A/N: i am now, in my surgeon's opinion, flat as a pancake. and have never been this happy in my life. Now, on with the new chapter, and it's high-key a filler chapter + i have mild writer's block
----
"You gonna tell me the name of that hot girl you hooked up with at the bar yet?" Ally asked as lieu of a greeting the following morning.
"Nope." Camila said with a grin, handing Ally a coffee before they walked into the 99, uniformed and happy to be back at their usual precinct.
"Why's it such a big deal?" Ally whined as they signed in and headed upstairs for Captain Holt's briefing.
"Why's it such a big deal for you to know?" Camila shot back. Ally grumbled under her breath before falling silent.
"Nothing bad happened right?"
"What? Ally no. We just made out at her place for a while. I went back home when we got interrupted by her sister." Camila said earnestly. "And that is all I'm telling you."
"Gonna see her again?" Ally asked as they entered the briefing room.
"Not if I can help it." Camila muttered to herself before standing at the back of the room.
The briefing dragged on for a little longer than Camila was expecting, apparently there were a few announcements Captain Holt had to get out of the way, and Diaz took the lead on the Jauregui investigation, per Camila's request.
She wasn't ready to stand in front of the precinct and lay out her plans and research. She could handle overseeing the investigation from the sidelines and happily let Diaz drone on in front of the others.
The room quickly emptied after Holt dismissed them, leaving Camila, Ally and Diaz gathered around one of the tables.
"So where do we begin?" Diaz asked, flicking through a file as Camila pulled out a chair.
"Building a profile. I want to know everything about her. Where she buys her coffee, when she gets her haircut, heck, I wanna know when she wakes up in the morning. I want to know who she's doing business with, forget what it's about, I just want to know who." Camila said, scribbling her rambling on a notepad.
"Holt thinks you two need to be out of uniform for this." Diaz said quietly.
"We're beat cops Diaz." Ally scoffed. "We're not allowed to be out of uniform."
"Which is why Cabello here let me run things publicly. I take my directions from her while making this investigation legit." Diaz said calmly. "And as that role, I get to order you two into undercover stakeout roles for now, which means no uniforms."
"Honestly I don't even know why I'm arguing this, uniforms suck." Ally muttered.
"Yeah but we look good." Camila said absentmindedly.
----
It'd been weeks since Camila had started investigating Lauren Jauregui.
Close to a month and she was getting frustrated.
They had close to nothing on her; their whiteboards were filled with surveillance pictures, their map covered in pins and post-it notes, Camila's notable scrawl covering everything else.
They had case files going back a decade to help, if it could be called that. All they did was prove that Lauren Jauregui was almost a ghost when it came to making charges stick.
The only notable thing they'd learned was that Lauren had been working her way around the other gangs and triads, seemingly striking a deal with everyone she came across.
Luckily they hadn't run into each other since their Slip-Up.
Camila was positive Lauren's low-key flirting was going to take a turn for the worse; aka it was going to be blatant and it was going to piss Camila off so much.
They'd arrested several low level criminals linked to the family but all of them favoured jail time over snitching.
Whatever Lauren had done to strike the fear of God into her pawns was vaguely impressive.
Especially since every bit of information they had on her proved she wasn't the one doling out beatdowns or drive-bys. Well she wasn't physically involved in them but it was obvious she was the one who ordered them.
The only victory Camila had almost tasted was when they'd busted Dinah on an assault charge.
The almost part came in the form of Lucy fucking Vives.
Apparently, under Lauren's new leadership, her presence extended to Lauren's right hand woman.
Lucy apparently could save anyones ass with a high enough motive, and money seemed to be the greatest motive of all.
"I'm just saying, there's probably another motive for her." Peralta said around a mouthful of food.
Camila, Ally, Diaz and Peralta were gathered in the briefing room, eating chinese takeout and licking their wounds after Lucy had promptly whooped their ass.
"What?"
"Vives. Sure she gets paid well but like, come on, you must've heard the rumours." Peralta pointed his chopsticks at Camila with a raised eyebrow.
Camila blinked at him.
"Take her silence as a no." Ally said with a snort.
"Jauregui and Vives. Word on the street is that she's not just getting paid with money, if you know what I'm sayin'." Peralta snickered, wiggling his eyebrows. Diaz batted him on the arm and rolled her eyes.
"Really?" Camila asked, poking at her food container with a frown.
"Wait, you really hadn't heard that?" Diaz asked, her own frown forming. Ally glanced at Camila with narrowed eyes, chewing almost comically slowly.
"I listen to more... important chatter." Camila shot back easily. Ally noticed the clench in her jaw, the almost imperceptible twitch in her right eye, the slight pursing of her lips.
"Kiyoko overheard Hansen and Vives talking on their way out earlier, Jauregui's got a meeting with Matt Healy in a few days' time." Ally said, pointing towards an open file at the centre of the table.
"Healy? Those two families... they don't get along." Peralta said with a frown. "You sure it was Healy?"
"Positive."
"Looks like we need to get a location before it goes down."
----
"I cannot believe you." Lauren hissed.
Dinah clasped her hands behind her back, keeping her spine straight as she stood before Lauren. Lauren had finally sat at her father's desk, the chair should've drowned her out yet Dinah swallowed at the feeling of power coming off her friend.
"Lucy helped me out."
"Because I asked her to. I can't have one of my right hand women locked up." Lauren said slowly.
"Laur, it was an accident." Normani said, stepping forward to stand by Dinah's side.
"This meeting with Healy has to go perfectly." Lauren groaned. "He's only just taken over from his mum, now is the perfect time to strike a deal that favours us."
"We have a plan-"
"That needs you both there." Lauren sighed. "Just... take the next couple days off until the meet. I can't have this blowing up in my face."
Dinah nodded reluctantly and glanced at Normani who smiled brightly and opened her mouth to ask Lauren a question.
"Yes I meant both of you." Lauren said with a small smile.
The pair of them left the office, mumbling under their breath and Lauren leaned back in her chair.
All she had to do was get through the next few days.
----
Lauren was so close to making it, she just had to get through this evening and then tomorrow would be her meeting. It'd gone great; she'd got some paperwork done, organised some of her business and made sure Austin wasn't trying to screw her over.
It'd been a productive few days.
So she was rewarding herself with a pizza; it was her favourite place, right around the block from her apartment and on her way home from the office. She decided to go in, order and wait around rather than go straight back to her apartment.
Of course it was just her luck that Camila Cabello walked in just after she'd finished ordering. Lauren had spun on her heel, receipt in hand and collided with Camila almost instantly.
"Fuck sorry." Lauren mumbled before she looked up and her face went pale. "Hey."
"Hi." Camila replied shortly before moving around her and up to the counter.
Lauren wandered over to the other side of the room and sat at one of the tables for collection.
She kept her head down and just read her receipt over and over - the one time she left her phone in her car.
There was a thud as someone sat down across from her, a blue hat making an appearance in Lauren's periphery. She looked up and raised her eyebrows as Camila ran her hands through her hair with a sigh and undid the top buttons of her uniform, her tie loosening around her neck.
"Uh... Camila?"
"Yeah?"
"What're you doing?" Lauren asked as Camila finally looked over at her.
"Waiting for my pizza, obviously." Camila replied, "What else would I be doing?"
"I... you don't like me." Lauren said slowly. Camila shrugged, pulling her shirt out of her pants and rolling her shoulders.
"Nope. Not even a little bit."
"Then why are you sitting with me?"
"Better than glaring at you from another table." Camila pointed out with a smile.
An awkwardness set in between them; Lauren trying her damned hardest to not think about how Camila sounds when she's not actively hating Lauren. Camila just stared at Lauren with a slight glare to her eyes, a mild annoyance sitting on her face.
"What?" Lauren finally snapped.
"I heard a rumour, that you're dating your lawyer." Camila said suddenly, her face perfectly void of any emotion.
"You heard wrong. Me and Lucy haven't been a thing since high school." Lauren grumbled, avoiding Camila's gaze by instead looking out the window.
"Noted." Camila muttered. Lauren chanced a look at her and was surprised at what she saw.
"Were you... jealous, Cabello?" Lauren asked in disbelief. Camila scoffed and folded her arms across her chest.
"No."
"Oh my god, you were." Lauren cackled and leaned forward on the table. "This is amazing."
"You don't know what you're talking about Jauregui." Camila huffed, willfully ignoring the heat blooming over her cheeks.
"This is... this is glorious. I'm loving this. You, jealous. Ha!" Lauren snickered to herself as Camila glared at her.
"Shut. Up. I was not jealous." Camila hissed, glancing around the pizza shop and thanking the Lord it was empty bar them.
"Oh you so were." Lauren teased. "I know you want me Cabello."
Camila leaned across the table, clutched the edges of Lauren's shirt collar between her fingers and tugged her closer. Their noses almost squashed together as Camila glared at her harder.
"All I want is you in handcuffs-"
"Kinky."
"-and behind bars." Camila ignored Lauren's interruption and shoved her away, letting her lean back in her chair.
Lauren started to speak before they were interrupted by someone calling their names.
Their pizzas were ready.
The pair of them walked out of the shop, still goading each other quietly as they wandered to their cars.
Lauren looked at her car and groaned, a small yellow sheet of paper trapped under her windscreen wiper.
"Fuck sake." She grumbled, yanking it out and glaring at it.
"Should've parked where I did." Camila said with a laugh as she walked ten feet down the road to her car.
"Right, like thirty- jesus, seventy bucks is putting me out." Lauren called with a snort.
"Just don't pay it and make my job easier." Camila replied with a grin.
"You wish Cabello but I always pay my tickets. It's almost like a rule of mine: always pay parking tickets and always keep your promises." Lauren laughed before ducking into her car.
Camila stood by her door, keys in hand, pizza getting slowly cold as Lauren's car disappeared around the corner.
"But you don't do you Jauregui..."