Five Times Michael Scofield Almost Kissed Sara Tancredi (And One Time That He Did)
Title: Five Times Michael Scofield Almost Kissed Sara Tancredi (And One Time That He Did) (1/1)
Fandom: Prison Break
Pairing: Sara Tancredi/Michael Scofield
Length: 3,188 words.
Rating: Rated R for bad language and sexual situations.
Summary: A plot bunny of the most evil kind, the kind that eats your brain until it's done. The first time I've written one of those 'five times that...' fics. Contains spoilers for Season One and Season Two to date AND spoilers and wild speculation for future episodes. Also contains dialogue taken from five different episodes that so does not belong to me. I also didn't wait for my beta-reader to wake up, so all concrit and typo-spotting is gratefully accepted. *g*
~*~
"All hell’s breaking loose", he tells her, oddly pained that it’s the only truth he can offer her. They slither and slide through dirty pipes and dusty vents until he loses track of time. Almost loses sight of who she is and what he’s pretending to be. She can’t understand why he’s come to save her, as if she thinks she’s not worth risking his life for, and the wariness in her eyes stings far more than it should.
They reach the empty linen storage room and he thinks they’re almost home free, then she ducks underneath his arm and slides into the impossibly small space between the wall and his body. His mind goes blank, his focus narrowing down to the warmth of her against his side, the unsteady rasp of her breath close to his ear. They’re both dirty and sweaty, the faint scent of her perfume and heated flesh teasing his senses, and he is suddenly swamped by a feeling of danger that has nothing to do with their flight to safety.
They’re alone in this suffocating hiding place, and he knows now that she’s forgotten who he is. What he is. He could roll onto his side and slide his knee between hers, trapping her against the flaking painted wall, and he knows her hands wouldn’t push him away. He could bow his head and kiss her so hard and so deep that the taste of her would stay with him for hours, and he knows that her mouth would be soft and open under his.
He closes his eyes, desperately reminding himself of what he’s pretending to be. He pulls away from the soft warmth of her body - God, the smell of her skin makes him want to bury his nose in the crook of her neck - and swings out into the harshly-lit real world, coaxing her down to join him. He congratulates himself on a narrow escape, then she’s literally falling into his arms, his hands on her waist, her hands on his shoulders. He sees the startled awareness in her eyes, the dark flash of hunger that calls to his own, and he realises once again that danger comes in many different forms.
~*~
They’re going over the wall tonight, and everything he’s never said to her is pressing down on his chest, squeezing his heart like a vise. Lincoln is his reason for being here and his reason for leaving, but this woman has slipped through the cracks in his plan, filling up the empty spaces with her soft hands and gentle words. He watches her as she mends his torn flesh for the last time, knowing he shouldn’t say what he’s about to say, knowing he cannot leave this room without asking her.
"Did you ever think, in another life -"
"I won’t be that woman, Michael", she tells him, too sharply and too quickly, her gaze determinedly averted, and he feels an idiotic flutter of something that feels very much like hope.
He watches as she tidies bloodied bandages and snaps off her gloves, and it’s almost time for him to walk away from her, but he can’t leave it like this, not after what she’s done for him. What she’s become to him. Her hand is dusted with the powdered residue from her gloves, but her skin is cool and soft against his as he curls his fingers around hers. She freezes, her hand rigid in his, her head bowed as she stares at their clasped hands.
"Thank you", he tells her, the words thick and tight in his throat, "for everything." She says nothing as he brushes his thumb across her knuckles, but he feels the faint tremour that ripples through her hand. He wants to tighten his grip on her slender fingers. He wants to pull her closer, lift his head until his mouth is only a breath away from hers. He wants to find out if what lies between them is more than just imagination and wishful thinking. He wants to take something tangible of her with him, something more than bandages and stitches and the faint memory of her soothing touch.
He doesn’t, of course, because that way lies madness, and he’s too well acquainted to risk letting himself stumble and fall. Already mourning the loss of something he’d never expected to find, he gives himself three seconds - three seconds he doesn’t need - to commit her face to memory, then he swallows hard, drops her hand and slides off the gurney. She doesn’t speak or move as he carefully walks around her, and he can feel the tension radiating from her, the same tension stiffening his spine and slowing his feet.
As he reaches the door, he struggles to control the urge to turn his head, let himself look at her one last time. He doesn’t, because Lincoln is the reason he’s here and the reason he’s leaving. They’re going over the wall tonight, he reminds himself, and he doesn’t look back.
~*~
"I put my blood into this", he whispers to himself, to his brother, to the world that has struggled to understand him for as long as he can remember. It’s all part of the plan, and then the blood and the pain and the anger overwhelms him, the darkness pushing him down against the cold concrete floor, making a mockery of his carefully constructed universe. His brother is only a few feet away, but Lincoln can’t help him now. Not here, not in this place.
They’ll send for her. She will come as soon as she hears. She will come, and he can move onto the next stage, the next lie. He knows all these things, but the darkness - God, the darkness - it has a way of making him forget the things he knows. It whispers thickly against his skin, pouring all his doubts and fears into his ears, leaving him alone and small, his hands bloodied and raw.
Then she’s finally there, her voice soft and lilting, chasing away the darkness as surely as the light pouring from the open cell door. She speaks to him as though he’s a frightened animal, soothing words meant to calm and quiet. Then she touches him, gently taking his wrist, her fingertips pressing lightly against his pulse, and something inside him breaks, snapping through him like the crack of a whip.
It’s all part of the plan. He clings to the blurred thought that skirts the edges of his mind, but the smell of blood and the cold sweat on his skin is all too real. Then she crouches beside him and the smell of blood is overlaid with the light scent of her perfume, and he’s moving towards her without conscious thought. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows this fits in perfectly, fits in with the plan, but then his head is resting on her knee and all he knows is the warmth of her against his clammy skin.
"You’re going to be okay", she whispers, the words falling on him as though from a great height. He wants so much to believe her, wants it even more when she puts her hand on his back, rubbing slow, awkward circles between his shoulders. "I have to leave for a little while, Michael, but I’ll be back soon. I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?"
She’s going straight to the Pope and it’s exactly what he wants her to do and he should be glad, but his face is wet with tears he doesn’t remember crying and his cheek is pressed hard against her knee and he can’t let her go. Exhaling a shaky breath that seems to go on forever, he leans into her, the pain in his hand fading with every circle she traces across his spine. The rough material of her trousers grazes his cracked lips, and somewhere in the fog in his head he feels the urge to press his mouth against her skin through cloth already damp with his tears and sweat.
"You’ll be okay, Michael", she whispers again, her hand lightly brushing over the curve of his shoulder, and this time he almost believes her.
~*~
His stomach is churning as she literally backs into the room, every line of her body stiff with anger, her keys clutched tightly in her hand. Keeping her back to him, she tosses the keys into a plastic tray, then slowly turns to face him. Except she’s still not facing him, still not looking at him, and her arms are folding across her chest like a shield.
He starts to speak but she cuts him off before he can utter more than a few fumbling words. "Enough, Michael." Her voice is flat and empty. "Enough with the lies and the stories and the coincidences. All of it."
He scrambles for a way to explain the unexplainable, but she sees right though every hastily uttered lie. Her questions come in a barrage, knocking him off-balance, and he feels everything between them pitch and roll. He presses his heels hard against the infirmary floor, grounding himself, and hears himself telling her the truth.
"I’m getting my brother out of here. Tonight. And I need your help."
She flinches, her dark eyes widening, then she shakes her head, holding up her hand as if that might stop the words coming out of his mouth. She can’t help him, she won’t help him, and there’s a sudden fury in her voice and her eyes that he’d even ask such a thing of her. She’s reaching for the door handle, running away even as she’s arguing with him, and he desperately flings Gandhi’s words at her, hating himself for resorting to such a cheap shot but he has no shame, not when it comes to this.
Her anger stings, but it’s a thousand times less painful than the hurt realization in her voice and her eyes when she finally puts all the pieces together. "I was part of your plan."
I’m so, so sorry, he thinks but doesn’t say. "Yes."
Something in her face crumples, and he knows she’s thinking that he kissed her - God, that kiss - for all the wrong reasons and he wants so much to tell her that she’s wrong, that it may have started out like that but it didn’t end that way and he wants nothing more than the chance to do it again, to do it properly this time. But he doesn’t. He just lets the silence stretch out between them, thin and brittle, until her face hardens, a tiny muscle jerking in her jaw.
"Was it all an act?"
He tells her the truth, because she needs to hear it. Maybe they both do. "At first, yes. I had to be here." She’s still gripping the door handle, holding it so tightly that he thinks it might shatter in her hand. "But then I wanted to be here. With you."
She rolls her eyes, her disdain breaking him all over again, then she turns, her hand shifting on the door handle, and he knows she’s going to leave him, leave him here alone with his guilt and his lies and his fear. The hallway outside the room is crowded, filled with guards and inmates, but he suddenly doesn’t care. He closes the distance between them with two long strides, desperation making him reckless. Her head snaps up when he gently touches her arm - it’s the last time he’ll ever touch her - but she doesn’t open the door.
His eyes blur with the sting of tears, but he doesn't care about that, either. She's seen him at his very worst, it can hardly matter now. "Whatever you may think of me, this is about Lincoln. Don’t make him pay for my mistakes."
Her face tightens with anger, her eyes burning into his, then she turns her back on him, wrenching open the door, leaving him alone with his guilt and his lies and his fear, leaving him alone with the memory of a kiss that now tastes like ashes in his mouth.
~*~
"Do you think there’s a part of you that enjoys this?"
They’re sitting in a sleazy motel that charges by the hour, but he doubts a change of venue would make this conversation any less awkward. He doesn’t look at the puckered wound she’s busily patching up, as if that will make it less painful. "Peroxide on an open wound? No."
She smiles, and he feels an odd jolt in the pit of his stomach. It seems a very long time since he’s seen her smile. Then it fades, taking his fleeting sense of relief with it. "I mean escaping from prison, being on the run and the danger and the fear and the rush and all that." She says the word rush almost lovingly, and he finds himself watching her eyes as she speaks, desperately hoping to see all the secrets she’s not telling him.
"I’ve never thought about it like that", he tells her, and it feels like the truth, but they both know that the truth is never what it appears to be. Perhaps it should unsettle him that she might know him better than he'd ever suspected, but it only makes him feel vindicated.
She mends his torn flesh, just as she has always done, her touch light and soothing, but he can already feel her slipping away from him. "I know you’ve heard this before, but it won’t always be like this."
He can tell she doesn’t believe him.
She bandages his arm and listens as he tells her the new plan - the plan that changes every other fucking hour, he thinks dully - and he thinks she might almost be ready to accept the fact that it’s safer for them to stay together. Then he touches her, sliding his hand up the smooth length of her forearm. He feels the furious tension in her, and he knows she’s still very angry.
He wants nothing more than to pull her into his arms and hold her as long as she’ll let him, to pull her into his arms and kiss her until they both forget that they almost died today, but she’s staring at his hand on her arm the way she had that day in the infirmary. As though she’s frozen in place, as though she’s simply waiting for him to give up and stop trying. Too late, he thinks, and one look at her face tells him he’s right.
"Go get cleaned up", she says gently, her eyes anywhere but on him, and he knows that it’s gone all wrong.
He gets to his feet, suddenly feeling ten years older than when they entered the room. "I’m glad you came", he tells her, wanting the words to be said, the sight of her heartbreakingly familiar face making him smile despite everything. Five minutes later, when he comes out of the bathroom to find her gone, he’s only surprised that something could hurt more than peroxide on an open wound.
~*~
Tightening his grip on Paul Kellerman’s cell phone, he closes his eyes and accesses the voicemail a second time. I didn’t leave you in Gila. Something happened to me. I need to know you’re okay. I need you. Please.
He snaps the phone shut, wondering how it’s possible to feel such hope and dread at the same time. He strides back into an almost empty train carriage, tossing the phone to his brother, then looks at the man sitting beside him. "You got us on this train and I’m grateful for that. But if you look at her, if you go near her, if you even think about saying her name, I will kill you myself." He stares at Kellerman. The other man returns his gaze steadily, rubbing a visibly bruised throat. Michael imagines briefly he can see the outline of his own hand on the pale skin, then adds, "Do we understand each other?" He walks away before Sara’s torturer can speak, not caring whether the man understands him or not.
She’s sitting exactly where he'd left her five minutes ago, in the window seat of the last aisle in the next car, her back against the wall. Pale but composed, her hands in her lap, she’s a different woman than the one who was hissing such ugly words at Paul Kellerman only an hour earlier.
She blinks at him nervously as he makes his way towards her, her gaze sliding away from his as he drops into the seat beside her. "I just got your message", he tells her without preamble, unwilling to waste another goddamned second, not when they’ve already wasted so many.
She frowns. "My message?"
"You left a message on my cell phone." He looks at her, studying the sharp line of her cropped hair as it falls against the delicate curve of her jaw, and wants her - all of her - more than he's ever wanted anyone. "You said you needed me."
"Oh." She breathes out the word on a sigh as she looks out the window, then turns to meet his gaze. "I did. I mean, I do." Her bottom lip trembles faintly, then she lifts her chin, her eyes glittering with everything he’s been waiting so long to see. Before he can speak, she presses her lips together, then shakes her head. "For all the good that does us now," she mutters, casting a quick glance behind them. "Bad timing strikes again." She looks at him sadly, shyly, as if daring him to prove her wrong, and he is undone.
His hand is sliding through her hair, tilting back her head, then her mouth is opening to his kiss. He tells himself to go slowly, be gentle, take his time, but her lips are soft against his and they taste of coffee and mint and her and he can't be gentle or go slow. Her hand is suddenly on his leg, her fingernails digging into his skin, then she’s kissing him with a fierce hunger that turns his flesh and bone to liquid heat. Taking her face in his hands, he kisses her the way he’s always wanted to kiss her, hard and deep and hot. She gasps softly into his mouth, her hand tightening on his thigh, and he feels the rush of blood to his head and his groin, every beat of his heart feeling thick and heavy.
It’s not enough and yet far too much, given their present surroundings. The words arrested for indecent conduct reverberate in his head as he gently pulls away, his chest heaving as though he’s had to chase the train through the last two stations on foot. She stares at him, her mouth swollen and red, her eyes swimming with the same desire that makes him want to be very, very reckless, then she smiles. "I guess I waited for you after all", she whispers, half-laughing, half-crying, making him both smile and want to kiss her again.
He does.
~*~
Fandom: Prison Break
Pairing: Sara Tancredi/Michael Scofield
Length: 3,188 words.
Rating: Rated R for bad language and sexual situations.
Summary: A plot bunny of the most evil kind, the kind that eats your brain until it's done. The first time I've written one of those 'five times that...' fics. Contains spoilers for Season One and Season Two to date AND spoilers and wild speculation for future episodes. Also contains dialogue taken from five different episodes that so does not belong to me. I also didn't wait for my beta-reader to wake up, so all concrit and typo-spotting is gratefully accepted. *g*
~*~
"All hell’s breaking loose", he tells her, oddly pained that it’s the only truth he can offer her. They slither and slide through dirty pipes and dusty vents until he loses track of time. Almost loses sight of who she is and what he’s pretending to be. She can’t understand why he’s come to save her, as if she thinks she’s not worth risking his life for, and the wariness in her eyes stings far more than it should.
They reach the empty linen storage room and he thinks they’re almost home free, then she ducks underneath his arm and slides into the impossibly small space between the wall and his body. His mind goes blank, his focus narrowing down to the warmth of her against his side, the unsteady rasp of her breath close to his ear. They’re both dirty and sweaty, the faint scent of her perfume and heated flesh teasing his senses, and he is suddenly swamped by a feeling of danger that has nothing to do with their flight to safety.
They’re alone in this suffocating hiding place, and he knows now that she’s forgotten who he is. What he is. He could roll onto his side and slide his knee between hers, trapping her against the flaking painted wall, and he knows her hands wouldn’t push him away. He could bow his head and kiss her so hard and so deep that the taste of her would stay with him for hours, and he knows that her mouth would be soft and open under his.
He closes his eyes, desperately reminding himself of what he’s pretending to be. He pulls away from the soft warmth of her body - God, the smell of her skin makes him want to bury his nose in the crook of her neck - and swings out into the harshly-lit real world, coaxing her down to join him. He congratulates himself on a narrow escape, then she’s literally falling into his arms, his hands on her waist, her hands on his shoulders. He sees the startled awareness in her eyes, the dark flash of hunger that calls to his own, and he realises once again that danger comes in many different forms.
~*~
They’re going over the wall tonight, and everything he’s never said to her is pressing down on his chest, squeezing his heart like a vise. Lincoln is his reason for being here and his reason for leaving, but this woman has slipped through the cracks in his plan, filling up the empty spaces with her soft hands and gentle words. He watches her as she mends his torn flesh for the last time, knowing he shouldn’t say what he’s about to say, knowing he cannot leave this room without asking her.
"Did you ever think, in another life -"
"I won’t be that woman, Michael", she tells him, too sharply and too quickly, her gaze determinedly averted, and he feels an idiotic flutter of something that feels very much like hope.
He watches as she tidies bloodied bandages and snaps off her gloves, and it’s almost time for him to walk away from her, but he can’t leave it like this, not after what she’s done for him. What she’s become to him. Her hand is dusted with the powdered residue from her gloves, but her skin is cool and soft against his as he curls his fingers around hers. She freezes, her hand rigid in his, her head bowed as she stares at their clasped hands.
"Thank you", he tells her, the words thick and tight in his throat, "for everything." She says nothing as he brushes his thumb across her knuckles, but he feels the faint tremour that ripples through her hand. He wants to tighten his grip on her slender fingers. He wants to pull her closer, lift his head until his mouth is only a breath away from hers. He wants to find out if what lies between them is more than just imagination and wishful thinking. He wants to take something tangible of her with him, something more than bandages and stitches and the faint memory of her soothing touch.
He doesn’t, of course, because that way lies madness, and he’s too well acquainted to risk letting himself stumble and fall. Already mourning the loss of something he’d never expected to find, he gives himself three seconds - three seconds he doesn’t need - to commit her face to memory, then he swallows hard, drops her hand and slides off the gurney. She doesn’t speak or move as he carefully walks around her, and he can feel the tension radiating from her, the same tension stiffening his spine and slowing his feet.
As he reaches the door, he struggles to control the urge to turn his head, let himself look at her one last time. He doesn’t, because Lincoln is the reason he’s here and the reason he’s leaving. They’re going over the wall tonight, he reminds himself, and he doesn’t look back.
~*~
"I put my blood into this", he whispers to himself, to his brother, to the world that has struggled to understand him for as long as he can remember. It’s all part of the plan, and then the blood and the pain and the anger overwhelms him, the darkness pushing him down against the cold concrete floor, making a mockery of his carefully constructed universe. His brother is only a few feet away, but Lincoln can’t help him now. Not here, not in this place.
They’ll send for her. She will come as soon as she hears. She will come, and he can move onto the next stage, the next lie. He knows all these things, but the darkness - God, the darkness - it has a way of making him forget the things he knows. It whispers thickly against his skin, pouring all his doubts and fears into his ears, leaving him alone and small, his hands bloodied and raw.
Then she’s finally there, her voice soft and lilting, chasing away the darkness as surely as the light pouring from the open cell door. She speaks to him as though he’s a frightened animal, soothing words meant to calm and quiet. Then she touches him, gently taking his wrist, her fingertips pressing lightly against his pulse, and something inside him breaks, snapping through him like the crack of a whip.
It’s all part of the plan. He clings to the blurred thought that skirts the edges of his mind, but the smell of blood and the cold sweat on his skin is all too real. Then she crouches beside him and the smell of blood is overlaid with the light scent of her perfume, and he’s moving towards her without conscious thought. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows this fits in perfectly, fits in with the plan, but then his head is resting on her knee and all he knows is the warmth of her against his clammy skin.
"You’re going to be okay", she whispers, the words falling on him as though from a great height. He wants so much to believe her, wants it even more when she puts her hand on his back, rubbing slow, awkward circles between his shoulders. "I have to leave for a little while, Michael, but I’ll be back soon. I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?"
She’s going straight to the Pope and it’s exactly what he wants her to do and he should be glad, but his face is wet with tears he doesn’t remember crying and his cheek is pressed hard against her knee and he can’t let her go. Exhaling a shaky breath that seems to go on forever, he leans into her, the pain in his hand fading with every circle she traces across his spine. The rough material of her trousers grazes his cracked lips, and somewhere in the fog in his head he feels the urge to press his mouth against her skin through cloth already damp with his tears and sweat.
"You’ll be okay, Michael", she whispers again, her hand lightly brushing over the curve of his shoulder, and this time he almost believes her.
~*~
His stomach is churning as she literally backs into the room, every line of her body stiff with anger, her keys clutched tightly in her hand. Keeping her back to him, she tosses the keys into a plastic tray, then slowly turns to face him. Except she’s still not facing him, still not looking at him, and her arms are folding across her chest like a shield.
He starts to speak but she cuts him off before he can utter more than a few fumbling words. "Enough, Michael." Her voice is flat and empty. "Enough with the lies and the stories and the coincidences. All of it."
He scrambles for a way to explain the unexplainable, but she sees right though every hastily uttered lie. Her questions come in a barrage, knocking him off-balance, and he feels everything between them pitch and roll. He presses his heels hard against the infirmary floor, grounding himself, and hears himself telling her the truth.
"I’m getting my brother out of here. Tonight. And I need your help."
She flinches, her dark eyes widening, then she shakes her head, holding up her hand as if that might stop the words coming out of his mouth. She can’t help him, she won’t help him, and there’s a sudden fury in her voice and her eyes that he’d even ask such a thing of her. She’s reaching for the door handle, running away even as she’s arguing with him, and he desperately flings Gandhi’s words at her, hating himself for resorting to such a cheap shot but he has no shame, not when it comes to this.
Her anger stings, but it’s a thousand times less painful than the hurt realization in her voice and her eyes when she finally puts all the pieces together. "I was part of your plan."
I’m so, so sorry, he thinks but doesn’t say. "Yes."
Something in her face crumples, and he knows she’s thinking that he kissed her - God, that kiss - for all the wrong reasons and he wants so much to tell her that she’s wrong, that it may have started out like that but it didn’t end that way and he wants nothing more than the chance to do it again, to do it properly this time. But he doesn’t. He just lets the silence stretch out between them, thin and brittle, until her face hardens, a tiny muscle jerking in her jaw.
"Was it all an act?"
He tells her the truth, because she needs to hear it. Maybe they both do. "At first, yes. I had to be here." She’s still gripping the door handle, holding it so tightly that he thinks it might shatter in her hand. "But then I wanted to be here. With you."
She rolls her eyes, her disdain breaking him all over again, then she turns, her hand shifting on the door handle, and he knows she’s going to leave him, leave him here alone with his guilt and his lies and his fear. The hallway outside the room is crowded, filled with guards and inmates, but he suddenly doesn’t care. He closes the distance between them with two long strides, desperation making him reckless. Her head snaps up when he gently touches her arm - it’s the last time he’ll ever touch her - but she doesn’t open the door.
His eyes blur with the sting of tears, but he doesn't care about that, either. She's seen him at his very worst, it can hardly matter now. "Whatever you may think of me, this is about Lincoln. Don’t make him pay for my mistakes."
Her face tightens with anger, her eyes burning into his, then she turns her back on him, wrenching open the door, leaving him alone with his guilt and his lies and his fear, leaving him alone with the memory of a kiss that now tastes like ashes in his mouth.
~*~
"Do you think there’s a part of you that enjoys this?"
They’re sitting in a sleazy motel that charges by the hour, but he doubts a change of venue would make this conversation any less awkward. He doesn’t look at the puckered wound she’s busily patching up, as if that will make it less painful. "Peroxide on an open wound? No."
She smiles, and he feels an odd jolt in the pit of his stomach. It seems a very long time since he’s seen her smile. Then it fades, taking his fleeting sense of relief with it. "I mean escaping from prison, being on the run and the danger and the fear and the rush and all that." She says the word rush almost lovingly, and he finds himself watching her eyes as she speaks, desperately hoping to see all the secrets she’s not telling him.
"I’ve never thought about it like that", he tells her, and it feels like the truth, but they both know that the truth is never what it appears to be. Perhaps it should unsettle him that she might know him better than he'd ever suspected, but it only makes him feel vindicated.
She mends his torn flesh, just as she has always done, her touch light and soothing, but he can already feel her slipping away from him. "I know you’ve heard this before, but it won’t always be like this."
He can tell she doesn’t believe him.
She bandages his arm and listens as he tells her the new plan - the plan that changes every other fucking hour, he thinks dully - and he thinks she might almost be ready to accept the fact that it’s safer for them to stay together. Then he touches her, sliding his hand up the smooth length of her forearm. He feels the furious tension in her, and he knows she’s still very angry.
He wants nothing more than to pull her into his arms and hold her as long as she’ll let him, to pull her into his arms and kiss her until they both forget that they almost died today, but she’s staring at his hand on her arm the way she had that day in the infirmary. As though she’s frozen in place, as though she’s simply waiting for him to give up and stop trying. Too late, he thinks, and one look at her face tells him he’s right.
"Go get cleaned up", she says gently, her eyes anywhere but on him, and he knows that it’s gone all wrong.
He gets to his feet, suddenly feeling ten years older than when they entered the room. "I’m glad you came", he tells her, wanting the words to be said, the sight of her heartbreakingly familiar face making him smile despite everything. Five minutes later, when he comes out of the bathroom to find her gone, he’s only surprised that something could hurt more than peroxide on an open wound.
~*~
Tightening his grip on Paul Kellerman’s cell phone, he closes his eyes and accesses the voicemail a second time. I didn’t leave you in Gila. Something happened to me. I need to know you’re okay. I need you. Please.
He snaps the phone shut, wondering how it’s possible to feel such hope and dread at the same time. He strides back into an almost empty train carriage, tossing the phone to his brother, then looks at the man sitting beside him. "You got us on this train and I’m grateful for that. But if you look at her, if you go near her, if you even think about saying her name, I will kill you myself." He stares at Kellerman. The other man returns his gaze steadily, rubbing a visibly bruised throat. Michael imagines briefly he can see the outline of his own hand on the pale skin, then adds, "Do we understand each other?" He walks away before Sara’s torturer can speak, not caring whether the man understands him or not.
She’s sitting exactly where he'd left her five minutes ago, in the window seat of the last aisle in the next car, her back against the wall. Pale but composed, her hands in her lap, she’s a different woman than the one who was hissing such ugly words at Paul Kellerman only an hour earlier.
She blinks at him nervously as he makes his way towards her, her gaze sliding away from his as he drops into the seat beside her. "I just got your message", he tells her without preamble, unwilling to waste another goddamned second, not when they’ve already wasted so many.
She frowns. "My message?"
"You left a message on my cell phone." He looks at her, studying the sharp line of her cropped hair as it falls against the delicate curve of her jaw, and wants her - all of her - more than he's ever wanted anyone. "You said you needed me."
"Oh." She breathes out the word on a sigh as she looks out the window, then turns to meet his gaze. "I did. I mean, I do." Her bottom lip trembles faintly, then she lifts her chin, her eyes glittering with everything he’s been waiting so long to see. Before he can speak, she presses her lips together, then shakes her head. "For all the good that does us now," she mutters, casting a quick glance behind them. "Bad timing strikes again." She looks at him sadly, shyly, as if daring him to prove her wrong, and he is undone.
His hand is sliding through her hair, tilting back her head, then her mouth is opening to his kiss. He tells himself to go slowly, be gentle, take his time, but her lips are soft against his and they taste of coffee and mint and her and he can't be gentle or go slow. Her hand is suddenly on his leg, her fingernails digging into his skin, then she’s kissing him with a fierce hunger that turns his flesh and bone to liquid heat. Taking her face in his hands, he kisses her the way he’s always wanted to kiss her, hard and deep and hot. She gasps softly into his mouth, her hand tightening on his thigh, and he feels the rush of blood to his head and his groin, every beat of his heart feeling thick and heavy.
It’s not enough and yet far too much, given their present surroundings. The words arrested for indecent conduct reverberate in his head as he gently pulls away, his chest heaving as though he’s had to chase the train through the last two stations on foot. She stares at him, her mouth swollen and red, her eyes swimming with the same desire that makes him want to be very, very reckless, then she smiles. "I guess I waited for you after all", she whispers, half-laughing, half-crying, making him both smile and want to kiss her again.
He does.
~*~