Chapter 12: Guy-Talk
The air in Luca’s cell was a distinct cocktail of cheap antibacterial soap, the sharp, metallic scent of ink, and the coppery, sweet odor of fresh blood. It clung to the back of the throat. A single, fat cockroach skittered along the base of the concrete wall, disappearing into a shadow.
The space was a violation of at least a dozen fire codes. Fifteen men were packed into a six-by-nine-foot rectangle, a study in controlled, masculine tolerance. Bodies were leaned against walls, perched on the sink, crouched on the floor. The only clear space was around the thin mattress where Luca worked, his back to the cell bars, a makeshift tattoo machine—crafted from a cassette player motor, a guitar string, and a ballpoint pen shell—buzzing with a furious, insectile whine.
Dominic sat propped against the far wall, his legs stretched out. Angel was settled in the vee of his thighs, leaning back against his chest, his head tucked under Dominic’s chin. One of Dominic’s heavy arms was draped loosely across Angel’s collarbones, a passive, possessive bar. With his free hand, he slowly, rhythmically, combed his fingers through Angel’s long white curls, separating the strands caught in the faint sweat at the boy’s nape.
“Hold the fuck still, Rico,” Luca grunted, not looking up from his work. His hands, gloved in nitrile stolen from the infirmary, were startlingly precise as he guided the buzzing needle over the swell of a man’s bicep. “You’re twitchin’ like you got spiders in your shorts.”
“Feels like you’re drillin’ to China, man,” Rico, a lean Latino with teardrop tattoos, hissed through clenched teeth.
“‘S just shading. You wanted the demon to have texture, it gets texture. Shut up and bleed pretty.”
The group rumbled with low laughter. Silas took up most of the space by the door, his bulk blocking the view from the corridor. He was filing a piece of metal into a sharp point on the concrete floor, the scritch-scritch-scritch a counter-rhythm to the buzz. Brick stood near him, a silent sentinel, arms crossed, watching the flow of men in and out. Rafael ghosted by the small, high window, a cigarette cupped in his palm, the smoke wisping up to the grate.
“He doin’ your mama’s name, Rico?” someone jeered from the corner.
“Nah, man, his dick’s too small to fit all those letters,” another voice answered. More laughter, easy and crude.
Angel giggled, the sound bright and clear in the gritty air. He turned his head slightly to look up at Dominic. “Is it really that painful?”
“Depends on where you get it,” Dominic said, his voice a soft rumble against Angel’s back. “And how much of a baby you are.”
“You’re not a baby, are you, Angel?” Spark piped up from his perch on the edge of Luca’s small desk. He was fidgeting with a loose thread on his shirt. “You sat through your whole… you know.” He gestured vaguely at his own neck, referencing Dominic’s claiming bite.
Angel’s hand drifted up, his fingertips brushing the pronounced, scarred indentations on the left side of his neck. A visible shiver ran through him, but his smile was serene. “That was different. That was Daddy.” He said it as if it explained everything, the physics of pain suspended by love.
Luca paused, wiping away a smear of blood and ink with a wad of gauze. “Kid’s got the right idea. Some pain’s transactional. You pay for the art. Some pain’s…” He glanced at Dominic, gave a slight, knowing shrug. “Permanent.”
The buzz started again. The demon on Rico’s arm gained a smoky halo.
Chatter ebbed and flowed, a stream of consciousness from fifteen caged minds. They talked about the guards’ rotation, the unbearable quality of the lunchtime slop, a football game someone had caught snippets of on a contraband radio.
Then Marco, a heavyset guy with a thick neck getting a grim reaper on his shoulder blade, let out a long, soul-deep sigh. “Fuck me, though. I can handle the shit food. I can handle the fuckin’ boredom. But man. I would sell my left nut for a decent lay. A real one. Not a frantic handjob in a shower stall while some guy’s got lookout.”
A collective groan of agreement rolled through the cramped cell. Nods. Grim smiles.
“Tell me about it,” muttered a younger guy named Jenson. “I’m so backed up I think my dick’s gonna fall off and roll away looking for a target on its own.”
“You wish it was that motivated,” Silas said, not looking up from his filing.
“How long’s it been, Marco?” Spark asked, grinning. “You keep a calendar? Little tally marks on the wall?”
“Last time was three weeks before I got nabbed,” Marco said, his voice taking on a wistful, pained quality. “Her name was Lacey. She was a waitress. Had this… fucking amazing ass. Like two planets in a tight skirt.” He shifted on the mattress, making Luca curse. “God, I can still smell her perfume. Cheap stuff. Smelled like flowers and vodka. Best night of my goddamn life.”
“Lacey,” Jenson repeated, rolling the name like fine wine. “I had a Chloe. Freckles everywhere. Every. Where.”
“I miss pussy so much I had a dream about the goddamn couch cushions,” a man named Fletcher chimed in from the sink. He mimed a crude, vigorous thrusting motion against thin air, his hips jerking forward. “Just… oh yeah, you sexy, beige, corduroy sonofabitch. Right there.” He groaned, comically exaggerated.
The cell exploded in raucous, barking laughter. It was loud, raw, aching with a shared, desperate hunger. Angel laughed too, a bright, startled giggle that was swallowed by the deeper noise. He didn’t fully grasp the depth of the ache, but he understood the comedy, the theatrical despair.
Dominic’s chest vibrated with a silent chuckle. His hand continued its gentle motion in Angel’s hair.
“Cushions,” Spark wheezed, tears in his eyes. “Fletcher, you tragic bastard.”
“Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it,” Fletcher shot back, still grinning. “It’s about the imagination, see? You close your eyes, you pretend it’s warm. And wet. And tight.”
Another wave of laughter. Luca shook his head, a smirk on his face as he dipped his needle into a small cup of black ink. “You animals are gonna make me fuck up this line. Think pure thoughts.”
“Too late for that,” Rico grunted.
“What about you, Reaper?” Marco asked, twisting his head slightly. “You gotta miss it, right? I mean, no offense.” He glanced quickly at Angel, back at Dominic.
The room’s atmosphere didn’t tense, but it attentive. They’d all seen the bite. They all knew the deal. But curiosity was a universal itch.
Dominic took his time answering. His fingers traced the shell of Angel’s ear. “I miss the concept,” he said finally, his voice level. “The scent of an Omega in a room. The specific… tension. But some things become less of a priority.” He looked down at the crown of Angel’s head, breathed in the clean, soap-and-sun scent of his hair—so different from the stifling, yearning despair in the room. “You adjust.”
“Yeah, well, my ‘adjustment’ is trying to fuck my bunk,” Jenson said. “It’s a losing battle. The mattress fights back.”
More laughter. It was cathartic, this shared lament. It wasn’t about angst; it was about the basic, animal biology of it, the absurd tragedy of being trapped without an outlet.
“Remember that Omega that came through intake about… shit, eight months ago?” Rafael spoke quietly from the window, not turning around. “The one with the pink hair. Nervous as a rabbit.”
A chorus of low, appreciative groans.
“Fuck, yeah,” Rico said. “They had her in Seg for her own protection. The smell… it leaked out under the door. Drove the whole block fucking insane for a week.”
“I offered a guard three years’ worth of commissary credits for five minutes in the supply closet with her,” Marco admitted, no shame in his voice. “He said no. Prick.”
Angel listened, fascinated. He’d been that Omega once, terrified, thrown into this world. Now he was protected, claimed, sitting in the heart of the pack that others feared. He felt a strange, distant sympathy. He knew what heat felt like, the unbearable, mind-melting need. Daddy helped him with that, with careful, clinical fingers and soothing Alpha vocal tones until the storm passed. But the idea of missing it… that was foreign. For him, that need was just a sickness Daddy nursed him through.
“It’s not just the sex,” Fletcher mused, his comedic bravado softening into something more genuinely pathetic. “It’s… the skin. The warmth. Falling asleep after. That moment when you’re still inside her, and everything’s quiet, and you’re just… sticky and quiet and done.” He sighed again, a real one this time. “Fuck.”
Silence settled for a moment, heavy with the ghost of memory. Even Luca paused his buzzing.
Then Spark broke it. “You’re a poet, Fletcher. A fucking bard of blue balls.”
The tension shattered back into laughter.
“What about you, kid?” Jenson asked, turning his attention to Angel. His tone wasn’t taunting, more genuinely curious. “You’re off the market, obviously. But before? You gotta miss something, right?”
All eyes turned to Angel. It wasn’t a hostile gaze, but an intense one. He was their living good luck charm, but also an anomaly—an untouched, claimed Omega in a sea of deprivation.
Angel blinked, thinking. He felt Dominic’s arm tighten the tiniest bit around him, a silent question: You okay? He nodded slightly against Dominic’s chest.
“I didn’t really… have that,” Angel said, his soft voice cutting through the murmur. “Before. It was all bad.” He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to. Everyone knew the story. Dead abusive parents. A life of pain before this life of… different pain, but with love. “So I don’t miss it. I just like this.”
He pressed back harder against Dominic, nuzzling his face into the side of his neck. It was a blatant, innocent display of affection that would have gotten any other Omega in the room torn apart. Here, it just made the men smile rough, knowing smiles.
“Lucky little bastard,” Marco said, but there was no malice. It was a statement of fact.
“Alright, enough of the sob story sauna,” Luca announced, capping his ink. “Rico, you’re done. Don’t touch it, don’t rub soap on it, just let it weep. You’re up next, Spark. You finally decide on what stupid thing you’re putting on your body forever?”
Spark hopped off the desk. “Yeah. I want a lightbulb. Right here.” He pointed to his forearm.
Dominic snorted. Angel beamed.
“A lightbulb?” Luca asked, raising an eyebrow as he snapped on fresh gloves.
“Symbol of enlightenment,” Spark said, winking at Angel. “And proper home maintenance skills. Make it look… you know, vintage. Glowy.”
As Spark settled on the mattress, wincing as Luca sterilized the skin with antifungal foot spray, the conversation drifted again, like smoke. It turned to rumors about a new smuggling route, the merits of different prison recipes for hooch, a debate about which guard was most likely to have a heart attack first.
Angel dozed lightly, lulled by the buzz, the warm safety of Dominic’s body, the rise and fall of crude, comfortable voices. This was his world. The longing in the room was real, a palpable hum almost as loud as the tattoo gun, but it flowed around him and Dominic like water around a stone. He was separate from it. Protected.
His last thought before sleep fully tugged him under was a vague, happy plan to ask Daddy if they could start gathering ingredients for that spaghetti soon. The domestic fantasy, here amidst the ink and the blood and the longing, seemed not just possible, but essential. A different kind of hunger to be satisfied.