Chapter Text
Keith woke up the way he always did in a jail cell–suddenly and aching.
It takes him a second to remember where he is. Blinking the sleep out of his eyes and rolling the pain out of his spine, he swings his feet off the cot and looks to the poor deputy sheriff outside the door dead in the eye. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
The deputy looks like he wants to respond in equal snark, but he can’t think of anything, so instead he says nothing and steps aside. Keith groans.
Shiro’s smile is knowing, with a layer of smugness underneath. “Hey, Keith. Long time no see.”
Keith gives him his most withering glare, which doesn’t affect Shiro in the slightest. The lock clicks and the door swings open. Shiro strides in like things are perfectly normal, and reaches for Keith’s shoulder. Keith dodges his hand, swinging to the other end of the cot where he stands up. Shiro’s face is as placid as a mountain lake. Keith shuffles through the door, ignoring the deputy.
Keith had learned it was wise to not make trouble as you’re leaving it. It was a hard-won lesson, learned by the ache of his spine after being thrown right back into a cell because he couldn’t keep a snide remark to himself on the way out the door.
“Much obliged, sir,” Shiro says warmly to the deputy as they leave. Keith keeps his eyes on the dusty wooden floor as they leave the county jail, blinking hard when they step into the sunlight of the day.
As his eyes adjust, he takes the town in. He doesn’t remember the name, or the exact location. The main street is small, with a few wooden storefronts and apartments along them, with a church to the right and a saloon to the left. Nothing special. Nothing to remember it by. Utterly unremarkable.
Shiro throws a heavy arm around Keith, jostling him back to reality. “Aren’t you going to ask where we’re going? Or say ‘Thank you so much Shiro, for finding me, and getting me out of that cell?’”
Keith puts on his most dazzling smile. “Thank you so much Shiro, for finding me, and getting me out of that cell. I never could have gotten out on my own."
Shiro’s face, for the first time, twists out of his measured, self-righteous big-brother calmness. “Too unnatural. Never mind.” He starts off, and Keith follows him. Tied to a hitching rail are two gorgeous horses, and despite himself Keith feels much lighter.
“Red!”
A chestnut mare looks up, acknowledging him, blinking her gorgeous eyes in greeting. He strokes her beautiful head, rubbing his thumb over the little v-shaped white spot between her eyes. She presses her nose against his shoulder, content. Shiro is already up on his horse, a gleaming Morgan steed, black as night and sober as a priest.
Keith pulls himself up Red, trying to fight a smile. She’d been his for years, up until he’d gotten into trouble with the law and with Shiro too many times. It was small stuff, to Keith, a couple brawls, once mouthing off to clergy, and riding Red through private land. But then one particular man, Iverson, went to the magistrate and insinuated Keith was carting liquor illegally through his land and Keith decided to skip town. That was a year ago, and all he’d left was a vague note for Shiro and a beautiful horse. His beautiful horse.
He couldn’t take Red, couldn’t separate her from the ol’ Black Lion (as Shiro affectionately referred to him), so he’d joined up with some travelers, found out they were cattle rustlers, and, in his defense, left them… but not before spending a couple nights in jail the next county over. Now trouble seemed to follow him wherever he went.
Shiro whistles for his attention. “Straight home, Keith. We’ll get there before dark.” It dawns on Keith that he doesn’t know what time it is, let alone what day it is. Shiro swings Black toward the path leading out of town, wherever they are, and Keith follows. It feels surreal to be back on Red after all this time, after all he’s done. Like someone forbade him from using his legs for a year, and now that he’s got them again, remembering how good it feels to stand, to be tall, to run. How natural it is, how fated it is, how this is who and what he’s supposed to be.
For hours, they ride in silence. Keith lets himself get lost in the beauty of the area. The bright blue sky and defiant trees jutting purposefully into the sky, despite steep terrain and thin air. They pass by a creek and let the horses stop to drink from it, then get down, stretching their legs. Shiro wordlessly hands Keith some jerky, which he gnaws while watching Red and Black wade into the creek, cooling off.
Keith lays back in the grass and closes his eyes. “Surprised you haven’t gotten to lecturing me yet,” he says.
Shiro snorts. “I’ll wait until you do something really bad before I pull out the dad voice, don’t worry.”
Keith is confused, but keeps his eyes closed. If leaving for that long wasn’t going to warrant a lecture, what was? And where was the Shiro who used to whip out a lecture over unwashed dishes?
The rest of the ride is easy. Their town, Castleship, is in view before Keith knows it, shyly poking through the mountains. It looks bigger than he remembers.
“They think there’s silver here,” says Shiro, doing that annoying thing where he answers questions Keith is thinking but not asking. “People just started showing up. Everyone’s got their hands full.”
There’s still the church, the saloons and restaurants, the hot springs, the schoolhouse, the train station. This town meant nothing a year ago and now he watches as a train pulls in and people get out. It was unbelievable. It did not used to do that.
Home is exactly how he remembers it–a little farmhouse just outside town. The dirt road, lined with lavender bushes, beckons him home. He slides off Red and leads her to her pen, her name still written in faded red paint above the gate, where she dunks her head into the water trough and ceases paying any attention to him.
Shiro’s already inside, pulling his boots off and collapsing into his big worn-out chair, old and discolored from years of use. It used to be their father’s. Keith remembers fighting with Shiro over who got to sit in it. In the end, he can’t deny it looks like it was made for Shiro all along. He shrugs his jacket off. Keith finds himself looking at the stump where Shiro’s hand used to be. It’s been a couple years, but he’s still not used to it. His time away certainly didn’t make seeing it again any easier. Shiro’s right hand used to be there.
Shiro notices him staring and gives him an irritating grin. “Looking for something?”
Keith rolls his eyes. “I’m going to bed.”
Shiro calls out after him: “How do you know I haven’t rented out your room?” but Keith is already halfway up the stairs. He swings open the door to his room. Nothing’s changed. The small bookshelf, the chair and bed, are all exactly as they were. It’s how he knew Shiro cleaned it, probably regularly, so Keith wouldn’t return to a dusty room. He swipes his finger across the bookshelf. No dust.
Guilt seizes him suddenly. What was he thinking, leaving like that? Shiro must have waited every day for him.
Too much trouble for my worth, he tells himself. It was always supposed to be temporary, just laying low, not giving Shiro any grief for a while.
And a while it had been. He’d just gotten caught up. He couldn’t face Shiro with the law right behind him, asking for him back. And yet, Shiro had found him alone in a cell, not sixty miles away.
Keith lays down on the bed and sighs. He’s glad to be home. He can be better. He’s going to do better. He has to do better.
-
The next morning, Keith wakes before sunup. He goes downstairs, trying to be quiet, but sound travels to every corner of the damn house so it barely matters. He boils some water for coffee and puts a couple dishes in the sink. There’s a single glass on the side table by Shiro’s chair–he must have been drinking last night after Keith went upstairs. He puts his nose to the glass. Whiskey. Not a great sign, but not necessarily a terrible one either. Keith can’t fault him for doing so. He wonders how many nights Shiro sipped whiskey and thought about him. Before he can wallow in guilt too much, Shiro comes downstairs.
“Coffee smells good,” he says simply, like this morning is like every other. “We’ll have to drink it fast.”
Keith turns, eyebrow quirked. “Why’s that?”
“We have to work,” Shiro says, his own eyebrow quirked in response, “What else?”
“Right…” Keith says, but doesn’t press. If Shiro wants to play games, he’ll let him play games. Last he checked, Shiro watched other people’s animals several months out of the year. Is that where they were going? He’d shepherded for Balmera ranch plenty of times. Sometimes he’d even take a sickly lamb home to care for it if the Balmera family didn’t have the space. Keith loved those lambs. He loved feeding them, seeing them get stronger, leading them into pastures, seeing them dart around Red’s elegant, coolly unbothered legs.
With the coffee done, Keith grabs a jacket and follows Shiro out into the cold. Shiro surprises him as he starts toward town. What work could there be for them there?
They walk all the way in, with Shiro nodding and smiling at everyone who passes by.
“Oh what, are you mayor now? Where’s Allura?” Keith jokes.
“Like they’d ever let her go,” is all Shiro says in response.
When they stop outside city hall, Keith sighs. “Okay, I give. What’s going on? You drag me back here so you can throw me in a closer cell?”
Shiro just claps a hand to Keith’s shoulder and leads him in.
The hall is mostly deserted, save for Coran, who says (a little too loudly) “Morning, Sheriff!”
Keith’s head snaps to Shiro. “Sheriff?” he says incredulously.
“Ah, good to see you again, Keith!” says Coran, striding over to grab his hand. “Been far too long. It’s much quieter here without you!” He laughs heartily, and twirls the corner of his moustache. “I wondered whether Shiro would find you. You were one of his conditions, you know.”
Coran always fired words off like a crazed gunman, but Keith is having a particularly hard time following this morning. “What do you mean, one of his conditions?”
“Well a sheriff is nothing without a quick draw to back it up, of course,” Coran says, nodding to himself. “And seeing as that might be a bit tough at the moment–sorry Shiro, that Lotor fellow really did a number on you!–he needed someone as his deputy. And I suppose of course that we could have elected someone with a right hand, no offense my dear lad, but then no one wanted to vote for anyone else! So, here we are.”
Keith blinks. “A deputy sheriff.”
“That’s right!” chirps Coran. “No badge though my boy, I’m afraid having a sheriff at all is quite a new and unusual position for old Castleship. We don’t have a proper place for you boys yet either, but with so many people coming in it was high time we elected a lawman! And what’s a lawman without his right hand? Er, no pun intended there. That’s where you come in, Keith.”
It’s all Keith can do to keep his mouth from hanging open. Shiro’s right hand. A deputy sheriff. Shiro is the sheriff. He is working for Shiro.
“Thanks, Coran,” Shiro says warmly. “Just let me show him around and we’ll start making the rounds.”
Shiro leads Keith into a side room off the main hall. There are two desks, a few chairs, a table, a bookshelf. Papered windows let in some light, dust floating through the beams like snowflakes. In the corner, iron grates have been welded together to serve as a makeshift cell. A single small bench rests inside.
Keith whips around as soon as Shiro shuts the door. “Deputy sheriff? Are you out of your mind? How in the hell did you get Allura to agree to this?”
“These were my terms,” Shiro says simply. “And this way, I can keep an eye on you. Make sure you don’t get into too much trouble again. Besides, who else would I trust to shoot, besides me?”
Shiro takes Keith’s silence as a begrudging agreement. “Exactly. Now let’s tidy up a little bit here. This is all we have until we find a better place. Welcome to your first day on the job.”
It takes less than an hour to transform the space. Light pours through the unpapered windows, the desks have been straightened and chairs laid out in a reasonable manner, with some flush to the wall and others facing the desk, so that there’s somewhere for residents with a complaint to sit. Shiro smiles, opening a drawer, and turns to Keith. “You got a gun?”
Keith shakes his head. It was taken from him two jail cell stays ago. He hadn’t been able to get his hands on one since. Shiro hands over a pretty little .45 revolver. It’s nothing too powerful, but it’s light and it’s reliable. The wood handle has been polished to a shine. Keith whistles softly.
Shiro pulls out another, much nicer revolver. Keith’s eyes snap to it immediately. “And what’s that one for?”
Shiro snorts. “For my left hand,” he says, and slides it into his holster. “Now let’s go.”
Despite himself, Keith is a little excited. The experience is new, and he’ll be out riding with Shiro all day. What could be better?
Turns out, a lot of things.
They barely ride. The town is still small enough they mostly just walk. People come up to them to complain about a neighbor’s horse shitting by their gate, or about how the new miners are too loud, or to ask why nothing was done about a bank robbery that allegedly took place three towns over and damn near a year ago.
Shiro stops for every question, addressing each one thoughtfully. More often than not people walk away placated. It’s all Keith can do to keep the impatience and frustration off his face.
They circle the town, moving outwards. Past the school. Past the creek, where there are more men than Keith has ever seen with panning for gold. Past the saloons, and the church, and people’s houses, and gardens and stables and out into nothing. Keith thinks it can’t get any more boring than that. Then, for some godforsaken reason, they retrace all their steps, taking that same path all the way back past everything, and end up by city hall again as the sun dips below the horizon, streaking the sky pink and white.
Keith is aware he’s acting like a child, but he huffs into the side room anyway, flinging his jacket off. “That was such a waste of time, Shiro… how have you been doing this every day?”
“Today was my first day,” Shiro says serenely. “Now that you’re here I can really get started.”
“Get started doing what?” Keith laughs mirthlessly. “Explaining to old ladies that people make noise? Telling people there’s nothing you can do when the wind blows through the trees too loudly? What did you need me for? To take notes on how many times a horse shits where it’s not supposed to?”
Shiro scoffs. “Don’t worry baby brother, it won’t always be like this. Even tomorrow will be different: there’ll be a lot more excitement with the rodeo coming to town.”
Keith gives Shiro a bewildered look. “What the hell is a rodeo?”