The Beginning Of An End- Chris/Ezra- 5/5 with Epilogue
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.
~~--~~
Another month later, and Ezra knew without a single doubt that everything had been worth the cost.
The mole had been found.
And he no longer had a place to call home.
Ezra smiled, it wasn’t a gentle smile that bespoke of the guileless charm he turned upon everyone, it wasn’t the slight upturned corners of his mouth that marked his genuine amusement in something, and it wasn’t the slight grin that crossed his face when he looked upon the other men of the ATF team and he realized that they were the closest thing he’d had to a family in a long time. This smile wasn’t the slight twisting of his lips that marked the devilish smirk he used whenever Chris used to say something to the group, and Ezra knew the words had been meant for him and him alone.
It wasn’t any of those things because Ezra was watching his entire world fall apart. The only emotion he could feel was the painful acknowledgement that he had earned this betrayal by allowing himself to dream of a life filled with laughter, with love, with everything that he had never tried to imagine because the reality of his never having had it hurt too much when he’d allowed himself the luxury of dreaming. It lasted only a moment, there and gone, before anyone else but him knew of it’s existence.
The other men filed into the room, Chris and Vin the last to enter, and he marveled at the other men’s inability to realize that there was anything out of the ordinary. Even with a simple glance, Ezra could still discern the slight flush that tinged Chris’s face, the quick glances the two men shared.
Ezra also knew one other thing with implicit clarity. He’d been replaced.
He shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d pushed Chris away, thrust him away really, set everything up so that it would look as though Ezra didn’t care for the man at all. It didn’t matter that it had all been a lie. What mattered was that Chris had believed in the lies he and Elizabeth had created, and they’d been able to draw out the mole before the man could destroy anymore lives.
Selling information. Ezra had his own list of informants, so he understood the reasons why. But all Ezra could focus on was that the man’s greed had caused Ezra to give up everything he had worked towards. In order to save the people he’d come to care for, Ezra had given them up.
Elizabeth entered the room a few steps behind Travis, and Ezra caught Chris’s lips thinning, the muscles in his jaw tensing.
Ezra kept watching Chris as Travis began to speak, introducing Elizabeth and telling the rest of the team the reasons behind Ezra’s mysterious actions over the past couple of months. Elizabeth remained silent. Ezra glanced over at her, and discovered her own gaze was directed towards Chris. That in itself he wasn’t too surprised over, Larabee was after all an incredibly handsome man, no, what
surprised Ezra was the animosity she directed towards the team’s silent leader. Seemed Lizzie kept up to date on her intel too.
The meeting seemed to pass by, almost too quickly, the discomfort between Chris and Vin seeming to increase as the minutes ticked by, and Ezra drank in every detail he could.
He’d have laughed if it all hadn’t hurt so much.
Orin smiled as he congratulated the team on Ezra’s abilities.
Chris paled while the words assaulted him, his eyes widened just so for a breadth of a moment, and then they shuttered, all emotion hidden away from the hazel orbs, but Ezra could still see the tightness in his shoulders. The tension that stubbornly clung to his lean frame.
Ezra let out the breath he hadn’t known he’d been withholding as a fresh spasm of pain ripped through him. He quickly turned his eyes to Travis as he continued speaking, outlining the new mission the ATF team would undertake, and exactly why the preliminary silence was required. He kept his attention on the older man even though he felt Chris’s eyes fall upon him, burning through him with their intensity. He kept his gaze steadily away even though he could feel the pain radiating from the other man. He kept his eyes from the form he wanted so much to hold, from the anguish he wanted to sooth. He couldn’t look. He wouldn’t look.
He had known that Chris wouldn’t trust him.
After all, no one that had truly known him ever did. It had been too much to hope that Chris would have been different. And he couldn’t blame the other man. Not really. Not when Ezra had all but disappeared over the past couple of months, spending more and more time away from the ATF team and his lover.
A part of him railed against the injustice of it all, but he quickly repressed it.
That tended to be his luck.
Just when he was settling in, life tended to turn it’s dubious attention back upon him.
It didn’t matter if he still wished he had stopped everything right from the beginning, that he’d made sure Chris had known of the assignment, and known that the reason he‘d been withdrawn for the past month had been because of a job. That the woman he‘d had to keep company with was no more than a way to facilitate the creation of the new persona he'd needed, and that he‘d never done anything more with her than just hand holding and sharing her company. That she was another agent, just working the job with him, an old friend he‘d worked with before, and who had known the status quo before he‘d even been able open his mouth. Because as she had pointed out softly she‘d never seen him more relaxed, as though he was someone living now, not just slipping silently through life.
Just more regrets to add to his ever growing mound.
Orin drew his talk to a close, smiling still, he congratulated Ezra once again, and slipped out with a nod to the other men. Ezra felt Buck’s hand land soundly on his shoulder.
All was forgiven. He could see the relief in the eyes before him, the happiness that their fears had been unfounded, and the slight embaressment that their had ever been fears or mistrust in the first place. He watched all of those emotions reflect back from him in the gazes of his friends. Each and every one, but one. One gaze he couldn't meet. He wouldn't meet.
He managed to dredge up a smile. If it didn’t reach his eyes, he doubted any one would notice.
Chris spoke for the first time since Orin had walked in, adding his congratulations, and agreeing when Buck suggested the seven get together tonight and celebrate.
The tightness remained in Chris' frame as he extended an invitation to join them to Elizabeth, and her acceptance, though softened by the slight southern drawl Ezra knew she tended to display when truly angered, was just as controlled and lacking in emotion.
They stood, one man after another, each saying their goodbyes. Ezra was the first to walk out, never looking back, though he heard Chris call softly after him, Elizabeth less than a step behind him, a silent well of strength.
He would speak to the man tonight, he couldn’t now.
Not yet.
Not when he had placed all of his hopes of something more on the belief that Chris was different than the others, that the man had trusted him, that he was able to look beyond all of the rumors that had trailed Ezra from one organization to another, the whispers he been unable to banish no matter how well he did his job or how honest he tried to be.
After all, everyone knew that Ezra Standish was a great undercover man because he had no heart, because he had no morals, because he didn’t care for anyone but himself.
For the first time in years, Ezra wished all of those things were true. He kept up his calm façade until he reached his car and had driven back into the city. Three blocks away from the townhouse he owned, he had to pull over and cry, the tears falling as he cursed himself for being so foolish as to believe that things could have ever been different.
Elizabeth held him as he wept, and when the tears had dried, she asked him what his plan was.
He didn’t answer her, and when the silence spread between them, she simply nodded. A few minutes later, when he pulled into the driveway of his home, she stepped out of the car and made her way into the townhouse. Ezra watched the door close behind her before he threw the car into reverse and drove away, the tires of his car screaming as though they shared the pain he held.
--
What felt like hours later, and probably was given how stiff his muscles felt, Ezra smiled.
In the shadows, the briefest glimpse of something could be detected, but it was so quick, barely lasting even a sliver of a second, that had anyone seen it, they’d have simply assumed it more a trick of the eyes than anything more.
He was used to not existing, to being a ghost, being nothing more than a figment of someone’s imagination, just a slight remembrance, someone whose face was blurred and indistinct.
Ezra had never liked attention, even though more often then not, he was in the center of everything going on, with his hands in multiple projects. He was the face that everyone remembered, though they could not place just why, the helping hands needed only for a moment, the man who cracked a joke that everyone remembered, though they could not recall just who had told it to them.
He was nothing and everything, and he’d enjoyed it.
He’d never craved more, never allowed himself to want more.
Family, a house with a white picket fence, the American dream, those things had never been meant for him. His childhood had more than reassured that fact. A mother who’d taught him every con and game imaginable, who’d taught him the use of people, and just how to use them, wasn’t exactly the paragon of maternal instincts, but she’d done well by him in her own fashion. And he’d been grateful, she’d given him a singular talent that few others were ever able to achieve. The ability to fade away, leaving no trace of his existence.
The smile that, though it reflected in his eyes, was nothing more than an illusion of the most deft crafting. Just as almost everything else was about him. There was a reason that his superiors tended not to like him, that though his arrest records were higher than normal and most of the assignments given to him were carried out flawlessly, his fault was that at times he tended to be just a little too good at his job. And there was enough distrust in his chosen field that sometimes, being too good was a bad thing. He’d heard the rumors that followed him, the assumption that he was double dipping, though no evidence could be found. With his track record, he was more than fairly certain that no matter what, his superiors would never believe he was simply that good.
He’d never worked for a man or woman he didn’t, in some way, feel contempt of. He’d never been part of a team where he’d felt anything more than an outsider, until he’d been recruited by this small organization, just starting off, still new enough that it existed more in rumors than any actuality.
At the ripe old age of thirty-seven, Ezra Standish was a man set in his ways, and had long since come to the conclusion that there was nothing that could ever change what he was. And then he met Chris Larabee.
Of course, he’d done his homework before he’d agreed to the transfer. With his job, he’d sometimes made contacts whose names he’d kept for himself and out of the reports; in a game where information was everything, he liked to have his own unprejudiced source of data to rely upon. Before he’d walked into the ATF office, he’d known more on every man assembled on the fledgling team than he was certain they ever suspected anyone outside of those closest to them were aware of. Knowing those facts however, in this particular instance, had done nothing to prepare Ezra for the first moment his eyes fell upon the group’s leader.
Ezra had assumed it was a simple fascination. When his interest had not faded after the first few months, he’d grown worried, and only the slight thrill of Larabee’s company had kept him from enforcing the walls a life of jaded existence had helped create.
The day he’d discovered Chris was interested in him as well…Ezra had allowed himself to dream of a life where perhaps there was a place for him, where he wouldn’t have to hide who he was, where he could cease being the face that everyone remembered but at the same time didn’t. Even though their beginning hadn’t been the most gentle, and had been borne of anger not love, Ezra hadn’t been able to bring himself to really keep himself from or stop the dreaming.
Almost a year of secret meetings, of lingering touches, stolen moments, of passion, of love, and Ezra had stopped believing in dreams because the dreams had become reality.
And then reality had crumbled.
In the darkness outside of Chris’ cabin, he could almost once again pretend that he hadn’t seen anything. That the past couple of months hadn’t existed. That the lies had never been spoken. That the illusion had never been required. That a few days ago he hadn’t seen Chris seeking release in another man’s arms.
Almost. Almost. Almost.
Almost did not erase the pain that still lingered. Almost did not mean that he could not imagine in perfect clarity the flush of Chris’s skin as he slid in and out of Tanner, the noises he could imagine falling from the sharpshooter's lips, of the promises Ezra remembered once directed towards him and now said to another tumbling from the mouth of the man who he’d placed his future with once upon a time. Ezra should have assumed something like that would have happened. He could picture every detail perfectly. It would certainly make sense, explain the sudden unease that had unfurled between two men who had always seemed to share such a bond. Chris and Vin. It must have been natural for them to take their relationship a step futher. Far more natural than what Ezra had shared with Chris. Perhaps Chris had simply been bidding his time with Ezra. Perhaps every promise Chris had made him was just a lie. Perhaps...a great deal of things. Too many to count.
Almost. Almost was the cruelest dream of all. Almost meant that he’d been fool enough to believe that he could have something more than the nothing he had built his life around.
From the shadows, he watched as the others left the cabin, one by one they filed out, some simply nodding their goodbyes. Muffled by the distance, he could hear Buck call something to Chris, a short burst of laughter sounded as the only answer Ezra could discern, and then Vin, the man who Ezra had found himself too broken to hate, paused at the door, and frowned. Ezra focused, watching silently, waiting to see what would happen, and was rewarded with only more questions. Tanner’s shoulders stiffened, his mouth twisting more into something resembling a pained grimace, and a smile ghosted Ezra’s lips.
It seemed that he was not the only one who Chris made mad. Nice to know he had company in this sorry little club, even if it was the company of his rival.
He watched and waited until Tanner’s truck crested the hill, the headlights disappearing, and then he moved.
The time for stealth was over, though he remained still cloaked in shadows. In the surrounding dark he could move freely, and though his presence was already more than likely waited for, the darkness suited him. He’d spent a year dwelling in the sun, and now he was paying for that] folly.
At the door he paused, his eyes sweeping the woods again, assured that there was no trace of his presence. Nothing to mark that he had come, nothing to leave a hint that he had ever been here. The estimable Mister Tanner could, of course, assuredly find the tracks of his rented vehicle, find were he’d parked it some meters away, but he’d never be able to trace the vehicle’s rental back to him. He’d built a life around being invisible, and he was surprised at how easily he could slip back into it. His hand fell to the door, his fingers tightening in uncertainty.
But only for a moment.
Uncertainty no longer had a place in his life. Dreams were ashes, and life was for others than himself. Smiling ruefully at his state of mind, he almost laughed, and instead choked back a sob.
Damnit.
Slipping inside, his eyes adjusted slowly to the faint light above the stove. Overhead, he heard the soft sounds of Chris moving around his bedroom. It was hardly difficult to sneak up on the man unaware. Chris had a tendency to drink on the nights when he had the team over, he let down his guard, allowed them to glimpse the man he was, the man who Ezra had fallen in love with, and by dawn, when sobriety had once again found their leader, the walls would once again be in place, and it would be as though Chris had never been anything other than the man he showed to the world.
Oh, how Ezra had come to crave those moments, few as they were. When Chris would drop the defenses he’d created, when he would let through glimpses of that something more that Ezra had never even suspected existed.
Making his way up the stairs, it was almost too easy to avoid the spots that squeaked, the ones he normally trod upon to announce his presence on those nights when he and Chris would flee to this haven, and for a few precious hours pretend that the world outside no longer existed.
From outside of the bedroom door, he saw a faint light creep from within, its incandescence barely breaking the shadows that enveloped the hallway, and he stopped. Chris sat sprawled at the edge of the large bed. A whiskey bottle dangled loosely within his long-fingered grasp, perhaps an inch of the amber liquid still left within it’s glass confines.
Ezra stepped forwards, and stood unflinching when he heard the safety being removed from the gun in Chris’s other hand. Even drunk the man was frustratingly too on edge, almost as though the energy that fueled him could not be dampened no matter how hard he tried. For an instant, Ezra remembered another night. One much like this one, where their roles had been reversed and he wondered how things would have been if only he'd stopped things that night, pushed Chris away instead of deepening that kiss. Futile thoughts. But still enough to make the pain in his chest swell.
“You didn’t call,” the husky tone caressed Ezra, and suddenly, it seemed as though this had been perhaps not the brightest path he could have chosen. But it was too late to chose another, and by dawn it would not matter anyway.
“No.”
“You lied.”
“Yes.” No point in denying the truth, and Ezra was damned if he was going to explain himself.
Chris lunged off of the bed, the whiskey bottle flying from his hand in the haste of his movements, and Ezra was dimly aware of the glass shattering against the other wall as Chris slammed him into the door.
“GOD! DAMN! YOU!” Every word was punctuated with the sound of Ezra colliding with the door, again and again and again. “I. Warned. You.” Chris gritted out, and then the assault began.
It had been expected, Ezra wasn’t too shocked by the attack. His relationship with Chris had tended to exist upon emotions sometimes too potent to soften, and if Ezra was going through with his plans, he wanted something to remember.
Pain he would remember. Pain would keep him strong. Gentleness now would break him. Make him rethink everything, and he couldn’t afford it. Not now.
As though Chris had read Ezra’s mind, his hands loosened their hold, fingers drew away to ghost down Ezra’s jaw, and the lips that had crashed against Ezra’s demanding admittance- now begged.
Ezra whimpered.
He couldn’t stop the sound from escaping his lips or the breathy moan that followed it, as Chris seemed to drink the sounds from his mouth.
Ezra wasn’t aware of getting from the door to the bed, somehow completely bereft of clothing, but there he was, his knees hitting the edge of the matress. Not that he could complain. He’d missed this. He’d dreamt of it. This was why he hadn’t been able to speak to Elizabeth in the car after he’d cried, because he’d already known that whatever lay ahead, he wanted one more night.
A night that would be his. A night that he’d drive Tanner from Chris’s mind and reclaim the spot he’d earned through sweat and blood over a series of months, and lost in a matter of weeks.
Ezra stood there, just watching, as Chris moved down. He was mesmerized by the slight glimpse of Chris’s tongue as it snuck out and lapped away newly formed trails of sweat. The gentle nipping of teeth, as the mouth continued it’s trek, drew out shaking breaths, and Ezra ached for more.
He cried out when he finally felt Chris swallow him. His tongue tracing the vein beneath, teeth just barely scraping the sensitive skin, and Ezra hung suspended between pleasure and pain, his fingers threading through Chris’s hair and pulling him back, a line of semen and saliva trailing behind his mouth’s forced removal.
Ezra crashed to his knees, hands still tangled through the silky strands that were bordering on just too long, and kissed Chris, a faint trace of whiskey laying just beneath the slightly bitter taste of himself. Chris's hands latched onto Ezra, fingers digging in just ever so, as he pulled their bodies closer, and Ezra could feel the trembling that haunted the thin frame.
Ezra had done this. He’d brought Chris to this place, tainted him with the same weakness he’d inflicted upon himself, and now they were both paying.
When he finally pulled away, Chris’s hands kept him in place, unable to retreat or even put a few inches of distance between their bodies.
They remained that way, just watching for long moments, both lost too deeply in their own thoughts.
“You lied,” Chris said, the words held none of their earlier anger, and instead were tinged only with a mournful resignation that cut deeper than any caustic emotions ever could.
Mutely, Ezra nodded.
“You didn’t trust me,” Ezra said, and Chris flinched, his eyes darkening, lips thinning, though whether from acknowledgment or guilt he wasn’t certain. Perhaps both. Perhaps neither.
Chris’s grip loosened and Ezra stood, quickly stepping out of the range of the other man’s outstretched fingers. He saw fear flicker through the hazel depths and made a decision.
Holding out a hand, he stood there waiting. After a moment of hesitancy Chris took it, slowly rising to his feet. They paused again, as though both were trying to figure out what lay before them, and neither one able to divine a path ahead. Sighing softly, Ezra moved. His feet carefully treading around the broken shards of the whiskey bottle, Chris’s hand still firmly clutched in his as he led him onto the bed, slightly bemused that neither of them had yet to step on one of the small shards.
Pulling back the covers to crawl beneath, it took Chris only a moment to follow, and when he moved towards him Ezra shook his head.
He’d been a fool to think one night could ever be enough. He wasn’t willing to destroy the other man any more than he already had, and pursuing any more physical gratification would do just that. Instead, Ezra placed another gentle kiss upon those thin lips as his hands came to rest on Chris’s shoulders, and he pushed him backwards. Chris’s eyes remained locked with his as he allowed himself to be moved under Ezra's direction, no other sound in the room but their mingled breathing, and the slight whisper of skin upon the cotton sheets.
The trust shone softly in Chris' eyes, and Ezra couldn't bring himself to say aloud that the time for that had already passed.
When Chris was fully reclined, Ezra lay down, pulling up the blankets, his body curling around the other man, and if Chris’s arm tightened around his middle just a bit too painfully he didn’t remark upon it. For hours they laid there.
When sunlight just began creeping over the horizon, its faint light brushing past the blinds, Chris finally broke the silence.
“We can work past this.”
Ezra remained silent, his arm tightening around Chris the only response.
A few minutes later, he felt Chris’s breathing even out, waited still longer, just laying there in the other man’s arms.
By the time he extricated himself from the tight embrace the sun had risen high enough that its light fell upon the bed, bathing Chris in a glow. Ezra dressed quickly, his movements silent, and his eyes remaining upon the sleeping figure. When he finally stood, shoes in one hand, he stepped forwards, the fingers from his other hand hovering just over Chris, close enough he could feel the other man’s body heat, but not close enough to touch.
He paused then. Moving moments later, his hand rising far enough that it could cup the jaw, his thumb running lazy arches back and forth as it traced the ridges of a cheek bone.
Finally he drew back. On quiet feet he carefully picked his way towards the door, and stopped.
It’d be so simple to stop, to undress and crawl back beneath the covers. Chris had been right. They could perhaps work past the entire episode. Only Ezra wasn’t certain about the next time. Or the time after that. And then that left the matter of Tanner. Vin was pretty much an innocent bystander. And for all the love he still possessed for Chris, he could admit that even he was aware of the close bond the two shared. Staying meant that he’d keep the remainders of a love built upon an unsteady foundation, ready to topple at the slightest of transgressions and destroy another relationship, perhaps permanently, while undermining the team’s already fragile infrastructure. Ezra wasn’t willing to hurt any of the others anymore.
Not even for his own happiness. Turning, he slipped past the open door, not even sparing a single glance back.
~-~
Epilogue
~-~
Five months later, Ezra Standish had found a new home, and a new wardrobe due to the loss of weight he’d undergone over the past few months. He smiled more often than he once had, and Elizabeth had stopped pointing out that the expression never reached his eyes about three weeks ago.
Passing by a couple of their team members, it was more by chance than intent, Ezra picked up snippets of their conversation and stopped in his tracks. Elizabeth’s hand tightened around his arm, and he allowed her to steer him away.
Shock wore away slowly and a few minutes later, mask back in place, he was ready for the meeting they had scheduled in a few short minutes.
He ignored the worried looks, and when his boss asked if the two were ready for their next assignment, he felt her stir beside him, and he spoke up before she could.
The man didn’t hesitate to send them on their way, and Ezra was grateful that he had finally found a boss who didn’t care about Ezra enough to worry over his rumored conflicting loyalties so long as he got the job done. With barely a nod, the two left. They were silent as they filed out, and the silence spun out between them even more on the drive to the airport.
Once they’d boarded the plane, Ezra Standish and Elizabeth Hollings ceased to exist, and Ezra had never felt more free.
He knew that she would have called a halt to the mission, would have asked for another agent to replace him, and he couldn’t have allowed her to. For once, Ezra hadn’t even considered stopping.
Four months later, when their cover had been blown, when Ezra saw a shooter aim for his partner, he didn’t hesitate in pushing her aside, nor did he cry out as the slug tore through his chest.
Dimly he heard the returning fire, and then silence. Elizabeth’s voice tried to break through the haze that was falling over him, but he couldn’t make out her words.
Instead he heard that snippet of overheard gossip. Nothing that mattered to his new team, but had meant everything to Ezra. It had been just office gossip. Word had filtered through that an ATF team in Colorado had fallen under some heat after the team’s leader had started shacking up with one of the people under his command. One of the male people under his command.
Ezra had gotten his wish. Chris had moved on. Elizabeth’s words became more frantic, though distant, and he tried to raise the strength to reassure her only to find himself unable to do so.
As his life slipped away, Ezra held onto the memory of Chris’s arm wrapped tightly around him, and then there was nothing.
~~--~~
To Be Continued? Who knows. Certainly not me. *whistles innocently*
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.
~~--~~
Another month later, and Ezra knew without a single doubt that everything had been worth the cost.
The mole had been found.
And he no longer had a place to call home.
Ezra smiled, it wasn’t a gentle smile that bespoke of the guileless charm he turned upon everyone, it wasn’t the slight upturned corners of his mouth that marked his genuine amusement in something, and it wasn’t the slight grin that crossed his face when he looked upon the other men of the ATF team and he realized that they were the closest thing he’d had to a family in a long time. This smile wasn’t the slight twisting of his lips that marked the devilish smirk he used whenever Chris used to say something to the group, and Ezra knew the words had been meant for him and him alone.
It wasn’t any of those things because Ezra was watching his entire world fall apart. The only emotion he could feel was the painful acknowledgement that he had earned this betrayal by allowing himself to dream of a life filled with laughter, with love, with everything that he had never tried to imagine because the reality of his never having had it hurt too much when he’d allowed himself the luxury of dreaming. It lasted only a moment, there and gone, before anyone else but him knew of it’s existence.
The other men filed into the room, Chris and Vin the last to enter, and he marveled at the other men’s inability to realize that there was anything out of the ordinary. Even with a simple glance, Ezra could still discern the slight flush that tinged Chris’s face, the quick glances the two men shared.
Ezra also knew one other thing with implicit clarity. He’d been replaced.
He shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d pushed Chris away, thrust him away really, set everything up so that it would look as though Ezra didn’t care for the man at all. It didn’t matter that it had all been a lie. What mattered was that Chris had believed in the lies he and Elizabeth had created, and they’d been able to draw out the mole before the man could destroy anymore lives.
Selling information. Ezra had his own list of informants, so he understood the reasons why. But all Ezra could focus on was that the man’s greed had caused Ezra to give up everything he had worked towards. In order to save the people he’d come to care for, Ezra had given them up.
Elizabeth entered the room a few steps behind Travis, and Ezra caught Chris’s lips thinning, the muscles in his jaw tensing.
Ezra kept watching Chris as Travis began to speak, introducing Elizabeth and telling the rest of the team the reasons behind Ezra’s mysterious actions over the past couple of months. Elizabeth remained silent. Ezra glanced over at her, and discovered her own gaze was directed towards Chris. That in itself he wasn’t too surprised over, Larabee was after all an incredibly handsome man, no, what
surprised Ezra was the animosity she directed towards the team’s silent leader. Seemed Lizzie kept up to date on her intel too.
The meeting seemed to pass by, almost too quickly, the discomfort between Chris and Vin seeming to increase as the minutes ticked by, and Ezra drank in every detail he could.
He’d have laughed if it all hadn’t hurt so much.
Orin smiled as he congratulated the team on Ezra’s abilities.
Chris paled while the words assaulted him, his eyes widened just so for a breadth of a moment, and then they shuttered, all emotion hidden away from the hazel orbs, but Ezra could still see the tightness in his shoulders. The tension that stubbornly clung to his lean frame.
Ezra let out the breath he hadn’t known he’d been withholding as a fresh spasm of pain ripped through him. He quickly turned his eyes to Travis as he continued speaking, outlining the new mission the ATF team would undertake, and exactly why the preliminary silence was required. He kept his attention on the older man even though he felt Chris’s eyes fall upon him, burning through him with their intensity. He kept his gaze steadily away even though he could feel the pain radiating from the other man. He kept his eyes from the form he wanted so much to hold, from the anguish he wanted to sooth. He couldn’t look. He wouldn’t look.
He had known that Chris wouldn’t trust him.
After all, no one that had truly known him ever did. It had been too much to hope that Chris would have been different. And he couldn’t blame the other man. Not really. Not when Ezra had all but disappeared over the past couple of months, spending more and more time away from the ATF team and his lover.
A part of him railed against the injustice of it all, but he quickly repressed it.
That tended to be his luck.
Just when he was settling in, life tended to turn it’s dubious attention back upon him.
It didn’t matter if he still wished he had stopped everything right from the beginning, that he’d made sure Chris had known of the assignment, and known that the reason he‘d been withdrawn for the past month had been because of a job. That the woman he‘d had to keep company with was no more than a way to facilitate the creation of the new persona he'd needed, and that he‘d never done anything more with her than just hand holding and sharing her company. That she was another agent, just working the job with him, an old friend he‘d worked with before, and who had known the status quo before he‘d even been able open his mouth. Because as she had pointed out softly she‘d never seen him more relaxed, as though he was someone living now, not just slipping silently through life.
Just more regrets to add to his ever growing mound.
Orin drew his talk to a close, smiling still, he congratulated Ezra once again, and slipped out with a nod to the other men. Ezra felt Buck’s hand land soundly on his shoulder.
All was forgiven. He could see the relief in the eyes before him, the happiness that their fears had been unfounded, and the slight embaressment that their had ever been fears or mistrust in the first place. He watched all of those emotions reflect back from him in the gazes of his friends. Each and every one, but one. One gaze he couldn't meet. He wouldn't meet.
He managed to dredge up a smile. If it didn’t reach his eyes, he doubted any one would notice.
Chris spoke for the first time since Orin had walked in, adding his congratulations, and agreeing when Buck suggested the seven get together tonight and celebrate.
The tightness remained in Chris' frame as he extended an invitation to join them to Elizabeth, and her acceptance, though softened by the slight southern drawl Ezra knew she tended to display when truly angered, was just as controlled and lacking in emotion.
They stood, one man after another, each saying their goodbyes. Ezra was the first to walk out, never looking back, though he heard Chris call softly after him, Elizabeth less than a step behind him, a silent well of strength.
He would speak to the man tonight, he couldn’t now.
Not yet.
Not when he had placed all of his hopes of something more on the belief that Chris was different than the others, that the man had trusted him, that he was able to look beyond all of the rumors that had trailed Ezra from one organization to another, the whispers he been unable to banish no matter how well he did his job or how honest he tried to be.
After all, everyone knew that Ezra Standish was a great undercover man because he had no heart, because he had no morals, because he didn’t care for anyone but himself.
For the first time in years, Ezra wished all of those things were true. He kept up his calm façade until he reached his car and had driven back into the city. Three blocks away from the townhouse he owned, he had to pull over and cry, the tears falling as he cursed himself for being so foolish as to believe that things could have ever been different.
Elizabeth held him as he wept, and when the tears had dried, she asked him what his plan was.
He didn’t answer her, and when the silence spread between them, she simply nodded. A few minutes later, when he pulled into the driveway of his home, she stepped out of the car and made her way into the townhouse. Ezra watched the door close behind her before he threw the car into reverse and drove away, the tires of his car screaming as though they shared the pain he held.
--
What felt like hours later, and probably was given how stiff his muscles felt, Ezra smiled.
In the shadows, the briefest glimpse of something could be detected, but it was so quick, barely lasting even a sliver of a second, that had anyone seen it, they’d have simply assumed it more a trick of the eyes than anything more.
He was used to not existing, to being a ghost, being nothing more than a figment of someone’s imagination, just a slight remembrance, someone whose face was blurred and indistinct.
Ezra had never liked attention, even though more often then not, he was in the center of everything going on, with his hands in multiple projects. He was the face that everyone remembered, though they could not place just why, the helping hands needed only for a moment, the man who cracked a joke that everyone remembered, though they could not recall just who had told it to them.
He was nothing and everything, and he’d enjoyed it.
He’d never craved more, never allowed himself to want more.
Family, a house with a white picket fence, the American dream, those things had never been meant for him. His childhood had more than reassured that fact. A mother who’d taught him every con and game imaginable, who’d taught him the use of people, and just how to use them, wasn’t exactly the paragon of maternal instincts, but she’d done well by him in her own fashion. And he’d been grateful, she’d given him a singular talent that few others were ever able to achieve. The ability to fade away, leaving no trace of his existence.
The smile that, though it reflected in his eyes, was nothing more than an illusion of the most deft crafting. Just as almost everything else was about him. There was a reason that his superiors tended not to like him, that though his arrest records were higher than normal and most of the assignments given to him were carried out flawlessly, his fault was that at times he tended to be just a little too good at his job. And there was enough distrust in his chosen field that sometimes, being too good was a bad thing. He’d heard the rumors that followed him, the assumption that he was double dipping, though no evidence could be found. With his track record, he was more than fairly certain that no matter what, his superiors would never believe he was simply that good.
He’d never worked for a man or woman he didn’t, in some way, feel contempt of. He’d never been part of a team where he’d felt anything more than an outsider, until he’d been recruited by this small organization, just starting off, still new enough that it existed more in rumors than any actuality.
At the ripe old age of thirty-seven, Ezra Standish was a man set in his ways, and had long since come to the conclusion that there was nothing that could ever change what he was. And then he met Chris Larabee.
Of course, he’d done his homework before he’d agreed to the transfer. With his job, he’d sometimes made contacts whose names he’d kept for himself and out of the reports; in a game where information was everything, he liked to have his own unprejudiced source of data to rely upon. Before he’d walked into the ATF office, he’d known more on every man assembled on the fledgling team than he was certain they ever suspected anyone outside of those closest to them were aware of. Knowing those facts however, in this particular instance, had done nothing to prepare Ezra for the first moment his eyes fell upon the group’s leader.
Ezra had assumed it was a simple fascination. When his interest had not faded after the first few months, he’d grown worried, and only the slight thrill of Larabee’s company had kept him from enforcing the walls a life of jaded existence had helped create.
The day he’d discovered Chris was interested in him as well…Ezra had allowed himself to dream of a life where perhaps there was a place for him, where he wouldn’t have to hide who he was, where he could cease being the face that everyone remembered but at the same time didn’t. Even though their beginning hadn’t been the most gentle, and had been borne of anger not love, Ezra hadn’t been able to bring himself to really keep himself from or stop the dreaming.
Almost a year of secret meetings, of lingering touches, stolen moments, of passion, of love, and Ezra had stopped believing in dreams because the dreams had become reality.
And then reality had crumbled.
In the darkness outside of Chris’ cabin, he could almost once again pretend that he hadn’t seen anything. That the past couple of months hadn’t existed. That the lies had never been spoken. That the illusion had never been required. That a few days ago he hadn’t seen Chris seeking release in another man’s arms.
Almost. Almost. Almost.
Almost did not erase the pain that still lingered. Almost did not mean that he could not imagine in perfect clarity the flush of Chris’s skin as he slid in and out of Tanner, the noises he could imagine falling from the sharpshooter's lips, of the promises Ezra remembered once directed towards him and now said to another tumbling from the mouth of the man who he’d placed his future with once upon a time. Ezra should have assumed something like that would have happened. He could picture every detail perfectly. It would certainly make sense, explain the sudden unease that had unfurled between two men who had always seemed to share such a bond. Chris and Vin. It must have been natural for them to take their relationship a step futher. Far more natural than what Ezra had shared with Chris. Perhaps Chris had simply been bidding his time with Ezra. Perhaps every promise Chris had made him was just a lie. Perhaps...a great deal of things. Too many to count.
Almost. Almost was the cruelest dream of all. Almost meant that he’d been fool enough to believe that he could have something more than the nothing he had built his life around.
From the shadows, he watched as the others left the cabin, one by one they filed out, some simply nodding their goodbyes. Muffled by the distance, he could hear Buck call something to Chris, a short burst of laughter sounded as the only answer Ezra could discern, and then Vin, the man who Ezra had found himself too broken to hate, paused at the door, and frowned. Ezra focused, watching silently, waiting to see what would happen, and was rewarded with only more questions. Tanner’s shoulders stiffened, his mouth twisting more into something resembling a pained grimace, and a smile ghosted Ezra’s lips.
It seemed that he was not the only one who Chris made mad. Nice to know he had company in this sorry little club, even if it was the company of his rival.
He watched and waited until Tanner’s truck crested the hill, the headlights disappearing, and then he moved.
The time for stealth was over, though he remained still cloaked in shadows. In the surrounding dark he could move freely, and though his presence was already more than likely waited for, the darkness suited him. He’d spent a year dwelling in the sun, and now he was paying for that] folly.
At the door he paused, his eyes sweeping the woods again, assured that there was no trace of his presence. Nothing to mark that he had come, nothing to leave a hint that he had ever been here. The estimable Mister Tanner could, of course, assuredly find the tracks of his rented vehicle, find were he’d parked it some meters away, but he’d never be able to trace the vehicle’s rental back to him. He’d built a life around being invisible, and he was surprised at how easily he could slip back into it. His hand fell to the door, his fingers tightening in uncertainty.
But only for a moment.
Uncertainty no longer had a place in his life. Dreams were ashes, and life was for others than himself. Smiling ruefully at his state of mind, he almost laughed, and instead choked back a sob.
Damnit.
Slipping inside, his eyes adjusted slowly to the faint light above the stove. Overhead, he heard the soft sounds of Chris moving around his bedroom. It was hardly difficult to sneak up on the man unaware. Chris had a tendency to drink on the nights when he had the team over, he let down his guard, allowed them to glimpse the man he was, the man who Ezra had fallen in love with, and by dawn, when sobriety had once again found their leader, the walls would once again be in place, and it would be as though Chris had never been anything other than the man he showed to the world.
Oh, how Ezra had come to crave those moments, few as they were. When Chris would drop the defenses he’d created, when he would let through glimpses of that something more that Ezra had never even suspected existed.
Making his way up the stairs, it was almost too easy to avoid the spots that squeaked, the ones he normally trod upon to announce his presence on those nights when he and Chris would flee to this haven, and for a few precious hours pretend that the world outside no longer existed.
From outside of the bedroom door, he saw a faint light creep from within, its incandescence barely breaking the shadows that enveloped the hallway, and he stopped. Chris sat sprawled at the edge of the large bed. A whiskey bottle dangled loosely within his long-fingered grasp, perhaps an inch of the amber liquid still left within it’s glass confines.
Ezra stepped forwards, and stood unflinching when he heard the safety being removed from the gun in Chris’s other hand. Even drunk the man was frustratingly too on edge, almost as though the energy that fueled him could not be dampened no matter how hard he tried. For an instant, Ezra remembered another night. One much like this one, where their roles had been reversed and he wondered how things would have been if only he'd stopped things that night, pushed Chris away instead of deepening that kiss. Futile thoughts. But still enough to make the pain in his chest swell.
“You didn’t call,” the husky tone caressed Ezra, and suddenly, it seemed as though this had been perhaps not the brightest path he could have chosen. But it was too late to chose another, and by dawn it would not matter anyway.
“No.”
“You lied.”
“Yes.” No point in denying the truth, and Ezra was damned if he was going to explain himself.
Chris lunged off of the bed, the whiskey bottle flying from his hand in the haste of his movements, and Ezra was dimly aware of the glass shattering against the other wall as Chris slammed him into the door.
“GOD! DAMN! YOU!” Every word was punctuated with the sound of Ezra colliding with the door, again and again and again. “I. Warned. You.” Chris gritted out, and then the assault began.
It had been expected, Ezra wasn’t too shocked by the attack. His relationship with Chris had tended to exist upon emotions sometimes too potent to soften, and if Ezra was going through with his plans, he wanted something to remember.
Pain he would remember. Pain would keep him strong. Gentleness now would break him. Make him rethink everything, and he couldn’t afford it. Not now.
As though Chris had read Ezra’s mind, his hands loosened their hold, fingers drew away to ghost down Ezra’s jaw, and the lips that had crashed against Ezra’s demanding admittance- now begged.
Ezra whimpered.
He couldn’t stop the sound from escaping his lips or the breathy moan that followed it, as Chris seemed to drink the sounds from his mouth.
Ezra wasn’t aware of getting from the door to the bed, somehow completely bereft of clothing, but there he was, his knees hitting the edge of the matress. Not that he could complain. He’d missed this. He’d dreamt of it. This was why he hadn’t been able to speak to Elizabeth in the car after he’d cried, because he’d already known that whatever lay ahead, he wanted one more night.
A night that would be his. A night that he’d drive Tanner from Chris’s mind and reclaim the spot he’d earned through sweat and blood over a series of months, and lost in a matter of weeks.
Ezra stood there, just watching, as Chris moved down. He was mesmerized by the slight glimpse of Chris’s tongue as it snuck out and lapped away newly formed trails of sweat. The gentle nipping of teeth, as the mouth continued it’s trek, drew out shaking breaths, and Ezra ached for more.
He cried out when he finally felt Chris swallow him. His tongue tracing the vein beneath, teeth just barely scraping the sensitive skin, and Ezra hung suspended between pleasure and pain, his fingers threading through Chris’s hair and pulling him back, a line of semen and saliva trailing behind his mouth’s forced removal.
Ezra crashed to his knees, hands still tangled through the silky strands that were bordering on just too long, and kissed Chris, a faint trace of whiskey laying just beneath the slightly bitter taste of himself. Chris's hands latched onto Ezra, fingers digging in just ever so, as he pulled their bodies closer, and Ezra could feel the trembling that haunted the thin frame.
Ezra had done this. He’d brought Chris to this place, tainted him with the same weakness he’d inflicted upon himself, and now they were both paying.
When he finally pulled away, Chris’s hands kept him in place, unable to retreat or even put a few inches of distance between their bodies.
They remained that way, just watching for long moments, both lost too deeply in their own thoughts.
“You lied,” Chris said, the words held none of their earlier anger, and instead were tinged only with a mournful resignation that cut deeper than any caustic emotions ever could.
Mutely, Ezra nodded.
“You didn’t trust me,” Ezra said, and Chris flinched, his eyes darkening, lips thinning, though whether from acknowledgment or guilt he wasn’t certain. Perhaps both. Perhaps neither.
Chris’s grip loosened and Ezra stood, quickly stepping out of the range of the other man’s outstretched fingers. He saw fear flicker through the hazel depths and made a decision.
Holding out a hand, he stood there waiting. After a moment of hesitancy Chris took it, slowly rising to his feet. They paused again, as though both were trying to figure out what lay before them, and neither one able to divine a path ahead. Sighing softly, Ezra moved. His feet carefully treading around the broken shards of the whiskey bottle, Chris’s hand still firmly clutched in his as he led him onto the bed, slightly bemused that neither of them had yet to step on one of the small shards.
Pulling back the covers to crawl beneath, it took Chris only a moment to follow, and when he moved towards him Ezra shook his head.
He’d been a fool to think one night could ever be enough. He wasn’t willing to destroy the other man any more than he already had, and pursuing any more physical gratification would do just that. Instead, Ezra placed another gentle kiss upon those thin lips as his hands came to rest on Chris’s shoulders, and he pushed him backwards. Chris’s eyes remained locked with his as he allowed himself to be moved under Ezra's direction, no other sound in the room but their mingled breathing, and the slight whisper of skin upon the cotton sheets.
The trust shone softly in Chris' eyes, and Ezra couldn't bring himself to say aloud that the time for that had already passed.
When Chris was fully reclined, Ezra lay down, pulling up the blankets, his body curling around the other man, and if Chris’s arm tightened around his middle just a bit too painfully he didn’t remark upon it. For hours they laid there.
When sunlight just began creeping over the horizon, its faint light brushing past the blinds, Chris finally broke the silence.
“We can work past this.”
Ezra remained silent, his arm tightening around Chris the only response.
A few minutes later, he felt Chris’s breathing even out, waited still longer, just laying there in the other man’s arms.
By the time he extricated himself from the tight embrace the sun had risen high enough that its light fell upon the bed, bathing Chris in a glow. Ezra dressed quickly, his movements silent, and his eyes remaining upon the sleeping figure. When he finally stood, shoes in one hand, he stepped forwards, the fingers from his other hand hovering just over Chris, close enough he could feel the other man’s body heat, but not close enough to touch.
He paused then. Moving moments later, his hand rising far enough that it could cup the jaw, his thumb running lazy arches back and forth as it traced the ridges of a cheek bone.
Finally he drew back. On quiet feet he carefully picked his way towards the door, and stopped.
It’d be so simple to stop, to undress and crawl back beneath the covers. Chris had been right. They could perhaps work past the entire episode. Only Ezra wasn’t certain about the next time. Or the time after that. And then that left the matter of Tanner. Vin was pretty much an innocent bystander. And for all the love he still possessed for Chris, he could admit that even he was aware of the close bond the two shared. Staying meant that he’d keep the remainders of a love built upon an unsteady foundation, ready to topple at the slightest of transgressions and destroy another relationship, perhaps permanently, while undermining the team’s already fragile infrastructure. Ezra wasn’t willing to hurt any of the others anymore.
Not even for his own happiness. Turning, he slipped past the open door, not even sparing a single glance back.
~-~
Epilogue
~-~
Five months later, Ezra Standish had found a new home, and a new wardrobe due to the loss of weight he’d undergone over the past few months. He smiled more often than he once had, and Elizabeth had stopped pointing out that the expression never reached his eyes about three weeks ago.
Passing by a couple of their team members, it was more by chance than intent, Ezra picked up snippets of their conversation and stopped in his tracks. Elizabeth’s hand tightened around his arm, and he allowed her to steer him away.
Shock wore away slowly and a few minutes later, mask back in place, he was ready for the meeting they had scheduled in a few short minutes.
He ignored the worried looks, and when his boss asked if the two were ready for their next assignment, he felt her stir beside him, and he spoke up before she could.
The man didn’t hesitate to send them on their way, and Ezra was grateful that he had finally found a boss who didn’t care about Ezra enough to worry over his rumored conflicting loyalties so long as he got the job done. With barely a nod, the two left. They were silent as they filed out, and the silence spun out between them even more on the drive to the airport.
Once they’d boarded the plane, Ezra Standish and Elizabeth Hollings ceased to exist, and Ezra had never felt more free.
He knew that she would have called a halt to the mission, would have asked for another agent to replace him, and he couldn’t have allowed her to. For once, Ezra hadn’t even considered stopping.
Four months later, when their cover had been blown, when Ezra saw a shooter aim for his partner, he didn’t hesitate in pushing her aside, nor did he cry out as the slug tore through his chest.
Dimly he heard the returning fire, and then silence. Elizabeth’s voice tried to break through the haze that was falling over him, but he couldn’t make out her words.
Instead he heard that snippet of overheard gossip. Nothing that mattered to his new team, but had meant everything to Ezra. It had been just office gossip. Word had filtered through that an ATF team in Colorado had fallen under some heat after the team’s leader had started shacking up with one of the people under his command. One of the male people under his command.
Ezra had gotten his wish. Chris had moved on. Elizabeth’s words became more frantic, though distant, and he tried to raise the strength to reassure her only to find himself unable to do so.
As his life slipped away, Ezra held onto the memory of Chris’s arm wrapped tightly around him, and then there was nothing.
~~--~~
To Be Continued? Who knows. Certainly not me. *whistles innocently*