Have a little faith, there`s magic in the night...

Bad habits

2008-10-21T21:28:54Z

Disclaimer: I don’t own Prison Break, sad but true.
Rating: R
Summary: He had enough love to save the both of them.
Pairing: Michael/Sara
Spoilers for 4x01 and 4x02.
To my very patient and very lovely Maria.
Title: Bad habits

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“-It's not your fault. It's not.”

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She really didn’t know how it started.

It was the same old sad and pathetic story of her life: getting dragged through the events of her life without even knowing when everything went to hell.

Or maybe not.

Maybe it was just the opposite; maybe she was the one who irreparably caused these things to happen, maybe it was some kind of Tancredi proverbial fate…

The guilt.

The second night there, Sara Tancredi ran fast, without wanting to stop and head back to the narrow and silent bed she had left in the dusty warehouse.

That night, all the pain, hate, fury, desolation and fear overflowed her emotional gates and made her go unnoticed to a dark and shabby bar relatively near the warehouse.

She could smell the sour scent of the saltpeter and hear the sound of the waves crashing against the concrete pier over and over again; she loved the ocean, she always had. Even now, when all it held was a dark and vague promise to her.

To them.

Because apparently the great Sara Tancredi could come back from the dead, but she couldn’t stay sober long enough to spend the whole night in a small bed with the man she loves.

Because she really does love Michael Scofield; every scar, bruise and guilty part of her is sure of that.

But suddenly she seems to be dangerously near the place where everything started turning into a mess for her.

In a bar.

Sitting on a stool, smelling the unforgettable and familiar scent of smoke, loneliness and alcohol in the dark air of the place, with a glass of cheap, sharp and very missed whiskey in her hand, she was waiting for one of the men in there to take the empty stool next to her. Or worse yet; maybe he would wake up and find her, like he always did. “Even when you are dead, even the rest of the world including yourself, thinks that you are dead, he finds you. Michael Scofield - always to the rescue”

Sara smiled bitterly to herself and brought the thick glass to her lips, until she could feel the taste of the metallic and sharp alcohol in her mouth, slipping down her throat, the miserable liquid burning everything. She was now a step farther from salvation than the night before.

“As if there were any hope or salvation for the both of you by now, because as far as you know there aren’t many super-heroes with nose bleeds.”

It is not his fault and she knows it. She is actually pretty sure about that, but on nights such as these, making everything his fault is just too fucking tempting to resist. Because making Michael Scofield suffer makes her own pain more bearable; because she is weak. She always has been weak when it comes to guilt and that weakness makes her fall into her bad and destructive habits over and over again; such as alcohol.

She raised her glass in silence and smiled lacking humor before swallowing the yellowish alcohol in one go.

Sara closed her eyes and felt the poison inside her, burning her mouth, her throat and her digestive tract while it drove her away from salvation; and for those precious moments in which her body tried to recover from the poison inside her, nothing else but the burning and the dizziness existed for her and she re-discovered in secret that she loved those short moments.

Sara made a silent and universal gesture to the barman and smiled at him when he refilled her empty glass, while she continued waiting in that stool.

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During the first seconds, when Michael woke up he was sure that she was dead.

That he had lost her forever and that no bloody and tragic revenge was going to bring her back to him.

So, after some seconds more of unbearable pain and grief Michael remembered that she wasn’t actually gone forever; the joy however vanished quickly when he realized that he was in an empty bed. Again.

Michael sighed frustrated and kicked the covers –which still had her scent—before realizing that he was having the worst headache in the world and that the pillow was stained with blood. Again.

And it wasn’t his fault what had happened to her --at least, that was what she used to tell him, so many times and in such a convincing manner that Michael had almost convinced himself of that to be true. The thought that he was somehow responsible for the pale scars on her back made him feel sick, and on nights like these, when he woke up half dressed and startled in a small bed without her, it was just too fucking tempting to think that it was actually, his fault.

Slowly, he shifted to the edge of the bunk, hanging his head between his hands, worriedly rubbing his cropped hair, while he was trying to figure it out if he were going to go out to find her again.

Of course, he was; after all it was his fault that she would wake up terrified and unable to stay with him for a whole night. So he was going to go find her like the previous two nights - find her sitting in a bar, poisoning herself with cheap alcohol, waiting for one of the swine there to lead her to the dark and dirty backstreet.

Suddenly he felt all his genius ideas, worries and every single thought leaving his mind quickly along with the haunted idea of his Sara with any other man in the world. He quickly got dressed, secretly knowing that Sara Tancredi was the one and only thing in the universe capable of emptying his always crowded and busy mind.

When Sara was “dead” and gone it was impossible to be mad at her. One thing that Michael remembered from his psychiatric visits during the lowest time in his life, was that people used to pass through an angry state during the grieving process; it was something relatively normal but he didn’t, not with Sara.

The weight of her loss had filled everything inside him, making it impossible for Michael to feel anything other than that… nothing. But now, now that she was alive again it was much easier to be angry at her for dying. It was irrational, selfish and made him feel miserable, but it also left a bitter-sweet taste in his mouth, like a painful payback or a vicious victory for all the pain that her loss had caused at him.

Sitting on the edge of the bunk Michael sighed and looked at his ankle monitor for a few seconds; he wasn’t going to worry about something like that now, besides Michael Scofield was always unable to think about anything else when Sara was involved.

Even now, when she had left –again—the relative safety of his side in their temporary bed and has left to go drink cheap whiskey in a lousy bar, while she waits for him to show up and rescue her for all the times that he did not save her. Bcause it was his fault.

But of course, Michael knew that she had to deal with everything that had happened to her in her particular and self-destructive way, so maybe hurting, pissing, blaming and making him want to die was her way of dealing with it.

And if it was, Michael was more than ready to play the part, no matter how many times she would leave their bed, or if she flirted with or even fucked a complete stranger in a dirty and dark backstreet. Michael would always forgive her; even if she wasn’t able to overcome it ever. Even if his mere proximity in the bed made her feel that miserable and broken that she needed to go to a bar and get drunk enough to fuck strangers. After all, on nights like these Michael Scofield “liked” to think that it was all his fault, so by now it didn’t matter to him if Sara wasn’t able to love him anymore, because he had love enough to save the both of them.

Michael left the warehouse and the cool breeze and the saltpeter hitting him while he walked rushed along the shadowy boardwalk.

“Maybe you can still save her. Maybe she just wanted to see the stars this time…”

When he was finally standing outside the bar and everything was suddenly red-bright-neon colored, Michael closed his eyes and rubbed his nose bridge in a typical gesture of exhaustion.

The last one was only something sporadic and only it happened to him occasionally: like when they were at a dead end in their search for freedom, or when he saws Alex in his particular grief bubble on a corner, or at some small moment in what Fernando tells him about how it feels his little daughter in his arms… God, a daughter; sometimes Michael Scofield couldn’t help to feel that somehow the future was happening without their permission; But the worst of all was undoubtedly when Sara would run away from his side; at nights like these, the lack of hope haunted Michael Scofield.

He pushed the heavy door open and his lungs filled with heavy smoke, loneliness and alcohol immediately. A few heads turned in his direction, but not her; Sara was sitting at the end of the bar with a golden drink in her hand and with that fragile and isolated air that always made her look ghost-like and distant.

“Hell, after all she has come back from the dead”

Sara was wearing that intense green t-shirt that left her shoulders and her collarbone exposed, it was something small and insignificant but Michael secretly loved that t-shirt and the way it suited her; sometimes when she was wearing it he was unable to focus on anything else than the line of her pale shoulders or her long hair floating around her neck. God, that neck; and collarbone; and shoulders and everything else of her… Michael smiled slight and mischievously until he remembered painfully that the t-shirt showed part of her --and his-- white scars on the back; but of course Sara didn’t know it and he wasn’t going to tell her.

“-Seems that this is becoming a habit…”

Sara smiled without humor at the sound of his voice near her and took another drink of her golden poison without even looking at him. She felt the harsh alcohol trickle down her throat and closed her eyes.

Michael’s voice had sounded hurt, possessive and worried, and Sara felt a rush of guilt mixed with the effects of the cheap alcohol. Refined and elegant as always Michel took the stool next to her and sat close to her and very suddenly very territorially let his long fingers caress her thigh briefly.

And then the other men there, the company, the warehouse, the rest of the world, the scars on her back… everything faded away for Sara.

She had already surrendered and she knew it, a bit of jealousy, a bit of worry, lovesick glances and a lot of guilt and as for her they could go back to that warehouse right now and hide under the covers again, but inside her in a very small and very, very mean spot, Sara couldn’t help to feel that he still had to pay; just a little bit more.

So she whispered:

“-Yeah…well, you know what they say… bad habits die hard.”

Michael’s hand squeezed a bit harder around her thigh and Sara felt a warm vertigo in her stomach and her breath rushed at his touch. In the few nights they had spend together he had obsessively studied her, licked her, kissed her and touched her with the same accuracy and thoroughness in which Michael Scofield did everything else, and usually his very low and very sick-sweet voice into her ear at night was reason enough for her to not want to run away and not feel as if every one of them where totally out of grace, but not on nights like these. Not when she had found more blood stains on his side of the pillow.

“-Yeah… I know a bit about bad habits too”

Michael`s voice sounded husky, broken and a bit guilty; she smiled weakly and with her eyes still fixed on the bottles at the other side of the wooden sticky bar, she smiled and let a small teasing chuckle escape when she whispered:

“-…I’m sure you do.”

She smiled softly and continued, only half joking:

“-… After all, you have broken more laws than I.”

Michael chuckled and sat quietly and a bit embarrassed. After a few seconds more of looking at her out of the corner of his greenish eye, he defended himself with no real interest:

“-Well… I’m not really sure of that.”

He smiled slightly and looked lovingly at her; even now that she was broken, hurt and scared, she was beautiful.

Of his many bad habits, Sara Tancredi was his favorite one. And he knew it.

She looked at him for the first time since he entered the bar and blinked in silence before a small and teary smile appeared on her lips:

“-Yeah… me neither…”

Sara’s voice sounded small and a bit embarrassed; now that everything was broken and burned and missing, and there was blood on his side of the pillow and scars on her back, and guilt and sorrow infecting everyone in that warehouse. She wasn’t even going to mention the almost continued lack of hope or the other million of horrible things that they would never be able to overcome. So there she was again, unable to hold on to the scared and hot tears like a frightened little girl.

Her bottom lip quivered slightly and she felt Michael’s warm and familiar hand leaving her thigh and caressing her cheek gently. And there he was, the great Michael Scofield --the first nose-bleeds hero she had known-- saving her again.

Because of her many bad habits, Michael Scofield was her favorite one.

“-Let’s go.”

Just two hot and husky words and Sara was down from the stool and leaning slightly against him, feeling his arm closed tightly around her waist, while they left the bar. Again. At least, until the next time she needed to be saved.

Sara closed her eyes a little and let Michael guide her slowly and in a comfortable silence back to the warehouse again, feeling the cool breeze in her face, the saltpeter, his familiar hand on her waist and his calm breathing upon her hair.

Sara couldn’t help but think that maybe the next time she would not need go to that crappy bar, maybe the next time it would be enough to fight the lack of hope by just staying at his side in their bed, or just walking along the concrete dock to see the stars…

The end.

Comments are love.

The other thing.

2008-07-21T21:46:38Z

Title: The other thing.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Prison Break… Sad but true.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: For Michael Scofield, fear was the fading memory of her voice
Pairing: Michael/Sara

Spoilers: S1, 2, 3 and vague speculation for season 4

Author’s note: Because sometimes miracles happen, here we go again.

To my very patient and very lovely Maria, thank you.

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“-…But my brother told me there wasn’t anything in the closet but fear. And fear wasn’t real. He said it wasn’t made of anything just…air. Not even that. He said you just have to face it. You just have to open that closet and the monster would disappear.”

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Michael Scofield, still used to wake up with a start in the middle of the night.

The intense humid heat in the dark room filling his lungs and sticking to his skin and also his own memories - blurring painfully in his dreams - used to wake him at night.

Like now.

When he opened his eyes in the darkened room Michael could feel that cold sweat on his skin, which only appears when you have been truly frightened or you are in pain. He took a deep breath, slowly letting the hot air around him inundate his still sleepy senses, while he felt his heart pounding loudly in his ears. A strangled scream had made its way to his throat.

All that never-remembering-a-nightmare-after-you-wake-up-crap, had become something familiar and painful to him, two adjectives that always seemed to go together for Michael Scofield.

But the nightmares; the cold sweats and the strangled screams were only the very first stage of his really, really… really altered sleeping pattern.

Because Michael knew that the second stage was a sudden and overwhelming fear of the darkness surrounding him, he was sure that it was something deeply connected to his childhood. Something that always made his brain plan creative ways of getting out of that apparently strange room, while his body was still paralyzed.

“This is not Chicago”

That was always his first thought. Because every night Michael Scofield would wake up with a start, for a moment, he would think that he was still the man he had been many miles, tears and painful ink-lines ago; always, as if he were stuck in some horrific loop of nightmares and sleepless nights.

But those first two stages were nothing compared with the third and final one. Because when he begins identifying the noises from the outside, slipping through the open balcony door at night, or when he finally starts to defy the darkness and the faltering breathing, that little voice in his head decides to wake up and whisper into his ear that there is something wrong; something terribly wrong.

Something worse than the darkness or the unfamiliar noises from outside. Worse than that strange room and the hot air filling his lungs at a rapid speed. It is what has really awoken him in the middle of the night.

Then everything comes back to him: the dark ink lines underneath his skin, the guilt, the fences, the fear, Sona… Sara.

And that is the exact point in time in which Michael Scofield breaks down every night.

Sara.

Sara and “-She is dead, Michael”

For him, during those first confusing seconds that always seem to pass between the nightmares and the grief, Sara simply consists of a combination of her voice, her smell, her touch and her taste… The parts of her that his brain still holds onto.

And suddenly Michael painfully realizes that there will be a night when he won’t be able to remember her voice anymore, or the way in which she used to say his name, that there will be thousands of small details of what she was that will be gone forever. He realizes that the pass of time and the desire for revenge will erase his memory of her some day. Then he won’t be able to remember her small hands on his face, her breath dancing over his mouth, or that day – which feels like so long ago - he had been almost happy in a train lavatory.

As her memory begins to fade and is replaced by something greater than misery, and her sweet taste is replaced by the ash taste in his mouth, his still groggy and sleepy mind reminds him that she is dead and that there are no blueprints marked on his skin or plan “B” for that.

And it is then that Michael realizes that his older brother was wrong, because fear is actually something very, very real that fills and slowly rots everything in its path, and that it consists of much more than just air. For Michael Scofield, fear was the fading memory of her voice, her beautiful features becoming blurred and soon after forgotten and he just can’t face it, because suddenly the damn closet is so full of fear that all the monsters seems to be outside; in that very dark room with him.

That’s the worst moment of all, when the monsters, the fear, the darkness…everything, means nothing to him and the only thing that exist in the world for Michael is a big black hole, and everything he is or could have been, falls into it and disappears and suddenly there is nothing left for him besides that damn black hole, absorbing and taking everything from him.

The sad truth is that Michael does not care about good and evil, about hope and faith anymore, because in a world where Sara Tancredi can be taken from him, there is no place for faith. He didn’t have the luxury of faith. He doesn’t deserve it.

After all, subconsciously, Michael Scofield is convinced that he is in fact responsible for her dying, and even worse, that he is killing her more and more with every mile he travels fueled by revenge, rage and self-destruction “-She wouldn’t have wanted this Michael… And you know it. “

His older brother’s words might have been right - Hell, he was sure Lincoln was right - but Sara wasn’t there anymore to say what she wanted or didn’t want, and Michael knew that certain people, including himself, had to pay for that.

And there is no epiphany, realization or acceptance at the end, knowing she is gone forever. Michael can’t cry, scream or hit things anymore, because somehow he knows that the black hole has absorbed all that by now, even taking the memory of her from him and now there is nothing left for him except… nothing.

All that happens to him every night, until his eyes finally get accustomed to the darkness around him, and his brain, completely awakened, makes him realize: “No!…She is not dead, don’t fear the hole”

And then, Michael Scofield opens his groggy eyes completely, half doubting yet half convinced that his mind is only playing a cruel trick on him; but it’s not.

She is there, sleeping on her back and only a few inches from his hand.

Michael used to dream that she was alive and then when he woke up he would realize that she was actually dead. But now, every night he dreams about her, he dreams that she is dead, but when he wakes up, she is alive.

Sara’s breathing is calm and her small body moves slowly underneath the blanket, and suddenly Michael remembers having joked around with her yesterday, about how she can sleep with blankets in a tropical climate. It had been one of the very first jokes shared between them since he found her, three days ago, but even then, she had answered with a meek smile.

Sara have been hiding in an anonymous hotel in the outskirts of the city and almost three days ago when he crossed the threshold and saw her, he thought the heat might have left him hallucinating – but what he saw was reality. She was alive.

She was alive and just a few feet from him, but in those initial moments he still was not willing to entirely believe what he saw. Michael remembered saying her name in a low and broken voice and then walking towards her ignoring his doubtful and obsessive mind, as he always did when it was related to that woman. Sara Tancredi, the one and only person on earth that could leave his mind at a complete blank.

He had kissed her: once, twice… hard and possessively, crushing his mouth to hers and touching her hair, her face, her neck, her back… everything of hers that his long fingers could reach, until he sensed his meddling brain screaming for air. Michael had smelled her, tasted her and touched her with his trade mark efficiency and attention to detail, until the last and most doubtful part of his brain was convinced that it was in fact her, Sara. The woman he thought he had lost for good.

And after those first couple of confusing minutes Michael Scofield finally understood that the woman he loved wasn’t dead and hugged her in a merge of guilt, protection and possessiveness that absolutely overwhelmed her; he had burst into tears and until she whispered his name softly against the fabric of his shirt, he didn’t let her go.

That had been almost four days ago but still, everytime Michael wakes up at night, he doesn’t remember it immediately.

After waking up Michael`s great mind - which had gotten him out of two prisons – slowly tried to put all the events of the last few months in order: Fox River, Sara in the infirmary, the riot, Sara in the ceiling with him, the break out, Sara’s broken voice on the phone, being on the run, Sara and him meeting in El Gila, Panamá, Sara and him in that ramshackle cabin saying goodbye to each other, Sona, her in the photo holding the paper, Lincoln’s: “-she is dead Michael”, him trying to keep breathing after that, the second break out, the revenge, her memory fading a little each day… Everything that had happened up until he found her again.

Michael`s extraordinary mind tries to process all that information and all the new ones, to adjust it to the reality of a dark room with Sara sleeping safety at his side. He reminds himself that they are now in an expensive suite of the “Panama Gran Vista Hotel”, paid by Sara’s inheritance. He reminds himself that Lincoln and L.J. are asleep in the suite adjacent to theirs, and he remembers how L.J. cried and hugged Sara three days ago when he saw her. He remembers the mix of guilt, shame and relief overflowing his brother’s eyes…his mind puts all those facts together while he is still looking at her, refraining from touching her out of fear that she will disappear - as if she were nothing but a ghost.

But Sara doesn’t disappear and Michael’s mind plays the last trick of the night on him. It makes him remember all the other things he’s learned over the last few days, for example that Sara is always cold when she sleeps - even if it’s almost forty degrees at night. He’s learned that she talks in her sleep, that she moves a lot when she is sleeping, that she doesn’t like pancakes for breakfast, or at all, which makes her the first person he knows who doesn’t like them, and that she is even more beautiful when she is walking on a sunbathed street in the old Panama City, wearing a white and long dress under the setting sun. He’s learned that she emits low breathy moans when he kisses her neck and her ear, that his hands - which have assisted him in his break out from two prisons - shake slightly, when they are fighting with the small buttons on the back of her dress, and that she laughs deliciously into his mouth everytime he nudges her and slowly rolls her over in bed until she is underneath him… All that and a million other little things, that make Michael Scofield so happy and free that he feels like he could easily be living someone else’s life.

In that dark and hot room, Sara’s hair is in a dark mess spilled all over the pillow and one of her arms is twisted in an awkward angle on top of the covers: “It will hurt her in the morning”, so Michael moves his hand slowly towards her wrist and touches her skin - ever so lightly making sure that she really does have a pulse - and finally moves her thin arm softly.

She wakes up immediately and looks at him alarmed and breathing fast, and Michael realizes that he does not know and that he really can’t know why there is fear in her sleepy and beautiful eyes when she opens them.

They had decided that while the days for them were dedicated to bringing down the Company and putting together the broken pieces of all of them, the nights were for doing “-All the things that we thought we would never do” or at least, that was how Sara has re-named the nights for him forever two days ago, while she was standing half naked in the middle of their room with her hair still wet from the shower. It was dripping down on her half buttoned white shirt. Obviously Michael wasn’t going to complain about that because an alive Sara Tancredi wearing only a partially buttoned shirt down to her thighs wasn’t something he could argue against. Nor did he actually want to.

And that first night, while Sara was talking to him in their darkened room, she did it as if it were something normal. As if being half naked, with her hair damp and with a tiny crooked smile dancing on her lips was something they had gotten used to; as if to Michael, she hadn’t been dead and gone only five hours prior to that.

It was exactly because of this, that Sara would find him sometimes looking at her with a palpable intensity in his strangely eerie gaze, or with his always changing eyes suddenly tearful and fixed on her, as if he hadn’t seen her in years. In those moments Sara couldn’t help but panic “-He doesn’t remember. For a second he really thought I was dead.”

And a grieving, mournful and inconsolable Michael Scofield - unable to help himself or save her - was something she didn’t want to think about.

But now she is looking at him with a small sleepy smile dancing on her lips while she turns slowly in the bed to look at him, to be sure in the darkness, that he had that devastated and scared look in his beautiful eyes that she had come to identify so well in the last few days.

And of course, he has.

In a fast move, Michael stretches out his long arm and holds her warm body tightly against his own. It isn’t a careful or tender lover’s hug, no; he holds Sara tight and possessively, until the only thing she can smell, touch or sense is Michael Scofield.

In the darkness of the room filled with hot and humid air, he presses hard and desperate kisses to her temple, her hair, her face and everything else his mouth can catch of her repeatedly. With his eyes closed Michael whispers her name in a broken and obsessive voice without even realizing that he is about to cry and that he is probably hugging her too tight and surely hurting her. He just holds onto her protectively, and for a long while the only thing that matters to him is to feel Sarah next to him.

After a while Michael finally releases her a bit but still keeps her in his embrace underneath the covers that suddenly smell like sex, sweat and like them. More serene now and more as how he always touches her, Michael runs his fingers across her face and over her lips gently, feeling her small and still sleepy kisses in his palm and between his fingers. He smiles slightly against Sara’s hair while his breathing and his senses are returning slowly to his body. Suddenly he hears her warm voice - worried and full of concern - close to him, filling the dark room and making her even more real to him:

-“…You can’t sleep?”

Sara already knows that it’s a stupid and obvious question, but suddenly it doesn’t matter anymore because Michael runs his familiar hand slowly through her hair and Sara closes her eyes lazily when he whispers in a low and not at all convincing tone:

-“It’s nothing… just a nightmare.”

Sara moves slightly in his arms and asks softly against his chest:

-“About Sona… Or about the other thing?”

“The other thing” had become a way for them to name the nasty fact that - to Michael - she had been dead for weeks; it was just easier that way. Michael didn’t have to say the word “dead” with his low and husky voice and she didn’t have to see his eyes while he said it.

He tightens his grip around her subconsciously and whispers roughly and with his eyes closed, against her hair:

-“…The other thing.”

Michael’s voice sounds miserable, guilty, angry and tired all at the same time, in that strange combination of mixed emotions that their lives, their relation and their nights have become.

“The other thing.” Of course. It was always “the other thing.”

Sara already knew the answer, because sometimes she’d feel as if she were a ghost haunting his dreams. It wasn’t fair that the man she loved only dreamed about her in a way that had him waking up terrified in the middle of the night. Sara hated to see that lost gaze in his beautiful eyes, as if the Michael she knew wasn’t there anymore. As if he had just switched on auto-pilot on his way to self-destruction.

It was painful for Sarah to witness, but she used to think that it was better this way, than having Michael wake up startled from a nightmare and not having her right next to him in bed to comfort him.

Sara spoke softly while feeling strangely guilty of his nightmare, as usual:

-“Sorry…”

-“Don’t be… It’s not your fault.”

Michael’s voice sounded slightly different this time than other times. This time it sounded like when Michael would whisper gentle words into her ear with that very warm, very shy and very husky tone of voice that he would only use with her at night, when they were both naked, sweating and with their bodies pumping full of adrenaline from the desperate and needy sex they’d just had. His voice had sounded very much like that, like the Michael Scofield she knew, and something made her think that maybe there was still a small trace of that man inside her lover.

It wasn’t much, but it might just be enough to save the both of them.

Sara cleared her throat and spoke in a teasing tone with a crooked smile on her lips:

-“You know… I was having another kind of dream”

-“Another kind of dream?”

A hint of a playful chuckle sounded in Michael’s voice when he spoke and Sara felt her hair stirring softly from his breath. She smiled brightly into the darkness of their fancy hotel room before she whispered against his shoulder:

-“Not that kind of dream.”

Sara laughed quietly and pulled back a few inches from his body, but she immediately felt Michael tighten his grip possessively around her waist, keeping her even closer to his body than before. She knew that Michael had done this subconsciously; that it was only his beautiful mind telling him to hold her closer which then in turn made Sara feel sad and guilty yet extremely loved at the same time, as only Michael Scofield could make you feel. And then, she understood that it would be like this for many, many nights to come because Sara knew deep down inside that a small, dark and controlling part of Michael Scofield was still mad at her for “dying”; that that part of him would never forgive her for leaving him alone in that dark and dirty place.

Never.

And that small, dark and controlling part of him makes Sara deeply miserable everytime she thinks about it, but luckily, the rest of the Michael Scofield loved her more than anything, so she would have to learn to live with it. Besides she knew that one of the five stages of grief was anger and Michael was still on it; even if he didn’t want to be.

But Sara was waiting for the next stage, bargaining, by definition: seeking ways to avoid having the bad thing happen; as a vain expression of hope.

“A vain expression of hope”

Those words danced in her mind for a few seconds while she thought about him, about Michael Scofield, the man who’s particular scent, salty taste, and deep breathing she could recognize anywhere. To her, all this should mean something more, she didn’t want a fucking “vain expression of hope”, they deserved much more than only… a vain expression.

He was Michael-I-went-to-prison-for-you-Scofield, he was the man who had combined life and hate, courage and love for that one way journey of justice and freedom.

He deserved real and overwhelming expression of hope.

-“I’m still waiting.”

His voice broke the muffed night noises of the very hot, very suggestive and very haunting Panama City, which where slipping through the half open balcony and he spoke in that typical “Michael tone” that always seemed warmer and lower when he was talking to her; more like the real Michael Scofield.

She whispered against his shoulder, choosing her words carefully:

-“I was dreaming about our house…”

-“Our house?”

A mix of curiosity and sadness appeared in Michael’s voice, but she continued:

-“Yeah…when all this is over, we’ll need to settle down somewhere… I’m tired of hotels.”

-“Ohh… I see.”

Michael smiled conspiratorially in the darkness and planted light kisses on her forehead, gently running his fingers down her naked back and suddenly it occurred to him that maybe the mere fact of Sara thinking about a future with him would be enough to keep the hole away from him, maybe just for that night.

Even if it was a lie.

Because they both knew very well that Sara was lying, that she had not been dreaming about their house, that in the best scenario, she had not been dreaming at all.

But that didn’t stop her and her soft and calm voice from giving him some much needed comfort, while her small hand trapped his long fingers:

-“Obviously, it will be in the outskirts, with nothing else around but us…It will be next to the sea, so close in fact that the only thing I’ll hear at night, will be the waves and our big and sunny living-room will smell like saltwater every sunset. “

Michael closed his eyes and heard her voice in the dark and hot room and wished with all his strength to see it. To be able to see the house she was imagining for him; for them. He wished he could just close his eyes and see Sara sleeping on their couch under a checkered cover… He wished he could imagine something other than that hole absorbing everything from under him.

He especially wished it for her, because she deserved the sun bathed living-room and everything else, and suddenly he felt like he wouldn’t be able to give it to her; the same man that had been sure once that he could have given her everything when he was just a miserable inmate with eight toes in Fox River.

Sara’s soft and warm voice muffled by his shoulder made Michael lose track of his thoughts. He came back immediately to that hot and dark room:

-“ ..And at the end of the beach --that is going to be at the very end of our porch—there’s going to be a small wooden dock, with the fifth board loose, creaking every time we walk on it.”

Michael caressed her hair gently and asked in that almost forgotten shy and charming tone that he only used with her:

-“…And do we walk on it a lot?”

-“Yes, we do.”

Sara stopped for a few seconds and imagined herself sitting on the edge of their imaginary dock and she could almost feel the rough knots of the ramshackle wood underneath her hands and the tide coming in on the beach at sunset… and when she continued talking, her voice – if possible – sounded warmer than before:

-“ …And of course you’ll want to repair it, but I like it that way… creaking.”

-“I see…”

While he whispered, Michael’s breathing changed, because suddenly and without knowing even how, he had heard the loose board creaking underneath his feet and imagined himself ducking slowly to examine it with his obsessive and detailed vision. His long fingers touching the rough wood, for a second he could even smell the saltwater… and then, a very small part of the man he used to be before her “death” and before putting on a suit and entering that bank months ago, made him smile against her hair and whisper with his eyes closed, still felling the sand, the hot breeze in his face and seeing a barefoot Sara sitting at the end of their wooden dock:

-“…Continue, please…”

Upon hearing his broken plea, Sara knew that he was trying. That for the very first time in weeks Michael was trying to stay away from the hole; that he wasn’t looking inside it anymore; wanting to fall into it and to be absorbed by it.

He was doing it for her. And for their wooden dock.

-“Our bedroom will be upstairs and we’ll have an ocean view from the bed… From a really big bed with no place for nightmares of any kind.”

This time Sara’s voice sounded a bit far and distant, and Michael knew that right now she was trying to fight some of her personal demons. He was suddenly reminded of their first night together, just a few hours after he’d found out that she was still alive, when she unwillingly scratched him – and he still had the scratches to prove it - in the arm while he had tried to wake her up because she was crying and fighting. That time Michael had hugged her tight while she was still sobbing and kicking in her sleep and he had whispered her name into her ear over and over again, leaving small kisses against her hair and her temple in the process.

-“…Just the ocean and nothing else.”

“Too close… too damn close” She continued talking but Michael’s mind was travelling again without his permission. He thought about how close he had been to losing her; for the first time since he had recovered her, he realized that he really almost lost her. That he’d almost had to learn how to live without her and her scent, her voice… he holds Sara tighter while she continues speaking fondly about their house and his mind slowly comes back to that hot and still dark hotel room. To that bed that smells like their sweat and like Sara’s hair:

“-… in autumn; and there will be a studio with big windows so you can do your… genius things.”

Michael chuckled softly and looked at her before whispering:

-“My genius things?”

Sara slowly turned in his embrace and he felt her loose hair tickling his chest and his neck for a second. She laughed softly and continued whispering, fully convinced:

-“Yeah you know, all that stuff that only Michael Scofield can envision; I know you, I know that even if you were totally free you’ll still need something to be obsessed with, something you’ll need to figure out… or need to fix.”

Michael, feeling naked in more ways than one, and not really surprised at how much that strong and brave woman knew him, swallowed hard and smiled slightly before whispering:

-“…Like the creaking board of the dock?”

-“Yep. Exactly like that.”

He closed his eyes and left small kisses in her hair and on her temple, while his fingers ran lazily across her naked back:

-“You don’t like my genius things?”

At the combination of worry and shame in his whisper Sara raised her head from his shoulder to look at him for the very first time and Michael felt her hair brushing slightly against his cheeks, but he continued looking at her, waiting for her answer and frenetically memorizing all of her beautiful features in his mind, just in case:

-“Of course… Your genius things is part of the package deal…”

Michael smiled at her slightly, satisfied with her answer, and ran his fingers through her soft hair. She continued speaking with her eyes fixed on him. Her voice was barely above a whisper but it was warm and calm:

-“I don’t understand your genius things or the way your mind works… but it is as much a part of you as these ink lines are.”

Sara’s finger gently caressed the paths and lines of dark ink underneath his skin. Michael swallowed hard and whispered in a sad and heated voice:

-“I hate that ink.”

Sara smiled brightly and moved nearer to him, so close that Michael felt her soft breath on his face, her strawberry smell driving him mad, her hair falling upon him and her warm body --alive and pulsing-- upon him and Michael closed his eyes for a second, drawing her down to him.

-“I know, but you shouldn’t…”

Sara’s voice is just a faint whisper in the dark room but even that is enough to make him open his eyes again and gently brush her hair away from her face. Michael kisses her deeply and thoroughly, feeling her small hands move all over his skin, until she pulls apart a few inches from his mouth and licks her own lips seductively. She then leans back in kissing his earlobe before whispering:

-“…that ink brought us here.”

In one fast move Michael scoops her up and draws her completely upon him feeling her surprised chuckle muffled by his lips while he kisses her slowly and lovingly at first, letting her hair fall to the sides of his face and feeling her warm body upon him and her pulse, her breathing and her life underneath his fingertips. He feels Sara smiling against the corner of his mouth and suddenly he remembers how much he loves that; every time she smiles, whispers or laughs against his mouth and every time she moans suggestively into his mouth when he kisses her hard and desperately, like he is now.

“-It brought us here.” Her hopeful and evocative words start to fade and get blurred by the warm and delightful weight of her small and creamy body upon him. His long fingers draw agonizingly slow circles on her spin, on the body that Michael already memorized perfectly two nights before. He raises his hands to her face and his fingers travel across her beautiful features until she smiles slightly and pulls away slowly, just a few inches from his lips but still close enough for him to feel her soft lips brushing against his mouth when she whispers, half teasing and half serious:

-“…Just for you to know, I always had a thing for tattooed guys.”

Sara’s soft chuckles against the corner of his mouth, her strawberry scent driving him mad and few locks of her silky hair between his fingers, make Michael quickly think of the many devastating images of Sara Tancredi with any other man in world who wasn’t him.

She smiles mischievously and kisses him, feeling his grip tighten around her and every muscle of his body underneath her reacting and yearning for her. She feels Michael licking, nibbling and sucking her mouth intensely and roughly and in that certain way that only Michael Scofield can do things he pulls Sara against his body until the only thing he can feel is her warm and wet and risqué mouth against his, knowing perfectly well that in a few hours they will have to leave that room and that hotel. That maybe this will be their last night in Panama City, but that they surely still have thousands of miles of dessert, heat, fear, anger and nightmares ahead until they reach home - that house by the ocean with a small wooden dock with the fifth board loose and creaky.

Sara reads his mind magically like she always does, and draws away a few inches from his mouth, just enough to still feel his quiet breathing against her and his lips brushing hers slightly while she whispers:

-“I’m scare too Michael. Sometimes I’m so scared that I can’t even talk or move… or sleep.”

Michael caresses her face and runs his fingers through her soft hair with a grateful smile on his lips, knowing instinctively that the woman on top of him who at that very moment was looking at him with a blind faith that he wasn’t entirely sure he deserved, was going to be a constant factor in his life. He knew that she was something so bright and perfect and beautiful that she would cover the dark lines of ink underneath his skin with her creamy body, her silky hair and her soft laugh.

Sara; who doesn’t like pancakes, who is always cold - even in a tropical climate - who has to sleep on the left side of the bed and monopolizes the covers, who never dries her hair after showering, who would never tell him that she has terrorizing nightmares, maybe worse than his, only to not make his worse; Sara Tancredi, the very first person he had met who despite knowing him completely, loves him; Sara, who was scared sometimes too.

Michael smiled slightly and when he whispered, his voice sounded dark, sickly sweet, hot and curious at the same time:

-“You know, between this and the tattooed guys thing you are not making me feel better…”

She chuckled softly and kissed him slowly and deeply, sending electric charges to all his muscles. She pulled back a little before whispering delicately:

-“…Maybe we should be scared together”

And that was the closest to a promise or to a vow of love that she had been –that they had been—since all that had started.

“Together.” None of them had said that word in the last three days; of course there had been guilty sex, needy sex, hurried and desperate kisses, hot words in her ear, tears against her shoulder and her hair… but not “together”. His resurrected, beautiful, perfect and broken Sara Tancredi wanted to be scared together and occupying the place of the gun and the paper rose in the seat next to him; so hell yes, please.

Michael smiled, almost a real before-entering-that-bank kind of smile and whispered playful and tenderly in the room that was slowly lighting up as the sun rose:

-“So Doctor, your theory is that misery loves company?”

She smiled slightly and moved closer to him kissing him slowly. Michael closed his eyes satisfied in settling the issue, but Sara pulled away a little and whispered:

-“Yeah, I’m sure actually… many years of misery have let me know that I’m right…”

He kissed her gently and eyes closed, letting her vanilla shampoo flood all of his senses and opening his eyes only at the sound of her soft voice against his shoulder:

-“It’s just that even being scared is much better with you… or underneath you…”

He smiled and a soft and low chuckle left her lips and she lazily let her fingertips brush against the four day stubble on his jaw, thinking that she had not seen Michael doing something as normal and ordinary as shaving yet. She secretly wondered if Michael Scofield was too unique, different, isolated and extraordinary for normal and ordinary things like shaving. Of course she knew it was a stupid thought, but it kept Sara quiet for some seconds before she continued, with a suddenly childlike and trembling voice, as if she were afraid of his answer:

-“My point is that it won’t always be like this and seeing how the bad times are, being with you…I have a vague idea of how the good ones are going to be, with you as well.”

Michael smiled surprised at the use of his own quote against him and then he looked at Sara in silence, playing with a lock of her hair between his fingers and with his eyes fixed on her beautiful features before kissing her, hot and thoroughly, taking his time to taste her, to memorize every little detail of her, like her breathing changing with his more and more needy and fierce kisses. The heat radiating off of her body, the muscles of her naked back under his tips, the wonderful feeling of the weight of her small body on top of his, her pulse - warm and constant - in her pale and long neck, her skin standing on end while he draws circles on her soft and creamy body, the warm Panamanian early morning noises in the streets slipping through the open balcony door, her pleading and heated moans against his mouth… And then, Michael Scofield felt the hole a bit farther away from him than just twenty minutes earlier. With his tongue in her soft, wet and addictive mouth and the rest of his senses focused on her, Michael barely realized that he had stepped a few feet away from the hole that night and that maybe some night in the future, he would be able to sleep in one go without nightmares, without “-She is dead, Michael”, without his mind tricking him into believing that she was really dead… A night – a life—without all that was still far away, but maybe closer than before, just maybe a tiny step closer than yesterday.

When he felt Sara’s nails digging delightfully into his arm and every inch of her warm skin brushing lethargically against him, he decided that he needed to stop because he really needed to ask the next obvious question. So almost against his - and her - wish Michael gently pushed heraway from his lips and smiled, a very real, very shy, very charming and very trade mark Michael Scofield smile and when he spoke --half joking and half worried-- his voice sounded like hot velvet, smooth and very warm directly into her ear:

-“… And how can you know that this isn’t everything. That you have not seen the very best of Michael Scofield already; how do you know that there’s going to be a wooden dock with a loose board at the end of the road?”

Sara smiled brightly and played lazily with her cold feet on his bare legs, making him smile shyly when she whispered, fully convinced and passionately:

-“And how do you know, Scofield? One thing is certain; you are here.”

Michael chuckled softly and kissed her temple and her hair before whispering in return, letting his lips hover lazily against her ear:

-“So … Was that faith I just heard, Doctor Tancredi?

Sara smiled delicately and when she answered, her warm words sounded muffled by his skin:

-“No, it’s something similar to faith… But you never know.”

Michael laughed warmly against her temple and tightened his embrace around her, feeling her hot pulse under his fingertips, her breathing against the crook of his neck and he kissed her hair before whispering in a very low, very hopeful and very Scofield tone:

-“No… you never know.”

The end.

You may now commence throwing tomatoes.

Equilibrium

2008-05-07T20:10:53Z

Disclaimer: I don’t own Pushing Daisies or Lee Pace… Sad but true.
Rating: T
Summary: Sometimes the Pie Maker couldn’t help but wonder who was suffering in trade for all his happiness with Charlotte Charles.
Pairing: Ned/Chuck
Dedicated to my very patient and very lovely Winnie, thank you.
Title: Equilibrium
By: Lylou

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-“…But as often happens when one celebrates, the universe is quick to even score.”

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Since he was only a little boy Ned had learned that the universe has its own fragile and unpredictable mechanisms to keep his particular equilibrium.

There were big, invisible and unshakable cosmic rules that keep everything strangely neat and turning.

For instance, every time that it rained hard for hours and lightening hit the asphalt, the sun appeared in the clear, blue sky for the next two days without mercy.

Because that was the way in which the universe adjusted his business: One storm was equal to two days of sunny weather.

For that reason, every time he resuscitated a flower, a peach or a childhood sweetheart something else had to die instead. Sometimes it was wonderful and sometimes it was absurd but it was always cruel and unpredictable; it was an insurmountable constant and, in the course of the years, Ned had learned to accept it and to live with that.

Equilibrium.

That was what it was all about.

That was why sometimes, the Pie Maker couldn’t help but wonder who was suffering in trade for all his happiness with Charlotte Charles.

If everything happened and spun by applying the “simple” rule of action and reaction, if one resurrected mother was equal to one stricken dead father and if one storm was equivalent to two sunny days, that means that to keep the cosmic equilibrium, someone was being miserably unhappy to compensate all his happiness with the girl named Chuck.

That idea haunted Ned sometimes and could keep him awake at midnight for hours; because by applying the rule of the storm and the sunny weather, it was evident to Ned that someone out there had to suffer a warm death every time he saw Chuck entering in the same room as him, or that there was someone out there in pain every time he listened to Chuck saying his name as nobody else in world did it, also worried him to have taken unhappiness to many, many innocent people out there every time that Charlotte Charles pressed her lips against his through the plastic wrap, not to mention all the other wonderful and delightful things they did using gloves and extreme care… Ned calculated one night they had brought misery and grief to half of the city.

And even more dangerous and lethal were the thousands and thousands of little wonders that the Pie Maker didn’t know were possible before Charlotte Charles.

Equilibrium.

Apparently some months ago, the universe had decided that he had been unhappy and lonely for too long and had pushed Chuck into his life. Again.

Now she was in the bathtub and all the warm steam in the bathroom smelled like her strawberry shampoo.

They used to do that; actually, that was one of those small and wonderful things that according Ned risked misfortunes to other people in the sake of equilibrium: Chuck taking a bath at night and spilling her magic in their bathroom, while he was completely dressed and seated in the blue floor tiles next to her, with his arm dangerously leant in the cold bathtub border and looking longing and happily at her; of course, it had been her idea since the first time they did it, then he had put his typical “we-shouldn’t-but-I-now-you-are-going-to-persuade-me-anyway” face on and had followed her to the bathroom.

That was one of those things that he didn’t know was possible before Chuck; of course, taking bath at night wasn’t something especially magical, but Ned never had thought that someday there will be someone who would fill up his bathroom with steam and strawberry smell at midnight, in the same way he never imagined that she would smile like a little girl when she saw her fingertips wrinkled after almost an hour in the warm water, or that he would be that comfortable talking warmly for hours and smiling shyly and happily at her, that much, that the next day Ned used to feel the muscles around his mouth aching sweetly at him for the still lack of habit in being happy.

It wasn’t exactly as if they both were in the same tub but it was enough; and besides, the Pie Maker had decided a long time ago that he wasn’t going to miss even one moment of a naked Charlotte Charles.

-Do you think they miss me?

Her voice sounded a bit sad in their bathroom and Ned’s mental treat was interrupted.

He looked at her, with some dark and damp locks falling across her skin and with her legs bent and pressed against her chest and her head leant in her knees looking at him and waiting for his answer:

- I’m sure they do. You are…you are definitely not easy to forget.

Ned smiled at her felling a bit childish and embarrassed saying it out loud -as if he was telling her some naughty little secret- and looked away from her naked shoulders for a moment, basically to be able to think fairly coherently again.

“I have spent the past twenty years trying to forget you and now, you are naked inside my tub.”

-But what if some day my aunts forget about me?

Ned raised his gaze and looked at her for a moment, Chuck could feel his breathing rushing slightly and his eyes studying her intensely and daring for a moment, in that mesmerized, possessive and lovesick way that he used to do when he thought she wasn’t looking, so much and so brutally sure, that she couldn’t help but think where had gone the shy and stammering man she knew.

-That’s not going to happen Chuck, but anyway… I promise to remember you.

She smiled brightly at him, in that way that always makes Ned feel dangerously normal, and rested her head upon her arm in the border of the bath tub, deathly near to his hand.

The ends of her hair were sunken and her long fingers were making circles in the warm water.

-Then I promise to remember you too.

Her voice sounded a bit distant and slightly sad when she continued speaking, just paying attention to the circles in the water:

-…It is not as if I didn’t want to be here, with you, because I want… It is just that sometimes, I can’t help to feel as if I am… an impostor.

-An impostor?

-Yes… as if Charlotte Charles doesn’t exist anymore, as if she had been the one who died in that sailing and then, Chuck had appeared opportunely.

Ned looked at her, with that mix of worry and love in his wide open eyes, and spoke gently and a bit scared in that bathroom full of steam:

-You don’t like Chuck?

-Most of the time. Do you like Chuck?

-…Absolutely.

She smiled at him finally, grateful, amazed, relieved and a million of things more and stopped paying attention to the ripples in the water and looked straight at Ned for a moment before speaking softly:

-Just for you to know… you are the best part of being Chuck.

Equilibrium.

Ned was sure that someone across town was feeling very, very miserable right now; because he was smiling madly happy and felt the world spinning vertiginously fast and suddenly flooded with a million new colors, steam and strawberry scented shampoo infecting delightfully all his senses. It is said that smells can bring us hidden memories or get attached forever to a feeling or a memory, and maybe Ned didn’t know then, but for the rest of his life, happiness would be always attached to that strawberry smell shampoo and hot vapor.

-What?

Chuck asked in a playful tone and smiling at him with one of her very sweet and very bright smiles, Ned nodded with a charming half smile in his lips and looked at her with that spark of hope and love in his changing eyes that used to feel to her as if he was seeing her again for first time after twenty years:

-…Nothing…

His voice sounded warm and strangely close to her but after a few seconds, his nice features changed and the Pie Maker wasn’t smiling happily anymore; he tore apart his suddenly aloof gaze from her, concentrating in the apparently interesting blue tiles of the floor, and continue speaking in a low and vacillating voice:

-… It is just that sometimes, I can’t help feeling… scared.

Charlotte Charles moved slowly inside the tub and looked at him; she frowned delicately and asked with her eyes fixed on him:

-Scared? …Scared of what?

He looked at her small and dripping hand in the border of the tub, dangerously close to his, Ned half closed his eyes a bit, trying to find the correct words in his steam and strawberry shampoo crammed mind, but still without looking at her, and spoke in his trade mark blend of shyness, charm and guilt:

-That day, at the funeral home, when I… you know.

I just… I wasn’t thinking.

Chuck expression changed fast and her beautiful features turned suddenly extremely sad and dark.

-Are you saying that you regret what you did…? Or what you didn’t?

Ned looked at her finally, as if he was processing her words and after a few seconds he spoke in an extra fast, extra guilty and extra stumbling tone, feeling miserable and stupid:

-Oh! no, no, no please… No, never.

He smiled nervously and looked at her, trying to read her expression and continued, slow and gentler this time:

-…What I was saying is that when I brought you home, with me, well… let’s just say that I never knew that it would be… like this.

Chuck looked at him still confused and scared that she wasn’t feeling how the water of the tub was getting colder and colder every second; she spoke slowly and with a tone of sadness in her voice, feeling tears forming fast behind her eyes:

-Like this as in “I never should have waked her”, like this as in “It makes me miserable having her around everyday” or like this as in “I wish I could just touch her and finish with…

-Like this as in “I never thought that my life could be … like this”

Ned’s voice sounded so low, sure and warm that for a second, she almost could imagine his breathing into her ear while she was underneath his body. She had become really good with imagining lately.

He continued talking gently, fast, charmingly and a bit embarrassed, as usually, and completely unaware of her mental train:

-I’m scared because I can’t help but think that someday I would have to pay for all… this; for being here, now, with you naked in the tub, for all the times you laugh in the kitchen, for every time that I see you in one of your small nightgowns, for the way you cry watching old romantic movies even if you have seen them a thousand times, for your clothes hanging in the closet next to mine, for the gratiné noodles “ala Chuck”… for the strawberry scented shampoo… And I, I didn’t make the rules: one storm is equal to two days of sunny weather so… it is the universal law apparently.

-Yeah… apparently.

Chuck, finally understanding him, looked at his worried and yet sure expression and smiled brilliantly in spite of the hot tears she was feeling behind her eyes.

“Tears of love”

She realized then that it was something else completely new for her, and that she would never have been able to have it if she wasn’t alive right now, in that precise bathtub and precisely next to him; and suddenly Charlotte Charles understood the millions and millions of coincidences, seconds chances, big and small mishaps in her life and all the invisible and untouchable mechanisms of fate had used to take them to that precise moment, to make it possible for them to be there that precise rainy night.

And intuitively she knew that it was one of those very strange, very painful, and very wonderful situations about which she had read in a book in her far away gone armchair that smelled of dust, damp, naps and memories and which had been one of her favorite places in the world for years, now she had other favorite places, magic, love and a turn of fate have make it possible, so, who was she to complain about it?

Chuck moved lazily inside the tub and turned off the faucet under the careful and worry gaze of Ned and continued half smiling happily, knowing that his eyes were fixed in her naked back and enjoying every second of it; she looked at him finally, still smiling and Ned chuckled sexily and warmly, and suddenly his worried features relaxed and turned shy, charming and confident, as if for a moment, he was that nine year old boy she once knew.

And it was at that exact moment when she thought “Maybe it would be worth the while to die for a kiss from him now”

But instead of that, Chuck smiled brilliantly at him and whispered:

-…Sometimes I’m scared too, Ned.

-Are you…? And what do you do then?

Ned’s voice sounded half intrigued and half playful in that warm bathroom and Chuck loved every tone of it.

She didn’t say a word, just smiled at him, submerged her hand in the hot water for a moment and took it out the next, without tearing her gaze from his, Chuck moved her hand slowly towards him and held it a few centimeters above his hand still resting on the tub border; warm, transparent and small drops fell directly from her hand to Ned’s and he looked at her and smiled gently, happy, lovesick and thousand things more while his heart pounded fast and alive, and suddenly, Ned didn’t care anymore if they would have to pay some day their particular happiness and love cosmic bill; as if making others grieve and suffer wasn’t a high price for feeling warm drops falling on his hand.

When she spoke, low, warm and playfully, Chuck’s voice inundated all the corners of the bathroom, and instinctively, Ned was sure that it would remain there for a very long time, latent upon the blue tiles and reminding him exactly how happiness was:

-When I’m scared… I look at you.

Equilibrium.

That was what it was all about.

The end

Comments are love.

Lately (III)

2008-05-05T20:14:54Z

Disclaimer: I don’t own Pushing Daisies or Lee Pace… Sad but true.
Rating: R
Summary:Ned had that look in his eyes again, as if the world start and end in Charlotte Charles.

Pairing: Ned/Chuck
Dedicated to my patient and lovely Beta, thank you for the magic.
Spoilers: Everything until Corpsicle is fair game.
Title: Lately
Chapter Title: Crash (III)

By Lylou

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-You can’t just touch someone’s life and be done with it…

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Olive Snook entered the Pie Hole that morning wearing big and dark sunglasses.

She hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours the night before, and now she had two dark circles under her eyes.

She had been too busy thinking over Lily’s “vanilla” induced confession to sleep.

When she was just a little girl, Olive had learned that there were two kinds of secrets:

First: the small, usual and almost harmless kind of secret that people usually keep to themselves; for instance, her crush on Ned.

And second: the big, more unusual and destructive kind of secret that people keep from everyone else; for instance, Lily’s devastating: “I’m Charlotte’s mother.”

Because that was exactly the kind of secret that could ruin lives; the kind of secret that blows everything away in the blink of an eye.

Olive knew that very well, she could feel it even now, while it was still safely hibernating in her mind, getting bigger and more powerful every second; as if these type of secrets were some strange kind of creature, which fed off fear and loneliness.

Olive knew that.

She had spent the whole night thinking about it, and about the girl named Chuck.

And Ned.

She thought about how the truth would affect their lives. It was easy and tempting to just avoid it, and run from the truth while you live in a bubble of love, sugar, flour and bells on the door, but Olive Snook knew that sort of truth was patient. It didn’t mind to wait for years, crouched in silence in some dark corner, waiting to spring one day.

And the truth was that Charlotte Charles wasn’t still that annoying, cheesy, damn perfect and inaccessible brunette she had once hated.

Now she was a real person to her; more than that, it could be said that she was her friend; Olive had seen her scared, lonely, crying, laughing, lost… Chuck was a real person and she deserved the truth. Even if it would change everything, even if it would destroy the fragile dynamic that all of them had built up. After all, she deserved to know that she wasn’t as alone in the world as she thought she was.

Olive walked toward the kitchen slowly and saw Ned and Chuck, both seated on the green tiles and leaning against the same cabinet, there was a bottle of peroxide near them and Ned had that look in his eyes again, as if the world start and end in Charlotte Charles.

He’ll never ever look at you in that way, but it is good to have her back… He is always much better, when she is around

“Hi Olive!”

Chuck tone was cheerful, but with Olive personal experience in crying, she could still hear the fading echo of tears in Chuck’s voice; or at least, she thought she did.

Ned looked at her for the first time since she was there, without really seeing her, and smiled gently and joyfully at Chuck, still sitting next to him.

“Good morning.”

Her own voice sounded almost normal when she spoke, and Olive saw, half sad and half fascinated, how Ned rose finally from the floor and how he looked, warmly and smiling shyly, at Chuck, getting up slowly and with the white bottle in her hand.

Olive saw Ned smiling in that particular and charming way of his that only showed when Chuck was around; then he walked towards the petit blonde and passed near her, so close, that the black fabric of his pants brushed her coat accidentally and Olive Snook closed her eyes involuntarily when she felt his body, his warmth and the faded scent of his after-shave floating around her during a few seconds “Is that’s how she feels all the time? Is this how it feels to be Charlotte Charles?”

That thought saddened Olive a bit in spite that she was breaking, slow and painfully, the Pie Maker`s spell upon her a little bit every day.

Ned murmured a “Good morning“ and said something to her in his habitual not-to-Chuck tone about the coffee machine while he passed at her side, but she didn’t hear him.

When Olive opened her eyes again, she saw Chuck smiling sweetly at her.

And Olive Snook was sure then that she deserved the truth.

“…I’m happy to see you are here again.”

Chuck smiled softly and spoke in a tone that proved she was happy to be there again, but that there was still something dark and dangerous inside her, screaming to the very sweet Charlotte Charles, to run away and never look back.

“Thank you. It’s good to be back.”

Both women looked each other in silence for some seconds, until Olive pointed at her wounded hand, smiling lightly, and broke the silence:

“Does it hurt?”

Chuck looked thoughtfully at her hand and spoke quietly, “No… Not as much as before.”

The shorter woman looked around to see where Ned was. He was busy doing something in the bar and Olive spoke in an uneasy whisper.

“I have to talk to you.”

Chuck looked at Ned, completely unaware of their small conspiracy and then looked again at the anxious blonde woman in front of her, and asked in a low voice:

“About my aunts? Are they okay?”

Olive sighed, bit her lower lip and frowned delicately while her mental gears spun at full speed, and for a moment, she wasn’t really going to say anything, she was really willing to live with that secret; but then she saw worry and fear in Charlotte Charles eyes mixed with something else, something that Olive couldn’t indentify then; something that she would only recognize some hours later, when it would be already too late for all of them.

“Chuck…There is something I have to tell you.”

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Ned kicked the right front wheel of his Mercedes again, too mad to pay attention at the snow falling quietly on his black shoe.

Frustrated, he rested his gloved hands in the roof of the car, closed his eyes and breathed again the nocturnal chilly air; it was so freezing that Ned felt his respiratory tracts aching and all his senses numbing momentary by the cold and the pain.

But only for a moment.

Because next, Ned remembered that she wasn’t there.

And he was in that snowy cemetery again, looking for Charlotte Charles for second time around in less than 24 hours.

But this time, she wasn`t there.

Ned finally clambered inside the car and slammed the door shut.

Chuck had left, unseen and without a word, out the kitchen door that same morning. It was almost funny: one moment he was busy looking for the sugar bowls to refill them and thinking again that life can be beautiful, and next, she was gone, leaving only a very silent Olive Snook there with a slight spark of guilt and fear in her trembling eyes that one very scared Pie Maker, didn’t even see.

Chuck had left so fast that she had forgotten her coat on the rack, and Ned couldn’t help but feel a rush of worry for her mixed with an overwhelming sense of predestination and inevitability that he hadn’t felt the last time she went away.

“She is not going to come back this time”

That had been repeating in his mind all over again during the whole day.

Ned pressed his lips and sighed defeated in his car. Before the cemetery, he had been in their apartment, on the snowy rooftop, outside her aunts’ house… he had even been in that meadow, the same one where they had a picnic the first weekend after he brought her back from death, back in the very last days of summer. Even now, Ned could still remember clearly the orange sunset light upon her and the sound of her laugh, still a bit strange to him then, surrounding them.

And that was the first time Ned knew he loved her.

He closed his eyes miserable, feeling completely lost, still remembering that far evening in a cold and lonely car with a, now useless, transparent screen.

The truth was that the Pie Maker had been happy.

It was weird and wonderful to think about it because Ned never had thought that he deserved to be happy in any way, that someday, he would be as happy as he had been with Charlotte Charles.

Because even if he had lost her forever, all the happiness, all the love and all the joy she had brought to his life, would be enough to fulfill two lifetimes.

“Maybe these months was all we were supposed to have. Maybe it is better that way”

With that and feeling terribly lost, tired and scared, the Pie Maker started the car and left.

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Ned looked mesmerized at the flames in the overwhelming empty kitchen of their –his- apartment, when he heard her keys in the door.

For a moment, he forgot the trepidation and the loneliness of the last hours and turned fast in their kitchen just when Charlotte Charles appeared in the doorsill.

She was soaked. And not in the cinematographic and romantic way. No; her hair, her clothes, her shoes…everything was drenched; she didn’t look as if she would have been walking melancholically under the rain for hours, she looked more as if she was some kind of marine creature from the ocean floor.

“Hi.”

Her voice sounded weak, and it trembled.

Ned took some steps towards her, feeling immediately relieved, angry, happy and tired at the same time, and stopped dead only a few meters from her, but enough to see that her lips were blue and her skin was paler than usual “God…she is cold, she looks as if she was d…”

And if everything was different, Ned would be already hugging and kissing her feverishly or pushing the both of them under the stream of the hot water until she didn’t look like a beautiful corpse anymore.

But he couldn’t.

And for one moment, as he stared at her, soaked, cold and guilty, the Pie Maker thought that his life would be much easier and less painful, without Charlotte Charles.

But only for a moment.

Because next he felt a consuming need to protect her; to never ever let Chuck out of his sight again, to locking the apartment door and throw away the key.

“Wow, suddenly you are the evil dragon keeping the princes in the castle, instead of the prince charming”

But he didn’t care; Ned only could saw her soaked locks stuck to her beautiful features, her green drenched sweater and the small rain drops falling in the floor.

But he didn’t say a word.

Suddenly, Ned felt terribly stupid and out of place, as if any word would break the spell and she would vanish under the rain, again, forever.

He didn’t know what to say, or why she had run away from him again; because Ned couldn’t know that some blonde waitress had said something to Chuck that had changed everything forever. That running away from him had nothing to do with them.

Ned couldn’t know that.

“She is still mad at you, she has just realized that she can’t forgive you and is here only to grab her things and vanish from your life as fast as she came.

And you are going to start to figure out how you are going to live without her.”

Chuck, totally oblivious to his mistaken train of thoughts, walked miserably and slowly to their bedroom and Ned heard her searching in the drawers and changing her soaked clothes.

He felt tears forming slowly behind his eyes and turned to look at the filled teapot upon the flames of the stove.

“When was the last time you cried, baker boy?”

Then Ned heard very soft steps behind him and knew that Charlotte Charles was at his back.

The only thing he felt then, were her small hands upon his shirt and her slow breathing against the fabric; without a word, she moved her arms slowly from his back until she embraced his waist.

And that was the first time Chuck hugged him.

Immobile, surprised and with his hands still resting on the counter, Ned closed his eyes when he felt her cold body pressed against his back thought the black fabric of his shirt, and her grip tightening around him.

He looked down carefully and saw her arms covered by a long sleeve sweater and one her small hands wearing one of the white soft gloves that they keep in the night table drawers, exactly where she had been searching a few moments ago, and which time ago had been used to manipulate resurrected peaches, but now, since Chuck was in his life it have acquire much more dangerous and delightful uses than peaches.

“Maybe there is still hope.”

But that thought, and the rest of them, flew off his head as soon as Ned felt her small gloved hand slipping under the black fabric of his shirt and “touching” delicately the skin of his stomach, to move down next, slow and dangerously, when she managed how to unbutton his belt blindly.

Ned breathing rushed and the earth stopped spinning around instantly when he felt her hand inside his pants, and he held on at border of the counter until his knuckles turned white.

“Don’t move… Don’t you dare move.”

Ned closed his eyes slowly and felt the warmth radiating off her body leant against his back, the trace of water that her soaked hair was leaving in his shirt and all the delicious small sounds she was making while her gloved hand was dangerous and perfectly working inside his pants.

Still eyes closed, Ned swallowed hard and spoke in hushed, sexy and painful tone, as if his words were thousands of needles in his suddenly dry mouth:

“Chuck…what are you doing…?”

She loved the way he always says her nickname when he was a few seconds of losing control; low and hot, as if it was some kind of dark and consuming secret mantra known only by him.

She whispered and her words muffled by the black fabric of his shirt: “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Eh… yes, absolutely. No.”

Ned felt her breathing changing slightly at his back but her hand didn’t stop. Because that was the way she always makes things. Time ago, Ned had discovered that something insider her was dangerously alive and free and savage, and that every time Charlotte Charles wanted something, she acted first and thought later.

She was straightforward, fast and deadly in many ways and Ned loved every one of them. And that’s how he knew she wasn’t going to stop, not even when the teapot began to whistle after about five minutes.

She wanted him and wanted him now.

Back in his mind, Ned couldn’t help to think that maybe right now, he was the luckiest bastard in earth; the woman he loved more than anything and who drove him mad wanted to have sex with him in their apartment kitchen, even if it was their dangerous, and always imperfect kind of sex; but somehow, Ned knew that her hand inside his pants and his blood leaving his brain was related to some brutal and dark spot of guilt in her mind.

That the loneliness, the fury and the hate of the last days was what has pushed her hand inside his pants and what was making him moan her name in their kitchen; and what made her to brush her hand away just in time so neither of both would die that night.

After a few seconds, still immobile and in a broken and distant tone, Ned said: “You… you really shouldn’t do that.”

Chuck didn’t answer and he continued whispering, half embarrassed half sad, and knowing perfectly she was still at his back:

“…Because every time that you, we… you know, there is a moment where I can`t help to think “would she die, if I touch her now?”

That was the first time he had said it out loud and it felt even worse than he had imagine, but he continued anyway, because it was already too late to stop and going back again to the “What if you didn’t have to… be dead” part.

So, he opened his eyes and continued:

“…And it is unfair and crazy and stupid and terribly, terribly frightening.”

And then, at his back, Charlotte Charles felt hot tears rolling down her frozen cheeks. Because in their private and secret language, what Ned had just said mean something like “I love you that much, that scares me to death the mere idea of knowing that I can inadvertently kill you.”

So she spoke softly and pointedly,:“Sometimes, when you, we…you know, I can’t help to think “would be worth it to die, if he touches me now?”

Ned turned fast to look at her and spoke in a firm tone:

“No. It wouldn’t.”

He grabbed her gloved hand, pressed it against his lips and kissed it again and again, her long fingers, the cut on the back of her hand from that same morning… The white fabric smelled slightly of him but he didn’t care; he could feel her hand still cold underneath the fabric and he squeezed it lightly before leaving a way of hot kisses in her palm.

“It is okay Ned… Everything will be okay. Listen to me, there is something… something I need to do. “

He looked at her confused and she caressed his face gently before speaking, slow and a slightly tearful, “Ned… I have to go. I just came… to see you.”

Not understanding what was going on, he raised his eyebrow in a typical Ned`s gesture that she loved, and whispered suddenly very scared:

“What?... You have to go?”

Chuck looked down for a moment and then she stared at him again.

“I’ll be back.”

He squeezed her hand, harder this time, and spoke against the white fabric:

“Don’t… don’t say that, the last person who said that to me never came back.”

Chuck felt tears forming in her eyes at his scared tone and at his needy grip on her hand.

So, she spoke in the most convinced, sure and sincere tone she could and with a small smile in her lips in spite of the tears.

“I’ll be back because I can’t help it; it doesn’t matter if I’m out for twelve hours, for two days or for twenty years, I always come back to you.”

He smiled slightly relieved but didn’t release her hand.

“I…I already know that, but I`m afraid that this time I’ll need something more than that to let you go. Sorry.”

She smiled radiantly for the first time, because it wouldn’t be the Ned she knew if he would have just let her go of his sight that easily and just like that, so with her free hand, she looked for something in her pocket and gave it to him.

“Then take this.”

Ned looked at her father’s small watch in his hand; he smiled sadly and looked at her, knowing that there wasn’t anything he could do or say to stop her from whatever she was going to do.

“When I get back everything will be like before, or better… but I really need to do this Ned.”

“By before you mean… before, when you didn’t live here?”

Charlotte Charles smiled and shook her head in silence, then she pulled off the glove slowly and embraced carefully his waist.

“She embraces as a little girl would do.”

Chuck leaned the side of her face against his chest and closed her eyes, letting her damp hair soak his shirt and breathing Ned, making sure that whatever happens next, she would never ever forgot his familiar scent floating in that kitchen, every muscle of his body immobile while she embraced him, his breathing against her hair… And the rest of little and wonderful things he was made of, then she left a small kiss on his chest upon the black fabric and raised her head to look at him for a few seconds before to speak:

“No, before when I didn’t make you feel miserable.”

And with that, Chuck got away from him slowly, and the muffled sound of the front door closing behind her and the whistle of the teapot in the kitchen, was everything Ned had left.

To be continued…

I always type faster with some comments.

The three times that the Pie-Maker almost killed Charlotte Charles

2008-04-07T20:41:20Z

Disclaimer: I know that I don’t own Pushing Daisies or Lee Pace… But I can dream.

Rating: R, to be safe

Summary:The rules seemed simple and clear. First touch: Life. Second touch: Dead, again, forever.

Paring: Ned/Chuck

Spoilers: Everything until Corpsicle is fair game.

Dedicated to my darling Beta darling; thank you for making it possible.

Title: The three times that the Pie-Maker almost killed Charlotte Charles.

By Lylou

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“-So, a kiss is out of the question?”

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The rules seemed simple and clear.

First touch: Life.

Second touch: Dead, again, forever.

Actually, after his mother died (twice), and except for some embarrassing, uncomfortable and maybe illegal things, Ned had lived more or less fine according to those two inflexible and established rules in his inflexible and established life.

But sometimes, all that inflexibilityand sticking-to-the-rules went out the window along with Ned’s self-control, sanity and precaution.

Because, although the rules were clear and more than familiar to him, and even with the constant fear that a second touch, accidentally or fueled by passion, would be the death of the woman he loved, sometimes the rules seemed dangerously more breakable and weak to Ned.

In fact, the rules and their reality were like a rubber band that stretched more and more everyday, so much that sometimes Ned was afraid of what would happen if one of them would let the band go without notice. He thought especially of this when he smelled her honey scent, intoxicating the air around him, every time her hair fluttered dangerously near him.

The facts were these:

One.

The first time that Ned’s self control weakened and left him in a hot rush of love, passion and a million things more that he didn’t know he had before Charlotte Charles, was only one week after brought her back to life.

Once, when he was only seven years old and happily ignorant that he could bring dead things back to life, the worst snow storm in decades hit Couer d' Cours. Although Chuck lived only eighty-two steps from his house (Ned had counted every each of them without really knowing what have pushed him to do it), Chuck’s father let her sleep at Ned’s home.

And that was the first and only time they shared a bed—his bed, to be more exact. Even now, Ned remembered how he hadn’t slept at all that night. It was impossible because she monopolized all the covers, with her breathing against his hair and with every particle of the air in the room, including his pillow, smelling like Chuck. So Ned didn’t move at all during the night, not even a muscle, secretly sure that if he moved and touched her even accidentally, she would faint under the covers, leaving him alone in that narrow bed.

Now, twenty years later, Ned would have laughed at the premonition and irony of that long ago and snowy night if the not-touching-her thing didn’t hurt him so much and so deeply, every second.

After that faraway night, half-consciously and half-unconsciously, Ned never had slept a whole night with anyone else. There have been girlfriends — or girlfriend, in the singular actually — but he never could stay a whole night in her bed, secretly knowing, and feeling devious and strangely guilty about knowing it, that he would be more than able to sleep at home.

That’s why the first time he saw Chuck peacefully sleeping on his couch, the Pie-Maker knew that he was in love, and that he had loved her since that summer evening so long ago when he first met her.

But that was also the first time that the weight of those simple and clear rules fell upon him, breaking his bones and his heart. The very first time that he remembered having thought: “Not touching her hurts.”

Ned discovered the second night that she slept in his home that Chuck loved watching old Audrey Hepburn movies, in particular Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but she always fell asleep on the couch, with the volume turned down, before the ending. Ned couldn’t help wondering if she knew what happened to poor Holly in the end.

That night he’d fallen asleep with his tie and everything else on in his bed and woken up to find that Chuck wasn’t in her bed yet. The faint brightness of the TV screen bathed the living room with gray and bluish light, altering the limits of everything in the room, including one very asleep Charlotte Charles.

She was breathing calmly and although she was deeply asleep, her eyes weren’t entirely closed, in the way some cats do. He didn’t know that about her, so Ned added it to his mental list of the-little-things-that-made-Charlotte-Charles-almost-too-perfect-to-be-real.

Her legs were stretched out on the couch and one of her small hands was underneath her head. The first two buttons of her duckling pajamas were accidentally unbuttoned, or at least, Ned wanted to think with all his strength that it was an accident, that she hadn’t unbuttoned them on purpose. And thinking, that in the hypothetical case that he would wake up at 3 a.m. and get up of his bed to look for her, he would see her collarbone skin and a bit of her white lace bra underneath the suddenly-now-much-less innocent duckling pajamas.

Of course, if they wouldn’t have been them, or at least them without those simple and clear rules, Ned would have already taken her in his arms and carried her to their bed, and by now he would be already kissing and licking her neck and her collarbone warm skin and feeling dizzy with her strawberry scent…

Ned bit his lower lip in his frustrating, attractive and —above all — typical way of his. Doing the only rational and prudent thing to do in that circumstance, he took the checked blanket on the sofa and bent slowly to cover Chuck with it.

But the Pie-Maker was so busy trying not to touch her, that he didn’t noticed that Chuck was finally awake until he felt something stretching his tie and keeping him dangerously only a very few centimeters of her. Ned looked down startled to discover that she was holding it and smiling at him:

“…What are you doing?”

There was a small teasing tone in her sleepy voice and Ned could felt the little blood that remained in his brain leaving it fast. So he stammered, in a guilty tone and too close to her to be safe.

“Me…? No…nothing.”

Ned could smell her honey scent everywhere and her warm breath on his face when she whispered:

“Did the TV wake you up? It wasn’t my intention.”

But her tone sounded absolutely as if it was, actually, her intention.

“No… I just…”

Ned didn’t know how to continue the sentence but Chuck didn’t seem to notice, because she let loose of his tie finally and he took a few quick and awkward steps back until the distance between them became safe and painful enough again. Ned watched how she got up slowly off the couch, turned off the TV and walked to their bedroom.

He looked at her, mesmerized by her moves, still infected with their previous proximity and asked, in the least pathetic way that he could, and trying in vain not to think of those two small buttons still unbuttoned, where he still could see her skin underneath:

“You…you don’t want to see the end of the movie?”

She turned slowly in the threshold of their bedroom and looked back at him with a small teasing smile in her lips.

“No… I’ll see it tomorrow night. If I don’t fall asleep too…”

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Two:

The Pie-Maker didn’t like surprises. For him, surprises always equaled something bad, something like: “Surprise! Now that you have touched your mum twice, she is dead, again, forever” kind of thing.

So during his whole life he had avoided surprises the best he could; actually, when surprise entered his door, Ned used to wait in silence in a corner waiting for surprise to get bored of his boring life and go away to wherever it had come from.

Of course, except Chuck.

She had been a surprise since the very first second her eyes opened at his touch in her coffin.

And more than a month after that evening, the Pie-Maker discovered that he was in love and that he had lost the count of how many times he had discovered that already.

It had been some days before Halloween. The autumn had left them the very last days of sun with that characteristic golden and warm light of the fall sun, spilling everywhere and on everyone, intensely coating all the familiar and grey things of his life with a particular and almost magical amber shine. So much so that Ned found himself a bit dizzy and confused all during that week, as if he couldn’t recognize the world without all his familiar grey tones and shadows.

Because light was something relatively new for the Pie-Maker.

Fridays had always been his favorite day; there wasn’t a real reason to that and he didn’t really know why it was. Ned couldn’t help to think that it had something or everything to do with that fact that, as a little boy, Friday evenings were when Chuck and he used to play in his backyard. Then they’d eat his mother’s still warm blueberry pies until their mouths, their lips and their fingers turned dark purple. Satiated from sugar and berries, they’d lie down in the backyard grass, side by side, to watch the intense blue autumn sky turn black and full of stars.

During all the years he had spent without her, Fridays always had reminded Ned of the bitter-sweet taste of blueberry pie in his mouth and her calm breathing next to him in his far, far away backyard.

The Friday of that golden and sunny autumn week, the light was finally fading slowly at sundown when the last customer left the Pie Hole with a bell clink. Chuck had gotten the habit of putting old jazz and swing records on a ramshackle record player that she had found somewhere a few days ago, and now warm and suggestive notes flooded magically in every corner of the Pie Hole.

Ned didn’t like jazz or swing especially; obviously he wasn’t the kind of person who could enjoy the chaos and soft savagery of those hot and dramatic notes. But that Friday, when he locked the door after the last customer and walked to his kitchen, the Pie-Maker stopped suddenly at the doorsill and forgot to breathe as he looked mesmerized into the kitchen.

The last rays of golden autumn sun shone even more intensely with the oranges of sundown, lighting without mercy every dark and grey spot of his familiar and grey kitchen. The old and warm music notes were slipping invisibly through the air, and Chuck was dancing and singing to herself gracefully, delicately and totally absorbed, while she cleaned something under the tap water.

Ned didn’t remember seeing anything like that before. Of course Chuck was beautiful, that wasn’t exactly fresh news for him, but he never had realized before that sundown that she was so perfect it could make him dizzy; because Charlotte Charles was a lot like looking directly to the sun.

And that hot autumn evening, while he was mesmerized with Chuck dancing alone in that empty kitchen illuminated by the orangey sunlight and surrounded by old and warm notes, the Pie-Maker knew exactly what real happiness was.

He stayed there in silence for some minutes more, hoping that she wouldn’t notice him and that his heart wouldn’t do too much noise when it fell down on the green tiles floor.

The red fabric of her dress tightened her soft curves while she continued moving gracefully to the rhythm of those warm notes that seemed to have taken possession of everything in the kitchen. Ned, half sheltered, half mesmerized behind the wall that separated the bar from the kitchen, looked at her, trying with all his strength to think about anything but sitting her on the worktop, spattered by flour, and kissing her while his hands, underneath her skirt, rose slowly across her thigh…and the Pie-Maker didn’t even want to start thinking about those cream-colored lace panties that he’d accidentally seen in the dryer some days ago.

But he did anyway.

Ned bit his lower lip, mortified, and saw the sun slipping its orangey light on her loose hair and her pale skin in that kitchen full of warm notes, and the Pie-Maker couldn’t help to think almost twenty years after than the very first time he’d thought it: “She is not beautiful, she is… perfect.”

Still following the slow rhythm, Chuck took something from the metallic soaked colander on the counter and ate it as she continued her solitary dance in the sun-bathed kitchen; Ned looked at her for a few more seconds, until his throat seemed dryer than usually and all the blood left his brain, so the all-over-again-in-love Pie-Maker walked noiselessly and softly into the orangey kitchen at the precise moment Charlotte Charles turned, guided by the music, just in time for her small hand to crush against his shoulder.

“Oh my… I didn’t hear you come in.”

Her face changed from surprise to a bright smile in less than a second and she looked at him with her loose hair, still tousled and her breathing rushed by the dancing, as if she had not been about to die only a few seconds ago.

Ned cleared his throat and spoke, gently and a bit guilty:

“Sorry… My fault.”

Chuck, with her hand still dangerously on his sleeve, looked at him as if she didn’t hear him at all, as if the only thing that she could hear were the soft notes floating in the warm kitchen.

Ned smiled lightly and tried not to think about the warmth of her touch through the black fabric of his shirt or about the mixture of pure terror, heat and love he was feeling. “And all that, only by her touch through the fabric, how would be to…”

But Ned didn’t want to torture himself more than usual, and besides, Chuck was looking teasingly at him as if she could read what he was thinking at that very precise moment. In fact, she looked confidently at her hand on his shoulder and then looked at him again with a hopeful and dangerous shine behind her eyes.

But Ned spoke in a hush and almost painful tone:

“You, you shouldn’t do that. …We shouldn’t.”

Chuck nodded slowly and brushed her hand slowly, leaving a faint trace of warmth on Ned’s skin underneath the black fabric. She smiled slightly and looked at him in silence but still with a small smile dancing in her lips.

“So… what were you doing?”

Ned’s warm voice mixed with the notes around them and Chuck smiled radiantly before looking at him with an accomplice-like spark in her eyes, and then she walked, still smiling, to the counter.

“Oh, I was… practicing Blueberry pie.”

Chuck smiled brightly and looked at him in that way that always made Ned feel dangerously happy, as if he was living somebody else life instead of his. So the Pie-Maker smiled shyly at her and spoke warmly in thatsuddenly very magical kitchen:

“Blueberry…?”

Charlotte Charles smiled at him, opened her big greenish eyes even wider and nodded.

“Of course… It’s Friday.”

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Three:

Ned had never been a jealous man.

Until Chuck.

Maybe it was because he’d never anyone as bright and beautiful in his life as Charlotte Charles. Whatever the reason, jealousy was something painfully new to the Pie-Maker.

He tried in vain not to lose his mind every time another man looked at her, wondering, same as him, if she was really wearing a diminutive dress underneath the half-buttoned coat that left the skin of her neck and collarbone exposed. The thought of Chuck naked underneath her coat always blew away his common sense embarrassingly fast, although Ned had seen her naked hundred of times by now, had almost touched her skin under the very same white gloves he used to use to handle the resurrected peaches for his pies and heard Chuck moaning his name at his gloved touch.

Although with all that and everything else they shared, the far and misshapen idea of some other man giving her everything he would never be able to give her, or doing to her all the delightful things that he would never do to her, made Ned feel sad, mad, worried and, yes, painfully alive.

Chuck was his, in every sense that really meant anything. They shared an invisible bond and every cell of her body that he couldn’t touch, kiss or lick was his. Ned didn’t have any doubts about that. But sometimes, when a male customer smiled at her a little longer than was polite, Ned couldn’t help remembering that he was the only man in the whole world who couldn’t touch her.

And that is exactly how the Pie-Maker felt when he saw, from behind the bar, the man sitting alone in the table three, smiling at her, talking to her cheerfully and looking at Chuck in her red dress, the slice of apple pie on his plate suddenly forgotten.

During the next fifteen minutes, Ned fixed all his attention on that man, so much, that he snarled and nodded deafly at something that Olive said without even looking at her, and didn’t even heard the noise of her heels going away, sorrowful. Ned only could feel his blood getting thicker and darker in his veins and that little meddling voice in his mind: “Why you didn’t go find her while she was still alive?”

That evening at closing time, instead of the sound of Chuck’s laugh intoxicating him or her light illuminating without mercy everything in the kitchen, Ned felt same as his first date with Heidi Hollson, back when he was nineteen: heated, silly and out of place.

Chuck still fluttered around in the kitchen, when Olive screamed a “See you tomorrow” from the door and closed it behind her. Chuck’s smile faded as soon as she stared again, concerned and suspicious at him, only to discover that Ned wasn’t looking at her, or smiling at her, or smiling to himself thinking of her, like he usually did.

No.

He was busy, paying obsessive attention to the dough in the tin, and Chuck, who was peeling peaches in the counter behind him, left the peach she had in her hands half peeled on the wooden surface and turned in silence to look at him. She studied Ned for some seconds, the way his hands were moving thoroughly and precisely on everything on the counter until he finally found the flour. God, she loved those hands even if they needed to wear gloves every time they were close, inside or on her; his wide back, his long legs…

Looking at him, and especially thinking of him, Chuck felt a familiar warm vertigo in her stomach and spoke with a teasing tone, hoping that it would coat her trembling voice and her suddenly burning cheeks:

“You know, it is just flour and yeast… you don’t have to watch it that exhaustively. It’s not going to run away.”

Ned didn’t turn to look at her; he continued making small cuts to the dough in the tin as if he was alone.

“Hey… What’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer, he didn’t even turn to her, so Chuck studied at him in silence for some seconds more, knowing that he was upset and that it was, in some mysterious way, her fault.

Chuck turned again, in silence and disappointment, to the peaches and continued peeling them. Her mind, without her permission, was in the faintly illuminated long corridor of her former house with the sound of her aunts’ voices rising from downstairs and far away from that kitchen. Then she felt the unmistakable warmth radiating off a body at her back and two strong hands on her hips, through the red fabric of her dress.

“Don’t turn.”

Ned’s very hushed, very near and very hot words whispered into her ear were more than enough to distract her from the fact the he hadn’t said his habitual “please” at the end of the sentence.

The Pie-Maker felt how the girl named Chuck didn’t move a muscle at his demanding tone or his ungloved touch; she only stood still, with her back to him and with a trickling resurrected peach trembling slightly in her hands. Ned forgot to breathe as Charlotte Charles closed her eyes unconsciously at his touch and exhaled a faint sigh in the suddenly-too-hot kitchen.

“Secondtouchdeadsecondtouchdeadsecondtouchdead…”

That was the only thing he could awkwardly think about when he sensed Chuck’s heart racing fast while his naked hands pressed her, needy and homicidal, against him.

“God… she is really alive. Too much alive for you.”

With her unspoken oath to stay immobile, trapped against the counter and his body so neither of them would die that evening, Ned slid his bare hands along the thin fabric of her dress, touching possessively her hips, her waist, her stomach and everything else in their way. Chuck drop the half-peeled and wet peach from her hands and licked her lips involuntarily, feeling his body dangerously close at her back.

Ned wasn’t speaking; there were no stutters or stammers this time, he didn’t say a word, he just needed to touch her for “real,” just for once. The Pie-Maker closed his eyes slowly, caressing Chuck’s warm body between his hands, imagining the pale skin underneath her dress.

And when he found himself trying to catch the strawberry scent of her hair in spite of knowing that just a few inches more closer would be the death of her, and surely for him, Ned admitted to himself that he was somehow trying to fulfill that very small, very insignificant and yet very painful part of their relationship, the one and only thing that unlike every other man on earth, he couldn’t give her. And it wasn’t only the sex, or at least, sex in the way everybody else understood it.

No, it was the sickly need of Chuck he had developed during all these months. He was a Chuck-oholic and it drove him insane, blurring idea of losing her.

Because truth was, the Pie-Maker lived terrified and haunted by the idea that someday she would grow tired of living their two-beds, gloves and plastic wrap life, and would fly away from him.

“Ned… it’s okay.

I’m not going anywhere.”

Her voice sounded faint but amazingly determined and although he couldn’t see her face, Ned was sure she had spoken with her beautiful eyes still closed.

“You promise?”

Ned’s voice sounded as if he was that eight-year-old boy again, hoarse and fragile, and so close that Charlotte Charles trembled imperceptibly when he straightened his grip and when she felt his warm breath moving her loose hair.

“Yes.

I promise.”

Ned smiled slightly and let out a soft sigh, feeling happy, dizzy, jealous and mad, all at once, and passed his hands slowly on her again, more shy and gently this time, more like Ned.

Chuck turned slowly and carefully, still between his hands, to look at him.

“I… I…”

Ned’s stammer that she loved so much came back to him and flooded the kitchen.

Then, the Pie-Maker looked down, smiling shyly, mortified at his hands still on her hips. Even so, he took some seconds before brushing them away, putting them together at his back, like he always did when she was around.

“…Sorry.”

Ned couldn’t help to look at her in the way that he always looked at her, as if after twenty years without her, she has just woken up in her coffin at his touch again.

Chuck smiled brightly and looked at him, making the Pie-Maker feeling dangerously normal, then she took a few steps towards the door, still smiling happily, and turned in the threshold when she noticed that Ned wasn’t following her.

“C’mon… Let’s go home.”

The Pie-Maker smiled, relieved, amazed and a hundred things more, and walked slowly toward Chuck, who was still in the doorsill, looking at him with a radiant and one hundred percent Charlotte Charles smile in her lips. With a warm and mischievous tone in her soft voice, she added:

“And don’t forget the gloves…”

The end.

Comments are love.

Lately (II)

2008-03-13T11:11:48Z

Disclaimer: I know that I don’t own Pushing Daisies or Lee Pace… But I can dream.

Ranting: NC-15, just to be safe.

Summary: That pleading, hushed and broken tone made Charlotte Charles want to kiss him to death.Literally.

Paring: Ned/Chuck

Dedicated to my patient and lovely Beta; thank you for the magic.

Spoilers: Everything until Corpsicle is fair game.

Title: Lately

Chapter Title: Secrets (II)

By Lylou

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-“…We've all done things we're not proud of.

We all have secrets.”

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Since the first time she entered the Pie Hole -- the very same night that Ned brought her back to life and drove her there, Chuck had loved the mixed scents of flour, fruit and baking powder floating in the surprisingly familiar air of that place.

And without knowing really why, she had loved that place immediately; some nights after that Chuck came to understand it was because every corner, every booth, every floor tile and everything there, was somehow attached to Ned.

Everything in that place was Ned.

But above all, what Chuck would remember from that first night and many after, later while she was trying to sleep in a strange bed, would be the savory and hot scent of the pie maker above all the others tempting smells there. She’d remember the way he smiled at her from behind the bar; as if he wasn´t really saying with that warm and gentle tone of his, the one that always seemed warmer and gentler when he was talking to her, that they would never ever touch, or she would be dead. Again. Forever.

But that first night in a closed pie shop Chuck didn’t pay too much attention to his words; of course, she had understood what he had said about the touching issue but all that seemed blurred and vague to Chuck while he was speaking and looking at her with that strange beautiful blend and trade mark of shyness, charm, sweetness, magic, that was, above all, Ned.

And Chuck would remember later that then had been the very first time of the many, in which she had thought that it was almost unfairly easy to fall in love with that man.

Now, almost four months after that night, but still under the spell of his voice and his warm glance upon her, Chuck could sense his now familiar savory scent mixed with all the other sweet smells in the Pie Hole; even today, the day after she returned from her lonely one-way journey.

The faint white light, typical of a snowy day, slipped in through the circular windows of the still closed local and spilled everywhere. It gave it the look of something frozen and solitary that Chuck instantly hated with all her heart; the Pie Hole always had seemed bright, busy, warm and safe to her, and she needed that this morning more than ever.

Chuck needed small slices of what was familiar and known to her; she needed the bitter smell of the fresh coffee impregnating everything there, or the soft conversation from the booths, the bells clinking in the door, Olive fluttering around Ned… Ned.

He was busy now in that cold and small room at the end of the kitchen, the one she always had secretly hated, bringing fruit back to life at the other side of a locked door.

Chuck didn’t like when he acted like that. Actually, it disgusted and saddened her so much that sometimes she couldn’t help to wonder if she really knew the man she loved.

Because the Ned she knew wasn’t the distant and cold man locked in a narrow room filled with rotted fruit, that had left her outside, alone, peeling apples and staring at an empty restaurant knowing that she hated being alone.

The Ned she knew was the man who knew how she felt, and didn’t care to wake up half hour earlier everyday to take all the rotted fruit out of that damn room and to bring it back to life in the large and warm kitchen, only so that she won’t feel lonely.

Like now.

Chuck felt hot tears forming fast behind her eyes and clouding her vision, and she didn’t realize that she had cut the back of the hand instead of the apple until blood appeared, dark and intense, through her wet vision:

“Damn it.”

When she moved the blood dripped, staining the elastic of her green cashmeresweater, and a few drops fell upon the wooden counter; Chuck sighed, frustrated, in the empty kitchen, left the guilty knife and looked for the paper towels.

She watched, mesmerized, as the paper strip turned red immediately upon contact with her blood, and without knowing really why, she couldn’t help but think: There is something different in your blood now and forever.

A faint trace of ozone and death poisoning you, and stopping you painfully from going to that narrow room and crushing your mouth against the man you love --from kissing and touching him until he stops looking at you in that heartbreaking way that makes you feel guilty. That kind of difference.

But of course, she could never ever do something like that. So she was left with the certainty that she would never feel Ned’s careful hands upon her skin, despite hours spent studying and memorizing every line of them, and the sureness that she’d never know how her nickname would sound among broken whispers, with his hot breathe in her ear, underneath him and feeling nothing but his touch…

All that was like a dull ache in her side – she was learning how to life with it, like an open wound that kept her bleeding, painfully, but still alive… but some days, that wound was too deep, too painful.

Chuck looked again at the small blood drops on the counter and a dark and dangerous idea crossed her mind… What if there was an antidote to that particular poison hers of being alive, but perpetually infected by death?

She was lost and darkly mesmerized with those thoughts , so she didn’t heard the door of the small room opening behind her. She didn’t even notice that Ned was in the kitchen until he was at her back, watching her intensely -- but when Chuck turned and saw him, all the thoughts of the antidote, death, and the man in the sewer fled from her mind.

“What…Are you okay?”

All kind of distances between them seemed to disappear when Ned’s concerned and alarmed voice flooded the empty place, and even more, when he quickly tore more paper towels and pressed them carefully against her wounded hand.

Suddenly, she couldn’t remember exactly why they were that far-away or the misery and guilt she’d felt wandering during two days, knowing that he was feeling miserable and guilty too. She even forgot that if his long fingers accidentally touched her, she would die instantly in front of him. Suddenly the only thing that mattered was Ned’s almost touch in the warm kitchen.

It mattered so much that Chuck could almost felt the warmth of his skin through the layers of paper and blood.

Almost.

She cleared her throat and whispered, overwhelmed by his nearness and the faint scent of the after-shave that Chuck secretly wished would cling her hair and her clothes: “It’s nothing…only a superficial wound.”

Liar. It’s not superficial wound. You’re bleeding to death, because even with him so close, looking at you with that dangerous mixture of love, guilt and concern, the only thing you want to do is to run away and break his heart again.

Because you still think that he deserves it, just a little.

Chuck looked at his big hand covering hers completely through layers of paper towels, and felt his sad gaze fixed on her, as if somehow Ned could read her awful thoughts, but loved her anyway.

Well, maybe he can -- maybe after he brought you back to life there is something small of you inside him, too; maybe that could be enough. It used to be enough… But not now.

Not while you’re still willing to hurt yourself to hurt him.”

To avoid betraying her destructive mindset, Chuck closed her eyes slowly, and felt the heat radiating off Ned’s body beside her own, his hot breathing against her loose hair, and her hand underneath his.

This is real. And the not-touching-thing doesn’t make it, or him, less real and painful.

Before she opened her eyes again, Chuck heard a faint sigh in her ear before he released her hand and separated from her painfully; taking his warmth with him.

Ned spoke in a polite but authoritarian tone that he didn’t often use with her. “The peroxide is in the other room… I’ll go to find it. Stay here.”

It wasn’t a question and he didn’t want an answer, so Chuck spoke up anyway. “It won’t be necessary, I’m…”

But Ned had already left her alone in that lonely kitchen for a second time that morning.

Chuck looked at the bloodstained and crumpled absorbent paper upon the wooden counter top with infinite hate before throwing it to a corner in a rage.

Ned appeared again in the kitchen with a small white plastic bottle that seemed smaller in his hands.

He looks even taller when he is upset. Especially when he is upset with you.

Chuck felt small, fragile and above all, lonely then; she sank slowly to the cold, green tiled floor, leaning her back against the cabinet door.

Ned walked to her and looked at her in silence a few seconds before sitting down next to her, leaving a gap between them. He bent his long legs and looked at her with his lately habitual mixture of care and guilt in his eyes; there was no trace of the authoritarian and distant Ned there.

Chuck stretched her wounded hand and Ned smiled lightly before opening the bottle.

Cold, transparent and burning drops of peroxide fell in her open wound and made her to groan low. Peroxide in her open wound was a painfully apt metaphor for the way she felt now.

But then Ned blew a puff of air in her wound carefully, in that intimate and charming gesture that broke Chuck’s hear. It reminded her of the good times, and of how far away they were now.

“… Sorry. I know it hurts…”

And without even thinking what she was doing, Chuck answered. “Yes… It does.”

Ned looked at her, mortified, and pressed his lips together, a painful and scared expression in his eyes that Chuck had never seem in him before. He looked away and his guilty sight was lost on the green tiles:

“..I’m sorry…I know that it probably doesn’t mean anything to you by now, but I… I want you to know that if I could… somehow…”

He didn’t know how to end his sentence, like all the words the Pie Maker knew weren’t enough anymore. Secretly she was thankful, because his voice sounded too broken and too sad for the tall and wonderful man, all grown up from the shy boy she’d waited for.

And suddenly, the most charming man she’d ever known, seemed sure that the abyss was the only thing that remain in front of them. It was like hope had slipped out of the door while they weren’t looking.

Chuck felt hot tears flooding her throat and her eyes, and very sad and small smile appeared on her lips as she spoke in a wrecked and defeated tone:

“I’ve already forgiven you. That was the easy part.”

The pie maker looked at her with a mixture of confusion, guilt, and a hint of optimism in his eyes, and Chuck felt even worst when the only thing he said was a very gentle, very caring, and very Ned:

“…Don’t cry… please.”

She wiped away the tears with a fast and nervous move and smiled sadly. It was unfair; she was the broken, resurrected and lonely one but still she couldn’t keep away from him, or hate for looking at her like he was doing now, or for speaking with a voice that was that full of love, fear, tenderness and guilt that silenced all the mean, terrified voices in her own mind.

If you’ve already forgiven him, why are you crying, and why is his heart breaking into a million pieces in front of you?

-“Chuck please… look at me.”

That pleading, hushed and broken tone made Charlotte Charles want to kiss him to death.

Literally.

She looked at him finally, and a warm rush of love poisoned her rage and hate when she saw Ned’s shy smile and grateful gaze, but specially, when she heard his unmistakably hopeful tone too close to her:

“Thank you.”

And then, the girl named Chuck smiled brightly for the first time in three days, even with the moisture of her tears burning her cheeks.

“How’s your hand?”

Ned had completely recovered his familiar warm and gentle tone, and was looking intensely at her with his back leaned up against the cabinet door.

He can’t touch me, but right now, he’s touching the same thing I’m touching.

Somehow, Chuck found that extraordinarily comforting and normal. Normal for them, anyway.

“Much better, I’m not bleeding anymore.
Thank you.”

Ned looked at her as if he hadn’t seen her in years and smiled shyly:

“You’re welcome.”

Chuck`s gaze left the Pie Maker and his charming smile for a moment to fix it in her green ballet flats. She asked softly and a slightly small teasing tone:

“So… is this how is going to be every time? You just say the right words, that’ll be it?”

Ned looked thankful and overwhelmed for a very few seconds, marveling at the discovery, that without knowing how and when, he had become Charlotte Charles’s anchor.

This is too good and too bright to be your life baker boy. You should be careful; maybe there is a surprise inside this pie…

And actually, there was.

But Ned didn’t know that yet, and brushed away that dark and premonitory voice of his mind, still under the spell of her words, and chuckled softly and delighted in that increasingly warm kitchen.

Chuck felt a familiar hot and wonderful vertigo in her stomach at his deadly combination of sexy, charming and shy tone when he said:

“Of course.

This is how it’s going to be.”

Ned smiled softly and looked at her in such an intense and powerful way that Chuck knew instantly and without a doubt, that he was kissing her.

But not the kind of friendly, respectful, in-front-of-parents kiss type.

No. In his mind Ned had pushed her up against the cabinet and had his big hands underneath her grey dress and his hot tongue into her mouth, kissing her thoroughly and consuming her.

Of course, it was only in his mind.

However, she knew it and it was enough, so Chuck smiled at him, hoping that somehow he could know that right now, she was digging her nails in his bare back and moaning his name.

Ned smiled a bit embarrassed when he spoke, as if his imagination had betrayed him with his teasing and anything but shy tone.

“I… I don’t have more secrets…”

And then, the girl named Chuck wasn’t smiling anymore.

She had one, and one of the big ones; the kind of secret that could make everything go the hell forever without second chance; or a third one in her case.

Charlotte Charles had run away from him and from his warm spell three days ago, and in that time she had almost betrayed their secret and everything else they were, as if all the love, faith and promises between them didn’t mean anything; and even now, there was still a part of her screaming her to do it, to hurt him and made him bleed in a way that no one else could.

You can admit it -- let him know how you almost told everything to a stranger, then sit back to watch his heart breaks in front of you -- or tell him that his worst fear was knocking at your door only a night ago—or that you are not as perfect as he thinks you are. Break the spell and tell the man that loves you more than anything how you were willing to run away to never go back.

Or you can lie to him again, and pray that truth and fate never knock at your door.

So the girl named Chuck smiled brightly and lied.

“Me neither.”

Of course, she couldn’t know that in actuality, fate was about to knock at their door.

To be continued…

Comments are always like sex and coffee combined.

Lately

2008-02-25T21:54:49Z

Disclaimer: I know that I don’t own Pushing Daisies or Lee Pace… But I can dream.
Ranting: NC-15, just to be safe.
Summary: As if somehow, a small memory of Ned had remained inside her.
Paring: Ned/Chuck
Dedicated to my patient and lovely Beta; thank you very much for the magic.
Spoilers: Everything until Corpsicle is fair game.
Title: Lately
Chapter Title: Sins (I)

By Lylou

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Chuck: “Where've you been?”
Ned: “Not important.”
Chuck: “It's important to me. I missed you.”

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Some nights, he still woke up uneasily at midnight, as if he had just remembered that he had accidently left the gas turned on; and always, for those very first seconds, Ned didn’t remember that he wasn’t alone in that bedroom anymore; that now, his bed seemed narrower than it used to be and that there was a faint scent of honey floating in the dark air of the room.

Always, in those first seconds, Ned needed some time in the blurred space between dreams and awareness to allow himself to re-remember that he could hear someone else’s breathing in the room.

Her breathing.

For the first nights she had been there his exhausted mind had travelled in vain during unending sleepless hours, just listening to her calm breathing in the bed next to his. He’d think, not so much about all of the intricate moral and metaphysic possible consequences of having a re-alive-untouchable girlfriend, but more on how now their clothes were mixed in the same closet. Sometimes, when he put on one of his shirts it still held a faint trace of her warm scent in the black fabric, making Ned feel dizzy and keeping a silly smile on his face throughout the day; until the night, when he slowly unbuttoned his black shirt and that warm scent, like peaches heated by the final days of the summer sun, faded. Because that was how the pale skin of her neck and collarbone smelled.

Or at least, how he thought they would smell.

Of course, Ned had never gotten close enough to her to discover if his daybreak musings were true, but that didn’t stop him from the addictive and incredibly painful routine of imaging it. It was just like the way Ned couldn’t help but look disguisedly at her while Chuck was kneading in the kitchen, smiling radiantly because the flour had stuck to her small hands. She’d wring them delicately, and it made her look even more like something unreal and definitely out of this world.

And actually, she was.

Ned held his self-destructive, yet delightful mental thread the best he could and turned slowly in his bed to look at her; Chuck was sleeping safely and quietly only a few feet from him.

The certainty that this was how they were going to spend the rest of the nights of their attached but separated lives made Ned feel terribly sad and sick. It was as if suddenly all the honey and pure joy that she had brought to his life had transformed into something bitter, unknown and rotten.

And soon, they’d have something else bitter, unknown, and rotten to face.

Ned had finally brought her home after two miserable days of looking for her everywhere, all the while torturing himself with the idea that maybe he would not see Chuck ever again; until he finally found her, sitting on the frozen ground and looking at her father’s headstone, covered by the snow.

And that had been the very first time in his life that the Ned had said an irrevocable “No” to her -- under the snow, when she begged him to bring her father back, even if it was only just for one painful minute.

After that, he put his coat upon her shoulders and remained, silently standing behind her for some minutes as an involuntary witness of her too lonely and too sour goodbye.

He was secretly sure that at any moment, the woman he loved would magically fade under his big coat at the same speed with which she had appeared in his life again.

But she didn’t.

And then, under thequiet snow and looking at her, Ned couldn’t help but think about how his life would be now without the sound of her chuckle fluttering around him, or without her big green eyes, looking grateful, lovingly and a million things more, and making Ned feel for the very first time as if he was much more than only a tall and lonely shadow who smelled like flour and baking powder.

After some minutes more in silence, Chuck turned to look at him with wet eyes and a small smile dancing on her lips; and when she spoke that snowy and cold night seemed less chilly to Ned.

“Let’s go home.”

He couldn’t help a half smile when he heard the word “home” from her lips, and then was the very first time that Ned realized, that actually, it was true; she was living with him, in his home.

They were just like a normal couple, sharing the shower, the bedroom, the closet… and they both felt that maybe those walls were something worth going back to.

But that illusion of warmth and normality faded fast and painfully when Ned felt a familiar dark and latent pain in his chest when he realized that it was impossible for him to do something as normal as hold her hand to help Chuck to get up from the snowy ground.

So she walked by herself as they headed for the car, and they left the frozen cemetery behind them.

After two days without her, Ned waited until Chuck was completely asleep, and did something that he hadn’t done since their first night together – that night when Chuck slept in his former bed and he imagined her across the wall -- he locked the door.

Of course, there was an urgent need in his shaking hands to protect her and her secret when he closed the bolt, but there was also a dark and hidden spot in his mind which convinced him that, otherwise, Chuck would run away from him while he was sleeping.

You know it, but you don’t want to admit it –you feel it even now, as she sleeps safely in the bed beside yours: something has changed. The spell has broken and you are not Prince Charming anymore; reality has caught up with the both of you.

Ned sighed. Frustrated and unable to sleep he turned again in his bed to look at her; he could make out her body's silhouette under the blankets through the darkness in the bedroom.

Their bedroom.

Again, Ned had to remind himself that now he was sharing his bedroom, his life and his secret with somebody.

She was still sleeping, but Chuck seemed to have developed an unconscious mechanism that always made her wake up only a few minutes after him. She was aware of that fact too, and secretly liked the idea, as if it was some kind of invisible bond that connected her to him; it was like after he had touched her cheek and brought her back to life, her body was still able to remember him, as if somehow, a small memory of Ned had remained inside her.

Even before she opened her eyes, Chuck could feel his gaze upon her body through the shadowy bedroom, and turned slowly to look at him with a small smile dancing on her lips before asking warmly: “You can’t sleep?”

Ned didn’t answer immediately, he just looked at her intensely and in silence for a few seconds. At first Chuck thought that he had just woken up of a nightmare, especially when she saw a spark of fear crossing fast behind his eyes… or maybe it wasn’t fear, maybe it was pain.

And then Chuck couldn’t help a rush of love overwhelming her when she realized that Ned never had seemed that much like that lonely nine-year-old little boy she knew once, until now.

Suddenly Chuck felt the urge to run to his bed and comfort him and wait underneath the blankets with him, until the last cell of her body was impregnated with his scent.

And if his touch wouldn’t kill her instantly, leaving him miserable and devastated for the rest of his life, she would have jumped underneath the covers with him and leave all the rest outside that bed.

Ned cleared his throat softly and spoke with that mix of shyness and stutter that she loved:

“Sort of. … I… I’m tired, but my body doesn’t want to give up.”

Chuck wrinkled her nose gracefully in the darkness and smiled softly before she whispered:

“Yeah… I know the feeling; it’s weird when you want to rest but your brain is still awake and kicking.”

“Yes… Something like that.”

Chuck looked at the long shadow laying in the bed next to hers, deathly sure that there was something else he needed to say her, and knowing deep down, that somehow she was the reason for his insomnia and elusive tone.

But everything else faded when Chuck felt an instant sharp lance of guilt and regret, hearing Ned speak without even looking at her and in a low and urgent voice that she never had heard from him before:

“You are okay, right? I mean… You, you have been fine for the last two days, haven’t you?”

And then, in their dark bedroom Chuck could feel her heart breaking noisily under the weight of his fragile voice, his concern and his love. Hot tears formed fast and burned her behind her eyes; when she whispered, Chuck’s voice sounded tearful, overwhelmed and a thousand things more:

“I haven’t been okay… But I’ve been safe.”

Her answer seemed to comfort Ned, even if he had clearly heard the trembling and the tears in her voice through the ever brightening room.

His tone changed a bit and Ned spoke warmly with a little smile on his lips and a small teasing tone in his voice:

“And what have you being doing during these two days…?”

Chuck could felt her heart stopping inside her chest and all her blood coagulating painfully in her veins, knowing that she was going to lie to the man that had given her a second chance of living without asking anything in exchange. She knew that it would torture and hurt him in a million different ways if she said something like: “I have been busy avoiding you and almost telling that creepy man who lives underground and seems to stalks us how Digby and I are alive again. It’s all because I was feeling miserably lonely and mad at you, and mostly unconsciously but partially on purpose, I wanted to hit you where it would hurt the most. And I know very well that what hurts you the most is me, and our secret.”

So she lied:

“Nothing. Just… thinking.”

Ned’s voice sounded worried, sad, and something else, something small and dark that Chuck couldn’t guess then, but even then it still made her feel as guilty and depressed as she ever felt during all the time she had spent next to him.

“Something I should know about…?”

A brutal and shrill voice in Chuck’s mind screamed: “He knows it; he knows that you almost ruined everything, and he isn’t going to be able to forgive you. You are going to lose him, and your re-gifted life isn’t going to be worthwhile without him.”

So Chuck lied to him for the second time that morning.

“No. Nothing.”

Ned looked intensely at her, wishing he could go to Chuck’s bed and kiss her thoroughly until she forgave him, or until she told him the truth, whichever came first; because he knew then that she was lying, that she had been lying to him since she had woken up. But he was too happy to have her back that he decided not to think about it.

At least, not today.

And Ned was an expert in doing that.

An expert in hiding all the unpleasant things and putting them together in some dark corner of his mind, and acting as if he had forgotten about them, as if they didn’t exist anymore.

And of course this time wasn’t an exception; but somehow, the thought of going to Chuck’s bed and crushing his body against hers and kissing and loving her until she was moaning his name, tortured Ned for longer than usual; until in an uncommon fit of sanity, he decided that it was enough torture and impossible delight for the moment.

But before he surrender completely to their reality again, Ned had time to think about how it would be to wake up every day with Chuck’s taste in his mouth and with the rest of his senses flooded by that honey scent of hers -- it was enough to drive any man mad -- or how it would be to have her underneath him until there wasn’t a centimeter of Chuck’s body left that didn’t belong completely to his hands and his mouth, and then continue, until she wasn’t able to feel anything but the trace of his saliva upon her skin and his hot breathing in her ear.

And then, Ned got up of his bed just like any other day, having dreamt of her only to discover that he had fallen in love again when he woke.

He was deadly sure that having just a small and untouchable piece of Chuck was much better than not having her at all, and unaware that today, everything was about to change forever, and that he would have to say goodbye to the woman he loved.

To be continued…

Comments are love.

Second chances.

2007-09-06T10:43:36Z

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!

Michael and Sara icons and banners

2007-07-24T15:42:36Z

Michael and Sara icons and banners:

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Lyrics by Snow Patrol and Chris Daughtry

RULES:
. Comments are always welcome.
. Credit please
. Request are always love.
Thanks.
Lylou

Thank you

2007-07-16T19:42:04Z

Disclaimer: I don’t own Prison Break or Wentworth Miller, sad but true.

Spoilers until “Sona”, after that, just my sick imagination.

Pairing: Michael / Sara.

Rating: PG-17

Summary: And Sara thought then that it was her time to say “Thank you”.

Dedicated to my lovely Maria, thank you for making it possible.

Title: Thank you

Chapter title: The morning after.

By Lylou

Feedback is always like sex and coffee combined.

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-”...Was it all an act?”

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Sara opened her eyes slowly and felt the humid and hot air stick to her skin and to her hair immediately.

She was naked and face down, near the edge of the bed, Sara felt the warm and heavy air sneaking slowly into her lungs and announcing a new day of heat and sunlight.

Actually, the orangey sun of the midday was slipping past the rectangular gaps of the closed blinds, bathing the bed, her naked back and everything else in the room in small and rectangular golden sparkles.

It was beautiful, but Sara hadn’t discovered that until now; since she had never woken up that late in all the lonely mornings she had been there; she usually woke up around 6 AM, her skin feeling clammy and covered with the cold sweat that only appears when you have just woken up from a horrible nightmare.

She heard the soft whisper of the fan in the ceiling above the big bed, turning the hot air slowly in the still half-dark and golden bedroom.

Sara moved lazily under the white silk sheet and felt all her muscles aching deliciously in places that she couldn’t even recall hurting ever before; she could still feel Michael’s hot and intoxicating taste in her mouth and on her tongue.

Sara closed her eyes slowly and smelled Michael’s warm scent trapped on the expensive and tangled sheets and even with everything that was weighing heavily on her shoulders, Sara couldn’t help but smile delightfully against the pillow.

She lazily stretched her arm to the other side of the bed.

Michael wasn’t there.

Sara’s heart accelerated instantly.

“You can still sense him and his scent is still lingering on the sheets… You didn’t dream it.”

Distractedly she pushed a chunk of her uncombed hair from her face and then she heard the faint noise of water running in the shower; she smiled lightly and immediately felt relieved. A moment later the water stopped running.

Sara saw the bathroom door opening slowly and felt all the hot vapour and the scent of the shampoo flooding the room and her senses.

Michael walked into the bedroom, wearing only a white towel that hung loosely on his waist. Soaked from the shower he had just taken, he walked stealthily with his catlike steps until he saw that she was already awake.

And then Michael smiled like she never had seen him smile before, and suddenly, all the years that he had seemed to have aged in those two months he had been apart from her, had disappeared.

And Sara saw something that she wasn’t used to seeing in his eyes: Happiness.

“What have you done Sara? Did you even consider before sleeping with him, how all this was going to affect him when you…”

Her thought was at once interrupted by Michael’s voice, surprisingly shy; in spite of all the delicious things he had done to her last night:

-“…Sorry…

I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“So… Now you know that Michael Scofield is even sweeter and more shy the morning after.”

Sara couldn’t help but smile softly and spoke with a still sleepy voice:

-“… You didn’t.

I was already awake.”

Slowly Michael sat down on the edge of the bed, just a few centimetres from her, which gave Sara a clear view of the small beads of water trickling down his skin, running over the dark ink.

He looked at her in silence for a few seconds, as if he still wasn’t sure if he was dreaming everything and when he seemed to be fully convinced of it all being real, he spoke in a warm and cheerful tone:

-“That has been my first shower in months - without a lot of guys around.”

Michael chuckled softly and Sara could feel his hand gently pushing her uncombed hair from her face and in the process leaving small drops of water on her cheeks inadvertently.

The touch with the water woke her completely and she looked at him; Michael was looking at her again with that dangerous shine of hope in his warm eyes.

“You should have known that having sex with him would only make him even more irresistible in your eyes.”

Michael was slowly running his familiar and still wets fingers over the curve of her spine, bathed in orangey and rectangular sparkles, as if he was trying to keep every small detail of her body in his beautiful mind.

Hell… Sara definitely wasn’t ready for that; for that hopeful look in his eyes, for his shy tone spoken close to her on the bed, for his naked body - that is except for that towel around his waist, the sun peeping through the gaps creating a beautiful lighting, the scent of the shampoo floating in the room and upon his skin…

“What were you thinking Sara…? Did you ever stop to think of the possibility that the morning after the spell would just break?

God. He’s fucking Michael I-went-to-prison-for-you Scofield.

…That kind of spell can’t be broken.”

-“So… Now what?”

Michael spoke barely above a whisper and looked at her, knowing intuitively that he had caught her off-guard with his soft question, and then he couldn’t help but feel the fear he was oh so familiar with rising again deep inside his body, gradually and painfully.

He observed how Sara sat on the bed, her bare back against the headrest, her knees bent and her long legs pressed against her chest. Sara slowly and unconsciously embraced her legs with her arms in a self-protective gesture.

All the alarms in Michael’s head sounded off: “There is something that scares her. You just made her jump with your question.”

“-Sara…”

He was now seated on the bed in front of her, but she was distractedly looking at the closed blinds, in the opposite direction. Michael gently touched her interlaced hands hoping to get her attention, and when she turned to him, she looked at him as if she didn’t recognize him anymore, as if he hadn’t whispered a needy “-I love you.” against her mouth only a few hours ago.

-“Are you okay, Sara?”

He smiled a frail smile, but Michael perfectly felt the fear draining any small trace of hope left inside him.

-“Yes…

Sorry, I guess I’m still asleep.”

“You’re a liar Sara, you were thinking about very dangerous things… And he knows it; he intuitively knows something is wrong.”

Sara looked at him hoping that her dirty not-that-little secret was still safe.

-“Have you seen Lincoln today?”

-“No.”

Michael smiled sadly and looked to the floor, painfully aware that Sara was desperately trying to get rid of him.

She spoke again and this time her voice sounded a bit nervous:

-“There are some clothes for you in the walk-in closet; Lincoln picked them out, so in case you don’t like them…”

Sara chuckled softly yet seemed distant, but in that moment all Michael could think of was the fact that she was beautiful, naked and bathed by the midday sun, with her knees bent and her legs pressed against her chest, with her hair uncombed falling on her shoulders… But Michael also felt something dark silently waiting for them. As if they hadn’t paid enough as it is.

As if he hadn’t lost her enough times to fill up two lifetimes.

Michael looked at her again and smiled weakly, then he got up slowly from the bed; He walked over to the big walk-in closet in dusk and disappeared momentarily of Sara’s distracted sight.

Sara got up from the bed slowly and put on the white satin robe covering her naked body; She took a few steps and then she saw Michael’s bare back reflected in the big mirror. He was putting on a pair of beige trousers that he hadn’t buttoned yet, but then Sara saw something that made her whisper scared and move quickly toward him:

-“Oh my…

What is that?”

Michael quickly turned around to look at her when he sensed Sara walking toward him worried, her eyes pinned to his back, and he could clearly hear the fear in her faltering voice.

Sara was only a few inches from his bare back, and Michael knew then what had scared her so much.

Slowly and indecisively she ran her fingers across the not yet closed and irregular long wound in the left side of his back, a wound that she didn’t know Michael had acquired.

Michael closed his eyes slowly, half in pain and half in relieve, when he felt her soft touch and her breath against his skin, just before he turned around to look at her.

He saw her eyes turning, and he felt a million different feelings flood him when he saw her bottom lip quivering slowly: love, pain… sorrow.

Michael gently took her hand in his and pressed her open palm against his lips, kissing it with eyes closed; Sara sobbed softly and pressed herself so close to him that she could feel the heat radiating off of his body, slipping through the white silk she was wearing.

He made soft calming noises and kissed her palm again before releasing it only to embrace Sara as tight as he could.

-“I’m okay Sara.

It’s nothing.”

His words were laced with sadness and guilt. She pressed her forehead to his chest and Michael felt her warm tears slipping over his ink covered skin.

“Now these dark lines are going to be even more permanent.”

Michael pushed that thought away and tightened his grip on Sara; he felt her sobbing beginning to subside slowly as he held her in his arms and he felt her lips moving slightly against his skin when she whispered:

-“It’s all my fault…”

“You were too preoccupied with the feel of his mouth leaving trails of kisses on your skin and his warm promises whispered into your ear to notice that ugly wound on his back.”

Sara’s voice sounded broken and guilt-ridden against his chest and Michael closed his eyes hurt, sad and a thousand things more; he slowly ran his fingers through her hair but she didn’t look at him.

Michael whispered, worried and gently into her ear:

-“Look at me… look at me, Sara…”

Sara raised her head slowly but avoided looking at him and he spoke low and faltering, near her mouth:

-“…It’s not your fault.”

He leaned his forehead softly against hers and closed his eyes before he whispered, in a warm and sure tone:

-“There are many things I would do differently Sara… But not that.

Not that.”

Michael felt the hot tears behind his closed eyelids and kissed her temple and her hair, trying desperately to make her believe in something again; just one more time.

Sara finally looked at him and she saw the fear and the concern in his wet eyes.

“You have lost a part of him in that place, and now you are going to lose the rest, Sara.”

Michael carefully touched her face and he felt Sara’s hot tears flowing down her cheeks; Michael closed his eyes and kissed her, feverish and needy, as if they were again in that dark cabin, surrounded by the Panamanian police and saying the most painful goodbye of his life.

As if he had understood suddenly that he was going to lose her.

And this time, maybe forever there wasn’t going to be more fate related turns and tricks for them.

That scared him more than anything, even more than the first night he spent in Sona, eyes wide open in a dark corner and surrounded only by hot air and pain.

Michael had never surrendered in his whole life and he wasn’t ready to start now, just when he could still feel her flavour in his mouth.

So Michael whispered against her lips between hot and rushed kisses, and even with her eyes closed, Sara heard the determination and the love in his voice, breaking both of them:

“-I would do it again Sara.

I would go there again, for you.”

Sara looked at him, she wasn’t sobbing any more but her voice still sounded fragile and guilty, as if she was about to break again:

-“I’m sorry Michael…

…I’m so sorry.”

He tightened his grip on her body and kissed her repeatedly; Michael could smell her wonderful strawberry scent even through her tears and brushed his lips softly against hers, whispering warm and faltering words into her mouth:

“-Don’t…

I would do anything for you Sara…

…Anything.”

She kissed Michael, feverish and guilty, tasting the salt of her tears mixed with his hot saliva.

Her words sounded choked and broken by his intense kisses and by their breathing in that walk-in closet faintly lit by the midday sun:

-“I know.

I would do anything for you too, Michael…”

Then he broke away from the kiss and stepped back slowly, but he didn’t release Sara; Michael looked at her, thinking about what she had just said.

He licked his lips in an automatic reaction and he felt Sara’s flavor intoxicating him; But Michael had heard something in her faltering voice that had made him shiver, even with all the hot and wet air surrounding them.

It sounded a lot like a confession to him… Or like a goodbye.

“No more goodbyes, Sara .Please.

Not now that I can still taste you.”

Michael caressed her face lightly and closed his eyes a bit, as if he was gathering strength for what he was going to say:

-“…I know that there’s something wrong here, Sara. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I…”

Michael closed his eyes and kissed her hair before continuing in a whisper, close to her:

-“… I want you to know; that there’s no way I would ever leave you or blame you, Sara.

For anything…”

Michael tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and looked at her wet eyes before whispering into her ear with his eyes closed:

-“…I bled for my brother…

Did you think I wouldn’t do the same for you?”

Sara crushed her lips against his and wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging Michael as tight as she could, separating from his mouth only enough to whisper between desperate kisses:

-“I’m okay...

…I’m okay.”

He saw her lips trembling, as if she wanted to say something else to him, but she didn’t.

Michael drew up his hand and cupped her face softly:

-“If you’re in some kind of trouble Sara, or if someone hurt you … I can fix it.

Let me help you, please.”

She kissed him slowly and passionately and smiled:

-“Everything’s okay, Michael.

I promise.”

“Liar. You are broken and you are going to break him too.

And he has an open wound for you in his back.

One more scar for both Sara, and you have already lost the count.”

She kissed him on the lips quickly and smiled again, leaving the walk-in closet slowly.

Michael heard the shower running in the bathroom and leant desolate against the wall, still feeling the moisture of her tears on his chest and her warm and sweet taste in his mouth.

A million of horrible ideas and possibilities crossed Michael’s mind, fast and painfully.

He had lost her.

Michael had felt the desperation and the need in Sara since she had hugged him tightly yesterday on that dusty and hot path, but now, everything, every word she said seemed more and more like a goodbye to him.

And they knew a lot about goodbyes.

Michael distractedly caught a black shirt from the hanger and finished off dressing himself; then he walked slowly to the terrace door and opened the blinds.

The midday sun dazzled him for a second “You are still not used to the light after all.” Michael went out to the big and sunbathed terrace; he put his hands on the white banister, feeling the warmth of the sun on his skin and looked around; he could see the Pacific Ocean and half of Panamá City from where he was.

In the last months Michael thought that he was never going to see the ocean again.

Or anything else apart from blood, dust and pain.

“But it’s worth the while… Because you saved her.

You did, didn’t you?”

Michael looked away from the ocean and lowered his gaze to the white tiles on the floor; he breathed deeply, worried and scared.

“How the hell did she get you out of there, Michael…?

Does it have something to do with what she’s hiding?”

Those two where the most painful and hard questions of all, but then Michael heard the terrace sliding door open behind him and Sara appeared, wearing a long, green dress, which made a nice contrast to her pale skin and her loose red hair.

“She’s beautiful; but not as beautiful as she was last night, when she was naked underneath you and moaning your name.”

Sara smiled weakly and spoke to him:

-“I didn’t remember, but today I have a lunch meeting with my lawyers.

Sorry.”

Michael looked at her disappointed and spoke worried:

-“Is there something wrong?”

-“No.

No it’s just something concerning my dad’s will…”

Sara looked to the floor a moment before continuing:

“… They have finally sold his estate in Chicago and … I only have to sign some papers and all of that will be over. Forever.”

She looked at him again and added in a sad and distant tone:

-“And then I’ll be the only remaining Tancredi.”

Michael covered the distance to Sara in a few strides and embraced her; he kissed her forehead lightly and whispered:

-“I’ll go with you.”

Sara smiled weakly while shaking her head:

-“You don’t have to; the last thing I want in this heat especially is to struggle to get a cab only to drag you to a boring meeting on your first day as a free man.”

Sara separated from him and walked slowly to the terrace sliding door. She opened it and looked at Michael, disappointed and worried outside.

-“I’ll pay you back, Michael.

I promise.”

Sara’s voice sounded suggestive and warm and she smiled to him from the door. Michael looked at her in silence, with the tone of her last words still floating in his mind.

Already in the room Sara caught her purse from the big sofa and both walked to the door.

Michael opened it slowly and held it for Sara, but when she was going to leave the room he caught her gently by the arm and kissed her thoroughly, running his free hand through her hair and whispering against her lips:

-“Are you trying to get away from me, Sara?”

She stepped back slowly and went out to the corridor followed by Michael who closed the room door behind him. Sara looked at him and smiled a bit confused, then she walked to the elevator doors and pressed the button before speaking:

-“No.

But Lincoln needs you too.”

Michael looked at her in silence for a few moments, trying desperately to figure out what she was hiding.

The elevator made a sound and then the metallic doors opened slowly behind her.

He ran his fingers slowly through her hair and kissed her one more time, resisting to let her go, as if he was sure that she wasn’t going to come back again.

-“I’ll be here when you come back, Sara.”

She walked into the empty elevator and smiled at him before she spoke:

-“I know…

…That’s why I’m going to come back.”

Michael smiled weakly at her and put his hands in his trouser pockets in a typical Michael Scofield gesture before he said in a warm tone:

-“Thank you, Sara.

For getting me out of there.”

She looked at him, confused, scared and about to cry standing inside that elevator, and before the metallic doors closed between them, she whispered, broken and weak:

-“…You’re welcome.”

Sara disappeared behind the metallic doors and Michael took a deep breath in that empty and sunny corridor.

He didn’t even knock at Lincoln’s room door, just behind him; Michael ran to the stairs and walked down, quickly and determined, to the big and elegant vestibule.

He saw Sara was outside; she was already leaving having closed the big glass door behind her.

Michael crossed the reception area and walked to the door, but he stooped suddenly when he saw a middle aged man in the street, he was smiling at Sara and kissed her lovingly on the cheek, slipping his arm around her waist.

Through the big glass door, with all the coherent thoughts leaving his mind, Michael saw how Sara, beautiful with her intense green dress, climbed into the back seat of an official looking black car, which was parked in the hotel entrance, while the mysterious man was politely holding the car door open for her.

And then Michael felt jealousy, hatred and panic seizing him, at once and painfully.

To be continued…

Tomatoes, death threats, insults, comments… Everything is love.

The little things

2007-07-08T01:20:45Z

Disclaimer: I don’t own Prison Break or Wentworth Miller…Sad but true.

Rating: NG-17

Pairing: Michael/Sara

Summary:Because she had discovered one insomnia night, that Michael Scofield was the only thing that was keeping her from fall down and break…

Dedicated to my wonderful and patience Chloe, who makes this possible.

Thank you for your magic touch.

Spoilers until 2x16, after that, just my sick imagination.

Title: The little things.

Chapter title: Inflection point. (IX)

By Lylou

Feedback is always like sex and coffee combined.

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-“…One more day Sara… That’s all I’m asking.”

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Sara felt Michael’s familiar hand squeezing softly hers upon the worn-out tapestry of that tumbledown Ford.

The rain and the wind outside the car were hitting them without mercy, and the complete darkness around them was briefly interrupted only by some blurred and far car spotlights.

Michael hadn’t looked at her in all the time; he hadn’t even talked to her.

Not since the low and distant “-I’m sorry.” that he had whispered ashamed into her ear when she was examining his injured and bleeding wrist in that dark motel room, with her hands still trembling and feeling her heartbeats in her temples.

But now they were in the back seat of the Ford and Lincoln was driving again under the storm; the four had been in complete and uncomfortable silence since they had left that shadowy and untidy motel room and the three dead bodies in the floor, more than two hours ago.

“But you have left something more in that room Sara …Your blood in that small table night, and Michael’s in the floor, just next to everything else that he used to be.”

Sara closed her eyes slowly; she was tired, scared, soaking and all muscles in her body aching her while she was trying to release all the fear and the adrenaline accumulated that long night.

The rain sounded against the chassis in a metallic and angry noise, and she heard the windshield wiper working full speed to brush apart the dark rain; Lincoln had turned on the radio a few miles ago, surely sick of hearing only the sound of that uncomfortable silence, and now from the back seat, Sara could catch some blurred chords of something that she recognized automatically like Van Morrison.

How would Van Morrison sound like over a hammock, in some warm and quiet beach of Panama?

“But you are very far from Panama right now Sara… Maybe you never have been farther than now.”

Sara looked at Michael disguisedly, he was quiet and wide awake, looking steadily to the darkness outside the window and Sara knew intuitively that in his eyes there wasn’t even a small trace of sleep.

“But he used to sleep right? After making love to you in some unmade bed of an impersonal and dark motel room… He sleeps isn’t it?”

Sara couldn’t answer completely convinced to that question, and that scared her.

The head was burning her as if she had gotten drunk the night before, and Sara could recognize that feeling very well; actually, time ago she had been a damn specialist in that and in waking up in some unknown bed next to someone that she didn’t even remember to have met before… But all that had been before; when she was a different woman, a lost and completely alone woman.

It wasn’t as if she was trying to find excuses for some of the things that she had done or for all the far and dead people that she had disappointed in her life, but the truth was that during the most part of her life, being Sara Tancredi hasn’t been exactly a fucking fairy tale.

Because Sara had felt everything falling down and dragging her to the sink enough times, to recognize when it was going to happen again.

To know when she was about to feel that unmistakable sensation in the pit of her stomach, indicating her that everything was going to come down around her, the headache that always tells her that the tide was rising fast.

“But you are not that woman anymore Sara… You are not alone, now you have Michael.”

Sara took a deep breath and felt his warm hand squeezing hers a bit harder. Michael was still there, or at least, he was still there enough to understand that she needed him too.

Because she had discovered one insomnia night, in some unmade and still smelling like them motel bed, that Michael Scofield was the only thing that was keeping her from fall down and break…

But what would she do now? Now that Sara knew that he was broken too?

“No matter what Sara, just don’t screw up everything this time too… No one drags you to the sink faster than yourself.”

Then Sara heard Paul’s severe and commanding voice breaking the silence in the car and the rain noise outside for the first time:

-“We need to hide for some time…

Let the storm passes.”

-“No, we should continue without stop until Chicago.”

Paul sounded fed up and impatient when he spoke again:

-“Sure Burrows, I almost forgot about how stupid you can be.

The man who went to kill someone openly in a parking lot full of security cameras. ”

Lincoln grunted and took the wheel harder, until his knuckles turned white and spoke pissed off:

-“Maybe I`m not the bitch of the President over here, but I can still remember what happened in that motel room in Montana, the last time we -hide to let this pass-.”

Paul sighed frustrated and talked upset:

-“Well Burrows, then maybe this time you could be careful enough to not let someone catch your gun from your back to blow up his brains.”

-“Fuck off Kellerman!”

Kellerman smiled softly without a trace of humor and spoke again in a cold and condescending tone, as if he was trying to explain something really difficult to a child:

-“We have activated all the alarms tonight Burrows.

Our fingerprints are all over that room…”

Paul pointed to Michael and Sara direction and spoke again in a less ruthlessly tone, but still arrogant and annoyed:

-“…And their DNA is spread by all the sheets, and God knows where more.

Surely The Company already know that we have been in that motel and are searching us right now!

And they are going to catch us if we don’t hide; soon. ”

Lincoln was about to answerer him when Michael spoke from the back seat, he didn’t even look away from the car window to look at them, and his voice sounded distant and cold, as if he was just speaking out loud:

-“The bastard is right Linc… We have to hide and let all that pass.”

Kellerman smiled fun in the copilot-seat when he heard his new nickname and looked at Michael, his eyes sparkled in that half dark car and he asked in a really convinced tone:

-“And surely Scofield, a first class nerd like you knows where… isn’t it?”

Michael moved his look from the darkness outside for the first time and looked at Paul, considering all the possibilities before to answer him in a pissed off and cold tone:

-“Yes… I know a safe place.”

The car kept in silence for a very few seconds, until Lincoln asked unsure from the driver seat:

-“You want me to drive there Mike?”

-“Yes… It is like four of five hours from here.

I’ll indicate you.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Michael heard the cold rain falling outside the big and warm cabin and he intuited the dawn, ending up forever with that damn and endless night, slipping in weakly through the closed blinds.

Michael felt his injured and burning wrist between Sara’s soft hands.

The peroxide slid painfully over his skin and he could saw Sara looking at him a bit concerned when he sighed in pain; but just a moment after he smiled weakly at her upon that comfortable bed but she didn’t looked at him, and suddenly, if it hadn’t been by the rain falling outside and the fireplace lighted up in the wall in front of them, Michael could have sworn that they were in that hot and dark motel room in El Gila again, with both seated upon that bed and with Michael breathing his regrets and her disenchantment like a warm poison.

“-One more day Sara… That is all I’m asking.”

Actually, he was asking for much more then; But now, after everything that had happened to her he didn’t have right to ask anything.

Or at least, that was what Michael had been painfully thinking in silence during the last five hours.

In his poisonous and hot guilt, in the more and more distant Panama, in the future…In her dry blood upon her lower lip.

Sara dried his wrist slowly and started to bandage it in silence and professionally until she finally spoke in a far tone:

-“I don’t think that you are going to need stitches after all… But it is an ugly wound.”

She looked at him but Michael didn’t answer, just looked at her with his greenish eyes sparkling under the orange fire light.

Sara sighed frustrated, picked up the cotton balls and the peroxide white bottle from the duvet, and rose slowly from the bed.

She pushed a chunk of hair beck behind her hear in a reflex and tired gesture and went away slowly and in silence from the bed, but then Michael held her hand softly in the very last moment and whispered her name:

-“…Sara…”

-“So… Are you talking to me finally?

It only took you five hours.”

Michael looked at her a bit surprised by her hurt tone of voice, but Sara wasn’t looking at him, she had her look lost somewhere in the floor; Michael sighed softly and tried in vain that his apology didn’t sound too worn-out when he whispered:

-“I’m sorry.”

Then Sara raised her gaze to look at him for the first time, and Michael could saw her eyes wets and trembling with the gilthead light of the fireplace.

-“You don’t have to be… I understand it perfectly Michael, you were too busy driving us until your hidden and fucking perfect just-in-case weekend cabin to talk to me.”

Sara release from his hand and gave a few steps in the bathroom direction, going away fast from the bed and from him. Michael looked at her walking away, still sited in the edge of the bed with his wrist burning him.

But then Sara stopped halfway for a second and turned to look at him; Michael saw perfectly her tears, shining under the warm fire light and rolling by her face, she covered her eyes with her free hand and sobbed in silence.

Michael got up from bed, walked a few fast steps to Sara and crushed his lips against hers in a consuming and needy kiss.

He slid his tongue between her warm and lips, kissing her intensely, feeling the salty taste of her warm tears mixing with the dry blood over them; he closed his eyes and hugged her as tight as he could, without knowing very well who was he really trying to comfort.

Michael broke away from the kiss and stepped a few inches back from her lips, he slowly brushed her hair away from her face, whispering desperate against her mouth in a scared and guilty tone that she hadn’t heard him before:

-“I`m sorry…

I’m so sorry Sara.”

She stepped back from Michael’s mouth, sighed quietly and looked to the floor, still feeling the hot tears rolling by her cheeks and his warm and guilty grip around her.

-“I know Michael… You always are.”

Sara released completely from Michael’s arms and walked depressed to the bathroom closing the door behind her, leaving Michael alone, sorrowful and still feeling her taste in his tongue in that room illuminated only by the orangey fire.

She heard the bathroom door closing behind her, left the cotton balls and the peroxide in the first-aid kit again and turned on the water in the bathtub; Sara hadn’t taken a bath since… well, leaving aside that bathtub issue with Paul the last time that she had get on into a hot bath Michael was still definitely in Fox River and she didn’t know how her name sounded when he moaned it between kisses.

Sara heard water noise outside the house too.

Will be raining in Chicago too?

…Or in Panama?

She nodded in silence and while the restroom was filling up with hot vapor, Sara took off slowly her dirty sweater and threw it to the floor.

She looked herself in the mirror and saw someone very similar to her, with her black bra, her jeans, her tired and pale face, the dark circles under her eyes, her hair uncombed, and the dry blood in her lower lip…

-“Sara, Do you need something?”

She heard Michael’s low and familiar voice at the other side of the closed door and looked sorrowful to the floor; but Sara didn’t see him, leant against the wood and facing the door with eyes closed, like that evening, when he had called her, leant in that dark wall and crying gutty at the other side of the phone, fighting against the urge to turnaround for her.

“-No.

I’m fine.”

But Sara knew him good enough to know that he wasn’t going to give up that easily, at least not now that seemed finally to had left back that stage of silent and guilt that had scared her.

His voice sounded pleading and faltering at the other side of the door:

“-I can fix this Sara… I can take the three of us to Panama, I know I can.

But I need you.”

She soaked up her tears and touched slowly the closed door with the palm of her hand.

-“…I need you too.”

Sara closed her eyes slowly, feeling a new fit of crying shakes when she continued:

“-But you have brushed me off, you have ignored me as if I had done something wrong… …I just wanted to save you Michael.”

Sara’s voice broke with her last words and for a few seconds she only heard the rain and the hot water running.

But when Michael spoke again, still eyes closed and facing the closed door, his voice sounded more desperate and helpless, as if he was crying in silence against that door or about to do it:

“-I know… But you can ask me to continue as if nothing knowing what would have happened to you Sara.

What you would have done to save me.”

-“Why not Michael?

I’m fine, they didn’t hurt me.”

He soaked quietly against the door and thought again in her dry blood in her lip, or in that man, holding Sara face down upon that night table and passing his hand through her hair, while he was just a few meters from her and was unable to help her, unable to shoot that son of a bitch and to hug her… Unable to stop hearing Sara saying “-I can do everything you want… But you’ll have to let them go.”

“…You’ll have to let them go.”

Surely he would never forget that words in his whole live.

Michael spoke again, softly and broken:

-“I can’t live with that Sara… There have to be an inflection point in all that, even for me.

Even for us.”

And then Sara felt the tide rising really fast for the first time since that lonely and painful night in what she shot herself that poison again, cursing his name and that kiss he stole her.

Her words sounded wet and Sara burst in tears and spoke flattering and infinitely scared of her own question:

-“What does that mean Michael…Are you leaving me too?

…Is that?”

But Sara didn’t hear anything at the other side of the door.

She moved away from the closed door and walked slowly backwards in that bathroom full of vapor; until she only felt the cold wall tile at her bare back.

To be continued…

You may now commence throwing tomatoes, don’t be shy about leaving death threats, criticism, insults, comments…

Second Chances

2007-06-30T00:21:12Z

Disclaimer: I don’t own anything, not Prison Break and not Paul Adelstein.

Sad but true.

Spoilers until Sona, after that just my sick imagination.

Dedicated to the lovely Kirsty, for her great patience with me.

Thank you so much for making it possible.

Note: English isn’t my first language so any mistakes that remain are my own.

Pairing: Sara/Kellerman.

Rating: R

Summary:And on that hot evening Paul knew without a doubt that he was in his own personal hell again, because she was even more beautiful than he remembered.

Title: Second chances.

Chapter title: Panama City.

Feedback is always like sex and coffee combined.

By Lylou

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“-…Don’t make me do this…”

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He had tried.

This time he had tried with all his strength, so much so that he thought maybe he had succeeded.

Or at least that’s what he wanted to believe.

This time he had moved on in the only way he could; he had let them go. “Well, more specifically Paul, she left you behind when she closed the door of that filthy car and her boyfriend stepped on the gas.”

Paul had tried so much, that after that “incident” he hadn’t even followed the three of them across half of Chicago while they played pathetically with the spies; despite knowing that he could easily have found them if he’d wanted.

But he hadn’t wanted to; he was tired of that situation, too tired of keeping holding on what it means to be Paul Kellerman. Besides, he had other things to take care of.

By driving through that circle of ashes and dead bodies, Paul had ensured that he would never find his salvation; that there wasn’t going to be forgiveness and a “happily ever after” at the end of his story.

Only the familiar and sibilant sound of bullets on his back, a sober and anodyne gravestone baring a fake name, and of course, not one single tear shed for him; “Hell, not even you would be sorry for your death Paul… Not now, not when it is time to pay.”

And although he had always known things would play out like this, in the last few hours he had passed through all the stages until he really understood it.

Paul had seen Caroline coldly through the telescopic aim of his rifle; ready to spill out all the memories of him that she still kept with one single shot.

He had dragged himself to his young sister, “How long since last time, Paul - ten years? Fifteen maybe?”

He had tried desperately to hold onto little Kris as if she might’ve been able to save him, but of course she couldn’t; no one could save him now… Actually, he was sure that he had gone to her that day just to say “goodbye”.

“But it doesn’t matter. You’ve always known that it would turn out like this, Paul… maybe you’re just a loser, even with all those shiny, colorful medals that prick you deep in the skin.”

So he went to a motel in the outskirts of that city that had already stolen everything from him, and Paul Kellerman tried to blow out his brains.

But that didn’t work either.

While he was in that chair, waiting for Kris, with the jammed gun in his hand and wearing his gala uniform, Paul thought about only two things:

The first: “Even your gun has failed you… How ironic is that for a man who has killed so many that he can’t even remember the first.”

And the second: “Sara.”

Paul couldn’t help but wonder if she might have forgotten him someday if his gun hadn’t jammed.

No, impossible. Not Sara Tancredi.

“Did you really think that it was going to be that easy, Paul? That you would just spread your brains all over the carpet and she, along with the rest of the world, would forgive you?”

The rest of the world could go to hell for all he cared.

The rest of the damn world had never meant anything to him. But Sara…

“What would she have thought if you’d died then?”

Would she have cried for him? Would she have had a party with Scofield to celebrate? ...Would she have forgotten him?

“Well, certainly everything would have gotten worse for her if that gun against your temple hadn’t jammed.”

God… He had tried, he really had.

Paul had treated her like just another assignment; he had studied her record, her weak points, he had spent a couple of days following her… And after that all it took was a sad story and a few tears in an A.A. meeting to get her attention; a slice of blueberry pie and some laughs one warm evening seated next to her on a church stairway.

“That was one hell of a move, Paul…”

It had been then when things started to become slightly more complicated; especially when that damn Scofield called her and he watched Sara speaking to him, hurt and confused, just a few meters away. Paul stayed sitting, watching her, with the sweet taste of the dark marmalade in his mouth and the sound of her laughter still in his ears.

Yes, everything definitely became more complicated then.

And after that warm evening, when Paul Kellerman thought that nothing in the whole world could surprise him, because there just wasn’t a damn thing that he couldn’t believe anymore, came the confessions on Sara’s sofa. Her sad smile, the way her hair smelled every time she came near him, her telephone number in the fake memory of both his normal and fake cell phone. And then meeting her father, feeling more like a nervous teenager and a little less like Paul Kellerman. The popcorn and movie sessions in her living room, and feeling Sara moving slowly next to him in her kitchen, looking for the soy sauce for the teriyaki chicken that he was cooking…

Paul could still remember how her soft laugh sounded behind him, and how she put her hand in the small of his back, and how suddenly all the air around him smelled like Sara Tancredi…

The last time that he had felt something similar had been… In fact, Paul couldn’t remember ever feeling like that; it was as if suddenly he wasn’t just a shadow and a fake name, it was as if for a moment he had stopped being Paul Kellerman and become another man.

A man that cooked teriyaki chicken for her with Van Morrison playing in the background of her kitchen, a man that made her laugh…

“Would the fucking Michael Scofield feel like that every time?

Surely.”

Paul thought that maybe listening to her laugh and feeling her soft hands on the small of his back enough times might help him with this “forgiveness” issue.

Maybe enough evenings of movies and popcorn on her sofa could let him think about dangerous things, like the fact that there could still be other options for him, that maybe there was still a little hope after all…

But that was all too optimistic and too intense; and he was Paul Kellerman, not Michael Scofield.

And that day, while he was waiting in that chair with his jammed gun in one hand, waiting for his sister to come, Paul remembered everything.

Or more precisely, he understood it.

“Surely the reason you were unable to blow your brains out was that there’s still another way… You can still come back and find forgiveness by other means.”

However, if it was that easy surely everyone could do it and not just the damn Paul Kellerman.

Was that his real name? Sometimes he couldn’t be completely sure, like now; when, walking out of the shower, he looked at his chest in the mirror in that hotel bathroom full of hot vapor, and saw all those familiar scars.

“Whose are all these scars?

Are they Paul Kellerman’s, or do they belong to someone else whose name you stole a long time ago?

How much of what you still have left can be saved, Paul?”

It had been almost four months since his “death” in that not-so-bulletproof truck, and he still wasn’t used to seeing those new marks on his skin.

“But those are your favorites, aren’t they?

Even more than that big triangular shaped one, even though that was the one that hurt the most…”

Paul smiled softly and sadly and walked out of the hotel bathroom to find his clothes.

“The small bites on your skin from the five bullets that you got then are the proof that maybe, after all, there could still be a little salvation left for Paul Kellerman.

Because you saved her.”

-“You saved her.”

He repeated the words in a low voice in the empty hotel room.

“And then you saved yourself.”

And Paul knew that surely he had spent his fair share of miracles for two lifetimes.

Because he had miraculously been saved from those five red-hot bullets that had drafted themselvespainfully underneath his skin, and after that, he had been saved from many other things.

After that, Paul had dragged himself once more to his younger sister and thought briefly - a notion pushed by the pain, the adrenalin and the blood painfully leaving his body - “She looks a bit like Sara.”

After that came the painkillers through his veins doing nothing, the dark stitches in his skin, and five new wounds that never really seemed to heal.

Paul stayed on his sofa for weeks - well actually Owen Kravecki’s sofa - waiting for someone from the company to realize that he wasn’t really dead… But they must have been really busy cleaning under the carpet, because no one came.

“Maybe you’re not useful anymore; maybe the worst thing that they can do to you now is leave you to live.”

And when Paul began thinking that he would have to find a job for the first time since he was nineteen, a man knocked on his door.

He was from the government; not from the United States government, the Panama government.

Because, apparently, he could still be useful after all.

So now he lives in Panama City, working for the Panamanian government and doing the two things at which he was always insuperable: killing people and not asking questions.

Once again he was given a new fake name, a new fake identity, and he would soon have a new fake home to complete his perfectly false and empty life. But meanwhile he was living in that nice, quiet hotel with air conditioning and a view of the Pacific; all that at the expense of the poor Panamanian taxpayers.

Now he killed other people, in other places. And if it weren’t for the hot air and his soft tan, Paul could have believed he was still in Chicago.

Until the day he saw Sara again.

That day Paul knew that he was in neither Chicago nor Panama anymore.

He was in hell, and Sara was there too; both paying for their sins.

There couldn’t have been any other explanation because destiny, that same destiny that had jammed his gun four months ago, couldn’t have brought them both to the same city at the same moment…

Was it really possible that they had both chosen the same place to hide from themselves?

He was in the worst, narrowest street of the most dangerous neighborhood in Panama City; and he saw her in that tight, sloping street, softly bathed by the orangey evening sun.

Sara was walking, distracted and absorbed in her thoughts, and Paul was able to observe her for a few seconds before she noticed him.

She was wearing an intense green dress and her hair had returned to its normal red-auburn color…

And on that hot evening in that dangerous, orangey street, Paul knew without a doubt that he was in his own personal hell again, because she was even more beautiful than he remembered.

After a few seconds Sara finally saw him and froze, looking at him with surprise and a thousand things more in her gaze, in that back street bathed by the sundown.

Even with the distance and the people moving around them, Paul could see something else floating in her eyes, something that he hadn’t seen before… Relief.

“Why are those five small scars suddenly burning you underneath your black shirt Paul?”

He raised his hand slowly, still surprised, to say a silent “hello” across the crowd, but then he saw Sara walking determinedly in his direction.

And Paul understood it painfully and delightfully. “Those bullets, forcing you to bleed to death, are going to be nothing compared to what you’re about to get into.”

Sara stopped just a few inches from him, so close that Paul could vaguely smell her intoxicating strawberry scent in the warm evening breeze. She looked at him, still a bit surprised, and spoke with a soft half smile on her lips:

-“… I thought you were dead.”

Her voice sounded small, nervous and something more; something that, for then, Paul didn’t allow himself to identify as relief.

“-… Sorry to disappoint you, Sara.”

She didn’t seem to hear his condescending and slightly hurt tone, and Paul was about to say something more caustic when Sara approached him, so close that he felt the heat radiating off her body beside his own… she was much nearer than he remembered being to someone in months, but he didn’t step back, not an inch.

Paul felt his generally low pulse accelerating and beating painfully under the five scars on his chest, and he looked at Sara, trying to find the appropriate words for someone in their situation.

But of course, there wasn’t anything appropriate to say.

But then he felt her small hands faintly on the black fabric of his shirt, rising slowly and somewhat vacillatingly over his chest, and Paul could sense her fingerprints burning deliciously onto his skin underneath the fabric.

She was beautiful; with her green dress and her long-again hair rubbing her shoulders, touching all the scars on his chest through the fabric of his shirt, all under the orange light of the sundown.

“…A bit less like Paul Kellerman.”

He licked his lips, nervous and surprised, and looked around the sunbathed street as if for danger; as if he wanted to be sure that no one was paying them any attention.

Paul’s voice faltered but he didn’t care; he was so close to her ear that he almost touched her earlobe with his lips when he whispered:

-“…What are you doing, Sara?”

She didn’t even look at him when he said her name; Sara was paying attention only to her hands against his chest, and Paul could feel her soft breathing upon the skin of his neck, where she had tried to strangle him only a few months before.

He slowly raised his hands to his chest and took her own, squeezing them softly between his fingers and pressing them more firmly against his body, until he could almost feel the wounds underneath burning him as if they were bleeding again.

“-…Sara…”

She raised her eyes and looked at him for the very first time, and Paul was able to see that dangerous and self-destructive look that he had recognized all along; a second after she loosened his hands from hers. She didn’t step back, allowing him the presence of her warm scent in the evening breeze for a little longer, and knew intuitively that he would remember that hot sundown for a long, long time.

-“You’re quite far from home… What are you doing here, Paul?”

Her voice had almost recovered that cold and distant tone that surely she never used when she was this near Scofield.

-“On vacation, having fun… until now.”

Sara looked at him in silence, knowing perfectly well that he wasn’t on vacation and, above all, knowing that he wasn’t really angry for having found her in this inclining street of the far-flung Panama City.

She moved a little closer,enough to let him feel her warm breathing upon him when she smiled scornfully, everything becoming blurred and dangerous as she whispered against his lips:

-“Did you come here… just to find me Paul?”

He noted the combination of sexy and rough in her tone when she spoke his name, and it was then that Paul saw the liquid shadow floating in her chestnut eyes… Pain.

“She feels more alone and abandoned than usual… Don’t do anything stupid, Paul, just go to your hotel room and don’t think about her ever again.”

He began to say something that later he wouldn’t remember, because Sara crushed her lips against his, kissing him deeply and not at all by surprise.

Paul felt her soft lips upon his and her hot tongue in his mouth, as if she had kissed him many times before.

But that was the first kiss of hate that someone had ever given him.

He decided not to think too much about that because he could feel every movement of her body against his and her small hands wrapped around the back of his neck and holding him as tight as possible.

Paul closed his eyes and caught her wonderful strawberry scent in the hot evening breeze, and he knew then that it was enough to drive any man mad, maybe even the fucking Paul Kellerman.

“This is not how redemption tastes Paul… on the contrary… ”

But to feel Sara Tancredi kissing him, consuming and desperate, turned out to be much more powerful than redemption itself.

Paul could feel her warmth and guilt poisoning him slowly and making him remember fast and hard why he had really run away from Chicago.

“You know that she can hurt you much more than that iron and those bullets, Paul... just stop kissing her in the middle of the street and walk away, never look back… Don’t make it worse.”

But he ignored those words in his mind, holding Sara tightly and pressing her closer against his body and mouth, kissing her thoroughly and sliding his tongue between her lips.

And it turned out to be a painfully easy way to silence that voice.

Paul could feel her warm skin pulsating underneath the green fabric of her dress and he tightened his grip around Sara.

It was like being intoxicated slowly with hot, sweet guilt; it was painful, twisted, inevitable, delightful and a thousands things more.

“Don’t hurt her any more Paul…”

He distanced himself a little from her mouth but didn’t release her; Paul licked his lips in an automatic response and he could taste her flavour perfectly on his tongue. “How long will you continue to feel her warmth in your mouth, Paul?”

He whispered softly against her lips:

-“…Go Sara.

Get away from me.”

His words sounded much more determined than his possessive grip around her body or the lingering scent of his cologne trapped in her green dress.

-“I know that you don’t want me to go Paul…

I’m the only thing you have left.”

Even in their painful, cruel truth, on her lips those words sounded positive and hopeful… as if they didn’t represent something that could make them bleed and die together.

Hereleased her slowly and stepped back a bit, still keeping his hand on the small of her back.

His voice assumed the same tone as a thought spoken out loud, not really expecting an answer.

-“… Why are you here Sara?”

-“On vacation, having fun… until now?”

He smiled weakly, coldly, and took off his sunglasses to ask the more dangerous and selfish question:

-“And… where is your Prince Charming?”

Her eyes shivered and dampened instantly.

Sara looked to the stone pavement for a second and Paul thought that she was going to cry. “Well, you’ve finally made her cry.”

-“He’s… he’s in hell.

And I’m not sure that he’ll ever be able to escape.”

“I guess that makes three of us.”

-“Where is he?”

-“…He is in Sona… For me.”

Then Paul understood everything.

Everything, from the dark pain that he had seen floating in her eyes to her hot and needy kiss… everything, even why she had decided to take a walk alone in surely the most dangerous street in the entire country.

The self-destructive and guilty Sara Tancredi loves the taste of her own blood in her mouth.

“Don’t let her hurt herself any more Paul.”

“-…I’m sorry, Sara...”

She looked at him with blemished eyes and pressed lips before speaking in a fragile tone that Paul had never heard from her before:

-“You hate him.

…And you hate me too.”

“That’s not true… I died for you and it didn’t even matter.”

Paul ignored her words and spoke softly again, already knowing the answer:

-“…So that’s why you’re here?”

She looked around at the increasingly dark street.

Yes… that was definitively why she was here.

Sara looked straight at him and Paul was able to fully see the pain and the loneliness floating in her eyes, poisoning her, slowly and silently.

Her big eyes fixed on his, Sara drew closer, until he felt her warm scent surrounding and intoxicating him, like that day in her kitchen long ago…

“Don’t let her hurt herself any more Paul.”

But Sara had wrapped her hands slowly around the back of his neck, playing softly with the short hair of his nape, and Paul felt a warm shiver along his spine.

He tightened his grip around her body, pulling her closer to him, and in that moment Paul knew, without a doubt, that they were in hell.

He could feel her soft lips moving slowly against his as she whispered…

-“…Maybe I was searching for you after all…”

“No you weren’t, Sara.

You were just looking for something that would hurt you enough to replace the pain with dangerous guilt… and you’ve found me.”

His lips brushed against hers as he whispered:

-“Come on… I’ll take you to your hotel…”

Sara pulled back slightly from his mouth, but remained in his arms, looking at him before she spoke:

-“You’re such a gentleman Paul… but you’re much less persuasive without your 9mm aiming at me.

So I’m not going anywhere.”

-“…Actually, I’m carrying my gun…”

Sara looked at him teasingly with a weak smile on her lips, before speaking softly:

-“… Yeah…

Actually I felt it when I kissed you before…”

He smiled truly for the first time in a long, long while and looked to the ground for a few seconds, keeping Sara in his arms and feeling her warm skin under the green fabric of her dress.

Paul’s smile faded slowly as he looked around the now dark and silent street.

It was almost empty, and the hot, nightly breeze around him suddenly smelled of saltpeter and of Sara Tancredi’s skin, but Paul knew very well where they were.

When he spoke, his voice sounded very much like it had on that warm and painful evening in that motel bathroom, when he almost supplicated: “-Don’t make me do this.”

-“If I leave you here now, someone will rape and kill you before I turn the corner.”

Sara looked at him, too tired and broken to argue more, and whispered, surprised, against the fabric of his shirt.

-“And why do you care, Paul?”

He half smiled, unconcerned, and pulled her closer to his mouth, softly bruising her lips and breathing upon her hair, before whispering:

-“…I don’t.

But I don’t want to discover that I caught five bullets just to save a stupid suicide.”

“…As if you hadn’t known it before Paul…”

Sara touched his chest reflexively; he shivered a bit under her touch and looked straight at her before speaking in a low, determined tone:

-“I’m not going to leave you here, Sara.”

She objected tiredly and slowly, and he could hear the accrued fatigue and hopelessness in her voice:

-“I’m not going to my hotel, Paul.”

-“Then come to mine.”

He said it roughly and suddenly into her mouth, without thinking too much about his consistent loss of control every time he’s near this woman.

Sara brushed her lips faintly against his and Paul whispered again, knowing then that they could never win this dark game:

“-Is that self-destructive enough for you, Sara? Sleep with the guy who tortured you.

Because I can do that for you.”

Sara blinked and he saw a flicker of surprise in her eyes. She left a soft kiss on his lips and whispered:

-“What is this all about, Paul… You think you can save me?”

He closed his eyes and buried his nose into her hair, smelling that scent that had captivated him months ago, when she was fluttering behind him in her now distant kitchen.

Paul felt Sara holding onto him tightly.

She spoke into his ear, and Paul could hear vividly the restrained tears and the fear in her voice for the very first time:

-“Michael thought that too, and now he’s in hell because of me…

And the last time you tried to do that, Paul, you almost died… I don’t want to be saved.”

His heart broke a little at her fragile tone and he smiled weakly and kissed her forehead lightly before looking at her again.

Sara could see his anxious eyes fixed on her, could smell the lingering hint of his cologne in her own hair, and she knew that she had fallen painfully and delightfully into his arms and into his trap.

But for then it didn’t matter that she could feel herself falling fast and irreversibly… all that mattered was the feeling of Paul’s hot and salty lips moving slowly against hers when he whispered:

“…Maybe just this time, Sara, I’m the one who wants to be saved…”

She looked at him in silence but Paul knew that look in her eyes very well, because he had seen it the evening that he had tied her to a motel chair: “You’re lying to me and now we’re both going to suffer.”

But he silenced that voice in his mind by kissing her deeply and thoroughly, holding her tight and letting Sara`s hot saliva into his mouth.

Her hands caressed the back of his neck, convincing him that what he was doing wasn’t really that bad…

By sleeping with her, he was going to save her from a horrible death, and in exchange maybe she would allow him a little forgiveness.

Sara drew back slightly from his mouth by only the necessary amount to enclose both of their fate, as she whispered between short, hot kisses against his lips:

-“How far is your hotel…?”

To be continued…

You may now commence throwing tomatoes. I would love to know if I should stop writing before traumatize someone, so please, don’t be shy about leaving death threats, criticism, insults, comments…