This is inspired by a series of prompts I've gotten on tumblr recently so I'm hoping everyone enjoys my romp in Voltron.

The first chapter is from an anonymous prompter: Shiro being a dad and taking care of his team

Voltron: Legendary Defender and related characters © Dreamworks
story © RenaRoo

A Simple Game
Chapter One: In Need of Distraction

There wasn't much to the story. Shiro could tell that even before he got into the thick of it.

After all, the argument involved Lance and it involved Keith and pretty much any additional information was mind numbingly incoherent in the midst of Hunk having to hold the two apart.

While he didn't usually appreciate jumping into a situation with only half the available information, Shiro decidedly made an exception for this as his usual mole, Pidge, was slunk off in the corner curled around a new device of curious origin.

Instead, he crossed his arms and stood before his teammates with as much leaning on his stature over them as he could. At the very least, his looming shadow drew their attention from each other back to him.

"Okay, I know ahead of time that I'm asking too much of you – and that's painfulon its own to admit considering I like to think we've grown up quite a bit in our time working together – but could we maybe go through a practice without devolving into petty squabbling?" Shiro asked sternly.

Lance dangled from Hunk's clutches and crossed his arms as well. "I would like to point out that there's nothing petty about my squabbling. It's very reasonable squabbling."

"No squabbling is reasonable by definition," Shiro countered.

"You know what else isn't reasonable?" Keith snapped, eyes still locked onto Lance. "The fact that every time it's Lance covering my back I mysteriously get shot by one of the drones."

"Hey, we're practicing," Lance huffed. "Do you think the Galra are going to let me follow you so close our boots are touching in real battle? I'm teaching you to look out for yourself more! I'm a great teammate!"

"Look out for myself!? With the eyes on the back of my helmet!?" Keith growled.

Shiro looked worriedly toward the observation deck, hoping a pleading expression would be all he needed to get Allura to step in. But like she had done the last several sessions that had devolved into madness, she stood poised and aggravated.

Testing him.

He shook his head before turning his attention back to the still arguing duo and took notice of Hunk's distracted expression.

"You have somewhere to be, Hunk?" Shiro asked with a raised brow. "You and Pidge both dropped your scores this round like you couldn't be bothered to keep your heads in the game." With a jerk of his head toward the pillar Pidge was poorly hid behind, Shiro continued, "At least we know why she was on the outs now. What about you?"

"Can I be honest?" Hunk asked, grip growing lax on Keith and Lance though neither seemed to notice in the heat of their verbal duel. "Pidge mentioned something about video games and it got me thinking about all the game releases I'm missing back home. And then I thought, oh gosh, who did my video game consoles go to? Like do they send all that stuff back home when you go missing? Are our dorms crime scenes now–"

Immediately regretting his decision to open dialogue, Shiro raised up his hands and formed an x.

"Okay, everyone, enough!" he called out, loud enough that even Pidge looked up from her machines.

Everyone stared readily at him and the training room grew deathly quiet.

"Seeing as how everyone seems time to reflect on why we're training. Again. I think we're going to officially call this practice into a timeout," Shiro ordered, putting his hands on his hips.

The other paladins glanced to each other then back to their leader.

"You mean… call off practice?" Pidge asked, brows furrowing.

"I mean, everyone is to get into a corner – opposite corners of the training room – and sit in quiet until I think we're ready to run this drill again," Shiro ordered walking over to Pidge and ignoring the baffled expressions of the other four. He then grabbed the device easily from Pidge's hands.

She floundered uselessly for it, going off balance and smacking onto the floor as a result. "Hey!" she cried out in aggravation.

"Without distractions," Shiro clarified, tucking the device under his arm.

He glanced toward the observation deck in time to see the stairs forming off its side as the princess came down to the training room floor. Shiro hesitated his look around the room, watching her instead and wondering what her input was about to be before shaking himself loose of his thoughts.

The other paladins were rubbing off on him.

"What? You're being serious? I'm in timeout?" Hunk called out, dropping Lance and Keith to the floor with a thud. "I've never voluntarily been in trouble! Not for, like, four years now! At least!"

"You can't put us in timeout!" Keith spat out, raising off the floor, one eye squinting.

"Yeah, we're saving the universe! That practically makes us adults!" Lance argued.

Shiro stared down at them angrily. "Corners, paladins. Now."

To his bemusement, the four teenagers picked themselves off the floor and actually slumped off to their corners, feet dragging and muttering growing to a steady white noise.

Once they were all in place, Shiro stood in the middle of the arena and wondered just how long he was going to be able to take the tense quiet of the paladin timeout before caving. He knew he had the iron will to resist early pardon, but the thought still lingered.

By the time Allura stepped up beside him, he was beginning to feel the burn of teenage angst aimed at him.

"You have a unique method of wrangling your fellow paladins," she noted, a smirk on her lips. "But it works for this team, so I suppose as unorthodox as it all is, this is what we need."

"To be honest I'm looking at this the most realistic way possible," Shiro sighed. "They're saving countless worlds, they're galaxies away from home, and at the end of it all… they're kids, Allura. They've barely experienced life and we're asking a lot of them, and they've done nothing but give. Some… childish slip ups from time to time, well, to be honest it might just be the best we can hope for."

He glanced down to the device in hand and then frowned dully.

"Still, they act like children, they get treated like children," he looked around the room to make sure no paladin had escaped their corner.

"Well then," Allura said, folding her arms across her chest. "I suppose I need to ask then, what childish activity should our paladins be allowed to have to betterexpress these tendencies then?"

Shiro thought for a moment, glancing between the four colorful paladins and then to Pidge's newest project. "Princess, do you know anything about video games?"