Work Text:
For a second, Shiro feared he’d be told ‘no’ when he asked if he could spend the night in Pidge’s room.
The princess had a look on her face, as if to say, ‘if it has nothing to do with the Lions or a mission, then why in Ancients’ name are you asking me about it?’
“You may,” was her groggy response, spinning back around to continue working on castleship maintenance.
“Thanks,” Shiro said with a yawn as he left her to it and headed down the hallway.
It should’ve surprised him more that Allura let him do this without so much as a second thought. But it was far, far too late to be questioning his good fortune. Shiro let out another yawn.
“Don’t jinx it…” he reminded himself.
Shiro walked into a wall while half-awake and musing to no one, though he recovered quickly enough. Lucky for him, he made it to Pidge’s door before anyone could see his blunder. The automatic door hissed open after he punched in the keycode and slid closed behind him once he entered.
Just as expected, Pidge was nowhere to be found amid the piles of paper, dirty clothes and odd electrical parts. Her sleep schedule was even more disastrous than his. She’d turn up eventually. Shiro just had to wait for her to finish working in the lab.
For now, he made himself comfortable in her bed. Shiro was already wearing pajama bottoms when he came in, so he wriggled out of his undershirt and let it join the other clothes on the floor. They could do couples’ laundry in the morning, maybe. He then raised an arm up over his eyes, one of his legs bent so that his knee pointed toward the ceiling. Her mattress was enviably plush, yet he still had trouble drifting off.
His eyes were about to close for real when Shiro heard the door open again. The familiar sounds of tiny feet approaching put a smile on his lips as she neared. Pidge probably meant to say something at the sight of him, but it came out as an incoherent slur of words. She didn’t bother to elaborate before crawling in.
“Mmm,” he hummed as she laid her scruffy head on his chest. “Come here, sleepybutt.” Shiro pulled her in close, giving that cute butt a squeeze.
“Nerd,” Pidge muttered into his neck as she curled up into a ball.
The two said no more, soon fast asleep on top of each other. They stayed like that for maybe an hour or two before Shiro felt a chill sweep over him. Allura was probably tinkering with the ship’s heating systems. He reached for the duvet to deal with it until then, but he came up empty. Shiro awoke to find his body bare save for his pajama bottoms.
He looked over at Pidge, who’d taken so much of the duvet for herself that only his leg was covered. Meanwhile, she had all but disappeared into the cushy folds.
Shiro sighed. This wasn’t the first time he caught her doing this, though he usually didn’t say anything about it. She wouldn’t be getting off that easy tonight. He slid his fingers into the blanket cocoon and started pulling when he grabbed a corner piece. Shiro stopped until his chest was covered, then went back to sleep.
It only took a few minutes for Pidge to steal his share of the duvet again, this time rolling off of him and taking the warmth with her.
“Pidge,” he whispered, gently shaking her.
“Hm?” she responded, fluttering her eyes open just a little.
“It’s cold in here and you’re hogging the blankets,” he said.
Pidge gave him a sleepy grin. “Oh, sorry.” She shuffled so that the duvet wasn’t tucked so close to her body. “Is that enough, or…?”
“No, this is good,” Shiro said. “Goodnight, babe.”
“Good morning, you mean,” Pidge said before rolling over on her side.
Shiro looked past her at the time telling device sitting on her nightstand. She was right; he was no expert at reading Altean numbers, but going off of his crude understanding of it, they only had a few more hours before Allura would be hollering at them to meet her for drills on the training deck. “Shit, gotta fall asleep,” he muttered.
Just as he was about to conk out, the chill in the room crept up his arms a third time. He almost reached out again, but stopped himself. ‘I am not fighting over this bullshit tonight… or, today. Whatever,’ Shiro told himself. Swinging his legs out and onto the floor, he trudged over to where he’d thrown his shirt, slipped it back on and rejoined his girlfriend.
By the time his dreams engulfed him, the temperature had dropped below zero. The freezing cold pulled him out of his sleep. His thin shirt did nothing to protect him. Shiro prayed to some higher power that the princess was in the middle of getting temperatures back to normal. The hairs standing up on his flesh arm and the back of his neck said otherwise.
It got to the point where Shiro even tried activating his prosthetic arm on its lowest setting and rubbed it on himself. Better than nothing, but it only warmed up one portion of his body at a time. He stared up at the ceiling, huffing so that his white bangs floated above his nose for a tick. A light bulb went off in his head. Shiro turned to his little blanket thief of a bedmate.
Pidge had buried so deep into her duvet cocoon that Shiro had trouble figuring out where she began and where she ended. He pulled her to him, duvet and all, before wrapping his limbs around her.
‘Wow, this is… actually comfortable,’ Shiro realized, bringing Pidge in a little closer without crushing her.
Pidge had the most contented smile on her face from what he could see of it poking out from the cocoon. She stretched her neck out further so that the top of her head nestled underneath his chin.
He wanted to kick his own ass for not doing this sooner. Pidge was like a space heater, even when she didn’t insist on hogging the only blanket between them. Shiro added one last layer of comfort to their bundle by activating his arm again, kissing her forehead and shutting his eyes to block out the purple glow.
They were going to be late for drills, no argument about that. But in spite of that fact and what he had to do to get here, this was probably the best sleep he had gotten since… well, since the Blue Lion had brought them all to the castleship.
Shiro had no doubt in his mind that Pidge felt the same.