#vrepit nah

Whatever concerns Hunk had, he decided to let it go. Stuck to the car, Shiro had no choice but to follow. Hunk hunched over so he could give Lance a solid look out the window. “Call me before executing any stupid ideas, okay?”

“Sure, whatever.”

Hunk kept his stare on Lance, as if to reaffirm that he meant it, then rolled up the window and pulled away from the curb. Lance waited until they turned out of the parking lot onto the main road, taking the time to kick one of the plastic bottles at his feet. It ricocheted off the curb into his shin. He flipped it off.

No lights came through the window of the second-floor apartment. He fumbled with the keys, brain not entirely computing which way to put it into the lock. Damn headache. He rubbed at his forehead as at last the lock turned, the door opened, and he could limp inside. “Pidge, I’m home!”

Not that he expected a response, considering the off lights, but it still squeezed at his chest. He had to come home licking his wounds and his roommate was not even there to make fun of him and then bandage him up.

He trudged into the bathroom, wincing at the fluorescent lights when he flipped the switch. “Stupid Green, stupid Keith. . .”

Keeping jacket and shirt intact, he shirked his shoes and jeans and beheld himself in the mirror. Right below his boxers was the bandage, a white square to cover the cut and surrounding burn left behind by Green. Shiro had not been wrong about Green feeling threatened. For weeks, Lance had been the only one sent to capture him, but with that obvious failure, and Green progressively gathering more and more information on the Kerberos mission and who knew what else with each venture into the Garrison, Allura had finally sent Keith to join him. The tag teaming had almost worked: Lance had got a nice shot in the shoulder of Green’s armor, and then Keith had got him with the hilt of his sword, right at the rib cage on his left side. So damn close, if Green hadn’t managed to tase Keith, and then tase Lance while he freaked out over Keith going down. “Stupid, stupid. . .”

He wanted to take the bandage off. Mostly to see the burn and shallow cut for himself, since Coran had patched him up still unconscious. There was also maybe a small part that wanted Pidge to help him bandage it up again when she got home. But who could guess when that would be? He was too tired to do it again himself. Tired and headachey and maybe a little sulky. He kicked his jeans into the corner of the bathroom, slapped the light switch down, and trudged out into the kitchen.

In the fridge, he dug around for some leftovers that were semi-edible. He couldn’t remember whose turn it was to buy groceries and whose it was to clean old food out of the fridge but they both had been slacking. Maybe he would ask Pidge if they should just do it all together tomorrow, because gods that sounded better than going back to the hidden Castle of Lions to hear Allura go on about how Green must be gathering intel for the Galra, because the technology Green used was far too advanced for Earth, what was the point of any of their defensive prep if the Galra already knew how to wipe out the Garrison when they would first invade, you must do better to stop him, Lance! At least now Keith would get to look as sour as Lance always felt.

Leftover alfredo it was. Except he was too damn tired to warm it—the microwave clock warned it was past two in the morning, and being knocked out didn’t count as sleep—so he took a fork and fell onto the couch to eat it cold.

“Oh, fuck, fuck, mistake—” Lance wiped his tongue on his sleeve as he tossed the alfredo onto the coffee table and took the remote instead. Who really needed food, anyway? When he turned on the TV, it was set for the next episode of Legendary Defender from where he and Pidge had left off the night before. He clicked around for something light—Garfle Warfle Snick, why not—and as it started to play, blindly reached around the couch until he found a throw blanket and pulled it up around his shoulders, the tip of it brushing his nose. It smelled just a little more like Pidge than the rest of the apartment did. He looked to the door.

By the end of the episode, she still had not come in. Another episode, still no Pidge. Which was fine. Her whereabouts at late hours were far from the only secret about her. He had quite a few questions—Where do you actually work? Who’s the Matt you looked startled you mentioned that one time? Do we have to go to our rooms tonight or can we camp on the couch together?—but they operated under a no questions policy. He didn’t ask about her private life, he didn’t have to tell about how he’s actually working with two aliens from some planet called Altea to prepare Earth’s defenses for an invasion that’s due in some eight months.

The blanket still around his shoulders, he stumbled to his room, patting at his pockets for his phone. It had been at twelve percent when he armored up to take on Green. He had not touched it once since then but he would not be surprised if it were already dead.

When he plugged it into the charger next to his bed, he found staring at him a clock reading 3:24—and several notifications from Pidge.

[1:36] Missed Call

[1:41] Can you come get me?

[1:53] Lance please respond

“Shit!” He pressed the call, set the phone to his ear, and pulled the charger’s cord to its limit as he stretched for pants and another pair of shoes. She answered on the third ring. “Shit, Pidge, are you injured?” She had always had her own scrapes when she came home at night, but again, don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t mention that you kind of adore getting to help her bandage up, but god if she was really hurt this time—

“I’m at the parking garage on Olkarion Avenue.”

Lance held the phone between his ear and shoulder to tie his sneakers. Two blocks from the apartment. She didn’t have a vehicle, always using public transportation, that Lance knew of. What the hell was she doing there? Was she mugged? Don’t ask, don’t tell. “I’m coming. My phone’s at—” He freed a hand to look at it. “—two percent. It died and I just got it to a charger, I’m so sorry. I have to leave it, be watching for me, okay?”

“Okay.”

He couldn’t hang up. Fortunately, she did, and then with only his keys he ran out the door and down the stairs. His thigh began to burn all over again, irritated at the movement, but still he sprinted all the way to Olkarion Avenue. When he slowed to look for her, the world was spinning, and he had to hold onto the ticket dispenser for the garage to keep from toppling. He would have missed her, tucked away in the shadows between the cement wall and a trashcan just beyond the exit, if she had not called his name.

When her hand dipped into the light to grab at the rim of the trashcan, he saw the muscles in her arm strain as she failed to pull herself up. In another moment, he was at her side, dipping his shoulder under hers to pull her up. But as their sides pressed into each other, she yelped and lurched away from him, slamming her right shoulder into the wall of the garage. Her shout echoed in the vast parking lot as she grabbed at the shoulder, curling back into herself on the ground.

Helpless, Lance spared a glance around the garage, to assure no one was around, then knelt in front of her. “How can I help? What’s wrong with your shoulder?”

She was back in the shadows, but he could still see, could still feel, her grimace. “I may have had to pop it back into place.”

“What—” Don’t ask, don’t tell. “—the hell. Do you need a doctor?”

“No,” she stated, too firmly. “Let’s just go home.”

Pidge still could not stand on her own, but holding her up without some pressure on one of the pained areas was near impossible. It was concentrated in two places: her right shoulder, and her left side around her ribcage. Her legs were sore but fine, so after he pulled her to her feet she could walk with just holding on to him for support, seething at any disturbance to the wounds. As they stepped into the light, Lance saw her green shirt sticking to the hurt on her side by spots of blood.

The stairs were the hardest; she was rasping curses by the time they made it to their door. Pidge was the one who shut and locked it behind them, an action Lance had forgotten in lieu of trying to get her to the bathroom. He felt his mouth going dry. Sure, it was only two blocks to walk, but she could have called an Uber or something, but she had stayed hidden from public transportation, and now she was locking the door, as if someone was following her, and—

With him spaced, she tried to walk to the bathroom alone, though winced and nearly fell. Lance caught her arm, let her hold onto him as they crossed the apartment. He seated her on the covered toilet, then pulled out the first-aid kit. His face burned as he remembered wanting her to come home and patch him up earlier, like blood and bandages were just a mode of his one-sided flirtation.

By the time he set the kit on the corner of the counter, she had pulled her shirt up to show the wound on her side. The bruise covered a large circle, from the bottom of her ribcage up to her sports bra. The cut itself was small, and not nearly so bad as the blood on her shirt had made it seem. Not deep, just a shallow scrape that ripped off some of the skin.

Lance was no expert in injuries. A few months ago, he had been even worse. But three months of being a paladin, he had learned what an impact against armor looked like. He swallowed thickly. “Okay. Okay. Does it hurt to breathe?”

“Kind of.”

Her shaky breaths that she did not let get too deep meant that it was probably more than kind of. She was gripping the toilet paper roll, distorting it in her hand like a stress ball.

Lance looked across her ribs, where he was becoming more and more confident something had smashed against a chest plate. And he hated that he might know what it was and loved that he was not allowed to ask. “Doesn’t look broken or warped. May I?”

When she nodded, he ghosted his fingers across ridged skin. She held her breath the entire time, grimacing only when his fingers trailed over the sticky cut. “Doesn’t feel broken either. Not that I’m an expert, it just, seems like a normal ribcage. Probably just bruised. I can’t wrap it, but we’ll get it cleaned up, okay?”

She squeezed the toilet paper tighter, but nodded. “Yeah, sure, fine.”

Though Pidge grimaced as the antiseptic dotted over the cut, she didn’t make a sound. Sure, she had much worse pains to focus on, but in her silent pain Lance only saw Green’s body stopped mid-motion by Lance’s shot, jerking and collapsing silently as if already blacked out from shock or pain, and Keith hadn’t even smashed their rib cage with his sword yet. As he pressed the bandage over the cut, lightly pressing the sticky part down on her bruises, his eyes went to her shoulder, to the edge of purple skin sticking out under her collar.

It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.

Of course it wasn’t. The injury to her side could easily be explained by running into a lamppost or something, same with her shoulder. Pidge maybe had issues with authority, and dabbled in conspiracy theories, but same for everyone else their age. She was a genius, but he had absolutely no reason to believe she would want to work with the Galra or break into the Garrison.

He had no reason to believe she wouldn’t want to do those things either. It struck him with nausea that he didn’t really know his roommate at all.

He put the bandage and antiseptic back in the kit, put his hand on the top, about to close it, but waited. “O-Okay.” He winced at his own stutter. “Can I look at your shoulder too?”

She was already pulling her shirt back down. “Skin didn’t break.”

“You dislocated it, Pidge.”

“I didn’t do anything.” A near confirmation that she earned this in a fight. God he wished she hadn’t said that. “I’ll lift my arms, you pull it off.”

He said he wanted to see her shoulder, but he didn’t actually want to, and hesitated to grab the hem of the tee when she lifted her arms. Her right arm could not get as high as the left. In her pain, she gave him a tense look to hurry the fuck up. He did, taking the hem, lifting her shirt but hesitating when the first of the bruise came into sight on her collar. His stomach flipped. He pulled it the rest of the way before Pidge could complain.

No puncture, just a round splotch of purple and blue and yellow on her shoulder and collar, all emanating from the precise spot he had been aiming.

“Christ, Pidge,” he breathed. “I’ll... I’ll get you one, a shirt, get you a shirt, without blood on it.”

He had not even examined it, a fact that made Pidge squint at him. “Okay… Can you get one that buttons in the front? I don’t want to try lifting my arms again, that hurt like hell.”

“Sure.” His voice sounded distant even to him. He swallowed down bile as he drifted from the bathroom, across the hall into his own room. He dropped the shirt on the floor. Folded himself at the foot of his bed. The world was wrong, like reality had shifted over three feet and nothing he touched was right anymore and his roommate wasn’t his roommate.

Not an hour ago he had been on the verge of passing out from exhaustion, but now the adrenaline had him shaking in a nervous high that he wasn’t sure he could ever come down from. Still twisted on the floor, he stretched his gangly arm to the bedside table. He managed to curl one finger around the cord and pulled the charging phone into his hand. Open the contacts. Find Keith. His finger hovered above the symbol of the little green phone.

Time was as unreal as the apartment they shared. He could never tell how much had passed when he heard her voice. “Lance? You okay?”

He locked the phone on Keith’s contact, yanked it off the charger, and shoved it into his pocket as he stood. “Yeah, one sec.” He stopped in the door of his room, remembered his mission, and returned to his closet. He grabbed the first buttoned shirt he could find, a blue and black plaid thing that was pretending to be flannel. By the time he made it back to the bathroom, the world had stabilized, and yet all had an almost fuzzy, numb aspect to it, and Pidge seemed too far away for him to actually give her the shirt as he passed it into her hand.

Wary of her shoulder, she put her arms in the sleeve, and then with only one hand buttoned the shirt. The process would be slow just from buttons’ known stubbornness versus one unaccustomed human hand, but crawled as she kept looking up to where he occupied the doorway, her expression growing in suspicion with each glance. “You’re acting weird.”

“I’m no medic,” he said, the diversion smooth across unfeeling lips. “You’re probably going to lose an arm or something.”

“It hurt so bad at first I thought it got blown off.” She grinned, mischievous, as if her sincere statement were something hilarious. Lance didn’t laugh. “If it falls off, I can just make a prosthetic.” When even that failed to get a reaction, her lips twisted, sour at the defeat, and she kept her eyes down to finish buttoning the shirt. “Anyway, want to watch Legendary Defender?”

He offered her a hand and she took it. Once she was situated on the couch he fixed ice packs for her ribs and shoulders. Legendary Defender played. He missed all of it. Pidge took over an hour to nod off, kept awake by sharp pain whenever she began to breathe too deeply. The sky was already colored by the time he was sure she was asleep, her head tilted back into the couch cushions and mouth hung open. He whispered her name. With no response, he stood, walked into the kitchen, and propped himself on the counter. Keith’s contact was still up when he pulled out his phone.

“Hello?” The great Red Paladin’s voice was groggy and more than a little irritated. Normally, Lance expected, Keith would be up with the sun, but he was probably trying to sleep off the attack from the night before. Lance wasn’t sure if he should feel guilty or not about waking him.

“Hey, it’s… it’s about Green.”

Something crackled on the other side, sheets shifting as Keith sat up and the sleep left his voice. “You have a lead?”

“I just wanted to say… I’m sorry for letting them get away.”

A pause, then Keith sighed, dispelling any heightened emotion he had in that breath to address Lance with a still voice. “It’s not your fault. The guy’s good at what he does. I’m honestly impressed you’ve been able to face him alone this far. We’ll get him next time.”

“Yeah.”