as high as hope

—and even though the glare of the Sun only lined the curve of Keith's helmet, or the edges of his suit, Shiro can't help but laugh and smile and tap his own helmet against the other's gently, purple-mauve eyes glowing in low gravity, eclipsed only by Earth in the distance.

Keith and Shiro are just roommates and co-cadets, best friends and lovers dreaming of reaching the stars.

You make a fool of death with your beauty
and, for a moment,
I forget to worry.

Hunger; Florence + the Machine

Shiro first meets his roommate at the space academy in the later part of June. Spring is on the horizon, the heat edging the line of just right and only wisps of grey-white clouds dot the sky. It's a season that promises new beginnings or the continuation of bright ones and Shiro can't help but push the curtains aside to let more light in.

A knock on the door is the only warning Shiro gets and he opens it to find a dark-maned man standing, purple-mauve eyes hesitantly looking up to his. A smile comes to his face and his voice is light, lilting when he greets. "I'm Shiro. You're Keith?"

"Yeah," the other says – and his voice is low, lined in a moment of pause, as if unsure of himself. "Your roommate."

"Great!" He opens the door wider and steps to the side, and he takes a moment to note the curl of dark hair against Keith's ear, and the neckline of his red shirt, collarbones peeking. A small duffel bag is carried over one shoulder as Shiro's new roommate walks in and sets it on the ground, half-turning to him.

Light catches on the slope of his nose and the flecks of blue in his eyes, and Shiro grins wide.

"So I haven't called dibs on who gets the bed by the window," he shrugs at the amusement lining the mauve, "and I thought it'd be fairer to wait for you before deciding."

"That's very considerate of you." The response is spoken calmly, but Shiro hears the subtle dryness to the tone and he smiles again, unbothered. Keith looks about and Shiro sees the tied hair resting in between his shoulder blades, onyx on crimson.

"How about we rock, paper, scissors it?" Keith suggests, hand on his hip and grinning. Shiro closes the door with his other hand and reaches forward with his free one.

"You got a deal."

Keith wins the game, and Shiro shrugs – not really sad about losing the window dibs – not when Keith sets his bag against the headboard and plops down in the middle of the bed, where the light catches on his hair and his skin and his eyes.

Shiro settles on his own, by the wall, and crosses his legs under him as mauve glitters across the room. It oddly feels like he's won.

Keith Kogane is eighteen and the only son of Japanese expat and the similarity of the lines between Shiro and the other has him reaching out further than he expected.

Keith Kogane listens to old classic rock with his black earphones, the volume turned high enough that Shiro can hear the lyrics the moment he wakes up, and he rolls his eyes as Keith grins at him from across the room and mouths the lyrics.

His hair is messy, askew and there are sleep lines across his face and gunk in his eyes and Keith can't comprehend anything longer than a sentence without caffeine.

Still, it doesn't stop the way Keith sings to Fleetwood Mac and The Strokes under his breath.

Shiro thinks he's beautiful like that.

Classes at the space academy are grueling and mind-numbing. Gravitational forces, Kepler's laws third law of planetary motion and thermodynamics turn his brain to slush and the early morning – as in early in the shitty, crack-of-dawn morning – boot-camp style training has Shiro groaning all the way back to the dormitories, sweat-soaked shirt sticking to his back and the mud clinging to his shoes.

"Why am I here again?" He groans, collapsing on to the steps running up the building and rests his head against his folded knees. Keith drops down beside him, just as sticky, the stench rolling off him in waves.

"Because we're masochists who want to be astronauts?" The other breathes out – gasps – still unable to catch his breath after seventy laps around the ring.

"Why do I want to be an astronaut again?" Shiro moans, waiting for the incoming dizziness born from exercise-induced fatigue to come and go.

"Because we're obviously too awesome for Earth?" came extremely witty reply that Shiro groans again and bumps his shoulder into the other, laying his head against Keith's shoulder.

"Ge' off me, you lump. You fucking smell." Keith grouses, but he doesn't shake his shoulder. What he does is rest his head against the crown of Shiro's.

"So do you, but you don't hear me complaining." He bites back and laughs when Keith grumbles. "C'mon, let's get cleaned up. We got g force training in two hours."

Shiro groans again. "Carry me, please?"

Keith's response is a flat, dead "No."

Keith doesn't carry him back to their room but he does allow Shiro hang his arm around his shoulders and put his weight on him and, although it's more for humor than actual need, Shiro finds that he doesn't really mind the sweaty hair against his face or Keith's odor against his nose.

He's crazy, obviously.

Orion and Eridanus are shining somewhere above them, but Shiro doesn't really pay the constellations any mind as Keith laughs, staggering to his feet. Shiro grins at his antics, the rum in his veins loosening whatever inhibitions he had before about drinking when there are exams in the next few days.

"Okay, so, uh—"Keith frowns, does something crazy with his face that has Shiro laughing before he remembers what he's supposed to say. "Like—when we get to the moon, I am so pissing there. Imagine if there are, like, alien life forms seeing my floating urine and thinking it's some weird resource."

"Jesus Christ, Keith, you are weird—"Shiro grins as Keith glares at him – well, squints more like it.

"Excuse me, which of us suggested videotaping ourselves literally mooning the Earth on the moon? At least mine has scientific value."

Shiro laughs again at the flush of red across Keith's cheeks and the pout of indignation. "Only you, Keith, can think of piss as scientific."

"Beats ass, fly boy." The other retorts, rolling his eyes a tad bit slower than usual. Alcohol does that.

"Hey," Shiro stands – staggers and almost loses his balance – before turning around tapping his butt. "It's a great ass. You're just jealous you can't have it."

Keith squawks, stalking forward – almost tumbling, actually – and prodding his finger into Shiro's chest. "Please, I can have that ass any day I want it."

Shiro tilts his head, challenging. "You? Don't overestimate yourself, pretty boy."

Keith grins at the insult – that isn't really an insult because Shiro knows how pretty Keith can be – before putting both of his hands on Shiro's butt, pulling their fronts together. This close, Shiro can smell the alcohol off Keith's breath and the firm grasp on his rear. "Dude, I didn't mean literally."

Keith raises a brow, purple-mauve eyes shining. "You didn't specify, Takashi."

Shiro laughs, loves the way his name sounds when Keith says it, and he places both hands on the other's shoulders and starts swaying side to side, to the beat of an imaginary tune beyond the wisp of the russet desert and the millions of lights across the sky.

Keith sways with him and they laugh at nothing and everything, and his hands are still on Shiro's ass. Shiro's not really bothered by it.

Keith moves with his hips and Shiro tumbles forward into him and he wraps his arms tight around the other – looking up at the expanse of the sky. "We're gonna be there, some day. Both of us. Deal?"

He feels a hand rise up to his back and starts drawing circles. Keith's breath is hot on the lobe of his ear. "Deal."

Shiro thinks this is what being in love feels like.

Shiro kisses him that night – in the middle of rum and the whiskey, Orion and the rose-gold of the dawn and Keith's hands are burning, white-hot, on his rear and on his side and on his face.

Keith kisses him back and his eyes glow when he pulls back – grinning, dimpled and effervescent. It's one part alcohol, two parts the flecks of blue in Keith's eyes and the entirety of the constellations in his smile.

"Not bad."

Shiro agrees. They're not bad at all.

They're paired up for the simulation and it runs amazingly.

They work in tandem, in sync and when Shiro calls for coordinates and frequencies, Keith is already there mouthing numbers and codes on the edge of Shiro's note. They play off each other's words, knows the finish line from the get go and when the simulation ends, they have the highest score out of the batch.

Their co-cadets applaud and congratulate them, and their professors and cadet officers look on in pride but Shiro only has an arm around Keith's shoulders and the other is smiling up at him.

"Till the end of the line?" Shiro asks, knows the answer in the quirk of the other's lips.

"You bet your ass on it, fly boy."

It's both the academy and their dreams—

And something far more important between them.

They get chosen for a spaceflight mission, them and three others. Shiro doesn't really mind or care – the fact that they both get chosen has him finally understanding what it means to want everything and get it.

He makes love to Keith that night—

And Keith is pliant and reactive, pale skin and dark hair and flushed cheeks as Shiro trails kisses down the side of his cheeks and on his neck and over his chest.

Keith wraps his arms around Shiro's head as he pulls him close and kisses him on the lips, digging deep and bridging something further than the physical and the tangible.

"I love you" is whispered in between pants and touches and it's just as genuine as the momentary blinking and the laughter and the blushes.

Keith calls him 'Takashi' as Shiro digs his heels in and pushes himself inside and Keith glows in the amber of the lamplight as Shiro pulls out and pushes back into the tightness and the warmth and the center of what Keith really is, at his core – bright, and heat and warmth and lightning.

Keith laughs and giggles as Shiro falls on his back and he's atop, and Keith's hands on his face are gentle – fragile and tender – as the hair falls into his eyes and over his cheeks and he looks ethereal.

He's beautiful and blinding, and Shiro finally understands what it means to look at a star and have it burn you to ashes.

Keith eclipses anything and everything in the universe – Orion, Polaris, great attractors and supernovas.

"Ready?" Shiro asks, turning to the side. Keith looks back at him – Shiro can imagine that as only his own reflection looks back over the curve of the other's helmet.

"Ready."

He decides to call fuck it and reaches beyond the seat to hold Keith's hand, tight and unyielding. Keith squeezes back, just as tightly, as strongly – never letting go.

Gravity and physics push them back into their seats, and water and density alter inside their bodies as the shuttle streaks past the atmosphere, past human limitations and into the great beyond.

When the inky blackness of space greets their eyes, they still haven't let go of each other.

Earth is luminous – blue and beautiful – and Shiro can't help but tear up as they stand, float, on the moon's surface. Keith is beside him and, although he can't see his face, can only see the outline of his suit and the vibrancy of the world in their vision—

—and even though the glare of the Sun only lined the curve of Keith's helmet, or the edges of his suit, Shiro can't help but laugh and smile and tap his own helmet against the other's gently, imagines purple-mauve eyes glowing in low gravity, eclipsed only by Earth in the distance.

No, he's wrong.

Even Earth can't pull him away from Keith.

"You okay?" Keith's voice cuts into the radio inside the space suit and Shiro clears his throat.

"Yeah, 'm okay. You?" The laughter in his ears is booming and raspy and Shiro hears a sob in the middle of the notes.

"Fucking amazing."

Shiro looks towards Earth – and feels the culmination of human intellect, the unyielding dream to reach the stars, to hold it in their hands and answer the millennia-old questions and they haven't – they haven't found the answers yet, haven't reached the stars yet and haven't gotten to the finish line of this great race—

But Keith's hand in his is tight – a vice grip – and his laugh is still present, still continuing and Shiro can't help but laugh, and cry, and just be in awe of everything.

"Mars, next, baby?" He asks, and he sees Keith's helmet turn to his.

He can imagine it – purple-mauve eyes fiery with passion, a victorious smirk on his face and just the image of a blazing comet in orbit around the Sun – with the full force of a star, unceasing and eternal.

"You got a deal, fly boy."

FIN