Fic: Let Us Ride Into the Sunset and We'll Find What Comes Next (Raydor/Fritz)
Title: Let Us Ride Into the Sunset and We’ll Find What Comes Next
Author: afrakaday
Rating: T
Word count: 2300
A/N: Happy birthday to rococoms. Rococo, I hope that you don’t mind that I took your horses out for a ride, notwithstanding my total lack of knowledge. Have a great day and I hope you can fit in some riding. :)
“Knock, knock.” The familiar deep voice startled Sharon as an unexpected visitor appeared in the frame of her open office door.
“What are you doing here?” she asked bluntly, looking up at him from her paperwork.
He walked in, closing the door behind him, and sat in front of her desk. “Can’t a guy drop in on his girl once in a while?”
She shook her head at him. “Not this girl.”
“I didn’t see you in the murder room, so I thought I’d come see what you were up to. Major Crimes just caught a homicide and it looks like they’re going to be working all night.” He wagged his eyebrows suggestively.
“Hmm. Yes,” she said, ignoring his flirtatious subtext. “I am no longer babysitting that division, now that the leak is no longer an issue. It makes a lot more sense to have a prosecutor present at their investigations than me, federal mandate or no.” She looked up at him over her glasses. “That was my idea, you know.”
He nodded obsequiously while she talked and pounced when she stopped. “So can I take you to dinner?”
Sharon checked her watch. “Five o’clock? Trying to catch the blue plate special, Fritz?” Glancing around her desk, she amended, “I’m not very busy at the moment, so I could knock off a little early. But I was already planning on doing something after work.” She looked him up and down, making a silent assessment of some sort. “I suppose you could join me, if you wanted...”
“Join you in what?” he asked. “Dinner? Sex? Dinner then sex at your house?”
She stuck her tongue out at him in rebuke. He was such a man, albeit an unapologetically adorable man. “You’ll just have to see. Go change into some casual clothes-- jeans and a t-shirt or sweater will be fine-- and meet me at my house in forty-five minutes.”
“Indoors? Outdoors? Where are we going?” Fritz felt like he was questioning a particularly difficult suspect, and getting nowhere.
“Outdoors. Very casual.” She stood up and began packing her slim leather briefcase. “It’ll be fun, Fritz. I promise.”
* * *
Sharon was waiting for him in the lobby of her building when he arrived. He nodded at the doorman and embraced Sharon when he reached her.
“This is a good look for you,” he said approvingly of her faded bootcut jeans, wide leather belt, and dark button-down shirt. Well-worn cowboy boots peeked out from beneath her jeans.
She smiled at him and gave him a quick kiss. “Come on, I’ll drive.”
“Where are we going?”
“Just north of Griffith Park. Not far.”
A short drive later, past the zoo and across the Ventura Freeway, Sharon pulled up to the Diamond Bar Stables.
“Riding?” Fritz said in surprise. “I’ve never done it.”
“Oh Fritz, you will love it,” she said, grinning as she gathered her hair up into a ponytail. “I come out here to ride the trails whenever I have the chance. The sunsets are just amazing from the mountains, looking out over the city. You can see all the way to Catalina on a clear day.” Her voice had taken on a dreamy quality as she described her experiences.
“Okay,” he said doubtfully. “It doesn’t matter that I’ve never ridden before?”
She shook her head vigorously. “Noooo. Not at all. Even young children can do it.”
“If you say so.” He got out of the car like a condemned man approaching the gallows; slowly and deliberately, with a palpable sense of dread.
She met him on his side of the car and slipped an arm behind his back as she prodded him toward the stable. “Come on, Fritz. It’s just ninety minutes on the trails. It’s so nice to get out and into the depths of the park.”
He stopped and looked at her. “For you, Sharon, I will give it a try.” He bent down and kissed her.
“Flatterer.” She laughed and tugged him along. “Put that charm to use on the horses and you’ll be just fine.”
Sharon clearly knew her way around the stable, saying hello to the owner and a few of the workers as well as the horses in their stalls. She stopped in front of one and dug a few sugar cubes out of her pocket.
“Hello, Wanda, my darling,” she crooned into the white-blazed face of a chestnut mare. “I missed you. Have some treats.”
As Sharon got reacquainted with her buddy, Fritz wandered past the stalls. Daisy, Scout, Star, Bindi, Mack, Chex, Polly. He wasn’t threatened by the beasts, not really...
Ten minutes later, the stablehands had saddled up the horses, and the guide, at ease astride a smoky black quarterhorse was ready to take them out on the trails.
“How come you get the bigger horse?” he asked Sharon. He shifted uncomfortably on top of Bindi, who seemed itching to buck him off.
She held the reins serenely and shook her head at him. “Wanda and I have a long history together, that’s why. Bindi’s not too bad, you’ll see. A little bit of a brat, but you just have to give it back to her. Show her who’s boss.”
“You really do ride a lot, huh,” he said. It surprised him to find out something new about her after all these months. It made him wonder how well he really knew her; perhaps fairly, she kept parts of herself closed off from him. Her bringing him here was probably as major a development for them as his buying the burn phones had been.
Sharon shrugged and squeezed her heels to get Wanda to start following their guide, Sam, into the park. “I brought my kids here pretty frequently when they were growing up. It’s not far from where we used to live.” She smirked at the horse beneath him. “Bindi is Sara’s favorite. I think they have similar personalities.”
Fritz had the grace not to respond to the unflattering comparison, though he could see why the girl with an eye for pretty things might have an affinity for the reddish horse with a small, distinctive single marking in the center of her forehead above her eyes. He gave his horse a tentative nudge.
“Kick harder, Fritz,” Sharon called over her shoulder, the gap widening between them. “Just let your instincts take over.”
He tried again, and Bindi broke into a too-fast gait, quickly closing the distance. “Whoa!” he cried. “Help!”
“Pull back on the reins a little and just relax,” Sharon advised between giggles. He took a deep breath and tried to let the tension leave his body. Bindi seemed to feel the change, though he still wasn’t confident that she wasn’t about to bolt from the trail and take him with her, and rider and horse both fell into line behind Sharon and Sam.
The sun was sinking low as they ambled the Western Avenue Equestrian Trail, casting the mountains and the city below in an ethereal golden glow. They occasionally encountered other small groups, mostly fanny-packed tourists and families, but as they rode on in companionable silence, Fritz began to see the appeal of this escape from the grind of life beyond the park.
They approached a crossroads. “Skyline Trail, Sharon?” Sam asked.
She nodded at Sam and smiled at Fritz. “It’s his first time. I think he should see the main attraction.”
Deeper into the park they rode, gentle switchbacks winding around mountain ridges. The sun fell further and the temperature began to drop, but Fritz barely noticed. He was more intent on admiring Sharon’s graceful ease as she rode and the occasional glints of red that shone in her hair. He was surrounded by beauty, immediately in front of him, beneath him, and all around him in the cradle of the mountains that seemed to come alive in the twilight. He realized that here, with her, he felt more awake, more vital, than he had in ages.
They wound around what Fritz recognized must be Mount Lee, from the telecommunications equipment visible at the top of it, and came to rest at an observation point with a half-dozen hitching posts and a trough of water.
“I’ll just head a little further down the trail. Be back in fifteen.” Sam winked at Sharon as he trotted away.
She dismounted with the same grace with which she rode and walked over to Fritz to lend him a hand in doing the same. Fritz’s thigh muscles burned as he walked tentatively to the trough, where Bindi, to his surprise, did indeed drink. Once the horses had their fill, Sharon took both sets of reins and efficiently hitched the horses to separate posts, where they stood patiently, occasionally kicking up dirt.
Fritz wandered out to the edge of the lookout; he could see the Hollywood sign to his left, the distinctive domes of the Griffith Observatory to his right. The sun had nearly set behind them, and dark swaths of low-lying brush and tumbleweeds dotted the valley between. “You brought me to make-out point,” he teased Sharon as she approached him.
“So what if I did,” she murmured into the material of his t-shirt, pressing her body against his back and wrapping her arms around his midsection.
He tugged her around to face him and brought his hand up to her face. “Thank you,” he said, lowering his lips to hers. He poured all of his feeling into the kiss; the golden greens and streaks of light that were his delight at being here with her, the clouds of doubt that he even should be at all. A fiery red heat burned between them, providing its own illuminations among the sun’s retreating rays. This place was theirs and theirs alone, their connection attended only by equine indifference.
She was pliant against him as she yielded to his probing tongue, parting her lips in invitation. Her hands, resting against his chest, slowly crept up and around his neck so she could pull him closer to her. His hands slid down along her back to cup her backside, and she nipped his lower lip and reluctantly broke the kiss. As he stepped back, he realized his nether regions had fallen asleep while riding, and the sudden rush of arousal had caused an unpleasant prickling sensation, the likes of which he’d never experienced before.
“Easy, cowboy,” she said, her voice throaty as the gravelled trails. “Let’s sit at the edge here.”
As he followed her to sit on the low stone ledge overlooking a steep drop-off, his saddle-battered muscles protested, but she looked so cute and gleeful as she swung her feet over the side that he sucked it up and joined her anyway.
“I think you have a thing for danger, Captain,” he said, placing an arm over her shoulders and looking down, his stomach dropping at the distance to the ground.
She snorted. “Hardly. If I did, I wouldn’t be in IA, would I.”
“You see your fair share of action,” he said, giving her a squeeze.
“I love it here,” she said, changing the subject. “It’s so peaceful.” Her countenance confirmed her words; all the tension she carried around with her at her job had melted away, leaving a softer, happier Sharon.
“Beautiful,” he agreed, staring at her intently.
She caught him looking and tilted her head at him inquiringly. “What?”
“Brenda still hasn’t come home,” he blurted out, surprising even himself. He hadn’t been planning on saying that, it just...escaped. He brought his arm back from over her shoulders and gave her some distance.
Sharon frowned. “Really? It’s been, what...” She counted on her fingers. “Over two weeks.”
“I don’t know if she’s going to,” he said quietly.
She didn’t say anything, just took his hand in hers and laced their fingers together, letting their joined hands come to rest on her thigh.
“If she and I were to split...do you...could we, do you think...” Fritz could barely form the thought in his mind, let alone express it out loud.
“Do you think that’s going to happen?” she inquired softly, ignoring his unfinished question.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I can barely get her to talk to me right now. I have no idea whether it’s because she’s still torn up about her mother, or she’s mad at me for leaving Atlanta early. Maybe it’s something else.” He stroked the top of her hand with his thumb. “But if that’s the way this is going to go-- a separation--”
“That’s pretty hypothetical,” she said.
“But would you? Be with me?” he finally said.
She hummed and let her head lay against his shoulder. “Yeah,” she said, barely audible over the gentle wind and fidgety horses. “I would.”
They stayed like that for several more minutes as the view gradually darkened and the lights illuminating the Hollywood sign glowed more prominently. The return of their guide stirred them from their quiet reflection, and they watered the horses one more time before setting back out the way they came.
Fritz barely noticed any discomfort on the return journey, endorphins coursing through his body as he replayed Sharon’s affirmative answer over and over in his mind.
Before he knew it they were back at the stables. Sharon was settling up with the owner and joking around with Sam, accepting his good-natured teasing about the fact that she’d brought a boyfriend with her for a romantic ride--apparently an unusual occurrence, Fritz was pleased to deduce. Fritz took a bucket of carrots over to Bindi and fed them to the greedy, impatient horse.
“Did you hear what she told me?” he asked the horse. Bindi whinnied in reply and snapped up another carrot. “Thanks for the backup, sweetheart.”
“Ready to go?” asked a clear voice from behind him. Sharon stood, amused at watching Fritz’s efforts to bond with his horse.
“You going to let me take you to dinner now?” he asked, wrapping an arm around her waist as they walked out to the car.
She sniffed delicately at his shirt . “Ugh. Absolutely not. You need a shower, cowboy.” She grinned. “But you’re welcome to one at my place.”
Author: afrakaday
Rating: T
Word count: 2300
A/N: Happy birthday to rococoms. Rococo, I hope that you don’t mind that I took your horses out for a ride, notwithstanding my total lack of knowledge. Have a great day and I hope you can fit in some riding. :)
“Knock, knock.” The familiar deep voice startled Sharon as an unexpected visitor appeared in the frame of her open office door.
“What are you doing here?” she asked bluntly, looking up at him from her paperwork.
He walked in, closing the door behind him, and sat in front of her desk. “Can’t a guy drop in on his girl once in a while?”
She shook her head at him. “Not this girl.”
“I didn’t see you in the murder room, so I thought I’d come see what you were up to. Major Crimes just caught a homicide and it looks like they’re going to be working all night.” He wagged his eyebrows suggestively.
“Hmm. Yes,” she said, ignoring his flirtatious subtext. “I am no longer babysitting that division, now that the leak is no longer an issue. It makes a lot more sense to have a prosecutor present at their investigations than me, federal mandate or no.” She looked up at him over her glasses. “That was my idea, you know.”
He nodded obsequiously while she talked and pounced when she stopped. “So can I take you to dinner?”
Sharon checked her watch. “Five o’clock? Trying to catch the blue plate special, Fritz?” Glancing around her desk, she amended, “I’m not very busy at the moment, so I could knock off a little early. But I was already planning on doing something after work.” She looked him up and down, making a silent assessment of some sort. “I suppose you could join me, if you wanted...”
“Join you in what?” he asked. “Dinner? Sex? Dinner then sex at your house?”
She stuck her tongue out at him in rebuke. He was such a man, albeit an unapologetically adorable man. “You’ll just have to see. Go change into some casual clothes-- jeans and a t-shirt or sweater will be fine-- and meet me at my house in forty-five minutes.”
“Indoors? Outdoors? Where are we going?” Fritz felt like he was questioning a particularly difficult suspect, and getting nowhere.
“Outdoors. Very casual.” She stood up and began packing her slim leather briefcase. “It’ll be fun, Fritz. I promise.”
* * *
Sharon was waiting for him in the lobby of her building when he arrived. He nodded at the doorman and embraced Sharon when he reached her.
“This is a good look for you,” he said approvingly of her faded bootcut jeans, wide leather belt, and dark button-down shirt. Well-worn cowboy boots peeked out from beneath her jeans.
She smiled at him and gave him a quick kiss. “Come on, I’ll drive.”
“Where are we going?”
“Just north of Griffith Park. Not far.”
A short drive later, past the zoo and across the Ventura Freeway, Sharon pulled up to the Diamond Bar Stables.
“Riding?” Fritz said in surprise. “I’ve never done it.”
“Oh Fritz, you will love it,” she said, grinning as she gathered her hair up into a ponytail. “I come out here to ride the trails whenever I have the chance. The sunsets are just amazing from the mountains, looking out over the city. You can see all the way to Catalina on a clear day.” Her voice had taken on a dreamy quality as she described her experiences.
“Okay,” he said doubtfully. “It doesn’t matter that I’ve never ridden before?”
She shook her head vigorously. “Noooo. Not at all. Even young children can do it.”
“If you say so.” He got out of the car like a condemned man approaching the gallows; slowly and deliberately, with a palpable sense of dread.
She met him on his side of the car and slipped an arm behind his back as she prodded him toward the stable. “Come on, Fritz. It’s just ninety minutes on the trails. It’s so nice to get out and into the depths of the park.”
He stopped and looked at her. “For you, Sharon, I will give it a try.” He bent down and kissed her.
“Flatterer.” She laughed and tugged him along. “Put that charm to use on the horses and you’ll be just fine.”
Sharon clearly knew her way around the stable, saying hello to the owner and a few of the workers as well as the horses in their stalls. She stopped in front of one and dug a few sugar cubes out of her pocket.
“Hello, Wanda, my darling,” she crooned into the white-blazed face of a chestnut mare. “I missed you. Have some treats.”
As Sharon got reacquainted with her buddy, Fritz wandered past the stalls. Daisy, Scout, Star, Bindi, Mack, Chex, Polly. He wasn’t threatened by the beasts, not really...
Ten minutes later, the stablehands had saddled up the horses, and the guide, at ease astride a smoky black quarterhorse was ready to take them out on the trails.
“How come you get the bigger horse?” he asked Sharon. He shifted uncomfortably on top of Bindi, who seemed itching to buck him off.
She held the reins serenely and shook her head at him. “Wanda and I have a long history together, that’s why. Bindi’s not too bad, you’ll see. A little bit of a brat, but you just have to give it back to her. Show her who’s boss.”
“You really do ride a lot, huh,” he said. It surprised him to find out something new about her after all these months. It made him wonder how well he really knew her; perhaps fairly, she kept parts of herself closed off from him. Her bringing him here was probably as major a development for them as his buying the burn phones had been.
Sharon shrugged and squeezed her heels to get Wanda to start following their guide, Sam, into the park. “I brought my kids here pretty frequently when they were growing up. It’s not far from where we used to live.” She smirked at the horse beneath him. “Bindi is Sara’s favorite. I think they have similar personalities.”
Fritz had the grace not to respond to the unflattering comparison, though he could see why the girl with an eye for pretty things might have an affinity for the reddish horse with a small, distinctive single marking in the center of her forehead above her eyes. He gave his horse a tentative nudge.
“Kick harder, Fritz,” Sharon called over her shoulder, the gap widening between them. “Just let your instincts take over.”
He tried again, and Bindi broke into a too-fast gait, quickly closing the distance. “Whoa!” he cried. “Help!”
“Pull back on the reins a little and just relax,” Sharon advised between giggles. He took a deep breath and tried to let the tension leave his body. Bindi seemed to feel the change, though he still wasn’t confident that she wasn’t about to bolt from the trail and take him with her, and rider and horse both fell into line behind Sharon and Sam.
The sun was sinking low as they ambled the Western Avenue Equestrian Trail, casting the mountains and the city below in an ethereal golden glow. They occasionally encountered other small groups, mostly fanny-packed tourists and families, but as they rode on in companionable silence, Fritz began to see the appeal of this escape from the grind of life beyond the park.
They approached a crossroads. “Skyline Trail, Sharon?” Sam asked.
She nodded at Sam and smiled at Fritz. “It’s his first time. I think he should see the main attraction.”
Deeper into the park they rode, gentle switchbacks winding around mountain ridges. The sun fell further and the temperature began to drop, but Fritz barely noticed. He was more intent on admiring Sharon’s graceful ease as she rode and the occasional glints of red that shone in her hair. He was surrounded by beauty, immediately in front of him, beneath him, and all around him in the cradle of the mountains that seemed to come alive in the twilight. He realized that here, with her, he felt more awake, more vital, than he had in ages.
They wound around what Fritz recognized must be Mount Lee, from the telecommunications equipment visible at the top of it, and came to rest at an observation point with a half-dozen hitching posts and a trough of water.
“I’ll just head a little further down the trail. Be back in fifteen.” Sam winked at Sharon as he trotted away.
She dismounted with the same grace with which she rode and walked over to Fritz to lend him a hand in doing the same. Fritz’s thigh muscles burned as he walked tentatively to the trough, where Bindi, to his surprise, did indeed drink. Once the horses had their fill, Sharon took both sets of reins and efficiently hitched the horses to separate posts, where they stood patiently, occasionally kicking up dirt.
Fritz wandered out to the edge of the lookout; he could see the Hollywood sign to his left, the distinctive domes of the Griffith Observatory to his right. The sun had nearly set behind them, and dark swaths of low-lying brush and tumbleweeds dotted the valley between. “You brought me to make-out point,” he teased Sharon as she approached him.
“So what if I did,” she murmured into the material of his t-shirt, pressing her body against his back and wrapping her arms around his midsection.
He tugged her around to face him and brought his hand up to her face. “Thank you,” he said, lowering his lips to hers. He poured all of his feeling into the kiss; the golden greens and streaks of light that were his delight at being here with her, the clouds of doubt that he even should be at all. A fiery red heat burned between them, providing its own illuminations among the sun’s retreating rays. This place was theirs and theirs alone, their connection attended only by equine indifference.
She was pliant against him as she yielded to his probing tongue, parting her lips in invitation. Her hands, resting against his chest, slowly crept up and around his neck so she could pull him closer to her. His hands slid down along her back to cup her backside, and she nipped his lower lip and reluctantly broke the kiss. As he stepped back, he realized his nether regions had fallen asleep while riding, and the sudden rush of arousal had caused an unpleasant prickling sensation, the likes of which he’d never experienced before.
“Easy, cowboy,” she said, her voice throaty as the gravelled trails. “Let’s sit at the edge here.”
As he followed her to sit on the low stone ledge overlooking a steep drop-off, his saddle-battered muscles protested, but she looked so cute and gleeful as she swung her feet over the side that he sucked it up and joined her anyway.
“I think you have a thing for danger, Captain,” he said, placing an arm over her shoulders and looking down, his stomach dropping at the distance to the ground.
She snorted. “Hardly. If I did, I wouldn’t be in IA, would I.”
“You see your fair share of action,” he said, giving her a squeeze.
“I love it here,” she said, changing the subject. “It’s so peaceful.” Her countenance confirmed her words; all the tension she carried around with her at her job had melted away, leaving a softer, happier Sharon.
“Beautiful,” he agreed, staring at her intently.
She caught him looking and tilted her head at him inquiringly. “What?”
“Brenda still hasn’t come home,” he blurted out, surprising even himself. He hadn’t been planning on saying that, it just...escaped. He brought his arm back from over her shoulders and gave her some distance.
Sharon frowned. “Really? It’s been, what...” She counted on her fingers. “Over two weeks.”
“I don’t know if she’s going to,” he said quietly.
She didn’t say anything, just took his hand in hers and laced their fingers together, letting their joined hands come to rest on her thigh.
“If she and I were to split...do you...could we, do you think...” Fritz could barely form the thought in his mind, let alone express it out loud.
“Do you think that’s going to happen?” she inquired softly, ignoring his unfinished question.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I can barely get her to talk to me right now. I have no idea whether it’s because she’s still torn up about her mother, or she’s mad at me for leaving Atlanta early. Maybe it’s something else.” He stroked the top of her hand with his thumb. “But if that’s the way this is going to go-- a separation--”
“That’s pretty hypothetical,” she said.
“But would you? Be with me?” he finally said.
She hummed and let her head lay against his shoulder. “Yeah,” she said, barely audible over the gentle wind and fidgety horses. “I would.”
They stayed like that for several more minutes as the view gradually darkened and the lights illuminating the Hollywood sign glowed more prominently. The return of their guide stirred them from their quiet reflection, and they watered the horses one more time before setting back out the way they came.
Fritz barely noticed any discomfort on the return journey, endorphins coursing through his body as he replayed Sharon’s affirmative answer over and over in his mind.
Before he knew it they were back at the stables. Sharon was settling up with the owner and joking around with Sam, accepting his good-natured teasing about the fact that she’d brought a boyfriend with her for a romantic ride--apparently an unusual occurrence, Fritz was pleased to deduce. Fritz took a bucket of carrots over to Bindi and fed them to the greedy, impatient horse.
“Did you hear what she told me?” he asked the horse. Bindi whinnied in reply and snapped up another carrot. “Thanks for the backup, sweetheart.”
“Ready to go?” asked a clear voice from behind him. Sharon stood, amused at watching Fritz’s efforts to bond with his horse.
“You going to let me take you to dinner now?” he asked, wrapping an arm around her waist as they walked out to the car.
She sniffed delicately at his shirt . “Ugh. Absolutely not. You need a shower, cowboy.” She grinned. “But you’re welcome to one at my place.”