Work Text:
The second year was the best of them all. The first was characterized by humiliations, large and small.
Stifling sobs in his cot, knowing his bunkmate was listening.
Begging Daniel over the phone not to come visit, because he didn’t want him to see his empty eye socket. His patch had been stolen that first week, and he hadn’t figured out a new covering yet. “Just come later, man, maybe like next month. I’m just settling in, you know, want to be able to have more to tell you when you visit! Plus, you need to get ready to go back to school and figure out how to convince Claire to get you a new Playbox…”
Fighting off Greg and his gang in the bathroom, cringing as his chin slammed the tile floor. Bit off a chunk of his own tongue and chipped a tooth, the right canine, its point gone. But they left him there, after, because before he’d lost the tooth, he’d managed to dig it deep into Greg’s hand.
But then the next day, he’d come back to his bunk and found his sketchbook burned to ash on his bed. He got a shot for damaging property, lost a week of outdoor rec time. But Daniel still had his old sketchbook. Nothing to mourn, really, losing a steno pad full of dark scribbles and angsty drawings of prison bars.
The sentence, in the end, wasn’t too bad, either. Kevin was a good lawyer, though a pain in the ass. Probably a good lawyer because he’s a pain in the ass. Got the murder charge down to manslaughter, thanks to an investigation into the “explosion”. That was 8 years, then the grand theft auto charge, two more years for evading arrest, managed to fend off a bullshit kidnapping charge, and then another 5 for the pot farm. 15 years, less time served. As a known flight risk, he’d sat in jail for the entire year of the trial. He couldn’t blame anyone for that one. After the first night in jail, he probably would’ve tried one last time for the border.
Best of all, Daniel got nothing. Free, and without even a bad mark on his record. Could’ve been a lot worse.
Yeah, year 2 was easiest. He called Daniel twice a week, Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. The call always cut off before they finished, but at this point goodbyes weren’t necessary. Their phone calls were one long conversation, interrupted but unending. Mostly Sean let Daniel talk, and his excited yammering about what he did with Chris that weekend or his least favorite new teacher or how Claire wouldn’t stop making him eat Brussel sprouts was like medicine. It was salvation, for real this time.
He and Karen exchanged letters, a funny turn of events that he would’ve never imagined in his life. Exchanging letters between prisons with his formerly deadbeat, currently incarcerated mom. Fucked up that it took jail sentences to get her to write, but it was ok. They were figuring it out, and there wasn’t a point to holding a grudge. She took all the heat for the church fire, adding up to 8 years for the arson and assault.
It was in May of year 2 that he got his first letter from Lyla. It was angry, furious actually, but it still made his heart leap every time he read it again. She was angry the way she’d been angry when he blew off her birthday that one year to go to the Strokes show with Jenn and her friends. Or the way she’d been angry when he broke her skateboard trying to grind it down a rail. It wasn’t angry like forever-angry. He was expecting forever-angry, like never-speak-to-me-again angry or you’re-a-murdering-piece-of-shit angry. Not you’re-an-idiot-and-it’s-gonna-take-me-a-long-time-to-get-over-this angry. All he had was time, and he was happy to use it making up everything to Lyla. For ghosting her, for breaking her heart, for scaring her. For getting 15 years. For not letting her help him. He sent back nearly ten pages of crinkled yellow steno pages, filled front and back, trying to explain and trying to make jokes and trying to make her smile with sketches and cartoons. He signed it Love, Sean and though her next letter was short, she said she’d write more soon and she signed it “Love” too.
Keeping his head down seemed like the right approach at first, but he learned fast that making friends in prison is key. He met Peter the second year. Peter reminded Sean of Finn in some ways, with his face tats and his sort of fake chillness. He was in for grand theft auto, and he was into cars the way dad had been. They had joked about their charges—Sean for hotwiring one car, Peter for snagging his stepmom’s Corvette keys and crashing the thing into a river. Peter had 5 years. His stepmom had been a real bitch about the whole thing.
Peter was into working out, too, which made a big difference that second year. His older brother ran a Crossfit gym and Peter liked to pretend he knew a lot about it, like any good younger brother. He and Sean would run through WODs three times a week, with whatever materials they could find. Without the space to run, Sean’s body changed from lean and light to bulkier and heavier. Not a bad look for prison, though. The facial hair that started coming in for the first time in California was denser and more even now, and he let it grow out. Between all that and his missing eye, he looked a lot meaner than the dumb kid he thought of himself as. He didn’t get another tattoo until his 5th year, but Cassidy’s wolf on his forearm lent to the image, too.
On Sean’s eighteenth birthday, Daniel, Claire, and Stephen came to visit. Daniel was taller and had shaved his hair short. He was looking and acting more teenaged every day. His letters had taken on a bitter note, as he chafed under his grandparent’s rules. He proudly wrote about stealing cigarettes from Chris’ dad and smoking them in the tree house, calling Chris’ dad a drunk and an asshole.
Sean finished his GED that year and sent the certificate to Daniel, who had started skipping school and gotten suspended for an incident involving the principal’s car being moved to the roof. They weren’t sure how it was Daniel’s fault, but were sure enough that it must be. Daniel sent back a photoshopped picture of Sean in a cap and gown, courtesy of Chris. Three months later, he mailed Sean a report card with mostly As and Bs, one C with an accompanying unflattering sketch by Chris of Mrs. Neilhouse.
It was later on in year 3 that things got hard again. His mantra from year two had been “Maybe I can get through this.” It seemed like hopeful optimism, like a positive attitude through hard times. In year three, it was a grim resignation. “I’m going to have to get through this” as the walls closed in and thirteen more years stretched out before him.
Sean wasn’t a kid anymore and the other inmates didn’t take him for one. Mornings spent working in the laundry room bled into afternoons spent reading in his cot bled into workouts in the rec yard, interrupted by occasional explosions of violence, occasional days of solitude. It was surprisingly easy to stay out of gang problems if you kept your head down and did what you were told to, but that wasn’t always Sean’s best skill set.
By year 3, staying scared of the tougher guys had lost its utility. And Sean had lost his patience with them. That year, it was a fight he started that got him into solitary for two weeks. His fear had congealed into rage, and Sean spent that whole third year furious.