Punk request

	“Yknow,” Hunk began, barely stifling a yawn as he added the last bolt to the robot’s chassis, “I don’t wanna be a pain, but I don’t think our little earth-altean scrap gladiator is gonna cut it.”
	Pidge spun her chair around, slightly overshooting the angle she needed to face him. “What do you mean?” She looked down at the robot they had spent the last five hours slaving over and frowned. It looked fine, better than anything she’d ever built on earth anyway. It should’ve been a shoo-in for what was basically an alien battlebot tournament. Kids were supposed to enter these things.
	“I mean we don’t know what it’s going up against. What if the other entries have, like, fire swords or they’re made of adamantium or something? Poor little mini-voltron won’t make it past the first round.” He gave the robot an affectionate pat on what would probably qualify as its head.
	“So you just want to give up? Hell no! I’ve already written a few hundred lines of code, I’m NOT--”
	“I never said we’d give up!” Hunk interrupted, throwing his hands up defensively, “I was gonna ask if adding a laser weapon would be against the rules.”
	“Hmmm,” she grabbed the flier off her desk and looked it over for probably the fifth time since they’d started this project, trying to make any sense of the rules. The alien characters practically swirled on the page, almost altean but too far off for her to glean anything from it. She crumpled it up and tossed it at the trash can, “I don’t know. It’s worth a shot though?”
	Hunk grinned at her approval and stood up, stretching into another yawn as he did. What time was it anyway? He left his workspace (a rather tidy word for a pile of scrap and tools spread all over the floor) and started searching the hangar for a gun or something similar to appropriate. Pidge opened another file and, after realizing how much work making a robot autonomously shoot lasers would be, promptly set it aside for future-Pidge.
	Time went by slowly as the two worked, occasionally asking the other for input on their half of the project or throwing out some inane comment. (“What if we just submitted one of the lions?” “Tempting, but we’d have to get it in the building first.” “How about naming it Rover jr.?” “Nah that sucks, let’s call it mini voltron!”)
	Sometime after the clock had ticked over into the next quintent, there was a loud crash of metal-on-metal. Pidge nearly jumped out of her seat, just in time to see Hunk keel over with a much softer thud. She stood still for a few seconds, only relaxing once she heard him snore. “First all nighter, buddy?” she snickered. Well, dragging him to bed would be impossible and if she remembered anything from their time at the Garrison, waking him up would be even harder. The castle must have had spare blankets somewhere, right? Something to at least keep him warm.
	She draped the blanket over him and he seemed to curl up into it, still snoring. “I’ll take that as a thank you.” Pidge added with a quick pat on his shoulder. It’s true what they say about people looking more innocent when they sleep. Not that Hunk didn’t look innocent, but he looked softer, more at peace. It was cute.
Even though she only thought the word, Pidge still found herself looking around for anyone who could’ve heard. She was the youngest and she didn’t need any more teasing from Lance (or even Hunk himself). A second or two after she realized watching him sleep might’ve been creepy, Pidge peeled off to go finish the code. Sleep was for the weak.

	The first thing Hunk noticed when he woke up was that his back hurt. The second was that he was surrounded by scrap metal and darkness, illuminated only by an electric blue glow in the corner. He didn’t even make it to bed tonight. Last night? What time was it even? Only once he sat up did he notice the blanket and that Pidge was still there as well.
	“Hey, thanks for that Pidge, but next time how about you try waki--” he cut himself off when he realized Pidge had also been asleep, slumped over onto her keyboard.
	He crept towards her and looked over her shoulder. The code was still up, and now flooded by a few pages of just the letter h. Way to go kiddo, he laughed quietly before nudging her off the keyboard and fixing it.
As carefully as he could manage, Hunk scooped the younger paladin into a princess-style carry. If she asked later, he would lie and say he didn’t want to wake her. But as for the actual reason, he just kind of wanted to. She was small, and cute, and he didn’t get to hold her as much as he would’ve liked. “Guess we should get to bed.” he mumbled. He was careful not to wake her up the whole walk to her room, even when she turned in her sleep and he ended up holding a lot more butt than he should’ve been.
	If he asked later, Pidge would lie and say she didn’t know when or how she got to bed. But in reality, she woke up as soon as he put his hands on her. She opened her eyes only slightly, just enough to see what was happening. She let him carry her because, well, it was a long walk to her room and she was tired, and he was warm. Warm enough that she wanted to lean in closer and fall back asleep like this. He didn’t seem to mind, even when she did lean in and realized that she accidentally made him grab her ass.
	Whoops.