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i come back from the dead just to tell you guys that for some reason i can’t stop thinking about the heith date.... we really got that in canon, they really went to a date. no, i don’t care that it wasn’t on their own will, i’ll take every crumb i can get, fuck off
Goo is great, but Hunk sure would feel better if they had kitchen access.
all chapters in this tag | full work on ao3
Shiro is the only other paladin who’s made it to the bridge, Allura sees, as she strides through the entrance just in time with its sliding open. Hunk, a few steps behind, follows at what is probably a far more reasonable pace for this early in the morning. It’s nearing fourth varga, although she doubts that will mean the same thing to the planet they’re approaching. While anyone left there might keep time to the standard, they’ll certainly live their days by the solar patterns of the star the planet orbits, a medium-sized white joggert, which means it could be any part of the light cycle right now, for all she knows. But for the castle’s inhabitants, this is earlier than any of them are usually up and about -- well, Allura’s not sure about Shiro, and Keith has been known to have bouts of insomnia, and Coran as well, and -- it’s earlier than she is usually up and about, at any rate.
“How close are we?” Allura asks as she makes her way to her station. It’s habit, even if she won’t need to be opening a wormhole any time soon.
“It should be visible in a couple of dobashes,” Coran answers, turning to look at her from the helm. “Oh, Hunk! I’m surprised you’re up this early -- or did my dulcet tones tempt you with the promise of a planet-viewing experience to start your day?”
“Nah, I was already up,” says Hunk, frowning slightly. “Anyway, what is this planet? Entuk, you said?” He looks from Allura to Shiro to Coran and back again.
“It’s a defunct Altean outpost -- well, the location of a defunct Altean outpost,” Allura says, trying to keep her voice calm. “We’re using it to detour around an imperial fleet -- a potential imperial fleet.” She corrects herself when she hears a small noise of objection from Shiro and sees Coran lift a finger to start speaking himself. Technically, they have no guarantee there were Galra ships in that area of space, but that doesn’t seem like that important of a detail to keep focusing on.
“Right, princess,” says Coran, lowering his finger before continuing. “Entuk used to be a communications relay hub, back before we perfected long-range signaling that was as reliable as it is today. Altea needed an intermediary to handle and forward messages that wouldn’t have otherwise made it to their intended destinations -- farther across the universe than we could manage in one go. We lost touch with the outpost there during the war, though. The technology advanced to the point where having a relay was nearly obsolete, and it seemed more dangerous to route messages there than otherwise -- if nothing else, to keep it safe from the Empire. If they didn’t know about it, at least the people who lived there would be left in peace.”
He pauses for a few moments, apparently lost in thought. It’s long enough that Shiro looks over at Allura, eyebrows raised. She shrugs back at him -- she’s never known anything about Entuk before now, although she supposes she must have heard of it back when her father was alive. Most likely she never registered it as much of anything important, or at least nothing she needed to know. For the hundredth time since the destruction of her father’s A.I., Allura wishes desperately she could learn more from him, that she’d had more time for diplomacy training, that she knew more about the state of the Altean forces back during the war --
“We mostly managed that,” Coran is saying now, having seemingly brought his thoughts back to their previous track. “At least, if the fact we don’t have it flagged as imperial territory is any indication. Of course, that means anyone left on Entuk has been alone and without contact with Altea for ten thousand years. The likelihood that any of them have survived with no further resources, on a planet outpost that wasn’t built to last nearly that long is infinitesimally small --” Coran’s voice is cut off and anything else he might say drowned out by a sudden crush of noise. Allura feels herself jump and gives a little yelp before processing it’s the castle alarms going full tilt. She shakes her head as her ears adjust to the cacophony of noise and looks around at the others.
“What’s that?” she asks quickly. “What’s set off the alarm?” Hunk shrugs broadly, eyes wide as saucers. Shiro is still looking to Coran, his frown set even deeper than before. Coran, for his part, has whirled back around to the helm, frantically pressing controls until he’s brought the alert up on screen.
“It’s a distress signal,” he says, shouting to be heard over the continued blaring of the alarm. “And it appears it’s from the outpost!” Allura breathes in sharply, and lets out a quiet “oh,” unheard over the din.
--
Yeskia stares at the drinking vessel in front of her, considering her options. Her hands are shaking, as they have been for the past half varga. That’s not a good sign, she doesn’t think. If Zoric and Lenida are right -- and they are, she’s sure -- that’s an early symptom, followed by a tightness in the throat, a lowered capacity for breath. Of course, they’ve had cases clear up from there with proper treatment, and she’s not worried so much for herself, but if Lenida or Zoric have caught it...then the rest of the medical team will handle it, she tells herself. They’re more than capable, even if they can only treat symptoms. Even if it has become maddeningly clear to her that there was a way to handle this back when they lived on Altea -- well, not when they lived on Altea, but when their predecessors -- she’s getting off-track. She’s getting off-track, and the other councilors who’ve joined her seem to have moved on from the debate they’ve been having since they arrived about whether the market sector needs to be closed, or somehow better-regulated. They're talking about trying to communicate their needs off-planet, now. Strange that they haven’t yet thought to consult her on any of this, when she’s easily best positioned to communicate with medical now that Councilor Hilvra has taken ill. Ever since she took leave to spend more time with Ren -- but no matter.
“I think we ought to try it,” she says loudly, cutting off Councilor Elian mid-sentence. He looks at her, brows raised high in surprise.
“I -- I’m sorry?” he asks, in the tone of someone not used to being interrupted quite so ungraciously. Councilor Lisanne, with whom he’s been arguing, grins at Yeskia from behind Elian’s back.
“Lisanne is right when they say it’s been long enough. We haven’t heard anything about a Galra presence in the area for dozens of decophoebs -- years -- both measures, it doesn’t matter. The point is, the Empire isn’t here. And whether they continue to thrive in other areas of the galaxy or not is no matter. Our communications relays are finely-tuned -- we can send a signal to a particular radius with nearly no margin for error. We can be sure there aren’t any Galra ships in the area, because if there were, we would know -- the grid would have alerted us, and so there’s no danger in casting a net, so to speak --”
“Yeskia, surely you don’t think sending a signal indiscriminately --”
“--I didn’t say indiscriminately, Elian.” She waves one of her hands dismissively, controlling the shaking as best she can. “I said to a particular radius. We need any help we can get at this point. Hilvra is not on the same trajectory as other patients have been, and Lenida has been tracking outcomes over the past several moons. Yes, we have many folks recovered, but not everyone has made it out of medical. I’d rather we not wait until our first true casualty to start looking for help.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been saying!” Lisanne sounds equal parts exasperated and relieved, and Yeskia makes a mental note to apologize to them later for not listening as attentively as she should have.
“I…” Elian swallows before he continues. “Well, we can’t make any decision on it until we’ve consulted with Hilvra and Morn -- without a full council vote --”
“How are you planning on getting a full council vote with Hilvra in medical and Morn on an expedition, Elian? We can’t afford to put this off any longer!” Lisanne slams their hands on the table in front of them, making Yeskia’s drinking vessel rattle. She’s suddenly reminded that in a former life, Lisanne worked out-of-dome expeditions themself. “We are lucky that no one has died yet, but make no mistake -- that’s definitely a possibility. We can’t just bet on, what? A lab cure that may not be developed for moons and moons? Even with anything that turns up in the expeditions --” The rest of Lisanne’s speech is drowned out by a deep wail that seems to come from the bowels of the council chambers itself. All three of the councilors turn to the main door of the chambers as it slams open, and they all start talking at once.
“What sector --”
“Is it the off-world --”
“Widened alert or --”
The page in the doorway holds up a hand, panting.
“Outpost citizen in the medical sector,” she says. “And yes, it’s transmitting off-world.”
Goo is great, but Hunk sure would feel better if they had kitchen access.
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The castle is nearly still when Hunk gets out of bed in the wee hours of the next morning. It’s a full four hours or so -- three vargas and something, he tells himself -- before the others would normally be up and about, except maybe Shiro. But, he thinks, yawning and pulling on some slippers before he leaves his quarters, even Shiro probably isn’t up quite this early. He wouldn’t be either, but he has no idea how long space yeast takes to settle in, and it seems better to check on things more often than less.
When he gets to the kitchen, at first nothing seems amiss. The staple querlay is still humming away -- they didn’t shut it back down fully last night, he notes -- and apart from the mugs he and Coran left on the counter, it’s neat and clean. The pantry itself is another story. At first, he’s not sure what he’s looking at. The surface of the island is lost under layers of blue and purple and gray...something. It looks goopy, but when he pokes it with an experimental finger, it’s almost solid, and doesn’t leave a trace of itself on his skin. Hunk frowns, studying it for a moment, until he thinks to follow the flow of it back around the island, down across the floor, up to the back counter, and to the row of bowls he left there last night.
It looks like the -- whatever it is, he’ll figure that out later -- must have come from the starters he threw together. Two of them have burst through the sheets of covering he and Keith put over the bowls, and where they’ve merged they’ve formed this…
“-- lung rot?” Hunk nearly jumps out of his skin at the sound of the voice from behind him, whirling around faster than he thought was possible.
“What the quiznak, Allura? What are you doing sneaking up on a guy like that?” His heart is hammering, and he takes a breath to recover, taking in her slumped shoulders and tiny sheepish smile.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize anyone else would be up and about just after third varga.” She sounds exhausted, and Hunk realizes with a rush that she may well not have slept at all.
“It’s okay,” he says quickly, and it is, really. He can feel his heart rate already going back to normal, and he can’t say he blames her for having a bit of insomnia, given the stress of everything they’ve been dealing with lately -- the Blade of Marmora just another concern to add to the list, really. “I’m sorry -- didn’t mean to snap at you...I’ve just been trying to figure out what the deal is with whatever different space yeast we can find -- gotta keep the brain occupied with everything going on, figure out how best to get some comfort food going -- and I thought I was the only one awake, and then you just -- Anyway, you get it.” He’s rambling, he realizes; it’s too early for filters.
“I do get it,” she says, her smile more genuine now. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For forgiving me, I suppose,” she says. “And for this welcome distraction.” She gestures broadly at the weird mess he’s apparently made of their formerly pristine pantry. Hunk grimaces.
“You said -- sorry, did you call this stuff lung rot?” He must have heard wrong, he thinks, because the alternative is too gross to think about. Not to mention he’s not sure how he would have made something like that outside of a body -- oh, but now he’s thinking about it inside a body, and that he definitely doesn’t need either.
“Yes,” says Allura, frowning now, and Hunk tries to lock onto her words instead of letting his mind continue down that particularly unpleasant rabbit hole. “It used to grow out in the fields during the floods back -- back home.” She goes quiet, and Hunk gets the feeling that any value this had as a distraction is somehow canceled out. Although, it’s certainly distracting him now; any thought of potential bread recipes with alien ingredients can’t make it through the visceral horror he’s still feeling thinking about what this stuff might do to a pair of lungs. He tries to think of how to phrase his next question to poke as little as possible at what’s clearly still a tender wound for Allura. Your whole home planet gone is kind of a big deal, he thinks, even if it had things like lung rot.
“Is it, uh...dangerous?” he asks finally. He has to know how to handle it, even if it does mean pushing Allura into painful memory territory. It would kind of stress folks out, he’s pretty sure, if he accidentally made some kind of toxic substance in the kitchen of all places and they had a repeat of the mass food poisoning incident on top of everything else going on. And he can’t imagine anything called ‘lung rot’ -- even in Altean -- could be good.
“I mean, it’s not usually desirable,” Allura says, though she sounds less sure of herself. “The growers used to clear it before planting, at least. I think you can handle it without any, ah...adverse effects, though.”
“You can handle it, you mean,” says Hunk pointedly. “I’m not sure that we can count on humans and Alteans having the same reaction.” Allura’s eyes widen at this.
“Right, I hadn’t thought of that,” she says, then looks down, shame creeping into her features. “Just like I didn’t think of it with the roast shellhorn.”
“Eh, it happens! Can’t blame yourself and all that.” Hunk shrugs, trying to catch her eye with an encouraging look. She hasn’t stopped studying the floor, though. “Technically, I already touched it, anyway,” he continues, and looks down at the finger he used to prod at the mysterious substance earlier. It looks the same as all the others, as far as he can tell. “And it doesn’t seem to have done anything to me for now.”
“Well, that’s good,” she says, finally looking up. Her brows knit into a frown before she goes on. “But you’re right that you probably shouldn’t risk it any more, just in case.” Any more of her plan is interrupted by an announcement from the roomwide comms, which, Hunk realizes, are clearly as present in the pantry as they are throughout the rest of the ship.
“Ah, attention, folks! Paladins, Allura, miscellaneous space critters I didn’t know we had on board until recently,” Coran’s voice is pitched like a game show announcer over the speakers, and Hunk suspects he hasn’t slept either. “Just wanted to let you all know that we are on the approach to Entuk, and if you’d like to see it fly by as we get near, well, now’s the time to make your way to the bridge. If you, like me, would rather be in a state of slumber right now, by all means, be my guest! That goes doubly for the space critters, none of whom I need startling me at this early hour.”
“Well, the lung rot can wait; it’s not going to do anything on its own, I don’t think,” says Allura, who seems to have perked up with a bit of hope at Coran’s announcement. Hunk is not at all sure that they can trust it not to do anything more than it already has, but he’d rather not push her back into the quiet sad place she seemed to be in when she first got here, so he shrugs.
Hunk and Lance go on a post-curfew kitchen excursion that leads to some eating and some thinking and some talking.
also on ao3
It’s a terrible idea, sneaking into the kitchens. Cadets aren’t allowed to just have free access to the food stores, let alone industrial-size appliances, which -- if Lance is honest with himself -- feels reasonable, considering the caliber of kids he’s met here already. Platt and Harper would have a field day, and he’s not sure much of anything would survive if Griffin stopped flexing long enough to try to light a stove. Hunk would at least -- probably -- know what he was doing, but it’s still a terrible idea.
“What if we get caught? I’m not getting chewed out by Iverson just because you wanted to make a sandwich!”
“Sandwiches are obviously not on the menu for the homesick and decent-meal-deprived,” Hunk says dismissively.
“Well, then what are we making?” He can’t resist asking. The answer won’t make a difference, he’s decided. It shouldn’t make a difference. It doesn’t matter that asking made Hunk’s entire face light up. He’s not breaking the fundamental rule of being a decent cadet his third week. He’s not doing it. That’s one way to guarantee he’ll never be a fighter pilot -- he’ll be stuck in cargo for life. But he won’t pretend he’s not curious, and he’s even more curious when Hunk ducks under his bed and pulls out a plastic container, the lid of which he whips off with a flourish.
“We’re making ramen!” His expression is positively giddy; Lance can hardly stand it.
“Ramen? That’s your brilliant idea for a meal that’s better than what they throw us in the mess?”
“Real ramen, Lance, not with those mysterious flavor powders you get in the little plastic-wrapped blocks.” Lance looks in the tupperware and has to admit this looks a lot more complicated than the packets he generally associates with the word. It doesn’t matter. This isn’t happening.
“I’m not sneaking out after curfew, breaking into the kitchen of all places, and risking being yelled at, suspended, thrown off the waitlist for fighter track --”
“--Now, come on, they wouldn’t do that.” Hunk interrupts, his face softening. “Is that what you’re worried about?”
“I’m not worried,” Lance says, sarcasm creeping into his voice and settling in like a cat jumping into a familiar lap. “I’m being realistic. They’re not just gonna say, ‘oh, good job boys, that’s some choice ramen!’”
“You don’t technically know that; my culinary skills are incredible.”
“According to who exactly?”
“Well, my mom, at least.” Hunk grabs the back of his neck self-consciously. “But, the point stands! She has excellent taste.”
“Hunk --” Lance starts again, but Hunk cuts him off.
“Please?” he asks, his eyes going wide. Lance suddenly finds himself unable to meet them, and looks down instead, ignoring the swooping feeling in his stomach. Maybe he’s hungrier than he thought he was.
“I just don’t think we should be breaking rules when we’ve just gotten here,” he mumbles at the floor.
“Lance, I miss cooking. I miss my family. I miss home.” The pleading in his voice cuts straight into his heart, and Lance feels his resolve break all at once.
“Fine,” he says, throwing up his hands in exasperation. “But only because I just realized I’m starving. And if we get caught, I’m telling Iverson you hypnotized me.” It doesn’t even feel like a lie.
--
“I can’t believe they don’t bother locking the doors,” Lance whispers, following Hunk through as the entrance slides open. The doors lead to easily the largest kitchen he’s ever seen, and his family’s kitchen back home is no slouch, full of butcher-block counters and a massive farmhouse table. There’s a lot less wood in here -- everything is gleaming stainless steel -- which makes it feel remarkably cold. Lance is suddenly glad this plan involves soup.
“What? Of course they lock them,” Hunk says incredulously. “Why did you think I brought this?” He holds up something that looks a lot like a graphing calculator.
“Uh...because you’re a nerd?” Lance offers, raising his eyebrows.
“No --” Hunk stops suddenly and frowns. “I mean, well, yes, technically, but the kind of nerd that knows how to make a door...unlocked.”
"How long have you been planning this?"
"Since like last Thursday," he says, shrugging.
"Hang on --" Lance holds up a hand, feeling his eyebrows stretch up to his hairline. "-- you've been homesick enough to consider midnight kitchen escapades for a week already? Hunk, that was after like...two weeks of being away from home!"
"I know," Hunk says, his shoulders slumping a little. "Seems like it doesn't take that much, I just...love my family, y'know?"
Lance swallows a sarcastic "that's one way of putting it, I guess," and lets the breath he'd taken in for it come out as a sigh.
"I do know," he says instead, the sarcasm cat apparently leaving him to embarrass himself. He's looking at the floor again -- tiles this time, as opposed to the carpet in their dorm room. "My family's close, too -- emotionally, I mean. I miss the fields, too, and the animals...deserts are cool, and all, I guess, but nothing normal grows here." He clamps his mouth shut, his lips together extra tight to keep the words from escaping any more. He did not sneak out after curfew with a kid he's known less than a month to get made fun of for talking about feelings.
"It only took me a week before I cried the first time," Hunk says quietly, and Lance looks up at him, surprised. This time he doesn’t even think of a sarcastic response; the sincerity is too jarring.
“Huh?” It’s all he can muster, but it’s enough that Hunk goes on.
“It’s not being away from them a week, like, obviously I’ve been away from my family for a week before, but it’s just -- thinking about all of it. Like, how home will always be home, but how it also never really will be again.” He shrugs, and Lance nods absently, but a moment later what Hunk’s just said hits him and he breathes in sharply.
“Oh, wow, I hadn’t thought about it that way,” he says, suddenly very aware of his heartbeat, which seems a bit too quick for standing still in the middle of a dark kitchen, even with the adrenaline of rule-breaking and risk. It never really will be again. Of course the farm is still home, to an extent, and his avuela’s little house in Varadero is still home, to an extent, but the main thing that’s always defined home for him is wherever his family is. When his older siblings went off to visit Dad in the summers and he was left behind with Mama, it never felt quite like home until they were back. When the others moved out and Marco and Luis started their own families, it was weird, but they were still nearby, and they came over more evenings than they didn’t. If he thinks about it, the weirdest was definitely when Veronica left and was suddenly missing from Shabbat dinners, except when she was home on breaks. That’s him now, he realizes. No wonder he was willing to break into the kitchens with Hunk on a Friday night.
“Lance, buddy, you okay?” Hunk’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts, and he nods, probably a few times too many.
“I’m good, I’m good,” he says, still nodding a bit. “Let’s -- let’s make some ramen.” Hunk grins at him and moves to put the container he brought from their room on the enormous stainless steel island in the middle of the room.
“Alright, now I know we can’t do a stock from scratch, but the stock cubes my mom gets are the best, and I slipped a few into my bag before I left home -- you never know when you’ll need a burst of flavor, right? Especially with cafeteria food. They’re chicken; don’t worry. All the rest of this okay for you?” He’s moving rapidly, setting out different smaller containers that were inside the one big one he brought. There’s a tupperware of tiny foil-wrapped cubes, a couple packages of noodles, and a bag of paper-thin, pink-tinged flakes of some kind. Lance isn’t sure what those last things are, but there’s a hechsher on the corner of the bag, so he shrugs.
“Sure.”
“Excellent,” Hunk says. “Hey -- can you check the fridge and see what they have in the way of veggies? We’re gonna have to improvise a bit.”
“You don’t think they’ll notice if we take all the onions?” Lance asks, feeling the panic rise a bit in him again.
“We’re not going to take all of them,” Hunk says reassuringly, pulling a cutting board and a knife from the counter next to the sink and bringing them over to the island where he seems to be setting up a prep station. “Just, like, one. See if there are any green onions or carrots or -- you know, whatever looks good.” Lance shakes his head and moves to the line of big industrial fridges, bracing himself for the noise of the seal releasing when he moves the lever on the first one to open it. Any noise the fridge makes is completely overshadowed by a series of incredibly loud clanging sounds from behind him, though, and he whips around to see Hunk holding a giant stock pot and looking a bit sheepish.
“It was on the bottom,” he says apologetically.
“Shit, Hunk, we don’t need the entire building to know we’re in here!” Lance remembers to keep his voice to a whisper, but it’s a close thing. He holds up a hand so Hunk won’t move and listens carefully, but all he can hear is the hum of the fridges and his own breathing, which has sped up to what strikes him as a totally unnecessary rate. He forces it to slow down and lowers his hand slowly.
“Sorry,” Hunk mouths at him silently, and starts to move toward the stove. Lance takes a deep breath and turns back to the fridge, hoping there’s something there that makes this worth the trouble.
--
Twenty minutes later, they’ve managed to assemble what smells -- to Lance at least -- like an absolutely delicious soup. His stomach is growling loudly enough that he’s pretty sure it may wake some of the instructors on its own, never mind the avalanche of pots earlier or Hunk ripping open the noodles now.
“Grab us a couple bowls?” Hunk says, dropping the noodles into the pot gently and grabbing the paddle he’s been using to stir them in. Lance nods and scans the back wall to try to figure out where the dishes must be. He’s settled on a likely-seeming alcove when he hears someone laugh loudly and freezes.
“Did you --” he starts, and Hunk nods emphatically, eyes wide, his arm still stirring the pot automatically, though he seems to have forgotten that’s what he’s doing. Lance gulps. Now that he’s listening more carefully, he can hear the murmur of voices from somewhere nearby. He moves softly toward the door back to the hallway, ears as alert as they’ve ever been. There’s a sudden burst of laughter again, shared between at least two people. It’s cut off suddenly by a loud shushing sound, and the voices are near enough now that Lance can make out what they’re saying.
“Do you want Iverson to catch us? God, Griff.” Oh, man, Lance thinks, if James Griffin is really out there, now would be a chance to get in good with him, convince him he’s a worthwhile guy to get to know. He wishes he weren’t so tired and so hungry -- he probably doesn’t have the brainpower right now to manage anything nearing cool, considering sarcasm has thoroughly abandoned him already.
“Come on, what’s he going to do? Kick us out? Hate to break it to you, but I’ve got the top GPA in this place. They’re not gonna touch me.” That’s Griffin’s voice, alright. Lance raises his eyebrows and turns to look at Hunk, who has put the paddle down and turned the heat off on the stove, wiping his hands on a towel he has tucked into his belt. Hunk frowns, shakes his head slightly, as if to say “not worth it.” Lance turns back to the door and sighs, realizing as he does that he’s been holding his breath for what must’ve been nearly a minute, listening.
“Hey, what’s that smell?” That’s Harper, Lance is sure, which means it’s probably all three of them, getting up to some midnight trio shenanigans. Weirdly, he doesn’t envy them nearly as much as he would have a week ago, before he got to know Hunk, and certainly before they broke into the kitchen in the middle of the night to make ramen, which, he realizes now, is exactly what Harper’s smelling. He bites back a yelp at this realization and sets his jaw. Hopefully they’ll all just...move on.
“I don’t know, Harp, Kogane’s grandma’s house?” And yep, there she is. Platt's presence also confirmed.
“What? You know Kogane doesn’t know his grandma.” All three of them dissolve into snickers at that, and Lance blanches. Keith Kogane might be arrogant and snobby as hell, but he doesn't deserve that. He's glad on a certain level, though, that they seem to have dropped the idea of investigating. Their laughter and voices fade away as they continue down the hall toward the cadets' quarters, and Lance feels his heart rate start to return to normal. Hunk, behind him, clears his throat, and Lance turns around.
"You know, I really don't understand why you even try to hang out with them," Hunk says softly.
"What, you think I'm not good enough for them?" he hears his own voice snap angrily before he can stop himself. So much for late-night lack of filters being maybe a good thing. Now Hunk is telling him he doesn't deserve to be respected and looked up to like those three? He can feel his eyes burning and tells himself it's because he's tired. "Like, I know I'm not --"
"What? No." Hunk looks absolutely baffled. "Good enough for Griffin? For Griffin?" He seems to have forgotten they're breaking at least four different rules and curfew, his voice rising. "Lance, that's the most absurd thing I've ever heard you say, and you manage to pack them in, buddy." This is the first time Lance has heard anything like bitterness in Hunk's voice, and it throws him.
"What do you mean?" he asks, the anger draining out of him.
"I mean," Hunk says, deliberately, crossing the room so they're standing eye to eye and lowering his voice again. "They're not worth it. Like, sure, they're popular, and they’ve got top marks, or whatever, but they're assholes. You want to be an asshole? Is that what you want? Because getting in good with assholes is how you turn into an asshole."
Hunk's right, of course. They are assholes, all three of them, but the relative kindness of a person has never really been part of his criteria. His survival strategy has been the same since he was thrown into a new country as a ten-year-old with nothing going for him but decent swimming skills and a tourist industry English vocabulary.
“Maybe I already am an asshole,” he says, more sincerely than he means to.
“I mean, sometimes!” Hunk says, throwing his hands wide. “We all are, sometimes, but that’s no reason to just lean into it.”
“You’re never an asshole,” he says sullenly, back to staring at the floor.
“I’m -- that’s not true, but we don’t have to get into that right now.”
“I just want people to like me,” he mutters, still not looking up. He can feel tears pricking the back of his eyes, and it’s easier if he doesn’t have to see Hunk’s face. It’s such a simple want, after all, and yet one he's had to work so hard to try to fulfill. Join team sports, crack the jokes, keep an air of detached irony at all times, and maybe -- just maybe -- people will fold him in as one of the cool kids, not notice that he’s dragging behind in class. He's starting to think that's not the same thing as liking him, though.
“Maybe try listening to people who aren’t assholes, then?” He looks up to see Hunk smiling ruefully at him.
“That's a thought," Lance admits, and his vision blurs. He blinks rapidly. He will not cry in the mess kitchen at one in the morning. He will not -- before he can finish the thought a second time, Hunk closes the distance between them and hugs him, really hugs him, not like the perfunctory hugs he gives to his tias when they're in for a visit over the high holidays. He breathes in sharply and feels his whole body tense, startled, and Hunk lets go of him immediately.
"Sorry," he says, hunching his shoulders a bit. "I didn't mean to --"
"No, that's okay," Lance says, a bit surprised that it is, actually. He laughs, which is kind of a relief since he much prefers it to crying. "I'm just not, uh, used to it. You should warn me when you're going off-script like that."
"You're not used to hugs? Or not used to hugs from me? Because I totally get not wanting to hug a stranger -- not that we're strangers, but you know, you've only known me a couple weeks, might be weird, you know --" Hunk trails off helplessly, his hand gripping the back of his neck, eyes looking somewhere over Lance’s shoulder.
“Uh, in general,” Lance says, and it’s his turn to hunch his shoulders, sticking his hands in his pockets for lack of a better place to put them. “My mom’s the only hugger in my family, really, and I haven’t seen her in awhile, so.” He doesn’t mean for that to come out nearly as bitterly as it does. He winces, looks back at Hunk to see him standing with his arms open.
“Buddy, if you need one -- oof.” Hugs are nice, he realizes, when they’re not being demanded by relatives you hardly see, whose primary purpose in visiting seems to be to comment about how tall you’ve grown, “and yet still so skinny! Are you feeding him enough, Marlinda?” Oh, thinking about his mom right now is not a good call if he wants to keep the tears from coming back, he realizes, and steps back out of Hunk’s arms, dashing the sleeve of his jacket across his eyes before Hunk can say anything about it.
“So how about that ramen?” He manages casual as a tone, which is not bad, all things considered.
“Oh, yeah! Bowls?” Hunk walks back over to the pot and Lance meets him there with two bowls from the back alcove. They’re a bit shallow, in that weird shape of cafeteria bowls everywhere that’s somehow not great for cereal and soup or for pasta, but they’ll get the job done. Hunk ladles noodles and broth into both, with some onion and a bit of wilted spinach they were pretty sure no one would miss. He tops each bowl with half an egg he boiled earlier and offers one to Lance, who looks down at it and frowns.
“Uh, Hunk? How are we supposed to eat this? I’m pretty sure the caf doesn’t have chopsticks.”
“Oh, it doesn’t,” Hunk says lightly. “But I do.” He goes back to the container on the counter and pulls out two pairs, handing one to Lance.
“Wow, you are a nerd,” he says, laughing. There’s nowhere to eat but the floor, and Lance is suddenly glad for all the cleaning details cadets get put on, since it’s probably been bleached in the last six hours or so. The two of them settle with their backs against the counter, and for a couple of minutes the kitchen is silent apart from the slurping of noodles and the clinking of chopsticks against bowls.
The ramen is cool enough by now that Lance can eat it quickly, and it’s absolutely bananas how delicious it is. He guesses he shouldn’t be surprised that packages don’t measure up to the real thing, but the real thing isn’t usually an option.
“Wow, Hunk,” he says when he can stop to take a breath. “This is something else.”
“It’s taking you on a journey, huh,” Hunk says, nodding. “Best food does.”
“A journey to deliciousville,” he says. “To tasty town, to flavor planet --”
“-- Alright, buddy, I get it.” He’s laughing now, a little bit, but Lance needs to be sure he understands.
“I don’t know if you do? But if I keep trying to explain, that’s going to keep me from eating it, and that is...Unacceptable.” He looks over at Hunk as he goes back to his bowl to see his roommate smiling down at his own food, his whole face almost glowing with pride. “I mean that,” he adds quietly. “This is, like, really good.”
“Thanks.”
It’s gone in minutes, and the empty bowls make him feel almost wistful, but he realizes as he carries them over to the sink to wash them that he’s also horrendously thirsty.
“Hey, Hunk --” He turns, only to see there’s already a glass of water being offered to him. “Oh, thanks.” Hunk nods, drinking his own water before they both move to clean up. The good news is Hunk at least has been assigned enough cleaning details that he’s mercilessly efficient. It seems like it comes with the territory of having an often-turbulent stomach. Although if he’s used to food like this, Lance thinks, it makes a bit more sense that the commissary stuff doesn’t exactly treat him right.
--
“I can’t believe you have a homemade mac and cheese recipe and you didn’t go with that for this whole stunt,” Lance whispers, trying to keep from laughing as they sneak back toward their quarters. Hunk’s container is full of leftover ramen now, and Lance is just hoping it’ll fit in their mini-fridge without a problem.
“I mean, would you have been nearly as impressed if I’d made something that simple?” Hunk asks him with a grin, nudging their door open with his shoulder.
“Honestly? I’m a simple man, Hunk,” He grabs Hunks shoulder and throws his other arm wide gesturing at their room as a whole. “Show me a big bowl of carbs and cheese, and I’m happy.”
“We can always make it next Friday,” Hunk says, shrugging. Lance laughs and shakes his head, dropping his arm.
“Right, sure, we’re definitely doing this again.” The sarcasm cat is back, thankfully, and he can’t resist adding -- “because we didn’t come close enough to giving us both full-blown panic attacks already.”
But despite his claims, it becomes something of a ritual before long, to the point where Lance will come back from service on Friday night, change into jeans instead of pajamas, and read comics for maybe five minutes before Hunk looks over at him.
“Still homesick?” He asks, every time, without fail.
“I mean, kind of,” Lance says, frowning. “Not like, really homesick, I’m not a baby about it or anything.”
But Hunk gives him that look, eyes wide, pointedly hopeful, and he knows that even if he wanted to say no, he’s not entirely sure he could. And every time he sees it he sighs, puts down whatever issue he’s reading.
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Goo is great, but Hunk sure would feel better if they had kitchen access.
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Lance figures Allura is probably on the bridge. Considering they’ll be at the headquarters of the Blade of Marmora in less than 24 hours, he’s pretty sure there’s nowhere else she would be, regardless of how late it is. He’s not sure how late it is, anyway -- he’s never really gotten the hang of timekeeping in the castle. The time they’ve spent in the kitchen may have been anywhere from ten minutes to an hour -- all he’s sure of is that it’s somewhere between “dinner” and “bed.” He sets out from the kitchen at something between a walk and a jog, trying hard to ignore the embarrassment sitting right on the edges of his awareness. If he pushes himself very strongly to focus on other things, it’ll go away, right?
“So if Hunk’s space yeast covers leavening, what’s left? Flour, right? Flour comes from wheat, wheat comes from Earth, so that’s a dead end -- what else does flour come from? Rye, barley, potatoes sometimes, rice --” He stops as a shadow appears on the floor, coming out from a hallway a few yards ahead of him that crosses the corridor he’s on. The shadow moves toward him.
Bigger than a breadbox, he thinks, then shakes his head a bit. Since when is he playing twenty questions with a weird floor shadow? There’s a quiet but persistent scrubbing sound that accompanies its movement, and Lance feels an echo of the fear he felt earlier, but mostly confusion. He frowns and looks up slowly, trying to find the source, until he’s looking at a point about 15 feet off the ground where a small fuzzy creature is sort of...swimming through the air.
“Um, hello?” He says, and the creature stops moving and curls inward. It doesn’t really have a distinguishable head or neck, but its two big eyes are now at an angle to peer down at him from within the ball of yellow fluff. “Who...what...are you?”
He’s not quite settled that that’s the right question to be asking, but the creature seems satisfied and begins scrubbing forward again at a rapid clip, descending toward him at an angle. “You’re kind of cute,” Lance muses as it approaches and he can see a bit more detail. There are two little glowing patches on what he supposes are its cheeks, almost like Altean markings. Lance notices those markings are approaching his face awfully quickly now and ducks.
“Hey!” he says, just as the creature zips over him and lets out a startled kind of chirp. He stands back up slowly and turns around to see it floating at face level now, peering at him. “Did I ask for you to smash your face into mine? Normally that requires some kind of consent from the other party.” The creature chirps again, quieter this time, and softly bops its face against Lance’s cheek. It’s the tiniest bit of pressure, and he softens a bit at it.
“Well, alright, that’s fine, I guess. You’d better come with me -- I’m not sure where you’re supposed to be, but if there are weird fuzzy aliens roaming the halls, it seems like Allura should at least know.” He reaches a hand out to the creature tentatively, which mirrors his gesture with one of its many little feet. Then it stops and pushes forward to curl against his hand. It’s surprisingly soft, he thinks, for a weird little alien...thing. He tucks it under his arm and keeps walking toward the bridge.
“I’m glad you weren’t anything scarier, little buddy,” he says as they set off. “I don’t know if I could deal with more scary stuff right now, after that whole thing in the kitchen, not --” he knows he sounds a bit too defensive, but he can’t stop himself “-- not like I was really scared, I mean I was kind of scared, sure, but mostly for Hunk, I mean he was the one who was inside the thing!” He glances over at the creature, which looks back at him blankly. “Hunk -- he’s my best friend, and he was in this machine when it just kind of -- shifted like some kind of transformer!” The creature blinks a few times, and Lance stops in the middle of the hallway to hold it in front of him so he can talk to it properly.
“Listen, of course that was scary -- it’s scary when giant things with your best friend inside go clunk unexpectedly, you know? That’s normal. That’s a normal thing to be scared about” The creature hasn’t made a peep, and he can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. “I wasn’t scared for me; I was scared for him,” he goes on, hoping the silence is at least a judgment-neutral thing. “Because it would really suck if anything happened to Hunk, obviously. I mean who would I share all my good ideas with without Hunk?” A few more blinks at that, but no further response.
“Not that he was gonna die --” Lance doesn’t let himself go too far down that path “-- of course not. He’s smarter than that. Who’s smarter than Hunk? No one, that’s who -- but smart or not, you can still get hurt, like when a giant machine sounds like it wants to eat you and everyone you love -- you know what, never mind.” He grunts, exasperated. The creature hasn’t so much as squirmed, let alone expressed any kind of sympathy. It just keeps staring at him with those giant eyes, and Lance is sick of it.
“You can go back to whatever your business was, since clearly recognizing major life events your friends go through and responding to them appropriately is not a skill you have.” He bends down and lets the creature go near the floor, moving on in the direction of the bridge, but as he walks away he hears that same scrubbing sound. Glancing over his shoulder, he sees that it’s back a few feet in the air and following him. “Well, fine then, come with,” he says. “But I’m not carrying you. You lost that privilege.”
Goo is great, but Hunk sure would feel better if they had kitchen access.
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“I think some kind of flax egg substitute may end up being our best bet,” Hunk says, as he continues to steer Lance back over to the other side of the kitchen. “I don’t think we’re gonna stumble upon any fresh eggs any time soon, but if you want to keep thinking about it, you’re welcome to -- now what was happening over here?” The cupboard is still open under the appliance Pidge had been looking at; Lance steps out from under Hunk’s arm to gesture at it.
“She was under there,” he says helpfully. Hunk keeps himself from laughing, but it’s a close call, and he’s sure he exhales audibly at least once.
“Yeah, I got that.”
“Cool, good, yeah you’re sharp, you’re on it.” Lance strokes his chin thoughtfully as he peers into the space under the cooktop. Hunk touches his shoulder, and Lance drops his hand to his side. “You know as much as I do,” he says in a flatter tone. “Almost definitely more, actually.” He sounds a bit hopeless, and Hunk squeezes his shoulder in response before letting go.
“Well, let’s take a look,” he says, and promptly lies down on the floor so he can see the series of tubes in its entirety. It’s clear enough to him what’s going where. The only thing that’s not clear is what exactly is in each pipe. If the color-coding is consistent, at least they’ve got that going for them -- but after the oven in the “smelting lounge,” he’s not even confident in their ability to identify a heat source. There doesn’t seem to be a quintessence line, and he seriously doubts the Alteans are burning any kind of gas for cooking. As he sorts through the lines, he can hear Lance from somewhere above him.
“Well, once you solve the egg problem, we still have the question of leavening, right? Is there some kind of space baking powder?”
“I’m guessing it would be easier to harvest our own yeast than to analyze anything the Alteans might give us,” Hunk replies absently, wondering if there is, in fact, any ambient yeast in the castle.
“How do we do that? Build a yeast trap? Lure them in with tasty treats? What does yeast eat, anyway?” Before Hunk can reply there’s a clunk from the machinery above that sounds so loudly that from his position he can feel it reverberate through his skull, making him clench his eyes shut. It’s followed by a yelp from Lance and then a quiet humming that keeps getting louder until he realizes that it is not, in fact, only his ears ringing, and something is actually happening. Hunk opens his eyes cautiously to a very different view than he had before. The network of pipes is still there, but the tubes now glow brightly in their varied colors, and above them he can see three strange honeycomb-like sections of the top of this thing. It takes him a second to realize Lance is shouting his name now, his voice about an octave too high and to Hunk’s ears, much too loud.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here, buddy,” he says in as reassuring a tone as he can manage as he extracts himself from the cupboard. Lance is crouched about fifteen feet away from the appliance now, looking at it as if it’s about to attack him. When Hunk turns around, he can kind of see why. What he’d originally thought was a cooktop has transformed -- the three circles that had been there originally are flipped up to reveal clusters of spigots and tubes that look ready to fire all manner of things, and the humming coming from the whole setup certainly isn’t helping. Hunk frowns.
“What did you do?” he asks, turning back to Lance.
“I didn’t do anything!” Lance whisper-shouts indignantly. “I was just standing there, talking about yeast, and then I leaned back and it -- oh.” His tone shifts to one of guilt, and he stands up slowly from his crouch, every movement sheepish. “I guess I leaned...on a button.”
“Okay,” says Hunk. “So, this thing does not appear to be a stove, that much is clear.” His head is still ringing a bit, and he can feel the pain trying to transform itself into nausea. None of that. “But whatever it is, it’s at home in a kitchen, so the good news is it’s probably not a weapon, and you can come back over here.”
“Oh, yeah, I mean, I didn’t think it was -- it’s clearly some kind of Altean cooking. Machine. You know, because having fifty different hoses come out of a machine with one command is. A totally normal kind of. Cooking machine thing to do, right? Right.” Lance is all false bravado, as if he wasn’t taking up a defensive position mere moments before.
“I mean, it probably is a totally normal thing to do, for this particular thing, but since I don’t know what this thing is, I don’t know exactly what it’s doing, which is kind of why we were holding off on pressing any buttons.” Hunk is glad to find he can still manage patience.
“It’s not like I did it on purpose!”
“I know. But...maybe you should go see if there’s a manual. You know how most things come with a manual? It seems like this kitchen should really come with a manual.” It’s a good idea, even if he does feel a little bad about its secondary purpose. If he really is going anywhere with this pancakes idea, the processing time will be good for him, but it's also clear that between how much he’s pushing both people’s metaphorical buttons and physical, actual buttons, Lance needs to be out of the kitchen for a while.
“You need me to go find a manual? Where? How’m I supposed to know --”
“Go check with Coran?” Hunk says, hoping maybe that’ll get a better response than it has in the past.
“Do I have to?” Hunk pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes, keeping his tone even and ignoring the way his head is still pounding quietly in the background.
“Remember how I said I needed you all to follow directions in order for this whole kitchen thing to work.”
“So, yes?” Lance sounds more dejected about it than it seems like he needs to be.
“If you’d rather ask Allura --”
“Now, there’s a good idea! Allura’s smart and funny and capable and strong and --”
“-- yes, okay,” Hunk cuts him off. This could go on for a long while otherwise, he knows from experience. “Go find Allura and ask her.”
Goo is great, but Hunk sure would feel better if they had kitchen access.
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Hunk makes his announcement that evening in the lounge, standing in the doorway to address the rest of the team.
“Didn’t you find a kitchen before?” Keith is curled up on the couch, his chin resting on the back.
“Ah, you mean the cookies.”
“Right,” Keith says, raising his eyebrows almost imperceptibly. “Cookies.”
“Turns out what we found was a kiln and a bunch of ground minerals,” says Pidge, adjusting her glasses. “He basically made Altean hobbyist ceramics.”
“The important thing is that what we’ll be making now will be food.” Hunk punches one fist into his other palm decisively, and takes a step toward the rest of them arrayed around the room. “Who’s with me?”
“I mean I’m very much with the idea of you making food, don’t get me wrong,” Lance says, not bothering to raise his head from the cushion it’s resting on. “But I don’t think I have to be directly involved. I’m more of an eater than a maker.”
“I’m a disaster in a kitchen,” Shiro laughs. “Ask anyone --” he cuts off and frowns for a second. “Anyway, it wouldn’t go well.”
“Pidge? Keith?” Hunk holds a hand out in each of their directions, palm up. Keith shrugs and sits up.
“I’m good at chopping.”
“And I’m guessing all the ingredients will be labeled in Altean, so I’d better come with you,” says Pidge, pushing herself up off the table she’s been perched on. “Let’s go.”
“Oh, this is happening now?” Lance swings himself up to sit against the back of the couch instead of draping himself across four cushions. Hunk cocks his head at him. “What? I said I wouldn’t cook, not that I wouldn’t come.”
***
“...so Coran just gave you the keys?” Keith sounds skeptical, but that’s not out of the ordinary.
“Well, to be clear, he gave me the keys and went --” Hunk stops walking and draws himself up to his full height, eyebrows knit dramatically, and does his best imitation of the Altean advisor’s voice “-- ‘I expect great things to come out of that kitchen, boy, or you aren’t half the paladin I thought you were.’”
“He did not call you ‘boy,’” Lance says, laughing.
“Oh, he absolutely did.” Hunk shudders and gets moving again. “And I have no intention to repeat the experience, so if you all will practice good skills in taking direction today, I’d appreciate it.”
“No problem here,” says Keith, shrugging and glancing at Lance sidelong. “Not sure about all of us, of course.” Hunk isn’t sure if Lance misses the dig or decides to ignore it, but he continues as if he hasn’t noticed.
“D’you think Allura ever makes pancakes? She seems like she’d like pancakes. I mean, honestly, who doesn’t? They’re the perfect food -- no tough techniques, no special equipment --” he’s ticking off criteria on his fingers, and despite his long legs seems to have invested himself enough in his argument that he’s no longer keeping up with the rest of them. “Hearty, yet sweet, kosher, versatile, no rare ingredients--”
“--we don’t know what ingredients are rare for Alteans, Lance.” Pidge’s interruption seems to snap him out of it, and Lance performs a half-skipping gallop to catch up with the group.
“And we’re here,” Hunk says, sliding the translucent rectangular chip Coran gave him this morning into a panel by the door they’ve just reached. It looks no different from the doors to their chambers, but opens into a vast room full of shining metal appliances of so many different sizes and shapes that no one is quite sure where to start looking, except for Hunk, who stares straight ahead, tearing up a bit, and then races across the room to the far side.
“Look at all! This! Counter space!” He spreads his arms out as far as they will go and leans down onto the bright white stone, still barely covering a fifth of the length of the surface, which spans the entire far wall. Pidge clears her throat.
“I guess we’d better start exploring,” she says pointedly.
“Alright!” Hunk whips around to face the rest of them still framed in the doorway. “Pidge, Lance, go figure out what over there is a heat source--” he gestures broadly toward the bay of gleaming machinery and appliances that fills the left side of the room “-- Keith, you’re with me. That --” Hunk indicates a large doorway in the opposite wall, leading into an area filled with what looks like an entire bank of giant middle school lockers more than anything else “-- has got to be food storage. Let’s see what we’re working with, ingredient-wise, and get you showing off some knife skills, since we already know that’s where your strengths lie.”
“Are you sure you’re going to be able to make anything with...Altean ingredients?” Keith asks, as he moves to join Hunk and the others make their way over to confront the dizzying array of alien technology.
“If I know one thing, and one thing only, it is this,” says Hunk seriously. “Given any set of potential ingredients, some time, and -- ideally -- some way to apply heat, I can make not only something, but a meal. Or else my name isn’t Hunk Garrett.” Keith is looking at him, but not with the awed respect he was hoping for.
“Well, is it?”
“What do you mean, ‘is it’?”
“Is your name Hunk Garrett? I’ve never known your last name.” Hunk looks utterly betrayed, and Keith spreads his hands wide. “Do you know mine?”
“Of course, it’s --” he pauses, frowns, shakes his head “-- no, no I don’t.”
“Kogane. See? Now you know. And now I know. So we can move on.” And with this final conclusion, he pulls open the door to the first locker.
