FIC: Married 2/?
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimers: I stole the boys when Tom wasn't looking and made them do naughty things. Shh!
Summary: Chris ponders over how to best control someone. Toby meets his potential future wife.
Notes: This is an AU fic, another of my 'canon-twist' things, only in this case the twist happens off-screen and is just mentioned briefly in the background narrative. The twist is when Vern and Robson attack Toby after his first parole hearing failed, Toby kills Vern in self-defence and winds up in Oz for life. I couldn't imagine Chris condoning Toby having conjugals if there was a chance he'd leave Oz with his wife and forget about Chris someday.
Thank-yous, love and hugs to Rifka. I'm still eagerly awaiting your quibbles.
~~**~~
It was an old lesson and Chris had learned it young: if you want to control someone, you find out what they need and give it to them. Then you create another need, and fulfil that. Then you create another need. And so on.
His first chance to put this axiom into play had come to him in Lardner. When he met his new cellmate, Vern Schillinger, Chris had immediately recognized the older man’s need for power. At the time that need was expressed by violence against ethnic minorities and pragging pretty young white boys - like Chris. When Vern wanted to fuck, Chris had fought him, knowing it would increase Vern’s desire for him. In no time Chris had a handy protector and was casting about in search of ways to bind Schillinger closer to him.
Schillinger wasn’t head of the Lardner chapter of the Aryan Brotherhood, not when Chris first encountered him. At twenty-five he had a long way to go before he reached that coveted position. Not that he coveted it at the time; a recruit of less than five months standing, he was still enjoying the ‘privileges’ that were granted to members of the prison system’s most powerful gang and was not yet looking for more. It was Chris who awoke his nascent desire to climb the ranks, though he did it with such subtlety that Vern died believing the idea had been his own. Similarly, when Chris came up with the necessary means and put them at Schillinger’s disposal, he did it with so much cunning that not only Vern but the entire Brotherhood believed that Vern’s ascent was due to Vern’s genius alone.
Chris had made himself Schillinger’s right-hand-man for the next three years, employing a seduction here, a betrayal there, a shanking somewhere else to achieve the goal, all the while preserving the illusion he was acting solely under Schillinger’s direction. At the end of three years Vern reigned supreme - he thought. Out of gratitude for Chris’s assistance, though with no idea of how far it had really extended, Vern abstained from making any more sexual demands on him and instead found other ways to employ his considerable talents. Chris spent the next two years with everything he could want in prison, even fucking who he wanted, just for pleasure, without even the need for a fake heterosexual front. He had almost been sorry when he was released.
Now, twenty-eight years later, he reflected that the rule of power through creating and fulfilling needs could be applied universally, even to the only person in the universe he loved.
~~**~~
Toby spent the next few days thinking about Chris’s suggestion, just like he’d said he would. Not that he needed to decide whether or not he wanted to - that was a given. He just needed time to work out how he felt about Chris doing the same thing, and ponder over whether it would all be worth it. He was by nature monogamous, and sharing wasn’t a concept he could accept after just a few minutes of conversation. But balanced against this was his still-thriving heterosexuality, his longing for the soft sensuality of a woman’s body, the stability of a mother-figure in the lives of his children, the possibility of other children that he had long ago given up on. To have all this within arm’s reach again filled him with a need so overwhelming he wondered at his own hesitation.
But still, an even stronger reason against marriage than jealousy was his love for Chris. As indifferent as he was to men in general, he knew he had never been more in love with anyone than he was with Chris. The most precious part of each day started at five o’clock. Locked safely in their pod for the night, he and Chris were free to talk to each other with an openness impossible in the quad. Free to touch each other. A hand on a shoulder or face while the lights were on, maybe the occasional kiss or quick grope, or just the accidental brush of two bodies forced to share a confined space for thirteen hours straight, no pun intended. And throughout those five hours from lockdown to lights-out, there was the anticipation of the greater intimacy they would share in the relative privacy of semi-darkness. This was the time they both lived for, when they would kiss and make love with a passion that had stayed strong since their first night together, seeing in a new year and a new life that, despite some earlier ugliness and a separation that had lasted some months, had survived intact until the present day. He could acknowledge that out of all the benefits a wife would bring to his existence, he didn’t expect a love like this to be among them. The thought that he might damage what he had with the wrong choice was a constant source of anxiety.
Both sides of the question were alternating in his mind the following Friday as he headed for the visitor’s room, looking forward to his usual weekly hour with his children. Today they were brought by Marian, Holly’s pretty young schoolteacher, as they often were when none of the Beechers could spare the time. Toby got along very well with Marian and on the occasional Wednesday she would even make the lengthy drive to visit Toby by herself, giving him someone to talk to with the candor not always possible with his family or his lover or his fellow inmates. Today, as Holly and Harry left them for a few minutes to visit the candy vending machine in the children’s visiting room, Marian mentioned the unusual number of women she’d noticed lining up in the waiting area. Toby nodded.
“Conjugal visits are being brought back to Oz,” he explained. “They’re also making it easier for inmates to get married. Everywhere you look, you see guys getting engaged. That’s why more women are visiting that usual.”
“Oh. I guess that’s not something you’re really concerned with, right? I mean, you still seemed pretty tight with Chris the last time you mentioned him.”
“I am. We are.”
“I can never figure that out. You love this guy, you don’t see him as a substitute for what you’re missing, but you still consider yourself a normal heterosexual?”
“I never said I was a normal anything, but yeah, I’m heterosexual. I love women. I love the idea of them, I love the fact of them, and I miss being married. I don’t love the idea of men. Just Chris.”
“Hm. And what about Chris?”
“He loves me, too.”
“I mean, is he straight?”
Toby shrugged. “He’s been married four times.”
“So he’s probably sick of it by now, right?”
“As a matter of fact,” Toby said, “the other night we were talking about finding wives. He was the one who brought it up. He thinks if we’re open with each other we can manage it without hurting what we have.”
Marian looked away. Following her glance, Toby saw only his children by the vending machine in the next room, probably debating the relative merits of the peanut M&Ms vs. the plain. There was nothing in the picture to warrant the intense, troubled expression on Marian’s face. Something sparked in Toby’s mind and warned him to tread lightly.
“What about you?” he said, keeping his tone casual. “Anyone in your life lately? You haven’t mentioned dating anyone since before last Thanksgiving.”
She laughed. It sounded slightly forced. “I guess I just felt like I needed a quiet ten months,” she said, and Toby’s lawyer-brain spotted the lie. He said nothing, but suddenly he knew what answer he was going to give to Chris.
~~**~~
During dinner, Chris noticed a lift in Toby’s attitude. Toby seemed more relaxed, almost cheerful, something that probably wasn’t caused by the gray strips of roast ‘beef’ and congealed gravy that the inmates had been served tonight.
After lockdown Toby remained in good spirits. He didn’t talk more than usual, but he gave the distinct impression of being relieved from something that had weighed heavy on him for some time. Chris was silently making educated guesses. He knew Toby would speak up eventually, and he felt he could even predict when and what Toby would say.
After lights-out Toby was eager to fuck, even frisky. With more willingness than he’d shown for the past two weeks he knelt down and sucked Chris, doing everything to make it good for the other man. Chris could tell his enthusiasm was real by the erection that brushed his shins, even though he hadn’t yet touched Toby there. Chris never wanted his lover more than when he was like this, and after a few minutes he gave into his urges and pulled Toby to the bunk, rolling him onto his stomach before mounting him and thrusting rapidly. Reaching around, he pumped Toby with his fist until they both came, panting, Chris tugging hard on a handful of Toby’s hair, and when orgasm quieted to the warmth of afterglow he collapsed on Toby’s back, nosing among damp curls to press soft kisses to his nape.
After a few minutes Toby sighed and eased himself out from under Chris, going to the sink to wash away the traces of sex. Chris watched him for a little while, enjoying the sight of Toby moving naked around the pod, then stood up to follow his lead. Afterwards they crawled back into Chris’s bunk for an hour or so of lying in each other’s arms, a ritual as important to them as the sex that preceded it.
“I’ve been thinking about what you were saying,” Toby said. “About getting married.”
“Uh-huh. And?”
Toby considered him for a moment, his face thoughtful and serious. “Listen,” he said. “I know you were the one who suggested it, but I need to know you’re really okay with this. Married or not, my most important relationship while I’m in here is with you. My wife, whoever she’d be, would be someone I’d spend one night in sixty with if I’m lucky. You’re the person I come home to. I love you. If I’m going to spend the rest of my life in here, I want to spend it with you. Whatever I’d have in a wife wouldn’t be worth spoiling what we have together.”
This was unexpected. Chris felt his love for Toby rise as he listened. Pulling him closer, he whispered, “You ain’t going to lose me, baby. Not ever.”
Toby searched his eyes for a long moment. Seeing confirmation of his words here, he sighed and settled deeper in Chris’s arms, relieved.
“I think I might have met someone,” he whispered.
Chris took a deep breath and nodded. He had known who was bringing Toby’s kids today, knew of the friendship Toby shared with the woman. He doubted a word of anything serious had passed between them yet - he knew he could trust Toby to let him know if things were headed in that direction.
This woman was at least a known quantity, and from what Toby had told him, she already knew about his relationship with Chris. It was a choice Chris could live with.
“Good,” was all he said.
Toby’s arms tightened around him gratefully.
tbc...