Chapter 1

"Shiro, how do humans court each other?"

"Uh… What?"

It had been two weeks since Keith had become an official member of team Voltron piloting the Red lion. Two weeks of hard training and team bonding that he can't say he didn't enjoy a least a little bit. Though, not without a good amount of complaining.

They had been fortunate enough not to have encountered any large Galra battlecruisers in that time. As such they had been able to focus on freeing outlying planets from Galra influence. Keith had become accustom to the team and Red and finally felt completely at home on the castle of lions.

Ever since then he had been trying to find the right moment to ask one of the humans about their courting traditions.

Any human, except Lance. If he was going to do this right he had to know how to court him and he wouldn't be doing a very good job if he had to ask Lance what to do next every step of the way.

He figured that Shiro was the most rational choice as he was the oldest, so he guessed he should start there.

The thing was, usually where there was one there was also another. And if it wasn't another human it was an Altean. But today he had found Shiro alone, exiting the showers after he finished some additional solo training.

"Courting. I believe Lance once called it dating?" Keith added, hoping that it cleared things up. He was just trying not to let his blush show. It was a little bit embarrassing having to ask someone about courting.

"Oh… um." Shiro awkwardly rubbed at the back of his neck as he looked around Keith, as if he was planning his escape. "I'm not really the one you should be asking about that sort of thing."

"Why not?" Keith took a half step over to block more of the hallway. He had to get this information.

"I'm just- you know, not good with that sort of thing." Shiro stuttered out. Keith cocked his head to the side curiously, waiting. Shiro sighed defeatedly. "I don't know much."

"You know more than me, that much is sure." Keith persisted. Shiro huffed and waved his arm in a 'follow me' motion as he turned back the way he came.

As they walked he spoke. "With humans things are… Complicated at best. Usually the man asks the woman to go on a date- though the woman could ask if she wanted, its just not as common. Then they go somewhere or do something together and talk."

"It is strange that the man must make the first move. It's not like that with the Galra." Shiro only hummed in response as he walked into the kitchen where Hunk was cooking up multiple meals at once, making enough to feed the whole team for a least a week.

"Hey Hunk, Keith has a question about humans and I'm… um… not very equip to handle it." Shiro said vaguely as he began to back out of the kitchen.

Wait! Keith thought. He had gone through all of the trouble tracking down Shiro because he thought he would be the most reasonable choice. He was the oldest so obviously he was the most likely to have the answers that Keith needed and Keith knew that he could be trusted to keep a secret.

The same could not be said about Hunk.

Don't get him wrong, Hunk was his friend and all but… Well, he was a terrible gossip.

"What could Keith need to know that you don't Shiro?" Hunk asked as he wiped his hands on his apron. There were words written across the white fabric in green marker that Hunk had once told him said, "I can give you dinner and a show"

"Oh, Keith can tell you that but I'm just beat-" Shiro yawned and stretched his arms in the air. Keith wasn't convinced and narrowed his eyes at him. "So, I'm going to go now." Before anyone could say other-wise he was gone, booking it out of the door very unlike the tired man he was pretending to be.

"What 'chu need?" Hunk pulled Keith's attention back towards him. Keith bit his lip, trying to decide his next course of action. "Don't think about it so hard." Hunk laughed.

"I'm not!" Keith defended, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. Hunk only laughed harder.

"Lance was right, you are a terrible liar."

Keith's cheeks flushed with embarrassment as he pouted his lip out. Everyone on the ship had said that to him at least once and he couldn't figure out how they saw so easily through him. He never had problems getting away with little white lies at the blade but the humans here were relentless.

"Whatever. I'm leaving." Keith turned fully prepared to make his way back to his room if Hunk kept teasing him.

"Wait, I want to know what had Shiro so scared." Hunk's steady steps indicated that he was following Keith.

He took a breath, deciding that he couldn't wait any longer so he might as well bite the bullet and get on with it.

"I asked Shiro about human courting traditions." Keith said as he turned around to face Hunk.

Hunk gave him a blank look for just a moment before letting out a loud 'Oh!' His lips turned up in a smile and then he said, "You mean dating!"

"Yes- dating or whatever you humans call it. I need to know how it works back on earth." Keith tried not to get frustrated so early in the conversation but he was a little bit embarrassed and just wanted to get the information and leave.

"Okay, I'll tell you." Hunk said as he turned back to his food.

"Great I really-"

"But first you have to tell me why you want to know." Hunk grinned evilly and Keith briefly thought that he had been corrupted by Pidge.

Shiro didn't seem to be willing to help him and Pidge was the only other available human on board… It would probably be better for him to just answer Hunk rather than risking any of Pidge's demands.

Keith bit his lip before letting out a puff of air in defeat. "I need to know so that I can…"

"Go on, don't stop now." Hunk egged him on.

"…So that I can… Court a human." Keith chickened out at the last second. Hunk was Lance's best friend. He was sure that as soon as he told him he would go running to Lance and mess everything up.

His life was on the line after all. He had to do this right, he couldn't risk being rejected by his Kalan.

"Ah-ah-ah." Hunk waggled his finger at Keith before he pulled something out of the space oven. "Which human?" He gave him a grin and Keith thought momentarily that he must know because there were only four humans on the ship and it wasn't very hard to narrow down the options.

"Don't make me say it." Keith asked, looking up at him with big eyes as his ears flattened against his head. Hunk's mischievous gaze broke for a moment before it caved and he whined.

"No fair, you can't use puppy dog eyes on me."

Keith pouted his lip out to add to the look.

"No! You're worse than Lance." He complained as he began to put the food he had taken out of the oven in containers for storage. "I'll tell you about dating, just cut that out." Keith nodded and pulled a stool out from under the counter. Hunk passed him some of the full containers and Keith began to stack them on top of each other.

"First off, you gotta ask the person you want to 'court' out on a date." Keith nodded. Shiro had said that much at least. Keith stacked his tenth container and walked over towards the wall, where he pushed in a hidden panel and a shelving unit made itself visible.

"What do you do on dates?" He asked as he put the stack onto the shelf. It fit in perfectly.

"Well, it depends on what's available, who you are taking on a date in the first place, and how much time you have. But really its just important that you think about what your date would want to do in the first place."

Keith looked at the ground as he thought, trying to think of what Lance would want.

"For example," Hunk continued, "If it were Pidge you would want to take her somewhere with cool technology she had never seen before like a museum. If it were me then somewhere without mean Galra, maybe even a restaurant or something. For Lance," He paused, gauging Keith's reaction. Keith stopped stacking his containers and waited for Hunk to continue attentively. "Lance would probably want to go somewhere with games or things to explore. Or rain." Hunk turned his attention away from the food, nodding to himself. "Definitely somewhere with rain."

Keith frowned slightly. Rain? How was he going to do that?

"Are dates the only part of human courting?" Keith asked, taking the last container from Hunk and stacking it in the shelves before closing the panel.

"No… well, sort of." Hunk pulled out two 'popsicles' from the Altean freezer, handing one to Keith. Keith took the orange treat and gave it a lick as he waited for Hunk to continue. "When two people are dating they will care for each other. They might get each other little gifts from time to time if they see something that reminds them of the other. If one of them is having a bad day the other might notice and pay more attention to them. It's a lot of little things really." Keith nodded as Hunk sat in the stool across from him, eating his own popsicle.

"If two people are dating then no one else can date them at the same time, right? It's just those two?"

Hunk nodded.

"And then after they've dated for a while they can become mates, correct?"

Hunk narrowed his eyes in confusion. "Mates?" He muttered to himself. "I think you mean that once two people have dated for a while and really like each other then they can get married."

"What's that mean?"

"It's basically the closest you can be to someone. That's the 'final' relationship. One of the people dating will offer a ring to the other and if it is accepted then they can be married."

"Once two people are married can they become un-married?" Keith asked. He was pretty sure he already knew that answer, but he had to ask anyways.

A sad smile made its way to Hunks lips. "Yes. It's called divorce. Back on earth a lot of people did that because the person they married would change or they would decide that they wanted to be with someone else. Honestly though, with the human you are trying to court it will probably be fine. He wouldn't accept marriage if he wasn't ready, so there would be no chance of divorce. He would want to be 100 percent sure first."

So, Hunk did know who he was talking about. But this was also bad news. He ran the risk of rejection if Lance didn't think he was ready. He would just have to make sure that he was the best date ever.

"Hunk, you won't tell him, right? I have to do this right." He gave Hunk a hard, determined stare.

"God, you act like it's a life and death situation here." Hunk laughed.

Ha. Act.

"Yeah." Keith finished off his popsicle, tossing the leftover stick into the trash. "Thanks Hunk."

"You got it." Hunk waved him off as Keith left the kitchen.

Well that went better than expected. Keith turned towards the paladin's rooms. It looked like he had some planning to do.

…

"Today we will be going down to planet Genopile. It has a relatively light Galra presence; mostly because it is a desert planet and lacks a large population." Allura pointed out a few spots near the top of the black and orange planet that were highlighted- indicating where they would be attacking.

"Do we have a game plan?" Pidge asked, pushing her glasses up her nose.

"Yes, we will be doing the same thing we did on planet XR7." Pidge nodded her head in understanding.

Keith glanced at Lance from his seat. He was paying attention, leaning his head on one of his propped-up hands as he stared intently at the planet for a moment.

"We will start the mission as soon as you are all ready to go." Allura nodded her head and they were dismissed to go and change into their armor.

"Pidge," Hunk nudged her as they all walked to the armor room. He was trying to be quiet, but the group was so close together that there wasn't much privacy.

"Yes?" Pidge asked.

"Uh, what did we do back on planet RX7?"

Pidge groaned. "XR7 Hunk."

"Right, that."

"Hunk," Shiro stepped in. "If you didn't remember what we did you should have spoken up sooner so that Allura could go over it again."

"Yeah I know but…" Shiro sighed.

"You three go ahead, I'll catch Hunk up." Shiro waved them forward.

They continued on.

"Finally, it's not me." Lance muttered beside Keith. Keith turned his gaze towards the brown skinned young man.

"Not you?"

"Damn your super hearing." Lance narrowed his eyes at Keith's ears. "What I meant was that it wasn't me who 'didn't get it' this time." Keith frowned.

"But you usually know what's going on."

"It doesn't always feel like it." Lance glanced down to his feet for a moment and sighed. Keith nudged him with his shoulder.

"Well, at least you know all that human stuff you guys go on about. I almost never know what you all are talking about when something like that comes up." Keith offered a smile and took the last few steps into the armor room.

"Well, whenever Chorrol visits I don't understand your Galra jibber jabber so I guess we are even." Keith grunted in agreeance and grabbed his armor, heading into the same changing room directly behind it.

Once changed he summoned his bayard and gave his sword a few experimental swipes. When he was satisfied he put it back into the leg of his armor. Before he left the changing room he grabbed his mother's dagger, which he had brought with him, and put it into the sheath on his belt.

"Hurry up Keith, the planet will be dead by the time you're done!" Lance yelled from the other side of the door. Keith rolled his eyes and left the room.

Lance nodded to him in greeting before turning heel in walking away. Keith trying not to stare but… Well Lance's wide shoulders and narrow frame just kept pulling his gaze back, no matter how hard he tried to look away.

Suddenly there was a strong push against his side. It wasn't anything that could knock him over but it was enough to grab his attention. He turned towards Pidge who was darting her eyes between Lance and Keith as if she was trying to speak without actually saying anything. Keith watched her for a moment more before shrugging.

"I don't know what that means." He whispered. Pidge set her jaw and rolled her eyes.

"Of course, you don't." Pidge faced forwards and left him be after that.

When they had almost reached the bridge, they saw Hunk and Shiro still talking but they were beginning to make their way towards the armor room. Shiro gave them a nod as they passed but Hunk seemed fully focused (and slightly confused) on what Shiro was telling him.

When they reached the bridge Allura asked where the other two were. "They're coming, just ran into a problem, but Shiro is handling it." Pidge answered.

Allura nodded and turned back to her station, reading the endless information that popped up on her monitor.

Keith sat himself into his chair, pulling up his own readouts about the planet, intending on being as prepared as possible. Allura had managed to configure his monitor to output information in Galra characters so that he would be able to read it.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Lance lounge back in his chair, one leg propped up over his other knee while he rested his head against a closed fist. The foot that was over his knee wiggled impatiently.

Pidge was on her computer, typing furiously. She was sitting hunched over the laptop screen, her glassed gleaming with the reflection.

Stop getting distracted. A voice in his head mused. He sighed, knowing that it was right. He redirected his attention to his monitor, reading over some features of the planet.

"Planet Genopile is highly dry and hot. It is covered in black deserts and dry cracked earth. The only inhabitable area is the top of the planet where the sun is unable to reach most of the period. Water is scarce and often used in bartering by the inhabitants know as the Genopians. Sandstorms plague these areas as the soil is looser and closer in texture to sand. Earthquakes are also an issue on the east side of the inhabitable zone.

"Genopians live underground where the temperature is cooler and find much of their food in those tunnels. Ground worms and Kanics make up most of their diet. To see in the dark underground they mine polenit stones, which are native only to Genopile. These stones glow in the dark and once a species touches one it can read its biochemical make up. Once read it will produce hormones and bio chemicals that the species requires and or lacks. These stones are highly valued for their medicinal uses as well." Keith read silently to himself.

Those must be what the Galra are after. He was about to mention this to Allura but Shiro and Hunk came in before he could speak and Allura was waving them towards their lions.

Oh well. It will be fine.

"Alright! Let's do this!" Lance exclaimed excitedly. Keith felt his heart beat a little harder when he looked at his smiling face before it disappeared to his lion.

Hey guys! I'm back :3

Sorry it took a little longer than expected. I have zero time management skills and I wanted to go back through the first one first for editing and memory refreshing reasons. So thanks for sticking with me!

Anyways, this was kind of an introduction chapter, but things are going to heat up really soon.

Also as always, if you want to talk to me or scream at me you can comment! If you want to have a good ole conversation about the story or anything in general you can find me at renncandraw on my tumblr- on insta/DA/Ko-fi my username is the same!

Luv ya! ya gremlins!