Chapter Text
Lance couldn’t wait to get back to Earth. Their battle for the planet had been hard and he was looking forward to spending more time with his family; his mom, dad, all his siblings, niece and nephew, aunts, uncles, cousins, more second cousins than he could count, but part of him was worried. He had been a boy when he left, even at seventeen, he could see that now, see that he thought he knew everything, and it was a long way from the truth. He had changed, the war had changed him, he had matured; certainly he still flirted and joked around, but his mentality had changed, he thought things through more, considered other people, it was something the team had come to rely on, they all supported one another, but now they were going home. Home. Where they had left their families, where the people who once knew them best no longer knew them at all, had no idea what they had gone through, and that was going to be hard. They had explained to their families and the garrison how they had accidentally been lion-napped and proven themselves worthy of defending every galaxy from here to, well, everywhere, but they didn’t, they couldn’t, understand, and he knew that, but he wanted them too. He didn’t want his mom guilt tripping him for having literally vanished off the face of the Earth, didn’t want his dad asking him to promise it wouldn’t happen again, because he knew if they were needed then Voltron would step up again, he would step up, without hesitation. It wasn’t something they could ever understand but he hoped they would at least accept it. It was a thought that kept him awake at night and he had taken to strolling around the cruiser to try and settle his mind. Tonight his feet had led him down to the labs, where he could hear Pidge’s fingers tapping on her laptop before he even reached the door. She still loved the old thing, she had stripped it and replaced the technology so many times it was literally just a shell for an Altean computer now, but she had still personalised it to run on her own operating system, and the clicking of the keys were comforting somehow.
‘Hey, pigeon.’
‘Hey, stupid.’ She replied without glancing up from the screen as her fingers flew across the keys, lines of code appearing not only on the screen before her but on two floating screens she had buddied up to expand her workspace.
‘Aw, don’t be like that.’ He came and leant on the desk opposite her, but she still didn’t glance up. ‘Lancey Lance just wants to talk.’
‘Lancey Lance is distracting and I want to get this done in the next hour so I can sleep late. What do you want?’
‘I can’t sleep.’
‘That’s because you’re in my lab. Try again in your room.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
She sighed, realising he wasn’t going to leave her alone just yet, and straightened from her hunched position, her hand reaching up for her glasses before remembering and stopping herself. ‘What’s on your mind, Lancey Lance?’
‘Nothing’s on my mind, what makes you think that?’ He said a little too quickly.
‘The fact you’re up in the middle of the night. Normally you sleep like the dead, although not the dead on Gzrachnik, because they were still walking around.’
‘Pretty well too.’ He chuckled as he thought back to the planet they had dubbed “world of the living dead”. ‘But yeah, I guess I do have something.’
‘So hurry up and tell me so I can get back to work.’ She said, continuing typing anyway.
‘Could you at least pay attention to me when I’m about to pour my heart out to you?’ He whined, and she raised her head but kept typing all the same.
‘I can multitask. Spill.’
He huffed out a breath. ‘I’m worried about going home.’
‘We’re all worried about going home.’ She replied. ‘We’re all pleased to be going home, but not necessarily one hundred percent.’
‘You had to bring math into it.’
‘Always.’ Pidge replied. ‘My assumption is that you’re worried you’ve changed too much for your family to accept you, that you’ve seen more than they could imagine in a hundred lifetimes. It changes a person and they’re the ones who’ll notice it the most because they think they’re getting their seventeen year old Lance back, not a battle worn twenty-three year old.’
‘That’s it exactly!’ He lurched forward until he was directly above her screen. ‘How did you know that?’
‘Because I know what my mom will say. Dad and Matt will have explained that I’ve grown up, but I’m still little Katie to her who disappeared without a trace. I went missing before we went to space, remember?’
‘Because you enrolled as Pidge Gunderson.’ He said, understanding. ‘So what was the official story with Katie Holt?’
‘Until we came back there were a few reports that I had run away from home after the trauma of losing my family. I’d taken my stuff, so why not? Then it was just a simple case of hacking into the garrison computers and changing Katie Holt to Pidge Gunderson. And it worked.’
‘What are you going to say to your mom?’
She sighed and sat back in her chair, finally taking her fingers off the keys. ‘That I’m sorry, that I did what I had to do to find the truth. I did what I set out to do, I just got involved in something bigger along the way. And hope she understands that. When it comes down to it we’re coming home in one piece and we ended a galactic war. I think we have a pretty good argument for having been gone so long. Sure, they might freak out a bit, say we were selfish, they were so worried and all that, but we know we did right, we just have to hope they don’t hold it against us.’
‘You think your mom will?’
She smirked. ‘I think Dad will have had the brunt of her anger, having come back from space without both me and Matt, and Matt has been home a couple of weeks already, so I’m hoping he’s been a bit of a buffer. We didn’t really get much time to talk while we were there.’
‘I don’t have a buffer.’
‘Sucks to be you.’ She teased.
‘Hah!’ He laughed, not really insulted, he appreciated that things hadn’t changed between the team. ‘Okay, change of subject. Has mullet kissed you yet?’
‘Who what now?’ Pidge looked at him in wide eyed horror at his question.
‘Mullet, you know, kinda funny looking, lilac eyes, no sense of humour, irritating as…’
‘He is not funny looking!’ She interrupted. ‘And he has an amazing sense of humour!’
‘Defensive much?’ Lance grinned. ‘But, has he?’
She looked back at the screen and started typing again. ‘No.’
‘Seriously? Even after what I walked in on earlier? He didn’t come after you at lunch and mark his territory?’
‘Lance, no! Keith didn’t mark anything!’
‘Kinda feel like you wanted him to.’ He wiggled his eyebrows at her.
‘Do we have to go over this again?’
‘Until it’s resolved, yep. You two should be bumping uglies by now.’
Pidge slammed the laptop closed, the two floating screens disappearing as she did so. ‘I’m out.’ She said, getting up and heading out of the lab.
‘Aw, c’mon, Pidge.’ Lance called as he followed her. ‘I just want to be your own personal cupid!’
‘I don’t need a cupid.’ She replied without breaking stride.
‘The fact you haven’t made your own move on him makes me think maybe you do.’
‘I don’t!’
‘But you do want to make a move on him.’
She stopped and huffed out a frustrated breath, turning to glare at him. ‘Why are you asking this? Do you need me to admit it for you to shut up?’
Lance slung his arm around her shoulders. ‘Nah, I don’t need you to admit it, I can see it every time you look at him. I need you to know that I’m totally behind this! Mullet and Pidge, sitting in a tree!’
‘Don’t finish that sentence!’ She pushed his arm off her and put some space between them. ‘I admit I might have feelings for Keith that are not entirely platonic, but we don’t need a push, we need to figure this out in our own time!’
Lance shook his head. ‘I can’t believe he didn’t finish what he started in the galley. I’m disappointed.’
‘Not as disappointed as I was.’ She grumbled. ‘We nearly kissed, I think, on the upper observation deck, when we had lunch, but…’
‘But?’ Lance prompted.
‘But work.’ She indicated to her laptop. ‘I’ve been in the lab ever since Shiro gave me the algorithms from the garrison.’
‘Cockblocked twice in one day. Ouch. But I’m here to help you!’
‘Please don’t help me.’ Pidge rolled her eyes.
‘You need the help. Let’s get the two of you together before we get back home. I can just see Matt’s face when you show up holding Keith’s hand!’
Pidge spun quickly and hit Lance in the gut with the corner of her laptop, knocking the wind out of him with an; oof! ‘I’m not trying to give my family a heart attack!’
‘Ow.’ Lance groaned as he tried to straighten, Pidge turning her back on him and heading towards the sleeping quarters. ‘Pidge, wait!’
‘Goodnight, Lance.’ She replied, ignoring him completely before turning the corner and leaving him behind.