Untitled: Salem centric
"Hey what is this? What the fuck?! Aw comeon."
Breen. His nametag wouldn't lie. More like officer powertrip though, it was like this jerkoff couldn't get enough of shoving him around. Despite cursing as loud as his voice could go without yelling, Officer Breen didn't seem to give a shit about his indignant utterance; his grip on his arm only tightened, forshadowing the oncoming shove. Luckily there was at least a chair to fall into this time, bare-ass wood that it was, and Elliot Salem tripped over his shoelaces and straight into it almost gratefully.
"Hey, back off man!!" Not that he was gonna take it like a pussy, though; he aimed a grimace over his shoulder and spat at the gleaming black toes of the pig's loafers. He couldn't hit him in front of this guy right in his office, it'd offend the beardy old fucks staring down from the paintings on the walls. Probably break that nice lamp on the desk too.
Behind said desk, which looked like it'd seen a couple dozen decades, the guy in question was some equally ancient motherfucker with a face that looked like aliens were trying to make crop circles around his eyes. Like he'd spent his entire childhood sunbathing in the Sahara, greying and balding at the same time, a beer gut straining suit buttons. Yeah, right, like wearing your old uniform is supposed to be intimidating when your fatfuck stomach hangs over your belt, asshole.
"Elliot Archibald Salem." The guy who was probably the dean or some shit - Elliot wasn't really paying attention - didn't give him time to say anything in response. He was already nodding at the pushy cop to pull Elliot out of the chair again, which instantly made him wonder why they bothered to make him sit down in the first place. But who the hell cares, really? Some stupid show to try to scare him, probably did this to all the inmates.
"Mess is at sixteen hundred hours. You will be there, and you will be there in regulation." He paused to crack a grin that made the disinterest on Elliot's face waver just a little.
"Welcome to Hinds County. Henley's gonna be glad to have you, boy." The old bastard was smirking as he was jostled to the door at the other side of the room. For an instant, the inside of the walled grounds rushed up from behind plateglass, giving him a glimpse of bare ground a few towering brick buildings before he was pushed out onto a cement floor and into the waiting arms of two massive guards. This was bullshit, all bullshit, but the door closed behind him before he could finish blurting the sentiment out.
Somehow, for the whole ride out, the six hours in the air and the four cooped up in that rusty old short bus with no stops to piss, it hadn't really seemed like a problem. Correctional institution or whatever, it couldn't really be any hard shit. Some stuff was still illegal to do to juvie kids, right? When the windows he was passing started to offer glimpses of barred windows, it finally began to sink in. One gate.. big wall.. hours away from anything... this was really it. He really was stuck here.
Sure, maybe legally speaking he'd done enough to earn a trip to one of these places. Even if all he'd done was carry a few backpacks full of mediocre pot between houses for some guys, hadn't even sold any of it himself- just run it back and forth. Get the money, give the shit, rinse repeat. Not any big fucking deal, and it wasn't like anyone had ever gotten hurt or anything serious. Bullshit is what it was, total bullshit, and something his dad's lawyer had made disappear before without anyone getting so goddamn bent out of shape. Why now? What the hell was so different about this time that this is what he got instead of another lecture?
The guards didn't seem to care if he swore though, they just dragged him on down the hall. Wind scratched the naked branches of a tree against the plateglass window ahead of them, loud enough to hear over his sneakers squeaking. This was really how it was gonna be, huh? His old man finally deciding he wasn't his problem anymore? Fine. Fuck it. Fuck him. They were leading him out to another building, the kind with the bars. He could barely tell if there were even any lights on inside. As he stumbled slowly down the hall between the two broad-shouldered, silent men, for once he couldn't find a single thing to say.
* * *
With the last of the memory waning Salem shoved the photograph back into the book. The edge of the laminated glossy print - a scrawny kid with stringy brown hair well past his jaw and tied back into a scraggly ponytail, making a forced smile at the camera - stuck out at one corner, but it's not as if Rios ever looked in his personal shit. As close as you ever got to Rios, he never made you tell something you didn't volunteer, and never questioned what you didn't. The mark of a lifetime of being in the service, probably; Salem had never thought to ask why he didn't ask, and now that he did think of it it sounded like a really faggy thing to do. So fuck that.
Even if he really did want to know, asking would mean letting the other man know he wanted to know. And when you get to know combat like Salem knew combat one of the first things to learn was that getting close to your buddies was gonna lead to some heavy duty headtrips when they inevitably bit it. Despite the fact that he'd call the older man his best friend in a second and kick the ass of any of his exes who tried to fuck him out of spite, despite being close enough that he knew his only real fear was not being able to change anything, there was always the going to be the fact that he'd never met his parents. Probably never would. He never really asked about his past or his family or any of that shit because there was always gonna be that divide. You don't bring a guy home to mama. And there was always the instinct to pull back whenever he felt like he wanted to move forward. Getting one step closer always, always meant a half step back in case everything suddenly got too real and too out in the open.
But Rios never complained, and Rios never questioned. And maybe that's why lately he'd seen more nights a week with him asleep beside him than without, and why he knew he had to take the couch when he fucked up, even in his own goddamn apartment.
Of all the stupid shit he'd done as a kid, getting sent to that place was probably the best thing that ever happened to him, because it meant he ended up here after all of it. After deciding the only job he could really do after juvie was the army, after deciding that if he was gonna be a soldier he might as well get good at it, after deciding that his own family didn't matter anymore and his old friends weren't really friends and just about the only thing he had going for him was the fact that he could shoot someone... after all that, to meet anybody willing to put up with him long enough to even have drinks with him was something, and then Rios had to come along.
That kid in that photo was a stupid little shit, but Salem had to thank his younger self. Without all of that, right now he probably wouldn't be half so happy.
Or... at least he'd would be if his partner would start talking to him again.