Chapter 5

Saturday, 2.47 PM

Keith was halfway down the fire escape when he heard the gunshots.

Stumbling to a halt on the next platform, he swiveled around, eyes scanning the building. The whitewashed walls betrayed nothing, but the sound had come from somewhere above. Where? Were Pidge and Lance–

A familiar mop of brown hair appeared over the rooftop ledge. "What the hell was that?" came Pidge's distant yell. So the roof had to be clear. That could only mean one thing.

Lance had run into trouble.

Running a hand through his hair, Keith surveyed his options. He could continue with the plan, keep heading down, block off the exit. But the front door was locked. He wouldn't be able to get back in and if things got bad inside…

Keith turned back around and ran.

:::

2.47 PM

Before the dust settled Lance was moving.

"Go, go, go," he hissed to Nyma, pulling her along and down behind the kitchen island. Her sharp breathing, dampened as she pressed her lips together, filled his ears as he snuck a glance towards the shattered door. His gun was already out of its holster and he clicked off the safety, waiting for the attacker to make their move.

A flicker of movement made him tense, finger tightening against the trigger. But no. No point revealing their location this early. Better to wait for the right moment.

Lance let out a slow breath, nerves tingling.

Come on. Show me what you got, you psycho.

One second.

Two.

Three.

Lance shifted his stance quietly, eyes trained on the door. What was Haggar waiting f–

A canister rolled into the room. Frowning, Lance watched it rattle to a stop… then realized what it was.

"Nyma!" he hissed, shoving an arm over his eyes, "Get–"

BANG!

Even through his jacket sleeve, the flash caught him off guard, patterns blinking in the corners of his eyes as he tried to orient himself again.

"Ahhh!" Nyma's pain-filled shriek filled the air as she curled in on herself, trying desperately (and too late) to protect her eyes. On instinct, Lance turned towards her, losing focus for just a second… and a second was all it took.

Wood splintered everywhere as the bullets pierced the kitchen island, inches from his head. Lance dove, firing blindly into the dark. He didn't dare for a hit, only a bit of time. A few seconds to calm the surge of adrenaline.

He only hoped his instincts would be enough to survive long enough for backup to arrive.

Sure. Piece of cake.

A glint of metal near the couches. Lance threw himself into Nyma, just as the entire right side of the island exploded to pieces. Ears ringing, Lance fired another shot, knowing even as it left the barrel it'd get nothing. He needed to do something. Something to draw Haggar out from cover.

Lance sucked in a steadying breath. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. What to do, what to do...

He looked up at Nyma. Her pupils were blown wide. A nasty gash across one temple.

"When I say now," he whispered, "you go that way." He gestured to the smashed side. To the front door. "You run. Okay?"

No answer.

"Okay?"

Squaring her shoulders, Nyma managed a nod. He had to give it to her: she was brave.

Slowly, Lance got himself up into a crouch. Adjusted his grip on the gun. Inched a look at the other side. No movement.

Okay. For this to work, he had to be fast. Steady. And missing… out of the question.

Lance clenched his jaw. Well. Yippee ki-yay.

"Now!"

Ducking to the other side, right into the open, Lance heard Nyma sprinting for the door. His gaze remained focused on the couch, on Haggar leaping up from behind it and taking aim for Nyma–

He fired.

A howl escaped Haggar's lips as the bullet found her hand. A clean hit, or a graze? Didn't matter. All that mattered was the shotgun clattering to the floor.

Lance leapt forward, kicking the shotgun out of the way just before Haggar landed on top of him. The world became a blur as they rolled around, fighting to get the upper hand. A mess of elbows, knees, ripped clothes… then Haggar's hand found his hair. His head smashed against the ground. Enough to make him disoriented, too slow as Haggar flew to her feet, took off after Nyma…

… and came to a dead stop at the doorway.

"Back the fuck up." Keith took a step forward, gun aimed at Haggar's chest. The scar on his cheek standing out sharply in the slanted light and eyes blazing in a way Lance had never seen before.

"Ow." Sitting up, Lance made a show of rubbing the back of his head. "You couldn't have shown up, like, three seconds earlier?"

Neither of the other two paid him any attention.

"You again." Haggar cocked her head to one side. "I thought I broke you enough last time."

As she took a small side-step, Keith's hands tightened around the weapon. "Don't move."

Haggar only smiled, like she was talking to a little kid. "You're not going to shoot me."

"Yeah? Wanna bet?"

"You're not," she took another step back, "going to shoot me–"

"Haggar, I'm warning you–"

"–because your dear Chief would want you to get justice–"

Keith's eyes flashed dangerously. "Don't–"

"–and to get justice," another step, "you need to take me alive. Don't you?"

She was backed up behind the couches now, Keith right in front of her, struggling to stay calm. And behind her…

… a window.

Lance realized it the same time Keith did, but it was too late. They barely made it a step before the glass shattered, Haggar's hair whipping wildly around her as she threw herself out.

"NO!"

Leaping over the couch, Lance peered down at the street far below, just in time to see Haggar let go of the drainpipe she'd scaled down and disappear into the beach crowd. Then he got shoved away.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Keith!" Lance grabbed the back of Keith's jacket, hauling him back inside. "Are you crazy?"

"But she– I can't just–"

"You can't just climb out a window four floors up? Yeah, completely agree with you, man."

Keith spun towards him – and was he seriously baring his teeth? "Let. Me. Go."

"No!" Twisting around, Lance placed himself between Keith and the window. And he had to admit, the bare inch of height he had on Keith felt incredibly satisfying in that moment. "Listen. There are hundreds of people out there. Hundreds. You'd never find her, especially not by turning yourself into a Mullet pancake. And in case you missed it I just almost died, so forgive me if I'm not in the mood to scrape you off the sidewalk!"

"I…" Keith began, the fight slowly draining from him. "Are you okay?"

Lance blinked. "Well," he said, "my hair's full of wood chips and I'm gonna have a bruise shaped like Haggar's bony elbow on my stomach tomorrow, but apparently I still have my shit together more than you."

"I'm not the one who was wrestling a trained killer thirty seconds ago."

The rebuke was half-hearted, but Lance still found himself letting out something close to an amused huff.

"I hate to interrupt," Pidge said, their voice revealing they very much didn't, "but we need to call an ambulance. Right now."

Lance glanced over towards the apartment doorway where Pidge was crouching next to Nyma, who was cradling her head. The gash on her temple looked even worse than before.

Yep. An ambulance was definitely needed.

Clearing his throat, Lance fished out his phone.

:::

3.07 PM

"Hey, uh… we should talk about earlier."

In the corner of his eye Lance could see Keith frowning at him, but he kept his gaze on the beach boardwalk. On the ambulance Nyma was being helped into. On the curious beachgoers, calmly but firmly being kept at a distance by the local police.

Once again, he asked himself if he could skip this whole thing. Vulnerability sucked on a normal day, but now, having to show it to Keith? It double – no, triple sucked.

Especially since he deep down knew he had to, or they'd keep sucking at being a team. Which in this case could literally mean the difference between life and death.

Lance knew which one of those he preferred.

"You know, the stuff in the elevator and… before that."

Keith sighed and crossed his arms, the 'Why are we talking about this again?' as clear as if he'd said it out loud. But he didn't walk away.

"I'll just say it: I messed up. I got so focused on proving you wrong I missed what was right in front of us and almost–" Almost destroyed our case. Almost let our only witness die. Almost died myself.

"I didn't mean it that way."

"Yeah, I'm starting to get that," Lance snapped before he could stop himself. He pulled in a steadying breath. "Look. We don't know each other, alright? I'm not gonna pick up on you joking every time. Especially not about stuff I still feel shit about sometimes and I don't need another voice telling me I'm doing the detective thing wrong, okay?"

Dios, that was not what he had meant to say, and now Keith was looking at him with that same look he had aimed at Hunk last night which Lance only now realized might not have been dislike after all and–

"Anyway," he said, forcing his voice into a more lighthearted tone, "I can't promise I'll stop finding everything you do frustrating, 'cause that's impossible, but I'll promise I won't let it get in the way of the case again. But maybe you could just… dial it down a little? Or, you know, be more obvious about it?"

For a second Keith studied him, something Lance couldn't decipher flickering through his eyes. Then he nodded. "Next time I'll get out the beacon lights."

"Why would you– Oh," he cut himself off as Keith raised an eyebrow, a little smile on his face. "Right." Lance let out a mix of a huff and a laugh, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. "Hate to break it to you man, but I think Captain Holt wouldn't be too impressed with you lugging a homemade Bat Signal around. You know, the one Gotham City uses to signal Batman?" he added at Keith's frown.

"Oh," Keith said. "Probably not, yeah."

A quiet moment passed, but for the second time today Lance found he didn't mind it.

He released another breath. "Okay. Cool. Now that that's out of the way," his eyes wandered over the scene, landing on Pidge heading towards the apartment building, forensics equipment in hand, "maybe we should, you know, do our jobs."

Without waiting for a response, he started over towards them.

"Hey, Pidge!" he called once he was in ear-shot. "How's the scene spec going?"

"Matt and the CSI team just arrived, so it's still gonna be a while." They shook their head. "Nyma did a real number on the computers; gonna take me ages to find anything of use there."

Lance patted their shoulder sympathetically. "Sounds like a party."

"Anything that could give us more leads on Haggar?" Keith asked, coming up beside the two.

"Again, we just started," Pidge crossed their arms, "but we did find part of what looked like a ticket. Some kinda palm tree logo on one side, the number 47 on the other. Not something of yours, right?"

Lance exchanged a look with Keith, before they both shook their heads.

"Thought so. Thinking it fell out of Haggar's pocket while you two," they looked at Lance, "were busy rolling around on the floor."

"Wrestling sounds cooler," Lance muttered to himself.

"Either way, Matt's gonna run it through photo-analysis back at the lab later, try to find a match in our database. I'll send you an update later with everything."

"Thanks."

Pidge nodded and went to walk inside, but stopped, turned back around… and wrapped their arms around Lance. "I'm glad you're okay."

The corner of his mouth quirked up as he hugged them back. "Hey, takes more than a little shootout to take out Lance McClain."

Rolling their eyes, Pidge then turned to very surprised Keith.

"Um," was all he seemed to get out as he stared down at Pidge wrapped around his middle. And it hit Lance like a thousand-page law book: Keith was awkward around affection. He hadn't disliked Hunk at all; he just hadn't known how to react to Hunk's laid-back, warm attitude.

Dios, Lance was an idiot.

By the time Keith unfroze, arms uncertainly moving to return the embrace, Pidge was already letting go.

"Sorry," they said, taking a step back, "shoulda asked first. Was that okay?"

"Yeah. That was, uh… hugs are okay. Just… wasn't prepared. So."

"Cool. I'll warn ya next time then." With a smile Pidge spun back around, calling a "Later!" over their shoulder before the front door closed behind them.

For a second the two of them simply stood there. Then Keith cleared his throat. "I'll go check the perimeter."

Lance opened his mouth to point out the obvious amount of police already watching over the area and the beachgoers and how their time was probably better spent checking in with Captain Holt about their next move, but Keith was already halfway across the boardwalk like he had somewhere to be.

… Or needed some space to think.

Lance shrugged, even as stored the thought for later. Guess he'd talk to Captain Holt himself.

:::

3.32 PM

Keith was fixing something with the police tape when Lance came up to him.

"Okay, so," he began, not waiting for Keith to acknowledge him, "update from Captain Holt: 'til the CSI:s get back with the analytics, we're off the clock."

Keith looked up. "Off the clock?"

"Yeah. Guess he thought we'd caused enough mess for today. I'm kidding," he added when Keith frowned, "he didn't say that. But there's probably a whole lotta paperwork to get all this sorted – sucks to be a Captain, am I right?"

A shrug was all he got in response.

"Sooo… whatcha gonna do with your sudden dose of free time?"

Another shrug. Maybe Lance was better off talking to the police tape right now. "Go to the hotel, I guess."

"Oh, so your Marshals office did manage to set something up. Nice. Where's our wonderful government putting you for the night?"

Pulling out his phone (which definitely had seen better days), Keith scrolled through it. "The… Krellian?"

"The Krellian?" Lance made a face.

"Let me guess, it's not like the five-star hotels you're used to."

"More like the home for every bed bug in L.A."

Keith's face fell. "Oh."

Pursing his lips, Lance studied him for a moment. Not going to lie, a few hours without his broody case partner sounded nice, but… no one deserved to share a bed with a bunch of bed bugs. Not even Keith.

Lance heaved out a sigh. "Alright. Let's go back to Hunk's."

"... What? No. Why?"

"Because I know for a fact Hunk would be more than happy to let you stay. And you already know how comfy his guest room bed is. Plus," he flashed a smile, "you get to spend more time in my charming presence."

"Wow," Keith said, sounding very much not wowed.

Lance rolled his eyes. "Look," he raised his hands, slowly walking backwards in the direction he'd parked his car, "if you wanna take chances with those flesh eaters, that's on you. But don't come complaining to me when you show up to work tomorrow lookin' like a red-spotted leopard."

Keith's frown was the last thing he saw before he turned around and ducked under the tape.

He had only just sunk down in the driver's seat when his phone buzzed. A message from Hunk.

'Hey, guess who just showed up!'

Underneath it was a crooked angle selfie of Hunk and another familiar face that sent a broad grin across Lance's face.

So that's why Coran had been asking around this morning. The sneaky bastard!

He was startled halfway through his reply when the passenger door cracked open and Keith unceremoniously thumped down next to him. "Fine," he said.

For a few seconds Lance only watched him, blinking, because he honestly hadn't expected Keith to change his mind. Then with a huff, he dug the car keys out of his pocket. "Okay then. But just so you know," and the smile was back as he turned the ignition, "we're gonna have some company."

A little shorter than the rest so far - but finally some action!

I had so much fun writing the fight scene for this, even though Haggar's a real challenge to get the right feel for. But I can tell you right now this won't be the last time Lance's sharpshooting skills come into play - that skillset is too fun to not lean into!

Hoping those of you with me here are enjoying the ride :)