Chapter Text
You met Andrew Cody three years ago.
You’d been working at Folsom State Prison for a couple of years at that point.
You knew the guards, you knew who had their heart in the right place and shared your philosophy of rehabilitation over punishment, and who to better avoid entirely. You knew who ran the prison gangs and had a good rapport with them. You weren’t going to change anything about the system inmates put in place to survive the years locked up somehow, but their goodwill ensured you could do your work without interference. That you could help those who wanted help, who wanted to get out of the life of crime.
They left those who wanted out alone, and you didn't bother those who intended to stay.
It was a fragile system, but it worked.
The first few seconds of the initial intake screening you conducted with every new inmate to assess needs made it painfully clear that Andrew had a lot of them. He barely looked at you, barely spoke. He almost compulsively rearranged the leaflets you put on the table for him. He tensed when you asked about his family, and only relaxed when you coaxed out of him what he did for fun, what made him feel calm.
Nature documentaries, it turned out. And he used to skate. He loved his little niece, Lena, and he was quite handy. Four tidbits of information you tucked away carefully for the future.
It was no easy feat to show such vulnerability to a stranger, especially in these circumstances, and you cherished the trust inmates granted you in these painful early days. With Andrew, it seemed he needed the softness you offered every inmate in careful, guarded doses, the daily reminder that they were still human beings and not animals in cages, especially.
You knew for many of your clients, you were the first safe person in their lives.
Andrew refused a lot of the help you offered. He was not going to speak to the correctional psychologist, no matter how often you tried to bring it up, tried to tell him that you believed it would really help him. It only made him angry, so you stopped. And you couldn’t even blame him.
The stigma around speaking about mental health was ten times higher within the walls of Folsom than anywhere on the outside - and there it was already hard enough.
Prison had the eerie ability to multiply every social struggle.
Every day that you came into work, you were reminded of the series of flawed studies conducted to prove the ‘alpha wolf’ concept. A bunch of unrelated wolves, taken out of their territories and families and thrown together into unfamiliar territory.
Terrified. Alone. Surrounded by what felt like threats.
Of course they started fighting to the death.
Folsom was just like that, and a man with a gentle, sensitive soul and violent anger issues like Andrew would either sink or get so much worse.
For many inmates, a social worker was their only hope.
The system was fucked, guards were either corrupt or cruel - or too soft to stay good for long. For most, incarceration was a never-ending cycle.
You provided counselling, group therapy, advocated for medical care needs, developed treatment plans, conducted reentry planning, acted as a liaison between inmates and their families. You had even helped a few fathers win visitation rights with their child. You gave parenting classes. Anger management courses. Conflict resolution training.
Most days, the work felt endless, especially since Folsom only had enough funding to pay three social workers - for a prison population of over five thousand! A number far over the capacity of the dilapidated old building.
And if all that wasn’t hard enough already, you had to balance rehabilitative goals with a punitive environment perpetually stuck in its ways.
It would never cease to break your heart to see how some of the men got after weeks of solitary confinement…
The fifteen-day limit - already a cruel and brutal length of time - was often ignored, with some of your clients having spent months or even years in a 6x9 foot cell for 22 to 24 hours a day…
Of course those were not your only challenges. Being a young woman in a prison full of male, violent offenders would never quite stop being intimidating, but you learnt how to handle yourself. You had a set of rules for yourself you lived by, for your own safety and to guard the integrity of your work.
Never disclose personal information. Ever.
Never turn your back on a room full of people.
Always place yourself near a door.
Know where the cameras and the blind spots are.
Be approachable and kind, but firm in the boundaries you put down.
Professional relationships only.
See the human over the crime.
The last of your rules was the easiest to follow with Andrew it had ever been.
The problem was that Andrew had an ability to make you forget all the other rules.
You were used to the help you offered not being accepted out of fear, but talking to you wasn't viewed the same by the inmates as it was to talk to the withered, dismissive correctional psychologist.
They could play meeting with you off as just seeing the hot chick.
Just something to distract from the time away from their girls. Looking at some nice piece of ass instead of the bare prison walls.
For some, that was the case. For most, it was just a defence mechanism put on for the bigger, badder predators.
It happened towards the end of his first year in prison. You knew the guards were rough on Andrew after he lost it on one of them, beating the man to a pulp, but the bad apples knew to hide their actions from you. People liked you.
It was easy to like you, your friends had told you throughout your life, charming, they called you - something your father would claim you had inherited from him, and so the compliment never failed to leave a bad taste in your mouth. You went to a good school with lots of people who went on to become influential in one way or another.
Your college essay about being on the run with a serial killer apparently really knocked the recruiter's boots off.
The guards had figured out quickly after you first walked into the prison not to fuck with you. You didn’t take shit, not from inmates and not from them. You had no personal relationships with any of the people who worked at Folsom for one reason or another, but you were not afraid of ruining their careers if they fucking deserved it.
You’d just wrapped up the book club you brought to life and were cleaning up in the library. Andrew offered to stay and help. He was a helpful person by nature, you realised early on. He didn’t seem to notice, just as he struggled to notice any good things about himself, so you made a point of pointing it out to him. That he had the capacity for good and the natural inclination for it too. He made bad choices sometimes because he didn’t have the support or tools he needed to manage his impulses and emotions - that didn’t mean he was a bad man.
You turned your back on Andrew to carry a stack of chairs into the office. You didn’t even think about it. With any other client, you’d never let yourself slip into such a vulnerable position. But Andrew was different.
The guard, an older man who became a CO because the police didn’t want him and was only waiting for his retirement to roll around, stood by the entrance of the library, no doubt dozing off.
Not that you minded.
Andrew deserved the precious few moments of peace.
You dusted your hands off and turned around, just to give a jump.
Andrew stood in the doorway, blocking your way out, trapping you in the small office, not visible from the entry to the library.
His hazel eyes bored into you, his staring as insistent and unwavering as it had been through the entire book club.
“Andrew.” Your voice came out breathier than you wanted.
You’d seen the guard he attacked as they wheeled him out.
You knew he was sentenced for armed robbery.
You knew he could be violent, deadly even, even though that last part could never be proven.
You moved to Oceanside a few weeks back, and it had taken no time at all to hear everything about the Cody family.
Not that you ever told Andrew you were now living on what some would consider his turf.
But still, for some reason, it was not fear that bubbled up in your stomach. The low afternoon sun fell through the narrow, pathetic excuse of a window just beneath the ceiling and cut a line through the tiny room.
“There is a camera in here.” You couldn’t muster more than a whisper. It wasn’t a threat. You’d never reported anything Andrew did that would have been punished by the COs. You didn’t believe in punishment, and you already believed they were way too hard on him.
“Haven’t worked in weeks.”
Of course he would notice such a detail.
A shudder rushed down your back and skittered along your arms, making goosebumps spread beneath the sleeves of your cardigan - a necessary item in your wardrobe and day-to-day life as it stopped inmates from staring at your ass all day.
These men had far too much time on their hands to plan things to do or say.
You wondered if Andrew planned this, but the way he thrummed his fingers against the side of his legs revealed how nervous he was. Maybe he had even been trying to stop himself before. It wasn’t the first time he stayed behind after book club. It wasn’t the first time you turned your back on him. It wasn’t the first time you left the line of sight of the COs while alone in a room with him.
Andrew took a step forward, your back hit the office wall. You should call the guard. You should tell Andrew to stop. A thousand thoughts raced through your head, but your feet were glued to the filthy carpet. He looked like a dog about to attack, his shoulders tensed, his head lowered, eyes pinned firmly on you.
Every part of your rational, professional brain screamed to set a boundary and protect your own safety. Andrew had never threatened you - unlike other inmates. He had never twisted your words into innuendos - like other inmates. He never commented on your appearance or clothes or body - like other inmates.
Never once had Andrew given you reason to be wary of him, and even now, you could not quite decide whether you should.
Andrew braced his hand against the wall next to your head, and before you could even as much as draw another breath, his lips were on yours. His kiss was firm, almost stiff, pressing against you with all the driving force of a man who’d been running for all his life and finally found some softness, but his blood-soaked hands and body honed for violence did not quite know how to touch something soft.
His hand found its way to your waist, thick fingers digging into your soft flesh hard enough to leave bruises.
Your insides twisted and turned. You melted into his touch, tension slipping off your frame like water off a raincoat. You cradled his neck in your hands, nails scraping softly against his freckled skin. He started to bulk up in the months he'd been here, the change becoming noticeable only slowly, but now it was undeniable. There wasn’t much else to do during rec time.
Andrew pressed his hard body against you. His hand slid off the wall and curled into your hair, his thumb tracing the swoop of your jaw. You tilted your head back further, pulling Andrew down towards you while parting your lips for him, letting him deepen the kiss, and he did with a brutal hunger you didn’t know how to respond to.
He groaned against your lips, muttering your name so quietly he might as well not have said anything, but the sound echoed through your head. Again and again and again-
Your name, off his lips, rasped with needy desperation and aching tenderness, just before his tongue delved into your mouth.
How often had you pictured how it would sound? How he would sound whispering it while perched above you?
You let your hands drop from his neck and pushed against his chest.
Andrew didn’t want to part with you. You managed to twist your head to the side. His lips pressed into your cheek, trailed down to your jaw, your neck. His already bruising grip only tensed further.
“Andrew, stop.” A tremble clung to your words. A shiver went through Andrew in response. He peeled himself away from you after a moment of hesitation, the action clearly taking a lot out of him, and stepped back. His gaze remained pinned to the ground. His hands curled into fists at his sides.
You recognised the spiral grabbing hold of him the second it closed its nasty teeth.
“Hey.” You whispered, pushing off the wall to reach out to him. You had never touched him before. You didn’t touch the inmates. It only made them believe they could touch you, and anything you permitted, they would find a way to exploit.
You didn’t even think about that with Andrew in this moment.
You cradled his face in your hands and ducked to force yourself into his field of vision. “I’m not mad, Andrew. Look at me.”
Transference, your brain shouted at you, and something despicable in your chest scrunched up painfully at the thought. Whatever had caused this, whatever made Andrew suddenly kiss you, it had little to do with you. He was unconsciously redirecting an attachment to a person from his past onto you. That sort of thing happened in your line of work, especially once a client gained more trust and felt truly safe with their caregiver.
You reminded him of a nurturing person, someone he probably missed. It was his first year in prison since he went to juvie, and his family didn’t visit often.
He was hurting and seeking comfort in you.
It wasn’t about you, and why did that hurt so fucking much?
You’d been good at denying the treacherous slivers of emotions surfacing when your day ended, and you left the prison, hoping Andrew would get through the evening and night alright or when you returned in the morning and worried you’d hear about him being sent to solitary again - or something worse.
“You shouldn’t have done this, I shouldn’t have reciprocated it, and it cannot happen again, ever, but I am not mad.”
“I disgust you.”
“No.” You said firmly. “I am not disgusted with you either, Andrew. I am your social worker. I am a person with power over you. Our relationship has to be of a professional nature for your safety and mine.”
“I’d never hurt you.” Andrew rasped, voice heavy with tears he never allowed himself to shed.
“I know that.” You whispered and wondered whether you should say such a thing. Your training prepared you for transference, and even countertransference, but not for being kissed by an inmate you had a pathetic, embarrassing little crush on. “But if I let you kiss me, and other inmates find out, that would put me at risk.”
“I’d protect you.”
“You can’t, and that is not your responsibility either. It’s my job to look after you, to help you. It is normal to bring old emotions and attachments into new, safe spaces. I’ve told you before, you can feel whatever you want, and all your feelings are valid and true and yours. Your feelings exist the way they exist, and trying to not feel them only does harm, but you are in control of how you act. This was inappropriate-”
“You didn’t stop me.”
“I did too late.” You let go of Andrew and took a step back, running your hands over your face. You still felt where he had held your waist and threaded his fingers through your hair. You still felt your lips tingle from his kiss.
This was wrong.
This was wrong on so many levels! He was your client. You had a position of power over him. He was severely mentally ill, under-diagnosed and unmedicated. He was hooked up on the shit guards forced him to take to keep him calm - you tried to get them to stop, but with his violent outbursts, they had a stronger case in front of the warden than you. Regardless of the fact that their abuse only made his anger and violence worse!
It was a goddamn cycle you alone simply couldn’t break.
“I never want to take advantage of you or harm our professional relationship, Andrew. I am sorry. I made a mistake.”
“Why are you apologising?”
“Because what I did was worse. We’ll-” You glanced at your wrist watch. “We’ll discuss this tomorrow, yes? Your feelings for me? And find out where they are actually coming from, but now you have to go back to your cell.”
“Where they are coming from? What are you talking about? They come from me.” He grasped at his shirt covering his chest. “From here.” He took a step towards you, steering you back towards the wall, but this time you didn’t budge. You remained where you were, even when Andrew got into your face, and you were left to wonder whether this was truly the better choice.
“It is normal to crave connection, especially in a place like this, and I will remain available to you in a professional capacity, Andrew. But boundaries are important, for both of us.”
Andrew hung his head, and after a moment of hesitation, he made a step back. You gestured towards the door. Andrew only slowly moved towards it. You watched the guard lead him back, deeper into the prison, while your own way led you in the opposite direction. You closed the door of the library and went through the seemingly endless check before the winding, stretching, dim prison hallways that somehow almost smelled like piss (You would know, having ended up on the receiving end of it being thrown more than once. Never with you as the intended victim, and the inmates responsible had always apologised to you. Your shoes had still been ruined though.) were finally behind you.
You got into your car and just sat there for a while, staring at the building towering over you and the lights in the scarce windows shutting off one by one and wondered how Andrew was doing…
You dropped your forehead against the steering wheel and cursed.
The next time you saw Andrew, for your scheduled appointment in the dingy, barren room in the secured area of the prison you and the other social worker worked out of, he shuffled into the room like a beaten puppy and slid a crumpled piece of paper towards you without meeting your eyes.
It was a drawing of some flowers. (If it ended up on your fridge later, that wasn't inappropriate. It wasn't crossing a line, you told yourself.)
You tried to discuss with Andrew which person the things he felt around you reminded him of, but Andrew was curt and unwilling to explore his past. He never let you in much. He was protecting his family, you could tell. One did not need to be a genius to know the Codys worked together, and you’d figured that out long before you moved to Oceanside.
He also wasn’t ready to face that maybe the way he’d been treated all his life wasn’t right, and a core factor in the way he struggled and acted nowadays.
So you dropped it.
These appointments were for him. They were his time. He decided what he wanted to work on, not you, and he set the pace. Andrew didn’t want to talk about his family, you didn’t talk about his family, despite how much you wanted to open that bag of trauma and help him shovel through the shit, despite how much you knew he would benefit from working through it and healing.
It wasn’t your place to force that on him, and it would be quite hypocritical considering how you were doing the same goddamn thing with your father.
He never kissed you again, never got too close, never followed you into another secluded room. He never even grazed the back of your hand with his fingers like he used to do, and you’d convinced yourself had been mere coincidences every time.
Apparently not.
You missed them, those brief, shy touches - and wasn’t that the most pathetic admission ever?
Two years passed like that, with a professional but painful distance between you and Andrew that you fought every day to maintain. It was embarrassing how often you had to stop yourself from touching his arm or taking his hand during one of your meetings. Or how often you’d notice the freckles littering his skin, how handsome he was even with the shitty prison haircut. How attentive he was, despite you doing your best to not share personal details - not even with Andrew.
The few things that could be noticed about you, he noticed.
It was nice to be noticed, to be seen. The job was your whole life, and the life you had outside the prison walls was somehow always spent setting up follow-up appointments, reentry help, finding social workers to take on clients once they left Fulsom and weren’t yours anymore, coordinating with POs, finding housing, dealing with family court paperwork - the work was endless. When you weren't volunteering in the community, that was.
Not that it kept you from friends and family. You didn’t have much of either.
Data suggests that trauma can be passed on, a concept called transgenerational trauma, and if that shit was true, then your father fucked your whole life up the second he fucked your mother in the back of a filthy little roadside diner.
Three years into a six-year sentence, the abuse dished out by the guards grew so oppressive, so terrorising, so torturous that for the first time since you’d worked with him, Andrew broke down. He collapsed into your arms the second you were alone with him and cried so bitterly, it broke your heart just to hear it. He didn't talk. Didn't tell you what had happened.
Five days later, he had a psychotic episode after weeks of solitary confinement, only intermittedly interrupted so he could see you, and you could be thrown off Hilty's corrupted, cruel scent.
You were called to the SHU by one of the few guards who at least had some qualms about the she shit people like Hilty did, though not enough to actually be a man and report the fucker.
They covered Andrew with a blanket before you arrived and shoved the chair aside, but they neglected to remove it. Or the chains still hanging from it.
From there, with your suspicions finally confirmed, it wasn’t difficult to get the tapes from the CCTV. You were your father’s daughter after all, and getting a few under-fucked, incel guards to leave a room unattended they really shouldn’t wasn’t all that difficult.
Nobody had ever said no to your father either.
You couldn’t stomach watching most of the tapes.
Andrew never spoke about Hilty. You knew about the abuse in vague, heartbreaking fragments, but as long as Andrew didn’t talk and you didn’t witness anything, there was nothing you could do. Andrew wasn’t a snitch, and honestly… you didn’t blame him. Things didn’t get safer or easier for inmates who talked.
Ever.
Guards, even the good ones, even the ones with the heart in the right place and some semblance of integrity, always stuck together.
Fucking parasites.
But those tapes…
You’d seen your fair share of crime scene photos, and more video material than you ever wanted to when you were a teenager and the investigating officers wanted to guilt you into talking about your father, but this was different… It made you sick and tore your heart into a million tiny shreds. You watched through tears you wiped away stubbornly, ready to let fucking hellfire rain down on every last person responsible for letting such heinous actions go unpunished.
Watching Andrew be marched through processing a few days later, waving at him through the glass separating the world out there from in here, you wondered if he knew you were the reason for his sudden parole. The hearing had been set weeks ago, but you knew Andrew expected to be denied, like the last two times.
He wasn’t.
Good behaviour and overcrowding were the official reasons, but unofficially, it was because you had threatened the warden to get Andrew in contact with the best criminal justice lawyers and personal injury lawyers money could buy - you knew people from school, who knew people, and many of your former classmates from college still owed you for this thing or that.
You were bluffing of course - Andrew wouldn’t sue the prison, but the warden didn’t know that. The threat of a multi-million dollar lawsuit and the attention of the press - or perhaps just your father’s reputation, and the fact you had inherited his eyes - made the warden sweat.
You hadn’t told Andrew, and you weren’t planning to.
You didn’t do this for his gratitude or anything like that. You did it to get Hilty fired and blacklisted and Andrew away from all this bullshit.
You wished you’d never see him again.
You always did when one of your clients was released. You wished they would escape the cycle of poverty and abuse and crime, but you knew the parole system only made life harder for ex-cons. It did not actually help them find their way back into society.
You also knew you’d miss him.
You always wanted inmates to leave this place better off than they had been when they were incarcerated. You couldn't help but feel like you failed miserably in Andrew’s case.
If only you could have done more…
"Farewell..." You whispered and turned on the spot, your way carrying you deeper into the prison while Andrew got to smell freedom for the first time in three years and nineteen days.