Chris leaned against his lover's chest, enjoying the late afternoon quiet and the slow pace of another beautiful day. Vin's breath touched his neck every few minutes, like the man was sharing his attention between the afternoon, and Chris' skin. And Chris 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 they both enjoyed.
Buck would be making noise; Chris cut off a snort before it got out, unwilling to break the silence. Buck loved noise, loved movement and vibrancy and there seemed to be few things his old friend enjoyed more, than watching Chris wrangle his children.
Vin shifted behind him, and the button of his jeans pressed lightly on Chris' lower back. It was warm here, and would have been even if it were ten degrees outside. Vin had made him warm in a life gone cold and brittle. Two of the horses, Stud and Merry, nickered at each other in the corral. The barn was getting full, and he couldn't decide whether or not to build on, or tear down and start from scratch with newer, better materials.
Vin would vote for rebuilding, so he could get in there and swing a hammer and climb on scaffolds and generally monkey around with the construction crew. So probably, they'd rebuild.
Buck would want to help too, since two of the new fillies belonged to his two eldest girls. He'd help if Jenny cut him loose long enough, anyway. Chris couldn't keep back the chuckle this time, and Vin made an interrogative sound against his shoulder. A hand swept gently across his chest, absently comforting, and Chris reached up to hold his lover's wrist, and twine their fingers together to reassure. Some would say Buck Wilmington was pussy whipped; Buck would say he was exactly where he wanted to be, with a wealthy, independent woman he loved to pieces, four kids they'd cranked out like a vending machine, a nanny (thank God for all of them) and, Chris would bet, dedicated lovemaking every night and every morning. Jenny had that look about her, and Buck didn't look any different, so…
Better not to think about that; his free hand, he stretched beside him and rubbed slowly up and down Vin's thigh. God, they were all lucky. For all the shit, for Vin's disability and Josiah's near-conviction, for Ezra's cockiness and Nathan's sternness and Buck's flagrant disobedience, his 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 Chris could have imagined.
"You moonin' again?" Vin's mouth, soft as butterfly wings, tickled his ear.
"Yeah," he admitted. Yeah, he sure as hell was. Two more years and he'd retire early at 54, and while that would be the end of the Team, it wouldn't be the end of the team. Three of the guys had already been promoted and were just waiting for him 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 Buck'll keep working, or quit?" Chris asked, musing.
Vin's shrug rubbed against his shoulder blade. "They got plenty of money, there's no reason for him to. Truth to tell, maybe he's stayin' because you are. But maybe he ain't. You asked him?"
Chris shook his head. He'd been a little afraid to ask, a little afraid to rock the boat; he didn't know why, he and Buck had been better, and closer than they'd been since their teens, for years. They still slipped off to go fishing a couple of times a year, quiet and intimate celebration of a friendship that defied definition and the trials of time, and that they both relied on to this day. Jenny didn’t know and Vin never asked and he and Buck never referred to it. Buck's kids spent more than their fair share of time at "Uncle" Chris' ranch, while Jenny and Buck pretended they were roughing it with neither nanny nor housekeeper. It seemed insane to question relationships that worked together so seamlessly, so richly. So well.
"JD might take a transfer," Vin offered.
"You think?"
Vin shrugged. "Nettie may not be around much longer, and I don't know what else holds Casey here, really."
"I'd rather he stayed," Chris said slowly.
Vin's arm squeezed tighter. "Don't we all?"
Chris just nodded, and settled deeper, more comfortably, into his lover's arms.
The sun arced slowly toward the horizon.
Vin had looked so good at Buck's wedding. Vin often did, though, and he'd cut his hair especially for the pictures. Let Buck "polish him up," as he'd said, with a European cut tux that fit him like James Bond's, and his hair a little shorter, styled. Made him look like a movie star, Buck had whispered into Chris' ear, and damned if Buck hadn't been right.
A wedding picture--a new wedding picture--of the seven of them, Buck, 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 Chris and Vin that Buck had slipped the photographer a hundred bucks for: pose 'em, pard, he'd said, just like me and Jenny.
Fucker.
Chris smiled, and turned in his lover's arms. "You remember that photographer at Buck's wedding?" Vin chuckled, and work-roughened hands slid over his jaw to cup his cheeks. Vin leaned in before answering, and the kiss was a slow and sweet and new as the first.
"I remember. You thought I was gonna kill Buck."
"You were."
Vin shrugged, and chortled. "He likes to think that, don't he."
Chris knelt up, straddled Vin's right thigh and bent his head. Vin, always so connected to him, 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?" he asked, his voice already husky with desire. As if Vin had any doubt; Chris' 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."
And Vin, damn him, just slid his hands down Chris' back and onto his ass, squeezing none too gently. "Aww come on, Chris. You know he don't ever come up here without honkin' the horn. We're pretty good together, but I don’t think we're gonna black out."
Chris jerked back, startled. He'd never noticed. Well, he'd noticed the horn, and its sick one-note rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, it had irritated the hell out of him for years. He just hadn't realized why Buck did it. And Vin was right, never did that horn remain silent when Jenny or the kids were with Buck. Usually, it blasted even when Buck was alone.
The thoughts processed through his brain even as he scrambled to his feet and ripped open the fly on his Dockers. Vin laughed, and slid warm hands down his thighs, helping him out of them. "Glad you see it my way, cowboy." Then, "What're you lookin' for, anyway?"
The quiet speculation, the way Vin eased his jeans open and down over a thick and waiting erection, made Chris wonder if Vin really had to ask. He peeled off his shirt and settled down beside his lover, back propped against the wall.
"Ah," Vin joked, and walked bare-assed to the kitchen door, reached inside and into, doubtless, the odds-and-ends jar. Waving a tube of lube, he grinned broadly and sauntered back across the deck. "Subtle."
"Don't talk," Chris breathed, urgent of a sudden. 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, he needed to be with his lover, needed to be buried inside him as far as he could get, and even then it wouldn't be deep enough.
Vin sobered immediately and his eyes softened. He dropped to his knees, and Chris let himself be kissed with a fervor that dazed him. Somewhere along the way Vin had uncapped the tube and loaded up his hand because, cool, slick and strong, it grabbed his cock and squeezed.
Chris yelped, and jumped with the jolt of desire.
Vin laughed, breathy and hungry, into his mouth.
Chris held out his hand, let Vin spread the lubricant across a couple of fingers, and eased his lover across his thighs. More kisses, more long-familiar strokes across greedy skin, until Chris finally parted his lover's cheeks and slid slick fingers in. Vin moaned, and the arm around Chris' shoulders grasped more tightly, almost bruisingly.
"I'm right here," he said, and slid his fingers deep.
Just a few seconds later, Vin was humping against his sternum, and Chris turned his head to bite at an available nipple, taking the resultant shudder of flesh in like a gift, a treat. His due, maybe. God, he was a conceited sonofabitch, and if he forgot, he had six friends to remind him…
"Come on, up now," he urged, and slid down a little. Vin raised himself and arched his back while Chris lined them up and waited for him to settle down, down, down. A soft grunt marked their joining, and the quiver that ran from Chris' groin and out in all directions, like ripples on a pond.
Vin's powerful thighs began to work then, and Chris thrust to meet him. He grabbed his lover's cock, stroked it gently in counterpoint to the fury rising between them, and in scant minutes--locked together at groin, mouth and soul--Vin was coming for him, and his own orgasm was ripped straight from his soul.
They held each other tightly, panting and sweaty. Vin laughed breathily. "Ride 'em, cowboy."
"That ought to be my line, don't you think?" he smirked. Vin's eyes were so deep and clear, Chris could stare into them forever…
"Sun's setting," Vin murmured.
"How can you tell?"
Vin tilted his head up. "Reflection on the window."
"Oh. Yeah." Once an eye for detail, always an eye for detail. Vin eased up then, and Chris held the base of his cock to make it a little easier, and turned in his lap. Chris opened his legs for his lover and bore his weight against his chest, 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!" Vin snarled.
"Easy," Chris said, scrambling for his clothes anyway, "We've got a couple minutes now, before they get up here and unloaded."
"Yeah, I know. I just… I was likin' this."
In a couple of years, 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 Buck's children as easily, as gratefully, as Buck had adopted his own.
"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," Vin grumbled. "Fine, bullshit. They could've waited another half hour to get here, right?"
"You tell Buck that," Chris warned, "and he'll tell you we could've started fucking a half hour earlier, and to stop complainin', you know."
Car doors opened and slammed out front. Vin shrugged, and 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, Vin grinned. "He'd be right."
- epilogue -
They got into the front hall just as the front door opened and the two eldest kids stormed through the front door and Chris hollered his traditional, "Who's tearin' down my house?"
High-pitched giggles that would have run the dogs away started up, as Virginia and Sarah sprinted into their arms. "Uncle Chris! Vin!" they howled, and Chris and Vin swept them up.
"Chris! Vin!" Buck's voice rumbled loudly, "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 oldest friend and a newer, almost as welcome one traded a toddler for a squirming four-year-old boy, who Buck dropped inelegantly to the ground.
"Oh stop it, Buck," Jenny's voice, quieter, "they're doing us a favor."
Buck looked up at that moment and met Chris' eyes, and that rolling, signature laughter of Buck's poured out. "We're doin' them a favor, darlin', and don't you let 'em make you think otherwise."
Buck grabbed CC's elbow just as the boy started to make a dash for the barn. "Huh uh, little man. Inside, say howdy, give your uncle Chris a hug and then we go out together. You know better'n that."
CC--Charles Christopher Wilmington, Chris still cringed sometimes, to hear it aloud--changed directions and swarmed up the steps, Buck 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. Buck 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 would join them. Ez too.
Two years seemed like an awfully long way away.
The End
