Title: Freedom
Fandom: Prison Break
Characters: Michael, Lincoln
Prompt: 072: Fixed
Word Count: 1,312
Rating: G
Summary: Michael and Lincoln take a trip to Mexico so that Michael can relax a little.

Disclaimer: Paul Scheuring and a whole lot of other people who aren't me own Prison Break.

When Michael was nineteen he started having panic attacks. He'd get hit randomly with nauseous feelings of dread and worry, unable to breathe and feeling three steps away from passing out. He took two weeks off of school in the middle of his freshman year second semester and was well aware that he'd have to work twice as hard once he returned, but Lincoln twisted his arm (literally) and dragged him off on a road trip that ended in Mexico.

They spent eleven days in a cramped little room with only one bed and played rock-paper-scissors each night to decide who got it. By the third night Michael was sure that Lincoln knew that he always went for paper first and was letting him win. But on the fourth night when he tried scissors, Lincoln had switched it up as well and put out paper, followed by a half-hearted, "dammit, you win again."

The place they stayed was cheap and sleazy at first glance, but Michael fell in love with it after a day and spent lots of early mornings trying out his Spanish with the owners who laughed good-naturedly at his mistakes, and long afternoons swinging back and forth in the hammock stung out on the back porch with a book in his lap.

Most days Lincoln would get up sometime in the early afternoon and disappear for a few hours before turning up with two Coronas and a lime. He'd pull a chair over next to the hammock, pass a bottle to Michael while pushing him back and forth with his foot, and blather on about some gorgeous woman he'd met or the group of kids he saw out surfing and how they should try it. Michael would respond by laughing and drinking, and neither one brought up the panic attacks.

By the seventh day, with the sound of waves crashing in his ears, sun warming his shoulders, and Lincoln pushing him back and forth, Michael started having trouble even remembering what it felt like not to breathe.

On the afternoon of the eleventh day Lincoln pulled his chair up next to Michael, handed him a beer and a slice of lime, and Michael waited to hear about the hot brunette or cute blonde or whatever other random person Lincoln had met that day.

"So, you're feeling better, huh?" Lincoln said instead, and Michael blinked, coughing a bit as the first gulp of beer slid down his throat. "You seem like things are – like you're feeling better."

"I – yeah, I guess," Michael replied, unprepared for this. They hadn't talked at all about any of the obvious subjects, including how long they would stay there, and for the first time in his life Michael had barely even spared a thought for the future. Now that the issue was being brought up, he knew he didn't want to leave.

"I like it here," he added, feeling meek and lame.

"Yeah, me too," Lincoln replied, turning his face towards the ocean. "But we've gotta go back."

"We don't really have to, you know," Michael said as he looked down at the hammock's webbing and fiddled with the corner of his book. "We could stay around here, look for jobs or something… there're probably some cheap apartments around…"

Lincoln smiled, looking a little gloomy, and turned back to look back at Michael as he leaned back in his chair.

"That sounds nice, but we can't. We have to go home. You've got school, and I…" he shrugged and shook his head with another sad smile. "We have to go. You have to get back to school."

Michael nodded and didn't look up, hating that Lincoln was right. Lincoln nodded also and took a long sip from his bottle and neither one said anything else for a while. When Lincoln finished his beer he gave the hammock a mighty shove and it flipped over, tossing Michael out onto the porch with a smack. He gave a yelp in response and glared up at Lincoln once he was able to untangle the foot trapped in the hammock. Lincoln grinned and tossed the leftover lime slices at him before reaching a hand down, which Michael took with a grumble.

"C'mon, we'll go do something tonight, something memorable," Lincoln told him emphatically, laughing as Michael gave him a shove and followed him off the porch.

Getting a tattoo was not something Michael had been expecting – was not, in fact, anything he'd anticipated on doing ever in his life – but he was always an impressionable drunk, so all it took was three more beers and a little bit of prodding from Lincoln to get him to agree.

Later he would swear it was the alcohol that caused him to choose a pair of tiny black wings on the back of his right shoulder, but when Lincoln laughed the next morning and asked why he got a design that meant "freedom," Michael shot back that at least he didn't get what looked like a big stupid bug on his arm. Lincoln glowered in response and agreed that maybe next time he shouldn't do three shots of tequila before heading into a tattoo parlor.

When Michael got back to school a few days later and showed his roommate what he'd done while away, he again got a good ribbing for the "girly paint". Michael frowned and his roommate laughed and rolled up his sleeve to share his own bad tattoo that he'd gotten when he "was real drunk that time".

Michael sat in the library for what felt like the next three days straight trying to catch up on his work and prepare for his upcoming midterms, and around dinnertime three days removed from Mexico he began to feel his chest tighten. It came in the middle of a reading on Much Ado About Nothing, a nothing paper for a nothing Introduction to Shakespeare class that he only took to fulfill a requirement, and he couldn't figure out why he was falling apart now. But his palms were starting to sweat and all of the air had somehow escaped his lungs and he closed his eyes tightly in an effort to squeeze back the tears that were forming against his will. He crushed the pen in his hand and leaned hard against his chair.

His eyes snapped open when he felt a twinge of pain shoot through him as his shoulder pressed into the back of the chair, hard wood pushing against his sore tattoo. An image of the beach sprang into his head and he could almost feel the soft rocking motion of Lincoln pushing him back and forth, and suddenly the air was back in his lungs. He took several deep, wobbly breaths and his hands stopped shaking, and after a few more minutes he felt the tension ease.

For years later every time Michael felt the first few stabs of panic he'd shrug his shoulder, flex a muscle, or press his back against whatever he might be leaning against, even for just a few seconds. He couldn't feel the tattoo on his skin anymore after a few weeks, but he knew it was there, and just knowing that brought him back to Mexico. He could feel himself swaying back and forth when he thought of the tattoo that he barely even saw anyway.

Silly as the thing looked, Michael felt like he was loosing a part of himself as his first tattoo was covered up by his second one. It was almost like loosing Mexico and loosing Lincoln all over again, stupid as the idea sounded even in his own head.

After his new tattoo was completed Michael stared at himself in the mirror and swore that he would get a new one, one he actually wanted and liked and wasn't simply necessary, once they got to Panama.

-end-