*
All he was able to hear were screams and the rain water hitting the yard’s soil, turning it all into a giant puddle of mud. There was a foul stench of filth everywhere, which only got worse with all the heavy rain, like a wet and really dirty dog. There was a fight going on and all the men were watching it like it was a show and going wild about it.
Then he spotted Michael. Alex never thought he’d see him so vulnerable and disoriented. He had wide eyes, was as soaked as Alex was and avoided his sharp look, turning his back on him. Michael stayed around, watching the fight a few feet away, seeming mesmerized. Alex knew better, though. He left Michael to his own fortune and took advantage of the fact everyone’s attention was drawn to the fight and followed corridors and hallways, trying to get out of the rain. The only clothes he had were on his body and he already knew by now that he wouldn’t be getting any others. He searched for a place with no leaks and that didn’t seem already taken; it wouldn’t be wise to get into a fight just now. He was so tired that soon enough he found his winner, a friendly looking bench where he sat and fell into a restless sleep.
It was the spasms of his body that woke him up, along with the buzz of talking and wandering of Sona’s inmates. Everything sounded so loud in his ears… His mind felt dizzy and the thin layer of cold sweat that covered his body bothered him beyond measure. His hands seemed to move according to their own volition, twisting, scratching, and clutching his own fingers. He opened his pen for what seemed the fifth time in two minutes. He knew there was no more Varatril in it, but he couldn’t stop hoping that
maybe one pill got stuck somewhere and that’s why it hadn’t fall on his palm yet. He rubbed his hand over his mouth, like trying to get a persistent dirt off his lips; his saliva was getting too thick and his mouth felt full, and he swallowed too many times.
He saw Michael in the hall above him. He looked at him, saw him walking and Alex instantly stood on his feet, going toward him. He didn’t think of what he was going to say, but, just like his hands, a part of his mind seemed to have gone frantic and just
did stuff. Like walking, talking, pacing… It was like he wasn’t able to suppress certain impulses.
Michael tried to avoid him, but Alex didn’t let him get away.
“What do you want, Alex?” Michael asked like he was just ready to leave.
Alex didn’t like at all the shaky sound of his voice when he spoke. “You’re so clever…Planting drugs on the boat. Big irony! Law man in jail…”
Michael looked at him through half shut eyes, measuring him. “You’re exactly where you belong,” he said.
Alex’s body was spasmodic and he got closer to Michael when he spoke again. It seemed to him that everybody was paying attention to what they were saying.
“No, that’s where you’re wrong. That’s where you’re gonna help me. I’ll have a court date one of these days and you’ll be there! On the stand… And you’re gonna tell the truth, that you planted this… That you set this up.” Why Michael would do that he didn’t care to know. “And I’m gonna go home.” But he didn’t know where
home was anymore.
“That’s funny. I could have sworn you set this up.” Michael approached him when talking and his breath was the first thing that ever smelled clean in this whole damn place.
Alex also noticed that his clothes were still pretty damp. Michael walked away, and Alex tailed along.
A man passed by them and Alex momentarily restrained himself, and then argued. “I set this up? I’m in here.”
Michael didn’t stop walking, but he answered anyway. “What does the Company want with me? Why Panama?”
Michael’s questions and his annoying need to know everything about anything got on his nerves.
“What? You think I know what they want?”
His harsh tone made Michael stop and look at him once more. He wanted to sound more natural, but his words were just frenetic…
“They had me. I did what they asked me to do. Arrest you in Panama and that's… That’s…” He wanted to finish his sentence, but the noise in his left ear was too loud. “That's old news.” He managed it. “This is the first day of the rest of our lives. How about we work together, you know? Help each other out?”
Michael stared at him for a moment before answering in a tone of voice that never failed to get to him. “Except every time I look at you, all I can see is the man who killed my father.” And then he whispered right in his face, “You’re on your own.”
He left and Alex couldn’t find the strength to go after him.
*
Alex gave up his futile attempt to sleep and got out of bed, placing both feet on the ground. He went to the small fridge in the corner and took a bottle of soda, taking a large sip. He sat down on bed again, drinking from the bottle and turned the TV on, switching channels without actually watching.
He thought randomly of Michael’s resistance to adapt himself to Sona. Like somehow he still thought he was somewhere things like honesty and truth mattered. In Sona, if you were honest, you were weak. And it took Michael his first fight to acknowledge that. Acknowledge, but not accept it nor comply with it, as he noticed later.
For a moment, when Michael hit the guy in the knee-cap, just like Alex had advised him, Alex really thought Michael had grown a pair. But then, after breaking the man’s neck with his bare hands, he realized Michael would always be same old Michael, who wouldn’t intentionally hurt a fly. And Alex detested that about Michael, because it made him feel dirty and evil for all the things he had done and was capable of doing. And he admired him for that too, because sometimes Michael brought out what was best in him and it didn’t matter if it was because Michael wanted to or because he was manipulating Alex, like he did to everyone around him.
He remembered Michael offering him his hand inside the sewers, when he had Whistler at his mercy.
“Let me help you, Alex,” Michael had said.
Strangely enough, Alex loved the way his name sounded from Michael’s mouth. Alex usually didn’t believe one word Michael’s mouth said, he only paid attention to the things his body language did, but every time Michael said his name, it was like the word carried a true feeling with it. Alex wasn’t able to tell what feeling this was, but it was powerful, nonetheless.
Alex finally got tired of switching channels and left the TV on some shopping channel. He finished drinking his soda, placed the bottle on the nightstand and went along with his memories. If he had been able to kill Whistler and get away from Sona, they wouldn’t be working together right now. And he and Michael wouldn’t… Wouldn’t have done a lot of things they did.
*Doing heroin did strange things to Alex. Anguish, shaky limbs, sorrow… It all went away, leaving behind just a calm state of euphoria. And the strangest of all, almost funny perhaps, was that his five senses, specially touch and smell, didn’t feel like his own. It felt like they… Belonged to someone else. So when he swung the shiv hidden under his arm and stabbed the wall just beside Michael’s head, his arm didn’t actually feel the hit. He knew he just plunged the dagger to the wall, but it was like his brain didn’t register that.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he recognized the fear in Michael’s eyes. He placed both of his arms over Michael’s shoulder for balance, but realized that increased his fear. Alex noticed the apprehension in Michael’s panting, in the way he breathed harshly trying to get control of his lungs. Alex took his time, waiting for his mind to decide what he was going to say. At the same time, he took advantage of Michael’s dazed state and placed his thigh between Michael’s legs, pinning him to the wall.
That wasn’t an erotic gesture, at least not intentionally; Alex was too fucked up to come up with anything remotely sexual. But he distantly knew he had Michael’s thigh trapped between his legs and that his own thigh was pressing on Michael’s crotch.
And then he said, “You are breathing only by my grace, Michael.”
He got closer to keep talking and his thigh rubbed lightly between Michael’s, their hips almost touching. He could sense Michael’s eyes going from the blade next to his head to Alex’s face. Alex saw the frown creasing his forehead and decided that he adored seeing Michael Scofield lose the damn attitude.
“Now you remember that the next time you’re gonna send me on a wild goose chase, okay?”
Michael interrupted him. “I didn’t…”
But he didn’t let him go on. He squeezed his thigh between his legs like a silent command to shut the hell up and said, “No, no, you did. And if you think you can manipulate me…” Alex tilted his hips toward Michael and saw him close his eyes when he did. “Just like you did Sucre, and Tweener, and Haywire…”
Michael’s eyes were uncertain and they moved randomly, looking downward to their entangled legs, to Alex’s face, to the blade… And Alex loved this new kind of control that left Michael so unstable.
“I’m not your errand boy. I’m gonna go with you when you escape. And if you think, in any way…” He stopped and couldn’t help laughing when he realized how
powerful he was. “That you’ll leave me…” His hips were clashed together with Michael’s now. “I will put this piece of metal right in that…” He paused, as if thinking of where he’d put his friendly piece of metal. Then he saw Michael’s scared face and decided. “Very small space right between your eyes.” He pressed Michael softly against the wall again for reassurance. “I will.”
He took the knife out of the wall and backed away. He touched the concrete surrounding Michael’s form, like he was quickly memorizing Michael’s height and form. And then images of him watching pictures of Michael’s body for endless and entire nights reminded him he already memorized pretty much all of Michael’s form.
Just when Alex got to the cell's gate to leave, he saw the swelling in Michael’s pants that definitely wasn’t there when he'd first pinned him to the wall.
*Alex turned the TV off and lay back on the bed again, the darkness once again filling the room.
He hated not being able to remember that first time they touched. He remembered what had
happened, but did not remember the most important part of it. How Michael smelled, what the feeling of having their thighs locked up for the first time felt like. He didn’t even remember feeling Michael’s erection before he saw it.
But then again, if he wasn’t suffering from detox and hadn’t taken a heroin shot, he probably wouldn’t have approached Michael the way he did. Because he was a straight man. Had always been. He found Pam beautiful and liked having sex with her. So, if he wasn’t completely high, he probably wouldn’t have thought that getting that close to Michael and locking their thighs together was a casual thing to do when threatening someone. He just got impressed with the power it gave him, touching Michael like that. At that precise moment, besides making sure he was going to get out of Sona, all Alex wanted was to keep him off balance.
But when the last effects of the heroin shot wore off, realization hit him like a punch. Michael had an erection when being confronted by him. And Alex couldn’t tell, couldn’t remember anything besides blatant moves. He could not read Michael because he did not remember what Michael felt like. He knew Michael would most likely ignore him or pretend it didn’t happen, but Alex couldn’t let him. It was far too great a weapon against Michael.
That day Alex decided never to use it again. Not heroin, not Varatril, not even getting fucking drunk on New Year’s Eve. Because if something like that
ever happened again, he’d be ready to tear away from Michael everything that would give Alex control over him.
*
It was late at night, probably around 2 am. Almost all of the inmates were inside their cells, or lying in their corners. The sun rose too early and it was too hot to sleep in the morning, so most of them went to sleep in the first hours of the night. The hallways were empty when Alex passed through them with silent steps. He reached the far end of the corridor and saw Michael standing on his bed, looking out the window. Alex stayed in the shadows and watched. Michael seemed to be throwing something out. Then he heard a gun shot, but Michael didn’t seem too distressed. Then he sat down on the bed again, his elbow resting on his knee and finally saw him.
Alex walked toward him with silent and slow steps. He stood by the cell’s gate and leaned against it. He had left his jacket under his mattress in his own cell; after he had broken that guy’s neck and been the first one to find Whistler, he held some respect and the inmates didn’t steal any of his belongings. The shiv was carefully hidden in the waist of his trousers, concealed from Michael’s sight.
Michael just looked at him and then turned his eyes away from him, facing front.
Then Michael was going for Plan A, ignore Alex.
“What? Not gonna ask me what I want this time?” Alex smiled weakly when he said it.
He noticed the tension in Michael's body as he sat on the bed. He briefly hid his mouth with his hand and looked at him.
“If it will make you get back to your cell…” He said with resignation, took a deep breath and then went on. “What do you want, Alex?”
“Oh, what I
wanted…” He paused deliberately, trying to work out Michael’s enigmatic face. “Was to apologize for… Scaring you earlier today.”
Michael pulled both legs to the top of his bed and stared at him. “We both know you meant every word you said, Alex.”
“Oh, you’re right about that, but…” He measured his words, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “I don’t wanna apologize anymore.” His words were drawling; his body and mind still in the aftereffects of his heroin shot.
Michael ran his hands over his scalp, looking kind of desperate. “Then what do you want, Alex?”
“What I want…” He said and paused again. When he was certain that Michael’s eyes were on him, he finished, forcing the words out of his mouth. “Is to know if you get a hard-on every time someone threatens your life.”
He saw Michael’s eyes doubling their size. Shame, perhaps? Disbelief that Alex would be brave enough to mention it? Anger? A mixture of all three, Alex decided. He waited for an answer, for a reaction, for harsh words to come out. But Michael only stood up slowly and approached him.
They were standing half a foot from each other, the inebriating smell of Michael’s sweat filling up his nostrils, when Michael whispered into his face, “Get out of my sight.”
His words were slow and Alex could sense the hint of a threat hanging in there. He didn’t answer and didn’t move. He just stared deep into Michael’s eyes, trying to decipher what was hidden behind that impenetrable expression. Alex thought of the dagger in the waist of his jeans, but didn’t reach for it. Maybe some other time…
He turned his back on Michael and walked away, just in time to hear his breath relaxing again. He hadn’t noticed Michael was holding it in.
