Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Adam did not, in any capacity, under any circumstances, enjoy travel. The word alone was enough to bring an uneasy tremor of nervousness coursing through his introverted veins. The move from New York to California had been straining enough for his disposition toward reclusiveness, and it had taken months upon months of uncharacteristic willpower and forced, practiced smiles, and countless nights pouring over bus routes and street names in order for Adam to feel only the slightest bit confident in finding his way to the observatory every day. It was admittedly easier now, now that routine had established itself, but the mere suggestion of a mandatory business trip was enough to send Adam spiraling into a self-deemed hole of destruction, and he could do nothing but stare at his boss across the shiny, pine-sol scented desk, with his lips parted in surprise to release quick, heavy puffs of panicked breath.

“I do know you would prefer not to go, Adam,” the man acknowledged, and Adam saw the thin lips moving and heard words coming out of them beneath a wiry ginger moustache, but he was in such a state of frazzle-headedness, he could scarcely discern a single word. With Adam’s current selective-deafness unbeknownst to his boss, the man continued to prattle on, ignorant to his employee’s internal, miniature meltdown. “The fact of the matter is, you are our best man for this, and if we want our presentation to come across at its best, you need to be the one to attend the conference. Your knowledge supersedes everyone’s here, and I, myself, cannot be pulled away. Not with my wife due next week. You understand.”

Adam nodded his head even though, no, he did not understand. He had barely been listening, unable to concentrate past the roar in his ears. His brain had been thrust into hyper drive the moment his boss had said ‘travel,’ actually, but he found himself nodding despite that, because he taught himself long ago that people expected head nods when they spoke. Adam wanted to be polite, or, he wanted to be thought of as polite, likeable, so he could keep his job. He liked his job.

“Excellent. So you’ll go?”

Adam’s boss extended his hand over the desk and Adam took it, also from self-ingrained habit. He shook it, three firm shakes, like in the video, and then released, his hand returning to wipe clamminess against his corduroy pants.

“Go?” Adam asked, wetting his lips with an anxiously darting tongue tip.

“Bucharest is absolutely beautiful this time of year, I’m told,” his boss said with a kind, if not oblivious, smile.

“Bucharest?” Adam asked worriedly.

“That’s where the conference is this year. I already have your ticket booked. You’ll leave tomorrow.”

Adam opened his mouth to contest the proposal, but his boss was already standing up and shuffling papers into his briefcase. He gave Adam a winning smile and patted him on the back, slightly too forceful so that Adam lost his balance and stumbled forward.

“I really do appreciate this, Adam,” his boss said. “We’ll be talking a promotion when you return.” And then he strode from the office, leaving Adam to stand alone in the center of the room.

Travel. Crowds. Foreign language. Strange food. Strangers.

He shook his head and swiped a fall of curls from his forehead, and then he realized, with a petrified start, that he couldn’t go to Bucharest because he had his monthly hair appointment tomorrow morning. Adam spun on his heels to explain the vital matter to his boss, but the man was long gone. With a bothered frown, Adam left the office, a single word echoing in his mind as if through some cruelly intimate megaphone: BUCHAREST.

--

He couldn’t decide which was worse, the airport, through which he navigated mass bundles of unreadable faces and over-loud noises, such as hacking coughs and overhead announcements of gate departures and beeps of unknown origin, or the plane itself, which was much the same experience except compacted into a smaller area, with fewer escape routes and less room to avert his eyes.

When a gum-popping, gardenia-smelling, bleached blonde woman elbowed into him while he struggled to slip his carry-on into the overhead compartment, Adam decided that the plane was a far worse place to be, and it resulted in him grasping the duffel bag in his arms and plopping heavily into his window seat. He held onto the duffel, keeping it tight against his chest, until the flight attendant happened by and asked him to put it between his feet or in the overhead compartment. Adam huffed in frustration and shoved the bag between his knees to rest on the floor. In all honesty, it was too large to comfortably keep at his feet for the entirety of the plane ride from California to Bucharest, but Adam wagered the ordeal of standing, straddling his row-mate, and trying to lift his duffel over his head, now with the whole populous of the plane watching, would be rather more unpleasant, and so he resigned himself to the scant wiggle room in his tiny bubble of the plane, his duffel hogging up most of his foot space.

As for the woman with the gum that both popped and smacked, she sat beside him, and her chewing boundaries proved to be much the same as her physical ones, for she practically sat atop Adam’s lap when she returned from the in-flight lavatory. He pulled desperately at the armrest, his only line of defense between them, and slunk his body against the cold glass of the window, trying to escape the unwanted feeling of her pink fuzzy sweater touching his shoulder. Yes, Adam thought, burrowing against the window, the sunrise brightly red and orange in his eyes, planes were definitely worse than the airports themselves. He clenched and unclenched his toes in his shoes when the woman’s foot brushed against his, and when he realized the duffel kept him from withdrawing from the touch, his jaw clenched too.

A year ago, the experience of flying would have been enough to send Adam into a conniption, but he handled it well enough now, and although his heart hammered uncomfortably in his chest, and his palms were sweaty, and his hands held a minor tremor, he remained in his seat, controlling his breathing and maintaining a relative air of calm. The rumble of the plane’s engine beneath him even brought a smile to his face, and when they launched into the sky after an anguishing time spent driving all over the runways, he felt a spark of excitement in his gut. In all likelihood, flying in a plane would be the closest Adam would ever be to space, and the thought of that, and the musings that followed that thought, were enough to keep Adam’s mind occupied for the duration of his flight.

--

The real trouble found him after the plane ride, when Adam was making his way through customs. After waiting in a line of weary travelers for what felt like hours and, in fact, very well might have been, it was finally Adam’s turn for perusal. He walked up to the booth and slipped the worker his passport.

When the customs officer, a middle aged man with impressively pronounced sideburns, spoke, Adam frowned, because he couldn’t understand. He reached for his pocket to pull out his basic phrases language book, but his arm was halted by a security guard, who grabbed him from behind. Adam yelped. He had not even heard the guard’s approach.

“Why are you holding my arm so tight?” Adam asked the guard, perplexed and panicky, his pulse faster than it had been when the bleached blonde woman on the plane had spit out her gum into a napkin and left the napkin lying out on her tray, thoughtlessly near Adam’s cup of soda.

The guards responded in Romanian, not to Adam, but to each other, quick, harsh sounding words, and the hands gripping Adam’s arms only increased their severity, so much so that Adam was positive his soft skin would be left with bruises. He tried to pull away and was treated to a smack to the back of his head, wrenching his neck forward and rendering him whiplashed. The flood of heat washed through his muscles, painful and sharp, and he kept his eyes cast down as the officers dragged him from the customs line.

The carpet in the small, white-walled room they brought him to was horrendously tacky, grey with multi-colored confetti shapes, and the pattern left Adam with a peculiar carsick feeling roiling in his stomach. When one of the guards pushed him rudely into a wobbly plastic chair, Adam swallowed hard, tasting the acidic bile rising in his throat. It burned and made his eyes water.

“Adam Raki,” one of the guards said, his voice thickly accented. He held Adam’s passport open in his hands, peering closely at its pages.

“That’s my name,” Adam told both men looming over him in his chair.

A brisk laugh erupted from the passport-holding guard as he thrust Adam’s picture in his face. “This is you?”

Adam squinted at his passport photo. It was certainly him, and he told the guard as much.

“If this,” the guard began, gesturing to the pale young man with the flop of curls in the photo, “is you, then who the fuck is this?” The second guard held out a second picture, this one on a large flyer sheet of paper. On the paper was a black and white image of another pale-faced man with a flop of curls. Only this man had a thick scruff of beard and a scar that ran across his forehead. Everything else about the man’s face, however, Adam observed with surprise, was eerily identical to his own.

“That looks like me if I stopped shaving,” Adam told the guards plainly.

“No shit,” the one with his passport snapped.

Adam squirmed in his chair. “I don’t understand what this photo has to do with me being in this room. Did you just want to show me someone who looks like me? Because it’s mildly fascinating, but I have places I need to get to for my job, and I’m very tired from the plane ride, and the airport before the plane ride. They were both extremely crowded, and I get overwhelmed easily when I’m around so many people, especially when I’m in new environments, and I haven’t had supper yet.” The guards glanced at one another, their brows furrowed in confusion. Adam licked his lips nervously and continued. “The photo is interesting, but I’m not sure why it warrants me being dragged into this room, or hit in the head, for that matter. I have a headache now, and it also gave me whiplash, which is not a sensation I enjoy. It probably wouldn’t normally have given me whiplash, the slap, but my body is strained from being immobile in a plane seat for so long. Can I go, now that you’ve shown me the picture?”

He felt the blow before his mind could process what had happened. His cheek grew hot where he’d been hit, and he ran his tongue experimentally over his lip and found a metallic taste where it had split. Wide-eyed, Adam looked up at the Romanians.

“I don’t understand,” he said, his voice small, his heart fluttering wildly in his chest. Had he missed something? Had he forgotten to check off the customs form box that assured he wasn’t a terrorist? His tummy rumbled and another wave of nausea hit him. “Can I go now, please? I’m hungry and don’t feel well.”

The guards laughed before Adam was gifted a second smack across his face that forced his head violently to the side. Blood splattered from his busted lip, Adam’s own morbid contribution to the ugly, speckled carpet.

The guard with the doppelganger’s photo rubbed it in Adam’s face. Blood smeared across the black and white picture, loaning the man a brutal look as it stained across his printed face.

“Think you can fool us?” the guard sneered as he threw the Wanted paper to the floor. He looked to the man beside him and lifted his hands, curling his fingers into little air quotes. “Adam Raki?”

“Don’t you mean,” the other guard said, eyes narrowing devilishly as he lowered his voice to a menacing grumble, “Will Graham?”

Adam squinted at the man through his tear-filled eyes. “No. I mean Adam Raki. Who is Will Graham?”

“Will Graham is who we’re taking into custody, that’s who Will Graham is,” the guard snorted, and before Adam could say another word, he was pulled up and out of his chair. Cold, cruel metal snapped around his wrists as they cuffed him roughly. And then they sank their fingers into the soft flesh of his arms and wrangled him from the room.

Chapter Text

The building was old and water stained, with vines creeping up its walls and layers of soot caking its sides. Its windows were barred. From the backseat of the transport, Adam couldn’t make out much else, but he did take note of the stone archway they passed beneath, and the word sprawled across it: JILAVA.

He shivered, his body cramped and chilled and stiff, chained as he was in the handcuffs bending his arms out of sorts behind his back. The skin on his wrists was already raw and chafing from the teeth of the bands, and every time he shifted he let out a soft hiss of pain. But beyond the pain, beyond the bitter taste of blood in his mouth, beyond the cold biting at his arms even through the cover of his sweater, Adam was scared.

There was no video online of how to act when one was arrested in a foreign country, or, if there was, he hadn’t watched it. He should have watched it, should have prepared better, would have if his boss hadn’t sprung the trip on him so quickly. Adam had succumbed to his boss’s wishes, fought against his instincts, ignored his better judgment, all for his love of space. He shook his head, leaned it against the back of the seat, and scolded himself. He really should have watched a video about out of country incarceration. Because Jilava was a Bucharest prison and Adam was to become one of its prisoners.

--

They shuffled Adam in through a thick metal door, and he jumped when it slammed shut behind him. He had expected to be taken to an office of some kind to be processed, like in the movies, but he had never seen a movie about someone arrested in Bucharest, and he wasn’t taken to an office or processed at all. Adam was manhandled from one of the airport guards to one of the prison guards, and marched through a second set of heavy doors. This door opened to a long corridor, stonewalled and high-ceilinged, with floors so grimy it seemed they had never been cleaned. Adam had to walk quickly to keep up with the long strides of the prison guard and avoid being dragged by his cuffs.

They passed door after door, each labeled with nailed-on, rusty brass numbers, with none but a small square of window through which the prisoners could peer. Adam was being trudged through a cell block, he realized, and the reality of his situation, or the surreal-ness of it, rather, hit him, hard and sudden. His feet stopped as if on superglue, and when the guard yanked him forward, Adam fell to his knees helplessly.

The guard spat at him, crowed something in Romanian he didn’t comprehend, and picked him up bodily from his place on the floor, where he shook uncontrollably. It’s not that Adam wished to be difficult, but his body refused to help the guard take him further into the bowels of a Romanian prison. Once the guard had a notion of his lightness, however, he threw Adam over his shoulder and strode down the hall until they reached a step of black, iron stairs. He followed their spiral upward, to the second floor of cells, Adam counting the numbers on the doors, upside down over the guard’s broad shoulders. They stopped when they reached 30.

The guard didn’t set Adam down yet, jangling his keys from his belt buckle one-handedly, and he unlocked the solid door and opened it with a loud, metallic clank that echoed throughout the whole of the cell block. He walked them in and slammed the door shut. It clicked into place, and only then was Adam tossed callously from the guard’s shoulder. He landed with a painful thud on the cold ground, his head jarring against the stone wall.

The room was gloomy, with only the light from the small window in the door illuminating the cell. Adam’s eyes adjusted and he pressed his hand to the back of his head where it had banged against the wall. Blood came away on his fingers. He looked up at the guard, who loomed over him, eyes dark and pitiless. He barked something, and Adam cocked his head to the side, not understanding. It sounded like an order, but for what, he hadn’t the slightest.

The guard kicked at him and bent down, grabbing Adam by the shoulders and hauling him up. He slammed him against the wall so hard Adam’s teeth clattered. The guard said something else, and as Adam parted his lips to inform him he did not speak Romanian, the guard held his elbow up against Adam’s throat, and snaked his other hand down Adam’s torso, shoving his fingers past the waistband of corduroys.

“Hey!” Adam yelled, and he bucked against the hand, ripping the skin of his handcuffed wrists as he futilely tried to flail his arms.

The guard knocked him against the wall, bouncing his head against it so Adam saw stars, and then he spun him around and pressed his face against the stone. When Adam felt his feet kicked apart, he screamed and threw his head back, trying to land a blow against the guard. It didn’t connect, but the press of groping hands disappeared all the same, and a loud thud at his back made Adam spin around.

The guard was on the floor, and kneeling over him was a man, one Adam hadn’t even seen in the cell before, pounding into the guard with urgent fists. Adam could do nothing but watch as his assaulter was punished with punches by his apparent cell mate. After the exuberantly violent man had deemed the guard bloodied enough, unconscious for sure, he fished around the belt buckle and lifted something shiny in his hand, a look of triumph on his face as he finally stood and turned to Adam.

“Fucking asshole,” the man said, and he strode up to Adam’s side.

Adam was shaking considerably and was quite possibly concussed, and when the man walked behind him to unfasten his handcuffs with the guard’s key he’d nicked, Adam did not fight it. The prisoner’s touch was surprisingly gentle as he worked the key into the hole and unlocked the metal bands. Adam winced as he felt the cuffs pried from his wrists, and he wrapped his arms over his chest. The man behind him moved away, and flopped down on his bunk in the shadowy corner of the room. That must have been where he’d been lying when Adam had entered the cell, why he hadn’t seen him.

The guard on the ground groaned, and Adam walked backwards until he felt the wall hit his shoulders. He sank, pulling his knees to his chest and shivering, from the cold as much as from adrenaline and fear.

The cot creaked as the prisoner, Adam’s savior, turned to his side, propping his head up on his elbow. Adam looked up through his fringe of unsettled curls, and saw he was being watched.

“Fucking hell,” the man said, reaching into his pocket. Unlike Adam, he was dressed in prison garb, a striped jumpsuit of sorts. Adam didn’t know they wore striped prison jumpsuits in real life, and on any other occasion, the sight of one would have made him grin. But not now.

The man brought a soft, half-crushed pack of cigarettes out of the pocket and brought one to his lips. He lit it, still lying casually on his side, and continued to absorb Adam, who cowered on the floor. “What the fuck is a slight fucking thing like you doing in this fucking place?”

When the shock of the harsh language wore off, the fact that the language had been in English sunk in. The man’s accent was thickly Eastern European, but he spoke English. Adam cleared his throat. “That guard brought me here,” he answered, pointing to the guard beginning to drift back to consciousness on the floor. “You should know that, you saw it.”

The man snorted and sat up, crossing his legs beneath him and running a hand through his hair, which looked sandy blond to Adam, but the light was so poor he couldn’t be sure.

“Yeah, I fucking saw it. Why did the guard bring you here?” he asked, following his clarification with a long, lazy pull from his cigarette.

“Because they arrested me at the airport,” Adam said. “I told them I wasn’t the man they were looking for, but they didn’t listen to me. They hit me and shoved me into a car and brought me here. I’m going to miss my space conference.”

“Your fucking what?”

“My space conference,” Adam said, louder this time. “I missed dinner and now I’m going to miss my space conference.”

“Are you a fucking astronaut?”

“What makes you think I’m an astronaut?” Adam asked, confused. His head ached and his mouth was dry.

“Maybe because you keep talking about fucking space, I don’t know,” the man said.

“You keep talking about ‘fucking,’” Adam pointed out. “Does that make you a professional fucker?”

The man laughed, and Adam scowled. The man had clearly mistaken his question for a joke. He hadn’t meant it as a joke, of course, as he found none of this especially humorous.

“Some call me that, true,” the prisoner said with a smoke-thick chuckle. “But you can call me Nigel.” He tossed the pack of cigarettes towards Adam, and they bounced off his knee and came to rest by his shoes.

Adam eyed the pack, picked it up, and threw it back at Nigel, aiming for his head.

Nigel caught it, his hand flying up to stop it in front of his face. He smirked and shoved the smokes back in his pocket. “His Highness doesn’t smoke, I gather.”

“I don’t know what His Highness has to do with anything, but I certainly don’t smoke,” Adam said. “And I don’t like for them to be thrown at me either.”

Nigel held up both hands, his cigarette dangling expertly between his lips. “Didn’t mean any offense by it. Fuck, you’re sensitive.”

Adam glared at the man called Nigel. Nigel met his gaze.

“Might be able to get a better look at me if you come a bit closer, space man,” Nigel said with a sharp huff of laughter.

Adam sighed. Then he stood up slowly from his spot against the wall and came to sit on the cot right beside his cell mate. Nigel’s eyes widened briefly as Adam fixed his gaze on him once more. He had been right, he realized as he took the man in at a closer distance. The light from the door window shone through and illuminated Nigel’s hair, which was very close to being sandy blonde, maybe a touch darker. More likely he was just dirty. It fell across his forehead in piecey strands, like it hadn’t been washed in a while. But the man’s face was clean enough. Tan. A little scar on the bridge of his nose. A thick scruff of beard on his jaw worth maybe two weeks of growth. So he had at least groomed two weeks ago. Adam sniffed the air. He didn’t smell good. But he didn’t smell bad.

“Took that literally, I see,” Nigel said, taking his cigarette up between two fingers and blowing his smoke away from Adam.

“How else should I have taken it?” Adam asked. He met Nigel’s eyes for a moment, and then turned his head to face away. The sudden movement brought his head to spinning, and he felt the world shift around him.

“Pardon my buggering your business, but it seems to me you should lie the fuck down,” Nigel said, putting the cherry of his cigarette out against the wall and carefully stashing the rest of it, still half un-smoked, behind his ear.

“I shouldn’t lie down, because I probably have a concussion,” Adam told him. “I’ve been hit in the head several times today.” Even as he spoke, he felt his body wavering. The floor began rushing toward him, and then he felt strong arms wrap around his chest and gently push him back. Nigel leaned him against the wall, keeping his hand on Adam’s shoulder until he knew he was balanced, and then he pulled back into his own space, for which Adam was thankful, or would have been, had he the proper soundness of mind.

“What’s your name, space man?” Nigel asked.

Adam groaned at the feeling of cold stone against his head. He closed his eyes and took in a deep, shuddering breath. His exhale was shaky, and in its wake he spoke his name to the man beside him on the cot. “Adam.”

“Well, Adam, see that guard over there that put his fucking disgusting hands on you?” Nigel asked, nudging Adam’s shoulder and pointing to the miserable, but undeniably awake figure on the floor.

“Of course, I see him. It’s not that dark in here,” Adam said, crossing his arms over his chest protectively.

“When he gets up in a second, he’s going to haul me the fuck out of this cell and take me to a room and kick the shit out of me,” Nigel said casually.

Adam looked at him, and Nigel’s face danced blurrily in his vision. At the same time, the guard on the ground moaned and sat up, holding his hand to his head.

Nigel leaned in close to Adam’s ear, and whispered, “There’s a knife under my cot, behind a loose stone in the wall. Find it and keep it on you, and if anyone tries to fucking touch you, don’t be afraid to use it.”

The guard was hauling himself to his feet now, looking none too pleased, his baton swinging in his hand. Nigel winked at Adam and came to his feet as well.

“Ready for round two, fucking pig?” Nigel asked, stepping toward the guard with a grin.

Adam watched, mesmerized, shocked, bewitched, as Nigel let the guard raise his baton over his head and swing it down into Nigel’s gut. He doubled over from the blow, coughing blood on the floor, but when he lifted his head, he was laughing. The guard hit him again, then grabbed him by the collar of his jumpsuit and pushed him up against the wall, where he took Nigel’s hands, offered without fuss, and handcuffed him.

The guard didn’t pay Adam any attention as he hauled Nigel from the cell, but Nigel did. The last thing Adam saw before the guard slammed the door to cell 30 was Nigel, bowing his head slightly to him, a bloody red grin spread across his face. Then the door shut and Adam was left alone in the dark.

Chapter Text

Adam remained on Nigel’s cot for a long time, waiting for his stomach to stop threatening upset, and then he moved to the floor. He sank down to his belly, bypassing the puddles of blood where Nigel had taken his beating and, with a deep breath, Adam began to scoot himself beneath the cot.

It was filthy under there, and when Adam lifted his hand, his palm was black with floor grime. But he scooted on along his belly until he was close to the wall. Lifting his hand along the rough stone, he felt for the loose piece, and found it just before he reached the back leg of the cot frame. After a moment’s jostling, the stone came free in his hand, and Adam set it gently beside him on the floor. It was dark under there, and he felt reluctance at sticking his hand into a mysterious black hole in the wall of a prison cell, but then he thought of Nigel’s whisper in his ear, telling him to find the knife, as if he knew it would be needed and, with a sigh, Adam reached in a hand. His fingers traced cautiously along the surprisingly roomy interior of the wall space, until they brushed upon a smooth surface. He clutched the object and pulled it from the hidey hole, and knew it to be a magazine of some sort by its floppiness and weight. He set it down beside him and reached back in, this time finding a cool, solid handle, which he wrapped his fingers around and set atop the magazine. It was the knife Nigel had directed him to obtain, and without further ado, Adam replaced the stone to cover the hole, and scooted back out from under the bed, pulling his findings along with him.

In the light of the cell, dim as it was, Adam could finally appraise the two objects. First, the knife, which was small, but sharp, and looked to be something Nigel must have engineered himself, the blade held to the handle with duct tape. Second, which Adam spent considerably more time examining, was the magazine. Inside the magazine were photographs of women. Naked. Doing things. It was a porno rag. Adam knew all about these. He had some back at home, although he preferred videos. He brought the magazine over to the cot on the opposite side of the cell, the cot ordained for him, he supposed, and flipped through the pages curiously. Apparently, his cell mate enjoyed blondes with large bosoms. Interesting. He slipped the magazine beneath his single, threadbare blanket, resolving to look over it more closely later on.

Then he fingered the knife in his hands and considered. The blade, though sharp, was rusty at the edge; at least, Adam assumed the little red specks were rust. The other possibility was that it was blood. And he wasn’t willing to entertain that possibility, not at present anyway. What Adam did entertain was whether or not he should hold on to the knife or not. Nigel had told him to take it, that was true, but now that Adam held it, felt its weight in his hands, he wasn’t so sure he wanted it. If someone attacked him, as the guard had done, would it make a difference if Adam had the knife or not? Would he use it? Could he? How would he use it? Did Nigel expect him to…stab someone with it? The very thought brought a chilled, sick feeling surging up from Adam’s stomach and he dropped the knife. It made a clean, singular clack against the floor. Adam nudged it with his foot until it was out of sight beneath the shadow realm under his cot.

He wouldn’t use it.

Adam sat on the creaky cot and pondered what he might say to Nigel when he returned, but swiftly realized he had no idea. He brought his hand back to explore the wound on his head. There was a lump there, but it was no longer wet. He felt the small cake of dried blood matting his hair and sighed, wondering if enough time had passed, if it would be safe for him to close his eyes and rest. He was exhausted.

In the end, his body decided for him, and Adam slunk down onto the lumpy mattress in a pathetic heap. He pulled the blanket over himself, not caring when the magazine poked into his back, and his eyes shut heavily. He would try and sleep. And maybe when he woke up, he would be back in California. Or better yet, as long as he was being wishful, he would be back in New York, in the apartment he shared with his father.

A few tears gathered in the corner of his eyes, but only a few, and then Adam was asleep.

--

He did not sleep for long, however, before the chilliness of the room became unbearable. Adam woke not twenty minutes later, shivering. He brought the thin blanket up to his chin, but it did nothing to appease the ice in his veins. Beneath him, the porno crinkled noisily as he shifted uncomfortably. Finally, he resigned to sitting up, wrapping the cover around his shaking shoulders. His eyes sought the cot on the other side of the cell. Nigel’s blanket was rumpled up in a cushy looking mound. Adam’s hesitation only lasted until his next wave of involuntary shivers, and then he was crossing the room to Nigel’s cot. He burrowed himself beneath Nigel’s blanket and his own, and though he was still cold, still shivering, at least the bed didn’t smell like old prison mould. It smelled like another human being, like Nigel. Sweet and sweaty and smoky. Adam’s eyes slid shut again, and this time they remained shut, and sleep found him, quick and deep. At least for a while.

--

When the door slammed, Adam came instantly awake, his eyes flying open. He sat up, pulling the blankets around him, and looked toward the beam of light streaming from the open doorway. He expected to see a guard returning Nigel to the cell. He was half right. There was a guard, thankfully a different one from before, but Nigel wasn’t with him. He was alone, and he was coming straight for Adam.

The blankets were ripped from his hands, and Adam was ripped from the cot, and the guard proceeded to roughen him through the still-open cell door. Adam noted with mild curiosity that the guard had not bothered to handcuff him, but as he was pulled easily down the corridor, putting up zero resistance, too weak to resist, it was easy enough for Adam to guess why. A rare, dark rumination surged through him in that moment, that if he’d kept the knife, now would be the time for him to use it, stabbing the guard in the back when he was least expecting it. But the thought left him as the guard’s fingers dug into the skin of his wrist, still raw from the teeth of the handcuffs from before, and Adam stifled his whine of pain by biting his lip, which also smarted. He tasted the split there, ran his tongue over it and tasted a fresh bloom of blood. He almost regretted the knife kicked under his cot. Almost.

Finally, they reached a door, and Adam wasn’t surprised when the guard opened it and threw him inside. Adam fell to the ground, catching himself on his hands and knees before he could sustain yet another head injury. A booming voice above him summoned his attention, and he looked up at a guard he hadn’t yet seen. He was fat and wore his hair cropped close to his head. And he had sweaty hands, which Adam noted when they hoisted him up by the throat and pushed him into the far wall.

More hands grasped him from behind, the guard who had escorted him here, and Adam squirmed as his sweater was ripped obscenely down the back and yanked from his body, his button-up beneath swiftly removed as well. Next removed were Adam’s corduroy pants, his white briefs, his socks and his shoes. Once Adam was stripped naked, the guard pushed him to the ground, laughing, and walked to stand beside the fat guard. Together they loomed over Adam’s bare, quivering form.

“Welcome to Jilava, Mister Graham,” the fat one said with a crooked smile that revealed several silver-capped teeth.

Relief flooded through Adam. “You speak English,” he said. “Good. Please listen to me. This is all a mistake. I’m not Will Graham. I’m Adam Raki, and I’m here for a space conference.”

The guards laughed and the fat one shook his head. “Nice try. You think we are stupid?”

“I think you’re not very good at your jobs,” Adam told him honestly. “And if you think I am Will Graham, maybe it’s appropriate to think you are stupid, too.”

The smile disappeared from the guard’s face and he stepped forward, lashing out with his boot to kick Adam in the chest. He collapsed to the floor, the breath knocked out of him. After several long, terrifying seconds in which he couldn’t breathe, a little wheeze finally rattled through his lungs, and he turned to his side in a fit of coughing hysterics.

“If you think you can pull the cloak over our eyes, you are mistaken, Mister Graham,” the guard bellowed, bending low enough for Adam to smell his vile breath. “Tell us where Dr. Lecter is!”

Adam blinked. “Who?”

“Your lover! We know you know where he is!”

“You’re wrong,” Adam said, shaking his head, his curls falling in his eyes. “I’m Adam Raki. I have no lover. Beth broke up with me. It’s been a while now. She wrote a book about me. It’s pretty, but I don’t really understand it, because I’m a raccoon.”

“Shut up!” the guard spat, threatening his boot. Adam promptly shut his mouth and shrank away from the lifted boot. “Good,” the guard said, and he bent down on one knee, fisting a sweaty, grubby hand into Adam’s hair and pulling his head back. “Now tell us where the doctor is.”

Adam did not answer, deciding it was better to keep his mouth shut than to repeat again that he didn’t know what the guards were talking about, that he wasn’t Will Graham. His silence was met with seething disdain, and Adam was slapped across his face, his hair still held tight in the guard’s fist.

“Don’t feel like talking?” the guard asked. “We’ll see how you feel when the American shows up.”

Adam was still trying to process the guard’s words when he was dragged from the room by his hair, still naked. He clawed at the man’s hand, twined deeply into his curls, but the guard didn’t let up, and Adam was dragged down the entire length of the corridor, his vulnerable skin sliding along the dirty floor, his eyes watery and blurred from the cruel pull against his scalp. By the time they approached cell 30, he was sobbing. The fat guard opened the door and kicked him through it, then slammed it shut. The sound of the lock sliding into place echoed in the dark cell, and Adam shook, naked and huddled on the floor.

A grunt stunted Adam’s weeping, mid-whimper, and he pulled himself up on his knees. A dark mass was strewn upon Nigel’s cot. Adam shuffled forward until he was kneeling beside it, and there was Nigel, lying on his back, his face swollen with bruises, his lip busted and bleeding, far worse than Adam’s injuries. Over Nigel’s eye was a gash.

“Nigel?” Adam whispered, unsure if the man was awake or not.

Nigel grunted again and one of his swollen eyes opened, a tiny slit of amber that peered up at Adam. “Am I hallucinating or are you fucking naked, Adam?” he croaked, and Adam felt the blush spread over his cheeks.

“They took my clothes,” he said.

Something between a sigh and a laugh escaped Nigel’s lips, and he groaned, pushing up on his elbows. He lifted an arm, directing it to his pocket, but before he could reach, he fell back against the mattress. “Fuck,” he rasped, and his one open eye looked pleadingly at Adam. “Be a fucking angel and get my cigarettes out for me.”

Adam nodded and searched around. “I don’t see any cigarettes,” he said.

“In my pocket,” Nigel groaned.

“You want me to put my hand in your pocket?” Adam asked, unsure. One had to be sure before they went around sticking their hand in people’s pockets.

“Put your fucking hand in my pocket and get me out my fucking smokes,” Nigel said. “Please.”

“Okay,” Adam agreed, and he slipped his hand down into the man’s front pocket, feeling for the pack. It was warm in there, and if it hadn’t been weird, Adam would have asked if he could keep his hand inside longer, but Nigel was watching him warily, and Adam knew that having his hand in another man’s pocket for a longer period than requested was a social taboo, so as soon as Adam felt the soft pack, he pulled it out, holding it up for Nigel to take.

“Think you can light one for me?” he asked Adam, and if Adam hadn’t known better, he would have guessed Nigel was amused by something.

“But I don’t smoke,” Adam said.

“You don’t have to fucking smoke it, just put one in my mouth and hold the lighter against the tip for me. If you’d be so fucking kind.”

Adam frowned. “Alright,” he said at last, and he grabbed a slender cigarette from the pack and brought it up to Nigel’s mouth.

Nigel parted his lips and accepted the filter between them. He smirked as Adam looked around for the lighter. “Pocket,” Nigel said, and Adam stuck his hand back into Nigel’s pocket, relishing the few seconds of warmth, and retrieved the Zippo. He struggled with lighting it, but after his fifth attempt, the flame appeared, and Adam held it up to the end of Nigel’s cigarette.

Nigel murmured his thanks and breathed in until the end of the cigarette burned with a hot orange glow. Adam let the Zippo snap closed and, without asking, placed it back into Nigel’s pocket. Then he put the pack back as well. He was careful not to let his hand linger longer than was necessary. And then he was done, kneeling awkwardly beside Nigel’s cot, still naked and now with nothing to do but watch the injured man before him.

Nigel took a deep drag of the smoke and tried again to pull himself up from his back. Adam watched. Once Nigel was properly propped, back against the wall, he sighed and caught the cigarette between his fingers, bringing it down to rest on his thigh. The blood from his cuts was still fresh, dripping down his face.

“You should clean those,” Adam told him.

“Let me run to the fucking shops and get some antiseptic,” Nigel responded. He lifted a hand to wipe at the blood before it could ooze into his eye, and the contact made him hiss in pain.

“I don’t think they’ll just let you leave,” Adam said, shifting uncomfortably on his knobby knees. “Is there water?” he asked Nigel suddenly, and the man nodded to a bowl in the corner of the room. “Is it clean?” he asked doubtfully.

“As clean as the drinking water gets in this fucking place,” Nigel answered. “But we’re only given a single bowl every day.”

Adam was already standing up and walking for the bowl. He turned to look over his shoulder at Nigel. “So?”

“So don’t fucking waste it on me,” Nigel said.

Adam ignored him, carefully picking up the bowl and walking slowly back to Nigel’s side, careful not to lose any to sloshing. “I’m not stupid,” Adam said as he lowered the bowl back to the ground. “The reason you have those cuts is because of me.” He took up a corner of one of the blankets on Nigel’s cot and ripped. A piece came away easily, and he dipped it into the water. Without asking permission, he sat down on the cot.

“What are you doing?” Nigel asked, throwing him a side eye with the only one he could manage open.

“Why do you ask questions you know the answer to?” was Adam’s response as he pressed the damp cloth to the cut above Nigel’s eye. The man sucked in a sharp breath at the touch, gentle as Adam was being, but he didn’t pull away. Adam dabbed at it, wiping at the line of blood headed for Nigel’s swollen eye, and then he held it against the gash, applying a steady pressure.

They sat in silence that way, Nigel smoking his cigarette, Adam holding the scrap of blanket to his brow. But it wasn’t long before the adrenaline of being dragged by the hair and kicked around began to drain from his body, and sooner than Adam would have predicted, his naked body began to shake. He ignored it at first, and Nigel didn’t notice. But then his whole body began to tremble with wicked chills, and when he could no longer hide the tremors in his arm holding up the cloth, Nigel wrapped a loose hand around Adam’s wrist and lowered it to the mattress.

Adam began to protest until he observed that the man’s injury had stopped bleeding, and then he sheepishly stood from the cot, his wobbly hands covering his privates, and began to walk back to his side of the cell.

“Adam,” Nigel said, his voice low and raspy. Adam heard him pull in a puff of smoke, and then he turned to face him. “Your blanket is over here.”

“Oh,” Adam said, remembering. He walked back the few steps to the cot, taking the sad little blanket Nigel held out for him. But when Adam made to move away, Nigel did not relinquish hold of the blanket, but tugged it forward, tugging Adam along with it until he fell to the thin mattress, bouncing them both. It creaked loudly beneath their weight.

Nigel smiled, his cigarette sticking between sharp, slightly crooked teeth, and stood up from the bed. His hands flew to the collar of his jumpsuit, and Adam watched, raptly wondrous, as the man before him began to ease out of his prison uniform.

He wore no undershirt, and when the striped cloth had been worked from Nigel’s shoulders, a broad chest was revealed. Adam ran a hand over his own chest, smooth save a smattering of hair, nothing to boast about. Not like Nigel, whose chest had a healthful covering of graying hair, bountiful and soft, but not so much that it distracted Adam’s eyes from continuing their search of Nigel’s body, revealed in increments as the jumpsuit was wriggled over his hips. Adam bit mindlessly at his bottom lip at the sight of the man’s stomach, strong and sleek, but with a slight tummy, a trail of hair dipping from beneath his navel and disappearing behind a pair of white boxer shorts. Muscular thighs came next as the jumpsuit slid from Nigel’s waist and fell around his ankles, and then he was stepping out of the uniform completely, bending over, and picking it up, a striped bundle in his arms.

Adam blinked up at the man, now only slightly less naked than himself.

“Fucking take it before you freeze to death,” Nigel said, tossing the jumpsuit at Adam. It landed square in his lap, and already Adam felt Nigel’s leftover body heat lingering in the folds of cloth and warming his thighs.

“But now you’ll be naked,” Adam said with a blush.

“I’d rather be fucking naked down to my britches than have to share a fucking cell with a fucking corpse,” Nigel responded, flicking his cigarette to the floor and returning to the cot, bouncing Adam. “So put it on and take your blanket and I don’t want to hear another fucking word about it.”

Adam stood up and quickly put his feet through the leg holes of the jumpsuit, then pulled it up around himself as quickly as his shaky hands could manage. Covered, he felt instantly better, and he paid Nigel a wide, genuine grin. “Thank you, Nigel,” he said, but the man waved him off, already lying down beneath his own blanket. Adam retrieved his blanket from on top and made to return himself to his side of the cell. But he stopped and looked down at Nigel, whose bare skin could hardly be covered completely by the threadbare cover.

“Fucking what?” Nigel grumbled at him, turning to his back and hiking up his arm to place behind his head. His hair hung loosely over his forehead, softening the planes of his face, and Adam was stricken for a moment, by the man he suddenly realized to be extremely attractive. That would make the next thing he was intending to say a tad awkward, if navigated without the necessary finesse.

“We should sleep together,” he said.

Nigel’s eyebrows arched high on his forehead. “Pardon? What the fuck did you just say?”

Adam swallowed hard and wet his lips before continuing. “It’s cold in here. I’ll be cold even with a blanket and your clothes, and you’ll be cold, too, even though you have all that hair. If we share your cot, we’ll have double the blankets and double the body heat to keep us warm.”

“You want to sleep with me?” Nigel asked slowly.

Adam nodded. “Yes. I think it’s the smartest solution for staving off the cold, don’t you?”

The older man mumbled something in Romanian, but despite the harsh sound of the words, he was already lifting up the blanket and shifting over on the mattress. Adam hesitated, unsure of the validity of the invitation, until Nigel sighed and patted the space next to him.

“Come the fuck here then, if you’re coming,” he told Adam, who wasted no more time before joining Nigel on the tiny mattress and maneuvering himself beneath the covers. Nigel took the second blanket from Adam and sat up, fanning it out so it spread over them both, then he laid back down, on his side this time, facing Adam. “This bed is fucking small. What if I roll over and squish you? You’re so fucking tiny, it would probably kill you.”

Adam hummed and considered the scenario. “It’s possible, but unlikely. If I stay pressed against you while we sleep, I’ll feel you if you start to roll on top of me.”

A strange snort rose from Nigel’s chest and he narrowed his eyes at Adam. “You want to press against me? You want me to fucking spoon you?” he asked.

“It’s the best way to share body heat,” Adam explained. “We went over this already.” He rolled to his side, facing away from Nigel, and began to scoot himself back. “If you move close to me, we’ll both be warmer. I could do the same to you, but you’re so much bigger than me. It’s easier for you to be behind me.”

“To be the big spoon, you mean,” Nigel said.

“I wish you would stop talking about spoons and get closer to me,” Adam said, pillowing his hands beneath his head.

“Fucking bossy little thing, aren’t you?” was Nigel’s response, but in the next second, Adam felt the bed move as Nigel scooted closer. “Like this?”

Adam wiggled backward a bit, until he felt the hot expanse of Nigel’s bare chest against his back. “There. See? It’s already warmer.”

Nigel made an indiscernible huff behind him, and it blew at the curls on the nape of Adam’s neck, and then, “Where the fuck am I supposed to put my hands? You’re in the way.”

“Just drape them over me, Nigel,” Adam said, his voice already growing weak with sleepiness. The man felt good against him, and between that and the jumpsuit and the covers, Adam was more comfortable than he’d been since he’d been dragged into the prison, since he’d been in Bucharest. “Haven’t you ever done this with a girl?”

“Of course I’ve fucking done this with a girl, but you’re not a fucking girl, are you, Adam?”

“You’ve seen me naked. You know I’m not a girl.”

“Fucking Christ,” Nigel cursed, and Adam smiled when strong arms came to rest against his waist. “Happy now?”

“Of course not. I’m in prison.”

“Fucking more comfortable then?” Nigel said. He paused for a minute, and when he spoke again his voice was softer, lower. “Will you be able to sleep better like this? Are you warm enough?”

Adam took Nigel’s arm from his waist and pulled it up around his chest, his eyelids sliding shut, heavy with exhaustion. “This is better,” he whispered. And then he fell asleep.

Chapter Text

Something was poking him. Adam opened his eyes, newly awake and surprisingly comfortable, considering he had just spent the evening on a prison cot with a naked inmate. He could only assume it was morning, since their sole source of light was through the small square window in the door, but it felt like morning to Adam. And the something poking him felt like a hot, solid stick, nudging him in the backside. Behind him, Nigel snored, tightened his hold on Adam, and pulled him closer.

Adam gasped as the culprit of said poking slid down his back and pushed between the crevice of his thighs, hot and huge, even through the jumpsuit he wore. His eyes widened, for in that moment, clear as the day creeping through the door-square, he realized the poking, stick-like object was not a stick, but Nigel’s erect penis. Nigel’s hard-on. Nigel’s cock, hard and heavy and throbbing ever so gently against Adam’s ass cheeks. He gulped, and tried to get away from the thing with nonchalance, but when he moved even an increment, his cot-mate’s arm tightened over his chest and held him firm, and all Adam succeeded to do was rub his bottom enticingly against the stalwart shaft.

Nigel sighed heavily in his sleep; his breath was hot on Adam’s neck and, with a miniscule, helpless little groan, Adam tried again to extricate himself from the larger man’s cuddle-grip. In his efforts, Adam’s thighs squeezed slightly together, and the resulting domino effect was staggering. Nigel grunted and pushed his hips forward in a discreet yet incontrovertible thrust, and Adam felt, not only the man’s sizable dick jutting against his most intimate self, namely his asshole, but also the beginning quakes of his own arousal, a jittery, tingly, fluttery feeling in the pit of his stomach. Nigel made a sleepy noise against his shoulder, and the feeling spread from Adam’s stomach to his groin.

And as quickly, as easily as that, in a Bucharest prison cell, in a cot shared with a handsome, naked prisoner, Adam found himself with a cock pressed between his legs and his own burgeoning erection swelling with unusual speediness. He kept stock-still, afraid to move even an inch for fear of what might follow. Of course, Nigel was asleep, and he had no idea what he was doing, but how would he feel once he woke up, which he was sure to do in short order? Adam could hear the stirs of a new day outside their cell. They couldn’t stay as they lay forever, despite how undeniably comfortable Adam found himself feeling in their accidentally familiar positioning. And besides, if Nigel woke up and found his cock between Adam’s legs, he might get the wrong idea, and then he might get angry. Adam knew that people, macho guys, like Nigel, sometimes got angry about things like that, and Adam already knew Nigel’s proclivities didn’t involve his ass. He thought of the magazine, of the big breasted blondes inside the worn pages. That’s what Nigel liked. And besides, Adam liked those girls too. Didn’t he? He had liked Beth. When they had sex, he had enjoyed it. His sexual response to Nigel’s morning wood was merely an odd incident. So what if he was harder than he’d been in…forever? The point was moot.

Adam was about to make a last attempt to unburden himself from Nigel’s arms, when their cell door burst open.

A guard walked in, his boots echoing as loudly as his laughter when he eyed the men in the bed. He muttered in Romanian, threw a bundle of something on the floor, and left. The door slammed shut, and Adam took the distracting opportunity to roll out of the cot, landing clumsily on his hands and knees against the dirt-matted floor. He reached out for the bundle the guard had dropped. It was a striped jumpsuit.

Adam turned around and there, wresting himself from the cot, was Nigel, his morning enthusiasm skillfully hidden by a clever corner of blanket. Adam tried not to appear taken aback by the vision of the man before him, mostly uncovered besides the secret Adam knew to be obscured by threadbare fabric. But Adam had felt it, and he couldn’t just forget that it existed, and so he mumbled a ‘good morning’ and sort of threw the new jumpsuit at Nigel.

“What the fuck is this?” Nigel asked, not unkindly, as he held it up to inspect. “What do you know? Spanking new gear. Fucking heartwarming.” He squinted, his eyes narrowing to an even greater extreme, given their swelling from his prior beating. “This one’s yours,” he said, throwing the jumpsuit back at Adam.

Adam dropped it and had to bend over to retrieve it. Images of Nigel pushing against him flashed through his mind as he bent, and he snapped up quickly, hoping his blush couldn’t be detected in the dimness of the cell.

“You should have the new one,” Adam insisted, holding it back out for Nigel to take.

“A fucking lovely sentiment, darling, but it’s a fucking size small.” He searched about him for his pack of smokes, patting his naked thighs uselessly and sighing.

“I have them,” Adam declared, patting the jumpsuit pocket and feeling the soft box beneath the fabric. “Should I hand them to you, and then hand you the jumpsuit, or should I just take off the jumpsuit with the cigarettes still in them and hand them both to you at once?”

“Fucking what?” Nigel asked, his lips pulling into an impossibly attractive sneer.

“Do you have a preference?” Adam asked.

“Yeah, I have a fucking preference, and it’s getting one of my smokes,” Nigel said, and he closed the distance between them with a quickness that stole Adam’s breath away. The larger man, whose bit of blanket fell away with his movement, strutted right up to Adam, still hard, and dug his hand into Adam’s pocket.

Adam knew he was still aroused, could feel the blood pulsing through his cock, and he knew the jumpsuit did little to hide it, so little he may as well be as exposed as Nigel. He shut his eyes embarrassedly at Nigel’s seeking fingers, but the moment was over in an instant, and Nigel pulled the pack from the pocket, tapping one into his hand.

“You sure you don’t want one?” he asked Adam.

“I told you I don’t smoke,” Adam replied meekly, his eyes still closed. He could feel Nigel lingering near. He heard him lighting the cigarette. He smelled the smoke as it swirled into the air, but he knew Nigel turned his head away from Adam to blow out his own thick cloud.

“That’s too bad. A man needs a hobby in this place,” Nigel said after the long drag.

That made Adam crack his eyes open and assess the man in front of him. “Smoking isn’t a hobby,” he informed him.

Nigel made a face. “Oh no? What the fuck is it then?”

“A habit. An unhealthy, deadly habit,” Adam explained, eyes opening all the way as he grew more confident, more distracted from their mutual hard-ons, concentrating instead on the hypnotic lilt of Nigel’s accent.

“You know what else is a deadly habit?” Nigel asked, leaning in, not close, but close enough to make Adam shuffle back a self-conscious inch.

“Lots of things,” Adam told him, his eyebrows furrowing as he began to run all of the deadly habits known to him through his mind.

Nigel observed the smaller man as he began to count murmured words with his fingers, before he placed a steadying hand on Adam’s shoulder and said, “Getting fucking arrested and thrown in prison, that’s a fucking deadly habit, Adam.”

The touch was jarring, and Adam wanted to take another step away, but for some reason unbeknownst to him his feet refused to move. Nigel’s hand felt hot against him, so hot he could feel the heat seeping straight through the jumpsuit and flushing the skin of his shoulder. He gulped, overly loud, and said, “It’s not a habit if it’s done to you. Once. Do you even know what a habit is?”

Nigel laughed and removed his hand, opting instead to take another long pull of his cigarette. “I know what a hobby is. And smoking cigarettes is about as good a hobby as you’re going to find in this place.”

Adam nodded his head, even though he didn’t agree. But still, Nigel did not move away. Adam licked his lips and looked down, looked up, looked anywhere but straight at Nigel, who was staring at Adam and nothing but Adam.

Finally, Nigel leaned close again, and again Adam found himself glued to the floor and unable to escape the lips that whispered in his ear. “Can I have my clothes now, or do you plan to keep me naked all fucking day?”

When Nigel pulled back, he was smiling, his pale brows lifted expectantly, and Adam breathed in sharply, his heart fluttering. “You can have them now. I don’t want you to be naked, Nigel,” Adam told him, setting the bundle of fresh clothes on his cot and quickly beginning to strip from the jumpsuit. He half expected Nigel to watch him undress, but he didn’t. Nigel turned around and smoked his cigarette, and Adam tried not to stare at his butt too much as he finished undressing, and then re-dressed, stepping into the smaller jumpsuit. When he was done, the new uniform snug against him, Adam cleared his throat. “I’m dressed,” he announced, because it was all he could think to say.

Nigel turned, holding out his hand for the jumpsuit, which Adam placed in his hand wordlessly as he noticed, unavoidably, that Nigel had grown soft again. For some reason, he felt a sting of insult that Nigel’s erection would have waned while he was undressing, after it was clear that Adam himself had been sexually aroused. In fact, it was almost rude. And worst of all, Adam was still hard, and watching Nigel bend over to step into his jumpsuit only made it worse. Adam considered turning away, like Nigel had done, but he didn’t want to, he realized, and so he didn’t, and Nigel didn’t ask him to. In fact, Nigel met his eyes as he pulled the jumpsuit up over his hips, his cigarette dangling from his plump lips.

Those lips were scabbed, as well as plump, from the beating he’d endured the day before on Adam’s behalf, and Adam ran his tongue over his own split lip in sympathy. “Are you in a lot of pain today?” Adam asked curiously. “I’ve never seen someone as beaten up as you.”

Nigel smirked as he settled the jumpsuit over his shoulders, and Adam breathed a sigh of relief that, finally, they were both dressed.

Suddenly, a loud buzz sounded in the hallway, and a speaker crackled, a Romanian grunt booming through it. Adam looked worriedly at Nigel, who was knocking the cherry from his cigarette and tucking it behind his ear.

“What does that noise mean, Nigel?” Adam asked, wringing his hands together and walking to look out the little square of window.

“Shower time.”

Chapter Text

Before Adam even had time to process the prospect of shower time in a Bucharest prison and the aspects such a thing entailed, he found the door to cell 30 being slammed open and two guards marching in to cuff both him and Nigel and lead them down the dingy corridor. Adam threw a frantic look over his shoulder at Nigel, who stared blankly ahead, and so, with no other clue pertaining how to act, Adam copied the expression. Meanwhile, other doors were being opened and more prisoners were being led from the cells. All seemed to bottleneck through a particular door at the end of the hall on the lower level of cells. When Adam was finally pushed through the door, he was thrust into the arms of another guard who hastily un-cuffed him, stripped him of his jumpsuit, re-cuffed him, and promptly passed him on to yet another guard, who grabbed Adam by the scruff of his neck and pushed him into an even larger interior room, lined with shower heads and filled with naked Romanian criminals.

The guard kicked Adam in the back of his calf to urge him forward, and he stumbled into the icy spray of a shower head. Torn between trying to keep his bits covered and needing to genuinely wash the grime from his body, Adam opted to stand directly beneath a nozzle toward the back of the room, where, hopefully, no one would notice him. He kept his eyes down as he walked the length of the room, his feet splashing in the water running fast for the drains, already swirling with dirt and blood from the other showering prisoners. A few things were muttered as he passed, turns of phrase directed at Adam that he was thankful for not understanding, but soon he reached the far corner and stood beneath a spray of water, closing his eyes as he tilted his face up to be rinsed clean. His cuffed hands he kept in front of his privates.

Long minutes passed before he felt the hot breath against his neck. Adam’s eyes shot open and he twisted to look behind him. He realized he had been half-expecting Nigel only when he saw it wasn’t Nigel. It was a huge, greasy, goateed, bulk of a man, and he was leering over Adam with a revolting smile. Adam considered asking the man if he wanted him to move, but when he opened his mouth to speak, the giant man grabbed his face, lifting his own handcuffed hands to press grubby fingers roughly into Adam’s soft cheeks.

The prisoner said something with a hearty chuckle and gave Adam’s face a shake. Then he pushed him back, ramming Adam against the shower wall. He cried out as he felt the cut on the back of his head drip fresh down his neck. With wide, panicked eyes, Adam searched about the crowd of washing prisoners, seeking out a familiar face, but he couldn’t see Nigel. The man pawed at Adam’s hands, which he still held low, trying to cover his groin. With absurd ease, Adam’s hands were knocked to the side, and he felt a large, rough palm encase his soft flesh.

“Nigel!” Adam yelled. He didn’t know why he yelled for his prison mate, but he did, loudly, and it was only a second before he appeared, wet and naked and strangling Adam’s assailant.

“Let him go right fucking now, or I will snap your neck, you fucking miscreant,” Nigel hissed into the larger man’s ear.

Adam felt the hand slip away, and Nigel pushed the greasy prisoner with such force, he fell on his knees, skidding over the wet floor. Many of the men in the showers were staring, and Nigel stood in front of Adam, holding himself tall and broad. He spoke something that sounded ominous and foreign to Adam, and everyone sort of muttered and looked away, going back to their business. When Nigel finally turned to Adam, his eyes were bright.

“What did you just say?” Adam asked, shaking with adrenaline.

“Don’t fucking worry your head over it, Adam,” Nigel told him. “Mind if I share your shower?” He stepped beneath it before Adam could say anything, shutting his eyes beneath the downpour.

Adam stepped from the wall to join Nigel beneath the water, but he didn’t shut his eyes. He looked at Nigel. The taller man was shining with droplets of cool water running down the golden skin of his shoulders, over muscular arms. His face. Adam could see it for the first time in decent lighting, and even though it was black and blue and swollen in places, it was the best face Adam could remember ever seeing. Nigel’s lips seemed to have a natural, alluring pout, and his eyes weren’t as large as Adam’s, but deeply set beneath stark, palely shaded brows. His bruised cheekbones were darkened but Adam thought they looked smooth and elegant. He wondered if Nigel’s skin was soft there, or rough. He almost extended his hand to feel, but then Nigel opened his eyes.

“Didn’t your parents teach you it’s not polite to stare?” Nigel asked, giving his head a shake to free the water-heavy hair from over his eyes.

“I never knew my mother,” Adam began, averting his eyes, “and my father tried to teach me good manners, but there are things I still don’t understand. And he’s dead now, so he can’t teach me anymore.”

“Fuck,” Nigel said, and Adam’s eyes darted up to watch the other man. He was still standing very close to Adam, still posturing to make himself appear larger than he was. Adam couldn’t help but marvel at him.

“Will you tell me what you said?” Adam asked again with a pleading expression.

Nigel sighed, but assented. “I told them to fuck off.”

“You said more than that,” Adam said. “It sounded like you spoke several sentences worth of Romanian.”

“Since when are you a fucking Romanian expert?” Nigel barbed.

“I’m not,” said Adam with a frown. “But I heard you, and it sounded like -- ”

“Will you shut the fuck up?” Nigel asked, taking a step closer and dipping his head low to Adam’s ear. “I told them you were mine, and I’d kill anyone that fucking touched you.”

Adam made a tiny gasping noise at the declaration, and Nigel stepped back an inch. He held his face up to the water and turned his back to Adam, possibly to rinse his other side, possibly to hide the blush creeping into his cheeks. Adam stood, staring confusedly at Nigel’s glistening backside. His buttocks were nothing like what he was used to admiring, but Adam recognized he was doing exactly that, admiring Nigel’s buttocks. When the guards at the door hollered that shower time was over, Adam felt a strange twinge of disappointment thrill through him. But the hand at the small of his back as he and Nigel walked from the room was a brief surge of comfort, and no one bothered either of them as they re-dressed.

--

Soon they were back in cell 30, clean and clothed, and after the guard unlocked their handcuffs, the door slammed tight, and they were, once again, locked together in the dim prison cell.

Nigel wasted no time in reaching for his smokes, stretching out long on the cot before lighting one. Adam sat on his own bed and tucked his knees to his chest.

“Nigel?” he asked, questions swelling in his chest. “Am I?”

He heard Nigel take a drag on the cigarette and blow it out before answering, “Are you what?”

“You said I was yours,” Adam said, not sure why his voice was trembling. “Am I? Yours?”

Nigel grunted and sat up on his elbow. “That’s what I fucking said so they’d leave you alone, Adam,” he said.

“I know,” answered Adam with an understanding nod. They sat in silence for a few minutes before Adam cleared his throat and asked, “So I’m yours?” The other man sputtered on his smoke, and Adam continued. “I don’t think I would mind, being yours. But I’m not sure what it means. In what way am I yours? To touch? To have sex with? I thought you might not be interested in sex because of the blondes, but you’ve been very kind to me, and if you wanted me to be yours, I think that would be okay.”

Nigel didn’t answer right away, waiting until he’d sat upright on the cot and crossed his legs beneath him comfortably. Then he fixed his eyes to Adam. They almost glowed in the darkness of the room, and Adam chewed at his lower lip nervously. “You’re fucking queer, Adam,” he said at last, not cruelly, but with words colored thick with interest.

“If you mean I’m strange, you’re not incorrect,” Adam told Nigel with a shrug. “If you mean it in reference to my sexuality, I’m inclined to tell you that I’ve only ever slept with women, and that ‘queer’ is often used in a derogatory sense, which I find offensive. Which way did you mean it, so I’ll know whether or not I should feel offended?”

Nigel didn’t laugh, like people usually did when Adam spoke, but silently smoked his cigarette. He tilted his head and his hair swept across his forehead, still damp. “I don’t give a fuck where you stick it, Adam,” Nigel finally said, voice smooth and smoky. “You’re strange, is what I meant.”

“I know I’m strange,” Adam said, slightly rough. “I have Asperger’s Syndrome.”

Nigel wracked his wheelhouse, and a few vague notions filled his mind. “I’m not sure I fucking know what that means, but I like it.”

“You like it?” Adam asked with pinched eyebrows.

“You say what you’re fucking thinking, far as I can tell,” Nigel said with another drag of his cigarette. “What’s not to like about that?”

“But you think I’m queer. Strange, I mean,” Adam said.

“Abso-fucking-lutely you are,” Nigel agreed with a laugh. “I’m fucking strange, too.”

“And that’s why you told the others that I’m yours?” Adam asked with a small smile.

“Fuck it, yes, Adam,” breathed Nigel, finally revealing a thread of frustration, but only a thread, and only towards himself for letting the smaller man rile him so.

They sat in silence for the remainder of the cigarette, Adam’s attention on the man’s lips snaring a curious amount of that time, until, flush-faced, he spoke. “Reading is another one.”

Nigel threw the burned up stub to the floor, not bothering to grind it out, content to let it smolder. “Another what?” he asked, amused by this sudden shift in conversation. Adam still watched him across the cell, his arms strapped across his knees, snuggled securely into himself, a lovely ball of nervous energy that made Nigel’s grin broaden.

“Another hobby one could find in a place like this,” Adam explained. He followed Nigel’s eyes, which had fallen beneath him, and he knew Nigel must be thinking of his dirty magazine, the one that was no longer under his bed, but under Adam’s.

“Do you like to read, then?” Nigel asked, and Adam wondered if he would mention the magazine, if he would offer to let Adam read it.

“I love to read,” Adam said, unable to stifle the zeal flooding his voice. “At home, I have a lot of books. The majority of my books are about space, because it’s my favorite subject, but I have all kinds. I also enjoy fiction and biographies. I love books. Do you like to read, Nigel?”

Nigel stretched his arms over his head, reminding Adam of a big jungle cat. He imagined the muscles rippled and smoothed beneath the cloth of his jumpsuit. The tattoo on his neck stretched as he rolled his shoulders. “Sure, I like to read. But you won’t find many options here, Adam, not in English anyway,” Nigel lamented, in what must have been genuineness, at least that’s what Adam guessed. Nigel seemed altogether genuine. Adam liked that. So he pressed on.

“If there were pictures, I could probably follow along with the story,” Adam said.

“I don’t have any fucking picture books, but I’ll ask around next time I get the chance,” Nigel laughed.

“What about the magazine? Is it the kind of magazine with interesting articles?” Adam inquired earnestly.

Nigel looked confused for a few moments before the realization dawned on him, and then he threw his head back, running his fingers through his hair. “You found my fucking porno, did you?”

“I did,” Adam admitted shamelessly. “It was unavoidable. And now it’s under my bed, but I haven’t read it yet.”

“I suppose you haven’t, being that it’s in Romanian,” Nigel said. “You like porn? Is that one of your hobbies back home?”

“An occasional hobby,” Adam told Nigel with a blush. “I have a collection of videos, but I keep those hidden in my closet, not out on the bookshelves.” A pregnant pause filled the space between them until Adam asked, “Would you read it?”

“Read the fucking porno?” Nigel asked.

“Since I can’t read it, and it’s the only other hobby in this cell besides smoking, would you read it out loud, and I can listen?”

“You want me to read to you out loud from a porn rag, Adam?”

“Is that strange?” Adam asked.

“It’s fucking queer,” Nigel corrected, but even as he spoke he was moving over on the cot. “Bring it here.”

Adam stood, bending over to gather the magazine from under the cot, spying the knife next to it. He ignored it and grabbed for the porno, then brought it to Nigel’s side of the cell on swift feet. He plopped down on the cot without invitation and handed the magazine over to the other man.

“Thank you, Nigel,” Adam said with a toothy smile, inching closer so he could better look at the pictures. “I didn’t want to have to start smoking.”

Nigel began reading from the magazine, and Adam listened intently, even though he didn’t find the material terribly interesting. Still, the sound of Nigel’s voice was pleasing and relaxing, and soon Adam wasn’t even looking at the naked women, but leaning his head back against the wall. He let his eyelids slide shut to focus wholly on Nigel’s voice. In this dreamlike state Adam previously only associated with space documentaries, he failed to take notice of the budding erection tenting his jumpsuit until Nigel turned a page of the magazine and brushed against it with his wrist.

Adam jumped. Nigel jumped in reciprocation. Both men stared at one another, red faced, from their opposite sides of the cot. Nigel looked down, saw Adam’s arousal, and then his lips snapped into a thin, straight line. “Are you…?” he began in a shockingly wobbled voice.

“I’m sexually excited,” Adam explained with no evidence to prove otherwise. He folded his hands over his lap.

A click of a lighter sounded in the room as Nigel lit a new cigarette. With his other hand, he waved the magazine in the space between them. “Because of the pictures,” Nigel said. “Why the fuck did you jump out of your fucking skin, Adam?”

“I assumed you would be uncomfortable, being so close to me in an aroused state,” Adam spoke slowly, his mind trying to suss out the expression on Nigel’s face. Of course, he couldn’t. He sighed heavily. It’d be really nice if he could.

“How fucking chivalrous of you, but I don’t actually give a fuck, so come back over here,” Nigel said, smoke escaping in snowy-white tendrils from his nostrils. “I was just getting to the good part. Don’t you want to know what --,” he looked down to scroll over the print he’d just been reading, “—what fucking Jessica’s favorite cocktail is?”

Adam sucked in his lower lip. He hadn’t been following along with what Nigel had been reading, only listening to the sound of his voice. He didn’t know who Jessica was, but if Nigel wanted to finish telling him about her, he decided he should listen, so Adam slid himself across the distance of the cot. Nigel slid over as well, positioning them shoulder to shoulder. He held the magazine between them, the front cover leaned against Nigel’s bended knee, the back cover leaned against Adam’s. Then he proceeded to read.

Jessica liked Old Fashioneds and reading romance novels in the bubble bath. Adam liked the sound of Nigel’s voice, and even when he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to block it out, his erection wouldn’t desist. If anything, it pulsed more insistently. The occasional rub of the other man’s thigh against his didn’t help, nor did the heat of Nigel’s shoulder as it pressed against Adam’s.

If Nigel noticed the hammering happening inside Adam’s chest cavity, he didn’t mention it. But Adam was internally scolding his body. He tried rationing with himself that Nigel was a heterosexual male who enjoyed blonde females with huge breasts. He tried to remind himself that he, also, was a straight male who had sex with not only Beth, a female, but a handful of other women. All with vaginas. None with hairy chests and muscular, smooth, beautifully rounded backsides that made Adam bite his lip just reminiscing about it. Adam had never had sex with someone like Nigel, so male and masculine and handsome, had never even considered it as a possibility. But there Adam was, breathing strained, a light trickle of sweat gathered at his hairline, his cock swollen with memories of Nigel naked and dripping wet in front of him in the showers.

When Nigel flipped the page, his thumb touched the back of Adam’s hand, which was pushed tight over his crotch, and the caress, purposeful or not, sent a jolt through Adam’s entire body, and it was too much, it was all suddenly far too much. He leaped from the cot, landing swiftly on both feet, hands folded over himself, eyes darting wildly, looking anywhere but at Nigel, who only had eyes for him.

“Adam?” he asked softly.

Adam wheezed on a deep inhale of stale cell air. “Yes?”

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“I…,” Adam stumbled anxiously for words he couldn’t imagine saying out loud before settling on, “…I need to lie down now, Nigel.”

“What’s wrong?” Nigel asked, and the tone was piled high with what must have been concern, but Adam felt utterly clueless and his shoulders slumped pathetically.

“I’m confused,” Adam answered truthfully. “I want to lie down.”

Nigel gave him a brief nod, and folded the covers down on his cot. “It’s okay, Adam. Lie down. Get some rest.”

It was not the response Adam had been expecting, and when he took a step back from the invitation, something equally unexpected happened. Nigel’s hand shot out and gently grasped Adam’s wrist, keeping him standing beside the cot.

Adam blinked at the contact, his lashes fluttering at the heat seeping into his skin. Nigel was looking up at him with eyes inscrutably bright and pupils blown huge and black. “Your hand feels like it’s burning me, Nigel,” Adam whispered, and the fingers wrapped around his wrist tightened. “Please let me go.”

Immediately, Nigel released him. “Sorry,” he said, and Adam stalked quickly to his cot, where he sat down with a forceful plop. He was aware of the eyes following him, so when he lay down it was on his side, facing the wall. But even though he couldn’t see the eyes watching him, he could feel them, like he could feel the phantom heat of Nigel’s hand sinking into his skin, setting his insides on fire. Adam tucked his hands beneath his head and closed his eyes, uncaring that he’d left his own blanket on the other cot. Maybe in sleep he could escape the unreservedly consuming presence of his cellmate.

Chapter Text

Sleep was not an escape. Adam dreamt of warm skin and steaming water, soaking wet hair plastered against a striking brow. But his restless sleep did not last long. Soon, Adam’s shivers shook him awake. He curled up on the small cot, wishing for the meager covering the blanket could offer him, but he dared not turn around, dared not drink in the image of Nigel sleeping on the other side of the room, so far away. Adam resigned himself to freezing to death and clenched his teeth, trying to keep them from chattering too loudly.

That’s when he felt the warmth drape over his body as Nigel spread the blanket over him. Adam kept his eyes shut, but his hands clutched at the blanket and pulled it to tuck up around his chin. Still, he shook, an almost violent motion. But then there was a sweet sigh, a creak as the cot moved beneath Adam, and he felt Nigel ease beneath the covers beside him. It was instant warmth, instant relief, and Adam couldn’t stop himself from pushing against the hot body at his back. Nigel slung his arm over Adam’s waist and flattened his palm against his chest, pulling him even closer. At Adam’s ear, he felt reserved exhales that ruffled his curls and made him shiver, but not from the cold. Adam wasn’t cold anymore. He felt his body sink into Nigel, and before he could think of anything other than how perfect it all felt, he fell fast asleep.

--

The morning’s cast of comfort was shattered when Adam was ripped unceremoniously from Nigel’s arms by a guard.

“Fuck!” Nigel yelled, half-asleep and fully pissed.

Adam squirmed in the guard’s firm hold, wincing in pain as the handcuffs bit into his still-tender wrists. “It’s okay, Nigel.” The guard smacked Adam in the back of the head with an open hand and Adam stumbled forward. Only cruel fingers twining through his curls kept him from falling.

Nigel was up and out of the cot, his eyes raging, his body filled to tipping with so much boiling energy Adam could feel it coming off him like steam on the pavement after a summer rain. His cell mate pushed a finger into the guard’s chest. “Where the fuck are you taking him?”

The guard, the grimy one Adam recognized from his questioning the other day, was one of the few souls in Jilava that spoke English, and Adam was thankful to finally understand what was happening around him, even though the man’s voice was like gravel scraping inside his eardrums. “He has questions to answer,” he said, yanking Adam toward the door.

“Don’t fucking pull on him like that!” Nigel yelled, and he followed Adam and the guard to the door, until the guard released Adam and slammed his baton over Nigel’s shoulder.

“Back up, scamp!” the guard bellowed, and he opened the door and shoved Adam through so hard he fell to his knees. Adam looked back in time to see the door slamming shut on Nigel’s fuming face. He watched Nigel watching him through the square door window, until the guard dragged him away and he couldn’t see him anymore.

Adam was taken into a new room, small, with a single table and a chair on each side. The guard led him to the table and forced him down into the chair by a heavy hand on the shoulder. He attached Adam’s handcuffs to the table by way of a chain, then left, but not without landing a final smack against his cheek. When he was gone, the door closed behind him, Adam licked at the blood dribbling from his freshly busted lip. He was becoming far too familiar with the taste of blood.

He sat alone in the eerie, cold silence of the room for about ten minutes before he heard the door creak open behind him and was joined by a man he’d never seen before. Immaculately dressed, serious face adorned by a hat, stylishly crooked on his head. The man, a powerhouse, muscular, possibly made of bricks, sat down in the chair opposite Adam.

Adam gulped. He expected the man to say something, anything, but he only stared. It was the most intense stare Adam had ever been unfortunate enough to receive, and he quaked beneath it. This went on for…a very long time, until Adam finally licked his bloody lip, and said with a cracking voice, “Um.”

“Adam Raki, huh?” the man asked with a thin, arching eyebrow, and Adam nodded enthusiastically, thrilled by the American accent singing in his ears.

“Yes, that’s me,” he said. “But no one here believes me. Everyone keeps calling me Will Graham. And hitting me.”

“You look an awful lot like a man we’ve been looking for, Mr. Raki,” the man said, his lips finally relenting into a kindly grin. “In fact, I flew out here just to take a look at you in person.”

Adam shifted in his chair. “And now that you’re looking at me?”

“Now that I’m looking at you, I can say wholeheartedly, much as it pains me, that you’re definitely not Will Graham.” The man shook his head and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Somehow, some way, you look just like him. But I’ll be damned if you’re the real thing.”

“I am the real thing. I’m just Adam Raki,” Adam said.

“Well, Adam, I’m sorry about this mix-up. I’m going to see what I can do to get you released as soon as possible,” the man said, and he reached across the table to pat Adam’s shoulder. “If this happens to you again, be sure to mention my name. I’m Jack Crawford.” Jack stood up and headed for the door. He turned, tipped his hat to Adam, said, “Have a good one,” and left.

Adam thought of telling Jack Crawford that he couldn’t possibly have a ‘good one’ because he was still technically a prisoner in a Bucharest prison, but the man was gone before he could say it, and then Adam was being taken back to cell 30.

--

Nigel was waiting for him, leaning against the wall by the door, and when Adam walked through, already freed from his handcuffs, and the door slammed shut behind him, Nigel extended his arm. In his hand was a bottle, small and plastic and filled three quarters full with amber liquid.

“Hi, Nigel,” Adam said, feeling much lighter than he’d felt as he’d been hauled from the cell. “What’s this?”

“Hi, Adam,” Nigel answered. He jiggled the bottle in his hand, and the innards sloshed and released a curious perfume into the air. “This is whiskey.”

Adam wrinkled his nose at the invasive whiff of alcohol. “Where did you get it?”

“I traded it,” Nigel said, giving it another shake before bringing it to his lips to sip.

“You traded it?” Adam asked. “For what?”

“The guard that brought breakfast around has a thing for blondes,” Nigel began, “so I traded him the magazine for the hooch.”

Adam felt his mouth fall open, powerless to mask his surprise. “You gave away the porn, Nigel? You like that porn. I know you like it, because I saw how worn the binding was, and where you’d dog-eared a few of the pages.”

“I don’t give a fuck about the porn, Adam,” Nigel said, once again holding the bottle out for Adam to take. “Drinking is another hobby in this fucking place so take a fucking sip.”

Adam accepted it that time and tipped the bottle to his lips. The whiskey burned as he swallowed it down, but it nestled pleasantly in his stomach.

“Do you like it?” Nigel asked.

“I do like it,” said Adam. “But I liked the porn too. You didn’t have to trade it because of me.”

“Well, maybe I traded it because of me. Maybe I wanted a fucking drink,” Nigel responded smoothly, taking back the bottle and helping himself to a hearty gulp. He wiped a hand over his mouth and handed it back to Adam. “Besides, you didn’t like the fucking porn. Your eyes were closed the whole time we were looking at it.”

“I liked listening to you read,” Adam answered. When Nigel narrowed his eyes, Adam took a large sip of the whiskey, only choking on it a little.

“You liked the sound of my voice, I think you mean,” Nigel said, taking back the bottle. He walked over to his cot and sat down, reaching into his pocket for a cigarette, which he deftly lit. Adam waited for him to motion him forward with a nod of his head before joining him.

“Yes,” Adam answered. He crossed his hands politely in his lap and waited for Nigel to offer him the bottle.

“You like hearing me speak,” Nigel continued on a thick exhale of smoke.

“I do,” Adam said, because he did. “Can I have another sip, Nigel?”

“You may,” Nigel said, voice dropping low and melodic in a way that had Adam’s chest tightening. “Come here and get it.”

Adam smiled and scooted closer to Nigel on the cot. He paused for a moment before reaching out his hand to take the bottle from the other man. Nigel relinquished it and Adam enjoyed another sip. His belly was warm and his pulse was rapid. He took another sip. When he handed it back, Nigel took it, sipped it, and set it on the floor. Adam watched, rapt, as Nigel sucked the tip of the cigarette filter and turned his head to blow out the smoke.

“An American came to see me today,” Adam said to fill the silence, and also because the information was knocking around excitedly in his head. “He realized I’m not the man they’ve been looking for, which I told them, and they’ve wasted a lot of time for no reason, but now I’m definitely not Will Graham, whoever that is.”

“That’s fucking great news, Adam,” Nigel said.

“The man said I should be released soon.”

“They fucking better release you soon, darling, considering you’re not fucking guilty. Fucking definitely.”

“I’ve missed my space conference,” Adam said, a bit glumly. “Hopefully my boss will understand.”

“If your boss doesn’t understand why you were unable to attend a fucking space conference he can go fuck himself, cant he?”

Adam made a face. “I don’t think he would…do that.”

“Do what?”

“…Fuck himself,” Adam said in a tiny voice. He could feel his cheeks heating.

Nigel laughed softly and threw his cigarette, barely smoked halfway, to the floor. “I mean, I don’t think you’ll be in trouble, Adam. This is sort of the best excuse for missing a space conference fucking ever.”

Adam smiled, still feeling toasty from the liquor, and leaned his head to rest against the wall. A dark curl fell over his eyes and he blew at it, trying to make it move. Nigel brought his hand up, and with hesitant fingers brushed the errant strand from Adam’s brow. His hand lingered when its job was complete, hovering over Adam’s cheek.

“Nigel,” Adam sighed.

“Yes?” Nigel asked, hand still almost touching Adam’s face. They were sitting very close.

“Nothing,” Adam said, and he took Nigel’s wrist. “I just like saying your name.” He brought Nigel’s hand to his skin and his eyes shut when the warm, large hand cupped his cheek.

Beside him, Nigel was nearly vibrating out of his skin. Had Adam’s eyes been open, he’d have seen Nigel leaning in, drawing himself closer into Adam’s whirling, intoxicating atmosphere. But he kept his eyes shut, and his hand slid down Nigel’s wrist, down his forearm, and back up to rest against the hand pressed to his face.

“Adam,” Nigel said, and it was a hoarse whisper.

“Yes?” Adam asked, eyes still shut, lips licked and parted, pink from biting.

“Nothing,” Nigel said, and Adam could hear the grin in his words. “I like it when you say my name, too.”

“Oh,” sighed Adam, and a second hand framed his other cheek. All he could smell was the clean, smoky scent of Nigel, and he had to actively keep himself from melting between his hands.

“Look at me,” Nigel said, and before Adam opened his eyes, he felt Nigel’s forehead press lightly against his own, felt his breath tickling his skin. “Look at me, Adam.”

Adam breathed in deeply. And then he looked. It was startling to see Nigel so close, but he didn’t wrench away. He brought his own hands up to smooth over Nigel’s scruffed cheeks, raking his fingers through the sandy blond strands. His blue eyes, huge and bright, he directed at Nigel’s honeyed brown. “I’m looking at you, Nigel,” Adam stated in a daze. “Now what?”

Nigel laughed, just a quick, single snort through his nose. His thumbs caressed Adam’s cheeks and his fingertips carded through his hair, sending a shiver through them both.

“I don’t usually maintain eye contact this long, Nigel,” Adam insisted, surprised at himself for not already attempting to twist away.

“You can close your eyes, Adam,” Nigel told him. “I just wanted to see them up close. Thank you for opening them for me.”

“This is a very odd conversation to be having,” Adam said breathily, turning his face so his nose smushed against Nigel’s. “Why are we so close?”

“Because you’re going to kiss me,” Nigel said.

And it made sense, Adam thought, because he did want to kiss Nigel. He felt the truth of it in his stomach, that fluttering, uncomfortable tug that had nothing to do with his sips of whiskey and everything to do with Nigel. Nigel, who was so hot and rough and sweet, and whose nose brushed against his, whose forehead met his, whose fingers wrapped wonderfully around the back of Adam’s neck. Nigel, Nigel, Nigel.

“I am going to kiss you,” Adam said.

“I’m glad, darling,” Nigel whispered. “Please fucking get on with it though.”

Chapter Text

Adam moved the necessary inch and planted his lips on Nigel’s mouth. It was a feather-light kiss, soft and skimming, and then Adam pulled away, breathless. Nigel’s eyes were closed and his lips were parted and panting softly. Adam’s heart pounded in his chest and, suddenly, his proximity to Nigel was all-consuming. Overwhelmed, Adam pushed up from the cot and rushed to the door, leaning his back against it, his hands folding over his stomach as if to calm the rabid butterflies. He bit his lip and tasted Nigel.

“Adam?” Nigel asked, his eyes finally opening. He looked at Adam through a tumble of displaced hair. “Are you okay?”

His breaths came faster, heavier as he watched Nigel stand from the cot. “No, I’m not okay,” Adam answered, voice thick with too many emotions to mentally sort through. And it only got worse, the twisted feelings bumbling around in his insides, as Nigel walked slowly over to him. He stopped a foot away from Adam, tilting his head curiously.

“Can you tell me why?” Nigel asked.

Adam clutched at his chest and licked his lips. “My heart hurts,” he said.

Nigel reached out his hand and set it gently against Adam’s chest, over his heart. “How does it hurt?”

“I don’t know. It feels like it’s being torn, like it can’t beat fast enough, like it’s too full,” Adam said, his words tangling and tripping. His hand squeezed Nigel’s, pushing his hand harder against his chest. “No, that doesn’t make any sense. But I don’t know how to describe it.” Adam forced himself to look at Nigel, his eyes watery blue. “It hurts, Nigel.”

Nigel rested his free hand on Adam’s waist and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Adam surged forward and kissed him hard. Nigel groaned beneath the hot, claiming lips and pushed Adam back against the door. Their breath came heavily through their noses, neither willing to break the seal of their kiss, their mouths moving smooth and rough. Adam tilted his waist up, demandingly rubbing his swelling cock against Nigel, who reciprocated in kind, fervently grinding their hips together. When their erections met in a delicious slide, Adam had to turn his head away, finally breaking their kiss to moan loudly at the sensation. Nigel’s hands slid around to grab his bottom, kneading the flesh beneath the striped jumpsuit and bending his mouth to press a trail of wet kisses over Adam’s throat.

“Nigel,” Adam whimpered, his hands running down the man’s strong back. Nigel lifted his head and nuzzled against Adam’s cheek.

“Do you want me to stop?” he breathed, and Adam trembled as he felt the words whisper fiercely against his skin.

“No,” Adam sighed, sinking his fingers into Nigel’s hair and directing their lips together again. “Don’t stop.”

They kissed, Nigel’s hips flush with Adam’s, their bodies pressed tightly, rattling the door every time Adam was slammed up against it with freshened urgency. When Nigel licked into Adam’s mouth, his tongue searching and insistent as it massaged against Adam’s, they both hummed their satisfaction, but it was Adam who slid his hand down to cup the rock-hard bulge in Nigel’s jumpsuit.

Nigel broke away from the kiss with a gasp. “Fuck,” he groaned, keeping his cheek pressed to Adam’s. He moved against the hand, rubbing eagerly. “Adam, fucking hell.”

“Is this okay?” Adam asked, suddenly unsure of himself, but unwilling to draw his hand away from Nigel’s heat.

“It’s fucking perfect, Adam,” Nigel said, and he grasped Adam’s chin and turned the smaller man to face him. “You’re perfect.”

Adam smiled, kissed Nigel, and pulled away. “I want to taste you,” he said, his lips shining damply. He laughed at the look of shock on Nigel’s face and grabbed the man by the shoulders, reversing their positions so Nigel was suddenly pressed against the door. Adam’s fingers slid beneath the neckline of the jumpsuit, peeling it away from Nigel’s muscular arms. It went with little resistance, Nigel shivering when his bare back touched the cold metal of the door. Adam chased the exposure of skin with his mouth, kissing every inch of Nigel’s tummy as he slipped the fabric away, until he was on his knees and the jumpsuit was bunched around Nigel’s ankles. He looked up at Nigel through a fringe of dark curls, his face tantalizingly close to the tent of arousal in Nigel’s boxer shorts.

Nigel’s eyes were huge. He placed his hands in Adam’s hair gently.

“I want to hear your voice,” Adam said. “Tell me what to do, Nigel.”

It was almost enough to bring Nigel to his knees, Adam’s sweet, keening plea for instructions, but the small hands on his hips kept him steady, and Nigel swallowed past the lump in his throat. “You want to suck my cock, Adam?” he asked, and Adam smiled, because he could hear the disbelief in Nigel’s voice, the recognition rare enough to be distractingly pleasing, and he placed an open-mouthed kiss over the thin white fabric of Nigel’s shorts, at the base of his cock.

“Yes,” Adam answered, his breath dampening Nigel’s shorts as he panted around the head of the cloth-covered bulge. “I do.”

“Take off my shorts, then, darling,” Nigel instructed, voice dazed and deep.

Adam’s slim fingers fitted beneath the elastic band and pulled the underwear down over Nigel’s hips until his cock sprang free, red and shining and impossibly thick. “Nigel, you’re so big,” Adam said wondrously, eyes finding Nigel’s with surprise. “I don’t think I’ve seen one this big before, not even in my videos.”

Nigel chuckled, preening at the praise. “Do you think you can fit it in your mouth?”

“I don’t know,” Adam said honestly with a slight shake of his head. “I want to try.”

“Start with just the tip, darling,” Nigel said, hands caressing softly over Adam’s jaw. “See if you like it. You don’t have to take any more than you want.”

“Okay,” Adam said, straightening his shoulders in a way that made Nigel smile, like he was readying himself for battle. He leaned forward, but then stopped to address Nigel once more. “I’ve never wanted to do this with anyone before, Nigel,” he said sweetly.

“Neither have I,” Nigel said, and then Adam closed his eyes and parted his lips. “Fuck!” Nigel moaned when Adam’s mouth enveloped the head of his cock with slick, velvet heat.
Beth had done this for Adam sometimes, and he tried to mimic a few things he remembered. He swirled his tongue over the slit of Nigel’s cockhead, and suckled gently against the tip, making sure his teeth didn’t scrape painfully against the sensitive skin. Then he popped off and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I like how you taste, Nigel,” he told the man standing over him.

“That’s good,” said Nigel on a rough exhale of held breath. “Do you want to try and take more?”

Adam frowned at the huge, swollen cock bobbing beside his lips. “I’ll try,” he said, and he wrapped a hand around the base before sinking his mouth over the head. He wasn’t exaggerating when he’d told Nigel it was the biggest he’d ever seen, and he felt it to be even truer once his lips were sliding down over it. Already his jaw was stretched wide, and he had barely taken half of Nigel in his mouth. But the tightening fingers in his hair and the breathy sighs of pleasure Adam was causing made him want to keep going. He squeezed his eyes shut and forced his mouth, plunging his dampened, plumped lips farther down the silky hot skin of Nigel’s cock until his eyes watered and he gagged.

“Whoa, Adam,” Nigel said, and he carefully pushed back on Adam’s shoulders. When Adam didn’t break the suction of his lips, however, and proceeded to bob back down on Nigel, he lost his grip in Adam’s curls and his eyes nearly crossed from pleasure. Only when Adam made a second choking sound did Nigel grasp a loose fist in his hair and pull him off. A trail of saliva linked Adam’s wet lips to Nigel’s twitching length. On his knees before him, Adam was breathing hard and his face was flushed. “Come here,” Nigel said, demanded. He took Adam’s small, soft hand in his and brought him to his feet.

“I could have taken it all,” Adam told him, tears of effort still streaming down his pale cheeks. “I just need more practice.”

Nigel wiped the tears away and returned Adam’s smile. “I know you could have,” he said. “But I fucking missed you.” He pulled Adam forward, hands sweeping Adam from his feet, lifting up beneath his knees to wrap his legs around his waist.

Adam laughed in surprise and landed a light kiss on Nigel’s mouth. “How could you miss me? I didn’t go anywhere.” Nigel began to walk them towards his cot and Adam let out another happy sound, something between a gasp and a guffaw. “I’ll miss you when I leave,” he said, lips brushing against the scruff of Nigel’s jaw. He felt himself lowered, as Nigel brought them both down to lying on the cot. He leaned Adam on his back, keeping the legs tight around his waist, and laid himself heavily on top. “Nigel?”

The larger man huffed like a wild thing and burrowed his nose into Adam’s neck. When he spoke, it was a ticklish grumble against Adam’s skin. “I’ll miss you, too.”

He kissed Adam then, deeply and roughly, making the smaller man squirm delightfully beneath him as he was smashed sweetly into the thin mattress of the cot. Adam squeezed his legs tighter around Nigel’s waist and slapped him playfully on the back until Nigel released his mouth. “I can’t breathe when you kiss me like that,” he told Nigel, who bent dutifully to drag his lips along the hollow of Adam’s throat. “Mmm,” Adam moaned, relishing every place where his body connected with Nigel’s. The thought stabbed at his heart and the sick, broken feeling filled him once more. He must have stiffened noticeably in Nigel’s arms, because he looked up at Adam through a parting of silky hair with concern plastered on his face.

He pressed his hand over Adam’s chest, fanning out his fingers. “It still hurts,” he said.

Adam nodded and asked, “How do you know?”

“Because it hurts me, too.”

“Oh.” Adam picked his head off the mattress, seeking the warmth of Nigel’s lips, finding it. He sighed into the kiss and let the man’s fingers spread beneath the collar of his jumpsuit.

“May I take this off?” Nigel asked, tugging delicately on the striped fabric over Adam’s collarbone.

Adam briefly turned his head to see the black and white pile of Nigel’s discarded jumpsuit by the cell door. The fact that Nigel was stripped bare and he wasn’t was highly amusing to Adam, so as he nodded his approval of Nigel’s request, his accompanying giggles were irrepressible. He wiggled, helping the progress of Nigel’s hands, and soon he was lifting his hips, shivering when the fabric of the jumpsuit slid over his waist. His eyes followed the jumpsuit as it sailed across the room to join Nigel’s on the floor, then glanced up at the man leaning into him, covering Adam’s body with his own. Their free flesh pushed together, impossibly hot, and Adam groaned as Nigel’s thick cover of chest hair brushed against his smooth pectorals.

He noticed, with strange relief, that when he was touching Nigel, the pain in his chest both subsided and grew in fervency. At the same time. He felt pulled and stretched in a way he was entirely unaccustomed to. “The fact that I’m going to be freed from prison soon is having an unpredictable reaction,” Adam confided in Nigel, causing him to abandon the delicate skin of Adam’s throat to look him in the eyes. Their shine made Adam fidget, but Nigel held him fast between the cage of his arms. “I should be happy to get out of here.”

“You’re not happy?” Nigel asked. His face was so close to Adam’s that when he spoke, the scruffle of his growing facial hair tickled Adam’s smooth jawline.

“I am happy,” said Adam. “But not because I’m leaving. I like being here like this with you. I like how you feel on top of me. You’re heavy, but it’s nice.”

“I like those things too,” Nigel said, following his words with a light kiss on Adam’s brow.

“But when I think of leaving, it makes me,” Adam began, but his voice fell small and he let his words trail to silence.

Nigel brushed the side of Adam’s face. “Hush,” he said and pressed a kiss to Adam’s lips. “Don’t think about it.”

A low whimper escaped Adam’s lips, and Nigel stole it away with his mouth. “But Nigel,” Adam said between kisses, “I can’t keep from thinking about it. I’m not going to be able to feel this again. Once I leave.”

Nigel made a small, deep growl at that, and nuzzled into the soft stretch between Adam’s neck and shoulder. “What if I make it so you can feel me? For days and days after you’re gone?”

“How?” Adam asked, but when he saw the smirk play out on Nigel’s lips he laughed. “Oh,” he said breathlessly. “But it won’t be the same.”

“It’ll be all we have,” Nigel said, pressing his hips against Adam’s. “I can make you feel me,” he said, and Adam groaned helplessly as their cocks rubbed together with delectable friction. “I can be so deep inside you, you’ll never fucking forget me.”

His words, his heat, his stiff cock sliding over his stomach. Adam was drowning in Nigel, and his answer was a pathetic mew of acquiescence. He couldn’t have tried for more words if he’d wanted. What Adam did want, desperately, was for Nigel to touch him, so he grabbed the man’s hand and forced it down, over his chest, between their grinding hips, and into the hot crevice of Adam’s thighs.

“What do you want?” Nigel asked, a steamed breath half-obscured by Adam’s lips as he pushed their mouths together. Nigel plunged his tongue past Adam’s lips possessively, and Adam melted weakly in his arms, his mouth opening obediently to Nigel’s ministrations. With his southerly directed hand, Nigel probed at Adam’s opening, just gentle, teasing presses around the tight ring of muscle, until Adam was writhing beneath him. “Do you want me to fuck you, darling?”

“Nigel,” Adam sighed, bucking his hips up to relieve his impossibly hard length against Nigel’s tummy. “Please, please,” he begged with powerless puffs of air. “I never want to stop feeling you.”

Nigel brought his hand away from Adam’s ass, making Adam cry out with upset. “It’s okay, I’m just wetting my fingers,” Nigel explained before he spread his lips around two of his long digits. Adam watched him, wide-eyed, until Nigel had soaked himself enough and removed his fingers from his mouth. They dripped with spit, and Nigel brought them back down, returning them to touch the hot, tender skin of Adam’s ass. “Spread your legs for me,” Nigel directed, and he pushed Adam’s thighs wide with his own resting knees. “I’m going to put my finger inside you now,” he said. Adam nodded weakly and bit at his lips.

The initial breach was weird. Nigel’s finger felt gargantuan as the tip pushed slowly past the wrinkled opening of Adam’s hole. “It stings,” Adam panted, and Nigel smoothed his broad palm over Adam’s heart.

“I know,” he said, lowering himself to lie once more over Adam’s body. He kissed him, and as his tongue licked into Adam’s mouth, his finger pushed further inside. Adam gasped beneath him and rocked his hips up, thrusting his erection against Nigel. Nigel slowly began to pull out the slicked finger, but before the tip could pop free, he slid back in, this time knuckle deep, and he swallowed the needy moans Adam made with a constant, wet kiss. His finger began to move, careful but insistent, increasing its pace as it swirled and waggled inside the tunnel of Adam’s heat.

Adam turned his head away from Nigel’s mouth to suck in a lungful of air, and Nigel smoothly pushed in a second finger. The yell from Adam could not be stopped. “Nigel!”

“You’re doing so well,” Nigel praised as he worked his fingers deep inside Adam’s asshole. “You’re so tight. You feel so fucking good.”

“Mmm,” was all Adam could string together as Nigel began to mercilessly finger fuck him. It was not without pain, Nigel’s saliva being a poor substitute for proper lubricant, but the pain would make him remember, Adam decided. And he wanted to remember the rough, beautiful man forever. Suddenly, Nigel’s fingers crooked inside him and brushed against his prostate. “Aaah!” he yelled in surprise and ecstasy. His entire body shook and he clawed at Nigel’s shoulder blades as the fingers began massaging the small bundle of nerves.

“Does that feel good?” Nigel asked, not letting Adam answer before he was pressing their lips back together in another greedy kiss. Adam hummed his approval and spread his thighs as far apart as they could go, urging Nigel deeper, trying to sink further onto his big fingers. “I think you’re stretched enough now,” Nigel said and he removed his fingers.

Adam groaned at the loss, and wrapped his legs around Nigel’s hips demandingly. “Please, Nigel.”

Nigel was already spitting into his hand and slathering up his cock. He lined himself up against Adam, kissed him sweetly on the mouth, and asked, “Can I?”

“Please,” nodded Adam, steadying his arms across Nigel’s broad back.

The push inside was slow, and Adam grunted every time Nigel sank a bit deeper, his hole aching and twitching as it was stretched wide for Nigel’s thick cock. “Fuck, you’re tight,” Nigel whispered lovingly into Adam’s ear, and the crude language on such sweet tones sent a shiver down Adam’s spine. He arched his back and pushed against the intrusion until Nigel was buried deep inside. They kept still for a few minutes, just breathing, waiting for Adam’s muscles to relax, and Adam could feel every pulse of Nigel’s cock inside him, like a second heartbeat. It was wonderful, and he kissed Nigel slowly.

Eventually, Nigel began to move, not thrusting, but rocking their bodies together, pressing so deep into Adam that the smaller man could do nothing but groan with pleasure and keep his eyes firmly shut. “You’re fucking perfect,” Nigel said as he planted himself all the way to the hilt. “I could fuck you all day.”

“That would be,” Adam gasped, “impractical.” Nigel finally began to pull himself out to the tip, slowly, so slowly, and then plunged back inside with such force that Adam slid further up on the mattress. “But I would let you.”

“Would you?” Nigel asked as, at last, he began to fuck in and out of Adam’s sensitive asshole. “You like my cock filling you up?”

“I love it,” Adam admitted and he hid the bright red flush on his face with the back of his hand before Nigel’s rough fucking jolted him and he had to cling to the strong shoulders above him.

“Tell me what you love about it,” Nigel grunted, pounding hard into Adam’s tight ass.

Adam’s brain was overly full with the onslaught of pleasure and pain, but he tried mumbling together a logical sentence, because he knew Nigel would like hearing it. “You’re really big.”

“Yeah?” Nigel asked, pleased and plowing a rough rhythm.

“Yes,” Adam sighed, his words a staccato as Nigel fucked him into the mattress. “Definitely above average in size. I love how it feels.”

“Good,” Nigel said, relentless in his brutal pace. The cot creaked obscenely with every thrust. “You’re going to feel me inside you forever. You’re never going to forget how I feel.”

“I don’t think,” Adam moaned, “that I’ll feel you forever.”

“I’ll feel you forever, then,” Nigel said, lifting Adam’s knees to rest over his shoulders as he finally began slowing his pace. Adam moaned at the new position, and Nigel slid deep, his cock filling him with slow, languid thrusts until he found Adam’s sweet spot.

“Nigel!” Adam gasped.

“Right there, darling?” Nigel asked, and when Adam nodded, sending sweaty curls falling stickily over his forehead, Nigel began to apply small, specific thrusts. Adam’s entire body shook and his nails dug deep into Nigel’s shoulders. A string of pre-cum stretched between the tip of Adam’s neglected erection and Nigel’s furry tummy.

“I’m going to come, Nigel,” Adam breathed, and when Nigel continued his relentless prodding, and began sucking his neck, Adam convulsed, his entire body overcome with the tremors of his orgasm. Ropes of white hot ejaculate coated their sliding stomachs.

“Fuck, Adam,” Nigel said, and he continued to rut shamelessly against Adam, plunging deep and fast. Adam’s muscles clenched around him in the spasms of his release, and Nigel fucked him with abandon, growling and grunting with every thrust of his hips. “I want to fill you,” he said.

“What?”

“I mean I want to come inside you.”

“Okay,” replied Adam, who was so beside himself with pleasure all he could do was cling to Nigel. He liked it. He liked being used for Nigel, liked the feeling of being a hole for Nigel to fill.

Nigel gasped and then his hips were slowing and his rhythm became erratic. Adam could feel the hot spurts of Nigel’s come painting his insides and he grabbed two fistfuls of Nigel’s hair and pulled him down for a needy kiss. Nigel rode out his orgasm, continuing a slow, easy rhythm into Adam until his cock began to soften. When he slid free, he moaned at the moist sound of suction, and rolled onto his side. He pulled Adam against his chest.

“Are you being a big spoon?” Adam asked, his voice soft and weary. He was sweaty, they both were, but Nigel’s chest felt so good and comfortable pressed up against Adam’s back. He shut his eyes and, when Nigel bent his head down to cover his neck in lazy kisses, Adam laughed.

--

They slept, wrapped in each other’s arms, barely moving except to burrow closer. They slept, and Adam dreamt sweet dreams about Nigel’s lips, the little crinkles around his eyes when he smiled, and his lilting, deep voice, telling him what to do. They slept, and they were happy. They slept until they were woken, and Adam was pulled from Nigel’s arms by the cold, cruel fingers of a prison guard.

He blinked in the dark, confused and half asleep, looking down at Nigel’s sprawled form on the cot, wrapped cozily in their blankets. The guard was the greasy, piggish one that spoke English, and he pushed Adam towards the door, but did not handcuff him.

The noise stirred Nigel awake, and he sat up, rubbing his eyes and swinging his feet to the ground. The guard threw a bag of clothes at Adam. Inside were his corduroy pants and sweater. The clothes he’d been arrested in. He felt the soft fabric between his fingers and stared at the guard in flustered shock. “I’m being released already?” It was too soon. His heart beat wildly in his chest and he looked desperately at Nigel, who was standing up, the blanket wrapped around his waist.

The guard grunted. “The American’s orders. Apparently a body was found in South America and, without a doubt, it’s the work of the real Graham and his boyfriend. It sped up your release paperwork. So now you’re being released. Get dressed.”

Adam looked at Nigel as he pulled on his pants and sweater. It felt strange to be in his own clothes. It felt even stranger to be looking at Nigel for what would have to be the last time. He put his hand over his chest, his fingers bunching into the sweater’s fabric. Nigel nodded sadly.

“Hurry up,” the guard hissed and he grabbed at Adam’s arm. Adam shook him loose.

“Get your hands off me. I’m not your prisoner anymore,” he said, and he walked over to Nigel and kissed him. The guard scoffed, but made no move to stop them, so Adam kept kissing Nigel a moment longer, sighing when the man dropped his blanket to wrap his arms tightly around Adam’s waist. “I don’t want to go,” Adam said when he finally pulled away.

Nigel pushed a curl from Adam’s eyes and cupped his face in his hands. “But you have to.” He kissed Adam softly on the forehead. “It’s okay,” he said. “I won’t forget.”

Adam blinked away the tears building in his eyes and kissed Nigel one last time. “Goodbye, Nigel,” he said. He turned from him, only stopping by his cot to adjust his sock and discreetly reach for something beneath the bed. No one saw him slide the object into his sock. And then he stood up and let the guard lead him from the cell. He looked over his shoulder at Nigel, who was standing in the center of the cell, smiling.

“Goodbye, Adam,” he called, and it was the last thing Adam heard Nigel say before the door to cell 30 slammed shut.

--

Adam let himself be led all the way outside, and the guard was pulling around the transport vehicle when he finally made his decision. He stood beneath the ominous black archway of Jilava, and when the guard came to open the passenger seat door for him, Adam pretended that he needed to fix his shoelace. He bent his knee and put his hand in his sock. His fingers wrapped around the handle of the knife Nigel had given him. When he rose, he stepped forward and pressed the edge of the blade against the guard’s neck.

“I’d like to go back to my cell, please,” Adam said in his most authoritative voice.

The guard’s eyes were huge, but he didn’t move.

Adam swallowed hard and his hands were shaking, but he clutched the knife firmer and pressed the blade harder against the guard’s throat. He thought of Nigel, what Nigel would say. “Take me back to the fucking cell or I’ll fucking slit your fucking throat. Fucking. Fuck.”

--

Back in cell 30, Nigel pulled his jumpsuit on and collapsed onto Adam’s cot. He didn’t cry, because Nigel never cried, but his chest pounded painfully, and his stomach was a knot of nerves. He stared at the ceiling and tried to take deep breaths with his nose, trying to catch any lingering traces of Adam’s scent. The small cell still smelled vaguely of sex, and that made Nigel smile, but only for a moment before he shut his eyes in anguish and scowled.

When the cell door opened, he ignored it. When a body was pushed inside, he ignored it. Another cell mate so soon was unusual, but not outside the realm of possibility. Nigel turned over to face the wall. He didn’t want to be friendly with the new prisoner. He wanted to sleep and dream of Adam.

When he felt the cot creak, Nigel nearly jumped out of his skin. He cursed in Romanian, and tried to turn around to glare at the man pressing against his back, but the caress of small, soft hands gliding over his arms stilled his movement. He hardly dared to ask, because it was impossible, but he couldn’t keep the name from forming on his lips. “Adam?”

A cold nose nuzzled into Nigel’s neck. “I want to be the big spoon this time,” Adam said, and he kissed the shell of Nigel’s ear.

“What the fuck are you doing back here?” Nigel asked, and he did turn now, facing Adam and tucking him close against his chest.

“I made the guard bring me back,” Adam said casually, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He kissed Nigel hungrily on the lips, and then he brought his lips to brush softly against Nigel’s ear. “Besides,” he whispered, “it will be easier for me to implement our escape from the inside.”

Nigel pulled away, his eyes wild and bright and beaming with love for the beautiful young man in his arms. “Fucking what?”

Adam bit his lip and laughed. “Kiss me again, Nigel, and then I’ll tell you.”

Nigel did kiss Adam again. And then they began to plan their escape.