Disclaimer: "If only, if only," the woodpecker sighs, "The bark on the tree was as soft as the skies." While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely, Crying to the moo-oo-oon, "If only, If only." –Louis Sachar, Holes
A/N: A birthday present for Erica, aka, The Melodious Nocturne, my dear friend and fellow Mag7 fan. It's a few days late, dearie, sorry about that. But I hope you enjoy anyway.
To the rest of you, this is my first Mag7 fic! I hope you all enjoy it as well.
It is, Chris decides later, as he nurses a black eye and glowers at his men, who are doing a marvelous job of completely ignoring him, probably his own fault. He really should know better by now. But for goodness' sake, why is it that everywhere they go, those two get into trouble?
Nathan tries to hide his amusement behind cold compresses and herbal teas, but his shoulders are shaking slightly and Josiah's muted chuckling is infectious. Buck is still off with his latest conquest, doing Lord only knows what, and J.D. is sulking, gingerly pressing a wet flannel to his busted lip.
As for the other two…
(It is not, actually, Chris' fault, but it is true that he really should have known better.)
000
The saloon is a quiet one, as saloons go, with farmers and cowhands drinking away sorrows and hard-earned pocket money one glass at a time, murmuring to each other and themselves about crops and horses and whether or not the rain will come in time to stave off the threatening drought. The dull roar of rough voices and clinking glasses is a soothing sound, and the men who live within it bask in the familiar comfort of burning whiskey and peaceful company.
This, naturally, is when the fight breaks out.
The Seven were just passing through, spending the night in this dusty little town on their way home to Four Corners. A quiet drink and a bed for the night hadn't seemed too much to ask.
Clearly, they are going to have to lower their expectations. Again.
Chris is comfortably sprawled in a chair drawn up to a table with seven chairs, only four of which are filled, sipping at his liquor and enjoying the feeling of warmth it sends through his blood, when the murmuring starts.
At first, he ignores it, because this is a saloon, and even if it's been quiet until now, he of all people knows that this can change at a moment's notice. It's only when the murmuring becomes muttering, and then raised voices, and then cursing and shouting that Chris looks up from his drink and lets out a curse of his own because where are Vin and Ezra?
He stands up suddenly, eyes scanning the entire place, aware of Josiah and Nathan's keen eyes joining in, searching for their missing brothers-in-arms. Chris is hoping that he'll see them over by the poker table (Ezra sweeping the game with an easy smile and a friendly laugh and Vin silently keeping an eye on everyone's guns because that's what Vin and Ezra do), but no such luck. Ezra isn't even playing tonight.
Which means…
Chris swears again, because he should have known right away that if there's a scuffle in the saloon, he can find those two right in the middle of it. He glances behind him and stops incredulously. Josiah and Nathan are still seated at their table, watching the proceedings with amused interest, and showing absolutely no inclination towards getting off their backsides and helping. J.D. is slouching in his seat, carefully not looking at Chris, and trying to bury his face in his mug.
Unbelievable. Chris shakes his head and starts for the knot of men next to the bar.
000
"What," Chris asks later, as Nathan finishes forcing his awful tea down everyone's throats, "were you two thinking? How on earth did you to get involved in a dispute between farmers? For goodness' sake, Ezra wasn't even playing poker!"
This earns him a dirty look from said gambler, but Chris stubbornly holds to his position. It isn't like Ezra's playing hasn't gotten them into fights in the past (there's a reason Vin stands behind him and watches everybody's gun hand these days), and the part of Chris that is desperately trying to make sense of this ridiculousness is pathetically still clinging to its old standbys. Ezra plays poker. People don't like losing money to Ezra in poker (which is what happens when Ezra plays poker), so people take a swing at Ezra. And then Vin intervenes (if Ezra hasn't already done it for himself), and next thing they all know, the two of them are caught up in a bar fight.
Chris isn't really sure how to handle a situation in which they ended up in a bar fight that had nothing to do with them.
"You two," he says to Vin and Ezra, "are like children. I can't take you anywhere, can I?"
Vin has the grace to look slightly sheepish. Ezra, of course, is completely shameless, and simply scowls back at Chris, obviously still sore over the poker comment.
Chris is still not looking at Nathan and Josiah, because Nathan is giving him meaningful glances that he can't interpret, and Josiah apparently still thinks this whole thing is hilarious.
(J.D. is muttering to himself about how he wants another drink.)
000
The crowd of men parts before Chris like butter when a hot knife comes by, but he still doesn't make it in time to prevent the first blow.
He can say one thing for Vin and Ezra, they rarely throw the first punch. No, all fighting on their part is done in self-defense, or the defense of someone else, because Ez and Vin are smart enough to know that Chris would be very, very unhappy if they ever started something like this on purpose.
And good Lord, he thinks, why does he sound like his father?
Ezra takes the blow to his cheekbone like he's thinking it too, careful to make sure Chris knows who started this, allowing the farmer to get one free shot in and then the gloves are off and Chris' Southern gentleman of a nuisance is back to back with his wayward Texan pain-in-the-neck and both are swinging hard.
A strange thought comes to Chris at this moment, as he prepares to wade into the fray and haul out the two delinquents he has the dubious honor of laying claim, and it is:
Where the devil is Buck, and why is he never around when I want him?
000
"What am I going to tell Mary," Chris asks, "when she gets a telegram from the local newspaper that says her town's lawmen were just involved in a saloon fight?"
Ezra opens his mouth to say something. It probably would have been witty and clever and possibly something that could make Chris actually strangle him, but luckily for all of them, Vin kicks Ezra in the ankle and the Southerner shuts his mouth.
Thank God for small favors.
Chris sighs wearily and looks around at them all, five out of the six men he calls his brothers (where the heck is Buck?), some of them nursing bruises and some of them trying not to laugh. His men, supposedly. His "boys" is probably more appropriate. He sighs again.
How did I get so lucky? He thinks that possibly this is God's reprimand for all the years of wallowing and drinking and getting into fights for no good reason. Either that or he just really knows how to pick 'em.
(And really, they do not, strictly speaking, belong to Chris, but he figures that, at this point, he's earned the right to call them his, and anyway, what are they going to do about it, exactly?)
000
At first the men come two at a time, and the fight is, more or less, equal. But then the drink takes over (or simple mathematics: there are ten of us, and only two of them, what are we waiting for?) and the whole crowd surges forward at the same time and Ezra and Vin go down under a crush of bodies.
Chris snarls a little bit and jumps in.
It is right about now that Buck would really come in handy, because Buck may be the gentlest of giants to his friends and to any lady that crosses his path, but put him in a fight and he's the toughest son of a gun Chris has ever had the dubious pleasure of knowing. But Buck isn't here, and Chris is the only one coming to rescue the two idiots at the center of this mess, so he lays out with an elbow here and swings his left hook into someone's eye there and he pretends he doesn't know that Josiah and Nathan are just sitting back there laughing their butts off at him.
Vin is a peacemaker at heart, a mild soul with a placid temperament. Ezra is a smooth-talking, easy-going son of a gun, and don't even try to tell Chris that Ez can't weasel his way out of most tight spots using nothing more than his smile and his tongue. So why is it that they can't seem to stop these things before they start?
Chris grabs the wrist of a man who is choking Vin and squeezes, hard.
000
It isn't, Chris knows, that Vin and Ezra try to get themselves into these messes. And it isn't that they don't try to get out of them. But it seems (to Chris, anyway) that they don't try quite as hard as they could.
"I mean, you're a conman! A fast-talking, gun-slinging, smarty-pants. And you're telling me that you couldn't talk your way out of a saloon brawl?"
Ezra does not reply, merely rolls his eyes –his usual response to Chris' dressing downs.
"And you, Vin," Chris continues, scowling at the tracker, who is much more unused to being in this position than Ezra, and appears to be embarrassed for it, "I know you can hold your temper. What is it about him," unfairly, he points to Ezra, "that causes you to get into this stuff?"
"That ain't fair, Chris," comes Vin's quiet retort, the only words either of them have spoken since the six of them left the bar room downstairs. And Chris winces, just a little, because Vin is right, that wasn't fair at all. It wasn't Ezra's fault.
Well. It wasn't all Ezra's fault.
Chris takes a deep breath. "Sorry," he mutters, which appears to surprise Ezra, who was clearly not expecting an apology, even one as half-hearted as that. Huffing, Chris cuts his eyes to Nathan, who is giving him a look that he can almost interpret as approval, and Josiah, who is attempting to coax J.D. out of the bottle no one had seen him bring up.
It is possible, Chris muses, that all of this can be attributed to Vin and Ezra's, admittedly, monstrously poor luck with excursions outside of Four Corners. After all, it seems like every time they leave their sleepy little town, one of the two ends up bleeding somewhere.
(He is, Chris admits, possibly blowing this out of proportion.)
000
J.D. only enters the fracas when some unlucky denizen stumbles into his elbow, knocking his drink all over the place, and then, it is only to take one fist to the face and then summarily dispatch the unsuspecting offender with a righteous air that not even Josiah could have pulled off.
Nathan has always rather suspected that J.D. could be a very, very vicious alcoholic, which is why they must never, ever let him get as bad as Chris.
000
Chris has finally dropped all pretense of lecturing and is now contenting himself with glaring and pressing just a little too hard as he holds the cold, wet cloth against the side of Ezra's head. A pointed snort from Josiah softens his hands before he even realizes it, and then he has to pretend not to know why Nathan is chuckling quietly behind him.
Ezra, whose own hands are occupied with dabbing blood from his mouth and trying to bring the swelling in his right eye down, does not appear to notice the difference in pressure. He merely offers a soft murmur of thanks to Chris, eyes downcast like he expects the scolding to begin again any second. Chris sighs, because he doesn't want to be this for Ezra, doesn't want to be stern and unyielding and severe, but he doesn't know how to change what was set in place so early in their relationship. And so Chris gentles his hands and softens his face and hopes that Ezra understands, at least a little bit, what Chris is trying to tell him.
He probably does, because in one second, Ezra's whole face changes, and he is suddenly animated, smirking up at Chris with his one good eye and holding out the cold compress as a peace offering. Rolling his eyes, Chris accepts it, and places the cloth against his own face, wincing as the bruise reacts to the cold.
Vin is silent, as usual, but clearly still a bit upset from Chris' earlier ire. The older man catches the tracker's eye with little difficulty, and holds his gaze with a kind smile until Vin relaxes slightly. And then Chris waggles both eyebrows at his friend and Vin can't help but smile back.
"Seriously, though," Nathan asks, because even though Chris can't stay mad at those two for long, Nathan sure as heck can, if he has a good reason, "what happened?"
What happened, as it turned out, was that Vin and Ezra were trying to order another round of drinks when one of the men already seated at the bar decided that he took offense to Ezra's fancy coat and wanted to make something of it. Ezra tried, Vin supplies, to talk the man down, but was completely unsuccessful. And then, Ezra picks up the tale, when the man threw a punch, Vin decided that Ezra was incapable of defending himself (this was said with a playful glare in Vin's direction) and caught the blow before it could land. The other man's friends didn't appreciate the two-on-one "fight" and a shouting match ensued. And then a shoving match. And then the bar fight.
(So it was Ezra's fault, after all, sort of. Somehow, this is not surprising to Chris.)
000
They stumble out of the crowd of angry, drunk men bleeding, bruised, and blaming each other. Chris shuts them up with one steely-eyed glare and summons Josiah, Nathan, and J.D. from their table the same way. As one, the six of them make their way upstairs to the room Nathan was sharing with J.D. and Josiah and collapse in various places in various states.
Nathan is personally amused with this whole situation, because he's seen enough bar fights to know that Ezra and Vin would come out of it in one piece, though not necessarily untouched. He brews tea quickly, pours it out and passes it around with the cheerful sadism felt by one who does not have to drink the medicine today. Chris looks like he wants to kill something, but that's alright. He usually does. Nathan has come to believe this to be Chris' normal face.
Josiah desperately wants to laugh at the look on Chris' face, but he knows instinctively that that would be disastrous, so he manfully stifles his guffaws and only allows the occasional giggly chortle. He can see Nathan's quivering shoulders, and he knows the man is only seconds away from completely breaking down in laughter, which, of course, just makes Josiah want to laugh harder.
J.D. just wants to finish his drink in peace. He really hadn't thought that would be too much to ask, but clearly, he should have thought again. Why Vin and Ezra insist on acting like twelve year olds is beyond him, but he would deeply prefer it if they would leave him and his drinks out of it.
And then Chris finishes brooding, or whatever he was doing, and says, "What were you two thinking?" and J.D. sort of stops listening, because they've all heard this before.
000
They are all bedded down in Nathan, Josiah, and J.D.'s room (ostensibly because this room has the medical supplies and plenty of floor space, but really because Chris is feeling sentimental and wants to keep them all close –or possibly he's feeling suspicious and wants to keep an eye on Ez and Vin, it's hard to tell with Chris, sometimes), and everyone is finally drifting off to sleep when the door opens.
Buck troops in happily, practically bouncing in his delight with himself and his own prowess as a man, but stops short almost instantly.
"What the…" he trails off, because Chris is sitting straight up and glaring at him. Buck swallows.
"What's going on?" he asks cautiously. Chris' eyes could have cut iron.
"There was a… kerfuffle," he says frostily.
Upon hearing this blatant disregard for anything remotely resembling coherency, maturity, or, well, facts, Nathan can no longer restrain his amusement and he bursts out laughing. This, naturally, sets Josiah off as well, and then Vin and Ezra seem to catch exactly what's funny about the situation and they start giggling, too.
Buck stares at them all in something that is sort of like concern and sort of like delight. "What," he said carefully, "happened, exactly?"
Chris rolls his eyes and lies down again, in his place between Ezra and Vin, who are making no attempt whatsoever to suppress their laughter in a way that makes him think they might have concussions.
Buck looks helplessly to J.D., in hope that one of his friends would not have succumbed to madness since he left with Maryanne.
"Should I have come back earlier?" he tries for a joke.
J.D.'s eyes narrow and his pillow hits Buck in the face with deadly accuracy for a drunk man.
Perhaps, Chris thinks as Buck collects some blankets and joins the nest on the floor, they are not the most stable, well-adjusted of groups, but they are his, and that's got to count for something.
(And Chris is not feeling sentimental at all, actually, he just wants to make sure he knows exactly where every one of his men is tonight. That's all.)
A/N: In which I set out to write a story featuring E's favorites, and end up sneaking in one of my own as well. Or, in which the story features Chris heavily, yet still manages to be all about Vin and Ezra.
Or, as well, in which the author accidentally wrote a character study of only two characters, using another character's point of view and a lot of parenthetical statements.
Also, this was supposed to be funny. And then Chris wanted to angst or something, and now we have… this. Which is sort of funny and a little bit angsty and weirdly non-denominational as well. I do hope you enjoyed it though, Nocturne. It was absolutely fun to write. Happy Birthday.