Title: Work (it) out!
Chapter 5: Easy riding!
Author: Ann
Rating: (G to NC-17): G
Spoilers/Warnings: After TS
Summary: Ranger does a week of working out Stephanie style

Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine. For more information on the workout-programs:

Number 5 for the Friday workout, which is RPM or Spinning. Sorry for the delay, RL interfered with my plan. So really separate from the books and other stories, here's a little fun for all of us! Hope it gives encouragement to go to the gym if you need it J.

PS: the description of the program is the current program of Les Mills, so anybody participating in these programs: you know what I mean! J

Easy riding!

I woke up to the sound of an alarm beeping. And once again realised it wasn't my alarm. When nobody moved after 15 seconds of beeping I looked around me. I was in Rangers' bed, again, but without Ranger, … again. I felt very disappointed and started thinking about last night. What had happened. We had made another dinner date, and it was nice. Again. Ella made a lovely recipe which combined healthy stuff with great flavours, so we both like it a lot. There even was a piece of chocolate cake for me as dessert! After dinner we moved to the couch, and Ranger set down with a sigh. I knew he was tired. I mean: he was trained and all that, so he could probably last another couple of days with little sleep, but that didn't mean he didn't get tired when missing a full night. I went to the bathroom and when I came back, he was gingerly touching his face. His head laid back against the couch and his eyes were closed. He looked very attractive, and I felt myself get very warm in several places. I walked to the kitchen and wasn't surprised that his freezer had a nice stock of icepacks. I personally stack ice cream, but that's just a small difference between him and me. I found a clean kitchen towel, made it wet and then wrapped it around the icepack. I knew from experience that it was much more effective that way. And the cool wet cloth felt nice against a bruise. I walked to the couch again and gently lifted his hand away from his face. He opened his right eye to look at me, but didn't say anything. I placed the icepack over the bruise, and saw him flinch a little. Guess it was still sensitive after all the hours that went by since he got it. I replaced my hand with his own and put my hands on his shoulders, gently pushing him to sit forward a little. He moved a little and I started massaging his shoulders. Ranger didn't strike me as a guy who liked things soft, so I squeezed thoroughly. I could feel his muscles under my hands and realized his strength, it was amazing. After a few minutes of massaging I realised he hadn't made a sound, positive or negative. Maybe he didn't like it, so I stopped and started walking around the couch.

"Don't stop, Babe." I could have sworn Ranger almost purred. He looked up, taking the icepack away from his face for a moment.

"Am I doing it right?" From the looks of Ranger I was doing really well. Mmm, interesting: big, bad, black bounty hunter loves to get a back rub. It makes him go all soft inside…

"Babe." I made myself comfortable on the couch and tugged at Ranger to sit between my legs. He moved and I started rubbing again. I moved up to his neck, and I could almost feel him relax. His head was resting on his knees now, which he had pulled up, one hand holding the icepack against his face. He was very quiet, but it felt very comfortable. After his neck, I moved to his shoulders and then went down along his spine. I was about half way when he flinched and jerked forward.

"Sorry, did I hurt you?" I wonder what I did.

"I got a bruise there from this morning." I pulled his t-shirt out of his pants and moved it up. That was a bruise indeed. It wasn't very big, quite round but it looked very dark, even against his delicious mocha-latte skin colour.

"How did you get it?" I'm curious about anything and everything in life.

"When I opened a door, there was a guy waiting there with a chair in his hands. It was one of those iron garden chairs, you know, the little things that are only used for decoration?" Yeah, I knew what he meant, my mother had 2 in the back garden. They were very heavy to lift, but nobody trusted themselves enough to sit on them. Getting smacked over the head with them was probably not a very pleasant experience.

"This," he pointed at his face, "was the back of the chair, and this," he pointed at his back, "was one of the legs of the chair." Ouch, that must have been painful.

"You were lucky." He gave me a look.

"I mean: a little more to the right and he could have broken your back. A little more to the left and he could have broken a rib." It sounded logic to me. Ranger seemed to think about it.

"I'll ask him if a broken rib is better or worse than bruising." Ranger humour. He probably beat the shit out of the guy for hitting him twice.

"Do you have any more bruises that I should know about?" Mmm, somehow that didn't come out the way I thought it would…

"Babe." One word, so many meanings. He lifted his shirt over his head, and I checked for drool. Man, he looked good. I let my fingers slide over his back, gently feeling and watching for a sign of injury. His cargos were sitting low on his hips, and there was a bruise showing just above the waistline on his right hip. Apart from that, nothing on his back. I pulled him backwards by putting my hands on his shoulders and pulling him towards me and he let me. In the end his head was laying against my shoulder and my hands continued their journey over his body. I went down from his broad shoulders over his chest, moving towards his 6 pack abs. There was a small bruise on his right ribs, but that didn't look too bad. Excellent. I pushed him off me and got up.

"Wait here." His eyebrow went up. I just smiled and disappeared into his bedroom. I had been there often enough now that I knew where I needed to look. He usually had some type of massage oil in his bedside table. The label said: for relaxation. Perfect. I came back out of the room and ran straight into Ranger. I bounced off like a ball.

"Ranger! What are you doing here?"

"Babe." Small smile.

"You're no good at following orders, are you?" More smile. I pushed him back to the couch and poured some oil on my hands. I was just about to start when his phone rang. It was 9.30 pm, this probably wasn't a social call from Tank to say hi. With a sigh, Ranger got up from the couch and answered his phone. After a few words and some listening he ended the call and looked at me.

"I'm sorry, Babe, but this is an emergency that I have to deal with." Right…. Again!

And I suppose I fell asleep, again, and decided to get up and go home for a good shower and a change of clothes before I had to start work myself, again. I padded into his kitchen to find a note which said:

Sorry about last night, one day we will get it right. See you in the office.

Ranger.

I hoped we would get it right one day, and I hoped that that one day was soon. I dressed and left his apartment. The ride home was quiet, not that many people around at 6.30 am. My apartment was quiet too, although my answering machine had something to tell me.

- Stephanie, when are you coming for dinner this week? Where are you? Hello? Stephanie? Call me! (My mother)

- Girl, are you okay? You haven't been home 2 nights in a row now. Got lucky with Batman? You go, girl. (Lula)

- Hey Cupcake, want to watch the game tonight? I'll buy Pino's and beer. Let me know! (Morelli)

- Stephanie, why aren't you home yet? Are you still working? Hello? Hello? I'm making pot roast on Saturday night… (sounds in the background) … date… bounty hunter… great package (grandma Mazur) See you Saturday. (my mother again)

I texted Morelli that I was sorry I missed the game, but that I didn't get the message on time. I deleted all the messages. I would call my mother later today and tell her I couldn't come on Saturday, but I would come on Monday. I had the sneaky suspicion that my sister would be there with all the kids and her husband, and I didn't feel up to that. After a nice, long shower and a good breakfast of poptarts I drove back to the office. It was 7.40 when I was sitting behind my desk. I was feeling a bit sleepy from the early start, but there was a definite buzz hanging in the air. So far, I had found out that there had been an attempt to break in at one the clients' houses. When a team responded, they found out it had been a decoy and soon the calls came in about a robbery at the other side of town, and that had just been the start of it. That was when they had called Ranger. And he had been running around ever since. After hours of hard work they had finally found out what the real target had been: Ranger's family. More precisely: Ranger's parents. Turns out someone wasn't happy with Rangeman. That wasn't really new, but this one was stupid enough to try and go after his family. From what I understood, the guy wouldn't be trying anything anytime soon. However, it left a lot of paperwork to deal with, since this guy had used 15 persons and had triggered 5 alarms before he actually went after Rangers' parents. Rangeman had responded to all calls and had called the police in as well. Ranger came back in around 8.00, looking tired and weary. I suppose having someone going after your parents does that to you. And working for over 50 hours straight probably had something to do with it as well. Poor guy.

After talking some of his team, he materialized near my cubicle.

"Hi Ranger."

"Hi."

"You're looking like shit." The hint of a smile formed at the side of his eyes and mouth.

"Thanks."

"How are you feeling?"

"Tired, but okay." The bruise on his cheek looked much darker today, and so were the lines under his eyes. His whole posture signalled fatigue. He drew a chair into my cubicle and slouched on it. He let his head fall back and sighed while his eyes were closed. I swivelled my chair around and started massaging his shoulders again.

"Mmmm." He almost purred and he moved forward a little. His elbows were resting above his knees, his hands hanging loosely, his eyes still closed. I took it as an invitation to massage his neck and back as well, mindful of the bruise I had discovered yesterday.

"Pity we didn't get to finish this yesterday." Ranger was thinking along the same lines as I was.

"Yeah."

"I would like to ask you over for dinner again tonight, but I'm almost afraid to see what will happen." He had a point there. But still…

"I'm sure a 3rd time will do it. You know what they say." Okay, I was fishing.

"Yeah." That wasn't really an answer, now, was it?

"Unless you're too tired. We could postpone it." But I really hoped it would be tonight. I felt closer to him now. And next week, when we wouldn't be going to the gym together anymore, things would be back to normal and then maybe this chance would not occur again. He didn't answer me straight away.

"We could eat at my place. I could prepare dinner." His eyebrow went up.

"Okay, I could order dinner." I amended.

"Okay, but I have to work until probably 7 or 8 pm. Is that okay?"

"Yeah, just call me when you're done."

"Okay." He put his hands over my hands where they were laying on his shoulders. With a sigh he got up and put the chair back in its place.

"I'd better start work then, if I have to finish before 8." He gave me a small smile and left.

At 9.45 I gathered my sports bag and left for the gym. I was almost 99 sure that Ranger wouldn't be there. He was very tired and very busy and today was a very tough workout. It was spinning. I liked it, but it was one of the most intensive workouts I had ever done. You felt great afterwards if you didn't fall off your bike, but I always felt half dead during most of it. But when I went in the room, Ranger was already warming up on a bike. The bike next to him was still available, surprisingly, since there were women in the room, and I quickly walked over to take that bike.

"Didn't think you would be here, after tonight."

"It's the last day, Babe, I couldn't give up now." He probably was used to a lot more during his time in the special forces, anyway.

I had seriously considered not going, but I wasn't going to win the discussion if I didn't do all the workouts that Steph normally did. And I sure as hell didn't want to go through another BodySteps lesson, so I figured I had better drag my ass over there. I wasn't feeling 100, but I had faced my fair share of physical challenges in the army, so this couldn't be that bad. I had never done it before, I'm not much of a cyclist. I liked running better. My ex had said that it was a tough workout and warned me to start easy. I had bought a bottle of sports drink for some extra energy, and basically hoped the best of it. Stephanie looked her best in a sportsbra and very short short. It showed off her body to perfection. I hoped that that would see me through this workout. Although, cycling with a hard on isn't really comfortable, so I stopped looking at her and thought some cool thoughts.

I don't remember that much of the workout. After the first track I was sweating big time and heard the words of my ex wife ringing in my ears. Shit, another 50 minutes to go. I tried to find my zone, and just went for it. After all the shit of the last two days, I could do with something that would really take my mind of things. Usually I would either go running, or would spar with Tank or Lester. This turned out to be a good third option. I got a bit of tunnelvision and felt lightheaded. We were doing interval training, climbing up hills and racing down. I forgot everything around me, only hearing the beat of the music that told us how fast we were supposed to paddle and the instructions of the trainer. I came down to earth again when we were finished with the cycling and had to get off the bike for some stretching. I almost fainted. It doesn't happen a lot anymore, so it took me by surprise. When we were going through intensive training in the army it wasn't unusual for us to faint after a very intensive training. On occasion I would still push myself to the limit, but this one was unintentional. Guess the sleep deprivation caught up with me. Steph saw me swaying and looked at me with worried eyes. I gave her a reassuring smile and drank the last of my sports drink. I felt empty, but great. Intensive exercise will do that to you.

I will continue with an Epilogue, to wrap things up. I think you can guess where it is going? Or maybe not ;)…. Hope you enjoyed it!