The Beginning Of An End- Chris/Ezra- 4/5
Title: The Beginning Of An End
Pairings: Chris/Ezra
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Angst is ahead. Consider yourself warned, there was a request for the fic to have no humor and this was the muses response because she loves to make people suffer and strangely enough that really applies to her visioning of poor Ezra. And sorry for any mistakes, they are all mine. If you point out the glaringly obvious ones I will fix them. Thanks. :)
Summary: There were five times that Ezra almost stopped himself only to find that he couldn't and one time that stopping never even crossed his mind.
Ezra regarded the woman before him coldly. It had been over seven months since he had last seen her, and whatever feelings he’d once harbored for her were pretty well and truly gone. Their warmth laying cold and forgotten in the remaining sense of betrayal that their last meeting had left.
Beside her, Travis kept speaking. Ezra’s eyes briefly broke contact with her gaze, the green orbs belying the shock he felt at being asked to perform this mission showing through for just a moment before he managed to hide it away.
Somewhere in the ATF agency was a mole. Several teams had already been compromised, more than a few agents were now dead because of them, and it seemed that even though the Seven hadn’t been targeted yet, it was only a matter of time. It was only a matter of time for too many other people as well.
When Ezra had wished his team would trust him, he hadn’t been wishing for this.
Travis’s mistrust of his character was well known. It’d even been documented when Chris had first hired Ezra against Orin’s wishes. And now here was the man asking him for help.
Asking for him to go undercover, to return to a world he’d all but left over a year ago, when his own team back in Atlanta had mistrusted his partner and him enough to ignore their intel and go through with a raid that had resulted in the deaths of several civilians, was asking just a bit too much in his opinion.
Across from him, Elizabeth continued to watch him. There was a faint trace of amusement lurking in the depths of her cobalt eyes, and he felt the beginnings of a smile creeping across his lips.
He could hate her all he wanted to for her choosing to remain in Atlanta, for not being angry over the loss of lives that their failed mission had caused, or over her simple remark that sometimes there were losses; he could do all those things because Ezra hadn’t worked his ass off just to watch innocents die, but he couldn’t hate her forever.
Not given everything they’d gone through. Not when, besides Chris, she was the closest he’d ever come to loving someone.
Orin kept speaking, and Ezra listened with only half an ear until one point of interest tweaked his attention.
“This is under the radar?” The words were spoken dryly, a hint of mockery tracing them, and Ezra caught the corners of Lizzie’s lips twitch before her expression became unreadable. Everything they did was technically under the radar. It was what going undercover meant.
And then the meaning struck him.
“I’m not to tell the others.”
“We don’t know how far this goes.” It was the first time she’d spoken since her and Travis’ arrival. He noticed a trace of discomfort lining her words. There was something neither one was telling him.
That would have been almost worrying if not for the fact that over the last year, Ezra had grown more or less accustomed to being left out of the loop about certain portions of his team's endeavors.
Just because he was sharing company with Larabee didn’t mean that the man fully trusted him. He’d gotten pretty good at making his own connections and finding out information by himself. All he had to do was just wait, and put out a couple of feelers.
Not telling the others though. Not telling Chris…
He didn’t like it.
Just because his team still didn’t trust him didn’t mean that he didn’t trust them.
But sometimes, he had no choice, and he could pretty well guess how much it had galled Orin to have come to him and asked for his assistance in the first place.
Elizabeth smiled fully for the first time since walking in, when he agreed to their plan. They sat together for hours, even after Travis had left them, just talking. Ezra hadn’t even noticed their hands had at some point become attached as they continued to speak, and when she teased him over Chris he remembered just how much he had forgotten about how being trusted by someone he cared for felt like. It was…nice.
As the days passed by, he began withdrawing himself from the team and distancing himself from Chris. He saw the worry in Larabee’s eyes become anger, and then mistrust. The others began watching their words around him, and he was certain that they had started hearing some of the rumors about a mole.
Ezra continued with his mission even with the misgivings roiling within him. Every time he entered a room and watched as Chris’s lips began to thin and his eyes to narrow, he wanted to stop right then and tell Chris everything. Only Elizabeth stopped him. She’d gone so far undercover the agency no longer recognized her as one of their own, and the intel she’d been able to garner was that Ezra’s team was likely to be one of the next ones targeted.
When Chris confronted him one day, nearly a month after the operation had begun, Ezra almost broke down. Almost laid out everything just to make the pain in Chris’s eyes go away. Only he hadn’t. Instead he’d distracted him. It had been simple enough, Chris was always ruled by his emotions, and Ezra knew how to push every one of his buttons. Angry words had bled over into angry actions. Fingers that a month ago had caressed, instead dug in with bruising pressure, and he hadn’t been prepared for Chris to take him, so when he drove ruthlessly into him, Ezra felt himself tear, his blood mixing with Chris’s semen, and still he begged for more.
Chris left him afterwards. A bruising kiss to Ezra's lips, and he was gone. The hazel eyes still shinning with pain, and now disgust, though whether the latter emotion was directed towards himself or towards Ezra, Ezra wasn’t all that certain of.
Afterwards, Ezra switched tactics. Elizabeth had listened quietly to his plan, had questioned his motives, and ultimately agreed. Buck saw Ezra being picked up one evening from work by a blonde woman driving a car he estimated worth about three years worth of his salary. Nathan caught a glance of them out to lunch one afternoon. J.D. saw the two of them walking one evening down the main street, their arms around one another. Vin watched the mystery woman throughout the day. Elizabeth told Ezra he was like a silent shadow, dressed in jeans and a hideous jacket. And Chris…Chris never seemed to catch Ezra in anyone’s company, but he heard the others talking.
The plan worked. Ezra watched as he was frozen out of the team he had come to think of as family, and was hated by a man he was certain he loved.
And so, every time Ezra looked into the others' eyes and read the mistrust shinning back at him, every time he wanted to stop and tell them everything, tell them that they hadn’t been wrong in trusting him before, he stopped himself.
They could hate him all they wanted to, as long as they were all still living.