Digging in the Dirt (1/1)
Title: Digging in the Dirt
Rating:R for language and mentions of drug use and violence
Category:Gen, Het
Characters: Lincoln Burrows, Derek Sweeney, Crab Simmons, Michael Scofield, Lisa Rix, LJ Burrows, mention of Sara Tancredi
Summary:There's a saying by someone that goes if you're in hole, stop digging. That someone never owed a lowlife like Crab Simmons ninety thousand bucks. Contains spoilers for #220, Panama and #408, The Price and dialogue written by the real writers, not me. The title comes from a truly amazing song by Peter Gabriel.
Author's Notes: Written with much love and determination to 'make it right' for domfangirl for the pbfic_exchange2. She wanted a story about Lincoln and Derek Sweeney, going into the history of their friendship. More importantly, she wanted a canonical explanation what happened during the opening scene of Episode 408, The Price, aka when Derek and Lincoln were running their errand for Crab. She also wanted the themes of regret, shame, penance. Candy, I can't deny I used my modly powers to snag this prompt for myself, even though I knew it was going to be a tough gig. I just hated that The Scene in #408 had disappointed you so much, and I wanted to make it better. *g*
~*~
Don't talk back
Just drive the car
Shut your mouth
I know what you are
Don't say nothing
Keep your hands on the wheel
Don't turn around
This is for real
~ "Digging in the Dirt", Peter Gabriel
“I’m pregnant.”
He stares at her. He’s tempted to wish he’s still sleeping off last night’s bender and that this is nothing more than a nightmare, but he’s very, very awake. Even so, his tongue doesn’t seem to want to connect to his brain. “What?”
“I’m pregnant, Lincoln.” Lisa’s wide mouth turns down at the corners as she throws the words at him. “I don’t know how much more simply I can explain the situation.” Her eyes narrow. “And don’t you dare ask me if it’s yours.”
He gropes blindly for the right words to say, but nothing he says will be right. Nothing he says. Nothing he does. Pregnant, he thinks, and a wave of fury rips through him. Fury at himself. At her. At the whole fucking world. They’ve slept together, what, half a dozen times? She was a blonde princess from the ‘burbs rebelling against doting parents, a girl who made him laugh and was a great lay, the perfect distraction from Vee skipping town to go to college and Michael’s fresh round of night terrors and crazy ideas. She hasn’t returned his calls for weeks, and now she’s looking at him as though she’s waiting for him to whip out a diamond ring and get down on one knee. “Well, that’s just fucking great.”
She flinches. “Charming.”
“Shit, I’m sorry.” He takes a half-step towards her, but the frigid rage in her eyes freezes him on the spot. Christ, he wants a drink. Or a fat spliff, rolled tight between his fingers, the acrid smoke burning away everything bad until there’s nothing but a soft, languid buzz. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“I was hoping you’d be a man and face up to your responsibilities.” She’s as angry as he is, but it’s her disappointment that fills the air around them like a sour, reeking thing. “But if you have to actually ask me what you should do, then I guess I’ll have to settle for maintenance.” Her gaze strips over him, and underneath the disdain in her eyes, he sees a hurt that goes bone deep. “If you ever get a job, that is.”
It’s his turn to flinch now, but he shrugs it off. I was hoping you’d be a man. He presses his palm hard against his temple in a vain attempt to silence the reverberation of her words. He can feel the pulse of his blood. Smell stale cigarette and pot smoke on his skin. Taste last night’s beer on his tongue. Be a man. “If you’re pregnant with my kid-”
Her eyes are practically snapping with anger. “I am.”
He drops his hand to his side and looks at her. “Then I’ll do whatever it takes to help raise it right.”
Her rigid expression falters. He wonders if she’s remembering what he’s told her about his own dad. Maybe she’s just relieved she doesn’t have to slap him with a court order. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“I’m not.” They stare at each other across an abyss of regret. The rampant lust for her that had once driven him almost out of his mind is gone, morphed into something he doesn’t recognize but suddenly wants to learn. “Whatever it takes. I promise.”
~*~
His son is born.
His son.
His.
When he finally edges his way into Lisa’s hospital room - he’d waited until her parents had left, their lips pursed in unison, as though the thought of his presence tasted like bitter lemons - he sees him.
A perfect, tiny scrap of soft skin and kicking legs and waving arms, filling his mother’s arms.
His own arms itch with a longing to feel that tiny weight. Where the fuck had that come from? He dislikes babies, with their dribble and puke and diapers. And yet he wants to snatch that bundle from Lisa’s arms and bury his nose into the soft down of its head.
Not it. Him.
His son.
“What are you going to call him?”
Lisa glances towards the open door, then back at him. “I was thinking maybe Lincoln, Jr.”
His jaw drops. He suspects she’s simply doing it to piss off her parents, but he doesn’t care. “He’s too little to be a Lincoln.”
“You were that small once, too.” Her gaze flips upwards, skimming over his shaved head. “Hard to believe now.”
Her eyes follow him as he edges closer, then the rest of the word disappears as he brushes his son’s face with one fingertip, feeling the impossibly soft skin against his. My son. Mine. “I was never this small.”
She gives him a look that reminds him why he started seeing her in the first place, all fiery humor and well-bred spark. “We can call him LJ.”
“We?”
She holds out the tightly wrapped bundle in her arms. “He’s your son, too.”
He wants to take him. God, he wants to, but he’s afraid. Afraid of holding him wrong. Afraid of talking too loud and scaring him.
Afraid of loving him too much. Because loving someone too much always hurts.
Lisa blows out a weary breath. “Just hold him, okay?”
He does.
He tugs the small bundle against his chest, feeling the squirming warmth against his heart. His son’s tiny mouth opens, pink gums moving as though he’s miming to a song only he can hear, then the fragile eyelids follow suit, revealing a pair of blue eyes, glazed and unfocused. “Hey there, LJ,” he mutters. Maybe he should feel like a dick for talking baby talk, but all he feels is right. “I’m gonna help your Mom take good care of you, you hear me?”
He remembers holding Michael like this, with his mother beaming proudly at them both. He also remembers listening to her cry later that night, when it was just her and the new baby alone in her bedroom. He remembers hating his father, knowing that he should have been there, that his mother was crying because his dad wasn’t there to help look after Michael. He remembers promising himself he’d be the man of the house.
Be a man.
His heart in his throat, he touches his mouth to the tender curve of his son’s head, and his eyes are suddenly burning. Whatever it takes, he thinks, and for once the thought doesn’t fill him with despair.
~*~
“What the hell is this?”
Michael looks at the crumpled college applications Lincoln has fished out of the trash, then shrugs. “I didn’t see the point in filling them out.” His brother’s gaze slides away to the television set blaring in the corner of the room. “It’s not as though we can afford for me to go to college, so why waste my time?”
Lincoln drops the forms into his brother’s lap. “Fill them out.”
“No.” Michael brushes aside the paperwork, but Lincoln recognizes the gleam in his eyes for what it is. A quiet desperation, a longing for something else.
Something better.
Plucking out the Loyola application from the pile now tumbled onto the couch, he once again drops it into Michael’s lap. “Fill it out.”
Michael’s head droops, his long fingers clutching at the paperwork as though it’s a lifeline. “There. Is. No. Point.”
Lincoln feels as though he’s free-falling, just like those dreams where you pray you’ll wake up before you hit the ground. “We’ll get the money somehow.”
His brother looks at him with eyes that brim with disbelief. “How?”
Be a man. “You let me worry about that, okay?”
~*~
There is a quote by someone (maybe a washed up movie star, he thinks) that says if you’re in a hole, stop digging. Whoever the hell it was, he has the feeling that someone never owed a lowlife like Crab Simmons ninety thousand bucks.
Because when you’re in deep with Crab, the only way out is to keep digging.
~*~
“I don’t get it.” Derek drops a painfully small tip onto the waitress’ tray, waiting until she’s finished her answering eye-roll of disdain before going on. “Why can’t your brother help you repay the money? He’s a big shot now, isn’t he?”
They’re in the kind of bar Lincoln hopes like hell that LJ never finds himself in, drinking crappy beer to take the edge off a morning of hustling for Crab. Lincoln reaches for his beer, narrowing his eyes against the smoke haze and the undisguised curiosity in Derek’s eyes. “He doesn’t know anything about it.”
Derek laughs as he lifts his beer bottle to his lips, a joyless sound that prickles through the stale air. “Come on, seriously.”
“I am serious, man.”
“So tell him.” His friend shrugs. “He’s gotta be pulling in some major money at that place. More than enough to make a dent in the heap you owe Crab, that’s for sure.”
Lincoln shakes his head, the fizz of alcohol sloshing coldly in the pit of his stomach. If he weren’t so tired, he’d be a little freaked out by hearing Vee’s habitual urging coming out of Derek’s mouth. “I can’t.”
“Shit, Linc.” Derek’s brow furrows with concern. Or maybe confusion. It’s hard to tell the difference. “You’d rather risk be picked off by someone on Crab’s enemies list than burst your little brother’s security bubble?”
Yes. “It’s not as simple as that.” He looks at the man he’s known since eighth grade, wishing he had the words to explain. Outside of Michael and Vee, Derek is the only person in this world he trusts with his life, but how can he talk about honoring a childhood vow without sounding like an idiot?
“If you say so.” Derek props his chin in his palm, looking ten kinds of hell. His eyes are bloodshot, his features drawn, and Lincoln doesn’t have to check in the mirror to know he doesn’t look much better. “At least he’ll have the money to pay for a nice casket when Crab finally decides we’re next on his list.”
Lincoln feels as though he’s swallowed a fistful of ice cubes. “That ain’t gonna happen.” Maybe if he says it enough times out loud, he thinks, that will make it true. “Not if we keep doing the job.”
Derek snorts. “Some job. Shaking down nameless scum to stay alive.” He lifts his beer in a mock toast. “Our mothers would be so proud of us.”
Lincoln knows the other man is only joking, but the words unleash a burst of fury that seems to erupt from the soles of his feet and taint every inch of him along the way. “You think this is how I want to spend my life?” Beer foams over the lip of the bottle as he slaps it onto the scarred wooden table. “You think I like not being able to tell my kid what I do for a living?”
His friend waves his hand in a shushing motion, his face suddenly alive with worry. “Keep it down, man.” He glances around the bar, as if worried an undercover cop is going to suddenly spring out from behind one of the peeling leather booths. “I know all that shit, man, okay? I know you’re doing it for your kid.” A dark shadow passes across the other man’s face, and Lincoln feels a twinge of sympathy. Derek has a kid too, to some chick he knocked up on a one night stand five years ago. The difference is that all Derek knows about his kid is her name and the fact that her mother moved to the other side of the country a month after she was born.
Maybe, Lincoln thinks, it would have been better for everyone if Lisa had done that too.
Defeat brims up and over, spilling hotly over his skin. “All I know is that as long as I keep doing the job, one day my debt will be paid and I’ll be free of all this bullshit.”
They look at each other, and Lincoln knows Derek doesn’t believe that fairytale anymore than he does. But what else is there to believe in?
~*~
“I’ve been trying to call you for a week.” Michael’s bright blue gaze sweeps over him as he steps past him into the untidy apartment, taking in his tattered jeans and leather jacket without comment. “Where have you been?”
Beating up scumbags who owe a more powerful scumbag a shitload of money. “Out.”
“That’s helpful.”
He stares at his brother, neatly pressed and buttoned up in his suit and tie, not bothering to hide his irritation. “What did you want?”
“What?”
“You said you were trying to call me.” He doesn’t have time for this bullshit, not today. “What did you want?”
His brother hesitates, a frown puckering at his forehead, and for a few brief seconds Lincoln sees the old Michael, the one who looked up to him and loved him and knew that everything Lincoln did, he did it for him and for LJ. Then Michael blinks and it’s as though an invisible hand has wiped his expression clean, and he’s back to looking like a smug college boy who knows everything but understands nothing. “Lisa called me.”
The earlier flicker of irritation steps up a notch. “Have a nice talk? Tell me something, did she tell you that her new boyfriend doesn’t want me to see LJ as often because he thinks I’m a bad influence?”
He thinks Michael might actually start wringing his hands in frustration, and he’s glad. He’s tired of being the only one who has to fight to be heard, to be understood. “She’s worried about you.”
“That’s great,” Lincoln flips angrily over his shoulder as he picks up his car keys and shoves his painfully thin wallet into his back pocket. “But maybe she should worry more about that pinhead she’s got living with her, the one pretending he’s my son’s father.”
Michael studies the car keys through narrowed eyes. “You going somewhere?”
“Yeah.” He’s picking up Derek to meet Crab, and for a brief moment of madness, he pictures himself telling Michael exactly where he’s going and what he’s going to do and why he’s doing it. He doesn’t, of course. He never does. I’ll help you look after him, Mom. I promise. “That’s the risk you take when you show up on someone’s doorstep unannounced, kid.”
Michael’s jaw tightens, just as it always does when Lincoln uses that particular word. “What should I tell Lisa?”
“Nothing.” He motions towards the door, and his brother slowly makes his way towards it. “That’s between her and me and LJ.”
“Linc-” He looks down at his brother’s hand, wrapped tight around his forearm, then up into his brother’s face. Michael is staring at him as though he’s trying to see inside his head, right down into his fucking soul, and Lincoln pulls away, knowing that if he lets Michael look long enough, he’ll see it all.
“I gotta go.”
He strides towards his piece-of-shit car, leaving his brother staring after him, all the secrets between them buzzing in his blood. One day, when all this bullshit is behind him, he’ll sit Michael down with a beer and he’ll tell him everything. Maybe they’ll even laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
But not today.
~*~
The mark is a paranoid schizophrenic drug dealer who gets off on messing with little kids. At least, that’s what Crab tells them. Lincoln learned long ago that Crab’s association with the truth happens on a purely accidental basis. All he wants to know is the when and where and how, and that’s where things get a little tricky.
“Two bodyguards and a limo with bullet proof windows?” He stares at Crab. “Are you shitting me?”
Crab’s expression doesn’t change. “The man has something of mine. I want it back.” He brushes his thumb over the barrel of the pistol sitting on his knee. “How you make it happen is your problem.” He jerks his head towards one of the thick-necked goons standing behind him. “Jonah will give you the lowdown on the man’s routine.”
“When’s it going down?”
A flicker of surprise disturbs Crab’s studied boredom, as if he can’t believe he’s being asked such a mundane question. “Today, my friend.”
In another life, Lincoln would openly sneer at this idiot’s pretensions of power and cultured breeding, knowing if there were any justice in this world, he’d be rotting in jail like the two-bit thug he is. Right now, all he can afford to do is nod his head and get to his feet, nudging Derek’s shoulder with his. “You just need the briefcase? That’s it?” As Crab nods, Lincoln stares at the sawn-off shotgun one of loitering goons has just shoved into Derek’s hands. The same goon then produces a revolver and dangles it in front of Lincoln. As Derek silently accepts two boxes of ammo from a second goon, Lincoln stares at the man who holds the balance of both their lives in his hands.
“What the fuck, man?”
Crab smiles. “Insurance.”
A fine mist of anger settles over him, pricking his skin like sweat. Crab is going to spend the day sitting here watching MTV while he and Derek risk getting their heads blown off. “Fine.” He shoves the pistol down the back of his jeans. The steel is cold against his flesh. “Let’s get it done.”
Another dive, another table in the shadows. It takes them two hours to frantically map out a plan. Somehow, they manage to resist the urge to get high to a desperate attempt to oil the cogs in their heads. Finally, after working their way through so many scenarios that his brain is starting to fray at the edges, Lincoln rubs his eyes with the heel of his palm. “It’s going to have to be a smash and grab.”
Derek fumbles with his cigarette lighter, almost dropping it into his lap. “You’re kidding me, right?”
Lincoln wants nothing more than to put his head down on the table in this sorry excuse for a bar and sleep for a week. “It’s the only way to take out the bodyguards easily and quickly.”
Derek looks at him in pained disbelief. “You call risking our necks in a car wreck quick and easy?”
“Better than adding murder in the first to our rap sheets.”
He can’t stomach the joint Derrick insists on lighting up when they reach their chosen destination, waving it away with an impatient hand. “I gotta keep focused.” He glances at the shotgun resting in his friend’s lap as the sweet musk of pot smoke fills the ‘borrowed’ car Crab had provided for their task. “So should you.”
“This is such bullshit, man.” Derek flicks the still-smoking stub of his joint out the car window. “We’ve never had to take out someone in broad daylight like this before.”
Nausea curls and uncurls like a fist in Lincoln’s gut, but somehow he manages to sound as though he knows what he’s doing. “All we gotta do is get the briefcase and get outta here.”
“Jonah’s waiting on Fifth to shoot through and pick us up, right?”
“He’d better fucking be,” Lincoln mutters, his gut tightening even more. Relying on Crab’s henchmen to extract them from a life or death situation is not the position he ever wanted to be in, but they have little choice.
Derek’s fingers drum restlessly on the dashboard, keeping time with the rush of Lincoln’s pulse. “Did Crab tell you what was in the briefcase?”
Lincoln shakes his head. “He didn’t tell. I didn’t ask.”
His friend almost smiles. “Wise move.”
They sit in the hot car, waiting. Later, Lincoln won’t be able to decide if it was the heat or the pot smoke or Derek’s drumming fingers that pushed him into a moment of clarity. All he knows is that he closes his eyes and sees his son’s face. He thinks of how LJ would feel if he ever learned exactly how his father spends his days, and a hot, burning ache gnaws at his ribs. He’s so fucking tired of being the family screw-up. He wants his son to be proud of him. He wants his brother to be proud of him, like he used to be.
He can’t do this anymore. There has to be another way, a way that doesn’t involve selling his soul to the devil and the risk of LJ losing his father every single fucking day. All he has to do is find it.
“Did you hear what Crab said about this guy being a kiddie fiddler?”
The coarse words yank him back to the unwanted present, a present where he’s about to put his life on the line for a man who would shoot him through the heart without breaking a sweat. “I heard it.”
Derek’s nostrils flare with distaste. “What kind of sick fucker does that?”
“I don’t know, man.” He thinks of everything Crab had told them about the mark. “But if Crab ever throws a psycho at us like this again, I’m gonna kill him.”
Derek looks at him. “Well, if we don’t get this psycho, Crab’s gonna kill us.”
Same old tune, Lincoln thinks, one he’s really fucking tired of hearing. “Just have the barrel ready.”
His friend cocks the shotgun, the click clack of metal on metal like a slap to Lincoln’s already jarred nerves. “I got it covered.”
Lincoln stares at the gun. It’s just insurance. Nothing more. “After this job I’m done, man.” Okay. He’s said it. Can’t take it back now. “I can’t do this anymore.”
Derek gives him a pained look. “What do you think Crab will say about that?”
“I don’t care what Crab says about that.” Brave words coming from an indebted man, but he has to believe it. “How can I be a good father if I’m always in prison?” Whatever Derek was about to say next never passes his lips, as though the mention of LJ has him zipping his mouth shut. “I missed out on my kid’s childhood. I’m not gonna miss out on him becoming a man.”
Taking a deep breath, his friend swiftly changes the subject. “Enough nothing, this plan is crazy, even for you. You sure this is the only way?”
The word feels thick and sour on his tongue, but he says it anyway. “Yeah.”
The mark appears on the top of the stoop, and Lincoln’s pulse is suddenly buzzing in his ears. “Hey look, he’s coming out,” Derek mutters, as though Lincoln could have missed seeing the man with the eighties hairdo in a three-piece purple suit. “He’s got the case.”
Lincoln turns the key in the ignition, and the engine of the stolen car roars into life, the battered chassis shaking around them. “Let’s buckle up,” he mutters, wondering darkly if the seatbelts in this piece of crap will do more harm than good.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees Derek wrap both hands around the shotgun, then his foot is slamming down the accelerator and they’re speeding towards the intersection and the world around him has narrowed down to the point of impact, everything going in slow motion even though they’re moving so fast. His heart is pounding so hard it’s almost bouncing clear out of his chest but he’s calm and how can that be possible, he wonders, then the hood of their car smashes into the side of the black limo and the word fills with the sound of tearing metal and fear.
Derek is out first, shotgun raised. There is no sign of the mark and the driver is either unconscious or dead, but that still leaves one goon to take out. His voice rough with nerves, Derek yells at the dazed bodyguard who’s just scrambled from the front passenger seat of the limo. “Put your hands up!” He yells again, louder this time, jabbing the shotgun fiercely into the space between them. “Put your hands up!”
Clutching his own weapon, Lincoln sees the man reach into his jacket, then he hears the roar of Derek’s shotgun. The bodyguard drops like a stone as the bullet slams into his shoulder, and Lincoln swears under his breath as he rushes to the backseat of the limo, praying the mark has been knocked out.
Just do it. Get the case and get out. Be a man and get it done.
The mark is in the backseat, dazed and bloodied, and it only takes Lincoln a few seconds to wrestle the briefcase from his limp grasp. The briefcase is in his hand and he’s walking away and it’s done, it’s over, then Derek raises the shotgun to his shoulder and fires again. Spinning on his heel, Lincoln sees the gun fall from the mark’s hand, the blood blubbing at the corner of his mouth as he dies.
His gun still unfired in his hand, Lincoln stands frozen in shock, his blood icing over. It takes him a few seconds to figure out that the roar in his ears isn’t gunfire but his own heartbeat. He turns to stare at Derek, who merely looks at him with a desperate sense of acceptance. “You’re welcome,” he gasps, but Lincoln has no answer for him.
The sound of screeching tires slices through the madness, and Jonah is there, the engine of his car screaming as he guns it. Derek flings himself into the backseat of the car, the slamming of his door bringing Lincoln back to his senses with a jolt.
Somehow he’s in the front passenger seat and the door is shut and he’s thrown backwards as the car surges forward. Clutching the briefcase to his chest, he turns to stare at Derek. He can see his friend is shaking, but he doesn’t give a shit.
“What the fuck did you do that for?”
Derek looks at him with wild eyes. “He had a gun pointed at your fucking head, that’s why!”
Lincoln wants to hit him, hit him so hard that his knuckles shatter. He wants to smash his fist into the window beside him, feel the sting of glass on his flesh, because anything would be better than feeling what he’s feeling right now. All those times when he told himself he was better than the rest of them, better than Crab, because no matter how many low things he’d done, at least he’d never taken another man’s life.
Bile stings the back of his throat, and it’s all he can do not to gag. He’s no better than the rest of them. He never has been.
Maybe he never will be.
Derek is still looking at him as though he’s waiting for an apology. Lincoln takes in his friend’s stricken expression and shaking hands, and knows he has no choice. “Thanks, man.” Derrick nods abruptly, then turns to stare out the car window. Lincoln looks down at the briefcase, grimacing as he shoves it off his lap.
Crab gets his briefcase. They get their blood money. Derrick says goodbye with nothing more than a hesitant clap of his hand on Lincoln’s shoulder. Lincoln can’t meet the other man’s eyes, and that’s fine with him. He doesn’t want to see his own shame mirrored back at him.
Hours later, fresh from a hot shower that does nothing to erase the despair hollowing out his insides, he calls his son. To his dismay, Lisa answers the phone in a voice that drips acid from every syllable. “It’s late, Lincoln.”
Surprised, he looks at his watch. How did it get to be nine-thirty so fast? “Is he still awake?”
“Yes, but that’s not the point. You’re supposed to call him between six and nine, remember?”
“Lisa, please. I’m sorry. Can I just talk to him?” Somehow he manages to keep it all together long enough to convince her to put his son on the phone, but when he hears the sound of LJ’s voice, his eyes start to blur. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hi.” He sits down on the arm of the couch, cradling the phone against his ear. “How was your day, kiddo?” He finds himself holding his breath after asking the question - his twelve year-old son’s moods are like quicksilver, changing from one hour to the next - but to his relief, LJ seems happy enough to talk.
“It was okay.”
As his son tells him about school and the swim team and how Uncle Michael has promised to teach him how to swim the length of the pool underwater, Lincoln stares at the luridly patterned carpet beneath his shoes. Finally, LJ pauses for breath and asks, “Mom said you had a really busy day and that’s why you called so late. Did you have to work late?”
Lincoln starts, the phone slippery in his suddenly damp palm. “Yeah, we had a big job come in at the last minute,” he tells his son, every word of this fresh lie slipping between the cracks of his conscience. “Hey, tell me more about the swim team?”
~*~
Two months later, he’s still jumping through Crab’s hoops, and it’s painfully obvious that things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better. He has to scramble to cover for Derek when a shakedown goes wrong and the mark puts a bullet into the head of Crab’s favourite lowlife buddy. Jittery after a week of indulging in his newly discovered coke habit, Derek botches the deal from start to finish, leaving Lincoln to salvage whatever pitiful silver lining there is. They come away with the money and the mark won’t be mouthing off for couple of months, what with his broken jaw and nose, but Crab doesn’t give a shit about silver linings. It takes all Lincoln’s powers of persuasion to convince Crab not to return the favour and put a bullet through Derek’s skull.
“Thanks, man,” Derek mumbles when they’re finally outside Crab’s apartment, blinking in the harsh early morning light. “I owe you one.”
Lincoln looks away from his friend’s shaking hands and haunted expression. He doesn’t want to live like this, checks and balances and who can stop who from fucking it up this time, but this is how it is. Two months ago, Derek stopped a guy from blowing off his head. Now they’re even. “Let’s call it quits.”
Three weeks later, he has to pull Derek’s ass out of the fire again, the balance sheet between them starting a new cycle Lincoln knows will only end when one of them walks away or gets his brains blown out. Only the thought of LJ and Michael has him actually caring if it’s him, which means it’s time to get out.
All he has to do is find a way.
A few weeks down the track, the way out appears from the most unexpected source. Crab offers him the chance to clear his debt in full with one final job, and Lincoln grabs it with both hands. Then he learns that it’s a rival drug dealer who Crab wants gone and gone for good, and the reality of the job description smacks him in the face.
Whatever else he’s done, he can’t do this. “Find someone else, man.”
Crab looks at him. For once they’re alone, and if Lincoln didn’t know that Crab never touched his own product, he’d think the guy was wired. His hands were whirling, his speech twice as fast as usual. “Let me put it another way. You do this for me and your monetary obligation to me is cleared, or you don’t and you and your kid will be looking over your shoulders for the rest of your fucking lives.”
“Sonofabitch-” Lincoln is on his feet and in the other man’s face before the maggot can take another breath, but today Crab’s hands are as fast as his words. The muzzle of the pistol presses against Lincoln’s belly for an eternity before he steps back, letting the stale air of Crab’s apartment waft between them. Frustrated fury boils up inside him, compounded by a dull, dead acceptance of what this really means.
A stranger’s death in exchange for LJ’s life.
Crab doesn’t smile, but Lincoln can almost smell his relief. “Do we have an agreement?”
There’s only one answer he can give. “Yes.”
~*~
Four years later, Derek looks at him with that same haunted expression Lincoln remembers so well. “I’ve gone straight, man. I’ve got a kid now. Marie, she’s just had a baby boy.”
Lincoln hesitates - he knows better than anyone how much a second chance means - but only for a few seconds. If it’s a choice between his brother’s life and Derek’s conscience, there is no contest. He’s not being fair, but right now, he doesn’t give a damn. “You owe me, remember?”
Derek looks as though he wants the ground to rise up and swallow him whole, but he nods. “I do."
Afterwards, Lincoln decides that three one-way tickets to Panama and a six pack of beer was a small price for Derek to sign off on their old balance sheet.
~*~
LJ picks up the secure line on the second ring, making it easy for Lincoln to picture him slouching on some unseen couch with the phone beside him. As always, the sound of LJ’s voice, alive and vibrant, fills with him a quiet joy he has never managed to find the words to properly express. After they negotiate the usual round of greetings, as awkward as any normal teenaged boy and his father, Lincoln takes a deep breath. “What did you do today?”
LJ chuckles, but it’s not a happy sound. “Same as I do every day, Dad. I watched DVDs and I slept and I listened to Sofia talk about how worried she is about you until I thought my ears were going to start bleeding.”
He doesn’t want to talk to Sofia - her sweet, breathy voice is just another reminder of how many lives he’s ruined - but he knows he has to ask. “Is she there?”
“She’s asleep.” He hears his son sigh. “What about you? What have you been doing?”
Lincoln closes his eyes. Four years later and he still can’t bring himself to tell his son how he’s been spending his time. This time, though, Crab Simmons is long dead, and Lincoln’s keeping secrets from his kid for all the right reasons. “Oh, I’m keeping busy. Your Uncle Michael says hi, by the way.”
“I wish I was there.”
So do I, Lincoln thinks but doesn’t say. He’s not safe to be around, and the further apart they are, the better it is for LJ. “Not long now, kid, and we’ll be fishing. Just like we planned, okay?”
“Sure thing.” LJ’s voice rings clear and strong, and his father wonders exactly who is doing the reassuring here. “Say hi to Uncle Mike for me.”
“I love you, LJ.” Even across the miles keeping them apart, he can feel his son’s embarrassment. It makes him smile, a smile that widens when he hears LJ clear his throat.
“I love you too, Dad.”
He disconnects the line, then spends a long time frowning at the silent phone. He hates this. His kid is hundreds of miles away, trapped in a Homeland Security safe house, and he has no idea when he’s going to see him. He swears under his breath, and Sucre gives him a reassuring nod, as though wanting to show his parental support.
Lincoln give Sucre a quick nod in return but, apart from his son, there’s only one other person he wants to talk to right now. Muttering something about wanting to get some fresh air, he makes his way through the warehouse, feeling as though he’s moving through sinking sand, knowing he has to reach his target before he becomes bogged down again.
He finds Michael just outside the main doors, his long legs stretched out in front of him as he sits on the concrete loading platform, his gaze fixed on the distant horizon. Sara is nowhere to be seen, and Lincoln can only assume she’s holed up in her little boat. He wonders briefly if there’s a problem between them, then dismisses the thought. He’s not here to ponder his brother’s complicated relationship with their former prison doctor.
He’s here for absolution.
“Hey.”
Michael’s face softens at the sight of him. “Hey,” he says softly as he pats the concrete beside him. “Pull up a pew.”
Lincoln blinks. Interesting choice of words, he thinks. He’s not a man who believes in signs or omens, but maybe he should start. His train of thought slips sideways, seizing on a memory that had come to him unbidden a few nights back. “Remember when Lisa started dating that high school teacher? You know, the one that convinced her to start going to church with him?”
If Michael’s surprised by the question, it doesn't show. “Sure. Why?”
“I don't know why, but the other night I was thinking about how LJ put Tabasco sauce into the holy water on their second visit.”
A smile lights his brother’s eyes. “I thought Lisa was going to send the priest after you.”
Lincoln grins. “Hey, all I did was tell LJ about the time I’d done it when I was eight. I didn’t tell him to do it.”
Michael chuckles. “Ever try it at Fox River?”
“Tough when you’re in shackles twenty-four seven.”
They sit in an almost restful silence for a moment, then Michael sits up a little straighter. “I went to church a while back.” He darts Lincoln a faintly embarrassed glance. “Ended up in the confessional box.”
Lincoln watches a myriad of emotion dance across his brother’s face, trying to think of the right words to say next. For all his talk of having faith, this isn’t a topic that comes easily to him. “Did it help?”
Michael takes a deep breath. “I didn’t think so at the time.” He turns to Lincoln, suddenly looking much younger than his years. “But now?” He turns to gaze at the expanse of blue water once more. “I think it did.”
There’s another saying, Lincoln thinks, not about digging holes but about teaching an old dog new tricks. Ever since the day Michael was born, it has been Lincoln’s job to keep secrets. Keeping secrets to keep him safe.
He's tired of keeping secrets.
He thinks about Derek. He likes to think his friend is happy with his new family and his new life. “That smash and grab maneuver we tried on the General. You know how I said I’d done it before?”
Michael nods slowly, his bright eyes filling with a subtle dread that makes Lincoln’s heart ache. “Was that when you were working with Derek?”
“Yeah. He’s clean now. Derek, I mean. Got a little kid. Steady job, at least he did until I turned up on his doorstep. Hopefully that didn’t change.” He studies the scuffed toes of his boots. He doesn’t know why he’s telling this to Michael, only that he needs to say it.
“You’ll have all that, too.” Michael sounds wistful, as though he’s not actually thinking about Lincoln but himself, and Lincoln clumsily bumps his knuckles against his brother’s shoulder.
"So will you, man."
“The time you pulled that stunt with Derek,” Michael ventures after an undeniably awkward pause, offering him a half-hearted smile. “I hope it worked better than the second time you tried it.”
“Not exactly.”
Michael looks at him steadily. “What happened?”
Lincoln hesitates, waiting for the feeling of free-falling to come, for him to start praying that this is all a dream.
It doesn’t come.
There is nothing but him and Michael and the blue water and the yellow sun and the chance of a normal life. The urge to change the subject gnaws at him like a dog with a bone, but he pushes it away.
Be a man.
He looks at Michael - no longer a smug college boy but a brother forever bound to him through blood and sacrifice - and smiles. “If you wanna grab a couple of beers, I'll tell you all about it.”
It's time to stop digging.
~*~
Rating:R for language and mentions of drug use and violence
Category:Gen, Het
Characters: Lincoln Burrows, Derek Sweeney, Crab Simmons, Michael Scofield, Lisa Rix, LJ Burrows, mention of Sara Tancredi
Summary:There's a saying by someone that goes if you're in hole, stop digging. That someone never owed a lowlife like Crab Simmons ninety thousand bucks. Contains spoilers for #220, Panama and #408, The Price and dialogue written by the real writers, not me. The title comes from a truly amazing song by Peter Gabriel.
Author's Notes: Written with much love and determination to 'make it right' for domfangirl for the pbfic_exchange2. She wanted a story about Lincoln and Derek Sweeney, going into the history of their friendship. More importantly, she wanted a canonical explanation what happened during the opening scene of Episode 408, The Price, aka when Derek and Lincoln were running their errand for Crab. She also wanted the themes of regret, shame, penance. Candy, I can't deny I used my modly powers to snag this prompt for myself, even though I knew it was going to be a tough gig. I just hated that The Scene in #408 had disappointed you so much, and I wanted to make it better. *g*
~*~
Don't talk back
Just drive the car
Shut your mouth
I know what you are
Don't say nothing
Keep your hands on the wheel
Don't turn around
This is for real
~ "Digging in the Dirt", Peter Gabriel
“I’m pregnant.”
He stares at her. He’s tempted to wish he’s still sleeping off last night’s bender and that this is nothing more than a nightmare, but he’s very, very awake. Even so, his tongue doesn’t seem to want to connect to his brain. “What?”
“I’m pregnant, Lincoln.” Lisa’s wide mouth turns down at the corners as she throws the words at him. “I don’t know how much more simply I can explain the situation.” Her eyes narrow. “And don’t you dare ask me if it’s yours.”
He gropes blindly for the right words to say, but nothing he says will be right. Nothing he says. Nothing he does. Pregnant, he thinks, and a wave of fury rips through him. Fury at himself. At her. At the whole fucking world. They’ve slept together, what, half a dozen times? She was a blonde princess from the ‘burbs rebelling against doting parents, a girl who made him laugh and was a great lay, the perfect distraction from Vee skipping town to go to college and Michael’s fresh round of night terrors and crazy ideas. She hasn’t returned his calls for weeks, and now she’s looking at him as though she’s waiting for him to whip out a diamond ring and get down on one knee. “Well, that’s just fucking great.”
She flinches. “Charming.”
“Shit, I’m sorry.” He takes a half-step towards her, but the frigid rage in her eyes freezes him on the spot. Christ, he wants a drink. Or a fat spliff, rolled tight between his fingers, the acrid smoke burning away everything bad until there’s nothing but a soft, languid buzz. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“I was hoping you’d be a man and face up to your responsibilities.” She’s as angry as he is, but it’s her disappointment that fills the air around them like a sour, reeking thing. “But if you have to actually ask me what you should do, then I guess I’ll have to settle for maintenance.” Her gaze strips over him, and underneath the disdain in her eyes, he sees a hurt that goes bone deep. “If you ever get a job, that is.”
It’s his turn to flinch now, but he shrugs it off. I was hoping you’d be a man. He presses his palm hard against his temple in a vain attempt to silence the reverberation of her words. He can feel the pulse of his blood. Smell stale cigarette and pot smoke on his skin. Taste last night’s beer on his tongue. Be a man. “If you’re pregnant with my kid-”
Her eyes are practically snapping with anger. “I am.”
He drops his hand to his side and looks at her. “Then I’ll do whatever it takes to help raise it right.”
Her rigid expression falters. He wonders if she’s remembering what he’s told her about his own dad. Maybe she’s just relieved she doesn’t have to slap him with a court order. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“I’m not.” They stare at each other across an abyss of regret. The rampant lust for her that had once driven him almost out of his mind is gone, morphed into something he doesn’t recognize but suddenly wants to learn. “Whatever it takes. I promise.”
~*~
His son is born.
His son.
His.
When he finally edges his way into Lisa’s hospital room - he’d waited until her parents had left, their lips pursed in unison, as though the thought of his presence tasted like bitter lemons - he sees him.
A perfect, tiny scrap of soft skin and kicking legs and waving arms, filling his mother’s arms.
His own arms itch with a longing to feel that tiny weight. Where the fuck had that come from? He dislikes babies, with their dribble and puke and diapers. And yet he wants to snatch that bundle from Lisa’s arms and bury his nose into the soft down of its head.
Not it. Him.
His son.
“What are you going to call him?”
Lisa glances towards the open door, then back at him. “I was thinking maybe Lincoln, Jr.”
His jaw drops. He suspects she’s simply doing it to piss off her parents, but he doesn’t care. “He’s too little to be a Lincoln.”
“You were that small once, too.” Her gaze flips upwards, skimming over his shaved head. “Hard to believe now.”
Her eyes follow him as he edges closer, then the rest of the word disappears as he brushes his son’s face with one fingertip, feeling the impossibly soft skin against his. My son. Mine. “I was never this small.”
She gives him a look that reminds him why he started seeing her in the first place, all fiery humor and well-bred spark. “We can call him LJ.”
“We?”
She holds out the tightly wrapped bundle in her arms. “He’s your son, too.”
He wants to take him. God, he wants to, but he’s afraid. Afraid of holding him wrong. Afraid of talking too loud and scaring him.
Afraid of loving him too much. Because loving someone too much always hurts.
Lisa blows out a weary breath. “Just hold him, okay?”
He does.
He tugs the small bundle against his chest, feeling the squirming warmth against his heart. His son’s tiny mouth opens, pink gums moving as though he’s miming to a song only he can hear, then the fragile eyelids follow suit, revealing a pair of blue eyes, glazed and unfocused. “Hey there, LJ,” he mutters. Maybe he should feel like a dick for talking baby talk, but all he feels is right. “I’m gonna help your Mom take good care of you, you hear me?”
He remembers holding Michael like this, with his mother beaming proudly at them both. He also remembers listening to her cry later that night, when it was just her and the new baby alone in her bedroom. He remembers hating his father, knowing that he should have been there, that his mother was crying because his dad wasn’t there to help look after Michael. He remembers promising himself he’d be the man of the house.
Be a man.
His heart in his throat, he touches his mouth to the tender curve of his son’s head, and his eyes are suddenly burning. Whatever it takes, he thinks, and for once the thought doesn’t fill him with despair.
~*~
“What the hell is this?”
Michael looks at the crumpled college applications Lincoln has fished out of the trash, then shrugs. “I didn’t see the point in filling them out.” His brother’s gaze slides away to the television set blaring in the corner of the room. “It’s not as though we can afford for me to go to college, so why waste my time?”
Lincoln drops the forms into his brother’s lap. “Fill them out.”
“No.” Michael brushes aside the paperwork, but Lincoln recognizes the gleam in his eyes for what it is. A quiet desperation, a longing for something else.
Something better.
Plucking out the Loyola application from the pile now tumbled onto the couch, he once again drops it into Michael’s lap. “Fill it out.”
Michael’s head droops, his long fingers clutching at the paperwork as though it’s a lifeline. “There. Is. No. Point.”
Lincoln feels as though he’s free-falling, just like those dreams where you pray you’ll wake up before you hit the ground. “We’ll get the money somehow.”
His brother looks at him with eyes that brim with disbelief. “How?”
Be a man. “You let me worry about that, okay?”
~*~
There is a quote by someone (maybe a washed up movie star, he thinks) that says if you’re in a hole, stop digging. Whoever the hell it was, he has the feeling that someone never owed a lowlife like Crab Simmons ninety thousand bucks.
Because when you’re in deep with Crab, the only way out is to keep digging.
~*~
“I don’t get it.” Derek drops a painfully small tip onto the waitress’ tray, waiting until she’s finished her answering eye-roll of disdain before going on. “Why can’t your brother help you repay the money? He’s a big shot now, isn’t he?”
They’re in the kind of bar Lincoln hopes like hell that LJ never finds himself in, drinking crappy beer to take the edge off a morning of hustling for Crab. Lincoln reaches for his beer, narrowing his eyes against the smoke haze and the undisguised curiosity in Derek’s eyes. “He doesn’t know anything about it.”
Derek laughs as he lifts his beer bottle to his lips, a joyless sound that prickles through the stale air. “Come on, seriously.”
“I am serious, man.”
“So tell him.” His friend shrugs. “He’s gotta be pulling in some major money at that place. More than enough to make a dent in the heap you owe Crab, that’s for sure.”
Lincoln shakes his head, the fizz of alcohol sloshing coldly in the pit of his stomach. If he weren’t so tired, he’d be a little freaked out by hearing Vee’s habitual urging coming out of Derek’s mouth. “I can’t.”
“Shit, Linc.” Derek’s brow furrows with concern. Or maybe confusion. It’s hard to tell the difference. “You’d rather risk be picked off by someone on Crab’s enemies list than burst your little brother’s security bubble?”
Yes. “It’s not as simple as that.” He looks at the man he’s known since eighth grade, wishing he had the words to explain. Outside of Michael and Vee, Derek is the only person in this world he trusts with his life, but how can he talk about honoring a childhood vow without sounding like an idiot?
“If you say so.” Derek props his chin in his palm, looking ten kinds of hell. His eyes are bloodshot, his features drawn, and Lincoln doesn’t have to check in the mirror to know he doesn’t look much better. “At least he’ll have the money to pay for a nice casket when Crab finally decides we’re next on his list.”
Lincoln feels as though he’s swallowed a fistful of ice cubes. “That ain’t gonna happen.” Maybe if he says it enough times out loud, he thinks, that will make it true. “Not if we keep doing the job.”
Derek snorts. “Some job. Shaking down nameless scum to stay alive.” He lifts his beer in a mock toast. “Our mothers would be so proud of us.”
Lincoln knows the other man is only joking, but the words unleash a burst of fury that seems to erupt from the soles of his feet and taint every inch of him along the way. “You think this is how I want to spend my life?” Beer foams over the lip of the bottle as he slaps it onto the scarred wooden table. “You think I like not being able to tell my kid what I do for a living?”
His friend waves his hand in a shushing motion, his face suddenly alive with worry. “Keep it down, man.” He glances around the bar, as if worried an undercover cop is going to suddenly spring out from behind one of the peeling leather booths. “I know all that shit, man, okay? I know you’re doing it for your kid.” A dark shadow passes across the other man’s face, and Lincoln feels a twinge of sympathy. Derek has a kid too, to some chick he knocked up on a one night stand five years ago. The difference is that all Derek knows about his kid is her name and the fact that her mother moved to the other side of the country a month after she was born.
Maybe, Lincoln thinks, it would have been better for everyone if Lisa had done that too.
Defeat brims up and over, spilling hotly over his skin. “All I know is that as long as I keep doing the job, one day my debt will be paid and I’ll be free of all this bullshit.”
They look at each other, and Lincoln knows Derek doesn’t believe that fairytale anymore than he does. But what else is there to believe in?
~*~
“I’ve been trying to call you for a week.” Michael’s bright blue gaze sweeps over him as he steps past him into the untidy apartment, taking in his tattered jeans and leather jacket without comment. “Where have you been?”
Beating up scumbags who owe a more powerful scumbag a shitload of money. “Out.”
“That’s helpful.”
He stares at his brother, neatly pressed and buttoned up in his suit and tie, not bothering to hide his irritation. “What did you want?”
“What?”
“You said you were trying to call me.” He doesn’t have time for this bullshit, not today. “What did you want?”
His brother hesitates, a frown puckering at his forehead, and for a few brief seconds Lincoln sees the old Michael, the one who looked up to him and loved him and knew that everything Lincoln did, he did it for him and for LJ. Then Michael blinks and it’s as though an invisible hand has wiped his expression clean, and he’s back to looking like a smug college boy who knows everything but understands nothing. “Lisa called me.”
The earlier flicker of irritation steps up a notch. “Have a nice talk? Tell me something, did she tell you that her new boyfriend doesn’t want me to see LJ as often because he thinks I’m a bad influence?”
He thinks Michael might actually start wringing his hands in frustration, and he’s glad. He’s tired of being the only one who has to fight to be heard, to be understood. “She’s worried about you.”
“That’s great,” Lincoln flips angrily over his shoulder as he picks up his car keys and shoves his painfully thin wallet into his back pocket. “But maybe she should worry more about that pinhead she’s got living with her, the one pretending he’s my son’s father.”
Michael studies the car keys through narrowed eyes. “You going somewhere?”
“Yeah.” He’s picking up Derek to meet Crab, and for a brief moment of madness, he pictures himself telling Michael exactly where he’s going and what he’s going to do and why he’s doing it. He doesn’t, of course. He never does. I’ll help you look after him, Mom. I promise. “That’s the risk you take when you show up on someone’s doorstep unannounced, kid.”
Michael’s jaw tightens, just as it always does when Lincoln uses that particular word. “What should I tell Lisa?”
“Nothing.” He motions towards the door, and his brother slowly makes his way towards it. “That’s between her and me and LJ.”
“Linc-” He looks down at his brother’s hand, wrapped tight around his forearm, then up into his brother’s face. Michael is staring at him as though he’s trying to see inside his head, right down into his fucking soul, and Lincoln pulls away, knowing that if he lets Michael look long enough, he’ll see it all.
“I gotta go.”
He strides towards his piece-of-shit car, leaving his brother staring after him, all the secrets between them buzzing in his blood. One day, when all this bullshit is behind him, he’ll sit Michael down with a beer and he’ll tell him everything. Maybe they’ll even laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
But not today.
~*~
The mark is a paranoid schizophrenic drug dealer who gets off on messing with little kids. At least, that’s what Crab tells them. Lincoln learned long ago that Crab’s association with the truth happens on a purely accidental basis. All he wants to know is the when and where and how, and that’s where things get a little tricky.
“Two bodyguards and a limo with bullet proof windows?” He stares at Crab. “Are you shitting me?”
Crab’s expression doesn’t change. “The man has something of mine. I want it back.” He brushes his thumb over the barrel of the pistol sitting on his knee. “How you make it happen is your problem.” He jerks his head towards one of the thick-necked goons standing behind him. “Jonah will give you the lowdown on the man’s routine.”
“When’s it going down?”
A flicker of surprise disturbs Crab’s studied boredom, as if he can’t believe he’s being asked such a mundane question. “Today, my friend.”
In another life, Lincoln would openly sneer at this idiot’s pretensions of power and cultured breeding, knowing if there were any justice in this world, he’d be rotting in jail like the two-bit thug he is. Right now, all he can afford to do is nod his head and get to his feet, nudging Derek’s shoulder with his. “You just need the briefcase? That’s it?” As Crab nods, Lincoln stares at the sawn-off shotgun one of loitering goons has just shoved into Derek’s hands. The same goon then produces a revolver and dangles it in front of Lincoln. As Derek silently accepts two boxes of ammo from a second goon, Lincoln stares at the man who holds the balance of both their lives in his hands.
“What the fuck, man?”
Crab smiles. “Insurance.”
A fine mist of anger settles over him, pricking his skin like sweat. Crab is going to spend the day sitting here watching MTV while he and Derek risk getting their heads blown off. “Fine.” He shoves the pistol down the back of his jeans. The steel is cold against his flesh. “Let’s get it done.”
Another dive, another table in the shadows. It takes them two hours to frantically map out a plan. Somehow, they manage to resist the urge to get high to a desperate attempt to oil the cogs in their heads. Finally, after working their way through so many scenarios that his brain is starting to fray at the edges, Lincoln rubs his eyes with the heel of his palm. “It’s going to have to be a smash and grab.”
Derek fumbles with his cigarette lighter, almost dropping it into his lap. “You’re kidding me, right?”
Lincoln wants nothing more than to put his head down on the table in this sorry excuse for a bar and sleep for a week. “It’s the only way to take out the bodyguards easily and quickly.”
Derek looks at him in pained disbelief. “You call risking our necks in a car wreck quick and easy?”
“Better than adding murder in the first to our rap sheets.”
He can’t stomach the joint Derrick insists on lighting up when they reach their chosen destination, waving it away with an impatient hand. “I gotta keep focused.” He glances at the shotgun resting in his friend’s lap as the sweet musk of pot smoke fills the ‘borrowed’ car Crab had provided for their task. “So should you.”
“This is such bullshit, man.” Derek flicks the still-smoking stub of his joint out the car window. “We’ve never had to take out someone in broad daylight like this before.”
Nausea curls and uncurls like a fist in Lincoln’s gut, but somehow he manages to sound as though he knows what he’s doing. “All we gotta do is get the briefcase and get outta here.”
“Jonah’s waiting on Fifth to shoot through and pick us up, right?”
“He’d better fucking be,” Lincoln mutters, his gut tightening even more. Relying on Crab’s henchmen to extract them from a life or death situation is not the position he ever wanted to be in, but they have little choice.
Derek’s fingers drum restlessly on the dashboard, keeping time with the rush of Lincoln’s pulse. “Did Crab tell you what was in the briefcase?”
Lincoln shakes his head. “He didn’t tell. I didn’t ask.”
His friend almost smiles. “Wise move.”
They sit in the hot car, waiting. Later, Lincoln won’t be able to decide if it was the heat or the pot smoke or Derek’s drumming fingers that pushed him into a moment of clarity. All he knows is that he closes his eyes and sees his son’s face. He thinks of how LJ would feel if he ever learned exactly how his father spends his days, and a hot, burning ache gnaws at his ribs. He’s so fucking tired of being the family screw-up. He wants his son to be proud of him. He wants his brother to be proud of him, like he used to be.
He can’t do this anymore. There has to be another way, a way that doesn’t involve selling his soul to the devil and the risk of LJ losing his father every single fucking day. All he has to do is find it.
“Did you hear what Crab said about this guy being a kiddie fiddler?”
The coarse words yank him back to the unwanted present, a present where he’s about to put his life on the line for a man who would shoot him through the heart without breaking a sweat. “I heard it.”
Derek’s nostrils flare with distaste. “What kind of sick fucker does that?”
“I don’t know, man.” He thinks of everything Crab had told them about the mark. “But if Crab ever throws a psycho at us like this again, I’m gonna kill him.”
Derek looks at him. “Well, if we don’t get this psycho, Crab’s gonna kill us.”
Same old tune, Lincoln thinks, one he’s really fucking tired of hearing. “Just have the barrel ready.”
His friend cocks the shotgun, the click clack of metal on metal like a slap to Lincoln’s already jarred nerves. “I got it covered.”
Lincoln stares at the gun. It’s just insurance. Nothing more. “After this job I’m done, man.” Okay. He’s said it. Can’t take it back now. “I can’t do this anymore.”
Derek gives him a pained look. “What do you think Crab will say about that?”
“I don’t care what Crab says about that.” Brave words coming from an indebted man, but he has to believe it. “How can I be a good father if I’m always in prison?” Whatever Derek was about to say next never passes his lips, as though the mention of LJ has him zipping his mouth shut. “I missed out on my kid’s childhood. I’m not gonna miss out on him becoming a man.”
Taking a deep breath, his friend swiftly changes the subject. “Enough nothing, this plan is crazy, even for you. You sure this is the only way?”
The word feels thick and sour on his tongue, but he says it anyway. “Yeah.”
The mark appears on the top of the stoop, and Lincoln’s pulse is suddenly buzzing in his ears. “Hey look, he’s coming out,” Derek mutters, as though Lincoln could have missed seeing the man with the eighties hairdo in a three-piece purple suit. “He’s got the case.”
Lincoln turns the key in the ignition, and the engine of the stolen car roars into life, the battered chassis shaking around them. “Let’s buckle up,” he mutters, wondering darkly if the seatbelts in this piece of crap will do more harm than good.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees Derek wrap both hands around the shotgun, then his foot is slamming down the accelerator and they’re speeding towards the intersection and the world around him has narrowed down to the point of impact, everything going in slow motion even though they’re moving so fast. His heart is pounding so hard it’s almost bouncing clear out of his chest but he’s calm and how can that be possible, he wonders, then the hood of their car smashes into the side of the black limo and the word fills with the sound of tearing metal and fear.
Derek is out first, shotgun raised. There is no sign of the mark and the driver is either unconscious or dead, but that still leaves one goon to take out. His voice rough with nerves, Derek yells at the dazed bodyguard who’s just scrambled from the front passenger seat of the limo. “Put your hands up!” He yells again, louder this time, jabbing the shotgun fiercely into the space between them. “Put your hands up!”
Clutching his own weapon, Lincoln sees the man reach into his jacket, then he hears the roar of Derek’s shotgun. The bodyguard drops like a stone as the bullet slams into his shoulder, and Lincoln swears under his breath as he rushes to the backseat of the limo, praying the mark has been knocked out.
Just do it. Get the case and get out. Be a man and get it done.
The mark is in the backseat, dazed and bloodied, and it only takes Lincoln a few seconds to wrestle the briefcase from his limp grasp. The briefcase is in his hand and he’s walking away and it’s done, it’s over, then Derek raises the shotgun to his shoulder and fires again. Spinning on his heel, Lincoln sees the gun fall from the mark’s hand, the blood blubbing at the corner of his mouth as he dies.
His gun still unfired in his hand, Lincoln stands frozen in shock, his blood icing over. It takes him a few seconds to figure out that the roar in his ears isn’t gunfire but his own heartbeat. He turns to stare at Derek, who merely looks at him with a desperate sense of acceptance. “You’re welcome,” he gasps, but Lincoln has no answer for him.
The sound of screeching tires slices through the madness, and Jonah is there, the engine of his car screaming as he guns it. Derek flings himself into the backseat of the car, the slamming of his door bringing Lincoln back to his senses with a jolt.
Somehow he’s in the front passenger seat and the door is shut and he’s thrown backwards as the car surges forward. Clutching the briefcase to his chest, he turns to stare at Derek. He can see his friend is shaking, but he doesn’t give a shit.
“What the fuck did you do that for?”
Derek looks at him with wild eyes. “He had a gun pointed at your fucking head, that’s why!”
Lincoln wants to hit him, hit him so hard that his knuckles shatter. He wants to smash his fist into the window beside him, feel the sting of glass on his flesh, because anything would be better than feeling what he’s feeling right now. All those times when he told himself he was better than the rest of them, better than Crab, because no matter how many low things he’d done, at least he’d never taken another man’s life.
Bile stings the back of his throat, and it’s all he can do not to gag. He’s no better than the rest of them. He never has been.
Maybe he never will be.
Derek is still looking at him as though he’s waiting for an apology. Lincoln takes in his friend’s stricken expression and shaking hands, and knows he has no choice. “Thanks, man.” Derrick nods abruptly, then turns to stare out the car window. Lincoln looks down at the briefcase, grimacing as he shoves it off his lap.
Crab gets his briefcase. They get their blood money. Derrick says goodbye with nothing more than a hesitant clap of his hand on Lincoln’s shoulder. Lincoln can’t meet the other man’s eyes, and that’s fine with him. He doesn’t want to see his own shame mirrored back at him.
Hours later, fresh from a hot shower that does nothing to erase the despair hollowing out his insides, he calls his son. To his dismay, Lisa answers the phone in a voice that drips acid from every syllable. “It’s late, Lincoln.”
Surprised, he looks at his watch. How did it get to be nine-thirty so fast? “Is he still awake?”
“Yes, but that’s not the point. You’re supposed to call him between six and nine, remember?”
“Lisa, please. I’m sorry. Can I just talk to him?” Somehow he manages to keep it all together long enough to convince her to put his son on the phone, but when he hears the sound of LJ’s voice, his eyes start to blur. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hi.” He sits down on the arm of the couch, cradling the phone against his ear. “How was your day, kiddo?” He finds himself holding his breath after asking the question - his twelve year-old son’s moods are like quicksilver, changing from one hour to the next - but to his relief, LJ seems happy enough to talk.
“It was okay.”
As his son tells him about school and the swim team and how Uncle Michael has promised to teach him how to swim the length of the pool underwater, Lincoln stares at the luridly patterned carpet beneath his shoes. Finally, LJ pauses for breath and asks, “Mom said you had a really busy day and that’s why you called so late. Did you have to work late?”
Lincoln starts, the phone slippery in his suddenly damp palm. “Yeah, we had a big job come in at the last minute,” he tells his son, every word of this fresh lie slipping between the cracks of his conscience. “Hey, tell me more about the swim team?”
~*~
Two months later, he’s still jumping through Crab’s hoops, and it’s painfully obvious that things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better. He has to scramble to cover for Derek when a shakedown goes wrong and the mark puts a bullet into the head of Crab’s favourite lowlife buddy. Jittery after a week of indulging in his newly discovered coke habit, Derek botches the deal from start to finish, leaving Lincoln to salvage whatever pitiful silver lining there is. They come away with the money and the mark won’t be mouthing off for couple of months, what with his broken jaw and nose, but Crab doesn’t give a shit about silver linings. It takes all Lincoln’s powers of persuasion to convince Crab not to return the favour and put a bullet through Derek’s skull.
“Thanks, man,” Derek mumbles when they’re finally outside Crab’s apartment, blinking in the harsh early morning light. “I owe you one.”
Lincoln looks away from his friend’s shaking hands and haunted expression. He doesn’t want to live like this, checks and balances and who can stop who from fucking it up this time, but this is how it is. Two months ago, Derek stopped a guy from blowing off his head. Now they’re even. “Let’s call it quits.”
Three weeks later, he has to pull Derek’s ass out of the fire again, the balance sheet between them starting a new cycle Lincoln knows will only end when one of them walks away or gets his brains blown out. Only the thought of LJ and Michael has him actually caring if it’s him, which means it’s time to get out.
All he has to do is find a way.
A few weeks down the track, the way out appears from the most unexpected source. Crab offers him the chance to clear his debt in full with one final job, and Lincoln grabs it with both hands. Then he learns that it’s a rival drug dealer who Crab wants gone and gone for good, and the reality of the job description smacks him in the face.
Whatever else he’s done, he can’t do this. “Find someone else, man.”
Crab looks at him. For once they’re alone, and if Lincoln didn’t know that Crab never touched his own product, he’d think the guy was wired. His hands were whirling, his speech twice as fast as usual. “Let me put it another way. You do this for me and your monetary obligation to me is cleared, or you don’t and you and your kid will be looking over your shoulders for the rest of your fucking lives.”
“Sonofabitch-” Lincoln is on his feet and in the other man’s face before the maggot can take another breath, but today Crab’s hands are as fast as his words. The muzzle of the pistol presses against Lincoln’s belly for an eternity before he steps back, letting the stale air of Crab’s apartment waft between them. Frustrated fury boils up inside him, compounded by a dull, dead acceptance of what this really means.
A stranger’s death in exchange for LJ’s life.
Crab doesn’t smile, but Lincoln can almost smell his relief. “Do we have an agreement?”
There’s only one answer he can give. “Yes.”
~*~
Four years later, Derek looks at him with that same haunted expression Lincoln remembers so well. “I’ve gone straight, man. I’ve got a kid now. Marie, she’s just had a baby boy.”
Lincoln hesitates - he knows better than anyone how much a second chance means - but only for a few seconds. If it’s a choice between his brother’s life and Derek’s conscience, there is no contest. He’s not being fair, but right now, he doesn’t give a damn. “You owe me, remember?”
Derek looks as though he wants the ground to rise up and swallow him whole, but he nods. “I do."
Afterwards, Lincoln decides that three one-way tickets to Panama and a six pack of beer was a small price for Derek to sign off on their old balance sheet.
~*~
LJ picks up the secure line on the second ring, making it easy for Lincoln to picture him slouching on some unseen couch with the phone beside him. As always, the sound of LJ’s voice, alive and vibrant, fills with him a quiet joy he has never managed to find the words to properly express. After they negotiate the usual round of greetings, as awkward as any normal teenaged boy and his father, Lincoln takes a deep breath. “What did you do today?”
LJ chuckles, but it’s not a happy sound. “Same as I do every day, Dad. I watched DVDs and I slept and I listened to Sofia talk about how worried she is about you until I thought my ears were going to start bleeding.”
He doesn’t want to talk to Sofia - her sweet, breathy voice is just another reminder of how many lives he’s ruined - but he knows he has to ask. “Is she there?”
“She’s asleep.” He hears his son sigh. “What about you? What have you been doing?”
Lincoln closes his eyes. Four years later and he still can’t bring himself to tell his son how he’s been spending his time. This time, though, Crab Simmons is long dead, and Lincoln’s keeping secrets from his kid for all the right reasons. “Oh, I’m keeping busy. Your Uncle Michael says hi, by the way.”
“I wish I was there.”
So do I, Lincoln thinks but doesn’t say. He’s not safe to be around, and the further apart they are, the better it is for LJ. “Not long now, kid, and we’ll be fishing. Just like we planned, okay?”
“Sure thing.” LJ’s voice rings clear and strong, and his father wonders exactly who is doing the reassuring here. “Say hi to Uncle Mike for me.”
“I love you, LJ.” Even across the miles keeping them apart, he can feel his son’s embarrassment. It makes him smile, a smile that widens when he hears LJ clear his throat.
“I love you too, Dad.”
He disconnects the line, then spends a long time frowning at the silent phone. He hates this. His kid is hundreds of miles away, trapped in a Homeland Security safe house, and he has no idea when he’s going to see him. He swears under his breath, and Sucre gives him a reassuring nod, as though wanting to show his parental support.
Lincoln give Sucre a quick nod in return but, apart from his son, there’s only one other person he wants to talk to right now. Muttering something about wanting to get some fresh air, he makes his way through the warehouse, feeling as though he’s moving through sinking sand, knowing he has to reach his target before he becomes bogged down again.
He finds Michael just outside the main doors, his long legs stretched out in front of him as he sits on the concrete loading platform, his gaze fixed on the distant horizon. Sara is nowhere to be seen, and Lincoln can only assume she’s holed up in her little boat. He wonders briefly if there’s a problem between them, then dismisses the thought. He’s not here to ponder his brother’s complicated relationship with their former prison doctor.
He’s here for absolution.
“Hey.”
Michael’s face softens at the sight of him. “Hey,” he says softly as he pats the concrete beside him. “Pull up a pew.”
Lincoln blinks. Interesting choice of words, he thinks. He’s not a man who believes in signs or omens, but maybe he should start. His train of thought slips sideways, seizing on a memory that had come to him unbidden a few nights back. “Remember when Lisa started dating that high school teacher? You know, the one that convinced her to start going to church with him?”
If Michael’s surprised by the question, it doesn't show. “Sure. Why?”
“I don't know why, but the other night I was thinking about how LJ put Tabasco sauce into the holy water on their second visit.”
A smile lights his brother’s eyes. “I thought Lisa was going to send the priest after you.”
Lincoln grins. “Hey, all I did was tell LJ about the time I’d done it when I was eight. I didn’t tell him to do it.”
Michael chuckles. “Ever try it at Fox River?”
“Tough when you’re in shackles twenty-four seven.”
They sit in an almost restful silence for a moment, then Michael sits up a little straighter. “I went to church a while back.” He darts Lincoln a faintly embarrassed glance. “Ended up in the confessional box.”
Lincoln watches a myriad of emotion dance across his brother’s face, trying to think of the right words to say next. For all his talk of having faith, this isn’t a topic that comes easily to him. “Did it help?”
Michael takes a deep breath. “I didn’t think so at the time.” He turns to Lincoln, suddenly looking much younger than his years. “But now?” He turns to gaze at the expanse of blue water once more. “I think it did.”
There’s another saying, Lincoln thinks, not about digging holes but about teaching an old dog new tricks. Ever since the day Michael was born, it has been Lincoln’s job to keep secrets. Keeping secrets to keep him safe.
He's tired of keeping secrets.
He thinks about Derek. He likes to think his friend is happy with his new family and his new life. “That smash and grab maneuver we tried on the General. You know how I said I’d done it before?”
Michael nods slowly, his bright eyes filling with a subtle dread that makes Lincoln’s heart ache. “Was that when you were working with Derek?”
“Yeah. He’s clean now. Derek, I mean. Got a little kid. Steady job, at least he did until I turned up on his doorstep. Hopefully that didn’t change.” He studies the scuffed toes of his boots. He doesn’t know why he’s telling this to Michael, only that he needs to say it.
“You’ll have all that, too.” Michael sounds wistful, as though he’s not actually thinking about Lincoln but himself, and Lincoln clumsily bumps his knuckles against his brother’s shoulder.
"So will you, man."
“The time you pulled that stunt with Derek,” Michael ventures after an undeniably awkward pause, offering him a half-hearted smile. “I hope it worked better than the second time you tried it.”
“Not exactly.”
Michael looks at him steadily. “What happened?”
Lincoln hesitates, waiting for the feeling of free-falling to come, for him to start praying that this is all a dream.
It doesn’t come.
There is nothing but him and Michael and the blue water and the yellow sun and the chance of a normal life. The urge to change the subject gnaws at him like a dog with a bone, but he pushes it away.
Be a man.
He looks at Michael - no longer a smug college boy but a brother forever bound to him through blood and sacrifice - and smiles. “If you wanna grab a couple of beers, I'll tell you all about it.”
It's time to stop digging.
~*~