fourstrings | (no subject)

[ Shiro loves Keith. It's a bone-deep thing by now, all tied up with pride and admiration, something that sparks from the warmth of a hearth fire into a blaze with very little provocation – and increasingly at very inconvenient times.

Shiro loves Keith, loves all that passion and forward motion. The problem is when forward isn't something the world doesn't immediately provide. Getting Keith to stay in the hospital wing until the doctors were satisfied with his recovery had been hard enough. Now that he's fully recovered and active, he's... well. A handful. The immediate threat to Earth has been contained, the people who'd been in Galra camps have been collected and brought to safety, and all the work that needs doing now is planning and organizing. Pidge has thrown herself into working on new designs with the rest of the Holts, Hunk and his family are eyes-deep in helping the freed prisoners, and Lance is introducing aliens to the way things work on earth in an effort that Shiro is pretty sure started out as an attempt to take Allura on a date. Shiro himself is still learning his way around Atlas, who despite being the size of a small moon had started reacting to his thoughts with all the enthusiasm of a new puppy until he had to get a “casual” prosthetic that doesn't amplify the connection. Keith, though – Keith seems to chafe against the new setting, fighting against the borders of this new way of doing things until he's sharp and snappish in a way that he'd left behind some time ago. Shiro's pretty sure Griffin was cruising for another beating at their last meeting, and there's not really much they can do short of letting Keith off the leash to get back into space and burn some of it off – which is something Shiro isn't willing to consider, not after they've spent so long apart and in danger.

So he does the only thing he can think to do. After the next outburst, he asks Keith for a moment of his time, leads him into an empty office, and slams him up against the door to kiss him with bruising force. ]

Threaded | Flat

[ keith has never been great at the waiting and planning stages of any battle.

sure, he's learned how to temper all of that instinct and passion inside of himself into something that he can control, but he still feels most suited to a battlefield. he's a soldier, not some kind of diplomat, and all of this discussion and planning and milling around just waiting for something to happen makes keith feel like he's going to itch right out of his skin.

but he tries, he really does. his younger self probably would have been in a fistfight with griffin and a shouting match with iverson by day two, but keith throws himself into combat training and workouts every morning and every night just to burn some of the edge off. he shows up for the meetings he needs to, he shakes hands with all the visiting dignitaries he's required to honor or impress, and he keeps all of his excess energy buttoned down and contained so that he can behave the way the black paladin of voltron is expected to.

still, it's not enough.

(not nearly enough, and sometimes he entertains idle fantasies of stealing a ship and taking off into the far reaches of space or begging kolivan for some kind of random special assignment for the blades --)

and when shiro pulls him aside the next time keith loses his cool and snaps at some visiting diplomat from another galaxy who asks (for the tenth time) if the galra are really that much of a threat, keith is just about ready to tell him that this isn't working out. that he's trying, he really is, but this isn't who he is, and he can't go on pretending forever, and --

then shiro slams him up against the door and kisses him in a way that knocks the air right out of his lungs, and keith forgets every single word of the speech he was gearing up for. ]