Green Day, Pt 3c/3 - I'm finished, yay!
Oct. 28th, 2009 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
boogieshoesA/N: Yay, I'm finally done! Well, I'm done with the rough draft, anyway. I hope you all enjoy this, and I hope you all enjoy the re-write when I get to post it around Christmas/ New Years (if all goes well, that is). On with the show. -bs
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Title: Green Day, Part 3c/3
Fandom: Magnificent 7
Universe: ATF LB Green Day AU
Pairing: N/A
Summary: JD has a meltdown at school, and Chris and Buck are baffled. Vin still isn't sure he can trust the adults enough to confide in them, but he may need to, if he's going to help his little brother. Green Day Universe information here.
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My Warnings Policy Post is here.
Warnings:
Kinks:
Rating: PG-13; the adults cuss.
Archive Information: Feel free to archive, just drop me a note if you do so.
Additional Links: Part 1/3; Part 2a/3; Part 2b/3; Part 2c/3; Part 3a/3; Part 3b/3; Part 3c/3
*****************MAG7: ATF LB AU**********************************
“I know. But listen to them a minute.” Dr. Lowery pressed a button on the intercom beside him.
JD and Vin sat at the bright yellow, plastic, child-sized table in the playroom, having both decided to color this morning. Dr. Lowery had several coloring books featuring various cartoon characters the children were familiar with, and often encouraged his young patients to pick out their favorites and talk to him about them. JD had chosen a coloring book with Spongebob Squarepants, while Vin contentedly filled in the outlined figures of Scooby Doo and shaggy. They had, rather typically, dumped all the crayons out between them so each could grab what they wanted.
Vin’s tongue stuck out of his mouth, an endearing sign that he was concentrating hard on making sure he stayed inside the lines with the colors – colors he’d picked so that the resulting picture would look just like it came off the tv show. JD, in an unusual burst of creativity, was coloring everything in an original color, mostly bright shades. He seemed to be staying away from greens and dark shades, frowning once or twice as a crayon produced a different color than he expected. There was no black anywhere in the picture, and even the shoes, which were inked in black, were covered up in bright orange construction paper JD had torn to the proper size and tried to adhere with…something. Chris suspected spit or snot – he’d have to talk to JD about germs, he thought. But why would JD cover up the shoes?
JD grabbed a blue crayon, saying, “I like blue, I’m gonna make his floor blue.”
Vin cocked his head consideringly. “I thought his floor was s’posed to be green?”
“Yeah, but that’s silly – who wants to walk on a green floor all the time? It’d be like walking on a bunch of nails, with all the pointy ends up.” JD spent a little more time coloring, deeper here, lighter there – Chris realized with some bemusement that JD was deliberately shading his drawing, although he wasn’t getting shadows placed correctly.
“Hey,” JD asked suddenly, “Did you ever wonder why Shaggy wears green all the time? You think he’s got scars and stuff from his shirt? I bet that’s why he never takes it off…”
Buck’s eyebrows rose in astonishment. “So he connects colors to physical pain?” He looked beseechingly at Dr. Lowery – Buck loved all the glorious, riotous colors in the world. His love of colors probably explained the number of Parrot-head posters he owned. It undoubtedly explained his fashion sense.
“Not all colors,” Dr. Lowery assured him, “Just some. You’re not going to have to keep him in a white cube. With some therapy – the sensory integration therapy we discussed earlier – he’ll be just fine.”
Buck sighed, glancing over at Chris. “That’s good – hey, what’s wrong, Pard?”
Chris was still staring intently into the playroom. “Just watch,” he said, and Buck turned back to watch the boys more closely. He kept throwing little looks over at Chris, probably waiting for him to say something more, but Chris held his peace.
In the playroom, Vin looked up from his own drawing of Scooby Doo and Shaggy. “That’s wrong, JD – Gary is s’posed to be blue with a red shell, not black.”
JD shrugged. “I’m not drawing him wrong, Vin, the tv gets it wrong! ‘Member the snails at the pond?”
Vin nodded, a puzzled look on his face. “So?”
“So Gary’s gotta be black cause he’s a snail, and snails are all slimy and yucky and gross.” JD shivered. “Evil, too,” he muttered, sotto voice, unaware of Vin shaking his head perplexedly beside him.
Chris knew the moment Buck realized what he himself had already figured out. He watched the shock cross his face, and watched it chased away by the look of understanding and sympathy. Chris nodded; yep, this was going to be quite a change.
With a stricken look on his face, Buck motioned for Dr. Lowery to turn off the intercom. “Oh, Chris,” he said, “Chris, I’m so sorry. What are you going to do?”
Chris rocked back on his heels, thinking. One night soon after Sarah and Adam had died, he’d thrown his clothes out in a fit of drunken grief. Everything had reminded him of his loved ones: Sarah’s favorite shirt, the shirt Adam had barfed on when he’d gotten chicken pox. It had all been too painful to bear, and he’d been too heartsick to even try. Buck had come to the ranch to find him sobbing in a rather appropriate rainstorm, torn and muddied clothes around him. His friend had said nothing, simply put the man to bed, and the next day, Chris had found a pair of black jeans and a black t-shirt next to a set of black sweats in his closet, and a cleaned-up yard outside.
He’d replaced the rest of his wardrobe with black clothes, also. It had been so hard for him to enter into the malls and department stores without remembering trips with Sarah and Adam. It had been quicker, at least, to buy only black – it minimized the time he had to spend in the store, and maximized the time he could spend locked in grief. Even after living hadn’t hurt so much, buying black had been a habit he’d kept. Sarah had bought most of his shirts and sweaters after they’d married, since he hated buying clothes. They’d both grinned over the traditional arrangement, and Sarah claimed that he’d wear his things to bare threads if he’d had to do buy his own stuff. She was just about right, too. Buying black clothes minimized the choices he had to make, and minimized his aggravation with the whole process, however necessary it was.
Nor was Chris so unaware of his social environment as to be ignorant of the contribution his wardrobe made to his reputation. ‘The Man in Black’ was well aware that his reputation as a grief-stricken, hard-drinking widower had brought him the sympathy of his colleagues, the opportunity to enforce his own policies towards his team at the ATF, and the fear and respect of his enemies. His legendary temper might lose its power if he tempered it with less aggressive dress.
All that paled in comparison to the needs of one little boy, wrestling with something he could barely comprehend, but was no less real for all that. It really wasn’t that much to do at all.
“Well, I guess I’m going shopping for new clothes,” he said, obviously startling his best friend. Chris raised his eyebrows. How had Buck missed his transition from the bitter, broken man he’d been? Especially since the big lug had had such a hand in keeping him together? Maybe, Chris thought, Buck had been too wrapped up in keeping everything together to see the difference he’d made. He reminded himself to thank his friend later. Later, but soon.
“Don’t get any ideas about practical jokes, Buck,” he warned, as Buck’s eyes began to take on his trademark twinkle. “I’m still wearing black at the office. It’s… professional. Sophisticated.”
“And you have a reputation to maintain.”
“And I have a reputation to maintain,” Chris agreed, his own mouth twitching into a smile.
***********************MAG7: ATF LB AU********************
Epilogue
JD hated black. It felt thick and oily, and he always got a picture of himself choking in liquid crud when he saw it. He had nightmares about it sometimes – surrounded by nothing but black, unable to escape the darkness churning around him. The first time he trotted downstairs to find Mr. Chris in blue sweats and a NAVY tee prepping breakfast, he stopped in surprise, completely taken aback by the fact that the third presence in the house was, in fact, another human. People were interesting to JD, always so different from each and yet so alike. He found it fascinating, these patterns of differences and similarities, and the joy he felt at realizing he had a new person to learn about had him running to Mr. Chris overflowing with questions he didn’t bother to repress.
“Whoa, there, Tiger,” Mr. Chris laughed, swinging him around in a circle like his Buck sometimes did before settling him deftly on one hip. Mr. Chris grinned at him like a demented angel.
“So, what are we going to do today?” Mr. Chris asked, and JD obligingly launched into an explanation of the very full and busy day he had planned. Mr. Chris, he found out in the next few weeks, generally wore some kind of sweats or shorts and a tee in the mornings. When JD had asked why, he said he had decided to start working out at the Federal Building, which had an entire gym inside. JD wanted to know how big a jungle gym had to be before an adult could play on it, and if he could play on the gym, too. Mr. Chris had laughed, but he wasn’t sure why. Adults were funny that way sometimes.
Mr. Chris often came home in his ‘work clothes’ – which were still the dreaded, oily black – but he changed as soon as he came inside into ‘barn gear’, the stained blue jeans and checked shirts he cleaned out the horses’ stalls in. JD was always amazed at how approachable Mr. Chris was after he changed clothes.
JD wasn’t fond of green, either – it was all hard and spiky. This texture was fun to play with and feel sometimes, but eating green things wasn’t something he was all that comfortable with. Despite repeated exposure, he could never stop imagining his green vegetables tearing great strips out of his throat as they went down. For his Buck, though, he would choke them down, firmly reminding himself that nothing had happened the last time he’d eaten broccoli or peas or green beans, and so it was probable nothing would happen this time, either. That didn’t change the fact that they tasted bad in addition to the un-appetizing green color.
A few nights after he first saw Mr. Chris in his morning workout clothes, JD wandered into his Buck’s bedroom as the man changed from his own work clothes into something more suitable for doing chores. He climbed onto the bed, sitting on the edge and swinging his legs happily. It had been a good day, and even the cafeteria with its icky green color couldn’t make him sad.
“Hey, there, Little Bit,” his Buck greeted as he came out of his private bathroom, wearing only a pair of jeans. He ruffled JD’s hair affectionately as he crossed the room to his closet, and studied the hanging clothes before him.
“Hmm,” he said, snagging a green t-shirt with a local Irish pub’s logo on it, “can’t wear that one.” He tossed it into a box in the bottom of the closet that JD hadn’t seen before. JD’s brow wrinkled in confusion as his Buck ran through the closet, tossing various items into the box.
“Mr. Buck, what are you doing?” he finally asked.
“Well, Little Bit, I decided to give some clothes to the Good Will. They take gently used things and sell ‘em at a price poor people can afford. I got some things here I can’t use anymore, and I thought I’d help out some people who aren’t as well off as we are.”
JD hopped off the bed and trotted over to the box. “They’re all green!” He reared back in surprise.
“Yep. Remember the other day when I wore this,” his Buck pointed to the hunter green polo shirt, “and you were afraid of me?” JD shuddered and nodded. His Buck reached out and hugged him tightly to his chest. “I don’t ever want to hurt you like that again, so I’m getting rid of all the green things I own.”
JD considered this seriously. No one had ever gone to this much effort to protect him from bad things before, except Vin. And it occurred to him that as seemingly simple as it was for his Buck to remove green shirts and ties from his wardrobe, it must have been much harder for Mr. Chris to part with his habitual black garments. JD and Vin had gone into Mr. Chris’s room before to get a forgotten wallet or cell phone, and JD clearly remembered a closet full of black clothes, and thinking how alien Mr. Chris had to be to thrive with that oily sludge covering him. Not just the work clothes that were the only black things he saw lately, but also sweats, t-shirts, black denim jeans, black leather jackets, black nylon windbreakers… Mr. Chris must have gone shopping for a whole new set of clothes, just so he wouldn’t make JD afraid anymore. The thought was… bigger than he was; even with his advanced vocabulary, he just didn’t have the words to describe it. Maybe he could ask Dr. Will about it.
“JD?”
JD re-focused on his Buck. “I love you, Mr. Buck,” he said, wrapping his arm around Buck’s neck and hugging as tight as could.
“I love you, too, Little Bit… but I’d like to breathe now!”
JD broke off, giggling. Then another, very important thought crossed his mind. “Hey, does this mean I don’t have to eat broccoli anymore?” That would be very cool.
His Buck grinned down at him. “Sorry, Little Bit, you still have to eat your green vegetables. But Chris and I agreed that we’d drown ‘em in cheese sauce for you. Is that okay?”
JD nodded, thinking that was very much okay. Everything was better with cheese sauce on it, after all.
~finis~
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 12:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 02:46 pm (UTC)I like the ending - love the cheese sauce idea, and love the way JD has noticed that chris and Buck have given up the 'bad' colors. Well done!!!
You excited to have it finished???
no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 03:19 pm (UTC)and then of course, came the worry that no one liked it, since it's been up for two days, hee. i mean, i know everyone has a life outside of fandom, but it's so anxious-making to post your fic, isn't it? i suppose i'll get used to it, though.
if you send me an email address, i'll send you the complete story in one file, if you'd still like to do the beta thing. i understand if you don't want to/ want to delay a bit, because of NaNoWriMo.
*hugs in exuberance*
-bs
no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 03:54 pm (UTC)-bs
no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 06:31 pm (UTC)*giggles* - love this little bit! :D
“Don’t get any ideas about practical jokes, Buck,” he warned, as Buck’s eyes began to take on his trademark twinkle. “I’m still wearing black at the office. It’s… professional. Sophisticated.”
“And you have a reputation to maintain.”
“And I have a reputation to maintain,” Chris agreed, his own mouth twitching into a smile.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 06:34 pm (UTC)humor is so hard to write. i greatly admire anyone who can do a straight comedy piece, i have a hard enough time figuring out little gems like these to insert!
-bs
no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 03:18 am (UTC)Mr. Chris must have gone shopping for a whole new set of clothes, just so he wouldn’t make JD afraid anymore. The thought was… bigger than he was; even with his advanced vocabulary, he just didn’t have the words to describe it. Maybe he could ask Dr. Will about it.
You've done such a beautiful job with this.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 09:24 pm (UTC)i wanted to highlight how smart JD was, to pick that up, even if he wasn't sure how to describe it. i'm so glad you enjoyed this piece.
-bs
no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 05:05 am (UTC)I liked the realization JD came to about what Buck and Chris were doing, and the special lengths Chris went to in order to not wear black around JD.
Thanks for sharing.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 09:25 pm (UTC)-bs