The Mysterious Case of Detective Kogane

by acetheblade

Summary:

Shiro is a superhero, strong and resilient and determined, aaaaaand utterly at the mercy of the little Detective Kogane… and her beautiful, kind-hearted papa of course.

Chapter 1: The Detective and the Damsel in Distress

To the average person being a superhero might seem like a thrilling, glamorous life. There’s the whole key-to-the-city thing, the fan clubs, hell Shiro was even approached with a cereal brand deal once! But he couldn’t quite help going pink-cheeked with embarrassment every time he thought of himself on a brightly colored cardboard box promoting Sheerios. He doesn’t think Allura or the other supers would have let him live it down either. 

 

Being Shiro the Hero is rewarding, don’t get him wrong. He loves to feel like he’s helping, like his strength and ability are useful to his community and deep down, he can’t say he hates all the attention either. Even if he gets knocked down a few times, or breaks a rib or an arm here and there… Shiro knows that a hero can never give up, never show weakness, never stop fighting for what is right-

 

Never be caught dazed, beaten, and smelly in a dumpster either. 

 

Something slurps loudly nearby and Shiro’s double-vision and probable concussion mean that turning his head takes longer than he wants it to. If Sendak is back then he’s a goner, but his tired eyes don’t find an alien super soldier. No, they see a pair of dark almost-purple eyes set in a tan cherubic face. She’s young, with chunky uneven bangs and the long parts of her hair in two thick braids that dangle over her shoulders. Her skinny arms are folded over the edge of the dumpster neatly and she sucks the straw of a juice box noisily as she peers down at Shiro. 

 

They blink at each other for a second and then she reaches down towards him, offering the juice box. Shiro makes to grab it from her but can’t quite get his arm to move where he wants it to, and after a few attempts she instead folds herself over the edge of the dumpster to poke the straw at his lips. Shiro drinks gratefully and tastes apple, his favorite. He ends up drinking the last of it and when the straw sucks loudly at empty air the girl giggles and pulls herself back to lean her arms on the edge again. 

 

“Are you a drunk guy who lost his wallet and had a bad day?” She asks suddenly, with just the slightest lisp. Shiro catches a glimpse of a missing front tooth and smiles to himself while he thinks over his answer. Immediately he knows he’s going to be honest with her, because that’s who Shiro is, but obviously he can’t tell a kid all the intricacies of how he ended up crushed like an old soda can and tossed in the dumpster. Even if he could string his thoughts together enough to do it. 

 

“Not a drunk guy, and I left my wallet at home on purpose, but yes I’m having a bad day.” Shiro answers simply, and tries not to grimace at the pain in his ribs as he speaks. 

 

The little girl nods her acknowledgement and rests her chin on her arms to watch him some more. “Why did you leave it at home?”

 

Shiro can’t help but laugh a little, the air puffing out in a short gasp that stings. “I don’t have any pockets in this thing,” he replies bashfully and she snorts her bemusement. 

 

“I hate that! That’s why papa buys me boys’ pants, I couldn’t even fit my magnetiz-“ she scrunches her nose as if frustrated and starts again quickly, “my magnifying glass!! My magnifying glass didn’t fit so that wasn’t good.”

 

“Your magnifying glass?” Shiro asks indulgently, sitting up a little better in his bed of trash. 

 

Her chest puffs out adorably with pride at his interest and she drops the juice box into the dumpster with him to scrabble at her pocket out of view. She pops back up over the edge of the dumpster with the magnifying glass over her right eye and a practiced scowl on her face. “I’m a detective! That’s why I have this!”

 

Shiro decides that he loves her.

 

“That’s why I had to ask if you were a drunk man!” She continues, waving her free hand dramatically while the other keeps the magnifying glass pressed to her eye. Shiro can’t help the laughter that bubbles up, clutching at his aching ribs but unable to stop and she perks up even further at his reaction. She makes a show of leaning down into the dumpster to inspect him with her tool, letting out thoughtful little ‘hmms’ and Shiro feels his lip split because of how wide he grins. “Yup! Just as I thought!”

 

With a sudden shift in emotion her eyes turn serious and she takes the magnifying glass away from her eye. Shiro sobers up too and watches her worry the little tool between her small hands. “You’re Shiro the Hero… aren’t you?”

 

Shiro smiles wryly, looking down at himself with his tattered suit and body riddled with scrapes and cuts. “Yes I am, I’m sorry you had to see me like this kiddo. I’m okay though.”

 

The little girl’s mouth twists up suddenly and she puts the magnifying glass back in her pocket. “That’s your first lie, but Detective Kogane forgives you because you're hurt.”

 

“What? I didn’t lie, I am Shiro the Hero,” Shiro tries in confusion and her little nose scrunches up distastefully. 

 

Her hand flashes out towards him and she points accusingly at where his arms are wrapped around his midsection. “You are NOT okay,” she says firmly and he watches her temper fizzle like a live-wire before she takes a deep breath and drops out of his view again. “I’m going to get Detective Papa so stay there!” The little girl calls out and the patter of her shoes on cement eventually fades. 

 

Shiro sits in filth, chagrined and bleeding as his wounds catch up to him without the distraction of her bright attention. He thinks about running away before she gets back, it’ll be much more difficult to explain away or deal with an adult fan. He doesn’t want this getting out and worrying more people, but he can’t muster the strength to do more than shift around in the trash pile. 

 

It’s been a little while and Shiro thinks maybe he’s been forgotten, when the patter of little shoes comes again. “Hello?” He calls out weakly, it seems like she came alone.

 

“Detective Kogane?” Shiro tries again and is met with silence. A couple moments pass and he leans his head back against his dumpster prison, closing his eyes against the growing pain and discomfort. 

 

A husky laugh has his eyes shooting open, and there Shiro is met with what seems to be an angel. His angel has the same dark, almost-purple eyes and pitch black hair pulled into a single braid that dangles towards him. His face is thin and delicate, and his gaze washes over Shiro with warmth, mirth, and something… deeper, something Shiro can’t place. There is something ethereal in those eyes, inhuman his mind tries but that doesn’t make sense. Either way Shiro is crumbling, and the angel is talking to him and he can’t hear it around his own heartbeat. 

 

“Hello? Everything okay in there? Are you with me?” The angel asks and Shiro nods dumbly. 

 

“Detective Papa I think we should bring him home,” comes a familiar little voice and that helps startle Shiro out of his reverie. The angel disappears from view and he hears them walk a little ways away from him and his dumpster. 

 

“What did I tell you about playing in the alley?”

 

“I wasn’t playing, I was detective-ing! And I have a real case this time!!” The little girl whines and he felt a smidge of guilt on her behalf.

 

“He could have been a bad person, or drunk and- he could have hurt you, do you see that?”

 

“But he didn’t! And I asked him that first and he didn't lie! And he was hurt and… and his pants are too tight so he doesn’t have his wallet- and you said that we always need to help people who need it!,” Shiro hears a sniffle and his guilt curdles further in his stomach, “And he needs our help papa!”

 

The silence stretches for a couple breaths and the angel speaks softer this time. “I’m not mad, okay? You’re not in trouble, I was just- just worried. Remember what I said? You’re a…” there’s a sigh and then the angel continues, “you’re still a rookie, so you need to wait for your partner okay? You can’t leave me out of it, do you remember why?”

 

There’s another sniffle and Shiro’s heart breaks just imagining her sad face, and the little girl replies wetly but with more confidence, “because we have to watch each other’s backs?”

 

“Exactly. Okay, let’s go Detective Kogane. Put your game face on and I’ll grab the perp.”

 

She giggles and Shiro shifts away from the edge as the sound of feet approaches. He can just barely hear the angel’s footsteps if he listens as hard as he can, which doesn’t quite make sense but then the little girl speaks and they’re right outside again. 

 

“He’s not a perp Papa, he’s the hurt one! We’re saving him.”

 

“Right, right,” the angel replies and then he’s leaning over the edge to look at Shiro. “Okay big guy, can you move?”

 

There’s decidedly less glowy sparkles this time, which Shiro hopes he can attribute to his sanity returning, but the man is no less beautiful. He tries really hard to form words around both the pain in his body and his mortification and manages shakily to say, “I don’t think so- I’ve been trying.”

 

The angel man chews his lip as he takes in Shiro’s bedraggled form and nods once, clapping his hands together as if to dust them off. “Okay, so I’m gonna lift you out of there and then I’ll take you back to my place and we’ll figure it out from there.”

 

Shiro is by no means a small man. Even aside from the superhuman physique, he’s just big. Too tall for some doorways and too bulky to go on most rollercoasters when he goes out on his days off with his normal friends and now he thinks his stupidity might be coming back. It has to be because- “You’re gonna… lift me?”

 

“I am, or do you wanna stay in the dumpster?” He asks around a grin, and Shiro very nearly pouts. “That settles that then, hold on. I’ll be gentle.”

And he is. Shiro reaches for him and the angel, and you can fight him on this okay he’s just that pretty , bends in half over the edge of the dumpster and scoops him up as easily as if he was the little Detective Kogane. No matter how gentle he is though, the movement jostles something in Shiro’s ribs and with a choked gasp he goes limp in his angel’s arms and everything goes black.

Chapter 2: The Detective and the Sleeping Beauty

Lost in the blackness of his mind, Shiro has no form, no sense of self. It’s as if the shell of Takashi Shirogane has come undone and the contents of his soul have spilled over the edges. They run on in every direction, stretching his awareness further and further until he is hardly Shiro anymore, just a mess of things that used to make a man. He’s been here before, been this Not-Shiro before, and has enough of himself left to be scared. But the mess of his consciousness is made and he is stuck with the echoes of old pain and fear. 

 

Just as he starts to think he is truly lost to the Black, there’s a tug.

 

It’s aimless, exploratory at first, a pinch here and a slipping grasp there. Slowly but diligently, his essence is scooped and pulled back together. He cannot see in any real approximation of the word, but knows that something, someone, is there. Their touch smoothes his edges down until he’s no longer a bundle of lost memories and thoughts but Shiro. He is Shiro. And something warm is crowding Shiro from all sides, washing the darkness away with light. He cannot see it but he feels a hand press to his very center and then the light isn’t just around him, it’s in him. And Shiro is floating, floating, floating…

 

Shiro wakes in degrees. There’s the smell of oil and he doesn’t know if the tang of iron is from his own mouth or not, but there’s a cool touch pressing gently to his face and that’s better to focus on than the various aches and pains that litter his body. A tv is playing nearby, the ebb and flow of the scripted conversation is soothing, and despite everything Shiro feels more comfortable than he has in a long time. He’s strewn across something worn and old, he can tell by the way the cushions have sunk into a welcoming, Shiro-shaped mold around him. Something hums in the very air around him and he feels his body pulled towards it like a flower arching towards the sun. If it weren’t for the next brush of the cool sensation down his cheek he thinks he could have stayed in this half-awake state forever.

 

Shiro’s eyes open at last and for the third time, he is awestruck by his savior. The dark-haired man is bathed in the glow of late afternoon light. It’s brighter here than the alley, and he’s bent over Shiro, a damp washcloth in hand as he continues to cleanse muck from his skin. Here, the violet-blue of his eyes is startlingly vibrant, a color Shiro has never seen in a person’s eyes before and he watches them until the stranger looks up from his work to meet his gaze. 

 

“You have some drool,” the angel smiles with mirth, and the warm washcloth dabs at his mouth. “There.”

 

“How many times did you have to clean drool off my face?” Shiro asks and feels the flush start across his nose and cheeks.

 

The stranger huffs a laugh and bites his lip to stifle it, but Shiro wishes he wouldn’t. His lips twitch a little as he answers, “oh just a couple times.”

 

The slap of bare feet starts somewhere behind where Shiro lays on what he now knows is a well-loved leather couch. 

 

“Shiro! Shiro!” Calls a little voice and Shiro watches the man in front of him soften further. He leans back on the coffee table he was sitting on to tend to Shiro and moves his long legs out of the way as the little Detective Kogane bounces into view. She’s changed into a flowy little orange sundress with a pink flower pattern along the bottom hem. Now that he’s stopped drooling literally drooling, ugh he’s so embarrassed over the stranger’s face he sees that he’s changed too. Weathered dark-wash jeans hug his strong legs and he’s wearing a plaid flannel in orange, brown, and black with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His braid, where it sits neatly draped over his shoulder, is tied off with a sparkly pink hair-tie. They match. Shiro tucks that little tidbit away, along with the strange yearning he’s gotten to feel how soft the man’s hair is when let loose from its braid.

 

The little girl shifts from foot to foot, bashful suddenly, and her father behind her pulls at his shirt and mouths something at Shiro silently, then points back at his daughter. 

 

“Oh! What a pretty dress you have there,” Shiro compliments and she beams, giggling and doing a little twirl that ends in a clumsy curtsy. Shiro melts. 

 

“What do you say back, Maggie?” The man chides gently and she spins back to her dad, hiding in his chest before peeking back at Shiro over her shoulder.

 

“Thank you Shiro the Hero,” she smiles and the man pulls her up onto his leg, pleased.

 

“You’re welcome,” Shiro replies easily and sits up, finding it easier than he thought it’d be. “And you can just call me Shiro,”

 

“Well Shiro, my name is Keith and this is Maggie.” The stranger, Keith, his angel’s name is Keith , says and adjusts the little girl in his lap. “I uh, took the liberty of cleaning up some of your wounds, they should be good as new soon… and I had some spare shirts and coveralls for the guys here so…” Keith’s ears are a little pink and he busies himself with straightening a non-existent wrinkle in Maggie’s dress. As she starts to rattle off questions to her dad, Shiro takes inventory of himself. 

 

Logically he knows he was beaten to hell and back, but he doesn’t feel like it anymore. Actually now that he thinks about it he even feels better now than when he first opened his eyes, like he just had a bad fall instead of getting crushed like a bug by an alien warlord. He’s in a snug gray t-shirt, and the borrowed coveralls are pulled up to his waist and tied there. Shiro pulls at the knotted sleeves and tries to make sense of it all.

 

“Sorry, you were, you’re,” Keith is growing steadily more pink, and the hand that’s not around his daughter gestures to his chest absently. He talks with his hands a lot , Shiro thinks and watches the father stumble over his words with growing affection. “-Big, um, your- it didn’t fit all the way but you needed pants, and your suit was dirty so I, I uh-“

 

“It’s okay, really, thank you,” Shiro cuts in and Keith nods, scratching at his jaw and turning away from him slightly. Maggie watches the exchange with glee, poking at her father’s face. 

 

“Papa’s so pink and cute,” Maggie teases and Shiro wants to agree, but he keeps it to himself. Keith seems at risk of overheating otherwise and he doesn’t want to drive him away from the little bubble of… something, that they have going here. 

 

“And thank you for, y'know rescuing me and all. And the clothes and- you didn’t have to do that. I don’t know how you did it, any of it, but I feel a lot better. So thank you.”

 

Keith nods and rests his head on Maggie’s when he looks back at Shiro, shrugging a shoulder as if rescuing a superhero from an alley dumpster was no big deal. She reaches towards Shiro and waggles her fingers at him, the nails painted different shades of pink and lavender, with the exception of her two middle fingers which are painted black. 

 

“Papa has magic hands Shiro, he makes lots of things better!” Maggie jumps off of her father’s lap and starts to run around the coffee table and leather sofa, making flying and shooting noises with her mouth as Keith watches her with fond exasperation. Shiro is reminded suddenly of the strange dream he had while unconscious, of the hands of light that pulled his soul back into his body. 

 

“I’ve always been a tinkerer, steady hands but I need to keep them busy.” Keith reasons, and he gets up to walk across the room, dodging the ‘flying’ Maggie easily and making his way across the open floorplan to a tiny kitchen.

 

“Steady hands, huh.” Shiro echoes to himself, and Maggie chooses then to stop her running and jump onto the couch with him. She’s winded and giggling and his heart aches with the domesticity he’s stumbled upon. 

 

“Hungry?” Keith asks, and Shiro’s stomach rumbles in response for him. Keith moves on easily, grabbing Tupperware out of the small fridge and putting two pans on the stovetop. “It’s not a great part of town, we get ignored a lot more than the… shinier parts of the city. There’s a lot of stumbling drunks, abandoned animals… a lot of lost people here.” 

 

Shiro gets the impression that Keith isn’t used to being watched, so he busies himself with taking in the room while he listens and Keith cooks. It’s small but inviting, neat but obviously lived-in. The kitchen and living area are one long room, only separated by where brown shaggy carpet meets the off-white tile of the kitchen. 

 

“They’re not all bad, not all good either, but everyone needs help and eventually they make their way through my shop.” The tension leaves Keith’s lithe form as he works, and a small pot is added to the stovetop as the smell of cooking meat hits Shiro’s nose. Maggie is soothed by the return to routine, and she leaves Shiro to busy herself with drawing at a little plastic table along the wall. 

 

He runs his hands along the cracked, worn leather of the couch where it sits in the middle of the room. The coffee table where Keith sat is topped by coasters and car magazines, and a few loose scrunchies in bright colors peek out from underneath it. The tv he heard earlier is right across from him and resting on top of a bookshelf filled with novels, picture books, and a few tattered baby board books. Rather than frames there’s a large, industrial-sized cork board filled with tons of pictures. Keith and Maggie, Maggie in diapers, Keith and Maggie and a group of people

Shiro doesn’t know; his friends or family he imagines. A woman that looks like Keith is in many of them, and so is a smaller freckled girl, but no one that fits into what Shiro is trying to imagine as Maggie’s mother. Someone with her same golden tan, or her button nose, but whoever she is, she’s missing. 

 

“Your shop?” Shiro asks, half distracted by his thoughts, “You don’t work at the precinct?” 

 

Keith fixes him with a confused squint from over the counter that separates the small kitchen from the rest of the room and then his face morphs into realization and he laughs, really laughs. His head is thrown back and a hand claps to his chest and his mouth is stretched into a grin so bright that it could put the stars to shame. Shiro drinks it all in like a man dying of thirst, wants to burn it like an after-image onto the back of his eyelids. Keith’s still wiping his eyes and giggling when he goes back to mixing whatever is in the little pot. 

 

“I’m not actually a detective, just a mechanic with a wounded-bird complex,” Keith manages a little breathlessly and starts to laugh again when he sees Shiro’s confused face. 

 

Maggie perks up at the sound of her father’s continued laughter and giggles along while her crayon works furiously at the paper. 

 

“I’m sorry… I just thought, Detective Kogane and… you seemed practiced pulling people out of a bad spot,” Shiro frowns but it doesn’t last long because Keith is looking at him with so much bemusement it’s making his own lips quirk up instinctively.

 

“I see why you’d think that and I am, practiced at it I mean.” He shakes his head and that grin is still there when he moves across the kitchen to a cupboard and starts grabbing mismatched plates from it. “English wasn’t my mom’s first language, she learned it for my dad but it was hard, different. What really helped was watching television together, and she kinda grew an affinity for crime tv.”

 

“I see,” Shiro is smiling too. He’s been smiling a lot today, more than he has in ages. At this point his cheek muscles might be more sore than the rest of him. 

 

“She still loves them, and she helped me a lot after Maggie was born.” Keith turns off the stove with a series of little clicks and Shiro’s mouth waters as he watches him open a bag of tortilla chips and start to plate the food. A layer of chips, refried beans, and steak is put down and he motions Shiro over with a gesture of his chin. “Mags, baby it’s time to eat!”

 

Maggie puts her crayons down and skips over to Shiro, taking his hand and tugging. He swears he remembers hearing the crack of his ribs during he and Sendak’s fight, but now it’s just a slight tenderness in his muscles. A miracle really, and one he’s grateful for. Shiro is strong, and fast, but he’s not unbreakable. 

 

“Oh gosh Detective, I don’t know if I can get up,” Shiro jokes and plays limp for a second, watching Maggie laugh and use all her skinny frame to pull at his arm. On her last tug he finally gets up, with a fair amount of pretend-groaning and complaining about his old man’s back. She cheers and pulls him towards the counter that acts as a bar and the three stools that accompany it. 

 

“My turn! My turn!” Maggie crows and Shiro appeases her, lifting her easily to place her on the middle stool.

 

He meets Keith’s eyes over her head in the afternoon light. He’s framed by a little window over the sink behind him and the vined and leafy plants that hang in cheerful pots there. 

 

Liquid pools of violet-blue, like the cosmos had been melted down just to craft Keith’s irises. He wouldn’t doubt it if it really was the case, Keith was worth such masterful effort. Those eyes could be his undoing, he thinks, and he would die a thousand happy deaths to keep them on him. 

 

“Nachos!!!!!!” Maggie shouts excitedly and it snaps them both from their reverie. The pink is back in Keith’s ears and Shiro feels the flush spreading along his nose and cheeks, sitting down on her right and thanking when the plate gets set down in front of him. 

 

“Sit down please, Maggie, Papa has a hot pot okay?” Maggie had been bouncing on the stool, feet tucked under her, but at her father’s request she arranges herself correctly on the chair and only bounces a little in place while he ladles hot cheese over her plate.

 

“Thank you papa!” She manages and starts digging into her plate with gusto.

 

Keith gives Shiro’s and his own plate the same treatment, and then sits to the left of his daughter. “So anyways, I’m glad they bonded over it but obviously someone needs to learn not to chase after every… potential case.” Keith finishes, and Maggie nods in agreement before shoving a loaded chip in her mouth and crunching on it noisily.

 

“Yeah, you need to work on that Detective Papa.” Maggie munches solemnly and Shiro snorts a laugh that he tries to hide as a cough into his metal hand. 

“She’s kinda got you there,” he teases and Keith scrunches his nose at Maggie the same way she had at Shiro earlier. There’s no heat to it, and Shiro angles himself towards them better. “She’s a smart kid.”

 

“Too smart sometimes,’ Keith teases and pokes her side in between bites. She giggles and scoots more towards Shiro and away from her dad’s tickling hands. Keith goes back to his food, resting his head on his left hand and eating with his right. Like Shiro, he’s angled in towards Maggie, and it's strangely cozy for a meal between strangers. “I don’t know, the doctors said not to baby her too much, that it messes with their speech development or something, so I just… talk to her the way I wanted people to talk to me as a kid. Like a person.”

 

Shiro remembers wanting the same thing when he was young and sick, before the tests that made him the ‘enhanced being’ he is today. He didn’t need them to pretend it was all okay, just to see him, really see Shiro and not just his illness. But that was a long time ago, and he’s different now, everything’s different. 

 

“I don’t have a lot of experience with kids,” Shiro starts, and has the sense to wipe his mouth free of cheese before he meets Keith's gaze, “But I think you’re doing a great job.” 

 

The warm afternoon light fills the room, lends Keith an even more ethereal glow. He's so beautiful that it almost hurts Shiro to look at him, but he finds he can't bring it in himself to look away either. His messy bangs, and the shorter pieces that slip from his braid, frame his pale face with a wispy softness he aches to touch. Just to tuck a strand of it behind Keith's ear, to press the end of Keith's braid to his lips or wind it around his fingers, to pull the sparkly pink hair tie from the end of it and let the strands pool out free and wild. No, Keith is not his to touch, not his to think about so reverently, but the longer he stays in his orbit the more he realizes that gods, does Shiro want. Its a startling revelation, and too soon, terrifying in the way it has swept him up so fully. Shiro... Shiro's life is dangerous and lonely, and Keith, with his adorable daughter and warm little home, is far out of his reach.

 

“Thanks,” Keith smiles, and the slow, sweet spread of it eases through him. After a breath of charged eye contact he looks away first, and they go back to their meal. 

 

They take turns wiping cheese from Maggie's face as they eat and talk and eventually the little Detective Kogane offers to show Shiro a trick. Before Keith's lips can form the word no, or he can reach a hand out to cover her mouth, Maggie's face screws up in concentration and she shoots a glob of cheese out of the gap from her missing tooth. Shiro laughs so hard and so long that he's sure, this time he must have cracked a rib. 

Notes:

I had a lot of different ideas on where to go with this, but decided to keep it pretty fluffy for now! Then I got so carried away I realized I had enough to probably split this into two chapters... so the next will be out soon!

Chapter 3: The Detective and the Fox

Shiro doesn’t want to intrude on the Koganes for too long. His suit and gear are trashed, including the earpiece built into his nano-mesh mask, so he borrows Keith’s phone to call his ride. The sun is low when he hears the honk outside and there’s a frantic moment where Maggie cannot find her other sandal and puts the two men to work finding it. Shiro lifts the couch with one hand and the little girl squeals with delight, and red-faced her father has to remind her that Shiro doesn’t have time to pick up their tv stand, or her bed, or the fridge, and really must go home. She disappears down the hall off the living room and reappears when they’re at the door, handing Shiro a pink sticker that reads, “You’re a superstar!” with a sparkly holographic star in the background.

 

“Good job Shiro the Hero,” She compliments and pats his hand as Keith unlocks the door. 

 

They live on the second floor of Keith’s shop, the stairs are just a little tight for Shiro’s broad shoulders and towering height, but not impossible to navigate. The trio come out into the back of the shop and Shiro finally has a source for the hint of iron and oil he smelled when he woke up earlier. The smell is denser here, more concentrated, and the shop has that same feeling of homey warmth despite the industrial machinery and tools laying about. There’s leafy plants like ficus and monstera crowding the windows, and four clean workstations with car lifts wait by the metal rolling doors at the far end of the shop. Nearest them there’s also a set up of a child-sized plastic work table, complete with simple plastic replicas of the various tools in the shop. 

 

“Sorry for the mess, and the smell, it kinda permeates everything here.” Keith mumbles, leading Shiro through the building with his hand in Maggie’s. When they pass the plastic work table she glows with pride and points it out to him.

 

“I fix stuff too! I help Papa when he has lots to do,” she boasts and Shiro nods appreciatively, humming his approval.

 

“Maybe I’ll have to bring my car here too sometime, superhero cars need the best mechanics after all.” Matt does all the work on his car, and would probably threaten him with a wrench if he tried to go somewhere else. But if there’s ever a time where Matt is busy… or wouldn’t notice, it’d be nice to see the father-daughter duo again.

 

“I wouldn’t say the best…” Keith starts bashfully but is interrupted by Maggie’s cheers of excitement. 

 

“Papa, I’m gonna fix a supercar!” She crows, skipping around her father and Keith shoots Shiro a look of amusement over his shoulder. 

 

“You are welcome back though, anytime,” Keith says softly, hand flexed on the door handle but not quite opening it yet. Shiro realizes suddenly how close they are again, feels the heat bloom under his skin and around the collar of his borrowed shirt. He looks down at his feet, flexes them in the funny black cat slippers that were intended as a gift for Keith’s uncle Kolivan. “For your car or… if anything else needs fixing, I can help. I really am good with my hands, fixing things, fixing…” He mumbles the last bit under his breath and Shiro misses it, but sees the tension in his shoulders. He wants Keith to turn towards him, to see what those impossible eyes tell him that Keith can’t.

 

Shiro wishes in that moment that they had met under different circumstances, that he hadn’t chosen the superhero life, that he could find his clumsy way into a world as simple and peaceful and kind as Keith’s. He wishes it with all his heart. 

 

Keith is still standing there, like he wants to say more, and jumps a little when Maggie tugs on his other hand. She looks between him and Shiro with those violet-blue eyes spread wide, confused about why they’re stalling. Keith seems to center himself and opens the door like nothing happened, back to his easy nonchalance. 

 

Matt is waiting at the end of the deep driveway in Shiro’s sleek, black sports car. It’s Shiro’s in name only, and not even really his, it’s Shiro the Hero’s car- the one he uses for missions or red carpet events. Really though, it’s Matt’s baby. The glossy paint job and polished exterior hide a titanium-alloy frame and bullet-proof 5% tint windows. If Shiro was anyone else the amount of tickets he’d get for his windows would be enough to put him in debt. 

 

Matt rolls down the window and Shiro is taken aback to see him in his LED helmet. It’s done the same style as all Matt’s work, a sleek black fox helmet that covers his face and sandy-brown hair. His expression is read by the helmet and translated into the color-changing LED light-up display, and right now, the little V between his holo-eyes is telling him that Matt is mad. Mad or not, Shiro is his best friend and he picks up the message immediately.

 

“Foxface, thanks for the pick-up,” Shiro greets and Keith picks up Maggie, slinging her thin frame up onto his hip so she can wave excitedly into the car. Matt waggles the end of his gloved hand at her and a flow of green lights pulses from wrist to fingertip, making her giggle.

 

“Anything for you big guy, and thanks for taking care of him, Sweetness,” Matt drawls. The vocal synthesizers give his voice just the edge of a robotic tilt and his mask winks at Keith, who laughs as well. 

 

Shiro tries not to pout.

 

“Foxface, master of technology, guy in the chair, breaker of hearts, you know how it is.” Matt’s LED eyes flash to a heart shape before returning to their normal O’s. He reaches a gloved hand out for Keith to shake, which Keith does. A strange sort of recognition flashes in his violet-blue eyes but disappears with a shake of his head.

 

“Good to meet you, I’m Keith Kogane: mechanic, dad, ocasional bedazzler. And this is Maggie, my daughter, she’s a princess or detective, depending on the day.”

 

“Sometimes I’m a princess detective!” She proclaims and Shiro’s face splits into a smile as she shows off her princess wave, nose in the air.

 

Matt leans over the passenger seat, lanky arms resting on the window to face them all better. He gestures loosely as he talks, gloved hands flashing. “Good to meet you Keith, and princess-detective Kogane. He didn’t cause any trouble for you right? Supers, it’s like herding cats.” 

 

“Hey!-“ Shiro tries, but Keith beats him to it.

 

“Oh he’s a good boy! You did a good job with him, he’s very well trained. Helped with the dishes and everything,” Keith jokes back and it’s. A lot. Keith calling him a good boy is not something he thought he’d get to hear, he hadn’t gotten that far in his daydreaming yet. Keith, teasing and playfully flirty. Keith with a mischievous glint in his gorgeous eyes. He’d have to thank Matt later when he felt less like squishing him between his finger and thumb.

 

Matt is saying something to Keith that makes him throw his head back with laughter when Maggie slips the magnifying glass out of her pocket. 

 

Shiro watches her put it to her eye and begin to analyze Matt- er, Foxface. 

 

“Foxy!” she declares matter-of-factly.

 

Keith and Matt/Foxface turn to look at her inquisitively, and in place of an expression a question mark flashes on his LED helmet. 

 

Keith adjusts her on his hip, leaning back to balance her as she leans forward towards the car. “No honey, it’s Foxface, you know him from TV. Remember? They stopped the bank robbery with StarSinger.”

 

Maggie wraps her free arm around her dad’s shoulder and rests her head against his, peering at Matt through her little tool. “You like Five Nights at Freddy’s huh?”

 

Foxface’s mask goes blank for a second, and Shiro knows the emotions underneath must be changing too fast for his mask to read. Finally it settles on one, the eyes wide circles and the mouth a little squiggly line Shiro has never seen before. 

 

“I like it as much as anybody else!” Matt/Foxface manages finally and the fans in his helmet audibly kick into high gear. 

 

“What’s Five Nights at Freddy’s?” Keith and Shiro ask together, and the LED eyes of Matt’s mask begin to dart back and forth between them erratically, his gloved fingers twitching where he grips the car’s window frame. 

 

Shiro’s face breaks into a grin at Matt’s obvious embarrassment, eager to see how it plays out. Any semblance of smoothness is out the door now, and Shiro applauds the little detective in his mind.

 

“It’s a game Auntie Pidge let me play,” Maggie answers cheerfully and Keith’s own face seems to waver between polite and earnestly amused. 

 

“Oh so a kid game? That’s cute.”

 

Matt nearly falls out of the window, the fans in his fox helmet wheezing as he rushes to his own defense. 

 

“It’s not a kid’s game! It’s an established genre-defining series with a complicated cast of dark, tortured characters and- and three-year-olds like you wouldn’t understand!”

 

“I’m five-and-a-half actually,” Maggie corrects smugly, arms crossing over her chest. Keith’s shoulders are shaking and his face is half-hidden in his daughter’s hair. Shiro himself has his metal hand hiding his mouth to try and disguise the way the corners of his mouth keep twitching upwards of their own accord. 

 

“Foxface likes foxy, I could tell,” she continues and Shiro and Keith both give in to the fit of laughter as Matt/Foxface splutters indignantly.

 

“How, how could you tell? You don’t even know me,” Foxface’s mask pouts, a sweep of digital blush lines where his cheeks would be. 

 

“She- She’s a detective,” Shiro reasons and earns himself a glare that sets him and Keith off again. Maggie however, glows with pride at her talents being recognized. 

 

~

 

Once goodbyes have been said, the heavily tinted window rolled up, and the car has left the vicinity of Keith’s shop, Matt nearly hurls the fox helmet off his head and into the back seat.

 

‘Oh right, he was mad’ Shiro remembers.

 

“If I weren’t so happy to see you alive you would be grounded right now,- actually it’s still a possibility,” Matt seethes. 

 

Shiro is only half-playing dumb when he answers, “because now I know you based your hero-persona on a video game? I kinda already figured it was something like that-“

 

“NO! Because I lose you for one afternoon and you just happen to find the ONE dilf in New Altea that I wanted you to stay away from.” Joking aside, Matt really does look upset now. Stiffly, Shiro takes in what he’s saying and the nachos in his stomach threaten to make a second-appearance. 

 

“Is he your… um, I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” Shiro mumbles, and fists his hands in his lap. So Keith was gay, he knew Matt swung both ways, and he hoped that Keith- but he was spoken for, obviously. Even if he didn’t seem to know about Matt’s secret hero life. 

 

Matt pulls one hand away from the wheel to run it roughly through his shaggy brown hair, sighing loudly. 

 

“It’s not like THAT, don’t go all kicked-puppy on me.”

 

“But the flirting?”

 

“You know I flirt when I’m nervous!”

 

“Then why…?”

 

“He’s my sister’s friend. One of her best friends.” The gloved hand rejoins its pair on the wheel and Matt grows uncharacteristically serious. “I don’t know him well, but he’s a big part of her life. They went to school together, he’s like her extra, moody brother. I’ve watched him grow up a lot over the years, especially after Maggie came along. Glimpses at Katie’s award ceremonies and presentations, birthdays, all that.”

 

So Shiro has a chance. His real hand is sweaty as he takes it all in, imagining Keith younger. Keith with a shorter braid, or did he wear it loose back then? Smaller, more rebellious. What dreams did he have back then? Or did he always dream of being a father? Keith with baby Maggie, Keith with a younger, girl version of Matt, bright eyed and ready to change the world. Shiro knew he had to be smart to keep up with Matt’s sibling, and added it to the growing collection of things he admired about the man. He nearly drowned out his friend with the thoughts, his hopes for the future. 

 

“Which is why you have to stay away from him.”

 

Time stops. 

 

Or, it does for Shiro anyway. 

 

Matt refuses to look at him now, soft brown eyes turned hard as he glares down the asphalt road stretching before them. He dodges and swerves around other cars like it’s nothing, like he hasn’t just crushed Shiro’s heart in his gloved hand. 

 

“This is for her. All of the secrets, helping you save the world. When aliens first came down we were so excited, it was our dream come true!” Matt laughs but there’s no joy in it. “Our dad always said there were others out there and he was right. They just… weren’t as eager to be our friends as we thought. Sendak and others like him, the attacks on the city… then dad found out about you and the experiments…” 

 

Shiro knows what happened next. How Sam Holt discovered the secret lab he’d been smuggled off to after his moms died in that accident. He had no one left to advocate for him here in the states, and they still don’t know the extent of what was pumped into Shiro’s young body. Sam Holt risked his career and family, brought Shiro’s suffering to light, and once the truth was exposed to the public, he was free.

 

Shiro went to live in Japan with his grandparents, and the peace of the countryside did him wonders. But he never quite escaped the memories of the lab, or the blackness of his mind that was his only company there. 

 

“Katie can’t know,” Matt continues after a moment. “They’re best friends, if Keith knows, she knows. She’d want to help. Or she could be targeted, or a million other bad things that I can’t let happen.”

 

“Matt, I know…”

 

“But you don’t!” Matt shouts, frustrated. And Shiro’s heart cracks at the fear in his voice. 

 

They’ve finally arrived at HQ, a large converted packing facility that Shiro bought under a false name with one of the first settlements he was paid after his imprisonment went public. Matt forces his hands to let go of the steering wheel and turns in his seat to face Shiro. 

 

“She is… so small. And young, and full of life,” Matt near-whispers, brown eyes finally meeting Shiro’s gray ones. “From the first day mom and dad brought her home I promised to protect her, and I will. I don’t have your powers, or a ton of money, but I have my mind and I’ll use it. YOU’LL use it to keep everyone safe.”

 

His gaze is both vulnerable and determined, and Shiro meets it. “Katie and her friends are off limits, okay? Keith is a dad Shiro, you met Maggie today so you know what he stands to lose… Things are better since you started defending the planet. But it won’t always be that way. We can’t bring them into this life. We can’t.”

 

In the face of his friend’s declaration, Shiro has to agree. Deep down he always knew that, he knew Keith didn’t belong in his world. Keith and Maggie were just… a test of his will. That’s all. A pleasant daydream that he has to wake up from. He thinks suddenly of Keith turned away from him in the doorway, what he offered and what he left unsaid. The slightest edge of need in his voice. He thinks of his time unconscious on Keith’s couch, of the hands made from light that soothed and pulled his being back together from the Black. 

 

Keith was like that, a golden memory to be tucked away out of sight and treasured in solitude. 

 

Shiro nods slowly, and Matt lets out a wet sigh of relief. The sandy haired hero rubs at his eyes and makes to get out of the car. 

 

“Matt,” Shiro calls, and Matt turns back to look at him, gloved fingers loose on the door handle.

 

“I know I have to stay away. I get it, I do. But I…” Shiro’s metal hand touches his chest and he frowns, rubbing at the strange hollowness there. He thinks, if he only just met them, it should be easy to let go of the mechanic and the little detective. Shiro has never been so affected by any one person, let alone two. His illness, his imprisonment, the time he needed to heal, and then the dedication of his life to heroism meant that he hasn’t had time to care about anyone else that way. His friends are superheroes with busy lives, his ‘normal friends’ are just the same busy crime-fighting crusaders unmasked or the one or two people he finds tolerable from the precinct. His grandparents have long since left him for the next world, and maybe he was too busy to see it before, or too stubborn. Or maybe it's because after the day he had with the little Kogane family, Shiro finally realizes that he is very, very alone.

 

“Why does it… hurt… so bad? I don’t understand.”

 

Matt softens, a sad smile stretching his freckled face. Shiro blinks once, twice, finds that his vision has started to blur and there is wetness spilling down his cheeks.

 

Matt reaches for him then, takes off his gloves so Shiro can feel the brunette’s trembling hands on his own. The metal and the human one. “Sometimes, especially for people like us, that’s just how love is.”

 

After a couple moments the two of them make their way inside the building that feels like home. Matt’s computer AI, Eve, welcomes them back and has a lot to say about the state of Shiro’s suit. The pair stand in the doorway of their command deck and Shiro tries to reaffirm to himself that the familiar cold-blue lights of the holograms and projections fit him better than the warm glow of Keith’s home. This is where he belongs, where he can do the most good. Right?

 

“Oh. One more thing,” Matt says to him, walking backwards towards one of the doors to retire to one of his many projects. 

 

“Yeah?” Shiro asks, having started towards the hallways for their locker room to clean up. 

 

“You rock the jumpsuit but the slippers have GOT to go,” he teases and disappears behind the whoosh of the door. 

 

Shiro looks down at himself again, in his borrowed gray t-shirt and the dark coveralls tied at his waist. He wiggles his toes in the cat slippers and bites his lip thoughtfully. 

 

Shiro can’t be in Keith’s life, but surely he can return the clothes. That’s not… BEING in his life, it’s just polite. 

 

Before he leaves to clean himself and change into his own clothes, he doubles back and peels the sticker Maggie had given him off his shirt. The superstar sticker curls slightly at the edges, but otherwise sticks just fine to the corner of the little plaque Matt had given him as a joke that reads ‘world’s best boss’. Shiro smiles at how the pinkness of it stands out brightly against the cool tones of the room, rubs at the slight itch in his puffy eyes, and finally shambles off for a much-needed shower.

Notes:

Enter, stage right: Matt!!! He is actually one of my favorite little meowmeows even tho I was mean to him this chapter. All with love though!!
ALSO a shoutout to my sister who helped me come up with his hero name!
PS. Matt would like you to know he is not a sidekick, he is a handler of Shiro's messes. Which is totally, completely different

Chapter 4: Shiro the Hero and the Most Important Mission

Shiro is trying to listen to Matt. He really, really is. He spends even less time in his spacious but lonely apartment, it’s overly neat, both because Shiro has nothing to do other than clean and no one else to clean up after. The interior decorator he hired had spared no expense on the dark clean-line furniture and state of the art amenities in neutral grays and cool blues. But it feels even colder now in comparison to the Kogane home, and Shiro… can’t stand it anymore. 

 

He throws himself into his work for the next week, taking every call for muggings, car robberies, and cats stuck in trees. Shiro even solves a dispute over a missing motorized lawnmower between neighbors in the small town a short way north of New Altea, which turns out to have taken a joyride with some local teens. No harm done aside from an empty fuel tank and a string of doughnuts cut into the grass of the local park.

 

When the next Sunday comes around Shiro is dead on his feet. Matt has ordered a day of rest that Shiro swears he doesn’t need, but when the AI locks him out of HQ he’s forced to hang up the cape for the time being. So he’s back to his lonely apartment, and his only other friend, Allura, is out being dazzling and mysterious in another city for the weekend and Matt won’t let him do the one thing he can do right and-

 

Shiro looks down from the pacing he was doing by his floor-to-ceiling windows and stares at the funky black cat slippers Keith gave him. A thought forms and he pushes it away stubbornly, but a second later he’s looking up to catch his own faint reflection in the glossy window. There are deep bags under his gray eyes, the shock of white in his forelock is frizzy and sticking up, and he’s pretty sure there’s a ranch stain on his pajama shirt from his sad early snack of leftover pizza. He’s also covered in a number of scrapes and bruises, most obviously the angry red scratches across his left cheek. Those were courtesy of one of yesterday’s rescues, Mr. Fluffy, the Persian feline menace from the house with the white lattice gate. 

 

His gaze drops back down to the slippers, then to the carefully folded coveralls and t-shirt waiting innocently on what his decorator called an ‘espresso’-colored bookshelf. The minimalist dial clock ticks 10 on the dot, and next to it, his moms smile from a popsicle stick frame he had made in grade school. Before he got too sick to go, before the accident, before everything.

 

Shiro decides. 

 

He doesn’t quite break the sound barrier, but he does use his enhanced speed to take the quickest shower of his adult life. His teeth are brushed quickly, the longer parts of his hair styled with pomade, and the ranch-stained shirt is traded for a gray henley and a pair of new dark wash jeans. Shiro frets over cologne options, settling on a slightly musky one in a fancy looking brown bottle that Allura had gotten him while on mission in France. He knows she’s too polite to comment on the fact that he hasn’t used it, but now- now he has a reason. Maybe. Maybe a little reason… A reason with beautiful eyes and a husky laugh who’s great in the kitchen and has an adorable daughter and-

 

The kitchen!

 

It’s nearing 10:15 and even just the thought of bringing Keith lunch has his mood skyrocketing for the first time all week. It’s new territory, Shiro has never really had the chance to provide anything for anyone. He hasn’t actually had anyone to provide for. It’s a thought that sends him reeling, that Keith will be the first.

 

But what does he bring him?

 

Frustrated at yet another wrench thrown into his frantic overthinking, Shiro pauses mid-stride to crumple against his door frame. He presses his forehead to the wood and screws his eyes shut tightly as his mind works. 

 

“Come on Takashi, think! Food, food, Keith and food, Keith and…” his muttering trails off and he knows he’s going to have a crease down his face but he’s in despair okay?! If he could cook he would, he’d cook three-course meals for Keith every day that the young father would let him. Unfortunately Shiro is the burning-water type, so it’ll HAVE to be takeout. Which circles back to the question at hand. Is Keith a burger guy? A sandwich guy? He made nachos from basically scratch like it was nothing so is Mexican food his thing? Shiro groans and smacks his forehead a little harder against the doorframe than he meant to. He peels an eyelid open to glare at the little crack formed in the wood before him.

 

Suddenly, his holo-phone starts to chime loudly from his bed and Shiro jumps like a startled cat, racing back into his bedroom to grab it and fearing that somehow Matt has sensed his traitorous Keith-centered thoughts.

 

Allura’s pretty face flashes on the holo-screen instead and he sighs in relief, answering it with a quick swipe. Allura was known to most people as StarSinger, a fan favorite heroine whose tragic past as one of the sole survivors of an alien race only further boosted her love on Earth. Her ship crash landed near the coast of England a couple years back and she and her charismatic guardian Coran still use London as their home base. They made headlines everywhere they went, especially with their frequent humanitarian efforts and help with natural disaster relief. It made it all the more special that the space princess made time for him. 

 

“Shiro! How are you? I was feeling a surge of… how do you say… mounting despair! From your corner of the world, is everything alright?”

 

Oh yeah, Allura and her uncanny sixth sense. Ever since the first fight against Sendak where he lost his arm and she had to resuscitate him, it’s like their minds, souls, have crossed wires somewhere. The princess was nothing if not polite, and usually leaves him to his own devices. She’s also Shiro’s friend though, and just a little nosy about his life. It’s appreciated at times like this.

 

“Allura, thank the stars, I need your help. There’s someone- well, kinda-”

 

She laughs on the other end of the phone and he can see it in his head, the un-princess-like guffaw she doesn’t let her fans see. 

 

“Shiro, you’ve been holding out on me! Tell me everything, what’s he like, when do I meet him? Have you had relations yet-“ She gushes and Shiro reddens immediately, taking a seat on the edge of his bed so he doesn’t keel over. 

 

“WHOA, whoa, no no it’s um. He’s just someone I met, he uh, kinda saved me.”

 

“A fellow super then? Someone I know? Coran pull up the scanner and see who is working near New Altea right now,” she says, voice slightly muffled as if she’s turned away from the device. Shiro still hears it though and is even further embarrassed.

 

“Coran is there too? Did he hear…?” Shiro mumbles, hiding his face in his metal hand.

 

“Oh darling it’s fine-“

 

There’s a scuffle on Allura’s end and Shiro winces when Coran’s exuberant voice blares from his holo-phone. “SHIRO MY BOY, CONGRATULATIONS ON ENTERING THE REALM OF ROMANCE!~”

 

Shiro wants to smother himself with a pillow, it’d be less of a blow to his ego. 

 

“You know I’m somewhat of a Casanova myself! In my time I’ve loved many a lady and gentleman, in fact they used to call me-“

 

“Coran please I want to hear about SHIRO’s love life today,” Allura grumbles irritably and there’s another scuffle for control of the holo-phone on the other end of the line. 

 

Allura emerges victorious, probably because Coran also wants to hear about Shiro’s romantic fumblings. 

 

“So Shiro how can I help you today?” She asks brightly, and Shiro imagines they must both be hovering near the phone in the middle of their ship’s command deck. 

 

He turns his metal hand over and from his wrist a holo clock projection appears in the air and reads 10:30 AM. “This… thing, it’s new. And it’s scary. He’s just a regular citizen, and a dad, he’s got a lot to lose and Ma- Foxface says I should leave him alone. I think that’s a smart idea, logical even, but I…”

 

“But you can’t?” Allura finishes gently, and Shiro’s heart twinges with affection for his friend. Jokes and dramatics aside, she is kind, and sees through him in a way he refuses to do for himself sometimes. 

 

“Yeah. Exactly! I’m grateful of course, for you and Coran and Foxface. I’m blessed to have you all in my life but I want… more. And I don’t want to mess it up. I was gonna try to surprise him with lunch but you know I can’t cook and I don’t know what would impress him and I WANT to impress him ‘Lura, I really do.”

 

“A single father huh…? Now that’s how you jump in with two feet.”

 

“Coran!” Allura whisper-scolds her guardian and Shiro flushes again. 

 

He’s been doing that so often these days he might have to change his name to Shiro the Blushing Hero. The tabloids would love it. 

 

“Alluraaaa,” Shiro whines and she tuts at him through the call. 

 

“Okay, okay, let me see what I’m working with,” comes her lilting voice and a request for a video call pings on his holo-phone. He accepts it immediately and hurries over to the full-length mirror in his spacious closet. 

 

“Goodness Shiro, have you been sleeping at all!?”

 

“Did you get attacked by a rogue mountain lion?? I didn’t think you were the cougar type, more in the silver-fox field! Haha get it-!” Coran laughs and earns himself a swat to the shoulder from his ward.

 

“Ignore him, seriously though, what have you been up to while I wasn’t there to check on you! I’m going to have to have a word with Foxface about this!” There’s that glint to her eyes that says she’s plotting something, so Shiro rushes to defend both himself and Matt before she does something drastic like warp her ship into their base to knock their heads together. She’s done it before.

 

“I’ve been… stressed. Is all, and busy, y'know lots of crime to fight and people to save, but we’re okay! Really!” Shiro soothes and tries to nonchalantly rub out the faint crease the door frame left in his forehead. “He made me take today off, so that’s why I thought I’d go see my um… new friend.” The words sound lame even to him, but he really doesn’t have another word for Keith yet. His friend, his crush, his sudden source of an intense affection and desire that makes his very bones ache with longing… yeah. Nothing quite covers that. 

 

Allura groans and tosses her hair over her shoulder with an exasperated huff, giving him a searing look before accepting his excuses. “Fine, fine, but the next time I see you you better look like you’ve had more than one hour of sleep in the past week or I’m coming down to sort it out myself.”

 

“I will, I will, okay, now back to the important stuff?”

 

“Important stuff…” she grumbles moodily but shakes her head as if to clear it, readying herself for the task at hand.

 

“Well I can’t see anything like this! Back up from the mirror a little and spin more, what jeans are those?” She asks and when he does as asked and looks back at the screen he has to stifle his laughter with his prosthetic hand. Her and Coran are both smushed into the camera frame to better look at him. 

 

“They’re new, I was thinking the dark wash blue looked good-“

 

“Hmmmm…” she trails off and then frowns at him, “do you still have the pair from the volunteer event in downtown a couple months ago?”

 

“The light blue ones?” Shiro hurries over to his dresser and props his holo-phone on top of it so he can dig through his drawers. He finds the older pair and holds them up for the princess’s inspection. “These ones? But they’re kind of old…”

 

“They make your butt look good,” Allura explains off-handedly, hand moving in a flapping, dismissive gesture. Coran gives Shiro a thumbs up and a wink as Allura moves on to the next order of business, ignoring Shiro’s sputtering. 

 

“Now cologne, what are you wearing? And the correct answer is the one I got you in Paris.”

 

“I did manage that one on my own yeah, does my hair look okay?”

 

She and Coran assess him and then give each other a Look.

 

“Pomade?”

 

“Why do you say it like that?” Shiro pouts, taking his holo-phone with him as he goes back to the mirror to check his hair.

 

“It’s fine as long as you fly,” Allura tugs a lock of her long silver-white hair as she thinks aloud, “oh he’s a civilian, right, okay drive but with the windows down.”

 

“It gives you that devil may care, messy look which gets the ladies and gents going wild!” Coran adds with a flourish.

 

Shiro tries to discreetly check the time again. The projection blinks up at him and Shiro feels that squirmy, itchy agitation under his skin again.

 

On his holo-screen Allura’s pristine white eyebrows furrow and she pinches the bridge of her nose between dainty fingers. “Shiro, I need you to take a deep breath. It’s going to be alright.” 

 

“You can feel that?” Shiro chuckles nervously and she waves him off before he can apologize.

 

“It’s only because I was already thinking about you, I can’t feel it all the time, so don’t worry about that. Time to go? You’ll call me after right?” She pleads and Shiro sighs fondly, grateful that even if he can’t go to Matt, he can count on Allura in this. 

 

“Yeah, I’ll tell you how it goes. I just still don’t know what to bring, that’s what was stressing me out in the first place.”

 

“Don’t worry lovebird, Coran is on the job!” Coran leaves the camera frame and Allura watches him for a second before turning back to her friend. 

 

“So Foxface doesn’t approve? I can’t imagine him denying you anything, you two are usually like this,” The white haired heroine twists her fingers together and blinks at him with sad blue eyes. 

 

“He’s scared of what could happen if we get too close. Keith, he- ,” Shiro stumbles over the words, uncertain how to word it without giving away too much. “Keith is close with someone he cares about and for their own safety they don’t know about what Foxface does for work. He’s worried that if I get close to Keith… his secret will get out and all of it will be ruined.”

 

“I see… that is rather complicated.” 

 

They both sit in silence for a moment, stewing in their thoughts. Allura breaks it first, that same crease back between her brows as she parses the words slowly.

 

“He’s your friend, and for that you should hear him out as you’ve done so far... But Shiro I’ve never seen you allow or want something for yourself like this. You do so much for us, for the world, and I think… maybe it’s time you did something for yourself.”

 

She meets his watery eyes and they share a laugh at his expense, Allura cooing soothingly as he rubs at his eyes. 

 

“I miss you,” Shiro mumbles and knows that she sees it for what it is. Thank you, I love you, I needed that.  

 

“I miss you too, Shiro, let’s plan something soon okay? And you’ll have to let me meet this mystery man of course!”

 

Coran pops back into frame, half shoving Allura out of view with his excitement. “Shiro my boy I’ve got it! There’s a particular chef who is the perfect fit for situations like these! Normally you’d have to be on the waiting list for a taste of his food, but he’s at his smaller restaurant today and he owes me a favor!” Coran stops to type away at his holo-phone and then holds it up triumphantly for Shiro to squint at.

 

“Hunk’s Comfort Food?” Shiro reads slowly and Coran practically vibrates with excitement.

 

“Yes! It’s a small place, very homey, he’ll be expecting you so just walk right up to the counter and- BAM!” He snaps with emphasis and those bushy orange brows waggle at Shiro again like dancing caterpillars. It’s always a little amazing how much control of them Coran has. “One meal ready to knock the boots off your intended match!”

 

“So what kind of food is-?”

 

“Ah-ah-ah you’ll see when you get there! Now hurry up, his time is very precious and let us know how it goes. Byeeee!”

 

Shiro’s view swings erratically as the duo fights for control of the holo-phone again, Allura’s trying to say something, goodbye probably, but the feed cuts out and Shiro is left staring in bewilderment at it. The screen lights up again with a message from Coran, first the pin for the address and the next with a series of winking and kissing emojis that make Shiro’s mouth twist with mirth.

 

He changes obediently into the light-wash jeans Allura told him to, doing a quick little turn for himself in the mirror. He doesn’t think they make his butt look THAT much better, but if Allura and Coran both agree on it then it must be right. It’s 10:45 AM, and Shiro’s stomach still churns with nerves but he does his best to swallow the butterflies down. It’s Keith after all, kind, comforting Keith, who has already fished him dirty and smelly and beaten out of a dumpster. He can’t get much lower than that. 

 

Shiro saves the address pin to his holo-phone, rubs once more at the bags under his eyes in vain, and straightens his shoulders with a deep breath. One more long inhale and exhale and he settles the thoughts that run rampant in his mind, tucks the fear and nerves back into their box to look at later. With Coran and Allura’s help he has his next step, he just has to take it. 

 

“Patience yields focus,” he tells himself quietly, picks up the bag with the borrowed clothes, and turns his back on the lonely apartment. Keith is waiting.

~

Well actually, Hunk is waiting. 

 

Shiro steps out of his black Cadillac and onto the curb in front of the cute little restaurant before him. Hunk’s Comfort Food resides in a yellow, converted townhome, it’s wide oak deck packed snug with round tables and mismatched chairs. Shiro whistles low to himself and wipes his sweaty hand on his jeans before jogging up the steps. The door was thick wood with a stained glass cut-out window, and when he opened it a jingle of bells alerted the occupants to his presence. A tall woman with ash brown hair and strong shoulders looked up from where she was leaning over and chatting with some of the patrons at a far table. A few other people look up briefly at Shiro and he freezes awkwardly, hoping they won’t recognize him, but they forget him quickly enough and go back to their food and conversations. 

 

The tall woman excuses herself and heads over to greet Shiro at the door, smiling kindly. She wore her hair in two thick, low buns at the base of her neck and silver hoops swung from her ears as she walked. Her presence oozed warmth and comfort, and Shiro tried to match it since he was only even expected here on Coran’s good word. “Hi, I’m Shay! I’ve never seen you here before, which means you must be Coran’s friend.”

 

“Oh! Yes, I’m sorry for such late notice, it’s nice to meet you! I’m… Shiro.” 

 

He pauses, waiting for her to recognize him and for the bombardment or questions to start. Usually if people didn’t recognize him outside of his suit, once they heard his name they knew. It was the double edge to using his real name as his hero alias, and usually didn’t matter since he spent little time amongst the public or out with friends. But she didn’t do either of those things, just smiled at him like they were old friends. 

 

“Welcome Shiro, my husband is in the back, you’ll want to talk to him if it’s as urgent as Coran made it seem.” She loops a long tan arm in his and guides him in his awkward stumbling past the loose array of tables as Shiro marvels at the energy in the room. Everyone was talking and laughing, easy smiles like Shay’s on every face and the food! Almost no two plates were alike, and Shiro’s nose twitches with the medley of scents filling the air.

 

“Husband? You don’t look a day past 20!” Shiro jokes, trying not to turn and follow the smells of the tables he passes like a hungry dog. Suddenly he’s starving again, and his mouth waters an embarrassing amount for civilized society. 

 

The golden woman laughs cheerily, her wide smile showing off perfect white teeth. “Oh you flirt! I’ll have you know I’m 24, and yes happily married. I’m lucky too, I found him young!”

 

“That is very lucky indeed, and a chef to boot. You’ve got the whole package,” Shiro grins, her happiness is infectious.

 

Shay laughs again and nudges Shiro with the arm that’s looped through his, giving him a conspiratorial wink. “I heard that’s why you’re here too, love and food go hand in hand. You know they say the way to a person’s heart is-“

 

“Through their stomach!” A deep voice finishes as they pass through the swinging double doors into the kitchen. Shay releases him and gives him a little push into the room. She’s strong and Shiro is out of his element, so he staggers a little on his feet. His towering height is nearly met by the large man at the counter, and Shiro waits as the chef claps his hands free of flour and wipes them on a cheery yellow towel. 

 

“Thanks honey, I’ll take the newcomer from here,” Hunk tells Shay sweetly and Shiro tries not to pinken as she strides past him to plant a kiss on her husband’s cheek and then leave back out the door they had come from.

 

“Sorry, we never really left the honeymoon phase,” Hunk laughs and Shiro waves off his apology good-naturedly. “So big guy, Coran told me a little, not any of the juicy bits mind you, but that just means I can get it fresh from the source. Now, I need you to tell me everything.”

 

Shiro must look a little puzzled, because Hunk snorts and claps him on the shoulder before leading him to a clean work table. “The old guy didn’t explain how I work huh?”

 

“No… he didn’t. He kinda just said I’d see when I got here and hung up…” 

 

“Yeah, that sounds like him,” Hunk sighs and walks away to bring Shiro a round swivel stool to sit on. “Buckle up, the way it works here is a little different. You tell me the scenario, what you’re thinking or feeling, or about who you’re trying to impress, and I whip up what my heart tells me to.”

 

Shiro sits obediently, he still doesn’t quite get it, but if the smells and happy patrons in the other room are any testament to his work… he’s gonna do what the chef asks. 

 

“Start from the beginning!”

 

“Well, he’s amazing, I met him pretty recently…”

 

Hunk is back to moving around his kitchen while he listens, but he stops and gestures with a big ladle in Shiro’s direction. “No the beginning is you, who are you?”

 

“Oh, um I’m Shiro. Takashi Shirogane, but usually just Shiro.”

 

“Nice to have you here Shiro,” Hunk is arranging bowls and knives, a calm expression on his gentle face, and he looks up when he asks, “Shirogane? You’re Japanese then?”

 

Shiro blows out a noisy breath as he settles, leaning an elbow on the counter and adjusting himself on the stool. “Half, on one of my mothers’ sides. When they passed away… I went through some bad stuff, I was still young so I went to live with my grandparents in Japan. I was a pretty sick kid, so we spent a lot of time together indoors. They took really good care of me…”

 

Shiro trails off, feeling a little like his mouth was filling with cotton as he tries to figure out what parts of his sad life were okay to tell Hunk about. His eyes are glued to the chipped corner of a ceramic tile on the floor, and he nearly flinches when the pair of big orange crocs come into his field of view.

 

He pulls his gaze up slowly, and Hunk’s large tanned hand is holding out a glass of something bright-colored and fizzing. Shiro takes it with an appreciative nod and Hunk gives him space, taking to fiddling around the different work spaces and racks in the room. “I’m sorry, they sound like good people,” Hunk says, and from him it doesn’t sound like the forced politeness he used to get when people found out. Back when there were people even around to find out. 

 

“They were. The best actually.” Shiro takes a sip from the glass and then another immediately after, the cool fruity flavor buzzing on his tongue is surprising enough to ground him back into Hunk’s warm kitchen. 

 

It’s easier after that, to tell the chef about his moms and his grandparents, as much about his friends as he can without giving their identities away, and then about Keith who he refers to simply as “the mechanic”. Hunk gives him things to do while he talks, like taking advantage of Shiro’s strength to move heavy boxes of produce into the cooler in the back of the kitchen. Shiro’s high-tech prosthetic hand comes in handy with pulling out hot trays of bread and pastries, and while Hunk works his magic in pans and pots on the stove he also makes Shiro something to snack on. Shiro is handed two slices of Hunk’s homemade bread that has been toasted and covered in melted cheese, spiced honey and garlic seasoning. The first crunch of it nearly has his eyes rolling back into his head, and when he can finally talk after swallowing down the crunchy perfection he tells Hunk that this must be the thing that convinced Shay to marry him. The chef rewards him with a booming belly laugh and a twinkle in his eye.

 

Shiro doesn’t know how much time has passed, but some time later he’s trying to describe the overwhelming desire to belong he felt after spending time with the mechanic and his daughter, and Hunk suddenly frowns down at the pot in front of him. He seems to be putting something together in his head and when he does he gasps and whirls to face Shiro with wide brown eyes.

 

“Wait a minute! You’re Shiro!?” Hunk gapes and Shiro is now equally confused. If he’s only just realizing he’s Shiro the Hero it’s one thing, but Hunk has also called him by his name several times now since they started.

 

“Uh yes, Shiro the Hero, yknow-,” and Shiro does his signature puffed chest, hand-on-hip pose that photographers love to see, pulling himself to his full height and trying to look… heroic and not like he still has cheese toast crumbs on his shirt. 

 

Hunk snorts and turns back to the stove, moving the pot he was working with to a back-burner and shooing Shiro towards the fridge. “Not that. I don’t care about that, I meant KEITH’s Shiro.”

 

It’s Shiro’s turn to gape at Hunk now, and after watching his mouth work like a fish for a few seconds Hunk rolls his eyes fondly and pushes past Shiro to get what he needs from the fridge himself. 

 

“You- You know Keith,” Shiro finally manages, and knows Hunk can see the pink flush that is traveling up his neck to his ears by the amused quirk to his mouth. Shiro has spent the last… he doesn’t know how long but definitely since before the toast, waxing poetic about his mechanic’s gorgeous face and gentle heart and the fact that he’s been agonizing over his burgeoning feelings for him for a week thinking it was safe because Hunk was a stranger and now THIS.

 

“Sorry, I guess I should have known earlier but like you’re not the only Shiro in the world right? And Keith isn’t the only mechanic, I guess I didn’t put it together until the daughter thing!” Hunk laughs like he hasn’t just sent Shiro into cardiac arrest and pulls out a flat cast-iron griddle-like object Shiro isn’t familiar with. Hunk continues cheerily, “this makes it so much easier, I always keep ingredients on hand for his and Maggie’s favorites! Oh that means you’ll need an extra plate too.”

 

Hunk is flattening a white dough-like substance with a press and the still-functioning part of Shiro’s brain recognizes that enough to realize he’s making tortillas. So he was right earlier, Keith really does like Mexican food. 

 

“Can you pick your jaw up off the floor and hand me those dried chiles and the blender? I don’t have time now to mash it by hand but he’ll live.”

 

While Shiro rushes to do as asked, Hunk starts up a fresh sauce pan, the smell of tomato and onions frying quickly filling the room. Shiro ends up hovering by Hunk’s elbow, embarrassed but burning with the need to know. Hunk had called him Keith’s Shiro which meant he had talked about him right?

 

“He told you about me?” Shiro tries shyly and Hunk shakes his head with a wry smile. 

 

“He did, and at first I thought he was going crazy! He usually sends the guys he scrapes out of the alley on their way with a bandaged injury or two and forgets them, but you,” Hunk whistles and gives Shiro an exaggerated look up-and-down, “I get it now. You’re like his own blend of catnip.”

 

“Oh,” Shiro mumbles, flattered but a little disappointed. Was he just a pretty face to Keith then? He’d been thinking about him so much, he’d hoped…

 

“Hey, Keith is a dad, he’s more than happy to ignore a pretty boy. Trust me, he has his hands full with shooting down admirers too.” Hunk wipes his hands on a towel tucked into his belt and gestures to Shiro’s body. “I meant this, AND this,” he says and the gesture ends with his large hand coming to poke at Shiro’s chest.

 

“My… boobs…?”

 

“Your HEART Shiro. Jesus.”

 

“Oh. Haha, right that,” Shiro brightens and can’t help the wobbly smile that spreads across his face.

 

Hunk laughs at him, not unkindly, and pops the chiles into the blender with water and tomatoes. The chiles looked black sealed in the crisp bag but now the concoction turns a lovely red color with the whirring of the blender. “You’re a dork, which is also good, because he kinda is too.”

 

At the look on Shiro’s face, Hunk taps his temple with a finger. “I already know what you think of him remember? I seem to recall the terms ‘guardian angel’ and ‘knight in shining armor’ being thrown around.” Hunk turns back to the food and smiles down at it, a faraway look on his face. “He is that too, sure, graceful and kind, but he’s also moody, stubborn, and he doesn’t let himself relax anymore. Maggie was a blessing, but she got here after a long time of Keith feeling like he couldn’t do anything right. He messed up a lot like we all do as kids, but for some reason he can’t forgive himself for it.”

 

Hunk’s smile turns somber, and his intelligent brown eyes dart up to Shiro’s face, knowing he’s drinking up every word. “I think he thinks he doesn’t deserve anything good that happens to him. And I think you’re someone who can understand that.”

 

“I want to. Understand him, I mean. I’ll do my best,” Shiro replies softly, and that seems to be the right answer. 

 

He and Hunk talk some more, and eventually Shay wanders back in to check on them. She directs Shiro to a supply closet in the hallway off the main dining area and on his way out he hears her ask softly, “How did it go then? Do you approve?”

 

Hunk answers somewhat indignantly with a, “you KNEW?” And she shushes him with a giggle before Shiro leaves them to it, heat burning in his face. 

 

He knows better than to expect secrets between a married couple, so he gives them time to debrief and wanders slowly through the converted townhome. Shiro passes by the open door of their office, filled with filing cabinets, bookshelves and a large wood desk. The desk has a raw feel to it that tells Shiro it was hand-made, the legs carved with intricate curves and strong lion’s feet. On its cherry-stained surface rests a few picture frames filled with smiling faces. Shiro was going to keep walking, but his eyes found a familiar shade of black hair. 

 

As if in a trance Shiro steps forward until he reaches the desk and picks up the frame gently. Pictured is Hunk, young and with a more timid smile than the one Shiro met in the kitchen. A long and tan-limbed boy with short brown hair and a cocky smirk on his face has his arm around a freckled sandy haired girl that looks like a carbon copy of Matt, Katie , his mind supplies. On the far right is Keith, with a shaggy haircut and a scowl on his face, slightly rounder with youth, and he’s sporting a cropped red leather jacket and slightly ratty fingerless gloves. Shiro can’t help the grin that appears on his face or the chuckle that escapes him, stifling it with his prosthetic hand. Hunk was right, he does look moody and it’s absolutely adorable. Like a hissing kitten with its fur on end that thinks it’s a big cat. Shiro returns the picture to its place, smiling wider at the various pictures alongside it that boast a happy life. Hunk and Shay at their wedding, and another from the same day but Hunk appears to be crying into a laughing Shay’s shoulder. There’s the tanned boy, Matt’s sister, and Keith lined up in tuxedos, posing like spies and doing finger guns. A large frame has what looks like Maggie’s latest school picture, with smaller baby pictures from different holidays tucked into the corners. He sees a photo with a large family in front of a low house, people who all look like Hunk, and Hunk’s same big smile sported on the face of a little boy in the middle. 

 

Shiro leaves before he lingers too long, lost in thought. Hunk doesn’t just know Keith, Keith is like family, and it’s another little tidbit about the man that he can hold close to his chest. If he can find a place for himself in Keith’s life, in any capacity, would he be welcome in the family too? Or play outsider like he has done with every other relationship in his life? 

 

Shiro takes a deep breath, he doesn’t need to go down this train of thought again. He thinks instead of the sticker Maggie had given him and it’s place on his desk at HQ, and the funky cat slippers Keith had given him back at home in his apartment, and that warmth the Koganes bring soothes the doubt in his heart.

 

Shiro finds the supply closet easily after that, balancing a case pack of carry-out boxes in one arm and one of napkins in the other. The hero makes his way back to the kitchen to find Hunk and Shay hip-to-hip at the stove, the picture of domesticity. She’s testing the rice as Hunk finishes rolling tortillas coated in thick red sauce, and Shiro tries not to drool again as the smell hits him. 

 

“I’ve found I kinda like having a super helper,” Shay teases when he approaches the pair with his arms full, and motions for him to put them down on the floor.

 

“Might be safer. Long shifts but a lot of off days too,” Hunk continues, and it’s the first time either of them have commented on Shiro’s rather rough appearance. Even if it’s more like they’re commenting around it rather than telling him he looks like crap. He definitely knows he does. 

 

It’s also sweet, too generous of an offer for someone they just met, and Shiro has to swallow down the emotion a little before he gives his reply. “I’m okay, really, it’s just been a rough week. I like my job a lot, superhero-ing,” Shiro huffs a laugh and leans back against the island countertop, “it’s not always bad, I can take it.”

 

“You don’t have to though, you shouldn’t have to,” Shay says softly, and that’s something he’d rather not get into right now. He has some choice thoughts about his own worth, and with how kind the two are he doesn’t think they’d like those thoughts.

 

Hunk seems to sense this, and gives him an out, “Well the offer is there anytime you need it. We could always use an extra set of muscles around here”, the chef says and turns away to look at his holophone following a soft ping! “Would you look at the time, he’s gotta get going! Let’s pack him up that extra plate too, okay?”

 

Shay gives Shiro an apologetic smile and starts to grab takeout containers from the boxes he had brought back. As she plates Hunk motions for Shiro to follow, and they end up in the big walk-in cooler Shiro had carried produce into earlier. It’s cold, but not unbearably so, and Shiro’s prosthetic will adjust to any temperature he finds himself in anyways. 

 

The chef seems a little uncertain of what he wants to say, so to lighten the mood Shiro does what he knows best, joke at his own expense. “Am I getting the shovel talk now? If I hurt Keith I’ll be chopped up and served in the restaurant?”

 

“First off, ew. Secondly, you’re too muscular buddy, I’d have to make it a whole thing and it’d be tangy and…” Hunk looks a little green for a second but shakes it off with a grimace. “Anyways what I wanted to tell you, Keith is… he’s… different.”

 

“Yeah, I know,” Shiro sighs softly, picturing the slant of those soft violet-blue eyes, the loose tendrils of night-black hair that slipped from his braid as he tended Shiro’s wounds.

 

Shooting him a vaguely annoyed frown, Hunk tries again. “He’s really different, from anyone you’ve ever met before.”

 

Confused but smitten Shiro nods eagerly, trying to let Hunk say his piece. He already knows Keith is special, just the fact that Shiro is here in Hunk’s kitchen is proof of that. 

 

“Shay said I shouldn’t tell you anything and I won’t but its… its really important you know that, before you take this any further.” Hunk is frowning like Shiro still isn’t getting it, rubbing at his temple with a large hand before dragging it down his face with a groan. “You’ll understand later, just- be gentle. Okay? And give him time.”

 

The prosthetic hand comes up to Shiro’s heart and he smiles ruefully at Hunk, touched by his devotion to his friend. “Scout’s honor, I’ll be good to him and Maggie both. I’m not looking to mess around or waste his or anyone’s time.”

 

“Right,” Hunk sighs again and makes to lead Shiro out of the cooler, where Shay raises a thick brow but says nothing. Shiro doesn’t get why she wouldn’t want Hunk to tell him to be careful, but if Hunk says he’ll understand then he’ll leave it at that.

 

The couple bundle up various takeout boxes and containers into reusable bags and walk him out to the porch, where Shiro hesitates one last time. He tries not to itch at the cat scratches across his cheek, they’ve only just scabbed and he knows they must be red and puffy by now. “I know I look bad, but… is it THAT bad?” 

 

Hunk lifts one shoulder in a shrug, “You’ll be fine once you see Keith.” Shay’s eyes widen behind him and she not-so-subtly squeezes the hand that’s locked with her own. “OW- I mean, Keith doesn’t care about that stuff! He’ll probably just want to take care of you anyways right? Let him mother-hen you a little and it’ll be fine!”

 

The same wobbly smile and heat in his face threatens to overtake him and he’s been embarrassed enough by well-doers today, so Shiro thanks the Garrett’s again and after arranging the boxes carefully into his Cadillac, he settles in himself. 

 

“Eve,” Shiro calls, and his prosthetic flashes a cool blue light as the AI wakes up. 

 

“Hello Shiro, Foxface said there wouldn’t be any hero work for you today. Should I update him?”

 

“No! No!” Shiro panics, trying to reel himself in before he crushes his steering wheel in his grip. “This is… for leisure, but it has to be a secret okay? You can’t tell Foxface where I’m going.”

 

“What if there’s an emergency?”

 

“Okay in the case of an emergency yes, but it would really really mess things up if he knew otherwise. Do you understand?” The AI seems to parse this and Shiro tries another tactic. “It would also reeeally hurt my feelings if you told him.”

 

“It would hurt you?”

 

“Uhhh… yes.”

 

“I understand. How can I help you Shiro?”

 

Shiro sighs with relief, feeling only the slightest twinge of guilt at manipulating it’s protocols now that he’s committed to seeing Keith. “I need the address to Marmora Auto Repairs, the fastest route please.”

 

“ Of course, Shiro,” the AI’s even voice replies calmly, “Should I call the hero-car or would you like me to send the details to your holophone?”

 

Shiro knows the hero-car, bland name aside, is state of the art with modifications that would make most racing fans and gearheads drool. But he has a feeling that Keith is an old-school kind of guy, and his ‘57 Coupe is just the thing he needs. “I’ll stay with the Cadillac today thank you.”

 

The AI takes a second to respond, and Shiro remembers Matt’s griping about how Eve feels left out when he uses his own ‘dinosaur’ car. “Understood,” the AI replies coldly after a minute and Shiro taps his fingers along the steering wheel awkwardly. 

 

He’s not actually sure how sentient Eve is, but Matt treats them like a real person. If being involved is what the AI wants then he can surely make up something for them to help him with. Inside he can’t believe he’s trying to comfort a computer program, but here he is. “Um, could you make me a driving playlist too? Pull from my usual preferred eras.”

 

“Of course Shiro!” The AI chirps and as he places his holophone into the old-style dock on his dashboard it opens up to a music application, the screen scrolling and tapping away without his help as Eve takes over. “What is the mood I should cater to?”

 

Shiro slides the key home into the ignition and his hands only tremble slightly as he coughs out a quick, “maybe… lvesngs.”

 

“Can you repeat that?”

 

Embarrassed despite the fact that he’s alone with just an AI who was coded to keep his secrets, Shiro swallows before repeating himself more clearly. “I said, um… maybe… love songs.”

 

“Love songs it is, Shiro,” the AI acquiesces and as he starts the Cadillac and it’s engine begins to purr the soft notes of an acoustic guitar begin to trickle out of his holo-phone’s speakers. He still hasn’t been able to integrate the new tech with the vintage hardware. Maybe that’s something Keith would be willing to help him with.

 

Eve pulls up the address for him and starts the navigation, and Shiro squirms in his seat as the butterflies take flight in his stomach again. He’s about to start what will probably be the most important mission of his life. Operation: Woo the Koganes (aka the Happily Ever After and Keep-it-a-Secret-From-Your-Best-Friend Who-is-Also-the-Best-Hacker-in-the-World Plan) was now officially underway.

Notes:

[The besties start to emerge!! Enter stage left- Allura, Coran, Hunk, and Shay!]

Sorry it’s been so long between updates!! 😭 I had a plan for everything I wanted to do but life had its own Most Important Mission (haha!). I’ve never gotten to do one of those crazy author’s notes before so this is the first! Our river broke through the levy and my town flooded from heavy rainstorms, I got slapped with the biggest wave of depression I’ve had in a while, and midterms were right after that BUT somehow I am alive, kicking, and still obsessing over Sheith!!
Idk if you guys can tell but favorite flavor of Shiro is Disaster Gay meets Himbo-boy-next-door~

Chapter 5: Shiro the Hero and the Godfather

Shiro presses his forehead to the steering wheel and tries not to chew his lip raw, hoping that Allura has made herself busy and isn’t feeling the waves of anxiety that are thrashing him in his front seat. It’s not a date, Keith doesn’t even know he’s coming so he can’t be disappointed by anything Shiro does and-

 

That’s right, he doesn’t even know Shiro is coming. 

 

What if he’s busy and Shiro is bothering him? He missed the usual lunch hour too, it’s closer to 1:00 PM now so what if Keith has already eaten and now he has to force himself to eat until he’s sick out of politeness because of Shiro? The hero groans and bumps his steering wheel with his head one more time for good measure. This was proving to be a difficult mission right out the gate, and Shiro swears he’s less afraid when faced with rockets and mech suits coming at him. He pulls down his visor mirror and meets his own harried gaze in it, lamenting the lost sleep over the past week that has left him pallid and bag-eyed. Shiro does listen sometimes though, so like Allura had told him to, he kept the windows down as he drove and now his hair has a soft windswept fluff to it rather than the neat and pressed down look he had before. Begrudgingly he thinks he’ll have to thank her for the tip later, maybe ask her for tutorials or something. She’d love that.

 

Trying to crush all his tension and negative feelings together with one big breath in, Shiro blows the air back noisily out of his mouth. The food will get cold if he waits any longer and he doesn’t want to disrespect Hunk’s time and effort like that. The chef had given him a cute business card with his personal number scrawled across the back and told Shiro he was welcome anytime, with or without Keith or Coran, and Shiro fiddles with it for a moment before tucking it into his visor and folding it back up against the roof of the car.

 

“Patience… yields… focus.” 

 

One shaky breath more and Shiro sets his shoulders, takes his key with the Lego R2-D2 keychain from the ignition and forces his jelly legged-self out of the Cadillac. The fenced in parking lot of Marmora Auto Repairs is fairly empty aside from what looks like some long-term projects and an old blue Honda civic that appears to be held together by duct tape and a dream. The front bumper is falling on one side, like it’s giving Shiro a dopey half-smile, and Shiro winces in solidarity as he passes it with his hands full of bags. It looks only a little worse than he feels after this week.

 

The building’s windows are tinted so he can’t see if anyone is in the lobby area, but when he walks through the front door it’s empty. It’s a relief, less people to watch him fumble his way through this encounter and he doesn’t have to squeeze by anyone with his many bags.

 

There’s the screech of mechanical tools coming from down the hall where the car lifts and workstations are, so Shiro follows them to the back. As he rounds the corner the first thing he sees is a pair of long, thin legs and a pair of beat-up blue converse propped up on Keith’s workstation. The nervous hero enters the room and the rest of the body is revealed and Shiro recognizes the lanky, tanned boy from Hunk’s picture frames. He’s leaning Keith’s chair back as far as it can go, balanced on two legs with a long arm thrown over his face.

 

“And I told him like it’s FINE if you don’t want to be my boyfriend but I’M not the one who said ‘I love you’ when he had my ankles by my ears with the hardest-“

 

The metallic whirring stops with a last squeal and Keith’s voice comes from somewhere under the car he’s working on, a wheezing laugh muffled by tons of metal. “Stop- stop! Lance you’re so gross-“ Keith falls prey to another fit of laughter and the tanned boy’s arm flies off his face as he sits up to continue his story. Then he sees Shiro and screams in surprise, losing his balance, and he and the chair both topple over noisily.

 

“Lance! I told you not to lean my chair back like that!” Keith scolds from under the car, and the clang of the machine hitting the floor tells Shiro he’s getting up. 

 

Shiro places some of the bags down and offers Lance his flesh hand, smiling apologetically down at the other in their dazed pile of long limbs. Lance takes the help and squawks as Shiro pulls him up easily and steadies him back on his feet.

 

They blink at each other for a second. 

 

“Well hell-o sailor, are you lost?” The younger man, Lance , asks with a cocky grin, hurriedly leaning his long frame back as nonchalantly as he can over Keith’s workstation. Shiro’s eyes flit down to where the chair still rests on its side on the floor, and then back up to Lance’s quirked brow. 

 

“Uh, I’m here to see… Oh… Keith.”

 

Keith emerges from behind the car, wiping oil-stained hands on an old red rag. He’s wearing his coveralls the way he’d put them on Shiro, the sleeves off and tied low over his waist. Keith is in a black tank, the soft material of it clinging to every inch of sweaty, toned ab and muscle and riding up on one side to expose a flash of dewy skin. He’s streaked here and there with smudges of oil and grease and his dark hair is beginning to fall loose and wispy from his braid. When his violet-blue eyes find Lance and then Shiro they widen in shock.

 

“Shiro?”

 

“H-hi Keith,” Shiro rasps, mouth suddenly dry as a desert. Hunk’s food is forgotten as a new sort of hunger begins to claw low in his belly, the heat of it threatening to consume him body and soul.

 

Keith takes all of him in, eyes flashing with emotions nearly too quickly for Shiro to catch. Surprise, hurt, confusion, and finally something he doesn’t have a name for but recognizes from their first meeting. That soft, melting, searching look from when their eyes met over Maggie’s head that day. Then those intense eyes focus and an edge sets in his mouth and he marches up to Shiro single-mindedly, the rag tossed somewhere around his workstation without a thought. Shiro swallows, Keith isn’t short, but Shiro is BIG. All over. So Keith still has to tilt his head to look up at him when he grabs Shiro’s chin with a firm but gentle grip, turning his face back and forth.

 

“You’re hurt again,” Keith says softly. It’s half-chiding, with a curl to his lip that’s just shy of a pout, and Shiro feels his face start to warm steadily under Keith’s attention. 

 

Shiro shrugs and it’s a sloppy thing, the body he’s toned through years of grueling exercise and violence in the name of justice suddenly seems to slip from his control when Keith is around. 

 

“Sorry,” is all he can think to say, and tries not to be too obvious about the deep breath he takes in to steady himself. It’s the wrong thing to do because this close he can even SMELL Keith; the mixture of oil, metal, and Keith’s own musky underlying scent working together to make Shiro’s head spin. He feels hot all over, his very skin alight with this new awareness he has for Keith. It’s too much too fast, he’d only mentally prepared himself for a shared meal and now those violet-blue eyes are slanting up at him just so and Keith’s body, warm from exertion, is so close he can feel it and-

 

“ Ahem,” comes a voice behind them and Shiro turns away just a little, pulling his chin from Keith’s hand to press his own metal one to his face. He subtly activates the cooling mechanic in it, trying to bring himself down from… WHATEVER that was. He doesn’t see how Keith stares at the fingers that once held his face and flexes them thoughtfully.

 

“Lance, this is Shiro, Shiro, meet Lance.” 

 

As Lance steps forward, chest puffed and hand extended, Keith steps around him to right the chair again. He picks up his grease rag and wrings it almost nervously, working to get the smudges from his fingertips.

 

“Lance McClain, the best friend, Maggie’s godfather, and you are?” The tanned boy says more than a little cockily, shaking Shiro’s hand with probably more force than was needed, not that it hurts Shiro in the slightest.

 

Shiro nods distractedly, shaking back and introducing himself but his eyes keep ticking away to watch Keith bustle about the workstation. He watches Keith pick up drill bits with a magnetized bar and roll a steel nut across his knuckles and back again before forcing himself to meet Lance’s startlingly bright blue eyes. “Sorry for scaring you earlier, I’m um- Shiro, the uh- the … Keith rescued me from a dumpster.”

 

Lance blinks once and then begins to howl with laughter, releasing Shiro’s hand and stumbling with the force of it. “Is that true? Oh you poor sad hottie. Keith! Why didn’t you tell me?!”

 

Keith looks caught, then shrugs it off, suddenly unable to look up from his hands to Shiro. “‘Dunno it just didn’t come up.”

 

If he was interested before, Lance is chomping at the bit now. He watches the two of them dance around each other silently, measures the pregnant pause between them with a keen eye.

 

“Don’t let Keith’s emo-ness scare you, he can actually be kind of nice sometimes.”

 

“Ha-Ha, and sometimes Lance isn’t such an ass.”

 

“Where’d you find Shiro again? A dumpster? Better an ass than a trash picker!”

 

“I’m not a trash picker,” Keith responds flatly, the steel nut rolling once more over his knuckles before his hand turns quick as a flash and catches it in the air.

 

Lance ignores him, coming to lean on Shiro’s shoulder and point a wagging finger at Keith as he laughs. “Trash picker! Trash picker!”

 

“What are we in elementary school?? I’m not a trash picker,” Keith snaps and Shiro, confused, looks between the pair unsure if he should be offended more on his own behalf or Keith’s.

 

Lips turning up in a Cheshire Cat grin, Lance cocks one hip, resting his head fully on Shiro’s shoulder as he lets out one more goading, “Trash. Picker,” with an exaggerated pop of his lips.

 

Keith is still for one long moment, then he turns away from the two men in front of him and Shiro steps forward after him but is held back by Lance’s hand on his shoulder. The brunette shoots him a wink and holds up one finger to his lips, which does nothing to ease Shiro’s confusion. Lance looks gleeful, like a kid pulling at a dog’s tail to make it bark.

 

Keith, in the meantime, has picked up an old oil filter from a spare bin and passes it gently from hand to hand. The fingers he had so meticulously tried to clean a moment ago are now coated again with dark, old oil, and he turns back to face the pair at his workstation with a toothy smile.

 

“Hey Lance, remember how I always tell you not to wear a white shirt in my shop?”

 

Lance’s head snaps away from Shiro and back to look at Keith in shock and incredulity. “You wouldn’t dare.”

 

“Oh, I dare.” Keith puts down the oil filter with a muted thunk and begins to stalk forward.

 

Shiro’s lips form a wobbly smile as Lance begins to shriek and flinch back with every step Keith takes towards them, pulling Shiro (who lets himself be pulled) in front of himself as a human shield.

 

“I was kidding! You’re not a trash picker!”

 

“Oh it’s too late for that,” Keith coos, oil-stained hands reaching out with menace and Lance shrieks once more, clutching at Shiro’s shoulder as his back hits the wall.

 

“Keith stop- Keith- SHIRO PROTECT ME!” Lance yells, shoving Shiro forward at Keith before racing down the hall. It’s Keith’s turn to laugh then, eyes shut and head tossed back and canines flashing, and Shiro joins along, the two of them gasping for breath as Lance’s long legs dash around the corner.

 

There’s a beat after Lance is gone where they try and fail to reign in their laughter a few times, and Shiro marvels in the glow of it. Keith tries to wipe a tear from his eye with the back of his hand, leaving a stripe of black across his nose and cheek before smiling up adorably at Shiro. The mirth still teases at the edge of his expression and his eyes are sparkling when he admits softly into the space between them, “I’m really happy you came to see me.”

 

Shiro the Hero has fought many battles since his debut as New Altea’s resident superhero. He has more wins under his belt in these past 10 years than some have in their whole lifetimes, but this is a battle he feels with ever-growing clarity that he is going to lose.

 

Keith is still fighting off a last chuckle, smiling easily like he hasn’t just thrown a wrench into every one of Shiro’s plans of defense. The hero’s heart squeezes painfully in his chest at the gentle honesty of Keith’s admission, and he reacts more on instinct than anything else when he closes the gap between them. 

 

Shiro can’t always find the right words to say what he feels, but this? This strange connection he feels with the man in front of him?

 

It’s easy, Keith has been trying his best to hold his dirty hands away from the other’s clothes, which means his arms are loose now and at his sides when Shiro steps closer. He blinks slowly up at the taller man like a cat, clicking his tongue once in disapproval but not fighting it when Shiro pulls the sleeve of his Henley up over his palm to rub at the oil stripe on Keith’s cheek. It only half works anyways, but it means that Shiro gets to use his metal hand to cup Keith’s face to steady him. His prosthetic fingers trace the shell of an elegant ear, tucking wispy strands behind it and Keith’s eyes close momentarily, the lashes thick and dark across his cheeks. They stay like that a moment before Keith pulls away begrudgingly, his nose wrinkling. 

 

“I’ve gotta… Lance,” he whispers, and his voice rasps in a way that makes Shiro burn just a little hotter. 

 

“I brought lunch, should we just call him back in?” Shiro crosses his arms over his chest, tucking his hands away so they won’t reach for Keith again and stay there.

 

“Maybe bring it upstairs? It’s open and it’ll be better to eat somewhere clean.”

 

Shiro nods and watches as Keith stretches out languidly, rolling his shoulders back and wiggling his oil-stained fingers experimentally.

 

“What’re you…? You’re still gonna go get him back for that?” Shiro can’t keep the amusement from his voice and it only spreads across his face as Keith answers with a smirk.

 

“Oh Lance? Of course, he wants to be chased.”

 

~~~~~

 

Shiro listens to the squawking and yelling from outside the shop as he takes the bags of Hunk’s food up the cramped stairwell and lets himself into the Kogane’s apartment. He slips out of his shoes and puts them by the door next to a pair of Keith’s boots, chuckling to himself as a particularly loud shriek signals the end to the friends’ game of chase outside. 

 

He’s still warm from his encounter with Keith, and every time the new oil stain on his sleeve comes into view his heart nearly skips a beat. Shiro makes himself busy in the Kogane’s small kitchen, he’s only been there once but he has a good memory, and an even better one it seems when it comes to Keith. He grabs plates, utensils, and starts to free the food from the confines of the insulated thermal bags. Luckily the containers are still decently warm, and he’s just starting to pop the lid on one of them when the door slams open and a grumbling Lance stomps inside.

 

“Stupid Keith, stupid grease monkey mullet face-“ Lance unlaces and kicks his shoes off noisily, and when he straightens again Shiro has to turn and muffle his laughter into his hand. There’s a black handprint laid over one shoulder of his white t-shirt and smudged across the left side of his face, like Keith had done his best grabbing him from behind.

 

Keith walks in jauntily after him, still grinning as he toes off his work boots and gives Shiro a cheeky wave. “When are you gonna drop the mullet thing, that was ages ago,” he laughs, and Shiro is reminded of the picture of young, moody Keith from Hunk’s office. Mullet in full glory.

 

“I dunno when are you gonna drop the stupid thing,” Lance parrots back in a bad mockery of Keith’s voice, turning his nose up proudly at the still chuckling Shiro. “I’m going to wash up and you all better hope I don’t break out after this!”

 

He storms down the hallway off the living room and another door slams, leaving Keith to meander over to Shiro’s side. “Looks like you’re in trouble with me.”

 

“That’s okay, I like being on your team better,” Shiro replies easily, earning himself another soft-eyed smile.

 

Keith sniffs the air appreciatively and his stomach growls, his eyes going wide with recognition.

 

“Hunk’s cooking? You know Hunk?”

 

“I just met him today actually, a friend of a friend I guess.”

 

“Huh, small world,” Keith mumbles and makes to grab a fork before he catches himself and pulls his dirty hands away from the food. His violet-blues stare forlornly back and forth from the food to his dirty hands. “Gotta wait, my degreaser is in the bathroom.”

 

Shiro hears another gurgle from Keith’s stomach and takes pity on him, grabbing a fork and opening the containers of food. “I’ll feed you for now, what do you want first?” 

 

Ogling the open boxes Keith licks his lips, and Shiro can’t help but swallow hard as he tracks the motion. “Ugh how did you know? Enchiladas are my favorite, I can’t- maybe a bite of that cheese one first,” Keith nearly bounces as Shiro cuts a big piece off with the fork and holds it out for him. He takes the offered bite and melts, leaning his toned form against the counter to chew happily as Shiro cuts him another piece. 

 

“I just got lucky that you have such good friends really, once he knew it was you he knew just what to make.” Shiro shrugs and tries not to let his nerves show, he’s feeding Keith, that’s at least 5 steps further than he thought he’d get today. “He even packed extra, I thought he meant I’d need another plate for Maggie, but she must be in school right?”

 

The raven-haired father nods and swallows, licking his lips clean. “Yeah, she’s in the afternoon kindergarten class. It’ll be a couple hours still, but Lance likes to drop by when he needs someone to complain to. Hunk is too sympathetic to his partners and Pidge doesn’t care enough about people’s love lives to have the patience for him, so I usually get the brunt of it.” He says it like a complaint but there’s a fondness to his words, and Shiro thinks he probably likes it more than he lets on.

 

Shiro feeds him another bite which he takes gratefully, humming around the fork and giving him a rueful smile. Shiro tries to chase the thread, opens his mouth to ask if he tells Lance about his own love life when the man in question stumbles out of the hallway pulling a towel down his face. He catches Shiro with the fork outstretched and Keith chewing happily, eyeing the short distance between them and raising a thin eyebrow in suspicion.

 

“Bathrooms free, go wash up grease monkey,” Lance orders and Keith nods around his mouthful, gesturing loosely in thanks at Shiro before heading down the same hallway. 

 

Sensing the tumultuous emotions from the lanky, raw-faced man stalking towards him Shiro fiddles with the containers again to keep his hands busy. He opens the soup container Hunk had packed for him and breathes in deeply, gazing down at the steaming broth with wonder. 

 

Lance snaps him out of his reverie as he slams his thin-fingered hands down on the counter, rattling a few utensils with the movement.

 

“You might be gorgeous or whatever but that’s not gonna cut it, what are your intentions with our Keith?” He ends the question with a jab of his finger towards Shiro, cerulean eyes sharp as daggers.

 

A traitorous part of Shiro’s brain whispers ‘marriage, lifelong devotion and like three more babies’ but Shiro shakes his head slightly to clear it away. “Um, I don’t have a plan exactly. I just, he helped me and was kind to me, I want to repay the favor if I can.”

 

Lance picks up a fork and stabs the piece of enchilada Shiro had cut free to feed Keith next. He gestures at Shiro’s… everything with it, “I don’t like a man without a plan, especially not for Keith. He doesn’t need another person to waltz in and sweep him off his feet only to leave when it gets hard.” Lance chomps the bite off his fork and chews, making a slight face at the flavor. “Ugh Hunk always makes them so hot for him, would it kill him to add more chocolate!”

 

Shiro wordlessly slides him the container of the sparkling guava juice Shay had added to his bags and watches Lance gulp a mouthful of it down, wiping the back of his mouth daintily with the napkin Shiro offers him to continue his rant. “Keith doesn’t need a… a rich boy gym rat, he needs a family man like my apá, someone who’ll take care of him and Maggie”, Lance frowns and skewers Shiro with a glare. 

 

“Are you prepared for that Shiro? Are you prepared to offer the clothes off your back, and- and do anything no matter what to protect them?” Lance braces his hands on the counter and leans over it and the food till his nose is nearly touching Shiro’s own. “If you are anything less than 100% sure then you need to walk out now, because if you hurt either of them you’ll have the whole McClain family coming for you, do you understand?”

 

Shiro isn’t invincible. He’s unnaturally strong and fast, he’s known to shoot lasers from his eyes and breathe frost on occasion, he’s durable yes, but not unbreakable. Lance is no threat to him by any mortal standing point, but the look in his eye still makes a prickle of uncertainty tingle down the hero’s spine. It tells him that Lance would find a way. It also, however, endears him ten times as much to Shiro to see the depth of his devotion to his friend. 

 

“I understand, really. I don’t have a plan because… I know Keith deserves the best, and I am not that by any means… but I think he also deserves to have a say in the matter.” Lance has settled back to his side of the counter and sits himself down on a stool with a huff. “It might be selfish of me to want it, but I just want to be near him, in any capacity he’ll have me. If that’s as just a friend then so be it. I want to help, to support and be there for him and Maggie in any way they might need me. Anything and everything I can offer is theirs,” Shiro sighs, runs his metal hand through his hair and meets the sharp blue eyes that watch him intently. 

 

“He saved me. In more ways than one. Maybe that should be gift enough, but I can’t get him out of my head ever since that day. Either of them. If they’ll have me, I have to try right?”

 

Lance glares at him a moment longer before throwing his hands up in exasperation. He mumbles something under his breath in Spanish and Shiro fidgets nervously until he fixes him with a less-judgemental look. “Fine fine, but I’m watching you,” he motions between Shiro and himself with two fingers as he concludes, “like a HAWK, got it?”

 

Nodding his agreement, the both of them startle as Keith emerges from the hallway, hair freshly braided and patting his arms with a clean red rag. He tucks it into the pocket of his coveralls, appearing to have put on a fresh black tank while he was gone. He shows his hands to Lance as he nears the pair who exaggeratedly inspects them for oil before gesturing his approval.

 

“Okay I’m starved, what are we talking about?” Keith asks innocently, starting to load a plate full of enchiladas, beans, and rice. 

 

He sits on the stool next to Lance and Shiro stays put standing where he is, blanching and shooting Lance a panicked look, but the lanky man stays loose and relaxed. “I was explaining to Shiro how you got your taste for spice from Nana Lupé.”

 

“Oh! Yeah haha I did,” Keith scratches his cheek and looks up at Shiro shyly, “she was the woman I was with the longest when I was in foster care. She lived on the same street as Lance’s family, so I kinda got lucky twice there.” 

 

“You were in foster care?” Shiro asks softly, and Lance gives him a warning glance over the plate he’s started to fill up for himself.

 

“Yeah, weird I know, I told you before that my mom only recently came back into my life right? Well it was just me and my pops before that, and when he- he passed, I bounced around a lot. Nana Lupé got me in… what, the tail end of eighth grade?” Keith looks to Lance for confirmation and he answers what sounds like ‘y-pp’ around a mouthful of beans and rice. 

 

Shiro reopens the soup container as he listens, tension leaving his shoulders as the smell of tonjiru soup hits his nostrils. The pork is perfectly tender and the vegetables are soft, the broth swirling from a brown lacquer to a creamier color as the miso spreads in the path his spoon makes. He takes a bite slowly, melting at the familiar tastes of home and comfort, the same bittersweet ache that has been his companion for years filling his chest as the thoughts of his lost family resurface. 

 

“S’ a little hard because my family is from Cuba but has been established here longer, and Nana Lupé immigrated here from Mexico alone when she was young. Our Spanish is a little different, the food, yknow-” Shiro watches the way he and Keith eat, how Lance takes a bit of each separate food one by one but Keith fills his fork with as much rice, beans and cheese all in one go as he can. Lance continues conversationally, “She had family I think, but never really liked to talk about it. Till Keith of course, jeez she came over nearly every day asking my mamá if Keith could be my friend.” He says it with a friendly knock of his shoulder into Keith’s, who pulls a face in his friend’s direction around a large bite of food. 

 

Lance throws an arm around Keith and rocks them together, flourishing with his fork dramatically and ignoring Keith’s protests. “They did NOT know what they were doing getting the two of us together though! I think we got in trouble enough times I could say the rosary backwards!”

 

“Sounds like you guys have always been a handful then? And Keith! Here I thought you were a model citizen,” Shiro teases, and Lance nearly falls out of his chair again with laughter. 

 

“Keith?! Keith probably had a bigger rap sheet at 12 then most criminals do in their whole lives!”

 

Keith is laughing right there with him and nearly chokes on his food, prompting Shiro to grab a cup and hurriedly pour him a glass full of guava juice. “Sorry- thank you, yeah, he’s right, we- they started running out of chores to give us as punishments,“ He and Lance start to snicker together and Shiro grins at the cackling pair. “Remember the- the tomatillos-“

 

Lance howls, his earlier terror-inducing mistrust of Shiro seemingly forgotten as he whips towards him with glee at the memory. 

“Shiro, she made us peel like 200 of these smelly little green things, they’re sticky and the juice gets EVERYWHERE and we thought it was for some party or something! Nope! She just gave them out to everyone on the street for no reason to make us learn our lesson!”

 

“Did you learn it then?” 

 

Keith is catching his breath and rubbing at one teary eye as he manages out, “absolutely not.”

 

“Now she was a fearsome woman, Nana Lupé! And her salsa could knock you on your ass for sure!”

 

Their laughter evens out slowly and Shiro sees it coming with a familiarity that only those who share the feeling of loss can know. The whiplash of happy memories against the cold absence of someone you love. 

 

Bright blue eyes flicker back from Keith to his food, sympathetic and soft, much more so than when he was staring Shiro down with the intent to kill.

 

“She passed away too, uh, before senior year. Cancer… it took her fast, which I’m grateful for since she didn’t have to suffer, but it was hard.”

 

“And this asshole kept running away from his foster homes,” Lance mumbles and Keith seems to wince in apology or shame. The mechanic’s eyes are dark, almost completely violet and far away, back in a place and time where Shiro cannot reach him.

 

“I… ran away from a lot of things, and… into some others,” Keith shakes the darkness from his eyes, embarrassed if the pink in his cheeks is anything to go by. It’s incredibly distracting, but Shiro tries to be casual about eating his soup to ease the pressure as much as he can. “Maggie came pretty soon after that, so I had to really straighten myself out. And it really is like they say y’know? ‘Takes a village’. All that time I still thought I was all alone, but I know better now.”

 

Lance forks another enchilada onto Keith’s plate with a hum of approval, a sloppy sort of pride to the quirk of his lips. The conversation flows easier after that, and though Shiro knows Lance is still wary of him he seems to have forgotten his hostility somewhat, or at least tucked it away for later. Shiro shares his steaming vegetable soup with them, which Keith adores and Lance begrudgingly concedes ‘okay because Hunk made it’, apparently not wanting to compliment something Shiro likes too easily. Eventually he begins to retell his story from earlier, a smidge less graphically, and Shiro joins Keith in the process of comforting Lance over another lost prospect.

 

“I just don’t get it,” the brunette bemoans, “I’m a total catch! Who wouldn’t want to put a ring on all this.” One hand gestures loosely down his own frame and the other is raised dramatically to his incensed forehead, his eyes shut tight against the emotion. 

 

“I know you refuse to admit it but it HAS to be the StarSinger shrine in the corner of your room.”

 

Lance gasps, scandalized, and Shiro sits up at attention again. “You like StarSinger?”

 

“He’s obsessed with her actually, he and Maggie both,” Keith rests his chin in his hand and leans back as Lance sputters.

 

“I have a perfectly normal, healthy love for a woman who devotes herself to making this planet better! I don’t know why that’s so hard for people to understand!” 

 

Keith raises his other hand to hide his mouth and mock whisper to Shiro, “the poster is by the bed,”

 

Shiro sucks a breath in hard to keep from laughing and Lance is fully red now, that perfectly manicured finger that had been aimed at Shiro earlier now wagging dangerously at Keith.

 

“I hope you never meet Shiro the Hero and that he marries some ugly random civilian someday so you know YOU could have been the ugly civilian but you’re not!”

 

“Lance…” Keith stares at him dumbstruck, and Lance crosses his wiry arms across his puffed chest, smug with his supposed win.

 

“And they’ll have ugly little superhero babies while StarSinger and I meet and fall in love and she carries me off in her ship to be her own private housewife- househusband, whatever.”

 

“Lance, I have already met Shiro the Hero.”

 

“Bullshit Mullet, if you’ve met Shiro the Hero then I have a magic space lion that can fly in the air and shoot lasers.”

 

Shiro watches with mirth as Keith gives Lance a genuinely concerned look. “Lance, we have BOTH met Shiro the Hero.”

 

“I think I would remember meeting like THE hottest superguy, I’d definitely remember you wetting yourself over it!”

 

Keith deadpans, opens his mouth as if to argue and then snaps it shut again, and after a second more of shock he grabs a napkin from the countertop. The mechanic folds it neatly in half hot-dog style, and places the folded napkin over Shiro’s eyes. “Look at him now you walnut-brain.”

 

Shiro can’t see from behind the napkin but does his best to sit heroically, chest puffed and shoulders squared and finally a gasp that’s almost a shriek is heard from Lance’s spot.

 

“KEITH- you?? SHIRO THE HERO IS IN YOUR KITCHEN?!”

 

Keith takes the napkin from Shiro’s eyes and smacks Lance with it, Lance whose blue eyes look about ready to pop out of his head as he stumbles off his stool.

 

“Surprise?” Shiro tries and Lance yelps, taking a step back.

 

“Regular Dumpster Shiro is Shiro the Hero … You told Shiro the Hero about my StarSinger shrine-“

 

“So it IS a shrine-“

 

“Shiro the Hero brought us lunch.” Lance has a hand to his head and wobbles dangerously, tripping over a plush cat in the adjoined living room.

 

“Yes I did?”

 

“KEITH IS FUCKING SHIRO THE HERO?!”

 

Shiro feels his face begin to burn instantly and Keith’s is firmly buried in his palm now.

 

Lance is muttering to himself now, having picked up the plush cat from the floor and kneading it between his hands furiously. “No- No… No! I’m NOT ready to babysit a super baby I just can’t- what if it breaks my arm because I didn’t give it a bottle in time- and Keith’s emo-ness and superstrength were never meant to mix- what if the baby decides it wants asymmetrical bangs and I have to be the one to tell him the one-eye thing doesn’t look good on ANYONE and-“

 

“We’re not-“ Keith stops himself with a glance in Shiro’s direction that has him sweating and then gets off his stool to comfort Lance. “Shiro and I- we’re just friends, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mention the StarSinger thing to her right?”

 

“Scout’s honor,” Shiro pipes up, wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans before raising one in salute.

 

Lance takes a deep breath with Keith’s encouragement and Shiro, nervous, says the first thing that comes to mind. 

 

“Besides, even if we were we’d have to adopt right? So just a regular baby! There’s nothing to worry about!”

 

Instantly, Lance starts to curse in Spanish and from where his back is turned to Shiro, Keith’s neck and ears begin to flush a deep pink.

 

They both turn and give Shiro matching scandalized looks, then look to each other and something passes between them, something only they two as childhood friends- brothers even, could understand. Lance drops the topic entirely and his mood does another 180 turn. It’s a little hard for Shiro to keep up with to be honest, but he’s not stupid. The hero has tread on a land mine and sealed his own fate.

 

They go back to eating and Lance leads them from topic to topic easily, ever the dutiful host, and Keith still participates but it’s stilted now, his eyes dark and thoughtful. Shiro hears more about their escapades as neighborhood menaces, about Lance’s previous two flings, and is treated to a rather compelling reenactment of how he told someone off at work the other day. Interesting, to say the least, especially the stories about Keith, but Shiro wishes he could go back and stop himself from putting his foot in his mouth. It’s only their second time seeing each other and Shiro is talking about adoption! What clue does Shiro even have that Keith is gay? Holy shit, Keith even has a kid, Keith is probably… straight? And Shiro just basically admitted to wanting to marry and adopt with him… No wonder Keith has been pushing beans around his plate and barely speaking, he’s uncomfortable!

 

“And THAT is when I decided I’d never date a chick who’s into motorcycles again,” Lance finishes and Shiro decides he has probably overstayed his welcome.

 

“This has been really fun, but I should probably get going.”

 

“You’re leaving already?” Keith asks at the same time that Lance lets out a sigh of relief and begins to pack up some of the enchiladas back into a container for Shiro.

 

“It was real lovely having you Shiro the Hero, please do NOT tell StarSinger about the shrine or I will have to make do on earlier threats.”

 

Shiro nods his understanding but Keith interjects with a sudden agitation that’s startling from the pensive mood he’d been in for the last 20 or so minutes, “What- what threats? And Shiro you don’t have to go.”

 

Keith is frowning, looking between Shiro’s bulk and Lance’s lean frame with a spark of something like desperation in his eye. Lance shoots Shiro a ‘what did I tell you?’ glare and the heat in it makes the hero stand up straighter. 

 

One prosthetic and one scarred human hand reach out placatingly and Shiro wishes there wasn’t a counter between them, that Keith was as close and warm as he’d been downstairs. A moment Shiro seems to have misunderstood but will treasure nonetheless. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he tries and Keith’s eyes grow impossibly more brilliant with emotion.

 

“Why would I be uncomfortable?”

 

“Well it’s just- the baby comment, I mean you don’t even really know me and I’m- I’m not even your type and I shouldn’t have- I upset you,” Shiro glances over to Lance for help but the brunette raises his hands in defeat and walks away to sit on the couch and busy himself with his phone to give them privacy. 

 

“Who says you’re not my type?” Keith’s eyes are downcast, and he wraps his arms around himself as if to hold himself together.

 

“Well I just assumed, I mean, you have a daughter.”

 

“What does that have to do with anything?”

 

In trying not to mess this up Shiro is messing everything up. It’s like he’s only capable of saying things to make the situation worse. He fidgets, but no amount of hero training has prepared him on how to navigate this. Keith looks beautiful even when upset, and it’s a knife to Shiro’s gut to know that he’s the one causing it.

 

“I just meant that- I don’t want you to think I’m pushing myself on you in a way you wouldn’t want, I misread is all-“

 

“A way I wouldn’t want..?” Keith cuts him off before he can ramble himself further into an early grave, “Shiro, I’m gay.” 

 

“You’re…?”

 

“Yes, I am.”

 

“Are you sure? But… Maggie?”

 

“Am I Sure?” Somewhere in the direction the couch Shiro hears what he presumed to be Lance smacking his head into his hand.

 

“Shiro,” Keith is red faced and for a second Shiro thinks it’s anger, but there’s a wobble to his chin that has Shiro using his super speed to flash around the partition that separates the kitchen to get to him. Keith doesn’t startle like most people would, even Lance in his feigned blind-deafness to them flinches when the gust of air from Shiro’s movement sends napkins flying and frames clattering against the walls. He pauses a breath away from touching Keith, hands outstretched but unable to broach those few centimeters of space. Keith is not his to touch as he pleases.

 

And yet, a current buzzes between them like livewire, tempting and most certainly dangerous and more than anything Shiro has ever dreamed possible.

 

“Don’t cry, Angel.” The petname leaves his lips easily, courtesy of his traitorous brain and finally, finally, Keith looks up to meet his gaze.

 

“Don’t decide my feelings for me, okay? Don’t push me away before I even know what I feel.” One long-fingered hand unwraps from the grip he had on his other arm, holding himself together, and Keith closes the distance between their palms. His starlit eyes hold Shiro’s, melting any resolve left in the hero’s heart that he could fight this. Keith’s breath hitches but the tears don’t fall, his dark lashes thicken with moisture and Shiro’s skin nearly burns where they touch.

 

“Would it be so bad if I felt something too? Is it that scary for you? That you have to hide behind excuses?” His fingers intertwine gently with Shiro’s and his other hand comes up to hold Shiro’s face much like Shiro had done for him earlier, soft and steadying. Keith’s voice is hushed but his words rattle Shiro to his core. Since the first moment Shiro had met Keith he’d been convincing himself that he could not have him, that he could get close but not too close, that he could never be wanted with the same ferocity he felt down to his bones. That he didn’t deserve to.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m… lost in this, I don’t know how to- I don’t know how to not mess things up,” Shiro confesses and Keith’s lips quirk into a shy smile.

 

“I think we could both benefit from taking our time, I haven’t exactly had much practice these past couple years either.” They are nearly nose to nose now, Keith’s eyes are half lidded and his voice is husky and full of emotion. “Can we do that? Just take our time before we make any big decisions like that? After you get to know me, if you still want to run away screaming I’ll let you.”

 

“Run away from you? Never. Maybe from myself though. That’s still a possibility.”

 

Keith pulls his hand back to his chest finally and takes a step away from Shiro and they both seem to let go of a breath they’d been holding.

 

“Thank GOD! I thought you guys were going to start going at it right in front of me!”

 

Shiro barks a surprised laugh and Keith’s softness visibly leaves him as he turns away from Shiro, stalks the short distance to the couch and shoves Lance’s face into a throw pillow. “Don’t threaten Shiro, I picked him out of the dumpster so he’s here to stay.”

 

A muffled, “trash p-cker,” escapes the pillow and then Lance is scrabbling away backwards on the couch with an exaggerated gasp. “First you clog up my pores with oil and now you mess up my hair! I’m telling Krolia!”

 

Keith yawns and makes a flippant gesture with his hand before he plops himself down on the couch beside Lance, who hands over the pillow easily much to Shiro’s surprise. Lance’s thin brows furrow at Keith and then he glances up at Shiro, frustration flashing across his face for a moment before he can compose it. Then he’s up and sauntering over to the counter to load Keith’s plate with more food and bring it back to the couch. 

 

“Eat, nap after,” the brunette orders and Keith obliges without complaint. Lance calls Shiro after him with a jerk of his thumb toward the kitchen and Shiro somehow manages to tear himself away from watching the way a sleepy Keith toys with the end of his braid.

 

Once they’re on the other side of the wall that becomes the bar and window into the kitchen Lance lowers his voice, annoyed but less hostile than during their first kitchen chat. “That’s enough for today, I’m sure you have superhero business to get back to right?” 

 

“Oh, right… Definitely have superhero business to get back to.” 

 

“Good. And next time, don’t come see him all banged up and sleep deprived, it…” Lance frowns, parses his words for a second, “it makes him feel bad.”

 

Guilt nips at Shiro’s heels just as much as the excitement does hearing that Keith worries about him that much, which of course, means the guilt starts to pull ahead because of his own selfish thoughts. 

 

“Okay, yeah, I’ll try to come back in top condition,” Shiro whispers back seriously.

 

Lance huffs an exasperated laugh at his expression, rolls his bright blue eyes, and hands him his share of the leftovers, “Okay now can Shiro the Hero please let me monopolize my friend again? I have more to tell him that your heroic ears can’t handle.”

 

Shiro agrees and is nearly herded out of the kitchen, but before they rejoin Keith he turns back and whispers as seriously as he can, “I meant it. Anything and everything I can do for them, anything at all.”

 

Lance snorts and pushes at his broad back to hurry him, which only works because Shiro allows it. “Yeah, yeah, get StarSinger to come to Maggie’s birthday and I’ll believe you.”

 

Goodbyes are short and sweet, they exchange numbers FINALLY!! Lance only pantomimes gagging once, and then Shiro is on his way, head still reeling with thoughts of his mechanic/Angel/friend/something-more-?

 

On the drive home Shiro is nearly buoyant with glee, and if he hadn’t brought his personal car he probably would have flown home and left Matt to go fetch it while he flew a few loops in the air just to get the energy out. As it was, when he gets home and is shut safely in the confines of his too big apartment, he’s actually grateful for the space for once because he can run even at just a quarter-speed around it a few times.

 

He comes to a sudden halt in front of his mirror to catch his own grin, out of breath not from exertion but from the sheer strength of the emotion in his chest. 

 

After just a second’s glance though it however his whole world is turning on its head again, and he marches up almost robotically to the mirror. Looking back at him, Shiro’s face which had been pale, scraped and clawed was now perfectly healed over and glowing. His pre-existing scars remained, but his new injuries from the past week were just… gone. 

 

Foregoing his holo-phone, Shiro calls Matt directly from the com-link in his prosthetic arm, the one they use on missions or during emergencies.

 

Matt picks up on the first ring, an edge to his voice that peeks through the robotic lilt of FoxFace’s mask. “This better be an emergency, what’s wrong?”

 

“Matt, I think I have a new ability?” Shiro’s voice sounds strange even to his own ears, floaty with disbelief. He knows Matt only likes to use their codenames on this line, but he feels raw with the revelation, vulnerable.

 

“You think? You haven’t had a new ability rise in 5 years.”

 

“I know but, Matt, everything from the missions this week… It’s gone, it’s all healed.”

 

There’s a moment of empty static, the elation Shiro had felt earlier falling way to unease. They still don’t know everything that was done to his body, they don’t know- there’s still more-

 

“Come to HQ, NOW. I’ve got you, Takashi.”

Notes:

Nino Lance enters the arena! He’s from a family with a lot of siblings, so I wanted him to reflect that chaotic back and forth, up and down, no one hurts you but me! pattern that my sisters follow too. Like a sour patch kid! First they’re sour, then they’re sweet. Also introducing an oc (kinda) that would tie our dynamic duo together, with more to come!

Notes:

I had a dream where I was a really buff superhero who fell into the lap of an adorable little girl and her hot single mom so then this happened lol ✌️