A/N: sometime before Change but after Loss

Day Four: Crush

No.

She refuses.

Pidge honestly didn't know how this happened. One minute she was cracking jokes, like she always does, and Keith is laughing and then she's looking at his stupid face and realizing that she really likes it when he laughs, cause his face morphs into this sharp grin and he snorts through his nose and-

No.

She refuses.

Absolutely not.

Katie "Pidge" Holt does NOT have a crush on Keith Kogane.

Pidge nodded firmly to herself. "Of course I don't have a crush," she muttered to her computer. "I feel the same about him as I do about Lance and Hunk!"

She doesn't see Keith any differently than she does the other Paladins. He's her brother-in-arms, her partner in crime, her friend!

No.

She refuses.

Absolutely not.

Pidge does NOT have a crush on Keith.

Except.

Nope! She shoved away from her work station and heads to the kitchen. Hunk or Coran would be there and they would provide a sufficient distraction from her thoughts. She enters and, shockingly, neither of them are there.

But Keith is.

Of course he is. He looked up as the door whooshed open and raised a hand in greeting. "Hey Pidge."

"Hey Keith." Oh god, did her voice get higher? Girls' voices get higher when they're around people they like right? No, no, her voice was normal. Because she did not like Keith. "I was just looking for Hunk, seen him around?"

"Yeah, he and Lance went to the bridge to talk to Allura."

"Thanks!"

She turned on her heel and headed back down the hall, heart racing and cheeks flushed.

No.

She refuses.

Absolutely not.

Katie Holt does NOT have a crush on Keith Kogane.

Except, she totally does.

-•-

Keith stood from the table as soon as Pidge left and stormed toward the training deck. He needed to punch something.

Anything to get rid of those stupid little flutterings in his stomach that he does not have time for. Not with Shiro missing and the team freaking out.

He does not have time for a crush on the only female member of the team. Besides, if she did decide she liked one of them, why would it be him?

She'd go for Lance. Lance was smoother, more comfortable with girls than he was and shared her sense of humor. They were the reigning King and Queen of Memes (according to Hunk, Keith wasn't even completely sure what a meme was).

Or Shiro. Shiro, who always knew she was a girl, who knew her family and wanted to find them as badly as she did, whose disappearance devastated her because he was her only link to her former life.

Even Hunk would make her a better partner. He understood her technical jargon, for the most part. He could bond with her over the intricacies of their Lions, joke with her while he baked, and comfort her when she was upset about her family or Shiro.

Heck, if either of them swung that way, Allura would be better, too. Or maybe not, Keith mused as he entered the training deck. He was pretty sure something had been going on between her and Shiro before he disappeared.

Either way, the last person Pidge would go for would be him, and so he did not have time for this.

And unless a miracle happened, he never would.