Disclaimers: OZ is owned by Levinson/Fontana, Rysher, Viacom and prolly some other people. I'm just playing.
Pairing: Beecher/Keller
Rating: NC-17 for filthy smut.
Feedback: Bring it on, baby! Fire at: rustlerdude@gmail.com
Notes: This is...hmm. Well, I don't know what the hell this is, but thanks to Linda for reading it over anyway.

Cells

Start, wake, cry out thrashing. Bolt up, caught. Tangled. Where? God! Fuck.

Here. Still here.

Still...here, with the abrasive scratch of low thread count sheets against my cold-sweat damp skin. Shudder then, as it catches up to me physically, heart hammering, hands shaking. Not Kathy, this time. I don't think, but who the hell even knows anymore the way they all blend together sometimes, one failure into the next. A blur of futility.

"Toby?" Chris' sleep-roughened voice rises from the bunk below. "You okay?"

No. Hell no, I need to get out. Out of here, out of my head, away from the voices. The fucking, goddamned, nonstop voices: nagging, berating, criticizing. Shut them up, for once. Please. Find some peace for a few damned hours.

"Uh, yeah," I mutter, peeling the covers back from my sticky legs. Jump down to the floor and go to the sink to splash a little water on my face, try to shake off the nightmare, the feeling. But I can't. Turn around, lean back against the sink and look at Chris. I want to just go to him but am held back by my own inertia. My own fear.

"C'mere." A sleepily flung arm, reaching in my direction, and even though I feel a little guilty for disturbing his rest, it's not enough to stop me from approaching once invited. From sitting on the edge of his bed and accepting a hand on my knee. "S'okay." He pats me a couple of times, then says it again, softly, "s'okay."

Of course, it's not okay. Nothing has been okay since the day I careened into Kathy Rockwell and knocked the life from her body with one sickening Toyota-driven thump. It's been one long fucking nightmare since then, both waking and sleeping, with no end in sight.

But Chris is doing his best. It's kind of him. Or something like that.

"I..." Words won't seem to form on my rubberized tongue.

Chris reaches up to stroke my cheek, and I lean in to his bunk to stretch out beside him, sighing with relief at the contact, huddling into the pocket of warmth surrounding his body.

The lack of touch is probably the cruelest punishment in this place. Cut off from comfort, it seems sometimes like the only reminders of humanity we get in Oz, the proof, is what pours out in pools of blood. It makes me glad, in this respect at least, that Chris has never been bothered much by rules. That he dares to steal what we want out of the night.

I want now.

He's still not really awake, and how he can sleep like that, so normally, in here never ceases to amaze me. Of course, he's spent a lot more nights in places like this than I have.

I reach for him, hands going automatically to his waist, sliding down past the elastic of his briefs. I barely have to touch him, he's so tuned for sex. I can feel, as much as hear his groan as I take his cock in my hand, pulling him longer and thicker with each stroke.

Rousing and arousing all at the same time, Chris turns into me with a big, sexy stretch, and I almost miss the sly quirk at the corner of his mouth as his arms come around me, tightening down suddenly to catch me in a warm vise.

"You lookin' for something, Tobe?"

Arms trapped, I push my thigh forward to nudge at his groin, feeling his dick now pressed at full attention against cotton rib.

"Think I found it, thanks."

"Good." And his voice has gone husky, eyes dark, wisecracks discarded. He's awake now. He wants to fuck.

We both turn our heads, almost at the same instant, towards the outer wall of the pod, ears cocked, listening for hacks, eyes straining into the semidarkness for signs of movement along the corridor or at the central station. Should be all right for the moment, but who the hell knows how long...

We do steal this. Quick and quiet, cramped and hidden in the shadows. Masking our movements, smothering our cries. It's never relaxed, or leisurely. Sometimes I catch myself in odd, sentimental moments, wondering what it would be like to be able to roll Chris' incredible body in expensive sheets and just blow a day in bed, glorying in him. I know it's silly. Stupid. If we weren't in Oz, thrown together by fate and bad judgment, I wouldn't ever even know Chris at all. Unless, what, he held up the out-of-neighborhood convenience store where I was buying a covert six-pack and happened to take me hostage.

Anyway, I don't want relaxed, or leisurely. Not tonight.

Chris gets down to business, tugging me into a kiss. It's one of those gear-stripping, breath-robbing Keller classics: a zero-to-sixty, hot, wet, fuck-me-now hotwired jumpstart that leaves me headspun, stubble-burned and panting for more. I chase after his mouth when he breaks off the kiss, hands scrabbling against his chest, trying to pull him back to me. But he's already on to other things, leaving me hanging, aching for another taste. He knows exactly what he's doing, the bastard, and I fucking love him for it.

He grabs at my t-shirt like it's annoying, in the way, yanks it off over my head and arms roughly. My boxers and his briefs get the same treatment, and when we settle back in, with the musky rub of skin against skin, he growls approvingly and gives me another kiss, finally, totally, diving hard and deeply into my mouth. I get lost in the heat and rhythm of the kiss, by the sensuous stroke of Chris' tongue against mine. He makes it so damned easy.

He pulls away again, and when I start to protest he laughs. "Roll over," he says, returning with the small jar of Vaseline we keep stashed under the corner of his mattress. Chris pats the flat of his palm against his pillow, and when I start to turn, he grabs me from behind, wrapping his arms tight across my chest and sinking his teeth into the top of my shoulder, sharp enough to sting.

And for all the doubts I still have about Chris, for all of my rational desire not to want this from him -- he hurt me, broke me, he's a liar, and a killer, and I should know better -- for all of that, he can do this for me, what nothing else ever really could. Not Gen, not booze, not smack, not madness. Chris can take me there.

It's his weapon, and his gift.

So, what are lies? Next to this mindless nerve-tripped spaceflight, where all I can do is lock down and hang on for the ride, pumped so full of raw heat that nothing else gets through? And what's trust? But Chris' muscular weight settling heavy against my back, pinning me reassuringly, helplessly down, an anchor against the hysterical bucking rush of lust, and guilt, and fear.

"Yeah, just let me feel you... please."

"Anything for you, baby." His voice is warm, soft, seductive in my ear as his hands continue to stroke across my body. "Everything. You know that, hmm? You want me to fuck you now, Toby? You need to get fucked?"

I manage a wordless nod, then he's biting me again, scoring hard, sucking kisses against my skin that make me squirm and gasp until I have to turn my face down into the pillow to muffle the piteously vulnerable sounds of need.

Nothing, no one, has ever made me feel like this.

His fingers, two, blunt but slick, curved just right, press inside me, and I close my eyes in anticipation of the real fire I've been waiting for. The fingers withdraw and his hands are on my hips, hard and strong, correcting my angle. When I feel the head of his cock, rubbing slow and warm against my hole, it's all I can do not to just shove back, impaling myself on him. Finally he begins to press forward in one long, hot, thick, greased slide that makes my eyes roll back in my head as I focus on the stretching pain, willing myself to breathe, open, relax.

"Yeah, like that, just like that," I manage to gasp out between pants, hand reaching back sliding across his skin, slick now with sweat, trying to grab onto him, guide him, pull him in. More, want more, need more...

"Shh...I've got you," Chris whispers, placing a steadying hand on the small of my back. His voice is gentle, but holds an unspoken command: Quit fighting. Stop trying to control this. Give it up. And unbidden tears of relief squeeze from the corners of my eyes as I finally relax and let him take me.

Chris begins to move again, almost unbearably slowly at first, like he's testing me, but that doesn't last for long. He likes to fuck me too much to turn this into some stupid power struggle, not while he's balls-deep inside me, with my entire body practically begging him to just pound me into oblivion.

It's a strange circle that comes to a close in this. How I've learned to crave this particular intimacy, the unequivocal truth of a dick fucking my ass. Blotting out the dread and terror of Schillinger's ugly violations and feeling only Chris' consuming desire for me, the drive in him, to convince me of his love, win me over, show me how it can be different. And right now, I don't even wonder why.

His left hand slides low across my belly, reaching to wrap around my own neglected, aching cock. I can't hold back a groan as he begins to jerk me off in time with his strokes, harder, faster, and harder still, slamming into me and around me until I'm so completely fucked I almost feel like laughing.

Soaring. High. Finally, finally pounded right the hell out of my own stupid head and into this gorgeous, swirling space behind my eyes, just him and me, easy and obvious. And at the moment I would risk anything -- the hacks, the cage, the hole, gen pop, death-fucking-row -- for the feel of Chris' body moving inside of me. For his iron-fisted grip on my cock, pumping me with ruthless, relentless, perfect strokes, hurtling me towards the edge until...there , yes, God, there... And just for a moment we escape Oz, as Chris growls and bucks against my back, burying his load in my ass while his hand rips the first spray of come from my swollen cock, and orgasm pours and pulses through my body like sweet, warm sunshine.

And suddenly, this thing, whatever it is that exists between us, this connection, feels open and sure. How can it not be true? The voices are silenced, and I am content. Chris helps me roll onto my side, then spoons around me, arm draped heavily across my chest, as he reaches strong fingers to lace through mine. "Love you, Toby," he whispers, rubbing and scattering soft kisses against my shoulders, my neck, the side of my face. He squeezes me hard. "So fucking much." He holds me there, like that, for as long as we dare.

But the respite is all too brief. Even the all-out sensory mayhem of a Keller fucking wears off sooner or later. And when the veil lifts, I'm back here again. Neatly vacuum sealed into the false sterility of Emerald City -- the scuttling sound of rats in the night giving lie to the artificial purity of all that plexi and steel.

I shift in Chris' arms, and realize he's already fallen back asleep. I watch him a moment, appreciating the power of his body, even relaxed. He seems unreal to me suddenly, all of this does. Except, of course, that I'm the one who's unreal. Who I was, what I had. Before.

I'm startled by a noise, the rap of a hack's flashlight banging on the door a few pods down. The sound snaps me back to reality completely, and I slip out of Chris' grasp as gently but quickly as I can. And sneaking furtively like the criminal I am, I creep back to my own bed, alone, to wait out phony dawn.

—FIN—