there was a whole lot of zip then it went boom (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} swear_jar) wrote,@ 2007-11-13 19:10:00 |
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prison break fic: crooked
Title: Crooked.
Author: Jess.
Rating: R.
Fandom: Prison Break.
Pairing(s)/character(s): T-Bag (T-Bag/Michael [one sided], various).
Notes: Beta bymandysbitch (left over mistakes are all mine).
Warning: Implied child abuse, implied rape, racial slurs, swearing.
Summary: Nine snapshots of Theodore Bagwell’s life, from childhood to Fox River.
1.
You sit on the old porch, no shirt on and too big shorts scrunched up past your skinny knees in an attempt to cool down. The jagged wooden edges of the porch are digging into your thighs as you swing your legs lethargically. Your fingers are sticky with homemade apple pie, even though you licked them twice.
Cicadas are singing all around, but you know they can throw their sound and that the majority of them are bunking in the old mulberry tree near the front fence. You bring your cup to your mouth but there’s only a trickle of water left from the ice that’s started to melt, so you set it down on your empty plate with a clink.
You’ve got no foster brothers and sisters this time. Mama Rosa’s got no husband and no pets. You think they sent you somewhere like this because of that dog that one time and what you did to your foster sister a few months ago.
Mama Rosa’s got a car that she likes a lot. It’s light blue and you ride to church in it. Sometimes, when you’ve been good, Mama Rosa lets you go shopping with her in it. It’s her favourite thing in the world, but you think maybe she likes you more. She makes you apple pie and answers all your questions. She’s always got time for you and she’s never taken a belt, a wooden spoon or a hose to you.
Jumping off the porch your shorts slip down and you have to grab a handful of the waistband to keep them on. They’re a hand me down from Mama Rosa’s last boy. You stand at the fence and press your fingers through the links, trying not to shift them too much because they pinch. The top of the fence hits you halfway up your bare chest, it makes you wonder if the last boy’s chest would have been above the fence top.
Next to the mulberry tree the cicadas are deafeningly loud. You feel a little thump on your arm and look down to see a black cicada has landed on you, gentle prickly feet clinging. It’s got devil red eyes and it makes its way down your arm to your hand. You turn your hand over and let the cicada wander onto your palm.
It didn’t matter if the other boy was bigger than you, though, because he was gone now. Mama Rosa liked you the best. You close your fingers around the cicada like a cage, then reach in and grab one of its clear wings with your other hand. It’s like thin paper and pulls off really easily, the little clicks of the cicada struggling make your heartbeat stutter. You think you’ve been with Mama Rosa the longest you’ve ever been with anyone in foster care. You’re not sure, but it feels like forever.
You hold up the wing to your eye. It’s like looking through a tiny church window without colour.
“Teddy, what’re you doin’ down there! Come on up here, there’s someone to see you!” Mama Rosa’s voice floats down from the back window.
You crush the cicada, throw its body into the mulberry bush and hastily scrub your hands of any evidence. Mama Rosa wouldn’t want you doing that. You won’t ever let her find out. You won’t do it again.
You hadn’t hurt anyone or anything since you’d been here. You weren’t going to school yet, but you’d be good there too. You want to stay here like you never wanted to stay anywhere before.
“Comin’!” You holler back, finally wondering who’s come to see you. Probably some case worker.
---
In Mama Rosa’s living room, you shake hands with a man who has bad teeth and dark, receding hair.
“Teddy, this is your real Daddy,” Mama Rosa says. “You might not remember him, you were only a little baby when he had to go away.”
“Um, hi,” you say, look up at Mama Rosa and add, “nice to meet you, sir.”
He puts out his hand and you put out yours and you shake. His hand is too damp and too hard and it stays too long.
“Can I go out back again?” You ask. He’s looking at you too much. You don’t like him.
“No, baby, you gotta go with him.”
Your heartbeat trips sort of like it did when you were pulling off the cicada’s wing but now it feels bad. It hurts. You go from standing upright to clinging to Mama’s arm and crying.
She presses you into her chest tightly, then pushes you back and looks at you, your small pale hands enveloped in her large dark ones. She looks sad. Why is she doing this to you then? You want to stay.
“Mama,” you say, and you forget to add Rosa.
“The courts said you’ve got to stay with him now he’s back,” she says. “It’s the law, baby,” She says. “He’s your Daddy, Teddy,” she says. “He’ll look after you,” she says.
“I promise.”
Your Daddy’s hand on your shoulder slides forward onto your bare chest and he steers you to your room to pack your things with his thumb petting you, back and forth.
---
2.
Daddy brings you a lot of books. You read better than him already, and you read better than all your class. You don't like the fiction books-- all those ridiculous happy endings.
You keep the dictionary, the thesaurus, the reference books and encyclopaedias. There's something clean about them, something truthful and perfect in how they tell you what things mean and let you sort out reality for yourself. You pile the fiction in a corner, and eventually Daddy stops bringing you them.
Miss at school doesn't like you. You can study hard, put up your hand as many times as you like and answer everything correctly, but she still ignores you and doesn't give you the same grades as other kids even though you know you’ve done better. Daddy says she was a frigid bitch when they were kids and she's a frigid bitch now.
One too many times she ignores you when you’ve got your hand up, instead she asks those stupid little girls in the front row who tease you at recess-- of course they get it wrong. Bitch. You tell her what your Daddy said and she takes you out of the class by your arm, not real hard, but it hurts like a son of a bitch because you're bruised there already.
"You're bad," Miss says. "Your Daddy was rotten and you're rotten just like him. We are going to the principal's office, Theodore, and I will be telling him everything you said, and I don't think he'll like it one little bit. I should never have had you in my class, you are the spawn of the devil!”
You're bad. Rotten.
You're just like him. Just like him.
You wrench your arm away and run. You use your fiction books to light a fire under Miss’s porch and the hot destruction is like looking at how you feel inside. You feel real calm, right then.
---
3.
By the time you were old enough to be locked up with the big boys, you’d decided you weren’t the one that was gonna get fucked anymore.
Sexual assault, assault with a deadly weapon: you could have been put away for much, much longer, but they go easy on a delicate boy of sixteen, especially in light of (your getting fucked by Daddy and being the son of a retard) your ‘poor upbringing’ and the tear in your eyes as you plead guilty.
“Your honour, I never tried to kill nobody.” Oh, you did, bitch judgin’ you like she knew anything, “I was just so angry, because… my Daddy, he…” just so angry because her little brother wouldn’t shut the fuck up and wait his turn.
Five years in maximum security; worth standing the eyes of the courtroom on you as you talk honestly about your father.
---
4.
“Mhmmm.” That little noise she makes is one that all psychiatrists seem to have their own personalized twist on. From juvie to now you think you might have heard ten or twelve different types. This ‘mhmmm’ precedes the most terribly dull questions. Case in point: “So, Theodore, why did your hurt that girl and her brother?”
Dull. Inane. Boring. Tedious. Insipid and incorrect.
You never even got to the boy, all tied up pretty in the corner like a Christmas present.
You lean forward confidentially and lick your bottom lip, take a deep breath and over exaggerate a little shiver going up your spine.
“Because I wanted to. May I go now?” Your words drip pure southern politeness.
She raises her eyebrow at you.
“We still have another minute or two, Theodore.”
She keeps on saying your name, that old trick, trying to make you her friend. Well, ain’t no one you liked ever called you Theodore (your father’s voice in your head, trying to sound smarter than his grade school education).
“What are you thinking, Theodore?”
You’re conscious of your scowl too late. You flick your eyes to the ground, tilt your head, demure like. Sad, maybe. You lick your bottom lip, and open your mouth.
Apparently she doesn’t like what you’re thinking one little bit. You don’t even get to the juicy parts where you’re cutting her pretty slender neck inch by inch before you’re being hauled out by the guards, their Neanderthal clubs at the ready and their indelicate hands leaving bruises on your upper arms.
“I’ll see you real soon, Doc!” You holler out from the hallway.
You crane your head back, smiling with teeth. She don’t look so fucking smart now.
---
5.
Coming to Fox River is like coming home. Candle burning on the windowsill, you said to Susan. Calling you home like a moth to a flame. Now you’re here; hindsight tells you it was inevitable. You’re glad you didn’t know that then—you don’t know what you would have done. You didn’t lie to her. You never touched those kids.
You (wish to God you believed that it was true) hate her.
Susan.
You could call Jimmy and—you could have her—you have to forget her. Forget beautiful Susan and her exquisite children and their love.
They do not exist in this world. They are for outside.
---
6.
You don’t dislike prison. You understand prison. Prison is full of dangerous animals locked in cages. Animal instinct rules.
Prison sends your center of gravity plummeting from your solar plexus straight into your cock. Prison sets your limbs flowing and loose with artificial calm. Show the dog no fear.
The best way to own something you don’t is to act like you do—but you have to be willing to back up your bluff.
You roll your hips when you walk, like you’re fucking every con who sets his eyes on you. You hood your eyes and lick your lips like you’re enjoying it, round your shoulders like armour, wear a shirt tight enough to show all the vulnerable spots, like you don’t need it.
Use your tongue as an enticement first, a weapon second, and keep a razor blade on it just in case.
Never give anything away for free. Fuck or kill (or both) anyone who thinks they can take anything from you without giving you something back.
But mostly, walk in like you own the place—half the cons will believe you do and it only takes seeing what happens to anyone who doesn’t to get the rest in line.
Cock of the walk.
Swagger, Teddy, you think. Look up at those stone walls. This is a castle and you are a king: they will all prostrate themselves before you.
---
7.
There’s no Alliance at Fox River, but there’s plenty of willing men just waiting to be made part of something. Plenty of men sick of the niggers running everything. There’s only one guy that has to fall-- and land with his nose in a pile of severely bleach tainted H-- before you’re certain of your place at the top. No one else has the brains or the will to dispute your leadership, stupid blunt soldiers spouting whatever rhetoric you feed them, killing whoever you tell them, selling or snorting whatever you (and Jimmy, bless him) supply them with.
The only threat is KKK college boy who gets transferred to Fox River a few months into your stay. He thinks because you fucked and killed those six kids, you’re not adequate to “represent the Aryan race on the inside”. As if you give a flying fuck about the Aryan race beyond the fringe benefits they can offer you—protection, drugs, power, companionship. It happens now and then though: some cons take a violent disagreement to the crimes you were convicted of. It’s happening less and less, the longer you’re here. Might be something to do with how those that have a problem with you not seeming to last real long after expressing it. New boy though, he doesn’t know how things work around here yet, he seems to feel the need to stir up waves in your little pond.
Not for the first time, college boy thinks he can step into your space and express his opinion without you expressly requesting it.
“Now this just will not do,” you say, clicking your tongue twice and ignoring what he says. “You keep steppin’ into my space and standing on my toes, boy, and I will fucking end you, do you understand me?”
He thinks he can stare you down. A few of your boys might side with him if he gets a chance to talk them over. Have to shut him up here and now and finalize it later.
“Would it help if I put it all pretty for you, since you an educated boy?” You say educated like with the emphasis on all the wrong syllables and your boys chuckle, all eyes on you. You side step college boy and put your hand on the back of his neck, lightly, and set your shank gently resting between his ribs, point digging into his skin just enough. From the outside, it looks like you’re just having a little private chat.
“The coexistence of myself and your current displeasing attitude within these walls may result in a series of unpleasant events culminating in your demise.” The words aren’t the point of this exchange, though you enjoy their flow as they hiss, roll and slither off your tongue. The point is entirely your blade’s, pressed precisely between two of his ribs. One good shove upwards and the blade will bust his lung. He won’t even be able to scream.
---
8.
(The problem with you and H, X, or coke (oh god, that precious powder) is that one way or another, you tend to get a little messy. They exaggerate you. They stretch you and pull you to little pieces and hold you together while you feel like you’re flying apart and it’s so good—until you wake up and you’ve broken all your nice things and there’s vomit on the floor and your knuckles are bloody).
“We’re going to call you Lamb, hm? And it ain’t just ‘cause I’m gonna eat you all up,” you say, your teeth clicking together sharply a hair’s width from his ear.
It’s merely a whisper in the dark, your tongue chasing after it and wetting your lips, punctuating with a barely audible wet noise.
He’s shaking under your hands.
Delightful.
(You wipe at the powder on your itching nose. Too bad he won’t last a week).
---
9.
You’re inside the guard’s room with the door closed over, Westmorland hovering on the other side, ready to knock if one of the Bulls comes.
The nigger’s digging, with Sucre taking the buckets of dirt from him as they fill. Pretty’s sitting on the table, scooted back against the wall, his feet not quite hitting the floor as they swing a little backwards and forwards. You’re supposed to be fitting wall pieces, measuring and marking-- only Pretty’s swinging his legs like a little girl gossiping to her friends on the phone. You can practically see the bobbysocks and mary-janes. You bite your lip. That certainly is a fascinating mental image: Pretty all done up in girls clothes. You snicker a little. It’s doing interesting things to your dick.
“Yo, Michael, what you gonna enjoy more, shitting by yourself or jerking off by yourself?” Sucre sounding ridiculously up-beat given there’s just an old man and an unlocked door between them and discovery.
It’s the same every day, though. Not much in common, the little group you’ve found yourself part of, but a hole in the ground and the fact that they all want something on the outside. They all want. They all lust. Never going to be a happy family, but their uneasy alliance allows a certain amount of wiggle room for casual conversation, almost always centred around on the outside. It’s an atmosphere of surprising calm, most of the time—so long as no one takes anything too far. But where, you think, is the fun in that? Pretty can beat you up all he likes and hope it keeps you in line, but he can hardly stop your mouth forever.
“How about both,” C-Note says, huffing a breath.
“Both,” Pretty agrees quietly, sounding absent, somewhere in his own head.
You look up from the dusty grey plaster and right at Pretty’s hand as it’s tracing slow, slow paths over his tattooed belly on repeat. Swinging his legs still, tick tock. Thinking.
“You been pleasuring yourself in the company of your cellie, Pretty?” You ask with a butter-wouldn’t-melt tone, your tongue darting lizard quick to your lips.
“You want to shut the hell up, pervert!” Sucre shouts and curses in Spanish a few times.
You look back at the wall you’re crouched in front of and smile to yourself. You lean on your fingers and push yourself up in one fluid motion, culminating a stretch of your arms above your head. You crack your knuckles.
Between bouts of action and set-backs galore, this breaking out business can get real tedious.
“Aw. You his Daddy now, Sucre? Let Pretty answer for himself.”
You saunter up to the table, right between Pretty’s open legs. You get to enjoy the position for the moment it takes you to wonder how you got this close, while he’s looking so calm—then a big hard hand lands on your shoulder. Scofield smiles at you.
“Back off,” Sink says, right behind your ear.
“Ah,” you say and bare your teeth at Scofield. His lips twitch with a smile. “Just asking a friendly question.”
“Just giving you a friendly suggestion,” Sink says and his hand is tight on the scruff of your neck now (that is definitely going to bruise), like a big pissed off Mama cat. Strong, strong boy. Could probably snap your neck in a heartbeat, which isn’t half as scary as the look you see John giving you out of the corner of your eye.
You go limp as a pup under an alpha dog. The back of your knuckles brush the inside of Pretty’s thigh, accidental like. You wink at him. Pretty’s big blue eyes drop the smile from their corners.
Sink pitches you back towards the corner you were working on. There’s a moment of quiet before—
“Man, I swear, after touching Marie Cruz’s stomach, the one thing I want is a McDonald’s burger. I don’t even care which one—“ Sucre starts.
“Even if it’s the fish one, and you hate the fish one,” Michael finishes for him. You snort. Yeah, everyone’s heard that one before.
“Pancakes,” Sink says.
“Good scotch,” Pretty says.
“That ain’t food,” C-Note chuckles.
“No wonder you so skinny, Pretty,” you can’t help but interject.
“Sunday roast I carve myself at my own table,” Abruzzi adds. Even the prospect of a traditional family lunch sounds menacing, coming from him. It’s a gift of his you’ve never appreciated, given how often that menace is directed your way (usually within half and inch of your face).
“Real apple pie,” you say, not sure why, but it’s something you really crave. Real homemade apple pie, sweet and sticky on your fingers.
“Apple pie smothered in ice cream,” C-Note says.
You grimace.
“No need to taint it,” you say, “that is dis-gus-ting.”
“That means a lot coming from you,” Sink says. Sucre laughs and starts up about soap and good razors.
When you look up again, Pretty is petting himself again. He’s tracing tattooed lines all over his belly, his fingers skimming the waistband of his pants to get to the bottom edge of his ink. There’s a crease in his fine brow.
The throb in your dick hits with the twist in your belly—- he better not fuck you over. You haven’t had someone to hold your pocket since Cherry, and Pretty is entirely the cause of that frustration. The things you want to do to Pretty—- fuck-— even you don’t have the words. If this fails, you are going to get him alone and do every. Single. One.
---
Title: Crooked.
Author: Jess.
Rating: R.
Fandom: Prison Break.
Pairing(s)/character(s): T-Bag (T-Bag/Michael [one sided], various).
Notes: Beta by
mandysbitch (left over mistakes are all mine). Warning: Implied child abuse, implied rape, racial slurs, swearing.
Summary: Nine snapshots of Theodore Bagwell’s life, from childhood to Fox River.
1.
You sit on the old porch, no shirt on and too big shorts scrunched up past your skinny knees in an attempt to cool down. The jagged wooden edges of the porch are digging into your thighs as you swing your legs lethargically. Your fingers are sticky with homemade apple pie, even though you licked them twice.
Cicadas are singing all around, but you know they can throw their sound and that the majority of them are bunking in the old mulberry tree near the front fence. You bring your cup to your mouth but there’s only a trickle of water left from the ice that’s started to melt, so you set it down on your empty plate with a clink.
You’ve got no foster brothers and sisters this time. Mama Rosa’s got no husband and no pets. You think they sent you somewhere like this because of that dog that one time and what you did to your foster sister a few months ago.
Mama Rosa’s got a car that she likes a lot. It’s light blue and you ride to church in it. Sometimes, when you’ve been good, Mama Rosa lets you go shopping with her in it. It’s her favourite thing in the world, but you think maybe she likes you more. She makes you apple pie and answers all your questions. She’s always got time for you and she’s never taken a belt, a wooden spoon or a hose to you.
Jumping off the porch your shorts slip down and you have to grab a handful of the waistband to keep them on. They’re a hand me down from Mama Rosa’s last boy. You stand at the fence and press your fingers through the links, trying not to shift them too much because they pinch. The top of the fence hits you halfway up your bare chest, it makes you wonder if the last boy’s chest would have been above the fence top.
Next to the mulberry tree the cicadas are deafeningly loud. You feel a little thump on your arm and look down to see a black cicada has landed on you, gentle prickly feet clinging. It’s got devil red eyes and it makes its way down your arm to your hand. You turn your hand over and let the cicada wander onto your palm.
It didn’t matter if the other boy was bigger than you, though, because he was gone now. Mama Rosa liked you the best. You close your fingers around the cicada like a cage, then reach in and grab one of its clear wings with your other hand. It’s like thin paper and pulls off really easily, the little clicks of the cicada struggling make your heartbeat stutter. You think you’ve been with Mama Rosa the longest you’ve ever been with anyone in foster care. You’re not sure, but it feels like forever.
You hold up the wing to your eye. It’s like looking through a tiny church window without colour.
“Teddy, what’re you doin’ down there! Come on up here, there’s someone to see you!” Mama Rosa’s voice floats down from the back window.
You crush the cicada, throw its body into the mulberry bush and hastily scrub your hands of any evidence. Mama Rosa wouldn’t want you doing that. You won’t ever let her find out. You won’t do it again.
You hadn’t hurt anyone or anything since you’d been here. You weren’t going to school yet, but you’d be good there too. You want to stay here like you never wanted to stay anywhere before.
“Comin’!” You holler back, finally wondering who’s come to see you. Probably some case worker.
---
In Mama Rosa’s living room, you shake hands with a man who has bad teeth and dark, receding hair.
“Teddy, this is your real Daddy,” Mama Rosa says. “You might not remember him, you were only a little baby when he had to go away.”
“Um, hi,” you say, look up at Mama Rosa and add, “nice to meet you, sir.”
He puts out his hand and you put out yours and you shake. His hand is too damp and too hard and it stays too long.
“Can I go out back again?” You ask. He’s looking at you too much. You don’t like him.
“No, baby, you gotta go with him.”
Your heartbeat trips sort of like it did when you were pulling off the cicada’s wing but now it feels bad. It hurts. You go from standing upright to clinging to Mama’s arm and crying.
She presses you into her chest tightly, then pushes you back and looks at you, your small pale hands enveloped in her large dark ones. She looks sad. Why is she doing this to you then? You want to stay.
“Mama,” you say, and you forget to add Rosa.
“The courts said you’ve got to stay with him now he’s back,” she says. “It’s the law, baby,” She says. “He’s your Daddy, Teddy,” she says. “He’ll look after you,” she says.
“I promise.”
Your Daddy’s hand on your shoulder slides forward onto your bare chest and he steers you to your room to pack your things with his thumb petting you, back and forth.
---
2.
Daddy brings you a lot of books. You read better than him already, and you read better than all your class. You don't like the fiction books-- all those ridiculous happy endings.
You keep the dictionary, the thesaurus, the reference books and encyclopaedias. There's something clean about them, something truthful and perfect in how they tell you what things mean and let you sort out reality for yourself. You pile the fiction in a corner, and eventually Daddy stops bringing you them.
Miss at school doesn't like you. You can study hard, put up your hand as many times as you like and answer everything correctly, but she still ignores you and doesn't give you the same grades as other kids even though you know you’ve done better. Daddy says she was a frigid bitch when they were kids and she's a frigid bitch now.
One too many times she ignores you when you’ve got your hand up, instead she asks those stupid little girls in the front row who tease you at recess-- of course they get it wrong. Bitch. You tell her what your Daddy said and she takes you out of the class by your arm, not real hard, but it hurts like a son of a bitch because you're bruised there already.
"You're bad," Miss says. "Your Daddy was rotten and you're rotten just like him. We are going to the principal's office, Theodore, and I will be telling him everything you said, and I don't think he'll like it one little bit. I should never have had you in my class, you are the spawn of the devil!”
You're bad. Rotten.
You're just like him. Just like him.
You wrench your arm away and run. You use your fiction books to light a fire under Miss’s porch and the hot destruction is like looking at how you feel inside. You feel real calm, right then.
---
3.
By the time you were old enough to be locked up with the big boys, you’d decided you weren’t the one that was gonna get fucked anymore.
Sexual assault, assault with a deadly weapon: you could have been put away for much, much longer, but they go easy on a delicate boy of sixteen, especially in light of (your getting fucked by Daddy and being the son of a retard) your ‘poor upbringing’ and the tear in your eyes as you plead guilty.
“Your honour, I never tried to kill nobody.” Oh, you did, bitch judgin’ you like she knew anything, “I was just so angry, because… my Daddy, he…” just so angry because her little brother wouldn’t shut the fuck up and wait his turn.
Five years in maximum security; worth standing the eyes of the courtroom on you as you talk honestly about your father.
---
4.
“Mhmmm.” That little noise she makes is one that all psychiatrists seem to have their own personalized twist on. From juvie to now you think you might have heard ten or twelve different types. This ‘mhmmm’ precedes the most terribly dull questions. Case in point: “So, Theodore, why did your hurt that girl and her brother?”
Dull. Inane. Boring. Tedious. Insipid and incorrect.
You never even got to the boy, all tied up pretty in the corner like a Christmas present.
You lean forward confidentially and lick your bottom lip, take a deep breath and over exaggerate a little shiver going up your spine.
“Because I wanted to. May I go now?” Your words drip pure southern politeness.
She raises her eyebrow at you.
“We still have another minute or two, Theodore.”
She keeps on saying your name, that old trick, trying to make you her friend. Well, ain’t no one you liked ever called you Theodore (your father’s voice in your head, trying to sound smarter than his grade school education).
“What are you thinking, Theodore?”
You’re conscious of your scowl too late. You flick your eyes to the ground, tilt your head, demure like. Sad, maybe. You lick your bottom lip, and open your mouth.
Apparently she doesn’t like what you’re thinking one little bit. You don’t even get to the juicy parts where you’re cutting her pretty slender neck inch by inch before you’re being hauled out by the guards, their Neanderthal clubs at the ready and their indelicate hands leaving bruises on your upper arms.
“I’ll see you real soon, Doc!” You holler out from the hallway.
You crane your head back, smiling with teeth. She don’t look so fucking smart now.
---
5.
Coming to Fox River is like coming home. Candle burning on the windowsill, you said to Susan. Calling you home like a moth to a flame. Now you’re here; hindsight tells you it was inevitable. You’re glad you didn’t know that then—you don’t know what you would have done. You didn’t lie to her. You never touched those kids.
You (wish to God you believed that it was true) hate her.
Susan.
You could call Jimmy and—you could have her—you have to forget her. Forget beautiful Susan and her exquisite children and their love.
They do not exist in this world. They are for outside.
---
6.
You don’t dislike prison. You understand prison. Prison is full of dangerous animals locked in cages. Animal instinct rules.
Prison sends your center of gravity plummeting from your solar plexus straight into your cock. Prison sets your limbs flowing and loose with artificial calm. Show the dog no fear.
The best way to own something you don’t is to act like you do—but you have to be willing to back up your bluff.
You roll your hips when you walk, like you’re fucking every con who sets his eyes on you. You hood your eyes and lick your lips like you’re enjoying it, round your shoulders like armour, wear a shirt tight enough to show all the vulnerable spots, like you don’t need it.
Use your tongue as an enticement first, a weapon second, and keep a razor blade on it just in case.
Never give anything away for free. Fuck or kill (or both) anyone who thinks they can take anything from you without giving you something back.
But mostly, walk in like you own the place—half the cons will believe you do and it only takes seeing what happens to anyone who doesn’t to get the rest in line.
Cock of the walk.
Swagger, Teddy, you think. Look up at those stone walls. This is a castle and you are a king: they will all prostrate themselves before you.
---
7.
There’s no Alliance at Fox River, but there’s plenty of willing men just waiting to be made part of something. Plenty of men sick of the niggers running everything. There’s only one guy that has to fall-- and land with his nose in a pile of severely bleach tainted H-- before you’re certain of your place at the top. No one else has the brains or the will to dispute your leadership, stupid blunt soldiers spouting whatever rhetoric you feed them, killing whoever you tell them, selling or snorting whatever you (and Jimmy, bless him) supply them with.
The only threat is KKK college boy who gets transferred to Fox River a few months into your stay. He thinks because you fucked and killed those six kids, you’re not adequate to “represent the Aryan race on the inside”. As if you give a flying fuck about the Aryan race beyond the fringe benefits they can offer you—protection, drugs, power, companionship. It happens now and then though: some cons take a violent disagreement to the crimes you were convicted of. It’s happening less and less, the longer you’re here. Might be something to do with how those that have a problem with you not seeming to last real long after expressing it. New boy though, he doesn’t know how things work around here yet, he seems to feel the need to stir up waves in your little pond.
Not for the first time, college boy thinks he can step into your space and express his opinion without you expressly requesting it.
“Now this just will not do,” you say, clicking your tongue twice and ignoring what he says. “You keep steppin’ into my space and standing on my toes, boy, and I will fucking end you, do you understand me?”
He thinks he can stare you down. A few of your boys might side with him if he gets a chance to talk them over. Have to shut him up here and now and finalize it later.
“Would it help if I put it all pretty for you, since you an educated boy?” You say educated like with the emphasis on all the wrong syllables and your boys chuckle, all eyes on you. You side step college boy and put your hand on the back of his neck, lightly, and set your shank gently resting between his ribs, point digging into his skin just enough. From the outside, it looks like you’re just having a little private chat.
“The coexistence of myself and your current displeasing attitude within these walls may result in a series of unpleasant events culminating in your demise.” The words aren’t the point of this exchange, though you enjoy their flow as they hiss, roll and slither off your tongue. The point is entirely your blade’s, pressed precisely between two of his ribs. One good shove upwards and the blade will bust his lung. He won’t even be able to scream.
---
8.
(The problem with you and H, X, or coke (oh god, that precious powder) is that one way or another, you tend to get a little messy. They exaggerate you. They stretch you and pull you to little pieces and hold you together while you feel like you’re flying apart and it’s so good—until you wake up and you’ve broken all your nice things and there’s vomit on the floor and your knuckles are bloody).
“We’re going to call you Lamb, hm? And it ain’t just ‘cause I’m gonna eat you all up,” you say, your teeth clicking together sharply a hair’s width from his ear.
It’s merely a whisper in the dark, your tongue chasing after it and wetting your lips, punctuating with a barely audible wet noise.
He’s shaking under your hands.
Delightful.
(You wipe at the powder on your itching nose. Too bad he won’t last a week).
---
9.
You’re inside the guard’s room with the door closed over, Westmorland hovering on the other side, ready to knock if one of the Bulls comes.
The nigger’s digging, with Sucre taking the buckets of dirt from him as they fill. Pretty’s sitting on the table, scooted back against the wall, his feet not quite hitting the floor as they swing a little backwards and forwards. You’re supposed to be fitting wall pieces, measuring and marking-- only Pretty’s swinging his legs like a little girl gossiping to her friends on the phone. You can practically see the bobbysocks and mary-janes. You bite your lip. That certainly is a fascinating mental image: Pretty all done up in girls clothes. You snicker a little. It’s doing interesting things to your dick.
“Yo, Michael, what you gonna enjoy more, shitting by yourself or jerking off by yourself?” Sucre sounding ridiculously up-beat given there’s just an old man and an unlocked door between them and discovery.
It’s the same every day, though. Not much in common, the little group you’ve found yourself part of, but a hole in the ground and the fact that they all want something on the outside. They all want. They all lust. Never going to be a happy family, but their uneasy alliance allows a certain amount of wiggle room for casual conversation, almost always centred around on the outside. It’s an atmosphere of surprising calm, most of the time—so long as no one takes anything too far. But where, you think, is the fun in that? Pretty can beat you up all he likes and hope it keeps you in line, but he can hardly stop your mouth forever.
“How about both,” C-Note says, huffing a breath.
“Both,” Pretty agrees quietly, sounding absent, somewhere in his own head.
You look up from the dusty grey plaster and right at Pretty’s hand as it’s tracing slow, slow paths over his tattooed belly on repeat. Swinging his legs still, tick tock. Thinking.
“You been pleasuring yourself in the company of your cellie, Pretty?” You ask with a butter-wouldn’t-melt tone, your tongue darting lizard quick to your lips.
“You want to shut the hell up, pervert!” Sucre shouts and curses in Spanish a few times.
You look back at the wall you’re crouched in front of and smile to yourself. You lean on your fingers and push yourself up in one fluid motion, culminating a stretch of your arms above your head. You crack your knuckles.
Between bouts of action and set-backs galore, this breaking out business can get real tedious.
“Aw. You his Daddy now, Sucre? Let Pretty answer for himself.”
You saunter up to the table, right between Pretty’s open legs. You get to enjoy the position for the moment it takes you to wonder how you got this close, while he’s looking so calm—then a big hard hand lands on your shoulder. Scofield smiles at you.
“Back off,” Sink says, right behind your ear.
“Ah,” you say and bare your teeth at Scofield. His lips twitch with a smile. “Just asking a friendly question.”
“Just giving you a friendly suggestion,” Sink says and his hand is tight on the scruff of your neck now (that is definitely going to bruise), like a big pissed off Mama cat. Strong, strong boy. Could probably snap your neck in a heartbeat, which isn’t half as scary as the look you see John giving you out of the corner of your eye.
You go limp as a pup under an alpha dog. The back of your knuckles brush the inside of Pretty’s thigh, accidental like. You wink at him. Pretty’s big blue eyes drop the smile from their corners.
Sink pitches you back towards the corner you were working on. There’s a moment of quiet before—
“Man, I swear, after touching Marie Cruz’s stomach, the one thing I want is a McDonald’s burger. I don’t even care which one—“ Sucre starts.
“Even if it’s the fish one, and you hate the fish one,” Michael finishes for him. You snort. Yeah, everyone’s heard that one before.
“Pancakes,” Sink says.
“Good scotch,” Pretty says.
“That ain’t food,” C-Note chuckles.
“No wonder you so skinny, Pretty,” you can’t help but interject.
“Sunday roast I carve myself at my own table,” Abruzzi adds. Even the prospect of a traditional family lunch sounds menacing, coming from him. It’s a gift of his you’ve never appreciated, given how often that menace is directed your way (usually within half and inch of your face).
“Real apple pie,” you say, not sure why, but it’s something you really crave. Real homemade apple pie, sweet and sticky on your fingers.
“Apple pie smothered in ice cream,” C-Note says.
You grimace.
“No need to taint it,” you say, “that is dis-gus-ting.”
“That means a lot coming from you,” Sink says. Sucre laughs and starts up about soap and good razors.
When you look up again, Pretty is petting himself again. He’s tracing tattooed lines all over his belly, his fingers skimming the waistband of his pants to get to the bottom edge of his ink. There’s a crease in his fine brow.
The throb in your dick hits with the twist in your belly—- he better not fuck you over. You haven’t had someone to hold your pocket since Cherry, and Pretty is entirely the cause of that frustration. The things you want to do to Pretty—- fuck-— even you don’t have the words. If this fails, you are going to get him alone and do every. Single. One.
---
