#sorry for the cliffhanger i'll write a third part eventually

[hailqiqi]

Can You Find a Fallen Star?

Healing broken bonds starts with confronting hard truths.

Ctd. from The Stars Aren’t the Same for You and I

I think I need to shoutout to @mistyhollowpro for helping me out with this, but honestly it’s been sitting at 95% for so long that I’ve totally forgotten if I owe anybody else shoutouts.

Words: 3,905

AO3 link in notes.

“Hi.”

The greeting was given with a raised eyebrow and a knowing smirk that immediately wiped half the tension from his shoulders.

“Hey, Veronica. Any chance you know what your little brother did to my little sister?”

“I love it how you cut to the chase,” she answered with a laugh, shaking her head ruefully as she opened the door to invite him in. “Why don’t you ask him yourself? I told him to quit moping and be useful, so he’s cleaning out the refrigerator in the kitchenette.”

Matt muttered a quiet thanks as he stepped inside. “He didn’t tell you?”

“Nope,” Veronica replied, shutting the door and gesturing for him to follow her, “and I suspect I don’t want to ask.”  She stopped part-way across the living room and pointed to an open doorway. “He’s in there. Don’t kill him, okay? We only just got him back.”

“I promise I won’t,” Matt answered solemnly, crossing his heart. “Scout’s hono— Hey!”

Veronica grinned as she released his ponytail. “I’m still not used to this.” She laughed. “Anyway. Enjoy, Holt.”

Grumbling, he flapped his arms at her and headed towards the small kitchen. This was not how he had wanted to spend his Sunday, but with Pidge acting like the world had ended what else was he supposed to do?

The kitchens in Garrison family quarters were small — more of a kitchenette, really, as Veronica had called it — with a counter for cooking/prep, an island for eating, and a wall of windows to let the light in (and get rid of smoke). The one in this particular family suite was no different, its only unique feature being the cluttered surfaces where every item in the fridge had seemingly been moved out and shoved aside.

Lance was nowhere to be seen, but from the clattering and muttered curses Matt supposed he was on the floor behind the island. He must not have heard him come in.

Excellent.

Moving quietly, he snuck up to the island and peered over. Yup, there he was — wearing shorts and a wife-beater, on his hands and knees with a bottle of spray in one hand and his head inside the empty refrigerator. The thoroughness with which he approached the task made Matt pause.

Whatever happened must have been bad; back before Kerberos, Veronica had always complained about how lazy her baby brother was when it came to chores. Then again, being a paladin had probably helped him grow up — Pidge was barely recognisable, sometimes.

And on that note…

“Lance!” he barked.

“Argh!”

A loud bang echoed as Lance hit his head on the shelf, dropping the spray when he tried to whip around to face the intruder. Matt bit back a laugh and quickly schooled his expression into one of stern bemusement, raising an eyebrow as he waited for him to turn and face him properly.

Lance’s expression fell the moment he set eyes on him. “Ah, shit. How did you even…?”

“One thing you might not know about me,” Matt said, pushing himself onto the barstool and aiming for ‘casually threatening, in the Kingsman style’. (Pidge had said he’d got ‘all buff and stuff’, so hopefully it was paying off now.) “I used to date your sister.”

“I — Wait — You what?!”

“I did. We parted on good terms, back when I left for the Kerberos mission?” He ignored Lance’s outburst in favour of picking up a bottle of juice from the counter and studying the label. “Pass me a glass, Lance.”

Lance stared at him incredulously, then moved to the cupboard, slapping his cleaning cloth down on the counter as he pulled out a glass. “Why are you telling me this?”

“No real reason.” Matt shrugged, accepting the offered glass with a cordial smile. “We still get on very well. I just think it’s nice to see how well she’s done for herself.” Lance was watching carefully, shoulders squared, and Matt ignored him in favour of pouring his juice. “We have a lot more in common nowadays, too, so we talk a lot. We’re both older siblings to a Paladin of Voltron, for one.”

He sipped his juice, eyeing Lance over the rim of the glass and inwardly laughing at how wide Lance’s eyes had grown as the implication sunk in. Less than a heartbeat later, though, his shoulders slumped and his gaze swung to the window, making him look more defeated than Matt had ever seen him look.

What the fuck had he done?

The juice was sweet, and still cold despite being left out on the counter. Matt took his time savouring it as he watched his quarry, hiding his frown behind the glass.

He had planned to wait him out, but Lance wasn’t offering any answers of his own volition — he stood on the other side of the island, eyes looking everywhere but Matt. He’d always seemed the type to fill the silence with random chatter, but right now he was more taciturn than Shiro.

With a mental sigh, Matt finished up his juice and placed the glass back on the counter. “So.”

“So?” Lance met his eyes briefly.

“I don’t suppose you have any idea why my sister is refusing to get out of bed?”

“I— Pidge is what?”

“She’s been lying face down on her bed for the past few hours, and whenever I try to talk to her all I get is ‘Allura hates me’, ‘none of my friends will ever talk to me again’ and ‘my life is over’,” Matt elaborated, raising an eyebrow as Lance shifted nervously. Honestly, the kid couldn’t look guiltier if he tried. “When I asked her who I needed to punch, she said you.”

“Oh.”

“And as fun as it is watching her channel a pre-teen drama queen, I’m sure you can understand why it’s a little concerning.“

"Fuck.” Lance ran a hand through his hair, then held his arms away from his body. "Go on then.”

Matt raised an eyebrow. "Are you serious?”

"Yeah,” Lance said, swallowing. “I definitely deserve it, so…’’

They looked at each other for a moment, then Matt snorted. “I’m not gonna hit you, Lance.”

Lance looked away, then sagged against the counter behind him, his hand back in his hair. "I kissed her, Matt.”

Oh. Not exactly what Matt had been expecting, but close enough that he suspected he already knew the rest. To be fair, he found it somewhat impressive that six teenagers-to-young-adults had managed to survive drama-free on a spaceship for nearly three years. Something like this was more than a little overdue.

Especially with these particular players. Though it wasn’t like knowing Matt had always thought it was inevitable would help Pidge any now.

"Okay,” he said with a tired sigh. "So?”

"What do you mean, ‘so’?! I kissed your sister!”

I’ve done worse with yours, he wanted to say, but instead he bit his tongue and shrugged. "Okay, I get that. But what’s the problem?”

“I’m dating Allura and I kissed Pidge!”

“I doubt Pidge is upset about the ‘kiss’ part of that sentence.”

Lance stared at him incredulously, then let out a bitter laugh and looked away.  Matt reached for the juice bottle again and took his time pouring a glass, watching Lance carefully as he did. The younger man was yet to meet his eyes.

Matt considered his words carefully, then took a sip before saying, “If we’re being honest, I was really surprised when I found out you were dating the Princess. I always thought you and Katie had something going on and were just keeping it secret.”

Lance flinched but said nothing. Matt filed the data point away for future reference and asked, “How did it even happen?”

A slow exhale, then Lance finally turned to face him again. “Allura, or Pidge?”

Matt snorted. “Pidge.”

“We were dancing.”

“You were dancing,” he echoed, one eyebrow raised. “Weren’t you in a dance team before flight school? Did you end up kissing all your partners then, too?”

Lance groaned and buried his face in his hands. “Fuck.”

 —————

 Keeping the frustration out of his voice felt like an impossible task.

"You've missed half of your targets today."

Lance shifted uneasily, not meeting his gaze. Keith narrowed his eyes, then turned to Allura.

"You're moving like a robot." Her movements were normally fluid and graceful, a sight to behold, but today they’d been lacking...everything.

Allura snapped her eyes to his, ferocity in her gaze. "I'm tired after your 'dancing' outing last night."

"We're all tired," he retorted, pushing back an irrational wave of irritation when her jaw tightened. "We were all out late, and we all got at least a little tipsy. That doesn't mean you should be sloppy on the field."

"It's just the training deck, Keith, lighten up."

Keith turned his ire on Hunk at the provocation. "You were just as bad! I've told you before: you've gotta control your strength if you want your hits to count!"

Hunk sighed and flopped to the ground. "Look, I'm just so worried about Pidge because she hasn't come, and she seemed really upset last night and—"

Both Lance and Allura stiffened. Keith blinked, tuning out Hunk's rambling and taking a moment to observe them instead. There was a distance between them that hadn't been there yesterday, and — now that he thought about it — they'd barely spoken or even looked at each other except when necessary.

And now Pidge wasn't answering Hunk's calls and had skipped training.

Cold dread slipped down his spine and settled into his stomach. "Hunk?" he said, cutting him off, his tone carefully calm. "Why was Pidge upset last night?"

"Why—?" Hunk paused at the interruption, but Keith's attention was focused more on the way Allura was gritting her teeth, her eyes firmly on the floor, and Lance had almost shrunk into himself, everything about his posture screaming guilty. "I have no idea, man, just her and Allura asked me to take them home early and she was tearing up the whole way. I tried to ask but she..."

Hunk carried on, talking about their drive back and how Pidge had disappeared the moment they pulled up, but all Keith could think about was the way Lance had looked at her in that dress and how tight her fingers had been on his arm as she all but fled from his gaze.

"Lance."

His voice shook with barely contained fury, and it took all he had to remind himself that Lance would never hurt her. Lance met his gaze warily, and Keith's hands clenched into fists at his sides as he asked, "Lance, what did you do?"

Silence fell over the room. Lance visibly wavered. "I didn't—"

"Allura won't look at you. You won't look at Allura. Pidge has missed training and isn't answering any of our communications." Lance winced with each statement, as though they were a physical blow instead of words. "Lance, what did you do?!"

"Nothing unwelcome," Allura answered for him, a bitter edge in her voice. "Pidge is over-reacting."

Keith frowned. If Allura was telling the truth, then—

"Leave her alone," Lance said, his eyes narrowed. "Pidge didn't do anything. If you're gonna be mad at someone, be mad at me."

Allura raised an eyebrow. "I am angry with you," she said, coolly, "but that doesn't negate the fact that Pidge's reaction is completely inappropriate and out of proportion. The integrity of Voltron is at risk."

"Uh, guys—"

"Okay, fine, but because of my actions, not hers!" Lance ignored Hunk completely, his shoulders squaring up for an argument, and Keith suddenly realised that he had no desire to be a part of whatever was going on.

"Enough!"

The tension from the air vanished immediately as they both jumped and turned to face him.

"I don't care what happened. Allura's right, Voltron's at risk. If Haggar attacked today, we'd all die." He glared at all three of them, daring them to challenge him. When no-one did, he continued, "Fix it. One of you needs to talk to her."

"Lance needs to talk to her," Allura said, crossing her arms over her chest. "I want no part of it."

Lance's eyes flashed. "Don't you think I need to talk to you, first?"

"I will talk to you later. After you talk to Pidge."

It was only the fear of looking too much like Shiro that stopped Keith from pinching his nose as his blue and red paladins scowled at each other, locked in a Mexican stand-off over Hunk's head.

At least Hunk looked as lost as Keith felt.

When neither made to move he gave in to the urge, closing his eyes in exasperation as he massaged his sinuses before speaking. "Fine. Lance: go and talk to Pidge. Today." He glared at Lance, his tone brooking no argument, and Lance shrunk back before giving him a hesitant nod. Satisfied, he turned to the others. "Hunk, Allura, get some rest. Allura, make sure you sort out your issues with Lance by the end of the night. I want everybody ready to work as a team again in the morning."

Allura gave a curt nod, her cheeks pinched, before turning away and leaving without a word. Hunk sighed in visible relief and held his hand out for Lance to pull him up — "I don't know what you did, man, but even I kinda wanna punch you right now" — and Keith swallowed back a groan as he moved to pick up their training equipment.

Hopefully his mom had something to eat ready when he got back to their quarters. Maybe Shiro would even be there and he could try to convince him to swap commands.

A guy could dream.

 —————

 He’d stood in front of the mirror for an hour that afternoon, and he still had no idea what he wanted to say to her.

It was throwing him for a loop, because Pidge should have been easy. They’d been a team back on Earth and grown together as part of a better team up in space. Together they’d fought monsters, blown things up, laughed, cried… He’d held her when she broke down over her first kill; she’d sat up with him modifying the training deck so that he could hone his sniping skills. Somehow, being with Pidge made him feel like all the answers were in reach.

So why was this so difficult?

Allura had been the easy one. Allura, who he’d pined after for years, who made him want to change everything he was so that he could be better just so that she would look at him. She’d held his hand, kissed his lips, told him she was happy he was with her…but after seeing the hurt on her face last night, it was easy for Lance to say that she deserved more than him. He would give her a chance to dump him for his transgressions – as Rachel had put it – and if she didn’t, he was fully prepared to end things. He knew what he wanted to say to her, how he wanted things to go with her.

But Pidge? Pidge, he had no idea.

His phone flashed, and for a moment he didn’t want to check it. In the end, though, hiding in his bedroom wasn’t exactly becoming for a Paladin of Voltron so he grabbed his keycard and headed out.

Hopefully he’d figure it out on the way.

-----

 He did not figure it out on the way.

Pidge had let him in — reluctantly — when he told her Keith had ordered him there, and now they were sitting side by side against her headboard with as much space between them as they could manage on her narrow Garrison-standard bed and he still had no idea what he wanted to say to her.

It probably would have been easier if they weren't in her room, now he thought about it. It had been so long since he'd been in any kind of space that belonged to her that her scent was overwhelming. Coherent thoughts were few and far between when every inhale took him straight back to the night before and sent shocks of electricity through his very soul. Hot breath on his ear, laughter tickling the skin of throat… The glimmer in her eyes and the heat of her arms around his neck, pulling him closer as she'd kissed him back with a fiery passion he’d thought only existed in movies.

Kissing Pidge had felt like drowning, and he’d gladly succumbed to it. But now...

“I doubt Pidge is upset about the ‘kiss’ part of that sentence.”

Matt's words ran through his head for the hundredth time that day, and for the first time Lance let himself consider that there might be some truth to them. Though, if anything, that just made everything more confusing.

"So?" Pidge's harsh voice cut into his reverie and he glanced at her, startled. Her messy hair hid her face as she hunched over in the corner, leaning on both walls, one hand fiddling with a loose thread on her pyjama pants. When he didn't answer, she finally raised her head to look at him. "You came here to talk, right? Talk."

"I..." The words died on his lips and he swallowed, hyper-aware of the scant distance between them and how little effort it would be to lean down and taste her again. Shoving the thought aside, he closed his eyes and exhaled. "I don't know what to say."

Pidge scoffed. "Really? Not even a 'sorry'?"

Lance blinked. "Sorry for what?"

"Are you kidding me?" She whipped around to face him, her voice rising in both pitch and volume, and absurdly all he could think was 'Ah. There she is.' "How about 'sorry for kissing you'?!"

The fire in her eyes and the bare foot brushing his calf were distracting, but the ‘angry girl’ alarm in his brain was dinging and this, at least, Lance was familiar enough with that his mouth began to form words on auto-pilot. This was the part where he was meant to grovel, where he was supposed to say he was drunk and it was a mistake and he'd never do it again and then they could go back to being friends. Lance could start pretending her kiss hadn’t left a permanent brand on his being, and Pidge could go back to pretending to be busy whenever he called her.

He paused, a familiar bitterness curling in his gut.

"So?" she prompted. "Are you going to say sorry?"

Should he? His mind was buzzing with a million different replies, a confused jumble of scenarios all playing out at the same time as he tried to figure out which one would bridge the gap between them. That was all he was sure he wanted, really — for Pidge to stop avoiding him, for them to go back to that easy partnership they’d built so that he could stop feeling so lost.

Pidge tilted her head back against the wall, raising one eyebrow as she waited for him to speak and he shifted, moving to sit cross-legged and face her properly, ignoring the way it made him vulnerable to being shoved off.

A little vulnerability was probably in order here, anyway. Maybe it was what they needed — vulnerability...and honesty.

Pidge was looking at him expectantly.

Lance took a deep breath.

“No.”

"No?"

"No," he repeated, squaring his shoulders before plunging on ahead, deciding to just say whatever felt right and damn the consequences. Honesty, if the coarsest type. "I won't say sorry, Pidge, because I'm not. It wasn’t the first time I wanted to kiss you.”

Pidge inhaled sharply, and Lance felt his own eyes widen at the admission. It was true though, wasn’t it? He’d wanted to kiss her before, he’d felt that urge. Over and over again.

There had been a couple of times when he was cradling her in his arms as they slow danced in the Castle, then a million times when she looked up at him with a grin as they sat together playing games at quiznak-knows-o’clock. Once when they were baking cookies with Hunk and she’d gotten batter on her nose — that image and the pounding of his heart was still crystal clear in his memory. More than once when they’d come in from a stressful mission and she’d squeezed his hand to steady him at the debriefing. And then that time when she’d helped him tackle Coran on a pirate ship and he’d been so relieved that she was okay and still there.

He’d always put it down to hormones, but now...now he wasn’t so sure.

The silence fell heavily between them, tension thick in the air; in lieu of finding something else to say, he simply looked. Pidge was staring at him, expressive eyes blown wide, soft lips slightly parted with a pretty pink blush blooming across her cheeks; her soft hair (he still remembered that detail, even if he hadn’t mussed it in months) was a tousled mess, her pyjama top had slipped down to expose one smooth shoulder, and suddenly Lance couldn’t drag his eyes away.

She was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

He reached out, one hand gently cupping her face, and murmured, “I want to kiss you right now.”

“I—” Pidge leaned into the touch before screwing her eyes shut and pushing his hand away. “Lance, you have a girlfriend.”

“I know.” He rested his hand back on his knee with a shrug. “I won’t after tonight, though.”

Pidge scoffed. “Don’t expect me to take the position.”

“Would you want it?”

She snapped her gaze to his, a pain he couldn’t understand hiding behind her eyes, before looking away. “Whatever, Lance. Look, you’re my friend so—”

Her words made him frown. “Pidge, are we even friends?”

The question came out softer than he’d intended, but it seemed to startle her all the same. “What? I—Of course we’re friends! Why would you—”

“It’s just—” he cut her off— “you never have any time for me anymore.”

“I’m busy!”

“You were busy before, too, but we still hung out!”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Have you ever thought that maybe I’m more busy now?”

“That’s bullshit Pidge, and you know it,” he snapped, gesticulating between them as his hurt gave way to a steadily-rising anger.  “Look, let’s at least agree to be honest with each other, okay? It’s not like we’ve got a friendship to save here because our friendship was in the toilet anyway.”

“It was not!”

“Yeah, it was. When was the last time we hung out together? We used to hang out all the time on the castle! We even did movie nights over the comms on the way here but now every time I ask you it’s ‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ and that’s if I even get a reply from you!”

She glared at him, her jaw set. “Did it ever cross your mind that maybe I just don’t wanna hang out with you?”

“But why?!” Lance asked, not even trying to hide the pain in his voice. “What did I do?! We hung out in the hospital but then you got out and you were helping with the tech stuff and I started dating Allura but I still—”

Pidge shifted her gaze to the side, and suddenly everything clicked into place.