How A Resurrection Really Feels - Michael, Lincoln
Title: How A Resurrection Really Feels
Author: Aspen Snow
Character: Michael, Lincoln
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Freedom doesn't taste like it should. Michael and Lincoln in Mexico.
Michael loses his mind a little bit when they get to the border.
It’s dark and there is nothing but cool dust and moonlight for miles and miles. Mexico is just there, he knows, at the edge of what he can see. But he stops running.
“Michael let’s go,” and Lincoln’s voice is a little bit fierce, a little bit tired.
Lincoln has been running in front since they escaped. He’s been desperate since before he got sent to prison and Michael can hear the so close so close in the way Lincoln can’t stop moving.
But Michael doesn’t move, doesn’t go.
The moonlight is hot like a spotlight and he hears sirens and dogs and helicopter blades and the way the handcuffs hanging off his wrist slide against his skin is too familiar.
Michael thinks maybe his plan has been wrong this whole time.
What if they can’t ever run far enough?
*
The air in Mexico tastes like fast food and cheap beer and sweat that stains. The freedom here is stale at best.
The clerk at the motel doesn’t understand English, but he does understand exhaustion and American money. When Michael pulls a hundred out of the waistband of his prison issued gray sweatpants with shaky hands (it’s a dead man’s money after all) the man behind the counter doesn’t ask any questions. Just takes the bill in a sweaty hand and tosses them a key.
The room has no windows, just one bed and one door and even though the walls are brown and the carpet is brown and even though he is in another country, he sees grey, he sees metal, he sees bars.
He hadn’t expected to be so stifled when they finally got here. This hadn’t been the plan, standing in an open doorway holding his breath waiting for everything to change.
He’d planned on breathing.
*
The first morning they are in Mexico Michael buys them both clothes with pockets and shoes with laces.
When they get hungry Lincoln insists on going to a diner where they don’t have to stand in line with trays. When the waitress asks them what they want Lincoln orders a hamburger and fries without looking at the menu like he has planned this moment.
Michael holds onto the menu, his fingers pressed hard into the cool laminated paper and he tries to take comfort in the feel of something so common.
But he can’t. He doesn’t know what to order.
He never planned this moment.
*
Lincoln never asks Michael why they always stay in towns on the beach.
Michael watches the way Lincoln walks now, carelessly with hands in his pockets and slow. So slow that Michael has to stop every once in awhile and wait for Lincoln and his long lazy strides to catch up.
He watches how Lincoln doesn’t run anymore and Michael doesn’t know how to tell him that he needs to be able to see the wide open space of the ocean so that he doesn’t forget, again, that there are places beyond places.
The sand isn’t soft and it isn’t white, but it’s warm under his feet and the way it sinks and collapses with each step lulls him into an easier rhythm.
Forces him to slow down and pull his feet out of the sand.
The sand is warm and it is the first observation Michael has that is completely useless.
*
They stop at a mini mart to buy $6.32 worth of aspirin and candy bars. Michael pays with a twenty dollar bill and when the cashier gives him the change, Michael gives Lincoln the 68¢ of loose coins.
When they walk out of the store Michael bites into a Snickers bar and Lincoln swallows three aspirin dry, walks across the street to the payphone, puts in a couple of coins and puts his hand on the phone.
But he doesn’t pick it up, he never does.
There are some things that even Mexico can’t give back.
So wherever they go Michael carries the bills. Lincoln carries the change─ because Michael can only plan and Lincoln can only hope.
*
Michael gets drunk one night, drinks too much watered down vodka and everything becomes so heavy that he can’t move.
Lincoln is standing not far away with the same beer in his hand that he been casually sipping the whole night. It angers Michael that he can do that, stand and sip, stand and sip, that he can keep doing something so meaningless over and over again like its nothing.
Like all of this is nothing.
But it’s everything to Michael, fucking everything. It’s his life now, bars and motels and beaches with sand shades too dark to be paradise.
“I’m not supposed to be here you know,” he says mostly to himself. But he thinks Lincoln hears it because he finishes his beer in one long swallow, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and slams the empty beer bottle on the table.
“Let’s go,” he says and Michael remembers the last time Lincoln said those words to him he was desperate and running.
“It’s your fault,” and Michael can’t stop himself, “it’s your fault,” he says again and again and again until the world becomes too heavy and everything goes black.
When Michael wakes up in the morning he’s too nauseous to remember anything from the night before.
They pass a payphone when they walk into town and Michael stops, but Lincoln keeps walking.
Michael feels like he should apologize for something, but he doesn’t know what.
*
He sees her picture on the TV. He can’t make out much of the rapid fire Spanish, but he catches one word, muerto.
Dead.
He buys himself a twenty five cent beer because at least it wasn’t Lincoln.
He goes to the beach that night, buries his feet in the sand, listens to the water─ smooth and quiet, and tells himself it wasn’t his fault.
*
Michael breaks when there’s no more Mexican space to run through.
“I don’t have a plan,” he says and he thinks maybe he’ll just sit here on the edge until everything changes, until he finds something familiar he can hold onto.
“I know,” Lincoln says and he wraps his fingers around Michael’s wrist, firm and steady, and drags him along, back to the coast, back to the beach. Like he’s always known that Michael was breaking, like he has always known that Michael needed something constant and endless to hold him in place.
“What are we going to do?” and it’s the first question Michael has asked anyone, anyone, since he got himself sent to prison, since he decided that his brother’s life was worth more than his own.
“I’ll think of something,” Lincoln says and he believes him.
It has something to do with the way Lincoln’s fingers are wrapped around his pulse, Michael thinks, holding it steady.
Author: Aspen Snow
Character: Michael, Lincoln
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Freedom doesn't taste like it should. Michael and Lincoln in Mexico.
Michael loses his mind a little bit when they get to the border.
It’s dark and there is nothing but cool dust and moonlight for miles and miles. Mexico is just there, he knows, at the edge of what he can see. But he stops running.
“Michael let’s go,” and Lincoln’s voice is a little bit fierce, a little bit tired.
Lincoln has been running in front since they escaped. He’s been desperate since before he got sent to prison and Michael can hear the so close so close in the way Lincoln can’t stop moving.
But Michael doesn’t move, doesn’t go.
The moonlight is hot like a spotlight and he hears sirens and dogs and helicopter blades and the way the handcuffs hanging off his wrist slide against his skin is too familiar.
Michael thinks maybe his plan has been wrong this whole time.
What if they can’t ever run far enough?
*
The air in Mexico tastes like fast food and cheap beer and sweat that stains. The freedom here is stale at best.
The clerk at the motel doesn’t understand English, but he does understand exhaustion and American money. When Michael pulls a hundred out of the waistband of his prison issued gray sweatpants with shaky hands (it’s a dead man’s money after all) the man behind the counter doesn’t ask any questions. Just takes the bill in a sweaty hand and tosses them a key.
The room has no windows, just one bed and one door and even though the walls are brown and the carpet is brown and even though he is in another country, he sees grey, he sees metal, he sees bars.
He hadn’t expected to be so stifled when they finally got here. This hadn’t been the plan, standing in an open doorway holding his breath waiting for everything to change.
He’d planned on breathing.
*
The first morning they are in Mexico Michael buys them both clothes with pockets and shoes with laces.
When they get hungry Lincoln insists on going to a diner where they don’t have to stand in line with trays. When the waitress asks them what they want Lincoln orders a hamburger and fries without looking at the menu like he has planned this moment.
Michael holds onto the menu, his fingers pressed hard into the cool laminated paper and he tries to take comfort in the feel of something so common.
But he can’t. He doesn’t know what to order.
He never planned this moment.
*
Lincoln never asks Michael why they always stay in towns on the beach.
Michael watches the way Lincoln walks now, carelessly with hands in his pockets and slow. So slow that Michael has to stop every once in awhile and wait for Lincoln and his long lazy strides to catch up.
He watches how Lincoln doesn’t run anymore and Michael doesn’t know how to tell him that he needs to be able to see the wide open space of the ocean so that he doesn’t forget, again, that there are places beyond places.
The sand isn’t soft and it isn’t white, but it’s warm under his feet and the way it sinks and collapses with each step lulls him into an easier rhythm.
Forces him to slow down and pull his feet out of the sand.
The sand is warm and it is the first observation Michael has that is completely useless.
*
They stop at a mini mart to buy $6.32 worth of aspirin and candy bars. Michael pays with a twenty dollar bill and when the cashier gives him the change, Michael gives Lincoln the 68¢ of loose coins.
When they walk out of the store Michael bites into a Snickers bar and Lincoln swallows three aspirin dry, walks across the street to the payphone, puts in a couple of coins and puts his hand on the phone.
But he doesn’t pick it up, he never does.
There are some things that even Mexico can’t give back.
So wherever they go Michael carries the bills. Lincoln carries the change─ because Michael can only plan and Lincoln can only hope.
*
Michael gets drunk one night, drinks too much watered down vodka and everything becomes so heavy that he can’t move.
Lincoln is standing not far away with the same beer in his hand that he been casually sipping the whole night. It angers Michael that he can do that, stand and sip, stand and sip, that he can keep doing something so meaningless over and over again like its nothing.
Like all of this is nothing.
But it’s everything to Michael, fucking everything. It’s his life now, bars and motels and beaches with sand shades too dark to be paradise.
“I’m not supposed to be here you know,” he says mostly to himself. But he thinks Lincoln hears it because he finishes his beer in one long swallow, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and slams the empty beer bottle on the table.
“Let’s go,” he says and Michael remembers the last time Lincoln said those words to him he was desperate and running.
“It’s your fault,” and Michael can’t stop himself, “it’s your fault,” he says again and again and again until the world becomes too heavy and everything goes black.
When Michael wakes up in the morning he’s too nauseous to remember anything from the night before.
They pass a payphone when they walk into town and Michael stops, but Lincoln keeps walking.
Michael feels like he should apologize for something, but he doesn’t know what.
*
He sees her picture on the TV. He can’t make out much of the rapid fire Spanish, but he catches one word, muerto.
Dead.
He buys himself a twenty five cent beer because at least it wasn’t Lincoln.
He goes to the beach that night, buries his feet in the sand, listens to the water─ smooth and quiet, and tells himself it wasn’t his fault.
*
Michael breaks when there’s no more Mexican space to run through.
“I don’t have a plan,” he says and he thinks maybe he’ll just sit here on the edge until everything changes, until he finds something familiar he can hold onto.
“I know,” Lincoln says and he wraps his fingers around Michael’s wrist, firm and steady, and drags him along, back to the coast, back to the beach. Like he’s always known that Michael was breaking, like he has always known that Michael needed something constant and endless to hold him in place.
“What are we going to do?” and it’s the first question Michael has asked anyone, anyone, since he got himself sent to prison, since he decided that his brother’s life was worth more than his own.
“I’ll think of something,” Lincoln says and he believes him.
It has something to do with the way Lincoln’s fingers are wrapped around his pulse, Michael thinks, holding it steady.