Chapter Text
Shiro is a gentleman.
He stands up when a women enters the room. He holds the door open for strangers. He helps little old ladies cross the street. He carries their groceries to their car too, or at least, he used to.
Opportunities for kindness were few and far between in jail.
But for a gentleman like Shiro, it’s impossible for him to ignore the pretty, crying boy sitting on the opposite side of the visiting room’s glass partition.
The boy had thick, black hair. It’s tied into a bun at the nape of his neck, and little strands fall either side of his cheeks. They’re sticky with tears. The colour is the first thing Shiro notices about how, and how his own hair used to be just as obsidian. His hair is now alabaster white.
From the stress, the doctors said.
The glass is soundproof, but Shiro knows the kid is crying. His shoulders hitch, and his face is hidden in the collar of his leather jacket. It’s a big jacket; black and beat-up, like it once belonged to a bigger man. The boy wipes his face, and he looks as if he’s doing everything he can to pull himself together — it isn’t working. He’s sitting one booth up from Shiro, and when he leans back to check the space beside him, Shiro can see there’s no one waiting on the other side for this boy.
It’s just the two of them, alone in the no-contact visitation room.
Shiro glances at the guard standing behind him. He’s chewing gum, prodding it between his teeth. Squish. Pop. He stares idly back at Shiro, readjusting the weight of his heavy gun. It’s just for show — Shiro is a good boy. The guards have always been nice to him. Have to be. Shiro smiles at the guard and pushes his chair back to see what he’ll do.
Nothing.
The guard blinks, squelching the gum between his teeth. Pop. He doesn’t lift a finger, lazily following Shiro with his eyes as the prisoner stands up and occupies the booth next to his own. He’s sitting directly across from the crying boy now. Up close, his angry type of misery is hard to watch. Shiro taps on the glass, and the boy flinches.
Cute, Shiro thinks.
The kid’s got huge, dark eyes and lashes like a whore. His nose is dusted pink with grief. He’s so pretty, Shiro thinks, not for the first time. Very pretty. Too pretty to be crying. Sharp cheekbones and a fat mouth, dark lips. He’s young, somewhat feminine if not for his squared jaw and tense throat. Shiro hasn’t seen such an androgynous beauty in many years, and the sight makes his mouth curve in a knee-jerk smile. The boy is fucking gorgeous, a real showstopper.
Shiro picks up the plastic phone in his booth, and he nudges his chin at the boy’s own.
“Pick up,” he mouths.
The boy wipes his face with the sleeve of his too-large jacket. He stares at Shiro like he’s insane. Maybe he is, and god, doesn’t he look it? Shiro has white hair, no arm, and scars that make him look like a dog’s chew toy. He’s not exactly easy to look at, and he watches as the kid flicks his attention from one tragedy to the other, lingering on the folded sleeve of Shiro’s orange jumpsuit.
Shiro forces another smile.
Eventually, the boy reaches for his end of the phone. He wets his mouth, and his breath rattles damply down the line. Shiro’s heart skips a beat.
“What?”
The boy had a deep, gravelly voice and a strong accent. It doesn’t match his sweet, little mouth at all. Shiro’s smile melts into a smirk, and he tilts his head appreciatively.
“Texan?” He asks.
Wide, blue-ish eyes widen.
“Pissed off,” the kid growls.
“Oh,” Shiro laughs.
He can’t help but smile wider, and it makes the boy angry. His tears dry up and the salt tracks crinkle when he scrunches his nose. There’s a silver loop hugged around one nostril, and it glimmers beneath the tacky, fluorescent lighting. Shiro wonders if he’s got any others hidden beneath the baggy black t-shirt that he’s wearing.
“You look like you’ve been stood up,” Shiro says.
The boy narrows his eyes and bares his teeth. Hell, when his cheeks suck in like that, he looks all the more devastating. Thick hair falls between his eyes, tickling the top of his curved nose. Shiro finds it attractive that he looks like a feral kitten. It also makes him nervous — but for Shiro, it’s not a dealbreaker.
“I ain’t been stood up,” the boy sneers.
Although his stare is withering, the kid doesn’t hang up. His tongue darts to the corner of his mouth and catches the last of his tears. Shiro can’t look away, enamoured by the petal-pink hint of flesh that slips across his lips.
He tells himself to get a grip. It’s just a tongue.
“Must be an idiot,” Shiro muses.
“What?”
“The guy that’s stood you up.”
The boy makes a bitter noise and shakes his head. His eyes take that critical path across Shiro’s appearance once again; his hair, his arm, the scar across his nose. Shiro knows what he’s thinking, but neither one of them looks away. Two train-wrecks, watching as the other burns.
“Quit bothering me,” the boy mutters, then hangs up.
Shiro swallows. He feels a little bit stupid. A lot stupid. He hasn’t spoken to a pretty boy in over eight years — at least, not one that hasn’t committed a felony. He hangs up his own phone, but he doesn’t look away from the kid. That would make him even stupider. Shiro’s prison cell didn’t have a window, and the boy is the best view he’s had in years.
Shiro decides that the nose piercing is more cute than annoying. He can see more silver dangling from his ears, but the kid’s hair is so thick he can’t make out how many. The boy wets his mouth, shying away like some zoo animal, and Shiro wonders how he smells. Like baby powder, his mind supplies, based on no other evidence than his excited pulse. Baby powder and chap-stick, and worn leather. Like cream.
Shiro leans forward, a little dazed, and his head bumps into the glass. It makes a loud donk sound and startles the boy. A crease forms between his eyebrows, then he sighs. Suddenly, he snatches up the phone, and has the gall to be frustrated when it takes Shiro more than a moment to do the same.
“Of course he’s an idiot,” the boy drawls. “He’s in here, ain’t he?”
Then, after a minute, he adds, “No offence.”
“None taken,” Shiro smiles.
The boy fiddles with a loop of leather around his throat. Shiro realises it’s a choker. It’s distracting, and the boy slips one black-lacquered nail beneath the band to tug at it. It does little to diminish the cat-like features the kid has, and neither do his wide, unnerving eyes.
“Why’s a pretty boy like you crying over an idiot?”
“Don’t call me pretty,” the kid spits in return.
Shiro sighs. He must hear it all the time. Hard not to, with a face like that. And that face fills with colour, like strawberries and milk, his embarrassment sinking all the way down to his neck. He’s a full-bodied blusher, Shiro learns. His mouth opens and shuts, then finally, the boy lifts his hand and shows off a silver ring around his engagement finger.
“It’s a promise ring,” the kid explains.
Shiro snorts, and then covers it up like a cough. Instead of getting mad, the boy exhales, staring wistfully at the jewellery on his hand.
“We’re in love,” he says quietly.
Shiro’s heart gives a hard, heavy thump. He had a ring like that once. It was gold, like the colour of his husband’s eyes.
“You love him?” Shiro echoes, his chest sore.
The boy nods ardently at his ring. Then he looks up, glancing past Shiro as if his boyfriend might appear at any moment. His naive expectation is heartbreaking. Shiro presses his lips into a line.
“My lawyer stood me up,” he offers lamely.
The boy does that cute thing with his nose again, the scrunch.
“She’s got narcolepsy though,” Shiro shrugs.
“Narcolepsy?”
The boy wets his mouth. His lips form the whisper of a smile. Shiro tracks that small, pink tongue like his pupils are attached to it.
“It’s a medical condition,” Shiro says. “What’s your boyfriend’s excuse?”
As quickly as it came, the boy’s smile disappeared.
“Got into a fight,” he says through his teeth. “He loves fighting.”
“More than he loves you?”
The boy rolls his eyes, his lashes flicking skyward as he shakes his head. It loosens a strand of hair from his bun, and it falls against his cheek. When he sighs, the locks are displaced, and the kid rests his chin against his hand.
“Maybe,” he mutters.
There’s still anger in his rough, Texan accent, but Shiro hears something else there too. The kid’s tired, and his voice skips, like his throat closes at the idea of coming second to a fight. Shiro makes a low, unamused sound.
“Shame,” he says. “He’s missing out.”
The boy barks out a harsh, sarcastic little laugh, but he blushes too. The gentle colour betrays his rough aesthetic that he tries so hard to keep. Pink bleeds down the column of his pale neck and beneath his shirt. Shiro drinks it all in like a sunrise — another thing he hasn’t seen for eight years.
“Shirogane,” comes the bored lilt of the guard behind him. “Let’s go.”
Shiro nods absently, reluctant to take his eyes off the boy.
“Gotta go,” he tells him, staring like a starved dog.
The boy glances at the guard, then at Shiro, and then back down to his hand. He’s looking at the ring again — the promise ring. A promise that’s been broken. His shoulders fall, and with that same promised hand, he wiggles his fingers at Shiro in a wave.
“Bye,” he says, popping his lips.
Shiro hesitates. The guard butts his gun into Shiro’s back and he jostles, remembering where he is. He hangs up the phone and stands, but it feels wrong to leave the kid just sitting there, his tears not long dried. The guard clears his throat as Shiro overstays his welcome, memorising the gorgeous sight before him.
Black hair, pink nose, plush mouth.
He wonders what might happen if he ignored the guard. What would it cost him? It might be worth it if it meant enjoying something beautiful for just a little longer. He was strong — stronger than the guard. If he wanted to, he could stay a minute more.
But then the rifle hits his back again, and the boy is already gazing right through Shiro and into the corridor, like his boyfriend might show up any minute. The clock stuck to the cold, grey walls ticked, and ticked, and ticked. The gates buzz, and the sound makes Shiro twitch.
The kid was not his visitor, and Shiro was a gentleman.
……………………………………………………………………………
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
Keith scrubs the orange sand off his face. His body aches from the long ride home, and his skin is rough with dust. It blew up beneath his secondhand helmet and chapped his lips, which he smears in cherry chap-stick. He throws his helmet down on the sofa and runs his hands across the sand-encrusted tear tracks on his cheeks. Lance raises an eyebrow, sucking at a sweating can of lemon soda.
“Don’t want to talk about what?”
Sand washes down the sink in a spiral of red dirt and foamy hand soap. There’s a breeze coming in from the kitchen window, and it makes Lance’s plants bob up and down. In theory, it’s a beautiful day. To Keith, it might as well have been raining.
“Don’t wanna talk about it,” he mumbles.
Lance took a long, deliberate sip of soda, smacking his lips as he swallowed. He hums, the sound grating in the otherwise silent apartment. Without lifting his head, Keith knew that his best friend was drilling holes into his skull with those perceptive blue eyes.
“What’d he do this time?” Lance sighs.
The disappointment is thick in his tone. He’s only six months older than Keith, but he’s always been protective. Maybe it came with the territory of having as many younger siblings as Lance had, and he considered Keith like family. They sure fought like they were related, but in the end, they shared some painful similarities.
Like their devotion to incarcerated men.
Keith’s boyfriend had been locked up for just under a year, and Lance’s eldest brother had been inside for three. It made their bond as strong as the bars that kept them from their loved ones, as they both shared cavities from their loss. They often visited the jail together, though Lance would visit less often than Keith.
“Nix had his visitation rights revoked,” Keith admits.
“Again?!”
Keith blows his cheeks out and nods, hands curled tightly around the counter. His heart feels bruised. For all his problems, he misses Phoenix more than he can bare.
“Fighting,” Keith explains.
“Knew it,” Lance mutters, followed by an insult in a language Keith couldn’t speak.
“I drove two hours for nothing,” he complained.
He hunches over the counter and thumps his head against the surface. His stomach is heavy with stones, and he clenches his hand just to feel the silver of Nix's ring. It makes him feel a little sick, now. It’s a physical reminder that Nix loves him, heavy and constant, but Keith is sick of the reminder. He wants touch.
Keith hasn’t been fucked since Nix went to jail. He feels empty, like his skin is screaming out for familiar hands, rough callouses, and hungry teeth. It shouldn’t matter — Keith knew what it was like to be alone. He’d been abandoned when his dad died, but he was self-sustaining and tough. Like a cactus, Lance said.
But, even cacti had gooey centres.
Nix taught Keith how to kiss. Showed him how to correct his over-eager mouth, and part his lips for a pierced tongue. He conditioned Keith to sleep next to a warm and solid body, and how to crave the crush of heavy, tattooed arms. He taught him how to suck cock, and how to sit on one too. Soon, Keith felt empty if he didn’t have it every day. He felt abandoned again, lost without the reassurance of his man. Most of all, he learned how much it hurt when it was stolen from him.
“You miss him,” Lance says.
It’s not a question. If it were, it would be a dumb one. Keith misses Nix more than words can say. He misses the scent of his cologne on the bedsheets. He misses the stubble on his jaw and the rash it would leave when it raked against his inner thighs. The loss makes him stifle a famished groan. Of all the things he misses, he doesn’t miss the tone in which Lance speaks. His disapproval has been there since day one.
“I don’t get it,” Lance shrugs.
He’s made peace with it, just like Keith has made peace with the fact that his best friend will always hate his boyfriend. Lance taps his fingers against the bench, and Keith makes a face. The older boy just doesn’t get it. He never could. He came from a big family, one that loved him. Lance has never known how it feels to be alone — not like Keith has.
“So what? You like, sat there for an hour?”
Lance’s jaw is strained, like it’s a struggle for him to keep the conversation civil. Keith smiles at that, oddly fond, and shakes his head. A strand of hair falls from behind his ear, and it’s still damp from his disappointing ride home.
“No. Some guy tried to chat me up.”
“Some guy, huh?”
Keith shrugs. “Some creepy guy.”
He feels a pang of guilt for calling the guy creepy. He wasn’t… that bad. The guy was big, sure. Missing an arm, maybe. Handsome though. Keith rolls his eyes at the memory of the man’s stupid broad shoulders, and his stupid grin, and how extra stupid he’d looked trying to cram all his stupid muscles into that small, stupid booth.
Lance gives a sage hum.
“Well, you’re kind of a creep magnet.”
Keith arches an eyebrow, but Lance only gestures at him with his hand. He flaps his fingers at the inch of skin between Keith’s jeans and his baggy, cropped t-shirt. Keith shrinks inward on himself, covering his exposed midriff.
“Your clothes,” Lance says. “Your hair. You sorta look like an angry prostitute.”
Keith opens his mouth to tell Lance that he looks like a cheap prostitute, but a sudden vibration cuts him short. He slides his out-dated cell phone from his pocket and immediately recognises the number. His heart skips a beat.
“You have a collect call from Altea County Jail. Say yes to accept this — ”
“Yes,” Keith blurts out. “I accept.”
Lance perks up, his eyes narrowing as he points an accusatory finger at his friend.
“Don’t let that pendejo off easily!”
Keith slaps his finger out of his face, his heart hammering as the phone line clicks and the atmosphere of the prison echos down the line. He intends to give Nix a piece of his mind, to share the distress he’s felt in his absence — but all of his anger melts away when he hears his boyfriend’s velvety voice.
“Don’t be mad at me, kitten.”
Keith exhales, his shoulders falling.
“I’m… I’m not mad at you.”
In his peripheral, he sees Lance bristling. His eyes are thin, blue slits.
“Let me talk to him,” he hisses.
Keith covers his ear to block Lance out, listening as his boyfriend’s deep, buttery voice rumbles down the line. Nix sounds good. So, so good. His voice is rough from smoking, a little throaty ever since he broke his nose. Keith’s stomach stirs as Nix tells him all the things that he’s been up to — including the reasons he’d been fighting. Good reasons, he assures him, and maybe Keith would be angrier if his boyfriend’s voice wasn’t so sexy.
Lance slaps the counter top, gritting his teeth.
“Let me talk to him!” He whisper-yells. “I want to talk to that bitch.”
Keith coughs to mask Lance’s words, slicing his hand across his throat to tell Lance to shut-the-fuck-up. Nix is still talking. God, his voice sounds hot. Keith presses his knees together, embarrassed by how easily it unravels him.
“Tell him you’re mad,” Lance says. “Tell him I’m mad.”
But Keith can’t remember ever being mad at Nix. Not when his boyfriend is speaking to him like that, making him feel like a teenager again. Keith hugs his waist, giving affirmative hums at every word Nix says. His resolve melts like honey.
“They had it comin’ kitten,” says Nix, and Keith nods. “I couldn’t let him get away with that, y’know? I won’t let no one talk to me that way. It was disrespectful — I had no choice but to fight him.”
I know, Keith thinks. I understand.
Despite how handsome Nix sounds, it doesn’t take away from how cold the plastic phone feels against Keith’s ear. It reminds him of the cool clutch of the metal around his finger. Deep down, he didn’t understand. It was difficult for Keith to wrap his head around Nix’s love of fighting, knowing it was the very reason he’d not been able to visit him for the past three months.
Keith sighs, telling Nix he loves him in the same breath that his heart breaks.
“You only like him because he’s bad,” Lance says when the call is over.
Keith bites his lip. He’s not sure what’s more painful — Lance’s expression, or the chance that there’s truth in what he says. The older boy sighs, crushing his empty can.
“Wanna go to the arcade?” He asks.
Keith nods as he puts his phone away. He feels it slide into his pocket the same way his heart sinks into his stomach.
……………………………………………………………………………
Keith’s dad died in a fire.
There were a thousand people at the funeral. Firefighter funerals always gathered crowds. They were heroes, people said. So people crammed themselves into the pews, and the church had to place plastic chairs on the lawn outside the chapel. People fanned their faces with paper booklets that were decorated with a grainy photo of Keith’s dad. It was bizarre, and only seventeen-years-old, Keith suffocated beneath it all.
The heat, the casket. The sensation of being totally alone amongst a sea of people.
Keith sat in the front-most pew, dressed in a suit that didn’t fit him right. When he turned back, he didn’t recognise a single face behind him. Hands squeezed his shoulder, but the touch was meaningless. The priest droned on, his collar damp with sweat. Keith swallowed, but his throat closed up, like a hand was clasped around it. When he stood up and fled the service, no one tried to stop him.
He purchased cigarettes at the gas station across the street. The cashier didn’t question his age, or his ill-fitted suit, or the red rims of his eyes. Keith wasn’t much of a smoker, his dad never let him do it anyway. Said they caused fires. Keith choked on a laugh as he lit a cigarette in the parking lot. He remembers wanting nothing more than a fire to swallow him whole that day.
As he stood in the sun, drinking smoke, sweat collecting on his borrowed suit, a man’s voice echoed across the parking lot. It was both smooth and rough, and it made Keith’s skin prickle.
“Hell of a crowd,” the handsome voice laughed. “Did someone famous die?”
Keith remembers glancing up at the funeral service across the road, and then turning his attention to the man who’d spoken to him. The guy was tall and attractive. He had brown skin and even browner eyes, and wore a denim jacket covered in thick patches. He looked dangerous, like a cigarette. Like something Keith's dad would have wanted him to steer clear of.
“No,” Keith said. “Just my daddy.”
The stranger’s smirk fell, and his eyes went to Keith’s lips.
“Shit,” he said, inelegantly. “That blows.”
Keith nodded with a lump in his throat. It did blow.
There were scuff marks on the man’s combat boots and holes in his jeans. They look purposeful, like they’d been torn to show off the tattoos beneath the fabric. He had his hair slicked back like some bad boy from a 1950s movie, and admittedly, it suited him. The longer he stared at Keith’s mouth, the more Keith was aware of the hole in his chest.
Nix came into his life as suddenly as his dad had left.
The man started as a distraction, something sweet to soothe his grieving. Nix rode a motorcycle, he had a gang, and he smoked a lot of pot. Keith found that as addictive as his kisses, and he soon let Nix put all sorts of things inside his aching hole. He pushed cocaine up into his nose, and he pushed his cock between his thighs. Keith let him fill the void his father left behind, and soon his pain drifted away like dust motes in the sun.
Some days, Nix would drape his jacket over Keith’s shoulders and light his cigarette. It made him feel like a film star, like there was never a hole inside his chest. Keith felt completed, or numb enough to ignore his broken edges. The place beneath Nix’s wing was so warm and dark that he ignored the nasty, often illegal, habits that Nix weaved into both of their lives.
“Hey, kitten.”
When Nix slides into the booth across from Keith, his heart skips a beat. His boyfriend of two years has a smile that spreads so slowly that Keith gets all caught up in it, like molasses. When the man speaks, Keith can hear his tongue piercing clack across his teeth. It’s a wonder the guards let him keep it, but Keith won’t complain. His eyes dart automatically to the man’s mouth, hoping he’ll see a hint of silver.
“Nix,” he exhales, almost dreamily.
He blushes so easily. Orange is almost Nix’s colour. Somehow, in his twelve-month imprisonment, Nix has gotten a face tattoo. It’s a little bird against his cheekbone, a nod at his gang. It’s a little crooked, and the ink blurs with each passing week. Keith still likes it, and he wonders if Lance was right. Maybe he does love Nix because he’s bad.
He shifts closer to the glass that separates them. Maybe if he gets close enough, he'll feel his boyfriend’s warmth. Keith places his palm against the glass, spreading his fingers as Nix’s hand mirrors his own. It makes Keith’s skin mourn, desperate for his touch.
“I missed you, Keithy-cat.”
The nickname is ridiculous, but Keith’s cheeks burn red. He likes the way Nix looks at him. He could feel that hungry gaze even it if he closed his eyes. Brown irises that map out his skin and stare at his mouth. It’s like Nix is thinking of the same thing Keith is - the last time their mouths touched, or perhaps, the last time they fucked. The memory is almost painful.
Knees pressed close together, Keith glances up at a glimpse of white.
Nix is talking, giving details of some argument he’d had with his cellmate. Keith nods absently, eyes drawn to the hint of white that shifts beyond Nix’s shoulder. His eyebrow raised as a one-armed prisoner passed behind Nix’s booth, standing even taller than the guard beside him. He looks as if he could snap the guard in half, and it’s comical to Keith. He almost smiles, but the prisoner notices him. He stops dead in his tracks.
Shirogane.
The prisoner smiles. It’s a wide, silly thing. Almost shark-like, a row of gleaming teeth, or maybe more akin to a dumb dog. It doesn’t really fit the scarred-and-dangerous persona the prisoner wears. Keith tries to ignore it, turning his attention back to Nix. He hums, affirming part of Nix’s story.
“You know how these guys are, kitten. Gotta set them straight sometimes.”
“Ahuh,” Keith says, but his eyes wander again.
The man named Shirogane points at the back of Nix’s head. The guard tries to move him along, but the prisoner is so bulky that he simply ignores the butt of the rifle at his back.
That him? Shirogane mouths through the glass.
Keith raises an inconspicuous eyebrow, then tilts his head. Nix says something about punching someone, and Keith gives an empty sigh of acknowledgment. But he can’t look away from the man standing behind him. The guard nudges him again, and Keith winces at the force he uses. Shirogane frowns, and his jaw squares meanly. The guard tries to move him into the hallway like some zoo animal that’s escaped from its cage.
He’s waiting for an answer, so Keith shrugs.
Want me to take care of him? Shirogane mutters again.
Keith frowns as he deciphers the silent words. The prisoner raises a fist and mimics punching the back of Nix’s head. He smiles as he does it, this wicked thing that makes Keith’s stomach knot. The guard doesn’t like that - and this time he shoves the prisoner until Shirogane stumbles toward the hallway. Nix turns at the sound, scoffing when he sees the white-haired prisoner being dragged toward the cells.
“Were you even listenin’ to me, kitten?”
Keith nods, but he’s lying. He didn’t hear a word Nix said. He feels guilty, and he snaps his attention back to the man in front of him. His boyfriend. Across the line, he swears he hears a distant laugh. He can’t shrug off that funny feeling in his stomach.
“I’m sorry,” Keith admits.
He hates how his blush betrays him.
……………………………………………………………………………