Forbidden Fruit (1/1)
Title: Forbidden Fruit (1/1)
Fandom: Prison Break
Characters: Sara Tancredi
Pairing: Implied Michael/Sara
Genre: Het, canon, pre-series
Length: 1,881 words
Summary: Addiction comes in many, many forms. Spoilers for Season One. Not fluffy or cheery in any way, shape or form.
Rating: PG-15 (adult themes involving bad things)
Author's Note: For the Remember When? challenge at pbhiatus_fic.
~*~
The chocolates are a gift from one of her father’s friends from work, a man who talks a little too loudly and doesn’t keep his mouth shut properly when he eats. Sara can tell her mother doesn’t like him because she always drinks her wine faster whenever he comes to dinner. She thinks her father must like him, though, because they laugh together at jokes she doesn’t understand. He talks to his friend more than he talks to them. Maybe, Sara thinks, that’s why her mother drinks her wine so fast. She’s not talking to anyone, so there’s nothing else to do.
The next afternoon, when she arrives home from school, the box of chocolates is still sitting on the sideboard. Sara runs her fingertips longingly over the red velvet lid, mouthing the words printed in gold. Cherry Liqueur.
She likes cherries.
“May I have a chocolate?” she asks her mother hopefully, who is staring out the window into the garden, her arms folded across her chest.
“You wouldn’t like them,” her mother says, still staring out the window.
Stung by the blunt refusal and already seduced by the lush picture on the box - shiny chocolate and sticky red cherries - Sara does something she doesn’t normally do with her mother. She asks a second time. “Why not?”
Her mother darts her a glance that makes her tummy twist. It’s smiling and sad at the same time. “They’re not very nice chocolates.”
Sara frowns. Why would someone give anyone a box of chocolates that weren’t very nice? Did her father’s friend do it on purpose? Seeing her frowning, her mother smiles at her. “They’re for grownups, sweetheart.”
She doesn’t understand what difference that makes, but she knows from the tone of her mother’s voice that the conversation is over. “Okay.”
By the time her mother calls her down to the dinner, the box has vanished from the sideboard. After dinner, her mother sits and watches a funny show on television without laughing while Sara finishes off her homework at the kitchen table. Her father is still at work, even though it’s almost time for her to go to bed, so she struggles through her algebra assignment alone, smiling when she puts the finishing touches on the last equation. She stopped asking her mother to help with math halfway through last year, because her mother always insisted she wasn’t any good at it and wouldn’t be any help at all, even with fifth grade math.
She’s glad she’s like her father when it comes to math. She likes being able to work her way through a problem from start to finish and make it come out right in the end.
She discovers the box of chocolates two days later, shoved carelessly onto the second highest shelf in the panty, a flash of red while she’s looking for an after-school snack. Her mother is napping and her father is at work, and there’s no one to stop her from dragging one of the kitchen chairs over to the pantry. If she stands on her toes and stretches her arm as high as it will go, she can reach them.
She just wants to look at them, she tells herself.
Sitting on the kitchen chair, her heart pounding in her ears as she listens for the sound of her mother’s feet on the stairs, she opens the lid. The smell of chocolate and cherries instantly wafts upwards, tickling her nose. The chocolates are wrapped in red foil, and they gleam in the bright overhead light. There’s only one missing, and this seems the strangest thing of all, that her mother only ate one of them (they really mustn’t be very nice at all, because her mother loves chocolate and never eats just one) but put them in the pantry instead of throwing them out.
She stares at the rows of identical, glittering red mounds. Her father doesn’t eat chocolate, and her mother didn’t like these. And if no one’s eating them, she reasons, then they can’t really get mad if she tries one.
Her heart is pounding as she walks back to her room, the box carefully replaced on the shelf, her fingers curled over the foil-covered chocolate in her hand. When she reaches her bedroom, she pushes the door half-shut, sits on the edge of her bed, unwraps the chocolate and pops it into her mouth.
The crunch of the cherry snaps against her teeth, then liquid heat spills onto her tongue, tasting like cough medicine, taking her by surprise. She gulps it down, partly out of reflex, partly because you don’t spit out chocolate, and it burns. She coughs, her eyes watering as the liquid - how can it be cold and hot at the same time? - blazes a trail down her throat and into her belly.
Her mother had been right. They weren’t very nice at all.
Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she rolls the red foil into a tiny, tight ball, putting it into her side pocket of her school bag. The next day at school, she puts it into the trashcan in the cafeteria, and promises herself she won’t do that ever again. She didn’t like the taste, she’d disobeyed her mother, and the thought of getting caught was making her feel sick.
But addiction, she realises many years later, will find a way. It always does, even when it starts with the smallest of things.
She takes a second chocolate from the box, the very next day, when her father is golfing and her mother is in the bathtub. To her surprise, she no longer hates the taste.
After the third one, two days later, she almost likes it.
After the fourth - she waited a week this time - she doesn’t know if it’s the thrill of not getting caught or the candy itself. All she knows is that she’s started and she just can’t make herself stop.
Sometimes, her parents are both at something her father calls a fundraiser and her mother calls a cattle call, and the sitter is too busy watching television. Sometimes, her mother is napping when she gets home from school - always on the days there is an empty bottle of wine in the trash - and her father is still at work.
Every time she knows it’s hers for the taking, she tries to resist the call of the velvet red box as long as she can, reading ahead in her schoolbooks, watching television, playing with her jump rope.
Nothing works.
Every time she pushes the chair over to the pantry, she tells herself this will be the last one she has.
Every time she weakens and gives into temptation, she frantically cleans her teeth so her parents won’t smell chocolate on her breath when she kisses them goodnight.
Every night, she goes to sleep expecting to walk into the kitchen the next morning and be confronted by her mother holding the half-empty box, for her secret to be discovered and laid bare for all to see.
It never happens.
It takes almost three months, but finally there is only one chocolate left. She stares at it, worry churning in the pit of her stomach, wondering how she could have let this happen. What if her father’s friend comes over for dinner again and her mother remembers the chocolates? Sara closes her eyes, trying not to think of what would happen if her mother opened an almost empty box of chocolates at the dinner table in front of a guest. Maybe she could find another box just like them, she thinks, then remembers her father’s friend telling them he’d bought them in Canada.
She feels sick - lying always makes her feel sick and this is lying - but she eats the last one, because maybe it will be better if the box isn’t there at all. She almost gags on the sickly sweet cherry flavour as she swallows, then cleans her teeth so hard she almost makes the gums bleed. There’s nothing she can do to take back what she’s done, but she can’t stand to go to bed with that taste in her mouth.
The next morning, she takes the box out of the bottom of her schoolbag and shoves it into the trashcan outside the library, pushing it down as far as it will go, knowing she’ll have to wash her hands but not caring because she needs it gone, hidden completely from sight so she can pretend it never existed.
It works. No one ever finds out, not her mother, not her father, not their occasional housekeepers. She never gets in trouble for it.
She never stops waiting to be caught, though.
~*~
Sitting on the couch in her apartment, Sara closes her eyes, unhappily savouring the burn of the scotch as it glides down her throat into her belly. She thought it would work quickly - after all, she’s out of practice - but she may as well be drinking water. Looks like she's her mother's daughter, after all, she muses darkly. Towards the end, her mother could drink an entire bottle of bourbon without slurring a single word.
She pours herself another, a larger measure this time.
And why not? After all, she won’t be tending to any patients tomorrow.
She drains the glass, pressing her tongue hard against the back of her top teeth as the alcohol hits her stomach. It’s working now, flushing her face with heat. Her hands are still cold, though. It’s stupid, she knows, but she can still feel the rounded imprint of the door handle on her palm, slippery in her grasp as she’d twisted it open.
Almost every day for the last three months, she’s walked through those gates afraid today will be the day that someone realises how she feels about Michael Scofield. That someone will discover something she’s said, something she’s done, and it will be all laid out for everyone to see.
Tomorrow, it will be.
Tomorrow, Michael and his brother will be gone. They will all look at her face and they’ll know who, and there will be nothing she can do or say to make them understand why. She barely understands it herself.
Michael lied to her, but she’s been lying to people for most of her life.
He used her, but it had been to save his brother’s life. His brother, the innocent man.
She very much wants to believe she turned that doorhandle for all the right reasons.
She’s very much afraid she didn’t.
Addiction, after all, comes in many, many forms.
She rubs her arms clumsily, dully noting the goosebumps rising up on her skin. She reaches for the bottle a third time, trying and failing not to think of the tiny vial buried in the bottom of her purse, because she’s still so cold, and the alcohol isn’t enough. She rubs her thumb over the tender skin of her inner elbow, remembering how easy it used to be, how easy it could be again. She looks at the bottle on the coffee table. It’s empty. It’s empty and she needs something else, something better, because she’s started now and she just can’t make herself stop.
She reaches for her purse, her fingertips feeling numb. Strange, she thinks, when everything else is hurting so much. There’s nothing she can do to take back what she’s done, she tells herself as the feel of the morphine vial replaces the imprint of the doorhandle on her palm, but maybe she’ll be able to sleep while she waits to be caught.
~*~
Fandom: Prison Break
Characters: Sara Tancredi
Pairing: Implied Michael/Sara
Genre: Het, canon, pre-series
Length: 1,881 words
Summary: Addiction comes in many, many forms. Spoilers for Season One. Not fluffy or cheery in any way, shape or form.
Rating: PG-15 (adult themes involving bad things)
Author's Note: For the Remember When? challenge at pbhiatus_fic.
~*~
The chocolates are a gift from one of her father’s friends from work, a man who talks a little too loudly and doesn’t keep his mouth shut properly when he eats. Sara can tell her mother doesn’t like him because she always drinks her wine faster whenever he comes to dinner. She thinks her father must like him, though, because they laugh together at jokes she doesn’t understand. He talks to his friend more than he talks to them. Maybe, Sara thinks, that’s why her mother drinks her wine so fast. She’s not talking to anyone, so there’s nothing else to do.
The next afternoon, when she arrives home from school, the box of chocolates is still sitting on the sideboard. Sara runs her fingertips longingly over the red velvet lid, mouthing the words printed in gold. Cherry Liqueur.
She likes cherries.
“May I have a chocolate?” she asks her mother hopefully, who is staring out the window into the garden, her arms folded across her chest.
“You wouldn’t like them,” her mother says, still staring out the window.
Stung by the blunt refusal and already seduced by the lush picture on the box - shiny chocolate and sticky red cherries - Sara does something she doesn’t normally do with her mother. She asks a second time. “Why not?”
Her mother darts her a glance that makes her tummy twist. It’s smiling and sad at the same time. “They’re not very nice chocolates.”
Sara frowns. Why would someone give anyone a box of chocolates that weren’t very nice? Did her father’s friend do it on purpose? Seeing her frowning, her mother smiles at her. “They’re for grownups, sweetheart.”
She doesn’t understand what difference that makes, but she knows from the tone of her mother’s voice that the conversation is over. “Okay.”
By the time her mother calls her down to the dinner, the box has vanished from the sideboard. After dinner, her mother sits and watches a funny show on television without laughing while Sara finishes off her homework at the kitchen table. Her father is still at work, even though it’s almost time for her to go to bed, so she struggles through her algebra assignment alone, smiling when she puts the finishing touches on the last equation. She stopped asking her mother to help with math halfway through last year, because her mother always insisted she wasn’t any good at it and wouldn’t be any help at all, even with fifth grade math.
She’s glad she’s like her father when it comes to math. She likes being able to work her way through a problem from start to finish and make it come out right in the end.
She discovers the box of chocolates two days later, shoved carelessly onto the second highest shelf in the panty, a flash of red while she’s looking for an after-school snack. Her mother is napping and her father is at work, and there’s no one to stop her from dragging one of the kitchen chairs over to the pantry. If she stands on her toes and stretches her arm as high as it will go, she can reach them.
She just wants to look at them, she tells herself.
Sitting on the kitchen chair, her heart pounding in her ears as she listens for the sound of her mother’s feet on the stairs, she opens the lid. The smell of chocolate and cherries instantly wafts upwards, tickling her nose. The chocolates are wrapped in red foil, and they gleam in the bright overhead light. There’s only one missing, and this seems the strangest thing of all, that her mother only ate one of them (they really mustn’t be very nice at all, because her mother loves chocolate and never eats just one) but put them in the pantry instead of throwing them out.
She stares at the rows of identical, glittering red mounds. Her father doesn’t eat chocolate, and her mother didn’t like these. And if no one’s eating them, she reasons, then they can’t really get mad if she tries one.
Her heart is pounding as she walks back to her room, the box carefully replaced on the shelf, her fingers curled over the foil-covered chocolate in her hand. When she reaches her bedroom, she pushes the door half-shut, sits on the edge of her bed, unwraps the chocolate and pops it into her mouth.
The crunch of the cherry snaps against her teeth, then liquid heat spills onto her tongue, tasting like cough medicine, taking her by surprise. She gulps it down, partly out of reflex, partly because you don’t spit out chocolate, and it burns. She coughs, her eyes watering as the liquid - how can it be cold and hot at the same time? - blazes a trail down her throat and into her belly.
Her mother had been right. They weren’t very nice at all.
Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she rolls the red foil into a tiny, tight ball, putting it into her side pocket of her school bag. The next day at school, she puts it into the trashcan in the cafeteria, and promises herself she won’t do that ever again. She didn’t like the taste, she’d disobeyed her mother, and the thought of getting caught was making her feel sick.
But addiction, she realises many years later, will find a way. It always does, even when it starts with the smallest of things.
She takes a second chocolate from the box, the very next day, when her father is golfing and her mother is in the bathtub. To her surprise, she no longer hates the taste.
After the third one, two days later, she almost likes it.
After the fourth - she waited a week this time - she doesn’t know if it’s the thrill of not getting caught or the candy itself. All she knows is that she’s started and she just can’t make herself stop.
Sometimes, her parents are both at something her father calls a fundraiser and her mother calls a cattle call, and the sitter is too busy watching television. Sometimes, her mother is napping when she gets home from school - always on the days there is an empty bottle of wine in the trash - and her father is still at work.
Every time she knows it’s hers for the taking, she tries to resist the call of the velvet red box as long as she can, reading ahead in her schoolbooks, watching television, playing with her jump rope.
Nothing works.
Every time she pushes the chair over to the pantry, she tells herself this will be the last one she has.
Every time she weakens and gives into temptation, she frantically cleans her teeth so her parents won’t smell chocolate on her breath when she kisses them goodnight.
Every night, she goes to sleep expecting to walk into the kitchen the next morning and be confronted by her mother holding the half-empty box, for her secret to be discovered and laid bare for all to see.
It never happens.
It takes almost three months, but finally there is only one chocolate left. She stares at it, worry churning in the pit of her stomach, wondering how she could have let this happen. What if her father’s friend comes over for dinner again and her mother remembers the chocolates? Sara closes her eyes, trying not to think of what would happen if her mother opened an almost empty box of chocolates at the dinner table in front of a guest. Maybe she could find another box just like them, she thinks, then remembers her father’s friend telling them he’d bought them in Canada.
She feels sick - lying always makes her feel sick and this is lying - but she eats the last one, because maybe it will be better if the box isn’t there at all. She almost gags on the sickly sweet cherry flavour as she swallows, then cleans her teeth so hard she almost makes the gums bleed. There’s nothing she can do to take back what she’s done, but she can’t stand to go to bed with that taste in her mouth.
The next morning, she takes the box out of the bottom of her schoolbag and shoves it into the trashcan outside the library, pushing it down as far as it will go, knowing she’ll have to wash her hands but not caring because she needs it gone, hidden completely from sight so she can pretend it never existed.
It works. No one ever finds out, not her mother, not her father, not their occasional housekeepers. She never gets in trouble for it.
She never stops waiting to be caught, though.
~*~
Sitting on the couch in her apartment, Sara closes her eyes, unhappily savouring the burn of the scotch as it glides down her throat into her belly. She thought it would work quickly - after all, she’s out of practice - but she may as well be drinking water. Looks like she's her mother's daughter, after all, she muses darkly. Towards the end, her mother could drink an entire bottle of bourbon without slurring a single word.
She pours herself another, a larger measure this time.
And why not? After all, she won’t be tending to any patients tomorrow.
She drains the glass, pressing her tongue hard against the back of her top teeth as the alcohol hits her stomach. It’s working now, flushing her face with heat. Her hands are still cold, though. It’s stupid, she knows, but she can still feel the rounded imprint of the door handle on her palm, slippery in her grasp as she’d twisted it open.
Almost every day for the last three months, she’s walked through those gates afraid today will be the day that someone realises how she feels about Michael Scofield. That someone will discover something she’s said, something she’s done, and it will be all laid out for everyone to see.
Tomorrow, it will be.
Tomorrow, Michael and his brother will be gone. They will all look at her face and they’ll know who, and there will be nothing she can do or say to make them understand why. She barely understands it herself.
Michael lied to her, but she’s been lying to people for most of her life.
He used her, but it had been to save his brother’s life. His brother, the innocent man.
She very much wants to believe she turned that doorhandle for all the right reasons.
She’s very much afraid she didn’t.
Addiction, after all, comes in many, many forms.
She rubs her arms clumsily, dully noting the goosebumps rising up on her skin. She reaches for the bottle a third time, trying and failing not to think of the tiny vial buried in the bottom of her purse, because she’s still so cold, and the alcohol isn’t enough. She rubs her thumb over the tender skin of her inner elbow, remembering how easy it used to be, how easy it could be again. She looks at the bottle on the coffee table. It’s empty. It’s empty and she needs something else, something better, because she’s started now and she just can’t make herself stop.
She reaches for her purse, her fingertips feeling numb. Strange, she thinks, when everything else is hurting so much. There’s nothing she can do to take back what she’s done, she tells herself as the feel of the morphine vial replaces the imprint of the doorhandle on her palm, but maybe she’ll be able to sleep while she waits to be caught.
~*~