A/N: Hey all! I'm back with another update! I hope you're all enjoying this story! Please review if you like it!
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Late January, 2016, Fort Madison, Iowa
Toris yawned and stretched in his bunk, feeling the chill of the morning from the window next to him. He frowned and pulled his blanket back over him. Why was it always so cold in the mornings? Couldn't they get better heat in there?
"Too cold," Feliks muttered from his bunk. Moments later, he was under Toris's blanket with him. "Keep me warm, 'kay?" His eyes drooped shut with exhaustion as he laid his head on his cell mate's chest and began softly snoring once more."
The brunet smiled fondly at his lover and closed his eyes as well, relishing the warmth that Feliks had brought to his bunk. He had been shivering all night, but now he felt he could relax with someone so warm next to him. His eyes drooped shut as well as he listened to the other's even breathing as he slept on. Something about that morning seemed different from the others, yet Toris had no idea how that could be so since every day seemed to blur together in this place.
Deciding not to think too far into it, Toris drifted back to sleep as well, only to be awakened by one of the guards telling him he had a visitor.
Groggy from being woken back up, Toris rubbed at his eyes as he walked into the visitation room. No one had told him who was there to see him. Maybe they had, but he was too tired to listen. Either way, he was surprised to see his mother sitting at a table, waiting for him.
"Mom, what's going on?" he asked, sitting across from her. "Usually you let me know in advance if you're visiting. Did something happen?" He fixed an even gaze at her as he studied her expression. Something seemed a little off, but he couldn't tell what it was. "Is everything okay?"
Justine Laurinaitis stared back at her son for a moment. "I was at the grocery store yesterday," she began. "Yes, the grocery store."
Toris tried to ignore the tightness in his chest upon hearing where she went. After all, it was the place where he had been accused of shooting random shoppers. "W-Why are you telling me this?" he managed to say. "What does that have to do with you not telling me why you're here?"
"I wanted to be the first to tell you," she said, breaking eye contact and staring down at the table. "They found a witness, Toris. She's a young girl, about high school age. After keeping her silence for nearly a year, she finally spoke up." Her eyes filled with tears. "She even has a receipt from her purchase that day. Apparently she was on her way out of the store when she heard gunshots, and she turned around and saw you holding a revolver." Justina began to sob profusely. "Why did this have to happen? I feel like a failure as a mother!"
The inmate didn't hear anything after that. He was blocking out the rest of her words after hearing about the so-called witness. "But Mom," he slowly said, voice quiet at first but rising in volume as he became hysterical, "I didn't do anything! I didn't do it! You have to believe me!"
"What's going on over here?" a guard asked, walking over to their table. "You need to keep it down, Toris. You're disturbing the other guests."
"I don't care!" Toris shouted, ignoring the stares of everyone else in the room. "I didn't do it! If I had done something like that, I know that I would remember it for sure! I wouldn't do something so crazy without a reason anyway! There's no way I could've done it! That girl is lying! She's slandering my name! That's not right!"
Justina sighed. "Toris, she got photo evidence that it was you," she softly said. "Apparently, she took a picture of what she saw and is planning on going to the police with it today. Why she kept quiet for so long is something I will never understand, but I knew I had to tell you after I found out. I hate that she's doing this to you. We've been trying to believe that you're innocent, but now she has pictures of you caught red-handed."
"But I didn't do it!" he shouted again. He couldn't even feel the grip of the guards as they dragged him away. "You have to believe me! I would never kill another person! Never! That's not the kind of person I am!" His shouts were drowned out by the door closing between him and the visitation room, but he could see the tears on his mother's face clear as day. "I didn't do it," he weakly said as he stopped fighting the guards.
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"So some girl showed up out of nowhere after nearly a year and says that she had evidence that you did it?" Feliks asked, surprise in his voice. "That's total fucking bullshit! How can she just show up out of nowhere months later and just be like, 'Yeah, I got this picture of him that makes him the killer,'? That's bullshit!" He threw his pillow onto the floor, trying to keep his cool. "No! That's not right! She can't just do that out of nowhere! Do you know who the girl is?"
"Not a clue," Toris sighed, still struggling with the incriminating "evidence" that was found against him. "But you're right. This is total fucking bullshit." His voice was devoid of the usual life and cheer that it normally possessed. Instead, he sounded like a monotonous broken doll. "It doesn't make any sense."
"What if the reason it took so long for her to do this is because she photoshopped it?" the blond thought aloud. "Like, what if she spent the past few months working on this picture in photoshop, and once it looked realistic, she decided to use it against you?" He thought for a moment. "Do you have any girls that hate you? Like, really hate you?"
"Not that I can think of." The brunet sighed and toppled over on his bed, laying his head on his pillow. "This is all so stupid and unfair. I didn't do anything, and now there's suddenly proof that I did something that I would remember doing if I did. I hate this. Why does this kind of shit have to happen to me? My life was going so well until all of this bullshit started."
Feliks remained quiet. "Do you think Jiri and Alena know anything about this?" he asked after nearly a minute of complete silence. "Considering they're your friends, don't you think they would have some sort of input on it?" He thought for a moment. "Maybe they'll call once all of it goes down."
"I wouldn't hold my breath," Toris groaned. "They have more things on their minds than to worry about someone like me. I mean, Jiri is studying to be a surgeon, and Alena has a life outside of me as well. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they just didn't contact me again after all of this. It's not like there would be much for them to say anyway, you know? If that picture turns out to be 'real', then there's nothing I can say or do that will change anyone's mind about me. That also means that my friends can all give up on me and use that as an excuse to."
"Toris, you're being irrational," his cell mate replied. "These are your friends we're talking about. Jiri and Alena even drove all the way down here to visit you a couple times. Do you really think they would give up on you that easily?"
"If I turn out to be a 'murderer' they will," the brunet weakly replied. "It's not like a friend of mine hasn't done something like this before." He recalled the painful memory. "One day, out of nowhere, my neighbor suddenly told me that he wasn't allowed to be friends with me anymore. He made up some lie about me beating him up or something and got everyone else to believe it as well. His mom called my mom, and the whole thing got out of hand way too fast." A frown rested on his lips. "Up until that day, I would almost say that he was my closest friend. I don't know why he would do something like that, you know? Alfred had lots of people who didn't like him, but I didn't think that someone would beat him up and he'd use my name instead of theirs when explaining who did it." He sighed deeply. "It's almost as if what's happening right now is a repeat of that situation, but only a million times worse. I would never hurt anyone."
Knowing that Toris couldn't see him, Feliks slowly brought his own hand to his throat. For a moment, he could still feel his lover's hand around it and felt his stomach drop. His mind swam with many possibilities of what could be the truth behind all of it. If Toris didn't remember attacking him that one time, then who is to say that he wouldn't remember attacking his friend or shooting up a grocery store. Though Feliks hated thinking that way, there was no way that he could just rule out that possibility. His heart felt heavy as led as he thought deeper and deeper into it.
After awhile, Feliks turned around to face Toris and saw that he had fallen asleep. Maybe that was for the best at that point. He brushed Toris's bangs from his forehead and leaned down to kiss it. "I won't let them hurt you," he whispered to his sleeping lover. "If they're going to hurt you, it'll be over my dead body. Or theirs. Either works."
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For the next few days, Toris didn't speak much, not even to Feliks. His appetite had nearly disappeared as well, which worried Feliks. It was obvious that he was rapidly losing weight due to stress, lack of food, and lack of sleep, but there was nothing the blond could do about it. The last thing either of them wanted was to get the guards or the warden involved. That would result in the two of them being watched at all times.
Feliks frowned as he watched Toris push away his lunch tray without touching it for the fourth day in a row. "You should really at least try to eat," he stated, pushing the tray back at the brunet.
"What's the point?" Toris sighed. "If that photo marks me as guilty, then I don't want to keep living anyway." He buried his head in his arms, which were rested on the table. "I should probably just wither away to nothing. It's not like anyone would miss me anyway."
"I would," the blond replied, shoveling a spoonful of corn into his mouth. He chewed a little and swallowed. "This isn't the end of the world, I promise. Besides, even if you're found guilty, what are they going to do? It's not like you're not already here."
"That's easy for you to say," his cell mate groaned. "You actually like being here. You like the life away from your family. Well I don't. I was hoping to get out of here and go back home, so I could forget any of this ever happened."
The tines of Feliks's fork barely grazed the side of Toris's hand. Had it even been one centimeter off, the brunet's hand would've been skewered. "What exactly do you plan on forgetting?" the blond asked, irritation in his voice. "You're saying you want to forget me as well?" The pain and irritation in his voice shone through with every word. "Even though you told me you would be there for me, that you wanted to be there for me. It was all just a lie?"
Toris's head snapped up as he looked at Feliks, panicked and wide-eyed. "No!" he quickly interjected, voice an octave higher than normal due to panic. "I didn't mean it like that!"
"Then what exactly did you mean?" his lover snapped. "You say hurtful things, and you never even care about how the people they're about feel. It seems like you try to go out of your way to hurt my feelings lately. Well, you did it. It's done. Is there any more salt you would like to rub into the wound while it's still open?"
The other inmate lowered his head in shame. "I'm sorry, Feliks," he apologized. "I've been so agonized by everything going on, that I really must've said some harsh things to you without realizing it. I'll get better about that, I swear. My situation is really no excuse for my behavior, but I really am sorry. I hope you can forgive me, even if it will take some time."
"I know you've been having a rough time these past few days, but please try to get it together," his lover replied. "Also, I wanted to thank you for not using some bullshit line in your apology like, 'I really suck,' or 'I'm useless,' because I probably would've decked you if you had." Feliks crossed his arms over in his chest. "I hate when people make themselves the victims of the situation when they pretend to apologize."
"Was there someone you knew who did that?"
"My stepdad would always do that to my mom," Feliks answered. "He was a shitty person, so naturally his apologies were shitty as well. Every time he fucked up with my mom, he would always add in how useless he was into his apologies as a way to get her sympathy. That manipulative fuck. I hate him so much! Even after he's dead, why does he still come back to haunt me like this? It's not fair." He pounded his fist on the table. "Even though I killed him, why do I still have to be haunted by my memories of him every day? Why do I have to suffer even though I saved everyone from him?"
After regaining his senses, the blond turned to his cell mate. "I'm sorry, Toris," he stated. "I hijacked your apology and made it all about me for a moment. I know you're going through some shit right now, and it really is unfair. If you are found guilty due to the photo, do you think the people who care about you are going to think any less of you? I know I won't. And I don't think Jiri or Alena or your mom would either. You seem to be blind to the people who really care about you. We all chose to love you, even after everything went down, we're all still by your side through this. Guilty or not, I doubt that will ever change. Please don't shut out our kindness like this. It really sucks."
"Yeah," Toris mused. "You're right, Feliks. I really shouldn't obsess over this. It's not like there's a real verdict anyway, you know? There's still a chance that I can be proven innocent. I can't give up yet."
Feliks resisted the urge to roll his eyes back into his skull. Had Toris not heard a damn thing he had just said? Then again, he was glad that the brunet had finally stopped sulking. He smiled at his cell mate. "Good to see that you're getting back to your old mindset. I've missed you these past few days."
The burnet chuckled to himself. "Yeah, I can understand that. I really was lost in my head, wasn't I?"
"More lost than you know."
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Feliks picked up the receiver to talk on the phone. He already had an idea of who was on the other line, but he wondered why she hadn't called Toris yet. "Hello?" he asked.
"Hey, Feliks, it's me," Alena replied on the other line. "I'm sure Toris already knows about the girl. There is no doubt in my mind that Justina went and told him the moment she found out." She sighed. "It's horrible, Feliks. It's an absolute shitshow up here with that girl suddenly speaking up. I don't know why it took her so long to do this, but it's really not helping those of us who still care about him. How's he holding up?"
"He's lost a bit of weight," the inmate honestly replied. "He hasn't been sleeping well or eating. I tried to get through to him earlier today, but I'm not exactly sure how well it was received. If he stays like this for much longer, the stress will probably kill him."
The girl on the other end of the call sighed. "I was afraid of that. Jiri and I have been worried sick about him. We want to come see him as soon as we can, but there is so much going on here that we can't leave yet. I hope we can get down there by the beginning of February. Please help Toris hang in there until then."
"That boy is so not dying on my watch," Feliks stated, rolling his eyes.
She breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you so much, Feliks. I'm so glad that I can depend on you to help in my place. This past has been so rough on all of us, but knowing that he has someone on the inside who is there for him helps us all rest easier at night. I don't care that society has branded you as a 'heartless killer'. You really do care for others, Feliks. I'm glad to call you my friend. You're such an important part of Toris's life, and even mine and Jiri's lives. Never change, Feliks."
Touched by her words, the blond couldn't help but smile. "I hope that things will calm down up there soon enough," he told her. "He needs the reassurance that you two still care about him, you know? Things are looking pretty dark for him at this point in time."
"Yeah, I hope things calm down as well," Alena replied. "I can't imagine how badly Toris is suffering through all of this right now. He believes that he is innocent, and now some kid shows up out of nowhere and brands him as guilty. The poor guy must be utterly destroyed on the inside." She clicked her tongue in disapproval. "I hate that I'm stuck up here and unable to help him at a time like this."
"No worries, Alena," Feliks assured. "He's in good hands."
"Thank you. I trust you, Feliks."
The inmate was dumbfounded for a moment. It had been so long since anyone had said those words to him. He couldn't afford to get sentimental at that moment, but damn, how he wanted to. Mentally reminding himself that this call was about Toris and not him, he quickly focused his mind on his cell mate.
"That's kind of you," he told Alena. "I'm glad that you can trust me with this. I swear, I won't let any harm come to our dear Toris. Not while I can help it."
"All I want is for him to be okay one day," she sighed. "He's never exactly had what you would call an easy life. I pitied him when we were children. Throughout our friendship, people always tried to point out all of his bad points, but for each bad point, there was at least one good point. It's better to focus on the positive than the negative, correct? At least, that's how I see it." Alena took a deep breath. "I just don't want our dear Toris to go through anymore hardship. While I know that is impossible, I still wish there were something I could do for him."
Feliks could hear the pain and regret in her voice as she spoke. "Alena, you really are doing your best right now, and that should count for something. It's okay if I handle things for awhile. I will gladly do that. We can't have you getting sick from stress as well, can we? You're like a beacon of hope for Toris, and I would hate for you to crumble so easily. Let me handle him for now. I know you'll come see him when you can. After all, he is our dear Toris, is he not?"
Her voice seemed to be smiling as she replied with, "Thanks, Feliks."
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The next few days seemed to drag on, but Feliks held true to his word. He encouraged Toris to eat each day, which the brunet did, and he even lulled the other to sleep at night. It made him feel almost motherly and awkward, but he did what he felt needed to be done.
"Feliks," Toris yawned one night as he laid his head in his cell mate's lap, "why are you doing all of this for me? You're stressed out too, aren't you?"
"Not really," the blond replied, playing with the other's hair. "Besides, as your boyfriend, isn't this what I'm supposed to do? Aren't I supposed to love and care for you in your times of need?"
Toris blushed a bright red. "When you put it like that, it sounds embarrassing," he quickly stated. "You've just been so kind to me lately, and I'm nervous about that. What if you just suddenly stop all of this and turn on me like everyone else in my life has? At this moment, you're all I really have. I don't want you to leave me without a reason just like everyone else has. If that were to happen, it might just kill me."
"Why are you saying these things?" Feliks asked, wrapping strands of Toris's hair around his fingers. "Do you really think I'll leave you just like that? It would be too easy. You're going to have to try a lot harder than that to get rid of me, you know."
"Yeah, I suppose you're right," the other replied. "It's just been so difficult lately. I'm honestly starting to lose hope. This entire situation I'm in has really become hopeless, hasn't it? Only one good thing has ever come out of it."
"Oh really? And what's that?"
"You." Toris's answer was so pure and simple that even he blushed after saying it. "You're the only good thing in my life this past year. Every day, you seem to put my comfort before yours, and you worked so hard to help me adjust here. If it wasn't for you, I don't think I would've lasted this long. You're always there for me, and you pick me up every time I fall down. I don't know what I'd do without you. It's as if you were my Prison Savior, you know?"
"Yeah," Feliks softly agreed. "I guess you could say that." He smiled to himself. "Was what I did for you really all that special, though? I was just doing what I would have wanted someone to do for me."
"Of course it was special," Toris replied, speaking as if what Feliks had just said were the dumbest thing he had ever heard. "You went out of your way to make me feel welcome, and as if I finally belonged somewhere." He blushed once more as he smiled. "It's not wonder that I fell in love with you."
The blond felt his ears grow hot at such honest words. "What was that?"
His cell mate smiled and turned his head to look up at him. He slowly rose just enough to touch his lips to the other's. Toris then smiled at the blushing Feliks. "It's no wonder that I fell in love with you."
