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falseroar · 2 years

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Visitation Day

((Y/N goes to visit Yancy after the events of Dog Days. Spoilers for that series, I guess, but otherwise no warnings to be found here.

I said I was going to do this, and I got there. Eventually. Like a month later, but I got there. Tagging @liafoxyfox up front for being the one to bring up visitation day in that very nice message. XD))

“Yancy, you’re wanted upstairs.”

Yancy didn’t look up from his cards. He had a good hand and couldn’t risk Sparkles McGee pulling yet another “spare” ace out of nowhere again to ruin it. “I’m wanted in a lot of places. I’ll raise youse one shift swap, no questions asked.”

A hiss went around the table and Jimmy the Pickle sighed and laid his cards facedown. “Too rich for my blood, I’m out.”

“Yancy,” the guard said again, and the prisoner all but rolled his eyes.

“It can wait,” Yancy said, waving him off as he looked at Sparkles and Tiny. “Well?”

“I’m in,” Tiny answered, and Sparkles hesitated before nodding.

A second later Yancy crowed and raked the pile of tokens and paper slips toward himself—favors and trade deals, the only currency that mattered around here—only to forget it all when the guard said, “It’s visitation day, Yancy.”

Yancy’s winnings hit the floor of the rec room as he shot up from his seat and grabbed the front of the guard’s uniform. “Why didn’t youse start with that?! And why didn’t any of youse tell me what day it was, huh?”

“Since when have you cared about visitation day?” Sparkles McGee asked and Yancy hesitated before slowly releasing his grip on the guard, who took a hasty step back just in case the prisoner changed his mind. “Not like anyone from Happy Trails is coming here to see us.”

Both true and valid points. Wasn’t like Yancy had any family or friends on the outside falling over themselves to come see him, which is one of the reasons he got transferred from Happy Trails to the Bronson Institute in the first place. No need to worry about what happens to a transfer if there’s no one who’ll even notice when they’re gone.

At least, that used to be the case, but Yancy still felt a rush of nervous energy as he took a seat at one of the empty round tables and looked around the visitor center, one of the few rooms in this place he wasn’t familiar with.

It couldn’t be more different than the room for visitations back at Happy Trails—he remembered a room with booths and soundproof glass separating the prisoners from those on the other side, holding a phone to his ear and listening listlessly while his court-appointed attorney spent his one and only visit yapping away about plea deals and a bunch of other stuff Yancy couldn’t care less about.

Here at the Institute though, they were all about presenting a good image for those visiting the few inmates who were allowed to take visitors. A big, brightly lit, spacious room, with windows (barred, but still more real sunlight than Yancy had seen in ages), round tables scattered around, and vending machines along one wall, plus cheerful posters about the importance of rehab with smiling, cartoonish monsters that would probably have offended half the folks Yancy hung out with downstairs.

There were still guards at the doors, of course, but they looked bored out of their minds. Not like they had to worry about any of the inmates causing problems, or not for long. Yancy rubbed at the tattoo-like wards on his wrists, which at any moment could be used along with the matching pair on his ankles to pin him down and put him out of any action until the guards said otherwise.

Well, assuming you didn’t get a jump on the guards first, not that Yancy would know anything about that sort of thing. Nothing that anyone who valued not having a makeshift knife in their side at any given moment could prove.

The people sitting around the other tables barely gave the guards a second thought though. At the nearest table, a vampire so heavily covered up that Yancy couldn’t guess who was under all those layers hugged a woman, their muffled voice apparently audible enough for her as she broke out into a laugh.

Yancy tried to keep his fingers from drumming on the table, only to find his feet tapping out a rhythm on the tiles beneath his seat.

Was it supposed to take this long?

Maybe they’d made a mistake.

Maybe they’d let him sit here, sweat it out a while, then come and take him back downstairs with a sorry or some excuse about how it was easy to get names mixed up.

They used to do that over at Happy Trails, sometimes. Longest Yancy waited in one of those booths was an hour, an hour of picking at his nails and humming the latest song he was working on under his breath, an hour of glancing at the door every time it opened just to see another unfamiliar face focus on someone else instead.

After that little “mix-up,” he stopped bothering to go at all.

Yancy heard the door open again and, despite all his plans to play it cool and not get his hopes up, turned his head immediately and nearly sprang out of his chair before regaining his composure.

“Y/N!” Yancy said before he could stop himself, shooting a wary look at the guard behind you. “I was starting to think youse wouldn’t come. They’s didn’t give youse any trouble up front, did they’s?”

“No, but mostly because I had some help getting in,” you said as you took the seat next to him, tilting your head toward the door and the guy who’d come in behind you and was now talking earnestly with the guard. “I wouldn’t have been able to get in at all if it wasn’t for him, since I, uh, kind of didn’t check with Emma ahead of time about this and don’t really have any current ID.”

“Him?” Yancy asked to be sure, and looked him over again after you nodded. From here, the young man in the cap wearing a faded shirt and some torn jeans didn’t look like the kind of person who could be much help getting in anywhere, much less into a facility as secure as this. “Sure, if youse say so. Made friends with the guards real quick, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah, Chase kind of does that,” you said with a shrug. “Helps that he knows a lot of people here anyways. He used to be—uh, here a lot. And he’s Staci’s husband. I mean, they’re still working some things out, but…”

“Oh, Staci? That’s okay then,” Yancy said, but he couldn’t help but notice you were stumbling over your words, your eyes straying toward the guards every time you looked away from him. “Don’t look so twitchy, that’s the quickest way to show you’re hiding something. And youse ain’t got nothin’ to hide, right?”

You winced as Yancy raised his voice on that last line, obviously looking at the guard behind him with a smile and wave that the guard returned.

“Yeah. Sorry. It’s just this place, after everything to get out of here…” You stopped and closed your eyes, taking a deep breath and slowly releasing it before focusing on Yancy with the sort of relaxed smile you hadn’t been able to muster the last time you were in here, what with the whole desperate need to escape thing. “You’re looking good.”

“Thank you for noticing,” Yancy said, only to wince. “Yikes, starting to sound like Illinois. When are you taking that guy out of here?”

“They couldn’t force him out of this place if they tried, not with the temperatures dropping every day,” you pointed out. Winter was slowly but steadily coming, and Illinois started shivering if the AC was turned on in a room. “You’re stuck with him until the spring. How’s he and Eric been doing?”

“Good enough,” Yancy said with a shrug. “You could come and see them yourself. When’s the visits with the scientist supposed to start?”

“Not until after my first full moon under observation,” you muttered, gaze dropping to Yancy’s idly tapping fingers. “Assuming I don’t…assuming I pass, Professor Beauregard wants me to do some tests.”

Yancy’s fingers stopped. “And if you don’t pass?”

He regretted the question as soon as he asked it, when your face took on the same tense, strained expression he had seen too often when you were here before. Speaking too loudly again, he brushed his own question off with a, “Yeah, no point in askin’ if it ain’t going to happen, am I right? Youse is lookin’ better—friends on the outside been treating you well?”

He glanced at Chase, who had taken a seat at one of the empty tables and was tapping away on his phone.

“…Yeah, yeah they are,” you said, smiling down at your hands at some thought. “Do you want to meet Chase? I’m sure he—”

“No,” Yancy interrupted, and quickly shrugged and looked away. “I’ve heard it can be hard to readjust, being on the outside again. ‘S why we kept getting people coming back to Happy Trails all the time.”

“I was only in here a couple of days,” you pointed out, but Yancy just shrugged again.

“Lot can happen in a few days.”

“…Yeah, yeah it can,” and he heard the smile in your voice even before he looked back at you. “I’ve had a lot to think about, what I’m going to do now that—that I don’t have to hide as much. Hopefully. I’ve been thinking about studying law again.”

“What, youse wants to be a lawyer or somethin’?” Yancy asked with a laugh. “Youse? A lawyer?”

“I actually used to be a lawyer, yeah.”

Oh. Oops.

But you didn’t seem too bothered as you admitted, “But that was a long time ago, and I’ve got a lot to catch up on if I want to be helpful to anybody. The stuff I learned back in university is a bit…outdated.”

“Youse was a college kid,” Yancy said, brow furrowed, and after a moment he shook his head. “Nope, doesn’t check out. Youse don’t feel nothin’ like a silver spoon in your mouth, rich kid type, and I mean that in a good way.”

“Well, I wasn’t, even before I couldn’t go anywhere near a silver anything if I wanted to. University was…rough, even when I had friends to help out when things got really bad.” You paused and then shook your head, brushing away whatever memories you had conjured up with those words. “What I’m trying to get at is, I want to be able to help people again, the way I used to.”

You looked him in the eye and continued, “I want to be able to help you get out of here, if you want that.”

“What, on parole?”

You sounded so confident, which was new enough to him, as if the only obstacle you could see to getting him out of the institute was whether or not Yancy wanted to get out.

To be fair, you were probably right.

Yancy rubbed the back of his neck and looked away. “I don’t know, I mean, I got a good thing here at the institute, you know? Cushy digs, work ain’t so bad, people who knows what respect is…”

“Until you get ‘volunteered’ to go help out downstairs,” you said.

“Emma said that stuff was supposed to stop.”

“Has it?”

Yancy looked away from your stare, which was another new one for him. “For now, yeah.”

A silence fell over the table, as you both knew how temporary any kind of promise from those in charge could be.

“Been thinking about the kid leaving here in the spring, with that guy,” Yancy said. “Doesn’t exactly sit right with me, Illinois dragging Eric around and getting him into whatever stupid thing he does trying to get uncursed again.”

“Yeah…” Your expression gave away your own thoughts and suspicions about how well that would go.

“Still, a lot could happen between now and then,” Yancy continued. “…But if youse wanted to brush up on your stuff over the next couple of months, it might not hurt.”

It wasn’t a real yes, but you smiled at him all the same, looking so hopeful Yancy couldn’t bring himself to point that out.

Instead, Yancy filled you in on what had been going on since you left, telling you all about how Tiny’s rehab was going and how Jimmy the Pickle got a gold star last week in his anger management class despite what he did to that one guy, and how Bam-Bam and Sparkles McGee won a bet against another cell block. He even spared a few words for Illinois, making sure to mention how the adventurer almost bit him yesterday when he stepped on his tail by accident, and Eric, whose tree was starting to grow some new roots which looked to be a good sign.

Too soon the remainder of the hour was gone and the guard was giving you a sign to wrap things up.

“I’ll be back, after the full moon,” you said, a flicker of unease on your face as you realized that would be true no matter how you handled the supervised change.

“Don’t go giving me that face, not as long as youse gets to walk out of this place free as a bird,” Yancy said, ruffling your hair and grinning as you pushed him away with an indignant sound. “Youse walking around out there like that? Because that don’t make being on the outside seem so great, you know.”

“Sorry I can’t be singing showtunes all the time,” you said, but despite the sarcasm you relaxed into a smile.

Yancy snapped his fingers as the two of you stood up together. “That reminds me, I got somethin’ I wanna show you, next visitation day. If youse comes back that is, and don’t get sick of this place with all your other stuff going on.”

Sure, you’d be back to see the professor, and maybe Yancy could wrangle an invite to be there in the lab when that happened, but this had been nice. Just the two of you, talking without you being stressed about tests or changing and without Illinois slithering into the conversation at every possible opportunity.

“Yeah, of course I’ll be here,” you said without hesitation, and Yancy couldn’t stop the grin even if he wanted to.

Those words made letting go a little easier after you hugged him, same as they did saying goodbye and watching you follow Chase out of the room with one last smile back at him.

Later, as he lay in his bunk staring up at the ceiling, Yancy realized it was one of the few times he genuinely had something to look forward to since going to prison. Sure, there were movie nights or the other odd piece of what passed as entertainment around here, but suddenly he had a reason to keep track of the days until the next visitation day.

And, though he still shied away from dwelling on the thought too long, winter would be here soon, and spring not that long after. He still couldn’t picture you being some stuffed shirt lawyer like the one they assigned him back at Happy Trails, but unlike that guy he could see you sitting next to him at his next parole hearing, ready and willing to argue for his freedom if need be.

Yancy laughed at the idea and rolled over in his bed to get some sleep, but it wasn’t the last time the thought crossed his mind.

And with each following visitation day, the idea only grew stronger. Every time, you made sure he knew it could be a reality the moment he decided he wanted it to be one.

After all, he helped you get your freedom when you’d given up any hope of ever getting out of this place—it was only fair that you did the same for him.

((The end. Thanks for reading!

I can’t guarantee any more stories anytime soon, but I am going to try to get back into the habit of writing again. It’s...been a while.

Tagging and hoping I’m not missing anyone or tagging anyone who asked not to be tagged: @silver-owl413 @skyewardlight @withjust-a-bite @blackaquokat @catgirlwarrior @neverisadork @luna1350 @oh-so-creepy @weirdfoxalley @95fangirl @lilalovesinternet-l @a-bit-dapper @randomartdudette @geekymushroom @cactipresident @hotcocoachia @purple-anxiety-blog @shyinspiredartist @avispate @missksketch @autumnrambles @authorracheljoy @hidinginmybochard))

#markiplier #fanfiction #traces of silver #werewolf au #dog days #ahwm yancy #wkm district attorney #visitation day #scruffy former district attorney y/n ready to fight for your rights

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