[fic] Definition of an Addict (REPOST)
Title: Definition of an Addict
Fandom: Prison Break
Author: badboy_fangirl
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Michael & Sara POV, Michael/Sara
Category: Angst, Romance, Smut
Word Count: ~5500
Summary: Sara Tancredi runs into Michael Scofield in the oddest of places.
Spoilers: Through the end of Season 1.
Warnings: Sex. Goes AU from then end of S1.
Author's Notes: When I first wrote this (in 2006), it was as an unauthorized sequel to Miss_Mazzie’s 12 Steps and a House of Cards
Additional A/N: So July marks FIVE YEARS since I started on LiveJournal. As part of the celebration I decided to repost some of my PB "Greatest Hits" as it were--stories that were written early in my fandom experience before I had mastered LJ and were never posted here.
Addict: 1: (noun) a person who is addicted to an activity, habit, or substance;
2: (verb) to cause to become physiologically or psychologically dependent on an addictive substance.
Addiction: the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is
psychologically or physically habit-forming, such as narcotics, to such an
extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.
The 12 Steps
1. We admitted we were powerless over our addiction-that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
~*~
Sara sat towards the back of the chapel. She hadn’t gone to a meeting for at least a year, hadn’t even felt she needed one in at least that long, but today, out of nowhere, she’d felt a compelling need to be surrounded by others like her. Those with pasts not far behind them; those trying to make something of their lives; those not wanting the rogue thoughts they sometimes had to control their lives.
Now that she was here, though, she felt some disdain. She had been clean for three years, with nary a close call. Her sponsor had never helped her so she stopped calling him, and when she’d done that, she’d felt better. She’d become her own sponsor, her own best friend. She had learned to control herself.
Dropping her head into her hands, she studied the designs on the woven moccasins on her feet instead of the next confessor. A meeting hadn’t been what she needed after all, but she didn’t know what she did need. It was like she was staring at a cupboard filled with delicious food but none of it appealed to her. She was starving and none of it could satisfy her.
So when she heard a voice that sounded vaguely familiar, a voice from her dreams, she slowly raised her head. His first statement was echoing off the walls of the church through her eardrums in a way that almost had her clamping her hands over her ears to drown it out. “Hi, I’m Michael, and I’m an alcoholic,” he said, his voice soft, his eyes on the wooden pulpit he stood behind. His long fingers tugged the microphone closer to his mouth, then pushed it back, then abandoned it altogether to smooth across the light colored wood. “I’ve got 48 hours, and nothing else. No pride, no dignity. Nothing. As I sat listening to each of you, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’ve been on this road my whole life. I’ve traded one addiction for another, over and over again.”
His eloquence in the face of the most terrible confession battered Sara’s heart. How could Michael Scofield, of all people, be here?
But wouldn’t it surprise many who knew her, too? If she wasn’t a successful doctor, if she wasn’t highly educated, if she didn’t give service to her community, if she hadn’t been the daughter of a politician, perhaps being a junkie would have been more acceptable, more believable.
What was Michael? The abandoned son of a drunk father, the orphan of a too-soon dead mother, the brother of an ex-convict, wrongfully accused, though he was. And what else was Michael? An ex-con in his own right with a $90,000 education and no self-worth. She had known that the night she left the door unlocked for him and Lincoln to escape from Fox River, when his plea to her was for nothing but his brother. If he’d asked it for himself, maybe it wouldn’t have made her so angry, and she had held it against him for far longer than he deserved.
And he had never asked her for anything since. He had quietly sent his apologies and when she wouldn’t see him, or speak to him except to say, “I don’t want to talk to you” he had left her alone. They lived in the same city, and they had crossed paths occasionally over the last three years, but he had never approached her, had never made an attempt to force her to listen to him. Now, she sat raptly at his feet, but she was far in the back and he probably couldn’t see her.
“I think the disappointment I’ve felt in other people, it’s made me a hypocrite. I’m someone who couldn’t see my own problems because I’ve spent so much time fixating on other people’s.” His eyes never moved up from the glossy wood pulpit, but his voice gathered strength as he continued on. “I’m here because I need help, and the biggest problem I’ve got is my pride. I haven’t even told my brother yet, the one person in the whole world who would want to help me, but I had to…” And with the mention of Lincoln his words lost momentum and his voice cracked. “I had to do this myself, without him. I had to do this for myself. And now I just pray to God that I can do it.”
~*~
It’s with irony lingering in his mind that Michael fills a Styrofoam coffee cup and sips carefully from it. It figures that a room full of addicts of one kind or another would have an endless supply of coffee and donuts. His eyes dance over the donuts. No maple covered ones, no temptation, he thinks, easily turning away from the table.
“You looking for a sponsor?” she asks him, standing just a few feet from him.
Michael is surprised, not surprised that she might be at a meeting such as this, but that she would approach him, speak to him. And he’s still surprised that he feels something deep in his gut when he looks at her. Her red hair is shorter now, barely touching her shoulders, but still beautiful and vibrant. Her brown eyes are wary but warmer than they were the last time he looked into them, when he tried to apologize. Not as warm as the morning he kissed her in Fox River, but he supposes they were never that warm on any other occasion with him anyway.
“Sara,” he acknowledges, proffering his coffee.
“No, thanks,” she says, almost tersely. “You need a sponsor?” she repeats.
“Are you volunteering?” he asks, because he can’t imagine that she’ll say…
“Yes. I am. If you don’t already have one.”
He drops her gaze, running his fingers carefully around the rim of his cup. This would be an easy lie. She’ll never know. She doesn’t have to know if his sponsor is chosen today or tomorrow. She doesn’t have to do this, yet she’s offering him something he needs badly.
One would think he wouldn’t have a reaction to her anymore. One would think two months of his life, spent sporadically at best with this woman who hardly knew him and who he hardly knew, would eventually fade as the years separated them. But, sadly, one of the reasons he’s here is undoubtedly because of Sara. Not that she drove him to magnify a major personality flaw, but that what he did to her certainly caused it to flare up like an unsightly case of herpes. It’s always been there, in his genetics if nothing else. Maybe his father wasn’t really a drunk, but Lincoln certainly gave it his best go there for awhile, and now that he’s got his life on track it’s made it even harder for Michael to face his own problems.
To admit he even had a problem. To say yes to her now, it’s a pride issue yet again. Let her help, let her try to fix him, yet again. Isn’t that what she always did when he was in Fox River? Mend him up and send him on his way?
His eyes snap to hers, searching to see if that’s her intent.
But somehow the reflection looking back at him from the deep brown of her irises only shows him how much he wants her, and that he will do anything to be with her again, even if it means that she will shuttle him away once she thinks he is fixed.
“I don’t have a sponsor,” he hears himself saying.
~*~
As they settled into a booth in a little diner not far from the church where the AA meeting was being held, Michael smiled at Sara, and she felt her heart rate quicken. Something about this, and how much sense it didn’t make almost made her relax, but not quite.
After they ordered some pie, he sipped water and avoided her eyes. So Sara just jumped right in. “How do you feel about the 12 Steps?”
His eyes came up and he shrugged. “I’m not that familiar with them.”
“Well here you go,” she said, sliding a small laminated card across the table to him. While he moved his hand over to pull it closer to his side of the table, she found herself noticing his arms. He was wearing a simple, short-sleeved, white t-shirt, no doubt the one that was under his button up while he was at the office, but the length of the tattoos down his graceful arms made her want to stroke her fingers down those lines of ink. Shaking her head, she tried to remember the pat speech she had prepared about the 12 Steps. “You’re bound to go through these steps and find something or many things that you absolutely don’t agree with. What’s important is to adapt the ideas to who you are and what you believe.”
His eyes scanned the card and he glanced up at her. “I believe in God, Sara.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t. It took me some time to come to grips with the things on that list.”
“You believe in God now?”
“Of a sort. I believe in a higher power.”
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t do it alone, I tried for too long, and then one day I had power I hadn’t had before. I can only attribute that to something I can’t see. I believe that.” She tapped her finger against the top of the laminated surface. “Go home and make a list. Start with number one and go through it. If you don’t have anything to say under one of them, skip it, and we’ll talk about it.”
His lips lifted in a smirk. “Have you done this before?”
“Been a sponsor?” When he nodded, she shook her head negatively.
“It shows.”
“You’re going to criticize me?”
“No, you’re just...abrupt. You have a much better bedside manner as a doctor.”
“Maybe my manner is affected by the recipient.”
The teasing light in his eyes faded away instantly. “Look, you don’t have to do this...”
“No, Michael, I want to, really,” she said, regretting her snappish remark. Reaching across the table, her hand landed on his wrist. “I’m sorry,” Sara said softly. “Let me try this again. See number nine?”
His eyes scanned down again, and he read aloud, “Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”
“I should have spoken to you when you asked to see me, and every day since then I should have said what I’m about to say. Michael, I’m sorry. And I forgive you for all the wrongs that I imagined and the ones that actually happened. And I’m practicing step 12 for myself. I want to help you, but I can only help you so far as you want to help yourself.”
His eyes traveled back to the card, and he read, “Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” As he looked up, his hand covered hers, the one that had found a new home against his wrist. “I’m sorry, Sara. I owe you an apology for so many things.”
“An apology to me is not part of your recovery. And you don’t owe me anything more than the apologies you gave me three years ago.” Pausing, she carefully withdrew her hand, fighting the urge to turn it into his and caress his palm softly. For a moment it was so real, she could feel her fingertips just grazing over the soft, fleshy pads and a shudder worked its way through her. She moved her hand quickly back to her lap.
When their pie arrived, their eye contact was broken too, and Sara felt relieved because she felt her face flushing. “Can I get some more water?” she asked their waitress.
“Sure thing,” the girl replied. Turning her head, she flashed a big smile at Michael. “Do you need anything else, sugar?”
Sara was astounded to see Michael’s cheek bones redden. “I’m good,” he said, looking away from the waitress. His eyes collided with Sara’s and he barely held on as the girl walked away. Then he started laughing out of sheer embarrassment.
Sara laughed with him because she didn’t know what else to do. Then she asked, “Does that happen a lot?”
“What?” he asked, scooping up a bite of pie and shoving it into his mouth.
“Girls, hitting on you.”
“It happens enough,” he responded, mouth full. As he swallowed, shame showered his face. “Enough that I’ve spent too many mornings recently waking up in places I don’t remember going to.”
She looked away from the mirror of her own angst. How many times had that happened to her? “Have you considered rehab?”
“Of course. I want to try it on my own first.” He took another bite of pie. “I figure I’ll know within a short amount of time if my will is enough to get me through or if I need restraints.”
Sara realized she hadn’t touched her own dessert because she’d been too involved with him-both in what he’d been sharing verbally and in watching his lips and tongue as he ate his pie. Then she also realized this was a bad idea. She shouldn’t be his sponsor, because she was too involved already. She shouldn’t be the sponsor that fucks her sponsoree, but she knew she would. Because the one addiction she’d had that she’d never experienced fully, explored enough, or exploited sat right in front of her.
When he looked up at her, his mouth opened to say something, but he never said it. His eyes pierced hers, as though he could read her thoughts, and perhaps he could. For only a few moments, silent stretches of communication from his eyes to hers, like so many moments before. Sara remembered being pulled up to safety by his strong arms and being lifted down to the floor from a ceiling; she remembered standing close to him, listening to his lung function, and then concentrating on the heavy thump-thump of his heart as her gaze was lost in his. She remembered closing her eyes to all of it as his lips overtook hers, and the reason why truly didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was the heat that was still there, and it flamed through her body as though just yesterday she’d stood in the Infirmary at Fox River and his long fingers wrapped around her wrist and his soft words thanked her for what, she couldn't even remember. Because he never should have thanked her and he should never have said she could be his sponsor.
“Are you going to eat your pie?” he eventually asked, and she knew whatever he had been about to say had been replaced by this lame attempt to break the tension.
“No,” she answered.
He reached over and tugged her saucer towards himself. “Maybe I’ll replace alcohol with pie,” he said, dropping her gaze again to look at the slice of banana cream.
No, she thought, you’ll replace it with me.
~*~
By the time they walk out of the diner, it’s past 9 o’clock. Michael glances at his watch briefly and enjoys the last vestiges of the sun. Summer is his favorite time of year, and always has been. The light is stronger and longer than the dark, and there seems to be something poetic about it, something he’s never considered before.
Sara walks alongside him without speaking. He holds the 12 Step card in his palm, the size of it not much wider than an index card. He assumes that’s for easy reference and imagines carrying it in his dress shirt pocket every day at the engineering firm he works in. “Where are you working, now?” he asks, reminded by his own thoughts that Sara left Fox River at the same time he did. Before the exoneration, before the hero status, before he started drowning his less than perfect life in a bottle of scotch every night.
“At County. They needed an Attending Physician in the ER; I fit the requirement. The boss wasn’t turned off by my record.”
“You like it?” he asks, after her matter-of-fact answer seems a little passionless.
“I like the volunteer work I do at the Southside Clinic and The Joshua Carter AIDS Institute better, but I’ve got to pay my bills, too.” She pauses and then says more softly, “I’m just glad they’ll still let me practice medicine.”
“I’m glad they let you, too,” he says with heartfelt sincerity. They keep walking, away from the diner, up the street that leads to a residential area. “Where are we going?” he asks.
“I live just up here,” Sara says, pointing a hand in the direction they’re walking.
Michael doesn’t argue the idiocy of what they are about to do. He’s not had a drink in-he checks his watch again-49 hours and 23 minutes. Being alone isn’t what he wants or needs right now. Wanting Sara has been a constant condition for him, almost since he first met her. Her wryness, her ability to say just a few words to put him in his place, her compassion-and since he’s learning number four on that list, Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves-he admits his wild attraction to the milky porcelain of her skin, and the curve of her hips and the thrust of her breasts under her simple blue v-neck shirt; not to mention the mile long legs that he’s imagined wrapped around his hips too many times to count and the wide smudge of her mouth, opening under his, inviting him inside to stay, not just visit indefinitely. He’s wanted Sara Tancredi for so long, it seems like that desire became his motivation, however subconsciously.
What had happened to get him here, to this night? Walking with her in the warm summer air, he knows his life is in shattered pieces, and he's too afraid to even tell Lincoln the truth of it all. He's not afraid that it will change Lincoln's opinion of him, but he's hidden it for so long that to come clean with his brother is more than he can bear right now. He can pinpoint the beginning of his downfall to successfully executing a plan that had one small hitch: a woman he fell in love with who could never believe him, or forgive him, or love him back.
Only now, she does believe him, and she has forgiven him. And love? Well, he wouldn’t dream of asking for that now, but he’ll take want or need, or even convenience. Because when she had looked at him across the Formica in that diner, he had known he would at least try to get in her bed. If she sends him away, if she tells him sponsors don’t do that, well at least he’ll know. But this night won’t end until he has made the effort. Because he can’t not. Because she has always driven him crazy, and now she's just a few inches away. Because he hasn’t made a single good decision in the last three years, and he sees no reason to start now.
Because two out of three was as good a statistic as a guy in his situation can ask for.
At the fenced off entrance to an old style apartment building, he runs his hand along the iron gate and looks upward. No more than five stories, it's a quaint white building with green shutters framing its windows. “You moved,” he blurts out.
“Yeah, I hated my old apartment, even though I stayed in it for almost a year after my overdose. I couldn’t live there any more. I didn’t want to, and then I found this place, for a song. I own two of the apartments, and sublet one of them.”
“This is a better section of town,” he adds, thinking about her old apartment and how he used to sit outside of it, even after she had told him she didn’t want to talk to him. He would sit in his car and sip Jack Daniels, or whatever he had acquired, but he never got drunk enough to get up the nerve to knock on her door.
“I like it,” she says, pushing open the gate his hand rests on top of. Turning, she walks backward towards the three steps that lead up to the outer door. She looks him up and down and he feels his body stir, knowing now that she won’t say no. She brought him here for the same reason he came with her.
As he follows her up the steps, he thanks God he ended up in the ER three days ago, not at County, but across town at Mercy, and that he knows he's clean, because he doesn't have any condoms on him. The excursion to the hospital was what had been the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. He'd woken up in an alley. An alley. He earns $75,000 a year, drives a Mercedes, and he woke up in an alley. He'd lain there, looking up at the sky, remembering times he'd found Lincoln in similar positions, and he finally faced that he had hit rock bottom.
He'd gotten to his feet, wandered into the hospital five blocks away and asked for a physical. The doctor had been kind, had given him business cards of rehab facilities along with a list of local AA meeting places. Along with that he'd given him a clean bill of health, other than an inflamed liver that wasn't going to show much repair unless Michael quit drinking.
So before he gets the shakes, before he faces the ugliest it can be, he wants to be inside Sara Tancredi and have one sweet moment to focus on. Sex unmarred by black holes or no memory of even reaching pleasure. He wants one time where he feels like the man who had walked into a bank with a plan stopped and the person who could have met Sara, fallen in love with her, and pursued her until she couldn't say no to him began. He wants that man to live, at least once. Right here, right now.
In the hall outside her apartment, he moves close to her. He doesn't wrap his arms around her, but he doesn't need to, because as soon as he invades her personal space she shifts so that her body brushes his oh-so-tantalizingly. Then she puts her hands back and leans against the wall so that his body follows hers. Their chests meet first, and his hands land on the wallpaper beside her head. He grazes a kiss over her lips, lips that are slightly parted already with hot breaths beating against his face in rhythm with his heart. "Sara," he breathes, pressing his body full length to hers. Don't tell me to stop, his mind cries, but he manages to spit out the words, "This is probably against the rules, right?" His voice sounds unnaturally tight, even to his own ears.
Sara's body arches up from the wall, her hands giving her leverage that leaves no doubt in his mind about what they are about to do. "Everyone fucks their sponsor. It's in the code."
"Even you?" he asks, unable to pick out her eyes in the non-existent hallway light. He can't see her, but he can feel her, against him in every place he's ever wanted to feel her. Soft, warm, curvy, pliant.
"Especially me," she says, and then her teeth sink gently into his bottom lip and he knows it doesn't matter. "I told you I wasn't a nice girl, remember?" She's trying to remind him of how they got here. But this is about now, and only now.
~*~
Sara knew this was about three years ago, and unfulfilled flirtations, comments that were nothing more than a way to build something between them he could later use against her, but it had felt real then, and the lines blurred and she no longer remembered when she hadn't believed. She stopped wondering what she believed now. All she knew were his hands and his mouth on every part of her.
He stripped her clothes off slowly, even though in the hallway he had kissed her mouth until she had arched up into him fully clothed, wrapped her legs around his hips solidly, and pumped against his straining erection long enough to give herself an orgasm. Showing her he remembered the conversation she referenced, he whispered, "So where do you finish?" just as she bucked against him and cried out under his lips. Now, it was slow, he was slow, or maybe he was still doing what he'd always done, being patient and thorough, and she was the one who was yanking at his clothes and feeling frustrated because they didn't slip away fast enough.
He turned her on to her stomach once she was nude and kissed his way down her back, lingering in the crevice of her spine, pressing his tongue down the length of it until he reached the top of her buttocks. Then his hands, those long fingered works of art, covered and cupped her, testing the resiliency of her skin for long, drawn out moments before sliding under her hips and parting her legs from underneath. He lifted her just slightly before dipping his tongue into her, and Sara heard herself gasp his name wantonly. Apparently his tongue was akin to his fingers in length.
Her hands bunched the pillow at the top of the mattress and she panted, "I don't want to come again, not without you inside me."
His fingers just slid inside her and his face rested against her right butt cheek. "Why?" he asked maddeningly.
Sara twisted desperately in his grasp, forcing him to let her roll over on her back. He was at least shirtless now, and her fingers reached to trace the patterns on his flushed skin. "The difference between me and other sponsors, is I fuck face to face," she said, aching for him as she slid her hands up behind his neck and pulled him down on top of her.
When she eased her palms into the back of his slacks, his lips brushed at her earlobe, down her throat to her collarbone. His teeth grazed along the sensitive tendon between her neck and shoulder and his lips formed the words against her skin, "If it's face to face, it's not fucking. This isn't just business." And Sara, unwilling to own up to that, remembered his description of the meeting with his wife in the conjugal room as she pushed his pants down, along with his underwear, all at once. "Condom?" he asked, then quickly added, "I don't have any."
"I'm on birth control," she said, gasping as she felt the rigid heat of him between her thighs. "Are you..."
"Yes, first stop was the doctor, before the AA meeting." She could feel the almost-chuckle that followed that statement as it froze up in his chest.
"I haven't been with anyone in a long time, and I've been clean-" His fingers pushed against her lips, stilling her explanation.
His eyes, his beautiful eyes, with their myriad of color; eyes she had seen in dreams, and awake, every day since she had met him looked into hers with such clarity and possessiveness that she knew the end had arrived. Whatever happened after this, she would finally belong to Michael Scofield, and maybe that was why she had refused to see him or accept his apologies any sooner. "I trust you," he said simply, not allowing her anymore reason to explain why it was all right if they continued.
Because, she acknowledged, she wanted to be his want, his need, his addiction. She wanted him to love her enough that he would throw his entire life away because of that love. She wanted his self-destruction, his self-denial, his self-gratification, whatever he chose to be or was forced by circumstances to be; she wanted it all. And knowing herself as she did, and knowing number six had always been the hardest of the 12 Steps for her-were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character-she knew she was greedy enough, and deceitful enough to get what she wanted.
As he surged inside her and joined their bodies completely, for the first-only?-time, Sara knew she had lied when she said she'd be his sponsor. She had lied when she told him she didn't want to see him. She had lied when she said she couldn't wait for him.
Because here she was doing what she shouldn't as his sponsor, not seeing enough of him, even though he was as naked and vulnerable as she was, and she had waited for him; would always wait for him.
In the silent aftermath, as his chest heaved against hers and his voice whispered at her temple, along the curve of her cheek and at the corner of her mouth meaningless words that caused tears to well up in her eyes, she ran her hands down the curved out portion at the base of his spine. Then she heard his words, "I can't stay."
"I know," she said. Then a beat or two passed and he shifted off of her, and she felt her heart break wide open. This was why she had lied, every time, to avoid this moment, this feeling. This. "You have to go to rehab," she said, her voice shadowy with fear.
"Tomorrow," he agreed. His devilish fingers were once again between her legs and he breathed into her ear, "As long as I look into your eyes, can I make you come again?" She had avoided looking directly at him since her eyelids fluttered shut to concentrate on the feeling of him losing control in her arms only moments before. When their gazes locked together again, he whispered, "It's not fucking."
"And I'm not your sponsor," she replied, gasping as he probed gently at her opening.
"Wait for me, Sara." He watched her face intently as his fingers purposely slid across her clitoris. "I won't always be like this."
She arched her hips up into his caress and said the only truth she knew, "We'll always be like this, Michael. We're addicts."
Fandom: Prison Break
Author: badboy_fangirl
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Michael & Sara POV, Michael/Sara
Category: Angst, Romance, Smut
Word Count: ~5500
Summary: Sara Tancredi runs into Michael Scofield in the oddest of places.
Spoilers: Through the end of Season 1.
Warnings: Sex. Goes AU from then end of S1.
Author's Notes: When I first wrote this (in 2006), it was as an unauthorized sequel to Miss_Mazzie’s 12 Steps and a House of Cards
Additional A/N: So July marks FIVE YEARS since I started on LiveJournal. As part of the celebration I decided to repost some of my PB "Greatest Hits" as it were--stories that were written early in my fandom experience before I had mastered LJ and were never posted here.
Addict: 1: (noun) a person who is addicted to an activity, habit, or substance;
2: (verb) to cause to become physiologically or psychologically dependent on an addictive substance.
Addiction: the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is
psychologically or physically habit-forming, such as narcotics, to such an
extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.
The 12 Steps
1. We admitted we were powerless over our addiction-that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
~*~
Sara sat towards the back of the chapel. She hadn’t gone to a meeting for at least a year, hadn’t even felt she needed one in at least that long, but today, out of nowhere, she’d felt a compelling need to be surrounded by others like her. Those with pasts not far behind them; those trying to make something of their lives; those not wanting the rogue thoughts they sometimes had to control their lives.
Now that she was here, though, she felt some disdain. She had been clean for three years, with nary a close call. Her sponsor had never helped her so she stopped calling him, and when she’d done that, she’d felt better. She’d become her own sponsor, her own best friend. She had learned to control herself.
Dropping her head into her hands, she studied the designs on the woven moccasins on her feet instead of the next confessor. A meeting hadn’t been what she needed after all, but she didn’t know what she did need. It was like she was staring at a cupboard filled with delicious food but none of it appealed to her. She was starving and none of it could satisfy her.
So when she heard a voice that sounded vaguely familiar, a voice from her dreams, she slowly raised her head. His first statement was echoing off the walls of the church through her eardrums in a way that almost had her clamping her hands over her ears to drown it out. “Hi, I’m Michael, and I’m an alcoholic,” he said, his voice soft, his eyes on the wooden pulpit he stood behind. His long fingers tugged the microphone closer to his mouth, then pushed it back, then abandoned it altogether to smooth across the light colored wood. “I’ve got 48 hours, and nothing else. No pride, no dignity. Nothing. As I sat listening to each of you, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’ve been on this road my whole life. I’ve traded one addiction for another, over and over again.”
His eloquence in the face of the most terrible confession battered Sara’s heart. How could Michael Scofield, of all people, be here?
But wouldn’t it surprise many who knew her, too? If she wasn’t a successful doctor, if she wasn’t highly educated, if she didn’t give service to her community, if she hadn’t been the daughter of a politician, perhaps being a junkie would have been more acceptable, more believable.
What was Michael? The abandoned son of a drunk father, the orphan of a too-soon dead mother, the brother of an ex-convict, wrongfully accused, though he was. And what else was Michael? An ex-con in his own right with a $90,000 education and no self-worth. She had known that the night she left the door unlocked for him and Lincoln to escape from Fox River, when his plea to her was for nothing but his brother. If he’d asked it for himself, maybe it wouldn’t have made her so angry, and she had held it against him for far longer than he deserved.
And he had never asked her for anything since. He had quietly sent his apologies and when she wouldn’t see him, or speak to him except to say, “I don’t want to talk to you” he had left her alone. They lived in the same city, and they had crossed paths occasionally over the last three years, but he had never approached her, had never made an attempt to force her to listen to him. Now, she sat raptly at his feet, but she was far in the back and he probably couldn’t see her.
“I think the disappointment I’ve felt in other people, it’s made me a hypocrite. I’m someone who couldn’t see my own problems because I’ve spent so much time fixating on other people’s.” His eyes never moved up from the glossy wood pulpit, but his voice gathered strength as he continued on. “I’m here because I need help, and the biggest problem I’ve got is my pride. I haven’t even told my brother yet, the one person in the whole world who would want to help me, but I had to…” And with the mention of Lincoln his words lost momentum and his voice cracked. “I had to do this myself, without him. I had to do this for myself. And now I just pray to God that I can do it.”
~*~
It’s with irony lingering in his mind that Michael fills a Styrofoam coffee cup and sips carefully from it. It figures that a room full of addicts of one kind or another would have an endless supply of coffee and donuts. His eyes dance over the donuts. No maple covered ones, no temptation, he thinks, easily turning away from the table.
“You looking for a sponsor?” she asks him, standing just a few feet from him.
Michael is surprised, not surprised that she might be at a meeting such as this, but that she would approach him, speak to him. And he’s still surprised that he feels something deep in his gut when he looks at her. Her red hair is shorter now, barely touching her shoulders, but still beautiful and vibrant. Her brown eyes are wary but warmer than they were the last time he looked into them, when he tried to apologize. Not as warm as the morning he kissed her in Fox River, but he supposes they were never that warm on any other occasion with him anyway.
“Sara,” he acknowledges, proffering his coffee.
“No, thanks,” she says, almost tersely. “You need a sponsor?” she repeats.
“Are you volunteering?” he asks, because he can’t imagine that she’ll say…
“Yes. I am. If you don’t already have one.”
He drops her gaze, running his fingers carefully around the rim of his cup. This would be an easy lie. She’ll never know. She doesn’t have to know if his sponsor is chosen today or tomorrow. She doesn’t have to do this, yet she’s offering him something he needs badly.
One would think he wouldn’t have a reaction to her anymore. One would think two months of his life, spent sporadically at best with this woman who hardly knew him and who he hardly knew, would eventually fade as the years separated them. But, sadly, one of the reasons he’s here is undoubtedly because of Sara. Not that she drove him to magnify a major personality flaw, but that what he did to her certainly caused it to flare up like an unsightly case of herpes. It’s always been there, in his genetics if nothing else. Maybe his father wasn’t really a drunk, but Lincoln certainly gave it his best go there for awhile, and now that he’s got his life on track it’s made it even harder for Michael to face his own problems.
To admit he even had a problem. To say yes to her now, it’s a pride issue yet again. Let her help, let her try to fix him, yet again. Isn’t that what she always did when he was in Fox River? Mend him up and send him on his way?
His eyes snap to hers, searching to see if that’s her intent.
But somehow the reflection looking back at him from the deep brown of her irises only shows him how much he wants her, and that he will do anything to be with her again, even if it means that she will shuttle him away once she thinks he is fixed.
“I don’t have a sponsor,” he hears himself saying.
~*~
As they settled into a booth in a little diner not far from the church where the AA meeting was being held, Michael smiled at Sara, and she felt her heart rate quicken. Something about this, and how much sense it didn’t make almost made her relax, but not quite.
After they ordered some pie, he sipped water and avoided her eyes. So Sara just jumped right in. “How do you feel about the 12 Steps?”
His eyes came up and he shrugged. “I’m not that familiar with them.”
“Well here you go,” she said, sliding a small laminated card across the table to him. While he moved his hand over to pull it closer to his side of the table, she found herself noticing his arms. He was wearing a simple, short-sleeved, white t-shirt, no doubt the one that was under his button up while he was at the office, but the length of the tattoos down his graceful arms made her want to stroke her fingers down those lines of ink. Shaking her head, she tried to remember the pat speech she had prepared about the 12 Steps. “You’re bound to go through these steps and find something or many things that you absolutely don’t agree with. What’s important is to adapt the ideas to who you are and what you believe.”
His eyes scanned the card and he glanced up at her. “I believe in God, Sara.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t. It took me some time to come to grips with the things on that list.”
“You believe in God now?”
“Of a sort. I believe in a higher power.”
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t do it alone, I tried for too long, and then one day I had power I hadn’t had before. I can only attribute that to something I can’t see. I believe that.” She tapped her finger against the top of the laminated surface. “Go home and make a list. Start with number one and go through it. If you don’t have anything to say under one of them, skip it, and we’ll talk about it.”
His lips lifted in a smirk. “Have you done this before?”
“Been a sponsor?” When he nodded, she shook her head negatively.
“It shows.”
“You’re going to criticize me?”
“No, you’re just...abrupt. You have a much better bedside manner as a doctor.”
“Maybe my manner is affected by the recipient.”
The teasing light in his eyes faded away instantly. “Look, you don’t have to do this...”
“No, Michael, I want to, really,” she said, regretting her snappish remark. Reaching across the table, her hand landed on his wrist. “I’m sorry,” Sara said softly. “Let me try this again. See number nine?”
His eyes scanned down again, and he read aloud, “Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”
“I should have spoken to you when you asked to see me, and every day since then I should have said what I’m about to say. Michael, I’m sorry. And I forgive you for all the wrongs that I imagined and the ones that actually happened. And I’m practicing step 12 for myself. I want to help you, but I can only help you so far as you want to help yourself.”
His eyes traveled back to the card, and he read, “Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” As he looked up, his hand covered hers, the one that had found a new home against his wrist. “I’m sorry, Sara. I owe you an apology for so many things.”
“An apology to me is not part of your recovery. And you don’t owe me anything more than the apologies you gave me three years ago.” Pausing, she carefully withdrew her hand, fighting the urge to turn it into his and caress his palm softly. For a moment it was so real, she could feel her fingertips just grazing over the soft, fleshy pads and a shudder worked its way through her. She moved her hand quickly back to her lap.
When their pie arrived, their eye contact was broken too, and Sara felt relieved because she felt her face flushing. “Can I get some more water?” she asked their waitress.
“Sure thing,” the girl replied. Turning her head, she flashed a big smile at Michael. “Do you need anything else, sugar?”
Sara was astounded to see Michael’s cheek bones redden. “I’m good,” he said, looking away from the waitress. His eyes collided with Sara’s and he barely held on as the girl walked away. Then he started laughing out of sheer embarrassment.
Sara laughed with him because she didn’t know what else to do. Then she asked, “Does that happen a lot?”
“What?” he asked, scooping up a bite of pie and shoving it into his mouth.
“Girls, hitting on you.”
“It happens enough,” he responded, mouth full. As he swallowed, shame showered his face. “Enough that I’ve spent too many mornings recently waking up in places I don’t remember going to.”
She looked away from the mirror of her own angst. How many times had that happened to her? “Have you considered rehab?”
“Of course. I want to try it on my own first.” He took another bite of pie. “I figure I’ll know within a short amount of time if my will is enough to get me through or if I need restraints.”
Sara realized she hadn’t touched her own dessert because she’d been too involved with him-both in what he’d been sharing verbally and in watching his lips and tongue as he ate his pie. Then she also realized this was a bad idea. She shouldn’t be his sponsor, because she was too involved already. She shouldn’t be the sponsor that fucks her sponsoree, but she knew she would. Because the one addiction she’d had that she’d never experienced fully, explored enough, or exploited sat right in front of her.
When he looked up at her, his mouth opened to say something, but he never said it. His eyes pierced hers, as though he could read her thoughts, and perhaps he could. For only a few moments, silent stretches of communication from his eyes to hers, like so many moments before. Sara remembered being pulled up to safety by his strong arms and being lifted down to the floor from a ceiling; she remembered standing close to him, listening to his lung function, and then concentrating on the heavy thump-thump of his heart as her gaze was lost in his. She remembered closing her eyes to all of it as his lips overtook hers, and the reason why truly didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was the heat that was still there, and it flamed through her body as though just yesterday she’d stood in the Infirmary at Fox River and his long fingers wrapped around her wrist and his soft words thanked her for what, she couldn't even remember. Because he never should have thanked her and he should never have said she could be his sponsor.
“Are you going to eat your pie?” he eventually asked, and she knew whatever he had been about to say had been replaced by this lame attempt to break the tension.
“No,” she answered.
He reached over and tugged her saucer towards himself. “Maybe I’ll replace alcohol with pie,” he said, dropping her gaze again to look at the slice of banana cream.
No, she thought, you’ll replace it with me.
~*~
By the time they walk out of the diner, it’s past 9 o’clock. Michael glances at his watch briefly and enjoys the last vestiges of the sun. Summer is his favorite time of year, and always has been. The light is stronger and longer than the dark, and there seems to be something poetic about it, something he’s never considered before.
Sara walks alongside him without speaking. He holds the 12 Step card in his palm, the size of it not much wider than an index card. He assumes that’s for easy reference and imagines carrying it in his dress shirt pocket every day at the engineering firm he works in. “Where are you working, now?” he asks, reminded by his own thoughts that Sara left Fox River at the same time he did. Before the exoneration, before the hero status, before he started drowning his less than perfect life in a bottle of scotch every night.
“At County. They needed an Attending Physician in the ER; I fit the requirement. The boss wasn’t turned off by my record.”
“You like it?” he asks, after her matter-of-fact answer seems a little passionless.
“I like the volunteer work I do at the Southside Clinic and The Joshua Carter AIDS Institute better, but I’ve got to pay my bills, too.” She pauses and then says more softly, “I’m just glad they’ll still let me practice medicine.”
“I’m glad they let you, too,” he says with heartfelt sincerity. They keep walking, away from the diner, up the street that leads to a residential area. “Where are we going?” he asks.
“I live just up here,” Sara says, pointing a hand in the direction they’re walking.
Michael doesn’t argue the idiocy of what they are about to do. He’s not had a drink in-he checks his watch again-49 hours and 23 minutes. Being alone isn’t what he wants or needs right now. Wanting Sara has been a constant condition for him, almost since he first met her. Her wryness, her ability to say just a few words to put him in his place, her compassion-and since he’s learning number four on that list, Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves-he admits his wild attraction to the milky porcelain of her skin, and the curve of her hips and the thrust of her breasts under her simple blue v-neck shirt; not to mention the mile long legs that he’s imagined wrapped around his hips too many times to count and the wide smudge of her mouth, opening under his, inviting him inside to stay, not just visit indefinitely. He’s wanted Sara Tancredi for so long, it seems like that desire became his motivation, however subconsciously.
What had happened to get him here, to this night? Walking with her in the warm summer air, he knows his life is in shattered pieces, and he's too afraid to even tell Lincoln the truth of it all. He's not afraid that it will change Lincoln's opinion of him, but he's hidden it for so long that to come clean with his brother is more than he can bear right now. He can pinpoint the beginning of his downfall to successfully executing a plan that had one small hitch: a woman he fell in love with who could never believe him, or forgive him, or love him back.
Only now, she does believe him, and she has forgiven him. And love? Well, he wouldn’t dream of asking for that now, but he’ll take want or need, or even convenience. Because when she had looked at him across the Formica in that diner, he had known he would at least try to get in her bed. If she sends him away, if she tells him sponsors don’t do that, well at least he’ll know. But this night won’t end until he has made the effort. Because he can’t not. Because she has always driven him crazy, and now she's just a few inches away. Because he hasn’t made a single good decision in the last three years, and he sees no reason to start now.
Because two out of three was as good a statistic as a guy in his situation can ask for.
At the fenced off entrance to an old style apartment building, he runs his hand along the iron gate and looks upward. No more than five stories, it's a quaint white building with green shutters framing its windows. “You moved,” he blurts out.
“Yeah, I hated my old apartment, even though I stayed in it for almost a year after my overdose. I couldn’t live there any more. I didn’t want to, and then I found this place, for a song. I own two of the apartments, and sublet one of them.”
“This is a better section of town,” he adds, thinking about her old apartment and how he used to sit outside of it, even after she had told him she didn’t want to talk to him. He would sit in his car and sip Jack Daniels, or whatever he had acquired, but he never got drunk enough to get up the nerve to knock on her door.
“I like it,” she says, pushing open the gate his hand rests on top of. Turning, she walks backward towards the three steps that lead up to the outer door. She looks him up and down and he feels his body stir, knowing now that she won’t say no. She brought him here for the same reason he came with her.
As he follows her up the steps, he thanks God he ended up in the ER three days ago, not at County, but across town at Mercy, and that he knows he's clean, because he doesn't have any condoms on him. The excursion to the hospital was what had been the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. He'd woken up in an alley. An alley. He earns $75,000 a year, drives a Mercedes, and he woke up in an alley. He'd lain there, looking up at the sky, remembering times he'd found Lincoln in similar positions, and he finally faced that he had hit rock bottom.
He'd gotten to his feet, wandered into the hospital five blocks away and asked for a physical. The doctor had been kind, had given him business cards of rehab facilities along with a list of local AA meeting places. Along with that he'd given him a clean bill of health, other than an inflamed liver that wasn't going to show much repair unless Michael quit drinking.
So before he gets the shakes, before he faces the ugliest it can be, he wants to be inside Sara Tancredi and have one sweet moment to focus on. Sex unmarred by black holes or no memory of even reaching pleasure. He wants one time where he feels like the man who had walked into a bank with a plan stopped and the person who could have met Sara, fallen in love with her, and pursued her until she couldn't say no to him began. He wants that man to live, at least once. Right here, right now.
In the hall outside her apartment, he moves close to her. He doesn't wrap his arms around her, but he doesn't need to, because as soon as he invades her personal space she shifts so that her body brushes his oh-so-tantalizingly. Then she puts her hands back and leans against the wall so that his body follows hers. Their chests meet first, and his hands land on the wallpaper beside her head. He grazes a kiss over her lips, lips that are slightly parted already with hot breaths beating against his face in rhythm with his heart. "Sara," he breathes, pressing his body full length to hers. Don't tell me to stop, his mind cries, but he manages to spit out the words, "This is probably against the rules, right?" His voice sounds unnaturally tight, even to his own ears.
Sara's body arches up from the wall, her hands giving her leverage that leaves no doubt in his mind about what they are about to do. "Everyone fucks their sponsor. It's in the code."
"Even you?" he asks, unable to pick out her eyes in the non-existent hallway light. He can't see her, but he can feel her, against him in every place he's ever wanted to feel her. Soft, warm, curvy, pliant.
"Especially me," she says, and then her teeth sink gently into his bottom lip and he knows it doesn't matter. "I told you I wasn't a nice girl, remember?" She's trying to remind him of how they got here. But this is about now, and only now.
~*~
Sara knew this was about three years ago, and unfulfilled flirtations, comments that were nothing more than a way to build something between them he could later use against her, but it had felt real then, and the lines blurred and she no longer remembered when she hadn't believed. She stopped wondering what she believed now. All she knew were his hands and his mouth on every part of her.
He stripped her clothes off slowly, even though in the hallway he had kissed her mouth until she had arched up into him fully clothed, wrapped her legs around his hips solidly, and pumped against his straining erection long enough to give herself an orgasm. Showing her he remembered the conversation she referenced, he whispered, "So where do you finish?" just as she bucked against him and cried out under his lips. Now, it was slow, he was slow, or maybe he was still doing what he'd always done, being patient and thorough, and she was the one who was yanking at his clothes and feeling frustrated because they didn't slip away fast enough.
He turned her on to her stomach once she was nude and kissed his way down her back, lingering in the crevice of her spine, pressing his tongue down the length of it until he reached the top of her buttocks. Then his hands, those long fingered works of art, covered and cupped her, testing the resiliency of her skin for long, drawn out moments before sliding under her hips and parting her legs from underneath. He lifted her just slightly before dipping his tongue into her, and Sara heard herself gasp his name wantonly. Apparently his tongue was akin to his fingers in length.
Her hands bunched the pillow at the top of the mattress and she panted, "I don't want to come again, not without you inside me."
His fingers just slid inside her and his face rested against her right butt cheek. "Why?" he asked maddeningly.
Sara twisted desperately in his grasp, forcing him to let her roll over on her back. He was at least shirtless now, and her fingers reached to trace the patterns on his flushed skin. "The difference between me and other sponsors, is I fuck face to face," she said, aching for him as she slid her hands up behind his neck and pulled him down on top of her.
When she eased her palms into the back of his slacks, his lips brushed at her earlobe, down her throat to her collarbone. His teeth grazed along the sensitive tendon between her neck and shoulder and his lips formed the words against her skin, "If it's face to face, it's not fucking. This isn't just business." And Sara, unwilling to own up to that, remembered his description of the meeting with his wife in the conjugal room as she pushed his pants down, along with his underwear, all at once. "Condom?" he asked, then quickly added, "I don't have any."
"I'm on birth control," she said, gasping as she felt the rigid heat of him between her thighs. "Are you..."
"Yes, first stop was the doctor, before the AA meeting." She could feel the almost-chuckle that followed that statement as it froze up in his chest.
"I haven't been with anyone in a long time, and I've been clean-" His fingers pushed against her lips, stilling her explanation.
His eyes, his beautiful eyes, with their myriad of color; eyes she had seen in dreams, and awake, every day since she had met him looked into hers with such clarity and possessiveness that she knew the end had arrived. Whatever happened after this, she would finally belong to Michael Scofield, and maybe that was why she had refused to see him or accept his apologies any sooner. "I trust you," he said simply, not allowing her anymore reason to explain why it was all right if they continued.
Because, she acknowledged, she wanted to be his want, his need, his addiction. She wanted him to love her enough that he would throw his entire life away because of that love. She wanted his self-destruction, his self-denial, his self-gratification, whatever he chose to be or was forced by circumstances to be; she wanted it all. And knowing herself as she did, and knowing number six had always been the hardest of the 12 Steps for her-were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character-she knew she was greedy enough, and deceitful enough to get what she wanted.
As he surged inside her and joined their bodies completely, for the first-only?-time, Sara knew she had lied when she said she'd be his sponsor. She had lied when she told him she didn't want to see him. She had lied when she said she couldn't wait for him.
Because here she was doing what she shouldn't as his sponsor, not seeing enough of him, even though he was as naked and vulnerable as she was, and she had waited for him; would always wait for him.
In the silent aftermath, as his chest heaved against hers and his voice whispered at her temple, along the curve of her cheek and at the corner of her mouth meaningless words that caused tears to well up in her eyes, she ran her hands down the curved out portion at the base of his spine. Then she heard his words, "I can't stay."
"I know," she said. Then a beat or two passed and he shifted off of her, and she felt her heart break wide open. This was why she had lied, every time, to avoid this moment, this feeling. This. "You have to go to rehab," she said, her voice shadowy with fear.
"Tomorrow," he agreed. His devilish fingers were once again between her legs and he breathed into her ear, "As long as I look into your eyes, can I make you come again?" She had avoided looking directly at him since her eyelids fluttered shut to concentrate on the feeling of him losing control in her arms only moments before. When their gazes locked together again, he whispered, "It's not fucking."
"And I'm not your sponsor," she replied, gasping as he probed gently at her opening.
"Wait for me, Sara." He watched her face intently as his fingers purposely slid across her clitoris. "I won't always be like this."
She arched her hips up into his caress and said the only truth she knew, "We'll always be like this, Michael. We're addicts."