Day 6 of Plangst Week: Nightmares

Lance dropped his sports bra onto the ground after undoing it, figuring he would just pick it up later, before flopping onto his mattress clad in nothing but boxers. While he was long used to the small size of this bed, having slept in similar sized ones all his life, the stiffness of the mattress bothered him every time.
(Even the ones provided in the Garrison dorm rooms had been a lot softer by a large margin, or should he say, well-worn? Considering the firm but comforting texture was probably born of dozens of other students sleeping on the same bed before him.)

Roughly, Lance tugged his thin blue coloured blanket up over his upper body, pulling up his legs to fit beneath the fabric when it proved too small to cover them. While the temperature in the paladin's rooms was programmed to be 'perfect' by normal human standards, it was always a bit too chilly for Lance's tastes; usually he would have donned pyjamas in order to fight the cold, although that night he found wrestling himself out of his armour a challenge and everyone knew that when getting undressed was hard, it was time to simply give in.

Reaching underneath his pillow Lance brought forth his sleeping mask, slipping it on before relaxing in preparation for sleep.
(Not long after first arriving at the castle he had abandoned using Pidge's head-phones to soothe him during the night, after he almost missed a real Galra-alarm instead of the drill alarm. Persevering with the music just didn't seem worth the risk, he sorely longed for the small comfort all the same.)

Before sleep could even start to claim him, Lance heard the tell tale hiss of his room's door sliding open, not even a knock to signal someone's entry. Huffing, he pushed his eye-mask up onto his forehead in order to see who dared so rudely intrude when he was finally able to go to bed. All his annoyance abated when he caught sight of Pidge stumbling in from the hall, her own pillow and blanket tucked against her chest. He quickly sat up in order to get a better look at his team-mate, uncaring of his indecent state of dress as it would not be the first time they had seen each other nude. It was then that he was able to note Pidge's red-tinged nose and eyes in the dim light.

"Hey Pidgeion, what's wrong?" In lieu of verbally answering Lance, Pidge instead chose to continue her stumbling until she reached the bed. She gently shoved Lance's pillow aside, placing her's in what little room there was beside it, before spreading her blanket onto the bed, having it overlap Lance's slightly. Pidge made her way underneath the blankets once she deemed her work satisfactory, snuggling up to Lance's warm torso.

He hesitated for a moment, before lowering himself back down beside Pidge, laying an arm loosely over his smaller companion. They stayed silent for a while, Pidge sometimes shuffling in vain the move closer to Lance, sniffing every so often. Lance used the hand he didn't have draped over Pidge to caress her hair, petting her head slowly and softly in an effort to calm her down from whatever emotional high she was on that caused the faint tremors he could feel shaking her frame.

Soon enough Pidge was breathing evenly, no longer the sporadic gasps, she was still taking in deep breaths in-between her more normal paced breathing. She had ceased trembling, her shoulders and chest rising in falling more calmly. Now that Lance felt Pidge could finally speak to him without her words being interrupted by sobbing, he broaching the question he wanted, needed, to know.

"You okay now, Pidge? Think you could tell me what upset you?" Instead of tensing up, as most people tend to do when asked uncomfortable inquiries, Pidge just slumped further into lance's hold. The weight of her head pushing against his bare stomach lightly, her hair an odd texture rubbing his skin with the slight movement.

"I-I was scared." Pidge's voice was quiet, hesitant, not quite uncomfortable talking about it but definitely apprehensive. "I fell asleep in Green's hangar earlier, working on an upgrade for her. Must have fallen asleep, though, because next thing I knew I'm waking up from a nightmare fucking terrified. So, I came here, because you're... Good. With people, that is." Although he knows it's probably inappropriate for the moment, he feels strangely smug about being the one Pidge came to when she needed some one.

"Not only that, though." At this Pidge clenched her hands tighter, digging her nails lightly into his skin. "I dreamt about... You." This gives Lance pause. Pidge had a nightmare, that in itself wasn't strange, as much as Lance hated to admit it, usually those nightmares were about her missing family and not people from the team; let alone the Blue Paladin.

lance resumes his hair petting, lightly scraping his fingernails on her scalp, a feeling he knows she and Keith both adore. It does the trick of loosening Pidge's hold, her nails letting go only to be replaced by warm hands overlapping where they previously clawed, a silent apology.

"Could you maybe tell me what happened?" He whispered; honestly if he had a choice he would never even ask in the first place, but he knew from experience that divulging nightmares to others was therapeutic in a way and if he could help his sister-figure he would.

When he felt Pidge's hold on him tighten he returned the gesture in kind. "The details are kind-of fuzzy, and I guess you would expect that from a dream, though I know enough to still be... Disturbed." Pidge moved her head sideways, making sure Lance could hear her and trying to somehow get closer all at once.

"We had just finished up a battle I think; Hunk and I were paired up and so were Keith and Shiro. We tried contacting you but the comms weren't working, so we started searching. Hunk and I were the ones to find you. Blue was in pieces, bits of her everywhere; y-you were right next to her head." An exhausted sob tore its' way from her throat. " Y-You were dead Lance, so cold and dead."

Pidge lifted her head away from his stomach, blood shot eyes screwed up. "What makes it worse was that we had found you in some sort of dried up lake; You love water Lance and you didn't even get to have it as the last thing you saw!" Lance cupped Pidge's over-heated face with one hand, gripping her own hand with the another before ghosting it over his mouth.

"Feel that? I'm breathing." He moved her fingers to his neck. "And that? My heart is beating." Next he took both her hands and held them sandwiched between his own. "I'm warm too." Lastly he brought her in for a hug. "I get injured, sure, but I have you and the others to cover me. As long as I'm a part of Voltron dying just isn't an option. Even then, if I died who would be there to annoy you and do silly things with you and be there for you when the others can't? I'm going to be there for you, for as long as you need me to be."

AN: This particular little drabble started out with the intention of it more exploring gender and body dysphoria; A theme of which you can mildly see in the beginning of the story wherein I wrote 'Lance dropped his sports bra onto the ground after undoing it', it's not much and if you don't want that in the story you can easily overlook it.
Eventually it more followed the path of a hurt/comfort fic for Plangst Week, which I don't necessarily mind as it still holds true to the platonic Lance/Pidge relationship I wanted in there. In the future I want to either rewrite this as separate story or whip up a prequel/squeal to this focusing more on the whole gender aspect.
(If you're curious originally I saw Pidge as either transgender, trans-girl or trans-boy I wasn't too fussy about, and Lance as gender-fluid.)