Dog Days // Sheith

Chapter 5

"Hey, Shiro?" Keith was standing in the bedroom door, a towel around his waist and his hair still dripping water onto his shoulders. Shiro stirred where he had dozed off, blinking up at Keith with a questioning little grunt. "I don't have any clothes to change into." Shiro scrunched his face up, rubbing his eye as he made himself wake up enough to be coherent. "And we only have the bike."

Shiro sat himself up and Keith stepped forward so that Shiro could wrap his arm around his thighs, resting his cheek against Keith's stomach. "We'll both go. You can borrow some of my clothes, they'll be a bit big, but."

Keith hummed quietly, petting Shiro's hair with a smile at the easy affection. "That's fine."

Keith was not a particularly vain person, not someone who preened or coordinated his outfits. He knew he was attractive by some standards, but he didn't really care. That being said, dressed in Shiro's sweatpants that bunched up considerably at his ankles, a t-shirt at least a size too big and the soft black boots from the Garrison suit... Keith was starting to feel a little self-conscious. Shiro's barely concealed laughter didn't help, but when Keith huffed and swatted at him, it only made Shiro laugh hard enough that he couldn't hold it back at all, rocking back in a dining room chair. Between deep breaths, he insisted that he still found Keith cute, which made him scowl deeply. Shiro was a little more composed by the time he was on the back of the motorbike, his hand resting on Keith's hip as he kicked the engine to life and they rode towards the citadel.

Heiress seemed to exist in a void. It was miles away from any other town, and in Keith's twenty years of living there, it hadn't changed at all. It had always looked like an old town even though it wasn't, shop signs faded and everything in dusky shades that complimented the shades of yellows and browns from the desert. At this time of year, the streets were pretty quiet. Kids were in school, the cadets had returned to the Garrison for the semester. All that was left were the parents of those kids, most of them working on the main strip of Heiress or persevering the heat to get their errands done before three o'clock. The sun wasn't even at its apex yet, but it didn't really make a difference during the dog days.

Keith pulled the motorbike into the parking lot of the grocery store, crown jewel of the strip, because it wasn't entirely visible from the road. There was no need to draw any more attention to themselves than Keith's outfit was going to. He cut the engine to the bike, leaning back against Shiro's chest, wiping his brow and staring up at him.

"Clothes first."

Keith walked with his head ducked down and his arms crossed over his chest, trying very hard to master the art of vanishing. Shiro didn't help at all, his hand in his jeans pocket and his grin poorly concealed. If Keith wasn't trying to spontaneously combust, he would have ribbed Shiro for being so smarmy. At least someone was having fun.

Keith relaxed once they stepped into the clothes store, hit by the air conditioning and the ambient music playing quietly. There was no one else but the shop assistant, who had looked up with a smile at first, then she stared at Keith for a moment too long and went back to folded shirts. Keith b-lined for the shelves of jeans to one side, finding his size in black and grabbing a couple of pairs. Shiro was milling around the racks, gradually falling into easy conversation with the sales assistant, and she was happier to see him than Keith, who had grabbed a few of t-shirts off a table and headed into the changing rooms.

He stripped out of the borrowed clothes, sparing himself a minute glance in the full length mirror on the back wall of the cubicle. He looked a little thinner than usual, and there was a smattering of bruises that he didn't know how he got. His eye was looking better, his dark iris bordered by a thin rim of red. He rubbed at his arms for a moment, before pulling on a t-shirt and wriggling into the dark jeans, feeling more like himself than he had in a long time. The shirt he had grabbed was thin, grey cotton with a vintage coca-cola logo across his chest. He had grabbed it blindly, but he liked it.