Fic: Uncomfortable Decisions 5/?
Nov. 28th, 2007 07:06 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
princessacadra.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
mag7fansTitle: Uncomfortable Decisions chapter five
Category: Delinquent AU (aka ATF Teen AU)
Characters: Vin, Ezra, Buck/Chris, JD
Rating: R
Warnings: Slash, mentions of child abuse of a sexual nature, profanity
Summary: Sequel to "Delinquent", and "Substitute Dreams" with the Halloween side stories/prequels Halloween Tales part of the Delinquent Universe which is a spin off of Mog’s ATF universe. The boys have some issues they need to deal with. It's a matter of whether they are going to face them or not.
Previous chapters: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Unaccountably Ezra was called away from school early and when he arrived at the office he found the social worker, Amber, waiting for him. It was not who Ezra wanted to see, but he wasn’t sure who he expected to be there, anyway. “An appointment came up suddenly and we wanted to make sure you got in again.”
His mind shut down suddenly because that was the only way for him to deal with seeing her again so quickly. Amber tried her best to get him to respond as did the counselor upon their arrival, but there was nothing Ezra wanted to say to either of them. He didn’t want to talk about his mother or his step-father or the shooting or anything else they wanted him to discuss. There was nothing he wanted from any of them. That and they were making him miss baseball practice for this.
“Will you say anything to me?”
Ezra kept his head down, eyes on the floor and refused to even shake his head one way or another. They could not and would not make him respond to them. There was no giving in, not even an inch.
“Would it help,” Amber asked on the drive back to the ranch, “If we took you to another counselor? Would you talk to someone else?”
There were certain people that Ezra was never supposed to tell things to: police officers, counselors, school personnel (counselors, advisors, teachers, principals), social workers, nurses, doctors, and anyone else that might make his life more difficult. The only lawyer he could trust was Erica. As soon as the car stopped Ezra was out the door and in the house, nearly crashing into Buck on his way to his room.
Buck stared after hurricane Ezra as he passed by him through the house and then headed outside to greet Amber. “I take it things didn’t go well judging by Ezra’s expression.”
“No, they didn’t. He was completely unresponsive again and the counselor is recommending we try someone else that Ezra will talk to.”
“Try John!” Vin had appeared beside them, just back from his run with Chris and having heard enough of their conversation to volunteer input. “John Perkins is good and maybe Ezra will talk to him. It’s worth a try. We’re going tomorrow again, right? Maybe John could fit him in, too, or Ezra could take my appointment.”
After promising to see what she could do, Amber left the premises. School had been difficult enough for Vin before and now the rumors about him and Ezra weren’t so much rumors as reality. More surprising than that was the fact that once there were no longer rumors everyone’s interest seemed to die down. JD had apparently missed seeing the actual kiss at recess though he had heard the stories about it and was still clinging to it all being false.
“Ezra?” Vin peered around the corner into his friend’s room a while later after he and Chris had gotten about halfway through his homework. “Dinner’s ready.” He was still really slow at getting his homework done, but Vin also found he was getting better at it and wasn’t getting so frustrated all the time. Ezra just breezed through his homework without batting an eye, like he didn’t have to think about it at all.
They sat down to eat and Ezra’s eyes fastened on the meat, the pork, and he felt his stomach protest at the thought. He carefully avoided the meat on the table and instead nibbled at a roll while he retrieved some mashed potatoes and corn. His selections did not go unnoticed.
“Don’t you want some pork?”
It took effort to be polite, but Ezra just barely managed it. “No, I don’t eat pig, thank you.”
“You’re not Jewish, are you Ezra?” There was a smile on Buck’s face as he asked. A smile that quickly faded when piercing green eyes turned on him. It suddenly struck Buck that Ezra had never once touched any of the bacon that they sometimes had for breakfast. At the time Buck had thought it was because Ezra barely ate anything in the mornings anyway.
“No. My daddy was Jewish – not my biological father – so I have never eaten pig except for once. It made me sick.” Ezra didn’t elaborate on the circumstances that had lead him to eating ‘pig’, but his expression indicated that it was not a pleasant experience.
That in Buck’s mind meant the end of any meals around pig-products, though he was making exceptions in his mind for big meals where there were more than one kind of meat. In those cases Ezra could pick want he wanted and avoid the offending meat as he did during breakfast meals. “Ez, your daddy, is he still around?”
Ezra shrugged noncommittally. “I don’t know. Last I heard he was living in France or Spain. He could be dead for all I know.”
“And your father.”
A smirk appeared on Ezra face as he curled his pinky and ring fingers back leaving two fingers and his thumb to form the shape of a gun. He turned his hand to point at his own forehead, miming a shot to the head. “Dead, execution style. He made the wrong people mad in the organization or so the reporters speculated – I don’t really know; mother had a restraining order against him, anyway.”
“What ‘organization’ was that?” Chris asked, genuinely curious and somewhat suspicious.
“Oh, you know shipping illegal substances in and out of the country, gun-running, prostitution – both sending Americans over as ‘slaves’ to other countries and bringing in foreign individuals with the promise of a better life. I’m sure there was more, but I can’t remember all the details of it.” There was a long suffered sigh from Ezra. “Of course, I had to glean all of that from other sources as mother never spoke of him – his name was not on my birth certificate, but I did discover the paternity test stating that there was a 99.9% probability that he was my father. That and the papers for the restraining order.”
“What was his name?”
“Patrick Edward Worthington, though he went by Eddie West. He was fairly high up in the chain of command, but apparently not high enough. Out with a bang.” Ezra was grinning as he spoke, clearly amused at his father’s fate and not in the least bit upset. “They were all a bit crazy, the Worthingtons – rich, granted, but not quite right. They all had violent deaths or killed themselves. I have a fortune set aside by my father and grandfather though I can’t touch it until I’m eighteen. I’m more or less the only one left, except for a great-great grandmother who refuses to die; she must be nearly one hundred now, what fortune she has is going to pay her nursing home expenses.” Then he brightened even more, his eyes gleaming with life. “Of course all of her estates are in my name so they can’t be touched. The opulence is almost offensive.”
There was really nothing anyone could say to that or at least nothing that could do it justice. The gleeful way in which Ezra spoke was astounding. Vin was confused by it all because he knew that Ezra wasn’t a mean person and had seen him at his most vulnerable. It was like something or someone else was speaking for Ezra and though he had never met Ezra’s mother he could see her saying those things. Even with as much as Ezra mentioned money and wealth he didn’t seem to care about it, not really – he’d made no demands to go anywhere other than baseball practice and games and he hadn’t spent any money except for his lunch at school.
All color left Vin’s face when he glanced back in Ezra’s direction and at the form that was hovering just behind his chair. It was a man and from Ezra’s previous description it was his father. There was a gaping hole through the shadow’s head and one of its eyeballs was hanging from being shot at such a close range. When the shadow turned Vin could see the back of its head – or what was left of it, with its brain and flaps of skin hanging as they were.
“Junior?” Vin jumped at the sound of Buck’s voice and his hand pressing against his forehead. “You doing all right? You aren’t coming down with anything are ya?”
Vin shook his head but couldn’t find his voice. He didn’t mind the pretty lady that sometimes hovered near Buck or Chris or the little boy that ran through the house sometimes or the other older woman he assumed was Buck’s mother, but he minded this one. There were more dark presences hovering around Ezra than he had ever seen anyone have before. They gravitated to him and he attracted them with his closed-off and darkened spirit and as much as Vin tried to fend them off they kept coming back.
Go, go, go. Go AWAY. Not wanted go away. Vin pushed until the shadow stepped back and away from Ezra then slipped off through a wall. He tracked it to make sure it was gone then turned his attention to his odd little makeshift family who was staring at him. “I’m okay.”
Buck snorted. “Where have I heard that before?”
“It’s true.” Vin went back to eating to make them stop worrying or at least stop looking at him. What Ezra said about his father’s family was a concern, though and might possibly be the reason why Ezra attracted dark spirits. It wasn’t common and it was one of the theories that he’d been kicking around in his head, but this was almost confirmation. It could be a family curse, possibly, which would explain the tragic deaths of his father’s family; Vin wondered if he was reading far too much into things.
That night Vin once more slept by Ezra’s bed, guarding his dreams from the demons that he could chase away. There was nothing that he could do about the internal thoughts and nightmares that plagued him, but he could get rid of the real spirits that haunted Ezra’s sleep. Maddy peeked out of her box every now and again just to keep an eye on the dog Sam, who had draped herself across Vin.
Ezra tended to twitch in his sleep with an unnatural tension, his face soft and innocent even as his hands and fingers moved restlessly. His legs twitched too though not nearly as much as his hands that seemed to always be trying to get away from something or fighting something or someone off. Vin could watch him for hours, while noting that Ezra’s face, even in sleep, never revealed whatever he might be feeling as his body betrayed him. More than once Vin had thought about asking Ezra what he dreamed about and had decided not to. It was possible Ezra didn’t know or remember what he saw in his dreams and it was also possible that Ezra wouldn’t tell him if he did know.
The next morning Vin made the decision to tell JD the truth about himself and about whatever it was that he had with Ezra. It was just a matter of actually telling JD eventually. Sometime. Maybe. He wished he could be as okay with it as Ezra was or at least as okay as Ezra seemed to be about it.
“Ezra?”
“Yeah?” His eyes were bright and wide as they walked toward the end of the drive to wait for the bus.
Vin’s breath caught and suddenly he forgot what he had intended to say. “You’re beautiful.”
Perhaps it was the abruptness of Vin’s statement that made Ezra’s cheeks suddenly flush red or it could have been that he was just not used to hearing compliments. “Is that what you wanted to say?”
“No, but it’s true. I just wanted to say that you shouldn’t worry about your dad or his family because they aren’t you. No matter what they did or thought you don’t have to be like that if you choose not to be – look at my dad’s family. I’d like to think that I’m not at all like that.”
“You aren’t.” Ezra sighed. “Changing meanness is one thing, but trying to escape from depression and schizophrenia when they tend to run in family’s bloodlines? That’s not nearly as easy.”
That was true though not something Vin could really address. There was no way that he would be able to tell Ezra that it wasn’t going to happen when he had no idea. Still, there was one thing he could ask, “Are you depressed?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been happy to know what being depressed means.” A distant look entered Ezra’s eyes and there was no telling where Ezra’s mind had wandered. “But it doesn’t matter. I don’t do things for myself anyway.”
“Who do you do things for?”
“Everyone. Mostly mother.” He snorted and shook his head. “Not that she ever listens to me even when I’m right. I suppose I couldn’t protect her forever.”
It was an odd statement and yet it somehow made sense to Vin. After all, if it had been his mother he would have tried to protect her no matter what except that, “A mother’s supposed to protect you, not the other way around.”
Ezra’s smile was bitter indeed, his voice tinged heavily with sarcasm. “As you know she did a wonderful job of that. Can’t you see how very sheltered and coddled I was? How very like a perfect and treasured pet to be taken care of? She did such a wonderful job protecting me that I have no reason to fear anything at all because I have never known real fear.” There was a cold and glassy look to Ezra’s beautiful green eyes that chilled Vin and as much as he wanted to comfort the other boy he didn’t know how. “She tried to send me away a few times to boarding schools and such, but I refused because someone had to be there if – if someone hurt her or she needed help. Someone had to be there to make sure she was still alive and breathing and to care enough to call the paramedics if she wasn’t.”
While Vin couldn’t fault Ezra’s logic he also couldn’t find any reason other than the obvious why that would have been a concern to him. As much as he didn’t like that idea there simply was no other explanation. It made sense that Ezra had not been the only victim of abuse.
-to be continued-
Chapter Six
Category: Delinquent AU (aka ATF Teen AU)
Characters: Vin, Ezra, Buck/Chris, JD
Rating: R
Warnings: Slash, mentions of child abuse of a sexual nature, profanity
Summary: Sequel to "Delinquent", and "Substitute Dreams" with the Halloween side stories/prequels Halloween Tales part of the Delinquent Universe which is a spin off of Mog’s ATF universe. The boys have some issues they need to deal with. It's a matter of whether they are going to face them or not.
Previous chapters: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Unaccountably Ezra was called away from school early and when he arrived at the office he found the social worker, Amber, waiting for him. It was not who Ezra wanted to see, but he wasn’t sure who he expected to be there, anyway. “An appointment came up suddenly and we wanted to make sure you got in again.”
His mind shut down suddenly because that was the only way for him to deal with seeing her again so quickly. Amber tried her best to get him to respond as did the counselor upon their arrival, but there was nothing Ezra wanted to say to either of them. He didn’t want to talk about his mother or his step-father or the shooting or anything else they wanted him to discuss. There was nothing he wanted from any of them. That and they were making him miss baseball practice for this.
“Will you say anything to me?”
Ezra kept his head down, eyes on the floor and refused to even shake his head one way or another. They could not and would not make him respond to them. There was no giving in, not even an inch.
“Would it help,” Amber asked on the drive back to the ranch, “If we took you to another counselor? Would you talk to someone else?”
There were certain people that Ezra was never supposed to tell things to: police officers, counselors, school personnel (counselors, advisors, teachers, principals), social workers, nurses, doctors, and anyone else that might make his life more difficult. The only lawyer he could trust was Erica. As soon as the car stopped Ezra was out the door and in the house, nearly crashing into Buck on his way to his room.
Buck stared after hurricane Ezra as he passed by him through the house and then headed outside to greet Amber. “I take it things didn’t go well judging by Ezra’s expression.”
“No, they didn’t. He was completely unresponsive again and the counselor is recommending we try someone else that Ezra will talk to.”
“Try John!” Vin had appeared beside them, just back from his run with Chris and having heard enough of their conversation to volunteer input. “John Perkins is good and maybe Ezra will talk to him. It’s worth a try. We’re going tomorrow again, right? Maybe John could fit him in, too, or Ezra could take my appointment.”
After promising to see what she could do, Amber left the premises. School had been difficult enough for Vin before and now the rumors about him and Ezra weren’t so much rumors as reality. More surprising than that was the fact that once there were no longer rumors everyone’s interest seemed to die down. JD had apparently missed seeing the actual kiss at recess though he had heard the stories about it and was still clinging to it all being false.
“Ezra?” Vin peered around the corner into his friend’s room a while later after he and Chris had gotten about halfway through his homework. “Dinner’s ready.” He was still really slow at getting his homework done, but Vin also found he was getting better at it and wasn’t getting so frustrated all the time. Ezra just breezed through his homework without batting an eye, like he didn’t have to think about it at all.
They sat down to eat and Ezra’s eyes fastened on the meat, the pork, and he felt his stomach protest at the thought. He carefully avoided the meat on the table and instead nibbled at a roll while he retrieved some mashed potatoes and corn. His selections did not go unnoticed.
“Don’t you want some pork?”
It took effort to be polite, but Ezra just barely managed it. “No, I don’t eat pig, thank you.”
“You’re not Jewish, are you Ezra?” There was a smile on Buck’s face as he asked. A smile that quickly faded when piercing green eyes turned on him. It suddenly struck Buck that Ezra had never once touched any of the bacon that they sometimes had for breakfast. At the time Buck had thought it was because Ezra barely ate anything in the mornings anyway.
“No. My daddy was Jewish – not my biological father – so I have never eaten pig except for once. It made me sick.” Ezra didn’t elaborate on the circumstances that had lead him to eating ‘pig’, but his expression indicated that it was not a pleasant experience.
That in Buck’s mind meant the end of any meals around pig-products, though he was making exceptions in his mind for big meals where there were more than one kind of meat. In those cases Ezra could pick want he wanted and avoid the offending meat as he did during breakfast meals. “Ez, your daddy, is he still around?”
Ezra shrugged noncommittally. “I don’t know. Last I heard he was living in France or Spain. He could be dead for all I know.”
“And your father.”
A smirk appeared on Ezra face as he curled his pinky and ring fingers back leaving two fingers and his thumb to form the shape of a gun. He turned his hand to point at his own forehead, miming a shot to the head. “Dead, execution style. He made the wrong people mad in the organization or so the reporters speculated – I don’t really know; mother had a restraining order against him, anyway.”
“What ‘organization’ was that?” Chris asked, genuinely curious and somewhat suspicious.
“Oh, you know shipping illegal substances in and out of the country, gun-running, prostitution – both sending Americans over as ‘slaves’ to other countries and bringing in foreign individuals with the promise of a better life. I’m sure there was more, but I can’t remember all the details of it.” There was a long suffered sigh from Ezra. “Of course, I had to glean all of that from other sources as mother never spoke of him – his name was not on my birth certificate, but I did discover the paternity test stating that there was a 99.9% probability that he was my father. That and the papers for the restraining order.”
“What was his name?”
“Patrick Edward Worthington, though he went by Eddie West. He was fairly high up in the chain of command, but apparently not high enough. Out with a bang.” Ezra was grinning as he spoke, clearly amused at his father’s fate and not in the least bit upset. “They were all a bit crazy, the Worthingtons – rich, granted, but not quite right. They all had violent deaths or killed themselves. I have a fortune set aside by my father and grandfather though I can’t touch it until I’m eighteen. I’m more or less the only one left, except for a great-great grandmother who refuses to die; she must be nearly one hundred now, what fortune she has is going to pay her nursing home expenses.” Then he brightened even more, his eyes gleaming with life. “Of course all of her estates are in my name so they can’t be touched. The opulence is almost offensive.”
There was really nothing anyone could say to that or at least nothing that could do it justice. The gleeful way in which Ezra spoke was astounding. Vin was confused by it all because he knew that Ezra wasn’t a mean person and had seen him at his most vulnerable. It was like something or someone else was speaking for Ezra and though he had never met Ezra’s mother he could see her saying those things. Even with as much as Ezra mentioned money and wealth he didn’t seem to care about it, not really – he’d made no demands to go anywhere other than baseball practice and games and he hadn’t spent any money except for his lunch at school.
All color left Vin’s face when he glanced back in Ezra’s direction and at the form that was hovering just behind his chair. It was a man and from Ezra’s previous description it was his father. There was a gaping hole through the shadow’s head and one of its eyeballs was hanging from being shot at such a close range. When the shadow turned Vin could see the back of its head – or what was left of it, with its brain and flaps of skin hanging as they were.
“Junior?” Vin jumped at the sound of Buck’s voice and his hand pressing against his forehead. “You doing all right? You aren’t coming down with anything are ya?”
Vin shook his head but couldn’t find his voice. He didn’t mind the pretty lady that sometimes hovered near Buck or Chris or the little boy that ran through the house sometimes or the other older woman he assumed was Buck’s mother, but he minded this one. There were more dark presences hovering around Ezra than he had ever seen anyone have before. They gravitated to him and he attracted them with his closed-off and darkened spirit and as much as Vin tried to fend them off they kept coming back.
Go, go, go. Go AWAY. Not wanted go away. Vin pushed until the shadow stepped back and away from Ezra then slipped off through a wall. He tracked it to make sure it was gone then turned his attention to his odd little makeshift family who was staring at him. “I’m okay.”
Buck snorted. “Where have I heard that before?”
“It’s true.” Vin went back to eating to make them stop worrying or at least stop looking at him. What Ezra said about his father’s family was a concern, though and might possibly be the reason why Ezra attracted dark spirits. It wasn’t common and it was one of the theories that he’d been kicking around in his head, but this was almost confirmation. It could be a family curse, possibly, which would explain the tragic deaths of his father’s family; Vin wondered if he was reading far too much into things.
That night Vin once more slept by Ezra’s bed, guarding his dreams from the demons that he could chase away. There was nothing that he could do about the internal thoughts and nightmares that plagued him, but he could get rid of the real spirits that haunted Ezra’s sleep. Maddy peeked out of her box every now and again just to keep an eye on the dog Sam, who had draped herself across Vin.
Ezra tended to twitch in his sleep with an unnatural tension, his face soft and innocent even as his hands and fingers moved restlessly. His legs twitched too though not nearly as much as his hands that seemed to always be trying to get away from something or fighting something or someone off. Vin could watch him for hours, while noting that Ezra’s face, even in sleep, never revealed whatever he might be feeling as his body betrayed him. More than once Vin had thought about asking Ezra what he dreamed about and had decided not to. It was possible Ezra didn’t know or remember what he saw in his dreams and it was also possible that Ezra wouldn’t tell him if he did know.
The next morning Vin made the decision to tell JD the truth about himself and about whatever it was that he had with Ezra. It was just a matter of actually telling JD eventually. Sometime. Maybe. He wished he could be as okay with it as Ezra was or at least as okay as Ezra seemed to be about it.
“Ezra?”
“Yeah?” His eyes were bright and wide as they walked toward the end of the drive to wait for the bus.
Vin’s breath caught and suddenly he forgot what he had intended to say. “You’re beautiful.”
Perhaps it was the abruptness of Vin’s statement that made Ezra’s cheeks suddenly flush red or it could have been that he was just not used to hearing compliments. “Is that what you wanted to say?”
“No, but it’s true. I just wanted to say that you shouldn’t worry about your dad or his family because they aren’t you. No matter what they did or thought you don’t have to be like that if you choose not to be – look at my dad’s family. I’d like to think that I’m not at all like that.”
“You aren’t.” Ezra sighed. “Changing meanness is one thing, but trying to escape from depression and schizophrenia when they tend to run in family’s bloodlines? That’s not nearly as easy.”
That was true though not something Vin could really address. There was no way that he would be able to tell Ezra that it wasn’t going to happen when he had no idea. Still, there was one thing he could ask, “Are you depressed?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been happy to know what being depressed means.” A distant look entered Ezra’s eyes and there was no telling where Ezra’s mind had wandered. “But it doesn’t matter. I don’t do things for myself anyway.”
“Who do you do things for?”
“Everyone. Mostly mother.” He snorted and shook his head. “Not that she ever listens to me even when I’m right. I suppose I couldn’t protect her forever.”
It was an odd statement and yet it somehow made sense to Vin. After all, if it had been his mother he would have tried to protect her no matter what except that, “A mother’s supposed to protect you, not the other way around.”
Ezra’s smile was bitter indeed, his voice tinged heavily with sarcasm. “As you know she did a wonderful job of that. Can’t you see how very sheltered and coddled I was? How very like a perfect and treasured pet to be taken care of? She did such a wonderful job protecting me that I have no reason to fear anything at all because I have never known real fear.” There was a cold and glassy look to Ezra’s beautiful green eyes that chilled Vin and as much as he wanted to comfort the other boy he didn’t know how. “She tried to send me away a few times to boarding schools and such, but I refused because someone had to be there if – if someone hurt her or she needed help. Someone had to be there to make sure she was still alive and breathing and to care enough to call the paramedics if she wasn’t.”
While Vin couldn’t fault Ezra’s logic he also couldn’t find any reason other than the obvious why that would have been a concern to him. As much as he didn’t like that idea there simply was no other explanation. It made sense that Ezra had not been the only victim of abuse.
-to be continued-
Chapter Six
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-29 02:16 am (UTC)Love the spirit scene, and how Vin is aware of them being around and being good or evil.
He always wants to help and cares deeply about his new family. I hope he can help Ezra as well, along with the others.
Can't seem to form more coherent sentences, but it's after three a.m. here, so I should probably head to bed.
Looking forward to more!
no subject
Date: 2007-11-30 11:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-29 02:25 am (UTC)Ezra's complexity is coming out as well. REally well done. Especially that he's opening up to Buck and Chris, or at least in front of them.
I'm looking forward to more!!!
no subject
Date: 2007-11-30 12:03 pm (UTC)