A/N: This is an AU, based very loosely on the American correctional system as opposed to the Japanese one. This is coming out of my own head, so forgive all the inaccuracies and misconceptions. Thank you!
The raucous clangs and shrieks blurred together into a wave of noise, a wrinkle folding into the smooth peaks of Kurama's forehead. He examined the walls of his cell, spoiled milk and egg whites, and leaned forward to feel their broad planes, finding them rough to the touch, and devoid of sharp corners he could use to smash a scull against or slice open his own wrist. Sitting primly on the cot, blanket in hand, he contemplated what a shame that was. His fingers strayed from the coarse fabric to search for and find the screws of the metal bunk, feeling them shaved down and corner-less. Again, he thought caustically, no luck.
The other prisoners' voices faded in and out like a radio being tuned, only the most important details coming through. "The Gentleman? That little kid?" one asked.
"Sixteen and already in a high security prison. He must be feeling lonely." The lust couldn't be moved by Kurama's indifference. He could hear cloth scrape, and realized with a flicker of disgust that the speaker was massaging himself through his pants. The voice rose to a shout. "Are you feeling lonely, boy? Daddy will take care of you."
Kurama blinked, annoyed, and thought calmly of killing him: of tying him down with the bed sheets and twisting his balls until he'd castrated him with his bare hands, and then letting him live in this prison for months afterwards before he finally ended it.
Others were shouting too, now, crowding outside this little purgatory, beaten back by a nameless guard and his baton. The skin above Kurama's lips tightened into a sneer, goading the rabble into a frenzy, making them righteous, and soon, though Kurama had never moved, the lone guard that stood between him and the mob forming outside his door was whistling, and more officers came bounding through the corridor and down the stairs to the first level of cement and steel apartments.
Kurama knew how much they wanted him. It would be dangerous here, that was already clear, but his will had been tested to its furthest limits long before he came to this prison. He trusted himself, and his own desire to survive. He was untouchable by trash like this.
"You're lucky, pretty fish."
"Am I?" Kurama asked disdainfully, his attention on the food in front of him. The sleazy conman slid a leg over the plastic bench and sat himself down next to him without any provocation. Men had died for less, but Kurama needed information more than he needed to deal with this irritation promptly.
"You are. Karasu's in lockdown right now, so you have your little cell all to yourself. It won't remain so comfy for long, unfortunately." The prisoner didn't bother adding sincerity to his voice. His gloating was starting to distract Kurama from the unappetizing mound of beef and overcooked vegetables that sat stewed together on his plate.
"Karasu?" The disdain, which lightened emerald eyes to a soft aquamarine, was morphing, turned to something much more sinister and complete; but the thug wrote it off easily in favor of sadism and lust. Greasy fingers slid along the plastic edge of the table, and then dipped underneath it, resting tauntingly near the slim curve of a hip.
"You didn't know?" the man crowed, delighted. "He has a taste for fine young things like yourself—and they're hard to come by, around here." The man's hand moved from a jaunty position by his waist, spread on the uncomfortable plastic lattice of the bench, to the hard length of Kurama's thigh, worming its way between tight muscles to caress the front of his stanchion-orange pants. He turned his head to the side and smiled a skewed smile into the blank glass eyes, feeling it flicker when Kurama looked straight ahead, his face inhumanly impassive. He was about to say more, leaning in and pressing down coyly with his fingers, when suddenly he was overtaken by an odd sensation.
He was falling back, hard, landing on his head with an audible crack and letting out a cut, wet shriek that turned heads all over the dining area towards them, curious necks craning. The conman looked up, far up, into expressionless eyes, and felt the strain of Kurama's foot against his neck.
"If I were to apply pressure," Kurama said conversationally, "I could snap your neck at this angle. You might survive it, and be paralyzed for life—you might not." He smiled and leaned down, putting just a bit more weight on his foot, long burgundy locks framing a sweet schoolboy face that jarred with the prisoner's clothes. "Do you think I should?" he asked gently.
The man gibbered, his hands jerking, trying to collect himself well enough to defend his suddenly feeble life through the fog surrounding him. Kurama smiled, and lifted his foot, intending to bring it down with a correct application of force, when a large set of hands hooked under his arms and lifted him up and off, setting him down gently about a foot away. Kurama hissed, eyes wide and flashing, and his graceful hand, which had been silently concealing a plastic fork, flipped the utensil around and attempted to slam it into the restraining arm.
The pain he had expected his opponent to feel was met with silence, and the plastic prongs bent, as though he were slamming them into a stone, and not a man. He looked down at a forearm built of pure muscle, and blinked, regaining his cool easily.
"Is there something wrong here, Toguro?" a guard asked, striding anxiously over to the site of the disturbance.
"Roto fell back on his head. You might want to take him to the infirmary, officer," a voice rumbled from behind Kurama, making the massive chest he was being held against vibrate pleasantly. Kurama watched as the order was barked into the radio by the C.O.'s chin, and marveled at the deference the guard was showing this man, coupled by the reverence he saw in the silent mass of other prisoners as he glanced covertly around him.
"That was foolish, boy."
Kurama blinked at the rough lips and stolid chin that scraped against his sensitive ear, refusing to shudder as hot, heavy breath eased against him and sent shivers crawling down his body. "It was necessary," he replied.
"It was reactionary and stupid. When Karasu comes, I advise you not to be so obvious—things will go very hard for you if you do."
"Who is this Karasu? And who are you?"
"Karasu is a nightmare for a boy like you. I'm no one important. Still, remember this—if you need to quit this world, come to me. I won't be adverse to helping you."
Cryptic, Kurama thought, and finally looked up at the towering man who stood behind him, finding a pair of small, beetle-black eyes far above himself, set into an angular body of pure, unadulterated muscle. "That won't be necessary," he said, and turned back to watch the stretcher carry the conman Roto away. He swung his legs over the bench, and sat down to his food without another word, using the fork he had tried to spear Toguro with to eat after only a moment of hesitation, the soggy green beans tearing apart in his mouth.
Toguro chuckled, and when Kurama next turned to look at him, he was far down the room, walking between cons that bent in homage as he passed, like Moses parting the Red Sea.
His cell, he discovered in the inordinate amount of time he was expected to spend there, was too simple to provide much entertainment, which made the book cart and the library a necessity. Both of those, however, had been picked clean, and it didn't take him long to start requesting other books, from Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to Stendhal's The Red and the Black. Within a few days of coming, he had thwarted so many slights and rape attempts he had earned the official title Dangerous. Betting pools were taken up over who would be the first to have him and how they would manage it, so many desiring to initiate Kurama into the world of a prison. The bloodlust was reaching a frenzy before two weeks were out, the sight of him walking blankly down the hallways, pretty as sin, nearly causing the tumultuous level of a riot.
Kurama was unfazed.
The guards were looking the other way. That was what tipped Kurama off—they should have had their eyes on the prisoners, but to a man they were watching the walls. He braced himself, his hand slipping into his pocket, and seconds later a salty palm smothered his mouth and he was being dragged out of line, into a supply closet that opened and then shut behind him, cutting off light. It was dim in there, the high barred windows giving everything a twilight glow, and Kurama's eyes burned in the darkness, his skin glistening with sweat.
A big inmate strolled covertly out from behind the rows of metal shelving, stocked almost exclusively with tomato paste. Large scars crisscrossed his body and fat, slobbering lips smirked as he grunted, "I get first taste." Kurama sneered, hissing as one of the men holding him dug his fingers into his arms and shook him sharply. Kurama's head snapped back, but he didn't stop sneering.
"Aw Bakken!" another man, solid and blond, moaned, as a third laughed. Their eyes appraised their selection, gazes resting on Kurama's skin, slick as motor oil. Kurama said nothing, his lips tight and his eyes wide with hate.
"I get first taste," the man repeated, and grunted, walking forward and undoing his pants, reaching inside with no warning to pull out his half-hard cock, already turning an ugly purple as it stiffened. They forced Kurama to his knees—he let them. "You bite, I beat. Capiche?"
Kurama frowned hatefully, and then suddenly smiled. His lips open and his eyes looking deviously up, he darted out his tongue and curled it wetly around the head of the cock, not reacting to the horrible musky smell. The two men restraining him dropped his arms in shock.
"Holy shit!"
"Look at that slut!"
Bakken groaned hideously, letting out pathetic, keening whines that made the skin around Kurama's nose tighten. He was so caught up in pleasure that he didn't see Kurama's hands drift up until it was too late, and it took him a few seconds to register the change.
"Ah—ah, ow—goddamn—what're you doing? Oh my god, what the fuck are you doing?"he shrieked, and began to scream like a girl, his voice getting higher and higher pitched as he tried to draw back.
As best he could, Kurama sank his teeth into the head of Bakken's penis with no compunctions, hot blood beginning to spray into his mouth, and continued methodically sawing his balls off with the knife he had stolen from another inmate not an hour ago. Meaty hands went down to drag at Kurama's hair, and Kurama opened his jaw and let them pull him back, his other hand grabbing Bakken's manhood and twisting, Bakken doubled over and shouting in pain, too far gone to knee him.
Kurama spat the blood from his mouth. "The damage I've done can still be reversed. If you don't let me walk out of here now, I'll keep going until this stallion is gelded."
"You're fucking crazy," the big blond one whispered, the supply room ringing with Bakken's inarticulate cries of agony. Kurama smiled.
"Maybe. Am I free to go?" The two others hurried to get out of his way, and Kurama led Bakken out by his dick. Bakken took a few steps under Kurama's duress, and then collapsed on top of him, passing out from the pain. In an instant Kurama had rolled him to the side and onto the ground, his now flaccid dick red, fleshy carnage.
Still threatening it, he motioned for the men to get further out of the way. They did, watching him with horror, hardened cons and rapists who none-the-less quailed at the sight of something they could not understand—a sixteen year old boy who had just castrated a man without blinking, his hands coated in crimson and his eyes holding an absence that chilled them to the bone. The blond one shook—the other one gaped. Neither of them turned when the door opened, transfixed by the gory sight before them.
"What the hell is going on in here?" the guard in the doorway asked, his eyes drawn to the bleeding, moaning mess on the floor.
"A thwarted rape attempt," Kurama said softly. "He pulled a knife on me."
The guard was barely listening, yelling high-pitched into the radio by his neck, calling for a stretcher. Kurama tossed the knife to the side, listening to it clatter, and looked into the two conmen's faces, one at a time.
They stuck to his story like clockwork, told the whole tale as if Kurama were the defenseless hero, and before an hour was out the guards were utterly convinced that Bakken was the one who had pulled a knife. The other prisoners were much more careful after that, and the attempted assault rates dropped exponentially. Kurama was no longer just Dangerous—he was fucking insane.
That was how things stood the day Karasu got out.
