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Keith has never been drunk like this before. He’s been angry drunk, sad drunk, and sleepy drunk, but never happy drunk. They bought a ship. He and Shiro bought a ship.
And then Shiro said they had to break a bottle of champagne over the prow to christen it, except they’re a couple systems from Earth so no one knows what champagne is, and their ship doesn’t really have a prow, but Shiro went to the trouble anyway. The stuff they found is blue and fizzy and weirdly spicy, and it seemed wasteful to break the bottle, so they’re drinking it instead. Keith snatches the neck of the bottle from Shiro’s fingers and takes another swig.
“What’s the name of this place again?” Keith asks.
“A minor, G, C seventh, F, D seventh, D-flat seventh,” Shiro recites. The language of this planet is impossible for humans to speak. The inhabitants here can produce multiple notes at once, and every syllable is a chord. The translation tech made it possible to understand, but replying required them to carry around a little electronic keyboard, which is how Keith found out Shiro took years of piano lessons as a child. All the locals found this very charming, but nobody liked it as much as Keith.
“No,” Keith says, shoving his shoulder. “Play it.”
They’re sitting across from each other on the bed—their bed—and Shiro leans back to pick the keyboard up off the floor. He plops it in his lap and obliges Keith with the name of the planet, and Keith beams at him.
“Let’s name our ship that.”
“Let’s name our ship something neither of us can say?”
Keith takes another gulp, wipes his mouth, and shrugs. “It’s pretty.”
“You’re pretty,” Shiro says, grinning like it’s the best and cleverest thing he’s ever come up with, and as far as Keith’s concerned, it is.
Keith crawls into his lap, forcing Shiro to toss the tiny keyboard onto the mattress. He wraps his arms around Shiro’s neck, the bottle dangling from one hand, and puts his nose to Shiro’s. “Let’s go up.”
They’re still at the dock where they bought the ship, under the gravity of Am-G-C7-F-D7-Db7, since it took a whole rotation of this planet to make the sale and then they needed dinner, and then Shiro had insisted on finding them a bottle of not-champagne, and then Shiro had to make a stupid boring conference call to the Coalition to confirm his leave of absence, and by that time they’d both wanted a drink.
“That’s drunk driving,” Shiro says solemnly. “Not allowed.”
“Mm,” Keith says, rolling his hips. “What about drunk riding? Is that allowed?”
“Very,” Shiro says. They come together for a sloppy kiss. Keith remembers to put the bottle on the floor before he wiggles out of Shiro’s lap and shrugs off his clothes. Shiro gets naked, too, and then Keith pounces on him. They land on the keyboard, which honks out an ear-splitting chord.
“Ow,” Shiro says, pulling it from under his back, while Keith shudders with laughter. Shiro sets it gently on the floor—nice that he can reach that far without moving—and then says, “Where’s the lube? Have we unpacked that yet?”
“On the table next to your side of the bed,” Keith says, and when Shiro raises his eyebrows in an alcohol-blotted exaggeration of surprise, Keith snickers. “Remember when you were in the cockpit with the door shut, making a very important conference call, taking forever—”
Shiro’s already slicking himself up. “You were back here… unpacking the lube?”
It was a long conference call. He had to entertain himself somehow. Keith smiles, then raises himself up so he can sheathe Shiro’s cock in his ass in one smooth motion.
“Fuck,” Shiro says, probably a lot louder than he means to, which makes them both laugh. Keith moves then, desperate for every stroke, and Shiro settles his hands on Keith’s hips, fingers pressing into the meat of his ass. The weight of Shiro’s hands drags against Keith’s movements, slowing him down. “You were quiet.”
“Did you want me to be louder?” Keith asks, his voice breathy from exertion. He caresses Shiro’s face, then lets his hand wander down Shiro’s chest. “You wish I’d panted your name while you were on the phone with Iverson?”
Shiro’s already flushed from drinking, but his cheeks get darker. “You thought about me?”
Keith lets out a crack of laughter. “Shiro, I never think about anything else.”
Shiro tugs him down by his braid until they’re kissing again. Shiro tastes spicy and sweet like the liquor. If Keith weren’t already drunk, he could get drunk from this alone—Shiro under him and inside him, his lips parted for Keith’s tongue to slip between them. Delicious.
Shiro makes short work of his braid, undoing all the strands until Keith’s hair hangs like a curtain besides their faces, the silky ends brushing their skin. Shiro combs his fingers through it, still kissing Keith, still rocking his hips up to meet every downward thrust of Keith’s. Then he reaches for Keith’s cock, bouncing between them, and wraps his hand around it with searing gentleness. Keith groans into Shiro’s mouth. He feels Shiro’s lips curve into a smile, and he breaks the kiss just long enough to murmur, “Keith.”
Then they’re both tumbling headlong into that final burst of sensation, hot and bright, every nerve effervescent with pleasure. Keith’s orgasm spurts onto Shiro’s stomach and then Keith lays right down in it, drunk and blissed out, kissing Shiro’s jaw, his earlobe, his neck.
“Have I mentioned,” Shiro says, a little short of breath, “that I am in love with you?”
“Mm,” Keith says. “What’s that?”
“Just like, wildly, ridiculously, crazy stupid in love with you,” Shiro says.
Keith hums again, his lips still pressed against Shiro’s skin. “Me too. We should buy a ship together.”
Shiro laughs, reaches for the bottle on the floor and raises it. “Cheers to that.”
Their ship is small, just a cockpit and a separate living space with a bed, a lavatory, and the tiniest of kitchens. The living space has a floor-to-ceiling window, even grander than the one in the cockpit, and that’s what sold them on this ship. Keith raises the blind as soon as they’re in space.
The ship isn’t large enough to have its own gravity generator, so everything’s latched and tethered, and when they’re not strapped into the chairs in the cockpit, they get around using conveniently placed handholds. There’s nothing out here but distant stars, so Keith clambers out of his chair and makes his way to the giant window.
Shiro drifts next to him a moment later and they float together, taking in the view. It’s so damn gorgeous, all that vastness, every tiny pinprick in the dark its own mass of possibilities—landscapes, civilizations, lives. There’s so much out there in the universe, more than they can ever know. Keith reaches for Shiro’s hand and squeezes.
Here they are, small and mortal and alone, but together. It’s all Keith has ever wanted. Tears well up in his eyes until a droplet breaks away and floats toward the window.
“You too, huh?” Shiro says, after a soft exhalation of laughter. Some of the droplets in the air came from his eyes, though Keith can no longer tell which.
Keith wants to pull Shiro closer for a kiss, but in microgravity, that takes a little planning. He grabs a handhold above his head and tugs Shiro toward him. They bump into each other and Keith floats backward, but he manages to draw their bodies together and drop a kiss on Shiro’s mouth. “You know, it makes me want to—”
Shiro smiles, his eyes sparkling. “Yeah, me too. But breathing makes me want that with you. We can try it in the sleeping bag, if you want.”
Their living space is modular, and the bed they use while planetside has been folded away. Tonight they’ll share a floating sleeping bag, tethered to the walls at several points to keep them from drifting into anything.
“No,” Keith says, undoing the fastening at the neck of Shiro’s flight suit with one hand. “Right here. You can use the handholds on either side of the window, and I’ll hold on to you.”
“The window?”
Keith brushes the pad of his thumb over the color staining Shiro’s cheeks. “Nobody’s out here but us.”
“I know. It’s just… the idea.” Shiro’s blush deepens instead of fading. He swallows and licks his lips.
Not embarrassment, then. Keith touches Shiro’s mouth, following the trail of his tongue. “You, me, and the universe.”
Shiro makes eye contact at last, his pupils huge pools of darkness. “Yeah.”
Keith kisses him again and then it’s all business. Deeply ingrained habit forces both of them to tuck their discarded flight suits away so they won’t float free. Naked, Keith sends himself sailing toward a storage compartment and begins to sort through it.
“That’s not where the lube is,” Shiro says.
Keith pulls out a bundle of rope and hoists it above the compartment door so Shiro can see it.
Shiro lets out a surprised, “Oh.” He clears his throat and adds, in a pitch closer to his usual speaking voice, “Good thinking.”
Keith smiles to himself. He’d only intended to tie the rope loosely around their waists to tether them together, but maybe they can do something else. Shiro is drifting in front of the window, his hands grasping the bars on either side of it, looking over his shoulder. Keith ducks down and takes hold of Shiro’s ankle. He makes quick work of tying it to the handhold along the bottom of the window, then rests a hand on the top of Shiro’s foot, glancing up for confirmation.
Shiro’s cock is jutting forward, thick and ready but not weighed down. The tip is almost touching the glass now that Keith has brought his body into parallel alignment with the window. Fuck, they’re really going to do this. Giddy arousal spirals through him, and it takes Keith a moment to pull together a sentence. “Just one, or both?”
“Both,” Shiro says, so Keith takes out another length of rope and does his other ankle. The window’s not so wide that the pose will be uncomfortable, but it forces him to part his legs far more than usual. Keith stretches upward, runs his hand up the inside of Shiro’s thigh, and gives his ass a squeeze.
“Be right back,” Keith says, and the shaky way Shiro releases a breath goes right to his dick. Fuck, he can just… keep Shiro there. All spread out in front of the window. Shiro’s the only thing that could have improved that view.
Keith takes his time. He retrieves the lube and lets the bottle float next to them while he luxuriates in touching Shiro’s back and stomach and thighs. Shiro shivers, quiet, beneath him. Keith grabs his ass—fuck, but it’s perfect, he’s perfect, Keith can’t possibly get any harder and yet somehow he does—and says into Shiro’s ear, “I’m the only one around for miles. You don’t have to be quiet.”
“So give me a reason to be loud.”
Shiro’s been astoundingly patient until now. Keith slides a finger into his ass and startles a gasp out of him.
It’s tricky, clinging to Shiro’s hip with one hand and working him open with the other. The bottle of lube is in a different place every time he looks for it, and Keith has already made at least one spill that will be floating around until they find it later. But it’s worth it. Shiro obliges him in wordless moans, louder and louder as Keith thrusts in and out. Every dip of his fingers into the tight, slippery heat of Shiro’s body increases the ache in his own. Keith’s almost perpendicular to Shiro, his legs floating behind him, his cock throbbing and untouched. He keeps twitching his hips like he could grind against a mattress, but there’s nothing there.
“Keith,” Shiro says, his voice breaking, and Keith breaks too. God, he wants this so much. Using Shiro as an anchor, he pulls himself closer. Uncaps the lube with one trembling hand, spills it over himself, then clings to Shiro’s hips and enters him with a couple of jerky thrusts, his breath coming hard.
Over Shiro’s shoulder, Keith glimpses of them in the window, sweaty and wild-eyed and mussed. His braid’s drifting behind him. Shiro catches him looking and smiles. Both of them let their gazes drift to the infinite for an instant, and then back to their reflection.
“I love you,” Keith says.
“Love you too.”
Keith bends Shiro forward as far as the window will allow, which isn’t far, but it’s enough that Keith can suck a sharp little kiss into the tender skin when Shiro’s neck meets his shoulder. Shiro gasps, and gasps again when Keith reaches around to take hold of his cock, and shouts out loud when Keith fucks him so hard he has to put a hand on the windowpane to stop from colliding with it.
Shiro keeps his hand there, palm splayed against the glass, stars visible through his spread fingers, until Keith brings them both to the end. Shiro cries out and his orgasm is a hot jet of liquid into Keith’s hand. Keith spills inside him an instant later, sinking his teeth into Shiro, his grip on Shiro’s hip clenching tight.
When he opens his eyes, his vision sparkles with tears. There are a few drifting into the air. Shiro chases one, catching it on his fingertip.
“Not sure if that’s mine or yours,” he says, out of breath.
Keith is too exhausted to laugh, but he rests his cheek against the back of Shiro’s shoulder in acknowledgement. “Give me a sec. I’ll be right back.”
Pulling apart is messy. Keith comes back with a damp cloth—the thing he misses most about gravity is showering—and wipes Shiro down and then himself. He floats down to untie Shiro’s ankles, massaging each of them in turn. Shiro makes a face when Keith presses a kiss to the bare arch of one foot, and Keith smiles and shrugs. There’s no part of Shiro he wouldn’t kiss. For now, he drifts up, hooking an arm around Shiro’s waist.
“It’s a good view,” Shiro says.
“It is,” Keith says, tucking his head against Shiro’s shoulder. “And a good ship. I don’t think I could have imagined this, even a few weeks ago.”
“Me either,” Shiro says. “Going all the way back to when I was a kid, you know, I used to dream about this kind of thing. A ship, someone who loves me, a whole universe we could explore together. I wanted it, but I’m not sure I really believed it would ever happen.”
“Believe it,” Keith says. He kisses Shiro’s cheek.
“We still haven’t named her.”
“Sure we have,” Keith says. “We took long enough getting here. Her name is Patience.”
Shiro laughs and kisses him deeply. Outside the window, the galaxy flows around them, waiting.