Summary: In prison, Lionel's past is his best advantage.

Warnings: Rated NC-17. m/m. Non-con. Incest. Violence. We're talking prison here, people. Don't read it if you're fragile.

Lionel is no stranger to listening for telltale sounds in the night. In fact, it pretty much sums up his childhood, a waiting game, for the lights to go out and the house to fall still and the dreaded floorboard to creak. This is what Lex, with all his grandiose notions of suffering, has never understood, the difference between the father who pushes you too hard because he wants you to succeed in life, and the one who steals into your bed at night and pulls down your pajamas and makes you wish that you were dead.

It wasn't until Lionel was old enough to hit back and occasionally even inflict some damage of his own that he and his father finally came to a truce. No more midnight indignities, no more sweaty fingers on his skin. From then on, Lionel said what and where and how often, and when his father got a taste of his throat, a skill he'd picked up from the whores down on the corner, the old bastard forgot all about trying to make him spread his legs.

It worked then, and it works in prison too--eventually, for the most part.

Of course, he knew what the animals wanted when they came for him, knew what they'd take. He is no stranger to the ways of thugs, and shaving his head was less a fashion statement than a defensive strategy, giving them one less thing to grab onto as they went at him from both ends, more of them than he could count, for longer than he cared to remember.

For a good week afterwards, he walks with a limp. The men laugh when they see him. "Man, that is one worn-out pussy!" they jeer.

They think they've broken him, and Lionel knows exactly how to play that, eyes sliding nervously around every room he walks into, starting at the least sound like he's scared of his own shadow. He saves his best performances for Schultz, a tattooed, thick-necked mountain of a man who lives on his cellblock. When you need an ally, he's found, the trick is to choose someone with a talent for viciousness, but no gift for strategy, someone who needs you as much as you need them.

Edge was his first and best, the only thing like a partner he's ever had. Everyone knew Morgan Edge around the neighborhood, brash and deadly, with a wandering eye for the boys. Uppity little bastard, Lionel's father always used to say, and that made it all the more satisfying to choose him to be the one. Such a beautiful plan, the night Lionel slipped into his room and got into his bed. When Edge came home and found him there, he whistled softly, "What do we have here?" After they'd fucked, Lionel told him.

It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

This lummox Schultz is no Morgan Edge, but his weak-mindedness does make him an easy mark. When he corners Lionel in the shower room with the predictable cliche, "hey, pussy, I got an offer for you," Lionel gets on his knees and puts the old talents to work. Schultz grunts the whole time, like he's never had sex before, and after it's over, stands there looking stunned.

"Fuck, yeah!" he says at last. "I always knew you rich guys were a bunch of faggots."

"You enjoyed yourself, I take it. Well, there's certainly more where that came from," Lionel promises, with a lascivious smile.

They make an arrangement, and he puts in for a transfer to the lummox's cell. He plies his trade by night, while the lummox keeps the vultures away by day. Sometimes he finds it a shame, wasting his skill on someone whose only response to his carefully choreographed blowbjobs is, "Suck that fucking dick, suck it good!"

Still, it doesn't escape Lionel's notice that the more feared the lummox is the safer he becomes, and he puts on a good show, pretending to cower whenever they're seen together. Before long, the lummox's stock starts to rise. Lionel hears the whispers around the cellblock, Schultz is the man. He's got Donald Trump over there so scared the bitch goes down on him like his dick is fucking candy.

Occasionally, the lummox buys into his own press too much, and Lionel wakes up in the middle of the night with a weight on his back, familiar pain between his legs, grunting in his ear, "I'm fucking your tight little pussy, so deal with it, bitch." Lionel digs his fingers into the mattress as he waits for it to be over. He promised himself a long time ago that he'd never be in this position again, trapped beneath a filthy, rutting pig, and he promises himself now that someone will pay for it.

Maybe that's why he always dreams of Lex after Schultz is done with him. Lex as a child and Lex as he is now. Lex under his hands, under his body, under his control, leaving blood and bruises on pristine skin, blue eyes staring up at him, hot with outrage, a look Lionel knows so well. He has never done to Lex the things his father did to him, even though there were times he wanted to, and in his dreams, he finally indulges, all the things he suffered and so much more. In the morning, he wakes up smiling.

It is Lionel's habit to fight his battles on many fronts, and as hard as he schemes to stay alive inside, he plots that much harder to get out again. Progress is slow at first. It's more difficult to get things done without money, although by no means impossible. Lionel is still rich in other people's secrets. Eventually, he finds the right leverage, a scandal that leads all the way back to the governor. When the pardon comes, it cites his "deteriorating health," even though his liver condition mysteriously reversed itself months ago.

Schultz actually congratulates him when he hears the news. Lionel smiles graciously, and after dinner the guards find his former protector in the shower, neck slit, his balls stuffed down his throat. A piece of a necklace discovered in the drain leads them to a rival gang member. He screams as they drag him off to solitary, the sound echoing off the walls, insisting the whole way there that he didn't have anything to do with it.

That night, Lionel settles down to sleep in his cell, for the last time, peacefully alone. In the morning, the guards will take him to the warden's office, and he'll sign the papers, and they'll give him back his clothes, and he'll be on his way. Out in the world again, with promises to keep.

Lex has never understood the difference between a father who just wants the best for his son and one hell-bent on destruction. But he will, very soon.