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The Atlas is locked in orbit around the star that the Garrison has designated XS-902846 — known to the Olkari as Pakdaix, but Shiro can’t quite figure out the pronunciation there — when things get weird.
They’re there on a scientific expedition, which means that Shiro does a lot of standing around looking important while Pidge and Matt and about a dozen Olkari representatives run test after test after test.
Shiro likes science. He appreciates science, especially astrophysics, but what they’re doing here is so over-his-head complicated that he can’t do much more than smile and nod. He looks forward to reading the results, he thinks, even if he’ll have to get Pidge to dumb it down for him.
The best thing about it all is the fact that Keith has been dragged into the expedition too.
XS-902846 is technically in the airspace of the still-fledgling Galran Republic, and while Krolia and Kolivan don’t mind much about letting other cultures dock in their airspace and run scientific experiments for weeks, a lot of the nearby population is still trigger happy and suspicious from the war.
Keith is, somehow, a stabilising force.
Everyone in the Galran Republic is a lot more relaxed when their half-Galran, Black Paladin, would-be-our-leader-if-he-let-us-elect-him cultural golden boy is present.
Everyone in the galaxy likes Keith.
Shiro likes Keith too, even more than he likes science. He thinks he would be going crazy if Keith wasn’t there.
Then again, the third time he lives through the same day over again, he thinks he might be going crazy anyway.
The first day goes like this:
Shiro wakes up, puts on his uniform, and eats breakfast with Matt.
He goes to the bridge and wastes time for a few hours — does paperwork, advises the bridge crew on the readings Pidge is looking for, covertly plays snake on his tablet and tries not to feel guilty for it, but hey, he’s just here to keep the Atlas steady — because their mission debriefing isn’t booked until noon.
He gets distracted from his paperwork by Keith leaning over slightly to look at a display over Veronica’s shoulder. He’s saying something Shiro can’t hear and his lips are painted with the ghost of a smile. Shiro is curious about what Keith finds amusing, and not at all enchanted by how good Keith’s ass looks in his fancy Senior Blade uniform.
It’s Curtis’s voice that pulls him from his contemplation of Keith’s smile — yes, smile, that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.
“…so, what do you think, Sir?”
When Shiro looks at him Curtis is hopefully expectant and too chipper. Shiro hasn’t even had his second coffee of the day yet. He’s not ready for expectant and chipper. Worst of all, he has no idea what Curtis was asking him in the first place.
Shiro looks at him for a moment, slack jawed and floundering.
“Um.” He says, and forces a thoughtful look onto his face. He is put together. He is considerate. He is carefully mulling the question over.
“Shiro, we’re going to be late for Pidge’s debriefing.” Keith calls out, impatient despite the fact that the debriefing isn’t scheduled for another half an hour.
Keith is saving him, he realises.
As many times as it fucking takes.
“Let me get back to you on that.” Shiro says to Curtis, and tries not to internalise the disappointed slacking of his face.
“Come on.” Keith says, an impatient motion to the door.
When they step out into the hallway, all Shiro can do is breathe out a quick: “Thank you,” before they get swept up in the ebb and flow of the day again.
They sit through the meeting and Shiro does his best to listen to Pidge and Matt lecture them about solar flares and electromagnetics — which means he absolutely can’t let himself look at Keith.
They decide, in the meeting, that they need someone to take a shuttle closer to the star to get more detailed readings.
They decide, to Shiro’s dismay, that the best person to pilot the mission is probably Keith. Keith accepts the news with only the smallest twinge of disappointment — and that makes Shiro’s heart swell a little bit, because he can only imagine that Keith wanted to spend time with Shiro on this trip as much as Shiro wanted to spend time with him.
He ached for Keith. He could only hope it was a twin ache.
They squeeze in a jog before Keith goes to ready his shuttle for launch. They had planned a full sparring match, like old times, but the pounding of their feet down the corridors of the Atlas will have to do for now.
When Keith brings them to a stop he is breathless from exertion, and utterly beautiful. Shiro devours the sight of Keith in work-out gear, sweat dripping down his brow, the sight of the slight smile gracing his face.
“I need to go prep for the flight.” Keith tells him, still breathless, and Shiro thinks that they should bottle the sound of his voice to sell to desperate lonely men like Shiro.
“I hate science.” He says, only marginally less breathless than Keith. “We should throw in the towel and all go on vacation.”
Keith laughs. It’s a bright, warm thing, and it catches Shiro off guard. Now that — that is a sound they could sell. The deep rumble of joy in Keith’s chest strikes Shiro like an earthquake, like a freight-train, like a disaster about to happen that he can’t escape.
He thinks, I would go to war for you, before he can even process it.
“This basically is vacation for you.” Keith says. “Aren’t you just here to look impressive and keep our girl flying in a straight line?”
Shiro tries not to feel a flash of possessive satisfaction at the way Keith calls the Atlas ‘our girl’, as if she was a wayward child or a particularly well behaved dog. He thinks he can feel a gentle hum of satisfaction from the Atlas too, whatever parts of her are made from that perfect mix of magic and science that allows her to feel vaguely satisfied.
“Orbit is inherently not straight.” Shiro says, as if that trumps what Keith is saying, his finger tracks a slow and careful circle in the air to demonstrate. His brain grinds to a halt even as his mouth continues onwards, because mid sentence Keith pulls up the hem of his grey t-shirt to wipe the sweat from his brow, exposing the expanse of his abs to the entire corridor. “It’s… you know, orbital. Oval-y. Ovaloid?”
“Oblong?” Keith asks him, and Shiro nods dumbly.
“Sure,” he says, even though he isn’t sure at all.
The look Keith gives him is fond, amused. “I guess I sold you short, then. Won’t make that mistake again.”
“Better not.” Shiro warns, smile bright.
They just smile at each other for what must be a full thirty seconds, before Keith declares that he really does have to go.
Shiro hates science.
That is the thought that takes him through the rest of the day, through a shower where he definitely doesn’t touch himself to the thought of Keith’s sweaty smile, through mission prep and Keith’s voice over the comms as he readies the shuttle and takes off through the Atlas’s hanger bay.
Keith is out there in space for a long time, past when Shiro should technically still be on duty, past when he should really have handed over the bridge to someone else. If Keith is out there, Shiro wants to be at the helm.
The last thing that he remembers before things start getting weird is Keith’s voice over the comms, static riddled and distant.
“I’m getting some freaky readings out here.” Keith says, and the world goes white.
The second loop starts with Curtis mid sentence. It’s unfortunate timing.
“…so, what do you think, Sir?”
The words ring in his ears and Shiro gets that distinctive feeling of his stomach dropping out from under him — like when you miss a step on the stairs, or launch a hover bike off the side of a cliff, no ground below you for a startling second before you find equilibrium.
“What?” He says, utterly confused.
“Shiro, we’re going to be late for Pidge’s debriefing.” Keith calls out, impatient.
Shiro goes through the motions, thinking maybe this entire experience is some weird kind of dream. He goes to the meeting, jogs with Keith, jacks off in the shower, and the world goes white as he stands on the Bridge and listens to the strange static of Keith’s voice.
On the third loop, he says something.
He’s in Pidge’s briefing when he does it, listening to them say the same thing for the third time over. His brow is furrowed and he looks unhappy. Unhappy enough that Matt looks him in the eye, critical, and says: “Is everything alright, Admiral Shirogane?”
Matt only calls Shiro ‘Admiral Shirogane’ when Matt is being a dick, or when Shiro is. In this case, it might be both.
“We’ve already done this.” Shiro tells the group at large. “Twice, now.”
They look at him like he’s crazy.
He tries to explain. They’ve done this day already, every beat of it.
“Have you been getting enough sleep, Shiro?” Keith asks him, beautifully concerned and low voiced.
Shiro gives him a look like he’s being betrayed, and Keith remains steady in the face of it. It’s a fair point. Shiro never gets enough sleep.
“We’re stuck in some kind of time loop. Living the same twelve hours over and over again.” He looks to Pidge, a quick turn of his head that makes his neck ache. He sounds like a mad-man, but he needs them to believe him. “You’re about to tell us about how you need someone to fly a shuttle out closer to Pakdaix —”
“Pak-dai-x.” Keith hisses in correction.
“— so that you can get a better read on the solar activity.”
All eyes turn to Pidge, messy haired and wonderful and every inch a mad scientist in their lab coat. “Well, yes, actually.”
“Ha. Yes!” Shiro grins. His friends look bemused. The Olkari scientists look bewildered, but he can’t bring himself to care. “And the first time I offered up Rizavi. She’s a great pilot, I said, and the MFE’s are on standby, but you said —”
“We don’t need a fighter pilot, Shiro, and I think everyone would be more comfortable if they had someone they knew better behind the wheel.” Matt says, eyes flicking significantly to the Olkari scientists.
“We believe the Black Paladin would be most suitable.” One of them said.
Shiro coudn’t help the sigh that escaped him.
“You’re all missing the point.”
Keith goes on the flight.
Shiro spends the time before the day resets sitting on the bridge, working everybody to the bone and forcing them to take endless readings of the solar activity. He urges the Atlas to give him something, anything, to get out of this.
“I’m getting some freaky readings out here.” Keith says, and the world goes white.
So, maybe five is going to be his lucky number.
Or the number that makes him really lose his mind.
“…so, what do you think, Sir?”
The lights on the Atlas flicker when Shiro looks up. His hand clenches into a fist.
“I’m late for Pidge’s debriefing.” He says, without looking at Curtis at all, and storms his way out off the command deck.
He’s storming through the halls when Keith’s voice calls after him.
“Shiro, wait.” Keith says, and it’s a sirens call.
Shiro and Keith are experts in waiting for each other. One of them is always doing it at some point or another. Keith asks for Shiro to wait, so he slows his footsteps without stopping, giving time for Keith to catch up to his side.
“What’s wrong?” Keith asks, half gentle and half demanding. Shiro doesn’t often have covert temper tantrums in front of half of his crew.
“Everything.” Shiro says, and when he does stop Keith halts his steps in perfect time with him. “Everything is wrong.”
He tells Keith everything, explains it all from start to finish, and this time Keith listens with a quiet reverence. Shiro wonders for a brief moment if Keith is going to try and put him to bed again — maybe he would let Keith do it today. Maybe he could take this loop off and just sleep for the many hours until it resets again. Maybe that would help him screw his mind on straight again. Keith doesn’t disbelieve him though. Keith lets out a slow breath and nods his head instead.
“Okay.” Keith says, “We can fix this.”
Keith, braver than most men have ever been, reaches out and takes Shiro’s hand. Shiro lets Keith drag him through the halls of the Atlas and into the lab that the ship has designed just for Matt.
Shiro, maybe stupidly, feels better because Keith is touching him. For a brief few minutes Keith is holding his hand. Keith’s palm is warm and dry against his own, calloused from years of work with his hands — delicate fingers digging through the guts of a machine, hands wrapped for sparring practice, calloused from holding his blade and learning to battle with it.
There is no debriefing, because Keith makes Matt and Pidge focus on this instead. They spend endless hours considering what could have happened, what could have gone wrong, what could be causing something as strange as a time loop like this.
Keith tries to contact their friends. He doesn’t get through to his mom and Kolivan on New Daibazaal. He doesn’t get through to Coran, Allura or Lance on New Altea. He doesn’t get through to Hunk either. The comm fizzles out and gets stuck on static every time he tries someone new, and every time he tries and tries again.
The only people he can get in touch with are Griffin and Kinkade, who Shiro had sent off ship this morning to search for rare parts on a nearby planet. It was only an hour away by pod, and Keith had described it as one big seaside flea market. They were fine, they hadn’t noticed anything weird at all.
This leads Pidge to believe that they’re stuck in some kind of time loop bubble. The star, the Atlas, and the planet are out of sync with the natural progression of time, while the rest of the universe carries on as normal around them.
They aren’t sure how it happened. They also aren’t sure how to fix it.
Shiro’s head thunks down on one of the lab countertops as they explain it to him. He lets out a groan.
“I’m going to be trapped here forever.” He laments, and is largely mollified an instant later, when he feels Keiths hand on his shoulder, warm and steady.
“We’ll fix it.” Keith promises.
At the end of the day, the world still goes white and Shiro still finds himself back on the bridge listening to the same old words.
Shiro spends the next four loops working himself to the bone. He tries to memorise every piece of data that Pidge shows him so that he can replicate it for her, and by the time he’s on the ninth loop he’s plugging equations into their computer himself instead of guiding her on what to do.
They get closer and closer to an answer every time, but Shiro is still struggling to keep a smile on.
On the tenth loop, Shiro takes a day off.
“…so, what do you think, Sir?” Curtis says, and the lights on the Atlas still flicker when Shiro looks up.
Shiro lets out an exhausted sigh, and says:
“I think that I’m sick.” He says, closing down his monitor. “I’m going to bed for the rest of the day. Call me if the world ends.”
He does what he says he will. He goes to the captains quarters and changes into sweatpants, stretches out his phantom-aching muscles and gets into bed. He gently nudges the Atlas to put his door into ‘do not disturb’ mode before he settles down into the pillows. The mental exhaustion more than anything else sends him to sleep faster that he’s ever fallen before.
His door chiming wakes him up, and a quick look at his clock tells him he’s slept for five hours. There are only three people on the ship that the Atlas would let bother him when he had asked to be left alone. Only one of them wasn’t focused on something much more important than Shiro today.
“Come in,” He calls out, his voice raspy with sleep. He’s still detangling his aching limbs from the bedsheets when he sees Keith’s face, exactly as he expected.
Keith gives him a curious look. He has a tray of food in his hands and an amused suspicion on his face.
“I’d give you shit for playing hooky,” Keith tells him, setting down the tray on Shiro’s bedside table, “But you’ve needed this rest for a long time.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a workaholic.” Shiro grumbles, and sits up, letting the sheet drop from his frame. His chest is exposed, and he knows he doesn’t imagine the way that Keith looks and looks and then quickly looks away.
Keith does that a lot. Looks at him and then doesn’t. Keith has been looking, and not looking, for a long time — longer, Shiro knows, than Shiro has been not looking at Keith. It makes his stomach flutter now, but he doesn’t move to hide himself.
He wants Keith to sit down on the edge of the bed, wants Keith to look his fill, wants to play sick enough that Keith will have to feed him by hand and pet his hair.
Keith doesn’t sit down on the bed — he moves to the armchair that Shiro has just enough room for, and throws himself down on it.
“What’s got you so grumpy, Admiral?” He asks.
Shiro snorts a laugh, quirks a smile.
“Time.”
“That’s… extremely vague.” Keith says, but he smiles back at Shiro, a second nature mirror image.
“I think I’d feel better if you spent the rest of the day with me.”
He can see the pleasant surprise that Keith tries to hide at those words. Keith is a desert flower, hardy and hard to kill, but he still blooms so prettily under the right words and the right attention.
“I’m supposed to go do a flight thing for Matt and Pidge soon.”
“Ah,” Shiro says, and lets his disappointment show.
Keith looks at him, and looks, and looks, and doesn’t stop looking. He’s searching, evaluating, and then he smiles again. “I guess I could… catch what you have.”
“We’ll both feel much better after some R&R.”
Keith, eventually, does come to sit on the bed with him. Not up top where Shiro would like, but at the bottom. It’s good, though, it’s close enough. Their legs tangle together and they talk for hours, the way they used to. Endless stories shared, telling each other everything they’ve missed.
When the world goes white around them Shiro is locked deep in his contentment, and when he blinks himself back onto the bridge of the Atlas, he feels robbed of something crucial.
“The worst thing about all of this —” Shiro says, with full irony, on the eleventh loop, “The worst thing is that at the start of every loop, Curtis asks me a question. Only, I wasn’t listening the first time he asked it.”
“Why weren’t you listening?” Matt asks him, absentminded, running a simulation on the data that Shiro has loyally repeated back to both him and Pidge.
“I—” Shiro says, and finds that he can’t admit it, can’t say the word. He lets his head thunk on the desk again, glad that he and Matt are alone here.
“Let me guess.” Matt says, slow and wry, the tone of voice he gets when he’s about to lovingly rip Shiro to shreds. “You were too busy thinking about Keith. Or looking at Keith.”
Shiro groans, low and annoyed and devastated.
“Your pining for him is going to rot your brain some day.” Matt tells him. “You need to take a vacation. Or to fuck him. Or do both.”
“Ha.” Shiro says, bland. “Thank’s, Matt, super helpful.”
“I mean, now’s your chance, right? You’re so terrified of ‘runing the friendship’,” Matt does air quotes and everything, and Shiro hates him for it, “that you won’t say anything to him about the whole epic romance plotline you guys have been playing out for years. It seems to me like you just got handed infinite chances to try and get it right. If you say something now, and he hates you for it, you can always take it back again tomorrow.”
“That’s…” Shiro starts, and then doesn’t finish. Morally corrupt, maybe. Or cheating, it probably counted as cheating.
“Just think about it.” Matt tells him. “You’re stuck here until we can figure this out anyway.”
Shiro does think about it. For all of the twelfth loop, the concept won’t leave his head — infinite chances, infinite possibilities, a get out of jail free card of Keith doesn’t feel the same way he does.
Shiro avoids Curtis’ question, explains the time loop, and writes down all the information he knows for Pidge and Matt. They run tests and ask questions, and eventually set Shiro free again, telling him to get out of their hair for a few hours while they work.
Keith and Shiro go jogging. Pounding feet down the hallways of the Atlas, adrenaline pouring through their veins. They haven’t done this on every loop. For more than half of them Shiro has kept everyone busy in a lab. This time he feels the desperate need to move his body, and the equally desperate need to see Keith panting and sweaty.
When Keith stops them, he’s breathless again, and Shiro watches the rise and fall of his chest. He hands Keith a water bottle, just so he can see the way Keith’s throat moves as he gulps it down, just so he can see the smile on Keith’s face when he finishes taking a drink.
“Thank you.” Keith pants, and Shiro wants to kiss him.
He watches with rapt attention as Keith uses the bottom of his grey tshirt to wipe at his sweaty brow again, feels the earth quake around them (if only in a metaphorical sense) as he tracks his eyes over Keith’s abs and the expanse of his chest, before the sight disappears again and Keith meets his eyes.
Keith has caught him looking, if the slight flush to his cheeks is any indication.
“So,” Keith says, looking up at him. The inches of height between them has never made Shiros gut twist more. “We should probably clean up and check in with Pidge and Matt, right?”
Shiro watches his lips move, and wants to kiss him.
Infinite chances, his mind prompts him.
Shiro shakes his head in the negative. “No,” He says, voice rough. “I don’t think so.”
When he takes a step toward Keith, the other man doesn’t move away. Not a flinch, not even a moment where he looks like he’s going to back up. Shiro gets them close enough that they are a mere inch from each other, enough to hear the gentle in and out of Keith trying to catch his breath — Shiro glances down at his mouth again, the pink of his lips, and those breaths seem to stutter in Keith’s chest.
When Shiro moves closer again Keith doesn’t so much step away as he lets Shiro crowd him back against the wall of the Atlas, eyes up and fixed on Shiro’s, throat bobbing around a swallowed gulp.
“What do you want to do instead?” Keith asks, a bare whisper in the air between them.
“I was thinking about kissing you.” Shiro says, “What do you think?”
Keith looks searching for a moment, looks startled, looks considering. Worst of all, he looks achingly hopeful. His head nods, the barest movement, and tilts his head up closer to Shiro’s.
For a moment, they’re breathing the same air, back and forward. The tension is high, the anticipation better that adrenaline at getting Shiro’s heart beating.
Shiro is happy to soak in it for a long moment, to give Keith the chance to push him away if he wants to, the chance to change his mind.
Keith only shifts millimetres closer, and huffs out a breath.
“Well?” He says, argumentative, foolhardy, reckless. “Are you going to kiss me or not?”
Shiro smiles — because that’s Keith, through and through, demanding the thing he wants now that he knows Shiro is considering giving it to him. He huffs out a laugh just to watch the way that Keith’s face twists in annoyance, before he cuts it short to press their lips together.
They kiss, and kiss, and kiss, Shiro’s body pressing Keith up against the hallway wall, entirely forgetting that someone could find them at any moment.
They kiss, and Shiro discovers that Keith kisses like he fights: graceful, and intense, and like he’s determined to win the battle if not the war.
They kiss, and Shiro discovers that if he tugs at Keiths hair just right, Keith will make the most beautiful sound that Shiro has ever heard against his lips, half whimper, half moan, a sound that is all consuming because suddenly all Shiro can think of is making Keith do it again, and again, and again.
They kiss, and Shiro thinks that nothing, not anything in the universe, will ever feel as perfect as this could.
Keith is breathless again when they pull apart, breathless and soft under Shiro’s hands. Their foreheads thunk together in a way that is distinctly painful, but still, all Shiro can do is smile.
“I didn’t think…” Keith says, with half a laugh in his voice, like its lodged in his throat and he won’t let it escape. Shiro noses at his cheek, presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth, restrains the urge to dig his fingers into the spot on Keith’s side he knows is ticklish just to pull the laugh out fully.
“What?” He says, rough with wanting.
“Didn’t think you wanted me like this.”
Shiro is the one swallowing at that. His fingers grip Keith a little bit tighter. “I want you. Like this, and any other way I can get you, every way I can get you.” He tells him, a whisper pressed half against his mouth. “I love you. As more than a friend, more than — I love you, and I’ve wanted you for a long time.”
He can feel Keith shiver at the words, can feel Keith shift until their mouths are pressed together in another bruising kiss, harsh yet gentle all at the same time.
“Are you going to say it back?” He says, panting, when Keith lets him back up for air.
“You’re a brat,” Keith says, “You know I love you.”
Shiro takes Keith back to his quarters on the Atlas and shows him just how much he wants him, presses love against his skin with kiss after kiss after kiss. They don’t have sex, because when Shiro fucks Keith for the first time he intends for both of them to retain the memory of it.
He doesn’t fuck Keith, but he does get his mouth on him. He’s aware that the line there is a thin one, but Keith is whiney when he wants something and Shiro is a weak, weak man.
Shiro learns that Keith gets wet like a river when he’s turned on, and that he tastes — well, utterly human, but because he’s Keith Shiro thinks it might as well be like the nectar of the Gods. Keith is sensitive and beautifully vocal: he cries out when Shiro sucks at his clit and Shiro is delighted to learn that Keith isn’t afraid to grab him by the hair too, isn’t afraid to tug and pull.
Keith makes a sound like a wounded animal when Shiro sinks a finger into him, and Shiro almost stops, almost pulls away again, but Keith is saying: “Please, Shiro.” Like he’ll die if Shiro doesn’t keep touching him, like this is all he’s ever wanted and he would kill for it. Keith comes with Shiro two fingers deep and with his mouth around Keith’s clit, pleasure rushing over him like a tidal wave, fingers tight in Shiro’s hair.
Shiro grins up at him when he’s giving Keith a break to catch his breath, mouth messy, fingers still buried in the tight-hot-wet expanse of Keith’s hole. “Wanna go again?” He asks, and thinks please, please, please — and there’s that wounded animal sound again, and Keith’s breathless laughter, and the nod of his head, so Shiro makes him come again, and once more for good measure.
When Keith is finally done, and oversensitive to the touch, he reaches down and pushes Shiro’s face away from him with his hand. Shiro can do nothing except lay down next to him, bundle Keith into his arms and hold on a little bit too tightly.
“Remember.” He says, lips a ghost against the sweaty expanse of Keith’s skin, moments before he knows his time here is up. “Please, remember this tomorrow.”
“…so, what do you think, Sir?” Curtis says, for the thirteenth time.
Except Shiro is still watching Keith — watching the way his back stiffens, watching the way he stands up straight and the smile slides off his face, watching the way his head tilts up to watch the lights flicker, like they always do.
Curtis looks between them too, questioning, curious. Shiro can’t pay him the attention he needs right now, because Keith is whipping around to look at Shiro with wide eyes.
“Holy shit.” Keith is saying.
“You remember?” He asks, hope lodged in his throat like a rock, eyes wide.
“I remember.” Keith says, and smiles bloom across both of their faces at exactly the same time. “Sorry, Curtis, Shiro is going to be busy all day.” He says, and is already stepping forward, already grabbing Shiro by the wrist to pull him out of the bridge and into the hallway.
They don’t go and update everyone, they don’t go and explain to Pidge and Matt.
They have unlimited time, endless possibilities.
So they spend the thirteenth loop having sex.
Shiro has never felt as free as he does when he’s kissing Keith, has never felt so heart-stoppingly excited as he does when he gets Keith pressed up against a wall again, when he gets his lips and his teeth on Keith’s neck.
Keith is a live wire when he gets started, demanding and needy and perfectly pliable all at once. He’s a little bit clumsy with it — out of practice, maybe, much in the same way Keith is — but when he gets his lips around Shiro’s cock it still feels like bliss, like Shiro is entering nirvana.
Shiro learns that Keith likes it when he talks dirty, when he narrates what he’s doing and litters in praising comments. He calls Keith ‘baby’, ‘sweetheart’, says ‘holy shit, you’re doing so good, baby’ and watches the way it makes Keith lose his mind a little bit.
Shiro learns that Keith likes it when Shiro fucks him slow and hard, languid with it. He makes punched out sounds with every thrust into him, a chorus of ah-ah-ah that makes Shiro smile, sweet and savage all at once.
Keith likes it, too, when Shiro rests a hand around his throat. Not squeezing, really. Not choking him, just resting it there, a calm and steady pressure to counterpoint every hard thrust of Shiro’s cock into him. It makes Shiro feel lost in power, knowing that he could clench down at any moment, knowing that Keith might want that too, some other day when they’ve had more time to think about it. Shiro feels like he’s conquered Keith somehow, like he’s tamed the reckless beast. He feels, too, like Keith has conquered him in turn.
“Baby,” Shiro says, a mantra, when he feels Keith come like a vice grip around him. “You’re so good, so sweet for me.” And when he asks if Keith wants to stop, Keith shakes his head and practically demands that Shiro keeps fucking him through his orgasm, all the way to the next one.
When Shiro comes inside him Keith locks him there, legs around Shiro, refusing to let him go for long minutes.
They fuck, and they fuck, and they keep fucking for what must be hours and hours. For a few brief, breathless moments, Shiro thinks they’ll keep going right to the end of the loop — but not even they can ignore the demands of their body. If it was just Shiro, he might try, but he can’t stand the way Keith’s stomach starts growling with hunger.
He wraps Keith in blankets and, grinning like a madman, practically runs to the kitchens to grab him some food. He feels lost in his puppy-dog excitement, knows that he must look like a crazy person when Matt catches him in the halls on the way back, arms laden down with food.
“Dude, where have you been —”
“Keith,” Shiro explains, with a frantic nod of his head. “Sorry, I know, I’ll do better next time, but he’s hungry now so can I just —”
And Matt lets him go, lets him rush back, and Keith lights up when Shiro comes back into the room.
They eat while they’re still wrapped together, Keith’s back against his chest, his chin resting on Keith’s shoulder when he isn’t busy chewing. He keeps getting distracted kissing up along the expanse of Keith’s neck.
“Don’t even think about it,” Keith tells him, when he feels Shiro at half mast again behind him. “I’m not going to walk for a week.”
“You won’t even feel it when the loop resets.” Shiro tells him, smile pressed against his skin. He feels Keith grow hot beneath his hands, shifts to look at the blush that spreads across Keith’s cheek. Keith looks embarrassed, taken aback, more than he has all day.
“I guess you’re right.” Keith says, and then, “God, that’s daunting.”
“You’ve been with people before me, right?” Shiro asks him, uncertain about what answer he actually wants to hear there. If Keith is a virgin — was one, before the sex marathon that just took place— Shiro might actually die from old resurfaced guilt, shame at the idea that he is chaining Keith to an old man who has lost his way in the world, shame at the knowledge that he has wanted Keith for far longer than he wants to admit, all the way since the day of the Kerberos launch when he saw Keith in the light of a desert sunset and realised how badly he wanted to kiss this boy goodbye.
If Keith has had sex with other people, there is always going to be a part of Shiro that wants to hunt them down and make them regret it, erase the memory from their minds so that he’s the only person who has ever seen Keith sweating and mewling and delirious with pleasure.
Keith groans, and his hands cover his face in a way that means he’s definitely blushing, and Shiro knows the answer in an instant. His arms wrap tighter around Keith, he pulls Keith closer.
“Keith,” He says, disbelieving, fond, grinning like an idiot because apparently his emotions have settled in on victorious.
“Shut up,” Keith says, and there’s a laugh in his voice, so Shiro knows it isn’t that bad. “I’ve never — people have wanted to, you know? I’ve had offers.”
“Of course you have. Have you seen yourself?”
“You’re just… the only person I’ve ever wanted to do this with.” It isn’t defensive. Keith has clearly come to terms with that a long time ago. It still makes Shiro ache for him. Those words are overwhelming, all consuming. Shiro takes him by the jaw and gently moves him so that he can press a kiss to those lips.
“I love you,” He says, again, because Keith needs to hear it a thousand times, because he needs Keith to be certain of it.
On the fourteenth loop, Shiro keeps his promise to Matt, and does better.
So there they go, back to the grind, back to scanning the solar flares and trying to figure out what, exactly, is causing all of this. His heart is lighter, this time, because he has Keith’s hand to hold and Keith to carry some of the burden for him.
They send Keith out to get a closer look again — because this time he’ll remember what he meant when he said the readings were weird. They keep a live feed running from his ship to the Atlas.
They have to do it three times before Keith and Shiro can remember enough of the data stream to parrot it back to Matt and Pidge.
Seventeen loops in, their day goes like this:
“…so, what do you think, Sir?” Curtis says, and like muscle memory Shiro shuts down his console and gives him a rueful smile.
“Sorry, let me get back to you on that.” He says, a sorry excuse, before him and Keith make their escape from the bridge and down to Matt’s lab again.
“You have no idea what he’s asking you, do you?” Keith asks him, finally. “It just occurred to me that we come back mid-sentence, and I’ve never heard you give him an actual answer.”
“Not a clue.”
Keith’s grin is a savage thing. Shiro doesn’t ask him to share, doesn’t really care to know.
Matt and Pidge, as always, spend hours doing research with their assistance. Shiro and Keith know enough now to help them catch up within a couple of hours, but it still seems like there are days of work ahead of them.
Matt and Shiro start shooting the shit over the dinner they share in the lab, hunched over workstations. They trade sci-fi classic explanations backwards and forwards, parrot information learned from long nights at the Garrison when they would watch any movie or TV show that had the word “Star” in it: Trek, Wars, Gate, everything and anything in-between.
“It’s a mysterious alien who wants to steal the Atlas’ technology.” Matt says.
“It’s a space wizard.” Shiro offers.
“It’s a simulation — you’ve actually been dreaming this whole thing.” Matt suggests.
“It’s Keith.” Pidge says, pushing themselves away from their computer.
Keith laughs in their face. “What? Why would I trap us in a time loop?”
Pidge pushes their glasses up on their face. “Well, not you, specifically — But I do think you are the reason.”
They look at Shiro, then, and an evil grin crosses their face. “I’ve been going over the data you gave me, and I took the liberties of looking into some of the Atlas’s code.”
Shiro can feel the low hum of the Atlas inside him, and she seems — embarrassed, somehow.
“Did you know,” Pidge says, slow. “That the Atlas keeps track of everyone’s life signs?”
“Of course.” Shiro says, “She wants her crew to be safe.”
Pidge nods, and their smile turns even more evil. “Did you know that she checks up on Keith’s approximately…” Pidge twists their head backwards to look at their screen, “Twenty-Three per cent more often than she checks on anyone else’s? And that she keeps logs of Keith even when he isn’t on the ship? If he’s within range of her scanners, she’s got him on lock and marks down every fucking heartbeat.”
Shiro flushes, red, because that is way too revealing. The Atlas hums in his head, emotions mirrored back at him. He remembers her flush of happiness when Keith talked about her in the possessive.
Keith sounds deeply amused, choked with it, when he asks: “What does that have to do with the time loops.”
“The ‘weird readings’ you got out there sound a lot like a sudden solar flare. One that, if what you’re saying is true, would probably have killed you mere moments after you reported in about it.” Shiro’s heart drops at the idea, his stomach twists, and the Atlas makes her displeasure known. “It wouldn’t have affected the ship, or any of the nearby worlds, but you wouldn’t have survived it even with your ships shielding.”
“Oh,” Keith says, a little shaken.
“Fuck,” Matt nods. “That’s not good. I don’t like that.”
“The Atlas doesn’t either.” Shiro nods. “We’re a very pro-Keith Living pair.”
“Which is why I think she’s doing this.”
“Does the Atlas even… have the capacity to do that?” Shiro asks, brow furrowed, heart beating faster. “And why would she keep doing it, even on the loops where Keith didn’t go out there?”
“We know that she can adapt to new situations.” Matt says, with a shrug of his shoulders. “She’s been storing up excess power now that she doesn’t have to go Mech or merge with Alien Lion Robots anymore.”
“So she adapted.” Keith nods.
“And now she’s stuck.” Shiro says, with dawning realisation. He can feel that in her, frustration and worry and aching love. “She wrote herself new code, but now she doesn’t know how to get out of it again.”
Shiro can’t say that he blames her for it. He would doom the world to save Keith at this point. He would sacrifice himself a thousand times over if it meant that Keith was safe and sound at the end of the day. There are terrible things that he would do for love. When he turns to look at Keith, it’s clear that Keith is shaken and touched by it in equal measure. Shiro loves him, and the Atlas loves him, enough to warp time without a single thought for the consequences.
“The good news,” Pidge says, “Is that I think I know how to fix it.”
“My genius baby sibling.” Matt says, with a grin.
“Oh, thank god.”
Shiro and Keith stand together on the observation deck in the minutes before the clock should turn over and reset the day. If Pidge has done their job right, there will be a tomorrow. The crew will lose seventeen days of their lives in the blink of the eye, but they’ll wake up again in the morning and deal with that as best they can.
For those moments, all Shiro wants to do is hold Keith in his arms and look out at the star that could have killed him, the blinding sun that illuminates a few scant skies, that Shiro won’t even be able to pick out of the crowd when they get back home.
Keith watches their clock tick down, keeps track, and when the day doesn’t reset itself as it has so many days before, he twists in Shiro’s arms to pull him into a kiss.
“No take backs.” he says, “No do-overs. You sure about this?”
Shiro nods his head, rests his forehead against Keiths. “I’ve never been more sure of anything, not in my entire life.”
Keith smiles, and it’s worth a thousand days lost.
“I love you,” He says, on the first new day of many.
“I love you too.” Keith tells him, and everything is perfect.