Sequel to: On Christmas Eve: A Holiday Moment

Vin popped another chocolate into his mouth and then resolutely put the lid back on the box and pushed it across the bar. He looked up and down the bar with a slight frown on his handsome face as the candy began to slowly dissolve on his tongue. He hated Ezra's kitchen; it was set up for maximum convenience, sure, but it was also narrow and cold. Kitchens should be welcoming, homey places to Vin's way of thinking. Of course, his own apartment's kitchen was even less welcoming than Ezra's...

They needed a new kitchen, he decided. Chewing up and swallowing the chocolate he licked his lips and forced himself not to reach for the box again by leaving the bar and cutting through the dining room to stand in the living room entryway. His lover was there, sitting on the floor surrounded by boxes and piles upon piles of pictures, books and the assorted miscellany that most people build up throughout their lives. Most people, though, kept at least some of those odd remembrances out where they could see them or at least someplace where they could occasionally take them out to look; Ezra kept his sealed away in packing boxes, some of which hadn't been opened in ten years or more. And he wouldn't be opening them now if Vin hadn't bullied him into it. The sharpshooter came the rest of the way into the room to stand over his lover, who immediately stopped what he was doing and looked up at him hopefully. "I believe it is time to stop unpacking and clean up the mess I've already made..."

"Baby, you promised," Vin chided gently, dropping down next to him. "I know it's a mess now, but it needs to be done so we're doin' it, all of it, end of story."

"But there's no place to put..."

"We'll make a place." Vin held a finger up to his lover's pouting lips to stop the next excuse from coming out. "Or we'll move, put all our stuff together in a big new place, how about that?"

Ezra's eyes widened, and he licked the finger that rested against his lips. "Did you just ask me to move in with you someplace other than Purgatorio?"

Vin chuckled. "I thought that's what I was doing, yeah and you know I wouldn't ask you to move to Purgatorio." He leaned forward to just barely brush Ezra's lips with his own. "We need a place that's not you and not me, a place that will be all only us."

The kiss was gentle and warm, not a starting something' kiss, and Ezra smiled into it. "Mmmm, you've been into the chocolates again, haven't you? And yes, I would love to move in with you but does that not mean that this unpacking is a waste of time?"

"Nope." Vin captured Ezra's face in his hands and shook his head. "Nice try, baby, but we're unpacking every last box and we're doin' it today. We can pack a bunch of it back up later though, okay?" He dropped another kiss on those willing lips and then pulled back and grinned. "So show me what we're into now."

"Some mementos from the Academy and my early days in the Bureau, that's all." Ezra sighed and lifted a wide, slim book out of the box next to him. "I don't even know why I kept them."

Vin took the book from him gently. "Because it wasn't all bad," he said. "Because you knew that someday you'd be able to look at them and remember without it hurtin', that maybe someday you might even want to. It's part of your life, baby."

"Attending the Academy wasn't bad," Ezra admitted, watching Vin thumb through the yearbook but not looking at the pictures with him. "I had acquaintances there if not friends, and it was one place that Mother couldn't interfere with me no matter how badly she wanted to."

"Kind of like the Army for me, I guess," was Vin's comment. "It was one place Mr. Joe couldn't follow me or do anything to get me in trouble, don't know that I could have gotten shut of him any other way. Hey look at you!" He tapped one of the pictures with his finger and grinned. "Damn, Ez, could you have been any cuter? You can't tell me no one there noticed you."

Ezra blushed and shook his head. "There were those that did, but the women did not interest me and the men...well, I was not willing to risk my safe haven for mere sex, even if I had been able to trust anyone enough to allow it to happen." He leaned against his lover's shoulder with another sigh. "I'd never been able to trust anyone that much...until you."

Vin kissed the top of his head. "And don't you ever think I don't appreciate the compliment." He set the yearbook aside and slid one arm around Ezra's shoulders, gesturing at the mess scattered across the living room floor with the other. "Or this one either. I know how rough this is for you, diggin' out all this stuff you ain't seen in years."

"It's something I hadn't envisioned doing, certainly," Ezra admitted, picking at the yellowed tape on the last unopened box. "At least not for a long time to come. But I suppose it was time to face the past instead of just lugging it around with me, especially if we are to begin a new life together." He abruptly ripped the tape off the aged cardboard and dragged the box over the surrounding piles until it was almost in his lap. "The last one."

"Yep, the last one." Vin readjusted his hold on his lover so that he, too, could see into the box. "Baby stuff?"

"One of Mother's early housekeepers, who also apparently doubled as my nanny at the time, kept these safe and later returned them to me," Ezra told him slowly. He reached into the box and pulled out a framed picture that showed a very young Maude Standish sitting next to a smiling young man and holding a baby in her arms. "Mother...threw them away, or tried to, when we left Virginia. She saw them as worthless and potentially incriminating, and I am not certain what she would do if she were to find out that I have them in my possession." He reached in again and brought out a handful of papers, letters and cards. "I learned quite a lot from these, and not all of it pleasant."

Vin reached into the box himself and pulled out a yellowed newspaper that had been folded to reveal a particular article. When he read the headline he stiffened and scowled. "She killed your dad?"

"So his family wanted people to believe," Ezra replied with a sigh, taking the newspaper from him and laying it on top of the other papers. "Rosa told me she knew Mother had nothing to do with the accident, but the family was powerful and did not want to see my father's inheritance go to Mother and I instead of being distributed amongst the rest of the bloodline. They ruined her life, Vin, deliberately, maliciously. What she is now...it was my father's family who started her down that path; she had to become the monster most people believed her to be in order to survive."

"She didn't have to keep on that way," Vin ground out, tightening his hold on his lover when he felt the faint tremble running through the compact body in his arms. He frowned down at the picture lying next to the box. "I've done things I ain't proud of to survive, but I didn't keep on doin' em once I didn't have to any more. Maybe she had to be that way for a while, but there's no excuse for her to be doin' it now and no excuse for her treatin' you the way those folks back then treated her, none at all."

Ezra turned in his arms and buried his face in the soft cotton of Vin's shirt. "I don't want to..."

"I know you don't want to talk about it, baby, I know," Vin soothed him. "But it's like unpackin' these boxes, it's something that needs to be done and now's as good a time as any. Because eventually she's gonna come back from Europe and find out about us."

Another tremor. "She'll hurt you."

"No, and she won't hurt you either." Vin dropped a kiss on his lover's soft hair. "I won't let her and that's a promise." He frowned at the picture again. "You ever notice how much you look like your dad? Maybe that's part of her problem."

"It had occurred to me," Ezra said with a resigned sigh. "I believe that may also have something to do with her repeated attempts to force me out of law enforcement; my father was a lawyer with the district attorney's office, a criminal prosecutor."

"Bet he'd be proud his boy grew up to be a federal agent, then," Vin told him. He tipped the box over and dumped out a scattering of papers and pictures, baby clothes and toys, and a pair of bronzed baby shoes. He picked up the shoes and looked them over, studying the engraving on the base. "You ever look up his family?"

"I know where they are." Ezra shifted around again and ran his own fingers over the cool metal, tracing the tiny laces. "But I decided against contacting them, for obvious reasons."

"Yeah, can't blame you there." Vin let his fingers drift over Ezra's, caressing the delicate skin with a feather-light touch. "Tell you what, let's pack up this mess for now, and later we'll get a big album to put all the pictures in except for this one," and he picked up the framed family portrait. "I want this one and the shoes on the shelf with my pictures of my mama and Uncle Chanu and my Ranger unit, we can put your graduation picture up there too." His fingers slid upwards to brush his lover's cheek. "In our new place, that is."

"In our new place," Ezra agreed slowly, smiling as he captured the caressing hand and pulled it down to rest against his chest, over his heart. "I very much like the sound of that."