Shiro shuts the door to his apartment behind him with a sense of finality and peace. He resists the urge to collapse back against it, slide to the floor, and spend the night there.
It’s a near thing.
He leaves his suitcase by the door and toes off his dress shoes to the sound of paws thumping to the ground from somewhere down the hall, and a smile curls at Shiro’s lips. Loosening his tie, Shiro moves into the kitchen, flicking the light above the sink on as Black slinks out of the shadows.
“Hey, girl,” he says. Ignoring the fact that he’s wearing a suit jacket and one of his best button down, Shiro bends and picks her up, cradling the huge cat in his arms as she immediately starts purring. “I missed you, too. Did Keith take good care of you while I was gone?”
There’s no question about it; every time Shiro returns from a trip, usually a teaching conference but occasionally somewhere more exciting, Keith somehow manages to leave the apartment cleaner and more organized than he found it. One memorable time, Shiro reached for the bottle opener in the drawer it was supposed to live in, pulled it out, and only realized then that he lost it three weeks ago, and he definitely had checked the drawer multiple times.
Keith never owns up to any of it.
Black bumps her cheek against Shiro’s chin, her soft fur catching on the edge of his day-old stubble, and he soothes her with a finger under her ear.
A massive yawn cracks his jaw. “Straight to bed, I think,” Shiro says, rueful.
As if on cue, Black squirms away and starts for the hallway. Shiro follows slowly, draping his jacket over the corner of Keith’s–no, the armchair.
It’ll be nice to see him tomorrow.
Shiro untucks his shirt and starts unfastening the buttons one by one. This is one of those nights he crawls into bed wearing nothing but his underwear, weary from too much exertion in front of too many people, and the only person he could stand to look at right now isn’t here. Shiro takes off his tie.
Finding him is like a fever dream, then, when Shiro nudges his half open bedroom door, confused by the soft lamplight spilling out of it when Keith is normally so fastidious about how he leaves Shiro’s apartment.
Shiro stops in his tracks. His breath catches, his heart slams once, twice, three times, and the tie slips from his fingers to the ground.
It’s just–this flash of a whole other life tears through his head, one where this sight doesn’t strike Shiro dumb and still the moment he lays eyes on it, and he yearns.
Black jumps up onto the bed, circling twice and curling up in what must be the crook of Keith’s knees, his shape obscured under the afghan pulled up from the bottom of Shiro’s bed. Shiro’s brain stutters on the most inane thing–that the soft blanket, his favorite, is hand knitted by his aunt for him, that it’s an inexpert project plagued by the occasional too big hole in the needlework, and Keith has a finger poking out through one of them.
Shiro has to catch himself on the doorframe, suddenly weak in the knees.
It’s Keith, curled on his side in the middle of Shiro’s king size bed–too big for one person, all his friends had teased when he bought it, but it’s the first bed he ever owned that his feet didn’t have to hang off the edge of.
It dwarfs Keith.
The dark red blanket is pulled up to his chin, leaving only one finger, a sleeping face, and a messy head of hair exposed. Shiro wants him exactly like this always, so much that he can’t stand it. He wants to come home at the end of the day from school with his shoulders aching and throat tired from teaching and find Keith sprawled lengthwise across a bed that belongs to both of them, on the phone scheduling an annual vet appointment for their cat. He wants Keith to smile at him when he appears in the doorway, big enough to show his teeth, and tip the phone receiver away from his mouth long enough for Shiro to press a soft, quick kiss on his lips, the kind that only comes with love that has turned to domestic comfort.
He wants Keith, and–and something more, something that’s even harder to admit to himself. But he can see it, can imagine a longer hallway with more bedrooms, the reality so tangible for a moment that he almost cries out.
It’s too much.
Shiro drinks in the sight, guilty and wanting, his desire so innocent that it shouldn’t be called that at all.
I want this, he thinks, and he can’t believe in it as even a possibility.
Trance-like, he crosses the floorboards, and it’s a sweet relief paired with a burning pain to touch Keith’s shoulder and watch his face unfurl into consciousness.
“Shiro. Hey,” Keith says, tired face smiling up at him. He seems to remember where he is, then, and his cheeks flush red. “Sorry, I was just—”
“No,” Shiro says, desperate and too forceful, but something huge is clawing its way up his throat and threatening to tear them both apart. Keith blinks. “It’s fine. It’s late, you should just stay.”
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” Keith says, still protesting.
“I’m sure you were tired.” Shiro’s tongue is twisted and numbed in his mouth, but he can’t have Keith leave him, not now, not after this.
A revelation.
“Just sleep,” Shiro whispers. His fingers brush Keith’s hair off his forehead without his permission, and Keith’s eyelids flutter. How does he flay Shiro open like this, make him raw in the face of such guileless rest? It’s torture and benediction all at once.
“Can I?” Keith whispers, eyes already shut.
“Of course,” Shiro says. Fingertips on Keith’s cheek, sweet as the ink of his lashes brushing the skin under his eyes. “Of course, Keith.”
i saw some ppl talk abt keith being afraid of shiro stopping breathing & i got some Bigass Feelings abt that & also some bigass feelings abt cuddling so
serenbach86 