Everything We’re Not
Pidge growled quietly, digging a fist into her eye to wipe away the blurriness and continuing to click away in the darkened kitchen. And yes, she knew that she had already triple-checked the coordinates for everyone’s flights in case they had to leave before she was back, run through the rate of fuel consumption for each ship (especially Coran’s; that old Altean battleship Hunk had found and tinkered back into fighting shape a few quintants ago had still been smoking the last Pidge had seen of it), confirmed that Hunk and Lance’s latest device could translate written Galran to English, and she had even configured three of her newest devices to hack more efficiently into Galran systems, but it still didn’t feel like enough. She would need all the help she could get if she was breaking into Haggar’s flagship.
Pidge flinched away from the witch’s snarling face that flashed through her mind, fingers fumbling over the code and brushing against the searing edge of her computer. For a second, she swore it was that electricity Haggar shot from her fingers (force lightning much?) and she hissed, punching the delete key and undoing the gibberish excuse for code she had knocked in. Pidge knew that if her mother saw her then, she would say Pidge was being “unreasonable” and would run through all the logic of why every member of the Volron family would be perfectly safe even if she didn’t do this stuff, even if she stayed at home, and Pidge would sit there and nod along until it was over. Because, if there was one thing she had learned from living with Keith and Lance, it was that logic didn’t rule emotions. Sure, Keith wasn’t permanently replacing Shiro when he stepped up to be their Black Paladin, but Pidge had just looked at her stolen glasses and placed her hand on his back instead. She knew how it felt to step into your big brother’s shoes. And sure, no one in that Castle of Lions was related by blood, but that hadn’t stopped Lance from taking them into his arms and his heart, claiming them as his family and loving them just as unconditionally. Pidge just had to listen to that laugh, so similar to Matt’s, and her heart had clenched in a painful understanding of the need for family out in space. It was only later that she realized they weren’t a replacement; they were just as real to him as the one he had been raised by.
Being “sensible” and “logical” didn’t stop the fear that bled into her heart and snaked up her throat, leaving her gasping for air as she curled over her computer in a pitch-black kitchen at 2 am on the morning of her 6 am space flight. Pidge couldn’t stand to lose anyone else, couldn’t handle coming down to hear that someone she loved—a precious member of her family—had been lost again. She had already said too many goodbyes, so many of which were nearly her last. She had watched almost everyone she loved nearly die, she had seen them walk out, and she had seen them fall to pieces.
Pidge would never forget screaming for Shiro, racing the others to his cockpit and finding nothing there, no trace that he had ever existed. No sign that he was even still alive. She could still see Allura’s head snapping against the headrest, quintessence raging around her as if ticks away from tearing her to shreds as agony consumed her sister’s face and the comms shorted out, leaving her helpless to support her friends as they risked everything to get back their family. She still remembered twisting, heart nearly exploding in her throat as Hunk shoved Shiro out of the way of that ion cannon, the former Black Paladin still not used to Blue, and the light blinding her to Keith and Lance’s last tick save. When she could see again, all she knew was that her best friend in the universe wasn’t there anymore. And, sometimes, she still tasted the smoke in the control room when she went running back to find Coran collapsed on the floor, half-coated in dust and pieces of shrapnel from the bomb. Pidge could never forget hearing Keith crash to the floor in the Black Lion’s cockpit, Haggar’s newest weapon starting to recharge, and Lance’s blinded screams hiding her own cries as one of her brothers nearly sacrificed his life again. And god, no matter how hard she tried, Pidge would never forget waiting for Keith and Lance to come back from the Kral Zera only to see the Black Lion carrying a half-destroyed, limp Red Lion in its jaws. She would never forget charging through the Black Lion, the crushing belief that she had lost another brother sending her careening into a wall, another loved one’s promise to come home lying broken in the war’s rampage, that she had lost him and it would be her fault for not coming along, for not protecting him, for not being enough—
Her eyes blurred again, and Pidge was pretty sure it wasn’t from exhaustion this time. She dug her forehead into her computer, the screen nearly blinding her, and the faint click of the light switch drowned out by her thundering heartbeat. She didn’t want to leave. Sure, her family were all strong, skilled fighters who had handled some of the universe’s worst before, but most of them were also reckless, self-sacrificial, and even more stubborn on the battlefield than she was during a late-night coding expedition.
“Oh. Hey, Pidge. You should go to sleep.”
She didn’t want to come back to a missing pilot seat, to a tombstone, to tears, to another family member gone.
“Seriously, you have a flight in the morning. Lance is going to throw you into bed if he wakes up.”
And this time, no matter where she went, she would never be able to save them.
“Pidge? Oh quiznak, are you okay?!”
Keith’s hand latched around her shoulder, and Pidge barely bit back a shriek as she jerked away. Her computer flew from her hands, clattering to the table as her shoulder jammed into the back of the chair, feet flying up and arms raised to block a blow. The chair lurched backwards, legs rising, and Keith’s breathing became fragmented as it tipped.
Kuron smiled, swirling a cup of sparkling apple cider in his flesh hand as he took a seat a little ways away from the giant group dancing in the center of the room. Curtis had dragged him to one of the Garrison’s social events, and the taller man was somehow still smiling next to him. He nudged Kuron with his shoulder, jerking his head towards the group with a raised eyebrow. Kuron just shook his head; he didn’t know if Shiro or Adam had joined in tonight, celebrating their recent engagement.
“You sure?” Asked Curtis, tilting his head even though Kuron had already explained his qualms with interacting with the Voltron team. “You were up there with them in space, I’m pretty sure they’d like you to join them. I mean, Shiro kept talking about his space family and all that; you guys may as well be brothers.”
Kuron winced, downing half of the cup as the paladins’ smiles flashed before his eyes when they had been celebrating their victory on Earth. He couldn’t remember a single time that they had laughed like that when he was the Black Paladin, not a single group hug or bout of teasing as long as he was around. Lance had tried so hard to give them this, to give them what they all had now. He had suggested game nights after death-defying missions, had always thrown open his arms for hugs, he had joked and laughed like he was trying to fill something up. And Kuron had shot down those suggestions, had walked past those open arms a thousand times, had greeted those jokes and chuckles with stony glares. For all that it was partially Haggar’s control, it was also partially his own fault, and he needed to take responsibility for that.
Part of doing that was not taking any joy from them now.
“No, I’m a pretty new addition to the team, not really family,” replied Kuron, swallowing the last of his cider. “Plus, I’m…”
“A clone?” Asked Curtis, cocking his head and grinning as Kuron bit his lip harshly. “Yeah, so what? It’s your experiences that define you, not your DNA or some bio stuff like that.”
“That…that’s the problem,” said Kuron, running his thumb over his forefinger and tossing the empty cup into a garbage can. “Let’s just say their experiences with me haven’t exactly been sunshine and rainbows. But, that’s beside the point. This is a party. Let’s celebrate, at least for tonight, okay…uh, you said your name was Curtis? Tomorrow, I head back up into space, so let’s just take the night off.”
Curtis arched an eyebrow, shrugging and standing up to dust off his pants. Kuron flashed him a tight smile, slouching down again. He needed to run diagnostics for his flight with Lotor tomorrow so that the Emperor could land them near that base safely, and he needed to verify the fuel supply on the ship to account for any difficulties when tampering with the clones’ control chips and—
“Right, come on then,” interjected Curtis, wiggling the fingers of his extended hand. “It’s not a party if there’s no dancing, am I right?”
Kuron blinked up at him, eyes almost glazing over at the brilliant grin offered back at him. Since when had he been able to make people smile like that?
“Hurry,” teased Curtis. “Looks like Sam and Colleen are taking over the dance floor, and if we don’t move fast, they’ll be dancing on top of our shoes too! Seriously, I went to a ballroom class with them as a joke once, and I’m pretty sure they got the last laugh.”
Kuron chuckled, standing up and offering Curtis a hand with a blushing attempt at a smile.
“In that case,” he said softly. “Please join me before our shoes are brutally attacked.”
Curtis cackled at that, twirling Kuron as a matching grin spread across his lips, his hand tightening around Kuron’s waist.
“You sound like the emo baby,” he teased.
“…Keith?”
Curtis’ near-shrieking laughter drew a giggle from Kuron along with the image of their sword-swinging firebrain as a tiny baby with an overgrown mullet in little paladin armor. And yet, Kuron sighed to himself, I still cannot imagine him in anything other than his paladin armor…as anything other than a warrior.
It was why Kuron couldn’t pretend to be surprised that Lance had eventually become the Black Paladin, the leader of the Voltron…family. When Kuron had been the leader, he had seen himself as everything that Lance was not. He was strict and harsh, forcing the team into order, trying to end the war as quickly as possible regardless of the consequences. And if the Paladins of Voltron bore the brunt of the damage, then that was fine; they were the Defenders of the Universe, after all. This was a war, and they were soldiers. They had a duty to walk through the flames.
But he had forgotten to take their hands as they all plunged in. Along the way, in that blazing heat, he had lost sight of them, had lost track of them. He couldn’t hear them anymore, couldn’t feel them, couldn’t do anything but charge forwards, striving harder against the heat until it became nothing more than a one-man race against death. And when a burst of cold hit his back, he rounded with rage, unable to see that Lance had brought a hose to the firestorm, had shielded Pidge and Hunk without any of them noticing, had been reaching out to Kuron the whole time and he hadn’t noticed. Kuron had fixed his eyes on their goal so completely that he had forgotten he wasn’t supposed to be a leader; he was supposed to be their leader.
Maybe Kuron was everything Lance was not. But Lance was also everything that Kuron was not.
Keith lunged forwards, curving his body around the chair and throwing his arms around Pidge. He yanked her back, pinning her to the back of the chair as she wriggled beneath him, and squeezed his eyes shut. He blew the breath slowly out of his body before the chair could steal it from him, draining the tension from each and every muscle, and tucked his chin in. He was used to being tackled, and not just by Nadia and Sylvio’s adoring hugs.
He wasn’t quite as used to welcoming it with open arms but, hey, a lot had changed over the past decaphoeb.
Keith smashed into the floor, the chair crushing down on top of him, and he dug his teeth into his lip to keep from snapping his head back at the pain. A concussion was high on his list of things to avoid right then. He held still, eyes flitting around the room in a frenzied storm, searching for any attackers or additional threats, and tightened his hold around Pidge.
Pidge snarled, blinking harshly to crush the flickering black dots from her eyes, and stared up at the McClain’s ceiling. Uhhhh, that was new.
“Hey, Pidge,” hissed Keith’s voice from beneath her, and Pidge’s eyes snapped down to see his arms locking her to the chair. “You mind?”
The decidedly tipped over chair. Oh. Oh.
“Pidge, you’d better be awake,” grumbled Keith, unwinding his arms from her and steadying the chair on top of him.
Pidge wondered if he would shove her off if she pretended not to be. She also wondered how many knives he kept on him when he slept.
“Right! Sorry!” She cried quietly, twisting off the chair and rolling across the floor.
On the battlefield, if Keith wanted to get something off of him, he usually ended up taking a lot of room. This would be no different.
Keith huffed, shoving the chair off of him and tossing it to Pidge. She yelped, scrambling to her feet and snatching the chair out of the air while he pressed his palms flat to the ground beside his head. Keith snapped his legs in an arch, the action whipping through the rest of his body as he pushed off his hands, curving through the air. He landed on his feet in a low crouch, and Pidge grinned.
“Taking lessons from Lance?” She teased, returning the chair to the table as her ears pricked up at a faint humming.
“Are you kidding?” Huffed Keith, lips quirking as he stood, tousling her hair. “This is one of Shiro’s favorites. When you see him constantly do this whenever Adam walks into the room, you end up picking it up pretty quickly.”
Pidge snorted, batting his hand away and returning to the table. Thank god, her computer looked like it was doing just fine. Geez, she needed to be more careful with it; next she would be throwing the poor thing across the room.
“Sure, it’s totally not from all the times Lance showed it off in the Garrison whenever he knew you were looking,” she quipped, erasing the lines of code her fingers had mashed in their terror.
“Shut up,” grumbled Keith with an affectionate shove on his way over to the microwave.
Pidge blinked as he turned it off, the nearly-silent beep vibrating through the air, and Keith tugged two steaming cups of hot chocolate out. Her lips compressed harshly.
“Is Lance up?” She asked, a faint growl lingering on her words.
Lance kept sneaking out of the house and camping out on the roof to knock through additional diplomatic work. He would tiptoe through the kitchen, slide open the window that Pidge could have sworn only she would be able to climb through, and would hop up onto the roof with a bag of paperwork. Then he would clamber over the tiles, plop on top of the roof, and pull the pencil out from behind his ear to begin working.
“You come up here to rock out?” Joked Pidge, twisting like an owl to stare at Lance as he joined her.
Lance screeched, jerking backwards and nearly flailing off the small ledge. Pidge snickered, spinning around to grin at her brother as he clutched at his heart overdramatically.
“Geez, Pidge! You trying to give me a heart attack and brain damage?” He complained, flopping forwards and unslinging the bulging bag from his shoulder. “What are you doing up?”
“Same thing as you,” replied Pidge, gesturing to the papers spilling from his bag and the pencil still locked between his fingers. “Pulling a late night.”
Lance chuckled sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head and folding up his knees to create a tiny desk.
“Yeah,” he admitted, pencil scratching out symbols and circling a few terms. “If I can get ahead on this stuff, then ‘Lura can leave for Oriande sooner, and we won’t have Haggar’s OP magic hanging over our heads anymore.”
Pidge snorted, leaning over and socking him in the arm. Lance yelped, rubbing his arm and sticking his tongue out at his sister. Pidge rolled her eyes.
“Hypocrite,” she stated, turning back to her computer with a slight huff. “You’re always telling me not to deal with problems alone when you guys can make it easier. We’re a team; you’re stuck working with us now.”
Lance snickered, ruffling her hair and dodging her flurry of swipes with an additional giggle.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he replied with that elusive smile playing over his lips, his eyes open wide and yet closed.
Pidge wished she could reach him when he was like that, but he always seemed so far away. He always seemed just outside of her grasp.
“You’re distracted~” Teased Curtis, spinning Kuron in a swift circle before pulling him in close again, smile still playing so sweetly across his lips that the clone was left feeling dizzy (perhaps it was just the twirling?) in the other man’s arms. “Come on, half of dancing is the conversation, and I don’t happen to know much about my dashing partner here. Anything spicy from your time in space to share?”
“Like what?”
“Uhhhhh, I don’t know. How about stars? Are the colors up there really as crazy as everyone says they are?”
Kuron chuckled, nights spent with the soft coos of the team back in the beginning rising up to his mind. He tugged Curtis just a little away from where Seok was dancing, swinging his partner a little wide and flashing him an almost wistful smile.
“Yes. They’re glorious. I think my favorite was this pale purple mist over a peach nebula. Everything was so dark around them, and stars were glittering at all corners like millions of lights just watching over you,” admitted Kuron, gliding across the floor and sweeping a beaming Curtis with him. “It felt like they were all saying everything’s going to be okay, so just keep going. It’s going to be alright. And when the big blue streak at the center of it came into view, I felt almost like I was back on Earth for a moment. Like I had come home.”
Kuron gazed up at the ceiling as if he could see that same sky in the black tiles if he gazed long enough. “But, then again, I’d never actually seen Earth’s sky. It was all an illusion in the end.”
Just like me.
The silent message rang clear despite the deafening music, the frenzied dancing of the Garrison staff, the faintly salty scents of snacks overtaking the air. The lights were flashing across the dance room, practically creating supernovas with each explosion, and some students had formed a giant circle to contain all of their different dancing styles. Kuron could almost see the paladins joining in and casually conquering the circle from the few moves he had seen them dance before. Keith would show off some fighting tricks that could pass for dancing if one squinted hard enough, Pidge would bounce all over the place and pump her arms freely, and Shiro would be doing the macarena with Adam and +3 dorkiness. Allura and Lance would probably show off a myriad of fancy alien dance moves, Matt would throw in a frenzy of gymnastics moves and, if Kuron knew anything about the Voltron family, Coran would be doing things that made no anatomical sense but looked cool? Krolia would probably just stand by and chuckle, clapping along with a smile that shone like fireworks in her eyes.
The same look Kuron should have given Lance all those phoebs ago.
“What? No, of course he’s not,” replied Keith, eyes rolling as he hopped onto the table and took a sip of his hot chocolate, the other cup abandoned in front of her. “I’m not that bad at sneaking out.”
Pidge poked the cup in front of her, arching an eyebrow at him silently. It was funny, really. For all that Lance and Matt were scarily similar, especially with their ~drama~ and flirting, the way she worked with Keith was closer to how she communicated with her brother. The two didn’t talk much, capitalizing on gestures and an intuitive understanding of where the other one stood. It was what made them such an effective duo on the battlefield; they would both charge in without any sort of thorough plan or expectations, without anything going for them but the wavelength they seemed to dance together on throughout the battle. It wasn’t that they watched each other’s back, it wasn’t that they knew each other well enough to guess where they would be at any given moment, it was just two matching sets of instincts. They were a brother and a sister who knew what needed to be done and how to make it easiest for them to pull that off. They thought the same way.
Keith shrugged as she prodded the cup a little more insistently.
“I couldn’t find any marshmallows,” he replied, sipping from his cup and deliberately not looking at her. “Didn’t think you’d want any.”
Pidge snorted out a laugh, the giggles shooting from her nose and drawing a smile from Keith. Pidge swore she saw him blink a few shadows out of his eyes.
“Nah, no marshmallows are perfect. Thanks.”
They both knew she wasn’t just thanking him for the hot chocolate.
“No problem.”
The two sat in an easy silence, each sipping their steaming drink as the stars glistened out the window and Pidge typed softly. The faint snores from the living room (Pidge swore they were coming from Adam) were comforting, almost like waking up in the middle of their team sleepovers to Hunk’s drooling and the promise of several more vargas of sleep. Pidge slurped at her hot chocolate, eyes flicking over to Keith’s profile and cataloguing all the little details. The faint bags dragging his eyes down, the hunch in his shoulders he always got when he was losing a video game a little too badly, and the way his eyebrows twitched occasionally, as if trying to hold back a thunderstorm.
His searing indigo eyes snapped to meet her amber gaze. The two stared at one another, Keith’s eyes narrow as a laser, and Pidge’s wide as the barrel of an ion cannon. They had faced down the worst the universe could throw at them together. They had squabbled, ran, searched, destroyed anything that was in their path, saved anyone who needed their hand, and smiled at the end of the day, together no matter what. And, as those familiar smiles curved into their burning irises, Pidge felt something inside her click back into place.
“Keith?”
“Mm?”
Pidge’s fingers slid to a stop on her keyboard, and Keith set down his drink with a soft clink. They never broke their gaze, and Pidge reached out slowly to let her fingers curl around his sleeve.
“Will you guys be here when I come back?”
Kuron stared off across the room, visions dancing in his eyes that weren’t there. But Curtis kept his eyes locked on Kuron’s.
“I think it’s a little too loud in here to be an illusion,” he replied, grinning maniacally and throwing Kuron into a dip with an exaggeratedly roguish wink. “Plus, if this were my illusion, it’d just be you and me, and I’d have the whole world melt away right now for dramatic effect.”
Kuron blinked up at the smirking man. A tick passed, and Curtis could practically see the gears turning in his brain. Then he giggled. Curtis chuckled, partially just at the cute pink spreading over Kuron’s cheeks, and partially because the giggles increased, growing louder and louder with every passing second. They built up on one another, growing into snickers, into chortles and, finally, blossoming into full laughter. Kuron’s head was thrown back, his shoulders shaking at the force of his laughs, and Curtis doubted there was any sight more beautiful in the world than when Kuron turned those glowing grey eyes on him with a look of adoration.
Curtis melted.
“I would hardly protest that illusion,” teased Kuron, snickering as Curtis nearly dropped him in a squawking attempt to pull the clone back to his feet. “So, how about a rain check on it until I get back?”
Curtis blushed, rubbing the back of his neck and unable to keep his lips from curving upwards at just the image of it.
“That! That would be! Um! I would like that! Very much!” He decided, trying to pretend that steam wasn’t curling out of his ears and Adam would probably be snickering across the dance floor over his friend’s flustered state if he was here.
“In that case, I’ll see you then,” said Kuron, bowing. “I have to go prepare for my flight tomorrow. Uh, Curtis, will you please tell the others I said goodbye?”
Curtis smiled, returning the bow and raising his head to seize a final look at the man with eyes softer than any heart Curtis had seen before.
“It would be my pleasure.”
Keith’s breath was sharp, splitting the kitchen in half, and Pidge tightened her grip on his sleeve as if to keep him from running away. As if to keep him safe by her side.
Keith recognized that instinct. He knew what it meant to watch someone leave and only realize later that it had been your last goodbye. And he knew Pidge did too; the same agony he had felt for Shiro, she had felt twice over for her father and brother. She had given up everything to find them, and now to step back and trust others to protect her family—including the ones she had met in space—was harder than summoning a superpowered shield in the middle of combat. Stepping back and trusting in the universe when it had failed you before was the hardest thing to do.
Keith slid his sleeve free of Pidge’s hand, her stuttered breath cracking his heart, and wrapped his fingers softly, but firmly, around her wrist. He held it steadily, staring into her amber eyes, shining as if holding back a tidal wave, until her fingers tentatively encircled his wrist. Keith squeezed softly.
“Will you come back to us?” He asked.
Pidge’s eyes blew wide, and her grip tightened around his wrist as her irises turned into razors and her mouth set into the streak of a comet.
“How could you even ask that?” She snapped. “Of course I’ll come back to you guys!”
Keith fought back the echo of the door closing on his father for the last time, and forced himself to keep eye contact with Pidge. He raised his chin, a faint tremble passing through his fingers, and swallowed the fear threatening to choke him. Sure, he wasn’t Lance, he wasn’t an expert on emotions or helping people or handling fear. But he knew better than almost anyone what it meant to be scared like Pidge was now, scared of losing everything you had ever loved and built for yourself.
He knew what it meant to be scared of losing your entire world.
“I know,” he replied. “We know you’ll come back to us. So know that we’ll be here when you come back. We’re a family; believe in us like we believe in you. And when you come back, will you…”
Kuron turned, his eyes trained on Curtis as the man turned away, cheeks bright pink and a smile blooming across his face. Huh. Kuron’s lips tilted up.
Maybe…maybe he really could make people laugh like he wanted to. Maybe, this time, he could let those goofy smiles show.
Maybe he still had time to get this right.
Well, maybe he would have, if he had decided to stay. But there was a clone base to pacify, a final battle rapidly approaching, and a new comet-powered weapon in development. They all had their part to play, and Kuron’s was not here. It wasn’t with these people he wished to call his own. And, as he slipped out of the room, he felt his last shot at having friends finally slip through his fingers with every step that took him further from them.
It was time to let go. Time to move on.
Pidge stared at Keith, her eyes swelling with tears at the question hanging in the air, her brother’s lips pursed and the faint remnants of a tremor still in his fingertips. Like that was even a question.
“Obviously!” Scoffed Pidge, holding tight to him and swallowing a sniffle. “I’ll bring along one of my flower robots!”
“Why do you have a—you know what, I don’t want to know, do I?”
“Nah,” she replied, smirking. “Probably not!”
We believe in you. God, had she forgotten that. She had been so trapped in the ‘perfect younger sister mold’ every time she was with her family, forced to sit still and listen when she wanted to run and chatter, to talk about or work on her latest projects, to plot pranks and make stupid jokes that broke scientific rules for humor’s sake, to be Pidge, that she forgot how she had become Pidge. And now she was trapped as Katie, chained back by her own fear. She didn’t want to upset her parents; she had worked so hard to find them, she didn’t want to lose them or disappoint them but she didn’t want to lose herself. She didn’t want to sacrifice everything she had made herself into. She didn’t want to be told she talked too much, too loudly, too quickly. She didn’t want to be too much because she knew she was always more than enough with her space family. She didn’t want to stay trapped as Katie.
So, she clenched Keith’s wrist, smiled back her tears, and raised shining irises to meld with his.
“I’ve always believed in you guys,” she stated. “And I always will. You’ve earned it.”
Even if he’d always had it since she first met him.
Keith laughed, breaking his wrist free of her grip and clasping her palm instead, a grin overtaking his face.
“You’ve earned it too, Pidge.”
And she’d always had it anyways.
Just believe me.
Pidge’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head, and Keith stifled a shriek as his sister’s voice joined his own in his head. Then a grin engulfed her face, and Keith groaned, hiding his face in his hands as Pidge whooped quietly, pumping her fists in the air and rattling off theories at light speed in their shared minds.
After all, she knew Keith would keep up with her.
Keith chuckled, leaning against the counter and swallowing half of his remaining hot chocolate in one go while admiring the way that Pidge looked with one amber eye and one indigo one. Pidge punched his arm lightly as the thought crossed over to her brain, and she grinned at him.
“You don’t look too bad yourself, haystack hair.”
“EXCUSE ME?!” Whisper-shrieked Keith, and Pidge cackled as she flooded their brain with theories on ‘pair melding’ as she had decided to call it.
Keith laughed, flopping across the table and raising his mug towards Pidge. It may be a long night, but it would be worth it to get to spend some time with his space sister.
“Cheers, sis.”
Pidge grinned like a sunflower, picking up her own cup as the knots melted out of her muscles. She couldn’t imagine a better last night on Earth than with her space brother.
“Cheers, bro.”