 James - 23 Years
James, the middle child, doesn't remember much about the mother he shares with Mick and Chris - he was very young when she died. The strife that followed gave him a more passive personality than his older brothers. At the time whenever violence or shouting contests emerged he went with quietly ducking into his room and tuning out the world downstairs.
That didn't mean he didn't know how to fight, and occasionally he did - whether with the siblings at home, one of Chris' idiot friends or someone at school who said the wrong thing. James didn't enjoy it. He didn't enjoy a lot of things, really. Something about being in a family of dropouts, criminals and burnouts left him under the impression that he wasn't going to end up any better. After all, his eldest brother was in prison before James got out of high school.
His years after high school were spent drifting, rather aimlessly. He eventually got a job, low-level office work that gave him white-collar clothes for a blue-collar wage and the awkwardness of never allowing his workmates and family members to exist in the same space. It was only recently he decided to actually try and make something more of himself than what his family usually manages.
At this point he's the only Decker son to graduate high school, and now studies Business in community college - the highest educational achievement the family has to celebrate.
His family are less impressed by the gay part.
Theo "Rat" - 12 Years
Rat is the only boy of the family to come from their step-mother, and the youngest member of the family. Initially a good enough kid, Rat is remarkably gifted with machinery - he spent most of his time with his dad and Chris working on cars.
He was also present for the accident that gave him and Chris their burns and left the four of them without a father. He was hospitalized for several weeks at the time.
Now Rat doesn't really talk much. He acts out and has been picked up for shoplifting and other minor offences. He is also the only member of the family who actively seems to bite back when their stepmother starts yelling.
On the days he doesn't go to school he usually helps Chris with whatever it is he's doing, good or bad - Chris is the only one he'll speak to.
Chris - 25 Years
Chris is the unfortunate middle child. Back before Mick was shipped off, Chris and Mick were inseparable. They learned to work with cars together, they got into arguments with their stepmom together, they both started their individual drug habits together.
Isn't brotherly love grand?
Unlike Mick, Chris knew when to stop. And while their paths are similar Chris never went as far as his elder brother did. He never got so violent as to get kicked out of school, or home. He dropped out to go into a trade as a mechanic. Where Mick was perfectly happy to hospitalize people for any reason, Chris was usually happy just to leave them with a broken nose.
He's had some jail time, but only for minor offences. Breaking and entering, minor drug offences, assault, Chris is at best a hoodlum rather than an all-out criminal.
Since their father died Chris has mellowed out a lot, and seems to have taken a pseudo father figure for the rest of the family. He still gets into trouble - it's a good week when a police car isn't outside their home - but he does his best.
Mick - 27 Years
Mick is the eldest of James' family, and the one who has managed to get the most done in their life, good or bad. The eldest brother, the one with the most responsibility, Mick entered the military after expulsion from high school. Partly because he was never very good at classes, partly because he, his father, and his farther's new partner got along about as well as he did with studying - violently poorly. Very few jobs take unskilled labor, and his father hoped that the service would straighten him out.
His time in the discipline of the armed forces didn't do much to stifle his aggressive tendencies, and upon returning home he swiftly ended up in the same circles as he was in before. Armed robbery put him in prison the first time and that began a cycle that had continued through his early twenties. Since then he's spent more time in lockups and a penitentiary than he has at home, but after his most recent return he seems to be keeping mostly out of trouble.
To take care of a wife and child he does a number of odd jobs - bouncing, helping Chris with his dirty work and whatever else pays his bills.
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