No survival instincts.
The ideal prey.
Jasper skids to a halt, bodily retreating from the bend, only his head peeking around it. His body language is rigid and tense, whomever he is watching does not appear to be friendly.It has Jasper’s full attention, allowing Sinn'ous to close the space between them and duck behind the corner of a different corridor.
Where he waits, and listens.
The voices carry, clear even to his ears, and the reason his prey froze.
“We can’t keep protecting him, or we will all be targets or in The Hole.” Sinn'ous recognises the voice as one in Reni’s clique, David. “And I for-one am not going back to The Hole for anyone. Especially not someone who can’t fight to save his life. He’s attracting attention. Pissing off gangs—gangs who we don’t need to be drawing attention from. It’s going to get us killed. Protecting him. Is it really worth it?”
Well. If Jasper wasn’t cut off from any help before, he sure is now. His isolation is growing by the second. His lifelines severed. He will have no one to turnto but Sinn'ous.
A scuff of shoe calls to Jasper’s retreat, head bowed he shuffles back the way they came, small noises of pain passing his lips. Passing Sinn'ous none the wiser. He smirks at the retreating back of his limping prey, retreating tail-between-legs to A-Wing
A deep guttural laugh carries to Sinn'ous. Isco’s unmistakable drawl floating right after it, “you know Reni doesn’t share in your feelings.”
“Fuck you.” David scoffs, tone bitten off at the ends.
Isco carries on like David hadn’t spoken. “Not about your feelings for him or your feelings towards the new kid. Reni does whatever the fuck he wants and bangs whomever the fuck he wants, and you aren’t one among that list.”
Sinn'ous steps out of his hiding place. This conversation is of little importance, the true gift is in prey who has escaped further than Sinn'ous wants. Orange prison clothes ruffling a farewell, then slipping away in the next instant.
~~~
Waiting on the ground floor for Jasper to fall asleep hadn’t taken long. He’d fallen onto his bunk and hadn’t moved again.
Looming over the smaller inmate, Sinn'ous ponders how clueless his prey is to the presence of a predator. Not one twitch of awareness in that petite body. On his stomach, fully clothed, shoes on, and blood caked to his face sticking his hair to his cheek.
The blood has Sinn'ous gritting his teeth. How dare they hurt what is his. This ishisprey. He is the only one who gets to hurt it. The only one who gets to draw blood from those elegantfeatures.
The white undershirt beneath Sinn'ous’s prison greys is easily torn from his body, the fibres letting go as easily as tissue paper torn in two. He wets the now shredded shirt under the mildlycold tap water. Taking it back to Jasper, he kneels on the floor peering into his prey’s slackened face.
Taking his time he carefully scrubs off the blood, pressing hair between his fingertips under the wet shirt to rubthe red away. Cleaning off the marks the Whytesleft behind. Each swipe of wet shirt takes off more crimson, only to reveal the already blackening starts of deep bruises encircling his eyes.
Anger surges into Sinn'ous’s chest, it tightens the hold on his shirt. His joints protesting in pops that crack his knuckles.
I will kill them all for daring to touch you.
With the blood gone, he moves on to the next task, slipping the boy’s shoes off and placing them on the ground. The sheet follows, untucked from the bunk’s edges, he rolls it over the unconscious inmate. Every time his eyes touch on a bruise his resolveto kill each and every Whytes gang membercements.
The only marks that should be marringhis prey are onesheleaves. Bruises and cuts made by his own hands. Not the undeserved hands of others. It makes him rabid to tear them apart limb by limb.
My boy will die withmymarks, no one else’s.
Which means he has to wait for these to heal before he can have his fun.
Satan, give me strength.
He slips from the cell, bloody shirt in hand, and is back in his own cell on auto pilot. The shirt slops wetly in his sink when he discards it. He gathers the few medical supplies he has—a couple bandages and a plastic-wrappedsquare containing two pain pills—and transfers all of it back to Jasper’s cell. Placing everything down on the cupboardby the end of the bunk.
The boy hasn’t moved, soft mumbling in his sleep is the only indication he lives, the rest of his body is stone still under the sheet Sinn'ous tucked him into.
A noise outside the cell raises Sinn'ous’s head. Clanging of multiple footfalls, voices rising and falling as more and more inmates climb the steps to their own cells. Chased there by the loud buzzing alarm announcing lockup and count.
His eyes linger on Jasper’s body a moment longer before he reluctantly takes his leave. Moving against the crowd to reach his Satanic cell on the far end.
8
