Work Text:
“Pidge?”
She doesn’t stop typing on her laptop, but she glances up at the doorway, catching Keith’s eye quickly where he stands with one foot in the kitchen. “Yeah? What’s up?”
Pidge feels rather than sees Keith walk into the room, hovering awkwardly near her spot on the floor as if he’s not really sure if he should interrupt Pidge’s work or not. That’s a weird thing about being here, with Voltron: Katie has started thinking of herself as Pidge, just a little bit. Not in a bad way, and not the way that she thought of “Pidge” when she was at Garrison—hiding, forcing herself back into an identity she’d thought she’d shed and killed years ago all while dealing quietly with her own grief. No, it’s different now. Fond. She no longer associates the name with hiding or with hating herself or with a wrong identity; she associates it with Voltron, now.
“I sort of wanted to talk to you about something,” Keith says. Pidge—Katie—finally stops typing, glancing up over the rim of her glasses to look at Keith. He stands there, hands in his pants pockets like he’s trying to look casual. Mostly he just looks anxious. She closes her laptop slowly and sets it to the side.
“Alright, what’s up? Is something wrong?” she asks, feeling her own anxiety rise with his. She hopes it’s not—something bad.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he assures her. He pauses, then finally sits down on the ground next to her. She makes room for him, scooting over. She probably needs to get off the kitchen floor soon, or at least find a better spot to work on her latest project. So far it’s only Keith that’s interrupted her work, but their arbitrary dinner time—arbitrary because who actually knows what time of the day it is out here?—is within the hour. Everyone else will start piling in soon enough.
Keith sits with his legs crossed then seems to decide that isn’t comfortable. She watches him fidget and readjust himself from the corner of her eye for a few seconds, before finally cracking her knuckles and prompting, “So, if nothing’s wrong, what’d you want to talk about?”
He shrugs stiffly. “Can’t I just want to be with you?”
“I mean, sure,” she says, “but you’ve never done that before. You can’t blame me for thinking it’s a little out of character.”
At that, he looks a little like he’s been caught, and she feels bad suddenly for how blunt she is. Before she has a chance to apologize or amend what she said, he seems to deflate a little, letting his shoulders droop. He rubs the back of his neck self-consciously. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s just…about earlier, what you said to everyone.”
Pidge’s stomach does something unpleasant. It’s probably—nothing bad, but she can’t help the pit of anxiety that’s growing. She pushes her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and nods as casually as she can. “Oh. Yeah, okay. Um, what about it…?”
“It’s—I mean, I think…” Keith lets his hand drop from his neck. He can’t seem to find the words to say. “I thought—think it was really cool, that you had the, um, courage to tell us that, and it must have been pretty hard hiding that from everyone for so long and having to deal with…you know, the constant misgendering.”
Okay, so not bad. Thank God. She isn’t sure what she would have done if any of them had an issue with her being trans, especially since they’re stuck out here with basically only each other for who knows how long. If anyone had had an issue with it, she knows that at the very least Shiro would have her back, but still. She’s come to think of the other paladins as her family.
She nods to let him know she’s still listening. He’s stopped talking, but it looks like he wants to say more. He takes a deep breath and doesn’t meet her eye when he says, “It’s…a lot more than I’ve been able to do—the, you know, you coming out to everyone.”
Pidge stares at him. “Are you…?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean—like, ‘coming out’ could be a lot of things, so, is it like…”
He glances at her, meeting her eye for a split second. “I’m trans too. Not—I mean, I’m not a trans girl, I’m a guy, but…”
She’s smiling. It’s hard not to. Growing up, she didn’t know anybody else who was trans; she’d had a few friends that weren’t straight (Lance in all his aggressively bisexual glory, for example), but that was it. It feels—a lot better than she expected, to have somebody she can relate to, even if they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum.
“Am I the only one that knows?”
Keith shakes his head. “Shiro knows. He was my mentor at the Garrison—he’s the one that made it so I could be there at all, actually…”
The Garrison, being a military base, hadn’t allowed transgender kids there, not as far as Pidge knew. That was part of her reason for what she did, but Keith had spent years there, at the top of the class for a long time until the Kerberos mission. Shiro must have had to pull quite a few strings to get him into the Garrison while still presenting as a cis guy.
“Thank you for telling me, then,” she says, and it sounds a little empty but she means it. Keith didn’t have to tell her, especially if he’s avoided coming out to the others for this long, and she knows how hard that is, to tell someone else. She’s glad she knows, and she’s glad he trusts her enough to tell her.
He nods, looking a little embarrassed. “I’m gonna need to come out to the rest of them sometime, but…”
“You don’t have to do it all at once like I did.”
“I know. But still.”
Pidge gets it, the disconnect between not wanting to keep that part of yourself from people you love and yet being terrified to tell them. Everyone will be just as accepting of Keith as they are of her, she knows, but she can’t blame him for hesitating.
“Anyway,” Keith says, stretching his legs out like he’s getting ready to leave, “I just wanted to tell you so you’ll know, and…I mean, I get it. So if you ever have anything you want to talk about, just…I’m here.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Alright.” He stands up, using the wall to help him up. He starts to leave the kitchen but stops at the doorway as if he’s not quite sure what they’re supposed to do now. They were never friends at the Garrison—Pidge can’t remember ever having a substantial conversation with him until Voltron—and even now, this is the first real, one on one interaction they’ve had. It’s hard to tell what they’re supposed to do now.
“I’ll see you around,” he ends up saying. He’s halfway out the door before Pidge calls, “Keith?”
He stops. “Yeah?”
“You too,” she says. “You can come to me if there’s ever anything you wanna talk about, too. Even if it’s not about…you know.”
For a second, he looks genuinely shocked, like he would’ve never expected her to offer the same to him. Then the shock melts into what might be the ghost of a smile, like he wants to be happy but isn’t sure yet how to show that.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll take you up on that.”
She beams.