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The pain is unending, waves of nerves screaming at him, drowning him in an ocean that he can’t swim, and Shiro just wants it to end. His sobs echo above the frantic voices, the lights that blind him, and for a moment he isn’t Shiro the Black Paladin, but Shiro the Kerberos Pilot, strapped to a cold, unforgiving table by the organization that had abandoned him. He thrashes once more, the feel of a needle piercing his skin like a hateful knife sliding between ribs. His veins pump the sedative through his body, and Shiro should feel thankful that he’s shutting down but terror grips his heart.
The last thing he remembers are fingers in his hair, the pads of skin against the bridge of his nose, and an unfamiliar sense of ease that fills his lungs.
Shiro wakes up to a ghost in armor, staring at him, searching him for weakness. Bile rises in his throat and he lurches over the side of the bed, spilling his intestines on the floor. The smell brings him back to his senses, but not by much. His head is hot, too hot, and his limbs shake as he pulls himself further onto the mattress, curling up on the opposite side to pretend that the vomit isn’t there. He closes his eyes, breathes in, tries to ignore the wrongness of his body. His stomach groans, aches, at the contractions, and his shaking isn’t helping to calm the pain.
He reaches out for the Black Lion, when the pain presses into his skull for his attention, but the response is weak. She can’t come to him. She can’t protect him where he is, haunted by the hazy memories of the past year, where a ghost sits in the corner of the room and accuses him with sharp eyes. There’s a longing somewhere, underneath the oncoming panic attack, and Shiro pours everything into their bond.
(He doesn’t understand where he is, and he’s not even certain he’s alive at this point. The only reason he’s assuming he is alive is because death doesn’t feel pain or heat. It doesn’t feel his bones aching, twisting with muscle, doesn’t feel the fever spreading through his tired body. No, Shiro is definitely alive.
But he’s not sure he wants to be.)
At some point, Shiro must have fallen asleep again, for he wakes up to the ghost cradling his head in his lap, nails scraping against his scalp as fingers tangle in Shiro’s hair. Shiro blinks, shudders, before twisting his head into the ghost’s stomach. His shoulders relax against the soft bed, legs stiff as the knees touch his chest. His arms pull his ravaged body together, gathering the limbs close, as if to piece them back together, but the king’s horses can’t put him back into one piece.
Weakly, he shuts his eyes. If he can’t see the ghost, it’s not real. It can’t harm him, this false picture that his brain is conjuring up to torture him further. His only option is to sleep, again, because he’d rather see nightmares than the hopeful image in front of him.
“I know you’re awake, Shiro,” the ghost murmurs in a smooth alto. Shiro shakes his head, opens his eyes and stares up at Matthew Holt.
“You’re not real,” he replies, though he isn’t entirely sure why he’s talking to a hallucination. Matt snorts, in that cute way that first endeared Shiro, and adjusts his hold on the other man. His fingers continue their ministrations, a knot forming in Shiro’s stomach.
“What makes you say that?” Matt asks, curious but controlled. He’s warm and firm beneath Shiro’s head, the armor he’s wearing digging into Shiro’s cheek. It grounds the haze and guilt and longing into something substantial.
“The last thing I remember is piloting Voltron to defeat Zarkon. I was in the Black Lion. And you-you were supposed to be in some working camp. You can’t be real, because this has to be a dream.”
The fact that he cannot feel his Black Lion quite profoundly-a feat that could only be explained by distance-is damning evidence to the contrary, but Shiro cannot hope. He’s afraid that his words ring true, that the Matt before him is simply a cruel dream or an illusion, so he can’t allow himself to believe that something so good would happen to him, when the past year has already been cruel enough.
“What can I say that will make you believe that I’m real?” Matt asks, and the mask between them shatters as tears spill out over his eyes and fall onto Shiro’s head. “I’m not even sure this is real either.” The dam breaks, then, and everything spills into the open air, and Shiro can’t possibly breathe in the tension.
He pulls himself upright, his body screaming and thrashing at him in protest at the pain that the action puts him through, and gently tilts Matt’s face towards him. His thumbs wipe the tears away, his eyes scanning Matt’s visage familiarly. There’s aging in his cells, a darkness ingrained in his cheeks that isn’t natural but formed from hours of labor and sun. His hair is longer now, skimming the edge of his shoulders and wild, untamed. Shiro’s gaze sweeps downward, cataloguing the alien armor, the muscle in his chest and limbs that hadn’t been there before, and he swallows audibly.
“I wouldn’t-I don’t think I could have imagined, uh, this version of you in a nightmare,” he mumbles awkwardly, a different sort of heat traveling through him. His cheeks are warm but he doesn’t bother hiding it. Matt grins mischievously, leaning into Shiro’s touch. His eyes sparkle wetly as they make eye contact, emotions swimming beneath the depths.
“ This version of me? Shiro, my guy, you can say I’m hot,” he teases, rolling his eyes in fond exasperation. Shiro flusters, eyes traveling back and forth between Matt, his feet, and the dull brown wall. “It’s ok, I think space made you hotter too. Didn’t think that was possible.” He shrugs casually, eyes still red with tears, but there’s a loosening of muscles and his expression is so open that Shiro’s heart stutters uselessly in his chest.
He’s not sure who moves first, but there’s a crashing of lips, frantic and desperate, against his and there’s a hand tangling in his hair so he reciprocates and he thinks his soul leaves his body at the spun silk in his fingers. Shiro groans, feels like a horny teenager again, but he can’t justify stopping the first real contact he’s had in ages. Matt seems to agree as he pushes himself onto Shiro’s lap, legs hooking around his waist, a hand absently mapping out Shiro’s side profile, fingers squeezing Shiro’s knee and dancing back up. Shiro’s human hand slides over Matt’s back for support, fingers gripping his ass, and Matt’s shuddering moan fills Shiro’s mouth.
They pull away, breathe, stare at each other, and Shiro feels self-conscious when he remembers the mess he made earlier. His tongue sweeps his mouth, peeks out from under his lips, and Matt’s groan tugs at the knot forming in his stomach.
“This is ruining the mood but my breath is awful Matt. I can’t believe you kissed me,” he says, feeling distinctly incredulous and distant from the experience. Matt huffs, shrugs like he couldn’t care less.
“Shiro we’re on a rebel space ship heading towards a base of operations sandwiched between two black holes and a blue star in order to contact a secret organization of Galra that have been fighting against Zarkon for thousands of years. Your breath is the least of my concerns,” Matt says, a hand on Shiro’s shoulder for support. “I’m just glad that you’re alive .”
It chokes him, those few words, to know that Matt feels the same, understands the relief in his ribs at seeing the other. Matt studies his face for a quiet moment, leans forward until their foreheads bump, catches his bottom lip. He grins, and Shiro is relieved to know that some things haven’t changed, that despite everything they’ve both been through, Matt is still the same boy he fell in love with.
(There’s time for talking, later, but Shiro has always been bad at saying no to Matt, can’t stop the other man from tangling their bodies together in a show of love and lust to save his life. He hopes, distantly, that if this is a dream, he never wants to wake.)