Chapter Text
All Lance wanted to do was go to the market and get some ingredients for his mama so that they could have some good fucking food for dinner tonight, but of course, he chose the one market day Akira fucking Kogane decided to show and rob everybody.
Actually, that was a bit of an overstatement. Akira Kogane wasn’t robbing anybody. He was just threatening the lives of the two Garrison soldiers here to oversee the market and make sure nobody was pulling any shady tricks. It was typical to see the highly-trained, elite military in attendance for mediocre events, as they often used little things like these for training, but… Nobody would’ve counted on this.
Akira Kogane was a cold-hearted, cruel-witted, asshole of a criminal. He was one of the most wanted in the whole goddamn country and loved to brag about his successes to the very Nobles he stole from. Lance may have been poorer than dirt, but he still hated the dude with a burning passion.
Granted, he had a reason to.
This wasn’t the first time Akira Kogane visited the city of Mesa, right on the edge of what used to be Phoenix (oh, the irony in which the city named after the immortal bird of rebirth was burned to ash after the Second Renaissance, wiped from existence like so many others). He’d shown up barely four years before, when Lance had been young and vainly trying to get into the Garrison like his sister had before him. It had been stupid of him to try, knowing that spots were rare to be given away and even then only to those who showed great natural abilities, of which he had none. He’d heard the insults thrown his way time and time again, especially after his College Tests last year, when not one university had invited him to continue learning, to follow his siblings, to support his aging mama. The last time Akira Kogane had come to Mesa, he’d stolen Lance’s very chance at the Garrison, humiliating him in front of the examiners.
The test had been to transport a locked briefcase safely across the city. It shouldn’t have been hard, not with how quiet the streets had been that day, but somehow Akira Kogane had decided that was the day he wanted to steal from a gangly little boy with too many dreams.
Akira fucking Kogane had slipped up beside him, chatted him up with that stupid white hair and those stupid purple eyes and those stupid leather gloves, and stole the key to his acceptance.
His chances of getting in had been slim to begin with, but showing up at the next drop point without the test itself?
They’d basically told him that he need not apply in future years.
So, when Lance saw that asshole in the market square, making a fool of the Garrison soldiers, the boys who would’ve been his classmates in another life, well… you couldn’t exactly blame him for watching, now could you?
Hovering on the fringes of the crowd, blues eyes glued to Akira Kogane as he waved a Garrison-issues laser gun in Officer Kinkade’s face, even Lance jumped when the gun fired for the second time in moments.
The first time, it had obviously been a warning shot. Right at Officer Griffin’s feet. Lance had silently dared the criminal to shoot him for real, because Griffin was a cock-sure ass who always acted like he was better than everyone else.
But that hadn’t meant he’d actually wanted him to do it.
When the laser shot through Griffin’s chest, the entire crowd froze. Akira Kogane was rutheless, and there were plenty of rumors of how many people he’d killed (Lance currently had a bet going with his siblings about it), but nobody had seen him actually kill someone.
The people around him fled in terror, shouts and chaos drowned out by the rising pounding in Lance’s ears. He was frozen to the spot, mind screaming at him to run home and never look back, to forget that asshole and get on with his life.
But then indigo met blue.
Then Akira’s gorgeous, hypnotizing, purple-as-the-night-sky-above-them eyes found his.
He grinned wickedly and crossed the space between them in moments.
It took Lance a minute to realize that Officer Kinkade was shouting something.
“Sir, remain calm! The situation is under control!”
Like hell it was. Officer Griffin had a gunshot wound in his chest, smoldering from the heat, and Akira fucking Kogane had one of his hands, stupid leather glove and all, gripping his arm.
“Welcome to the game, handsome,” Akira told him, the galaxies in his eyes twinkling with malice and mischief. “You’re officially my leverage.”
It took Lance a minute to realize what was said.
Akira Kogane, criminal extraordinaire and asshole supreme, was using him as leverage in a shoot-out with a Garrison officer.
He was being used as leverage by one of the most feared thieves (and now killers) in the entire country.
And, to make matters worse, in the four years since Lance had seen him…
He’d gotten hotter.