You still haven't cried.
You're typing up statistics, endless rows and columns of numbers, because you still can't walk properly. They feed you well. The food is better than in the tunnels.
Your foot is hurting in its makeshift splint. You'd think they'd treat their working prisoners better. You remember the Compound: you were a prisoner there, too, but you were pamperered like a prize-winning Persian cat, groomed and primped and almost loved.
These people don't pretend to love you. It's a relief, really.
You share a cell with someone you've never seen, because he works the night shift and you are asleep when he gets in, and you're eating when he gets up and leaves. The cell is tiny and dank, but you like the privacy. Before you fall asleep, you think about Chris.
You've been locked up for five days. You're lying on your narrow bunk, with your leg full of rolling, pounding ache and your head full of Chris. You have your hand between your legs, but you don't think you'll be able to take that any further, not with the pain radiating up from your ankle and knee. But you like to think and feel and pretend you're somewhere else, with Chris' hands on you instead.
The cell door clangs open. You stay where you are, keep your hand where it is, but you turn your head to look at the intruder.
He's young, tall and broad-shouldered, and he's dressed in the same grey pants and tank top as all the prisoners. He glares at you with narrowed eyes. You turn your head away.
Later, you wake up to hear him jerking off in his bunk. You're still cupping your own dick, and it's making a valiant attempt at paying attention, but when you move, your ankle screams its protest, and you're left lying there with the pain and the buzz of almost-arousal itching along the outer edges of your consciousness.
In the morning, after the wakeup buzzer jerks you out of a honey-slow dream where Chris bows his head and licks your stomach in lewd, wet laps, your cellmate says, curtly, "I'm Nick," and you tell him your name, and that's all you say to each other all day, even though you work in the same room for twelve hours, but when you're back in your cell and lying on your bunk and hurting again, you say, "stop that."
"What?" he says. "I can beat off if I want to."
"Yeah, but," you say, but you can't really think of any good arguments. You don't know him. You're not sure you want to.
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