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Another planet, another distress signal. The faint radio ping comes from somewhere in an ancient forest. The tangle of massive trees is dark, damp, and too dense to fly through; they land the lions on the outskirts and huddle for a plan.
“Let’s split up,” Keith says, ignoring Hunk’s groan. “Pidge and Hunk look north. Lance and Allura look west. Shiro and I will head east. Cosmo, you’re in charge of the lions.”
Cosmo whines his agreement.
Keith’s not being selfish, claiming Shiro to himself. Really. He’s just worried about him. It’s the real Shiro now, not a clone, but he still doesn’t seem quite right. Keith wants to keep an eye on him.
Pure altruistic concern. Really.
“I really don’t know about splitting up this time, Keith,” Hunk says. “This place is spooky.”
Pidge slaps him on the shoulder. “Come on, scaredy-cat! I saw some really cool rock formations on our way down here.”
“I saw them too! They looked like giant skulls!”
“Not skulls,” Allura says reassuringly. “They looked like Altean summoning stones. I’ve never seen any that big.”
Hunk doesn't look reassured. “What exactly are they supposed to summon?”
“Doubt and fear.” Allura shrugs. “It’s all very mystical. More mystical than most Altean traditions, even. My people have a legend…”
Keith coughs. And yeah, it’s still pretty weird the way everyone actually turns to listen to him. “Meet back at the lions in two hours,” he says. “Shout if you run into trouble.”
He pats Cosmo on the head and then takes off east, to the sound of Lance’s plea: “No! No more spooky alien legends! I couldn’t sleep for a week last—”
Shiro falls into step beside him, and it’s just like normal. The trees loom large and dark above them, blocking out the golden sun. The leaves beneath their boots are blue and green and do not crunch on impact; the ground is soft and damp, muffling their steps, and soon the only sound is the occasional echoing trill of some alien bird thing.
Okay, there’s one more sound, and that’s Shiro thinking loud as fuck next to him. Keith looks over and up and asks, “What?”
Shiro grins. “I was just thinking, I always thought we’d end up here.”
“Seriously?”
“Not here specifically. But exploring the universe together? Yeah.” He looks up at the interwoven canopy. His expression’s hard to read in the shadows. “Okay, so I was expecting something a bit closer to home.”
“Sure. Same galaxy at least,” Keith agrees. He flips through the settings on his communicator. They’re on a mission, after all. And his chest’s doing this funny flip thing thinking about Shiro thinking about them exploring the universe together. “I’m not picking up anything alien on here. I can see the others’ locations, but no source for the distress signal.”
Shiro frowns. “I don’t think…”
His words are lost in a sudden wind, whistling through the trees, catching in their suits, blasting through their hair. Keith grabs his knife on instinct. He can’t see Shiro anymore, and he panics, until a shoulder nudges his, and he recognizes the familiar presence. Shiro’s there, at his back like he’s supposed to be.
The wind dies down. The forest is quiet again.
“Just the wind.” Keith would feel sillier for jumping like that, except Shiro did too. Something is weird about this forest.
“Maybe,” Shiro says. “Stay sharp.”
They fall in step again, not talking this time. The quiet builds around them. The light thins out through the canopy. Dark blue shadows, dark green leaves. The communicator’s occasional beep only accentuates the silences in between.
Keith is only just starting to relax when the wind picks up again. Slower this time, steady cold against his face—then a thin, rasping voice—
He doesn’t love you.
Keith jumps, knife singing, and sees nothing. He’s all alone, except for Shiro.
“Did you hear that?” he asks, and he can’t quite keep the edge from his voice. What the fuck was that? And how did it...
“I heard a voice,” Shiro says slowly. “But I couldn’t make out the words.”
Thank fucking god. “Uh. Me neither. Let’s keep moving.”
Shiro squeezes his shoulder, and fuck that is not helping Keith’s composure. The pressure and heat of that brief touch lingers as they venture further into the forest.
The wind ebbs and flows as they walk, and with it, the voices echo.
He’ll never need you like you need him, the trees murmur.
He didn’t miss you, says the vanishing sky.
Keith grits his teeth and tries not to look at Shiro, until Shiro touches his shoulder again and says, “Keith. You okay there?”
He’s not. He’s gripping his knife so tightly it hurts. He’s so tense he might snap. He’s panicking. He says, “I’m fine. This place just gives me the creeps.”
“Yeah. Me too.” Shiro’s hand falls away, and he starts walking again. “You’ll tell me if anything’s wrong, right?”
“Right,” Keith manages. He really wishes he’d teamed up with Pidge instead.
The space ahead of them is lighter. The trees do not separate so much as coil themselves around the massive stone structure in their midst. It looms large as a house, pale gray, pockmarked with age.
Hunk was right. It does look like a skull.
Keith checks the communicator. “I’m still not picking anything up. We’ve gone far enough, should probably head back soon.” The sooner they get out of this place, the better.
“We should ask Allura about the stones,” Shiro says. “Maybe there’s something—”
He cuts off a moment before Keith hears it too. The dry, rasping voice, louder and clearer than ever, and this time, he’s looking right at Shiro, and can see the way his face changes with the words.
He doesn’t love you, the stone breathes. He never will.
“You hear it,” Keith says. His heart’s thudding. “You hear what it’s saying.”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t lie to me,” Keith hisses. He’s mad. That’s good. If he’s mad, he can’t be hurt.
And that would work on anyone else but Shiro, who’s always been able to find the chink in his armor. Shiro, who tilts his head, and meets Keith’s eyes, and says, “Look who’s talking. You hear it too. You’ve heard it the whole time.”
The whole time they were in this forest. Sure. Try his entire life. He’s had that voice in his head since the moment he stole Shiro’s car. He wants Shiro in a way Shiro could never want him, and life would be a lot easier if he could just fucking deal with it.
But life’s never been… wait, why the fuck is Shiro smiling like that?
“You heard it too,” Shiro says again, and Keith has never heard that kind of giddy lightness in his voice before. “Keith, I missed you. And I’m pretty sure you missed me.”
It clicks.
Keith blinks, and Shiro’s still standing right there, real, with this weird look in his eyes that Keith never wants to look away from. He swallows, and manages, “What about the rest of it?”
Shiro laughs, rubs his hand through his hair, and okay, there’s a sensible bit of nervousness there after all. “I mean, this really isn’t how I imagined saying this, but yeah. I’m in love with you.”
Whispers hiss through the air like rain. Keith can’t understand any of them through his thundering heartbeat. And there is a fuckton to unpack there but Keith’s brain is stuck on this unbelievable fact:
“You imagined it.”
“I thought it would be cool to ask you out on the moon,” Shiro says. He’s closer now, and the air seems to hum between them.
“With the entire Garrison listening in on the comms? What if I said no?”
Fuck, he could spend hours staring at Shiro’s smile.
“You wouldn’t say no,” Shiro says, and his hands, flesh and metal, are hot and cold against Keith’s face.
As they kiss, the whispers fall silent. The forest is empty of all but their heartbeats, and the stone at their backs is no more than stone.
Shiro pulls away, breathing heavily. He’s flushed red. “We should head back to the others.”
“Sure,” Keith says, and leans up, and murmurs into Shiro’s ear. “Just five more minutes.”
***
They return to the lions only ten minutes late. Their teammates are lounging around between the lions’ paws, except for Lance, who’s picking something unsavory out of his hair. He looks uncomfortably damp.
“Oh, there you are,” Hunk says. “We were definitely just about to look for you.”
Nobody seems to be able to tell Keith’s entire universe has been shattered and reassembled in the intervening two hours, for which he’s very grateful. He wants some time to process, and time to shove Shiro into a supply closet for more, uh, relationship talks.
“Thanks for the concern,” he says. “You guys find anything?”
Pidge waves her communicator. “No. And even weirder—I just checked our communication logs, and I don’t think there was anything to find.”
“What do you mean?” Shiro asks. His hair’s kind of messy, from Keith grabbing it. Keith thinks it’s a pretty good look on him.
Pidge shrugs. “There’s no record of the original distress signal that brought us here. It’s like we never received anything at all. We just thought we did.”
Allura hops off of Blue’s paw and stretches. “There could be lingering magic around the summoning stones. Though I don’t know why they would send Voltron a fake distress signal—the old legend is more about star-crossed lovers overcoming their fears.”
“Really,” Shiro says. “How does that old legend go, exactly?”
Keith coughs. “Tell us when we’re moving. If there’s no signal, anyway, we should probably get going.”
They pack up. It’s all going great until Lance finishes wringing alien pondscum out of his hair and looks up, and says really loudly:
“Hey Keith, what’s that bruise on your neck?”
“No idea!” Keith shouts, and runs for his lion.