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brettanomycroft · 7 years

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For Science, Chapter 3 [Voltron, Shidge, 3/4]

“Are you comparing me to a computer?” Shiro asks. His own voice echoes back in his ears, dancing the line between nervous and so, so hopeful.

“Yeah,” Pidge spits out, “yeah, I am.”

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Pairing: Pidge|Katie Holt x Shiro, Lance x Keith Rating: T, for swearing and implied sexual content Words: total 34591 Tags: Shidge, swearing, ancillary Klance/Klancillary, let’s talk about our feelings NOT, Pidge is a little shit, gymnastics, antics, FOR SCIENCE duh, cuddling, oblivious Shiro is oblivious, AGED UP, FIVE YEARS LATER, kissing finally

Read on Ao3

Chapter One Chapter Two

@battleshidge @d0g-bless

Keith tells Shiro to talk to Pidge. Shiro doesn’t.

For three long days, Shiro skirts around the issue, always finding something urgent to do when Keith attempts to ask him about it. Even Lance tries to approach him a few times, but that shit-eating grin of his gives him away, and Shiro is long gone before Lance can corner him.

It’s not that he’s avoiding Pidge - he couldn’t, even if he tried, and as the days crawl forward, it hits him harder and deeper that he really doesn’t want to. As much of their time as before, if not more, is spent together. Every morning Pidge slides into the seat next to him and across their bond shares her amusement at whatever new drama has taken over the breakfast table. Coran alerts them to the fact that they’re nearing the edge of the system, and that the Castle’s information on the next system over is thousands of years out of date. So, the two of them spend hours pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, hunched over a system map and strategizing. Pidge interprets the data relayed from sensors Lance and Keith had taken out in their lions while Shiro begins analyzing potential hazards and plotting the safest means for them to approach the system. The satisfied thrum of the connection between them holds until they part after dinner. For two nights straight, he watches Pidge walk away from him, either to her room or down to the labs, and take the remnants of their psychic link with her.

And for two nights straight, the nightmares yank him from sleep hard enough to send him careening off the bed. Shaking and on all fours, he dry heaves in between gasps for breath that aren't deep enough. Once pulse and stomach settle, minutes later, Shiro knows he's up until breakfast. Even then, the air doesn't really sit right in his lungs until he sees the brown thatch of hair stumble into the dining room and slump over the table with sleepy, murmured greetings.

Shiro doesn't think he's being all that obvious about his lack of sleep - it's been a consistent problem for years. Midway through the third day of system plotting, though, Pidge bumps his shoulder with hers and says, “You wanna go rest for a bit? I can come get you when Lance and Keith are done with the data transmission.”

She scoffs at his reassurances that he's fine, but doesn't bring it up again. The rest of the day’s work is quiet, but companionable, even as they exchange strains of worry and soothing through their bond.

It’s nearing evening when Hunk pages Pidge from down in the hangar. Like a blade, the crackle of noise from the PA cleaves straight through their bond.

“Hey, uh, Pidge, Coran an’ I have some smoking circuitry down in the gravity adjusters and could totally use some backup. Or maybe a fire extinguisher. Both?”

“Both is good!” Coran’s voice echoes from further back.

A slight grunt escapes her as she unfolds from over the system map and presses her hands into the small of her back. She sends him a long, impassive look. He stares back, unable to quite decipher the meaning behind her neutral gaze. Her eyes squeeze into a squint, and then widen.

“Sorry,” she murmurs, “I thought we were still connected. I was trying to feel out if you’d be all right finishing up without me.”

He blinks. Her words are slow to process over the shouting going on between his temples. The thing is, it’s not just lack of sleep and the long hours transforming numbers into action that’s had him feeling out of sorts these past few days.

It’s also the voice in his head, the one he swears used to be much quieter and used to sound a lot less like Lance, that leaps to attention like an overeager puppy any time Pidge so much as looks at him too long. At the moment, it’s insisting that he let Pidge know in no uncertain terms that he will not be all right finishing up without her, and that rather than leaving she should, in fact, come closer.

“Oh, of course, sure,” Shiro says instead.

“Thanks. I’ll try and get back up, but if you finish before I do, maybe at least try and get some rest, okay?”

“I will,” he says with full certainty that he will not.

Pidge, who had already started turning to leave, stops short. She leans in and elbows him in the arm. His “Hey!” of protest lacks teeth; she had, after all, fulfilled his silent hope that she might come nearer.

“You’re so full of shit,” she says, unapologetic.

As exhausted as he is, and as much as he doesn’t want her to go, she succeeds in making him smile. The grin she shoots back is all teeth and mischief. He’d like her smile to overlap with his. They’re close enough that they could, if he bent down, if she rocked forward on her toes.

The thought is dangerous, wholly inappropriate, and impossible to undo. It races around in his brain, getting louder and more Lance-like with every pass.

“Get your filthy mouth off of my bridge and go help Coran and Hunk,” he orders.

Pidge gives him the most lackadaisical salute possible, not much more than a flick of her wrist, and trots off.

“Go take a nap, Shiro!” she calls as the doors to the bridge begin to close. A good twenty ticks pass before he moves. He knows he’s alone on the bridge, but that doesn’t stop him from looking left and right before burying his head in his hands and letting out the longest groan.

This was not going to be easy.

“That bad, huh?”

Shiro’s head snaps up, his body jerking into a defensive stance.

“Wow, I did not mean to startle you.”

His roving eyes, looking for danger, dart to the bridge’s primary holoscreen. It’s Keith, projected larger-than-life above him. He’s suited up in his armor and surrounded by the flickering lights of his lion’s cockpit. Shiro’s arms drop.

“I didn’t hear you open the comm channel,” Shiro says. He’s unable to keep the defensiveness out of his voice, as if it’s Keith’s fault that Shiro has been caught in an awkward situation.

“That’s because you were too busy flirting to notice.”

Keith’s voice is the slightest bit tinny over the bridge speakers, but the humor in his tone isn’t lost.

“We- we weren’t flirting,” Shiro says. His denial sounds weak even in his own ears.

Keith purses his lips and raises an eyebrow. “Be glad it’s me and not Lance, because you know he’d take a pot shot at the whole ‘get your filthy mouth off my bridge’ line.”

It’s a desperate hope that Keith can’t see how red Shiro flushes, but also a foolish one.

“Anyway, I connected to get an update on the mission, not your love life, but since it’s obvious that you still haven’t told her-”

Like the aforementioned conversation with Pidge that he keeps putting off, Shiro avoids Keith’s with immediate redirection.

“Have you and Lance finished the last system scans?”

“Yeah, but-”

“Great. I’ve almost completed the system entry protocol, and Coran, Hunk, and Pidge are dealing with the adjusters so that we’ll be ready for the heightened gravity, since our target planet is circumtrinary. Allura should be about done with the maintenance on the crystal, too, so you two can head on back.”

“We’re already on our way,” Keith says, face pinching in annoyance. It’s obvious what Shiro is doing, and Shiro is happy to keep it that way.

“Got it, we’ll see you soon then.”

“Shiro, stop being an ass, this isn’t difficult--”

Shiro cuts the comm, reburies his face in his hands, and lets out an even longer, even more desperate groan.

Because the truth of it is, nothing about this decision is as easy as Keith claims. Caring wasn’t a weakness, no, but the agonizing he’s done the past handful of days has revealed a long list of problems that wouldn’t exist were it not for his ridiculous feelings.

They would all return to Earth one day. Sooner rather than later, if they used their heads and fought hard. And what was waiting back on Earth for them? Pidge would want to finish school. She’d become a doctor, and no doubt surpass her father. Katie Holt would be known planetwide and beyond. But him?

Maybe he’d have a legacy when they got back; maybe he’d be celebrated for helping rescue the Holts and getting back to Earth. When the praise died down, though, there was no telling what he’d have left. He’d be an old and broken soldier with a fistful of medals and a meaningless rank. Part of him had already considered offering to stay on with Coran and Allura, to continue protecting the universe after the war ended. Dragging Pidge into that was not part of the plan.

And even if she did choose to stay with him after the war, that didn’t mean things would be all right before they defeated Zarkon. Lance and Keith were fine by Allura, Shiro knew that, but this relationship would be different. He was the Black Paladin, the one looked to to call the shots, and when victory was dependent on the seamless mind-meld of five independent individuals, there was no room for perceived favoritism. If he and Pidge were together, would the other paladins question every time he gave her a mission or a special task?

Shaking his head, Shiro drags his hands down his cheeks and lets them go limp at his sides. His team isn’t like that, nor is the Princess. He’s had a half-decade of proof to go by. The fact doesn’t soothe the churning in his abdomen, or keep him from imagining all of the other terrible possibilities. Zarkon or one of his agents could discover their relationship, and go for Pidge under the impression that they could use her as leverage, to make him surrender Kuro.

And what if it didn’t work out? A warzone was no place for heartbreak. Back at the Garrison, he’d watched cadets fall in and out of love as fast as they did formation. It was never pretty to watch the strain it put on the affected units. That was part of why he’d avoided anything more serious than a few off-base flings. The feeling welling up inside of him had been little more than an abstraction until Pidge, and the uncharted territory of what might come next sets him on edge.

His fears go on, and his brain gives him no reprieve from enumerating them, one by one, over and over again. But there was no worry worse than the one that first surfaced when Keith drew out his confession: that she might not return his feelings.

…

The tension in his gut refuses to subside even as it approaches dinner time. He books it from the bridge to the dining room, eager for some regularly scheduled dinner chaos to distract him. Of course, the cosmos has it out for him; the doors to the dining room slide open, and only Lance and Keith are at the table. He has one tick to be thankful that they’re seated and chatting, as opposed to the alternative, before they both turn to him with matching innocent expressions. Shiro has never been so certain that he was the topic of conversation up until he entered.

Never one to dance around a subject, Lance opens with a blatant, “So, how’s Pidge?”

Shiro frowns at Keith and goes over to the goo dispenser. Keith has the decency to look a little uncomfortable.

“He wouldn’t stop bugging me about it,” he says. “And he’s obnoxiously persistent.”

“Yup,” Lance replies, a note of pride in his voice. “Though it’s not like Keith had to tell me anything. It was all pretty obvious after we found you leaving her room. Early in the morning. After spending the night.”

“I didn’t- you know it wasn’t like that!” Shiro snaps. The lever on the goo machine gets the brunt of his frustration as he yanks it down.

“But it could be, if you ever said anything to her,” Keith says.

Instead of responding, Shiro watches as the green, gelatinous goop fills his tray. This exact same conversation has been playing itself out in his head all day, and that paired with his incessant worrying about the whole situation is doing little to soothe his fraying nerves. He forces himself to take a deep breath, grabs a spork, and heads back to the table. From the twitch at the corner of his lips, it’s clear that Lance is fighting a grin, and Keith is starting to get the same pinched look from earlier. There’s not much that Shiro wants more than to give up on dinner and retreat to his room, but he knows Keith and Lance, and he knows that the longer he tries to dodge, the more they’ll pursue.

“I know that you two are trying to help me,” he starts, “and I’m even willing to admit that you’re right.”

Triumph springs up on Lance’s face. Keith, however, doesn’t react, like he knows that Shiro isn’t done.

“But I need you to let this go. At least for a few days, until I can finish wrapping my head around the situation.”

Lance’s protest is immediate. “But why wait? Everyone can tell that Pidge-”

“It’s just going to be harder the more you put it off,” Keith interjects. For once, Lance doesn’t look all that miffed at being interrupted. He nods along vigorously to Keith’s words. “I know from experience that confessions are difficult, but it will be worth getting it all off of your chest. And we can help.” Keith glances at Lance. “Or, I can help.”

“I can help!” Lance insists. “I’m the best at helping!”

He backs down under two sets of dubious stares. Muttering under his breath, Lance turns his attention to pushing the goo on his tray into different shapes.

Under different circumstances, Shiro might feel fortunate to have such caring teammates. The way the Paladins of Voltron look out for one another has been the core of their strength for years. But right now it feels more like an unwelcome intrusion, and he’s reminded of the fact that he is pretty much stuck on a giant castle hurtling through space with limited options for escape.

“I appreciate it,” he says. “I do. But I will do this when I’m ready, and not a minute sooner.”

“Shiro-”

“And I promise that it won’t take me two years.”

Keith’s teeth click when his mouth snaps shut. From the mottling red of his cheeks to the growing scowl, Keith appears to be figuring out if he should be chastened or offended. Lance, still playing with his food, lets out a whistle.

“Low blow, bro, low blow. We’re just trying to help,” he says.

For once, Lance looks less perturbed than Keith at what was by all accounts a pretty petty accusation. By no means was Lance a paradigm of maturity, but he was showing himself to be the bigger person in the room now. Shiro cringes. Lashing out at his friends wasn't the way to solve any of his hangups.

“That was uncalled for,” he says. “I'm sorry. I… haven't been handling this whole revelation very well.”

Keith’s frown flattens a little; he looks somewhat mollified by Shiro’s apology.

“We get it, Shiro, promise,” Lance says. “You’ve got to handle this in your own way. Me? I handled it for a year by trying to flirt with every attractive biped we encountered. Keith? He handled it by buying knives. A lot of knives.”

How Lance manages to bend far enough in his seat to avoid Keith’s elbow in the side without breaking eye contact with Shiro is a mystery. Maybe it was that thing called couple’s ESP that Hunk often joked about. Maybe that was something he and Pidge could have, if he ever got over his own nerves.

“The important thing,” Lance continues, “is that you do eventually do something about it… And that you remember you have people who are here for you when you feel like you can't handle everything on your own.”

Lance sounds so serious, so genuine and assured, that it throws Shiro a bit off balance. Suspicious, he glances around the dining room, looking for any indication that this was a setup. He spots the camera, unnoticed for years, that Hunk and Pidge hacked into in order to spy on Keith and Lance. He wouldn't put it past someone like Lance or Hunk to, in the name of helping, have staged this whole thing reality television style and have Pidge out in the hallway, watching Shiro’s painfully obtuse stumbling through all of this feelings business.

But despite Keith’s frustration with him, Shiro knows Keith wouldn't agree to a stunt like that. His feelings are likely still safe.

“Thanks,” he says, and he tries to put as much appreciation into the word as he can. Lance gives him a thumbs up.

Any further conversation is derailed a tick later, when the doors slide open and Allura joins them. She starts in with questions for Lance and Keith about what they picked up on their system scans during the last flight, and Shiro is left with a few blissful minutes between himself and his food goo.

“Now, if you recall, I did instruct you not to try and reposition the density lifters without the proper equipment.”

Coran appears through door ahead of Hunk and Pidge, chattering away. Draped over Hunk’s arm even as she walks, Pidge sucks at her index finger.

“Hands are proper equipment,” she whines, words obscured by her finger.

All of the tight, tangled knots in his chest go lax. As much of a relief as her presence is, it makes him feel all the more foolish for his earlier melodrama. Reason tells him that if a crush was going to turn him into a mess of a man, then maybe he’d be better off stepping back, trying to return to the easy dynamic they’d had before Keith had wrenched forward all of those concealed feelings.

He doesn't want to. Especially not when her finger pops from her mouth and beams at him.

“Looks like your girlfriend is here.”

The words slide low and quiet across the table, but they gain enough momentum to hit Shiro with the force of a fist to the jaw. His spork hits his tray with a squish, and his head snaps in Lance's direction. Given the way Allura and Keith carry on with their conversation, Shiro must the only one who heard Lance’s comment. The grin on Lance’s face reads clearer than any data screen readout: A low blow for a low blow, buddy.

What's worse is that Lance knows as well as Shiro that there's nothing he can say or do without drawing attention to what Lance just said. Pidge sits down next to him, and Shiro swallows his agitation at Lance. He did kind of deserve it.

“Looks like that whole nap thing really worked out for you,” she says, gesturing to his lost spork. She rests her head on a fist and smiles at him again. “Your dexterity is astonishing.”

“My dexterity is fine,” he says, hoping to cover one embarrassment with another, “You startled me, is all.”

Tearing his eyes from her and turning them to the spork in the goo is the right way to keep himself from getting called out; lying has never been his strong suit, but his bluff seems to work well enough to keep her from questioning why his words came out so high and rushed.

“I’d make some joke about you being a total space case,” Pidge says, watching in amusement as he tries to pluck the spork from his plate without goo-ing his fingers, “but I think we all technically qualify as space cases, so the joke would be kinda moot.”

She slides some goo onto her spork, shoves it in her mouth, and continues talking even as she chews at it. “Also, I guess I’m not really one to lecture when it comes to sleep. Since, you know. I don’t get much of it.”

“No, you?” he asks, voice dripping in mock disbelief.

“Surprising, right?” Pidge sets her spork down and starts fluffing up her already voluminous hair. “You’d think it’d take hours of beauty sleep to look this good.”

Her tone of voice is teasing, like it's obvious she doesn't believe a word of what she's saying. She bats her eyelashes at him, or, at least, attempts to: the end result is a mechanical sort of blinking that sends them both into a giggling fit.

“Hey, that's my line!” Lance protests from across the table.

“What, you have some kind of space patent on stupid pickup lines?” Pidge asks. “If I owe you royalties, consider this the first installment of my payment.”

She sticks out her tongue. Lance returns the gesture, so Pidge ups the ante by crossing her eyes. Shiro’s pulse momentarily forgets itself at the phrase ‘pickup line’.

Stars, when viewed in isolation from the ground, are little more than distant specks of light. On their own, they make for poor navigation; on their own, they carry no story.

And so, the decision Shiro makes does not come just from Keith’s constant encouragement or Lance’s prying. It does not come from sleepless nights or hours spent connected at mind and hip. No, in this moment it is Pidge's face, reddened from laughter and contorted as she tries to match Lance's ridiculous expressions, that becomes his blazing North Star. With it, everything joins.

He wants her. He wants to be with the genius of a woman who pulls faces at her friends and faces off with her enemies. The woman who spends hours creating flamethrowers for fun and then dismantles entire Galra fleets with a few keystrokes. The one to literally sweep him off his feet.

The picture comes together as a whole, a constellation bright against the black, pointing him in the right direction. He just has to take the first step.

“If you look this good without beauty sleep,” Shiro declares, “then I want to be around the first time you get a full eight hours of shut eye.”

The table falls quiet. Keith and Lance share slack-jawed stares, like they can't believe that, after all of his protesting, Shiro up and did the thing he’d said he wasn't ready to do. He can't believe it either, really. Even spoken under his breath, Hunk’s “Oh, that was smooth” is audible.

Pidge, in the middle of pushing up her nose like a pig’s, turns from Lance to him with aching slowness. She lets go of her nose. Her eyes dart from Shiro, to each side of her, and back again to him. Panic clenches around his neck: he can’t breathe, he can’t look away. What on Earth or in space compelled him to say that?

“Weeeelllp, delicious goo as always,” Lance says in a rush, “but you know, there’s nothing like a good round on the training deck before bed, so I’m just going to go.” His chair scrapes across the floor noisily as he pushes back from the table. “Keith, come spar with me.”

Sounding shocked, Keith gets out a “But you never want to train after-” before Lance cuts him short by hauling him out of his chair and towards the door. Shiro can hear Lance hiss something to Keith in a whisper, which is followed by a loud “Ooohh,” from Keith.

“Uh, yeah, you know, that reminds me, I still have a ton of stuff to do in the lab, ship stuff and… stuff that I need Coran’s help with,” Hunk says, scrambling to balance his two goo-stacked trays and drink as he stands. Coran continues eating, appearing nonplussed by Hunk’s volunteering of his time. “So I’m going to go ahead and go,” Hunk continues, “and Coran is going to come with me to help me out.”

There’s a beat of silence before Coran erupts from his seat. “Right, righto! Helping! Down in the lab. Away from here. In the lab. I’m on it!”

Coran and Hunk make a beeline for the door. Allura is on their heels, leaving with little more than, “I wasn’t all that hungry anyway.” Her voice sounds downright gleeful.

And then it’s him and Pidge.

“Well…” Pidge hedges, “that was weird.”

When Shiro breathes in, it feels like he’s swimming in food goo: everything around him thick, unclear, and impossible to tell if pleasant or not. He likes being with Pidge. He’s not so sure he likes the strange look she’s giving him.

“Yeah. I’ve never seen Hunk leave a dining room so fast.”

“Yeah.”

They stare at each other like it's their first time meeting. Nerves win out against the temptation of probing their bond; he not sure he wants to know what she's feeling. Shiro scrapes the remnants of his goo from the corners of his tray. When he swallows the meager bite, he pictures swallowing the anxious lump in his throat down as well. It works, but barely.

“I meant it,” he says as he puts his spork down. “You look good. Even without much sleep.”

Pidge's smile rises rosy like dawn: gradual and hesitant at first, as if it might peek back down under the horizon. But as it strengthens, he feels light fingers of warmth assuage his misgivings.

“I hope you're not holding out for a night of good sleep from me,” she says, “because the chances of that happening are less likely than Coran shaving his moustache.”

“That's okay,” he says. “Unlike Coran, you don't need it.”

On some level, he's aware of how ridiculous he sounds. For better or for worse (mostly for worse), the most exposure he's had to the art of flirting is through Lance, whose over-the-top methods of “seduction” often ended up with him being rejected, ridiculed or, in a significant number of cases, both. Somehow, despite all of that, Lance had attracted stolid, serious Keith. Somehow, despite all of that, Pidge responds to his flirtations in the best of ways. She blushes, rolls her eyes, and goes, “I think Coran was born with that thing. It's probably some sort of bizarro Altean lifesource.”

They spend the rest of dinner together discussing everything from the possibility of a Samson-like connection between Alteans and their hair ('Allura’s hair is way too voluptuous to be purely decorative’) to the absolute boredom created by their travel through the current system ('Zarkon came through this system once, and it was so uninteresting that he decided that even he couldn't make it worse’). It doesn't matter that they both finished eating ages ago, or that they stay at the table way longer than even Hunk and Coran would.

When they eventually part, it's with flimsy excuses and an unspoken understanding that it wouldn't be all that long until they're together again.

…

And as much as Shiro knew it wouldn't be long until he was back with Pidge, he'd rather it were under better circumstances. He can't sleep. He already knows that trying now will lead to misery.

Shiro doesn't naturally have violent tendencies, but if he did, he thinks he might punch Keith. It's not actually Keith’s fault, he knows this, but their conversation splits wide a sort of Pandora’s Box that he guesses had been lying dormant at the base of his skull now for years. For two nights straight, every latent fear he'd never acknowledged he had is shoved to the forefront, and the nightmares that, with time, had become more formless in their details if not their terror, refocus to painful clarity.

Almost all of them feature Pidge. Whether it’s the Green Lion being dragged down by the inescapable gravity of a powerful sun, or Pidge taking Matt’s place in the Galra prison camps, his dreams always rip her away from him. They only feed his growing need to see her as much as possible.

So this time, when the hot breath of waiting nightmares huffs down his spine, he doesn’t hesitate. Shiro rises from his desk, detaches his data screen from its keyboard, and leaves. He swears he hears the fury of the dodged dreams in the hiss of his closing bedroom door.

This time, Pidge's door is wide open. Light from her room cuts through the dim hallway. It draws him straight to his destination, part tractor beam, part invitation. He sidles up to the entrance and gives the doorframe a quiet rap.

Pidge's lithe frame is silhouetted in the bright glow of the screen at her desk. As expected, she's plucking away at her work. It's not much past eleven - just an hour after the Castle’s lights dim, and early into Pidge's night. She doesn't turn when he knocks, though the sharp clatter of fingers flying across a keyboard pauses.

“You know you can come in without knocking.”

Their bond has already snapped into place, the process so seamless and natural that he hadn't noticed until now. It's been getting easier and easier to connect after the recent days spent in such close contact. Given the twist of emotions he's been battling all day, Shiro should feel nervous standing at her door. But all he feels are impressions of his thoughts mingling with Pidge’s, and all of them tell him that he's right where he ought to be.

“I know, but old habits die hard,” he says. “I didn't want to invite myself in unannounced. You don't like surprises.”

She spins in her chair to face him. She’s back in her standard loungewear, and lounge she does, slinging her arm around the back of her chair and stretching her legs out. Without the thick lenses of her glasses in the way, her eyes seem all the more gold as she heaves them upwards and shakes her head.

“I don’t like bad surprises,” she clarifies. “Coran’s 'surprise’ vacation to that moon that was inhabited by semi-sentient spiders was a bad surprise. Keith’s birthday gift last year was a really bad surprise.”

Shiro grimaces at that, even as she chuckles. Where Keith had gotten the idea that Pidge loved being ambushed in the hall by training droids in homemade party hats would be a good gift for her, he doesn't know. Probably Lance. Pidge had sliced all of the sleeves off of Keith’s jackets for that.

“But I have nothing wrong with good surprises,” she continues. A smile rising to her lips, Pidge cocks her head and rests it on her fist.

The words are as welcoming as the tug he feels on their link. Without hesitation, he crosses over to the small living side of the room and props his elbows on the back of her couch. The doors shut behind him, and her room becomes a bubble, bright and detached from its surroundings.

“Am I a good surprise?” he asks.

If his attention hadn’t been fixated on her, he would miss the flash of teeth as they sink into her bottom lip. The couch makes for a solid barrier between the two, an unexpected blessing the moment after she stops worrying at her lip to say, “Technically, you’re not a surprise, since I sensed you on your way and all… but you don’t have to be unexpected to be good.”

While her words may wind around the point, the sentiments zip straight across their bond, unimpeded. He leans more heavily against the couch, unsure if he’s glad or frustrated for how it holds him back from her.

“You have a strange way of giving a guy a compliment,” he says, grin curling at his lips. Giving in, he circles the couch and drops down.

Pidge shrugs. “Pot, kettle, Shiro. I’m not good with people, or compliments, or probably even being nice. You, on the other hand, are good at people and being nice, but terrible at compliments.”

He couldn't act offended if he tried. It’s all too pleasant: her teasing smirk, the little crinkles at the corners of her eyes as she watches and waits for his response.

“Terrible? Care to explain?”

She snorts. “I'm sure you were just warming up with, ‘Unlike Coran, you don’t need it’”. A smug look crosses her face, but it doesn’t undo the splash of pink across her nose and cheeks.

He frowns and glances away. Had it sounded that awkward when he'd said it? At the time, he'd been going for genuine and heartfelt, not 'blindly grasping at straws’. Pidge seemed to react well to it, though, and she looks pretty pleased now. Shiro’s mind backs up its last sentence by two words and sticks firmly there.

Her hair, swept back into a low ponytail, falls over one shoulder, leaving the other bare. The light from her desk basks her in a bluish glow, highlighting the curve of her shoulder and the slope and shadow of her collarbone. His eyes follow the line of her arm, down to the desk and back up to where her head sits on a hand. Wisps of scars, gathered through years of fighting and fiddling, peek out from under soft arm hair. The skin stretched across her knuckles is cracked from hard use, and while he's not close enough to see them, Shiro knows she must feel the scrape of thick callous she absentmindedly strokes at her cheek with a finger.

Perhaps she had a point about his compliment technique. It was getting difficult to find enough words for the ever-growing list of traits of hers that he found captivating.

“Maybe not my finest,” he concedes. “So, give me some pointers. What kinds of compliments would you like to hear?”

He watches her reaction. At first, there is none: she peers at him and offers nothing more than a slow blink. Rationally, he knows it is impossible, but to him it is as though the whole world constricts to a single point. Every molecule of air has been compacted into such a small space; his lungs ache. There is no more to the universe than Pidge, who holds him captive in her sudden quiet.

A wordless Pidge has, and always will, put him on edge. It makes him wonder just how fast her brain must be spinning, just what the roiling twister of her thoughts will spit out first. It makes him feel millions of miles away from her, the only star in the sky he can see, but cannot reach. She bites her bottom lip again.

“Only the ones that you really mean,” she says.

He holds back a sigh of relief. “Easy enough. I always mean them.”

She leans forward in her chair and smiles. Genuine pleasure drips across their bond. This time when she looks him up and down, the gap between desk and couch seems to dwindle. She further narrows the distance when she scoots her chair forward, settles a hand on his knee, and says, “Then I guess the real challenge will be coming up with a compliment that doesn't involve Coran.”

Letting out a low whistle, Shiro shakes his head. “That… might be a little more difficult,” he teases. He strokes at his chin, pretending to think, while he lets his other hand slide over to rest atop hers.

“You’re as brilliant as Coran’s moustache is thick.”

She snorts and shakes her head. “You're terrible,” she says. Nonetheless, she turns the hand under his over, so that they press palm to palm. He takes it as encouragement to curl his fingers around hers until he's loosely holding her hand.

“I admire you more than Coran admires the Balmera.”

“Okay, that's pretty good, even for a Coran compliment.”

The color surging to her cheeks is reward enough, but then she squeezes his hand tight. The sensation travels from hand, to chest, to stomach.

“What else have you got?” she asks. Her voice wavers, missing the nonchalance he thinks they've both been aiming for. She's back to not-quite-looking at him.

Shiro grins. He’s been saving the best of the ones he'd come up with.

“Eating next to you every day makes Coran's paladin lunch more tolerable.”

“Holycrowstoooop!,” she whines. Pidge drops his hand and pushes off his knee, spinning herself back around in her chair. She hides her face in her hands, and the emotions that come across their connection are a thick and knotted jumble. It would take him ages to untangle, should he try, but for a tick he thinks he can tease out a few familiar in himself: excitement, worry, hope, affection, and something deeper, something he might know, but that trembles and retreats when his mind reaches out to investigate.

“You're supposed to give compliments you mean,” Pidge says through her fingers, “and there's no way Coran's paladins lunch is ever tolerable.”

“But it's true,” he says simply.

Pidge makes a strange sound, somewhere between a groan and a gurgle. He understands: he, too, feels a bit like drowning.

“I guess you're not that terrible at compliments,” she admits. She peels her hands from her face, but she's still facing the large data screen at her desk.

“I could use some more practice,” he says. “Would you be willing to be my test subject again some time?”

Shiro envisions the desired effect: the broad strokes of red painting cheeks and neck; the hitch of breath; perhaps, if he were lucky, her hand back in his. Instead, Pidge makes that funny gurgle-groan again. It may be different from what he was expecting, but her reaction doesn't dampen the way his pulse picks up, not in the slightest.

“I'll take that as a yes?”

“Yeah,” Pidge mumbles. “Please. But no more now. There are only so many Coran references I can handle, and I need to get through the rest of this system data tonight.”

Disappointment pecks at his chest, until she follows up with a quiet, “Besides, I think I may go into A-fib if you keep it up like this.”

He wishes she would turn around so she could see the open, awestruck look he feels molded into his face - more honest than all of his words - but he takes solace in the pluck of warmth that glides between their bond.

“Sure,” he says, just as quiet. “Will I be bothering you if I stay here while you work?”

“Of course not. Be forewarned though, I'm kinda breaking my usual schedule and staying up pretty late tonight.”

“Bold,” he says with a chuckle. “I like it.”

She doesn't reply, but it takes a long moment for her fingers to start up at her keyboard. Smiling, Shiro reclines on the couch and pulls out his data screen to continue his own work.

A satisfied semi-silence nestles between them, accented by the steady churn of Pidge’s keyboard and her occasional comments. Sometimes she's simply thinking out loud, an acknowledging hum all she requires to get back on track, but at other times she'll direct a question his way. Most of her inquiries come as sentence fragments, bits of thought that got lost at some point and found their way to her mouth. He answers when he can and probes when he can't, and they maintain that same easy flow they've had going for days. They happen without effort.

“Come take a look at this?” she asks maybe an hour later.

Having somehow made themselves one with the inflexible couch, his neck and back bristle at the prospect of moving, and it's no easy task to coerce his muscles into behaving. He rubs at his neck as he leans over Pidge's shoulder to check out what's on her screen.

The readouts are from the data they'd compiled earlier that day and reworked to begin developing a flight plan. With three stars cozied up at the center of over seventy inhabited planets, half of which were, as far as they could tell, embroiled in a Galra backed inter-planatary trade dispute, the new system promised to be far more interesting than the expanses of empty space that made up the current one. He and Pidge look over the new route the Castle’s computer plotted, weighing out the risks before ultimately agreeing to scrap the coordinates and start over.

Pidge inputs the adjusted route requirements with a few definitive strokes of her keyboard, and Shiro slides back onto the couch with a grunt.

“You can read on the bed if you want,” she says. “The couch is mega-uncomfortable.”

“I’m fine,” he replies. He shoves aside the needling Lance-voice in his head that suggests he should only accept her offer under the condition that she join him. The voice can no longer be called intrusive given its constancy, but at least Shiro has gotten better at resisting every temptation mind-Lance proposes.

“You sure? You've been groaning and rubbing at your shoulder for the last few minutes, old man style.”

His hand freezes and slips from where he'd been absently kneading at his shoulder. The crick in his neck throbs from the angle his head had been propped up at. No surprise he's feeling achy after a short time on the couch - he hadn't felt all that different after falling asleep there a few nights ago.

“I wouldn't want to impose,” he says. He rolls his head, stretching his neck, without thinking, and Pidge gives a disapproving cluck.

“One, quit fretting over whether you're being polite or not. We’ve all spent the last five years squished into alien mechanical lions that magically combine into some kind of hivemind giant punchbot. We’re well beyond formality.”

And you and I have basically been in each other’s heads for three days straight, he adds on. Words don’t cross the bond, but ideas and feelings do, and Pidge must pick up on his. She smiles.

“Two,” she continues. “All of your elderly joint popping and huffing aren’t conducive to either of us being productive. Use the bed. You'll be more comfortable.”

Just standing up again leads to a discovery of fresh aches. Pidge’s “I told you so” look follows on the heels of his uncontrolled groan. She may have a point.

“I suppose I can't argue with that logic,” he says, winding around the couch and approaching her bed.

Each of the paladin’s living quarters looked identical, and the small bed is no exception. Like his, it’s narrow but long, with a few shelves and adjustable lights inset along the wall it abuts. Unlike his, the bed is haphazardly made, sheets tossed rather than spread out across it. He's impressed she'd even bothered that much, though there's a chance she’d fallen asleep on top of the covers a few nights ago and flattened them into some sense of order then. Despite Coran's occasional threats of “inspection”, there was really no impetus for any of them to make their beds in the middle of space. Even so, as mussed as it already is, Shiro hesitates to sit. Like everything else in the past week, sitting on a bed seems much more like diving headfirst into a black hole.

With the kind of caution reserved for espionage missions on Galra destroyers, Shiro lowers himself into the bed. His eyes snap over to Pidge the moment he sits, but her attention has already flipped back to her work. He reclines against her pillows. No automated warning alarms go off; no pre-programmed robot comes to chase him away. It's a perfectly normal bed, and he's doing something perfectly normal on it. He's glad Pidge isn't paying him any mind right now. No doubt she'd be amused over his indecision.

He resumes reading on his data screen, in a position far more comfortable than the one he'd been in on the couch. Pidge plugs on.

It's just a bed. Tension slowly seeps from Shiro's body. There's nothing wrong with him being there. It’s fine. They're fine.

He drifts to sleep. …

As before, he doesn't realize he's fallen asleep until he wakes up. The room is brighter this time, and when he recognizes the walls surrounding him as Pidge’s, he's flooded not with shock, but an almost gluttonous contentment. Pidge is still at her desk.

Sleep, even though it couldn't have been much, changes his entire outlook regarding her bed, and him being on it. Childish delight overtakes him, that sensation of knowing he shouldn't, but being unable to resist the heady pull of gratification. Shiro buries his face in Pidge's pillow and sucks in a deep breath. Of course she almost never used her bed; Pidge has occupied the room for five years and yet there remains the lingering scent of plasticy newness to the pillow and linens. Undeterred, he inhales again and catches a pleasant whiff: oranges, sweat musk, wisp of burnt plastic. Even the faintest trace of her is a comfort. It’s not much of a stretch for his sleep-laced brain to suggest he drift back to into unconsciousness as is, burrowed in her pillow and close enough to hear her tapping away her work.

Or, at least, he should hear her working. When he’d passed out, it had been to the soft clatter of her fingers on keys. It is silence that overtakes the room now.

Shiro rolls onto his side, then freezes. Pidge stands at the side of the bed, arms stretched over her head, mouth wide in silent yawn. She’s pulled her hair down. Her eyes flutter closed as her yawn trails off, and it seems like an effort for her to peel them back open again to look down at him. Even bathed in the harsh light from her desk, everything about her looks soft, from the hunch of her shoulders to the loose tangles of hair.

She scratches the back of one calf with her foot and murmurs, “Oh good, you’re awake. I was starting to think I’d have to sleep at my desk.” Her lips quirk into a smile. “I don’t know if you know this about yourself, but you’re kind of a bed hog. And a pillow hog.” Her gaze fixes on her pillow, and his arm wrapped around it.

He lets go of the pillow as if it were molten hot, sits up, and scoots back from the edge of the bed. Logic kicks back in a moment later and starts shouting about the fact that he fell asleep in Pidge’s room again, this time in her bed, and that he should probably stop doing that before he found himself in major trouble.

“I’m so sorry,” he stammers. “You should have woken me up and kicked me out.”

Pidge dismisses him with a lazy wave, and plops down on the bed next to him. “But then you would have left,” she says. Her voice is gentle but sure.

He doesn’t have an answer for that. Shiro wishes he felt as at ease as she seems lifting her comforter and wiggling to get under it. Unlike him, she doesn’t look as though her heart is about to pound through her chest.

The bed is small, not designed for more than one body. He’d fallen asleep on top of the covers, and doesn’t dare get under them now, but the bit of separation between them feels thin when her foot brushes his leg.

“It’s okay?” he chokes out. It’s different from what he’d told his mouth to say, which was Well, I should head back to my room.

Pidge turns from rearranging her pillow to stare at him. She looks unimpressed.

“Duh. Now budge over.”

Her tone permits no protest, nor does he think he could offer one even if he tried. Wouldn't want to, his mind confesses feebly. Easing over until his back hits the wall, Shiro tries to leave as much space between them as he can. It's not more than a few meager inches, but as Pidge finishes twisting and adjusting, he becomes convinced that the sliver of distance might just be the final remnants of his sanity. He rests his head on one arm to keep it from acting of its own accord and reaching towards her. In place of the glue or restraints he wishes he had, he lays his other arm flat across the line of his body and curls his hand into a fist.

“That looks uncomfortable.”

Pidge wrinkles her nose and fluffs one side of her pillow. She lies on her back, watching him from under heavy eyelids.

“It's fine.” I'm just trying not to invade your space. Or make you feel uncomfortable. Or cross a line. Or assume something I have no right to assume.

“Whatever,” she sighs. He imagines she'd roll her eyes if they hadn't already slipped closed. Raising her voice, she continues, “System, shut off lights and dim data screen, but continue running background trajectory calculations.”

Whatever voice activated system she'd installed chirps twice in confirmation. The room goes black.

He’s felt less anxious while in the cockpit of Kuro while facing down an entire Galra blockade. If it were at all appropriate, he might laugh at how painfully accurate to his character the situation was turning out to be. Star-pilot-turned-tireless-soldier afraid to sleep in a bed with a girl he has feelings for.

But the tension isn't all his; he can feel that much. If the wall he hits when he tentatively reaches out with his bond weren't enough of an indicator, the shallow breaths she takes and then holds, as if waiting, are. Perhaps he wasn't alone in experiencing the vertigo that came along with staring down a very high figurative cliff.

Minutes pass in silence. He’s left to wonder if Pidge is lying in bed just as he is: eyes wide open, body ramrod straight. She'd seemed unusually close to sleep minutes ago, but that was before they'd been drenched in the room’s darkness. Those slim inches between them turn intangible now that he can no longer see. They may as well not exist. And since they no longer exist, he may as well reach across them.

Shiro tries. He really does. His hand hovers above the space between them for a good five ticks before he loses his resolve. It's dark, after all, and Pidge has no idea about how he feels, and she's trusting him enough to let him sleep in her bed. She's allowing him to stay. He won't mess this up.

“Shiro?”

As suspected, all of the sleep has vacated her voice. She sounds as awake and aware as he feels.

“Yeah, Pidge?”

“Relax.”

Her command catches him off guard; he lets out a laugh and tenses, the opposite of what she'd ordered.

“I am relaxing,” he lies. From her snort, she sees right through him.

“For real, though. I know you were trying not to bring it up, but you already know it's okay to stay when your nightmares get to be too much.”

He does already know that, which makes it worse when he admits to himself that it's not the only reason he's there. He wants to say as much, owes it to her to say as much, but even in the anonymity of the dark, he can't find the nerve.

“Thanks,” is all he says instead.

The rustling sound of sheets and the shifting weight on the mattress aren't enough for Shiro to anticipate what happens next: a hand whacks him in the face. Pidge’s fingers roam blind along the bridge of his nose and feel down to his lips. Each light touch feels like the prick of distant stars on his skin: close enough to burn, too far to explore. His breath quavers.

“Is this your face?” Pidge asks.

Shiro nods, and she chuckles.

“Sorry,” she murmurs. “Guess that should have been obvious.”

Her hand lifts from his face and settles on his chest. She pats along his chest until she reaches his right arm, the one he'd extended towards her but a minute ago. That must have been what she was searching for: she gives a content hum, slides her hand down to his, and takes it.

“Relax,” she says again.

Which is the most painfully funny thing he's heard all night. It doesn't matter that his sense of feel is muted in his Galran arm, that the pressure and heat from her touch are but a fraction of what they'd be had she grabbed for his left hand. Straight fire still rockets up his nerves, quickening his pulse with dizzying intensity. Shiro can't tell if he's experiencing all of the symptoms of fight-or-flight, or something else, but he's certainly not experiencing relaxation.

Her fingers contract around his, hand-holding equivalent of a nervous twitch. Every part of him, from bare feet to breath, is so still that he can hear Pidge's quiet cacophony: soft thumps as her free hand adjusts and readjusts her pillow; the whisper-slide of moving fabric as her legs swim through the sheets; each long, forced exhalation. Her restlessness begs for some sort of harmony, something he'll try to provide despite his own discordant feelings.

“Are you relaxing?” he asks. He runs his thumb up and down the side of her hand.

“No. Are you?”

“No, but that's not unusual.”

They share a choked laugh. He wishes he could see her through the dark, wishes he had more to go off of than her voice, her fingers, and the flecks of feeling that manage to escape her end of the bond. There's a nudge behind his forehead. Like him, Pidge is sending out tentative feelers, trying to gauge what's happening on his end; like her, he’s constricted the passage, letting only the barest of friendly emotions by.

Which is no doubt why she turns to lay on her side facing him and asks, “Shiro, are you nervous?”

Now that she's turned, she brings their joined hands up to rest in the space between them. They are already close to touching, crammed in the tiny bed as they are, but that doesn’t stop Pidge from scooting closer. Her knees knock against his. His heart knocks against his throat.

“I am,” he says, as evenly as he can. “Are you?”

“Yeah. I didn't think I would be, but I am.”

For once, his Lance voice is oddly silent, leaving all of the uncertain, worried parts of his mind to take her words and run with them in eight different directions. What had she anticipated happening? Did she want him gone?

“Am I making you uncomfortable?” he asks. He has to rip the words out of his mouth, a painful process as his heart tries to drag them back in. He doesn't want to hear her answer, but he needs to know that he's not letting his feelings take this too far.

“No,” she says, voice startling in its sharpness. “It’s not you, per se, just-”

Rather than finish, she lets go of his hand. His stomach plummets, then ascends again when she wiggles her other hand between his pillow and neck and wraps her arms around him. She banishes even more of the distance between them.

This close, she looks different without her glasses. This close, he can see how her eyes flick back and forth, scanning his face. It’s too dark to see the flecks of honey-brown that shine out under the light, but he can see the hint of lines crinkling at the corner of her eyes, the promise of handsome wrinkles from too many hours too close to a screen. He can see the rapid flutter of her lashes and feel the puffs of warm breath touch his mouth and cheek.

“It's not you that makes me nervous,” she starts again. “Just being right here, like this-”

She cuts off and stares up at him. He watches her lick her lips. It's a little like tunnel vision, that fixation on what is a right in front of him, the sudden graying out of the world around them. He's experienced it before, those moments right before his ship or his lion spins out: the nothingness beyond his steering controls, the frigid, utter panic that consumes before impact. But instead of ice rising from his gut, it's all taut heat. Her fingers accelerate the burn when they run through the hair at the nape of his neck.

There’s so little still keeping them apart: a blanket, an inch, and his own hesitation. Two of those are eliminated when he finally rests his hand on her waist a pulls her to him. Her lips part in something like surprise, but she does not draw away. It should be awkward, laying on their sides in straight lines, one of her arms trapped under him, but delight and desire are the only things that well up within him. It would take so little to lean in and kiss her. He leans in.

“Can I ask you a question?” he breathes.

“Yeah,” she says. “But can I ask you something first?”

“Of course. Always.”

Pidge regards him in the low light, holding his gaze as her fingers make small circles along his scalp. He ignores the lurch of anticipation below his ribs and occupies himself with mimicking her motion along the small of her back.

“Shiro…” she begins. “From an academic standpoint, how would you define what's going on between us?”

He wishes he could have asked his question first. He wishes he could have kissed out an answer to her inquiry and let her know in no uncertain terms how he would define what he wanted between them. But he has to think about his choice, how best to respond to her. He chews at his bottom lip and flattens his hand against her back.

“From my perspective,” he says, words careful, “there's very little academic about it.”

Her brows dip. Perhaps not his best answer, then.

“Meaning…?” she asks.

There’s no backpedaling from here, no way to pretend this conversation hasn't started. No more evasion or avoidance. Just the two of them, a bed, a bond, and a question. He loosens his mental grip on his end of the bond and braces for the wash of feelings about to come spilling over. Need and happiness and curiosity and anxiety and affection fill him in a flood.

“Meaning I have feelings for you that go beyond that of friend or paladin or peer,” Shiro says, “and I'm hoping that you feel the same.”

Pidge freezes. The warmth from each point of contact between them lingers, but it's otherwise as if she's become a statue. He's not even sure she's breathing. In the dark, he can see nothing of her reaction but the general expression on her face - no blush or paling, no fidget of eye or flare of nose that might give her away. She simply stares at him. He reaches out in his mind to find that she hasn't just obstructed her end of the bond: it's been completely severed. He'd been too deep in releasing his feelings to notice it snap.

Every one of those released emotions bounce back, whip-like and soured by fear. Pidge isn't responding, in word or deed, and it becomes all too possible that Shiro has massively misjudged the situation. Little else could have made her rejection any clearer.

The room is dark and the air unmoving. The hard pounding of his heart is the solitary sound. He's not sure what is more unbearable: Pidge's silence or the fact that his fear may be reality. Both gnaw away at his resilience.

“I'm sorry,” he says, pulling his hand back to him. She blinks, the first sign of life since he'd last spoke. “I'm so sorry.”

“I-” she starts, but it's panic instead of blood that pumps through him now, and he reacts on instinct.

“I-I shouldn't have assumed,” he continues. Shiro sits up, resisting the tug of Pidge's arms around his neck. She lets go of him.

“Please don't think I don't value you as a friend, or a teammate, I wasn't trying to force you into anything you didn't want. I was projecting or seeing something that wasn't- it was irresponsible of me to think-”

“Shiro,” she begins, following him up. “What are you-?” Pidge peers at him, eyes narrowed, like he's speaking a different language. With as fast as his words are dropping now, he may as well be.

Shiro worms his way off the end of the bed past her and stands. “I just- I should go.”

The woosh of her bedroom doors as the open sound like an explosion in his ears; he doesn't know why everyone else isn't startled awake by the boom of it. It’s so loud that he doesn't hear her voice as it trails after him.

Dim and empty hallway greets him, the singular relief in all of this. There are no reflective patches in the halls, but even without a mirror Shiro knows what reads on his face. If he looks even half as distraught as he feels, there'd be no way of keeping what happened from Keith or Lance, or anyone else on the ship, really.

He makes it to his room in record time and activates the lights. All of the waiting nightmares he'd abandoned hours ago for the comfort of Pidge rear up in unison; he sits himself squarely at his desk, reattaches his data screen, and pulls up his reading. There's not going to be any sleep tonight, and he's going to at least go through the motions of attempting to distract himself. He forces a few deep inhales through his nose, but it's not much use.

His heart wails on his ribcage with ugly blows, rattling him from the inside. Although he knows it's not physiologically possible, it feels like the inside of his chest will be bruised from it by morning.

This is what he'd wanted to avoid, now and all those years ago, when he'd sidestepped any sort of serious relationship with anyone. How he'd imagined this all feeling is only a fraction of how hard it actually stings. He clenches his Galra fist until the metal starts to creak. Maybe he should go down to the training deck and work some of that desperation out. There weren't many more hours until breakfast, and Shiro refused to let this keep him from being the leader his team deserved. From being the leader Pidge deserved.

Instead, he sits at his desk. Cradles his head in his hands. Tries to convince himself to read, to be productive, anything.

His door opens. He knows who it is, but turns anyway.

In spite of the way Pidge rests a hip against the door frame and crosses her arms over her chest, her nervousness reads clear on her face. He should have expected that she would follow, would want to clear the air as quickly as possible. Maybe even let him down properly, gently. It’s what he should have done: stayed and discussed it with her, rather than fleeing.

“Can I come in?” she asks.

“Please. I should apologize,” he starts. “Running off like that wasn't right of me.”

Pidge enters and walks straight over. She avoids the couch across from his desk, and instead stands a few feet from where he sits, hands dangling at her sides.

“It wasn't,” she says. “I haven't seen you react like that to something in a long time. The Galra I get, but me? Am I that scary?”

He can hear her try to lighten her tone, but the joke falls flat. The effort helps, though. Maybe they can salvage something, go back to how things were before.

“You're terrifying,” he says earnestly. “A force to be reckoned with.”

She smiles, and oxygen flows back to his brain.

“You may not believe it,” she says, “but you're pretty scary yourself.”

She takes a step closer. While his brain has registered her earlier dismissal, his body has not. His skin seems to crackle with her nearness, and his fingers ache to interlock with hers.

“I think there's been a misunderstanding,” Pidge continues.

This is it. He rubs his palms on his thighs, then grips his knees.

“We should talk. Should have talked instead of me leaving.”

Pidge, of all things, snorts. While the worry has yet to clear her features, a small smile rises on her lips.

“We should talk,” she affirms. “But before we talk, I am going to talk.”

“Right,” he says. His stomach heaves below his rioting chest. “Absolutely, please go ahead.”

“Okay,” she says with an exhale. “Okay, you can do this, Pidge.”

The air between them is so thick, he wouldn't even need his Galra prosthetic to slice through it. Pidge drags a hand through her hair. It musses it further, but she doesn't seem to notice.

“Shiro, you know how you feel when they've just released the newest build on a desktop computer,” she starts, “and the specs on it are amazing, like, flawless integrated graphics, super efficient cooling, crazy processing: everything you could want.” Pidge has gone into full rambling mode now. Most of the time, it's a habit he finds endearing, but her rushed words lack their usual passionate surety, and she looks everywhere around the room but him.

“And everything about it is sleek and powerful and brilliant and gorgeous,” she continues, picking up speed, “and you can't believe that there’s a chance it could be yours? And so you kind of sit there and stare at in disbelief and act like all of your .exe files have stopped working when it asks you if you want it?”

The breaths between her strings of sentences grow sharp as her body struggles to keep up with how fast her brain must be going. To be fair, Shiro's having difficulty keeping up with her steam train of thought, and all he has to do is be the recipient.

Her final sentence is slow to sink in, but it hits him as she scrapes her stare away from some corner of the room and makes eye contact. It happens all at once: their paladin bond flares to life; he finally gets her meaning; a choir of angels springs to life in his head.

“Are you comparing me to a computer?” Shiro asks. His own voice echoes back in his ears, dancing the line between nervous and so, so hopeful.

The pink of her cheeks deepens to red, and her eyes dart back around the room. It's not enough to break their psychic connection though, and underneath the anxious tension that zings from her side of the bond, he can feel the unadulterated rush of-

“Yeah,” Pidge spits out, “yeah, I am.”

Even though she's not looking at him, she takes a step forward. In the already small space around his desk, it finally puts her within reach. Her hand is at just the right height for him to wrap in his, so he does. Her fingers twine with his a moment later.

“Not that I think of you like some kind of fancy machine,” she says. “Well, I mean, I do in a way, but only like, for the sake of analogy, because you know I really like computers and machines, even though machines are probably more Hunk’s thing-”

“Pidge.”

She stops, meets his gaze again, and it's like a warm fist encircles his lungs and squeezes, hard. Never before did he think that joy could hurt; in that moment, Shiro decides that elation is his favorite kind of pain. He has to suck in a long breath before he can continue.

“I understand,” he says.

Relief sweeps over her face, softening the hard lines of her brow. Her shoulders slump forward. He squeezes her hand.

“Thank goodness,” she breathes. “I realized what you must have thought when I froze up, and then I couldn't get my brain back online fast enough and you were gone, so I thought that you thought I didn't feel the same way, when really…” She trails off. “When in reality I have feelings for you that go beyond that of a friend or a paladin or whatever.”

For a long moment, all he can do is stare at her and grin. It's fortunate that that's all she seems capable of too. Fire blooms across his brain and courses through his chest before swinging up through his arm and crossing straight to her. Their bond feels more like a physical connection, pulsing through his entire system and strengthening as the space between them shrinks. He takes her other hand, and a single, shared feeling loops and spirals between them, ecstatic.

“I'm glad you feel the same way,” he says, though the sentiment doesn't even scrape the surface of what surges across their link.

“So am I. Next time, I'll compute and respond rather than go into a system failure.”

Raising an eyebrow, Shiro tugs Pidge close. He parts his knees enough for her to slot between them as she stands.

“Next time?” he asks.

Her eyes dip down, roving over their joined hands. She bounces from foot to foot before murmuring, “I hope you’ll tell me how much you like me again sometime.”

“I like you a lot,” he says immediately. Now that the words are out, he’s not sure he’ll be able to stop them. “I think you’re brilliant, and hilarious, and strong, and very pretty.”

Pidge goes quiet again, but this time, he’s not worried. Instead, he admires the minute shifts of her face: the upward quirk of lips, the crinkle at the corners of her eyes. It takes her a few more ticks before she shakes her head.

“System response time is still laggy,” she says with a laugh. “Will need to run some more tests before troubleshooting.”

“I’d be happy to help at any time.”

Their movement is unconscious but synchronous, either a facet of the bond or a knowing reaction to the other. Pidge raises her hands to rest on his shoulders. His skim her hips. She curves down. He looks up. Her hair tumbles from her shoulders and seems to curtain them both; the inches between them are so few that he hears clearly what she says next.

“In that case, perhaps you’d be willing to assist me now. I’d like to test something.”

“A test?” he asks. He cranes his neck up so that his nose brushes hers.

“Mhm. A test. For science.”

When her lips capture his, they also engulf his laugh. After that, his amusement takes second place to the feel of her against him. Chapped but plush, her lips move slow across his, drawing out kiss after kiss. Shiro holds firm to her hips, though there’s no indication she’ll be leaving soon.

It’s been ages since he's kissed, but with Pidge it's like flying a plane: the mechanics all come back in one exhilarating swoop. Once their mouths find the right rhythm he's free to chart the terrain of her lips, letting tongue and teeth map out new territory. Parted lips give greater freedom to explore. He tallies every gasp drawn out by scraping teeth and moan from sliding tongues, then promptly forgets that and his own name the moment Pidge swings a leg over his and drops into his lap.

No element carries the proper comparison for how it feels to be joined with her in this way; fire doesn't burn hot enough and electricity doesn't spark sharp enough and water can't drown him fast enough. It hits Shiro all at once, and all he can do is cling tighter to her and deepen their kiss.

Pidge is more than happy to oblige, lifting up in his lap to better angle herself against him. Deft and clever, she seems to know the right way to curl her tongue along his to make him shudder. He does his best to return the favor in every way possible. He leans back in the chair and she follows, letting gravity pull them flush. She plants her hands on the back of the chair for stability and dives back to his mouth.

Gravity pulls them closer, and then gravity gives a particularly petulant backwards yank on Shiro’s chair. They jolt apart as the chair tips back. Pidge’s arms flail in haphazard circles as she leans back to counteract the tilt; Shiro smacks a hand against the desk and plants his feet on the ground. The chair tips back forward.

They gaze at one another. Chests rise and stutter and fall, half-gasping, half-laughing as they regain a sense of stability. Brain still hazy from lack of oxygen, Shiro can only take in the sight of Pidge, red and dazed-looking and straddling him.

“Test results?” he manages.

“Inconclusive,” she pants. “As before, outlook is positive, but more testing is necessary.”

“Bed?”

“Bed.”

She hops out of his lap and snags his hand, pulling him up. He follows. While his body balks at the loss of contact, his mind is quick to provide a long list of ways that this change of setting could be much, much better. The voice sounds nothing like Lance, and everything like himself.

Stopping at his bedside, Pidge wrinkles her nose. Shiro comes up behind her, wraps his arms around her waist, and rests his head on her shoulder to see what she’s looking at. Everything, from the standard two pillows to his folded top sheet, looks normal.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“It’s too pristine,” she says, gesturing towards the bed. “No wonder you don’t sleep. I figure that bed’s in its original condition from 10,000 years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a layer of perfectly formed dust that’s molded to the shape of the bed. It’s immaculate.”

While she’s speaking, Shiro learns that their position allows him access to new skin. He nuzzles against her neck and lets his lips find their way to the shell of her ear. She shivers against him. Emboldened, he presses his chest to her back and murmurs, “I know a decently made bed is foreign turf for you, but if it makes you that uncomfortable, maybe we can mess it up so it’s to your standard.”

Pidge exhales hard and cranes her head to look at him. “Damn, the Garrison did a good job designing you,” she says, eyes going wide. “That suave from zero to sixty switch is cutting edge.”

“Is that the only reason you like me?” he says with a chuckle. “Because you think I’m a robot?”

She turns in his arms and pouts. “No, I like you because I think you’re a very handsome and capable robot. I have standards.”

Laughing, Shiro guides them both to the edge of the bed. Pidge lays down first, reclining against one of his pillows, then stretches her arms out to him. He eagerly complies.

Unlike the slow heat of their first kisses, when they meet again it’s with dizzying urgency. Pidge pulls his bottom lip between hers and sucks hard; he moans and takes the next opportunity he can to slip his tongue into her mouth. Hands roam and bodies twist and shift, moving but never parting. They stay joined at the mouth as Shiro rolls her on top of him, then trails his hands down her waist and over the curve of her ass.

If time were measured by the deep, gasping inhales Shiro takes in between kissing, and being kissed, senseless, then no more than three or four ticks seem to have passed. In reality, it has to be closer to half an hour that they spend, pressed chest-to-chest and mouth-to-mouth. Pidge is half-draped over him, one knee wedged between his legs to give her enough support as her hands set their own course.

With time they slow, bodies losing steam even as hearts pump more molten blood through their veins. Touches grow tender and kisses soft. Shiro breaks away first, drawing in a breath and resting back on the pillow. Pidge melts, puddle-like, her face tucked against his collarbone. Her heavy exhales leave a damp patch on his shirt. Next time, perhaps he’d remove it.

“Hunk’s going to lose his shit when he finds out,” Pidge mutters.

He massages up and down her back and processes her words. Being here with her, like this, Shiro hadn’t given much thought to the other members of the team. A big part of him resists taking a moment more to consider them, instead insisting that every ounce of his attention should be focused on the woman before him. As such, his response comes after a long lull.

“Keith and Lance will, too.”

She huffs into his shirt and shakes her head. “I thought they were acting funny. So I guess it’s just Allura and Coran who aren’t aware.”

Shiro thinks back to Coran’s frantic reaction at dinner, and all of Allura’s sly smiles. It should have been obvious even then; Allura was right about him the entire time.

“No, I think they have an idea of what’s going on as well.”

She groans a bit, and finally pushes herself up from his chest. “It was bad enough with Hunk pestering me about it for months. He’s been on such a kick since we entered the system, trying to get us together with all of his experiments and what not. Everyone else giving us a hard time is going to be torture.”

“Are you saying that Hunk planned on nearly setting the ship on fire just to set us up?” he asks. As soon as he says it he knows the answer.

Pidge bites her lip and looks away, expression caught somewhere between sheepish and mischievous. “Yeah. But I may have helped him. And gone along with everything else. You may have noticed this, but he’s way better at people and relationships than me.”

“It was probably for the best,” he assures her. “Word on the ship is I’m pretty oblivious to my own feelings, let alone someone else’s.”

She doesn’t disagree, nor does she expect her too. Instead, she wraps his hand in hers and says, smiling, “I’m glad you figured it out.”

“Me too.”

Without letting go of his hand, she slips off of him and settles down at his side. He tucks his free arm under her and watches as she gets comfortable. He can’t say he’s ever experienced the sensation of his heart fluttering, but it does so now. The emotion that’s sailed across their bond breaks back down into its component parts: affection, safety, happiness, contentment. It gives him the confidence to ask his next question, knowing that she won’t rebuff or reject.

“So, how do you want to approach this?” he asks. “Us? And them?”

She gives a soft hum, thinking. “I’d like to be with you, like this, for however long is right. Hopefully that’s a long time,” she starts. “Titles aren’t really important to me - friend, partner, teammate, girlfriend, whatever - because I feel like whatever we have going on between here,” Pidge taps her temple, then runs a finger from his temple and down his jaw, “makes more sense than anything else.”

He takes her hand and presses a kiss against her knuckles. “I like partner,” he says. “It makes it sound like we could get in trouble together.”

Her eyes narrow, but her smile sticks.

“You’ve never gotten in trouble a day in your life,” she deadpans. “And don’t try to deny it.”

“I’ve gotten into trouble plenty,” he protests. “You just didn’t know me then.”

“I don’t believe it, but I’ll ask Keith. If anyone has dirt on you, it’s him.”

A drop of panic hits his stomach - who knows what Keith, under the influence of Lance, would tell Pidge about Shiro’s Garrison days (which were, admittedly, boring outside of a few extreme exceptions) - but it’s quickly soothed when Pidge arches up and kisses the corner of his lips. Her touch leaves a warm spot on his skin and deep in his chest. There was nothing he wanted, or needed, to hide from her.

“Speaking of Keith,” he says, “How do you want to handle telling everyone?”

Sighing, Pidge rolls her eyes. “They’re going to be so obnoxious.”

“Uh huh.”

“Has Lance been making your life miserable about it?”

“He certainly has.”

“And Keith?”

“Less so, but he’s been more persistent.”

A sly look crosses Pidge’s face. The smile she gives him is like an injection of jetfuel straight to his bloodstream. He draws her in closer. Her eyes focus on a point just beyond him, into some space where she’s no doubt calculating what’s about to come.

“What if…” she starts. “What if we didn’t tell them yet?”

Oh, now that was a curious idea.

“And kept them thinking that we were still unaware of each other’s feelings?” he adds on.

That sly look turns utterly wicked, and when she grins, she bares teeth. “It would eat them all up.”

“They’d lose it,” he says. “It wouldn’t be fair to keep them on edge for so long.”

He can hear his heart hammering away in his ears, and the sensation that charges across their link from Pidge is tinted dark red and tastes like desire. He pushes himself up and over, bracketing her with his body.

“Just for a little while,” Pidge says. She licks her lips. “To see how they react.”

Shiro smirks. “For science?”

Pidge chuckles. He feels her fingernails drag down his back.

“For science,” she confirms. “And for fun.”

Shiro drops down to take possession of her lips. It would be fun.

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