Working on his room for the next week wasn't so much distracting as it was traumatizing. Ian finished up the mud and they painted with ease, but when they got to the floor, neither of them knew how to do carpet. It was easier than putting in vinyl floors, so they went with it, but Rick was the only person who was actually house repair savvy. The man was a jack of all trades with most skills, but as the saying goes, master of none, especially not communication.

It was just a slew of gay jokes, jabs, and ear numbing vulgarity that Nathan could do without. One day, Rick went on for almost an hour about how he'd been in a foursome with another couple, with one of his kinkier marks. Marks being what he called the women he'd conned. Nathan didn't want to know half the details that escaped Rick's lips, nor the names for the positions they had sex in, but it was hard to get rid of them now.

The man talked about nothing but sex, women, and getting laid. Thankfully, putting in carpet required him to have the whole room with no one standing on it, so Nathan was able to escape for a little basketball with Rachel after they put down the nail boards. Rick said he'd get the carpet in in the next few days, so Nathan's room was almost ready to live in. All that was left after was aesthetic, some trim and final touches.

Outside of his room, he stopped by the stairs to the third floor and did some poor math in his head. Ian and Maggie had said there were five men here, but he'd only seen four. Ian, Tanner, Donovan, and Rick. There were also only four rooms down here, so someone had to be up on the third floor with whomever he hadn't met.

"Hey, Ian," Nathan called to him as he headed back into their room. They'd been about to go their separate ways since Nathan wanted to play with Donovan, Rachel, and her gang, but Nathan still needed to change. "I'm missing someone right?" Nathan asked as he dug through his dresser for something wearable. They'd ruined a few too many shirts on paint and mud. "You said there were five inmates here, but I've only ever seen four."

"Oh, you mean Julian." Ian's shoulders lifted and shuddered like someone had just run ice over them as he returned his book to the shelf. "Kid's something else. Someone left a few screws out when they constructed that one."

"Kid?" There was someone else here his age?

"Yeah, Julian's sixteen, but not someone you should fantasize about being friends with. Mags plucked him from a mental hospital, and he has special accommodations both on the third floor and downstairs. He's fucking nuts, so he's locked in his room. When I first got here, I could sometimes hear his screams at night." Ian leaned in to whisper the final words into his ear, and Nathan slapped a hand over it and backed away.

"Why was he screaming?" Nathan sputtered, and Ian laughed as he dropped a full arm on Nathan's shoulders.

"He has nightmares, but I would too if I was that deranged," said the man who was slowly running his hand down Nathan's arm as his nose fell dangerously close to his cheek. "It's pretty gruesome, even for people like us. Julian kidnapped two kids and carved them up like Halloween pumpkins, which is why he was restrained in a high-level psychiatric facility before he was brought here. It's one thing to cut people and another to meticulously carve detailed pictures into living flesh."

"I regret asking," Nathan pushed past Ian and his narrowing personal space bubble to slip into the bathroom. He locked the door and changed as fast as he could before he crawled back out and found Ian waiting for him with a smile. "Did you have more to say?" Nathan asked, his stomach turning.

"Nope, not unless you want me to compliment how your shirt looks taut on your ches–" Nathan slammed the door on Ian and intended to head for the stairs, but he came face to face with Rick instead. Dead grey eyes passed over Nathan like he was a lamb for slaughter, and Rick leaned into the hand on his hip with a smirk.

"Lovers' spat?" Rick said in his low growl. Nathan tried to push past him, but Rick grabbed his shoulder and shoved him up against the wall. "I heard you having story time. Got me interested. Do you want to know what I did?"

"Not really, but I have a feeling you're going to tell me anyway." Leave it to a man like Rick to be proud of his depravity.

"I was convicted of four counts of kidnapping, torture, rape, and murder," Rick said, his eyes sharp as steel as he waited for Nathan to respond. If he wanted him to tremble, he didn't have to work this hard. "All of which, I'm innocent of." Rick chuckled and backed off, leaving Nathan completely flabbergasted. "Kid, I am the only person in this house who has not killed someone, incidentally or intentionally. Shit, I haven't even raped anyone. The women beg for me to crawl into their beds so I've never had a need. Unfortunately, that line of reasoning was not convincing to a jury of my 'peers'. Prudes probably never had a girl beg to blow them."

"Rick, you spitting that nonsense about your innocence again?" Ian asked, leaning on the door frame to his room.

"It's not nonsense, fairy. I'm a conman, the core of which is charming. I either pamper and dote on women with affection, or I pleasure them in ways their men won't or can't. Can't squeeze a dime out of a dead chick, and if I rape them, they ain't comin' back."

"I fail to see how you con anyone with that attitude," Ian challenged, and Rick let out a breath of incredulity.

"You're all men, and I'm not a fucking queer. No reason to waste my time pretending here." Rick returned his gaze to him, and Nathan lowered his eyebrows, unsure of what he wanted. "Go play with your friends or I'll help Ian hold you down to the bed."

Ian slapped the man upside the head, and Rick cursed, but Nathan needed no more convincing to dart for downstairs. Behind him, Rick cackled as he exchanged words with Ian, but Nathan thankfully didn't catch any of them. There had been a flicker of a moment where Nathan had wondered about Rick's innocence, but then everything molded back to the man breaking things and yelling at Maggie. Rick had demonstrated that he was more than capable of depravity.

Wondering about Rick's innocence or guilt distracted him the entire time he played with Donovan and Rachel, which may or may not have mattered because he was awful at basketball. All Nathan could focus on was the dead look in Rick's eyes. The man always had it, like people were things to him, and whether or not he killed someone, a jury would see that. What if Rick was just a terrible person but not a murderer?

"You've been off today." A touch to his shoulder jolted him to Donovan's frown as they walked home together. The kindness and concern in his pitch eyes scrubbed Rick's dead look away. "Did Ian do something to you?" Donovan asked with a deepening tone of threat, and Nathan shook his head.

"No, I was just wondering about Rick. He said he was innocent."

Donovan grimaced. "That is a true waste of time. Rick is straightforward." Donovan bounced the basketball on the sidewalk and caught it with tightened muscles. "Rick cares about one person, himself. If something will benefit him, he'll lie, pretend, and deceive. Rick puts on a face like normal people put on shirts. Anything he said is most likely a lie."

"You really think so?" Something about the look in Rick's eyes had just seemed so believable, and his logic hadn't been particularly flawed either. The way he'd said it was what had been condemning.

"Something is still on your mind," Donovan said when he was abnormally quiet, and Nathan's shoulders tensed. He'd been wondering for a few days what Donovan had done to end up here. Donovan was clearly capable of injuring another person if pressured, but at the same time, he had a gentleness about him, sort of like Ian.

Nathan tried to formulate the question but failed. How could he ask the man about the darkest part of his life? It just seemed intrusive, but Ian hadn't liked it when Nathan had found out his from someone else. What option did that leave him but to ask directly? Mostly, Nathan didn't want to damage their fragile friendship. Donovan was the only person in the pen Nathan had managed to trust was waiting to traumatize him.

"If you're wondering about my crimes, I'm not innocent, nor do I claim to be," Donovan said with little emotion, though his eyes darkened before he looked away. "I killed my wife."

Nathan stopped in his tracks, but Donovan kept on walking at his slow pace, his shoulders lower than they'd been before. Donovan had talked so fondly about his son, but this made it was clear why their relationship was so strained. How could his son love the man who took his mother?

Nathan skipped a few steps to walk at Donovan's side again, but he couldn't find words. Asking why seemed insensitive, just as much as trying to pick up on a different topic, so they walked in silence for a while before Donovan let out a slow breath and spoke.

"Your mother is kind to you?" Donovan asked with a brittle smile, keeping his focus ahead as if he were talking to a ghost.

"Yeah," Nathan's throat tightened as he thought of her. Before all this, she was a really good mom. They didn't always agree or get along, but she worked two jobs and still gave him any free time she had. With everything going on, he'd been given the gift of forgetting about his own problems, and they hit him hard.

"My wife was not kind to our son." Donovan near whispered as he tucked the basketball into the crook of his arm and sank his hands into his pockets. "It struck me harder than she'd ever hit my son because I didn't find out for years. All I could think about was how I could have missed it.

"I worked a nine to five, but my position often kept me later than I wanted. Even so, I always made time for my son, Micah. We played basketball every day, even if it was by the fading light when I got back. Micah waited like an eager puppy, jumping on me as soon as I got out of the car and dragging me to the hoop at the end of our driveway." Donovan's expression lightened from his internal pain as he remembered his son fondly, and Nathan clenched his hands at his side. What if his mother no longer thought fondly of him?

"My wife never abused Micah as a child. I'd have known. I bathed him, clothed him for school, and cared for him just as much as his mother. But once they reach a certain age, they do that all on their own, which is how it slipped under the radar. Once maybe, I caught him with a bruise on his arm, but he said he'd fallen practicing for basketball.

"My son is docile, very smart, but quiet. If he said he fell, I believed him. I didn't think lying was in him, but I suppose I underestimated how far he'd go to protect his mother. I'm sure you've lied to your mother." Donovan glanced over to Nathan, and he tripped over an uneven sidewalk square.

"Well, yeah." Nathan couldn't say he'd never lied.

"You don't have to look so guilty about it," Donavan's lips lifted in a soft smile. "Children lie for any number of reasons, but people like you and Micah lie because they don't want to hurt anyone. Micah didn't want to get his mother in trouble, and I suppose he was ultimately right.

"I only found out when they took custody away from us. My wife brought him to the hospital, and abuse is fairly identifiable at a certain severity. Fourteen-year-olds don't break bones and bash their own heads in without extenuating circumstances."

"Is he okay?" Nathan asked. It was a naïve question, he realized when a shadow passed over Donovan's dark eyes. Donovan's pallor greyed, his lips fell into a deep-set frown, and his eyes sank, like the life was draining out of him as he imagined his son's well-being.

"I don't know how to quantify that." Donovan's voice came out hoarse as he ran a hand over his face. "Alive? Yes. Okay? Probably not. I haven't communicated with him once since my trial started. The prosecutors ate him up, and I never saw him again after my conviction."

"Did you never try to write?" Nathan offered as a suggestion, but none of his words affected Donovan how he expected them too. Everything he said just made Donovan's pain worse, and Nathan nearly ate his own tongue as Donovan looked up from the sidewalk with tears heavy in his eyes.

"And say what? It's a little too late for apologies, and I don't know if saying 'Micah, I forgive you for lying on the stand and saying it was me who abused you' really goes that far."

"I didn't know." Nathan looked away as tears wetted his own eyes. Whenever his mother had cried, he'd hidden himself in his room to do the same, but there was nowhere for him to hide her.

"Perhaps Micah was angry or he couldn't bring himself to say anything bad about his mother. Either way, I took both his mother and his father from him on the day I raised my hand in violence. I don't even know why she did it. I never asked." Donovan grew silent then, and Nathan's mind bounced in so many directions it was hard to pin it down.

He wanted to be angry at Donovan's son, but at the same time he didn't know how he could. Without a parent to lean on during the trial, Micah must have been so alone and frightened. Who knew what those prosecutors had said to sway his testimony or if they even cared about the truth. Nathan had learned that the courtroom was nothing but a competition of jesters, the jury nothing but a captive audience for a show that painted what the lawyers wanted them to see.

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Word count: 2484