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Hunk has really outdone himself this evening.
Their most recent mission took them to a planet that had developed in a similar manner to Earth and the Voltron crew were able to kick back for a few days on a beach that wasn't entirely unlike Varadero beach, where Lance had grown up.
Before leaving, the locals had given them a veritable truckload of meats and produce that were called by different names but basically amounted to several months worth of fine dining for the Earthlings.
This evening, Hunk has made the closest thing to burgers and fries that any of them has had in almost two years. Not even Pidge, self-proclaimed pickiest eater in the known universe, turns down this meal.
"Everyone," Lance says before anyone can dig in, "I would like to say a few words before we begin."
The six castle inhabitants look at him expectantly. Lance clasps his hands, as if praying, and looks around just as expectantly. Everyone follows suit with confused looks on their faces. Lance closes his eyes.
"Good bread, good meat," he cracks an eye open and begins to smile, "Good god, let's eat."
A hearty round of laughter, and everyone begins filling their plates. Coran and Allura look suspicious at first but as soon as they take bites, both begin to make the same kind of uncomfortable noises that anyone who is trying Hunk's cooking for the first time would make. The buns are little sesame speckled clouds that Hunk made fresh, himself. Pidge helped with the chemistry part of the cooking and Hunk usually wouldn't have asked for help in the kitchen, but he wanted there to be minimal ingredient waste (meaning none of the taste testing that Lance would usually get to do) as nobody knew when they would next be on Planet Airathea to stock up.
Through trial and error, Hunk discovered that the brown meat tasted and cooked in a the same way that salmon did, so they decided to call it Aira-salmon and they stored it in the freezer unit for another meal. They also found and stored a greenish substance that cooked and tasted like chicken and some solid orange balls that, when cut, looked the same as pork chops and also happened to taste like them, when fried.
In one chest, they found bright red blocks that looked like four by four cubes of beef that just happened to be the Airathean equivalent of cow rump, so Hunk measured out and ground up eight pounds of it for the burgers. The only seasonings he added were half a bottle of something that smelled like Worcestershire sauce and four cloves of garlic.
Turns out that one is universal.
The fries that Hunk made are pink and Lance is adoring them, but they need something a little extra so, during a lull in his conversation with Coran, who is sitting at the opposite end of the table from him, Lance asks Hunk offhandedly if there is any extra seasoning for them.
"Oh sure," Hunk says, motioning to a little bottle on the table a little too far for Lance to reach, "That stuff there is close enough to salt."
"Awesome. Princess, can you pass the salt, please?"
To his left, Allura reaches out with her left hand.
At the same time, on his right, Keith reaches out with his right.
Their fingers touch as they land on the bottle.
The whole table freezes.
Allura looks like she's swallowed a penny.
Shiro looks like he's been expecting this and is only a little disappointed.
Pidge's eyebrows look like they're going to fly off her face, they're raised so high.
Coran looks a cross between confused and disgusted, like he doesn't quite know what's going on.
Hunk is studiously looking at his plate and trying to pretend like nothing is happening.
Keith is checked out. He's still sitting there, hand poised for the salt shaker, that much is true. But his face is red enough you could fry an Airathean egg on it and his brain has come offline, Lance can see it in the vacant stare of his eyes.
At a loss for what to do, Lance looks past his boyfriend and to his best friend.
"Hunk, can you pass the salt please?"
As soon as Hunk's fingers nudge Allura and Keith's out of the way, life seems to start back up again, beginning with Pidge (the little gremlin) cackling into her lemon-ish-ade. Then Shiro sighs and drops his head into his prosthetic hand, mumbling something about teenagers and hormones and 'good god, please get me off this boat'.
Allura sighs as well and spares Lance a lightly disgusted look that he could swear his mother had given him once a few years ago when he had brought a bucket of dead crabs into her meticulous kitchen and hid it under the kitchen sink for three days. The smell had lingered for weeks and now that Lance thinks about it, that 'swallowed a penny' look she had given him before was vaguely reminiscent of the look anyone in his family had gotten on their face when they entered the kitchen in that time.
Coran shrugs and goes back to eating.
Hunk finally gives Lance the salt.
Keith has sunk so low in his seat that only the top of his head was visible over the edge of the table. He continues to eat, his hand creeping up to snag a couple pink fries, but even that's flushed.
Lance wolfs down his alien burger and alien fries, ignoring the salt completely; he can live without it, for his boyfriend's sake.
"Keith," he says, standing up, and Keith raises his head high enough to make his eyes visible, "spar with me?"
Keith is up and out of the room faster than Clay Aiken's music career.