Title: Wire
Fandom: Prison Break
Characters: Michael and Lincoln
Prompt: 041: Shapes
Word Count: 1,292
Rating: G
Summary: "You need me here in case you feel like chickening out again," Michael said with a smirk.
Disclaimer: Paul Scheuring and a whole lot of other people who aren't me own Prison Break.
-

"You sure you want to do this?"

"Yeah."

"'Cause this is your last chance to back out, you know."

"I'm not gonna back out."

"That's what you said last week..."

"I know what I said."

"...And a couple days before that..."

"I said I know."

"...And that first time you tried three weeks ago."

"Michael, just shut it, okay? What are you even still doing here? All I needed you for was to pick the design, so you can go."

"You need me in case you feel like chickening out again," Michael smirked.

Lincoln huffed and turned to look down at the tattoo artist inspecting his leg. "I told you, I'm not chickening out."

"This time."

Lincoln ignored him and spoke to the woman tracing the pattern on his leg. "How long have you been doing this?"

"Two years," she answered with a smile as she finished up and went to ready the needle.

"Really?" Lincoln smiled back, and Michael rolled his eyes with a groan. "How'd you get into it? Tattoos, piercing..." he trailed off, lowering his voice and trying to sound flirtatious to cover the shakiness that entered his tone when he saw the needle.

"Well, you know," the tattoo artist began as she pulled a stool over to sit next to Lincoln.

"You don't really have to answer," Michael cut in. "He's just scared so he's trying to cover it by flirting with you."

"Christ, you're a pain in the ass," Lincoln said, turning to look at Michael standing next to him. "And you know, I'm the one sitting in the chair, here. I don't see you getting one."

"I could do it," Michael replied defensively.

"Uh-huh."

"You're the one who's so afraid of needles. I still don't see why you even need to get one so badly."

"Because, it'll look good," Lincoln said, trying not to look down. He clenched the chair's armrest as he felt the needle touch his skin for the first time, pain burning through him from just the one small prick.

"If you can sit through the whole thing," Michael replied. "But if you quit now all you're gonna have is..." Michael leaned over him to look at the progress made in thirty seconds of drawing on Lincoln's skin. "...What looks like a half-moon."

"I'm doing fine so far," Lincoln said through clenched teeth. His stomach tightened and he closed his eyes, trying to picture himself anywhere but in here with a needle digging into his skin.

"Want me to hold your hand?" Michael said, and Lincoln could hear the smile in his voice.

"Shut up."

Ten more minutes of pain shooting up and down his leg and Lincoln wasn't sure he could take much more. He'd never admit it out loud, but just the sight of a needle, any type of needle, made his palms sweat, and having one actually push into him over and over and over and over again was torturous. Every downward tug made his leg feel like it was on fire, and it was nowhere near over.

Trust Michael to pick out the biggest design he could find to etch into Lincoln's skin and convince him that it was cool.

"You okay?" Michael asked after a while, his voice soft and void of its earlier mockery.

"Just get over here," Lincoln bit out, grabbing onto his brother's arm. Lincoln heard the scrape of another chair being pulled over could feel Michael next to him without having to open his eyes.

He grabbed onto Michael's shoulder and Michael let him squeeze as hard as he wanted, saying nothing but "you're okay," a few times throughout the rest of the process. In any other situation Lincoln probably would have teased his brother for the cheesy words, but at the moment he let them pass, feeling oddly comforted. After a while he got used to the pierce of the needle and didn't even notice the pain much anymore when he dug his fingers into Michael.

When it was all over Lincoln blinked his eyes open, feeling faintly ridiculous for the tears lining them. His head pounded from keeping his eyes closed so tightly for so long, but he couldn't even feel anything in his leg. He glanced down at the finished product, black and twisting and so badass, despite the red skin surrounding it. Lincoln smiled, feeling almost high with accomplishment and pride.

Michael slid off of his chair to kneel next to Lincoln's leg, eyes moving over the tattoo as if studying a foreign object. Lincoln watched as his brother reached a hand over, but before he could bark out not to touch it, the hand stopped and hovered just over Lincoln's skin, like Michael was touching it without actually touching.

"I like it," Michael said finally, seeming to come to a conclusion about the tattoo. "Looks good."

"You think?" Lincoln asked, and craned his neck so he could to look more fully at his new body art. He nodded in agreement. "Me too. Good choice," he said, giving Michael a light smack on the chest. Michael beamed at him.

Lincoln stood from the chair with a wince as he put weight on the leg, but the pain was mostly meaningless now that he had the design permanently etched into his skin.

"I could carry you if you want," Michael grinned at him and Lincoln rolled his eyes.

"I'm fine," Lincoln glowered, shoving Michael away while Michael just laughed at him.

-

"When'd you get that?"

Lincoln glanced at his brother and then down at where Michael was staring at the tattoo around his ankle, just barely visible beneath his rolled-up pant-leg.

"'Bout a month ago."

"In – in prison?" Michael asked, tripping over the words.

Lincoln nodded and turned away, back to the duffle bag he was unpacking. Michael's chest burned as he watched his brother. He'd just gotten Lincoln back, yet it felt like he was still far away, disconnected somehow even sitting right here in front of him.

"How – I mean, they don't have a tattoo artist in jail, do they?" Michael asked with a hesitant smile, trying to make Lincoln smile as well. He didn't.

"You'd be surprised," Lincoln replied cryptically as he pulled off his pants and started rooting around for a new pair.

Michael chewed his lower lip and tried to remember when it wasn't so hard to talk to his brother. He looked down at the twisting, coiled tattoo that ran down the side of Lincoln's left leg, three-years-old now and still as dark and perfectly shaped as it was the day he got it.

The choppy, angry-looking barbed wire that circled the ankle of Lincoln's right leg was a harsh contrast to the beauty of his first tattoo. It stood out against his skin as if it didn't belong there – rough and uneven, a light-greenish color that almost made it hard to distinguish the pattern and made Michael wonder again who did it for Lincoln. He wasn't even completely sure he wanted to know how his brother got the ink; it was another new part of this man that he seemed to hardly know anymore after two months apart, another reminder of how things had recently changed so drastically.

Michael was glad when Lincoln finally pulled on a new pair of pants, covering up the ugly new tattoo on his ankle so that Michael didn't have to stare transfixed at it anymore. He hoped he wouldn't have to see it again for a while and pushed the image out of his head with a last fleeting wonder of how Lincoln was able to get through the application of such a nasty-looking tattoo, and if he'd had someone to hold onto while it was happening.

-end-