WHAT. Au!Keith and Au!Shiro wake up with little Kipp and have a little freak out about it. WHERE. their house WHEN. November 21st WARNINGS. panic attack STATUS. complete
When Keith had gone to bed, it had been in the cockpit of Black because he hadn’t trusted this “Garrison” that Shiro had spoken so highly of before, this “Garrison made up of Earth’s best and brightest” that had held Shiro captive this whole time that Keith had thought the human safe. There was a tentative truce between him, the Blades that had come to Earth to find the Blue Lion, and the Garrison. Because it was them against a common enemy; the Galra Empire.
But he certainly wouldn’t spit on the Garrison if they were on fire, at this point. They had lost any goodwill when they had turned against their own. Was Keith unusually heated about it? Maybe. But it was becoming increasingly clear to anyone that knew him that his rational side was much quieter whenever Takashi Shirogane was involved.
The rest of the Blades were housed in another ship, alongside his mother and father, but he and Shiro had bunked it in Black with the wolf. He had insisted on giving the human the bunk in the back, while he had made a nest of blankets for himself on the floor in the cockpit. Had he fallen asleep staring intently at the door that closed him off from the human? Also a maybe.
So why was he waking up on a couch in front of a television with Shiro and…a child? What?
“What?” He asked loudly, confusion mounting. Unfortunately, Shiro looked just as confused. Then, when the child stirred and shuffled into the heat of his side before settling back down again, he asked more quietly, “What?”
Shiro hadn't slept deeply since before he left for Kerberos years ago. He certainly hadn't slept well in the arena cages or in a Garrison cell. If he tried to think about the last time he slept through the night, his head started to hurt. What mattered more was that he slept just enough hours to stave off the cognitive performance issues that came with excessive sleep deprivation. Now was not the time for slowing his response time and damaging his memory. There was a war on and he was now avoiding recapture by the Garrison and fleeing with the alien and rebel pilots that had freed him.
Or at least, that was where he thought he was. He woke up slower than usual because he was so comfortable. The warmth of a body pressed against his side and another smaller one resting on his chest was soothing until consciousness started to creep in. Keith's voice broke through the rest of the web that was keeping Shiro half-asleep. He jerked his head up and instinctively reached behind his head for a shiv that was under his pillow back in the arena.
This was not the arena. And the small child with big brown eyes staring up at him was not a Galra jailor. Neither was the Galra looking startled and beautiful at his side. "What?" he echoed dumbly, before he shook his head and tried to sit up. "Goddamn it, what is it now? Who's kid is this?"
Kipp blinked sleepily up at them.
“Shh!” Keith hissed at the stupidly handsome man that was talking way too loud with a sleepy child around. He might have been a ninja spy, but even he knew that you didn't wake up or startle kits if they were resting. There were very few kids at the main base of the BoM, but he had enough practice around them to be pretty good with them.
“I don't know what's going on, but since you're pinned down by the kid, I'm going to check out the rest of the area,” Keith whispered, shifting to get up. He paused when a little hand shot out and grabbed his hand, curling around it as the child whined out. “Daddy stay.”
Then the kid nuzzled into Shiro's chest and promptly fell asleep again. Lucky kid, Keith thought, before he processed what the kid had said. “Daddy?” He repeated, the confusing growing further.
"Don't shh me," Shiro growled, even though it didn't particularly have any heat. The choice to snap at Keith had been getting harder and harder every time he spoke to him. Watching him interact with an adorable sleepy child certainly didn't help.
"Daddy? You have a son?" he whispered incredulously. His gaze locked on the child for a long moment and then shifted to Keith, comparing the two. There didn't seem to be any resemblance, outside of perhaps the sharp curve of their ears. Unfortunately, this process also meant he stared at Keith too long, appreciating his thick eyelashes and purple eyes. It was complicated - this attraction that burned in his gut - but it was also very simple sometimes. Or simply inconveniently timed, in this case. Shiro scowled and tried to shift out from underneath them both.
"Papa stop moving, it's nap time," the toddler mumbled, not opening his eyes. Shiro's eyes, in turn, went wide and startled.
Keith's eyebrows were practically disappearing into his hairline at this point. None of this was making sense. He was almost certain he hadn't spawned any children and if he had with Shiro, he would have remembered that. He froze when he was called ‘Daddy,’ but he eventually started to move again. Carefully, he maneuvered his hand, keeping his claws clear from harming the kid, before slipping his grasp.
He studied the small child carefully, trying to note any similarities between him and the human he had done a number of stupid things for. Other than their tan skin tone and the shape of their eyes, he couldn't see anything that screamed father-son. “Trick from the Empire?” He asked, feeling completely untethered from this moment. Because if he examined his feelings any closer, he would have to admit the thought of having kids with Shiro was something that made butterflies flutter in his belly.
"Must be." Shiro was very decidedly not looking at the child now. "Or he's just confused." He started scanning their surroundings with a shrewd gaze. His Vallo self was smart. Responsible. Organized. This Shiro was cagey and perceptive. He spotted the family pictures before much of anything else. "Definitely a trick. Some kind of experiment?"
His eyes dropped back to Kipp. As harsh as his life had turned out, he would never take it out on a child. If the last few months had proven anything, he was incapable of taking it out on the Galra next to him either. He snuck a glance at Keith.
"Did you come back to save me or did I imagine that part?" He didn't mean to ask that, but the question had been lingering in his mouth ever since he'd seen Keith with Lance and the other pilots, preparing to break him out.
“What would they have to gain through this?” Keith asked, face pinched as he picked up what looked like a family portrait. Except it featured him in his human form, Shiro, and this child, with Tex slinging his arms around both of their shoulders. But he was distracted when Shiro asked him about the escape.
He flushed, with his cheeks pinking up stupidly bright, as he looked away from Shiro's way too direct gaze. “Of course I came back to save you. I wouldn't leave you there to suffer needlessly.” The idea hurt his heart in an inexplicable way.
"I don't know what they'd have to gain. I don't know what they have to gain from a lot of their choices though." Shiro didn't know what to make of Keith, still, after all this time. He'd wanted to hate him for being Galra. But every moment with him was like finding something he'd been missing in his life all this time. Someone passionate and kind, brave and stubborn. And someone currently holding a baffling family picture.
"You already rescued me once, Keith." He sounded confused and softer than his usual hardened bitterness. Kipp's gentle breathing where he slept on Shiro's chest probably had a lot to do with it. "How many times are you going to keep saving me?"
Keith's clawed hand gripped the family picture a little more tightly, a sudden lump in his throat. What was it about this human that had him running through the cosmos to make sure he was okay? Their arrival to Earth had been more than just a strategic choice. It was also because Keith had desperately wanted to see the human again.
He swallowed hard, before quietly, but clearly stating; “As many times as it takes.” The words were firm, strong with Keith's conviction.
Something about that reply felt like too much. Shiro felt like he couldn't breathe. He couldn't feel like this. Not here, not now, not with Keith of all people in the universe. The last time he'd had a complex relationship, it had just been with another pilot, one who thought Shiro shouldn't go to space with his condition. Keith was more complicated in every possible way. And what if all he felt was pity? Shiro pushed out from under Kipp and Keith as quickly and carefully as he could. Kipp startled awake, wide-eyed, and it made Shiro's chest feel even tighter.
"Sorry, sorry. I can't--I couldn't--" God, was he having a panic attack? He'd had a few over the years but he'd managed to keep them to himself. Now, he was sure his trauma was painted plain as day on his scarred face. "Just…just give me a second." He turned towards the kitchen where a little breakfast bar separated the tiled space from the living room. He braced his hands on the high counter and closed his eyes, trying to get his breathing under control.
Panic attacks weren't new to Keith. Not because he had them, but because he had witnessed his mother suffer from them. There were things that Krolia had done and witnessed in her lifetime that could put any other person in the madhouse, but she only let her own traumas manifest in panic attacks. They were rare, so much so that she was still allowed to go on missions because of her ability to turn shit off until a mission was done.
But whenever she let herself be softer around her family, whenever there was too close of a call with her family, sometimes it crept up.
Keith had only seen them from his mother a handful of times, but he recognized the signs easily. He shushed the child and turned him away from watching Shiro, trying to give the man some semblance of privacy. But he himself couldn't tear his eyes away. How could he, when Shiro's pain was clear as day on his face? He let the child cling to him in sleepy confusion, while he silently watched Shiro hunch over as he fought his inner demons.
It took a few minutes of Shiro trying to breathe right. He didn't have anyone who'd ever taught him methods to get through these attacks and he was too stubborn to admit he needed the help so he'd never looked it up himself. Not that he'd really had the time anyway, between escaping the arena, meeting the blades, and returning to Earth to be marked a criminal.
"I don't understand you," he finally muttered softly. "But I'm grateful. I don't want you to think that I'm not." Being repeatedly saved by a beautiful man wasn't a hardship, even if his alienness made it complicated for Shiro's trauma. He stood up straight and swept a hand back through his white forelock. "I'm going to search the house. Look for hidden cameras. See if I can figure out what the trick is here."
Every bit of his instinct that would normally be screaming at him to not let Shiro go off on his own was oddly quiet now. So Keith nodded awkwardly, trying not to wake that sleeping toddler that was now clinging to him. “Don't take long or I'll come looking,” he warned.
Shiro's instinct was to bark a disgruntled "don't tell me what to do", but he managed to hold it back this time. Probably because Kipp and Keith looked soft and domestic there on the sofa and every cell in Shiro's body wanted to crawl back in amongst them and go back to sleep.
"I'll do my best not to need saving," he murmured instead, quickly turning away and striding off into the house.