#pls give me garrison OC buddies !!!!

[madefate-a]

that’s just who i am this week. | fic. 

↳ there are sayings about earthly pleasures, probably. 

Shiro doesn’t think much about the Garrison. Which would make more sense if he wasn’t, by now, actually there. He’s spent the three days back on earth not thinking about much of anything beyond the tangible details: the things that have to get done, the introductions, the explanations. The first night, he suspects, is as much a blur for the memory-capable members of his team as it is for him, still trying to understand how this body works. How bodies works. How all of this works. 

It didn’t occur to him to ask about the rooms he’d once occupied a few lifetimes ago -- it was Officer Harrison that mentioned, offhand and quiet, that they’d been turned over the next academic year. Reasonable, Shiro thought, and strange that Harrison ( a memory: Harrison slid the keycard over to him, carefully not talking about how the passcode written on it was a burner for the simulation; a glitter in his eyes when Shiro earned his commendation, a hand on his shoulder at Shiro’s thanks ) would couch his words so carefully -- soft and hesitant, the way ( he thinks ) one might approach a wounded animal. 

Perhaps it is not so confusing, then. 

The first day is crashing, the second day is paperwork ( Shiro only realizes, after he wakes late, that all the work he requests to complete has been filed by Sam Holt and something rustedly aching and affectionate swells in his chest ), and the third is: storm clouds gather at the horizon, the the packed desert sand is cool, and he tries to remember what it had felt like, to sit in this common area of the Garrison with its overly familiar couches and the view from the window he’d committed to memory. 

Some of the team is here. Keith is here, and Shiro is -- grateful, most likely, but the fog that had been so pleasant upon waking is starting to feel like a stranglehold, letting only a vague frustration permeate its mass. If he had the energy, he’d hate himself for not understanding why comfort of family is evading him. Hunk and Lance look too energized, Shiro thinks, talking about something he doesn’t have the wherewithal to eavesdrop on. 

Beside him, the couch dips with the weight of someone sitting there. Shiro sees Keith react before he can, and when does it’s languid -- slow and then stopping altogether as he looks at the woman who’s taken up residence there. 

❛ --- Camila ? ❜ 

❛ Hey, you didn’t forget me in space ! ❜ 

It would feel entirely surreal if the surreality wasn’t the thing that manage to fork like lightning through the blanket of fog he’s been shrouded in. Idly, he notes that Hunk and Lance have fallen silent, and he can almost feel Keith’s alertness behind him. Camila’s voice is not muted around the edges; her cadence has always been low and clear, cutting through the background noise, glittering with irrepressible enthusiasm. 

It sounds precisely like he remembers it. He realizes that he does, in fact, remember it. 

❛ Apparently, ❜ he says, and it’s not a joke in and of itself but he couches it like one. Shiro can’t see any tension in Camila’s posture, but he is aware in that moment that they are not alone. It strikes him that this is something he should solve, if only because he instinctually reacts to the boys’ silence and the presence of Keith behind him that he does not want to ignore. 

He shifts, turning around to the team that’s present. ❛ Guys, I’ll be back in a sec. We’re gonna take a walk. ❜ 

❛ Sure, sure. ❜ It’s Hunk’s reply that comes first, easy and sure and guiding Lance’s attention back to him. Shiro shoots him a look that he hope is translated well in this body -- relief and gratitude, and the kind of fondness that is inseparable when it comes to this team. Maybe Hunk gets it, because he smiles. Which frees Shiro up to look over at Keith -- and he doesn’t know what he wants to convey. 

It takes a longer tick, but Keith just shrugs and turns to absently gazing over at Lance and Hunk, who have resumed their previous conversation. Shiro is not sure to make of anything, not sure if all of this ( existing ) is objectively hard or if he’s making it so. 

❛ We could -- ❜ Camila starts, eyes wide and earnest. Shiro shakes his head and pushes against the back of the couch to stand. 

❛ Nah, I could use a chance to stretch my legs. If you’re up for it ? ❜ 

She barks a little laugh, a low whuffing sound, and he remembers it too. The only difference is that when she stands, fluidly, she tenses as if to offer him a hand up and he rocks to his feet before she can make up her mind. 

There’s no surprise that she looks entirely at ease in these halls. There is some that Shiro does not feel lost as he keeps up with her, even if he does not recall the specific memories that decorate the paths they take ( midnight runs, slipping out the door to see a desert with the endless sky stretching above them, climbing up to the roof, rehearsing recruitment skits together -- ) 

❛ So I hear you guys have been busy. ❜ 

❛ Yeah, you’re not wrong about that. ❜ 

Camila’s voice is unapologetically what it has been, but Shiro can feel the way they pick carefully through what could be said -- they look different than they did when they were younger, but Shiro is aware that he looks unignorably so. And there are the things that lurk on the horizon: there are fighting alien factions, there are threats that loom unavoidable and larger than the Garrison could ever imagine. 

The news that had circulated of his prematurely presumed death. 

❛ I definitely owe Commander Holt something, ❜ Shiro says instead. ❛ He’s taken care of most of my stuff since we got back. ❜ ( it dawns on him, in that moment, that Sam has probably cushioned all of this -- their return, the shock of it, the questions and experiments they’d have faced without his intervention. ) 

For her part, Camila seems to have picked up on his tone and follows it like a river pulling with the current. ❛ Oh please, like he’d ever accept anything from you. Or anyone. ❜ 

❛ He should, ❜ Shiro says -- petulantly. ❛ I can’t write with my left hand. ❜ 

It had been unintentional, teasing and drenched in his personal brand of less than kind humor, and it could be too much for someone he hasn’t seen in -- however long it’s been. 

Camila doesn’t pause; she laughs, full and loud. 

Shiro grins. 

❛ Yeah, Iverson wouldn’t buy that excuse. If you were really prepared, you’d have learned a long time ago, Junior Officer. ❜ 

❛ Hey, I was promoted ! ❜ 

❛ Sorry, sorry. ❜ Camila’s grinning too. They are paused by one of the big windows that they’d shimmied open one night -- three of them, Joaquim had been there, too. Shiro draws a deeper breath than he’d been able to take for days. 

At the same time -- 

❛ Hey, d’you want to do something -- ? ❜ Camila asks. 

❛ D’you wanna get really drunk tonight ? ❜ Shiro asks. 

In the end, Shiro only tells Keith and Coran that he’s slipping out that evening. Leaving to do -- anything without telling his brother sits uneasily in his stomach. It still does, when he finds the words -- it feels ungrateful and worrying. But Keith gently places his hand on his shoulder and it feels like acceptance and permission in one, and since Shiro doesn’t have the resources to unravel these developments then, he just takes it. 

And it doesn’t feel like a big deal ( or, it shouldn’t, because a memory: the world does not seem so large now that they have traversed in the dark so often, slipping away without permission, the desert falling away from them underneath the motor of Shiro’s bike ) and certainly not something to tell the team. So he gives the information to Coran and makes a quiet, surreptitious exit when he won’t be missed. 

They don’t take a bike. They take a cab. The bar is lit up with the same golden neon lights as the last time he saw it and his throat closes a little at seeing it -- crossing its threshold with this body that he doesn’t know beyond its power to taint everything around it. 

But then he’s four tequila shots in and fuck it. 

❛ They took my fuckin’ arm, Cami. ❜ He’s draped over the counter, the follow up beer mostly drained in front of him. At least eight shot glasses glitter on the counter in front of them in the light from the running karaoke screen behind the bar. Cami makes a whining sound, half sympathetic and half completely amused. 

❛ The whole thing? ❜ 

❛ The whole thing! Even the shoulder. Who takes an arm ? ❜ 

❛ A whole arm, ❜ Camila reminds him. 

��� A wholeass arm ! ❜ Shiro knocks back the rest of the bottle and signals the bartender to send another one down to him. ❛ Y’ want -- ? ❜ 

❛ ‘M not done with this one. ❜ 

Shiro waits until the cold glass is under his fingers before groaning, loud and low. 

❛ It was fine, Cami. ❜ 

❛ Your whole arm? It was? ❜ 

❛ No, it was broken in three places. But like, fuck. ❜ 

❛ They don’t have space hospitals in -- uh, in space ? ❜ 

Shiro chokes on his drink and it turns into a laugh, wheezing and wet with beer, undignified, snorting and burning until his eyes tear up and he feels Camila surrender and laugh, collapsing in on herself the way she does when she laughs even though she doesn’t know why it’s funny and he can’t remember why it’s funny. 

❛ You’re going to actually kill me, ❜ he gasps, ❛ ‘N I don’t know how many lives I have left in me, asshole. ❜ 

❛ I didn’t do anything ! ❜ She insists, but they dissolve into another wave of laughter, desperate and aching and alive. 

It takes him a while to ease away from the fit, and his ribs ache with the effort, but even when he curses again and slumps back over the bar, he’s smiling. 

❛ My best friend’s an alien, I think, ❜ he says, apropos of nothing. 

Camila doesn’t miss a beat. ❛ You replaced us? Quim’s gonna fight you. ❜

❛ No like, space friend. ❜  

❛ Oh, well then. ❜ 

They laugh again and Shiro’s eyes are wet with the force. ❛ I hate him. ❜ 

❛ Joaquim ? ❜ 

❛ No. ❜ 

❛ Oh, your best space friend. So why is he, then ? ❜ 

❛ ‘Cause I can’t catch a fuckin’ break. ❜ 

❛ Yeah, they didn’t put this in the job description, hunh ? ❜ 

Shiro doesn’t notice when Camila rests her head on the shoulder that’s still flesh until way after the fact, and when he does it doesn’t startle him. ( a memory: they are a little threesome, sprawled out on the roof, a tangle of limbs and everyone’s a bit of a pillow and they’re eating candy rings as they race to name as many constellations as they can. ) 

( then he just stops thinking for the night. ) 

This time, Shiro reacts first -- he recognizes the strains of the song before even Camila, but she’s only half a step behind and they’re scrambling to sit upright and talking over each other -- 

❛ That’s our song -- ! ❜ 

❛ Hey, we need the -- can we get the mic ? ❜ 

❛ Cami I can’t hold it I don’t have arms ! ❜ 

❛ You have a wholeass arm ! ❜ 

❛ I have a drink ! ❜ 

❛ Useless, okay hang on -- ❜ 

They’re a tangle of limbs, and Cami holds the mic between them as they start the whole bar in on mostly-screaming the lyrics that flash across the screen. But they don’t need them. Shiro doesn’t need them. 

He remembers every word.