Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/9483542.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Voltron:_Legendary_Defender
  Relationship:
      Keith/Shiro_(Voltron)
  Character:
      Shiro_(Voltron), Keith_(Voltron), Pidge_(Voltron), Allura_(Voltron),
      Lance_(Voltron), Hunk_(Voltron)
  Additional Tags:
      Inception!AU, Rough_Sex, Keith_is_17_the_first_time_they_have_sex, But
      honestly_they_have_so_many_bigger_problems_in_this, Angst, Mention_of
      torture, Alternative_Universe_-_Inception, fucked_up_people_with_fucked
      up_pasts_that_fell_in_love
  Series:
      Part 1 of Sheithunlimited
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-01-28 Words: 2148
****** If you give it a name it has already won ******
by chiapslock
Summary
     Keith's head has always been kind of fucked up, he doesn't need a
     machine that lets him enter other people dreams to know that.
     The PASIV brings a lot of problem in Keith's life, but it also brings
     him Shiro. So it's probably worth it.
Notes
     This was written (hastly) for the first day of #sheithunlimited week
     for the prompt DREAMERS.
     I wanted to write something a little less... fucked up, but alas.
     It's pretty late where I am from so I haven't... re-read this as much
     as I probably should? But I wanted to post something today for the
     start of the week so here it is
See the end of the work for more notes
Keith doesn’t even remember the first time he enters someone else’s dream, he
was young – too young – and angry. He knows now that he’s lucky to be alive,
that everything he was then was a recipe for disaster in this job.
In the beginning he took any job, jumping from team to team, trying to stay
alive, trying to find a reason to stay alive (which might be worse), at least
until the freaking Mombasa job.
Their architect betrays them in the middle of their con and Keith, that can’t
even remember the guy’s name, gets strangled by the mark’s subconscious.
He wakes up, because of course he does, and he can’t breathe, for a second he
thinks that he’s still feeling the effect of the dream, but then he realizes
that no, there’s someone fucking choking him. Fan-fucking-tasting.
Keith tries to kick at the guy’s stomach, but he can’t reach, and he can’t pry
the hands from his throat. He’s going to die, here, for a stupid mistake,
because someone should have checked better, dammit. For a second, for the first
time in his life, he thinks that he doesn’t want to die, not really.
He’s sixteen, he had lied to get the job, and isn’t this just the high point of
his miserable life?
The next thing he sees is red and for a second he doesn’t understand (shouldn’t
he be seeing black? He isn’t an expert of asphyxiation but…) before he realizes
that what he’s seeing is blood, more to the point the blood of the guy trying
to kill him, that is now sliding to the floor, dead.
He looks up and he sees who saves him and for a second he doesn’t even
recognize their freaking Extractor, which really speaks volumes about how much
had Keith been paying attention. The guy holds a gun in his hand (the gun he
had just used to save Keith’s life, presumably) and he doesn’t even spare a
glance his way before firing again, killing the damn snitch.
When Keith stops coughing and can finally focus on what’s going on around them
it’s chilling to realize that they are the only two left alive.
“Well,” the extractor says, cleaning his face with his sleeve (his bloody face,
with other’s people blood) “this went poorly”
Keith, probably because he almost died, loses his shit. Rather poorly?This was
a clusterfuck of epic proportions and the worst thing is? It’s the first time
in his life that he has felt alive.
The other guy looks at him and then smiles, amused.
--
This is how Keith meets Shiro, but when other people ask they just tell them
that they had worked together on some jobs before deciding they made a good
team.
And they do. Shiro teaches him how to dream, how to really dream, and the
difference from whatever amateur bullshit he was doing and this is incredible.
Keith starts to realize the incredible possibilities that the PASIV offers
them, start to realize the power at his fingertips and that he can do more than
just little jobs to pass the time and buy some bread at the end of the day.
They aren’t a complete team, obviously, and what the two of them can do alone
is very limited, but Shiro doesn’t like working with people he doesn’t trust
and after last time Keith can’t say he’s a fan of what happens when they don’t
do their researches.
(“Why where you even in the Mombasa Job?” he asks Shiro three months after
their little partnership starts.
“Because there was a spy” he says, like it’s logical, but Keith doesn’t get it.
Keith doesn’t know about the Galra yet, about the story behind his prosthetic
arm, about his scars, his nightmares. He was just a kid then, even if he liked
to think he wasn’t.)
It’s just the two of them most of the time, sometimes they are joined by a kid,
even younger than him, but Pidge never dreams, she’s their chemist, one of the
best even at her age, and she just watches them, with a gun at her side.
Keith sometimes wonder if, in this job, there is someone out there who isn’t as
screwed up as he is and is. He hopes not.
--
Considering their first meeting, Shiro should have been way less shocked when,
five months after the Mombasa job, Keith pushes him against a door with the
perfectly understandable intention of fucking the guy’s brain’s out. And
getting fucked right after, because, really, Keith has been thinking about this
since the first moment he had seen Shiro cleaning blood from his face.
It’s cute that Shiro tries to stop him, asks him if he’s sure, tells him that
Keith doesn’t have to, Keith laughs in his fucking perfect face.
He has to. Because there has never been anyone who had actually given two crap
about Keith the way Shiro does, not since his father, not since he was left
alone when he was twelve and so fucking hungry. Most importantly he wants to
and Keith had never wanted anything in so long that the feeling left him
breathless and confused most of the time.
He cups Shiro’s face, licks the scar across his nose and hopes that this is the
last time they have to talk about this (“You didn’t even say anything, Keith,
you just lick me whenever I try to talk!”).
Thankfully Shiro gets on with the program rather quickly from there on, and
Keith smirks when the other picks him up (and yes, Keith can feel his hand all
up on his ass, he likes it very much) and brings him to the bed.
They’re staying in a shitty safe house and they have to stay out of the radar
for a while, this time, which is why it’s the perfect opportunity for this,
when they have days where they won’t be disturbed.
So they take their time. Not the first time, of course, the first time is quick
and messy, because Keith can’t wait any longer and Shiro doesn’t seem to be
much better (which is a relief, really, because he was sure Shiro wouldn’t have
refused him for sex, but Keith didn’t want to ruin everything else).
The first time Shiro takes him with, probably, not enough preparation and it’s
exactly what Keith wanted. The second time it’s Keith that pushes inside Shiro,
looking at his chest, pumping his erection at the same time with each push.
He wonders what love feels like, if it’s something like what he feels when he
watches Shiro moaning his name. If it’s not, if what he’s feeling it’s
something else, he thinks that everyone else is just missing out.
--
It’s almost one year later that Shiro hooks him up on the PASIV when they don’t
have any job and tells him he has something to show him.
Keith follows him, of course he does, he would follow Shiro to his death and
back and not even complain, and he doesn’t say anything at least until Shiro
starts stripping in the middle of the dream.
They aren’t in the middle of the street, Shiro had made them appear in a room
that Keith had never seen, but seemed kind of cozy (maybe his childhood room?),
but, at the same time, Keith isn’t sure if he likes the idea of dream sex, he
will try it if Shiro wants to but…
It takes him a moment to understand what he’s seeing.
Shiro has always been very particular about clothes, always wearing at least
two shirts and one sweater and Keith had never said anything, even if it meant
more time lost undressing him when they wanted to have sex. Keith had never
asked and never known what Shiro had gave him so freely all those months ago.
He sees him now, his chest covered in cuts and scars that hadn’t been there in
reality, bruises and injuries where in the real word Keith had licked at
perfect skin. It’s a horrific painting and Keith doesn’t dare moving.
Every self-respectable dreamer knows about totems, about those little private
things that changed between reality and dreams, sometimes the only thing that
marked the line between madness and sanity. Keith had never heard of someone
that used himself as a totem, his skin as a way to center himself, his trauma
as a way to remind himself that he had survived, that the scars he felt weren’t
real.
How can he not love this man, he wonders.
“You don’t have to show me yours,” Shiro tells him immediately “I just…” he
stops, collects his thoughts. Keith doesn’t want to listen, it’s too much.
So he stops him, takes his dagger and shows it to Shiro, removing the bandage
that show the little purple symbol that, in real life, just doesn’t exist.
Shiro already owns his life, what does it matter if he gives him his sanity as
well?
--
When she finds them Keith is suspicious, when she talks about assembling a team
he’s pissed.
He thinks they have worked with some of them (Lance, probably, maybe?) but he
doesn’t care, it’s dangerous, far more dangerous than any other job they have
taken in the past two years together. If he says something now, he knows, Shiro
would stop would listen to him.
But Keith looks at Allura, listen to her talk about Zarkon, about Galra, and
thinks about Shiro’s chest. He keeps his mouth shut.
Vows to protect Shiro, or at least die trying.
--
In the end Allura brings with her Lance, a forger, and Hunk, an architect,
while him and Shiro call Pidge to help.
They shouldn’t work. Keith doesn’t like Lance, and the feeling is mutual, and
they fumble, don’t work well together and this is not some kind of job they can
just half-ass. This is Shiro’s life, and Keith won’t accept nothing but the
best.
So one day he tells Shiro that he needs some time and he takes Lance and dive
in his own subconscious. When he opens his eyes they are in Mombasa, and isn’t
that just a bitch (his mind really doesn’t trust Lance, but the other doesn’t
get the reference).
They talk, for hours, minutes in the real word, and they try to understand each
other, try to work something out because they are the only part of this that
doesn’t click as effortlessly as everything else. It’s difficult but after that
Keith thinks that maybe now they can stay in the same room without biting each
other faces off.
He’s almost proud of himself.
--
They do some trial jobs, to start really working as a team, to iron out the
kinks in their relationship and it’s difficult. Keith usually counts only on
Shiro as back up, and now he has to keep count of at least two other heads if
something goes wrong. Lance is unpredictable, he changes faces with too much
ease and never tells them. Hunk is good but he doesn’t believe in himself
enough. He sees all of this, but he doesn’t know what to do, how to make it
better.
“Patience yealds focus” Shiro tells him, after their first job (which isn’t a
disaster, but only because of dumb luck) and then he goes and do what he does
best, he takes these kids with problems that Keith will never really know and
makes them better, like he had done with him almost four years ago.
In the end they are a well-oiled machine, they can almost predict each other’s
movement, red each other’s mind. They are a team, they can trust each other,
and in their world it’s much more than some get in their entire life.
--
The night before the job he finds Shiro in their room and he doesn’t know what
to do, doesn’t know what to say.
When Shiro looks at him and smiles, Keith doesn’t know what to expext.
“Don’t tell me this is actually the time where you want to talk” he says,
smirking, like the little shit that he is. Keith loves him more than he can say
and so he goes there and he licks the scar on his nose, because it’s the only
thing he can do, the only way he knows how to tell him that it’s going to be
okay.
--
(After the job, after it’s done and the idea had been implanted in Zarkon’s
mind, Shiro doesn’t wake up, lost in Limbo. Someone had to do it, everyone
knows it, so Keith had let him, had woken up and had known that the minute it
would take him to get on the PASIV again would be too much time that Shiro will
live without him trapped in his own mind.
He doesn’t care. He closes his eyes again and goes after him.)
End Notes
     .....I'M SORRY???????
     It's possible I will write something more to this universe. I would
     like to write the whole Zarkon job more in details, and explain
     Shiro's backstory a lot more, but with I really didn't have the time
     to make this a 10K monstruosity.
     Just some notes that I couldn't put in the story: Shiro is an
     extractor, Keith works as his point man, but Shiro is training him to
     be an extractor in case something happens to him (he just doesn't
     tell him so, because the last time he tried Keith punched him in the
     face). The other's role are clearer, I hope (Allura is just the
     Tourist - at least in this job).
     Shiro is ex-military, Galra is a special - and secret - branch in the
     military that uses the PASIV technology to do experiments on people
     and steal from other governments (make 2+2).
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