author's notes: This is actually more of a genfic than romance. While it focuses on Pidge and her crush, the rest of the main cast features heavily, as do the space mice and the caterpillars; other pairings may be implied or hinted at, but nothing is confirmed.

Waiting, Wishing

Something is wrong with the sensors in Pidge's armor.

She keeps close tabs on her biodata - on everyone's biodata, actually, just to be sure. She knows now, for example, that no matter how fast the Red Lion flies, Keith will always breathe 14 times a minute, inhaling and exhaling in perfectly even intervals. If she'd been paying closer attention to that kind of thing, maybe they wouldn't have lost Shiro. Maybe she'd have noticed him slipping away. Maybe–

But there's no time for doubt, not in war, so Pidge grits her teeth and tugs Green into a barrel roll, barely evading a direct hit from another Galra fighter.

"I got this one!" Lance sings out over the comms as her sensors register another impossible spike in her biometrics. The Blue Lion hits the fighter on her tail with its ice ray.

The Yellow Lion punches through the frozen mass, sending debris flying. "Mind if I break the ice?" Hunk quips.

Pidge cracks a smile at the pun, half-listening as Lance continues to brag about how many fighters he's taken out so far. She can imagine the look on his face as he narrates his way through another dogfight.

They land, the enemy fighters disposed of. They debrief. Keith goes off on his own on another fruitless search for Shiro, comes back too exhausted to talk. Over dinner, Allura and Coran announce another planet is ready to join the Voltron Coalition. Pidge has more footage to sort through in her search for Matt.

Days pass in an endless routine.

She doesn't get around to checking her sensors until Hunk approaches her about them.

"Uh, I got a weird blip on my screen from your suit," he says, obviously concerned, and it shows the same anomaly she's been ignoring. "I know it's kind of weird, but ever since what happened with Shiro, I've been paying more attention to everyone's sensors-"

Pidge heaves a sigh. "I know about it. I think it's some kind of glitch, it's happened a few times. I feel fine, though."

Hunk's eyebrows raise at that. "Well, if it's a glitch, let's fix it."

They hole up in his sleeping quarters (because everyone refuses to go into Pidge's disaster zone of a room) to review the last few missions. The data show Pidge's heart rate escalates and her body temperature rises seemingly randomly, just for a moment, then everything stabilizes. They pull up flight footage, cross-check against the others' biodata. They hypothesize: Was the Green Lion in more danger at certain times? No, definitely not.

Hunk starts to pale.

"I think I have a theory," he says.

Pidge snorts. Half their conversations can be summarized that way. They have theories about everything. It's why they get along so well. Why bother leading with that?

"You're gonna hate me," Hunk continues miserably.

He shows her how the blips show up when they're all together. They don't occur on solo missions. They don't occur when Pidge is teamed up with Hunk. But, Hunk explains, the second the Blue Lion shows up on the screen, there's a corresponding spike. It's not affecting Pidge's performance, and it's not slowing her down, but it's there.

Pidge doesn't follow.

"Is this a Lion thing? Like Blue and Green are having issues, or what?" she says.

"Nope," Hunk says. "It's just– you. Around Lance. Oh man, please don't kill me."

The implication hits Pidge full on. She can feel her face heat up. "What?"

"I mean, you always snap at Lance when he's flirting with alien space girls-" Hunk points out.

"WE ALL DO!" Pidge insists, which is true, but comes out much too loudly to be taken neutrally.

"-or when he's flirting with Allura," he adds, ignoring her. "It's like you're jealous."

"She doesn't like it either!" She wonders why she said 'either', as that implies his flirting does bother her, which it doesn't. At all.

"And I'm not jealous!" she tacks on, lamely.

"You gave him your headphones," Hunk says with sudden insight. "And you let him use your phone, like, all the time. That's significant, isn't it? Oh, my gosh, it's so significant. It's a sign. How did I not notice sooner?"

"He's just borrowing them!" Pidge scowls. "He wouldn't lay off about needing to sleep and needing to take photos and whining and-"

"You never let me borrow your stuff," Hunk says, chin wobbling threateningly. "You always yell at me if I try because I might mess with it."

"Not anymore, I don't!" But she can't figure out how to keep Hunk from crying, and oh, man, he's already sniffling, and she doesn't have tissues. Why doesn't space have tissues?

In that moment, Pidge realizes three things:

1. Hunk is the scariest kind of genius
2. She's going to make space tissues
3. She definitely has a crush on Lance and she doesn't know how that happened.

She doesn't know what to say.

"Hunk, I don't have time for this!" is what comes out.

Pidge manages to make it through most of a day without talking to Lance even once. He doesn't notice. That stings, a little.

When they all gather in the lounge she sits as far away from Lance as possible, just because being close to him is making her nervous and sweaty and it's about to leave marks on her shirt. Hunk flops down next to her.

"You don't look so good," Hunk tells her.

Lance looks over casually. "You doin' okay, Pidge?" he asks.

She stares at him and tries to figure out what's wrong with her. Lance is too tall and too skinny and his hair sticks up strangely in the back and he makes the worst jokes. He can't understand half the science or technology that comes so naturally to her, and he's an incorrigible show off. Despite all of that, him just looking at her makes her feel happy.

Pidge is suddenly aware that she is now visibly sweating, and immediately thinks of a reason to escape, quickly, before she ends up saying something she regrets.

"It's just warm in here," she says, standing up abruptly, "or maybe that's just me, because you look fine, I mean are doing fine, and oh man I have so much stuff on my mind today maybe I should just go okay bye."

Lance cackles. "STAY COOL!" he shouts as she retreats, and he shoots finger guns in her direction, like a shot to the heart. Pidge despairs, and thinks: He is the worst.

"Lance," Keith says in his best Shiro voice. "That was terrible."

"Shut up, Keith! IT'S FUNNY," Lance snaps. "Because Pidge is already cool. Duh."

"Pidge," Hunk says, alarmed. "The door. It's the other way. I- okay, she's gone. You know what, I'm gonna go check on her."

Pidge is not in her room.

Hunk makes his way down the hall, then looks in one of the secondary workrooms on a hunch.

"Crushes are fine, Pidge," Hunk says to the empty room, projecting in the direction of the nearest worktable. He's pretty sure she's hiding in here, although she's gone invisible like she's cloaked. "You don't have to do anything about it. I mean, I wouldn't. Oh man, it'd be so weird."

And: "I'm not gonna judge you for having bad taste or whatever, Lance is actually a pretty great guy. I think space has been good for him. Space has probably been good for all of us, actually. I think we're all better people now."

And: "Look, you're way cooler than any alien space girls, pretty sure. So you also shouldn't let that worry you. If it does. Maybe it doesn't. I don't know."

There is a deep sigh.

"You can never tell him about this," says the worktable. "You know how insufferable he'd be? He can never know."

"I'm so bad at secrets, though," Hunk says nervously. He bends down to look under the table, where Pidge is sitting, knees tucked under her chin.

"Don't tell me things like that," Pidge sighs again.

"Why not?"

"Now I want to know what other secrets you know," says Pidge. She grins up at him, all teeth and devious ideas.

"Oh, no," Hunk warns, backing away slowly. "Don't pressure me like that, not cool-"

They don't notice the mice scurrying out of the room.

Allura is surprised when the mice burst onto the bridge, announcing they have big news for her, leaping into action before she's even put down her datapad. They act out Pidge's reactions to Lance's bravado, Chulatt imitating her pounding heart and sweating, and Pidge's reaction to Hunk calling her out on her crush. They even show her Hunk's attempts to make Pidge feel better, as in the background, Plachu-as-Lance continues to be clueless.

The mice think the whole thing is very funny.

"No," Allura says, sounding strained. "I hadn't noticed."

The mice chitter away at her. Allura squares her shoulders, staring down at them haughtily.

"I've been a little preoccupied," Allura reminds them. "You know, running a war effort. We don't all have so much free time."

The mice look disapproving. Platt offers his input on the matter.

"I certainly do not mind!" Allura says, shocked. "Why should I mind? Lance isn't my-"

The mice scatter to act out another scene, commanding her attention. The devoted paladin, vowing to protect the beautiful princess (Chuchule, this time) forever. Then the paladin's attention is drawn by someone else, and the princess is left without her follower. The princess cries, alone and lonely, and then, possibly, dies. They take a bow.

Allura frowns. "What are you trying to say?"

They leave her to figure it out.

Pidge is still adjusting to looking for Lance in a flash of red instead of blue. He doesn't seem to mind the change. She wonders if she could handle Green telling her to move on, pushes those thoughts to the side as the team races through a starless sky.

"Pidge," Keith barks over the comms, sounding tense. "Where's Lance?"

Pidge reports automatically, then experiences a sudden, sinking feeling of dread as the comms are overwhelmed by a torrent of Lance's emotions. Why does Keith not pay more attention to him to know where he is? Why not ask Hunk, who is his best buddy apart from the best Lions in the world?

"Because Pidge always keeps track of you," Keith interrupts, clearly exasperated. "I'm not going to go to extra effort if I don't have to–"

"I'm not the only one who keeps track of Lance!" Pidge protests.

But Lance is having realizations. Now they can all see his face on their visual comms as he goes through shock and awe and confusion and excitement in rapid measures.

"Oh no," Hunk says in that small voice he has when something is extremely Not Good. Usually it means he's about to throw up. But this? This is worse than throwing up.

"You watchin' me, kid?" Lance says gleefully, specifically to Pidge, and his teeth are sparkling white. "You think I'm gorgeous! You want to kiss meee–"

"This is not happening," Pidge practically yells, bolting upright in bed in a cold sweat. In their corner, the space caterpillars are startled awake, glowing questioningly at her before dropping back to sleep.

It was a dream.

Just a dream.

There's a noise at the back of her mind like the rustling of leaves, but she ignores it, covering her head with her pillow.

Deep in space, Pidge is experiencing an unsettling sense of déjà vu as the Green Lion draws up alongside a very antsy Black Lion. They can all hear Allura muttering to the Blue Lion under her breath on the comms, alternating curses and compliments in rapid succession.

"Pidge!" Keith snaps. "Where's Lance?"

"Beats me," she lies, knowing full well the Red Lion is fast coming up on her six.

Hunk doesn't say anything. She doesn't have to look at her sensors to know they're picking up a subtle change in her heartbeat, and she knows he'll have noticed that, too.

"I'm RIGHT HERE, you jerks," Lance says, pulling an ugly face on the visual comms.

"Lance, get out of the way, I can't see my controls," Keith says calmly, opening up his own visual channel.

Lance sputters indignantly. Keith cracks a rare smile. It makes them all relax, even Allura.

As their Lions fly in formation, Pidge takes all the feelings she doesn't know what to do with and pours them into Voltron, where there is always room for the mysterious and unknown.