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“Shiro.”
Shiro knew a contradiction when he saw one. The single word came soft, solid and sure but with the downy lightened edge that rendered Shiro’s emotions a tangible burst in his chest. He could go hearing his name spoken like that, in that voice, with that tone, every day for the rest of his life and continue to feel like his heart was buoyant at the sound of it. But the cushion of Keith’s voice belied something heavy here.
It contrasted dramatically with the blade he held in his hands.
Generally, Shiro had one of two reactions upon entering a room these days. One, look for threats. Two, look for Keith. The former usually won out in his day-to-day activities because it was often the more pressing of the two in any given situation Shiro found himself in. After a year of walking through doors on the other side of which likely laid danger and almost definitely did not lay Keith, he had formed a hard habit.
It was a rare blessing to be able to step through a door and bypass that first one, and go straight for the second. As the door slid behind him Shiro centered his awareness of the bedroom around Keith, zeroing in on the fall of his hair and the curve of his nose before spreading out from there. But his attention still snagged on the blade. Habit.
“Hey,” Shiro replied, matching Keith’s tone.
Everything else was in place, more or less. Right as he expected it to be. The lights were dimmed, which Keith seemed to prefer. There was his neat pile of day clothes in the corner, his boots standing at attention beside his bed, the scent of him subtle in the air, his bedsheets slightly rumpled. And Keith himself, natural and beautiful on the edge of his bed.
All that was the kind of thing that put Shiro instantly at ease. After a long day of battle it was a homecoming. After endless exhaustion it was rest. It wasn’t even what Keith held openly in his lap that made him pause before continuing further inside. Instead it was the atmosphere of the room, thick like with nebula clouds, like with starbirth. A little dense, a little choking, a little dark.
Maybe Shiro had been too quick to judge what he should look for first. He sat down beside Keith on the edge of the bed.
Keith leaned into him and raised his gaze to his face, expression blank and eyes searching, until Shiro bent and pressed an easy kiss against his lips. Seemingly satisfied, Keith pulled back and turned his attention into his lap again.
“You don’t know, huh,” Keith said, something wry darkening his words.
“Keith.” Shiro sighed. “I’m sorry. I should have trusted you more.”
Keith didn’t say anything. Shiro watched the charcoal-smudge shadow of his eyelashes on his cheek as his eyes roved over the blade, from its handle to its tip and back again. His fingers were on it too, tracing the flat of it, outlining the symbol on its hilt over and over. Like a tight knot’s strings tugged just the right way to loosen, something inside of Keith seemed to have resolved, just a little bit, at the confirmation of what he must have been expecting. Or maybe, perhaps, at the acceptance Shiro had offered him after the revelation, though Shiro didn’t like to flatter himself to think that his impact would be so great.
They’d already sorted that out anyway. Shiro had already told him that he’d love him no matter who his parents, grandparents, ancestors were. But these things don’t go away with a few well-said, well-placed words. Shiro’s kisses couldn’t erase the way Allura looked at Keith now, or the ignorant comments from the rest of the team, or the contradictory and intricate puzzle of loathing and curiosity and recent understanding that Keith felt towards the Galra as a whole. Of course Keith still had lingering feelings about the issue. Of course he still spent time pondering his heritage. His existence.
The blade, of course, was the physical embodiment of the problem, right from the beginning. By rejecting that in front of the Marmorites, Shiro had been rejecting that part of Keith.
“Can I see it?” Shiro asked.
Keith’s gaze flashed up to him, wary for a second, before carefully handing it over. Slowly, gingerly, Shiro let his fingers brush over Keith’s as he slipped both hands beneath it, the luxite cool against the flesh and scraping against the metal. Just from looking at it he could tell the edge was viciously sharp, though the blade wasn’t heavy. When he wrapped his hand around the hilt the grip was comfortable.
He took a careful breath in, soaking in its weight, its power, its significance, before handing it back to Keith, hilt first.
“Keith,” he said, his voice low, and rough to his own ears. “Use it on me.”
Keith’s eyes went instantly wide.
“What do you mean?” he asked, and his grip shifted, pulling the blade to the other side of his body as though using himself to stop it from coming into contact with Shiro.
“We’ve talked about it a little, right? Doing things like this,” Shiro replied, fighting down the way his stomach twisted, how it felt like something was creeping up his throat. “You seemed interested, but we don’t have to if you’re not—”
“I’m interested,” Keith said, his eyes dark. But then he bit his lip, and softened. “Are you sure you’re okay, though?” Something in his tone turned raw. “I don’t want to hurt you, Shiro. Not more than you want to be.”
Shiro reached out and took one of Keith’s hands, and rubbed gently across his knuckles. “I want to try,” he said. “And I trust you to stop if I need to.” He took a deep breath. “I think it would help me.”
Silently, Keith examined Shiro’s face, looking from his eyes to the set of his mouth and then back again. Shiro didn’t know what he was looking for. A crack in his resolve betrayed by his lips or the slant of his eyebrows, maybe, or an obvious sign of his confidence that this was in fact something he wanted. Shiro stayed still as he was studied.
“Me too,” murmured Keith. “I think it would help me too.”
Shiro nodded.
“Now?” Keith asked.
“If you want,” Shiro replied.
Contrary to Shiro’s expectations, Keith put the blade aside on the mattress. In a smooth, unselfconscious movement Keith slid over and slipped himself into Shiro’s lap. He took Shiro’s face between his rough hands and tilted it upwards, calloused pads of his thumbs running over his cheeks once, twice. He leaned in, brushed the sides of their noses against each other, breathed in the shuddering air that Shiro was breathing out. Their foreheads pressed together as Keith continued ghosting his thumbs along his skin, and Shiro let his gaze sink to Keith’s lips before his eyes, ever intense, ever fierce, drew him in again.
Shiro let Keith initiate the kiss. He let him lead it too, let him run one hand back into the short bristle of his hair while the other went to cup at his neck, fingers digging against his spine. Shiro opened his mouth for Keith’s tongue, rested his arms around Keith’s waist, and savored him. Kissing Keith was like a meteor streaking, fiery and intense, and it stoked the same kind of wild excitement in Shiro’s chest.
“Take this off,” said Keith as he pulled away, tongue gone from Shiro’s mouth, already yanking at the zipper of Shiro’s vest. Shiro shrugged it off his shoulders and then stripped off his shirt too, all under Keith’s unwavering stare.
A stare which next raked down Shiro’s torso. He knew what Keith was seeing: the crisscross of scars, raised white ridges not healed quite right, the patches of himself that were unrecognizable as human anymore. This entire ordeal would undoubtedly be more rewarding on pure, unmarred skin, Shiro thought with a frown as Keith bowed his head to press his lips against a particularly grotesque scar in the center of his chest. It was like Keith thought he could kiss it better.
Shiro pictured Keith’s own skin, speckled only here and there with a scar from a childhood fall, from a close call out in the desert, just the recent wound on his shoulder to prove that he was a soldier in the fight for the universe. Surely something like that, a complete unbroken surface, smooth and blank like a canvas begging to be used, would be better than Shiro’s body. He was already painted over with the ugly image of his past.
Shiro watched Keith carefully, head down, as Keith breathed feathery sighs against his chest.
“I’ll make my own marks on you,” Keith murmured.
Shiro’s breath caught, trapped somewhere between his lungs and his mouth. “Please,” he said.
Keith drew back and replaced his mouth with a hand, open palm centered over Shiro’s heart. He could probably feel the way the tempo of its beating had picked up into something violent and thunderous, but he made no comment on it as he leaned over and reached for the knife. He kept it in Shiro’s sight as he brought it between them, and held it harmlessly on both open palms.
With it separating their chests, so close to Shiro’s bare skin, Shiro felt a jolt of apprehension. It wasn’t fear. There was no way he could ever be afraid of Keith, not even armed with a weapon, not even planning to use that weapon on him. It was more a spark of sanity. An awareness that he was about to feel pain. That was probably natural. It passed quickly when Keith raised the blade in one hand and pricked his own finger with it, testing its point.
They both watched as blood beaded on the surface, the sphere of the droplet shiny and a dark, bold red. Just as it was about to break and drip down his finger, Keith brought it to his mouth and lapped it up with the pink tip of his tongue. Shiro’s eyes followed the motion, and his hands tightened on Keith’s hips.
“Where do you want it?” Keith asked, dropping his hand and surveying the expanse of Shiro’s chest.
“Anywhere,” Shiro replied, though he found he could barely raise his voice above a whisper.
Keith nodded once, resolutely, and smoothed his left hand across the width of Shiro’s body, just under his collarbone. Shiro’s skin sparked at the touch. He willed himself to relax, to allow himself to just exist. He reminded himself he could stop this at any time. There was nothing to be afraid of here. Not under Keith’s hands. Never under Keith’s hands. He focused on the sensation of Keith’s warm palm on him, centering, a reminder to breathe.
Keith raised the knife. He pressed the flat of it carefully against Shiro, and Shiro shivered at the contact. It was cold, almost icy, startlingly different after the heat of Keith.
“Ready?” Keith asked. His voice was quiet and his tone was even, calm.
Shiro met his eyes. “Yes,” he said, and willed it to be true.
Both their gazes dropped towards Shiro’s chest, and Keith angled the blade carefully, holding its point close to the skin on Shiro’s right side, but not touching. Shiro stopped breathing.
Steady, straight, and slow, Keith brought the point to Shiro’s skin, and sliced across it.
It took the same amount of time for Shiro’s lungs to kick back in for the pain to register, just as it took time for the blood to rise to the surface. It wasn’t anything more than a sting, a slight twinge, almost tickling in a strange and twisted way. Shiro had certainly felt much worse. It itched a little as the outline of the thin cut filled red with blood, and then began to spill out in small droplets.
Keith inhaled deeply, audibly, and hovered his fingers over the wound.
“Are you okay?” he asked, not tearing his eyes away from it.
“Yeah,” Shiro said, and rubbed his thumb against Keith’s thigh. The muscle was firm there but the skin gave beneath his touch when he pressed in, warm and thrumming with life. The motion kept him balanced, reminded him how real Keith was against him, even as things began to go fuzzy at the edges of his awareness from the sensation.
Not in a bad way. He felt like he could slip here into something comfortable and warm, instead of something harsh and dark. He was used to the tension of teetering at the edge a mental precipice, but never like what he could fall into below was as soft and forgiving as this.
He bled, he bled slow and bright rivulets of blood, but it was because of Keith. By Keith’s hands, under Keith’s eyes. Well-protected, well-cared for, nothing could harm him here. He was solid in Keith’s gaze, a real entity, present in this white-shaded moment and nowhere else. He existed as something breathing and living, not in the sharp violence of his memories, but here on Keith’s bed, here in Keith’s room, here on the Castle-ship. Here, here. A fluttering sigh strained the edge of the cut, deepening the burn by a centimeter.
Keith brought the blade up again. He showed no sign of uneasiness, of unsteadiness, as he rested it against Shiro’s chest. This time Shiro watched his face as he drew the blade across in one smooth, even motion. His eyes were sharp and clear, his eyebrows pulled down and his mouth in a firm, thin line, but he looked somehow untroubled. Like the weight of the universe was sliding off of his shoulders piece by piece. The slope of his posture was attentive but not tense.
He sat back a little once the cut began to bleed, and his mouth relaxed just enough to read comfort in it. His hand rose to rest against Shiro’s shoulder, so that his thumb brushed against the corner of the wound. His eyes traced over its length, from one end to the other and then back again.
Shiro looked around for his misplaced voice, and upon finding it, said, “You can touch it, if you want.”
With permission granted, Keith didn’t hesitate. Shiro had distantly assumed, with those words, that he would follow the line of it with his fingertips, trace its outer edges with the same careful hands that parted his skin in the first place. But all the air seemed to leave his lungs at once when Keith leaned forward and pressed his lips to the end of the red gash. It singed where he touched it, a sharp sting that kept Shiro anchored on this side of reality with a tenuous thread. The pain spread as Keith’s tongue slipped out and licked along the length of the cut, slowly tasting it.
When Keith raised his head again to look at Shiro, his lips were smeared with red.
“You’re hard,” he noted, shifting his hips forward as if to prove it.
“You are too,” Shiro replied. That earned him a heartstoppingly beautiful grin, stained dark. Shiro felt like he’d been punched in the gut, slowly, and gloriously.
“Take off your pants,” Keith said, moving to get off of him. “Lay down.”
Snap. Shiro’s hand shot out and snagged Keith’s wrist. Keith blinked at him once, twice, frozen in place, before something clicked and grief broke over his features.
“You don’t have to,” he said. “Don’t—”
“No, it’s fine,” Shiro said, his grip loosening, taking big deep breaths. His head was returning to him, if only a little, from wherever he had been. He gently maneuvered Keith aside so that he could drag his pants off his legs. “Just don’t stand up over me. Not with the blade.”
He added this silently to his list of future goals. Restraints, pain, and weapons were all things he and Keith had discussed exploring, gradually more and more solidly as their relationship progressed. Especially before Kerberos. But now Shiro could only handle them in small doses, in certain situations. He was determined to eventually write over all that had happened during his captivity with safer, happier memories, the palimpsest of his mind filled with warmth and pleasure and Keith. But in the meantime he had to be careful with himself.
Maybe one day they could breach that wall. Maybe one day even the idea of someone standing over him with a sharp object while he laid supine wouldn’t send his head into a dizzy spin, his vision blurring, his heart pounding uncomfortably fast and his muscles seizing up. Maybe one day he wouldn’t need Keith to put the blade aside and pet through his hair at the very mention of that, just to keep himself bound to the moment.
That day wasn’t today. He laid back on the mattress but let himself relax into Keith’s fingers until the scratch of his nails against his scalp settled him. He raised his arms to remind himself that he could, bent his legs at the knee to reassure himself they weren’t bolted down.
“I’m okay,” he said.
Keith was careful to keep himself low, unthreatening, blade held loose and easy, as he kneeled beside Shiro on the bed. “Tell me if you want to stop.”
The blade was dark in his hand as he raised it just enough to examine its wet edge. Shiro put his hand on Keith’s leg to hold himself down. He managed to find Keith’s pulse in the space above his knee and counted the pounding of his blood. In response Keith reached out to rub circles on Shiro’s hip, but didn’t take his eyes off of the blade, turning it in the light so that he could watch it glint.
“Does it feel good?” he asked, voice quiet and easy, coaxing Shiro back into that hazy, gentle place. Shiro focused on letting his fists unclench, his toes uncurl, and let the way Keith touched him take him away. Keith moved the blade towards his sternum, and dragged the tip so lightly over him that Shiro wasn’t sure it broke the skin at all. Keith traced lazy indistinguishable shapes, curves and lines and circles. Shiro’s breath hitched at the sensation, at the point of the knife held against him but not slicing into him. He could slip into this again, into the barely-tangible scratch of the knife’s edge, the moving point at which everything seemed to converge.
“Yes,” Shiro breathed, belatedly remembering to answer. Keith looked at him with his unwavering gaze, and Shiro’s stomach dropped like he had turned his lion down for a nosedive. It did, it felt good, it felt so good, especially with Keith enjoying him like this.
A occasional drop of blood welled up along the path that Keith was tracing. Keith pressed his thumb against one, smudging it over the backdrop of scars. The warmth of his hand left a lingering impression. It tingled, a soothing contrast to the bite of the blade.
But Shiro found himself craving it again, the controlled, even parting of his skin. The opening of his body that was so different from what he was used to: jagged tears and deep wounds, too much blood, a real permeating pain. This was the complete opposite. He had no control, that had long since been relinquished to Keith, but the wounds he suffered now felt warm. Felt safe. That in itself was a delirious buzz in his veins. Everything on top of that made him float.
Funny that after all that, he could now find pleasure in a Galra slicing him open with a knife.
“Keith,” he said, and Keith’s eyes rose to his face, pulling the blade away from him in a quick but steady motion.
“You doing okay?” Keith asked.
“Yes,” Shiro said. His voice was hoarse. “Please, Keith.”
“You want more?” Keith cocked his head, but a quiet smile spread across his lips. “You’re too good to me, Shiro.”
Keith’s eyes were drawn to the blade, then back to Shiro’s chest again, as if he wished he could split his attention evenly between the two things. Even if Shiro wasn’t enjoying this thoroughly, he wouldn’t hesitate to do it all over just for that look on Keith’s face.
This time the place Keith chose was lower on Shiro’s torso, near the bottom of his ribcage. He eyed the area, and then dipped the tip into the skin, pulling it a few inches across.
Shiro inhaled sharply, and Keith’s eyes were on his face in the same instant, checking for discomfort. But while it hurt, it hurt good. Shiro felt like he was burning, not just around that area but everywhere else Keith touched him, from inside out and from outside in, on the stripes of his red wounds given to him by Keith. The blood welled up, and Keith watched.
He then put the blade down once more and, with his fingers, traced along a white line of particularly bad scar near his hip, irregular and uneven and long. Shiro couldn’t remember where he had gotten it, or what had inflicted it, but it was a grisly-looking thing. For a moment he felt like curling in on himself, hiding it away from Keith, but the warm, itching creep of blood over his chest seemed to weigh him down, make him lethargic, make him forget.
Keith placed the blade in the center of the scar, and reopened the skin there.
“How are you doing?” he asked, and pressed his fingers against the new cut, watching the blood pool around them. When he pulled his hand back his fingertips were highlighted in deep red. It suited him, as red always did.
“I’m good,” Shiro replied. And he was.
Keith sighed then, the sound of it reaching Shiro’s ears like a warm echo. “You’re amazing, Shiro, you know that?”
Shiro listened to his own breathing in his ears as Keith easily tucked the blade back into a nonthreatening hold and brought the fingers of his free hand once again to his face. He took a moment to examine the sheen of dark blood on them before licking the pad of each in turn.
Shiro felt full of nothing, completely, from head to toe. The only important thing was Keith, and his blade. Shiro was attached to those, connected to him, in such a way that he’d never been before, and the heady high of it seared itself into the pain that he felt littered over his chest. Keith’s skin where he touched on Keith’s leg was the only other sensation he felt, physically, and a dull ache in his lower body that seemed almost inconsequential in the need for Keith to open him again, to see inside of him, to be united with him through this blade.
“Keith,” he called, and though he didn’t know what he was asking for, Keith seemed to.
He held the point over Shiro’s heart, motionless for a long moment as they stared at each other, Keith’s gaze penetrating through the warm haze clouding Shiro’s mind. Then, slowly, he lowered it until it bit into the flesh, opening a smooth cut. He repeated the motion a second time, perpendicular to the first, bisecting it, and the skin parted easily at the tip of the blade.
At all the wispy edges of his consciousness, Shiro was so aware of the painstaking care Keith took in every motion, the way that the blade seemed to be an extension of himself. It accentuated his appreciation for the way the blade could mark and mar and injure and kill. It showed his care for Shiro. It all manifested in a warm, floating light in Shiro’s chest, just under where Keith had cut these last marks. Shiro felt consumed by it, and drenched in the sensation of Keith.
“Shiro,” sighed Keith, and bent low over him to brush their lips together. Shiro chased him when he pulled away. Chased the mixture of pleasure and pain and warmth and searing heat. But when he went to rise after Keith, the swift cold pressure of the blade against his throat stopped him, freezing him in place. He swallowed hard, and focused on the way Keith swept Shiro’s bangs out of his face with his free hand. Shiro knew full well himself how one hand could offer a threat as the other provided something gentle.
Keith didn’t go far away. He leaned his forehead against Shiro’s, mouth just outside of Shiro’s reach. If he tried to meet it, he’d be cut. This, somehow, enigmatically, brought Shiro’s attention back to the way he was straining against his underwear.
“What do you want?” Keith asked in a whisper, careful not to graze against the open wounds still bleeding freely on Shiro’s torso.
“You,” Shiro moaned.
Keith grinned.
Some of the cuts had scabbed over at the edges by the time Keith was inside of Shiro. Others still bled freely, creating shallow webbing streams across Shiro’s chest and stomach, pooling in the dips of his muscle and bone. With each thrust they were agitated, and Keith kept dragging his fingers across the open wounds, smearing red over his hands, using those same hands to wrap around Shiro and draw a mind-numbing orgasm out of him.
Loose-limbed, warm, empty, leaking, Shiro sprawled and floated. He barely registered that Keith had left until he was back, murmuring comforts and praises as he pressed a wet cloth against Shiro’s skin and held a rehydration pack to his lips. The cuts still stung, but distantly, almost theoretically, like his brain was acknowledging pain as something it should feel rather than a true reaction. This was even true after Keith gently smoothed bandages over his skin, bringing together the flesh that had been broken.
“Are you okay?” Keith asked once, twice, three times, and each time it was a laborious stretch for Shiro to find his voice, to say yes, yes, yes.
Keith wedged himself behind Shiro, enveloping him in his arms from behind, propping him up so that his back was against Keith’s chest.
“I’m here, Shiro,” Keith said, and Shiro centered himself around the sensation of Keith’s lips moving against his hair. “I’ve got you.”
The last thing Shiro registered before dozing off was Keith shifting, pulling the blade into his hands, which he then rested across Shiro’s lap. Unsheathed, raw in its power, a vital part of someone he loved, Shiro welcomed it there. Shiro placed his hand over Keith’s on the handle of the blade, tightened his fingers around him, and drifted off to sleep.