The process of leaving the prison following the visit with Tony was an eerie echo of the day over a year ago when Jaye had been released. They were signed out. They walked through gates, each layer of security peeling away to leave them that much closer to the freedom waiting on the other side. There was a sense in him to not walk too quickly or seem too eager to go, lest they tag him for suspicious activity and detain him until they got to the bottom of it.
A year ago, he’d waited for them to drag him back inside, to lay new charges on him for Tio or a few other incidents since his initiation into the Disciples. He knew they’d figure out they’d made a mistake, and tear away his chance at escape. Part of him had actually hoped for it, though he would never have admitted as much out loud, even to Dixon. At least if he’d stayed in Sheridan, he’d see Cash again, and he wouldn’t have to deal with going out into the world with nothing and no one — no friends, no family, no job, no home, no possessions. In FCI Sheridan, all was familiar. He knew how to work the system. There was a dangerous comfort there.
Now, a year later and in entirely different circumstances, Jaye registered the odd look Dixon gave him. It seemed expectant or confused, spiced with a little wariness. With Dixon’s hand on his back, Jaye was led out into the sunlight. He folded his arms and tried not to let it show how his heart was beating so hard. The towers with guards holding long-range rifles were quite close. They could pick him off easily if they wanted, which gave him the destructive impulse to run, screaming, for the complex’s exit.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here,” Dixon said, unlocking the rental car. “Place gives me the creeps.”
“No shit.”
They got into the car and shut the doors. That little act of sealing out the prison’s rank air helped Jaye breathe easier. He leaned back in his seat and took a deep breath, itching to be away.
“I could see it,” Dixon said like it pained him as he slipped the key into the ignition and started the engine. “In your face, your posture, and that place… I could see you in there. I don’t like it.”
Jaye turned to look at him, not knowing what to say.
Because Dixon wasn’t wrong.
The phone began to ring.
Grant was first, though Dixon could hear Brekken’s commentary in the background. He pictured her pacing in the background, rubbing her arms and worrying.
“How’s it going? You go there yet? The prison?”
“Yeah, just got back,” Dixon told his brother-in-law. Jaye sat on the edge of the hotel room bed, clicking through television stations, tuning out the world. “Saw Tony.”
“As bad as you thought?” Grant guessed.
“Worse. When I first met Jaye, he wasn’t exactly doing great either, but this is a whole other level. This guy is actively being tortured on a regular basis. He’s got an end in sight, but he doesn’t even care much, other than to just have it all over and done. He’s not living for anything. We tried to tell him a little about Zus to give him a place to keep in mind and look forward to seeing.”
He wanted to talk to Jaye about what he’d agreed to, but he was afraid to ask, knowing he could probably guess the answers.
Dixon walked out of the room and into the hotel’s hallway, shutting the door behind him.
“The whole trip is fucking with Jaye’s head though, man. He’s trying to prove to himself he’s past all of this, but how can anyone be? He’s still just a kid.”
He wanted to get Grant’s opinion on the whole Cash thing, but also thought he could guess what the response would be. He’d only make it harder to find a compromise with Jaye, so Dixon kept it all to himself.
“And how are you holding up?” Grant asked.
Looking at the long corridor of rooms, all the same except the numbers on the doors, Dixon pictured prison cells instead. He imagined Jaye being locked inside theirs from the outside, trapped and resigned to it. Locked inside with a monster who only wanted one thing from him. “I’ve never felt more helpless, to be honest,” Dixon admitted. “I can’t save him from any of this. Can’t save Tony either. I can’t make it so that those other men never touched them or forced themselves on them. What can you do after someone’s innocence and mental health has been torn away? Being there isn’t enough. It just isn’t.”
“I know, Dix, but still… you’ve gotta try.”
While Dixon hung up with Grant only to get a call from Sesi, Jaye sat on the bed and answered his phone on the third ring.
“Yeah?”
“Talk to me,” Brekken blurted. He could hear how tense she was. “Please.”
“What can I say here? I mean, really? I hate it. I’ve never wanted to be anywhere less, but no one did this for me. I need to do it for Tony.”
“But you saw him. It’s done. You can come home now, right? Isn’t your flight tomorrow?”
“Night. Tomorrow night. I, uh.” He sighed. “I need to pay one more visit first. I made a deal. Tony would fly to Zus if I saw Cash one more time.”
“I thought that was the plan anyway? What kind of shitty deal is that?”
“You didn’t hear him, Brekken. I honestly think this is the only way we even have a slim chance he doesn’t do something awful before we get a chance to actually help.”
“You can’t see Cash, Jaye. That’s like Dixon agreeing to a one-on-one with Marcus, may he rot in hell.”
“He can’t touch me,” he reminded her. “There are rules.”
“But he can make you feel like someone you aren’t anymore. I know how these mental games go. I see the way guys like Marcus yank a little string and it collapses everything inside their victim. They set it up that way on purpose.”
“I’m no one’s victim.”
She made a tiny sound of exasperation.“Fine. Tell me you actually want to see this douchebag. Convince me.”
“Do I want to? No. Do I have to? Absolutely. I know he only sees me as Johnny. As a whore. Would you want to see a guy who only sees you as a whore?”
“Jaye…” Her frustration made her sound eerily more similar to Dixon. “Don’t do this. Maybe Dixon can’t say this to you, but I can. Don’t see this guy. Don’t do this to yourself.”
“I have to. Not just for Tony. I haven’t ever gotten to say goodbye to anyone, Brekken. Ever. Do you know what that’s like?”
“You’re not bringing him with you, are you?” Brekken said softly, the realization hitting her. “Dixon. You don’t want him there.”
“I’ll see you soon, okay? Thank you for caring so much.”
“Love you, kid. You know I do. Please be careful.”
“I will. Love you too.”
Jaye felt the heat in his face, the pressure in his neck, jaw, and forehead as if his blood was going to pop his head like an overripe tomato.
There was nothing Dixon could say to stop him. They both knew it. So to avoid a huge fight, they said nothing.
Dixon hadn’t tried to argue the point. He knew he was outmatched by Jaye’s stubbornness, but Dixon was upset. More upset than Jaye had ever seen him. He looked like he was coming apart, like Jaye was actively hurting him in ways it would take a long time to forgive or get over. He kept looking over at Jaye, pleading without words but only energy, raw need, and heartfelt love. To deny all of that, to walk away from it and keep hurting him instead was the hardest thing Jaye had ever had to do. No one had ever given him as much passionate, active, complete unconditional love as Dixon.
Jaye was spitting on that by doing this.
But he still had to do it.
In his mind, he heard distant screaming, banging, fighting.
Johnny!
JOHNNY!
Of all of the countless times him and Cash fucked, one time stood out sharpest.
It was the night after the gang bang porno shoot. Jaye hurt physically, mentally, emotionally, you name it. He wanted to not be touched, to not be expected to give any more than he had. He wanted a chance to heal, rest.
But Cash had climbed down to the lower bunk. Pulled down Jaye’s pants. Forced his oversized cock up Jaye’s swollen, sore rectum. Listened to him cry into his pillow as he rutted and rode him, holding him down and pulling his hips back into the deep thrusts.
After falling back into that moment, it took a strangely massive amount of effort and force of will to climb back out of it.
“Jaye?”
They were parked in the lot outside the prison visitor’s entrance. It was a sunny, warm day.
Jaye was shaking uncontrollably, his clasped hands shoved down between his legs, his body curled forward in his seat, his head bowed.
Softer, “Jaye?”
He grunted. Rubbed his hands over his head.
“You know I love you, right?”
“Please don’t,” Jaye begged.
“I love you so much,” Dixon told him, with his whole heart, wearing it right out there where anyone could smash it and ruin it forever, as if he hadn’t learned to hide it away for his own safety. As if he would never learn. “You’re not this guy. You’re not his. You’re more than this. You’ve always been so much more than this.”
He was glad Dixon knew without having to be told why Jaye couldn’t take him inside. He would never dream of taking someone whose heart was so horribly exposed around someone like Cash. Not in a million years. Not for any selfish reason that could ever exist.
JOHNNY!
Jaye said the only thing he could. He told the truth. “I’m so tired, Dix. I want it to be over. I want it to stop.”
Dixon was breathing hard, charging the air, holding the keys to the car as if they were the keys to everything.
Jaye pulled the handle. He jumped out, shut the door and hurried away.
When Cash came around the doorway, Jaye felt the inner tug, the loyalty, the aches, the sense memories, the old fear and devotion. Before Cash recognized or saw him, Jaye had time to see the new wound circling Cash’s right ear, as if someone had tried to slice it right off. It wasn’t bandaged, the wound partially healed but still garish. He also looked thinner, his muscles, scars, and tattoos starker with the shriveled nature of his appearance. He wore his age clearly in the lines around his eyes and mouth. Cash was an old thirty-six. Maybe the oldest thirty-six-year-old there had ever been.
Recognition finally hit, and Cash blinked in surprise. He was angry, his upper lip curling, jaw clenching, then he was laughing. Laughing it off as he walked over in his shackles, jingling on the approach like a perverted Santa Claus, his hands tight together in front of him, his feet shuffling along.
Falling into the chair across the table, Cash didn’t hide the long look up and down he gave to Jaye’s body. It set the tone for the whole visit. Jaye wore jeans and a button-down black shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows due to the warmth of the day. Some of his spider web — his initiation tattoo — showed, crawling down his arm.
“Fuck you for cutting your hair,” was Cash’s greeting.
“Yeah, well, I’m no one’s bitch to ride anymore,” Jaye retorted, holding eye contact and not letting Cash push him into submissiveness.
Cash smiled a mean smile.
“Is that so? What about that pretty-boy redhead cop? If you try and tell me you don’t beg him real sweet to give your tight ass a hard pounding on the regular, you’re a fucking liar. I know how you are. Never seen a bitch wanna spread for dick like you, or get hard and squirt from loving it so much.”
“Why are you doing this? Is it just jealousy? What is the point of me coming here?” Jaye snapped. Cash didn’t reply, only stared, so Jaye kept going. “What part of this is my fault? Hmm? You getting thrown in the hole? Me getting out when I was due for it? Building a life for myself? Finding someone who doesn’t treat me like a ride is all I’m good for? Or how about the shit I dealt with that last week? Do you even know what he did to me? The beatings? The rapes? The mind-fucks? You think that doesn’t stay with me every single day? So tell me, Cash. Come on and tell me what exactly I’ve done to piss you off so bad. I’m here for your guy. For Tony. Because people who get broken down the way he has — the way I have — deserve a hell of a lot better than they get.”
Cash stared hard at him, his chest rising and falling. It was hard as hell to maintain eye contact, because he felt the old tickle it created. Those were eyes he’d looked into countless times during some of his worst and most vulnerable moments. It made him feel the old touching. The old poke and wriggle. The fondling. The wide stretch as his slim body fought to take what was being fed into it. He heard echoes of his whimpers and the chuckle they’d draw from Cash as he sank in, balls deep.
“You think, in other circumstances, I couldn’ta given you better?” Cash challenged, his scary, gruff voice lowered.
Jaye had to laugh, but it forced him to drop his gaze. He felt his face heat again. “That what you want, boss?” He added a sarcastic edge to the title. “Do better by me?”
“So what if I do?”
Jaye was struck speechless for a moment. Cash leaned forward, his voice conspiratorial.
“I could do things for you. Take care of your problems. You name it. All you’d have to do is get me your number. Send me some pictures once in a while. Let me write you.”
He hated the blush, but it wasn’t going away. The ugly desperation in the offer flooded Jaye with shame on Cash’s behalf. “Thought you’d have a new bitch by now.”
“Oh, I do. Ain’t the same. He don’t want it like you did.”
“Incredible. Really,” Jaye said, shaking his head. “And I can guess what kind of pictures you’d want. Those wouldn’t get through security, so lemme guess. I send ‘em to your guy instead? The one I had to pay in services?”
Cash’s eye darted around like he was afraid of them being overheard.
“Not gonna happen,” Jaye told him definitively, getting riled, feeling steadier. “I’m in a relationship now. I have someone who takes care of me the way I deserve. I don’t need your favors.”
“Okay, okay. Look. I’m glad you came to see Tony. Did some good. Hax said he — ”
“Yeah, that’s another thing,” Jaye cut in. “I don’t approve of any of that shit. You should have kept hands off of Tony. What the fuck were you thinking? After everything they did to him, you hand him over to Hax? For that?”
“He was sharing a cell with one of the blacks,” Cash said under his breath, eyes blazing. “Hax treats him a lot nicer than that guy did, and you know how it works in here. You need to give them a reason to keep hands off. No one touches him now.”
“No one else, you mean.” Jaye shook his head, wanting to hit something. “You’ve watched, haven’t you? Does he cry? Fight? Squirm? Beg? Scream? Or does he just say, ‘thank you, sir’ because his mind is so far gone?”
“Don’t even try to give me that shit, boy,” Cash warned. “You know sometimes it’s the lesser of two evils that wins out.”
“I have nothing to say to you about it, other than you better make damn sure he leaves here in one piece, or I’m holding you accountable.”
They just stared at each other for a minute or so. Around them, other visitors hugged in goodbye.
As much as he wanted to hit Cash, Jaye also felt the part of him that used to want to curl up at Cash’s feet to bask in how safe he felt around him. It was a false safety, distorted and toxic, just like everything else in that place.
“You look good,” Cash told him, a peace offering. “Got a job. A place.”
“Yeah.”
“If Rowe ever turns on you, you tell me, okay? No one hurts you no more.”
“What happened to your ear?”
Cash just smiled.
“Damn, I miss the feel of your mouth, Johnny. Miss other parts even more.”
A creeping shiver ghosted up his spine.
“Miss your fire. Your spirit. You were a hell of a kick in the pants. Always kept things interesting.”
“You do right by Tony. You swear it?”
“I do.”
Jaye stood.
“Goodbye, Cash.”
“Hey… don’t. Sit a while. We can talk about whatever you want. We — ”
“Goodbye, Cash.” He held out a hand for Cash to shake.
Sadness, pure and strong, rose up high above everything else then in Cash. Jaye saw it happen.
After a pause, he stood, took the offered hand and squeezed it, chains jingling.
Then he tugged Jaye in close, kissing him on the lips, quickly but deliberately.
Jaye pulled back in surprise just as the guard yelled for Cash to knock that shit off.
Jaye pushed past him, fleeing.
“Johnny! Jaye! Jaye?!”
By the time he was out in the sunlight again, Jaye was panting. Cleared of security, he stood there, dumbstruck, until his heart slowed to a normal pace and the chills faded back.
He tried to let it go. He tried to let all of it go.
He wanted to leave it all there.
It wasn’t his to carry any longer.
Knowing that, he kept walking. He saw Dixon standing by the rental car and smiled, feeling all of that weight lift at last.