Fic: Uncomfortable Decisions 8/?
Dec. 16th, 2007 03:28 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 eight
Category: Delinquent AU (aka ATF Teen AU)
Characters: Vin, Ezra, Buck/Chris, JD
Rating: R
Warnings: Slash, mentions of child abuse, 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, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chris didn’t make it to the game on Friday, something about working late, but JD was there sitting with Buck and Vin in the stands. Ezra ended up sitting out part of the game because he’d missed practice on Wednesday and he’d had to sit out of practice on Monday. It ended up being an okay game though they didn’t win – not even playing in the final innings could save the game because they were that far behind. Still it was good to be active and involved.
They got junk food at the concession stand and Ezra even got them some extra things, just because. Not that Ezra ate any of it; he claimed to be on a diet. When Vin told Ezra that there was no way he should be on a diet because he wasn’t fat Ezra had replied simply, “Yes I am.”
“Oh, please. You could bounce a dime off your ass.” JD was rolling his eyes as he tried to fit a whole giant pretzel in his mouth.
“You’ve been checking out my ass, huh?”
If it wasn’t so upsetting Vin might have laughed when JD started choking on his mouthful of pretzel. Though he was naturally concerned that JD was choking the less immediate but more concerning prospect was Ezra thinking he was fat. There’d been a girl – well, three actually, but only one that Vin remembered with much clarity – who was stick-thin and had been obsessive with her weight to the point that she had to be hospitalized because she wouldn’t eat. They’d thought she was going to die and she almost had if it hadn’t been for the feeding tube they put in her.
The more Vin thought about it the more he wondered. Ezra barely at anything for breakfast and if he could get away with it he would eat nothing at all. At lunch Vin knew that while Ezra did buy his lunch he rarely ate anything he bought, preferring to hand his food off to his friends in a subtle but planned manner. Dinner was pretty much the only meal Ezra ate much of anything substantial and that was because he was faced with all of them watching him at one table. Even then Ezra tended to eat very little and pushed most of his food around, using words to distract from his eating habits even as he scraped his leftovers into the trash.
Since it was possible he was again reading too much into a situation, knowing his own vivid imagination, Vin kept quiet while vowing to pay more attention. After JD got picked up after the game Buck took them back home and since Chris still wasn’t back from work Vin went on a walk with Ezra. They walked out toward the woods along the pasture fence in companionable silence until an eerily familiar click, click caught Vin’s attention. The flame from the small Bic lighter made him start in surprise as Ezra inhaled the smoke from the cigarette that had found its way to his lips. “Want one?”
Vin jerked backwards and shook his head.
“It’s just a cigarette.” Ezra leaned against the fence as he shoved the pack of cigarettes into his jacket pocket.
“I’m on probation. Don’t you know that?”
Ezra shrugged his shoulders. “So?”
“Part of my rules of probation includes not smoking. You know how much trouble I could get into if I smoked?” It wasn’t just the probation, but it was a good excuse. Vin hated cigarettes. The smell made him nauseous because it made him remember what he didn’t want to remember.
“Who’s going to tell? I won’t.” He took another puff on his cigarette as Vin backed further and further away from him.
“No.” It was a matter of turning and fleeing for the sake of survival. Helping Buck in the barn was better and was something he could throw himself into. By the time Ezra wandered back toward the barn and began discreetly feeding Cassius treats they had finished up and were headed inside. Ezra stayed outside for a while longer and only came back inside after Chris had arrived home and dinner was ready.
When Ezra passed by Chris to head toward the dining room, Chris’s arm shot out blocking the boy’s way. “Why do you smell like an ashtray?” It was a rhetorical question because the next thing Chris said was, “You’ve been smoking.”
Ezra didn’t deny it, but he also made no response other than to stare blankly at the man. What else could he do? It was certain that Vin hadn’t had a chance to tell on Ezra – or at least not a chance to tell Chris – and something made Ezra suspect that Vin wouldn’t have told even under pressure.
“Hand ‘em over. Matches, lighter or whatever you’ve got, too.” There might have been a fight with the way Ezra was staring at Chris almost glaring and then he reached into his jacket pocket and dropped the slightly crumpled box of half-full cigarettes into Chris’s hand. It was followed shortly by the lighter. “Anything else that you have in your room that you shouldn’t have you’d better go get and bring to me. If you choose not to I’m going to go through everything myself and if I find something you shouldn’t have it’s gone. Now go.”
They all waited as Ezra shifted his weight from one foot to the other then edged past Chris to his room. He brought back two more unopened packs of cigarettes and another lighter. “Is this it?” When Ezra hesitated Chris told him, “Go get it.” Ezra turned and walked back to his room and brought back not cigarettes but two bottles one full and one nearly empty.
“Vodka.” Chris stared at the bottles in disbelief. “Ezra, how full was this bottle when you got here?”
Cool green eyes gazed steadily at Chris as he replied, “Completely full.”
“And you drank this all by yourself?” His eyes flickered toward Vin as he spoke and it was only with great effort that Vin didn’t drop to the floor and cower at the look alone.
“Yes.”
“Is there anything else you shouldn’t have – drugs, alcohol, anything?”
There was another small pause then Ezra met Chris’s eyes calmly. “Not unless you want to confiscate my condoms, too.”
Chris shook his head. “No, you can keep those, though I want you to understand that there should be no reason that you should be involved in any occasions that you would need them.”
Dinner was a tense affair and Vin did notice that Ezra ate hardly anything, but that could have been due to the previous circumstances. They all gathered in the living room afterwards though no one seemed up to conversation and the TV was just on for background noise. “You don’t need to smoke or drink, Ez,” he finally said to break the silence. “You’re better than that.” When Ezra didn’t answer, just burrowed deeper against the couch Vin whispered, “You know why I don’t like cigarettes… or alcohol?”
Ezra focused on him and shook his head no so Vin pulled off the sock on his right foot and turned his foot so that Ezra could see the bottom of it. A soft “ah” left Ezra’s mouth as he leaned in and though Buck and Chris were looking too he didn’t mind.
“What’s that?”
Ezra was tracing the design on Vin’s foot lightly and answered Buck so Vin didn’t have to, “Cigarette burns. Perfect little connecting circles. He held you down on your belly, probably sat on you,” Ezra speculated. “Kept your other leg down with his and burned here, first.” Vin shivered as Ezra touched the old burn closest to his heel and moved upwards. “It’s the deepest burn. One, two, three, four, five then six and seven across. The irony, seven, the supposed perfect number, the holy number, God’s number burned into a cross.”
“I didn’t know there was seven, but it fits.” Vin had little memory of that night and that was probably for a good reason. All he could remember hazily was that it had hurt and that distantly he could recall the smell of his skin burning. “M’daddy said I was possessed by something demonic and he wanted to make it go away.”
“The irony there is that he was the demonic one.” Ezra laughed even though it wasn’t funny and Vin couldn’t help but smile.
Then the smile faded abruptly as a thought struck Vin. “How did you know they were cigarette burns?”
“Hm? Oh.” Ezra shifted up on the couch and nudged down the top of his jeans, twisting so that Vin could clearly see the perfect circular mark on his hip. “I used my teeth,” he said by way of explanation.
Chris was suddenly coughing liked he’d choked on something and Buck had closed his eyes sharply. Vin didn’t get it. “What?”
“I used my teeth,” Ezra repeated like it made sense and smiled to show his teeth to Vin as if there was some meaning behind it that Vin simply was not grasping.
“Ezra. No.”
Vin looked in Chris’s direction, offended that he’d cut off whatever explanation Ezra might have continued on with. He supposed it didn’t matter because he would just ask Ezra about it later anyway and he was sure to get an answer then. But what did a cigarette burn have to do with using his teeth?
#t#
As soon as the boys were in bed – or, rather, Ezra was in bed and Vin was curled up on his floor – Buck went looking for Chris who had disappeared into their bedroom. Chris was flopped face down on their bed and if not for the tension along his back and shoulders Buck might have assumed he was asleep. It had been a long day because he’d had to work over to wrap things up and part of it was the fact that Chris had missed going to Ezra’s game.
“How ya holdin’ up there?” Chris shifted into Buck’s hand as it stroked down his back.
“Tired.” He twisted his head to get a better view of Buck as he settled beside him. “You know what they say about invisible scars hiding deeper pain you can’t see and how they can sometimes be worse than the visible scars? I thought I understood that. I don’t.”
Buck made an attempt at working some of the tension out of Chris’s back, but when the man didn’t want to relax or be soothed there was nothing anyone could do. “I can’t – ” Chris started to move in his grasp and Buck applied just enough pressure to get him to stay still. “Why would someone do that? Hold a kid, any kid, their son down like that and do that, to burn them not once or twice but seven times with a cigarette? And Ezra… used his teeth. I can’t even – I don’t want to wrap my mind around that.”
“Does it bother you because it happened or because they are so matter-of-fact about it?”
On the one hand it was a horrifying thought to imagine that it happened at all even though he’d been aware of aspects of what both boys and gone through. It was just one more thing to add to their list. The way Vin talked about it so casually like it was normal and that it wasn’t a big deal to talk about it was upsetting, too. That and Ezra calmly talking about things Chris didn’t think a kid his age should know about, or at least should never have had forced on him, was not something he wanted to talk about. “Both, I think. I’m afraid for them.”
“I know, but that’s not going to help them any.” There was no changing the past and they wanted the boys to feel that they could tell them anything without retribution. Being afraid of what happened to them was easily misinterpreted as disgust of the act itself and possibly of the boys for allowing it to happen. Vin was more reluctant to offer up things from his past and his offerings were few and far between. On the other hand Ezra seemed to easily offer hints of his abuse, but not nearly the extent of it like he was bursting to tell someone and at the same time didn’t want to. That was so like Ezra, though – a bundle of contradictions.
“Is it going to be okay?”
The question stunned Buck into asking, “What?”
“Is it going to be okay?” Chris repeated. “Vin asked me that and I didn’t really answer him because I don’t have a clue. Just when I think everything’s settled it all changes again.”
“You ain’t saying what I think you’re saying, are you?”
“No, no. I’m just saying that my innocent picturesque up-bringing did not prepare me for all of this and I’m out of my range of understanding.” He yelped when Buck’s fingers brushed across his ticklish sides. They both knew that they had seen a lot in their time, but that Chris had definitely had an easy childhood and had always assumed that that was how it should be. While Chris had seen that Buck and his mom had to scrimp and save his mom had always loved him and done her best to take care of him. Anything else was shocking.
“They’re like little abandoned kittens, Chris. Like the ones people try to drown or shoot or whatever only they’ve already had a lot of stuff done to them that didn’t kill ‘em, just made them afraid. Now one little kitten might spit and hiss and growl and try to take on the world while another little kitten is gonna cower up in a little ball and try to hide. Another little kitten might let you hold it and pet it and then the next minute it’ll turn on you so fast your head will spin.” A smile had started to appear on Chris’s face at the thought of the various kittens they had had over the years, a smile that quickly faded when he thought of the boys.
“Just like kittens, huh? You know they put some feral cats to sleep. Some of ours have up and run away and who knows how they ended up.”
“What, no jokes about this being a ‘cathouse’?”
“Buck!” It wasn’t funny at all but Chris was laughing so hard that tears were running down his face. At least Buck liked to think it was the laughter causing the tears because he did hate to see anyone cry but he especially hated to see Chris cry. It was even worse when Buck couldn’t do anything to make it all better.
-to be continued-
Category: Delinquent AU (aka ATF Teen AU)
Characters: Vin, Ezra, Buck/Chris, JD
Rating: R
Warnings: Slash, mentions of child abuse, 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, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chris didn’t make it to the game on Friday, something about working late, but JD was there sitting with Buck and Vin in the stands. Ezra ended up sitting out part of the game because he’d missed practice on Wednesday and he’d had to sit out of practice on Monday. It ended up being an okay game though they didn’t win – not even playing in the final innings could save the game because they were that far behind. Still it was good to be active and involved.
They got junk food at the concession stand and Ezra even got them some extra things, just because. Not that Ezra ate any of it; he claimed to be on a diet. When Vin told Ezra that there was no way he should be on a diet because he wasn’t fat Ezra had replied simply, “Yes I am.”
“Oh, please. You could bounce a dime off your ass.” JD was rolling his eyes as he tried to fit a whole giant pretzel in his mouth.
“You’ve been checking out my ass, huh?”
If it wasn’t so upsetting Vin might have laughed when JD started choking on his mouthful of pretzel. Though he was naturally concerned that JD was choking the less immediate but more concerning prospect was Ezra thinking he was fat. There’d been a girl – well, three actually, but only one that Vin remembered with much clarity – who was stick-thin and had been obsessive with her weight to the point that she had to be hospitalized because she wouldn’t eat. They’d thought she was going to die and she almost had if it hadn’t been for the feeding tube they put in her.
The more Vin thought about it the more he wondered. Ezra barely at anything for breakfast and if he could get away with it he would eat nothing at all. At lunch Vin knew that while Ezra did buy his lunch he rarely ate anything he bought, preferring to hand his food off to his friends in a subtle but planned manner. Dinner was pretty much the only meal Ezra ate much of anything substantial and that was because he was faced with all of them watching him at one table. Even then Ezra tended to eat very little and pushed most of his food around, using words to distract from his eating habits even as he scraped his leftovers into the trash.
Since it was possible he was again reading too much into a situation, knowing his own vivid imagination, Vin kept quiet while vowing to pay more attention. After JD got picked up after the game Buck took them back home and since Chris still wasn’t back from work Vin went on a walk with Ezra. They walked out toward the woods along the pasture fence in companionable silence until an eerily familiar click, click caught Vin’s attention. The flame from the small Bic lighter made him start in surprise as Ezra inhaled the smoke from the cigarette that had found its way to his lips. “Want one?”
Vin jerked backwards and shook his head.
“It’s just a cigarette.” Ezra leaned against the fence as he shoved the pack of cigarettes into his jacket pocket.
“I’m on probation. Don’t you know that?”
Ezra shrugged his shoulders. “So?”
“Part of my rules of probation includes not smoking. You know how much trouble I could get into if I smoked?” It wasn’t just the probation, but it was a good excuse. Vin hated cigarettes. The smell made him nauseous because it made him remember what he didn’t want to remember.
“Who’s going to tell? I won’t.” He took another puff on his cigarette as Vin backed further and further away from him.
“No.” It was a matter of turning and fleeing for the sake of survival. Helping Buck in the barn was better and was something he could throw himself into. By the time Ezra wandered back toward the barn and began discreetly feeding Cassius treats they had finished up and were headed inside. Ezra stayed outside for a while longer and only came back inside after Chris had arrived home and dinner was ready.
When Ezra passed by Chris to head toward the dining room, Chris’s arm shot out blocking the boy’s way. “Why do you smell like an ashtray?” It was a rhetorical question because the next thing Chris said was, “You’ve been smoking.”
Ezra didn’t deny it, but he also made no response other than to stare blankly at the man. What else could he do? It was certain that Vin hadn’t had a chance to tell on Ezra – or at least not a chance to tell Chris – and something made Ezra suspect that Vin wouldn’t have told even under pressure.
“Hand ‘em over. Matches, lighter or whatever you’ve got, too.” There might have been a fight with the way Ezra was staring at Chris almost glaring and then he reached into his jacket pocket and dropped the slightly crumpled box of half-full cigarettes into Chris’s hand. It was followed shortly by the lighter. “Anything else that you have in your room that you shouldn’t have you’d better go get and bring to me. If you choose not to I’m going to go through everything myself and if I find something you shouldn’t have it’s gone. Now go.”
They all waited as Ezra shifted his weight from one foot to the other then edged past Chris to his room. He brought back two more unopened packs of cigarettes and another lighter. “Is this it?” When Ezra hesitated Chris told him, “Go get it.” Ezra turned and walked back to his room and brought back not cigarettes but two bottles one full and one nearly empty.
“Vodka.” Chris stared at the bottles in disbelief. “Ezra, how full was this bottle when you got here?”
Cool green eyes gazed steadily at Chris as he replied, “Completely full.”
“And you drank this all by yourself?” His eyes flickered toward Vin as he spoke and it was only with great effort that Vin didn’t drop to the floor and cower at the look alone.
“Yes.”
“Is there anything else you shouldn’t have – drugs, alcohol, anything?”
There was another small pause then Ezra met Chris’s eyes calmly. “Not unless you want to confiscate my condoms, too.”
Chris shook his head. “No, you can keep those, though I want you to understand that there should be no reason that you should be involved in any occasions that you would need them.”
Dinner was a tense affair and Vin did notice that Ezra ate hardly anything, but that could have been due to the previous circumstances. They all gathered in the living room afterwards though no one seemed up to conversation and the TV was just on for background noise. “You don’t need to smoke or drink, Ez,” he finally said to break the silence. “You’re better than that.” When Ezra didn’t answer, just burrowed deeper against the couch Vin whispered, “You know why I don’t like cigarettes… or alcohol?”
Ezra focused on him and shook his head no so Vin pulled off the sock on his right foot and turned his foot so that Ezra could see the bottom of it. A soft “ah” left Ezra’s mouth as he leaned in and though Buck and Chris were looking too he didn’t mind.
“What’s that?”
Ezra was tracing the design on Vin’s foot lightly and answered Buck so Vin didn’t have to, “Cigarette burns. Perfect little connecting circles. He held you down on your belly, probably sat on you,” Ezra speculated. “Kept your other leg down with his and burned here, first.” Vin shivered as Ezra touched the old burn closest to his heel and moved upwards. “It’s the deepest burn. One, two, three, four, five then six and seven across. The irony, seven, the supposed perfect number, the holy number, God’s number burned into a cross.”
“I didn’t know there was seven, but it fits.” Vin had little memory of that night and that was probably for a good reason. All he could remember hazily was that it had hurt and that distantly he could recall the smell of his skin burning. “M’daddy said I was possessed by something demonic and he wanted to make it go away.”
“The irony there is that he was the demonic one.” Ezra laughed even though it wasn’t funny and Vin couldn’t help but smile.
Then the smile faded abruptly as a thought struck Vin. “How did you know they were cigarette burns?”
“Hm? Oh.” Ezra shifted up on the couch and nudged down the top of his jeans, twisting so that Vin could clearly see the perfect circular mark on his hip. “I used my teeth,” he said by way of explanation.
Chris was suddenly coughing liked he’d choked on something and Buck had closed his eyes sharply. Vin didn’t get it. “What?”
“I used my teeth,” Ezra repeated like it made sense and smiled to show his teeth to Vin as if there was some meaning behind it that Vin simply was not grasping.
“Ezra. No.”
Vin looked in Chris’s direction, offended that he’d cut off whatever explanation Ezra might have continued on with. He supposed it didn’t matter because he would just ask Ezra about it later anyway and he was sure to get an answer then. But what did a cigarette burn have to do with using his teeth?
#t#
As soon as the boys were in bed – or, rather, Ezra was in bed and Vin was curled up on his floor – Buck went looking for Chris who had disappeared into their bedroom. Chris was flopped face down on their bed and if not for the tension along his back and shoulders Buck might have assumed he was asleep. It had been a long day because he’d had to work over to wrap things up and part of it was the fact that Chris had missed going to Ezra’s game.
“How ya holdin’ up there?” Chris shifted into Buck’s hand as it stroked down his back.
“Tired.” He twisted his head to get a better view of Buck as he settled beside him. “You know what they say about invisible scars hiding deeper pain you can’t see and how they can sometimes be worse than the visible scars? I thought I understood that. I don’t.”
Buck made an attempt at working some of the tension out of Chris’s back, but when the man didn’t want to relax or be soothed there was nothing anyone could do. “I can’t – ” Chris started to move in his grasp and Buck applied just enough pressure to get him to stay still. “Why would someone do that? Hold a kid, any kid, their son down like that and do that, to burn them not once or twice but seven times with a cigarette? And Ezra… used his teeth. I can’t even – I don’t want to wrap my mind around that.”
“Does it bother you because it happened or because they are so matter-of-fact about it?”
On the one hand it was a horrifying thought to imagine that it happened at all even though he’d been aware of aspects of what both boys and gone through. It was just one more thing to add to their list. The way Vin talked about it so casually like it was normal and that it wasn’t a big deal to talk about it was upsetting, too. That and Ezra calmly talking about things Chris didn’t think a kid his age should know about, or at least should never have had forced on him, was not something he wanted to talk about. “Both, I think. I’m afraid for them.”
“I know, but that’s not going to help them any.” There was no changing the past and they wanted the boys to feel that they could tell them anything without retribution. Being afraid of what happened to them was easily misinterpreted as disgust of the act itself and possibly of the boys for allowing it to happen. Vin was more reluctant to offer up things from his past and his offerings were few and far between. On the other hand Ezra seemed to easily offer hints of his abuse, but not nearly the extent of it like he was bursting to tell someone and at the same time didn’t want to. That was so like Ezra, though – a bundle of contradictions.
“Is it going to be okay?”
The question stunned Buck into asking, “What?”
“Is it going to be okay?” Chris repeated. “Vin asked me that and I didn’t really answer him because I don’t have a clue. Just when I think everything’s settled it all changes again.”
“You ain’t saying what I think you’re saying, are you?”
“No, no. I’m just saying that my innocent picturesque up-bringing did not prepare me for all of this and I’m out of my range of understanding.” He yelped when Buck’s fingers brushed across his ticklish sides. They both knew that they had seen a lot in their time, but that Chris had definitely had an easy childhood and had always assumed that that was how it should be. While Chris had seen that Buck and his mom had to scrimp and save his mom had always loved him and done her best to take care of him. Anything else was shocking.
“They’re like little abandoned kittens, Chris. Like the ones people try to drown or shoot or whatever only they’ve already had a lot of stuff done to them that didn’t kill ‘em, just made them afraid. Now one little kitten might spit and hiss and growl and try to take on the world while another little kitten is gonna cower up in a little ball and try to hide. Another little kitten might let you hold it and pet it and then the next minute it’ll turn on you so fast your head will spin.” A smile had started to appear on Chris’s face at the thought of the various kittens they had had over the years, a smile that quickly faded when he thought of the boys.
“Just like kittens, huh? You know they put some feral cats to sleep. Some of ours have up and run away and who knows how they ended up.”
“What, no jokes about this being a ‘cathouse’?”
“Buck!” It wasn’t funny at all but Chris was laughing so hard that tears were running down his face. At least Buck liked to think it was the laughter causing the tears because he did hate to see anyone cry but he especially hated to see Chris cry. It was even worse when Buck couldn’t do anything to make it all better.
-to be continued-
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Date: 2007-12-16 09:46 pm (UTC)Also love that he's confused nad that Chris calls him on it (even though it took me, stupidly, a minute to figure it out, but that was me, not the story - your writing's fine).
I especially love last scene though - Chris' awareness that his own history is actually perfect comparatively and the kitten analogy - excellent comparisons.
Really nicely done. Looking forward to more.
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Date: 2007-12-21 11:14 pm (UTC)Love how the boys feel like they can confide in each other.
Can't wait for the next chapter!