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There is no knife this time, only the bulk and heat of Mahone’s body pinning him to the wall. It shouldn’t be enough - Michael is stronger than that, strong enough to push Alex off, to walk away - but somehow it is.
It’s the fear, he thinks, the very reasonable fear of what Alex is capable of doing, of how little it would take to make him snap. Of the bones he could snap in the bat of an eye, without batting an eye, even now, even in this condition.
There is every reason to be frightened, and he is. But of course that’s not it, not what keeps him here at all.
“Alex…” he tries, but Mahone raises a finger to his lips.
“Ssshh,” he says, head slowly swaying, hypnotic, like the movements of a snake. Or maybe he’s the man who charms the snake; Michael is never quite sure. Sometimes he thinks their roles are interchangeable.
Mahone’s finger stays there, so close to Michael’s lips, but not quite touching. They’re not touching anywhere, although he’s trapped in the cage of Alex’s body, and the almost of it, the anticipation of every possible point of contact, is an ache that verges on the unbearable.
And perhaps Alex feels the same, or understands, because he runs his palms down the wall, tracing the outline of Michael’s frame on the painted stone, until his hands reach Michael’s wrists and grab hold.
It’s a forceful grip, bruising, but it feels like relief, like a weight lifted, everything that was tearing at his body suddenly pouring into the places where Alex’s hands are encircling him. He fists his own hands, feels the shifting bones and tendons strain outwards against the press of Alex’s fingers, and his breath hitches. A quick puff of air, and Alex licks his lips, as if he can taste Michael there, the essence of him caught in the touch of an exhale.
“You think you can leave me behind, Michael,” he says, “you think you can get away clean,” and his mouth quirks around the last word as around a familiar joke, the fond memory of an old punch line that has long since stopped being funny. He looks tired, worn thin, as Michael feels. “But you forget that I can read your maps. That I’ve read you, page by page.” A caress of his thumb, sliding up beneath the sleeve of Michael’s shirt, carefully tracing the serpent curve of the s drawn on the inside of his wrist, the last letter of a dead man’s name. The first place they almost met. He leans in, lips to Michael’s ear, a third point of pressure. “Cover to cover.”
And this is it, this is the point where Michael should break, where he should struggle to get free, but instead he says “Show me,” and his voice is firm.
Mahone makes a noise in his ear, a strangely soft hum from somewhere deep in his chest, and Michael can smell him, the heat and grime of Sona on his skin, sweat laced with the chemical scent of whatever drug he’s shot into his veins. His left hand stays at Michael’s wrist, holding on, but his right hand wanders. Fingers trailing up the length of Michael’s arm, palm stroking down his chest, warm through the cotton of his shirt.
“Here,” Alex says, and he doesn’t look down, just taps his finger against a spot beneath Michael’s ribs, the touch light and unhesitant. “That’s where your cell was, where you started out. This -” and his finger slides, over and up, steady and precise along the stretches and bends of lines he shouldn’t know how to follow, across angel’s wings and a devil’s sword, the rise and fall of Michael’s chest, “- this is the route you took, through the pipes. Right here -” and his left hand moves up, cupping Michael’s elbow, thumbnail scratching the length of a name, one of three inked into his arm, “- is the street you escaped on, and, God, Michael, here…”
But it’s enough, already too much, and he doesn’t want to hear it.
He raises his hand to wrap around the back of Mahone’s neck, and tugs. Shoves their lips together, and Alex groans, kisses him. Tongue and teeth and hands slipping from their paths, savage and eager, and Michael didn’t plan this, but he knew it was coming. Alex’s mouth is tinged with copper like the water they’re given to drink, and Michael arcs against the hardness of him, pressed against his hip, rubs himself into the contact that is suddenly everywhere, their bodies scrambling with the need to touch.
The wall is rough behind him, a painful scrape against his scalp when his head drops back, his muscles spasming as Alex’s hand slides between his legs, as Alex squeezes down. His nails dig into Alex’s neck, and outside in the yard he can hear shouting, prisoners playing soccer in the dust. He can hear music from someone’s tinny radio, conversation in Spanish three cells down, the tapping of an off-beat rhythm on the bars, but the loudest sound is his own panting, the moan Alex gives when he thrusts into his grip.
Fumbling with buttons and zippers, Alex’s fingers struggling with his fly, and they’re skin to skin. Only naked where they need to be, but Alex’s cock is hot and slick against his own, grinding into him, and then Alex’s hand is there, closing around them, around both of them, and he has to bite back a scream, has to claw at the wall to stay upright.
Alex’s lips stray from Michael’s mouth, ragged kisses dragged down the line of his jaw, soft and breathless against his neck.
“I will find you,” he says, and it’s a threat, sharper than the point of a shiv, but it feels like a promise.
Labyrinths upon labyrinths inside his mind, so many places to lose himself where no one would ever think to look, but Alex knows, Alex has tracked him down, will track him down again. There’s nowhere to hide.
He should be frightened, but what he feels is free.
“Michael,” Alex says again, “I’ll…I’ll always…” and his hand closes tighter, pleasure bright on the verge of pain, the touch of his lips so gentle, and Michael shudders against him, strokes his thumb over the smooth, sweat-damp skin behind his ear.
“Yeah,” he says, “yeah,” and the truth of it makes his head swim, too sharp like the Panama sun.
He clings to it, as Alex rubs their cocks together one more time and comes, curling in to press his face into Michael’s shoulder, stifling his groans. Closes his eyes to hold it in, the bars and walls of Sona on the outside.
He lets his arm wrap around Alex’s waist, holding him, too. Letting Alex hold him as his hand starts to work again, slippery now with semen, urging Michael on toward where he needs him to go.
Michael has never been sure which one of them is the prey, but he can live with that.
He knows they will find each other.