New Fic: All God's Monsters (Oz)
Title: All God's Monsters
Fandom: Oz
Category: Beecher/ Keller, circa season 4
Rating: NC/17
Summary: "Chris is narcissistic, but never about anything that matters. It's sex and getting high and who he's fucking over and how."
Author's Notes: Written for scissorknot for the oz_magi challenge. All might and glory to the super and sexy callmerizzo who organised the challenge and kept the flame burning for one more year.
To be subject to appetite is to be a slave, while to obey the laws laid down by society is to be free - Rousseau, The Social Contract.
Before Toby leaves the room, Agent Taylor catches his arm. "Ask yourself," Agent Taylor says. "What do you really know about him?" Toby looks at Agent Taylor's hand around his elbow. They meet eyes and the hand falls away. "Think about it," Agent Taylor says as Toby walks out the door.
Agent Taylor doesn't want to find Toby's kids; he wants Chris, preferably in the electric chair. He's the worst kind of law enforcement, all about the job, no recollection of what the job is for. He wastes valuable time going after a white whale when he should be hunting down real leads, genuine suspects.
Still, for some reason Agent Taylor's words take root, sprouting tendrils like poisonous oak. What does Toby know about Chris? What does he really know? Toby blames it on the kidnapping, a need for something to occupy his thoughts. It doesn't mean he doesn't trust Chris. It doesn't mean anything.
*
Back in the cell Chris is seated in the chair by the glass, feet on the bed, reading. He's pretending to be engrossed in the book but his shoulders are set straight, tense, like he's been waiting.
"What you reading?" Toby asks. He sits on the bed, pushes Chris's feet aside so they fall to the floor. Chris holds up the book. The Social Contract: one of Toby's library books. "Don't tell me how it ends," Toby says.
"You can have it back," Chris says. "I don't know what the fuck it's about."
"If it's any consolation," Toby says, looking at the cover. "Neither do I." He doesn't remember why he borrowed it. Sometimes he feels a need to think about the things he used to, remember who he was before he came here. It never works.
"What did the police say?" Chris asks.
Toby shrugs. "They haven't got any leads."
"No shit," Chris says, shaking his head. "Those idiots can't tell their assholes from their cakeholes." Toby fears as much. It must show in his face, because Chris suddenly leans forward, rests his hand on Toby's shoulder. "We'll find them," he says earnestly. "I've got contacts. I'll ask around."
"Yeah," Toby says. He doesn't believe it but he likes to hear it. Chris knows this. There's a lot about Toby that Chris knows. "Chris?" Toby turns his head so that he's looking at Chris. Outside the pod, Em City inmates are congregating in time for Miss Sally. "Tell me something about yourself."
"Like what?"
"Where were you born? Where did you go to school? What did you want to be when you grew up?"
Chris leans his head to the side, looks at Toby curiously. "The Bronx, the Bronx and a fireman. What's going on, Toby?"
Toby imagines Chris as a fireman, a heroic figure rescuing a child from a burning building. It's easy to do - Chris is tall, strong, athletically built. Toby smiles at the thought. "You wanted to be a fireman?"
"Every kid wants to be a fireman," Chris says dismissively.
"I wanted to be a pilot," Toby says. He has vague memories of a model airplane, holding it aloft and making propeller sounds as he ran along the path outside their house. He wonders what Gary and Holly want to be when they grow up. He wonders why he never asked.
He puts his face in his hands and rubs his cheekbones. His cheeks are wet. More tears. Toby's father kept him safe. Toby had a loving family and a beautiful home in a quiet neighbourhood. All he had to do was follow in his father's footsteps and he would have done the same for his family. Was that so hard?
He feels the bed dip beside him, Chris's arms around his shoulders. "It'll be okay," Chris says, stroking Toby's back. He rests his forehead against Toby's temple, and his breath is warm against Toby's ear. "Everything will be okay," he whispers.
*
Toby doesn't know if Chris has family. Chris talks about his wives a lot, talks about sex with Kitty versus sex with Angelique. Chris talks about sex all the time, so his wives feature heavily in his stories. He once said his mother took him to church, but if he has a father or siblings he's chosen never to mention them.
There's a child's hand in Toby's mail and suddenly everyone is talking to him, telling him things they think he wants to hear: they'll test it, see if it was cut off while the child was still alive, see which child it belonged to. He stares at them in disbelief. One of his children is surely dead. Does it matter which one?
He admits later that he knew it was Gary, the older of the two. Before Toby went to jail he told Gary he was the 'man' of the family while daddy was away. Gary was six. No child should have to be a 'man' at six.
His mother arranges the burial. The FBI demands an autopsy so it's days before the body is released. Toby gets to gets to lie in his bunk and think about Holly, telling himself there isn't a monster alive who could look at her blonde curls and shining blue eyes and take her life.
Chris moves about the pod like an intruder, like he doesn't belong and he's just trying to stay out of the way. Toby should say something - he's always on the verge of saying something - but the words don't come and they go to sleep alone.
The dreams still come. Every night brings a fresh horror, more nightmarish images to add to Toby's already vivid imagination. Tonight he sees dismembered children, thrown out in the trash like broken dolls. He sees their hands and feet bleeding stigmata-like, crucified for their father's sins. He wakes screaming, soaked in sweat, and Chris is there at the bedside, his hand on Toby's arm saying, "I'm here, I've got you..."
Toby climbs down from the top bunk, and washes his face in the sink. When he looks up he sees both their images in the mirror. "I'm sorry," he says, to Chris's reflection.
"What for?"
"Being like this."
"Fuck." Chris hands Toby a towel. "Forget about it, all right? Scream all you want. If it were me - if it were my kids - I'd probably go fucking psycho or something." He climbs back into bed. The hacks shine their lights into the pod, and Chris gives them a wave.
Toby wipes his face and goes back to bed. The hacks are cutting him some slack tonight. That's the first time he's seen them since the nightly count.
"Four marriages," Toby says. "No children. Didn't any of your wives want kids?"
"Bonnie wanted children," Chris says. "The others - I wasn't married to them long enough to ask."
"You didn't discuss it before you were married?"
"Huh." Chris laughs. "I got married to Kitty because I was sick of guys looking at her like they could have her. I got married to Angelique so she wouldn't throw my stuff out on the street. We didn't talk about kids. We didn't talk anything."
"What about you? Did you ever want to be a father?"
"Me? Nah. What kid would want me as a father? Better off growing up on the street."
Toby wants to say, Is that what happened to you? Instead he says, "What was your father like?"
Chris doesn't answer. Toby stares at the ceiling. The stains and the cracks have become more familiar than the backs of his hands lately. Too many nights with eyes wide open.
Eventually, Chris says, "Why do you want to know?" He sounds suspicious.
Toby feels guilty. "It's - I just wanted to know more about you. You don't talk about yourself."
"I talk about myself all the time."
It's true. Chris is narcissistic, but never about anything that matters. It's sex and getting high and who he's fucking over and how. It isn't reflexive; it's just words.
"It doesn't matter," Toby says. "Go back to sleep."
"Whatever," Chris says. His voice is muffled, like he's talking into the pillow.
Toby closes his eyes and concentrates on the image of a calm blue ocean, sailing with his children, all three of them under clear skies and a light breeze. When he falls asleep he dreams his children are tied to the mast, sharks circling. He wakes up screaming again.
*
Toby imagines Chris with other men. It isn't hard. Chris flirts habitually, on instinct. His charm is his weapon of choice and he uses it wherever he thinks it will work. Whether this translates into Chris being a homosexual predator, Toby can't tell. Taylor said the boys were college kids: educated, wholesome, affluent. They could have been Toby's classmates at Harvard. They could have been Toby. The thought eats away at the back of Toby's mind, daring him to call it a coincidence.
Chris is sympathetic after the funeral. He doesn't dwell on Toby's earlier accusations. He doesn't seem to remember. He puts his arms around Toby after lights out, pulls him into a short embrace and kisses his shoulder before letting him go.
"You okay?" Chris asks.
"I'm - " Toby is hanging on. His fingers are slipping and his arms are tired but he's still here, still above ground. "No," he says. "But I'll be okay - for Holly's sake."
"Yeah?" Chris squeezes his shoulder. "Good for you."
"And about what I said earlier," Toby says. "I believe you - I do - you're just, unlike anyone I've ever known. I don't know what to make of you."
"You don't trust me?"
"No," he lies. "It's not that at all." Chris is an enigma, a dark uncharted territory. In Toby's mind he's capable of anything.
"Huh," Chris says. "Because the way I see it, if you don't know me, then you don't know whether I would do something terrible; like those murders the FBI are accusing me of, or kidnapping your kids."
"No." Toby shakes his head. "You wouldn't - not my kids."
Chris takes his hand away from Toby's shoulder. He looks at Toby, eyes narrowed, like he's looking for something. The hacks call 'lights out' and the pod goes dark.
Chris puts one hand on Toby's chest. "You want to know something about me?" he says. He steers Toby into the narrow space between the bunks and the wall, the only place in the pod to hide.
"Chris..." Toby puts his hands up in a surrender gesture. "I'm sorry, okay? Forget I said anything."
"Oh, no." Chris shakes his head. "You said it. You can't make it go away." He puts his hands on the waistband of Toby's boxers and pushes them down around Toby's thighs. Toby leans his head back against he wall. It's been days since they've touched each other. He'd forgotten how much he missed it. Chris wraps his fist around Toby's cock. "Look at me," Chris says.
Toby opens his eyes. Chris's face is serious, like a sculpture set in stone, every line and angle carefully drawn. Chris is always unearthly looking during sex. Maybe that says more about Toby than it does about Chris, but there's something about the way Chris looks at Toby - his intensity - that makes Chris seem unreal, like a haunting.
Toby gives in to the feel of Chris's hand around his cock. Chris's fingers are dry and rough against Toby's skin, and it hurts more than it should. There's Vaseline on the shelf above the sink but Chris hasn't bothered. Not this time. Toby wants to be punished. He deserves nothing more.
Chris takes his hand away before Toby comes. "On the bed," Chris says. "Face down."
Toby drops his boxers to the floor, steps out of them, and lies down on his stomach, facing the glass so he can see the hacks coming. He feels the bed dip behind him as Chris places himself between Toby's legs, spreading them with a hand at each knee.
Toby feels Chris's hands on his ass, parting his cheeks, one wet finger dragging down the crease to Toby's opening. "You want to know something about me?" he says. "This is it. Right here." He shoves two fingers inside Toby, like he's making a point.
It feels like Chris is ripping him apart. Toby cries out, muffling the sound by burying his face in the mattress. He grips the bed frame with both hands, holds on so tightly his knuckles go white and purple. Chris isn't going to be careful tonight. He isn't going to spare Toby any pain. Toby pushes back against Chris's fingers. He wants this. He needs this. Now, right now, please, god, now. "Do it," he says. "Chris, please."
Chris holds his fingers inside Toby, flexes them a little. "One thing," he says. "You need to know one thing about me."
Toby can't wait any longer. The hacks are going to catch them any minute now and Chris is taking his time. Toby rubs his erection into the mattress. It isn't enough. "Chris..."
Chris takes his fingers out, nudges Toby's ass with his cock. "I love you," he says, and he pushes all the way in, all in, one go. He fucks Toby so hard Toby's palms bleed where his nails dig into them.
Chris can't give Toby what he wants, but somehow he always knows what Toby needs.
*
This is what it comes down to: Toby knows nothing about Chris and Chris wants it that way. Maybe that's why Toby so readily believed Les and his stupid story about his daughter's teeth. Maybe he wanted an answer so badly he bought the first story that came along. Maybe he just didn't believe that an empty vessel, a man without a past or a future, could love him, or anyone.
Chris piles his few possessions into a laundry bag, and moves into a pod on the upper level. Mondo moves in and everything changes. Whole new person, whole new game. When the lights go out Toby sees Chris looking down on him, guardian angel with a halo hanging off his dick where it does the most good.
When Toby thinks about it, he can tell himself three things about Chris, three things he actually knows:
Chris loves him, whatever that means.
Chris would kill for him.
When he's with Chris, there are parts of him that fade, that no longer feel pain.
Toby wonders why it isn't enough.
End.
Fandom: Oz
Category: Beecher/ Keller, circa season 4
Rating: NC/17
Summary: "Chris is narcissistic, but never about anything that matters. It's sex and getting high and who he's fucking over and how."
Author's Notes: Written for scissorknot for the oz_magi challenge. All might and glory to the super and sexy callmerizzo who organised the challenge and kept the flame burning for one more year.
To be subject to appetite is to be a slave, while to obey the laws laid down by society is to be free - Rousseau, The Social Contract.
Before Toby leaves the room, Agent Taylor catches his arm. "Ask yourself," Agent Taylor says. "What do you really know about him?" Toby looks at Agent Taylor's hand around his elbow. They meet eyes and the hand falls away. "Think about it," Agent Taylor says as Toby walks out the door.
Agent Taylor doesn't want to find Toby's kids; he wants Chris, preferably in the electric chair. He's the worst kind of law enforcement, all about the job, no recollection of what the job is for. He wastes valuable time going after a white whale when he should be hunting down real leads, genuine suspects.
Still, for some reason Agent Taylor's words take root, sprouting tendrils like poisonous oak. What does Toby know about Chris? What does he really know? Toby blames it on the kidnapping, a need for something to occupy his thoughts. It doesn't mean he doesn't trust Chris. It doesn't mean anything.
*
Back in the cell Chris is seated in the chair by the glass, feet on the bed, reading. He's pretending to be engrossed in the book but his shoulders are set straight, tense, like he's been waiting.
"What you reading?" Toby asks. He sits on the bed, pushes Chris's feet aside so they fall to the floor. Chris holds up the book. The Social Contract: one of Toby's library books. "Don't tell me how it ends," Toby says.
"You can have it back," Chris says. "I don't know what the fuck it's about."
"If it's any consolation," Toby says, looking at the cover. "Neither do I." He doesn't remember why he borrowed it. Sometimes he feels a need to think about the things he used to, remember who he was before he came here. It never works.
"What did the police say?" Chris asks.
Toby shrugs. "They haven't got any leads."
"No shit," Chris says, shaking his head. "Those idiots can't tell their assholes from their cakeholes." Toby fears as much. It must show in his face, because Chris suddenly leans forward, rests his hand on Toby's shoulder. "We'll find them," he says earnestly. "I've got contacts. I'll ask around."
"Yeah," Toby says. He doesn't believe it but he likes to hear it. Chris knows this. There's a lot about Toby that Chris knows. "Chris?" Toby turns his head so that he's looking at Chris. Outside the pod, Em City inmates are congregating in time for Miss Sally. "Tell me something about yourself."
"Like what?"
"Where were you born? Where did you go to school? What did you want to be when you grew up?"
Chris leans his head to the side, looks at Toby curiously. "The Bronx, the Bronx and a fireman. What's going on, Toby?"
Toby imagines Chris as a fireman, a heroic figure rescuing a child from a burning building. It's easy to do - Chris is tall, strong, athletically built. Toby smiles at the thought. "You wanted to be a fireman?"
"Every kid wants to be a fireman," Chris says dismissively.
"I wanted to be a pilot," Toby says. He has vague memories of a model airplane, holding it aloft and making propeller sounds as he ran along the path outside their house. He wonders what Gary and Holly want to be when they grow up. He wonders why he never asked.
He puts his face in his hands and rubs his cheekbones. His cheeks are wet. More tears. Toby's father kept him safe. Toby had a loving family and a beautiful home in a quiet neighbourhood. All he had to do was follow in his father's footsteps and he would have done the same for his family. Was that so hard?
He feels the bed dip beside him, Chris's arms around his shoulders. "It'll be okay," Chris says, stroking Toby's back. He rests his forehead against Toby's temple, and his breath is warm against Toby's ear. "Everything will be okay," he whispers.
*
Toby doesn't know if Chris has family. Chris talks about his wives a lot, talks about sex with Kitty versus sex with Angelique. Chris talks about sex all the time, so his wives feature heavily in his stories. He once said his mother took him to church, but if he has a father or siblings he's chosen never to mention them.
There's a child's hand in Toby's mail and suddenly everyone is talking to him, telling him things they think he wants to hear: they'll test it, see if it was cut off while the child was still alive, see which child it belonged to. He stares at them in disbelief. One of his children is surely dead. Does it matter which one?
He admits later that he knew it was Gary, the older of the two. Before Toby went to jail he told Gary he was the 'man' of the family while daddy was away. Gary was six. No child should have to be a 'man' at six.
His mother arranges the burial. The FBI demands an autopsy so it's days before the body is released. Toby gets to gets to lie in his bunk and think about Holly, telling himself there isn't a monster alive who could look at her blonde curls and shining blue eyes and take her life.
Chris moves about the pod like an intruder, like he doesn't belong and he's just trying to stay out of the way. Toby should say something - he's always on the verge of saying something - but the words don't come and they go to sleep alone.
The dreams still come. Every night brings a fresh horror, more nightmarish images to add to Toby's already vivid imagination. Tonight he sees dismembered children, thrown out in the trash like broken dolls. He sees their hands and feet bleeding stigmata-like, crucified for their father's sins. He wakes screaming, soaked in sweat, and Chris is there at the bedside, his hand on Toby's arm saying, "I'm here, I've got you..."
Toby climbs down from the top bunk, and washes his face in the sink. When he looks up he sees both their images in the mirror. "I'm sorry," he says, to Chris's reflection.
"What for?"
"Being like this."
"Fuck." Chris hands Toby a towel. "Forget about it, all right? Scream all you want. If it were me - if it were my kids - I'd probably go fucking psycho or something." He climbs back into bed. The hacks shine their lights into the pod, and Chris gives them a wave.
Toby wipes his face and goes back to bed. The hacks are cutting him some slack tonight. That's the first time he's seen them since the nightly count.
"Four marriages," Toby says. "No children. Didn't any of your wives want kids?"
"Bonnie wanted children," Chris says. "The others - I wasn't married to them long enough to ask."
"You didn't discuss it before you were married?"
"Huh." Chris laughs. "I got married to Kitty because I was sick of guys looking at her like they could have her. I got married to Angelique so she wouldn't throw my stuff out on the street. We didn't talk about kids. We didn't talk anything."
"What about you? Did you ever want to be a father?"
"Me? Nah. What kid would want me as a father? Better off growing up on the street."
Toby wants to say, Is that what happened to you? Instead he says, "What was your father like?"
Chris doesn't answer. Toby stares at the ceiling. The stains and the cracks have become more familiar than the backs of his hands lately. Too many nights with eyes wide open.
Eventually, Chris says, "Why do you want to know?" He sounds suspicious.
Toby feels guilty. "It's - I just wanted to know more about you. You don't talk about yourself."
"I talk about myself all the time."
It's true. Chris is narcissistic, but never about anything that matters. It's sex and getting high and who he's fucking over and how. It isn't reflexive; it's just words.
"It doesn't matter," Toby says. "Go back to sleep."
"Whatever," Chris says. His voice is muffled, like he's talking into the pillow.
Toby closes his eyes and concentrates on the image of a calm blue ocean, sailing with his children, all three of them under clear skies and a light breeze. When he falls asleep he dreams his children are tied to the mast, sharks circling. He wakes up screaming again.
*
Toby imagines Chris with other men. It isn't hard. Chris flirts habitually, on instinct. His charm is his weapon of choice and he uses it wherever he thinks it will work. Whether this translates into Chris being a homosexual predator, Toby can't tell. Taylor said the boys were college kids: educated, wholesome, affluent. They could have been Toby's classmates at Harvard. They could have been Toby. The thought eats away at the back of Toby's mind, daring him to call it a coincidence.
Chris is sympathetic after the funeral. He doesn't dwell on Toby's earlier accusations. He doesn't seem to remember. He puts his arms around Toby after lights out, pulls him into a short embrace and kisses his shoulder before letting him go.
"You okay?" Chris asks.
"I'm - " Toby is hanging on. His fingers are slipping and his arms are tired but he's still here, still above ground. "No," he says. "But I'll be okay - for Holly's sake."
"Yeah?" Chris squeezes his shoulder. "Good for you."
"And about what I said earlier," Toby says. "I believe you - I do - you're just, unlike anyone I've ever known. I don't know what to make of you."
"You don't trust me?"
"No," he lies. "It's not that at all." Chris is an enigma, a dark uncharted territory. In Toby's mind he's capable of anything.
"Huh," Chris says. "Because the way I see it, if you don't know me, then you don't know whether I would do something terrible; like those murders the FBI are accusing me of, or kidnapping your kids."
"No." Toby shakes his head. "You wouldn't - not my kids."
Chris takes his hand away from Toby's shoulder. He looks at Toby, eyes narrowed, like he's looking for something. The hacks call 'lights out' and the pod goes dark.
Chris puts one hand on Toby's chest. "You want to know something about me?" he says. He steers Toby into the narrow space between the bunks and the wall, the only place in the pod to hide.
"Chris..." Toby puts his hands up in a surrender gesture. "I'm sorry, okay? Forget I said anything."
"Oh, no." Chris shakes his head. "You said it. You can't make it go away." He puts his hands on the waistband of Toby's boxers and pushes them down around Toby's thighs. Toby leans his head back against he wall. It's been days since they've touched each other. He'd forgotten how much he missed it. Chris wraps his fist around Toby's cock. "Look at me," Chris says.
Toby opens his eyes. Chris's face is serious, like a sculpture set in stone, every line and angle carefully drawn. Chris is always unearthly looking during sex. Maybe that says more about Toby than it does about Chris, but there's something about the way Chris looks at Toby - his intensity - that makes Chris seem unreal, like a haunting.
Toby gives in to the feel of Chris's hand around his cock. Chris's fingers are dry and rough against Toby's skin, and it hurts more than it should. There's Vaseline on the shelf above the sink but Chris hasn't bothered. Not this time. Toby wants to be punished. He deserves nothing more.
Chris takes his hand away before Toby comes. "On the bed," Chris says. "Face down."
Toby drops his boxers to the floor, steps out of them, and lies down on his stomach, facing the glass so he can see the hacks coming. He feels the bed dip behind him as Chris places himself between Toby's legs, spreading them with a hand at each knee.
Toby feels Chris's hands on his ass, parting his cheeks, one wet finger dragging down the crease to Toby's opening. "You want to know something about me?" he says. "This is it. Right here." He shoves two fingers inside Toby, like he's making a point.
It feels like Chris is ripping him apart. Toby cries out, muffling the sound by burying his face in the mattress. He grips the bed frame with both hands, holds on so tightly his knuckles go white and purple. Chris isn't going to be careful tonight. He isn't going to spare Toby any pain. Toby pushes back against Chris's fingers. He wants this. He needs this. Now, right now, please, god, now. "Do it," he says. "Chris, please."
Chris holds his fingers inside Toby, flexes them a little. "One thing," he says. "You need to know one thing about me."
Toby can't wait any longer. The hacks are going to catch them any minute now and Chris is taking his time. Toby rubs his erection into the mattress. It isn't enough. "Chris..."
Chris takes his fingers out, nudges Toby's ass with his cock. "I love you," he says, and he pushes all the way in, all in, one go. He fucks Toby so hard Toby's palms bleed where his nails dig into them.
Chris can't give Toby what he wants, but somehow he always knows what Toby needs.
*
This is what it comes down to: Toby knows nothing about Chris and Chris wants it that way. Maybe that's why Toby so readily believed Les and his stupid story about his daughter's teeth. Maybe he wanted an answer so badly he bought the first story that came along. Maybe he just didn't believe that an empty vessel, a man without a past or a future, could love him, or anyone.
Chris piles his few possessions into a laundry bag, and moves into a pod on the upper level. Mondo moves in and everything changes. Whole new person, whole new game. When the lights go out Toby sees Chris looking down on him, guardian angel with a halo hanging off his dick where it does the most good.
When Toby thinks about it, he can tell himself three things about Chris, three things he actually knows:
Chris loves him, whatever that means.
Chris would kill for him.
When he's with Chris, there are parts of him that fade, that no longer feel pain.
Toby wonders why it isn't enough.
End.