Lance rolls his shoulders, then stretches his arms above his head with a groan. The motion is stiffer than it should be, and Lance’s accompanying wince raises a red flag. Maybe he’d gotten roughed up worse than Hunk thought.

“Sounding like an old man there, Lance,” Hunk says. He keeps his voice in the sweet spot between amused and concerned, and Lance, thankfully, picks up on what Hunk’s trying to get at.

“Yeah, actually I’m pretty sure I tweaked my back kinda funny earlier today during practice,” Lance admits. “It was right after I got Keith by the waist and flipped him over my shoulder that everything started getting pretty sore.”

The smooth confidence with which Lance spouts stuff like that never ceases to amaze Hunk. Hunk and everyone else had been there. He’d watched Lance grapple Keith by the waist, start to lift him, lose his balance from Keith’s flailing, and then topple backwards. Not a tick later, the bulk of Keith’s body weight had followed the pull of gravity. Hard. Straight into Lance’s prone form. The two recovered from their inglorious flop pretty quickly, but still. It wasn’t like they hadn’t been wailing on each other before that.

Just replaying it over again in his head makes Hunk’s muscles twinge in sympathy. No one could ever say Lance didn’t fight hard, and he often felt it afterwards.

“Dude, that’s brutal. Sounds like the kind of thing a Hunk Special could fix up pretty easy, though,” he says.

Lance melts at the words. His shoulders slump forward and a smile lights up his face.

“Please, that would be amazing,” Lance says with a relieved exhale. “Your hands are magical.”

Hunk’s been waiting for Lance to cross into the lab and nestle up against his chest since he showed up, and it’s just as rewarding as he’d pictured when Lance does. When Hunk wraps his arms around Lance’s waist and gives him a tight squeeze, it’s as much to pull him close as relieve the tension in his back. Letting his head rest just below Hunk’s chin, Lance returns the gesture and doesn’t let go.

“You didn’t even do anything and I’m already feeling better,” Lance murmurs into his shirt.

Since the top of his head is close enough anyway, Hunk brushes his lips over the swirl of soft brown hair, then plants a kiss there. His hair still holds a hint of dampness from an earlier shower, and it mingles with the fruity, near-coconut scent of the soap Lance had dragged Hunk all around some on-planet alien bazaar to look for.

“That’s the magic,” Hunk says.

He smiles into Lance’s hair and moves his hands up his back until he reaches the bottom of Lance’s shoulder blades. His fingers rub circles, small but firm, all along the middle of his back and spine. After this many years training and fighting in space, Lance is all muscle under his shirt, and despite Hunk’s continued efforts, most of that muscle is quick to tense and knot. Sometimes, Hunk wondered if being a paladin put more strain on Lance than the others: internalizing the unreal notion that somehow, Lance wasn’t as cut out for the job as anyone else, he tended to work himself longer and harder. The rest of the team didn’t notice it as much, thinking Lance’s constant calls for training floor rematches and extra patrol shifts were just part of his competitive streak (and, well, they weren’t all that wrong), but Hunk could always feel the truth of it in the tension Lance carried in his back and shoulders.

Switching his hands from Lance’s back to the tops of his shoulders, he palms and pinches the flesh at the junction of his neck and collar. Lance leaves even more heavily against his chest, and a low groan wells up the longer Hunk massages the muscle.

“You’re amazing,” Lance mumbles.

Hunk drops another soft kiss onto the crown of Lance’s head, and Lance returns with a happy hum.

Without warning, Pidge swans into the lab and over to her workstation. Through the transparent hologram of her data screen projector, Hunk can see her nose wrinkle.

“Gross, get a room, you two,” she teases. Her eyes flick back and forth between her screen, them, and the jumble of tools scattered around her work area.

“My lab is a sacred space for scientific endeavors,” she continues, “not some kind of Makeout Point.”

Lance leans away from Hunk just enough for Pidge to get to full brunt of his eyeroll.

“Since when were backrubs and necking even remotely in the same category?” Lance protests.

“They’re both PDA,” she says, “and displays of affection that are public have no place in a lab environment.”

She’s kidding, of course: no one in the Castle had ever raised legitimate complaints about Lance and Hunk’s minor public intimacies, nor anyone else’s. On a cramped ship that’s been hurtling through space with the same seven people for almost five years, hugs and kisses and hand holding were commonplace. And it’s not like Pidge was one to talk.

Still holding the data screen, she shifts through her mess of tools. Under normal circumstances, Hunk might offer to straighten her workstation up for her - more for his sanity than hers - but she’s not even aware she’s given him an opening, and he’s petty enough to take it.

“Oh, but like, me going to use the kitchen only to walk in on you and a certain someone about to put some buns in the oven is totally cool, yeah?” he says, voice casual.

He's got to admire Pidge's poker face: she keeps from cracking a blush for a good ten seconds, even as Lance's eyes just about bulge from his head and his strangled questions fill the long pause before Pidge’s response.

“Carry on,” she says, blindly grabbing for one of the tools at her table. Her eyes fix straight ahead, she hides her flushed cheeks behind her data screen, and she darts out.

Much of the exhaustion has faded from Lance’s face at the prospect of new gossip. The rapt attention with which he’d watched Pidge leave shifts to Hunk.

“Who’d you catch about to do the do with Pidge?” he asks. “Did she check ‘mullet’ or ‘muscles’ off her list?”

Trying not to snort in laughter, Hunk shakes his head and makes a zipping motion over his mouth.

“They both asked me not to say anything. My lips are sealed on the matter.”

Pouting, Lance trails his fingers up and down Hunk’s sides. The sensation is nice, but he knows it’s in part a tactic to soften him up to Lance’s questioning.

“Come on, you can tell me,” Lance whines.

Hunk shrugs and lifts his hands, doing his best to look contrite. While it had been worth it to tease Pidge back some, he’d known he was going to have to deal with Lance’s insistence. Fortunately, for some reason, all of them on the ship acted more like children than adult defenders of the universe, so he already knew how to shut the rest of this conversation down.

“Sorry,” he says, “but no can do. She made me pinky promise not to tell, you know I can't break it.”

Lance shifts from foot to foot, then crosses his arms over his chest. Disappointment crosses his face, but he sighs and nods.

“That's totally fair,” he concedes, “I can respect that.”

Mischief alights in the corners of his lips as he grins a tick later. “I may not be able to ask you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t eventually pry it out from Pidge. She’s always been weak to my wiles.”

“Dude, she’s never been weak to your wiles,” Hunk says with a laugh. Lance deflates back into a pout.

Shaking his head, Hunk wraps an arm around Lance’s waist and starts steering him towards the lab exit.

“That said,” he continues, “she does have a point about the whole ‘getting a room’ thing.”

Lance puckers his lips and raises an eyebrow. He loops his arm around Hunk as they walk towards Lance’s room. “Pidge’s public displays of affection giving you ideas about something you’d like to do in private?”

Hunk bumps Lance’s hip with his. “Well, I had been thinking you needed some more work on the pain in your lower back, but if that’s not what you want…”

“No!” Lance says, leaping a little. “I need more of your back rubs if I’m going to be in fighting shape tomorrow. But maybe afterwards…?”

“You should really take a break, man,” Hunk says. Lance shoots him a ‘yeah, right’ kind of look as the door to his room unlocks and slides open.

“I’m just saying, if you keep pushing yourself, not even my massages are going to be able to fix it.”

“Lies. Your massages fix everything.”

The lights in Lance’s room raise, comfortably dimmed to match the Castle’s evening settings. Boneless, Lance flops onto his bed, then scoots over for Hunk to join him. Hunk kneels on the bed, shifting so that he can get into the right spot to start on Lance’s back, but Lance reaches out and tugs on his shoulders. Hunk tips forward and catches himself on one elbow. It brings him close enough for Lance to crane his head up and press a soft kiss to Hunk’s lips.

“But even if they didn’t,” Lance continues, “your kisses would.”

It’s so sappy, but damned if Lance doesn’t know how to make Hunk blush. Joy swoops up through his gut and goes straight for his chest; he leans in closer to nuzzle his cheek against Lance’s.

“All right, flip over before you make me incapable of doing anything but swooning like a school kid.”

Lance winks but obliges. Sitting back up on his knees, Hunk shuffles around on the bed until he’s at the right angle to begin. His hands slip under the hem of Lance’s shirt, and he presses at the flesh just above his hips. Lance wiggles the rest of the way out of his shirt and settles back in.

The next half hour is filled with a warm chatter as they discuss everything from possible alien pizza toppings to the mystery behind Shiro’s seemingly ever-permanent eyeliner (‘If it’s not natural, then it’s gotta be tattooed on’ ‘Nuh uh, the man just knows his around a gel liner’). Hunk kneads at Lance’s lower back and works his way up. Huffs and groans of relief begin filling up more of Lance’s conversation than his words.

“You want me to keep going?” Hunk asks.

“Mmmhmmm…” is the languid reply.

It’s not long after that Lance’s breaths begin to slow and deepen, and his body goes even more lax under Hunk’s hands. Hunk smiles to himself.

“Lance, you conked out there, buddy?”

No response.

Hunk skims his hands over Lance’s bare back, admiring warm brown skin accentuated by the rise and dip of countless battle scars. The shaggy hair at the nape of Lance’s neck curls ever-so-slightly, and he wonders how long it will be before Lance asks him to trim it (‘There’s no way I’m growing out a mullet, I’m not Keith). He runs a gentle thumb along the line of Lance’s neck, following it up to his jaw, then sweeps his touch across his cheek. Lance stirs and whispers something nonsensical, but his eyes remain shut.