Catch the Stars ||Keith Kogane||

72

By the time training ended, Esmerelda and Harron had come to a draw over their fight, and the paladins were trying to pick out their weakness when they went against a squad 11 member. The Olympians knew how to pick out a weakness against an opponent.

"Lunch will be waiting in the dining area," Coran's voice comes over the speaker as Trip effortlessly dodges a hit from Lance, "come and get it while it's hot!"

Everyone looks at Trip, who is standing in the center of the room. She nodded her head in the direction of the door, indicating that training was over for the day. The entire room breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oh thank you, Coran!" Hunk huffs in exhaustion, dropping his hands from the defense stance he had been in against Esmerelda.

Trip had paired everyone up carefully. Pidge went against Haylie, Esmerelda and Hunk, Trip and Lance, and Harron and Keith. Though, the last one had been difficult to place. Putting Pidge with someone so much bigger than her (either Harron or Esmerelda) seemed cruel, and she knew putting herself with Keith would be a giant distraction. But, luckily, she'd been more than able to steal glances to make sure neither Keith nor Harron were trying to throttle each other.

Lance groans, "Were you even trying, Trip?!"

She looks over at him with raised eyebrows as she wipes her hands on her pants, "were you?"

"You weren't even looking at me for half the fight!" His arms crossed and he glared at her as if offended she didn't require all of her attention. Maybe she should've given it more thought in his eyes, but she got all the information she needed by only keeping one eye on him.

"Your moves follow a pattern, Lance," she sighs and rolls her neck to crack the stiff bones, "or some variation of it. It's predictable, that's your weakness."

"I do not follow a pattern! I go with the flow!"

"Yeah, let's argue with a war commander," Pidge scoffs as she walks past them, "that's a great idea."

Haylie bounds up after the youngest Paladin, "what's Coran made for lunch?" she asks.

Pidge looks back at her, "Probably something questionably edible."

Her sister grins, "It's just like mission rations!"

The paladins walk ahead, talking amongst themselves about things ranging from training to what they wanted for dinner that night. Trip presses her knuckles to her leg, making a move to follow after them. She would have to make mental notes on each paladin's combative weaknesses and make them a training regime to move past them, or at least to be aware of them in a fight. But as she moves to follow them, satisfied with the ache in her muscles from the workout, she's stopped.

The touch on her wrist is soft and warm, and there's only one person not seen ahead of her. She already knew who it was before she turned to face him.

Keith was looking at her with his black hair stuck to his face from sweat, and she could feel the elevated pulse in his palm as he held her wrist. It takes concentration to keep her mind on track, but she manages it without letting her eyes wander him.

"Trip," he says her name, "can I talk to you for a minute? Alone?"

"Sure," she says without hesitation.

She looks back at the door of the training room, unsurprised to find a few curious sets of eyes now walking a little slower than before, gazing back at them as if waiting for something to happen. Haylie was one of them, with Lance dragging his feet as he slowly turned the corner into the hallway. Even Pidge was shamelessly watching the two with wide eyes. You'd think they were nothing more than entertainment for this place.