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“Are you excited for the new year?” Coran asked.
Pidge jolted in place. She hadn’t noticed him even approaching her and Lance.
Well, to be fair, she had been a bit preoccupied with trying to figure out what her boyfriend was up to. It was frustrating, she knew he was hiding something from her, but she couldn’t understand what he needed to hide from her. He had been acting weird all evening at the New Year’s Eve party, sneaking off when someone held Pidge’s attention long enough only for her to realize he was gone much later.
Currently, he had his arm wrapped around her shoulders, leaning a bit of his weight against her side, knowing she wouldn’t let him fall even if she was thinking about it.
“Very!” Lance answered enthusiastically. “Anything could happen, I’m hoping for a good year.”
“You’re always hoping for a good year, Lance,” Pidge remarked, nudging him lightly. “I don’t really see anything changing. It’s just another day.”
“And yet you still come to these parties,” Lance teased, bending down partially to brush his nose against her cheek. She whacked him in the stomach, knocking a bit of air out of him, which made her smile.
“You kept dragging me to them so I stopped putting up a fight,” she rolled her eyes, but there was no real annoyance in her tone.
“It’s true it’s normally like any other day, Number Five,” Coran said, chuckling at the couple’s antics, “but every day is another adventure! Never the same day twice.”
“Yeah, but there’s nothing special about today and tomorrow. Earth has a bunch of different days that signify a ‘new year’ depending on the culture,” Pidge shook her head, barely noticing how Lance pulled his arm away from her shoulders. “The lunar new year happens in February, the Hindu new year happens for their first month Chaitra, which is in April. There’s Rosh Hashanah, which happens in September. For those who don’t really follow the Gregorian calendar, tonight’s just another regular night.”
“Really? I keep forgetting how diverse this Earth is,” Coran commented. “Is there anything all you Earthlings agree on?”
“Not really,” Pidge shook her head, before she realized Lance wasn’t next to her at all. She huffed and looked around, trying to find him but there were too many tall people. “Where did he go this time?”
“Oh, Lance?” Coran questioned, a smile making his moustache twitch. “I think he went to speak with Hunk, he’ll be back any moment.”
“But he keeps doing this,” Pidge frowned, partially crossing her arms and absently rubbing her inner left wrist. A nervous habit since the words first formed when she had been ten.
Soulmarks were fairly common but not as accurate as those dumb romance novels make them out to be. More often than not, if someone said a really long sentence, the soulmark would only be about half the sentence, making it difficult to figure out who is and who isn’t Fate’s choice. Pidge was one of those people with a cut-off mark, and it had frustrated her to no end. Seeing the clear blue lettering of “Who the heck” followed by a blue smudge on the inside of her wrist.
Maybe it was because of her soulmark that had made it so difficult to realize Lance had been the one to say the words until several months after he had said it. Seeing her own words on his upper arm, having always been hidden under layers and layers of clothes or Voltron suits, the one time he took his shirts off had almost bowled her over, but he hadn’t noticed until after she confessed, showing him her own mark after their fun at the space mall all those years ago.
“I’m sure he doesn’t mean to distress you,” Coran’s voice brought her back to the present, putting a hand on her shoulder reassuringly, and he glanced behind her before smiling widely. “Ah, he’s coming back, see?”
Pidge turned her head to see Lance and Hunk walking their way, heads almost knocking together as they whispered too fast for her to decipher what their lips were shaping. She was beginning to think nearly everyone in the room except her knew something was up.
As the guys walked closer, Coran said something about seeing Allura, and by the time Hunk and Lance reached her, the alien advisor had slipped away without protest.
“Hey, Pidge!” Hunk wrapped his arms around her petite frame and picked her up in a bear hug. “How have you been?”
“Good!” She grunted as she was put back down. It was a surprise every time she met up with Hunk, how all-encompassing his hugs were to her, and that she was startled every time he went in for a hug first thing. One would have assumed she’d be used to her friend’s antics like that by now. “What about you? It’s rare to have you on Earth for a holiday.”
“Oh I wouldn’t miss th-” Hunk made a face of surprise, as if he had been startled by the words almost coming out of his mouth, “I didn’t want to miss another New Years on Earth, y’know? Managed to work out a few days off. Sal and Shay are keeping everything in order while I’m gone.”
“It’s great that you’re here, man,” Lance wrapped one arm around Pidge’s shoulders and wrapped the other around Hunk’s, pulling them close to him with a laugh. “It’s never as fun around without you to complete our trio.”
“Yeah, right,” Hunk laughed, pulling away and shaking his head. “I’d just be the third wheel again. I’m glad you found each other but you both get too mushy for me, and I am as soft as the Altean food goo.”
Lance and Pidge joined in on the laugh, and Pidge felt her cheeks warm in mild embarrassment.
“Anyway, I’ll talk to you guys later. I want to catch up with everyone else,” Hunk smiled widely at the couple before he made his way into the fray around them, and even from the short distance, they could hear when he made contact with Keith by the semi-surprised yelp made by the Blade member.
Pidge turned to Lance with a frown, opening her mouth to question him on why he’d been so strange all evening, when the music in the background changed to something intimately familiar to them both. Lance visibly perked up and pulled away from her, extending a hand and semi-bowing to her.
“Would you do me the honour of dancing with me, Pidgeon?” He asked, and she practically melted at his tone.
She nodded, taking his hand, and he gently pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her waist while she loosely wrapped her own arms around his bare upper arms, one hand just covering her very first words she had said to him.
They danced without a word to one another for the entire song, and Pidge pushed the minor annoyance at Lance’s strangeness away, content to resting her head against his chest as he rested his head on top of hers.
As the song ended and another one began, neither stopped swaying. It seemed someone had asked for a bunch of slow dances just before midnight, and neither Lance nor Pidge were about to complain.
“I never thought I’d be here,” Lance said softly, pulling Pidge back to the moment, and she shifted to look up at him. He tilted his head to look down at her with so much affection she could drown in it. “In all my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d be here, with my soulmate, both of us saviours of the known universes, and then some.” The two chuckled at that. “I never thought my soulmate would be this wonderful, smart, fiery, snarky, amazing woman, and yet, here we are, here I am with you.”
They had stopped swaying, Lance pulling away from Pidge to look her full-on. Pidge only saw him. His smile, the way his eyes crinkled as he did so, the soft expression as he held her hands between his own.
“I spent so much time daydreaming about how I’d meet my soulmate. It’d be epic or something, and I’d be the hero asking if anyone needed help, and I’d hear their voice say those magic words and it would be love at first sight.” Lance said, a confession he had only once told her before, early into their relationship. “But I wouldn’t change how we met. Never in a million light years.”
He squeezed her hands. “Being with you has been the strangest, wildest roller coaster I have ever been on. You’ve tricked me, saved me, made me wish I actually properly paid attention in my science classes back in high school, and made me feel loved even before you told me we were soulmates. And I wouldn’t change that for the galaxy.”
Pidge hadn’t realized she was crying until Lance reached up and gently wiped a tear away with a soft coo.
“I’ve loved you since we met Allura, all those years ago, even when I thought you were a guy. Thanks for that bi awakening, by the way,” he laughed softly and shook his head. “I love your science talk, how you light up at the thought of advanced alien technology, how you actually give me a chance to understand your science talk. I love your eyes when you talk about a new project. I love how excited you get about the Killbot Phantasm series and when we can stay up for hours trying to beat one level together.”
Pidge chuckled, weak and wet as tears continued to fall. Her mind was blank except for the words Lance said, every syllable bouncing around in her head.
“You are one of my best friends,” Lance continued, cupping her face and wiping her tears. “I would have said you are my only best friend, but that would be a lie and slander against Hunk.” They both laughed, one a little more watery than the other. “But it’s true what they say; marry your best friend. I had been almost surprised Hunk hadn’t been my soulmate, really, before I met you.”
He laughed to himself, and Pidge realized how shiny his own eyes were, but before she could move - it felt like she was rooted in place, the entire world frozen for them - he swiped at his own eyes before the tears could fall.
“I’ve always wondered why Fate decided to give me such a vague soulmark, one that made attendance horrible for me every new term. But now I see what Fate had in store, because you were right, Pidge. You were always ‘right here,’ right in front of me. All those fantasies, all those grand ideals, they never mattered. All I ever needed,” Lance shifted, getting down on one knee and Pidge’s breath caught, hands flying to her mouth, “is right here.
“Katie… Katrina Katie Pidge Gunderson Holt, will you marry me?” He pulled out a little box, and tears made it very hard to see the little ring nestled inside.
Unable to find her voice, Pidge nodded as fast as she could, springing forward to wrap her arms around Lance’s neck and pulling him in close for a deep kiss as she distantly became aware of cheers all around them. She pulled away slightly to look at how there was now a circle of their friends and family surrounding the two of them, and a new wave of cheering swept through them as a countdown came over the speakers where the music had been coming from before.
Pidge looked back at Lance, unable to find her voice. He looked equally as speechless, as if he had used them all up in that proposal speech - Pidge’s mind screeched to a halt at the realization that Lance proposed to her, and she said yes. He pulled on her left hand and she could only watch tearily as the little band was placed around her finger, just as the countdown reached zero.