Archive of Our Own

I'm Michael, by the way.
Scofield, I know. I read your report.
And you are?
Doctor Tancredi will do.

She's not a pushover. She makes him work for every reluctant smile she gives him, and oddly enough, it makes him like her even more.

Her body language is open and relaxed; it's a good match for her brisk bedside manner. He knows she will be well-practised at deflecting inappropriate overtures from her patients. He also knows she will have already catalogued him with the rest of them, and that annoys him more than he cares to admit.

He's still not quite sure what he'd been expecting. Her face has been on his wall for weeks, and yet it's something of a shock to see her in the flesh. The photograph had failed to capture the precise shade of her auburn hair, the fragile luminosity of her pale skin. It had also failed to warn him that locking eyes with her for the first time would feel like a kick to the stomach.

Maybe we've met before, drunk somewhere out at a bar.
I would have remembered.
Is that a compliment?
No.

Every time he uses a line on her, saying the words he'd never say in the real world, his smile seems to stretch his mouth too thin, his face feeling stiff and awkward - if the wind changes your face will stay that way, his mother always said – and he's glad she's not meeting his eyes.

When the flicker of disappointment at being rebuffed – because beneath the plans burned into his brain and into his skin, he's still a man - fades away, he's actually relieved when she doesn't figuratively fall at his feet. After that, every time she doesn't buy a cheesy line he would have never used on her in the real world, he likes her a little bit more.

He doesn't feel the need to analyze why, and he suspects that alone should worry him a lot more than it does.

When I get out of here, alive, I'll take you to dinner. Lunch. Cup of coffee.
You know, Michael? This charm act of yours is precisely what's going to get you into trouble out in the yard.

She says the word charm as though it leaves a bad taste in her mouth. Perhaps she's still having a hard time digesting the story he gave her about catching an elbow while playing basketball. She doesn't look at him as she stretches the butterfly bandage across the cut over his eyebrow, but the cool brush of her fingertips on his skin seems to make the throbbing in his temples recede, if only for a moment.

He makes small talk with her for the rest of the visit, but her replies are monosyllabic and he soon finds himself on the other side of her office door with a lingering feeling of still having his foot firmly in his mouth. Later that night, his hands busy with metal and concrete, his head almost bursting with the fear that he is running out of time, he realises that she never actually said no to his offer of dinner.

He knows it shouldn't, but the thought makes him smile.

After what you went through in the riot, I thought you might take a day off.
Nah, I'm fine. I couldn't get anybody to cover for me, anyway.

He'd already learned during the riot that she was much stronger than he'd first thought, but her wry smile still takes him by surprise. He's proud of her, he realises, and the thought both pleases and disturbs him. He has spent many hours trying to forget what happened, not wanting to dwell on the uneasy suspicion that there might be more than one person in Fox River for whom he would give his life.

She gently prods him about his working knowledge of the prison air-duct system. He opens his mouth to offer her another lie, but instead hears himself snap a mulish retort at her. Too late he realises he's angry – with her, with himself – and when she tells him she just wants some answers, he knows he needs to leave this room right now, because he suddenly wants nothing more than to give them to her.

Woah, we haven't even had our first date and already you're inviting me in. I thought you were a nice girl.
Oh, Michael, I think we all know that nice girls finish last.

He feels foolish even thinking the words, let alone saying them, and again he feels the flush of embarrassment stain his skin. But then she flirts right back, and his resolve stumbles and falls, embarrassment taking a back seat to the raw attraction tightening his gut.

He plays the good patient and lifts his shirt and takes a deep breath and all he can think is that her hand is cool on his chest and if he breathes in deeply enough, he can smell the perfume on her skin. Her smile fades and he briefly wonders if it's because his heart rate has accelerated, then her hand twitches against his flesh, her pupils dilating, and he knows she's fighting the same fight he is.

No, she's not a pushover.

Perhaps it's not her that he needs to worry about.

What do you want from me, Michael?
Wait for me.

He doesn't need her to fall in love with him. He just needs her to keep believing he's a diabetic. He don't need her, he tells himself, just that damned drain in the corner of her office. And then his map blisters and burns away, and the script needs to be rewritten.

He walks to the infirmary with the slow tread of a condemned man. It's not that he doesn't want to do this - his pulse has already dangerously spiked at the mere thought of kissing her - but that he's already kissed her in his head a hundred times and he already knows that the reality is going to outstrip his imagination to the point of distraction. He already knows what this is going to mean to her and what it shouldn't mean to him but – fuck it - it does mean something, and he's glad because it's proof he can still feel an emotion other than despair and detached rage.

She cleans his wound, touching him the same way she always does, her air of professional concern firmly clamped in place, and he again puzzles over how hands so soothing and calming can stir up such a firestorm inside him.

Her gloves have been peeled off and the bloodied sponge is in the trash and she's close enough to touch and smell and he knows he needs to do this now, now before he loses his courage and rediscovers his self-respect. He sucks in a lungful of cool infirmary air, then the warmth of her lips chases away the cold from his tongue, his mouth and throat filling with the taste of her. She's touching his face – he can smell the fine powdery residue that her gloves have left on her skin - and her mouth is opening like a flower to his kiss, her tongue sliding against his in a tentative caress that makes his groin ache.

Don't touch her don't touch her don't touch her. The mantra pounds in his head as his blood roars and his skin tightens and her mouth is so warm and soft and willing. His hands grip the edge of the gurney so hard he later finds deep, red marks on his fingertips, but it's the only way to stop himself from reaching for her and pulling her hard against him. It also stops him reaching for the key in her pocket, but perhaps that's not the only reason. There will be another way, he tells himself because there is always another way even though he knows this time there isn't. Then her beautiful mouth – her lips swollen from his kiss – is moving and she's asking him what he wants and he tells her the answer he wants her to hear, the one he wants her to believe.

Because he wants to believe it, too.

Was it all an act?
At first, yes. I needed to be here. But then I wanted to be here. With you.

The fury comes off her in waves. Beneath the fury he senses an embarrassment that's a match for his own, and he knows she hates herself for forgetting what he is as much as he hates himself for proving her right.

She throws razor-sharp words at him like a circus performer flinging knives and they all hit their mark, every single one of them. He tells her everything, his protestations of (he can't say love, not now, not yet) caring for her sounding like the fumblings of a teenaged boy. Adrenalin is howling through his veins but all he can think is that he's telling her the truth at last and it's almost worth the way she's glaring at him.

She looks away, as though she can no longer bear the sight of him, then he touches her, a fleeting brush of his fingertips against her arm. She stares at him, her eyes burning with resentment and betrayal, but she doesn't walk away. He pleads for his brother's life, one last time, then she has finally had enough. He watches her as she stalks away from her own office, leaving him alone.

No, she's not a pushover.

He watches her through the glass, his throat closed as tight as a fist, and he knows that as much as he needs her to be one right now, he's still almost glad she's not.

Almost.