This one-shot was based off of a post on Facebook by Natalie regarding a funny video. As soon as I read your post Natalie, ideas started zinging off in my mind. Here's my rendition of your imaginings brought to life.

I'm not really a song fic kind of person, so this doesn't really focus on the song.

Disclaimer: Janet Evanovich owns the Stephanie Plum Books and all the characters (sadly). Taylor Swift owns the song 'Shake it Off'. I'm just borrowing both for a little fun *winky face*

Warnings: It's Babe. Language. Sexual themes.

Description: While bored on surveillance, Stephanie and Lester have a little fun on camera to entertain themselves and the guys in the control room. Babe.

Just Shake it Off

"Be safe today, Babe," Ranger murmured against my lips before he drew back slightly.

My hands gripped his Rangeman shirt tightly, preventing him from drawing away anymore. I wanted to pick up where we'd just left off. However, considering we were standing in the middle of the control room, I doubted that was gonna happen anytime soon. I was actually kind of surprised Ranger had kissed me in front of any of his men, period, let alone in the control room for all of them to see.

Ranger had been keeping our PDAs on the down low. We were only just starting to get the hang of being in an actual relationship. It was close to three months now, since he'd shown up at Morelli's door one night with a letter from the government in one hand and a gun in the other.

Romantic, no?

Well, to be fair, he'd just come back from a five week mission in some dark, mosquito and terrorist ridden jungle. So he wasn't exactly functioning on all cylinders.

Thankfully, Morelli and I had just been having a pizza and hockey night and Joe didn't make any fuss about me going with Ranger. Morelli and I had been in an off phase for nearly two months when Ranger had showed up. I tried really hard not to think about what might have happened if Joe refused to let Ranger take me. It was probably best not to.

Anyway, the letter from the government was Ranger's official retirement. No more dangerous, or sudden, or extended missions. He was free to pick and choose assignments from our government (and any other) or private contractors as he wished and refuse any he didn't want.

Ranger had practically tossed me in the front of his Porsche 911 Carrera GTS Coupe and broken land speed records getting us out of the Burg. We'd spent a week together, relaxing, in a king sized bedroom luxury suite at the Waldorf Astoria New York that overlooked Park Avenue. Not that we had spent a lot of time looking at the skyline, or out of the bedroom for that matter. It had been absolutely perfect.

We'd been, for lack of a better word, dating ever since. For the past couple of weeks, I'd been spending most nights with Ranger and coming down for work with him in the mornings. Ranger and I had enjoyed a lively debate about my living and working arrangements the day we'd come back from New York. In the end, we'd compromised. He set up a replacement Bounty Hunter for Vinnie, and I'd signed a contract to work full time at Rangeman, provided I got sufficient field time. I also kept my apartment, but Ranger and some of the guys did an intense security overhaul. Not even Ranger could break in there now, so it was lucky he had a key, and the codes, and the electronic swipe. Yeah, did I mention the security was now intense? I locked myself both in and out of my apartment multiple times the first week of having the system. But I got used to it, and I slept a hell of a lot better at night. But that may have had something to do with just who slept next to me, rather than the laser beams, motion sensors and pressure plates. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, slightly.

So the guys all knew Ranger and I were together, Ranger just hadn't been making a big show of it. Until today.

"Babe, you still with me?"

I watched his lips curve up slightly and stared at his handsome face. How'd a girl like me get lucky enough to land a gorgeous hunk like him? I still didn't completely get what he saw in me, but our chemistry and friendship were hard to deny. Not to mention we loved each other. That might have something to do with why he kept me around.

"What's with the goofy grin, Babe. You're scaring Hal," Ranger said, his body brushing against mine as he chuckled.

I tilted my head and stretched up a little so I could kiss him softly.

"I love you. You stay safe too, okay?" I requested firmly.

His eyes were soft now as they stared down at me. We weren't really the type of couple that dropped the 'l' word ten times daily, so when one of us did say it, it really hit home.

"Yeah, Steph. I'll stay safe," he said, lifting a hand to cup my face gently and stroke his thumb across my bottom lip.

I knew it was his way of saying 'I love you' in public. I turned my head, pressing a kiss to the inside of his palm, letting him know I got him.

We stepped apart, my hands smoothing down the front of his shirt as I finally let go. He stared at me for a long beat before pivoting and striding out of the control room.

I sighed softly and thought about grabbing the roster to see who had been paired with me for field work today when Ranger marched back into the control room and kissed the hell out of me. I stumbled as he let go and dazedly glanced at him, running my fingers over my now swollen lips.

"I fucking love you too, Babe. Keep her safe, Santos." Ranger didn't need to add 'or else', it was intrinsically applied.

As soon as he'd returned, he was gone again. His office door closed with a quiet thud that resonated throughout the fifth floor.

"Uh," I cleared my throat a couple of times before I managed to get words to come out my mouth. "So I guess you're with me today, Lester?" I wondered, looking around the room until I found him in the fourth seat in front of the monitors.

I jolted as I found multiple sets of eyes upon me. The three guys actually watching the monitors, Hal, Cal and Ram were alternating rapidly between the screens and me. Nearly every man on the floor was also staring at me over the top of cubicles or from the rabbit warren of corridors. I felt my cheeks flood red and shifted uneasily.

"Yeah, Beautiful. It's you and me today. We got surveillance. Get back to work everyone, nothing to see here," Lester said loudly, casting glares around left, right and centre.

He dropped a comforting arm around my shoulder and quickly steered me towards the elevator.

I let out a sigh of relief when the doors slid closed behind us.

"You'd think they'd never seen two people kiss before," I muttered under my breath.

"It's the two people doing the kissing that makes all the difference, Beautiful. Especially if it comes with loud declarations of love."

"I'm sure most of you suspected Ranger felt something for me." I rolled my eyes in exasperation. Ranger's men were nothing if not keen observers.

"I think most of the guys thought he felt insatiable lust. Seeing a man like Ranger tell a woman he loves her is not something guys like us see a whole lot. Hell, guys like us don't usually find a woman who loves us or who sticks around. You're one of a kind, Beautiful, but seeing you and Ranger gives the rest of us hope."

I slanted him a sideways glance but found him staring at me earnestly. Damn, where was my fun jokester when I needed him.

"Sheesh, Lester. You're making me feel worse." I rubbed my arm anxiously before folding my arms across my chest, feeling my cheeks pink-en once again.

"Wasn't trying to," he said as the elevator door slid open. He rested a warm hand on my lower back and propelled me towards one of the Yukons. "Just trying to explain. You wanna hit up 7-eleven for surveillance snacks?" he asked drolly, wiggling his eyebrows.

I felt a wide grin stretch across my face. "Hell yes, is my middle name TastyKake?"

Lester snorted and just like that, both of our moods lifted. "No, but it probably should be."

A short car ride and snack run later, we were parked in the large industrial estate on the outskirts of Trenton.

There were very few cars parked on the streets, the ratio of car bodies to actual intact cars was about sixty-forty. There was not a single human in sight. None of the roller doors, or man hole doors were open on any of the warehouses. It was nearly eerie in its empty lifelessness. I guess maybe one of Rangeman's skips were rumored to be holed up out here. Either that or Lester had gotten the address wrong. Somehow I didn't think it was the second option.

Lester popped a can of soda and handed it to me as he opened a packet of chips for me. I hunkered down and scanned our surroundings dutifully.

It was over an hour before I finally cracked.

"What on earth are we doing here, Lester? There's nobody around."

My soda was gone, my chip packet empty. I had a nervous bounce to my leg and I was bored out of my mind.

Lester just sighed, something that didn't bode well for me. "I kinda think that's the point, Beautiful."

I blinked at him rapidly. "What? What's that supposed to mean?"

He took his eyes off the windshield and swiveled to face me, occasionally doing a scan.

"I mean, you're Ranger's woman. He loves you and shit now. He wants to keep you safe and doesn't want anything to happen to you. This is probably his way of compromising; you get to do field work, he knows you'll be relatively safe doing it."

"I – ugh! That man!" I cursed creatively for a couple of minutes and resisted the urge to grab my cell phone and blast Ranger's ears off. I finally calmed down and thought about it all rationally. Even if Ranger wanted me on low risk assignments, there was probably some slight chance a skip or target was out here, or there was some intel we could gather. He wouldn't just waste his resources completely, especially Lester who was highly trained. I couldn't exactly blame Ranger for putting me on lighter duties when I hadn't finished the Rangeman training course yet. Wait, what was Lester doing here with me? There were plenty of other guys more suited to baby-sitting me than him.

"Okay, so I can understand his reasoning behind sticking me on dull duty, but what about you?"

"Well someone's gotta go with you. And maybe it's punishment for the camera gag I – nevermind." He snapped his mouth shut so fast I could swear I heard his teeth clack together.

"Camera gag? I never heard about that," I said slowly, carefully studying his face.

"And you never will." He clammed up even tighter and there was a tick in his jaw. Oh boy.

"Fine. So basically you did something to piss Ranger off?"

"Yeah. I'm on either monitor duty or what did you call it? Dull Duty? Yeah, either of those for the next three months."

I whistled lowly. "Wow, you really pissed him off. I'm surprised you can still walk."

"I've been trying to sleep off the ass kicking he gave me for the past two days."

I grimaced sympathetically. "Ouch."

"Yeah, and I kind of need to apologize to you."

A ball of dread sunk deep into the pit of my stomach.

"Me?" I managed croakily. "Uh oh, three months and an ass kicking so bad you needed two days of sleep to recover? And you're prank involved me? I think for the sake of our friendship, you better not tell me." I tried to deliver it like I was joking, but it probably came out more nervous and disappointed than anything.

"I want to apologize. I am really sorry, Steph. I didn't realise how much it might hurt you until Ranger lost his shit."

But, Ranger did tend to overreact sometimes when it came to me. Right? "You're starting to scare me, Lester."

"Nothing like it will ever happen again. Not with my doing anyway. I promise. You don't have to worry; just know that I'm sorry if you ever do find out."

I blew out a breath and nodded slowly. I knew sometimes Lester could take jokes too far. It wasn't personal either. Everyone in the office was a target of his pranks. I just hoped not many people had seen whatever embarrassing thing Lester managed to record me doing.

After another half an hour of literally nothing – I swear I even saw a tumbleweed roll past – I growled loudly.

"This is bullshit, Lester! This is ten times worse than being in the office. Hell, being in the office is fun compared to this."

I threw my last TastyKake wrapper at the dashboard. It landed on top of the small surveillance camera that was linked to the control room. Either we or the control room could turn it on. Mostly the guys used it when transporting female skips, high profile fugitives or to collect evidence. There was a smaller camera mounted on the outside of the car that was always recording. It had come in handy quite a few times when skips thought it would be cute to booby-trap a Rangeman vehicle. Obviously, we hadn't had the inner camera turned on because there was NOTHING to record. At all. We were in deadsville.

Lester reached forward slowly and grabbed the wrapper off, thoughtfully turning it over in his hands.

"Hmmm. Well, we could have some fun here."

I stared at him with my eyebrows raised, interested. "Fun? You looking to extend your three month sentence?"

He chuckled slightly and flashed me a small grin. "Tame fun. Something to entertain the guys in the control room and make us laugh at the same time."

"I'm keen. Ranger wouldn't take me to the mats over that… I think."

"That's the spirit. You have music on your iPhone?"

"Yeah?"

"Great, I think I know the perfect song."

Ten minutes later, we were set. Lester's idea of the perfect song was cued and ready on my iPhone. Both Lester and I had read through the lyrics a few times on his phone. Surprisingly, Lester knew them better than I did. I wasn't sure whether to be worried about that or not.

Lester was getting ready to turn on the camera. As soon as we turned it on, a light would flick on in the control room alerting them, and hopefully they would switch to our view. It was a bit of a gamble, but even if they didn't see our little performance live, there would always be the recording.

"You ready to do this, Beautiful?" Lester asked, finger poised over the on button.

I laughed at how ridiculous we were going to look and nodded. There was no way I wasn't going to commit one hundred percent to this performance. It would be so worth it.

Lester nodded to me as he hit the button and I hit play.

The opening riffs to Taylor Swift's 'Shake it Off' began to play and I put my phone down so I could use my arms.

Lester and I lip-synced and danced to the entire song. Lester didn't hold back, and neither did I. We were coming to the last verse when Lester's and my phones started ringing and the music cut off.

Lester and I were laughing so hard when we saw Ranger's office line on his phone and Ranger's cell phone number pop up on mine. Man, the whole office must have seen our show and made enough commotion to draw Ranger out of his office.

"Santos! You're in deep shit!" Ranger voice snapped suddenly.

I jumped as Ranger's voice echoed inside the car and my gaze locked on movement outside our vehicle. Well shit.

"Holy Shit, that's so cool. I didn't know that was possible," Lester murmured, glancing around at the car speakers and back to the camera. "Why did no-one tell me you could talk to the guys through the camera? What on earth do we have the radios for?"

I smacked him on the arm, my gaze still pinned to the figure outside that was carrying a couple of grocery bags and heading down the street. "Lester?"

"Santos!" Ranger barked again.

I hit Lester a few more times nervously, "Uh, Lester? Isn't that Brent Johnson? Like, right outside our car?"

I'd done a search late last week on Brent. He was a high bond skip that Rangeman only had a week to capture. He was worth a very tidy profit to Rangeman. He was also dangerous as fuck, and the intel was that he'd already skipped out of the State. Looked like the intel had been wrong, or Ranger had known something.

Lester finally picked up on my stillness and staring, my words penetrating through to him. "What? Where? Shit."

He threw open his car door and hit the ground running. I pushed open my door and hitched my bag up on my shoulder.

"Uh, we gotta go, Ranger."

"Babe!" I heard him growl as I jumped out of the car and high tailed it after Lester.

Brent had realized we were on his six and had dropped his groceries and was reaching for his piece as he sprinted further down the street.

I frantically dug around in my handbag as Lester closed in on Brent. Brent and I pulled our guns out at the same time, but he had to turn around to fire his properly, I just had to aim.

It was over in seconds; Brent hit the ground with a bullet in his leg and Lester tackled him a moment later. Brent was quickly secured in handcuffs and Lester had pulled a bandage out of his utility belt and was performing first aid on our skip. I was panting slightly as I caught up to them.

"You okay?" I wondered, watching Lester as he secured the bandage and started patting Brent down.

"Yeah, thanks to you. Nice shot, Beautiful."

Lester heaved the skip onto his feet and started marching him back to our vehicle. The skip wasn't really cooperating and was taking the opportunity to vent his feelings on women, bounty hunters and the justice system in general.

"Ranger's gonna kick our asses for not being more aware of our surroundings," I grumbled, keeping my gun out just in case Brent managed to break out of Lester's hold.

"Yep." Lester popped his p loudly and opened the back door of the Yukon.

That was when Brent decided he really didn't want to go for a ride with us. He bucked and kicked and head-butted, trying to throw Lester, and me as I grabbed his other arm, off and make an escape. We held on and wrestled him into the car. Together we managed to get our fighting skip secured in the leg shackles and the door closed with nothing more serious than a few bruises. Turns out when you were facing life imprisonment, you weren't too keen to go to jail.

Tyres screeched around us, and Lester pushed me against our car, shielding me with his body. I felt him relax as a tingle raced down my spine. We weren't in any danger… well, okay we were in any immediate danger. Once we got back to Rangeman it might be a different story.

Ranger was prowling around our vehicle to our side in seconds. "Santos, mats, oh five hundred. You're riding with Tank."

I glanced around Lester and saw another Yukon and Ranger's Porsche boxing in our car. Yikes. Bones and Bobby jumped out of what I assumed was Tank's Yukon and into our car. Guess they were gonna take care of the skip. Fine by me, I had a feeling Brent would like going into the cop shop even less than he liked going into our car.

"Yes, Boss." Lester saluted cockily, threw me a wink and sidled over to Tank's Yukon.

Ranger's hand wrapped around my forearm firmly and steered me over to his Porsche without saying a word. I suddenly knew with startling clarity how Brent had just felt. I wanted to struggle, curse and kick too as Ranger held open the passenger door of his 911 and encouraged me inside. I didn't though. It probably would have only made my fate worse.

Ranger remained stonily, unbearably silent the entire trip back to Rangeman.

"Okay, I can't take it. When am I scheduled for the mats?" I broke as we stopped at the last set of traffic lights before the turn off to Rangeman.

A small smile quirked up lips and I let out a large sigh of relief. He wasn't too mad – thank God.

"Oh no, Babe. I have a different kind of punishment in mind for you."

Later that afternoon and night I learnt just how enjoyable some kinds of punishment could be. I felt a little bad that Lester's punishment wouldn't be nearly as fun, but if it made him feel any better, I would probably need two days of sleep before I could walk properly again too.

The End.