Work Text:
Seeing the piece of paper fall from his opened locker made her heart stutter in the worst way possible.
In her last school, she had received anonymous notes, even when she knew exactly from whom they were, and all of them criticized and offended her intelligence, her way of thinking, her lack of friends and scarce cuteness. Every single one of them were hate notes to her person. And they were, with other things that included pranks, hurtful comments in front of multitudes, and actions to ridicule her, the reason that made her change schools in the first place.
It had been a nightmare, only being forgotten and overcome thanks to the great support she had from her family.
So, seeing the piece of paper, bent carelessly, falling from her locker like it was the blade of a guillotine wasn’t an experience she wanted to revive.
“What’s that?”
She caught the paper with her fist before the other’s hand reached for it, and she heard a mocking hum.
“Well, well,” she heard him laugh while she took out her books with rough moves and lashing the door of her locker, the piece of paper in her palm burning her skin too insistently, “What’s that, Pidge? Is it a love letter?”
“A love letter?”
She rolled her eyes at Hunks question, her friend looking at them from the other the side of the hallway while putting his notebook inside his own locker.
“It’s not a love letter,” she spat out, hanging her backpack to her shoulder and rushing her feet to arrive to the classroom with no more questions.
“Oh, please!” Lance exclaimed just before closing his locker and following her fast enough, Hunk coming to his side, “You haven’t even opened it! How do you know it’s not a love letter?”
She rolled back her eyes, again.
“It’s true, Pidge!” Hunke assured with a too bright smile that made her feel more bitter, “Maybe you have an admirer somewhere!”
She let out a noise from her throat that could be a growl.
“It’s not a love letter!”
She had shouted to the floor, and every sound in the hallway stopped.
She knew she was the center of attention, with all the murmurs starting to push her against herself. She didn’t even care about the reaction of her friends, rushing to the classroom and drowning in the textbook even though class hasn’t started, the little piece of paper trying to be ignored in the bottom of her pocket.
She couldn’t focus on her homework.
Normally, it would take her a couple of hours to do all the homework that they gave. And the rest of the day she continued her investigations or spend time on the internet until dinner.
But in that moment, she was still glaring at her math homework, and there were roughly 20 minutes for her family to call her to go down for dinner.
She huffed, taking off her glasses and rubbing the pain from her eyes, the headache she had annoying her since that morning not wavering through the day and torturing her until that very moment.
“Damn it.”
She dropped her face to the desk, hitting her forehead to the wood and somehow lowering down the headache with another pain, and she turned her face to the left, her hair disheveling against the table. Her eyes stopped in the bent piece of paper, abandoned in her desk with her keys and her phone, and she tightened her eyelids with force, as if she could make it disappear only with her willpower.
She had thought in throw it in the garbage and forget about the whole thing, but every time she wondered what could have been written in it made her anxious, and actually she had tried to ignore its existence completely to avoid thinking of that. She knew that if she doesn’t get rid of it, her headache won’t stop, and eventually her mother or her brother would find the note. And she didn’t want to hear the yelling from the principal office once again while their family made a drama about it.
She sighed and reached for the paper, taking a deep breath before opening it and glancing its content, expecting something worse that what she had received in previous notes.
Nonetheless, that thing written in careless and shaky letters wasn’t an offense or criticism to her being.
‘You’re really pretty.’
She squinted at it, glaring the little heart beside the compliment, and swallowed hardly, feeling her heart start to beat faster, in a very different way of how it had happened that morning with that same note.
She rolled back her eyes at that and let the paper drop in the desk, burying her face into her arms and closing her eyes for a few seconds, giving herself a moment to calm down before looking back to the note again.
Surely it was a mistake. Allura, her friend and classmate from literature, had her locker beside hers and the note maybe was for her.
There was no way someone thought she was pretty.
Her eyes followed down the paper fall from the door of her locker, immediately frowning at finding kind of a pattern of how it was bended. She glanced over her shoulder, expecting to find someone staring at her attentively, but no one seemed to have noticed that, and she crouched to pick it and take a look inside.
‘You are so smart!’
She winced when she felt a smile perk up her lips and reviewed the four words, highlighted with an exclamation sign and something like a doddle of herself with her glasses in an exaggerated size.
“What’s that?”
She jumped, and until she found herself glued to the locker, she noticed she had screamed, Lance backing up a step immediately. She huffed, reaching her hand to where her heart was beating rapidly, and Lance glanced her hand, where the note was wrinkled in her fist, his mouth starting to curve up in a smirk.
“Oh,” he said acting surprised while she shoved the note to the bottom of her pocket and closed her locker with a slam, “A love letter, huh?”
She scoffed.
“It’s not a love letter,” she spat, turning in her heel to dodge him and avoid his eyes, his grin too big and annoying.
“Oh, your red face says otherwise.”
She turned to him and pointed him with a finger, Lance stepping back again and chuckling nervously.
“Get away, McClain,” she warned him wrinkling her nose, and he showed his palms in a sign of truce.
“I’m just saying the obvious, Holt.”
She grimaced with a roll of eyes and gave turned away, thinking thoroughly to arrive to her classroom whilst the piece of paper burned her pocket.
‘I love the color of your eyes!’
‘Your smile is spectacular.’
‘You look beautiful with your new haircut.’
‘Do you know you wrinkle your nose while you read?’
Instinctively she brought up her hand to her nose, a grin going out from her lips so she had to act as if Shakespeare was something she enjoyed.
“What’s going on with you lately?”
She shot a glance to Lance and Hunk, both in the other side of the table, and lowered down her literature book, closing it and covering up that she had only opened it to hide the new note that had appeared in her locker.
“Hm... Nothing,” she answered pushing away the book and taking out her lunch.
“Really, Pidge,” Hunk insisted, his eyebrows furrowed, “You’ve been too happy these days.”
She simulated thinking of a reason, but she was searching for an excuse.
“Well, the planetary trip is next month,” she half lied, because actually she was excited for the trip.
But Hunk seemed to consider it, narrowing his eyes at her while Lance tilted his head.
“You’re hiding something.”
She squinted at them and bit her sandwich.
“You’re exaggerating,” she said with her mouth full, Hunk looking away in exasperation.
“My god, Pidge, close your mouth!”
She covered her mouth, a laugh bubbling in her throat, and glanced over Lance, finding him staring at her with too much attention.
“What?” she asked after swallowing and he pursued his lips, shaking his head slightly.
“You’ve been too beaming...” he commented lifting a brow, “You really are hiding something.”
She frowned and lowered her sandwich, her eyes going briefly to her literature book. Lance narrowed his eyes at that and jumped over the table to take it, getting away from her reach when she stood up and tried to snatch it back.
“Oh, oh! What could you be hiding, Pidge?” he sing-sang, standing in the bench while she shifted in her place to stand over the table.
“Give me that, McClain!”
“Oh, no,” he answered when she could get over the table and he jumped to the ground, quickly escaping from her and shaking the book over his head, “So you really are hiding something in here.”
She felt time stop when he opened the book, the piece of paper being left in disposition for the blue eyes, and she jumped from the table to snatch the book from his hands, making him trip back at the sudden move.
“Leave me alone, Lance!”
She felt her face blush violently and had to retrieve her lunch in a hurry to avoid being the center of attention once again, too ashamed to be seen like that.
‘I saw what McClain did to you in lunch, are you okay?’
She pouted at the written words, looking lower and finding a ‘Such an idiot’ crisscrossed a few times.
She couldn’t help but scoff.
Looking up to her book, the note being in her lap between her hands down the table for no one in the library to see it, she bent it to put it back in her pocket, being a habit taking it out when she came home and into her room, saving it with the rest of the notes she had received in the little green box she had in her desk.
She sighed and leaned in the table, trying to focus on the reading she had to do for literature, but that was so much like a torture. She was sure that she’ll never bestow her life in such things as philosophy or romanticism.
Her eyes got distracted instantly, frowning at the obscured back of the library because of the tall bookcases full of dusted copies. She didn’t know from whom those notes came from, and she really wanted to find out, but she couldn’t think of a way to know, unless she had the time, energy and resources to check out the calligraphy from every single student.
She took a deep breath and let her head hit the wood of the wood, the sound startling the guy on the other side of the table.
“Sorry,” she muttered, hearing him huff.
“It’s fine…”
She crooked her neck to look at him, her temple still against the wood, and she had to take a moment to recognize him, knowing they shared a couple of classes.
“Keith Kogane, right?” She murmured, and he glanced up from his aeronautics book, a book that was his own because the school library didn’t have that kind of volumes, “We have physics together.”
He looked away, nodding slowly.
“Katie Holt,” he remembered, and she smiled at him.
“Call me Pidge.”
The notes didn’t stop coming, some of them too elaborate, with drawings or comments about the day, some of them with compliments and little hearts.
“You’re receiving love letters?!”
She shut him up by slapping her hand to his mouth, looking around to see if anyone had heard.
“They’re not love letters,” she clarified letting him go and adjusting her glasses, “They’re just notes.”
“Love notes,” he corrected with a huge smile, “I knew it! I knew you weren’t happy just because the trip to the planetary!”
“It’s part of my happiness, Hunk,” she scoffed rolling her eyes and pushing him playfully, “And they’re not of love, understand that.”
“But, Pidge,” he whined exasperated, “You say they write to you compliments and pretty things, those are love notes! You have an admirer!”
“They’re not of love!”
He pursued his eyebrows and pouted, musing it.
“Well, they haven’t sworn eternal love to you,” he said shrugging and gazing up to the sky, “but they’re compliments, Pidge. They’re talking pretty to you. They’re building up their road.”
She sighed heavily, slumping her shoulders and falling to the grass, Hunk following her a bit later.
“Do you know who they are?”
“Of course not,” she answered frowning at a lonely cloud in the sky, “The notes just appear in my locker, and I’m not going to compare more than 600 writing styles to find them.”
Hunk took a deep breath and heaved a sigh, the grass crouching as he turned to her.
“And would you give them an opportunity even when you don’t know them?”
She blinked and turned to him, mouthing a bit without knowing what to say.
“Well...” she muttered looking down and shifting in her place, “I don’t think I would immediately.”
Hunk gasped with exaggerated surprise.
“Pidge! You like them!”
She felt her bllod rush to her face.
“I don’t like them!”
“But you considered it!”
“It’s considering! Not accepting it just like that!” she exclaimed sitting up, “If I don’t know them, I’ll obviously would like to know them, but that doesn’t matter, I just want to know who are they!”
He lifted an eyebrow, a teasing smirk curving his lips.
“Yeah, ‘know them’...”
“I want to strangle you.”
Another note fell from her locker, and she felt a smile perk up her mouth, but seeing Keith crouching to take it made her jump out of her skin.
“Is this yours?” he asked frowning, the note still in his fingers though he was obviously offering it to her.
“I... uh...”
One of his eyebrows went up and she snatch it, chuckling nervously.
“Yeah, well,” she tried after shoving it to her pocket as if it wasn’t something important and she wasn’t anxious to know what was written on it, “sometimes I leave my stuff in a mess and the fall when I open my locker. It’s nothing new.”
He nodded once and she smiled widely at him, taking out her physics textbook and closing her locker.
“I thought you were overly organized,” he pointed out eying the bookmarks in the book, marking out each of the chapters and important details in the text.
“Oh, you should see my room,” she brushed it off with a wave of hand and turning to the classroom, a nervous and forced laugh blurting out of her mouth, “I’m not that organized with my life as I am with my studies.”
Keith smirked a bit, signal that he believed it, and she sighed, really relieved that she had avoided completely topic of the little piece of paper.
“Kogane?”
Both looked over their shoulders, Lance staring at them with his arms crossed over his chest and with a frown in his face.
Oh, yeah, Lance kind of hated Keith because he was better than him in his favorite class: P. E.
“Do I know you?”
She snorted, not containing a laugh, and the pained look in Lance’s face made her shut up.
“Forget it,” he spat under his breath, turning around and walking in angry steps to the other side of the hallway, “Doesn’t matter.”
She raised an eyebrow at him, hearing him curse in lower voice.
“Do you think it could be James?”
She looked at him as if he had grown a second head.
“Okay, no.”
She rolled her eyes and continued writing, her math homework much more interesting than seeing her classmates play during recess, which Hunk was doing to try and say candidates, crossing their names when she discarded them.
“What about Keith?”
She stopped writing mid number, and looked up to the boy, smiling widely at the teacher’s assistant, Shiro.
“He’s gay.”
Now Hunk almost whiplashed when he turned at her.
“How do you know that?!”
She grinned crookedly.
“He asked me about Shiro. He knows I’ve knew him from before because he is Matt’s best friend,” she commented and Hunk glanced back to the pair in the edge of the court, noting Shiro’s shy smile.
“Wow.”
“I know.”
“They make a cute couple”
“Yes.”
“You know with who you’ll make a good couple?”
“What?”
“Leif.”
“Hunk...”
“Okay, she neither, then.”
He crossed her name in his list.
‘Do you have something with Kogane?’
That’s the only thing it said, and it was disconcerting. There were no doodles or drawings. Not even the constant drawing of round glasses that most of the notes had. The lack of it made it look too serious.
She arched her eyebrows, almost feeling them disappear in her hair, and she warily glanced around, kind of expecting that the one who had written that was watching her attentively, even when Iverson was explaining what the quantum phase was.
Her eyes stopped over Keith writing vaguely whilst he was hearing the teacher, and her sight went over a few rows ahead, noting that Lance moved awkwardly in his seat. She frowned, staring at him cautiously, and she saw him slowly look over his shoulder and make contact with her eyes, startling and turning to the board with a flinch.
Oh.
“Why do you leave me those notes?”
He jumped, almost crashing into his locker and hitting himself in the ribs with the corner of the door, his face deforming in pain when he looked at her.
“What?” he asked avoiding her eyes briefly, “Notes? What notes?”
She raised a brow, and he tried not to breathe, letting out a bunch of air and seeming defeated.
“I’m sorry, okay?” he said turning his back to her and closing his locker to face her once again, “It’s just that I didn’t know how... I didn’t know how to say it to you and...”
“Do you like me, Lance?”
He opened his mouth and closed it, swallowing hard and looking away.
“Would there be a problem?”
“Many.”
He grimaced and scoffed.
“Sure, you prefer Kogane over me, don’t you?” he spat bitterly, his fists tightening in his sides, “I really hope you two are happy with your astrophysics and weird haircuts.”
“I thought you liked my hair,” she pointed out, regarding the ‘Your hair looks so soft! It is or I would’ve to make sure?’ and the wink he received in one of the notes that embarrassed her that much that she croaked a laugh.
“Well, that doesn’t matter, does it?” he said like a curse, “Just tell me you reject me so I can go home.”
She thought it for a bit, tilting her head and wrinkling her nose.
“You know,” she started looking down, suddenly self-conscious, “Your notes really liven up my day. And I imagined a lot how I could thank you for that when I knew who you were.”
There was no answer, and she lift her eyes, finding him staring fixedly to the ground, his eyebrows pursued sharply.
“Lance,” she called him, and he raised his shoulders to his ears, glancing her with a vulnerable and shy expression, “would you like to go for something to drink?”
His surprise was obvious, his eyes opening up more and his jaw falling open.
“What?”
“We’re friends, aren’t we?” she reminded him looking up to the ceiling, “Of course, until you took my book from me to reveal the note I’ve hidden. And, ah, when you were an asshole to Keith.”
He rolled his eyes.
“I get it, I’m sorry.”
She huffed.
“Come on, or the bid is off.”
Lance smiled slightly, sighing.
“Are you giving me an opportunity?”
“To mend your mistakes, yes.”
He groaned and she tried not to laugh.
“They weren’t love letters,” he mentioned suddenly, his eyes staring intently to the table while his hands fidgeted with his glass of lemonade.
She watched him silently and shrugged it off with a shoulder.
“It wasn’t what you said when everything started.”
She saw him blush violently and chuckled.