multimuse indie

Indie RP blog. Mun and muse(s) are 21+. CST/GMT-5

[hydralois]

The dress can’t possibly actually look good on Zane. Maybe ten years ago, he might have been able to pull it off, when he was a lot more androgynous looking and softer in the face, but Zane’s not a fresh-faced young adult anymore. There’s (wildly premature) bits of gray in his hair, his shoulders have filled out, there’s no way he looks even remotely good in a dress.

It leaves him to wonder if Callum just has very diverse interests.

Well. If he does, Zane can’t bring himself to mind. Dress or no dress, anything that makes Callum look at him like he just pulled the sun out of his ass is worth it.

He seems embarrassed about something though. The fact that he’d made the dress? Callum can deny it all he likes, but even if he hadn’t personally woven the fabric, it still very much counts. He’d planned and sewn this, and it becomes more obvious as Zane lifts some of the ruffles up to examine them. The stitching isn’t perfect – he’d know, he’s had bespoke suits for a while now – but it’s still good. Great, even.

And the thought of Callum bent over a pile of fabric, squinting in concentration as he lines up buttons and edgings and trim, it’s–

Bizarrely adorable.

“It definitely counts,” he disagrees. One does not have to personally make paper to be an author, or make paints from scratch to be a painter. “I–”

He’s distracted by following Callum’s gaze up the rope attached to the ceiling. His thoughts immediately go to a much darker place than sexy dancing – no, his first thought is, oh shit, is someone planning to hang themselves?

After he realizes the true purpose of it, Zane assumes that, yes, his pride is going to hang itself.

He opens his mouth for a vehement refusal – he’s not going to swing around on a rope and flash his legs at everyone, he’s not going to sing, he’s not going to shimmy around in a dress and toss out saucy winks like Satine. No. Never. Absolutely not.

But something catches Zane’s attention first: a little burst of happiness bubbling up across the cafeteria. His gaze swings over, catching sight of Martin standing back and admiring a set piece he’d just finished painting. The entire room is buzzing, a low hum of accomplishment and determination. It’s pleasant. They’re in Alcatraz, and the mood is pleasant. And then there’s Callum, a little banked fire burning away, pride radiating out from his face and his gestures and his emotions.

Zane can’t bring himself to refuse this enormous idiot.

“I hope you’re not expecting me to be as graceful as Nicole Kidman on that thing,” he drawls. “The last time I climbed a rope I was fifteen years old.” Experimentally, he reaches up and tugs on it.

He really hopes there’s going to be some sort of harness involved.

“So. Dancing aside, I notice Christian hasn’t shown up today, but I need to run lines. Where the fuck is he? We’re set to rehearse that little medley of Satine and Christian sneaking out of rehearsals to fool around and fall in love, and I can’t exactly do it on my own.” He probably could. The guy can’t act.

Callum did have very diverse interests. He hadn’t considered ginger bearded, older ex-mayors convicted of treason a part of them until recently but hey—who wouldn’t be impressed by thatruling? Zane Matthews: treason. It was impressive in and of itself. Kinda like how being able to shove precisely sixteen marshmallows in your mouth was impressive but in a naughty way. In a, ‘maybe you shouldn’t do that but that’s still kinda cool’ type of way. Marshmallows, prison sentences. Tomato, tom-ah-to.

His sense of morality was as loose as his hips were these days. He would’ve given it more thought, perhaps, if it weren’t for the fact that he was preoccupied with craning his neck over cotton hems and picking the right polyester blends for Zane’s skin type.

Or, you know, not justZane’s, but if his was especially gentle on the skin, it was surely because he was one of the few guys who tolerated being put into a dress.

Theonlyguy who tolerated being put into a dress thus far, actually. The good doc had his work cut out for him this go-around. At the sight of Zane tugging on the rope, he couldn’t help but let out a little grin. He tried to hide it behind a cough but failed as a laugh bubbled up when he quipped,

“Well, the last time you climbed me was a few weeks ago, so something tells me you’ll be okay, Zane.”

Callum proceeded to back up his remark by casually leaning his weight onto the wooden crate beside him, going for Cool Guy Just Made a Funny but ending up with Dr. Waters Attempting To Be Cool But Almost Plopping to The Floor at the sound of running lines.

With Zane.

Running lines with Zane. He’s gotta run lines with Zane. Right now. Here. In front of everyone—and not the Elephant Love Medley or El Tango de Roxanne. No, it was The Montage.

The Big Montage. The one scene they hadn’t rehearsed yet. The one scene that Callum was certain he wouldn’t be able to watch because, well.

If Zane was going to be kissing anybody, it certainly shouldn’t be Christian. Hooky Christian with the rough hands that didn’t know how to gently handle a man, much less one in a delicately stitched satin dress, the one with three perfectly circular burn marks on his inner forearm.

He never did figure out where those came from.

“Debatably, they were already in love, right?” Callum diverted, his eyes darting from the dress, to the collarbones, to his own hands. He looked up and Zane and made a prompt decision:

No games, no funny stuff, no nada. This was all strictly business, and the show must go on. Alcatraz depended on it. Alcatraz depended on him to do the right thing.

He took another note from Zane and tried for the playful, deflective approach. He figured he couldn’t fall over himself twice within the same two-minute mark. He cleared his throat.

“Well, lucky for you, I just so happen to be Christian’s understudy,” His lips tugged into a cheeky smirk. “If ya wanted to mack on me so bad, you shoulda just said so,” The little flippy-do his stomach did betrayed his words. He was wrong. He could, in fact, fall over himself twice within the same two-minute mark. It was as if his body rejected the act, casting out its spirits with a spazz of a leg, a slip of his arms.

Smooth.

“We, uh. We’re starting with the ‘mad with jealousy’ line, right? When Christian and Satine are running circles around the evil Maharaj—”

And, as if the mention of evil summoned the devil himself, a figure sauntered into his peripheral:

Boss.

[hydralois]

Zane sniffed at the notion that he might do anything as undignified as pitching a fit, but honestly, he just might. He’d hated the ridiculous sexy priest outfit, but this, this was… well, it was certainly a whole lot more. There were silk shorts and glimmering material and a ruffled skirt, and what the actual literal fuck, he hadn’t signed up to cross-dress.

But Callum was jiving closer like a gargantuan dork, pulling those ridiculous puppy eyes that Zane had lost all immunity to, and–

“Fine. Fine! I’ll try it on, Jesus fucking Christ,” he grumbled. “Keep your knickers on, Doc. Is there a– right, yes, there’s a proper closet there. Be right back.”

It wasn’t so much a proper closet, more like one of those fancy partition walls one tended to see in period dramas. And it wasn’t so much fancy as it was what looked like some misappropriated curtains slung over a clothing rack, but it worked well enough for Zane’s purposes. He bundled the costume up in his arms, vanished behind the curtain, and spent a good thirty seconds staring helplessly at the garment, trying to figure out how he would even get into it. A good deal of rustling and cursing later, he somehow managed it.

There was no mirror, so he couldn’t see himself. Looking down, all he could see was a lot of ruffles and some feathers around the neckline that were being aggravating. Only the ones on the right shoulder, though, since apparently, it was an off the shoulder design.

Christ, he felt stupid.

Along the heels of that revelation came a considerably more interesting realization, though: it fit. It didn’t sag in weird places. It wasn’t too short or too long. Whoever made it had clearly done so with him in mind, but who–

Of course.

Callum.

Callum, who was waiting beyond the curtain with the buzzing anticipation of a hundred butterflies in tight formation, the tentative hope of a delicate ivy tendril trying to push its way through the topsoil. He’d made it. Callum, with his goddamn carrot cakes and goddess printouts and gentle hands, had another talent buried underneath his doofus grins and metaphorical wagging Labrador tail.

Zane emerged from beyond the curtain, stonefaced. “I–”

I hate it, he wanted to say. Everybody’s going to laugh.

“–’m feeling a bit breezy,” he amended carefully, after one look at Callum’s expression. He practically didn’t need his empathy; everything was written all over Callum’s face. Zane’s gaze flicked six inches down. One eyebrow raised a fraction.

(Holy fuck, how was he supposed to concentrate with those staring him in the face. No, memory of stairwell bouncing, go away, not now.)

“I’m probably going to need to shave before the big night.” Zane didn’t indulge in a whole lot of outward humorous self-deprecation – he mostly saved that for internal ruthless self-hatred – but there was a shade of it in his grin as he scratched at the ginge collecting on his jawline. “Did you make this?”

Callum would argue that maybe, sometimes, perhaps, Zane had a bit of a soft spot for him. He didn’t know if it was because of the wicked dance moves he’d whipped out since day one or if it was the residual effects of having been on the receiving end of a lap dance—all in all, pretty intimate stuff, he’d reckon, and if it was the dance moves that kept Zane so cooperative, well… he certainly didn’t plan on stopping any time soon. So he hit him with loose hips, some mean leg work, and sexy shoulder rolls until his friend finally relented to his requests. He stopped just short of a triumphant fist pump as the politician grumbled his parting words beneath his breath. Callum bit at his lower lip, fighting back a toothy grin.

“They’re on, they’re on!” He insisted, rubbing at the back of his neck as the other slid behind a partition. The inmates had done a fantastic job of making the set come to life. The cafeteria always, between the hours of 2pm to 5pm, transformed convincingly into a fully functional stage. The props they’d been working on were coming along, the smell of drying paint on cardboard cutouts a distinctive hallmark for a day’s hard labor. The acoustics weren’t the best, and they didn’t have the biggest budget, but that never stopped them from losing themselves in their tasks. The work was rewarding, even if the work, at times was, well… work. And a lot of it.

The inmates responded well to baked goods and positive affirmations. Jerry didn’t always agree, but the doc was happy to play Good Cop. He didn’t know Martin the Murderer used to be an artist, for example, until the 6’6” behemoth got his hands on a paintbrush and a few wooden crates. His partner in crime, Dennis, had a natural gift for set design. Callum told them their work was valuable. There weren’t as many stabbing incidents that week.

Jerry said it was a coincidence.

Blue eyes swept across the cafeteria, now teeming with life as men sat hunched over creaky stools, others reciting lines beneath their breath as the endless chatter buzzed like white noise amidst rush hour traffic. Callum’s chest swelled. An unfamiliar fullness sat heavily on him, pushed its foreign weight against his body until he felt his throat constrict.

Pride.

When the curtains parted, he experienced the oncoming flood as a distant memory.

He was a sophomore in high school. Sixteen, scrawny, soft spoken. He wore a bright orange hoodie with a dragon ball emblem on the front. His teacher droned on about Wordsworth. He hadn’t been listening. His bangs were in his face. He blew at them absently.

…is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.

Adoration.

Callum felt his mouth open, close, then pull into a wide grin as the other scratched at his beard. The dress, no matter how gender-bending, fit him just right. He hadn’t lost his touch just yet.

“—Is it out of line to say that it looks good on you?” He teased, purposely averting his gaze from the bare shoulders that stood before him. Sure, he could feel Zane’s eyes on his chest, but they were quite literally on display! A man was only a man, even if he spent his days in prison, after all! Callum regarded the following question with a cough, followed by a hand running along the length of his jaw. He avoided eye contact.

The catch was, he avoided eye contact intentionally. Cosplay was a deep, dark secret of his! Everyone had skeletons in their closet, for god’s sake, his just happened to hail from the hidden leaf village and desperately wanted to become Hokage. How else would he know how to throw together costumes?

“I mean, make is such a subjective word, ya know.” Callum waved a hand at the thought. “Like, psh, who even makes their own costumes? That’s so—even if I assembled it, it’s not like I wove the cloth or anything, so it doesn’t even count, right?”

Callum’s eyes darted to wayward length of rope that dangled from a ledge above them. It was the same kind of rope P.E. teachers used when they forced their kids to engage in fitness tests—logically, then, it was going to be the rope that Zane would (hypothetically) swing in sexy-Tarzan style from to emulate Satine’s pivotal solo, Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.

The doctor looked at the rope, then at his own shoes, then at back at the rope, then finally, back at Zane.

There was no casual way of acknowledging that he had spent roughly twelve hours making a dress for him. It was even less casual to explain away the fact that he’d inferred his measurements based on touch alone.

They’d been doing that more often these days. The occasional hug and the gentle brush of their hands.

Those moments were memorable in a way that Wordsworth never was.

Focus.

“You know which scene I’m envisioning, right?” 

[bumblebeeindie]

@hydralois

There were a number of things that Zane Matthews was very good at, and he wasn’t shy about letting everyone know just how good he was at said things. He could have even written an itemized list:

Public speaking, speech-writing, and all forms of conversation in which Zane’s aim was to convince another person of something

Bargaining, trading, dealing, and manipulation of the former three activities in order to achieve lots of wins for him and very few wins for the other person

Looking presentable (though not so much these days, what with the prison garb, but Zane still kept himself looking as socially acceptable as possible)

Any and all conversations of a political nature

Acting, though of a decidedly more subtle nature than stage-acting

There were several things not present on that list. Namely: singing (although he supposed he had a decent enough voice), cooking (though that had nothing to do with his current dilemma), and acknowledging that he’d have to wear costumes.

Yes, costumes. Because apparently he’d not only agreed to go along with Callum’s Moulin Rouge à la Alcatraz, he’d agreed to do one of the two main roles, and he’d spent the last two weeks doing rehearsals of some of the more short, simple scenes. There were times he’d been hard pressed not to laugh at the absolute ludicrous image of inmates dancing around in their drab prison clothes, spouting off purple prose lines about romance and beauty. They’d all been sat down to watch Moulin Rouge three times now, and the first time had been… an experience.

Zane, not much of a movie lover, had initially thought the first few scenes of the movie were overwrought and ridiculous. By the time Christian was dancing around in Toulouse-Lautrec’s apartment writing a show called Spectacular Spectacular, he’d been ready to write the whole thing off. But, slowly, he’d gotten engaged. Slowly, he’d gotten invested. And by the time the Roxanne tango had been blaring from the shitty TV speakers, Zane had been blinking a bit too hard, his throat a bit too tight. To say nothing of the ending.

In his opinion, it was everybody else’s fault that he felt that way. Everybody else had been sad, and Zane, an untrained empath, had just been coasting on the mood of the crowd. That was the absolute truth. One hundred percent.

Two weeks of rehearsals and memorizing lines and Callum bouncing around like a gremlin on smack, and here he was: staring at a couple of newly-made costumes, aghast.

It was a good thing he could feel Callum approaching (like a small star buzzing closer), otherwise Zane might have had to shout for him. The second Callum got through the door, Zane pointed an accusatory finger at the costumes on the rack.

There were ruffles. And lace. And feathers.

“What,” he said frostily, “is this.” 

[hydralois]

Attempting to get Alcatraz inmates to watch a musical was a lot like herding cats. Callum had not only attempted but succeeded in the task by whittling his methods down to a science: First, he’d ask politely. When he was inevitably met with a gruff ‘fuck no, doc’, he’d resort to more earthly methods of persuasion. The McGregor enthusiast would then proceed to push his beefy pecs together with his equally as beefy arms, stopping only when a hint of a cleavage would form within the deep neckline of his scrubs.

He’d caught wind of the nickname he received in Alcatraz. It was something along the lines of Captain Big Tits, and Callum was no fool. All that time he spent with Zane was not time gone to waste—he learned some valuable life skills! A man had to capitalize on what he’s got, after all!

He’d ask the question again, this time with a small flutter of his blond lashes, lips tugging into a cheeky little smile as he awaited the other’s answer. Sometimes, he could feel their eyes darting towards his neckline. Other times, he ran the risk of feeling their penis pressed against his own and immediately dropped the pecs and ran for the hills.

Before long, he and Jerry had a full cast on their hands. Some inmates were happy to busy themselves with props while others yelled—regularly—about not landing a lead role. Callum could only soothe so many people before his own patience wore thin.

When in doubt, whip ‘em out.

He’d spent the last seventy-two hours scouring his local Marshall’s, five of those spent with a man who claimed he could speak to the fabric. Callum wasn’t sure if that was a super power related thing or an extended metaphor, but he listened to him all the same. Red satin would complement Zane’s features the best, he decided.

He fastened every sequin by hand, pouring all his efforts into the carefully placed feathers and ruffles. When he waltzed into the open set, he wasn’t prepared for what was in store for him—

Well, actually, he was! But he didn’t think Zane would be that upset!

“Zane,Zane, wait,” The doctor held up his hands, circling around his small friend like a zookeeper caught in a lion’s den. He could feel a gust of wind breeze over his chest. His V-line had gotten progressively deeper these days—you know, for the cause.

“Before you pitch a fit, I just want you to try it on, alright?” He placated, tiptoeing over to the rack that held the offending garment. Callum gingerly pulled it from the rack, holding it at arm’s length as stepped closer to Zane.

“It’s got little trousers underneath, look!” He grabbed the dress’ hem by the bottom, pulling it up to reveal not one, but two layers of silk shorts sewn into its design. It shimmered and glistened under the fluorescent prison lights. He wore a proud little smile on his face. “I made it myself! I wanted to make sure you were comfortable in it—the shorts give you a lotta range. You could do a karate kick in it if you wanted to!” His legs did a tired rendition of the Can Can routine to strengthen his point. He used it as a chance to inch nearer to Zane, feeling awfully bold for a man who was certain there were still drool stains on the costume somewhere. His inner music fueled his enthusiasm. He could Can Can his way into the Zane’s good graces, he was sure of it! Still jiving, gravity pulled him closer and closer to the musical’s newest starlet,

“I promise! Please give it a try?”

He pulled the classic puppy dog, this time draping the costume over Zane’s front, his hand holding the plastic hanger right above the politician’s shoulder. He briefly wondered if he had freckles there, too. He was suddenly very proud (and simultaneously ashamed! How unethical!) of himself for going with the off-shoulder design on Satine’s dress. 

He flashed a pleading smile. “Pleaaaaase?”

[hydralois]

@bumblebeeindie

“Callum—”

“Please,”

“Cal, seriously, I don’t know abou—”

Callum, with all the conviction of a fuzzy blanket, took to his iconic puppy dog look. The one that involved clasping his hands together in prayer and batting his eyelashes. He stood there, bouncing from the heel to toe, before two folding chairs and a manuscript in bright red lettering entitled Moulin Rouge! with two exclamation points. One printed, and one hand-written in ballpoint pen by what had to be the most sleep deprived doctor in all of San Francisco. The bags beneath his eyes were concealed by way of frozen spoons—it was a life hack he’d read off some Cosmo article a while back. He liked to think it worked.

“But you’ve got experience with this stuff. You don’t even have to do anything, listen, just,” He held out the palm of his hands. “Stick with me through these last auditions. Please, Jerry? We’ve only got a few left. I know someone who’s perfect for one of the leads.”

He left out the part where he was perfect in general. Callum thought it best to let his coworker see that bit for himself.

The older man rubbed at his own temples. How the fuck the Ken doll managed to persuade Alcatraz prison of all places to go along with this whacked out shit was beyond him. A prison musical. It was a disaster waiting to happen. He gave him a pointed look before letting out a sigh.

“I hardly think my short-lived acting career in eighth grade counts as ‘experience’.” He grumbled, ass regrettably meeting the chair. His scoliosis was acting up. He grimaced.

“But fine. Get on with it. Go find your Satine. You’ve got ten minutes.”

…And that was the story of how Callum, winded and lightly misted with a sheen of sweat, managed to locate Zane amidst a crowd of inmates. It was the lunch rush. GoGurt packets were being traded for biscuits. Biscuits were getting traded for booty. Callum tried hard to repress his urge to stop and lecture the man about the dangers of prison prostitution—but his eyes were on the prize. The prize being a darling ginger beard and hands that surprisingly (or unsurprisingly?) felt really good on top of his own.

He tried to brush the thought from his mind. That’s not why he was there.

He was there to make Zane a star.

The moment the man was in reaching distance, Callum took hold of his shoulders and yanked. Maybe he was in the middle of a conversation. Maybe he was just minding his own business. Whatever the case was, Callum had five minutes left to get him to the casting room and—

“Zane, we gotta run. Like, right now!” He urged, tugging at the man’s hand with urgency. He pushed back a wild tuft of hair that’d flown over his forehead. He needed another haircut soon.

“Jerry gave me ten minutes to find you and now we’ve got five left! I told him you’d make a better Satine. He’s trying to give it to someone else but we have to go because you’re just so much better and—”

He bounced toward the hallway,

“I’ll explain more when we get there!”

[emmanuel-dsi-blog]

hazards of the job

[hydralois]

“That’s disgusting.” Luther’s imagination starts acting before he could stop it and the image it conjures is enough to make him shiver. “Are you saying you’re into it? Because if you’re not, it’s still a pretty good threat.”

Listen, the lack of skin contact is appreciated, but Luther will not be handled like a dirty pair of undies being held by the edge. Grunting, he pulls free from the other’s grasp and decides to look at him enough to empty his bladder. But after that’s done—!

“Listen up, Depression Manifested. I am not stepping one custom made leather boot inside a public bathroom. I expect to be treated right, or else I will not only get you fired, but I’ll close this whole place down.” He makes a circle with his finger to capture the pathetic room they’re in. “I have the money to do it and I’m pretty vengeful when I have nothing better to do.” The finger ends up poking Emanuel’s chest, right in the center. “Which happens more often than you’d think. And FYI I don’t hook up with saggy-assed men in their fifties thank you very much.”

Emmanuel considered the kink, if not briefly, and settled for a shrug. His imagination was as vivid as the next guy’s, but the image didn’t ruffle his feathers the same way it did the younger man. He was getting too old for this shit. “Doesn’t matter. You’re not finding out anyway.” He brought a hand to his beard, stroking absently. “I can’t be bothered with threats from guys who wear leather boots unironically.”

One minute, the kid demanded to have his hand held. The next, he’s wrestling free of Emmanuel’s hold on his sleeve and shooting daggers at him as if he’d single handedly murdered his whole family. The bystanders at the station looked on in wonder. When the kid’s bony finger met the middle of his rib cage, the coroner cocked his head.

“Then do it.” He stepped into the accusing finger. “See if I care. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly in love with my job. Harder to threaten saggy-assed men with no will to live, eh?” He pushed the man’s shoulder with a flippant hand. “How about you use all that money to buy a new pair of pants since you’re so keen on pissing yourself.” Emmanuel shot the curious onlookers a glare. “Someone entertain Don Quixote for me while I clock out.”

[emmanuel-dsi-blog]

hazards of the job

[hydralois]

Too stunned by the angelic beauty to hold a proper conversation with Luther is no doubt the reason for the man’s lack of ‘spoken words’. “Don’t degrade me, or I will spit in your face. I don’t care if this is the police station.” Luther flips his hair away from his eyes to show just how serious his threat is. “Pobre— Did you just curse at me in a different language? You know I can sue you, right?” Did he not dress rich enough today to intimidate people the proper way? He knew he shouldn’t have skipped on the chance to wear a diamon-anything.

Luther snorts and turns his face away from the interrogator. Refusing to look at him will surely hurt the other man. “No.” He says slowly and with enormous satisfaction.

But his bladder says otherwise, so Luther’s mind quickly changes to accommodate his body’s needs. “Okay, yes. But you have to take me there, because I refuse to look at you ever again.” He stretches out his hand, and uses the other to cover his eyes. “And it better be a private one, because I will not pee where all the common folk pee.”

There was a lot to decipher here.  

“Spit in my face?” Emmanuel repeated, syllables stretched beyond the point of breaking. His expression remained neutral. “It’s 2018, kid. That’s considered a kink these days. You might want to look into a more recent array of threats. For your own safety, of course.” Like he cared much for that.

Again, the kid’s face was okay.  Standard brat that exfoliated with the tears of plebeians. It wasn’t anything new. If he had a dollar for every—

He sighed. Gratuitously.

“Yes, of course you can.” He then stepped out and away from the situation, stopping only when he realized the infant wanted him to hold his hand. Emmanuel glared at the appendage as if it caused his family great dishonor. It was like looking in a mirror.

He took it as an opportunity to get off work early. Grabbing onto the boy’s sleeve (because what the fuck kind of terror would ensue if he held his hand), he tugged them out of the room. It was radio silence for the next thirty seconds.

“Tch, a private bathroom.” He scoffed. “You don’t expect me to take you to my bathroom, do you? What is this, a bad porno? Get real. The station’s stalls are fine.”

[hydralois]

Jesus fucking Christ. If he’d thought Callum had been the emotional equivalent of a fairground before, he’d just strapped himself in to the biggest roller-coaster on site and decided to go a few rounds with the gravity-defying loops.

A dizzying confusion. Stark realization. A tight sensation that Zane couldn’t identify. The crush of the bottom of the ocean.

Then, white-hot anger for a few boiling seconds, like fireworks out of the corner of his eye.

After that, fear.

For a long few seconds, Zane had absolutely no idea what Callum was talking about. Washe okay? Did he need to talk? Why–

He followed Callum’s gaze, and glanced down. Three tiny burns in a neat little row, barely bigger than a matchhead each, standing out dark red against the too-pale skin of his inner forearm, burns he’d unwittingly revealed by rolling up his sleeve. Like nothing was wrong or out of place, Zane rolled his sleeves back down.

In the moment with Ace, he’d been all for them. He’d been excited/anticipatory/thrilled. He’d been turned right the fuck on.

Now, Zane wondered what the fuck he’d been thinking. He wasn’t a masochist, not even remotely. Sure, he liked the tiny sting of lovebites and fingernails dragged down a back, but he was too familiar with pain to enjoy it. Too familiar with the disciplinary slap of a ruler against his knuckles or the strain of muscle after an ice-bath.

And there was Callum, looking like someone had shot his fucking puppy.

What the fuck had he been thinking, accidentally exposing that shit to Callum? Zane hadn’t forgotten a single word of what they’d discussed in the basement – hadn’t forgotten the sight of scars stark on Callum’s skin, the faltering explanation of his family and his time in prison. Zane still didn’t know the whole story, and he wondered if he ever would.

On pure autopilot, because Callum’s worry ached like a splinter in the back of his mind, Zane reached out and took Callum’s hand. A spot of warmth in the middle of a freezing day.

“It’s not what you think,” he reassured. His thumb traced a path over Callum’s knuckles, and this was– intimate, but so ridiculously fucking right that he kept it up. “I didn’t do it. Shit, I’m notthat unhappy here. I’m doing surprisingly okay, considering.”

Because some people wilted in prison. Some people turned into the darkest versions of themselves.

Zane Fucking Matthews was too busy wheeling and dealing and double-crossing gangs. A life of politics had prepared him disturbingly well for prison.

His empathy, that idiot fucking gremlin of an entity, was trying to wrap itself around Callum like a fuzzy octopus, all metaphorical limbs and comfort. At this point, Zane just let it. Trying to control it gave him a headache.

“Now, come on, let’s get back to this cake,” he encouraged, shooting Callum a smile, a rare genuine version. Not Politician Zane, not Diplomatic Zane, but something considerably more real – up here, surrounded by the ocean and the wind and Callum, he could let himself be real. He could keep holding Callum’s hand (though it might make it a bit difficult to deal with the cake, he supposed), he could–

Hold up. Was he flirting?

…Almost. About 90% of the way to getting his flirt on.

“You went to all this fucking trouble and I don’t want to bring the mood down. Do you want,” Zane squinted at the cake, “this alarmingly big piece I cut, or the stupidly little one, because I apparently can’t cut a cake to save my life?”

I didn’t do it.

It was only marginally comforting. Zane gave an answer that led to more questions— like who did and most importantly, why. Callum considered the possibility of a gang initiation, if not only briefly. The Hollowed Hearts were no strangers to hazing, three perfect burns lining his inner arms like initials carved into hardened oak.

His heart dropped again.

The younger Bennett had a way with words. The elder? Well, the elder cornered Callum in the showers just weeks prior. Naked and afraid, Callum slinked out of danger’s clutches with only the clothes on his back and a rock-hard erection trailing him close behind. Predator to prey. It was always one way or the other with them. If brute force didn’t work, they tried seduction. If you caught Lucien on a good day, it could be both. His hair held all his secrets.

Callum hadn’t joined their leagues. As Zane rolled his sleeves back down, he had a distinct feeling that he hadn’t, either.

More questions.

He opened his mouth, words of protest forming on the tip of his tongue, when he felt an unfamiliar warmth clasp atop his hand. Then the soft stroke of fingers brushing against his knuckles.

Chills ran down his spine. Chills that transformed into fuzzies right after… like hairy little caterpillars metamorphosing into a big, wooly blanket.

Zane smiled, and it was in that moment that Callum threw caution entirely to the wind. It flew off into the San Fran skyline, getting caught somewhere on a telephone line or some Millennial’s solar panels. He wasn’t paying attention anymore. Instead, he was more concerned with,

Well. Not the cake. He hardly entertained the idea of glancing at it.

He cleared his throat, faux-huffing. “Hey, hey, hey—watch the humor! Self-deprecation sure isn’t gonna lighten the mood, huh? I think they’re perfect.” The cake slices, not the man.

That was a lie. The cake slices and the man. Sans the treason. And the assassination attempt.

Callum’s hands moved before he could think to stop them. Or, rather, Callum’s hand, singular, moved. The one that Zane wasn’t actively… caressing. Because why would he ever want that to end?

He scooped up a forkful of cake, icing precariously lining its plastic prongs, and airplane’d it right into Zane’s mouth-hole. Quickly. So quickly, in fact, that the man’s mouth hadn’t even opened yet in response to a foreign object threatening to lodge itself inside his—

Yeah, okay, he should stop.

Callum had a serious case of the giggles. Zane had a serious case of cream cheese face.

“I—shit, sorry,” He rasped, the perpetrating forkful still hovering midair. “I, Zane! Your face. I just.” Callum went for the knee. Oh yes, the good ol’ knee slapper!

“I’m trying to watch my figure,” He wiggled lasciviously towards the other man. “So I figured you’d appreciate both pieces. It’s your birthday, after all. I’m trying to be helpful!”

[hydralois]

So new to this whole empathy thing, Zane hadn’t quite developed the language of empaths.

Every major class of ability had their stereotypes. The telepaths who would finish your sentences, the fliers who got a bit chubby because they never walked long distances, the aerokinetics who would make their hair and clothes flutter dramatically in the breeze. There were jokes: don’t fuck a shapeshifter because you never know who you’re gonna wake up next to, or,don’t have flirt with pre-cogs, they know long before you do if you’re going to be successful.

For empaths, the stereotypes had a decided therapist flavor. Asking how you were feelings, old sexist jokes about women needing to talk about their feelings. Spouses never getting any alone time or time to process anything because the empath already knew exactly how they felt. Sex column writers who tittered about how empaths could bring you to new heights in bed, self-help writers who droned on about how empaths needed to make friends with other empaths, because anybody else inevitably got fed up with the constant remarks about their emotions.

But Zane had never developed that language. And even though it had only been a few days of his suppressants acting up, he’d yet to say those sorts of things to Callum: you feel weird, what’s up, or, wow you’re feeling good today, did I miss something?

Partly, it was deliberate. An attempt to deny his own hated ability. Partly, it was out of decorum.

And he’d never wanted to ask so badly as he did right then.

Because all of a sudden, Callum just went blank.

A human blue screen. A howling void. The mental equivalent of those scenes in action movies where the big buff hero nearly gets exploded and the audience has to suffer through thirty seconds of muffled, high-pitched whining.

But Callum kept moving, kept talking.

He’d seen a talk given by an empath, once. She’d described growing up with it, how it became a sixth sense, and how much her sense of reality had changed when she’d briefly gone on suppressants. She’d described a world of zombies, scarecrows, human puppets with no warmth. More than losing sight or hearing, she’d lost connection.

And Zane scoffed at the notion, because he got by just fine. Except, these past few days he’d had the eerie sensation of finally breathing, of finally seeing people the way they were meant to be seen.

–suddenly, he got exactly what that speaker was talking about.

Because Callum’s grin was bright and cheery and there was nothing behind it.

“Callum–” Zane started, a tiny little divot between his eyebrows, on the verge of asking. Did Callum know about his empathy? If so, was he even okay with the concept of having his emotions read like a book? A lot of people weren’t.

A particularly strong gust of wind threatened to blow the candles out before he did. Shit.

“Yeah, alright, fuck, give me a second, I didn’t pre-prepare for any wishing,” he joked on autopilot, sidling up alongside Callum to get to the cake, nudging shoulder against shoulder, a small point of warmth in the cold ocean gale.

Zane didn’t know what the fuck to wish for. He didn’t believe in wishing, he believed in hard work and achieving success on your own merit – when social advantages allowed it, don’t get him started on how much he hated Republicans and their dipshit bootstraps ideology. He didn’t want to wish to be free, because he was working on that. He probably shouldn’t wish for a pony.

He ducked down, closed his eyes, and the accursed small soft entity that was his empathy said, I wish I could make Callum happy because he deserves it so much more than any other motherfucker in this hellhole.

He blew the candles out, and snorted, “By the way, lucky gal? Callum, where the fuck do you think I would’ve found a woman in this prison? I sure as hell didn’t ship one in alongside my daily fanmail.”

There was a plastic butter knife sitting next to the cake – presumably because even Callum couldn’t get proper knives into a prison – which Zane picked up and started studiously cutting the cake. Probably the first home-made cake Zane had ever seen on a birthday. The distraction made it easier to ask:

“You, ah. You okay?” If he even remotely hinted at why he knew Callum wasn’t, then he’d be giving away his wonky suppressant secret. But that suddenly seemed so much less important than Callum right then. His sense of the man had faded into the background, as gray as the concrete walls and the choppy seas and the unhappy clouds overhead.

Where’d the fucking sunshine go?

“Because you seem…” Zane dithered. “Not yourself, all of a sudden. Was I an asshole about something without knowing?”

When they were teens, Corey didn’t stuff Playboy magazines beneath their mattresses. He would sneak into the public library, slip out through the back alley, and only run home when he was certain their mother had left for work. He returned with the first three books in the Harry Potter series. Their parents forbade it: witchcraft, they said.

Their backs hurt for following weeks, but it was the first time Callum had known magic outside of his own.  He accidentally scuffed himself on its spine—he might still have the mark somewhere, hidden along the edges of his hipbones.

They never called it magic in their household. It was a blessing. It wasn’t a superpower, either—those were for people who’d made deals with the devil. Sold their soul for a bit of dumb luck, a guaranteed win at the raffle. The ability to walk on water. They turned their cheeks and closed the curtains while they were at it: There was no ‘power talk’ at the dinner table. They turned the news off when the newest candidate for Justice of the Peace was up for election. He was a nice fellow with a good head on his shoulders. He occasionally liked to blow bubbles from palms for the kiddos.

“Witchcraft”.

So there Callum was, at the impressionable age of thirty-something, turning the other cheek when it came to matters of powers. He still flinched in public sometimes, when his hands would reach out for a wounded creature—usually an overly adventurous squirrel or baby bird—and still expect to feel a cold swat at the tops of his hands.

“Not in front of people.”

Did he know Zane had empathy? Sure, the paperwork said so. But the paperwork also said that everyone in the prison was good and well suppressed. The included most of the staff but, well—Callum had become an asset. Less resources. Less cost. Less trouble.

They kept him happy by not asking any questions. Like his frequent visitor or why exactly he needed the last plastic knife in the kitchenette (it was really just a microwave next to an electronic tea kettle, but the idea of having a kitchenette in a prison sounded like a luxury).

The blue screening was an apt defense mechanism. Instead of howling pain there was just howling wind and a comfortable, almost familiar warmth of a tiny politician sliding up his shoulder.

Callum could deal with familiar. Callum couldn’t deal with much: Queues, asking for help at Hobby Lobby, calling to make a dentist’s appointment. It wasn’t a point of contention he was proud of, but it was his… life.

Having the man he had a profound crush on tell him he just got laid?

Well, that was his life too.

And, like all other things, he had to grin and bear it.

“Please, you’re good at thinking on your feet! Remember when you dropped a stack of medical books on your head?” He nudged Zane with a push of his shoulder. “—I think you can handle making a wish.”

The candles were blown, his big, hunky heart had been broken (yet simultaneously stitched back together again!), and Callum was just about ready to start the good ol’ slice n’ dice when Zane went on to attack his Very Convincing Façade.

He was doing well. He sounded authentic! He called Zane a stud, for goodness’ sake! The only thing left to do was high five about the perfect ten Zane had undoubtedly smashed, someone who looked like Angelina Jolie maybe (he didn’t peg Zane as a blonde type of guy), and then, all of a sudden…

Well.

The pain struck.

His chest seized, his stomach felt eight times heavier, and he could feel his fingertips go numb at his sides. It wasn’t because of the wind. He stood, in complete stillness, the cogs in his head struggling to turn as he processed every word the other spoke line by painstaking line.

Zane was into men. Zane was into men, but not him, not because he wasn’t a man, but because he wasn’t the right type of man, because he was his doctor, and Zane was his patient, and he shouldn’t be feeling jealous about it but his head was starting to get hot, and the sun was shining directly into his eyes, and he was somehow angry at everything, hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, and—

“What?” He asked, jolting himself back into reality. Zane had already started slicing.

“Me? No, I’m great, pft, peachy keen.” He shucked off the questions with a flippant wave, shuffling a bit as he stood by Zane’s side. He tried to give him more room. “One of the best days I’ve had in a while, actually. Why? Did I do something?”

The question bothered him more than it should have. Perhaps because he knew he was feeling something fierce. His heart was giving acupuncture a test ride and it wasn’t entirely sure how it felt about it yet—

And it was in that moment that Zane rolled his sleeves up.

And Callum went from empty, to sad, to angry, to… frightened.

He didn’t say anything at first. He waited until Zane served him his slice, picking up the paper plate gingerly, plastic fork readily available at its edge. He tried hard not to hazard another look. He’d seen enough.

He cleared his throat. It tightened instead.

“Are you…” Callum started, mouth hovering over a bite of carrot cake. “Are you, uh. Are you okay? Do you need to talk about anything… or,” There was a strategic pause where he let himself chew. Let the words kinda marinate a little bit.

“It’s just, I’ve been there before, you know? Uh. You don’t need to,” He held a plate atop one hand, used his fork as a prop in his other.

“Resort to any extreme measures if you’re feeling unhappy here, Zane. I—” He looked to Zane, then to the burn marks. Then back to Zane again.

He performed the human equivalent to the spinning wheel of death.

“Shit, sorry, I’m,” He set the cake down. “I really tried to make this a good day for you, and I didn’t wanna bring this up, but— I didn’t notice this the last time we saw each other. I can’t help but think this is recent? Do you need to talk? Is there anything more I can do to make this,”

This. This prison. This place. The scars.

It hurt. Somehow, it hurt vicariously.

His ability didn’t work that way.

“Better somehow?” He spoke in quiet earnest.

He waited, again, for the cold swat on his hand.

He could heal a lot of things, but he couldn’t heal a mind.

[hydralois]

There was a moment, just a quick one, where Callum’s emotions sharpened, for lack of a better word. If Zane were a telepath, he’d be able to tell exactly what it was – as an empath, all he knew was that for a second or two, Callum’s focus honed in like a hawk spotting prey. Or, no, not predatory like that. More like a collector finding a long-looked-for item, or…

He didn’t fucking know. This shit was confusing.

He did, in fact, know what the day was. Zane had a nice birthday letter from his dad to show for it, tucked into his pocket, already faintly creased with the number of times he’d reread it today. Eventually, he’d have the words memorized, so he wouldn’t need to read the physical letter.

“Callum, come on, you really didn’t need to– fine, alright, I’m turning around. See? Not peeking.”

Except he could still feel Callum behind him, zipping around like a firefly, that bundle of emotion moving to the left and right, anticipation growing keener, little starbursts of amusement and hope. There was scraping noises, shuffling noises, something metal being set down.

And, finally, as directed, he turned around.

…Was that a fucking carrot cake?

He’d mentioned, very briefly, to Callum that he wasn’t a big fan of sugar. Zane didn’t go out of his way to avoid it, but he preferred savory to sweet, and Callum… had listened. And remembered. And it wasn’t like Zane had never gotten birthday presents before, but in his time as Mayor he’d gotten used to getting champagne and chocolates, fellow government workers telling their secretaries to get a perfunctory gift. A gesture, with no meaning and no depth.

But Callum had gotten him a fucking carrot cake, and a gag gift about Trump because Zane constantly talked his ear off about politics when he had a chance, and there were actual candles.

Zane wished he could blame the tightness in the back of his throat on someone else nearby feeling sad, but nope. That one was all him.

“Jesus, Callum.” Somewhere between overwhelmed and incredulous and unbearably fond. “This is– shit, you didn’t have to do all this. How did you even get carrots onto this shithole? I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen an actual real vegetable in the cafeteria.” Aside from tomato paste, of course, did that count as a vegetable?

Since Zane Matthews never does anything tentatively, he doesn’t sidle toward the table like his slightly overwhelmed self kind of wants to: no, he walks over normally, and picks up the tin of mints with a little laugh. It’s got Trump making a ridiculous face (ie. a normal Trump face) on the front, and a rambling Trumpian message on the back, which makes him laugh again. Which is precisely two more laughs than he’s done for, well, a while.

Meanwhile, Callum is standing by, beaming like a proud father, and–

Fuck it.

Zane goes in for a hug.

He has to stretch up to get his arms around Callum’s shoulders, the tall asshole, and while Zane has many things he’s not good at, hugging is not one of them. He’s a squeezer, none of that hesitant ass-out hug shit.

“Thank you.” That might have been lost, somewhere between Callum’s throat and shoulder. Too much beef to cushion the noise. So Zane pulls back, recovers slightly by giving Callum a Totally Manly smack on the shoulder, and repeats. “Thanks. You’re a fucking gift, you know that? I thought all I was going to get today was a quickie, but now I’ve got an actual cake too!”

Callum was a proud father! He’d not only conceived the idea of a carrot cake, but he had successfully carried it to term! It sat there, glistening happily beneath the San Francisco sun, atop a wooden crate branded ‘Alcatraz property’ in bright red paint. His eyes darted from his masterpiece to the tiny picture of Trump. He almost shuddered. When his gaze finally settled back on Zane, happy Zane with deep smile lines and bright eyes, all the toils of his labor screamed that it was well worth it. His kitchenette was covered in flour, and he was certain he would come home to ants trailing up the countertop, tiny legs mesmerized by a long path of cinnamon. They would dot the granite like the flecks of Zane’s freckles—

Get it together, man.

His hands quickly worked at the candles that sat beside the cake, tearing apart that plastic that revealed various shades of pinks and purples, all of which were adorned by spirals of glitter. Callum’s beaming was relentless.

“Shhh, but I did!” He countered, poking holes into its spongy layer. The candles sank into the cake. Callum vibrated. He vibrated so hard, in fact, that he was perfectly still. Excitement would do that to a guy. “Atticus owed me one. He said he wouldn’t be rude to me on my birthday a few weeks ago, and, well,” Callum reached into his back pocket to dig for his lighter, free hand motioning expressively. “As soon as I walked into the building he called me an asshole, so. Fresh carrots? Can do! Beats tomato paste any day, huh?” His fingers swiped against the cool metal of the lighter.

He hadn’t celebrated his last few birthdays. It came with the territory of being an adult, that much he knew for sure. Gone were the days of shared birthday cakes (Corey would always insist on Dutch chocolate. Callum took the ice cream cake route wherever possible) and in their place was major OT and an impending sense of doom—did Callum leave the stove on when he left the house? Should he start investing in some time shares? He got the birthday texts, all caps lock of course, but spent his night flipping through self-help books on his living room couch. It was quiet.

Zane deserved more than just quiet.

He tried not to watch as the other sidled over to inspect the goods.

He tried and failed miserably, because at some point, the candles were lit, the plates were out, and all he could do was stand there with his hands on his hips, looking on dotingly as Zane’s laugh filled the space between them.

He felt warm.

There were a number of Hug Categories he was familiar with.

1.)       The Christian Side Hug.

2.)       The Manly Bro Hug, complemented nicely with a firm pat on the back.

3.)       The Hugging Aunt Susan

And now…

4.)       The Adorable Man Tucked Into My Breast Hug.

It was a quick transition. One moment, his hands were on his hips and the next, they were wrapped all the way around Zane, arms bringing the man in for a squeeze as they embraced in what had to be the most cinematically pleasing man-on-man hug the world had ever seen. The sun was at its zenith, the birds hushed, and all the world stopped to listen when Zane uttered that magic word—

Quickie.

It was the equivalent of taking a man’s heart to a cheese grater. To crack open the hollowed shell of his existence and scramble him into a breakfast omelet. To not only be in a train wreck, but to watch in third person the way his bones would unsuccessfully fold into themselves like a broken lawn chair.

If it weren’t for the manly smack on the shoulder, Callum may have never returned from The Dark Place.

He’s now experienced war.

The war on love.

He blinked.

“It’s—I, uh.” Shell shocked, his body began moving on its own accord. His voice did much the same. The lights were on, but not a damn soul was home. The bubonic plague had riddled the city! Population of the town: zilch!

“I told you about the syphilis thing, didn’t I? The other day? Were you—um. Were you safe, or…”

Callum motioned vaguely toward the cake, its flames still flickering amidst the gusts of wind.

“Unless it’s, like, a figure of speech or something. I mean, psh, I dunno, it’s not,” The seagulls were judging him. He could feel it. What was he supposed to do? Congratulate him?

Wait... was he supposed to congratulate him? Was that a Straight Man Thing to do?

When in doubt, initiate the finger guns.

“Zane, Zaaaaa-aaaane. My man! You dirty dog?” Yes, there was a question mark at the end. No, he didn’t understand why he put it there.

“Sorry, that’s… You should make a wish now-- not that they didn’t already come true today, am I right? What a lucky gal... wowza. You’re such a... stud.” 

[hydralois]

Walking out of that medical examination room had been–

Zane didn’t know how to describe it. Still didn’t. He wasn’t like other empaths or psionics, he hadn’t grown up with it, hadn’t learned the terminology and the etiquette, hadn’t learned how to keep other people (and himself) safe.

It felt like leaving the sunlight and warmth to step into a dark cave. It felt cold, and hot, and open, and stifling, and a dozen other things that were so confusing that his walk back to his cell had been done in a wobbly silence. His empathy had crept up slowly, and then all at once, seemingly blown open by Callum’s intense presence. He’d walked the path to his cell multiple times a day, and yet it felt like a completely new experience. Where before he’d noticed a scrubbed-off bloodstain on the wall or a crack in the concrete, now he noticed pinpoints of emotion, like firelies in a web.

And they all had their own feel. Angry and exhausted and sad and lustful and jittery.

He’d gotten back to his cell, sat down, and had had only five minutes to try pull himself together before Ace had come bouncing in. Like Callum, he felt intensely, all excitement and anticipation. Zane sometimes regretted giving him access to a lighter, the goddamn pyromaniac. He burned as bright as his fires did.

They talked. Shot the shit, nothing meaningful. But Zane couldn’t stop chewing his lip and Ace wouldn’t stop looking, and feeling, and before Zane knew it, he couldn’t think for the thick heaviness of lust in the air. He wanted.

And he got what he wanted.

Only, ten minutes after Ace had pulled his clothes back on and bounded out of the cell to go wreak havoc somewhere else, Zane wondered where his conviction to never sleep with Ace had gone. He’d told himself on their first meeting: don’t sleep with your cellmate, he’s useful, don’t fuck this utility up. But he’d gone and broken that rule.

He hadn’t broken a self-imposed rule since he was twelve.

He didn’t quite know where the rest of the day went. Zane napped, and coasted on auto, shaking a few deals loose and tugging a few connections, then slept again. Breakfast was an effort innot stabbing the guy who sat across from him, in not screaming from fear, in not happily telling everyone–

No. That wasn’t his. None of that was his.

Carefully, Zane made sure he was presentable before he went to see Callum. He made a note to procure more foundation, since the shit he used was running out, and god forbid anybody see that he had freckles. He shaved, getting rid of the ginge. He stared in the mirror for a while, sure he hadn’t looked that bruised and exhausted yesterday, but at least the black eye was gone. He shook his prison-issue sleeves down over his wrists to cover the tiny dotted burn-marks Ace had been so eager to make on his inner arms.

And he went up to the rooftop.

Callum wasn’t quite as fairground-loud today.

He felt like a stretched rubber band, not yet perilously close to snapping point, but getting there. A warm tidal wave cresting on a beach, fondly caressing the sand. A nagging sensation, little pinpricks of stress. A child standing in front of a classroom of judgmental peers.

And he was smoking. That was new.

Zane shot him a glance, a fractional tip upward of one eyebrow.

“Yeah, turns out I look amazing when I don’t have a black eye, I should keep it up,” Zane drawled, reaching out to pluck the cigarette from Callum’s hand to steal a drag of it for himself. Not his preferred brand, but it’d do.

He’d started to think of his empathy as an entity, which wasn’t right, it wasn’t a separate being, it didn’t have its own will – but how else to explain it, when he could feel it try to jump outward like an eager puppy, trying to latch on to Callum? If Zane was even capable of projection as well as receiving, he had no idea. For his own sake, he hoped not, otherwise Callum would be feeling some extra-strength warm fuzzies right about then.

“You, on the other hand, look like shit.”

(No he didn’t. Well. He did. Sort of. Mostly he still looked fucking amazing.)

The eager puppy – kitten, baby sloth, whatever tiny soft creature it was – tried extra hard to make Callum feel warm and safe. It was fucking obnoxious.

Graciously, Zane offered the cigarette back, and shifted to stand next to Callum, shoulder-to-shoulder, to look out over the view of the grey sea. “So what’s up? Why the clandestine rooftop meeting?”

The first time Callum encountered a cigarette was outside the temple. It was a tiny thing, only about an inch and a half long, lost in a puddle of rainwater and mud. Someone had only put it out minutes before the small boy happened upon it, the lingering smell of smoke clinging to his hair as he hopped up the pearly white steps.

No one ever protested healing hands. Not when they turned the pages to allegories, not when they learned to pick up a baseball bat, and especially not when they discovered they’d become too weak to set it down again. The ache was constant. It blanketed over him like a second, third layer of clothes, a suffocating pressure that pushed against his lungs for every cut, scrape, and burn the elder Waters bestowed to him. His shoulders, bearing the weight of Miracles, were frail. They flexed and fluttered like butterfly wings. They hung pretty on the temple’s walls.

The birds of paradise had never stopped singing. Their melodies filled the pristine halls, their feathers latching onto the thick tar that became his skin. He would always remember the smell of Reds.

It was the only thing that brought him comfort when the silence came.

Praise made the pain worthwhile. Praise, he realized, was the drug they’d gotten him hooked on all those years ago.

The ache returned.

Relapse.

Now, after the ferry departed and the earth stopped shifting beneath his feet, Callum relished in the risk with none of the reward. Like an addict, trembling hands reached for solace somewhere, anywhere—and found that it didn’t exist. Not in Alcatraz.

No songs. No touch. No hands—

No relief.

No, he was not a fairground today. What he was, however, was a friend. Friends don’t ruin other friends’ birthdays because they couldn’t commit to their role: Callum promptly hit the ‘on’ button.

“Please do.” He laughed, shaking his head. “If you wanna see me so bad, all you gotta do is say it’s a stomach ache. You don’t have to give yourself a black eye just ‘cause you miss me!” At the swipe of his cigarette, Callum threw Zane a dastardly frown. He would have swiped it back, save for manners and the startling realization that…

Zane had freckles.

Zane had freckles, the world stopped spinning, the sun lent its light to the beautiful stars that twinkled brightly over the bridge of his nose, the carefully crafted constellations on his cheeks, the way his eyes adorned them like sau—

Callum hit the brakes so hard he gave himself whiplash.

He cleared his throat, opting for doctorly over… dotingly. His heart hadn’t gotten the memo yet. It, too, was a tell-me-when-you-see-me-next type of guy.

“Smoking kills, Zane.”

You, on the other hand, look like shit.

Callum vaguely motioned with his hand. Pft.

“But we’re not talking about me,” He reminded him, playfully nudging the other with his elbow. “Is that even a question? Need I remind you what day it is? The day I’ve been talking about for at least a month?”

Exhaustion gave way, if not infinitesimally, for small sparks of excitement to come through. Zane’s presence was encouragement enough. His freckles? Why, his freckles just added fuel to the fire! Maybe it was the natural sunlight, or maybe it was the anticipation—whatever it was, Callum had sacred Friend Duties to attend to. He took these matters seriously.

With a swift flick of his wrist, the cigarette was put out, and the birthday celebrations were on. He flashed the politician a quick grin before zipping the other direction, calling out “Don’t turn around until I say!”, rearranging massive crates and pushing them center stage: who said Callum was buff for nothing? Make-shift prison tables were gonna catch on in 2018, and he’d be the pioneer to take all the credit!

By the time it was all set up, half-perfectly iced carrot cake in tow, candles ready, lighter in hand, and novelty gift set perfectly beside the cake (a pack of mints with a picture of Donald Trump on it entitled Embarassmints), he poked gently at Zane’s shoulder.

“Alright, I’m ready,”

Callum commenced the most dramatic drum roll he could muster, courtesy of his bare hands and a rather sturdy wooden crate.

Their eyes locked and he let loose the goofiest, grandest gesture his tired body could muster.

“Happy Birthday, Zane!”

[hydralois]

Reading about the psychological effects of isolation was both interesting and depressing. Zane hadn’t yet had the misfortune of being tossed into solitary yet – thus far, he’d managed to blame all physical altercation on the other guy – but the pamphlet contained what might be some good advice for when that inevitably happened.

Mostly, he mentally researched a political speech he’d never get to make. It was something of a daily exercise: Zane would catch bits and pieces of the news, and would get some quiet time for half an hour to think about what he, as Mayor of San Francisco, would have said about it.

Today’s speech mostly revolved around his sheer incredulity that the meeting with North Korea would be attended by Sean Hannity (Actual Lunatic) and Sebastian Gorka (Actual Hungarian Nazi). The speech included some excellent salient points about how North Korea’s state media would only be matched in intensity and propaganda as the current administration’s state media (Fox News), and some subtle shade thrown at Paul Manafort for being an absolute ding dong who was going to jail for a long time.

He was interrupted in the middle of thought about perjury by…

Well, Zane wasn’t quite sure what it was.

Something was coming, that much was obvious. Someone. A ball of concentrated sunshine moving closer, an entire orchestra rising in intensity, a tsunami cresting on the horizon.

And then Callum walked into the room.

“I’m–” Zane started to get out, about to insist that he was totally fine (aside from the black eye), when Callum went and put his hands on Zane’s face, and all other sensory input fell silent. Callum’s mouth moved but his words fell on deaf ears.

It was like–

He’d gone to a fair, once, when he’d been six years old. His mom had taken him, though fuck knows how she’d managed to drive there without crashing and killing them both. She’d tottered by his side for hours, a cloud of oxy haze in high heels on worn dirt tracks between colorful tents. There’d been whirling lights and the smell of cotton candy, huge stuffed animals and laughing kids, joyfully terrified screaming from the rides. A shuttered disappointment on a father’s face as he realized he couldn’t afford any more games for his kids. Teenagers sneaking off behind a tent, caught in the thrill of young love. A wailing, horrified baby confronted by a clown. The childlike glee on an old woman’s face as she watched an entertainer blow enormous bubbles. A veteran’s subtle flinching from the pop-pop-pop of the air rifles.

It was the only way he could think to describe Callum.

Not that he could do much thinking at that point.

He didn’t know how long he’d gone silent for, because all he could do was try to focus, with all the desperation of a man clinging to a life-raft in the middle of a sudden storm. Except Zane didn’t even have a life-raft.

He managed to make a little croaking noise in the back of his throat, which… probably wasn’t as reassuring as he hoped it might be.

Right. He could do this. He’d picked up bits and pieces of information about how people with psychic abilities handled their powers. Visualization, centering oneself, finding an anchor, all that hippie-sounding bullshit.

If he could just manage to get his metaphorical fingertips to grasp onto something, anything, he could wade through this. But the concern was too strong, too overwhelming, too… stark white/cotton scrubs in mint green/hands/healing/exhaustion/determination/pride/need–

Something else. Some– joy. Fading, swamped by other things. Still there. Joy like sunshine, like cotton candy and delight and music. He could hook onto that like an anchor, focusing on it until everything else faded into white noise.

Zane, slowly, lifted one hand and wrapped it around Callum’s wrist, and tried not to breathe like a man that had just surfaced from a too-long dive in the ocean. He wasn’t totally successful.

“I’m fine.” Whoops, that was a bit croaky. Bit pale. Bit too wide-eyed. Zane tried again, clearing his throat first. “I’m fine, just a black eye. And low blood sugar. That’s what the staring was about.” He gently squeezed Callum’s wrist, trying to tug the doctor’s hand away from his face.

See? Look, he was totally fine.

Zane stared, wordlessly, at Callum for what could have been five whole minutes. In reality, it was nearing the twenty second range, but intimacy increases at a factor of x^3 for every second spent staring directly into someone’s eyes. Those were the rules. The rules also stated that at some point, one of the parties should look away, but it’d become clear that neither men got the memo. Callum never cared for memos much, he was a tell-me-when-you-see-me-next typa guy.

Callum took it as an opportunity to do some soul searching. His discoveries were as follows:

1.        First and foremost, Zane had the prettiest eyes he ever did see. They were much prettier, he determined, when they showed the slightest bit of cognizance, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Although the lack of response (and the guttural croaks) incited a wealth of panic to surge inside his chest, they were offset by the small moments when the doctor noticed signs of life. A flicker of emotion, a twitch of his brow. It was, perhaps, only the second time he’d seen the other’s expression move without strict calculation—no smiles due at NW 34 degrees, turn in five to head eastbound. Did Zane only have two functions? Mortally injured or Politician?

2.        Secondly, this close, he noticed the stubble that’d started dotting Zane’s jaw. They were happy little flecks of red, dancing eagerly beneath the fluorescent lights of Callum’s office. They’d never spoken much about their heritage. Callum personally didn’t feel a need for it, what with being from Utah and all. All that meant was that he was one uniform shade of vanilla. But Zane? Why, he started displaying signs of bagpipes. He was a doctor, he could rightfully diagnose him with a case of Ireland (maybe Scotland? This required further review).

3.        Thirdly—well, thirdly, the twenty seconds were up. And within those twenty seconds, Callum had done something drastic.

Zane, the same Zane who was prying his hands from his face, didn’t have a black eye anymore. 

When exactly Callum had started healing, he wasn’t entirely sure. When he’d started healing without explicit or implied consent, well, that was another question. He took a step back, eyes shifting quickly from the other’s lack-of-wound to his own hands. He felt a pit forming in his stomach.

He was getting too close.

Running a hand over his beard,

“A couple things,” He prefaced, making note of the labored breathing.

“You don’t have a black eye anymore. That’s my bad.” Yup. That was guilt. He recognized it by that strange pull in his chest, some kind of pretzel-y twist that made a home in his stomach,

“And if it’s hypoglycemia, we can run a test to make sure,” A pointed look.

Or as pointed as Callum could manage, anyway. It was probably a more brow-heavy expression that he normally wore, nothing more and nothing less.

“If you don’t want to, though, we can make a deal. I may or may not have something that could cure low blood sugar,” He repressed an excited little dance, hands twitching at his sides as he fought to remain calm. Subtlety was an art he wanted to master by the end of his tenure at Alcatraz. The inmates could always see right through him.

I know you ain’t out of lollipops, doc! You’re doin’ that twitchy thing with your eye!

“Arooooound noon tomorrow, maybe? Rooftop?”

Zane didn’t have too much of a choice. It was either get pricked and talk about the staring episode or not get pricked and avoid talking about the staring episode. It was obvious which one appealed to mayor Matthews.

Callum was early to arrive, of course. Noon was prime-time for roof top tomfoolery. The medical staff liked to ferry their way back into San Fran and go for mimosas right about now, scrubs shoved into their bags in lieu of street wear. Jeremy had a habit of trying to coerce him into Bloody Mary Mania Mondays, but the man knew he his limits. Two Michelob ultras and he was a goner.

Plus, alcohol reminded him of college when he’d gotten involved with a senior that floated around the GSA club room on Fridays.

It was a bad time. Everything started becoming a bad time lately, as a matter of fact, so he’d resorted back to an age-old habit he’d kicked three years ago:

Marlboro Reds.

Nothing crazy, he hadn’t even gone through a pack this last week, but it seemed to be helping his… nerves.

Adam’s glares, coupled with Atticus’ comments and a heaping handful of the warm fuzzies meant the doc hadn’t been getting much sleep lately.

The carrot cake was hidden in a plain box that concealed a nicer box which concealed and perfectly iced cake.

He’d been practicing.

When Callum heard the door swing open, he looked over his shoulder, cigarette pursed between his lips, and hazarded a grin. He brought a hand to the cancer stick and exhaled.

“You didn’t stand me up! And you don’t have a black eye today. Things are lookin’ pretty good!”

[bumblebeeindie]

@hydralois

In the two weeks that followed Zane’s rooftop chat with Callum, he – unsurprisingly – didn’t have a whole lot of time to ruminate on Callum’s relationship issues. He thought about it here and there, tossed a couple of glowers at Adam from a distance which probably confused the hell out of the poor bastard, and didn’t bring the issue up whenever he had the opportunity for a quick chat with Callum.

Instead, he spent the following two weeks:

1. Writing a letter. Good old Reuben continued to send a letter every week, and Zane knew that a special one would be arriving on the day of his birthday. Birthdays had always been special occasions in the Matthews household when he was young: his mom would down a few extra oxy’s, and his dad would carve out another couple of hours to put him through his paces. After he’d moved out, letters had taken the place of in-person lectures.

This year, Zane decided that he’d write back, since he couldn’t visit in person. He’d gone through precisely eleven sheets of paper and three broken pencils trying to get the letter perfect.

2. Phonecalls. Though Zane did have a burner phone he’d procured through an extremely high-value trade, some calls had to be made on the prison landline. Unfortunately. The second he’d set foot inside Alcatraz, he’d decided that he wasn’t going to resign himself to staying here forever. Why should he, when he had entire lists of very loyal (and very corrupt) contacts and friends?

The phonecall agenda of the past two weeks had been a simple one: falsifying information about his case. It was slow going (mostly because he didn’t speak Russian, and had to rely on translators), but it was, at least, going.

3. Goading two of the heavies of the main gang to get into a fistfight. There was no purpose behind that one other than giving Zane the opportunity to slip into Heavy One’s cell and steal some shit while he was occupied. Hey, a guy had to get his kicks somehow.

And finally;

4. Trade for extra suppressant medication. Because Zane was pretty sure his were going wonky somehow, what with all of the weird ridiculous feelings he was getting around Callum. So, he’d double up for a while, and hope that did the trick.

The point was, it had been a busy couple of weeks. 

Weeks made even busier by the fact that, a couple of days ago, Zane had definitively concluded that his suppressants were going wonky. Having suppressed his ability since he was eight, he only had the haziest memories of what it felt like – and when the first flicker of it came back, he was genuinely convinced for about a day that he’d just gotten really angry for no particular reason in the cafeteria. Maybe it had been the shitty food, right? That was reason enough.

And then, when he was in the middle of falling asleep, out of nowhere: crippling depression. A sensation of being deep underwater when he was trying to write his letter. The banked fire of contentment when he was busy being irritated at a phone call. For a couple of days, Zane was sure he was just having weird mood swings.

But then it clicked: his fucking ability.

As soon as it clicked, Zane dropped what he was doing (trading a pack of cigarettes, whatever, he had more), found the testiest roid rager in sight (an easy feat, all he had to do was follow the feeling of twitchiness), and insult his mother until he got punched the face.

After that; a free trip to medical!

He’d apparently had the good luck of arriving when Callum was on break, so Zane got to wait in the room by himself. He took a moment to pull a face at his dumb drawing that was still on the wall, and settled in with a pamphlet entitled How Not To Go Crazy In Isolation!

[hydralois]

Two weeks was a long time. A lot could happen in two weeks.

Callum had not only managed to break up with Adam, but he also succeeded in completely burning that bridge while he was at it. The conversation was going to be difficult enough as it was. It’s Not You, It’s Me was an easier card to play when it wasn’t It’s Not You, I Want It To Be Me and Him. Adam saw right through his ruse. It was obvious. The guy had enough decency to not name any names, (well, he did pointedly scoff and mutter the inmate?), but the sheer look of animosity in his eyes spoke volumes. The doctor could tell there was a shift, a certain edge to his words that hadn’t been there before. He’d only noticed it a few times, namely when Adam would overhear prison chatter or the distressed phone calls to loved ones. If it was one thing the librarian hated, it was Alcatraz’s finest.

He considered Callum one of them now. That was a tough pill to swallow.

Dr. Waters dragged his feet for that first week. He jammed out to his sad 60’s tunes (aka Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow by The Shirelles on repeat), read terrible poetry his aunt posted to her Facebook (really, Marsha, you should just leave him already!), and contemplated whether or not he did the right thing. Nothing this right, he reasoned, should feel this bad.

He always felt better when he saw Zane. It was mostly in passing, quick hellos and updates in the hall, but there was something about seeing a little head of dark hair zipping between massive meat suits that made his heart happy. It was a wonder how Zane navigated the prison at all: he weaved through the biggest men as if they were mere traffic cones in his obstacle course. The man was unstoppable.

With the advent of his birthday nearing, Callum had not only procured his fresh carrots but also sifted through a million and one recipes to find the best one. He settled on Not Your Mother’s Carrot Cake, busying his hands to the sound of CSPAN blaring in the background—

The number of times he had to stop and google references was ungodly. Who knew politics would require so much thought? And who knew baking the perfect carrot cake would be an all-day event?

The finished product sat proudly in his unused fridge. He vowed to present it only when it was perfect.

He hadn’t expected to see Zane in his office that day. In fact, he was hoping he wouldn’t have to, what with his clean bill of health and all. He was in the middle of deep contemplation—a blue bow or a blue box to put the cake in—when one of the nurses nudged him in the break room.

“Your regular’s waiting for you.”

It wasn’t a sentence any good doctor should be elated to hear, but Callum wasn’t a good doctor anymore. He had very unethical feelings towards a patient, and by week two post-breakup, he convinced himself to just let it be. If it wasn’t hurtin’ anybody anymore, why beat himself up over it? It was a simple solution: just make sure Zane never finds out. Easy!

Callum proceeded to shamelessly skedaddle his way down the medical hall, remnants of five too many rolling pin incidents flying off his scrubs. The flour trail he left could be followed for miles.

He was, undoubtedly, Jim Carrey-ing when he busted the door down to his own office.

What was Jim Carrey-ing, you ask?

Swinging both of your arms around with reckless abandon, clicking your heels, and grinning to the tune of Mr. Blue Sky by ELO. Whether or not that was playing out loud didn’t matter, it was playing in his heart.

“H—”

Callum couldn’t even get the greeting out.

The wind beneath his feet had sucker punched him in the throat.

Zane was sitting there, pamphlet in hand, looking like he’d just gotten mugged within an inch of his life. Callum took that as an opportunity to immediately devolve into a panic.

“What happened, Zane? Are you okay?”

He rushed across the room, firm hands immediately taking hold of either sides of the other’s face.

Whether or not it was a medical requirement to do so with such earnest was a different discussion.

Callum was very careful not to squeeze.

“How are you feeling? Confused? Light headed? Please don’t tell me you got involved with some gang nonsense again. I hate hearing about that. People talk.”

[hydralois]

Zane’s only response to being told he was a good partner in crime was a single eyebrow raise. Of course he was a good partner in crime – hello, he’d been charged with actual treason. Sure, he’d gotten caught, which was a black mark in his Getting Away With Crime record, but it had taken political assassination for it to happen.

He was still kind of mad that he hadn’t gotten away with it. His opponent had been an absolute shitbag; an alleged serial sexual assaulter, victims as young as fourteen. And, okay, no, Zane’s arrangement of his murder hadn’t been about that, it had been about winning the race, but come on. He’d practically done the nation a service getting rid of that asshole.

Still. That was neither here nor there. It was done, and here he was.

On a rooftop, listening to a stupidly charming doctor talk about his relationship problems, eating chicken nuggets while seagulls shrieked angrily overhead.

If Zane hadn’t gotten caught, and had been elected to another term as Mayor, he’d probably be in City Hall around this time, walking past the busts of Harvey Milk and George Moscone (both assassinated, the irony), on his way to the chambers to have a debate about infrastructure or banning single-use plastic bags or how to deal with the giant manchild that was their new President. Endless arguments with people that, for the most part, didn’t actually give a shit about any of it. After that, he’d go back to his office and his mountain of paperwork, then back to his empty apartment.

A part of him was weirdly content being here. Right here, sitting on this rooftop, listening to a man who just wasn’t that into his boyfriend anymore.

Callum was genuine. He was fucking real. It was alarming how much of a difference that made in a person.

“No, it’s probably not fair to him that you’re into someone else,” Zane replied bluntly, but with no real sharpness behind his words, just a simple statement of fact. “But, shit, it’s not like you said to yourself, hey, I want to ruin this relationship, let’s go out and develop an interest in someone else.”

At least, Zane presumed that was the case. Callum was far too fucking good of a guy to do that.

Now he just had to examine the weird twisting sense of jealousy in his gut at the news that Callum was into somebody. Jealousy, and vague exasperation that he’d have to go and give another shovel talk.

Ugh. He’d just lost his appetite for chicken nuggets too.

Zane sat back, watching Callum out of the corner of his eye. “Letting it go on when you’re not that into him would be more unfair to him,” he said, strangely gentle. “It’s not your fault that he’s more attached than you are. But stringing him along when you don’t want it to go anywhere, that… probably would be your fault.”

Who was this fucking bastard that Callum liked more than Adam? Zane was going to threaten him so hard. Forget threats of a prison riot, no, he’d have to find something even worse, especially if this new asshole didn’t care about Callum in return. That’d be the ultimate fucking sin. Zane might even have to go beat him up personally if that happened.

“Hey.” Zane reached out, because Callum just looked so downtrodden, and poked at Callum’s bicep. (Jesus Christ, it felt just as good as he remembered). “Don’t beat yourself up over it, man. I’ve broken up with people because they chewed with their mouths open, or because they ate mayonnaise straight out of the jar, or they didn’t laugh at any of the funny videos I showed them. You’ve got a way more noble reason.”

There was something unsettling about describing your crush to your crush. Call him crazy, but a small, insecure part of him was afraid that Zane knew precisely who he was talking about. That in between the pause of his breaths, the unceremonious plop of ranch dribbles, and the piercing winds, Zane saw right through him. Transparency was never the issue with Callum, it was vulnerability. Bare beneath a looking glass, but never having experienced the lightness of human touch. Metal couldn’t give him comfort, his father taught him that.

The truth didn’t hurt this time. It bruised a little, danced its way over his knuckles by way of warning.

“It’s probably not as noble as it sounds.” He started, the small of his back leaning into the wall. It was partly cloudy that day, cotton candy clouds shielding the sun from all the world’s terrors. Callum smiled up at them.

“If I’m being honest, I think I started to convince myself that I should stay because it’ll pass. I know it won’t.”

One of the clouds looked like a Stiletto heel. He repressed a chuckle.

“Which, I guess is the worst part since it can’t happen. And that’s a good a reason as any to stay, too. So you don’t have to be alone, chasing something you can’t have.”

Zane, for all that Zane was—charismatic, intelligent, witty, and so, so funny—would always be an inmate at Alcatraz. Fourth degree murder and treason, the paperwork said. It described him as high risk and methodical, pages upon pages of evaluations revealing everything but nothing about the man who knew he was better than Great Value ketchup. The paperwork couldn’t describe the way his stubble felt when it rubbed against your skin, the way he scoffed a little before telling you exactly why what you said was ludicrous: that was a word Callum would never use himself. Ludicrous—but he could imagine the way it’d sound falling off Zane’s lips during a TedTalk.

God, Zane would be phenomenal at TedTalks.

…But he was stuck here, sitting on a freezing rooftop listening to Callum try (and fail) at not gushing to his face.

He wondered if he wanted Zane to see right through him. Maybe then the truth would hurt again, but at least then he could live in the Absolutes.

They absolutely could not be together.

Zane absolutely did not like men.

He hadn’t known he sighed until he felt Zane’s finger poke at his bicep. He let out a laugh.  

Ambiguity was better sometimes after all.

“Anyway, if this is being alone, I guess I can take it.”

The big Stiletto heel in the sky looked pleased by that answer.

Callum grinned.

“And who the hell were you dating that eats mayonnaise straight out of the jar?”

[END.]

[hydralois]

How Callum managed to run, drag Zane by the wrist, and juggle a tray of chicken nuggets, Zane honestly had no clue. How he managed to do all of that while running up stairs, Zaneseriously had no clue. It seemed like some kind of miracle of nature.

You know what else was a miracle of nature? Callum’s pecs fucking bouncing as he ran. Ludicrous. Absolutely ridiculous.

Zane, very much out of breath because he wasn’t even as remotely fit as some weight-lifters in the prison that he could name, failed to catch the condiments that got thrown at him. They sailed past and landed with a sad thump on the concrete floor, which, now that Zane looked around, were they on the goddamn roof? Were prisoners even allowed to be up–

Oh, right, there were enormous barbed wire fences everywhere he looked. Prisoner proofed. Seemed a good indication that prisoners were allowed here, Zane had just never managed to venture up this way before. Fuck, it felt good to be outside, though. The one hour of rec time the prisoners got, Zane usually spent indoors, wheeling and dealing, too busy to factor in personal time, too single-minded to think about things like personal time.

He was too busy trying to drag air into his lungs (while pretending that he wasn’t doing so), he mostly missed Callum talking.

“Sorry?” he said quizzically, before what Callum said caught up to him.

Wait, really?

Zane modified his surprise down to a slow blink, and made a mental note to threaten Adam even harder if he screwed up. Which… might not be an issue much longer, if Callum really was contemplating breaking up with him?

With a huff of air that might vaguely resemble a laugh, Zane parked his ass on a bench after retrieving the errant condiments, and waited for Callum to sit with the tray. “And you thought a prison might be the best place to pursue your first relationship?” he asked dryly, picking up one of the chicken nuggets. “Granted, neither of you are prisoners, which is a point in your favor, but I can’t imagine it’s the most romantic surroundings.”

How had someone like Callum gone this long without dating anybody? Holy hell.

“So since we might as well acknowledge the fact that I absolutely saw through yourfriend metaphor, and I know you’re thinking about breaking up with him, do you want to talk?” Zane carefully didn’t pull a face at the inferior brand of ketchup. “Like I said, I’m shit at advice. I wasn’t lying about the whole two month thing. But why the potential breakup?”

Prisoners weren’t generally allowed on the roof: hence the sneaking. They also weren’t allowed to eat Tyson chicken nuggets, hence more sneaking.

Most people who ended up at Alcatraz became its prisoners. That included Callum. The rooftop was, most days, all he had as far as escapism went. He used to be an avid reader, but half the time he couldn’t keep his head up long enough to dig his nose into a book. Shivs are back in style! Fresh and better than ever!

How he managed to juggle Zane, chicken nuggets, and the sheer weight of his own body was beyond him. It must have been the adrenaline rush. Dr. Waters was steadfast becoming the biggest rebel in all the prison.

This epiphany was punctuated abruptly by the fallen ketchup packets. He let out a laugh, zipping right up to Zane and going for the left-boob-grab. The first seal was broken.

“Oh man, I can’t believe we actually made it outta there! You make a good partner in crime, Zane. I’m so impressed.”

He plopped down right beside him, pulling open the nugget tray and one of his own ranch packets. He listened reticently as the topic unfolded before them.

Birds flew overhead. Actual birds, not what they called women and occasionally each other in Alcatraz. It was almost easy to forget where they were, save for the fact that Zane was asking the hard-hitting questions and Callum used the time in between nugget chews to formulate coherent answers. Good answers, because every politician knew a thing or two about good answers. The pressure was on.

“I mean, it—I guess when it comes to relationships it wouldn’t make a difference,” The ranch was Great Value brand, too. He’d take it.

“Us being prisoners, anyway.” Love was blind, wasn’t it? That’s what all the great romance novels said. “I never had much luck meeting anyone out there.” He looked off behind the barbed wire, hundreds of tons of iron. An entire ocean separating them between Alcatraz and the rest of humanity. He carried the weight of the prison on his shoulders—others claimed it was too heavy.

“I think I did a great job with the metaphor,” A crunch while he dug around for a better nugget—Zane’s were all perfectly warmed up, but his? Most of ‘em were still frozen in the middle. He had his priorities in line! “And I really don’t believe the two-month thing. The only issue I could see you having is someone not being smart enough for you. It’s a wonder how you deal with me.”

There was a long moment where Callum considered the man’s query, blue eyes meeting the other’s (far more striking pair) after deep contemplation.

And then it dawned on him.

“I’m… pretty sure I like someone else.”

He just ransacked an entire fridge’s worth of chicken nuggets and then thought to microwave them. He shook the thought before he was able to ruminate on it further.

Shoving a whole nugget in his mouth,

“I mean, it’s not that he’s not a great guy. He is, I just think, maybe, I don’t know—” The ice could be heard screeching between his teeth. “He’s getting really personal with me, and I don’t feel like I have the same level of commitment. I mean, Zane,” Callum’s brows furrowed together. His headache was in full swing alright. Bonus points for guilt pains!

“He’s told me some really, really dark stuff. It’s not fair to him that I’ve got eyes for someone else.”

He leaned back and sighed.

You knew it was bad when he couldn’t even finish his nuggets.

“I’m not proud of it.”

[hydralois]

Zane, honestly, wouldn’t have thought anything of the books, given no other context. This was a medical wing that no doubt had to double as a psych ward, of course they’d have advice about relationships and how to end them – there were probably a few about how to do a long-distance breakup, for the casual criminal that just wanted a casual relationship. But then Callum went and flailed around trying to pick them up like he’d accidentally just dropped hardcore homemade porn all over the floor.

Still, Zane said nothing. Didn’t even raise a doubtful eyebrow or anything, because if Callum wanted to get super embarrassed about self-help books, well, that was none of his business.

Tucking both poster and lollipop into his pocket, he followed at a more sedate pace, notentirely sure why Callum was acting like this was Mission Impossible and he was Tom Cruise on his way to spy on some dirty Commies or whatever those movies were about. But it was too entertaining to stop, so he let Callum have at it.

He did start to regret his decision somewhat when Callum decided that hiding Zane using his own body was the best way to go – a fucking comic-book-torso’d dude as a visibility obstacle. Admittedly, it worked okay: Callum crept down the hallway like goddamn Scooby Doo, and Zane casually strolled beside him, neatly hidden from any passersby by the impressive length and breadth of his paranoid walking companion.

But then Callum to go and literally airquote his own excuse.

And then he had to go plaster himself into a corner, seemingly forgetting Zane was between him and the wall, which meant that Zane got plastered up against the corner, and Callum squished right up against him.

“Talk about being between a rock and a hard place,” he muttered, somewhere against Callum’s collarbone.

Jesus fuck, that really was an incredibly impressive–

Nope. No, think about something else.

“Look–”

Seriously. Really, truly impressive–

“I don’t know if you realize that you did it, but you airquoted friend,” Zane whispered, keeping an ear out for the footsteps. Why were they even hiding, anyway? “So it doesn’t take more than two guesses to figure out you’re having relationship problems.” He’d given Adam the shovel talk not long ago, practically cornering him and telling him, very flatly, that if Adam fucked up and hurt Callum, Zane would arrange a prison riot centered around Adam.

And yes, he still very much intended to keep that threat, if Adam did indeed fuck up. Zane might not be big and scary, but he knew where to whisper the right words. Instigating a prison riot would be… disgustingly easy, honestly.

“And if you want my advice–”

Zane shut up as the footsteps got too close, and kept silent as they passed. Finally, once the coast was clear, Zane wedged a hand between them and pushed against Callum’s chest, nudging him back a few inches. “If you want my advice,” he continued, “probably don’t ask for my advice, because I’ve never been in a relationship longer than two months. I hear I’m a great listener, though. Still got both ears and everything.”

This close, he had to look up at Callum. What an asshole. What a tall asshole. What a stupid, tall, ridiculously good looking asshole with his soft blue eyes and– nope. Don’t go there, girlfriend.

“Now seriously, why are we sneaking? I wanted lunch, not James Bond cosplay.”

Of course Callum was using his own body to hide Zane. He knew the moment Zane locked eyes with anyone, particularly gang members or other medical staff, it was all over. He’d either go on a tangent about constitutional rights, woo someone into doing his bidding, or all of the above. Either way, he’d have to vie for his attention, and Callum rather liked having the ex-mayor of San Francisco all to himself—call him crazy! He was good company, and this time around the guy actually wanted to do lunch with him.

No coercing involved. No staged concussion riddled lap dances, just two dudes being dudes.

Bros being bros.

With one bro nuzzling against his collarbone, pelvis-to-pelvis, as Callum did everything he possibly could to avoid the gaze of one Dr. Weiss.

He almost forgot why exactly he was Scooby Doo-ing around in light of their new predicament. This close, the good doctor felt like the other could hear his own heartbeat. The birds sang, the clouds parted, and down descended Zane Matthews, with his blue eyes and smart-ass mouth and darling smile and—

Did he really do the airquotes?

He scrunched his face up in embarrassment. He woulda face palmed himself for good measure, but naturally, his hands were pressed firmly against the wall in order to… shield them. From evil.

With the crisis averted, he looked down at Zane, who so kindly wedged a hand between them.

“Two months?” He repeated in disbelief. His brows furrowed together. “I don’t know if I buy that—”

Not that it was the topic at hand—Callum’s relationship issues were spread all about the table now and they were still communicating, hush-hush, in very close proximity. He backed away only when the coast was clear (and when he was granted a smile because, man, it looked way better up close!).

“More on that later—did you miss the part where I’m not supposed to be on lunch for another hour and a half? I’m breaking the rules!” And, as if he was about to disclose the grandest national secret, he whispered,

“I’m also about to sneak into the break room and grab all of the chicken nuggets. And the condiments. Ranch or ketchup, by the way?”

He led them to the very back of the medical wing, revealing a small door next to a stairwell.

“I’m not about to let you eat mystery meat for the umpteenth time this month. It’s my professional obligation to you.” That, and Callum really liked chicken nuggets. Sure, they were Tyson brand, but he’s sported a headache for the last week and the nurses kept eating all his yogurt singles. Enough was enough, even for Dr. Waters.

“You keep a lookout and send me a distress signal if you hear anything—then we’re heading up.” Callum pointed at the stairwell. “It’s got a better view than the cafeteria.”

He then proceeded to disappear, Bond-level-stealth, and returned minutes later with an armful of nugget trays. He stowed the condiments in the pockets of his scrubs. More footsteps.

“Go, go, go!” He called out beneath his breath, releasing his hand if not only for the sake of tugging Zane by the wrist as he booked it up the steps.

He pushed the metal door open with his shoulder, revealing a shallow rooftop overlooking the whole of Alcatraz.

Callum damn near dropped all the nuggets with his momentum.

When he finally caught his breath, he looked over to Zane and flashed a dopey grin. He tossed him his condiments of choice.

“Have I ever mentioned to you that I’ve never dated before?”

[hydralois]

Despite the promised posters and the lap dance and the basement heart-to-heart, Zane still wouldn’t say that he knew Callum well. Not enough to be able to pick up on tiny shifts in expression, or implied tone–

(he’d probably know Callum a lot better if he had his empathy, but he didn’t have that choice, and even if he did, he would still be suppressing it – a career of being able to literally feel the emotions of politicians sounded like hell, but it hadn’t even been that that had made Zane suppress it, no, that had come earlier with dear old dad and his disappointment and his righteous anger)

–but he knew Callum enough to notice some things, at least, and the look of absolute, bone-deep exhaustion wasn’t hard to miss.

Concern made for an uneasy tug at his stomach. When was the last time Zane Fuckin’ Matthews had actually been concerned about someone?

It almost made him miss Callum’s solemn words, his big dumb puppy eyes reinforcing his sentiment. And there went that little pop of warmth, except Zane couldn’t blame it on a concussion now. Maybe his suppressants really were going wonky? Maybe his concern wasCallum’s concern?

It made a disturbing amount of sense.

“Who said I need help?” Zane smiled, all innocence and benevolence. “I’m cured of my pesky skull fracture, my lungs apparently sound good, there’s not a single thing wrong with me other than the fact that I don’t have a lollipop for good behavior right now.”

It’d be so easy to get up off the bed, smack Callum on the shoulder and zip off some witty goodbye. Zane wasn’t a huge fan of the medical wing – nobody was, really – but for the moment, it did look a bit better than the prospect of going back into the prison proper and having to deal with hoots and hollers because the general population will never let him live down the priest outfit. And he…

Alright, he knew that as soon as he left, Callum was going to be laying hands on some fucking murderer and healing him, exhausting himself more, possibly outright endangering himself.

So, instead of getting off the examination bed, Zane swung his legs up onto it, sitting back against the pillows, making himself comfy. “Yeah, I tried to bribe all the nurses with contraband oxy’s,” he said airily. “They got so shitty at me that they booted me out. Who would haveguessed that would happen? What a total and utter surprise.” Zane leaned to pluck a pamphlet off the side-table, perusing it casually, because Syphilis And You: How To Protect Your Penis sounded like a riot.

“Have you had lunch yet?” Something told Zane that Callum really hadn’t. Too many prisoners, too many stab wounds. “I can’t guarantee they’ve got Mystery Meat on today, but I’m sure we can find something equally suspicious and horrific.”

Don’t remind Callum about the lap dance. He had dreams reminiscent of Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights , in which he was Diego Luna and Zane was… Romola Garai. He’d wake up in a cold sweat wondering where he was, who he was, and what business Zane had moving his hips like that.

It was driving something of a wedge between he and Adam. Not that Adam was fully aware of his recasting of Dirty Dancing, but it’d become obvious that Callum hadn’t been into it as of late. If the lack of eye contact didn’t prove it, his inability to get it up spoke volumes. Screamed volumes, much to his horror!

The poor doctor already had enough to worry about. Impotence was out of the question—he was a healthy, able-bodied adult male! He had no excuse. He could only plead a stomach ache for so long. The truth was in the puddin’.

He hadn’t realized he’d spaced out thinking about his own penis until he caught himself staring at the wrinkly one sitting on the desk. He blinked.

They really needed a better looking model for sex ed. What was he teaching these guys, how to put a condom on Winston Churchill? How to effectively cope with the fear of aging?

He looked back to Zane again, the poster child of innocence. He was incredible at smiling on command. Callum convinced himself he was the best mayor that ever was, before, y’know, the treason and the attempted assassination. Whatever the papers were sellin’, Callum refused to buy it.

After all, mayor Matthews was just a kitten. Look at those eyes.

“Okay, okay,” Callum relented, one hand scooping up Winston Churchill’s penis and the other reaching for the cabinet handle. He stowed him away in a hurry. He had lollipops to dig for. “You’ve been on your best behavior, I know. Gimme a sec.”

He heard the familiar sound of crinkly pillows being laid against. He fought for those pillows. He was happy someone was finally layin’ on ‘em. He shouldn’t have to beg war criminals to get comfortable, but he did most days. Basic human rights! Dr. Callum Waters: proponent of cruel and unusual punishment.

He found a stash of lollipops and tossed one over to Zane. Blue raspberry seemed like the best pick.

He then started rummaging for the poster he’d promised.

“Well, that’s why you have me.” Callum brought a thumb to his chest, puffing up proud. “Here to say no to oxy’s and never turn you away. Maybe I should put something down in your notes for other people—not that you should seek out other doctors. I think I might get jealous.”

Actually, he was fairly certain he’d get jealous. Thinking about Zane talking up Dr. Weiss inspired the most pitiful pout he’d ever sported. Callum shook it off as soon as he realized.

“Not yet,” He pulled at the history book until it gave, releasing a trio of miscellaneous reads with it as they all plopped onto the floor. They read as follows:

It’s Not You, It’s Me: A Guide for First Breakups

Follow Your Heart, He’s Not The One

You Fucked Up, Now What?

Callum scrambled to pick them up. Yes, he frantically shoved them into whatever cabinet was closest. No, he didn’t care about the repercussions—there were a few clicks and clanks that sounded like glass. So what! He had his pride to protect!

“I, ah, am not technically supposed to go on lunch until four-ish, but y’know what, I’m feeling rebellious today.”  The word rebellious was, of course, emphasized with a little wiggle. He ripped out the poster and folded it up, clearing this throat a bit as he repressed a deep blush. It didn’t work out as well as he’d intended.

“We can sneak outta here on my count,” Callum walked over to Zane, trying and failing to stay cool. He handed him the poster and mad-dashed to the door, eyes scanning the hallways of the medical wing. He glanced behind him to make sure the man was still coming. “I can cover you, we just gotta stay quiet. Y’know, keep close to walls. I really don’t feel like hearing another lecture today,”

Callum snuck off into the hallway, keeping a small gap close to him so Zane could waltz through.

“So, ah, those books.” He whispered, sasquatch-stature attempting to tip toe through the aisle. It was almost comical. “Those were for my ‘friend’.” There may or may not have been air quotes around it. He couldn’t be sure.

“He’s going through a bit of a time right now, I’m just tryin’ to help, y’know. It’s not like… I, y’know, know much about that type of stuff. It’s a whole situation.”

Foot steps approached. Callum plastered himself into a corner.

He was unbelievably smooth.

[hydralois]

Zane knew how Callum had wound up a prison doctor – he’d heard a tiny bit of the story from Callum himself, and had gotten the rest of the story from other inmates. Not all the details, probably, but enough. He knew about the twin and the abuse and the year in prison. So, he knew how it had happened.

He just… didn’t get how. How with emphasis, because seriously, no prison doctor should bethat cheerful, doing a jaunty little slide across the room like getting to examine Zane’s skull fracture was the best thing that had happened all week. He didn’t get how Callum maintained anything even resembling a positive attitude in here. He didn’t get how Callum continued to use his frankly fucking miraculous ability to heal criminals when most of them probably weren’t even a tiny bit appreciative.

Head down, frowning at the floor while Callum examined him, Zane almost missed the healing. It really didn’t feel like much, just a slight itch and a sudden lack of pain; nothing flashy or dramatic like comics would have you believe. But the relief had his shoulders slumping fractionally, tense lines fading from the corners of his eyes.

Of course Callum acted like he hadn’t been lying. Because Callum was just… ridiculously thoughtful like that.

“Yeah, preaching abstinence doesn’t work on teenagers, I can’t imagine it’ll work on sex-deprived inmates,” Zane drawled. “Not even if you threaten them with a future of living in a leper colony.” Christ, the stethoscope was cold. Had he even agreed to a checkup? He was pretty sure he hadn’t, but it was happening anyway.

His lungs probably didn’t sound great when he snorted rudely, because he might be the former Mayor of San Francisco and fully fledged Card Carrying Adult, but butthole was still a hilarious word.

“Is that the proper medical term, Doctor Waters? Butthole?”

It wasn’t like Zane had actually been going around doing the rumpy pumpy with everyone in the prison, but after hearing the symptoms of syphilis, he definitely wasn’t going to be engaging in anything of the kind. Rashes and bumps on his business? No thanks.

Now, he just had to figure out exactly who had it. Social shame was a great tool of manipulation, and Zane wasn’t past using that sort of leverage to grab a little more power for himself. No, he wouldn’t be standing on a table in the cafeteria and loudly proclaiming hey everyone, Joe over there has the syph, let’s all gather ‘round and give him a round of mocking applause, but there were ways he could use it.

He stifled a sigh, said, “I’d better get a lollipop after this, I didn’t even agree to this checkup,” and dutifully (or as dutifully as Zane could ever do something, which was mostly just grudgingly) opened his mouth.

Zane had said it himself—a healthy dose of self-deprecation and a lack of self-worth made for an incredible doctor. One that would put the needs of others before himself each and every time, no matter how unappreciative, or brash, or… undeserving.

Callum heard that word thrown around a lot in Alcatraz. Someone deserved what was comin’ to him.  Someone didn’t deserve to be alive. He decided a long time ago that there was no use in playing judge. He had enough complexes to last him a life time. At the very least, he believed that everyone deserved to have a friend. If an eccentric prison doctor was gonna be all they had, it was his duty to play that part till the day they all danced on his grave;

He’d want them to dance to tango, he decided. Zane said he’d like it. He wasn’t sure if the man was truly going to teach him anytime soon, but he wasn’t going to be the one to bring it back up again.

Matthews was a tough cookie to crack. One with a crunchy exterior and an ooey gooey middle.

Callum would get to the fudge eventually. Until then, he’d try not to call him out when he knew he was lying.

Zane did that a lot. Maybe it came with the territory.

“Can’t blame a guy for tryin’! There’s hundreds of ‘em out there, at least one will listen to me.” He didn’t hold out on the one under the stethoscope.

The snort was especially loud when it was right in his ear-hole.

Callum went for the good ol’ left-pec-grab.

His own pec, of course. Not Zane’s. Goodness forbid the doctor was any handsier than he already was.

“Stop. You can’t just pick and choose when you get to call me a doctor—I’m allowed to say butthole! I went to school for this!”

Truly, Zane was spoiling him. He’d managed to avoid most forms of protest while also going along with Callum’s professional shenanigans. He wasn’t above begging, let that be known, but he also shouldn’t have to in order to accomplish something as routine as vital signs. Getting Zane to prove a clean bill of health? Why, that was out of the question!

…And what better time to spit that knowledge than when he had a wooden instrument stuck inside his mouth?

Callum proceeded with reckless abandon.

“You mean the checkup you should’ve had yesterday?” He asked, innocent as can be.

“I heard you managed to weasel your way out of that one. Something about oxycontin, I think?”

His head was still throbbing. Zane’s throat looked fine.

He disposed of the instrument, gloved hands slipping from their apparel and meeting the cold rush of the sink. It was only a moment before he motioned back toward his clipboard, eyes focusing and un-focusing on the text a few times over before the words finally started to make… sense.

There had been a few stabbing incidents before Zane walked in. Callum couldn’t help himself.

He regained his bearings after a brief pause, pen scribbling onto the paper diligently.

“It’s okay to let people help you sometimes. Especially when they want to.”