Archive of Our Own ^beta

The roads on the plains of Wyoming are long and straight and unbending. Route 18 is surrounded by grassland and scrub, and a glance in any direction looks exactly the same. Walt Longmire was born here in Absaroka County, and while he’s visited plenty of other places he can’t imagine ever living anywhere else.

Still, he realizes the monotony is enough to drive any non-native crazy, and from the corner of his eye he steals a sideways glance of his deputy in the passenger seat of his marked Bronco. She’s got her feet hiked up on the dashboard, clear of the paperwork on the floor of the truck, most of which has to do with their current investigation. With her sunglasses on, Walt can’t tell what she’s looking for.

“If we get in a collision you know your kneecaps are gonna go right through your ribcage,” Walt says.

“A collision?” Vic replies. “With what, exactly, would we collide? We haven’t seen another vehicle since we left Durant.” She stretches, lifting her arms above her head, inhaling deeply. It’s hard not to notice how shapely she is as she does so. Today her fair hair is pulled back in a braid, and wisps of it keep slipping free, framing her face in gold as it catches the warm Wyoming sun.

Walt has had to bite his tongue every goddamn day for weeks to keep from asking her whether her divorce is finalized yet. He figures she will tell him if she wants him to know.

At least he hopes she will.

They get back to Durant during the gray hazy twilight hour. Ruby is waiting for them upstairs so she can finish filing their paperwork before she goes home, and an hour or so after she leaves Walt is ready to call it a night. He supposes that Vic’s already gone; she’d been slipping in and out without saying hello or goodbye a lot lately. She has her reasons, Walt figures. The Ferg is on duty tonight; any incoming calls will be directed to his cell. Relieved of duty then, Walt picks up his hat and slides his jacket on in one smooth motion, heading to the door.

“Hey, Walt, what are you doing tonight?”

He turns and sees Vic is still there, seated at her desk. Her shirt is unbuttoned and untucked, revealing a ribbed white tank underneath. She's taken her hair out of the braid. She pulls open the bottom drawer and reveals a case of Rainier beer.

Walt could say something about maintaining professionalism in the office. He could say something about having alcohol in her desk at work. He could say something about how tired he is, how they should both get going, but she grins at him and all he manages to do is grunt in return. “Hmm?”

“Have you got plans?” Vic says, taking the case out of the drawer and setting it on the surface of her desk.

Walt isn't sure how to respond.“No?” he says, hesitating.

Vic rises to her feet and tosses a bottle Walt’s way. He catches it on instinct. She takes the chair from the Ferg’s desk and brings it next to her own so they can sit together.

“You do now,” she tells him. Her Rainier bottle pops and hisses as she twists off the cap.

Vic pulls the bottle away from her lips and sets it down on the desk next to several other empties. It clinks with an echo, hollow, as she fingers the neck, twisting and turning it. “Let’s just do it already,” she says, nonchalant.

Walt is still throwing back his own beer, and he swallows and smiles before he asks for clarification. “Let’s just do what?” He lifts the bottle to his mouth again for another swig.

“Let’s just fuck and get it over with.”

Walt fights to keep from choking and sets the bottle down. “I beg your pardon.”

“Fuck, Walt,” Vic says. “You know what fuck means.” She reaches for another Rainier from the case. There are few remaining, and they’ve gotten warm, but Vic obviously doesn’t give a shit.

Walt extends his hand to keep her from twisting the cap off. “I think you’ve had enough.”

“I haven’t had nearly enough lately, Sheriff,” she says. "That's the issue." She straightens in her seat and looks at him with an expression of mock-seriousness, doing her best to match his tone and attitude. “Let’s put your boy parts into my girl parts.” She can’t keep a straight face and shakes her head at herself. She looks like a wild thing, hair falling freely where it may as she bucks with laughter. Walt tries to be stone-faced, but he is blushing madly, and Vic slips her hand against his thigh and presses her palm into the denim there.

He tries to move her hand away, but she is stubborn. “Vic, you’re inebriated.”

“Why thank you, sir, I’m flattered,” she says, catching the fabric of his pants between her fingers and softly squeezing the skin underneath.

“I am too. Believe me, I am.” Walt sighs. “But it wouldn’t be right.”

Vic remains undeterred. She leans in and whispers in his ear. “It would be wrong. It would be very, very wrong.”

“Vic,” he says. His voice hitches in his throat.

“Walt, please.” He turns to face her. Her dark eyes are flecked with gold, and they glisten. She’s pleading with him.

Walt is very nearly tempted. He is very, very, very nearly tempted.

“You take the bed in the holding cell,” he says finally. “I’ll take the bench outside. And if you still feel this way in the morning, I’ll reconsider.” He hesitates. “Deal?”

She leans back in her seat and crosses her arms. “Fine.” She says the word like she’s spitting glass. She looks away. “Deal.” She gets up, stalks over to the holding cell, and falls into bed alone.

Walt wonders if he should have done something different.

He doesn’t sleep well on the wooden bench outside the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Office, but somehow he doesn’t wake up when Vic leaves, either. He’s up while it’s still dark, but even so the bed in the cell has already been stripped and remade, and there’s a pot of hot coffee, freshly brewed, minus one cup. The mug is on Vic’s desk, rinsed clean but not put away. The beer bottles have all mysteriously vanished.

He sits at her desk for a moment and tries to remember to forget all about it.

He would have reconsidered if she’d still been there.

When the early rays of morning begin to slant in through the blinds, Walt rises to his feet and puts away Vic’s mug.

He meets Ruby on his way out. “Rough night, Walt?” she asks. “Didn’t realize you’d stayed.”

“I’m taking the day off,” he tells her. “Well - at least the first half of it.”

“Take the whole week if you want, Walt,” Ruby replies. “You’ve got enough sick days to last until February. I’ll call you if we need anything.”

He gets in the Bronco and winds his way out of town, into the foothills of the Absaroka mountain range where he and Martha had started building their cabin all those years ago. Martha, of course, had died before they’d even gotten a door on the bathroom, and it had become a de facto bachelor pad instead of the peaceful retirement home he and his wife had imagined.

When Walt gets there he considers coffee but has to move the old tea box out of the way to reach it. The box is empty now. Nothing more of Martha remains.

Walt forgoes the coffee in favor of going back to bed.

Also alone.

There’s a rapping at the door, but it’s not like Walt was sleeping that well anyway. He rolls out of bed in his boxer-briefs and puts on a button-up shirt. He’s still struggling to fasten it when he pulls open the front door to find his deputy on the porch. She’s fully dressed, with her hands in her back pockets and her sunglasses on. No way of knowing what she’s come here looking for.

“Look,” she says. “Didn’t mean to bother you. I’m - I’m sorry for how I acted last night. What I said.”

Walt stops buttoning and lets his hands fall at his sides. “What have you got to be sorry for?”

Vic smiles wickedly. “You have no idea how hard that is for me to say, do you?”

“What, the apology?” Walt asks. He leans on the door, trying to match her nonchalance. “Or the things you said that you’re apologizing for?”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t mean it,” she replies, cocking her head. “The apology part.”

“Are you heading in today?” he asks.

“I’m taking a half day,” she says. “I’ve got a bitchin ' headache right now.”

“I know something that might help with that,” Walt says. “Fresh air will do you some good. Hold on a sec, let me get some pants on.”

Walt Longmire is good with horses. His father was a farrier, and Walt went with him to work sometimes, and got used to the big hulking beasts. He’d gently hold their halters while his father nailed shoes into their hooves, running his hand along their nose reassuringly. “It doesn’t hurt too bad, does it?” he would whisper to them. Their ears would flick back and forth as if they were actually listening. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Victoria Moretti, on the other hand, gained all her experience with horses from Saturday morning cartoons and reruns of The Lone Ranger. Until she moved to Wyoming, she couldn’t have said she’d ever seen a horse up close, except for the mounted police that sometimes strolled through the Philadelphia parks, who she consummately avoided because she was up to no good.

Now there is a black stallion that Walt looks after, a wild beautiful thing. It had been broken for an unsanctioned rodeo, and then abused afterwards when a dead man had been tied to its saddle. Walt had lassoed it to safety and given it the chance to return to the wild, only to find it would rather stay with him instead.

Vic had met the horse a few times - firstly, when she had made sure it had gotten to the vet, and then again when Walt needed both of them to help get a murder suspect to confess. It had been a tense half-hour for all involved, though. Neither Vic nor the stallion were at ease with one another then, but Walt hopes to change that now.

As Walt and Vic circle around to the back of his cabin, the stallion stands in the distance. It lifts its head as it sees them approach, and then curiosity gets the better of it as it slowly makes its way towards them, hoping Walt has a treat for him.

Vic crosses her arms and widens her stance, staring down the equine suspiciously. “Relax, Vic,” Walt says, sliding an apple into her palm.

The horse would never be tame enough to take a rider, but Walt figures it can be coaxed to eat out of Vic’s hand. “When you hold it out, keep your hand flat,” he warns her. “He won’t mean to bite you, but he could.”

“Okay, horsey,” Vic says. When she speaks to the animal her voice goes small and childlike. “Be nice, big fella.”

The horse delicately takes the fruit and bites into it impatiently as soon as it’s in its mouth. Juice and spit dribbles into Vic’s palm, and she pulls her hand away.

“I think you two have a lot in common,” says Walt.

“What, we both put up with you?” Vic asks, wiping her hands on her pants at first, and then turns to wipe them off on the sleeve of Walt’s shirt. She takes off her glasses. The flecks in her eyes catch a sunbeam, and she squints.

But for the first time Walt can tell that she’s looking right at him.

There is a nervous flutter in his chest. He's afraid of getting hurt. He's afraid of hurting her. But she's not afraid at all - she is a wild, beautiful thing, and she trusts him. "It's okay," he tells himself. "It's okay. It's okay. It's okay."