Hard Time - Part 19 (Rhink)

Title: Hard Time - Part 19
Disclaimer: This is TOTALLY NOT REAL. It is fake. I made it up. Nothing is meant to be implied about any actual real-life people.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Minor injury/blood.
Word Count: 3033

It was three days before the start of his classes in January when Rhett once again made the journey to Craven. Snow was falling when he got on the road, fat flakes that swirled in front of his headlights and melted when they hit the pavement. His mother would have told him not to go, but he wasn’t going to let such a little thing as a mild winter storm prevent him from possibly seeing Link.

It had been two months since he’d stormed out of the visitor lounge; two months of yearning and pain and self-recrimination. As he got closer to the prison he realized he felt very little emotion now, as if it had all been crushed out of him by repeated disappointments.  The less hope he allowed himself to feel, the less it would hurt when his hopes were dashed.

All of the guards at the visitor entrance knew him by now. He’d let his hair grow out a bit but hadn’t bothered styling it, and it stood up from his head in careless waves. He’d also allowed the hair under his bottom lip to grow in, and now it merged with the thin beard along his jawline while leaving his upper lip bare. He knew from a quick glance in the mirror this morning that his skin was pale and there were heavy shadows under his eyes.

Bill was working the desk and he gave Rhett a friendly nod. “Happy New Year. Tryin’ again, huh?”

Rhett forced a polite smile. “Yup. Fingers crossed this time.”

“Neal, right?”

“Right.”

Bill typed in the name and waited. Despite telling himself not to have any expectations, Rhett felt his heartbeat pick up speed as it seemed to take longer than usual for the results. Finally the man looked up at Rhett with a smile. “Good news, you can see him today.”

Rhett grinned broadly. Finally! He thanked Bill and took a quick step toward the metal detector before being brought up short. “Ah, not that way,” the guard clarified. “Inmate’s been moved to D Block.”

Rhett turned back and raised an eyebrow. “D Block? What’s there?”

“It’s higher security. They got a different entrance.”

He gave Rhett directions to the other visitor lot and Rhett hurried out the door with a short thank-you. He followed the road further into the prison grounds, past the sign for C Block, and pulled into the gravel lot for D. The gatehouse seemed quite similar to the one he’d been going through, except the sign on the door informed visitors that no gifts of any kind were permitted. Rhett frowned at the box of candy canes that had sat on his passenger seat for a month, then got out of the car empty-handed.

Inside the door was a very similar intake area. He gave his name and Link’s to the guard behind the desk and held his breath as the computer churned, only exhaling when the man waved him on. He passed through the metal detector and the door beyond and found himself in a long, narrow room with small cubicles along one wall. The guard standing just inside the door gestured for Rhett to enter one of them, and he complied.

The cubicle had a low countertop that abutted a pane of glass which extended to the ceiling and was honeycombed with reinforcing metal wire. A phone receiver sat on a cradle at the corner of the counter. He sat down in the folding metal chair and stared at the empty room beyond the glass as the familiar scent of mint and ammonia antiseptic filled his nostrils.

Over the next few minutes, a handful of unfamiliar prisoners in drab uniforms entered the opposite room and disappeared out of Rhett’s field of vision as they went to different cubicles on their side. He heard people on his side of the glass pick up their phones and start talking. Finally the far door opened and Link came through, and Rhett gasped.

The other man was barely recognizable, most notably because all of his hair was gone. It looked like it had been shaved inexpertly with clippers; it wasn’t entirely down to the skin, and some patches were darker where the hair was slightly longer. His goatee was gone as well and instead the lower half of his face had a few days’ growth of stubble. His eyes were deep and shadowed, the skin around them darkened from sleeplessness or malnutrition. He located Rhett as the taller man sprang to his feet, and walked over to the opposite side of the glass with a slow, deliberate gait.

As his friend approached, Rhett saw Link’s cheeks were sunken; the bones of his face stood out in sharp relief. His uniform seemed to have grown two sizes and now swallowed his small form. There was a line bisecting one of his eyebrows — a scar or a cut of some kind — and his lower lip was swollen and cracked by a cold sore. It obviously hurt as he smiled carefully up at Rhett.

The glass and two countertops kept them separated by a few feet, but to Rhett the distance felt like a mile. His need to take Link in his arms was almost unbearable. He tried to smile back, but his inner conflict had him paralyzed. Link was alive. Link looked like hell.

Link pulled out the chair on his side and leaned on the arms as he lowered himself into it. Rhett forced himself out of his stupor and did the same. They both reached for their phones as if mirror images of each other, pressing the hard plastic to their ears.

“Hey, Rhett.” Link’s voice through the receiver was startlingly close, as if he were speaking directly next to Rhett’s ear.

“Link! God, I missed you, buddy.”

“I missed you too.”

Rhett stared through the glass, a genuine smile of relief on his face now that he had heard Link’s voice. He drank in the sight of his friend like a man lost in the desert. Battered and bruised as Link was, his beauty was still undeniable. Rhett felt like he could breathe again for the first time in weeks. “What happened?” he asked.

“Oh, this?” Link gestured to his head. “It just… seemed cleaner.”

The man seemed self-conscious, so Rhett hastened to reassure him. “It looks badass, man! But I meant, like, in general. Why’re you in here? Why’d you lose visitor privileges?”

“Oh.” Link’s smile faded as his gaze dropped down. “I got in a pretty big fight the day you were supposed to visit in December. It happened in front of a guard who had a bug up his ass and decided to make an example out of us, so…” he trailed off, his fingers tracing circles on the counter.

Rhett saw the man’s knuckles were split and scabbed; the injuries seemed more fresh than what he would have gotten in a fight a month ago. “So?” he prompted. “They just threw you over here in D Block?”

“Not right away.” Link licked his lower lip delicately, then chewed on the corner away from the cold sore as he hunched over in his seat. He wrapped his free arm tightly around himself and spoke quietly. “I was in solitary.”

Rhett was surprised to learn solitary confinement still existed, let alone that it was used as punishment for something like this. “Whoa,” he breathed. “What was that like?”

“It was… awful,” Link replied. “Just awful. It’s a small room, no windows, no people, nothing to do, no sense of how long you’ve been there or what time of day it is until they shut the lights off at night, and then it’s pitch black.” His eyes darted up to meet Rhett’s for a brief moment before falling back down. He propped the phone between his ear and shoulder and began picking at one of the scabs on his knuckles. “You’re just there. By yourself. Talking to yourself, eventually. Thinking about how everyone’s forgetting you exist. Going insane.”

Link had always been the more social of the two of them. Rhett knew the guy got anxious if he spent more than a few hours alone; as a teenager he always begged Rhett to come over and keep him company when his parents were out of town. Rhett tried to imagine what it would have been like for him in that cell and his heart ached. “How long were you in there?” he asked.

 “Two weeks. It felt like a month. Or a year.”

Rhett didn’t have the words to convey the extent of his sympathy, so he had to settle for, “That sucks, man.”

The scab started bleeding and Link brought it to his mouth, licking it clean as Rhett winced. “Yeah,” Link murmured. “It sucked pretty bad.”

Rhett decided to change the subject. “What was the fight about?”

Link’s eyes flicked up to his. “I got your letter. Well, both of them. Thanks for that. The second one I got a few weeks ago, and that was really nice. Helped me feel a lot better after I got out of that place. The first one came a few days after…  after your last visit.”

The man’s apparent ignoring of Rhett’s question confused him, but he rolled with it. “Oh? Good. I’m glad. I’m still really sorry about that, by the way. I was just surprised, that’s all. It’s… it’s totally cool though. You and Tanner I mean.”

Link’s laughter was high and thin and something about it sent chills down Rhett’s spine. “That’s great, Rhett. I’m so glad I have your approval.”

“No, it’s not — I’m not saying you need my — “

“Sorry,” Link interrupted him, “This is hard. Talking to you about this stuff.” He giggled again, a weird and hysterical sound.

“It’s okay, man.”

Link coughed, pulling himself together, and when he spoke again his voice was steadier. He grasped the phone in his hand again, clutching it tightly in his fist as he met Rhett’s eyes through the glass. “It was your first letter, actually, that sort of lit the fuse.”

Rhett felt a flutter of nervousness in his chest at the thought of somehow being responsible for Link’s trauma. “Oh?”

The smaller man nodded. “I was so relieved. I thought you hated me. And when I got the letter, I was so happy.” He paused to rub his eyelids with his fingertips. “I thought about what a good friend you’d been to me all these years, how I knew you cared for me, how I trusted you to look out for me and never do anything to hurt me… we made such a good team.”

“We still do, man.”

“Yeah, I guess...” Link gave him a quick smile before dropping his eyes to the countertop. “Anyway, I was thinking about that a lot, and on the day you were supposed to visit I was so excited I couldn’t really contain it. And… it started really getting on Tan’s nerves. Like, he’d always been jealous of you but now he was gettin’ real angry about it.” Link worried at his cold sore with his teeth while he paused to think, and Rhett waited, his concern growing. “I realized… I didn’t feel that way about him. I didn’t feel like… I could trust him. Even though he was protecting me in here, I never really…. knew… what to expect.” Link seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “We got into a big argument and then I told him… I didn’t want to be with him anymore. And he… didn’t take it well.”

Rhett felt sick to his stomach. “He hurt you?”

Link scratched at the short hair on his head, still averting his eyes. “He tried. I fought back. Some other guys saw it as an excuse to get in a few licks of their own, on both sides… it got pretty bad.”

“But the guards stopped it?”

“Eventually, yeah. Separated us, patched us up, and dragged everyone off to our separate cells in solitary.” Link’s voice was rough. “Then when I got out they put me in D Block.”

“What happened to Tanner? Is he in there with you?”

“No…” The man took a shaky breath. “I heard he got transferred to another prison. Something about too many infractions. It’s weird how he’s suddenly… just gone.” Link looked conflicted, almost wistful.

Rhett was relieved, for the most part, except for the fact that he wouldn’t get to take his vengeance out on the bastard with his own bare hands. “But that’s good, right? He hurt you.”

The smaller man’s eyelashes fluttered rapidly as he kept his gaze down. “I guess, but he did care about me, though. He was really sweet… sometimes. And it was nice not to be alone. Now it feels like I’m alone all the time even when there are folks around. It was just that he really… changed when we got in here.”

Rhett didn’t want to push the issue, since it looked like Link was on the verge of tears. Instead, he asked a more immediate question. “Are you okay in there without someone protecting you now?”

Link laughed again without any real humor to the sound, bringing a finger to his lip and tracing the edge of the sore. “Yeah, actually, the guys seem to think I’m a bit crazy. They leave me alone.”

“That’s… good, I guess.”

“Yeah, I kinda wish I had taken that tactic from the beginning.”

Rhett was quiet as he watched his friend fidget uncomfortably in his chair. He wanted to be excited that Tanner was out of the picture, but the pain Link had gone through in the process, plus his obvious emotional distress, made it impossible for Rhett to feel joy. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, man.”

“Thanks.” Link was silent, seemingly lost in thought, and Rhett listened to the man’s soft breathing over the phone cable. Link flexed the hand that wasn’t holding the phone and they both watched the skin pull at the scabs on his fingers. He looked back up. “No more Lauren, huh?”

“Nope. We both decided it was for the best.”

“That’s too bad.” Link chewed his upper lip, the swollen lower one jutting out, then laughed. “Weird how we’re both single now, huh? It’ll be great when I get out, two eligible bachelors goin’ out an’ causin’ trouble. And we won’t even have to compete with each other.”

It took Rhett a few seconds to understand what Link was getting at. It occurred to him that he could clear the air right now — blurt out the truth and lay it all out on the table — but as he hesitated, he saw Link’s face fall in a sudden reversal of mood. “Who’m I kidding,” the man muttered. “I’m not exactly a good catch these days.”

“Don’t say that, man.”

Link shrugged. “It’s true, though.” His adam’s apple bobbed sharply as he swallowed. “I haven’t even… I mean, the last time I even touched another person… was when I punched Tan in the face.”

Link’s eyes began to well with tears. Without a conscious thought, Rhett reached out his free hand and placed his palm on the glass between them, spreading his fingers. “It’s okay, brother. It’s gonna be okay.”

Link raised his own hand and Rhett saw that it was trembling. When he placed it against the glass, the trembling ceased. He spread his fingers to match Rhett’s; their length was almost the same even though his hand was narrower. Rhett felt Link’s warmth through the smooth surface and guessed the other man could feel his, too, as his lips curved into a tentative smile.

He held Link’s gaze as he tried his best to transmit comfort and reassurance through the glass that separated them. He saw Link’s shoulders relax slightly. “This is silly,” the man murmured self-consciously.

“Maybe, but does it make you feel better?”

Link smiled more. “It does.”

“Then who cares?”

They both rested their elbows on the countertop and kept their hands on the glass as they continued their conversation. Link described the differences in D Block, most notably that he now slept in a cell with actual bars that he shared with three other men who mostly ignored him. Inmates in D were only allowed outside for an hour a day, but it had been so cold lately he didn’t mind that much. He’d been allowed to resume his job at the library when he got out of solitary, and his time there was the highlight of his day.

Rhett told him a little about how he’d spent the holidays, but brushed over it quickly so as to not make the man feel bad. He definitely did not mention Corey. Instead, he talked about his upcoming classes and awful final exams, then entertained Link with an in-depth review of the James Bond movie he’d seen over winter break. By the time visiting hours were over, his back ached from hunching over the table and his elbow was sore from the hard surface, but Link’s smile made it all worth it.

They both reluctantly withdrew their hands, their fingertips being the last to separate. The glass was fogged with condensation from where they had touched it. Link grinned at him, and Rhett was relieved to see his friend looking less unsteady and more like himself, despite his new haircut. “Thanks for comin’, man.”

“Any time. See you next month, Link.”

They both hung up the phones and Rhett felt the acute loss of Link’s voice by his ear. He watched the man get carefully to his feet and walk out of the room, seeming distant and blurry through the glass when he turned back for a last glimpse of his friend. Rhett gave a little wave before he, too, turned and departed. Fat snowflakes swirled around him as he walked to his car, clinging to his eyelashes and melting on his lips. He didn’t feel the cold as he smiled up at the overcast sky; he felt only the warmth of his best friend’s hand through the glass.