Archive of Our Own

In retrospect, Pidge really should have seen it coming. They’ve all been in space for however long now, and even in spite of all the vaccines Coran had stabbed them with when they first took up their roles as the defenders of the universe, something was bound to slip through eventually. That’s just human nature. That’s just . . . Well. 

That’s just her brand of luck, frankly. Of course, of all her teammates, she would be the first one to catch some sort of alien flu. Go quiznacking figure. 

At first, it’s hard to separate potential symptoms from the simple byproducts of being herself. She’s more tired than normal, she’ll think in retrospect—though when it first begins, she thinks it’s just the cause of too many nights in a row spent staying up far too late on her laptop, as usual. She’s achy in her limbs, but that could, again, be attributed to the weird pretzel positions she manages to curl into while working. Too much time spent frozen in positions she doesn’t realize aren’t comfortable until after she unfolds, normally to go immediately to training to exercise the aforementioned uncomfortable limbs . . . Well. Even she can see the flaws in her current operating set-up. She’ll have to consider making some adjustments, going forward. 

But the more-tired-than-normal-and-achyness slowly shifts to something more unusual, as she goes about her day. What starts out as the natural twinge that comes from the ab repetitions Keith’s always convincing Shiro to smuggle into team training doesn’t fade, the way the ache normally does once she leaves the training deck to return to her computer. 

The aching in her abdomen persists well into the afternoon—an almost cramping sensation, like she’s overworked her muscles, even though today’s training was no more strenuous than normal. 

What confirms to her that she must be sick is when, after a normal—and thankfully goo-less—dinner provided by Hunk, Pidge is struck by a nearly dizzying nausea on her way to her room to grab some scraps she’d thrown there the other day for a project. She barely has time to duck into the nearest communal bathroom dispersed throughout the castle halls before the contents of everything she just filled her stomach with comes rushing back up. 

Pidge hates throwing up. She can’t imagine there’s anyone who possibly doesn’t hate it, because it’s quite honestly the worst feeling in the fucking world—and Pidge has been shot before, so she can even say that with fairly confident accuracy. She’s been involved in a space war for over a year, she’s managed to avoid getting sick in all of that time, and now it’s descending on her alone in a bathroom, shaking and choking of vomit-induced sobs and blinking back tears as she realizes this is the first time she’s ever been sick alone. 

In all of her childhood memories of sickness, there was always a comforting hand on her back when the nausea came. Her mother’s soft shushes, or the solid, quiet warmth of her father, or Matt’s too-loud voice as he rambled about something that happened to him earlier in the day, trying to take her mind off of how bad she felt. In a very literal sense, Pidge has never thrown up by herself, and it’s hitting her now that this must be one of the awful side-effects of being a grown-up. 

She’s fifteen fucking years old. She’s nowhere near grown, and yet somehow she’s found herself far out in space, far outside the comforting hold of her family, and she has no choice but to be an adult right now. 

Eyes pricking, but refusing to let the tears fall, Pidge flushes the disgusting evidence of her new sickness and rinses her mouth. She looks at herself in the mirror, her skin flushed and too-pale at once, her eyes fever-bright as she continues to bite back tears, and thinks she looks as young as she feels. 

But this is just another reminder that Pidge no longer gets to be young. She’s a paladin of Voltron. She’s a warrior—a weapon. She doesn’t get to curl up in bed with her dog and her mother’s soft touches to her forehead and a hot bowl of soup or a bowl of peanut butter ice cream. 

She has to be an adult, now. That means she has to make a game plan for how she intends to tackle this by herself. 

With a final look at herself in the mirror, Pidge blinks away her tears for good and leaves the bathroom in search of a solution. 

Pidge checks herself for a fever in the medbay, and surprisingly, her temperature is within the normal range. There’s no need to alert her teammates, then, she figures. Why bother them over something that’ll most likely blow over by tomorrow, assuming she gets a handle on it now and a good, full night of rest? 

She snatches some pills for nausea from one of the cabinets before swinging by the kitchen for a glass of water, then to her bedroom to tuck herself in for some proper—albeit extremely, extremely early—sleep. 

She runs into another problem when she finds her bed completely loaded with bits and pieces from the dozens of projects she’s currenty working on. Pieces of tech, random bolts and screws, a large sheet of metal that she honestly can’t remember what she intended to do with—all of this with her space caterpillars circling above, their marks glowing in multicolor as they chirp their concern at Pidge. 

Pidge does her best to smile at them, even though she doesn’t really feel it. “I’ll be okay, guys,” she tells them, then sets about dragging everything from her bed onto the floor. The blankets probably aren’t the cleanest, considering the places she found all her stuff, but she doesn’t have the energy to wash them right now, so it’ll have to be good enough. Honestly, she can’t even remember the last time she curled up in a bed to sleep—she spends most nights sleeping over her laptop in her lab, bent in way too uncomfortable a position. Maybe that’s why she’s always so grouchy when she wakes up—though that’s neither here nor there. 

Finally, Pidge manages to shake all the little scraps from her sheets and slides underneath, reaching for the pills and the water on her bedside table and downing both before curling up on her side to sleep. 

Her caterpillar friends join her immediately, snuggling up under her arms and around her head like protective, sentient stuffed animals. They make her feel almost okay, and she almost smiles as she presses her face to one. She sniffles, pretending she isn’t fighting off new tears, pretending she doesn’t want her mom so badly that it hurts like a physical, visceral thing, and closes her eyes. 

Pidge must be sick, because sleep doesn’t normally find her that easily or that quickly. She wakes up late, too—far too late, since considering how early she went to sleep, her natural circadian rhythm should have had her waking up after only about five hours—six, tops. It’s past team breakfast time, she realizes when she blinks open her eyes to find her clock blinking back at her in green Altean numbers—and then becomes aware of another, much more pressing problem. 

Her stomach. What had been an uncomfortable, unusual cramping yesterday seems to have intensified tenfold overnight. It hurts, something fierce and terrible like she’s never felt before, and when she sits up, it feels like all of the wind gets knocked out of her from the simple movement alone. 

Pidge bites her lip on a whimper, swallowing it down as she pushes back the blankets. She shifts to get up with the intention of doing— something, she doesn’t know. Heading back to the medbay to conduct a more thorough bio-scan, maybe, figure out what’s really wrong with her. (Which, in retrospect, she should have done yesterday, but she had been too tired and achy and focused on getting rest to do much more than what she did.) But as she pushes herself with her hands to get off the bed, she becomes aware of something uncomfortably wet coming from a region of her body that should decidedly not be wet. Bewildered, she looks down, wondering for a moment if it’s possible she’d been so dead to the world in the night that she peed the bed— and as her eyes fall on something telling and starkly red, she realizes that the reality of the situation is much, much worse. 

Oh. Oh. This is . . . Not an alien flu, then. 

“Fuck,” Pidge whispers. Her eyes are blurring before she’s even fully aware of what’s happening—except she’s all too aware of what’s happened. She’s just gotten her period in fucking space, after ignoring what were probably some pretty obvious signs, and she should’ve—she should’ve known this was going to happen, at some point. In the back of her mind, she was. It’s just—well, she’s fifteen, which is a little on the older side of the spectrum when it comes to first periods, and there had been a large chunk of her adolescence where she wondered if she might not get it. Which had brought with it some concerns, from a medical standpoint, until she took those concerns to her mother and was assured that she was just a late bloomer. It’ll come when it comes. There’s no need to worry about it until then, Katie. 

It’s not like Pidge had been looking forward to her period. She knew some girls back home who made a big deal out of theirs, who saw it as a mark of womanhood or something along those lines, but thinking of it like that always just made Pidge want to gag from how stupid and gross that mindset seemed to her. Nevertheless, she liked to be prepared—still does—for any possible situation. She’d kept an emergency pack of tampons hidden under her bed at the Garrison, just in case, but had never had to pull them out. (Actually, they’re probably still there, and will probably be the source of some teenage boy confusion if they’re ever found.) 

The point is, she’d been prepared— but then she’d launched herself into space in a fucking robot lion and subsequently forgotten about little things like human bodily functions she’d never had to deal with before. And now, Pidge is staring at a puddle of blood in her bed and vacantly wondering if that’s ever going to come out, but the larger part of her is spiraling as she realizes that after all her anxiety over just wanting to get it over with and not worry about her period springing a surprise-attack on her, she’s fallen into exactly that. And she . . . She’s not ready. 

Pidge had kind of always assumed, when she got her first period, that her mom would be there to talk her through it. Even though Pidge knows all of the scientific stuff—she knows how this works, she knows her own body and what’s supposed to be normal and that in time, she’ll figure out what’s supposed to be normal for her body— she was still counting on her mom to be there to remind her of all that, to tell her everything was okay and brush her hair with her fingers and offer to make some peanut butter cookies. To hug her, to hold her and comfort her and watch bad horror movies with her until Pidge felt okay and could start acting like her normal self again. 

But her mom’s not here. In fact, there’s no one here who can help her, or even possibly understand— all of her teammates are fucking boys, and the only person on the spaceship who isn’t one is Allura, who isn’t exactly human. Pidge doesn’t know what kind of reproductive cycles Alteans even have, and she’s never thought to ask, but since Alteans are so magical and generally everything they do is a billion times easier and more advanced than humans, if Allura does have a period, it probably includes zero cramping and involves, like, glitter shooting out of her alien uterus like confetti at a New Year’s Eve party or something. 

Fuck. Pidge doesn’t think she’s ever felt so alone in her whole fucking life, and she’s starting off her day in the worst possible way, under the worst possible circumstances, and she just wants her mom, damn it, and she wants her stomach to stop hurting so she can get out of bed and change her pants and try to clean her sheets—but instead of doing anything she wants, Pidge finds herself helpless to do anything but curl her knees up to her chest and begin to full-on sob. 

Pidge tries really, really hard not to be a crier. When she was a kid, she cried all the time, over every little stupid thing over the sun—until she got old enough for it to go from being some cute little kid thing to being a dumb, overemotional girl kind of thing. The things that are acceptable in elementary school quickly give way to ridicule once middle school hits, and Pidge came to the horrible understanding—like so many girls do—that crying will label you as someone weak and unable to handle your emotions, that crying makes you a dumb whiny bitch and is unacceptable. 

Except, knowing that crying makes you something weak has never really stopped Pidge before. She tries, but, well—she’s had a lot going on. From losing her dad and brother to leaving her mom with no warning, pretending to be a boy for months on end before launching into space with some dudes she barely knew and her brother’s best friend who’d been presumed dead just to be told she’s a destined warrior in an intergalactic fight against evil . . . None of it has exactly been easy, and try as she might, Pidge has fucking limits. She always makes sure she’s alone when it hits, that she can hide her face behind her laptop and pretend it’s not happening, and she’s good at covering it up in seconds when Lance or Hunk barges in on her while she’s working, but the point is—she doesn’t let them see.

What, are you on your period or something? She can remember the way boys would scoff it at girls when they dared to act annoyed or upset or generally not give them an ounce of attention, mouths quirking like they thought themselves something clever over something they barely even understood— something that, when they weren’t using it to being sexist, asshole-ish pricks, treated like the plague and mimed gagging over. 

None of her friends have been assholes to her over the whole girl thing yet, and there’s a big part of her that’s pretty sure they won't be, ever—but there’s another, always suspicious part of her that wonders if they have limits too, and she doesn’t want them to look at her differently. She doesn’t want them to see her as someone weak, as anything less than what they are. Because she’s not less, she’s never been less, and she’ll take on a fistfight with Zarkon before she’ll ever let anyone suggest as much—but it would still hurt to be accused of it.   

So, she cries. She’s a fifteen-year-old girl who just started her period in space with absolutely no emotional or moral support— fucking sue her. As for the assholes who try to say periods don’t hurt, yeah fucking right, because she thinks this is right up there with being shot, like someone fired a bullet straight into her uterus, and fuck fucking boys because if they had to deal with this, they wouldn’t laugh and make jokes and ridicule girls (or anyone in general who owns a uterus) for it. 

Oh, fuck. This is . . . this is something she’s going to have to deal with every month now, isn’t it? Or—every phoeb, at least, which are a little longer than months, but the idea still stands, and it sucks. How do people with periods do this on a month to month basis without like, fucking dying? How is she meant to commandeer a warship when she can’t get out of fucking bed or stop crying for five fucking seconds? 

She feels in every fiber of her bones like the weak, useless person she’s never wanted to look like, let alone be. She feels like shit.   

A knock on her door startles her so bad that her knees jerk against her chin—not hard, thankfully, because a broken jaw is the last thing she’s equipped to handle on top of everything else right now. A moment later, a curious voice calls, “Hey, Pidge, you in there? You missed breakfast, and everyone’s looking for you.” 

Fuck. Fucking fuck. Pidge can’t be seen like this, but of course . . . She’s going to have to leave her room, at some point during the day. There’s still team training, and she doesn’t get the day off just because of some stupid biological thing, and if she leaves her laptop unattended in her lab for too long the others are going to have questions, and she can’t . . . She can’t be like this. She has to woman up. She has to get up and clean herself up and figure out what to do about the whole blood situation, and she needs to open her mouth and let Keith know she’s fine, she just overslept—but instead, she has to bite down on another sob before it can escape, muffle it against her knees and pray to any deity in the universe that Keith will assume she’s not here and move on to searching the next place. 

Please, please, please go away, she thinks. 

A moment of silence passes, and she thinks maybe that’s what Keith’s done after all, even though she didn’t hear footsteps leaving—but then his voice comes again as he says, “Okay, I’m coming in. I really hope this won’t come back to bite me later, but we’ve gotta cover the bases . . .” 

He won’t get in, Pidge is sure. Her password is foolproof, there’s no way he’ll fucking—

Her door beeps, then slides open. Pidge makes this demonic, unhuman screeching noise, half-outraged and half- horrified. “What the fuck?” she shouts, trying to sound angry—but her voice comes out all croaky and broken and gross, and she doesn’t sound like half the badass that she wants to. “How did you fucking figure out my password?” she demands, then screeches again as Keith’s eyes find her on her bed. “NO— don’t fucking look at me.” 

“I didn’t. Hunk told me it was the first ten digits of Pi,” Keith tells her, first and foremost, because he’s Keith and he never lets a question go unanswered. He frowns, padding further into the room and squinting in the low light, and not doing at all what she told him to. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks. “Are you . . . are you crying?” 

“No,” Pidge snaps again, because she’s fucking not. She’s swiping at her face almost frantically, desperate to rid herself of the evidence of tears and snot—but she can’t do it fast enough, she’s more of a mess than she normally is when she cries in her lab and damn it, Keith, do not turn on the lights, fuck get out, get the FUCK OUT—

Light floods her room, soft and yellow, and Pidge tries to curl further into herself like that’ll be enough to hide her. “Just leave me alone,” she chokes out, hoping that the simple plea will be enough to make her friend listen to her. But he doesn’t—he’s Keith— and Pidge curses whoever thought it would be a good idea for him to be the one to check her room. It was probably Shiro. Fuck Shiro. 

The thing is, of everyone on this castle-war-spaceship, Pidge would probably consider Keith her closest friend. They’re similar in a lot of ways that the others just can’t relate to—their aversion to people and their social anxiety, the way they’re both awful with words and better with actions, the way they’d rather punch something than talk about their feelings ever. They share a love for anything sweet and bad Altean horror movies, and on Pidge’s sad nights sometimes she’ll seek Keith out to see if he wants to watch one, or he’ll seek her out, and normally they have a good time together because they don’t ever have to talk to each other. With Keith, it’s easy to just exist, the way it so rarely ever is with anyone else. 

Matt had been one of those people for her, before. She guesses that makes Keith the closest thing she has to a brother, out here. 

“Pidge, what’s wrong?” Keith repeats. Stupid, well-intentioned Keith pads across the room to perch on the end of her bed, mouth open like he’s about to ask another question until his eyes fall to Pidge’s crossed ankles and the slowly blooming stain of red around her. There’s not a lot of blood, by any means—at least, it’s not some gigantic puddle like she’d always assumed it’d be like in movies and books. But there’s still enough for it to be noticeable, and she sees when Keith sees it, and then she buries her face in her knees because she’s so humiliated and she starts sobbing again, loud and wet and disgusting sounds that she hates with everything in her. 

“Oh, fuck,” she hears Keith swear softly. Then, louder, he hesitantly asks, “Pidge . . . Is this—is this the first time this has happened?” 

For a moment, Pidge is unable to even really think about the question through her crying. When it registers, all she can do is nod against her knees, still refusing to look at Keith. He curses again, just as quiet as before, then says, “Okay. Okay—is it okay if I touch you?” 

After another moment of hesitation, Pidge nods. Keith scoots closer to her on the bed, facing her as his hand comes around to rub her back. The contact is warm, and even though Keith asked it’s still somehow unexpected, and Pidge finds herself involuntarily slumping into Keith until her head hits his shoulder as she continues to cry, arms loosing themselves from her knees to wind around his neck instead. 

Fuck, it feels so good to not be alone, but this sucks because she knows exactly what she must look like, and what Keith must be thinking of her, but his hand stays warm and steady on her back as he moves it up and down her spine. Even through the fabric of her sleep shirt, she can feel how warm he is—Keith runs hot like he’s his own personal sun, and Pidge knows this from the few times they’ve hugged before, but it still doesn’t prepare her for the burst of warmth along a place that really, really needs it. 

Pidge sniffles, and since she’s already this low she figures, what do I have to lose? and rubs her wet face on Keith’s shirt. Keith doesn’t complain, though. Voice croaky, she mutters, “How d’you know this feels nice?” 

“What? Rubbing your back?” Keith hums at her answering nod, then answers, blatantly honest, “I didn’t know. I was just hoping for the best. I’m a little freaked out right now.” 

Pidge can’t help but laugh, a startling sensation between all the crying. “Me too,” she replies. Keith squeezes her tighter. 

“Plus, isn’t back pain like . . . A common period thing? Like you’re basically having mini-contractions, right? Sounds like it fucking sucks.” 

Pidge groans, now, and slams her forehead back against Keith’s shoulder. “It fucking does,” she whines. “I don’t ever even want kids, what’s the fucking point?” 

Keith hums again, sympathetic and low. “It’s fucked up,” he agrees. Oddly, that seems to be what she needs to hear, because it makes her laugh again, and she realizes that she doesn’t feel quite so overwhelmed by panic and horror anymore. 

“So . . . Listen,” Keith says. “I get that all of this is probably . . . Surprising. And not very pleasant. But we should probably do something about it? I mean, you’re probably not having—much fun, sitting in your own blood, so we should do something about that. You should go take a shower, or a bath, or—whatever will make you feel better. And I’m going to go get Allura.” 

Pidge stiffens minutely. “Allura?” she repeats. “Why?” 

“Be . . . cause?” Keith’s own voice sounds like a question. “She’s a girl. And probably way better equipped to help you with this than I am.”

“She’s an Altean girl,” Pidge corrects. “It’s not—not the same. She probably doesn’t even know what periods are.” 

Keith is still rubbing her back, all warm and reassuring, and Pidge closes her eyes and soaks it all in. “Maybe, but it doesn’t hurt to ask,” Keith says. “She’s more likely to know anything than anyone else. Even if Alteans don’t have periods, there’s gotta be some other species that does that she knows of. Also . . . my next go-to for information would be Lance. Which is fine, if you’d rather me skip over Allura and go straight to him, but . . .” 

Pidge thinks about it for a longer moment than is probably necessary. Pidge gets why Keith would go to Lance, honestly—Lance comes from a big family, with sisters and in-laws and more cousins than Pidge would ever know what to do with, and as a byproduct probably knows more about this stuff than Pidge would’ve credited him with when she first met him. But at the same time . . . 

Keith knowing about this is bad enough. She doesn’t think she wants the entirety of her male friend group to find out about her period before she even knows how to deal with it. “Fine—ask Allura,” she mutters. “I’m just gonna go . . . die, now, I guess.” 

Keith squeezes Pidge again before pulling away. He smiles as he ruffles her hair and says, “It’s gonna be alright, Pidge.” 

“Easy for you to say, you fucking boy,” she mutters as she crawls out of bed. She cringes at the cramping in her stomach and the disgusting sensation that comes from having blood all over the inside of her pajama pants, but she manages to stand okay on her own and goes to gather some clothes for after her shower. 

She hears Keith laugh quietly behind her, but it’s not in a mean way. “Fair enough,” he concedes. She turns back to look at him as she’s heading into the bathroom attached to her room and frowns, stopping in the doorway.  

“You don’t . . . have to do that,” she says, shifting uncomfortably. “Seriously, Keith, I can take care of my own bedding—” 

“It’s fine,” Keith replies. He looks up from where he’s tearing the top layer off her bed, smiling when he meets her uneasy expression. “Seriously, don’t worry about it. Go.” He nods at her bathroom door with meaning, and she realizes this isn’t an argument she’s going to win. Or even one she wants to have, really. 

Admitting defeat, Pidge sighs and nods and goes to take her shower. 

Showers really are one of the universe’s few gifts to humanity. Pidge goes in feeling like a gross, miserable pile of pathetic, and only a few minutes in she feels like a whole new person. Well—she still feels pretty miserable, but at least she’s a clean kind of miserable. 

She’s interested to note that once the initial stream of red swirls down the drain, it doesn’t continue to be so dramatic. The water runs clear all around her, and she could almost pretend she’s not going to be gushing blood like it’s her job for the next week, except for the unrelenting cramps. After awhile she lays down on the shower floor and lets the hot water fall directly to hit her abdomen, sighing at the temporary reprieve it provides. 

She stays like that for . . . probably an ungodly amount of time. Altean showers never get cold unless you want them to, and she dreads the way she’ll feel when she actually stands up again. So she just . . . doesn’t, for a long time, until her skin turns as red as a lobster and she decides she’s had enough of this, for now, and should probably go track down Keith and find out if he’s found anything useful. 

She runs into a new problem though as she’s getting out and drying off. Namely, figuring out what to do if she doesn’t want to bleed right through her new, clean underwear and pants. She doesn’t have access to any kind of tampons or pads for the time being, so she’s going to have to get a little creative. It’s as she’s pawing through her towel cabinet for a washcloth that there’s a knock on her door, and she pauses. “Yeah?” she calls. 

“It’s me,” Allura’s distinct voice rings through the door, calm and naturally confident in that subtle way that Pidge has always kind of envied. “Keith informed me of your . . . ah, situation. I believe I have some things that can help.” 

Curious, and admittedly more than a little desperate, Pidge clutches her towel to her chest and pads over to the door to open it. Allura stands on the other side, arms loaded down with . . . actually, Pidge isn’t quite sure what all she has. 

“May I?” she says, and Pidge has no reason to say no since she’s here to help, so . . . She shrugs and steps aside, allowing Allura into the bathroom. 

“I must admit that I have no idea how much human cycles differ from Altean ones, but the way Keith described it sounded similar enough, albeit much more . . . frequent. Though I suppose that makes more sense when you take the length of our lifetimes into account—humans live much shorter lives, and therefore your cycles are a bit more demanding. Is that right?” 

Pidge thinks about it, then tilts her hand in a see-saw motion. “More or less,” she says. “How often do you get . . . Altean cycles?” 

“Generally speaking, twice a decaphoeb,” Allura tells her. “They also tend to last about two movements.” 

Pidge does the math. That’s like . . . two weeks per every six months. Lucky bastards, she thinks. “Oh,” she says. “Yeah, that’s . . . A lot less than human periods. We get them every month—er, phoeb after we start, and that’s anywhere from five to seven days for most people. Sometimes less, sometimes more, but I’ll probably fall somewhere along those lines.” 

Pidge kind of wants to ask about the glitter confetti thing—if it’s really blood Alteans shed, or something more magical and cool. She resists the urge, though. Allura is helping her out, and it’s not really her business what comes out of her alien friend’s body every six months, so . . . 

Allura lays out all of her products on the counter and starts explaining each one’s function. She has a pack of washable pieces of fabric that function exactly like reusable pads and something that’s malleable and squishy and looks like a really small tampon, until Allura explains how it works and Pidge realizes it’s just a really cool, advanced Altean menstrual cup. Evidently, as Allura explains, you just put it in and it expands and shapes itself to the natural width and shape of your vagina, which—honestly, that’s pretty fucking cool. Pidge is kind of excited to try that out. It’s green, too, which is just an added bonus, and kind of a stupid thing to be happy about, but . . . small joys, right? 

There’s also a heating pad that works pretty similarly to ones from earth, except with this weird wax that warms up and acts as an adhesive to skin, then hardens back up once you take it off, and is reusable for . . . pretty much ever. Pidge can’t deny that it’s also pretty fucking cool. 

Allura also brings some pain meds for cramping and headaches, as well as some herbal juniberry tea that she swears by, and a spray bottle of something that she also swears by for getting stains out of clothes if Pidge leaks through something and doesn’t have a chance to wash it right away. “It dries instantly too,” she says, “So no worries about looking as if you accidentally wet yourself instead, either! It truly is a miracle worker!” 

Well, that kind of confirms a no on the glitter thing. Probably. Pidge decides to let it go for now. 

For a minute, she just stands there, taking in the sight of all this stuff Allura pulled together for her at barely a moment’s notice, and feels so stupidly emotional that her eyes water. She hadn’t expected anyone to go to such lengths to help her—really, she hadn’t been expecting to get any help for this—but she’s so, so grateful for it. She had felt like she was drowning when she first woke up, and now she feels . . . kind of okay. Not great, but okay. She thinks she’ll be able to handle this, now. She thinks it won’t be quite as bad as it seemed in the moment. 

“Hey—Allura?” Pidge looks up at Allura, feeing vulnerable in a way that strangely has nothing to do with the fact that she’s only wearing a towel, and say, “. . . Thanks.” 

Allura smiles easily. “Of course,” she says. “I also wanted to thank you, Pidge. I know I made you . . . a bit uncomfortable, back when I first found out you were a girl. I had hoped you would fill the void of sisterhood in a way that—simply is not you. And that is okay, because I realize now that I should not have put those expectations on you solely because of your gender. Lance fills that void quite well, and he enjoys our beauty regimens and routines, and that’s all that matters in that regard. 

“I suppose what I’m getting at,” Allura summarizes with a quiet, almost sheepish sigh, “is that I’m grateful you are allowing me to help with this. I know you don’t always . . . trust easily when it comes to personal matters, and that makes it an honor to be with you during such an uncertain time. I never want any of my paladins to feel as if they have to handle something alone. I consider you all my friends . . . family, even. And I hope, at least, that you know you can trust me and come to me, should you ever need anything.”

Fuck, Pidge’s eyes are watering again. Actually . . . 

“Oh, shit,” she grumbles. She holds onto her towel with one hand and uses the other to swipe at her eyes. “Fuck, don’t mind me, I’m just . . .” 

“Oh. Oh, dear, did I say something wrong?” Allura frets. 

“No, no,” Pidge waves her away. With a final sniffle, she scrubs the last of the tears away and forces a smile. “Sorry, it’s just . . . Dumb hormones. I’m okay. And I—I think of you as a friend, too. As family. That means a lot, Allura.” 

Allura smiles again, this time in understanding. “Believe me, I quite understand the hormonal imbalance. Mine always manifest as unrelenting rage—I always spend all of my free moments on the training deck, destroying whatever I can get my hands on,” she says. Pidge has a flashback to a couple phoebs back when Allura had been so pissed over literally everything. They’d been in the middle of a terse diplomatic agreement with a pretty snobby planet, and Allura had shouted a stream of profanities at their pompous, self-entitled leader during one of their meetings before stalking from the room and refusing to take part in any more of the treaty for the rest of the week. 

Huh. At the time, Pidge had thought Allura’d finally cracked from the stress of always having to be the calm, peaceful princess and was letting her true colors fly. Admittedly, stress and irritation were probably a major factor in that situation . . . but throwing a period on top of it certainly wouldn’t make Pidge feel any more diplomatic. 

“Make no mistake, Pidge—these feelings will pass. But in the moment, perhaps it would be a good idea to embrace them,” Allura suggests. “There is a part of me that enjoys my cycles, because they allow me to work out all of the emotions I never realize I bottle up until I have an outlet to release them. This is a time to focus not only on your physical health, but your emotional health as well, and no one will fault you for taking as long as you need for them. Really, you deserve this time to yourself. And if your way of working through emotions is to cry, then by all means . . .” Allura shrugs, her smile never fading, and shrugs. “Go right ahead,” she finishes, as if it’s that easy to say. As if it’s that easy to believe. 

Pidge feels another pricking, unwelcome stab of envy towards Allura. She’d kill for Allura’s easy confidence for being herself—for being confident because she doesn’t feel like she has to prove anything to anyone. 

Of course, no one would ever try to tell Allura she’s not a total badass. Allura could kill a man with one hand, and she’d do it gracefully. In battle, Allura wears blood like an actress wears a dress on a red carpet. She’s so effortlessly ethereal, so beautiful and deadly at once, and Pidge is . . . small, and scrawny, and scrappy in battle—resorting to tactics she’d learned from play-fighting with Matt as a kid, kicking and pulling hair and, when all else fails, biting. It always, without fail, works—but it’s nowhere near graceful or elegant. 

Not that she wants to be those things. Pidge doesn’t know why she’s comparing herself to Allura at all. It’s like Allura just said, they’re both too very different people, and the fact that they both happen to own uteruses has nothing to do with it. 

Still, that doesn’t change the fact that Pidge doesn’t want to embrace her emotions and spend all week crying. She just wants to pretend her emotions don’t exist, push them away into the corner and hide from them until they leave her alone—and never, ever admit them to anybody, even herself. 

Still, Pidge forces another smile. This one, she doesn’t really feel. “Yeah,” she says. “Thanks, Allura.” 

Allura smiles back, something genuine and trusting and caring, and Pidge tries to pretend that she can’t feel all of the treacherous, awful feelings stirring in her chest. 

Allura leaves her alone to figure out how the cool Altean menstrual cup works. At first, Pidge worries that she’ll have a hard time with it, remembering all of her mom’s nightmare stories about when she first started using tampons, but it goes in easily and pops into place with barely any fuss—no traumatic experiences involved, no stressed-out tears, no uncomfortable trips to the medbay. Pidge puts the reusable pads under her cabinet to try out at a later date, straps on the heated pad, and finally puts on some clothes. 

Allura returns right as Pidge is leaving her bathroom, knocking on the door and then slipping past Pidge into the room once she opens the door. “I brought you some leftovers from breakfast,” she tells her. “It’s important that you eat to avoid the risks of anemia—trust me on that. Though if you want to go back to bed now, it’s quite alright, as long as you make sure to eat something once you wake up. I’ll leave it here for you.” 

Again, Pidge is weirdly touched by her thoughtfulness as she watches Allura set the tray down on her bedside table. There’s a bowl of food goo, another bowl of something that Hunk definitely made, if the aroma wafting from it is any indicator, and a glass of juice. 

“Thank you, Allura,” she says. “That’s really nice.” 

“Of course,” Allura says easily. “Is there anything else I can get for you?” 

“Oh, that’s okay.” Pidge frowns a little. “I was just about to leave to get my laptop, you don’t have to—” 

“Nonsense. I will get it for you.” Allura doesn’t leave room for any argument. She sweeps from the room without another word or half a second’s pause for Pidge to protest. With a sigh, Pidge turns away from the door . . . and finds her bed perfectly well made, sheets clean for the first time she can remember since first coming to the Castle of Lions. 

Keith. Fuck, she’d completely forgotten about Keith. She should thank him for not treating her like a fucking baby when he found her, and also for finding Allura for her. And for making her bed, apparently. He’s such a good friend, and she should tell him. Maybe she’ll ask Allura to go find him when she gets back . . . 

With a reluctant yawn, Pidge climbs back into bed and under the fresh sheets to wait for Allura to come back. Then she lays down, deciding that waiting will be more comfortable like this, and her space caterpillars come over to crowd around her head, chirruping and letting their marks flash brightly as they snuggle close. 

“Yeah, I’m better today, guys. Thanks for asking,” Pidge tells them. She closes her eyes. Closing them for just a minute won’t hurt anything. . . .

When Pidge wakes up, the lights in her room are off. Her laptop is sitting at the foot of her bed. Allura must’ve turned them off when she brought it, she thinks distantly, before realizing with a start that she’d fallen asleep again. Pidge doesn’t normally sleep this much, and now she’s completely wired. And a little groggy, like she’s stuffed her head with cotton. It’s not completely pleasant, but at least it’s not period cramps. 

Someone knocks on her door again, and that’s what reminds her of what woke her in the first place. She shifts so she’s sitting up, the caterpillars floating in a circle around her head, and clears her throat. “Yeah?” she calls. 

Again, her door opens of its own volition. Or really, at Keith’s volition—he’s standing in her doorway when it slides back, peering inside with nothing but sheer worry on his face as he says, “Hey, just wanted to check in on you. I came by after Allura left but I guess you were asleep, because you didn’t answer.” 

“Oh.” Pidge yawns so hard that her jaw pops. “Yeah, guess I did. I was uh . . . a little emotionally exhausted.” 

“I’ll bet.” Keith pads into the room and over to her bed, perching on the end by her laptop. He looks a bit uncertain about whether he’s allowed there, and the result is his body language curving like a bird about to take flight. Part of Pidge wants to laugh. 

The other part feels so soft. 

“C’mere,” she says. She makes grabby hands until Keith complies, shifting across the bed so he can sit next to her instead, and she immediately turns to curl around him like an octopus. “Thank you,” she mutters into his shirt, as he settles a hesitant hand on the back of her head. “For not . . . Not treating me like I’m stupid and overemotional earlier, even though I was. Thanks for . . . not being an asshole, I guess.” 

She can hear the frown in Keith’s voice when he responds. “Uh, Pidge? I’m pretty sure you know that waking up surrounded in your own blood isn’t something stupid. Honestly, if the same thing happened to me I probably would have been screaming, so . . . All things considered, I’d say you handled it pretty well. Not that it’s my place to judge that.” 

Pidge laughs. “Well, if it happened to you, it’d probably be because you rolled on your knife in your sleep and stabbed yourself or something. Which . . . isn’t too unlikely, actually. Hey, maybe you shouldn’t sleep with a knife anymore.” 

“That knife is like a stuffed animal to me. If anyone tries to take it from me they’re gonna get fucking cut.” 

Pidge laughs again. She rests her face there, in the crook between Keih’s shoulder and neck, for a long while. Then, abruptly, she says, “Hey—you know I fucking love you, right?”

Keith’s hand stills in her hair as if the words startle him, but he picks up the motion again after the unsteady beat passes. “I fucking love you too, Pidge,” he softly replies. 

“And thank you for changing my blankets. And not being grossed out about it.”

At that, Keith snorts. “Are you kidding? That was nothing. Literally nothing bothers me after that time we had to strip Lance down to shower off green, noxious space-skunk spray. I have nightmares where we find the fucking skunk on the castle and Lance tries to pet it again, and the thought of it is honestly worse than the thought of taking on Zarkon by myself.” 

Pidge bites down a grin at the memory. That had been fucking hilarious. And hey, she’d told Lance not to touch the skunk, and he didn’t listen to her, so she’s allowed to be amused by the chaos that descended after he went ahead and touched the skunk anyway. 

Keith, evidently, doesn’t share the same sentiments, so she doesn’t laugh. Too much. 

Keith sighs anyway, because he knows where her mind is. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” he grumbles. “Anyway—no, when I say it’s not a big deal, it’s not, Pidge. It would be pretty fucking hypocritical to get weird over blood when I spend like, seventy-five percent of the time getting myself ripped to shreds in battle. Don’t worry about it, okay?” 

Pidge is quiet for a moment, thinking it over. Right now, she feels so stupidly comfortable, and this conversation is so much softer than she ever would’ve imagined a conversation between herself and Keith would be, and she can’t quite remember why she was so worried about Keith getting weird before. This is Keith. Keith is the least asshole-ish guy Pidge has ever met. That’s part of why she loves him so much. 

“Okay,” she says. She hums, shifting so she’s resting more comfortably against Keith’s shoulder, and asks, “D’you wanna watch a bad horror movie with me?” 

“Yes,” Keith says. Again, his hand stills in her hair. “Do you want to do that right now?” 

“Mmm . . .” Pidge thinks it over. “In a few minutes,” she decides, and snuggles closer to Keith, and sighs in content. “Right now, things are pretty fucking good right here.”