Chapter Text
"You're doing so well for me, Takashi."
The voice is purred, hot against the back of his neck. Shiro blinks, tries to shake the static from behind his eyes, tries to comprehend and acknowledge the liminal spaces that flash in front of his eyes, between his irises and eyelids – red-flash, blue-flash, flashflashflash –
It's fine. It's all fine, it's easy, smooth, and suave, with semi-sharp fingernails gliding up the crawl of his spine and taking steps of their own across the expanse of Shiro's tensed-up, fought-down body, gentle like razorblades and sparking like circuitry.
There's that voice again – rasped and desperate against his ears, “fuck, Shiro, Takashi, look at you – ” and it makes Shiro's shoulders tense and shiver. It makes his lungs jump up in his chest – all too desperate to catch more air, too desperate to be drained of fluid, desperate to be rid of the wavefront of the sea and the plasma fluid of the stars –
And – blink, flash, don't miss it, Takashi, don't let yourself miss it – and then Shiro's on his back, flat against something soft and fluffy like clouds, mattresses that are too unrealistic for the castle to have, because Alteans are smooth and efficient and ascetic, so of course the bedsheets wouldn't be deep black and phasing in and out of his touch as though the only thing Shiro can feel is –
is –
is –
( “Say it with me, Takashi – who are you holding? Who’s doing this to you?” )
– brown skin, like the sands on planet Earth, and soft sky eyes glancing up at him – tinted navy with mischief, darkened with lust, as he – Lance, it’s Lance – tightens his pretty fingers around the hollow of Shiro's throat.
"So, so good for me," Lance sighs out, and Shiro’s vision flashes with stars and vibrates with electromagnetism.
Because – fuck. He's Lance, and he’s fucking beautiful, and his sharp nails feel heartbreaking against Shiro’s skin.
It's a truth, reality, some kind of undeniable fact that asserts itself in every cell and circuit in Shiro's body – Lance is beautiful, with deadly blue eyes and fingers wrapped around Shiro's neck, gentle but choking, lovely-destructive.
Shiro tries to say his name – and if he did say it, past a huff of breath or a strangled moan, then god, would he worship it – lance, lance, my love, my command, my teller – something – something too unnecessary, too flashy, something Lance doesn't need to be called, but –
Then the room fades and flashes, and there's the slick taste of sea-salt on Shiro's tongue. Fingers tighten on his throat, two more fingers press against his mouth and draw shapes – a wave pattern, like interference and electromagnetic radiation –
And Lance has those blue-light, high-energy wave eyes focused so hard on Shiro. "I dream of this, y’know?" he says, and his voice is –
– static,
and breezy –
and it's all –
all tangled up in Shiro’s braincells,
picking Takashi apart
right from the inside of his mind.
It's unfamiliar and the room flashes, stutters with blue light. Shiro's electrons are being stripped away, slow-slow-slowly.
( – high energy wavelength, low intensity heat in Lance's eyes and Lance's mouth and Lance's shark-sharp smile buried in the junction of Shiro's shoulder, razor-edged, enough to make Shiro's skin sing – )
This is it, the photoelectric effect, hypothesized through Lance’s smirk and mouth and words, realized through his infliction on Shiro – an experiment, to test the fundamental behaviors of light –
– as a particle
– as a wave
– as both
– as neither.
And the room flashes blue, and the room flashes purple, and the room flashes with EM radiation that's far off the spectrum of human vision. Ultraviolet, and x-ray, and gamma rays – unseeable-unknowable, and Shiro's throat aches with claw-mark scratches.
And Lance is smiling.
Beautiful, beautiful Lance. Like a hurricane and a fire cyclone and a mess, like a disaster and a fucking car crash against Shiro’s shaky semblance of confidence.
He makes Shiro's mouth taste like sea salt and surreality, makes his head breezy-dreamy-greedy, and –
and –
– fuck.
His hand lurches out to grab at the bedsheets and his eyes snap open so wide it hurts. It’s his human hand that moves, human real flesh and blood and nerves and skin cells and scarred up beneath his long sleeves, fingertips clawing at not-so-soft ascetic Altean bedsheets, and Shiro's –
– panting.
Castle bedsheets. Darkened room. He hisses under his breath, with a throat sore like the aftermath of strangulation, like the consequence of drowning. His chest hurts like it was filled up with seawater, like salt over-saturated his circuit-wire heart, like all the bones and all the electric charges lined up in his body are fading, and flickering, and flashing.
God, Shiro needs to breathe.
Except he can't.
Wanting Lance – that’s the kind of hope that closes up his throat and turns his stomach inside out, acidity that bubbles up in all of Shiro’s sockets and circuits. It’s a wretched desire that claws inside his ribs – this tired, over-repeated song that cycles in his head and mind and thoughts.
It's getting pathetic.
It's at the point where Shiro has to wander awake, wide-eyed, slow-minded through the castle halls, his brain bleary with exhaustion, his mouth sore with regret, strained with you can’t do this, you can’t think of him like this –
Because it's Lance, yes, it's Lance – but it's bright-eyed, soft-smiled Lance who wouldn't break a brittle, stress-stained hair on Shiro's head. It's Lance who wouldn't have the strength or stomach to snap Shiro's fingers in half, Lance who wouldn't dare grip onto Shiro's throat with choking intention.
Lance who is clever and kind and brave – not a being of harm, not a creature of destruction.
( Shiro is different.
For him, survival becomes carnage. For him, love becomes mania. For him, want is a sickening stickiness at the back of his teeth, and the continuity of his existence is combat. Shiro, he can tear, and rip, and hurt, and harm.
He is not gentle, feisty, terrestrial like Lance is, he's not brave and earthly-impulsive like Keith, he's not forest-frantic and human-curious like Pidge, he's not caring and compassionate and worldly like Hunk.
Shiro knows void, disappearance, obscurity.
Shiro knows asphyxiation.
Shiro is different. )
He knows he shouldn't – deface Lance, the way he does. He knows Lance wouldn't do the things his dreamscape puts forth as reality. He knows he's not quite right, somewhere.
It makes Shiro freeze up, when he needs to talk to Lance. Makes him harsher. Colder. Brush Lance's words off and turn the other direction.
And yet – Lance almost died, yesterday, he almost died, and Shiro wouldn't've been able to take that –
( It's scary, the things he's seen, but scary stopped being scary and scary turned into expected. Creeping terror turned into a necessity of survival, a thread in his veins hooked up to his heart hooked up to his mind hooked up to Lance's shark sharp dream teeth so Shiro knows just how much danger to feel. )
Shiro saw Lance get cut open today.
Shiro saw Lance lacerated and unconscious.
Shiro almost saw Lance die.
Shiro saw red and if sentries were soldiers, he would've killed one – but sentries are sentries, and he’d rendered one inoperational. Tore its circuits out. Tore its mechanical insides to bits. Sentries don’t look fragile – they look broken when they’re dead.
But Lance? Lance looked fragile, when he shouldn't look fragile. The hard look in steel blue eyes turned surprised and watery, pained and fearful, and this is the part where Shiro’s throat goes heavy and his stomach acid threatens to burst his organs in pure terror.
– and then Lance's cryopod took too long.
Lance stumbled out, healed and okay, just fine, Shiro, I'm just fine, half a day later than he should've, and Shiro needed to swallow his own misplaced tears and tangible relief down, because Lance – Lance was safe and healed and smiling, nervous but handsome, his eyes ashine with life and his skin flushed with cold-color, eyelashes frosty and mouth chapped in a way that Shiro wanted to feel against his own.
Shiro isn't – in love. This isn't love, this can't be – he doesn't know Lance well enough. Love is different from this. What this is, it's that Shiro wants Lance to drown him. Shiro wants Lance to asphyxiate him. It's something loud and frantic and wild but it is not, it is not love.
But Shiro dreams of Lance's long legs and bright smile and warm arms wrapped around his shoulders to soothe him down. Shiro dreams of delicate fingers entwined with his own, wrapped around his throat, forcing his mouth wide open as Lance stares into his eyes and coos you're so good to me, Takashi. It's too much. It's not enough.
It's the haunting images of Lance smiling wide, with intent, at passing alien girls and boys, a sharp shiny grin that Shiro wants engrained in his own skin. It’s the look of Lance in Shiro’s own clothing, fingertips curled around the edges of those too-long sleeves and swaths of black fabric reaching down to his thighs and the prettiest rosy blush smattered across Lance’s cheeks matched up with that addictive nervous giggle.
It's the terrifying want, can't have, don't touch.
It’s like drowning, except Shiro doesn’t have lungs to drown with.
Whatever it is – it’s draining. And Shiro isn’t sure how he still has the nerve to look Lance in the eye, after dreams like this.