Chapter Text
Let them cant about decorum,
Who have characters to lose!
Robert Burns
And by 'wrong' he didn't just mean things of which Mother would disapprove – that was a long list whose items he seemed to be gradually ticking off over the years, some of which made little to no sense at all – but things which she might never have thought of in the first place. Things which people just didn't do, not sensible people who wanted to live a respectable life and make as much money as possible, goals which didn't always coincide so well where Ezra was concerned but viable ones none the less.
He didn't quite have it in him to be 'respectable', maybe that was the problem? He liked the trappings of wealth as much as the next man, more than the next man in many cases, but there was something about the allure of the forbidden that tipped him over the edge from 'respectable' into another category altogether. There was just something about himself, something which clearly didn't come from Maude Standish no matter how outlandishly she could behave at times, that wanted things he shouldn't want and didn't see why he should stop wanting them just because they weren't the things respectable people wanted.
Mother wasn't afraid of much, but she wanted to fit in so desperately that she never would. Ezra knew he was different; he'd like to fit in, admitted to himself that he wanted it desperately when he was at his lowest ebb, but knew that in the end he never would because he just couldn't stop being himself for long enough to make it happen.
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If his experience of war had taught him anything, it had taught him how to wait, how to hunker down and sit out a barrage until it was safe to move again. It had given him that experience, that counterpoint for the rest of his life as he waited for the bombs to drop once more.
He had no more sense than god gave a mule, apparently, when it came to keeping out of trouble's way, particularly when that trouble walked on two legs and was called Nathan Jackson. Not that it was Nathan's fault; even at his lowest ebb Ezra couldn't refuse to shoulder the blame for the actions of his libido, unexpected as they might be.
It had all started in the church. His good intentions, tutoring those fallen women with no thought of his own recompense save a small finders fee to grease the wheels of a successful transaction, had been thrown in his face by Nathan, leaving him all but speechless in response.
He'd covered for himself, of course, certain neither Buck nor Josiah had been aware of his visceral response, but Ezra had to admit his concentration had been as affected as the tightness of his pants. He'd managed to find a pretence for cutting short their lessons and beaten a hasty retreat to his room, in search of a little privacy for some self-contemplation Nathan would have been embarrassed to witness.
Or maybe he wouldn't. Ezra had closed his eyes and imagined Nathan's hands on his flesh, pushing his own away and taking charge of their intimacy, demanding all the time that Ezra do exactly as he say or else. Or else. At the time he couldn't finish the imagining, his hand stuttering even as his body followed through regardless, but a significant amount of thought had gone into what 'or else' might be followed by since then, even if Nathan was ignorant of his starring role in Ezra's fantasies.
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Better and better.
“May I ask just exactly what you have in store for me, Mr Larabee?” Ezra asked, ignoring the fact he'd effectively been dismissed and sitting down in one of the empty chairs instead. There was a deck of cards on the table and he reached for them, almost instinctively, focussing his attention on them rather than the other man at the table.
“Trouble out at the Seminole village,” Chris said, after a long pause. “Some of the kids are sick.”
Ezra's hands had frozen on the cards, stopped midway through one of the more complicated shuffles, and it took a moment before he realised that he was even still holding them. A moment later and the cards were back in a neat pile, then back on the surface of the table before Ezra even knew he was heading back towards his room.
The fact he was always ready to leave town was sometimes useful and this was one of those times – he was partly packed, just his bedroll to retrieve from where he had stashed it on top of the wardrobe and some clean shirts just in case they were there longer than he anticipated might be the case.
It had to be the children, didn't it? As he headed back down to the saloon, nodding farewell at Chris where he was finishing his coffee, then out towards the livery stable Ezra considered this and just why it felt so wrong.
It could be nothing, of course. Children got sick, they were more susceptible to all sorts of things, and the Seminole village was hardly the most sanitary of places for anyone concerned. It could be that simple, it really could. And he could almost see Nathan's concern in his mind's eye, the way those hands were so sure yet gentle, sending yet another wave of arousal through him just when he really didn't need it.
“You ready to go?” Nathan asked; he was already leading his horse out even as Ezra hurried past him, bedroll held in front of himself just in case the other man was a little more perceptive than usual. “I already saddled your horse, in case you were wondering how that happened...”
“Thank you,” he called out, though he was unsurprised to get no response to his words, no matter how polite.
Ezra busied himself with tying on his bedroll then tested the girth briefly before swinging up into the saddle – it wasn't that he didn't trust Nathan, it was force of habit now after so many times when Buck or JD had not quite tightened it enough and he'd ended up on the ground, usually to the sound of mocking laughter.
Nathan was waiting at the edge of town, clearly eager to get to the village and Ezra wondered just how much of that was about the children – knowing Nathan, that was definitely foremost on his mind – and how much of it was Nathan's budding romance with the chief's daughter. Ezra remembered Rain fondly, as she'd been a definite highlight of their previous time in the village; he wasn't usually attracted to women, but for her Ezra knew he would make an exception. It seemed like all his disreputable chickens were coming home to roost together, whether he liked it or not.
He'd seen the way she looked at Nathan, wondered if she was also aware that he looked at her the same way; that might not be the case, considering that Nathan was still living in town, though that fact could just as easily be ascribed to Nathan's own sense of duty. Like Ezra, he'd agreed to be part of their merry band and it would take more than a beautiful and passionate woman to shake Nathan's commitment to something he believed in. Ezra only hoped Rain appreciated that, given that it clearly went against everything she wanted.
“Shall we?” Ezra asked, kicking his horse into a canter as he came alongside where Nathan sat. He didn't need to look back to see the annoyance on Nathan's face, he could imagine it well enough without doing so. “I thought you were in a hurry to leave,” he called back over his shoulder, his only answer the hoofbeats of his own and Nathan's mounts.