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It was such a stupid fight.
That was all Keith could think about as the wind whipped past him at thirty miles per hour.
Such a stupid, stupid fucking fight.
It was noon, the sun high and bright, the glare and wind and dust stinging his eyes. He’d forgotten his goggles in his rush to get away and he was regretting it, but no way was he going back. Not until he could think about it without feeling like he was going to cry like a little kid.
He didn’t even know what had started it. Keith invited him to race the hovers, but Shiro had to go to a Kerberos meeting.He’d made some joke about Kerberos eating away Shiro’s time, something so innocuous he didn’t think twice, didn’t even remember exactly what he’d said, but for some reason that was enough to make Shiro snap.
Keith’s throat tightened again. He gunned the engine, squinting to see ahead of him, trying so hard not to think about it. About how Shiro’s expression had twisted, how his eyes had sparked, how his fists curled at his sides– and how cold had spilled down Keith’s spine when he saw it.
He flipped the hover sideways for a moment to dodge a cactus and came back down with a hard thump. He really should’ve seen this coming, just like that cactus. This was how it always happened– he said something, did something, and everything fell to pieces. The only difference was that he’d been stupid enough to think it wouldn’t happen this time. He’d flown head first into that metaphorical cactus.
Keith’s hands were shaking, making the hover wobble, and he sped up again to compensate. He probably shouldn’t be going this fast with how blurry everything was from the tears, but what did it matter? He always made everything worse. Especially when he was angry. He didn’t remember what he’d yelled back at Shiro. All he remembered was seeing Shiro’s eyes flare and the adrenaline surge when he flipped from fight to flight.
And now he was here, alone in the desert, with no idea what he was going to do if he went back and Shiro didn’t want him anymore.
I just need to calm down, he tried to reason with himself as he dodged another rocky outcropping. I just need to take a break, calm down, and when I go back we can talk it out. That’s how Shiro liked to do things. At least, that’s how Keith thought he liked to do things. He had also thought that Shiro wouldn’t snap at him out of nowhere like so many people had before. Maybe Keith didn’t know jack shit.
Another pile of rocks jumped into Keith’s periphery. He jerked the hover sideways again. This time he didn’t go far enough.
His whole body jarred when the wing clipped the rock. The landscape turned into a brown blur as the hover spun around and around and around, Keith clinging to the handlebars with all his strength. Somewhere around the fifth spin he threw his weight sideways to balance it out, but this time he leaned too far, and the other wing smashed into the ground.
Somehow he managed to keep his grip on the bike, which turned out to be a mistake. His side hit the ground first, then his leg, and the weight of the metal came down on his shin with a sickening crack!
Keith let out a hoarse shout at the bright burst of pain and finally lost his hold. He rolled through the scant brush, once, twice, a third time, before his back slammed against another rock and knocked the breath out of his lungs.
A tinny ring filled his ears. Dust was thick in the air. His vision was tan and black spots. The sun beat down on him, yet Keith was shivering. The only warmth he felt was slowly spreading underneath his side where he’d hit the ground before the hover.
After a few seconds the shock began to fade, the ringing dimming, the dots of his vision widening again, and pain came forward to replace it. Another raspy sound escaped before he could stop it, and when he bit down on his lip to cut it off, he tasted copper.
He… he crashed the hover. He crashed the Garrison’s hover.
Keith jolted and tried to scramble back to his feet, only to crumble back to the ground when his leg screamed at him. As soon as he looked down at it he knew it was broken, because that was just his freaking luck, and he let his head fall back into the dust with a muttered curse that would’ve gotten him a scolding from Shiro. Or maybe something worse, now. Especially since he wrecked the Garrison’s hoverbike.
He allowed himself a couple of panting breaths before lifting his head again. The hover was a mangled wreck of metal, one wing crumpled up into an almost perfect circle, the other dangling by a few wires. The nose was smashed flatter than a sheet of paper.
Keith’s stomach twisted into knots. Even if he’d had two working legs he wouldn’t be able to fly that thing back.
With a shaking hand he groped over his hoodie, eventually finding the pocket that held his Garrison issue phone. The screen was smashed too, but it still lit up when he tapped it, and despite all of the glitching and flashing lights, he was able to find his way to his contacts list with a whopping two entries.
Keith paused with his thumb poised over the flickering call button. If Shiro had been mad at him before, he would be furious now. The kind of fury that could earn him another broken limb.
So instead he chose the first contact and held it near his ear, wary of getting glass stuck in him. As it rang his stomach twisted more and more, until he wasn’t even sure he wanted the call to be answered, but his gut still dropped when the recorded voice played.
“You’ve reached Adam at the Galaxy Garrison. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.” Beep.
Keith swallowed and cleared his throat. “Uh, hey, Adam, it’s Keith.” His voice was obviously trembling, and he paused to clear it again before continuing. “I, um– just call me back, please. Bye.” He set the phone down next to his head so that he would hear it ring. Adam didn’t like him all that much, but he wasn’t mean. He would help. Probably.
Closing his eyes against the sun, Keith tried his best to breathe, to stay calm. He would give Adam a few minutes to call him back.
But those minutes passed, and the pain in his leg was getting worse, and Adam didn’t call him back. Keith chewed his lip and told himself to be patient, to wait, and he managed it for fifteen minutes. Then he couldn’t take it anymore and made himself sit up.
His back ached, but nothing there felt broken, which was a relief. But his side was bloody, staining his hoodie and his jeans, and his leg–
Don’t think about it. Dwelling on the pain wasn’t going to help him right now. What he needed to focus on was getting a hold of someone, and if Adam wasn’t going to answer, there was only one other option.
Swallowing back the anxiety as best he could, he went back into his contacts and chose the other one.
The phone rang. And rang. And rang. Keith stuck one dusty knuckle between his teeth and gnawed at it as he waited. He didn’t want to be doing this, but it was the only way he’d be getting out of here.
His breath caught when he heard Shiro’s voice, but his heart quickly plummeted again.
“You have reached Takashi Shirogane. Please leave your name and message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Beep.
Nausea churned in his stomach as more chills swept over him, leaving goosebumps standing along his arms. He told himself it was fine, that Shiro probably just put his phone down somewhere and forgot like he was always doing. So he left his message and waited another fifteen minutes before trying again.
“You have reached Takashi Shirogane. Please leave your name and message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Beep.
It’s ok. He’s just busy. He’s always busy. Keith left another message, then made himself put his phone down and chewed on his knuckle. He didn’t want to use it too much– if he wound up being stuck out here for a while, he would need his phone alive for the GPS.
This time he waited another twenty minutes, according to the phone clock, before letting himself call again. The ringing seemed to go on forever, until:
“You have reached Takashi Shirogane. Please leave your name and message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Beep.
Keith slapped his hand against the dusty ground. He knew Shiro was mad at him, but he’d never thought he would be this petty. No, no, he was jumping to conclusions again. Shiro wouldn’t ignore him just because he was mad… probably. He was just busy, away from his phone, in a meeting or something.
Either way, he couldn’t stay sitting where he was. Sweat was sticking his hair to his forehead despite the chills, and his mouth was already starting to feel dry, his tongue tacky against the roof of his mouth. He had to get into shade. Conveniently enough there was some under the wreck of the hover, which wasn’t smoking or otherwise indicating it was going to explode. There was just one problem.
The hover was twenty feet away, and Keith’s leg was as broken as it was.
Well, he didn’t have a choice. He knew better than to try and stand, so instead he leaned onto his side, ignoring the sting, and dragged himself a few inches.
Another noise of pain squeaked past his teeth. His breath came fast, in and out so quickly he sucked in dust and started coughing. Jesus, it hurt. He’d had broken bones before, but it had been a while, and they had usually been fractures. His leg felt like it had snapped clean in two. At least the bone wasn’t sticking out.
After a second to rest, he repeated the motion. Again the pain flared and again he paused, just long enough for it to wane a bit before going again, gritting his teeth.
It took eons to make it into the shade of the hover. He collapsed onto his stomach, wracked with trembles, coated in cold sweat and his clothes caked with a muddy mixture of dust and blood. When he gathered the strength to pull his phone from his pocket, he found to his astonishment that it had taken him almost forty-five minutes to move twenty feet.
And neither Shiro nor Adam had called him back.
But surely Shiro would be done with whatever it was he was doing. Surely he had his phone in his pocket and just hadn’t thought to check it yet. He just needed to call him one more time.
Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Click.
“You have reached Takashi Shirogane. Please leave your name and message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Beep.
Ok, Shiro was pissed at him. Really, really pissed. But maybe Adam hadn’t heard about the fight yet. His phone still had 48% battery. He could try again.
This time he didn’t think before putting the phone to his ear. The shattered glass scraped against his cheek as he listened to it ring, and ring, and ring.
“You’ve reached Adam at the Galaxy Garrison. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.” Beep.
Keith squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could and dug his teeth into his lip. He couldn’t cry, he couldn’t waste the hydration. He forced a few tremulous breaths, only for the timer on the message to run out. The call hung up and Keith let the phone slide into his lap.
He should wait. Give them time to notice the voicemails. Conserve his battery. Eventually they would call him back. Shiro wouldn’t give him the cold shoulder forever.
Despite all of his own reassurances, dread solidified in his stomach.
It was 2:17 pm when Adam picked his phone up from the coffee table. His eyebrows rose at the notifications: two missed calls and two voicemails, all from Keith.
He sighed and shook his head. He probably forgot his keycard again and couldn’t get into his building or something. Well, he would just have to wait in the common room for a while– Adam had a class to teach in ten minutes and he wouldn’t be free again for a while.
Besides, he thought as he packed his bag for class, Shiro can always go rescue him. He thought it with just a hint of bitterness. Sometimes it felt like Takashi cared more about his protege and the Kerberos mission than his boyfriend.
He picked up his phone again, considered for a moment, then powered it down and tossed it into his bag. Couldn’t have it going off in class, after all.
Whatever Keith needs, Shiro will help him.
It had been hours. The light had gone from bright noon yellow to golden orange as the sun sank towards the top of the canyon. Keith lay in the dirt beneath the hover, head pillowed on his crossed arms, staring at the screen of his phone that still remained tauntingly dark and still. He’d tried a couple more calls, but none of them had been answered, and somewhere in the last hour or so he’d slipped into a haze.
His throat burned. A headache pounded in his skull, echoing the throbs of pain reverberating up from his leg. His thoughts were fuzzy. At least he was too dried out to be at risk of crying anymore.
He watched as the sun slowly descended. A breeze kicked up, not too cold, but enough to prompt the return of the goosebumps. Enough to rouse him, just a little, as the stars blinked into view.
Eventually Keith had to face the facts. Shiro wasn’t coming for him, and neither was Adam. Whether Shiro was just too angry to answer his phone, or just didn’t care, or was planning on shipping him back to the home once the Garrison personnel tracked him down, it didn’t really matter. The scent of blood would call in every predator in a mile radius.
He was on his own again. He got himself into this mess, and now he had to get himself out. Just like not-so-old times.
“Ok,” he muttered to himself. His voice cracked painfully, but he cleared his throat and forced himself up on his hands. “I can do this.”
He had to do this. But Jesus, his arms were already shaking.
First he moved his unbroken leg, forcing it up until he could get his weight onto his knee. He still had one working leg, so he figured he could hop along, and maybe eventually make it back to the Garrison… somehow. Not the best plan, but it was the best he had.
A plan that immediately fell to pieces as soon as he tried to move his other leg.
“Ah! Fuck!” The pain flared through his whole body, like it was all of him that was broken, and his muscles promptly gave up trying to hold him up. Keith collapsed back onto the ground, seething, aching, burning, shaking, and so, so alone.
“Come on,” he told himself, clenching his fists until his knuckles ached like the rest of him. “Get up. Get up.” He shoved against the earth with the determination of a rocket trying to break through the atmosphere, only for his leg to once again protest. “God damn it, stupid fucking leg!”
He should be able to fight through this! If he was so soft now that he could be stopped by a broken leg, maybe he deserved to die out here.
Maybe that’s why Shiro left me here.
Keith shoved that thought away. It might’ve been true, but it wouldn’t help him now. He couldn’t give up. He– he–
God, what was the point?
He slumped back down. He’d fought and clawed to survive his entire life, and for what? To be given hope just to have it taken away again? For people to promise him things and then leave him for dead? Shiro had promised never to give up on him, just like the last foster mother before the group home had promised not to hurt him, like his social worker had promised to find him a family, like his father had promised to come home.
Promises weren’t worth shit. And what was the point of surviving when all it got him was more of the same?
He pressed his cheek to the sand. That tinny sound was back, drowning out the whistle of the wind, and the sun disappeared completely behind the canyon walls.
Keith closed his eyes.
It was a stupid fight, and Shiro wasn’t proud of it.
In his defense, he was having a really, really bad day. His arm had been acting up all night, so he got no sleep. He had another fight with Adam that morning about the Kerberos mission. Then he had to sit through not one, not two, but three meetings where he had to prove over and over that he was fit to fly it.
So when Keith had caught up to him on his way to the planning session with Commander Holt and his son and asked him to go for a ride with him, Shiro had wanted, desperately, to say yes. To drive off into the desert and lose all of his troubles to the wind and the dust.
But he couldn’t. And Keith hadn’t really done anything wrong. Just made a joke, “Your fancy space mission is going to lose you your winning streak.”
On any other day Shiro would’ve just smirked and said something snarky back. But today. Today all of the frustration rose up, and before he could rein it in, it lashed out.
“Believe it or not, Keith, your endless sarcastic commentary can get pretty old sometimes.” What was even worse than the words was the tone– it sounded so acidic, so angry. Even worse than that? The way Keith’s face froze in shock, in hurt, and how he flinched.
Then the anger kicked in. He watched Keith’s hackles rise, watched him bare his teeth, like a dog that had just been kicked and backed into a corner, and felt the scathing words before Keith even spoke them.
“Fine. I hope Adam changes his mind about the launch.”
Keith couldn’t have known it, but that was exactly what the fight that morning had been about. The launch was still years away, but Adam refused to come, even just to say goodbye if his threats of leaving were serious, and with his grandparents dead Shiro had no one else to bring. The anger surged up in him again, and before he could wrestle it down, Keith had turned on his heel and stormed off.
Shiro should’ve gone after him. But he was already late, and the last thing he needed was to make anyone else in power think he couldn’t handle the mission. So he stalked away on his own path to the high security building.
The Kerberos mission details were top secret. Before he went in he had to put all of his personal devices in a locker and log them before going to the meeting room. Shiro did it with agitated distraction, and was happy to lose himself in the following seven hours of planning. For seven whole hours he didn’t have to think about Adam or Keith or even the whole social aspect of the launch. All he had to care about was schematics and flight plans and physics.
It was a relief, but he was still dead tired by the end of the meeting. Shiro trudged back to the lockers to get his things back, his arm aching and weak, and shoved his phone in his pocket without looking at it.
Outside he paused for a moment, just to breathe. The air had cooled since the sun had set, not long ago judging by the lingering light above the canyon, and a few stars had appeared far overhead. Shiro took his breath, let it out slow, and resigned himself to whatever situation awaited him back at his apartment. Then he finally took out his phone and looked at the screen.
His stomach dropped.
Missed calls. Voicemails. All from Keith, who never called unless he had to.
Swallowing to soothe his suddenly dry mouth, Shiro selected the first voicemail, from 12:44 that afternoon, and held the phone to his ear.
At first all he heard was raspy, heavy breathing. Then Keith spoke: “Hey, Shiro, it’s Keith. Um– I’m– will you call me back, please?” Not too alarming, really, but there was something in his voice, a tremble, that Shiro had never heard before. Heart in his throat, he went to the next message.
“Hey, it’s me again. Look, I– I know you’re probably mad, but will you please just call me back? It’s kind of important. Um, thanks.”
This message started with a strange thumping sound. “Shiro, it’s Keith, again. I know you’re pissed. I know, and I’m sorry for what I said. I’m sorry, ok? Please pick up your phone.”
Another message.
“Ok, you’re really, really pissed. I get it. I got the message, alright?” Keith sounded exhausted, wrung out– what had he been doing? “Just forget it. It’s ok, I’ll try Adam again. I’ll see you later.”
Adam? Again? None of this was making sense, and Shiro wasn’t liking any of it, not one bit.
There was a bigger time difference between that message and the next one. Keith had been trying to get a hold of him for hours. Shiro’s heart was racing, but still he played the next message. Better to know everything before going charging off.
“I’m really sorry, Shiro. I really, really don’t know what I did to make you this mad, and I’m really sorry that I keep bothering you, but I don’t know what else to do.” Keith took a deep, shuddering breath that sounded alarmingly like he was trying not to cry. Shiro had never seen him cry. “But I need y– I need you to answer. Please. I don’t know what you want me to say, but I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
That call was the last one, and it was from an hour and a half ago.
Obviously the first thing he did was try to call Keith back as he strode briskly towards the cadet dorms. The ringing seemed to drag on forever, and when it finally stopped, it wasn’t Keith’s voice he heard. Instead he got the automated voice for someone who hadn’t set up their voicemail yet.
“We’re sorry, but the owner of this line is not available. Please leave your message after the tone.”
Shiro hung up before the beep. His next call was to Adam.
“Hey, Takashi.” He sounded nonchalant, not like someone who had received the same harrowing messages as Shiro. “I already ate, so don’t worry about dinner.”
Shiro tried his best not to sound accusatory when he asked, “Has Keith called you today?”
“Yeah, he left a couple of messages, but that was a few hours ago. I thought you would help him with whatever it was.” His tone was a smidge annoyed at Shiro’s brusqueness. Shiro didn’t care.
“Did you listen to the messages?”
“No, I haven’t had time. Listen, we should talk about—”
“I think something happened to Keith.” Shiro was in sight of the dorms. “He left me a bunch of messages too, but I was in high security and couldn’t have my phone. Have you seen him today?”
“No, but he’s probably fine. He’s always running off.”
Shiro ground his molars together and just barely kept the frustration in this time. “I’m going to check the dorms. Please listen to his messages and let me know what they say.” With one hand he hung up before Adam could answer, while the other opened the door to the dorm building.
Keith’s room was on the third floor. Shiro took the stairs, knowing he could scale them faster than the elevator, and within a minute was keying in the override code to the door.
As he’d feared, the room was empty. The bed was still made from the morning, Keith’s backpack and his stuff still there, so he probably hadn’t run away. It was a thin comfort.
Shiro’s phone buzzed in his pocket. His heart leapt, only to plummet again when he saw Adam’s picture on the screen.
“I listened to the messages,” he said the moment Shiro answered. “There were only two. One of them just asked me to call him back, but the second one was just heavy breathing and wind, like he was outside.”
Something clicked in Shiro’s mind. “He asked me to go out on the hovers with him today.”
“Shit, do you think he crashed?”
A million worst case scenarios ran through his head and he couldn’t stomach any of them. Keith was a good pilot, but he was reckless. If he was out there somewhere…
“I’m going to check the hover logs,” said Shiro, voice tight despite his efforts to disguise it.
Adam’s reply surprised him. “I’ll meet you there and check out a rover. But if he’s out in the desert we’re going to need his phone GPS to find him.”
Shiro, halfway down the first flight of stairs already, had a plan for that. Officially only certain higher ups had access to the phone GPS signals. But that was only officially.
Shiro gave a quick thanks and goodbye to Adam with the agreement to meet outside the vehicle hangars. Then, as he rushed out of the dorm building, Shiro made yet another call.
“Matt, I need a favor.”
Shiro was the first to make it to the vehicle hangars. He could see from the front door that Keith’s usual bike was missing, and checking the logs confirmed it: Keith had checked the bike out just after noon, and hadn’t checked it back in.
He marched back outside just as a rover was pulling out of the garages across the way. Adam was behind the wheel, his expression grim, and as the rover pulled up to him he saw Matt sitting in the passenger seat, armed with a tablet and a solemn expression of his own.
“I got the signal,” Matt said without preamble. “About five miles out. Climb in.”
Shiro crammed himself into the backseat as quickly as he could, and before he even had time to put his seatbelt on, Adam was hitting the gas.
Dusk had settled into night while Shiro had been running around. Now the headlights cut through the shadows, a yellow glow softer than the silver shine of stars and the slowly rising moon. It was 7:36 pm, and Keith had been gone for more than seven hours. Shiro’s stomach hurt.
“Keep going west,” Matt instructed, squinting at his tablet screen.
“It’s going to take us off road,” responded Adam. Matt gave a half-hearted snort.
“He was on a bike. Of course it’s off road.”
Shiro couldn’t find it in himself to say anything. Aside from Matt’s instructions the atmosphere in the rover was tense and silent. Adam’s body held tension born from guilt, but with his own eating away at him, Shiro didn’t have the space to hold Adam’s, too.
The rover jarred as it left the road and headed into the open desert. Shiro hardly noticed. He shouldn’t have let Keith walk away. He should’ve said screw the meeting and made sure Keith knew he didn’t mean it. He shouldn’t have lashed out at Keith in the first place, he should’ve kept his temper in check, shouldn’t have let his frustration get the better of him, should’ve taken breaks during the meeting to check his phone, should’ve–
“We’re getting close. Turn left, into those rocks.”
Shiro recognized the landscape. It was a stretch of rocky earth and boulders that he and Keith liked to practice their quick turns in. Usually Keith was pretty good at it, but if he’d been distracted…
He kept his eyes peeled, looking for anything that didn’t belong. Matt kept rattling off instructions, guiding the rover through the rocks, until eventually Shiro spotted what he was looking for– a shadowy silhouette that didn’t match any of the rock formations he knew.
“There!” he cried, practically leaping into the front seat when he leaned forward to point through the windshield. “That one!”
Sure enough, when the rover’s headlights fell on the strange shape, the light glinted back off of dark metal. Metal that was twisted and broken into a mass unrecognizable as a hoverbike, and all three of them sucked in the same horrified breath.
Maybe it was just the shadows from the headlights or the fear pulsing in Shiro’s veins that made it look so terrible. Maybe all of the damage was superficial, maybe they would find Keith sitting cross-legged in the dirt, a snarky question on his tongue about why it had taken so long for them to find him.
Then he saw the smear of blood in the dirt.
Shiro threw off his seat belt and got out of the rover before Adam had even stopped it, hitting the ground with a hard stumble that nearly knocked him over.
“Takashi! Don’t just–”
“Wait for us!”
“Keith!” Shiro’s voice echoed across the desert, even above the rumble of the rover’s engine. “Keith, where are you?”
No response. Shiro took in the scene with frenzied eyes: the pile of wrecked hoverbike, the nauseating smear of blood, a cracked boulder, but no Keith.
“Look.” Matt pointed at a spot partially obscured by Shiro’s shadow. “Drag marks in the dust.”
Shiro’s heart rate doubled. There were predators roaming these canyons– mountain lions, coyotes, and god knows what else. Keith was scrappy and smart, but he was only fourteen and still scrawny, anything could’ve gotten to him–
A light hand landed on his shoulder. “Takashi?”
Shiro pushed Adam’s hand off and turned away, ready to scour the place for clues, only for it to return with intent.
“Takashi, you’re shaking.”
“I’m fine. We need to find Keith.” Even as he said it he knew Adam wouldn’t listen, and he was right. Instead of letting go Adam grabbed his other shoulder, forcing Shiro to face him.
“You need to take a deep breath,” he said, with an evenness that Shiro both envied and despised. “You need to be thinking clearly.”
As much as he hated it, Adam was right. So Shiro forced himself to stop, forced himself to breathe, to listen to the rumble of the rover and the whisper of the wind. The things he told Keith to do when he was spooked. Like he had been when Shiro had snapped at him like an absolute–
Matt’s footsteps crunched through the dirt. Shiro kept up his controlled breaths, but he watched over Adam’s shoulder as Matt moved past them, squinting at the marks on the ground.
Adam followed his gaze and frowned. “What are you looking at?”
“The marks ended at that boulder,” Matt answered without looking up. “He was out here all afternoon, right? So maybe…” Having reached the wreck, Matt crouched down and craned his head, only to shake it in annoyance. “I can’t see anything, it’s too dark.”
Shiro pulled away from Adam’s hands. Matt made room for him to kneel down, and Shiro pulled his phone from his pocket to use as a flashlight.
The wreck was surprisingly deep. The bike had twisted into an archlike shape, creating a shadowy alcove in the center, just the right size for a kid to curl up in.
At the mouth of the arch lay a pale, still hand.
Matt yelped when Shiro suddenly tossed his phone at him and dove headfirst into the opening. For a split second terror gripped him– what if they were too late– until he grabbed hold of that hand and felt the warmth of life, the thrum of a pulse in the fingertips. Shiro could’ve cried with relief.
Instead he gasped, “He’s here!” Gingerly, he felt his way up the skinny arm to a shoulder, and as gently as he could, began to pull.
Keith was dead weight, clearly unconscious, so Shiro nearly jumped out of his skin when Keith let out a pained groan as he was moved. Heart pounding fast again, he pulled Keith out and into the light as quickly as he could.
The kid was a mess. He was caked in dust, his hair matted with sweat, his jeans and hoodie dark with dirt and blood, and his leg–
“Shit,” Matt hissed through his teeth as he cast the flashlight over Keith’s body. “His leg’s not sitting right.”
“Probably broken,” Adam agreed.
For a moment Shiro just sat there, cradling Keith’s head in his lap as his emotions ripped through him like a hurricane. There was relief in there somewhere, blessings being counted that Keith hadn’t been dragged off by a mountain lion and hadn’t tried for the cliff trick that day, but it was being drowned out by the guilt. Keith had been out here for seven hours, through the heat of the day, injured and alone, all the while thinking Shiro had abandoned him out of anger.
Then he took another deep breath, packed his feelings away, and looked up. “We need to get him back. Matt, will you call the infirmary and tell them we’re coming?”
Matt immediately nodded and stepped away, using Shiro’s phone to make the call. Adam took his place.
“Do you need help lifting him?”
Shiro shook his head. After a bit of manhandling he got a decent grip on Keith, but as soon as he stood up another sound punched out of Keith’s lungs.
“I know,” Shiro murmured quietly to him as he and Adam returned to the rover. “I know, I’m sorry.”
He settled into the back with Keith. Instead of laying him down and risking more jostling, Shiro kept Keith’s head laying on his shoulder and kept him in his arms. He looked even worse up close. Too pale, lips cracked and dry, a touch of sunburn across his cheeks. Shiro ran his hand through Keith’s hair, tugging through the matts, and his fingers came back muddy. A second pass produced a burr that stuck eagerly to the pad of Shiro’s thumb. He flicked it away without a second thought.
Adam and Matt climbed into the rover. Matt was still on the phone, rattling off information to whichever Garrison official was on the other end, while Adam put the rover back in drive and steered them back in the right direction. He drove gingerly, going slowly and doing his best not to shake Keith too much.
Matt hung up the phone just as they got back onto the dirt road. “They know we’re coming. My dad is going to meet us there.”
“What about Iverson?” asked Shiro. Technically Iverson was in charge of the cadets, he would be the one to question Keith about the wrecked bike, which was absolutely the last thing Keith needed to deal with right now. To his relief Matt shook his head as he passed Shiro’s phone back to him.
“No Iverson. Not until tomorrow.”
Good enough. Hopefully by then Shiro would be able to apologize.
With the terrifying part over, Shiro’s focus began to drift. His eyes wandered to the window; the desert was eerie at night, all jagged angles and hard shadows, bathed in silver moonlight. A pair of eyes glinted in the underbrush, just for a moment, before vanishing.
A tiny murmur dragged him back to reality. At first he thought it was just another unconscious sound of pain as they jolted over the rocky road. But when he looked down Keith’s eyes were open, staring at him in glazed confusion, and Shiro’s throat tightened up again.
“Hey,” he managed to choke out. “Welcome back.”
“Is he awake?” Adam asked from the driver’s seat. Matt twisted around, a bright grin splitting his face, but for a long moment Keith didn’t react to any of them. He just… stared.
“Keith?” Gently, so gently, he brushed Keith’s bangs out of his eyes. “Are you with us?”
Keith blinked and opened his mouth, but the only thing that came out was a hoarse cough. Shiro shifted his arm, helping Keith sit more upright, and held him there until the fit died down, ignoring how the muscles in his arm protested and his bracelet chimed in warning. When it was over Keith slumped against Shiro’s chest again, his face pale and exhausted. Yet he still managed to croak out a few words.
“I didn’t– think you were coming.”
Matt’s happy expression followed the path of Shiro’s stomach, dropping like a stone, and Keith’s face turned blurry when tears clouded Shiro’s vision. Apologies were primed on the tip of his tongue, but now wasn’t the time for that discussion– Keith was barely conscious.
Instead he ran his hand through Keith’s hair again, this time catching a cactus spine with his fingernail and dragging it free. “It’s ok. We’re on our way back to the Garrison. We’ll get you all fixed up.”
Keith’s eyelids sagged. “Thought you were mad at me.”
Fuck.
Matt’s eyes widened before he quickly turned back around to face the windshield. Through sheer force of will Shiro kept his breath even and the tears held back, though he couldn’t disguise how his voice shook when he answered, “No, otouto. I’m not mad at you.”
“But– but I–” He was interrupted by another cough and the flare of light through the windows as they rolled back onto Garrison property.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Shiro promised. “We’re almost to the infirmary. Try to relax, ok? You can go back to sleep if you want to.”
“Mmmm.” Keith’s eyes closed again far too easily, and within seconds his muscles went lax.
“I hope he doesn’t have a concussion,” Adam fretted as they pulled into the infirmary parking lot.
“Look, there’s my dad!”
Sure enough there was Sam, standing outside the infirmary, armed with a nurse and a gurney.
Shiro got out of the rover gingerly. Keith didn’t wake again, even when Shiro laid him on the gurney, even when he started rattling off everything he knew to the nurse, even when said nurse did a quick examination of his broken leg. His hand was limp and clammy when Shiro took it.
“We’ll need to do X-rays,” the nurse said, moving to the head of the gurney. Shiro instinctively made to follow, until the nurse paused and held out a hand to him. “I’m going to have to ask you to wait here, Captain Shirogane. You’ll be able to see him once the examination is complete.”
Shiro’s throat clicked when he swallowed, but he made himself nod. It was harder to make his hand release Keith’s, but he managed, and when the nurse wheeled the gurney away, he didn’t rush after them, no matter how badly he wanted to.
Instead he turned and sat down in one of the hard waiting room chairs. Matt stood near the infirmary door, conversing quietly with his father, while Adam sidled over to Shiro.
“Are you going to come home tonight?” he asked, not sitting down.
All at once the exhaustion hit like a ton of bricks. Shiro’s shoulders drooped as he braced his elbows on his knees, and all could muster in reply was a shake of the head. He couldn’t let Keith wake up alone, wondering if he was going to be thrown away again.
Thankfully Adam didn’t make it a fight. He just said, “Alright, I’ll see you in the morning,” and bent to give Shiro a peck on the cheek. Then he was gone.
Matt and Sam stayed a few minutes longer. Shiro could feel the glances being thrown in his direction, but he couldn’t find the energy to care. If this whole fiasco made them think he wasn’t fit for Kerberos, then so be it. Nothing he said would change their minds.
Still, he tensed when Sam broke away from his son and took the seat next to Shiro. But Sam didn’t say anything at first, just sat beside him in silence until Matt waved goodbye to them and slipped out of the infirmary. Then he leaned forward, mimicking Shiro’s pose, and spoke quietly, barely stirring the still air of the waiting room.
“You aren’t responsible for this.”
“Yes, I am,” Shiro answered, not even embarrassed by how his voice cracked. “I should’ve been out there with him. I should’ve been checking my phone during the meeting.”
“Accidents happen. Keith is a good rider– you couldn’t have known he was going to crash.”
Shiro just shook his head again. It wasn’t a freak accident, Keith had probably messed up because he was upset with Shiro, but he wasn’t about to air that dirty laundry in front of Sam. Keith wouldn’t want him to.
Sam, as though sensing that his words hadn’t helped, leaned back and casually crossed his legs. “Do you mind if I stick around?”
“I don’t mind.” Shiro’s leg was already bouncing, the same nervous stim that Keith had when he was studying for important tests. Hopefully his leg wouldn’t need surgery.
To Shiro’s relief, Sam didn’t pursue his previous line of conversation.
Together, they sat in silence.
Keith woke to starched white sheets and buzzing fluorescent lights. For a moment he just laid there, frowning in confusion, before he registered the weight on one of his legs and everything came rushing back.
He was in the Garrison infirmary, a cast on his leg and bandages plastered all over his side. He’d pissed off Shiro and wrecked a Garrison hoverbike. Iverson was probably filling out the expulsion paperwork that very minute, if he hadn’t done it already. But he should be counting his blessings– at least he wasn’t still out in the desert or getting gnawed on by a mountain lion. At least someone had cared enough to look for him.
Something moved in his periphery. Keith peeled his eyes away from the white paneled ceiling and was shocked to see a familiar figure in the chair next to his bed.
Shiro was asleep, resting his head on the mattress next to Keith’s elbow. He looked as exhausted as Keith felt, hair tousled and dust sticking to his jacket like he’d been out riding– had he been, or was he the one to find him in the wreck? Keith couldn’t remember. His thoughts were sluggish.
As he lay there, trying to make his synapses connect, Shiro stirred. He rolled his head to the side, lifted a hand to rub at his eyes, and Keith’s voice was stuck in his throat. It wasn’t until Shiro picked up his head fully that their eyes met.
For one terrible moment, Keith braced himself. Then a bright, baffling grin spread across Shiro’s face.
“Hey, Keith. Welcome back.”
He tried to answer, but all that came out was a croak and a cough, and Shiro’s smile gentled.
“Take it easy. You were pretty dehydrated, they just took the IV out a couple of hours ago. Here.” He retrieved a cup of water from the bedside table, and with his help Keith was able to sit up enough to gulp it down. His skin under the bandages felt tight, but the pain was dulled. They must’ve given him something. How nice of them.
“There,” said Shiro when the cup was empty, gently easing Keith back down against the pillow. “Better?”
Keith nodded, cleared his throat, and tried again. “What time is it?” His voice was raspy, quiet, but at least he could get words out.
Shiro checked his watch. “About nine a.m.”
Keith’s stomach clenched. He was supposed to have classes today– then again, if he was going to be expelled he supposed it didn’t matter.
As though reading his thoughts right off of his face, Shiro said, “You’ve been excused from classes. All you need to worry about right now is getting better.”
Ha. There were plenty of things for Keith to worry about.
“I’m sorry. About the hover.” And about a million other things, but one apology at a time.
But Shiro shook his head, absentmindedly reaching out to brush Keith’s dirty hair off of his forehead; Keith shuddered, half in confusion, half in fear. Why was Shiro being so nice to him? Shiro was nice to almost everyone, almost always, but Keith certainly didn’t deserve it.
“It was an accident.”
Like that had ever mattered.
Shiro’s smile, which had been growing smaller as the conversation went on, disappeared entirely. “I already talked to Iverson. The higher ups think that a broken leg is punishment enough.”
“But the bike– doesn’t someone have to pay for it?” Keith was tired, had never stopped being tired, but refused to follow the pull back to slumber until he knew what he was going to be waking up to.
To his surprise, Shiro huffed a little chuckle. “The Garrison is a military institution that teaches teenagers how to handle million-dollar equipment. Their insurance policy can handle a hoverbike, trust me.”
It was almost too good to be true. The only thing that kept Keith from thinking he was dreaming was the other worry lurking in the back of his mind, the image of Shiro’s face twisting in anger. There was no trace of that expression now, but Shiro was kind to a fault. Keith had no doubt that he could– and would– conceal his true emotions for the sake of an injured kid, even if that kid was the biggest fuck-up the Garrison had ever seen.
For a second he considered not bringing it up. For now, Shiro was acting like he still cared. Keith could take advantage, spend the time soaking up what comfort he could until the other shoe dropped, but it wouldn’t be genuine. He’d still be waiting for when the guillotine dropped its blade.
No. Better to get it over with.
“Shiro, about… what I said before…”
Shiro straightened up. Keith’s stomach did a somersault and the rest of the words vomited out of him as fast as he could make them go.
“I’m sorry about what I said. I really, really am. I swear I wasn’t trying to make you mad, I just suck at reading people, and I always say the wrong things, and I’m sorry.” Hopefully Shiro wouldn’t realize that Keith couldn’t even remember exactly what had been said.
Shiro let out a heavy breath. His hand moved in Keith’s periphery; his body processed it before his brain did and he flinched away, but Shiro didn’t try to chase him. He left his hand hanging a few inches in the air, and Keith was too much of a coward to look at his face, but when he spoke his voice was calm.
“Keith, I was never angry at you.”
Wait, what?
Keith’s eyes darted to Shiro’s face. He didn’t look angry, just solemn, and maybe a little guilty.
“Honestly, I should be the one apologizing to you. I was having a bad day, I was frustrated, and I snapped. But that isn’t an excuse– I shouldn’t be lashing out at people like that, especially not you. I’m sorry I scared you.”
Keith was so taken aback he didn’t even bother to contest the word ‘scared’. He’s heard the ‘I was just having a bad day’ line so often that usually the words rang hollow, but Shiro looked so sincere, so genuinely distressed, that Keith couldn’t find it in him to doubt. Or maybe he just wanted to believe that there was finally someone in his life that wasn’t out to hurt him on purpose. But one question remained.
“But… if you weren’t mad at me, then why didn’t you answer?”
Shiro gave an apologetic cringe. “The meeting I was on my way to was in the high security building. No phones allowed.”
“Oh.” Suddenly Keith felt like the biggest idiot on the face of the Earth. A big, pathetic idiot.
“Hey.” Shiro sat forward in his chair again, trying valiantly to catch Keith’s eyes even as Keith refused to meet his gaze. “None of that. You were hurt and scared and on your own. I don’t blame you for assuming the worst.”
“I wasn’t scared,” Keith muttered. They both knew it was a lie, but Shiro didn’t push the point.
“The point is, I meant it when I told you I wouldn’t give up on you. Just…” he trailed off. When Keith snuck a peek at his face, he was shocked by how Shiro’s smile trembled, how it was crumbling at the edges. He lifted his hand again and held it out to Keith. “Just don’t give up on me either, ok?”
For a second Keith’s throat was too tight to answer. Instead, he grabbed Shiro’s hand and squeezed until his knuckles turned white, clearing his throat until he could get the words out.
“I won’t. I promise.”
Shiro’s smile steadied, and he returned his other hand to carding through Keith’s hair.
“Thank you.”