Page 31 of Freshman

When it was his time to check Queenie, Alfie flung himself out of the office and through the gate. He bounded up the stairs, ran his hand along the railing, then took the next set two steps at a time to get to the top landing. He strolled up to cell 149 and knocked his fist to the door.

“Queenie?”

He listened to a scramble, the slap of bare feet on concrete, and then finally, Queenie spoke.

“Officer Alfie?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay. Thank you. Nate told me what you did, said I wouldn’t be here without you.”

Alfie pressed his hand to the door and frowned. “Thank me? You were trying to kill yourself. Surely I just screwed it up.”

Nate laughed, and Alfie stared at his door, not getting the joke.

“I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” Queenie mumbled.

Alfie rolled his eyes. “Right, so you were lying in bed playing with them, and they just happened to jump down your throat.”

“No… I put them there. I was experimenting.”

Alfie’s frown intensified, and he shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

“What he means to say is he was having a high wank and it went wrong,” Nate muttered.

“A high wank?”

Nate hummed and banged the door of his cell. “Make it hard to breathe, and it gets you high. He was probably imagining a huge cock suffocating him. Ain’t that right, Queenie?”

“Screw you, Nate.”

Nate barked with laughter, drumming his fist to his door. “It’s a new take on tea-bagging, but I don’t think it’ll catch on.”

Alfie smacked the heel of his hand to his forehead. “Wait, it was some sex thing? You were getting off on choking yourself?”

A slow, patronising clap came from Nate’s cell. “Gold star for the freshman.”

Queenie whined. “Please stop talking about it.”

“No way. The more I take the piss, the less likely you’ll do some stupid shit like that again. I don’t want yours and Freshman’s mouths getting familiar.”

Alfie narrowed his eyes and huffed through his nose.

Nate tapped his nails to the metal door.

Alfie imagined a big toothy grin on Nate’s face, and it irritated the hell out of him.

“You know what, Queenie? Out of all the prisoners, I’m glad it was you I had to kiss.”

“That’s cruel,” Nate murmured. “It was CPR, nothing sexual. Any boner Queenie had was from the teabags, not you.”

“Yeah, that kiss in the cell was CPR, but what about the secret one in the back of the ambulance?”

The tapping nails stopped, and Alfie stared at Nate’s door, eyebrow raised as he waited for a reaction.

“When you slipped your tongue against mine, that was something…” Alfie moaned softly. “That was special.”

“Jesus, Alfie,” Queenie groaned. “You’ll get me in the shit. He didn’t even come in the ambulance. He’s messing with you, Nate.”

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