Years ago, Claire was intercepted by Gloria at a strip mall shooting range.
Having one more thing in common, the two women secretly met up to blow off some steam from time to time by shooting pistols and revolvers ever since. A rare chance to bond for the two, because Claire wasn't the best at healthy communication when it came to her same-aged 'step-mother'.
However, once Gloria wowed Jay's daughter at the shooting range with impressive skills with a pistol that the latina picked up back in Colombia, Gloria arranged for the two to meet up at a more 'dignified' shooting range. Not the moldy backroom of the gun store at the strip mall where they first met for this shared hobby.
"I'm telling you, you're smothering Manny. He'll withdraw if you keep this up," Claire commented after sipping some water as they both marched into the shooting range with casual sport gear on. "Let him live, it's his second year at college - he'll survive…"
Gloria gave Claire a side-eye, rolled it, and corrected, "Manny will never push me away. He wouldn't dare."
"I'm just saying," Claire defended, clearly noticing the dissatisfaction in Gloria's voice and not pushing the matter.
"Enough about Manny. What about Haley? Is she still crying out of nowhere in the middle of a conversation? Has she washed her hair this week?"
Claire deeply sighed with a defeated expression.
"It's hitting her way harder than any other break up before. Not even her weird on-and-off again situation with Dylan was ever this heartbreaking," Claire described as they checked in with the range master. "I'll give her until the weekend to figure it out. Then, mommy will take her to a spa for the entire weekend to get her head right."
The two were regulars by now, even had their own locker for the guns at the range. The process of checking in barely even stopped their conversation.
"Hey, are those people police?" Gloria suddenly whispered as she was about to comment on how Claire should deal with her heartbroken daughter.
The Dunphy mother looked over and saw people she recognized. Quickly brushing some hair forward and dipping her cap lower, she hurriedly dragged Gloria to the side.
"They are SWAT. I recognize four, all from a different team than Chris," Claire whispered as Gloria gave her step-daughter a weirded out look. Chris, as a fellow latina, naturally was someone that Gloria got to know over the months since Haley and Ben had been together. Chris came to Ben's new home close to Jay and Gloria's often, same as Gloria and Jay themselves.
"What's with all the…," Gloria questioned as she gestured at their position behind a large plant near the reception area, "... 'hidey-hidey'?"
"I… I don't actually know. It's not like even seeing Chris or the others from her team would be weird," Claire weakly excused as she suddenly realized the situation and confidently stepped out of the shadows of the potted plant. But at the last moment, she turned back unsurely and asked, "Uh, I think. Would it be weird?"
"You're a grown woman, Claire. We are not in high school and Ben is a very sweet boy," Gloria pointed out in mock disdain. "I doubt he bad-mouthed your family or your daughter to his colleagues."
Claire nodded with a calculating, somewhat unsure look toward the 50-David squad members but then decided to drag Gloria closer to them anyway.
"What are you doing?" Gloria asked quietly, still weirded out by the blonde's behavior.
"We'll make sure they aren't bad-mouthing my daughter," Claire explained in a low voice.
Though it was in no way an explanation on why Claire thought these people would randomly talk about Haley out of nowhere.
Just as Gloria rolled her eyes and tried to wrestle her arm back from Claire's grasp, they heard one of the SWAT officers say, "I remember that Weiss told Mumford and Hondo that he wasn't good with anything bigger than a pistol. Is that bastard just trying to make us look bad or something?"
"Knock it off, Stokes. You're just mad he outshot you at poker," one of the most physically intimidating of the bunch said as he shoved the blonde man who had talked before.
Stokes, undeterred, shoved his colleague back and corrected, "It was a tie. Two for two, bastard. Also, I spent years in the army as a sniper. Two tours. Weiss has no business tying with me. He can't just walk up to the captain, ask for the Precision Rifle Training course and get the certificate a week later after some hush-hush written test and acing the training course. That ain't sit right with me."
"You're just a sore loser, Stokes," the buff guy leading the team forward countered with a shit-eating grin.
"Oh yeah? Well, fuck you, Rocker," Stokes countered and showed his colleague the middle-finger.
"Come on," Rocker waved off. "He still has to beat Alonso and Hondo. He isn't the best sniper at metro yet."
"Are you saying they are better than me?" Stokes asked with a heated voice.
"Well, I know you beat Tan and Luca, but have you ever beat those other two at poker with a Remington 700PSS in hand?"
"At least I beat the rookie," Stokes countered with another middle-finger for his laughing companions. "Or have you won against Street yet?"
Gloria and Claire shared a look from behind the team as the group left the range laughing and teasing each other.
"He is a sniper now?" Claire asked, having paled quite a bit.
"Dios mio," Gloria muttered as she hastily signed the cross with one hand. She urgently turned to Claire and asked, "Have you done anything to upset him?"
"What!?" Claire whisper-shouted, clearly offended. "How can you ask me that!?"
"I'm just saying, if he is as good with such a weapon as he is with anything else, aren't you afraid he'll take it out on you?"
Claire looked even more offended now, but suddenly took a deep gulp as she remembered how the break-up went.
"Nooo…," Claire defended with furrowed brows. She continued, though clearly not entirely sure of her assessment, "Ben wouldn't do that."
—————
[Back at Valentine's Day]
It was almost midnight when Ben came home from work.
The kid from the Amber Alert was found, the father was arrested. He had abducted his child after a nasty divorce resulted in the mother getting full custody. The man surrendered quickly once he was found, the kid had been safe all throughout the entire ordeal - just confused.
But that didn't matter much to Ben, as callous as that sounded. He simply dreaded going home that day after dodging the fight he was about to have with Haley. And looking at the Trans Am recklessly parked in front of both of his two garages, Ben's mood didn't improve.
"Deep breaths, Ben. You know what you came here to do," the detective mumbled to himself, his fingers absentmindedly drumming on the steering wheel of his car as he parked on the driveway in front of the door.
Instead of going through the main entrance, Ben gathered his thoughts and walked around the house to his pool… and immediately regretted his decision.
Turning on his heel, Ben instead walked back to his main door.
[Phil and Claire Dunphy commentary scene change]
"Not our smartest moment," Claire admitted with a sheepish smile after giving her husband an embarrassed look.
"After getting kicked out of Jay's house, before finishing what we started, we were too frisky to drive all the way home," Phil offered up almost reluctantly. He looked sad and depressed as he continued, "We should have just gone home instead of going to Ben who lives less than five minutes away."
"Aww, Phil," Claire cooed as she saw how downhearted her husband looked. "Cheer up."
"How can I, Claire?" Phil asked as he flinched away from the hand Claire had put on his. "Did you see how he looked at us? At me? I didn't want to ever be the reason Ben looked so heartbroken!"
"Uh, isn't that something Haley should be saying, not you?" Claire asked with a flabbergasted look for Phil.
"Oh my god, Haley! I've been so struck with grief, I totally forgot about our daughter," Phil suddenly shouted as he hastily stood up. Running out of the frame, he hollered desperately, "Wait for me, baby! Daddy is coming!"
Claire eventually turned to the camera again with a resigned expression and breathed out, "We really screwed the pooch, huh?"
[Commentary ended]
"Talk to me, Ben," Haley pleaded as the detective made his way into the kitchen as a shivering, wet, and very naked Claire listened in from outside.
Phil approached his wife from behind, equally unclothed as his wife, and draped a towel over her that he had gotten from a box near the pool. Their 80s-themed clothing from the roleplaying they did for Valentine was no use for them as they had only hungrily peeled themselves out of it inside the pool. The clothes were all wet and torn.
"Haley… I'm very sorry to have to do this today of all days. But I realized that I am no longer as happy in our relationship as I was before," the two heard Ben reply in a tone of voice they had never heard from the police officer.
It sounded vulnerable and almost defeated. Originally, Ben always sounded so sure of his place in the world. At times, it felt like he was larger than life to the Dunphy couple, even when Phil had listened in on the conversation his daughter had with her boyfriend in New York about the dark parts of his work and the friend he lost. They had really forgotten how vulnerable the man who spent so long drifting undercover really was.
"But, this is just miscommunication," Haley tried to placate, sounding unsure herself. "We can overcome this. We have before. We can work this out."
Claire and Phil heard Ben take a deep breath and then they heard their daughter sob quietly. Leaning over to see inside, the two parents saw Haley hug her arms close to herself, tears dripping from her eyes as Ben braced himself against the kitchen counter, softly shaking his head.
"I'm very grateful for having gotten to know you, Haley… but I don't think we should be seeing each other anymore," Ben quietly added, his voice quivering a little. "Please give me some time and some space."
"I messed up, okay?" Haley once more pleaded. "I know I was wrong, so please, Ben. Please don't just give up on me."
Both Phil and Claire were by now crying, same as their daughter, ignoring the fact that they were once more snooping… and still naked in the house of their ex-almost-son-in-law.
"I'm not giving up on you," Ben softly defended, though he didn't move closer to Haley to comfort her as he clenched his fists resting on the countertop. "You're remarkable, and kind. You have a generous heart and a love for life that resonates with anyone around you. I thi-"
"Then please, please keep me around you! I have never felt so good about myself as I have when I'm with you," Haley interjected, her tears intensifying.
But when she saw Ben shaking his head again, she started to sob into her hands that she brought up to her face.
"I'm sorry, Haley. I can't. I think in the long run, we will both be better for it," Ben declared and brought a hand to his own face to wipe away the tears that were freely falling from his own eyes.
Just as Haley wanted to plead once more, Phil, trying to comfort his crying wife, slipped and crashed into the room through the open sliding glass door with Claire in his arms.
Both immediately looked up, horrified, as both their daughter and her now-ex-boyfriend looked at them.
Ben's expression just turned resigned as he breathed out deeply and walked away. In the meantime, Haley was too dumbfounded to say anything to her parents.
"Do you need a hug?" Phil unsurely asked while looking at his daughter when nobody said anything, but Haley's eyes just widened even more before she ran out of the room in the opposite direction of Ben, crying heavily.
"Oh, Phil," Claire muttered defeatedly beneath her naked husband as they just laid there at the edge of the huge living room.
—————
Back at the gun range on an outdoor target field weeks after Valentine's, Ben laid on the ground looking at a faraway hill with several targets set up. Next to him, Mumford stood taking score.
The veteran SWAT sergeant looked through the spotting scope for a moment before looking down to the detective and instructing, "Two inches left, three up. You're doing amazing."
Ben calmly slotted another bullet into the bolt-action rifle lying there with him, readied the shot and took a deep breath. As he steadily exhaled, his finger hovered over the trigger and he gently squeezed it at just the right time.
Once the loud crack of the shot no longer rang in their protected ears, Mumford searched for the target with the scope and he was momentarily too stunned to say anything. But the veteran sergeant just inwardly sighed and commented, "Dead on, Wundershot. I still don't know how Hicks and Cortez could have known about this. We all read your files. But they were absolutely right to trust you. Just one week and you're clearing three-hundred yard targets with one adjustment. Take another two or three shots for the five-hundred yard target and we're packing up."
Without saying a word, Ben repeated his performance while aiming for a target further away than the last one.
Finished with his search for the appropriate target, Ben wordlessly took the shot.
"Damn son, two inches left and you'd hit another bull's eye on the first try," Mumford mumbled in awe.
Still silent, Ben adjusted accordingly and took a second shot at the 500 yard target.
Looking through the spotting scope, Mumford quickly took note of the second impact and commented dryly, "Now it's four inches down and one to the right. Bad luck with the wind or you screwed up. I'm thinking you screwed up."
It was still on target, so calling it a screw-up was a stretch. But Mumford wanted to rain on Ben's parade a little before the new detective became too cocky.
Leaning away from the rifle's scope to observe the plants and wind flags on the range with both eyes, Ben calculated what could have messed up his aim as much, but he didn't comment outwardly when he came to his own conclusion. After all, Ben didn't aim for the center this time.
Ben had spent his years undercover doing everything to better himself away from the eyes of the gun smuggling criminals he spied on. Most of it was spent honing his skills in hacking and shooting. After all, for someone who could manipulate the inventory data it was easy to use up a few bullets for practice here and there. Teaching himself, absorbing the wisdom of the monsters he lived with, honing his abilities, Ben's aim quickly became much, much better than he would ever want to show to the LAPD.
It wasn't inherent distrust in the institutions he worked for. It wasn't even a total loss of faith in the justice system. But the detective could freely admit to himself that after months back on the force and observing the verdicts resulting from his time undercover, his vision of justice became something different compared to his days on patrol with his T.O. Sergeant Grey. He saw what came of all the cases brought on by the evidence he provided and it made him sick. Seeing the misery the White Front brought to the world and the 'justice' that came from it, Ben became disillusioned.
Some people just lived outside of the rules everybody else lived by.
And if he could do something about it while staying off the radar, that is what he vowed to do.
Ben stood up after he firmed his thoughts and brought his rifle to the table behind the two police officers. The skills he showed were on par with officers who came with a background in hunting or the armed forces, but it still wasn't his limit.
Watching the young detective methodically disassemble the rifle and putting it away, Mumford hesitated for a moment before walking behind him to closely observe his work.
"You want to talk about it?"
Ben looked back for a short look, searching Mumford's face for the implied question before softly shaking his head in denial.
"Whatever it is, don't bring it into work," Mumford commented and continued to look at the rifle in the detective's hand as the younger man started to clean the barrel with practiced ease. "You're gonna want to oil that bolt assembly and quicken your reload so it doesn't dust up so fast. They jam easily. California is very dry. Also, ask Luca for a bottle of my special recipe back at the station."
"Special recipe?" Ben asked with a small shuckle as he continued the cleaning. "Like 50% virgin olive oil with a hint of cedar and motor oil mixed in or something?"
"Ha-ha, laugh all you want, brat," Mumford quipped with an amused scoff of his own. He was glad to see the smirk on Weiss' face. The young detective hadn't smiled a genuine smile all day. "I'll have you know that it took decades of perfecting this secret sauce. No amount of your giggling will diminish my life's work."
Ben openly chuckled at that and inquired, "Wouldn't it already help if you don't call it 'secret sauce'?"
"I'll call it what I call it," the senior SWAT sergeant argued indignantly.
Ben just shook his head with a small smirk.
—————
Later that night, Ben sat in a lone booth in a loud bar peeling away at the stickers on his beer bottle.
Thinking back to how Claire jumped into a bush dragging Gloria with her when he made his way back to the main building of the gun range, the detective bitterly chuckled and took another sip.
"Detective Weiss?" A small voice called out as a timid brunette arrived next to his table.
Looking up, Ben smiled in greeting and gestured to the bench opposite him.
"Erin, please, call me Ben," he proposed as he studied her and gently pushed a bottle in her direction.
The woman merely swallowed deeply and took the second bottle of beer Ben had on his table that arrived before her. Fidgeting, the woman placed the bottle on her lips and almost emptied it in one continuous chug.
"I'd love to say 'there's no need to feel nervous', Erin… but you know," Ben placated with an understanding smile.
The young woman's breath briefly quivered as she took another inhale and didn't find the words. Eventually, a lone tear escaped her eyes as she looked down.
"I broke up with Chris," she whispered more to herself than Ben.
"Hmm, Rookie Officer Chris Rios, right?" Ben asked with a compassionate smile, Erin nodded. "It won't feel like it now, but eventually, you'll find it might have been for the best. Who knows? When this is all over, maybe you can find it in you to seek him out again?"
Hearing his soothing words, Erin shed another tear and just shook her head.
The two drank in silence as Ben ordered another round for both. Eventually, Erin asked, "So what now?"
"You have two options," Ben explained and waited until she found the strength to look him in his eyes. "I found your link to the Derian crime family through mere chance. I prepared a file with the evidence I gathered but I haven't uploaded it to the LAPD servers… yet. I don't know you well enough, so I'll explain it in plain words. If the Derians take me out, the file gets uploaded with everything I found so far in every federal database I have access to. You will all go down eventually."
Erin clenched her fists but stayed quiet.
"The Armenian mob is sick in the head, so I would personally advise you to finish this as an informant and leverage your position to get a new identity through the feds in wit-sec," Ben offered with compassion filling his voice.
Erin swallowed heavily, her hands turning sweaty, her arms slightly shaking from nervousness.
"And the other option?"
Ben breathed out for a long while as he looked at the ceiling to properly arrange his thoughts.
"I create a paper trail and we pretend you did everything by the book as I recruited you straight out of the academy because Ruben Derian approached you. You saw my name in the news and believed in my integrity. For that to work you will have to tell me absolutely everything you did for the Armenians, anything that Ruben can prove you did for him."
"That list would be short, Mister Derian has more officers than just me on the force and I'm merely a rookie," Erin breathed out, her expression one of disbelief. "And it's that easy?"
"Easy?" the detective scoffed. "Easy would be to turn you in and fold the entire mob in a week as the FBI denies you your one phone call and puts you in an unmarked bunker. If I can find you, I can find the other people the Derians have on payroll. Same with IA and the FBI."
"I didn't mean-"
Ben held up his hand to indicate for Erin to stop.
"Creating paperwork that didn't exist is something I would do at the risk of my own professional well-being, my own career. I'd do it only if I was sure it's worth it."
"How do you see if I was worth it?"
Erin looked completely lost as she searched the kind eyes of the senior officer sitting in front of her.
"If I create a papertrail, you will get to keep being a police officer. You'd be worth it if I think you're any good as an officer."
"How-"
"I already called your watch commander. You'll be riding with me tomorrow. Your T.O. Brett signed off. Either we're driving around to work, or I'm driving you straight to the D.A.'s office for you to negotiate for witness protection," Ben declared with a small sigh. "Like I said, the choice is yours."
"T-thank you," Erin shakily replied, her eyes once more glued to the bottle of beer in her hands. After she took another sip, Ben was about to stand up but Erin hurriedly placed a hand on his and asked, "Could you please stay a little while longer?"
Scrutinizing her for a moment, Ben wordlessly complied with the request and sat down again.
Once he was done drinking one of the worst decaf cappuccinos of his life because his day would start early tomorrow and another beer wasn't smart, Ben watched Erin get an uber and drive off.
He took his phone out of his pocket.
"*Hicks,*" a voice answered after he dialed a number and pressed his work phone to his ear.