Day Six | 1:47 AM | February 16th, 2025

’Sunday. Do whatever you want day.’

’I am not doing fine.’

.

.

I don’t know why I’m writing again.

Last time I said it was documentation. I’m keeping that. This is documentation. Official and professional. A record of events relevant to my assignment in this facility.

That’s what this is.

Moving on.

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.

The director called a meeting at eleven tonight.

I want to note, for the record, that the director of Blackmere Correctional is a man who believes he is the most important person in this building. He has a title that says director. He has an office that says director. He has a salary, a parking spot, and a plaque on his door that all say director.

What he does not have is eleven years of active military service. A private general ranking. Or the specific kind of clearance that means I could pick up a phone right now, call two numbers, and have this entire facility restructured before morning in ways he wouldn’t be able to reverse or even fully understand.

He fucking knows that.

But I prefer to be the calm person. I want it that way.

So I sat across from him tonight and I listened to him talk about prisoner statistics and facility reports and maintenance schedules, and I nodded in the right places, and I said ’yes sir’ when it was required, and I let him feel like the most important person in the room.

It costs me nothing.

I checked the last report and signed what needed signing. I also noted three things I’ll be following up on that he missed entirely because he doesn’t know what to look for. Excused myself and finally left.

.

It was just past midnight when I got into the corridor.

I checked my watch.

And I thought about the staff bathroom.

’Professionally.’ I want that on record. Ruaan had established a pattern which was to head to the staff block at midnight, with my soap that he stole and has not returned and apparently has no intention of returning. I had noted the pattern because I note all patterns. It’s what I do. It’s surveillance. It’s my job.

I walked to the staff bathroom.

He wasn’t there.

I stood in the doorway for a moment and looked at the empty room to listen but there was nothing. Just the faint drip of the third tap on the left that maintenance has been ignoring for two weeks.

I sat on the bench.

’Maybe he already came and left,’ I told myself. ’Or he isn’t coming tonight.’

I waited fifteen minutes and he didn’t come.

I stood up and headed toward my office.

.

That was when I heard it before I turned the corner.

Moaning.

I didn’t slow down when the sound got even more ragged. My pace did not change. Sounds like that is a normal feature of this facility. People have sex constantly in Blackmere. In cells, in bathrooms, in corridors, against walls, in places I have actively chosen not to examine too closely. It is not my concern unless someone is being forced and nobody is calling for help.

I kept walking, ignoring the moan till I heard it.

"Ruaan — fuck — Ruaan—"

My feet stopped immediately.

They simply stopped, like my body had decided before my brain finished processing the information.

There was a man in dark blue standing in the corridor outside the prisoner’s bathroom. His back was facing me with one hand braced on the wall. The other wrapped around his own cock, moving rapidly, as he’d almost forgotten where he was.

He was moaning Ruaan’s name.

My Ruaan.

The only Ruaan in this entire facility.

I felt something happen in my head that I don’t have a clean clinical word for.

If I had my weapon on me I would have used it.

Not fatally. I want that clear. Just enough. Maybe.

I crossed the corridor in four steps.

My hand closed on his shoulder and covered his mouth at the same time. He went completely rigid. He turned his head and I looked at his face.

Ruaan’s cellmate. I recognised him since researched them to figure out who to use to betray Ruaan.

He was looking at me with his eyes wide open as if he was seeing his entire future collapse.

I asked him what he was doing.

But he apologised rapidly as he pulled his trousers up with shaking hands. He didn’t wait for me to finish before he was gone, moving down the corridor with speed.

I let him go.

I turned to the bathroom door and that’s when I realised I should have walked away.

I am a private general with eleven years of active service and more self-discipline than anyone in this building.

But I did not walk away.

I stood by the door.

And I listened.

"Fuck... it’s huge... it’s not going to fit—"

Ruaan’s voice. Strained. Slightly breathless.

Something in my chest did a thing I am not documenting.

"I added enough lube, why isn’t it going in?"

Different voice. Someone I didn’t recognise. Someone who was apparently in the prisoner bathroom at 1am with Ruaan and a ’lube situation’. I fucking want to find this person and have a very calm, very professional conversation with them about their life choices.

"Maybe because it’s tight—" Ruaan again.

And then a sound.

A groan that became something else halfway through.

I was hard.

I want to be clear that I was furious at the same time. Both things were happening simultaneously and I did not enjoy either of them and I especially did not enjoy the way they were happening ’together’ which felt like a personal betrayal from my own body.

I wanted to kick that door open.

I wanted to find whoever was in there and remove them from the situation entirely by whatever means were fastest.

I wanted to pin Ruaan to the tile floor and make him understand, in very specific and thorough terms, that those sounds were not for anyone else in this facility and I was going to make sure he understood that clearly and repeatedly until the message was received.

I stepped back from the door and walked to my office.

.

.

I sat at my desk for a long time before I opened this notebook.

I thought about the meeting room and about how simple tonight was supposed to be. Report. Sign. Sleep.

I thought about an empty staff bathroom and thought about Ruaan standing in my office four days ago with his shirt off and his tattoo catching the light saying ’I’d rather submit to you than Cullen Ray.’ And a professional, disciplined and rule-following me saying no.

And then him going and finds someone else within forty-eight hours.

In a prison bathroom.

With adequate lubrication apparently.

I looked at what I’d written.

’My Ruaan.’

I crossed it out.

I stared at the crossed-out words for a while.

I can still read them through the line.

.

.

His cellmate was outside that door, calling his name like that. It was obviously because he was attracted to the way Ruaan looks and moves and exists in a room, which I am apparently not the only person in this facility to have noticed. That is one piece of information I received tonight.

I need to deal with the cellmate.

I need to deal with whoever was in that bathroom.

I need to deal with the Thursday game this week because my original sabotage plan needs adjusting now that Ruaan has apparently been spending his evenings doing ’research’ instead of sleeping.

I need to deal with the fact that I came to Blackmere for one reason and that reason has been getting considerably harder to focus on since approximately day one.

I stopped writing and put the pen down.

Then I picked it up again.

’It’s going to be a very bad week for him,’ I finally wrote. ’I’ll make sure of it.’

I closed the notebook as I stared at the ceiling.

’— H.L.C’

’I am absolutely fine.’

’Everything is fine.’

’Go to sleep, Harolin.’