Fic: Breathe Love (5/9)
Sep. 8th, 2006 11:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aeroport_artTitle: Breathe Love (5/9)
Pairing: Michael/Lincoln
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aeroport_art
Rating: R
Spoilers: Up to 2.03 but mild AU throughout
Word Count: 3,836
Disclaimer: Prison Break is not mine, obviously. And I am not making any money from this, obviously.
Notes: I've been working on this all evening! A chapter a day, am I cool or what (ha). Well, hurrah for summer (although I did have work today and tomorrow...). Anyway comme toujours, feedback = love!
Summary: Michael has always wanted his brother, and Lincoln has to wrestle with the responsibility of a reciprocated love that can never be... or can it? Spanning two decades, this story attempts to explain Michael/Lincoln within the confines of canon.
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
6 months later (September 1990)
It was one o’clock on a Monday afternoon and Lincoln had doubled back home for a quick lunch. Letting himself in, he quickly assembled a sandwich and plopped down on the couch for twenty minutes of rest with his BLT and whatever was on the sports channel. He wolfed the meal down with one eye on the clock, downed his coke and then hurriedly made to leave again so that he would get to the garage before lunch break was over. As he gathered his wallet and keys, a sharp double-knock resounded through the door.
Lincoln peered through the peephole before opening the door for the casually dressed man.
“Hello, can I help you?” He asked hastily, willing to make the stranger to state his business concisely and then leave.
“Yes, actually. I just came to drop this off, it wound up with our mail but we’re two floors up,” he replied, handing over an ordinary-looking piece of mail.
“Huh. Well thanks for coming all the way over,” he said, holding the envelope up as the neighbor departed. Then he quickly shut the door behind himself, locked it, and rushed to his black Mustang. By the time he had gotten to work and resumed tinkering with the problematic car they’d had been dealing with for weeks, the innocuous envelope sitting in his passenger car seat gradually fell away from his mind.
-----
Michael Scofield was in very, very high spirits. He’d nearly skipped his way back home, bursting with impatience to see his big brother so he could show off the final project he’d just gotten back from the teacher. The one that had taken months for him and Samantha to build, the one that they’d gotten an A+ on with gushing comments of adulation in bold red ink decorating the grading sheet. He looked at the big happy face with the enthusiastic circle around it and smirked at his own ingenuity. Well, Sam had helped but really she was just the labor and he was all the smarts.
Careful not to drop or crush the delicate model, Michael balanced it on his hip and dug his key out of his backpack, unlocking the knob with one hand and pushing the door open. Eyeing the advertisements and envelopes sticking out of the mailbox, he snatched them out, stuck them in his mouth and clambered inside.
With extreme fussiness he placed the model on their dining table. Centered? No, too banal. In the corner? Now it just looked unbalanced. Finally he settled for placing it at the end of the table and minutely angled it so that it didn’t look so deliberate. Furthermore the lighting would be just right when Lincoln got home, with the sunset slanting into their windows around 6:30 pm and illuminating the varnish in an orange glow. Satisfied, he turned back to the mail and went through them systematically, throwing out the “free” credit cards and vacation sweepstakes and segregating the bills for his brother in a neat pile. Then he picked through the rest, wrinkling his nose at the spam he’d been receiving from various colleges as of late.
He’d started getting them late last school year; colorful brochures from east coast universities or applications from the local schools, all informing him of this or that and “hurry and apply!” and really, he couldn’t give a rat’s ass about any of it. At first he was tempted to just toss it in the trash along with the other junk mail but then realizing that his brother might see them prevented him from treating them so casually. These were dangerous pieces of mail, he thought. They had the potential to make Lincoln think crazy thoughts and in the worst case scenario, even send him away for four years.
So, he pulled out the appropriate envelopes and went outside to toss them into the dumpster directly. Having completed that daily task, the boy went into the kitchen and made himself a grilled cheese sandwich before settling at the dining table to start his homework, eager to make a pleasing image for his brother to come home to; his cute young lover at the table being a good boy with an impressive wooden model beside him. He couldn’t wait to explain the meaning behind the model to his brother… he was sure to get some pampering tonight.
Soon his mind left such fanciful matters and he hunkered down to begin his AP History (ugh) assignment, deciding to get it out of the way first so that he wasn’t thinking about the Civil Rights Movement as he jerked his brother off.
-----
He had read the mail. After a long day of greasy work, he had gotten into his car and noticed the white envelope waiting patiently beside him. Finally giving it some attention, Lincoln roughly slit the top open with his finger and pulled out a thin pamphlet. Groups of politically correct students beamed up at him in front of a picturesque building and the words “Discover Yourself!” were jauntily scrawled over the top in bright yellow font. Addressed to Michael Scofield, he flipped the pamphlet open to see exactly what it was that his little brother was supposed to discover about himself.
Soon, he was skimming the paragraphs about programs and housing, blinking at the deluge of collegiate statistics presented before him. On one of the inner pages, a boy about Michael’s age had his arm slung around a laughing brunette and he slowly let the information process through his brain.
College. This was an advertisement for a college, mailed to his little brother. Because his little brother was a junior in high school and if he didn’t apply NOW (as the pamphlet emphasized), then he would be tough out of luck by the time he graduated. Still vaguely out of it, Lincoln fought through his work-tired mind and tried to digest what this exactly meant for his brother. What it meant for them.
Suddenly, everything seemed to click together. His brother was a junior in high school and college applications were due in a few scant months (he remembered sitting through the laborious process with Veronica four years ago), and Michael hadn’t even broached the subject with him at all. He needed to go home and kick the younger boy’s butt into gear, because there was no way in hell that his brainy baby brother would be missing out on the chance to make something of himself, maybe becoming a doctor (he knew his brother liked his math and science classes) or perhaps a lawyer, like V. At a university the bright teenager would be so prosperous, finally able to find something that challenged him mentally.
Lincoln sat dreamily, thinking about all the wonderful things a college education would bring his brother. A good career, maybe even some friends, a chance to really mature out of the bubble he’d been living in. He imagined himself visiting some far off campus to help his brother move in, trying to conjure up what it would be like to live with a college-educated sibling.
Well, not “live with” per se. Michael would be living in the dorms of course, which meant that he wouldn’t be here in Chicago. Hmm. His baby brother would be in the dorms… rooming with somebody his age. Attending classes with other intelligent kids, studying at the library with likeable peers. University students were nothing like the kids at Morton East High; Michael would finally meet people who could keep up with his independence… people who could talk books and politics with him unlike Lincoln, who would probably be working in the garage for likely the rest of his life. Working at a dead-end job, that was him; Michael’s older brother who touched him in inappropriate places and boxed him into a twisted lifestyle that in comparison with the blissfully ordinary life of a college student, suddenly seemed so wrong.
Lincoln shook his head to clear the upsetting digressions out, but unfortunately while his focus came back, one thing was still left painfully obvious.
Lincoln would have to leave Michael.
He would have to let him live a normal life, a good life that didn’t involve incest or squandering his potential away by working straight out of high school. He wanted Michael to be free to do anything and everything he wanted. He wanted to let his younger brother realize that the meaning of family, the meaning of happiness was not working at McDonald’s by day and fucking your older brother by night. If he truly loved his younger brother, really and truly wanted what was best for him, then he would show it by setting the boy free.
-----
Michael was just finishing up the last chemistry problem when Lincoln unlocked and sauntered into the kitchen. Head jerking up, the younger boy fought to contain the exuberance that he had been restraining all day and jumped up to cling to his big brother.
“Linc! Linc you’re finally home, you gotta see what I made for my final project!!” Michael babbled, pulling the larger boy towards the table. In his excitement he failed to notice the scent of cigarette smoke that lingered on his brother’s leather jacket, nor Lincoln’s uncomfortable frown and instead thought to himself, The lighting’s perfect. Ha.
The wooden structure glowed in the warm pool of orange that filtered through the kitchen window. Michael’s insistence on varnishing and then lacquering the model paid off enormously as the roof refracted the light and cast a blinding halo across the wall. The miniature house was painfully intricate in its ribbed door frame and individually-glued shingles and the removable top revealed walled off rooms that were spacious and planned in a creative yet functional manner. Admiring his own handiwork, Michael began explaining.
“So we had to make something that we wanted to eventually own for our French final and then present it. Other people came in with like Lego cars and other stupid stuff, but me and Samantha worked on this together,” he started, oblivious to Lincoln’s surprised glance at the name of another student. “But what I didn’t tell her was that what we were building was the model for our future house!”
Michael finally tore his eyes off his masterpiece and searched his older brother’s face for the delight that was sure to come.
“What do you mean?” was all he got.
Michael knit his brows and replied, “Well… Sam and I have been working on this after school for months now. I drew up all these plans for a house and looked up stuff like what wood to use and how to engineer the building so that the rooms could be really open without the roof collapsing. It’s like… an ideal house. I designed it with us in mind…,” he trailed off, realizing that no approving glance or admiring expressions were forthcoming. In fact, Lincoln looked downright disappointed.
Crushed by his brother’s lacking reaction, Michael quickly put the roof back on to hide from view the proportional king-sized bed he’d painstakingly put together with tweezers, a sewing needle, and an X-acto blade.
“I got an A+ on it,” he lamely attempted. Lincoln only stared at a spot somewhere over Michael’s head.
“Mikey, when were you going to tell me about these letters you’ve been getting,” Lincoln asked, holding up the damning envelope clenched in his left hand.
Thrown off for a second, the younger brother stuffed his acute disappointment down and took the letter, peeking at its contents.
“…Oh,” he stated, feeling like a robber that had been caught hauling a television set out of a house. Realizing that there was no talking his way out of this quandary, he swallowed hard and said, “I didn’t think they were important. I’m not going to college.”
“Not important, are you trying to be funny?? Look kiddo, I’m sorry that I didn’t notice earlier that college applications were coming up, but you should have at least discussed it with me!” Lincoln snapped, appalled at his brother’s ridiculous claims.
“There’s nothing to discuss! I don’t want to go to some pretentious school a thousand miles away from you, just so I can feel superior and hang out with other assholes who probably had their daddies buy them an acceptance letter,” he hotly refuted. “Besides, we can’t afford it and it’s too late for me to get any scholarships or grants.”
“Don’t speak to me like that, Mikey. You’re really pushing it. The money isn’t an issue, and I know you might feel a little apprehensive about leaving Chicago; god knows I haven’t helped in that department. But I’ve sheltered you for too long, you need to finally go out and do something better with your life. You want to wind up like me? In blue coveralls and stinking of oil every day??”
I like that smell on you, Michael irritably thought.
“I just don’t think that I have to go through college necessarily in order to get a good job,” the younger boy asserted. “Look at Bill Gates,” he added helpfully.
“Mikey, he’s a one in a million guy. Well, six billion really. Anyway I’m going to say this once, and you know I don’t make ultimatums very often. But when I do I’m serious, and I’m completely serious when I say that you’re going to college.”
Michael’s heart seized in anger and he opened his mouth to retort, but Lincoln cut him off.
“I need to let you go, kiddo,” he continued, softly but firmly. “I’ve been your only influence for the past ten years. You need to get out and see what’s available to you, learn new things. Meet new people.”
Detecting the slight waver in Lincoln’s tight voice, he desperately hoped that he wasn’t hearing what he thought he was.
“Linc… you don’t mean that right? About the other people,” he asked, feeling his chest tightening in fear.
Lincoln stilled and took a deep breath. He met his brother’s eyes and quietly clarified, “I do mean it. This has gone on for too long already, I never should have let us get this far. I'm sorry Michael, I really fucked this one up. Believe me when I say that separating is in your best interest. I love you too much to be selfish anymore.”
Michael’s heart imploded in slow motion and he suddenly found himself unable to breathe. He panicked, wondering if his condition included cardiac arrest; maybe his heart was exploding, he could feel it shattering, he could feel it bleeding…
“What about that Samantha… is she a nice girl?” Lincoln weakly offered.
“No… no, Linc NO!” he cried. “I thought we were over this!! Don’t you know how much I love you?? I don’t want other people, I’m never going to want some other person, I want YOU!”
Lincoln watched, frozen, as his little brother stepped forward and grabbed his shirt in two convulsing fists.
“ Linc, please don’t push me away, please, you said you’d never leave me…” Michael felt hysterical, unable to compose himself over the agony rushing through his veins. He rambled and argued, pleading that he would do anything if only Lincoln wouldn't send him away.
Lincoln felt his heart break as he watched his little brother fall apart in front of him.
This is why… this is exactly why I have to let him go. He can’t rely on me forever, he thought, desperately gripping onto that thought lest he crumble and sweep his brother into his arms, kissing away the salty tears that clung to his long lashes and spilled out of his heart-wrenchingly transparent eyes.
He gave himself a moment to compose his voice before saying, “I want to see those applications by tomorrow, Mikey. As much as you might hate me right now, I’m not going to let you avoid this.”
Michael started, feeling as if he’d been slapped across the face. The steadiness of Lincoln’s voice betrayed no sign of emotion, as if he was simply telling his younger brother to do his homework. The older boy then abruptly turned around and walked back out the front door again, shutting it behind him with a firm thud. The lone teenager watched in shock, the silence ringing in his ears in a high-pitched whine.
And then the rage flooded in. Hot, blinding rage over how absurdly stupid he was for begging his brother like a cheap mistress, fury over how even the purest and most intense love could never pierce his brother’s guilt of fucking his little brother. He hated Lincoln’s selfishness, he hated that breaking them up would somehow heal a little bit of his brother whereas it would only leave Michael feeling incomplete. Didn’t his brother want him? Wasn’t Michael ever good enough?? Searing pain threatened to consume his entire soul and Michael roared, lashing out at his beautiful model home and watching the fragile wood splinter and shatter. Horrified at what he'd just done, he stared at the broken home for a few long seconds before realizing that the structure didn't mean anything anyways, that Michael and Lincoln were never going to happily live together because of the hard fact that Lincoln would never let it happen. Setting his mouth in a determined line, Michael knocked a side of the fragile wall down and angrily pounded it to splinters with his fists.
Fuck the lighting, fuck the presentation, the house represented everything he would never have and he couldn’t bear to look at its mocking gleam any longer. He knocked the supports down and threw the painstakingly created roof into the wall, feeling both satisfaction and sadness as the little shingles exploded into the air. He destroyed everything, hammering the wood into dust and pummeling the remains until every remaining ounce of energy in his thin frame had been exhausted.
As he collapsed onto the kitchen floor the boy sobbed in wracking shudders, letting the reverberating noise reflect the deafening emptiness that he felt. He had tried for years to make his brother love him the way Michael loved Lincoln and for a while there it felt like he had succeeded, that his dream had come true. But his brother's unwavering moral complex got in the way again, breakng up with and hurting Michael so profoundly that somthing so trivial as college could never heal. As his quivering body shivered to a stop, Michael let the static of his mind shut down as he mutely watched the blood from his knuckles and forearms trickle to the white kitchen tile. He wondered if he could bleed to death here. He wondered if somebody could die of pain. Finally, finally, Michael just closed his eyes and wished to god that he would never wake up.
-----
Lincoln was only twenty years old, nine months shy of the legal drinking age, but his friends from work often frequented a bar that he knew didn’t check ID. So, he went.
He wandered in feeling right at home in the low lighting, appreciative of how the darkness clouded the pain that was surely etched onto his face. He sat at the bar, lit up a cigarette from a box he had purchased earlier that day and ordered the strongest drink they had in the hopes that it would make him stop thinking so goddamned much. A brownish drink was set in front of him and Lincoln downed what the bartender dubbed an “LC”. Liquid cocaine. And the shot certainly lived up to its name, instantly hitting Lincoln in the back of his head and taking his attention off the void he felt in his body for a second. He concentrated on the alcohol that burned a path into his stomach, relishing in its ability to make him feel something other than emptiness and promptly ordered another shot. And then another.
By 10 PM Lincoln was what you could call “really fucked up”. The concerned bartender called a cab for him (you don’t just get this kind of service anymore!) and the ride home consisted of swimming to stay upright and falling down the staircase to his apartment, twice. Unreasonably pleased with how the alcohol dulled the pain (wasn’t something supposed to hurt if you fell down a flight of stairs?), he clambered to his place and spent a good five minutes finding the right key and getting inside his place.
His first thought when he entered the kitchen was what’s all this wood everywhere, and his next being is that Michael? Aww he’s so cute when he’s curled up like that in that puddle of red stuff. His third thought was Wait, what the fuck and he fell on all fours, vomiting onto the white tile. Feeling about two shots worth of alcohol heaving out of his system, he felt a little clarity returning to his mind and instantly rushed forward to kneel beside his brother.
“Oh god Michael what have you done,” he stuttered to himself, picking the boy up and trying to figure out what to do through the leaden haze of his mind. Finally he regained enough of his senses to carry the boy to the bathroom and filled the tub with warm water (somehow the thought of wiping the blood off with a wet towel hadn’t occurred to him). Fumbling to remove his younger brother’s shirt and jeans, he lowered the boy’s slack body into the water and gently rubbed the caked blood off. When the majority of it had left Michael’s body and stained the water red, Lincoln pulled him back out, examined him for any mortal injuries (none, thank god) and toweled him dry. He then drew his baby brother close to his chest and laboriously made for the bedroom, finally reaching the mattress and with intense concentration, pulled back the covers and stuck the boy in.
Feeling considerably more sober (albeit queasy) now, Lincoln walked back to the kitchen with minimal swaying and surveyed the wrecked area. He busied himself with cleaning up the vomit and blood, then sadly examined the pile of timber in front of him. It really had been a beautiful, perfect house.
Lincoln kneeled closer and picked through the wooden remains, trying to find some recognizable piece in the rubble. When he couldn’t find a single twig over a few inches large, he crossly swiped at the pile and accidentally uncovered one miniature piece of furniture. Picking it up with his thumb and forefinger, he blew the dust off and peered at the little replica of a bed that was cradled in his palm. Somehow the piece had escaped unscathed, and Lincoln scrutinized the model, noting the felt covers and tiny pillows that were glued down (had Michael done that by hand?). Feeling his eyes watering, he quickly pocketed the wooden model and with the last of his emotionally drained body, dropped onto the couch and blacked out.
-----
One week later Michael finds a bag of hundred dollar bills sitting on the kitchen counter. It is labeled “Mom’s Inheritance, I’ve been keeping it until you were eighteen but you could use it now” and Michael spends the rest of the afternoon counting the money. There are $90,000 in the black bag.
Back | Next
Pairing: Michael/Lincoln
Author:
aeroport_artRating: R
Spoilers: Up to 2.03 but mild AU throughout
Word Count: 3,836
Disclaimer: Prison Break is not mine, obviously. And I am not making any money from this, obviously.
Notes: I've been working on this all evening! A chapter a day, am I cool or what (ha). Well, hurrah for summer (although I did have work today and tomorrow...). Anyway comme toujours, feedback = love!
Summary: Michael has always wanted his brother, and Lincoln has to wrestle with the responsibility of a reciprocated love that can never be... or can it? Spanning two decades, this story attempts to explain Michael/Lincoln within the confines of canon.
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
6 months later (September 1990)
It was one o’clock on a Monday afternoon and Lincoln had doubled back home for a quick lunch. Letting himself in, he quickly assembled a sandwich and plopped down on the couch for twenty minutes of rest with his BLT and whatever was on the sports channel. He wolfed the meal down with one eye on the clock, downed his coke and then hurriedly made to leave again so that he would get to the garage before lunch break was over. As he gathered his wallet and keys, a sharp double-knock resounded through the door.
Lincoln peered through the peephole before opening the door for the casually dressed man.
“Hello, can I help you?” He asked hastily, willing to make the stranger to state his business concisely and then leave.
“Yes, actually. I just came to drop this off, it wound up with our mail but we’re two floors up,” he replied, handing over an ordinary-looking piece of mail.
“Huh. Well thanks for coming all the way over,” he said, holding the envelope up as the neighbor departed. Then he quickly shut the door behind himself, locked it, and rushed to his black Mustang. By the time he had gotten to work and resumed tinkering with the problematic car they’d had been dealing with for weeks, the innocuous envelope sitting in his passenger car seat gradually fell away from his mind.
-----
Michael Scofield was in very, very high spirits. He’d nearly skipped his way back home, bursting with impatience to see his big brother so he could show off the final project he’d just gotten back from the teacher. The one that had taken months for him and Samantha to build, the one that they’d gotten an A+ on with gushing comments of adulation in bold red ink decorating the grading sheet. He looked at the big happy face with the enthusiastic circle around it and smirked at his own ingenuity. Well, Sam had helped but really she was just the labor and he was all the smarts.
Careful not to drop or crush the delicate model, Michael balanced it on his hip and dug his key out of his backpack, unlocking the knob with one hand and pushing the door open. Eyeing the advertisements and envelopes sticking out of the mailbox, he snatched them out, stuck them in his mouth and clambered inside.
With extreme fussiness he placed the model on their dining table. Centered? No, too banal. In the corner? Now it just looked unbalanced. Finally he settled for placing it at the end of the table and minutely angled it so that it didn’t look so deliberate. Furthermore the lighting would be just right when Lincoln got home, with the sunset slanting into their windows around 6:30 pm and illuminating the varnish in an orange glow. Satisfied, he turned back to the mail and went through them systematically, throwing out the “free” credit cards and vacation sweepstakes and segregating the bills for his brother in a neat pile. Then he picked through the rest, wrinkling his nose at the spam he’d been receiving from various colleges as of late.
He’d started getting them late last school year; colorful brochures from east coast universities or applications from the local schools, all informing him of this or that and “hurry and apply!” and really, he couldn’t give a rat’s ass about any of it. At first he was tempted to just toss it in the trash along with the other junk mail but then realizing that his brother might see them prevented him from treating them so casually. These were dangerous pieces of mail, he thought. They had the potential to make Lincoln think crazy thoughts and in the worst case scenario, even send him away for four years.
So, he pulled out the appropriate envelopes and went outside to toss them into the dumpster directly. Having completed that daily task, the boy went into the kitchen and made himself a grilled cheese sandwich before settling at the dining table to start his homework, eager to make a pleasing image for his brother to come home to; his cute young lover at the table being a good boy with an impressive wooden model beside him. He couldn’t wait to explain the meaning behind the model to his brother… he was sure to get some pampering tonight.
Soon his mind left such fanciful matters and he hunkered down to begin his AP History (ugh) assignment, deciding to get it out of the way first so that he wasn’t thinking about the Civil Rights Movement as he jerked his brother off.
-----
He had read the mail. After a long day of greasy work, he had gotten into his car and noticed the white envelope waiting patiently beside him. Finally giving it some attention, Lincoln roughly slit the top open with his finger and pulled out a thin pamphlet. Groups of politically correct students beamed up at him in front of a picturesque building and the words “Discover Yourself!” were jauntily scrawled over the top in bright yellow font. Addressed to Michael Scofield, he flipped the pamphlet open to see exactly what it was that his little brother was supposed to discover about himself.
Soon, he was skimming the paragraphs about programs and housing, blinking at the deluge of collegiate statistics presented before him. On one of the inner pages, a boy about Michael’s age had his arm slung around a laughing brunette and he slowly let the information process through his brain.
College. This was an advertisement for a college, mailed to his little brother. Because his little brother was a junior in high school and if he didn’t apply NOW (as the pamphlet emphasized), then he would be tough out of luck by the time he graduated. Still vaguely out of it, Lincoln fought through his work-tired mind and tried to digest what this exactly meant for his brother. What it meant for them.
Suddenly, everything seemed to click together. His brother was a junior in high school and college applications were due in a few scant months (he remembered sitting through the laborious process with Veronica four years ago), and Michael hadn’t even broached the subject with him at all. He needed to go home and kick the younger boy’s butt into gear, because there was no way in hell that his brainy baby brother would be missing out on the chance to make something of himself, maybe becoming a doctor (he knew his brother liked his math and science classes) or perhaps a lawyer, like V. At a university the bright teenager would be so prosperous, finally able to find something that challenged him mentally.
Lincoln sat dreamily, thinking about all the wonderful things a college education would bring his brother. A good career, maybe even some friends, a chance to really mature out of the bubble he’d been living in. He imagined himself visiting some far off campus to help his brother move in, trying to conjure up what it would be like to live with a college-educated sibling.
Well, not “live with” per se. Michael would be living in the dorms of course, which meant that he wouldn’t be here in Chicago. Hmm. His baby brother would be in the dorms… rooming with somebody his age. Attending classes with other intelligent kids, studying at the library with likeable peers. University students were nothing like the kids at Morton East High; Michael would finally meet people who could keep up with his independence… people who could talk books and politics with him unlike Lincoln, who would probably be working in the garage for likely the rest of his life. Working at a dead-end job, that was him; Michael’s older brother who touched him in inappropriate places and boxed him into a twisted lifestyle that in comparison with the blissfully ordinary life of a college student, suddenly seemed so wrong.
Lincoln shook his head to clear the upsetting digressions out, but unfortunately while his focus came back, one thing was still left painfully obvious.
Lincoln would have to leave Michael.
He would have to let him live a normal life, a good life that didn’t involve incest or squandering his potential away by working straight out of high school. He wanted Michael to be free to do anything and everything he wanted. He wanted to let his younger brother realize that the meaning of family, the meaning of happiness was not working at McDonald’s by day and fucking your older brother by night. If he truly loved his younger brother, really and truly wanted what was best for him, then he would show it by setting the boy free.
-----
Michael was just finishing up the last chemistry problem when Lincoln unlocked and sauntered into the kitchen. Head jerking up, the younger boy fought to contain the exuberance that he had been restraining all day and jumped up to cling to his big brother.
“Linc! Linc you’re finally home, you gotta see what I made for my final project!!” Michael babbled, pulling the larger boy towards the table. In his excitement he failed to notice the scent of cigarette smoke that lingered on his brother’s leather jacket, nor Lincoln’s uncomfortable frown and instead thought to himself, The lighting’s perfect. Ha.
The wooden structure glowed in the warm pool of orange that filtered through the kitchen window. Michael’s insistence on varnishing and then lacquering the model paid off enormously as the roof refracted the light and cast a blinding halo across the wall. The miniature house was painfully intricate in its ribbed door frame and individually-glued shingles and the removable top revealed walled off rooms that were spacious and planned in a creative yet functional manner. Admiring his own handiwork, Michael began explaining.
“So we had to make something that we wanted to eventually own for our French final and then present it. Other people came in with like Lego cars and other stupid stuff, but me and Samantha worked on this together,” he started, oblivious to Lincoln’s surprised glance at the name of another student. “But what I didn’t tell her was that what we were building was the model for our future house!”
Michael finally tore his eyes off his masterpiece and searched his older brother’s face for the delight that was sure to come.
“What do you mean?” was all he got.
Michael knit his brows and replied, “Well… Sam and I have been working on this after school for months now. I drew up all these plans for a house and looked up stuff like what wood to use and how to engineer the building so that the rooms could be really open without the roof collapsing. It’s like… an ideal house. I designed it with us in mind…,” he trailed off, realizing that no approving glance or admiring expressions were forthcoming. In fact, Lincoln looked downright disappointed.
Crushed by his brother’s lacking reaction, Michael quickly put the roof back on to hide from view the proportional king-sized bed he’d painstakingly put together with tweezers, a sewing needle, and an X-acto blade.
“I got an A+ on it,” he lamely attempted. Lincoln only stared at a spot somewhere over Michael’s head.
“Mikey, when were you going to tell me about these letters you’ve been getting,” Lincoln asked, holding up the damning envelope clenched in his left hand.
Thrown off for a second, the younger brother stuffed his acute disappointment down and took the letter, peeking at its contents.
“…Oh,” he stated, feeling like a robber that had been caught hauling a television set out of a house. Realizing that there was no talking his way out of this quandary, he swallowed hard and said, “I didn’t think they were important. I’m not going to college.”
“Not important, are you trying to be funny?? Look kiddo, I’m sorry that I didn’t notice earlier that college applications were coming up, but you should have at least discussed it with me!” Lincoln snapped, appalled at his brother’s ridiculous claims.
“There’s nothing to discuss! I don’t want to go to some pretentious school a thousand miles away from you, just so I can feel superior and hang out with other assholes who probably had their daddies buy them an acceptance letter,” he hotly refuted. “Besides, we can’t afford it and it’s too late for me to get any scholarships or grants.”
“Don’t speak to me like that, Mikey. You’re really pushing it. The money isn’t an issue, and I know you might feel a little apprehensive about leaving Chicago; god knows I haven’t helped in that department. But I’ve sheltered you for too long, you need to finally go out and do something better with your life. You want to wind up like me? In blue coveralls and stinking of oil every day??”
I like that smell on you, Michael irritably thought.
“I just don’t think that I have to go through college necessarily in order to get a good job,” the younger boy asserted. “Look at Bill Gates,” he added helpfully.
“Mikey, he’s a one in a million guy. Well, six billion really. Anyway I’m going to say this once, and you know I don’t make ultimatums very often. But when I do I’m serious, and I’m completely serious when I say that you’re going to college.”
Michael’s heart seized in anger and he opened his mouth to retort, but Lincoln cut him off.
“I need to let you go, kiddo,” he continued, softly but firmly. “I’ve been your only influence for the past ten years. You need to get out and see what’s available to you, learn new things. Meet new people.”
Detecting the slight waver in Lincoln’s tight voice, he desperately hoped that he wasn’t hearing what he thought he was.
“Linc… you don’t mean that right? About the other people,” he asked, feeling his chest tightening in fear.
Lincoln stilled and took a deep breath. He met his brother’s eyes and quietly clarified, “I do mean it. This has gone on for too long already, I never should have let us get this far. I'm sorry Michael, I really fucked this one up. Believe me when I say that separating is in your best interest. I love you too much to be selfish anymore.”
Michael’s heart imploded in slow motion and he suddenly found himself unable to breathe. He panicked, wondering if his condition included cardiac arrest; maybe his heart was exploding, he could feel it shattering, he could feel it bleeding…
“What about that Samantha… is she a nice girl?” Lincoln weakly offered.
“No… no, Linc NO!” he cried. “I thought we were over this!! Don’t you know how much I love you?? I don’t want other people, I’m never going to want some other person, I want YOU!”
Lincoln watched, frozen, as his little brother stepped forward and grabbed his shirt in two convulsing fists.
“ Linc, please don’t push me away, please, you said you’d never leave me…” Michael felt hysterical, unable to compose himself over the agony rushing through his veins. He rambled and argued, pleading that he would do anything if only Lincoln wouldn't send him away.
Lincoln felt his heart break as he watched his little brother fall apart in front of him.
This is why… this is exactly why I have to let him go. He can’t rely on me forever, he thought, desperately gripping onto that thought lest he crumble and sweep his brother into his arms, kissing away the salty tears that clung to his long lashes and spilled out of his heart-wrenchingly transparent eyes.
He gave himself a moment to compose his voice before saying, “I want to see those applications by tomorrow, Mikey. As much as you might hate me right now, I’m not going to let you avoid this.”
Michael started, feeling as if he’d been slapped across the face. The steadiness of Lincoln’s voice betrayed no sign of emotion, as if he was simply telling his younger brother to do his homework. The older boy then abruptly turned around and walked back out the front door again, shutting it behind him with a firm thud. The lone teenager watched in shock, the silence ringing in his ears in a high-pitched whine.
And then the rage flooded in. Hot, blinding rage over how absurdly stupid he was for begging his brother like a cheap mistress, fury over how even the purest and most intense love could never pierce his brother’s guilt of fucking his little brother. He hated Lincoln’s selfishness, he hated that breaking them up would somehow heal a little bit of his brother whereas it would only leave Michael feeling incomplete. Didn’t his brother want him? Wasn’t Michael ever good enough?? Searing pain threatened to consume his entire soul and Michael roared, lashing out at his beautiful model home and watching the fragile wood splinter and shatter. Horrified at what he'd just done, he stared at the broken home for a few long seconds before realizing that the structure didn't mean anything anyways, that Michael and Lincoln were never going to happily live together because of the hard fact that Lincoln would never let it happen. Setting his mouth in a determined line, Michael knocked a side of the fragile wall down and angrily pounded it to splinters with his fists.
Fuck the lighting, fuck the presentation, the house represented everything he would never have and he couldn’t bear to look at its mocking gleam any longer. He knocked the supports down and threw the painstakingly created roof into the wall, feeling both satisfaction and sadness as the little shingles exploded into the air. He destroyed everything, hammering the wood into dust and pummeling the remains until every remaining ounce of energy in his thin frame had been exhausted.
As he collapsed onto the kitchen floor the boy sobbed in wracking shudders, letting the reverberating noise reflect the deafening emptiness that he felt. He had tried for years to make his brother love him the way Michael loved Lincoln and for a while there it felt like he had succeeded, that his dream had come true. But his brother's unwavering moral complex got in the way again, breakng up with and hurting Michael so profoundly that somthing so trivial as college could never heal. As his quivering body shivered to a stop, Michael let the static of his mind shut down as he mutely watched the blood from his knuckles and forearms trickle to the white kitchen tile. He wondered if he could bleed to death here. He wondered if somebody could die of pain. Finally, finally, Michael just closed his eyes and wished to god that he would never wake up.
-----
Lincoln was only twenty years old, nine months shy of the legal drinking age, but his friends from work often frequented a bar that he knew didn’t check ID. So, he went.
He wandered in feeling right at home in the low lighting, appreciative of how the darkness clouded the pain that was surely etched onto his face. He sat at the bar, lit up a cigarette from a box he had purchased earlier that day and ordered the strongest drink they had in the hopes that it would make him stop thinking so goddamned much. A brownish drink was set in front of him and Lincoln downed what the bartender dubbed an “LC”. Liquid cocaine. And the shot certainly lived up to its name, instantly hitting Lincoln in the back of his head and taking his attention off the void he felt in his body for a second. He concentrated on the alcohol that burned a path into his stomach, relishing in its ability to make him feel something other than emptiness and promptly ordered another shot. And then another.
By 10 PM Lincoln was what you could call “really fucked up”. The concerned bartender called a cab for him (you don’t just get this kind of service anymore!) and the ride home consisted of swimming to stay upright and falling down the staircase to his apartment, twice. Unreasonably pleased with how the alcohol dulled the pain (wasn’t something supposed to hurt if you fell down a flight of stairs?), he clambered to his place and spent a good five minutes finding the right key and getting inside his place.
His first thought when he entered the kitchen was what’s all this wood everywhere, and his next being is that Michael? Aww he’s so cute when he’s curled up like that in that puddle of red stuff. His third thought was Wait, what the fuck and he fell on all fours, vomiting onto the white tile. Feeling about two shots worth of alcohol heaving out of his system, he felt a little clarity returning to his mind and instantly rushed forward to kneel beside his brother.
“Oh god Michael what have you done,” he stuttered to himself, picking the boy up and trying to figure out what to do through the leaden haze of his mind. Finally he regained enough of his senses to carry the boy to the bathroom and filled the tub with warm water (somehow the thought of wiping the blood off with a wet towel hadn’t occurred to him). Fumbling to remove his younger brother’s shirt and jeans, he lowered the boy’s slack body into the water and gently rubbed the caked blood off. When the majority of it had left Michael’s body and stained the water red, Lincoln pulled him back out, examined him for any mortal injuries (none, thank god) and toweled him dry. He then drew his baby brother close to his chest and laboriously made for the bedroom, finally reaching the mattress and with intense concentration, pulled back the covers and stuck the boy in.
Feeling considerably more sober (albeit queasy) now, Lincoln walked back to the kitchen with minimal swaying and surveyed the wrecked area. He busied himself with cleaning up the vomit and blood, then sadly examined the pile of timber in front of him. It really had been a beautiful, perfect house.
Lincoln kneeled closer and picked through the wooden remains, trying to find some recognizable piece in the rubble. When he couldn’t find a single twig over a few inches large, he crossly swiped at the pile and accidentally uncovered one miniature piece of furniture. Picking it up with his thumb and forefinger, he blew the dust off and peered at the little replica of a bed that was cradled in his palm. Somehow the piece had escaped unscathed, and Lincoln scrutinized the model, noting the felt covers and tiny pillows that were glued down (had Michael done that by hand?). Feeling his eyes watering, he quickly pocketed the wooden model and with the last of his emotionally drained body, dropped onto the couch and blacked out.
-----
One week later Michael finds a bag of hundred dollar bills sitting on the kitchen counter. It is labeled “Mom’s Inheritance, I’ve been keeping it until you were eighteen but you could use it now” and Michael spends the rest of the afternoon counting the money. There are $90,000 in the black bag.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-09 07:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-09 08:57 am (UTC)BTW, have you heard about prisonbreakfic.com yet? I'm just pointing it out because it is really practical for archiving multi-parters :)
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Date: 2006-09-09 05:11 pm (UTC)So anyway thanks for the tip! I'll be sure to notify people when I'm actually satisfied enough with the story to post it in its complete form.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-09 05:16 pm (UTC)Oh, lengthening the story, I like the sound of that :)
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Date: 2006-09-09 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-09 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-09 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-09 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-09 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-09 05:15 pm (UTC)Truthfully I'm planning on finishing this Breathe Love quickly and then going back to lengthen the story. The fic is really rushed right now but this is my way of getting the central plot elements down before fleshing it out some more.
I'll be sure to notify people when I'm actually satisfied enough with the story to post it in its complete form.
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Date: 2006-09-10 02:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 12:57 am (UTC)i sat there laughing for about 10 minutes at this line. then it got angsty and i felt guilty because i eas stil giggling about it.
by the way. brilliant end.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 04:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 12:34 pm (UTC)But how I can be so upbeat in the face of all that angst...OMG! It was an incrdedibly painful part and I was thinking 'poor Michael' alternating with 'poor Lincoln' and it just kept going around and around like that!
Okay, if that's all a bit incoherent it's your fault for writing such a touching, deeply moving and very upsetting chapter!
But I still love it!
no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-23 10:22 am (UTC)Yep, around ten to go but hoping for another today before I have to tredge begrudgingly off to work!
*hugs*
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