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“Don’t be mad,” Pidge says, which is the least promising way for her to start a conversation. Shiro keeps a running tally, and her tone is placing this one firmly in the die mad category, which he has a non-zero amount of experience with. “And before you ask, Keith is fine.”
That’s not suspicious. Or alarming. It is, in fact, suspicious and alarming. Shiro sets down his data pad and shoves his chair back from the terminal in order to subject Pidge to his undivided attention. “What happened to Keith?” Keith was fine this morning, and he’s off-duty for the next seven cycles.
Keith is perennially fine, these days. Ever since the war ended he and Shiro have been sharing an apartment — each with their own room, but they spend most of their off-duty hours in the shared spaces. Shiro likes what they have, even if he’d also like to initiate more touching that Keith has advertised an interest in.
“Lance and Hunk tried it, too, and it wasn’t a big deal, so Keith offered to be the variable, since he’s part-Gala — ”
“Pidge,” Shiro says. “Katie. What happened to my best friend that I shouldn’t be mad about?” He’s using his best I’m the leader voice, the one he used to trot out during the war when Pidge was, somehow, impossibly young. He hasn’t had much call for the voice as of late. Shiro forgot the way the combination of authority and warmth strains his vocal chords: it’s a tone that hurts to use, because it reminds Shiro of being young, too, and of losing the luxury of a chain of command.
The voice works. She looks him in the eye and stops being defensive, stops trying to pretend she isn’t responsible. “I’ve been running sleep studies. I’ve been heat-treating an Olkari hallucinogenic pollen and when paired with one of Allura’s headsets, you know, the memory ones, I think it could impose a lucid dream state. I bet it would work for collaborative purposes, you know?”
Or to get high. Or to treat complex PTSD. Yes, Shiro does read Pidge’s briefings, even though she doesn’t report to him any more; it’s a compelling idea. He encouraged her department head to okay the funding. But: “I thought Lance and Hunk vetoed your last compound.”
“It didn’t work for them,” Pidge allows. An understatement, based on Hunk’s extensive documentation re: the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad nap. “But Keith said maybe he’d have better luck because he’s part-Gala, the compounds might work differently on him, and anyway, he doesn’t sleep so good these days, so what was the harm?”
Shiro stands at attention. Maybe he doesn’t need to be mad — just useful, just available. “He always says he’s fine when he wakes up from a nightmare.” Shiro’s gotten used to Keith’s definition of fine and has fine-tuned his responses accordingly. He has a standard response for this kind of situation, and it involves sitting knee-to-knee with Keith until he remembers he’s a person. Then they usually go joyriding (no joy, just speed, grimly whipping around obstacles until all that remains is the sensation of having a body, of how hollowed out it’s possible to feel). And order takeout.
Shiro hates and loves this kind of caretaking in equal measure; a part of him thinks it would be more straightforward to arm-wrestle Keith back into bed after a night of bad dreams, and spoon him so aggressively that Keith’s nightmares would get the message and back off.
“That’s just it,” Pidge says. She sounds: afraid. “Keith is fine, all his vitals are standard, his brain activity doesn’t indicate distress — but he won’t wake up.”
+++
In lieu of pointed exclamations, Shiro pulls rank. Rank, and also power of attorney. He declares that if Pidge is so keen to experiment on her erstwhile colleagues, she can continue by putting Shiro under using the same concoction she used on Keith, paired with Allura’s headset for good measure.
What but Keith could make Shiro do something so foolish? Krolia’s a wormhole away and would come in a heartbeat, but she’s Galra too; Hunk and Lance are still hungover from their forays into Pidge’s experiment, and Allura informed all of them that she had already done the whole sleep thing and wasn’t keen on repeating it. Plus, no one knew how Altean biology would react to the drugs. After about an hour, Pidge capitulates and Shiro marches behind her into the hospital room where she’s stashed Keith.
Keith doesn’t look unhappy, even if the headset he’s wearing is, objectively, very dorky.
“He looks peaceful,” Pidge offers.
“Don’t start,” Shiro warns.
So: Shiro lays back on a gurney and keeps his face turned to one side, fixing his gaze steadily on Keith, while Pidge swabs his arm and administers the worst IV line Shiro has ever had the misfortune to experience.
Tries to administer. At her fourth attempt he can feel the bruises rising; his fist aches from clenching and the tourniquet is starting to feel like a vise.
“Use a smaller needle,” he hisses without looking as Pidge digs in for a fifth go. He can tell she’s missed the vein again, rolling it away from the needle point and making a mess of his inner elbow.
Shiro has excellent veins. He is not the problem.
“You have to be gentle, Pidge,” Hunk says, and takes over. He has a more delicate touch and besides: Hunk’s also the only one of the team who refreshes his field medicine credentials on a routine basis. Between that and working with wiring: he gets the stick on his first try, the needle gliding under Shiro’s skin and settling in for the duration of this terrible idea. It’s nearly painless.
“There you go, big guy,” Hunk soothes, rubbing warm hands over the exposed crook of Shiro’s arm, flattening the tape. “You ready?”
“I’m not counting backwards from ten,” Shiro informs him.
“Sure, sure, whatever.” Hunk rolls backwards from the gurney on his little wheels stool to make room for Pidge to start the flow of her terrible experimental sleep drug. True to form, she ignores the telescoping IV pole and just climbs up onto Hunk’s knee to twist the titrate knob.
“You fill me with confidence,” Shiro tells her. She looks like a scrappy angle on an unorthodox Christmas tree, if he squints: his vision is already starting to blur.
“Go get him, tiger,” Pidge says, and then Shiro’s out. Sedation hasn’t changed much.
+++
Shiro opens his eyes and has his first thought: that Pidge must have figured out the dose. This doesn’t feel like being asleep or getting caught up in a bad trip. It feels: normal, like Shiro has stood up from the gurney and walked away from the hospital room, following Keith’s obvious footsteps down the corridor and to the outside.
An alternate theory: Shiro’s not quite human either, after the whole died-cloned-died-transplanted from the astral plane thing. Maybe the drug is no good on him, too.
That’s hell to write in on the medical history form, though; Shiro usually skips it.
His second thought: Keith’s dream is in full color. The walls of the medical unit are the same eye-watering purple that the Coalition Cultural Exchange Representative insists is soothing across species, and Keith’s footprints pulse bright red around the edges, the same way his signature displayed back when they were piloting the Lions. He remembers a story his mom used to tell him, about how once upon a time, people didn’t see color until after their soulmate died. That’s been fixed, mostly: once CRISPR was finally approved for human trials, science opted to excise that little heartbreaker. Aviation really took off as a result, which is why Shiro likes the story. The skies opened for everyone!
Shiro has perfect vision and his sense of color is similarly impeccable. He owes it all to science. But: there’s some kind of memory that the world has about it, and most people dream in black and white as a result.
Shiro spends a full six seconds trying to remember if he himself dreams in color or in black and white and can’t come to a conclusion.
+++
Back to the mission: Shiro allows Keith’s trail across campus, all the way to their apartment. There aren’t any stray memories or monsters lurking in the shadows; it’s not even dark out, like it was when Shiro was stranded in the Astral Plane. It’s a nice day with full sun and a slight, dry breeze, the kind of weather Keith always yearns for and logs abrupt time-off requests during.
And there’s Keith: slumped bonelessly on a cushion Shiro keeps on their little exterior balcony. The dream-version of the balcony is nicer than what they have in real life — it’s bigger, and the breeze wafts improbably through the spindles on the guard rail. Shiro doesn’t spend a lot of time on the balcony because Keith likes it so much, and it’s tight quarters for two men. It’s not an obstacle now. He doesn’t bother with the stairs, just walks up to the building and thinks, I’ll stand there now. The dream obeys.
“Hey, Keith.” Shiro crouches down beside Keith. Somehow they’re enjoying full sun but there’s still enough shade to prevent any glare.
“Shiro?” Keith tilts his head a little, still supine on his porch-cushion, catlike, looks a little surprised to see him. Does Keith always feel surprised when someone seeks him out? “What are you doing here? I thought you had work today.”
Shiro vows to himself: he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure Keith believes Shiro will always, always find him. “Change of plans. I thought I’d check up on you instead.”
“Heh. Well, I’m glad you decided to join me.” The cushion broadens and softens around the edges and it just makes sense for Shiro to tumble down beside Keith upon it. The dream doesn’t skimp on detail: he can feel the textured weave of the fabric against his skin (a quick check: somehow Shiro’s clothes have been replaced with one of his undershirts and a pair of baggy sleep shorts, the pair he always means to toss because they show so much leg, but can’t bear to dispose of because they’re comfortable, damn it), and the sunlight ups its intensity without getting in his eyes. Keith offers Shiro a sip from the bitter-sharp glass of tea and lemon substitute he always drinks in hot weather, and the container is slick with condensation.
“Thanks for having me,” Shiro says. It’s just a dream, so what can it hurt if he rolls deliberately into Keith’s personal space? The cushion is more comfortable this way. “I feel underdressed.”
“You’re handsome,” Keith assures him. Plainly; maybe this is how Keith always talks in his dreams? He’s a direct speaker when he’s awake. “I love those shorts.”
It’s impossible not to preen. Or to shuffle closer against Keith’s lithe side, for the hem of Shiro’s shorts to creep up a little higher. “Yeah? You look really nice too.”
Objectively: Keith does not. His dream-self showcases all of his perceived flaws (the scar on his face hasn’t healed so well; he’s got freckles across his upper lip, just dusky enough that in some lights it makes his face look dirty instead of speckled; the circles under his eyes indicate that even though Keith is dreaming, he still hasn’t figured out how to rest). If this was Shiro’s dream, he wouldn’t subtract these details — but he would soften them. And because it is Shiro’s dream, too, just a little bit, he does.
The scar isn’t so red these days; the freckles are endearing, and darker from the little hint of sunburn Keith caught the other day and hasn’t finished healing from; his eyes are deep and lovely and full of stars. At least: Shiro thinks so.
“I always want to look nice for you,” Keith says. Out of anyone else’s mouth, the words would be flirtatious, or accompanied by batted eyelashes. Keith sounds earnest; he does blink rapidly, but Shiro chalks it up to Keith being Keith, to the weird dream-light.
Is it boldness or embarrassment that makes Shiro flush? He isn’t sure.
“We’re dreaming,” he blurts, because Keith is so soft like this — he deserves to know. “Pidge couldn’t get you to wake up. I came looking for you.”
“Maybe I’m just tired,” Keith murmurs, and nuzzles his face into Shiro’s shoulder. “Ever think of that? I’m tired, and I just want to spend some time with you. Pidge said it was my dream, I could control it, and here you are.”
And oh, Shiro doesn’t know who to blame for the sensation. Keith kisses Shiro’s neck, and his lips are chapped; his mouth is gentle, to make up for the scrape, a little damp, like he tried to lick the skin soft before pressing against Shiro’s throat. It wouldn’t have mattered if Keith hadn’t licked his lips first, Shiro thinks; this time of day his beard starts growing back in, and it would have been rough-against-rough. They’re two of a kind.
“Awake and asleep, huh,” Shiro says, and wraps his arms around him. Keith — makes a little sound that Shiro absolutely cannot analyze, but which he is now absolutely obsessed with. It’s almost a purr, and a bit of a moan, and just a little of how Keith used to whine when he was younger and less reserved. This is noise that is for the two of them: Shiro is positive no one else has ever heard it before.
It’s nice. When he was dead-dreaming in the Astral Plane, there wasn’t much sound.
Which is why he hears when Keith croons to himself, “you’re my dream come true.”
Shiro is used to being admired. He used to being feared. It comes with the territory: you set enough records in a flight simulation or in a gladiator ring, and people start buttering you up because they believe in your potential But the way Keith murmurs against his neck, the sweet drag of Keith’s lips against Shiro’s throat — that’s just for them. It feels like a gift, something brilliant and warm. Keith’s adoration doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels —
Shiro threads his fingers into Keith’s hair, which, in their shared dream, isn’t frizzled or snarled or ill-kept. When they’re awake, Keith keeps it braided because he can’t be bothered to groom himself more than twice a week, so he always has a slightly harassed look about him. But Shiro wants to stroke him; he wants to wrap himself around Keith like an octopus. And so Keith’s hair is unbound and clean, and he’s wearing one of Shiro’s shirts, and when Shiro gets a decent grip on Keith’s hip, Keith leans even closer into the touch.
“This is a dream,” Shiro reminds him. “It’s true, too. Keith. Hey, you’re crying.”
Keith is, a little. Shiro pulls back enough to see, and then he dips back down to kiss the tears away. He can’t taste the salt, even though he knows that Keith’s tears are just as salty as Shiro’s own. One of the first things Shiro remembers from waking up in his new body is the taste, from where Keith’s tears dripped off his own face and into Shiro’s mouth.
“I know you don’t love me,” Keith says. He’s smiling. He keeps his eyes closed, which is just as well: it lets Shiro kiss him again, gently, on each lid. “Not like I love you. But it’s okay, I promise. This is plenty. Why would I want to wake up?”
“I do love you,” and it’s an argument. Shiro’s almost insulted. They live together. Shiro thinks about Keith almost as soon as he wakes up in the mornings, and definitely — even lewdly — as he falls asleep. “I washed the dishes yesterday. You cooked us dinner. You asked about my day and let me complain about Ambassador Ketireddy for sixteen minutes. If you don’t wake up, I won’t have a chance to repay the favor.”
Keith’s little huff of disagreement is somewhat undercut by how he snuggles in closer — the pillow is dissolving, and the little balcony is becoming a bed. Not Shiro’s bed, which has better quality sheets on it, and not Keith’s, which is a futon Shiro despises with every fiber of his being — but a bed that belongs to the two of them, one with a skylight above it. “Shiro. You don’t owe me. I appreciate everything you’ve done — ”
It is not cute when someone interrupts another person with a kiss. Shiro has never enjoyed it when it crops up in the media. It feels dismissive, and rude, and kind of arrogant, and he’s never wanted to commit to that action more in his life. Not just to stop the heartbreak from coming out of Keith’s mouth; not just because Shiro is secretly a little romantic, and he hopes true love’s kiss can break their sleeping spell. He wants to kiss Keith to redirect him, not to stop him from speaking entirely. Shiro would much rather hear Keith say I love you again, without a qualifier. He wants to hear Keith yell. He wants to hear Keith laugh, or moan, or even say, enough about Ketireddy, it’s my turn to complain.
Shiro wants to kiss Keith. He wants to kiss Keith when they are both awake, even if it’s on the verge of falling asleep again. He does not want to kiss Keith on the mouth and have it manifest as a figment of imagination. Never mind that Shiro has dreamed about kissing Keith before, many times, in many configurations. “I can prove it,” he vows.
Keith yawns. He yawns the same way he does when they’re really awake: like a snake, opening his jaw wide enough that Shiro gets a gust of hot breath to the face and a brief impression of too many teeth. “Sorry. Pidge’s dream stuff is good, but I guess I’m still tired.”
Shiro’s never felt more intense in all his life, and that’s saying something. The exhaustion is familiar — it’s a tugging sensation, the same as a mental thread from Allura’s old mind-meld device. Coupled with the fading sense of sedation, maybe the lucid dream has run its course. “Okay. Okay. Do you remember your dreams, Keith?”
“Yeah.” Of course he does. Keith clings to meaning in a way Shiro admires and fears in equal measure, and right now it’s the most reassuring thing in existence. Keith remembers things. He’ll remember this, too. It could change both their lives all over again, and Shiro can hardly wait to get started.
“I will, too. I promise. Come talk to me when you wake up, okay? I think we’re waking up. Don’t be scared. Just talk to me.”
“Shiro,” Keith is — even more beautiful than he was a moment ago, when his was lying still with his eyes closed so Shiro could kiss the lids. “I love you. I could never be afraid of you.”
“Okay, baby.” He rubs his metal hand against Keith’s scalp, soft enough that it isn’t a noogie, but enough to generate static. “Go to sleep so you can wake up. I’ll see you soon.”
+++
The sedation drops away, slowly and then all at once, and Shiro opens his eyes to the realization that his prosthetic — detached for the duration of his participation in Pidge’s terrible, stupid experiment — has activated of its own accord and floated to Keith’s bedside. It’s holding Keith’s hand.
Shiro’s prosthetic isn’t the same oversized floater he got during the war. This one is still metal, sleeker, better suited to peacetime, and it has a multitool hidden in a compartment at the base of the thumb. It doesn’t usually have its own ideas, but Pidge threaded some Olkari technology into this model. Olkari technology, Shiro thinks, has opinions about emotional denouement. He isn’t about to complain.
There are worse things he could hold on to. His haptic sensors are online, at least, so he can sense the pressure Keith exerts when he wakes up too, and clutches reflexively at Shiro’s hand.
“I’m here,” Shiro calls across the gap between their hospital beds.
“Oh thank the maker,” Pidge moans in the background. Shiro can hear Hunk soothing her. He tunes them out.
“It felt like a normal dream,” Keith mumbles. “Why am I covered in sensors? It was nice, I mean. But regular. I don’t know what Lance was complaining about.”
“You were pretty far under,” Pidge starts, but Shiro glares at her — she’s done enough — and Hunk once again rescues all involved by nimbly removing Shiro and Keith’s respective IVs and herding Pidge out of the room.
And so there aren’t any witnesses to how Shiro hauls himself upright and slumps himself onto Keith’s hospital bed. Keith unclenches his fingers from around Shiro’s detached hand and helps realign the upper arm with Shiro’s connector port, then braces Shiro which his own body during the itchy/painful moment it takes for the prosthetic to reattach and recalibrate with the rest of Shiro’s body; it’s a vulnerable feeling. Shiro’s glad to have an ally, and Keith is the best ally of all.
After breathing carefully through his nose to get his heart rate back down, Shiro twines his body around Keith’s and lays half on top of him, a little to keep Keith where Shiro can keep an eye on him and a little for comfort. Hospital rooms are always too cold. It’s warmer this way, though the bed is too small for two adults, even one as lithe as Keith, and they end up hopelessly tangled, clothes and monitors tugging unpleasantly against skin. It’s completely unlike the smooth ease they had on that cushion in the dream. Shiro thinks this is just the way he likes it.
“Did you have a good dream, baby?” Shiro asks. It feels natural to run his fingers through Keith’s hair, but he gets stopped by a rat’s nest before he makes much headway. Maybe it’s unfair to press the advantage when Keith’s just come out from under sedation, but Shiro thinks they’re on equal footing. Even if they weren’t: this is too important for Shiro to abandon a strategic advantage. “Did you dream about me?”
Keith’s eyes are so wide, and a little shocked, but Shiro knows what hope looks like. This is hope. “I dreamed you were with me.”
“That’s good.” Shiro does kiss him then, because there’s a natural pause in the conversation while Keith’s brain and heart catch up — nature abhors a vacuum, right? It’s a nice kiss. Thanks to the saline and Olkari hallucinogenic pollen drip, Keith’s properly hydrated and his lips aren’t chapped at all. He even has a flavor, and Shiro savors it even though Keith tastes a little muzzy and sour. It’s all real, all happening, and they’re both awake for it.
“Oh,” Keith sighs into Shiro’s mouth. He sounds happy, and he follows through, as sure as he has ever followed Shiro’s lead. The timing is off, they both lunge too close too fast and click their teeth . “You told me — you meant it — ”
“We’re awake,” Shiro says. Vows. “I mean what I said, Keith. I love you. You’re my dream come true, too.”