He loves me, He loves me not ~ Shance

2

"So, who do ya' think it was from?"

Lance shrugged, falling backwards against the large bed. "I dunno'," he mumbled, holding the flower up to the neon-like light on the ceiling, "do you?"
"Nope," Hunk replied, looking over his shoulder at Lance from the small Tenzin machine he was working on repairing, "but like, it can't be hard to work it out, right?"
Lance shrugged again, shuffling up the bed to prop his back up against the headboard, and Pidge hummed in vague agreement from where she had stationed her laptop on the second bed. "Process of elimination, right?" he asked, twisting his face in thought, "like, was it you?"
"Nah, sorry dude," Hunk said with a sheepish grin, "Pidge, are you harbouring a secret lil' crush on Lance-?"
"Don't even think about it," Pidge replied flatly, not looking up from her keyboard.

"So you're telling me it's- it's either Keith or Shiro?"
Hunk turned back around, placing the small machine down on the floor before crawling onto the bed beside Lance.
"I guess," he replied, grin slowly beginning to spread across his face, "oh man, think about it - Keith, the poor, pining rebel who has no idea how to talk to his crush, bless him-"
"It's not Keith," Pidge piped up, finally looking up from her laptop to grin knowingly, "yeah, he's pining, but trust me, it's not over Lance.
Lance whined, flopping an arm over the side of the bed in defeat. "Why am I offended by that? I'm prime pining material- wait, who's mullet in love with them."
Pidge just tapped her nose, earning a groan from Lance. "Well, someone has to have agreed with you on the pining material thing-"
"Wait," Hunk butted in, confusion melting into what Lance could only describe as a shit-eating grin, "that only leaves Shiro-"
"No, no, no," Lance interrupted, folding his arms childishly, "I'm not getting my hopes up, that's not fair!"
Hunk clicked his tongue, lying next to Lance on the bed. "Why's it getting you hopes up? It's obviously him."
"Obviously, huh?" Lance whined, rolling over to face Hunk, "how is it obvious?"

"Think about it," Hunk mused, rolling into his back and resting his hands behind his head leisurely, "he always takes the time to make sure you're okay after every mission and training session, before anyone else, right? And all the gentle touches, and he laughs at your jokes-"
"Does he?" Lance asked, voice tinged in disbelief; Shiro definitely didn't laugh at his jokes, or at least, he never heard him laugh.
"All the time," Hunk assured, gesturing in the air, "you just don't hear it because he's trying to look like the perfect leader guy, but his face goes all red and blotchy, it's, uh, actually quite funny-"
"And you should have seen how he was acting after we saw you got the flower," Pidge added, lowering the lid of her laptop to lean back on her hands, "like, sad? Like a kid that had just been told they weren't going to Disneyland anymore."
"Yeah, right," Lance scoffed, "why would he be sad?"
"Because he didn't get one back, dumbass," Pidge snapped.
"And?"
Next to him, Hunk hummed in confusion, and Lance was suddenly aware of his fingers prodding the side of his head. "Hunk, what-?"
"So, the flowers were given out to people who had admirers, right? From the brain scans?" Hunk questioned, and Lance hissed as he tugged on his hair experimentally, "so how did you get past it?"
On the other side of the room, Pidge frowned in confusion. "Get past what?"
"The brain scan!" Hunk shouted back, "because I know for a fact that you have a crush on Shiro-"
"Lance has a crush on Shiro?"

"Wha- Where did you find out about that?" Lance replied in shock, practically jumping out of Hunk's grip.
"You literally had a poster of him on your wall in the Garrison, and we all see you staring at least, like, once a day," Hunk said with a shrug, and Lance felt his face heat up uncomfortably as Pidge snickered, "but that's not the point-"
Lance huffed in annoyance, folding his arms and sitting up against the headboard. "So what is the point?"
"Well, I know you still like him - 'your heart belongs another', remember?"

Hunk, unfortunately, had a point.

There wasn't much doubt about that.
Shiro was always someone he admired, someone he idolised and adored. He'd worshipped the ground he walked on back at the Garrison - probably less subtly than he would have liked, but who cared? Pretty much everyone had a crush on Shiro at the Garrison - and a part of that admiration had inevitably carried through to Voltron. Sure, it was less hero worship now, since Shiro wasn't this untouchable, perfect Adonis anymore, but it was something else-
Something more, deeper and more open, warmer than the cold idolisation ever was. Maybe he wanted to wake up in his arms every morning, but he wasn't ever going to admit that. Maybe he wanted to be the one that Shiro admitted his fears to, the one who kissed away tears after each nightmare, but the others didn't need to know that.
It went a lot deeper than jokes about crushes like he was twelve or something-
Because Shiro wasn't really his hero anymore. Not in a bad way, but, now, Lance knew he was human with flaws and imperfections. A human with grey eyes that the posters couldn't properly animate and possibly the softest smile he'd ever seen on a person-