The tattoo is right between Justin's shoulderblades, over the spine. It's a circle the size of Nick's palm, with a double helix in natty primary colours. The base pairs are in pastels, and Nick is pretty sure they represent the beginning of the sequence for the haemoglobin beta chain. That would be the most likely cliché. "Valine, histamine, leucine, threonine..." he mutters into Justin's damp skin, and Justin moves slowly under him. "Nice tat," Nick says and licks the inked skin slowly. Justin shivers and makes a little noise. Nick holds his arms and pushes him down. When he licks the tattoo again, Justin arches his back.
"What are you doing?" Justin says after a while. There's a slur in his voice, like always once the painkiller kicks in. His hands are fisted in the rough sheets.
"Fucking you, I think," Nick says and moves, gives a sharp thrust.
"Oh-- Okay."
Nick isn't sure if he'd call it irony that he's fucking what he's pretty sure is Genotech's precious prototype, his father's greatest accomplishment. It might be irony. It might just be really amusing. He wonders if they're desperately trying to replicate their success now. He torched a lot of the research when he torched his father.
Justin hisses and cries out. Nick can't make out the words, but he knows. Whoever this Chris is, he's on Justin's mind a lot. It's sweet, but it doesn't make any difference in here. Justin's pliant and eager and yields under Nick's hands like clay, doesn't mind if it's rough or even painful. Afterwards, he's sweaty and languid and Nick is tempted to stay, let him curl up close like a pet.
Instead, he slips out of the bunk and takes a detour to the sink to splash lukewarm, rust-yellow water on the bits that need it the most. He meets his own eyes in the mirror, and looks away. Justin's fallen asleep where he lies, his face buried in the pillow, his legs still spread. Nick pulls the sheet over him and goes to bed.
AJ gives him a cigarette and says, "So, what does it mean? Is it something they'd pay for?"
"Are you kidding? They'd kill to get him back. When they find out he's in here, with a broken leg that's gonna heal crooked, they'll probably execute half the police force just out of spite."
"Sweet," AJ says and slaps Nick on the back. "I got a situation developing with the bible thumpers. I need the leverage."
"Sure," Nick says.
"Don't have any today. Maybe tomorrow or the day after," Richardson says. "You shouldn't be feeding him them for more than a few days at a time, either. He'll be useless for work."
"He's useless for work already," Nick says.
"I can give you plain morphine."
"Whatever."
Richardson gives him a narrow stare; he's got a face carved from bedrock, that guy, and Nick never knows when he's happy. If he ever really is. His expression doesn't change even when he comes.
The distressing part is how the call for quiet is like Pavlov's bell ringing, now. The lights dim, he gets horny. And it's only been a fortnight.
Justin's bright-eyed and expectant. He can't keep the eagerness off his face anymore. Oops, Nick thinks, he's hooked.
"Couldn't get any," he says, and Justin blinks and frowns.
"What do you mean?" he says, and there's a hint of a whine in his voice, a whine he's probably not even aware of, the junkie whine.
"I mean there's none to be had. It's a seller's market, kid."
"But--"
Nick takes the two steps from the wall to the bed and pushes Justin back down on the bunk. He resists for a fraction of a second, and Nick sees his expression flash to anger and back to blank neutral. "Shut up," Nick says.
"Hey--" Justin says, "hey, you're not gonna--" but he's folding back and Nick figures he's hearing the bell, too, and he only has to push a little harder than he usually does.
The skin on Justin's arms shivers into goosebumps when Nick runs his hands over them. He feels cold under Nick's hands, not hot and smooth like before, and Nick thinks it'll be a long night.
"Fuck, fuck--" Justin mutters, and now Nick has to keep him down, because he's trying to move away, turn away, and that's not cool. "Fuck, it hurts, man, let go."
"Shut up," Nick says again, and Justin falls quiet, but he's still shivering, and Nick can't believe it starts so soon. Maybe it's just the knowing that there won't be relief. Maybe he's faking it. "Turn over," he mutters and pulls at Justin's shirt, pulls it off. Justin moves too slowly and Nick pushes him around, tugs down his boxers.
Justin makes a sound somewhere between a groan and a cry, and Nick claps a hand over his mouth and feels his breath puff hot and harsh on his fingers, and he slips a couple between Justin's lips, and between his teeth into his mouth. Justin bites down, maybe reflexively, and that's not bad, it sends quick tendrils of heat through his stomach and down, and it suddenly occurs to him that AJ might be out making a deal right now, and Justin could be gone in a day.
"Mpphh," Justin mumbles around his fingers, and Nick pulls his hand away. "Fuck you," Justin says, "fuck you, just give me a fucking-- f-fucking--" and Nick claps the hand back on his mouth.
It's going to be a hassle to do this if Justin's set on making as much noise as possible, and Nick wonders if he's doing it on purpose. He tries to decide whether he misses the slow, sweet, languid drugged Justin, but maybe this is better, this raw battle where he's still coming out on top because Justin is too wounded and too addicted and too conditioned into spreading his legs at the sound of Nick's voice to put up a real fight.
Justin shivers and tries to turn his head away from Nick's hand, but Nick holds him down with his body, twists his arm behind his back and pushes his knee between his legs. Justin gasps against his hand and stops fighting, lets Nick pry his knees apart.
It is different; not so much a hassle as tougher going. Justin isn't fighting, but his body is; none of the pliant give, but resistance everywhere, hovering just above painful. Sweat is breaking out all over Nick's body, and Justin is already slick with it; it's gathering in droplets in the hollow between his shoulderblades, on the smooth surface of his skin, on the bright orange and blue of the tattoo. Nick bows his head on a thrust and slides his tongue up along Justin's spine all the way to the stubble at the back of his neck, and Justin whimpers into his hand. Nick feels his teeth again.
The cell is stifling hot, a fucking oven with no window or air conditioning, just a small vent in a corner. He knows his skin is flushing red all over; every breath is like pulling in a soggy stew of distilled prison air, stale and heavy.
Justin is chilly and damp, like he just rose out of the ocean. The muscles in his back are tight and trembling and he's whimpering softly, and Nick feels a brief twinge of conscience, or something related to it, but then Justin bites his hand hard, maybe hard enough to draw blood; it stings like a bitch, and bucks under him and Nick bites his neck in return and thrusts sharply, faster, pushing Justin into the bed.
Justin twists underneath him, almost gets his hand loose, thrums with tension, shudders and his shout is muffled but still loud enough, too loud, and Nick tears his hand away and slams Justin's face into the thin pillow, ruthlessly.
"Shut UP," he whispers, and feels Justin relax, just go limp, and realises that he just came.
He lets go of Justin's head. Justin turns his face away from the pillow and draws in a huge breath and says, "Fuck you, Carter, just--" and Nick puts his sore hand back over his mouth.
He thrusts twice, and then Justin licks the bitemark on his hand, sharp little tongue drawing a line of bright pain across his palm, and he yells when he comes, too.
"Why did you--" Justin says after a while, when Nick's sweat is starting to dry on his back and Justin's still cold and trembling. "Why did you. Why did you--" but that seems to be all he's capable of saying, so Nick rolls off him, wrung out and a little puzzled as to why he's still lying in Justin's bunk.
"What, didn't you like it?" he says and looks at the rough boards of his own bunk above them. Justin's turned his face the other way, and his shivers run deep and resonant through his body; it's like lying next to some sort of machinery. He's snuffling softly into the pillow, and Nick realises he's probably crying. He squirms and thinks about getting up, but he's worn out and post-coital languid and his eyes are falling shut.
"No," Justin says. "I hated it. I didn't. I wanted--"
"Missing your boy?" Nick asks and thinks, wow, we're having a conversation or something. Pillow talk with the prison bitch. Justin must be in pretty bad shape if he wants to talk. They've probably said twenty lines to each other in these two weeks.
Justin doesn't answer, just pulls in a shivery breath and then suddenly moves sharply, staggers out of bed, swears when he puts weight on the bad foot and almost falls, would have fallen on his face, in fact, if Nick hadn't been quick and caught him around the waist.
"I'm gonna--" Justin blurts and throws up on the floor.
"Oh, FUCK you," Nick says, but he gets a bunch of wet paper towels and mops it up, because Justin's curled into a ball on the bunk, clutching his stomach and moaning.
"It's your fault," Justin whispers much later, in between shivers. "You did this." He sounds almost surprised.
"Yeah, tough shit," Nick says and goes to fill his mug with water again.
He remembers the morphine about an hour later and almost punches the brick wall with frustration. Moron, moron. Three hours 'til wake up call, and he hasn't had a wink of sleep.
It's in one of those little ampullas the military has for emergencies, and he sticks it into the skin on Justin's thigh. It takes roughly ten seconds, and then Justin stops shaking.
"Why didn't you give me that before?" Justin says. "Do you like it when I puke my guts out on the floor? You sick fuck."
"Shut up and go to sleep," Nick says. He doesn't climb up into his own bunk until after Justin's asleep, just lies quietly and stares at the Technicolor tattoo on Justin's back and listens to his breathing calm down.
In the morning, the guard has to bang on the door several times before they wake up, and when he comes in, he makes a face and says, "What the fuck have you two assholes been up to? It's like an apehouse in here. Christ," and they have to stay in for an hour and clean the whole cell. Justin's pale and slow and doesn't speak a word.
Nick thinks it's just as well that he'll be gone soon. Just as well.
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