That's how it happens. Routine settles in, a couple of days then another than a full week. During the day, Michael and Kellerman are gone, leading busy lives that Lincoln starts to find enviable, smothering inside that unconditioned motel room. He does as he promised, keeps an eye on Sara, tries to keep his eyes from wandering to the wrong places of her. It doesn't go too bad. Most of the time, Lincoln thinks it's good, they have a nice time. He visits her one day and lets her visit him the next. They give each other space.
He gets to know little details of her, feels guilty when it crosses his mind Michael may not have had time to learn them yet.
The twitch at the corner of her lips when she stifles a smile. Tossing her red hair behind her shoulders when she tries to focus. Rapping an index against her thigh when she's nervous – say, when Michael and Kellerman are running behind.
When she gets angry, Sara's face takes on a kind of earnestness that reminds Lincoln of dangerous, dignified animals – panthers, maybe, it definitely has something feline. It's a look she gave Kellerman throughout their ride to Chicago, before she tried throttling him with – what was it again? – a shoelace? Probably, she gave it to Michael when he told her the real reason why he was in prison. But she never gave it to Lincoln yet, so he's counting his blessings.
He's definitely in awe at Sara's anger. Veronica was a tamer nature, but Lincoln used to explode, used to bang his fists on the walls, used to feel like he'd grow crazy with the heat in his brain, his pulse racing and his eyes seeing red. Sara's anger is impressive, demands respect. Looking her in the eye, you can tell it runs deep, but not a bump above the surface. In her anger, she is perfect, in absolute command.
He thinks one of these days, if he gets bold enough, he's going to ask her about how she learnt that. Keeping herself in check. Lincoln's not one to ask personal questions, but she doesn't shy from asking them.
Where'd you and Michael grow up? Were you close then already?
So maybe he'll give in, let himself be tempted. Hell. He's never met anyone so smooth on the outside but when scratching the polish a little, when taking a look at that maddening, raw material, you feel live-wire energy, trembling like earthquakes.
One afternoon, they're sitting on the carpet – his room, this time – it's a hundred and ten inside and Sara is fishing into the grocery back Michael brought back yesterday. Oreo cookies, brown sugar pop-tarts. Lincoln half-chuckles half-sighs. "Feels like I'm sixteen again."
"Lucky you," Sara retorts, smiling. "I didn't get to eat sugar-packed foods till I was in college. Dad was crazy about my being a healthy girl."
"Christ's sake. A childhood without sugar. My condolences."
"Not just childhood, Linc," he likes when she calls him that, likes the proximity it inspires, how comfortable she is with him. "Adolescence. Eighteen was how old I was when I had my first twinkie."
A burst of laughter escapes him. He likes to look cool, composed. She likes to surprise him. "What else couldn't you have?" He wonders.
"Cigarettes. Booze. Sex."
"Ouch." He breaks the word into two syllables, absently grabs a box of pop tarts. There was heat in his cheeks when heard Sara say sex – damn it, it's like he's turned virgin all over again – and he'll be the most embarrassed grown man in the world if she notices he's blushing. "Didn't realize you grew up with a tyrant."
"For all the good it did us," she shakes her head. Grabs a pop tart from the box he's just cracked open. "Those things only hit me twice as hard when I was an adult."
"I'll bet."
He knows she's talking about the drugs, about alcohol addiction, but all he can think about is the sex part. Sara sexing with faceless men he can easily imagine his face into. Sex in just about any position Lincoln's ever wanted to try.
He tries to hit the brakes, desperately looks for a way to stop. He crams the nastiest image into his head. The electric chair. How his brother's foot looks now with two missing toes.
It doesn't quite do the trick. The air between them is too hot, too thick. Sweat plasters stray locks to her forehead, the material of her dress clings to her skin. All of a sudden, the noises he hears her make at night come alive, crazed half-awake distortions.
Lincoln's usually so good at seducing women. It's just fact. He never needs to say much, knows the right thing to say. For a second, he absently wonders how he'd go about it, if she were just anyone, if she weren't dating his brother. Drawing inches closer to her on the carpet, brushing sweet cookie-crumbs from her lip. Then he'd wait for her sign, she'd open her mouth, tilt her head into his, and he'd kiss her, and she'd taste cookie-sweet and forbidden and salty from the heat.
She tosses the pack of Oreos his way and Lincoln snaps out of it immediately. Somehow, he's no longer able to believe his attraction to Sara is just incidental, that she happens to be a woman and he happens to be horny.
If Fox River hadn't happened, if he'd met Sara anywhere else in the world, if she hadn't fallen for Michael first –
We'd be good together, he thinks, isn't able to help himself. It's be an easy, effortless happiness, like it is right now, having a candy-snack, watching whatever's on TV, reading each other the riddles found on the back of cereal boxes. The sort of activities that are shamelessly lazy, filling the pauses from hungry lovemaking. He can't imagine any relation he'd have with Sara wouldn't include that.
"You miss it?" She asks.
Fuck yes, he thinks, nearly says it. Being in love, sleeping with a naked body in his arms, shared showers, making breakfast for two. He used to make Veronica astonishingly good breakfasts, scrambled eggs and toast, syrupy pancakes decorated with chopped strawberries – yes, chopped, he could remember carefully disposing the red heart-shaped sliced around the plate. You wouldn't think Lincoln's the sort of man to do that, just looking at him – come to think of it, Michael would probably be dumbfounded to learn Lincoln's capable of any sort of minuteness. He's got that laconic tough-guy look going on and somehow, it makes it even more intimate that he does this sort of thing, as if the girl is thinking I wouldn't have guessed.
Suddenly, Lincoln wishes Sara knew that about him, that he comes with breakfast in bed.
Then he realizes he hasn't answered her question and he's actually got no clue what she's talking about. "Sorry?"
"Some people get nostalgic, talking about the past. Do you ever miss any of it?"
"Oh." Yes, that's just the kind of question she would ask. Given how much time they spend together, it's not ridiculous that they get to know each other, of course. She doesn't know that much about him yet. She doesn't know about Veronica.
But right now, Lincoln realizes, when he thought about how much he missed being in love, it wasn't the past he meant – what he missed was that fantasy life with Sara he dreamed up in just a few minutes, something he's never even experienced.
"No, I wouldn't say that." He lowers his eyes. The heat makes it so hard to think, to muster a coherent sentence. "You?"
"Oh God," she sighs. Her eyes are closed. He wishes he could see what she's seeing. "I miss things I never thought to notice. Like taking long walks. I used to love walking by myself, looking at the things around me – the tables at the restaurant, the people walking me by. Somehow that always quieted me. I never used to really see the magic in being able to do that. Just walking without keeping my head down, without worrying someone'll roll down their car window and shoot me where I'm standing."
"Ah," he shrugs, makes it sound like it all slides right off his shoulders. "We'll get it back. Won't be a fugitive forever."
Her eyes wander away from him, like she doesn't want him to catch her cynicism. "Maybe."
"And if we are, all the better. We'll sail away on a great big boat and you'll have better than Chicago, you'll have the ocean."
She crams a cookie into her mouth. For a moment, the look on her face is serious, and despite the shorter hair, she looks so much like the prison doctor that used to have him sit down and bandage him up that he finds it absurd they're somehow having an afternoon snack together on the carpet of his motel room.
"You know," she says, "I don't know why, but I can't see it at all. The three of us on some never-ending cruise. Maybe it'll happen," she chuckles, "who knows?"
"Who knows?" He repeats. First the thought of nothing but his brother and Sara and the ocean feels a lot like hell, then a little like heaven.
For the first time since this inappropriate lust grew into him, Lincoln thinks of what will happen if it lasts. For years. Maybe forever.
There I'll be, watching my brother marry this woman, watching him melting with adoration in front of their beautiful children, and all the while he'll just think, 'Poor old Linc, never got over Veronica, did he?'
The odd man out. It almost feels okay, so long as it can remain Lincoln's secret, so long as his brother will never know how unworthy he is of all he's done for him, that while he was working on getting him exonerated, keeping an eye on Kellerman, Lincoln was utterly failing not to fall hopelessly in love with his girlfriend.
There're times when confession's good for the soul, sure enough, but there are things you just know, right from the moment they take roots in you, that you'll never tell.
Inside his head, Lincoln swore to whoever might be listening.
They'll never know. Not either of them. They'll be carefreely in love and happy and I'll be there. Not waiting. Not hoping. Just there.
Suddenly, knocks are rapped on the door. Lincoln watches as Sara cranes her neck towards the noise. "They're home." She sighs. Lincoln can't quite determine if she's joking when she adds, with mock regret, "You know, hanging out with two wanted convicts and a psychopath was something else my father never let me do."
…
AN: I know I haven't updated this story for a while, I'm much more into Mi/Sa stories at the moment and I don't actually consider this fic is Sara/Lincoln. I just want to explore the possibilities. Please let me know your thoughts and ideas for the next chapters in a comment. I'll most appreciate it ; )
