Warlords - 1. Warlords

Warlords

 

Keith’s fork bounced off his plate and clattered to the floor as he gaped across the table at his mother. A tiny part of his brain lamented the loss of the morsel of meat, because for almost as long as Keith could remember, food had been scarce; good food even more so. But the rest of him thrummed with what his mother had just told him. He was completely certain he must have misheard her, but Lady Krolia of the House of Marmora was known both for her excellence with a sword and her impeccable enunciation. They were skills as useful on the battlefield as when negotiating treaties, but only one of these talents had been shared with her son.

“Sorry? What?”

“You heard me.”

Keith was fairly certain he must have suffered a minor stroke, but he held his tongue and retrieved his fork. He wished, for a dozen heartbeats, that the emergency alarm would sound. He would have an excuse to flee the room, pull on his flight suit as he ran to his fighter, and meet their enemies in the air. But the alarm wasn’t going to sound – there was a ceasefire in action – and no expected attack of opposing forces was going to save him from this conversation.

“This is the price of peace, my son.”

“Are we sure it’s worth it?” Keith grumbled to himself, then he glared at his mother. “Why this? Why me?”

“Unsurprisingly after two hundred years of war, the Grand Coalition demand a lot in order to accept the Galra as members, not enemies.” Krolia’s words were heavy, and Keith knew without being told that if there had been any other way, she would have found it.

They were not winning this war. It wasn’t so much that they were losing either, because their losses were fewer that those of the armies they faced, but the reserves they could call upon were less, and the Grand Coalition seemed to be able to replace fighters and ships without end. Keith knew it wasn’t true, knew that fighting the Galra tooth and nail in each quadrant of the solar system had seriously depleted their forces, and right up until the last movement, Keith had been proud of the part he had played in their decimation. No force he had faced had escaped with more than ten percent of their ships fully functional, many even less, and his record on the ground was just as impressive. But now, war was over, and the uneasy situation in which they found themselves could apparently only be resolved by-

“Marriage.” Keith held his forehead in one clawed hand and rubbed his temples. “Who?”

Krolia told him. Then she told him again, even though he was on his feet, hand itching for the comforting feel of his blade, every muscle tense.

“No!”

“He is the Terran’s most distinguished fighter.”

“And I am a Prince!” Keith snarled, pressing his ears back into his inky hair. He was also the best warrior the Galra had, but that had never actually allowed him to make his own decisions in life.

“Terran royalty does not work like ours, little Kit.”

Keith bit back a snarl at the intimate nickname. This was not the time he wanted to be reminded that this was a conversation – only a hair shy of a full-blown argument – he was having with his mother of all people. It would be far easier, if a good deal more terrifying, to fight with Kolivan, because he and the King had at least clashed before.

“I know that.”

“This is how the war will be ended, my son. The Coalition’s most decorated Admiral, wed to our greatest and fiercest Blade. No more bloodshed, no repeats of past mistakes, and no continued punishment or retribution for past wrongs – on either side.”

Keith sneered.

Two hundred years of war, ended. And all he had to do was get married. Two hundred years of fighting, over. Everyone knew this war should have ended a dozen deca-phoebs ago when Keith was still a child. It nearly had. But the leading forces of the Coalition at the time had been angry, short-sighted, unable to look past the losses they had suffered at the hands of the Galra and the fight they had launched from their little moon on the outer rings, and brought to every inhabited planet and satellite. His people had been shunned, persecuted, penalised, and that had made them angry. And that anger had solidified in one man, the former Emperor of the Galra. Zarkon had galvanised their people, and torn a chunk out of the Grand Coalition where it had hurt the most. The fact that Kolivan had gotten the Coalition leaders to behave differently was testament to his skill as a negotiator, not to mention his stubbornness.

“It could be worse, Keith. He is a fighter and a pilot, just like you. They say he is much celebrated on Terra for his strategy-”

Keith had had enough, and pushed his seat back with a snarl.

“I know who he is, mother! I tried to kill him!”

The moment the words were out of his mouth, Keith felt guilty, because though the war was hard and stressful, he had never snapped at his only parent. She was the woman whom he loved and who had taught him everything; from how to read, how to handle his sword, how to fly a hoverbike, to how to lead and position his forces to best exploit his enemy’s weaknesses. They had few enough allies in the universe without picking fights with each other. Keith flicked his ears in lieu of an actual apology, turned, and stalked away from the table, heading for the only person he could talk to who might be vaguely sympathetic to his plight.

He threw himself down onto the bed with sharp grunt, drew the knife from his belt and slashed it through the air even as it changed in his grip into a full blade. From the seat set into the curve of the window, Lotor sighed.

“If you shred the linens, I’m taking your bed.”

Keith snarled wordlessly.

“Quite the temper we have today. I’m assuming she told you?”

Keith jerked upright, violet eyes wide.

“You knew?!”

“I was in the room when the deal was brokered, Keith. Honestly.” Lotor rolled his eyes. “If it makes you feel any better, I did tell father that you weren’t going to like it.”

“Can’t you marry him instead?” Keith resisted the urge to spit the name of his apparent betrothed.

“Kit… I am the Crown Prince of Daibazaal, the heir apparent.” Lotor smiled at him softly, and Keith was reminded of why he had always been secretly pleased to be both three phoebs younger and also cousin to Prince Lotor rather than brother. “I can’t marry some human Admiral for the sake of the peace deal, because I have to, y’know, actually produce an heir.”

“I know...”

“It won’t be that bad Kit.”

Keith slumped back onto Lotor’s bed and glared at the ceiling.

“Yes. It will.”

*

Over the next few quintants there were many moments which made Keith want to take his knife and his space fighter and simply fly away from everyone and everything he knew. In the unfairly long night before they would be leaving for the official signing of the peace treaty and his fucking wedding, Keith wondered what the actual difference would be in the quality of his life if he decided to jettison himself into space rather than follow through with the arrangement. It wouldn’t be a lot, he decided as dawn crept over the horizon, not for him, but he wasn’t doing it for himself; he was doing it for the future and safety of his people. It wouldn’t happen overnight, there would still be so much work to be done and goodwill to be won. But one day soon the Galra would be held in equal regard, part of the Grand Coalition, and no other boy like him would be born into a war which had forced him to pick up a blade and kill a man before his twelfth birthday.

The wedding was to be on New Altea, and to Keith’s utter disgust, he and his new husband were to live there after the ceremony was over. The planet was ideally positioned midway in the belt of the solar system, and made it the perfect hub for the peoples of all planets and moons to come together. When he was told that he would not be allowed to retain a personal retinue, or even a set of his own guards, Keith had snarled at his King and only his mother’s stern expression had stopped him from storming from the room entirely.

“The Admiral will not be keeping his guards either,” Kolivan said levelly.

“But Altea is crawling with humans! He’ll have support from whoever he likes!”

“The Alteans’ are providing your staff.” Kolivan’s eyes flashed briefly, and even his stoicism couldn’t entirely mask his annoyance. Seated across the room, Lotor arched a perfect eyebrow, but stayed wisely silent.

“Great,” Keith snapped. “That’ll make me feel so fucking safe.”

Then they told him about the arrangements for the ceremony, a perfect blend of Galran and Terran customs, and Keith actually did storm out.

Now he stood restlessly in an antechamber, waiting to be married to a man to whom he had never actually spoken; waiting to be removed from his family, his people, and the only life he had ever known. Granted, that life had mostly been training, fighting, flying, battle, bloodshed, and war, but it had been his life. Keith did not want to give it up to do… what? Sit around in an Altean château being bored and keeping the peace for the rest of his life, apparently. And that was only if his new husband didn’t try and have him killed first.

Keith ran a finger around the edge of his high collar, and scowled as his mother sighed.

“Try not to fiddle, Kit. You look wonderful.”

“I don’t want to look wonderful.” He rubbed his hand over the plush red fabric of his jacket, claws catching on the very fine black metal chains which looped across from his shoulder to the fastening of his collar. “I miss my armour.”

“No more need for armour now; the war is over.” Krolia squeezed his hand and pressed a kiss into his hair, brushed, smoothed, and specially braided for the occasion. “It is a good thing you do for your people today my love.”

Keith twisted the end of his betrothal braid around one finger and prayed she was right.

*

He didn’t remember much about the wedding ceremony, but a few moments stuck out.

They walked in at the same moment from opposite sides of the hall, and Keith couldn’t help but feel that positioning them just as they had been the last time they had seen each other on the battle field was setting things up to go wrong from the beginning. The Admiral wore white, accentuated with gold and delicate embroidery in black, and Keith was reminded of Lotor’s heavy sigh when Keith had put his foot down about his own wedding outfit.

‘Keith! Red is not a wedding colour.’

‘It’s my colour.’

‘But-’

‘Otherwise I’ll just wear my armour and the rest of them can fucking deal with it!’

‘Fine.’

The Princess of New Altea presided over the ceremony, and never met his eyes. Keith didn’t blame her, he didn’t look at her directly either, not even when he answered her prompts.

He had to give up his knife, and Keith knew no one but his mother would be able to feel his heart breaking as he turned and handed it to Kolivan. Another piece of raw luxite was lain down before them – Keith held the cold chisel; the Admiral took the hammer – and Keith only trusted the man not to smash his hand with it because there were so many witnesses. The two pieces would be forged into matching, paired blades overnight, one for each of them. It was an old Galran custom Keith did not think his arranged, political marriage deserved.

The Admiral gave him a ring. Keith knew it was a Terran thing. The ring was gold, and heavy, and entirely unfamiliar. He could not wait to take it off; he knew he was not allowed to.

The worst moment came at the end.

He turned, facing the man he was now married to, and actually had to look up at him. He was standing so close that he was forced to notice the silver hair – like so many Galra – the grey eyes, the thin, unamused line of his mouth. The way his smile did not reach his eyes when the last command was given. It was worded as an offer, but Keith knew it was an order: do this, or there will be war again. If Keith closed his eyes as he tilted his face for the kiss, it was only to hide the fact he screamed internally. Humans did not have the same senses as Galra, and Keith knew the Admiral did not spend the five tics it took to seal their bond with his nostrils flooded with the scent of something which reminded him of hot, sun bleached wood and the smell of the sea through the rainforest. He hated that the scent did not fully vanish along with the sensation of the Admiral’s lips on his.

 

[insert art here]

 

After the ceremony, they walked side by side directly to a formal state banquet. Keith smiled, because he knew he had to, and nodded to those brave enough to meet his eye. He managed not the snap out the two syllables of the phrase ‘thank you’ at each person who wished them congratulations. He was silently relieved that almost everyone was speaking Altean, in which he was at least proficient.

At no point did the two recently married people touch, or even look at each other, and Keith couldn’t help but feel grateful.

He ate, because not doing so would have appeared rude and suspicious, and because Keith had never seen such an abundance of food in his entire life. The senior Galran generals, the people with whom he had grown up and who Keith wished were staying with him, tore into their food with barely disguised longing. Thace shot him a soft, regretful expression over a dish of grilled fish and red vegetables, and it was such a foreign look on his face that Keith nearly smiled back.

Neither he nor the Admiral were actually required for the signing of the peace treaty, and when the table of the Galran delegation rose to depart, Keith knew it would be the last he saw of his family for a very long time. Lotor hugged him, and Keith froze, because he could feel the Admiral watching him and he didn’t want anyone he cared for to become bigger targets for inevitable retribution than they already were by simply being Galran. He bowed to Kolivan, because he was the King, and watched until they were out of sight.

“Highness?” It was not the Admiral who spoke to him, but an Altean attendant with mauve cheek and forehead markings. They gestured for him to follow them, and Keith restrained his reaction to the knowledge of what would come next.

It made sense, because Galra had a similar version of the Terran honeymoon; not that anyone had the luxury of time or the safety to have one in recent memory. Keith could not actually describe how little he wanted to spend the next movement in some distant wing of the Altean palace with no real company other than his new husband. But he went. He had to.

The attendant bowed politely and excused themselves. The door closed with a click which sounded terrifyingly final. Keith found himself alone in a suite of rooms with the man he had tried to kill, twice, and whom he had just married.

Admiral Takashi Shirogane stared levelly at him across the two paces that separated them, and which might as well have been the entire span of the star-field on which they’d first faced each other. Keith refused to be the first to look away or break the silence, and though he found it unconscionable that his human husband was taller than him – Keith was short for a Galra but he’d never realised how big his enemy really was – he knew he was more stubborn.

The Admiral cleared his throat.

“Kei-”

“Do not call me that.” Keith snapped the words as fast as he could: the Altean language sat heavily on his tongue.

The Admiral’s expression turned stony. Keith was fairly certain there were mountains which would lose a fight with that chin.

“I am not calling you by your title.”

“Why not, Admiral?” Keith near enough growled the word, and did not resist the urge to press his ears back into his hair, fangs showing as he spoke.

The Admiral clenched his prosthetic fist. It was a sleek Altean design, perfectly matched to his natural arm, the fine plates of the fingers almost seamless. It was white and glinting gold as though created to match the wedding outfit.

“What do you want me to call you then?”

Keith smirked.

“I know what you used to call me.”

Red Flare. The words hung heavy and unsaid between them. Red for all the blood he’d spilt; so much it used to stain his clothes, his fur, even his hair. So much blood that it became easier to make his clothes and armour the same colour so as not to worry about marks and blotches which would never wash out. Flare for his speed, his sudden unexpected attacks, flaming from nowhere to decimate those in his path before winking out again, fading and vanishing into the black. As swift on the battlefield as in the air.

Not too long-ago, Keith had worn his enemy’s moniker like a badge. With honour, enjoying the knowledge that his rumoured presence was enough to make them fearful.

But now the flare was dimmed, snuffed out, quelled. This was a palace not a prison: a marriage not a kidnapping, but the results were the same. Here he was, shown to be tamed so that the rest of the solar system might feel safe in the knowledge that the Galra had traded their most precious asset of war, in order to have peace.

Keith did not wait for the Admiral to actually form a reply, but turned away and walked toward the room which lead from the tasteful living area. His luggage, meagre as it was, had been brought already, and he could not wait to be free of his constricting, formal clothes.

“Where are you going?”

“I am tired. I’m going to bed.” Keith stopped so suddenly in the next doorway that the Admiral collided with his back. Keith turned, withdrew, and snarled all in the same tic, and his pride fluttered pleasurably at the widening of the Admiral’s eyes, watching his claws. Satisfied that there would be no more accidental touching, Keith turned back to the room.

Of course, there was only one bed. Of course, it was covered in flowers. Of course, what appeared to be fancy and possibly sultry nightwear had been lain out for each of them. Of course… they were newly married after all.

Keith grunted, strode across to sling his duffel over his shoulders, and tore half the blankets from the bed with no care for the romantic decoration or the small table which was knocked over by the force of his gesture. He gathered the bedding in his free arm, and turned to leave. The Admiral blocked his exit, and not the for the first time, Keith missed the familiar presence of his knife.

“Move.”

“Where are you going?” The Admiral repeated. Keith thought he sounded stupid, or maybe just dazed.

“Bed,” he snarled. “Do not fucking follow me.”

It was the last thing either of them said for almost an entire quintant.

*

In the morning, the same Altean attendant brought them breakfast, swept the petals from the floor of the bedroom, and took all the used linens away, before returning to make up the bed once more. Keith had not bothered to hide or disassemble his nest from the corner of the main room where he had felt most secure but had slept in fits and starts, fingers clenching around the empty air where the hilt of his knife should have been. He snarled at the Altean when they had stepped forward to try and tidy it too.

His new husband had appeared for breakfast in a white and black ensemble which was well tailored, but which he wore as though it was a uniform. Keith wondered if there was a single fibre of the man which wasn’t entirely military. He had watched Keith with narrowed eyes as they had eaten, forced into proximity by the food, and the lack of plates which would have allowed Keith to hoard his breakfast and transport it across the room.

“You have to get dressed today. They will be here soon with our swords.”

Keith sneered at him.

“Glupek.” He gestured to his own clothes, his usual off-duty outfit of a stretchy, tight black undersuit and a traditional thigh length belted tunic in dark red. “I am dressed.”

He had the distinct pleasure in watching the Admiral appear momentarily flummoxed, as though his extensive cultural knowledge had not actually included details of anything Galran, apart from their war tactics. The Admiral’s cheeks and ears turned pink, and when he swallowed, the noise was too-loud in the silent room.

“That word. What was it?”

Keith barked a laugh but didn’t reply.

“He called you an ‘idiot boy’.”

“Princess!”

Keith glanced up at the intrusion of the Altean Princess. He had not expected her to come with the delivery of the matched blades, or for her to come alone. But she carried the purple swaddled parcel from the smith in her arms, and Keith’s fingers itched to hold a sword again. Princess Allura looked over his shoulder at the nest of his blankets and clicked her tongue in disapproval. Before Keith could snap another warning, the attendant was there, gathering his blankets and whisking them away.

“Hey-!”

“No.” For a species known throughout the system for their diplomacy, Allura’s voice was iron-hard. “You both have to make this work. That-” she glanced at the space Keith had made his own before fixing him with the same icy cold glare, “-or rumours of it, will not do. The Coalition already considers this peace treaty a dangerous prospect. Do not lead us all back into a war no one can win.”

Keith didn’t respond, but pressed his ears back and abandoned the rest of his breakfast. Choosing to sit whilst his enemy stood was not a position he was willing to put himself in. If the Princess of Altea understood his reasoning, she showed no outward sign of it, but simply placed her bundle upon a second, bare table and gestured welcomingly to it.

“Your blades.”

“Thank you, Princess. It was most gracious of you to bring them yourself.”

Keith barely suppressed his sneer as the Admiral spoke, and turned all his attention to the matched blades as they were revealed. Forged as they were from the same piece of luxite, the blades were perfectly alike, black but gleaming faintly purple, their hilts wrapped in white. Upon each blade, a symbol glowed very softly. But it was not the sigil of Keith’s family name, as familiar to him as his own reflection in the mirror. This one was different, it was new.

Shomara.

Somewhere in the preparations for the wedding, Keith was certain someone would have mentioned to him that they would both be taking a new, combined version of their familial names. However, he also knew that after the discussion when he’d been told he wouldn’t be allowed to keep his knife, he hadn’t heard a great deal else.

“What does it say?”

He knew he was supposed to answer the Admiral’s question, even though Allura would know what the symbol said. It was depressing that the only person on the planet who could read Galran besides himself, hated him. But then, near enough everyone on New Altea probably hated him. Keith took up the closest knife and sighed as the weight settled firmly into his hand. It wasn’t the same as the knife he’d been given by his mother when he had joined the fight which had shaped his entire life, but the luxite hummed with the presence of quintessence, and it was oddly reassuring to be standing in his own clothes and holding a weapon despite the rest of the strange circumstances in which he found himself.

Keith stepped back from the table, spun the knife hilt around in his palm, reversed his grip on the blade and beamed as it reacted to his will. The sword was a lot like that he was used to, with a wide recurved blade and tapered pommel. It felt good in his hand, well balanced, and Keith could tell without testing it, that the edge of the blade was incredibly sharp. He took up a ready stance and began to move automatically through his kata, flowing from one form to the next taking only enough time to hold the poses for two tics before moving on. He was already halfway through his second set before he realised that he was being stared at.

The Princess Allura was smiling faintly, but the Admiral – his husband, Keith reminded himself with a ripple of irritation – was watching him with a slack jawed expression Keith didn’t think he wanted to know the origins of. He growled.

“What?”

“I’ll leave you both to it. Do feel free to enjoy the gardens and the grounds.” The Princess smiled and departed without anything further.

The Admiral was still staring, his own knife held gingerly between his fingers, as though he was not entirely sure what to do with it. Keith returned his blade to it’s smaller form with a flick of his wrist. His belt had a space for it to rest in the small of his back – all of his belts did – and Keith stowed his knife with a pleased noise.

“How do you do that?” The Admiral sounded impressed, as he should be, then his straight brows furrowed. “Did you really call me that?”

“Yes,” Keith gritted out between clenched fangs. His feet itched to take him away: from the room, the conversation, the impossible reality he had found himself in.

“Don’t call me that. My name is-”

“I know your name, Admiral.”

Fast as a blink, he was in Keith’s space, his face too close and too controlled, his human hand wrapped around Keith’s wrist. He was fast – too fast – for someone so large. Keith was small for Galra, and the Admiral was big for a human, but though Keith was used to feeling short at home, he was also used to being the fastest. The Admiral had clearly been working hard since the last time they had faced each other on the field.

“Do not call me that.” His fingers wrapped all the way around Keith’s narrow wrist; the gold ring glinted at him accusingly.

Keith snarled.

“You prepared to lose that hand too?” The grip vanished in an instant, and Keith tasted the emotions in the Admiral’s scent faster than they flashed across his eyes. Fear and anger in equal measure, sorrow and loss and longing, a fiery currant of rage… he hated that he understood them all. “You know we had a name for you too.”

“Tell me.” It was not a question.

“Black Paladin,” Keith spat. “You and your fucking shiny artillery fleet; patrolling the skies and thinking your way was better than anyone else's.”

The Admiral looked genuinely surprised.

“That I never heard.”

“Feel free to forget I told you then.” Keith stepped back, watching the man carefully. There was still tension across the Admiral’s broad shoulders, and a fierce desire in his expression which could twist in any direction. He was a dangerous adversary and Keith had failed to kill him twice. There was no way he was going to let himself forget it.

“Hey...” the Admiral dropped his hands, prosthetic thumb hooking into his front pocket, the kind of casual, easy gesture Keith had never allowed himself to imagine. “Do you want to go for a walk in the gardens?”

Keith sneered.

“Do I look like I want to go any fucking place with you?” he snapped. He stalked off, snatched up his data pad as he went, and wished he could be anywhere but here.

*

He had been married for two quintants. A message had been sent inviting the pair of them to an informal dinner in the main palace. Keith hadn’t spoken to his husband since they had been presented with their knives, and had ended up sleeping poorly on the chaise in the main room of their suite, shivering without any blankets. But they had to go, and Lotor had encouraged him to try and be at least civil to the Admiral when he’d called: ‘It’s the rest of your life Kit. Stop thinking of it like a fight to be won.’

So Keith knelt in front of the long mirror in the bedroom and gnashed his teeth as his fifth attempt at his braid escaped from his fingers and disassembled back into a handful of loose strands. He had practised these braids, just as he had with so many other types, but espousal braids were designed specifically to be made by two people working together. Trying to weave the complex design with only two hands was an impossibility.

And he would have to wear them every day for a deca-phoeb.

“Fuck!” Keith threw down his handful of hair-ties and seriously considered cutting off all his hair with his knife for about five tics, then huffed with irritation. “Stupid fucking tradition! As though anyone at dinner is actually going to know if I wear the right braids or not.”

But someone would know. Keith was sure some advisor would have made it their specific duty to see if Keith was doing his hair correctly for whatever stage of his relationship he was supposed to be in, because he was in a palace, a city, a whole planet, just full of people waiting for him to fuck up. As though called by his frustration, he watched the Admiral’s reflection enter the room behind him.

“Talking to yourself?” Keith hated to know that the Admiral spoke Altean better than he did, but then, it was much closer to Terran than Galran. At least the silver haired man didn’t understand what he’d been saying.

“Fuck off.”

The Admiral ignored him, which was to be expected, but crossed to the dresser where his clothes had been lain out, and Keith did not watch as the man stripped off his jacket and shirt before taking up the traditionally dyed Galran-purple tunic.

“Someone thinks we should match.”

Keith glared at the hem of his own tunic over his bare legs. Even after completing his hair, he would still need to get properly dressed.

“I never credited anyone in this place with a great deal of rozum.”

“Huh?”

“Common sense,” Keith translated before he could stop himself. “Alteans are smart but stupid.” He watched the flex of the man as he pulled the tunic on over his head, especially the join between his shoulder and the hard edge of his prosthetic. This one was different, black, but just as well crafted. The Admiral met his eyes in the mirror as he emerged from the fabric, seeing what he was looking at.

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“I don’t care.”

“I don’t blame you.”

Keith stood, whipped round, and snarled.

“And I’m not sorry!”

Galran’s had a reputation for being feral and too quick to lean into violence, and Keith knew he wasn’t doing anything to help fix that. His mother had reminded him that all his sacrifices would be for nothing if he couldn’t help change the perception of their kind with the people he came across on Altea. But the Admiral was looking at him with an expression which was almost soft, and Keith hated it. He glared once more at his husband, then spun back to the mirror, all progress on his braids undone.

The Admiral finished dressing in silence and set his knife prominently on his hip. Keith hated that he noticed how small his waist was in comparison to his shoulders. If the Admiral had been Galran and looked like that… Keith killed the train of thought before it could finish forming, and went back to his braid. The first half was good enough, it was the lower section he couldn’t manage with so few hands, so Keith gave up and switched to finish it with a simple flat weave.

“You changed your hair,” the Admiral commented.

“I have to.” Keith scowled at his braids. He wondered if the advisor who had researched Galran customs would make a comment about it. If he stabbed someone at dinner, Keith doubted he would even make it into the air before war was declared. “We’re married now.”

“Are we?”

The barb struck him in the gut, just as it was designed to, and Keith dug his claws into his palm as he clenched his fist.

“I hate you.”

“Well that was pretty obvious from the first time you tried to kill me.” The Terran had the gall to look smug. “But I’m still alive and so are you. Get over it.”

Keith clenched his jaw so hard he was fairly certain he pulled a muscle, and stalked bare-foot from the room. To his surprise, there were no guards to shadow him, and he discovered the very best way to avoid stabbing one’s husband at dinner, was not to go.

*

He heard the Admiral before he saw him, but the silver haired man was talking in Terran, and the words made no sense to Keith. The tone was clear enough though – tight, angry, frustrated – and the emotions in the otherwise soft and spicy scent Keith wished he knew the name of only supported his assumption that his decision not to show up to dinner had been very badly received indeed.

Keith watched, hidden within the dappled black shadows of a large tree, already shrouded in the gloom on the gardens at night, as his husband rounded the corner of the covered veranda, talking with a tall, slender human man dressed in stylish and expensive civilian garb. Keith assumed he was a diplomat, and wondered just how long it would take for this slight to anger the politicians of the Grand Coalition.

The Admiral turned to his companion, what sounded like a question bursting from him along with an expansive hand gesture which was equal parts angry and upset, then stood leaning against the pierced stone balustrade, looking out into the darkness where Keith hid. The man with the messy brown pony-tail laid a hand on his shoulder, comfort in his tone.

Even if Lotor was wrong, and this was a fight, Keith was fairly certain he had won this round. He turned, intending to slip away and back to the suite now he could be sure it was empty, and the badly braided length of his hair caught in the branches of his hiding place. He tugged, the leaves rustled, he fumbled to free himself, a twig snapped, and Keith snarled as he looked up to find his husband watching him back.

The Admiral said nothing, but the hard expression in his eyes told Keith everything he needed to know. He scowled, extracted himself from the tree, and sprang without effort over the railing and onto the veranda rather than walk around.

“Highness.” The other human bowed, then glanced at the Admiral warily.

“This is Matt Holt, he’s a friend.”

Keith shot the man a withering look.

“I don’t care who you fuck, but you could at least be honest about it.”

Matt blanched, and Keith realised that until that moment he had never actually seen the man he’d married truly and completely angry. Keith was quick, lithe, and light on his feet, but the suddenness with which the Admiral launched at him caught him almost entirely off-guard. He staggered, hip and lower back smacking painfully into the balustrade, but the Admiral followed him every step, and the inch of space between them shimmered with tension as Keith snarled.

“We are supposed to be married,” the Admiral snapped. “If you were going to sabotage it from the start, why did you even agree?”

“I wasn’t exactly given a choice.” Keith shot back. He wanted his knife, wanted the blade to resolve itself into a sword in his hand and slash at the man who had so disrupted his life for so many years. But he couldn’t; he wouldn’t do that to his people. Keith flipped back his ears and scowled as he shifted his gaze away from the Admiral’s hard eyes.

“You missed dinner.”

“Obviously.”

“Come back to the rooms and eat something.” It was not phrased as a request, and something in Keith rankled.

“Wouldn’t you rather spend the time with your boyfriend?”

“Highness! I must protest-” Matt held up both hands in supplication, smelling both fearful and confused. “Shiro, tell him? I wouldn’t sleep with you if we were the last two people on all of Terra. No offence.”

“I think basic politeness is out of question right now Matt. Goodnight, I’ll see you another time.” The Admiral held his glare as his companion bowed, saluted, and withdrew from sight rather quicker than was strictly protocol. “That was Matt. I was hoping to introduce you at dinner. He is a rather gifted scientist.” The Admiral scowled. “And clearly very straight. Luckily, he is also very discreet, so you probably haven’t started an international incident with your temper.”

Keith wanted to say that he didn’t care. He didn’t want to care certainly, but the concept of reneging on his marriage contract and so destroying the peace deal was scary; and the idea of dealing with Kolivan’s anger afterwards frankly terrifying; but it was the image of his mother’s disappointment which stopped him. After their first conversation, she had impressed upon him the importance of this union, but had also given him ample opportunity and support to say no. He scowled, not quite trusting himself to speak.

“Come, let us go back to the rooms, it is late.”

Keith twisted away from him.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” The Admiral still wore his luxite knife on his hip, and Keith didn’t trust him not to use it. After all, so many Galra had fought the Coalition and died – no one would miss another.

“I am not fighting you for this. You are coming back to the suite with me.” The Admiral’s grey eyes were dark and hard, and Keith wondered how long the man had spent training the iron will of his self-control.

“You’re going to have to make me.”

The Admiral replied without missing a beat.

“Then I will.”

Keith felt the fine fur at the back of his neck prickle at the words. He tensed, but he was not expecting the Admiral to actually follow through on his promised threat. Half a breath later he found himself with his back to the Admiral’s broad chest, one arm twisted and pinned up between his own shoulder blades. The prosthetic hand that wrapped around his wrist squeezed tight enough for the bones of his arm to grate together sickeningly. He could probably escape the hold, but not without dislocating his shoulder or breaking his wrist; or he could use his other hand, reach for his knife and stab his husband, but that would be tantamount to an act of war.

“Walk.” The Admiral kicked him in the back of one heel, and Keith hissed at him through his fangs. He stumbled forwards, and then they were walking.

Keith tried not to think about the fact he was being literally marched back to their suite by a man he hated and had married. He resolved never to tell his mother or Lotor that he’d been so useless at his task so far, as to let the situation develop into such an act. Thankfully, the route they took through the palace was as empty as it had been when Keith had fled the rooms before dinner, and neither of them were forced to explain the situation away.

He had expected the Admiral to simply discard him in the main room of the suite, and Keith had already steeled himself for another chilly night of shivering and not-sleeping. But he was held firm until they had entered the bedroom and the door had swished shut behind them. Keith tugged against the grip on his arm, but the Admiral did not release him. The metal and polymer hand was strong and unyielding, and Keith wondered how it could possibly be true that the Admiral didn’t blame him for its presence.

“If I let you go, and you turn and walk out that door, I will not come after you.” The Admiral’s voice was close, breath warm against his ear, and Keith shivered involuntarily. “I will consider it a formal renege on our marriage contract though.” He smelled… disappointed. Keith resisted the urge to growl: he did not care if the man was annoyed with him. He didn’t. “So, should I let go?”

Keith exhaled, knowing that in every way that mattered, this was quite clearly a loss against a more powerful enemy, and nodded. The pressure and heated presence behind him vanished instantly, and he turned quickly to watch the man as he uncurled his arm. The joints clicked as he flexed his claws, and Keith scowled. Even after the ceasefire had been called, he had still trained daily. It had been longer than he could remember since training or fighting weren’t a part of his normal routine, and his whole body itched and ached with the lack of it.

“Go bathe. You’re not getting in the bed with leaves in your hair.”

Keith showed his fangs.

“I’m not sleeping in the bed with you.”

“Yes, you are.” There was the voice that had commanded a fleet of ships against him. The sureness of a man who had led his troops into a battle they couldn’t have hoped to win, and still had them come out the victors. The tone of one who had tried very hard to kill him. “I’m not going to touch you, but this,” he gestured to the large, plush bed, “is not a choice.”

“I hate you.”

“You’re repeating yourself.”

Keith hissed, ears pinned back. To become predictable in battle was to lose, and he hated that his husband had read him so well. He stalked past the human toward the bathroom, and slammed the door behind him. But of course, it was an Altean design, which meant the door slowed and closed softly no matter how forcefully he pushed it. Keith clenched his fist, and used all his remaining self-control not to put his fist through the mirror.

Large amounts of hot water were not a readily available feature on the battlefield, in space, or on Daibazaal. Keith might have been second Prince, but he was also well used to a conservative style of washing which was clearly rather different from that which Alteans enjoyed. He sat in the bathtub up to his sternum in hot, faintly floral scented water, and tried not to think about the fact he was going to have to sleep next to the man he had married. The strategist in him, the one who spent hours poring over maps of territory and models of warfare, had assumed that this alliance was to be a marriage in name only. He hadn’t actually expected to see much of his husband. Adjoining apartments perhaps, matched suites in their château and a vaguely familiar shape passed at a distance, but not this. No one had said anything, and Keith hadn’t asked. Now he could hardly believe he’d been so stupid as not to clarify living arrangements.

There was only a single dim light in the bedroom when he returned, and the Admiral was in bed, staring at the ceiling through the tuft of white hair that fell into his eyes. Keith found and pulled on his sleeping clothes before discarding his towel, then stood uneasily midway across the room, holding his blade by it’s sheath. The Admiral glanced sideways at him and sighed.

“I’m not going to stab you in your sleep. It’d be nice if you did the same.”

Keith scowled, stalked over to the bed, and laid his knife on the table beside his pillow. It was where he had placed his own knife, his first knife, every time he’d been lucky enough to be sleeping in a bed somewhere safe. Mostly though he’d slept with it on his body somewhere. He stared at the empty space on the bed.

“Fought off an entire fleet of Coalition cruisers but scared of a bed? You sure you’re Red Flare?”

“I thought you didn’t want me to stab you?” Keith snapped. But he lifted the corner of the blankets, and slid carefully into the bed, keeping his back right on the edge of the mattress. “Lights out,” he barked, plunging the room into darkness.

There was a long moment of stillness. Keith kept his breaths shallow, too used to being stealthy in the dark, then there was a soft sensation of movement from the far side of the bed, and he could see the Admiral looking at him.

“Huh. I always wondered if that was true.”

Keith knew he was going to regret not ignoring the comment.

“What?”

“Galran eyes really do glow in the dark.”

Keith snorted. Lotor always said it was the most undignified way for a Prince to laugh, and Keith had usually sworn at him in a variety of creative, non-verbal manners.

“No they fucking don’t.”

“But-”

“You have any idea how useless that would be? It would make it impossible to see in the dark if your eyes were a light source.” Keith narrowed his gaze, and tracked the human’s small movements as he searched for the discs of pale light he had seen in Keith’s eyes. “I can see much better in the dark that you can. Bigger lenses. So they… odbic. Um… they reflect differently.”

“Oh...” The admiral frowned, and Keith didn’t think he’d ever seen the man look so thoughtful, not even when he’d stared at him performing his kata. “Does bright light hurt then?”

Keith schooled his reaction, because it would not do to let an enemy know a weakness, but he had to say something.

“We’re a long way from the suns on Daibazaal.”

Silence stretched like a welcome chasm between them, and Keith shivered despite the blankets.

“Cold?”

“No.” Being cold was practically a way of life, but Keith was tired. He hadn’t slept well in the days before the wedding and had basically not slept at all since. He tried to count back to the last time he’d woken up actually refreshed and found that he couldn’t.

“How old were you?” The Admiral’s voice was soft and low, quiet enough that perhaps a human would not have heard it. Keith wondered if the man expected an answer. “That first time, how old were you?”

He knew what he was being asked. In the dark of their bedroom, lying together – well, close enough together anyway – for the first time, the Black Paladin was asking the Red Flare how old he’d been when he had taken his arm.

Keith swallowed dryly, too loud.

“Battle of Thayserix… what, six deca-phoebs ago? Err… fifteen.”

The Admiral said something softly in Terran. It sounded like a swear word.

“You handled that fighter like it could read your thoughts. I’d never seen anyone move like that in my entire life, and I was the best pilot the Terran Garrison ever trained.”

Keith resisted the urge to interrupt with something snarky.

“I was so busy watching you, I nearly missed the entire left flank of your formation. It’s a wonder they ever promoted me at all after that.”

There were things neither of them said; Keith wasn’t sure either of them ever would.

Keith broke his gaze and settled himself onto his spine.

“That was a good fight,” he said after a while.

“And what constitutes a ‘good fight’ to you, Red?”

Keith smirked, that was a nickname he could live with.

“When we killed more of them than they did of us,” he replied simply.

*

Keith woke in stages, luxuriating in being satisfyingly warm for what felt like the first time in forever and ran his tongue over his fangs as he listened the pulse beating slow and steadily against his ear. He grunted sleepily, flexed the fingers of his dominant hand and brushed against the sparse hairs underneath his fingertips. Then his brain caught up with his senses, and he opened his eyes.

He was still lying on his side, though he was no longer on the edge of the bed. There was plenty of light filtering through the intricate fretwork shutters for him to see that he had somehow ended up pillowed on the Admiral’s outstretched bicep with his other hand resting on the bare side of the man’s overly muscled abdomen. And he was watching him, expression unreadable.

Keith swore, and scrambled backwards off the bed, taking a great deal of the blankets with him. He flailed for his knife, smacked his forearm on the edge of the table and snarled. Then he growled again, because the Admiral was laughing at him.

“Not quite so coordinated in the mornings, Red?”

“Fuck off,” Keith replied from within his heap of bedding. “Why the fuck are you watching me sleep?”

“Your head is surprisingly heavy.” Keith couldn’t see him, but he could feel the smugness radiating off the man. “You know you growl when you snore?”

Keith knew, Krolia always said the noise was ‘cute’ whenever someone mentioned it. He maintained his silence from within the mess of blankets and pretended he hadn’t heard.

“Are you going to…?” The question tailed off into nothing, and Keith was momentarily grateful.

A full night’s actual rest, being warm and comfortable, and waking up with his nose full of the soft, spicy scent of the Admiral, had brought on a fairly obvious and predictable physical reaction. Keith cursed his anatomy, his sleeping clothes, and the fact that he did not hear the sounds of the human leaving the room. Their stalemate seemed to go on for a long time, then there was a distinctive rustling and the Admiral’s voice came from behind him.

“Told you I wasn’t going to stab you in your sleep.”

Keith waited another ten heartbeats until he was certain he’d heard the bathroom door close, then extracted himself from the blankets. He was alone in the room, and part of Keith did not understand why he wasn’t dead, or why the Admiral had almost sounded pleased.

By the time the man appeared in the main room, Keith was dressed, brushed, and fighting unsuccessfully once more with his braids. The Admiral said something in Terran that Keith didn’t understand, but it didn’t sound overtly derogatory, so he simply flicked his ears back and fast-wove the rest of his hair into a standard plait. The Admiral was watching him, but he was waiting by the main door.

“Are you coming to breakfast?”

Keith shot a glance to the table they’d used on the first day – he’d ended up abandoning that meal and now that he thought about it, didn’t remember seeing evidence of any others.

“Where?”

“What do you mean- wait, when was the last time you ate?” The Admiral followed Keith’s gaze to the empty table, bare except for the neatly folded purple cloth their blades had been wrapped in. “That was almost three quintants ago! How are you not starving?”

“Doubted you would be very tasty.” Keith shot back, and had the pleasure of watching the Admiral blanch quickly, before a soft blush began to spread across the bridge of his nose and his cheeks.

“Did you just make a joke, Red?

Keith glared at his reflection, but when the Admiral left for breakfast in the main palace, Keith followed him. The man still wore his blade on his hip, but the position was wrong and it wasn’t in easy drawing reach; Keith walked behind and to one side, far enough back to be out of range, and the prickle of discomfort he had felt upon waking made his fingers twitch at his side. It would not do to forget that the man had been his enemy, and that everywhere he went on Altea, the people looked upon Keith as strange and dangerous – rightly so.

Breakfast turned out to be a communal affair much more like the meals Keith was used to than he was prepared to admit, though the cuisine was far more varied, and the company far more refined. No meat, slab of bread and hearty beer to be shared around the strategy table with his generals, whilst the soldiers ate in the mess halls. Rather, delicate pastries, a wealth of fruits, colourful drinks in long glasses clinked together by lesser royals, high ranking officers, and diplomats from almost every planet and moon in the system. The moment he entered behind the Admiral, Keith knew he was drawing not just general attention, but the eyes of everyone in the room, guests and servers alike, and many of them were not at all subtle about it. The Admiral greeted several people across the dining hall with a nod and an easy, open smile Keith knew he couldn’t have managed if he practised for many deca-phoebs, and gestured to the long table where stacks of warmed plates and bowls stood ready to be filled.

“It’s like a cafeteria, only posh.”

Keith frowned.

“You help yourself.”

Keith watched an Olkari diplomat selecting pastries, getting crumbs all over because more than half their attention was turned to watching him. He itched once again for his knife, though at least now he could be fairly certain no one would try and poison him, which was probably the point of this style of meal. Alteans were well known to go out of their way in order not to offend anyone, though as Keith saw a pair off to his left exchanging a slim fold of money – all eyes still on him – he realised that same courtesy did not, of course, extend to the Galra.

“Admiral...” The man was greeted by another human, though their speech and dress were Altean. “I see you’ve managed to get him all the way here without a leash. Congratulations.”

The Admiral said something back in Terran, and his voice was lower than Keith had ever heard it. Every line of him projected well-contained anger, and Keith wasn’t sure how the intruder managed to even meet his eyes. He did though, before his gaze slid back to Keith, who bared his fangs silently. The man made some shaky excuse, and disappeared so quickly Keith wondered momentarily if the Altean scientists had managed to create a personal instantaneous transporter.

Choosing food, sitting, and eating seemed to be the thing to do, and Keith hadn’t actually realised how hungry he was. Everything was sweeter than he expected, but the fruits were a welcome treat indeed. His enjoyment of them however, was both noticed and tempered by the fact that he could hear the dozens of comments softly murmured behind hands, and smell the undercurrent of curiosity and fear which wove around the room. Keith wondered if staying hungry might not have been a better option, because it was one thing to know that everyone was suspicious of you, and quite another to be the unwanted centre of so much negative attention. It reminded him of being hauled before Kolivan and the royal council for stealing a cruiser and going joyriding when he’d been a cub. Even though Lotor had been punished too and stuck by him – he’d been the one who crashed after all – it was not a memory Keith wanted to relive in any capacity.

“Red Flare? More like a Red Dwarf.” The disparaging tone came from a person whose plain clothes and yellow skin marked them as an Arusian – the biggest of New Altea’s moons – and who had absolutely no business looking down their nose at him. “Dim and ever weakening,” they added, as though such a comment could be misread as anything but an insult.

Keith snarled.

“Don’t-” The Admiral placed a hand over his arm, but did not touch him. His eyes were fixed on the Arusian. “Is there something the Prince of Marmora or his husband can help you with this morning Klyzap?” The Arusian gaped at them. “Or may we be allowed to finish our breakfast in peace?”

“Forgive me, Admiral.” The Arusian bowed, floundered, apparently unable to finish the gesture or the thought, and hurried away.

Keith relaxed back into his seat by a mere fraction, and someone unseen behind them laughed loudly, proclaiming;

“Well, well, the Galra is tamed indeed!”

He’d been doing alright up until then, Keith thought privately, but no one was that forgiving, and his temper was already stretched. He snapped. The glass he’d been holding, his chair, and an intricately knotted bread bun all went flying as he stood and reeled, the last item smacking the person who had spoken squarely in the jaw. Keith found his knife in his hand without consciously remembering that he’d drawn it, and pointed it to at the idiot who had dared suggest that such a simple act as coming to breakfast could imply that he was not still everything his enemies had ever feared. The blade in his hand reacted to his will and once fully formed, the wickedly sharp point was far too close to the other man’s face for his comfort.

“Say it again and I will paint this floor with your innards.” Keith hissed, violet eyes narrow.

He knew he was doing every single possible thing wrong as far as inter-planetary diplomacy was concerned, but if Kolivan had really wanted this to go smoothly, he should have sent someone – anyone – other than Keith. Keith sneered at his target – the man looked and smelled like he was about to soil himself – and turned on one heel to stalk away, blade still unsheathed. The Admiral was standing in his way, and Keith simply pushed him unceremoniously aside. He could tell he was being followed before he even reached the main doors. The Admiral’s footsteps got louder, closer, faster, but before he could be caught Keith rounded a corner and smacked into a red-haired Altean with bushy facial hair coming the other way.

“Prince Keith.” The use of his given name made Keith want to scream. The man frowned at him. “You are not wearing the correct braids. Is something wrong with-”

But Keith didn’t let him finish. Even though the Admiral was warning “Coran, don’t-” his blade was still in his hand, and there was no safe outlet for his rage. He spun, snarling and the slash of his sword was brought up short by the Admiral’s prosthetic hand wrapped around his wrist. The luxite blade hovered over his otherwise unprotected shoulder. In a strange flash, Keith saw again the blast from his fighter’s laser cannon which had damaged the Admiral’s ship badly enough that he’d lost his arm. A feral part of his mind wondered if the man would still somehow manage to be strong and fearless, even if Keith cleaved him still further in two.

“Calm down Red.” His voice was stern and immoveable as a glacier. A weaker opponent would have crumpled just from that, but Keith was not weak.

“Let me go or I’ll kill you.”

“Drop the sword or I’ll break your wrist.” The sleek black prosthetic squeezed inexorably. Keith fought to keep the pain from showing in his eyes. “Now.”

Self-preservation won, as it always did, but Keith didn’t drop his blade, and simply let it meld back into its smaller form. That seemed to be enough for the Admiral, and Keith followed through and sheathed the knife in the small of his back as he was released. They stood, glaring at each other for what felt like a very long time before the Admiral turned to the red-haired Altean.

“Coran. Could you show us to a training area we might use?”

*

“Spar?” The Admiral turned away as he shrugged off his jacket. Keith was torn between being impressed by the swathe of flexing muscles and the fact that he himself would never have trusted an enemy, so obviously riled up, enough to turn his back on them.

The training hall was sparsely populated with a number of Altean palace guard in their pale workout gear, and by the time Keith had stepped up to the edge of the nearest mat, more than half of them had stilled or slowed to watch him. A drill instructor snapped at his squad when they became distracted, but when he turned, he too stared at the sight of the Admiral facing off against the Galran Prince across the mat.

“You alright Red?”

“Why the fuck would you choose to fight me? Eager to lose?”

“Things change. That was a while ago.” The Admiral quirked a thick eyebrow at him from across the circle, and Keith snapped his fangs in response.

The Admiral was strong, fast, sure in his body and his movements, and Keith remembered how he’d fought before, with such unexpected power for someone so quick. He’d been a worthy adversary then, and he was still one now. The first few moves were set and familiar and far too fucking easy. Keith countered, blocked a punch with his hand, turned underneath him and flattened the Admiral against the floor with a forearm on his throat. He gnashed his teeth in frustration.

For a single heartbeat he thought the Admiral might yield and leave his anger just as hot and directionless as it already was, and then the man flexed and flipped them. Keith felt the air smack out of his lungs and barked a laugh at the force. The hold wasn’t enough to keep him and Keith twisted out from under the man’s weight and scrambled to reassume his ready position on the mat.

“Something you want to say, Red?” The cocky, confident tone made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, and Keith snarled.

They engaged, blocked, moved, blocked. Every aborted motion made Keith want to scream. Since the moment he’d gained consciousness he had hated the world in which he found himself: detested the moment of contented warmth when he’d woken, loathed every expression which had been directed his way, abhorred each needling comment suggesting that he was somehow magically tamed. The next time he and the Admiral connected he wrapped the punch in his fist, claws digging into the man’s skin, drawing blood.

“Fucking fight me!”

“You want another battle where we both end up blooded and limping?” the Admiral countered, his voice edged by merest hint of the anger Keith couldn’t help but feel raging in his pulse.

“How about another where you end up losing?” he snapped.

“You brat.”

“Fuck you!” Keith twisted, grabbed the back of the Admiral’s under shirt and pulled the man over with the weight of his body, cloth tearing under his hands. He had his knee at the human’s sternum. “I’m better than you.”

“You have no control.” That much muscle was hard to resist, and Keith snarled as he was pushed away, but caught himself before he fell and regained his footing on the mat. “Why did you join a fight you are so desperate to lose?”

Keith knew he wasn’t talking about the sparring match.

Rage shot through him, hot and vicious. He drew his knife, moved before it had even finished transforming into a blade, and grinned in triumph when he was met by the Admiral with his own sliver of matched luxite. It was the Admiral who growled next, a noise of mixed hatred and disbelief, and Keith paced back and smiled when his blade was met again.

They turned around each other, every moment quick and deadly, each parry and block necessary not just to save face but to avoid injury. Keith didn’t pull his hits, not even in training, because danger was the best teacher. Even practice blades could inflict bruises which lasted for weeks. The next time they met at close quarters, Keith smiled.

“You’re enjoying yourself?” The Admiral’s tone was coloured with disbelief.

“I’ve wanted to kill you for the last six deca-phoebs,” he smirked.

“Shame you’re so bad at it then.”

Keith snarled, the noise entirely animal. He shifted his shoulder to shake off the Admiral’s balance and the length of his blade slid with a metallic shriek along the edge of the Admiral’s knife, until both the narrow cross-guards locked. The man was using both hands on the hilt to fend him off, the strain visible.

“Don’t pretend you’re any better.” Keith growled the words, never dropping the concentration he kept on his blade. “You’d rather gut me with that knife that share your bed with me again.”

“No.”

“I took your arm!”

The Admiral’s eyes went suddenly dark, the leading hand on his knife hilt twitched, and something in the back of Keith’s head reminded him that the blade had not transformed before.

It did now. It took hardly a tic for the knife to lengthen into a beautifully curved sword, and as it resolved itself for the first time the luxite was as hot as it had been in the forge. There was no escaping it, and Keith was fast, legendarily so amongst the fighters of the Galra, but nothing could have outrun that. The blade scored his face, from his jaw to his cheekbone, the bones of his face and his eye spared only by the natural curve of the blade, which was exactly like his own. The wound cauterized as it formed, the air rank with the scent of burnt fur and charred flesh from the heat of the newly shaped sword. Keith heard a roar of pain and realised it was his own only as it faded. He knew without being shown, that he would wear the laceration as a scar for the rest of his life. Not even Altean healing pods could fix a wound already sealed over in such a manner.

He grunted and fell back. His fist closed reflexively around the hilt of his own blade.

“Congratulations,” he slurred, fighting back the pain and the urge to show it with each movement, “you beat the Red Flare.”

Later, he could be proud of not dropping his blade, even though his muscles were on fire; or passing out, even though his head was swimming. Later, he could deal with his pain and mourn the loss of his face, such as it had been. Later, when he was safe… except that he wasn’t safe, nowhere was safe, and the Admiral was still looking at him like he wanted to run him through. Keith didn’t blame him.

“Go on then,” he grunted, turning his wrist and pulling away the point of his sword, offering up his chest, the bare length of his throat. “Do it. I expect the Alteans are really good at clean up.”

The Admiral looked at him with disgust. A muscle in his cheek twitched involuntarily.

“I am not going to kill you.” Every word came out measured and steady, as if they hadn’t just fought for most of a varga.

“Why the fuck not?!”

Rage flashed across the other man’s features again, but this time his eyes were wide and pale, and Keith could smell the unhappiness rolling off him.

“Because! You are not the only one who spent their whole life fighting a war they never wanted!”

The clatter of the Admiral’s sword falling to the floor snapped the tension between them. By the time the Admiral turned away, his strides lengthening across the floor, Keith felt as though all his strings had been cut. The blade in his hand shrank, returning to its resting shape, and Keith watched as the Admiral’s discarded blade did the same. Wincing, he bent to scoop it up, and stowed it in his belt along with his own. Placed together, the two blades vibrated in sympathy with each other, the tiny reaction causing heat to flood Keith’s skin where they rested.

A single glance around the room showed him that the entire exchange had been watched by dozens of prying eyes, but a short wordless growl at the nearest palace guard who looked at him as he made his way towards the door ceased the stares. There was bound to be a medical facility somewhere in the palace, and Keith set off in search of it.

 

[insert art here]

 

He hadn’t been walking long – down yet another beautiful but apparently purposeless passage – when Keith let his instincts stop him in his tracks just before a familiar brown-haired human exited backward through a side door and narrowly avoided smacking into him. Keith glared at the man, who scraped his wits about him enough to manage a vaguely passable bow, then frowned.

“Er… Your Highness?”

“Do you know where the med bay is?”

The man – Matt, Keith remembered – gaped at him.

“Y-your face. Are you alright? What happened?”

“The med bay.” Keith repeated, then clenched his teeth, which hurt, as he realised he’d been speaking Galran, and therefore no one could understand him. “Medical ward?” he repeated in Altean.

“Um, yes. This way.” Matt radiated nervousness, and kept a very deliberate distance between them as he gestured the direction of travel.

They met no one else as they walked, and Keith was certain various attendants and palace staff had been sent scurrying back the way they’d come by his appearance. The medical ward was just as he had expected – white, gleaming, softly lit, very Altean – and he sat on an empty cot rather more heavily than he would have liked. Being weak and appearing weak were not two things which always went together, and Keith had spent too long on his mask for it to slip away entirely.

Matt hadn’t left, and Keith glared at him.

“Yes?”

“Is… is Shiro OK?”

“The Admiral won.” Keith stored away Matt Holt’s unwavering loyalty to his friend as useful future information. “I expect he should be rather pleased with himself.”

“Sorry, what?” Matt’s voice had taken on an entirely different expression of incredulity. “Did you just call Shiro ‘The Admiral’?”

Keith nodded, then turned his attention to the Altean doctor with blue facial markings and dark hair who had obviously drawn the short straw amongst their peers.

“Painkillers.”

“Perhaps a healing pod would be better, Your Highness?”

Lotor had been in an Altean healing pod once, and from his descriptions of the lurid, lucid dreams and the sensation of lost time, it was not an experience Keith was keen to try.

“No. Painkillers.” He clenched the fist in his lap, remembering that he was supposed to be a gesture of the goodwill of his people now, not a commander at arms. “Please?” he managed eventually.

As the doctor bustled to assist him, Keith turned back to where Matt Holt was still inexplicably waiting for him.

“Yes?”

“Why did you call Shiro by his title?”

“Why not?” Keith tilted his face as directed, and hissed in pain as a smear of cool salve was smudged along the line of his new wound.

“Because he hates it.” Matt frowned, deep furrows forming between his brows. “I thought he would have told you.”

“We don’t talk.” Keith grumbled, then winced as the Altean doctor injected his neck with what he assumed was a local sedative. He was fairly certain now no one in the palace was actually going to try and poison him; perhaps his show of trust would help to add gloss to his entirely tarnished reputation. “Thank you,” he directed to the doctor.

“You need rest. Probably privacy.” The doctor glanced at the door with an obviously fearful expression.

Keith rolled his eyes, of course the medical staff didn’t want him to stay and collapse in the ward. He would scare off anyone else who needed the facilities.

“Yes. Indeed. Thank you.” He stood, swayed, cursed in Galran, and stepped towards the door. Behind him, the doctor spoke again.

“Someone should go with him...”

Keith made it as far as the corner of the corridor before Matt caught up to him, and by that time his face no longer hurt, but he also couldn’t feel anything much down the whole of his right side. His ears seemed to be filled with fluff, and it took him a long time to understand that Matt was talking to him.

“They said they’ve never treated a Galra before. They guessed the dose. Whoa….” Keith realised Matt’s hands were holding him up and tried to pull away before his other shoulder collided with the nearest wall. “I think they went a bit heavy on your meds.”

Keith rumbled a growl, everything seemed like a lot of effort.

“Now would be a great time for an assassination attempt.”

There was a long pause, during which Matt lead him down yet another familiar but featureless passage; Keith was never going to understand how the Altean’s found their way around.

“Is that what you said to Shiro?”

“Something similar.” He glanced down at the human who was, probably despite his better judgement and sense of self-preservation, supporting most of his weight with an arm under his shoulders, and saw Matt’s serious frown. “What?”

“Nobody wants you dead, Keith.” He should have been much more annoyed at the lack of formality from the human, but it was hard to care. “Least of all Shiro. He married you!”

“The Admiral was a good choice by the Coalition to keep me from becoming feral,” he scoffed.

Matt pushed him into his suite. It was, mercifully, empty.

“Don’t call him that. He’s never liked his title… any of them.”

Keith frowned at that, because it was well known across the system that the Admiral was a skilled fighter, an excellent pilot, and a remarkable tactician. They were the qualities which had allowed him to climb through the ranks of the Terran military. When Keith had first faced him, he had been a Lieutenant, and no normal man made it from that to Admiral in less than six deca-phoeb.

“Why?”

“Talk to your husband, Highness.” Matt replied, and his bow was a pitying thing.

Keith wanted to be angry, indignant maybe, but his head was fuzzy and he couldn’t feel his face, or his arm. He staggered to the chaise and collapsed; with his last conscious thought that he must only rest for a moment, because he would not let the Admiral catch him sleeping and vulnerable again.

*

He need not have worried, because when Keith shivered awake it was becoming dark, his face ached dully, he was still desperately hungry, and he was most decidedly alone. No one had been into the suite since he’d passed out, and Keith was sure he should have been grateful for that, but a thin thread of worry tugged at his mind. He pushed the feeling away and went to bathe because his clothes smelt with the effort from sparring, and there was blood on his collar. He threw a short tunic on over his still damp fur, combed his hair with his fingers and twisted it into a simple, practical braid as he tucked his knife and his husband’s knife into his belt. He glanced in the mirror, hardly believing it had only been that morning when they had traded barbs back and forth as Keith had tried to weave his hair into espousal braids – a feat he had yet to manage.

The scar was raw and red, no longer covered by the healing salve which had soaked away whilst he’d slept, and tender to the touch of his fingertips. Keith had other scars, lesser ones, the unavoidable signs of a life spent at war, and he knew that this one would in time fade to a pale purple similar to the skin under his light fur. It cut diagonally across his cheek, and he winced at how close he had come to losing his right eye. His husband had somehow become a more fierce opponent after losing an arm, but Keith didn’t want to test his own skills as a half-blind swordsman.

He padded out into the palace in near silence, and went looking for his husband.

A whole varga later, he still had not found him, and Keith was running out of places to look. He hadn’t actually ventured into the dining hall, but a couple of doboshes of careful listening and sniffing had assured him that the man was not there, and so he had moved on.

Now he was travelling down an unfamiliar passageway with fine carvings in the balustrade and decorated with abstract art in soft pastel colours. There were no guards and no signs, but Keith got the distinct feeling he was somewhere private. The sensation only intensified as the floor changed to a runner of plush pale blue carpet, and Keith wriggled his bare toes against the soft texture before continuing onward. A door near the end of the passage stood half-open, warm light spilling through from beyond, and as he drew closer he heard familiar voices speaking in Altean.

“And what now?” His husband’s voice, tired, low, and clearly stressed. “We’re due to move into the château at the end of this movement, and the first Galran delegations are expected next pheob.” Keith frowned, neither Kolivan nor his mother had told him his people would be returning to New Altea so soon. “They will want to see him. And this is assuming he hasn’t already messaged the Lady Krolia and told her his new husband tried to kill him!”

“My dear Shiro, try to be calm.”

“I can’t be calm Allura! I just caused an international incident!”

Keith’s frown deepened. He had goaded the man into the fight, taken every opportunity to hurt him, regardless of the ethics of doing so, and made his intentions to cause lasting damage very clear. And yet here the Terran was worried that he was the one at fault. Keith was certain he’d missed something somewhere.

His husband said something in Terran, it sounded like there might have been more swearing, and the Princess replied, but her Terran words sounded as stilted as Keith felt his own Altean was. It was oddly reassuring. They switched back to Altean: it had become the universally accepted international language long ago.

“Neither of you is entirely blameless in this. It’s probably my fault. I should have insisted on a settling in period before the actual ceremony. The Terran leaders were so determined that they wouldn’t sign unless the deal was done and they swayed the rest of Coalition; and the Galra would have viewed anything other than the wedding as a kidnapping and ransom, rather than a brokered peace deal.” The Princess sighed heavily. “The two of you really should talk to each other.”

“He’s just so...spiky.”

In the shadow of the door, Keith smirked, then winced, because his face still hurt.

“Shiro… did you tell him why you agreed to marry him?”

“No.”

“Don’t you think that might be wise?”

A chair scraped on the floor, there was the sound of feet.

“I feel it will already be too late.” The man sounded defeated. “You didn’t see his face, Allura. He wanted me to kill him.”

“No one wants to resume this war, Shiro, try to remember that.”

Keith shifted his weight forward, eyes on the door. Princess Allura exited first in a sweep of perfectly draped fabric and effortlessly styled white hair. Keith took a single breath and timed his spring precisely. He slid behind her, hand raised to his husband’s sternum, pressing the advantage that surprise had given him to force the man back into the room, slamming the door behind him and leaving the Princess on the other side. Keith didn’t know if he could lock it from the inside, and though a muffled cry of “hey!” came from the passageway there were no hints that force would be used to regain entry. Just as the man stopped walking backward, Keith switched hands, and thumped his husband’s knife, hilt first, into his chest.

“Wha-?”

“We’re married, aren’t we?” Keith demanded with a glare.

“Um...” Seeing his husband genuinely lost for words would have been funny, if Keith hadn’t been so confused by the entire situation. “Er...”

“Which means you’re Marmoran now. You don’t ever leave your blade behind.”

“Um...” The human repeated, but his hand came up to take the knife from Keith, and Keith was sure he wasn’t the only one who felt the quick jolt of power which made him snatch his fingers back from the contact. “What was that?”

Keith ignored the question.

“They are paired blades.” He knew Lotor would make some useless comment about them being a terrible pair if he’d been present. “You discarded it in public. You may as well have said that you never wanted to see me again.”

“And?” His husband snapped, the confusion in his eyes replaced with his earlier anger. “You tried to get me to kill you.”

“You should want to kill me!” Keith snarled back. “Why don’t you?”

The tall man looked as though he wanted to hit him, and then he slumped back into the chair he’d clearly only just gotten out of, knife still cradled against his chest.

“I lost everything to the war.” It wasn’t actually clear if he was speaking for Keith’s benefit or simply the cathartic assistance of airing his pain aloud. “My parents, my family, so many friends… war took everything. Or it took me away from everything, and by the time I came back, people were gone, died, changed. I hate being an Admiral, pushing troops around and seeing the death tolls… forgetting for a moment each one of them was a person – someone with a family who would miss them.” He pinched his brow, eyes troubled. “Aren’t you tired of fighting for everything Red?”

Keith bit his lower lip, watching as his husband turned his knife over in his black prosthetic hand.

“It’s all I know,” he admitted quietly.

“Fuck… that’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.” The man stood again, sheathing his knife on his belt with a motion which was already incredibly familiar. “I’m sorry about your face.”

Keith shrugged, and gestured vaguely to his husband’s arm.

“It’s fine. Now we’re even.”

A pained look crossed the man’s features, and Keith realised too late that it was the wrong thing to say.

*

They were transferred to the château right on schedule. The house, which Keith had great difficulty thinking of as anything other than temporary, was last on a row of similarly beautiful and lavish residences, all home to other diplomatic envoys and their families. To his intense relief, his husband did not suggest holding a soiree in order to welcome their new neighbours. But Keith stood beside him when they came separately to wish them well, and tried not to scowl when the Olkari stared and the Krellians sneered.

The château was larger by far than the suite at the Palace, and though there were several guest bedrooms, Keith stowed his clothes in a trunk in the master room and slept on the far edge of the large bed. It was an awkward, formal kind of intimacy, and Keith didn’t quite know what to make of the fact that no matter how carefully he positioned himself at the edge of the bed, he always ended up curled up against his husband’s side come morning. He’d become better at extracting himself from the man’s sleepy embrace though, and neither had them had mentioned it.

After two further attempts, he had given up on the frustrating undertaking of espousal braids, and had settled for simply twisting three lengths around each other in a standard braid each morning and evening, always being careful to ensure he completed the task without being observed by his husband. He hadn’t seen any more Altean advisors since they had moved out of the Palace, but the knowledge that a Galran diplomatic delegation would soon be arriving loomed in his subconscious whenever he thought about his hair. They would notice if his braids were wrong, and then word would surely get back to his mother, Lotor, and Kolivan. That was something he couldn’t risk.

Four confusing mornings and four frustrating and boring quintants later, Keith grunted and set his shoulder against the dresser in the uppermost spare room of the tall house and pushed it with an unpleasant scraping noise across the floor. The day-bed and chaise had been far easier to manhandle, and though he would have preferred to get rid of them altogether, with everything pushed up against the walls there was a decent sized empty space in the centre of the room. Keith rolled his shoulders as he took up a position in the centre of the floor, wiggling his toes and wishing he had any idea where or how to buy padded training mats. He wasn’t even certain what kind of credit system the Alteans used.

“Hey… what are you doing up here?”

Keith looked over his shoulder to see his husband standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame with one well-muscled shoulder, looking far more comfortable than Keith felt he really had any right to be.

“I need a training room.”

“It’s not really big enough.”

Keith hissed at him in annoyance.

“I know that! But I’m ‘not welcome’ in the garden.” Keith scowled, pressing his ears back into his hair at the sharp anger and hot shame which washed through him with the memory. Attached to the row of châteaus was a large, beautifully appointed, communal garden, laid out in such a way as to create a variety of semi-private spaces amongst the plants. Keith had unwisely assumed he could use the gardens just like everyone else did, but the visceral reaction from the Arusian envoy who had all but hauled her children back into her arms had proved otherwise. “I wasn’t even using my blade! It was just a simple kata.”

Keith inhaled, closed his eyes as he took up the first position, and tried to slow his heartbeat enough to complete the most basic forms. He snarled as he dropped the stance, shaking out his arms. He was tense with energy which had nothing to do with the unpleasantness in the garden and everything to do with the fact he had never spent so long being still as he had since arriving on New Altea.

“ARRRGH! I can’t do this!” Keith wished fervently that there was something he could punch. “I’m so bored!”

“Red...” The softness of his husband’s voice did nothing to soothe the prickle of irritation which crawled up his spine. “Well, what do you like to do?”

Keith turned to look at him, a broad stripe lounging against the wall, apparently content. He frowned.

“What?”

“For fun?”

Keith thought, briefly, about tearing his own hair out, but settled instead for pressing a hand across his eyes to hide his pained expression. He knew that the man he had been arranged to marry was a gifted fighter and excellent strategist, but he was also, clearly, exceedingly dense.

“I’ve been on the battlefield since I was thirteen,” he explained carefully, using all his self-control not to snarl the words. “Exactly when do you think I last had time for ‘fun’?”

“Oh… Come with me? I wanted to show you something.”

Keith hesitated, took a breath, and seriously thought about turning down the offer in favour of taking his blade and genuinely destroying everything in the room. Then he sighed, touched the hilt of his knife at the small of his back, just to reassure himself it was there, and nodded.

“Fine. What?”

Five dobashes later, Keith had pulled on a pair of boots and a jacket, and followed his husband down the stairs which lead to the underground parking garage he hadn’t actually been aware existed. So far, the only transport Keith had witnessed upon the surface of New Altea other than walking had been the incredibly fast silver train which seemed to flow, suspended, over the city, like oil on a lake. He’d missed the relative freedom of his fighter more with each passing varga, and had caught himself gazing wistfully at a perfectly ordinary cruiser as it had taken off from the direction of the Palace, even though he was fairly certain the craft couldn’t have been capable of doing any kind of speed. But standing before them in the long, low space of the garage was not a cruiser, nor any kind of craft even vaguely able to reach the mid level of the troposphere. And yet Keith’s palms itched with the desire to claim one. He stared.

“Hoverbikes?”

“You have them on Daibazaal? Thank god.” The human looked genuinely relieved. “You want to go for a ride?”

Keith’s natural suspicion was tempered by his desire to move faster than running speed, and to get away and go anywhere other than here. He nodded.

“These aren’t Altean...”

The two hoverbikes were black and red with chrome trim, and neither was new, though both looked in good condition. They were subtly different from each other, though Keith couldn’t tell if one was simply an upgraded model of the other or not. His husband stepped forward eagerly and took up one of the two helmets which hung over the handlebars.

“I brought them with me from Terra. They gave me a whole bay for my stuff on the transport ship, so I decided I’d better put it to good use. I think I was supposed to use it for furniture or wedding gifts or something.” He shrugged, scooped up the spare helmet, and tossed it under arm at Keith. “Let’s go.”

Keith had felt over energised and antsy for days, ever since he’d stepped from the Galran ship and been, practically if not formally, grounded on New Altea. Now, with his braid whipping out into his slipstream, the edges of the city flashing by, and the engine of the hoverbike thrumming hard beneath him, Keith found he was able to breathe fully once more. The snide little remarks and pointed looks of their neighbours did not matter when there was a horizon to chase. As they emerged fully into the countryside surrounding the capital, his husband drew alongside him and flipped up the visor of his helmet.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were smiling.”

Keith glared at him, pleased at least that the design of the helmet his much of his face from view, and the man couldn’t actually tell how delighted he was.

“Race?” His husband offered.

“You think you’ve improved that much since Thayserix?” he quipped. “You’re on.”

“There’s parkland up ahead.” The display on the hover bike scrolled and flashed up a route on a map as the man pinged the details over to him. “Winner gets to pick what’s for dinner.”

Just the idea they actually had choice in their food was a surprise to Keith, but he was well practised at schooling his features and merely nodded, flipped down his visor, glanced once at the map, and gunned his engine.

Racing on a hoverbike wasn’t much like piloting his fighter in high-level atmosphere or out in the black, but Keith had always been good on anything with an engine, and being frustrated and surrounded by his enemies had only heightened his competitive streak. The controls were familiar – they weren’t that many different ways to set up a hoverbike after all – but all the dials and labels were in Terran, so Keith simply just ignored them and focused on the lay of the land ahead. The park, much like the rest of New Altea, was picturesque, colourful, and sparsely populated. Keith swung wide over a broad rolling meadow of lush grasses, then snarled as his husband’s own bike cut a direct path across his front, clearly avoiding the corners of the route on their displays. He pushed the craft harder, aimed for a narrow space between the other hoverbike and the sheer drop of the canyon they were beginning to follow, and overtook his husband close enough to hear him curse in Terran once more.

It went like that for much of the rest of the late afternoon, and without talking they lead each other on a tour of the expansive parkland and the various features which allowed them both to pull interesting stunts with the hoverbikes. Watching his husband drop, seemingly unconcerned, over the edge of a cliff, only to pull up as the boosters kicked in right at the last minute before he would have been nothing more than a colourful splatter against the rocks, had made Keith’s heart batter against his ribs; though he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know why. Only when the battery levels on the bikes had crept down just below fifty-percent did the man wave him over before killing his engine.

They ended up sitting, more than an arm’s reach apart as was their habit, on the edge of another canyon seemingly formed by the wind through oddly coloured sedimentary rock, watching as the stars began to appear in the deepening pink and lavender hued sky.

“They hardly even look like the same stars.” Keith breathed, folding both arms around the knee he’d drawn up to his chest. He felt, rather than heard, his husband’s intake of breath as the man turned all attention on him. He wasn’t sure if he’d actually been the one to initiate a conversation since their wedding. “We don’t get sunsets like this back on Daibazaal. First Sun drops behind our sister planet before the day’s end, and Second Sun only ever gives us a red line on the horizon when she vanishes. Our skies are just as dark as it is out in the black.”

“On Terra we don’t even have Second Sun.” His husband sounded rueful. “For a long time, it was apparently only theorised, because our orbit never allows us to see it.” He glanced up at the colourful darkness of the Altea sky once again, running the black fingers of his prosthetic hand through his silver hair. “Our night sky is dark too.”

Keith felt the fine fur on the back of his neck prickle at the warm tones in the man’s voice, and wished he could shake off the feeling without it being obvious that he was doing so. The next time he looked over, his husband was watching him back, grey eyes unreadable.

“Do you miss it?”

“Yes. Of course. But I think it’s worth it.”

Keith’s claws dug into his palms as he clenched his fist briefly.

“To keep the peace.”

“Yes. Among other things. At least communications from here to Terra don’t take long, and Matt is always up to date with news from home.” There was a lengthy pause. “He told me about the conversation you had.”

“Oh...” Keith blinked and looked away, not wanting to see whatever measure of disappointment his husband’s expression held. The mere fact he cared if the man was disappointed in him was either a very good or a very bad thing, and Keith wasn’t sure he could work out which it was. “What should I call you?”

“Everyone calls me Shiro.”

Keith arched an eyebrow at him, ears flicking back.

“Well I’m not like everyone.”

“This is true.” A smile, tiny and transformative, quirked the corner of the man’s mouth.

Keith bit his lip and thought for a moment, and his husband seemed content to let him have the time as the evening drew in around them.

“Your given name is Takashi, right? I’ll call you that.”

Keith could hear his husband’s pulse from where he sat, and he was fairly certain he hadn’t imagined the quickening of the hot, double thud at his words.

“I… OK. Kei-?”

Keith snapped his fangs to cut him off.

“No. Red. Call me Red.”

His husband was frowning now, brows drawn low.

“Why?”

Keith exhaled long into the night, wondering if the ache he felt in his chest was what homesickness truly felt like, doubting if he would even recognise home if he was allowed back. The entire moon had been at war for far longer than anyone living could remember. What would peace even look like there? Keith couldn’t picture it. He turned instead to his husband, hoping his fears didn’t show on his face.

“Because you’re the only one who does.”

*

The very first official Galran trade delegation would arrive on New Altea the following quintant; he and Shiro had been invited to attend the welcome meal and subsequent meetings by Princess Allura; and Keith still couldn’t properly complete the espousal braids in his hair. He had managed to get hold of Lotor during one of the rare windows when planets, moons and satellites were arranged well enough to allow them to speak in near-real time, and his cousin had been less than helpful.

‘You really should have insisted on a valet.’

‘Lotor! When have I ever had a fucking valet?’

He hadn’t reminded his royal cousin that they had both been living on the fringes of battlefields most of their lives. Even though Lotor was a warrior too, he did not pilot a fighter out in the black, and his status as Crown Prince had provided him with slightly more luxury than Keith had ever really wanted. He’d never needed a valet to attend him before, and realistically he shouldn’t have needed one now, because he should be having his husband sit behind him and assist with the delicate and intricate construction of his braids. He’d shown his best attempt of the braids to Lotor, and been forced to hang up on his cousin’s laughter. He had received a message a while later with the suggestion that he should perhaps ask someone else to help him. He hadn’t been willing to tell Lotor that apart from Shiro, there was literally no one else on the entire planet he could talk to.

No one spoke to him when he and Shiro went out, not beyond a very polite and rigidly formal greeting, and the only person he had actually had a conversation with since the departure of his family after the wedding had been Matt Holt. The scientist had been round to visit with Shiro, and though he had smiled politely at Keith and inquired after his scar and any related pain, Keith had made himself scarce during his stay. The pair were old friends, and Keith had very much doubted Shiro would want him hanging about whilst they caught up. It wasn’t as if he could understand them when they spoke together in Terran anyway. Even if he had known how to contact Matt, Keith doubted the human would have been willing to assist him.

Keith was used to being surrounded by generals, advisors, other warriors, and pilots. Even in the rare times he’d lived in the castle on Daibazaal, meals and rest times had been communal. The presence of his mother, his cousin, often times the King, the royal guard, and various other nobles was as normal to him as breathing. There was special kind of loneliness being the only one of his species on the planet, and it was getting to him more than he wanted to admit. And yet he hadn’t even learnt the name of the attendant who cleaned their château, because they never met his eyes and seemed to actively avoid being in the same room as him. Back in the time of war, Keith could happily go several quintants without actually speaking to anyone, especially when travelling through the black. But now that there was no one with whom he could have a conversation even if he wanted to, he burned for companionship.

Keith held four locks of hair in his mouth, several others between his lesser digits, and tried to grab the piece he needed to meld the two main sections of the braid together. He failed, cursed, and flung his collected hair ties across the room.

“Having fun there, Red?”

“I swear if it was a viable option, I’d shave it all off.” Keith dragged all ten claws through the thick locks of his hair. Black was a highly unusual colour for Galra, and he’d always been pleased and proud of it before. Now, the knowledge that his lack of decent braiding skills was likely to cause ripples of concern – though probably not all out war – throughout the delegation, and therefore also his family, was making him wish he didn’t have hair at all.

Shiro frowned at him in the mirror.

“You’ve never cut it, right? It’s… bad luck?”

“It’s anathema… it’s cursed, causes great distress.” Keith nodded. “I cut my bangs, obviously, but yeah, never the whole length. My cousin never cuts any of his – dramatic bastard. For Galra who have hair, it is very important.” He realised, belatedly, that Shiro was still watching his reflection as he carded his fingers through his hair. “Wait… how’d you know?”

“Uploaded every byte of data about Galran culture to my data pad after we moved here. I figured it would be nice to know something about my husband’s life other than his battle tactics.”

“Oh.” Keith flicked his gaze away quickly, deeply thankful that between his purple fur and pale grey cheek markings, it was very hard to tell when he was blushing. It had never occurred to him that Shiro might actually care enough about their marriage to read up about his people and he hated that the thoughtfulness of the gesture made him want to smile. Keith knew he must have been really lonely for something so small to affect him.

“So, it’s not like you can cut it off before tomorrow. Show me these braids you need to wear.”

Keith bit back a snarl as Shiro stepped close behind him, and clenched his fists as every muscle across his shoulders tensed. They’d been sleeping in the same bed for the last phoeb but there was something about Shiro being behind him which made Keith ready himself for an attack every single time. Shiro said nothing, made no sign that he had noticed at all, except that he waited, not staring, not touching, until Keith was able to breath normally again.

“You know how to braid, Takashi?” He eyed Shiro’s short silver locks with suspicion, and the man rubbed the back of his own head with black polymer fingers. The stretch of muscle across his shoulders with the motion should not have been in any way appealing. Keith cursed his errant libido – it had been an age since he’d had any kind of comfortable privacy – and set to gathering his hair ties again.

“When I got my first prosthetic, calibration took ages.” Shiro toed off his shoes and sat cross-legged in the space Keith had abandoned. “And it’s really boring. When Matt and the Alteans got together to make the second one, he advised me to get a hobby which would help with pinpoint dexterity.” Shiro looked momentarily uncertain as Keith knelt by the mirror. “Ended up making woven bracelets for the whole crew that summer. After I’d exhausted myself making all the crochet blankets anyone could reasonably need.”

“Huh.” Keith looked up from under his hair at Shiro as the man finished speaking. He didn’t look embarrassed by his admission, but a rosy blush was spreading slowly across his cheeks nonetheless. It stained the tips of his ears in a manner which Keith couldn’t help but find endearing.

“So yeah, I know how to braid. What’s it supposed to look like?”

It was the closest they’d ever been to each other whilst conscious, and it was oddly reassuring that Keith wasn’t the only one who fidgeted with obvious nerves. He pulled up the images of espousal braids from which he had unsuccessfully practised whilst Shiro wrapped a hair tie around his human fingers. The complexity of the espousal braids made Shiro’s eyebrows almost vanish into his forelock when he saw what Keith had been trying to attempt alone.

“They’re supposed to- it’s...” Keith gave up, took up his comb and began to brush his hair flat and neat once more.

“Requires four hands?” Shiro finished for him.

“Yes. Takashi?”

“Red?”

Keith couldn’t meet his eyes in the mirror and chose instead to stare at his knees when he spoke, feeling more alone than ever.

“Help me?”

*

“I can’t believe that’s what you chose to wear Takashi.” Keith glanced at his husband in the glare of the morning suns, taking in the broad sweep of his shoulders clad in traditional Galran purple, arms and legs covered by a soft grey undersuit. His robes were edged in red, and fastened with a complicated geometric woven belt Keith was certain Shiro must have actually made himself.

“The whole point of this arrangement is to make the Galra a full and welcome part of the Coalition, is it not?” Shiro flicked the open collar of Keith’s own short tunic, the only garment he was currently wearing. “Besides, at least I’m actually dressed.”

“Fucking laundry machine ate my clothes.”

Shiro barely managed to hide his snigger behind his hand, even as the outer airlock doors of the Galran cruiser began to hiss open. Princess Allura’s chief advisor, the red haired man Coran, narrowed his eyes at them with an indisputable gesture to be quiet.

“I still can’t believe you were doing your own washing in the bath.”

Keith elbowed his husband hard in the ribs.

“At least when I did that, I had clothes.”

“So, do you know anyone in this delegation? Personally, I mean.”

“I don’t think so...” But the doors were open, and Keith had become distracted as Coran moved forward to greet the first people Keith had seen who looked like him in far too long. It was a trade negotiation, so Keith wasn’t expecting to recognise anyone beyond a nod or smile, and he already knew from his mother that none of the family were coming. But as the first of the ambassadors stepped forward to bow to Coran, all Keith’s attention was captured by a familiar hulking figure at the back of the group, and he could not stop his feet for all the formalities in the ‘verse.

“ULAZ!”

Keith found himself swept up in the same giant hug he had known since childhood, and buried his face into Ulaz’s thick neck, drinking in the scent of home.

“Little Kit!” Ulaz beamed, yellow eyes bright and shining as he put him down. “It is so good to look upon you again.”

“You too, my dear friend.” Keith held tight to Ulaz’s broad forearm, the texture of the black flight suit under his fingers a tactile reminder of endless days and nights spent side by side with the people who were his family, his kin. He didn’t want to let go. “You must tell me everything of home. How is Thace?”

“He laughed at one of your cousin’s jokes.”

“Thace laughed?”

“I know. Your mother practically fell off her chair in shock.” Ulaz rubbed the end of Keith’s braid between two fingers. “Dare I ask how it’s going?”

“I haven’t tried to kill him since we moved into our own house.” Keith kept his voice low, because even though no one else on Altea would understand him speaking Galran, the other emissaries would, and the whole point of getting Shiro to help him with his hair was to avoid a diplomatic incident. “He’s- it’s- I don’t know Ulaz. I can’t blame him for not liking me. What’s to like?”

“Ah Kit, there’s plenty to like about you.” Ulaz paused, frowning over the top of his head. “Do you think we’ve broken enough protocols yet?”

Keith turned to see every pair of eyes on them, dread building in the pit of his stomach. But Shiro was grinning, and doing a poor job of hiding it behind his prosthetic hand. Several of the Alteans looked stern. Keith huffed between his fangs, dropped Ulaz’s arm and returned to where Shiro was now quite obviously laughing, free arm wrapped across his middle.

“Oh I’m glad you think it’s funny.”

“It is Red. You know how rarely diplomats ever smile? So, do I get to meet your friend?”

Keith was fairly certain someone had been in and switched the place cards around, because when they reached the table laid out for the welcome meal, not only were he and Shiro seated pretty much in the centre of the Galran delegation, but Keith had Ulaz beside him too. Throk, the newly appointed Head of Trade and Commerce, was on Shiro’s other side. There was some kind of strange joy in introducing Shiro to Ulaz as his husband, despite how strange that title still sounded to him, and listening to Ulaz tripping over the pronunciation of Ta-ka-shi and frowning as he shook the prosthetic hand, knowing as Keith did, the history behind it.

He had forgotten how easy it was to speak his own language, how quickly he could listen in on and join each conversation, and how much he missed his people. Everyone had questions, but everyone also had news, and whilst Lotor might have been his kin by blood, he was terrible at telling Keith about the things that really mattered.

“He broke my record?”

“And hasn’t shut up about it all phoeb!” Ulaz laughed. “It’s all anyone can do to keep that kid from proclaiming himself the next leader of the Blades.”

“I cannot believe Regris broke my record.” Keith huffed, but there was no heat in it.

“You’ll just have to come back, little Kit, and set another one. Unless you think you’ve gotten too slow?”

Keith elbowed the bigger Galra in the ribs before helping himself to several skewers of rich, dark meat as the platter passed around their end of the table. A concerted effort had been made to cater to the carnivorous tastes of the Galran delegation, and Keith was more than happy to eat his share. Ulaz arched a pale eyebrow at him with concern.

“Is the food not usually like this, Kit?”

“No. Altean food is weird. Everything is too sweet and there’s never enough meat.” Keith rolled his eyes at a tray of delicate nut-flavoured pastries as they came near. “Everyone seems to be addicted to those things.”

Shiro took a pair of the treats as he spoke, and offered him one with a smile.

“Red, you want one?”

Ulaz frowned deeply as he realised Keith’s husband had not been following along with their conversation, and switched to Altean when he spoke again, his voice rough.

“He does not like them. The food here is… not right for Galra.” He turned to Keith. “Red? That’s what he calls you?”

Shiro looked confused.

“Oh. You’ve never said.”

Keith suddenly hated that the both of them were looking at him so intently, and he couldn’t answer Ulaz’s question because his friend was well aware of the moniker Keith’s enemies had gifted him. The idea that Ulaz could now see him being affected by Shiro’s concern and confusion made his skin feel tight.

“Why would I have told you?” He snapped; voice low. “It’s not like you care.”

“Kit...” Ulaz’s voice was quiet, but his warning was clear, and they were attracting attention from across the table.

Wishing he’d never set foot back in the Altean palace, Keith stood, his chair scraping on the floor in a manner which made each Galra wince, ears pressing back.

“I’m not hungry. I’ll see you later Ulaz.”

Keith didn’t look back, and he didn’t run. His heart was thumping against his ribs and his pulse whooshed so loudly in his ears that he was already swinging himself over the railing to access the gardens before Shiro’s prosthetic hand caught him by the arm.

“Red!”

Keith snatched himself out of the grip and snapped his fangs together as the fine fur on the back of his neck rose. To his surprise, Shiro jumped over the balustrade with ease, and Keith hated how he noticed the strong curves of his torso, and the breadth of his thighs clad in the tight undersuit as the robe moved around him. He stopped and shoved both hands in the pockets of his tunic, claws digging into the flesh of his palms. He would not go feral and give everyone yet another reason to hate him. Not again.

“What happened back there? Red, seriously… what makes you think I don’t care?”

Keith met his husband’s grey gaze, hating the genuine puzzlement he saw there, concern written deep across his features. Shiro’s eyes flicked the to the long length of Keith’s braid which the pair of them had created together, and he bit his lower lip softly. Keith wanted to reach out and touch him or draw his knife and fight him in equal measure.

“Don’t look at me like that!”

“Like what?” Shiro replied, not stopping in the slightest. Keith wanted to scream.

“I just- I can’t- and you and Ulaz both wanting me to be different things…” Keith pressed hard finger tips into his temples, the pain a good distraction from thoughts which refused to settle long enough to be pinned down. “I can’t do this.”

To his surprise, all the colour drained from Shiro’s face.

“Wait… is Ulaz- were you guys together?”

Under any normal circumstances, the suggestion that he would be attracted to Ulaz – who was more like an uncle to him than his actual uncle the King – would have been laughable. Now it just added a fierce edge to his depression. Keith snarled, drew his knife without thinking about it, and swung the blade as it materialised in full, embedding it deep into the trunk of the nearest tree.

“No. Stars, no.” He turned his back on Shiro, walking far enough away that he’d need to actively retrieve his blade: Keith wasn’t sure he trusted himself to hold it in his current state. “Ulaz is my kin. He’s known me all my life.”

Shiro frowned at him, drawing closer, and stopped precisely just out of arms reach, the familiar distance they had maintained from each other, right up until the moment Keith had asked his husband to assist with his braids.

“Red...”

“I can’t be nice to you! Not like that! Not when I’m- I’m-” Keith clenched both hands in the back of his hair, pulling tight enough to make him screw his eyes up against the pain of his scalp. “I am more than their Prince. I was his commanding officer for years, even when he and Thace were assigned to protect me!” Keith remembered with vivid clarity striding up and down the low bunk room aboard a cruiser out in the black, whilst their fighters were repaired, his own blade in his hand, slashing at nothing as he replayed his hand to hand fight with the Black Paladin. Trying to work out where he’d gone wrong, how they had both been injured but escaped with their lives, and he’d sworn to Ulaz that next time he was going to get it right and kill the son-of-a-bitch properly. And now that same man stood in front of him, wearing Galran traditional dress like it was natural, telling him he cared whether or not he liked the food. “He trained with me, coached me, sat up nights whilst I tried to work out the best way to defeat you.”

“It was a war.” Shiro replied simply. Keith snarled.

“You just don’t get it! I’ve spent more hours discussing with Ulaz how best to kill you than you and I have spent talking at all!”

Keith wasn’t sure what he had expected – probably for Shiro to turn on one heel, exit the gardens, and never speak to him again – but it certainly wasn’t for the man to shrug, remove his knife from his belt, plant the blade very deliberately in the ground and step forward with his hands open and ready.

“What-?”

“Come on then. Kill me.”

“Takashi...”

“You’ve got to get over this, Keith.”

His fangs snapped shut, ears pressed back into his hair, but Shiro had already moved, eating up the space between them, aiming directly for him. Keith blocked him, a jarring blow which made his shoulder ache instantly, twisted to avoid the next hit and countered with a swung leg of his own. Shiro was a powerful fighter, surprisingly fast for a human with such a big frame, and his aim was true as he grabbed Keith’s bare calf, over rotating him so that he fell heavily. But Keith was the fastest Galra on Daibazaal, his small build advantageous for one thing only, and he rolled before Shiro could grab him, got his feet under him once more and lunged at the man’s middle. They fell together, Shiro caught him with a knee in the chest, hands scrambling for his wrists, a heated, prideful smile on his face. Keith jerked forward, knocking Shiro’s jaw hard with his head, the clack of the human’s teeth was loud over their laboured breaths. He pushed the advantage, grabbed Shiro’s prosthetic and twisted it up behind the man as he flipped him over, pinning his thighs with his knees. He sunk his claws into the back of Shiro’s human hand as it came up to try and grab his hair, then bore his full weight down upon his opponent with a wordless snarl.

“I yield.” The words were panted into the short, blue grass of the lawn, Shiro’s face half turned, grey eyes looking back at him. “You still want to kill me?”

Keith panted, frozen in place, every muscle tense. He couldn’t kill Shiro, and not just because his blade was too far away to reach. He didn’t want to kill Shiro. The realisation was like a blow to the back of the head, and Keith clenched his eyes shut against tears he absolutely refused to shed even as his forehead came to rest on the back of the man’s neck.

“I’ve spent my whole life hating you,” he whispered, half-wishing he wouldn’t be heard.

“And now?” Shiro’s voice was soft and private, and Keith could feel the motion of his breath through his own chest as he pinned Shiro to the ground.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I know how to do anything else.”

There was a lengthy pause.

“Red? Are you going to let me up?”

And because Keith’s life wasn’t painful or embarrassing enough, the moment Shiro spoke and shifted his weight minutely underneath him, Keith became inescapably aware that he had pinned his husband down with his entire body, and that he was hard and pressing directly into the cleft of Shiro’s arse. For two heartbeats, Keith wondered if he asked, whether Ulaz would just decapitate him so he wouldn’t need to die of humiliation, then took a sharp breath and rolled off the human.

 

[insert art here]

 

Keith stood, adjusted the hem of his short tunic, wished he was wearing more clothes, and stepped back so that Shiro wouldn’t expect to be helped to his feet. Shiro brushed grass off his robes, face flushed with exertion, smiling faintly.

“They’ll want us back for the first of the trade talks. Would you like to walk with me?”

“I- um.” Keith glanced at his husband from under his bangs, feeling horribly guilty and more besides. “Give me a minute?”

“I’ll go retrieve our blades. I think that tree might have suffered irreparable damage though.”

It was easier to breathe without Shiro’s eyes on him, though no easier to think, and Keith blinked slowly and willed his unwanted arousal to vanish. The claws of his left hand were still tipped with Shiro’s blood – red like his tunic, like his name, like the blood of so many others he’d spilled. He couldn’t go and sit in on trade negotiations with human blood on his hands. Without thinking, Keith licked the blood from his claws and knew with perfect clarity as the flavour seared itself into his mind, that it had been an extremely bad idea.

*

Keith had sat through many formal talks before, and rather quickly decided that the council of war was much more fun than trade negotiations. There was a lot of back and forth about tariffs, rates, and allowable imports, and Keith allowed his attention to wander. Ulaz kept running his hand down his side, unconsciously checking for his knife, scowling briefly each time he realised it was missing. The head of the delegation, a female with bold red markings not too dissimilar from Kolivan’s, kept playing with the tip of her tail, wrapping it around her wrist whenever the tension in the room became too high. One of the Alteans on the other side of the table did the same thing with their hair, copying the gesture whether they meant to or not, and it was oddly heartening to realise that near-enough everyone in the room wanted it to go smoothly.

The one notable exception to this was the same idiot – a mixed race human with blue Altean face markings Keith now realised – who had insulted him at the breakfast shortly after the wedding. Every time the man looked at him, he scowled openly, and as Keith paid better attention to the negotiations, it was from him that most of their disagreements came. Keith made sure to be watching the next time the man’s eyes found him, and smiled enough to show his fangs. The half-Altean blanched, face markings washing out, and Keith flushed with pleasure. It was a miniscule victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Regardless of one idiot’s personal issues, the fact was talks were actually taking place, and there were many Galran ships with communication channels open to the frequency used by the members of the Grand Coalition. It was, by no small measure, actual progress; and drawing up contracts for minerals and produce was very different from counting up the totals of dead on either side.

The delegation wasn’t staying, and before the evening meal, with the talks concluded and several suitable agreements in place to begin mutually beneficial trade, Keith stood and walked with Ulaz out toward the hanger where the Galran cruiser was parked.

“I wish you weren’t going so soon.”

“Me either.” Ulaz reached out with one massive hand to ruffle his bangs, a gesture so familiar from so many memories that Keith felt his heart stutter in his chest. “So, tell me, what do you want me to report back to the Lady Krolia of Marmora?”

“Huh?” Keith was perplexed.

“Oh yes.” Ulaz grinned broadly. “Well I am officially here as protection, but since we all had to leave our blades on the cruiser, it is a thin excuse. Both your mother and the King sent me to check up on you.”

Keith scowled. Of course, Ulaz hadn’t been sent so that Keith might have a day of company, he was there to make sure Keith wasn’t fucking up the peace treaty.

“They don’t trust me,” he grumbled.

“They care about you,” Ulaz countered. “You are missed young Kit, and loved.”

“Ulaz...” Keith allowed himself to be drawn into a loose embrace, hugging his friend back with a quick, tight clench of both arms before stepping away. “No one here will ever love me. I miss home.” Keith bit his lip as he spoke, ears pressing back into his hair. He’d spent so little real time on Daibazaal – always off in the black or fighting on another moon or planet – that he hadn’t thought before it was possible to miss the red dust of their small moon or the severe, foreboding architecture of the castle. But he did. Knowing Ulaz and the others were headed back there, a journey on a cruiser which would only take a few quintants, made him ache to join them.

“And what about your Admiral?” Ulaz smiled softly. “In time perhaps-”

“No Ulaz. He won’t.” Keith glanced away, wrapping the fingers of his left hand around his own arm, because the memory of tasting Shiro’s blood on them was almost overwhelming. Keith knew he wouldn’t be able to forget that taste – as though the perfect, woody, spicy scent of the man had been distilled – for many many phoebs.

“You do not look at him,” Ulaz began.

“I don’t-”

“Do not interrupt.” Ulaz turned him bodily, shoulders hunching as Keith tilted his jaw up to hold his intense gaze. “You do not look at him, so you do not see how he looks at you.”

Keith shivered. Whatever Ulaz thought he saw, it wasn’t what was there. Human’s were tricky, not like Galra, and it was well known they were fickle with their expressions.

“He is suspicious of me. Everyone is. I’m dangerous.”

“I know how one looks at an enemy; that is not how he looks at you. Give him a chance Kit, he is trying.” Ulaz laid a last, reassuring touch on his shoulder. “It is time.”

Keith stood in his formal place, next to Shiro, but he didn’t shake hands with the Galra as they filed past, choosing to salute and bow instead, fist clenched tight to his chest. Ulaz returned the gesture with a smile, then took Shiro’s outstretched prosthetic hand without hesitation.

“You look good in Galran, Admiral Shirogane. It suits you.”

“Thank you. But it’s Shomara now.” Shiro’s words were warm, and heat pooled in Keith’s belly at the sound of their shared name in his deep voice. He’d never heard anyone say it aloud before.

“So it is,” Ulaz smiled, gaze flicking to Keith briefly, as though he could tell exactly what he was thinking. “Byc dobrym Kit.”

And just like that, they were gone, and Keith was left alone – the only Galra on the whole planet – once more. As the diplomats and negotiators drifted away, heading for their own apartments and homes, some returning to the conference room to begin disseminating the agreements reached that day; Keith stayed staring up at the sky where the dark purple Galran cruiser had vanished from sight. It was only when he shifted his weight from one foot to the other that he realised Shiro hadn’t moved, still standing beside him, and much closer than their usual just-out-of-arms-reach.

“What did he say to you?” Shiro’s voice was light, gently teasing.

“Nothing I haven’t heard before.”

*

It only took the rest of that movement for Keith to decide, once and for all, that mornings were torture. After he watched Ulaz and the others leave, he slept fitfully, woke often, and found himself in the upstairs training room, arms wrapped tightly around himself as he shivered, looking out of the window at the strangely colourful night sky, wishing he were home. Shiro had come to find him, softly blurred with sleep, and herded him back to bed without touching. Keith had lain awake well into the morning, listening to the man breathing softly on his side of the bed.

After that, he slept better, but not well, and the unconscious way the pair of them always seemed to move together in the night became not just a persistent annoyance, but a source of deep and terrible aggravation. Keith woke in the dark to find Shiro’s chest under his cheek, or the man’s well-defined abs rising and falling gently with his palm splayed across them. He would blink from the inky sleepiness where there were no dreams, with his fingers clenched tightly in Shiro’s sleeping clothes, once with Shiro’s large hand cradling the back of his head, his braid half disarrayed, looping in the space between them. Each time he forced himself calm and still, trying not to draw attention to the situation, not to wake the man who’s bed he shared; and certainly not to touch Shiro any more than he already was, lest he compound his private embarrassment with the heated betrayal of his body.

Every morning seemed to get worse.

Keith woke instantly, but didn’t move. It was a suppression of natural movement he’d ingrained into himself by now, willing his body to remain just as he had been whilst he took stock of his situation.

Shiro’s human arm was beneath his neck, Keith could feel he man’s pulse echoing through his jaw, and all along his back, from neck to knee, he was warm with the heavy press of Shiro’s body curved against his. The heavy prosthetic arm lay across his ribs, hand flat against his diaphragm, his light sleeping shirt rucked up around his ribs. Keith exhaled between his teeth and wondered how best to remove himself from the situation… and then Shiro moved. It was just the slight shift of hips, natural as the rise of his breath and the soft unconscious grumble in his throat as he settled, but it brought them somehow closer together, and Keith could feel a ridge of heat pressing against his arse. Keith flexed, braced himself to escape the bed and vanish into the bathroom, but the prosthetic arm tightened around his middle. Shiro snuffled into his hair, murmuring something in sleep-drunk Terran that Keith doubted would have made any sense even if he had spoken the language.

Keith made one more attempt to extract himself from Shiro’s hold, then gave up and wallowed in the delightful warmth of the bed. Shiro had braided his hair with him every morning since the Galran delegation’s visit, and it was impossible for their fingers not to touch. But Keith had avoided touching him at all other times, even in sleep, and he knew exactly why. He knew, objectively, that the only reason he had such a strong reaction to Shiro was proximity. That, and the fact that his husband was the only person on the entire planet who would spend time with him willingly. Waking up with Shiro’s spicy, woody scent filling his nostrils, or having the man’s surprisingly nimble fingers in his hair, coupled with a complete lack of reliable privacy had a damning and predictable effect on his anatomy and ability to remain focused.

Now he was safe, for a certain value of the idea – Shiro at his back made the obvious ache of his crotch less dangerous – and it was nice to luxuriate in the warmth which spread along his spine, the grounding weight of the arm over his ribs, the steady, intimate hand which balanced each breath. It was hard not to notice the way Shiro’s black fingers covered him, spanning the narrowness of his waist. Keith really thought the man had no business being so large, even if he himself was atypically small for his kind. But Ulaz was wrong, and Keith knew he could not allow himself to be caught indulging in such unconscious closeness. Shiro shifted again in his sleep, arm tightening even as his hips moved, and Keith was instantaneously distracted by the knowledge that his husband was not just big, but generously well-endowed, and had clearly developed a habit of talking in his sleep. There was a word, sighed softly, repeated with a little whimpering moan, that Keith didn’t understand, but it made his fur stand on end.

Ulaz had been wrong, because it was obvious Shiro wanted another. Keith wondered with depressing certainty, how long it would be before his husband took a discreet lover, and prayed he would never smell someone else in their bed.

Keith laid in the warm space along Shiro’s front, held securely by a prosthetic arm which had been made to replace one removed by war – the loss of which was entirely his fault – and felt guilty for enjoying it. He wondered, briefly, what Lotor would say about his unpredictable change of heart if he ever found the courage to tell him, but decided he couldn’t deal with the smirk his cousin would wear in triumph and which Keith would not be able to jostle from him over a comm unit. It wasn’t as though anything he felt was real anyway, it was just a combination of a lack of proper training and purpose, coupled with the absence of physical contact, doing a number on his frontal cortex.

Shiro yawned, jaw creaking, and stretched before waking fully. The movement arched his spine, pressing all the himself more firmly against all of Keith, but the moment his prosthetic arm uncurled, Keith saw his opportunity and slithered from the bed and ran for the bathroom. He couldn’t slam the door, because the Altean soft-close mechanisms were apparently standard throughout their chateau, but slumped against it as soon as he could, and blocked the entrance with his body and cursed his libido.

“Red?” Shiro’s voice was groggy from the other room.

Keith shuddered and flicked on the shower so he would not have to reply. It was good enough cover, and the only modicum of privacy he was able to achieve.

Later, across the table from his husband as Shiro diligently divided their breakfast, Keith arched an eyebrow as the plate on his side quickly became the lion’s share of all the meat and savoury elements.

“Are you not eating, Takashi?”

“Have you eaten properly since we got here?”

Keith hated the way his husband could apparently answer every query with one of his own. He pressed his ears back into his freshly braided hair and declined to answer.

“Matt invited us out for dinner. Would you like to come?”

“He’s your friend.” Keith made it sound like an accusation.

“He’d be yours too, if you let him.”

“No one wants to be friends with a Galran warlord.” Keith glanced up from under his hair at Shiro, and felt the disappointed expression like a punch. “Will it make you happy?”

“Yes. We should go out together.”

“Fine.” Keith schooled his expression. After growing up on battlefields and in war tents, he had plenty of practice not letting his disappointment show on his face. Anger was harder to control, but the low grade hurt caused because Shiro only wanted to do this because it was good for the peace treaty, was as familiar to him as the man’s intoxicating woodsy scent.

That afternoon, he sent a message to his cousin, and received a reply as he finished dressing to go out into New Altea with his husband under the pink and purple evening sky.

‘You knew what you were getting into Keith, you can’t be mad that he’s doing exactly as he ought. That said, no one can ever get themselves noticed like you can. If you want him to look, make him.’

A second message pinged to his data pad a moment after.

‘And stop being so fucking cryptic. Humans aren’t mind readers.’

*

Not for the first, or even the tenth time, Keith missed the familiar fit and feel of his armour. He missed the control he’d always felt when wearing it, the security of being both protected and hidden by the tightly jointed polymer panels. His only pair of tall boots were about the closest he could manage to approximate the feel, coupled with the widest of belts over his tunic. Lotor and his mother had oft expressed surprise at his attachment to armour and flight suits. Only Ulaz ever really understood how the outfits which others found constricting and awkward were a source of comfort for Keith.

He tugged the collar of his red tunic straight, and stepped out through the front door of their château, feeling like he was about to walk into battle without his armour.

“You look nice,” Shiro offered, half a smile quirking his mouth.

“Um...” Keith didn’t know how to answer such an unexpected statement, but took in his husband’s now familiar Galran outfit in purple. The fact that Shiro had chosen to look a bit more like they belonged together even though this was not a formal excursion made him flush softly under his fur. “You too.”

Keith might have become used to the strange and colourful sky of New Altea, but there was something rather different about being out in it for the first time. The dark was not actually dark, the sky still a mix of purple and pink hues, though the colours deepened so late into the evening. Keith wondered that the Alteans had illuminations on their streets at all, until he reminded himself that – like humans – they could not see as well in the dark as himself. They walked in companionable silence, an exact and familiar distance apart, and Shiro moved like their route was familiar to him.

“Will there be people besides Matt?” Keith inquired as they neared their destination.

“Yes. Several scientists from the Garrison are here on a movement-long placement. They are some of the most prestigious in the joint Terran-Altean task force.” Shiro glanced at him as they passed to one side of a group of mixed Alteans and Arusians coming the other way. “What? What’s with the look?”

“Am I going to understand anything anyone says this evening?”

One varga, half a bottle of fairly decent wine, and most of the fruit in the restaurant later, the answer to Keith’s question was ‘no’, though he didn’t much care because he was still pretty hungry and also slightly drunk for the first time in several years. There was very little meat on the menu, and one forkful of Shiro’s pink-fleshed fish had been enough for Keith to decide that he liked it about as much as the nut pastries. He was seated next to Shiro, Matt was opposite him, and their conversation was so dense with jargon that even when it was in Altean he only understood about one word in ten. And then Matt turned to him with a broad grin.

“Well, why don’t we ask your husband what he thinks?”

Keith frowned and glanced between the brown haired human and his husband. Shiro was noticeably pink around the ears.

“What do I think about what?” he asked carefully.

“Shiro doesn’t want us to make him a new prosthetic,” Matt explained.

Keith’s frown deepened, and he looked across to where Shiro was expertly wielding something he’d called chopsticks with his sleek black fingers. Keith hadn’t seen him wear the white one since the wedding ceremony.

“Why does he need a new prosthetic? Is it broken?”

“Matt...” Shiro’s voice was one of resigned indignation. “Please feel free to ignore him, Red.”

“I don’t understand, Shiro. Why wouldn’t you want a floating arm? Think of the advantages!”

“Matt!”

Keith shuffled uneasily in his seat.

“Think of the features it could have! And the range… there’d never be an awkward wrist angle again. It could even vibra-.”

“Matt, I swear to god if you finish that sentence, I will be explaining to Pidge why it is I had to murder her brother at dinner,” Shiro snapped hotly.

“And what does the esteemed Prince of Marmora think of the advances the Terrans and Atleans have made in interstellar communication satellites?” asked the man sitting on Matt’s other side. He was older, and shared some similar features with Shiro’s friend.

“I’m afraid I don’t know very much about them,” Keith admitted carefully.

The reply was interrupted by a voice from further down the table.

“That’s because he’s a-” there was some string of human words Keith didn’t understand definitely didn’t like the intonation of, “-imbecilic princeling. Galra are hardly better than animals.”

Keith was certain the only reason he didn’t draw his knife within a heartbeat was that he had been holding his glass in his dominant hand, and drawing from the small of his back with the other one was awkward as fuck whilst sitting down. The stem of the glass snapped in his fingers, and Keith jumped to his feet, shaking his hand as wine soaked his fine purple fur. He could smell the hot fury rising from Shiro at the words which had been spoken, and Keith knew with the same kind of clarity which had allowed him to cut through swathes of his enemies to seek the targets he really wanted, that if he stayed there any longer he was going to do something swift and regrettable.

Everyone at the table was watching him, and Matt had half risen out of his chair in well-schooled politeness. Keith thought his entire body must have been shaking with how hard he was fighting the desire to simply call upon his blade and run it through the man who had disparaged him. He was a Prince, and recent war or not, such a comment would have never been tolerated by any Galra. He stepped back, heavy boots half tripping on the chair he’d knocked over in his haste. Pressing his ears back into his hair, fangs clenched to keep from growling, Keith fled.

In the vestibule where they had deposited their coats there was a door to the bathrooms, and Keith shouldered through it and slammed his weight back against the soft touch closure, buying himself a few precious moments of total privacy. His wine wet hand throbbed, and Keith stared down at the glossy pale floor as bright red drops fell from his fingers and spattered. Redder than the wine, harsh in the cold light from the Altean crystals which illuminated the space, blood red like the armour he’d worn for what seemed like his whole life, red like his name.

“Red?” Shiro’s voice was close and low through the door, but Keith shivered as though he could feel his husband’s breath on his ear. “Can I come in?”

Keith stepped away from the door, boots smearing the blood on the floor, and crossed to the line of sinks and sonic cleaning basins, staring at himself in the mirror. Shiro met his eyes in the reflection, his mouth a single hard line, his jaw sharp and square with the way he was gritting his teeth. Keith doubted many people could weather that stare and live, let alone remain standing. He drew himself up, curling the fingers of his bloodied hand beside him, hoping to divert Shiro’s attention elsewhere, gearing up silently to defend himself without resorting to violence. In the long silence between breaths, blood dripped loudly on the floor.

“Red… you’re bleeding.” Shiro swooped in close and took his wrist, turning Keith’s hand over in his own, black prosthetic reaching over Keith’s shoulder for a fluffy washcloth from a display between sinks. “Are you alright?”

“I-” Keith wanted to say that he was fine, he wanted to brush off the man’s words – because nothing so low could possibly affect him – and equally desired to go back out into the restaurant and show everyone exactly who the Red Flare was and why Alteans and Terrans had feared his name for years. He wanted to snarl and snap and tell Shiro he didn’t need his help. He wanted to, but all that issued from his throat was a whine; Lotor would have teased him for it endlessly.

“I don’t know how you resisted slicing his fucking head clean off.”

Shiro didn’t look at him as he began to daub at the blood and the lacerations from the glass. Keith knew he should wash his hand, his fur was tacky and damp in a manner he found faintly distressing, but he stood there mute, whilst Shiro expressed enough rage for them both.

“It’s unforgivable. Even if you weren’t royalty, and my husband, and the best damn fighter in this or any other solar system… Even if we hadn’t put all our efforts into brokering this peace deal, making new alliances and sharing culture and technology and science… Even if all that weren’t true what he said was still so pathetically stupid they haven’t invented a word for it yet. Damn fool will be back on the first shuttle heading to Terra in the morning and he won’t be getting off planet for the next- fuck it, forever.” Shiro only stopped his spitting tirade of anger when Keith’s hand was clean, the bleeding staunched by a second fresh washcloth, and Keith still hadn’t said anything. “Red?”

Keith looked up at his husband from under his hair and swallowed dryly at the expression of intense concern he found there. Keith had been fully expecting to be chewed out for abandoning yet another meal, and yet here was the man he had spent years trying to kill with worry in his eyes as he cared for Keith’s minor wounds. Keith took a breath, which turned out to be an appalling idea, because all his senses lit up with the nearness of his husband. The thick spicy scent of him mingled with the sharp tang of Keith’s blood, and suddenly he was quivering with the effort of keeping still.

“Red?”

Shiro reached across the space between them with his free hand, warm fingers sliding under his chin – skin against fur – tilting up his jaw. Keith felt himself tethered by the contact, by the last tense inch between them. It was the closest they had ever been whilst awake and not actively trying to hurt each other. Keith exhaled, Shiro breathed in. They repeated the movements in reverse, and all Keith could think about was the way they were standing and how they were sharing the air between them, unable to look away. He could feel Shiro’s pulse in the fingers pressed to the soft underside of his jaw, knew his own heartbeat was flying too fast as well, and followed the motion of Shiro’s throat as he swallowed around nothing.

“Red...”

And then Shiro stepped back, almost falling over his own feet in his haste; a pink blush spreading across the bridge of his nose and his cheeks.

“I shouldn’t press you-” The words were frantic, as though Shiro couldn’t wait to put distance between them.

“Takashi...” Keith wanted to reach for him, but was left holding the cloth against his own hand least it fall, feeling useless.

“Don’t-” Keith had no idea what he was being told not to do. “I won’t make you feel- You don’t owe me.” Shiro bumbled through the broken sentences, barely making any sense, and then with a last gut-wrenching expression he spun on one heel and vanished from the bathroom.

Keith blinked at the space where his husband had so recently been standing, tasted the mingled scents of desire and lust in the air, and wondered why he’d let himself believe, even for a moment, that things could have turned out any other way.

*

He’d found his way home eventually, collapsed on the chaise in the downstairs sitting room, slept badly and woke early. With nothing better to do and a knot of desolate guilt sitting in his stomach from the previous night, Keith took himself back to the palace training gym, not particularly caring for the way attendants scurried to get out of his way. Dignitaries, courtiers, and guards alike all stared, as he stalked through the shining white palace in his obviously day-old slept-in clothes.

Upon reaching the gym he discarded his boots and belt, and peeled out of his creased robe before scooping up his knife. Dressed in nothing but his clingy undersuit, he took up the first stance of his kata, blade materialising in his hand. People watched him, and he was used to that, but none of the gazes were friendly. When other Galra watched him, it was to study his form, pick up new habits and skills, sometimes just for the thrill of seeing someone perform a task they excelled at. He knew, because he so often watched Ulaz, Thace, and others for just the same reasons. These people watched him like he was a meteor hurtling towards their planet: dangerous, unpredictable, and as though they wanted nothing more than to avoid him. Keith tried not to care and followed the movements of his kata, a routine so ingrained he was fairly certain he could complete it with a basic level of proficiency in his sleep. The swoop and curve of his blade took up enough of his focus that he almost missed the figure who approached and then stood mere microns out of range; far too close for Keith to be able to comfortably continue with his practice. He stopped.

“Yes?” he snapped, just harder than he’d meant to. He was not supposed to be short with people.

“Highness.” The guard was Altean, but his training clothes were not palace livery, and the badge on his arm marked him out as belonging to some private security outfit Keith wasn’t familiar with. Not a battle mercenary for sure. He bowed, just. “Your graceful movements look like they would be better suited to sparring with a partner. I would be honoured to join you.”

Keith looked him up and down, eyes lingering on the well-honed white blade at his hip, and rolled his shoulder as he spun the hilt of his own sword around in his hand. He hadn’t had anyone to spar with in the longest time.

“Sure.”

It took only two parries for Keith to realise that his opponent, though he may have spouted pretty words, was indeed an opponent, an enemy, and that this was no training or demonstration fight. This person wanted to kill him. Keith didn’t bother to parry the third strike, but deflected the white sword with the hilt of his own blade, bringing the other man close enough for Keith to see the reflection of his bared fangs in the man’s dark eyes. His blood sang, energy crackling along his arm to the hand which held his blade, every muscle bent to the purpose of attack and defence. Keith found himself grinning. He’d missed this.

They sprang apart, moved to circle, and Keith switched his blade into his other hand between one step and the next. The Altean’s cheek markings flashed and paled before he gritted his teeth. Parry, parry, swerve, Keith turned under his own shoulder and came up behind his opponent, tapping his back with the flat of his blade, smirking. In no universe would this guard be able to beat him like this, but he was capable, and getting better all the time.

Between the next two blows, the man started trying to goad him into making a mistake.

“Don’t you know what you did?” he gritted out, voice tight with anger. “Don’t you care?”

Keith sent the arc of the guard’s blade swinging wide with a twist of his wrist, flicked his sword back to his dominant hand, and pushed his opponent backwards across the mat with a series of blows the other scurried to counter.

He shrugged in answer, not caring for whatever perceived hurt he might or might not have been responsible for. He might have killed this person’s parent, or sibling, or lover. He probably had. He was responsible for so much blood that it hadn’t been able to be held by his hands in years. It had become a river, a river of blood Keith had spilled, and it all washed away under the bridge of his life. He stared at the Altean and couldn’t bring himself to regret a single drop of it. Every life taken was one which was needed to secure the lives of his people, and Keith would trade anything for their safety. He already had.

His coolness raged his opponent. The next set of blows came thick and fast and Keith sidestepped each and every one, leaving the Altean panting angrily, his steps carrying him too far across the mat when Keith simply turned his shoulder and changed direction.

“It shouldn’t have been you. You don’t deserve him!” The words were spat, snarled, the Altean’s eyes alight with righteous fury. He sounded bitter, clearly angry, but his tone was not jealous as his words would have suggested. Keith stilled.

“What?”

The tip of the Altean’s blade snagged the material of his undersuit at his shoulder, Keith growled, but it was too late to move. The material cut – the white sword was sharp – and nicked through fur and flesh beneath. His blood welled red and vibrant against the blade. Keith snarled.

It took the Altean only a tic to realise that whatever had happened before, had just been a game and he had been being toyed with. Keith moved with speed and determination and in four fast movements had the Altean pinned, standing on his chest, the other foot on one wrist, the man’s free arm bleeding profusely, the tip of Keith’s blade tight against the hollow of his throat. Blood pooled there slowly.

“Life does not give you what deserve. You take what you want!” He pressed his blade closer by a fraction, every muscle of his arm tight, and watched the Altean’s eyes go wide with fear. “Who sent you to dare and try to kill me?”

The floored guard swallowed nervously, and Keith saw the change in his eyes as his body went truly slack. Private security or not, he was not actually willing to die for his master. Keith took half a pace back, blade withdrawing from the Altean’s skin but remaining ready.

“Who sent you?”

“Adaris Hira.”

Keith scowled. He knew the name of the Altean Primary, their most senior politician, and had no idea why they would want him dead.

“You should train more, and harder, if you ever wish to fight another Galra and live.” His blade shrank in his hand and he wiped the blood away on his sleeve. “Do not think too much on it that I do not stop to help you up.”

Keith returned to the collection of his possessions and dressed with quick movements. The Altean guard sat up as he belted his tunic but wisely stayed on the floor, holding his wounded arm close and taking the measured breaths of the recently injured. Keith sheathed his blade last, cast a withering glare at the collected smattering of others who had still moved not a single muscle between them to either help or hinder any part of the situation, and swept out.

He had not travelled around more than two corners before he spied the familiar shape of Matt Holt at the far end of the passage, speaking with a dark-skinned human dressed in blue and white Coalition armour and holding a helmet casually under one arm.

“Matt!”

“H-H-Highness!” Matt looked, momentarily, terrified. “Let me introduce-”

Keith waved away the sentence with a flick of his ears.

“Have you seen Takashi?”

“No, but I can ping him?” He held up his data pad like a shield.

*

The fallout from Keith’s complete and utter trouncing of the private security guard found him, his husband, and the three leading members of the Altean political class, including Adaris Hira, standing opposite each other in Princess Allura’s private study. Keith couldn’t help but remember the last time he had been there – inappropriately dressed and freshly wounded – forcing his husband to take back his blade whilst telling him he was Marmoran now. Whilst not the most pleasant of memories, he clung to it, because Shiro stood beside him now and his Altean flew thick and fast as he argued in Keith’s defence with no evidence other than Keith’s word of what had happened.

“If your guard didn’t want to be beaten, then he really should not have challenged the best fighter on the planet.” Shiro said shortly, his voice impossibly level and controlled, his grey eyes hard as Keith’s blade. “You should be grateful his Highness has so much control and that he’s not injured worse.”

“He tried to kill him!” One of the Alteans shrieked, and then switched into a language Keith didn’t understand, but was sure was ancient Altean because the Princess glowered. To Keith’s shock, the hateful glare was not turned upon him.

“I will not have these things declared without evidence.” Her voice was calm, quiet, soft: like a predator at rest, sweet and adorable until the moment it decides it wants to kill you. “Prince Keith will not be accused of high treason on such incredibly shaky presumption.”

Keith’s snarl died in his throat as Shiro’s warm fingers squeezed his hand. The message was clear: Shiro believed him, the Princess was on their side, but they could not escape this situation by simply getting angry.

It went on like that for a while, and Keith let the others do the talking. He might have been the second largest person in the room after his husband, but he felt small. He knew he was being talked over because everyone else was not only better at the language, but far more adept at political sidestepping. Keith had never before dealt with a challenge which could not be solved with sword or spacecraft, but in a lull after one of the Alteans said something vaguely derogatory about Shiro’s choice of consort, Keith inserted himself between the man he married and the facing politicians.

“How badly is he hurt?”

There was a long beat of perplexed silence.

“What?”

“The guard,” Keith sighed, “how badly is he hurt?”

“We put him in a healing pod to be sure-” one began, but the words were cut off by the thunderous rage of Adaris Hira, a man with thin yellow hair and prominent pink cheek markings.

“Why should we trust you with even so little information when all you will do is try to finish the job?!” Apparently, he didn’t want Keith to respond, because he plowed on regardless of the look of uncertainty which flashed between his other two associates. “I demand he have his weapon removed from him. He is not safe. The Admiral cannot control him. This marriage of theirs is a farce and I will not allow it to risk harming the Coalition!”

“I never hurt an enemy who did not come prepared for a fight.” Keith was proud of how calm he sounded, even though his reply was ground out between clenched fangs.

“You destroyed our capital!” Adaris Hira shot back. “Millions of lives and millennia of cultural and scientific knowledge!”

Keith’s claws punctured the heel of his hand at the words.

“He is not Zarkon!” Both Keith and Shiro blinked, stunned, because the voice and the rage belonged to the Princess Allura. “He was a child, younger than any of us here, and nothing which was done then can be lain at his feet.”

The politicians had the good grace to look cowed. Keith wondered just how rare it was for Allura to lose her temper.

“I think you owe my husband an apology.”

Keith stared at Shiro, and did not think about why the dark rumble of his voice did hot and nebulous things to his insides. The Altean started, stalled, gaped like a fish, then bowed awkwardly. Allura said something in their ancient language and Adaris Hira’s cheek markings blanched.

“Um… I sit on the board of hospitality and catering for the royal residences. We would be honoured if you would join us, your Highness.”

Keith frowned, and turned to Shiro. His husband grinned from ear to ear.

“They want your help fixing the food, Red.”

He left Allura’s study and found himself out in the blue carpeted passageway, still holding Shiro’s hand. He frowned down at their fingers, pink skin and soft purple fur, and then raised his other palm to his mouth to lick away the blood.

“Red?” Shiro caught his wrist with his broad prosthetic hand, frowning at the pair of triangular puncture marks.

“I’m fine. It’s nothing.” Keith frowned and forced himself not to think about the pulse he could feel where they touched, but the scent of his husband was harder to ignore. “What just happened, back there?”

“Adaris Hira has a problem with letting go of the past, that’s all.” Shiro sighed aloud. “His son and I trained together at the Garrison. We… dated. Adaris Hira liked the idea of his son making a good political match much more than either of us liked being together.” He shrugged, exactly as though the distant past was insignificant. Keith tried to imagine a time before he and Shiro had known and fought and hated each other, and failed. “They might not like you Red, but they respect you now. Whatever else, they know they’re beat and that this-” He squeezed Keith’s hand with a broad smile, “-is a real and permanent thing. The peace treaty is safe, that’s what matters.”

Keith tried to smile, but pressed his ears back into his hair. Of course, his husband would think only of the safety of the peace treaty. Keith tried to step back, to increase the distance between them to the customary just beyond arms reach he had become so used to, but Shiro still held his wrist and Keith’s hand was dangerously close to his face.

“Takashi...”

“You’ll join them? The visiting delegations will all appreciate your input I’m sure. And then perhaps breakfast can be a meal we both enjoy?” Shiro ducked his head and pressed his lips to the wounds on his palm. Keith swallowed dryly.

“I can’t do this.”

“Red...”

Keith wished for a long moment they were somewhere else, back at the château or standing in one of the beautiful courtyard gardens. He wished he was back on Daibazaal, or in his fighter out in the black. Anywhere but here in the Altean palace, facing his husband and the idea of a future which was completely unrecognisable from everything that had come before.

“I can’t do this. I can’t just sit there being bored and making nice Takashi! I’m a swordsman, fighting is all I know.” His chest was tight, his skin prickled under his fur, and he couldn’t help but feel that every time they had faced each other it had ended badly. He pulled his hand from Shiro’s grasp, but his fingers landed on the lapel of the Galran-style jacket his husband wore and he closed the fabric within his fist. He was shaking. “We were warlords!”

“Yes Red, we were.” Shiro’s voice was low and quiet, pitched only for him to hear, and a heavy hand came to rest upon his hip. He was so close: Keith couldn’t look at him.

“I don’t know how to be anything else.”

Shiro’s tone went soft against his fur.

“Red… you have to let it go.” Familiar fingers touched his jaw, and Keith looked up at his husband’s grey eyes.

“I’m scared, Takashi.”

Shiro smiled, a tiny motion, but it reached his eyes. He shone.

“I’m here. I’ve got you.”

It took so little for Keith to close the space between them. His senses flooded with heat and spice, the rich woodsy scent he associated only with his husband. For the second time, Keith fitted his mouth against Shiro’s and let his eyes flutter close. This time, there was no screaming – internally or otherwise – and when Shiro brought a large hand up to the small of his back. Keith made a pleased noise and pressed closer, arms sliding over Shiro’s shoulders to pull the larger man down toward him. Shiro opened for him, and Keith realised he’d produced a happy trill in discovering that his husband tasted just as good as he smelled. The press of tongues was hot and wet between them, and then Shiro dragged the tip of his over the point of Keith’s fangs and groaned into his mouth.

Keith pulled back, just enough for air and to look at his husband, keeping his fingers laced together behind Shiro’s neck. Shiro’s blush stained his cheeks and the tips of his ears, and Keith realised he hadn’t anticipated up until that moment how good it would feel to be able to see such clear evidence of his effect on the man.

Shiro’s lips shaped a word, a familiar murmur, and Keith stepped away as though struck. It was the same thing he’d oft heard Shiro say – half asleep and half awake – when Keith would find himself in their bed, pressed against his husband without his conscious permission. He shivered in recognition, but Shiro didn’t look guilty or embarrassed, just softly pleased. Then he said it again.

Keith refused to believe his husband would call him someone else’s name to his face.

“Takashi? What is that?”

“Red?”

“That word. What does it mean?”

“Umm… the direct translation is a bit-” Shiro’s blush deepened, a darker pink across the bridge of his nose. “Baby.”

Keith wrinkled his nose, ears pressing into his hair, but Shiro’s hands were firm at his waist, and he clearly did not want him to step away.

“Baby?” Keith scowled. “I am not a-”

“Not like that.” Shiro’s eyes still shone, still smiling gently. “It means, it can mean… like ukochany. Beloved.”

Keith pulled him close once more, pressing his face into Shiro’s skin in the soft space where neck became jaw. Shiro turned, seeking him, and Keith kissed him greedily. Shiro kissed like he fought – powerful, swift, without hesitation. Keith wondered if his husband would say the same things of him as he pushed his way into Shiro’s mouth, diving into the heat of the man he had married like he’d been doing it forever. Only when the need to breathe outweighed the desire to taste Shiro did he break the kiss, panting.

“Ukochany.” Shiro said again, his voice awed. “Baby...”

“When did you learn Galran?” Keith didn’t even try to suppress the rumble of pleasure in his chest at the sound of his language, and that word, falling from Shiro’s tongue.

“I didn’t. Just the most important bits.”

“Malzonek...” Keith traced his fingertips down the side of Shiro’s face, smoothing fur against skin, then wrapped Shiro’s fingers in his hand. “Come.”

“Where are we going?”

Keith grinned over his shoulder and tugged on their joined fingers hard enough to make Shiro stumble.

“To be married properly of course.”

*

Keith wasn’t entirely certain how they got back to their château, or kept their hands off each other long enough to get upstairs. He’d taken his knife from his belt and placed it onto the side table along with Shiro’s – the paired blades had hummed together in perfect synchronicity – and that had been the last thing Keith had done with anything he could describe as care. It reminded Keith of the second time they’d met, striking against each other’s weapons on the ravaged battlefield which had once been the verdant and lush Yalex Valley on the planet Krell. The ground had been equal parts old blood and churned mud, and the sky had been tossed with storm clouds and the threat of yet more rain. Every move either of them had made had been fast, frantic, designed to deal the greatest damage possible.

Now, the damage Keith wanted to deal out was to Shiro’s clothing, his claws shredding the fabric which kept him from the man he’d married, and Shiro was no less hasty as he pushed aside the red fabric of Keith’s tunic and sought out the fastenings of his undersuit with cool polymer fingers. Keith ran his hands over the broad expanse of Shiro’s sculpted chest and grinned.

“Skin is so… weird.” He moved to rub his cheek and bare shoulder across Shiro’s pecs and felt the man go still beside him, heart hammering fast. “Nice though.”

“Glad you think so.” Shiro dragged his suit down to his hips and wasted no time putting fingers in Keith’s fur. “Fuck… you’re so soft.”

Keith had his husband pinned to the mattress in one quick movement, pressing his big shoulders back into the bed with his hands as he sat up to simply look. If Shiro was the price of peace, then Keith decided the solar system could stay saved. He’d never actually seen the man he’d married up close without anything on, and now he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

“Stars...”

“Yeah?”

“Takashi...” Keith stooped to kiss him again, drinking down the spicy scent he doubted he’d ever be able to put a name to. “Can I kiss you here?” He pressed his fingers against Shiro’s chest, trailing down the ridges of his abs.

“Y-yeah.” Shiro looked enthusiastic, but sounded confused.

Keith moved off him just enough to discard the rest of his clothes, then hissed as he settled himself between Shiro’s thighs, pulling his husband into his lap.

“It’s different for Galra. You don’t really kiss fur-” Keith’s sentence was cut off by his husband pressing warm lips to his knuckles, then his wrist. “Takashi….”

“I think I can make my own mind up about what I want to kiss.” Shiro dragged him down and pushed into his mouth once more: Keith couldn’t tell which of them had groaned aloud. “God, baby… you’re beautiful.”

“No-”

“I’ve always thought so.” Shiro grinned, stroking his warm hand low across Keith’s abdomen. “So Red, you as good at handling this as you are with your other weapons?

Keith sucked a breath in sharply between his fangs, then growled against Shiro’s ear as he echoed the gesture.

“Do you ever shut up, Takashi?”

“You gonna make me, Red?”

“No. I know making you scream is gonna be more fun.”

For a moment Shiro’s eyes were too-wide and too-dark and Keith worried he’d pitched the tone of his teasing just a little too close to old wounds that he doubted would ever fully heal – for either of them. But in the next breath, Shiro had him flipped, straddling his thighs, and Keith couldn’t find it within himself to be upset at this view either. Shiro’s spine curved under his touch, hot and cool hands cupping his face as they kissed again, frantic and messy and not caring. Keith tasted blood, but Shiro didn’t give him time to apologise, too busy invading his mouth, worrying Keith’s lower lip between his own blunt teeth.

It went like that, trading accidental scratches and bruising grips as they explored each other. Lips and fingers never ceasing as they discovered what made the other groan, growl, and lose the ability to think straight and form words. Keith delighted in the soft hollow of Shiro’s navel, Shiro was entranced by the sensitivity and reactiveness of Keith’s ears. When Keith entered him, he made good on his promise to make Shiro scream, and his given name in Shiro’s voice made him break apart all over again. Keith shook in Shiro’s arms as he realised he already trusted the man to fix him when the time came.

Shiro blushed with his whole self afterwards, and that too was delightful as Keith discovered that for all his husband’s ardent fervour, he was sweet and shy once it was over. Keith kissed him again and again as he came down from his long-denied ecstatic high, slumping over until his forehead rested against Shiro’s sweat sheened chest. His husband raised a cool hand to stroke through his hair, petting his ears gently in his less responsive state.

“Mmmm… you still smell awesome.”

“Been using the same brand of aftershave so long it’s become permanently embedded?” Shiro chuckled. “Thank heavens you like it then.”

“Yeah...” Keith let himself sink fully against his husband and the strange texture of his hot-damp skin. He sighed.

“Cedarwood,” Shiro said, but it was a new word Keith didn’t know, and he couldn’t be bothered to find the words to ask about it. He wrapped himself contentedly in Shiro’s arms. “Red? Are you…? You’re purring.”

Keith nodded and made an agreeable sound in his throat. It wasn’t possible to speak and purr at the same time, and he was too happy to want to deal with translation just then.

For a long while they just lay, breathing in each other’s space, listening to Keith purr. When Shiro shivered, Keith kicked a blanket up with one foot and covered them both. Shiro huffed a laugh.

“Happy there, Red?”

“Very.”

“Mmm… you sound it.” Shiro’s fingers in his hair moved with more deliberate strokes. “Did I ever tell you why I married you?”

“You wanted to stop the war.” Keith remembered the way Shiro’s face had fallen when he’s spoken of all the people he’d lost to the war that had raged since long before they were born. “You wanted peace.”

“True.” Shiro stroked the pad of his thumb in little circles behind one of Keith’s ears. “I would have married pretty much whoever the Grand Coalition wanted me to, for that goal. But no, that’s not what I meant. I meant why I married you, Red, particularly.”

Keith frowned, worried by this new conversation.

“Go on,” he prompted uneasily.

Shiro exhaled heavily, and spoke up at the ceiling.

“You’re not the only one who spent long nights with their generals and commanders; hashing out the details of battles fought and lost, trying to strategize how best to kill you. Praying that without their blood-soaked prince the Galra would lose their will to continue to beat us senseless.”

Keith’s frown deepened and he raised himself up on his elbows, his head still in Shiro’s big hand. He did not like where this conversation was going. Especially not after such a feral and pleasurable romp.

“I couldn’t stand the idea of them picking anyone else when it was first suggested you would be one half of the arrangement.” Shiro went on, looking directly at him, his grey eyes sad. “The idea that they’d try and pair you up with some figurehead royal… I couldn’t stand it. I lost everything in becoming the Admiral for them, and I wanted to be with someone who would understand….”

“Takashi….”

Keith pressed his palm along Shiro’s jaw, holding his gaze, because he could tell his husband wanted to look away, now that his admission was out. But Keith didn’t need him to finish speaking, because he knew. He knew.

Keith had the same deep ache inside himself he never touched; wouldn’t dare to touch. The fleeting moments of longing for a childhood which didn’t involve killing, and Keith knew he would never let himself fully feel the pain buried there. The memories where he’d stood on the battlefield meting out quick merciful deaths to the fallen – people who were friends before they became just bodies – memories which lingered behind his eyelids sometimes when he looked across a crowd. Every single hurt was a pain that Shiro knew too, something he had felt, and probably still did. Shiro knew everything he was, knew it intimately, even before they had found themselves lying naked together in their bed. Keith knew that Shiro held fast to him because he too was made up of those same terrors.

Keith stroked his fingers across Shiro’s lips, shivered at the soft kiss pressed there. Shiro was just like him, every awful thing they’d done wrapped up in flesh and a shining smile. He knew how to appear human, just as Keith knew how to pretend to be a good Prince to the Galra, but they were just cases filled with cold fire which burnt like the stars. Keith shifted up, kissed Shiro, deep and hungry, then pressed their foreheads together. Shiro’s arm tightened around him.

“And now?” Keith asked. “What do we do now?”

“We’re not warlords any more.” Shiro sighed. It almost felt like they hadn’t paused their earlier conversation at all.

“No. What are we Takashi?

Shiro smiled, and Keith found himself mirroring the gesture.

“I have no idea, but won’t it be interesting to find out?”

*

Keith ran one finger around the inner collar of his flight suit, then checked the hilt of his knife in his belt once again. Behind him, Shiro finally let go of the end of his freshly tied braid and sighed softly.

“It’s been there the last ten times you checked. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were nervous Red. What’s up, become scared of heights?”

Keith resisted the urge to roll his eyes so hard they’d fall out of his head and instead reached up, wrapped strong fingers around his husband’s forearm and hauled him down over his shoulder for a searing kiss.

“You want me to fling you around the cockpit or can I finish doing a systems check? I wish they would have let me redesign the control panels with Galran pictograms...”

“Hey, I have to be able to fly her too,” Shiro reminded him. He hummed against the side of Keith’s neck, the warm fingers of his human hand sliding down across his chest. “I mean, I’m not going to say no to being thrown around again...” he murmured happily, and Keith was very pleased his blush wasn’t visible. Shiro seemed to have learnt the things which made him react anyway, because he laughed softly and nipped at Keith’s neck before standing straight again. “I still almost can’t believe that Allura got clearance for you to fly us out.”

“Fuck you.” Keith replied, but there was no heat in it. “I jumped through their hoops and got my damn licence, didn’t I?”

“I thought you were gonna bite Coran’s head clean off when he suggested that passing the flight exam was the best way to get the council to allow you to pilot again.” Shiro laughed and Keith watched as his husband settled himself into the second pilot’s chair beside him. The first time he’d seen Shiro in a flight suit he’d nearly swallowed his tongue. His obvious reaction to the long-limbed, broad-shouldered shape of the man, clad in nothing but skin-conforming textured black and grey zylon had not lessened in any way. Shiro saw his hot grin, and then it was his turn to blush, softly pink across his nose and cheeks. “So, did I do a good job on the new braid?”

Keith flicked his hair over his shoulder and examined the glossy, many stranded twist his husband had created for him. He trilled in happiness.

“Thank you, Takashi. I should take a picture to show Lotor – he’d be very proud.”

“Will you tell him I did it for you?”

Keith bit his lip as he remembered what Lotor had said the first time Keith had called him to show him how good Shiro’s braiding skills had become.

‘Keith! Very impressive.’ Lotor had arched a perfect, pale eyebrow at him, and smirked. ‘So, your husband is good with his hands then?’

‘Could you be any more inappropriate, cousin?’

Keith had wished he’d held his tongue when Lotor moved the data pad to show that he had indeed answered Keith’s call whilst in bed, and true to form, he wasn’t wearing sleeping clothes.

‘Lotor!’

‘You asked!’

Whilst his cousin had been laughing, Shiro had walked in behind him and began to greet the Crown Prince of Daibazaal over Keith’s shoulder. His flustered shock at seeing said Prince naked had made Keith laugh too.

‘Lotor, there’s things about you I don’t think my husband needs to know!’

Keith reached across the console and squeezed Shiro’s black prosthetic fingers briefly, then began the engine power up sequence. Around them, the sleek, customised space cruiser hummed to life.

“So, what’s the new design for? I liked doing the espousal braids with you.” Shiro ran a hand through the silvery buzz of his undercut with a soft smile. For about six phoebs Shiro had considered growing out his hair until Keith had very firmly let him know how much he enjoyed the short, dense texture of Shiro’s hair. It was the closest thing his husband had to fur after all. He had driven his desire home by sitting very firmly in his husband’s lap and distracting him for the rest of the afternoon until Shiro had believed him.

“Once married, Galra with hair wear espousal braids for one deca-phoeb to show their commitment to their new status. Once that time has passed, they are free to wear their hair however they like.” Keith ran his fingers over the smooth nubs of his new braid. “Galra have lots of traditional braids: there are familial and clan braids, braids for celebrations, wartime, births and deaths...” Keith trailed off, aware that he hadn’t actually answered his husband’s question. “The best translation for przygodom is… homecoming, adventure.” Keith reached across the console between them and took Shiro’s hand once more. “It seemed appropriate.”

Shiro beamed at him.

“I love it. So Red, ready to get off this rock?”

“Fuck yes.”

Keith kissed Shiro’s knuckles, dropped his hand, and grabbed both joysticks. He depressed the starter buttons with both thumbs and eased up on the rear trigger switches. A laugh caught in his throat as he felt the ship’s landing gear leave the platform surface. As they rose into the pink Altean sky, the readouts told him the landing gear had folded safely away, that the heat shields were perfectly aligned for their proposed take off angle, and that their course had been cleared by all the relevant authorities. Paladin Flare lifted into the upper atmosphere at Keith’s command, the glossy deep red nose tilting as he readied the main engines to take them up into the black. A sidelong glance at Shiro showed his husband grinning from ear to ear like an excited rookie.

It was an expression Keith now knew well. From the first time Shiro had taken him up into the upper troposphere in Princess Allura’s personal craft – borrowed specially for the occasion and with only the scantest of permissions from the Altean council – Shiro had worn the same look of total hope and utter bliss whenever they’d been close to the stars. His husband had, completely against regulation, abandoned the pilot’s chair and let Keith take the controls on that flight, and every other they’d been on, and Keith adored him for it. He’d been grounded on New Altea for longer than he liked to think about. Flying meant freedom, but flying with Shiro’s laugh in his ears and obvious joy for the shining black of space was better even than that.

They’d returned from that first flight with racing pulses and eager hands, and it had been Keith who’d pulled them into a storage bay, with his hands inside Shiro’s clothes, unable to wait. It hadn’t taken more than a movement after that for Shiro start negotiating permission for the design and build of their new craft.

Keith leant forward on his controls, grinned, and gunned the thrusters. Shiro’s delighted whoop filled the cabin as the cruiser shot forward.

“That’s it, Red! Yeah!”

Keith snapped his fangs and barked in response as he pushed the cruiser forward.

It was a fighter in all but firepower, bearing nothing but exterior flares which couldn’t be used for anything other than deflecting debris in order to protect the hull, and shields for extreme emergencies. But unlike a standard cruiser, their craft was smaller, sleeker, faster, and almost as manoeuvrable as Keith’s war fighter had been. He’d been the one to suggest dual pilot’s chairs, and either of them could fly Paladin Flare from either position. ‘On the ship like it is in bed?’ Lotor had teased when Keith had taken him on a data pad tour of the newly completed craft, and Keith had almost hung up on him.

They broke through the atmosphere exactly as planned, and Shiro’s hand hovered over the controls for the automatic lifestyle support systems, including the gravity controls. He hesitated.

“I strapped the bikes down.”

“Yeah?” Keith grinned.

“Go on then.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t love it too, Takashi.” Keith laughed.

He jerked his right hand joystick to one side, braced his forearm on the rest, and sent their craft spinning over on its long axis. Barrel roll completed, he righted them, Shiro still giggling beside him, and hit the button to engage the artificial gravity. The ship settled, as did everything in it, and Keith turned to look at the view through the aft port-side window. New Altea glowed pink and green, haloed by the blue of atmosphere.

“It’s very pretty.”

“But you’re not sorry to be leaving?” Shiro asked in a soft tone.

“No.” Their route took them through a partial orbit of the planet below. The still blackened peninsula – half a continent in ruins – had come into view. Keith made himself look at what Altea had once been; what his people and Zarkon had taken before he had joined the war. “Allura said we could keep the château. We’ll be back.”

“Anywhere you like baby.”

“Takashi...”

“Oh.” Shiro laid a hand on his chest, feigning shock.“Should I not call you that once we’re onboard the Atlas?” He left his chair and went to stand behind Keith, one hand resting on his shoulder, the other tracing an intimate line down the ridge of Keith’s ear before dipping into the close-cut fabric at his collar. “What would my husband like me to call him?”

“I think we can just proceed as usual, Admiral Shomara.”

“You know, I almost think I like it when you say it like that.” Shiro bent low, resting on the back of his chair, close enough to whisper in his ear. “Keith… baby.”

Keith shivered all over.

“Are you sure we’re going to be welcome?”

“I guarantee it, Red. I promise. Even the food will be good – I sent very specific instructions. We can use the Atlas as our base for as long as we like, and travel wherever we want from there. Any moon or planet in range, baby. I promise.”

“Even Daibazaal?” Keith had never asked him in words before, it seemed like such a big favour to want.

Shiro kissed the top of head.

“Anywhere. I want to see those red sunsets you speak of so fondly.”

It did not take them long to get within visual range of the Atlas, because the mighty ship Shiro had once been sole commander of was sitting in orbit around the moon Arus. Shiro was the one to call in and make contact, but he switched the comms off afterwards, set the autopilot to keep them on course, and followed Keith happily back to their quarters, tripping over kisses as they went. It was no more than a cot just wide enough for the two of them to share, built into one side of the cruiser, but they had a couple of varga to spare, and Keith intended to enjoy his husband fully without fear of reprisals for being too loud.

Keith flew them into the hanger, Shiro’s hand on his shoulder, and he took great pride in settling Paladin Flare, with her perfectly crisp paintwork, down onto the marked bay with the absolute faintest of jolts. It was just how he’d always landed his fighter, not that anyone watching would know that. And they had indeed drawn a crowd.

“Ready, Red?”

“As I’ll ever be.” Keith touched the hilt of his knife, straightened the hem of his red tunic, and wished he wasn’t – once again – the only Galra living on his new home. He reached for Shiro’s hand, but his husband threw an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close.

“Let’s not have anyone making a mistake about this.” Shiro hit the panel for the outer airlock doors “We’re married.”

“Yes, Takashi.” Keith rolled his eyes. “We’re married.”

“And I like having you close.”

Keith reached up and dragged his husband down for a kiss, drinking in his scent, pressing his palm against the sharp cut of Shiro’s jaw.

“You like showing me off.”

“You love it.”

“I love you being happy, Takashi.”

There was decidedly pointed cough, and Keith glanced sideways to see the assembled welcoming party of the Atlas, led by her Captain, every single one of them watching the pair of them making out in the airlock of their distinctive red spacecraft like horny teenagers. Keith grinned, showing fangs.

“Admiral Shomara, Your Highness.”

“Captain Kinkade!” Shiro grinned as he started down the ramp, his arm still wrapped firmly around Keith. “Are we on time?”

“Yes sir! They arrived about twenty doboshes ago.”

“Takashi?” Keith frowned at his husband. “What’s going on?”

“You like surprises, right?” Shiro beamed

“I hate surprises.”

A different voice came from some point away to his left.

“You’ll like this one, little Kit.”

Keith spun where he stood, the fur on the back of his neck rising sharply, hand reaching reflexively for his blade. There were other ships in the hanger, but not all of them were of the standard Coalition designs and colours. Three cruisers on the opposite side from where they stood were distinctly angular in a manner Keith recognised in his soul, and were liveried in grey and purple more familiar than his own face in the mirror. They were Galran ships, and the voice which had used his childhood nickname had also spoken in Galran.

“Surprised, my cousin?”

“Lotor!”

And behind him, Ulaz and Thace, and half a dozen other familiar faces of emissaries who had visited the Altean high palace at various points throughout the deca-phoeb since Keith’s marriage. Keith barked, jumped, and tackled his cousin to the ground with a forceful hug. The unexpected movement was incomparable however to the act of Ulaz picking them both up bodily, and then Keith was subsumed in the joy of his kin. Lotor held him by the shoulders and looked at him straight as Shiro finally made his way over to them, arm snaking around Keith’s waist.

“Your Royal Highness, it is a pleasure to meet you at last.” Shiro beamed. “And when you’re dressed.”

“Haha!” Lotor grinned wide. “I was wrong, little Kit.”

Keith quirked an eyebrow; his cousin was wrong about plenty of things. He said as much.

“-but what specifically, this time?”

Ulaz and Thace were smiling too, like they were in on the joke already. Lotor cupped his face, and Keith reflected the gesture, boundlessly happy to be with his family once more.

“What were you wrong about, Lotor?”

“Red. Red is a wedding colour after all.”