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Lance woke slowly, languidly, to a still-warm bed, gentle morning sunlight – and the acrid stench of something burning.
He closed his eyes and tried to breathe shallowly so as not to smell the smoke. If it also led to him passing out and slipping blissfully back into unconsciousness – well, that was an added benefit. Shiro would take care of it. He was great at taking care of things – about as great at it as he was not-great at cooking.
Lance dragged his eyes open once more with a groan. He’d had very definite plans for today that included a lot more Shiro in bed and absolutely no Shiro-in-kitchen. He pulled himself reluctantly from bed but didn’t relinquish his blanket. It was a house – or, apartment – warming gift from Hunk, and now he wore it wrapped about his shoulders like a cape. It trailed after him, dragging over the wood floor.
The stench grew stronger the nearer Lance came to the kitchen, as well as the voices. Shiro’s was quiet but clear enough, but Lance couldn’t quite make out the second. It was familiar but too hushed to be identified.
He turned the corner into the kitchen and nearly choked. Shiro’s back was to him, hunched over the counter. Between them, on the table, sat the smouldering ruins of what once might have been edible. At this point, it was identifiable only as a tragedy.
“Babe,” Lance managed, a little strangled. Shiro twisted around. “What the hell?”
His voice turned squeaky at the end, laughtering making it half-gasp, half-words.
Shiro flushed red from his ears down, sheepishness and guilt crumpling his expression. In turning, he had revealed a tablet on the counter with Hunk watching through a videostream. Lance blinked. Hunk lifted his hand in a four-fingered wave.
“Hi Lance,” he said.
“Hi,” Lance said slowly, looking from the tablet to the table to Shiro and back. “Oh. Ooh.”
If possible, Shiro seemed to grow even more uncomfortable. His shoulders curved inwards and he ducked his head. Hunk glanced between the two of them and beat a hasty retreat.
“I’ll see you guys at the party bye,” he said.
The screen snapped to black and left the kitchen in silence except for the quiet ticking of the oven cooling down. Shiro crossed his arms over his polka-dot apron. It wasn’t really his, as evidenced by the fact that Shiro cooked no more than once a month. Lance was pretty sure it was left over from the previous tenant, mostly based on the way it strained to cover Shiro’s chest. The waist strings hadn’t even been tied, and they dangled down against Shiro’s bare thighs.
Not that Lance was looking, of course.
“Shiro,” he said, stifling laughter. “Babe. Why?”
“I wanted to bring you breakfast in bead,” Shiro explained, a little petulant.
Lance snorted a laugh and shuffled across the floor. He winced at the scent of scorched sugar and bread – a cloying smell somewhere between too-sweet and just nasty – that increased as he passed the blackened something on the table.
“Cajun breakfast?” he teased. “Charbroiled?”
As planned, Shiro huffed out a soft breath of laughter. He opened his arms, and Lance shuffled close. Shiro’s arms wrapped about him, pulling him flush to Shiro’s chest, and through the blanket, Lance could feel the Altean prosthesis tracing gentle patterns on his back.
“Cinnamon rolls,” Shiro admitted. “I was trying to make cinnamon rolls.”
Lance managed to keep his composure for an impressively long moment before he broke. He sniggered. His entire body trembled with laughter. He quivered like a leaf. A beat later, Shiro was laughing too.
Lance tucked his head into the crook of Shiro’s neck and snaked one arm out of his blanket cape to loop around Shiro’s waist. After a few minutes, their laughter subsided and they fell quiet, content in the watercolor light coming through the window. Shiro shifted to press a soft kiss to the side of Lance’s head.
“Happy birthday,” he said. “Think Cinnabon delivers?”