The Rewards of a Haircut and a Dye Job
Michael’s hand played at the back of her hair, tangling in the strands at the nape of her neck. "How did you cut it?" he asked.
Sara looked up from their intertwined fingers. They were holding hands like ninth graders, sitting in the back of a car waiting for Lincoln and Kellerman, and Michael had his arm around her while his hand tugged at her hair lightly as he ran his fingers through it. "I used a straight razor," she answered.
"It’s amazingly even," he commented, leaning his head back to look at it a little more closely.
"It took me two hours. It took me about 20 minutes just to cut the first strand. I didn’t want to do it at all."
"It will grow back," he said softly. "It’s not like you had to shave it all the way off." He paused and then looked into her eyes again. "I miss the red," he confessed.
"Dark brown is more common. Red hair stands out," Sara explained. Surely that was obvious, but she said it anyway.
"It’s one of the first things I noticed about you," he said, a smile touching the corners of his lips and lighting his eyes.
"Really?" she asked. This was so new, she had no idea how to react to information like this. She knew they had said in essence that they loved each other, but all the little details that led to that had been forsaken for issues of a more timely manner.
But here they sat, waiting, and there was no time like the present.
"Really," he murmured, dipping his head again, only this time a little kiss landed on the corner of her mouth. "The photos I had of you were black and white, so I had no idea until I saw you in person that you had gorgeous red hair. And you know what they say about red heads?"
"We have red-hot tempers."
"Yeah, I’ll say," he chuckled breathily in her ear, and she knew he was thinking about her trying to strangle Paul Kellerman earlier that day. "Hot," he whispered, and Sara shivered.
"Stop it. They’ll be back any moment." She ducked her head away and looked out the car window. "Besides, I haven’t made out in a car...since like 1991."
"Some things never go out of style," he said, smiling at her embarrassment.
Dragging her eyes away from the window and the moment of impending interruption, she looked into his blue eyes and again found herself breathless. Michael Scofield and his pretty eyes had left her breathless many a time inside Fox River’s walls. Outside, they were a hundred times more potent, and there was really nowhere to hide from them. Even when Lincoln and Kellerman returned, Michael would still be looking at her with those eyes, and making love to her as surely as long, graceful fingers moving over sensitive body parts. Swallowing hard as her mind moved rapidly from virtual contact to actual contact, she covered his mouth with her own, surprising them both.
Michael gasped, but recovered quickly, angling his head to the left to align their noses and to send his tongue deeply into her mouth, taking, tasting, making her heart nearly explode with need, and want, and the elusive love that she had confessed to earlier.
She wondered if they would always do this, find odd places to make out, places that would always find them ending things before they actually wanted to, infirmaries, passenger train bathrooms, backseats of stolen cars.
The hand under her hair clasped her nape tightly, pulling her closer, and she wrapped an arm around his neck while their clasped hands loosened so she could slide it around his rib cage and dig her fingers into his back. Michael’s free hand was more bold. It shifted to cup her breast and moaning, she arched into him, wondering wildly how he could be so forward, at the same moment she shoved her suddenly aching, tingling body more firmly into his palm. Their lips slipped apart and she breathed, "Oh, Michael," against his chin just as a sharp rap came down on the roof of the car.
She tried to jerk herself out of his arms, but all Michael did was move his hand away from her breast. He kept her close to him; his flushed face and wet lips filled her vision, and for a split second she forgot that something had interrupted the moment. Then the driver’s side door opened and Lincoln stuck his head inside. "Cool it," he commanded, not looking at Sara, instead giving Michael a intensely terse stare followed closely by a wolfish grin. "Game on," he muttered as Kellerman opened the passenger side door.
Lifting her hands up, Sara smoothed her hair back into place, still missing the way she used to be able to run her fingers through about six more inches. "It will grow back," Michael murmured, drawing her eyes back to his.
He watched her steadily and she felt his chest expand with a heartfelt sigh. A small smile touched his lips and her heart. "I know," she said, wondering when hair had become an analogy for her life.
As Lincoln started the car, she had a glimmer of hope. They still didn’t have what they needed, but as long as she was with Michael, the faith to believe was just as real, just as tangible as the missing strands of her hair. It would grow back, indeed.