Chapter Text
Her vision was blurry.
Pidge let out a weary yawn, rubbing at her eyes with the butt of her palm, letting air out from between her lips. The blue light from her computer screen illuminated the joints of her fingers, the wrinkles in the fabric of her t-shirt.
“Go to bed.”
It was Lance, naturally. He placed a mug of something-quite-like-coffee--oh, it is coffee -- next to her laptop.
“Your words contradict your actions, McClain.”
He collapsed next to her in an unceremonial heap, a yawn stifling his next line of thought.
“I was pretending to be the responsible friend.”
She pressed her lips together, a soft hum escaping her. Quickly, she typed out more of what she was working on, unbothered by the warm closeness of Lance’s body, the way he began to lean into her side, chin bobbing close to the curve of her shoulder.
“I thought you finished studying,” said Lance.
“I did. This is for a personal thing.”
“A personal thing?”
“I’ve decided to keep up a journal.”
Lance let out a hard laugh. “Oh my god. You? Keeping a journal?”
She made a face, turning to look at him full-on, brows furrowing. “What makes that so funny?”
“You’re never going to keep up with it. You drop projects all the time when you get bored. It’s just not part of your personality, Pidge.”
She let out a huff, turning back to the screen, to the word document opened in front of her. Quickly, her fingers flew across the keyboard, and she spoke aloud as she typed.
“Journal Seven. Lance brought me coffee, which I thought was very cool of him, but then he opened that stupid mouth of his and now I have to contemplate on pouring his gift right into his lap.”
Lance leaned away, eyes half-lidded. “You’re a hardass.”
“You are too. What’s on your mind, McClain?”
He turned his gaze away.
It had become routine, the late-night conversations between the two living down the hall from each other in their dormitory. Pidge’s roommate slept to the (loud) sounds of the rainforest. Lance’s roommate snored loud. And it had been an accident, the first time Lance found Pidge in the common room at three a.m., headset in with music turned up high that he could hear the guitar riffs from halfway across the room.
One accident and four months later, it was part of their weekly routine. They didn’t speak much, save for the quiet moments they had at night’s darkest hour, alone amongst themselves in the common room. If people saw them together, they wouldn’t assume they knew each other, much lest that they were friends.
“I had a blind date today.” He said it plainly. Pidge’s brow quirked up.
“And it was bad?”
“Ugh,” he slid down the couch they shared, propping his feet up on the table. “She was a total snob. Didn’t like the restaurant I took her to because everything was under twenty bucks.”
She let out a snort. “How dare you.”
“Wouldn’t even let me buy her frozen yogurt afterwards! And to think I budgeted.”
“Hey, you still have fro-yo money. That’s a plus, right?”
Lance’s pout broke into a grin. “That is a plus.”
A steady silence fell over the pair, and Pidge went back to typing, the clacking of keys the only thing disturbing the silence. Lance stared at her work, brows furrowing.
“Are you just writing about me?”
“Nothing interesting happens to me,” Pidge said with a shrug.
“This is entry seven, right?” Lance sat up straighter, leaning back into the smaller girl, chin resting against her shoulder without a care for personal space or property. “Can you read me another one?”
“No.”
He clutched at his heart, dramatically falling away from her, outstretching a hand in her direction. “Your brutal words, have fatally wounded me, Pidge! Only a maiden’s secret journal entries can save me now!”
She didn’t look away from her journal. Only typed more.
“Thank you, McClain, for this quality content.”
“You’re so mean. And to think, I, your only night owl friend, was about to ask you if you wanted to get fro-yo.”
Her typing stopped. She turned to him, brows knitting together.
“What’s the catch?”
“Ah, another arrow to the heart.”
“McClain.”
“You’ll have to actually be awake at a reasonable time. Because no fro-yo place in the world is open at this hour.”
“That’s false. It’s currently 5pm in Australia. I’m sure fro-yo places in Australia are open.”
“Have I told you that you’re a hardass?”
“Twice, now.”
Lance let out a groan. “Pidge, let me level with you, because you’re clearly not getting it. I want. To treat you. To frozen yogurt. And hang out. While the sun is up.”
He followed a rhythm, a syllabic beat, his hands pressed together and motioning towards her with each punctuation.
She beamed. “But I thought the charm of being my friend was only seeing me in the cover of night?”
“Holy Toledo, Batman . You could not get any more aggravating.”
Pidge shrugged, turning back to her laptop--and to Lance’s delight--shutting it close. “Any particular reason?”
“Am I supposed to have a reason to want to hang out with my friends?”
Pidge thought for a moment.
“I guess it doesn’t seem like our style?”
“Oh, because this--” he gestured between them both, then around the darkness of the common room. “--Is our style?”
“Kind of, yeah. It’s nice.” She was smiling again, adjusting herself to sit criss-cross on the couch, hands in her lap. “I don’t hang out with anyone else like this.”
“If you did, I’d be offended. This is our thing.”
“Exactly. It’s our thing.”
He opened his mouth to retaliate, but closed it quickly. She was smiling, natural and calm, as if she was expecting Lance to eventually ask her to hang out at another time. She was prepared to reject him, or so it seemed. She hadn’t said yes or no, yet, to fro-yo.
And it was aggravating.
Maybe it was wrong of him, to have this weird desire to see Pidge during the day and not in her pajamas, to see her looking less like a gremlin in the dark and more like a real person. He couldn’t quite place why he cared so much. Maybe because it was mysterious, to know what Pidge looked like with proper sunlight? Maybe because she was always here in the common room, that he wanted desperately to know what she did during the day. Did Pidge have hobbies? Or did she just do her homework in the dead of night? Does she have a job? Does Pidge Holt even exist outside the dorms?
Was she a ghost?
The last one was a stretch.
She took a sip of the coffee Lance brought her, letting out a content sigh. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“You’re welcome. You know, I work at the campus cafe. You could come in during one of my shifts and I’ll make you another on the house.”
(And see you outside of the dorms.)
She grinned. “Gave up on fro-yo?”
“I am not giving up on fro-yo.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you what,” Pidge set the mug down, turning towards him, the corners of her lips upturned in that quiet smile of hers. “I’m going to bed. I’ll bother you after I get back from class, and you can take me on this spectacular fro-yo date you have planned.”
“Thank you,” Lance said, a satisfied groan escaping him. Then his eyes widened.
“Did you say date?”
That caught her off-guard. Without the glow of the laptop screen, it was hard to see her features. Hard to know if she was turning as red as he was.
“Goodnight, Lance.”
“Goodnight-- oh my god! You called me Lance!”
“No, I didn’t, McClain. Goodnight.”
She was quicker than him, scooping up her study materials in both hands, as well as the coffee cup, scurrying quickly across the room and down the hall. Lance made a show, knees sinking into the cushion of the couch as he called after her in loud whispers.
“Pidge. Pidgey. Pidge-o. Pigeon. Pidgeotto. Come back here! We can talk about this! I’m totally flattered if you want to call it a date!”
She didn’t come back, much to his relief. He probably wouldn’t be able to handle it if her brain booted back up, if she threw a brilliant retort at him when he was completely fried. It’d be emotional warfare. She already had struck him with enough arrows tonight.
He stood up after a long moment of sitting in complete silence, letting out a quiet huff before going down the same hallway back to his own dorm. He should get some sleep.
After all, he had a fro-yo date later.