This was the combined effort of myself and ellisfifellis. This took us about six hours in total. We sacrificed sleep for this. I'm a little worried about Keith's characterization, but Lance is a joy to write.
Because Hunk deserves all the love in the world, we gave him two boyfriends. They're trying their best.
"Are you sure about this? Because if not then I'm not wasting my time trying to do this."
"Of course I'm sure. Mostly. Relatively. Look, time in space is weird, but I'm reasonably certain that it's Hunk's birthday." It was hard to tell how many days passed when 24-hour days with sunrises and sunsets didn't exist, but Lance felt that enough time had passed since their magical lion ride from Earth for it to be Hunk's birthday. Last year, Lance hadn't been able to celebrate with Hunk because he'd been with his family on a visit to Cuba. He loved seeing his extended family, really, but this was Hunk. Big, strong, love-of-his-life Hunk. So that meant this birthday had to be perfect. Especially since Hunk was turning 18. Which made him the second adult paladin, technically.
The first order of business was keeping Hunk out of the kitchen at all costs, which was far easier said than done. Despite his best puppy face and pleading, Pidge had refused to keep Hunk occupied down on the friendly planet they were currently docked at. Keith had simply asked. Pidge agreed. Lance was going to kick that little shit's ass, seriously.
"Why does it have to be a secret?" Keith had first asked when Lance told him the plan. Stupid Keith. Cute, but stupid. It was like he'd never organized a birthday party in his life. Or like he was antisocial and lived in a shack all by himself in the desert. Oh, wait, he did.
"It's all about the element of surprise, dude. Trust me, the end result is much better when they're not expecting you to do something thoughtful."
"So that's why you're always so thoughtless." Keith had replied with that stupid, cute smirk of his. Lance whapped him for that one.
So now Hunk was with Pidge, Shiro, and Allura down on the planet, being friendly with the locals and spreading the Good Word of Voltron. For all he knew, Coran was in his room grooming his mustache and watering it with Nunvill. Lance estimated that they had a couple hours at least to get dinner cooked and ready before everyone came back to the ship. He was also hoping that they wouldn't eat dinner with the locals, because that would ruin his entire day. Then again, Hunk was basically a bottomless pit, and if no one else wanted to eat what they'd made, that was just fine. The food wasn't for them, anyway.
"Hello? Earth to Lance? Are we doing this or what?" Keith asked.
"Yeah, yeah, calm your quiznak," Lance replied, waving his hands at Keith in a 'calm down' motion, ignoring Keith telling him he was using that word wrong.
Now, Lance wasn't useless in the kitchen. Back home, he could make ramen, quesadillas, pasta, eggs. Those sorts of things. Easy-peasy. Unfortunately, those skills (meager as they were) didn't carry over to alien foods of suspicious origin. The only cooking he'd done in this kitchen was get a bowl and press the trigger on the food goo machine. It was the alien equivalent of getting a bowl of cereal. Man, he really missed Earth breakfast food. Hunk was the only one that missed it more than Lance, because Hunk's mom always made breakfast for dinner on special occasions. Hunk was being pretty blase about it, but Lance could tell that the big guy was homesick.
Of course. How could Lance be such an idiot? Breakfast for dinner was the perfect thing.
"How do you feel about pancakes?" Lance asked.
"Uh, nothing in particular?" Keith said.
"Has anyone ever told you you're no fun? Because you are. And we're making pancakes. Food goo pancakes."
"Alright. Do you know how to make pancakes? Because I don't."
"I've never done it before, but how hard could it be? We're using food goo, so it's not like we need to measure out ingredients and make a batter."
"Good point. What do we do first?" Keith asked. Lance tried not to think about the tingly feeling in his stomach when Keith complimented him and brought his hand up to his chin in concentration.
"We're gonna need something hot and something flat to cook the pancakes on. You find something flat and I'll see if I can work the stove thing." First he had to find the stove thing. He knew one existed, because Hunk had to be cooking things with some sort of heat-producing instrument. The only questions were what and where. In the background, Lance could hear Keith opening drawers and cupboards and shifting cooking utensils. Shrugging, he started pressing buttons, hoping that none of them would kill him. You never really knew with Altean technology. And yes, he was still salty about the haunted castle trying to kill him.
After two buttons that turned lights on and off, a button that seemed to activate a garbage disposal, and five buttons that didn't seem to do anything at all, Lance struck gold. With a great WOOSH, a flame sprang up from the white countertop.
"I've got heat!" Lance called over his shoulder.
"I've got the flat thing," Keith called back, waving a cookie sheet-like object in one hand.
"Perfect. Now we just gotta collect the goo and make it into pancakes for our boyfriend." If his cheeks were a little flushed, it was because of the fire. Totally. Lance grabbed a bowl out of a cupboard and made his way to the goo dispenser.
"Should the flames be this high?" Keith asked.
"Dunno, I've never worked with open flame before. It'll probably be okay."
"Well, I'm going to try to make it smaller."
"Whatever you say, Fire Paladin. You go ahead and master those flames while Mr. Ice Cool gets the goo." Paying no heed to Keith's inevitable grumpy comeback, Lance grabbed one of the food goo hoses and filled the bowl with a generous amount of the green substance. When he got back to the stove, Keith had somehow managed to reduce the amount of flames shooting from it.
"Nice job, Hotman. Now let's heat up the metal sheet so we can start makin' some pancakes." Carefully, Keith unfolded collapsible metal legs and set the weird tray-like thing over the flame.
"Should we… oil it up?"
"Maybe later, honey. Right now we're cooking dinner for Hunk."
"I hate you."
"You love me. But yes, we don't want the pancakes to stick. There's probably something around here that we can use." The two of them separated to find something they could use. Under the cupboard that held the weird Altean cups, Lance found a bottle of a likely looking substance. It had roughly the same consistency as vegetable oil, but it was a translucent dusky pink color. He stood up and raised the bottle over his head. "I think this'll do it."
"Good, because I didn't find anything." They returned to the stove, where the metal thing was getting nice and hot.
"I guess we just pour it on," Lance said while doing just that. The pink liquid spread across the surface of their griddle into a light pink puddle.
"I think you used too much," Keith said.
"Shut up, it's fine." Together, they watched the oil sit on the hot metal.
"How do we know when it's ready?" Keith asked.
"We, um, test it. With a little bit of batter." Using a spork, Lance scooped up a tiny bit of goo and plopped it down on their makeshift griddle. Nothing happened. They waited. Still nothing.
"We didn't wait long enough."
"Relax, Keith, we got this. It just takes a little time, you know? Lets try a bigger one." Lance piled on another blob of goo, this one about four inches across. After a couple ticks, he shrugged and dolloped a few more four inch circles on the griddle. Might as well go all in. "Alright, now we wait for the surface to bubble, and that's when we'll know they're ready to flip. Mi mamá loves to watch cooking shows, so I saw it on TV. Can you go find something like a spatula that we can use to flip them?" Keith nodded and left to find something while Lance kept watch over their pancakes. He wouldn't wait to see Hunk's reaction. He and Keith both knew that Hunk seriously missed his mom, and this should help cheer him up. Lance could relate, after all. Keith never talked about having family, and Hunk and Lance politely avoided asking him about it.
"Found something," Keith said, reappearing at Lance's side with something that looked remarkably like a normal spatula.
"Good job, babe. Make sure you're prepared to flip them when they're ready. " Keith shifted his stance a little like he was about to fight the pancakes instead of flip them over. How did Lance manage to land such adorable boyfriends? The two of them waited in anticipation for the green globs to start bubbling.
"Hey, I think something's happening," Keith said. He was right; the first full size pancake was puffing up.
"That means it should be ready to flip soon," Lance explained excitedly. Impatiently, they waited a few more minutes.
"It's not bubbling," Keith stated.
"Thanks, Captain Obvious," Lance snarked. "Maybe since it's food goo and not actual pancake batter, it won't behave like actual pancake batter. We should try flipping it now. We don't want it to burn." Keith nodded in agreement and firmly shoved the metal spatula between the griddle and the pancake and flipped it over with a fluid motion that must have come from hours of sword practice in the training room. It was perfectly executed, and a slightly brown-tinged green pancake sat on the griddle. Satisfied, Keith did that annoying smirk that he did when he was proud of himself.
"Yeah, yeah, you're the spatula master. Now flip the other ones." Keith scowled but did it anyway.
"This isn't as hard as I thought it would be," Keith commented.
"Dude, don't jinx it. We're not done yet."
Somehow, the pancakes stopped being flat round circles of goodness and started expanding.
"This isn't supposed to happen," Keith said.
"No, definitely not. Hey- no, what are you doing, you can't just-" But it was too late; Keith poked one of the puffed up spheres and the entire thing exploded, igniting a devastating chain reaction. The oil slipped off the edge of the griddle and the flame flared up. The sudden flux of heat caused the remaining spherecakes to explode as well, and in the span of mere ticks, the entire kitchen was covered in green goo. Including themselves.
"Dios mío," Lance whispered.
"That's my line, I think."
The two paladins whipped around to see Coran enter the kitchen, primly avoiding splotches of food goo on the floor.
"Coran! Buddy! What brings you here?" Lance asked, trying to play it cool.
"Well, I thought I'd come down and make dinner, but imagine my surprise when I heard explosions coming from the kitchen." Sighing, Coran produced a communication device from somewhere in his skin-tight uniform.
"Whoa, what are you doing?" Keith asked. It was only due to familiarity that Lance could hear how nervous he was.
"Calling Hunk back to the castle," Coran said simply.
"There's really no need for that, we'll just clean this up and-"
"Too late," Coran said, pressing the call button.
"Coran? What's up?" Hunk said over the comms.
"We have a Code Orange, I'm afraid." Coran informed the yellow paladin gravely.
"A Code Orange? But the only people up on the ship are- oh no. They didn't." Lance was kind of offended that Hunk immediately assumed they were both responsible for the Code Orange. For all Hunk knew, it could have been all Keith's fault.
"So you understand we are in need of your assistance here on the ship." Coran said.
"Yeah, I'll be there soon." The line clicked, signaling the end of the transmission.
"Dude, we are so fucked. And not in the good way," Lance murmured to Keith.
"I'm telling him it was all your idea," Keith said.
"Traitor," Lance mumbled. The minutes they spent waiting for Hunk to fly back to the ship and make the long trek out of his hangar felt like years. Finally, Hunk's handsome face peeked around the open kitchen door.
"I don't know if I should be angry you made such a big mess or impressed that you managed it so well," Hunk commented thoughtfully.
"Maybe you should consider that we were trying to make you pancakes for dinner for your birthday before you decide what to do with us?" Lance said. Immediately, Hunk's face softened into a fond expression.
"Look, guys, I really appreciate the thought you put into this, even though it didn't work out. I'd kiss you if you weren't covered in goo," Hunk said.
"You could always come over here and lick it off of us," Lance replied saucily.
"Yeah, uh, no. I'm not going to defile food like that. Sorry," Hunk said, looking disgusted.
"Wow. That is something, isn't it, Pidge?" Shiro was in the doorway, Pidge and Allura right behind him.
"I sure hope they weren't expecting to escape and leave the mess for us to clean up," Pidge said pointedly.
"That would be an incredibly irresponsible way for defenders of the universe to behave," Allura agreed.
"And that's why the three of you will be cleaning all this up. Right now." Shiro commanded.
"What?! Why me too?!" Hunk exclaimed.
"Because they're your boyfriends, and your responsibility," Shiro said. Their leader gave them a shit-eating grin and followed Pidge and the princess out of the room. Coran stayed long enough for him to make sure the three paladins were working before he too left the kitchen.
"Promise me," Hunk said, scooping food goo into a trash bag, "upon pain of Special Paladin Lunch, that you will never try to cook something in this kitchen again."
"I promise," Lance and Keith groaned.