Chapter Text
So! This is my piece for the Pidge Big Bang! I'm really excited to be able to finally share this story.
Mad love goes to ibupony, my hard-working artist for this Bang, and Reem, my long-suffering beta!
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Special Credits:
Shout outs to mistyhollowdrummer, Morie-mordant, potato-person and radiantcerulean for their encouragement!
The concept for this fic was heavily inspired by A Study in Relevancy by some-cookie-crumbz. (It's a fantastic Kidge one-shot. Go read it.)
The implementation of the paladin bonds was inspired by the epic gen fic Truce by Kyanve. (Go read this too. It's incredible.)
Certain phrases shamelessly stolen from Reem's vast collection of gen and plance works, which are well worth paying homage to.
Now, without further ado!
Sinking into the sheets had quickly become Pidge's favourite part about going to bed. The sheets on the castle were ridiculously soft and the duvets were plush and fluffy, like how you always imagine clouds should feel if they were warm and not composed of ice water. Altean duvets were warm from the instant they touched your skin, making cocooning yourself in them feel like an act of extravagant luxury. (Pidge hadn't figured out the why yet, but it was on her list. She suspected they could share something in common with the thermoregulators in their body suits.)
The worst thing about going to bed was knowing that she'd have to wake up early (which was, really, the only reason she bothered going to bed at a decent hour at all) and knowing that she could be summoned by the alarm at any time. The second worst thing was the knowledge that nightmares were all-too-common and it was often all-too-hard to fall asleep in the first place, but she was exhausted from the final performance of The Voltron Show earlier and well... She had the others for nightmares. That was one of the best things about being part of Voltron — you never had to be alone if you didn't want to be.
Yawning, Pidge rolled herself up in the duvet and nudged Green sleepily with her mind to say goodnight, receiving a small nudge of amused fondness in reply. She could tell that Shiro, Allura, Lance and Hunk were all safely ensconced in their own beds, and they were passing through an allied quadrant where the chances of attack were low. It was a good night for sleeping.
...Or, it was meant to be.
Pidge cracked one eye open and glared at the wall, as if the force of her glare could make the blue flashing stop. When it didn't, she let out a sigh that was more of a groan and wriggled around under the covers, trying to keep as much of herself in the warmth as possible while she stuck a bare arm out and retrieved her tablet. Who the quiznak would be ringing her at this hour?
"Pidge! Uh... Are you there? It's too dark to see anything."
"Hang on..." Pidge flipped over onto her stomach, blanket still over her head, and placed the tablet carefully on the pillow before reaching up to flip her fairy lights on. "Better?"
"All I can see is your nose..."
He was right. The little square showing her own image looked not unlike the Emperor from Star Wars, if the Emperor had been young and bathed in a warm yellow glow rather than sickly blue.
"Keith, I was almost asleep. I really don't care right now," Pidge said, yawning for emphasis. "What's up? And if you're going to tease me about The Voltron Show again..."
"No, no!" Keith said hurriedly, a smile tugging at his lips. "The big finale was pretty good though. We watched it at Headquarters."
Pidge smiled in reply. "So?"
"I actually had something else I wanted to ask you about..." Keith glanced left and right before continuing. "Your dad helped design The Obol , right?"
" The Obol ?" Pidge repeated, curiosity piqued. "The ship they flew on the Kerberos Mission?"
Keith nodded. "Yeah. Your dad helped design it, right?"
"Why are you asking me about The Obol ?"
"Pidge!" Keith touched a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes momentarily. "Did your dad help to design it?"
Pidge frowned. "Of course he did, he was the engineer for the mission. He had to know how it went together."
"Okay, so..." He took a deep breath. "Are you familiar with how it goes together?"
"Kind of, but... Keith, why are you asking me all this?"
"I was getting to that."
"Can you get to that quicker? I'm meant to be asleep right now," she griped, pushing her curiosity aside in favour of annoyance. "Why didn't you wait until morning to call, anyway?"
"Don't you love saying 'there are no mornings in space'?"
Pidge snorted and rested her head on the pillow next to the tablet. "Get to the point, man." She yawned. "I can't stay awake much longer."
"Okay, so... I was on a mission with the Blades to a decommissioned base near Olkarion. We were checking to see what was salvageable, and in one of the rooms they had The Obol in pieces."
"Mmm..." Pidge replied sleepily. "That sounds... Wait, what?"
Okay. She was officially awake now.
"They had The Obol , in pieces," Keith repeated patiently. "Like they'd completely taken it apart and it was in a thousand bits, but it was definitely The Obol ."
"Wow," she breathed. She wasn't quite sure how to feel. The Obol had embodied all of her father's and brother's hopes and dreams, and a good deal of her own, and she'd assumed it lost forever when the crew was captured. She hadn't even thought to look for it.
"So... Do you think you could put it back together?" Pidge tilted the tablet towards her and looked at him hard. His expression was hesitant, but his eyes were soft...almost pleading.
She smirked. "Who do you think I am, Keith? Me and Hunk can rebuild it, no problem."
"No Hunk," he said firmly. "I want to keep this between us."
"What? Why?"
"It..." He trailed off, looking everywhere but at the camera while he gathered his thoughts. "I want to surprise Shiro with it, and the less people that know about it the better."
"Oh." Pidge frowned. "Would Shiro like that surprise? He might not have the best memories of the ship he was flying when, you know..."
"He's fine when he talks about it," Keith said quickly. "Or... At least he was, when he talked about it. He used to say how much it ended up feeling like home. But he doesn't really talk about it anymore..." He trailed off, eyes downcast as his lips turned down in a frown.
Pidge sighed. "He doesn't talk about much anymore."
"I know. That's why I wanted to surprise him."
"Okay..." She nodded, biting her lip. "It'd be way easier with Hunk on board, but I should be able to do it. Are you sure we can't tell Hunk? I don't think he'd tell."
"Positive. More people keeping secrets would be more obvious in the bond. Plus you're always thinking about one project or another, so it would be easy for Shiro to overlook."
Huh. Well, that made sense. Keith always had been more sensitive to that stuff than Pidge.
Trying to put The Obol back together by herself would be no easy feat, but she'd heard her dad describe the ship and its design a million times. With all the technology at her disposal she should be able to manage it. Or at least, get close enough that she'd only need Hunk's help for a short amount of time, thus minimising the chances of exposure. And if it might help bridge the weird distance that had grown between Shiro and the rest of the team, then the hard work would definitely be worth it.
"Okay then. I'm in."
#
The base where Keith had found The Obol was on a planetoid only half a varga away from Olkarion (by lion). With the conclusion of The Voltron Show there were a large number of planets and other civilisations looking to join the coalition, and so a preliminary 'Coalition Summit' of sorts had been called on Olkarion. Since both Team Voltron and the Blade of Marmora would be present, it was the perfect opportunity for The Heist, as Pidge had taken to calling it.
Voltron and the Blades were the hosts, so they had to be there to set up. The second day was primarily taken up by arrivals, with the last one scheduled for early afternoon. Discussions weren't due to start until the next morning. That meant Day One could be spent catching up with friends and family, leaving them free to sneak off on Day Two in the late afternoon. As long as they were back by morning they'd be fine, and Pidge figured that they had a fifteen-hour block of time at the minimum .
The hardest part would be getting away from the rest of the team, but with Shiro's odd distance Keith wasn't too worried about giving Shiro the slip and he wasn't expecting anybody else to go looking for him. It wasn't so easy for Pidge, but she'd managed to set Matt up with Lance and Hunk on a 'boys' game night', and she knew that would definitely keep them occupied long enough for her to sneak out (and probably get back, too, but they would likely just end up crashing in Lance's room so they wouldn't even know she'd gone).
That was how Pidge found herself in Green's hangar late that afternoon, going over her checklist for the mission while waiting for Keith to show up. She'd managed to find a disused hangar big enough for her lion in a far-off corner of the castle and set that up for The Great Puzzling (what she'd nicknamed the 'rebuild The Obol project' in her notes), and the bay doors for the hangar had been left open for their return. She was in her armour and had her bayard, just in case the Blade had missed anything during their previous exploration of the base. She'd managed to procure a bunch of the sacks Keith had taken into the weblum to collect the scaultrite (and had a lot of fun with the expansion mechanism), and she had set up a private frequency for them to communicate on during the mission.
Now all she needed was for Keith to turn up, but he was late.
She tapped her fingers against her gauntlet impatiently, tossing up the pros and cons of sending him a message. If he was having trouble getting away from the others, a message might look suspicious.
"Then again, is he the type to forget the time? We never really scheduled our hang outs before," she mused out loud, earning an amused rumble from Green. "He was never late to training, at least..."
The sound of the door opening echoed in the hangar.
"Dude! I've been here for—"
"...Pidge?" Lance stood near the entrance, staring at her with surprise. "Why are you wearing your armour? You're going somewhere?"
Pidge stared back with wide eyes. "Um... I was going to... Uh..." She glanced around the hangar desperately, looking for some quick inspiration. "I got invited by Rynar to check out a city on the other side of the planet, so I was just about to head out!"
"You did?" His shoulders slumped. Pidge thought he looked disappointed, but why would he look disappointed? "How long are you going to be gone for?"
"Um, I'm not sure," she replied, biting her lip. "I probably won't be back until pretty late. She wanted to show me some stuff that's only really useful at night."
"Oh," he answered, one hand coming up to scratch the back of his neck. "I guess I'll catch you some other time then."
"Yeah, okay." Pidge hated herself for lying to him. Lance was so trusting — he was always willing to take whatever she said at face value, simply because 'we're teammates, Pidge. Why would you lie to me?' But Keith was adamant that they keep the project between the two of them to minimise exposure, so she had to lie.
Lance shrugged and turned to leave. Pidge watched him go with a frown. Shouldn't he be playing video games right now?
"What did you want, anyway?"
"Oh!" Lance stopped short and spun back around, hand still at his neck and...was that a blush on his cheeks? Why would he be blushing? "I was just gonna ask if you wanted to go and watch the sunset."
"The sunset?" Pidge's mind raced to a halt and her mouth dropped open. "Uh..."
"Well, we were talking about them before, remember? And they're really pretty here, and I know a good spot, and just...thought maybe you'd like to see it... I dunno." He looked away and shrugged, but not quickly enough to hide the deep burgundy of his cheeks.
Pidge's own cheeks were burning, but before she could formulate a reply the hangar doors opened again. Keith walked in and she jumped, trying to act casual. Lance straightened up too.
Keith stopped just inside the doors and looked between her and Lance curiously. "Uh... Am I interrupting something?"
"No! No, no, nothing at all," Pidge replied a little too quickly, hoping Keith wouldn't pick up on how flustered she was. "Uh... Are you ready to go?"
"What the cheese?" Lance's eyes widened. "Rynar invited Keith?"
"Yeah? Why are you so surprised?" Keith raised an eyebrow at him, and Pidge silently thanked Kolivan for Keith's ninja spy training. He was a much better liar than she was.
"You don't even like science! You're worse with tech than I am!" His eyes narrowed as he looked from Keith to Pidge. "Is that why you set up the gaming night thing? So you two could sneak out?"
Pidge froze.
"Lance. Are you crazy?" Keith rapped Lance on the forehead with the back of his knuckles, taking his attention off Pidge and giving her room to breathe. "Rynar invited Pidge, Pidge asked if I wanted to come as a Blade representative. That's all ."
"Oh." Lance visibly deflated, and Pidge breathed a mental sigh of relief. Somewhere at the back of her mind, Green was laughing at her. Stupid cat. "Uh, right."
Keith looked to Pidge. "We need to go."
Pidge started. "Yeah! Okay, let's go." Green lowered her head, opening her jaw to admit them, but Pidge hesitated and glanced back at Lance. "Uh, I'll see you later? Make sure you beat Matt for me!"
"Yeah, see ya." Lance waved as he left the hangar, shoulders slumped.
The doors slid shut behind him and Pidge turned to start up the ramp to where Keith was waiting for her, one eyebrow raised. "What?"
Keith shook his head. "Nothing. Let's go."
Green was still laughing at her.
#
Keith stood just behind Pidge's seat as they went up, but as soon as they broke atmo he started wandering around the cockpit, surreptitiously running his hands over the consoles as he 'checked their course'.
Pidge fought back a smile as she watched him, but there was something bittersweet in it. He still looked wrong in that Blade uniform.
"Do you miss it?"
Keith glanced over at her question, a rueful smile on his face. He looked back at the console before nodding. "I miss the team. I miss Red."
"We miss you too. It's not the same with you gone." To be honest, she was never quite sure what was different, but there was something missing now. "I miss you keeping me company when I'm working."
"I didn't really do that a lot," he replied, looking at her with a raised eyebrow.
She shrugged. "Yeah, but I always appreciated it when you did. Sometimes it's nice to have someone there that I don't have to talk to, y'know?"
Keith nodded and looked away, shoulders slightly hunched. Pidge turned her attention back to the viewscreen and Keith began looking around the cockpit again, touching his fingers to the curves of the walls. Not for the first time, Pidge was glad that she hadn't had to change lions. Green was a comforting presence in her mind, a strong support and a guiding hand — she couldn't imagine how lost she'd be out here without her.
Green rumbled in agreement around them, and Pidge smiled softly. Yeah, she wouldn't give up Green for the world.
A sudden thought struck her, and she glanced back over at Keith. "Do you miss Black?"
"Black?" he repeated, taken aback. "No, not really. We didn't have the same connection."
Pidge nodded. "That makes sense. Lance misses Blue, and he says Red misses you."
"Yeah, whenever I come back to the castle..." Keith replied, tapping a finger to his temple with a smile. A moment later his smile turned devious, his eyes twinkling as he asked: "So... What was that ? With you and Lance?"
Pidge raised an eyebrow at him. "What was what with me and Lance?"
Keith snorted. "I interrupted a Moment."
"You didn't interrupt anything."
"Sure," he answered, shrugging. "Why was he there, then? What did he want to talk to you about?"
"Uh..." Pidge examined the flight path she was following, carefully avoiding his gaze as she fought to keep the blush from her cheeks. "He asked me if I wanted to go and watch the sunset."
"...Like on a date?"
"No!" she replied, a little too quickly. "He didn't say it was a date. Uh. He just asked if I wanted to go. But obviously I couldn't, because we're going to that base."
"But he had a games night, right? He invited me to join earlier."
"He did? I didn't know that." Pidge was genuinely surprised. Keith had never been much of a gamer, and Lance had never been one for Keith's company. Then again, they did get on a lot better now than they had at the beginning. She suspected they had the potential to be great friends if Lance would only give it a chance.
"Why would you know that?" Keith turned and leant back against the console, arms crossed over his chest.
Pidge shrugged and looked away.
"Is there something going on between you two?" Pidge shook her head and glanced back at him. Keith tilted his head to the side, examining her. "Do you still like him?"
"Huh? I never liked him. Not like that."
Keith deadpanned. "Paladin bond, Pidge. It was obvious. You've liked him for ages." He paused before continuing, tone suddenly much softer. "Did you really not notice?"
"I..." Pidge trailed off, eyes narrowed in thought. Lance was a good friend, but they were friends and that was it. He was too flirty, too goofy, too extra, too tall for her to ever think of as anything more than a friend. Besides, all of her extra energy was taken up with looking for Matt and her dad. She didn't have time for distractions. "What makes you think I like him?"
"Do you want a list?" Keith replied, before raising a hand and ticking each point off on his fingers. "You let him use your stuff. You give him the softest smiles. You blush around him. When you guys make plans you feel happy and excited. People getting in your personal space puts you on edge, but when Lance does it you feel warm. And then you always get jealous when he flirts with other girls."
Pidge blinked. "I don't get jealous! It's just annoying."
Keith sighed. "That's jealousy, Pidge. Paladin bond, remember?"
"I never get anything like that from you," Pidge grumbled.
"Because I know how to keep my emotions to myself. You leak them everywhere," he responded. "We all know that you like him. I think the only person who doesn't know is Lance." He frowned. "And you, apparently."
"Oh, quiznak," said Pidge, burying her face in her hands and letting Green fly herself for a moment. Did she like Lance? She thought back over all the time they'd spent together with a critical eye. Lance was... He was a jerk, but he could be sweet when he wanted to. He always seemed to go the extra mile to connect with her, and she'd always appreciated that about him — even when she couldn't show it.
But did that mean she liked him? How was she supposed to figure that out? Green rumbled sympathetically beneath her feet, helpfully supplying a montage of images — Lance dressed in the Blade of Marmora uniform, Lance leaving the team instead of Keith, Lance's familiar presence in her mind becoming a small, easily overlooked breath like Keith's had.
The stab of pain she felt at the idea told her all she needed to know.
"Oh," she said as realisation hit her. "Oh. I, uh, I guess I do like him." Keith chortled, and Pidge's surprise quickly turned into annoyance. "Why are you laughing? I'm not supposed to like Lance! Keith! This isn't a good thing!"
Keith just laughed harder, and soon he was doubled over and wheezing from the exertion. Pidge glared at him, then turned away to look out the viewscreen. Screw him. If he was going to be like that, she didn't need to talk to him about it. In fact, she didn't want to talk to anyone about it, because she didn't need to like Lance at all, and the more she acknowledged it the more it felt real, so talking was a bad idea.
She couldn't like Lance. No way.
"I'm sorry," Keith finally spoke, wiping at his eyes as he straightened up. "You really didn't know, huh?"
"No," she answered quietly. "I didn't... Ugh. It's just a crush, Keith. It's not important in the long run."
"If you say so," he replied with a shrug. "But if he's asking you to go and watch the sunset, then maybe he likes you too?"
She slid her gaze to him. "Does he?" Did she even want him to? When he looked confused, she tapped her head twice. "You're better at reading the bond than me."
"Ah," Keith answered. "I don't know. I'm not really in the bond now, but his feelings towards you were always pretty positive?"
"He likes Allura." Pidge's heart sank. Thinking about Lance's crush on Allura had always made her feel bad; now that she could put a name to why , it made her feel even worse. The plus side was that that made her annoyed, which was a much better feeling than 'mildly heartbroken'.
"I'm...actually not sure about that? At first, yeah, I guess, but then his feelings towards Allura kinda...stopped being consistent. The whole thing didn't make sense." Keith shrugged again. "But you guys were always pretty close, and Matt said you spend a whole lot of time together... And even I could feel how disappointed he was when you turned him down in the hangar."
Pidge shifted in her seat. "Honestly, Keith, I don't know? He's been acting really...clingy lately."
Keith raised an eyebrow. "Clingy? Isn't that just Lance?"
Pidge laughed at that, and Keith offered her a small smile. "No, he's being more clingy than normal. Sometimes I feel like he's following me around the castle. It started after I found Matt, actually." Her eyes widened at the realisation, and she paused to think about it. "He was kind of sulking the whole time I was showing Matt around the castle, and I thought it was because Matt hit on Allura when he first met her, —" Keith let out a bark of laughter "— but then..."
She trailed off, frowning. The only person who knew the whole story was Lance, and she wasn't entirely sure that she wanted to talk to anybody else about it. It wasn't a fun memory to relive.
"Then what?" Keith prompted, his eyes gentle.
Green rumbled sympathetically, and Pidge took a deep breath. "Well, after Matt left I kind of...broke down?" Keith's eyes widened and Pidge hurried to continue. "Not like, a nervous breakdown or anything! And it wasn't because Matt left. It was just... When I found Matt he was on a top secret mission, and the Rebellion had set up a fake grave to cover his identity. He left a coded message on it in case Dad ever found it, and that's how I discovered where he was stationed, but..."
Keith gave a sympathetic grunt. "You thought it was real."
"Yeah. I thought it was real." Her grip on the flight sticks became painful, and she forced herself to relax. "And then I was just so happy that I'd found Matt that I just kind of...pushed it aside? But a couple of nights after Matt left I was playing video games with Lance and it just hit me. And Lance was there for it."
They had been talking about some of the things they missed about home, and Lance had lamented that he couldn't even remember the last time he experienced rain. Pidge, on the other hand, could remember the last time she experienced rain all too well. It was one of those memories that made her wish she could program a way to delete them.
They flew in silence for a few moments, the stats on the display ticking over as they travelled onwards. They were almost at the base now.
"I'm sorry, Pidge," Keith said finally. "I know that hurt."
Pidge nodded, looking away. "I... Thanks." She fell quiet for a moment, then shook her head. "Anyway. That's when Lance started hanging around a lot more. It probably doesn't mean anything."
"Hmm." The planetoid hosting the base was visible in the viewscreen now, and Keith turned to look as the base rapidly grew larger. "The room with The Obol is around the far side, so you should land her over there."
"Okay." Grateful for the change in topic, Pidge pulled on the flight sticks and the Green Lion soared over the base. They landed gently on the bare rock of the planetoid next to a low, dark building without any windows. Pidge checked the scanners before standing up. "Masks up, Keith. Looks like there's hardly any atmosphere here."
"All right." Pidge bent to grab her helmet when a hand on her shoulder stopped her. "Hey, about Lance? He obviously cares about you. You should try and make it up to him. The sunset thing."
Pidge gaped at him as he released her, activating his mask with his other hand. Keith was the last person she ever expected to get relationship advice from. Keith was who you went to when you wanted to know how to disembowel someone cleanly, not how to make friends.
Keith rapped the helmet in her hands in consternation. "What? Put it on, Pidge. We need to move."
#
The Heist went off without a hitch.
They'd fallen into old habits quickly, covering each other as they cleared each room of the base. Once they were sure no squatters had moved in since Keith's mission with the Blades they hit up the control room, where Keith kept an eye out (more out of habit than anything else) while Pidge copied every byte of data she could find in their servers.
Once that was done, they moved to the room with The Obol.
Pidge hadn't been able to hold back the tears when she first saw it. There, right in front of her, lay her father's pride and joy, the pinnacle of a lifetime's career...in pieces all over the floor. The shell of the ship had been taken off in chunks and was still recognisable, but everything down to the toilet seat had been disassembled into its smallest components and then seemingly thrown at random. She wasn't sure if they were stripping it for valuables or just examining it to see how it worked, but both options made her angry. The Obol was a masterpiece of human engineering. It didn't deserve this .
But, as always, they had a job to do, and there was no time to wallow in sadness. Pidge brought the Green Lion into the nearest hangar and they quickly got to work, carting bits and pieces from the room to the storage bay in Green's underbelly using some boxes and old-fashioned trundle trolleys that Pidge had found on the castle. Some bits were easy, some — like the larger pieces of the shell — required both pairs of hands and a lot of grunting, and others — like the shredded mattresses they found discarded in a corner — brought the anger back and gave them fuel for the next trip.
At one point — two hours in — Pidge had returned from the hangar to find Keith standing at the side, his back to her and his shoulders shaking. He had turned at her approach and held out the item in his hands — a Garrison jacket with SHIROGANE written on the breast — and her heart had stopped.
She hadn't been prepared to find personal effects.
As it turned out, neither of them were. In hindsight, it was an obvious oversight — why would the Galra keep the pieces of the ship, but not the contents? — but both of them had been so focused on bringing the ship back to life that they forgot about things like socks and pencil cases and photographs. After the discovery of the jacket Keith had fetched three boxes and placed them in the centre of the room, and any personal items they came across were silently placed in the corresponding box before they went back to the task at hand. There was no time to waste on tears.
It took them a little under seven hours to stow everything safely on-board the Green Lion. The three boxes were the last things to board, and stayed in the cockpit with them. Pidge took off, set the autopilot, and took one look at the minute shaking of Keith's shoulders before deciding that there was time to wallow after all. The duo spent the trip back kneeling on the hard floor of the cockpit, turning over the items in the boxes and recounting memories, sobbing and laughing in turn as they leant against each other with tears running down their faces.
By the time they broke atmo on Olkarion they had dry throats and red eyes, but the experience had brought them a little closer and given them renewed determination to put the ship together and fix something in the mess that was their shattered lives. For the first time, Pidge wondered if Keith had specifically asked her to help with this project for more than just her technological prowess.
Unloading was much quicker than loading, and by the time they finally disembarked in Green's hangar — sweaty, greasy, and exhausted — the sky was starting to show the first signs of dawn. If they showered and went straight to bed they might get about four hours sleep before they had to be up for their first meeting of the day, and while that wasn't enough neither Pidge nor Keith were ever really expected to contribute much to diplomatic niceties so Pidge at least had that to be thankful for.
They shuffled down the hallways side-by-side in companionable silence, both too physically exhausted and emotionally drained to bother making conversation. Pidge's entire focus was on putting one foot in front of the other — when she got to her room, she was going to have the quickest, hottest shower ever, and then she was going to sink into her warm Altean blanket-cloud and have the best sleep of her life.
She must have muttered that aloud, because Keith let out a short laugh and grunted something that sounded like 'me too'. Or maybe her thoughts were just that loud that even Keith was picking it up over the bond. Whatever.
Nothing was going to get in the way of her and her bed, and she was so close. They were almost at the lounge.
"What the quiznak have you two been up to?!"
Lance's voice shattered the quiet of the hallway, cutting through her thoughts like a knife and making her head throb with pain. Beside her, Keith stumbled and almost fell, evidently as shocked by Lance's sudden appearance as she was. Or would be, if she was awake enough to feel anything but blurry exhaustion.
"Lance...?" she said slowly, squinting at him. "What are you doing awake?"
Lance stood at the turn towards their rooms in his dressing gown, one hand on his hip as he surveyed them with raised eyebrows. "What am I doing awake? What the quiznaking cheesey telephones are you two doing awake? And don't tell me Rynar took you to a club or something, because I won't believe you."
Pidge stared at him, the wheels in her mind sluggishly turning before settling on an answer. "It's a really long story."
She saw Keith minutely shake his head out of the corner of her eye. By the way Lance's expression hardened, she guessed he'd noticed it too. "Care to share?"
"She can't," Keith said, straightening up. "Secret mission." He patted Pidge lightly on the shoulder and started forward down the hall. "The sun's almost up. I'm going to bed."
Lance narrowed his eyes but let him pass with a murmured 'goodnight' before turning back to Pidge, concern and confusion warring in his gaze. All of a sudden Pidge felt very aware of his presence. She wasn't sure if she wanted to run to him or bolt in the other direction, bed be damned.
As the silence ticked on, Keith's advice from earlier sprang to mind, and the words were tumbling out of her mouth before she had time to think about them. "Do you want to go and watch the sunrise?"
He blinked at her. "Seriously?"
Pidge shrugged and shuffled her feet. "I'll need to take a shower first, but yeah?"
Lance's expression slowly blossomed into a wide smile, and Pidge fleetingly thought that it was brighter than any of the stars she'd seen so far. Quiznak.
"Yeah, I'd like that."
For once, the happiness radiating down the bond was palpable to Pidge.