He’s tracking constellations, enjoying how different they are from the ones he grew up seeing, and he’s perfectly content like this. He’s not sure how long he’s out there by himself, but he thinks he could be happy staying there forever, staring out at the vastness of infinity.

It’s quiet there, alone on that hilltop, and Keith likes that. He’s always liked places where he could just enjoy the silence. It was why he’d left Earth after their victory over Honerva, traveling to remote outreaches of the universe where he was often unreachable.

He's not sure how long he's out there simply enjoying the view. He drifts a bit but he jolts a bit when a pair of small hands covers his eyes. He smiles slightly when he hears a quiet giggle. Leaning back, he hums. "Who turned the stars out?" His words are met by another giggle.

He reaches up, covering the hands over his eyes and pulling them forward before twisting his arms around in a wide circle to bring a small Galra child crashing onto his lap. He laughed softly at the quietly whined, "Papa, no fair!" as he ruffled the child's hair.

He smiles down at the child in his arms, helps the boy settle into his lap before his looks back out at the stars again. He notices the squirming but doesn’t say anything about it because Keith knows his son well enough: if he waits, the boy will ask his question.

He’s not wrong, of course. After following Keith’s gaze and just staring for roughly half a minute, the child twists around and looks up at him with a pout. “Papa, what are you doing?” Keith glances down at him with a smile. “Looking at the stars. They’re beautiful.”

As he says that, there’s another voice behind him, deeper this time. “Yes, you are,” the voice confirms, and Keith almost laughs because he’s heard this before, so many times. The first time was a genuine accident, but now it’s the usual response when he calls anything beautiful.

Before he can retort, someone sits beside him to his right and a hand settles onto the ground beside him, an arm pressed in a line against his back. Keith leans back as his son excitedly jumps onto the newcomer with a happy, “Daddy!” and receives a laugh in response to his hug.

“So this is where you disappeared to. I should have known.” Keith laughs lightly at that, leaning his head against a strong shoulder. “Sorry. You two looked like you were having so much fun, I didn’t want to break it up.” He feels guilty; it wasn’t fair to just leave like he did.

“It’s fine.” There’s silence as Keith reaches over to ruffle his son’s hair again. The next words sound smug. “You know there’s nowhere you can go that I wouldn’t find you.” Keith laughs at that, looking at the ring on his left hand. “Yeah. You already proved that to me.”

“Oh, is that what all that running was about?” It wasn’t, but they both know that. They both know Keith was unsettled after the war, unsure of just where he belonged after everything. Earth meant so much to him, it was home, but home was also the stars, his mother, the Blades...

They’re quiet for a bit, Keith leaning against his husband’s shoulder and both of them staring up at the stars while their son cuddles with them. Eventually, Keith glances up at his husband and then down at their son, knowing he should say something. “I’m sorry for leaving.”

“It’s just a party, Keith. The only one who was put out was Allura since you ran off before she could dance with you.” “No, I mean back then.” The arm at his back shifts, curls around his waist, pulls him closer. “We’ve been over this before.” They’d been over it a lot of times.

“I know.” “I don’t blame you for going, Keith. Isn’t it about time you stop blaming yourself?” Keith smiles faintly, because he knows all of that, too, but it didn’t make the guilt disappear. “Besides, we might never have found this little guy if you hadn’t run off back then.”

His husband nods down toward their son and Keith’s eyes soften as he reaches over to run his fingers through the boy’s hair. It was true, running to the far reaches of the universe had shown him just how many planets needed help, just how many were so severely devastated.

That had started a whole new mission for everyone once they’d finally caught up to him, and it was on one of those planets that he found the boy they’d later adopted. “Everything happens for a reason, Keith. There was never a moment where I thought I wouldn’t find you again.”

Keith smiled again, settling down and resting his head against a broad shoulder once more. “What did I ever do to deserve you, Shiro?” There was a soft snort at his question. “What didn’t you do?”

They stay there watching the stars together for a while before Keith looks over at where his left hand is tangled in their sleeping son’s hair. His eyes catch on the ring again and he laughs softly at a thought. “They’re going to kill us when they find out about this, you know.”

Shiro raises an eyebrow before looking down at Keith’s hand, then down in the direction of where his rests on Keith’s hip, knowing there’s a matching ring there. “They’ll get over it.” “Maybe. But you’re dealing with Lance yelling for us getting married without anyone there.”

Shiro grimaces at that before countering, “Deal. But only if you’re the one Allura and Hunk drag off to plan a real ceremony.” “Not happening.” Shiro looks at him, though, and he realizes then that, yes. Yes, that’s exactly what’s going to happen because Shiro wants it to.

The thing is, when he thinks about it, he kind of wants it, too. A wedding with their friends there to see, with his mom there. He didn’t regret how they’d done things, finding somewhere they could get married almost as soon as Shiro asked him, but that... that sounded nice.