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Sara clears her throat. “Nice suit,” she says hastily, then wants to bite off her tongue. Perhaps it would have just been easier to tell him she can’t stop looking at him, that the sight of him dressed as though he’s just left a board meeting makes her feel as though someone has removed the bones from her legs.
Michael flushes, or perhaps she just imagines it. “Thank you.”
She glances at Lincoln, waiting in the hallway, a casually disarrayed contrast to his younger brother. “Not your style?”
He smirks. “Not really.”
~*~
An hour ago, she was strolling along a Chicago street, fulfilling the cliché of minding her own business. And now? Sara shakes her head, trying to pull together the cotton wool strands of her thoughts, trying to make sense of what she’s gotten herself into.
She watches Michael as he moves about the main room of their temporary sanctuary, faintly ashamed that their current situation doesn’t stop her from admiring the supple lines of his body, her gaze traveling over the tailored suit that perfectly defines broad shoulders and long legs and tanned skin.
Her chin resting on her cupped palm, Sara pulls her gaze away from the man across the room and looks at the man beside her. “Can I ask you something?”
Lincoln shrugs. “Sure.”
She nods across the room. “I understand the suit,” she tells him, and it’s the truth. She knows it’s Michael’s version of donning armor before battle, although she doubts he’ll admit that to her any time soon. “What I don’t get,” she adds quietly, eyeing Lincoln’s rumpled dress shirt, “is your idea of blending in.”
He blinks. “What do you mean?”
She gestures towards the front of his shirt, at the row of buttons that are more unfastened than not. “Not a fan of formal wear?”
The corner of his wide mouth twitches, and for a few seconds she thinks he’s going to smile. “Not really.” He hesitates, looking at her with narrowed eyes, as if debating how much more she deserved to hear, then shrugs again. “I’m not someone who likes having to wear a uniform,” he admits haltingly, “never have been. Didn’t make a difference if it was school or Juvie or Fox River.” He looks faintly sheepish, and she wonders if she’s the first person to hear this. “Being told what to wear every single fucking day. Being forced to look the same as everybody else. Be the same as everybody else.”
“Not even if it was for the football team?” she asks lightly.
He chuckles, but it’s a humourless sound. “Funnily enough, that’s never come up.”
She nods, finally understanding the rumpled, unbuttoned shirts, the refusal to wear a cap to hide his face. “Now that you’re out, you’re the one who decides.”
He flashes her a grin, and it changes his whole face. Makes him look younger, less hardened. Makes him look more like Michael’s brother, she realises. “Damn straight,” he tells her.
Sara glances across to where Michael is packing mysteriously shaped items into a large backpack, then back to his brother. “Has he always been like this?”
To his credit, Lincoln knows what she’s asking without her having to elaborate to an embarrassing degree. “Pretty much.” He watches his brother for a beat, then smiles. “He doesn’t like being told what to wear, either.”
They sit in a strangely companionable silence for a moment – considering where they are and what they’re about to do - then Lincoln gets to his feet. “Thanks for the chat, Doc.”
She watches as he joins his brother to have a murmured conversation not meant for her ears, and realises that despite all their differences, the two men are more alike than she – and perhaps they – would have thought. The thought is both unsettling and strangely comforting.
“You ready?” Michael is standing in front of her, his vivid gaze searching her face with an intensity that makes her skin prickle.
She looks at him in silence. Her entire life has been turned inside out and upside down, but she'd be a fool not to realise that she's safer with him than without him. She may be a fool for this man in many other ways, but not when it comes to staying alive. She grabs her bag, slinging it over her shoulder as she gives him a quick nod. Lincoln is already standing behind him, and as much as she has to say to Michael, now is not the time. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Michael’s hand touches hers, a fleeting brush of warmth that makes her fingers clench, then she’s following the two of them out the door and into the lion’s den.