Did a thing for the fic, Every Breath You Take by @arahir
!! also heard it was your birthday so ansjsks happy birthday!
anyway you write good and i love your works (the parkour fic changed my life omg) and I hope u had a great day!
Keith looks up from his magazine, frowning. “What?”
This has been weighing on him for a while. He has to ask. Shiro repeats, “How long are you going to live, Keith? Don’t the Galra live for thousands of years?”
“It might be a quintessence thing.” Keith shrugs. “I dunno.”
Shiro gestures to the photograph on the bedside table. “Well, what about Krolia? How old is she? Or Kolivan?”
Keith protests, “I can’t just ask them how old they are. That’s weird.”
“If you had to guess-“
“Shiro. I don’t know.”
“And what if you do live for a couple hundred years? A couple thousand?” Shiro leans forward. “What are you going to do?”
Keith blinks slowly, and when he bites his lip, Shiro can see the glint of one of his too-sharp canines. “Just…keep fighting, I guess. Stay with the Marmora until my human side puts me out of commission.” He pauses, and his face falls with what must be the realization of what Shiro’s been trying to say. “And move on, I guess. We’ll need new paladins eventually.” Something dark and worried and desperate crosses his face, and he holds his arms out to Shiro. “Come here.”
“Is it bad to want to grow old with you?” Shiro asks softly, climbing on top of the sheets and wrapping his arms around Keith. He places his head above Keith’s heart, listening to the steady beating of his heart. This heart will endure long after Shiro’s gone. Of course it will. It’s Keith’s heart, and he’s always been a survivor.
“No,” Keith replies, and he tangles his fingers in Shiro’s hair. “I…I want that too,” he admits. “We’ll figure something out. I promise.”
Keith has never broken a promise like this. It gives Shiro hope, somehow, that this will all work out.
“Hey M do you want to talk about royal AUs in any way, shape, or form?”
WHY YES, YES I DO, THANK YOU FOR ASKING.
So Keith, right? Even as a prince, I think he’s going to be stupidly well-trained as a fighter. Think Zuko only without fire. Like, hell yes Keith will be able to dual-wield swords and he will be awesome at it.
So I think he might chafe initially at having a bodyguard because he can take care of himself, thank you very much.
But here’s the thing: Shiro is just as good of a fighter as he is. Maybe even better in some respects.
Keith’s not going to lie, that’s a little bit of a turn-on. (Okay, a lot of a turn-on.)
So he gets to spar with his bodyguard and Shiro is physically imposing enough that many people who would wish harm on the prince take one look at him and decide they have somewhere else very important to be.
It certainly doesn’t help that Shiro is kind and thoughtful and encouraging and an absolute nerd with a terrible sense of humor that Keith nevertheless finds endlessly endearing.
So it’s no surprise that he starts caring for Shiro as…more. More than a bodyguard, more than a friend. Shiro becomes someone that Keith wants by his side always.
BUT THEN.
The rival kingdom attacks, and Shiro is sent to the border with the rest of the knights because they need every man they can get and he is a brilliant strategist and tactician. Keith hates watching him go and makes Shiro swear to come back to him. Shiro promises he’ll return. Keith wants to kiss him, but he doesn’t. But from the fleeting look Shiro gives him, he wonders if Shiro wants the same thing.
One month passes. Then two. It’s at the end of the third month that they finally get word: the battalion Shiro was with was captured by enemy soldiers. Everyone is presumed dead.
Keith doesn’t handle it well. Keith doesn’t handle it at all. He refuses to believe that Shiro is gone, that Shiro could ever be gone. Everybody at the castle learns very quickly not to mention that in front of the prince.
Nobody else believes him that Shiro could still be alive. Nobody else wants to help him. So Keith packs up a very few things, leaves a letter for his mother, and takes off in the dead of night to go find Shiro.
Even with his knowledge, it’s hard living on the road for weeks at a time. But Keith keeps at it, keeps traveling, keeps hidden–because no one can know the crown prince is traveling alone and heading right for enemy territory–and keeps his ears open.
Sure enough, he learns where the prisoners are being held, and sure enough, he finds them and finds Shiro. Shiro, with a new scar across his nose and a tattered knot where his right arm used to be, but it’s him and he’s alive and Keith has never been so grateful for anything in his life.
And it takes some doing, but Keith manages to free him and the rest of the prisoners and they make their way back to friendly territory. Shiro is delirious with fever and exhaustion and Keith practically has to carry him most of the way back to the castle, nursing Shiro as best he can with his rudimentary field medicine skills.
But they make it back safely, Shiro is whisked away to the healers, and Keith sits by his bed day and night and glares at anyone who tries to make him leave for any reason.
So he’s there when Shiro finally regains sense and consciousness, looks up at him with wondering eyes and whispers, “You found me.”
Keith kisses his hand. “I’ll always find you.”
Shiro gives him a small smile. “I’m supposed to be the one saving you.”
Keith breathes easier for the first time since he watched Shiro ride away. “We can trade.”
Maybe it’s not the most romantic to have their first kiss be while Shiro is still abed in the healers’ quarters, but for Keith, it’s perfect.
[extra] It was supposed to be a casual date but these two dorks wanted to impress each other. You best bet Shiro endlessly showered Keith in compliments
But Shiro does want to say it, because this scar is his fault. Even if it wasn’t him, not really him, it was this body. It was this hand. It was this face that looked down at Keith as he burned and charred Keith’s skin.
It was him, in almost every sense of the word.
“Don’t apologize. I would do it a thousand times over.”
It’s in the way that Keith looks at him, somewhere between desperation and exasperation, adoration and defeat, that makes up Shiro’s mind.
Instead, Shiro leans down, pressing his lips to the new scar, feeling Keith’s cool skin under his lips.
The silver chain around his neck is hanging loose against the red and
dirtied white of his paladin armor, a single silver tag hanging from
it, smeared red.
It’s weird, because the Garrison didn’t hand out dog tags to cadets. It’s weird because the last name isn’t his.
This idea has been hunting me for ages (since the day the fic, which I hope y’all read because it’s a must, was published), and you can pry the ‘pretend’ marriage trop and Jojo’s fics from my dying hands, so.
It’s a miracle they managed to find a mirror at all; Earth’s not known for its luxuries anymore. But the Garrison provides them with a nice room of their own, and Kolivan is dozing in an armchair by the window, and Keith sits in front of a mirror with Krolia behind him. She twirls their shared blade in her hand, running her fingers through his too-long hair.
“What if I cut it short?” she muses, and in the corner of Keith’s eye the knife flashes violet.
Keith raised his hands to cover his head with more speed than he’s ever mustered before. “No.”
She taps the flat of the blade lightly against his fingers where they’re tangled in his hair. “Keith. You’re tense.”
“Mom. You’re insane.”
Krolia snorts and sets the blade aside next to Keith, raising her hands to pry Keith’s away from his head. She tells him, “I wouldn’t actually do that. I was just thinking about how you’d look.” She hums a bit, still holding one of Keith’s hands, and meets his eyes in the mirror.
“Like Dad, maybe,” Keith offers, because of course that’s what she meant, and someone’s got to say it.
Her eyes go soft for a moment, and her thumb strokes idly along Keith’s wrist. “Maybe,” she says softly. Then she ruffles his hair with her other hand, just barely grazing him with the familiar scratch of her claws, and says, “But you’re Keith, and you’re very attached to this hair. How about a trim?”
Keith grins and sits back, handing the blade to Krolia over his shoulder. “Just like yours,” he orders, and in the mirror, Krolia smiles.
serenbach86 