"I told you, Lance. Nobody has time for you to try and practice your stupid moves!" I moved my hand in time to the words, mocking his dumbass face. "'Oh, I'm Lance. And I think some fancy tricks are gonna impress the princess who's obviously not interested in me but I try anyway.'"
He glared at me, eyes cold and unforgiving, walking towards me with his hands clenched into fists. I returned the favor, matching his pace with fire burning in my own eyes. For a few moments, we stood there, tension filling the air. It took all the willpower in me to not punch him in the nose right then and there. Break a part of that perfect face he thought he had. Pidge, Hunk, Shiro, Coran, and Allura gasped in unison as Lance grabbed the collar of my shirt. His jaw was clenched together, as I breathed in as much air as I could. He was quite stronger than me, which threw me off guard. There was no way I was going to be the one to make the first blow in this state.
"That's not why I was practicing that and you know it." He was hissing, nearly spitting in my face. "At least I'm not the one going around, shouting at us because he's having another one of his prissy mood swings!"
"Lance, that-"
Allura tried to force her way in, but I cut her off. Our faces were still inches apart, Lance's grip tightening on my shirt, choking even more air out of me. My heart was pumping adrenaline through out my body. I wasn't done with him yet. I wouldn't be done until the day he minded his own damn business and stuck to practice the way it was meant to be, with Shiro at the lead and us following his every order. A few days ago, we had just formed Voltron for the first time, without being put in life-threatening danger, and Lance was already causing trouble. I was surprised he hadn't instantly fucked everything up that first day. I stood my ground as much as I could. I could barely speak my next wods, voice straining to stay confident.
"So what are you gonna do about it?" I smirked. "Punch me?"
"Fuck you Keith."
He let go of my shirt. I snickered as he turned away, only to be met with his fist hitting my cheek instantly. I fell to my knees, wiping the blood off of my chin that trickled out of my mouth. I could already feel it swelling, knowing well it would be bruised for a while. I stood back up, getting close to him once more so I could take a swing at his face. Another hand grabbed my wrist and pulled it down to my side. Shiro glared at me first, then Lance. We knew this time we had done it, as Allura hopped down from the controls, stomping towards us.
"What are you idiots trying to do?" She was fuming, arms shaking by her sides. I almost think she wanted to punch us both harder but was resisting the urge to do so. "Kill each other? You're a team! The defenders of the universe! We don't have time for fights like this!"
"Allura's right." Shiro let go of my arm, standing between Lance and I. "We may not be fighting right now, but who knows when we will be? You can't go around beating up your teammates. If something happened to either of you, we wouldn't be able to form Voltron. We wouldn't ever be able to go home."
"Then get someone else to pilot the red lion."
I walked off, the pain in my cheek duller than before. From behind me I could hear yelling and bickering but it didn't matter to me. Why would I care about sticking around just for Lance to ruin everything? The door hissed open, then closed behind me. I hung up my jacket and flopped onto my bed, letting out a sigh. Was it that hard for Lance to take things seriously? All he'd been trying to do was try to impress the princess, with everything he did. It was always "Oh Allura, look what I can do!" and "Are you asking me out on a date?". I tried to forget the majority of his cringey pick up lines, but some of them still managed to resurface in my mind. I buried my face further into my pillow. He wouldn't ever listen to me no matter what I could ever try and tell him. Shiro barely knew how to control him. It was always Allura that he'd do anything for. I wished that someday, he would learn to listen to one of us. Even if it wasn't Shiro, that someone else on the team would manage to keep him in line. I would even be that person, if it ever came to it. I heard the door hiss open and shut once more, and from the sounds of his pathetic whining, I knew who had dropped by. Before I could even object, he was pounding on the door.
"I don't wanna be stuck in the same room as Keith!" The door beeped. I didn't even know it could do that. "Hey, princess! Open up! Please? I'll bring you back something shiny from our next mission."
"As much as I love shiny things, I'll have to decline." The princess' voice rang throughout my room, and I sat up. Lance didn't look too pleased to be here, and I didn't feel too great having him here, either. "The fighting between you two has got to stop. I don't care what kind of rivalry you two had back on Earth. You are paladins now, two of the universe's defenders, and I will not stand back and let you ruin practice, and potential battles, for everyone else just because you can't get past that."
"So, how long is he gonna be in here?" I asked the princess, fed up with her antics "With me? Alone?"
I had no idea what she was planning, but whatever it was, it couldn't be good. It made sense that she'd want us to get along, but couldn't she just force us into battle? Make us work together until we learned to protect each other yet control out hatred at the same time? You didn't have to like someone to work with them, that much I knew. This plan of hers seemed a little bit out of line, and it gave me a pit in my stomach that was building up as Allura began to explain our 'conditions'.
"I want you two to get to know each other, so you'll be staying in here every night, or just around, until you're able to bond." Lance and I were quick to object but she cut us off. "You can't expect battles to keep forcing you to bond. They can help, but they won't form the bond the team needs you to have. You need to learn to care about one another, to listen and sympathize with each other. I don't care how many nights of locking you in that room it takes. You're going to get along for the sake of Voltron, and I will not accept any excuses as to why you shouldn't. This war can't be fought if the ones fighting it are waging one amongst themselves."
With that, she left us in silence. Lance tried his hardest to pry the doors apart, to no avail. The princess had locked us in, that much was apparent from her tone and that beep from earlier. I couldn't help but watch him and laugh as he tried any way he could to get them to open. Clearly, he took this more of as an, 'I'm laughing at you' rather than an 'I'm laughing with you' kind of situation and turned around to look at me, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
"What're you laughing at?"
"You do know that beep meant that the doors were locked, right?" I rolled my eyes at him. "Even I figured that out."
"At least I had the decency to try and stay at the Garrison and not get kicked out for discipline issues." He put air quotes around the last bit, a sly smiling crossing his face. "What'd you even get kicked out for?"
"Sneaking out." I shrugged, uninterested. "Didn't matter to me then and still doesn't now. I'd kinda been hoping to be kicked out, as bad as that sounds. Felt better to be on my own than have people on my back all the time about how I could be the best pilot of this generation."
I sighed and laid back down on my bed, this time with my back on the mattress. We didn't speak once more, I for one enjoying the fact that Lance had enough decency to back down and stop arguing for once. Maybe that's both what we really needed, now more than ever. Space and silence. In an instant, the princess was all over the speaker, grumbling and irritated to say the least.
"You can't just sit there like that!" She snapped, seeming like she'd take the opportunity to strangle us, had she been in here too. "Talk! About anything! Something!"
"Princess, have you ever tried to get along with your enemies?" Lance questioned, fed up. "It's not as easy as it seems."
"It's not like we can just spill our whole life stories to each other in a heart beat." I backed him up, he made a good point. "Would you ever do that with a Galra, no matter how innocent they seemed?"
"No, but that's not the point!"
"Then what is, princess!" Lance stood up, shouting up to the ceiling. "You always want everything to be your way. It's 'the team' this and 'Voltron has to' that. Have you ever wondered how we feel?"
"Thank you Lance!" I stood beside him, yelling too. "'Oh I'm the princess, I can do whatever I want because I'm royalty of some alien race we only learned about a few weeks ago'!"
We couldn't help but laugh at out mockery. The princess stayed silent, but I was certain she'd be mad later. For now, Lance and I were alright. I looked over at him and he at me and we smiled at each other for once. Well, as much as my swollen cheek would allow me to. He was annoying, that much was true but, if it was one thing you could count on Lance for, it was that he was always down to make fun of people he was on bad terms with at the moment, even if they were a princess he so admired.
"You know, you're pretty good at that." Lance shook his head, letting out a few more laughs. "I never thought you'd be able to beat me at anything but, your comebacks are quite impressive."
"Thanks." I laughed a little more and stopped. "I wouldn't sell yourself short, you're pretty damn good yourself."
"Where did you sneak off to from the Garrison anyways?" Lance sat down on my bed, so I sat next to him, leaving a fair amount of distance between us. "To get pizza or something?"
"If I'm being completely honest, yeah." I couldn't help but realize how ridiculous that must've sounded, so I tried to justify it. "The day before I went to the Garrison, I decided to check out the town closest to it, since I was already on my way there. I found a nice pizza place, and one night I got hungry, stole a little ship to get there, and boom. Pizza at four in the morning."
"You're serious?"
He looked at me like it was a joke, but I nodded. I knew how to pilot one of those things well, plus they were more like motorbikes than space crafts anyway, so parking wasn't an issue. I shrugged at Lance's shock and continued to explain more.
"I was hungry, and like I said before, I didn't care if they kicked me out. I just wanted food." I paused. Tonight wasn't the night to tell him. "It wasn't the only thing that got me kicked out but it certainly didn't help my case."
"Damn, what a way to go."
"You're telling me."
We both sat there in more awkward silence. There wasn't much we could say that wouldn't have us open up too much to each other, but I was desperately trying to think of something, anything to talk about. Lance beat me too it, one upping me once more.
"Do you ever sometimes not want to make it back to Earth?" He asked, seeming kinda sad at this. "I miss it and all most of the time, but there's something about space that's calming. A whole universe we never dreamed we'd get to see, yet here we are. Two of the most important people in the galaxy, and everyone back home doesn't even know."
"Yeah, but it doesn't really matter if they know." I responded, his eyes lighting up a little bit. "All that matters is we know what we do for people. We're saving lives we never knew existed. We're heroes to them, and, in a way, Earth itself. It's our job now to keep Zarkon from destroying places so crucial to the function of basic space life, and I think that sometimes makes this life better than what we had back there."
"Totally." He sighed. "It's like all we did, all that training in the Garrison, it doesn't really mean anything. True, we learned how to fly but our lions amplify our abilities, and the others, they never did. I wonder if the blue lion somehow drew us all there, so that we'd be there on that night together. The five paladins of Voltron, new saviors of the universe, all originally trapped in a school that taught them nothing about life."
"You really think it taught us nothing?"
"Pidge barely got to pilot and Hunk threw up the majority of the time, and look at them now."
We both laughed once more, but this time, the doors slid open. We both knew that we had done enough for the night, and we were both exhausted because of it. I didn't know if this would help us in the long run, but it sure as hell made me wonder about how we were all destined for Voltron. As he left, he turned to me.
"Here's to one hundred sleepless nights." He pretended to cheers a drink with me to it, so I raised an imaginary glass myself. "Goodnight Keith."
"Goodnight Lance."
In that moment as I turned out the lights and drifted off to sleep, one nagging thought plagued my mind.
Would one hundred nights even be enough?