Adult Content Warning
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Summary
Brian Zeller did not fit into the suit he wore to his hearings fifteen years ago; the seams of the jacket seemed determined to garrote his armpits, his socks were exposed halfway up his ankle, and his belt was on the loosest notch possible to hold his faded dress shirt down. The ill-fitted, starchy fabric clamped around his shoulders every time the bus jostled or turned, and it seems that this child's suit and cardboard box were the only real things occupying Zeller's seat. He certainly didn't feel real; he felt caught between himself at nineteen years old, a scared loud mouth shoved past the chainlink fences of prison; and himself at... Thirty-four. He was thirty four years old now.
Thirty-four years old fit Brian Zeller about as well as the too small suit from fifteen years ago; it pulled at him and threatened to break the seams keeping him together at frayed edges. Thirty-four years old was almost as uncomfortable as his shoes, almost as tight as the pressure of tears against his Adam's Apple. Almost; but he hadn't made it this far and really he never considered it until thirty-four years old was scratched into his appeal paperwork and stamped "Approved"; effectively marooning him in the real world.