"Nervous?"
Sara glances away from the mirror above the table she and Michael use as a desk, then finishes putting on the discreet red earrings that go with the dress –
Untraditional, her father would have scolded.
Yet again, if Frank Tancredi could see her about to get married to an ex-convict, there'd probably be more things to debate than the color of her dress.
"A little," Sara answers, but realizes it's wrong when she hears it – realizes it's only that nervousness feels in order, but there's no knot in her stomach, no moistness in her palms or tremor in her fingers as she handles the earring. "No," she says, "not really."
In the mirror, Sara can catch Michael's broad smile that only starts looking like a grin at the corners – charm and confidence and just a little bit of smugness, but she'd be lying if she said it played no part in seducing her.
Michael – who she hasn't gotten used to calling her fiancé, who she can't bring herself right now to think of as her to be husband – is standing on the threshold of their bedroom, one foot in, the other one out, and he's slid his head through the opening, which is only a crack. It's as if he thought taking more than a peak of her on their wedding day would be bad luck.
His talent at breaking out of prison notwithstanding, Michael Scofield, Sara thinks, is fairly old-fashioned.
The past few months of fugitive lifestyle have been such a chaotic and tumultuous ocean to swim across, it's made Sara's old life feel drastically distant, a story inside a story, like trying to remember which tale came first in the Arabian Nights. But suddenly, an image flies into Sara's head, a fragment of childhood somehow salvaged from her rocky past –
And it's the image of a knight riding a white horse, crossing a forest of thorns.
A fairytale picture.
Come to think of it, Michael is very old-fashioned –
She can still see him holding out his hand to her through the smoke, during the Fox River riot.
Isn't that what you called a modern fairytale rescue?
That's all it takes for Sara to realize she's smiling, too – and Michael's eyes gleam blue and eager at her in the mirror.
"You?" She asks.
"Nervous? No."
"No," she teases, can't help herself.
Though Michael's body is still outside the door, she can see the collar of a white shirt, over which he may be wearing something a little more formal – old-fashioned – and it doesn't displease her.
She likes him in a suit. Likes all the disguises that circumstances have made them try on – Michael actually still has the policeman uniform he put on to infiltrate the Eagles and Angels ceremony earlier that year. Not that he's all innocent himself. The other day, when she was fishing through his sock drawer, she found a picture of herself in the golden bikini she wore in Vegas. Michael was just behind her, making the bed (he has such a neat, inimitable way of doing that) and Sara chuckled in startle as she produced the picture.
"Who took that?"
Michael gazed at her above the pillowcase which he'd been busy smoothening up. "Um…" Suddenly, she had a clear enough image of what he must have looked like as a boy, when he was caught doing something he shouldn't have – as her father would have said, caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "I believe it was Roland."
"And you didn't think to tell me?"
"Well, I had a word with him about it, as you can guess." He shrugged.
The very thought of Michael reprimanding their young associate for hiding an inappropriate picture of her struck Sara as oddly amusing – and exciting.
"I just didn't see the point in bothering you about it. I mean, teamwork can be hard when some members are particularly unpalatable."
"Unpalatable?"
God, she was loving this.
How he verbosely tried to extricate himself from those guilty waters – and he was good at it. Would have made a fine lawyer.
Or, she supposed, picturing the face of her frowning father once more, a fine criminal.
"And you want to tell me why you kept it?" Trying to maintain a serious tone – if he spotted her amusement, the boyish cuteness of being caught cookie-jarring might be replaced by the usual confidence she knew and loved.
"Well…" Michael swallowed. His fingers tightened around the pillowcase, like he was struggling not to run a hand over his scalp. "It just – you know. Like it could maybe –"
"Yeah." Sara found it was time to put an end to his miseries, and so she didn't hold back the smile that was breaking on her lips. "I know."
Right now, looking at Michael's face, as he came to steal a glance of his future bride, Sara finds there is is faint trace of that boyish guiltiness left.
"What are you thinking?" She asks.
He looks like he's gone away in his head a little, like she has, and she wants to know how far.
"That I like the dress," he says.
"Oh."
Hopefully, he wasn't actually hoping to see her walk ceremoniously down the aisle in anything extravagant – fitted bodice, floor-length skirt, bell-shaped gown, and all of it white, white, white. Sara's never been too fond of the traditional bridal look, but she hasn't gotten around to asking Michael what he thinks about it –
Oh, if he were so traditional, he wouldn't have come here to see his bride before the wedding, would he?
Which reminds her, he still hasn't got more than one foot and his head through the door.
"Why don't you take a closer look?" Though she aims for casual, her voice glides into sensual teasing – ridiculous. They're expected downstairs in less than half an hour, and it's not like Michael's been old-fashioned enough to insist on spending the night outside her bed. Really, they've been getting a fine head start on their honeymoon ever since they got their exoneration papers from Kellerman, just a few weeks ago.
Freedom, to Sara's mind, will forever be marked with the saltiness of heat, day-and-night sex and craving bodies.
Before then, making love was different, was a brief and hasty reprieve squeezed into the extraordinarily busy schedule of their lives as fugitives.
But it was worth waiting, yes, worth putting up with the scarcity of those glimpses of intimacy, a few minutes outside the warehouse here and there, kisses that remained chaste in case anyone should be looking, and the occasional indulgence in spending a few hours alone in her boat cabin, when there was enough time to spare. Really. It felt to Sara almost like a teenage love affair – or gallant, nearly unconsummated wooing.
Now, she almost can't get used to all this leisure, the luxuries of privacy, having a house all to themselves. When there's a brusque noise, she sometimes jumps with alarm, feeling convinced someone will come bursting in – that something's finally going to come and swallow their happiness, like a tiny paradise beach disappearing in the hungry blue mouth of a tidal wave.
They have time to talk. Spend hours, sometimes entire days in bed, wander around naked to fetch food, ask personal questions –
Michael wonders if she misses the tattoo, and she must say she does, running her fingers over his scarred torso. But she wouldn't want it back, either – the blue design of Angels and Devils belongs to Fox River, to his cold schemes of seduction, not the wonders of marital bliss she knows they're headed to.
"Well?" Sara insists, her voice chiming with amusement. "Won't you come in?"
Michael shrugs, but doesn't achieve to look casual. "I don't know."
"You don't know."
"Not that I'm superstitious, Sara, but after everything we've been through – I wouldn't want to jinx it."
No trace of shyness in the admission, but his honesty moves her. All the things they've been through have brought them so close, she sometimes forgets they haven't known each other for a year yet – and those moments when Michael freely peels off the layers of his social persona, when he shows himself emotionally bare, always surprise her.
The enigma-man has no reason to keep secrets any longer.
Sara wonders if she'll ever get used to this, the uncomplicatedness of their new lives. If she has it in her to get used to easy.
"Is it the dress?" Sara wonders, not really serious. "I can take it off."
She better not.
It's expected for traditional brides to be late (and Sara's demonstrated how untraditional she is) but if both bride and groom are MIA as the ceremony begins, the guests might start wondering where they are. People will look for them and someone, probably Lincoln, will go up those stairs to see what they're up to and –
Sara can already picture herself bent over the table, with her dress rolled up to her waist, and Michael standing behind her, with whatever fancy trousers he's got on pooling at his ankles and –
They really better not.
Except she can see in the desire-driven wildness in Michael's eyes that he's sharing the same ideas, which is actually nothing surprising. Before the exoneration, sex was a separate bubble from the insane rhythm of fugitive lifestyle, but now, it's the other way round, and passion is the sole ruler of their admittedly much happier lives.
When you think about it, Sara this is still a lot like a teenage love affair, except one in which ever-hungry hormones have taken full control.
"Fine, then don't come in." Sara says, wants to mean it, but finds she's smiling, a smile that's an absolute stranger to innocence or casualness. "You didn't tell me why you stopped by."
"Oh, I like to be on the safe side of things." He's taking that tone she can't resist – Michael is always serious beyond belief when they're playing games.
"So, chasing second thoughts if you caught me nursing any – making sure I didn't get cold feet?"
"This sort of thing."
The door clicks shut behind him, as he slides in with natural ease. His sudden boldness makes it all too easy for Sara to chide him, "Michael, we really can't be late."
"Of course." That same serious voice, rich with arousal, gleaming with control –
Control is something Michael must have in most things, and Sara lets him, has herself relinquished control the moment she followed the paper trail that led her through his schemes, one origami crane at the time.
"Your brother will come looking for us," Sara warns.
Probably, Lincoln won't give it much time, either – five minutes past the appointed hour, they'll hear his step in the stairs. No mark of intrusiveness, but the remains of their common past, the ghost of that familiar voice in his head, Something could have gone wrong, something can always go wrong.
"Then we'll send him away." Michael has made his way to the table, the bedroom desk he shares with Sara – and which they've already used for less scholarly purposes in the past.
Then, Michael gets on one knee, and the initial amusement triggered by the unexpected image dies quick on Sara's face, the smile leaving place to a deep earnest look – lovers are often as serious as diplomats settling internationally important questions.
No protest makes it up Sara's throat when Michael's hand reaches for the hem of her dress and glides slowly under the soft material – his finger stroke the skin of her calf, make their way up to her inner thigh, before finally brushing the increasingly warm flesh covered by lace underwear – which is also red.
"He'll understand," Michael says, simply. "Trust me. After all that's happened – I don't see how Linc or anyone could deny us a little self-indulgence."
She can but agree.
All things considered, Sara is on to a pretty good start to getting used to easy.
…
END NOTES: Hope you've enjoyed this. Let me know your thoughts and the sort of stories you'd like to read in the future.