Chapter Text
The world is on fire.
Shiro’s eyes dance golden from the flames, and Keith can’t help but stare back, transfixed and breathless despite himself. His pulse is a roar in his ears, mixing intermittently with the thunder of the blaze.
Even with his face twisted into a murderous snarl and an enchanted metal arm etched with runes of dark magic inches from his face, Shiro is still the most beautiful sight Keith’s ever laid eyes on.
He might be the last thing he ever sees.
Shiro’s arm pushes closer closer closer, silver wreathed in white-hot purple and a shout is torn out of Keith’s throat, his voice lost to the crackle-pop-burst of a timber nearby. His arms are trembling under the force of Shiro’s blow, his hands white-knuckled around his sword, but his face his face is burning burning burning
His wand is too far.
The ground is cold and muddy at his back, and there is nowhere to run.
“Shiro,” Keith says, shuddering and broken. “Shiro, please. You’re my brother.”
He’s frozen to the core and his nerves are shot through with heat but leaving, leaving was never an option.
Shiro’s smile is twisted in the firelight, his face cast into stark relief and his arm presses closer.
The pain flays him to the bone.
“I love you.”
His wand is too far.
Shiro falters, just for a second.
His eyes go shock-wide, storm-grey instead of glinting, sickening violet and a fragile thread of hope Keith didn’t know he was still holding onto pulls taut. Adrenaline jolts through Keith like lightning in his veins, kickstarts his lungs to breathe in ash and soot so hot his throat is seared with agony.
He pushes back with all the strength left in him, wills that there’s magic enough in his sword to not simply shatter under Shiro’s might even as the homicidal glint creeps back into Shiro’s eyes.
“Just let go, Keith.”
Never.
It’s too far.
“You don’t have to fight anymore.”
His face is burning, burning, burning.
He’s going to die here, under Shiro’s hands.
His wand is too far –
---
Crack.
Shiro jumps and swears as the scroll hits his desk, spilling an inkpot across the delicate fringe of his favorite quill.
He moves to grab it, cursing again as he leans forward reflexively with the stump at his right shoulder before quickly plucking it from his desk with his left hand.
Allura stands at his door, arm propped lazily against the doorframe. Her hair is striking ice blue today, done up in a neat bun.
“New mission,” she says, grin cheeky and bright, and his stomach does a small swoop in excitement. She steps inside and pulls the door closed against the raucous laughter in the background, where most of the Aurors’ desks are situated. “How’s the new office?”
“As much as I miss the racket out there, it’s nice.” He raises an eyebrow at the slow-moving puddle on his desk. “But it could be nicer.”
She rolls her eyes and lifts her wand, slow and elegant as she sweeps across his desk. “Tergeo.”
It’s not quite pointed at him, but the sight of her wand raised has Shiro on edge, his shoulders tensing, even six months after his retrieval from the hands of Zarkon.
When he looks up at Allura, her smile has faded. “How are you, Shiro?”
There’s a long pregnant pause between the two of them, and Shiro is so, so tempted to brush her off with I’m fine, everything’s good if he weren’t equally certain she would take his head off for the lie.
“I don’t know,” he finally says, honesty sticking heavy in his chest and words. “I know it’s been two weeks since they cleared me for active duty, but sometimes...”
Her brow creases. “Shiro. You didn’t need to return until you were ready. We would have understood. You were captured, forced to fight for your life, sent to battle under Imperius.”
“No.” The sharpness of his own voice cuts him by surprise. “No, I needed to come back. Resting in Japan isn’t what I need right now. There’s so much to do, Allura. So many people lost so much to the war.”
She eyes him for a second, calculating, before she nods once and he lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding as she settles onto the edge of his desk, silvery-rose robes rippling in the light.
“We’re officially operating at peacetime capacity now. Missions are expected to be slower and less dangerous.” Her voice is almost bland, as she twirls a loose strand of hair around a finger, watching it fade through a myriad of neon colors before she settles for jet black at the ends, like a glacier tipped in nightfall. “They say Zarkon is dead.”
Shiro can’t quite restrain the shudder that runs through him at the mention of the Dark wizard’s name, mind blanking with fear and memories barely held at bay –
his arm his arm his arm they took his arm, made him flesh and machine and magic instead
‘avada kedavra’ leaves his lips for the first time in the arena, and he is never whole again
Keith, bloodstained and pale under him
“I love you.”
He clenches his fist and tries not to balk at the feeling of Keith struggling to breathe under his hands.
“So they say,” he finally breathes out. He finds skepticism mirrored in Allura’s face, but his door is open, there are other ears about, and this is a discussion for another time as she shrugs noncommittally, finally meeting his eyes with piercing blue.
“How’s Keith doing?”
It’s embarrassing how fast his head snaps up at the mention of Keith’s name.
“I. Uh.”
Surprise darts across Allura’s face. “Have you two still not spoken?”
He winces, a brief memory of Keith standing by his hospital bed in the middle of the night flashing across his mind. Keith, who took his hand as he lay feigning sleep, and whispered welcome back against it before brushing fingers against his cheek and disappearing.
His chest aches.
“I – we haven’t talked.” Couldn’t face him, Shiro doesn’t say. Maybe when I can stop hearing him beg for his life in my dreams.
“Oh.” Her forehead creases, and she frowns, opening her mouth as though to speak before she closes it again, in that way people struggle with secrets between mutual friends.
Not for the first time, hurt blooms in his gut as he realizes that this is one of those things he’s missed in the past year and a half. There are things about Keith now that he no longer knows, and gods, isn’t that a knife to the heart when Keith literally bore him from death’s gates.
He’s not sure he deserves to know.
Allura remains quiet though, and relief swells light and nauseating in his gut. Rising from the edge of his desk, she nods at the scroll. “Read it carefully. It’s enchanted to destruct when you reach the end of the message.”
He looks up as she reaches the door, hand raised in a wave.
But Allura has never afforded him shelter from his own demons.
“Shiro.” She turns back to him, a sad smile on her face. “He missed you terribly. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
He tries to grin back, but it’s hollow at best. “I’ll talk to him soon.”
She leaves, and Shiro watches the door swing shut slowly.
Just not slowly enough for him to miss Keith walking into the common area, newly returned from a mission with nicks singed at the edges through the rolled-up sleeves of his white collared shirt, a tattoo peeking out in stark contrast against his pale skin at his left bicep. A tract of sweat is still running down at his right temple, mile-long legs hugged in tight fitting trousers.
Lance, Pidge, and Hunk are all chattering closely behind him, and what would be annoyance is softened by the upward pull of his mouth at the corners.
His stride has a newfound confidence that Shiro’s rarely seen before, head held high; he can’t hear Keith’s voice, but the look across his face speaks volumes of hard-won self-assurance even as something forlorn dogs his every expression, ages the air about him well beyond his twenty-two years.
Even so, Keith is beautiful, and it makes Shiro’s breath hitch in his throat.
But then Keith turns over his left shoulder to reply to an excited Hunk, and the scar is stark against his pale skin.
Shiro’s blood runs cold.
The door finally shuts. Shiro gives himself a shake, before throwing all his concentration into soundproofing and warding his office, rooting out half the objects in the mostly vacant room before he’s solidly convinced there’s no spying about.
He turns his focus to the scroll.
Maybe a mission is just the distraction he needs.
---
Ten minutes later, he’s convinced there’s been a terrible mistake.
The scroll erupts into a merry burst of bubblegum pink flame almost as soon as he’s done reading it, mocking him as it curls in on itself in midair. Sparkling golden text lingers in midair, a ghostly glowing quill materializing next to a signature line. Confirmation of acceptance, reads the fine print text below it.
But most damning of all is how the smoke and ashes collapse in on themselves with a small pop into a golden wedding band in midair, clattering onto his desk with a metallic ring-ring-ringringringring in the air before it rolls to a stop.
Ice creeps through Shiro's veins.
He picks it up, horror mounting slowly in his chest. The ring is gorgeous – simple gold, inlaid with a wide band of pitch-black obsidian, swirling, colorful nebulas languidly floating across the swath of darkness. He catches a glimpse of a name he knows almost better than his own, traced into the muck and dirt of a cell repeatedly over a year of dueling for his life in an underground arena, before he closes a shaking hand around the ring.
His heart quakes, and whether in hope or in fear of its truth, he can’t quite tell as they mingle together venomously inside of him.
This is a mistake, no two ways about it. Pidge is a master of charmed objects and forged documents and the entire mission statement smacks of Lance’s humor.
But there’s no mistake in the way his heart kicks up a flutter as his treacherous mind runs endlessly over.
If it’s real, accepting the mission means he marries Keith. Fierce, intelligent, gorgeous Keith, his best friend who he’s been in love with since he set eyes on the spitfire who annihilated his Seeker records at Hogwarts.
It’s for the people. It’s for morale, in the wake of the war that left countless dead and missing at the hands of the pureblood Galra. It’s the closest thing to a modern-day love story the Daily Prophet can get, and the media will take it and run; heroes and brothers-in-arms torn apart by war, only to return to each other.
But mostly, Allura isn’t convinced that Zarkon is dead, and Kolivan of the rebel wizards of Marmora thinks the same.
The logic is there. They’re both war heroes now, in their own ways – Shiro surviving a horrifying captivity, Keith an underdog hero who upended Zarkon’s movement with a ragtag team of Aurors who hadn’t yet completed their training.
It’s a power move, designed to bait out a vengeful Dark wizard at his weakest. There’s a part of Shiro that rears its head at the thought of exacting bloody vengeance, angry and hurt and eager to lay blame, but just as quickly guilt rolls sickly through him as the image of Keith standing before him, despairing and weakened flashes back through his head.
Shiro can turn this down. Keith can turn this down, and he has every reason to.
But he looks at the ring, feels every thud of his heart in his chest as he swallows dryly. Tries to picture himself putting it down, walking away, but the light catches the engraving of Keith and he rolls it between his fingers absentmindedly, frowning when Keith’s last name doesn’t quite seem to end.
He sets it on his desk
“Lumos.”
Engraved in full is Keith Kogane-Shirogane on the inside of the ring, bright and clear as day under the light of his wand, and his breath catches in his throat.
Hope thrums through him, alien and terrifying in a way that threatens to undo him at the seams.
If even for a moment, if even for a farce, he and Keith could be real.
For the first time in a year, he dares to hope.
He signs the contract in midair before he can stop himself and watches it glow hotly before it fades, and tells himself to not be disappointed, either when the mission is proven false or when Keith doesn’t agree to it.
But he can’t help but picture Keith’s smile, relieved and beatific as Shiro finally, finally wakes to the safety and warmth of Keith’s arms around him after a year imprisoned, and his pulse skips a beat.
It’s just another mission.
---
One long week of being subjected to mere glimpses of Keith in the Aurors’ office space later, Shiro arrives at a nondescript apartment with a briefcase in hand, unable to stop his mind from tumbling end over end of his thoughts.
These are the things that Shiro knows.
He knows every hidden passageway down to the kitchens of Hogwarts. He knows Herbology was his favorite class, even if he was best at Defense Against the Dark Arts. He knows he joined the Aurors because it gave him a sense of purpose helping others. He knows he can throw a punch as well as he can cast a spell. He’s killed a man for his own survival, watched him bleed out and curse him on his last breath.
He knows what it’s like to be ripped from the Imperius Curse and realize he’s nearly murdered his best friend.
And yet, Keith has always found him with willpower indomitable and unmoving, ripped him from the hands of one of the greatest evils of wizardkind. Keith has known him at his greatest of greats and his lowest of lows.
And yet.
He does not know what to do faced with the sight of the single, king-sized bed, married unceremoniously to the love of his young life.
It’s daunting in a way he didn’t expect, and a memory washes over him unbidden.
His N.E.W.T.S. are tomorrow – so late they’re today now – but Shiro can’t quite get his brain to shut down, running endlessly over potion ingredients in his head.
Restless, he heads down the stairs from the fifth-years’ sleeping quarters to the Gryffindor common room when he notices a familiar head of messy, dark hair, turned towards the fireplace.
Something pulls in his chest.
“Keith?”
His head snaps back towards Shiro, hands flying up defensively before they drop and his eyes go soft in recognition. A rush of protectiveness cuts through the haze of Shiro’s brain.
“Hey,” he says easily. “Can’t sleep?”
“Yeah,” Keith says after a beat of silence. He shifts over wordlessly to make room for Shiro in front of the fireplace, and he takes it without question.
“Want to talk about it?” He’s learned over the years that it’s best to be direct, best to not dance around the subject long enough that Keith can run from it.
Keith hesitates again. “Not yet. I’m just – really tired, Shiro.” He narrows his eyes. “Don’t you have your exams tomorrow? Go back to bed.”
“Yeah, but I can’t sleep either.” Keith grumbles as Shiro wraps an arm around his shoulder, but he leans in, savoring momentary comfort.
He settles his head against Shiro, and they both stare into the crackling flames, peaceful silence between them.
Then, quietly. “It was my dad. I keep closing my eyes and all I see is him running back into the fire, Shiro.”
He feels more than sees Keith’s hands fist into the loose flannel of his pajamas, and the silence is heavy as Shiro wraps his left arm around Keith’s slender shoulders, right hand rubbing soothing circles into Keith’s bicep as he breathes in deep and slow, as if willing himself not to fly apart.
Ten minutes pass like this before a soft snore reaches his left ear, and he can’t help but look down in surprise, Keith’s eyelashes fluttering shadows from the firelight. He slips a bit off Shiro’s shoulder, sleepily nuzzling at Shiro’s shirt in a way that warms him deep.
He smiles, heart soaring despite himself as the image of Keith asleep, pressed against his side, drooling across a piece of parchment paper only yesterday surfaces in his mind.
“What’s with you and dozing off around me, kiddo?”
“Mm. Safe.” Keith yawns suddenly, gloriously unaware of how his answer sends Shiro’s heart flip-flopping in his chest even as his exam-riddled mind leaps bounds ahead of him.
Safe. How had he not thought of this before?
“Sleep with me,” Shiro blurts out, and his face goes hotter than the fire and Keith blinks awake blearily, dumbfounded. There’s a blush splashed across Keith’s cheeks, but whether from Shiro or the flames, Shiro’s not sure.
“What,” Keith says, disbelief laced into his voice, and Shiro’s mind screams at him.
“Not like that – I mean, you don’t have to, but Matt’s the only one in, he won’t mind, everyone else is pulling an all-nighter and you need sleep and I need to make sure I don’t miss my N.E.W.T.S. and I just – “
Keith snorts, more awake now as violet eyes finally settle on him in amusement, and relief swirls cool and heady through Shiro’s chest. “What am I, your glorified alarm clock?”
“What else do I need my vice-captain for,” Shiro says, deadpan, and Keith rolls his eyes. Shiro stands up, feeling oddly heady as he reaches out and Keith takes his hand. “Come on, let’s go to bed.”
“That sounds so weird,” Keith mutters, and Shiro elbows him in the ribs as they make their way towards the stairs.
“It’s only weird if you make it weird.”
He wakes next morning earlier than he needs to, to Keith sound asleep, slack-jawed and face more peaceful than Shiro’s ever seen him.
Shiro reaches out to brush a stray strand of hair out of Keith’s face, heart in his throat.
Safe. Keith thinks he’s safe. It’s precious and fragile and god, Shiro will do anything to be worthy of that.
He’s almost late to his exams.
It’s violent, how Keith’s face begging Shiro, you’re my brother, I love you tears into his mind abruptly. He bites his lip almost hard enough to draw blood as he inhales slowly, turns away to drop his bag onto a desk before stepping to the window and looking out.
The apartment is on the top floor, tucked away in a bustling town just quiet enough to hear himself think, but loud enough that silence was a rare companion. Behind them are rolling, wooded hills; there’s a hint of salt in the air, just the barest tell of the ocean. If he listens long enough, he thinks he can hear the gulls crying out, sorrowful and longing. He draws back the curtains, goosebumps prickling the back of his neck.
The paranoia will take time to deal with. He’s already compiling a mental list of additional wards to cast on the residence.
The front door opens quietly, just slightest creak of a hinge, but it’s enough to send Shiro whirling around, blood rushing thunderous in his ears and wand at the ready as his mind whispers danger fight enemy attack.
“Shiro?”
The sound of Keith’s voice washes over him and the adrenaline drains out of him, leaving him weak-kneed and somehow no less fearful. Something hits the floor with a thud – a trunk, maybe? – before footsteps, hesitant, cautious, come nearer down the short hallway.
“Shiro?” Uncertainty is finely laced into his voice in a way that pulls at the tendril of a memory, and Shiro tamps down the echo of a nightmare or ten.
Shiro moves away from the window, feet carrying him towards the doorway, like the gravity of Keith’s presence is too much for him to not fall instantly into orbit.
Keith steps into the doorway, wand raised, and their eyes meet.
“Shiro,” Keith says again, purple eyes widening, and it cuts Shiro to the quick, the way he says Shiro’s name like it means everything. His heart stutters in his chest.
There’s a moment of stillness, where Shiro can’t help but finally really look at Keith. Look over the way his shoulders have broadened, how his chest tapers to his waist under the leather jacket he wears, the way something forlorn settles about him like a cloak and pulls at Shiro’s heartstrings. He’s different, but no less beautiful, like he’s finally settled into his own skin and it’s magnetizing. But.
He looks like he’s mourning, in some bone-deep, unspeakable way.
He tries not to look at the scar, Keith’s wide purple eyes too reminiscent of the precious few memories afforded to him in the explosive final battle that ultimately led to Zarkon’s disappearance.
He’s uncomfortably aware of how Keith searches him, too, and tries not to curl in on himself. Shiro knows he must be quite the sight, sleeve pinned up at his right side, pale scars across his arms, his hands, silvery slivers across his neck. One skates under his jaw nearly ending at his jugular, to say nothing of the slash clean through the bridge of his nose.
He’s not broken, but it’s a near thing, and he feels in pieces next to Keith, who radiates warmth and fire and everything Shiro’s ever craved in his life even as Shiro lays ruin to all he touches.
Shiro moves forward and Keith almost seems to flinch, stilling before he schools his features and deliberately drops his wand arm.
Bile rises in Shiro’s throat and he stops short, sickened.
The scar across Keith’s cheek is further proof of his failings.
“So you got it too?” Keith’s voice is lower than he remembers, melodious in Shiro’s ears.
Shiro’s too caught up in the sound to realize that he’s spoken for a moment.
“Yeah,” Shiro finally says. “Yeah, I did.”
“Are we sure it wasn’t Lance?” Keith says, and Shiro can’t help but laugh weakly.
“Thought it was Pidge. You?”
“Not sure. But Kolivan’s seal is hard to miss.” Keith says Kolivan with a sort of undeniable fondness, and Shiro feels out of touch, out of step again. He knows of Kolivan, knows Keith spent some time with a rebel faction of Galra wizards, knows him from debriefing and intel, scowling back at him through pictures and distinctly unwelcoming, but Keith sounds exasperated more than intimidated and there are so many questions.
The sudden silence between them is loud.
“So are you – “
“Are you going to – “
They stop short, and whatever eggshells Shiro’s been treading on have already been firmly ground to dust.
“You first,” Keith says, somehow unexpectedly, and Shiro’s not used to this, not used to a Keith he can’t quite read, like a house where all the furniture’s the same but everything’s been shifted two inches to the right.
“If it’s real,” Shiro starts slowly, every word a step closer to a precipice. “I’m in. You?”
“I’m all in,” Keith says, and something lights up inside of Shiro at the way Keith seems to relax, ever so slightly. His smile is bittersweet and wry. “Honestly, I can’t imagine who else I would rather do this with.”
Honestly, I can’t imagine who I’d rather be married to, Shiro’s treacherous mind whispers.
Keith stops short, and for a mortifying second Shiro thinks he’s spoken aloud before he realizes he’s looking for something. He pulls a tiny object out from the inner pocket of his jacket, close to his chest. Shiro’s so smitten by the sight of him that he nearly misses the silver twin to his ring between Keith’s thumb and forefinger, held up accusingly before his face even as he watches a binary star system spiral and collide within the inlay.
Fumbling, he pulls out his ring, watches Keith flicker eyes to it, unreadable expression across his face.
“I like the name. A lot of syllables, though,” Shiro says in a weak attempt at humor, and Keith nods curt acknowledgement, lips thin, half-paying attention.
Keith’s gaze has drifted to the bed, and the bereft look to his face has draped back over him.
“It’s only one bed?”
“I, ah. Yeah.” Something flashes across Keith’s face, too fast for Shiro to identify.
“I can take the couch,” Keith says, and before Shiro can protest he’s whisked off down the hallway to the common area.
He looks surprised that Shiro’s followed him, lips parted slightly.
“How’s the promotion?” Keith says, as he reaches into his trunk.
“Don’t really feel like I did much to earn it,” he says dryly, surprised when Keith turns to him like a whirlwind, familiar ferocity in his eyes.
“Why do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“That. You just.” Keith nearly growls in frustration, and this is finally familiar ground for Shiro, Keith struggling for words to exact his meaning, fists clenching at his side as he bites the inside of his cheek.
“You always think you don’t deserve things, Shiro,” he finally says, guarded eyes scrutinizing Shiro’s face. “Why?”
It’s not the first time Keith’s struck him dumb with his candidness, but it doesn’t leave Shiro feeling any less vulnerable, any less transparent to Keith.
He wants to run his fingers over Keith’s cheek, tracing the scar he put there and say this, this is why.
“I think we need to talk about the mission,” Shiro breathes instead, and Keith looks at him sharply, almost wounded before visibly shuttering closed, face strangely neutral.
“We’re married, Keith. This is our job,” and it shouldn’t hurt this much to say it like this, say it like it’s nothing more than a distraction, but it lays him bare and knocks the rest of the breath from his lungs. “We’ll be expected to act a certain way, do certain things. We need people to believe this, Zarkon to believe this.”
“Like what?” Keith’s voice is guarded, dangerous somehow.
“Like dates,” he says, wishes masquerading as strategy in the air. “Like holding hands.”
And then, before he can quite stop himself, “Like kissing.”
“Shiro,” Keith says, and there it is again, gravity and stars in his name all at once, in a way Shiro does not deserve. It’s gut-churning when Keith finally turns to look back at him, a half-folded rumpled shirt in his hands. There’s fatigue etched into the shadows of his face, and Shiro thinks too far, too far, I’ve gone too far as Keith takes another step forward, like he’s about to take a swing if not for the rumpled shirt still clutched in his hands.
“How,” he breathes, low and dangerous. “How are we supposed to do that, exactly?”
Shiro’s heart is being weighed against a feather, and he’s been found lacking in the face of Keith’s ferocity.
“Can’t we just be us again, first?” Keith sets the shirt aside, stepping forward into Shiro’s space and sending Shiro’s pulse racing. “I missed you, Shiro,” he says, voice frayed.
“I’m right here,” Shiro blurts out, but Keith shakes his head helplessly, no perched soundlessly on his lips and it dawns on Shiro, awful and horrifying.
“I’m right here, Shiro.” Keith’s eyes rove across his face, desperate and lost. “I still miss you.”
Shiro flinches.
He knows how many nights Keith has spent sleepless at St. Mungo’s by his bedside, pleading for his recovery while Shiro lay feigning sleep, knows how many owls Keith has sent. Keith’s beloved owl Red had flung stones at the window of his ancestral home in Japan, screaming shrilly for him to open them up and answer Keith’s messages.
He couldn’t. Wouldn’t, when all he could hear was Keith begging for his life in his ears, even as koi fish older than him plucked insects from the water’s surface, oblivious to his ruin above their undisturbed pond. Keith is star-shine brilliant and Shiro, Shiro is no longer who he once was.
There was only so much enforced leave and therapy could do.
It’s devastating, hearing the words fall from Keith’s mouth, framed by a wound that Shiro had carved there himself.
“We don’t talk anymore,” Keith whispers, and Shiro tightens his grip on Keith’s hand, marveling at how his fingers meet just under Keith’s knuckles.
“Keith, I’m sorry,” he says, but Keith is shaking his head again.
“I’m not angry, Shiro. I was never mad at you.”
He’s close, so close Shiro can feel Keith’s breath ghost across his face.
“I just want you to know you’re not alone,” Keith says, and a knife-sharp pang shoots through him. “I’m here, if you want me.”
And he does, god he does, but to keep Keith too close is to watch him burn alive again.
Even so, he feels drawn to Keith, drawn to the halcyon haven he finds in him as he automatically leans forward, Keith’s startled eyes meeting his.
“I want you here, Keith,” he says quietly, wants to say I’ll always want you here, feels a knot in his chest loosen when relief flashes palpable in Keith’s eyes. “How couldn’t I? You saved me.”
Keith’s eyes are haunted still, and Shiro’s breath catches as he realizes they’re mere inches from each other’s faces.
“Let’s be us first,” Shiro says, and it feels like a promise.
Keith’s gotten taller, slender build lean with muscle, and Shiro would only need to tip his head down to meet his lips. Would only need to tip his head down to potentially destroy anything that had ever existed between the two of them.
You’re my brother. I love you.
He draws away sharply, pulling his hand from Keith’s, disappointment prickling in his gut as he forces himself to sound normal.
“We should wear these,” he says, rolling his ring between thumb and forefinger. “For the mission.”
“Right. For the mission,” Keith says flatly, all sharp utilitarian edges in his voice even as he slips on the ring.
He tries to look at Keith, see where this sudden rawness came from, but Keith won’t quite meet his eyes.
Keith hesitates, finally looking up at Shiro with uncertainty that takes him back to Quidditch trials when Keith was a tiny slip of a boy with a secondhand broom.
“Can we take this slow?”
Anything, Shiro thinks. Anything for you.
“Yeah,” he says instead, and Keith seems to ease at that.
“I have some time,” Shiro says in a rush, before he can lose his nerve entirely. “If you want to go grab a coffee or something.”
“I, uh. I have a mission.” Keith’s face is red, and once, once that meant he was lying, but Shiro’s not quite certain of anything anymore, not even the ground under his feet.
Shiro hopes his face doesn’t fall as he goes, “Oh. Right. Okay. I guess – I’ll see you later?”
“Yeah,” Keith says, after a long, sputtering silence, heading back towards the door.
The sight of him turning his back unsettles Shiro, enough that he nearly reaches out back towards Keith before stopping himself, half-step forward. He gathers enough in him to turn towards the bedroom, trying to funnel his thoughts towards some semblance of the mundane task of unpacking.
“Shiro.” He turns back, throat tight with some emotion he can’t quite place.
Keith’s eyes are on him, brimming with an intensity that threatens to send him sprawling to the floor. “It’s good to have you back.”
He’d nearly forgotten how Keith’ frankness left him speechless, tore him up and scrubbed him raw of all his pretense.
“It’s good to be back,” he says, and Keith smiles and it finally, finally reaches his eyes. For a moment the weight on his shoulders seems to lift, and the air seems to lighten a touch.
Keith waves once, moment broken, and steps through.
He watches the door close behind Keith and wonders how he’d let the distance between them grow so large.
---
Thace’s Pub is grimy, busy with patrons even as Keith nurses a glass of knotgrass mead, perched languidly at the bar. The ring is safely ensconced in a jacket pocket near his chest, ready to be worn – or destroyed, depending on the outcome of tonight.
It’s been a favorite haunt of his ever since his time with the Blades – intel and rumors trickle as fast as the liquor flows, and wizards and Muggles alike pass through these doors. Here he sheds everything he’s become in the past few months since Zarkon’s disappearance.
Here he’s not a half-blood mongrel of a family branch blasted from the infamous Galra family tapestry, nor the rogue Auror who recovered the lead Auror of their time and ended a four years’ long war in one fell swoop.
Right now, he’s just Keith, married to the man he’s in love with for the sake of a mission, and all of it out of his control.
Zarkon’s disappearance is suddenly a far easier topic to tackle.
Disappearance, because death makes him scoff into his drink. Disappearance, because quiet does not mean peace, and that fool of a Minister of Magic can’t be bothered to verify a death before claiming it as a victory under his time. For once in his life, he can agree with the knucklehead seer Slav (Keith is convinced he works for the Department of Mysteries, as much as he continuously claims to be part of the Ministry’s financial department) that Zarkon’s survival is far more likely than not.
He’s not convinced this mission isn’t a trap of some sort.
His fingers curl around the glass when a distinctly unfamiliar face dips through the ratty veil separating the back of the bar from the raucous activity up front.
Her face is nondescript, familiar enough to draw a second look, but somehow just average enough to not warrant a third. Her black hair is pixie-short, parted and combed over. She settles a few barstools down from him at the bar, drawls, “Whiskey. Single-malt,” at the bartender as she delicately clicks Sickles down onto the sweet-sticky counter.
The barkeep pours one with hardly a glance, slams it down before her so it sloshes down the sides. Keith lets out a low whistle, and she looks at him pointedly before making her way to a secluded booth in the corner.
He downs the rest of his drink before ambling after her.
The leather seats of the enclosed booth crackle under his hands even as they slide across it nearly to face each other, leaning in closer. Under his breath he utters a charm that ripples across the air, so anyone who looks at the booth only sees him and the girl flirting animatedly.
In reality, he flicks his wrist and his knife is out, pressed dangerously just under her sternum.
Her eyes widen, before narrowing at him. He doesn’t need to look to know her wand is pressed just against the base of his throat, ready to blast his head off. She’s fast, and he knows that almost better than anyone else.
“Fair game, Kogane,” Allura says from the face of a stranger. “What ever did you call me out here for?”
“Old habits die hard,” he says, keeps his eyes steady on her face, searching for any giveaway that this is a Dark wizard using Polyjuice instead of Allura’s Metamorphmagus abilities. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re still at war. I don’t care if someone’s trying to mess with me, but Shiro is out of the question. Prove to me you’re Allura.”
She clenches her jaw. “When I found out you were half-blood Galra, I called you a murderer and blood-traitor before I punched you. I took the Portkey and left you in an alleyway with a broken nose.”
Regret is splashed across her face, but she prods him insistently with the tip of her wand.
“When Shiro was still recovering, I snuck into St. Mungo’s to see him and you caught me. Instead of kicking me out, you charmed the entrance with an alarm so I could avoid the night nurses.” His scowl goes crooked, emotion creeping into his voice. “I don’t think I thanked you enough for that.”
Her mouth quivers at the corners. “I asked a favor from you after you saved my life, and you took it before I could even apologize. I think I’m the one still in your debt, Keith.”
He shakes his head, but she eases her wand down to rest a hand on his, regret skirting across her delicate features. “I’m sorry, Keith. I failed you dearly as a friend.”
“It’s okay.” His throat tightens. “I didn’t really give you a reason to be one.”
A sudden wave of tiredness washes over him as he scrubs the back of his hand across his eyes, plucks the ring from his jacket.
“Was this your plan, Allura?”
She looks at him for a moment, before nodding, resigned.
“So it’s real,” Keith says, and tries to pretend his voice isn’t trembling. He looks back at Allura, unsure how to respond now as the reality of the mission sinks in. “I’m really married. To Shiro. This isn’t just a sick joke.”
His chest aches at the thought, shoves down the memory of being tucked under Shiro’s arm, deep laughter booming against his chest after Gryffindor’s Quidditch victories; sunset flights on broomsticks over the lake at Hogwarts; sleepless nights out of his mind, desperate for a hint of Shiro’s survival in the darkness of war.
“Yes.” Her adopted face goes troubled the same way she does, tight at the corners of her eyes and lips thin. “I’m sorry, Keith. I did not mean to make light of this for you.”
“It’s alright,” he says, voice steeped in exhaustion, just barely refraining from parroting knowledge or death. “We need to find Zarkon. We have to make him pay for what he’s done, and stop him from whatever he’s about to do.”
“Keith, you don’t have to take the mission.”
“Yes, I do,” he says sharply, startling both of them. He swallows. “I do, Allura. We know Zarkon’s waiting. This is our best chance, right?”
A heartbeat passes. “Yes,” she finally says, tipping her glass so the whiskey stones slide down with a clink. “He’s weak, and he’s angry. He’s never taken slights to his power well. You hurt him badly, and Shiro was meant to be his greatest weapon.” Her eyes glint in the low flickering candlelight above them. “He’ll be after you both.”
“I’ll take my chances.” He scowls, fingers the elegant curve of his blade in its sheath against his hip before dropping his voice. “I just – Allura, I can’t lose him. Not again.”
His next words are halting, because Shiro, Shiro is his strength and weakness, Achilles’ heel and armor all at once. “I’ll do anything to keep him safe.”
She looks at him over her glass. “So you accept?”
“Yeah,” he says, looking up fiercely at her. “I won’t let anyone hurt Shiro again, Allura.”
Not even myself, a voice in the back of his mind whispers, and he resists the urge to pass fingers over the scar on his face, still hears the echoing cry of pain as Shiro’s cursed arm is sheared off by his blade.
“It’s just a mission, right?” He hates how he sounds like he’s been torn open.
“Yes.” Her voice is so weary that if he closes his eyes long enough, it’s a year ago and they’re sitting next to each other in the midst of war, on the brink of defeat, no sign of Shiro and the continent’s death counter rising by the day. “Just another mission.”
The silver wedding band in the pocket of his jacket is leaden against his heart.