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Keith wasn’t a heavy sleeper. He had never been one to just fall into a deep sleep. It wasn’t because he was paranoid and wanted to be ready in case someone attacked, and it wasn’t because he hardly ever relaxed. That was just the way he was; a light sleeper. Often times he would wake up in the middle of the night for no foreseeable reason, unable to return to sleep again for a long while, a couple hours, at least. It didn’t happen extremely often, but it happened enough that Keith got the drill. It had been happening more since he had joined Voltron. He guessed it was probably the stress, both mental and physical, which he faced daily.
The lights in his room were off, as expected, and Keith squinted at the ceiling. Sometimes, he would consider picking up things from the various planets they went to so he could decorate his room for nights when he couldn’t sleep, but he never remembered to when he was actually on the planets, too enthralled in whatever mission he was on. So instead, when his nights grew long, Keith was only greeted by an empty room.
It wasn’t all bad though. Especially since he wasn’t alone. Keith shuffled slightly, hoping to release some of the pressure cutting off circulation to his arm without actually waking up the girl who was laying on it. She was out like a light, slumbering away next to him, curled tightly. When Keith and Pidge began sharing a bed, he quickly realized a lot about Pidge’s sleeping habits. She always went to sleep with her legs tangled with his, sometimes even kicking him by accident, but she always woke up curled into a tight little ball. He asked if she was cold once, even offering to turn up the heat in his room or find an extra blanket, even though he preferred sleeping in colder temperatures. She had told him that she was fine though, that was just how she slept.
As Keith stared down at her wild hair covering part of her face, he slid his bare leg around the bed. It found nothing. Keith smiled, he knew that meant she was curled up again.
Another thing Keith became aware of was that Pidge never had bedhead. No matter how much she thrashed around, how deeply she slept, and no matter how many times she would unconsciously butt her head into Keith’s chest, she always woke up looking just as good as when she went to sleep. She was one of those people who could wake up, run a hand through her mane, and be ready to go immediately. Keith, with his hair sticking up everywhere, looking like a peacock’s fan, never understood, and was frankly quite jealous.
Keith gently picked up a section of Pidge’s hair and moved it to the side, out of the way. She made a noise somewhere in between a grunt and a snort. Keith pressed his lips together, struggling not to laugh at the sound.
Sleeping next to Pidge was great for those reasons and many others, including her koala-like tendency to latch onto Keith in her sleep and how she said the word ‘yawn’ while she was yawning when she was really tired. Except, there was one thing that she did that Keith had deemed his favourite above all.
It didn’t happen every night, and it had confused the shit out of Keith the first time it happened, but Pidge was a sleep-talker. A very chatty one at that. Keith had had full conversations with her before, whispering softly in response to everything she said. The conversations never made sense, and when they did, it was personal fears and worries that Pidge had which she probably wouldn’t want revealed, so Keith would always steer the conversation away at that point, or urge her back to sleep altogether. Pidge knew she spoke in her sleep and Keith always told her what she had said when he caught it, leaving out the parts he pretended not to hear.
Lucky enough for Keith, this seemed to be a night in which he was awake at a ridiculous hour of the night and Pidge’s unconscious was feeling chatty.
“I can’t believe this…” she whispered, barely audible.
Keith leaned a little bit closer. “Can’t believe what?” he asked.
“We’ve been lied to…” her voice got slightly louder as she spoke, but still quiet.
“We have?” Keith urged.
Pidge hummed in confirmation. “The government…” She gave no further explanation.
“What did they lie about?” he prodded, hoping she would elaborate on what could possibly be bothering her.
“Bananas… they’re just apples in disguise…”
Keith turned his face to press it into his pillow, stifling the laughter that nearly burst from his lips. He didn’t want to wake her or disrupt her. “Is that so?” he asked, forcing his voice to remain steady.
“And… and pears… pears are just watermelons in disguise…” Her voice was so serious, as if she was informing Keith of a national tragedy, but Keith couldn’t keep a straight face.
Grinning, Keith sucked in air, hoping to keep down the laughter rising in his throat. “Interesting…” he squeaked out, a lilt of humour in his tone.
“Y’know what oranges are…?” she asked him.
“No, what are oranges?” Keith questioned in a soft whisper, attempting to think up what fruit could be disguising itself as an orange.
Pidge shifted around uncomfortably, her face scrunching up briefly. “They are… Oranges, they’re… Oranges are…” her voice gradually faded off, getting quieter and quieter. Keith found himself leaning closer to her disgruntled face, smiling softly as he waited for her to reveal the oranges’ secret. “You’re stupid!” she angrily declared all of a sudden. Keith pulled his face away quickly at the outburst, sufficiently startled. “Oranges are oranges!” Her face cleared and she continued resting as if nothing had happened.
Keith stared at her for a moment, his eyebrows furrowed, baffled. He blinked, waiting for her to say something more, but she didn’t. “I… Sorry…?” He phrased it more as a perplexed question.
“It’s fine…” Pidge murmured, her lip twitching at the corner.
“Sorry I asked…” Keith muttered.
Pidge’s eyebrows creased again, this time angrier than anything before. Her voice dropped, not in volume, but in pitch. She dangerously hissed, “If you go into the woods…” Keith’s eyes widened a little, taken aback. “I… will…” she sounded murderous, “…bake you a cake…” Even as her sentence finished, Keith was sure that whatever cake she was making was poisonous, but he couldn’t help the sudden huff of laughter he emitted.
“Yeah? Thank you,” he snickered. “What flavour?”
“Do you want chocolate or vanilla?” Pidge asked, sounding calm again.
Keith shuffled closer. “Vanilla,” he responded softly, smiling once more.
“We don’t have vanilla…” Pidge mumbled. Her hands, which were folded neatly together in front of her face, twitched a little as she spoke.
“Okay, chocolate,” he said.
Pidge grunted, “We don’t have chocolate…”
Keith squinted in confusion. He knew that Pidge wasn’t coherent and that what she said wouldn’t be either, but he was still thrown every time he had these unconscious conversations. “Then what do you have?” he asked.
“Swirl…” Pidge slurred.
“Alright, I’ll have swirl,” Keith told her. He wasn’t sure what swirl meant, if it was chocolate and vanilla mixed together, or something else.
Pidge didn’t say anything for a moment and Keith began to think that Pidge was done speaking for the night when suddenly she answered, “We don’t have swirl…”
Keith closed his eyes and raised his eyebrows as far up as they would go, pausing to take in a deep breath and compose himself before he opened his eyes, staring down at Pidge’s sleeping form with a hard, unimpressed glare. “You just said we have swirl,” he reminded with a huff.
“Mom needs to buy more swirl…” Pidge whined.
“Yeah?” When Keith didn’t know what to say, he would just encourage her to continue speaking in whatever way fit the conversation. He snuggled farther into the covers, shuffling down the bed so he was eye-level with Pidge. His arm circled underneath his pillow, elevating his head a tad. He was better able to see Pidge that way.
Pidge was silent again, her face twitching as she dreamed. Keith just waited.
He stared at her freckles, counting them and searching for ones that could look like certain constellations. The bags under her eyes were looking better, less pronounced than they had been days prior. Pidge needed more sleep and it made Keith happy to see she was finally getting it. As she twitched, her long eyelashes fluttered and Keith could see her eyes moving under her eyelids. It was comforting somehow, calming Keith down and spreading a fond warmth through his chest. Her delicate fingers were covered in cuts and scars from her many mechanical projects. Keith knew exactly how many since he had kissed each and every one of them before. It always made Pidge laugh and then yip at him for worrying so much. His eyes trailed up to her lips. There were large patches of deep red where Pidge had worriedly peeled and bitten off sections of her skin. As he stared, her lips parted. Keith smiled.
“I want to lock Matt in a cage,” she hissed.
Keith’s smile dropped instantly. “What the fuck...?”
“He always eats all the swirl… and blames it on me…” Pidge whimpered, “Why doesn’t mom believe me…?” She sounded so dejected, her eyebrows furrowing once again.
Keith, suddenly panicking at not knowing what to say, attempted to comfort her. “Uh, I’m sure she knows it wasn’t you…” He narrowed his eyes and mouthed ‘what?’ to himself. Conscious or not, Keith really couldn’t comfort anyone unless he got a warning that some comforting was about to be needed.
“She’s going to be upset…” she argued in a tiny voice.
“Why would she be upset?” he questioned, shuffling closer once again.
Pidge hummed, drifting for a second before finally answering, “She won’t like my guy…”
Keith stared at her for a second. “Your guy?” he prompted.
“Yeah…” she breathed. “He’s… he’s a… rebel… no cause…”
Resisting the urge to snort, Keith reiterated her statement, “A rebel without a cause?”
“Behaviour issues…” she agreed. Her eyebrow trembled lightly.
“Sounds charming,” Keith commented sarcastically. “Who is this guy of yours?”
Originally, he had been planning to tease Pidge when she woke up about whoever ‘her guy’ was – whatever that even meant – but he really wasn’t ready for when her lips jolted at the corner, as if she was trying to smile, and she dotingly mumbled out, “Keith… Pretty eyes…”
Keith’s hand instantly flattened against his mouth, preventing whatever embarrassing squeak he had been about to make. He stared at Pidge’s sleeping face for a moment before the heat of his face and the thudding of his heart became too much and he clenched his eyes closed. “Oh my god,” he loudly whispered into his hand. She had threatened him with a cake, and called him a stupid rebel with behavioural issues but no cause, and yet Keith still couldn’t find her anything but adorable and his heart constricted.
Slowly, Keith brought his hand away from his mouth, pressing his lips together to supress the grin that was inevitably taking over his face and straining his cheeks. He huffed a breath that he wasn’t even aware that he had been holding, then removed his other arm from beneath his pillow. As gently as Keith could, he inched his fingers in between Pidge’s hands until he was able to thread their fingers together. She made a small, grumbly noise.
Squeezing her hand lightly, Keith murmured, “Go back to bed, Pidge.” His voice was softer than even he had been expecting.
Pidge hummed quietly. “Okay…”
Keith waited a moment, just holding her hand. Once he was positive that she wouldn’t be saying anything more, he slowly leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Love you…” he mumbled. Keith laid back down, closing his eyes. His final thought before he drifted into unconsciousness was that he would end the conversation at the swirl when he recounted it to Pidge the next morning.