Lance flicks on the lights and his soul damn near leaves his body.
“Jesus H. Christ one a one-wheeled motorbike, Pidge,” he gasps, hand pressed to his galloping heart. She doesn’t laugh — Pidge doesn’t laugh often — but Lance has learned to read her, in the year or so they’ve been in space. He recognises the twitch of her mouth, the flash in her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“Your lock code is embarrassingly easy to guess,” she says in lieu of an answer. Lance smiles reflexively at the matter-of-fact, half chiding tone. He pulls finally away from the wall, having caught his breath, and starts rifling through his cabinet.
“Yeah?”
He hears the shuffle of blankets, the muffled hits on a pillow being shoved into a lap. When he glances out of the corner of his eyes, he finds her sat comfortably in the dead centre of his bed, criss-cross-applesauce, nails picking at the threads of his pillowcase and eyes blinking owlishly behind her glasses.
“Yes. Fifty eighth most common four letter password.” She pauses a moment. “Spelling F-A-R-T with numbers is very immature.”
Lance snickers. He’d forgotten what his password spelt, he’s used the same combo so long. “Is that right?”
“Yes. You should come up with something more secure. It was my second guess.”
“What was the first?”
Pidge doesn’t seem to notice his curious look. Her eyes are focused on the items in his hands, watching diligently as he sits on the floor next to a dish of water, squeezing some soap into his hands and rubbing it all over his bare legs. Her head is tilted with a similar look of inquiry.
“Your birthday. What are you doing?”
Instead of answering, Lance removes the cap from his razor and starts to carefully drag it down his calfs, rinsing it every two strokes in the water. Pidge watches with rapt attention.
Weirdo, Lance thinks, fondly and hypocritically.
It doesn’t take long for the questions to start firing off.
“What’s the point of shaving your legs?”
“Gets rid of the hair.”
“Why do you want to get rid of the hair?”
Lance takes a moment to gather his thoughts, answering truthfully. “Lots of reasons. Not all of them I’m proud of. I started mostly ‘cause Veronica did it and I used to do everything she did.” He pauses. A sad smile pulls on his lips, and he swallows around the comfortingly familiar lump in his throat. “Well. ‘Used to’. If she was here I’d probably still be puttering around after her.” He finds Pidge’s eyes and smiles at her, winking. “Older siblings are easy to hang off of, huh?”
Her mouth twitches. She breaks eye contact, resting her chin on her knees and moving the pillow under her legs. “No. Older siblings are annoying. And ridiculous. I once followed Matt around all day and wrote down every single time he said ‘ow’. He said in on average twenty-three times an hour.” She meets his eyes again, mouth pinched and eyebrows raised. “Your average is twenty-four.”
“I see.”
“You should tie your shoes.”
“Nah.” He taps the razor on the side of the dish, gently sliding it to the other side of him and switching his razor to his left hand. “Anyways. When I was your age I mostly did it ‘cause Ronnie did it. Helped with swimming, too. But as I got older…” He frowns. “As I got older, I started feeling like I had to, I guess. Like I was ugly if I didn’t.”
A pinprick of pain makes his hand still, lifting the blade from around his ankle. A tiny drop of blood swells at the base of it. He sets the razor down, quickly grabbing a towel and dabbing at the nick. Ankle wounds always bleed so much — it doesn’t even hurt anymore, but he can’t pull the towel away or he’ll stain the floor.
“…Do you feel that way now?”
Lance doesn’t answer for a long moment. He hears Pidge fidget, clicking her nails together. The blood finally slows enough for him to pull away the towel, and he resumes shaving the last half of his leg — much more slowly, this time.
“Not exactly,” he says carefully. “I recognize why I feel that way. I know where that pressure comes from, why it’s harmful. But it’s still…there. I still catch myself thinking cruel things; I have to spend a few minutes talking myself out of them. I tried stopping for about a year. I didn’t like it.”
He finally finishes swiping up the last line of soap, rinsing off his razor and then gently running a cold, wet cloth over his legs to get rid of any lingering suds.
“Do you think you’ll try to stop again?”
“Hm. I don’t think so. I like the feeling of smooth skin more than hairy skin, I’ve found. It’s nice on fresh sheets, plus sometimes hair tickles me and makes me jumpy. Plus, it’s easier to moisturize.”
“Ohhh,” Pidge says, and when Lance looks up there’s a real look of understanding on her face — not the practiced one she puts on when she doesn’t actually get something but doesn’t want to look dumb. “Like — it’s the same as why you don’t like jeans and socks.”
Lance smiles. “Exactly. I’d walk around in nothing but shorts and a big t-shirt, if I had the choice.” Legs clean and clean-shaven, he picks up his tube of lotion and starts dabbing dollops all over the skin. “That’s all I ever wore back home.”
“Arizona is freezing half the time!”
“Cuba,” Lance reminds her.
“Oh yeah,” she says again. “But what about when it rained?”
Lance shrugs. “Better to wear flip flops and get wet feet than wet socks. Wet socks are the worst.”
“Yeah.” She shudders. “Like prickly sweaters.”
He hums. The lotion smells like juniberries, which kind of smells like pineapple and hibiscus mixed with a strange, almost spicy scent. Not quite home, but close enough to be nice.
He doesn’t ask Pidge why she broke into his room while he was in the showers and sat in the dark waiting for him to get back. The same way he doesn’t press when she follows him down the halls, disappearing behind corners when he turns to look, or sits by his feet during movie night. He lets her be prickly with affection and learns to hear the undercurrent in her constant comments and rambles, learns to read her questions about every thing he does as curious rather than judgemental.
She would ice him out for weeks if he said it out loud, but there was this stray cat that lived near his house, when he was young. It hissed and spit and clawed if you came halfway near it; Mamá had forbidden him from trying in case it was sick. But he used to leave out water for it at night and sometimes even sneak Abuelo’s heating pad, and every once in a while it would let Lance sit near it without clawing him. Once it even attacked one of the older kids who used to chase him after school.
It’s no coincidence that Pidge always happens to be in the same room as him 90% of the time. Or that she can guess his passcode easily.
“Hey, Pidgeon,” he says, unwrapping the towel from his hair and starting to work in the leave in conditioner. “The lockcode on my snack drawer is the same as the room code. Just so you know.”
She stares at him for several minutes.
Her mouth twitches.
“I could have figured that out myself.”
“I know.”
“You’re weird.”
He smiles. “You too, nerd.”
