Prompt List #1 ♛ Imagines
Prompt #19 “I think I’m in love with you, and that scares the crap out of me”
[ canonverse | 1.5K | also on A03 ]
When Shiro rounds the corner of one of the garrison’s winding corridors, Keith is waiting for him.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Keith tells him, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. Shiro gets the sense Keith was aiming for casual but there’s a tension in his frame that Shiro recognizes instantly. “Want to tell me why?”
And that was Keith, wasn’t it. Straight to the point.
“Keith,” Shiro sighs and runs a hand over the back of his neck. He’s tired. It’s been a long day, meeting after meeting with the other leaders, trying to make sense of how they were going to fight back. He doesn’t want to get into this now. “It’s late.”
“So?” Keith unpeels himself from the wall and stalks towards him. The glint in his eye makes Shiro wary.
“So, I’m tired and I want to get some sleep.”
A flicker of concern crosses Keith’s face and Shiro feels vaguely guilty for playing on it. He knows Keith’s been watching him like a hawk since Allura had placed his essence back into this body. He’s mostly recovered now, but he’s still tired. And Keith is right, Shiro has been avoiding him.
“You okay?” Keith finally asks him. He’s taken his hands away from his chest and shoved them in his pockets instead. His shoulders hunch a little.
“Fine,” Shiro rushes to assure him, to brush it off. “Just tired like I said. It’s been a long day.”
He starts walking again, down the quiet halls towards his quarters and Keith falls into step beside him. He slides Keith a glance. “Shouldn’t you be getting some rest too? You have that mission tomorrow.”
“I’m fine,” Keith shrugs. They walk in silence for a few moments longer, until the door to Shiro’s assigned quarters loom ahead. “Is that the only reason you’re avoiding me?”
He doesn’t quite recognize the tendril that curls around Keith’s words. It sounds faintly like hurt, or maybe a quiet resignation and it hits Shiro hard. It’s hard to reconcile, he doesn’t know what to make of it, and as much as he wants to take Keith and scrub it away… Well, what can they do anyway? There’s a war to fight and it wasn’t about them.
“I’m not avoiding you,” Shiro says mildly but even he can hear the lie in his voice. He busies himself by fishing his access card out of his uniform pocket and swiping it across the door panel. The door swipes open with a low hiss and Keith follows him inside without breaking his stride.
“Yes. You are,” Keith says once they’re sealed inside. The barracks are underground in this portion of the base, dimly lit and stuffy but it’s painfully familiar. Keith hovers by the doorway. “Are you… is this about Black? Are you mad at us-“
“What? No. No, of course not.”
Silence falls between them.
“Then what?” Keith demands. He doesn’t move from his position at the doorway, ready to make a hasty retreat… or maybe to block Shiro’s own exit. Shiro feels a bit like he wants to run right now. He’s not ready for this. He’s not ready to face the way his feelings for Keith have changed. He’s not ready to admit how only sadness and regret remained when he stood at the memorial and traced his fingers over Adam’s face. He’d loved Adam, he truly did once, but the memory of that love feels pale and soft under the sheer raw emotion that he feels for Keith now.
And what could they even do about it? With Sendak lurking in orbit, fighting for their lives, for their planet’s very existence, what could confessing his feelings really achieve but serve as a distraction for Keith. Shiro wasn’t going to put that on him.
“Keith, this isn’t-“