Chapter 8
It’s raining. Dean can hear it outside the window of his cell. This building is old and converted, though he can’t put his finger on its original purpose. It came with extra small, barely there windows now covered in bars, but it’s more than he’d ever get in a new facility.
It allows him to hear a million raindrops blending into a soothing melody, and to see them bouncing off those little flowers growing up the outer fence. He tries to imagine himself out there instead of on the hard bed of his cell with Clyde snoring above him.
He only wishes he could take full advantage of the rain and fall asleep instead of obsessing over his visit with Ava earlier that day. Somehow, against all logical conclusions and common sense, they have a date set up on the outside. It’s not really a date, he reminds himself. It’s a non-date, a friend date. A whatever you call two people platonically having dessert together type of date, because he ran his mouth like an idiot and said they could go as friends.
She would be a good friend as far as he can tell. The problem is he wants more from her than friendship and now he’s shot himself in his other foot by letting his nerves get the best of him. He huffs and the self-deprecating puff of air hangs in the muggy space of his cell. Of course, he fucked this up. He’s never asked a woman out before. Never felt inclined to do so when he’s been perfectly fine alone. Having anyone in his space like that always sounded like torture to him.
He kinda likes the idea of letting Ava invade his space though, and ain’t that some bullshit he has no business wishing for.
Doesn’t matter now, because he told her he wants to be friends and it would be a jerk move to backtrack on that now. She hadn’t seemed bothered by it, which probably meant she only wants to be friends too, and he should take that as a sign. When he’s a free man again, he’ll let her show him that cafe she loves so much. They’ll drink coffee and order pie like normal people doing normal things, and it will be completely platonic. That’s all there is to it.
He tries to appreciate what he does have, a new friend to add to the current list of zero. This is still a win. He’s still coming out ahead here. It doesn’t even seem that long now, either. A few months, maybe sooner if he can get off on good behavior and he’ll be eating dessert with her. It’s something to look forward to, and he hardly knows how to handle the unfamiliar excitement.
She could still change her mind, he reminds himself. He is still some guy in prison asking her to see him on the outside and if she decides that sounds like a stupid idea he can’t fault her for it. Once he’s out they may never speak again, but he’s trying not to fall into a trap of what-ifs. He chooses instead to remember the way she smiled so sweetly when she accepted, and how eager she was to show him pictures of those kittens she spends too much time with for someone who isn’t taking one.
Dean thinks about how they shared food this time instead of her feeding him so he wouldn’t starve.
It had felt, for only a sliver of a moment, like what he assumed a date might feel like. The two of them in that tiny infirmary making plans and sharing a meal, but it wasn’t a date and it never will be. Friends. They are only friends.
Fuck, Boone would never let him hear the end of this. ‘Finally asked a woman out and you ain’t planning to fuck her? What’s the damn point? You get dropped on your head when you was little more than those ten times we know about?’ Then he’d laugh and give Dean unsolicited pointers for how to seal the deal.
He’s so lost in thought that takes him a moment to realize what’s happening when the cell door opens and three men rush in, catching him off guard and dragging him by the shirt collar and arms across the main area to the showers.
Shock keeps him from responding at first. His heart slamming against his ribcage is all he can focus on, certain he’s about to have a damn heart attack, but then muscle memory kicks in and he fights back. He swings blindly and connects with soft tissue, kicks out and slams into a random kneecap. Someone wails in pain and then one pair of hands let him go.
He’s pretty fucking sure he re-broke his toe, judging by the white-hot heat spreading like wildfire up his foot and into his leg, stealing his breath. Adrenaline keeps him fighting as he’s dragged to his final destination. He’s unfocused, but he makes contact more than once and prompts colorful cursing from his attackers. For a split second, he is free. His captors fall behind, trying to recover, but Dean can’t take advantage of the moment. The sharp corner of the bathroom counter digs into his side as he stumbles back, ripping and tearing until he’s bleeding from an open wound.
The opportunity passes and they’re on him again before he can run. He’s shoved into one of the shower stalls no one uses because it backs up with sewer water every time a toilet flushes. He presses himself into a corner, his exhales flaring his nostrils like an angry dragon. He’s ready to fight off whoever might come in here or die trying.
An obscene creak of the door reveals Jaxson with four others trailing behind him.
“Cozy in here, huh?” Jaxson grins, kneeling in front of Dean like he has no worries about his own safety. “Been enjoying those regular meals again? I hope so. I realized that hey, maybe that tactic doesn’t work for you and that’s cool. I’m a patient guy, got a lotta time to kill, plenty of methods at my disposal, so I had a little chat with my right-hand men here and we devised a new plan for you. Something that might work, might not, but only one way to find out, right? Little trial and error.”
Dean doesn’t answer, and much to his own horror, finds himself unable to keep eye contact for more than a few seconds at most. Too many memories from his childhood surge up at the worst possible time.
The fear of being thrown into the basement and left there for days.
The crack of the bathroom tiles in the old shack he grew up in when his father shoved him into the wall during one of his benders.
Hard hands closing over his wrists and dragging him out into the woods, a drunken voice telling him to fend for himself until he learned some respect.
He’s not outside right now, doesn’t hear birds in the woods, can’t smell the liquor on his father’s breath, but despite the passage of time, he is right back there again, throwing out submissive signals to his old man.
Only it’s not his old man in front of him, and one thing Jaxson doesn’t deserve at all is Dean’s submission.
“Strip him.”
The words come out matter-of-fact as Jaxson steps back and the others rush forward, pinning him to the floor, where he can smell the remnants of the last sewer back up as he struggles and fails to keep his clothes. He’s naked and shivering, curled up into the disgusting stall before he can blink or think and the next person to touch him is going to pull back a stump, even if he has to chew it off.
He knows what happens here. He’s not stupid or sheltered enough to be ignorant of how inmates show dominance over each other. That won’t be him.
“Hey, hey, hey, don’t look at me like I’m about to stick my dick down your throat, or anywhere else. That ain’t my thing, and you are not my type.” Jaxson squats down in front of Dean to deliver his next words laced with a shit-eating grin. “You should get real comfortable though, because this is your home for a while. Until you say yes, or I get bored. Whichever comes first and really, it could go either way. Gonna be fun to find out.”
Dean stays quiet, though the urge to spit in this man’s face nearly wins.
“Now, I know you only got a few months left, and usually I wouldn’t bother with someone that won’t be around a while, but what the fuck else I got to do? Am I right? This shit hole is boring so even if you never come around, this’ll be time well spent. Gotta get my entertainment where I can and if you do say yes, well hell, the difficult ones are my favorite. Gotta get all that fight out right from the start. Walt, when’s the thing?”
Walt perks up from behind him in response. “Two days from now, the usual appointment is at Noon.”
“That means you got two days in this part of town before they whisk you away for your session with that pretty nurse. What’s her name….Carly? Karen? Ava? Yeah, that’s it. Ava.” He pauses, bending closer, his southern drawl breathing hot on Dean’s face. “Been in there a few times. It’s a damn tease to put a woman like that in front of a shackled man. Like showing a starving dog a T-Bone steak. But I do enjoy the view in that infirmary.”
Dean’s eyes darken at the mention of Ava. This fucker shouldn’t be within a football field of her.
“Now, whether you head back here to this shit-infested stall again after your little visit, that’s your choice. All of this, it’s your choice. Don’t forget how easy things can get for you. Ponder it some. Be back to check on you periodically, bring you your meals and whatnot. If you can stomach eating in here.”
As quickly as he’s dropped on the floor, stripped and taunted, he is alone again.
The shower room is quiet. The stall door is gone, but there are panels up on either side of him, giving an illusion of privacy that evaporates when he focuses on the fact that he’s naked as the day is long. He has to hunch up against the wall with his legs bent and his bad toe pressing into the ground to cover himself.
Every time he closes his eyes he’s both here and not here, whisked back to a dozen different times when he was half the size he is now and the tears fell at will. He’s spent most of his adult life forgetting his childhood, but fuck if it doesn’t all come back now like he never left that house.
He breathes through the panic until his body stops trembling and he can rest the side of his head on the cold wall, staring at the mold in the grout lines. When someone comes in to use the toilet the flush sends a back up of sewer water curling around his feet. If he presses himself far enough into the corner he can escape it, so that’s what he does, keeping his skin a few inches from the waste and trying to imagine he’s somewhere else.
Back home again, where he can eat what he wants and shower when he wants.
On the outside with Ava, her sweet smile making his heart squeeze and her soft lips pressed against his. He imagines her like a fantasy come to life and it’s the only thing that keeps him going for the next two days.
* * *
Dean’s clothes smack him in the face just before the guard appears to drag him out of his cell and toward the infirmary.
Every step aches, every breath still shakes, and he’s only too glad that he made use of the shower stall he was in and took a damn shower today. He wasn’t about to show up in front of Ava smelling like the backed-up water he sat inches away from.
Nick hadn’t said a damn thing when he found him. No, that’s not right. He did mumble out a confused “The fuck you doin’ in here?” before he cuffed him and proceeded as usual.
Dean never had much idea of what prison would be like before he arrived, but he assumed that the guards would have some sort of control. That couldn’t be further from the truth. They don’t care and the vast majority of the guard’s tasks are taken over by the trustees, what they call the inmates who have gained enough trust in the system to do what none of the staff wants to deal with.
They serve meals in the lunch line, mop the floors, and report the headcount to a guard who may or may not double-check himself. They press the emergency button by the door if there’s a fight, except no one ever presses that until a fight is over and the losing end is bloody, miserable, and defeated.
It’s no coincidence that the trustees he’s seen going about their daily routine are all a part of Jaxson’s gang.
Dean wonders how no one has escaped yet. The opportunity would be there, ripe for the taking if the motivation and desire burned bright enough. The only time a guard shows up is when over-the-counter meds are dispensed or an inmate needs moving to the infirmary, to the warden’s office, or to the front where they can check out.
No, the guards don’t run this place, the prisoners do. The fact that no one intervened or even noticed that Dean was missing for two days, stuffed into the back of a shower stall, proves that much. At least he’s not hungry. They brought him his meals like they said they would, having given up on starving his complacency out of him and likely trying to avoid a murder charge should he drop dead one day.
Any progress he made over the last few weeks is gone when he shuffles into the infirmary and he’s right back where he started the first day he met Ava. Broken and weak. He doesn’t want her to see him like this and avoids looking at her, preferring to count the grout lines on the floor.
Once they’re alone he expects she might say something, but she doesn’t. He watches her feet get closer and closer until she’s standing in front of him and yet she remains quiet, as if waiting for him to speak first.
He can’t.
“Dean…”
Her voice is a decibel above a whisper, so careful and gentle, but he shakes his head, hoping she won’t make him recount what happened.
She takes another step and if he could back away, he would. He’d crawl right up onto the bed and push himself into the wall to avoid whatever comfort she wants to offer, if only because he doesn’t deserve it. He let himself get into this mess in the first place and wasn’t strong enough to stop it.
The unexpected touch of her fingers against the back of his hand almost prompts him to lift his head, but he resists. One moment of eye contact and she’ll see how wrecked he is. Her palm curls over his knuckles and it occurs to him that this is the first time they’ve touched when it wasn’t required to treat his injuries. He must be weak as fuck because instead of backing away like he thought he wanted to, he leans forward instead, some invisible thread pulling him toward the only source of warmth and safety he’s seen in days.
She takes his slight movement as permission to glide her touch up his arm and over the round of his shoulder, leaving trails of goosebumps in her wake.
He isn’t sure he can hold it together and really, he shouldn’t be having such a hard time. Sure, he’s got a broken toe, a few cuts, and his whole body hurts. He had to spend a few days naked on the floor. So what? Who cares?
He’s had so much worse. Felt worse. Never broke then and he won’t now.
Layering new wounds on top of old ones is a tricky thing, though, and they’ve begun to dig a crater into the flimsy spaces he thought long healed. He can feel the heat of Ava’s body, smell the fabric softer she uses on her clothes and the deodorant she wears, cucumbers and melon.
The moment her hand leaves his shoulder and flutters over the back of his head, he is lost. Gone. No hope for resistance anymore and he melts into her touch like he’d been waiting for it all along. His forehead brushes against her belly, ready for her to shove him away, but she doesn’t and so he rests there as her arms wrap around him in a loose hold. She is the first person to hug him in so many years he’s lost count. Physical contact isn’t something he enjoys or yearns for, but right now he soaks up every stroke of her fingers through his damp hair while her touch chases away the panic that plagued him for the last two days.
He could stay here forever. This is all he’d ever need.
“Tell me where you’re hurting,” she asks.
“Broke my toe again. Same one. Got some cuts on my side that won’t close up. They feel deep.”
She steps back and he leans forward until the cuffs stop him, wishing for the contact he didn’t know he wanted before he got here.
“Shit.” She scowls at his foot, then lifts his shirt to gasp at the gash in his side. “I’ll tell the doctor you slipped and fell in the bathroom, scraped yourself up. Ask him to let you stay here for a few days, minimum. You need a head start on healing and I’m worried that if you go back in the pod you won’t get a chance before this open wound gets infected.”
“But I can’t…if they think—”
She cuts him off with a firm shake of her head. “You won’t be snitching. Slip and falls happen here. You won’t be the first to end up getting an extended stay after multiple injuries. The state doesn’t want to pay for treating infections.”
He wants to believe her, but it feels like false hope that could put him in an even worse situation once he’s forced back into the pod. She’s already heading for the door though, giving him no time to object and throwing over her shoulder that she’ll be back with the doctor.
In the end, it works out as she said it would. His toe is reset and wrapped, his cuts are stitched up and disinfected, and the doctor agrees that he’s at risk for infection if he goes back before they heal, mumbling under his breath that it can’t be that hard to keep from playing in sewer water, as if Dean did it on purpose.
He’s granted a week-long stay in the back part of the infirmary that he hasn’t seen before. It’s small, with only three beds, all empty except for him. It’s clean and dry and the sun shines through the full-size window across from him. There are bars covering it secured by a small lock that he suspects takes an even smaller key, but he can see signs of life outside. Cars and buildings and people. Sounds from the freeway filtering in unchecked.
It all feels like the best hotel he could book a stay at, and even better, it comes complete with his favorite person. Maybe it’s okay to rest for a while. Maybe it’s okay to enjoy the view.