"Prisoner! You awake?"
Brick blinked, breaking the crust that had accumulated in the corners of his eyes during the night. The voice had roused him from a mercifully dreamless sleep.
"Whatchu want?" he mumbled.
"I can take you to shower now. I saw your burns last night, figured you'd want to wash them."
Brick sidled out of the bunk, careful not to hit his head again. "What about them?" he asked, nodding to the snoring kids.
"Let them sleep. They'll be fine here."
The concrete floor was freezing against Brick's bare feet as he crossed the cell. He stood by the bars and studied the guard with sleepy, unguarded curiosity. It was the same man who'd led the girls in the day before. He struck Brick as a sweet kid, someone who'd probably married his childhood sweetheart and had a couple kids of his own already. He stared up at Brick with apprehension tugging the corners of his mouth. But it must have taken courage to come here just to offer an early shower to a prisoner, knowing that kindness might be repaid by hostility. The young guard was either brave or dumb.
"You gonna cuff me?" Brick asked.
The guard unlocked the cell with unsteady fingers and shook his head. "No. They don't send the worst ones here, so security is more relaxed."
But Brick noticed that after pocketing the keys, the guard's hand never strayed far from the shock baton and radio on his belt. He led Brick down the hall, always keeping the prisoner a pace ahead.
"Are you the only guard for this block?" Brick asked.
"This, and the next one over. You and the girls are the only ones here right now, so that would be a pretty light detail." That surprised Brick, and he almost said so, but the guard kept talking. "They can shower later, by the way. I'll make sure nobody else is down there when I take them."
"I'll go too," Brick grunted.
"You can't, it's-"
"Those girls don't go nowhere without me."
The guard hesitated, then sighed. "Fine. I'll work it out. But you could have told me sooner. I would have told you to take your shower at the same time."
"I ain't gonna strip in front of Teeny. She'll gossip about my butt."
The guard laughed. "Well, if you ever need to ask for me, my name is Briggs."
"Wish I could say it was good to meet you, Briggs, but-" Brick shrugged.
The rest of the short walk to the showers passed in silence. For a Hyperion guard, Brick thought Briggs seemed okay. A little anxious, but honest. Sort of like Andy, if he'd had a spine.
He had a skull, though. We all saw it, Brick thought with a chill.
Briggs gestured to a large, open arch at the end of a hallway - after you - and Brick stepped into the room. The showers were full of warm, wet heat, and steam that rolled across the tile floor. Heated water, Brick thought, bemused. They hadn't even had that in New Haven. A few prisoners showered at the far end of the room, half hidden behind thick concrete pillars that stood at regular intervals. Shower heads and their accompanying knobs jutted from the columns.
Brick suddenly remembered the place. He thought he could even see where he'd killed Mr. Shank; could just make out the faint pink tint in the grout where the blood hadn't scrubbed away.
He hadn't wanted to murder the bandit lord. Brick had no problem with him, but business was business, and the centurion woman Shank's crew had captured would go on to give Mordecai and himself a lot of business. So they had cut Shank down mercilessly, and when the bandit's lover attacked them in a bereaved frenzy, they'd slaughtered him, too. That was business on Pandora.
Brick began to pull his undershirt over his head and glanced back at Briggs.
"You staying for the show?"
The guard surprised Brick by blushing. "No, no. Well, yes." He pointed to another yellow and white clad man who stood by the other door. "I'll be over there. You can come to me when you're done."
"No time limit?"
"Within reason."
"Whoah! These dumbasses have it good," Brick said with an appreciative whistle.
Briggs strolled off to join the other guard, and Brick turned back to the showers. The room was huge, so it would be easy to find a secluded place to wash. He finished stripping off his clothes and kicked them against the wall.
"C'mon, Rocko. I said I was sorry," said one of the other prisoners, a giant man, even bigger than Brick, what he and his friends would have dubbed a 'badass bruiser' before getting the hell into cover. Stacks of muscle packed so thickly that there didn't seem to be a human frame underneath, scars pitting the bulk of his flesh. Brick wasn't embarrassed to stare at the naked brute any more than he would be embarrassed to look at a pile of boulders.
The hulking man was talking to another prisoner, the one he'd called Rocko. Brick couldn't get a good look at him past the other man. The brute positioned himself to trap the smaller man against the pillar, and when Rocko tried to sidle away, he grabbed his shoulder with a hand the size of a hubcap.
"Go fuck yourself, doll," the shorter prisoner said, and sighed, like he'd been making the point for awhile but it hadn't penetrated the other man's thick skull yet.
"Why would I do that, when I got your pretty mouth right here?" The other said. He gripped Rocko's jaw with his free hand.
"Hey!" Brick yelled.
The bandit looked over his shoulder, one cro-magnus brow raised in disbelief. "'Scuse me?"
Brick puffed out his chest, trying to look like a more imposing figure, but found it hard to feel tough with his dick swinging free. "Leave him alone. He clearly ain't interested in you."
The brute looked down at the pinned prisoner, who shrugged.
"Well, I did tell you," said Rocko. He reached up and patted the big guy on the cheek. "I'm not the one you have to apologize to, anyway."
"No...'spose not," said the brute, grinding his toe against the floor like a guilty child on steroids.
"That's right. Now, get lost. Go kiss and make up," Rocko said, giving the behemoth a suggestive shove.
"Maybe we just make up, an' come back to you for kissing."
Rocko grinned. "Fine, fine. Just go!"
Brick realized with an embarrassed jolt that he was still standing there, slack jawed, watching the interaction between the two prisoners. The brute turned away from Rocko and shouldered Brick on his way past. Brick grimaced away from his breath, which stank like old meat.
He couldn't imagine how Rocko put up with that stench, since the two appeared to be intimate. The idea of the bruiser doing anything of that nature turned Brick's stomach. He wondered if other people would feel that way about himself and Mordecai, if they knew.
Knew what? That's been over for awhile, amigo. Finished. Done, he reminded himself, only it was Mordecai's voice in his head.
Then Brick looked at Rocko, and his stomach flipped for an entirely different reason.
The smaller man didn't resemble a pile of rocks, or any other geological formation- except, perhaps, the Garden incarnate. It wasn't exactly right to call Rocko 'smaller', because he wasn't small. He might have been a little taller than Mordecai if he'd been there to compare - and Brick compared every man to Mordecai, if he was honest - and was more muscular, with broader shoulders and thicker extremities. All the extremities, Brick couldn't help but notice, since the man stood with his hands on his hips, unapologetically nude. Tattoos banded his chest and arms, sea-glass green swirls against olive skin.
The man regarded Brick with a glitter of amusement in his dark eyes. Brick noticed, with a hard swallow, how veins in Rocko's forearms stuck out a little, and the smooth arc of his hips down to a dark thatch of hair, clean and perfect, like a man carved from stone.
Brick worried briefly over something his momma used to say- Don't go down to the Garden, she'd tell him, although she hadn't been talking about any real place. She'd meant it as a metaphor for sin, particularly lust. But that seemed very distant now, worlds away.
Here, Rocko was the embodiment of the Garden. Brick wanted him, wanted to go down to him.
Or on him...
Rocko snapped his fingers, startling Brick out of his thoughts. "You okay? You're not one of the messed up ones, are you?"
"Huh?" Brick asked.
"You know, the bandits from out past the Divide."
Brick just gaped.
"Never mind. I can tell you're not. They don't really talk. Listen, though, do you need a medic? They're pretty stingy with kits around here, but I got some guys who owe me." Rocko glanced over at the guards, who'd stopped chatting to watch the exchange. Now they quickly turned back to their conversation. "Those burns look bad."
"They're nothin'," Brick said, although they felt almost as bad as they looked. "They just need washed."
Rocko waved him over. "C'mere, cutie. I won't bite. Do those go around your back?"
Brick nodded, wondering a little at the endearment. He'd been called a lot of things in his life - dummy, faggot, bastard, baboso - but cutie had never cracked the list.
"I'll help you wash, then. It was sweet of you to stick up for me. Unnecessary, but sweet," he said, and chuckled. His laugh was low and musical. It made Brick's heart skip a beat, made him step forward automatically. Rocko grabbed Brick's wrist and pulled him into the shower's spray.
Agony seized him when the water first flowed over his body. Although the rest of his skin assured him that the water was only lukewarm, it seemed to boil over the burns, scalding him anew. He buried his face in his hands and gritted his teeth, waiting for the pain to abate. He became dimly aware of something tickling his stomach.
He peeked through his fingers and saw Rocko thumbing a scar near his naval, the rest of his hand braced against abs.
"I'm Rocko, but, you probably heard that. What's your name?"
"It's, uh-" he almost said Maurice. "Brick. Uhm...What're you doin?"
"I thought that you might want something. You know, for defending me."
"From your boyfriend." Brick snorted. "Man, I'm an idiot." The pain ebbed while they talked, until the burns radiated an almost comfortable warmth instead of red-hot misery. His coiled muscles unwound. The other man's fingers brushing over his skin sent a pleasant shiver through him, a sensation he hadn't felt in a long time; pins and needles, slender daggers of lust.
"He's not my boyfriend." Rocko's said, while his fingers fluttered down over Brick's stomach, closer and closer to the area that, Brick realized with an embarrassed flex, betrayed his interest. His dick stood at half attention.
"What? I thought you-"
Rocko stopped pawing but continued to stand so close that Brick could feel heat coming off him in waves. "We fuck, sure. But I wouldn't call him my boyfriend. I fuck just about everyone." He glanced at the guards again, just a quick, sidelong look, but Brick noticed.
He was mortified. "Everyone?"
"If they behave. I've been here the longest, since before Hyperion. The prisoners here are mostly bandits from different clans. The guards give me special treatment to keep them from killing each other."
"How do you do that?" Brick asked.
The other man gave him a long, loaded look, and he blushed.
"Oh."
Rocko must have seen disapproval in his face, because he frowned. "Don't look at me that way. I happen to like sex. And it's better than..." He shook his head. He was touching Brick again, fingers tracing the hard line of his abs.
"I don't wanna take advantage," Brick said. "You don't, uh, you know. You don't hafta do that stuff for me."
"What if I want to?"
Again, Brick could only gape, and Rocko loosed another laugh. It might have been insulting if it weren't so damn breathy and beautiful. His fingers grazed one of the burns, making Brick jolt.
"Hey, Cash," Rocko called to the guards.
"What?"
"I forgot the soap. Would you bring it to me?"
The guard stamped over and thrust a white bar of soap into Rocko's outstretched hand.
"Thanks, gorgeous," Rocko said, and winked. The guard, Cash, muttered under his breath. Before stalking back to his post by the door, he laid a hard, open palmed smack across Rocko's bare ass.
Brick balked. "You and him, too?" he asked.
Rocko lathered the soap between his hands before replying. The suds smelled medicinally plain, like rubber gloves. Eventually he handed the bar to Brick and rubbed his hands across the larger man's broad chest, taking extra care around the burns.
"Yep," he said at last.
Brick had nearly forgotten that he asked a question. He grunted, immersed in the feeling of Rocko's hands on him, which now drifted up to massage his shoulders. He bent so the man could reach. Tension drained out of him as Rocko worked, kneading the muscles, drawing his nails gently across skin.
"You think I'm a slut," Rocko said.
Brick didn't know how to answer that, so he shrugged.
"Well. I guess I am, but at least I have a choice about it. That's better than I had in the Cauldron. You ever been out there, to the Highlands?" Rocko asked.
"Nah," Brick said.
"You look familiar, so I thought...Anyway. I used to run with the clan out there. Nice place, easy life. The old King used to love me. Not...not love. Nothing serious, but he liked my body, and I didn't mind. I liked it. Liked him."
He didn't say anything for awhile, so Brick asked, "How'd you end up here?"
"Goddamn mutiny. Bunch of shit-lickers killed the king, and those guys were always jealous of how he treated me. They...uh."
He paused for a long moment. His fingernails pressed harder now, nearly scratching, and it reminded Brick of Mordecai in one of his moods. It filled him with a kind of aching affection that made him want to wrap his arms around the ex-bandit. He didn't, though, and Rocko eventually continued.
"They used me," he said with a dismissive shrug. "When they got bored with me, they sold me to the warden here. That guy was alright."
"Mr. Shank?" Brick asked.
Rocko blinked. "I knew I recognized you! You're the one who killed him, right?"
Brick's mouth opened and closed wordlessly, but Rocko laughed. "It's okay! But I remember you. I wasn't much help when you came through. I saw you pop some punk's head off, and I thought, no thanks. I'm not getting mixed up in that. So I went back to bed."
"Good," Brick said. When Rocko looked confused, he added, "I'm glad I didn't kill you."
"What a coincidence! So am I. Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I might as well be a slut on my own terms, right? To get what I want."
Brick frowned. "Whaddya want from me?"
"Oh, nothing! It's not like that," Rocko said. "Well. One thing. I want you to like me."
"I do like you," Brick said. Rocko smiled up at him coyly, eyes half lidded, droplets of water clinging to his lashes, and Brick felt like a fourteen-year old boy with a crush again.
"I'm happy to hear that. But what I also need to know is...do you want me?" Rocko's hand dipped between Brick's legs, grasped with soapy fingers and found him hard. A single stroke made Brick so lightheaded that he panicked for a moment, thinking his animal was coming to the surface, taking control. When he realized the feeling was just pleasure, he almost laughed. It had been so long that he hadn't recognized it.
But he raised a staying hand to Rocko's chest. "I can't."
"Why not?"
Because you're a stranger that I just met in a prison shower, Brick thought. Because I've only had sex with one person before.
What actually came out of his mouth surprised him. "I was with someone awhile back, and we had a fight. We made up, kinda, and wanted to be friends again. But I...I couldn't," Brick said, stumbling over the words. He'd never told anyone about his relationship with Mordecai. The vocabulary was unfamiliar on his tongue. "He got with a girl while we weren't talking. I had to see 'em together, and it was too hard. I can't do it again."
"Can't be with someone else?"
"I can't..." Brick paused. "I can't share."
"Ah," Rocko said. When he withdrew his hand, Brick felt suddenly exposed in the open shower- more naked than naked. Despite the warm water, he shivered.
"It's nothin personal."
Rocko shrugged and plucked the soap out of Brick's palm. "I know. It's fine. Not to sound like a prick, but I'm used to everyone wanting me, and I forget that some people have scruples."
Brick didn't know what to say to that, either, so he just slicked back a fringe of Rocko's dark hair that had fallen into his face. Rocko clutched his chest like he'd been shot.
"Il mio amore! My perfect gentleman," he said. "I'll get you eventually."
Brick didn't doubt it.
For the rest of the shower, Rocko was a gentleman, too. He helped Brick wash his back but stayed respectfully above the waist. Brick was relieved, but also strangely disappointed. They talked a little, mostly about the prison, a bit about the guards. Casual topics. Things that most people would lead a conversation with, rather than a declaration about fucking everyone and a story about being a bandit lord's sex slave.
When they finished showering and prepared to leave through separate exits, Brick cast a final look over to where the other man stood, and found him staring back. Rocko winked and blew a kiss.
More prisoners had trickled into the showers, and Brick had the crazy thought that one of them would catch the blown kiss before it reached him. Still, he mimed catching it and putting it in his pocket. He saw Rocko laugh, and was sorry that he couldn't hear it over the hiss of running water.
Brick remembered it later while he lay in his bunk. With his burns aching and the snores of the girls keeping him awake, isolated by absolute darkness, he pulled out the kiss and pressed it to his lips.