Saddle leather creaked and hoofs clopped echoingly against rock outcroppings. The horses snorted with a wuffling noise that bounced around in the thick freezing air and came back to their riders' ears with increased volume. Vin Tanner and Chris Larabee each hunched low on their mounts to combat the rising wind and sideways falling snow. Hat brims hung low over eyes that searched the sky for signs that further progress was possible on this winter afternoon. The tracker finally spoke. His soft voice sounded abnormally loud, being the first words in hours."Need to take shelter," he stated succinctly.
Larabee nodded. What more was there to say? The ride from Chillimonga Springs through the high country had been a bit of a risk at this time of year, but the indications of bad weather had seemed distant enough when they'd embarked on their ride back to Four Corners. This storm, a blower of grand proportions, had swept up from the Southwest, engulfing the two riders in less than an hour. Even Vin, who had plenty of experience traveling through desperate weather was ready to wait this one out.
Chris turned his horse to follow close on the heels of Vin's. It was difficult to see in the blinding snow. Vin was the better leader. And Chris was more than comfortable being led by him. Come to that, he felt totally secure whenever he was around Vin Tanner. The man had lived a hard life and learned to predict and react cleverly to combat enemies natural and not. If he said take cover, they'd take cover, even though they normally wouldn't have made camp for several more hours. Chris noted that the lack of chatter was something else he especially liked about the solitary cowboy. Tanner had a way with words, his bashful poetry recitations had proved that, but he chose them carefully and used them sparingly. Made Chris feel right at home being a naturally reticent man himself. And he and Vin Tanner for some unknown reason seemed to communicate volumes on glances, nods, shrugs and singular words. Larabee wondered if he could be more at ease with anyone.
The tracker pulled up on the leeward side of a tall rock formation where a number of scrubby trees clung tenuously to the hillside. They tethered the horses and set to work erecting a crude shelter of serapes and saddle blankets, tying them to the closest trees. Snow and ice particles stung their cheeks, and clung to eyebrows. When an effective shelter was up, Vin trudged to the trees, scooped away the snow from around their bases and gathered armfuls of dead leaves. Chris joined him and together they took the compost into the tent and created an insulating layer to protect them from the harsh frozen ground. When they'd gathered all they could find, they tended to the horses, pulling them close to the rocks for optimum protection. Then, gathering saddles and bags, they crawled inside the crude tent, pulling the flaps together as best they could. The shelter was high enough only to sit up, long enough to lie down. A fire was impossible.
The men sat huddled together after Vin unfolded the buffalo hide he traveled with in winter, draping it across their combined backs and pulling it close. They sat in silence, letting their eyes adjust to the dimness. As the warmth of their bodies filled the small space beneath the hide, Vin applied teeth to gloved fingertips and pulled the covers from his hands. He rubbed them together vigorously and blew into them. Shifting around a little, he rummaged in his saddlebag and came out with jerky. Yanking a chunk off he offered the other half to his companion.
Chris took the bit and promptly dropped it.
"Shit. Numb fingers," he said.
Vin nodded and retrieved the meager food from among the leaves but instead of handing it back, placed it on his thigh. Then he reached for Chris's right hand and pulled the glove off. Chris grimaced as the friction of Vin's rubbing hands caused prickles and tingles in his frozen fingers. But shortly, he got feeling back and withdrew his hand. "Thanks."
"Yup." Vin handed the jerky back.
A few hours passed and the two men alternated braving the storm to check on the animals and trudge around the clearing to regenerate body heat with sitting in comfortable silence listening to the snow falling and the stomping and snorting of the horses. Chris knew if Vin could have, he would have brought the horses into the shelter, too. He was real soft that way. Not that he'd ever say it like that to Vin, who would surely get his hackles up. He did whenever anyone commented on his ways. Chris didn't mean it as a criticism. In fact, he thought it was a fine attribute that Vin had a big, caring heart. It was just that he'd never had a person to share it with, so animals got the benefit of his kindness. And, these days, Chris did, too, since the men seemed to have forged an unlikely but certain friendship. He smiled, realizing that he'd put himself in the same league as beasts of burden.
"What?" the tracker queried.
"Nothin'. Just thinkin'."
"Dangerous."
"Fuck you," Chris laughed softly.
Vin chuckled and rearranged his long legs to lie down on his back, tucking gloved hands under his armpits. Chris followed suit and the pair laid alongside each other, readjusting the hide to cover as much of their bodies as possible. The lawman didn't realize he'd drifted off to sleep until he woke up with hands and feet like blocks of ice. He tried shaking his hands to bring back the blood flow, but the numbness wouldn't ease. He turned onto his side but came up with a noseful of rotten leaves. His loud sneeze stirred the younger man, who sleepily rolled over. Chris used his wrists to rub his eyes then opened them and found himself nose-to-nose with Vin Tanner.
The snowfall had stopped and a bright moon, aided by the white landscape, cast a light glow through the cracks in the simple tent. In the faint light, Larabee discovered that Vin was staring right back at him. "Sorry," the older man whispered.
"Hands botherin' ya?"
Chris hated to admit it, but it seemed the older he got the worse his circulation got. Vin knew it. In his typical way, he stayed quiet about it, just making a mental note and offering help whenever necessary. The gunslinger shivered. "Yeah."
Vin withdrew his own gloves, then Chris's, and took both of the older man's hands between his own. He rubbed the backs of his friend's hands then brought them to his mouth and breathed into them, softly massaging the fingers. Chris closed his eyes, concentrating on bringing life back to his extremities. The warm air from Vin's mouth bathed his aching fingers. As sensation gradually returned, the older man sighed gratefully and, without thinking, used his thumb to softly stroke the blessed lips that had brought him relief.
As one, both men stopped moving. Chris's eyes flew open as he realized his misstep and he quickly pulled his hands out of Vin's. The embarrassed gunslinger thought he saw the corner of Vin's mouth twitch upward but decided it was just a trick of the faint light. Opening his mouth to form an apology, he was stopped by a finger placed across his lips. Then the silencer gathered Chris's hands into his own and once again brought them to his face, this time placing them on either side of his jaw.
Chris had a flash of awareness that he should pull away, turn over, get up. But he didn't. When Vin let go of the older man's hands, Chris let them stay on Vin's face and ever so tentatively moved his fingers to trace the outlines of the impossibly square jaw. Vin didn't make a move to stop him or assist him. He simply laid on his side facing Chris, eyes wide and searching the older man's. Chris, compelled by something beyond his own knowledge, continued his fingertip exploration of the tracker's face, moving up to run softly across the strong brow bone, then down the blade-straight nose. At last, his fingers were back at Vin's lips, which were slightly parted and expelling warm air in miniature clouds of mist.
The tracker finally moved, taking one of Chris's hands in his own and moving it down to rest on his chest. Through the buckskin, wool, and cotton layers covering it, Chris was still able to feel Vin's rapid, strong heartbeat. What was this supposed to make him feel, Chris wondered. That Vin was scared? That he was excited? Horny? The man in black knew it all applied to him and that, had he bothered to test it, he would have found his own heart beating to the same fast tempo. Then, Vin's tongue lapped at the hand still touching his face. He slowly engulfed Chris's index finger in his warm, moist mouth, and it didn't matter to Chris anymore what his pulse was doing.
He startled himself with a moan and the realization that his breeches were entirely too tight. Briefly, he thought that he should probably stop this, but the idea was chased away as his second finger joined the first in Vin's hot mouth and the younger man began a rhythmic pulsing movement, plunging Chris's fingers deep into his mouth, pulling them out to the tips, bathing them with his tongue, then driving them deep inside again, sucking and sucking.
Speechlessness and a light-headedness came over the gunman, which he was prepared to surrender to when a knee came up and pressed lightly against his hardness. Then he managed a sound, but it wasn't precisely a word.
Once more the younger man took the older one's hands into his own and guided them. One staying on the strong heart, the other traveling slowly, slowly, slowly down the tracker's chest and belly, past hips to a long, solid mass that had filled the space in the trousers that encapsulated it. Chris gasped involuntarily at the length and breadth of the unseen member. Vin smiled for sure then. Chris saw his teeth gleam in the weak light.
In the eon it took to move his lips toward the younger man's, Chris Larabee considered all the reasons this was wrong: He couldn't betray Sarah's memory. He'd never considered Vin in ‘that way.' He'd never considered any man in ‘that way' because he'd been brought up in a righteous home where this sort of thing was a sin against God. Or, how about that he was absolutely fucking terrified?
Finally his lips met the tracker's in a feathery touch of skin against skin and and his doubt and fear evaporated. As the tentativeness of their first kiss gave way to a more confident pressure and tongues joined in the exploration, all four hands roved inquisitively, insistently to experience the hardness, length and curve of muscles, the tautness of sinew, the power of sexual organs straining beneath tight fabric.
Vin pulled his mouth away to gasp for breath. But Chris was lost in the exquisite sensations of long-forgotten sexual arousal. Only an avalanche could have stopped him as he greedily recaptured the tracker's mouth with his own. He was rewarded with a firm hand to his buttocks, pulling his hips to grind against the other's, erections meeting through flimsy barriers. The lawman reached to Vin's waistband, frantically pulling shirttails up and free so that his now-warm hands could feel all of him. Touching and trailing lightly up and down the smooth, muscled torso, he felt goosebumps rise in his hands' wake. It made Chris want to absorb that skin into his own flesh, meld with it.
As if reading his thoughts, Vin reciprocated by pushing Chris's jacket open and tugging at his shirt, which he started unbuttoning. The lawman was so distracted by his own enjoyment, it took him a minute to realize Vin was struggling with his task. And that was only after Vin's grunt of frustration. Chris swiftly undid the buttons and Vin pulled the cloth away, hitched up the undershirt and drew the older man against his own bare chest, engaging him in a jaw-wrenching kiss at the same time.
The men writhed in the leaves inside their makeshift cocoon, generating heat enough to make them throw off the hide blanket. First one on top, then the other, they dove into each other's necks, hungrily sought lips, stroked and squeezed as much skin as could be gathered in a hand at one time, and ground their hips together with desperation.
When he thought he would go mad with need for the younger man, Chris pushed him to his back and, straddling his thighs, unhooked his trousers working them over the solid cock that bounced against its owner's abdomen. One of them growled. Chris heard it and honestly didn't know if he had done it or not. He was too busy unbuttoning his own pants. He rolled off the tracker to lay beside him, lifting his hips to wiggle his pants down to his knees. The men began their mutual explorations again, touching, squeezing, kneading. Mouths sought and suckled straining organs, hands reached beneath shirts to tease hardened nipples. It was only as their frenzy approached a natural crescendo, that they both slowed their movements, falling to lay beside each other, panting heavily.
Suddenly uncertainty loomed between them. Chris tried to hold Vin's direct look but the thought of giving himself to the over-endowed, virile man gave him pause. His eyes flickered downward between them, imaging an invasion by the massive cock. He drew his gaze back to Vin's and swallowed.
The tracker decided the moment for them. Rolling onto his side, he drew his top leg up at the knee and pushed his buttocks backward toward Chris. The lawman's heart raced with anticipation, but he hesitated. Vin looked back over his shoulder at him and nodded encouragement.
Chris tried and tried later to recreate in his mind's eye exactly what had happened then between him and Vin, but the best he could do was to remember the swarm of frenzied butterflies that attacked his gut as their bodies joined for the first time. Their bodies had moved in unison with the fluid gracefulness of a dancer, slowly at first, savoring the stunning sensations of discovery, accelerating as passion eclipsed desire and in turn giving way to a primal compulsion to have and be had. But who had done exactly what, Chris couldn't say.
In the end, they landed in a heap of sweat-sheened limbs and contorted torsos, a light mist of steam rising from their over-heated bodies. They gasped and heaved for breath and when they were able, they untangled and silently pulled clothes up and down and together enough to ward off the freezing air that they both began to feel again. Vin grabbed the buffalo hide, pulling it back over their lengths, settling it carefully around Chris's shoulders.
Lying facing each other, they entwined their legs to get as close as possible. Chris stared into Vin's eyes and tried to fathom the pain and loneliness he had endured and how it had somehow translated into gentle consideration. Vin's wide eyes stared back. No artifice, no duplicity, no ulterior motive. Simply a man offering himself, for what it was worth. Then he touched Chris's face lightly, devotionally.
The older man felt a surge of emotions he thought had atrophied long ago. His new lover trailed a finger to the corner of Chris's eye and wiped at the tear that had escaped despite the gunslinger's attempt to control himself. At a loss for words, he realized he didn't need them when Vin used his second finger to dab another drop then took the tears into his mouth on his fingertips.
Licking his lips, Vin smiled at Chris then took the older hands into his own. Vin massaged the once-aching fingers and said in a hoarse whisper, "Better?"
A brief nod, loud gulp, and Chris Larabee managed to speak. "Yup."
The End