#oops now we're getting all Jayden Smith existential

[hailqiqi]

Message Received and Misunderstood

Once a promising fighter pilot candidate with the best skin in the Garrison, Lance Serrano is now relegated to languishing in cargo training during the day and locking himself in the library at night, sacrificing his self-care for a pile of textbooks like the nerds he used to make fun of.

He doesn't even bother talking to the other late-night regulars -- the boy with the Rubik's Cube, the girl who chews her pens too loudly, or the Sadako-wannabe who's always the only other person in there at midnight.

Friends will only distract him, and he needs to study.

Rating: G

Chapter One: First Contact

4,622 words | Read on AO3

So here’s my contribution to the @planceminibang! Beta’d by the wonderful @sp4c3-0ddity and with art (Chapter 3!) from the fantastically-talented @artemisarya, here’s a little teenage sweetness that’s a bit different from my normal offerings.

Enjoy!

5TH JANUARY

 The rough calculations on the page had long since blurred together by the time his phone blinks for break time, and Lance slumps forward onto the table with a groan.

Twenty minutes. Another twenty minutes that he’s been at this stupid problem, and despite filling both sides of the page up with calculations, he’s still no closer to figuring out if a hafnium carbide vessel would survive the stress of a gravity assist off Saturn or not.

He lifts his head and glares at the paper. Two points were all that had stood between him and making fighter pilot; instead, he’s stuck in cargo training and desperately trying to pull up his grades at night because he needs an extra fifty to make it in off a retest. And despite the lack of sleep and him studying harder than he ever had in his life — even harder than he had for the entrance exams — it’s now half-way through the school year and he’s still staring down a failing grade.

All because of freaking materials science.

Maybe he should just give up. There’s no shame in being a cargo pilot, mijo, his mom had said. Cargo pilots make a steady wage — a good wage, enough to raise a family and have a lot left over. The job wasn’t as boring as it sounded, and there were still opportunities to leave the atmosphere (and while he’d been bottom of fighter, he was top of the cargo class so he’d definitely be given the space runs).

But cargo isn’t what he wants. Maybe he’s being immature, but he wants to swoop and soar and feel the world fall out from underneath him at mach speeds when he jiggles the stick. You can’t do a barrel roll in a cargo ship, even in space.

His phone flashes again and he leans back in his seat, hands over his eyes as he begins to recite the problem again.

“If the hafnium carbide heat shields are two inches thick and have a tensile strength of 14,000 psi at 2,000 degrees…”

It’s way too freaking late for this.

“And Saturn’s gravity is 10.44, and we’re travelling in a prograde direction during the assist and approach from…” This bit he can do. The miss distance, the outgoing velocity, the amount of fuel needed — he’d calculated it so many times now he can rattle the whole thing off by memory, but once he gets past the flight calculations he needs to check his notes to know what happens next. “And then…”

He glances at the paper, checks both sides, and groans again, one hand in his hair. “...And then some random amount of heat is generated and I guess the stupid shuttle explodes and everybody dies, ‘cause I’ll be a flying space cow if I know if it survives or not.”

A snort of laughter from behind makes him jump.

He whips around in his seat, heart in his throat because it’s eleven p.m., who the heck is in the library at this hour?, only to be met by a pair of laughing brown eyes half-hidden behind a curtain of equally brown hair.

Oh, yeah. Her. The only other person crazy enough to be in the library every night, even though he’s fairly sure she’s not studying for the resit since he doesn’t recognise her from any of his classes last year. In all the months they’ve shared a space they’ve barely exchanged a nod, but it looks like that’s about to change because she’s actually speaking to him.

“I’m sorry,” the girl is saying, mirth still flowing in her tone and not looking sorry in the slightest. “That was just really funny.”

Lance rolls his eyes. “I’m glad someone finds it funny.” He begins to turn away but then stops, desperation prodding him to use this opportunity. “You...wouldn’t happen to know the answer, would you?”

The girl looks surprised. “What’s the question? Whether or not the heat shields would survive the gravity assist?” Lance nods, and she blinks. “Well, yeah, of course they would.”

“Uh...Say what?”

“Yes, they’d survive. Zero material stress, actually,” she repeats steadily, her head tilted in confusion. 

“Oh… Thanks,” he manages, and she shrugs and turns back to her textbook.

Lance grabs his sheet of paper, fumbling it in his haste to turn it over and go over all the calculations again because she sounds so sure, like it’s an easy question when he’s been at it for almost a freaking hour now with no results.

What did he miss? He must have missed something. Something obvious? Where are his notes on Kepler’s laws?

With five minutes left on the study clock he gives in and turns back to the girl. The Library Sadako, he’d nicknamed her, since her hair is always covering her face and her pyjamas are as shapeless as a ghost’s robes. Plus she had a habit of appearing and disappearing from the library all but soundlessly. 

But right now she’s his last hope.

“So, uh… How do you prove it?”

She glances up at him, an irritated frown on her face at the interruption, and Lance realises there are bags under her eyes too. But her tone is neutral when she clarifies, “The material stress question?”

Lance nods, and she puts her pencil down and eyes him curiously. “You don’t need to prove it. Those are the specs for The Obol’s heat shields, and that flight path was the one for the return Saturn assist from the Kerberos mission last year. Remember?”

The ticking of the clock in the corner is suddenly much too loud, and all he can do is stare.

“You don’t need to prove it,” she repeats, exasperation creeping into her tone. “It’s already been proven. That’s one of the general knowledge questions.”

He spins back around, practically snarling in frustration as he digs through his papers to find the mock with the question on it.

When he finally finds it, it’s all he can do not to burn the damn thing. Stupid, stupid, stupid… She’s right, and there’s only two lines for an answer. Nowhere near enough space for the pages of vector diagrams and formulas covering his scrap paper.

And he’d wasted an hour on this. Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Maybe he should just go back to the farm. Veronica wouldn’t have been this dumb. Heck, Keith wouldn’t have been this dumb and the guy wasn’t exactly the brightest in the bunch. Still, Keith’s in fighter class while Lance is languishing in cargo, so if Keith’s stupid what does that make Lance?

Really stupid. Space-level stupid. The stupidest stupid to— 

The thud of books hitting the table next to him rips him from his thoughts, and he looks up in surprise to see the girl pulling out the chair next to him, a hesitant smile on her face.

“When I studied for the entrance tests, I always found it easier to focus at night when I had my brother with me, even if we didn’t talk,” she says, one hand on the back of her neck as she sits down. “So, uh, maybe some company will help?”

Without waiting for an answer, she arranges her books, flipping open a notebook and textbook with practiced ease and beginning work on what looks like a flight mechanics question. Lance watches her for a moment, unsure, then sighs and flips to the next question on the paper.

Maybe she’s right. He might as well give it a go, since his solo progress has been nothing to brag about.

It’s almost midnight, anyway.

 *****

10TH FEBRUARY

 As it turns out, Sadako’s name is Katie, and she’s studying for the same exam he is.

But not because she failed round one, like Lance. She’s two grades below him and looking to skip a year.

Lance can’t help but find it a little bit galling, especially when it’s 11 p.m. and she’s just finished walking him through a Critical Reasoning question for the third time like it’s nothing. The formulas — formulae — are all neatly laid out on the paper, but Lance still doesn’t get it.

“Why are you even here?!” he blurts out, his jaw aching from the frustration. Katie recoils, her mouth hanging open and hurt flashing across her face and — oh — he hadn’t meant for that to sound so harsh. 

Especially not when she’d put so much effort into helping him over the last month.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, taking the pencil from her hand gently and putting it down before running his hand through his hair. “It’s just...none of this seems even a little bit hard for you. Why are you bothering to stay up like this?”

It’s something he’s wondered for a while. Katie’s been the only other person in the library until closing almost every night since fall so he’d always assumed they were in similar places, but now they were actually studying together…

“Oh,” she says, the tension leaving her posture again. Apology accepted, Lance guesses, but her eyes linger on his material science textbook instead of him, and her fingers fiddle with the ends of her long hair as she speaks. “Um, well, mat-sci really isn’t that hard for me. My dad’s...uh, my dad works for the Garrison as an engineer, and he does a lot of R&D and he always talks about his work at home, so…”

Katie taps the book, looking distinctly uncomfortable for some reason. Lance raises an eyebrow. “So if you haven’t been studying this, what have you been studying all this time?”

“Flight manuals,” Katie replies, finally meeting his gaze again, and Lance is relieved to see a spark in her eyes again. “I’ve only flown the droids a few times, and some of the older planes in basic, but the practical is a big part of the class exams and since there’s no way I’m going to get any actual practice, if I at least memorise all the flight manuals and mechanics and everything then I should have a shot.”

“Memorise the flight manuals?!”

“Yeah!” Lance stares at her as she chatters on enthusiastically, seemingly oblivious to how absurd that suggestion is in the first place. “A strong foundation in the theory can never be a replacement for practical experience, but it can be the difference between a weak pass and a fail. Of course I’ve been brushing up on stuff like this as well”—she pats the textbook twice—“because the closer I get to a hundred percent on the other subjects, the less a poor practical score will matter. I’ve tried to code my own simulations too” —you’ve tried to what?!—“but obviously I can’t replicate the physical aspects of the hardware with my laptop. I mean, I’d try a set-up of books and stuff just to get the motions down but then my roommate would probably complain even m—”

Lance bursts out laughing, cutting her ramble off abruptly, and Katie narrows her eyes at him.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing.” Laughter still threatens to bubble over, but he pushes it down as he explains, “Just...that’s a lot!” His gaze falls to the notes from their study session and the pile of books spread across the desk, and he suddenly realises how he can pay her back a little. “Hey, my prac scores were pretty high, so I can help you out with that stuff if you want?”

A warm, genuine smile spreads across Katie’s face as she looks at him, and Lance realises with a start it’s the first time he’s seen it. It transforms her, turning her from a tired teenager in pyjamas into something his exhausted brain vaguely recognises as the sun.

“Really?!” Her tone is way too vibrant for this hour of night, and her hair swings back and forth as she bobs in her seat. “That would be the best! Thank you!”

Lance beams.

 *****

20TH FEBRUARY

 Hunk is rambling nervously about his last sim class as students bustle through the hallways when Lance’s phone finally buzzes with a reply.

Mid-terms are in two weeks. Of course I’m coming tonight. Usual time?

He shoots off a thumbs-up and turns back to tune into Hunk’s chatter.

“—and then he broke the whole comms deck and Lance, what if he does that during our mid-terms? Keith already made Iverson angry — and I mean really angry —  and oh, if we get marked down on the pracs because of it then I’m really going to need to pull up my avionics and aero science scores if I want to stay in the top ten,” Hunk continues, breathless. “Oh man, I have no idea how I’m going to do that on top of all this other stuff we have to study! I don’t even want to leave the ground, why do I have to learn how to fly the stupid things?!”

Lance glances up from his phone, a smirk already on his lips. “Because you went to flight school, maybe?”

“Ugh, don’t remind me!” Hunk slumps back against the wall and groans. “Hands down the Biggest. Mistake. Of my life.”

Lance’s phone buzzes with a reply. He checks it quickly, excitement filling him when he sees the small thumbs up icon.

“Hey, if you’re worried about your exam scores, why don’t you study with us in the library sometimes?”

Hunk pauses, expression turning devious as he straightens up and turns to face him. “Us? You mean you and your study girlfriend?”

He waggles his eyebrows meaningfully, and Lance rolls his eyes, shoving his phone back into his pocket.

“Katie. And you know she’s not my girlfriend. She’s good to study with, though, and she said you should come.”

“Hm.” Hunk’s expression doesn’t change. If anything, his smirk grows more irritating. “Okay, I’m in. It’s about time I met the elusive Katie, anyway.”

 *****

10TH MARCH

 The first time Lance sees Katie in daylight is at a diner near campus the week after mid-terms.

“Why don’t you just ask your brother, Pidge?” Hunk asks accusatorially, wielding a fry at the girl across the table rolling her eyes at them. “Can’t he like, just log in and tell me my scores? Given that he’s a famous astronaut and all.”

Katie — Pidge, he has to remember to call her Pidge now because she freaking deserves it after all the lies she told him in the library — grabs the fry from Hunk’s grasp and pops it into her mouth, chewing it deliberately slowly before swallowing and replying with a frown, “You know it doesn’t work like that. And stop calling me Pidge.”

“Aw, but Pidge is such a good nickname. Cute Pidgey-Widgey Pigeon.” Hunk pops another fry into his mouth as Pidge’s expression darkens. 

(For someone who spends most of his time worrying, he’s a heck of a lot braver facing certain death than Lance would be.)

“Oh my God, can’t you just drop it?”

“Nope,” he replies, smirk still firmly in place. “It’s your punishment for keeping secrets. Isn’t that right, Lance?”

Lance glances from Hunk to Pidge, then decides that self-preservation is for losers after all.

“Totally.” He quirks an eyebrow, inwardly delighting at how her eyes narrow as they focus on him. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. You’re the one who was all ‘oh, I’m just good at this because my dad’s an engineer’ and totally forgot to mention that he wrote the freaking textbook.”

“Ugh!” Katie slumps forward, all but slamming her forehead on the table. “Look, I’m sorry if I didn’t tell you guys, but people hear the name ‘Holt’ and get weird, okay?”

The last bit comes out as a mumble, and Lance feels a stab of sympathy. The weight of having successful siblings is something he understands well; he can only imagine the pressure of coming from an entire line of Garrison royalty.

Then again… “We’ve been friends for months, Katie,” he points out. “It just sucks that we had to find out because your famous astronaut brother appeared in the library and started calling you ‘Pidge’.”

Katie raises her head, lips pursed in annoyance. “So what, you guys are going to stop using my real name as my penance or something?”

“Exactly,” Hunk says decisively. “Like, I wouldn’t have cared if you’d told us — hey, Matt was pretty cool, and it’s so freaking amazing that your dad is like one of my engineering heroes — but finding it out like that sucked. You should’ve trusted us enough to tell us.” He pauses, then goes for the kill. “I thought we were friends.”

Her face falls, and Lance is vaguely aware that they might have overdone it.

 *****

25TH MARCH

 The post-Matt interrogation at the diner starts something. Soon, Pidge is joining them for lunch in the canteen every day, and then breakfast, and then before Lance has really processed it their duo has become a trio and it feels weird to think of a time when Pidge wasn’t in their group.

Moments like now, though, remind him.

“Why would he make a fool of himself?”

“Because that,” Hunk answers with a flourish, gesturing at Jenny’s retreating back, “was—”

And Lance suddenly realises that he doesn’t want Pidge to know about this.

He quickly slaps a hand over Hunk’s mouth, ignoring his muffled indignation to smile awkwardly at Pidge. “Y’know what? It doesn’t matter. You don’t need t— armmf!”

Less than two seconds later he’s struggling to breathe, strong muscles wrapped firmly around his head and torso and the pungent smell of Hunk’s armpit filling his nostrils.

“That,” Hunk continues, barely affected by Lance’s struggles for freedom, “was Jenny Shayburn.”

“Who’s Jenny Shayburn?” Pidge asks, and Lance can just imagine her expression: one eyebrow raised with that look that says why must you be like this? as she watches their tussle.

Or, well, Lance would like to call it a tussle. Hunk probably just sees it as an inconvenience.

“Oh, just the love of Lance’s life and his obsession for the last two years. No big deal.” 

Lance slumps against Hunk’s chest and groans. Both Pidge and Hunk latch onto gossip with the ferocity of his brother’s old terrier.

“Oh,” she says, her tone flat. “Weird.”

Lance pushes away from Hunk, who releases him without a fight, but he can’t find any relief in his reprieve. Pidge’s fingers grip her cup tightly as she sips, her gaze fixed on the students entering and leaving the canteen, and Lance feels an odd weight settle in his stomach.

What’s he supposed to say to that? A part of him wants to protest that he hasn’t thought about Jenny in ages, but it feels like... What’s that Shakespeare quote? The one about the lady protesting?

That.

Hunk glances between them, a calculating expression on his face as he takes in the tension at the table, then waves at Pidge to get her attention. “So,” he begins, tone sly, “is there anyone you like? Any special boy in our little Pigeon’s life?”

Lance rolls his eyes and tries to look as disinterested as possible, even though a part of him is on tenterhooks waiting for the answer. It’s not a topic they’ve ever broached in their hangouts. 

“Sorry, no,” Pidge answers quickly, but she’s avoiding their gaze and the lie is obvious, and Lance suddenly wonders who it is and if he could take him in a fight.

Though it’s not like he cares.

“Aw, c’mon, you can tell us,” Hunk cajoles, nudging Lance far too hard in the chest with his elbow. “Bet you loverboy Lance here can give you some tips for catching his eye.”

“Uh, yeah! Sure!” He runs a hand through his bangs, feigning a confidence he’s not feeling. “Advice. I can totally help ya out.”

He grins and shoots her some fingerguns, adding a wink for good measure. There. That was natural.

The deadpan expression on her face doesn’t change (maybe he’s lost his touch?).

“Thanks, but no thanks,” she replies at length, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “Look, it’s just a crush and he doesn’t like me back anyway. Can we change the topic now?”

For whatever reason, Hunk obliges, and the weird tension that had hung over the table dissipates fairly quickly as they move on to safer topics. The strange taste in Lance’s mouth lingers, though, and he’s not sure why.

 *****

3RD APRIL

 Everybody else in the diner is watching and chuckling and Pidge looks like she’s about to die, but really — she should know by now that they take that as encouragement.

“Haaapppy birthday dear Pigeon…” they bellow, Hunk adding an impressive vibrato on the low note. “Haaapppy birthday tooo—” Lance manages to take it up way-too-high there, grinning proudly when Pidge winces from behind her hands— “you!”

They finish with a poor attempt at harmonisation, bodies half-out of the booth with a flourish of jazz hands as the rest of the restaurant bursts into laughter, whoops and applause.

“Oh my God…” Pidge mutters, finally removing her hands from her face as the noise dies down. “Can I blow these stupid things out now?!”

Her tone is deadpan but her cheeks are a bright pink, but the sparkle in her eyes is what really gives her away. She’s pleased, she just thinks she’s too cool to show it.

(Or something. Sometimes Pidge really confuses him.)

After several unsuccessful attempts to blow them out, Pidge plucks the sparklers from her pile of pancakes and rapidly-melting ice cream and dunks them both in Lance’s water before he can stop her. Then she waves the dead sparklers in his direction with narrowed eyes and hisses, “I know the sparklers were your idea.”

“You wound me!!” Lance protests, his hand on his heart as he pretends to swoon. “You should know by now I only have your wellbeing at heart!”

“Nah, she’s not that dumb, buddy,” Hunk adds. Pidge snorts, turning into a full-blown laugh when Lance flops onto the table dramatically at Hunk’s betrayal, getting ice-cream in his hair in the process.

They dig into their pancakes with gusto, discussing their plans for when spring break starts the next day (Lance and Pidge are both heading home — Lance to Cuba to help with the calving and ploughing, Pidge to her family’s house just outside post — while Hunk is staying on at school for the fortnight) and debating the perfect topping combination and whether or not they’d be able to eat them when they finally made their way into space. It’s the most carefree meal Lance has had in a while — the perfect end to a busy term — and it’s enough to make him forget about the gift bag on the seat next to him.

But eventually the plates are cleared and the butterflies come back full-force when Hunk drops his gift on the table with a thud.

“Seriously?!” Pidge exclaims, beaming as she looks between them. “Guys, you didn’t need to!”

“Hey, this one’s just from me! Open it.” He pushes the box towards Pidge, winking surreptitiously at Lance as he adds, “Lance has his own present for you.”

Pidge tears into Hunk’s gift with gusto, her eyes lighting up as she removes what looks like a very small version of the throttle used in the fighter sims. Hunk starts rattling off its specs — he’d picked up an old one and basically reengineered the part with help from his whiz-kid pilot — and Pidge launches into a series of questions, almost all of which fly way over Lance’s head.

He tunes out of the conversation somewhere around the point where they start making plans for Hunk to visit her over the break to help install it, instead choosing to sit back and watch his friends interact. The hair in Katie’s ponytail is swinging all over the place as she does that excited bobbing thing she does, and he can’t help but think that it’s ridiculously cute.

A well-placed elbow rips Lance from his thoughts and he hurriedly grabs the bag and shoves it across the table, almost tipping it over in the process and wincing at how uncool he must look.

He quickly flashes a pose and follows it up with a wink and fingerguns (fingerguns can save any situation. Fact). “Mine’s the best, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Pidge drawls with a smile, but her brow furrows as she accepts the bag and looks inside. “Uh, did you forget your umbrella in here…?”

“Oh! No, no, that’s for you.” Hunk’s shoulders are shaking with laughter beside him, and Lance can feel his cheeks heating up. “Just like, you seem like a practical girl, and an umbrella’s a practical gift!”

The fingerguns come out again, and Pidge rolls her eyes with a laugh as she places the green-and-blue umbrella to the side (really he’d just picked it up so he wasn’t just giving her the other thing, but she didn’t need to know that). “Okay…”

The butterflies return in full force as she opens the bag again and pulls out the slim box, her expression shifting to one of surprise as she recognises it.

“Go on. Open it,” he says, answering the question in her eyes, and he can’t help his lips from pulling up into a smile when she does so and gasps.

“Lance…” She looks from him to the necklace in the box, eyes wide and lips parted, then shakes her head. “Lance, I can’t accept this! It must have cost you a fortune.”

But the way she’s looking at it — at him — lets him know that she really wants to, and that’s enough for the butterflies to finally settle into something warm and soft instead.

“Nah, it wasn’t that much.” Only his whole allowance for the month, but she didn’t need to know that, either. “I just saw it and thought it would suit you. And you only turn sixteen once, right?”

She flashes him a smile and looks back at the necklace, eyes soft as her fingertip traces over the intricate gold and green pendant. He’s telling the truth about thinking it would suit her — he saw it on a trip to the mall and immediately wanted to get it for Pidge, and that was before he’d known her birthday was coming up. 

Hunk is nudging him with his elbow, making weird noises that Lance knows translate to ‘See? See? I told you she’d like it’ and Lance feels an urge to laugh because he’d been so stupidly nervous about giving her his gift — even though it’s just a necklace! It’s not like it’s a ring or anything else with some weird hidden meaning.

“Could you help me put it on?”

He stares at Pidge, startled by the shy question. Her cheeks are a bright pink but she’s not looking away and he nods dumbly, rooted to the spot until Hunk all but shoves him out of the booth and towards Pidge’s side.

“I, uh… Sure.”

His fingers barely tremble as he removes the necklace from the proffered box, and then Pidge is leaning forward and flipping her ponytail out of the way and before he really knows what’s going on he’s fastened the clasp and is drawing away from the pale, freckled skin of her neck and back to his side of the booth (which suddenly feels so, so far away), fingertips burning as he takes his seat again.

“Thanks.” Pidge beams at him as she fiddles with the pendant displayed on her chest.

Lance nods dumbly, heart pounding. Her skin was so soft. Are all girls that soft?

He glances from Pidge’s smile to the pendant, finally breaking into a genuine smile himself as one thought crosses his mind. 

He was right. It does suit her.