Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE
[August—fall semester, this year]
It's the end of August, two in the morning, and Shiro can't sleep. He's lying on the floor of his apartment in front of the window fan, books stacked all around him, the light from his desk-lamp bouncing off the cracks in the paint on the far wall. Has it really been five years already? Five years that he's spent here, in this place? The worn wooden floor is cool under his back. There's a spider tracking across his ceiling, too high to reach. August is always the month for spiders. This is the longest he's lived in one place since he was a teenager. Now he's twenty-eight. When he thinks about it that way it makes his arm ache.
The fall semester of his final year starts tomorrow, technically today. And after that, what? Doing a Ph.D. in history had sounded better than going aimlessly back to Toronto, where he didn't even have a home anymore, after the armed forces discharged him—five to six years of job security, even if barely above minimum wage, plus health insurance were enough to get him to accept the offer of admission when it came. It was a better offer than he had anywhere else. Moving here had been less about hope for the future and more about desperation, really. And now his time is running out. It's as simple as that. Now he's applying for jobs he doesn't feel qualified for and almost certainly won't get, with the way the academic job market is these days. Now he's thinking about his future and all he sees is the darkness of space, spreading out before him.
Shiro sighs and pushes himself up off the floor. He needs to get it together. He needs to wash up, brush his teeth, get some sleep before morning properly comes. He has a brand new class of first-years to teach at ten a.m. and has to find it in himself, somehow, to be enthusiastic about that. His back is stiff as he steps into the bathroom; he stretches his arms out and reminds himself of yet another thing he should be doing. When he stopped going to physical therapy years ago he'd picked back up his childhood martial arts training, even started teaching a couple of classes, but lately there hasn't been time for that. There would be time, he thinks, if he could get it together and just be better. Be more on top of things, more prepared, more driven. If only he wasn't so exhausted all the time. But there's a strategy behind that, too, that makes it hard to shake—the dreams that come now, when they do come, are too brief to cause much trouble.
*
Ever since basic training Shiro has awoken at dawn without an alarm and this morning is no different, never mind that he closed his eyes only a few hours ago. Sometimes he can roll over, press his face into the pillow and go back to sleep. This isn't one of those mornings. Early light is barely breaking through the clouds when he steps into his kitchen to make coffee. He doesn't sleep with the prosthetic on and there's no point attaching it before he's showered so Shiro goes through the motions one-handed, using his hip to close the drawer after him. While the coffee percolates he does a couple of stretches on the kitchen floor, forces himself through a couple one-armed push-ups just to prove that he still can. Doesn't want Keith to give him a hard time for having lost his edge—he hasn't, of course, but can never quite manage the requisite mindset during sparring and so these days Keith always wins. Somehow the gym mats don't carry the same sense of danger that got him through Afghanistan more or less intact. It's been a while since they sparred, actually. When he can spare a moment to think about it, Shiro feels bad for leaving Keith without a partner, particularly since he can tell it bothers his friend more than he lets on. They had something of an argument about it the other day, inasmuch as Keith ever argues beyond glaring at him. “Take better care of yourself, you idiot,” is basically what it came down to. Somewhat embarrassing to be told that by your own undergraduate research assistant.
Shiro's showered, caffeinated, dressed, and out the door before eight. These days he never has much of an appetite for breakfast. The early morning haze has burnt off and he forces himself to take the walk up to campus slowly, warm even in a short-sleeved shirt. He always likes to get the awkward questions about his arm out of the way on the first day, though surprisingly eighteen-year-olds these days have a fair amount of tact. Often he's the one left feeling awkward when they address as him as “Professor Shirogane,” a title that in his mind will always belong to his father. He teaches an intro seminar on Japanese history, only loosely related to his dissertation, but it's interesting to talk about. His parents left Japan in the 1970s and ended up in Canada, where Shiro was born and grew up; he's been back overseas a few times, visiting various relatives or, more recently, doing research for his project. It's been helpful, in a strange way, to lecture on distant aspects of his heritage to a classroom of wide-eyed first-years. It's given him a sense of some of the family he's lost over the years.
So he meets his new students, teaches his first day, runs errands around campus while avoiding his advisors, to whom he owes any number of emails. He doesn't cross paths with Keith and can't decide if that's a good thing or not—Keith is a senior by this point and surely busy with his own first day, but it would have been nice to see a friendly face. For a given definition of friendly, that is. Even after three years getting to know him, Shiro still has to admit that Keith looks surly eighty percent of the time. Personally he finds it kind of hilarious but word around the department is that Keith frightens the first-years. Every time Shiro hears this repeated he finds himself contemplating asking Keith to come give a guest lecture for his course, just to see what would happen. This year is his last chance. Maybe he'll finally do it.
Shiro is still thinking about Keith when he gets back to his apartment and begins unloading his bag—he should text him and apologise for the other day. It was probably his fault, their argument. He can't deny that Keith had a point. A slip of paper falls out when Shiro empties the last pocket of his bag and he just manages to catch it before it hits the floor. It's bright pink, definitely not anything he recognises. There's another one scrunched into the corner of the pocket and Shiro tugs it out, smooths it flat. They're vouchers for free classes at a local yoga studio. Keith, again. He'd been pestering Shiro about some yoga class that his friend Lance had dragged him to, trying to get Shiro to give it a try. Promising that it would help the stiffness in his muscles, the ache across his shoulders that never quite goes away, the forced straight posture he can't lose. Shiro had shrugged off the offer and changed the subject but Keith must have stuffed these in his bag when he wasn't looking.
The papers stay on his kitchen table while he changes into sweats, cooks dinner, absently reads a book on European politics in the first half of the 20th century. As much as he tries not to look at them they're just so bright. They keep drawing his eye. Eventually he leaves to move to his desk and yet “out of sight, out of mind” doesn't prove true. Then Keith texts him, some emoji that Shiro isn't certain how to read, and he caves. He sends Keith a photo of the crumpled vouchers and writes, “Fine, I'll go. Happy?” Almost immediately, Keith replies: “Ecstatic,” followed up by, “Lance says to send photographic proof.” Shiro laughs and doesn't bother replying. He's definitely not going to send photos, to Keith or Lance. Or anyone. He's going to go, and probably make a fool of himself, but at least it will appease his friend. And then he's going to get back to work and not think about it anymore.
[December—fall semester, three years ago]
Keith showed up to the gym one night in early December, finals week, when it was snowing like mad. Shiro had just finished teaching a youth karate class for the local community and was beset by a gang of hyperactive six-year-olds when he saw this college kid step hesitantly inside and shake the snow from his dark hair. It took a while to get all the children and their parents squared away but when the chaos died down, he was still there. Shiro sighed and grabbed his water bottle before heading over.
“Hey,” he said. “We're actually not holding any more classes today. Were you looking to join?”
“Uh, not really,” the college kid said, shifting his footing. “Just looking for a place to train. I thought it might be empty here.” He shrugged. “I can leave.”
Shiro considered him for a moment—slight build, but muscular. A tiredness around his eyes, hair grown long in the back, red winter jacket, arms crossed over his chest. Standing there with an air of tension, barely contained. “I can't let you have the space to yourself. I'm responsible for locking up tonight.”
“Fine,” the kid sighed and turned to go.
“But, you know, “Shiro said, stopping him, “I could train with you. If you want.”
“Karate's not really my style these days. No offense.”
“What do you do, then?”
“Tae Kwon Do. More or less.” Keith paused, and then admitted, “Less.”
Shiro smiled. “So I'm guessing you're not actually with the university club then. Well, it's been a few years, and my mind's still stuck in kids' class mode, but let's see what happens.” He gestured towards the mats. “Leave your boots over by the door. You can call me Shiro, by the way. What's your name?”
“Keith Kogane.”
“Nice to meet you, Keith. If you beat me and ever want a job teaching small children to fight, let me know. I'm getting exhausted.” Stepping onto the mats, Shiro took off his belt and jacket and set them aside. He stretched while waiting for Keith, t-shirt damp with sweat as he pulled his right arm across his chest. When Keith stepped up onto the mats Shiro caught him staring and met his gaze. Waited. Keith said nothing, just took up position to spar.
Despite Shiro's best plans to take it easy on the kid, he found himself on the defensive, circling around while Keith tested his reflexes. After barely catching a kick on his forearm before Keith's foot met his nose Shiro huffed and changed his stance, pushing into offense. He ducked under Keith's roundhouse kick and spun behind him, reached out and tapped him on the back of the neck. When Keith looked affronted—fairly so, since Shiro definitely wasn't following typical Tae Kwon Do sparring conduct any more—Shiro just smiled and said, “You said less, right? So loosen up. Show me what you can really do.”
“If that's what you want,” Keith said, and that was the first time Shiro ever saw him smile. His eyes tightened, his stance shifted, and then before Shiro even saw what happened Keith had him flipped over and pinned to the mat.
After a few rounds Shiro had managed to score once or twice but it was clear that he spent more time hauling around small children in uniform than actually training himself these days. He pushed up off the mat and put his hand out to Keith. “Good match,” he said. “Where have you trained?”
“Oh, you know,” Keith said, “here and there. You're good. Once you stopped holding back.”
“You could tell?”
“Hmph. Your face gave it away.” Keith brushed off his pants and eyed Shiro's arm again, measuring him up. “You're with the university?” he asked, clearly skeptical.
“Grad student. You?”
“. . . First-year.”
“Really? I wouldn't have guessed. You seem . . .”
“Old?”
“Well-adjusted, I was going to say. Exhausted, too, but it's finals week. Older than my last students, that's for sure.”
“I took some time off before coming here,” Keith said and Shiro was surprised to see some colour rising to his cheeks.
“Keith, my last students were six. I should hope you look older than them.” Shiro laughed, picked up his towel from the bench and rubbed at the back of his neck. “How are you liking it here?”
Something like a scowl crossed Keith's face before he said, “It's fine.”
“What are you studying?”
“I don't know. I'm not really . . . that great at anything besides fighting.”
“Not true,” Shiro said.
“How do you know? We just met. You don't know me.”
“I can tell. Hey, why don't you take my class next semester?”
“You teach?”
“I can teach you a thing or too,” Shiro joked, and Keith rolled his eyes. “I teach first-year seminars in the history department. Look me up.”
And that's how they met, and kept meeting—Keith would show up at a time when one of Shiro's martial arts classes was ending, they'd spar and talk a bit, then part ways until the next time. Keith knew what he was doing, that much was clear, and Shiro quietly made a copy of his keys and left them in Keith's jacket pocket one night. Winter break came and went quietly and the new semester started; Shiro was in his third year of the program, teaching a seminar on military history, and who should appear in his class but Keith, seated at the back of the room and quietly appraising throughout the lecture.
Shiro went up to him afterwards, after all the other kids had cleared out. “Well?” he asked.
“I guess you can teach after all,” Keith said, and Shiro reached out and shoved at him. Either the casual touch or the classroom setting caught Keith off guard, and he didn't dodge in time. Shiro raised an eyebrow.
“That's one-nothing, to me.”
“I'll get you back for it.”
“Oh, I'm sure you will.” Shiro laughed, and then paused a moment. “Keith,” he said, “you know I can't treat you any differently during class. It wouldn't be fair to the others.”
“No, I know.”
“Just as long as you understand.”
“Yeah, well, you can make it up to me afterwards, or something,” Keith mumbled. Shiro clapped him on the shoulder, and ushered him out of the room.
“Count on it,” he said. “I'll make it two-nothing in no time.”
Keith made an indignant noise. “Just try it. And I'm not calling you Professor Shirogane, by the way. Though at least now I know your full name.”
“You didn't know it before? And you have to. It's protocol.”
“You never fully introduced yourself! 'Call me Shiro,' ” Keith huffed, in a passable imitation of Shiro's deeper voice. “How was I supposed to know?”
“You're a smart kid. I thought you'd figure it out.”
“Still not calling you that.”
“Well no one calls me Takashi, so you're out of options. One of these days you'll cave.”
“Try me,” Keith said, and so it became something of a bet between the two of them. Keith would go on to avoid addressing Shiro outright in any way possible during class—he called this being smart. Shiro called it cheating, but continued to spar with him, occasionally taking him out afterwards for jja jang myun at a hole-in-the-wall place downtown where Keith would scarf down noodles while Shiro watched him and remembered being young and hungry. And that's how the year went on.
[August—fall semester, this year]
Keith tucks away his phone with a smile. He's lounging across their tiny couch while Lance, his roommate, is sprawled on the floor playing an intense round of Wipeout 64 on their battered Nintendo system. “Shiro didn't reply to your request,” Keith tells him. Lance twists and looks up at Keith, upside down. The game's late-nineties techno music is loud in the background.
“So no photos?” he asks.
“Probably not,” Keith says, and nudges Lance with his foot. “Let me have a turn.”
“No way, you'll beat my high score!”
“Lance, you can't win just by not letting anyone else play.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . .” Keith frowns down at him. “That's stupid.”
“You're stupid,” Lance says, and sticks out his tounge while leaning hard on the hand-break as his ship streaks around a turn and into the final stretch of the course.
“We're not having this argument.” Keith drops a pillow on Lance's head and swipes the controller while his roommate is distracted. Lance shoves him over but Keith keeps playing, and in another lap he's won the race. “New lap record,” the game announces, and Keith sits back up and grins at Lance.
“Cheater,” Lance tells him, but picks up the second controller and sets them up for a race against each other, so he must not be too upset.
Keith still feels like he's learning—when to push, when to back off, when it's all right to really be himself. When he first met Lance they fought constantly, and Keith was about ninety percent certain that Lance hated him; they lived on the same floor in the first-year dorms and Lance made everything into a challenge, or a race, and Keith was sick of it. He wanted to keep his head down, do his work, get his degree. Get out. Lance made that impossible, always loud, always inviting people over, constantly making friends. Keith didn't know how to make friends. Every friend he has these days—and really, that's about two people—just sort of took him in. As one takes in a stray dog.
Sitting there on the floor, next to his outgoing friend who can smile and flirt with anyone like it's second nature, Keith is very aware that he's the odd one out. One of the good things about martial arts is that it teaches contact alongside control. So whereas Keith from five years ago would've fought Lance with his fists, now he can just thwack him with a pillow and they move on with their lives. He has learned not to think so much about casual touches, doesn't jump anymore whenever Lance throws an arm over his shoulders, doesn't flinch when he has to shake someone's hand upon meeting them. Which is a good thing, considering that he's graduating this year—they both are, him and Lance—and going on the job market, which means interviews and strangers and endless small talk. Keith is fairly confident he can make it through that without fighting anyone.
Lance wins the first three races while Keith is distracted with his thoughts, and then of course he has to defend his honour so he clears his head and trounces Lance, hitting him with every weapon in his arsenal as they fly across the course. He's never played videogames with anyone as loud as Lance before; it's a wonder their neighbours don't tell them off more often. Lance is dramatic, always needing to make the grand gesture, throwing himself back into the pillows as if he's dying when he loses a single race or falls off the record pace. There was a time when those antics would've driven Keith crazy but now he just watches, maybe even lets himself smile a bit, and offers a conciliatory second round.
*
They've been sharing an apartment for a year now, since they were juniors and out of campus housing. As with most of the good things in Keith's life, it just sort of happened one day. Their place is tiny, two closet-sized bedrooms attached to an open common room and kitchen, plus a bathroom that you can stand in and touch all the walls at once. It's in slightly better repair than Shiro's apartment, Keith knows, and yet he still finds himself swearing whenever he sets something down on a countertop only for it to roll off and end up on the slanted floor. Eggs. Eggs are the worst for that. Nothing in this city—at least, within a student budget—is built with any kind of surety. If you asked Keith three years ago whether he could live with Lance without either of them winding up in a dumpster come morning, he would've said no, emphatically. But it works for them. They are each other's right kind of company, just enough pestering to keep their spirits up while, as Keith has discovered, underneath Lance's bravado is insecurity, and more than either of those is kindness. That's it, really; Lance is kind. Keith doesn't have any such delusions about himself, no matter how often Lance tells him he's a good friend. Maybe he is that, but it's only out of selfishness. No, Lance is the kind one between the two of them. Keith is the one who looks out for himself and his own, and fuck everyone else.
The point is that they work well together. They live well together. Lance cooks heaps of Cuban food all the time and is always trying to feed Keith, and Keith is kind of obsessive about cleaning, learned long ago how to keep a house running—between the two of them, their apartment has become a home. Small, and temporary, especially these days with graduation looming, but home nonetheless. If Keith thinks about that too long he doesn't know what to do, so these days mostly he tries to live while pretending that he's not going to have to leave this all behind in nine months. And mostly, it works.
There are other things he tries to live without thinking about, too—the way Lance's hair curls at the ends when it's damp from a shower, the warm sound of his laughter, how long his legs look in those ridiculous pajama pants. How many things Keith wants to say to him but can't find words for. Those thoughts don't help anyone. They won't get Keith a job, they won't get him into graduate school, they won't ensure him a future. So he clears his mind by cleaning, or he goes for a run, or he badgers Shiro into sparring with him and doesn't hold back so when he comes back home bruised and sweaty and aching he can focus on sensation instead of thought—can go through the motions, be mostly a regular person like anyone else, and ignore all the rest. Or, these days, he goes to yoga, which is kind of counterintuitive because it involves Lance in very tight pants being all kinds of flexible in his peripheral vision, but Keith goes and he focuses on his breathing, on the flow of the poses, and somehow it helps. It grounds him. Lance's flushed face as they walk home together afterwards is an added bonus, a small distraction that Keith allows himself to look at and think about, and remember. He'll always remember this.