Publicly Decent - 1. Publicly Decent

Keith is eating an apple.

Or at least, he will probably eat the apple, but right now he’s polishing the green and red surface against the orange fabric of his jacket. And he’s holding a knife in his other hand.

The knife is large, almost comically so, but that doesn’t seem to matter to Shiro. From the moment he turns around at the end of the cafeteria line with his tray, and sees Keith alone at their usual table, his pulse has been whooshing in his ears. It’s loud enough to drown out any residual noise in the mess hall.

Shiro’s grip on his tray tightens, and he can feel the plastic edge pressing a groove into his skin which is borderline painful. Either he’s going to shake out of his skin or the tray is going to splinter down the middle and spill orange chicken and egg rolls all over his shoes, because his head contains exactly two thoughts.

Keith has a knife.

Keith holding a knife is incredibly sexy.

And his body has apparently primed him to develop and very particular, and possibly visible response to this. He needs to sit down.

“Dude? Shiro, c’mon shift it. Food’s getting cold.” Matt’s impatience snaps him out of focus, and Shiro moves on autopilot across the room to the seat opposite Keith. Matt slides into his usual chair and picks up his fork, gesturing to Keith. “You not eating?”

“Orange chicken is the food of the devil.”

“You’re weird.” There is no actual heat in Matt’s words, but Shiro feels his jaw clench regardless. Other people call Keith weird and wrong and they mean it, but it doesn’t happen so much any more, and it never happens within Shiro’s presence. “Er... Shiro? Are you not joining us?”

Shiro is still staring at Keith, at his long fingers wrapped around the hilt of the large bladed knife. The knife is shiny. Keith clears his throat, and Shiro’s eyes follow the motion up to the sharp cut of his jaw until he meets that violet gaze. He could happily loose himself in it forever. Keith holds every inch of him, just by existing.

“Sit, Shiro.”

Shiro hastens to comply, scooting his chair in so forcefully he momentarily winds himself. Keith arches a dark eyebrow at him from under his rough and un-styled bangs, and Shiro bites back the sudden urge to apologise. His silence apparently lasts a moment too long, because Matt notices. His best friend has seemingly lost the ability to turn beet red as he did the time he’d opened Shiro’s door with Iverson in tow, but that doesn’t actually make his reaction any better.

“Fucking hell. Shiro! We’re in the damn mess hall. Get it under control,” he hisses.

Keith finishes polishing his apple and sets the reddest part of the skin against the sharp edge of his blade, thumb balancing perfectly over the spine of the knife. The wet crunch of the crisp apple flesh being cut down to the core is incredibly loud across the little table. Shiro feels his cock – fully hard now and pressed along the crease of his left hip – jerk at the sight of a drop of juice rolling down the shiny blade in Keith’s hand.

Matt stares at him, and suddenly realises the implications of what he said. He groans into his hands, loud enough to draw attention to their table. A couple of other Junior Officers begin to make their way toward them, followed by a Senior Cadet Shiro doesn’t personally know. He dreads the conversation he has already had a dozen times just on the way here, which he going to have to have another hundred times today before he can escape to bed alone. But the moment never comes, because Keith breaks his gaze and glares at the approaching ensemble of curious well-wishers who want to grill Shiro and Matt on the announcement of their new mission.

It shouldn’t work.

A stern look from a gifted, but undeniably unruly Cadet, should not be enough to force three people all older and more senior to stop in their tracks and suddenly decide that there are other, different, places they would rather be. But it is. One look from Keith, and their attentions are diverted. Keith smiles, it’s the merest upturn of the corner of his lips, a fragment of a true motion, but it is an arrow through the heart for Shiro. Keith makes another clean cut into his apple and he lifts a slice away on the flat of the blade, taking it directly from the metal with his lips.

Shiro has had those lips on his, he knows exactly how soft and rough they are, knows the sweet way Keith tastes once he gets past the wind-chapped exterior. Keith’s too-white, too-sharp teeth bite into the slice, and Shiro realises he is sitting in the Garrison mess hall being jealous of a fucking apple. The very pink tip of Keith’s tongue slides along the shiny apple peel, and Shiro can’t breathe. He remembers how, but he just can’t, because Keith is watching him with dark eyes studded with stars, and Shiro realises that the boy he adores knows exactly what he is doing.

Matt, valiantly, tries to derail the moment which stretches between them for far too long to be publicly acceptable.

“What’s with the knife?”

Keith shrugs: Shiro follows the movement of the knife blade with his eyes.

“It was the first one I could borrow from the kitchens before the cook caught me.”

Before Matt can respond to this frankly bizarre explanation, Shiro has already started speaking. His libido has bypassed his brain and seized control of his mouth, because he hears himself say;

“Keith is good with knives.” Like it’s a perfectly normal response and not a segue into his personal, private vault of very specific Keith memories.

Matt looks like he wants to vault himself directly from the mess hall onto the nearest Mars-Transporter and never return. He sets to eating his food as fast as he can, possibly in the hope he might be able to plug his ears with egg rolls from the inside. Shiro should probably apologise, or regain some semblance of self-control and stop causing his best friend and teammate to question both his sanity and his skill at taking them further into space than any person has ever gone, but he can’t.

He can’t, because with one glance over at Keith – casually using the enormous knife to cut another slice of apple with precise and deadly movements – he meets the boy’s galaxy eyes and realises he knows. He knows. Keith is sitting there, calm, confident, outwardly unaffected by Matt’s second-hand embarrassment and Shiro’s flustered thirst, knowing the effect he is having on Shiro. He knows completely, and he is exploiting it.

Keith changes his grip on the glossy skin of the apple, and then his bright-white incisor catches the pink pillow of his lower lip. His eyes are hooded, gaze soft and gentle as he caresses the apple with his thumb. When the sharp edge of the knife breaks through the shell of the apple, Shiro’s knee jerks up with enough force to bang into the table. Matt flinches.

“Oh my fucking god,” he hisses, voice low and tight and completely exasperated. “Could you two be any more obvious? Shiro! Stop undressing the kid with your eyes.”

Shiro can’t help the way his breath hitches at the vision, and Matt groans, covering his face with both hands.

“Why did I say that? Why, oh why, do I have to suffer you idiots pining after each other like this? I don’t need any of these mental images...”

“No one is asking you to picture us naked,” Keith replies in a cool tone which serves only to superheat Shiro’s blood. It’s the closest to how Keith sounds when they are alone together that he’s ever heard with another person present, and it sends sparks of pleasure along his spine. His free will is chained to that voice.

Matt screams silently at the table.

Keith lifts the overly large knife to his lips, and Shiro watches in slow motion as he touches the cold metal and the crisp flesh of the apple with his tongue before he takes it between his teeth, lip indented by the shape of the fruit. He keeps Shiro’s gaze as he bites down, and Shiro’s pulse skyrockets.

Keith understands completely the effect he is having upon Shiro, and that Shiro is embarrassingly hard in his uniform pants under the table. But Shiro can’t help it. The sight of Keith’s slender, nimble fingers on the big knife short cuts directly to his cock and he burns with desire.

“Shiro...” Matt sounds very much like he’s begging now. Like he is seriously considering backing out of the new mission, their friendship, and possibly his entire Garrison career if Shiro can’t get his shit together. He turns his attention to Keith, because at some point during the time it’s taken Keith to carefully, lovingly, slice and eat half an apple, Matt has realised that Shiro is no longer the one in control of the situation. “Please Keith. We’re in public.” Matt elbows Shiro in the ribs, hard. “This is the goddamn mess hall and there are people around who should never know the things I have to know about the two of you!”

Keith clears his throat: Shiro follows the bob of his adam’s apple with his eyes. His mouth is desert dry.

“Eat your dinner, Hotshot.”

Shiro blinks, but he’s already picking up his fork and stabbing the first piece of sauce-coated orange chicken. Keith wants him to eat his dinner, which means he can’t focus entirely on his protégé any more. But it’ll make Keith happy, and Shiro lives for making Keith happy.

Matt makes a noise like a dying walrus, and then movement to their left distracts all their attentions.

A group of younger Cadets – some of them are in Keith’s class and Shiro TA’s one of their modules – are making their way over to their table. The lanky, tan-skinned youth in front has a cocky grin which switches to a worshipful half-smile as they get within easy talking distance of their table.

Whatever interruption is poised to disturb them never comes however, because Keith turns his upper body, the knife sliding around to a different, backhanded, inherently dangerous grip in his hand, and he wrinkles his nose at the other Cadets. It’s a sneer like no other. People look down on Keith all the time, and not because he’s kind of short. Shiro knows that other Cadets and Officers think he’s doesn’t belong at the Garrison, despite his insane test scores and record-breaking sim runs. He’s different: for being poor, for being an orphan, for being gifted, for apparently having no friends other than Shiro and Matt. And Keith is good at making himself smaller, unassuming, he walks like he wants to avoid trouble at all costs. But not now.

Now he gives the approaching Cadets a look which could wither a cactus, and the confident leader falters so suddenly he trips over his own boots.

Keith eats another slice of his apple as though nothing happened. Technically, it didn’t.

They all eat, and Shiro thirsts, in silence for many long minutes, and then Keith’s shoulders drop slightly, ducking as he hides behind his messy fringe.

“I can’t believe you guys are going into space without me.”

Honestly, Shiro can hardly believe it either. Not that he’s going to space – he’s been out to the Lunar base half a dozen times and Mars once, as well as a month-long stint on the Orbital Space Station already – but more that he will actually get to go further than any one has ever gone before. Him and Matt, and Matt’s father; an impossibly small three man blot in the vastness of space at the edge of the solar system. He was surprised that the Garrison commanders couldn’t be convinced to send two pilots though, considering how long he, Matt, and Keith have been training as a unit. Even in his own head Shiro knows he’d be far happier going to what feels like the other end of the universe with a co-pilot, especially one he trusts like Keith.

It’s Matt who breaks his reverie.

“Sorry bud. You’re not eighteen yet, and they can’t graduate you that early.”

Shiro knows Matt is thinking that Keith is just a kid, but he doesn’t say anything. Matt knows that ship has long since sailed with Shiro helplessly rowing it away. Keith looks utterly dejected at his words, as though a verbal confirmation that there is no way for him to join them is as equal to all the disappointments in his life which have come before.

And maybe it is, because however else Shiro wants to frame it in his head, they are leaving – scratch that – he is leaving Keith.

“I’m gonna miss you.”

“Hey,” Matt’s voice is soft, his lopsided half-smile kind and sympathetic. “We’ll miss you too. That simulator better not be in bits by the time we get back though.” He gives a low chuckle, trying to break the mood which is probably too sombre for what everyone else is treating like a celebratory occasion. “No idea who’s going to write new code that’ll actually challenge you, whilst we’re away.”

Keith laughs at Matt’s attempt to lighten the tone, and makes a joke back that he’s sure Matt’s little sister could run rings around Matt’s code without breaking a sweat. He’s more on the money than he realises there of course, and Shiro feels an ache in his chest. He’s mourning already. The whole conversation is cover for the one he and Keith can’t have publicly and might never actually have at all.

Shiro is getting his dream – the chance to touch the stars, to be the youngest pilot going the farthest distance – but he’s losing it too, because he’s going to be gone slightly more than a year, and Keith isn’t going with him. He can practically feel his heart tearing in two.

Then Keith looks at him again, and Shiro can see in his galaxy eyes all the things he can't say right now. This boy is a spitfire, the best pilot of his generation. He's already proven just how far he's able to go with nothing and no one to help him, and how much further with even the tiny amounts of support Shiro has been able to provide. He is the reverse of gravity, an unstoppable force propelling outward towards the stars.

Shiro is going to leave, but he will come back and take Keith’s hand, tell the whole world he loves him, and then he’s going to let that force drag him back out into space again. He’ll go to the end of the solar system for the Garrison, but Shiro already knows he’ll go to the ends of the universe for the boy with the galaxy eyes.

Keith sets the overly large knife against the skin of his apple again, taking impossibly thinner and thinner slices from the fruit, as though he wants to make it last forever. Shiro cannot tears his eyes away, trapped in the triangle made by the knife in Keith's hand, Keith's lips, and Keith’s eyes which never stray from Shiro’s own as he eats. Something about Keith cutting perfectly precise apple slices without even looking at what he’s doing makes Shiro’s internal temperature ratchet up another few degrees. Keith is good with knives and some kind of god of dexterity, and all Shiro can think is that Keith could command him under the table right now and he would go without a second thought.

The image of being on his knees snags as Keith swipes the slightly pointed tip of his tongue across his lower lip, and the air feels suddenly damp and humid as he replays the memory of kneeling in the shower before Keith. Already the memory is well visited, worn soft and familiar like a many-washed blanket, but that doesn’t make its impact any less. Shiro sits there in the mess hall, half wishing and half dreading that Keith might actually do the thing Shiro is fantasising about. He’s just been handed the biggest opportunity of his entire career – the thing he has worked for with almost every waking breath since he was a kid – and Shiro knows he would tank it all on Keith’s say so. It’s a heady sort of feeling, but Shiro isn’t the least resentful about his loss of control.

The truth is that with Keith, he wants to lose control. He wants to take all that he is and relinquish it into the slender, skilled hands of the boy with the galaxy eyes and the cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. He’s already most of the way there, because there’s no way he can frame being happy on his knees in an open shower stall with Keith hands in his hair as anything other than what it was. Adoration, devotion, worship. He doesn’t want to leave Keith, but already he can’t wait to get back from Kerberos and wrap himself around that boy for all the world to see.

“You have your first Lunar base trip coming up next week, right?” Matt is clearly expecting to be met with excitement; the rest of Keith’s class have been hanging on the promise of their first trip out of atmo to get them through studying for the exams, in which Keith quietly excelled.

“Yeah.” Keith’s response is lacklustre at best, and Shiro aches with the knowledge of why.

“They’re going to be running us ragged on the new drills for the Kerberos vessel whilst there’s no classes to TA for-” Matt begins, but then his face falls as he realises that, for the first time during this meal, Shiro is no longer looking directly at Keith. Keith is staring at the remaining core of his apple, now stabbed through with the overly large knife. “Oh… you were on crew for that, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” Shiro replies, wishing there had been some way to talk to Keith directly after the briefing when he, Matt and Sam had been confirmed as the crew for the mission to the far reaches of the solar system. He’d have given anything for an opportunity to tell Keith what had happened, to cushion the blow of his departure so that his protégé wouldn’t have to find out third hand along with everyone else. Not being able to be with Keith for his first trip off-planet – even though they’re not leaving for Kerberos for another three months – is just an extra kick in the teeth.

“It’s only a week.” Matt gives Keith a soft smile, then rolls his eyes at Shiro with a sharp sigh. “Stop looking like somebody kicked your puppy. You’ll cope.”

When Keith looks up to meet his eyes, Shiro honestly isn’t sure how he’s supposed to manage that exactly. He never wanted anything more than space before, and it’s not like Keith would never ask him to stay. As much as he encourages Keith, he knows his friendship with the Cadet has made him better too. But now the idea of space seems very empty without the possibility of Keith beside him in it.

“You’ll have to send us pictures from the Lunar base, yeah Keith?” Matt offers their simulator co-pilot and friendly smile. “No one looks good in the old-style EVA suits they’ll have you wearing up there.” He waggles his eyebrows, a Holt family trait. “Not even Shiro.”

“Matt…”

“I’ll show you photos when you get back from the moon, yeah?” Matt continues, and despite the fact Shiro is fairly certain there isn’t much to be incriminated by in snaps from their first space-walk as Cadets, he’s grateful for the tiny Keith-brand smile which breaks over the boy’s face. Matt drops his voice to a conspiratorial less-than-whisper. “If you’re really lucky, I’ll dig out the ones of him in his IVA pressure suit from the Mars mission. It fitted him-” Shiro can feel the blush spreading across his face with Matt’s words. “-just.”

Keith’s smile becomes a darker thing then, broader, and with a slight hint of his ridiculously sharp teeth. His eyes sparkle, and Shiro is caught. Matt only realises what’s he’s done when it’s too late.

“Shiro? Oh for fuck’s sake guys… please. We’re still in public.” He puts his head between his hands and whines in abject horror. “Why? Why do I get myself get into these situations? Why couldn’t I have picked anyone else to be friends with, all those years ago? Why does it have to be this disaster of a pilot?”

Keith snorts with a bitten back laugh – because no matter how much being a gifted pilot and protégé of Takashi Shirogane has improved Keith’s situation in the Garrison, Shiro’s still never seen him laugh in public – and the moment breaks. Matt kicks Shiro’s ankle and stands, tray in hand.

“Dude? Shiro, we gotta go. You’ve got a sim class to teach, and I’ve got to get my father to stop trying to pack every experiment he owns onto the cargo list for this mission.”

But Keith is still holding his gaze, and he opens his mouth with a single, almost whispered, command.

“Stay.”

Shiro doesn’t lift from his seat. He is fixed. Immoveable. Completely unable to disobey the boy with the knife and the perfect lips. He can tell that Matt wants to say something, he can practically hear his best friend thinking about how clearly whipped he is. Shiro doesn’t care. He’d let Keith drag him around on a chain if it made him happy.

And that’s a thought which shocks him a little bit, because his brain has never taken him there before.

“How’s your hoverbike?” Keith question is a dismissal of Matt entirely, all his focus on Shiro and only Shiro. Shiro doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the way Keith looks at him; he doesn’t want to. Matt rolls his eyes so hard Shiro’s surprised that he doesn’t actually pull a muscle, exhales loudly, and walks away with his empty tray. “How’s your hoverbike?” Keith repeats, drawing him in. “Needs a seeing to after that cliff jump, right?”

It’s a coded question – disguised, like so much they say to each other publicly – couching desire into outwardly acceptable conversation between a gifted Cadet and a compassionate Junior Officer.

Shiro’s bike needs no attention. The love and care of it is too ingrained, because the scientific precision with which the Garrison drills its students has materialised in Shiro as total dedication to the things he loves. And those things are Keith, his hoverbike, and the opportunity to go into deep space. Keith is no less meticulous with his own hoverbike, because the vintage red beauty he rides belonged to his father, and is almost all he has left.

“Yeah,” Shiro finds himself agreeing, “it does.”

Keith’s smile turns up almost imperceptibly at the corners. For Keith in public, this is as good as a pleased reaction gets.

“You’d best see to that then, Lieutenant. Wouldn’t want you to need to blame your next lost race on engine failure, would you?”

Shiro doesn’t moan aloud, but it’s near thing. And Keith knows it.

The boy stands, all long lean lines in his orange and white Cadet uniform, tugging the hem of the jacket straight as he does so. The movement is enough to draw Shiro’s attention to his hands. Because his hands are close to his crotch, and that’s all Shiro can think about suddenly. He wonders if the Command will kick him off the mission due to his braincells being lost to excessive thirst.

Shiro knows he will not be standing up to walk Keith out, and Keith’s quick visual flick down his still seated body tells him Keith is proud of this fact.

“Bye, Shiro.”

Shiro watches him go, physically unable to do anything else.

No, his hoverbike does not need maintenance, routine or otherwise, but Shiro knows that Keith is fully aware that in between dinner and lights out, there is an opportunity.

The weather is too poor for stargazing, and certainly not good enough to go racing in the desert. The parking hangar for personal vehicles will be deserted, all the normal people tucked up in their quarters with their holoscreens or revision notes. If Shiro is a very good boy and very lucky, there will be twenty minutes or so when Keith’s fingers will be woven into his hair, the boy pressed like a fire brand down his front. And he will open his mouth and do anything Keith wants.

Shiro smiles at the retreating back of his friend, who he loves, because Shiro is the golden boy of the Garrison, and being good is his speciality.