Awakening: Chapter 6
Title: Awakening
Author:
domfangirl
Pairing/Characters : Lincoln/Sara
Category: Romance/Drama
Rating: NC-17 (for later chapters)
Summary: Michael and Lincoln take Sara on the run with them
Author's Notes: This chapter is Michael & LJ combined, Michael's thoughts are first, then we switch to LJ.
She tastes just like I remember, and when I press a little, she lets me slide my tongue right past her lips. Like that day in the Infirmary, it’s better than I expected, better now than I remembered. A breath trembles in her chest and then she makes a small sound, like she’s confused. My hands come down on her thighs, trapping her hands against her legs.
I want to touch her everywhere, I want to kiss her everywhere, but it would take more strength than I have to pull my lips from hers, so I just go on kissing her mouth. Our tongues move against each other, our lips press harder together and then pull apart to get a better angle, a deeper taste. I kiss her like I have all the time in the world to do it, but I know that I don’t. I know this can’t go on much longer, because we’ve hardly talked and kissing isn’t the answer to what we have talked about. But I’ve wanted it for so long, and she’s so responsive and it feels so damn good.
Her fingers extend under mine and then she pushes against my hands, and I break away from her mouth, gasping for breath. Our foreheads touch and our labored breaths bounce off each other. She whispers, “Michael,” and I shush her, because I just want the moment to be a little longer, I want this to be more than it is.
In the silence I think maybe we’ve found neutral ground. She can forgive me, and we can start a real relationship, one not based on subterfuge and manipulations. But then she stiffens and starts hitting me.
At first, it was just one hard push against my shoulder; then it was her fist doubled up and she makes this sound in her throat that’s a cross between a growl and a howl of rage and I freeze. I stay on my knees in front of her and let her go. By the time she tires of hitting me, tears stream down her face, and she shoves me hard until I fall back on my ass, out of her way so she can get to her feet. “Sara, I’m sorry-“
“Shut up! Shut up!” Her hands cover her face and swipe tears in all directions. “You…” she takes a shuddering breath. “God, I hate you, Michael. I hate you, that you can just…be so unaffected!”
“I’m not unaffected!” I wonder if she was even awake during that kiss. I sit on the floor, afraid to get up on her level, afraid she might launch herself at me again. She can’t hurt me physically, but the blows to my emotions are more than I can handle. I’ve known since we got here it can never work. As much as I want it to, as much as I wish it was different…
“As long as you’ve got your plans, you never deviate!” she shouts at me, and it’s an accusation and a pronouncement.
“I didn’t plan that,” I say, jabbing a finger at the bed.
“Oh, really? You didn’t think a little kiss might make me forget everything?”
I shake my head and look at the floor. I don’t think a lifetime will make her forget. So I say the only thing I know, the only thing that remained true from the moment I entered Fox River to the minute I left it. “I had to save my brother.”
She makes this strangled sound that causes my eyes to jerk back to her face. She’s got her fingers pressed to her lips and she’s nodding wildly. The only thing that makes sense is that she has felt the sharp piercing pain that it would be: a world without Lincoln. She knows that I had to do it, but it doesn’t change the fact that any relationship we may have had is irreparable.
“And you hardly knew me, I was nothing but part of the plan,” she says, wiping tears more gently from her face.
“It was two months, Sara, two months. No matter how quickly I began to feel something deeper for you, it could never change the outcome. I had to get him out. I’m sorry you were hurt, and involved, and I’m sorry you’re here, dragged away from your life, but…”
“You wouldn’t change a thing. I know.” She walks to the door and stops before going through it. Resting her head on the edge of the wood, she looks at me, and I have no idea what she thinks. For once the inscrutable one is at a loss. I don’t see the caution with which she found herself liking me, nor the helpless reprimands she held in her eyes when I came in injured but wouldn’t reveal what had happened. “I’m glad you saved him,” she says, almost to herself. “I wouldn’t change certain things, either, Michael. But I don’t know…if I can come back from this. It almost destroyed my life.”
And she doesn’t mean that we’re on the run now, and that things are up in the air. She means the needle in her arm, and the fact that I helped put it there. I drop my head again and rub my hand over the top of it. “I know,” I breathe out. I’ve always known. And somewhere, deep inside me, a flame burns. It’s small, but steady, and I can’t help but think I brought her here for Lincoln. I don’t want that to be the answer, but it is.
Softly, she says, “I’m sorry.”
I look up. “For what?”
“For being so screwed up that I can’t bounce back. For being…”
“I seem to have an attraction to those types,” I say with a small smile. I see it now, why I liked her. In an odd way, she always reminded me of Lincoln. She warned me, she stood up to the C.O.’s for me, she went to the warden when she felt it was in my best interest, she forced me to go to the warden when it was in my best interest. She protected me, in her way, just like Lincoln would’ve if he could have. And all the time I was a strain, dragging her down. Lincoln said he was the anchor, but I know now. He’s the buoy. I’m the anchor.
~*~
It’s after midnight when I quit pretending I’m watching TV. I start pacing in the living room, wondering where the hell my dad is. He’s been gone for hours, and I keep praying that all he did was find some chick he liked. But maybe he’s drunk somewhere, or even trying to drive that way, and he’s going to get caught and then we’ll be right back where we started.
My heart is pounding, and I’m just about ready to start walking into town, no matter how long it will take, not only to get there, but then to find him once I am there, when Sara comes walking down the hall. She’s in her bathrobe, and rubbing at her wet hair with a towel. “LJ, you should just go to bed. He’ll be home soon, I’m sure.”
I stop pacing to face her, wondering how she can say that so calmly, like she knows something. She doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t know my dad, and how he acts. She doesn’t know that I’ve been here before, waiting on him, only to be disappointed either because he never showed up or when he did he wasn’t right. “You don’t know that,” I say, and I hate how my voice shakes.
“He wasn’t thinking about alcohol or drugs when he left here. And he might be gone all night, so it would be better for you to sleep anyway, the morning will get here much more quickly that way.”
“Why would he be gone all night? He’s already been gone,” I look frantically at the clock. “For five hours.”
“He might stay the night…with whomever.”
“Or maybe they caught him? And he’d never tell them where we are, so we won’t know until it’s on the news. Oh, man, Uncle Mike was right, we should always stay together!”
She moves closer to me, putting her hand out to grab my wrist. “LJ, calm down. Look, it doesn’t do any good to-“
But before she can finish her sentence, the front door opens and he walks in. There’s probably about ten feet between where we are standing and where the door is, and he looks at us questioningly as he shuts the door behind him. He flips the overhead light on, which I had turned off a few hours before, so it wouldn’t look like I was waiting up for him. We blink in the soft glare, and I can see that his eyes are clear, and he’s fine. He looks at Sara for a long time before he finally turns his eyes towards me. “Waiting up, Dad?” he asks me, his lips creeping up into a smile.
I can’t help it; I break away from Sara and throw my arms around him. “You can’t be gone so long like that,” I say. I’d give anything not to have tears break through right now, especially with her watching, but I can’t stop them. Dad’s arms come around me securely and one of his hands fits itself to the base of my head.
“It’s okay, kid. It’s okay. I’m sorry. You’re right. You’re right.” He just holds me tighter, and that seems to squeeze more tears out of my eyes, so I bury my face in his shoulder and shake my head negatively. “I’m sorry,” he whispers again. “LJ, I’m sorry.”
He smells like cigarette smoke and definitely some type of perfume, but there’s not a drop of liquor on his clothing, much less inside him. I’m so relieved that more tears pour out and I feel like such an idiot.
A few moments pass, but I finally gain control, so I step back. I try to play it off, but his eyes are full of concern and he grabs my face in his hands and forces my eyes to meet his. “I won’t ever stay gone that long again, not without calling. I swear it, LJ.”
I nod and choke out, “Good. Deal.”
He claps my shoulder with a big hand and then says, “You should get to bed.”
It’s the dumbest thing in the world to say, but it just shows me he’s still my dad, so I smile and glance over at Sara. She smiles too, and then I walk down the hall. As I turn the corner to our bedroom, I stop, leaning my head against the wall, just taking a couple deep breaths. Then I hear my dad say, “Was he a basket case all night?”
“No,” she says. “I just found him out here, though, obviously upset. I tried to tell him you might not come home until tomorrow.”
“Why would I be gone that long? That probably just made him more worried.”
“Well, Lincoln,” Sara says, and there’s this tone in her voice. I know it well, because I heard my mother use it on my dad when he did something that annoyed her. “If you found someone you really enjoyed, how were we to know if you wouldn’t spend…a great deal of time with her?”
“Well, that’s none of your fuckin’ business.”
“I didn’t say that it was.”
“Well, anyway, I’m home. And I won’t do that again, I won’t scare him again. Or…inconvenience you.”
“It wasn’t an inconvenience. I like LJ, I don’t mind helping out.”
“It’s not like he needs a babysitter.”
“I know that.”
“Who put a burr under your saddle?” he snaps.
“Nobody,” she snaps right back and then I hear her footsteps as she starts to come down the hall. I start to move to the door of mine and Dad’s room, because I don’t want to get caught eavesdropping, but he must stop her because her footsteps fail to continue.
“Doc,” he says, “did you talk to Mike?”
“That’s none of your…business.” I know she thought about repeating exactly what he had said, but for some reason she doesn’t use the f-word. I smile to myself. She’s probably one of those people who only says the f-word when she’s really mad. Although, if I was her and Dad was bugging me about whatever’s going on between her and Uncle Mike, that might piss me off.
“Doc,” he says again, a plaintive note.
“We talked, yes. But, I’m not talking to you about it. Just leave me alone, Lincoln.”
I put my hand on the doorknob, knowing at any minute I’m going to get caught, but I want to hear what they say.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
She sighs, and it sounds so sad. “I-I…think so. I think I will be.” There’s a long pause, then she says, “Are you okay?”
He chuckles, just a little sound, and then he responds, “Yeah. I’m better.”
I slip in the bedroom, and quietly shut the door. When Dad comes in a few minutes later, he smiles at me and starts to pull off his shirt. “Did you get any?” I ask.
“If you must know,” he says with a leer, “yes, I did.”
“Good. The Doc told Uncle Mike you needed to go, so I guess she was right.”
“I’m sorry I scared you, man,” he says as he lies down on the bed.
“It’s okay. I’m sorry I was such a big baby about it.” I lay down next to him, watching as he wads up the pillow under his head.
“Next time, I’ll take you with me,” he says, winking.
“Gross. No thanks. I don’t want to do it with a whore.”
“I didn’t do it with a whore. There were some nice girls there.”
“Nice girls that you never met before?” I ask.
“When did you get so choosy?” he demands, poking me in the ribs with a finger.
I shrug. “I don’t know, I just…there was this one girl, back home, I really liked, before all this started…”
Dad flips up on to his side and looks at me intently. “You had a girlfriend?” he asks.
“Kinda.”
“Did you love her?”
“Kinda.”
“You’re like your Uncle. He was always more…emotionally inclined, let’s say.”
“I know you loved Veronica.” He just looks at me, and it makes me wish I hadn’t said anything. It was mean, and there’s no taking it back now. “I’m sorry, Dad. I shouldn’t have-“
“Look, LJ, when it’s like that…when you can have it with love, you should. That’s a good thing. It is. But sometimes, you just…need something else.”
“Like when you can’t have what you want?” I ask. I think I understand, even though it makes me feel sorry for him.
He flops back down and sighs again. “Yeah, exactly. When you can’t have what you want.”