Sara and Michael's first Christmas in Chicago marked their fourth Christmas together as a family. When Sara thought back to that first shaky holiday season they'd shared in Ithaca, it felt obvious to her how far they'd come; the sight of a box of Christmas lights could take her right back there, shivering in the garage, angry at Michael, nauseous with morning sickness, fearful that they wouldn't figure this out, wouldn't be able to find their way back to each other, would fail Mike, would break each other's hearts all over again.
And then Henry had arrived, lending his unique brand of bliss to their next two Christmases in New York, his presence adding a sense of joy Sara wasn't sure she'd ever felt fully, even as a child herself. And this year, they had so much to look forward to: Christmas in their new home, the chance to share the day with Lincoln and LJ, new traditions made with their kids in the city they loved, their New Year's party here, where their friends and family lived.
"We can host it on the rooftop patio," Michael told her, drawing up plans for their annual party as they sat in the kitchen on a Saturday afternoon in mid-December. "Fire pit, lights, even a temporary bar up there, if that's alright." He glanced at her to gage her reaction.
"Knock yourself out," she smiled, glad to find they'd reached a point of comfortable banter when discussing such loaded topics as the holidays or Sara's sobriety. She ran a hand over the cropped dome of his head as he bent over his notes at the kitchen counter. Henry napped, and Mike sat at the dining room table in the next room, finishing homework. "Remember Heather, Larry, and Dylan will be taking over the upstairs guest rooms, but we can open up the playroom, to keep all the kids close by."
"And we'll have to invite the neighbors, because I'm going to upgrade the sound system," Michael added.
"Oh, did all the background checks clear, then?" She tried to look serious, then grinned at him.
"I told you that idea in confidence," he told her, failing in his attempt to look stern. "And I wasn't serious…I didn't actually run checks on anyone."
"Sure, you didn't." She laughed, and he hooked a thumb around the waistband of her jeans, tugging her to him and silencing her with a thorough kiss.
"You're in a good mood," she noted when he'd released her. She leaned against him, in no hurry to retreat from the V he'd formed for her between his thighs. "Looking forward to the party already?"
"Maybe I'm looking forward to your party," he told her, dipping his head to press a second kiss to the side of her jaw. "Tonight." Sara's clinic holiday party started in a few hours. "Are you going to wear that black dress I love, or the green one I really love?" Another kiss.
She drew back, eyes narrowing. "You will behave." Dan would be there, and Michael knew it.
"I shouldn't," he told her a little more darkly, "but I will. Probably."
She kissed him back lazily, her body pressed against his, drawing away only when she'd decided they were in danger of venturing into PG-13 rated territory in the middle of the kitchen. "I'll wear the green one, if you promise to play nicely," she told him, her hands still locked around the back of his neck. She wanted to climb right up into his lap, and she suspected he knew it.
He gazed back at her intently enough to make her blush, his hand high on her thigh. "You don't really want me to promise," he told her, and she laughed again breathily. If he did manage to behave himself this evening, he was most certainly going to get very lucky tonight.
"What's funny?" Mike called from the dining room, and Sara jumped to move away, but Michael didn't let her, locking her between his legs, his lean quad muscles like a vice.
"Uh," She looked pointedly at Michael, but he only winked at her, so she called to Mike, "Dad says he's lowering the house security measures for the New Year's party," earning her a nip of Michael's teeth at the nape of her neck. She shivered.
"What, no metal detectors?" Mike called.
"Hey!" Michael's laugh tickled her skin.
"I'm just kidding, Dad," Mike amended. They heard the scrape of his chair as he stood up at the table, and Michael finally released Sara before he could round the corner. "I know you'd never have metal detectors."
Michael nodded as Mike entered the kitchen. "I should think not," he mumbled, turning toward the fridge. Sara noted he grabbed the pitcher of ice water and poured himself a large glass.
"You've already told me full body scanners are much more effective," Mike concluded, the line delivered so expertly, Sara truly couldn't decide whether it was sincere or sarcastic. She laughed more ruefully this time. Without a doubt, Mike was more like his father every day.
While they waited for Ellie to arrive to babysit, Michael reminded himself, in preparation for interacting with Dan at the party, that he was not a jealous man or a petty man or a small man. And then Sara walked down the hallway in the green dress, and he had to tell himself all over again. "You look amazing," he said, letting his lips linger on her temple when he kissed her, his fingers brushing the crook of her elbow to trail down the inside of her arm to encircle her wrist and capture her hand. He waited until he'd caught her eye with his own, then pressed a second kiss very deliberately to the inside of her palm. It wouldn't hurt to keep their flirtation this afternoon at the forefront of her thoughts.
She met his gaze with only a slight flush, after assessing him in his perfectly tailored suit from head to toe. "So do you," she told him, smiling.
Ellie arrived amid the usual pre-bedtime chaos, and fell right in step, taking over Henry's story while directing Mike into his routine seamlessly. Michael felt immeasurably grateful to her, coming back so willingly for an evening shift. She'd quickly become much more like a family member than a sitter, allowing him to leave for a night out with Sara without worry.
On impulse, he retrieved the Christmas card they'd gotten her from his desk drawer, into which he'd slipped what he hoped was a generous check. He hadn't gifted an end-of-year-bonus to a childcare provider before, and didn't know what amount was customary. They'd planned to give it to her the next week, but tonight seemed more fitting. She opened it in front of him, while Sara said goodnight to the kids. When the check slid out into her hand, her jaw dropped.
"Mr. Scofield," she breathed, at a loss. (He'd yet to convince her to call him Michael.) "This is far too much."
"We appreciate you, Ellie," he told her firmly, pleased and relieved the amount seemed to be in the ballpark he had been aiming for…excessive.
"I just…I was expecting a Starbucks card or something, but not this." She stared back down at the check, blinking. Michael frowned, wondering if they were paying her too little on a weekly basis, that she seemed so awed.
I can do that instead," he ventured, smiling at her, "if you'd prefer." She hastened to assure him that would not be necessary as Sara stepped out of Henry's room, tugging on her heels.
"Oh good," she said, noting Ellie's card and embracing her. "Happy holidays."
"Is this…are you sure?" Ellie asked her, still with that faint note of amazement, and Sara told her, "You're worth every penny and more, Ellie. You know we feel that way, don't you?"
She did now, Michael noted with satisfaction, watching her hug Sara a second time.
The party was held at a restaurant located in a cavernous industrial building in River North, with high ceilings, concrete floors and exposed beams and ducts. It was busy and noisy in the back room the clinic had reserved; Sara told Michael that in addition to their staff and board, Dan had invited some of the clinic's primary partners, like the director of the addiction recovery unit they worked with closely at the hospital, the rep from child social services, the independent RN staff they hired for their free inoculation days, and the like. She introduced him to a few people he didn't already know as they made their way slowly through the crowd. No surprise: Sara was a popular person in the room.
"You're popular too," she told him. as yet another jaw dropped slightly when Sara dropped Michael's name.
"Infamous is not the same as popular," he noted ruefully. He knew she wanted to argue with this, but couldn't.
After being waylaid by the third or fourth person to slide up to Sara, touching her arm or waving to get her attention, Michael threaded his fingers through hers, stilling her momentarily next to him. "Do you notice how people gravitate to you?" he asked her, his lips to her ear.
She shook her head faintly; she either didn't hear him over the din or didn't believe him. He just squeezed her hand. She may never fully recognize the impact she had on people, but it wouldn't be for his lack of trying to point it out to her.
By the time they reached the bar, they also reached Dan. He stood stiffly while he made small talk with someone, trying so hard not to look at Sara, his hyper-awareness of her was obvious. Michael suspected he'd been acutely aware of their progress all the way across the floor. His heart sank; he'd told Sara this had been no simple crush all along, but hadn't wanted to be so clearly proven right.
Sara noticed Dan too, and leaned up to tell Michael, "I'm going to go say hi to Kaylie," tipping her head toward her nurse. He nodded, but she looked at him for another beat before leaving him at Dan's side by the bar, her eyes, dark caramel in the ambient lighting, abruptly scanning his face. He read her sudden spike of anxiety: behave.
"Who do you think I am," he asked her easily, "my brother? I'll be right over." He flashed her a smile, and she returned it weakly before he turned toward the bar.
He ordered himself a bourbon on the rocks, and waited for the bartender to slide it into his hand before tapping Dan lightly on the shoulder. He suspected he'd been well aware of Michael standing behind him, but still enjoyed watching the flush on his cheeks suddenly pale when he turned around.
"Dan," he said. He held out his hand. "Michael Scofield." They'd met only once before, and he took too much pleasure in reminding Dan of his name, as though it might have escaped him.
Dan looked at his hand like he wondered whether he'd end up on the floor if he took it, then reluctantly shook it. "Of course. It's good to see you," he said cautiously.
Because there were few things Michael enjoyed more than knowing he held the upper hand, he told himself again that he intended to be the bigger man tonight. He glanced down the bar at Sara to remind himself who mattered in this scenario, took a slow sip of his bourbon, and said, "I hear the clinic will be losing you."
Dan gulped a swallow of his own drink in response. "Uh yes, unfortunately it was unavoidable."
This word irritated Michael, so he allowed himself the pleasure of pinning Dan with a long, hard look, not releasing him from his gaze until he could practically feel him sweating. "Unavoidable," he repeated slowly. "That's an interesting way to put it." He took another sip from his glass, the pleasure of the warmth of the bourbon second to the pleasure of watching Dan squirm. "I'm glad to hear the problem can be rectified."
"Absolutely," Dan agreed swiftly. His body language screamed, please don't hit me. God, Michael wanted to. Maybe he was more like Lincoln than he'd thought. Instead he nodded easily, clapping Dan on the shoulder perhaps a tad vigorously. This was starting to feel entirely too easy, and he had no interest in mirroring the myriad of bullying tactics he'd witnessed in prisons from here to Yemen.
"Good luck to you," he told Dan simply, and then, "If you'll excuse me." He downed the last of his drink in one swallow and turned to scan the room for Sara, steadfastly resisting the urge to see if Dan's gaze tracked his as he looked for his wife.
He caught her eye immediately—she'd been watching them, he realized—but as he approached her, he noted that the reproof he'd expected to see on her face was instead an interesting cocktail of approval and…hmmm. He knew her well enough to recognize the subtle blush of her skin as arousal, the low burn in her eyes as hunger. Very interesting, indeed.
He touched her elbow, and she threw him a smile that confirmed his suspicions and sent a swift rush of blood southward. "Come with me," he requested in a low voice, his lips at her ear, after excusing her gracefully from her conversation. She followed as he guided her to the side of the room, where oversized bay doors led to a lit outdoor terrace, empty at this time of year. She shivered as the sudden cold hit her bare arms, but only for a second; Michael pulled her flush against him to kiss her hard the moment they'd stepped into the shadow cast by the exterior wall, out of sight of the crowd at the bar.
She released a quick gasp in surprise at his abruptness, then yielded to him just as fast, kissing him back hungrily, her back to the brick wall. The warm stroke of her tongue, already deep in his mouth, sent any remaining blood racing from his head, which is why it took him a second to realize she'd pulled back, twisting her head away from him.
"Sara?"
She pushed at his chest, trying to free herself from the rough brick, and he stepped back in confusion, giving her space. "What…?"
"Dammit," she flung at him, as she pivoted away. She turned her back to him, bracing her hands against a wrought iron high top table by the edge of the patio. With the blood now pounding less violently in his ears, he could make out the buzz of conversation and clink of glassware inside the restaurant, on the other side of the wall. He trailed after her, across the empty patio, baffled. Two seconds ago, she'd been throwing herself at him.
He curled a hand over her shoulder, but she shook him off. "Is it too much to ask that you don't taste like single malt when you do that?"
Oh. Shit. And also…ouch. Her tone implied he had a regular habit of downing shots of booze and manhandling her on deserted patios. Despite the unfairness of this, he simply said, "I'm so sorry, Sara."
"Do you know how much I want a bourbon tonight?" she shot at him.
He shook his head, but since her back was still to him, he added a soft, "No."
"As much as I want one every night."
His thoughts went immediately to his stupid request to set up an open bar at their New Year's party. She'd so easily agreed. So gracefully taken that in stride, just as she did whenever confronted with substances she needed to avoid. Which, now that Michael thought about it, was often, despite the fact that he didn't drink very regularly, and hardly ever in her presence. The bourbon tonight had been unnecessary, just part of his bluster for Dan's benefit, he realized now. Stupid.
"You make sobriety look so easy," he told her slowly, "I forget how hard you work at it."
She turned then with a sigh, her arms folded tightly around herself, hugging her chest. Goose bumps rose on her skin. "I'm sorry," she told him. "You've done nothing wrong. It's just…I can still taste it, on my tongue." She sounded more bitter than angry now.
A few moments ago, he'd wanted to tear her clothes off her. Now, he wished he had something to wrap around her. He stepped toward her, shrugging out of his coat jacket and setting it over her shoulders.
"Thank you," she told him quietly. She pulled it around herself like a shawl.
He leaned against the table next to her, his own arms now folded to ward against the cold, watching her worry the hem of his coat between her fingers.
"Your mother taunted me about this once," she said abruptly. "I never said."
He stared at her hands, unable to look up. He hated, hated, hated thinking about that woman.
"Implied I'd never be a good enough mother for her grandchild."
Anger, red and dark, rose in Michael's gut, instantly heating him. Not good enough? How dare she. Plus, his mother didn't get to call Mike that. Even now, posthumously. "Sara, you are the best—"
"Actually, her words ensured I'd never take a sip again." Sara released a hard laugh. "She probably knew that."
Michael swallowed roughly. "Probably." He looked sidelong at her; she stared at a fixed point somewhere past the patio where city lights blurred against the black sky. She still shivered.
Enough of this. They were always better together than stubbornly fighting on parallel fronts. He moved in front of her, blocking her view of who-knew-what, and pulled her against him. She didn't protest this time, resting her face against his chest, her arms still caught under his jacket. He encircled her body, his hands resting on her lower back.
She sighed. A slow, shuddering sound.
"Do you want to go back inside?" he asked.
"In a minute," she said after a time. "I just need to reset my mood."
"Could you reset it to the mood you were in about five seconds before you hated my guts?" he asked hopefully.
She chuckled softly into his shirt. "Maybe later." She looked up at him, and her eyes were soft again, deep and warm. "The night is young, Scofield."
They returned to the party, Sara slipping out of Michael's suit coat once she'd stepped back into the restaurant, handing it to him as she navigated through the crowd toward the tables laden with food. Michael felt eyes on them (an instinct he wish he hadn't honed) and turned to catch Dan's gaze; who knew what he made of their disappearance onto the patio, but Michael found he didn't care. There was no way that man could peel back the layers of complication that made up Michael and Sara's relationship in one evening, or one month or even one year…Michael invited him to try.
He ordered them both club soda with lime—Sara slid him a look of apology which he waved off—and sampled appetizers as she networked with various clinic supporters and partners. He was content to stay on the periphery of her conversations; this was Sara's world, and he enjoyed watching her own it. If he'd ever wondered who she'd been, outside of her infirmary in their Fox River days, before their months of clawing and fighting their way to survival—and he certainly had—he'd gotten his answer in the past two years. Sara exuded a confidence much like Michael remembered from her father, but with a gentle poise that turned his bulldog tenacity into something much more effective. People listened to her, because she listened to them, genuinely cared about them, related to them, sought to help them.
Right now, she was talking with a case worker for Cook County's foster care system, her head cocked slightly in thought as he shared some of their challenges. "My husband spent some years in the foster care system in Chicago as a child," she told him, turning to draw Michael into the conversation. "It was not an easy time for him."
"I'm sure it's nothing like it used to be," Michael said generously, shaking the man's hand.
"I wish that were true," the case worker told him, looking more haggard than he should, at a holiday party. "And this time of year is particularly tough, of course."
Michael felt a pang, somewhere deep in his gut. He briefly allowed himself to remember the acute pain of being a foster kid at Christmas, then shut the door firmly against the thought. He pictured instead the Christmas morning awaiting Mike and Henry, the morning he, personally, would ensure they had with him and Sara, and that helped, though only a little. "Are there a lot of kids in the system right now?" he asked reluctantly.
"More than we can place in homes with any type of stability," the man said. "That never changes." He looked at Michael sympathetically. "You probably remember the constant shuffling between families, perhaps the less than adequate foster parents. It's so hard to find good homes. Much harder than it should be."
Michael tried not to remember, but his brain betrayed him, as it usually did, flashing him detailed images without mercy. He never forgot the faces of all the people who hadn't wanted him, had considered him a burden, an inconvenience, a paycheck. The spare rooms, stark and impersonal, where he'd shared dressers and beds with too many other foster kids, the hallways where he'd slept on mattresses or just wrapped in a blanket on the carpeting, the closet…the dark closet…the sound of metal scraping wood, over and over, as he tried to work his way out, one splinter at a time… the crash of the door, the sudden, sharp slant of light flooding his retinas when his father….his father…
"Excuse me," he managed, pivoting to retreat. He felt Sara's hand brush his arm, but couldn't let her prevent his escape. He'd gone instantly sweaty and hot…another thirty seconds, and he'd be hyperventilating. It was how these attacks always hit: without warning. Without discretion. He navigated the crowd swiftly, eyes locked on the sign for the men's room, even as his head swam and the floor seemed to shift beneath his feet. Only after he'd made it into the temporary sanctuary of the empty washroom did he allow himself to suck in a greedy gasp of air, then another. Another. He braced heavily against the bank of sinks, gasping like a man dying of thirst might gulp water, until pinpricks of sensation tingled along his fingers and lips, warning him he'd pass out if he didn't stop. He forced himself to slow his breathing, pleading silently with his brain not too surrender completely to the blackness encroaching upon his vision.
Slowly, the darkness faded, and he felt the clammy heat that had gripped him recede, his skin now cold and sweaty. He exhaled deeply, then splashed water on his face, wiping it off with a rough paper towel from the dispenser. He gave himself one more minute to compose himself, and pushed open the door of the washroom.
Sara waited for him on the other side, as he'd known she would be. She looked relieved when he appeared, but just said softly, "I thought it was my night to freak out." The smile she offered him looked pained, the calm in her voice forced, but at least they were there…the calm, the smile.
"I'm sorry," he told her. Her eyes scanned him a bit too clinically, so he joked, "It definitely is your night. That was selfish of me." He threaded his fingers through hers, hoping his palm would be dry to her touch.
It wasn't, but she squeezed his hand gently, almost fraternally, and the gesture sent his mind on another swift return to the past, albeit a more welcoming one. Her hand in his had briefly reminded him of Lincoln's, attempting to comfort, tugging Michael along when he'd felt scared, alone, confused. It made him think of something. "Do you want to get out of here?" he asked Sara. "Can I take you somewhere? Show you something?"
She nodded. "Sure."
He waited for the valet to bring around the car while she grabbed her coat, and a few minutes later, they were crossing the river on I-84 and exiting at West 63rd. "Are you hungry?" She'd hardly eaten a thing at the party.
"I could eat," she supplied carefully, clearly wary of giving the wrong answer and derailing whatever plan he had in store.
"Good," he said, making a left onto Halstead and heading into the Southside. They passed her clinic—dark, the parking lot empty with everyone at the party—and into the working class neighborhood beyond it, the front yards sparse, separated by rusty chain link fencing, the houses sporting bars over the windows. It dawned on him that his Lexus stood out here in all the wrong ways, as he scanned the road signage for the street he wanted. When he found it, he took a left, and it opened back up onto a commercial district with the likes of laundromats, pawn shops, and cash advance offices. He wondered whether the place he sought would still be there, then saw it: Dave's Drive In, the greasy burger and shake joint where Linc had worked a brief stint behind the counter as a teen. One of the 'v's in the neon sign had gone dark, one of the 'd's blinking erratically due to a short in the wires somewhere.
When he swung into the parking lot, Sara said, "Okay..." with a confused laugh.
He parked where he could at least keep the car under the beam of a street light, if not exactly in his sightline from the metal picnic tables scattered outside the drive in, and told Sara to keep her coat on. They'd be eating outside, and besides, they stood out enough in cocktail attire as it was. As they got out of the car, he spotted a boy, probably only a year or so older than Mike, tooling around on a skateboard in the parking lot. That could have been him, once, Michael thought, out on his own, long after a respectable bedtime, in nothing more than a cheap sweatshirt, with no one to worry when he didn't come home. On impulse, he called the kid over, fishing his wallet out of his coat pocket. He placed a $50 in the kid's palm, and said, "I'll double it if I come back and my hubcaps are still where they should be."
"Yeah, you got it, man," the kid enthused, while Sara shook her head in disbelief.
"What if he takes the hubcaps, and your $50?" she asked, when they'd walked toward the order window.
"He won't," Michael said with certainty.
He placed their order and they sat at the cleanest-looking of the sticky tables; they had their pick on this cold December night. "Lincoln worked here in high school," he explained to Sara. "I was living right down the street at the time." He looked over his shoulder toward where he remembered the house. "I guess I was there less than a year, really," he realized now, "but it seemed like longer. I'd sneak out and come here. Linc would slip me food…plates of fries he'd purposely leave too long in the fryer, maybe a milkshake from a mistaken order, and I'd sit right here, watching him work the window. He met Lisa, here. And other girls." He laughed quietly. "Even when it was winter, like this, tonight, I'd down those milkshakes, and then just sit here freezing. Lincoln would get mad at me for that, tell me I was stupid for not getting out of the cold, but I think it only upset him because he had to watch me, shivering, and understood: I'd suffer anything to delay going back to that house."
Sara followed his gaze toward the counter, where a new generation of teenagers held down the fort. When she looked back at Michael, her eyes shone amber in the low light, their customary empathy effortlessly warming him. Instead of telling him she was sorry, offering empty condolences, she asked quietly, "Was that the house where your dad found you, that one time?"
He shook his head. "No, this was before then. This one was okay enough, I guess. Just too many other kids there all the time. They weren't terrible, just miserable themselves, you know? I was younger than most of them, smaller, more sensitive…I suppose I was an easy target when they were in need of a punching bag." He watched Sara swallow tightly. The compassion in her eyes shone brighter, nearly burning him, and he had to look away from her. "Lincoln would come around every once in a while, knock some heads together, and it would be better for a few days, but…" He shrugged. Their order number was called, an unnecessary observance of protocol as they were the only customers, and he welcomed the distraction, rising to get their food.
When he returned with their tray, she said, "Thank you for bringing me here."
He slid her a paper-wrapped burger. "Hold that thought until you try it."
She indulged his attempt to lighten the mood. "I'm sure this will be the best 'sorry excuse for a childhood' burger I've ever had."
He laughed, and she smiled back at him, but then seemed to sober just as quickly. She studied him, her brow furrowed, her burger still unwrapped. "I love you," she told him almost severely, her voice low and earnest.
He looked at her just as solemnly. "And that's why I'm still standing," he told her. It was true. If he knew anything, he knew this: while Lincoln may have gotten him through his childhood, he could trace his survival of the past decade back to Sara, every time, from every angle.
She didn't have a retort for this, though he could tell she tried to think of one. She leaned forward slowly across the table to him, and when she kissed him, her lips felt cold. He placed a palm to her cheek, warming her skin, and kissed her back tenderly, tasting the soda she'd been drinking, the sweetness still on her tongue. He pulled away from her only after hearing a car honk at them from the road, and even then, reluctantly.
"Eat your burger," he told her gruffly.
She snagged a fry from the paper basket between them instead, probably just to prove a point. He watched her eat several, then couldn't resist, kissing her again deeply, tasting salt. This time when their faces parted, he saw with some satisfaction that her eyes had darkened again, echoing her earlier appetite for him. She studied him intently as her chest rose and fell a bit faster—he could watch each breath dissipate in the cold air—effortlessly warming him in new ways, in achingly frustrating ways, sitting out here in the open, in a seedy parking lot. He reached for her under the table, his hand closing over her bare knee. Keeping his eyes on hers, he slid his fingers slowly up her thigh, just under the hem of her dress…far enough that she couldn't mistake his intent, not so far as to draw attention to them. She continued to stare him down, breathing through slightly parted lips, then she shivered. He felt the tremor all the way up her leg. God damn.
Eyes still never leaving his face, she finally unwrapped her burger and bit into it, chewed methodically, swallowed. Again. After a minute, she shifted her leg even closer to him and said, "Aren't you hungry?" To put an exclamation point on this statement, she slid her heel-clad foot up his calf.
He swallowed his burger in about four bites, took a long draw from his soda, and said, "Ready to go?"
The car was in one piece, his young friend practically bouncing on the balls of his feet when he saw them approach. Michael lived up to his end of the deal, doling out another $50, then urging the kid to head home. They exited the parking lot and turned north toward Lincoln Park. Michael replaced his hand high on Sara's thigh, far less worried about discretion now that they were in the car. Her dress bunched up toward her lap, a visual he really didn't need right now, while driving. She answered with her own hand on his trousers, sliding it up, all the way up, to palm him with devastating accuracy through the fine wool blend weave of his suit pants. He released a hiss of breath, shifting in his seat.
"Distracted driving, you think?" he said through clenched teeth.
"I'm not distracted," she answered, her voice velvet, her fingers teasing with precision.
He exhaled on a groan, slightly concerned about his ability to merge onto the upcoming freeway. Then, in a burst of inspiration, he decided not to, swerving back to 63rd instead. Sara's hand momentarily stilled. "Where are you going?"
"I can't exactly walk through the door in the state you're putting me in," he told her, taking his hand from her leg long enough to lay it over hers, encouraging her to pick up where she'd left off. "I thought you weren't distracted," he reminded her.
She resumed her soft, methodical exploration of him with a low chuckle, but still craned her neck around to figure out where they were headed. Michael returned his hand to her thigh, sliding it up even higher this time, and felt her legs part, just slightly, for him. He wondered if she even knew she'd done it, and wondering this sent a rush of blood south, making him even harder than he'd already become, thanks to her touch. She stroked him with more pressure through his pants, leaning toward him to kiss his neck and jaw and ear. With another low groan, Michael pressed his foot harder to the gas. The diner Sara frequented with Katie flashed by, then the hospital, and he finally made a sharp turn into the dark parking lot of her clinic.
"Oh," Sara said, her hand stilling again. He had time to wonder what she thought of this plan, but not much: the second he turned off the engine and cut the lights, she scrambled awkwardly over the middle console to climb onto his lap.
He swore under his breath as she straddled him, nothing under that dress but the thin barrier of her silk underwear, nothing between him and the soft, willing heat of her but his trouser fabric and boxers. Then she was grinding slowly against the hard ridge of his erection, her mouth back on his. His hands went to her hips, holding her against him, dragging her across his body in a agonizing tease of friction that threatened to make him see stars. That damned dress had now ridden all the way up to somewhere above her waist.
He hissed another low curse. "Not. Here," he managed, tearing his face from hers. He scanned the deserted parking lot, eyeing the street traffic with its share of loiterers. Her clinic really was located in a shady part of town, especially at night. "Inside. You have your key card?"
She looked at him blankly for a moment, her eyes still registering a singular hunger that made his blood continue to sing, then nodded. "My purse," she murmured, her mouth back on his jaw.
He supposed it was up to him to fish it out of her bag, which involved dislodging her from his lap, which he was loathe to do. He hefted her off of him with a rough groan—it was a means to an end, he told himself—reached to curl his hand around the key card in the outside pocket of her bag, and pushed open his door. She met him at the front of the car and he scanned her body swiftly with his eyes—dress still seemed to be on, he noted with hazy relief—and took her hand, tugging her through the dark to where the clinic's security floodlight lit the entrance. He pressed the card into her palm, so he could click the car locked with one backward wave of his hand.
Inside the dark waiting room, Sara was on him again in an instant, her arms encircling his neck, drawing him back down to her. "Whoa," he said against her mouth, "door," and she twisted in his arms to flip the lock again clumsily with one hand. She kissed him fervently for another couple of minutes while Michael tried not to rip her dress off her next to the reception desk, then seemed to come slightly to her senses.
"What if someone comes by?" she panted, mouth against his collar, fingers tugging at his tie.
"No one will," he told her, using his most assertive, most unequivocal voice. "Party, remember?"
"But…someone might. Leave early."
He knew who 'someone' was, but shook his head. Dan wasn't going to come into work tonight, where he'd be reminded of Sara. Dan was going to go get drunk. "We're fine," he told her, steering her backward, down the hall toward her office and the exam rooms.
She let him guide her without argument, finally loosening the tie and working her way through his top two buttons, but when he pushed open the door of Exam 1 and tugged her through it, flipping the light on now that they were in the back of the building, she looked around her a little wildly. "I don't think I'll be able to…that I can…here," she told him, eying the exam table, the privacy screen, all the other all-too-familiar props of their past.
"Oh yes, you can," he countered, the words somehow both velvet and gravel against her skin as his mouth closed hotly on her throat. Because he was sure, very sure, of this, and he couldn't wait to help her. He lifted her up onto the exam table against the back wall, and her hands went from his shirt to his belt buckle, ridding him of it in seconds. He ran his hands back up her thighs, spreading them as he stood before her, pushing her dress back up out of his way to finally stroke the soaked strip of silk between her legs, her body heat nearly burning him. She threw her head back, eyes closed, her legs wrapping intuitively around his waist. See? he wanted to tell her. Told you you could do this.
Michael's mind start to narrow to a mantra of yes, this, yes, now, moving against Sara in a desperate need to give her pleasure, to take the pleasure she was offering. They were both going to come just like this, still mostly clothed, if he didn't do something about it, and so he grasped her hips to slide her back, until her shoulders hit the wall. She fumbled with her underwear, her hands tangling with his, trying to tug this final barrier of fabric off her body, and he'd just hooked a finger around the elastic when a sudden screech sounded outside, followed by loud crash of metal on metal. The light he'd flipped on blinked oddly, then went out.
They both froze. Sara stared at Michael, blinking in the sudden darkness. Her brain told her, something just happened. Do something! But her body lagged behind, still nearly boiling over with sexual energy, her pulse still on fire. "What…was that?"
"Car," he said, on a gasp of air, like he, too, was coming up from underwater, wading upward through desire. He spun his head toward the door, sliding his hands back down her thighs. "That was a car, hitting something outside. Probably the electric pole." He tugged her off the exam table, and she followed him through the darkness, feeling like she'd just been yanked, mid-course, from where she'd wanted to go into an entirely new direction.
Navigating the dark hallway, with its weak strips of safety lighting, only made her feel marginally less disoriented. By the time they reached the reception desk, she'd thought to tug her dress back down into a semblance of modesty; Michael had buttoned his pants, but they passed his tie on the floor on their way to the front door. Outside, a black SUV straddled the road and the parking lot at an angle, its front end smashed, as Michael had predicted, into the electric pole. A small crowd of onlookers had already gathered, pointing and yelling. A few other cars had stopped on the road, and Sara watched as a man from one of them ran up to the wreck, tugging open the driver's side door. A second later, he pulled someone out, struggling under the weight.
A young man. Teenager, maybe? Unconscious, by the look of him. The man held him awkwardly, trying to lay him onto the ground, and Sara flinched. He shouldn't hold him that way, her brain yelled, but she hadn't spoken aloud. She just stood there, shivering, still reeling from their abrupt about-face in the clinic, her breath clouding on each exhale in the cold. Because the second she'd seen this kid, Sara had seen another: on a bicycle, on the street, her head swimming, her knees sinking to feel the bite of concrete and slush before being dragged away, because she'd been useless. Useless.
She would not be, tonight. She ran forward in a sudden burst of clarity, hearing Michael call to her but not looking back. She pushed past more people who had collected around the scene, falling to her knees by the victim. The boy was probably sixteen or seventeen, bleeding from a contusion on his forehead, but breathing, his face bloody from both the impact and multiple lacerations from the broken windshield.
"I'm a doctor," she told the Good Samaritan, who looked relieved at this news. She told him to call 911 but someone else already had, so she gave him the task of keeping the kid's neck and spine steady as she took a pulse. It was too fast, his BP too low, and that worried her, but now that she was here, on the frozen asphalt, doing something, her brain felt mercifully clearer. She asked for light—cell phone, anything?—then found the source of the teen's bleeding at the side of his skull…bad, maybe even cracked, but not shattered. She heard the peal of a siren as the ambulance navigated the short distance from the hospital, and by the time she'd begun palpating the kid's abdomen, she saw the red and blue lights wash across his face.
She explained her presence and credentials to the lead paramedic, relaying vitals, then decided she'd better just come with them, climbing into the back of the ambulance with the victim. The low blood pressure had her worried about internal bleeding. She saw Michael, who tried to thrust her jacket at her, but she refused it; her hands and dress were already bloody. Why ruin a favorite coat, too?
"Meet you over there," she called to him, before the ambulance doors slammed shut. An EMT handed her a medi-wipe for her hands and arms, which she used to clean off most of the kid's blood; treating the boy gloveless had been unavoidable tonight, but unfortunate. When they arrived, she realized she knew the attending ER physician from narcotic emergencies at the clinic, and she left the kid in his hands, repeating the vitals to him and relaying her worry about internal injuries. He nodded, urging her to get to BFE.
She begged an extra set of scrubs from the nurses' station, and at the Body Fluid Exposure station, stripped herself down behind the shower curtain, vigorously scrubbing her arms, hands and legs for the required fifteen minutes. The water was only lukewarm, and she shivered under the spray. Had it really only been a matter of minutes ago she'd been overheated and half-naked with Michael in the clinic? It seemed like a lifetime ago. When she'd gone through each step of the BFE process, she pulled on the scrubs, bagged her clothes, then remembered she only had her heels to wear on her feet. She found a pair of surgical booties and wore those; they were far more comfortable, anyway. Tugging her damp hair up into a messy bun, she went in search of Michael.
The ER physician found her first. "Good call on the internal bleeding," he told her. "Ruptured spleen. He's in surgery now."
"I'm glad," she told him. She looked around her at the controlled chaos of the ER. She didn't miss it, but when the physician said, "I guess we'll see less of you, once you're in the director's office at the clinic," she felt a little pang of regret. This place might be a circus, but she disliked the idea of being stuck behind a desk.
"I plan to be the hands-on director type," she assured him, as Michael found them.
He smiled at her somewhat oddly, and when they turned to leave, and she reached for her coat more willingly—she wore absolutely nothing under these scrubs, after all—he seemed reluctant to hand it over.
"What?"
"Just…enjoying this look," he told her with a slow grin, handing her the coat.
"You are truly hopeless, you know that?"
"Unchallenged," he agreed easily. He slid her another look before she could wrap the coat around herself, and took her hand as they walked across the parking lot. "What a night," he observed.
"Yeah." She looked up at the black sky, starting to spit snow, and then back down at her paper boot-clad feet, which were now freezing. "It felt good though, being able to help."
Michael nodded. "You were amazing." He nudged her. "Highly inconvenient timing though," he added.
She smiled, but knew he'd missed her point. When they got in the car, she touched his hand, stopping him from turning the engine over right away.
"I don't think I ever told you," she began, kind of startled by this realization, then took him through that December night so long ago, when she'd been too high to walk straight, let alone help the boy on the bike. She spoke haltingly, not allowing herself to gloss over anything. It felt a little like speaking in Group, only, here in the quiet car, there was nothing anonymous about it. When she was finished, he looked at her with the customary intensity she'd come to know so well, that she wasn't sure she could live without, anymore. He kissed her softly, then less softly, in the dark car, his lithe fingers toying with the rough cotton of the scrubs. She wanted to ask what he was thinking, what this part of her past made him feel, but that would require pulling away from him, willingly denying herself his warmth and touch and love. So really, didn't she already have her answer? She decided to simply keep kissing him, until…wait.
"What time is it?" They'd told Ellie they'd be home by 11 pm.
"Almost midnight, but I already called home," Michael assured her, his mouth near her ear. "Ellie's staying the night in the guest room."
She had some stuff stashed in the closet and guest bathroom there, for the few times she needed to stay over when Michael left town. "What about the clinic? Did you lock it back up?"
"Yep." He dug her key card out of his pocket and handed it to her.
She bent her face back to his to kiss him more, then thought of one more thing: "Your tie. It was on the floor of the reception area."
He looked at her blankly. "Whoops."
"We have to go back," she informed him. She didn't want to be answering questions about that tie on Monday morning.
She got no argument from Michael. He turned the car over with a grin. "Well, if we have to go back, I guess we have to go back," he told her, and she noted with a quick thrill that his voice had instantly turned to velvet again. Would they ever stop acting like sex-starved teenagers? And more to the point, could she really go from 100 mph to zero back to 100 again? And then again? He gave her a wink, his free hand already back on her knee, and she had her answer. She slid him a look of approval and he hit the gas, taking the exit out of the parking lot at a completely irresponsible speed.