Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/10131701.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Prison_Break
  Relationship:
      Lincoln_Burrows/Michael_Scofield
  Character:
      Lincoln_Burrows, Michael_Scofield, Minor_Characters, Background_&_Cameo
      Characters, Original_Characters
  Additional Tags:
      Pre-Series, Consensual_Underage_Sex, Sibling_Incest, Sibling_Bonding, Low
      Latent_Inhibition, Neurodiversity, Post-Traumatic_Stress_Disorder_-_PTSD,
      Hallucinations, breakdowns, Dreams_and_Nightmares, Synesthesia,
      hypersexuality, Self-Harm, Recreational_Drug_Use, Neurodivergent
      Relationship, Unconventional_Relationship, BPD_Lincoln_Burrows, Autism
      Spectrum_Lincoln_Burrows, Hurt/Comfort, Haircuts, ASMR, Banter,
      Roughhousing, Fighting_Kink, Angst_and_Fluff_and_Smut, Slow_Burn, Coping,
      Internalized_Biphobia, Teasing, Antagonism, Belligerent_Sexual_Tension,
      Brotherly_Affection, Financial_Issues, Poverty, Reckless_Behavior,
      Stimming, Mutual_Stimming, Mutual_Pining, First_Time, Oral_Sex, Rimming,
      season_one_elements_at_the_end, My_First_Work_in_This_Fandom, Id_Fic
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-03-06 Chapters: 7/7 Words: 23056
****** you look like hell (because you are) ******
by boycoffin
Summary
     Michael craved stimuli and yet despised it; Lincoln, in his own ways,
     was much the same. Michael tapped things, counted, checked, tested,
     always consuming more information. Keenly aware of what normal was
     and how difficult it was for him to achieve it, Lincoln got an early
     start dulling the edges of his own perception, because he wanted that
     kind of thing to get the fuck out of his head.
     There were times they wanted the same sensations at the same time,
     but there was always a line, some hidden seam between good and bad
     that neither of them could locate until they snagged it and the
     moment passed.
Notes
     'i'm just gonna do a short banter/smut piece to get used to writing
     these characters,' i said, while lying, writing the equivalent of
     half of nanowrimo in 48 hours
     this was composed as a one shot but ao3 apparently can't handle that
     kind of word count in the work text box at once?? so it has succumbed
     to The Chapters
***** Chapter 1 *****
4AM, shift at the pipe factory. People in bars would sometimes ask Lincoln if
he meant pipes or like, pipes. Lincoln would wink and say maybe a little of
both. It sounded more interesting than saying that he stood side-by-side with a
dozen other people in grey coveralls, watching a conveyor belt bearing PVC 3-
way elbow sockets trundle by. Whenever he glanced away from his task, the world
scrunched and stretched like an optical illusion, nausea gripping him until his
brain figured out how to see stationary objects again.
8AM, partial shift change, morning people's break; every few days Lincoln could
get away with 'forgetting' to punch out for his half-hour during the bottleneck
at the clock-in station. Tiffany in payroll thought he was cute, and everyone
knew that Lincoln was raising his kid brother, so when he got his paychecks
he'd always earned just a little more than he was supposed to, and nobody in
admin got wind of the mistake.
12PM, eat cheap food while driving to the movie theater outside of town for
swing shift, clock in early so Carmen can pick up her twins from day care on
time, spend the next eight hours dispensing overpriced sodas and greasy
popcorn.
8PM, groggily walk across the huge parking lot to his his car, eyes adjusting
in the oranging light of the evening, glad that the days were longer in summer.
(In winter, the only sunlight he got was on the midday drive.) Resting on top
of one of the tires, hidden by the wheel well, was a package, which he
retrieved. He ate fistfulls of M&Ms while he drove back into the city, caught
as always in the crunch of traffic both coming and going. Suburbanites out,
nightlife trippers in. Lincoln turned the radio to the college station he
liked; they played what Michael called 'weird underground stuff' but that's
because Michael thought that anything he didn't immediately like had to be some
sort of niche genre that no one had ever heard of, like, as he very badly
guessed on one occasion, scooter punk or grind skull. In reality, Lincoln
listened to indie that was pretty standard stuff for someone his age, and
Michael never wanted to admit that he didn't know something. If Michael ever
did hear actual 'weird underground stuff' he'd probably need to lie down for
awhile.
(Michael, to his credit, didn't have terrible taste in music, or no taste at
all; instead, he had complex, specific taste in music. He collected
polyrhythms, the concept of which he'd tried to explain to Lincoln with a
diagram and tapping on the kitchen table, 'just in case you ever come across
one'. When Linc still didn't get it, Michael got out a bunch of tapes and
played him wildly different songs, from John Coltrane to Queen to some kind of
percussion thing from Nigeria, none of which sounded to Linc like they had any
similarities whatsoever.)
Lincoln took a different exit home than he usually did, because it was
Wednesday, and Wednesday meant a visit to Covey for the hand-off.
Covey was a tall, wiry Irish guy who always wore a hat with earflaps. Lincoln
had heard from a mutual acquaintance that it was because he'd crossed the wrong
(implication: mob) guy and got an ear cut off, but Lincoln never saw Covey
without the hat and it wasn't like he was gonna ask.
Lincoln parked in an alley, jumped up to pull down a fire escape ladder, and
climbed up to Covey's kitchen window, tapping the glass.
Covey, who had been waiting for him, turned around and jerked his chin at
Lincoln in greeting. He then got a cereal box from somewhere, opened it, and
took out a wad of cash bound in a rubber band. He put the box back where he'd
found it (out of Lincoln's line of vision), and only then did Covey open the
window a crack.
'What's up,' he said. 'Get it all right?'
'Yeah, I got it.' Lincoln took the dense tape-wrapped package out of the inside
pocket of his jacket. It was about the size of a paperback, but heavier.
They exchanged what they were holding at the same time.
'No trouble?' said Covey, setting the parcel on a kitchen scale to make sure it
was accurate. Used to be, he wouldn't hand over the cash until he'd weighed it,
but Lincoln was a familiar face now and Covey knew he didn't skim.
'Ogden said to tell you he's making arrangements for the funeral,' said
Lincoln. He didn't know whose funeral, but it was probably a euphemism and none
of his business. Lincoln just did his job and stayed out of the way. 'He wants
you to meet him at the usual tomorrow.'
'Will do. Hey, you still interested in some more work?'
'Yeah! What's the job?'
'It's not a sure thing yet, but let's just say you'd make a hell of a lot more
than I've been handing you.' A timer went off in the kitchen. 'Aha! Pizza
rolls. You take care of yourself, man.'
'You too,' said Lincoln, descending the fire escape as the window closed.
9:30PM, home at last. The wall-mounted air conditioner rattled, turned up on
high to combat the heat of being on the 19th floor of a giant brick box in
July.
Michael was sitting at the kitchen table, working on college applications.
There was a cup of soda on the table, looking watered-down and flat, its
coaster swimming with condensation.
'Looks like your ice melted,' said Lincoln, hanging his keys on the hook.
Michael didn't look up.
Lincoln put the back of his hand against the glass. 'Gross, this has probably
been sitting here for hours. When did you last take a break, man?'
Michael frowned down at the form he was filling out. 'Just now.'
'And what time is it now?' Lincoln prompted him. Michael looked at the clock on
the microwave.
'Oh.' He sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face. 'You're home, therefore it's
obviously not ten in the morning anymore. Right.'
'Come on, how about you call it a night and get some food in you?' Lincoln took
the soda and dumped it down the sink. 'What do you feel like?'
'I feel like how when a piece of gum sort of gets melty on a hot sidewalk and
then gets stretched out a foot or so by somebody's shoe,' said Michael. 'And
then it grows old and starts to look like tar and it has little bits of gravel
stuck in it.'
'Descriptive. Next time, throw in some SAT words.' Lincoln got a bottle of beer
out of the fridge and opened it. 'I mean what do you feel like for dinner?'
'Anything's fine.' Michael got up, wincing a little. He'd been sitting there
for way too long. He opened the freezer and enjoyed a brief blast of icy air on
his face before he closed it again. 'Can I live in there? I should become a
contortionist.'
'Oh, hey,' said Lincoln, as if he'd just remembered. He took the wad of Covey's
payment out of his pocket. 'Got that bonus I was telling you about. How much do
you need for all the application fees, again?'
Michael told him, and Lincoln got twice that much off of the roll of bills.
'Keep the change. For like, backup.'
'All right, Mr Moneybags.' Michael elbowed him a little. 'Is this your subtle
way of telling me to do the grocery shopping tomorrow?'
'Well, you are best at doing the shopping.' Which was true. Linc could wander a
store for an hour and still forget rudimentary things he needed to pick up;
Michael wrote out his lists to make doing the groceries as efficient as
possible, organized based on the placement of items in the store, a knowledge
of peak shopping times and when certain stock was rotated or marked down. Even
with a long list he could be in and out in less than fifteen minutes, and he
never forgot anything.
They made dinner together, getting in each other's way in the cramped kitchen,
and they ate in front of the TV so as not to disturb Michael's 'application
station' at the table.
The TV watching part only lasted for a few bites.
'Can we turn it off? Sorry,' said Michael. 'I just... can't taste my food, with
the noise.'
Lincoln obligingly poked the remote. 'That's a shame. Wouldn't want you to miss
this fantastic culinary experience.'
'I know, right? What could possibly top canned spaghetti with mushrooms cut up
in it?' Michael smirked. 'You deserve some damn Michelin stars.'
'And my dessert course is to die for,' said Lincoln, holding up a package of
Red Vines he'd swiped at the end of his theater shift.
11:46PM, the nightmare. Like any other part of Lincoln's day, it was
predictable and required minimal alertness to navigate.
'Sorry,' said Michael. Always apologizing for things he couldn't control. He
was sitting on the floor next to Lincoln's bed, resting his head against one
arm on the edge of the mattress as he waited for Lincoln to wake up a little.
'I know you've got to be up and in the shower in like three hours—'
'Hey, shh,' said Lincoln, sitting up. 'It's fine, you know it's fine. C'mere.'
Michael got up onto the bed with him, all gangly and not grown into himself
yet. Lincoln could feel him blushing in self-blame, hot against Lincoln's chest
as Michael rested his cheek there, arms around him. 'I hate this place. I know
we can't afford anything bigger, but my room is just. It's so.' He made a noise
in the back of his throat, not wanting to finish the thought.
Michael's room's single window faced the wall of the building next door, and
being at a certain angle as high up as they were, that meant that basically no
light got in at night, not even the hazy dirt-orange of city light that came in
through the living room window and Linc's. What with the dimensions of the
place, and the fact that Michael's mattress was on the floor because they
didn't have a frame for it, waking up in there was uncomfortably reminiscent of
another small space he'd occupied years before.
Lincoln held him, and as usual tried to keep Michael's mind occupied so he
wouldn't dwell on the memories too much.
'Things are going well at work,' he said, not meaning the jobs that came with
W-2 forms. 'I may get promoted.'
'Really?' Michael didn't like hope, he considered it to be a sort of dread
masquerading as future happiness, but despite himself he sounded a little
hopeful right now.
'Yep.'
'Are you sure you can handle that? You're so busy already.' Michael had said
this a dozen times before: 'Maybe I should be out looking for a job.'
'Nope, out of the question.'
'Linc, come on.'
'The deal was you focus on your education, I handle everything else.'
Michael made a frustrated noise. 'It's summer, Lincoln. Literally all I'm doing
is obsessing over my applications, which I'm doing way earlier than everybody
else anyway, and doing the reading for next semester. Guys my age get jobs all
the time.'
'Yeah, but the last two years of school are the big ones, right? That's why you
signed up for those advanced classes. You're telling me you want to juggle all
of that and a job?'
Lincoln already knew that Michael couldn't handle that sort of workload. Half
the time, he couldn't handle school. At least once a month Lincoln would get a
call at work from someone at the high school, saying Michael had had an
episode, usually one of the blank ones. The bad ones hadn't been as much of a
thing since Lincoln started being able to take care of Michael himself, but
they did sometimes happen and Lincoln was always scanning for danger signs.
Putting Michael in the kind of job a sixteen-year-old could get was a recipe
for disaster.
Lincoln was good at boring repetition; he found comfort in it. Doing the same
thing over and over, day after day, gave his life a sort of muscle memory,
allowing Lincoln to keep doing whatever he was doing on autopilot while he was
sorting out his thoughts, or (on the days when he came to work with a little
something in his system) having very few thoughts at all. But put Michael in a
summer job scenario—answering a drive-thru headset with the same script every
two minutes, stocking shelves, wrangling shopping carts—and he'd practically
explode.
Patterns, or at least the wrong sort of patterns, were a sure-fire way to send
Michael spinning off into his own mind, or worse, straying aggressively from
what he was supposed to be doing in a desperate attempt for fresh stimuli to
drown out the monotony. Lincoln wasn't great at thinking ahead, but even he
could imagine the sort of damage that might cause: Michael asking strangers
invasive personal questions, taking apart expensive equipment just to count all
the pieces, burning himself on a screaming-hot grill to drown out his own
racing thoughts. Such things would lead to family sessions with Michael's
therapist, and suggestions that maybe he should try medication again and see if
they could find one that works this time, then the inevitable downward spiral
as Michael hid his symptoms, smothering it under fake normalcy until even
Lincoln had a hard time spotting them, but he sure as hell noticed when bloody
wads of paper towels started showing up crammed to the bottom of the bathroom
trash can, how Michael winced when Linc hugged him.
'You're not getting a job,' said Lincoln. 'I'm the adult, that's my
responsibility. You just do what you can.'
'I want to help,' said Michael miserably. 'You do too much.'
'I do what I have to,' Lincoln insisted.
Michael felt tense in his arms. 'Look, I'm not stupid. I know in some way
you're trying to make up for what happened when we were separated. But running
yourself into the ground isn't going to do us any good, either.'
'Shh,' said Lincoln. 'Don't get yourself worked up again, okay? You need to
rest.' He nuzzled the top of Michael's head. 'Walk me through the dream, let's
get to the root of it.'
This was their ritual: The nightmares would come, flashbacks disguised as
dreams, occasionally peppered with a different sort of horror than the real
thing. Michael would wake Lincoln up, Lincoln would distract him for long
enough for the adrenaline spike to die down, and then they would discuss the
dream, picking it apart for symbols.
'The closet,' said Michael. The usual opener. 'I was trying to get the mounting
screw out. But it kept not coming, no matter how much I twisted it. It wasn't
like,' he tugged at the blankets, shifted into a more comfortable position
against his brother, holding on tighter, 'it's not the same as the one where my
fingernail breaks when I try to do it. It's not stuck, the screw is actually
turning, but it doesn't ever go anywhere. It doesn't come out, even though I've
been turning and turning it for what feels like hours, but I know I can't stop
because it has to come out.'
Lincoln rubbed Michael's back, listening.
'And while I'm doing that I can see the Shadow Beast,' Michael went on. Lincoln
had helped him name his hallucinations, so he could think about them and
address them as something tangible that could be defined, and therefore
understood. In real life, the Shadow Beast had been Michael's own shadow, cast
large and distorted by the faint glow of the pilot light. 'And the place where
its eyes should be is looking at me. I can feel its eyes staring, like it's
waiting for me to finish unscrewing the screw, but I can't. So like, on the one
hand, I'm scared of what happens if I give up, like it's going to devour me if
I fail, but on the other hand I feel like it's sort of...' He twitched a
little, creeped out, then shook it off. 'Trying to help. It wants me to finish,
and I know it'll be disappointed if I don't, and in the dream I don't like what
happens when it's disappointed in me.'
'Can you pinpoint what happens when it's disappointed?' Lincoln said. 'Do you
know, when you're awake?'
Michael was curled up so small, it was weird to think that he was nearly as
tall as Lincoln was. 'I think the blackness consumes everything around me. I
mean everything except the walls, until there's nothing left. The water heater
is gone and there's no light and there's no texture on the floor or the walls
or on me. I don't seem to have a body anymore, and the door disappears so I'm
trapped forever. At least that's what I think happens.'
'Mmh.' Lincoln stroked Michael's hair, varying the movements without a rhythm,
giving him something to pay attention to. 'Sounds to me like you feel like
you're grinding away at something, but you don't know when it'll finally be
over with.'
'Yeah,' said Michael in a soft voice.
'Sounds kinda like school stuff, huh? All the applications you're doing. It's
the same thing every time, and even when you've finished all of them you'll
have to wait on other people to make decisions and get back to you. I know you
hate that.' Lincoln scrunched down a bit in the bed, and Michael moved along
with him, letting him get comfier. 'Now, we know the Shadow Beast is like, the
part of yourself that you're scared of...'
'Yeah,' Michael repeated. 'That's what I thought, too.'
'So you're worried you'll let yourself down. I think this is just like...
anxieties about college and the future and stuff,' said Lincoln. It sounded
trite, but it was worth saying.
'I guess,' Michael sighed. 'I mean, you're probably right.'
'I want you to remember that no matter what happens, no matter what college you
get into, you're gonna do great, okay? And I'm proud of you.' Lincoln hugged
him a little tighter for a moment. 'I'm never disappointed in you, even when
you're disappointed in yourself.'
Lincoln stayed awake until he was certain Michael was deeply asleep, untroubled
by further dreams. He got a scrap of paper from the bedside table drawer where
he kept them (junk mail, old worksheets from when Michael cleaned out his
binders at the end of the school year), and, careful not to disturb Michael by
moving too much, he made a crane for him to find in the morning.
                                     * * *
6:17AM, a sharp sound breaking the stillness of the apartment. Lincoln
scrambled out of bed and into the kitchen, grabbing the phone off the hook, its
long cord snarled in a tangle. 'H'lo?' he said hoarsely.
'Good morning, is this Mr Burrows speaking?'
A cold fist of dread clenched in Lincoln's chest, and he noticed how sweaty he
was, how stale the air. 'Yeah.'
'Mr Burrows, this is Amelia Jefferson from Human Resources at,'—the factory
Lincoln worked for, oh god, what was this about?—'calling to inform you that
your employment has been terminated.'
Oh shit, shit. Details about the room started to filter into his conscious
understanding, distorted as if by funhouse mirrors: the air conditioner was
off, and light was coming through the windows. Too much light. Lincoln looked
over at the clock on the microwave, which was blinking. 12:00 12:00 12:00.
There must have been another power outage; their building's wiring wasn't the
greatest to begin with, but combine it with heat like they were having this
summer, and it flicked on and off at least a few times a week, and sometimes
stayed off for several hours. His alarm clock, which plugged into the wall,
hadn't gone off.
'I can explain,' he said in a rush, wishing they had a goddamn analogue clock
in the apartment somewhere, wishing he could remember where he'd left his
watch. 'There was a—'
'I'm sorry, Mr Burrows, the terms of your employment are very clear. We adhere
to a strict Three Strikes rule. Your final paycheck will be delivered to the
address we have on file. Have a good day.'
Lincoln didn't reply, hanging up the phone. What he really wanted to do was
take it and slam it against the wall until a phone-shaped hole appeared in the
sheetrock, but he couldn't afford to do that, considering the fact that he
could no longer technically afford this apartment.
He could no longer afford a lot of things.
How was he going to tell Mike? Maybe he shouldn't tell him at all, just use the
time he would otherwise be at the factory to drive around looking for Help
Wanted signs. But gas cost money, and even walking around cost money, because
it meant he'd be exhausted by the time he got to the cinema for swing shift and
would fuck things up. And he couldn't just ask the manager if he could take on
nights as well, because that would mean overtime, and the manager already kept
people's hours low enough that he didn't have to provide anyone with perks like
insurance.
Lincoln sat down at the kitchen table and stared blankly at the neat stacks of
college applications Michael had sent away for, the essay meticulously typed on
the big whirring second-hand word processor Lincoln had bought him last year.
Michael had arranged things into little trays he'd made, like inboxes in an
office. Cereal boxes cut in half, tiers supported by thicker bits of cardboard.
All the edges cut smooth and perfect, no mess from the rubber cement visible
where pieces had been glued together.
He picked up one of the essay copies, careful not to dent the paper. Read the
first few paragraphs, set it down again.
He felt like he couldn't breathe.
'Linc?'
Lincoln looked up to see his brother standing in the bedroom doorway, eyebrows
tilted in a mixture of worry and relief. 'I woke up because I heard something,
and there wasn't a crane, so... why are you home, are you okay?' He rubbed his
eyes a bit, standing up straighter, trying to sound less like a needy little
kid. He cleared his throat. 'Um. I mean, sun's up.'
'Yeah,' said Lincoln, going back into the bedroom. He found the crane he'd made
a few hours ago, which had been knocked down between the bed and the nightstand
in his frenzy to get up and answer the phone. 'Listen, Michael...'
'You got fired, huh.' It wasn't a question. 'It's okay, we'll make it work.'
Michael went into the living room, Lincoln close behind him, and got the phone
book from the shelf, sitting down on the couch and flipping through with an
almost peaceful look on his face. 'You didn't renew the lease yet, did you?'
'I was gonna get to it this weekend—'
'Now you don't have to worry about it. I'll recalculate your income and find us
a place. Get your watch so we can reset the clocks.'
Lincoln did, glad to feel like he was doing something useful.
'We'll have to downsize,' said Michael, as if he were the adult in the room.
'That's fine. I was surprised we had a place this big, anyway.'
'We're not fuckin' penniless,' Lincoln grumbled. 'Jesus, Mike.'
'No, I mean... well, we don't need a whole lot of space, do we? It's just us.'
It was just them. Lincoln had resolved not to bring his friends/associates
around now that Michael lived with him, which also pretty much meant no girls,
either. That hadn't been much of a struggle, because Lincoln hadn't exactly
been dating up a storm since things had ended with Veronica. He went out to
indulge in his vices (or to indulge in strangers), and didn't bring any of the
riskier stuff home. Sure, he had beer in the house, but no liquor. And while
Michael knew about the stash of pot in Lincoln's bedroom, Linc never smoked it
in the apartment, simply rolling a few joints to take with him when he went
out. (Michael was incredibly vocal about his opinion that pot smelled
revolting, and that revolting smells made it impossible for him to focus on
anything.)
Michael didn't have the sort of friends who hung out much when not at school,
which was fine with him, especially since falling in with a cohesive group of
people had nearly gotten him into serious trouble before. At school, friends
were like a preset on the radio: you knew what to expect and where you stood,
and you had a small, carefully-curated selection of others to choose from at
any given time, all familiar and predictable. Michael knew that probably
sounded heartless, but it meant that he had more heart to go around.
It was comforting to recognize every outfit that somebody owned and to know all
of their conceivable combinations by heart, to count during every second period
the freckles on the back of Tony's right hand, and to know that, no matter what
discomfort the day wrought, Melissa's braces only got adjusted once every two
weeks. People behaved in predictable ways at school, comforting patterns that
changed very little but just enough to be interesting, minor arguments and
who's-dating-who-now, a new pair of shoes, trying out for the play. Variables
that could be planned for. But transplant those same cozy elements from their
academic bubble and they clashed horribly with the outside world, voices tasted
wrong, everything felt bad. Michael once went to Dan Price's birthday party and
discovered entirely by accident that Michael couldn't stand him when he wasn't
discussing calculus.
Completely new experiences could be exhilarating, the rush of novelty sweet and
inviting. But people he already knew? People belonged in the context where they
originated in his map of the world, and anything beyond that felt like an
invasion of his privacy.
Understandably, dating wasn't one of the things Michael did, so like hell was
he bringing girls home ever. He tried dating once and it failed horribly, and
he didn't try again. It simply wasn't an activity that he had the patience for.
So yes, it was just the two of them. Just Linc and Mike, like it was supposed
to be. Michael didn't care if they had to live in a tin can, as long as they
were together. Michael's context was with Lincoln.
At 9AM, when leasing offices began to open for the day, Michael started making
calls.
                                     * * *
They moved at the end of the month into a studio apartment, tiny and cheap but
with more windows than the last place. They sold what they didn't especially
need (or what wouldn't fit), and had a month to adjust before Michael went back
to school for junior year. There was a lot to get used to.
For instance, they no longer had a sink each in the bathroom.
'Oh my god, why do you do this?' Michael was shaving while Linc took a shower.
'Do what?' Lincoln's voice was blurred a little as he washed his face. 'I
didn't do anything.'
'There's like, blobs of toothpaste snot in the sink,' said Michael. 'You
animal. Were you born in a barn?'
'Just like our Lord and Savior,' Lincoln joked. 'How's your five chin hairs,
little man? I don't know if that razor's gonna be strong enough, might need to
get some hedge clippers in here for that massive beard you have going on.'
'Shut up.'
'You're smooth as a baby's butt.'
'You know, I don't think I've ever encountered a baby's butt in the wild,' said
Michael, rinsing his razor under the tap.
'Consider yourself lucky. I watched Mom change your diapers.'
'Wow, rude.' Michael inspected his jawline in the mirror, checking for strays.
'I bet I was the cleanest baby alive.'
'Only after three hours of work and like, a forklift to carry it all away.'
'Gross.' Michael got Lincoln's aftershave out of the medicine cabinet and put
some on. 'Jesus, this stuff hurts! I always forget and then I put it on again
like a moron.'
'Maybe you shouldn't steal my damn aftershave, then,' said Lincoln, turning off
the shower. Michael threw Lincoln's towel over the top of the curtain rod for
him.
'It's not stealing, it's sharing.'
'Well, maybe you'd remember that it stings if you had to shave more than once a
month.'
'We can't all be Grizzly Adams.' Michael put the aftershave back, secretly glad
that he got to smell like Lincoln all day.
                                     * * *
They no longer had cable, or a TV to watch it on. Also, no dishwasher.
'Three letters, a small stringed instrument.'
'Uke,' said Michael, who was doing the dishes. 'As in, a sneaky abbreviation of
ukulele.'
'Nice. Tawny brown marsh bird, seven letters, starts with a B and it has a T in
the middle.'
Michael thought about it for awhile. 'Bittern.'
'What?'
'Bittern. It's a kind of heron.'
'You're shitting me. What kind of a name is that?' Lincoln wrote the answer in
anyway. 'Two T's?'
'So I'm told.'
'Hey, that works! And it gives me titular down.'
Michael turned off the faucet and opened the cabinet under the sink, then said,
'We're out of dish soap. I can go to the dollar store tomorrow, but in the
meantime we have no clean silverware, and the good frying pan has gunk in it.'
Lincoln set the crossword aside and went into the bathroom, coming back with a
bar of Ivory soap. 'Here, let me help.'
'I swear, if you try to scrub this pan with a bar of soap that I use on my
face, I'll call some kind of hotline on you.'
'No, genius. Hold out the sponge.'
Michael complied, and Lincoln used his pocket knife to shave delicate curls of
soap onto the sponge. They melted instantly into suds under Michael's fingers.
'Thanks,' he said, starting on the silverware. Lincoln stood by, watching,
adding more soap shavings whenever Michael needed them.
                                     * * *
They no longer had separate bedrooms.
Lincoln's bed was where they both slept, now, Michael's former mattress propped
shortways against the wall behind it to act as a headboard. It had seemed silly
to have separate beds because Michael inevitably ended up in Lincoln's, anyway,
and if they had two mattresses laid out in the studio and enough space to walk
around them, there'd hardly be room for any other furniture.
It was one of those things that Lincoln knew was pretty weird. A grown man
didn't typically sleep in the same bed with his brother, no matter that
brother's age. Then again, most guys Lincoln knew wouldn't comfort someone
after a nightmare, talk them through it, ease the pain by cradling them until
they fell asleep again. And Lincoln didn't know anybody who told their brother
they loved him every day, sometimes more than once, and meant it.
                                     * * *
They no longer had money to go to a barber shop.
'I start school in a week and I look like one of those dust mop dogs,' said
Michael. 'I'm more hair than person.'
'I thought that was a Look these days,' said Lincoln.
It was weird being home with Michael at this time of evening, and it was a
mixed blessing. The theater had started changing the schedule around now that
the summer was almost over, and Lincoln had hoped that meant that he, one of
only five employees who wasn't in high school or college, would get more hours,
but lo and behold, he now had two fewer shifts a week than he had before. It
might be because he fell asleep in the back room again a couple of weeks ago
and somebody sent Seth to find him when he didn't come back from what was
supposed to only be a ten-minute break. Lincoln had been spending too much time
chasing leads and doing dead-end interviews for a new primary job (the
concession stand was supposed to just fill in the gaps and help make ends meet,
before), and that plus moving halfway across town (in multiple stages because
they only had his car to transport things) had left Lincoln somehow more
exhausted than working two full-time jobs and a side gig.
On the bright side, he'd started getting more... unconventional work, doing
fetch-and-carry between Ogden and Covey, and this other guy that people called
Crab. Increasingly larger packages, some of which definitely weren't pot or
pills. What with his dwindling hours at the theater, and the new semester
starting in a few days, Lincoln was entertaining the idea of working for
Ogden's firm full-time, if he could convince him to take him on. Time was
running out, and Lincoln's calculations for how much he'd be able to put into
savings had been completely fucked over when he lost his factory job. Now, if
he didn't bust his ass working as much as he could, there wasn't going to be
enough by the time Michael graduated. Hell, he'd hardly scratched the surface
yet, regardless.
That was something he definitely didn't want Michael to know about.
'It's not mine.' Michael was sick of shoving his hair out of his face, and he
didn't particularly like the guys at his school who wore their hair like this,
so he had the added incentive of not wanting to be visually lumped in with
them. They listened to scratchy, garbled music turned up loud in their cars and
looked like they didn't wash their jeans ever. 'Can you do it for me?'
'What?' Lincoln had been off in his own thoughts. 'Cut your hair?'
'You do yours all the time. It can't be any harder than trimming the back of
your own head, I mean, seriously.'
'Yeah, all right.' Lincoln got up and stretched. 'I'll have to use scissors on
it first, otherwise the clippers'll yank like a motherfucker.'
'Wouldn't want that,' said Michael, getting a pair of scissors out of the junk
drawer in the kitchen while Lincoln got the clippers from the bathroom.
A few minutes later Michael was in one of the kitchen chairs, newspaper laid
down on the floor around him so the carpet wouldn't get hair all in it. 'You
close enough to the outlet?'
Lincoln tested the length of the cord. 'Yeah, we're good. You ready for this? I
kinda got used to you looking like the guy on 21 Jump Street.'
'The mullet one or Johnny Depp?' Michael asked. 'Humor me.'
'Well, this definitely isn't a mullet,' said Lincoln, starting in on it with
scissors.
'Just don't take part of my ear off, okay? I like being eeriely symmetrical.'
'Yeah, yeah. I'd never forgive myself if I marred your timeless beauty.'
'Shut up.'
Lincoln chuckled. 'You're the one cryin' about it. Sit still, would you?'
The scissors continued snipping: a delicate sound, and Lincoln seemed to choose
at random what part to cut next, and would pause and consider his next move for
a moment beforehand. For Michael it was right on the edge of being stressful,
with just enough unpredictability and anticipation for him to feel on-edge and
like he needed to scan for threats, but that also meant that every snip was a
relief, a little spark of dopamine at a simple promise being fulfilled.
'You okay?' said Lincoln, poised and just about to make another cut. 'You went
super still.'
'I'm fine,' said Michael softly.
'Is it a bad noise?'
'No, Linc, it's fine.' Michael relaxed as much as he could in the hard chair.
Each time the blades of the scissors slid together he felt a little lighter, a
little calmer. Soft whispers of hair falling to his shoulders, some skimming
down his chest, his back, feather-light between his shoulder blades like a
hesitant caress.
Lincoln seemed to sense that he was about to disrupt a rare moment of peace.
'You okay for the clippers, man? We can take a break for a minute if you want.'
But no, that wouldn't be necessary, because Michael didn't mind the clippers at
all. Ever since he was little, their hum and buzz was something he looked
forward to every time he needed a haircut. And now it would be even better:
safe in a place with no strangers to examine, no overlapping conversations, no
bright lights in his eyes, or tangled cords, or the distracting cacophony of
multiple mirrors. Just him and Linc in the light from the kitchen, which wasn't
even its own separate room but open to the rest of the studio so Michael could
see everything and confirm where it was...
'I'm fine,' Michael murmured. 'Go on.'
There was the slight rasping sound of metal, for the barest instant, before the
clippers slid into a smooth and continuous purr. Lincoln started at the back of
Michael's neck, working his way up, the guide comb creating its own sensation
as its plastic tines dragged gently over Michael's scalp like tiny fingers.
His vision sparkled from the vibration, trickles of goosebumps slinking down
his limbs, his breath shallow and just a touch faster than it ought to be.
'Shouldn't take too long,' said Lincoln, as if to reassure him.
'Mmmn,' a noise of assent, eyes closed.
'Do you want me to do a fade or just one length all over?'
'Whatever you like,' Michael said in a dreamy voice.
'Dude, you sound high.' Lincoln gently folded down one of Michael's ears and
ran the clippers just above it. 'And I would know.'
'Shh,' said Michael. 'Just let me enjoy this, okay?'
When it was over and Michael had showered to get all the clippings off, Lincoln
admired his handiwork.
'Not too bad,' he said, looking from one side of Michael's head to the other,
checking that everything was even. 'It'll go directly into a goofy stage if you
don't maintain it, though. I can touch it up in a couple weeks.'
Michael didn't say, but he was looking forward to it.
That night as they lay in bed, Lincoln noticed how velvety Michael's head was
now, and started idly petting it. Michael made soft, sweet sounds in the back
of his throat, not speaking, not wanting Lincoln to stop. So Lincoln kept
smoothing his hand over Michael's shorn hair until his palm tingled and Michael
tucked up tight against him under the blankets, little restless movements
keeping time with the sounds until he drifted off to sleep.
***** Chapter 2 *****
Michael had a mental timeline of how Lincoln changed over the course of their
young lives, its milestones clear and easy to follow: when his brother learned
how to throw a baseball, then throw a punch. When Lincoln stopped using
bandaids when he skinned his knees, because for some reason he wanted people to
see he'd been hurt, like using a bandage was somehow a mark of weakness.
When Lincoln figured out that flirting was more rewarding than fighting (not
that he stopped fighting, that is); when he started having what Veronica once
called 'that way about him' that drew the eye and left girls whispering behind
their hands, 'Oh my god, look at him.' The year Lincoln started to swagger,
entering every room pelvis-first. That was also the year that he climbed back
into their bedroom window in the middle of the night, smelling weird, smelling
wrong, his eyes were strange and his words were all scribbled and too big, his
hands moving like they belonged to someone else when he talked, telling Michael
to go back to sleep and not mention it to Mr and Mrs Donovan, okay, because he
didn't actually break any rules because nobody explicitly ordered him not to
climb out of the window and walk to their old neighborhood and buy little
plastic bags from that guy who used to have a Camaro. Nobody personally told
Lincoln to his face that he ought not to do that, so it wasn't breaking the
rules, therefore Michael shouldn't worry about it, and god, don't look at me
like that, go back to sleep.
Then he was gone. The milestone that became a millstone, dragging Michael down
into the dark by his neck. Four walls and a water heater and the suffocating
pressure of fear.
And then Lincoln was there again, and he had stubble now and muscles like a
grown-up and Michael couldn't fit into his shoes anymore. Lincoln smoked
cigarettes and had scars that Michael didn't remember, and stick-and-poke
tattoos from juvie: doodles like he used to do on the front of his notebooks,
skulls and knives and a coffin with a cross, painstakingly rendered in tiny
pinpricks over long hours. When Michael had asked how he did it, Lincoln said
that when no one was watching, you took 'a safety pin or whatever' and stuck it
down inside the ink cartridge of a pen and then stabbed yourself, and Michael
had been so exasperated with Lincoln's poor choices that he couldn't look at
them for the rest of the day. (Some time later, paradoxically, Michael became
fascinated with the tattoos, and would touch them whenever he could, tracing
them over and over, counting the individual dots of ink. 'I had to go over that
one three times,' said Lincoln as Michael ran his thumb over the shape of a
tombstone with RIP LINC on it, graven forever into Lincoln's thigh. 'It didn't
want to take.')
Michael decided his brother was the bravest and stupidest person he knew.
                                     * * *
'So I gotta take care of it, you know?'
Lincoln was pretty buzzed, but there was something about sitting on an
unfamiliar couch that kept him more alert than usual. He kept misjudging where
the armrest was, missing when he reached to get his beer off the coffee table,
so he had to pay more attention than he wanted to. He wondered why there was a
new couch here when the old one had been perfectly fine, then he remembered
that they moved stuff inside of couches sometimes, and shrugged it off.
Crab Simmons had a much nicer apartment than Linc and Michael had had before
the studio, and bigger, too. He lived there with his girlfriend, and people
were always coming and going, stopping to say hello, to drop stuff off, to talk
business. Crab was the go-to guy for certain product since Covey got a bullet
in the neck, and Lincoln was doing a damn fine job making himself invaluable to
the operation. Crab was an okay guy, with the usual bad habits of anyone in
their line of work, and if you stopped by he always asked if you wanted some
dinner, which was nice, and it wasn't a hollow gesture, which was nicer. He'd
straight up roast a chicken and make hushpuppies in the middle of the night.
Dude was teaching Lincoln how to cook a little bit, and everything, though not
stuff that complicated. Pancakes from scratch.
'I gotta take care of it for him,' Lincoln went on, gesturing a little with his
bottle. 'He deserves that. I've been nose to the grindstone ever since he came
to live with me, and I just... I'm fuckin' stupid, I messed up. I said we had
money so he wouldn't worry about it, and I thought I could... I mean, shit,
it's like, we started with nothing and somehow ended up with less. Yeah, we
have stuff, like, regular people stuff. We can buy food. But we don't have a
future, man. I want to give him a future, but fuck if I can afford it, you
know?'
'I hear you, man,' said Crab, sorting pills on a tray. 'That shit gets more and
more expensive every year, doesn't it?' He handed Lincoln one of whatever-they-
were, and Lincoln took it without looking. 'What's little man want to do with
himself? Gonna be a doctor or a lawyer or some shit? That's good money and you
get girls.'
'Structural engineer,' said Lincoln, pronouncing it like it was sacred. 'It's
all he can talk about, some days. Shows me floor plans for buildings he just
makes up out of the blue, reads these books full of equations in his free time.
Asks for big graph paper pads for Christmas. Uses words like tensile forces.'
Lincoln chuckled at himself. 'And me, I'm over here.'
'Ain't nothin' the matter with being over here,' said Crab, without rancor.
'You do good work, man. You're goin' up in the world.'
'In this world.' Lincoln waved a hand, encompassing their empty beer bottles
and the half-empty fifth of Jack, the tray of something-or-others, the ends of
spent roaches in the ashtray, the gun he knew was in the drawer of the side
table. 'Mike's got like, potential for more than I do. His brain already wears
a suit. Does that make sense? Like, his chips fell different than mine, and
he's winning. But he can't cash out.'
Crab gave Lincoln a long, steady look, and made him an offer.
                                     * * *
Their quirks seemed, at times, to collide and run parallel in odd ways. Lincoln
didn't think very many steps ahead, struggling with cause and effect, while
Michael jumped from point A to point X and every conceivable variable in-
between in a matter of seconds, and rolled his eyes and dragged his feet
through points Y and Z while everyone else caught up. Michael had strong gut
feelings about things and knew danger when he saw it, whereas Lincoln didn't
realize he was dancing on the edge of a volcano until he'd already fallen in.
Lincoln took things at face value and was prone to impatience, while Michael
dissected every moment, asking endless questions, prying, striving, reaching,
fingers everywhere.
Michael craved stimuli and yet despised it; Lincoln, in his own ways, was much
the same. Michael tapped things, counted, checked, tested, always consuming
more information. Keenly aware of what normal was and how difficult it was for
him to achieve it, Lincoln got an early start dulling the edges of his own
perception, because he wanted that kind of thing to get the fuck out of his
head.
There were times they wanted the same sensations at the same time, but there
was always a line, some hidden seam between good and bad that neither of them
could locate until they snagged it and the moment passed.
                                     * * *
'Michael, come on!' Lincoln shouted, following close behind until Michael
slammed the bathroom door in his face and locked it. 'Will you just tell me
what happened? Jesus!'
There was a repetitive thudding noise from inside, accompanied by angry grunts
of effort. They increased, closer together, until one loud slam and a choked-
off scream of frustration, and then they stopped.
Lincoln kicked Michael's dropped backpack aside and stood close to the door,
talking softly now. 'You okay, Mike?'
'No.' A muffled sniff.
'You wanna tell me what happened at school?'
'It's not what happened at school,' said Michael. The door moved a little bit,
and his voice did too, and Lincoln could tell he had slid down the door to sit
with his back against it. 'It's what happened after what happened at school.'
'Okay.' Lincoln mirrored his position, sitting outside the door and leaning
back, his arms folded and resting on his knees. 'Can you expand that idea for
me? Start from the beginning.'
Michael sighed; Lincoln could barely hear it, which made Lincoln focus on it
all the more. (He often judged how Michael was feeling by how he was breathing,
when nothing else worked.) 'My new AP physics teacher has this really loud
cologne that gets up in my face and one of the lights in the classroom was
flickering today and I couldn't understand anything and I dissociated.'
'Okay. Then what happened?'
'He thought I was being a smartass because I didn't answer when he asked me a
question like six times and waved a hand in front of my face.'
'But you were spaced out?'
Michael cleared his throat a little, sniffed. 'Yeah.'
'It wasn't your fault, Mike. It's okay.'
'I stopped floating and I was in the waiting room for Guidance. I guess
somebody walked me down there.' He sounded like he'd buried his face in his
hands in shame. 'Or... god. Carried me.'
Lincoln rested his forehead in one hand, too. 'So did you talk to Mr Singh
about it?'
'No,' said Michael. 'Because first he tried to call you at work.'
A searing little stone of dread dropped into Lincoln's stomach like a punch.
'Did he?'
'Yeah, at the theater. Because you were supposed to be on-shift then.' Michael
sounded flat, expressionless; he'd reached that stage in the cycle. 'But
apparently you don't work there anymore.'
Lincoln had rehearsed what to say in case Michael found out. 'Look, about
that.'
'I didn't know where you were,' Michael said quietly, sounding betrayed.
Lincoln felt his heart clench in his chest. 'I'm right here.'
'Mr Singh said that my teacher is new to the faculty and apparently hadn't got
the memo about my... brain shit,' Michael went on, 'and I'm not in trouble. But
I looked like I was in trouble, I looked stupid and now nobody in this class is
going to take me seriously, and this guy thinks I'm a disrespectful...' he
struggled for a word and vehemently decided on, 'instigator.' He sniffed. 'And
you know how important this class is.'
'I'm sorry, Mike.' Lincoln pressed the heels of his palms into his temples,
trying to keep it together. Michael wasn't the disrespectful instigator in the
family, and they both knew it. 'I'd been meaning to tell you that I got a
position with this moving company, right, but I was new and I didn't know if
it'd work out. It seemed sort of cruel to tell you, hey, not only did I lose
yet another job, but I might not be able to stick around in the job I got to
replace the last one, you know?'
'And did you?' said Michael, hollowly.
'What?'
'Stick around.'
Lincoln tipped his head back against the door. 'Yeah.'
'How long?'
'Couple weeks now. The boss likes me and says I'm moving up in the world. I'm
already earning like, perks and stuff.'
'What's his name?' It was obvious Michael was scanning for lies; he knew
Lincoln couldn't improvise a good lie to save his life, he'd just freeze up.
'Mr Simmons.'
'First name?' He was really pushing, this time. Lincoln didn't blame him.
'Cecil. But nobody but his mama's allowed to call him that.'
Lincoln thought he heard a little breath of a laugh on the other side of the
door, and then, 'Will you help with my hand? It's pretty fucked up.'
Later, after Lincoln had bandaged Michael's bloody knuckles, after shoes and
socks and jeans had been kicked off, Lincoln rubbed the velvet fuzz of
Michael's hair as they lay in bed and sang to him under his breath, a verse of
the lullaby their mother liked.
'I can never remember the words,' said Michael, when Lincoln had finished. 'Do
you know what they mean?'
Lincoln thought about what he liked best about their mother, her voice, the way
her nose crinkled when she laughed, how when Michael was small he used to coil
a lock of her hair around his finger while she rocked him, his sleepy eyes
narrowed like he was examining it.
'Hell if I know,' said Lincoln. 'It's Welsh.' He moved his hand, thumb brushing
Michael's cheekbone, down along his jaw. 'I'm sorry I kept something from you
and you found out the way you did. I know I'm an asshole sometimes.'
'Yeah, you are,' said Michael, though not without affection. 'Why did you stop
messing with my hair? It's nice.'
It was, but Lincoln thought back to the night he'd given Michael the haircut in
the first place, those soft sounds Michael made when he touched him, the gentle
shifting of his hips, like Michael didn't even know he was doing it, like he
couldn't help himself.
That wasn't the first time that sort of thing happened, either. Lincoln
remembered every single instance of That Sort Of Thing, going back years,
because he replayed them in his head and prayed that Michael couldn't actually
read minds.
'Arm's tired,' Lincoln fibbed.
Michael nuzzled his brother's hand like an insistent cat. 'Bullshit.'
'Seriously, man. Pet your own head for awhile.'
Michael smiled. 'I started doing it at school, when I'm trying to calm down.
It's really nice.'
'Good.'
'Best haircut ever,' Michael added. 'You're officially my barber now.'
'I'll be sure to install a twirly pole outside the door,' said Lincoln. 'You
better leave me a tip next time, too, ya freeloader.'
A few moments passed.
'C'mon, Linc,' Michael fussed, drumming his fingers lightly against Lincoln's
chest.
'Why don't you do it yourself?'
'Because I want you to do it.' Michael started drawing a slow circle with his
index finger, just under Lincoln's collarbone and above the raw edge of his
shirt where the collar was cut out, perfectly centered. Round and round and
round. It wasn't fair, you could practically hypnotize Lincoln doing that, and
Michael knew it, the bastard. 'Please touch me?'
Lincoln could almost hear the thin thread of tension drawn taut and singing
inside each of them, so taut it could cut you, a flare of warmth unfurling from
the base of his spine, and if he said no the thread would snarl into a knot,
the warmth would turn cold and clammy because fevers always betray.
But Michael was the sort of person who'd reply with maybe tomorrow when Linc
said fuck you. Once, before they moved, Lincoln was on his way out for an
evening and asked if there was anything he should get on the way home, and
Michael had replied, 'some tail, I hear it's good for you!' He pushed his
brother's buttons because all brothers did that, but Michael did so with the
added need to make sure he still knew where they were and what they did.
Running diagnostic tests, determining whether their tongue-in-cheek brotherly
antagonism was still fully operational.
And Michael thought before he spoke, always. He knew the ramifications of every
jibe he threw Lincoln's way, and was therefore prepared for any response.
That's just how he worked.
That's how Lincoln knew it wasn't accidental.
He skimmed his fingers lightly over Michael's scalp again, enjoying the
alternating sensations of smoothness and slight, soft friction depending on
whether he stroked along or against the direction Michael's hair grew. Michael
hummed, tipping his head a little to press into the touch, pleased with himself
and pleased that Lincoln had done what he wanted.
Michael lay against Lincoln's chest, one gangly leg tangled in his, enjoying
being petted. He shifted a little every few seconds, his hand moving, or the
angle of his chin, and at one point his foot slid up Lincoln's calf, the soft
curve of his arch against the curve of muscle.
Lincoln let his fingers stray to the spot on the side of his brother's neck
that he'd sometimes seen Michael idly messing with while he studied. Expecting
it was just one of those things that would be equally as nice as what he'd
already been doing, Lincoln was surprised when Michael's breath hitched and he
said, voice cracking a little, 'Oh, god.'
Lincoln froze, his quickened pulse tripping and speeding beneath his skin like
it was trying to get away.
'Come on,' Michael urged him, his expression a little scornful, but the flicker
of irritation melted away as soon as it had appeared. 'Linc, please, that was
so good.'
Lincoln didn't always know what to say, but he always knew how to take action.
To just do something, damn the consequences, not even understanding quite what
the consequences might be because that was too many steps ahead, so many
seconds away that they seemed like eons.
He ducked his head and pressed his lips against the spot on Michael's neck.
Michael went from loose-limbed and relaxed to strung taut and trembling; when
before he had been draped comfortably along one side of Lincoln's chest, now he
was practically pinning his brother down by how eagerly he leaned against him,
one thigh tucked between his.
Lincoln read that as encouragement, kissing Michael's neck, taking a risk and
flicking the point of his tongue against whatever the hell made that particular
square inch of skin so sensitive.
Michael moaned. 'Fuck, yeah, right there—'
Lincoln felt the seam snagging, the thread of the moment straining until it
snapped, an uncharted void widening between good and bad so that Lincoln didn't
know where he was anymore.
Michael, who was watching Lincoln's expression and body language, noticed
instantly and decided to fix the problem. He climbed off and got out of the
bed. 'I've got homework,' he said, getting his backpack from where he'd thrown
it off when they first got home, calmly setting up at the kitchen table as if
he'd meant to do that the whole time. 'I intend to put my headphones on and
listen to waves.'
'Sure,' said Lincoln, taken aback, but this was a typical Michael maneuver,
wasn't it? The sudden shift in behavior, always a smooth transition for him
while Lincoln lagged behind, gears grinding.
'Do whatever you want,' said Michael, and Lincoln knew he meant it. Soon
Michael was engrossed in his reading, taking notes and marking passages with
little colored flags, like Lincoln wasn't there at all.
                                     * * *
Michael dutifully plowed through his homework until it was finished. It wasn't
that he hadn't noticed Lincoln wrestling with his conscience across the room,
because of course he had. He'd been aware of every shift in his posture where
he lay, the slight drift of Lincoln's hand as he debated what he thought to be
the inherent Rightness or Wrongness of even contemplating touching himself
after what had just happened. Michael knew all of that was going on. He took in
his brother's every shaky breath as if it were his own, all the while drawing a
diagram of rough endoplasmic reticulum on his barely-legible biology worksheet.
A photocopy of a photocopy.
Lincoln was always worrying about Rightness that belonged to other people,
packing Wrongness into his heart that he didn't necessarily feel. He did things
without thinking, and later assigned them a moral position based on how well or
badly it had turned out, and then much later decided how to code it within a
traditional slant of morality. But that method, by its very nature, meant that
some things were truly too complex to accurately label without first exploring
them further. That was something Lincoln didn't intrinsically get—which
frustrated Michael to no end, but he understood how that must feel. Lincoln had
taught him that fear of the unknown existed only if you allowed yourself to
remain in ignorance, but it was a fear that Lincoln couldn't seem to shake,
himself.
Despite his questionable taste in substances and pursuits, Lincoln had always
been the more religious of the two of them, prone to prayer in times of
trouble, and Michael knew that he sometimes even still went to confession. And
though time and again Lincoln returned to the same crooked paths, which was
like, the exact opposite of repentance, Michael didn't fault him for the
hypocrisy. To Michael, all was forgiven, always. Some things took longer for
Michael to let go of, but he always did. If Michael Scofield could forgive
anything—Michael, horny adolescent weirdo, far from omniscient and whose
feelings were easily hurt, who tripped over himself every few feet and wished
he had a cool nickname like his brother did and thought that it was totally
okay to eat pizza for every meal for the rest of his life—why couldn't God?
Michael tucked that away for background processing, because it was much more
important right now to look over at his brother in the slow fade of dusk, and
to remember the fierce surge of desire that had electrified those few minutes
so brightly it seemed to have left an after-image in the air, glowing neon
blurs, two maps of nerves firing in synchrony.
And beneath this, Lincoln covered his eyes, the heels of his palms pressed hard
into them, his lips shaping a silent litany:
Michael. Michael. Michael.
***** Chapter 3 *****
Ninety thousand dollars was more money than Lincoln could conceptualize in any
real way, so he sat on Crab Simmons' couch with the cash in front of him,
counting increasingly larger amounts of it until he reached saturation point
and couldn't handle anymore. He surprised himself by how limited his
imagination was in that regard: anything over ten thousand seemed like complete
nonsense, even though he had a somewhat accurate gauge of how much that was.
His car had been $5k, therefore ten thousand could cover two of his car. That
meant that the whole shebang was like... eighteen of his car? Jesus.
Even knowing that, and even though he knew how many bills were in a stack, and
how many stacks there were, it just didn't make any fucking sense.
(This wasn't a fact he chose to share with anyone else, especially present
company. That was just begging to be stiffed.)
'You all right, man?' said Crab. 'You look like you've seen a ghost.'
Lincoln felt like he had. In that moment, the moment he came into possession of
that money, his brother's future (as Lincoln knew it) had died and been reborn
as something better, something strong and certain and good.
He wished he could celebrate. He wished he could go home to their tiny
apartment and pick Michael up and swing him around as if he was still a lot
smaller than him, laughing in relief that everything was finally taken care of.
He wished he could weep, let go of all of the fear that he wasn't going to be
able to provide for Michael and give him a good life. He wished he could turn
to his brother and say, I did this because I love you so much it fuckin' tears
me apart sometimes.
But he couldn't do that. He couldn't say anything, because he had lied.
And no matter what spectacular news this loan was, the lie was so big and had
been fed for so long that there was no room left for the truth.
                                     * * *
Michael wrote down things he never wanted to say to anyone. This was a
technique his therapist taught him, only slightly warped. The original
suggestion was that he write down the sort of things he wanted to tell people
but felt like he couldn't, and then practice saying those things out loud when
he was alone, but what Michael did instead was pour out on paper all the things
he hoped never fell out of his damn mouth no matter how over- or
understimulated he was. Dreadful and secret things that no one should hear him
say, either because they were embarrassing, or juvenile, or true.
I suck at being a person. Sometimes I think I might be an alien, or an
evolutionary mistake. I shouldn't be here. I'll never be good enough.
I hate the way you smell and look and act when you come home from a bar, it
takes everything about your presence and strangles it and that kills me. (Why
are you even in a bar, anyway? Don't they card people?)
I miss Veronica and I feel bad that I used to spy on you.
I can predict men, but I never know what a girl will do. Women are a mystery
that I have no business trying to unravel. They probably want to stay raveled,
anyway, right? At least by me.
When I dissociate I sometimes think I've left my body and I'm a ghost. I
wonder, in the moment, what you would do if you just found this lifeless
Michael puppet thing without a soul in it, sitting around like everything is
fine. Would you bury it? Would you keep it?
I want to wake you up from a nightmare and comfort you so you know how I feel
when you do it.
I hate that I like it when guys pick on me at school and call me things and
like, mime sucking a dick when I pass them in the hall, because I know it means
that they're thinking about what I must be like, and they're essentially
advertising that fact, so on the one hand, huh that's interesting, that's some
kinda dissonant psychological cocktail they have there, but on the other hand,
the fact that I like it says something really fucked up about me, doesn't it?
I can't live like this, why am I like this? You do so much for me and all I am
is this twisted fuckup who wants even MORE from you.
Why do you always insist on picking up two other things when you're buying
condoms? I don't know if you do this when you're alone, but you do it when I'm
there and it's ridiculous. Do you think a frozen pizza and a tub of ice cream
are going to eclipse the fact that there's a box of condoms on the conveyor
belt along with them? Do you think I'm easily distracted by food (I mean...
true, but beside the point) so I won't be thinking about you having sex?
History classes are taught in the most fucking uninteresting way. Why will I
ever need to remember these names and dates? There's no context other than
vague descriptions of what else was going on in the period, and some pictures
in the textbook of how people dressed. I want to know what people ate for
breakfast, what songs they got stuck in their heads, time-wasting things they
doodled on the back of old letters. I want to know like, in times when every
other fuckin' guy was named John, if groups of friends identified people by
things like Tall John, Whistling John, John With The Weird Mole, His Name's
John But He's Trying To Be All Cool And European So He's Going By Johann Now,
etc.
you treat yourself like shit and i'm sick of it please stop
I never want to compete with anyone, in any context. Competition is needlessly
cruel, literally always. Why can't people accept that our actions have merit
even if we're not shoving each other while we're at it? Other guys are
especially awful about this. I'm fine with us shoving each other, you and me,
because I don't have to prove to you that I'm worth something.
When you come home and you've been in a fight I want to stomp on all your
bruises and make you wince so you know how I feel when I see you like this, you
careless, reckless fucker.
I wish I could open myself up and see all my guts and find the part of me that
wants you and TEAR IT OUT
One time you forgot a crane so I skipped school and took a bus across town to
your old job at the hardware store to make sure you were alive.
I feel like no matter how much I help people, I'm an unspeakably selfish
person.
All I want to do is spend the entire day scratching the back of my throat raw
sucking your cock.
                                     * * *
Michael punched him.
There was only so much room in a studio apartment to have a physical fight, and
Michael ended up backed against the mattress at some point, and Lincoln pushed
him over hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Michael retaliated by
hooking his leg behind Lincoln's and digging his heel into the back of one of
his brother's knees, bringing him down too.
'You little shit!' Lincoln snapped.
'You fucking deserved that!'
It didn't even matter what they were fighting about anymore; both of them had
forgotten. What started the fight wasn't the point, the point was that they
were at it now, and it was an opportunity to let off some steam and to get
stuff out of their systems so they wouldn't start being resentful of each
other.
Michael managed to squirm out from under Lincoln for long enough to get the
upper hand, pinning Lincoln by the throat with one arm, a knee on Lincoln's
chest, saying close to his ear, 'I'm gonna thrash you within an inch of your
life, Linc. Better get your earthly affairs in order.'
'The only thing out of order here is you,' said Lincoln, scratching the side of
Michael's neck sharply, making him hiss.
'Oho, he's a feisty one.' Michael smirked sharply, then spat in Lincoln's face.
Lincoln kneed him, flipping them over, slamming Michael down, the fitted sheet
suddenly popping free of one side of the mattress beneath them. 'Fuck you!'
'Is that,' Michael was panting from the exertion, trying to stick a thumb in
Lincoln's eye but his hand kept getting batted away, 'a personal remark, or are
you reading off your to-do list?'
That was it, just then, the moment when a regular fight morphed into something
else.
They exchanged a couple of punches, and then, 'Maybe tomorrow,' Lincoln
growled, in mockery of Michael's usual reply.
'Why not right now?' Michael countered, challenging, pushing whatever
boundaries they had left. 'You wanna go? We can go.'
'Not until I've won!' Lincoln bit him on the shoulder, leaving a perfect set of
red teethmarks dented into his skin.
'You never win a fight with me, Linc,' Michael gloated, 'I just give up because
I love the look on your face when you think you're the strong one. It's cute.'
'Take that back.'
Completely contrary to his usual form, Michael actually slapped him, and
Lincoln was so startled that he shut up for a couple of seconds, going still,
and Michael used that to turn them over again so he was on top. He straddled
Lincoln's shoulders, a knee on either side of Lincoln's head, keeping him down
so that no matter how much Lincoln clawed at Michael's back, there was no way
he could buck him off, the angle was all wrong.
'If you want some, you have to be man enough to admit it,' Michael said,
quietly, not quite angrily but right on the edge of it. 'You can't just chicken
out the second I respond to what you're doing to me because I fuckin' want you,
you bastard.'
Lincoln's breath caught in his chest. 'What did you say to me?'
Michael had thought this through, played through every possibility in his head
a thousand times, but in none of his imaginings had Lincoln ever had quite that
expression on his face.
'I want you,' Michael repeated, then swallowed hard, like he could swallow the
words back down. 'You need that notarized or something? I thought it was pretty
obvious.'
And it was: the way Michael was straddling him made it impossible for Lincoln
to ignore how turned on Michael was right now, even if it hadn't been for his
flushed skin and quick breaths and eyes dilated like he was on something.
'If you don't make a move, Linc, I swear to god I will go do my econ homework
and you can jerk off in the bathroom and think about where your life went
wrong.'
'Jesus, Mike.' Lincoln glared at him. 'I'm about to make a citizen's arrest for
the murder of this mood, bro.'
'We're still fighting,' Michael said brusquely. 'That was a tactic. Your move,
tough guy.'
Lincoln didn't even think about it until he was already doing it.
He tilted his head so the point of his chin dragged along the bulge at the
front of Michael's jeans, and Lincoln opened his mouth, lax and inviting and
trusting.
Michael hooked one long finger into Lincoln's mouth, sliding slick along his
teeth before pressing against his tongue. Lincoln's lips closed around it, both
hesitant and eager, and—
'While I'm delighted with what's happening here,' said Michael, 'I need to
pee.'
Lincoln stopped what he was doing and spoke around Michael's finger, scowling.
'Exthudes ee?'
Michael moved his hand away. 'You did shake me around a lot, just now. I feel
like a Martini.' He climbed off.
'You're fuckin' kidding me right now,' Lincoln groaned as Michael went off to
the bathroom. 'You're a bastard!' he called after him.
'I learned it by watching you!' Michael shouted back cheerfully.
He came back into the room a few moments later, looking smug. 'Gee, would you
look at the time. I really should get started on my assignments for the
weekend.'
Lincoln, still flat on his back on the bed, threw an arm over his face. 'Oh my
god.'
'I mean, I have an average to keep up. It's important.'
'Yeah, yeah, I get the message.'
Michael leaned down and whispered in Lincoln's ear, 'Now that I know you want
it, I may pounce at any time.' Then he straightened up, threw a blanket
completely over Lincoln (to noises of protest), and got his textbooks out of
his backpack.
                                     * * *
Saturday morning; a gash of sun divided the apartment into light and dark.
Michael woke up aroused and sore and aching, his lip still a little swollen
from last night, bruises painted across his skin like watercolors as he slept.
He jabbed one, hissing softly under his breath. These were going to help ground
him for awhile, maybe even a couple weeks if he was lucky. He smiled. Any time
he felt like he was falling upwards into space he could just dig his knuckles
into one and he felt alive again, or rather he felt like he wasn't dead.
That was something for the 'never say that out loud' notebook. People didn't
understand that pain was just another sensory experience, equally important and
useful and meaningful as anything else, but not in the way people thought it
was. The fact that Michael appreciated being bruised or cut, or being sick,
wasn't the fucked-up part; the fucked-up part was that nobody would just let
him feel things.
Linc did, though. It wasn't that he encouraged Michael to seek out that kind of
stuff—honestly, Lincoln felt awful about it—but he understood the urge to find
some sensation, any sensation, other than what you were feeling at baseline.
Lincoln had his own demons, each lulled to sleep by its own vice: for the
flights of rage, there were drugs to make him giddy and playful; for the dire
compulsion to fall into bed with literally anyone who offered, there was enough
booze to keep him from getting it up; for the intrusive thoughts that screamed
his failures and urged him to destroy, there were cocktails of uppers and
downers that made the voices sluggish like they were shouting underwater; and
for the overwhelming need for Michael's approval and praise and love, there was
Michael.
It wasn't that Michael encouraged his brother to seek out that stuff—except for
that last one—but he understood.
And he understood why Lincoln was so back-and-forth about what had been
happening lately. It wasn't just down to his (kinda broken) moral compass. It
was that Lincoln was afraid that all this was because of his own brain shit,
the stuff he'd never admit to, stuff he'd never ask for help with because
therapy was for 'people who really needed it', not him:
Years ago, when he'd started letting Michael lay all over him, it was because
he loved the weight and could think of no better feeling than Michael giving
him that, holding him down, keeping him safe. He told Michael he loved him so
many times a day because sometimes that was all Lincoln could think about. Ever
since Michael had come back into his life, Michael was the only person in his
world that mattered anymore. Some nights when Michael was falling back asleep
after the inevitable dreams, Lincoln would whisper, 'You don't hate me, right?'
and kiss the backs of Michael's fingers, hoping he was awake to hear it,
praying that he wasn't. And some mornings before Michael left to catch the bus,
Lincoln would ask, 'You're going to come home to me, aren't you?' and Michael
would pull a face and say, 'Duh.'
Lincoln was afraid that his desire was just brain shit, too. How could he not
be afraid of that, when he knew himself so well, knew that there were nights
when he would tread dangerous paths, dive bars and gutted warehouses, not
caring what happened as long as he got a fix, got attention, got someone to
touch him? How could he not suspect his own motives, when he'd get so
overwhelmed that he'd have to pull over off the highway and jerk off sometimes,
that he used to call in sick from work so he could find someone, anyone, to
fuck?
Wouldn't it be easier, said a nasty little demon voice that dug in its spurs in
his mind, wouldn't it be perfect if you could throw away all those superfluous
people that you don't give a shit about? They don't exist anyway, not really.
You know who you want and who's important. You know who the only real person
is.
But Michael deserved more than that, more than perverse convenience. And while
in the back of his mind Lincoln knew that he didn't just think Michael was
convenient, that he actually adored him and couldn't imagine life without him
and sometimes stayed up late thinking of new ways to please him, the refrain
was always the same: Lincoln was an anchor, a burden who dragged everyone down
with him into the dark. Who's to say he wasn't doing that to Michael? Who's to
say he wasn't ruining Michael's life even as he tried to save it?
Michael saw all of this and understood. He saw love in the way Lincoln secretly
scrambled to change his habits when Michael commented on something he disliked
(even while making a big show of not caring what Michael thought about trivial
stuff like that); he saw it in how Linc started wearing a particular sort of
shirt that Michael said looked good on him (even though Lincoln insisted that
Michael had terrible taste). Michael saw the way Linc kept track of his ever-
shifting needs, how sometimes they'd have the same thing for dinner for three
weeks in a row, night after night, because that's all Michael could stand to
consume, and Lincoln never complained, never seemed to get tired of
accommodating him. All Lincoln seemed to want from him was approval and
reassurance, the knowledge that, whatever his feelings, Michael wasn't going to
abandon him. As if Michael would ever abandon his brother—he knew too well how
much it hurt.
And Michael also knew, whether Lincoln was willing to believe him or not, that
Michael had wanted him first.
The sun fell across the snarl of sheets that they hadn't bothered to put back
on properly before bed, and Lincoln's chest rising and falling, Lincoln's arm
and foot hanging off the side of the mattress, the faintly visible pulse of
Michael's half-awake erection as he looked at him.
Michael pressed a fist into a bruise on his own hip, his breath quickening into
bursts, a small sound suspended in each, high and needy for this, until he
found himself whispering, Linc. Linc. Linc.
***** Chapter 4 *****
Lincoln loved surprising Michael with things, loved the thrill of observing and
planning and keeping a happy secret, imagining the eventual response. Michael
hated surprises and did everything he could to convince Linc to just tell him
stuff as soon as possible.
This was especially difficult for Lincoln to accept when it came to birthdays.
Part of the point of getting someone a present was the anticipation, right?
Being happy for their sake before they even knew about it, and them wondering
what might be in store. But Michael didn't like that sort of anticipation; not
knowing how he would need to react stressed him out, even though he'd naturally
react when the time came anyway. It made him feel helpless, and that was the
opposite of what Lincoln wanted him to feel.
At least, Lincoln figured, none of their limited closet space was taken up with
wrapping paper.
He got a cake from the grocery store two days before, and it lived in the
fridge in a plain white box until October 8th, a known quantity in the sense
that Michael knew it was a cake and could, for the time being, leave it at
that. A few weeks ago Linc had come home from moving stuff for Crab, and he set
a shopping bag down in front of Michael and said, 'I got your birthday present,
look.' And Michael had looked, and nodded approvingly, handing the bag back so
that Lincoln could at least have the little ritual of hiding it in a cabinet
until the appropriate date.
Michael's birthday fell on a weekday, so Lincoln wanted him to have a boost of
happiness before he left for the bus, especially because he had a test that
afternoon. Lincoln got up early, put some food in the oven, got the cake out of
the fridge, and found the thin tube of decorative frosting he'd bought on the
same day. He wrote a message on the cake, set it on the kitchen table, and
realized he'd forgotten to buy candles.
'Hey,' Lincoln said a few minutes later, sitting on the edge of the bed and
gently shaking Michael awake (he'd turned off his alarm, because when the alarm
went off Michael automatically flung himself out of bed and was halfway through
a shower before he was even conscious of what he was doing). 'Wake up, it's
your birthday.'
Michael's eyes opened and he squinted up at his brother. 'It's also a school
day,' he grumbled.
'That's why we're having the breakfast of champions,' Lincoln replied. 'Pizza
and cake.'
It made Michael smile.
His present was on the table, not wrapped: a full kit of drafting instruments,
from a shiny steel compass and proportional dividers to clear plastic
templates, all neatly and efficiently arranged in a little case. And
painstakingly written on the top of the cake, in Lincoln's best approximation
of architectural lettering as rendered in sugar goo, were the words 17 FUCKING
YEARS!!!
'Eyy,' said Michael, pointing finger-guns at his brother, 'legal in the state
of Illinois.'
'Only under certain circumstances,' said Lincoln, unable to stop himself.
'There's no candles,' Michael noted.
'I forgot.' Lincoln took his lighter out of his pocket and flicked it on. 'Make
a wish.'
Michael closed his eyes, long lashes laid out in a gentle curve. He licked his
lips slightly, then blew softly and slowly against the lighter flame. Lincoln
nearly dropped it.
The timer on the oven went off, thank god.
'Pizza's ready!' Lincoln gave Michael a brief noogie before stepping into the
kitchen. 'How many slices do you want it cut into?'
'Eight,' said Michael, already testing a fingerful of cake frosting. 'What
flavor is this on the inside?'
'Yellow,' said Lincoln, trying to find where he'd left the oven mitt.
'Yellow isn't a flavor,' Michael pointed out.
'Says the guy who tells me that oblique is a flavor.'
Michael stuck out his tongue at him. 'I'm sorry, I can't hear your whining over
the awesomeness of my X-Men superpowers.'
'The X-Men suck,' said Lincoln, who had a certain amount of opinions about
comics. 'I'd rather be Superman.'
'We are not having the Marvel/DC argument on my birthday.' Michael went into
the kitchen and piled a plate high with food. 'Besides,' he went on, going back
on what he'd just said because he loved this argument, 'Superman is a ticking
timebomb of unknown alien biological imperatives. For all we know, Supes is
still the Kryptonian equivalent to a fetus. What if he turns into a giant slime
monster when he hits puberty? He could just become like, liquid. Liquid Man for
the rest of his life. It'd he hard to hold down a job as a reporter if Jimmy
Olsen had to carry him around in a thermos the whole time.'
'Or, here's a thought, Krypton isn't the land of a thousand unfortunate
monsters.'
'But he's an alien. There's no reason aliens would develop at all like humans,
I mean, it's fuckin' weird that he looks human at all. He doesn't even know
what's going on with his species, because he's arguably supposed to be the only
one left.' Michael got a soda out of the fridge and went back to the table.
'What if he hits like, six different kinds of puberty over the course of a
hundred years? We don't even know what kind of hormones he has, much less what
his junk is doing. I don't think Lois Lane would appreciate it if he was some
kind of insect/werewolf hybrid with no dick and three vaginas all of a sudden
because it's his time of the planetary cycle.'
'Oh, and mutant powers are somehow less of a crapshoot? Please.' Lincoln
pointed at him with the end of a slice of pizza. 'You could literally explode
at any time, or murder somebody by bumping into them. Have fun with that.'
'At least I'd be around a whole bunch of people who understand me.'
Lincoln felt his heart twist a little, at that, and tried to act like it
hadn't. 'Yeah, while Professor Voyeur reads your mind any time he wants.'
'You've got your head up your ass,' said Michael, fondly.
'Speaking of which: must be a hell of a thing to be Plastic Man, am I right?'
They bickered happily about the logistics of fictional abilities until Michael
had to leave to catch the bus. Lincoln hugged him as they stood by the door,
Michael's backpack between their feet.
'I love you,' Lincoln told him, lips brushing against the spot on Michael's
neck that was such a temptation and a distraction to him now.
Michael made a little noise in the back of his throat, hugging him tighter.
'Can't I just stay home today? You could call the office and say I'm sick.'
'Oh, right, on your birthday? Like that's not suspicious.' Lincoln breathed in
the scent of the nape of his neck. 'Besides, then we'd have to get you a
doctor's note.'
'Pretty sure you could forge that,' Michael wheedled. 'You've got connections.
I mean, you do know some, uh... medically-minded professionals.'
'Nope,' said Lincoln, letting go and handing Michael his backpack. 'Not a
chance. You have that test on the Revolutionary War today whether you like it
or not.'
'Uuuugh.'
'Go on.'
Michael ducked his head, smiling, and Lincoln should have known he was up to
something but the penny didn't drop until Michael had kissed him quickly on the
mouth and left the apartment, calling, 'Love you, too!' over his shoulder as he
went.
                                     * * *
There were times when the wave crashed through him when he least expected it,
but most often, when the storm would come, Lincoln could feel its approach and
he waited, with resigned dread, for it to break over him and drag him under.
Little things piled up. A promised favor he'd forgotten to do for Michael, a
mistake, a terse exchange with one of Ogden and Crab's guys. Sometimes it was
just that he'd had a really good day, actually, everything had gone right, so
the cosmic scales had to slam in the opposite direction to even the score.
Sometimes he'd feel completely neutral and fine, not particularly happy or sad,
and he'd just. Drop something. And the world would catch fire.
There was a pattern and he knew it, he could feel even as he spiraled into the
dark what step would come next. It was the only time when Lincoln understood
what was likely to happen, and that was almost worse than if it were impossible
to predict.
Rage rose first, then angry tears; the overwhelming urge to make it stop by any
means necessary, the more final the better. That blended seamlessly into a
bleak and helpless despair that even the most adamant urges to take action
could not overcome, still crying but silently, and Lincoln would feel like he
was watching himself from far away. Unable to speak or think about anything,
just blankly existing until it passed, sometimes cradling himself or rocking,
making a soft noise, sometimes forgetting to breathe. That step took hours, and
left him feeling scraped out and hollow and dead.
That's what Michael came home to that day, how he found him, on a day that was
supposed to be nice. But Michael had seen this before, and didn't fault him for
it, didn't think Lincoln was weak. It was just how things happened sometimes.
'Hey,' he said kindly, kneeling down beside where Lincoln lay on his side on
the floor and stroking tears from Lincoln's face with his thumb. 'The bed's
right here, genius.'
'I know,' Lincoln said, his voice flat.
'You want help up, or do you want to keep your head buried in the carpet?'
Lincoln made a wordless noise of distress, indicating that both options seemed
too difficult to fathom at the moment.
'Okay,' said Michael, lying down behind Lincoln on the floor and holding him.
'It's okay, I got you. I'll always take care of you. I'm right here.'
''M supposed to do that,' Lincoln protested, but Michael shushed him.
'I'm allowed to do it back,' he said.
                                     * * *
I had a nightmare, or at least it started out as one, that I didn't tell you
about. I didn't thrash or freak out in my sleep, so you never knew. I was the
Shadow Beast, vast and powerful and terrifying, and my shadow-body fell over
you, stark black and enveloping you until there was no light left. And in the
dream you weren't afraid, you welcomed me, you told me I'd always been the
monster and you'd always loved me, and when I touched you I found out you were
a shadow, too, and we blended together, we'd both been the monster the whole
time.
                                     * * *
Their lives changed slowly. Michael started getting early offers from colleges,
and he sorted them accordingly, biding his time until he knew all the options.
Lincoln was given more and more opportunities by Crab, his pay getting better
the more involved he got, but he hadn't started thinking about how to set aside
for paying off his debt. He'd get to it eventually.
Michael's appearance started to change. For one thing, he needed to shave more
often now, and by some miracle his ears seemed to stick out less. He'd started
tutoring this rich senior girl, Vanessa Cramer, who wanted to retake the SAT in
the spring to improve upon the score she got as a junior but didn't want her
parents to know she needed a tutor. He wanted to save her that embarrassment,
the conflict it might cause for her overbearing parents to know that she didn't
flawlessly achieve her grades without help. It was the least he could do. And
it wasn't a job, Michael reassured his brother, because he was studying for the
SAT anyway, what did it matter if somebody asked for tips at the same time?
Besides, it was nice to have somebody to help go over flash cards.
So Michael actually had some walking-around money of his own, now, and instead
of doing what most seventeen-year-old boys would do with $100 a week, the first
thing Michael did was go to a Brooks Brothers store and buy a light blue shirt,
a silk tie that looked good with it, and some tailored khaki pants that were so
smooth to the touch that Michael couldn't stop running his fingers over them.
He'd need a pair of brogues to go with this stuff, but it was snowing and his
socks were wet, and that was no way to try on shoes. So Michael went straight
home, carefully snipped the tags out of everything, and tried on his new outfit
to show his brother, telling him not to look until he was done, barefoot and
vibrating with anticipation.
'You look like what falls out when you pick up Connecticut and shake it,' said
Lincoln when he looked up from his crossword.
'I'm not even going to say what you look like right now,' said Michael loftily.
'Some kind of fuckin' marble statue of a god,' Lincoln suggested. 'Dionysus in
repose, or some shit.'
Michael laughed. 'I'm sure Dionysus sat around scratching his balls and doing a
crossword book like, all the time.'
'Guy knew how to party, what can I say.'
Michael was about to change out of his new clothes again when Lincoln got up,
gently sliding Michael's tie over his fingers, enjoying the texture. 'Where'd
you learn to do that knot? I can only do the kinda crooked one. Hell, I rarely
even button my shirt.'
'I looked up a bunch of tie knots at the library,' said Michael. 'This one's
called the Balthus.'
'It's nice,' said Lincoln, tipping Michael's chin up with a gentle hand. 'You
look good. Confident.' He brushed his thumb against the side of Michael's neck,
just over the crisp edge of his collar, as if to reward him.
                                     * * *
Lincoln scrubbed a hand down his face and looked over at Michael in the
passenger seat as they waited for the light to turn green.
Michael was leaning his head against the window, his breath fogging the
January-cold glass, looking miserable. 'I fucked up, okay?'
'Yeah, you did.' Lincoln tried to carefully choose his words, but frustration
took over and he smacked the steering wheel, once, making his hand smart
something fierce. 'Damn it, Michael, you know that counts as a weapon, right?
That you could've gotten expelled? Your school is Zero Tolerance, jackass!'
'But I didn't get expelled,' Michael retorted in a quiet, mutinous, told-you-so
voice. 'I didn't even get caught—'
'You're so close,' Lincoln talked over him, hitting the gas pedal a little too
hard as the light changed, 'you are this fucking close to graduating—graduating
early because you're that fucking smart—and you think it's funny to go to
school with that kind of... I mean, Jesus Christ, Michael!'
'I didn't think it was funny,' Michael snapped. 'And I still have all of next
fall semester before I graduate.'
Lincoln realized he shouldn't be driving right now, and pulled up to the
nearest open curb and jerked the car into park. Best decision either of them
had made all day.
Michael had hidden a razor blade in the pocket of his sweatshirt, and had left
school with perfectly parallel cuts on the backs of every finger, and a scent
of blood that got into the car with him. His excuse was that there was a boring
speech by some sort of politician that day, the gym risers packed to capacity
with juniors and seniors, and there'd been a question-and-answer session that
lasted an additional hour after that. He couldn't leave, he couldn't read a
book, he couldn't just stick his headphones on and listen to waves. All he
could hear for upwards of two hours were the platitudes of this fucking guy
whose smile didn't reach his eyes, and the sound of several hundred kids
breathing, sniffing, chewing gum, whispering, giggling, shuffling, scooting in
their seats, all amplified and echoing around the ceiling of the gym like some
sort of divine punishment chosen specifically to remind Michael Scofield that
he was designed for suffering.
'Look,' said Lincoln, and he noticed he was still gripping the steering wheel
too hard so he let his hands drop, turning in his seat to face his brother as
much as he could. 'I get why you do that, okay? I get it. But you can't have a
razor blade at school again, Mike, it can fuck up your life. Your plans.'
That last word was loaded with how awed he was by the fact that Michael could
just know what needed to happen and when, like it was a gift given to him alone
out of everyone in the world. But Michael heard it like it was a barbed comment
meant to wound, someone else's words in Linc's voice, look at you with your big
plans, you really think you're something, don't you? All that pride and you
still want to throw it away.
'I know I can't tell you to stop, because that's not fair,' said Lincoln, and
he didn't sound disappointed, 'but just... I know it was an emergency, this
time, but in the future if you know you're going to be that overstimulated by
something that's coming up, do something before you leave so you can just like,
press on it to calm down, okay? Like you do with bruises.'
'I could ask you to punch me,' Michael said sourly.
'I'm not going to punch you.'
'Yeah, you say that,' said Michael, in full bitter/snippy mode now. 'But we
know how easy you are to manipulate, don't we?' He tipped his head back against
his seat, eyes closed, arching, moaning in a mockery of his own breathless
voice, 'God, Linc, you're so hot, touch me, touch me—'
Lincoln reached across and shoved the passenger side door open. 'Out.'
Michael's eyes snapped open again. 'What?'
'Get out. You're walking the rest of the way home.'
'That's like two miles!'
'Get out, Mike. Feet on the pavement, now.'
'It's sleeting!'
'Yeah, and? You wanna cry about it?' Lincoln unbuckled Michael's seat belt to
hurry him along. 'Maybe you should've thought ahead!'
Michael glared daggers at Lincoln for a second, and then got out, slamming the
door behind him.
                                     * * *
They sat huddled together in front of the space heater, Michael's cheeks and
nose and fingertips red from the wind. His wet clothes hung in the bathroom to
dry, audibly dripping in the otherwise silent apartment, the occasional crust
of sleet melting slightly and falling with a delicate plink into the tub below.
'I'm sorry,' said Michael at last. 'I was really out of line and I did it on
purpose to hurt you, and that's fucked up.'
'It's okay,' said Lincoln, trying to help rub circulation back into Michael's
hands—Michael had stormed out of the car without his backpack, and Lincoln had
only realized too late that Michael's hat and gloves were under his backpack on
the back seat.
Michael shook his head, shivering. 'It's really not.'
'I mean I forgive you, man.' Lincoln ran his hand over Michael's hair, forward
and back. 'My side of it was pretty fucked up, too.'
Michael sighed like he didn't believe that, and leaned against him.
***** Chapter 5 *****
I don't know what's going to happen if I have to choose a school that isn't
here. I'll probably die, or want to. And god knows what you'd be doing to
yourself. I know what you're doing with this mysterious "moving company" and I
don't like it. I know it's the only stable pay you've had in a long time that
doesn't run you ragged, and it seems like it'll last awhile, but sooner or
later something's going to fuck up, and then where will you be? Where will I
be? I'm nothing without you.
You kissed me when you were half- or mostly-asleep, I don't think you remember
doing it, because if you did you'd be worrying about it and acting all tough
and not looking right at me, like you had something to hide. But you kissed me
and I wanted it and all I could think about all day was your mouth, your
beautiful mouth.
I feel like you're lonely for me even when I'm in the room with you. Like
there's some piece of us missing unless I'm right next to you, exchanging
breaths, my hands on yours. Now that we know what that feels like, everything
else seems incomplete. I don't mean that we don't have the same relationship
anymore, because we do. It's exactly the same, we're just looking at it in an
honest light. Or at least I am. Are you looking? Or are you covering your eyes?
                                     * * *
Michael couldn't understand why people went places on spring break. How could
they possibly adjust to Cancun or whatever while also making sure their lengthy
assignments got done, and then make a smooth transition back into school (and
home, and the weather) when they got back? When Michael wondered about this
aloud, Lincoln scoffed and said, 'They don't, genius. They get shitfaced and
jet-lagged and turn in everything late. Kind of the point of the whole thing.'
'Appalling,' said Michael, with some disdain, drawing a decisive line on the
blueprint in front of him. 'Will you come look at this pediment?'
'Huh?'
Michael gestured at the paper in front of him, and Lincoln came over.
'Be warned, I don't know what a pediment is,' Lincoln said.
Michael tapped a particular architectural feature. 'That.'
'Ah.' Lincoln put his hands in his pockets as he stood there, examining the
drawing over Michael's shoulder. It looked like one of those old government
buildings from the 1800s, all fiddly crinkly bits and symmetrical details, lots
of columns and steps. 'I reckon so. Yep, that's some pediment right there.'
'I was looking for an opinion,' said Michael, rolling his eyes. 'What do you
think?'
'I... don't know.' Lincoln chuckled at himself. 'Sorry, man, this is not my
area. If you drew a pair of tits I could give you a constructive critique, but
otherwise I'm pretty useless.'
'What, like this?' Michael quickly sketched and shaded a little doodle on a
piece of scratch paper, then handed it to Lincoln.
Lincoln shook his head in disbelief. 'Mike, bro, you're going into the wrong
line of work.'
'Vanessa tells me that the bra industry could use some structural engineers of
its own,' said Michael conversationally, twirling his pencil over his fingers.
'I whipped up a few designs under her guidance to get an idea of what she
meant. I figured it might be interesting to include in my portfolio.'
'Nice to hear you're talking to girls,' Lincoln teased him. 'Don't beat around
the bush, do you? Straight to the underwear, this one.'
'Shut up.'
'No wonder she pays you a hundred a week! Watch out, ladies, Scofield's an
animal.'
Michael grinned. He liked when Lincoln ribbed him like this, even though it
(obviously, to Michael) didn't mean anything. 'She put one in my hand, as
well.'
'What, a bra?'
'No, a boob,' said Michael.
'Had an extra lying around, did she?'
'One of hers,' Michael clarified, laughing. 'So I could see how heavy it was in
relation to its size.'
'With smokin' hot lines like that, you should write for Penthouse.'
'Maybe I will.'
Lincoln had met this girl a few times when he picked Michael up from school for
his therapy appointments. Part of the cashmere-and-khakis set, with nice hair.
She was... definitely a senior in high school, Lincoln's mind supplied,
categorizing her immediately as Nope. (The fact that Michael was a junior,
however, went into a totally different file in his brain, one that didn't have
a label yet, and he kept that drawer locked.)
'Vanessa Cramer seriously handed you her tit like it was no big deal?'
'Well, it wasn't.' Michael shrugged. 'We were brainstorming stuff for my
portfolio. Anyway, she's a lesbian.'
Making her a Double Nope. Lincoln recalled their conversations about Vanessa's
parents' expectations, how she was practically born with a white picket fence
pre-built around her. 'I wish her the best of luck with that.'
'So yeah, I was measuring a platonic tit,' said Michael, then laughed at
himself. 'Sorry. Little geometry joke, there.'
'Fuckin' nerd.'
'Get it? Eyyy?' Michael elbowed him a little in encouragement, chuckling again.
'No wonder you're drowning in babes,' said Lincoln, going into the kitchen to
put the same thing on the stove that they'd had for dinner all week. 'I gotta
trim your hair tonight, it's starting to stick up.'
                                     * * *
Michael made a frustrated noise from where he sat, surrounded by books, at the
foot of the bed.
'What's up?' said Lincoln, who was reading a comic.
'I wish I could go back in time and tell Charles Dickens directly to his face
that you can't just write down every damn thing that pops into your head and
call it a cohesive narrative.' Michael marked his page and shut the book. 'I
think God gave us Dickens so that we'd be thankful for editors.' He crawled up
onto the bed and lay next to Lincoln, craning his neck a little to look at the
comic he was holding. 'Good stuff?' He glanced at the cover: A Death in the
Family. 'Oh, wait, you read that one before, I remember.'
'Yeah, and it's still fuckin' vile.' Lincoln chucked it off the side of the
bed.
'Why reread it then?'
'So I can be mad about it.' He crossed his arms over his chest. 'I need a hug.'
'Not a chance, Captain Elbows. You'd take out my eye.'
Lincoln relaxed. 'Better?'
'Lots.' Michael cuddled up against his chest, his head tucked beneath Lincoln's
chin. 'Do you think I should ask Vanessa out?'
'I thought you said she was a lesbian.'
'She is. But like...' Michael shifted a little. 'I dunno, it might do us both
some social favors.'
Something clicked, and Lincoln finally got it. Not just the current
conversation, but other ones.
'Huh,' was all he said. 'Maybe so.'
'I figure, if I ask her out now then that's plenty of time to coordinate for
the prom. She says that all the guys who have asked her are chodes.'
Lincoln laughed. 'That's, uh. Not the sort of thing I'd expect her to say.
She's kind of the embodiment of a lace doily, is the impression I got.'
'Just because she dresses a certain way and has manners,' said Michael,
trailing off. 'Anyway, I figure, hey, we're friends now, maybe I could take her
to the prom and she wouldn't have to deal with like... you know.'
'Wandering hands?' said Lincoln wryly.
'I was gonna say "some macho horndog begging for her to give it up in the
limo," but we're on the same page.'
Lincoln thought about it. 'Well, I mean. She's nice. You're nice.'
'That's exactly what her parents want to see,' said Michael. 'A couple of darn
nice kids keeping their hands to themselves for the evening and getting
pictures done for the family album. Nice flowers, thank you for the honor of
accompanying your daughter to the dance, home before midnight. A chaste kiss at
the door, maybe, but even that'd be pushing it. Wholesome, you know?'
Lincoln couldn't determine exactly how wholesome his brother was, when it came
down to it, knowing what he knew. But he also knew that Michael sort of thought
that he was a different species from girls in general, and that he might
accidentally poison them with some kind of malignant nerd miasma if they got
too close. He'd be the last person on earth to cop a feel on the dance floor.
'It's your call, man. I don't really know how this stuff works.' Linc had
dropped out as a sophomore, after all, and the expense of his evenings out with
girls these days tended to only run to about a six-pack, some weed and some E.
'I think it's good that you want to look out for her.'
'Thanks.'
'You'll have to wear a suit,' said Lincoln.
Michael sighed happily. 'I know, I'm excited.'
                                     * * *
Lincoln had a lot of time on his hands. He didn't exactly work nine to five, or
have any sort of schedule. He'd told Crab and Ogden the times he wasn't
available (in the morning before Michael went to school, Michael's Tuesday and
Thursday afternoon therapy sessions), they called when they needed him, and it
all balanced out over the course of the month. True, there were times when
funds got tight because it had been too long between calls, and Lincoln would
go over to Crab's place and ask if there was anything he could do on the side,
which there usually was. That money would get him and Michael through until the
next big run, and that was fine with Linc.
The rest of the time, sometimes for weeks at a time, Lincoln didn't have an
occupation. He worked out a lot with what he had available; he picked up the
mattress and put it down again, ran up and down their building's stairs, lifted
old milk jugs full of sand. Then, restless, he started going to cheap matinees
(though not at the theater he used to work at), going to the library, and to
places where it was fun and rewarding to pick pockets. For about a week and a
half he tried to take up bowling. Once Lincoln ran into a mutual friend of
Covey's at a bar, landing a one-time gig where all he had to do was stand guard
outside a door and pretend he couldn't hear what was being discussed inside.
Easy money.
But the restlessness remained, whenever he was home by himself. He thought
himself into corners, talked himself out of how he felt, only to realize that
it was impossible to trick his own mind into not thinking about something,
because if he could do that then he probably wouldn't have learned how to
identify thirty-four different kinds of pills by sight, in the dark, while
already high.
At least he didn't do the hard stuff anymore. Well, okay, he rarely did the
hard stuff. (In his opinion, the occasional dexy hardly counted.) Instead,
Lincoln had found himself more interested in staying at least 70% sober on any
given day, so when Michael got home they could hang out and banter and argue
and touch. If he was any more fucked up than that 30%, Michael didn't want him
around, didn't want to be held, treated him like a completely different
person—because, in reality, Lincoln probably was.
                                     * * *
Michael was busy studying for the SAT and working on his big end-of-term
assignments and weighing the pros and cons of various colleges, until, in what
seemed like no time at all, Michael was standing under the ceiling light of the
kitchen in a sharp suit and saying, 'How do I look?'
'Like fuckin' James Bond,' said Lincoln, genuinely surprised.
'Which one?'
'I'd hazard a Roger Moore.'
'I'll accept that.' Michael got his boutonniere out of the fridge. 'Will you
help me put this on straight?'
Lincoln wasn't the best at fiddly hand-eye coordination things, but if Michael
was asking that meant he trusted him to get the job done up to his standards,
which gave Lincoln a little flutter of happiness.
'Suit's a lot better than the rentals I've seen before,' said Lincoln as he
tried to get the backing onto the pin without creasing Michael's lapel.
'It isn't a rental, I bought it.' Michael smiled. 'I can dress it down with the
blue shirt, or even a step more casual with the gingham shirt and no tie.'
'Sounds like that'd look good.' Lincoln finished and stepped back to survey his
work. 'That's about as straight as it's going to get, man. It's kind of top-
heavy.'
'You did fine.' Michael checked his watch. 'I should head out. Have any plans
for the night?'
They'd been able to afford a TV again, the kind with a built-in VCR, so while
they didn't have cable they could at least rent movies. 'Evil Dead and Evil
Dead II, dude.' He got the corsage box out of the fridge and handed it to
Michael. 'You're gonna be the best-dressed guy there, you know.'
'I won't be home super late,' Michael reassured him, checking his cuff
links—what teenager in all seriousness bought cuff links for himself? Christ,
Michael, maybe you are an alien. 'If you're still up when I get home, can we
hang out?'
'Sure. You got the tickets?'
'Yes.'
'And cash for food afterwards?'
'Yes.'
'Do you have condoms?'
Michael gave him a deadpan look. 'Yeah, Linc, because me and my lesbian not-
girlfriend like to blow them up and make balloon animals.'
Lincoln got one out of his wallet and stuck it in Michael's pocket anyway.
'Then here's a giraffe waiting to happen.' He almost hugged Michael, but didn't
want to crush the flower, so he sort of awkwardly side-squeezed him by the
shoulders. 'Remember, no breakdancing. We don't have the insurance.'
'I love you,' said Michael on his way out the door.
Lincoln trailed a finger briefly against Michael's neck, for good luck, or
something. 'Knock 'em dead!'
***** Chapter 6 *****
Michael didn't, as promised, get home super late. At some point in the evening,
probably before going for post-prom diner burgers, he'd taken off his tie;
Lincoln could see the end of it trailing from his pocket.
'Hey,' said Lincoln. He'd finished his movies awhile ago, and had been debating
with himself about the comparative merits of turning the lights on like a wuss,
or sitting in the dim glow from the tiny bulb over the stove and assuming there
was a shambling corpse in the bathroom. He'd compromised by playing lively
music, which he now turned off. 'How'd it go?'
'Vanessa's parents are super white.' Michael unbuttoned his suit jacket, sat
down in one of the kitchen chairs and started taking off his shoes. 'Whiter
than white. Drop them at the North Pole and they'd disappear.'
'I bet she'd love that.'
'The pictures took forever,' Michael was unpinning his boutonniere, 'mostly
just a bunch of standing around waiting.'
Lincoln got up for some leftover pizza. 'Did you guys dance?'
'Yeah. The music was pretty blah but it's all right if the person with you
doesn't like it either and you both just decide to like, make fools of
yourselves.'
'What kind of music does Vanessa like, then?'
'Norwegian metal, apparently. Those guys sound like they gargle nails. Anyway,
I started getting super overstimulated so we left after like, thirty minutes.'
Michael took off his suit jacket and draped it neatly over the back of a chair,
unbuttoning his old-fashioned suspenders. 'Then we walked around and went to
the diner with Tony and his sister and their dates, and Melissa.'
'Did you go to the place with the curly fries or the waffle fries?'
Michael untucked his shirt. 'Curly. So like, Melissa didn't go to the actual
prom part because the venue claimed to be wheelchair accessible but like, she
checked it out before she bought a ticket and said you'd basically have to be
an actual Transformer to get up that ramp, so she spent her ticket money on
dyeing her hair green instead and just met up with us afterward.'
'How did you do with the contextual dissonance?' Lincoln asked.
'Pretty okay. I think because I had a lot of other stuff to focus on than the
fact that these people were supposed to be in a different place. There was a
light ball over the dance floor which was weirdly helpful, and like, we've met
at the diner before to study, so it wasn't that bad.'
'Well, good job.' Lincoln opened the fridge, got out a tallboy of cider and
poured it into two glasses, setting one at the table beside Michael. 'Hey
Mike.'
'Present.'
'Are you gay?'
Michael paused, one leg out of his pants, one hand steadying him against the
table, because while he was one of those people who looked really put-together
while he was dressed, undressing was a confusing and clumsy ordeal if he was
interrupted. 'Shit, Lincoln, I don't know, ask me in fifty years.' He sat down
at the table in his shirt and boxers, dragged his pants the rest of the way off
while sitting down, and had a drink of cider. 'Why, did you have some half-
baked romantic notion of fucking me on my prom night?'
'No,' said Lincoln, a surly line between his brows.
'Because if so, yikes, I had no idea you had so much class.' He was smirking,
damn him. 'I gotta clean up my act if I want to be anywhere near your league.
That Lincoln Burrows, they say, why, he's the classiest fella I ever saw, a
real gentleman, and that brother of his sure takes it like a champ—'
'Shut up, Mike.'
'I'd tell you not to worry and that I have protection, but Vanessa filled it
with water and slapped Tony in the face with it.'
'I said shut up.'
Michael grinned. 'And then I tried to see how many inches I could fit in my
mouth.'
'Just drop it. Jesus.'
'This guy at the diner asked for my number, you know, but I said I was taken,
and he said, "Oh yeah? How often?"—'
'Mike, I swear to god—'
'All right, I heard you.' Michael took a leisurely drink of his cider, sighing
after he swallowed. 'My bad, I forgot that you have to have an existential
crisis before you can get it up anymore.'
He finished his glass, watching his brother and his secret crush and the man
who raised him stand there against the wall where the rest of the apartment
ended and the kitchen began, fuming and bright red down his neck and chest.
Then Michael got up and walked around him, rinsed his glass and put it in the
drying rack. He took Lincoln's glass from his hand and set it on the counter,
then walked back around in front of Lincoln and got down on his knees.
Lincoln looked down at him, hand trembling a little as Michael nuzzled it,
getting Lincoln to pet the side of his face, touch his neck. 'God, Michael, why
are you like this?'
Michael ran his fingertips under the waistband of Lincoln's jeans, hips to
button and back again. He bit his lower lip, and Lincoln was mesmerized by the
slow dragging release of it, the momentarily darker shade of pink when it slid
free of Michael's teeth.
'Disrespectful instigator,' Michael said, and Linc didn't know which one of
them he meant.
Lincoln felt his jeans button twisted open, the zipper dragging down, the
little thrumming vibration of it enough to ground him and make him realize that
this was happening, this was happening in real life, right now.
Michael had already stroked Lincoln the rest of the way to hardness before he
said, 'You okay up there? Still on the same planet?'
'Y-yeah,' Lincoln managed to say.
'Just stay with me.' Michael delicately held Lincoln's cock with one hand,
fingertips barely touching it, and curled his tongue around the head, licking
the tip into his mouth, suckling slow and easy.
Lincoln pressed into the wall behind him to steady himself, his heart pounding
like he'd just sprinted up the stairs. When he spoke he didn't sound like
himself, or rather the words he used had never encountered that version of his
voice. 'God, Michael, that's good.'
Michael sat back on his heels, Lincoln's cock sliding free of his lips with a
soft sound. 'Really?'
Lincoln nodded.
'Tell me what you want,' Michael prompted him, gently tapping his fingers where
they held his brother, a sensation that surprised Lincoln into a gasp.
It was a long, tense moment, into which every doubtful thought they had churned
and twisted and burned, before Lincoln whispered, 'Please don't stop.'
Michael smiled, satisfied with that answer. He leaned forward again, rubbed the
salt-slick tip against his lips, back and forth, back and forth, teasing with
his tongue as it passed, chasing it—
'Fuck,' Lincoln moaned, his hands sliding over Michael's scalp, fresh velvet
perfectly shorn that morning in preparation for Michael's night out.
'What do you want, Linc? Say it,' Michael repeated, his voice low and warm, and
Lincoln would have done anything he said.
'You,' Lincoln said on a breath. 'I want you.'
Michael's hand moved loosely, still so gently, teasing soft strokes along
Lincoln's cock. He didn't circle it in his fist, didn't tug and drag at it like
Lincoln did to himself; he touched with care, observing every little response.
Roughness (such a touch promised) might come later, much later and after many
more nights like this, but not now.
'Am I okay?' Michael asked, and it took Lincoln a few seconds to figure out
what the hell he was talking about, because he thought that it must be obvious.
'Yes.' He rubbed his thumbs in soft circles on either side of Michael's neck,
making him moan. 'You're great at this, trust me.' (And even if he'd been
objectively bad at it, Lincoln would have still been so turned on he couldn't
see straight, because this was Michael, this was real, this was what he wanted
more than anything.)
Michael was looking up at him, slightly flushed, his eyes sparkling. 'Do you
want me to keep sucking you off?'
Lincoln tipped his head back against the wall, unable to hold back a moan.
'Michael, yes, come on.'
The corner of Michael's lips curled up in mischief. 'You want to see how much I
can fit in my mouth?'
Lincoln wanted to say God damn it, Mike, if you keep asking me stuff like that
with that look on your face I'm gonna fuckin' shoot already and it hasn't even
been five minutes, but he didn't say that, he said, 'Yes.'
Michael inched forward slowly, brow furrowed a little in concentration. When he
reached his limit he held still for a moment, then Lincoln felt Michael's
throat click as he swallowed, Michael's tongue pressing the head of Linc's cock
against the roof of his mouth in the process.
'Michael,' Lincoln was murmuring, he didn't know how many times, 'you're so
good, I want you, I love you...'
Michael slowly inched back again, and repeated what he had done before.
It was the tidiest, most leisurely blowjob Lincoln had ever received; Michael
didn't rush because he wanted to learn, wanted to experience the flood of new
stimuli at his own pace and integrate it into his mental map of his brother's
existence. And Lincoln, for once, didn't want to hurry along to the conclusion,
didn't lunge grasping for an orgasm because the sooner he had one, the sooner
he'd be ready for another. Lincoln just enjoyed it as it progressed, the slow,
sweet build, the feeling of taut fullness waiting for release.
And when he came, he warned Michael a moment before, giving him opportunity to
pull back if he wanted, in case it would be too much of a sensory burden to
handle. But Michael stayed put, moving just enough so that Lincoln's come
landed on his tongue instead of being dashed across the back of his throat. He
sat back, tasting what he'd earned, sliding his tongue against the roof of his
mouth to get a good idea of the texture and viscocity. He tasted Lincoln's come
with the same thoughtful expression he wore when he would briefly rub things
against his lips or put them into his mouth in any other context—the surface of
a new pen, the corner of the undisturbed pages of a new paperback, the canvas
cuff of Lincoln's jacket sleeve.
'Mine's sweeter than yours,' he said. The fact that he immediately drew that
comparison made Lincoln's breath catch.
'My knees are tired,' Michael added matter-of-factly, standing up; he finished
getting undressed, completely this time, and climbed into bed. 'You gonna come
touch me, or what?'
Lincoln nodded, not knowing what to say. It wasn't as if he'd never seen
Michael naked before—they did grow up together, after all, and obviously they
lived together—nor was it the first time he'd seen Michael aroused. But this
was the first conjunction of those two states, and Lincoln couldn't stop
staring.
Michael was one of those people who healed bright and angry at first, but in a
couple of months nearly all the additional color was gone, leaving him with
soft, faint scars that almost looked like a trick of the light until you
touched them. Hardly any of them were raised, and Lincoln had often remarked
that they'd disappear if Michael ever got tattoos over them, and Michael had
scoffed, why would I ever want to get that many tattoos?
There was a stretched-out quality to Michael's proportions, still slightly off-
kilter in the wake of his last growth spurt, but that seemed to fade with every
passing day. The stretch marks on his back from growing so fast two summers ago
were as subtle as his other scars, now; his hands, which at fourteen had looked
cartoonishly large, now seemed spidery and delicate, and his feet, which he
used to constantly catch on his own ankles, were now sort of elegant.
Lincoln's eye was drawn to Michael's erection, slender and slightly back-
curved, with fewer visible ridges of veins than Lincoln's own. Until the past
couple of years Lincoln hadn't spared a thought for what Michael's cock looked
like; he'd known it was there, obviously, and felt a vague sort of acceptance
of the fact that it must work just as well as Lincoln's did, but otherwise the
mental image was about as compelling as an elbow. When exactly that had
changed, Lincoln didn't know, but now all he wanted to do was learn everything
about this part of him, its scent, flavor, weight, texture.
He supposed the urge to touch and taste wasn't as jarring as it might have
been, if this had been unfamiliar territory for him. Lincoln rarely thought
about it unless he was in the middle of the act, but he fucked guys about as
often as girls. He didn't specifically seek out either, his choices driven more
by compulsion and whim than any real preference. Some nights he'd tell himself,
all right, Linc, no dick for you, tonight you're gonna be normal and just buy a
girl a drink and flirt and see what happens, and if nothing happens you're
gonna go home and go to bed like a normal person, but he'd find himself
striking out and then find himself walking a few blocks to the gay bar as if
drawn there by a powerful magnet, and a guy would smile at him in just the
right way and twenty minutes later they'd be in the back of one of their cars,
or the guy's apartment, or against a cold brick wall with the hiss of traffic
just out of sight. It was just one of those things.
Michael was the only one he'd genuinely wanted for more than the time it took
to get off. And Lincoln didn't mind the chase, when it was Michael, didn't get
impatient with him and give up. He enjoyed the arguing about it, pushing each
other's buttons at every opportunity, trying to make their opponent snap; he
loved the slow ache of anticipation, wondering what little touches would
become, the tentative dance they stepped together, one darting forward, one
falling back.
(If you put Veronica on one side of the scales, and Michael on the other,
they'd be perfectly in balance.)
Lincoln shoved out of his jeans and got up onto the bed with Michael, not
knowing where to touch him first because he wanted to feel everything. He
decided to start with something familiar, places they had been before.
He nuzzled Michael's neck, kissing, flicking it with his tongue until Michael
was squirming under him with begging words, clutching Lincoln's back. Lincoln
went a step further, then, sucking the spot gently, stroking the opposite side
with his fingers as Michael demanded more, more;  Lincoln slid his fingers
down, gently rubbing one of Michael's nipples in time with the movement of his
mouth.
'Fffuck, Lincoln, please touch my cock, please!'
'Shh.' Lincoln began kissing his way down Michael's body, shifting lower on the
bed. 'Be patient.'
Down Michael's abdomen, to one side along the notch of his hipbone, over the
top of Michael's thigh—
'Kind of missing the target,' said Michael, trying to sound casual, but the
needy edge was still in his voice, the little rasp on certain syllables that
was already getting Lincoln hard again.
'Turn over.'
Michael sat up on his elbows to give Lincoln a sharp look. 'Slow down,
Casanova, pretty sure I get to vote on where we stick things.'
'I wasn't...' Lincoln sat up, making a clear hands off gesture. 'I swear, no
sticking anything anywhere unless you specifically ask.' He swallowed hard,
embarrassed at the miscommunication. 'That's not what I was going to do.'
'Oh.' Michael looked a little embarrassed, himself. 'Well, okay.'
He lay on his stomach, hugging a pillow, his head to one side.
'Knees up,' Lincoln instructed him, 'farther apart. Good. Now sort of arch...'
he splayed a hand over the basin of Michael's lower back, guiding it into
place, 'there.'
'Surprisingly comfy,' said Michael, a bit muffled by the pillow. Lincoln had a
fantastic view: Michael's ass in the air, his thighs spread, his cock rosy and
beaded with slick, twitching for attention, Michael's sac small and taut and
blushed with color like a peach.
Lincoln knelt behind him, smoothing his hands over the curve of Michael's hips.
Then he bowed his head, kissed, licked him.
'Oh dear god, what are you doing?' Michael moaned, his hands clenched in the
pillow.
'Mm,' Lincoln replied, moving his tongue in circles, over and over.
Michael's thighs were trembling as he pressed back into the sensation, his toes
curling, tensing against Lincoln's touch. 'Nnnhgh, Linc, yes...'
Lincoln drew the point of his tongue down along the silken seam of Michael's
perineum and further still, placing open-mouthed kisses against softly yielding
flesh before returning to his original task.
Michael's hips were rocking back in a shaky rhythm now, his body pressed low to
the bed and his legs spread wider. His cock was still untouched, and it left a
glossy smudge on the sheets where it bumped against them when Michael squirmed.
Lincoln moved back just enough to speak. 'Touch yourself for me,' he said, and
Michael made an eager sound not only in response to the instruction, but to the
feeling of Lincoln's warm breath across damp, sensitive skin. 'I want to make
you come like this.'
He stayed still for a moment to watch what his brother would do.
Michael gave a choked little gasp the moment he reached for his cock. Again, he
didn't circle it with his hand; there was no mimicry of the grip and friction
of an opening. Instead, he ran his fingertips along its length, forward and
back, sometimes pressing against his frenulum gently with one finger, at other
times turning to stroke the underside of his cock with the smooth skin of the
back of his hand.
'You're gorgeous,' Lincoln said, unable to stop smiling, shaking his head a
little in disbelief before he bent low again, making Michael whimper with long,
slow licks with the flat of his tongue.
Michael was saying something, voice scratched and desperate and his face
pressed hard against the pillow, and it took Lincoln a few rounds of repetition
to understand what it was:
'Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me—'
Lincoln pointed his tongue, and pressed.
There was an instant where Michael went slack under him, only for his whole
body to tense and spasm a second later, and Lincoln began really thrusting with
his tongue as best he could, Michael's moans and curses kicking up into a
higher register until he sort of slid forward, knees no longer supporting him.
Only then did Lincoln stop.
'You okay?' he asked, wiping spit off his chin with his forearm.
'M'fine,' Michael slurred. 'Just... appear to have melted.'
Lincoln helped turn him over onto his back, dragging the bunched-up top sheet
off the bed while he was at it, since there was come all over it. Michael's
stomach also had come all over it, which Lincoln decided was in need of his
attention. Turns out it was sweeter than his own.
'You're far away,' said Michael, still sounding a little dazed, reaching for
Lincoln and feebly trying to get him to move closer. Lincoln went along with
it, lying down and gathering Michael into his arms.
'I'm right here,' he said, and gave Michael a long, unhurried kiss.
They hadn't really kissed before, save for Michael sneaking a quick peck on the
lips when Lincoln wasn't expecting it. But this was a whole different
experience, kissing without urgency or an agenda, both of them spent and
content to just enjoy a simple, good feeling that didn't have to lead anywhere.
When even kissing became too much work for how relaxed they felt, Michael
snuggled down against Lincoln's chest: his favorite spot.
'Post-makeout observation—' Michael said with a sort of tipsy articulacy,
raising one finger to accompany the point he was making, 'contrary to my
expectation, ass does not, in fact, taste like ass. Of course, my experience
was second-hand. I mean, does it?'
'Nope.' Lincoln was already petting Michael's hair, an automatic thrum of
additional pleasure for them both. 'I'm not sure anything does, really.'
'I feel like I've discovered some kind of secret of the universe,' said
Michael.
'Sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm pret-ty sure you're not the first person
to get rimmed.' Lincoln lifted one of Michael's hands to his lips and kissed
the backs of his fingers, the scars from months ago still faintly pink. 'Not
even by me.'
'I'm wounded,' Michael joked.
'You're fine, suck it up.'
Lincoln could feel Michael smiling against his chest. 'Apparently I'm good at
that...?'
'Damn right you are.'
Michael hummed contentedly, glad to have pleased him. 'I feel amazing. Sort of
a good kind of spaced out. I'm still here, but here is better.'
'Welcome to being high,' said Lincoln, a little wryly.
Michael didn't say anything for awhile, and Lincoln wondered if maybe he'd
fallen asleep, but then Michael said in a small voice, 'Hey, Linc?'
'Yeah?'
'Any time you want to take something or do something reckless, can you just
come to me instead?'
'You mean like, for sex.'
Michael drew a circle just under Lincoln's collarbone, round and round. 'Yeah.'
Lincoln let his breath out until his chest ached. 'Um. I don't know if it works
that way, man.'
'You could try it. Will you try?' He shifted around so he could look at
Lincoln. 'It's only three weeks until school's out. We could try for the first
week for summer, maybe. Just a week. I'm not asking you to try for more than
that.'
Lincoln knew he'd probably fail because he was a broken fucked-up mess who
didn't know what was good for him, but he didn't say that, he said, 'Okay.'
***** Chapter 7 *****
Eight months later
Lincoln pulled his uniform shirt over his head and tossed it in the hamper. 'So
how was the big fancy Loyola orientation?'
'I have so many pamphlets,' Michael groaned, his backpack thudding against a
chair as he set it down. 'Whatever happened to "save a tree"?'
'Maybe they saved them for informative literature.' Lincoln turned on the
shower so the water would get hot by the time he got in.
Michael kicked off his shoes. 'How'd the big move go today?'
A year ago the big move would have meant something completely different, but
Linc wasn't working that kind of scene anymore. Now he had a job actually
hauling furniture in and out of people's houses, furniture that (presumably)
didn't have any imported substances hidden inside. Everything was above-board,
legal, and his work shirts had a little embroidered oval with his name on it.
For once, everything was working out for both of them. It was nice. It was
lasting.
'It was an unmitigated disaster,' Lincoln joked. 'We dropped a grand piano out
of a window onto a guy's head and everything.'
Michael came and stood in the bathroom doorway, clicking his tongue. 'And here
I thought you were competent.'
'Watch your mouth.'
Michael stepped into the little room, backing his brother up against the sink.
'How about you watch it for me?' He pressed his hands against Lincoln's pecs,
fingers kneading gently.
'C'mon, man,' Lincoln protested without any real emphasis, 'I'm all sweaty.'
'I literally couldn't care.'
Lincoln's gaze darted from Michael's lips to his eyes and back.
'Are you watching?' Michael whispered, the air thick with steam, Lincoln's belt
clicking open in his hands.
                                     * * *
The SHU
Knuckles bloody, skin scraped raw, here, here was the moment when the taut
thread snapped; the walls lacing their fingers around him, the faint yellow
glow from the grate became the pilot light. The Plan had been his tether, and
Lincoln his anchor, but everything was spinning out of his control. Here lay a
scared and drawn-on boy, and up out of his body rose a creature that belonged
here, a hollow husk of darkness that could devour a life and yet not be filled.
Peppered amid the rising clamor beyond the door: all the stupid things that had
driven them apart, the mistakes and the lies and the other relationships that
had flared and died. The fights that left them exhausted and busted up and
still angry, still resentful, full of bitter words even Michael hadn't been
able to forgive. And then let's forget all that for the trial, the panic, the
desperation to save and be saved, who doubted the other and why, who was
allowed to despair, who was designed to endure.
Michael curled up on the cold floor and said into the drain, 'You're far away.'
'I'm right here, Michael,' his brother told him, his voice cutting through the
dark and the noise, like it always had. 'I'm right here.'
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