Anatomy of a Field Operation

Part 1. Ritual

by Oracle

Characters: Seven (this is very much a Team fic)

Pairing: Chris/Vin

Warnings: some owwies, some slash, kinda tame for me

Disclaimer: Once upon a time in the Old West, CBS joined forces with Mirisch Entertainment, Trilogy and MGM. They brought together Seven unbelievable gorgeous men and made a Television series. And all was well. But the fans saw that certain of these sexy, hunky men did look upon each other with lust and longing in their eyes. And being the sweet, kind, generous fans they were wrote stories where they could have fun and hot cowboy sex and comfort each other after extreme pain and angst had been visited upon them. And it was good…

One day, Mog looked at the Seven hunky men (sweat-soaked and caked with dust<WEG>) and thought wisely, "Would it not be fantastic were they to reside in the present day?" So she took the Seven, dropped them into beautiful Denver, Colorado, gave them each jobs to do and made them agents of the ATF…. Team Seven. The devoted fans rose to the challenge, taking them to their hearts and many more wonderful stories came to be. And they all lived happily ever after…

Notes: This series was written several years ago. I was going to send edited versions for posting on Blackraptor. Then REAL, real life happened. Marriage, death, grieving, bad health. So having finally gotten my head out of the fog, I pulled it out, dusted it off and here it is. Thanks for all the good thoughts friends. I knew you were out there even if I was among the missing.

First story in the Anatomy of a Field Operation Series

Everything is ready to go. The van is loaded with all our equipment and weapons, fully packed and even warm inside thanks to Josiah's care for the comfort of his teammates. We have our tactical vests on under black long sleeved t-shirts. Black nylon jackets, thick with a polar fleece liner in Vin's case, lay tossed on desks or hung on the backs of chairs, ready to be picked up on the way out the door.

Vin's hand clasps my arm and mine his. Our eyes meet briefly. The heat in his makes it hard to breathe. It makes me remember last night when I was rocking into his body. The room was dim, just enough to see what we were doing. That was all right, feeling what were doing was more important anyway. I can almost hear that raspy voice of his.

"Harder! Faster! More. Give me more."

And I did. I gave it to him just like he wanted, because I wanted it too. When he talks just that way in that raspy voice of his, it cuts through me like a knife. It also makes me hard enough to pound nails. Which is convenient to do just what he’s asking. Almost like he knows what it does to me.

Shit! The bastard does know. That’s why he does it. I can feel my face set and my mouth tighten as I give him one of my best glares. Of course it doesn’t work. Never has with him. This time all it gets me is those blue eyes widening in a look of innocence that fools pretty much everyone else. I know better. The smart-ass not only isn’t affected by my look, he probably even knows just why I’m doing it.

Tanner would explain it away with one of his Comanches spiritual sayings about our souls communing. I’m not fooled. I believe he just flat out reads my mind. Sara used to do it too. What’s spooky about Vin and I is that we’ve never done all the talking Sara and I did to get to that point. On second thought, maybe Native American spirituality has a point.

As I’m looking at him, that innocent “little boy lost” expression changes for just a brief moment to one that other people don’t see. The one that’s just for me, that I see when he’s thinking about pounding me into the mattress or pinning me against the wall. The one hot enough to make my boots smoke, curl my toes and make my mouth dry. It sends chills up and down my spine. My jeans get even tighter and I have to shift my stance to try and ease the near pain it causes.

His eyes flicker and he knows just what I’m doing and why. And that look sends me straight back to this morning. It was the still part of the night just before the sky begins to lighten. The house was cold all around us, but underneath the stack of covers that thin-blooded Texan piles on the bed it was like summer on the beach. Hot and steamy like the way Tanner just looked at me. We moved slow, stroking, sucking at each other, twisted together till neither of us could really tell where one began and the other left off. It was slow and torturous until we couldn’t stand it any more. Everything exploded into white lights. It felt like my chest cracked open and everything came spilling out. All the feelings: love, want, fear, pain. Like my heart couldn’t hold it anymore and it just poured out. All over the person who made me able to feel it all again. I always see in his eyes just then that he understands what’s happening and feels the same way.

I drag my eyes away from his for now. The others have gathered around us in a loose circle. Just as we do before every mission we go on, before every raid, before every riding off into the sunset to try and save the world from itself. It began on the first assignment we had, once I had gathered all my team together. I started it - to bond them as a team, to keep them safe under my command. Vin and I had already established a connection. That had happened the first time I met his eyes. It seemed natural to clasp his arm in an affirmation of the brotherhood that was already understood between us. The others I pulled into the circle with my eyes and my words. Something began that day. None of us were sure just what it was then.

Even after all this time I'm not sure what I inadvertently started that day. I do know that if not for the bond that began to grow with the first touch of all our hands together, we would not be here. We would be dead, scattered, lost, instead of what we'd formed - a team that was closer than family, closer than brothers. Kipling's Thousandth Man and how in hell had I ended up with six of them. The odds - and Ezra had quoted them to me - were staggering.

I, for one, knew that I didn't deserve this second chance. Why it had come to me, I still couldn't wrap my head around. But there was no denying that it had happened, against all odds. And yet we'd beaten those odds time and time again as well as the likelihood that one of us would die in the performance of this dangerous job we were tied to. The bond, as it developed, drew us closer, kept us from stupid grandstanding maneuvers that would have gotten us killed before the team came together. We were all prone to them then, for different reasons. Josiah and I because we didn't cared if we died. Ezra, just for the hell of it. Vin, because he believed in lost causes. Buck because his heart was just too big to hold all those emotions of his and they led him on some hair-raising adventures. Nathan because helping someone else totally blocked out saving himself in his own mind. J.D. because he was too young, too naive and too gung-ho to save the world to realize just yet that he wasn't immortal.

So, it had become a ritual before we left on a new assignment. While we were still all together, before Ezra left to go under cover, before J.D left to set up surveillance. We performed what Josiah came to call our bit of magic, our spell of protection. What had become almost a superstitious bit of our standard operating procedures. We did it in fear that if we didn't something horrible would happen. We did it in hope that we would all return here, not perhaps all in one piece but alive and still together, because that had become the most important thing, that we continue... together. With even one piece missing, this house of cards we had constructed would collapse and those who survived would be doomed to a half-life for as long as their bodies existed, always missing what they had lost.

Each time, Vin and I began it, clasping arms just as he took hold of me when we first met. The clasp of brother hood, a connection of souls on the same path of honor and integrity, fighting together against wrong and evil. And somehow we found something above and beyond even that, an ease to the loneliness, the warmth and caring of family chosen rather than born, a place and time to belong to as deeply as blood kin. And for me, a complete thaw from the frozen death of feeling and emotion that I had lived with since fire stole all I cared for.

All the others have joined their hands to ours now and I look around me, meeting the gaze of each of the men that have played a part in my return to life and meaning. We each look at the other, meeting eyes, letting the bond, the connection between us open and flow, building slowly until we know that it will hold us together. Enable us to move in perfect synchronization. Do whatever is needed to see this assignment to a successful conclusion. Bring about justice for innocents wronged, punishment for evils done, safety to those who need it. It's a high ideal. And only with these men at my side could we aspire to it.

We walk into danger all too often. We risk everything. For in finding each other we've discovered just how much we have to lose. Yet none of us would back away from this, give up accomplishing all we've been able to do together. Together, we are so much more than the sum of all our parts, broken shattered parts that they were. Together we are whole. Together we have something to live for, something to accomplish that makes a difference in the often ugly, hate-filled place this world has become.

My eyes meet Vin's once again. Always, we look at each other last. We know this could be the last time. So we look our fill, memorizing every little detail, sending final messages with our eyes. I tell him everything that's in my heart, both things already spoken and those only felt. And I see the understanding in those blue eyes that are both so innocent and so old. I know he loves me with that great big Texas sized heart of his. I don't understand why. At this point, I doubt I ever will. But I've come to accept that it's true and that it will never change. When Vin is nothing but a spirit left sighing across the high plains, moaning through the mountain passes he'll still love me with everything he has. And if there's any mercy at all in this world or what comes after, I'll be right there behind him, following his lead throughout eternity.

"Love you, cowboy."

“I love you too, Vin. Always."

"For always."

It's hard to believe it's only been six months since we stopped dancing around each other and started dancing together. Buck would laugh at that analogy. It sounds like something he would say. It seems like it's been forever. I keep finding myself wondering how much more time we'll have, almost as if this is too good to be true. As if I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don't believe I deserve this. No, I know I don't deserve this. So, we do our little ritual each time in hopes that this won't be the time. The time we come back torn asunder, missing our heart or our soul or some other vital part of us.

In between, Vin and I live hard, and love hard, cherishing every touch, every moment, storing them all up, just in case. Every time, I look into Vin's eyes last before we separate and tell him how much he's cared for, how much he means to me. And it makes us all stronger, keeps us safer, that each of us knows without himself the others will be lost, shattered, crippled, blind. We keep each other safe, watching each other's back with the dedication of both pure self-interest and selflessness. None of us wants to feel the hole that would be left should one of us not survive and none of us wants to see the reflection of that hole on the face of the others.

Our ritual done, hands and eyes drop away. Vin holds on to me a moment longer. I squeeze his arm. We're ready. The Bond is strong. We'll accomplish our raid. Take down the criminals and return... together.

“Load up and head out.”

Continues in Part 2. Threads