Chapter Text
“So here’s the deal,” Torquemada says, and as he begins to speak at the head of Chico’s hospital bed, Chico simply stares up at him, wigged out by his appearance in general—tall, what’s he so tall for?—and then more specifically, by his choice to pair a raggedy lime-green scarf with a pale yellow tank top and royal purple tracksuit.
“What, were they out of hot pink at Juicy Couture?” Chico mumbles.
With that, there’s an abrupt and merciful break to the buzz of chatter swirling above his head. Then Torquemada’s bracing a hand at the edge of Chico’s bed to bend down and force their eyes to meet.
“You haven’t been listening to a word, have you, you stupid donkey?”
“Nope.” He’d gotten a fever on the chilly bus ride out of Oz when everyone had been evacuated—a fever which had turned into a mild case of pneumonia—had almost diverted him to Benchley Memorial, except, well, it’d been cheaper not to bother, he supposes. Still, he’d tuned Torquemada out mostly by choice, and he squints at him now, remembering the promises and offers spoken to him from the other side of a hazy nightmare. “Why the fuck should I?” he growls, jerking his chin forward. “Fuckin’ poisoned me.”
“The product was tainted,” Torquemada replies, icy and dismissive. “A risk in our business—you know that. It won’t happen again.”
Chico continues glaring, even as the cogs begin to turn. Take a wider look at the situation, Enrique used to say. Consider every angle.
There’s the fact that Torquemada sought him out in the first place, he realises. Had sought him out back then and now. For all his haughty sneering and grand plans…
The fag needs help.
Chico snorts, the words that Torquemada had been speaking earlier now returning to him despite his best efforts to ignore them. “I be your lieutenant,” he says slowly, sitting up a little—carefully, because he still has that I.V drip tangling him up. He can see the calculations running in Torquemada’s eye in the meantime, his expression otherwise impassive, waiting to see which scenario in his head runs true. Chico doesn’t leave him waiting; “What the fuck is in it for me?”
Torquemada’s tone had come out curling and crooning back at Oz; it’s flat now, as he lifts a hand and presses something into Chico’s palm. “That’s just a taste, Guerra,” he says.
The familiar feeling of a wad of bills is certainly a fucking comfort against swallowing the pill of following Torquemada.
Shit had seemed like a decent enough proposal when he was already high as shit, but it can’t be ignored in the sober light of day that Torquemada is a fucking fag…and that it’s bound to come with its own unique challenges, if Chico’s to do this.
Glancing down, Chico sees the numbers attached to the bills and swallows hard, fingers tightening into a fist.
A look of delight sparks in Torquemada’s expression—has his mouth curling into a punchable smirk. “I take it we have an understanding?” he asks, voice a smug rumble once more.
Fucking cabrón.
Chico could say no. Could relish in the momentary flash of power, throwing away a good opportunity for the sake of petty gratification.
But he thinks about his bank account. Recalls Miguel’s ambition and Raoul’s doggedness and Enrique’s business acumen.
And finally, he thinks about his boys—what the fuck they’d want him to do—and he grits his teeth, knowing the answer without the sliver of a doubt.
“Guess so.”
*
It helps that, in the end, the amnesiac properties of Destiny are far greater than Chico could have guessed. One pill—one taste of that sweet, soaring high, and it turns out a man can forget that the person delivering the product to his mouth is a maricón.
“That’s how it’s always been,” Alonzo drawls, quick to snatch collection from Chico as he leans against the entryway of the cell. “They always hate you until you have what they want. You could be queer, broke, crippled, and loco… If you have supply? My my, then you have the magic beans, Jacky-boo.” His hands are quick, thumbing through the profits and flipping the one bill that Chico’d overlooked as he mouths the numbers to himself, eyes rolling up to one corner in mental calculation afterward.
It’s all fucking there, Chico wants to grumble, but he holds his tongue—lets the math prove him right.
Business has been smooth but not so fucking smooth that he expects Alonzo to stop checking his numbers. They don’t have that trust—just wary reliance.
Anyway, that’s not all bad.
As ridiculous as he’d looked when he first arrived, Alonzo’s a hawk when it comes to the money, shrewd and methodical. Importantly, he’s as prompt about dispersing the goods as Chico is in collecting the profits. They’d entered a good rhythm of business pretty quickly, between Chico’s ability to whip the boys into shape and Alonzo’s deal with the wops. Now, Alonzo peels off a couple of bills from what Chico’d handed to him and folds it over, handing it back.
“Pocket change for you, sugar,” he says, the rest of the cash disappearing as if by sleight of hand into one of the dozens of pockets on the monstrosity that is his pants. Another perk of his command over this corner of the prison: Alonzo wears his own clothes as often as he can, paying off the hacks to let him flounce around the unit in whatever eyesore he wishes. Today, it’s a black, incredibly baggy pair of pants covered in useless straps and paired with a blood-red mesh crop top.
Money is made to be enjoyed, Guerra.
Chico nods curtly, receiving his bonus and stepping back as soon as it’s reasonable to do so. Despite the fact that he fucking lives there, too, he doesn’t always hang around the cell during the day and Alonzo doesn’t expect him to. Ain’t that kind of gang he’s trying to lead here; he wants numbers, not brothers, and Chico’s relieved for that understanding. Knows the hermanos are, too, even if it seems to be like Alonzo says—that no one cares, ‘cause money talks…
“They still hate you, you know,” Chico muses, pausing at the gate.
Alonzo’s head snaps up from where he’d turned his attention to fiddling with something else—a vial of green in his hands. His bleach job has started to grow out and only frosts the top layer of his buzz cut, brown coming in at the roots. The mix of pale and brown matches his eyes as he blinks.
“Better to be hated than loved,” he sneers after a moment, shaking his head as he pops the vial open.
It’s like the fucking sound of a can of tuna opening to a cat the way Miguel—a lump on the lower bunk behind Alonzo up till then, back to the cell, ignoring everything—rolls over and sits up.
These days, he has that constant pale and weary look, bags under his eyes, which are coal-black at the moment, vacant except for that short burst of life as he glances from Alonzo’s profile to the green pills rolling into his palm.
He croaks something as he sits up, hardly looking aware of anything else in their three-man cell. Fucking zombie he’s been this past week, only waking up for pills, really.
It’s fucking sad.
“What’s that, sugar?” Alonzo asks. He talks to Miguel like he’s talking to a fucking baby, all sweet and indulgent in a way that, paired with how he extends a hand with the clear message for Miguel to lick the pill out of it, makes Chico’s skin crawl.
He grits his teeth when Miguel shifts forward, perching on the edge of the bed as if he might just do what Alonzo wants—but then, zombie or no, he’s still Miguel, even after these strange, strange few weeks of resetting the status quo. He still ends up reaching out, plucking the pill up with his fingers instead, gleeful as he pops it into his mouth and flops onto his back again.
“Feared, stupid,” he says, crunching on Destiny and proving himself far more lucid and aware of shit than Chico had thought. With the pill seeping into his bloodstream now, though, it won’t be for long. “Quote is better to be feared. S’bad to be hated.”
Alonzo rolls another pill into his palm, glancing at Miguel with amusement as he tips the second D-tab into his own mouth. “Oh well,” he decides glibly.
Chico can already see how his eyes are raking over Miguel’s supine form—how the space of the cell is feeling increasingly small. Suffocating. His stomach flips and his skin crawls as he turns on his heel before Alonzo can offer him a tab.
He always says no, anyway.
Chico indulges, sure, but never daily like Miguel now—never enough to get hooked—much less on his own fucking supply. That was a thing he and Enrique had agreed pretty strongly about: if you’re on top, you stay clean.
And even if he wasn’t on top…
Growing up, he’d seen what the needle and the bottle did to his old man, the crazy asshole. He’d always said he wouldn’t follow suit and yeah, he’d gotten fifty years in the slammer but he’s yet to break that vow, at least.
Out on the caged tier, Genardo is loitering by the railing a couple cells down, and Chico catches his eye as he passes, jerking his head in a clear message of Keep standing watch.
He’s Alonzo’s lieutenant, not his fucking babysitter, so he’s not about to do the deed himself—certainly isn’t going to stand there while he and Miguel… do whatever it is they do once he makes like the wind.
He doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t want to see it. Doesn’t want to hear it.
It stings.
Shit, he’d thought Miguel was made of tougher stuff. Thought that he was a man—that he had a stronger sense of who he was. Stronger will to live, not just survive.
It’s a fucking testament to the way Alonzo has managed to defy expectations, maybe, that he’s molded even Miguel’s iron will to his whims. Turned him into putty.
Yeah, there’s something to learn from Alonzo—maybe not there in particular, with what he’s done to Miguel—but with his leadership, in general. There’s always something, way Chico figures it.
Time will simply have to tell what.
Either way, there’s a small upside to being in this new place, Chico supposes as he clangs down the narrow stairs to the main floor two levels down. Unlike Em City with its clear walls, Unit E at Hancock Correctional contains cells carved out of a wall of concrete, four tiers and fifty cubby holes overlooking a windowless wall with a recreation area on the floor below that consists of six tables welded into the floor and two foosball tables. It’s a brutalistic design, meant to create a certain air of austerity and oppressive gloom, but there’s also a high level of privacy afforded by the layout of the unit… which means that luckily, there’s yet to be any whisper of Miguel being Torquemada’s bitch.
In fact, Chico’s pretty sure there’s a good chance that in the wider landscape of Hancock, Miguel barely registers as a blip on anyone’s radar. So far, he’s been good and lowkey since they arrived, made safe by his reclusiveness—only coming out of the cell for meals and yard time—and probably, by his proximity to Alonzo, who could stop traffic anywhere he went by comparison.
Another advantage to Miguel’s camouflage is the chaos of Hancock. It’s less violent than Oz, but only in the sense that the men here stop short of beating each other to death, keeping the murder rate down and the Warden happy. Whatever else happens, happens, a degree of lawlessness in the four tier structure, gates at every end. Tier Two is still locked down, in fact, vestiges of the fight that had broken out within the caged walkway the day before present in the tiny pieces of debris—toilet paper and downy pillow stuffing—scattered over the grated floor.
With the amount of shit that goes on in just Unit E, nevermind the common Gen Pop spaces like the yard and the cafeteria, Miguel’s ass is safe.
Well, relatively.
As Chico strolls out onto the floor, he scans the recreation tables for a friendly face—someone to join—somewhere to turn to.
It’s a pathetic feeling, searching for a safe pocket to slip into, but he finds one quickly, dropping down onto the metal bench beside Liam Meaney and saying, “Yo, deal me in.”
“Fuck off—you cheat,” Ryan O’Reily mutters, moving the cards in his own hand around.
“So do you,” Tobias Beecher points out dryly.
It’s a motley crew, O’Reily, Meaney, Beecher, and the exiled Muslim Zahir Arif, but they’re known factors as far as Chico’s concerned.
“There a pot?” he asks as Meaney slides him a couple cards.
“Nope,” O’Reily says, squinting at his cards before placing his hand facedown on the table. “Arif here has something against this thing called fun.”
Beecher gives a small sigh but Arif—who Chico’d always remembered as being one of the more spirited Muslims—doesn’t say anything.
After a second glance toward the guy, who looks weird without his little hat these days, Chico can see why: motherfucker’s high, eyes glazed as he stares at his cards, tongue running over his teeth under his lips as he pretends to be generating thought.
“Not from what I can see,” Chico snickers, reaching over and snapping his fingers in the air in front of the guy’s face. “Oye, ¡despierta!”
Arif blinks and looks up, scowling. “What?”
“Hey, he lives!” Chico laughs, and though Meaney smirks a bit, the rest of the table is fucking lame, all gloomy and shit.
Unfuckingbearable.
Chico licks his lips, setting his hand down and extracting himself from the table. “You know, on second thought… I’ll come back when there’s cash to win off you pendejos.”
Distraction.
Picking up, Chico moves on in search of a more fulfilling use of his goddamn time—a tall order in prison, he knows, but he’s never been one to humor boredom or indulge in misery, either.
Fuck that.
Life’s too short.
As he takes to the edges of the commons, circling the foosball tables with mild interest and contemplating getting a pass to the library, Chico eventually glances up toward the towering wall of cells. From his place on the ground, he can only see the front of each cell—certainly can’t fucking see past the fencing and into the depths of his own, even if knows which one it is, Genardo still standing around out in the middle of Tier Three.
“Yo, Guerra.” Someone walks up to him—starts pacing with him, all twitchy and looking around. “I need some shit.”
“Yeah? You gonna be able to pay, Rawls?” Guerra says flatly, knowing the answer. Library it is. “Fuck off, man,” he says, and peels off, picking up his step so Rawls won’t follow him across the commons. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he sees the homeboy heading for the tier instead, and that doesn’t fucking bode well, but that’s what Genardo’s standing watch for.
There’s an hour until dinner and three until lockdown.
Chico goes in search of more distraction.
*
If there’s something nice to be said about Hancock Correctional, it’s the one hour of rec time on the yard each afternoon.
Reminds Chico of fucking recess in elementary school. Eating and then being turned out onto a playground to laugh and scream and burn off the energy derived from cheap, sugary school meals.
Of course, the yard at Hancock’s no playground, and there’s no laughing, really. Screaming? Maybe.
It can be dangerous, what with multiple units of Gen Pop being released into a concrete yard, testosterone and aggression running high.
Hancock’s shaped like a fortress itself, red-brick buildings running in a big hollowed-out square with a courtyard within. The inmate yard is only a fraction of all that space, a gray concrete wall running along one edge and high, barbed wire fencing along the other three sides. Steel watch towers loom over the space, guards with rifles keeping patrol, ready to shoot fish in a barrel.
Even then, it’s not always enough to keep inmates in check. If there’s a beef, there’s a beef, and no hack waving a gun is going to be able to make himself seen around the blinders that come with pure hatred.
Chico’s already seen his share of shankings on the yard in the past couple of… months, at this point. Sometimes it’s a gang thing, sometimes a personal spat. Sometimes, it’s just a basketball game gone wrong or the perception of being cut off at the weightlifting equipment.
Tensions are always ready to spill over, and yet.
The danger’s worth it.
Worth it to feel something other than stale prison air. Worth it to be able to look up at the sky—to see the sun, though granted, it’s late autumn and a blanket of gray clouds is the much more common sight now. Still.
Sweat trickles down the side of Chico’s face as his back hits the cold concrete wall that neighbors the basketball courts as he slides down to the ground beside Miguel. “You just gonna sit here all hour?”
Sitting in the shade of the wall, it’s fucking frigid, which might be why Miguel’s all curled in on himself, looking swamped by his hoodie, knees drawn up to his chest. That, or it’s the chills of coming down from his morning dose of Destiny. Probably both.
“Don’t wanna play ball,” Miguel mumbles.
“Yeah. You’d trip all over yourself, anyway—break yo’ pretty little face,” Chico laughs, stretching his legs out in front of himself and resting his palms on the ground to either side of him as he catches his breath. He’s both sweaty and cold himself, face bitten by the light chill in the air, which is rapidly cooling the sweat around his collar.
Putting a damn stitch in his side as he breathes.
“Yo, you hear they finished cleaning up Oz, though?” Chico says. “Maybe they’ll be transferring us back.”
Miguel shrugs, staring out broodingly at the men running back and forth on the blacktop they’re sitting near.
Most of El Norte is huddled off on the other side of the yard near the weight floor where concrete neighbors the dead grass on the other side of the barbed wire fence and where Alonzo—easy to spot with his freshly unnatural blond hair that sticks out a head over the rest—is in talks with Pancamo. It’s nothing important, or Chico would be over there, too.
Nah, Alonzo’s just holding court with the Sicilians, amusing them with tales from the outside and taunts and fruity little turns of phrase that always manage to walk the line between offending and entertaining. Well, the important part, Chico supposes, is that Torquemada never offends Pancamo; anyone else is fair game, his words leading to intermittent jeers and laughter instead of flying fists and catastrophe.
Yeah, and his tight control over the supply of Destiny helps, too.
“Prison’s prison,” Miguel grunts.
“Miss the TVs, though,” Chico says lightly. “‘Specially HBO, you know?”
Miguel turns his head abruptly, the action forcing him to come out of his shell a little, squinting at Chico like he’s the dumbest person alive. “Never had HBO, man.”
“Yeah, there was that show about the strippers,” Chico says, tracing curves as he remembers them out in front of him. Those had been some glorious few weeks, free of fucking Nudey and Pecker—free of the goddamn local news. Watching some real TV. “The documentary. Shit, no way you forgot it, man. They were baring it all—” Chico laughs at the memory—not because it’d been funny, but because those little flashes of the dim scenes from that documentary had been crazy—he’d jacked off to just the opening titles more than once. “Oh, shit, man,” Chico realises with another cackle that gets Miguel scowling at him. He ignores it, grabbing Miguel’s knee and shaking him until he’s smacked away. “You were in the Hole—you missed it. Damn! Oh, compadre, you woulda loved it. The women? There was this chick, man. She had her pussy pierced. Showed it right on—”
“McManus let your horny asses watch that?” Miguel says sourly, looking forward again, body settling back into his huddled disinterest.
Chico snickers, beaming out across the yard, a cheerful feeling in his chest as he waves a dismissive hand. “Well, you know, it wasn’t all porn, man. It was insightful and shit. Yo, those hoes were working for the Bennys. They had discipline. Business strategy, you know? Doin’ what they had to do.” He licks his lips—blinks, feeling his smile fading a bit. He snorts. “Anyway, I guess you got pussy on the run anyway, right?”
Miguel, who’d been listening with a moody expression, lips pressed together and folded in, suddenly glances sideways.
“...What, you didn’t? Aw, fuck. Miguel—”
“Wasn’t tryna get caught,” he says defensively, clearing his throat after a wet rattle appears, straining his voice.
“Yeah, but it’d be worth it to get caught for pussy,” Chico teases, leaning over and knocking Miguel’s shoulder with his own. “Shit. You didn’t even get freedom pussy?” He’d always assumed Miguel had—that he’d gone out and chatted up the hottest chick he could find—opened her… hospitality to him. Christ, what a waste of an escape. Where had he slept those six months then?
“Shut up,” Miguel grumbles, but Chico can’t let it sit—hooks an arm around Miguel’s neck and pulls his head in toward his chest, making him tip over.
“Miguelito,” he says as Miguel immediately squirms in his embrace, legs finally unfolding as his limbs scramble to find purchase against the ground. “You break my heart, compadre.”
The old him would’ve really laid into Miguel about it—called him a dumbass loser, maybe, and even if he still thinks it—because come on!—he just snickers and twists Miguel’s earlobe as he flails and slaps at Chico’s arms.
“Damn, Chico!” Miguel snaps and manages to worm free, shoving Chico hard against the chest. “Fuck’s wrong with you?” he huffs, glaring. His hood has fallen down, exposing his buzzed head, the lack of hair and his dark eyebags and pallid look giving him a mean, sickly appearance.
Slumping against the wall Chico hisses out a final laugh, not letting that grin fall even under Miguel’s venomous glower.
Nah, they’re good. Maybe they skirt the line sometimes—annoy each other—but there’s no bloodlust anymore.
Hatchet’s good and buried, a huge weight off Chico’s shoulders. May have been on McManus’s orders they’d grumbled out apologies, but standing in that office, shaking Miguel’s hand, the realisation that he could let it all go—stop looking over his own shoulder—had been a fucking profound one, too.
Attractive.
Hating Miguel had become a kind of addiction to him despite his intention to never get hooked on any vice, and when Miguel had said I’m glad you’re alive so I can say this to your face—that he was fucking sorry? It’d hit Chico right there and then that he’d almost let the animosity destroy him—that he’d caved to the bullshit of Oz and let it rule his mind—make him reckless.
Embracing Miguel like a brother again, it’s not like Chico had thought it would be good again, like in the early days he could barely even remember anymore. Had just been symbolic, putting his arms around Miguel—true forgiveness or whatever.
But once the pretense of hate was dropped and Miguel’s presence was no longer an exhausting fixture in Chico’s mind… well, it hadn’t been like the guy wasn’t still around, and Chico had found himself falling back into an even older habit.
Camaraderie.
There’d been that play, Macbeth, and the rehearsals which had become a reason to seek Miguel out and start a casual conversation—a convenient task, too, because by then, Carlos had been deteriorating in the hospital ward and Enrique’s paranoia had become an uncomfortable, crushing thing to be around. Miguel had been neutral territory—positive, even, an underlying optimism in him for a couple weeks back then, before…
Well, something had happened to him, while Chico was in the hospital.
He’s not sure, and Miguel doesn’t say, either, but Chico’d heard the rumors about Schillinger and the Aryans beating him—about how Miguel had given himself up to Torquemada, Destiny a steady drip into his bloodstream ever since.
He doesn’t get it—doesn’t understand why Miguel had crumpled like a castle of cards—again—but for old time’s sake, and because he’s learned through experience—knows which battles to pick now—Chico doesn’t turn on Miguel over it this time.
He figures Miguel knows, anyway—doesn’t need to be told how pathetic he is.
Ain’t stupid—just weak, at the end of the day.
Really, it’d been Chico’s mistake to hold Miguel to any kind of expectation—to even consider the idea of making him leader of El Norte again… So yeah, he can be sore over it all he likes, but he won’t take it out on Miguel, not like he used to.
“Just messing with you, pendejo,” Chico drawls, putting his palms up. “We cool?”
“Yeah, whatever.” Miguel sneers and looks away, drawing his legs back up and hugging them to his chest again, surly as fuck.
“Whatever,” Chico mocks with a snort, reaching over and pulling Miguel’s hood up for him.
He dodges belatedly, reflexes badly dampened by his habit, even if he’s not currently high—can only push his hood away from his eyes and settle back down, frowning. “Dick.” He doesn’t get into it, though, the shrill buzzer ringing through the air, signalling the end of yard time, drawing his attention instead.
On the basketball court, the guys who’ve been running back and forth come to a stop, the sharp dribble of rubber on concrete abruptly cutting off as boots scuffle to a walk.
The damn buzzer keeps going—won’t stop until every goddamn soul has trudged back inside, Chico knows, groaning as he pushes off the ground and to his feet. His sweat has completely cooled, face left feeling mildly itchy and collar cold and damp against his neck. “C’mon,” he says, holding down a helping hand for good measure.
He’s a dick, yeah, but he doesn’t mean harm.
Miguel ignores the hand, clutching the wall for balance as he climbs up and then sways, seeming wobbly on his feet. “Damn. Leg fell asleep,” he mutters with a grimace, looking down and shifting gingerly to his right side.
“Shit, it’s always something with you, huh? Well, I ain’t carrying you,” Chico informs him, and does the next best thing as the other inmates begin to leave them behind and he imagines the trigger fingers of the hacks in the watchtowers growing impatient: he grabs Miguel’s wrist and starts marching ahead—
Hears Miguel curse him out, limping and dragging, and laughs.
“Asshole!” Miguel says, yanking out of Chico’s grasp. He keeps walking though, and his limp evens out as they join the herd being processed back through the gates of Hancock.
“Just looking out for you, Miguel,” Chico tells him, meeting Miguel’s glare with a wink.
And okay, maybe they’re good, and maybe he’s glad for it, but he won’t deny there’s not still something satisfying about messing with Miguel. The guy’s going to be toasted out of his mind shortly after they get back to their cell, anyhow—might as well enjoy getting a rise out of him while the lights are still on and he has the wherewithal to get annoyed.
For old time’s sake.