A shudder crept down her spine at the stroke of his fingers. The wrongness of it imprinted on her mind along with the deeper, more primitive sense of right.
"We can't," she breathed, low, looking at the wall. "We shouldn't."
Lincoln didn't point out these were two very different things.
"I know," he said. "I know."
That's how it had started.
Lincoln's fingertips following the supple line of her neck, the curve of her shoulder blade, bare but for the pale strap of her loose top – it had been hot, so hot inside that motel room, in New Mexico, where the two brothers had tried to build a safer life for her and for themselves.
This wasn't safe.
How she could feel his touch charged with desire, until he kissed the crook of her shoulder, the salty taste of her skin, sending gooseflesh down the nape of her neck.
Both of them standing, facing the door, with his front to her back – she had meant to turn away from him when he caught her by the forearm and pressed himself to her. A hot blush had swum to her face as she'd felt the stiffness of his erection against her thigh.
He held her with one hand, still, tight around her stomach, so she could tell herself he was coercing her. Though she could feel him, she couldn't see him, so she could pretend he was Michael.
She did neither.
Instead, as the stubble of his shaven forehead rubbed against her neck, his mouth blowing hot breath against her skin, she said, "I love your brother."
He answered, "That makes both of us."
But his hand never stopped, discovering the unchartered paths of her body that over the past few weeks had been confined to the realm of fantasies. He rubbed his thumb over a nipple, beneath her top, then down her stomach, the firm line of her jeans that clung to her skin in the heat.
If she said, Stop, she believed he would, although she never got a chance to put that to the test.
Whatever breath she might have used to say it froze dead in her throat as the door of the motel room opened on a thunderstruck Michael, whose jaw fell slack at the sight of the embracing couple.
There was no time to break apart, no time to start voicing excuses or laugh with horror.
That's it, Sara thought, it's over.
The fatality of the realization seemed to stab her in the chest and, through her, Lincoln.
It wasn't the end but the beginning, of course; the start of something no one who wasn't in this room at that precise moment would understand.
No. Not quite.
The beginning, the real beginning, had been weeks earlier. Back when it would have been absurd to think Michael would ever walk in on Lincoln trying to undress his girlfriend – what quick changes they had been. Maybe they were all to be blamed on the heatwave.
…
It had been after Kellerman, when Sara was having a hard time keeping a brave front, stopping the rush of crude anger from bursting to the surface.
Michael was an angel, naturally – would have been willing to mother her with unfaltering patience if only it had been what she needed, for him to stroke her hair, to whisper soothing words in her ear.
What Sara really wanted at the time was drugs. Or something like it – alcohol would do. Yes, alcohol would wash away the nastier memories clawing at her brain before sleep. In med school, Sara's girlfriends used to get drunk to get over a bad breakup – would it do for an actual torture episode? Ha. A cynical smile would stretch her mouth at the thought of her friends' face if she asked – cynicism was one of Sara's last few pleasures. And now, she doubted an origami flower would be enough to wear it out.
Michael, with all his sweet promises and kind attentions, had been utterly useless in helping Sara cope.
Lincoln, because it wasn't his place to say anything, didn't try, and perhaps that was better. In his silent way of looking at her, or looking away when tears of rage brimmed in her eyes, Sara had felt he understood her; her acknowledgement of this had passed between them like the quiet flow of a river; it had required no words.
She felt so ashamed, to wake up screaming in the middle of the night, so the other clients could cast suspicious eyes on the brothers who came flying to her side, and they had to find another motel on the next night. Michael's attempts at reassurance, though heartfelt and well-intentioned, were unbearable. How she wished he could be locked up in some tower, like a fairytale princess, stored away safely until she was ready to start a real romance with him – the one she wanted, the one they both deserved.
She should not have to endure witnesses, as she handled the worst of the Gila incident, her father's death, the obliteration of life as she'd known it for the past twenty-nine years.
"He means well, you know," Lincoln had said to her, one evening, as Michael had gone to a nearby gas station for food.
Because of that silent understanding between them, his remark hadn't seemed blunt or surprising, and Sara had answered with the same stark honesty. "I know. It's not about what he means."
"Just take it from someone who knows what it's like, to want to dig a hole into the earth and hide for years and years. Don't push him away." There was no command in his low voice. "He'll be back, even if you do – but it's best to just let him have his way. To be there for you."
A spike of anger entered Sara's voice – oh, the anger was always there, now, looking for cracks in the surface. "Is it for me when it's really for him?"
Lincoln had shrugged – his crude lack of gloves had impressed her. She hadn't known, before then, that compassion could be entirely without pity.
"What can you do?" He said, not jeering – plainly putting her before the facts. "Go your separate way? You jumped through a window to make your way back to us, Sara."
The way he said this – maybe that's how it really started. How her name was rich with respect and a little something else; desire, which he forced himself to contain into distant admiration, because she was his brother's girl.
Except she was not.
Not when his gaze on her was thick and hot, when the words ran simply between them, and each one she exchanged with Michael was laborious and carefully thought-out.
Had he noticed, the way he'd put this?
You jumped through a window to make your way back to us.
Us.
A flash of another reality emerged in Sara's mind and, before she could help it, Lincoln was no longer just Michael's brother, the tall, quiet individual bound to be around, so long as they were all fugitives from the law, hiding, running –
Soon, running from other, more tangible things.
For a while after she noticed Lincoln wanted her, the appropriate awkwardness that ensued distracted her both from her unmanageable anger and from the knowledge that she wanted him, too.
Her memories of this were pleasant enough. It was easy, to blush duly when his eyes on her lingered, to rationalize this to her own mind – he hasn't touched a woman in nearly three years, of course, there'd be a little temptation about this, the three of us packed up in a motel room for days on end. It was flattering, cute, even –
Except Lincoln never made it look cute (cute is too weak, easily dismissed) when his eyes were there on her, smoldering, and she could feel his arousal in every breath of air she drew in, in every single word they weren't speaking.
Michael was often gone, whether because he could sense it was what she wanted, or because he would sooner take the risk of getting caught before he'd allow either of them to run it, Sara couldn't determine.
She only knew if it hadn't been like this, and she and Lincoln hadn't been left alone for so many hours –
"What are you thinking." She said, at some point, when the silence between them was unbearable – hardly a question, really, an order, issued with queenly impatience.
She had been sitting on the bed while Lincoln looked at her from an armchair, plunged in the shade; she didn't need to see his eyes to feel them on her, each a hot wave that licked and lashed at her skin.
"That you're like me," he'd answered.
Outrage had felt like an easy response. "Whatever does that mean?"
"All this time, I thought you were like Michael – and you are," all this, without smugness, but the plain confidence of observation. "Kind. Self-sacrificing. But you're also like me."
She didn't ask, How?
That word alone would be too much like lying.
Then, at that second, she had felt exactly how much he wanted her, had known what sweet oblivion awaited her down that road – to have his strong hands pin her hips down on her mattress, his teeth nibble playfully at her skin. She imagined the pleasure as he'd thrust inside her, not brutal, but without finesse – it seemed to her she could guess exactly how he would be with her. And she wanted him, immediately, knew that she had wanted him for weeks.
Sara had jumped to her feet and rushed to the door without thinking.
Her own rapidity startled her so, it was a wonder he could think of catching her –
The firm hold of his hand against her forearm.
"Let go."
"No."
But if ever force had made it into their relationship, that had been the end of it. That single No. Before he was touching her, and chasing thoughts from her mind, making protests void, resistance null.
Both of them froze when Michael entered the room.
Oddly, the shock on his face left no place for anger or betrayal; and, after enduring so much of it in the past months, Sara found none for shame.
"Oh," Michael uttered.
Sara broke away from Lincoln's arms, but didn't rush to Michael in repentance.
She didn't repent.
Truth came clear as rain to her.
"I don't want to –" He said, eyes shying away from her. "I don't want to intrude."
"You're not."
But he must have sensed this wasn't completely right. That though it was all he wanted, he didn't manage to give her what she needed. The message passed between them in silence.
"I just want to make you happy," he said.
She nodded.
Suddenly, the glass wall burst between them, sweeping away the distance that had settled after Kellerman, and it was easy, like with Lincoln.
"Come," she said.
He walked to her like a man bewitched.
Sara turned back to Lincoln, who was still standing behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat of his chest in her back. His gaze was black with lust when it met hers, and she asked, "Okay?"
"Okay," he answered, and said nothing as she turned back and kissed Michael.
Hard. Like she'd never kissed him before – nothing like their shy encounter at the infirmary, which had been their first and, so far, their only.
Michael did more than meet her halfway, and clasped her to him with unexpected passion. Tender, as he thrust his tongue into her mouth, but eager with his hands, that went about removing her shirt, stroking the warm flesh of her stomach.
Meanwhile, Lincoln's hips were rocking against her ass, holding her by the hips, as he planted wet kisses (and hungry bites) into the crook of her shoulder.
The sound of her own moans was surreal to her ears, like songs in a dream.
Not the end, after all, but the beginning of something different, like a couple but better, fuller; joy and bliss to distraction.
You jumped through a window to make your way back to us.
The words crossed her mind again.
Sara realized part of her had known, as early as then, that she wanted them both, and that it made sense – maybe not to others, but to her. At least as much sense as being willing to stand torture and death rather than to give away the man she loved.
Men.
She had gone through hell and back to come home to them.
For as long as this logic endured – the logic of loving both brothers more than her own life – they had better make it worth her while.
…
End Notes: This is very different from what I usually write which is why I'm even more eager than usual to know your thoughts. Oddly I had this idea of a story where all three characters would be romantically involved, and how that might have developed as a dynamic in the show. Please share your reactions.