TITLE: Thirty Pieces
AUTHOR: uzisuicide
RATING: MA
PAIRING: T-Bag/Abruzzi
GENRE: Slash
WARNINGS: Sexual situations, character death
SUMMARY: If at first you don't succeed...
Thirty Pieces
John Abruzzi's Jesus thing, T-Bag thought to himself privately and not for the first time that morning, was really starting to be offensive.
Of course, much about the man was. T-Bag, who would have liked to be the biggest dog in the entire house, who resented the very fact that power had to be shared, had been morally offended by the heavy jowled, intelligent-eyed mafioso from the first time he'd seen him menace another inmate. It was the process, not the act, that bothered him so. T-Bag had done his fair share of intimidation, but he ran with a pack that kept to his heels while Abruzzi's associates did the work for him. Abruzzi could trust other people to do the work for him, whereas T-Bag was sure if he gave the job to someone else, that he'd have to come up behind and clean away the loose ends.
He had envied Abruzzi, and because he had grown up to see jealousy as weakness, he hated the man still more for it. T-Bag would see him pass in the yard and recognize that broad shoulders and good height would make people fear him, forgetting that his own eyes were unsettling, that his gaunt angles made others not want to watch him for very long. Where once he had been more than satisfied with himself and his ability to spark unease in the innocent, he had begun to doubt. T-Bag had circled the Italian's cronies, both physically and not, licking at the edges of their group with a curious mind when he thought they might not notice the hunger in his stare. He had struck up seemingly innocent conversation with Fiorello until he realized the burly man was both stupid and starving for power, a dangerous combination. Abandoning that angle, and covering up his fear of approaching the ethnic half of the prison with his racist veil, T-Bag had resigned himself to temporarily lording over the bleachers, to building his own empire in miniature on a two-part foundation: pretty young faces desperate for corruption and blue-collar criminals with swastikas in fading prison ink. T-Bag, for all of his high strung nature, had incredible amounts of patience when it mattered. When what he was after was absolutely, unquestionably, worth the wait... and this was.
Two weeks after he decided that overthrowing Abruzzi could not be an immediate thing, he met Michael Scofield in the yard.
Scofield was interesting for several reasons, primarily that he was more attractive than anyone in the new shipment. T-Bag had stood at the fence with his fingers hooked through the chainlinks and watched the prisoners filter off the bus. There were boring men, slight men that he enjoyed thinking about snapping like matchsticks for the few seconds it took for another possibility to appear, and then there had been Michael, hair cut close and freshly shaven, hands cuffed in front of himself. He had looked straight ahead at the inmates behind the fence instead of watching his shoes, the way most of the new arrivals did. T-Bag saw the blue of those eyes glitter from so many yards away and, unconsciously, his tongue began its overly-wet play against his bottom lip.
He had been thwarted in his attempts at seduction; Michael wasn't so keen on being persuaded, but he wasn't easily run off, either. The contradictory reactions confused T-Bag, and he allowed himself to dwell on how he would win the boy over, until he learned about the real reason why that particular fish was in that particular barrel. And then, the nature of winning was tweaked a bit - no longer obsessed with fucking Scofield, he tried his hand at intimidating the kid into taking him along, and then he tried friendship, and when neither worked he resorted to blackmail, which which he had a lengthy history. It didn't fail him now. An entirely new thought process, just as interesting, just as complex. When he wanted something desperately, the way he wanted freedom badly enough to taste, Theodore Bagwell had to remove himself from the issue to figure out how he'd find an in. He was not unintelligent by any means and was fully capable of pursuing multiple things at once; his interest in leaving prison by unconventional means did not eclipse his interest in slicing John Abruzzi down to size.
And so his eye turned from Michael Scofield, turned to another one of those lithe, pale figures, such an easy replacement for Cherry, unwilling but so blessedly weak. He allowed his distaste for the inked man to fester as he preyed on the young. A wolf cutting the sick from the herd, though instead of eating his captures he amused himself, toying with them, reenacting his own experiences in so many hours after the lights went out. Those he molested in the showers, in his bunk, never said a word. Scofield never looked at him with anything more than slightly distasteful indifference. John Abruzzi still held more power than T-Bag himself. Only one of the three was appreciated, only one of the three was acceptable.
Then, rather suddenly, Abruzzi had found Jesus. T-Bag didn't know the specific reason, but it coincided i so /i ironically with his cousins' deaths. James, who had the Bagwell blood like muddy water in his veins but a cleaner conscience than T-Bag's own father, had been a good man and he had been taken down. James' five year old son had gone, too, and T-Bag mourned for him more, used as a shield in a fight he had no business seeing, forget partaking in. His own anger overtook his rationale: although he knew, logically, that Abruzzi was integral to Scofield's escape plan, when the Italian had caught him alone, knife in hand and demands on his lips, T-Bag had slit his throat. The fear that their escape would be compromised was erased, almost immediately, by the idea that without Abruzzi in power, all he'd have to deal with was those colored fucks and he'd be sitting pretty. Prettier than usual, anyway - when he walked out of the door with the larger man sprawled in a thickening pool of his own blood, T-Bag's confidence had returned in force. He slipped the razorblade back under his tongue and imagined, though it wasn't true and he knew it, that when he smiled, others would see steel glinting through his teeth.
For a time, with Scofield and his brother rearranging plans with an air of panic, T-Bag was on top of the world, as comfortable as he could be in prison with an unhealthy amount of power to abuse. It was only when he learned that perhaps he'd been a little too quick to walk away that he felt the first rush of actual fear, cold like an ice cube dropped down the front of his pants. Seeing that the man had apparently earned a personality transplant in addition to stitches didn't make his stomach unknot in the slightest. A warm hand might have felt better than a cold shank, but a cold body was more reassuring than either.
Besides, all things considered, Abruzzi's fascination with the Lord and Savior was downright offensive, as far as T-Bag was concerned.
He had been raised a Christian, learned to respect and fear Christ, learned to believe that there was someone up there who could protect him. The idea that God could keep him safe but that He refused to keep his father from locking his bedroom door with one hand already going for his belt had occurred to him early on, and in T-Bag's eyes, he had a free pass to Heaven after that. He was not a chapter in God's eventual plan, he was not even a footnote, and when he left the world he would insist on justice. He would demand it. His earthly transgressions would pale in the face of what God had done, or rather, not done, on his behalf. Rape and murder might be typically despicable things, but the Lord was in no place to judge him, not after ignoring his plight as a boy. Not after He refused to intervene, even when T-Bag sacrificed many a pair of ragged underwear to the trashcan when the blood wouldn't wash out -- and he had tried.
Theodore Bagwell believed wholeheartedly in the idea of rebirth, and he knew that when he stepped foot outside the prison walls, he would be reborn as a new and better man. A man who did not have to kill the woman who betrayed him, a man who could acquire a wife and a family and honest, true love simply by knocking on Susan Hollander's front door. There wasn't another option, it had to happen that way. But Abruzzi alive, simply by being alive, was a possible snag in the idea of it. Every day that the Italian breathed meant one more chance for his own death to unfold. Every day that T-Bag saw him across the cafeteria, praying before he ate, was an insistent rapping at what was left of T-Bag's conscience, reminding him that it is acceptable to lie to God, but it is not acceptable to lie about Him.
He rarely slept, and the next morning, just before dawn, how he would handle it appeared to him suddenly. It was a warm, rippling epiphany that uncoiled from the base of his spine and spread out, tingling along his skin, fire licking like moth wings against the inside of his ribcage. T-Bag tucked the spit-damp razor into the barely-visible slit against the seam of his mattress, feeling his way along the sheet in the darkness, and went after breakfast to see a man about a knife.
It always felt better to have a plan. T-Bag had learned that early on, from the time he formed his very first alibi as a child, and he hummed old hymns he remembered from church as he went through the motions of the day. His body performed ordinary tasks but his mind was elsewhere, flying, high on his own cunning. If Abruzzi sensed any new animosity, he showed nothing, going through his own motions, looking at nobody. His eyes had a peaceful, cowlike calm that everyone chalked up to his new rapport with religion. T-Bag chalked it up to a piss-poor cover.
--
The showers always smelled too much like chlorine after The Incident, capitalized in T-Bag's mind always. He hadn't been there, but he had heard about it later and was still disgusted to think on it now. An aging black, feeling his oats, had sodomized one of the young supremacists in training and smashed his skull on the floor, in the corner. The kid had been HIV positive. The guards had been disgusted.
Chewed out for not having kept a closer eye on things, a badge had taken to slicking the tiles with chlorine before each new wave of men coming for the showers, in hopes that people wouldn't want to spend their time in there. He was supposed to be concerned about attacks for attacks' sake, but instead he was only concerned with keeping his own shift clean. The chemicals hadn't done much; the smell was a bit off but not overpowering by the second prisoner group, and by the time T-Bag came in, on the third, he could pick out what, exactly, had been used on the floors but he didn't mind it, not much.
T-Bag wore his towel around his waist, knotted and folded over a few times til the top of it bulged. It wasn't the most attractive of getups, but he could fit a blade lengthwise in the fabric and nobody would be the wiser. John Abruzzi was at the wall, wet already, leisurely letting the water run over his shorn hair and those broad shoulders. His face was turned to the wall, trusting because of his power and his religion both, that nobody would take him by surprise. One of his cronies, a ratfaced, olive-complexioned man a nozzle away, kept a wary eye out on Abruzzi's behalf but said nothing when T-Bag approached, palms open and turned to the ceiling.
"John," he said, letting the name trip off his tongue instead of keeping it for long enough to taste.
Abruzzi looked over his shoulder before shuffling around to face T-Bag.
"Theodore." The Italian pronounced his name like 'theater' and it made T-Bag bristle somewhat, annoyed but determined not to show it. "What can I do for you?"
"I need to talk to you, for a minute, just for a minute." Jerking his head in the direction of the rat, he arched both eyebrows. "He gonna be listening in all the time now, or what?"
"Or what," Abruzzi repeated, catching his friend's eye and nodding. The wet slap of footsteps on tile sounded and it was safe to go on.
"Wanted to tell you how glad I am that you've come to have religion, John." His voice was earnest, eyes wide and as true as he could fake. Water splattered against the mafioso's head and ricocheted off again, wetting the side of T-Bag's cheek. "Can't explain how nice I find it that we've got some... some common ground between us, like."
"Common ground," the older man repeated again, reaching suddenly to sweep excess water from his hair and looking oddly pleased when T-Bag didn't flinch away from the movement on instinct alone.
"Right, that. The Lord is the greatest thing we'll ever know, John." A phrase stolen from a priest he'd known as a teenager, culled from a memory he didn't know he still had. "And I wanted, too, to welcome you back. I didn't get the chance before. But there's a little something I want to give you, John, a little favor I want to extend. If you follow."
Whether or not he followed wasn't clear; Abruzzi said nothing, but the placid look his eyes held when he returned from the hospital was nowhere to be found. In its place was quiet intelligence and curiosity. T-Bag wondered when the change had come, and how long the man had been walking around with his disguise halfway gone. To have his knowledge confirmed, to have proof that Abruzzi had been lying all this time, didn't make him feel the way he'd imagined it would. Instead of pleasure, he felt a surprising ache, mostly dull but edged with the sharpness of anticipation.
The men of Fox River had seen a good amount of violence authorized by Abruzzi, and they weren't watching him now. That was the trouble with being a spectator - sometimes he wanted an audience and at other times, witnesses would be dealt with accordingly. Word had got around after the medics' helicopter had landed and T-Bag was pretty sure most in the showers thought he would be the next to leave by air. Pity they didn't know what they were about to witness. Throughout the initial talk, he had resolutely kept his eyes above the man's shoulders, but now he let his gaze wander low, playing, wondering if Abruzzi could feel the touch of attention.
"What is it you're doing, Theodore?" Abruzzi spoke mildly, no offense in his tone.
Good.
"You have a wife, don't you, John? But she never comes to see you. I didn't always notice that, but it's hard to miss." This was hardly the ideal spot for seduction. T-Bag would have greatly preferred a cell, or even a storage room; this was too open. He wouldn't have minded putting on a show under other circumstances, but this wouldn't end with a slap on the ass and a loose cigarette. This was the kind of deal he didn't need others' eyes for.
"I don't need her to see me here," came the reply.
"Right, right, I get it. She's pretty and clean - far as your people go, anyway - and you don't want to dust her up with the sight of people like me. But I bet it gets lonely in here, don't it. You know me, I'm a real social butterfly, I been making friends left and right since they had me in Donaldson, but you , John... all you've got are those fine gentleman who watch your behind in the shower. Kind of a lonely life, ain't it? Being so... untouchable?" He reached out a long-fingered hand, nails walking spider-light down from the jut of Abruzzi's collarbones. T-Bag was used to slight men but his expression didn't change when his palm flattened out and ran over the curve of the Italian's stomach. He sensed, rather than felt, that the man was tensing and he leaned forward, lips bare centimeters from the corner of Abruzzi's mouth. "If the CO comes round the corner, you pull me up, hear?"
T-Bag almost thought his plan wouldn't work, because Abruzzi hadn't moved a muscle. And then a broad hand wrapped around the back of his skull and strength past what he associated with the man weighed down on him, pressing him to his knees, the water coursing down in a fine spray over his face. He couldn't see well but he didn't need to, moving by feel with practiced ease as he took John Abruzzi's cock against his bottom lip, tongue lapping delicate wet stripes against the tip until both of them, near simultaneously, realized that teasing wasn't appropriate here. He gulped the back of his throat open and pressed his head down even as the fingers tightened against his hair, guiding him along.
The water was almost too hot and the acoustics were such that all he heard was spray, tinted slightly by noise from above. Abruzzi wasn't loud enough to encourage him, but the hand, pulling him back and then shoving him down again, was all the praise he needed. T-Bag didn't give half as often as he received, but he'd had enough time on that end to know what felt right. He knew that if he rolled his head, treating Abruzzi to a pattern of lips, tongue, and the slick inside of his cheek between skin and teeth, and then back again, hips would snap up against his face. T-Bag was absolutely right, and he barely remembered to slide back in time -- the other man damn near broke his nose. One hand, sliding up Abruzzi's thigh, up the crease to his hip and then over; T-Bag pressed his fingertips against the dark thatch of curls against his face and eased John back, scooting forward on his knee and other hand until the mafioso was against the wall and he himself was out of the water, mostly. Dry gasps above him and soft cursing in a language he didn't recognize. God's name and his own, twisted with profanity and groaned louder as the seconds passed.
Reaching behind himself with his free hand, T-Bag worked his fingertips over the top of the rolled towel, short nails bumping against the handle of the shank. He drew it out, the fabric fluttering down from his hips, and he looked up quickly - Abruzzi's chin was upturned, eyes slitted, almost closed in full. T-Bag brought his arm up at the same time he rose from his knees, too much teeth as he pulled away and rocked up to his feet.
The man's eyes snapped open again and he looked down at T-Bag, meeting his eyes squarely, mouth open to say something but he never got the chance. The knife cut him below the soft curve of his belly, driven up by a sharp twist of T-Bag's wrist, the trimmer of the two laughing despite himself, choking on water and victory both. It wasn't real until he felt slickness on his fingers, achingly hot and slippery, blood staining his arm and dripping -- pouring -- down to mix with the puddles on the floor, pink and filtering toward the drain. Abruzzi gurgled a cry, too surprised to have made a proper one before, and T-Bag backed away enough to bring his hand up, knife still stuck where he'd left it. He painted his bottom lip with a gentle sweep of his thumb and leaned in to press his mouth against Abruzzi's, feeling another tongue slip out on instinct, wetting his lip, cleaning the blood from T-Bag's.
T-Bag felt glorious, and he heard nothing. Not his own breathing, not the shouts behind him, not the air forcing its way up John Abruzzi's throat as he sagged and slumped and slid down the wall, caught too off guard to launch himself forward.
That glory was not the same sort of rewarding, T-Bag thought then, as thirty pieces of silver, but he supposed it would do.