Lonely Where You Aren't

by jetplanejane

Summary:

Michael is separated from his family and although Alex and Sara have one another, it's not the same without him.

He prefers slow seduction and caresses and the way words feel against her skin. She prefers something a little more physical, being pinned, the weight of him in the wet, aching space between her thighs. It’s okay to be rough, to fuck, like they sometimes did.

“Michael,” she breathes, into the topology of the old scar left by Kellerman’s poor aim.

“You’re still thinking about him?” Alex challenges.

“You’re not?”

“Touché.” He smiles and strokes deeply into her.

Her own smile collapses and her head drops back onto the crumpled sheet. Right then, Alex makes her feel, on the inside, in a place…in a way…that nothing – no one – can.

Except Michael.

“Come for me, Sara,” he urges. “Come with me.”

He makes it sound like they’re running away, and when she finally surrenders, it feels a little like they’ve made it. Like they’re free.

But something’s always missing. Something gets left behind.

~ * ~ * ~

“Hey. Did I wake you?”

“No.” It’s a little after six in the morning where Sara is, in the kitchen in a pair of his boxer’s and one of Alex’s T-shirts. She holds the phone with her shoulder as she clears bright, scuffed plastic toys from the breakfast bar chairs.

“How are you?”

“I’m good,” she whispers, careful not to disturb the lie in her voice.

“And Alex?”

“Asleep, tackle-hugging a pillow he thinks is me.”

It’s not an answer to what he asked, but Michael chuckles softly.

She misses that. G-d, she wants to feel that against her skin again. To lie, straddling him, breasts pressed against the faint, laser-faded outlines of an escape plan – the uncomfortable pleasurepainfullness of them both – Alex’s soothing words tracing the pain Gretchen tattooed on her back.

She pictures her husband, trapped in a corporate steel and glass cage, stepping out of a boardroom with an ocean view after negotiating the end of the world on Company terms. He wears a suit now, carries a card key, while an armed entourage keeps him safe. That’s the only way he can keep his family safe.

“We miss you,” she says. “It’s get lonely where you aren’t.”

Michael hates knowing that. Hates being away from them – more than the forced assimilation and the daily evil genius routine. “Kiss Michael and Alex for me.”

“I will.” She always does.

“Sara?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you. All of three of you.”

She smiles. She loves knowing that.