AN: Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to leave a review, it really means a lot to me and makes my day! Even those who don't, thank you for reading! :)

AlbaSky: ¡Muchas gracias! Me alegra que te guste la historia, aunque tengas que traducirla. (Estoy usando el Traductor de Google también, jaja). Definitivamente encontraré a alguien para traducir la historia algún día! :)

With the streetlights cutting into the shadows as they passed and the quiet hum of the engine masking the sound of the wind whipping around them outside on the empty highway, Shiro would have probably found the drive back downtown to be almost serene—if it weren't for Pidge nearly knocking the spit out of him.

"Would you stop that already?"

Kick.

"I'm serious."

Kick.

"Alright, that's enough!"

"Then let me go."

"How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not—" Kick. "Hey! I said knock it off."

Shiro was no stranger to the difficulties of driving with only one fully-functional arm. As a self-sufficient bachelor who lived alone, he'd had plenty of time over the past two years to learn to adapt, and having a partner who handled the bulk of it while on the job certainly made his life easier, too. But driving with only one fully-functional arm and an agitated, spiteful thing constantly ramming their heels into the back of his seat was something that no amount of practice could have possibly steeled his nerves for. How she was able to even gather up that much leg power in such a deliberately-cramped space was both astonishing and incredibly obnoxious.

Kick.

Shiro dug the heel of his palm into the steering wheel. "Is there a reason you're acting like a child?" he snapped.

"Depends. Is there a reason you're being an asshole?" Pidge shot back. Shiro wasn't going to entertain such a ridiculous question. "Listen, it's gonna save the both of us a lot of trouble if you'd just forget about all this and let me go. Trust me."

"Sorry, but I can't say I'm too keen on trusting people who bite me," he said, the soreness in his arm serving as a reminder of what could happen when he let his guard down for even a second. "I really hope you're not positive for anything. For your sake, not mine."

"This is ridiculous," Pidge said. "I didn't even do anything!"

"You robbed a bank."

"Barely!"

"Doesn't make you any less of a criminal," Shiro said. Then before she even had the chance to finish taking a breath for her imminent rebuttal, added, "Nope. Not gonna argue with you. But good luck explaining that in court, though."

Pidge gave a dramatic huff and flopped back into her seat. "You don't know me," she mumbled, quiet and small, though hardly an indication of remorse for her actions with the way her words dripped with contempt.

Shiro watched her from the rearview mirror as she pouted and looked out the window. She was right—he really didn't know her, aside from the fact that she was a pain in his ass, both figuratively and literally. He'd been so caught up in the midst of things that he hadn't even remembered to ask for her ID, let alone her real name.

"So. Pidge." The name settled uncomfortably on his tongue. It felt weird, addressing her as an actual individual rather than by some titular placeholder that tied her to a larger, shadier collective. "What kind of name is that?"

"The only one you're getting," she told him, and that was the end of that.

For the next ten minutes, Pidge miraculously managed to keep her thoughts—and more importantly, her feet—to herself. Not only was this a much-needed vacation from the brain-rattling hell that that car ride had become, but it also gave Shiro some downtime to come up with an idea that was ten times better than simply tossing Pidge into a holding cell overnight until the captain arrived bright and early the next day.

"Hey, wait, aren't you gonna stop?" Pidge said. She elbowed the backseat to sit up straight as she watched the precinct pass by, dead and still, devoid of its usual hectic activity. Most of the squad cars were left unattended in the side parking lot and only a few lights remained on in the main office. "What are you doing? You're passing up the jail!"

Shiro made a left. Pidge kicked his seat.

"Hello, I'm talking to you!" she shouted. "I thought you said you were turning me in!"

There'd been a change of plans. "Eventually."

"'Eventually'? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means exactly what it means." Shiro merged back onto the highway. "First, you're going to tell me where the others are."

"Others?"

"I know you don't work alone. I've seen that other guy. Lance, right?" He could practically feel Pidge staring holes into the back of his head. "How many of you are there? Two? Three? Which one are you? The brains? Hacker?"

Pidge spat at him from the backseat.

"I'd rather go to prison than tell you anything."

Shiro grimaced as he wiped the back of his neck. God, she had better be clean. "Oh, believe me, you're definitely going—I'll make sure of that myself. Just not yet," he assured her. "Robbery, assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest—"

"Yeah, and what about you? Newsflash: you're basically kidnapping me. Which is illegal," she said. "And you didn't even read me my rights, dumbass, so looks like you've got unlawful interrogation going for you, too. Good going, officer."

Shiro met her challenging stare in the mirror.

So she was one of those people, then—the ones who liked to pull out the book and act as if they knew the law better than an actual police officer did. Nothing he hadn't dealt with hundreds of times before. Except for some reason, this girl's thinly-veiled threats made him uneasy in a way that nobody else's had, as if she'd actually make good on them rather than just throw a fit in holding for an hour before breaking, pleading guilty, and asking for a lawyer. As if she was the lawyer.

"Now c'mon, this isn't funny anymore. Do we have a deal or what?" she asked, perking a brow. "You let me go, and I forget all about the psycho cop who violated my rights and threatened to hold me hostage."

"And that's bribery," Shiro said, and then he angled the mirror away.

Perhaps, for once in his meticulously-organized life, Shiro hadn't thought his plan through well enough. Fine. He could admit that. In his defense, it was kind of hard to think straight when your brain was being knocked around your skull like cheap candy in a six-year-old's birthday piñata, and staying awake for nearly 72 hours straight with only the occasional nod-off probably hadn't lent him much clarity either, but whatever. The point is, owning up to his mistakes had never been a problem for Shiro. This, however, was more like a disaster.

"I'm so bored," Pidge moaned, slumped against the car door with her cheek smushed up against the window. Now unable to go down to the precinct for fear of Pidge calling foul for police misconduct and with nowhere else to go, Shiro had pulled off into an empty department store parking lot after wasting nearly a quarter tank of gas driving back and forth across town.

"We can always talk, if you want," he offered nonchalantly, checking his phone. "In fact, the sooner you tell me where your friends are, the sooner we can go."

It hadn't taken him long to come up with a new course of action; he really only had two options to choose from, anyway. Either he could (a) turn Pidge in and get ran through the wringer of internal affairs; or (b) keep Pidge to use as leverage, grab the rest of the Paladins, turn them in all at once, and then get ran through the wringer of internal affairs. The choice was clear. Either one he chose he was bound to get chewed out and put in front of a civilian review board, but at least with the second option the Paladin case would finally be put to rest and he'd be back working to take down the Galra crime ring with the rest of the department again. Hopefully.

Pidge scoffed. "Over my dead body," she told him, which brought Shiro to the first—and possibly most difficult—obstacle of his new plan: actually getting her to talk. "Seriously though, can you at least turn on the radio or something?"

"No."

"Fucking hell."

"Language."

"'Language,'" she mocked, and Shiro had to make a conscious decision to pick and choose his battles.

They sat there in that parking lot for the better part of an hour, Shiro passing the time with some crossword puzzles on his phone while Pidge lied sprawled out in the back, quiet for the most part, but every so often reminding Shiro that she was very much still alive and quite ticked off with a groan here and some twisting and turning there.

Kick.

"You're really gonna start that up again?" Shiro asked, readjusting the mirror so that he could fix her with a warning glance. "Do you want me to zip tie your ankles? Because—"

"I'm hungry."

Oh. "I don't know what to tell you."

"I said I'm hungry."

"Well, that's too bad," he said, silently praying that she wouldn't force him to deliver on his empty threat; he really didn't want to get kicked in the jaw tonight. "There's plenty of food down at the precinct, though. Maybe once you stop messing around and start taking this a little more seriously—"

"You wanna add cruel and unusual punishment to your rap sheet, too? Be my guest." She shrugged. Shiro looked at her. "Denying me food and water? That's considered inhumane treatment."

"I'm not denying you anything. I told you, there's food at the precinct."

"Yeah, the precinct that you're not taking me to," she reminded him. "Kidnapper."

Shiro squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled slowly through his nose. He didn't know how much more of this he could take.

"There's a breakfast diner not too far from here, if you want," she suggested. "They've got really good blueberry pancakes. Oh, and French toast. I mean, unless you're like, one of those gluten-free health nuts, which… honestly, wouldn't really surprise me with how uptight you are. You need to chill out and eat some bread."

"Absolutely not." He wasn't about to let this monster loose inside of a public establishment. But then his stomach rumbled, and Pidge lifted a brow at him. He pretended not to notice, concentrating his attention on the pavement outside, but his gut was unyielding.

"So—?"

"Taco Bell," he relented, and threw the car in drive. It was the only place still open this late with a drive-thru, and therefore the safest bet he had if he wanted to keep the little demon contained.

As if Pidge's unruly demands for food hadn't been bad enough, she actually had the audacity to be picky about what she got, too.

"I don't want water! It's gross!"

"It's water."

"Have you ever had water from Taco Bell? It tastes like plastic. Dirty plastic," she argued. Shiro pinched the bridge of his nose as he, for the fourth time, edited his order. "Oh, and don't forget the cinnamon twists."

"And can I add on an order of—wait, no." He turned to Pidge. "Do you think this is a joke?"

"Uh, no? It's a drive-thru, clearly."

Pick and choose your battles, Shiro told himself as he paid for their order and proceeded to find a place to park. He separated his own food from Pidge's and rolled down the back window, just enough to reach around and slide her two burritos through without having to get out and open the door. "Here. Now, just—be quiet," he told her, dropping them onto the seat. There was a beat of silence as he considered how to go about safely handing her the large Baja Blast she'd insisted on having.

"Hey, genius," she said, cutting into his brief moment of zen. "How exactly am I supposed to eat like this?"

Shiro dropped his head into his hand and groaned.

"This is the most degrading moment of my life."

Shiro rolled his eyes as he tore open a mild sauce packet with his teeth, slathering it all over Pidge's burrito before holding it up to her mouth. "You did this to yourself."

"What? I'm not the one who—more mild sauce—thought it'd be a bright idea to leave me handcuffed behind my—hey, no, don't dip it. What's wrong with you? Unroll it and spread it around like a civilized human being."

Shiro did the best he could with one hand and went in for another attempt.

"Ew, there's lettuce. I said no lettuce."

"Would you just. Eat. The burrito."

Pidge turned her cheek.

Shiro felt more like a babysitter than a police officer, sitting in that cramped backseat and picking apart a burrito as if he were trying to feed a fussy child—except that Pidge definitely was not a child. Up this close and beneath the dome light, he could see her much more clearly than he initially had in that dark alley; and despite her small stature—and her less-than-eloquent choice of words—there was no way this girl could have possibly been younger than eighteen.

Shiro's eyes slid down to the shoulder strap of the backpack she was still wearing.

"Don't even think about it," she warned, mouth full and meat sauce running down her chin. Shiro couldn't help but quirk his lips at the sight. Even for a social deviant, he couldn't deny that she was pretty cute. He reached out and wiped her face before letting her take a sip of her drink.

"Fair enough. You did promise to keep your feet on the floor, and so far, so good," he told her. "But I'm going to see what you've got in there sooner or later. You're still under arrest, you know."

"Says you."

"Yes, me. A police officer."

"Right. Hey, can you add a bit more mild sauce to the next one?"

Shiro frowned. "Are you even aware of the situation that you're in?"

"I don't think you're aware of the situation that you're in," Pidge said, watching him as he prepared her other burrito. The way she eyed his jacket-clad right arm, which he kept wedged tight between himself and the backseat, hadn't gone unnoticed. "I bet it'd be a lot more efficient if you used both hands," she told him, and Shiro decided that she could figure out how to wipe her face on her own.

Once the beast had been fed and Shiro finally had the chance to put something into his own mouth, he disposed of their garbage and returned to the front seat. There he tried to finish one of the crossword puzzles he'd started earlier, but it was almost two o'clock in the morning and he found that his eyes were getting harder and harder to keep open. Pidge, on the other hand, was wide awake.

"So… are you just crazy, or what?"

"If you're trying to get a reaction out of me, it's not going to work."

"No, I'm being serious. It's a serious question."

Shiro glanced at Pidge through the rearview mirror. She looked honest enough. "What do you mean?"

"Keeping a suspect hostage," she said. "I mean, you're a cop—I shouldn't have to tell you that's illegal. Do you just not care, or…?"

Shiro sighed. "You wouldn't understand."

"Try me?"

He didn't, choosing to close his eyes and let his head fall back instead.