Chapter Text
Right after Shiro had dropped Allura off at her house, she called him wanting to Facetime. I’m driving, He texts her the moment he’s stopped at a red light.
No problem. Facetime when you’re home.
There’s no other cars in his driveway when he pulls up so he figures his grandparents are still out. He unlocks the door and lets himself into the house. Black, the family’s beloved flat coated retriever, immediately jumps off the couch and goes to greet Shiro. Shiro laughs at the dog’s playfulness.
“You silly dog. You know you’re not supposed to be on the couch,” Shiro teases. Black just thumps his tail against the floor.
Shiro walks upstairs to his bedroom and sits on his bed before facetiming Allura back. If this is going to be a long conversation, he might as well make himself comfortable.
She picks up on the first ring. “You have to check out the latest Garrison-Secrets post. It’s about a gay kid at school,”
Just like that, Shiro’s heart drops. He scrambles off his bed and into the chair in front of his laptop. He’s pulling up the garrison-secrets website, his fingers trembling. Garrison-secrets is a website where people can post anonymously about what’s going on at Garrison High. It’s an odd combination of bad poetry and gossip and Shiro doesn’t usually pay attention to it. Now, it feels as if the site has the potential to completely destroy his life. Because it does.
“Shiro?” Allura’s voice called from the phone.
“Sorry. I just...I gotta go,” Shiro hangs up before Allura can get another word in. The first time he reads the anonymous post over he just barely glances at it. He’s only looking for his name or anything else incriminating. There’s nothing there and Shiro feels like he can breathe again after being forcibly held underwater.
Intellectually, he knew the post wasn’t going to be about him. For one, if the post had been about him, Allura wouldn’t have just asked him to check it out for himself. She would have wanted to talk about it. Amongst their friends, they often joked that she must have been a diplomat in one of her past lives. She always wanted to talk everything out, smooth everything over. She wouldn’t have let him just hang up on her. Hell, she would be banging on his front door demanding to speak to him.
Second, it couldn’t be about him because he had never told anyone that secret about himself. He had never even said it out loud. So the idea that someone else could have picked up on it was laughable. And yet, it still made him anxious, which is why he was always sure to never do incriminating. He had had girlfriends before. He never signed up for the school drama productions, despite how much he desperately wanted to. He played sports but never let his eyes linger in the locker rooms. Not that he would do that anyway. Because, ew, creepy.
After Shiro has sufficiently calmed down, he looks over the post again. It’s intentionally vague, nothing giving away the identity of the poster. It’s sappy, like most posts on Garrison-secrets were, and yet something about this post resonates with Shiro.
Every day, I feel like I’m flying through life. I should be enjoying the view but all I can think about is the fact that I can’t keep it up forever, that there will come a time, I’ll slip somehow. One day someone is going to find out I’m gay and then everything will come crashing down.
Shiro recognizes the deep seated fear in the author. He recognizes it because it’s the fear he’s lived his whole life trying to abide. After reading the post for a fifth time in a row, his eyes focus on how it was signed. With an email address, to be precise. p
Shiro couldn’t believe it. For someone so afraid of being found out, they had left an email. It was almost like the person was calling out to him. And then before he knew it, he was creating an email of his own and typing as fast as he was able.
From: [email protected]
Dear Red,
I read your email. I feel like that much must be obvious since that would be the only way I could be emailing you in the first place but I digress. Sorry. I tend to ramble when I am anxious and right now I’m nervous as hell emailing you. I’ve never done anything like this before. Felt the need to email a complete stranger.
But I had to tell you that your post on Garrison-Secrets really spoke to me. Because I’m just like you. I have a secret I’ve never told anyone that threatens to ruin my life everyday. So I guess what I’m trying to say is I get it. And I just wanted to let you know that you’re not alone.
Sincerely,
Ryou
Shiro sends off the email without even spell checking it. He’s afraid that if he takes the time to look it over before sending it that he’ll chicken out of the whole thing. He stares at the computer screen in shock for a few seconds. He’s really done that. He goes from never saying he was gay out loud to practically outing himself to a complete stranger. Shiro is usually so careful, never doing anything to draw the slightest bit of suspicion. He’s too afraid.
But there’s something about Red. Something that made him want to reach out. He felt like Red needed a friend. Someone to talk to. And to be honest, so does Shiro. If he shares his thoughts with his friends or grandparents, then it would be a big production. He would be ‘coming out’ of the closet. And once you ‘came out’ there was no way of going back in. That’s probably the reason he has still yet to come out despite being almost 18. ‘Coming out’ was so permanent. And it’s bound to change his life, change people’s perceptions of him despite their reassurances to the contrary.
So, in a really weird roundabout way, Red was safe. Red only knows him as Ryou. He doesn’t have to be ‘Golden Boy of the Garrison’ Takashi ‘Shiro’ Shirogane. He can just be himself. He doesn’t have to pretend.