#!vld

OUTLINE

(keith pov) matt messages keith. scene cut before message is said. “shiro is a sleeper agent”

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(shiro pov for the rest)

keith arrives back at castle of lions. wary around the rest of the paladins.

seen with matt, discussing what should happen. shiro never catches what they’re talking about. a little jealous but very focused on the mission.

shiro is tired, working through treaties, trying to integrate the galra with the vision of intergalactic peace while quelling rebel galra and infighting between other aliens + galra. keith keeps to the fringes but shiro is aware of him, tries to respect the distance between them, but they haven’t broken up- least not to shiro’s knowledge. keith continues to awkwardly hover

as soon as shiro brings up matt/keith and how he’s just wants to clarify if they’re still together, keith immediately reassures, begins making an effort to be more affectionate. other paladins react. shiro gets the impression keith was trying to puzzle out how to ask the same question.

catches keith with the black lion. bond still strong. shiro wonders if keith has accepted that he IS shiro’s chosen successor. (its for keith/matts continuity plan if shiro goes darkside)

CLIMAX > shiro overhears terse keith and matt quietly whisper warring about something to do with haggar and project kuron. when shiro’s name comes up, shiro- sick with the feeling of being left out of yet another keith/matt conversation- curtly cuts into the conversation. keith looks strained, matt quickly excuses himself.

shiro begins to reassure keith. keith’s underlying tone, altho affectionate and tender, is sad. he derails the conversation, pressing shiro into some corner of the castle.

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emotional sex, keith quietly reassuring shiro ‘youre a GOOD person shiro’ and reminds him ‘as many times as it takes’

ACTUAL FIC

Keith expects Allura- the team- and yearns to see Shiro’s face without the rest visible just at his shoulder. Even though there is an “ex” firmly affixed to his role as Paladin, the Team liked to send him updates. Typically, the less dire messages were sent through to a Marmora outpost, where Keith accepted them side by side with Kolivan.

There are two- maybe three- people aboard the Castle of Lions with the ability to locate Keith’s specific vessel without a specific frequency. And that’s enough to convince Keith this wouldn’t be one of those “less dire” messages he’d been hoping for.

It’s Matt’s face flickering into focus on his holoscreen. Keith would never assume to make much headway toward a friendship with Matt, back before. They were polite acquaintances, a little bemused by the variety of people caught in the orbit of one Takashi Shirogane. Even if they weren’t friends, they were friendly. Keith picked up on Matt’s cheery extroversion, letting Matt fill the empty air that so often hung around him. It’d been novel. A relief.

The Matt onscreen looks decidedly grim.

Keith shores up his mental armor to brace, mouth pressed in a tight line. Shiro, the Team, the Lions, the Blades, his mind skips down his growing list of priorities, privately fretting. He readjusts his grip on his ship’s controls, letting the feel of the throttle steady him. Familiar.

“Keith,” Matt says. Already, Keith doesn’t like the pity softening Matt’s solemn expression. He watches Matt’s eyebrows tic up, just a fraction. “This is going to be hard to hear. I don’t know how to say it.”

Eventually, Matt did. And his prediction was true. Keith’s shoulders hunched with tension, jaw aching. Wild eyed. A hundred days blurred and refocused in an entire new lens, the cold realization dropping into the pit of his stomach. Matt’s voice drifts off into white fuzz, while Keith’s throat clicks around a block in his throat.

It lasts an age, or a second.

Then clarity reasserts itself with dizzying brutality, and Keith breathlessly hears Matt say, “I’m sorry Keith. We’ll make it right, you and me. Promise.” It’s a generous offer, considering all the other roles Matt has assumed with the Voltron Coalition. Keith can’t quite wrap his head around all the implications of “you and me”, or “make it right”. He’s never felt so wrong. His heart squeezes painfully beneath his ribs, with uncanny timing, sick and weighty.

He doesn’t say anything. Or if he does, Keith doesn’t remember it. But Matt’s cutting the connection, and then Keith sends an encrypted update to Kolivan and readjusts course. It’s him, alone in the cockpit, as Blades were sometimes wont want to be, mindlessly checking readings and gazing into the yawning nothingness between stars.

_________

“Keith.”