bakerstreet | thursday pic prompt

[ a moment drags out -- swallows a second, a third. but he looks down at last; his shoulders twitch once in the universal sullen language for right, fine, whatever. not even space academy could remake him, apparently, the last of the garrison's dutiful little obeisances scrubbed off with the sway of the stream and the ache in his throat.

( what'd happened out there? how'd he learned to move like that, crossing from water to sand like a lash? could it happen again in voltron? in an empty hall? )

the flask's still dark in his grip -- clanks against a knee as he sits up a little. blinking, keith stares at its metal, sets it aside. more little distractions and delays. ]

Are you okay?

[ it isn't a real question. but then, it's not like he has the words to piece together a better one. ]

[ it's no resounding agreement, but it'll do.

his gaze flicks down to the dull sound of metal against sheathed bone. he can see his own shadowy reflection in the flask's surface, distorted by the fire, by the distance between them.

it used to be so easy to talk to keith. garrison work, sims, shitty instructors, new breakthroughs in flight technology, the terrible slop served in the cafeteria. now he has to weigh each word before delivery, thinking about what he's willing to reveal. sometimes he's certain that something inside of him has been charred black: one day he'll breathe out and smoke will pour from his nostrils. ]

I'm out under the stars with a buddy of mine.

[ the smile flickers back into being. shiro scuffs a hand through his hair; leans back on his palms. there, in the eastern corner, the false cassiopeia. ]

It's not all bad.

[ he draws up a knee, rests his chin against the heel of his hand as he watches shiro settle. it's not a moment to smile -- and still reflex tugs a corner of his mouth, eases the sling of his shoulders. it's a corny sentiment, sure -- but familiar footing and all that. he's never been good at disguises, spinning subjects, makeshifting peace. it doesn't mean he can't spot an attempt to slide something under the rug. ]

I trust you.

[ it's a clumsy driftwood declaration -- doesn't fit a conversation that keeps battering itself against clusters of all the unsaid things, subjects they're leaving up to the inevitable team discussion to come.

even so. ]

Just so we're clear.

[ in the immediate aftermoments, it's almost as if shiro hasn't heard keith's declaration. he's still looking up at the stars, grounded in the present like he's never wanted to be. the grit under his hands, the breeze against his cheeks. the silvered sky.

keith's loyalty has been a boon on the battlefield, but here it's a stone chained to his ankle. saving a friend, one thing, forgetting his humanity in the process: another entirely.

it's not the questions that reminds shiro how young keith is. it's the trust.

maybe it would be kinder to accept it, but he won't make a liability of himself. ]

Trusting the unknown isn't what you were trained to do, Keith.

[ yet he looks calm, unruffled. as if it's a lifetime ago, and he's asking about keith's astrophysics homework. ]

You're smarter than that.

[ the fire leaps in place, yellow-white-yellow, stirring up sparks, swaying their shadows to and fro. he breathes, and tastes for a beat the faint acidic sting of rain in his teeth -- a coming storm, as promised, churning ready for some faraway hour.

in the interim, keith only shrugs again, a bare cool movement, nearly unseen. there's no real answer he can make to that -- it isn't, after all, an argument. shiro's right: he doesn't know. but it doesn't matter. trust isn't a switch, on and off and on again. it lives or it doesn't. ]

Should've trained me out of it while you had the chance.

[ that keith isn't frightened is no surprise, but he would have expected circumspection. wariness, if not outright rejection. the instinct to survive should have overridden all else.

but this is the same hothead who'd flown in to take on the leader of a ten thousand year old empire by his lonesome. maybe he'd been the stupid one, to expect anything less from keith.

he tilts away from the canvas of unfamiliar sky above him, looking instead to the one familiarity amongst all of this. keith's hair has begun to dry; his bangs lift off his face in unruly curls. it's enough to add truth to shiro's smile. ]

Yeah? Well, it goes both ways.

[ it's not a thank you, but it's the closest keith's going to get from him. ]

That's -

[ the rest of it catches in his teeth, syllables ground to dust as he fishes for the right thing to say. i trust you, he'd said, when what he'd meant was i know you, despite all the facts laid out, the weighted silences that'd dogged them since they'd settled down to dry. it's a surety built on old awful habit, arrogance, instinct.

it's one thing to offer something like that, another to take it gracefully in turn.

words, words, words. he rumples back his hair in a useless, restless sweep -- contrarily, it springs up again, all ruffles with a single outraged tuft sticking near-upright like a particularly fat antenna. keith's already looking elsewhere, fingers splayed along his cheek as he studies every scrap of ash building along the base of the fire. ]

I think you're just going overboard now.

[ at the very least, with saying it out loud. but it comes out mostly dry. ]

[ that startles a laugh from shiro, quiet enough that it's barely audible over the whispering fire. the state of keith's hair - making him look less like the freedom fighter circumstance has wrought, and more like the teenager that he is - is only half of it.

keith's hair, just as stubborn as keith himself.

he's fortunate, he thinks, though all the ugliest parts of him rail at the thought. with what he's done for the preservation of his own life, for that of his species. but that's not a conversation that belongs here, with the strange wet ozone burning his lungs, with someone who trusts him sitting vulnerable just a moment away. ]

What, you can dish it but you can't take it?

[ keith makes an endearing picture. embarrassed but unafraid. shiro doesn't have to voice that thought: he knows it shows in his face. ]

. . . is this really what you want to be talking about?

[ a sensible remark -- the rain's going to come (sooner or later), and they're going to have to duck into their lions and fall asleep to the dim rattle of metal, water lashing glass. space's good for a lot of things, but constellation-counting isn't one. there's something about the view from planetside: dirt scraping dry beneath the shift of a heel, all the grit and grey of smog torn out of the air, stars dusted across the arching sky -- like nothing else he knows.

which may as well be: i can take it. i just took it. go away. he spares a look at shiro eventually, a beetle-browed glower that he can't quite fix in place. ]

You're gonna miss Orion.

[ even the glower is endearing; for all that keith has proven himself time and again on the battlefield, in the training rooms, on the tactics console, it's near-impossible to take his irritation seriously. not least because his trust is an unwarranted thing.

they'd buried that alien corpse together, after all. shiro's nails still burn from the grit lodged too deeply.

he allows the change in topic without further comment, allowing his knowing look to speak for him. ]

First the weather, now the stars, hm?

[ all right, without too much comment. his voice is low and warm, not teasing so much as quietly amused.

but he obligingly tilts back. orion, earth's brightest constellation, yet here it's little more than white noise.

living amongst the stars is a wonder in and of itself, but there's nothing like feeling the pinprick ache of isolation when looking up to the scatter of white bulletholes across the sky. ]

[ if it bothers him, he gives no sign -- doesn't pick at his nails or fidget. maybe that's just good luck -- after all, he'd gotten to scrub it out: muck and scratches, the sucker-red rings where a sting tore open his flightsuit.

maybe it's an uglier resolve -- thinking like a paladin. a war's war. a good soldier doesn't lose sleep over history, inevitabilities. ]

Which one's. . .

[ that's elsewhere, though, the shadow of a memory and another time. here and now he lifts his hand, half-sketches a bow across the sky, what might be an an arm outstretched -- but that's not quite the right angle, and the arc of tiny lights's too thinly spread. he's frowning again, at an uncooperative spray of stars.

the deepest secret (that everyone knows) -- it was only the flying that keith ever liked about pilotwork. astrophysics, cosmology, rote dull facts on a string, sure -- but here beneath the distant rush of an alien tide, it's hard to piece the old diagrams back together. ]

[ shiro had loved history before he'd ever loved the stars. there's one thing that dusty old tomes teach their benefactors, lessons imparted in the underground library stacks reminiscent of an earlier age: good soldiers don't exist.

he'd been an idealist, prior to all of this. only recently has the axis turned for him. he slides closer, careful to skirt the circle of flames. ]

Not quite. There.

[ is shiro's murmured reply, dragging his finger across the faraway cluster of stars. ]

About six o'clock from where it ought to be. You can't see Meissa, Betelgeuse is blocking it out.

[ he's been charting the skies, adding to the ten-thousand-year-old data in the castle's memory banks. the starscape is unfamiliar, but not as unfamiliar as it could be. ]

See it?

[ he doesn't see it.

or rather, it takes a moment -- takes shiro's careful hand to coax out the shape: the hourglass from bellatrix to saith twisted thin, the faint double-bright burning of betelgeuse and (just maybe) a smaller star wheeled behind it. his hand scrapes the dirt, bracing him, as he leans over a little to squint into the sky, like it's proximity that's his problem. ]

He's lost weight.

[ a beat. ]

And his head.

Mm.

[ the inscrutable stars. shiro's gaze flicks the figure-eight of the familiar made unfamiliar; blinks away pinprick afterimage. they know now that the red giant betelgeuse expands in supernova eventuality, the heart of a system cleared out by the galra thousands of years ago. ]

Sounds like someone I know.

[ a teasing elbow pressed to keith's side. just a heartbeat pressure, falling away in the next moment. ]

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