prison cellmates!jjafe. i hope everyone had an amazing holiday season and has an even better new year <3
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BZZZZT. LIGHTS OUT. ALL INMATES TO REMAIN IN BEDS UNTIL 0600.
Rafe leaned over the edge of the bunk. It’s bolted into the wall securely enough that he felt comfortable hanging half his torso off the edge to nose in on what JJ was doing. Doodling, it seemed, with a golf pencil and some scratch paper, illuminated by a tiny book light Rafe had no idea where he got. Maybe a friend brought it in for him.
The lights in the unit were never totally out, but no one wanted eye strain from pushing it without the overhead fluorescents. The teeny battery must have been dying, only powering enough of a glow for the artist to see his work, but Rafe’s sharp blue eyes were able to make out that he’s sketching their cell, and that it wasn’t very good. Perspective was all wonky, he was pressing too hard in some of the shading, he left the top bunk empty.
“Don’t know why you’re trying to document this place,” Rafe murmured, picking up JJ’s attention with that practiced timbre that only cellmates can catch. “There’s nothing here that I want to remember when I leave.” In eight years, ten months, and sixteen days.
The little pencil kept scratching on the page as he filled in the shadow below the sink, and he ignored the snark. He was always quiet in the cell— quite the contrast to how he ribbed around with the other inmates during the day, in the cafeteria, out in the yard. JJ arrived a few months ago and didn’t make the typical mistake of over-exerting his presence, bowing up to a huge guy to establish dominance and hilariously getting body slammed into a bench. No, he was just… easygoing. Talkative. Always offered to spot other guys at the racks and didn’t argue about what the TV was set to in the rec room. He even joked around with Rafe playing bones with the chipped dominoes, so he knew it wasn’t anything personal when they retreated to their hole and the boy went mute.
Still… it stung when the bids for attention were left hanging. He kept trying.
“Are you ever gonna really tell me why you’re here?” Rafe prodded. He knew it was bad etiquette, and he didn’t go around taking a census of everyone he met, but he figured it’d be in his best interest to ask about the recent history of the man he slept above each night.
Except— he was annoyingly secretive about it. Not that he refused to talk about it, the opposite; in the short time he’d shared a cell with the guy, he’d heard no less than six different crimes that landed him there. None of the guards cared to spill, and nobody went to the same courthouse as him to corroborate or deny his stories, so he seemingly rolled with whatever popped into his mind when questioned in casual conversation. Burned down a Wendy’s. Caught moving six hundred pounds of green. Dogfighting bookie. Busted selling counterfeit Yeti cups to suburban moms. It was clearly a joke to him, something to brush off the discussion and move back to who’s supposed to deal the next round.
Amateur. Rafe was too nosy for that aversion.
“M’not gonna judge you,” he added, honestly. “I mean, if you touched kids, you’d already be with the other chomos. So what happened? You try to outrun a cop and realize you can’t outrun the radio?”
That got a soft laugh, just a little puff out of his nose, and for him to look up. His angular face caught the underlighting around his cheekbones and eyes, crinkled up at his bunkmate. “Why do you wanna know so bad?”
Rafe lifted a land lazily, a shrug without even using his shoulders. “Bonding.”
Another giggle. JJ went back to filling in the texture of the concrete walls. Bed checks had been about fifteen minutes ago, meaning no one would poke around their cell for another hour or so. Rafe clambered off the bunk until his light feet hit the floor, then dropped down to sit cross-legged on the cement.
“Do you know why I’m here?” It’s a peace offering: a reminder that, most likely, nobody had any room to judge if they were in the same damn cell. Information wasn’t free, anyways.
Tough to tell if he’d piqued his interest when he wordlessly flipped the page over and started sketching on the back. A few more moments of silence and Rafe would’ve yielded and crawled back up the ladder, conceding to try another day.
“You killed your old man.”
The story was out but slightly skewed. Rafe had no issue admitting the charges on him— driving under the influence, vehicular manslaughter. Multiple bad decisions in a single night, his father shouting at him in the passenger seat, a thick tree trunk that came out of nowhere, swerving to avoid it and— nothing more. He woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed with nurses that sneered at him and a preset court date.
“Yeah.” Rafe thumbed at a crack in the floor, then gagged when his hand came up dirtied. He wiped it on his canvas pants. “So it’s not like I’m here for donating too much to charity. I’ve fucked up. You can tell me.”
If he wasn’t encouraging him to open up, he was at least entertaining. JJ’s lip curled up into a little smirk, but it disappeared when he pressed his lips together uncomfortably. Rafe was inches from almost pouting, begging to know what was so awful he couldn’t confide in someone who pinned his flesh and blood father between the center console and a hundred-ten year old magnolia. But just before he jutted out his lower lip—
“Same reason as you, actually.”
His jaw dropped. “No shit.” It was a hair too loud, and the burly guy next door stirred. They both froze, waiting for the creaking to stop as he found his sleep again, then Rafe continued. “Sorry, just— really?”
JJ nodded. “It wasn’t the same, though. I meant to do it, and I’d do it again if I had the chance.”
If ever there was a time to shut up, Rafe knew this was it. This chick had to hatch alone.
“He… didn’t treat me too good. I guess one day, I just snapped.” He wouldn’t make eye contact now. JJ focused entirely on his drawing until the pointed tip of lead broke off his little pencil. He sighed, then pressed the pad of his index finger against the loose graphite. “I beat him with a whiskey bottle. He was chasing after me, trying to choke me out, and I grabbed the first thing I found. I know one hit would’ve been fine, but once I saw him on the ground, finally defenseless—”
JJ pinched the lead tip until it crumbled between his fingers. He brushed it off his bed, careful not to fling it too hard towards Rafe. Still didn’t look at him, though.
“I know I probably deserve to be somewhere worse. For longer. But the judge went easy on me.” His lids fluttered shut and he leaned his head on one of the bars of his bed. “I lifted my shirt at one of my hearings, and I still had marks on my ribs and chest from him. The man was dead, and you could still see what he did to me. Hard to walk away from that with more than the minimum sentencing, in a prison far from the rest of his family.”
He went back to drawing, face pinched in concentration as he worked with the broken graphite. It was a good thing the kid wouldn’t make eye contact, because Rafe’s were probably bugging out of his head. JJ couldn’t— he wouldn’t hurt anyone. He didn’t even like watching WWE. Not like Rafe didn’t know the idea of a limit being broken, though.
“It wasn’t an accident,” he blurted, and JJ finally, finally looked up from his paper. His brows were furrowed, and Rafe gasped when he realized what he’d just admitted. “What I did. Everyone thinks it was, even my lawyers and family.”
He thought for a moment he’d already said too much, but there was no stopping the words that spilled out.
“My father was an evil, powerful man, and I’m not the only one he…” Rafe’s thoughts drifted away, gaze locking on the scuffed wall behind his cellmate. “I had to stop him and I didn’t care if it killed me. Literally. I don’t know how I’m alive, I thought I drove hard enough into the tree to take us both out. I told the cops I was on coke and a saliva test came back positive because I’d done it the night before. I…” He remembered what JJ said earlier. “I’d do it again, too. Fuck, I’d try different methods to see which felt the best. I don’t care. And I don’t remember much, but I hope it wasn’t instant. I hope he suffered.”
Several beats passed before he caught his breath. Jesus Christ. What was wrong with him? He blinked hard, scanning over the boy’s face for some indication that he’d gone too far, that he’d revealed what a disturbed fuck he really was. One whiff of connection and he sang like a canary.
Like he could read his goddamn mind— “Birds of a feather.” JJ smiled, utterly unfazed. “They stuck us together for a reason, huh?” He calmly flipped the paper up again and held it to the light, revealing the rough sketch of Rafe’s face. Shockingly a much better portrait artist than of interior space. “C’mon. Let’s get some sleep.”
