"The Secrets We Keep" for ferrynheit
Title: The Secrets We Keep
Rating: NC17
Character/pairing: Michael/T-Bag
Requested by: ferrynheit
Summary: Michael thinks about what has been and what is.
Author’s Notes: Not brutally true to the prompts, but I did my best. Pretty dark/sad.
Once upon a time Michael told Lincoln all his secrets. Lincoln is still the only one who knows that Michael used to wet his bed every night until he turned twelve and that he kept doing it every now and then until he was fifteen. Lincoln used to know everything, but now he knows nothing. He might think he does that he’s got Michael all figured out and sometimes Michael almost chokes on all the lies. He was twenty and Lincoln was just out of jail when Michael first started keeping secrets because he realized that Lincoln would just never understand. Full of excitement to have his brother back safe and sound Michael had been brimming to tell him all that had happened while he was gone and he really tried his best. He told Lincoln about his first time with a girl and how awful and icky it had been, but Lincoln just laughed and said that Michael would learn to love it and that everyone had conflicting emotions about their first time. Somehow that made Michael bite down on the second part of his statement about his first time with a man, because he got a feeling that Lincoln wouldn’t want to know.
Years later Michael was still keeping that secret and even though he suspected that Lincoln actually did know about his preferences, the older brother seemed happy with not knowing for sure. Besides it was not like Michael could take the type of men he preferred home to meet his brother, so slowly the gap between them started growing until it felt like they didn’t really know each other at all anymore. He thinks of this and many other things as he tries to not let the cold concrete floor underneath his naked body and the aching wrist cuffed to a pipe get to him. He thinks about prison, about the escape and the aftermath that turned out to be nothing like he expected. He smiles and shifts slightly as he remembers the look on Lincoln’s face when Veronica and LJ caught up with them at the airport in Guam and he keeps smiling even though it hurts when he remembers the fact that Lincoln never even questioned that he wasn’t coming with them. Maybe his brother does know him after all, or maybe he saw through the lies and defences and decided his little family would be better of without the darkness inside of his younger brother. He’s far away now, and Michael doesn’t think he’ll ever see him again.
It hurts to think that if he met Lincoln in ten years they would be strangers to each other; his brother has always been such a big part of his life, but in a way he thinks that maybe it’s for the best. This way they will always have the memory of each other and all the good times they’ve had without the secrets and the lies sitting in between them making things awkward and uncomfortable. Michael shifts again trying to ease the numbness of his aching muscles and the chain rattles against the pipe. It’s the first sound he’s heard in a few hours, the cold and damp cellar is almost completely sound proof, so he does it again. After a while he grows tired of the sound of metal against metal and he grows quiet again, lying still staring out into the darkness. A little light is seeping through around the corners of the boarded up windows and he can see just enough to make out the shapes in his dark little prison. He doesn’t mind the darkness and the quiet though, because he knows that his punishment will soon be over and he’ll be let back out into the light and warmth.
He swallows thickly trying to do something about his dry throat and the collar around his neck chafes slightly, making a shiver of excitement go through his body. The collar means slave, but it also means safe and owned which is what Michael has been wanting all along. He knows he’s not the only person in the world that wants this, but it feels like he might be. Still he knew the second the collar went around his neck that this is what he’s been longing for his entire life. The extreme feeling of love and gratitude that washed through him as he sank to the floor at his master’s feet equals nothing he’s ever experienced and he is pretty sure nothing ever will come close. The collar is made out of soft black leather with a flowing pattern burnt into the shiny surface. A sliver charm with his name on was hanging from the front of the collar and it was the prettiest thing Michael had ever owned. If he got to choose he would wear it all times, but so far his Master had made him take it off whenever he went out in to the public. Michael swallows again, just to feel the delicious chafe of the collar and painstakingly gets up into sitting position, his cold and numb muscles reluctant to obey.
He wonders what Lincoln would say if he could see him now, what thoughts would run through his head. Somehow he doesn’t think that Lincoln would believe the witness of his eyes; the picture he has of Michael is far more pure and angelic. To him Michael is the saviour and a saint, and Michael much prefers him to keep that picture.
The door to the cellar opens and Michael blinks, his eyes assaulted by the bright light flooding down over him.
“Did you learn your lesson?” the master asks and a pleasant shiver goes through Michael. He wonders if he’ll get a reward for being a good boy.
“Yes Master,” he croaks, his voice roughened by the dusty air.
The Master just stands there looking at him for a while and Michael gets an almost unstoppable urge to wag his ass like he had a tail. Then the waiting is finally over and the master slowly descends the stairs until he is standing beside Michael, looking down at him. Michael doesn’t grovel because the master doesn’t like that. He told Michael once that it’s the steel in Michael that attracts him, the icy core under the easily bruised surface. Michael might be a slave, but his spirit has never been broken. Finally the master bends down and undoes the cuff around Michael’s bruised wrist, massaging the reddened skin with gentle fingers.
“Come here Pretty,” he says softly helping Michael to his wobbly feet.
With joint efforts they get Michael up the stairs into the sunshine of the bedroom. Michael thinks the bed looks inviting, but he knows better then to get on it without permission. Unbidden Michael starts thinking of their first encounter long before they escaped and T-Bag became master.
Michael was attracted to T-Bag from the first time he met him, an attraction bordering on obsession. Everything about the older man intrigued him and even though the thoughts of all the bad things T-Bag had done made his insides crawl there was no denying the power the other man had over him. T-Bag saw it right away of course, the lingering desire in Michael’s eyes no matter how casual he pretended to be, but he took his sweet time acting on it. It was not until after T-bag had joined the PI crew and they found themselves alone for a few minutes that the older man made his move. They had been arguing about something, Michael could no longer remember what, when T-Bag had suddenly turned on him and pressed him up against the wall. Michael fought of course but only because it was expected of him, inside red hot desire was welling up clouding his senses until nothing existed but the places where their bodies were in contact. T-Bag's pelvis against his ass, hot breath against his ear, chiselled chest against his back and rough hands on his chest.
“Don’t even try to tell me you don’t want it,” T-Bag had rasped against his ear, sending shivers down Michael’s back and making him achingly hard. “I see how you look at me Pretty. I see the want in your eyes.”
“I don’t want you,” Michael lied.
T-Bag just chuckled and let one of his hands slide down to rest over Michael’s prominent erection. “Yes you do Pretty. You just don’t want anyone to know about it.”
Michael had closed his eyes then, giving in to the pleasure of T-Bag's hand kneading his erection and the puffs of hot breath licking his ear. It took him approximately twenty seconds to come, creaming his pants like a horny teenagers and T-Bag had owned him in a way no one else ever had since then. Their encounters had been few and brief but for every one Michael had come deeper under T-Bag's thrall until he could not imagine a life without him. After the escape Michael’s stress levels had been so high that it had taken months of peace and quiet with his master for him to feel even remotely human again. Now they had been on the run for over two years and had made themselves a quiet little life far away from western civilization.
“What are you thinking about?” T-Bag suddenly asks shaking Michael out of his stupor.
“Our first… encounter,” Michael answers because when the master asks a question you always answer.
T-Bag smiles a little, tilting his head to the side. “What made you think of that?”
Michael shrugs. “I was just thinking, you know.”
T-Bag smiles again one of his soft warm smiles that show he’s in a good mood. Michael smiles back, shivering when T-Bag steps closer to press a kiss just under his jaw. Calloused hands travel up Michael’s sides making the skin prickle wherever they touch until they reach his delicate collarbones. The hands pause there while T-Bag presses another kiss to Michael’s jaw, just below the ear. Michael sighs in pleasure tilting his head back to give his master better access to his neck.
“I remember our first encounter,” T-Bag rasps. “I remember how hot you were for me and how loath you were to admit it.”
T-Bag's silky drawl ignites a fire in Michael’s bloodstream. Sometimes it feels like T-Bag is a drug that Michael needs to survive and every time they touch it’s like shooting up. Maybe this isn’t so much about love as it is about addiction, Michael is addicted to T-Bag and he doesn’t ever want it to stop. T-Bag lets his hands slide higher until they are touching the edges of the collar, tracing it around Michael’s vulnerable neck.
“Do you know why I was always attracted to children?” T-Bag asks as he finds the clasp of the collar, slowly unbuckling it.
“No,” Michael whispers, but he’s not sure if it’s to stop T-Bag from removing the collar, that he doesn’t know or that he doesn’t want to know or hear about it. He knows that T-Bag is a bad man; he knows that he has killed and molested children and even though the thought of it still makes him feel sick, he can’t bring himself to care. For the first time in his life Michael is caring only about himself and what he wants.
“It’s their innocence,” T-Bag says. “The purity of their souls. I want it, I want to own it. So I tear them apart to find it and make it mine.”
The collar comes free and T-Bag tosses it to the corner. Michael feels naked without it, vulnerable, like he doesn’t really belong any more. “You have the same thing,” T-Bag murmurs, his hands going around Michael’s neck. “No matter what I do to you, you’re still pure inside.”
The hands around Michael’s neck tighten, making it difficult to breathe. Michael’s eyes flutter shut and he wonders if this is it, if they’ve reached the end of the line. This is how it will end, if not now so sometime in the future when T-Bag's desire to know what’s inside of Michael becomes too great to resist.
T-Bag loosens his grip letting his hands slide down and around Michael to pull him close. “No more games today,” he murmurs before kissing Michael, hard and desperate.
They back towards the bad as their tongues tangle and fight for dominance; desire curling between them and around them like it’s a living thing. When they fall Michael ends up on the bottom T-Bag weight forcing the air out of his lungs. He doesn’t let it stop him from tearing at T-Bag's clothes though, trying to get to the skin underneath. Finally he gives up, just pushing T-Bag's pants down enough to free his erection before pulling his legs up and apart, desperate to be fucked. There is a short pause while T-Bag slathers dome lube on his cock and then the glorious long slide inside. It stings and Michael’s muscles clamp down on the flesh impaling him making T-Bag groan low in his throat. There is no finesse about their coupling, no gentleness, but Michael never wanted that. He wants hard, fast, brutal and painful that is what makes him feel alive. T-Bag's hand finds Michael’s dripping erection, fisting it hard in time with his violent thrusts and Michael arches up moaning with pleasure. Nothing is better than this, this need they have for each other. It’s the only time where Michael is able to fool himself that maybe there is a future for them that stretches beyond now and the necessity of staying hidden. That maybe he will be enough and T-Bag will never have to tear him up to see how he works, that maybe T-Bag loves him after all and not just get off of having the power over him.
It doesn’t take long before Michael is coming in deep trembling waves, coating his belly and T-Bag's clothes with his seed. T-Bag follows shortly thereafter pushed over the edge by Michael’s screams and his shaking body. For the longest of whiles, nothing is heard but their panted breaths as they slowly wind down from their high, T-Bag lying limply on Michael’s chest pressing him down into the mattress. Then he moves, rolling of Michael to rest beside him, staring up at the roof.
“This is pretty good you know,” he says, moving one of his hands to rest on top of Michael’s.
“What is?” Michael asks.
“This… You, me… The house. It feels calm. I don’t know, peaceful?”
Michael smiles slightly. “Yeah it’s good.”
They turn their heads at the same time to look at each other, the beauty and the beast.
“We’re good together,” T-Bag says, giving Michael the confirmation he’s been longing so desperately for.
“Yes,” Michael says, letting his fingers curl around T-Bag's hand. “Good together.”
They both know it won’t last forever that one day Michael’s eyes will stare blankly at the roof while T-Bag's tears mingle with the blood on his hands, but that day is far off yet and maybe, just maybe, it will never come.
As he drifts off to sleep Michael finds himself thinking of Lincoln again, the brother that was once his everything. He wonders if he would be here now if Lincoln had been another type of person, if he had not tried to escape from Michael and his responsibilities through drugs and crime. Would Michael be so happy giving up all control now if had not spent the better part of his life as a control freak, making sure no details slipped past him? He supposes it doesn’t matter and he’s not blaming his brother for anything. He did the best he could, the same way Michael used to do. With a silent smile Michael internally says a last goodbye to his brother and the man he used to be. Maybe Lincoln will be at his funeral some day, maybe he’ll never know Michael slipped away. Either way they’ve said all the goodbyes they’ll ever say and Michael no longer has to keep any secrets.
Thank you for participating! :)
Rating: NC17
Character/pairing: Michael/T-Bag
Requested by: ferrynheit
Summary: Michael thinks about what has been and what is.
Author’s Notes: Not brutally true to the prompts, but I did my best. Pretty dark/sad.
Once upon a time Michael told Lincoln all his secrets. Lincoln is still the only one who knows that Michael used to wet his bed every night until he turned twelve and that he kept doing it every now and then until he was fifteen. Lincoln used to know everything, but now he knows nothing. He might think he does that he’s got Michael all figured out and sometimes Michael almost chokes on all the lies. He was twenty and Lincoln was just out of jail when Michael first started keeping secrets because he realized that Lincoln would just never understand. Full of excitement to have his brother back safe and sound Michael had been brimming to tell him all that had happened while he was gone and he really tried his best. He told Lincoln about his first time with a girl and how awful and icky it had been, but Lincoln just laughed and said that Michael would learn to love it and that everyone had conflicting emotions about their first time. Somehow that made Michael bite down on the second part of his statement about his first time with a man, because he got a feeling that Lincoln wouldn’t want to know.
Years later Michael was still keeping that secret and even though he suspected that Lincoln actually did know about his preferences, the older brother seemed happy with not knowing for sure. Besides it was not like Michael could take the type of men he preferred home to meet his brother, so slowly the gap between them started growing until it felt like they didn’t really know each other at all anymore. He thinks of this and many other things as he tries to not let the cold concrete floor underneath his naked body and the aching wrist cuffed to a pipe get to him. He thinks about prison, about the escape and the aftermath that turned out to be nothing like he expected. He smiles and shifts slightly as he remembers the look on Lincoln’s face when Veronica and LJ caught up with them at the airport in Guam and he keeps smiling even though it hurts when he remembers the fact that Lincoln never even questioned that he wasn’t coming with them. Maybe his brother does know him after all, or maybe he saw through the lies and defences and decided his little family would be better of without the darkness inside of his younger brother. He’s far away now, and Michael doesn’t think he’ll ever see him again.
It hurts to think that if he met Lincoln in ten years they would be strangers to each other; his brother has always been such a big part of his life, but in a way he thinks that maybe it’s for the best. This way they will always have the memory of each other and all the good times they’ve had without the secrets and the lies sitting in between them making things awkward and uncomfortable. Michael shifts again trying to ease the numbness of his aching muscles and the chain rattles against the pipe. It’s the first sound he’s heard in a few hours, the cold and damp cellar is almost completely sound proof, so he does it again. After a while he grows tired of the sound of metal against metal and he grows quiet again, lying still staring out into the darkness. A little light is seeping through around the corners of the boarded up windows and he can see just enough to make out the shapes in his dark little prison. He doesn’t mind the darkness and the quiet though, because he knows that his punishment will soon be over and he’ll be let back out into the light and warmth.
He swallows thickly trying to do something about his dry throat and the collar around his neck chafes slightly, making a shiver of excitement go through his body. The collar means slave, but it also means safe and owned which is what Michael has been wanting all along. He knows he’s not the only person in the world that wants this, but it feels like he might be. Still he knew the second the collar went around his neck that this is what he’s been longing for his entire life. The extreme feeling of love and gratitude that washed through him as he sank to the floor at his master’s feet equals nothing he’s ever experienced and he is pretty sure nothing ever will come close. The collar is made out of soft black leather with a flowing pattern burnt into the shiny surface. A sliver charm with his name on was hanging from the front of the collar and it was the prettiest thing Michael had ever owned. If he got to choose he would wear it all times, but so far his Master had made him take it off whenever he went out in to the public. Michael swallows again, just to feel the delicious chafe of the collar and painstakingly gets up into sitting position, his cold and numb muscles reluctant to obey.
He wonders what Lincoln would say if he could see him now, what thoughts would run through his head. Somehow he doesn’t think that Lincoln would believe the witness of his eyes; the picture he has of Michael is far more pure and angelic. To him Michael is the saviour and a saint, and Michael much prefers him to keep that picture.
The door to the cellar opens and Michael blinks, his eyes assaulted by the bright light flooding down over him.
“Did you learn your lesson?” the master asks and a pleasant shiver goes through Michael. He wonders if he’ll get a reward for being a good boy.
“Yes Master,” he croaks, his voice roughened by the dusty air.
The Master just stands there looking at him for a while and Michael gets an almost unstoppable urge to wag his ass like he had a tail. Then the waiting is finally over and the master slowly descends the stairs until he is standing beside Michael, looking down at him. Michael doesn’t grovel because the master doesn’t like that. He told Michael once that it’s the steel in Michael that attracts him, the icy core under the easily bruised surface. Michael might be a slave, but his spirit has never been broken. Finally the master bends down and undoes the cuff around Michael’s bruised wrist, massaging the reddened skin with gentle fingers.
“Come here Pretty,” he says softly helping Michael to his wobbly feet.
With joint efforts they get Michael up the stairs into the sunshine of the bedroom. Michael thinks the bed looks inviting, but he knows better then to get on it without permission. Unbidden Michael starts thinking of their first encounter long before they escaped and T-Bag became master.
Michael was attracted to T-Bag from the first time he met him, an attraction bordering on obsession. Everything about the older man intrigued him and even though the thoughts of all the bad things T-Bag had done made his insides crawl there was no denying the power the other man had over him. T-Bag saw it right away of course, the lingering desire in Michael’s eyes no matter how casual he pretended to be, but he took his sweet time acting on it. It was not until after T-bag had joined the PI crew and they found themselves alone for a few minutes that the older man made his move. They had been arguing about something, Michael could no longer remember what, when T-Bag had suddenly turned on him and pressed him up against the wall. Michael fought of course but only because it was expected of him, inside red hot desire was welling up clouding his senses until nothing existed but the places where their bodies were in contact. T-Bag's pelvis against his ass, hot breath against his ear, chiselled chest against his back and rough hands on his chest.
“Don’t even try to tell me you don’t want it,” T-Bag had rasped against his ear, sending shivers down Michael’s back and making him achingly hard. “I see how you look at me Pretty. I see the want in your eyes.”
“I don’t want you,” Michael lied.
T-Bag just chuckled and let one of his hands slide down to rest over Michael’s prominent erection. “Yes you do Pretty. You just don’t want anyone to know about it.”
Michael had closed his eyes then, giving in to the pleasure of T-Bag's hand kneading his erection and the puffs of hot breath licking his ear. It took him approximately twenty seconds to come, creaming his pants like a horny teenagers and T-Bag had owned him in a way no one else ever had since then. Their encounters had been few and brief but for every one Michael had come deeper under T-Bag's thrall until he could not imagine a life without him. After the escape Michael’s stress levels had been so high that it had taken months of peace and quiet with his master for him to feel even remotely human again. Now they had been on the run for over two years and had made themselves a quiet little life far away from western civilization.
“What are you thinking about?” T-Bag suddenly asks shaking Michael out of his stupor.
“Our first… encounter,” Michael answers because when the master asks a question you always answer.
T-Bag smiles a little, tilting his head to the side. “What made you think of that?”
Michael shrugs. “I was just thinking, you know.”
T-Bag smiles again one of his soft warm smiles that show he’s in a good mood. Michael smiles back, shivering when T-Bag steps closer to press a kiss just under his jaw. Calloused hands travel up Michael’s sides making the skin prickle wherever they touch until they reach his delicate collarbones. The hands pause there while T-Bag presses another kiss to Michael’s jaw, just below the ear. Michael sighs in pleasure tilting his head back to give his master better access to his neck.
“I remember our first encounter,” T-Bag rasps. “I remember how hot you were for me and how loath you were to admit it.”
T-Bag's silky drawl ignites a fire in Michael’s bloodstream. Sometimes it feels like T-Bag is a drug that Michael needs to survive and every time they touch it’s like shooting up. Maybe this isn’t so much about love as it is about addiction, Michael is addicted to T-Bag and he doesn’t ever want it to stop. T-Bag lets his hands slide higher until they are touching the edges of the collar, tracing it around Michael’s vulnerable neck.
“Do you know why I was always attracted to children?” T-Bag asks as he finds the clasp of the collar, slowly unbuckling it.
“No,” Michael whispers, but he’s not sure if it’s to stop T-Bag from removing the collar, that he doesn’t know or that he doesn’t want to know or hear about it. He knows that T-Bag is a bad man; he knows that he has killed and molested children and even though the thought of it still makes him feel sick, he can’t bring himself to care. For the first time in his life Michael is caring only about himself and what he wants.
“It’s their innocence,” T-Bag says. “The purity of their souls. I want it, I want to own it. So I tear them apart to find it and make it mine.”
The collar comes free and T-Bag tosses it to the corner. Michael feels naked without it, vulnerable, like he doesn’t really belong any more. “You have the same thing,” T-Bag murmurs, his hands going around Michael’s neck. “No matter what I do to you, you’re still pure inside.”
The hands around Michael’s neck tighten, making it difficult to breathe. Michael’s eyes flutter shut and he wonders if this is it, if they’ve reached the end of the line. This is how it will end, if not now so sometime in the future when T-Bag's desire to know what’s inside of Michael becomes too great to resist.
T-Bag loosens his grip letting his hands slide down and around Michael to pull him close. “No more games today,” he murmurs before kissing Michael, hard and desperate.
They back towards the bad as their tongues tangle and fight for dominance; desire curling between them and around them like it’s a living thing. When they fall Michael ends up on the bottom T-Bag weight forcing the air out of his lungs. He doesn’t let it stop him from tearing at T-Bag's clothes though, trying to get to the skin underneath. Finally he gives up, just pushing T-Bag's pants down enough to free his erection before pulling his legs up and apart, desperate to be fucked. There is a short pause while T-Bag slathers dome lube on his cock and then the glorious long slide inside. It stings and Michael’s muscles clamp down on the flesh impaling him making T-Bag groan low in his throat. There is no finesse about their coupling, no gentleness, but Michael never wanted that. He wants hard, fast, brutal and painful that is what makes him feel alive. T-Bag's hand finds Michael’s dripping erection, fisting it hard in time with his violent thrusts and Michael arches up moaning with pleasure. Nothing is better than this, this need they have for each other. It’s the only time where Michael is able to fool himself that maybe there is a future for them that stretches beyond now and the necessity of staying hidden. That maybe he will be enough and T-Bag will never have to tear him up to see how he works, that maybe T-Bag loves him after all and not just get off of having the power over him.
It doesn’t take long before Michael is coming in deep trembling waves, coating his belly and T-Bag's clothes with his seed. T-Bag follows shortly thereafter pushed over the edge by Michael’s screams and his shaking body. For the longest of whiles, nothing is heard but their panted breaths as they slowly wind down from their high, T-Bag lying limply on Michael’s chest pressing him down into the mattress. Then he moves, rolling of Michael to rest beside him, staring up at the roof.
“This is pretty good you know,” he says, moving one of his hands to rest on top of Michael’s.
“What is?” Michael asks.
“This… You, me… The house. It feels calm. I don’t know, peaceful?”
Michael smiles slightly. “Yeah it’s good.”
They turn their heads at the same time to look at each other, the beauty and the beast.
“We’re good together,” T-Bag says, giving Michael the confirmation he’s been longing so desperately for.
“Yes,” Michael says, letting his fingers curl around T-Bag's hand. “Good together.”
They both know it won’t last forever that one day Michael’s eyes will stare blankly at the roof while T-Bag's tears mingle with the blood on his hands, but that day is far off yet and maybe, just maybe, it will never come.
As he drifts off to sleep Michael finds himself thinking of Lincoln again, the brother that was once his everything. He wonders if he would be here now if Lincoln had been another type of person, if he had not tried to escape from Michael and his responsibilities through drugs and crime. Would Michael be so happy giving up all control now if had not spent the better part of his life as a control freak, making sure no details slipped past him? He supposes it doesn’t matter and he’s not blaming his brother for anything. He did the best he could, the same way Michael used to do. With a silent smile Michael internally says a last goodbye to his brother and the man he used to be. Maybe Lincoln will be at his funeral some day, maybe he’ll never know Michael slipped away. Either way they’ve said all the goodbyes they’ll ever say and Michael no longer has to keep any secrets.
Thank you for participating! :)