#yes my dad was a nerd and yes my original name was gonna be Leia but my mom said no

[phantom-of-the-keurig]

Having a little brother named Anakin is so wild sometimes bc I’ll be scrolling and see some random click bait article called like

“Top 10 Things You Won’t Believe Anakin Did 😱”

And every time there’s at least a brief moment where I think what the fuck but then I remember they mean like, actual Star Wars Anakin

[this-book-has-been-loved]

Peanut Butter Cookies: A Voltron Fanfic

Pidge is left to celebrate their father’s birthday on their own. But, maybe they’re not as alone as they think.

Read it on Ao3 | Read it on FFN

A year ago today, Pidge had been woken up by Matt over an hour earlier than it already was. 

They’d raced down the stairs, nearly tripping over their dog as he ran beside them, heading towards the kitchen, where their mom had already started pulling out bowls and pans and ingredients to start the day.

Today, only a year later, Pidge sat alone at a table in the Garrison’s dining hall, staring through the open windows at the sunlight glinting off the red mountains.

The sounds coming from the kitchen behind the commissary sounded nothing like the ones that would’ve been coming from their mother’s kitchen. The dining hall was cold and impersonal and full of indifferent strangers, while their kitchen at home was warm and inviting.

Pidge took a deep breath, trying to keep their leg from jiggling.

They’d had trouble sleeping last night. They turned in late after staying up to work on their equipment—the tech that’d let them scan the stars for any signs of the lost mission to Kerberos—then spent a few restless hours tossing and turning, before finally giving in and getting up to watch the sunrise.

And here they were, still watching, still waiting, as groups of Garrison students streamed in.

“You’re up early.”

Pidge looked up in surprise as Lance plopped down across the table from them, Hunk sitting down next to him. Both of them carried trays laden with breakfast.

Pidge blinked, looking at the two of them warily. “I’ve been up earlier.”

“The only time you’re up early is if you didn’t go to bed the night before.”

Pidge pursed their lips, leveling an even glare at them. “What are you guys going here?”

Lance held up his bagel. “Um, eating breakfast?”

Hunk glanced at them curiously. “You already eat?”

They shrugged. “Not hungry.”

A pause. Then: “Everything okay?”

Pidge rolled their eyes heavenward. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You sure?” Lance asked. He waved an arm at the figure across from him. “You’re just all…sulky.”

Pidge gave him a tired look. “Thanks, Lance.”

“Listen, I know you’ve got your whole ‘you must be a level four friend to unlock my tragic backstory’ thing going on, but like—”

“I’m fine,” they insisted. “Just…reminiscing on some things.”

The boys sitting across from them paused, exchanging a quick glance, before Hunk asked hesitantly, “Do you…wanna talk about it?”

“Is that your way of telling me to go to therapy?” Pidge shook their head, exasperated. “Look, it’s nothing, okay? I’m fine.”

“Mmm, doesn’t really seem like it’s nothing,” Lance pressed.

“Lance.”

“I’m just saying! I mean, it’s totally okay to be not fine, ya know? And you’re always welcome to tell us—”

They snapped. “If I tell you, will you shut up?”

“So it is something!” Lance called triumphantly, only to get elbowed by Hunk.

Hunk sighed, looking from Lance back towards Pidge. “If you don’t want to tell us, you don’t have to—”

“It’s fine,” Pidge muttered. The three of them fell into relative silence—the only sound being Pidge tapping at the table anxiously. “Today’s my dad’s birthday,” they eventually said, their voice barely above a whisper. “And…I just…haven’t seen him in a while.”

Across the table, Lance and Hunk had both froze, looking a bit at loss, almost as though they hadn’t actually expected Pidge to open up to them.

They sighed, starting to stand. “I’ve got work to do; I should go—”

“No!” Lance hastened to exclaim, holding out a hand, as if to stop them. “You don’t have to do that! Just…took us by surprise, is all. You never really talk about your family.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” Hunk interjected. “I mean, everyone’s entitled to their privacy, and we don’t want to pry or anything. And it’s totally fine if you don’t want to talk about that kinda stuff; I mean, if your dad’s not really in the picture or whatever—”

“It’s not like that,” Pidge said, interrupting his ramblings. “He didn’t leave us. He—” They broke off.

There was a pause, before Lance hesitantly asked, “Did he…pass away?”

Hunk elbowed him again, harder this time. “Dude!”

“Ack!” Lance rubbed at his arm. “Sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

Pidge was silent. Did he pass away? Well, the rest of the world seems to think so. But…I guess I don’t really know. “Can we just…ignore that question?”

“Of course, Pidge,” Hunk said gently.

Pidge sighed, resting their chin on the table and folding their arms in front of them. “I guess I’m just homesick,” they mumbled. “Birthdays were always a big celebration. Mom would get up extra early and make pancakes. Banana pancakes, with whipped cream. And peanut butter cookies, we always had peanut butter cookies. She made them for every birthday, every holiday, every special occasion.” Pidge smiled, lost in memory. “Mom wouldn’t let me anywhere near the kitchen. Didn’t matter what we were trying to make; somehow, I’d find a way to burn it.”

Matt, on the other hand, had always been much better at cooking. He’d join their mom in the kitchen, sneaking Pidge some of the cookie dough.

Colleen was laughing, looking at the smoking contraption that was probably a microwave. “I swear, if I asked you just to boil some water on the stove, you’d manage to burn that too!”

Katie, twelve-years-old, was flushed bright red. “Sorry, Mom.”

Colleen merely shook her head, reaching out to ruffle her daughter’s hair affectionately. “What am I gonna do with you?”

Katie giggled. “I can fix it,” she offered.

“I’m sure you can,” her mother agreed. “But let’s leave that be for now.”

Across the kitchen, the oven beeped, and Matt reached in to pull out a tray. “Burning the cookies in the oven, I can understand,” he said. “Burning the pancakes on the stove, I can understand. But burning the bacon simply by sticking it in the microwave?” He set down the cookie sheet on the counter and walked over, taking off his oven mitts and ruffling Katie’s hair as their mother had. “That takes a special talent.”

“A special talent that should stay away from any sources of heat while we’re working,” Colleen said firmly. She gave Katie an exasperated smile. “Can I trust you to get the orange juice out of the fridge? Or will you burn that too?”

Katie laughed. “I promise, the orange juice will be safe from me.”

“Afterwards,” Pidge continued, their eyes staring off into space, “we’d all pack up the car and head into the mountains.” They smiled fondly, remembering the frantic moments spent packing the night before their one-day trip. “We always went to the same campground—the same campsite, if we could. Dad would bring out his telescope and we’d set it up and just…stargaze. We’d name all the constellations. Andromeda, Pegasus, Hercules, the Little Dipper…. And point out all the planets we could see.”

Sam pointed towards the west, his other hand resting on his daughter’s shoulder. “You see that, Katie-Cat? That bright dot by the horizon? That’s Venus.”

The seven-year-old’s eyes widened. “Woooow. It’s so pretty!”

He spun his daughter almost completely around, so the two of them were now looking east. “And look there. Do you see where I’m pointing?”

Katie followed his outstretched finger, trying to make out which flickering pinprick it was that he was referring to. “Is it another planet?”

“That one’s Jupiter,” her father told her.

“Wow,” she breathed.

“Do you want to look at it through the telescope?”

Her eyes widened, and she started bouncing up and down on her toes. “Yes yes yes!”

Sam laughed, then turned to look over his shoulder at where the telescope was. “Matt? How’s it coming?”

Matt, nearly eighteen at this point, was peering through the eyepiece, his other eye shut. “All good.” He pulled back, and offered a smile to his little sister. “Alright, Katie, come here and take a look!”

Katie raced over to the scope, and her brother held it steady for her while she looked through. She gasped in wonder. “I can see the red spot!” she squealed.

“And when it got late, we’d sleep right there under the stars.” Pidge paused, wiping absently at their eyes. “And I guess it just sorta hit me that…that this is the first year we won’t be doing any of that.”

Lance and Hunk were silent for a bit. “Well,” Hunk started, “I think homesickness, at least, is something we can all relate to.”

At the sound of his voice, Pidge was startled back to reality. They tensed, suddenly remembering who it was they were talking to. “Yeah.”

“So…your dad’s into all this nerdy space stuff too?” Lance asked.

He was careful to avoid the past tense, and Pidge appreciated that. They smiled, scoffing a bit. “You have no idea. Runs in the family, I guess.” They sat up a bit straighter, no longer using the table as a chin-rest. “I’m pretty sure being a space nerd was in my pre-ordained destiny.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry, Pidge, we already knew you were a nerd.”

“My parents met at a Star Trek convention,” they said flatly. “They’d tell this story all the damn time. And not just Star Trek , but Star Wars and Firefly and Doctor Who and all that too. Just, a SciFi convention, but specifically for people in the field of space exploration. My mom the astrophysicist and my dad the astronaut-slash-aerospace-engineer both went into their fields because they were raised on the fucking Enterprise .”

Hunk’s eyes had brightened. “SciCon?” he asked.

Pidge blinked in surprise. “You’ve…heard of it?”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “Yeah, I was looking into it a bit, over the summer. I mean, we’re technically in the field of space exploration since we’re enrolled at the Garrison; we could totally go. It sounds like fun.”

“Dude!” Lance exclaimed. “We totally should!! The three of us could all go together; that’d be so cool!”

“Yeah?” Hunk said with a grin. “I think it’d be a lot of fun. One condition, though.” He held up a finger. “Can we go in costume?”

“Um, yes ,” Lance enthused. “We could go as the Star Wars trio! The original one; ya know, Luke, Leia, and Han Solo.”

Pidge tensed, almost imperceptibly. “Which one of us would be Leia?” they asked drily.

“Uh, I would, obviously ,” Lance retorted. “I’m the prettiest.”

Pidge snorted, then started to laugh.

“Sorry,” they gasped. “I’m just picturing you in those hair buns.”

Lance was grinning. “Hey,” he said with a shrug, “that is definitely a look that I could pull off.”

“I just would have pegged you as more of a Han Solo kind of guy.”

“Nah, you can be Han.” He reached over to sling an arm around Hunk’s shoulders. “And Hunk here would be the purest Luke. It’s perfect!”

Pidge kept laughing, and Lance and Hunk exchanged triumphant grins.

After a moment, Pidge took a deep breath, letting this morning’s bittersweet memories fade away. “I should get back to my room,” they said, starting to stand up. They thought of the tech they had stashed under their bed—still had a few bugs in that to work out. “I have some work I need to do.” They picked up their bag from the floor. “Thanks for—” keeping me company, talking to me, listening to me, humoring me, being nice to me, “—this.” They waved their hand vaguely.

Lance saluted. “Anytime, Pidgeroo.”

“Don’t call me that.” They shouldered their bag. “I’ll see you guys in class.” With that, they headed out.

Lance and Hunk stayed at the cafeteria table, watching them go.

“So,” Hunk started, glancing over at Lance. “Operation ‘Cheer Up Pidge’ successful?”

Lance steepled his fingers. “Phase one,” he decided. “I think we need to initiate phase two. You can bake, right?”

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That night, there was a box of fresh-baked peanut butter cookies waiting at Pidge’s door.

  -fin-

 Many thanks to my dear friend @kabber for beta-reading!