your love is my religion. keith x gn!reader

It’s funny, you think as you watch him sleep, how space works.

Does it end? Where does it begin? You remember your mother, her warm hand on your back as you lean against her breast and she reads you passages from the bible.  “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”; amidst the tales of creating stars and parting seas, those words -- John 15:14, you remembered -- stuck with you.  You weren’t religious. Your mother was, your father was, but you had always been more fascinated by the stars. The chemicals and their reactions, science and truth you can touch and feel. When you left to become a pilot your mother cried, but you murmured that passage -- the one thing the bible, as fantastical and whimsical and fake as it seemed to you -- that you had always held tightly onto since your youth.

And then you had smiled, and said, “If I die, when I die, I want it to be when I’m protecting the people I love.” Your words didn’t cease her tears, but you felt like her silence had been approval, or the closest thing you’d get to it.

Your fingertips trace his jawline, sharp and full, and you think about Mary. The virgin, the wife, the mother. She probably slept with someone other than Joseph than came up with this wonderful lie that she was pregnant with God’s child. Jesus must have been born with high expectations; heal the blind, Jesus, or you don’t get any dinner.

His eyelashes flutter and you scoot closer.

You had been baptized as a child. Dipped in water deemed holy, held up by a stranger as you wailed, your eyelashes glistening with blessed water and salt.

“Do you believe that space has always existed?” you whisper into the darkness. “Even before God?” You didn’t believe in a god, though. You believed in aliens and giant robots that fought those aliens, but a god? Nah. If there was a god, one as forgiving and kind as the one in the tales your mother read to you every night, wouldn’t he come to save earth? His children, his creations? Why let an alien princess build the weapons to protect an earth that wasn’t hers?

You didn’t receive an answer.

You met him on a planet distant from your own. You were a pilot, refined and respected, admired and envied. Yet you had made a fatal error, and you crashed Hard, fast, violent. Fire burned your nose, your vision, and blood marred your tongue and arms. You couldn’t breathe in the condensed air, tight and cold, and you might have died if you hadn’t been saved by them.

You would be dead, still, if they hadn’t let you stay.

You felt alone sometimes on this vast ship. Surrounded by warriors, bonded with incredible machines that are capable of incredible things, a refined and beautiful princess who even made your heart stutter, well, it was understandable that you felt inferior. You weren’t doing much to help on the ship other than mechanic repairs, but even then Pidge was much better at it than you.

But it was fine, it was alright. They let you stay. And Keith always made you feel like you were incredible, amazing, wonderful, the stars and the planets and the hands that god claimed were his when he molded the world. He made you feel like you were a god, the way he looked at you. How his breath caught when you smiled, the gentle way he touched you, how he held you and how he kissed you -- like you were the universe and he wanted to capture every star and planet that burned inside of you.

His eyes opened, finally, and they answered all of your whispered questions, your unspoken worries and wonders, with just one bleary gaze. And that was one of the reasons you loved him so, because all he had to do was look at you, and everything was okay.

“Hi,” you murmur into the darkness. He smiles, and your heart thrums. He reaches out, his hand slipping through your hair, curling around the back of your neck. He tugs you in, pressing your cheek against his neck. You inhale, savor the scent of Keith -- his minty soap and sleepy sweat, melded together to create a soothing, comfortable aroma that lulled you into drowsiness.

“Go to sleep, [F/N],” he whispers, his lips in your hair.

“It’s hard to sleep when such a handsome man is laying in the same bed,” you tease, even as your voice turns drowsy.

“Well, tough.”

“Cruel.” You nuzzle closer, your eyes shutting. You try not to think about how you hadn’t spoken to your parents since you left your mother sobbing in the living room. No letters, no calls, nothing. Your crash, your disappearance in space -- maybe she didn’t even know, or care.

“Keith?”

“Hm?”

“Do you believe in God? Or, well, some sort of higher power?”

His grip tightens just a bit, his fingers slipping to rest comfortably in your hair, on your shoulder blades. It’s soothing, and you sigh quietly as you wait for his response. As sleepy and teasing as Keith can be when you’re like this, tangled up in each other, he takes questions like this seriously, you’ve discovered.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to believe something you can’t see.” You listen to his heartbeat, a steady, comforting rhythm. “I wish I did believe.”

“Faith is an awesome thing.”

“Too bad we’re cynical realists.”

You laughed into his neck, sleepy and giddy, despite the depressing conversation. Your hands slip around to rest against his side, wrists brushing the slither of skin peeking through his loose t-shirt riding up with all the shuffling around you two did to get comfortable in his tight bed.

“I believe in you, though.” Your voice is soft, gentle, as your lips brush his sweaty skin. You don’t mind that the room is hot, that you both are still covered with blankets despite this. “I think you’re the only thing I’ve ever believed in this strongly before, Keith.”

You can feel his smile.

“Just go to sleep.” And you do just that, but not before you feel him mouth lovely words against your scalp -- i love you so much -- and you no longer care about god or time or dying. If you can find meaning in your days here, surrounded by intelligent and selfless warriors you call friends, holding hands with the lion with the loudest roar and feeling his love for you fill every fiber of your being -- you didn’t need any religion other than this.