Killers by almostforgiven, R

[almostforgiven]

Title: Killers
Character/Pairing: Theodore ‘T-Bag’ Bagwell
Prompt: 044. Sun
Rating: R
Summary: The thoughts crawled up and down his throat and whispered to him all night, fleshing themselves out and poisoning him with them.
Author's Notes: Yeah. It’s been a while. All the stuff from this ‘verse is here in case you were wondering. :P Also written for psych_30 prompt 04. Ego/Id. Warnings for gore, violence, swearing and the general T-Bag darkness.



The thoughts crawled up and down his throat and whispered to him all night, fleshing themselves out and poisoning him with them. All bow down to the lovely little worms, telling him exactly what he had to do like they were gods. He laughed in his sleep and hoped little Loot down there was lying with eyes open, waiting for the morning to come so that the sun would scare all the monsters away.

There was no sun in four walls of a cell.

“’Nother mornin’.” He mused as he sat up, glancing down at the bunk under him where Loot was still laying down, his eyes watching the wall with unnecessary intensity. “Ain’t that nice. Gonna miss wakin’ up when I’m dead, won’t you?”

Loot glanced over at him, his head not moving his inch, only his eyes flitting like some sort of insect. “I suppose.”

T-Bag laughed and dropped down to the floor, pacing over to the bars and leaning against them, staring out across the way at Roach, sitting on his bunk talking to big-man-Nigel about another little mutiny the two of them would be pulling off at some point or another. No loyalty in a place like this. Their old leader was in the grave. T-Bag was eighteen years old. Nobody was going to listen to him unless he showed them that they had to.

“What do you think happens to a boy in here for murder?” T-Bag swung around to look at Loot, leaning back against the bars and licking his lips slowly. “For murderin’ another inmate. Think they get punished less than if they killed an actual human bein’, or ‘s it all fair-like? We all equal?”

Loot’s eyes flitted up to T-Bag’s face. “Are you going to kill me?” He sounded oh-so-resigned like he’d been waiting for this to come for decades.

T-Bag laughed, feeling the lump in his throat that came around on those spare occasions where he started to think about spending the next too many years locked in four walls without any real sunlight or breeze or rain or shine or any of that shit he didn’t give a fuck about on the outside. It felt a lot more important when he was without it. But he wasn’t so good at thinking like that and the lump faded in seconds. “No, no, no, boy.” He stepped forwards, hands in Loot’s hair, stroking through thin weedy strands, letting them scrape against his skin soft like that. “I ain’t gonna do somethin’ like that.”

Something like disappointment crawled through Loot’s eyes. Like he wished that wasn’t the answer.

T-Bag hated that look and he had to walk away.

There wasn’t much space to walk away in, and that just made the whole thing worse.

“You killed my wife.” Loot’s voice wasn’t as strong as it usually was and but it was holding steady just fine. “Suddenly you’ve got yourself some morals to keep from doing the same to me?”

“I didn’t kill your wife.” T-Bag leaned against the rough wall, tapping his fingers against it gently, rough skin on stone, hating all of it just a little bit more. “Can’t prove none o’ that, boy, so you’d best keep quiet with them theories o’ yours. People might start assumin’ the worst.”

Loot was quiet a second. “About you or about me?”

A laugh burned deep down in T-Bag’s gut where he was usually too numb to do much of anything. “Really, boy, do you think it matters anymore?”

It was cloudy out in the yard and Loot kept close, hand on the pocket, staring at no one, obedient and good as hell while the rest of the Alliance lingered nearby, always close but never close enough. Showing respect but only the respect that they needed to be showing to keep him from kicking their ass, that tense sort of feeling falling out across them all. Roach and Nigel close together, close enough to be lovers, talkin’ about one thing or another.

T-Bag dialled Jimmy and waited for him to pick up.

“I’m rottin’ in here.” He grunted over the line, watching Loot’s face stay carefully blank at the words. “You an’ your girl had better come visitin’ me Jimmy, or I’m just gonna crack or somethin’.”

“Teddy, you cracked ages ago.” Jimmy was high, Kelly was laughing in the background with her sister, a girl named Charlotte who was something like six years old. “Lonely out there? Ain’t you got your boy to deal with when you get like that? Don’t need me comin’ down there.”

There was an air to the words of him not wanting to come that left a dry sensation in the back of T-Bag’s throat.

“Is that Teddy on the line?” Kelly shouted in the background. “Pass that o’er here, babe, lemme talk to our favourite badass felon.” There was a clunking and a bit of shrieking before Kelly’s voice filled up T-Bag’s ear, just as bitchy as ever. “Callin’ us at home again, Teddy-boy? I can hardly believe it.”

“Nice o’ you to say so.” He grimaced at the dial and ran his fingers over the buttons. “They caught you yet?”

“Nah, ain’t never gonna catch us. Fuck, I gotta go. See you, Teddy-bear.” She hung up on him, dial tone replacing the voices. No goodbyes. He was being forgotten and it made his fists clench up around the receiver. He wanted to smash it. Smash something. Beat someone’s head in to see all the blood come out because he needed it. He needed something right now to bleed.

He put it down lightly though and walked stiffly away.

Loot trailed along looking at the ground, pretending he hadn’t heard anything. But there was a hard line to the boy’s jaw that made T-Bag twitch and want to hurt him. Hurt something. Anything. Just something right now needed to die because he couldn’t handle all this hanging.

He decided he was half addicted to death and he wasn’t sure if he cared or not.

“It’s weird thinking you actually have a family.” Loot’s voice was empty but his eyes bit. “Just… It’s scary. What did you do to them? How many people have you killed?”

T-Bag’s eyes grazed the ground and he thought about everything but where he was and what he was doing. It hurt to exist. He wanted to do something to change that but the only things he could come up with were only going to make things worse. “Boy, you best start watchin’ your own fuckin’ business here, or I’m gonna have to show you how it’s done right.”

He kicked up dirt on the ground and watched the shadows. The sun was coming out, just a little.

He rolled his bottom lip into his mouth and chewed on it a second, tasting the ghost of blood on it that made it all worth it. Somehow. “How far are you willin’ to go to keep yourself alive, boy? You willin’ to murder another man? You willin’ to murder yourself?”

Loot’s eyes glanced up at him then back away like he was scared of what he saw there. A strange twitch of satisfaction shuddered through him for a second. “I have nothing to lose, don’t I?”

T-Bag laughed and ruffled the back of Loot’s hair, just hard enough to not be friendly. “Boy, you’ve always got somethin’ t’lose. Just a matter o’ figurin’ out what exactly that is.”

Loot listened quietly with narrowed eyes and hunched over shoulders, just a bit more so than they’d been before he pretty little wife turned up dead. His head twitched to the side at some words and he glanced up at T-Bag’s face when all was said and licked his lips darkly. But not like he wanted this. “You’re asking me to murder someone.” His laugh was animal. Because he had nothing to lose. “God. Why the fuck not? After all, it’s not like you’re actually asking.”

T-Bag bit chewed on a fingernail and watched Loot squirm. “Got a shank right here, boy. Go for it.”

“You’re serious?”

He didn’t know why people always had to ask that. His face tensed up a bit and he watched Loot shrink into himself. Watched the rebellion fade away into stubborn obedience. Nameless. He was just Loot. There was nobody behind the eyes. “Ain’t I always?”

Something in Loot’s face got real pale but he nodded a few times. And it made T-Bag’s heart race a bit to think that maybe things would turn out right.

He was getting awfully bored of all this waiting.

Loot followed him around all day and they sat next to each other at meals, glaring in opposite directions at opposing things. Roach and Nigel were stirring up trouble in the masses again. Loot got a look about him like he’d be fine joining in on that, but he seemed to figure that T-Bag would slit his throat, right out there in the open and let him bleed out in front of everybody. And nobody’d do a thing. Just watch all the blood puddle and pool out, getting thicker and farther out on the floor, little old Loot’s body sprawled out on the table, eyes open and lips parted with a look of outright fear on it.

T-Bag would have drawn something like that if he were the sort of person who did things like that anymore.

“It’s gloomy out today.” Loot remarked like he felt he had to make conversation or something or it’d all get to be a little too much for his liking.

T-Bag didn’t look at him, just scowled in the other direction. “Don’t be fuckin’ poetic, hear me? Or I’ll gut you right here in this here room an’ you ain’t gonna be able t’do nothin’ ‘bout it, hear?” The words all came out a jumble of snarls and Loot seemed to get the point ‘cause he didn’t say anything more.

Silence was getting fucking irritating, but no one seemed to have anything interesting to say.

While he was wandering around the cell block, Loot clinging to his pocket like it was a life raft in shark infested waters, Roach stepped out in front of him, a dark look in his eyes but a smirk on his face that made a twinge knot itself in T-Bag’s stomach, because damn did he want to be able to do that someday.

Be that fucking terrifying.

“Take a walk, boy.” He muttered with enough confidence that some people lurking nearby sniggered, like they thought he was just messing around. But Loot let go of the pocket and backed away with wary, hunched up shoulders because he knew better than to get in the way. “What you want, Roach?” He drawled it out best he could because he wasn’t fucking afraid of anything.

Wallace and Ginger were standing on the sidelines, sniggering and T-Bag made a little note in the back of his mind with all the creepy-crawly things there that he usually tried to ignore that they were gonna be on the top of his hit list when Roach was dealt with.

Roach cocked his head a bit to one side and Nigel behind him leered. “Since when is it against the law to walk around here?” He stepped forwards towards T-Bag, staring down at him from a few inches up like he was trying to make some kind of a point by the height difference. “Think you’re the big man in here, Bagwell?”

“I ain’t the one makin’ the confrontations here, boy.” T-Bag was feeling risky. Because it wouldn’t matter if they came at him, there were bulls all over the place just waiting ‘round for something to break out, and they may not like him but they were gonna save his ass or they’d get in shit. “Seems to me everyone ‘round here’s a little bit anxious ‘round me. Why’s that, you think?”

“Cocky attitude for someone who hasn’t been around here long.” Roach stepped closer again and his eyes narrowed a fraction like he was staring and trying to figure him out. See through his soul and look at all the rotting things hidden in there.

T-Bag had a lot of secrets.

But Roach wasn’t about to start reading minds so he didn’t have anything to worry about with him. “Don’t go underestimatin’ me, boy, I ain’t some little thing you can push ‘round. I’ll gut you if you step wrong in front o’ me.”

Roach didn’t seem phased.

That was around when CO Riley got involved again. “Cons! Put some space between you, now!” Roach glanced back over his shoulder at the CO and turned back to T-Bag to wink.

“Later, Bagwell.” He smacked Nigel’s hands and the two of them stalked off together, T-Bag standing staring after them for a long second, letting all the fury bubble around somewhere in his midriff where all the other neglected little rotting things went at the end of the day. Festering there like a little bruise. He wanted to collect all the stuff in there and unravel it all and use it to kill everyone there. Brutalize Loot so bad the cell would be covered in blood. Like Jack the Ripper. Rip things apart.

Only he didn’t have time and if he did he’d just get in shit for it. He had to lay low so he slunk over to Loot and paused only long enough for the other man to catch the pocket before continuing along to the cell.

He leaned against the bars after they shut and all the lights were out, staring into the abyss of cells full of people who’d all done something terribly, terribly wrong only it didn’t bother him half as much as maybe it should.

“You ready to do it, boy?” He murmured in the darkness because he knew Loot was lying awake and listening. Boy always slept with one or two eyes open after his poor wife died. Seemed half scared to death that maybe someone might be coming for him next.

T-Bag had no idea where he might have gotten that idea.

There was a short pause before Loot said anything that gave T-Bag half doubts - little fluttering maybes that he’d gone to sleep but he knew better than that deep down. “Now?”

T-Bag didn’t think he could really wait any longer.

“Yeah, now. You gonna scamper out on me, boy? Am I gonna have t’kill you like I had your pretty doc wife killed? That what you want, boy?” He listened to Loot breathe for a long time. “That what you want, boy? ‘Cause I can have that arranged real fast if that’s what you’re lookin’ for.”

Another one of those silences. Stupid. Fucking. Silence.

“I’ll do it if you give me the opportunity to do it.” Loot’s voice got that dead ring to it all of a sudden, resigned and hollow and it didn’t bother T-Bag as much as it used to. Not at all. It sent a little tremor all up and down his spine a second and he gripped the bars a little tighter. “Arrange something that works and I’ll do it. Just…” He fell off.

It was hard to sleep with all those dancing pictures of dead people underneath his eyelids. Mona crept around in his dream with thirty-seven holes in her body, giggling and holding knives in her hands and whispering things. Come an’ find me, Teddy-Bear. There was a pit in the centre of the world where all the dark things were coming out of because all the floodgates were dead. Hide an’ go seek, Teddy-Bear. Let’s go hiding. Mona giggled like she never would have alive and went creeping by.

He followed along and they slaughtered things together like she wasn’t dead and he wasn’t in prison and he woke up with invisible blood on his hands; disappointed.

Loot was already awake. Or maybe he never got to sleep. He was lying in bed staring at the underside of T-Bag’s bunk with heavy-lidded eyes and bloody lips from biting them too much. “You’re actually going to make me do this.” The question in his voice was dead and T-Bag decided that he didn’t need to respond.

“Big day today, boy.” He chuckled, leaning against the wall and staring across the cell block at Roach and Nigel, standing there like kings of the fucking world because that’s what they were. “Gonna flip things upside down for a little while, ain’t we?”

For some reason Loot seemed less enthused than he was.

In the yard he couldn’t resist calling Jimmy up again. The sun was out all bright and shit. One of those days that just needed to happen. T-Bag felt kind of sick in that good sort of way. Nauseous for all the right reasons.

“’Lo?”

“Jimmy! When are you gonna come visitin’ me again. It’s been ages.” He let the slur and the drawl fall into his voice and he watched Loot’s face for all the signs. All the dark little signs that he knew these weren’t good things about to happen.

“What? Teddy? What the fuck, man, you just called yesterday. Don’ tell me you’re goin’ outta your head already.” Jimmy’s voice was ringing and thick and from thousands of miles away and T-Bag suddenly appreciated the space.

He laughed into the receiver. “Ain’t a man allowed to call his cousin every once in a while on special occasions?”

“It ain’t Christmas.”

“It ain’t your birthday neither, don’t mean it’s not a special day.”

“Stop talkin’ in fuckin’ riddles.”

He couldn’t stop laughing and it was making Loot shift side to side, foot to foot, staring at the ground underneath his feet like he was petrified the ground was about to cave in or something. “How’s my daddy? Still a fuckin’ bastard, I would presume.”

“The very same. What the fuck’s got into you? You been takin’ some shit without me ‘round to enjoy it?”

“Just got stuff on the brain.”

They talked for a little while about things. T-Bag’s daddy and his mama and Auntie Lara and Kelly and what all o’ them were up to around home. Things he was missing and things he didn’t give a shit about, but needed to know anyway just to be able to say that he was aware of what was going on back home.

And when he hung up he looked back over at Loot and enjoyed the pasty look about his face. “I think it’s about time, how ‘bout you, boy?”

Loot couldn’t seem to think of anything to say.

T-Bag had to consider for a while before he figured how he wanted to do it. Subtle or blatant or whatever the fuck else. He wanted it outside. Like Mona and little Johnny. Slink up, charm them away from the pack and just gut them apart to make it all worthwhile. Organs streaming out on the grass and flattening it all into a bloody mess on the ground for the animals to pick up later.

That’s what needed to happen.

Only he wasn’t really in a place that was prime for that sort of thing, was he?

And someone was always watching here. Watching and waiting for someone to die, which made it damn hard to do anything subtle, behind closed doors, hidden where nobody saw it. Because there were no private places.

Then again, even if it was done blatant, right out there in the sunlight, it wasn’t like anything was gonna happen to him. Loot would be the one getting caught. And everyone would know anyway that he was calling the shots behind it but no one would be able to prove it.

The sort of thing that worked out right.

They lingered in the yard, watching all the inmates gather around their little leaders. The niggers with their men, the whites with theirs, the Hispanics with theirs. T-Bag licked his lips and watched Ginger and Wallace hustle everyone down around Roach and Nigel.

Too fucking convenient.

“Go do it.” He muttered to Loot, arms folded up across his chest while staring at them, knowing they were all laughing at that eighteen-year-old son of a retard who fucking though he ran things ‘round here.

They didn’t know nothing.

He slipped Loot the shank and stepped back a bit.

Loot knew how to handle things like that. He slipped the shank in a convenient sleeve, baggy enough around his skinny little from that it looked like nothing, shoulders hunched up like he was petrified, stalking over and staring at the ground, pasty white and empty and soulless and T-Bag watched Roach and his little gang look up and stare, waiting but not knowing what they were waiting for.

Little old Loot incarcerated for fucking identity theft was gonna make a name for himself now, wasn’t he?

T-Bag inched forwards, lurking closer and closer because he wanted to watch.

Loot was messy with the shank and everyone pulled him off fast and started stomping on him and shouting which gave enough time for T-Bag to slip through, quiet and close enough to watch. Roach with a jagged wound right in his belly, bleeding all over and looking pissed rather than shocked. And it was too fucking clean, too fucking easy to fix.

Prison doc could fix that in a heartbeat.

“Well now, boy, look at that.” T-Bag drawled at him, watching Roach’s face contort while he couldn’t do a single damn thing about it. “Gonna bleed out, ain’t you?”

But the guards were already running.

T-Bag pulled a razor blade from the inside of his shirt cuff and it took two fucking seconds to knock Roach down and slice his throat and shove the razor back in his pocket, watching Roach shake and shout and clutch at his throat even though it was way too late for that now.

He knew how deep you needed to cut to kill someone.

The guards yanked him off and he shouted some bullshit that he was just comin’ close to see what was goin’ on, it was all that Loot boy’s doing. And the guards let him go for now because Loot looked beaten to death and Roach was bleeding out all over the grass.

And maybe it wasn’t everything he ever dreamed of, but it was enough for now.