Chapter Text
He knows he’s kind of a player.
It works out well for him. No strings, no long term attachments, no wife worrying about him late into the night when he’s working. He doesn’t go as far as seeing multiple people at the same time - and that’s what it is, he’s seeing them, he’s not dating anyone - because he’d fucked that up in high school when he was a kid and learned the hard way that it rarely worked out well. Plus he liked to think he grew a little empathy as he aged.
So yeah, he checks her out, once or twice. When she’s not looking. Looking doesn’t do any harm, and it’s easy to take a glance and say nothing. Checking out doesn’t cross the professional line. Plus he hardly ever fucks with white women anyways. Especially not the sheriff’s daughter.
He doesn’t really know her, either, and even if he’s a player he likes knowing his girls. He’s not heartless, and understanding how someone’s head works usually helps him. Of course, that starts to change the more cases she accepts. She’s around more. Even stops getting weird looks from the other cops in the office. Hell, at one point she brings a mug ; at least she brews coffee for the whole office. And not that he’d say anything, but the coffee she brews is actually a damn sight better. He wonders if she’s sneaking in some expensive beans - they mostly used shitty canned stuff.
She’s never really obtrusive. Pops in now and again to ask questions, mostly about navigating the rez. She keeps to herself unless she needs to, like she’s afraid of taking up too much space, like if she does he’s gonna tell her to get off his land.
He doesn’t know where along the way he starts really paying attention. He likes being alone in his office with his skulls and his computer and the endless case files, but he lingers sometimes, chatting with his officers on the way to or from the coffee pot. Standing around like that, he learns a few things as he watches Cady out of the corner of his eye.
She’s quiet. Tries to stay in line. But when she’s working, really focused on working, she starts to spread out. Take up more room. That hesitance and self consciousness disappears when she’s working, fading away to laser focus. She forgets that coffee she brewed, pouring over pages and pages before finally taking a sip and frowning at the cold beverage like it had personally offended her.
That’s when she reminds him of Walt. When she’s focused like that, to the point where she doesn’t notice the world spinning around her. It’s a weird contrast, seeing her like that, and then seeing her when she wakes up from it, suddenly that meek girl again that keeps asking for permission, self conscious and aware she shouldn’t be there. It lets him know that, if she needs to, she can be fierce. Just like her dad. Unlike her dad, she has the good sense to not piss off everyone in a fifty foot radius the rest of the time.
She’s good with clients, too, from what little he’s seen. They don’t meet at the station much. Usually she goes out, pursuing cases across the rez all on her own. But he’s seen one or two times, the gentle way she talks to people. She’s got facets to her, and it’s interesting.
A couple of the staff even end up relaxing enough around her to talk casually, and judging by the way he hears people laughing at her jokes, she’s gotta be funny, too. He lets them joke, because it’s not negatively impacting work, and honestly on some level he likes trying to puzzle her out. She’s very unlike her father, and yet she’s got that Longmire steel in her bones.
What’s real fascinating is how naive she can be, sometimes. Maybe it’s just him being cynical, but she’s got those big eyes and that boundless optimism. If she wasn’t so good at her job - making headway, slowly but surely, forcing her way through the cases he left her - he would’ve thought she’d never cracked open a case file in her life. It’s so obvious she wants to believe she can make the world a better place, that she wants to believe the best of humanity. Some of the things Mathias had seen, he’s not sure where his faith is now; probably buried six feet under with all the victims of countless crimes he couldn’t fix.
But she’s still going. And there’s always hope in her eyes, even when it gets a little worn and ragged on the edges. It’s fascinating. It’s attractive in a way he doesn’t know how to quantify.
There’s a while there where he doesn’t understand what’s happening in his own head. Cady Longmire isn’t a case, and he doesn’t need to be obsessed with solving her. She is who she is, and for the most part, she’s not his business. It comes crashing down when, one night after he got off work, he fantasizes about her as he jacks off. He comes hard, and spent a while staring at his ceiling, hating himself.
That’s when the puzzle pieces clicked into place, outlandish as they were. He’s too old, too experienced, too much of a womanizer to be thinking like this. Hasn’t dealt with it in a long damn time. Despite all that, he was already in deep. Crushes were total shit.
---
He runs, sometimes, on his days off. It’s not too long after he fit the puzzle pieces together that he finds her when he’s on one of his runs. Broken down, in the dirt, on the side of the road. Her car’s listing with a pretty fierce flat, but she’s already fixing it when he arrives, brows knit together with frustration and the knees of her nice suit all dirty. She’s got the hubcap off, the flat tire overturned in the dirt, and the lug wrench in her hands.
“Need a hand?” He calls, and she jerks her head up with a start.
“No,” she says, giving him a tight smile, this sort of look he’s never seen on her face before. Like she’s pissed off she got caught in a moment of weakness. “I got it. But, thanks, Mathias.”
He pauses, aware of a bead of sweat rolling down the back of his neck. He walks over anyways, taking a swig from his water and eyeing the car. “It looks like you do,” he agrees.
Her brows tug together more, almost embarrassed, now. He wonders if she hates being seen like this; uncomposed, in the dirt, with the situation out of her hands. “Just have to get the spare on, that’s all.”
She’s right; the hard part’s over with. All that’s left is the spare. It’s leaning against the rear bumper, notably mismatched, smaller than the other tires. He leaves his water bottle on the roof of the car, and he grabs the spare, bringing it over to Cady.
She looks at the tire first, then her eyes flicker up to meet his. “Thanks,” she says, barely more than a murmur. Like she doesn’t understand why he’s helping her. It makes him wonder how much her dad bitches about him.
“No problem,” he says as she takes the tire, pushing it onto the wheel hub. She dares another confused glance in his direction, so he puts his hand on his hips and looks away, down the road. “Who are you going to see?”
“Mary Little Horse,” Cady says, plucking the lug nuts from the pile next to her knee and threading them on, one by one. “And I already saw her, thank god. I wouldn’t want to keep her waiting because of this.” She throws her hand at the car, frowning at it again.
“I’m sure she appreciated it,” Mathias mutters. Little Horse was having issues with the casino. One of many that was. “You heading back to Durant after this?”
“Yeah,” Cady says as she grabs the lug wrench. She gives him one more sidelong glance. “Why? Is there somewhere else I should be?” He can hear the unspoken question - is there a new case for me?
Mathias shakes his head. Despite himself, a couple of shitty pickup lines flicker in the back of his mind. He ignores them. “Nah.” He grabs his water bottle off the car. “You shouldn’t be driving too long on that spare, though. That kind’s not made to hold up too well. Especially out here.”
Cady nods. She goes back to tightening the lug nuts. He waits a moment more, watching her. That sharp focus is written on her face again. It's amazing when it makes an appearance. It fades away quick, her eyes flickering up as the rumble of another car starts down the road.
For a moment she almost looks scared. It confuses him for half a second before he remembers, distantly, the story in the papers from last year - local woman, Cady Longmire, caught in hit-and-run . He almost feels glad he stopped. Not like he could’ve done much if the car was intent on hitting them, but he had a feeling Cady’d be a lot more on edge if there wasn’t someone else standing by.
Then he sees the truck, and he can’t stop the frown from crossing his face. He knows the beat up piece of crap. A 1992 Ford F-250, dented and red and white, the windshield still busted despite the fix-it tickets he knows it had gotten. Even though he couldn’t see it, he knew the tailgate had fallen off the bed of the pickup a long time ago. That’s Rita’s truck.
He might have sighed. The look that Cady gave him says he probably did. But he puts his water bottle back on the roof of the car and waits with his arms crossed - knowing Rita, she’d probably stop. She was nosey as hell.
True to form, the beat up Ford slowed down to a crawl. Rita cranks down the window, leaning an elbow out and arching an eyebrow at the scene. There’s a mischievous glint in her eye when she catches sight of Cady, and Mathias standing so close by. “Everything okay here? He’s not bothering you, is he, sweetie?”
Mathias glowers. If he wasn’t tired of this sort of shit, he would’ve snorted at the way Cady stumbled over her words to defend him.
“No! No. Everything’s fine,” Cady said, shoving her hair out of her face and flashing the biggest, most sincere smile she could. “Just stopped to help, that’s all.”
“We’re fine, Rita,” Mathias says, flat and annoyed. “Officer Larance gave you a fix-it ticket for that windshield last month.”
At her name, Rita grins. “Sure did.” She turns her attention back to Cady, and it takes work for him to keep himself from groaning. “You sure, kid? Matty’s a wily one.”
“Matty,” Cady repeats. There’s shock and a thread of laughter in her voice, like she’s just barely holding back.
“Yep,” Rita says, that wicked grin still curling her lips. “And trust me, when Matty offers help, he usually wants something in return.” she winks, her emphasis making it agonizingly clear what she was implying. She pursed her lips a little, the smile still hidden in the corners of her mouth as she surveyed the scene. “Good luck with the flat. Looks like you got it well in hand after all.”
She gives a little wave and starts to roll her window up, gunning the engine as she pulled away. Mathias glares after her. He carefully doesn’t look at Cady until Rita’s truck is far along down the road.
When he does, Cady’s staring at him, this huge, self-satisfied smile on her face. Like the cat that ate the canary, except in this case the canary was that incredibly unprofessional nickname. “ Matty ,” she repeats, on the edge of laughter.
“Don’t you start,” he grumbles. But there’s something about the smile on Cady’s face that draws a lopsided smirk from him.
“Ex girlfriend?” Cady asks, the humor in her voice tempered with the smallest sliver of empathy.
“Something like that.” Mathias turns and grabs his water off the car, hopefully for the last time. “Haven’t seen her around in a while.”
Cady turns back to the car, lowering the jack. “Can’t be easy, dating with your job.”
“No kidding,” Mathias agrees. “I’m on call all the damn time. Plus, usually I’ve arrested somebody they know. It can get awkward.”
That makes a smile flicker across Cady’s face as she tightens the lug nuts one last time. “Yeah. The last person dad tried see was somebody he met on a murder investigation.”
Mathias snorts. He has a tough time imagining Walt Longmire dating anybody, but if really tried, he could see it being something that socially awkward. “Sounds about right. You want me to put the flat in the trunk?”
The question seems to catch her by surprise, and she looks at him for half a moment, the lug wrench still grasped in her hands. “Ah...sure!” She says, after a moment, pulling the jack out from under the car and standing. Then a stupid grin crosses her face, and her voice takes on a teasing tone. “Unless you’re going to want something in return.”
It’s walking the edge of being flirty. He grins despite himself, grabbing the flat tire from where it laid in the dirt and hauling it to the back of her car. “I think you’re doing more than enough, working pro bono with the tribe. Any something would just be a nice bonus.”
It slips out before he can stop it, and as the words leave his mouth he wants to hit himself. That was definitely crossing the line, professionally speaking.
Cady makes a noise that’s somewhere between a stifled snort and a laugh, and she pauses with her hand on the latch for the trunk, giving him a look. “Did you just flirt with me? Wow, your ex was right. You are wily.”
The hot flush of embarrassment crawls over his skin. He can imagine her telling her dad, casually, like it didn’t matter, and Walt going on the warpath. He has to deal with enough shit from the Longmires already. On the bright side, the lopsided smile on her face said she wasn’t one hundred percent ticked off.
Instead of responding directly, he jerks his chin at the trunk. “You gonna open that, or am I gonna stand holding a flat all day?”
The lopsided smile on her lips grows into a small grin, and she opens the trunk, dumping in the wrench and the car jack. He hefts the flat up, shoving it into the trunk as gently as he could, and backs away just as quick so she can shut it. She does with a slam, then fishes her car keys out of her pocket, favoring him with another smile. More genuine, this time.
“Seriously, thanks, Mathias.”
He nods. “Drive safe. Go get that tire replaced.”
He watches her get into her car and start it up, the engine purring to life. It kicks up dirt as she pulls back onto the road and drives away. He stands by the side of the road for a minute more after she leaves, and then he takes another drink of his water and gets back to running.