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Shiro isn’t used to flying solo.
Two years ago, he’d have been at the head of a formation, a squadron arrayed behind him, streaking toward some imperial base nestled in the rings of a gas giant or a fleet backlit by the glowing dust of star-cradling nebulae. His comms would’ve been open and alive with chatter from both his team and the bridge of the Atlas; the bustle of the hangar reached his officer’s quarters, even, its dull murmur a comfort.
Now, he fills the silence with his own voice.
“When was the last time anyone serviced you?” Shiro questions, elbow deep in the guts of the ship’s backup engine as he replaces a worn component.
Cargo ships this size usually carry a crew of three, minimum, but a series of ill-timed losses have the Coalition’s forces spread thin. Or that was the excuse, at least, handed down along with his new flight orders. Shiro suspects the reasons for his reassignment are far simpler and more personal: high command simply didn’t know what else to do with him anymore, their star pilot who’d crashed into the icy earth of a hostile planet and clawed his way back home.
The journey had cost him— in blood and sweat, in bone and marrow and his own peace of mind— but Shiro had struggled back to the Atlas on broken wings, his survival a shock to the crew that had presumed him dead for months. And he’d been a thorn in their side ever since, unwilling to sink quietly into an early retirement, grounded on the earth he’d fought so long to leave behind. He’d spent his two years of rehabilitation begging to return to active duty, unable to stomach the thought of never flying again.
And this was the compromise they’d found for the great and not-so-late Lieutenant Takashi Shirogane.
It’s a cargo delivery detail, however much Iverson had tried to dress it up and put a pretty ribbon on it, to make it sound like anything less than busy work meant to occupy Shiro on the far end of the universe, where he can’t make trouble for anyone but himself. But it’s still flying, even if he’s set on a nearly straight-line course, the ship’s autopilot more than enough to handle such an uneventful flight path. And it’s still a place in the stars, even if this corner of the universe is empty and ancient, its lightless reaches home to only a few scattered stars born out of the cosmic dark ages and their barren, crumbling planets.
And through it lies a straight shot to the Coalition’s farthest-flung outpost, Horizon, where Shiro’s new orders lead him.
He hums a few bars from some song he can’t quite remember the words to as he flips switches along the console, adjusting the power across the board before wandering from the cockpit to finish his morning routine. It’s not like there’s much to avoid out here, anyway. Asteroids, maybe. Stray electromagnetic interference. The rest of it is an open, empty void unlike any he’s ever seen, and even the empire is reluctant to waste resources veering this far out.
Shiro turns sideways as he slips down the halls of the ship’s cabin, the span of his shoulders too broad to comfortably fit. He ducks through the hatch of one doorway, and then another, until he reaches the small greenhouse near its tail. He adjusts the LED light feeding the hydroponic garden, nibbling on a leaf of arugula as he walks the length of carefully maintained plants. After checking on the cargo hold, he pads back to his living quarters, still humming as he drops down to the steel floor and counts out a hundred push-ups. They’re followed with crunches, a handful of stretches he remembers from the last yoga class he took on the Atlas, and pull-ups on a metal bar hung in a rarely used doorway.
And then shadowboxing, dancing around his room and taking swings at some imaginary opponent to help his form stay sharp. To help keep him used to the heaviness of his right arm. To help him vent his frustrations and excess energy, in spite of having no one to spar with anymore.
After, he settles down cross-legged until his pulse slows to its usual tempo, staring out the nearest window and into the deep and powerfully empty void outside. Meditation never came easy to him, but the last two years have made it harder to be alone with his thoughts, which inevitably slide toward bitter disappointment the longer he sits with them.
They’ll never let me fly like I used to. Two years of rehabilitation, surgeries, and therapy only got me this far— a pre-set autoflight on the longest, shittiest cargo detail in the universe.
Shiro plants his mismatched hands on his knees and sighs, head falling forward. “So much for that.”
He abandons the attempt at meditation and rises to shower, shave, and slip into a casual uniform of charcoal sweats and a heather grey top. A quick check in the cockpit shows they’re still on course.
Twenty-three cycles into a ninety-two cycle trip. One way.
“Damn.” Shiro plops down into the pilot’s chair and spins in a lazy circle, the heels of his slippers dragging over the corrugated steel flooring. For lack of anything better to do, he props his chin in his hand and stares out the cockpit viewport.
Traveling the stars had been his dream since he’d been old enough to babble to his grandfather about it, sitting on strong shoulders and pointing out the constellations he’d visit first. Even years into his service aboard the Atlas, Shiro’d spent all his free time on one of the observatory decks, listening to music from earth and taking in the sprawl of the universe around them. In the thick of battle, he’d still be struck by the light catching in the ice rings of alien planets, the awe-inspiring spirals of nearby galaxies.
But out here, there are no streams of stars or gorgeous planets to study. There are no brightly colored nebulae, their gas and dust cradling newborn stars; no red giants, no blazing comets, no thriving civilizations making glittering colonies of their moons. Even the empire and its fleets don’t bother straying this deep into open, empty space at the fridge of the known universe.
The only enemy out here… is boredom.
It eats at Shiro worse than he thought it would. He’d burned through most of the ship’s provided entertainment material within the first two weeks, quickly growing bored of the holo movies and books and puzzle games. Like this whole mission, they feel like pointless distraction; a means to fill time while hours of his life slip away around him, underutilized. Wasted. Lost in the void.
He misses people more than he thought he would, too: their idle chatter, their small talk, the camaraderie of his fellow pilots. Isolation does terrible things to humans— and Alteans too, and every other sentient species, probably— and Shiro knows it well from the months he spent lost behind enemy lines.
But the slow creep of space madness doesn’t strike him as a potent threat. Not yet, anyway. His boredom is just boredom, if exacerbated by discontent.
Sudden movement at the periphery of his vision startles Shiro stiff in his padded chair, jolting him out of his gloomy thoughts. His glassy eyes blink furiously, adrenaline spiking his veins at the first flicker of excitement he’s had in weeks.
But whatever it was, it's gone. A trick of the faint light, maybe, his eyes and mind eager to see something— anything — where there is nothing and no one at all.
- - - - ---- - --- ---- - - --- ---- --------------- - --- - --- - - - - -
Day and night don’t exist in the depths of space, but Shiro’s long since grown used to that. His regimented schedule sees him through each long cycle, the last of his waking hours spent updating the pilot’s log before he sinks into bed and waits wide-eyed for sleep to come take him.
When it finally happens, it’s shallow and fitful. Phantom pains needle where his right arm used to be, and if he stays under long enough to dream, it’s of an icy world rising up to meet him in force, his fighter’s command console bathed in the red glow of the CRITICAL FAILURE blinking across every screen, and smoke filling the cockpit until he chokes—
And wakes, gasping for breath so hard that the ship’s observational metrics notice, a nearby hatch popping open and dropping down an emergency oxygen mask.
“No, thank you,” Shiro sighs as he stuffs it back inside, giving the ship’s cold, grey wall a fond little pat. “Just a dream,” he says as he swings his legs over the side of the bed and fits his prosthetic back on, not entirely sure who the reminder is for.
He peels off his sweat-drenched top before starting his morning ritual: a check of the ship’s controls, course, and vitals; a workout and a shower; then breakfast, eaten cold while he sits cross-legged in the pilot’s seat and stares at the display charting his journey.
Cycle twenty-four.
“Just sixty-eight more cycles to go,” Shiro says, trying to be optimistic. Without an audience around to put on a smile and brighter attitude for, though, it fails. The back of his head thumps heavy against the chair’s headrest. “And then we turn around and do it all over again,” he grumbles.
He longs for the hum of life on the Atlas, always voyaging somewhere new, its hundreds of floors filled with fighter ships to work on, greenhouses the length of football fields, well-furnished gyms in which to blow off steam. He misses the cafeteria’s giant batches of macaroni and sheet cake.
And he misses flying like he used to, before the accident.
Shiro leans back in the pilot’s chair and laces his fingers over his belly, his eyes closed against the unchanging spacescape before him. And when he opens them, weary of brooding on how little his hard-earned skills are needed here, it’s to a face looking down upon him through the cockpit viewport, pale and humanoid.
He's up on his feet without another thought, already reaching for the pulse blaster fixed under the console. Every heartbeat hits against his sternum like a thrown jab; his ears ring, whole body trembling with the sudden influx of adrenaline in his veins.
But it’s not there. It’s gone— if there had ever been anything at all.
As Shiro works himself down from near-hyperventilation, he paces. Even glimpsed in an instant, even upside down, the face had looked... its features looked human. Dark eyes set under dark brows; a nose pressed against triple-paned, silica fused glass; the slash of a mouth not unlike his own.
That’s not possible, some logical portion of his rattled mind whispers. He’s alone inside the ship— a simple diagnostic check of the metrics for sensing heat and vital signs can confirm that— and nothing could possibly be outside of it. Nothing.
It’s space. Nothing survives in space.
Shiro runs a trembling hand over his face and through his white and black hair, drawing measured breaths in through his nose and exhaling slow through his mouth. With the blaster still in hand he stalks the length of the ship, peering warily out every porthole and airlock window.
But there isn't anything there. Nothing can be there— least of all anything human.
- - - - ---- - --- ---- - ------- - -- - - - - -
Shiro doubles down on playing games with his mind, lest it keep playing games with him.
Hours of sudoku, trivia, and puzzles on his entertainment tablet help to stave off the boredom. He keeps music running whenever he’s in the cockpit or tending to the hydroponic garden, singing along softly and swaying his hips to the beat, practicing moves to show Matt when he returns to the Atlas to resupply. He cleans already-polished instruments. He alphabetizes his remaining meal packs. Literally anything to keep him distracted while the ship continues hurtling through what feels like endless darkness. Anything to keep himself focused on what is real and solid around him.
Because he can’t afford to have a mental break in the middle of the abyss, cut off as he is from everything and everyone else.
Shiro thinks he’s doing a good job of it, too, until that prickling sensation crawls up the back of his neck as he folds his laundry, fine hairs drawing up stiff. And then there’s a pale flutter from the nearby porthole, caught at the very corner of his eye. He holds his breath, the socks in his hands falling to the floor. Steps weighty with dread draw Shiro close to the window, his hands braced flat on either side as he leans in close to the panes of reinforced pressure-glass and peers out.
Only darkness meets him. The deepest black, interrupted only by the faint twinkle of a few distant, distant stars nearly as old as the universe itself.
With a ragged sigh, Shiro turns and heads for the front of the ship. The tight, dim halls make him nervous, his footfalls and forceful breaths the only sounds bouncing off of their metal walls. The view ahead of the cockpit is empty and open as ever: a sea of airless, heatless, lifeless nothing.
Shiro licks his lips as he pulls up a command screen and starts keying in codes, drawing up the ship’s external feeds. The cameras and sensors are there to check for damage from docking and stray debris, but Shiro’s purpose feels more pressingly vital. No matter how many angles he checks, though, there is only the sleek, silvery-grey fuselage and the inescapable backdrop of space— and no easy, relief-filled explanation for whatever it is that keeps catching Shiro’s attention.
Shiro swipes the projected displays closed one by one, sighing as he turns on his heel.
And it’s there again, hanging above the cockpit's curved window, watching.
Shiro seizes like he’s been pushed out an airlock, every limb and muscle gone rigid. He stares into the creature in the void, and it stares back— with glitteringly dark eyes, wide and eerily pretty. Hair like ink spilled in water swirls around its shoulders. Clawed fingers grip the edge of the cockpit’s window. And when its mouth opens, lips hovering just against the other side of the pressure-tempered glass, Shiro sees canines with wicked points.
He blinks and it’s gone again. Fled. Or invisible. Or a hallucination. Shiro’s mind turns over myriad possibilities— not that any of this should be possible— as he calls up the external video feeds, hunting thought footage for another glimpse of whatever the fuck is stalking his ship.
A soft, insistent tap against the glass draws Shiro’s eye up and dead-center. For the first time, he sees the strange creature in full.
It is human— from the waist up, at least. Slim and possibly male, with a belly button and everything. From the waist down, though, he’s… something else. His translucent lower body reminds Shiro of a mermaid’s, but its long, elegant taper ends in no fins. It’s all sleek, all sheer golden gleam, soft where its coils press against the reinforced glass, translucent enough to see the stars through. His dark hair moves with a life of its own, floating sinuously in the cold vacuum of space, billowing with every movement. His features are undeniably human, though Shiro’s less and less sure of what that even means.
He steps closer, looking up and into the eyes of the alien resting on the viewport glass of his cockpit. Shiro sees that they aren’t black, like he’d first suspected; more a rich violet, keen intelligence lurking behind them.
And his face is— it’s pretty. All his sharp angles meet with perfect symmetry. Fangs peek from behind delicate lips. There’s a faint, iridescent shimmer across his skin, too. Rainbowed, almost, and the vibrant beauty of it makes Shiro smile, dumbfounded and full of wonder. It covers the whole of the strange creature’s body like a film. A protective coating.
It occurs to Shiro that this is a monumental discovery, upending everything he’s ever known about space and its inhospitable nature. He fumbles to make sure the ship is recording, that he’ll have some evidence of this stunning and inexplicable lifeform when he eventually returns home.
But by the time he looks up again, it’s gone.
- - - - ---- - --- ---- - --- - - - - -
Cycles crawl by. The alien doesn’t resurface again. Shiro deliberately avoids any mention of it in his official pilot’s log.
He pens his experiences down with good old pen and paper instead, keeping a private journal of what’s either his sudden descent into space madness or a breathtaking discovery of the universe’s bounty. He’ll figure out which it is when he makes it to the Horizon outpost, he supposes.
On its pages, he dubs it— him?— the space mermaid. Or the mer-alien. On account of the tail. And maybe also because Shiro feels something like a sailor caught in the doldrums, slowly going stir-crazy as his ship is circled by something from the unknown deeps.
He puzzles over the space mermaid while he lies awake in his bed, while he showers, while he picks vegetables and heats up prepacked meals. He almost wishes he would show himself again, if only so Shiro might rest assured he’s no figment of a mind deprived too long of too much.
Shiro fears his half-made wish has been granted when he’s jolted awake just three hours into his designated sleep cycle, his quarters bathed in red light while the ship’s automated voice calmly gives a running report of sustained damage. His belongings lay strewn across the floor, presumably knocked loose by the same impact that woke him, and he fishes his pulse pistol from the pile, just in case.
“Fucking fuck,” he hisses as he sprints to the cockpit in only his boxers, bare feet slapping against frigid steel. He skids to a stop along the way to adjust the failing grav in the cargo hold and check the status of the airlocks— all still sealed, mercifully.
In the cockpit, Shiro flicks through dozens upon dozens of warnings and error readouts, hunting for the cause of all the tumult and damage. He finds it in a systems response logged just minutes ago: a collision with small debris. Too small to show up on the sensors and shooting fast enough to nick the hull and cause a slow, air-leaching leak in the ventilation system. The cabin’s pressure has already dropped slightly, though not yet enough to be a danger.
But time will make it so.
Shiro cuts the engine for now, correcting with the front thrusters until the ship is close to a stop, floating listless. At his core, he is afraid. It’s harder to put on a strong face with no one around to see it, but Shiro tries anyway. He talks to himself like he would his crew, if he still had one.
“Check the blueprints, check the repair manual,” he says as he tabs through files on his tablet, refreshing himself. “Just a quick little emergency patch job in the abyss that is Sector Ursa. No big deal. It’s not like any of the support systems are even critical yet.”
As if on cue, a new warning screen pops up beside him, its hovering yellow text blinking ominously.
Shiro could almost laugh. “Except for the air pressure. Wonderful.”
He’s still clad in just his boxers as he hurriedly dons an emergency EVA suit. It’s sleek and form-fitting— leagues better than the bulky, two-hundred pound relics he’d had to use when he first underwent training in earth’s orbit— but awfully streamlined compared to the suits on the Atlas. Shiro taps the tiny reservoir of air affixed to the suit, worried, and hopes he won’t have to be topside for long.
It’s been ages since he had to do an EVA, and this will be his first time solo. He steps through the inner seal of the airlock, hooks a tether into a sturdy loop at his waist, and pulls it taut to test its strength. With a deep breath that fogs against the inside of his helmet, Shiro presses his palm to the airlock release and waits for the chamber’s outer seal to open.
Nothing ever quite compares to the sensation of stepping out into the void, leaving the cradle of reinforced steel for weightless, empty nothingness. Below him is a never-ending spread of inky black and stars so distant they might well already be dead— and above him, and all around him, too. A lonesome little speck of life in the most inhospitable environment imaginable.
Although… less inhospitable than we realized.
Shiro shakes that thought immediately, a more pressing worry pushing the memory of the space mermaid aside. He grabs little rungs and handholds along the ship’s exterior, cautiously navigating toward the damaged portion of the hull. It’s almost laughable how small the tear is. Grape-sized, and yet it’s enough to slowly cripple the whole ship if left untouched. Shiro draws a set of tools from the holster wrapped snug around his thigh, working quickly while the ship continues to flash little reminders across the inner screen of his helmet.
He mostly ignores it, more concerned with patching the leak without damaging his spacesuit in the process. Until he hears the beeping. It’s soft at first, faded by his preoccupation with the task at hand and the white noise of the oxygen filtering into his helmet; then all at once it’s loud, rapid, spurring Shiro’s heart to beat faster, his quick breaths burning through the small air tank.
He looks up just in time to see the IMMINENT COLLISION the ship is suddenly registering— another round of stray debris moving too close and too quick to avoid. Shiro’s eyes go wide as the first pieces speed past him in perfect silence, each little bolt or chunk of metal moving hundreds of times faster than a bullet. Even a graze would kill him.
Shiro plants the soles of his boot against the hull and pushes off as more scraps veer dangerously close, desperate to stay clear; the small jetpack affixed to the back of his suit is weak, but it’s enough to help him maneuver away, stretched to the end of the cord securing him to the ship.
This time, its moderate armor holds up. A few bits of debris hit, streaking with orange sparks as they scrape along heat shields. They deflect away as they’re supposed to, though, glancing off in some new direction to cause trouble for the next ship unfortunate enough to chance across them. Shiro’s relief, thin as it might be, is short-lived. The largest piece of debris yet sets the ship’s collision system sounding off in his ear, signals blaring for evasion, but all Shiro can do from here is wait and watch with fearfully choked breath.
What looks like the remnant of an ill-fated imperial reconaissance vessel catches his ship right on its sturdily-plated nose— not hard enough to shatter it or crunch the steel frame inward, mercifully, but with enough momentum to set the whole thing into a sudden spin.
Shiro is snapped forward as the cargo ship rolls, the tether linking him to it tugging him directly into the path of the small debris still streaking by. His trembling fingers hurriedly pry the hook loose from the loop at his waist, afraid of being swept in and bashed against the ship’s hull or pierced by deadly shrapnel. In an instant, Shiro is free. Unbound. Lost.
Bile rises in his throat as his momentum continues to hurtle him further from the spinning cargo ship, though it’s less from the motion than it is from swelling panic. The weak thrust of his spacesuit’s jetpack is barely enough to correct himself and slow his silent, agonizing tumble through space.
It’s silent around him, at least. Inside his helmet, Shiro’s labored breaths and the warning beeps of his oxygen tank are deafening, a clamor that smothers his thoughts. The jetpack goes unresponsive just as Shiro gets himself reoriented, still, like he’s treading water in place. From an aching distance, he’s able to watch as the cargo ship’s basic AI begins to stabilize itself, the precision firing of its thrusters slowing it to a listless drift, much like Shiro himself.
He tries the jetpack again, thumb jamming harder against the button, over and over, his patience stretched so thin it lies in tatters. The jetpack gives him nothing in return, and a dull beep and a flashing bar inform Shiro that his oxygen is dangerously low. Overused when his heart rate leapt, no doubt.
Shiro closes his eyes, lashes wet along their roots, and slowly spreads his arms. One by one, he relaxes muscles gone tense and cramped, aware down to the very tips of his trembling fingers. His eyes open again, staring out through foggy glass and into the deadest, darkest corner of space he’s ever seen. Ten-billion-plus light-years from home and everyone he's ever known. Alone.
Shiro picks a small, distant star and holds it in view, even as his eyelids begin to droop and the hiss of oxygen grows noticeably thin.
Then something firm meets the small of his back, nudging him forward a few inches. Shiro’s eyes draw open wide, as far as they’ll go, but the rest of him remains stockstill as an increasingly familiar face looms into view.
Behind the dividing glass of his helmet, Shiro’s lips part in a tiny gasp.
“You’re real,” he whispers, though the strange mermaid can’t hear him through the vacuum surrounding them both. “I think so, anyway.”
Or maybe one last little delusion to see him off. With syrupy slowness, Shiro raises a hand gloved in pale grey and reaches for him, emboldened by near death. Wisps of black hair trail through his fingers like liquid smoke. Foolhardy, he stretches his hand further— til his palm cups along one shimmering cheek, feeling the soft solidity of something undoubtedly real under his fingertips.
The relief that slakes through him is out of place, but Shiro welcomes it. If this corner of the universe is where he’s going to die, he’d rather have something wondrous to look at.
The pad of his thumb strokes slowly along the corner of the mer-alien’s mouth, wondering if it will kill him before the dwindling oxygen does. But he’d rather spend these last moments marveling at the way that sheer, rainbow-hued coating that covers every inch of him ripples under the slightest touch. It’s what sustains the creature out here, maybe— like the EVA suit Shiro wears, only this one is elegant and organic and worlds beyond the Coalition’s most advanced research.
His oxygen tank beeps steady, urgent. CRITICAL flashes in the corner of his fading vision.
Shiro stiffens as the space mermaid closes the meager distance between them, the tip of his nose pressing into the glass front of Shiro’s helmet. Slim arms slip over his shoulders, winding tight as the pretty space mermaid draws himself flush against the front of Shiro’s suit; a tapered, spectrally translucent tail winds around his lower body, squishing his thighs together.
There’s an abrupt and disorienting shift that sends Shiro’s vision spinning and makes his usually resolute stomach lurch. When he opens his eyes, they’re floating inside the ship’s open airlock.
Lightheaded and nauseous, Shiro clumsily drags himself toward the control panel along the wall. It’s a near thing, but he manages to slam the button to close the outer airlock even as his vision goes black at the edges, sealing the chamber.
The room pressurizes as it fills with air. The artificial grav kicks in, too, dropping Shiro into a heap on the metal floor. He rolls over onto his back, his grip on consciousness thin as a spider’s thread. As soon as the green light along the wall blinks on, hazy and dim by his failing senses, Shiro desperately claws off his helmet and swallows down a ragged, stomach-deep breath.
The rest of the airlock chamber swims into view, his bleary vision clearing in waves. He’s still sick to his stomach, actively debating whether to roll to his side in case he starts spitting up bile, when that same striking and unearthly face looms above him.
Shiro lays still.
So starved for air and desperate to survive, he hadn’t even realized he’d locked the mysterious alien inside the ship with him. Now he lies at its mercy again, his body weak from near-suffocation.
The space mermaid’s skin no longer glimmers with that gorgeous cast of iridescence. The dark hair that once billowed around him like smoke now falls limp to his bare shoulders, leaving him looking that much more human.
“Are you alright?” the mer-alien asks, shocking Shiro worse than that first glimpse he’d gotten on the bridge so many cycles ago. He’d never thought he’d hear English some twelve-billion light-years from earth, and much less in a low, kind voice with such rich texture to it.
Shiro runs a dry tongue over drier lips. “You saved me,” he whispers, his voice ratcheted tight by lingering adrenaline. “I… if you hadn’t found me, I’d be…”
He swallows down the rough, scratchy lump in his throat as flashes of exactly where he’d be well up in his mind’s eye— adrift in this dark corner of the cosmos, alone for eternity among the stars.
“Very dead,” the mer-alien finishes for him.
“So dead,” Shiro agrees, smiling without thinking. It’s a bleak, tired thing, coming on the heels of four fitful hours of sleep, a near-death experience, and now a face-to-face confrontation with the creature that’s been haunting him for the better part of a phoeb. “Thank you for bringing me back.”
“Are you still scared of me?”
“Less than I was before,” he decides after a moment of deliberation. With a groan, Shiro raises his right arm and extends a hand. “I’m Shiro.”
“Keith.” His gaze alights on Shiro’s hand, momentary wariness giving way to open curiosity. His slender, clawed fingers brush against Shiro’s, lightly testing. He plucks gently at the material of the gloves, as if bothered it’s there.
“Keith?” Shiro questions, curling his fingers and drawing his hand back. “That’s… a very earth name.”
Keith’s expression shifts, softens, goes fond. “My father was a very earth man.”
“Oh. That explains some things,” Shiro murmurs. It also raises a hundred new questions, each spiraling down its own rabbithole, but Shiro would rather not linger any longer in the airlock chamber. He glances out the viewing window on the heavy-duty outer seal, at the endless black and a handful of tiny stars. It means cold, pressureless death to him, but to Keith, it’s more like home. “I didn’t mean to trap you in here with me. I can let you out once I’m in the cabin.”
But as Shiro stands and the inner seal softly slides open, Keith’s expression is anything but relieved. His mouth opens, wordless, and then snaps shut. He shrinks against the wall, his stare shunted to one side. Miserable.
“Unless you’d like to stay?” Shiro asks, soft.
The effect is instantaneous. Keith’s pointed ears perk and his see-through, shimmery tail flops against the floor. He gazes up at Shiro with eyes as deep and mesmerizing as any star-speckled field of sky, warily hopeful. “I’d like to.”
“Then you’re welcome to,” Shiro says, only wobbling a little as he kneels in front of Keith. “Here, lets get inside. I’ll carry you?” Shiro suggests, reaching out a hand.
Keith’s tail flops again, smacking light against the floor. “O-okay. Sure.”
With the utmost care, he scoops Keith off of the floor and into his arms. Still a little woozy, Shiro nonetheless manages to rise with his long body cradled bridal-style in his arms. And Keith, wide-eyed in his trust, slips slim arms over his shoulders and keeps tentative hold.
Navigating his way down the ship’s narrow halls is tricky, Shiro taking extra care not to bump Keith into the doorways or walls. He’s puffing by the time he reaches his living quarters and lays Keith down in his own bed, surprised at just how heavy Keith’s rather delicate-looking form is.
His sinuous body stretches too long for it, the end of his tail drooping off the mattress to rest on the floor. And as he lets go of Shiro and lies back onto the mismatched collection of pillows and blankets, he sports a faint purple flush from the hollow of his throat down to his navel. The lovely color crests his cheeks, too, and the tips of pointed ears.
Shiro almost slips and asks what color Keith’s blood runs, but he checks himself, determined not to be a creepy host, and nods his head towards the door. “You rest here. I need to check on the ship’s functions, see what the damage is. I’ll be back in a few.”
In the cockpit, Shiro reviews the ship’s systems and is relieved to see read-outs in green and yellow. No critical flags. No more leaks. The collision knocked some instruments out of alignment, but nothing that can’t be fixed with some recalibration and rooting around in the engine room. All told, the unexpected debris-shower costs him six hours from the flight plan. It’s surmountable, though, and once Shiro has the cargo ship back on course, he’s ready for a shower and some shut-eye to make up for what he’d lost.
He starts shedding his EVA suit on the way back to his quarters, no longer able to stand the feel of trapped sweat under its stretchy, form-fitted thermal insulation. It’s more frustrating to peel himself out of it than it was to hurriedly squeeze himself in, but Shiro’s shoulders and upper body are free by the time he turns into his room, thumbs already hooked into the material bunched at his hips.
He freezes.
“I… I forgot you were in here,” he explains to the startled mer-alien lying in his bed. Well, not lying— Keith is sitting up now, spine rigid, his eyes the darkest and widest Shiro’s ever seen them.
Months alone had cut Shiro’s usual modesty down to nothing. He’s grown used to sleeping, eating, walking the halls in whatever he finds comfortable— which is why he’s wearing nothing but a pair of tight briefs underneath the rest of the spacesuit, so much of his skin bare and sweaty.
“Fuck it,” Shiro murmurs as he wriggles his hips and shucks the EVA suit the rest of the way down his legs, fighting to slide the clingy fabric down his thighs. It’s not like it really matters. He already has a strange alien naked in his bed— how much odder or more awkward can he make it?
“You’ve got… legs,” Keith says, as though he’s seeing them for the first time now that they’re bare.
“And you have a tail,” Shiro comments, ignoring his own blush and hoping Keith somehow doesn’t take notice, either. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The tail in question scrunches, Keith drawing all of himself onto Shiro’s small bed. “You like it?”
“Yeah. It’s beautiful.” Like the rest of you, is the thought that follows, unbidden. Shiro tamps it down and nods toward the adjoining bathroom. “Do you, uh, need anything before I hop in the shower?”
Keith shakes his head, already working himself deeper under the covers. He clutches Shiro’s fat duck-shaped pillow against his chest, his bare upper body delicately arched as he lies back atop the rest of the squishy pile.
Shiro bites softly along the inside of his own cheek, trying not to let his eye linger on the shape of perfect hipbones just above the shimming transition to Keith’s semi-translucent tail. Or the swells and dips of defined muscle. Or the lilac-tinged fullness of his lips. He ducks into the cramped bathroom and seals the door, immediately whapping the settings for coldest jet of water possible. Once sufficiently shocked back to his senses, he scrubs himself clean under a blistering spray and a creamy lather of vanilla and cinnamon scented soap.
But in his horny thought-fueled haste to jump into the shower, he’d forgotten to grab fresh clothes. After pacing a tiny square in the confines of the bathroom, bemoaning his plight, Shiro finally wraps a towel around his hips and pokes his head out.
He's relieved to see Keith already dozing, nested in blankets and clutching at pillows, everything about him softer in slumber. Shiro could sit and study him for hours, probably, and still find more of interest; he could memorize that face, the shape of him, and still be awed to look upon him.
But there's no time for any of that, thirsty and weird as it is. Shiro's wet feet slap-slap-slap across the floor as he darts to his plastic tub of clothes and stealthily fishes a shirt and some sweats out of it, casting furtive looks to the bed where Keith still sleeps, oblivious.
With nowhere else to go, he then trudges to the cockpit and throws on his clothes. With a bone-deep groan, Shiro drops into the pilot’s chair and props his feet up on an unused stretch of the console. All is quiet for now, the ship and its monitors humming along smoothly again. And as his exhaustion gives way to slumber, it all feels almost like a distant dream— the astronomically unlikely brush with debris, the gut-wrenching fear of being lost in the void, the magic of an unexpected rescue, and the handsome alien man currently sleeping in his bed.
- - - - ---- - --- ---- - - --- ---- --------------- - --- - --- - - - - -
When Shiro wakes, it’s to the wan glow of the console, the kiss of cool, recycled air on his goosepimpled skin, and echoing rasp of something sliding against metal.
The sudden leap of his heart throws his eyes wide open, fingers already scrabbling for the blaster kept within arm’s reach. The sound draws nearer by the second, rhythmic in its pattern of thumping, scraping, the telltale drag of something heavy across the floor.
Pulse pistol clenched in hand, Shiro springs from the chair and pads to the cockpit doorway. He squares his shoulders and his stance before edging his head out far enough to peek around the frame.
The hallway echoes with the ominous sound of something encroaching ever closer, but it’s pitch black down there, the ship’s power still running on conservation mode. It’s empty, too, until Shiro sees the glimmer of movement where he’d look for it last— low, near the floor, a pale shape emerging from the darkness by a hand, then an arm, and then a face framed in inky hair.
Keith.
Shiro relaxes, but not completely. His arm drops a little, the pulse pistol aimed down at his feet instead. “Keith?”
Keith startles, glances up, and blinks at Shiro with a look so innocently surprised that Shiro feels guilty for the weight of the blaster in his hand. “Keith, what’re you doing?”
Keith draws himself up on his elbows, claws scraping lightly over the floor. Behind him, half masked in the long hallway’s darkness, his tail ripples with movement. There’s a dark flush across his cheeks and a soft set to his frown. “I was looking for you.”
It’s almost… sweet, the way he says it. Shiro sighs, his weight listing from one foot to the other. He flips the safety and tucks the pulse pistol into a nearby drawer, both hands free as he treads down the lightless hall to meet Keith where he is.
“Let me get you,” he says, stooping to pull Keith into his arms again. Keith reaches up for him and clings tight— a little more eager this time, a little less surprised as Shiro sweeps him up and carries him to the cockpit.
He settles Keith down in the pilot’s chair and then hovers, uncertain what to say or do. “Uh… are you hungry?”
“Starving,” Keith says, a note mournful, and Shiro’s pulse quickens as he recalls the intimidating fangs sitting behind that unfairly cute frown.
He hurries to the galley with the promise of bringing back food, wondering what Keith usually subsists off of out in this empty expanse. When he returns, it’s with a small feast of rewarmed, prepackaged meals like meatloaf, dumplings, mac and cheese, bulgogi, banana pudding, and cheesecake.
Shiro nabs bites for himself where he can, mostly sitting back and smiling as Keith tears through each dish— except the banana pudding, which he wrinkles his nose at and passes over— with the voraciousness of a starved lion. He’s mid-swallow when Keith pauses to lick his standard-issue Coalition spork clean, his tongue long and… unusually agile.
Shiro sputters, coughs, hammers at his own chest to knock the dumpling loose. His eyes water, and through the welling tears he sees Keith drop the spork and lean in, violet-ringed eyes shining with concern.
“M’fine,” he wheezes as Keith’s hands settle on his shoulders before palming down his heaving chest, trying to help. “Thanks. Just swallowed too fast.”
The worried frown on Keith’s lips lingers as he pulls away; it deepens as he glances up and around the cockpit, hunting for something. With an annoyed little grunt, he finally looks downward instead and finds his spork lying on the floor. “I don’t like your… artificial gravity.”
Keith says it with such distaste that Shiro has to laugh, the sound erupting from him in an embarrassing snort he hasn’t made in ages.
“Understandably,” he says, admiring the lean shape of Keith’s form again. “You’re not made for it. You’re made for life out there,” he says, gesturing out the cockpit viewport, at the empty sprawl of space. At Keith’s quiet nod, he adds, ”Here. Let’s try something.”
Shiro pulls up a screen and taps through the controls, finding the settings for the ship’s artificial gravity. It’s more a crew quality of life feature than an absolute necessity, and he can stomach the inconvenience for Keith’s sake. With two fingers, he adjusts the levels and confirms the choice. It takes a moment for the ship’s systems to register the change, but Shiro hears the faint hum from the engine room lessen by a degree.
And then he’s untethered from the floor where he sits kneeling, light as air as he and everything else that isn’t bolted down begins to float. Including their empty dishes, which Shiro hurries to catch before they make a mess in the cockpit interior. It’s worth the chaos to see Keith’s delight as he rises out of the pilot’s chair, his hair and tail no longer resting limp. He’s alive the way Shiro remembers seeing him outside the ship, through this very window— unfathomably strange and beautiful, thriving where nothing should.
Keith maneuvers around the cockpit with natural born ease, nimbly weaving between the loose papers and pocket tablets and empty coffee mugs. He rolls through the air and arches into perfect loops, an aerial acrobat of the highest caliber, and Shiro soon realizes that Keith is showing off.
For him.
It’s worth watching. Shiro’s jaw tightens at the supple flex in Keith’s back as he swims circles around him, at the sway of his hips as he cavorts upside down. He grins as the tip of Keith’s tail whips in to playfully swish in front of his nose. And the longer Shiro watches him move, the more he sees— like the way Keith’s tail catches the light and bends it, refractive. A sort of camouflage rather than true translucence. The illusion of near-invisibility.
No wonder you were so hard to get a good look at.
Shiro grins so sincerely that his flushed cheeks go sore with it. “So, is this more comfortable for you?”
“Yeah. It feels like home, almost,” Keith says, his pointed smile gleaming bright. “Will you be okay?”
“I’m going to be bumping into a lot of walls and—” Shiro bats away a pen drifting toward his face. “—dealing with that, but it’s not a big deal. I only need the grav on to shower, really. And it’s better than you having to crawl around on the cold floors.”
Keith agrees. Enthusiastically.
It’s hardly Shiro’s first time in zero-G. His Garrison training required experience flying in sims with little to no gravity to simulate a worse-case scenario. And he’d grown up watching ancient footage of early astronauts in orbit, floating through the long-since retired International Space Station. But with Keith, it all feels wondrous and new again, hair raising along his nape and a tingle racing under his skin. It’s like magic, hanging in the air of the cockpit while Keith wheels around him, agile as a hawk in flight.
The glossy sheen of Keith’s tail is close enough to reach out and touch. Shiro does so almost without thinking, entranced by the silky look of Keith’s skin— and he finds the feel of it matches, his fingertips dragging over soft, shimmering, scaleless skin, the rippling of lean muscle underneath an insight into how much power rests beneath all that beauty.
It’s only as Keith slows that Shiro realizes he’s overstepped, careless. But even as he draws his hand back, sharp and reflexive, Keith follows. His satin-lined tail presses insistently into Shiro’s palm, its sinuous muscle achingly warm to the touch. It’s been ages since Shiro felt someone— anyone— like this, with some shred of intimacy, worlds apart from the clinical touch of rehabilitation or medical examination.
It’s nice, though Shiro doesn’t quite know what to make of the way Keith writhes closer and encourages him to run his hand down the firm length of his tail. And as fine claws tentatively trail over the bare skin above his collar and into his dark, close-cropped hair, Shiro feels a pang like hunger, a yearning for touch that aches with the same hollowness of slow starvation.
“I should show you the rest of the ship proper,” Shiro says before those thoughts run away with him.
And Keith, able to slip through the air like a seal through water, is more than happy to follow.
They spend the day touring the cargo ship’s many rooms and halls. Before anything else, Shiro brings Keith to the hydroponic garden— his pride and joy, more bountiful than most Coalition ships can boast— and lets him nibble arugula, shiso, sweet mint, soft butter lettuce. He shows him the water conservation system, and how to work the shower, and where the laundry gets done. And he tries to ignore the unsettling ache behind his navel as they float side-by-side in the ship’s small observation chamber, arms brushing as Keith points and names what few stars are visible in a tongue unlike anything he’s ever heard.
And when it comes time to sleep, Shiro retreats back to the bed in his quarters, strapping himself into it the way the astronauts of old did. It’s strange, falling asleep in zero-G. It’s stranger still to wake in the dimness of the ship’s pre-set sleep cycle and find Keith floating above him, dark and spectral.
“Keith?” Shiro sleepily questions, almost used to his sudden appearances now, less and less bothered by the inhumanness of him. It’s just the way he is, breezing through the cabin’s rooms and corridors like a mermaid through a sunken ship.
“I just wanted to see you again,” Keith whispers back, his void-black hair fanned around him like a halo.
Shiro moans softly and closes his eyes again. “There’s room for you,” he murmurs, showing the slackness of the padded belts that keep him from drifting aimlessly as he sleeps. Slack enough for Keith to squeeze in alongside him, if he wants.
It’s all the invitation Keith needs. Shiro is unceremoniously squished to one side of the narrow bed as Keith slithers his way under the loose hold of the restraining straps, his length tucked tight against Shiro’s side. It’s not uncomfortable, though— warm and snug, Shiro slips back under the veil of sleep within moments.
It is uncomfortable when he wakes with another body wedged firmly against his own, but only from its lack of familiarity. With a blush settled high across his cheeks, Shiro quickly acclimates to the arms ringing his middle, the warm flesh pressed into his spine, the tail wound around his legs. And the hot fan of breath against his back, too, with the featherlight brush of soft lips tickling between his shoulder blades.
Shiro sighs and pushes his cheek deeper into his pillow, relaxing into Keith’s hold and letting himself drowse a few minutes more. It’s the best morning he’s had since he first embarked on this mission. No, even before that— Shiro can’t recall the last time he woke in the arms of anyone else at all, much less someone as eager to have him as Keith is.
It’s not the last time they share his bed, either. Shiro takes to turning the artificial gravity back on when it’s time to sleep, though, so that he and Keith can sprawl together without needing padded straps to tether them down. He awakes each new cycle with Keith draped over him, clingier than an EVA suit, and grows used to the weight and heat of him. Welcomes it, even.
Because the journey is infinitely better with company, however unexpected it may be.
The ship feels less and less like a husk in which Shiro is trapped and more like a home, however odd it is to think that of any place but the Atlas, where he’d been stationed for more than five years before he fell.
He tells Keith about that. The fall. And the weeks and months after, struggling to survive on a hostile planet with a cauterized stump for a right arm. The agonizing flight back in a stolen imperial fighter. The way people looked at him after, somber and pitying as he was carried from the hangar to the med bay— a far cry from the heroic homecomings he was used to, filled with the first rumblings of his removal to earth and incoming honorable discharge, their intent to leave him on terra firma with a new arm and a few medals for his trouble.
It’s still a raw wound, though his body’s healed and scarred over. It still stings of betrayal after so much of his life was aligned to the Coalition’s cause. And there is something immeasurably soothing about the way Keith holds him while he pours out everything that felt too bitter and coarse to admit to the Garrison’s psychiatrists and therapists, too risky while he still hoped to secure their clearance to fly again.
It’s nice to have someone in his corner with no strings to the Garrison, or the Coalition, or even to earth at all.
“They don’t deserve you, Shiro,” Keith whispers as he coils protectively around Shiro’s larger frame, the words hitting somewhere between a growl and a hiss. “And you deserve to be here, in the stars.”
Keith is slower to open up— a little less of an emotional mess dammed up behind a public facade, Shiro supposes, and good for him— but in time, he shyly fills Shiro’s ear with all kinds of unbelievable stories. His father had been a crewman on one of the Garrison’s first deep-space voyages, thrown off course by stellar winds and wrecked against an asteroid. His mother had found him (“The same way I found you, Shiro,” Keith inserts, smiling softly.) and brought him back to the shattered, hollow planet where her people live.
Keith’s home is unlike anything Shiro’s ever even imagined, its decimated mass apparently providing the perfect measure of gravity for the Marmora— enough to hold onto pockets of livable atmosphere without weighing them down. A world full of people who move as Keith does, swimming through the air. A species that can even go off-planet on their own, protected by a flexible barrier of their own making.
Keith is considerably more shy to admit that he’d stumbled across Shiro on his first lone hunt, drawn in by the prospect of food and resources to bring home to his family.
It doesn’t faze Shiro, though. He’d figured that existence out here must be slim, precarious, and the Marmora raiding the warring ships that cut through their territory isn’t exactly unexpected. He’s more curious to know what changed Keith’s mind and turned his intentions so... friendly.
They’re splitting a meal of hot sauce-slathered fries and apple pie when he asks, “So, why’d you decide to save me instead? My ship was easy pickings. You could’ve left me, you know.”
Keith huffs as if by reflex, irritation his gut response to any hypothetical scenario in which Shiro is under duress. But he calms down as he chews, soothed by the slightly soggy potatoes and the little nudge of Shiro’s foot against his tail where they sit on the floor, the hum of artificial gravity on while they eat.
“You were… alone, like me. Human, like part of me. And the longer I watched you, the more I wanted to know you, Shiro. Also, I liked how you’d wiggle around the ship while you worked,” Keith tells him, absolutely sincere even as the color blanches from Shiro’s face. “Dancing, I mean. You’d sing, too, or at least it looked like it. Sometimes, I could almost read your lips. And I’d wonder what your voice sounded like…”
“Keith,” Shiro begs, dragging his mismatched hands down his face glacier-slow, all the blood rushing back into his cheeks setting them aflame. It’s typical Keith, really— bluntly sweet and admiring, even as Shiro’s eyes glaze as he recalls how many cycles he strolled around the ship in nothing but his underwear, freely acting like an idiot while under the impression he was the only living thing around for a million light-years. “I was bored out of my mind. No one was supposed to see— those were experimental moves, Keith. And I wasn’t— I didn’t—”
“I liked how you did this one,” Keith says, resting two fingers on the floor and gliding them backward, imitating a moonwalk. He laughs as Shiro hangs his head, hiding his dumb grin. “How your legs moved. Especially without pants.”
Shiro has also become well-acquainted with Keith’s general disdain for the concept of clothing. There are exceptions, though. Keith takes a liking to certain articles of Shiro’s, going so far as to hoard his favorites in piles on the bed— the pull-over Garrison hoodies, the softest of Shiro’s shirts, whatever briefs he can get his grabby little hands on. And his gloves, too.
Keith loves Shiro’s flight gloves. So much so that Shiro digs around in the storage closet and finds a smaller regulation pair. Fingerless, so Keith’s sharp-tipped claws won’t be an issue. He wraps them up in aluminum foil— about as festive as he can find on the old cargo ship— and rips a piece of paper from his journal to make a little card to go with it.
It’s a modest gift. A little shabby in presentation, especially compared to the decorations and frills he could’ve gotten on the Atlas or a Coalition trading colony. But Keith holds the messy little package like he’s been handed his weight in quintessence, overcome to the point of a trembling chin as he tugs the fingerless gloves on and gives his hands a testing flex.
Cycle forty-seven. Cycle fifty-three. Cycle sixty. The readout on the ship’s screen seems to leap every time Shiro lays eyes on it, reminding him that this little bubble for the two of them can’t last forever. The hours slip by as Keith assists him with repairs, competes with him in two-player games, and curls around him as they watch movies and talk late into the night.
“Where have you been, Shiro?” Keith asks deep into cycle sixty-six of ninety-two, drifting around the cockpit while Shiro works. “Before you came here. Before I found you.”
Shiro smiles as he pulls up a holo map of the charted universe, the glow of its softly shaped light catching in the wells of Keith’s dark eyes, enhancing their keen and curious gleam. He rotates the sparkling three-dimensional image, the whole cosmos held in the span of his arms, and flicks at the different sectors where the Atlas’ battles had taken him.
“I fought here, here, here,” he points out, lighting up a dozen different points across the sprawl of the universe, awash in memories of flying through nebulae and watching sunrise fall on alien planets. His metal fingers hesitate in one particular star system, where the planets are shrouded in ice and crystal; where the empire had lain in wait for them, to devastating effect. “And here.”
But he doesn’t want to be reminded of the cold and the hunger and the loneliness of surviving his entire squadron.
Instead, Shiro focuses on a tiny pinprick of light, enlarging the holo map until it only shows one spectacular quasar in Virgo. The projection almost glitters, particles of light moving to show the luminous energy emitted by the matter falling into the massive black hole at its center.
“That’s… I’ve never seen anything like it,” Keith says, leaning in so close that the stars on the fringe of the projection catch in his dark hair and over the bridge of his nose.
“This part of the universe is old, old, old. Empty and dark, comparatively, everything spread and expanded. But we wouldn’t have to go too far to see a quasar like this,” he says, fingers tapping against the console. “Where I’m from, though— and your dad, too— it’s… the skies are full of stars, Keith. Ribbons of them, galaxies clustered tight together, brilliant nebulae and young planets. Young by space standards, I mean.”
Keith nods, bathed in the speckle of simulated stars as he reaches into the holo projection and drags his gloved hand through a constructed image of the Trifid Nebula. Its form breaks apart around his fingers, wisp-like, motes of soft, multicolored light dancing over his skin and the black of his gloves as they scatter.
“Do you plan on going back? To places like these?”
The corner of Shiro’s mouth gives a little tug. “I’d like to,” he sighs, smiling in full as Keith starts toying with the holo’s controls himself, lazing in a loose circle through the air as he explores the three-dimensional map. Its color and complexity is a sharp contrast with the current view outside the cockpit, bleakly devoid of anything but darkness. “But I’ll be spending most of my time here.”
Keith looks at him from under sleek, pretty lashes, expression torn. “I know you probably can’t wait to return to the Atlas,” he says, voice dropped low. “And I don’t blame you. But I’m glad you’re here, Shiro. And I… I wish there were nebulas and supernovas and galaxy clusters here, too. Something special to make you want to come back.”
“Something special?” Shiro grabs the back of the seat to pull himself closer, his legs treading in the air by habit. Close enough that he can see down into the depths of Keith’s violet-ringed eyes, his metal hand weaving into the messy halo of pitch black hair, drawing it out of Keith’s handsome face. “Keith… you’re here.”
Keith blinks up at him. “Me?”
“You,” Shiro affirms, grinning as he crooks a finger under Keith’s chin, his knuckle trailing fondly along his jaw. “You’re more amazing than anything else I’ve ever seen in this universe, Keith. And not just because you can swim around out in space, although that’s admittedly cool as fuck.”
Keith’s lips move in a silent repetition of fuck— something he’s been doing ever since Shiro taught him how to swear in English.
“No supernova or comet or Wolf-Rayet star can compare to you,” Shiro continues, looking at Keith more fondly than he’s felt for anyone or anything. “I’ve seen dozens of those. Hundreds. But you’re irreplaceable, Keith.”
Shiro’s breath stops short somewhere in his chest as strong hands hook over his shoulders, a clawed thumb gentle as it strokes along the side of his throat. Keith levers himself up until they’re eye-level with each other, dragging his body against Shiro’s front the whole way, the friction of his bare torso bunching and tugging up the fabric of Shiro’s grey tee.
“You’re irreplaceable to me, too,” Keith whispers back, his palms cupping over Shiro’s ears as he draws him in close, their foreheads bumping while he brushes their noses together. It’s intimate, affectionate. A gesture conveying feelings that Shiro shares, and has for weeks.
It’s Shiro who angles his head and makes it a kiss, eyes heavy-lidded but open, watching Keith’s reaction as he slowly lips at his fanged mouth.
Keith likes it, judging by the way his pupils grow wide, and swallow the dark, sparkling violet of his irises. And the way his tail whips around behind Shiro and pulls him close, tangling them together where they float through the cockpit and kiss with a kind of hunger Shiro hasn’t felt since he was a teenager, still all reckless fire not yet bridled.
The rest of the universe falls away. Weightless and wrapped tight, Shiro only knows the smooth grind of shimmery, serpentine hips against him and the taste of Keith’s eager mouth— sweet and cinnamoned from from their recent hot chocolate, his fangs catching on Shiro’s bottom lip, his tongue warmly soothing as it laps away any pinprick trace of blood.
Shiro shrugs out of the tattered remnants of his clothes, shredded by impatient claws, as bare and free as Keith’s always been. He writhes within the flexing coil of Keith's tail, aching with the friction of rutting against his slim hips and smooth belly. And as Keith guides his hand down to finger along a warm slit surrounded by clingy little tendrils, its depths as silky soft as the rest of him, Shiro loses himself in it— in Keith, completely.
It’s only hours later that Shiro is finally able to enter his pilot’s log for this cycle, struggling to stay awake as he taps his way through the calendar and recounts the day’s uneventful— in aeronautical terms, at least— journey. Beside him in bed, Keith already slumbers, his hips gently rocking into Shiro even in his dreams.
Shiro sighs, smiling into the palm of his hand as he drags a hand down his face. In the private pen and paper log he’d started keeping, he jots down his first update in what feels like ages.
Made contact with space mermaid/angel. Fell in love. Fucked in zero-G. Matt, you’d be so proud.
- - - - ---- - ---- --------- --- - - - - -
The last cycles of this leg of the journey are bittersweet, even as Shiro promises that Keith can ride with him again for the ninety-two cycles back to the waystation that will wormhole him to the Atlas’ coordinates. They’re closer than ever— literally, much of the time, Keith clinging to him and leaving biting kisses over his shoulders and down his back even while Shiro works— and the thought of parting even for a week while Shiro unloads his cargo and makes repairs is about as appealing as going without his prosthetic.
They wait until the last moment possible, stealing every moment they can. And just before the Horizon outpost blinks into view of the ship, they say goodbye.
Shiro watches, freshly awed, as Keith’s skin dapples with that thick, shimmery coat; it spreads over him like a cast of oil, gleaming under the ship’s artificial light, its sheen a multitude of colors.
“You can touch,” Keith says, reading Shiro’s curious mind. His voice is oddly distorted, muffled in such a way it sounds leagues distant. “It’s okay.”
Shiro does, reaching up to press his hand along Keith’s cheek, his fingers lost in his floating mane of hair. The pad of his thumb glides over the strange gloss on Keith’s skin, surprised at the resilience of its surface tension. That rainbow sheen pools where he presses, responding to the stress, but its bonds are impossible to break. A flexible and impervious shield against even the deadly depths of space, and Keith wears it well.
“Find me when I leave?” Shiro asks, his hand falling to grasp Keith’s. He’s still wearing the gloves, the skintight leather safe under that protective iridescent coat; a reminder of him even while they’re apart, he hopes. “I won’t last the trip back without you.”
“I’ll always find you, Shiro. Don’t be scared when I tap the glass on your window this time, okay?”
Shiro snort-laughs. “Just try not to catch me with my pants down.”
Keith’s mischievous smile assures Shiro that that’s exactly what he’s going to try to do.
Their lips don’t quite touch as they kiss, the shimmering film on Keith’s skin a barrier holding them a centimeter or two apart. And as Keith presses his forehead to Shiro’s and nuzzles against his nose, Shiro can no longer feel his warmth or smell his scent, his heart already keening for what’s missing.
“I’ll wait for you,” Keith promises, holding onto Shiro’s hand until it’s time to seal the airlock door. His black-gloved palm presses against the window once they’re separated; Shiro lines his fingers up with Keith’s, the span of his hand wider by inches.
And there’s no way to steel his heart for the brutally sudden absence of Keith as the outer seal opens and he’s whisked out into space, a brilliant glimmer and then— gone. Shiro’s stomach knots around itself, anxious despite his intimate knowledge of how capably Keith can live beyond the safety of a ship or a colony or the bubbled atmosphere of a planet like earth.
But by the time he propels himself up to the cockpit, flips the artificial grav back on, and starts slowing the ship for the approach, he’s gently reminded not to worry.
A tapping against the viewport glass draws his eye up to its edge, to a face Shiro’s memorized over the course of months— nestled in the pillow beside him, flecked with water as Shiro washed his hair, cast in shadow and faint starlight or lit bright with the ambient color from vivid holo projections. Shiro waves, blows a kiss, and taps two fingers against his brow in a lazy salute. Keith glows a bit brighter, his skin giving off a wave of shimmer, and then his whole body turns that same golden-hued translucent, nearly impossible to see against the backdrop of star-flecked space.
And long after Shiro loses sight of him, he thinks he can still feel Keith close, ghosting alongside his ship. He trusts he won’t stray far. And he knows, surer than anything else, that he’ll see Keith again.