Chapter Text
Dex’s lips were pressed into a thin and displeased line, boredom coloring his stoic eyes while apathy dripped like venom down his slack shoulders and languid arms. It seemed to seep into all those who came close to him, as mere touch or glance into his dark and remorseless eyes could make even the calmest of guards volatile. Perhaps they all had some stake in what he represented. Perhaps he hurt them in ways he was convinced could never compare to the ways he hurt himself. Whether it was a stolen lover or a prematurely buried parent or child, Dex was an easy placeholder for the anger and grief these underpaid and overinflated correctional officers felt for their crumbling New York.
The two officers escorting Dex back to his quarters pushed and shoved at Dex until they felt big themselves, as a depersonalized and subdued Benjamin Poindexter was an apt subject to their tyranny. Dex hardly fought back as they corralled him down the clinically drab halls; all he did was look on in that cold way that seemed to be his new preset. No more quick to anger Dex, no more screaming into the void when things were not going his way Dex. Riker’s Island was all he’d ever know from now on.
He looked to his right and felt his pace slow when he passed a large glass window looking into a room. He’d lost count of how many times he passed that room before, as it was always unlit and empty, but its contents caught his attention now. Two correctional officers stood guard at either end of the window outside the room, allowing Dex to peer through the center of the window. At the center of the small room was a metal table that had been bolted into the ground, and on the side facing the window sat a fellow inmate with trembling lips and skinny shoulders huddled close to his caving in chest. His hair was falling out in the tufts, and on closer inspection, Dex recognized the man as the one who’d attempted to gouge his own eyes out with a plastic spoon in the cafeteria two days ago. He still had the fresh scars on his eyelids and cheekbones, as when the spoon failed, he tried to use his fingernails instead.
But Dex cared little for the mentally troubled inmate; he was taken by the sweep of long and thick hair overlying a pressed black blazer, slender and feminine fingers holding a fountain pen and scratching delicately written words across a notebook page. Her body was leant back against the metal seat, which had also been bolted into the ground. Her heeled feet were crossed at the ankles, the toe of her shoes grazing the ground as she moved her feet further under her seat. She faced the inmate as the troubled and crying man spoke softly, his scarred blue eyes holding some virtue of hope when he met the gaze of the woman sat across the table from him. Dex slowed his pace further to get a look at the woman, as something about the rounded and downturned edges of the inmate’s eyes had him taking pause. It was as though someone had turned the light on in the inmate’s eyes, as if there was still a way to light in a place as dark and desolate at this.
She nearly turned her head from over her shoulder when Dex was hit over the back with a baton. “Keep walking, convict!” The officer to Dex’s right barked as he pushed Dex forward. Dex stumbled to catch his footing and looked back to the window, but she was too far behind for him to see her looking over her shoulder. It wasn’t like she’d be able to see him anyways, as the window was no more than a one-way mirror for guards to look in and for troubled inmates to reconcile with their mottled appearances.
He was pushed forward into his cell, the mittens fit around his hands and forearms with cuffs taken off only once he was in the confines of his room. He was pushed chest first into the wall by the officers all the same, as they were keen to check his person for any illicit objects. They knew he couldn’t have stolen anything, as he wasn’t allowed access to his hands in any room outside of his barren cell and the cafeteria. Even then, he was surrounded by his usual rotation of officers who made sure he did not keep any of the materials allotted to him during meals. It took dehumanization to another level when Dex had to watch grown men count his cutlery aloud and confirm the count with a witness before he’d be allowed to return to his seclusion.
The correctional officers sniggered between themselves from behind him. The taller one clutched onto Dex’s blond hair and slammed his cheek into the wall. Dex groaned but did not struggle as they forced his cheek against the cinder block wall where loose bits of gravel collected in the gash now tearing his cheek open. He tried to look to the men holding him, but they pulled him off of the wall and kneed him between his legs before he could catch his footing.
Dex’s cheeks flushed a livid shade of red, a deep bellied groan leaving his lips as he hobbled over in pain and braved the sting both in his cheek and that which now ran sharply up the inside of his groin. The officers chuckled amongst one another before they left the cell again, their voices sounding out in the halls as they left Dex in his secluded cell with no prospect for further human interaction until the following morning.
Dex breathed heavily and moved his trembling hands over his thighs, a dribble of saliva spilling out from his lips and hitting the ground as he panted for reprieve. His entire body ached, but he soon looked up to the wall where the fragile cinder block crumbled just from a mere kiss to his cheekbone. He panted and eventually stood to his full length, his broad shoulders rolling as he kept his attention fixed on the loose gravel on the ground and the divot left behind in the brick.
//
Dex kept his eyes turned down towards his arms as his mitten clad hands were cuffed to the table, his legs shackled in place to the legs of his chair while a separate chain wrapped around his abdomen just under his diaphragm. “Do you really think all of this is necessary?” Dex asked lowly as he turned his head down towards the correctional officer pulling the ends of the chain wrapped around his waist to the floor behind his chair.
The officer looked up at him, youthful round eyes framed by long lashes staring up at Dex’s hardened face with poorly shielded fear. He was young, likely no older than a college kid, and still full of that anxiety that came from standing so close to a man whose dangerous reputation preceded him. In time, even this fresh-faced boy would be inured by this place, and he would act no differently from the men who’d been incarcerated. The only thing differentiating them would be the cloths they wore over their eyes. Where criminals saw no way out, these officers saw a way forward. Sometimes Dex wondered who the real criminals were.
“You know protocol.” The officer stammered out, his voice somehow more boyish than his face. Dex tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes before the boy tugged on the chains and ensured there was no slack. “This is to protect you. K-Keep you from trying to kill yourself again.”
Dex hummed and nodded his head, which had been cut up from him repeatedly bashing his head into his cell wall three days earlier. The swelling had long gone down, but his skin was an ugly mirage of yellow and purple while odd and jagged red lines split across the whole of his forehead and cheeks. He was far from the clean and composed inmate he had been for so many months, but his vanity hardly mattered once he heard the door open.
He parted his lips when he saw her, her hair left loose so that it swept over the lapels of her navy blazer while her shirt buttons rippled from over her breasts. Her navy skirt hugged the fullness of her hips and tapered down to a point just above her knees, which gave rise to glistening legs and modest heels that clicked when she walked. What truly captivated him was her face. Somehow, in his haze to buy himself a one way ticket to a psychiatric evaluation, he could not imagine a more beautiful face. She possessed something he could only describe as unearthly and wholly feminine, her features eliciting the softest gasp from his lips when he considered that hope the inmate before him held in his eyes at the sight of her. It was not hope; it was love, it was adulation, it was obsession. She was perfection encompassed.
She held the doorknob as she looked at him, her head tilting slightly as he met her gaze with the devotion he figured was idiosyncratic in her usual demographic of patients. His attention was clear and focused even with his injuries considered. There wasn’t the hint of a tremble or quiver to his shoulders or arms, his chest rising and falling steadily and consistently even when she smiled tightly.
“Thank you Officer Das, if you’ll excuse us.” She said as she moved towards the edge of the door. She smiled tightly at the officer but looked back to Dex, her lips parting slightly when he did not shift his eyes from her face. He waited patiently at the table and clasped his hands from within the cushioned restraints bulging around his fists and forearms. She took notice of the chains and the mittens and merely shut the door to a resounding close behind her. In their first few moments of being alone, they both stared at one another in complete silence.
“Mr. Poindexter, color me somewhat surprised to find you sat before me today.” She said, her lips curving up slightly. Her hips swayed as she walked towards her seat, her notebook and pen coming down onto the table first before she ambled into her seat. She settled against the cold metal slab and looked back at him with the same intrigue he imagined he possessed. “Forgive me if I say I read up on your file before our scheduled meeting today. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.”
“What’s there to understand?” Dex asked, his voice gentle and unimposing. He drew his hands closer to his body to give her more space, but the table was wider than it was long, and even if he stretched across it, he would never be able to reach her. Still, the distance seemed little object to her as she leaned back against her seat and tilted her head in obvious intrigue. Her eyes shifted between his while her lips parted at the whisper of a word, though no sound followed.
“I see many patients. Some violent criminals, some poorly understood individuals incapacitated by their own minds and bodies. They all have something in common though.” She said, her honeyed voice making his eyelids flutter.
Dex rose a brow and eventually shrugged his shoulders. “And what’s that?” He drawled in feigned boredom.
She nodded her head at him. “They would rather be dead than sit here and talk to me.” She said with a small shrug, a soft chuckle leaving her lips as she looked between his eyes for a response. When Dex did not react, she merely pressed her lips together and nodded her head again. “It’s their failure in ending their own lives that brings them here. Do you see what I am getting at?”
Dex merely rose his brows and shook his head. “I imagine you’ll enlighten me, doc.”
She chuckled and smiled at him. “I don’t believe you wanted to kill yourself, Mr. Poindexter. You might have been suicidal in the time leading up to your arrest and sentencing, and you might still be suicidal now, but I don’t think you really meant to kill yourself by ramming your head into the wall of your cell.”
Dex’s lips pressed together into a thin line. “You got all that just from looking at me? From reading my file?”
She smiled at him again, her eyes attentively holding his gaze in a way that made him feel vulnerable and open. “I’ve been doing this a long time with many different kinds of people, Mr. Poindexter, and there’s something about all of them that I’m not getting with you. You’re different, I can tell. I don’t think a man like you would keel over because some officers jumped him in the halls and the pressure got to be too much. I think you have suicidal tendencies, and I believe you’ve been tempted to act on them in the past, but when I look at you now, I don’t see a man who is unafraid of death; I see a man who doesn’t care about death. I don’t think you’d go out of your way to hasten the end when you don’t care for the outcome either way. You still have some work to do, don’t you Mr. Poindexter?”
“Frankly doc,” Dex sighed out as he shrugged his shoulders and leaned forward until the chain around his waist strained against his orange jumpsuit. She looked down to the chain and pursed her lips before she met his gaze again. “You can’t know all that without talking to me first. That’s kind of like your whole job, isn’t it?”
She smiled at him and nodded her head. “Alright, Mr. Poindexter.” She began before she opened her notebook and uncapped her pen. “What would you like to talk about?”