these moments

(a space for all the words that don't make a full story, but still complete them anyway)

[shallurapoems]

Allura's eyes suddenly flick up, meeting his from across the table. 

 "Can I talk to you for a second?" she asks Shiro. 

Surprised, he swallows. "Uh, yeah," he replies, nodding his entire head. 

He lifts his hands from the strategy table, following her lead as she walks through the door. The door slides shut behind him, a small vacuum of air delivering a short gust of wind to rustle his hair. 

She turns around, a flyaway of her white hair also caught in the breeze.

"Something wrong?" he asks, but his question is interrupted by her lips.

"No," she answers, when she pulls away with a sigh, a satisfied sigh perched on her lips. 

He can't help the smirk that tugs at the corner of his mouth. "So... what did you want to talk about, captain?"

"There was nothing to talk about, Shiro. I simply wanted to kiss you."

"Taking on this new leadership role well, aren't you?" 

She only smiles, turning away just as the door slides open again.

[shallurapoems]

He hates to interrupt Allura when she's so hard at work, but he also can't tuck away his desire to give her a little affection as he retreats to the room to sleep.

He stands in the hallway, watching her as she typed away on her computer, sitting in probably the least ergonomic way -- one knee up into her chest, the other leg crossed over the seat of the chair, her chest learning forward into her propped up leg. 

She's probably been like this for the past hour. 

 "You know better than to sit like that," he reminds her gently, stepping into her workroom. 

 "Hm," she simply replies, writing out another few lines. Some coding gibberish that he isn't going to invest time in understanding. The pen in her mouth shifts from the left to right side of her mouth. 

 He watches her tab through her multiple windows on her screen, completely focused on the task at hand. 

 She isn't sleeping anytime soon. 

Shiro feels another yawn climbing up his chest and suppresses it, ducking down to give her a short kiss at  the corner of her mouth. 

 "Goodnight," he tells her, turning away. 

 She catches his forearm just before he steps off, taking him by surprise. When he turns his head back to look at her, she takes the pen out of her mouth and pulls him down, meeting his lips for a kiss -- this one, longer, deeper, and more passionate. 

He blinks as she pulls away, an amused smile on his face. "I didn't think you'd want to be interrupted." 

"For a kiss?" she asks. "You can always interrupt me." 

He chuckles, pressing a kiss onto her forehead. "Good to know."

[shallurapoems]

And just before he disappears into the spacecraft, she suddenly realizes something. Her head clicks to the right, her eyebrows furrow, and an uneven smile rolls over her lips.

“You know something?” she remarks.

He can’t help but turn around to smile back at her. “What?”

“I think this is the first time we’ve ever said goodbye to each other,” she says, thinking on it for a moment. She smiles at him. “You’ve never left my side — at least, not willingly.”

His smile widens. “No,” he agrees, shaking his head. “I guess I haven’t.”

They look at each other for a while, taking in a few more seconds of each other’s eyes.

He breathes out, reaching up to rest his palm on her chin. “Let’s make this our last goodbye.”

She squirms nervously. “I know you don’t mean it but you make it sound like you’re going to die on this mission.”

His eyes widen in shock. “Oh no, no, no,” he corrects quickly, with an embarrassed smile. “What I mean is that when I come back, I don’t plan on ever leaving you again.”

[shallurapoems]

for shallurangstweek day 2: failed // saved

.

She barely realizes what's happened until she feels a warm pool gathering under her. Eyes wide, she looks down from Shiro's eyes to the lower half of her body. There's a dark bloom over his torso, a triangle of silver at the center. Streams of red dribbling over her paladin armor. 

She looks back up at him. "You're dying," she gasps.

His smile doesn't waver. "I saved you," he simply replies, voice calm.

"But you're dying," she repeats. Her chest tightens, her breath quickens, and the thoughts in her mind start to fog. This couldn't be happening. This can't be happening. This can’t be happening again.

He can't die now. He can't die ever. 

She would never allow it. She cannot let him die. 

Not here. Not on this mission. Not when the end is so so close and their happy ending is just within reach.

This mission failed. This mission failed again. 

How many times does she have to try to keep him alive?

How many times does she have to reset reality?

Each and every time it ends the same way. He saves her, and she loses him. No matter what she does, no matter what she changes, this is always how it ends. 

Is this how it is always going to end? Is this really what fate offers two star-crossed lovers?

He coughs, then turns his head to spit away some blood before he returns his eyes back to her. She cradles his head in her hands, holding back the tears in her eyes.

She's seen him dying hundreds of times over. She should be used to the sight of it by now. But she's not. 

"Hey," he reassures her, lifting a hand from the floor and taking her wrist. "It's okay. It's going to be alright. You — "

"No," she tells him. "No. I'm going to make this right. I won't fail again." 

"What?" he asks, confused. His eyebrows furrow as they do each and every time she tells him again.

He'll never know.

She intends to keep it that way.

[shallurapoems]

He doesn’t hear her through his headphones, so her excited “hey, hello Shiro” feels more like a secret attack from behind him. She jumps onto him — her hands over his shoulders — with such force that his chair scoots forward and his ribs knock into the edge of the table.

He feels the tickle of long curly hair over the back of his neck as a face comes into his peripheral view on the left. He smiles, turning towards the shadow.

“Hey, Allura,” he greets, his body turning towards her.

She replies back with something that he can’t make out through the beat of the music or by reading her expressions, so he gives her his best apologetic face and reaches his hands up to pull down his headphones.

“What?” he asks, sheepishly.

Allura gives him a look and rolls her eyes. “What are you even listening to?” She grabs the headphones around his neck and props it over her head.

He can tell she doesn’t know the song. Her eyes squint and she blinks a couple of times before she looks down and concentrates on the music. Maybe trying to figure it out, maybe trying to form an opinion about it — whatever she’s doing, she’s doing it cute.

As he watches her, his gaze softens. After a couple more seconds, her eyes flit back to his, one eyebrow raised at him, as if questioning his taste.

He smiles. “Will you go out with me?” he asks.

She furrows her eyebrows. “What?” She pulls off his headphones.

His smile grows wider, and he shakes his head.

“Oh, nothing.”

[shallurapoems]

When the black fades away and becomes white room light, Shiro sits up.

The first thing he notices is not how light his right shoulder feels or the fact that his arm is now white and completely... detached, but the fact that he still — fortunately — has his two real human legs.

Maybe it’s his paranoia. Maybe it’s his cynicism. Maybe he’s been taught to be afraid of everything and anything so much that the moment he wakes up he primarily checks that his body is still intact as it was the last time he remembered it. Wherever this instinct comes from, he shakes it out of his head because how the hell could he ever think that his friends — his team surrounding and protecting him — would ever want to hurt him?

“What happened?” He asks, dazed. He tries to remember, but he can’t figure out what the last thing he recalls is. “I don’t remember anything.”

He clenches and unclenches his hands, and notices the white robotic arm doing exactly as he wants. A surge of positive energy rushes through his right side, as if his arm itself is sending life through him.

“I feel... great,” he says, almost surprised at himself by how light his voice sounds.

“Are you okay?” Allura asks him.

He looks over at her, and she gives him a soft smile. He returns it and reaches out to her, but that’s when he’s startled once again by his arm’s new look and function. His hand actually glides forward in the air toward her — much further than normal human reach. He blinks and pulls his hand back again, cradling it on his lap and staring down at it to analyze it more.

He’ll need to re-learn how to use his arm.

What’s that phrase? To know something so well you know it like the back of your hand?

Shiro doesn’t think he’ll ever know his own hand that well. He’s never kept it long enough to grow comfortable with it, and he’s not sure he’ll ever accept the fact that these mechanic reincarnations are his own when he is still mourning his flesh and blood, still waking up to nightmares where he loses, again and again.

“I’m sorry if the... floating surprised you at all,” she apologizes.

“No, no,” he assures her. “I’m... just getting used to it.”

He lifts his hand, slowly flipping it back and forth in front of his face, taking in all of its details from fingertips to palm, from wrist to elbow. White fingers and palm, black knuckles, silver joints, blue glow...

It’s shaped like a human hand. Works like a human hand. As powerful as a human hand — and more. In fact, it’s designed exactly as a hand, but is in so many ways not.

But this time is different. This arm vibrates with a warm electricity, with a current that feels comforting and familiar. He can tell it was designed with him in mind — created out of love and generosity.

He looks at it again, impressed by how easily he controls it.

“I hope you like it,” she says. “I tried my best to accommodate everything you’ll ever want to do while still respecting the anatomy.”

“I do,” he replies, outstretching his fingers. “I like it so much more.”

And as his eyes unfocus from the back of his hand to her smile, he realizes that maybe she is all he really needs to know.

[shallurapoems]

He loves watching her pull up her hair into a quick knot — with a flick of her wrist and the ends of her silver hair swirling in the momentum — all right before his eyes in what could only be magic. He loves how she always does this the exact same way: the two black elastic bands clipped between her lips and her eyebrows furrowed at the screen in front of her, frowning at her whatever sentence she was trying to write, her hands operating automatically.

But it’s not like he always finds his eyes captured each and every time she does this. And it’s not like he’s constantly peering up from his computer screen to look across the cafe coffee table to watch her work.

It was just mesmerizing to watch the long tangles of hair, beautifully messy and untamed — kinked with curves pressed into them from many long work hours of being contained — being swiftly and so easily slicked back into a neat bun.

It’s not like maybe he likes her or anything like that. He was just incredibly fascinated by her — well, by how athletically she puts up her hair.

“How do you do that?” he suddenly blurts.

What. His eyes widen when he realizes he’s said his thoughts out loud.

Allura looks up at him, and then raises an eyebrow at him, suddenly realizing he’s staring. But she nevertheless replies without missing a beat, “Years and years of practice.” She narrows her eyes. “Have you been watching me this whole time?”

Shiro ducks his cheeks behind his laptop, feeling heat crawl over his face.

“Well,” he gulps. “I mean, I think it’s kinda funny whenever you’re working on something hard and you have this look on your face and your hands just go up and put your hair up.”

He is not describing this well, and he definitely is not covering himself well either.

Allura just looks at him.

“Funny?” she asks him.

Shiro swallows. He meant cute, but that’s not a word he was planning on saying out loud.

Or at least not today.

“Interesting,” he clarifies.

She gives him a slow nod. “Huh,” she says, her eyebrows still furrowed. She considers his words for a moment before whatever on her computer screen grabs her attention again. “I see,” she says, her fingers coming back to her keyboard. She starts typing, and that’s how he knows when he can let out his breath.

Yeah, definitely not today.

[shallurapoems]

you find me  on the steps of my father’s grave my silence tells you what I’m thinking your silence quiets the guilty nagging in my mind

thank you for wrapping your arms around me in embrace for time will never replace his arms around me

[shallurapoems]

"You’ll be safe as long as you’re with me,” the paladin assures her, picking up his sword to examine its edges.

Her frown doesn’t falter. Her lips slant in uncertainty. “And if you’re not with me?” she asks. She tilts her head, peering closer and trying to meet his dark eyes.

He brandishes a big smile in her direction, the glint of his silver hair and silver blade cutting the sunlight.

“I’m not leaving you,” he simply replies.

[shallurapoems]

I’d rather your soothing kisses than a million healed scars. I’d rather my heart complete than my own mind whole. I’d rather my life have been broken to find you than to have it perfect and not be able to meet you at all.

[shallurapoems]

you asked me to do this silly exercise in your to-be-married couple building workbook that you only got because it was 50 percent off, so here it is:

five things you should know about me.

one. i left the eggplant to marinate in the fridge.

two. i didn’t have coffee this morning.

three.  i love you.

four. i love you.

five. i love you.

[shallurapoems]

often I am frustrated with my missed steps with my darker eyes with my hazy memory with my manufactured body with this skin I have not lived in

but your kisses remind me that not so much has changed.

“feels like everything is just like how it used to be,” I would say.

you correct me. “everything is still how it always was,” you reply. “it’s always been you and me.”

[shallurapoems]

he loves pushing her limits.

hands over the swell past her hips lips along the crook of her neck knees against her inner thighs

until

“please, Shiro...” she whines in an impatient breath “you’re making this terribly unbearable.”

[shallurapoems]

as we look through the glass — there, can you see it? hidden between twinkling constellations and empty space we see my familiar set of blue and green, surrounded in swirls of white, orbited by steel gray satellites and skeletons of rockets — Earth.

welcome to this planet I call my home. I hope you’ll call it yours too.

[shallurapoems]

for a moment 

you see through my eyes, and you see yourself as I see you. you feel the warm thrum of my heart when I think of you, the relaxing ease of my breath when I know you are safe, the loosened tension in my shoulders when I feel your soul against mine.

could we be any closer?

I wait to see myself in your open eyes

[shallurapoems]

nothing is the same:

body anew. these scars I don’t remember. old burns that don’t align with my memory. muscles I never trained, only ones I inherit. this skin has never touched the hot desert sand around the garrison, these eyes have never seen the twinkling stars and white full moon over the ocean’s horizon.

my reflection foreign. is this because I haven’t seen my face in all the time I’ve been watching over everyone else in my absence? or because I’ve displaced my own image to distance me from whoever — whatever — was walking in my stead? minutes pass like seconds in front of the mirror.  

the weight of my past gone. right side lighter, but socket empty, wires frayed, awaiting yet another metal restoration. a strange nostalgia when I look down and don’t see the familiar black prosthetic, purple circuitry that has long since defined me — I wonder if I should miss it at all, now that my mind inhabits a complete replacement. I’ve become my imitation. I’ve become who I wasn’t.

nothing is the same. not my self. not my mind. not all this time that has passed. not all these consequences to choices I didn’t make. my head pounds like mad and I clutch my forehead in the hand I have left and I bury my face to muffle my agony but then you hold me in your arms and shush my pain with a kiss, quiet my demons with your words and I remember

nothing is the same but you.

[shallurapoems]

you found me first trapped in time my father, the last words on my lips you took me into your arms and reminded me that all would be okay

now i find you trapped in some space between universes my name, the last words on your lips i take you into my arms, crying because i cannot reassure you the same