Author's Notes/Warnings/Etc at the end
/1/ Weather
When Deputy Connally pulled the charger up to the front door of the Powder Junction substation, Vic had been leaning against the front door and watching the falling snow for nearly an hour.
It was frankly horrifying, the amount of white stuff already on the ground. Plus that which had fallen the day before, and melted a bit, and then frozen overnight. Which she really should have taken into account, and maybe have laid off the speed, just a little. But really, it wasn't like she was some Georgia redneck who didn't even know what the fuck snow was. She'd been born and raised in Philly. She knew snow. Or so she thought.
Turned out, she should have been more worried about the wind.
"Fuck me," she muttered under her breath. This morning she'd been really looking forward to heading back to Durant. She'd been stuck here in the passel of jackheads substation for three days and an extra night, with nothing more interesting than kids tagging the old trestle bridge with quasi-gang signs. Ops at Newett Energy were shutting down at noon, and Sean had called Vic's cell at oh-dark-in-the-morning to engage in a particularly filthy conversation - one that promised to be only a foreshadowing of the weekend to come. After that promising beginning, there'd been the snow, the rising wind that snatched her notebook from her hand on the way to the truck and two annoying call-outs in a row, and on the way back from the last one, she'd well and truly scuffed the front quarter panel. And the tire. And the frame.
Ruby had taken the call, copied down the report from the body shop without comment, and assured Vic that someone would be down to fetch her. "Noon, probably. One at the latest."
It was half past two when Connally finally showed. He beeped the siren – dooh-wheeeet - at her before she got the door open. Like she hadn't gone out and checked the street every fifteen minutes in case he'd parked up the block. She leaned out the door and gave him the finger before slamming the door and dashing to snatch up her bags. She got all the way out of the substation before she remembered she'd left the heat on and went back in to dial it back down. She dropped her overnighter and laptop case outside the door to give herself two hands to set the alarm and struggle with the lock. The temperature had already dropped since sunrise, and her clouding breath kept obscuring her vision but she got the bolt thrown before the alarm delay ran out.
"You're late," Vic snapped, and didn't bother to shake the snow off her overnighter before she dumped the canvas back in the back of the Charger. She slammed the rear door and jerked the front passenger open, shaking the hard flakes from her coat before peeling it off and sliding into the seat. "What the fuck happened to one o'clock?"
Connally didn't turn to look at her, only stared straight ahead over the steering wheel. "You don't have to ride with me. You want to walk, go ahead. Or," he said, flicking the windshield wipers back on, to clear the skim of snow that had gathered while she'd struggled with the lock. "You could drive the vehicle you were assigned. Oh, right, you managed to put that one in the shop, our first real snow day. Guess you're stuck walking."
She glared at him. "What are you going to tell the Sheriff, when you show up back in Durant without me?"
This time he did roll his head over on the headrest. "What makes you think he'd notice?"
She folded her arms. She didn't have a good answer to that.
Fuck my life, Vic thought. Not even four months and she was already wondering if she should have taken this job. She could have stayed in the house, kept it clean and tidy – because Sean still couldn't be bothered to pick up his own socks - spent her days in the library reading Anne Rice and Sherrilyn Kenyon novels. Maybe taken up knitting.
Out loud she said, "Go ahead, drive."
Branch put the Charger in gear and pulled out. He didn't offer an excuse. Nor any conversation.
The snow pelted the windshield – thicker, as always, once they were moving than it had been when she'd been watching through the door. The plows were evidently running behind. The Charger's heavy tires hissed on the road, throwing slush against the undercarriage in a steady hiss that underlaid the steady beat of the wipers.
She thought about reaching over to play with the radio, but Connally had indicated really early on that he adhered to the 'driver picks the music, rider shuts their face' rule of audio entertainment. Vic folded her arms and tried to ignore her twitching fingers.
She made it twelve miles at fifty miles an hour before she broke. "How pissed was he?" And that didn't sound pathetic at all. "About the truck?" As if she was in the shit for anything else today. That she knew of.
Connally shrugged. "We've got three years of reports into the city about that swale. This might get them off their ass." His eyes flicked up to the rear view, then back to the road ahead. A faded red sedan dinked along ahead of them, only the second car they'd passed since leaving the outskirts of Powder Junction. "But if you'd read the duty log notes, that stretch is marked. The wind's pretty constant and a blue norther'll shove empty trailers around on the downhill." He put the indicator on and checked the rear view.
"What duty notes?" she demanded. "I read all the notes all the way back to 2006, it's not like there's that much else to do. Damn stupid tourist," she snarled at the sedan, and did not give the civilian a finger.
"They only paved Keylock in '02. Lucian wrecked a truck there in January of '03."
"The fuck? The old sheriff breaks a vehicle on a random hillside a dozen years ago and I'm supposed to, what, mindread –"
If he'd not been shifting the car back to the right-hand lane, he might have seen it. If Vic hadn't been turned to face Connally and blister his ear drums, she would not have.
"Stop!" Connally's foot came up off the gas and tapped at the brakes, just enough to make the vehicle start to slide. He put his foot back on the acceleration pedal and applied himself to the steering, and the car straightened out. Vic twisted in her seat, fighting the safety belt, trying to see past the snow on the rear window. "What are you doing, stop, go back!" She smacked his shoulder when he didn't stop the car.
"Get off me, seriously! What the fuck?"
"There was a car, in the median, why the fuck don't you people have median barriers, it was in a drift, go back!"
He twisted his head around, then snapped it forward again to fight the steering wheel and keep the Charger on the asphalt. "A car? Off the road, in a drift? You're sure?"
"Yes, I'm fucking sure, unless you have snow deer out here with red tail lights. No, I don't know, maybe a car –" She stared at the white road behind them, at the slight hump in the median now completely lost to the snowfall. The vehicle had been rounded, not a sedan, maybe one of the hatchbacks…"maybe a hatchback, maybe a minivan. Green, dark green." She thought through it again. "Mississippi plates."
"You're sure." But it wasn't a question now.
It was another six miles to a turn around, and then a slow creeping back the way they'd come. Connally kept an eye on the odometer to ensure they didn't blow right past the spot.
"How far? Are we there yet?"
"No, not yet. Another half mile."
"Slow down!"
"You might not see it, we'll have to get out and walk the –" But Vic had spotted the skid marks – faintly kicked up mud on the shoulder, where a tire had drifted off, and then the arc of a spinning skid that had flung the vehicle into the deep swale between the divided roadway.
"There, can you see?"
Connally was already braking, the lights flipped on and his hand reaching for the mic. "Absaroka Base, this is Unit two, come in."
Vic didn't wait for the static, but flung herself from the Charger. The vehicle itself was little more than a mound of snow, the disturbed clumps already smoothed by what was, she figured, less than half-an-hour's snowfall. She thought about the heavy tan coveralls in her overnighter, looked back at Connally, who was climbing out of the cruiser with the radio mic still in hand, and got a gallon of snow in her eyes. She turned around to put her back to the wind and pressed on. There, a bit of fender beckoned.
"Damnit, watch –"
She never actually heard the last part of the shouted warning. She had been plowing through the snow, aiming right at the green rim of the car, when the ground opened up under her feet and she dropped a yard and a half into four inches of ice melt.
"FUCK!" She made her knees buckle as she hit bottom, one ankle rolling on the river rocks. She went with it to save the joint, and ended up with that shin in the water, and her left hand as well. "Goddamit, who put the damn ditch here!" She struggled upright and found her world view distinctly altered. The snow had collapsed around her, leaving Vic in a funnel of snow with a wet spout, and her head barely peeking above the drift. She tried to clamber out but slipped on the freezing mud, ending up back in the gully but avoiding falling on her ass.
She got half a foot back up the side just in time for the cavalry to almost drown her in a wave of loose snow. She raised a hand to warn him off the slope, but the damn cowboy slowed and oh-so-casually gripped the edge of a reflective yellow ravine marker – a marker that Vic hadn't seen at all – and asked with studied casualness, "Making snow angels, Vic?"
"Shit," she said, and started laughing. He smirked at her and leaned down to offer a hand.
It took some doing, but she managed to get her good foot wedged on a solid rock and half hopped, half worm-wiggled far enough up to grasp his hand. He dropped his weight and pulled. Her knees cleared the gully edge in the same moment that another gust of wind battered them both –
- absurdly, she remembered something Ruby had said the week before, nothing between us and the north pole but three strands of barbwire, and half of that's down –
- and blew the white hat off Branch's head.
Snatching after it only made sense. Branch had her with one hand and the reflective signpost with the other. She was the only one with a free hand. It was bigger than a baseball, and smacked neatly into her reaching hand.
The not-so stable rock crumbled away beneath her, Vic gasped, and Branch grunted explosively with the effort of throwing both of them backward. He heaved her suddenly swinging body up and over the rim of the culvert even as he fell backwards. She hit with an ooff of expended air, and then there was a bit of mutual scrambling, as gravity tried to drag them both back into the ditch.
When she was still, Vic lay on her back, snow falling in her face, and the hat – only slightly crumpled – still in her fist. The wind whistled over the ravine marker, making the oval yellow panel rattle.
"I got it," she said weakly, and waved the hat. Branch stared at her, and collapsed down on his rump in the snow. "Hey," she said after a minute, "Aren't we supposed to be rescuing someone from the wreck?"
"Jesus H. Christ," Branch said, reverently, and pushed himself to his feet. He waited while Vic sat up, took his hat back from her, and gave her a hand up, in that order. "Watch your step," he said, pulling his hat back down on his head, but Vic figured she deserved it, and didn't bitch back at him.
The vehicle was a forest green Ford minivan, with standard Mississippi plates. The occupants were a pair of sisters on their way to see Yellowstone. It took Vic and Branch both to stomp and kick away enough snow to allow the doors to open. Branch checked the forward end of the vehicle and reported it fairly well scuffed, with the bumper bent around both front wheels. Vic looked over the women and found them in better shape, although badly rattled, and with a touch of carbon monoxide poisoning from running the car with the exhaust blocked.
Vic crouched in the lee of the driver's side door and asked the older and greyer woman - one Ms Greenwald - to move her feet again. "Do you hurt anywhere?"
"No, no, I'm fine." The woman shuddered. "Just cold. My goodness." With the door open and the engine off, the two women were already brighter and more coherent, and Vic was beginning to agree with them about the weather.
She stood and stepped closer to Branch, so the wind wouldn't snatch away her words. "They're okay, I think, but they've got street shoes on, I don't think they can get to the Charger from here." She waved at the northbound lane. "That side's almost closer, now."
Branch nodded and shouted back. "I'll go down to the next cut-across and call it in, then come back and get you. You okay waiting with them?"
"Fuck yeah, if I don't have to jump that creek again." That won her a grin from Branch. "Fifteen minutes?"
"Ten," he said, then looked at the gully between them and the cruiser's blue and red lights. "Ten once I get to the car."
"Why are you still here?" She tapped his shoulder, he mock-punched her back then ducked his head to trudge carefully up and around the gully. Vic shut the van door and jerked on the side door until it let her in.
The two sisters were Margaret and Mary-Anne, but they were quickly Maggie, Mo, and Vic. Maggie was mortified at the first accident she'd caused in forty-four years. ("Thirty-two," correct Mo. "There was that truck you rear-ended in the Publix parking lot." "I never told you about that." "No, but Mother did.") They were from Meridian, which was evidently a going concern in east Mississippi. It had been Mo's idea to spend Christmas in Yellowstone. ("I wanted to go to the Yucatan," Maggie said with a sigh. "Everyone goes to the Yucatan," Mo said tartly. "What's wrong with a vacation in America, for pity's sake?") They were both widowed – Mo for over a decade, Maggie for less than a year. They were both impressed with Vic being a female deputy. ("I wanted to be a police woman when I was a little girl," Maggie said. "You wanted to ride on the police horse behind Bobby Lee Peters," Mo said. "That's not at all the same." "Well, I at least had a chance with Bobby Lee, which is more than I could say about you and Neil Armstrong." Maggie looked at Vic in the rear-view mirror. "Do you ride a horse out here in Wyoming?" "Or any deputies?" put in Mo. "That young man wears a hat very well.")
Vic was actually a little sorry when she spotted the returning cruiser's lights, despite the way her ankle was starting to ache and both her feet were freezing.
The slope up to the north-bound road was rough but relatively short. The two women had packed light – a pair of manageable cases apiece, and their purses. Vic tugged out their luggage and left Branch to actually guide the women, one at a time, up the grade and into the warmth of the Charger.
He shut the rear driverside door on Mo at the same time that Vic slammed the trunk closed. "Got everything?" he shouted at her. Vic checked her belt – gun, cuffs, ammo, radio, keys – and nodded. "Wrecker?"
He shook his head, waved her forward to the front seat. "On their list. They'll get it out tomorrow."
They dropped the sisters Greenwald at the next exit south, at a motel that Branch swore wasn't a no-tell. Vic was dubious, but helped schlep luggage to the reception. They accepted a pair of to-go cups of weak coffee from the counter and left the sisters still tearfully waving through the window at them.
She piled into the side seat at the same time as Branch dropped behind the wheel. She turned to him, found him grinning back at her. They spoke over each other.
"Well, fuck me."
"That was fun."
She smirked. Branch laughed, actually laughed, and jammed the heater up to full. "C'mon, Dipty More-ready. Let's blow this taco stand."
The adrenaline high lasted until they were on the highway, but then the coffee kicked in, and she started an argument with Branch about the Eagles just for the fun of it. By making excessively improbable claims for her home team, she was able to keep the constant flow of chatter up all the way to Durant.
He seemed to appreciate it as much as she did.
She was mostly dried out by the time Branch pulled up to the parking place by Founder's Square. Her ankle was steadily throbbing, but she'd retightened the boot laces, and she figured it would hold until she got home to a hot soak and Sean's fingers on her calf.
Or so she thought, until she had to slog up the stairs in Branch's long-striding wake.
The office was quiet and half-lit when she opened the door. Branch's coat lay over his chair, dripping on the floor, and the other two desks were empty and tidy. Vic walked to her desk as straight as she could, dumping her bag on the floor and sinking down into her chair with relief.
She sat there, pressing her fingers to her eyes, then straightened, looking for her bottle of Motrin. God, she should have finished those Powder Junction reports in the car. She shook out a pair of pills, looked around for her water bottle.
The coffee pot beckoned. Vic eyed it, weighing the effort of rising and crossing the hardwood floor against the ache in her foot. Coffee won.
The door to the Sheriff's office was cracked open. Vic's better angel didn't put up any resistance and she leaned against the wall of the hallway, frankly eavesdropping. And peeking around the corner.
"-must have spun out less than ten minutes after me. If Vic hadn't seen it, we'd have been digging the two of them out next spring."
"Good thing you went down after her, then."
Branch shrugged, looked over his shoulder. "Yeah. It worked out."
The older man looked down at his desk. "Never mind what I said earlier. I'll comp you the half day. You pick a day, let me know."
Branch shrugged again. "Getting paid, aren't I?" He turned on a heel, walked out of the office. Vic hopped back ahead of him, busied herself at her desk, scribbling notes on her pad.
Branch paused beside her. "You want a ride back to your place, Vic?"
"I got it," Longmire said. "She'll need to finish the Powder Junction paperwork. You better take off now, or the Charger'll be stuck in the square until spring."
Branch nodded squarely at Longmire and hooked his coat off the back of his chair. "Catch you later," he said to the office air, and then he was gone, while Vic was still trying to figure how to say that she'd just get her husband to come get her.
"Thanks, I think," she said. "Umm. How long do I have?"
Longmire waved a hand. "Ruby's gone, the phone's forwarded. We'll go when you're done." He returned to his office, but didn't shut the door this time.
She applied herself to the paperwork, thinking of the little house and Sean. Probably neither of them had changed in three days. Probably. She mentally winced over the accident report for her unit, but stuck in the stack anyway.
Half an hour propped up and a pair of painkillers had helped her foot. It took only a bit of teeth grinding to walk mostly normally down the hall. When she tapped on the doorframe, Longmire looked up from the book in his lap and said, "Done?"
"Ready for your review."
"Good." He took the stack of papers and tossed them in his overflowing inbox, went back to his book.
Ooookay. She stuck her hands in her pockets. "Um. You were going to give me a ride?" She hadn't called Sean, because she'd have to call Sean.
His eyes flicked up to her. "Right." He folded away the book. "How's your foot?"
There was no sense in pretending it didn't hurt at all. She made a face, tested the give in the ankle. "It'll be fine. I'll ice it tonight."
He shrugged, almost imperceptibly. "Ready to go?"
She made it down the stairs on her own, clinging to the stair railing with the strap from the overnight bag digging into her shoulder, and then nearly hit the concrete, tripping over the threshold to the sidewalk. Longmire wasn't there to see it, at least, having already crossed the road to his Bronco. So for the second time that day Vic fought with the lock on a door to a Sheriff Department office while another officer waited on her.
"Fuck my life," she swore again, just as glad Longmire, Branch – or worst of all, the Ferg – weren't there to hover at her elbow and offer a helping hand. Not that Longmire would have noticed, she thought viciously.
He had his unit cranked and warmed up, though, by the time she hobbled across the road. She flung her bag in the back and used the door to lever herself into the seat.
"You all right?"
She didn't look at him. "Door lock was stiff. Cold, I think."
Longmire regarded her. "We've got medical. If you have trouble, go by Durant Memorial, ask for Doc Bloomfield."
She paused in the middle of brushing her hands together and gave him a look. "He's never in, you know."
Longmire shrugged and put the Bronco into drive. "He is for me."
When he pulled the Bronco up to her house, he surprised her by putting the vehicle into park and clambering out. He crossed to her side almost before Vic had her door open, and took the overnighter over his own shoulder. When she had both feet on the ground, he held an elbow out to her. "Here."
"I don't need this," she said, and might have said it twice, as he guided her around Sean's SUV and up to the door.
"Well, I don't need to deal with the sick-leave paperwork," was all Longmire said. She let go of his arm as soon as she reached the steps and the guardrail. He dropped the bag on the front porch and rapped on the screen door as she was negotiating her way up the steps. Her foot slipped on the top step, and for a drunk old coot, he had fast reflexes.
"Thanks," she said. He frowned at her, kept his hands – huge mitts, even without gloves – on her as he helped her cross to the door. And given that Sean had evidently not scraped the front porch at all while she'd been gone, she appreciated the assistance.
And that was how Sean opened the front door on Vic – five hours late on returning after three days' absence – hanging onto her boss's arms on their front porch.
Longmire tipped his hat, said, "See you Monday, Vic," and left her standing there.
To give Sean credit, he didn't start the fight until after Longmire left, and she had two days off to make it up to him. Halfway through, she was tempted to start another fight, because the makeup sex was always worth it.
/to be continued/
Author's notes:
Characters/Pairing: Gennish, mentions of Vic/Sean. Vic Moretti, Branch Connally, The Ferg, Ruby, Henry Standing Bear, Walt Longmire
Setting/Warnings: S1-ish, pre-series. Influenced by book characterization, except when I preferred the tv series. Minor OCs. Warnings for Moretti mouth and wide open skies.
A/N: Five part story. With thanks to the greatest beta eva (tm). All the errors remain my own. Title from Corb Lund's "September". Feedback and concrit aways appreciated. I hope you enjoyed the books and the tv show as much as I did.