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After Shiro disappears, things kind of go to shit.
…Yeah, that about sums that one up, if you ask Hunk.
Well…not that they hadn’t already been shitty beforehand—what with the Galra and Zarkon attacking them and being an unfathomable distance away from home and all that—but things definitely do not improve with Shiro’s disappearance, to say the least. Losing their leader when they barely had half a clue as to what they were doing in the first place was not the best turn of circumstances in the slightest.
So yes, Hunk thinks it’s fair to say things deteriorate to an even larger extent with Shiro’s…absence.
Absence—that’s all it is. All it must be. Shiro can’t be dead.
…Right?
Because…if Shiro’s dead, then they honestly have no hope in hell of winning this fight.
Still, Hunk is painfully aware of the fact that sharing this little revelation on his part would do nothing to help the team’s morale. Nor will it get them out of the current pickle they currently find themselves in, and would likely only make certain people’s panic worse, so he decides it’s best kept to himself.
…And Lance.
Lance, who’s quick to sneak into his room that first night (and every night following) after they escape Zarkon’s clutches again, plus one new bayard yet sans Shiro, and curl up on the end of Hunk’s bed across from him, knees drawn up against his chest as he stares down at the blankets with wide eyes and pale cheeks.
“Shiro left Keith in charge,” he says almost immediately once he’s situated, giving up on beating around the bush. Not even bothering to give Keith’s name the usual disgusted inflection he tends to place on it at most opportunities for the sake of theatrics, if nothing else. “He left us alone, with Keith in charge.” There’s a breath, shaky and unsure. “We’re all going to die.”
…Welp. He doesn’t really know how to argue with that one.
“Lance…” Hunk sighs, long and low, because he knows Lance is right in his worry. Knows Lance is almost always right in his analysis of a person’s abilities, once he removes personal bias at least, but is scared to admit to this fact, especially in the face of Lance’s own spiraling paranoia. “I know you’re not Keith’s biggest fan, but we can’t just—“
“He’s going to get us all killed,” Lance cuts Hunk off flatly. “This has…” His face balls up, conflict and irritation crawling to the surface. “This has nothing to do with my feelings about Keith as a person one way or another, honest. You know I’m over a lot of that, anyways.” He breathes out, hands trembling where they’re fisted in the fabric of his pajama pants, and Hunk doesn’t hesitate to reach out and loosen his white-knuckled fingers carefully, tangling them with his own.
“It’s just logic,” Lance continues, narrowing his eyes and glaring down at the blankets. “He’s too hotheaded, impulsive. Never mind his focus right now is on figuring out this whole…Galra thing.” A pause, and Hunk meets his eyes sympathetically. “Look, I’m not saying he could never be a good leader. Shiro saw potential in him and that must mean something. It’s not like Keith’s terrible, but Shiro barely had a handle on how to lead us himself as it was, and he was mostly playing sounding board to Allura’s own bouts of impulsiveness when her anger gets the better of her. Put her and Keith together and we’re a dead ship sailing. Er…” He makes a face. “Floating.”
Hunk wavers for a moment, looking for a rebuttal, and slumps. “…Yeah.”
So…okay, yeah, they’re kinda fucked.
Ironically, Hunk thinks things wouldn’t be so bad if he or Lance (preferably Lance, in his mind) could get a word in edgewise to mention their concerns in the most polite terms possible during one of the team scheming sessions on how to get Shiro back, those already being the team’s predominant focus with barely a day passed in an attempt to stem their grief into something useful, and also, like, not die, but their version of Voltron, in its short and tumultuous history, has always operated as more of a ‘listen to the leader’ type group than a democracy, per se.
Or, at least, it’s somewhat a democracy, so far as what Keith or Pidge suggests at any given time if Allura and Shiro are feeling like listening—Shiro more than Allura, honestly. Allura isn’t much better than Keith in terms of the whole ’doing it my way’ thing, in Hunk’s opinion.
Which, incidentally, is another reason it kinda sucks not to have Shiro around.
At least then Pidge might be able to get a word in. Shiro always listened to her suggestions, which if nothing else provided the rather interesting telephone game that was Lance talking to Hunk who talked to Pidge who then talked to Shiro, when issues needed to be met that way. Perhaps, logistically, it would be easier to cut out the middleman, but Hunk generally found it easier to talk to Pidge than Shiro when necessary, and Lance could always easily start a fight even when there wasn’t one, when he felt someone wasn’t taking him seriously.
Not that Lance is inherently always wrong in those assumptions.
Just…sometimes, because, again, paranoia.
But…yeah, that’s another thing Hunk has noticed—that in terms of actual suggestions for dealing with problems, Lance’s and his own opinions aren’t exactly…valued beyond, say, votes on a group consensus, occasionally.
Even that is iffy, depending on how you look at it.
Not that the team ignores them or anything, just that…well. It’s complicated. As a group they really have no idea what they are doing, and he and Lance are not, unfortunately, top of the expertise-seeking food chain, as it were. Have questions about an engine, and Hunk is your guy, but those skills don’t necessarily extend to battle plans, and the fact that Lance might be useful with those is apparently lost on most people.
Then again, as much as that annoys Hunk ever so slightly, most people haven’t been glued to Lance’s side since they were like…eight. The team isn’t going to have his personal level of Lance-centered expertise, just like he isn’t going to have Pidge’s level of tech knowledge or Keith’s fighting instinct. Lance-reading is a learned art form, developed over a lifetime of observation, as are most things, especially when it comes to interpersonal relationships—which Hunk will readily admit neither he nor much of the rest of team Voltron likely excels at.
Not that he minds being the Lance-to-world translator at times, just as Lance is for him often enough.
…It’s just. Complicated.
Really fucking complicated.
At the end of the day, Lance is paranoid, insecure, and a bit of a secret pessimist, but he’s not often wrong about these things—about people.
So yeah, they’re kinda fucked, and not, as Lance would so crudely put it given the opportunity, the quote on quote “fun way”.
It is, Hunk reflects later—after Lance has crawled into the warm space next to him on the long, but not particularly wide, Altean bed that really can’t fit the both of them, snuggled into his side and sapping his warmth with cold fingers curled into his shirt sleeve, as they have done since they are children—undeniably frustrating that understanding the right path for the future of Voltron, and what to do in the face of this new, rather significant bump in the road, is not even half as clear as it is to him the simplicities of talking Lance down from a panicked spill of rambling and into sleep.
But he supposes that’s rather the point, isn’t it? He’s had the better part of a lifetime to learn Lance, and comparatively, in his short period as a paladin, he’s had basically no time to figure out exactly what the right way to go about being a paladin of Voltron is.
xxx
When days of searching for Shiro turn into weeks, Hunk gets used to two things very quickly: breaking up vicious arguments, usually with Coran’s help, and dragging Lance away from the hologram monitors on the bridge every night.
Usually, Hunk would count on Lance to help out with the former problem among their fellow paladins, and he still often can, blessedly, but thanks to the latter aforementioned sleep issue, not always. Lance is the kind of person that can run for days on nothing but spite and manic energy, but when he finally crashes, he crashes hard, and if he doesn’t get some solid sleep for a couple nights afterward, he turns nasty pretty quickly when pushed too hard.
A sleep-deprived, cranky Lance is not one you want to pick a fight with, Hunk knows this, but apparently the others haven’t quite gotten the memo yet. Which means he’s all-too-frequently forcing himself between Keith and Lance, and occasionally Allura, in order to stop their loud words from escalating into actual punches.
Trying to figure out what to do now is stressing them all out, Hunk included, and he finds keeping the peace comes with its own tolls in terms of exhaustion levels.
If nothing else, he can rely on Lance to consistently coddle Pidge off to rest when she gets overly tired and cranky herself—ever the caretaker to those that will let him get away with it. Honestly, Hunk rather suspects that Lance would do the same for Allura, maybe even Keith, if they let him, but he feels that’s a thought better kept to himself. There are enough pushed boundaries and stepping on toes going on now as it is without him aggravating the situation.
So he does what he can. He cooks, he cleans, he helps keep the peace, and he handles the complexities of Lance, as always.
Three weeks into Shiro’s “unplanned vacation,” as Lance has taken to calling it in faux-joking terms that have nearly gotten him strangled by Keith a couple times, Hunk finds Lance perched back on the flight deck floor, not long after Hunk had wheedled him into going to bed for the first time that night, hands swiping through hologram screens at a speed that gives him a headache just watching.
Great, so Lance is doing the sneaking out at night multiple times thing now. Classy.
“Y’know, it’s kind of hard to get this one past me when you sleep in my bed pretty much every night, dude.”
Lance startles, making a half-smothered noise somewhere between a squeak and a squawk, and turns back with hunched shoulders to look at him guiltily. “…You’re a heavy sleeper!”
“No,” Hunk says, taking the last few steps to Lance and folding down to the floor next to him, crossing his legs and tucking his hands under his thighs as he offers Lance a pointed side-eye. “You think I’m a heavy sleeper. Besides, I’ve got your body clock memorized. You’ve been waking up at four AM to pee every night since we were like…nine. By now, I wake up naturally, expecting to feel your sharp elbows jabbing me when you get up. Not really that hard to notice when you get up and then don’t come back, ya know.”
Lance pouts, blowing a raspberry into his palm and flopping backwards to lay spread-eagled on the cool metal floor, bringing his holo-screens with him to project over his head with a quick grabbing motion of his hand as an afterthought. Almost automatically, Hunk copies his movements, settling with his hands crossed over his stomach and feet tucked together, a sharp contrast to Lance’s all-over-the-place limbs, taking up much more space on the floor despite being half Hunk’s size. Making a happy noise, Lance frees a hand from the monitor to bury it in Hunk’s hair, scratching lightly in an idle motion as the other hand continues its swiping and tapping on the screen.
“Can you even read that?” Hunk asks, yawning, eyes glazing over as he tries to follow the whizzing Altean scrolling by. He can recognize a few written Altean words (or maybe they’d be better considered symbols) by now, but only things in relation to equipment around the ship hangars, workshops, and the kitchen when he’s very lucky. Even the alphabet, if Alteans even have one in a similar format to theirs, would be lost on him. But that’s hardly surprising, given language has always been more Lance’s area than Hunk’s.
Humming, Lance shrugs, shoulders sliding along the polished chrome. “Yes and no? I’m getting better, but a lot of the more complicated stuff is still lost on me, especially without a human language point of reference. I swear, Altean is the most complicated language possible to try and learn.”
Hunk smiles despite himself, closing his eyes, “Even harder than Japanese?” he asks, thinking back fondly to the period Lance had gone through in middle school when he’d decided he was going to try and learn the language, merely because some kid that had been really into manga at their school had bet him he wouldn’t be able to.
He’d managed to, as well, for the most part. It had taken a few years, but he’d done it, purely out of spite—the best motivator for Lance there is.
Lance snorts. “Well this doesn’t have three different writing systems, as far as I can tell, but it’s no cake walk either.”
Hunk hums in agreement, and for a long moment there is silence, distinct and obvious but not uncomfortable, Lance’s fingers still tangled up in his hair, before there’s a quiet sigh, and he cracks an eye open to watch Lance’s half-awake, exhausted face reflected by the dimly glowing lights of the holo-screens, hand still outstretched to tap or swipe.
“What’re you thinking?” Hunk asks. An offer to talk, but not a demand, and Lance glances ruefully at him, one thin eyebrow arched in a response.
“Hell if I know. It’s not like I have any idea what I’m doing, really.”
Hunk nods slightly, accepting the admission for what it is. “…Shiro?” he guesses, quietly.
Lance looks away, and he sighs. “You’re allowed to be worried about him too, Lance. Yeah, you’re not as close to him as Keith or Pidge…or Allura, maybe, but he’s still…” His voice catches on the words, and it comes out as something like a question, “He’s still our…friend?”
Blue eyes turn back to him, Lance’s face scrunched up in something between grief and distaste. “Is he? He’s our teammate, sure, and our leader. And yeah, we need him around, no bones about that one, but can we honestly say he’s our friend?”
“I…” Hunk blinks, hesitating, and Lance snorts, gaze darting away and narrowing to a glare at the monitor above him.
“I just want him back as soon as possible so that we can go back to normal,” Lance says firmly. “The less time Keith stays in charge, the better.”
“You’re allowed to care, you know.”
Lance grunts in response, fingers untangling from Hunk’s hair to cross his arms and pout up at the ceiling.
Hunk grins despite himself, rolling onto his elbow to peer down at Lance, head caught in his hand as a resting place. Almost unconsciously, he reaches out to poke Lance on the nose, earning himself an unamused huff. “Oh come on, don’t even try. I’m not saying you’ve suddenly got to become best buddies with Shiro or something, I know he wasn’t exactly what you were expecting, but don’t pretend it doesn’t matter to you whether he comes back in one piece or not for reasons outside of team functionality.” He laughs at Lance’s disgruntled face, smoothing his fingers over bared collarbone against the loose edges of the wide neckline of the castle-provided paladin pajamas, feeling the faintest pattern of heartbeat just underneath. “You care about him. You care about all of them, probably a bit too much. Don’t think I don’t notice. Every fight you pick with Keith and Allura is to distract them and give them a break from stressing over Shiro. It’s your own way of looking out for them.”
“Not every fight.”
“Most fights,” Hunk amends softly. “You, Lance McClain, have a heart the size of Earth, and you’d take a bullet for anyone on this team without hesitation.” He smiles ruefully. “Much as I wish you’d show a little more self-preservation.”
Lance grumbles, rolling his eyes, and pushes lightly on Hunk’s chest. Obliging, he leans away from his place hovering over Lance’s head, falling back to his original position on the floor. Lance rolls over in turn, tucking himself against Hunk and folding his arms up onto Hunk’s chest, chin resting on them over his breastbone, one leg idly tangling with his own.
“Maybe I do care about them,” he admits, catching his lower lip between his teeth. “But not as much as I care for you.”
Hunk smiles. “That’s a bit different though, isn’t it?” he says, and Lance hums in reluctant agreement.
“And what about you, huh?” Lance asks him quietly, eyes drooping and voice lulling in rare peace. “Sir Hunk—everyone’s knight in shining armor. Savior of the Balmera, and of our kitchen whenever Coran’s on the move. Leg of Voltron, strength of Voltron.” He grins lazily, wide and easy. “Strength of all my crazy, keeping me from falling off the rails.”
“Me?” Hunk laughs quietly. “I have no clue what I’m doing.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“Not you. Never you.” He traces his hands over Lance’s sides, familiar warmth under his fingers. “You know me too well.”
“Maybe,” Lance acquiesces. “Maybe.”
They fall into silence, long and open in a way that makes the hum of the sleeping castle even clearer, like the ticking of a clock that gets louder the longer you listen to it, one part soothing and one part filled with the creeping, crawling sensations of distant foreboding. Almost idly, Hunk runs his hands along Lance’s waist and hips and up his back once more, one hand coming up over Lance’s shoulder to trace fingertips along his jaw, feeling the thin bone underneath soft skin. Lance smiles tiredly, turning his face into Hunk’s hand and closing his eyes, breathing in deeply and exhaling slowly, and Hunk finds himself copying his rhythm automatically.
There is still so much to be said. About them, about the team, about Shiro, about Voltron…but now, he suspects, is not the time. To press on too far would shatter the serene stillness of this pale imitation of night, and he doesn’t have the heart to do it. Not when so much about their situation, their lives, is so unsure, and Lance is the only stable, familiar thing he has left.
So he lets it be, sliding his palm up Lance’s cheek and pushing his bangs back off his forehead, running his fingers through Lance’s hair in a steady motion as Lance brings an arm up to rest his elbow on Hunk’s chest, his chin propped into his fist, and his other hand traces unfamiliar symbols into Hunk’s sternum, practicing his Altean, assumedly, even in this half-awake state.
“I know I’ve been worrying you,” Lance murmurs eventually, voice laden with sleep as he peers down at him with lidded, dazed eyes, “I’m sorry.”
Hunk smiles softly, shrugging as best he can against his position on the floor. “I always worry, it’s what I do.”
Lance snorts lazily. “Yeah, but I haven’t really been helping.”
“Just take care of yourself,” Hunk says quietly. “That’s all I need. To know you’re okay, that’s it.”
There’s a sigh, and Lance slumps forward, dropping his arms and resting his face against Hunk’s chest, ear right over where he knows his heartbeat resides, and he brings his arms up carefully, wrapping them around Lance’s shoulders. “Ok…ok.”
“…You too. That—you too.” Lance adds almost silently after a long moment, and Hunk closes his eyes, pretending not to hear.
There are some things he can’t swear to, right now, if it means keeping Lance, and everyone else, safe. He won’t make promises he can’t keep.
xxx
A little over a month and then some into Shiro’s disappearance, the Galra find them once more, and they run out of time.
It’s a whirling, anxious thing, in the aftermath of what is much more an escape than it is a victory, as they realize that hiding and waiting and hoping Shiro will return to them of his own accord—or that they will magically find a way to locate him immediately—is a near hopeless endeavor. A dangerous one, even, given they now know for certain the Empire has regrouped and is doing just fine.
Whatever element of surprise or advantage they might have had, knocking Zarkon out of commission, it is lost now. The Galra have more than demonstrated that they do not waver in the face of a threat in favor of sentimentality, not even for their Emperor. Everyone is replaceable, even Haggar and Zarkon’s generals know this, and they are on the losing side of this battle so long as they pretend otherwise.
At least, that’s so much as what Lance says, when it’s all over and they’ve skulked off to some deserted star system to lick their wounds and consider what to do next.
Not surprisingly, Keith promptly reacts by grabbing Lance by the front of his shirt and threatening to show him exactly who is so replaceable, and Hunk forces his way between them with diplomatic grace as he ignores the flicker of hurt on Lance’s face and the grief in Keith’s eyes. He can’t solve everything at once, he just can’t.
It’s Allura who finally gives into it, catching Hunk’s eye and nodding before asserting control with a steely grip, demanding their attention and their compliance with tone alone as she calls for silence, and reluctantly, oh so reluctantly, admits they cannot carry on like this any longer.
She doesn’t say it, would never say it, but it rings in the air anyways—Lance is right.
Pretty much most everything is replaceable in war, even if it’s a damn shoddy replacement, like a bad spare part for an engine. It has to be.
Everything. Even Shiro, albeit hopefully temporarily.
It leaves Lance with a smug grin and his hands on his hips even as Keith scowls and shoulders past him, not that it stops Hunk from catching the sight of Keith’s wrist darting up to rub at his eyes as he speeds out of the room, or the crack in Lance’s petty expression as he watches him go, genuine concern flickering across for only a moment. They’re all hurting, they’re all terrified, but Hunk doubts Keith and Lance will ever get on the same page long enough to notice, let alone talk it out properly.
They’re too different—Keith is hot anger and fire, channeling his grief and his love into fury and wickedly bladed words in the face of what they have lost, and still stand to lose. And Lance…Lance takes all his fears and doubts, ties them to an anchor, and chucks them in the water to let them drown, hiding them from any wandering eyes. Neither of them is what they seem on the surface, but underneath their contrasts and occasional similarities are even more obvious.
It’s the kind of thing that might be able to be fixed one day, to sit them down and help them hammer out a way to understand each other, but that certainly isn’t now. This isn’t the time, or the appropriate situation, and frankly Hunk may not be the person for the job.
He’s biased. Admittedly, undeniably biased, as much as Shiro is towards Keith, and he doesn’t think he’d even know how to be an impartial party in a manner pertaining to Lance, honestly. A good decade of doing the exact opposite stands firmly in the way.
And so, as Keith departs the bridge and Lance follows him with his eyes, weaknesses covered up and his indecipherable mask back on once more, Hunk sucks in a deep breath, exhaling slowly, and then lets it go. He’ll deal with Lance later, and Keith…well. Someone else will have to handle Keith.
He ignores the part of himself that reminds him that certain someone else for Keith would normally be Shiro.
He looks to Lance, who nods, hands curling into anxious fists at his side, and then Hunk turns to Allura, observes her tired eyes and set jaw, steady on her feet even as their few reclaimed victories crumble around them.
“What do you have in mind, Princess?” he asks, speaking for both himself and Lance—and Pidge, he supposes, from where she hovers in the corner, arms crossed and leaning against the wall with a dark expression. Allura’s face brightens ever so slightly with relief as she relaxes her shoulders and brings her hands together in front of her, and Hunk tries to feel glad for it.
Fighting her helps no one, after all. She needs their support, because right now there is no one else to give it. That is simply the way it is.
They are all replaceable, yes, but right now, at least, they are valuable—maybe not as individuals, but certainly as a unit, and that has to be enough.
It must be enough.
xxx
In light of Shiro’s final advisement to the team, Allura calls for a lion rotation in the interest of finding a way to reform Voltron in his absence, admitting it’s probably a more sensible option than looking for a new pilot for Black altogether, given the suitability of a black paladin relies severely on the composition of the rest of the team.
Perhaps Shiro had known what he was doing after all.
Or…perhaps not, Hunk thinks, when post Allura reassigning Keith to Black, as they all expected, she makes the executive decision to stick Lance in Red, and take over the Blue herself, rather than try and convince the Red Lion to accept an inexperienced pilot.
“It’s the best solution in light of our situation,” she tells them, looking to Lance in cool appraisal. “You’re the closest substitution we have for Keith’s position. It will go fine, with any luck.”
Hunk takes one look at Lance’s face, pinched tight and brimming just under the surface with a good dozen emotions, most involving anger, and seriously doubts it.
Lance argues weakly for a few scant moments, arms crossed defensively in the face of his own argument that they are all of them replaceable, before he accepts the position, arms at his sides in a not at all subtle parade rest as he nods to Allura and exits the room quickly. Keith’s eyes follow Lance, mouth a thin line, in a cruel mockery of their positions during their earlier confrontation, and Hunk forces himself to turn away and ignore the pit in his stomach until Allura finishes speaking and dismisses them. He may want to go after Lance like…now, but then he will likely miss something said, and Lance will want to know what happened.
One of them needs to be here.
Eventually, Allura departs, gesturing to Keith to follow her and mentioning she needs to speak to Lance about the lion change in depth. Hunk watches them go, hesitating on whether to follow or not, before sighing and going to see if he can press Pidge to eat something and get some rest, since Lance isn’t here to do it for him. He doubts any of the participating members will appreciate him eavesdropping in on a conversation he’s clearly not meant to be a part of (even he has enough tact to admit that much), and Lance will no doubt want some time to himself to get his thoughts together afterward. They may be…close, and share the aspects of their thoughts and personalities the others aren’t privy to, but Lance is still the kind of person who prefers for someone not to see him at his most vulnerable unless he approaches them first. Hunk has painfully given into this one, through much trial and error. It’s not easy to leave well enough alone when it comes to Lance, but he’s getting better at it, slowly.
Hunk makes a show of coaxing a meal onto Pidge and then tidying up the kitchen, creating noise simply for the sake of it to shake off the still emptiness of the castle that still claws at him even after this long, far too used to the busy noise of the small town where both his and Lance’s families had moved when they were children, and later the hurried racket of the Garrison in full operational swing.
The castle might have been glorious once, packed to the brim with Altean nobles and staff and visiting diplomats, but now it is only a hollow ghost of a shell of what it might have been, echoing with the barely forgotten memories of the past. With only seven residents—eleven if you include the mice, he supposes—in a residence meant for hundreds, their own tininess in the vast scheme of things, even in relation to the size and scope of one singular culture, is palpable.
…He hates it, honestly. While there is something undeniably incredible about visiting alien species, rescuing their homes and liberating their planets, he finds his mentality has grown over time to be more and more like Lance’s, rather than, say…Keith or Pidge’s. The more he sees, the more he just wants to go home.
He may have accepted this duty gracefully, he may have even embraced it, but he never signed up for it. Hell, he only applied to the Garrison on Lance’s encouragement, relieved at the idea of this oh so special, and so close to his heart, piece of home coming with him into this new, foreign territory.
The two of them had wanted a little adventure, maybe, sure, but…not this.
It’s too much and too little, all at once. So much responsibility and promised infamy in the history books eating away at the moments of normal life, all the little milestones that they’re skipping over. His grandmother’s birthday, Lance’s sister’s wedding, their college graduations…
Missed, lost. Every last piece of it, all the promised memories they’ll never get at all now.
Sometimes, in the recesses of the night, he wakes with heavy breaths to a creeping, crawling fear—that one day, if they stay away long enough, they too will be forgotten, just barely distinguishable smudges of the past, like the ghosts of the Castle of Lions.
He doesn’t tell Lance about those nights, even when the other is there in his bed still sleeping next to him, which is a solid almost always. There are some things Lance doesn’t need to know, with so much weight and so much peril already to bear.
Later, much later, after Allura and Keith have returned, arms crossed and avoiding each other’s eyes as expected, because Hunk’s not quite sure if they ever fully worked out the Galra thing, and he doubts all this is helping with it, he ventures down the flights of the ship in search of Lance.
It’s not hard to guess where he might be, honestly. Lance has a short list of places he considers as close to safe as he can within the castle, and the entirety of it is basically comprised of just his room, Hunk’s room, and the lion bay, right with Blue. Given the situation, Hunk feels he can safely guess which of those it is, and he skips any fanfare by just finding the closest elevator down to the lion hangars, fingers tapping nervous rhythms against his side as he considers what he could even say in this situation.
It’s not like he can offer to take Lance’s place or anything. He probably would if he could, just to spare Lance any pain, even if it makes his gut queasy and causes Yellow to growl moodily in the back of his mind, but he’s pretty sure he’d be an even poorer replacement for Keith, and Red might just eject him if he ever got motion sickness in her cockpit.
Much as he hates to admit it, and much as he knows Lance will too, Lance is the better option here, even if it’s still not a remotely good one.
Hunk finds Lance at the Blue lion’s base, curled up in a miserable-looking ball on one of her feet, thin shoulders hunched and knees pulled to his chest, turned away from the door in a clear sign for any intruders to go away. He notes with some relief Lance is at least out of his paladin armor, form all the more deceivingly breakable looking in his oversized jacket and faded jeans. Lance tenses as he gets closer, no doubt hearing his footsteps, and Hunk breathes out slowly, giving it a moment.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Allura.”
“It’s me,” Hunk says quietly, and is rewarded with Lance rolling out of his ball quickly, turning around and wiping not so subtly at his eyes to look at Hunk, expression hovering between closed off and calm, and open and vulnerable.
“Oh.”
Hunk sighs, slowly walking the few extra steps to stop in front of Lance, waiting. “Can I sit down?”
Lance snorts, forgoing an answer and instead shifting over to tap the space on Blue’s paw next to him in invitation, clearly considering the question unnecessary, if appreciated for the permission check it offers. They’re both very different people when it comes to personal space, and while they know each other better than most people when it comes to these things, it certainly never hurts to check, especially in situations like this.
He sits down gently, patting the metal of Blue’s surface when her welcoming purr starts up in the corner of his mind through the interconnected lion bond via his tie to Yellow, muffled and less distinct than his own lion’s, but still plenty clear in its intent.
There’s a short moment of wonder as to whether Red would respond so positively to his presence in the same situation, assuming she first accepted Lance, and then he shoves it out of his mind. It’s hardly important, really, what Keith’s lion thinks of him, even through the lens of Lance as a pilot.
Lance is on him in seconds, curling into his side, tucking a leg over the closest knee, and burrowing the side of his head into Hunk’s shoulder in an obvious seeking of physical comfort. Hunk accepts more than gladly, trailing an arm around his waist and resting his head on top of Lance’s, breathing in the smell of citrusy-sweet Altean shampoo and feeling himself relax properly for the first time in hours after the haunting silence of the nearly empty castle. After a moment, he feels the slightest stirrings of movement as hands wiggle under his shirt, coming to rest on his stomach and abdomen, and he grins sheepishly against Lance’s hair. It’s not sexual in the slightest, it rarely is with them, but the skin on skin contact is nice, a reassurance in the void of space where human touch outside of their team is completely nonexistent. Lance has always been big this sort of thing, even before Voltron, but he’d become particularly insistent on making it a regular occurrence after they ended up in the castle—not that Hunk can blame him, really. If he had five siblings, he’d probably be used to a significantly higher amount of physical contact too.
…And it’s enjoyable, regardless, so he hardly minds.
Idly, he brings a hand up to catch on the hair at the back of Lance’s head, threading thin strands through his fingers, and hums, “It’s getting longer. Are you thinking about growing it out again?”
Lance shudders visibly, knowing exactly which childhood phase Hunk is referring to, and makes a noise of disagreement. “What, and let Keith give me crap for following in his frankly atrocious footsteps? I think not.”
“I thought the whole point of that argument was against the existence of mullets,” Hunk says, voice tinged with amusement. “Not long hair on men in general, per se.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Lance mumbles, shifting slightly. “Besides, it was always a mess. Impossible to keep tidy.”
“It was fun to braid, though,” Hunk offers, remembering hot summer afternoons when they were little spent up in the high branches of the climbing trees at the park, his hands pulling the locks of Lance’s just slightly curly brown hair gently through the processes of the short braids he’d do down Lance’s neck.
Lance offers only an amused huff, wiggling against Hunk’s side in an effort to get more comfortable as they lapse into silence once more. After a long moment, he sighs, extracting a hand from under Hunk’s shirt to reach next to him and grab the object Hunk hadn’t even noticed had been there until now, holding it into view in front of the both of them. “I thought it wouldn’t really matter who kept what bayard, since they’re just weapons, but apparently they’re synced to each lion’s consciousness or something, since there’s the whole…plug it into the dashboard and produce a huge weapon thing, so…”
Hunk looks down, watching the lights of the hangar glint off the polished surface of the red bayard, and fights back the slight, but undeniable sinking in his stomach. “What shape does it take?” he asks almost automatically, unable to help himself as his head buzzes with the possibilities. Lance is naturally a ranged fighter, preferring guns or…basically anything that can be used from a distance, honestly, but the traditional role of the red paladin, from what he understands of it, is that of a close combat fighter—a bladed weapon.
There’s the slightest of exhausted, but willing breaths, and then Lance’s second hand is on the bayard as both grasp it and yank it apart as the bright light of its activation shapes it willingly with his movements. When the blinding white clears, Hunk blinks down and whistles at the two small, distinctly shaped blades lying in Lance’s palms.
“Throwing knives?” he asks, reaching a hand out carefully to trace along the sharp edge of the closest of the thin-edged blades, hissing when it catches on his skin and pulling away quickly, sticking the offending finger into his mouth as he would a paper cut. Lance looks worriedly to him for a moment, but he waves it off, pulling his hand back away and nodding to the knives. “Do you um…even know how to use those?”
There’s a huff of laughter, and Lance shakes his head. “Nope, not a clue, and I’m not that hot at it either, Allura made me practice for her.” Hunk winces, and Lance just shrugs, “This was apparently the closest compromise the Red lion and I could reach between a ranged weapon and…well. Its preference for something sharp and pointy, so it is what it is.”
“What would you do once you’ve thrown them, though?” Hunk asks cautiously, squinting at the small blades suspiciously.
“They just seem to automatically re-spawn? Every time I threw one and reached for another—while Allura yelled, of course—there was one waiting at my hip like there would be if I had a storage belt.” Lance wrinkles his nose, “Pretty much in the same vein as how our guns never run out of ammo or Pidge’s electric blade…thing…never runs out of charge. It’s like some kind of…bad alien video game hack. Infinite ammo.”
“Well,” Hunk offers quietly, “It is magic…I think.”
Lance scowls, dropping the knives and watching with unreadable eyes as they clatter to the ground and are reabsorbed by the white light, reforming the red bayard’s resting form at the base of Blue’s foot in an almost painful moment of visual irony. “I hate it. I already miss my gun.”
“It’s only temporary,” Hunk murmurs, and Lance snorts in response.
Temporary. Right.” He sighs out, falling back against Hunk’s chest and craning his neck to peer up at him, eyes wide and tired and full of so much raw humanity, the same way they were that night out on the flight deck only what was a couple weeks ago, but in many ways feels like lifetimes previous. Every day out in space has been long and unfamiliar, and every minute and every hour without Shiro even more so. “We’ve been searching for more than a month, Hunk. Everyday, nonstop, every night, out on those holopads looking for something, anything that might tell us where he is. What if we never find him?”
He considers making some quip about Lance’s previous insistence on not caring, and then dismisses it, knowing it will do little to help in this case, instead smoothing a hand over Lance’s forehead gently. “We’ll find him.”
“But what if we don’t?” Lance presses, staring at him with so much naked fear, and bone-chilling certainty in the face of his admission. “Like I myself said first, as Allura kept reminded me, we’re all replaceable. All of us— Zarkon and his soldiers, Shiro, even you and me. We’re only here because we were a convenient option that managed to fulfill some very specific characteristics. What if it gets to a point where it’s just…more economical to stop looking? Could we really blame that logic?”
Hunk freezes, looking into Lance’s imploring expression and trying to decide the right answer, jumping between gaps in sentimentality and logic in the face of their deepest fears and worries laid bare. “Do you…do you remember that time when we were ten, and that older kid in the grade above us stole our lunch cards?”
Lance blinks, furrowing his eyebrows. “Uh…yeah? But—”
“And do you remember how we were too embarrassed to tell our parents, so every morning you’d sneak over to my house before they woke up and we’d make lunch for ourselves in my kitchen?”
“Yes, Hunk, I was there.”
“That first time—“ He hesitates, idly brushing his fingers over Lance’s bangs, “That first time, we realized the brown paper bags we’d need to pack them were on the high shelf, yeah? The really high shelf, the one neither of us could reach even when standing on the counter. So we got the footstool ladder from the hall closet, and we still couldn’t get them down, because I was too scared to climb up, and you were too short to reach back then even with the ladder. So you remember what we did?”
Lance’s mouth is a scrunched line of confusion, eyes squinting up at Hunk in bafflement. “We…I climbed on your shoulders?”
“You climbed on my shoulders.” Hunk beams. “And like that, we were just tall enough together to get that cupboard open and save ourselves the humiliating embarrassment of admitting we had forsaken our lunch cards to the horrendous monster that was the idiot in class B6.” Lance laughs, soft and fond, and he grins despite himself. “A hundred other people could have gotten that cupboard open a hundred different ways, but only the specific combination of you and me would have produced that exact result. We could only do it as a team.” Hunk sighs, tracing a thumb along Lance’s cheekbone. “There may be a hundred other potential paladins out there…we may be replaceable as a part of this team, because we have to be for Voltron to survive, that’s fact. You know it and I know it. But you are not replaceable to me. There is only one Lance McClain in the whole universe, and I wouldn’t want any substitute, lions or no.”
There’s a chuckle, and then Lance grins, thoughtless and bright and all the things his smile used to be, before Voltron, before everything. “That was an absolutely terrible metaphor.” Hunk snorts, and said grin stretches even wider. “…I like it, though.”
“Yeah?”
Lance’s hand finds his, fingers twisting around each other and palms pressed flat together, and Hunk closes his eyes, breathing in softly.
He may not know what comes next in this perilous experiment they’re calling the rebirth of Voltron, the weapon born of long gone ghosts of Altea and revived by five children of Earth who accidentally stumbled into a war they were never meant to be a part of in the first place. He may not know if they will find Shiro, or what condition their leader may be in. He may not even know where he stands with this team, disjointed and falling apart already as it is, and he may not know when he will ever get home again, if ever.
But he knows he has Lance.
“…Yeah.”
And that, for once in his life, he thinks, can absolutely be enough.