Surprise! I wrote this between classes because I was just feeling inspired, I suppose.
Pidge:
· Pidge’s safe place on the ship is her office. We don’t get to see much of her office, but whenever we do, we can see that she likes it messy; she has blankets thrown everywhere and books scattered here, there and everywhere. There was one time where Allura tried to help her clean it up and Pidge sat in the corner, watching Allura with wide eyes as the princess picked up her clothes and tossed them into the wardrobe.
The next day, Pidge had thrown everything back onto the floor. She didn’t like the unfamiliar atmosphere of a clean room, since having things thrown everywhere makes her feel like the room is smaller, and she likes smaller rooms. They make her feel cosier, and like less people can fit inside of them. They make her feel safer.
· Pidge sometimes needs brought back to reality whenever she is in a stressful situation. It’s usually Keith who notices whenever she’s starting to get overwhelmed, and it’s usually him who sits down next to her and tries to calm her down.
· She likes it whenever people hold her hand and squeeze really hard. The action keeps her grounded and it’s something she can concentrate on, releasing her from whatever stress she feels is surrounding her.
· She wears only one jacket and absolutely refuses to wear any other jacket due to her fear of being exposed to sensory irritation.
· She hears things a lot louder than other people, which very often is the main cause of her stress and the main reason she decides to isolate herself a lot of the time. Whenever she’s in battle, she often hums to herself or puts music on to block out the noise of the guns and the screaming because, what sounds like a normal volume to other people, sounds like a screeching, bellowing and echoing noise to her that overwhelms her beyond anything.
· She doesn’t wear skinny jeans. She prefers sweats – things that don’t cling to her legs.
· Pidge prefers not to get involved whenever there’s banter being passed around, though people try to include her anyway. She struggles to understand when sarcasm is being used, or when it is a joke being passed around, so instead of making anybody feel awkward by her lack of understanding, she just stays quiet.
· Of course, the other Paladins completely understand and it’s very rare that they actually ever feel awkward whenever she has to ask for confirmation that what they just said was, indeed, a joke.
· She likes spending time with Shiro, because Shiro listens to her.
· She sometimes spends hours upon hours talking about computers. She loses track of time, getting so absorbed in explaining the different mechanics and the different things you can do with them, and Shiro is always willing to listen.
· Pidge also likes it because Shiro asks questions afterwards, as well. Pidge likes it whenever he shows interest in the things she just told him.
· She has a blanket that she carries around with her that has ruffled edges. She likes to play with the ruffles between her fingers to keep her hands busy.
· She has a special pull-over that she puts over the top of the gear stick in the green lion because she doesn’t like the feel of the bare gear stick in her palm.
· She often sneaks out of her room at night to simply wander the halls because she likes the calm and peaceful atmosphere that comes with having nobody around; everybody is sleeping.
· The other Paladins being very protective over her and getting extremely riled up whenever somebody uses her autism against her.
· The other Paladins making her their main priority whenever she is on the verge of a meltdown, a shutdown or any form of sensory overload.
· She likes to be reassured that she’s doing her job right, as well. She feels a little lost whenever somebody doesn’t tell her she’s doing something right, and that can often lead to her giving up on the task at hand because she feels as if she’s done it wrong, so there’s no point.
For the autistic hcs, could you do 2, 5, and 11 for Pidge?
omg thank you, nonny, now i feel so much better about how i also thought that the meme involved asking about specific characters when, upon a reread, it just says, “send a fandom” ♡
2. Stimming headcanons?
“Pidge, stop bouncing your leg during a simulator!” / “I’m not bouncing my leg, Lance, wth???”
Katie Holt, before she cut her hair and started calling herself Pidge, used to stim a lot by playing with her hair. She’d have to tie it back while trying to do most things that required close attention, because it was easy for her to get distracted from them by playing with her hair
(or alternately, it was easy to get frustrated, need to stim, and get her hair covered in coolant or something, and then feel disgusting and unable to stim, but oh god, she can’t go take a shower until she’s done doing the thing, that’s not how this is supposed to work, but she can’t focus on doing the thing because stimming isn’t even an option, and oh god, what do????)
She thought cutting her hair was going to kill her a little bit inside, but now she has a new hair stim that actually works a lot better. Namely: flipping it.
“Pidge, come on! You’re bouncing your leg during the simulator again! It’s making me nervous!!” / “??? Lance, what the heck is Hunk talking about” / “He’s talking about stop bouncing your stupid leg, Pidge!” / “I am NOT bouncing my leg!!!”
Pidge doesn’t want you touching her, but also she wants a lot of physical affection and to be compressed in a hug??? About the only people currently allowed to hug her are Shiro and Hunk (and Matt would be on the list if he were actually around to hug her, but since he isn’t?)
Most of the time, when Pidge wants a hug, she goes and chills with Green instead, because: 1. it’s often hard for her to ask other people for a hug, and 2. maybe lying on top of your Lion’s head and awkwardly trying to embrace her is not quite what she’s after, but it’s better than being hugged by people who don’t know how to do it right. Also, Green just gets her.
“oh my god — Pidge! Again with the leg!!” / “I don’t know what you guys are talking about!!? I do NOT bounce my leg!”
“Lance has a point okay, you’re like really bouncing your leg today, is everything okay, man”
“HUNK SO HELP ME I WILL TURN THIS SIMULATOR AROUND”
“YOU CAN’T TURN IT AROUND LANCE, YOU CAN BARELY FLY IT IN THE FIRST PLACE”
“WELL MAYBE I COULD FLY IT IF YOU WOULD STOP [string of aggravated noises because Lance can’t focus and is kind of forgetting how to make words do the thing] BOUNCING YOUR [string of half-uttered Spanish curses, and more aggravated noises, because Lance really wants to cuss right now (and knows that he can get away with it because Iverson doesn’t know a lick of Spanish), but at the moment, Lance can’t focus enough to get any of the words out of his mouth] FREAKING LEG!!”
“THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE”
“[sighs dramatically. groans.] OH MY FUC— HOW DOES, ‘STOP BOUNCING YOUR [aggravated noises] LEG, IT’S DISTRACTING ME AND MAKING HUNK ANXIOUS’ NOT MAKE ANY [aggravated noises] SENSE TO YOU, PIDGE, AREN’T YOU SUPPOSED TO BE A GENIUS”
“I AM *NOT* BOUNCING MY LEG!!!”
“guys can we stop yelling please i’m really anxious now and lance is flying really bad today oh my god i’m gonna throw up D:”
One stim thing that Pidge legitimately doesn’t understand at all is fidget spinners. She’s taken several of them apart to try and figure out what it is that makes them so appealing to other people, and she still has no idea.
“Pidge, uh? You okay?” / “Of course I’m okay, Hunk. Why wouldn’t I be.”
“Okay, uh. I was just asking because you haven’t been bouncing your leg in the simulator for a couple weeks? Or in class? Or at lunch, when you like actually show up to lunch?”
“…So? Doesn’t that make it better for you and Lance? And get me out of being yelled at for it?”
“Well, yeah, kinda? But it’s also making you kinda look like you always want to puke, and I would know?? And I mean, Lance is a bit much sometimes, but he only wants us to do well—”
“He only wants himself to do well.”
“I mean, he wants that too, but… He really doesn’t mean to be quite as much of a jerk about things? He just…… doesn’t? Really?? Think about stuff? Before he says it? Or does it? Like, ever??? But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about the team doing well, or about you???”
“……Look, I really didn’t notice that I was bouncing my leg, okay. But since I apparently am, and since apparently, it’s tanking our performance almost as much as Lance’s creative approach to flying, it’s just — whatever. I’m trying to make it stop. For everybody. Right?”
“But it might not actually be as helpful as you and Lance think? Like, if it puts you on edge to not be doing it? That can throw you off your game too, right? And I just feel like there could maybe be a better compromise here for all of us if we work together on it, maybe??”
“……*sighs* I have work to do, Hunk. Just…… Tell Lance he doesn’t have to worry about my stupid leg, okay. *exits to go sit on the roof with her equipment where she can just not be bothered or forced to talk about things, with people*”
“Some advanced alien civilization this turned out to be, these people don’t even have clicky pens” — Pidge, about most of the aliens she meets, at one point or another.
But the Olkari have clicky pens made out of tree parts and magitek, which is endlessly fascinating to Pidge because???? How do you make them work and make them so satisfying to click without plastic, omg??
A lot of this leg-bouncing thing would probably have been a bit ameliorated if Lance and Pidge actually knew that they are autistic (Pidge) and have ADHD (both of them), and could have a slightly easier time of putting words on their specific needs with each other…… but sadly, neither of them did. But they’re working on it.
Granted, they are working on it very slowly because both of them are stubborn as shit, and even now that they like each other, they end up needing a lot of space from each other sometimes for a lot of reasons (many of which somehow involve the theme of, “Dealing with each other can easily get very overwhelming for them”).
But…… still. They’re working on it. Just…… give them time.
And maybe help them hook up their Mercury Gameflux already because no seriously, that would do wonders for both of them, and for their relationship (*gestures at how they worked really, really well together on collaborating to fish up enough money to buy the thing*)
otoh, you would probably also need to pull both of them out of hyperfocusing as Hell on their game, and that could get Messy very quickly, so maybe they should try to find a different way to connect with each other better and get on each other’s level better, outside of video games and Voltron
5. hated foods & textures?
FOOD GOO IS SENSORY HELL, WE DO NOT SPEAK OF IT
(or at least we speak of it as little as possible, because Pidge does realize that it’s something of an Altean delicacy and that Hunk is fond of it, at least, so it’s not like she can completely avoid any and all discussion of food goo for the rest of her time with Team Voltron or her time in space, but she would personally just prefer it if she didn’t have to talk about food goo because no seriously it is sensory Hell, you have no idea, or maybe you do, Pidge wouldn’t want to speak over you if you do, but also on the other hand……… etc.)
Why does Pidge hate peanuts so much? because the texture is so terrible, oh god why, they feel so slimy, this is disgusting
Pidge doesn’t know how she feels about the fact that Alteans apparently don’t have flour, but she kind of appreciates the fact that the lack of it means she can be in the kitchen without the constant temptation to just put her hand in the flour
11. how do they prefer to communicate? are they non verbal/have periods of being non verbal? do they use sign language? do they talk? do they prefer text, etc?
If you ask Pidge, the biggest communication issue she has is that sometimes, she loses all sense of how loud or soft her voice is. If you ask most people, that’s probably accurate.
It is not, however, the full truth, because oh man, Pidge has trouble with staying verbal. Sure, sometimes she is hyper-verbal, but…… other times, she really isn’t.
She, however, would not describe this as, “being non-verbal.”
She would call it, “Sometimes, I just forget how to make words do the thing. Y’know? The thing where they come out in sentences and make sense and, like? Connect to concepts and images so people know what I am saying?”
“……That’s called, ‘being non-verbal,’ Pidge.”
“No, it’s not, Keith.”
“Uh, YEAH, it is.”
“Well, obviously, it isn’t, because I can still use words, just not exactly well or entirely correctly!”
“[aggravated noises because Pidge having trouble with accepting that sometimes, she is non-verbal? makes it harder for Keith to stay verbal] Shiro! Tell Pidge that it’s okay to be non-verbal sometimes and she doesn’t have to pretend like she isn’t!!”
“………[well, okay, Keith, strictly speaking? putting your big brother on the spot like this makes it harder for him to be verbal, so this conversation is going to get nowhere slowly and??? Shiro wants to have a motivational speech here for you and Pidge?? Or something? But you put him on the spot and he’s having trouble pulling up the social scripts he needs right now, so you might have to wait a while???]”
“……There, see, Pidge: Shiro agrees with me.”
“……………????!!???!!?!???!??!?!?! *will admit that this reaction is a non-verbal one… maybe eventually someday possibly. but definitely not right now. right now, she’s going to just go hang with Green and probably grumble at Green a lot about how Keith is being stupid and frustrating.*”
On another note entirely: who learned how to be sarcastic as a defense mechanism because she got tired of people making fun of her for being so earnest about things and using it against her when she missed their sarcasm or couldn’t tell when they were lying to her, and now has times when she can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or not because she may or may not have used this defense mechanism so much that she skewed her own internal gauge of her own feelings (which was already kind of off-kilter to begin with)?
Pidge et Keith avaient leur routine : elle faisait du thé, il apportait des couvertures, ils s'asseyaient à ras du sol et prenaient le temps d'analyser la situation. C'était comme si le temps s'arrêtait, comme si la réalité leur accordait la pause dont ils avaient besoin.
Title: Une sorte d’urgence
Characters: Keith, Pidge
Rating: K
Words: 1 400+
Language: Français / English is here
Pidge et Keith avaient leur routine : elle faisait du thé, il apportait des couvertures, ils s'asseyaient à ras du sol et prenaient le temps d'analyser la situation. C'était comme si le temps s'arrêtait, comme si la réalité leur accordait la pause dont ils avaient besoin.
