Transmission - PG-13

[serai]

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A guest viewpoint. Another surprise.

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Transmission
by Serai


Wanda Tyler never knows if her son is glad to see her or not.

He’s such a contradiction, she thinks yet again. Right now, he’s watching her with that amused, detached air he gets when he doesn’t want to show anything to the world. But there’s a tightness to his temples and the corners of his mouth that makes his usual relaxed smirk into more of a defensive posture. There’s strain at the corners of his mind, she thinks. Something's distracting him. She considers how rare it is for anything to win his attention. But then, she thinks wryly, stubbing out her cigarette, how would I know?

“Oh, yeah,” he murmurs, and stalks towards his room. After a minute, he returns and tosses her the keys to her Volvo. “Your brakes went out. I got them fixed.”

“What? When?” she asks, agitated, feeling the passing echo of the unthinkable.

“Relax,” he answers with a smile. “It happened in the driveway. I was putting it away after giving it a wash.” He steps over and squeezes her shoulder. “Nothing happened. Relax.”

She catches her breath. “Well, thank God,” she breathes and then laughs a little. He grins, and she looks at him, at her beautiful, wickedly grinning son, and realizes her boy is gone. Here is a man, a grown, strong creature with warm arms and cool golden eyes, and she breaks away and walks over to the window to catch her breath.

When did this happen? In that instant, she felt not only the shift, but the history in it as well. This isn’t new, she realizes, this bridge he’s crossed. He hasn’t been a virgin in a long time. When did this happen?

“I’m sorry,” she says to the sunlight outside. She can’t look back, but she feels him there, in the room, can see him slide his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders. “I don’t know –“

“It’s alright,” he says softly. “I understand.” She thinks of him standing in the doorway, looking at his trim, pretty, sharp-faced mother, with her lively eyes and witty mobile mouth, and how he thinks of his father at such moments, as he always has, wondering what he was like. The dark-eyed tree of a man he hasn’t seen since he was five, but whom he resembles in so many ways it tears her heart to look at him. And now he’s branched away like a ghost of that tree, growing outward toward something she can’t see that has captured his heart, and she has no way of calling him back. No way of telling him that she only now realizes what she’s given up, now that it’s receding away from her. That without him she’s adrift, that he’s always been her mooring after the storm, and only his harbor has kept her safe at sea.

The silence spins out for a minute, then Zeke pushes off the doorjamb where he’s been leaning. “You want coffee?” he asks.

“Sure,” she says, and tries to remember when she last saw the first autumn leaves fall here.

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Chapter 12 of High Contrast
Chapter 13

Comments

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

I really love this one. It's always interesting to see Zeke or Casey from an outside viewpoint, and having it be Zeke's mother is a powerful way of doing it. I've read different fics with different interpretations of his mother, and wrote her into one of my stories, but I've never read one from her pov. I felt sorry for her, because she's only realizing too late what a remarkable young man he's become.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Thanks. This one was a surprise, but a welcome one. I've read several interpretations of Zeke's mom, too, and by and large they portray her as cold or uncaring, or just too wrapped up to bother with Zeke at all. But thinking about the film, and how Zeke talks about his parents, I realized he doesn't seem to resent them much. And I thought about all the different possible reasons he might be in the situation he's in, and saw that not all of them were about callousness and neglect. And that's when she stepped up and started talking.

[gabi-fics.livejournal.com]

Great little vignette. There's a quietness to this, a more mature voice, and a sadness that is probably well deserved. They may have grown apart, but even Zeke's demeanor is quieter in her presence. It's good to see a rarely glimpsed flip-side to him.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much. They do love each other here, and are just resigned to the fact that life decided to separate them. I find complexity and regret far more interesting than coldness and barred doors, myself.

[aliensouldream.livejournal.com]

Heartbreaking. Somehow Zeke's the capable one taking care of her here, as if sensing there's fragile emotions lurking under the chat. He has grown up hard and fast and it must be a double hurt, to lose the boy and gain the image of the man who left them both, in whatever way. He has his own life, he always did, but now she sees too late that she might have been more of it, might have inspired his confidence to tell her what it is he's not saying. They're both reaching for more, maybe this time they'll get there. Explains a LOT.