It hadn't started out as much—just a couple of those little science terrariums that had various plants inside of them. Some were carnivorous, others had little cacti, and there was even an underwater one that Pidge had taken delight in. The small glass jars took over the engineer's room, surrounded by the metal and wires of robots, computers, and unrecognizable technology that had been taken apart and put back together again over and over.
Plants in fish bowls, glass tea kettles and cup sets, jars, bottles, birdfeeders, an old, miniature gumball machine, and even a gutted glass Christmas ornament.
Perhaps that was why Mrs. Holt left the greenhouse (a product of the last people who had lived there), the overgrown pond, and the mess of flowerbeds in the hands of the fifteen year old when they first moved in. Pidge, never one to disappoint, took to the task with the same hyper focus taken to robotics. Pots were purchased, bags of soil dragged to the house, watering can patched, and the overgrown wooden structure fixed with a few long days with Matt and Sam Holt.
She had them paint it a dark, evergreen that ended with each Holt having more paint on themselves than on the actual greenhouse.
A few plants were a necessity as demanded by her mom (a climbing peace rose one and a deep crimson Ingrid Bergman in memory of her grandmother the other) but the rest were entirely up to her. Pidge still hadn't decided on what to plant by the time there were only two to three weeks before school came around and buried herself in researching taller flowers—ones that couldn't grow in the terrariums and picked out a mix of tulips and forget-me-nots.
Canna soon joined the bunch, Colorado columbine following with lily-of-the-valley not far behind. Bleeding heart was planted by the door and the window that wouldn't close without a good shove, bluebells beside it, and zinnias because the picture on the seed package had made her smile. Orange lantana in a wide, round pot was hung off a long hook and was quickly joined by a spider plant whose vines were already falling over the sides and reaching for the floor.
In one corner, Pidge placed the ixora so it could grow into a proper bush without strangling the other plants and a couple of wildflowers found their way around the base. Matt got her a small yucca that made its home next to some young sunflowers, her father came home with a wilting iris that was slowly nursed back to health, and her mother gave her a small planter full of herbs that made their home next to the lavender and marigolds.
When school started, there were sprouts taking over the pots and the green house was looking, well, more brown than green, but it was a start.
The pond was still a rag tag mess that needed more than just a simple cleaning and paint job to get it fixed up, though.
oOo
Matt, with his rust bucket of a car, was the one to drive them to school on the day before they were actually supposed to learn anything. He grinned at her though, when he parked close to the front—most of the other new students had probably come with their parents, walked, or had been dropped off. "Ready for a new year?"
Pidge grunted half-heartedly and glared at him from under her bangs.
"You know," he said, pushing open his door and letting her wallow in misery while getting his backpack out of the trunk, "if you hadn't stayed up until two in the morning working on... Rover, was it? You might be less of a grump."
"I lost track of time," she grumbled and pouted up at him, "and Rover is a perfectly valid reason to not sleep!"
Matt snickered, "That's why dad woke you up first, you know that, right?"
Pidge slammed the trunk shut and walked past her brother, a fierce scowl on her face. Her brother ran to catch up, grinning down at the grump of a sophomore. "I would kill you for a pack of sticky notes," she told him when he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "It will be painful—agonizing even."
"Love you too," Matt adjusted his glasses and guided her through the open doors. There were a couple of paper signs about, some of them announcing which way classrooms were, how to change schedules, IDs for the library, some sort of football fundraiser, and an entire hallway filled with tables dedicated to clubs. Everything was colourful and the Holt siblings stared for a couple of seconds.
None of the stations were numbered, so Pidge simply tugged Matt over to the nearest one in order to get out of traffic and ended up at the ID table. The woman sitting behind it smiled up at them, a couple of boxes set out next to a package of papers that looked like just a list of names. "Good morning!"
"Hello," Matt smiled back at her and Pidge offered a tight smile.
"Last name?"
Pidge spelled it out for her out of habit and accepted the blue card with a picture of her face and Katie Holt typed out on the top with white block letters. They skipped the bus station, though Matt accepted the route map just in case he was sick and couldn't drive her to school, and they turned to the place where a bunch of councillors sat.
A man with a large, red moustache was sitting in the seat marked for A-I and Pidge stared at him for a second—it was a pretty impressive moustache, actually. Top grade uncle material with just a splash of Nigel Thornberry.
Matt was the one that pushed her forward towards the sign and the man turned from the older Zeus looking man with his white beard and hair to smile at them. "Morning!" He greeted and the slight accent took both Holts off guard for a moment. Australian or New Zealand, Pidge realized after a moment when her hand was being shaken. "Sorry, I'm not actually Mr. Hendrick; he's off for the day, but is there anything I can help you with?"
He was a whirlwind of words and motions, almost like some type of static electricity kept in a human body, and Pidge blinked a couple of times while she gathered her thoughts. "Uh, we're here for some of the paperwork...?"
A folder was slapped into her arms without so much of a warning and Pidge yelped, scrambling to get a firm hold on it before the papers inside were scattered upon the floor.
"Thank you!" Matt offered the man a smile before turning his sister around to head back towards the tables. "Well, he seems..."
"Wacko?"
"I was going to say excitable," the older Holt shrugged.
Pidge muttered something under her breath and earned an elbow in her side from her brother.
Because they promised their parents to at least look at everything, the Holt siblings headed over to the table currently being manned by a tall senior. His dark hair had been cut so that the top was longer in the front than anywhere else, hanging over his forehead and styled so it somehow didn't look like a backwards rat's tail.
And his eyelashes either were naturally winged, or the guy was incredibly talented with eye-liner. Either way, Pidge was impressed.
He was talking to a girl with long, white hair, skin the colour of a cherry wood picture frame where only the precious of memories were kept, and bright eyes that were soothing like an icepack on a hot day. Their conversation tapered off when Pidge and Matt stopped in front of the booth and both grinned.
"Welcome!" The girl pulled at the edges of her pale blue and purple blouse, "I'm Allura, the Captain of the cheer squad and this is Shiro, he's on the football team, probably captain—"
He huffed and rolled his eyes good naturally, holding his hand out for them to shake. "Nice to meet you."
"And you," Matt grinned back and leaned to the side so Pidge could shake their hands as well. Both towered over her and she fought the urge to sigh. A lifetime among giants, that's what she had to look forward to. "I'm Matt, this is Pidge; we just moved here."
"Oh?" Allura tilted her head to the side. "Where are you from?"
Pidge tuned them out to read over the various flyers laying on the table. It seemed less of a football team thing and more of a school wide sport fundraiser. There was something about the swim team, another for baseball, basketball, volleyball, and even tennis.
"Thinking of joining a team?"
"Huh?" Broken from her musings, Pidge glanced up at Shiro. "Oh, no, I mean, I'm more into marching band, honestly." Brass instruments bigger than her, standing on her feet for hours at a time.
Robotics, plants, and instruments. Perhaps she was a little bit weird.
Rather than be put off, Shiro simply nodded. "Well," he said and leaned slightly over the table to point down the hall of clubs. "I think Marching Band is the third table from the far end, I could help you go look for it, if you want?"
"No, it's okay," Pidge smirked slightly, "if I can't find something in a straight hallway what hope do I have for the future?"
They left a few minutes later, holding a card that would get them discounts for the whole year at various businesses around the school and the semblance of meeting new people. Pidge added her email to some of the club lists that interested her, leaving her brother as he did the same.
Finally, they met at the marching band table.
"I thought you said that you would rather swallow a cactus than play a tuba again?" Matt stood behind her with a broad grin, arms crossed over his chest as she added her information to the others already written down.
"If you think that being my brother saves you from disembowelment you have another thing coming," Pidge said, pointing the pen at his nose.
oOo
One Saturday was spent entirely cleaning out the pond tubing and pool.
Matt ran away instead of getting in to help when Pidge flung a handful of algae at his face.
oOo
Absolutely refusing to buy a new water pump until it was proven that the old one would never work again, Pidge packed it up in a couple of plastic bags and brought it to the robotics club. Someone there had to have some idea about pump mechanics and, even if they didn't, at least it was better for a problem to be solved with multiple people than one with Google.
Turned out that robotics club was mostly filled with people who liked talking more than doing and Pidge was about to call it a day until someone pointed her to a bulky boy in the corner.
So she met Hunk who was more of a mechanic than a robotics guy. He didn't have a completely blank face when she talked about it though. So that was a plus.
"What kind of system is it?"
"Underwater filtration that takes the water up to a waterfall," Pidge pulled out the instruction manual she had printed off the internet; the original was probably long gone at this point. "The filter and tubing are fine—I checked them separately—but the pump has trouble getting the water it receives to actually go through the spout."
Turning the bit of machinery over in his large hands, Hunk frowned. "Well..." he started and the discussion descended into techno babble from there. Eventually they opened the poor thing up to point out pieces that probably needed to be replaced, sanded down a bit, or just cleaned.
They didn't quite fix it, but Pidge had a direction to go in which was more than what she had started with.
oOo
"Dad? Can I get a beehive?"
"Absolutely not."
oOo
Honestly, for his size Hunk was incredibly good at worming his way into people's hearts. Or, specifically, Pidge's heart. He was brilliant when it came to engineering and chemicals not to mention food. The guy certainly knew how to make food.
And he was nice. Which wasn't completely unrelated but, well, kind of the glue that held the whole puzzle that was Hunk together. They talked tech outside of class, food while at lunch, and anything else that came to mind. Sometimes they would sit there quietly, tapping away on whatever device suited them at the moment and the silence was comforting.
Hunk was probably the first friend she made in this new place.
It was only natural, per say, that the next time Pidge went out to buy soil and stumbled upon a pot of Hens and Chicks that reminded her a bit too much of her new friend, she bought it and brought the plant back to her slowly expanding greenhouse.
But then Hunk introduced her to Lance and she regretted everything because Lance was cocky, told terrible jokes, and—to Pidge's great disgust—was also just as kind as Hunk.
It was infuriating.
oOo
Heated water flowed down the stone waterfall, splashing into the pond and Pidge grinned at her handy work. Dirt stained her jeans at the knees and stuck under her fingernails, but the stupid thing was finally working and that's all that mattered. There were a couple of things still to do—like get the aquatic plants situated and, maybe, get some fish—but the worst part was over. No more finding algae in odd places or finding a leaky tube somewhere.
Now it was all about the plants.
"Nice work, kiddo."
Pidge jerked and spun around on her heel, looking up at her dad. Sam Holt has his hands on his hips and was admiring the perfectly placed stones that lines the water and the small lights that lit up the small waterfall from beneath. "Thanks," she said, grin crooked and wide. "I still have to go pick up the plants, but it's almost done."
He hummed and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "You know," he joked, "if engineering ever falls through, I'm sure you could always go into landscaping."
She shoved his side with a laugh.
oOo
A blue lotus had somehow gotten mixed up in her order but the 'no returns' policy of the place she had ordered the plants from left her with the flower.
So Pidge called it Lance, planted it in the pond, and left it be among the water lilies, some hyacinth, a bit of fanwort at the bottom, and an umbrella plant to provide a bit more shelter.
oOo
"That one," Matt said, pointing at an orange and black tiger-like koi. It had beautiful flaring fins, not unlike a beta fish, and was calmly doing laps around the tank. The colours themselves were bright—brighter than the fish around it at least—and was closer to a deep, saturated pumpkin than anything else.
So far he had found a yellow and white one with dark colouring along the dorsal, one that was a pale bone colour with dark marks along its back and blood red flaring fins, one so gold it almost looked green (which Pidge thought to be the prettiest out of the lot), and the last which happened to be every colour—red, black, white, and yellow—but looked more like a kindergarten art project with how they were all splattered about on the scales.
"Alright," the breeder, a young woman who Matt had found while looking up local breeders, took a note on her pad and they moved on. Pidge trudged behind, looking at the colourful options her brother skipped by.
She would have picked out the fish, but after her failed attempts to keep a beta alive, the Holt family agreed that she was far better suited to look after plants than animals.
Pidge was fine with that—leave her to the robots and the greens. Anything that needed feeding was her brother's problem. She watched him lean over to look in another tank, pointing at a koi that was black from nose to tail and added that to the list.
The last was another white one with blue dotted along the black and just so happened to be five dollars more than the others, but the colour matched the new lotus flower in the pond and it happened to be some rare breed. Pidge just shrugged and went along with it—she wouldn't be the one taking care of them.
While the breeder went about catching all the fish Matt had pointed out, the Holt siblings picked out some food, some treats, and carefully avoided looking at the large tank full of gold fish with their great bulging eyes staring at every move they made.
"I think you went a little bit overboard," Pidge sighed as Matt unlocked his trunk. She was currently carrying the blue tub that was the transportation for the seven plastic bags currently holding the koi. "Didn't mom say two or three?"
"The pond is big enough," he said and helped her guide the container carefully into the car. "Besides; they're pretty! Even mom will have to enjoy them."
Pidge rolled her eyes, made sure none of the bags threatened to roll and disturb the fish, and closed the trunk. "You can't just walk into the house and be like," she made her voice higher and talked a little bit faster, "'Hey mom! Bought four more fish than you asked me too, just going to go put them in the pond please don't ask how expensive they were!'"
Laughing, Matt picked up the plastic bag currently holding various koi foods and tossed it into the back seat. "Look, you let me worry about mom, okay? Besides, she loves fish!"
oOo
Amanda Holt definitely did not love fish.
She did love her son though; that was probably why he was still breathing.
oOo
"You know that it's cheaper to build your own computer than buy one, right?"
Hunk sighed and pushed his laptop away, leaning back into the chair with a groan as Pidge watched him, polishing off the Blizzard she bought during the fifteen minutes between school being let out and the time the robotics climb started. "Yeah, yeah," the bigger teen groaned, "but that takes so much time—"
"No pain no gain," Pidge murmured around a mouthful of ice cream.
The groan that came out of Hunk's mouth was filled with agony. "Come on, Pidge! Just a little bit of sympathy?" He placed his arm across his eyes like a classic Shakespearian actor, "I'm dying! My computer's dying!"
Pidge licked off the last bit of Blizzard from her spoon and reached over, patting his hand with the shining example of empathy. "There, there," she cooed, eyes gleaming. "Do you want me to pay for the funeral arrangements?"
"I never knew someone so short could be filled with such meanness."
Snorting, Pidge slapped the lid back onto the paper cup and aimed for the trashcan. "Don't you know?" She said, taking the shot, "Short people are so full of anger cause we're closer to hell."
The cup hit the rim of the trashcan, flipped over, and landed in the recycling bin.
oOo
Lance slammed into her at precisely seven o'clock in the morning with a cup of some expensive concoction made at the nearest Starbucks and a look of panic that was, unsurprisingly, not all that uncommon on his face. "Pidge! Pidge you have to help me—"
"Sorry," she said ducking by him, "office hours are eleven to two. Please make a schedule with the secretary if you have any questions—"
He grabbed onto her backpack and pulled the short teen back. Pidge squawked indignantly and was about to turn on him with the fury of someone who had only slept four hours when he held a phone that looked like it had had brighter days. "Mi Tia," he said, dropping the device in her started hands, "she dropped her phone in the bath and she's off work today but she really, really needs it to work by tomorrow and I told her that you might be able to fix it?" Lance trailed off and looked at her with those wide, hopeful eyes.
God damn it.
"Ugh," Pidge tapped the power button and sighed as it didn't start up, "fine, I'll fix it, but you owe me!"
Lanky arms wrapped around her and she yelped when Lance lifted her up off the ground and swung them around. "Thank you!" He crowed and set her disgruntled, ruffled form back on the cement, "I'll get you whatever you want for lunch today, okay? Pizza? Burger?"
She sighed and headed towards the front doors, ignoring the bouncing teenager until they reached her locker and he was still spouting off food.
"—I would rather not buy you Taco Bell to be honest, I'd really rather just have my family cook you something—"
"There's something wrong with you," Pidge told Lance, looking up at him from under her bangs, "And whatever it is, I bet it's long and very hard to pronounce."
oOo
The herbs had grown enough to be transferred outside and Pidge bought a dozen woven baskets with plastic interiors to line the path from the pond to the greenhouse to plant them in.
She caught her mother picking a leaf off the lemon grass and bringing it up to her nose to breathe in the strong citrus smell one afternoon and turned away with a small smile.
oOo
"You know," Sam Holt started conversationally at dinner one night, "I think the front yard could use some more colour."
No, Pidge thought, shoving a roll with more force than necessary into her mouth. No, no absolutely not.
oOo
"Pidge, right?"
Looking up from the stack of stones currently wobbling and threatening to topple over, Pidge looked up at the football player she and Matt had met all those weeks ago. "Yeah," she leaned back on her heels and wiped her forehead with a wrist, ignoring the dirt clinging to her skin. "Shiro, was it?"
"Yeah," he said with a small smile. "Sorry, I'm here to meet your brother for a biology project?"
"Go ahead," she nodded to the door and watched him make his way up the path before turning around and digging her fingers back into the earth to dig a particularly grumpy dandelion out by the roots.
A few hours later when all the plants had been planted and all the stones had been placed back where they had been before, Pidge flopped down on the couch after a long shower and fiddled with a touch screen wall tablet that would eventually be able to control everything in the yards—watering system, lights, everything.
Except for feeding the fish. They were her brother's problem.
oOo
Matt, not really caring that he was currently interrupting one of Lance's stories about his family, set a box down in front of Pidge in the middle of lunch one day.
"What's this?" She fiddled with the lid and opened it partially, careful to keep it mostly closed in case it was something that was actually alive like a turtle or some frogs. Lance and Hunk were leaning forward too, not even bothering to hide their curiosity.
"The science department got a bunch of new equipment so they decided to give away the old stuff," Matt shrugged and grinned down at her, "I figured you could use some more, uh, homes for your pets."
Pidge scowled and opened the box all the way. "They're not pets," she grumbled but held up one of the glass flasks and examining it. A plan of what she could put in it was already forming in her mind. Maybe she could make one of those small marine terrariums. She certainly had enough little tropical and desert ones. And there was no threat of the water spilling out unless someone knocked it over unlike the bulbs and geometric ones she already had.
Closing the box back up, Pidge grinned up at her brother. "Thank you," she said.
"No problem," he ruffled her hair, waved at Lance and Hunk, then left. Once Matt was out of earshot, the two descended upon Pidge.
"Pets?" Hunk poked the box, "What kind of pets?"
Pidge shook her head. "They're not pets," she insisted again because they weren't, not really. Some of them were just decorative anyway.
"I bet they're little robots captured from outer space," Lance wiggled his fingers about.
Laughing, Pidge stood up, hoisting the box up into her arms. "Keep dreaming," she told him before heading off to put the glass safely into her locker.
oOo
To Be Continued?
I was thinking of making this a series of three, not sure though. Inspired by the High School AU by Ilovelancealot at tumblr but also just... Green thumb Pidge who's an odd mix of technology and plants because that sounds like fun.