Nick brings you a pill every night, and you take it. You know it makes you different, and you know you'll end up having sex with him, but it doesn't really bother you. The first morning after, you had a few moments of panic, but he was his usual glum self and you calmed down quickly. You don't tell him that you've never had sex with anyone before, that you were really waiting for Chris to catch on and be the first. You guess it doesn't matter. Any day now, someone could recognise the Genotech tattoo on your back, and they'll lock you up and throw away the key. Better to have fun while it's available, even if it is stoned fun with a guy who looks nothing like Chris and sounds nothing like him, and doesn't hold you afterwards.
You don't talk, until one day when you ask, out of spite, maybe, "Who do you think about?"
"What?" he says testily.
"When you're fucking me."
He bows his head over the thick ledger he's going through, hits a few keys on the calculator next to him. Makes a couple of notes. Your foot hurts again, and you're sick of typing numbers. Maybe he likes doing it, but you don't. He seems to like it here, in fact. He has friends he talks to in the dining hall, strange, tattooed weirdos who turn expressionless faces and eyes hidden behind sunglasses your way when you look at them. He talks to the guards, and you wonder what he knows about them, what he does for them to get the pills and special privileges he has.
You're used to routine. You're used to waiting, used to being bored, used to being alone with people who won't talk to you. Doesn't mean you like it. Life in the sewers wasn't easy, maybe, but it was never boring, and you miss Chris.
You hit the keys on the fucking stone-age computer you're using. Hard. And say, "I'm sure not thinking about you."
You're not sure why you're being a bitch to him. He's just some schmoe who had the bad luck of being bunked up with you. You stare at the computer. There's a huge spider walking across the screen. You're briefly tempted to squash it, just because. You don't. Instead, you close your eyes and picture your room down in the tunnels. Your bed. Chris' bed. You'd lie awake at night, sometimes, just to listen to him breathe. You think he must love you, because he let you tag along and he found you a bed and helped you carry it through the tunnels, and he didn't get angry all those times you were walking so close behind him that you bumped into him when he stopped. He just grinned and poked you in the stomach and said, "Sleepwalking again, J?"
You think he must love you, because you had nothing to give him, and he kept you anyway.
"I know who you're thinking about," Nick says suddenly, and you jerk out of your quiet moment and remember that you were picking a fight with him just seconds ago. "You call his name when you come, dumbass."
"Fuck you," you say, and that's it for the conversation. Ten minutes or so later, one of the guards comes in and nods sharply at Nick, and they disappear down the hall for a while.
You stare at the screen without seeing it. You wonder if it's something everyone gets, that feeling of just knowing when something important has happened. Opening a door, turning a corner and seeing Chris hunched over the torn-out guts of the alarm control box. Meeting his startled eyes and there it was. Click. Like a gosling follows blindly, you followed him.
You look over your shoulder at the rest of the inmates tap-tap-tapping away on their keyboards. Maybe it is just you.
Nick comes back, and one of his bad mofo friends is with him. Piercings, tats, sunglasses that seem surgically grafted to his face. He tilts his head and lifts an eyebrow.
"What?" you say. He ignores you.
"I gotta get back to work," Nick says.
"Don't exert yourself, Carter," the bad mofo says and leaves. Nick sits down in front of his console. You take a deep breath and try your best to get back into your head, but he's distracting, somehow, like a scratch in the roof of your mouth.
You blink and focus your eyes on the screen again, and you haven't done anything in the last half-hour, and you've typed CHRIS in at least three cells at random intervals. Nick's leaning back in his chair and smirking at you.
"Fuck off," you say, tiredly. Your foot throbs monotonously, and you're thirsty. You wonder if it's another side effect of the pills; you're thirsty all the time. You think maybe you should stop taking them.
But he gives you a pill at night, again, and you take it because your foot hurts and your head feels too small for your brain. Before you even lie down, he grabs you by the arms and pushes you against the damp concrete of the wall and kisses you. He's never kissed you before, but it's not bad, it makes you sweat and shiver, and he holds you up by your arms, his fingers digging into your biceps. You forget not to put pressure on your bad leg, and pain pierces the fog you're lost in, shoots up your ankle, radiates through your body, sticks icy daggers in your back. You twist your head away to gasp for breath, and he licks your neck, and your head is swimming and heavy and you fall helplessly against him.
You forget to pay attention to what you call out when you come.
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