#tbh still struggling to write a little in the aftermath that is season eight

[sp4c3-0ddity]

the eve of it all

technically i had this idea before season eight so it doesn’t have any real spoilers, but i didn’t write it till after so you can consider it a fluffy little fix-it that disregards it entirely if you like (i know i am lol)

~1800 words. enjoy!! <3

The eve of their launch back into space, diving deep into the unknown, and Pidge can’t sleep. Streetlights shine through the thin curtains covering her bedroom window, plastic stars stuck to the ceiling glowing green, her old-fashioned alarm clock’s digital display a sharp red on her tired eyes. But she can’t do anything but stew.

Lance never showed up to their weekly game night - their last before leaving Earth for who knew how long.

The engine of an old car roars as it drives past her family’s home. Shadows fill her room, a room both familiar and not, wider than the walls she grew used to first on the Castle of Lions then on their intergalactic road trip residing entirely in the Green Lion.

Pidge sighs and turns over, putting her back to the window, and clutches her mermaid plushy to her chest before beginning to list the chemical elements. “Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron…”

She’s halfway through the third period when a sharp thwack against her window interrupts.

Pidge’s breath catches as she bolts upright, unsure if she imagined it or if it’s just a nocturnal crow rapping its beak on the glass like in that poem they read in eighth grade English. But when something else strikes the window, she jumps out of bed and dashes for the window.

Pidge nudges the curtains aside and peeks through the crack between them towards a shadowy figure standing in the dirt in the front yard. “What the quiznak?” she mumbles, her eyes narrowing in confusion.

The figure bends down, fingers scraping the ground before straightening, and when they move a streetlight shines on his face.

Her eyes widen, her heart skipping a traitorous beat as she fumbles for the window latch. She pushes it up and sticks her head through the gaping hole in the screen to hiss, “Lance?”

Lance raises his hand, a shadow of a hesitant smile on his face, but it falls, his eyes shooting wide in panic, when Pidge moves to slam the glass down. “Pidge, w-wait!” he shouts, voice bursting through a too-silent night.

Pidge’s hands freeze, her chest tightening with renewed hurt that he stood her up only to have the audacity to appear while she’s trying to sleep. She glares down at him and demands, “Why should I?”

He lifts a paper bag, shaking it so something inside rattles, and offers, “I brought peanut butter cookies?”

Her lips twist into a scowl. “You think you can bribe me so easily?” she retorts.

Lance’s gaze drifts away, shoulders slumping and bag lowering. “I was hoping you’d at least hear me out.”

She drums her fingernails against the glass, considering. No trace of exhaustion remains to her, and her heart pounds wildly with both anger and the…implications behind him simply lobbing pebbles at her bedroom window.

And, well, she’s always been a little weak to any hint of him moping.

Pidge sighs and says, “Fine. I guess it’s better we talk about this before we launch in the morning.” Lance pumps his fist as he breaks into a wide grin that only warms her (how will she sustain her anger like this?), but before he can say anything else, she adds, “I’ll let you in through the front door, but be quiet. My parents are asleep.”

(She hopes; her mother always makes sure her bedroom door is open anytime Lance is there, as if he ever wants to get up to something besides play video games and talk with her, so she can only imagine how she’d react to a nighttime visit.)

Lance flashes her a thumb’s up as she shuts and latches the window. She pushes her bedroom door open, wincing at the squeaking of the hinges, and tiptoes through the hallway past her parents’ bedroom and down the blessedly carpeted stairs to the front door. The deadbolt scrapes out, and Pidge swings the door in.

Lance steps over the threshold before she properly invites him in, his arms raised before he seems to think better of hugging her. Now, face to face, her irritation with him doesn’t fade, but something about seeing him smiling hopefully tempers it.

“Pidge—”

She shushes him with a finger to her lips and a glower, nodding for him to follow her upstairs once she closes and locks the door. She doesn’t exhale until her bedroom door clicks shut.

She rounds on him right as he opens his mouth and demands, “Where were you?”

“I was, uh…” His gaze roves around the room, lingering on her bed in its disarray, and quietly confesses, “I was on a date with Allura.”

Pidge blinks, his words slow to penetrate her keyed up yet somehow still sleep-deprived brain, but after mulling them over, letting them echo through her mind, her heart drops into her stomach, accompanied by a knot of dread.

She never could snuff out that hopeful whisper that lived in her so long as he stayed single, that thought she had a chance, that one day Lance would get over Allura and finally look twice at her. And the fact he went on a date without even telling her - without at least canceling their weekly game night - knocks the air from her lungs.

“B-but you and I had plans,” Pidge protests feebly. Where is her anger now? “You could’ve at least told me.”

“I should’ve,” Lance admits. He sets the paper bag of cookies on her desk and approaches her. “I’m sorry, Pidge. It was just—”

“Just what, Lance?” she says. Her fingers curl into fists, spine stiffening and - ah, her frustration’s back in full force. “How hard is it to pick up a phone and call me and say, I can’t come to our last game night on Earth for who knows how long because I made a date with someone else?”

He shifts his feet, but his gaze finally snaps to hers. “I don’t have a good excuse,” Lance says. “I was going to tell you - quiznak knows I did start to call you more than once - but…” He stuffs his hands into his pants’ pockets - a nicer dark wash of jeans, Pidge now bothers to notice - and shrugs, his whole demeanor almost painfully defeated.

She rolls her eyes, refusing to be moved. “I’m guessing you’re here because it didn’t go well,” Pidge says.

“Actually, it kind of did,” Lance says, “but also kind of didn’t.”

She quirks an eyebrow, more confused than annoyed. “What does that even mean?”

He sighs and sits on the edge of her bed, staring past her at her bookshelves riddled with textbooks, fantasy novels, superhero figurines, and stuffed animals. Everything she owns, all her interests that most people (including her own mother) usually disdain as childish, are on full display; she’s never bothered to hide them, and Lance has never commented beyond admiration - such as jealousy that some rare collectible sits on her shelf or that she has a box tucked in her closet full of older mint condition comic books she and Matt spent years hunting down - but a part of her can’t help but worry that one day he - or any of her teammates - will.

Geek, nerd, weirdo…all insults - and worse - thrown at her by peers, but never by Lance or her other friends.

(And why is she even thinking about this now?)

“I’m not sure,” Lance says. His fingers run through his hair and he adds, “But there won’t be a second date.”

His words send a shock through Pidge, a relieved giddiness filling her and pushing a smile onto her face. But she bites her lip to suppress it right as Lance looks up, and the implication of what he said hits her.

Her eyes snap open, her chest squeezing and guilt hitting her, and she offers, “I-I’m sorry, Lance. I know how much you like her.”

“Eh…it’s not really that.” He shrugs and smiles slightly. “It was kind of my idea to not go on another date; I’m not even sure I liked her as much as I thought I did.”

“O-oh,” Pidge says, unsure what to add. She perches beside him and rests a hand on his arm. “You still…okay with it?”

His nod is slow and hesitant at first, but it’s more vigorous before long, a smile stretching his lips as he turns and meets her eyes. “Yeah, I think I am,” he says. “Besides, it didn’t feel right that I blew you off just to go on it.”

And they’re back again. Her lips twist into a frown, but his not-quite reassurance fills her stomach with a familiar fluttering. “You going to make it up to me, Sharpshooter?” she wonders, nudging him in the side with her elbow.

Lance gestures towards her desk with a gasp of affront. “I brought your favorite cookies; what more do you want?”

Pidge laughs. “You think I can be bought so easily, Lance?”

He rolls his eyes and grumbles, “What else do you want from me, Pidge?”

She thinks for a second, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully as she taps her chin. “The Game Flux must be in my room on the Atlas,” she decides.

Lance buries his face in his hands, releasing a muffled groan. “A cruel and unusual punishment,” he whines.

“Commit the crime, do the time.” Pidge scuffs her bare feet over her shaggy carpet, leaning back on her hands and staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars and the globes of Earth and the moon on her highest shelf. Soon…

“Fine.” Lance flops backwards, lying beside her with his legs hanging off the end of the bed. “Anything else, cruel overlord Pidge?”

She smirks and pronounces, “You have to carry me anywhere I want to go once we’re back in space.”

Lance quirks an eyebrow. “Seriously?” When she nods, he sighs and says, “You’re lucky you’re so small…but how long?”

“Until I forgive you for standing me up on our last game night on Earth,” Pidge tells him. She nudges his shin with her toe, warmth spreading through her chest when he turns his head to glance at her.

But his face falls in obvious dismay. He wonders, “And when the quiznak will that be?”

Pidge can’t help her smile as she lies down next to him and rests her hands over her racing heart. She’s already forgiven him, she thinks, but she likes seeing him squirm and the Game Flux is payback for when he stole her rigging for his room on the Castle, and the carrying…

Well, sometimes a girl gets lazy and busy defending the universe and needs a reason for her crush to cradle her in his arms.

But aloud, she says, “Just wait and find out.”