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Shiro finds out about the selling much later.
He hasn’t return on Earth for like six months, being around the Vegas Galaxia for the IGF Atlas Space Exploration program and the city changes everything in the meantime. It expands in the desert with its street and its skyline, and Keith’s old shakes doesn’t exist anymore. It looks like it never exists, as if no stories connected to it exist.
Sometimes Shiro wonders if even Keith is just a creation of his own mind.
But Keith is there, is real, and even if they can’t stay together much, is with Shiro.
“Yes, I know. I sold it some time ago.”
Keith’s answer is short, distracted. The entire situation around his former house is no more than a mundane matter for him.
“Oh.”
“They called me,” Keith adds, and Shiro knows it’s more for his own benefit. “They wanted do expand the city and I had no reason to say no. They even send me back the objects and furniture inside.”
A small smile appears on his lips. Shiro is sure: within that object, there is his old research about the energy, the one that lend them to the Blue Lion.
“We pay for a new expedition into the Third Quadrant with that money.”
“But you don’t have a house anymore.”
Shiro’s reaction is unexpected. He doesn’t have a house anymore too. Well, he inherits his Grandfather’s house, back in Japan, but he hasn’t gone there in more than ten years. He isn’t even sure the war didn’t destroy it. Shiro has good memories of it, he just wasn’t expecting to come back. He expects to create a new one, and now he lives on the Atlas, connected to Atlas.
“I have,” Keith replies. Another surprise.
“Have you?”
“Yes?”
“Where?”
“In the best place in the entire universe.”
Shiro frowns, a small wrinkle between his eyebrows.
“Daibaazal?”
Keith chuckles. “No.”
Shiro is lost. The entire space is their house, since Keith lives most of the time around the universe from his humanitarian projects. Shiro doesn’t remember quite a place Keith will consider superior. Lance and Allura and Coran have Altea, Hunk has Balmera, Pidge had Olkarion. And Shiro? He doesn’t have an answer not even for himself.
“Tell me,” he dares to say and hopefully, hopefully, Keith won’t get offended.
He doesn’t.
“It’s wherever you are, Shiro.”
It’s not like they don’t have a place to stay. Shiro has his own quartier on the Atlas and it’s big enough to be a small flat; Keith spends his time there when they manage to organize a meeting. It happens sometimes that the routes of the Blade and Atlas meet, and so does their leaders.
But being on the Atlas isn’t the most convenient solution. Once Lance joked about Shiro being the king of his own moving castle, white hair and everything. Despite the bad pun, he isn’t entirely wrong. Shiro loves his work, and that means he never gets holidays.
Sometimes, they land on the nearest planet and take a room there. It’s nice to wandering around, exploring, as they dreamt back then at the Garrison. It’s their free time.
Still, Shiro decides, he wants a place only for the two of them.
They won’t get married. Probably. Shiro never asks, and Keith seems fine with it. Their works are too much important and none of them will ask the other to give up. Maybe, one day, when they’ll be old, they’ll settle down somewhere, with ten cats and a space wolf as companies.
For now, they’re just two people that loves each other very much. Shiro just wants a place for this.
They call themselves Mirimians, and they say they come from Mirim, the planet.
No one lives on that planet. It lost its atmosphere decades ago, and now Mirim is reduced as a desert, with acid oceans and burned rocks. The Mirimians are strong people, very loyal to their home planet. They still live around it, in space ships that their own star nourishes as once it did with their planet.
The space ships are so advanced they basically look like a city, but in space: there are bigger ships with shops, cinemas, schools, big ship for flats, and smaller ships one after another that are independent houses. They also move as they are small planets, guaranteed the regular life style. Shiro has been there once, as Earth Ambassador.
When he calls for a house, they hurry to find one for him.
He doesn’t tell Keith, not until the entire procedure ends.
“Mirimians are nice,” Keith says. “They have a voice in their balance sheet especially for humanitarian reason and, since they are in the Voltron Coalition, they devolve it entirely to the Marmora Project.”
“Good for you.”
Keith nods. “They are most untouched by the Galra War, still they want to help as much as they can.”
Shiro is there, nervous like a boy at the prom party. He doesn’t even know what he wants. Approval? He already has it. He just looks at Keith wandering in the room of the house and can’t help but be happy. This is what he wants, or at least he thinks it is.
“This is a nice house,” Keith says, once he finished his tour. “Do you plan to buy it?”
“I did already.”
Silence stretches between them. Keith’s head is tilted on the side, as he waits. Shiro knows he owes him an explanation, yet he is hesitant.
“I wanted a place for the two of us.”
There is a smile on Keith’s face, just a little, before it disappears into Keith lowering down his head.
Shiro can’t say when Keith ends up hugging him, his head deeply buried in his chest. It just happens and in that moment, Shiro feels all his being relaxes.
This is what he wants. Not really a place to call home, but a place to be with Keith as they are the only one of the universe. This is the last part of his life, and the last part of his happiness.
When Keith speaks, his voice is rasp, as he is on tears.
“Can I buy the furniture?”
Keith’s hands are dirty with paint and sauce. He’s laughing at something Shiro said and now doesn’t even remember. What he wants to remember is the two of them, sitting on a dirty sheet, eating mirmirians food from a pack, with the smell of fresh paint in the nostrils.
Creating a house is such a mundane thing to do. Deciding the color of the wall, of the curtains, of the furniture, the way they want to organize the kitchen, the dining room, the bedroom. They order glasses and dishes, and even towels. Light blue for the wall, white and black for the dining room. Red covers for the bed. They spend days and tons of messages before deciding.
Pidge knows a lot of good engineers that could help for the house, but they refused. They create their own house, just the two of them. It takes time, because they don’t have much time, but each day they are together in this project is a treasured one.
Keith licks his fingers and examines the blue stains on his palm.
“We should have hired a painter,” he says.
“We should,” Shiro confirms.
They shouldn’t, and they hadn’t. This is all theirs.
The ceiling of the bedroom is made of glass.
During the day, the room has enough natural light thanks to the near star. It’s during the night that Keith and Shiro can look up and see the sky and the star around them. They love it. There is time where they stay there, in bed (it was a futon before) all naked, curled around one another.
The constellations aren’t the same you can see on Earth, but it doesn’t matter. Shiro studied all of them, he loves it. What it matters is the feeling, the time and time again they spend together looking at the sky the dreamt to reach once and they are a part of now.
Shiro studies Keith’s profile, chin up and a soft smile on his lips as, with his finger, he points out a star.
“Are you unsatisfied?” Shiro asks, once.
“About what?” he replies.
“This. The house.” Shiro looks at the space outside the ceiling. “Your idea of home is a little more… abstract than this.”
Keith crawls nearer, arms around Shiro’s chest, legs wrapped around the other’s, head placed against Shiro’s shoulder.
“I love this,” he says. “We built it. It’s like our little special hideout. But,” he adds, “it won’t be home without you.”
Shiro’s hand finds his way through Keith’s air, as he tilts his head a little to brush Keith’s cheek.
They never come in the house alone. It’s a place for the two of them, together.
“It won’t be without me.”
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