#picklewitch

He had caught in him the hall after training, waiting till everyone had filed out before calling out to him.

With a turn of his head, Shiro smiled, warm and kind, “Yeah, Keith?”

All his resolve was trickling away, leaving him to stand before his leader, anxious and stammering, “O-Oh um- you just- I needed to talk to you,” he plays it off quietly.

“Sure,” With a fold of his arms, he leans back against the wall to allow Keith to talk. Keith babbled, bringing up random questions and double checking on strategies that he had long since memorized.

The tearing emotions of wanting to run away from this but keep Shiro here as long as possible, all to himself, was jarring.

“Anything else you need to know or is that all?” Shiro inquired when Keith’s list of possible conversation topics ran dry. Keith averted his gaze, his mind blank.

“Guess so,” he says, disappointed. Shiro must have heard the emotion in his tone and raised his eyebrow.

“Keith,” he says steadily, “If there is something specific on your mind, don’t be afraid to talk to me about it. You can trust me,”

Keith is quick to say, “It’s not about trust, I just…” he sighs, “I don’t really know what I’m doing right now,”

“What do you mean?”

“You,” Shiro doesn’t understand and Keith feels the same way. “I don’t understand you- I don’t know what to do around you. I feel... “ he turns, frustrated. “Never mind.”

Shiro grabbed his wrist before he could get away, “Hey, no no, it’s okay. Just talk it out, Keith. We’re a team. Whatever is wrong, I’ll help you through it.” he secures his grip, inflaming Keith’s skin at his touch.

With a shaky breath, his gaze locked on Shiro’s strong fingers. Realizing he was staring a moment too long he pries his eyes up Shiro's form to meet his gaze,  “...I’m just really glad you’re alive,”

Startled, Shiro’s eyes widened, “You’re still thinking about that?”

“Of course I am- you were dead for a year, Shiro,” Keith looks away. “I thought I’d never get to see you again. I missed you,”

“Keith,’ Shiro brightens, laughs, and holds out his arm, “C’mere,”

Keith doesn’t hesitate to step into his arms, hugging Shiro’s well-built form. Inhaling his scent, something moved in his chest.

“I missed you too, Keith. I thought about you every day,”

“You did?”

“Sometimes you were the only thing that kept me going,” Shiro admits quietly, his voice sounding distant, recalling the year in vivid detail. “You don’t know how happy I was when I woke up and you were there,”

“Shiro…”

The black paladin squeezes Keith’s shoulders before pulling back enough to see his face. “Is this what all of this was about?” he inquires affectionately, “All of that, just to tell me that you missed me?”

The blush crawled up his neck like a plague, brightening his cheeks and making him pucker his lower lip in annoyance, “Shut up- I’m not good at putting things into words,”

“I know,” Shiro’s gaze softened. “Your actions speak for you,”

The swell of his chest is something Keith wasn’t expecting. With a small grin, one that he found himself only ever showing to Shiro, he chuckles, “Or maybe you are just good at reading people,”

“I wouldn’t say that,”

“I would,”

“Well, okay, maybe I’m better at reading others than you are, but-”

“You can’t just compare it to me, everyone is better at reading people than I am. I don’t like people,” Keith says.

Shiro gives him a little look, smirking, “Now that definitely isn’t true.”

“People are dumb,”

“People are not,” Shiro laughs, swinging Keith a little in his arms. “You just need to work on your social skills. I’ll help you,”

Keith tilts his head to consider that. Pursing his lips, he shrugs, looking forward to the one on one time this opportunity presented, “Okay. But I’ve been often told that I’m a very troublesome student,”

“I already knew that,” Shiro lifts Keith up a little till his feet dangle below him

“Yeah but now you have to experience it,” Keith wiggled a little, “Put me down,” he snorted.

“No,” he swung Keith. “I get to hug you after an entire year of not being able to- I’m filling up my Keith hug bar,”

“What is that?” Keith snickers as Shiro shuffles around the hall with him, spinning. “Do I even weigh anything to you?”

“It’s like I’m holding a puppy,” he admits.

“You're ridiculous,”

“You’re adorable,” There was a tilt of Shiro’s head right as Keith looked at him.

Lips, plump and soft, pressed to his. Keith tensed, his ears ringing with the heavy beat of his heart.  

With matching gazes of surprise, Shiro dropped him and stepped back in a panic.

“Wha-” Keith lifts a hand up to his tingling lips.

“I-” Shiro’s face burst into a shade of red and he covered his mouth, “I didn’t mean to- you were-” not one to stammer often, it was kind of cute to watch their calm leader fumble in embarrassment. "We just-" he motioned between them, "We just kissed..."

Gulping at the obvious statement, Keith opens his mouth to say something- anything. But then...

The two almost screamed when the alarm blared above their heads.

With one lingering look, they sucked in a heavy gulp of air and turned to run down the hall to their lions.

They had kissed.

Keith should have held his head high for accomplishing what he set out to do- but that feeling he had before- that thing that started this, it hadn’t gone away.

It had grown, the feeling of Shiro’s lips too strong to not seek out again.

So, apparently, in 2016, 38.8 million people live in California. That says nothing of tourist flow, travel, or population growth. By the way, that’s consistently been around 1% in the past few years, give or take a few decimal points. So if it were to stay that way, for the next 32 years, the population would be 53,347,698 people approximately. And that’s just human beings. Let’s say that more humans live in CA than supernatural beings. Still, I’m going to assume that they’re fairly common, so let’s round that up to a nice 70 million beings. In California. Now, as of 2008, 68% of residents lived in coastal counties. We’re going to round that number down to 60% because, well, while some inland areas were affected by Alcor’s hissy fight, not all coastal areas were as badly affected as others. So 60% of 70 million is 49 million. 

42 million California lives were taken. About. Ish. Let’s round it up to 45 million, because I like clearer numbers. 

But that’s not the extent of it. Because we have tourists! In 2014, 251 million people visited CA. 44.2 million visited LA. That was up 3% from 2013. Now, that’s for the whole year: if we divide by 12, that’s about 21 million per month on average. April’s not your peak tourist travel month, though, so i’m going to do some illegal math stuff and cut that 21 million in half–10.5 million. here’s the thing though: there’s going to be more people in the world, and depending on economics, growth rate, etc, that could be a lot of people, and a lot of people travelling. I’m not sure how to calculate that. What I do know is how to grow that 10.5 million by 3% over a period of 32 years with my trusty computer calculator. That, by the way, is 27 million. Let’s round that up to 30 million, because of supernatural tourists and because I like clean numbers. So, 30 million visitors in 2048 in the month of April. Maybe. 

About 20% of all tourists/visitors would have been in LA for the year of 2014. I’m not sure how many were in San Francisco, or Sacramento, or anything else. A lot. I’m going with a lot, because those are pretty popular destinations (especially San Fran). Let’s say like 50%. 50% of 30 million visitors in April would be 15 million. That’s tourists. Granted, that’s like just one day in April, so it’s probably less than that. if we divide things up evenly per day, that’s 500,000 visitors on April 29, both supernatural and human. That’s not counting through traffic or exchange students, though. Or college kids who might not be counted in the residential surveys. Or illegal immigrants, or or or. 

For my own math sake, and because these numbers are squishy, i’m just. Going to round that up to 1 mil.

So far that’s 46 million people in CA alone. Remember, these earthquakes, the devastation reached up through Oregon and as high as Washington. I don’t even know where to find the numbers for that sort of thing. Can I guesstimate? I’m going to guesstimate. Another million in Oregon, in Washington, the people travelling through there (travelling infrastructure’s a mess), Mexico…yeah. 

So, adding in all those non-CA people along the coastline, that’s 47 million. 

But what happens when you have the equivalent of a giant series of earthquakes and destruction on the edge of the ocean, enough to completely restructure the coastline (I hc a mix of this and this and maybe this )? What happens to the water?

That happens.

Except that’s happening off the coast of California, right towardsAllThoseIslands. 

Whoops.Let’s go through them all. 

Hawai’i and Polynesia/Micronesia: based off of 2011 data, 2016 would have 1.4 million. Projected growth is .4% annually. 1.6 million by 2048, about. Round up to 2 million for supernatural beings. Emergency evacuation efforts and magic are only going to go so far, and it’s one of the first places hit, so I’m imagining a death toll of at least half that. There are other islands in the Pacific that are inhabited and lay after Hawai’i in the path of this wave, so they’re going to have better luck but people are still going to die Um, this is really vague and guesswork, but I’m thinking (according to wikipedia) that relevant islands and areas come up to about 102 million. If we increase that 48 million for pop growth and the introduction of sentient supernatural species, then that’s about 150 million. Maybe 1/3 of those will die, I’m guessing. 

Let’s go 1 million dead for Hawai’i, and 50 million for Polynesia/Micronesia.

Japan: 2016, 126 million. Japan’s population rate is actually going down, but they’re also working to change that, and supernatural beings are going to boost that population, so I’m just going to do the lazy thing and keep it the same number. Again, they’ll have more time to prepare than Hawaii, or maybe the same time, but they’re also used to tsunamis. Maybe not one of this magnitude, but still used to them. I’m still going to drop them a bit, because despite magic and emergency evac, it’s not going to save everybody.

100 million alive, 26 million dead. Approximately 1/5th the population.

Korea and China: Saved mostly because of the barrier that Japan, Polynesia, and Micronesia have afforded them. Any lives lost can be figured into the estimation number itself.

So, all together, we have:

North America: 47 millionHawai’i and Polynesia/Micronesia: 51 millionJapan: 26 millionTotal: 124 million people give or take. Congratulations, Alcor! You just killed probably 1.3% of the world population :D

We’re just. Not even going to get into the plates because that could bring about the end of the world. Or at least the end of the North and potentially South Americas. Nor are we going to go into the repercussions to the economy, environment, etc, that could affect peoples lives. Or any other number of things that would be affected by this disaster and cause premature deaths. Who even knows how weather patterns would be affected! It’s just nasty.