Chapter Text
A faint rattling sound rouses Keith, and it takes only seconds, not ticks, for him to feel like utter shit again. Keith concludes that no, it hasn’t been too long since the whole bar thing happened, which is probably why he still wants to curl up and die.
Nausea rears its ugly head, and it’s all he can do to roll onto his side and let out his lunch that Hunk made earlier that day. His fellow paladin had tried out a new recipe, and it was very tasty, but now it’s this gross slop next to him and wow he doesn’t want to think about it. Keith groans and scoots away from the mess. He rolls back over and confusion racks through him. Something soft is under his head, and his fingertips roam over the material. In the dim lighting he realizes it’s Lance’s jacket.
“Glad to know you’re okay, mullet head.” Lance rasps off to the side. Keith sits up a little to see Lance propped up against a wall. A wall that’s shaking.
“Ugh, Lance? What happened? Where are we?”
Lance sways to the side, and Keith is convinced he’s going to fall over at any moment now, but Lance catches himself. “I think we’re in a car? It keeps moving, and the driver is pretty shitty. We’ve hit like seven potholes. Can’t a guy take a much needed ciesta?”
“Do the others know we’ve been kidnapped?” Keith reaches up for his ear only to find his comm. unit missing.
“Yeah these guys may be terrible drivers, but they’re one step ahead of us.” Lance sighs. “You doing okay?” His voice is tinged with worry, and Keith ignores that warm fluttery feeling in his chest.
Keith gives Lance a shaky thumbs up. “I’ve had worse.”
Lance scoffs. “What, is that tough guy talk or something?”
“No, I really have. There aren’t exactly a ton of doctors out in the middle of nowhere.” Keith shuts his eyes tightly when they hit another pothole, and his stomach churns violently. He can hear Lance scooting closer. A beat later, a cool hand is pressed to his forehead, and Keith leans into it before he can think about it.
“You might be running a slight temp, buddy. Better stay cool.”
“I’m always cool.” Keith huffs. “You’ve even said it once.”
Lance looks flabbergasted and raises his arms in defense. “W-what? When did I say that?”
Keith finds enough strength in himself to smirk knowingly at Lance. “When I cradled you in my arms that one time. You talk a lot in your sleep, and apparently you think I’m cool.”
Lance’s mouth is flapping open and shut like a goldfish and if that’s not the funniest thing to Keith. “You are such a liar! Didn’t we have a bonding moment? Isn’t there some bro code to never bring it up again?” It’s dark inside the car, truck?, thing, but if Keith squints, he can make out a light blush dusting Lance’s cheeks. Oh he so had him.
“It’s okay to admit that I’m cooler than you. Just say it.”
“Pssh, if anyone’s the cooler one it’s me. Hello, my lion has ice powers! Yours is fire.” Lance shoots back quickly. Keith rolls his eyes for what feels like the millionth time that day. That’s a mistake. His head is spinning, or everything around him is spinning—Keith doesn’t know—and he blindly reaches out and grasps the first thing he can find.
Lance’s hand.
The other doesn’t seem to mind it all that much, but rather his eyebrows crease and the playful grin he was sporting drops. “Hey take it easy. I’m pretty sure that drug is still in your system.”
“Yeah.” Lance gives Keith’s hand a small squeeze, and he squeezes back—harder—and somehow this becomes a competition between the two to see who can cut off their circulation first. Keith wins once Lance’s hand goes limp in his and both are letting out breathy chuckles.
They stay like that for a while, half-laying, half-sitting in relative peace despite their situation. Keith takes to observing as much as he could inside the back of the vehicle; it looked like they were in a storage unit really. His eyes wander until they find Lance’s face. The other teen’s eyes are drooping shut, desperate for sleep, and his brows keep scrunching together. The bruise glaring back at Keith is new. It’s to the side of Lance’s right eye, and if it weren’t for this crappy lighting he probably would have noticed it earlier.
“Lance, you feeling okay?” Keith’s hand hovers over the wound, and Lance pulls back slightly.
“Totally. I mean I could go without getting this handsome face all banged up, but I’m fine.” Lance smiles, but Keith’s lived around Lance long enough to tell real from fake. This one was definitely forced.
“Lance—”
The double doors at the other end of the storage unit burst open and a blinding amount of light assaults their vision. Keith blinks through it, but Lance’s eyes are squeezed shut, and he’s got an arm raised in front of his face.
“Get out.” A rough voice orders.
Lance squints over at Keith and they share a look. They need to get out of here, fight their way out it would seem, and fast. Lance goes to stand and wobbles, barely catching himself.
“Hurry it the fuck up!” There are several figures outside, all armed with guns, and one starts to aim for Keith. That sets Lance off.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, pendejo, pero mi amigo está enfermo!” Lance hisses at the men. Didn’t they know Keith was feeling sick holy shit. Another string of curses slips past Lance’s lips, and Keith doesn’t even need to speak Spanish to know that they’re downright insulting. The team’s heard plenty of expletives from Lance way too many times to count. Keith thinks the last was when Lance stubbed his toe. Five minutes of Lance telling off a chair and insulting its mother was definitely the highlight of that week. Pidge even recorded it.
Keith’s standing now and pouring every ounce of concentration into not falling over. He just needs to breathe and stick close to Lance. Sure there are a lot of armed guards waiting for them, but going down without a fight isn’t on their to-do list.
Lance makes the first move and lashes out at the closest person with a well-aimed kick to their hands. Their gun goes flying and Lance catches it sloppily. Keith’s right behind him taking down one person and trying to attack the next when vertigo washes over him. He can’t seem to place one foot in front of the other or even tell which way is forward. His arms stretch out in front of him to provide what little bit of balance they could. A large, meaty hand clamps over his wrists and pulls them harshly behind his back. Keith thinks a grunt of pain leaves him, but everything’s moving like molasses rolling up a hill.
“Keith!” Lance calls out to him. Lance rushes forward and slams the glock down on Keith’s captor. The man drops and one of Lance’s arms wraps around Keith’s waist, holding him close to him. “So I don’t think my plan is working out.” Lance comments, all but dragging Keith back behind the truck they were in previously.
“What gave that away?” Keith asks dryly.
“Just a hunch.” Lance risks a look around the vehicle and immediately ducks back right as a shot sounds off. “You got anything in mind?”
“Not really.” Well Keith does have something on his mind, but it’s anything but plan related. It more so has to do with the hand that’s still pressed against his waist. Warm and reassuring.
“We can try and make a break for it, but I’m not getting far.” Lance proposes. That gets Keith’s attention.
“Wait why not?”
“I’m stupidly dizzy right now and I might just hurl, but that’s a strong might. Not a weak one.” Now that Keith actually takes a moment to look over his fellow teammate he sees the thin line of blood trailing down the side of his face. His gaze follows it back up to Lance’s hair, where a patch is darker than the rest of the brown strands. Blood, still wet by the looks of it, has his hair matted down, so it’s hard to tell just how bad the injury is.
“Shit Lance.”
“’M fine, don’t worry about it.” Don’t worry about me.
Keith full on glares at Lance. How the hell was he not supposed to worry about him? Keith isn’t exactly an expert on medicine, that’s more Hunk’s department as of late, but he knows that head injuries are tricky. He knows that concussions are nothing to sneeze at.
“We need to find an escape r—”
The sound of a gun cocking is deafening and the dark barrel stares both teens down menacingly. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they’re both done for, that their chances of escaping this time around just fell to unfathomable lows.
“If either of you steps out of line again, the other is getting shot in the leg.”
***
Halfway into the meetup with the information broker, Olersky, Shiro can already tell something’s off. The conversation keeps going off on a tangent, and he’s noted how it’s somehow been diverted to ancient Altean history.
“Right.” Shiro nods along, trying to remain polite on the very off-chance that this guy did have information. Though keeping up this faux smile seriously ticked him off.
He can’t help but scan the bar, locating the other members of his team. Hunk’s off to his right chatting up some of the usual customers and a bout of laughter meets his ears. Pidge is tinkering with what Shiro thinks is a jukebox. It’s playing some downbeat music with a guitar maybe and some other foreign instruments he can’t place. Pidge presses something on the side of the machine and the lights brighten from a dim blue to bright green. They smile triumphantly.
As for Lance and Keith…
Shiro’s eyes narrow. He knew for a fact that those two were sitting at the bar not one minute ago. Something about that doesn’t sit right with him and call it parental instinct or whatever, but he needed to find them.
“Wait, you didn’t let me finish.” Olersky, a being from the planet Solara—a desert planet orbiting a Blue Giant star—holds out a gnarled hand to stop him.
“Hold that thought.” Shiro strides up to the bar and captures the bartender’s attention. “Excuse me, you wouldn’t happen to see where the two sitting there went, would you?” Shiro gestures at the spot. He’s the epitome of calm and collected even if he was currently freaking out on the inside.
The bartender raises three pairs of shoulders in a shrug and that does nothing to ease Shiro’s rising anxiety about this whole situation. He tries again. “Surely you can point me in the right direction.”
“Haven’t seen them.”
Right. He returns to the Solaran informant, who’s now fidgeting nervously in his seat. His beady eyes are purposefully avoiding Shiro’s and that raises every alarm bell available in his head.
“You know something.” It’s a statement more than a question, and those three words are all it takes to break him.
“I’m terribly sorry!” Olersky squeaks. “Your friends aren’t here, they were taken. A group of traffickers were interested in humans, and I helped for the right price!” He says it all so fast, and Shiro somehow manages to process, really process, what he just heard. The Solaran curls in on himself when Shiro shoots to his feet.
“Where?” Shiro demands. His voice carries, and Pidge and Hunk both leave what they’re doing to come over. The urgency in Shiro’s tone is enough to turn a few other heads.
“I-I don’t know. My job was to keep you preoccupied.”
“Then who else was involved?”
The Solaran doesn’t answer but instead his eyes speak for him. They wander over to the bartender and that’s all Shiro needs. Pidge and Hunk get the silent message to stay and watch the informant.
“Mind telling me the truth this time around? Where are they?”
The bartender regards Shiro while making a neon pink drink dusted with what could only be described as silver stardust. “You must be new around here. This place is one of the main outlets in the business.” The business. It’s gross how he can say it so simply like trafficking wasn’t that much of a big deal. The business.
“Where are the people taken?” Shiro pries.
“Why should I tell you?” The alien answers with a question of his own.
Shiro could give him a long list filled with why this entire setup was wrong or he could straight up threaten him and have Pidge and Hunk back him up. The latter would do sans the paladins. They couldn’t waste any time.
His hand, right hand, lifts up and burns with power as it activates. The bartender takes a step back and has all six of his hands held up.
“Alright, alright, just don’t mess up my set up here.” He relents. Shiro’s hand fades back to smooth grey metal and the bartender launches into the details of where the victims were usually taken. Before Shiro can turn his back, however, the alien speaks again. “I don’t understand why a Galran agent would be so concerned with this, I mean some of these poor saps are sent to work for you.”
Shiro’s chest clenches tightly and a part of him goes a little cold at being associated with the enemy. “I am not part of the empire.” He shoots over his shoulder.
He’s not and never will be.
“Come on you two, let’s go.”