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ezlebe · 2 years

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Tomgreg prison era?

4-11

Dear Thomas Wambsgans –

Tom blinks at the flowy script and formal address, then reaches out and grabs the envelope… Yeah, it says it’s from Greg. He unfolds out the rest of the paper and it says Sincerely, Gregory Hirsch too.

He furrows his brow, wondering if this is something weird spear phishing scam by letter. It’s really bizarre, if so, but clearly it is working.

Dear Thomas Wambsgans,

The food here is dreadful. I finally understand your concerns, and have now had them realized, from our visit to the diner in Washington DC. It is worse than –

Okay, so it’s probably Greg, but is he… roleplaying? Did he dictate this aloud for some crook secretary to apply pen to paper, too?

– when we went, I fear, as it seems to be entirely processed and I had forgotten the odd rubber texture to powder egg. It is even worse than the MREs that I once found on my grandfather’s ranch and sustained myself with for a week. Is the food for you also of subpar quality? I have been curious to know if mine is worse due to being in the state of Florida, where it is very hot and damp.

The other occupants here are surprisingly cordial, though there have been some friendly joshes toward my height, but it is no worse than any of the family. I do think I may have to learn Spanish. I have found a single fellow inmate who speaks French, but it is in an incomprehensible dialect called Cajun, which I previously believed only to be a type of food. I have struck up something of an acquaintanceship with this man, if only to irk those around us.

Sincerely, Gregory Hirsch

“Oh, buddy,” Tom mutters, covering a smile with a tight palm and exhaling a broken laugh into it. He drops the letter to cover his eyes with that hand, mortified at the burn behind them. It’s a nothing letter – it’s just… Greg sounding sort of like Greg, complaining about eggs, and third languages, and… and very deliberately reaching out to him.

Fuck. He’s so fucking happy thatit’s really just disgusting.

Tom reaches out and grabs the envelope, again, scanning his eyes across the address. He has no idea what he’s going to write back, except maybe to tell Greg that his French is fake, too.

Greg,

We’re not in a period drama. You’re okay to write to me like a real person.

The food here sucks, too. I would’ve taken you out to more dives, but let’s be real your affection for crappy chain food prepared you better than I ever could for it. If you repeat this, I’ll kill you, but I actually don’t mind powder eggs. They remind me of camping with the scouts.

My only real stumble here so far is this guy in for corporate fraud talking to me like he knows Connor. It’s bonkers. He doesn’t actually know him, right, because he thinks knowing him makes him more respectable in here. It does not. You would think him seeing me in here would make it plain as day that being in the Roy circle is meaningless, and yet.

How you doing, otherwise? I know you need a precise measure of water and shade like a delicate, fussy flower.

–Tom

It takes about a week and a half to get a reply to a letter, which is maybe quick for moving a physical object a thousand or so miles, but is just horrific on Tom’s anxiety. He feels like a wartime widow, attending the mail drop and regularly disappointed, wondering if the last letter was the last. It’s just about the time he starts thinking he’s said something wrong, too, Greg has finally realized he shouldn’t be writing Tom, a new one shows up, easing his worries in a way almost like its own clockwork.

6-05

Dear Thomas,

I do not believe I was ever meant to take residence in Florida. It is very hot and humid, which is very manageable for visits, but I recall believing New York was too much, and this is far, far worse. I am beginning to feel like a slug. It is not allowed to simply stay in bed, but I fear that I will one day wake stuck to it.

I’ve been trying to do exercise since I arrived, but I dislike it, especially now that my body seems to be attempting to melt, so I’ve moved on to other pursuits. A good number of other inmates do not hold any regard for the less physical activities available to us –

Tom nearly covers his face, but settles for pinching the bridge of his nose; good lord, Greg is really playing at being such a dandy. Is it a psychological thing? He’s claimed it isn’t, but Tom really has no way to know, a whole country away.

– at all. I enjoy them, though. It is much better to be assigned an indoor detail, as well, than to be stuck outside toiling with a bunch of rude oafs who think height equals shares of physical labor.

Tom gives up and breaks into a laugh, dropping the letter to cover his mouth with both hands in attempt to muffle it.

A clear of a throat, which Tom had been avoiding, comes from behind him. “You good, Tom?”

“I think…” Tom sighs, dragging his hands down his face with a forceful swallow. “My only friend in the world has been driven insane by coke withdrawal.”

“…That can happen?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Tom says, as he picks the letter back up with a careful straightening of the paper. “But he’s weirder than ever.”

I have been unable to get any concrete answers about disease prevention to answer your question about the mosquitos. I was, however, informed that only twenty percent of people show outward symptoms of West Nile, so I may, in fact, have already had it?

How are your call out duties and activities among other inmates? I know that was something you were exceedingly worried about, and my experience so far in that is the warning was some measure exaggerated. It is not an amazing experience, nor one I would ever welcome, but now approaching my third month I have suffered the most of boredom. Your letters have bolstered me greatly, in that respect, as I keep them to reread when the impulse strikes me, which is often.

I also hope you’re doing well.

Sincerely, Gregory Hirsch

Tom furrows his brow, as a flush streaks across his nose. He presses his thumb against the word reread, covering and uncovering it, and tries not to think too much about the small, if growing stack of letters now well memorized on his own time.

Greg,

I hate to say it buddy but I’m not surprised you’re an indoors activity guy. I can actually see you running around with a little moleskine and a pen, though if it’s for secrets or pictures, who’s really to know?

I’ve been running and working out a lot, actually, so maybe it’s better we were separated by a spiteful, nasty old man of your blood relation. I’d have made you tag along to my free time whenever I get too cooped up and antsy, which is all the time, Greg. It is literally every day. I wish the unit staff here would assign me go out and do something awful and back-breaking outside, but I think they think I’m too soft and old, which is obviously its own insult.

I’m saving your letters for my tell-all book, so I hope you don’t expect anything to be forgotten. The world is going to know about the oatmeal thing and how you don’t know the capital of any US states, as well as the fact that you write to me like a lunatic in immaculate cursive. You’re going to get nothing but fountain pens and calligraphy sets, as gifts, from now on.

They better have bug spray in that commissary. I do not want you getting a brain disease and croaking out there on me. I would hate to have the entire state of Florida ruined for me by a mosquito.

– Tom

“You got two from your lovely lady friend.”

Tom eyes Carter shuffling the letters like cards. “I know it says Greg.”

Carter demonstratively sniffing at the edges, pretending to look inside, generally just fondling Greg’s fucking letter, which is a bold move for a forger built like Roger Rabbit. “Don’t smell any perfume on it…”

“I know it also says FPC Pensacola,” Tom says, injecting every ounce of deliberate pleasantness that he can spare.

Carter pulls back and looks at the front of the envelope. He grunts and throws both at Tom. “Shit, so it does. I didn’t think that was allowed?”

Tom narrows his eyes, then glances down to the letters, as Carter fucks off to the next person in line. He turns them over in his hands by the corners, waiting until the unit is let loose, and decides forcefully not to ask. He doesn’t want to know if he’s got strings pulled without him knowing, until it matters; ignorance, at this point, is bliss.

Tom pulls out the first postmarked with a tense tug. He’s not sure why Greg would send two so close – he usually waits for a reply.

Tom! I saw an alligator!! It was like both bigger and smaller than assumed!

Tom raises an eyebrow, then flips over the page to a blank back.

Alright.

He reaches out for the next envelope, more careful at the twice over sealed seam.

8-16

Dear Thomas,

Okay, that’s more familiar. Evidently, the alligator was just exciting enough Greg forgot he’s pretending to be a Victorian.

It’s been a day and I have seen to send a formal letter.

I have weathered a small actual hurricane, but I just believed it a bad storm at the time. The water level rose high, but, thankfully, it did not outright flood. It was less intimidating an experience than I had assumed it would be after watching films on the subject. The hurricanes, evidently, do not get quite so bad in general and are most often a lot of rain and wind.

The alligator was roughly two meters in length and hissed quite loudly when it was woken, but did not make any other move. My fellow inmate Lou told me that the creature was simply sunning itself after the storm. He also informed me that they are cocodrie in his French and they can get much larger, but that they’re lazy. In return, I told him about orignal and that I would not have approached one so closely to the fence.

Are you still well? I do not know what August is like in Minnesota.

I have recently been considering the end of my stay here. I know you are sentenced for nearly twice as long, but do you think that I might see you before then? Our lawyer has said that it may be easiest to find out by trying to put my name on the list after my release in November.

Yours, Gregory Hirsch

Tom reads the last paragraph twice before he believes his eyes, sure he’s misreading something in Greg’s flowy, perfect cursive script. He curls against his dinky desk, into his elbow, and folds the letter up while swallowing thickly against emotion balling up at the base of his throat. He sets both letters with the others, then closes the drawer, ignoring impulse to take it back out to read a third time.

He wants to see Greg so much that it sits behind his sternum with all the comfort of the head of a morning star, but… it’s hard to believe that the sentiment might be returned, let alone enough to ask about it. He might just be being polite – it’s far more likely that their lawyer floated the idea out of bias.

Greg,

I can’t believe you saw a dinosaur when I haven’t even seen a deer. I’m relieved you were okay during the hurricane, though, and every other storm. It sounds like a lot of water to be dealing with and I don’t envy it. Stay safe. You can probably survive any flooding by standing up, but I don’t think we want to test it.

The worst August weather up here is just a little rain. I haven’t even had to deal with it much. The winter is in a couple months and that’s going to really suck the energy out of everything. I can’t wait to feel like I’m in fifth grade and forced to go outside for recess again. I bet you’re familiar with the feeling, though I’ve never thought to ask where you went to school? The one I went to was private and still made us do it, but maybe Canada doesn’t allow that shit.

It’s no problem to try to get you on the list, but check in before you actually make any detour on your welcome home tour. I’d really love to see you, but you’ll have spent enough time in a prison, Greg, to ever walk willingly into another one.

What the flying fuck is an orignal?

– Tom

10-23

My Dearest Thomas,

Tom flips the upper third of the letter down and sets a flat look out the window. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times that he tells Greg to write like he was born in 1988, not 1788, he just won’t because he thinks it’s fun, the nut, and now it is just getting ridiculous.

All Hallows’ Eve approaches! I am most excited. I don’t believe that the camp will do anything monumental for the holiday, but I have sketched some decorations for the letter. The seasons are most odd in Florida, as well; I have been put on a garden detail and, because they do not have winter, they are still growing food. I enjoy it! It is a much better experience doing this under the direction of the faculty here than my grandfather, who had much patience for plants and little to spare elsewhere.

Tom didn’t actually need any confirmation that Ewan was basically a warden, but good to know he’s worse. He wonders, as well, if Greg is predisposed to entire conversations with plants; he seems the type. The little thinking pumpkins in the letter margins just sort of support the idea.

I have also sketched out one of the blossoms on the back from a zucchini. I find they are quite pretty. I was informed by a CO that they can be stuffed with ricotta and fried to be eaten, and I told him that sounded like something you might enjoy more than me. He said then that I must make them, but I believe that would be better left to you, as well.

I only have a month left, as of today! I cannot wait for the opportunity to see you. The letters are sustaining, but hardly satisfying enough compared to actual company.

Our lawyer has urged me that I should prepare for the cold and I was forced to remind her that I am from Canada; however, she then informed me that Toronto is, in all fact, south of both Twin Cities and Duluth. I never thought to look. I doubt still that it is all that bad.

Ever Yours, Gregory Hirsch

Tom stares at the closing for a beat, a reluctant grin twisting his mouth while he huffs through his nose. He flips the page over and studies the drawn flower, wilted and certainly somewhat lifelike, featuring faint lines and shading, and realizes Greg must be practicing a lot. He probably won’t be sending many more letters, tripping back into real life, but Tom hopes that Greg continues the artsy hobby. He’s not half bad at it. He’s like a little amateur naturist; a burgeoning, trapped Monet.

Greg,

Your cartoon pumpkins are very dark, thinking about being carved into pieces. I’m surprised the administration let the letter through at all, hah. Duluth isn’t doing Halloween, either, but there is a CO who started wearing cat eye contact lenses and it just comes off as a painfully dorky rebellion. It reminds me of Tyler the assistant with the Felix clock on his cubicle.

It’s now getting a bit colder and the leaves are turning, too. I expect meals are only going to get worse, from here, so I’m happy someone is going to be getting vitamin c even if it isn’t me. I hear a lot of rumor about hydroponics around here, but I don’t believe anyone is relating it to food. If you like the gardening, though, you should keep it up, so you’ll be prepared for when the world ends and we’re reduced to agrarian pursuits. I’ll do the hunting part.

I’ve noticed you’re collecting hobbies. A quick learner with a curse. What I’m saying is the flower is really well drawn, buddy, as in actually lifelike. I didn’t know you were such an artist.

I have heard of frying them, some Italian thing, but never tried it. It’s probably really crispy and greasy, so I wouldn’t dismiss to so quick for yourself. In a similar weird Italian thing, they do their own songbird, but from what I’ve seen, it is a bit too much even for me.

I miss you, too. I admit I asked about you and our lawyer said to my face she only uses you as an excuse to visit Florida. She doesn’t even It’s just rude.

– Tom

++++

“Wambsgans, visitor,” the CO says, jerking his head toward the visitor building with a flat expression. “Greg Hirsch.”

“What – Really?” Tom says, shocked that – well, Greg is even in the state so soon, since he was scheduled to be released only something like three days ago, but also that he got through the visitor screening process. It seems whoever is signing off on those is either a moron, letting in his accomplice, or the opposite of one, and knows Greg and he can’t exactly duplicate or plan any other version of their crime. …Or, more likely, his lawyer pulled strings. “Oh, I – ” he looks down at his rumpled uniform, suddenly feeling almost naked in it. “Okay.”

He enters the visitors room at the behest of another, more familiar, CO called Maria, and promptly forgets her and the rest of the bland room at the sight of Greg hovering near one of the bolted, tacky tables. His hair is longer, maybe having gone entirely uncut since the day they got stuck in their respective camps, and he’s hunched as ever, big round eyes staring back at Tom.

It’s tempting to do the crazy thing and piledrive Greg into the ground and never let him go, but Tom takes the sensible and sane choice to simply speedwalk to the table. He gets close enough and Greg jumps him, anyway, squeezing the life from him while Tom clumsily, hurriedly grabs back.

“Tom,” Greg murmurs in his ear.

“Hey, buddy,” Tom answers, softly, bracing his hands on Greg’s back with a hard swallow. He closes his eyes for a brief pair of moments, holding his breath and pretending they’re anywhere else. “Long time no see.”

Greg hums a vague response, a petulant grumble escaping his lips when Tom gently pulls away before a CO can come peel him off. It’s a whiny, spoiled little noise that Tom missed so much.

“You were really that eager to get back into another prison, huh?” Tom asks, settling across the table from Greg and ignoring another plain stupid idea to reach out for Greg’s hands to make themselves a summoning circle of two. It’s not like a hug; he’s never held Greg’s hand.

Greg sweeps some overlong hair behind his ear, leaning into the table with a shrug.

Tom is just struck dumb by the fact Greg is sitting in front of him. He’s solid and real and here, and Tom needs to do more than just stare at him. “Florida for eight months and not even a tan?”

Greg grins and stretches out his arms to look at the pale backs of them. “I guess not?”

“You doing okay?” Tom asks, glancing over Greg from his bulky sweater to his obviously new jeans, ankles exposed to the air with a shock of white socks underneath. “No yawning distress, or whatever? I assume you got the benefits coming in.”

“Yeah, your, uh – your mom is really nice? Like still. She said she would help me find a place.”

“A place? Oh.” Tom swallows hard in shock, because it almost sounds like Greg plans to… to stay in Minnesota? “Huh… You might want to watch that. Her taste leans toward art deco – Oh no, wait… that’s you.”

Greg breaks into a laugh, shaking his head and suddenly ducking it into his chest. His long-fingered hands flex against each other on the table, making it more tempting than ever to reach out and take them.

“There’s this… Frank Lloyd Wright service station, not far from here,” Tom says, unsure where he’s really pointing when he flicks his fingers toward the wall across from them, but it could be close to Cloquet. “It’s based on that sort of thing. You should go gawk.”

“Or, maybe, we do that when you get out?” Greg says, quietly, looking up under his brows with a small shrug. “It’ll like… you know, be better. You could tell me about it.”

“Yeah?” Tom swallows hard against a swell in his throat, heat blazing across the back of his neck. “I haven’t actually been there.”

“I bet it’s pretty cool,” Greg says, smiling back, flicking his fingers in a similar direction. “For like a – a gas station.”

“A service station, Greg, which goes the extra mile,” Tom says, raising his brows while leaning across the table with a hum. “Full service.”

“No, yeah,” Greg laughs, again, smiling wide, as he nods his head. “Sure.”

Tom takes another few seconds to stare, rudely indulging himself and prepared to blame his circumstances. It’s the prison that’s doing it – he’s just lost all his social graces. “So is… Mommy’s just dragging you around the Twin Cities?”

“Kind of?” Greg says, narrowing his eyes a bit with a wincing sort of smile. “She had me help do some shredding at her office yesterday, after we flew up? I think as, like, a joke?”

“Oh my god,” Tom mutters, rolling his eyes toward the windows and more than a bit exasperated, but not that all that surprised. “Don’t tell me that.”

“She said she’d pay me, actually,” Greg says, outright overeager, as he relays this baffling bit of news. “If I wanted a job? But I couldn’t tell if she was serious. She reminds me sort of, uh, of you, when she’s not like being my lawyer.”

“Embarrassing, right,” Tom says, scoffing through his nose with a weak laugh. “I’m glad you’re getting along.”

Greg sweeps his hair out of his face, again, smiling somewhat under his fingers. “Yeah, like… I’m glad, too.”

The conversation drifts, almost awkwardly, but not uncomfortably, like neither of them know what to say, but don’t want to leave. It goes on like that, anyway, until a CO breaks in with an announcement and Greg does straighten with a glance at the clock. It suddenly feels like it hasn’t been any time at all.

“So, I was looking – um, at the rules?” Greg says, lifting his head with a nod at the station behind Tom, though there isn’t any sign to that effect behind him. “And you get like unlimited time but only like eight total, right? Per month. So like I could split it with your family, or whatever, but that could be, like… two visits a week?”

“That is math, buddy,” Tom says, forcing himself to look up into Greg’s eyes while he raises his brows high up his forehead with forced levity. “You want to stick it out here that long?”

“Yeah, I – I mean if that’s okay?”

“Of course, Greg, I would love it, if you stayed, it’s just – ” Tom lowers his voice, making sure to put a taunting pull at his lips. “This is Minnesota. It’s dead boring.”

“I like lived in New Brunswick as a kid in the summers, you know?” Greg says, though Tom had certainly not known, but that’ll be an explanation asked for later. “It’s like way more boring.”

“But…” Tom rises out of his chair slower than Greg; no matter what Greg thinks he’s going to do, there’s a chance this is the last time Tom sees him. “…No hard feelings if you run back to New York, alright?”

“You totally would have a lot of them, Tom,” Greg disagrees, as a grin pulls somewhat mocking at his lips. “But I’m, like – I’m not going to. That’s why I’m here.”

“Sure,” Tom says, offering a shrug that he’s sure would look less stiff on a Buckingham Palace guard. “If you say so.”

“Like, it’s like… like how you wrote you’d have to go down to Florida?” Greg says, while his hands swing to briefly tap at either edge of his now-vacant chair. “If I ended up doing something that got me stuck down there longer. Remember? When I stole oatmeal. It was something like… you’d go down to Pensacola to give me a reason to keep on-target?”

Tom feels his eyes go wide, startled at the baldfaced mention of a, until now, gone unmentioned lack of subtlety on Tom’s part that should’ve been left that way out of politeness. “So what, Greg? You know that’s not just…” He reaches up and scratches at the heat bursting across his jaw, heart thumping heavily in his chest. “It’s not the same. That coming from me.”

“Or, uh…” Greg shrugs smally into a shoulder with another nod. “Maybe it is.”

Tom only barely manages a punched out breath: “Oh.”

“Uh… uh… anyway, I’ll be back Saturday,” Greg says, taking a hasty backward step and nodding, then looking down with a hitch when he nearly flattens someone’s kid. “With y-your mom, maybe?”

“Okay, buddy,” Tom says, lifting a hand to wave by rote. He drops it slowly back to his side, as Greg slips out the door behind some group of other visitors. He sighs hard through his nose, biting at the inside of his lip and muttering against it. “Fuck.”

“Hey, man,” Neal says, stage whispering from two tables over. He’s an insider trader with a rumored few hundred mil stashed away somewhere that everyone knows about, because he won’t shut up about it. “Was that rumor true about you two bumping uglies the whole damned time?”

“No,” Tom says, annoyed to hear his voice lift, as he keeps staring at the door and shoving down hard on the impulse to do something really stupid, like try to follow. “I was married.”

“Huh. You think I don’t hear that ‘was’?” Neal says, with a hum that leads into a quiet click of his tongue. “I will say this, man? He did not look that tall on the TV.”

“No?” Tom says, looking over with a sneer building across his lips.

“You two make each other look normal size,” Neal says, offering an unkind gesture with a back and forth sweep of his hand at two evident levels. “You have my endorsement. You got to be with someone who makes you look less like a freak.”

“Golly gee, thank you,” Tom says, flatly, rolling his eyes back to the door. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

A sharp clear of the throat comes from behind Tom. “Are we conspiring, gentleman?”

“With this guy? Our resumes don’t line up,” Neal scoffs, which is… insulting but sort of true, since he actually made money off trade schemes, while Tom fell on a sword and jammed another person on top of himself and it for good measure. “But did you see his boy? He could play for the Knicks.”

“I did see that,” Maria says, tilting her head in the same direction. “He didn’t look that tall on PGN.”

Neal raises his brows. “That’s what I’m saying.”

Tom folds the Funyuns bag, half and half over again, empty now after Greg offered it as the standard fare. “So you really like the work – are you looking into becoming the worlds largest paralegal?”

“The whole job is, you know, interesting, seeing it from the other side, but –” Greg leans forward, as his eyes go wide with a marked sparkle of excitement. “The – like, the best part is reading all the horrible things people did.”

Tom rolls his eyes. “Oh god, your insatiable snoop monster is finally being sated.”

“I guess?” Greg says, sweeping his ever-growing hair behind both his ears with his hands. “The worst so far is this guy who admitted to your mom he totally burned up a company car, but she had to convince everyone it got stolen.”

“Wow,” Tom says, lowering his voice with a glance toward the observing CO utterly ignoring them. “Burned it?”

“I guess he was super unhappy at his job?” Greg says, with a small shrug of a single shoulder up against his ear. “I never would’ve done that – I like having stuff too much.”

Tom snorts hard, as he leans back away, grudgingly putting some space between them for his next question. “I know you do. Speaking of… How was your New Years thing? Aside for your scheduling issues.”

It probably didn’t go great, because no Roy function ever does, but there has to be some reason Greg came back to Minnesota, afterward, rather than sending Tom some Dear John about sticking it with them a second time. In fact, Tom had thought that was exactly what he was going to get until he got called up today, since Greg missed Saturday, so he’s just… more curious than ever.

“Oh, uh…” Greg sighs hard through his nose, slumping back in his seat. “It was… bad. I’ve never really seen my mom with them all, as like an adult? It – like, it was really uncomfortable. But Grandpa Ewan at one point, uh – He actually yelled at Uncle Logan for calling her a pill head, so that was, like. It was nice of him? But my mom still kind of cried.”

Tom presses his mouth together in a grimace; that sounds par for the course. “That sucks, bud.”

“I got some champagne, though, and brought it home,” Greg says, eyes flicking back to make contact with Tom, then a laugh breaks through his lips. “Your dad is funny – he thought like I’d get in trouble? But it wasn’t even like the most expensive stuff.”

Tom stares back for a beat, then slowly cocks his brows. “…You got my parents champagne?”

“I-I can get you some later,” Greg says, eager, wiggling forward on his seat and leaning into his elbows on the table with a wide look. “It’s like not until September. Or like, you can pick it out – I just took this off the table.”

“You’re such a delinquent, Greg,” Tom says, then swallows hard, as he realizes for the nth time, in a way that still feels just absolutely impossible, Greg seems to really be in Minnesota just for him. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Like, the same as usual? Hey, like,” Greg says, scratching up against the side of his nose with a thumb. “Do you think the champagne is like a heavier offense than the papers?”

Tom drops his head in a deep nod. “I think it would be to your family,” he says, affectedly flat and joyless.

“My mom like brought this extra big purse with a bunch of plastic baggies,” Greg says, waving down at his side with a gesture like he’s brought his own bag. “And she took like a bunch of food. She said it was for her book club.”

Tom tilts his head to a wide angle, then scoffs hard through his nose while lifting it back up. “I’ve never met your mother, but I like her, Greg.”

“The book club is more like a wine club,” Greg adds, looking up when the CO starts to make the announcement for the end of visiting hours. He rises from his chair with a stretch, back cracking like a broken zipper. “I used to have to pick her up? But now she uses like Uber and sometimes her friend, Brian.”

“That’s so funny,” Tom says, wrapping a hand around Greg’s nape, as he leans down for his now-customary hug. “You have a good week, okay?”

“I’m sorry I missed Saturday,” Greg says, his pout unambiguous against Tom’s neck while he speaks into it. “The stupid plane –”

Tom hums loud to interrupt, squeezing one last time before reluctantly letting go. “Hey, you were here today.”

Tom isn’t sure if he’s more anxious or less with Greg around, as his release date approaches with the quick passing of summer. He feels weight against his back, excited but crawling with uncertainty, as easily hundreds of good, bad, or ugly ways it could go build in the back of his head and he… He wants to know where he stands with Greg, but also he doesn’t want to know; the thing that makes him nearly lean up at every perfectly appropriate hug, sitting as it’s been so long under his ribs, almost scarier than any of the rest of it.

He never expected Greg to do more than uncomfortably put up with it, let alone start to… regularly imply some similar sentiment. The ambiguity of zero privacy spares him any real denial or confession. He can pretend forever that Greg really forgives him, or at least the actions, and will stand with him at the gate at the end of all this, if he never, ever asks.

“Yeah, but it’s like… we made it?” Greg says, sweeping his hand through his hair, then he offers the other to make a jazzy gesture. “Or, I did. You’ve got two months? It was – it sucked, a lot, and everything, but the, like… I think the working yourself up before it the first time was actually the worst part? To me. When you thought you’d end up in, like… Alcatraz.”

“Alcatraz is closed, first off, Gregory, and second, I’ve read it was mostly the island part that sucked. Whatever, yes, it’s done. …But I wish you’d had something to run off with, anyway,” Tom says, rolling his voice around the word with a low grumble. He gestures toward the decidedly denominational symbol hanging around the curtain rod at the window, smuggled in by some past visitor. “I’m not a Catholic, but there’s still some part of me that feels like I should have taken all this guilt upon myself like I promised to.”

“If it helps, I – I maybe did?” Greg says, wetting his lips, then dropping his shoulders with a shrug. “Have… something. But I decided not to use it.”

Tom stares for a few beats, mouth twisting downward, and when Greg doesn’t crack and admit to some terrible joke, he feels his hands curl into fists across the top of the table. “…You what?”

“Yeah, uh,” Greg shrugs, again, blinking rapidly and looking down, plainly not having expected to get this sort of response for his confession of heinous idiocy. “Um. You remember when we – We were at your like house – penthouse…? I… I recorded it on my phone.”

“Greg,” Tom says, hearing his voice bark, then forcing it back down into something lower like a hiss. “Why the fuck wouldn’t you use that?”

“Your mom said it probably wouldn’t matter? She might’ve – probably was lying, but –” Greg suddenly reaches across the table and sets his hand on top of Tom’s wound fist. “Now it – I think… I don’t know. I’d rather just be happy that I’m here like this an-and with you now, than… wonder if I had used it? If I wouldn’t be.”

Tom stares for a few beats, suffering a brief, horrible wash of anger at his mother. “Greg –”

Greg shakes his head, fingertips scrambling at the edge of Tom’s turned-down hand. “I dunno, Tom, shit sorta happens?” He continues, his voice lowering, almost breaking, “Like… like how none of this would’ve happened, at all, if I hadn’t told Gerri ab-about your press conference plan an-and then lied to you about it.”

Tom stares and feels his eyes narrow, then widen, as his whole expression threatens to collapse; he’s angry, so angry, but it wanes almost all at once when he sees Greg is… trying so hard to blame himself for some reason. He shakes his head and looks down, pulling his hand from underneath Greg’s by widely spreading his fingers.

Greg makes a tight, pained noise, almost soundless.

Tom finishes the action to wind their fingers together, palm to palm, to put himself in a more active grip. He’s… upset, yeah, but he’s suspected this for a while; he suspected Greg telling a lot of people about a lot of things that were just too convenient, but he was just as bad. “Okay, Greg, don’t… get so worked up. You’re not that big of a snake. That’s why I’m so mad you didn’t slither out of this – you’re usually smarter.”

Greg takes a wet breath. “But I –”

Tom tightens both his hands around Greg’s one, squeezing around the knuckles. “Don’t start. You’d been working in the corporate environment not even a month, baby, and I can’t remember giving you a single reason to trust me.”

Greg takes a sharp breath, lifting his eyes and mouth dropping open, but he still doesn’t speak until seconds later: “Ne-neither did Gerri.”

“She was the closest thing you knew to a lawyer,” Tom says, tilting his head with a flat, sarcastic smile. “Too bad she’s probably even more biased and self-serving than the rest of us.”

“Maybe… yeah. Like, with Roman, she – ” Greg looks up with a start, as a shadow falls somehow indifferently over their table.

“I want to preface this by saying none of the comments by Officer Carlos were homophobic,” Maria says, pointing over her shoulder at the markedly ducking CO that’s been shadowing her for a few weeks. “He had me concerned because you look like you’re fighting, but now I’m here and it’s more a crying situation. Are we having a problem, gentlemen?”

“No, ma’am,” Greg says, ducking his head with evident mortification. “No-not at all. I can’t really cry with witnesses, actually.”

Tom flattens his lips with a shake of his head at Greg, then up at Maria, who’s now giving Greg the hairy eyeball. He squeezes Greg’s hand one last time before letting it go. “We’re just praying for our sins.”

“Inmate Wambsgans,” Maria says, turning her condescending look toward toward him with a bizarrely uncanny rock of her head. “Do you even know where chapel is?”

Tom stares Maria down for a solid beat, then lifts his hand with a point and a crooked smirk. “It’s the same place where I meet my counselor.”

Maria raises an unamused brow. “You got me there.” She nods down at the table. “The time ends in twenty minutes. You better apologize quick, eh?”

“Ten-four,” Tom says, sunnily, dropping his arm to smack at the table with an exaggerated gesture and very light tap.

Later, once the announcement officially goes out to part ways that afternoon, Tom presses his lips lightly across Greg’s jaw, hiding it inside the hug; it earns him a tight squeeze almost to the point of asphyxia.

====

Greg cranes his head up at the station, leaning against the hood of the car behind him. He looks like he’s actually judging it, which is pretty funny, since his amateur interest began with a Parducci documentary he watched on a flight to Scotland. He’d gotten Minneapolis and Detroit confused, then been irked when Tom didn’t know about all the buildings in this city that he’d visited once on a hockey trip.

“You don’t have to write an essay on it,” Tom says, flatly, keeping one eye on Greg and the other on the mechanic in the open bay. It would be just his luck to get a trespassing call an hour after his release. “You’re not going to be graded on if you like a tacky gas station in a town that’s only other claim to fame is Jessica Lange.”

“It��s got a – ” Greg takes a breath, gesturing back and forth with flailing, turning palms. “A lot of angles.” He looks over at Tom, raising his brows with a short lean inward. “Did you know they built this – uh, fake one sort of the same in Buffalo, recently?”

Tom stares for a beat, taking in Greg’s eager, bright face, then leans up and kisses him across the mouth. He figures if Greg shoves him, he can just blame the surprise that way, in his own head, rather than the much slimmer, but very present, chance of disgust. He ends up being the one surprised, when Greg hums deeply, all of a sudden weighing heavy on Tom’s shoulder with an arm wrapping around his neck. It even makes him forget the mechanic, who’s hopefully not a total dick.

“I, um – ” Greg stutters, moments later, a smile cutting across his face while he goes on to shake his head. “It’s maybe not that great, Tom? The one in – uh, in the museum is all copper.”

Tom yanks at Greg gently by the coat lapels, listening to a resulting sputtered laugh, and tightens his voice up somewhat more cartoonish, maybe like how he’d scold a baby. “You just prove over and over you can’t appreciate these nice things I give you.”

#tomgreg #this is probably one of the longest of these ive done lol #long distance prison era

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