vyncapervynca (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} vyncapervynca) wrote,@ 2007-09-06 12:27:00 |
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| Current mood: |  sleepy |
| Entry tags: | fanfic, kesa, second chances |
Second chances.
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything, not Prison Break and not Paul Adelstein.
Sad but true.
Spoilers until Sona, after that only my sick imagination.
Dedicated to the lovely Kirsty, for her great patience with me and for being my friend.
Thank you so much for making it possible.
Note: Sorry for a late update but it was holiday time here and I have been away; Thank you very much for reading and for all the nice reviews, they've made me very, very happy!
Pairing: Sara/Kellerman.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: No more small hope of salvation for Paul Kellerman.
Title: Second chances
Chapter title: Salvation (II)
By Lylou
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“-It was good knowing you, Sara.”
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Paul closed the room door blindly behind him with his free arm; the one that wasn’t busy around Sara’s waist, keeping her against his mouth.
Sara heard the thud of the door closing somewhere behind them but she just closed her eyes tighter and kissed Paul angrily and passionately, as if she didn’t hate him so much that she couldn’t even think straight; as if Paul’s salty taste on her tongue and his strong hands searching blindly for the clasp of her dress, wasn’t something she had thought about during many lonely and guilty walks at sundown, along the dark, narrow streets of Panama City.
And Paul knew it; he had known it the second that he saw her, beautiful, guilty and walking along the most dangerous street in the whole city.
But he didn’t want to think about any of that now; Paul didn’t want to think about anything other than her body pressed against his, or her small hands together behind his neck; so he tightened his grip around Sara and kissed her, feverish and needy, as if his warm taste in her mouth would save them now.
He could feel her strawberry scent floating in the hot air of the room perfectly, and Paul smiled against Sara’s lips, when he sensed her breathing interrupted by his consuming kisses.
Sara could feel how all the blood quickly accumulated in her cheeks, and how a warm shiver rose slowly along her back when Paulleft her mouth and her lips to cover her neck, her earlobe and all her pale skin between them with small kisses, leaving an invisible and poisonous trace of hot saliva and kisses upon her skin.
Slowly, Sara pulled back a few inches from Paul’s mouth, but stayed in his arms, feeling his breathing upon her loose hair, and with his addictive and dark taste still burning on her tongue.
Sara looked at him in that barely illuminated room, feeling her heart beating fast against his chest and his arms tightly around her; but then Sara saw confusion, desire and something much more dangerous floating in Paul eyes; Sara smiled imperceptibly and sadly, she licked her lips, slowly and close to his mouth, before speaking in a soft, teasing voice:
-“…I’m sure you have a great bathtub in your bathroom Paul.
Do you want me to go turn on the tap?”
He smiled without humor and looked at Sara in silence for a few seconds, feeling her hate and her guilt in every word, but without releasing her.
“She hates you, Paul, with all her heart; she hates you so much that this runs the risk of turning into something like love.
Especially if she keeps caressing the scars underneath your shirt like that.”
Paul looked straight at her and spoke in a low tone, still near the room door and with all the lights off:
-“No… We’ve already played that game, Sara…
And I lost it.”
Sara blinked and looked at him, confused by his answer and by his low, warm tone; too close to her ear, and dangerously near to an apology.
She didn’t want a fucking apology, not now.
Sara looked away from Paul’s eyes, still fixed on hers, and stepped back a few inches from him, but she could still feel the heat radiating off his body and his hands on the small of her back.
Apparently, to spy on, lie to, kidnap, electrocute and almost kill her, didn’t scare Sara so much as his last words did.
And for one moment, Paul thought that she was going to open the door behind her, and finally run away from him; that maybe Sara Tancredi wasn’t as lost, alone and guilty as he had thought before, when he had kissed her in that narrow, orange street.
But Paul could still feel Sara’s small hands against his chest, touching those five small scars underneath the black fabric.
“Five shots underneath your skin and it seems like you didn’t save her after all, Paul...”
Then Sara looked at him again, and something floating behind her big eyes made him understand that their chance of salvation had been left behind long ago.
Tonight was the time for payback, for a turn of fate, for both of them.
And he was damn sure, when Sara drew nearer him again, so much, that for a moment, Paul thought that they were in her kitchen again, searching for the soy sauce for the Teriyaki chicken and listening to the low notes of Van Morrison in the background.
But they were not.
Not anymore; Now they were both miles and miles away from that evening, and Paul knew it when he felt Sara`s breathing upon his neck and her lips touching, lightly and purposely, the skin of his ear when she whispered, teasing him:
-“No Paul…
…I was the one who jumped out of that window, to escape from you.”
He looked at her in silence for a few seconds, feeling the warmth of her body pressed against his and her hand still on his chest, then smiled weakly and slowly brushed her hair behind her ear, caressing her cheek gently in the process. His voice sounded low when he whispered:
-“It doesn’t seem to me like you’ve escaped at all, Sara.”
Paul was about to add something else when she wrapped her arms around his neck and held onto him as tightly as she could, crushing her lips against his in a consuming and desperate kiss.
And when Paul felt her hot tongue slipping into his mouth and her fingertips brushing against the four-day stubble on his jaw, that small voice in his mind pleading for the return of his self-control and willpower was silenced, as if by magic.
“She killed you… She needs to pay a little.”
In one fast move, he pushed Sara passionately, pressing her back against the closed room door, and Paul smiled wickedly when he heard a small and surprised moan slipping between her lips as he pressed his entire body against hers to pin her against the door, planting hot kisses all over her face and neck.
Paul’s angry and possessive kisses upon her skin didn’t exactly feel like salvation, but it wasn’t salvation that Sara was searching for that night, so she closed her eyes slowly, and moaned a small, guilty and delighted “-…Paul…” into his ear.
And then, everything else in the room, and in the hot and already darkened Panama City, seemed so much smaller and further away to him.
“Fuck off Scofield… She is moaning my name.”
Paul pressed Sara harder up against the door and crushed his lips against hers, until he could felt her gasping for breath between his feverish kisses;thenhe left her mouth and kissed her neck and her earlobe, feeling the strawberry scent of her skin and of her loosened hair intoxicating him, warm and merciless, and Sara’s fluttered breath upon his neck.
He followed the path back to her mouth along her pale skin and captured her lips with his in a needy and primal kiss, feeling her hot taste burning onto his tongue and her small hands searching blindly for the buttons of his shirt.
Paul felt the warmth of her skin underneath the thin, green satin dress, and the hint of her perfume slipping quickly underneath his clothes and into his brain; and then, pressing Sara’s fragile body against the door, between whispers and hot and angry kisses, Paul Kellerman understood that it was going to be impossible to remove her scent from those clothes, and from his memory, after that night.
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Three hours later, Sara was still in his bed, lying naked beside him with her auburn hair spread over the pillow and her shoulders.
She had her back to him, awake and looking through the big window out to the dark Panama City.
Paul could still feel the taste of her saliva on his tongue, and the salty sweat upon his skin, but most of all, he could hear Sara’s quiet breathing only a few inches from him in the dark room.
“When was the last time that you heard other breathing beside yours in the early morning, Paul?
Maybe Caroline in the Marriott, the night that you set off the whole Burrows thing….?”
He couldn’t remember it now, but Paul knew instinctively that he wasn’t going to easily forget Sara Tancredi’s warm, naked body underneath his, and how she had whispered his name into his ear, with that unique and painful mix of pleasure, guilt and hot saliva on her lips. Just like Paul knew that he wouldn’t forget Sara, seated naked in his lap, with her body covered by their sweat, and touching, hypnotized, those five scars in his bare chest with her long fingers, or the way she had looked at him after that, scared and thankful in that shadowy room, or Sara’s loose hair in his face, or her guilty and much-needed kisses…
Paul looked at her again and passed his finger slowly up the curve of her naked back, but she didn’t move; he knew that she was awake in the same way that he knew that Sara wasn’t going to spend the entire night in his bed.
“But you would like that, wouldn’t you Paul?”
He moved closer to her, until his breathing moved her hair and Sara answered by passing her hand slowly over her long neck and her shoulder.
But she didn’t turn to look at him.
“But the worst, darkest part of you, wants Sara to spend the night among your sheets and your arms, only to see what will happen tomorrow… But that’s a dangerous idea, Paul, because she could throw your heart into a mincer and you would still be pleading for more.”
Paul closed his eyes slowly, trying to silence that voice in his mind. He sensed Sara moving slowly beside him and when he opened his eyes again, Paul saw two dark bruises on the pale skin of her back, which had been hidden by her loose hair until now.
He touched them slightly and Sara jumped at his touch, finally turning to look at him:
-“Did I make those?”
His voice sounded low and like a tiny apology to her ears, but Sara smiled weakly, and whispered a bit uncomfortably:
-“No.”
Paul looked at her in silence through the dark and hot air of the room for a few seconds before asking, harshly, but concerned for her answer:
-“Someone hurt you?”
Sara smiled sadly and he saw mixed memories and feelings floating behind her eyes. Paul was going to add something else, surely, something more stupid, more dangerous, something like: “-Don’t worry Sara; you won’t have to sleep with any more bad guys to feel guilty and miserable for having sent your boyfriend to prison, because I’m here now and, hell, maybe I can still save you after all.”
But when Sara spoke, still naked and lying next to him, that small, dangerous ray of hope left him painfully:
-“Yes…
…But don’t get jealous, Paul. Even without your violence, even without an iron, you’re still the one who hurts me the most.”
After saying it, Sara looked at him in silence for a few seconds, secretly hoping that her harsh words would have hurt him as much as his hot and needy kisses had her.
But Paul just remained silent, looking at her through the shadows within the room and wondering how in hell he was going to save her and, on the way, save himself, when he could still smell the lingering hint of her perfume on his skin. But of course Sara didn’t know that, so after a few seconds more in the uncomfortable silence, she sighed, disappointed, and got up from the warm, unmade bed and started to search for her green dress in the half-darkness.
Sara dressed quickly and in silence, and while she was searching for her left sandal, she felt Paul getting up slowly and half-naked from the bed, and walking to where she was.
She felt the heat radiating off his body and his breathing upon her hair only a few inches behind her and, in particular, she felt Paul’s now familiar hands around her waist holding her close and gently closing the zipper at her back. Sara tried really hard not to think about all the delightful things that those hands had done to her in the last few hours… but especially, she tried not to think about how those same masculine and warm hands that were tenderly zipping up her dress now, had drowned her only six months before.
“But this was what you wanted, Sara; this is why you kissed him in that orange street, you wanted the guilt, the regrets, and you needed some kind of human contact. And, besides, all the other horrible and self-destructive things that you’ve done to yourself during the last months haven’t hurt you as much as sleeping with him.
Salvation has never been further away than it is now, Sara.”
Paul, completely unaware of her thoughts, left a small kiss on her shoulder before letting go of her completely, and Sara turned slowly to look at him, with her hand already on the doorknob.
His voice sounded low and warm, and was too close to her ear to be completely accidental:
-“Do you need me to take you to your hotel…?”
Sara pressed her lips together and tightened her hands on the handle before speaking, without even looking at him, in a sad and distant tone, very different to the warm, guilty one that she had used when she had moaned his name underneath him, only two hours ago:
-“Stop doing that, Paul… I hate it.”
She opened the door in one fast movement and the soft light from the hotel corridor lazily illuminated the room. Sara looked at him finally, and spoke again:
-“I don’t want to be saved Paul; I wouldn’t have come here tonight if I wanted that.
I don’t want you, and I don’t want your fucking compassion.”
He looked at her in silence for a few seconds, thinking for the very first time, that maybe those five bullets killing him slowly had been completely useless, that neither of them could be saved after all.
Paul looked at her but didn’t say anything, he only nodded in silence, and then Sara left his room and closed the door behind her without looking back.
Paul touched the wooden door for a few seconds; the room was in complete darkness again. He felt the need to run after Sara along that illuminated corridor and to drag her back to his room and not let her out of his bed until both of them were saved… But he didn’t, and he couldn’t help but wonder if he was ever going to see her again.
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But he did.
Three nights after that, when Sara’s warm scent was beginning to vanish from his fingertips, Paul heard a soft knock on his door, and his hand moved unconsciously through the darkness to his gun lying on the small night-table beside him.
He walked to the room door and opened it slowly, knowing very well whom he was going to find in the elegant and well-illuminated corridor.
Sara was there again, only a few inches from him, and this time she was wearing a long, white dress; she had her big eyes wide open and fixed on him, as if she hadn’t been completely sure if he would open the door.
But of course he did, because now, every time that he touched that damn door he could vividly remember pressing Sara’s body against it and her gasping for breath between his feverish and needy kisses; and now, every time that Paul closed that door and the rest of the damn world stayed out, he tried to think of anything but how he had pressed Sara up against that same door two nights before and how he had blindly slid his free hand underneath her green dress to slowly pull off those very panties.
Of course, not thinking about all that was almost impossible now, with a very lost and helpless Sara in front of him again, in the privacy of a five star hotel corridor at midnight.
She didn’t say anything; Sara only crushed down her lips against his and Paul hugged and kissed her in the threshold of the open door.
He felt the intoxicating heat of her skin on his hands, underneath the white fabric of her dress, and walked slowly inside his room, keeping Sara tightly in his embrace and against his lips, and barely listening to how she closed the door blindly behind her.
And then everything happened again.
Her hot whispers and faltering words against his ear, Sara’s lips hovering, warm and guilty, upon the scars on his chest, her nails digging into his back. His hands touching and covering every small inch of her skin in a desperate attempt to keep her scent on his fingertips and in his memory for as long as possible…
“Do you think that you are any nearer salvation now than two nights ago, Paul?
Is she?
Do you still think you can save her?”
At least there weren’t any more dark bruises on Sara’s naked body this time; Paul had made sure, caressing and leaving small kisses thoroughly upon her skin, and he had even smiled, secretly satisfied, when he had seen Sara closing her eyes slowly underneath him, at the feel of the four-day stubble on his jaw brushing lightly against her skin.
Apparently, kissing him and sleeping with him hurt her more than anything else, or anyone else, so Paul couldn’t help but think that maybe they had made a little progress since the last night.
Two hours later, both were lying in the unmade and moist bed in silence, and still with all the muscles of their bodies aching wonderfully, acting like a dark reminder of what they had done.
Paul caressed her arm slowly in the darkness and felt their sweat and scent dried on Sara’s skin. He remembered that first evening, on that church staircase bathed by the light of the sunset, with the air around them smelling like blueberry pie, the sound of her laugh still in his ears… That woman didn’t exist anymore.
He had lost her, and surely Scofield had lost her too.
Paul closed his eyes, slowly and surprisingly flooded by the memories, and looked to the ventilator spinning silently above them in the dark ceiling.
He spoke in a low voice without looking at her:
-“I have killed so many people, that I can no longer remember who the first one was… but I don’t spend a day without thinking about you.
…Does that mean anything to you, Sara?”
She smiled weakly and kissed his bare chest and his neck slowly, then she got up from the bed and started to dress in silence. When she finished and was about to leave the room, Sara looked at Paul and spoke with a small playful tone in her voice:
-“Yes, Paul…
…I think that it means you’re getting old.”
She left the room finally, and Paul smiled weakly in the bed at her little joke, knowing very well that she was going to come to him again.
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As Paul had predicted that night, there were more midnight visits from Sara to his hotel room, more hot whispers into his ear, more needy and desperate kisses in the half-darkness and more guilty, thrilling sex. It lasted for almost two great and less lonely months.
And during that time, Paul was sure of two things:
The first one - that Sara still loved and missed the fucking Michael Scofield enough to continue sleeping with him more than four nights a week.
And the second and much more dangerous one - that Sara hated him less and less with every visit to his bed at midnight and with each hot kiss and caress of her skin.
So much, that one night Sara spent the whole night in his bed, and at dawn, when the warm breeze started to slip through the open window, she dressed slowly and in silence, illuminated only by the soft, yellowish light of daybreak. Paul saw her searching distractedly for her purse and with her long, loose hair, and he remembered thinking:
“She’s worried about something; she’s scared of something.
And she is beautiful. She is so beautiful that those five scars, the pain and your massive loss of blood that day, seems worthwhile.
Surely that’s why he’s in Sona, God I would go there too if I thought that that would be what finally saved her.”
Paul sat down slowly on the bed, watching in silence as she dressed, until asking:
-“Burrows never asks you where you go at night?”
She stopped what she was doing and looked at him, a bit uncomfortable at the dangerous and personal slant of the question. She answered softly:
-“… I don’t think… that he likes me.
I guess he’s too busy blaming me, to care about me.”
Paul licked his lips on reflex and smiled weakly before adding in a half-joking tone:
-“I can kill him, if you want.”
Sara chuckled softly for the first time in weeks and walked to the bed again; she bent down close to him and kissed Paul’s lips, slowly and gently, for the very first time since they had begun their desperate, suicidal relationship.
Sara felt his warmth against her skin, his strong hands in her hair and his familiar lips kissing her lovingly.
And Paul knew then that that had been their first real kiss.
The first kiss not induced by hate, guilt or loneliness.
And of course, Sara knew it too, because she tried to get away from him. But when she tried to move back slowly from his lips, Paul held her gently by the arm and pulled her to him, kissing her one more time and trying to keep her close for a moment longer, feeling her warm scent intoxicating him and her hair in his face.
After that, Paul released her softly and she drew back a few inches from his mouth; he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear slowly, feeling Sara’s warm breathing upon his face, his lips hovering lightly against hers when he whispered his own “I’m sorry” in that room illuminated only by day-break:
-“I do, Sara…
…Care about you.”
She closed her eyes slowly at his confession and left a fast kiss on his lips, before pulling away completely to tell him, guiltily:
-“I know.
That’s why I can’t come back, Paul.”
And after she said it, Sara opened the door slowly and left the room.
And this time, Paul Kellerman was absolutely sure that salvation had just passed without even stopping.
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For the next few weeks, Paul didn’t see Sara.
No more visits to his room at midnight.
No more small hope of salvation for Paul.
One evening, he even walked through that narrow, orange street where he had first seen her on that distant, warm dusk, but he didn’t find her.
“Isn’t fate a funny thing, Paul?
Kicking your ass, every time you turn a corner.”
The same fate that had put Sara in his way the first time, the same fate that had jammed his own gun against his temple that evening, the one that had made him find Sara one hot, orange evening in a narrow street of Panama City, that same fucking destiny had apparently decided that they were no longer worth the time or effort…that the woman who was laughing and eating blueberry cake on a stairway bathed by the July sun, had faded away forever.
Of course, Paul could have found her.
He had followed her thousands of early mornings, just like before, to her expensive, elegant hotel, still fascinated and scared by that aura of loneliness and fragility that always seemed to surround her.
He could’ve knocked at her room door one midnight, but somehow, he hoped he wouldn’t have to, because Paul still waited, secretly and for the first time in his life, in hope that fate would turn, just one last time, for them.
“What is it Paul… is that faith?
Have faith and salvation been poisoning you so slowly, that you haven’t noticed?
That you’ve only seen it now that it’s too late and she’s no longer in your bed?”
But Paul couldn’t be sure, because he didn’t know a damn thing about faith or salvation.
But he knew a hell of a lot about fate and destiny.
Paul could have written a fucking book about fate and destiny.
Especially after the last day he had spent in that hotel room.
While Paul was packing his things to finally move to his new (and like everything else in his life – fake) house, paid by the poor taxpayers, in a small, cowardly attempt to leave behind that bed, that door and everything else in that room that reminded him of her, and when Sara’s smell had completely and painfully disappeared from his sheets and from his fingertips, someone knocked at his door.
And Paul could feel fate waiting for him on the other side.
He opened the door, knowing very well who was behind it:
-“Hi Sara.”
Paul smiled weakly when she saw her; more than three weeks had passed since that dawn that he had seen her saying a silent “goodbye” to him for a second time in their lives, and Paul couldn’t help but think that now she was more beautiful than ever.
She was more beautiful than on that evening, when he had seen her walking alone and lost in a narrow and sunbathed street of the city, or more beautiful than on that distant day, when Lance and him had knocked at her apartment door with dinner…
God, suddenly it seemed to him as if a thousand years had passed between that day and now.
“How could you have known, that melancholy was a side-effect of happiness, Paul?”
And when Sara smiled, slowly and more radiantly than ever before, Paul knew that everything that had happened in between no longer meant anything.
Because for a second time in his life, Paul could see the woman that had laughed happily while she ate blueberry pie on that distant July evening; because maybe, after many nights in his bed and after some half-confessions, Sara had forgiven him.
And maybe, after all the guilt, the pain and those five scars in his chest, Paul had saved her.
Sara spoke warmly, smiling softly from the threshold:
-“Hi… I’m glad you’re still here.
I wouldn’t have known where to find you otherwise…”
Paul licked his lips slowly in a gesture typical to him, thinking again about destiny and second chances; and after that, he spoke warmly but with that condescending tone, the patented Paul Kellerman smirk:
-“… Then it must be fate, because I’m about an hour away from leaving this damn room forever.”
Sara smiled, cheerful, but wondering, as always with this man, where Lance ended and Paul started. Where the exact point was that separated them; that lay nearest to the dangerous truth.
God… She was going to miss that.
She nodded slowly, still smiling, from the doorstep, and looked intensely at him before she spoke:
-“Yeah… it has to be fate.
He’s free, Paul.
Michael’s going to be released. Tomorrow.”
He looked at her in silence for a few seconds, assimilating the new information.
When he spoke, Paul’s voice was a bit cold, but strangely honest:
-“I’m glad for you, Sara.”
-“You are?”
Her question and her tone caught him off guard and he smiled weakly; he thought about his answer for a few seconds and looked straight into her big eyes:
-“Yes… I’m happy for you.
And besides, that’s what you wanted all this time, isn’t it? Your tattooed Prince Charming.”
Sara looked at him, a little confused, but didn’t say anything. Paul spoke again, but this time in a warm and teasing tone:
-“What? You expected a jealous scene or something, Sara…? That’s not my style. You already know that.”
Both smiled weakly at his words, knowing too well that all that sounded a lot like “Goodbye”.
-“Yeah Paul… I know your style.”
Sara smiled weakly and saw a familiar half-smile floating on Paul’s lips when he spoke:
-“And besides, we could still be friends.”
Sara’s chuckle sounded softly along the illuminated corridor, knowing very well that there was no longer anything else left for them, and Paul smiled weakly and a little sadly, finally sure that he had saved her after all.
“That was the only thing that you wanted during all this time, wasn’t it?
To save her, so that you could keep at least a small piece of your soul.
She was always his, and you knew it all along.”
Paul looked straight at her and slowly questioned:
-“Why are you here, Sara?”
She smiled delicately and caught his hand in hers slowly before speaking, in a warm and hopeful tone that Paul hadn’t ever heard from her:
-“I just want you to know… that you saved me.”
Paul looked intensely, and a bit surprised, at her moistened eyes and squeezed her hand gently before making the most honest confession in his whole life:
-“You saved me a little too, Sara.”
She moved toward him slowly, so much that Paul felt her strawberry scent intoxicating him again and her loose hair on his face; then Sara left a slight and fast kiss on his cheek and took a few steps away from him.
She smiled nervously and brushed away her hair from her face in a shy and cute gesture, and then spoke warmly:
-“Goodbye, Paul.”
-“…Goodbye, Sara.”
She looked at him one last time and smiled, thankful, then she walked away slowly along the corridor.
He closed the door slowly and smiled weakly in the untidy room with his suitcase open, thinking about destiny, second chances and salvation.
Especially salvation.
And Paul couldn’t help but smile again while he continued packing his things slowly, knowing that that had surely been the last time he would see Sara, that he would listen to her laugh, feel her scent floating in the air, no more guilty nights, no more desperate kisses…
Unless, of course, fate had other plans for them.
The end.
Sorry for a late update, thank you for reading, and for all the nice reviews, they've made me very, very happy!
