Plance One-shots

Deserts and Rivers. Part four

Lance had been stood staring at the door for almost half an hour.

He had painstakingly searched every corner of his brain for an answer to the end of that sentence. But there wasn't one. He'd played out all the scenarios, thought of every possible out come and... Nothing.

Lance groaned, pawing his hand down his face in frustration.

See, this is why Pidge makes the calculated decisions. You work on instinct or something like that.

He was right, he did work on instinct. Instinct that had brought him to the foot of this particular door to have a particularly painful conversation. He wasn't even sure he was making the right decision.

Lance lifted his hand to knock.

He hesitated. His doubts were tied to his wrists like weights, preventing him from moving any further.

He couldn't stand it anymore.

Lance smacked his hand against his temple. Amidst the mild pain, his mind filtered through more memories. Allura's melodic laugh. Pidge's beaming smile when she beat him at Killbot phantasm 1.

Only one of those memories made his chest inexplicably flutter. Lance scrunched up his nose at the result. Really? Why Pidge?

Why Pidge? Because she was his best friend. The one he would go to when he was lonely or homesick. The one he could have a laugh with when things got too serious for him. He recalled every night he'd fallen asleep with her splayed over his lap after a serious gaming session. The way she fiddled with her glasses when she was nervous. How comfortable he was around her.

And how...

He could be himself.

His mind wandered through images of the food fights they'd have - much to Hunk's dismay - and how they'd laugh about it for hour afterwards. The way her cheeks glowed when she chuckled. He even thought of the time Pidge had sat and listened to him blabbering on about Allura after Lotor had first made an appearance.

She must have liked him then, yet she still sat with him. She always listened. An unfamiliar heat rose on Lance's cheeks.

He was so naive... How could he have missed this? He had been so painfully besotted with Allura he failed to notice the beautiful young woman by his side who'd helped him grow in confidence, skill and intellect.

Pidge made him better.

Something in Lance's mind clicked into place, flooding his chest and heart with a dull pain. The pain he'd felt when Allura had shattered his heart into a million pieces... He'd done that to Pidge. Lance suddenly felt very uncomfortable in his own skin.

How could he hurt her this way?

He knew from the ache that now wracked in his chest that he was making the right decision. However, that didn't stop a sour taste building up on Lance's tongue as he knocked his knuckles against the metal door.

There was a pause.

"Come in," a voice lilted through the door.

The door pulled itself open with a great sense sluggishness. Warm sunlight poured into Lance's eyes causing him to squint. His eyes strained to focus on the elongated silhouette in front of him. After blinking a few times, she finally came into focus.

"How are you Lance?" Allura smiled, stepping away from the window of her room. Lance looked up, his eyes scanning the princess from head to toe.

She was wearing her usual outfit of her Altean armour, and her hair was pulled up perfectly -as always - into a bun. The warm light of the sun made her hair and eyes glow. The eyes that were an impossible mix of pink and blue that were enough to make any man's heart stop.