shiro cranes up to look at him over the edge of the counter; Keith is waiting already, across the store and through the brittle slant of overhead fluorescents, past posters and collage of flyers and adverts on the walls, stacks of magazines, crates of tapes, a single stick of incense going – waiting already, gawking from the far end of the CD shelf. His back to the open door. Like maybe he is poised to turn around and leave and never come back if Shiro says, No. We aren’t.

Shiro’s stomach instantly leadens; his heart bruises a little in his chest to see the pathetic look on Keith’s face. Just sullen and resigned. And a little scared, though he struggles to hide that behind one of his impatient frowns. It’s one of those moments where he looks his age again – barely twenty-one with the softness of eighteen still clinging despite the maturity of his smiles, those owl eyes. His hair is coming loose around his face from what he insists is a half-back, although it is really, and adorably, more like the stub of a ponytail at the crown of his head and the rest of it falling wispy at the nape of the neck, at the ears, at the temple.

Are we … ?

Shiro clears his throat, brow knotting. “What – I mean, what do you mean? What’s ‘we’?”

“I don’t know.” Keith shrugs stubbornly, casting him an almost offended look. No … betrayed. “I guess that’s the point,” he says. He leans against the CD shelf, taps one foot behind the other – digs the toe of one scuffed All Star into the ugly blue carpet and just stares at Shiro for a moment. His eyes are a little dark below the bottom lashes, dark and heavy. Exhausted.

Shiro doesn’t know what to say. He is too distracted by the shape of Keith’s mouth and how it felt on his, the way his body shivered and there was nothing vulnerable about it, the way his hands are smaller than Shiro’s but firm, and strong, and know what they want –

“Let me drive you home,” Shiro finally says. “It just got pretty nasty outside. You’re off for the night, right? Not just on break? I planned on closing early, anyway. It’s fucking dead tonight. So just hang out for a while.” He shrugs. In an apologetic murmur, he promises, “We don’t even have to talk.”

It started because Keith works at the late-night coffee shop just a block or two down from the Half Moon, back when Keith finally realized that Shiro noticed him noticing him, walking by around closing every other night. That Shiro had noticed him noticing him long before Keith had realized it.

It started then, and Shiro does not know how the last few months have brought them to sitting outside Keith’s place in his cold, dark Volvo, listening to Nirvana’s Dumb in the awkward but strangely cathartic sort of silence that comes after fucking once and not really talking about it. But here it has come.

The brakes whined a little when Shiro pulled up parallel to the curb. Rain speckles through the trees, through the dim puddles of light from streetlamps; the weather’s calmed down again to a pinprick spitting. Shiro doesn’t expect Keith to leave before the song is over. Keith doesn’t seem to want to leave until the song is over.

The song ends.

“Well,” Keith sighs.

“Yeah,” Shiro says.

Keith waves a little as he gets out; Shiro tips a half-assed salute with two fingers to the temple. Keith does not look back as he hurries to cross the narrow front yard and hop up the front stoop, fumbling for his house key somewhere in his pocket –

He just stands there, at the door, for a moment. Statuesque silhouette, little contrapasso and wilted shoulders, head bowed.

Keith turns around with a scrape of his heel on the cement stoop, and half-jogs back down, across the yard, shoving his hands in his pockets as he slows to a stop at Shiro’s driver’s side window.

Shiro rolls it down, denim jacket rustling as his shoulder pumps and his brow knots. Worried — genuinely concerned, for someone he barely knows. Well, not barely. Not barely at all, despite outside opinions on the matter.

“Hey,” Keith says, and clears his throat again, and Shiro thinks he might be blushing, though it might just be the night rosying his cheeks, “you’re not too tired, are you?”

There is a park up the street. A little family park with slide and jungle gym, seesaws and pine trees with low branches begging to be climbed. The woodchips are hard and soggy from the rain earlier; water drips crystalline from the hug of the neighborhood trees.   

“You know Playground Puget Sound?” Keith asks as he closes the passenger door, the echo bouncing around the cool October night.

Shiro leans back against the hood of his car, freckles of oxidation and headlights so fogged they’re like cataracts when they’re turned off. He crosses his arms tight and tucks his hands into the warm places against his sides, a nest of denim jacket and bleach-stained muscle tee sweatshirt. “Yeah,” he says. “The old fairground by the bay, right? The one that closed in ’85.”

“Yeah. You know it’s haunted? Some guy snuck in and committed suicide jumping off the Ferris wheel in ’87.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah.”

“I told you the Half Moon is haunted, right? There’s a ghost in the basement.”

“Yeah,” Keith says, voice drifting back over his shoulder as he wanders along to the playground merry-go-round. “You told me.”

Shiro laughs lightly, shaking his head. “I don’t know if I believe in ghosts, but it does get creepy working alone in there sometimes.”

Keith closes his hands on one of the sloped handles of the tiny merry-go-round and props a foot up on the edge, idly swaying it side to side as he flashes Shiro one of his more playful glances. “You don’t believe in ghosts?”

“Not really.”

Keith almost pouts at him for the answer, head a little ducked. “What about aliens?”

“Aliens — yes. Absolutely.” Shiro nods adamantly, raising his brows. He pushes off the front of his car to make his way over closer to the merry-go-round, arms still crossed. Keith laughs, drumming a thumb on the cold metal handrail. “What?” Shiro asks. “Don’t you believe?”

“Well, yeah.” Keith cuts him another one of those little looks. “It’s just funny. You believe in aliens, but not in ghosts … ”

The wind pulls at one of the swings over near the slide. It squeaks, rattles a little. The wind dances through Keith’s hair and pushes his parka hood a bit; it shifts Shiro’s collar at his throat. And it’s like at the same time, in some shared moment of awkward, penitent shame, they both realize they shouldn’t be acting this way if they haven’t talked about it yet. Not allowed. Don’t deserve it. Are we going to be okay? What’s ‘we’?

A silence unfurls like rewinding a cassette tape with the pinky finger. Or maybe it’s tightening. Winding. Winding. Rewinding. Lemniscate to three weeks ago. To the Half Moon, closing up. To after work cigarettes in the glittering dimness of University Avenue, nothing new. The almost daunting light of fixation in Keith’s eyes as he looked up at Shiro, little half smile, not really obsession so much as hyper-attention. Simple, undemanding adoration. Rewinding to kissing him up against the rain-dusted side of the Volvo. His fingers combing through Shiro’s hair. The inside of the car, dark and chilly. The fog of the windows and his hand up Keith’s sweater, his T-shirt, Keith’s wiggle to get more comfortable on his lap, his elbow hitting the horn on the wheel and his laughter bursting between their mouths and the way he didn’t even move his lips when Shiro’s parted for a chuckle and a smile with teeth. Rewinding to the way his gasps knotted in his throat, little grunts and whimpers like burnt silk, the grind of his body and the glint in his eyes catching sparks from nearby streetlights as Shiro clutched him at the hips, thumbs pressing into thighs, denim scratching denim –

The swingset chains rattle and squeak. Shiro shifts his weight to one foot and swings his hands up to rake through his hair, pulling it in little fistfuls that only just fall right back into place. He clears his throat.

“You haven’t been sleeping again, have you, Keith?” he murmurs.

Keith flashes him a dark glance, with utterly unintentional bitterness. In a flicker of lashes he seems to realize it and rips his eyes away again. He gives the merry-go-round a shove and, grabbing another edge of railing, hops on. His heels slip on the slick surface of the studded steel but he lets them slide, holding tight to ease himself down onto his back as the merry-go-round spins and spins.

His voice swirls in a circle with him as he says, “I can only really sleep all right when I’m around you.”

“Then why haven’t you been around?” Shiro demands. He doesn’t mean to sound so aggressive about it, possessive. Frustrated. Sometimes he is so keenly, painfully conscious – and self-conscious – of the deepness of his tenor compared to Keith’s brooding alto.

But Keith is quiet. Just spinning, slowly. There goes his voice again, chasing him through the night:

“You’re ignoring me.”

That’s it. Simple and sweet, and God, does Shiro love that voice. You’re ignoring me. He takes it like a blow, a bruising shove deep in his chest. Mouth pressed in a firm line, as he shoves his hands back in his pockets now, shifts his weight to the other foot again with a lazy cock of the hip.

“I mean,” he husks, “you’ve been ignoring me, too.”

Ignoring me. He didn’t call Keith. Keith gave him his number, but he didn’t call. He stood in the dark of his apartment staring at the phone but he didn’t call. He owns up to that. But Keith didn’t stop by. They have been like satellites and they’re orbiting the same fucking thing and it’s that night in Shiro’s car, Keith’s hands down his pants and Shiro’s tongue in his mouth –

“I didn’t call,” Shiro murmurs, voice thick in his throat, “because I wanted to ask you on a date.”

Keith’s face falls in a defiant, and deservingly so, scowl of disbelief. “That’s insane,” he says, voice looping more slowly now, in a perfect curve like rewinding a cassette tape, as the merry-go-round starts to slow.

“No.” Shiro sighs. “But it is cynical, and childish.”

The merry-go-round turns. Keith gawks up at the sky as he drifts by, again, and again.

“I just … ” he says, like now he’s the one chasing his voice. “I don’t know, I’m afraid of not letting go.”

Something strums tight and deep in Shiro’s chest – and it is not exactly disappointment. He reaches out, fingers brushing the moving merry-go-round bars. Finally he angles his palm to stop the thing completely, gentle enough to give Keith a little roll to one hip, fingers tightening on the cold handrails of the merry-go-round, tipping his head back to look up with brow knotted and lips parted for the breath before words, but no words to shape.

“Why would you have to let go?” Shiro presses, and he is afraid, again, of sounding overbearing by the cool, firm timbre of his voice.

“I don’t know,” Keith mutters through his teeth, low, defensive, that soft and almost plaintive sort of mumble that isn’t quite a mumble. “Maybe my judgment isn’t so good lately. Like you said, I’m not sleeping very well. I – ”

“Stop lying.”

“I’m not. I don’t sleep well, you know that – ”

“Keith.”

Little pause of guilt, doubt. “Shiro,” Keith finally mumbles back, stubborn per usual and adorably sulky.

Shiro crosses his arms, leans down to prop himself at the elbows on the curved bars of the playground merry-go-round. Directly below him, Keith frowns up flustered and frustrated with himself.

Rewinding. Almost there. Almost back to that night in Shiro’s car, and the innocent desire, and the faultine of lust uncomplicated by social ritual or emotional bribery. I’m afraid of not being able to let go. Just the two of them and simple, honest kisses, curious hands, yield of the mouth to a prodding tongue. Why would you have to let go? Holding each other against the side of the car outside the Half Moon, mouths moving, noses nudging. Keith lying there on the merry-go-round below him, looking up with a sad, sweet little hopefulness like the last leaf clinging to a tree in autumn wind. Shiro eases down to his haunches, fingers sliding along the cold metal handrails. It’s starting to spit rain again, stinging his knuckles in little pinpricks. He dips down slowly as Keith stretches up, and their mouths meet somewhere in between with a tender slip of lips into place, a sweet, simple little kiss like a gasp in reverse, rewinding, rewinding, rewind –  

Click.

That one restless swing rocks to and fro, barely, tiny whine of the chains. The wind threads through the trees along the perimeter of the park. A car passes by, roll of pale headlights.  

“So are we going to be okay?” Keith whispers, curled up lazily on the studded merry-go-round footplates and tracing circles on Shiro’s cheek where Shiro finally just sat down on the damp woodchips beside him, arms draped loosely about his knees and head tilted against one of the curved handrails. Shiro smiles faintly, nudges his face into Keith’s fingertip. Keith jumps, just a little, like he didn’t expect Shiro to stir.

“Yeah,” Shiro murmurs. “I think so.”

Keith is doing that thing again, that wide-eyed empty stare thing. “You think so?”

“Yeah,” Shiro says again. “I’m tired of letting things go.”

Keith opens his mouth to say something, but he doesn’t seem to know what again, so he just breathes in – and then breathes out a little, his eyes clearing. Focusing. Sharpening with a light that, in the dimness of the park, dances through dark lashes and indigo. He smiles, like he doesn’t even know it’s there, and Shiro can’t help but smile back and mean it.