Cellmates (3/?) - SPN/PB Crossover, PG-13
Title: Cellmates
Author: Nev
Rating: PG-13 (so far)
Summary: Lawman comes down from the gallows... and sends Dean and Sam to Fox River. (A crossover between Supernatural and Prison Break.)
Warning: This series may contain slash eventually.
Notes: This part is for shadowpoet89, who answer my Top 10 post with praise for this story :p Which inspired me to jot down a bit more of this.
Links to previous chapters:
part 1
part 2
And on to the update...
...'>
Cellmates (3/?)
He supposed it was the day previous of overthinking the thing that had set Michael up to be letdown when the first night passed without incident.
Or. Not letdown, exactly. Michael was happy, of course, that there had been no trouble so far. But he was on edge, as well - like a man who’d gone to the doctor to get a tumor examined, and who’d been treated for a skin rash instead. He couldn’t really believe it was over that easy. He’d approached Sam Winchester making himself at home in cell number forty-one expecting…
Well, not knowing what to expect, honestly. But if he’d expected anything, a sincere-looking smile and a pleasant greeting probably hadn’t been it.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Michael,” Lincoln said as they carried out a conversation in their usual manner. Back to back with the chain link of the fence separating Gen. Pop. from Ad. Seg. between them. “If they don’t want any trouble then don’t give them any.”
Michael nodded.
“I, for one, am glad to hear it,” Lincoln added.
Michael frowned. His eyes wandered the yard. “It isn’t that I’m not. I just-”
It was a typical day in the general populace. The major sects in the prison body kept to themselves, mixing only so much as to throw one another dirty looks and the occasional mild insult. Rattling one another’s cages just to see what came next. Abruzzi’s crew had a card game going in their favorite spot. C-Note and his boys conducted business as usual from theirs. T-Bag held an audience over on the bleachers.
Sucre was with his cousin, arguing playfully about some bit of trivia, and Sam and his brother stood against the fence on the other side of the yard, taking it all in.
Michael watched them. “They aren’t what I thought they’d be.” Though, to be fair, what Michael was thinking of the Winchesters in the last moments before their arrival was probably more the stuff of scary stories than real life - even in prison. With the stories and the buzz that had circulated that day, Michael’s imagination had begun to get the best of him.
“Yeah. Well, don’t be too sure,” Lincoln cautioned. “You’ve known the guy for a day,” he said about Sam.
“Less than that,” Michael corrected.
Lincoln tilted his head in agreement. Michael could picture it though he couldn’t see it. Funny - he’d almost gotten used to not being able to look directly at his brother when he spoke to him. Almost.
“If these guys are as crazy as some people say they are,” Lincoln said, “it might not mean anything. He could be full of frickin’ sunshine and cheer and stab you in the fucking back the first chance you give him.”
Michael shifted on his feet, kicking the ground a bit. He threw a wry look over his shoulder. “Yeah. Thanks for the pep talk,” he replied.
He saw Lincoln smile in profile. “You’re welcome.”
“I just want you to watch your back,” Lincoln added afterward.
Michael glanced at the Winchesters once more. Sunshine and cheer, perhaps, they weren’t. But they didn’t look like they were gearing up to go psycho on the next inmate that walked by either. Sam looked wary and his brother - Dean - looked…
Like he knew he was being looked at. He was staring straight at Michael.
Michael looked surreptitiously away and swallowed. “I know. I will.”
He’d try. He had a lot more reasons for doing so than he’d anticipated when he’d come up with his plan for being here.
“So. One night and one morning down. And nobody’s made you their bitch. That’s something to celebrate, huh?” Dean asked, arms crossed over his chest. He had the top of his orange prison jumper down, sleeves tied around his waist. Sam shoved his fists into the pockets of his.
He gave Dean a look, brow raised. “Yeah. Let’s break out the champagne.”
Dean grinned. “Nah. You know me, Sammy. I’m more of a Jack man, myself.”
Sam shook his head, looking out across the Yard. Dean’s cheer was a bit much after having spent the night not sleeping on a prison issue bunk. Even if Sam knew that his brother wasn’t nearly as carefree as his attitude suggested. Dean could grin with a near-broken jaw - crack jokes through anything.
As annoyed as Sam sometimes got because of this, the thought also made him breathe easier.
“I’m just glad Bellick left me in cell forty,” Sam admitted. Things could have been worse. Sam generally rolled his eyes at the comments Dean had started making when all of this began, about how Sam had better not drop any soap in the shower and a lot of other bullshit. But Sam wasn’t stupid, or ignorant to the stories everybody heard about what went on in prisons like Fox River. So he had been anxious over who might be put into the same cell as him.
It didn’t matter that he knew how to take care of himself if a cellmate did try to give him trouble. The Winchester method of “taking care” of trouble had a way of pissing people off. And if Sam had to piss off a cellmate with big, pissed off friends… Well. He and Dean could probably hold their own better than anyone else in this prison. But they weren’t invincible, and there was only the two of them. Bad things happened, even to hunters.
“Yeah. Kid looks okay to me. Better than the short straw I drew, let me tell ‘ya.” Dean snorted.
He was watching Sam’s cellmate, who was standing on the other side of the Yard, by the fence to the Ag Seg division.
Sam looked at him too. Michael seemed nice enough. He was quiet, anyway - hadn’t said more than a few words since their introduction, which Sam realized didn’t mean anything. Plenty of demons could be quiet… right up until the moment they attacked you. But it was a comfortable silence that had filled Sam’s cell the night before. He hadn’t gotten any sort of hostile vibe from Michael. And though demons were more his area of expertise, Sam thought he knew a thing or two about spotting hostile people. He’d made a point of developing his skills in doing it since meeting Gordon.
Who - speak of the devil - might have gotten along fairly well with Dean’s cellmate. Right up until Gordon figured out that the big goon wasn’t as smart as he was - or the goon figured out that Gordon wasn’t as sane as… Anybody, this side of a straight jacket.
“That him?” Sam asked, turning in the direction of a tall, meaty white guy with a shaved head standing near the bleachers. He and Dean had come from the same section of cells that morning when their block had been released for breakfast.
“Tiny?” Dean asked. “Oh, yeah. And he’s a barrel of fun. What with all the swastikas on the wall and the calling me Sugar.”
Sam smiled. He could only imagine how well Dean had reacted to that. He’d be concerned, too, but Tiny didn’t look damaged in any way - as he undoubtedly would have been if he’d tried anything more than namecalling with Dean.
“Swastikas, huh?” Looking again, Sam saw that all of the prisoners standing near Tiny were white, many of them with shaved heads. Maybe he wouldn’t have gotten along so well with Gordon after all.
“Yep. Tiny there’s a regular posterboy for Aryan inbreeding.” Dean made a face usually reserved for expensive suits, tofu, and Volvos. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Demons don’t have anything on humans when it comes to crazy.”
Sam hummed his agreement. “I take it the skinny guy in the middle’s their leader.” Sam didn’t look at him overly long. He recognized the man’s angular face from the crowd that had celebrated his and Dean’s arrival the day before - pulling at the Yard’s chain link fence and catcalling. The man had nowhere near the body mass as some of the men gathered around him, but the respect he commanded was obvious. No one got near him, and - even at a distance - the angry superiority he projected was obvious.
“T-Bag,” Dean told Sam, not looking in the direction of the bleachers, either. He squinted in the sun, watching a game of basketball that had sprung up on the court in the Yard’s back left corner. His voice had lost the playful tone it’d had moments before. “Watch out for him, Sammy. He’s one sick puppy. Raped and killed a bunch of kids in Alabama. He’s serving two life sentences.”
Sam swallowed and nodded, disgusted. He and Dean had seen some awful things happen to children. But it was one thing to kill a Shtriga or a changeling who’d done it, and another to meet a human who was capable of such things.
“Anyone else I ought to know about?” Sam asked, watching Dean closely. There weren’t any demons or ghosts in Fox River (that they knew of) but there was plenty of danger… And Dean only knew one way of dealing with danger. Sam could practically hear him clicking into hunter mode.
“Don’t know yet,” Dean said, pushing away from the fence. “But we will.” He slapped Sam on the chest, wagging his eyebrows. “Come ‘on, baby brother. Let’s go mingle.”
Sam smirked. He hated that ‘baby brother’ crap. “After you, sugar,” he said. And then ducked so Dean couldn’t get him on the back of the head.
Once the surprise of getting a new cellmate - after having worked so hard to get rid of the last one - was out of the way, Michael realized that nothing had changed. He still had a lot of digging to do, and he was entirely too far behind on doing it. Meanwhile, the same rule applied - if he was going to do what needed to be done, he’d have to have his cellmate on board to help him. He doubted that Sam Winchester would sleep through his efforts any better than Haywire had. And he could hardly beat himself up a second time to get a new cellmate.
Still, the thought of bringing a set of prisoners with a reputation like the Winchesters’ into an escape attempt didn’t settle easily with Michael. He was relatively certain he couldn’t let Sam in on the plan without including his brother. And even if it had been just one of them, both Winchesters were rumored to have committed a number of strange and gruesome crimes. Michael didn’t like to think that he was the kind of person who would let a couple of serial killers back into the world just to further his own gains.
But if it came down to that, or letting Lincoln die for a crime he didn’t commit… Letting all of this be for nothing-
Michael sought out C-Note in the Mess. He could consider the moral implications of his choices later. The least he could do now was learn all he could about the choice he was considering.
C-Note and his crew quieted as Michael approached their table, Sucre hanging back nervously. C-Note’s gaze was speculative, but his buddies’ reactions ranged from wary to amused to downright hostile. Michael had a long-perfected poker face and was almost used to how necessary it had become in Fox River. He kept an even expression.
“I need information on the Winchesters,” he said without waiting. C-Note studied him for all of a moment and then chuckled.
“Do you now? You sure you wanna pay good coin for somethin’ you could get offa any con in here? Cause info ain’t no different than pills - it don’t come for free.” A couple of C-Note’s friends laughed with him. Michael paid them no attention.
“I want facts. Not gossip,” Michael said. “Corroborated facts. News clippings. Whatever you can get me.”
C-Note leaned back in his seat, scoffing. “What do I look like to you, Fish? Fox River Public Fucking Library? I thought you might be comin’ to me for help with your new cellie. Didn’t think a paperboy is what you’d be asking for.”
Michael understood the insinuation but didn’t acknowledge it.
“I just need information that I can trust,” he insisted calmly. “Can you get it for me or not?”
C-Note hesitated and then shrugged. “Sure I can get it. Long as you pay, it’s yours. Not my business what you white boys waste your money on.”
There was more chuckling. Michael simply nodded. “How soon?”
“I’ll find you in the Yard when I got it. One, two days tops.” C-Note pointed at him. “You just have my funds ready and I’ll provide your facts.”
Michael nodded again. He walked away, Sucre joining his side when they were out of earshot.
“I can’t believe you’re paying C-Note for a book report on your cellmate and his brother,” Sucre told him, shaking his head. “There are a lot better ways to spend your money, Michael.”
“But none that would help us with this situation,” Michael replied. They approached the Mess line, speaking in lower voices as they fell in with the other prisoners.
“Some sort of weapon sounds plenty helpful to me,” Sucre mumbled.
Michael smiled at him. “With any luck, that won’t be necessary. You know what prison talk is like, Sucre.” Michael looked out over the crowded Mess. “Some of them think that I’m crazy.” Word had gotten around that he had stabbed Maytag, and plenty of people believed it. Including T-Bag, who’d had a claim on the younger man. No one sane would touch someone belonging to T-Bag and get caught doing it. And it didn’t help that Michael’s run-in with Abruzzi and those garden shears wasn’t exactly a secret.
Sucre laughed. “That’s because you are crazy, papi,” he said.
Michael smirked. They took their trays to the nearest empty table.
“You know…” Sucre stirred his fork around in what was supposed to be a helping of mashed potatoes. “You could just ask this Sam if what they’re saying about him is true,” he suggested.
Michael nodded. But added, “You’ve got to ask the right questions to get the right answers. I need to know where to start.” Michael started in on his own lunch, setting aside one of his cartons of milk for Charles to give to Marilyn.
[tbc]
Author: Nev
Rating: PG-13 (so far)
Summary: Lawman comes down from the gallows... and sends Dean and Sam to Fox River. (A crossover between Supernatural and Prison Break.)
Warning: This series may contain slash eventually.
Notes: This part is for shadowpoet89, who answer my Top 10 post with praise for this story :p Which inspired me to jot down a bit more of this.
Links to previous chapters:
part 1
part 2
And on to the update...
...'>
Cellmates (3/?)
He supposed it was the day previous of overthinking the thing that had set Michael up to be letdown when the first night passed without incident.
Or. Not letdown, exactly. Michael was happy, of course, that there had been no trouble so far. But he was on edge, as well - like a man who’d gone to the doctor to get a tumor examined, and who’d been treated for a skin rash instead. He couldn’t really believe it was over that easy. He’d approached Sam Winchester making himself at home in cell number forty-one expecting…
Well, not knowing what to expect, honestly. But if he’d expected anything, a sincere-looking smile and a pleasant greeting probably hadn’t been it.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Michael,” Lincoln said as they carried out a conversation in their usual manner. Back to back with the chain link of the fence separating Gen. Pop. from Ad. Seg. between them. “If they don’t want any trouble then don’t give them any.”
Michael nodded.
“I, for one, am glad to hear it,” Lincoln added.
Michael frowned. His eyes wandered the yard. “It isn’t that I’m not. I just-”
It was a typical day in the general populace. The major sects in the prison body kept to themselves, mixing only so much as to throw one another dirty looks and the occasional mild insult. Rattling one another’s cages just to see what came next. Abruzzi’s crew had a card game going in their favorite spot. C-Note and his boys conducted business as usual from theirs. T-Bag held an audience over on the bleachers.
Sucre was with his cousin, arguing playfully about some bit of trivia, and Sam and his brother stood against the fence on the other side of the yard, taking it all in.
Michael watched them. “They aren’t what I thought they’d be.” Though, to be fair, what Michael was thinking of the Winchesters in the last moments before their arrival was probably more the stuff of scary stories than real life - even in prison. With the stories and the buzz that had circulated that day, Michael’s imagination had begun to get the best of him.
“Yeah. Well, don’t be too sure,” Lincoln cautioned. “You’ve known the guy for a day,” he said about Sam.
“Less than that,” Michael corrected.
Lincoln tilted his head in agreement. Michael could picture it though he couldn’t see it. Funny - he’d almost gotten used to not being able to look directly at his brother when he spoke to him. Almost.
“If these guys are as crazy as some people say they are,” Lincoln said, “it might not mean anything. He could be full of frickin’ sunshine and cheer and stab you in the fucking back the first chance you give him.”
Michael shifted on his feet, kicking the ground a bit. He threw a wry look over his shoulder. “Yeah. Thanks for the pep talk,” he replied.
He saw Lincoln smile in profile. “You’re welcome.”
“I just want you to watch your back,” Lincoln added afterward.
Michael glanced at the Winchesters once more. Sunshine and cheer, perhaps, they weren’t. But they didn’t look like they were gearing up to go psycho on the next inmate that walked by either. Sam looked wary and his brother - Dean - looked…
Like he knew he was being looked at. He was staring straight at Michael.
Michael looked surreptitiously away and swallowed. “I know. I will.”
He’d try. He had a lot more reasons for doing so than he’d anticipated when he’d come up with his plan for being here.
“So. One night and one morning down. And nobody’s made you their bitch. That’s something to celebrate, huh?” Dean asked, arms crossed over his chest. He had the top of his orange prison jumper down, sleeves tied around his waist. Sam shoved his fists into the pockets of his.
He gave Dean a look, brow raised. “Yeah. Let’s break out the champagne.”
Dean grinned. “Nah. You know me, Sammy. I’m more of a Jack man, myself.”
Sam shook his head, looking out across the Yard. Dean’s cheer was a bit much after having spent the night not sleeping on a prison issue bunk. Even if Sam knew that his brother wasn’t nearly as carefree as his attitude suggested. Dean could grin with a near-broken jaw - crack jokes through anything.
As annoyed as Sam sometimes got because of this, the thought also made him breathe easier.
“I’m just glad Bellick left me in cell forty,” Sam admitted. Things could have been worse. Sam generally rolled his eyes at the comments Dean had started making when all of this began, about how Sam had better not drop any soap in the shower and a lot of other bullshit. But Sam wasn’t stupid, or ignorant to the stories everybody heard about what went on in prisons like Fox River. So he had been anxious over who might be put into the same cell as him.
It didn’t matter that he knew how to take care of himself if a cellmate did try to give him trouble. The Winchester method of “taking care” of trouble had a way of pissing people off. And if Sam had to piss off a cellmate with big, pissed off friends… Well. He and Dean could probably hold their own better than anyone else in this prison. But they weren’t invincible, and there was only the two of them. Bad things happened, even to hunters.
“Yeah. Kid looks okay to me. Better than the short straw I drew, let me tell ‘ya.” Dean snorted.
He was watching Sam’s cellmate, who was standing on the other side of the Yard, by the fence to the Ag Seg division.
Sam looked at him too. Michael seemed nice enough. He was quiet, anyway - hadn’t said more than a few words since their introduction, which Sam realized didn’t mean anything. Plenty of demons could be quiet… right up until the moment they attacked you. But it was a comfortable silence that had filled Sam’s cell the night before. He hadn’t gotten any sort of hostile vibe from Michael. And though demons were more his area of expertise, Sam thought he knew a thing or two about spotting hostile people. He’d made a point of developing his skills in doing it since meeting Gordon.
Who - speak of the devil - might have gotten along fairly well with Dean’s cellmate. Right up until Gordon figured out that the big goon wasn’t as smart as he was - or the goon figured out that Gordon wasn’t as sane as… Anybody, this side of a straight jacket.
“That him?” Sam asked, turning in the direction of a tall, meaty white guy with a shaved head standing near the bleachers. He and Dean had come from the same section of cells that morning when their block had been released for breakfast.
“Tiny?” Dean asked. “Oh, yeah. And he’s a barrel of fun. What with all the swastikas on the wall and the calling me Sugar.”
Sam smiled. He could only imagine how well Dean had reacted to that. He’d be concerned, too, but Tiny didn’t look damaged in any way - as he undoubtedly would have been if he’d tried anything more than namecalling with Dean.
“Swastikas, huh?” Looking again, Sam saw that all of the prisoners standing near Tiny were white, many of them with shaved heads. Maybe he wouldn’t have gotten along so well with Gordon after all.
“Yep. Tiny there’s a regular posterboy for Aryan inbreeding.” Dean made a face usually reserved for expensive suits, tofu, and Volvos. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Demons don’t have anything on humans when it comes to crazy.”
Sam hummed his agreement. “I take it the skinny guy in the middle’s their leader.” Sam didn’t look at him overly long. He recognized the man’s angular face from the crowd that had celebrated his and Dean’s arrival the day before - pulling at the Yard’s chain link fence and catcalling. The man had nowhere near the body mass as some of the men gathered around him, but the respect he commanded was obvious. No one got near him, and - even at a distance - the angry superiority he projected was obvious.
“T-Bag,” Dean told Sam, not looking in the direction of the bleachers, either. He squinted in the sun, watching a game of basketball that had sprung up on the court in the Yard’s back left corner. His voice had lost the playful tone it’d had moments before. “Watch out for him, Sammy. He’s one sick puppy. Raped and killed a bunch of kids in Alabama. He’s serving two life sentences.”
Sam swallowed and nodded, disgusted. He and Dean had seen some awful things happen to children. But it was one thing to kill a Shtriga or a changeling who’d done it, and another to meet a human who was capable of such things.
“Anyone else I ought to know about?” Sam asked, watching Dean closely. There weren’t any demons or ghosts in Fox River (that they knew of) but there was plenty of danger… And Dean only knew one way of dealing with danger. Sam could practically hear him clicking into hunter mode.
“Don’t know yet,” Dean said, pushing away from the fence. “But we will.” He slapped Sam on the chest, wagging his eyebrows. “Come ‘on, baby brother. Let’s go mingle.”
Sam smirked. He hated that ‘baby brother’ crap. “After you, sugar,” he said. And then ducked so Dean couldn’t get him on the back of the head.
Once the surprise of getting a new cellmate - after having worked so hard to get rid of the last one - was out of the way, Michael realized that nothing had changed. He still had a lot of digging to do, and he was entirely too far behind on doing it. Meanwhile, the same rule applied - if he was going to do what needed to be done, he’d have to have his cellmate on board to help him. He doubted that Sam Winchester would sleep through his efforts any better than Haywire had. And he could hardly beat himself up a second time to get a new cellmate.
Still, the thought of bringing a set of prisoners with a reputation like the Winchesters’ into an escape attempt didn’t settle easily with Michael. He was relatively certain he couldn’t let Sam in on the plan without including his brother. And even if it had been just one of them, both Winchesters were rumored to have committed a number of strange and gruesome crimes. Michael didn’t like to think that he was the kind of person who would let a couple of serial killers back into the world just to further his own gains.
But if it came down to that, or letting Lincoln die for a crime he didn’t commit… Letting all of this be for nothing-
Michael sought out C-Note in the Mess. He could consider the moral implications of his choices later. The least he could do now was learn all he could about the choice he was considering.
C-Note and his crew quieted as Michael approached their table, Sucre hanging back nervously. C-Note’s gaze was speculative, but his buddies’ reactions ranged from wary to amused to downright hostile. Michael had a long-perfected poker face and was almost used to how necessary it had become in Fox River. He kept an even expression.
“I need information on the Winchesters,” he said without waiting. C-Note studied him for all of a moment and then chuckled.
“Do you now? You sure you wanna pay good coin for somethin’ you could get offa any con in here? Cause info ain’t no different than pills - it don’t come for free.” A couple of C-Note’s friends laughed with him. Michael paid them no attention.
“I want facts. Not gossip,” Michael said. “Corroborated facts. News clippings. Whatever you can get me.”
C-Note leaned back in his seat, scoffing. “What do I look like to you, Fish? Fox River Public Fucking Library? I thought you might be comin’ to me for help with your new cellie. Didn’t think a paperboy is what you’d be asking for.”
Michael understood the insinuation but didn’t acknowledge it.
“I just need information that I can trust,” he insisted calmly. “Can you get it for me or not?”
C-Note hesitated and then shrugged. “Sure I can get it. Long as you pay, it’s yours. Not my business what you white boys waste your money on.”
There was more chuckling. Michael simply nodded. “How soon?”
“I’ll find you in the Yard when I got it. One, two days tops.” C-Note pointed at him. “You just have my funds ready and I’ll provide your facts.”
Michael nodded again. He walked away, Sucre joining his side when they were out of earshot.
“I can’t believe you’re paying C-Note for a book report on your cellmate and his brother,” Sucre told him, shaking his head. “There are a lot better ways to spend your money, Michael.”
“But none that would help us with this situation,” Michael replied. They approached the Mess line, speaking in lower voices as they fell in with the other prisoners.
“Some sort of weapon sounds plenty helpful to me,” Sucre mumbled.
Michael smiled at him. “With any luck, that won’t be necessary. You know what prison talk is like, Sucre.” Michael looked out over the crowded Mess. “Some of them think that I’m crazy.” Word had gotten around that he had stabbed Maytag, and plenty of people believed it. Including T-Bag, who’d had a claim on the younger man. No one sane would touch someone belonging to T-Bag and get caught doing it. And it didn’t help that Michael’s run-in with Abruzzi and those garden shears wasn’t exactly a secret.
Sucre laughed. “That’s because you are crazy, papi,” he said.
Michael smirked. They took their trays to the nearest empty table.
“You know…” Sucre stirred his fork around in what was supposed to be a helping of mashed potatoes. “You could just ask this Sam if what they’re saying about him is true,” he suggested.
Michael nodded. But added, “You’ve got to ask the right questions to get the right answers. I need to know where to start.” Michael started in on his own lunch, setting aside one of his cartons of milk for Charles to give to Marilyn.
[tbc]