-x-
settled
-x-
Hunk is sleeping soundly when his bedroom door slides open in the middle of the night and Lance stumbles in, hugging his own pillow and dragging his blankets. Lance digs his knuckles into his eye and muffles a yawn with same hand. He doesn't bother trying to work the sleepy thickness out of his voice, barely even raises it, "Okay, Hunk. Slide over, buddy." He pushes at Hunk's shoulder and repeats the demand until Hunk finally makes an effort to rouse himself.
It isn't much of an effort; Hunk turns his face out of the pillow.
"Mmh. Nope, too comfortable. Just climb in."
Lance huffs, "Fine," and kicks off his Blue Lion slippers.
Climbing in over Hunk is no easy task in his drowsy state, but Lance somehow manages it without knocking his head against the top of the bunk this time. He drops onto the mattress on Hunk's other side, tangled in the blanket, and lays where he is: legs still kicked up across Hunk's back, crowded against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. Lance's face twists unhappily and he squeezes his pillow in his arms, forcing his eyes closed.
Hunk doesn't see it, but he senses it.
"S'matter?"
"Nothin'."
"You woke me up for 'nothin' I am gonna be real upset if there's not at least a bagel, and some galactic cream cheese, or interstellar strawberries in your pocket or something."
Lance huffs a laugh. "No bagels in space. Sorry."
"No bagels, no vacancy, amigo."
"Seriously, Hunk? You would deport me over bagels."
"I don't make the rules, Lance, I am but a humble civil servant. And I take bagels and all types of breakfast pastries very seriously."
"Okay, so what about breakfast burritos?"
"Okay first of all, we've been over this a million times: the burrito is not a pastry, and I am both hurt and offended that you of all people would say something like that to my face - "
"To your shoulder."
"Whatever. And second of all: it is an extremely underrated - "
The door slides open a second time.
"I thought I heard Lance get up." Pidge trots into the room with their own pillow in their arms, a blanket trailing under foot and a small light in their hand, "Don't tell me you guys are talking about burritos again?"
"Breakfast burritos," Lance clarifies.
"I thought we already decided that burritos are best when they are a minimum of four hundred yards away from any eggs, this is a pointless conversation." Pidge dumps their bundle across Hunk's legs and climbs over without waiting for an invitation, taking up the corner opposite Lance. They fuss a little, creating a nest, then settle. "Talk about something else."
"Can I just clarify," Hunk says, "That all poultry - "
"Hunk! No! Eggs are gross, especially in burritos!"
"This is strictly a 'no bagel - no vacancy' zone, Pidge, and since there are no bagels in space I'm gonna have to ask you to leave the premises."
"Lance doesn't have bagels!"
"Lance is homesick, he's allowed one pass."
"Thanks," Lance says, voice muffled by his arm.
"We're all homesick," Pidge grumbles.
"Not the point, Pigeon," Hunk says.
"Is that why you're so quiet?"
"Is that why you're so obnoxious? Go to sleep, Pigeon."
"Stop. Calling me 'pigeon'. Besides, you guys were the ones talking."
"Hunk was talking."
"What, so, me specifically? I'm not allowed to talk?"
"Not if you're going to argue against the integrity of the breakfast burrito - "
"Hunk."
Knowing the debate will only escalate if someone doesn't intervene, Lance lifts one leg from Hunk's shoulders and drops it across Pidge. He also does it because Pidge is curled up with their handheld device inches away from their face, their thumbs swiping over the screen. The three of them are trying to bond here, and Pidge is multitasking.
Lance knocks the device out of their hand with his foot.
Pidge yelps in outrage as the light disappears.
"Lance!" They swat at his intrusive feet. "I'm doing something! Lance!"
Pidge kicks out at him in retaliation, but Lance has the longer reach. He grabs Pidge around the middle with his legs, digging his huge, stupid feet into all their tender spots, until Pidge is thrashing and shrieking with laughter and half angry because of it.
"Stop! No - no tickling! Lance!"
The rolling and kicking is finally enough to disturb Hunk, who has made it a point to not move since Lance first climbed into bed with him for reasons that he thought were pretty obvious. The desire to actually get back to sleep being one of them. Hunk kicks out, dislodging Pidge from Lance's foothold, and lifts himself onto his elbows enough to roll so that he's facing the inside of the bunk. He tries to reach back and grapple with Lance, but his arms are trapped in the net of blankets, under Lance's weight, and it's mostly pointless.
"Okay okay, stop, guys, not on top of me, c'mon! Give it a rest, please, it is way past bedtime!"
"Lance, started it!"
Pidge gets the final say by smacking Lance hard with their pillow as he finally withdraws his legs. They separate to their respective corners, cooling off, catching their breath. Hunk is just beginning to let his guard down and relax again when Lance suddenly kicks free of his blanket, struggles upright, and clambers over Hunk out into the room. He accidentally knees Hunk in the lower back in the process, and Hunk grunts in surprise.
"Whoops, sorry, bud!"
Lance pats him distractedly and hurries to the door. Pidge looks up from digging in the blankets, trying to unearth their device.
"Where are you going?"
"To get Keith," Lance sighs, as if they've bullied him into it. He hops through the door as soon as it's open enough for him to pass.
Hunk lifts his head. "There's not enough room, tell him to bring his mattress!"
Keith doesn't bring his mattress.
Lance frog marches the Red Paladin through the door by his elbows, Keith's blanket thrown over his shoulder, pillow squashed in between them. They're stumbling because Lance's long legs over reach, bumping the inside of Keith's feet and tripping him; and Keith is still half-asleep, visibly irritated, clutching the hilt of his sheathed knife like he's ready to use it, but unsure of on who. He's still grumbling about his abduction, his voice rough, "What are you doing?"
"It's a miracle he didn't stab you," Pidge observes, glancing up. They're already curled up in their corner at the foot of the bed, poking away at their device again. Hunk is dozing.
"Oh, believe me, he tried!"
"You just surprised me…!"
Keith is awake enough to be defensive, at least - just barely.
He makes a final effort to shrug out of Lance's grip, but he's forced into the bed and over Hunk's backside before he can really do anything about it. Lance follows him, Hunk yelps, and it takes a few struggling moments and grunts of annoyance to get disentangled from one another. In the end, Hunk sighs, stretched out along the edge of the bed to give the others some more room, and Lance is cradled up in the corner with his legs tucked over Hunk's shoulders again.
Keith is in between Lance and Pidge, against the wall with his knees drawn up and his arms around them, looking disgruntled.
"This isn't comfortable."
"You can take up more space, Keith," Lance says, exasperated.
"That's not what I meant…" Keith mutters, pawing at his pillow.
"You wanna go back to your room?" Hunk asks understandingly, "It's fine if you do, man, not everybody's into slumber parties. We just wanted you to feel included - "
"No!" Lance says, throwing out his hands, "This is happening. We're all bonding, we're having a great time. Everyone go to sleep!" He twists the blankets in his hands and burrows down into his pillow, shooting Keith a final glare from among the folds. "Don't wait til the rest of us are asleep and then sneak off, mullet head."
"I wasn't going to!"
Since that was exactly what Keith was planning to do, he makes a point of getting comfortable, if only to prove Lance wrong.
"No, come on, be fair," Hunk says, "Galra!Keith would never do something like that."
"Human!Keith might," Pidge says, grinning.
"Human!Keith absolutely would do exactly that," Lance confirms, "And Galra!Keith is just as likely, so be on guard, Hunk."
"I am a sphinx. Nobody's getting past me."
"Can you guys knock it off with the Galra thing…"
Keith punches his pillow a little harder than he has to before dropping onto his side. Cramped in three directions between Lance's pointy hipbone, the wall, and Hunk's much softer side, Keith has an unobstructed view past his own knees of Pidge: snuggled contentedly in their own blanket and pillow near Hunk's feet, poking at the device in their hand.
Keith pops up onto his elbows, frowning.
"Why are you all the way down there by yourself?"
"Nobody wants to wake up sweat-stuck to me."
"What?"
"It's not my fault! I run really, really hot when I sleep. Feel - "
They grab Keith's arm with their small, hot hands and Keith yanks back in surprise and discomfort.
"They're like tiny ovens!"
"Exactly! And I'm sweaty. It's disgusting."
"It really is," Lance supplies, "Pidge is a sweat goblin. Now everybody shut up and go to sleep!"
"Lance, you yourself have piled four obnoxious teens into a bed together and you expect them not to talk."
"No one asked you, Pidge!"
"Someone should have; this plan was foolhardy, at best."
"Um it's my bed?" Hunk says, "So I'm the one that should have been asked. Just sayin'."
"What, you want us to go?"
Hunk thinks about it. "Nah. I'd miss you guys."
"We're right down the hall," Keith mutters. He does finally lay down, though, and makes more of a genuine effort to get comfortable, tentatively mimicking Lance by stretching his legs out across Hunk's lower back. His arms are crossed and he's frowning at the ceiling in typical Keith fashion. "We weren't that far away, and we had more room."
"Keith is just mad because he's not as sweaty as Pidge is," Lance says.
"Why would I be mad about that?"
"Don't worry, you're still smellier than me."
"Yeah, Keith is the smelly one."
"It must be a Galra thing."
"Guys."
"Hey, okay, we said we would stop with the Galra thing. It makes Keith uncomfortable and we should respect his feelings about his heritage - lineage? ("Lineage," Pidge confirms.) - the same way we respect Lance's impulsive desire to sing salsa music when he's in the shower."
"I'm gonna assume 'salsa' is not actually what it's called," Keith says, with a little sideways smirk at Lance.
"No, it is," Lance says with dignity, "And it's soothing, alright! These are trying times!"
After Hunk suggests, grinning, that Lance sing something to lull them all to sleep, which he refuses to do on the grounds that he isn't going to squander his talents on an unappreciative audience (to which Pidge and Keith enthusiastically agree), the four of them lapse into a contented silence.
It lasts about five minutes:
"Alright, I'm gonna be that guy," Hunk says, sighing, "We mentioned salsa; who else is hungry."
"Me."
"Kinda."
"Alright, fine, yes, we were talking about burritos and bagels earlier, too, I think I'm literally starving to death right now."
-x-
"Why wasn't I invited?" Shiro asks later on, just to tease them.
"You would have made us all go to bed," Pidge says.
"And we would have," Hunk adds.
"Should have," Lance says, rubbing his tired eyes.
Keith is asleep with his head on the table.
-x-
(A/n) This was dumb and 80% dialogue, but it was fun and comforting and I really needed some of that good platonic shit post-season 4 it wrecked my emotional ass. Thank you guys so much for reading! Reviews are appreciated!
-bobtac