Unexpected
An answer to Katherine’s March Challenge by Setcheti,
written in the Masquerade
version of Mog’s ATF AU.
Katherine’s March Challenge: Okay, challenge is this: Give any one of the seven a hobby the other
six do not know about, until events conspire to bring it to their attention.
Hobby must not be anything previously mentioned in other stories...ie. no working at a shelter for
Josiah, no piano playing for Ezra, no working with neighborhood kids for Vin.
You get the idea. In essence I want to know what one of the boys does with his
down time, and the reaction of the others when they
find out. They aren't always working.
Vin shifted on his bed and stared at the far wall of his
bedroom. After wrenching his knee during
a wrestling match with a suspect on their last bust two days ago, his doctor
had told him to stay off it as much as possible until the swelling went
down…and then Nathan Jackson had taken over his life and turned it into Hell
under the guise of ‘following doctor’s orders’.
It was times like this when Vin thought the world was lucky that Nathan hadn’t had
opportunity to become a doctor. Not that
the ex-paramedic wouldn’t have made a technically excellent doctor…but he had
the bedside manner of a bridge troll and saw no reason to change. Josiah had commented once that Nathan was
just one of those people who get so wrapped up in trying to do everything
‘right’ that they forget they’re dealing with another person and not just a
collection of symptoms and conditions.
He’d also been of the opinion that Nathan would eventually learn to do
better, and Vin had to admit that the chemist was a
little more personable and less of a bully now that Rain was gone. Nathan had definitely been too good for the
likes of someone like Rain.
Of course, since Vin privately ranked Rain right down there with skinheads
and Klansmen, he was pretty much certain that she wasn’t good enough for anyone
he knew – including some of the perps they’d busted. The sharpshooter usually impressed people as
being laid-back and easygoing, even shy, but he could be more hard-assed than
Judge Travis and more unforgiving than Chris.
He still wasn’t entirely happy with Nathan, either, but since that had
basically come down to a choice between happily making the chemist pay for his ‘mistake’
or grudgingly letting go of the mistake to make Ezra and Juliet happy…well,
he’d chosen Ezra and Juliet and tucked his grudge away where no one could see
it. Being laid up and having Nathan
start his troll routine on him was definitely making his feelings harder to
hide, though.
A double buzz from the
doorbell startled Vin out of his thoughts and let him
know that the next shift had arrived; he wasn’t supposed to get up to let them
in, so he settled for yelling at whoever it was when he heard the door
open. “Go away!”
Footsteps, and then a head
poked around the side of the door…nearly a foot lower than he’d been looking
for one. “Are you sure?” Juliet asked
him, smiling.
Ezra appeared right behind
her. “I believe someone is suffering
from a surfeit of overenthusiastic caretakers,” the Southern undercover agent
quipped with a grin. “Good morning to
you too, Vin.”
Vin couldn’t help but smile back; his Saturday was suddenly
looking a whole lot better. “Did you eat
breakfast yet?” Juliet wanted to know.
“Yeah, I got somethin’ when I woke up.”
He could actually admit that to these two without getting yelled at or
grilled about using his crutches. “But
there’s still a couple boxes of donuts in the kitchen if you…”
“Thank you for the offer, but
we already ate breakfast as well,” Ezra said, making a face at him. “Now would you like some assistance getting
out of this dark hole of a room?”
“Wouldn’t say no to some
help.” Walking to the kitchen and back had hurt some – enough that he’d taken a
pain pill when he came back to bed. And
it was a relief that someone had finally noticed what he’d been complaining
about all along; his bedroom was small and dark and aggravated his
claustrophobia if he stayed in it too long while awake. Vin started to throw
off his blanket and then remembered exactly what state of undress he was
in. He blushed and pulled the blanket
back up around his waist. “Um, that is…”
“I think I’ll go see exactly
what is in the kitchen,” Juliet said,
correctly divining his problem. “I need
to find out what I have to work with.
You two yell if you need me.”
“I think we can manage,” was
Ezra’s reply. The two of them exchanged
a look that might as well have been a kiss before Juliet disappeared again, and
then the undercover agent turned back to his friend with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’ve risked goin’ commando…”
Vin snorted. “I
ain’t that stupid – with everyone traipsin’ through
here like they have been? It was just too
hot in here to wear anything but my boxers.
I’ve got some old sweats over there in the dresser…”
Ezra got out the sweats and a
comfortably worn t-shirt to go with them and matter-of-factly helped Vin to get dressed before offering one crutch and a
supportive shoulder to get him out to the living room. Juliet had apparently stopped there before heading
into the kitchen because there was already a place prepared for him, a box with
a pillow on top placed between couch and coffee table to support his leg and an
end table dragged within easy reach so he wouldn’t have to move around too much
once he was comfortable. “Ez,” Vin said, settling into his
spot with a sigh and letting the undercover agent help him get his leg up on the
pillow, “you have got to be the luckiest man on the face of the earth, you know
that?”
“I know it quite well,” Ezra
replied smugly, dropping into the nearest chair. “Thank you for mentioning it, however, I do
love being reminded.”
Vin grinned. Yes,
it was very worth holding back his grudge to see Ezra happy…not to mention that
now he was reaping an unexpected reward from it. “She’s lucky too.”
“Incredibly,” Juliet said,
reappearing back out of the tiny kitchen.
She put a glass of orange juice with crushed ice in it down on the end
table for Vin and then leaned on the back of her fiancé’s
chair, running her fingers through his hair.
“I’m marrying a dashing federal agent who could give James Bond a run
for his money.”
Ezra blushed, and Vin laughed out loud for the first time in three days. Oh yeah, it was shaping up to be a good
Saturday. “Sounds like you’ve got Ez pegged, all right.”
The undercover agent’s blush
deepened and he gave Vin a look that promised revenge. “So, darlin’, what
is the verdict on the state of Mr. Tanner’s larder?”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll be
happy to know that whatever was in Nathan’s Tupperware bowl is gone now,” she
answered with a wink at Vin. “We are
absolutely going to have to teach that man to cook, what he does to good food
is inexcusable.”
“Buck’s just as bad,” Vin observed casually.
His grudge camouflage was back up and running again; Nathan wouldn’t
receive any more criticism than anyone else did today.
“Yes, but at least Buck perpetrates
his atrocities on junk food…”
“Most of what Vin consumes is junk food as well,” Ezra pointed out with a
smirk.
“I know why Vin eats junk
food, it’s cheap and it’s fast, ” Juliet countered. She shook her finger at Vin
in a mock scold. “Well not today, Vin; today you eat real food and I’m going to the store to
get some right now. Is there anything in
particular you want?”
“I have macaroni and cheese already…” Vin began.
“No, you had a box of
artificial powdered cheese and the noodles had a weevil in them,” Juliet corrected
him. Ezra shuddered theatrically at the
mention of the weevil. “But if you want
macaroni and cheese I’ll make you some.
Don’t feed him while I’m gone, Ezra – I found three empty boxes of
powdered-sugar donuts in the trash and he doesn’t need any more.”
Vin blushed but recovered himself. “My wallet’s back in the bedroom…”
“We’ve got it covered,” Ezra
assured him. “Be careful, darlin’.”
“Always,
Ezra. I’ll be back directly.”
Vin didn’t understand
the caution until Juliet stopped at the door to arrange her purse strap so no
one could snatch it off her shoulder.
“You’re plannin’ to walk to the store?!”
“Certainly, it’s only two
blocks from here,” she said matter-of-factly.
“It would be silly to drive two blocks.”
“But…” But she was already out the door. The sharpshooter gave his friend a
disbelieving look. “You’re lettin’ her walk around by herself in Purgatorio
and all you say is ‘be careful’?”
“She’s a big girl, Vin –
figuratively speaking, of course,” Ezra told him. “And Juliet lives downtown, remember? She knows how to walk the city streets in
safety and she is perfectly competent to defend herself if some misguided soul
attempts to accost her, although even in Purgatorio
ah don’t see that happenin’ in broad daylight on a
main thoroughfare, do you?”
“Guess not, when you put it
that way,” Vin replied. He could tell that the undercover agent was
uncomfortable with the situation as well from the way his accent had thickened,
but he had the feeling this was an argument Ezra had already had with his fiancée
and lost. “She knows how to protect
herself, huh? She have
pepper spray or somethin’ like that?”
“No, she knows Jujitsu,” Ezra
replied. He grinned at Vin’s surprised but doubtful look. “Rest assured Juliet knows quite well that
even so equipped she could easily be overpowered; that is why when her brother
and his compatriots taught her self defense they concentrated on techniques to
facilitate escape rather than attack.”
“Her
brother? He in law enforcement or
something?”
“Something – he is a
firefighter.” Ezra relaxed back in his
seat. “I met the entire family when we
flew down for New Year’s, we had an extremely pleasant
visit.”
Vin was happy to hear that; he’d wondered how Ezra’s trip
to
“Apparently. I was rather
disconcerted at first to realize I had already been accorded family status as
one of Mrs. Moore’s ‘boys’ along with Michael and
Brian.” Ezra’s smile took on a slightly
wistful quality. “I am unused to being
treated as someone’s son. It was an
experience that may take some time to adjust to.”
“You’ll get used to it,” was Vin’s reply. “I
didn’t know what to think either when Miz Nettie started treatin’ me that
way, but once I realized she didn’t want anything and wouldn’t get bored of me
and stop I started to like it. Hadn’t
had anyone mother me since Mama died all those years ago.” He thought of something and cocked his head
at Ezra. “Was there ever anyone like
that for you, Ez?
Someone to mother ya?”
Ezra was silent for a long
moment, and Vin was starting to worry that he’d
ventured into territory he shouldn’t have; he’d met Maude twice, and they all
knew she wasn’t any kind of mother to her only son and most likely never had
been. He also knew that the medication
he was taking tended to make him a little more talkative than normal and
therefore less circumspect about what he said – which was one of the things he
hated about taking medication but wasn’t able to get anyone to take seriously. “Sorry,” he apologized, just in case. “Didn’t mean to pry.”
The Southerner blinked at him
and then shook his head with a smile.
“Oh…no, you didn’t; ah just got lost in the memory for a moment. Ah’d been thinking
about
“Huh?”
Ezra’s smile widened. “I was tryin’ to
think of a way to keep you entertained, somethin’ you
could do to keep your mind off bein’ laid up.
Vin turned the package over in his hands; it was a new crochet
hook, almost identical to the one his friend was holding. “Ain’t never tried
this.” He cocked an eyebrow at Ezra, who
was looking a little nervous. Probably afraid I’m goin’
to laugh at him, Vin thought. If he only knew… “How do you do it?”
Relief was evident on his
friend’s face. “I’ll show you.” Reaching into his bag again, Ezra took out
two balls of yarn, one red and one blue.
He then moved to sit next to Vin on the couch
and dropped the blue ball in his lap, keeping the red one for himself. “Watch me first and then I’ll help you repeat
the procedure.”
Vin watched carefully as the undercover agent’s nimble
fingers tied what looked like a slip knot over the hook and then wound the trailing
length of yarn over the fingers of his left hand. The hook began to dip and twist, pulling on
the yarn, and a narrow red tail began to grow downwards. Ezra stopped when the tail was about six
inches long and showed it to Vin. “That’s a chain, that’s how you get it
started. Now let’s take your hook…”
Five minutes later, Vin had a blue chain that was almost identical to Ezra’s and
was watching his friend demonstrate different techniques to make the chain into
other things. By the time Juliet got back
from the store the sharpshooter had mastered single crochet and was working on
double while Ezra was turning his own project into something circular and
complicated-looking. “No, don’t get up,”
she told her fiancé when he started to lay his work aside to come help
her. “You know if you stop now you’ll
end up forgetting your count and having to unravel everything. I can manage.”
She dropped a kiss in his
hair and then disappeared into the kitchen, from which almost immediately began
to emanate the sounds of cooking in progress. Vin glanced over at
his friend. “You do this a lot, then?”
Ezra shrugged and blushed a little. “Ah
enjoy it. When ah was a child, it was a
way to keep my playthings with me as ah went from place to place; when the toy
was taken away, ah could always count on bein’ able
to recreate it as soon as ah was out of Mother’s sight, and the hooks were easy
to hide as well.”
Vin knew all about the inevitability of toys being taken
away; in spite of the difference in social class, he and Ezra had had very
similar childhoods. He appraised his own
hook now in a different light. “See what
you mean; this would go right along a seam in your clothes and no one would
ever know it was there.”
“And plastic hooks don’t set
off airport security devices,” Ezra concurred.
“String is also easy to be had if one is looking for it, and a creation
can nearly always be dismantled by the untying of a few knots and stored as an
innocuous ball if necessary.”
“Good thinkin’,”
Vin approved, unraveling a few stitches to erase a
mistake. “You can
always come up with a reason for havin’ string.”
There was something in his
tone, something just a little…wistful?
Ezra cocked an eyebrow at him.
“And what exactly is it that you cannot concoct a reason for havin’ on hand, Vin?” The sharpshooter stiffened and Ezra made a
face at him, pretending offence. “I
showed you mine.”
Vin relaxed again and made a face of his own. “Mine’s bigger,” he told the undercover
agent. “Maybe I just didn’t want you to
get jealous.”
“Size isn’t everything.” Both men burst out laughing, and by the time
they’d regained control of themselves Ezra had to unravel two rows of
stitches. “All right, you reprobate,” he
said with a mock frown. “Now I’m goin’ to demand that you show me as restitution for my
loss,” and he held up the now-smaller red doily. “Confess, Vin; what embarrassin’ hobby have you been concealin’
all this time?”
A mischievous smile lit up
the sharpshooter’s face. “You’ve been leanin’ against one of ‘em ever
since you sat down on the couch,” he said.
Ezra jumped slightly and
looked behind himself, seeing the quilt that was draped across the back of the
worn couch. He brushed his hand across
it lightly, staring at the softly colored fabric pieces that had been joined into
an intricate pattern with tiny, even stitches.
“Vin, you…you made this?”
Vin was taken aback by the awe in his friend’s tone; it
wasn’t a reaction he’d expected. “Uh, yeah. Quiltin’ was somethin’ Mama used
to do, I kind of taught myself. Makes me
feel like…” he blushed and looked away.
“Like she’s real close ta me, just right over
my shoulder when I’m sewin’.”
“Ah know exactly what you
mean,” Ezra said softly. He shook his
head when Vin looked at him in surprise. “Ya’ll nevah asked
why ah stayed in
Light dawned. “
The Southerner nodded. “She was in a retirement home there, ah
visited as often as ah could. She died
just a few months before ah moved to
“Maybe we should get the two
of ‘em together, then,” Vin
suggested. “My mama and
Ezra seemed pleased by the
suggestion. “Most likely – and I would
enjoy it too.” He cocked an eyebrow at
the sharpshooter. “I take that to mean
you also are currently engaged in an ongoing project?”
“Oh yeah,” Vin
confirmed. A little bit of his grudge
surfaced. “I was plannin’
to use all this downtime to get it done, and then that damn troll decided
someone had to be here every minute of every day and I ain’t had a chance to
get it out once.”
“Troll?” It took a moment, but then Ezra got the
reference and burst out laughing. “Oh,
that was apt; that comparison will make my next medical incarceration much
easier to tolerate.” But he sobered
again quickly. “However, at least for
today your difficulties are over; you can certainly put in as much work on your
project as you care to while Juliet and I are here.”
“Aw Ez,
I can’t let you guys do that, just sit here and watch me sew,” Vin demurred. “Bad
enough you two gave up your Saturday to be here, wouldn’t be fair…”
“It would be more than fair,
I assure you,” Ezra cut him off. He
reached for the black bag again. “It so
happens I was hoping to get some time in on my own current project – which also
needs to be finished in a timely fashion.”
He put the red yarn and
attached hook back into the bag and extracted what looked like a large spool of
thread and a ball of…something fine and delicate-looking with a hook so small
it looked more like a needle. Vin’s mouth dropped open.
“Ez, what is
that?”
“Lace.” The undercover
agent, to Vin’s surprise, blushed. “For Juliet’s weddin’ dress, to be precise.”
The sharpshooter leaned
forward to get a closer look. “Ain’t never seen nobody do anything like that, what’s that
you’re makin’ it out of? Thread?”
“Silk thread,” Ezra
qualified, patting the spool. “Not the
easiest medium to work with, but the result is certainly worth the extra
effort.” He finished laying out his work
on the coffee table and then stood up.
“Now where is this project of yours and I’ll fetch it for you so we can
both get to work.”
“In my room, the big green
plastic box in the closet – all my stuff is in there, you can just bring the
whole box out.” Ezra hurried back into
the bedroom and was back in a few moments with the green plastic storage box in
his arms. He settled the box on the
couch next to Vin and then sat back down in his chair
with an expectant look on his face. Vin laughed at him.
“Told ya mine was bigger than yours, didn’t
I?” he quipped, popping the airtight lid off the box and setting it aside. “Really you shouldn’t be seein’
this…but if I can’t get some done on it you two aren’t gonna
have a wedding present from me.” It was
his turn to be nervous as he pulled out one of the finished blocks and held it
up for Ezra to see. “The pattern’s
called Wedding Ring. What do you think?”
“I think it’s beautiful,” was
the honest but stunned answer. The
intricate pattern was warm with deep crimson and reddish-violet, the stitches
so tiny it was hard to believe they’d been made by a human hand. “Vin, that is absolutely exquisite.”
Vin colored up again.
“Glad ya like it,” he said, putting the square
back in the box and starting to arrange his supplies where he needed them. “Glad I’m gonna get
to finish it then, too.”
Ezra made himself
comfortable and started counting stitches to see where he’d left off. Both men were hard at work when Juliet came
back out of the kitchen. “Lunch should
be coming out of the oven in about half an hour,” she began, and then stopped
and smiled when she saw what they were doing.
“Oh good, I’m glad the two of you found something to do. Vin, that’s beautiful!”
“Thanks,” the sharpshooter
answered. “I tried to pick colors you
both would like.”
“That marvelous creation is
to be our wedding present,” Ezra elaborated, not taking his eyes off his
lace. “Vin has been unable to work on it
due to…the depredations of a particularly persistent troll.”
Vin cracked up.
“Least this weekend he’s gonna be under
someone else’s bridge.” he managed. Then
he thought of something else. “Um,
Juliet, do you crochet too?”
“Oh heavens no, that’s my
mother; fiber arts elude me completely,” Juliet told him. “But she can’t cook like Grandmere
and I can so I guess we balance each other out.” She started to dig in the black bag beside
Ezra’s chair. “That’s why she’s making
my wedding dress and I’m making the cake.”
Vin frowned at the pieces he was joining. “Ain’t that supposed to be bad luck? For the bride to make her
own wedding cake?”
“It would be far worse luck for the poor soul
who tried to make the cake and decorate it to her satisfaction,” Ezra chuckled.
Juliet made a face at
him. “Vin, may I monopolize your
television for a while?”
“Sure,” the sharpshooter
agreed quickly; he’d actually been feeling slightly guilty that he and Ezra
would be mostly ignoring Juliet if they kept on with what they were doing. “Don’t have cable, though, ain’t too many
channels to pick from…”
“Oh, that isn’t a problem; I
brought my entertainment with me.” That
made Vin glance up, and he saw her unzipping a padded
black-and-silver case and pulling out cords.
“I’ll put your antenna back the way it was before we go, all right?”
“No problem.” It still hadn’t registered what she was doing
until she sat down cross-legged on the floor and turned on the television…and
picked up her controller. Vin almost dropped his needle. “You’re gonna play video games? Like JD?”
“It’s not just a video game, it’s Tomb Raider,”
Juliet corrected him. “Another teacher
got me interested in it a few years ago and I’ve been addicted ever since. I own the whole set.”
“Tomb Raider is an
archaeological adventure and a surprising amount of the details are accurate,”
Ezra said, his attention still fixed on his project. “I have to admit it can be quite enjoyable to
watch her play, almost like watching a movie that can be changed to suit your
whims.”
“Your last ‘whim’ was to see
Lara swan-dive off the head of the Sphinx,” Juliet teased.
“I just wanted to see the
panoramic view of the cavern the fall would provide…”
“You made me do it three
times running, Ezra,” she reminded him. “And
you heckle
Ezra applied himself very
intently to his crocheting. “He is a
craven coward and his accent is atrocious.”
Juliet winked at Vin and turned her attention to her game, and the
sharpshooter chuckled to himself and started stitching again. His quilt was that much closer to being
finished, he could already smell something wonderful from the kitchen, and his
bridge troll had been replaced by a prince and princess. It was definitely going to be a very good Saturday - even more so
because he hadn’t expected it to be.
Fin