Prison Break - The Sum of the Parts
Title: The Sum of the Parts
Author: clair-de-lune
Fandom: Prison Break
Characters: Michael/Sara/Lincoln (Michael/Sara, Michael/Lincoln, Lincoln/Sara)
Categories: Slash, het
Rating: NC-17
Warning: Incest
Summary: Everything was perfect. So perfect that what he couldn’t have and shouldn’t want created by contrast a bigger craving than he would have ever imagined. It made what he was desperate for painfully obvious. (Post-series, alternate canon)
A/N: This is a fic that ate my brain I’ve been trying to write for over two years. It's not exactly how I wanted it, but at least, I finished it. At last \0/
If you have some interest in that 'pairing', consider giving the fic a shot and dropping me a note... please, pretty please? Happy reading!
Many thanks to foxriverinmate for the beta. (By ‘beta’, I actually mean: patience, hand-holding, fixing creative grammar, patience, listening to whines and complaints, did I mention patience?, support, encouragements to fatten the story, suggestions...)
Kink/prompt for
kink_bingo ( my card): This is for ‘ménage à trois’ (wildcard).
→ Read entry in light format
In the end, they came up with an arrangement - the second one in a few months.
Despite her initial sharp comeback on the schedule option, Tuesday nights are Sara’s. Thursday’s are Lincoln’s, plain and simple. Sunday’s are Sara and Lincoln together, only the two of them, and whatever it is they do, Michael doesn’t know; he’s a bit miffed about those Sunday nights, but it’s the least he can roll along with, given the situation.
Any other nights, or in-betweens, are the three of them.
- - - - -
Bubbles in which time seems to pause and expand forever all at once; surroundings fading and becoming nothing but colored haze; all people except one or two vanishing from existence even though they’re within arm’s reach. For the best and the worst, Michael has experienced the feeling quite a few times before. It has often involved Lincoln in some way, and this afternoon is no exception.
The beach below his and Sara’s bungalow is deserted, the air hot and still, the sounds and scents merging to form a familiar background - salt and suntan lotion and that inimitable smell of the sun warming everything. Safe. Hence the feeling of dozing inside of a bubble as Linc and he are lying on the sand, the late afternoon sun mellowing them to the point of laziness.
They used to be more cautious. Granted, they also used to have things to hide, which used to lead to more caution. Michael thought they got this out of their system a while ago, but obviously, he either deluded himself or fell into it again because the pull is as atavistic as it is irresistible. Lincoln is a stretch of relaxed muscles on display inches from him, skin salted from the sea, tanned and shiny with lotion and a thin layer of clean sweat. Too much flesh and heaven-like smell, not enough clothes and wits to restrain himself. Michael’s hand moves of its own volition; he lays it on the fine ridges of his brother’s stomach and lets it slide down leisurely, aiming for the wildly colored bathing shorts.
It’s so innocent and so not innocent at the same time, instinctive and unguarded. He’ll blame it on the perfection of the moment that knots his throat and wakes up the old craving for Lincoln, the old need embedded deep and resurfacing with a vengeance. Perfect, perfect moment, and just this missing to make it blissful.
Lincoln leans into the touch with a soft grunt, a sleepy murmur of approval. Instinctive response brought back from another time, no thinking involved.
Sara’s voice sneaks into the bubble, her tone normal and casual at first. It’s her sudden silence, its shocked quality coupled with the soft rustling of her long dress above their heads, that freezes them; pins them down, and steals any ability to talk and, even more so, to explain. Whatever Lincoln was about to do is stopped, and Michael’s hand stills in place. They haven’t heard her coming, not that it would have made any difference if he thinks about it, her bare feet too light and silent on the white sand, her voice part of the decor and too low with the sound of the surf mere yards away.
She watches them for what seems like forever, taking in the situation, brown eyes moving from their faces to Michael’s fingers on the red, blue and yellow fabric of Lincoln’s shorts, splayed in that tender way she ought to be personally well-acquainted with. Her cheeks pale beneath her golden tan, her smile becoming plastered to her face like a mask that refuses to slide down. She watches and keeps watching, looking at them as though the last pieces of a puzzle she hasn’t been quite able to figure out are falling into place at last. Her smile shines true again, then, dazzling and blinding, and bitter too.
The hemline of her dress brushes the two of them when she turns on her heels and walks inside the house; the bubble finally explodes with the noise of her car starting and quietly driving away.
It’s what it takes to get Michael moving, scrambling to his feet to try to follow her. Lincoln holds him back, the grip firm and painful around his biceps.
“What are you going to tell her?” Michael stares with huge eyes; scared and crazy and for-once-he-doesn’t-have-any-plan eyes. “Leave her alone. Let her digest this. There’s nothing you can say to her right now that won’t wreck her even more.” A pause. “She’ll come back.”
Michael presses a hand to his stomach. His mouth floods with saliva, his throat as tight as if he was about to throw up, and eventually, he whispers, “What if she doesn’t?”
Lincoln’s face hardens in a way that makes Michael recoil and wish he’d shut up.
“After all the shit she went through...” Because of you. For you. For us. Michael hears it even though Lincoln knows better than to say it aloud. For a second, he thinks his brother may slap him in the face - not a punch or anything, but an actual, humiliating slap. “... give her a bit more credit.”
- - - - -
She does come back. As quietly as she left. A few days later. She seems to materialize out of thin air on the veranda. She’s pale, her eyes red and unrelenting as she stares at them. She doesn’t watch their faces, she looks a bit lower, where their shoulders brush as they’re standing next to each other under her inspection. Michael doesn’t have the nerve to step aside and pretend there’s not a huge elephant wandering around; or maybe he needs Lincoln’s support. Either way, he doesn’t move and feels his skin prickle where he’s touching Linc.
“Nothing happened,” Lincoln tells her firmly, and Michael wonders if he hates him or loves him even more for jumping into water for him in such a way.
“When?” she asks.
“I’m sorry?”
“When did nothing happen? During the last few days? During the last twelve months? Never?” She shrugs, just a hint of harshness finding its way into her voice. “When did nothing happen, Lincoln?”
She has hollow bluish circles under her eyes, and fine lines around her mouth that weren’t there before. One more blow he gave her, Michael thinks. He doesn’t tell her it has nothing to do with her. She knows it, and it probably makes no difference at all. He doesn’t say he’s sorry either because it - he - doesn’t matter; it’s not about him.
“We ended it before Fox River,” Michael answers in a rough voice. Not about her. Not ended because of her. Not threatening to start it again because of whatever she would or wouldn’t do. And then, because if they have to be honest, they might be honest. “But after we broke out... once...”
Her lips quirk, and it’s not a smile, but it’s the closest thing to it he can decently hope for right now.
“You fucked your big brother to celebrate your freedom?” she volunteers. “Or maybe it was to seek comfort in each other?”
Lincoln flinches at the deliberately lewd ‘fucked’ in her mouth, but takes it like a man: he shuts the fuck up and looks her in the eye.
“Both,” Michael says.
They leave it at that. For now. At night, after Lincoln has left, Michael starts to settle in the guest room and shivers when she orders him, “Come to bed, for God’s sake.” He lies still and stiff near her, wondering and wondering again what’s in her mind, thinking it’s a way more refined form of torture than anything else she could do or say, and pretty sure she knows it.
She deserves it.
- - - - -
He didn’t mean to spy on them. He didn’t even know Lincoln was supposed to drop by. He realized his brother was here when he heard the metallic squeak of the porch swing - he really needs to oil that thing - and the distant murmur of a conversation. He stands between the living room’s sliding glass doors, terrified and relieved all at once to see them sitting face to face, so fucking inappropriate jealousy clamping his fists - his nails bite hard into the palm of his hands - because Sara’s voice is warmer and her eyes softer than when she talks with him, nowadays.
He clenches his fists tighter and pushes his fingernails deeper into his skin.
“I don’t get it,” she tells Lincoln, and there’s no mystery about what that ‘it’ is.
She looks him up and down. Not in dismay or contempt. In curiosity and wonder. She examines him, focusing on his mouth and hands, on the skin showing in the opening of his shirt and on the slightly stretched fabric over his crotch, as if she’s trying to picture Michael touching him and being touched by him.
Michael thinks he may break the skin of his palms when she slides down the porch swing - more squeaking - kneels before Lincoln who’s sitting in a low chair, and kisses his mouth. It’s a mere stroke, tentative and chaste, but already more than enough to punch Michael in the guts in a not entirely bad way.
She sits back and licks her lips pensively; Lincoln refrains from mirroring her reaction.
“I don’t get it either,” he admits. “When I think about it, it freaks the hell out of me. Sometimes makes me sick to my stomach.”
“How do you handle it, then?”
Lincoln looks at her sheepishly. “I don’t think about it.”
Sara barks out a short laugh. Michael hates his brother just a little bit for making her laugh, as desperate as it sounds, when he just makes her miserable.
- - - - -
He’s so close. It feels so good and so frightening. Felt incredibly, overwhelmingly frightening when Sara slid her hand down the small of his back and whispered into his ear that she wanted him now, so frightening that he was terrified he wouldn’t be able to...
She wraps her legs around his waist, clenches and arches up, and he makes it his mission to take care of her and pleasure her before even thinking to cater to his needs. He kisses the sweaty skin of her neck and sucks lightly on that spot that never fails to rile her up, angles her hips to drive into her the way that always makes her pant and whimper beneath him, and watches her face - heavy lidded eyes, open mouth, flushed cheeks. He missed it all so much, the spicy smell of her release, the slick of her sweat, the fucked-out haze clouding her eyes...
He waits a few seconds to start moving again after she came. So frightening, so good, so close.
“Was it as good with Lincoln?”
The question stops him cold in his tracks. The fact she’s actually curious about it, not throwing the sentence in his face to punish or disturb him, just spilling it because she can’t help it, makes it even worse. His erection weakens, and goes even limper when she strokes his face and murmurs that she’s sorry. Because she is actually sorry and it has to be the worst possible sensation.
“It was different,” he replies, not to say it was as good. Not better, just as good. Then, because he’s already lied enough to her: “Yes.” She relaxes into his embrace. Her hair is a reddish brown halo around her face that he won’t try to untangle and tame. He slips his fingers into it. “I love you both.”
He hadn’t said it up until now, not in that way, but she has to have figured it out, right? She wouldn’t imagine he used to sleep with his brother for the dirty kick of it
“You need us both...?” she says, half a question half an affirmation.
He doesn’t answer.
- - - - -
“What did you do?”
There is the very distinct possibility that Sara is asking and insisting because she enjoys watching Lincoln squirm. God knows Michael wouldn’t blame her.
“We...” Lincoln scratches the nape of his neck. “We had sex, Sara. What do you want from me?!”
“How?”
They’re on the veranda, and the damn porch swing is still squeaking. Michael once again forgot to oil it.
“There is no way you’re asking me that,” Lincoln grunts. But she does, and she arches an eyebrow to prompt him to answer. “We...” He moves his hand, and points a finger to his mouth, and shrugs. “We fucked. You know how it’s done.”
“How?” she asks again. She won’t back off on this, Michael knows it for sure. She has that same determined expression as when she had the lock of the infirmary changed before his eyes or when she told him for the first time that she loved him. She’s the sweetest person he ever met; she can also be the most ruthless one.
Lincoln leans towards her, his elbows resting on his thighs, his face hard as stone and a few millimeters from hers. When he speaks, his breath must brush over her lips and warm them.
“Most of the time, I fucked him. But we liked to switch every now and then. Is it what you wanted to hear?”
“You let him take you?”
“I didn’t let him do anything. I liked it. I wanted it. He was good. But you know that, right? Just like you know that he likes having his cock in a nice tight hole.”
Michael chokes on embarrassment and anger and... he doesn’t even know what. He just chokes and focuses on his archeology book. He’s not been invited into this conversation, and chances are he would be sent back to the beauty of the pyramids if he tried to butt in. That’s the price, small price really, he has to pay for what he laid on the two of them.
If Lincoln wanted to make Sara as uncomfortable as he is, though, too bad for him. She calmly nods her head.
“Yes, indeed. I know.”
- - - - -
Lincoln misses a step on the stairway of the veranda, and it’s instinctive; it’s common sense: Michael reaches out for him and catches his elbow. Fingers on bare skin. Lincoln jolts, pulls his arm away and sprawls onto the steps. The content of his shopping bags - things and stuff he bought for the scuba shop - spills all around him.
That’s typical.
Lincoln doesn’t stay alone with him anymore. Lincoln actually spends more time with Sara than with him, now. Maybe he doesn’t want to worry or upset her more than she already is. He certainly thinks that if she still wants anything to do with Michael, she has the precedence over Lincoln. Because morals and logic and decency command it. You don’t marry a woman and let her down after ruining every single aspect of her life. You don’t wreck someone you love - and Michael does love her, so much. Above all, and it boils down to that, you’re not supposed to have or want to have sex with your brother. Despite all his bravado and crude words when he talks with Sara, Linc has always been more freaked out than Michael about what they used to do.
So no more beach afternoons, no more common shifts at the scuba diving shop if Sara’s not there too, no more casual hanging around together. When Sara invites him over - because damn, but Sara still invites him over for dinner or brunch more often than not - he doesn’t sit next to Michael.
Cans and boxes, as well as Linc’s right knee, hit the wooden step. Hard and noisy. The clatter and subsequent curses and arguments between both men draw Sara outside. She waits as Lincoln gets back to his feet and lets Michael pick up everything. She asks if he’s okay and if he needs help.
Lincoln snickers. He needs help. He needs buckets of help for buckets of things. She cleans the nasty cut on his knee and suggests to him to stop acting like an idiot. She’s pretty sure he’s not going to bend Michael over first chance he has (or vice-versa), given they fucking managed to control themselves for months.
Well, Michael thinks, watching his brother’s face go slightly ashen because of relief, because of Sara’s trust and blunt words. Not that they had planned to, but they certainly won’t even try after her vote of confidence.
- - - - -
The fourth time she asks it - You need us both...? - he finally answers her. Yes, he does. Yes, in a physical, as in sexual, way too. It’s not that she’s not enough, he tells her; she’s more than anything he ever hoped for. She shrugs and points out that she’s obviously not enough, and neither is Lincoln. It stings because to some extent, she’s right: either one of them is enough, but not quite everything he needs.
His response is hardly a surprise. She knew the answer before asking the question the first time, and she doesn’t even quail when he speaks up. Only half-joking, she says, “You’re just greedy, Michael,” and she’s right again. He is. Greedy, needy, unable to leave behind him the twisted safeness of Lincoln’s affection and love to revel in hers. Not feeling quite complete without Linc. Not feeling quite complete without her either.
She wants to know why it’s emerged again now, so he goes back to that day on the beach.
“Because everything was perfect.”
So perfect that what he couldn’t have and shouldn’t want created by contrast a bigger craving than he would have ever imagined. It made what he was desperate for painfully obvious.
“Of course. I like to ruin perfection too. Perfection is so overrated.” Sarcasm is thick in her tone. She breathes in and out a few times and pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “Would you sleep with him again if you could?”
He doesn’t even need to think before answering.
“No. It would hurt you.”
She’s making a pie. An apple pie. It’s odd to have this kind of conversation while she’s doing something as mundane as a pie and he’s preparing green beans for dinner. Surrealism for beginners.
“Michael, the fact that you would want to hurts me. And to be honest, when I think about it, I’m not even sure why it hurts me. It’s not like you don’t love me no matter what. So what difference would it make?”
The knife cuts, cuts, cuts into the apples and then into the flesh of her index finger. A drop of brilliant red blood surges, and he takes the digit between his lips without any hesitation. Kissing it better.
“I think that need for exclusivity is called monogamy and is pretty common in our culture,” he says with the tiniest bit of humor. “Doesn’t it disgust you?”
She watches the blood still seeping from the tip of her finger, then her wedding ring, trying to figure out what the hell he’s talking about: blood threatening the apple pie? non-monogamy? monogamy?
“I mean Linc and me.”
She purses her mouth in bitter remembrance.
“I got sick when I saw you two on the beach. Twice. And the day after too. And after that... You know when you reflect on something totally crazy and horrifying so hard and for so long that in the end, it doesn’t sound so crazy and horrifying anymore, and the thought becomes familiar?”
She kisses him. Except for the couple of times when she all but jumped him in the dark and it felt like she was claiming and marking him, it’s the first time in weeks she’s kissed him.
- - - - -
Sometimes, he has the sensation she makes them jump through hoops. It’s Sara, though; even in their current situation, Michael can’t imagine she does it just to try them. There has to be more behind it. Like when she hands the suntan lotion to Lincoln and nods towards Michael.
“Don’t let him go into the sun without lotion. You know how he burns.”
Lincoln fiddles with the small bottle until it’s obvious that she means put some on him, and do it here and now.
Hoop. Just like he jumped into water for Michael when she came back, Lincoln jumps through Sara’s hoop. Michael holds onto the veranda’s teak fence, his knuckles white with effort, as Linc starts to lotion down his shoulders. Warm hands, rough and soft at the same time, and he can’t help it, can’t help the effect they have on him, even with Sara watching from the damn swing porch. Her eyes are heavy on the nape of his neck; must be heavy on Lincoln’s too.
He risks a glance above his shoulder. She’s worrying her lips like crazy and following Lincoln’s hands on him. Linc is below his mid-section, almost reaching the small of his back, when she speaks. Neither one of them is sure they hear her right at first, so she says it again.
“Kiss.”
Michael’s reasonably sure she’s not demanding a kiss for herself. The sun lotion slips out of Lincoln’s grip and falls onto the floor, where it makes a white splash on the dark wood. Sara rolls her eyes at the stain, but doesn’t say anything.
“Sara...” Michael pleads, breathless in shock and hope and fear.
He doesn’t have the chance to go further because Lincoln does kiss him. Spins him around slowly and kisses him. He doesn’t try to make it look nasty to put Sara off; he doesn’t try to make it look pretty and clean either to comfort or reassure her. He just kisses him like he’s always done it, and sharply bites his lips when Michael refuses to part them. A hand still sticky with sun lotion behind Michael’s head to prevent him from backing off, the other one on his hip. Linc devours him in the exact same way he devoured him years ago, or against the hood of the car in Nowhere, Montana, after they escaped from Fox River.
Michael grunts low in his throat and kisses back. Harder and needier than he’d like to. Somewhere between the sound of the surf on the beach and the blood roaring inside of his skull, he can hear Sara whispering to herself, “I can do that,” and then saying louder “Don’t stop.”
She gets that so right. He doesn’t want Lincoln to stop. Ever. He pushes into the hand palming his crotch. When did Lincoln’s hand go from his hip to... there, he doesn’t know and can’t bring himself to care.
He’s panting like after a race - an eight-year long race - seeing everything bathed in a red blur when Lincoln lets him go. The old yearning is consuming him from inside, twisting, pulling, demanding. Sara’s an addict. She should know. Should know that hoop is going to kill him.
“Get a room, guys,” she lets drop with a hint of derision.
He’s still plastered against Lincoln, and it’s probably for the best that she can’t see what a kiss did to him. To both of them. They stare at her, only understanding she meant this literally when she adds, “The guest room. Before I come back to my senses.”
She gets up from the porch swing tiredly - the thing doesn’t squeak, and Michael assumes she got annoyed with it and oiled it - and makes a move towards the small stairway.
“I’ll be on the beach.” She touches his arm to get his attention as though she didn’t already have it. “Michael.” Her hand burns his skin so badly he looks down, thinking she might have left a branding iron imprint. “Don’t worry. I will be on the beach.”
She will. Not fleeing again and making him sick with worry wondering if she’ll ever come back. For several minutes, he stays still at the threshold of the house, until Sara’s only a dot on the otherwise empty beach, until Lincoln grabs his shoulder and tugs him inside, soft but insistent. His brother murmurs that they’d better not fail her indulgence; that the least they can do is relish the moment, the luxury, her leniency and its extravagance.
Michael nods, but resists the pull for a few more seconds. Guilt weights on him and nails him to the floor; starts eating his brain and his heart, blackening his vision. He forcefully pushes away the first strands of it, of shame, remorse and whatever. It would be questioning Sara’s decision; he won’t be questioning Sara’s decision.
He follows Lincoln; or maybe he urges him inside and across the hallway.
The guest room is pleasantly cool and half dark, closed shutters, light white curtains and fresh sheets, smelling of wax and salt, and very soon of Lincoln and him. Being with Lincoln like this again, high on need and lust, and so slow and careful because they have all the time in the world, is both Heaven and Hell. He’s spread-eagled on the bed and lets his brother - begs him - to do to him everything and anything he wants to. Linc goes for it beyond all his expectations. Michael pants and grunts against his neck, until Lincoln pushes him back into the pillow - his teeth break the skin and leave a red scrape on the bunched muscle - and murmurs “I want to hear you; see you.” He lies back, smiles and revels in coming undone beneath Lincoln’s gaze, in watching Lincoln come undone.
Later, after Lincoln is gone, he tries to kiss Sara. He walks in on her while she’s drinking from the tap in the kitchen; or actually, he realizes, rinsing her mouth from the tap in the kitchen. He tries to kiss her and she throws her head back to elude him.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” she warns him.
He does it anyway. She tastes sour, not as if she threw up but as if she was a hairbreadth from it.
“I...” he begins.
“You’d better not say that you’re sorry, Michael, because if you do, I swear that Lincoln won’t be able to enjoy that fine ass of yours for weeks. At best.”
She’s frowning, tearing up and scoffing all at once; she leans heavily into him when he wraps his arms around her.
- - - - -
Eventually, Lincoln moves in with them. Eventually, they live with - in - the situation. Eventually, they try to work out a solution.
“I’m not fucking my husband according to a schedule,” Sara says very calmly at Lincoln’s suggestion, and Michael’s not sure, but he thinks it’s the first time since the whole thing started that Lincoln blushes. Deep red throbbing blush, from his shaved head down to his neck. How he could talk about loving to be nailed by his baby brother or cock in a nice tight hole without batting an eyelid but loses his composure at Sara’s cold statement, Michael doesn’t know. Maybe because he didn’t see Sara’s retort coming, today.
“So what do you suggest?” Lincoln says.
He’s still absurdly red, both out of embarrassment and out of anger to be embarrassed by her bluntness. Any other moment, Michael would have laughed at him.
Sara squints and then concedes her defeat by grabbing a paper and a pencil: three days a week each, Sundays alone except for special occasions.
It’s efficient; cold and practical. Michael feels a pang deep in his chest, and he’s pretty sure that both Sara and Lincoln experience it too. He can only hope they’ll forget about it once their bedrooms doors are closed.
- - - - -
“You didn’t try to find me when I left?”
It’s not a reproach. It’s the opposite of a reproach; she sounds relieved.
“You mean, when you fled?” Lincoln shakes his head. “No. We knew you would come back.”
“What if I hadn’t?”
“We give you more credit than that, Sara. Before, now, later. Always.”
Michael appreciates the ‘we’ here, especially about before.
She bites ferociously into a blueberry pancake.
“Maybe you give me too much credit.”
“Nope. And even if we did, it wasn’t the kind of decision you could take with us pushing you in the direction we wanted.”
Michael really appreciates the ‘we’ here too. Also, despite what everybody says, sometimes he thinks that Lincoln may be the smart one.
- - - - -
Michael bows his back under the wet trail of Lincoln’s kisses. Down, down his spine - and stopping when Michael starts to see white and stars behind his close eyelids. He swallows back a desperate moan.
“That must be so convenient,” Lincoln says against the swell of his butt. “Fucking her, fucking me. Having it all.”
Michael rolls onto his side and gathers from Lincoln’s expression that there will be no fucking tonight. It doesn’t matter. His brother’s presence, warmth, and harsh words are enough. He snuggles up into those and throws an arm across Lincoln’s chest, possessive and protective. He wants Lincoln. So much. His erection is hard and hot against his belly, but he ignores it; doesn’t even try to will it away and accepts his ordeal with good grace. He’s already falling asleep when Lincoln lifts one of his arms into the light of the bedside lamp to see more clearly the small pinkish indents Sara’s nails left in his flesh.
“You remember when I told Sara that sometimes, I wanted your cock in me?” Lincoln says while moving on the bed, like a gigantic, threatening cat prowling for his prey.
Michael doesn’t answer, doesn’t need to. It’s the kind of statement that sticks with you, and Linc knows it. He gasps, willingly lies on his back, and settles into the mattress to brace himself for Lincoln - not to escape him, never to escape him, always eager to take whatever Linc has in store for him. What’s coming is obvious and makes his heart beat wildly. Lincoln kisses him, straddles him and sinks onto him, too tight, too fast, almost painful. Hardly any preparation at all, and it burns, burns both of them, but of course, this is what Linc wants. And if that’s what Linc wants, then it’s what Michael wants too.
“I want it tonight,” Lincoln concludes unnecessarily.
- - - - -
“When did it start?” Sara wants to know.
“Never.” She considers Lincoln with skepticism above the rim of her shades, so he explains, “It’s always been... here.”
“What you’re telling me is that you can’t remember the first time you kissed your brother?”
“I kissed my brother a lot of times.”
Sara’s not amused. At all. “Nor the first time you bedded him?”
“Said brother is right here,” Michael points out from his beach towel, not bothering moving or looking at them.
“Tan, be pretty and shut up,” Lincoln instructs him, which makes Sara giggle. “I do remember the last time I bedded him, though. He smelled like you.”
“Sorry to impede your sexual drive by spreading my female smell all over him.”
They banter. They always banter. It’s always on a very fine line between complicity and open fight, and Michael found out quick enough that it was better if he stayed out of it. As Lincoln’s remark just reminded him. So he bites his tongue and doesn’t quip a word. Sometimes, he feels like a kid in a grown-ups’ argument; sometimes he feels like he is the grown-up in a kids’ rivalry. Most of the time, though, he thinks that if he loves them more than anything else, it’s obviously reciprocated for them to go to such lengths - and the best, the least, he can do, then, is to shut up and cherish it.
“You smell good,” Lincoln tells Sara. “You smell great. It kind of increases my sexual drive, babe. That said, you’ve started to use lotion, soap or whatever smelling stronger since...”
She leans up on her elbows and lifts an eyebrow. Michael burrows his head between his arms to hide a smile because Lincoln’s right; she’s been marking her territory. They can hardly reproach her for that.
“Do you remember the first time with him?” she demands again.
“Yes.” Lincoln huffs with exasperation.
“Do I want to know?”
Lincoln doesn’t think twice about that one. “I don’t think so.”
“I still don’t get it.”
Michael considers telling her about need and yearning embedded deep in their bones, growing up being the only one always there for the other and dysfunctional love finding its expression in the most inappropriate yet mind-blowing way; but he abides by his shutting-up rule. Later, one day. It wouldn’t explain it; anyway, it would merely expose the craziness of it a bit more.
“Welcome to the club,” Lincoln murmurs before patting her shoulder blade.
Michael likes the visual of Lincoln’s big hand on her smooth skin a bit too much.
- - - - -
Maybe it’s in order to get it that Sara starts lurking in the shadows - or in full light, as a matter of fact, she’s not sneaky about it - when he and Lincoln are together. She stands or sits, starts stealing glances and ends up watching straightforwardly as the two of them exchange a few grunts and words - their version of a conversation - sit, work or laze around together, kiss and touch. Over the days, her face and eyes go from shocked to fascinated, to complicit and jealous at the same time until they eventually lit up with a kind of glint Michael knows all too well and loves. Her fingers move from pressing her temples and her chest to touching her mouth in conjecture, relaxing after a while and then sliding down her hips on their own volition; stopping at her hipbones as if she doesn’t exactly knows what to do with herself at that point.
Michael doesn’t know what she can see when she spies on them, beside sweaty skin and muscles, bodies slotting together and burning need. She won’t tell. But she must see something beyond lust and sex to switch from unable to compute to willing to go along, and then from understanding to involvement.
Eventually, she breaks all their rules and slips into Lincoln’s bedroom. The bedroom Lincoln shares with Michael three days a week. One would have thought that if one of them should break the rules, it would be Lincoln because it’s not like Lincoln is good with following rules.
Of course, it’s not like Sara is that good with them either, considering she walked eyes wide open into a peculiar kind of ménage à trois with her brother-in-law.
She strolls across the room as silently as that day on the beach, until she stands by the bed and stares. Lincoln startles but doesn’t bother pulling up the sheets to cover his bare ass. Between the exams at Fox River, a couple of beach incidents and all her barely hidden peeking, she’s seen it before anyway. Never from so close, clenching rhythmically as he thrusts into Michael, though; with Michael’s nails digging into the strong muscles to egg him on.
Both men turn towards her; tear themselves from their enthrallment with one another to let her in.
With slow, deliberate gestures, she draws a small armchair closer to the bed and sits. The buttons of her good-girl flowery dress are open high on her long legs, undone low and showing her cleavage, skin smooth and almost glossy in the soft light. Michael is positive she’s not wearing a bra, and he wonders if she even kept her panties on. He bites the side of Lincoln’s neck as a surge of arousal goes straight to his groin and rolls his hips up.
Lincoln drives into him with renewed fervor, a bit deeper, a bit harder as if to punish and reward him all at once for his wife’s indiscretion. He growls into Michael’s mouth that she’s one filthy, sexy Peeping Tom, loud enough for her to hear. Michael throws her a pleading glance, wanting her to touch him and knowing she won’t. She sits with her legs crossed and her hands politely folded on her knees, a picture of good manners, and she fucking won’t touch him.
A sob almost breaks out of Michael’s chest when Lincoln slows down and reverts to a maddeningly idle cadence.
“What do you want from me, Sara?” Lincoln asks her, an echo of their previous conversation.
Michael can barely hear their words above the white noise in his skull. Sara’s hands unfold; one of them flies to the chair arm and grips it.
She squirms in her seat, her thighs pressed together, her free hand gliding between them high, but not quite high enough.
“Push him hard. Ruin him for anyone else but us.”
Lincoln grins at her.
It doesn’t take much, really. Between Lincoln’s merciless thrusts and Sara’s dark, possessive demand, it really doesn’t take much.
Both of them probably knew it when Linc asked and Sara answered.
- - - - -
He opens his eyes a few minutes later to see Lincoln, spent and sweaty but still alert, grab Sara’s wrist and stop her from touching herself. In a swift gesture, he lifts her from the armchair and moves her onto the bed as if she weights nothing; pushes her onto her back and pins her down when she tries to sit up.
She’s not happy with that.
They fight for a few seconds. Sara kicks and twists under Lincoln, hisses and threatens him when his softening cock comes to rest against her stomach. Michael swallows hard and thinks that it shouldn’t turn him on; hopefully, it wouldn’t turn him on if Sara really meant every kick and twisting attempt to get away. Lincoln squeezes her breasts, caresses her ribcage and her hips, and dips a hand between her legs. He grins triumphantly at what he finds here, and Sara looks daggers at him.
“It’s supposed to be about Michael, not about me,” she breathes out, wrestling to push his hands off her.
“But it is about you,” Lincoln counters her. “And about me. And about him, yes, but not only. It can’t work if it’s only about him, or you wouldn’t have sneaked in on us tonight.” He bows down to whisper something Michael can’t hear but that has her calmed down and makes them watch him sideways and smirk.
Sara wraps her fingers around Lincoln’s neck and kisses him deep and sloppy before lying back and relaxing into the messy bedding. They don’t pay attention to Michael. He can feel their heat, and smell their sweat and musk, hear their breathing and Sara’s small whimpers. He doesn’t speak; he watches.
Linc is quick to take care of the few buttons still holding Sara’s dress half closed. His brother is good with his hands, Michael should know and Sara is finding out as he runs them down the length of her body. They catch the swell of a full breast, roughen a nipple, graze the moist and velvety skin of her belly, and Michael’s mouth waters at the same time that his head throbs in anger.
The thin dress is the only hindrance because he was right - no bra, no panties; it opens on lean muscles and succulent curves like a curtain falling. Sara stretches out wantonly, and Lincoln doesn’t linger, doesn’t play with her the way he played with Michael. He’s already exhausted, and Sara is so strung out that he has to be careful not to tip her over the edge right away.
She parts her legs for him willingly, eagerly even, now. He fits here neatly, settling between her thighs, burrowing his head between them, and he noses and licks the salted moisture on her skin.
“Even her dress is damp with it,” he informs Michael, looking up at him. “She’s a mess. Sopping wet and so tasty. I hope you eat her out every chance you have, you lucky bastard.”
“Asshole,” Sara spits out.
Engrossed by the image they offer, Michael doesn’t say anything and sits up to get a better angle. Sara’s calves are pressed into Lincoln’s broad shoulders, her whole body coiling and uncoiling as Lincoln holds her open for both of them. For him to taste her and for Michael to watch. Michael wants him to stop now; or maybe he wants Lincoln to dive for it right now and makes her moan, the louder-lewder-crazier, the better.
“Please, Linc.”
Knowing she won’t, Michael says it for her in a surprisingly steady voice, and Lincoln nuzzles between her thighs.
She grinds down onto Lincoln’s face, any shred of modesty and restraint forgotten. One of her hands pushes his head tighter against her while the other shoots up to find an impossible purchase on the bedpost; hips rolling frantically, she’s gone and screaming in few swirls and strokes of Lincoln’s tongue.
Michael groans in tandem with her as she shakes beneath Lincoln’s ministrations, heart pounding in his chest. Jealousy, desire and understanding flare and merge. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to totally separate them, and get rid of the jealousy. Maybe he’s not supposed to; maybe it’s meant to remind him how they feel. He knows how it is to be Sara right now, and he knows how it is to be Lincoln. He wants to be Sara and he wants to be Lincoln. He wants to be each of them; he wants to be between them. Crushed, squeezed, pressed, used, loved, and loving them.
He doesn’t touch them while she’s riding her orgasm and Lincoln is trying to prolong it. He waits until after she’s gone limp and pink-flush from head to toe next to him to kiss her, then to kiss Lincoln and taste her on his tongue, smell her on his face.
He knows what’s coming next, tomorrow morning.
- - - - -
It all happens in slow-motion, languid and dirty and blissful.
Sara has been waiting for him to wake up; necessarily, because the minute he opens his eyes, she moves across the bed and straddles Lincoln’s lap. Takes him into her. Just a few ups-and-downs, a few seconds, a few grunts before she rolls off him and pushes Michael’s face into Lincoln’s lower stomach.
“This is what you wanted, right? Him and me, mingled.”
He complies, does as they tell him, takes Lincoln in his mouth, and basks in the reward of their satisfied murmurs. Lincoln is hard and velvety between his lips, Sara’s delicate hand so strong and sure on his neck; their combined tastes burst on his tongue. Bliss. He looks up at them. Flashes of anger still shine in their eyes at times, and will keep shining, but the anger subsides with their own desire for him and for one another.
He slides into Sara, slow and easy; her hands are on his ass, spreading him open and offered for Lincoln’s cock. It’s all the invitation Lincoln needs to press into him. The two of them trap him and move in unison, Sara arching up when Lincoln is pushing down. Not enough strength left in him to groan, even less shout of pleasure, Michael rests his face in the crook of Sara’s neck and revels in the weight of Lincoln’s chest against his back.
He comes first; clenches around Lincoln and spills into Sara. Delicious jealousy burning him because, after he’s spent, Lincoln is still fucking him into Sara, and it makes her whimper and thrash in the sheets. Both of them fumble for his hand at the same time as they follow him fast, fast and hard and panting, open palms sliding on his skin and fingers entwining with his.
He breathes in and lets their pleasure ripple throughout him.
- - - - -
“We may need to rethink that stupid schedule,” Sara says very seriously from beneath them.
- - - - -
There are tensions, small and not so small, and laughs; easy teasing and stealthy dark looks; heart-stopping jealousy and overwhelming pleasure; hints of rivalry and boundless love and affection. It’s not perfect anymore. It never will be perfect anymore, but as sarcastic as she was, Sara had it right; perfection is overrated.
- - - - -
For months, he had imagined that it was about Sara and him for one part, Lincoln and him for another, and his inability to take a decision and stick to it altogether. He was wrong. He was egocentric too, but that is another story. He used to be a structural engineer: he should have remembered sooner that more often than not, things work in synergy. Instead, he broke the situation into small pieces, peered and scrutinized them, and neglected the bigger picture. Yet, it was so easy to see. It’s more than Sara and him, Linc and him, and - damn - once a week Sara and Linc. Synergy. The superiority of engineering, architecture and relationships over basic arithmetic? The total exceeds the sum of the parts.
-End-
--Feedback is always welcome.
Author: clair-de-lune
Fandom: Prison Break
Characters: Michael/Sara/Lincoln (Michael/Sara, Michael/Lincoln, Lincoln/Sara)
Categories: Slash, het
Rating: NC-17
Warning: Incest
Summary: Everything was perfect. So perfect that what he couldn’t have and shouldn’t want created by contrast a bigger craving than he would have ever imagined. It made what he was desperate for painfully obvious. (Post-series, alternate canon)
A/N: This is a fic that ate my brain I’ve been trying to write for over two years. It's not exactly how I wanted it, but at least, I finished it. At last \0/
If you have some interest in that 'pairing', consider giving the fic a shot and dropping me a note... please, pretty please? Happy reading!
Many thanks to foxriverinmate for the beta. (By ‘beta’, I actually mean: patience, hand-holding, fixing creative grammar, patience, listening to whines and complaints, did I mention patience?, support, encouragements to fatten the story, suggestions...)
Kink/prompt for
kink_bingo ( my card): This is for ‘ménage à trois’ (wildcard).
→ Read entry in light format
In the end, they came up with an arrangement - the second one in a few months.
Despite her initial sharp comeback on the schedule option, Tuesday nights are Sara’s. Thursday’s are Lincoln’s, plain and simple. Sunday’s are Sara and Lincoln together, only the two of them, and whatever it is they do, Michael doesn’t know; he’s a bit miffed about those Sunday nights, but it’s the least he can roll along with, given the situation.
Any other nights, or in-betweens, are the three of them.
- - - - -
Bubbles in which time seems to pause and expand forever all at once; surroundings fading and becoming nothing but colored haze; all people except one or two vanishing from existence even though they’re within arm’s reach. For the best and the worst, Michael has experienced the feeling quite a few times before. It has often involved Lincoln in some way, and this afternoon is no exception.
The beach below his and Sara’s bungalow is deserted, the air hot and still, the sounds and scents merging to form a familiar background - salt and suntan lotion and that inimitable smell of the sun warming everything. Safe. Hence the feeling of dozing inside of a bubble as Linc and he are lying on the sand, the late afternoon sun mellowing them to the point of laziness.
They used to be more cautious. Granted, they also used to have things to hide, which used to lead to more caution. Michael thought they got this out of their system a while ago, but obviously, he either deluded himself or fell into it again because the pull is as atavistic as it is irresistible. Lincoln is a stretch of relaxed muscles on display inches from him, skin salted from the sea, tanned and shiny with lotion and a thin layer of clean sweat. Too much flesh and heaven-like smell, not enough clothes and wits to restrain himself. Michael’s hand moves of its own volition; he lays it on the fine ridges of his brother’s stomach and lets it slide down leisurely, aiming for the wildly colored bathing shorts.
It’s so innocent and so not innocent at the same time, instinctive and unguarded. He’ll blame it on the perfection of the moment that knots his throat and wakes up the old craving for Lincoln, the old need embedded deep and resurfacing with a vengeance. Perfect, perfect moment, and just this missing to make it blissful.
Lincoln leans into the touch with a soft grunt, a sleepy murmur of approval. Instinctive response brought back from another time, no thinking involved.
Sara’s voice sneaks into the bubble, her tone normal and casual at first. It’s her sudden silence, its shocked quality coupled with the soft rustling of her long dress above their heads, that freezes them; pins them down, and steals any ability to talk and, even more so, to explain. Whatever Lincoln was about to do is stopped, and Michael’s hand stills in place. They haven’t heard her coming, not that it would have made any difference if he thinks about it, her bare feet too light and silent on the white sand, her voice part of the decor and too low with the sound of the surf mere yards away.
She watches them for what seems like forever, taking in the situation, brown eyes moving from their faces to Michael’s fingers on the red, blue and yellow fabric of Lincoln’s shorts, splayed in that tender way she ought to be personally well-acquainted with. Her cheeks pale beneath her golden tan, her smile becoming plastered to her face like a mask that refuses to slide down. She watches and keeps watching, looking at them as though the last pieces of a puzzle she hasn’t been quite able to figure out are falling into place at last. Her smile shines true again, then, dazzling and blinding, and bitter too.
The hemline of her dress brushes the two of them when she turns on her heels and walks inside the house; the bubble finally explodes with the noise of her car starting and quietly driving away.
It’s what it takes to get Michael moving, scrambling to his feet to try to follow her. Lincoln holds him back, the grip firm and painful around his biceps.
“What are you going to tell her?” Michael stares with huge eyes; scared and crazy and for-once-he-doesn’t-have-any-plan eyes. “Leave her alone. Let her digest this. There’s nothing you can say to her right now that won’t wreck her even more.” A pause. “She’ll come back.”
Michael presses a hand to his stomach. His mouth floods with saliva, his throat as tight as if he was about to throw up, and eventually, he whispers, “What if she doesn’t?”
Lincoln’s face hardens in a way that makes Michael recoil and wish he’d shut up.
“After all the shit she went through...” Because of you. For you. For us. Michael hears it even though Lincoln knows better than to say it aloud. For a second, he thinks his brother may slap him in the face - not a punch or anything, but an actual, humiliating slap. “... give her a bit more credit.”
- - - - -
She does come back. As quietly as she left. A few days later. She seems to materialize out of thin air on the veranda. She’s pale, her eyes red and unrelenting as she stares at them. She doesn’t watch their faces, she looks a bit lower, where their shoulders brush as they’re standing next to each other under her inspection. Michael doesn’t have the nerve to step aside and pretend there’s not a huge elephant wandering around; or maybe he needs Lincoln’s support. Either way, he doesn’t move and feels his skin prickle where he’s touching Linc.
“Nothing happened,” Lincoln tells her firmly, and Michael wonders if he hates him or loves him even more for jumping into water for him in such a way.
“When?” she asks.
“I’m sorry?”
“When did nothing happen? During the last few days? During the last twelve months? Never?” She shrugs, just a hint of harshness finding its way into her voice. “When did nothing happen, Lincoln?”
She has hollow bluish circles under her eyes, and fine lines around her mouth that weren’t there before. One more blow he gave her, Michael thinks. He doesn’t tell her it has nothing to do with her. She knows it, and it probably makes no difference at all. He doesn’t say he’s sorry either because it - he - doesn’t matter; it’s not about him.
“We ended it before Fox River,” Michael answers in a rough voice. Not about her. Not ended because of her. Not threatening to start it again because of whatever she would or wouldn’t do. And then, because if they have to be honest, they might be honest. “But after we broke out... once...”
Her lips quirk, and it’s not a smile, but it’s the closest thing to it he can decently hope for right now.
“You fucked your big brother to celebrate your freedom?” she volunteers. “Or maybe it was to seek comfort in each other?”
Lincoln flinches at the deliberately lewd ‘fucked’ in her mouth, but takes it like a man: he shuts the fuck up and looks her in the eye.
“Both,” Michael says.
They leave it at that. For now. At night, after Lincoln has left, Michael starts to settle in the guest room and shivers when she orders him, “Come to bed, for God’s sake.” He lies still and stiff near her, wondering and wondering again what’s in her mind, thinking it’s a way more refined form of torture than anything else she could do or say, and pretty sure she knows it.
She deserves it.
- - - - -
He didn’t mean to spy on them. He didn’t even know Lincoln was supposed to drop by. He realized his brother was here when he heard the metallic squeak of the porch swing - he really needs to oil that thing - and the distant murmur of a conversation. He stands between the living room’s sliding glass doors, terrified and relieved all at once to see them sitting face to face, so fucking inappropriate jealousy clamping his fists - his nails bite hard into the palm of his hands - because Sara’s voice is warmer and her eyes softer than when she talks with him, nowadays.
He clenches his fists tighter and pushes his fingernails deeper into his skin.
“I don’t get it,” she tells Lincoln, and there’s no mystery about what that ‘it’ is.
She looks him up and down. Not in dismay or contempt. In curiosity and wonder. She examines him, focusing on his mouth and hands, on the skin showing in the opening of his shirt and on the slightly stretched fabric over his crotch, as if she’s trying to picture Michael touching him and being touched by him.
Michael thinks he may break the skin of his palms when she slides down the porch swing - more squeaking - kneels before Lincoln who’s sitting in a low chair, and kisses his mouth. It’s a mere stroke, tentative and chaste, but already more than enough to punch Michael in the guts in a not entirely bad way.
She sits back and licks her lips pensively; Lincoln refrains from mirroring her reaction.
“I don’t get it either,” he admits. “When I think about it, it freaks the hell out of me. Sometimes makes me sick to my stomach.”
“How do you handle it, then?”
Lincoln looks at her sheepishly. “I don’t think about it.”
Sara barks out a short laugh. Michael hates his brother just a little bit for making her laugh, as desperate as it sounds, when he just makes her miserable.
- - - - -
He’s so close. It feels so good and so frightening. Felt incredibly, overwhelmingly frightening when Sara slid her hand down the small of his back and whispered into his ear that she wanted him now, so frightening that he was terrified he wouldn’t be able to...
She wraps her legs around his waist, clenches and arches up, and he makes it his mission to take care of her and pleasure her before even thinking to cater to his needs. He kisses the sweaty skin of her neck and sucks lightly on that spot that never fails to rile her up, angles her hips to drive into her the way that always makes her pant and whimper beneath him, and watches her face - heavy lidded eyes, open mouth, flushed cheeks. He missed it all so much, the spicy smell of her release, the slick of her sweat, the fucked-out haze clouding her eyes...
He waits a few seconds to start moving again after she came. So frightening, so good, so close.
“Was it as good with Lincoln?”
The question stops him cold in his tracks. The fact she’s actually curious about it, not throwing the sentence in his face to punish or disturb him, just spilling it because she can’t help it, makes it even worse. His erection weakens, and goes even limper when she strokes his face and murmurs that she’s sorry. Because she is actually sorry and it has to be the worst possible sensation.
“It was different,” he replies, not to say it was as good. Not better, just as good. Then, because he’s already lied enough to her: “Yes.” She relaxes into his embrace. Her hair is a reddish brown halo around her face that he won’t try to untangle and tame. He slips his fingers into it. “I love you both.”
He hadn’t said it up until now, not in that way, but she has to have figured it out, right? She wouldn’t imagine he used to sleep with his brother for the dirty kick of it
“You need us both...?” she says, half a question half an affirmation.
He doesn’t answer.
- - - - -
“What did you do?”
There is the very distinct possibility that Sara is asking and insisting because she enjoys watching Lincoln squirm. God knows Michael wouldn’t blame her.
“We...” Lincoln scratches the nape of his neck. “We had sex, Sara. What do you want from me?!”
“How?”
They’re on the veranda, and the damn porch swing is still squeaking. Michael once again forgot to oil it.
“There is no way you’re asking me that,” Lincoln grunts. But she does, and she arches an eyebrow to prompt him to answer. “We...” He moves his hand, and points a finger to his mouth, and shrugs. “We fucked. You know how it’s done.”
“How?” she asks again. She won’t back off on this, Michael knows it for sure. She has that same determined expression as when she had the lock of the infirmary changed before his eyes or when she told him for the first time that she loved him. She’s the sweetest person he ever met; she can also be the most ruthless one.
Lincoln leans towards her, his elbows resting on his thighs, his face hard as stone and a few millimeters from hers. When he speaks, his breath must brush over her lips and warm them.
“Most of the time, I fucked him. But we liked to switch every now and then. Is it what you wanted to hear?”
“You let him take you?”
“I didn’t let him do anything. I liked it. I wanted it. He was good. But you know that, right? Just like you know that he likes having his cock in a nice tight hole.”
Michael chokes on embarrassment and anger and... he doesn’t even know what. He just chokes and focuses on his archeology book. He’s not been invited into this conversation, and chances are he would be sent back to the beauty of the pyramids if he tried to butt in. That’s the price, small price really, he has to pay for what he laid on the two of them.
If Lincoln wanted to make Sara as uncomfortable as he is, though, too bad for him. She calmly nods her head.
“Yes, indeed. I know.”
- - - - -
Lincoln misses a step on the stairway of the veranda, and it’s instinctive; it’s common sense: Michael reaches out for him and catches his elbow. Fingers on bare skin. Lincoln jolts, pulls his arm away and sprawls onto the steps. The content of his shopping bags - things and stuff he bought for the scuba shop - spills all around him.
That’s typical.
Lincoln doesn’t stay alone with him anymore. Lincoln actually spends more time with Sara than with him, now. Maybe he doesn’t want to worry or upset her more than she already is. He certainly thinks that if she still wants anything to do with Michael, she has the precedence over Lincoln. Because morals and logic and decency command it. You don’t marry a woman and let her down after ruining every single aspect of her life. You don’t wreck someone you love - and Michael does love her, so much. Above all, and it boils down to that, you’re not supposed to have or want to have sex with your brother. Despite all his bravado and crude words when he talks with Sara, Linc has always been more freaked out than Michael about what they used to do.
So no more beach afternoons, no more common shifts at the scuba diving shop if Sara’s not there too, no more casual hanging around together. When Sara invites him over - because damn, but Sara still invites him over for dinner or brunch more often than not - he doesn’t sit next to Michael.
Cans and boxes, as well as Linc’s right knee, hit the wooden step. Hard and noisy. The clatter and subsequent curses and arguments between both men draw Sara outside. She waits as Lincoln gets back to his feet and lets Michael pick up everything. She asks if he’s okay and if he needs help.
Lincoln snickers. He needs help. He needs buckets of help for buckets of things. She cleans the nasty cut on his knee and suggests to him to stop acting like an idiot. She’s pretty sure he’s not going to bend Michael over first chance he has (or vice-versa), given they fucking managed to control themselves for months.
Well, Michael thinks, watching his brother’s face go slightly ashen because of relief, because of Sara’s trust and blunt words. Not that they had planned to, but they certainly won’t even try after her vote of confidence.
- - - - -
The fourth time she asks it - You need us both...? - he finally answers her. Yes, he does. Yes, in a physical, as in sexual, way too. It’s not that she’s not enough, he tells her; she’s more than anything he ever hoped for. She shrugs and points out that she’s obviously not enough, and neither is Lincoln. It stings because to some extent, she’s right: either one of them is enough, but not quite everything he needs.
His response is hardly a surprise. She knew the answer before asking the question the first time, and she doesn’t even quail when he speaks up. Only half-joking, she says, “You’re just greedy, Michael,” and she’s right again. He is. Greedy, needy, unable to leave behind him the twisted safeness of Lincoln’s affection and love to revel in hers. Not feeling quite complete without Linc. Not feeling quite complete without her either.
She wants to know why it’s emerged again now, so he goes back to that day on the beach.
“Because everything was perfect.”
So perfect that what he couldn’t have and shouldn’t want created by contrast a bigger craving than he would have ever imagined. It made what he was desperate for painfully obvious.
“Of course. I like to ruin perfection too. Perfection is so overrated.” Sarcasm is thick in her tone. She breathes in and out a few times and pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “Would you sleep with him again if you could?”
He doesn’t even need to think before answering.
“No. It would hurt you.”
She’s making a pie. An apple pie. It’s odd to have this kind of conversation while she’s doing something as mundane as a pie and he’s preparing green beans for dinner. Surrealism for beginners.
“Michael, the fact that you would want to hurts me. And to be honest, when I think about it, I’m not even sure why it hurts me. It’s not like you don’t love me no matter what. So what difference would it make?”
The knife cuts, cuts, cuts into the apples and then into the flesh of her index finger. A drop of brilliant red blood surges, and he takes the digit between his lips without any hesitation. Kissing it better.
“I think that need for exclusivity is called monogamy and is pretty common in our culture,” he says with the tiniest bit of humor. “Doesn’t it disgust you?”
She watches the blood still seeping from the tip of her finger, then her wedding ring, trying to figure out what the hell he’s talking about: blood threatening the apple pie? non-monogamy? monogamy?
“I mean Linc and me.”
She purses her mouth in bitter remembrance.
“I got sick when I saw you two on the beach. Twice. And the day after too. And after that... You know when you reflect on something totally crazy and horrifying so hard and for so long that in the end, it doesn’t sound so crazy and horrifying anymore, and the thought becomes familiar?”
She kisses him. Except for the couple of times when she all but jumped him in the dark and it felt like she was claiming and marking him, it’s the first time in weeks she’s kissed him.
- - - - -
Sometimes, he has the sensation she makes them jump through hoops. It’s Sara, though; even in their current situation, Michael can’t imagine she does it just to try them. There has to be more behind it. Like when she hands the suntan lotion to Lincoln and nods towards Michael.
“Don’t let him go into the sun without lotion. You know how he burns.”
Lincoln fiddles with the small bottle until it’s obvious that she means put some on him, and do it here and now.
Hoop. Just like he jumped into water for Michael when she came back, Lincoln jumps through Sara’s hoop. Michael holds onto the veranda’s teak fence, his knuckles white with effort, as Linc starts to lotion down his shoulders. Warm hands, rough and soft at the same time, and he can’t help it, can’t help the effect they have on him, even with Sara watching from the damn swing porch. Her eyes are heavy on the nape of his neck; must be heavy on Lincoln’s too.
He risks a glance above his shoulder. She’s worrying her lips like crazy and following Lincoln’s hands on him. Linc is below his mid-section, almost reaching the small of his back, when she speaks. Neither one of them is sure they hear her right at first, so she says it again.
“Kiss.”
Michael’s reasonably sure she’s not demanding a kiss for herself. The sun lotion slips out of Lincoln’s grip and falls onto the floor, where it makes a white splash on the dark wood. Sara rolls her eyes at the stain, but doesn’t say anything.
“Sara...” Michael pleads, breathless in shock and hope and fear.
He doesn’t have the chance to go further because Lincoln does kiss him. Spins him around slowly and kisses him. He doesn’t try to make it look nasty to put Sara off; he doesn’t try to make it look pretty and clean either to comfort or reassure her. He just kisses him like he’s always done it, and sharply bites his lips when Michael refuses to part them. A hand still sticky with sun lotion behind Michael’s head to prevent him from backing off, the other one on his hip. Linc devours him in the exact same way he devoured him years ago, or against the hood of the car in Nowhere, Montana, after they escaped from Fox River.
Michael grunts low in his throat and kisses back. Harder and needier than he’d like to. Somewhere between the sound of the surf on the beach and the blood roaring inside of his skull, he can hear Sara whispering to herself, “I can do that,” and then saying louder “Don’t stop.”
She gets that so right. He doesn’t want Lincoln to stop. Ever. He pushes into the hand palming his crotch. When did Lincoln’s hand go from his hip to... there, he doesn’t know and can’t bring himself to care.
He’s panting like after a race - an eight-year long race - seeing everything bathed in a red blur when Lincoln lets him go. The old yearning is consuming him from inside, twisting, pulling, demanding. Sara’s an addict. She should know. Should know that hoop is going to kill him.
“Get a room, guys,” she lets drop with a hint of derision.
He’s still plastered against Lincoln, and it’s probably for the best that she can’t see what a kiss did to him. To both of them. They stare at her, only understanding she meant this literally when she adds, “The guest room. Before I come back to my senses.”
She gets up from the porch swing tiredly - the thing doesn’t squeak, and Michael assumes she got annoyed with it and oiled it - and makes a move towards the small stairway.
“I’ll be on the beach.” She touches his arm to get his attention as though she didn’t already have it. “Michael.” Her hand burns his skin so badly he looks down, thinking she might have left a branding iron imprint. “Don’t worry. I will be on the beach.”
She will. Not fleeing again and making him sick with worry wondering if she’ll ever come back. For several minutes, he stays still at the threshold of the house, until Sara’s only a dot on the otherwise empty beach, until Lincoln grabs his shoulder and tugs him inside, soft but insistent. His brother murmurs that they’d better not fail her indulgence; that the least they can do is relish the moment, the luxury, her leniency and its extravagance.
Michael nods, but resists the pull for a few more seconds. Guilt weights on him and nails him to the floor; starts eating his brain and his heart, blackening his vision. He forcefully pushes away the first strands of it, of shame, remorse and whatever. It would be questioning Sara’s decision; he won’t be questioning Sara’s decision.
He follows Lincoln; or maybe he urges him inside and across the hallway.
The guest room is pleasantly cool and half dark, closed shutters, light white curtains and fresh sheets, smelling of wax and salt, and very soon of Lincoln and him. Being with Lincoln like this again, high on need and lust, and so slow and careful because they have all the time in the world, is both Heaven and Hell. He’s spread-eagled on the bed and lets his brother - begs him - to do to him everything and anything he wants to. Linc goes for it beyond all his expectations. Michael pants and grunts against his neck, until Lincoln pushes him back into the pillow - his teeth break the skin and leave a red scrape on the bunched muscle - and murmurs “I want to hear you; see you.” He lies back, smiles and revels in coming undone beneath Lincoln’s gaze, in watching Lincoln come undone.
Later, after Lincoln is gone, he tries to kiss Sara. He walks in on her while she’s drinking from the tap in the kitchen; or actually, he realizes, rinsing her mouth from the tap in the kitchen. He tries to kiss her and she throws her head back to elude him.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” she warns him.
He does it anyway. She tastes sour, not as if she threw up but as if she was a hairbreadth from it.
“I...” he begins.
“You’d better not say that you’re sorry, Michael, because if you do, I swear that Lincoln won’t be able to enjoy that fine ass of yours for weeks. At best.”
She’s frowning, tearing up and scoffing all at once; she leans heavily into him when he wraps his arms around her.
- - - - -
Eventually, Lincoln moves in with them. Eventually, they live with - in - the situation. Eventually, they try to work out a solution.
“I’m not fucking my husband according to a schedule,” Sara says very calmly at Lincoln’s suggestion, and Michael’s not sure, but he thinks it’s the first time since the whole thing started that Lincoln blushes. Deep red throbbing blush, from his shaved head down to his neck. How he could talk about loving to be nailed by his baby brother or cock in a nice tight hole without batting an eyelid but loses his composure at Sara’s cold statement, Michael doesn’t know. Maybe because he didn’t see Sara’s retort coming, today.
“So what do you suggest?” Lincoln says.
He’s still absurdly red, both out of embarrassment and out of anger to be embarrassed by her bluntness. Any other moment, Michael would have laughed at him.
Sara squints and then concedes her defeat by grabbing a paper and a pencil: three days a week each, Sundays alone except for special occasions.
It’s efficient; cold and practical. Michael feels a pang deep in his chest, and he’s pretty sure that both Sara and Lincoln experience it too. He can only hope they’ll forget about it once their bedrooms doors are closed.
- - - - -
“You didn’t try to find me when I left?”
It’s not a reproach. It’s the opposite of a reproach; she sounds relieved.
“You mean, when you fled?” Lincoln shakes his head. “No. We knew you would come back.”
“What if I hadn’t?”
“We give you more credit than that, Sara. Before, now, later. Always.”
Michael appreciates the ‘we’ here, especially about before.
She bites ferociously into a blueberry pancake.
“Maybe you give me too much credit.”
“Nope. And even if we did, it wasn’t the kind of decision you could take with us pushing you in the direction we wanted.”
Michael really appreciates the ‘we’ here too. Also, despite what everybody says, sometimes he thinks that Lincoln may be the smart one.
- - - - -
Michael bows his back under the wet trail of Lincoln’s kisses. Down, down his spine - and stopping when Michael starts to see white and stars behind his close eyelids. He swallows back a desperate moan.
“That must be so convenient,” Lincoln says against the swell of his butt. “Fucking her, fucking me. Having it all.”
Michael rolls onto his side and gathers from Lincoln’s expression that there will be no fucking tonight. It doesn’t matter. His brother’s presence, warmth, and harsh words are enough. He snuggles up into those and throws an arm across Lincoln’s chest, possessive and protective. He wants Lincoln. So much. His erection is hard and hot against his belly, but he ignores it; doesn’t even try to will it away and accepts his ordeal with good grace. He’s already falling asleep when Lincoln lifts one of his arms into the light of the bedside lamp to see more clearly the small pinkish indents Sara’s nails left in his flesh.
“You remember when I told Sara that sometimes, I wanted your cock in me?” Lincoln says while moving on the bed, like a gigantic, threatening cat prowling for his prey.
Michael doesn’t answer, doesn’t need to. It’s the kind of statement that sticks with you, and Linc knows it. He gasps, willingly lies on his back, and settles into the mattress to brace himself for Lincoln - not to escape him, never to escape him, always eager to take whatever Linc has in store for him. What’s coming is obvious and makes his heart beat wildly. Lincoln kisses him, straddles him and sinks onto him, too tight, too fast, almost painful. Hardly any preparation at all, and it burns, burns both of them, but of course, this is what Linc wants. And if that’s what Linc wants, then it’s what Michael wants too.
“I want it tonight,” Lincoln concludes unnecessarily.
- - - - -
“When did it start?” Sara wants to know.
“Never.” She considers Lincoln with skepticism above the rim of her shades, so he explains, “It’s always been... here.”
“What you’re telling me is that you can’t remember the first time you kissed your brother?”
“I kissed my brother a lot of times.”
Sara’s not amused. At all. “Nor the first time you bedded him?”
“Said brother is right here,” Michael points out from his beach towel, not bothering moving or looking at them.
“Tan, be pretty and shut up,” Lincoln instructs him, which makes Sara giggle. “I do remember the last time I bedded him, though. He smelled like you.”
“Sorry to impede your sexual drive by spreading my female smell all over him.”
They banter. They always banter. It’s always on a very fine line between complicity and open fight, and Michael found out quick enough that it was better if he stayed out of it. As Lincoln’s remark just reminded him. So he bites his tongue and doesn’t quip a word. Sometimes, he feels like a kid in a grown-ups’ argument; sometimes he feels like he is the grown-up in a kids’ rivalry. Most of the time, though, he thinks that if he loves them more than anything else, it’s obviously reciprocated for them to go to such lengths - and the best, the least, he can do, then, is to shut up and cherish it.
“You smell good,” Lincoln tells Sara. “You smell great. It kind of increases my sexual drive, babe. That said, you’ve started to use lotion, soap or whatever smelling stronger since...”
She leans up on her elbows and lifts an eyebrow. Michael burrows his head between his arms to hide a smile because Lincoln’s right; she’s been marking her territory. They can hardly reproach her for that.
“Do you remember the first time with him?” she demands again.
“Yes.” Lincoln huffs with exasperation.
“Do I want to know?”
Lincoln doesn’t think twice about that one. “I don’t think so.”
“I still don’t get it.”
Michael considers telling her about need and yearning embedded deep in their bones, growing up being the only one always there for the other and dysfunctional love finding its expression in the most inappropriate yet mind-blowing way; but he abides by his shutting-up rule. Later, one day. It wouldn’t explain it; anyway, it would merely expose the craziness of it a bit more.
“Welcome to the club,” Lincoln murmurs before patting her shoulder blade.
Michael likes the visual of Lincoln’s big hand on her smooth skin a bit too much.
- - - - -
Maybe it’s in order to get it that Sara starts lurking in the shadows - or in full light, as a matter of fact, she’s not sneaky about it - when he and Lincoln are together. She stands or sits, starts stealing glances and ends up watching straightforwardly as the two of them exchange a few grunts and words - their version of a conversation - sit, work or laze around together, kiss and touch. Over the days, her face and eyes go from shocked to fascinated, to complicit and jealous at the same time until they eventually lit up with a kind of glint Michael knows all too well and loves. Her fingers move from pressing her temples and her chest to touching her mouth in conjecture, relaxing after a while and then sliding down her hips on their own volition; stopping at her hipbones as if she doesn’t exactly knows what to do with herself at that point.
Michael doesn’t know what she can see when she spies on them, beside sweaty skin and muscles, bodies slotting together and burning need. She won’t tell. But she must see something beyond lust and sex to switch from unable to compute to willing to go along, and then from understanding to involvement.
Eventually, she breaks all their rules and slips into Lincoln’s bedroom. The bedroom Lincoln shares with Michael three days a week. One would have thought that if one of them should break the rules, it would be Lincoln because it’s not like Lincoln is good with following rules.
Of course, it’s not like Sara is that good with them either, considering she walked eyes wide open into a peculiar kind of ménage à trois with her brother-in-law.
She strolls across the room as silently as that day on the beach, until she stands by the bed and stares. Lincoln startles but doesn’t bother pulling up the sheets to cover his bare ass. Between the exams at Fox River, a couple of beach incidents and all her barely hidden peeking, she’s seen it before anyway. Never from so close, clenching rhythmically as he thrusts into Michael, though; with Michael’s nails digging into the strong muscles to egg him on.
Both men turn towards her; tear themselves from their enthrallment with one another to let her in.
With slow, deliberate gestures, she draws a small armchair closer to the bed and sits. The buttons of her good-girl flowery dress are open high on her long legs, undone low and showing her cleavage, skin smooth and almost glossy in the soft light. Michael is positive she’s not wearing a bra, and he wonders if she even kept her panties on. He bites the side of Lincoln’s neck as a surge of arousal goes straight to his groin and rolls his hips up.
Lincoln drives into him with renewed fervor, a bit deeper, a bit harder as if to punish and reward him all at once for his wife’s indiscretion. He growls into Michael’s mouth that she’s one filthy, sexy Peeping Tom, loud enough for her to hear. Michael throws her a pleading glance, wanting her to touch him and knowing she won’t. She sits with her legs crossed and her hands politely folded on her knees, a picture of good manners, and she fucking won’t touch him.
A sob almost breaks out of Michael’s chest when Lincoln slows down and reverts to a maddeningly idle cadence.
“What do you want from me, Sara?” Lincoln asks her, an echo of their previous conversation.
Michael can barely hear their words above the white noise in his skull. Sara’s hands unfold; one of them flies to the chair arm and grips it.
She squirms in her seat, her thighs pressed together, her free hand gliding between them high, but not quite high enough.
“Push him hard. Ruin him for anyone else but us.”
Lincoln grins at her.
It doesn’t take much, really. Between Lincoln’s merciless thrusts and Sara’s dark, possessive demand, it really doesn’t take much.
Both of them probably knew it when Linc asked and Sara answered.
- - - - -
He opens his eyes a few minutes later to see Lincoln, spent and sweaty but still alert, grab Sara’s wrist and stop her from touching herself. In a swift gesture, he lifts her from the armchair and moves her onto the bed as if she weights nothing; pushes her onto her back and pins her down when she tries to sit up.
She’s not happy with that.
They fight for a few seconds. Sara kicks and twists under Lincoln, hisses and threatens him when his softening cock comes to rest against her stomach. Michael swallows hard and thinks that it shouldn’t turn him on; hopefully, it wouldn’t turn him on if Sara really meant every kick and twisting attempt to get away. Lincoln squeezes her breasts, caresses her ribcage and her hips, and dips a hand between her legs. He grins triumphantly at what he finds here, and Sara looks daggers at him.
“It’s supposed to be about Michael, not about me,” she breathes out, wrestling to push his hands off her.
“But it is about you,” Lincoln counters her. “And about me. And about him, yes, but not only. It can’t work if it’s only about him, or you wouldn’t have sneaked in on us tonight.” He bows down to whisper something Michael can’t hear but that has her calmed down and makes them watch him sideways and smirk.
Sara wraps her fingers around Lincoln’s neck and kisses him deep and sloppy before lying back and relaxing into the messy bedding. They don’t pay attention to Michael. He can feel their heat, and smell their sweat and musk, hear their breathing and Sara’s small whimpers. He doesn’t speak; he watches.
Linc is quick to take care of the few buttons still holding Sara’s dress half closed. His brother is good with his hands, Michael should know and Sara is finding out as he runs them down the length of her body. They catch the swell of a full breast, roughen a nipple, graze the moist and velvety skin of her belly, and Michael’s mouth waters at the same time that his head throbs in anger.
The thin dress is the only hindrance because he was right - no bra, no panties; it opens on lean muscles and succulent curves like a curtain falling. Sara stretches out wantonly, and Lincoln doesn’t linger, doesn’t play with her the way he played with Michael. He’s already exhausted, and Sara is so strung out that he has to be careful not to tip her over the edge right away.
She parts her legs for him willingly, eagerly even, now. He fits here neatly, settling between her thighs, burrowing his head between them, and he noses and licks the salted moisture on her skin.
“Even her dress is damp with it,” he informs Michael, looking up at him. “She’s a mess. Sopping wet and so tasty. I hope you eat her out every chance you have, you lucky bastard.”
“Asshole,” Sara spits out.
Engrossed by the image they offer, Michael doesn’t say anything and sits up to get a better angle. Sara’s calves are pressed into Lincoln’s broad shoulders, her whole body coiling and uncoiling as Lincoln holds her open for both of them. For him to taste her and for Michael to watch. Michael wants him to stop now; or maybe he wants Lincoln to dive for it right now and makes her moan, the louder-lewder-crazier, the better.
“Please, Linc.”
Knowing she won’t, Michael says it for her in a surprisingly steady voice, and Lincoln nuzzles between her thighs.
She grinds down onto Lincoln’s face, any shred of modesty and restraint forgotten. One of her hands pushes his head tighter against her while the other shoots up to find an impossible purchase on the bedpost; hips rolling frantically, she’s gone and screaming in few swirls and strokes of Lincoln’s tongue.
Michael groans in tandem with her as she shakes beneath Lincoln’s ministrations, heart pounding in his chest. Jealousy, desire and understanding flare and merge. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to totally separate them, and get rid of the jealousy. Maybe he’s not supposed to; maybe it’s meant to remind him how they feel. He knows how it is to be Sara right now, and he knows how it is to be Lincoln. He wants to be Sara and he wants to be Lincoln. He wants to be each of them; he wants to be between them. Crushed, squeezed, pressed, used, loved, and loving them.
He doesn’t touch them while she’s riding her orgasm and Lincoln is trying to prolong it. He waits until after she’s gone limp and pink-flush from head to toe next to him to kiss her, then to kiss Lincoln and taste her on his tongue, smell her on his face.
He knows what’s coming next, tomorrow morning.
- - - - -
It all happens in slow-motion, languid and dirty and blissful.
Sara has been waiting for him to wake up; necessarily, because the minute he opens his eyes, she moves across the bed and straddles Lincoln’s lap. Takes him into her. Just a few ups-and-downs, a few seconds, a few grunts before she rolls off him and pushes Michael’s face into Lincoln’s lower stomach.
“This is what you wanted, right? Him and me, mingled.”
He complies, does as they tell him, takes Lincoln in his mouth, and basks in the reward of their satisfied murmurs. Lincoln is hard and velvety between his lips, Sara’s delicate hand so strong and sure on his neck; their combined tastes burst on his tongue. Bliss. He looks up at them. Flashes of anger still shine in their eyes at times, and will keep shining, but the anger subsides with their own desire for him and for one another.
He slides into Sara, slow and easy; her hands are on his ass, spreading him open and offered for Lincoln’s cock. It’s all the invitation Lincoln needs to press into him. The two of them trap him and move in unison, Sara arching up when Lincoln is pushing down. Not enough strength left in him to groan, even less shout of pleasure, Michael rests his face in the crook of Sara’s neck and revels in the weight of Lincoln’s chest against his back.
He comes first; clenches around Lincoln and spills into Sara. Delicious jealousy burning him because, after he’s spent, Lincoln is still fucking him into Sara, and it makes her whimper and thrash in the sheets. Both of them fumble for his hand at the same time as they follow him fast, fast and hard and panting, open palms sliding on his skin and fingers entwining with his.
He breathes in and lets their pleasure ripple throughout him.
- - - - -
“We may need to rethink that stupid schedule,” Sara says very seriously from beneath them.
- - - - -
There are tensions, small and not so small, and laughs; easy teasing and stealthy dark looks; heart-stopping jealousy and overwhelming pleasure; hints of rivalry and boundless love and affection. It’s not perfect anymore. It never will be perfect anymore, but as sarcastic as she was, Sara had it right; perfection is overrated.
- - - - -
For months, he had imagined that it was about Sara and him for one part, Lincoln and him for another, and his inability to take a decision and stick to it altogether. He was wrong. He was egocentric too, but that is another story. He used to be a structural engineer: he should have remembered sooner that more often than not, things work in synergy. Instead, he broke the situation into small pieces, peered and scrutinized them, and neglected the bigger picture. Yet, it was so easy to see. It’s more than Sara and him, Linc and him, and - damn - once a week Sara and Linc. Synergy. The superiority of engineering, architecture and relationships over basic arithmetic? The total exceeds the sum of the parts.
-End-
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