#sillyilly10

When he dropped a leg to turn towards the door, Pidge was standing there, barefoot, holding a pillow. “Sorry,” she said, and hesitated as though she was about to turn and go.

“Nah, it’s cool. You wanna come sit down?”

Pidge eyed him suspiciously. “What?”

Lance patted the floor invitingly. “Come on, Pidgeon, you can tell me what’s troubling you. It’ll be a bonding moment that I can use to blackmail you later. I’ll even share this lovely cup of goo with you. Win-win.”

Pidge rolled her eyes. Thought about it. Eventually, she padded over without comment, and Lance held up an arm for her to slide in under. Pidge tucked her pillow behind them both. She settled in against Lance’s side. She didn’t say anything at all for a long time.

Together, they watched the universe streak by. Lance didn’t know what had chased her out of bed, what had driven her to the observation deck, what had made her decide she wanted company after all. He didn’t think it mattered, really. She’d tell him if she wanted to. It was just nice to have her here. It was easy to forget, when he was in these moods, that family didn’t end with blood - that he had family, right here, even if it wasn’t the one he wanted right now. He’d be okay. He just missed them.

Finally, Pidge took a shaky breath. “You know,” she said, almost whispering, “every time we make one of these jumps, I wonder if we’re jumping right past my dad and brother. Isn’t it weird to think about? How much we’re missing like this?”

Lance had no answer to that. He wiggled her glasses off and set them on top of his own head. “Figures you’d be thinking about lightyears and junk. I was just wondering what time it is back home.”

She sighed as though she was considering correcting his terminology. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Like, what everybody’s doing. Right now, at this second.”

Pidge nodded; her head bumped Lance’s chin. “I do that a lot, too,” she said softly. She didn’t elaborate, and neither did Lance. To speculate out loud would make the distance between them and home too tangible, and some small, selfish part of Lance hoped that was the end of it. But then -

“I worry about my mom,” said Pidge. She spoke so quietly he almost didn’t hear it.

By the tone of her voice, he knew that ‘worry’ was a very small word for it. And it made sense, when he thought about it.

Lance’s mom had lost him, but Pidge’s mom had lost everything. A whole family, vanished into thin air. Husband, son, daughter. He could barely wrap his head around it.

And then he decided, all at once, that his homesickness was one problem. Pidge’s was another. He wasn’t about to let her suffer with hers if he could help it.

“Pastelitos de guayaba,” he said. The change of topic was jarring, but that’s what he’d been going for anyway, so he just smiled when he felt Pidge squint up at him. “They’re these…uh…” He held his hands out to approximate the shape of the pastries, then gave up, dropping his arm back around her shoulders. “I miss those every single day. When I get home, I’m gonna eat them til I die.”

“Never heard of them,” said Pidge, just a little more sniffly than usual.

“I’ll show you. We’ll find your dad and brother. Convince Zarkon to just, like, chill for about a week. Maybe Allura will give us a couple days off,” he said dreamily, and Pidge hiccuped a laugh. “We can go to Varadero beach, have an actual vacation. Do you think our moms will get along?”

“Absolutely not,” Pidge said, but she said it easily: no more tears. Mission accomplished, then, for now.

They lapsed back into quiet. Outside the windows, the universe raced by in watery twists of blue and silver. Lance wasn’t a moron; he knew how relativity worked. He knew that Pidge knew. There was no chance of them going home to find everything the same as when they’d left.

But it was a nice lie. Enough to get them through the day.

That had to count for something.