(Not yet, anyway.)
He doesn’t touch him, either. Doesn’t say a word. Just looks, looks at Keith’s face in the golden Arizona sunshine, and remembers.
Keith’s changed, when he wasn’t there to see.
Shiro doesn’t ask how he knew, because he’s never met anyone who has quite as much faith in him as Keith has. That doesn’t change.
Even when Shiro’s blade is to Keith’s throat, that doesn’t change, even if it should.
“I should have kissed him back,” Shiro says to the stars. “I would have. If he’d let me. But he was young. Scared. So was I. He didn’t have a reason to be afraid of me then. But now...now, he’s fighting me to the death.”
He was afraid of disappointing him.
He was afraid of losing him again, for good.
He was afraid of forgetting him, and of being forgotten by him.
So when Keith chooses Shiro and lets go, it isn’t really a choice at all.
But Shiro is tired of being feared. He is tired of being alone, too.
So instead Shiro says, “I missed you.”
Shiro starts forward & this time Keith is the one who flinches.
Keith’s face crumples. “But you —”
Shiro reaches out. He touches Keith’s scarred face. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m not leaving you, Keith.”
Keith clings to his wrist with both hands, tight.
Shiro is quiet. Then he slides his hand to hold Keith’s jaw, to frame it with fingers long-lost, and says, “I was your first kiss.”
“I love you too,” Shiro says, and kisses him.
The darkness around them bursts into brilliant supernovae.
Keith’s eyes burn and glow to his very core. “You were my only kiss. First and - and last.”
Keith tilts his head, softly bewildered. “Aren’t we dead?”
Shiro smiles, bright as an event horizon. “Do you think I would let the man I loved die? You didn’t give up on me. I’m not giving up on us, Keith.”
There is comfort in the darkness. The Black Paladins welcome it, for they are together, and that is all that matters.
But they make sense. Shiro and Keith. In love. Inseparable.
The Black Lion hums, welcoming them home.
the end 💖