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Pidge squints, leaning down to get a closer look. There’s a piece of paper in between the pages of her book, sticking out as if it had been placed there specifically for her eyes to see. She tugs it out, eyebrows raised, and holds it closer to her face to inspect it.
You look beautiful today stares back up at her, a poorly-drawn heart next to it. She blinks once, twice, trying to think more carefully about it. Maybe somebody had been reading her book when she wasn’t around and had left this note as their bookmark? Or maybe they had meant to flirt with their significant other and had mistaken whose book belonged to who?
She moves to tuck the note back in, but she realizes that the pen shines through to the other side, and that there’s writing on the back. She flips the piece of paper over and immediately startles.
It’s her name in bright pink lettering, underlined thrice and circled by another heart. That certainly can’t be a coincidence, which means that - that someone had left this note specifically for her. Somebody had decided to flirt with her. A squeak leaves her lips, unbidden, and she covers her mouth with her hand. The skin that her hand touches is warm, but she refuses to connect the dots about that implication.
The obvious answer is Lance, given his lover boy persona, but the longer that she stares at it, the less that it looks like his handwriting. No, his handwriting is all capital letters, and he doesn’t dot his i’s. Plus, whenever he flirts with her, it’s always clearly for the sake of riling her up, due to his long-standing unrequited love for Allura, and always in person. Whoever wrote this note isn’t Lance. But who could it be?
Nadia, who had asked her to be set up with any lesbian aliens the other day? Veronica, who had kissed the back of her hand in greeting just a few hours ago? One of the cadets who had gushed about her being a paladin when she had walked by?
She grins at the piece of paper, widely enough that she’s glad nobody is around to see it, and tucks it into the pocket of her uniform. She doesn’t think that she’ll ask around, doesn’t want to order any more spotlight than she already has, but it’ll be something to keep with her during rough days.
Pidge almost forgets about it as the next few days go by. Almost. She laughs with Hunk and strategizes with Dad, and the mystery of the note’s author pushes its way into the background. The only real lead that she's gotten has been leaning over Nadia’s shoulder while she had been reading a handwritten recipe, and deciding that the handwriting didn’t match up enough for it to be her.
The next one is folded over the door handle to her dorm, looking as though it could topple over and flutter down the hall with any slight breeze. She immediately turns red, looking from side-to-side to make sure that nobody’s watching. One of the MFE pilots, Griffin, is talking with a cadet a few yards away, but she supposes that they’re too busy with their own conversation to pay attention to her. She grabs the note, trying not to look too eager, and opens it up clumsily.
You smiled today and it made me forget my own name, the note reads. Under that, in smaller lettering, it continues: but I’m so glad that I still knew yours. When she flips it over, her name is there in big letters again, as if to further solidify the fact that it is meant for her.
She can’t help the grin that spreads over her face, and she hides it behind the note in her hands. Nobody’s ever shown interest in her before, besides that one Balmera who had tried to initiate an engagement with her, and even that had only been because of her status as a paladin. This is new, and exciting! Oh, she hopes that they’re not really old, or mean… that would just turn this cute, nice thing into something sour.
She misses the smile directed her way when she ducks into her room.
“I have an issue,” she announces to Matt later that day, upon finding him loitering outside one of the garages. “Well, not a bad issue, it’s actually pretty awesome, but I feel like I’m incapable of not telling you about any of my basic life events.”
He squints at her, though she can tell by his smile that it’s just for show. “You’re about to tell me something really dramatic, right? You got a job as a prison guard? You’re going back to space? You snorted coke?”
Pidge chokes at that last one, bringing her hands forward to gently shove him. “You egg,” she accuses, wagging her finger in his face. “No! No! God. I don’t need to be a paladin and on drugs. I think I’d die.”
She pulls out the pieces of paper from her pocket, careful not to crinkle them on their way out. “I’ve been getting these … notes,” she says, gentle, as if saying it too loud will make the papers disappear. “I’m not gonna ask you to figure out who it is or anything, I just wanted to geek out a bit.”
Matt reads them quickly, and then again, and then he’s grinning at her as though she’s just told him that his favorite dessert is currently being whipped up in the kitchen. “Ooh, somebody’s got a crush on you!” he teases. “Also, the fact that you aren’t dying to know more is the most shocking thing that’s ever happened to me. Who are you and what have you done with my sister?”
“I don’t know,” Pidge admits, and she can’t meet his eyes, so she drops them to the floor instead. “I’m just hoping that it’s not a joke.”
He bends down so that they’re eye level, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Katie,” he says, quietly, “why on Earth would it be a joke?”
“Because I’m - I’m me, remember?” Pidge demands, voice as tiny as she feels. “It was really easy to forget that people thought I was weird and stuff in space, but now I’m back here and I have to remember that I’m just some loser to these people.”
Matt draws her into a hug, which surprises her enough that she clutches onto his uniform. “People were jerks, but you’re so much cooler than everybody now,” he tells her. “Hell, you’re cooler than me! Everyone talks all the time about how cool you were to dupe the Garrison like that, you know? If it is a joke, which I really don’t think that it is, I’ll - er, give them the ole razzle dazzle.”
She’s laughing at the sheer absurdity of his words when he pulls away, and he offers her a dorky grin. “Thanks, Matt,” she says, and gives him a smile right back.
“Pidge, I love you like a sibling,” Hunk says the next day, his hands clasped tightly together, “but you are the dumbest smart person that I have ever met!”
Pidge makes a wounded noise from her side of the breakfast table, hand raising to menacingly aim her fork at him. It’s not just the two of them in the cafeteria, since there are people scattered all around, but none of them seem to be paying the group any mind. Sure, the MFE pilots had greeted the two of them when they’d walked in, but they all seem engrossed in some sort of debate now. “You take that back,” she demands, “I am the smartest smart person that you have ever met!”
“You are!” Hunk agrees, nodding his head in an effort to appease her. “You are the most intelligent person that I know! It’s just that you’re also the dumbest!”
“Hey, hey, woah,” a voice says, and Pidge looks up to see Lance sitting down next to them, plate in his hands. “Why are we attacking Pidge?”
“Tell him what you just told me,” Hunk tells her, more of an order than a question, which is baffling enough that she becomes even more confused. “I need you to see the light.”
“I don’t want to tell Lance,” she replies, even though the aforementioned man is obviously going to hear her. “Because I don’t want this to be a big deal! The only reason you know is because you saw it before I could hide it!”
“Hide what,” Lance says, and there’s something serious underneath his voice at the sound of her distress. “What, Pidge, do you have a secret dating app or something?”
Instead of explaining herself, she simply gives up any sense of privacy and gives him the newest note. She watches as he reads the words, eyes lighting up with fascination. “No way!” he says, and drops the note back on the table. The words Can I take you out sometime? You deserve something to look forward to are neatly scrawled onto the paper, signed with the same poorly-drawn heart that Pidge has grown to love.
“Tell him what you said in response,” Hunk says. “Go on.”
“This is peer pressure,” Pidge accuses, but there’s a smile in her voice now. “I don’t even know why I’m being shamed. I just said that I didn’t want it to be a joke!”
Lance blinks at her as if she’s just said that Allura is a human. “Pidge,” he says, voice thick with disbelief, “you do realize that, like, every teenager in the Garrison has a crush on you, right?” His voice rises in volume for the last few words, causing her to look around in slight panic before leaning closer.
“No, they don’t!” she hisses. “And don’t be so loud! Somebody could hear your - your joke.”
“Oh my God,” Lance says. “I knew you were inexperienced with this type of thing, but I didn’t know that you were oblivious.”
“Thank you,” Hunk responds, but Pidge is just staring at the both of them in bewilderment. “This is almost as bad as the time that that alien told her that she was pretty, and she kept waiting for them to finish the sentence.”
“Shut up, shut up!” she says, feeling her face flush red at the reminder. “That was one time!”
“Your obliviousness will remain eternal unless we do something to stop it,” Lance says, voice overly solemn in an effort to be comical. “I must do what I have to for the sake of your self-image.” He pushes his plate out of the way and moves Hunk’s glass of water, but Pidge doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he’s standing up and climbing onto the table.
“No,” she demands, loud enough to know that if him standing on the table like an idiot didn’t get everybody’s attention, her voice sure did. “Lance, get down, I swear to God!”
“I am doing what needs to be done,” he responds, voice full of false drama, similar to one of the characters in that rom-com they’d watched a few nights ago. “Attention, everybody! Attention!”
Pidge reaches up to tug him back down, but Hunk grabs for her hand to stop her. “Let him do it,” he says. “It’ll get him in trouble, so you won’t have to go through the effort of finding a way to kill him.”
She huffs in response but knows that she’s right, so she instead opts for crossing her arms tightly against her chest. A quick look around the room shows that everybody is watching Lance. Matt, sitting a few tables away with Shiro, is looking on with unconcealed amusement, while James Griffin raises an eyebrow from where he’s sitting. Oh, no.
“It has recently come to my attention that our beloved Katie Holt, a.k.a. Pidge Gunderson, is completely blind,” Lance announces, hands cupped around his mouth in an attempt to further project his voice. A few people in the room snicker, which just makes Pidge want to slam her forehead against the table. “No, not literally, because those glasses are fake. However, she seems to have not realized that she is the daydream of about half of the cadets in here, and then some. I would like to rectify this by humbly requesting that the secret admirer whom she has been blushing over for the past two weeks please make it known to her that it is not a joke! Thank you, and amen.”
Horrified by both the loud cheering that follows his speech and the fact that he had brought up the notes, (and by the fact that he’d noticed her blushing for the past two weeks even though he’d only just found out a few minutes ago) Pidge buries her face into her hands. “I am going to kill you before Iverson gets the chance to,” she tells him, and even though her words are muffled by her skin, she can hear him laugh in response.
Of course this isn’t a joke. Let me show you how serious I am - meet me outside of the observatory at 19:30?
Pidge opens her mouth and then closes it, forcibly pushing up on her chin with her finger to stop herself from gaping. I just officially got asked on a date, she thinks to herself as she stares down at the note, completely bewildered. Sure, there had been that other note where the note writer had asked if they could take her out, but … that had been hypothetical. This? This has a time and a place and oh, man, Pidge has no idea what to do.
She can’t tell the others - Lance would force her to dress up way too fancy and probably take so long that she’d be late, while Hunk would prep her on the dangers of meeting up with strangers and probably force her to bring him with her, as if somebody who has access to Garrison premises could be too dangerous. Keith would probably pretend not to care and then put fifty knives in her date's room. No, she can't involve the boys at all.
She does send a text to Allura (she’d been given a cell phone for communication purposes, and teaching the two Alteans about memes had been thoroughly amusing) about where she’ll be, just in case anyone needs her or something bad ends up happening, because, yes, she did take a stranger danger class, but she doesn’t think that anything back at the Garrison will require her attention.
… She’s excited. Nervous, if the way that her heart won’t stop racing is anything to go by, but excited, too. She’s still not entirely sure that this isn’t a prank, since this wouldn’t be the first time, but maybe it’s worth it to find out. The risk is worth it this time, though, because she has her friends who will back her up.
She gets there a little before seven-thirty, hands nervously looped together as she regards the empty hallway before her. Maybe this was a bad idea. Who has time for romance when you’re saving the universe, anyway? She should just go back to where she’s been rooming and pretend that none of this had ever happened -
“Pidge?” a voice sounds, and it’s familiar, really familiar, but she doesn’t pinpoint it until she turns to see the owner of the voice. He smiles, a little awkwardly, with something silver and shiny dangling from one of his hands. “Thank you for coming!”
Pidge blinks up at him in surprise. Jeez, she’s not sure who she had been expecting, but James Griffin, esteemed pilot and most thirsted-after guy in the Garrison (according to Veronica, anyway) was probably the last on her list. “Oh, hi! You’re not really who I expected to see here. Oh, wait, that probably sounds rude, er… I meant it in a good way, though.” With each further rambling word that digs her deeper and deeper into a hole, she can feel her cheeks flame. Oh, no. Is this what a crush feels like?
He laughs, but it’s soft and clearly not meant to be malicious. “Really? Rizavi told me that I was being obvious.”
“Not to me,” Pidge says, and then, because she’s never been one for subtlety, “uh, whatcha got there?”
“A gift!” James responds, and then hesitates. “Which, er, you totally don’t need to accept if you don’t want to, it’s just that I thought of you when I saw it?” He offers it to her and she takes it gently, lifting up the chain to see what it actually is. It’s a charm bracelet, though there’s only one charm on it - a green heart that glitters as she tilts it back and forth. The fact that he’s gotten her a gift is … huh. It’s a bit much, to be completely honest, but it definitely eases any fears of this being a prank.
“I like it,” she decides, slipping it on over her left wrist. Maybe if this becomes something more long-term, she can add more charms to the chain. “Thank you! Next time, I’ll get you something so that we’re even, yeah?”
James scratches the back of his neck, ears tinted at the concept of a next time. “That sounds great,” he tells her, and he sounds truly sincere. “I was thinking that we could maybe go into town for a few hours? There’s a bakery that I wanted to try that just opened back up.”
Pidge smiles in return, warm even through the chilly autumn air. “I’d really like that,” she tells him, and when he offers her his hand, she takes it.