Fic: know what you're thinking | Fringe
Fringe. Threesome. Red!Lincoln/Red!Charlie/Blue!Amber!Lincoln.
Spoilers for early S4. Set also in early S4 and lives in the limbo world when no one was sure what the deal was. So, Alt!Broyles is still dead and only Fauxlivia has met/seen Blue!Lincoln.
This fic also lives in a world similar to one of kerithwyn's creation in which the Red!verse team engages in threesome activities on a semi-regular basis.
~5,800 words. PG-13???
My first attempt at writing a fic for
kerithwyn for the Fringe Secret Santa Exchange, which I had to abandon because I had no idea what I was doing with the end. I still kind of don't, please forgive it. So, the fic is a few months late and not completely beta read (gently pointed out mistakes, etc. would be quite welcome in the comments). Special thanks to monanotlisa for a wonderful half-beta job full of support and motivation.
Summary: “Hey,” Charlie murmured to Lincoln, who was standing at attention next to him, and gave a slight nod toward this Lincoln with glasses and an sharp-looking suit walking through the doorway of the bridge. “Do you think he knows what he’s getting into?”
know what you're thinking
“Hey,” Charlie murmured to Lincoln, who was standing at attention next to him, and gave a slight nod toward this Lincoln with glasses and an sharp-looking suit walking through the doorway of the bridge. “Do you think he knows what he’s getting into?”
Lincoln shrugged, but his eyes betrayed the interest he was harboring about the man. “Liv said he’s already been through. She met him, sort of.”
“No, I mean, with us,” Charlie replied, smirking.
“I don’t know how different things are over there but,” Lincoln’s expression now mirrored his own as he said, “he might.”
::
Lincoln liked himself.
Like, really liked him, which he hadn’t been expecting. Liv always said that dealing with your double was weird, off-putting. But that’s not what Lincoln was feeling. When they first spoke, he and Agent Lee, his other self briefly touched the side of his glasses before he shook Lincoln’s hand. The gesture made Lincoln think of himself, before he got over his awkward teenager phase--and before he got rid of the glasses.
He remembered a line from that one eighties movie about whiz science kids at a tech college, the one with Robert Downey Jr. He’d told the younger whiz kid, I used to be you. And lately I've been missing me, so I asked the Dean if I could room with me again, and he said: sure.
The Masters of the Universe had seen fit to allow him this glimpse of a former self, to speak with him, to interact. Everything he did somehow reminded Lincoln of things he used to do -- ways he responded to questions, even the way he looked at people when they were talking, like maybe they were going to ask him something and he wouldn’t be prepared. The slight hesitation he took before taking the plunge into any kind of action was somehow a revelation.
Lincoln loved it. He missed this kid. And he found himself smiling at him.
He felt like he’d been given a gift.
“What do you think, Tactical Agent Lee?” The other Broyles asked, bringing him back to the meeting as he remembered that’s what they were calling him to differentiate between them.
Lincoln swiftly met his own eyes then looked away and forced himself back onto the task at hand.
::
The Tactical Agent had been looking at him a lot, Lincoln noted. He figured his double would be busy identifying the ways they were different, and those did seem to be significant. But Lincoln found himself searching for the ways they were the same.
It was hard because this other Lincoln seemed to have such a different manner. Lincoln supposed that the atmosphere of the Fringe Division Over There was much at once more tense on a protocol level yet more relaxed on a personal one, probably in response to the highly dangerous nature of the agents’ jobs. He hadn’t really thought about it much until then, previously thinking that the other Olivia’s attitude had just been a personal quirk.
Today, he realized this team was a lot closer to each other than his own, just from the way they looked and talked to each other. It took years for Lincoln’s smile to be as quick as it was around Agent Francis, and he didn’t think the difference was just personal quirk--it was too fundamental a change. In fact, he was reminded of the way he used to smile at Robert and had to tamp down on a rising tide of grief and jealousy he hadn’t been expecting to feel at all.
Then he heard Broyles say, “Agent Lee will go with you.”
“Umm, Sir,” he said, not meaning it to come out like a protest. It was just that he hadn’t been told in the briefing.
“You got a problem with that, Agent Lee?”
“No, Sir,” he replied, quickly glancing at the two men, who looked sort of like they were about to laugh, but were obviously too smart to follow through. “It’ll be a two day mission, correct?”
“Yes, you’ll have some time to round up a few personal items and necessities. Rendezvous back here in an hour, with Tactical Agent Lee and Agent Francis. This package is highly sensitive, Agent Lee, that’s why we’ve got people on both sides here, understood?”
Lincoln was pretty sure he was making a face, one the other him and Francis seemed to think was fairly amusing as well, but occasionally it irked him to be the new guy. Broyles seemed to enjoy dressing him down every so often. “Yes, Sir, of course,” he said and tried not to look too miffed as Broyles walked out of the bridge. The two agents were looking at him expectantly, so he said, “I have some stuff in my car. Just let me get it and we can get going. We don’t have to waste the hour.”
The Tactical Agent raised his eyebrows and replied, “All right. We’ll wait, then.”
::
Charlie crossed his arms and leaned on one of the metal tables away from the machine, looking hard at Lincoln after the other him left to go get his stuff. Lincoln had been smiling weirdly at his double and had that, I’m-on-the-verge-of-planning-something look on his face. Now that it was apparent they’d be seeing a lot more of the guy, Charlie was a little worried. Obviously, he didn’t voice any of those concerns. Instead he asked, “You want to bet on how long he’s been with the team?”
Lincoln smirked, then put on his logic face. Charlie loved the logic face; it was much better than the fancy science face. “Well, longer than three weeks, which was when Liv saw him. And Broyles is still testing him out, so to speak. Remember when Captain Broyles didn’t tell Liv about the alligator in that sewer until after we’d been dredging it for an hour and a half?”
“Oh, I do,” Charlie laughed. “Your impression of the way she said ‘whaaat’ is still, I think, your best.”
Lincoln grinned at the compliment, but it faded quickly and he scrunched up his nose, like the memory still smelled of dank sewers and terror sweat. “If you recall, I was down there too and nobody told me about any alligators, either. Anyway, that was way worse than not completing the briefing.”
Charlie shrugged. “Do you think he got a briefing at all?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” a familiar voice came from the doorway and Charlie wondered how much he’d heard. “Originally, Agent Dunham was going to be on this one. I thought she was just running late, there’s been... some stuff going on. Changes in the office, you could say. So it’ll be me instead of her. I was briefed. He just caught me off guard. Perks of being the new guy.”
“That was fast,” Charlie said looking at the bag in the man’s hand.
The other Lincoln shrugged. “I had a good parking spot.”
“Oookay,” Lincoln said, waving his double over towards their side of the bridge. As the man approached, Lincoln held out his hand again to shake. “We don’t stand on much ceremony in this division these days, so I’d really rather not keep up with the Agent stuff unless we’re talking to civilians, which you won’t be anyway. So, how do you want to do this?”
The other Lincoln narrowed his eyes as he took the outstretched hand, “Do what?”
Lincoln smiled and pointed a thumb at Charlie. “You can call him Charlie, he really doesn’t mind. What do you think we should do about the name thing?”
The other Lincoln glanced over at Charlie with a considering look and asked, “What do you call him usually?”
Charlie wanted to laugh. “Lincoln,” he said. “Or Boss, when it’s appropriate, which it never is, or ‘Hey, idiot’, which is appropriate more than you would think.”
“I’m wounded,” Lincoln muttered and his double smiled.
“I don’t know,” he replied, hesitating. “You really could just call me Agent Lee. I’m fine with that.”
Lincoln shook his head. “That’s no fun. How about Glasses? Would that work for you?”
Glasses did kind of a little half-sigh stuttering laugh and he put a hand up to his chin like it was on his way to cover his mouth before he decided not to. “You guys are going to be a riot, I can tell,” he said.
Charlie turned to Lincoln, who was busy punching protocols into the door, and observed, “A drier sense of humor, I think.”
“Oh, much more dry,” Lincoln replied. He looked over his shoulder at Glasses, who was looking more nervous by the second, and said, “I am so excited about this.”
Charlie felt pretty bad about what was about to happen, but not really bad enough to stop it.
::
The package, as Broyles had called it, was housed in a secure facility outside of Bangor, Maine. What it was doing all the way up there, Lincoln had no idea. He wasn’t even exactly sure what it was, just some crazy tech that was far above his pay grade, though the way Glasses hedged around the subject of speculation made him wonder how high security clearances went in the other Fringe Division.
The mission was for the three of them: one from Over There to carry the package back, and two from this side to guide and watch him go up to Maine and get it. Usually things like this were relegated to couriers and brand new agents, but no one, not even completely uneducated newbies were supposed to know the exchange was even taking place. So, he and Charlie had volunteered, beating out Liv via rock-paper-scissors, because they’d heard they were going to meet Lincoln’s double and spend two whole days with him.
They’d been in the car for about twenty minutes when Lincoln turned around in the front seat and said, “So, I heard Red Lantern is green over there, is that weird for you?”
“Oh, here we go,” Charlie said from the driver’s seat and Glasses’ eyes flicked between them.
“Red, huh?” he asked with the kind of teasing tone Lincoln recognized from his own voice when he was trying to feel out a situation. “Isn’t that a little sinister? The Hulk is still green over here, right?”
Lincoln rolled his eyes. “Don’t even get me started on Marvel--”
“Don’t even get him started,” Charlie echoed, like it was a joke he’d heard too many times.
“Shut up, you,” Lincoln retorted then turned back to himself, “Listen, I don’t know about your universe, but here that company went down the tubes when Stan Lee died. Now they just do reissues and every once in awhile try to revive a title, but nobody wants to hear it.”
“Wait,” Glasses held up a hand, “Stan Lee died? When did that happen?”
Lincoln shrugged, like it was nothing, except his mouth decided to run itself just a little and he said, “In the late eighties, about a week after my father died.” He held himself back from saying he’d been more broken up about the comics mogul.
“Hey, idiot,” Charlie barked and Lincoln looked up to register the shell-shocked face of his double. “Oh, damn,” he said and was about to about to apologize.
But the other Lincoln Lee shuttered his expression for a split second then replied, “Stan Lee is very much alive and kicking where I come from, guys. Marvel’s doing just fine. They beat out DC in numbers all through the nineties.”
“What about Dad?” Lincoln asked after what felt like a long period of silence, prompting Charlie to make a slicing motion with his hand, his go-to signal to shut the hell up. Too late, Lincoln figured. And anyway, he wanted to know.
“He’s fine,” he replied flatly. “Shortlisted for Connecticut Supreme Court. Though he says he might hold out for 2nd District Federal when Alderson retires in a few years.”
No wonder, was all Lincoln could think.
He couldn’t imagine what living under the same roof as that man for his teen years would have been like. Lincoln had had all he could take by the time he turned eight, with all the rules and all the studying and the never being good enough.
If Mom hadn’t sent him away to school at thirteen, Lincoln would never have taken Smith’s physics class, would never gone into the sciences. He would never have met Daniel, would never have learned to give head at fifteen in a bathroom stall during the deserted spring break. He would never have gone to that party a year and a half later, would never have been inside a girl with Daniel inside of him. He would never have realized that he could have that with his partners now, would never have gotten Liv to convince Charlie. He knew he would never have made it without the two of them.
But instead he replied, “My father took the bar in New York. He said Yale was up to the gills in incompetent assholes.” and nobody spoke for kind of a while after that.
::
Lincoln Lee was not exactly warming to this other version of himself. He wanted to, if only to make the next twenty-four hours bearable at all, but then he thought about Dad. And every time he looked at this guy he thought, No one judged you every day of your life like they were judging in a courtroom. No one found you wanting when the grades weren’t quite there. And who would blame you, with the pressure that high?
He was over it, he’d thought; he’d made his choice when he went to the Agency and not to the firm. But looking at this guy, who seemed to be everybody’s friend and couldn’t keep a secret as if he’d never had to, made Lincoln feel like he was nothing but wasted potential.
Well, fuck that shit, he thought, and leaned forward between the seats where his doppelganger was pretending not to sulk. “Hey, idiot,” he said quietly. The other Lincoln turned towards him with a half frown and a curious glare, but didn’t answer. “If I tell you about Marvel’s Civil War, will you tell me what’s going on with Batman over here?”
“Oh. My. God,” Charlie said, tightening his grip on the steering wheel.
Tactical Agent Lincoln Lee just smiled and said, “Civil War, huh?”
Three hours later, Charlie finally begged hard enough that they promised to stop talking comics. The conversation lulled after that, mostly because Lincoln found himself zoning out a little, his eyelids falling of their own volition, his limbs becoming too heavy to move from their cramped position in the back of the car. He decided not to think about it too hard, and let the road carry him off.
Some time later, Lincoln woke up from a sound sleep to Charlie looking at him from the passenger seat. “You’re so cute,” he said with a smile that Lincoln couldn’t quite identify as patronizing. “You fell asleep with your glasses on, buddy.”
Lincoln sat up slowly, rolling his shoulders and his neck, hearing them crack from sleeping uncomfortably, and rubbing his face underneath his glasses. “Sorry,” he said. “Long car rides always put me to sleep.”
He wasn’t sure if the disbelief he was feeling was showing on his face, but it was buzzing in him like an angry hornet. Weeks of insomnia and he could have just gone on a road trip? Why hadn’t he thought of that before?
“That’s why I’m driving now,” the other Lincoln said and winked at Charlie. “I win.”
“He thinks he knows all about you,” Charlie said, tilting his head towards his partner. “We made bets.”
Lincoln smiled slowly and tried to push his uncertain thoughts away. He didn’t need these guys wondering what the hell was going on with him. He could deal. He was totally dealing.
“If I tell you what you want to know on the sly, Charlie, can I get a cut of what you make off him?” he asked.
The other Lincoln laughed, way longer and harder than Lincoln thought was strictly necessary, but Charlie just gave him a considering look and replied, “Maybe. Let’s talk about it when we get to the hotel, after we pick up the package.”
“Sure,” he said with a shrug and settled back low into his seat.
If they didn’t care if he slept, which they hadn’t said that they did, he was just going to do it. It had been too long since he’d had a good night’s sleep, and while this wasn’t exactly what he wanted, it was some real rest, for once. He let the lull of the road take him away again and mumbled. “Whatever you think, Charlie.”
“Damn right,” he heard the man say and his other self laughed again before he drifted off.
::
Charlie liked the kid, Glasses, he should be thinking really, but there was something about him that made you want to call him a kid, in the same way Liv a few years ago had somehow begged to be called ‘kiddo’.
He liked the kid a lot and he saw Lincoln noticing.
Charlie was sure Lincoln had seen the way he didn’t slam the door when they stopped for coffee, or the way he’d kept looking back over his shoulder when the kid made the slightest noise. And Lincoln had definitely noticed the way Charlie leaned over the seat to wake the kid up, shaking him gently and calling him by his name instead of anything else.
“Lincoln, hey, we’re about twenty minutes out,” Charlie told him. “Thought I’d give you some time to wake up.”
“Thanks,” he said groggily, making Charlie give him a crooked smile. His Lincoln flashed him a grin from the driver’s seat and Charlie pointedly ignored it. He still wasn’t sure all this was going to go down in quite the way Lincoln seemed to think it would.
The exchange of the package, the signing of it out of the facility and into the custody of Agent Lee of the FBI, went off without a hitch yet felt like it took forever. Charlie, as Lincoln’s back-up, had virtually nothing to do but stand around and watch the two men reading over paperwork and signing things, all the while Lincoln was giving Glasses the flirtiest eyes he had ever seen. The kid seemed to be completely oblivious. That, or he was really good at ignoring unwanted attention.
The car ride to the hotel, with the package locked securely in a secret compartment inside their SUV, was short and also boring. By the end of it, Charlie just wanted a drink. He knew what Lincoln was thinking and he was getting increasingly nervous about it not going right. So, when Lincoln was busy with checking in, he beckoned the kid over to the hotel bar.
“You’ll have to buy,” Glasses said, patting his pockets. “All my money’s useless.”
“Don’t worry, my treat,” Charlie said with a smile. “And his too, eventually.”
The kid flicked his eyes towards the door, in the direction of Lincoln, and then back to Charlie.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said and Charlie realized he wasn’t as oblivious as he seemed, but wasn’t quite prepared to do anything with that information. There were still too many variables.
“So, what do you want to know? What didn’t you guys place bets on? How about I buy my drinks in information?” The kid shot him a mischievous smile that would rival Charlie’s Lincoln even on his best day.
Charlie grinned as the bartender came over. “Three shots of tequila,” he said and put his card down. “Keep it open.”
The kid’s eyebrows rose. “You’re not kidding around, are you?”
Charlie leaned back in his chair and replied, “Hey, the package is in lock-down, right? Set to encase the SUV in amber if anyone tries to break in, nothing is more secure that that stuff. So, we can relax. And what better way?”
The kid tilted his head and adjusted his glasses, which was actually a pretty sexy move, Charlie was surprised. “You’re trying to loosen me up for something.” he said. “What is it?”
Charlie laughed. “You know, I think you’re better than him at that.”
“At what?”
“Observation. Interrogation. Police stuff,” Charlie answered. “You know, they hired him on at first for his fancy tech degree.”
The kid nodded, probably already having been briefed on all their backgrounds and qualifications. He would know about that difference between him and his double. “He’s just comfortable,” the kid said after a minute, taking off his coat and adjusting his jacket and tie. “He doesn’t have to do it around you. He already knows you so well, when he knows what you’re up to it doesn’t seem as impressive.”
Charlie always thought it was kind of weird these FBI people from the other side wore suits all the time, as if they were still G-men chasing after John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson instead of searching out alternate tech and ripping holes in the fabric of the universe. But he liked the suit look on this Lincoln, especially with the glasses. It was so interestingly straight-laced, like all he needed was a good tumble to mess him up and then he’d do all sorts of kinky things. The kinds of things Charlie’s Lincoln was into.
Charlie laughed again and tried not be real obvious about what he was thinking. “Maybe so,” he said with another smile.
“So, what do you want to know?” the kid asked again.
“Aww, you’re not starting without me, are you?” Lincoln said, nodding at the bartender who had just finished pouring their shots and coming around to Charlie’s other side.The girl, probably just eighteen and decked out in red vest and a high ponytail, as this was small town Maine, did sort of a double take as she slid the shot glasses at them. “Hey, are you guys twins?”
The kid let out a sort of embarrassed laugh and flicked his eyes at Lincoln, who responded with a flirtatious smile, saying, “Yeah we are. Guess which one’s the evil one.”
She laughed and pointed at him and he leaned in, prompting her to look down the bar at the kid. “You’d be surprised,” he staged whispered. The kid just adjusted his glasses and the girl blushed, turning away to take another order.
“Evil, huh?” the kid asked with a thin-lipped smile.
Lincoln shrugged. “You could have stood up for yourself.”
“I was told not to speak to civilians, wasn’t I, Charlie?” The kid slid Charlie a smile as he said this that made something warm in his belly give a slow little twist.
“That’s true,” Charlie said, with a little hitch in his voice that he knew Lincoln, at least, would notice. “He was.”
Lincoln leaned forward and quirked a lascivious grin at his double. “Do you always do as you’re told?”
The kid stilled, for just a second, but long enough for it to be noticeable, and licked his lips, as if he were thinking about something very carefully before he replied, “Are you always this obvious, or are you laying it on thick just for me?”
And here, Charlie thought, is where it crashes and burns.
::
Lincoln could not figure Glasses out. He’d held his cards so close that Lincoln hadn’t been able to tell if he’d noticed the eyes or the smile. Lincoln wondered if maybe Glasses had decided he was just going to fuck with Lincoln’s head, because he would know how to do it if anyone did, other than Charlie, or maybe Liv if she cared to. He decided to just lay his cards on the table. “I usually don’t have to be so obvious. But I’m having a hard time reading you. Like, really hard. So, do you want to take this upstairs or not?”
Glasses glanced at Charlie, whose mouth was twisted up in that way it got when he thought things were going badly.
“Him too,” Lincoln said. “Oh, and we’ll get there eventually anyway, just so you know. I only got us one room.”
Charlie put two fingers to the bridge of his nose.
But Glasses actually laughed at that one. It was a loud laugh, more like a yelp of surprised amusement. He spun his bar stool around to face Lincoln directly, his hand tight on the thick wood of the bar itself. “You were that sure that I would go for this?”
“Eighty-five percent sure,” Lincoln replied, smiling. “If you’re not into it, I can go get another one. We’ve actually got the funds for three.”
Glasses knocked back the shot that was sitting in front of him, licked the excess alcohol from his lips and said as he flipped the glass over onto the bar, “Get me another round and I’ll let you know.” Lincoln took that as a good sign.
After the next shot, Glasses leaned closer to Charlie and asked him, all the while eyeing Lincoln carefully, “Tell me about the bets.”
Charlie smirked. “First one was on if you would fall asleep in the car. We made it while you were waiting in decontamination. The rest we made while you were sleeping and he,” Charlie thrust his thumb in the direction of Lincoln, “was feeling lucky.”
“What else did you bet on? What were the terms?” Glasses’ voice held an edge to his curiosity, like he had a hunch the bets were for more than money. Which they were. Lincoln said nothing though, he could tell Glasses wanted to hear it from Charlie. These things always did sound particularly dirty coming from that mouth.
“We bet on how long you’ve worked for Fringe. We bet on how old you were when you got those glasses and on how fast you would agree to what he wants to do,” Charlie answered, not really in a rush, but fast enough that it was obvious he was sort of uncomfortable with the topic.
“This is really really unprofessional. You know that, right?” Glasses said, deadpan, but Lincoln wondered if he meant it.
Charlie sort of rolled his eyes in that defensive way he got sometimes and grumbled, “You gotta get your kicks where you can in this world, kid. You probably heard I have a wife. She’s fine with this, by the way, we’re open.”
Glasses raised his hands in mock surrender. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it.”
“You still didn’t tell me about the terms.” Glasses tilted his head, very slightly, and Lincoln realized, sort of all of a sudden, like he’d been hit over the head with it, that Charlie was being flirted with.
The subtlety here pretty much blew Lincoln away and he wondered if this was something his double was doing unconsciously, or if he was just that good. Either way, it was obvious Charlie had been, and was continuing to be, thoroughly charmed.
Lincoln remembered it had taken months for him to wear down Agent Francis enough to crack a smile on a daily basis and here this guy was practically splitting his face open in that wide, just short of excited grin that only made its way to Charlie’s face every once in awhile.
It would be an incredibly vast understatement to say that Lincoln was miffed, but he had started this whole thing and he wasn’t about to go and be a giant baby about the fact that it was mostly working, just not in the way he had thought.
He was so lost in his own head about the entire situation that he actually missed Charlie’s big reveal, only hearing the other Lincoln’s disbelieving follow-up question, “You bet him a blow job that I fall asleep in cars?”
Charlie was smiling, in that way he did when he was turned on but not ready to start anything, his lips quirking, but earnest enough not to be a smirk. “No,” he corrected, “the first bet was for a BJ, the second was topping and the third…”
Charlie trailed off when Glasses tilted his head again and squinted at him, the same way Lincoln would if he had a burning question. The smile that Glasses gave Charlie when he realized he was responding to someone else’s mannerisms was both surprised and maybe a little weirded out. He recovered quickly and asked, “But where do I fit into this equation?”
Charlie’s response was as immediate as his lascivious grin. “That stuff’s all for later. Tonight, you fit wherever you want. Right?” he asked, turning to Lincoln for confirmation.
Lincoln found himself smiling tightly, in a way that he was sure both Charlie and Glasses would be able to see right through. “Let’s take this upstairs,” he replied.
::
They had one more drink, then Lincoln followed his double, who held the key to the room he’d booked, and Charlie up to the top floor of the three-storey hotel and down a long hall to what must have been the biggest room in the establishment.
It was decked out in pastel colors in rich fabrics and floral arrangements. It was two-roomed, with the bedroom on one side with a big bath and a living area through a sliding door.
Charlie whistled through his teeth. “Did you get us the bridal suite, Linc?”
The other LIncoln smiled, in that strained way he had at the bar. “I just asked them for the biggest bed.”
Lincoln looked at him, at the way he was standing further into the room, but sort of off to the side like maybe he wanted to circle back in retreat, and at the way he was holding himself very still, looking at the bed instead of at Charlie or him.
“Now you’re not so sure,” he said.
“What?” His double glared, surprise and resentment flashing fast in his eyes and then disappearing.
Lincoln spoke quietly but with certainty, almost analytically, as if he were analyzing a report, “This. You’re not sure anymore. You thought it would be fun. Different. But now it’s weird.”
The other Lincoln was looking at him with a challenge in his eyes so Lincoln went on. “You get territorial. Not always, not often, but you’ve been known to, though you hide it really well. You don’t do it with Liv because she’s so different from you. And you’re not worried about Charlie’s wife, because that’s separate. But this... this isn’t going the way you expected. You thought you were going to need to seduce me, convince me. And now that you haven’t, you’re not so sure.”
As Lincoln spoke, Charlie stepped away from them both, backing up and moving between them, probably to get a look at both their faces. Lincoln imagined it was quite a show.
“How do you know?” His double asked in a flat voice, as if trying not to admit to anything.
Lincoln shrugged, “The same way I knew about what you were thinking. Why I wasn’t surprised. This,” he gestured between them and around the room, “is what I would want, if I was in your position and if I was in the habit of thinking that things I want are always within my reach.”
Charlie snorted at that, like he was affronted by the very idea--either that one of them was quite so confident, or the other so retiring.
“And that’s how I would feel if someone just like me was anywhere near someone I love,” Lincoln continued, smiling softly and trying to look reassuring. He stepped forward and the other Lincoln stood his ground, letting him approach and enter his space. “You know I’m not real competition. On an intellectual level, you must. It’s not like I can stay here. But, knowing in your head isn’t the same as knowing it here,” he finished and put his hand on Lincoln’s chest.
The fabric of the man’s shirt felt strange, like no natural or synthetic material he had ever felt before and Lincoln’s brain latched onto that, however fleetingly, as the most alien thing he had felt or done in a day, a month even, full of impossible things.
The other Lincoln met his eyes with a mirrored expression of trepidation followed by growing certainty. “Is it?” Lincoln asked right before his double kissed him.
::
Charlie had a hard time not pulling his dick out right then and there when the two Lincolns started going at it.
First, it was the hands in the hair, they both came up swift and sure, like his Lincoln’s always did. It was the same motion, unconsciously mirrored, until they realized what they’d done and just started pulling off each other’s clothes.
That was when Charlie made his move, unwilling to forgo sliding his fingers across the sleek creases of that G-man suit as they took it off the kid.
His Lincoln’s clothes were a lot easier to get off, a lot faster, too. So he was naked first and looking ready while Charlie pulled the jacket from the kid’s shoulders then wrapped his arms around from the back side, to pull at the buckle of his belt.
The kid groaned into Lincoln’s kiss as he slipped off his tie and they let everything drop to the floor. Charlie’s clothes were last, and they would have been just as easy to remove as Lincoln’s had the two not pushed him onto the bed and pulled them off as he was lying there.
The kid climbed up and bent over him, bracing his hands on either side of Charlie’s shoulders while Lincoln was busy unlacing his boots. “You got any reservations?” the kid asked with a smile.
Charlie reached up in response and pulled off the kid’s glasses. “None here,” he said softly and was rewarded with a quiet grin. “You don’t seem like the type to open up like this,” Charlie said, cocking his head. He figured they had one last chance to get everything on the table. “So fast, I mean. What made you decide to come upstairs, kid?”
The kid’s eyes were big and blue and still smiling at him as he licked his lips, then replied, “That’s easy, Charlie. You got me drunk.”
*fades to black*
*runs away and hides*
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Spoilers for early S4. Set also in early S4 and lives in the limbo world when no one was sure what the deal was. So, Alt!Broyles is still dead and only Fauxlivia has met/seen Blue!Lincoln.
This fic also lives in a world similar to one of kerithwyn's creation in which the Red!verse team engages in threesome activities on a semi-regular basis.
~5,800 words. PG-13???
My first attempt at writing a fic for
kerithwyn for the Fringe Secret Santa Exchange, which I had to abandon because I had no idea what I was doing with the end. I still kind of don't, please forgive it. So, the fic is a few months late and not completely beta read (gently pointed out mistakes, etc. would be quite welcome in the comments). Special thanks to monanotlisa for a wonderful half-beta job full of support and motivation.
Summary: “Hey,” Charlie murmured to Lincoln, who was standing at attention next to him, and gave a slight nod toward this Lincoln with glasses and an sharp-looking suit walking through the doorway of the bridge. “Do you think he knows what he’s getting into?”
know what you're thinking
“Hey,” Charlie murmured to Lincoln, who was standing at attention next to him, and gave a slight nod toward this Lincoln with glasses and an sharp-looking suit walking through the doorway of the bridge. “Do you think he knows what he’s getting into?”
Lincoln shrugged, but his eyes betrayed the interest he was harboring about the man. “Liv said he’s already been through. She met him, sort of.”
“No, I mean, with us,” Charlie replied, smirking.
“I don’t know how different things are over there but,” Lincoln’s expression now mirrored his own as he said, “he might.”
::
Lincoln liked himself.
Like, really liked him, which he hadn’t been expecting. Liv always said that dealing with your double was weird, off-putting. But that’s not what Lincoln was feeling. When they first spoke, he and Agent Lee, his other self briefly touched the side of his glasses before he shook Lincoln’s hand. The gesture made Lincoln think of himself, before he got over his awkward teenager phase--and before he got rid of the glasses.
He remembered a line from that one eighties movie about whiz science kids at a tech college, the one with Robert Downey Jr. He’d told the younger whiz kid, I used to be you. And lately I've been missing me, so I asked the Dean if I could room with me again, and he said: sure.
The Masters of the Universe had seen fit to allow him this glimpse of a former self, to speak with him, to interact. Everything he did somehow reminded Lincoln of things he used to do -- ways he responded to questions, even the way he looked at people when they were talking, like maybe they were going to ask him something and he wouldn’t be prepared. The slight hesitation he took before taking the plunge into any kind of action was somehow a revelation.
Lincoln loved it. He missed this kid. And he found himself smiling at him.
He felt like he’d been given a gift.
“What do you think, Tactical Agent Lee?” The other Broyles asked, bringing him back to the meeting as he remembered that’s what they were calling him to differentiate between them.
Lincoln swiftly met his own eyes then looked away and forced himself back onto the task at hand.
::
The Tactical Agent had been looking at him a lot, Lincoln noted. He figured his double would be busy identifying the ways they were different, and those did seem to be significant. But Lincoln found himself searching for the ways they were the same.
It was hard because this other Lincoln seemed to have such a different manner. Lincoln supposed that the atmosphere of the Fringe Division Over There was much at once more tense on a protocol level yet more relaxed on a personal one, probably in response to the highly dangerous nature of the agents’ jobs. He hadn’t really thought about it much until then, previously thinking that the other Olivia’s attitude had just been a personal quirk.
Today, he realized this team was a lot closer to each other than his own, just from the way they looked and talked to each other. It took years for Lincoln’s smile to be as quick as it was around Agent Francis, and he didn’t think the difference was just personal quirk--it was too fundamental a change. In fact, he was reminded of the way he used to smile at Robert and had to tamp down on a rising tide of grief and jealousy he hadn’t been expecting to feel at all.
Then he heard Broyles say, “Agent Lee will go with you.”
“Umm, Sir,” he said, not meaning it to come out like a protest. It was just that he hadn’t been told in the briefing.
“You got a problem with that, Agent Lee?”
“No, Sir,” he replied, quickly glancing at the two men, who looked sort of like they were about to laugh, but were obviously too smart to follow through. “It’ll be a two day mission, correct?”
“Yes, you’ll have some time to round up a few personal items and necessities. Rendezvous back here in an hour, with Tactical Agent Lee and Agent Francis. This package is highly sensitive, Agent Lee, that’s why we’ve got people on both sides here, understood?”
Lincoln was pretty sure he was making a face, one the other him and Francis seemed to think was fairly amusing as well, but occasionally it irked him to be the new guy. Broyles seemed to enjoy dressing him down every so often. “Yes, Sir, of course,” he said and tried not to look too miffed as Broyles walked out of the bridge. The two agents were looking at him expectantly, so he said, “I have some stuff in my car. Just let me get it and we can get going. We don’t have to waste the hour.”
The Tactical Agent raised his eyebrows and replied, “All right. We’ll wait, then.”
::
Charlie crossed his arms and leaned on one of the metal tables away from the machine, looking hard at Lincoln after the other him left to go get his stuff. Lincoln had been smiling weirdly at his double and had that, I’m-on-the-verge-of-planning-something look on his face. Now that it was apparent they’d be seeing a lot more of the guy, Charlie was a little worried. Obviously, he didn’t voice any of those concerns. Instead he asked, “You want to bet on how long he’s been with the team?”
Lincoln smirked, then put on his logic face. Charlie loved the logic face; it was much better than the fancy science face. “Well, longer than three weeks, which was when Liv saw him. And Broyles is still testing him out, so to speak. Remember when Captain Broyles didn’t tell Liv about the alligator in that sewer until after we’d been dredging it for an hour and a half?”
“Oh, I do,” Charlie laughed. “Your impression of the way she said ‘whaaat’ is still, I think, your best.”
Lincoln grinned at the compliment, but it faded quickly and he scrunched up his nose, like the memory still smelled of dank sewers and terror sweat. “If you recall, I was down there too and nobody told me about any alligators, either. Anyway, that was way worse than not completing the briefing.”
Charlie shrugged. “Do you think he got a briefing at all?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” a familiar voice came from the doorway and Charlie wondered how much he’d heard. “Originally, Agent Dunham was going to be on this one. I thought she was just running late, there’s been... some stuff going on. Changes in the office, you could say. So it’ll be me instead of her. I was briefed. He just caught me off guard. Perks of being the new guy.”
“That was fast,” Charlie said looking at the bag in the man’s hand.
The other Lincoln shrugged. “I had a good parking spot.”
“Oookay,” Lincoln said, waving his double over towards their side of the bridge. As the man approached, Lincoln held out his hand again to shake. “We don’t stand on much ceremony in this division these days, so I’d really rather not keep up with the Agent stuff unless we’re talking to civilians, which you won’t be anyway. So, how do you want to do this?”
The other Lincoln narrowed his eyes as he took the outstretched hand, “Do what?”
Lincoln smiled and pointed a thumb at Charlie. “You can call him Charlie, he really doesn’t mind. What do you think we should do about the name thing?”
The other Lincoln glanced over at Charlie with a considering look and asked, “What do you call him usually?”
Charlie wanted to laugh. “Lincoln,” he said. “Or Boss, when it’s appropriate, which it never is, or ‘Hey, idiot’, which is appropriate more than you would think.”
“I’m wounded,” Lincoln muttered and his double smiled.
“I don’t know,” he replied, hesitating. “You really could just call me Agent Lee. I’m fine with that.”
Lincoln shook his head. “That’s no fun. How about Glasses? Would that work for you?”
Glasses did kind of a little half-sigh stuttering laugh and he put a hand up to his chin like it was on his way to cover his mouth before he decided not to. “You guys are going to be a riot, I can tell,” he said.
Charlie turned to Lincoln, who was busy punching protocols into the door, and observed, “A drier sense of humor, I think.”
“Oh, much more dry,” Lincoln replied. He looked over his shoulder at Glasses, who was looking more nervous by the second, and said, “I am so excited about this.”
Charlie felt pretty bad about what was about to happen, but not really bad enough to stop it.
::
The package, as Broyles had called it, was housed in a secure facility outside of Bangor, Maine. What it was doing all the way up there, Lincoln had no idea. He wasn’t even exactly sure what it was, just some crazy tech that was far above his pay grade, though the way Glasses hedged around the subject of speculation made him wonder how high security clearances went in the other Fringe Division.
The mission was for the three of them: one from Over There to carry the package back, and two from this side to guide and watch him go up to Maine and get it. Usually things like this were relegated to couriers and brand new agents, but no one, not even completely uneducated newbies were supposed to know the exchange was even taking place. So, he and Charlie had volunteered, beating out Liv via rock-paper-scissors, because they’d heard they were going to meet Lincoln’s double and spend two whole days with him.
They’d been in the car for about twenty minutes when Lincoln turned around in the front seat and said, “So, I heard Red Lantern is green over there, is that weird for you?”
“Oh, here we go,” Charlie said from the driver’s seat and Glasses’ eyes flicked between them.
“Red, huh?” he asked with the kind of teasing tone Lincoln recognized from his own voice when he was trying to feel out a situation. “Isn’t that a little sinister? The Hulk is still green over here, right?”
Lincoln rolled his eyes. “Don’t even get me started on Marvel--”
“Don’t even get him started,” Charlie echoed, like it was a joke he’d heard too many times.
“Shut up, you,” Lincoln retorted then turned back to himself, “Listen, I don’t know about your universe, but here that company went down the tubes when Stan Lee died. Now they just do reissues and every once in awhile try to revive a title, but nobody wants to hear it.”
“Wait,” Glasses held up a hand, “Stan Lee died? When did that happen?”
Lincoln shrugged, like it was nothing, except his mouth decided to run itself just a little and he said, “In the late eighties, about a week after my father died.” He held himself back from saying he’d been more broken up about the comics mogul.
“Hey, idiot,” Charlie barked and Lincoln looked up to register the shell-shocked face of his double. “Oh, damn,” he said and was about to about to apologize.
But the other Lincoln Lee shuttered his expression for a split second then replied, “Stan Lee is very much alive and kicking where I come from, guys. Marvel’s doing just fine. They beat out DC in numbers all through the nineties.”
“What about Dad?” Lincoln asked after what felt like a long period of silence, prompting Charlie to make a slicing motion with his hand, his go-to signal to shut the hell up. Too late, Lincoln figured. And anyway, he wanted to know.
“He’s fine,” he replied flatly. “Shortlisted for Connecticut Supreme Court. Though he says he might hold out for 2nd District Federal when Alderson retires in a few years.”
No wonder, was all Lincoln could think.
He couldn’t imagine what living under the same roof as that man for his teen years would have been like. Lincoln had had all he could take by the time he turned eight, with all the rules and all the studying and the never being good enough.
If Mom hadn’t sent him away to school at thirteen, Lincoln would never have taken Smith’s physics class, would never gone into the sciences. He would never have met Daniel, would never have learned to give head at fifteen in a bathroom stall during the deserted spring break. He would never have gone to that party a year and a half later, would never have been inside a girl with Daniel inside of him. He would never have realized that he could have that with his partners now, would never have gotten Liv to convince Charlie. He knew he would never have made it without the two of them.
But instead he replied, “My father took the bar in New York. He said Yale was up to the gills in incompetent assholes.” and nobody spoke for kind of a while after that.
::
Lincoln Lee was not exactly warming to this other version of himself. He wanted to, if only to make the next twenty-four hours bearable at all, but then he thought about Dad. And every time he looked at this guy he thought, No one judged you every day of your life like they were judging in a courtroom. No one found you wanting when the grades weren’t quite there. And who would blame you, with the pressure that high?
He was over it, he’d thought; he’d made his choice when he went to the Agency and not to the firm. But looking at this guy, who seemed to be everybody’s friend and couldn’t keep a secret as if he’d never had to, made Lincoln feel like he was nothing but wasted potential.
Well, fuck that shit, he thought, and leaned forward between the seats where his doppelganger was pretending not to sulk. “Hey, idiot,” he said quietly. The other Lincoln turned towards him with a half frown and a curious glare, but didn’t answer. “If I tell you about Marvel’s Civil War, will you tell me what’s going on with Batman over here?”
“Oh. My. God,” Charlie said, tightening his grip on the steering wheel.
Tactical Agent Lincoln Lee just smiled and said, “Civil War, huh?”
Three hours later, Charlie finally begged hard enough that they promised to stop talking comics. The conversation lulled after that, mostly because Lincoln found himself zoning out a little, his eyelids falling of their own volition, his limbs becoming too heavy to move from their cramped position in the back of the car. He decided not to think about it too hard, and let the road carry him off.
Some time later, Lincoln woke up from a sound sleep to Charlie looking at him from the passenger seat. “You’re so cute,” he said with a smile that Lincoln couldn’t quite identify as patronizing. “You fell asleep with your glasses on, buddy.”
Lincoln sat up slowly, rolling his shoulders and his neck, hearing them crack from sleeping uncomfortably, and rubbing his face underneath his glasses. “Sorry,” he said. “Long car rides always put me to sleep.”
He wasn’t sure if the disbelief he was feeling was showing on his face, but it was buzzing in him like an angry hornet. Weeks of insomnia and he could have just gone on a road trip? Why hadn’t he thought of that before?
“That’s why I’m driving now,” the other Lincoln said and winked at Charlie. “I win.”
“He thinks he knows all about you,” Charlie said, tilting his head towards his partner. “We made bets.”
Lincoln smiled slowly and tried to push his uncertain thoughts away. He didn’t need these guys wondering what the hell was going on with him. He could deal. He was totally dealing.
“If I tell you what you want to know on the sly, Charlie, can I get a cut of what you make off him?” he asked.
The other Lincoln laughed, way longer and harder than Lincoln thought was strictly necessary, but Charlie just gave him a considering look and replied, “Maybe. Let’s talk about it when we get to the hotel, after we pick up the package.”
“Sure,” he said with a shrug and settled back low into his seat.
If they didn’t care if he slept, which they hadn’t said that they did, he was just going to do it. It had been too long since he’d had a good night’s sleep, and while this wasn’t exactly what he wanted, it was some real rest, for once. He let the lull of the road take him away again and mumbled. “Whatever you think, Charlie.”
“Damn right,” he heard the man say and his other self laughed again before he drifted off.
::
Charlie liked the kid, Glasses, he should be thinking really, but there was something about him that made you want to call him a kid, in the same way Liv a few years ago had somehow begged to be called ‘kiddo’.
He liked the kid a lot and he saw Lincoln noticing.
Charlie was sure Lincoln had seen the way he didn’t slam the door when they stopped for coffee, or the way he’d kept looking back over his shoulder when the kid made the slightest noise. And Lincoln had definitely noticed the way Charlie leaned over the seat to wake the kid up, shaking him gently and calling him by his name instead of anything else.
“Lincoln, hey, we’re about twenty minutes out,” Charlie told him. “Thought I’d give you some time to wake up.”
“Thanks,” he said groggily, making Charlie give him a crooked smile. His Lincoln flashed him a grin from the driver’s seat and Charlie pointedly ignored it. He still wasn’t sure all this was going to go down in quite the way Lincoln seemed to think it would.
The exchange of the package, the signing of it out of the facility and into the custody of Agent Lee of the FBI, went off without a hitch yet felt like it took forever. Charlie, as Lincoln’s back-up, had virtually nothing to do but stand around and watch the two men reading over paperwork and signing things, all the while Lincoln was giving Glasses the flirtiest eyes he had ever seen. The kid seemed to be completely oblivious. That, or he was really good at ignoring unwanted attention.
The car ride to the hotel, with the package locked securely in a secret compartment inside their SUV, was short and also boring. By the end of it, Charlie just wanted a drink. He knew what Lincoln was thinking and he was getting increasingly nervous about it not going right. So, when Lincoln was busy with checking in, he beckoned the kid over to the hotel bar.
“You’ll have to buy,” Glasses said, patting his pockets. “All my money’s useless.”
“Don’t worry, my treat,” Charlie said with a smile. “And his too, eventually.”
The kid flicked his eyes towards the door, in the direction of Lincoln, and then back to Charlie.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said and Charlie realized he wasn’t as oblivious as he seemed, but wasn’t quite prepared to do anything with that information. There were still too many variables.
“So, what do you want to know? What didn’t you guys place bets on? How about I buy my drinks in information?” The kid shot him a mischievous smile that would rival Charlie’s Lincoln even on his best day.
Charlie grinned as the bartender came over. “Three shots of tequila,” he said and put his card down. “Keep it open.”
The kid’s eyebrows rose. “You’re not kidding around, are you?”
Charlie leaned back in his chair and replied, “Hey, the package is in lock-down, right? Set to encase the SUV in amber if anyone tries to break in, nothing is more secure that that stuff. So, we can relax. And what better way?”
The kid tilted his head and adjusted his glasses, which was actually a pretty sexy move, Charlie was surprised. “You’re trying to loosen me up for something.” he said. “What is it?”
Charlie laughed. “You know, I think you’re better than him at that.”
“At what?”
“Observation. Interrogation. Police stuff,” Charlie answered. “You know, they hired him on at first for his fancy tech degree.”
The kid nodded, probably already having been briefed on all their backgrounds and qualifications. He would know about that difference between him and his double. “He’s just comfortable,” the kid said after a minute, taking off his coat and adjusting his jacket and tie. “He doesn’t have to do it around you. He already knows you so well, when he knows what you’re up to it doesn’t seem as impressive.”
Charlie always thought it was kind of weird these FBI people from the other side wore suits all the time, as if they were still G-men chasing after John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson instead of searching out alternate tech and ripping holes in the fabric of the universe. But he liked the suit look on this Lincoln, especially with the glasses. It was so interestingly straight-laced, like all he needed was a good tumble to mess him up and then he’d do all sorts of kinky things. The kinds of things Charlie’s Lincoln was into.
Charlie laughed again and tried not be real obvious about what he was thinking. “Maybe so,” he said with another smile.
“So, what do you want to know?” the kid asked again.
“Aww, you’re not starting without me, are you?” Lincoln said, nodding at the bartender who had just finished pouring their shots and coming around to Charlie’s other side.The girl, probably just eighteen and decked out in red vest and a high ponytail, as this was small town Maine, did sort of a double take as she slid the shot glasses at them. “Hey, are you guys twins?”
The kid let out a sort of embarrassed laugh and flicked his eyes at Lincoln, who responded with a flirtatious smile, saying, “Yeah we are. Guess which one’s the evil one.”
She laughed and pointed at him and he leaned in, prompting her to look down the bar at the kid. “You’d be surprised,” he staged whispered. The kid just adjusted his glasses and the girl blushed, turning away to take another order.
“Evil, huh?” the kid asked with a thin-lipped smile.
Lincoln shrugged. “You could have stood up for yourself.”
“I was told not to speak to civilians, wasn’t I, Charlie?” The kid slid Charlie a smile as he said this that made something warm in his belly give a slow little twist.
“That’s true,” Charlie said, with a little hitch in his voice that he knew Lincoln, at least, would notice. “He was.”
Lincoln leaned forward and quirked a lascivious grin at his double. “Do you always do as you’re told?”
The kid stilled, for just a second, but long enough for it to be noticeable, and licked his lips, as if he were thinking about something very carefully before he replied, “Are you always this obvious, or are you laying it on thick just for me?”
And here, Charlie thought, is where it crashes and burns.
::
Lincoln could not figure Glasses out. He’d held his cards so close that Lincoln hadn’t been able to tell if he’d noticed the eyes or the smile. Lincoln wondered if maybe Glasses had decided he was just going to fuck with Lincoln’s head, because he would know how to do it if anyone did, other than Charlie, or maybe Liv if she cared to. He decided to just lay his cards on the table. “I usually don’t have to be so obvious. But I’m having a hard time reading you. Like, really hard. So, do you want to take this upstairs or not?”
Glasses glanced at Charlie, whose mouth was twisted up in that way it got when he thought things were going badly.
“Him too,” Lincoln said. “Oh, and we’ll get there eventually anyway, just so you know. I only got us one room.”
Charlie put two fingers to the bridge of his nose.
But Glasses actually laughed at that one. It was a loud laugh, more like a yelp of surprised amusement. He spun his bar stool around to face Lincoln directly, his hand tight on the thick wood of the bar itself. “You were that sure that I would go for this?”
“Eighty-five percent sure,” Lincoln replied, smiling. “If you’re not into it, I can go get another one. We’ve actually got the funds for three.”
Glasses knocked back the shot that was sitting in front of him, licked the excess alcohol from his lips and said as he flipped the glass over onto the bar, “Get me another round and I’ll let you know.” Lincoln took that as a good sign.
After the next shot, Glasses leaned closer to Charlie and asked him, all the while eyeing Lincoln carefully, “Tell me about the bets.”
Charlie smirked. “First one was on if you would fall asleep in the car. We made it while you were waiting in decontamination. The rest we made while you were sleeping and he,” Charlie thrust his thumb in the direction of Lincoln, “was feeling lucky.”
“What else did you bet on? What were the terms?” Glasses’ voice held an edge to his curiosity, like he had a hunch the bets were for more than money. Which they were. Lincoln said nothing though, he could tell Glasses wanted to hear it from Charlie. These things always did sound particularly dirty coming from that mouth.
“We bet on how long you’ve worked for Fringe. We bet on how old you were when you got those glasses and on how fast you would agree to what he wants to do,” Charlie answered, not really in a rush, but fast enough that it was obvious he was sort of uncomfortable with the topic.
“This is really really unprofessional. You know that, right?” Glasses said, deadpan, but Lincoln wondered if he meant it.
Charlie sort of rolled his eyes in that defensive way he got sometimes and grumbled, “You gotta get your kicks where you can in this world, kid. You probably heard I have a wife. She’s fine with this, by the way, we’re open.”
Glasses raised his hands in mock surrender. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it.”
“You still didn’t tell me about the terms.” Glasses tilted his head, very slightly, and Lincoln realized, sort of all of a sudden, like he’d been hit over the head with it, that Charlie was being flirted with.
The subtlety here pretty much blew Lincoln away and he wondered if this was something his double was doing unconsciously, or if he was just that good. Either way, it was obvious Charlie had been, and was continuing to be, thoroughly charmed.
Lincoln remembered it had taken months for him to wear down Agent Francis enough to crack a smile on a daily basis and here this guy was practically splitting his face open in that wide, just short of excited grin that only made its way to Charlie’s face every once in awhile.
It would be an incredibly vast understatement to say that Lincoln was miffed, but he had started this whole thing and he wasn’t about to go and be a giant baby about the fact that it was mostly working, just not in the way he had thought.
He was so lost in his own head about the entire situation that he actually missed Charlie’s big reveal, only hearing the other Lincoln’s disbelieving follow-up question, “You bet him a blow job that I fall asleep in cars?”
Charlie was smiling, in that way he did when he was turned on but not ready to start anything, his lips quirking, but earnest enough not to be a smirk. “No,” he corrected, “the first bet was for a BJ, the second was topping and the third…”
Charlie trailed off when Glasses tilted his head again and squinted at him, the same way Lincoln would if he had a burning question. The smile that Glasses gave Charlie when he realized he was responding to someone else’s mannerisms was both surprised and maybe a little weirded out. He recovered quickly and asked, “But where do I fit into this equation?”
Charlie’s response was as immediate as his lascivious grin. “That stuff’s all for later. Tonight, you fit wherever you want. Right?” he asked, turning to Lincoln for confirmation.
Lincoln found himself smiling tightly, in a way that he was sure both Charlie and Glasses would be able to see right through. “Let’s take this upstairs,” he replied.
::
They had one more drink, then Lincoln followed his double, who held the key to the room he’d booked, and Charlie up to the top floor of the three-storey hotel and down a long hall to what must have been the biggest room in the establishment.
It was decked out in pastel colors in rich fabrics and floral arrangements. It was two-roomed, with the bedroom on one side with a big bath and a living area through a sliding door.
Charlie whistled through his teeth. “Did you get us the bridal suite, Linc?”
The other LIncoln smiled, in that strained way he had at the bar. “I just asked them for the biggest bed.”
Lincoln looked at him, at the way he was standing further into the room, but sort of off to the side like maybe he wanted to circle back in retreat, and at the way he was holding himself very still, looking at the bed instead of at Charlie or him.
“Now you’re not so sure,” he said.
“What?” His double glared, surprise and resentment flashing fast in his eyes and then disappearing.
Lincoln spoke quietly but with certainty, almost analytically, as if he were analyzing a report, “This. You’re not sure anymore. You thought it would be fun. Different. But now it’s weird.”
The other Lincoln was looking at him with a challenge in his eyes so Lincoln went on. “You get territorial. Not always, not often, but you’ve been known to, though you hide it really well. You don’t do it with Liv because she’s so different from you. And you’re not worried about Charlie’s wife, because that’s separate. But this... this isn’t going the way you expected. You thought you were going to need to seduce me, convince me. And now that you haven’t, you’re not so sure.”
As Lincoln spoke, Charlie stepped away from them both, backing up and moving between them, probably to get a look at both their faces. Lincoln imagined it was quite a show.
“How do you know?” His double asked in a flat voice, as if trying not to admit to anything.
Lincoln shrugged, “The same way I knew about what you were thinking. Why I wasn’t surprised. This,” he gestured between them and around the room, “is what I would want, if I was in your position and if I was in the habit of thinking that things I want are always within my reach.”
Charlie snorted at that, like he was affronted by the very idea--either that one of them was quite so confident, or the other so retiring.
“And that’s how I would feel if someone just like me was anywhere near someone I love,” Lincoln continued, smiling softly and trying to look reassuring. He stepped forward and the other Lincoln stood his ground, letting him approach and enter his space. “You know I’m not real competition. On an intellectual level, you must. It’s not like I can stay here. But, knowing in your head isn’t the same as knowing it here,” he finished and put his hand on Lincoln’s chest.
The fabric of the man’s shirt felt strange, like no natural or synthetic material he had ever felt before and Lincoln’s brain latched onto that, however fleetingly, as the most alien thing he had felt or done in a day, a month even, full of impossible things.
The other Lincoln met his eyes with a mirrored expression of trepidation followed by growing certainty. “Is it?” Lincoln asked right before his double kissed him.
::
Charlie had a hard time not pulling his dick out right then and there when the two Lincolns started going at it.
First, it was the hands in the hair, they both came up swift and sure, like his Lincoln’s always did. It was the same motion, unconsciously mirrored, until they realized what they’d done and just started pulling off each other’s clothes.
That was when Charlie made his move, unwilling to forgo sliding his fingers across the sleek creases of that G-man suit as they took it off the kid.
His Lincoln’s clothes were a lot easier to get off, a lot faster, too. So he was naked first and looking ready while Charlie pulled the jacket from the kid’s shoulders then wrapped his arms around from the back side, to pull at the buckle of his belt.
The kid groaned into Lincoln’s kiss as he slipped off his tie and they let everything drop to the floor. Charlie’s clothes were last, and they would have been just as easy to remove as Lincoln’s had the two not pushed him onto the bed and pulled them off as he was lying there.
The kid climbed up and bent over him, bracing his hands on either side of Charlie’s shoulders while Lincoln was busy unlacing his boots. “You got any reservations?” the kid asked with a smile.
Charlie reached up in response and pulled off the kid’s glasses. “None here,” he said softly and was rewarded with a quiet grin. “You don’t seem like the type to open up like this,” Charlie said, cocking his head. He figured they had one last chance to get everything on the table. “So fast, I mean. What made you decide to come upstairs, kid?”
The kid’s eyes were big and blue and still smiling at him as he licked his lips, then replied, “That’s easy, Charlie. You got me drunk.”
*fades to black*
*runs away and hides*
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