Zach noticeably didn't know where to start. He was faced with an array of bowls full to the brim with buttery carrots and fresh baby peas and a platter piled high with turkey. Instead he sat back, waiting for others to inquire if he wanted the food, and then taking similar amounts to what they had until his plate had no plate showing and gravy was touching the edges. Ben was pleased to then see the teenager virtually inhale turkey. He was totally absorbed in his food, unaware that he was making appreciative noises each time he chewed a mouthful. It made Ben thoughtful to watch this young man with the sparkling eyes, not talking, or joining in the teasing at the table, but focusing intently on the food and just listening to the chaos around them with a small smile on his face.
Zachary Isaiah Weston, seventeen, school records at thirteen showed him as an A student, his records stopping dead in the November just before his fourteenth birthday. His mom was a homemaker; his dad was ex-Army. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing in their records showed any kind of evil that would drive a father to beat his son for his sexual preferences. He had a sister, younger, in school still.
"To blue bananas." His mom's voice broke into his daydream, and he realized he had almost spent his entire dinner with his thoughts and worries. He raised his glass of nonalcoholic beer in toast, watching Zach lift his glass also. Maybe Zach needed to know what the toast was for, seeing as how he was looking totally clueless.
"Dad," Ben started, looking at his mom, wondering if even after four years it was still too difficult for her to hear. She nodded and lifted her glass gently to indicate he should carry on. "He passed on nearly four years ago, but he made this dessert once, and to this day we don't know how he managed it, but he turned the bananas blue, hence the toast."
"I'm sorry for your loss," Zach said immediately, his eyes going straight to Donna. "It must be hard."
"I'm not saying it isn't," she began, "but like Ben said, it has been four years…"
Zach didn't push for more, just lowered his eyes and concentrated again on the food on his plate, happy when the chattering around him started up again. He glanced up under his long hair and met Ben's eyes, blushing furiously.
Ben was excused from cleaning up as he was still in his uniform, and Zach was refused entry into the kitchen on the grounds that he was clumsy and pathetic, still not that far from being unconscious on a bench and all. Zach didn't even argue that he had been asleep, not unconscious, and drifted back into the front room where Ben stood holding Jamie's eldest in his arms. Ella, he remembered she was called. He helped her reach the star on top of the tree, whispering to her and making her giggle as he tickled her under her arms whenever she tried to reach up. Jamie's son was lying on the floor playing with a handheld game of some sort—a PSP, Zach thought, hopelessly out of the loop with the home schooling and friends-blocking. He kneeled down next to him, feeling like he should be saying something.
"Hey, Daniel."
"Hi," Daniel replied, his tongue poking out between the gaps in his teeth as he concentrated hard on the screen.
"What's that?" Zach asked, not really aware of game-etiquette but nonetheless deciding his curiosity needed to be satisfied.
"Ben 10: Alien Force." Daniel didn't need to put the duh on the end. Zach could hear it in his head and, disappointed at himself and his chosen social interaction, he slumped back against the sofa and decided to wait out the time until everyone else came back into the sitting room. He was surprised when Daniel stopped his game and relocated to sit next to him, his Christmas shirt all crinkly and smelling of detergent, his hair spiked, and his face an open book. Handing Zach the game, he frowned as Zach held it gingerly in his hands.
"Haven't you ever played a PSP before?" he asked Zach, his voice lisping with the missing teeth, shaking his head when Zach said a simple no. "'S upside down," Daniel pointed out, watching as Zach turned it around in his hands and then proceeding to point out the different controls. Controls seemingly too small for Zach's large, uncoordinated hand. Instructions such as push here, pull there, tilt the PSP that way—no that way, followed as Daniel took pity on the Christmas guest. Zach was pathetically grateful that this small boy was handing over his precious gift, and he tried his hardest, he really did, ridiculously happy with his score, until Daniel decimated it in the space of twenty seconds, sending a cheeky grin Zach's way.
Zach knew his upbringing had been unconventional, and he didn't just mean since he had been virtually imprisoned in his own home, but even before that. He was the firstborn child of one of the only families without a working TV, one of the only families that had absolutely nothing remotely resembling a game machine or a computer in their home. He had rolled with it, his height always giving him the advantage of not generally being picked on for what he didn't have in his life.
Still, he was made to try out for all the school teams—it was his dad's rule. Competition was the route to good health and happiness. If you listened to Samuel Weston, it went alongside no television, no money, and fatigues instead of jeans. He shifted as he watched Daniel with the controls. Never let it be said he wasn't a fast learner, and he could see what was happening on the screen as Daniel moved each control.
"Beat that," Daniel said, handing back the PSP and smirking at his new high score. Zach took the gadget gingerly, put his fingers in the same position Daniel had and pressed start, managing to multiply his last score by ten before it all became too fast. He could feel Daniel pressed into his side, chuckling like a little demon. He could sense Ben's eyes on him, and he sent him a quick shy smile even as his character nose-dived off of a cliff to be smashed to his apparent doom on the rocks below or something equally dramatic considering all the noises emanating from the handheld in his grasp.
The rest of the day was more of the same. Jamie and his wife and kids left at around ten, both kids droopy and tired in their parents' arms. When they had gone, the house seemed quieter. Ellie made her excuses; the current boyfriend of choice was on IM. Then Donna decided to retire with new bubble bath, a good book, and a glass of wine. Ben had disappeared a while earlier to check in at the station, but everything was quiet, and he had arrived back just in time to wave goodbye to his brother and family. It was now just Zach and Ben sitting on the sofa in front of the fire. The night pulled in around them, and the only illumination was from the lights on the tree.
"I realized I don't know the name of your town," Zach said carefully, not wanting to open the whole how the fuck did you get here then debate, but needing to know what kind of town held families as impossibly perfect as the Hamilton family or this other guy's family, the apparently really tall guy who had donated his clothes, where people gave presents and rooms to a boy like Zach.
"Hill Valley," Ben replied with a grin.
"Hill Valley." Zach rolled the name on his tongue; it sounded strange. "Kinda sounds made up." Zach added the afterthought before he even realized what he was saying, and then immediately regretted it. A person doesn't go around insulting his host's town name for God's sake.
Carefully he looked at Ben who, with his head laid back on the sofa, had an honest to goodness laugh on his lips. "It does." Ben sniggered. "I always said it should be called Flatville, 'cause we sure as hell don't have big hills round here." He kept chuckling every so often as Zach searched for another subject to talk about, but Ben beat him to it.
"What were you gonna do? That is, when you woke up Christmas Day, where were you gonna go?" Ben sounded curious, but not official, and Zach wasn't sure what to say.
Zach shrugged. What was he going to say? That he had kind of given up, that he had no money left? "Winchester," he finally offered. "I was heading north, thought maybe I could pick up work there."
"Winchester is a fine place," Ben said in response. "But you don't have to go to another city and find work, you know." Ben sounded thoughtful. "What about college?" Zach smiled softly into his hot chocolate. College was just pipe dream.
"I didn't even graduate, and I don't have the money for college."
"You don't strike me as stupid, Zach. You could get your GED, get a degree, make a life for yourself." Pain speared Zach. Everything seemed so damn simple when Ben said it like that, and irrationally, he started to feel angry.
"We don't all have apple pie lives," Zach spat, not sad, but angry, hostile, and feeling trapped. He pushed himself to stand, stumbling slightly and sloshing hot liquid over his hand and onto the carpet. Ben stood just as fast, grabbing Zach's arm.
"Zach, sit down," Ben said in a calm voice, instantly gentling the passion Zach felt and encouraging him to sit back on the sofa. "There is nothing about our lives here that you could remotely call apple pie perfect. We may not have a lot of crime, but we have poverty in pockets like you have never seen. Yes, we have a town that pulls together to help each other out, but we have crops that fail, cattle that die, and stores that close. We don't have a big college; it's desperately underfunded, but we have community learning. If you took a step back, wait 'til after Christmas maybe and then approached them for a place? This town may not have a lot of material things, but what we do have is a place you could be safe, somewhere to grow, maybe go to the college—"
Zach interrupted with a disbelieving snort. "Where in this would you see me living?"
"We'd find somewhere. You could work for your keep, live with me possibly. I have my own house, admittedly a small one, but it has two bedrooms. You could stay with me, stay here in Hill Valley." Ben sounded pathetically hopeful and entirely convinced he had an option Zach should entertain.
"What about money?" Zach snapped in return.
"It's a poor community generally, but some of the farms need laborers. There's at least one store looking for a clerk. I don't know, but we'd find somewhere." Ben was clearly on a roll.
"Why would you do that? You want me to be grateful? Maybe bend over for you, pay you back that way?" Zach's chest was tight with anger.
"No—god no." Ben finally managed to answer, shaking his head, and his face flushing scarlet. "I just have— I mean, no. Do you…"
"Ben—"
"Shit, I really didn't know how to word this, please. I'm a cop, I'm trained to help, and god knows… I mean, Zach, you need to stop running. You're eighteen in two days. Make a stand, draw a line. Just stop."
Zach unconsciously drew his knees up on the sofa, wrapping his hands around them, his usual pose of self-protection. "I can't think," he finally said. "I just can't think." His voice was broken. "Can we just leave this?"
Ben made a decision, flicking through the TV channels with the remote. "You ever seen Die Hard?" he asked. "It's starting in five minutes, you wanna watch?"
Zach had heard of Die Hard. Being in mainstream school until thirteen, he had a feel for popular culture as much as any person who nobody actually talked to could. "Yeah, I've not really seen many movies at all," he replied, almost shyly. At least that would stop him from having to think. Ben fiddled with a control, the television showing the news, the main topic of conversation being the snow that had blanketed the town, which then segued into the start of the film. Ben settled back, his hand resting along the back of the sofa, and Zach shifted away a little, wincing at the pain in his back and hoping Ben didn't see. Ben was so damn warm, soft, welcoming, and supportive, and before he knew it, his head was resting on Ben's shoulder, his long legs relaxing and stretching out in front of him. Zach tried to settle to watch the film, deciding it was going to be nigh on impossible with Ben so close, but then in the space of ten minutes, he was totally engrossed in what was happening on the screen.
"I have so many movies to introduce you to," Ben said enthusiastically as Die Hard came to an end.