Wise Men Run, (4/?)
Title:Wise Men Run
Author:Aireyail
Pairing/Characters: T-Bag/Michael
Category:Slash
Rating:Overall NC-17
Summary:After Gretchen and Bagwell sell Scylla, Bagwell has gotten what he's always wanted-freedom and Michael. Can he finally settle down now and rest, or is that too much to hope for? A visit to his aunt in Manhattan Island might be the break he's always wanted or the nightmare he cannot escape.
Michael knows he's in trouble when he wakes up in an odd room to one, Theodore Bagwell. Trying to make nice with T-Bag is not one of Michael's finer points. Can he flee Bagwell and his domineering Mafia Family? In the end, will he even want to?
Spoilers:possible season 4 spoilers
Warnings: explicit sexual situations between two males
Disclaimer: Prison Break and all related elements and characters are copyright Paul Scheuring, 20th Century Fox Television, Adelstein-Parouse Productions, and Original Television. This is a fan story in no way affiliated with any of the above copyright and trademark holders of Prison Break. I make no money off of these writings.
A/N: Someone asked if this will be a mutual michael/t-bag relationship. Well it *is* labeled romance. I guess you'll have to stick around and find out!
A/N#2: I know it's been too long since I last updated. I feel a bit discouraged. Support through reviews should keep the story going! So, please leave a review, even if it’s just to say ‘keep writing’! :)
A/N#3: After I had already updated I went back and reread the last few chapters- There definitely isn't enough of Michael worrying about Sara, Linc and the gang. I guess I wanted this chapter to focus more on T-Bag and his feelings/past. There will be a bit more Michael angst next chapter as he will have to face that he might not be seeing Sara and Linc anytime soon.
________________
“Oh my God,” the small voice more or less repeated. Theodore’s panicked mahogany colored eyes landed on a waif of a child at the mouth of the manager’s current coffin-like drugstore.
The girl raised both hands to cover her trembling lips as she stood stunned in the still very open doorway. Theodore rushed to the entrance in his dread and snatched the child’s skinny arm, pulling her further into the drugstore. His eyes whipped around crazily for signs of other people.
The babyish looking girl, possibly twelve, with deep murky green eyes framed by dark greying circles stared openly at him. Theodore was at a loss for words. What could he possibly tell this child? She had seen everything- the mutilated body, his face, God, she could have seen the car, the only one in the parking lot.
He had killed children before, though not as young and under very different circumstances. He liked to believe that he had changed somewhat since his incarceration at Fox River. He swiped at his sweaty face with his prosthetic hand and watched as the girl gaped in all innocence at his disfigured limb.
“Whadya doin’ in here,” he asked. The clock read 5:24 am. What child in their right mind would be up at this hour, especially one without a parent?
A weak stuttered response was his answer. “M-My daddy, he needs his beer.” She let her wide green eyes land on the body before flinching and turning away. “Tommy sells it to me.”
“Beer, huh,” Theodore tried his best to talk conversationally and managed a small smile at her. He noticed the manager’s name tag reading ‘Tommy’ out of the corner of his eye.
“He gets cranky without it,” she sniffled.
His eyes darted around the drugstore once more and he came to a decision. “What’s yer name?”
“Molly.”
____________
The door suddenly swung open again with a whimsical ring and Theodore felt his neck snap in distress as it was cranked toward the doorway again. There stood Michael, his eyes wide with raised brows, his mouth slightly parted in horror. His attention now lay fully on the girl as she stood clutched within his claws. He knew Michael was frightened: for the girl, for himself- hell, maybe he was even frightened for Theodore in a sick dark way. Theodore wanted to laugh pathetically at the thought, Stockholm syndrome was unintentionally kicking in.
“What are you doing?” Michael’s voice wavered and cracked. He inched himself cautiously toward Theodore and the girl, limping on his battered leg. He tripped over something strewn across the floor and slipped; blanching as he realized it was the manager’s lifeless body now bleeding freely onto his worn chucks.
Theodore grabbed the girl by her hand and walked toward Michael grasping him by the elbow and dragging him back up to his feet. “Yuh need t’shut-up now, Pretty,” he ordered. “I need to torch this place and find the tape from those cameras.” There was a short pause before he took the girl’s small pasty hand and placed it in Michael’s warm larger one. “You two get in the car.”
“But, T-Bag-,” he started to protest. His pale fingers twitched around the girl’s small wrist.
He turned to Michael and wound his hand harshly against his neck in a flash, feeling the pulse fluttering beneath his fingertips rapidly. “Get your ass in the car or the police will find three dead bodies insteada one.” He loosened his hold on the younger man’s neck and let his fingers trail lazily across a cheek to tangle in the wispy growing black hair. He ruffled it like one would a young child and patted his cheek mockingly as he got to work.
He strolled down the aisle stocked with cleaning supplies.
_____________
Michael squeezed the girl’s hand. He thought of letting her go, telling her to run, and perhaps stopping Theodore from chasing after her, like some goddamn hero, but the possibilities of her getting away unharmed seemed slim to nothing. At the moment Theodore, even with his fake limb, was in much better condition than Michael and his legs were much longer than the child’s. He would be able to fight off Michael easily enough with his damaged leg and catch up with the girl in no time to ultimately kill them both. They had a better chance waiting in the car.
His hand shook as he gripped the car door’s cool handle. He pulled open the door and pushed the seat forward allowing the girl to crawl into the back. Michael followed her crawling into the front passenger’s seat and shutting the door with a fatal clank. There was no going back now. What was Theodore thinking? He should probably just be thankful the girl was alive, but under the circumstances…maybe she would have been better off dead. Theodore could be unsurprisingly unpredictable and surprisingly predictable at the same time.
“What’s your name?” he whispered, as if Theodore would seep up from the ground and appear at the car door at any moment.
_________________
Theodore held a bottle of lighter fluid in his hand popping the top of the lid off with his thumb. He poured the bottle of lighter fluid over the body along with the used rags in a careless fashion and dropped the bottle next to the body. Another bottle was held with greater care as he made an oblivion of Michael’s footprints.
Sweat dripped from his russet brow and stung his eye. He swiped at it with a stained shirt sleeve. His blunder of choice in the murder of the manager was most apparent now as the high of his kill wore away with the commencement of panic. These bouts of extreme and unexplained rage had been the end and ruin of his childhood and to most of his adult life.
Michael had it so easy, Theodore thought. He had been pampered and rich, a big-shot Engineer and a high class snob. His mother had died young, but surly Linc the Sink and Pretty had gotten cozy enough with a relative. A boy as sweet as Michael always had a home.
Not like Theodore who had been passed around to different unwilling relatives every chance his father got. Forever misunderstood and underestimated. A gross abrasion on the festering boil that made up his kin.
His Aunt was different though. She had been like the girl next door when he was seventeen. They had grown up together one summer, close in the same age and nearly equal in acumen. Her presence had been a relief in their four short years together.
Her marriage to his uncle at twenty one had been an unpleasant discovery and had taken place the same year Teddy had been prosecuted for his vastly sordid deeds- battery, assault, murder, kidnapping and rape- while functioning under the Alliance of Purity, a group he had joined at the tender age of fifteen.
She had certainly been angry with him, but she remained the only family member to visit Donaldson Prison every Friday till she had convinced her father, fifteen years later, to run an inside job for his breakout.
Those brief months spent in liberation with Susan Hollander and her children, after the lingering fifteen years in Donaldson, had made him reevaluate his way of life. Susan made him want to be a better man, which in turn made it all the more aching with her betrayal.
Best not to think of the past, he reflected. He had what he wanted now, what he had craved for since laying eyes on Pretty for the first time in Fox River. Michael made a very notable trophy.
_________________
Michael sat nervously in the car waiting for Theodore to return. Molly had been rather quiet and had not put up as much of a fight as he had expected her to. As of now she sat in the back seat looking through the car windows eagerly.
Molly’s stomach growled and Michael’s ached in sympathy. No sleep and no food made Michael a dead beat. Food was immensely essential for energy and he would need all his energy to heal. A plan needed to be formulated if Molly and he were to ever escape Bagwell, healing would be his first step.
A lone figure appeared from the now smoldering drugstore. Small wisps of smoke curled and twisted as they exited the store’s glass door with Theodore. A hefty black garbage bag was lugged behind him as he made his way toward the sedan. He inaudibly settled the bag in the back seat next to Molly. She quickly riffled through it and squealed as she snatched a box of Twinkies.
“Is this food for us, Teddy,” she asked. Theodore raised a brow in Michael’s direction.
At the elevated brow Michael looked away and faced the car window murmuring, “Well, I couldn’t have her calling you T-Bag.”
Theodore tossed himself into the driver's seat and Michael wrinkled his nose in distaste as the smell of lighter fluid combined with smoke wafted from the other man's clothes and hit him full force. Theodore turned to the girl with a disarming smile. “Of course, Bunny,” he chuckled. Molly scrunched her nose at the nickname.
He quickly looked toward Theodore in irritation. “What are we doing about this,” he questioned, motioning angrily at the girl.
Theodore licked his lips before biting his tongue in thought looking into the rearview mirror at Molly as she munched on a Twinkie. “She’s goin’ with us,” he said simply.
Michael exploded. “What are you thinking? She needs to go home!”
Theodore twisted toward Michael heatedly as he started the car. “She’s seen our faces, she knows what we did. Pretty, she can’t go home,” he finalized.
“I-I…I don’t want to go back home. Can’t you just take me with you?” She placed an undersized hand on Michael’s shoulder pleading more with those hazy green eyes than her own words.
Theodore looked pointedly at Michael. “’Nough said, the girl comes with us.”
Michael sighed in defeat. “Any cereal bars back there,” he asked. Molly smiled before digging her way back into the bag.
________________
Molly fell asleep after two hours of being on the road. Her sugar high had led to the discovery of her being a very troublesome traveling partner, but the information made Michael feel light hearted.
As the hours of driving on straight grey highway wore on, Michael realized that the responsibility of caring for Molly would fall on his shoulders. He almost didn't mind. As selfish as it sounded, he was glad he wouldn't be alone with T-Bag.
Author:Aireyail
Pairing/Characters: T-Bag/Michael
Category:Slash
Rating:Overall NC-17
Summary:After Gretchen and Bagwell sell Scylla, Bagwell has gotten what he's always wanted-freedom and Michael. Can he finally settle down now and rest, or is that too much to hope for? A visit to his aunt in Manhattan Island might be the break he's always wanted or the nightmare he cannot escape.
Michael knows he's in trouble when he wakes up in an odd room to one, Theodore Bagwell. Trying to make nice with T-Bag is not one of Michael's finer points. Can he flee Bagwell and his domineering Mafia Family? In the end, will he even want to?
Spoilers:possible season 4 spoilers
Warnings: explicit sexual situations between two males
Disclaimer: Prison Break and all related elements and characters are copyright Paul Scheuring, 20th Century Fox Television, Adelstein-Parouse Productions, and Original Television. This is a fan story in no way affiliated with any of the above copyright and trademark holders of Prison Break. I make no money off of these writings.
A/N: Someone asked if this will be a mutual michael/t-bag relationship. Well it *is* labeled romance. I guess you'll have to stick around and find out!
A/N#2: I know it's been too long since I last updated. I feel a bit discouraged. Support through reviews should keep the story going! So, please leave a review, even if it’s just to say ‘keep writing’! :)
A/N#3: After I had already updated I went back and reread the last few chapters- There definitely isn't enough of Michael worrying about Sara, Linc and the gang. I guess I wanted this chapter to focus more on T-Bag and his feelings/past. There will be a bit more Michael angst next chapter as he will have to face that he might not be seeing Sara and Linc anytime soon.
________________
“Oh my God,” the small voice more or less repeated. Theodore’s panicked mahogany colored eyes landed on a waif of a child at the mouth of the manager’s current coffin-like drugstore.
The girl raised both hands to cover her trembling lips as she stood stunned in the still very open doorway. Theodore rushed to the entrance in his dread and snatched the child’s skinny arm, pulling her further into the drugstore. His eyes whipped around crazily for signs of other people.
The babyish looking girl, possibly twelve, with deep murky green eyes framed by dark greying circles stared openly at him. Theodore was at a loss for words. What could he possibly tell this child? She had seen everything- the mutilated body, his face, God, she could have seen the car, the only one in the parking lot.
He had killed children before, though not as young and under very different circumstances. He liked to believe that he had changed somewhat since his incarceration at Fox River. He swiped at his sweaty face with his prosthetic hand and watched as the girl gaped in all innocence at his disfigured limb.
“Whadya doin’ in here,” he asked. The clock read 5:24 am. What child in their right mind would be up at this hour, especially one without a parent?
A weak stuttered response was his answer. “M-My daddy, he needs his beer.” She let her wide green eyes land on the body before flinching and turning away. “Tommy sells it to me.”
“Beer, huh,” Theodore tried his best to talk conversationally and managed a small smile at her. He noticed the manager’s name tag reading ‘Tommy’ out of the corner of his eye.
“He gets cranky without it,” she sniffled.
His eyes darted around the drugstore once more and he came to a decision. “What’s yer name?”
“Molly.”
____________
The door suddenly swung open again with a whimsical ring and Theodore felt his neck snap in distress as it was cranked toward the doorway again. There stood Michael, his eyes wide with raised brows, his mouth slightly parted in horror. His attention now lay fully on the girl as she stood clutched within his claws. He knew Michael was frightened: for the girl, for himself- hell, maybe he was even frightened for Theodore in a sick dark way. Theodore wanted to laugh pathetically at the thought, Stockholm syndrome was unintentionally kicking in.
“What are you doing?” Michael’s voice wavered and cracked. He inched himself cautiously toward Theodore and the girl, limping on his battered leg. He tripped over something strewn across the floor and slipped; blanching as he realized it was the manager’s lifeless body now bleeding freely onto his worn chucks.
Theodore grabbed the girl by her hand and walked toward Michael grasping him by the elbow and dragging him back up to his feet. “Yuh need t’shut-up now, Pretty,” he ordered. “I need to torch this place and find the tape from those cameras.” There was a short pause before he took the girl’s small pasty hand and placed it in Michael’s warm larger one. “You two get in the car.”
“But, T-Bag-,” he started to protest. His pale fingers twitched around the girl’s small wrist.
He turned to Michael and wound his hand harshly against his neck in a flash, feeling the pulse fluttering beneath his fingertips rapidly. “Get your ass in the car or the police will find three dead bodies insteada one.” He loosened his hold on the younger man’s neck and let his fingers trail lazily across a cheek to tangle in the wispy growing black hair. He ruffled it like one would a young child and patted his cheek mockingly as he got to work.
He strolled down the aisle stocked with cleaning supplies.
_____________
Michael squeezed the girl’s hand. He thought of letting her go, telling her to run, and perhaps stopping Theodore from chasing after her, like some goddamn hero, but the possibilities of her getting away unharmed seemed slim to nothing. At the moment Theodore, even with his fake limb, was in much better condition than Michael and his legs were much longer than the child’s. He would be able to fight off Michael easily enough with his damaged leg and catch up with the girl in no time to ultimately kill them both. They had a better chance waiting in the car.
His hand shook as he gripped the car door’s cool handle. He pulled open the door and pushed the seat forward allowing the girl to crawl into the back. Michael followed her crawling into the front passenger’s seat and shutting the door with a fatal clank. There was no going back now. What was Theodore thinking? He should probably just be thankful the girl was alive, but under the circumstances…maybe she would have been better off dead. Theodore could be unsurprisingly unpredictable and surprisingly predictable at the same time.
“What’s your name?” he whispered, as if Theodore would seep up from the ground and appear at the car door at any moment.
_________________
Theodore held a bottle of lighter fluid in his hand popping the top of the lid off with his thumb. He poured the bottle of lighter fluid over the body along with the used rags in a careless fashion and dropped the bottle next to the body. Another bottle was held with greater care as he made an oblivion of Michael’s footprints.
Sweat dripped from his russet brow and stung his eye. He swiped at it with a stained shirt sleeve. His blunder of choice in the murder of the manager was most apparent now as the high of his kill wore away with the commencement of panic. These bouts of extreme and unexplained rage had been the end and ruin of his childhood and to most of his adult life.
Michael had it so easy, Theodore thought. He had been pampered and rich, a big-shot Engineer and a high class snob. His mother had died young, but surly Linc the Sink and Pretty had gotten cozy enough with a relative. A boy as sweet as Michael always had a home.
Not like Theodore who had been passed around to different unwilling relatives every chance his father got. Forever misunderstood and underestimated. A gross abrasion on the festering boil that made up his kin.
His Aunt was different though. She had been like the girl next door when he was seventeen. They had grown up together one summer, close in the same age and nearly equal in acumen. Her presence had been a relief in their four short years together.
Her marriage to his uncle at twenty one had been an unpleasant discovery and had taken place the same year Teddy had been prosecuted for his vastly sordid deeds- battery, assault, murder, kidnapping and rape- while functioning under the Alliance of Purity, a group he had joined at the tender age of fifteen.
She had certainly been angry with him, but she remained the only family member to visit Donaldson Prison every Friday till she had convinced her father, fifteen years later, to run an inside job for his breakout.
Those brief months spent in liberation with Susan Hollander and her children, after the lingering fifteen years in Donaldson, had made him reevaluate his way of life. Susan made him want to be a better man, which in turn made it all the more aching with her betrayal.
Best not to think of the past, he reflected. He had what he wanted now, what he had craved for since laying eyes on Pretty for the first time in Fox River. Michael made a very notable trophy.
_________________
Michael sat nervously in the car waiting for Theodore to return. Molly had been rather quiet and had not put up as much of a fight as he had expected her to. As of now she sat in the back seat looking through the car windows eagerly.
Molly’s stomach growled and Michael’s ached in sympathy. No sleep and no food made Michael a dead beat. Food was immensely essential for energy and he would need all his energy to heal. A plan needed to be formulated if Molly and he were to ever escape Bagwell, healing would be his first step.
A lone figure appeared from the now smoldering drugstore. Small wisps of smoke curled and twisted as they exited the store’s glass door with Theodore. A hefty black garbage bag was lugged behind him as he made his way toward the sedan. He inaudibly settled the bag in the back seat next to Molly. She quickly riffled through it and squealed as she snatched a box of Twinkies.
“Is this food for us, Teddy,” she asked. Theodore raised a brow in Michael’s direction.
At the elevated brow Michael looked away and faced the car window murmuring, “Well, I couldn’t have her calling you T-Bag.”
Theodore tossed himself into the driver's seat and Michael wrinkled his nose in distaste as the smell of lighter fluid combined with smoke wafted from the other man's clothes and hit him full force. Theodore turned to the girl with a disarming smile. “Of course, Bunny,” he chuckled. Molly scrunched her nose at the nickname.
He quickly looked toward Theodore in irritation. “What are we doing about this,” he questioned, motioning angrily at the girl.
Theodore licked his lips before biting his tongue in thought looking into the rearview mirror at Molly as she munched on a Twinkie. “She’s goin’ with us,” he said simply.
Michael exploded. “What are you thinking? She needs to go home!”
Theodore twisted toward Michael heatedly as he started the car. “She’s seen our faces, she knows what we did. Pretty, she can’t go home,” he finalized.
“I-I…I don’t want to go back home. Can’t you just take me with you?” She placed an undersized hand on Michael’s shoulder pleading more with those hazy green eyes than her own words.
Theodore looked pointedly at Michael. “’Nough said, the girl comes with us.”
Michael sighed in defeat. “Any cereal bars back there,” he asked. Molly smiled before digging her way back into the bag.
________________
Molly fell asleep after two hours of being on the road. Her sugar high had led to the discovery of her being a very troublesome traveling partner, but the information made Michael feel light hearted.
As the hours of driving on straight grey highway wore on, Michael realized that the responsibility of caring for Molly would fall on his shoulders. He almost didn't mind. As selfish as it sounded, he was glad he wouldn't be alone with T-Bag.