Sunset

Buck leaned against his lover's chest, enjoying the late afternoon and the slow pace of another beautiful day. Chris' breath touched his neck every few minutes, like the man was sharing his attention between the afternoon, and Buck's skin. And Buck understood that. The last fifteen years had been some of the hardest, and some of the most precious, and they didn't take enough time to just relax, unwind, enjoy the quiet space and silence that could rest so easily between them.

As easily as it used to, with Vin; Buck cut off a snort before it got out, unwilling to break the mood. Three kids and an independent, hellion wife had brought out the wildness in their mustang, and Vin seemed to feed off the animation of his children. Vin, Jenny and three kids together stirred up trouble, disturbing the peace up here at the ranch, and Buck knew for a fact that Vin took them off the leash on purpose, that Vin loved watching Chris herd his kids, and Buck turned into a jungle gym.

Chris shifted behind him, and the button of his jeans pressed lightly on Buck's lower back. It was warm here, and would have been even if it were ten degrees outside. It had taken awhile to infuse warmth back into a life gone cold and brittle. It had taken patience, and honesty and shouting matches more than once, and time. It had taken Chris finding his way through the pain, and remembering that just because one life was lost, another had always been there and still awaited him, and for years now, their commitment to each other had done nothing but grow, like flowers in the sun.

Two of the horses, Stud and Merry, nickered at each other in the corral. The barn was getting full, and they couldn't decide whether or not to build on, or tear down and start from scratch with newer, better materials.

Chris would vote for rebuilding, so he could get in there and swing a hammer and climb on scaffolds and generally boss the construction crew and pretend he'd done the job single-handed. And new materials would make it a better home for the stock anyhow; winters were cold. So probably, they'd rebuild.

Vin would want to help too, since two of the new fillies belonged to his two girls. He'd help if Jenny cut him loose long enough, anyway. Buck couldn't keep back the chuckle this time, and Chris made an interrogative sound against his shoulder. A hand swept gently across his chest, absently comforting, and Buck reached up to hold his lover's wrist, and twine their fingers together to reassure. Some would say Vin Tanner was pussy whipped; Vin would say (and Buck had vocally agreed whenever Chris proposed to doubt it) that he was exactly where he wanted to be, with a financially comfortable, independent woman he loved to pieces, three kids they'd cranked out fast like a vending machine, a nanny (thank God for all of them) and, Chris slyly whispered on occasion, dedicated and regular sex. Chris had gone so far as to bet on four times a week, but of course it had fallen to Buck to ask.

He'd earned a whack on the head for his trouble, and Vin had said, "You ain't got no manners at all, have you?" and refused to confirm or deny.

But Jenny had that sated look about her, and Buck knew those signs well enough to read them in the dark. And Vin looked more energetic than he'd ever been, so he was getting everything he needed . . .

Better not to think about that; his free hand, he stretched beside him and rubbed slowly up and down Chris' thigh. Chris shifted slightly behind him.

"Am I too heavy?" he asked.

The arm tightened around his chest. "Hell, no."

God, they were all lucky. For all the shit, for Vin finding the woman he'd always wanted and Buck missing the worst of a bullet and Josiah's near-conviction, for Ezra's cockiness and Nathan's sternness and his and Chris' own horrors and JD's youthful ignorance that kept him from ever catching up with the rest of them, they were all alive, and still generally together. And out of the field. Nobody had killed anybody for more than five years, and that felt better than Buck could have imagined.

"You moonin' again?" Chris' breath, soft as butterfly wings, tickled his ear. Buck smiled.

"Yeah," he admitted. Yeah, he sure as hell was. Two more years and Chris would retire early at 54, and while that would be the end of the Team, it wouldn't be the end of the team. Buck, Vin and Nathan had already been promoted and were just waiting for Chris to quit. JD did more and more work for the department at large, and it was just a good thing that computer geeks could telecommute or he'd have been swept back to D.C.

"You think Vin'll keep working, or quit?" Buck asked, musing.

"What?"

"When you retire," he clarified.

Chris' shrug rubbed against his shoulder blade. "They got plenty of money, there's no reason for him to."

"I get the feeling he's stayin' because you are."

Chris shrugged again. "Maybe. I don't know."

Buck shook his head. Chris had been afraid to ask, afraid to rock the boat; Buck didn't know why, the closeness between Chris and Vin had never faltered, not in all these years. They still slipped off to go fishing once a year, quiet celebration of a friendship neither one of them fully understood but that they both valued more than they could say. Jenny didn't know and Buck, while he had his suspicions, never asked. It didn't matter one way or the other, not when his and Chris' life had returned to an altered form of the paradise it had once been--more wild, not enough estrogen he liked to joke, but the truth was, Buck had only ever lived vicariously with his women.

He just wasn't the marrying kind.

Vin and Jenny and the kids let him do almost the same thing he'd done with Adam--maybe better, he guardedly surmised. He and Chris were in the same bed, and Vin had two girls, too. He'd never say it, rarely even think it, because he missed Adam and Sarah sometimes still, when Vin and Jenny and the kids were here, when children's laughter and Chris' hearty paternal coaching caught him unawares. Sometimes he'd look around for her, and Chris would see it and reach out and they'd share one silent, horrible moment of mourning . . .

Most of the time, though, it was like a dream come true, to have laughter and light and love back in this house. Vin's kids spent more than their fair share of time at "Uncle" Chris' ranch, while Jenny and Vin pretended they were roughing it with neither nanny nor housekeeper. It seemed insane to remind Vin that he used to live in a slum lord's paradise.

It seemed insane to question relationships that worked together so seamlessly, so richly, too.

He didn't think he'd stay long, after Chris retired. He didn't know what he'd do instead, but this job had always been about the Team for him, and the Team had always been about Chris. He still owned two condos downtown, the first was entirely paid off. He could probably live off the rent forever...

"JD might take a transfer," Chris offered.

"You think?"

Chris shrugged. "Nettie may not be around much longer, and I don't know what else holds Casey here, really."

"I'd rather he stayed," Buck said slowly.

Chris' arm squeezed tighter. "Maybe he will. You're family to him now, I know."

Buck craned his head around to see his lover's somber profile, and squeezed the hand he held. "We all are, Chris."

Chris's face softened but he just nodded, and Buck settled deeper, more comfortably, into his lover's arms.

The sun arced slowly toward the horizon.

Chris had looked so good at Vin's wedding. Chris usually did, though, and Buck had taken him to a fancy barber shop especially for the pictures. Polished him up a little, with a European cut tux that fit him like James Bond's, and Buck remembered to this day, the sensation of that rented silk tie sliding through his fingers and toward the floor. Vin had said Chris looked like a movie star that day, and Vin had been right. Vin and Jenny had taken off on their honeymoon, and Chris and Buck had had another honeymoon of their own, and the tuxes were returned a day late, wrinkled to hell and back . . .

A wedding picture--a new wedding picture--of the seven of them, Vin, Chris playing best man, and the rest of the team as groomsmen, sat next to older, faded images of Chris in the gray and Buck in the black, images that had yellowed with time and tears. Another picture rested beside it, of him and Chris that Vin had slipped the photographer a hundred dollars for: make 'em look good, pal, he'd said, just like me and Jenny.

Fucker.

Buck smiled, and turned in his lover's arms. "You remember that photographer at Vin's wedding? Chris chuckled, and slid strong, smooth hands over his jaw to cup his face. Chris leaned in before answering, and the kiss was as slow and sweet and new as the first, decades and decades ago.

"I remember. You thought I was gonna kill him."

"You were!"

Chris shrugged, and chortled. "Y'all like to think that, don't ya? But where's that picture now?" he challenged, self-satisfied.

Man had a point.

Buck knelt up, straddled Chris' right thigh and bent his head. Chris, always so easy, so connected to him when it came to lovemaking, bumped his head on the house wall as he tilted his neck back, and the kisses went on too long.

"You want to go to bed, 'fore they get here?" Chris asked, his voice already husky with desire. As if the man had any doubt; Buck's cock poked his belly as he spoke.

"Rather stay here."

Chris blanched. "I do not want those kids running around the corner of the house while we're in the middle of something."

Idiot, Buck thought fondly. "Come on, Chris. You know he don't ever come up here without honkin' the horn. I know we're good together, but I don't think we're gonna black out."

Chris jerked back, startled, and Buck laughed out loud when he realized that Chris had never noticed that horn, and its sick one-note rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. It had irritated the hell out of him for years, but he hadn't realized why Vin did it. "He does it for us, pard," Buck said softly, spelling it out anyway. "Always, with Jenny or the kids, most of the time even when he's alone."

Buck watched the thoughts process through Chris' brain even as he felt his lover push him out of the way. Chris scrambled to his feet and ripped open the fly on his Dockers and Buck, aroused and delighted, slid warm hands down his thighs to help him out of them.

"Glad you see it my way, stud." He eased his jeans open and down over his own pulsing erection, and Chris' eyes narrowed in speculative desire.

"Don't know if I see it *exactly* your way..."

Buck chortled in spite of himself, peeled off his shirt and walked to the kitchen door. Inside, he dug into the odds and ends jar and came out with an unlabeled tube of lubricant. Looked like somebody was going to need it.

When he came back out, Chris leaned naked against the wall, slumped down a little, and one hand absently traced a line up and down his runner's girdle. "Ah," Buck joked, and shuked his jeans. He waved the lube toward his partner as he ambled over and purposely stepped wide across Chris' thighs. "Subtle."

"You're one to talk," Chris retorted, but his gaze traveled up Buck's body hungrily, and by the time their eyes met Chris had that urgency about him, that fists-clenching desire for *now*. They'd sat here for an hour or more, in silent communion, thoughts wandering back over years or forward into possibilities, not saying much at all and comfortable just being together.

But now, Chris needed him, needed his body as much as he'd ever needed his heart, and that knowledge burned so warm and bright, Buck's chest ached with it.

He dropped to his knees.

Chris reached up, kissed him with a fervor that dazed him, that made it hard for him to uncap the lube and smear some over his palm. He wrestled control of the situation back by dint of grabbing his lover's cock and stroking a loaded, slick hand along it.

Chris yelped, and jumped with the jolt of desire.

Buck laughed, breathy and hungry, into his mouth.

Sometimes, they talked a lot. Sometimes they chattered, or tried to remember tedious things that needed doing or laughed, in bed. Most times, like now, they didn't need any words. Buck tilted his head. Chris held out his hand. Buck spread the lubricant across a couple of fingers, and scooted his knees further up, alongside his lover's hips, until he felt the tickle of the hairs on Chris' thighs play against the bottom of his butt, and the gentle pressure of his lover's erection separate his balls.

More kisses, more long-familiar strokes across greedy skin, until Chris finally parted his cheeks and slid slick fingers in. Buck moaned, his arm around Chris' shoulders clutched tighter almost of its own accord. So good . . . Strong thighs moved restlessly between his wide-spread knees, rubbing up his inner thighs. This was an easy day, and Chris was so gentle with his body, slowly circling his fingers to press and stimulate his inner walls, to loosen him enough that penetration would be like a shot of ecstasy, no discomfort at all.

He groaned again, shuddered. His belly carved out an empty ache, and Chris' free hand stroked up his chest to rub at his neck.

"I'm right here," Chris said, and slid his fingers deeper.

Ahh, God . . . Chris was everywhere . . .

He kissed his lover more deeply, trying to focus on the one smooth sensation of mouth on mouth to keep from humping against Chris' sternum, but Chris wasn't letting him distract himself. The hand at his neck smoothed back down his chest, pinched at his nipples, tickled his belly button and finally skimmed over the tip of his weeping erection.

The heat flared through him, in his gut, in his heart. He drew away, witnessed the passion and the smug certainty and the depth of love in Chris' eyes, and couldn't decide whether to laugh, frown or bear down hard on his lover's probing fingers. God, Chris was a conceited sonofabitch. Lucky for all of them, if he got too full of himself he had six friends to remind him . . .

"Come on, up now," Chris urged, and his hands moved to cup Buck's butt and urge him forward. Buck raised himself and arched his back while Chris lined them up, then settled down slowly, feeling the head press and widen then slip through, and the shaft it rode on slide in and in until the craving in his belly was fed and Chris' soft grunt marked the limit of their joining. A quiver ran from Buck's ass and out in all directions, like ripples on a pond.

Buck's began to work then, placed his hands on Chris' shoulders and lifted up, slid down, lifted up, slid down. Chris thrust gently to meet him, the tension in that whipcord body wound tight as a high tension wire. Chris' hand wormed in between them to take up his cock, to stroke it gently in counterpoint with the fury rising between them, and in scant minutes--locked together at groin, mouth and heart--Buck was coming, his orgasm ripped straight from his soul. Chris grunted beneath him, and in the nimbus of pleasure he felt the jerky thrusts, the tight-held pause at the end, the barely-sensed jet inside him.

He found himself wrapped around Chris, hunched over, mashing him into the wall of the house. Chris held him just as tightly, and they just sat there together, panting and sweaty. When Buck got his breath back he laughed, "Ride 'em, cowboy."

"That ought to be my line, don't you think?" he smirked. Chris' eyes were so deep and clear, Buck could stare into them forever.

"Sun's setting," Buck murmured, before he got all mushy.

"How can you tell?"

He tilted his head up. "Reflection on the window."

"Oh. Yeah." Chris shifted beneath him, and Buck eased up, his quads tight and well-worked, his butt aching pleasantly, the aftermath of orgasm washing gently over him and mixing all his emotions together, like rain on a pond. Chris held the base of his cock to make the separation a little easier, and Buck turned in his lover's lap.

Chris opened his legs and bore Buck's weight again, as together they watched the sun kiss the horizon.

The blare of a car horn broke the tranquility of the moment, and both of them jerked.

"Shit!" Buck snarled, climbing to his feet.

"C'mon," Chris said, scrambling for his clothes anyway, "We've got a couple minutes now, before they get up here and unload."

"Yeah, I know. I just . . . I was likin' this."

In a couple of years, if he really did decide to retire too, they'd probably have more of this than they could handle.

"You're the one promised him to play baby sitter this weekend," Chris reminded. He was happy to do it and nobody doubted that; after a couple of years to get over hearing children cry or laugh in his home and know they weren't Adam, Chris had adopted Vin's children as easily, as gratefully, as Buck had adopted Adam and Sarah.

"I knew you'd like it."

"And you don't?" Chris retorted, smiling now as he tucked his shirt into his trousers. "Bullshit."

"All right," Buck grumbled. "Fine, bullshit. They could've waited another half hour to get here, though."

"You tell Vin that," Chris warned, "and he'll think you're off your feed, and ask me why you didn't start fucking me half an hour earlier."

Vin would, too. Car doors opened and slammed out front as he hustled to button up his jeans. Then, after stepping up and pushing Chris' hands out of the way and leaning in for a brief, eternal kind of kiss, Buck grinned. "I should have."

- epilogue -

They got into the front hall just as the front door opened and the two eldest kids stormed in and Chris hollered his traditional, "Who's tearin' down my house?"

High-pitched giggles that would have run the dogs away started up, as Carlie and Sarah sprinted into their arms. "Uncle Chris! Uncle Buck!" they howled, and Chris and Buck swept them up.

"Chris! Buck!" Vin's voice called from the car, "You want to get your lazy butts out here and give us some help?"

Chris leaned in the doorway, half his attention on six-year-old Sarah, who chattered about first grade and bounced in his arms, and the rest on the lovers in his yard. His closest friend and a newer, almost as welcome one traded a toddler for a squirming four-year-old boy, who Vin dropped inelegantly to the ground.

"Oh stop it, Vin," Jenny's voice, quieter, "they're doing us a favor."

Vin looked up at that moment and met Chris' eyes, and Vin smirked. "We're doing them a favor, sweetheart. Don't you let 'em tell you different."

Vin grabbed CC's elbow just as the boy started to make a dash for the barn. "Huh uh, you. Inside, say howdy, give your uncle Chris a hug and then we go out together. You know better'n that."

CC--Charles Christopher Tanner, Chris still cringed sometimes, to hear it aloud, but Vin had no siblings and had wanted to acknowledge his closest ties--changed directions and swarmed up the steps, Vin and Jenny following close behind.

"You're sure you're all right with this?" Jenny asked dubiously, as she did every time.

Chris nodded. The kids liked the sleepover thing in the living room. Vin and Jenny would sleep in the back, saddle up and slip out into the National Park on horses before any of the kids woke, and tomorrow some or all of the team would be up: Nathan with Rain and Summer, JD and Casey for sure. Maybe Josiah and Ezra would join them.

They did need to rebuild the barn. Maybe even get some animals in, because six hundred acres against a national forest deserved to have something grazing on it. He'd have plenty to do, and the idea of leaving Chris every morning to go and work for someone who wasn't his lover--he was spoiled and he knew it. Always had been.

And two years seemed like an awfully long way away.

The End