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autisticlancemcclain · 1 year

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It’s the whispering that gets her. Loud conversations and jokes are par for the course — that’s not interesting. That’s whatever. That’s something she’ll probably have to hear about, recounted tomorrow morning at breakfast.

But whispering? Now that has Pidge intrigued.

She creeps towards Lance’s door, which is just barely cracked open, and crouches low to avoid being seen. She peers through the crack, squinting to see through the low light — Lance hates big lights and only ever has crystals glowing in his room.

Knelt on Lance’s floor are the Legs of Voltron themselves. Their heads are bent close, eyes glued to Lance’s blue daisy case covered-phone, whispering to each other. Pidge has to strain her ears to hear them.

“—you think it means? It’s just casual, right? Totally casual.”

“I mean, our texting is pretty casual, and he’s never sent me a winking emoji. I’m surprised he even knows what a winking emoji is.”

Lance frowns deeply. “Yeah, it’s weird! The colon is right next to the semicolon on a keyboard, though. It could just be an accident.”

“But it’s kind of a flirty message,” Hunk points out. “Look. ‘You sure as shit kept me on my toes today, Sharpshooter.’ Winky face. That’s flirty, Lance. I think Keith is actually flirting with you!”

Holy motherforking shirtballs!

Keith? Flirting with Lance?

Pidge can’t help her gasp. It’s literally involuntary.

She hits the floor the second the sound leaves her mouth. She dives to the side of the door, scrambling to her feet and running down the hallway as quickly as she can.

Only the rush makes her unbalanced, and she’s never been particularly agile, so she trips over her own feet and sprawls onto the floor face-first.

“Pidge?”

“Just — let me die,” she says, face burning. She refuses to lift her head from the ground.

To be caught spying, dear God. On Hunk and Lance’s sleepover. Is there any greater humiliation?

“You can join us, you know,” Hunk says, voice amused. “You don’t need to spy, you little weirdo.”

Pidge weighs her options quickly. She can get up, brush herself off, lie about being uninterested, and make the walk of shame back to her room and stare, bored, at her ceiling until she falls asleep.

She bites her lip.

Or, she can join these two dorks. She’ll never admit it under pain of death, but she’s always kind of wanted to be invited to a sleepover. She never got along well with kids her age growing up — at least, not well enough to be invited to things — and the jealousy she felt when other girls would bring their overnight bags to school and head home with a friend was positively burning.

She turns to face her teammates, deliberately pretending to be way less interested than she is, picking at her nails and shrugging. “I mean, I have some really important things to do, but I guess if you guys want to hang out with me so bad…”

Neither of them are convinced for even a second. Hunk has his left eyebrow raised, and Lance is smirking. But nevertheless, they don’t tease her about it any further, ushering her in and tossing pyjamas at her head.

“They’ll be a bit big, but you’ll manage,” Lance says. He tilts his head at his ensuite. “Bring me the sparkly pink bottle next to the sink on your way out, please.”

Quickly turning away so Lance can’t see her smile, Pidge does. She ducks into the washroom, locking the door behind her, and sets the soft PJs on the bathroom counter. She looks at herself carefully in the mirror, taking in the small smile she can’t force down, the bags under her eyes and the excitement in her irises.

A sleepover. An actual sleepover, with real people who aren’t her brother. With friends, to do stupid shit like gossip and tease and knowing Lance, do some sort of inane skincare.

Giddy, she hurriedly changes into the clothes Lance gave her, hefting up the way-too-long plaid pants and tying them tightly around her waist. She sleeps into the soft green t-shirt, which thankfully is decently close to her size. Lance is essentially 94% leg, after all, so that makes sense. She nearly forgets to grab the bottle Lance asked of her, thankfully remembering just before she opens the door.

She throws it at Lance the second she’s out of the washroom, sniggering at his loud yelp. He sits in the middle of a truly insane amount of soft things, including dozens of pillows, stuffed animals, who knows how many blankets, and —

Pidge squints. “Is that my fuckin’ duvet?”

“You took a million years getting changed,” Hunk explains. “We stole your entire bed. We got mine too. Mattresses are at the bottom of the pile. Want to help me make a structurally sound fort?”

Some part of Pidge wants to protest that — she has a keep out sign on her door for a reason and that reason is Hunk’s nosy ass — but the allure of building a fort is too strong.

“Toss me that measuring tape and a pencil. We are going to blow this shit out of the water.”

———

Forty minutes of her and Hunk’s arguing — interrupted occasionally by Lance’s complaining that forts are inherently unstable and that stem nerds such as them shouldn’t be allowed to ruin the fun — later, a truly beautiful fort is built. They had to sneak into the common room to steal the sturdy couch pillows to make the walls, but with those invaluable assets, Lance’s collection of safety pins, and two and a half dreams, the fort is a thing of fairytales. Two of their mattresses serve as the base, and one of them is the makeshift wall opposite to the real wall. A big sheet is pinned to the ceiling and drapes over the mattress-and-couch-pillow walls to drape like a tent, and blankets and pillows are strewn in a comfy nest over the base. Several low-light crystals are scattered throughout the fort, making it bright enough to see clearly but not too bright to kill the ambiance.

“This is, without a doubt, the best fort I have ever seen,” Hunk says proudly. He shares a grin with Pidge, then flicks Lance teasingly on the nose. “You see what happens when I have a helpful fort-making partner who cares about structural integrity?”

Lance huffs snootily. “You suck the fun out of it, that’s what. Yeah, maybe this fort won’t collapse on top of us while we sleep, but where’s the charm? That character? Where — hey!”

For a moment there is only silence. Eyes shift between Lance’s shocked face, hair a static mess, and the pillow in Pidge’s hands.

And then all hell breaks loose.

It’s ridiculous, really. A pillow fight, at a sleepover? What is this, a low-budget teen movie? But in truth this is nothing like any pillow fight Pidge has ever seen or even experienced before. As soon as the reality of the war sets in, it’s like a switch flips in everybody. All of them forget that they are teammates, friends, people who care about each other, and the one and only goal is to win, by any destructive means necessary. Pidge has a pillow clenched in each hand and whips them down at anyone who comes near — across Hunk’s face, hard into Lance’s belly. Hunk takes the more traditional approach, double-fisting one bigger pillow and wailing it on one victim at a time with full strength. Lance, extra ass bitch that he is, scrambles on top of a dresser like a spider monkey and throws small stuffed-animal projectiles. He never misses. Pidge is nailed in the face no less than twelve times.

After what feels like a thousand years of ruthless battle, Pidge starts to get tired. She’s sweaty, face bright red, hair sticking up everywhere, but she knows she can’t stop. Her honour is at stake, her pride. She will not be the first to fall. In fact she will not fall at all. She will push until she is victorious, until her enemies are felled by hear mighty pillow —

The trill tone of a text rings through the air. Lance makes loud, strangled noise from his perch, leaping off the dresser and somersaulting to his feet when he hits the floor.“Everybody freeze!” he screeches.

Beyond grateful at the call for a ceasefire, Pidge drops the pillows, panting with her hands braced on her knees.

“Dear fucking God almighty, ” Hunk wheezes. “My lungs have shrunk to the size of walnuts, I think.”

Pidge inhales deeply, trying to calm her galloping heart. “Me fucking too.”

She’s about to ask Lance how the hell he’s still standing, but then he lets out what can only be described as an ear-piercing squeal, hand not holding his phone flapping wildly as he hops around the ruins of their beautiful fort.

“Date! Date! I think it’s a date!”

“No way,” Hunk gasps, hurrying over to where Lance is celebrating. He wrenches the phone from Lance’s grip, eyes widening as he reads whatever is on the screen. “Dude!” he exclaims, grinning wildly. “Dude!”

“What?” Pidge finally demands, tired of being left out of the loop. Lance doesn’t answer, too busy spinning in giddy circles around the room until he trips on a stray stuffed animal and collapses on the fort ruins. He stays there, kicking his legs in the air and crowing in glee.

Pidge looks at Hunk, at a total loss for words. Lance is acting like a lunatic , which is saying something, because Lance is so strange regularly that her threshold for Lance-isms is pretty wide.

Despite his similar excitement on Lance’s behalf, Hunk is able to explain. He beckons her closer and points to a text open on Lance’s phone, from the contact ‘willie nelson wannabe’ — Keith. It reads:

from: willie nelson wannabe

i was thinking we cld maybe stick together for the next space mall trip??

from: willie nelson wannabe

u know. safety in numbers and all that

from: willie nelson wannabe

and maybe i can buy u that alien smoothie thing u were telling me about

Pidge’s jaw drops. She thought Lance was exaggerating, but this is very clearly a date. A nervous asking, sure, but the intent is clear.

“Keith?” she asks incredulously. “Lance and Keith? Since fucking when?” She swivels her head between Hunk and Lance, who has finally calmed himself enough to sit still, although a beam still lights up his face and brightens his brown eyes. “I thought you were into Allura!”

Lance waves a dismissive hand. “She’s objectively gorgeous so of course I was interested, you know? But she’s not interested in me, so any crush dried up pretty fast.”

“But Keith?” Pidge can’t quite let it go. Hunk guides her to the fort ruins, and she does willingly, flopping belly-first on top of a small pile of pillows. Her eyes never leave Lance’s. “When did that happen? I thought you two were rivals?”

Hunk snorts. “They are.” He rifles around for a moment, moving aside and shaking out some blankets until he finds the sparkly pink bottle Pidge brought out earlier at Lance’s instruction. He squeezes some green goop onto his fingers, gesturing for Pidge to come closer, and then starts smearing it all over her face as he speaks. “Lance is emotionally challenged and can’t flirt like a normal person, so he picks fights with Keith every time he wants attention.”

Lance sighs dreamily, grabbing something from a shelf and then sitting next to Pidge, too. He starts tying her hair back into short pigtails to get it out of her face, so it doesn’t get stuck in the goop.

“He’s such an asshole,” he says, still sounding whipped as all hell. “A few months ago he had enough of my shit, I guess. I was nagging him about being a show off and he told me to shut the fuck up or he was going to lay me out on the training mats. His eyes were so intense, and his voice was so low I thought I was gonna fucking —”

“Young ears present,” Hunk interrupts loudly, which usually Pidge would protest but in this particular moment decides she will let slide.

Lance goes a little red around the ears, smiling at her sheepishly. “Sorry, Pidgeon. Forgot you’re a baby.” He punctuates this statement with a squeezing of her cheeks, despite Hunk’s chiding about the still-wet facemask. Pidge tries and fails to kick him.

“Anyways,” Lance continues, “I kept being a shit until he really did hand me my ass on the mat, but then he started to get worried that I would die on missions because I suck at hand-to-hand or whatever. He basically forced me to start training with him.”

“Basically forced, he says.” Hunk looks at Pidge, deadpan. “He made his own training outfit — I will spare you the detail of how skimpy it was, you’re welcome — and did his hair. Every time.”

Pidge laughs, which feels weird because the facemask has made her face all stiff. “You did your hair to go train?”

“Oh, piss off. I’ve seen you act a fool whenever a particularly cool robot is anywhere near you, you hypocrite. Shut up and help me text him back.”

She and Hunk do, settling comfortably next to Lance. They snack on the bowl of cucumbers that Lance asserts is supposed to be for the faces, helping Lance draft a response.

“It can’t be too enthusiastic,” Lance mumbles, crouched over the phone. He’s been space-googling ‘how to text your crush like a cool person’ for twenty minutes. Hunk has completely checked out of the task, placing cucumber slices all over his face and giggling to himself. Pidge is starting to get itchy.

“Is this supposed to burn?” she questions, scratching at the dried facemask.

The question startles Lance into dropping his phone. “No, shit, it’s not. C’mere.” He takes a damp rag and gently wipes away the mask, patting her on the cheek when he’s done. “There!” he says, smiling brightly. “Bet that feels nice and fresh, huh?”

It does, actually. She feels like a goddamn daisy.

…But she’s not about to admit that.

“It’s okay, I guess.”

Lance rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. He nudges Hunk with his foot and convinces him to help again, and together the three of them come up with a reasonable response to Keith’s question. (They convince Lance to be honest about his feelings, is what they do. And that’s not without endless nagging and clowning, Pidge can attest.)

Once the text has been sent, the date set, and Lance’s worries are assuaged, the sleepover starts to wind down. It’s well past two in the morning, and training — not including Lance’s private tutelage — was rough that morning. They start to yawn, and then their heads start to nod, and eventually they’re all laid flat on the piles of pillows and mattresses and bedding, limbs all over each other and stuffed animals everywhere.

“Hey, guys?” Pidge whispers, well past half asleep.

“Yeah?” Hunk whispers back. Lance hums.

Pidge doesn’t finish her thought for a while; long enough that she’s nearly sure the other two have fallen asleep.

“Thank you for inviting me,” she says eventually. After an even longer break, Hunk and Lance answer her, words lethargic in their sleepiness.

“‘Course, Pidge.”

“We like hanging out with you.”

Pidge falls asleep with a smile in her face, and sleeps the best she has since her brother went missing.

———

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