Caged Bird - Part One of Two
Jun. 15th, 2011 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: BA/Murdock
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: non-con
Summary: Part One of Two for a fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
ICan we get a prison AU? Hannibal is the lifer who runs the place, Face his second in command who can get hold of anything you want, BA is the muscle with the secret sensitive side... And Murdock can be the new prisoner who really should be in the psyche ward but had a shitty lawyer.
Bonus points for Murdock getting in a bit of trouble to begin with and BA (or Face) stepping in to help him. Double bonus points for BA (or Face) pretending to claim Murdock as his prison bitch to keep him safe from other prisoners and Murdock being a bit bemused by the whole thing. BA/Murdock would be love but I could totally go for some Face/Murdock if that's more your speed :)
Hannibal sticks BA in charge of some crazy-ass new inmate. And the guy’s driving BA nuts. Except, maybe, there’s something more going on...
“Batch of new guys at intake today, boss.”
The big black man looks up at the rangy blonde, plopping his tray of today’s whatever-the-fuck down across from his own, right next to Hannibal’s, that usual shit-eating grin plastered across his handsome face.
“I think you’re going to like this one.”
Way things are around here, BA thinks for the hundredth time, poking his spork into something that was once probably vegetable matter, that face should have been broken at least once. But the kid was tougher than he looked, a lot tougher, and once the boss had taken him under his wing, there wasn’t a person in the entire prison that was going to lay a hand on him
Nobody was that stupid.
Nobody was stupid enough to fuck with the guy who fucking runs this place.
“Anybody interesting on the manifest, then?” Hannibal asks, looking up from his own lunch. Same shit the rest of them are forced to eat. The man’s got enough pull to change that for himself, but he used to be in the Army, or some shit like that, and refuses any kind of special treatment. “Anybody we need to be worried about?”
“Oh, you know,” his lieutenant replies, that grin still firmly in place. “The usual smattering of petty bullshit, armed robbery, gang activity...”
“Fucking gangs...”
“I know, right, boss? They’ll sort themselves out. There is one guy, though, that looks kind of interesting...”
“Interesting trouble or interesting good for us?”
“Maybe good, maybe trouble, I don’t know. Some guy with three counts of manslaughter in an aircraft. Like vehicular manslaughter but... in a plane. Not sure what the term for that it...”
That gets the boss’ attention. “A pilot? You sure?”
“Sounds like,” Face shrugs.
Hannibal nods that silver head of his and stabs a carrot. “What about the gangs?”
“Guards are still doing the tattoo inventory, I couldn’t get that quite yet, but judging from the mug shots Sosa was able to get me there’s at least two neo-nazis in the bunch...”
BA tunes it out, the boss and his boy talking details on who they’re getting in, what kind of ripples this is going to cause, what gang’s going to get strengthened, which is going to lose power, if they’ve got any real psychopaths coming in, ages and records, who the career criminals are, if there are any newcomers young enough or new enough to reach...
He’s one of those lucky ones, BA figures, the ones Hannibal tries to pick up.
Two counts of grand theft auto, one of aggravated assault on a police officer, charged as an adult at seventeen, fifteen to twenty years, thrown in fucking San Quetin. Maximum security. He’d already figured on what he was going to have to do, wondered through the whole sentencing phase if he’d be able to survive it, too scared to sleep, that first night.
And there they’d been, in the showers that first time, the second day in.
Some white-haired white guy with some kind of assault rifle, hung with dog tags, tattooed in black prison ink on his chest, hung like a fucking horse, putting down three guys half his age like it was easy. Some blonde kid, barely older than BA himself, casually smashing a fourth nose-first into a wall, completely unconcerned with his own nudity.
“I’m Face,” he’d said, dropping the unconscious body like a bag of bricks, pointing over to where the older man was washing his bloodied chest off under the hard spray. “And that’s the boss, Hannibal.”
“Face? Stupid fuckin’ nickname, ya ask me.”
“Didn’t ask you,” Face retorted, staring back.
BA looked back over at the older man warily. He’d heard rumors. Already. That some guy named Hannibal ran this place. All the guards in his pocket and the gangs all deferring. Fuck, they said the warden was scared of him... “What he want wi’f me?”
“Not your ass,” the blonde teen had chuckled. “He’s already got mine.”
“And you guard it for me jealously, kid!” the old guy, Hannibal, had yelled as he cleaned off and the bastards bled into the drains. “Got an offer for you, Baracus. You gonna listen to me? Or should I let them get you next time?”
“Could’a handled ‘em.”
“Don’t fuckin’ lie to yourself in this place, Baracus. Easiest way to get yourself dead,” Hannibal had told him, shaking the water out of his hair as he walked back over, slapping Face on the ass in the process. “If you want to learn how to fight, I’ll teach you. No bullshit”
Important thing, in prison, to have friends. And the old guy seemed to know what he was doing. And based on what he’d heard . So he’d agreed. But it wasn’t like that with Hannibal. It had been at first, maybe, just needing the protection of the boss’ group. BA had been secretly terrified Face had been lying, that any one of them was going to jump his ass at any time, turn him in to somebody’s wife.
But it never happened.
After a few weeks of listening to the extremely loud cries from the cell down at the end of the bloc, the one Hannibal shared with that blonde kid, cries that couldn’t be construed as anything but pure pleasure, BA had started to wonder.
About two months in, BA won his first yard fight, on his own, the boss watching from the side, smoking one of his damn cigars and talking to Face, whispering something, and by that point, the teen knew them both well enough to know that something was up.
Three days later, he’d gotten an supervised visit. The kind in the room, where there wasn’t any glass. Where you could touch.
With his mama.
For an hour.
That was nine years ago. And BA's been loyal to the man ever since.
“You hear me on that, Baracus?” Hannibal asks now, and the big man realizes they’re both staring at him.
He shrugs, a little curious about the pilot, but not really willing to say so just yet. “Intake always trouble, boss. We ready for it.”
“No shit,” Face agrees, and lets a big glob of powdered mashed potatoes fall off his spork. “Fuck, boss, I wish you’d let me fix the food here...”
“You’ve got champagne taste, kid. We can’t hold the California prison system accountable for that,” Hannibal replies serenely.
And lights up a cigar.
+++++
BA doesn’t see the fresh meat until the next day, during yard time, and it’s pretty much immediately apparent who’s going to be the problem child in this particular group.
Immediately. Apparent.
There’s a group, clustered, growing, down on the opposite side of the yard, but even from here, it’s possible to hear the screaming. This is probably going to mean a fight, just like it always does, and Hannibal really prefers that those are avoided in his prison as much as possible. “Boys?” he asks in that tone of voice that clearly indicates an order.
BA doesn’t need to be told twice.
He starts jogging over.
Last night, the bloc was full of the usual bullshit. The catcalls, the noises. Old taunting new, testing them. Seeing who would shatter, who would be the contenders for power. Who’d could be dominated and who could be taken apart and who’d need to be killed, just to save the rest of them the headache of dealing with the son of a bitch.
BA, alone in his cell, sat up against the wall, legs crossed up on the shitty pad that passed for a bed, listening for it silently. Somebody always cried. Even the hardened criminals up here. Somebody always did, the first night. And it’d been a big group, half a dozen or so, too many, really, so somebody was bound to start crying...
And just when all of it crescendoed up to the level that Hannibal didn’t tolerate, right before the boss was about to scream out for everyone to shut the fuck up, there was another voice that broke through all else.
Somebody singing.
In some language that BA didn’t know. But the tune had been familiar. He couldn’t place it. But familiar.
It hadn’t lasted long, anyway. Cut off mid-word, maybe, who the fuck knew German in here anyway, by a pained grunt. Asshole had probably gotten himself hit. Or something. Who the fuck knew?
But as BA muscled his way through the shouting, seething mass of men, it was pretty damn apparent who the owner of that voice had been.
He was laughing.
Some scruffy dark-haired man, a little too scrawny in his prison orange, but he wears the jumpsuit like he knows what the hell to do with it. Facing off against Pike, that dickhead who was in for life, just like Hannibal, for murder, just like Hannibal.
Or facing off might have been the wrong term, since two of Pike’s gang is holding him by the arms, holding him while another winds up up for a clean swing.
And Pike, standing a little off to the side, pacing a bit, is talking as his goon’s fist connects with the guy’s face.
“Hey asshole, you kept me up all night wih your fucking musical stylings!” A cheer goes up from the little assembly, and as BA shoves the last man away, stepping into the shifting space inside. “This ain’t a fuckin’ choir loft, boy!”
“Ya sure about that?” comes a drawling response, a little accompanying giggle for good measure.
That almost stops BA cold. Who the fuck giggles in prison?
This guy, evidently. Number 62908. Giggling like a schoolgirl at a Justin Beiber concert.
Another hard, meaty smack, and then Pike’s goons are pulling the guy up as he falls, knees crumpling, new white prison shoes already gray from scrambling in the hard dirt. Pike himself walks fist full of lank black hair. “Fresh meat that doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up has to be made to shut the fuck up. Gonzalez...”
Around the side of the goon, BA catches a glimpse of the new guy’s face. Hair wild, skin pale and flushed at the same time, dark bruises already started to emerge, blood trickling from his hairline. Eyes wild. Wild, like something’s not all there, or maybe like there’s too much there. Caged and frantic. An expression he’s seen before, but different, different on this man for some reason, and it pulls at him. Like that time he found a bunch of boys in his old neighborhood torturing a pit bull puppy in a back alley, maybe like that...
“You gonna keep the fuck quiet from now on, sweetheart?” Pike asks, and the crowd’s roaring its approval now.
The guy just keeps giggling. “You poor gents have no appreciation for the classics!” In a perfect British accent.
“Fuck him up, boys,” Pike snaps, dropping his head and backing away, and this, this is the part where they start beating the guy to death.
But BA’s right there, grabbing that cocked fist before it has a chance to connect, driving his own through that surprised face, hard and fast, dropping the guy like the sack of shit he was, one of the others holding 62908 going down as well, on his way to the third, vision tunneling down to the fight, when he feels a jerk on his collar and the cold press of a jagged, cutting edge to the skin above.
“What the fuck you doin’, Baracus?” Pike growls, giving him a little shake, and BA goes still as death. His head’s down, so he can see the dark-haired guy beneath him, bleeding into the hard-pack of the prison yard, and he figures, crazily, in the back of his mind, that the puppy analogy wasn’t so far off after all. Something about this fool...
“Hannibal don’t want no trouble with new guys,” he reminds him, trying to sound as threatening as he can. He doesn’t like Pike. Pike scares the shit out of him. Always has, probably always will. If half the stories about the lifer are true, he’s probably not scared enough.
“The old man havin’ you do his dirty work again, Baracus? Fuck you. Overstepping yourself again. Just cause you’re the top bitch in this prison doesn’t mean you aren’t still a bitch,” Pike jokes back in that chilling tone of his, and the shank presses in, hard enough to cut.
“I ain’t nobody’s bitch, fool!”
“Tell you what, Baracus. You stay bent over here for me, right like this, like a good bitch, and we’ll pretend like you didn’t just disrespect me in front of...”
“And we’ll pretend like you weren’t just disrespectingme by laying a hand on my man in my goddamn yard.”
It booms out over everything, and BA allows himself a smile, and a wink for the confused, slightly stunned man beneath him. Hannibal. Thank fuck. The crowd’s probably parting for him like the Red Sea for Moses right now. Just like it always does. Dead silent, too.
“How you doin’ BA?”
“Fine, boss,” he grunts back.
“Let him up, Pike.” Hannibal’s done yelling. He’s just talking now. And BA takes back what he thought earlier. That voice, out of the boss, scares him more than Pike ever can. “Right the fuck now.”
The homemade knife is gone in an instant, and BA straightens, trying not to wince at the stinging pain from the shallow wound. Pike’s glowering at Face, who’s smiling that conman smile back as he tucks the confiscated weapon into his own pocket. Hannibal’s still got his damn cigar, smoking it pensively.
“BA, pick him up,” the boss orders, and turns to Pike, cigar firmly clenched in his front two fingers, jabbing all together at the short murderer. “You leave my boys alone, Pike. You fucking hear me?”
“You won’t be top dog around here forever, Smith,” Pike snarls back, and Hannibal has to grab Face’s arm as the shank reemerges.
“Fucking try it,” the blonde still shoots out.
Pike hesitates. Just for a second. He always hesitates at these moments. Everyone always hesitates. Everyone who doesn’t want to wind up dead. And then the asshole smirks, like it doesn’t matter. “Take him, then. You’re the one running all the charity cases around here, like fucking Mother Theresa...”
That gets a chuckle from the crowd, and BA glares up at them from where he’s pulling the new guy off the ground.
Hannibal just laughs back. “Your life is my only charity case, Pike. Keep pushing me and we might have to change that.”
62908 is lighter than he looks, and he looks fucking light. It’s nothing to toss the guy’s arm over his shoulder, and BA hears a little, pained grunt. “C’mon, fool, let’s get ya outta here.”
“My hero!” the guy yells, throwing both arms around BA’s neck, squeezing tight.
More laughter. A couple of wolf-whistles. One “fuck ‘im hard, BA!”. And no amount of glaring is going to stop it now. Motherfucker, but the only thing BA can do is haul the still-giggling idiot out of there, following Face and Hannibal into a quieter part of the yard.
“What do we call you, son?” the boss asks, soon as they’re free.
“Cap’t HM Murdock, at your service, sah!”
The British accent’s back, but at least the open-hand salute he throws gets that arm off BA’a neck. Scrawny fool’s stronger than he looks.
Face starts laughing.
Hannibal just nods. “Glad to have you on the team, then, captain. One thing, though, if we’re going to keep you alive.”
“Wassat?”
Is that... Texan? Is that what he normally sounds like.
“No more Beethoven’s Ninth during dark hours. Didn’t seem like the boys appreciated it too much.”
There’s a moment of silence. Face is still laughing, just quieter. And the idiot leaning on him feels like he’s really, really having to think about this.
“I’ll keep it in mind, sir,” Murdock finally says, and throws BA a big, lopsided grin, very lopsided on his swelling face. “Permission to sing now?”
“Permission granted, captain,” the older man shrugs, and flicks ash off his cigar as they walk back to a more peaceful corner of the yard. Face bumps his hip, obvious as ever.
And as those extremely loud strains of German burst out of the dark-haired man again, BA swears he’s going to just kill the old man for saddling them with this one.
+++++
BA doesn’t really realize how goddamn tough it’s going to be, dealing with this Murdock guy, until the next day.
When he’s in the library, looking up that piece of music the boss was talking about, the one that Murdock had been singing out in the cell block his first night.
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement, Murdock had corrected the boss, to Face’s laughter. And then he’d prattled off something about the evolution of the violin and the old practice of castrating boys for church choirs and Hannibal had grunted and told BA to get the pilot under control.
Pissed as he is at the situation - because Murdock really, really doesn’t shut up - the big enforcer hasn’t been able to get that song out of his head. Crazy has a good voice, he thinks, and if something could sound that sweet, sung one single voice in the darkness, it must be really fucking good, performed by the whole orchestra.
He had to look up what that even meant, like four or five different things he had to look up, actually. But some idiotic rich person had donated an inexplicably large collection of classical CDs to the prison library, and that’s where he is now, looking for the right jewel case in the rows and rows of shelves.
“I say, old chap, good to see you beyond the exercise grounds.”
Fuck. Murdock. Fucking idiot. If he’d just stop talking... BA clenches a fist and tries not to think about it. He just keeps reading labels on his knees, and tries not to look up at the pilot. The one Hannibal’s told him to watch. The one he has to watch.
“What you want, fool?” he grunts.
The pilot squats down next to him, too close to not see. “No reason to get your knickers in a twist, old boy. I was simply stating that since we share a common benefactor...”
He laughs a little at that. “Hannibal ain’t nobody’s bene...beni...”
“Benefactor?” the other man offers in a far-too-perky voice.
“Yeah, man, bennifactor, whatever the fuck that i...”
“A benefactor, according to Webster’s Dictionary, is a person who confers a benefit, a kindly helper...”
He snorts. “Yeah, man, Hannibal ain’t kindly or a helper.”
The other man sags a little bit, and BA tries to tell himself it doesn’t bother him at all. That he doesn’t need to look. “Then, why would he...”
“Cause, man, the boss runs this place. He don’t want no trouble in it,” the enforcer explains, and goes back trying to find that CD. “And Pike was disrespectin’ him by not stoppin’ when he said stop.”
“So you guys...y’all seem pretty nice, ‘s’all I’m sayin’...” Murdock says, Texas twang back, picking at a spot on the naked floor, fingers twitching a bit, body twitching. It reminds BA of that man who used to live down the street from his mama’s house, the ‘Nam vet who had all those stories about chopper crashes and POW camps. And he wonders what, exactly, brought this guy here. If he’s really a captain. If he’s been to, like, Afghanistan or some shit like that. “Thought maybe we were...”
“Were what, fool?” he asks, a little sharper than he means to.
“Were friends,” the pilot admits, barely audible. “Or somethin’ like that.”
“Ain’t no such thing as friends in prison, man,” BA tells him, and notices the slightest bit of recoil at those words. He finds himself reaching out to stop that. Who knew what crazy was going to get up to, if he wandered off upset like that? “But you under Hannibal’s protection. He gets to say what happen to you. Don’t gotta worry ‘bout nuthin’, man.”
“Oh, so touching,” a heavily accented voice says above them, and BA jerks his hand away at the sound of it. Ramirex. Ranking Aztec gang leader around here. “You stake your claim on this mariposa’s tight white ass yet?”
“Aww, you noticed my ass?” Murdock asks with a manic giggle before BA can stop him, actually batting his eyes up at the son of a bitch. And the enforcer can’t help but realize the pilot’s got really, really long lashes. Really long. “That’s so sweet of you, roomie.”
“Keep talking, mariposa. You good at that.”
Fuck. Ramirez. Double-homicide-and-drug-smuggling Ramirez? Somebody put a newbie in his cell? And this man has to be insane, because he’s ignoring the clear danger here, still talking, babbling wildly, loud, voice carrying, just like it had yesterday.
“I thank you for compliment, sah,” and the British accent is a bit jarring, “and we should all be as fortunate to have as generous a spirit as you do...”
That gets a growl from the hulk mass of Mexican above them. “You ever stop talking, mariposa? I bet you’d stop talking if you had my dick up your ass. Bet that would shut you up...”
BA gets up. There’s no way he’s losing favor with Hannibal by letting his new pilot get his ass beat. Not after the old man told him specifically to look after the idiot.
“Back off,” he orders, spreading his arms out between the shelves on either side of them, creating a solid wall with his body. He knows exactly how intimidating he can be. The boss relies on that, Face coaches him on it every so often, and he brings it to bear here. Protecting some damn fool who got his white ass thrown into some world he clearly doesn’t belong to. “He mine.”
Ramirez laughs, orange jumpsuit shaking over the lard of his belly. “You into white boys now, BA?”
Feeling a little sick inside, because no matter what Face says about the joys of a properly-executed fucking, BA’s never been comfortable with most of the shit that goes on in here, he forces a sly grin and stares right at the other inmate. “He a bitch, Ramirez. Boss says he mine. So he mine. You ain’t touchin’ what’s mine.” And he leans forward into the other man’s face. “Back off b’fore you start disrespecting me.”
The other man stares back at him, just for a moment, and then shakes his head, backing off. “Your boss no run the gangs in here, Baracus. And he in my cell. You can’t protect him there,” he laughs, and makes some dismissive gesture as he walks away. “You see how far your boss’ reach goes there!”
The enforcer growls, low and deep in his throat, and starts after the guy, because fucking nobody gets to question Hannibal’s authority in here, but there’s something holding him back, grabbed hold of his leg, and when he looks down, it’s Murdock. Holding the hem of his pants leg.
Holding up a CD case.
“This the one you were lookin’ for?” he asks, and BA feels his anger deflate a little, looking at the man. “Cause they got a couple different arrangements here, different composers, so I’m not sure which one you were going for...”
It’s a big, chunky 6-disc CD case marked Beethovern’s Complete Works. How’d that fool know that was the one he was going for? It’s a little strange that he’d just know that...
But Murdock’s still tugging on his pants like a lost child, brown eyes a little wide, and with a sigh, BA settles down next to him.
“How do you know which one’s good?” he asks, feeling a little stupid. He went to most of high school, but still, this culture stuff wasn’t ever really a focus at West Ridge High. “I mean, uhh, does it matter?”
But a big smile just breaks out over the other man’s face, and the babbling’s baack now, cycling through a whole bunch of shit about philharmonics or philharmonias or something like that, pulling cases and cases off the shelves, little piles beginning to form around their knees.
He tunes it out.
He has to talk to Face about this, getting the pilot out of the cell he’s in now. Put him somewhere else, with someone not nearly as dangerous. Somewhere where BA doesn’t have to worry about him getting jumped by some big-ass Mexican in the middle of the night.
One of the bitches, maybe.
Yeah, he tells himself as Murdock finally eases that topic in for a landing, handing BA the original case he’d had at the start of it all. Yeah, that will work out just fine.
+++++
“Aww, hell no, Faceman.”
“You said you wanted him out of his current cell. There’s an empty bunk in your cell. Works, doesn’t it?”
BA glares at the blonde, standing outside his cell twenty minutes before lights out, smiling back at him innocently as the guards toss the top bunk. Just in case there's contraband before they put a new prisoner in here or some shit like that. “Didn’t mean you should put him in here. I meant...”
“Boss wants you to keep an eye on him, BA,” Face replies lightly, the slightest threat of ever-present violence on the underside of his words. “And from what I heard about your little scene in the library, he’s officially yours now, so...”
“Hate y’all,” BA grumbles, and Face laughs, high and clear.
“You’ll be fine. How bad could it be? He’s cute enough,” Hannibal’s second in command chuckles back, and then digs a small opaque tub out of the pocket of his orange jumpsuit. The jumpsuit that seems to fit him better than any other man in this prison. Except maybe Murdock. And BA doesn't even want to think about where that comment comes from. “And here.” He tosses it over to him, catching that glare from a guard that indicates he needs to get the fuck back to his cell. “Think you might need that. Hell of a lot better than spit.”
It’s Vasoline.
“You motherfucker...” BA growls, but Face is laughing his way down the cell block now and the guard’s blocking his exit, and the guard’s fucking sniggering at him.
And then there Murdock is. Tossed right in, and the door slams shut with a heavy clang.
“Don’t be too rough with him, Baracus!” one of the guards calls back.
“Assholes!” he yells back, and scattered applause can be hear outside, in the rest of the block. BA stands there a moment more, trying to get his raging anger under control, like his mama always done told him to do, and then a little shifting sound brings him back down to earth.
Where Murdock is.
“Lights out! Fifteen minutes!”
Scrunched back in the opposite corner, up against the bars, clutching his spare set of tomorrow’s clothes to his chest like it’s a fucking teddy bear or something. Eyes a little wild. Breathing hard. Fighting panic.
Staring at the tub of Vaseline.
“Faceman got a sick sense o’ humor, man,” BA grunts, feeling horrible all of the sudden, horrible about this, and he goes to hide the little tub somewhere that isn’t under his bottom bunk pillow. “I don’t normally use this stuff... I mean, don’t normally need to...Hannibal don’t make me do that kind’o’ thing...got no interest in catchin’ your crazy AIDS, man...”
“Naw, it’s okay, big guy!”
The downright happy tone in those words snaps BA’s head up and around, over to the corner, where Murdock’s beaming at him, no hint of the earlier fear anywhere in his face.
“What?”
“You don’t gotta worry about it, BA,” the pilot says, hands on his hips now, some kind of weird Southern sass on display. Or something. “You can’t get AIDS from sharing lip balm with somebody.”
“Lip...lip balm?”
“Yeah,” and Murdock smiles at him, like he’s talking to a particularly dense child. “I use it all the time. Good stuff. No menthol, won’t dry out your lips like chap stick does. Really important for when your lips start crackin’ from the oxygen...”
“Oxygen?” BA remembers eigth grade science class. There’s lots of oxygen in the atmosphere, everywhere, lots of oxygen. What’s wrong with this fool?
But the pilot nods back enthusiastically, like it’s BA who’s got the problem, and his stuff drops out of his hands as he starts gesturing wildly along with his words. “See, you’ve got this half-face mask that hooks in to your helmet when you’re flyin’ the test airframe, and it’s got all your radio and stuff for talkin’ to the tower in it, and the air feed, in case the cockpit air goes out, and it can go up to pure oxygen, but the air outta the tanks ‘s’all dry and cold and hurts your lungs when you spend ten hours breathin’ it in...”
“Shuttup, fool!” BA groans, and tucks the Vaseline under the little sink unit. “Don’t care ‘bout no damn oxygen.”
“You should,” Murdock says seriously. “Air’s really dry here in California and it’s full of oxygen. I may be needin’ to borrow your Vaseline every once in a while.”
“Ain’t borrowin’ my shit, crazy!”
“But we’re cellmates, BA! You gotta share with your cellmates!”
The enforcer shakes his head, and retrieves this month’s muscle cars magazine that his mama brought him, last visit. Sometimes, a lot of the time, he thinks he should have listened to her. Not gone out with his older buddies that night. Not hot-wired that Shelby for them. Not let Darren shoot that cop. Maybe if he hadn’t, he could have finished out the auto vocational program at his high school, been a real mechanic by now. Or joined the Army. Mama had always wanted him to join the Army, be a sergeant, just like the daddy he’d never met.
Should have listened.
This is one of those times he wished he had.
For different reasons than normal, though.
And he doesn’t think he’s ever met anybody like this pilot before. And certainly not in prison. He’s almost...he’s almost sweet.
Almost.
“Hey, BA?”
And that’s so close to his ear, the big black man jumps a little bit. Glances over to see a pair of curious sea-green eyes, watching him.
“What, fool?”
Another smile. It’s the smile. That uneven, strange little smile. Like he’s gt a secret he only wants BA to hear.
“Can I have the bottom bunk?”
“No! “
“But where’s Billy gonna sleep?”
That gets BA’s attention. “Billy?”
“My dog.”
“You got’a dog, fool?”
Murdock huffs, and points. “He’s right over there by the door. Ain’t he cute?”
There is, of course, nothing there. BA realizes this, realizes this without even looking, but he still feels compelled to at least glance over. And then back at his new cell mate, who’s still smiling. Wavering a bit, but still smiling.
“Don’t want him to hav’ta sleep on the floor, big guy.”
“Light outs!” the guard down below yells, and suddenly the cell block’s awash in darkness. Just a little light from the high, narrow window, the emergency lighting down below.
He looks at Murdock, who’s still there, expectant, and he rolls himself up in his blanket, face into the blank, drab wall. “Bottom bunk mine, man.”
“Like I’m yours?” the pilot asks softly.
It knocks BA totally on his ass.
It’s normal, he knows. To be expected. What he’s supposed to do. What’s going to keep this idiot from getting his ass jumped in the showers tomorrow, or his ribs broken in the yard next week. But something’s welling up in him now, and the inmate’s not real sure what that is, just that he doesn’t want to hurt this man locked up in here with him. That it’d be like hurting a puppy. That he couldn’t live with himself afterward.
“Go to sleep, Murdock,” he grunts, eyes wide in the black of the prison night, and after a few more minutes, the soft breath prickling at his neck stops, unnoticed until it’s gone, and BA listens to the springs above him creak and shift.
Finally.
Maybe the fool shuts up when he’s asleep.
But BA doesn’t get any relief, not even in sleep, because he wakes up a few hours later, ejected from fading dreams.
To the sounds of silent sniffling above him.
The big guy listens to it for as long as he can, and then something in him snaps and he’s pulling himself up to eye level with the upper bunk.
There’s Murdock, the source of the noise, jammed back against the cell wall, curled up into himself, dark head down in his hands. His blanket’s shoved off and his pillow’s mangled up and he seems utterly miserable.
“Hey, Murdock, man,” Hannibal’s enforcer says quietly, reaching out and watching the other man cringe away from him. He pushes up, both feet on the lower bunk, far enough to touch that surprisingly soft hair. “Hey, hey, I ain’t gonna hurt you. I ain’t.”
The pilot is shaking under BA’s hand.
He tries a different tactic.
“You wan’ me... wan’ me to put Billy up here for ya? Your dog?”
Murdock nods, and doesn’t speak.
Feeling like a total idiot, the big guy steps down off the bed and walks over to the corner, where the pilot indicated the dam imaginary dog was. He bends over and mimes scooping the dog up, figuring that a forty-pound animal’s going to have to be enough, and feels those green eyes on him the whole time. As he walks back over. As he deposits his imaginary burden on the bed.
The pilot stretches out of himself, and holds out a hand. “Here, here, Billy,” he says, and his arms kind of crooks, like there’s an actual canine up against his side now. He lays his head down on his arm, petting the air. “We’re gonna be okay, boy. Just you wait and see.”
BA can’t figure this out, and doesn’t really want to, not right now, he’s too fucking tired. So he settles for tugging that knotted-up blanket over the other man’s relaxing form, careful to pull it kind of high around the dog. “Go ta sleep,” he grunts, and drops back down into his own bunk.
And he stays awake, until the soft little words to the dog above him stop, and breathing evens, and Murdock’s dropped off the planet.
Oh yeah. This one’s going to take a lot of watching. But. But somehow, right here, right now, BA would rather Murdock be with him than anyone else.
There’s something innocent about this guy.
It won’t survive.
But something in him wants to protect it. For as long as he can.
Until Murdock drives him nuts, at least.
+++++
Weird as his new cellmate is, it doesn't take BA very long to get used to having him around. Not that he's used to Murdock himself, per say. No, not that. Not the way crazy talks to his imaginary dog all the damn time. Or his habit of answering BA's grudgingly interested questions about plane engines with sock puppets on his hands. Or the random bursts of foreign languages that just spill the fuck out of him at the oddest moments.
Like right now.
Like right now with Face.
Him and Face, Face of all anyone in this goddamn place, jabbering away in something, French according to the boss, while they pull kitchen duty with half a dozen others who seem to think that the whole thing is fucking hilarious.
It's okay, though. Gives him a break. Space to think, up to his elbows in hot, soapy water, scrubbing the shit out some gigantic pot still soaking from yesterday's lunch.
Time to think about Murdock.
He minds the crazy-ass pilot. Definitely minds the man. So fucking annoying on his good days. And BA is pretty sure they're gonna to start running out of good days here, real soon, way he's having to constantly step up, back other prisoners down, bust a few heads, every time an accent or a comment doesn't sit right with somebody else. And considering the fine cross-section of California's uneducated underbelly they've got in here, that happens a lot. And it only ever seems to make Murdock more manic, which starts a fresh round of threats.
So it's really a goddamn non-stop job.
The only time he gets to relax at all now is at night, after lights-out, and Murdock seems to feel the same. They usually don't talk then, the pilot just crawling up into his bunk, and it had taken BA a few nights to figure out that the man is up there not sleeping, but crying noiselessly, talking silently to his damn dog as the tears came slowly.
Something about that keeps him awake, and he can't figure out why the fuck it bothers him as much as it does.
None of it, BA thinks, makes any goddamn sense at all.
He's never felt like this before, like he wants to kill anybody who looks at his bitch wrong, even though he hasn't even tried to take Murdock, even though he can’t really bring himself to apply that term to the pilot. Like he can't relax if his cellmate can't relax. Like how his stomach draws in on itself, every morning he wakes up and finds a tousled head smiling at him from over the edge of the bunk, asking him if he had any interesting dreams he needs examined before breakfast.
Steps need to be taken, and taken right the hell now, but BA isn't sure what those steps should - or could - be.
"Killing that pan, son?"
BA blinks at the sound of the old man's voice, and realizes that yes, he's furiously scouring the dented metal thing. So hard his hands are hurting around the steel wool, and he pulls out of it all immediately.
"No, boss."
Hannibal chuckles and lets that cigar of his dangle dangerously close to the scummy surface of the dishwater. He's not looking at BA, though. He's watching his bitch.
He's watching Face.
And, BA supposes, the term doesn’t really fit the blonde, either.
"He's supposed to be in the psyche ward," the boss says, and BA almost laughs, thinking about Face in some little group therapy session, like the kind the prison shrink likes to hold after some asshole punches his own ticket, or some AA meeting like on TV, the prettyboy explaining how he's addicted to cock and expensive hand lotion. "Murdock was one of the best pilots the Army had, up until about three years ago. Little unhinged, maybe, but good pilots always are." He pauses for another mouthful of smoke. "They cut him over to Lockheed Martin..."
"Lock head what?"
"Lockheed Martin. Big defense contractor. Anyway, they had him on their YF-22 development project..."
"Say what?"
Hannibal gives him one of those looks, the do you ever read the fucking news look, and goes back to watching Face. Who's now slapping Murdock with a wet towel, the pilot giving back as good as he's getting, those two idiots starting to giggle like little girls.
It ain't fair.
The blonde seems to get along with Murdock like they were made for each other, like brothers from another mother or whatever the fucking expression is, and it would make a lot more sense if they were bunking up together. Except, he suspects, Hannibal likes fucking that beautiful bitch of his just as much as Face seems to.
"It's a new military fighter jet, BA. Murdock was on a test flight, some kind of mix-up happened with the controls, and then he's ejecting from a $100 million dollar aircraft. It hit a control station on the range. Three people were killed. Company needed a scapegoat, it ends up in court, he gets a shit attorney..." the boss' voice is low and pensive, like he's remembering something himself. "That's why he's here. Enough to make anyone insane, I’d think."
“No shit, boss. He crazy,” BA says, thinking about what that would be like, being able to work with machines like that, fly like that. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with Murdock. No more sky, no more freedom, locked up, feathers clipped like that parrot mean ol’ Widow Jones used to have. Wanting to fly. Denied the most basic of its nature.
Hannibal smiles back, and starts to say something, but there’s a squeal, a literal squeal, and the sound of water splashing out onto dirty tiles, and the boss pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Face!” he bellows. “Knock it the fuck off and get back to work!”
Murdock looks almost fearful, blood draining from his cheeks, like he only now remembered where he was, but Face, Face on the other hand...
...Face smacks the pilot again with that wet towel. “Make me!” he teases, eyes dancing.
“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU SAY TO ME?!?”
Hannibal’s got a real set of lungs on him when he’s pissed, and they take all the air out of the room to yell that out. So suddenly, nobody’s breathing, nobody’s moving at all, except for the old man, who’s on Face in an instant, grabbing a fistful of orange jumpsuit, dragging their faces level.
“What did you just say to me, Peck?” he growls.
Face’s eyes go wide.
Then narrow.
“I said make me go back to work, Smith,” he tosses back, not a hint of the earlier humor there at all now.
And this is really the source of everything about these two. Why Hannibal can touch the kid in public like he does. Why Face still gets to act as Hannibal’s chief enforcer, despite the fact he takes it up the ass from the man. Because he pushes back on Hannibal and Hannibal always, always beats him down. Because they fight. And because Face can throw a punch almost as hard as the boss.
Which he isn’t going to get to do.
Not with the boss starting out with that kind of hard, hard backhand across his mouth. Knocking him down.
BA’s not even aware that Murdock’s creeping over to him, right there, pressing against his side, fingers searching out something that, whatever it is, BA can’t give him right now. But he doesn’t shoo him away, not as Face grabs Hannibal’s ankle and pulls him down into the soapy, disgusting mess on the floor, the pair of them tangling up in a furious single mass. Not as Hannibal knees him in the gut and drives a fist into his ear at the same time and gets on top of him. Not as Face gets in a punch or two of his own before the boss pins him. Not as Hannibal backhands him again and pounds him down, one big hand pinching the blonde’s neck to the floor.
The other dropping to his zipper, yanking his jumpsuit open to the groin.
“BA,” he growls, not turning, tightening a little so Face can’t talk. “I’d prefer to not to have an audience for this.”
The big black man doesn’t need to do anything. The room clears.
Immediately.
He has to throw Murdock off him, though, the man’s eyes the size of dinner plates. “BA,” he whimpers, pleading.
But just then, he turns at some little noise, a very familiar little noise, and what he sees makes him throw Murdock completely clear of the room and stare in shock.
Face is on his knees, making those little noises he always makes in the night, happy, happy noises, Hannibal groaning, hand tangled up in blonde curls, working that mouth around his cock. Both of them trying to hold the sounds back.
They never hold the sounds back.
It’s almost...well, it sure ain’t punishment. BA knows that much, and he shuts the door quietly, knowing he should be on the other side of it but suddenly overcome with curiosity.
It goes quick, like it always seems to. Like these two just can’t control themselves around each other or something, maybe, Hannibal coming with a soft cry, Face clinging to the older man’s thighs
BA thinks it’s over, but instead of letting Face just fall to the ground, leaving him there, like the boss has every right to do, like he should do, he pulls him up. Holds him against his chest, one hand resting against Face’s cheek, thumb playing lightly against the small trickle of blood from before.
Kissing him.
They’re actually....
Not just a kiss, not like one of those creepy things he’d seen before, a man enforcing his claim in some sadistic way. No. This is deep and long, Face clinging to him, whimpering again as it finally breaks apart.
The enforcer freezes cold, solid. No. No. He can remember, he can remember his own daddy kissing his mama like that. Out there. In a world that doesn’t rely on sex for power
“You like that, Templeton, my boy?” Hannibal murmurs in the softest voice BA has ever heard. “Need to know that you like it, when you make me hurt you like that...”
“I’m your boy,” Face echoes, pushing his head up for another kiss. “I like being your boy, John. Like everything about being your boy. Everything we have to do...”
“I know, sweetheart, I know. Im so sorry it has to be this way,” Hannibal whispers back, kissing him once more.
And then falls to his knees.
That shit just doesn’t happen in prison. The boss, the boss of this place, is blowing his own bitch.
And BA can’t, can’t, can’t stay and watch this. Right now, all this, they’re relying on him to be watching the door, giving them the privacy they need. He has to get out there.
But as he’s slipping out, grabbing Murdock by the arm, where crazy’s waiting, right outside the door, expression somewhere between apprehension and terror, BA wonders, really wonders, for the first time since arriving here, if it’s possible for two men...
If maybe...
If maybe it’s not impossible after all.
If maybe this is what's going on with him and Murdock.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: non-con
Summary: Part One of Two for a fill for this prompt on the kink meme.
ICan we get a prison AU? Hannibal is the lifer who runs the place, Face his second in command who can get hold of anything you want, BA is the muscle with the secret sensitive side... And Murdock can be the new prisoner who really should be in the psyche ward but had a shitty lawyer.
Bonus points for Murdock getting in a bit of trouble to begin with and BA (or Face) stepping in to help him. Double bonus points for BA (or Face) pretending to claim Murdock as his prison bitch to keep him safe from other prisoners and Murdock being a bit bemused by the whole thing. BA/Murdock would be love but I could totally go for some Face/Murdock if that's more your speed :)
Hannibal sticks BA in charge of some crazy-ass new inmate. And the guy’s driving BA nuts. Except, maybe, there’s something more going on...
“Batch of new guys at intake today, boss.”
The big black man looks up at the rangy blonde, plopping his tray of today’s whatever-the-fuck down across from his own, right next to Hannibal’s, that usual shit-eating grin plastered across his handsome face.
“I think you’re going to like this one.”
Way things are around here, BA thinks for the hundredth time, poking his spork into something that was once probably vegetable matter, that face should have been broken at least once. But the kid was tougher than he looked, a lot tougher, and once the boss had taken him under his wing, there wasn’t a person in the entire prison that was going to lay a hand on him
Nobody was that stupid.
Nobody was stupid enough to fuck with the guy who fucking runs this place.
“Anybody interesting on the manifest, then?” Hannibal asks, looking up from his own lunch. Same shit the rest of them are forced to eat. The man’s got enough pull to change that for himself, but he used to be in the Army, or some shit like that, and refuses any kind of special treatment. “Anybody we need to be worried about?”
“Oh, you know,” his lieutenant replies, that grin still firmly in place. “The usual smattering of petty bullshit, armed robbery, gang activity...”
“Fucking gangs...”
“I know, right, boss? They’ll sort themselves out. There is one guy, though, that looks kind of interesting...”
“Interesting trouble or interesting good for us?”
“Maybe good, maybe trouble, I don’t know. Some guy with three counts of manslaughter in an aircraft. Like vehicular manslaughter but... in a plane. Not sure what the term for that it...”
That gets the boss’ attention. “A pilot? You sure?”
“Sounds like,” Face shrugs.
Hannibal nods that silver head of his and stabs a carrot. “What about the gangs?”
“Guards are still doing the tattoo inventory, I couldn’t get that quite yet, but judging from the mug shots Sosa was able to get me there’s at least two neo-nazis in the bunch...”
BA tunes it out, the boss and his boy talking details on who they’re getting in, what kind of ripples this is going to cause, what gang’s going to get strengthened, which is going to lose power, if they’ve got any real psychopaths coming in, ages and records, who the career criminals are, if there are any newcomers young enough or new enough to reach...
He’s one of those lucky ones, BA figures, the ones Hannibal tries to pick up.
Two counts of grand theft auto, one of aggravated assault on a police officer, charged as an adult at seventeen, fifteen to twenty years, thrown in fucking San Quetin. Maximum security. He’d already figured on what he was going to have to do, wondered through the whole sentencing phase if he’d be able to survive it, too scared to sleep, that first night.
And there they’d been, in the showers that first time, the second day in.
Some white-haired white guy with some kind of assault rifle, hung with dog tags, tattooed in black prison ink on his chest, hung like a fucking horse, putting down three guys half his age like it was easy. Some blonde kid, barely older than BA himself, casually smashing a fourth nose-first into a wall, completely unconcerned with his own nudity.
“I’m Face,” he’d said, dropping the unconscious body like a bag of bricks, pointing over to where the older man was washing his bloodied chest off under the hard spray. “And that’s the boss, Hannibal.”
“Face? Stupid fuckin’ nickname, ya ask me.”
“Didn’t ask you,” Face retorted, staring back.
BA looked back over at the older man warily. He’d heard rumors. Already. That some guy named Hannibal ran this place. All the guards in his pocket and the gangs all deferring. Fuck, they said the warden was scared of him... “What he want wi’f me?”
“Not your ass,” the blonde teen had chuckled. “He’s already got mine.”
“And you guard it for me jealously, kid!” the old guy, Hannibal, had yelled as he cleaned off and the bastards bled into the drains. “Got an offer for you, Baracus. You gonna listen to me? Or should I let them get you next time?”
“Could’a handled ‘em.”
“Don’t fuckin’ lie to yourself in this place, Baracus. Easiest way to get yourself dead,” Hannibal had told him, shaking the water out of his hair as he walked back over, slapping Face on the ass in the process. “If you want to learn how to fight, I’ll teach you. No bullshit”
Important thing, in prison, to have friends. And the old guy seemed to know what he was doing. And based on what he’d heard . So he’d agreed. But it wasn’t like that with Hannibal. It had been at first, maybe, just needing the protection of the boss’ group. BA had been secretly terrified Face had been lying, that any one of them was going to jump his ass at any time, turn him in to somebody’s wife.
But it never happened.
After a few weeks of listening to the extremely loud cries from the cell down at the end of the bloc, the one Hannibal shared with that blonde kid, cries that couldn’t be construed as anything but pure pleasure, BA had started to wonder.
About two months in, BA won his first yard fight, on his own, the boss watching from the side, smoking one of his damn cigars and talking to Face, whispering something, and by that point, the teen knew them both well enough to know that something was up.
Three days later, he’d gotten an supervised visit. The kind in the room, where there wasn’t any glass. Where you could touch.
With his mama.
For an hour.
That was nine years ago. And BA's been loyal to the man ever since.
“You hear me on that, Baracus?” Hannibal asks now, and the big man realizes they’re both staring at him.
He shrugs, a little curious about the pilot, but not really willing to say so just yet. “Intake always trouble, boss. We ready for it.”
“No shit,” Face agrees, and lets a big glob of powdered mashed potatoes fall off his spork. “Fuck, boss, I wish you’d let me fix the food here...”
“You’ve got champagne taste, kid. We can’t hold the California prison system accountable for that,” Hannibal replies serenely.
And lights up a cigar.
+++++
BA doesn’t see the fresh meat until the next day, during yard time, and it’s pretty much immediately apparent who’s going to be the problem child in this particular group.
Immediately. Apparent.
There’s a group, clustered, growing, down on the opposite side of the yard, but even from here, it’s possible to hear the screaming. This is probably going to mean a fight, just like it always does, and Hannibal really prefers that those are avoided in his prison as much as possible. “Boys?” he asks in that tone of voice that clearly indicates an order.
BA doesn’t need to be told twice.
He starts jogging over.
Last night, the bloc was full of the usual bullshit. The catcalls, the noises. Old taunting new, testing them. Seeing who would shatter, who would be the contenders for power. Who’d could be dominated and who could be taken apart and who’d need to be killed, just to save the rest of them the headache of dealing with the son of a bitch.
BA, alone in his cell, sat up against the wall, legs crossed up on the shitty pad that passed for a bed, listening for it silently. Somebody always cried. Even the hardened criminals up here. Somebody always did, the first night. And it’d been a big group, half a dozen or so, too many, really, so somebody was bound to start crying...
And just when all of it crescendoed up to the level that Hannibal didn’t tolerate, right before the boss was about to scream out for everyone to shut the fuck up, there was another voice that broke through all else.
Somebody singing.
In some language that BA didn’t know. But the tune had been familiar. He couldn’t place it. But familiar.
It hadn’t lasted long, anyway. Cut off mid-word, maybe, who the fuck knew German in here anyway, by a pained grunt. Asshole had probably gotten himself hit. Or something. Who the fuck knew?
But as BA muscled his way through the shouting, seething mass of men, it was pretty damn apparent who the owner of that voice had been.
He was laughing.
Some scruffy dark-haired man, a little too scrawny in his prison orange, but he wears the jumpsuit like he knows what the hell to do with it. Facing off against Pike, that dickhead who was in for life, just like Hannibal, for murder, just like Hannibal.
Or facing off might have been the wrong term, since two of Pike’s gang is holding him by the arms, holding him while another winds up up for a clean swing.
And Pike, standing a little off to the side, pacing a bit, is talking as his goon’s fist connects with the guy’s face.
“Hey asshole, you kept me up all night wih your fucking musical stylings!” A cheer goes up from the little assembly, and as BA shoves the last man away, stepping into the shifting space inside. “This ain’t a fuckin’ choir loft, boy!”
“Ya sure about that?” comes a drawling response, a little accompanying giggle for good measure.
That almost stops BA cold. Who the fuck giggles in prison?
This guy, evidently. Number 62908. Giggling like a schoolgirl at a Justin Beiber concert.
Another hard, meaty smack, and then Pike’s goons are pulling the guy up as he falls, knees crumpling, new white prison shoes already gray from scrambling in the hard dirt. Pike himself walks fist full of lank black hair. “Fresh meat that doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up has to be made to shut the fuck up. Gonzalez...”
Around the side of the goon, BA catches a glimpse of the new guy’s face. Hair wild, skin pale and flushed at the same time, dark bruises already started to emerge, blood trickling from his hairline. Eyes wild. Wild, like something’s not all there, or maybe like there’s too much there. Caged and frantic. An expression he’s seen before, but different, different on this man for some reason, and it pulls at him. Like that time he found a bunch of boys in his old neighborhood torturing a pit bull puppy in a back alley, maybe like that...
“You gonna keep the fuck quiet from now on, sweetheart?” Pike asks, and the crowd’s roaring its approval now.
The guy just keeps giggling. “You poor gents have no appreciation for the classics!” In a perfect British accent.
“Fuck him up, boys,” Pike snaps, dropping his head and backing away, and this, this is the part where they start beating the guy to death.
But BA’s right there, grabbing that cocked fist before it has a chance to connect, driving his own through that surprised face, hard and fast, dropping the guy like the sack of shit he was, one of the others holding 62908 going down as well, on his way to the third, vision tunneling down to the fight, when he feels a jerk on his collar and the cold press of a jagged, cutting edge to the skin above.
“What the fuck you doin’, Baracus?” Pike growls, giving him a little shake, and BA goes still as death. His head’s down, so he can see the dark-haired guy beneath him, bleeding into the hard-pack of the prison yard, and he figures, crazily, in the back of his mind, that the puppy analogy wasn’t so far off after all. Something about this fool...
“Hannibal don’t want no trouble with new guys,” he reminds him, trying to sound as threatening as he can. He doesn’t like Pike. Pike scares the shit out of him. Always has, probably always will. If half the stories about the lifer are true, he’s probably not scared enough.
“The old man havin’ you do his dirty work again, Baracus? Fuck you. Overstepping yourself again. Just cause you’re the top bitch in this prison doesn’t mean you aren’t still a bitch,” Pike jokes back in that chilling tone of his, and the shank presses in, hard enough to cut.
“I ain’t nobody’s bitch, fool!”
“Tell you what, Baracus. You stay bent over here for me, right like this, like a good bitch, and we’ll pretend like you didn’t just disrespect me in front of...”
“And we’ll pretend like you weren’t just disrespectingme by laying a hand on my man in my goddamn yard.”
It booms out over everything, and BA allows himself a smile, and a wink for the confused, slightly stunned man beneath him. Hannibal. Thank fuck. The crowd’s probably parting for him like the Red Sea for Moses right now. Just like it always does. Dead silent, too.
“How you doin’ BA?”
“Fine, boss,” he grunts back.
“Let him up, Pike.” Hannibal’s done yelling. He’s just talking now. And BA takes back what he thought earlier. That voice, out of the boss, scares him more than Pike ever can. “Right the fuck now.”
The homemade knife is gone in an instant, and BA straightens, trying not to wince at the stinging pain from the shallow wound. Pike’s glowering at Face, who’s smiling that conman smile back as he tucks the confiscated weapon into his own pocket. Hannibal’s still got his damn cigar, smoking it pensively.
“BA, pick him up,” the boss orders, and turns to Pike, cigar firmly clenched in his front two fingers, jabbing all together at the short murderer. “You leave my boys alone, Pike. You fucking hear me?”
“You won’t be top dog around here forever, Smith,” Pike snarls back, and Hannibal has to grab Face’s arm as the shank reemerges.
“Fucking try it,” the blonde still shoots out.
Pike hesitates. Just for a second. He always hesitates at these moments. Everyone always hesitates. Everyone who doesn’t want to wind up dead. And then the asshole smirks, like it doesn’t matter. “Take him, then. You’re the one running all the charity cases around here, like fucking Mother Theresa...”
That gets a chuckle from the crowd, and BA glares up at them from where he’s pulling the new guy off the ground.
Hannibal just laughs back. “Your life is my only charity case, Pike. Keep pushing me and we might have to change that.”
62908 is lighter than he looks, and he looks fucking light. It’s nothing to toss the guy’s arm over his shoulder, and BA hears a little, pained grunt. “C’mon, fool, let’s get ya outta here.”
“My hero!” the guy yells, throwing both arms around BA’s neck, squeezing tight.
More laughter. A couple of wolf-whistles. One “fuck ‘im hard, BA!”. And no amount of glaring is going to stop it now. Motherfucker, but the only thing BA can do is haul the still-giggling idiot out of there, following Face and Hannibal into a quieter part of the yard.
“What do we call you, son?” the boss asks, soon as they’re free.
“Cap’t HM Murdock, at your service, sah!”
The British accent’s back, but at least the open-hand salute he throws gets that arm off BA’a neck. Scrawny fool’s stronger than he looks.
Face starts laughing.
Hannibal just nods. “Glad to have you on the team, then, captain. One thing, though, if we’re going to keep you alive.”
“Wassat?”
Is that... Texan? Is that what he normally sounds like.
“No more Beethoven’s Ninth during dark hours. Didn’t seem like the boys appreciated it too much.”
There’s a moment of silence. Face is still laughing, just quieter. And the idiot leaning on him feels like he’s really, really having to think about this.
“I’ll keep it in mind, sir,” Murdock finally says, and throws BA a big, lopsided grin, very lopsided on his swelling face. “Permission to sing now?”
“Permission granted, captain,” the older man shrugs, and flicks ash off his cigar as they walk back to a more peaceful corner of the yard. Face bumps his hip, obvious as ever.
And as those extremely loud strains of German burst out of the dark-haired man again, BA swears he’s going to just kill the old man for saddling them with this one.
+++++
BA doesn’t really realize how goddamn tough it’s going to be, dealing with this Murdock guy, until the next day.
When he’s in the library, looking up that piece of music the boss was talking about, the one that Murdock had been singing out in the cell block his first night.
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement, Murdock had corrected the boss, to Face’s laughter. And then he’d prattled off something about the evolution of the violin and the old practice of castrating boys for church choirs and Hannibal had grunted and told BA to get the pilot under control.
Pissed as he is at the situation - because Murdock really, really doesn’t shut up - the big enforcer hasn’t been able to get that song out of his head. Crazy has a good voice, he thinks, and if something could sound that sweet, sung one single voice in the darkness, it must be really fucking good, performed by the whole orchestra.
He had to look up what that even meant, like four or five different things he had to look up, actually. But some idiotic rich person had donated an inexplicably large collection of classical CDs to the prison library, and that’s where he is now, looking for the right jewel case in the rows and rows of shelves.
“I say, old chap, good to see you beyond the exercise grounds.”
Fuck. Murdock. Fucking idiot. If he’d just stop talking... BA clenches a fist and tries not to think about it. He just keeps reading labels on his knees, and tries not to look up at the pilot. The one Hannibal’s told him to watch. The one he has to watch.
“What you want, fool?” he grunts.
The pilot squats down next to him, too close to not see. “No reason to get your knickers in a twist, old boy. I was simply stating that since we share a common benefactor...”
He laughs a little at that. “Hannibal ain’t nobody’s bene...beni...”
“Benefactor?” the other man offers in a far-too-perky voice.
“Yeah, man, bennifactor, whatever the fuck that i...”
“A benefactor, according to Webster’s Dictionary, is a person who confers a benefit, a kindly helper...”
He snorts. “Yeah, man, Hannibal ain’t kindly or a helper.”
The other man sags a little bit, and BA tries to tell himself it doesn’t bother him at all. That he doesn’t need to look. “Then, why would he...”
“Cause, man, the boss runs this place. He don’t want no trouble in it,” the enforcer explains, and goes back trying to find that CD. “And Pike was disrespectin’ him by not stoppin’ when he said stop.”
“So you guys...y’all seem pretty nice, ‘s’all I’m sayin’...” Murdock says, Texas twang back, picking at a spot on the naked floor, fingers twitching a bit, body twitching. It reminds BA of that man who used to live down the street from his mama’s house, the ‘Nam vet who had all those stories about chopper crashes and POW camps. And he wonders what, exactly, brought this guy here. If he’s really a captain. If he’s been to, like, Afghanistan or some shit like that. “Thought maybe we were...”
“Were what, fool?” he asks, a little sharper than he means to.
“Were friends,” the pilot admits, barely audible. “Or somethin’ like that.”
“Ain’t no such thing as friends in prison, man,” BA tells him, and notices the slightest bit of recoil at those words. He finds himself reaching out to stop that. Who knew what crazy was going to get up to, if he wandered off upset like that? “But you under Hannibal’s protection. He gets to say what happen to you. Don’t gotta worry ‘bout nuthin’, man.”
“Oh, so touching,” a heavily accented voice says above them, and BA jerks his hand away at the sound of it. Ramirex. Ranking Aztec gang leader around here. “You stake your claim on this mariposa’s tight white ass yet?”
“Aww, you noticed my ass?” Murdock asks with a manic giggle before BA can stop him, actually batting his eyes up at the son of a bitch. And the enforcer can’t help but realize the pilot’s got really, really long lashes. Really long. “That’s so sweet of you, roomie.”
“Keep talking, mariposa. You good at that.”
Fuck. Ramirez. Double-homicide-and-drug-smuggling Ramirez? Somebody put a newbie in his cell? And this man has to be insane, because he’s ignoring the clear danger here, still talking, babbling wildly, loud, voice carrying, just like it had yesterday.
“I thank you for compliment, sah,” and the British accent is a bit jarring, “and we should all be as fortunate to have as generous a spirit as you do...”
That gets a growl from the hulk mass of Mexican above them. “You ever stop talking, mariposa? I bet you’d stop talking if you had my dick up your ass. Bet that would shut you up...”
BA gets up. There’s no way he’s losing favor with Hannibal by letting his new pilot get his ass beat. Not after the old man told him specifically to look after the idiot.
“Back off,” he orders, spreading his arms out between the shelves on either side of them, creating a solid wall with his body. He knows exactly how intimidating he can be. The boss relies on that, Face coaches him on it every so often, and he brings it to bear here. Protecting some damn fool who got his white ass thrown into some world he clearly doesn’t belong to. “He mine.”
Ramirez laughs, orange jumpsuit shaking over the lard of his belly. “You into white boys now, BA?”
Feeling a little sick inside, because no matter what Face says about the joys of a properly-executed fucking, BA’s never been comfortable with most of the shit that goes on in here, he forces a sly grin and stares right at the other inmate. “He a bitch, Ramirez. Boss says he mine. So he mine. You ain’t touchin’ what’s mine.” And he leans forward into the other man’s face. “Back off b’fore you start disrespecting me.”
The other man stares back at him, just for a moment, and then shakes his head, backing off. “Your boss no run the gangs in here, Baracus. And he in my cell. You can’t protect him there,” he laughs, and makes some dismissive gesture as he walks away. “You see how far your boss’ reach goes there!”
The enforcer growls, low and deep in his throat, and starts after the guy, because fucking nobody gets to question Hannibal’s authority in here, but there’s something holding him back, grabbed hold of his leg, and when he looks down, it’s Murdock. Holding the hem of his pants leg.
Holding up a CD case.
“This the one you were lookin’ for?” he asks, and BA feels his anger deflate a little, looking at the man. “Cause they got a couple different arrangements here, different composers, so I’m not sure which one you were going for...”
It’s a big, chunky 6-disc CD case marked Beethovern’s Complete Works. How’d that fool know that was the one he was going for? It’s a little strange that he’d just know that...
But Murdock’s still tugging on his pants like a lost child, brown eyes a little wide, and with a sigh, BA settles down next to him.
“How do you know which one’s good?” he asks, feeling a little stupid. He went to most of high school, but still, this culture stuff wasn’t ever really a focus at West Ridge High. “I mean, uhh, does it matter?”
But a big smile just breaks out over the other man’s face, and the babbling’s baack now, cycling through a whole bunch of shit about philharmonics or philharmonias or something like that, pulling cases and cases off the shelves, little piles beginning to form around their knees.
He tunes it out.
He has to talk to Face about this, getting the pilot out of the cell he’s in now. Put him somewhere else, with someone not nearly as dangerous. Somewhere where BA doesn’t have to worry about him getting jumped by some big-ass Mexican in the middle of the night.
One of the bitches, maybe.
Yeah, he tells himself as Murdock finally eases that topic in for a landing, handing BA the original case he’d had at the start of it all. Yeah, that will work out just fine.
+++++
“Aww, hell no, Faceman.”
“You said you wanted him out of his current cell. There’s an empty bunk in your cell. Works, doesn’t it?”
BA glares at the blonde, standing outside his cell twenty minutes before lights out, smiling back at him innocently as the guards toss the top bunk. Just in case there's contraband before they put a new prisoner in here or some shit like that. “Didn’t mean you should put him in here. I meant...”
“Boss wants you to keep an eye on him, BA,” Face replies lightly, the slightest threat of ever-present violence on the underside of his words. “And from what I heard about your little scene in the library, he’s officially yours now, so...”
“Hate y’all,” BA grumbles, and Face laughs, high and clear.
“You’ll be fine. How bad could it be? He’s cute enough,” Hannibal’s second in command chuckles back, and then digs a small opaque tub out of the pocket of his orange jumpsuit. The jumpsuit that seems to fit him better than any other man in this prison. Except maybe Murdock. And BA doesn't even want to think about where that comment comes from. “And here.” He tosses it over to him, catching that glare from a guard that indicates he needs to get the fuck back to his cell. “Think you might need that. Hell of a lot better than spit.”
It’s Vasoline.
“You motherfucker...” BA growls, but Face is laughing his way down the cell block now and the guard’s blocking his exit, and the guard’s fucking sniggering at him.
And then there Murdock is. Tossed right in, and the door slams shut with a heavy clang.
“Don’t be too rough with him, Baracus!” one of the guards calls back.
“Assholes!” he yells back, and scattered applause can be hear outside, in the rest of the block. BA stands there a moment more, trying to get his raging anger under control, like his mama always done told him to do, and then a little shifting sound brings him back down to earth.
Where Murdock is.
“Lights out! Fifteen minutes!”
Scrunched back in the opposite corner, up against the bars, clutching his spare set of tomorrow’s clothes to his chest like it’s a fucking teddy bear or something. Eyes a little wild. Breathing hard. Fighting panic.
Staring at the tub of Vaseline.
“Faceman got a sick sense o’ humor, man,” BA grunts, feeling horrible all of the sudden, horrible about this, and he goes to hide the little tub somewhere that isn’t under his bottom bunk pillow. “I don’t normally use this stuff... I mean, don’t normally need to...Hannibal don’t make me do that kind’o’ thing...got no interest in catchin’ your crazy AIDS, man...”
“Naw, it’s okay, big guy!”
The downright happy tone in those words snaps BA’s head up and around, over to the corner, where Murdock’s beaming at him, no hint of the earlier fear anywhere in his face.
“What?”
“You don’t gotta worry about it, BA,” the pilot says, hands on his hips now, some kind of weird Southern sass on display. Or something. “You can’t get AIDS from sharing lip balm with somebody.”
“Lip...lip balm?”
“Yeah,” and Murdock smiles at him, like he’s talking to a particularly dense child. “I use it all the time. Good stuff. No menthol, won’t dry out your lips like chap stick does. Really important for when your lips start crackin’ from the oxygen...”
“Oxygen?” BA remembers eigth grade science class. There’s lots of oxygen in the atmosphere, everywhere, lots of oxygen. What’s wrong with this fool?
But the pilot nods back enthusiastically, like it’s BA who’s got the problem, and his stuff drops out of his hands as he starts gesturing wildly along with his words. “See, you’ve got this half-face mask that hooks in to your helmet when you’re flyin’ the test airframe, and it’s got all your radio and stuff for talkin’ to the tower in it, and the air feed, in case the cockpit air goes out, and it can go up to pure oxygen, but the air outta the tanks ‘s’all dry and cold and hurts your lungs when you spend ten hours breathin’ it in...”
“Shuttup, fool!” BA groans, and tucks the Vaseline under the little sink unit. “Don’t care ‘bout no damn oxygen.”
“You should,” Murdock says seriously. “Air’s really dry here in California and it’s full of oxygen. I may be needin’ to borrow your Vaseline every once in a while.”
“Ain’t borrowin’ my shit, crazy!”
“But we’re cellmates, BA! You gotta share with your cellmates!”
The enforcer shakes his head, and retrieves this month’s muscle cars magazine that his mama brought him, last visit. Sometimes, a lot of the time, he thinks he should have listened to her. Not gone out with his older buddies that night. Not hot-wired that Shelby for them. Not let Darren shoot that cop. Maybe if he hadn’t, he could have finished out the auto vocational program at his high school, been a real mechanic by now. Or joined the Army. Mama had always wanted him to join the Army, be a sergeant, just like the daddy he’d never met.
Should have listened.
This is one of those times he wished he had.
For different reasons than normal, though.
And he doesn’t think he’s ever met anybody like this pilot before. And certainly not in prison. He’s almost...he’s almost sweet.
Almost.
“Hey, BA?”
And that’s so close to his ear, the big black man jumps a little bit. Glances over to see a pair of curious sea-green eyes, watching him.
“What, fool?”
Another smile. It’s the smile. That uneven, strange little smile. Like he’s gt a secret he only wants BA to hear.
“Can I have the bottom bunk?”
“No! “
“But where’s Billy gonna sleep?”
That gets BA’s attention. “Billy?”
“My dog.”
“You got’a dog, fool?”
Murdock huffs, and points. “He’s right over there by the door. Ain’t he cute?”
There is, of course, nothing there. BA realizes this, realizes this without even looking, but he still feels compelled to at least glance over. And then back at his new cell mate, who’s still smiling. Wavering a bit, but still smiling.
“Don’t want him to hav’ta sleep on the floor, big guy.”
“Light outs!” the guard down below yells, and suddenly the cell block’s awash in darkness. Just a little light from the high, narrow window, the emergency lighting down below.
He looks at Murdock, who’s still there, expectant, and he rolls himself up in his blanket, face into the blank, drab wall. “Bottom bunk mine, man.”
“Like I’m yours?” the pilot asks softly.
It knocks BA totally on his ass.
It’s normal, he knows. To be expected. What he’s supposed to do. What’s going to keep this idiot from getting his ass jumped in the showers tomorrow, or his ribs broken in the yard next week. But something’s welling up in him now, and the inmate’s not real sure what that is, just that he doesn’t want to hurt this man locked up in here with him. That it’d be like hurting a puppy. That he couldn’t live with himself afterward.
“Go to sleep, Murdock,” he grunts, eyes wide in the black of the prison night, and after a few more minutes, the soft breath prickling at his neck stops, unnoticed until it’s gone, and BA listens to the springs above him creak and shift.
Finally.
Maybe the fool shuts up when he’s asleep.
But BA doesn’t get any relief, not even in sleep, because he wakes up a few hours later, ejected from fading dreams.
To the sounds of silent sniffling above him.
The big guy listens to it for as long as he can, and then something in him snaps and he’s pulling himself up to eye level with the upper bunk.
There’s Murdock, the source of the noise, jammed back against the cell wall, curled up into himself, dark head down in his hands. His blanket’s shoved off and his pillow’s mangled up and he seems utterly miserable.
“Hey, Murdock, man,” Hannibal’s enforcer says quietly, reaching out and watching the other man cringe away from him. He pushes up, both feet on the lower bunk, far enough to touch that surprisingly soft hair. “Hey, hey, I ain’t gonna hurt you. I ain’t.”
The pilot is shaking under BA’s hand.
He tries a different tactic.
“You wan’ me... wan’ me to put Billy up here for ya? Your dog?”
Murdock nods, and doesn’t speak.
Feeling like a total idiot, the big guy steps down off the bed and walks over to the corner, where the pilot indicated the dam imaginary dog was. He bends over and mimes scooping the dog up, figuring that a forty-pound animal’s going to have to be enough, and feels those green eyes on him the whole time. As he walks back over. As he deposits his imaginary burden on the bed.
The pilot stretches out of himself, and holds out a hand. “Here, here, Billy,” he says, and his arms kind of crooks, like there’s an actual canine up against his side now. He lays his head down on his arm, petting the air. “We’re gonna be okay, boy. Just you wait and see.”
BA can’t figure this out, and doesn’t really want to, not right now, he’s too fucking tired. So he settles for tugging that knotted-up blanket over the other man’s relaxing form, careful to pull it kind of high around the dog. “Go ta sleep,” he grunts, and drops back down into his own bunk.
And he stays awake, until the soft little words to the dog above him stop, and breathing evens, and Murdock’s dropped off the planet.
Oh yeah. This one’s going to take a lot of watching. But. But somehow, right here, right now, BA would rather Murdock be with him than anyone else.
There’s something innocent about this guy.
It won’t survive.
But something in him wants to protect it. For as long as he can.
Until Murdock drives him nuts, at least.
+++++
Weird as his new cellmate is, it doesn't take BA very long to get used to having him around. Not that he's used to Murdock himself, per say. No, not that. Not the way crazy talks to his imaginary dog all the damn time. Or his habit of answering BA's grudgingly interested questions about plane engines with sock puppets on his hands. Or the random bursts of foreign languages that just spill the fuck out of him at the oddest moments.
Like right now.
Like right now with Face.
Him and Face, Face of all anyone in this goddamn place, jabbering away in something, French according to the boss, while they pull kitchen duty with half a dozen others who seem to think that the whole thing is fucking hilarious.
It's okay, though. Gives him a break. Space to think, up to his elbows in hot, soapy water, scrubbing the shit out some gigantic pot still soaking from yesterday's lunch.
Time to think about Murdock.
He minds the crazy-ass pilot. Definitely minds the man. So fucking annoying on his good days. And BA is pretty sure they're gonna to start running out of good days here, real soon, way he's having to constantly step up, back other prisoners down, bust a few heads, every time an accent or a comment doesn't sit right with somebody else. And considering the fine cross-section of California's uneducated underbelly they've got in here, that happens a lot. And it only ever seems to make Murdock more manic, which starts a fresh round of threats.
So it's really a goddamn non-stop job.
The only time he gets to relax at all now is at night, after lights-out, and Murdock seems to feel the same. They usually don't talk then, the pilot just crawling up into his bunk, and it had taken BA a few nights to figure out that the man is up there not sleeping, but crying noiselessly, talking silently to his damn dog as the tears came slowly.
Something about that keeps him awake, and he can't figure out why the fuck it bothers him as much as it does.
None of it, BA thinks, makes any goddamn sense at all.
He's never felt like this before, like he wants to kill anybody who looks at his bitch wrong, even though he hasn't even tried to take Murdock, even though he can’t really bring himself to apply that term to the pilot. Like he can't relax if his cellmate can't relax. Like how his stomach draws in on itself, every morning he wakes up and finds a tousled head smiling at him from over the edge of the bunk, asking him if he had any interesting dreams he needs examined before breakfast.
Steps need to be taken, and taken right the hell now, but BA isn't sure what those steps should - or could - be.
"Killing that pan, son?"
BA blinks at the sound of the old man's voice, and realizes that yes, he's furiously scouring the dented metal thing. So hard his hands are hurting around the steel wool, and he pulls out of it all immediately.
"No, boss."
Hannibal chuckles and lets that cigar of his dangle dangerously close to the scummy surface of the dishwater. He's not looking at BA, though. He's watching his bitch.
He's watching Face.
And, BA supposes, the term doesn’t really fit the blonde, either.
"He's supposed to be in the psyche ward," the boss says, and BA almost laughs, thinking about Face in some little group therapy session, like the kind the prison shrink likes to hold after some asshole punches his own ticket, or some AA meeting like on TV, the prettyboy explaining how he's addicted to cock and expensive hand lotion. "Murdock was one of the best pilots the Army had, up until about three years ago. Little unhinged, maybe, but good pilots always are." He pauses for another mouthful of smoke. "They cut him over to Lockheed Martin..."
"Lock head what?"
"Lockheed Martin. Big defense contractor. Anyway, they had him on their YF-22 development project..."
"Say what?"
Hannibal gives him one of those looks, the do you ever read the fucking news look, and goes back to watching Face. Who's now slapping Murdock with a wet towel, the pilot giving back as good as he's getting, those two idiots starting to giggle like little girls.
It ain't fair.
The blonde seems to get along with Murdock like they were made for each other, like brothers from another mother or whatever the fucking expression is, and it would make a lot more sense if they were bunking up together. Except, he suspects, Hannibal likes fucking that beautiful bitch of his just as much as Face seems to.
"It's a new military fighter jet, BA. Murdock was on a test flight, some kind of mix-up happened with the controls, and then he's ejecting from a $100 million dollar aircraft. It hit a control station on the range. Three people were killed. Company needed a scapegoat, it ends up in court, he gets a shit attorney..." the boss' voice is low and pensive, like he's remembering something himself. "That's why he's here. Enough to make anyone insane, I’d think."
“No shit, boss. He crazy,” BA says, thinking about what that would be like, being able to work with machines like that, fly like that. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with Murdock. No more sky, no more freedom, locked up, feathers clipped like that parrot mean ol’ Widow Jones used to have. Wanting to fly. Denied the most basic of its nature.
Hannibal smiles back, and starts to say something, but there’s a squeal, a literal squeal, and the sound of water splashing out onto dirty tiles, and the boss pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Face!” he bellows. “Knock it the fuck off and get back to work!”
Murdock looks almost fearful, blood draining from his cheeks, like he only now remembered where he was, but Face, Face on the other hand...
...Face smacks the pilot again with that wet towel. “Make me!” he teases, eyes dancing.
“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU SAY TO ME?!?”
Hannibal’s got a real set of lungs on him when he’s pissed, and they take all the air out of the room to yell that out. So suddenly, nobody’s breathing, nobody’s moving at all, except for the old man, who’s on Face in an instant, grabbing a fistful of orange jumpsuit, dragging their faces level.
“What did you just say to me, Peck?” he growls.
Face’s eyes go wide.
Then narrow.
“I said make me go back to work, Smith,” he tosses back, not a hint of the earlier humor there at all now.
And this is really the source of everything about these two. Why Hannibal can touch the kid in public like he does. Why Face still gets to act as Hannibal’s chief enforcer, despite the fact he takes it up the ass from the man. Because he pushes back on Hannibal and Hannibal always, always beats him down. Because they fight. And because Face can throw a punch almost as hard as the boss.
Which he isn’t going to get to do.
Not with the boss starting out with that kind of hard, hard backhand across his mouth. Knocking him down.
BA’s not even aware that Murdock’s creeping over to him, right there, pressing against his side, fingers searching out something that, whatever it is, BA can’t give him right now. But he doesn’t shoo him away, not as Face grabs Hannibal’s ankle and pulls him down into the soapy, disgusting mess on the floor, the pair of them tangling up in a furious single mass. Not as Hannibal knees him in the gut and drives a fist into his ear at the same time and gets on top of him. Not as Face gets in a punch or two of his own before the boss pins him. Not as Hannibal backhands him again and pounds him down, one big hand pinching the blonde’s neck to the floor.
The other dropping to his zipper, yanking his jumpsuit open to the groin.
“BA,” he growls, not turning, tightening a little so Face can’t talk. “I’d prefer to not to have an audience for this.”
The big black man doesn’t need to do anything. The room clears.
Immediately.
He has to throw Murdock off him, though, the man’s eyes the size of dinner plates. “BA,” he whimpers, pleading.
But just then, he turns at some little noise, a very familiar little noise, and what he sees makes him throw Murdock completely clear of the room and stare in shock.
Face is on his knees, making those little noises he always makes in the night, happy, happy noises, Hannibal groaning, hand tangled up in blonde curls, working that mouth around his cock. Both of them trying to hold the sounds back.
They never hold the sounds back.
It’s almost...well, it sure ain’t punishment. BA knows that much, and he shuts the door quietly, knowing he should be on the other side of it but suddenly overcome with curiosity.
It goes quick, like it always seems to. Like these two just can’t control themselves around each other or something, maybe, Hannibal coming with a soft cry, Face clinging to the older man’s thighs
BA thinks it’s over, but instead of letting Face just fall to the ground, leaving him there, like the boss has every right to do, like he should do, he pulls him up. Holds him against his chest, one hand resting against Face’s cheek, thumb playing lightly against the small trickle of blood from before.
Kissing him.
They’re actually....
Not just a kiss, not like one of those creepy things he’d seen before, a man enforcing his claim in some sadistic way. No. This is deep and long, Face clinging to him, whimpering again as it finally breaks apart.
The enforcer freezes cold, solid. No. No. He can remember, he can remember his own daddy kissing his mama like that. Out there. In a world that doesn’t rely on sex for power
“You like that, Templeton, my boy?” Hannibal murmurs in the softest voice BA has ever heard. “Need to know that you like it, when you make me hurt you like that...”
“I’m your boy,” Face echoes, pushing his head up for another kiss. “I like being your boy, John. Like everything about being your boy. Everything we have to do...”
“I know, sweetheart, I know. Im so sorry it has to be this way,” Hannibal whispers back, kissing him once more.
And then falls to his knees.
That shit just doesn’t happen in prison. The boss, the boss of this place, is blowing his own bitch.
And BA can’t, can’t, can’t stay and watch this. Right now, all this, they’re relying on him to be watching the door, giving them the privacy they need. He has to get out there.
But as he’s slipping out, grabbing Murdock by the arm, where crazy’s waiting, right outside the door, expression somewhere between apprehension and terror, BA wonders, really wonders, for the first time since arriving here, if it’s possible for two men...
If maybe...
If maybe it’s not impossible after all.
If maybe this is what's going on with him and Murdock.
