Loving Lincoln

Loving Lincoln is the hardest thing I have ever done, but it is not something I can control or stop. Lincoln is my brother. He is my lover. He is my…everything, and always has been.

Lincoln was always there for me in a way that no one else ever was. Even before mom died, she was always at work or sleeping because she had to get up and go to work…. Lincoln was always the one who really looked after me; from the time I can remember anything at all.

Then mom got sick, and I was too young to understand things like death, but I knew it wasn’t good that she was sick all the time, and getting worse. Lincoln did his best to distract me…. looking back, I realise it must have been horrible for him because she was his mother too, and she was leaving him as well, but somehow he managed to take care of me and not complain.

And then mom died and Lincoln took care of me for real then—all the time. He used to say we got by our wits and good luck—but it was his wits, not mine. I was too devastated by mom’s death to be of any help at all that first year.

Dad showed up for five minutes after mom’s death—just long enough for me to get attached—and then took off like the devil was chasing him again, leaving no forwarding address. I remember Lincoln coming to pick me up at school one day and sitting me down and telling me that dad had to go away on business, but that he was going to send us money every month to keep us from harm, and I was happy and proud to have a father who cared so much…. it took me almost a year to figure out that Lincoln was knocking over houses a few streets over with friends at night to get the money he said was from our father…that asshole never sent us a dime. I don’t know why Lincoln lied like that, just to make me think my dad was a decent guy, I guess.

Those were the kinds of things Lincoln did for me all the time. Like the time I was afraid of the monster in my closet, and Lincoln told me fear was just air. And when I still wouldn’t sleep without the light on, Lincoln let me leave the light on—even though he had no idea how he was going to pay the electric bill as it was. Stuff like that—small stuff. Small stuff matters a lot when you are a kid with nothing…. I didn’t know we were poor, but I knew we didn’t have things that other children had. Things that I wanted—like a bike or a skateboard…and even though Linc was only fifteen, he had to be the parent after mom died, and I know that was hard on him, really hard…he was constantly sacrificing for me. All our lives, when we sat down to a meal together, Lincoln would let me eat first—because if there wasn’t enough food for both of us—and frequently there was not-- he always wanted to make sure I had enough. He would make some excuse about how he wasn’t hungry or how he had eaten at work—I knew he was lying and going without so that I could eat enough. It made me feel so sad and guilty….

So, when Lincoln started touching me at night, in the bed we had shared ever since I was old enough to walk, I didn’t mind. I liked it. It felt good, and it seemed to make him very happy. I have a clear memory of being, about thirteen, I guess, and Lincoln taking my cock in one of his hands, and his own in the other and stroking us together gently, until I orgasmed for the first time. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew it felt wonderful—and Lincoln kissed me and told me how good it felt for him too. I remember being mesmerised watching Lincoln come, seeing his essence spill out of him, and hearing his moans of pleasure. I felt so close to him at that moment.

I always knew it was fucked up and perverted—to want your own brother in a sexual way. But I didn’t want to stop.

When we were in homeless shelters or foster homes, we had to be more careful…we would wait until we were sure the other kids were asleep before I would join him in his single bed. We would push down out pyjama bottoms and writhe together, barely moving, barely making a sound…and Lincoln would hold me against him at the small of my back, and kiss my neck until we both came, soaking each other with our desire and our pleasure. It was a respite from the coldness of our daily lives. Then we would lay together, entangled, for a while as we slowed our breathing—and then Lincoln would get a cloth and clean us both, and kiss me and tell me to go to sleep.

Later, as Lincoln’s life spiralled further and further beyond control, and he took to coming home drunk or stoned—when he came home at all—I would help him to bed and sometimes lay on the floor beside his bed, listening for him, making sure that he took a breath, that he didn’t overdose, that he didn’t choke to death on his own vomit….my role in his life became that of the caretaker, suddenly I was the responsible one. I resented it, but I also understood. Lincoln just wanted to go out sometimes and be a kid again—not have to be the parent for a few hours.

Veronica always yelled at him for leaving me alone at night, and I would hear them arguing over me. But Linc never listened to her—he always went out when he wanted too. Lincoln was not the kind of person who let anyone tell him what he could and could not do.

Veronica asked me once if I minded that Lincoln went out and left alone. I put on my best fake smile and told her no. I told her it didn’t matter since I was in bed asleep anyway, and Linc took good care of me, so if he wanted to go out with his friends, it was no big deal to me.

The truth was that I hated Lincoln going out and leaving me alone all the time. I hated when he was drunk or stoned, when he would bring his druggy friends around to our apartment…most of all, I hated watching him slowly slip into a world of crime, drugs and hopelessness that trapped so many in the ghetto. It was rather like watching a car accident in slow motion, and being unable to do anything about it.

I would ask Lincoln sometimes, as gently as I could, if he was all right, if he was doing drugs, what he got up to with friends. He always lied to me, but I always knew the truth after that day I discovered his track marks while he slept. I knew what he was doing, but I would not acknowledge it. We never talked about it in those days—the drugs, the drinking, and what it was doing to him. Lincoln was incapable of having a reasonable conversation about his problems, and I simply could not find the words to confront him.

Lincoln still went to work, though he was fired from more jobs then I can count. He still beat the shit out of me if I stepped out of line or attempted to join him in his rowdy nights or his petty crimes…Veronica and he would argue about the bruises on my face, and he would say things like, “I just don’t want him to end a loser like me,” and I would feel sad then, because I didn’t want my big brother to think of himself as a loser….
It is exhausting loving an addict, caring about someone who does not care for themselves—only cares about their addiction.Whether the addiction is alcohol, a drug, gambling…it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the addict loves his addiction more than you, and he will continuously and constantly let you down.

I don’t remember when I first became aware that my brother Lincoln was an addict. I know that I knew he was doing less than legal things to put food on our table for a long time. I guess I also suspected that drugs were involved. But realising that Lincoln not only sold the drugs, but also took them, was a slow process for me; a dawning realisation that horrified me.

Lincoln had always been the more wild of the two of us by far. After mom died, and we shuttled between homeless shelters, friends couch, and foster homes,


When Lincoln was sixteen, he dropped out of school. He was already big, and looked older than his age, so it was easy for him to lie and get construction jobs that paid relatively well. He was true to his word—I never went to another homeless shelter or foster home. Lincoln was able to convince the state to let him have custody over me, and he looked after me from then on.

It wasn’t perfect—Lincoln had a bad temper and we didn’t always get along. He was under a great deal of pressure, and would sometimes disappear for a day or two, to party with his friends, and that would leave me alone, to fend for myself. But he always came back, and he always told me he was sorry, and I always forgave him.

When he hit me—because I was goofing off in school, or because I was hanging around with the wrong crowd, or not getting the grades I should get—I hated him. Lincoln never just gave a slap—it was always a full beating. Once he broke my wrist, another time he bruised my ribs and gave me a black eye…he meant well—he just wanted me to have a better life then he had—but I hated him for the beatings. Even so, I grew used to his violence, just as I got used to all the other bad habits of his. It got to a point where I hardly noticed when Lincoln would lose control and start throwing things around our apartment, and I barely registered it when he turned his fists on me. I just let him hurt me, and never fought back—it was over much quicker that way—and then Lincoln would walk out or pass out, and I would tend to my wounds and bruises and try to forget. Living with his violence was just part of living with Linc.

I was about fifteen, I guess, the first time I began to notice that something was very wrong with Lincoln…he would oversleep in the mornings, and sometimes it would take me an hour to rouse him from his stupor. He started to get in trouble at work, get fired from jobs….he started disappearing more and more often.

I would hear the neighbours whispering words like, ‘addict’ and ‘user’ and ‘junkie’ when they would see Lincoln…. I noticed how his appearance took on a constant, haggard look, his eyes dazed, face pale and gaunt, and his temper shorter than ever. Then I came home from school one day and Lincoln sat me down at the kitchen table, and gave me the news—he’s gotten Lisa Rix pregnant and he was going to be moving in with her to help care for the baby when it arrived.

I remember thinking that he’s probably knocked her up just to get away from me, and that now I would be alone, but Linc did his best to take care of both his baby and me. He paid for my rent and made sure I had food, and all the things I needed. He visited me often, and sent Veronica around to see after me when he could not be there. I can’t even imagine how exhausted he must have been, looking after a girlfriend and a baby, plus his little brother—but he managed to do it, and never complained.

LJ was only about a year old when Lincoln moved back in with me, and I was happy to have him back, being a selfish kid and not understanding the pain Lincoln was going through. Lisa would not let him see LJ for reasons I did not understand at first, and I would hear them screaming and arguing on the telephone late at night, when he thought I was sleeping. I would hear him hang up with Lisa, and sit at the table in the kitchen and just cry. Every fibre of my being wanted to go to him and embrace him, but Lincoln was not the type of person who wanted to be embraced. He didn’t want me to even know about his problems, much less try to comfort him—so I never went to him when I heard him crying. I often wish now that I had….

Lincoln told me that Lisa was being a bitch and not letting him see LJ because she had a new boyfriend. I believed him. Then I found him one day, when I came home from school. He was sprawled across the couch in our living room, passed out cold. He was wearing only a wife beater and jeans, and I looked at his arms, and nearly forgot to breath—they were covered in track marks. And his thick fingers were burned, a sure sign that he had been smoking a crack pipe. I remember slowly sliding to my knees beside his body, dropping my books and just sinking. I laid my head on his chest and just cried and cried for a long time. I didn’t want to believe the rumours about him, but now I knew they were true. Lincoln had tried to hide it from me and protect me from the truth, but now I knew—Lincoln was a drug addict. And I blamed myself, hated myself. I remember thinking that if only he did not have to drop out of school, and take care of me, none of this would have happened. Now I knew why Lisa had kicked him out, and why she never wanted him around little LJ—it all made horrible sense.

I managed to pull myself together and by the time Lincoln awoke, a few hours later, I had retreated to my bedroom to do my homework. I heard him stir and suddenly he appeared in my doorway, wearing a long flannel shirt now to cover his track marks, “Hey Mike,” he muttered sleepily, and I managed to smile up at him, “Sorry. Had a rough night—took the day off.”

I nodded dully, and went back to my math homework, while Lincoln fixed dinner in the small kitchen. I didn’t say a word to him; didn’t tell him that I knew. But Lincoln was never as dumb as people aid he was—he knew that I knew. He ate dinner with me that night, unable to meet my eyes, staring at his plate the entire time, shame etched across his face, trying desperately to make small talk with me.

He didn’t go out that night, and I was so happy to spend some time with him—even if he was crabby most of the night, complaining about everything.

Then it was ten o’clock, and I was tired and announced that I was going to bed. Lincoln grabbed me as Is stood up from the couch, and pulled me back against him, his arms going around my waist, and his lips sloppily kissing the small of my back through my t-shirt, “Michael…” he whispered huskily, and I knew what he wanted…
It had been a while since we had been together like that. Lincoln kissed the back of my neck as he stood, “I’ve missed you, Mikey…” he breathed against my skin, and I felt myself harden from the sound of his rough voice.

Lincoln called it our ‘affection time’—and since it was practically the only time I ever had any affection, any physical contact from another person, I didn’t mind laying naked with my older brother in his bed and letting him touch me. I didn’t mind when he would ask me to put my mouth on his dick and suck gently, nor did I mind when he would come in my mouth and make me swallow the bitter liquid. It seemed to make him so happy, and I loved making Lincoln happy…and when he would do the same thing to me—with his mouth or his hand—I would come and feel so very relaxed and content.

So, we went to his bed and took off our clothes, and Linc turned off all the lights and we found one another in the darkness and began to kiss and touch in a way that brothers aren’t supposed to kiss and touch…Linc made me come with his hand, and then pushed my head down between his legs and I sucked him off.

Afterwards, as he lay panting, I rested my head on his belly and fell asleep, listening to my big brother tell me how much he loved me.

I knew it had to be a secret—what we did in bed together. I knew that if social services ever found out, they would take me away, and Lincoln would be in a lot of trouble. I never understood why though—it made us happy, it gave us pleasure. We loved each other—why did it matter what we did alone in our apartment? I asked Lincoln this once, and he just got a look of guilt on his face, “It just…people wouldn’t understand, Mikey,” he managed to say, “No one can ever know, okay?”

So I nodded and promised to keep it a secret—and I did. I never told anyone.

Linc and I made love for the first time when I was sixteen and a half. He had just been arrested for the first time as an adult, and he knew he was going to prison for a stretch. It was the night before his sentencing, and he was scared, though he never would have admitted it. We were laying in bed, touching, and I reached for his erect sex, wanting to get him off to take his mind off his impending incarceration. Lincoln stilled my hand and I looked up at him in confusion. Then he was slowly pushing me onto my back and straddling my waist. He looked down at me and smiled, reaching for what I knew only later was lube, “I want to do something with you, Mike…will you let me? I want to…want to make love to you? Please? Before I go away? I want to be inside you…”

I swallowed thickly because I was afraid—I had heard that it hurt to make love in that way, and I was still a virgin, but I wanted to make him happy and I knew there was every chance that I wouldn’t see him for a while after that night, so I nodded.

“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered harshly as he positioned himself at my entrance, and I nodded, trying to relax.

Then he was pushing inside me, and the pain was…awful. I cried out, and he stopped moving, freezing and trembling with the effort of not going any deeper. After a few moments of silence he whispered, “Okay?” and I nodded, and he pushed inside me again, going deeper still. I clenched my teeth against the pain and closed my eyes as tears formed there. I held my breath and just let him continue to push, until he was completely sheathed inside my body, “Oh, God…Michael…you feel good…” he groaned as he began to move against me. I bit my lip and let him have me completely.

As inexperienced as we both were, it didn’t take long—Linc bucked against my body a few erratic times and came, spilling himself inside my passage with a loud groan of completion. Then his hand found my cock, between our two bodies and he began to stroke me, his spent cock still buried inside of me. He pulled back and we stared at one another for a long minute of exquisite pain and pleasure, and then I arched and my head fell back slightly and I came into my brother’s hand, crying out his name in the dark.

I remember laying in his arms afterwards and crying because I didn’t want him to go to jail and leave me alone again. Lincoln held me close and promised me that he would be out as soon as possible, and that he would come back to me, and we could be together again. It was that promise alone that kept me going for the seven months that Lincoln was locked up.

The day he got out, I was there to pick him up in a friend’s borrowed car. We drove to a nearby motel and rented a room for the night, making love until it was nearly dawn, desperate and needy for one another in a way that I had never felt for another person—and never would feel for anyone but Lincoln.

When I think back on my childhood, there is not a lot about it that was particularly happy, but the hardest and saddest thing I ever had to do was watch my brother’s slow but steady descent into drug addiction and alcoholism, and the hell that accompanied it.

When he managed to stay away from the booze and the drugs, Lincoln was still wonderful. Sometimes we would lie in bed, after sex, and spend hours just talking. He always told me I was special, that I could get out of the ghetto; make something of myself….he always told me I wasn’t white trash, even when everyone else said that I was. I knew I was smart, and could get good grades, but if not for Lincoln, I probably would never have gone to Loyola—I would have dropped out of school like so many of my friends did, good grades or no good grades. Lincoln kept me straight, even when he could not do the same for himself.

When he was sober and clean, Lincoln was a good man, a good father and a good brother. And I would find myself deliriously happy because he was clean, and we would spend time together and it was wonderful…. I would lay in bed at night and watch him sleep, and pray to God that tomorrow would be the same—that Lincoln wouldn’t drink or do drugs while I was at school, and that when I got home, he would still be the wonderful Lincoln he was when he was sober. I never wanted those times to end, but I always knew they would.

Sooner or later, I would open our apartment door after school and find Lincoln sprawled on our couch, drunk or worse. Or I would come home to a roomful of Lincoln’s ‘friends’, all of them shooting up, drinking, smoking crack…I would hurry past them to my bedroom, hoping they wouldn’t come and bother me, and they would laugh at me as I passed by, offering me drugs, while Lincoln yelled at them to leave me alone.

Other times, I would come home and Lincoln would be awake and alone, but in a shitty mood because he was either drunk, or wanting to get drunk; high or desperately needing a hit. He would pick a fight with me then—over anything and nothing. I would do my best to avoid trouble, but in the end, it always came to blows—Lincoln would hit me, choke me, call me names…then stomp out of the apartment and I would not see him for days. I would sit and cry for the first day, and then somehow pull myself together and go to school and take care of myself until he returned.

When he returned, he would never mention what had happened or where he had been—and I would never ask. I truly did not want to know—thinking of him in some crack house, or on the streets made me feel sick. I could only imagine the things he got up to—and imaging was more than enough.

When he would get arrested, I would be angry with him, but my anger had nowhere to go, so I had to bury it. Lincoln would give me that lopsided smile of his and hug me close and I would forgive him. He would reach for me in our bedroom at night, and no matter how angry I was, I could never deny him my body. I would make love with him, and try to forget the pain he caused me when he let me down again and again and again.

As I got older, things began to shift in our relationship. Lincoln took to giving me a part of his pay check every week because he knew I would be more responsible with it then he could ever be. I slowly became the one who paid the rent, bought the food, paid the electric bill—Lincoln spent more and more of his money on drugs, and if he didn’t give me some of it, he would have spent it all on drugs, and we both knew it.

I also used ‘my half’ to bail him out of country jail more times then I care to recall.
I remember the sympathetic looks on the faces of the police officers when I would arrive at the jail to bail him out. I was maybe sixteen, and they would mutter among themselves about how sad it was that I had such a loser for a brother, and no other family. They would whisper about how my mom was dead and my dad was no where to be found, and Lincoln was supposed to be my carer, but it was more like I was the carer…I hated when they did that—talked about me as if I wasn’t there; talked about my family as if I couldn’t hear them. I wanted to scream and rage at them and tell them to fucking mind their own business, but I was quiet, polite Michael Scofield—the good brother—the one who never got into trouble. So I would smile shyly and give them the bail money and wait for Lincoln to be released….he would emerge, sooner or later, and look sheepish and embarrassed, and promise me that this was the last time. I would smile and nod and not believe him. We would go to a diner and drink coffee and talk. Sometimes we would go home and make love, but only if he was clean. I couldn’t stand being with him when he was wasted and he knew it.

Lincoln’s downward spiral continued, and worsened when I went away to school. I often came home on weekends to check up on him, and was always disappointed by what I found when I would enter our small apartment. It was as if I spent a week away, in a normal world, and then was forced to return to the dysfunction of life with Lincoln—it never ceased to be a cruel blow to my soul.

When he came home drunk, I tried to rationalise it away and tell myself that he was in pain, and this was his way of dealing with it. When he came home black and blue after yet another bar room brawl, I would tend his wounds and ice his bruises and take him the emergency room if it was bad enough, and give him Tylenol if it wasn’t, and tell myself that Lincoln could not help his bad temper….yes, I made excuses for him. But that’s what you do when you love someone.

Veronica told me once that our idea of love was dysfunctional and I smiled. I was thinking: ‘You have no idea’—but I didn’t say it. If she had any suspicion that Lincoln and I were more than close brothers—and I think she did—she never said, and we never told.

When I graduated from college and got a job and bought an apartment, I tried to reach out to Lincoln. I wanted him to move in with me, and get some help. His drug addiction was spiralling out of control. Lincoln had been fired from another job, and his relationship with LJwas precarious at best. I had him over for dinner two weeks after I moved in.

Lincoln walked in and just stared at my loft. I bit my lip and looked at my shoes, feeling embarrassed by my own success. I could feel Lincoln’s pride in me, but also his frustration at the dead end his own life had become. I could sense jealousy along with his love, and I did not know how to deal with it, “This is..um…real nice, Michael. You got a great place here…” he told me over stilled conversation.

I felt uncomfortable and shifted in my leather chair, “Thanks,” I managed to say, staring down at my drink.

“You must be doing well at your new job,” he continued, trying to be happy for me.

I nodded and swallowed thickly, “What are you going to do for work now, Linc?” I asked, regretting the words as soon as they left my mouth because I saw the look of shame that came over Lincoln’s face.

He shook his head slowly and stood up, walking over to my balcony and staring out at the city lights, “Not sure, Mike…” he admitted, “With my record, its not easy to…get a decent job, you know?”

I nodded, even though his back was to me. After an awkward silence, I stood up and walked up behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist and resting my head on his right shoulder lightly, “Take me to bed, Linc…” I offered.

My hand slid down to grasp at his cock through his jeans, and he gasped, pressing back against me and hardening under my hand instantly.

I offered him sex, like I always did when I did not know what else to do with my brother. And Lincoln accepted. We barely made it to the bedroom, tearing our clothing off in a haphazard fashion, desperate to feel one another again.

But it was not the kind of sex I would have hoped for, but an angry, rough coupling that left me feeling used and hurt. Lincoln turned me onto my belly and took me from behind. I wanted so badly to look at him as he took me, “Please, Linc, not this way….I want to see you…” I begged as he forced me over on to my stomach.

He said no gruffly, and just pushed inside me, biting my shoulder as he thrust over and over again until he came with a sharp cry and collapsed against my back. It was not making love…it was not even sex—Lincoln was claiming me, he was owning me—getting even with me by controlling the sex, and the pleasure I got from it. I hated him at that moment.

In the darkness of my new bedroom, he lay flush against my back, breathing hard, “Are you high?” I asked, feeling used and broken.

“Jesus Christ, Michael Is that all you can say to me anymore?” Lincoln snapped, withdrawing from me harshly and falling onto his back beside me on the bed.

As angry as I was at the way he had treated me, I still loved him so much. I forced myself to calm down and look at him.

“Linc…this place is huge. There’s another bedroom, another bathroom. Why don’t you live here with me? You put a roof over my head for years…let me help you out now. You can go into a program…get some help?” I asked him hopefully.

Lincoln shook his head slowly, “No, Mike…I don’t need your charity…” he replied bitterly.

I closed my eyes against his words and the pain they caused me, “I didn’t mean it like that…its not charity, Linc—you’re my brother, my only family. I love you…I love you, and you’re killing yourself.”

“I’ll be fine, Michael. I can take care of my own shit, all right?” Linc growled, starting to lose his temper now.

I reached out in the darkness to stroke his chest tenderly, feeling a tear slide out of my eye, “Why? Why won’t you let me help you?” I asked, tormented.

Lincoln closed his eyes for a moment, and just enjoyed my caress, then opened them again, and sat up abruptly, pulling away from me, “You can’t help me, Michael. Things are…complicated. You don’t want to get messed up in it.”

I sat up and wrapped my arms around his vast torso, kissing his back softly, “I don’t care what you’ve done,” I told him gently, “Or…what drugs you’re doing…or any of that. I just…I won’t judge you, Linc. I never would…I just want to help you make things right…I love you, Linc…”

He sighed and I could sense his despair. He lowered his head, “Oh, Michael…I love you too. I really do. But…things are…different now—fucked up. I’m not the man I was when we lived together…I’m not a good person, Mike. You’re better off without me.”

I felt a lump in my throat at his words because I knew he was right, but I could not turn my back on him, “Don’t say that,” I begged quietly, “You’re everything to me.”

We were silent for a long time.

“Let’s eat dinner,” I offered when I realised the conversation was over, “Maybe you can stay the night? Make love again?”

Lincoln looked at me and the torment and pain in his eyes nearly undid us both, “I can’t, Michael. I…I have to go.”

I lowered my eyes, “At least eat with me? You don’t eat…I want to know you at least had a decent meal tonight.”

I looked back up at him hopefully, and Lincoln nodded.

We ate in virtual silence. I felt inexplicably cold and kept shivering. Lincoln ate with averted eyes.

At last he spoke, “I owe some bad people a lot of money, Michael. If I…lived here, they might come after you—or steal your stuff or…fuck knows what.”

I struggled to eat, despite the lump in my throat, “How…how much do you owe?” I managed to say, “Maybe I could loan it to you?”

Lincoln smiled ruefully and shook his head, “No, Michael. I know you make a good living, but…it’s a lot of money—far more then you could lend me.”

“I could lend you some…?”

“It doesn’t work that way, Mike—these people don’t do payment plans…”

I sighed heavily, “So, what are you going to do? What’s your solution?”

Lincoln said nothing.

“Fine,” I said bitterly, pouring myself some more red wine, “Destroy yourself, then Linc—that’s what you’re best at, isn’t it?”

I didn’t see him for a few months. I worried about him, but it was not like it was something I wasn’t used too. Lincoln had been disappearing from my life for days and weeks and months at a time for years.

Then he called me to bail him out of country jail for selling coke to undercover cop.

I went to the jail and bailed him out, then drove him to his shabby little cramped apartment in a numb kind of silence. Lincoln tried to make small talk, but I was in no mood for it. I flipped on the radio and turned it up so that I could not hear his words over the music. When we arrived in front of his apartment building, Lincoln turned off the radio and tried to speak to me.

“Get out,” I said calmly, staring straight ahead.

“Michael…” he said sadly, reaching for me.

“Get out of my car, Lincoln…” I said coldly.

After a minute, he did.

The next time I saw my brother was in the hospital. He had overdosed and nearly died. When he came out of his coma-like sleep, I was sitting beside him in a chair, not having slept in two days, “Oh, Linc…thank God…” I whispered painfully when he opened his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he told me contritely.

I remember feeling so exhausted, I could barely keep my head up at that point—loving Lincoln was draining me of everything I had. It was not surprising that I didn’t have any friends or lovers, or any social life to speak of—so much of my time was dedicated to Lincoln and his continuous problems with no solutions. I worked, I slept, I ate and I waited for the next crisis in Lincoln’s life to emerge—that was my life. That was all I knew.

I held his hand and begged him to get help, and he nodded and promised that he would.

“If you keep gong like this, Linc, you’ll die—you know that, right? And I…I can’t lose you. You’re all I have…”

I gave him money, making him promise to use it to enrol in the drug rehab program at the hospital. Lincoln promised me that he would enrol, and I left, asking him to call me when he was in the program, and telling him that I would come to visit him there.

I went to his apartment when I did not hear from him for a week.

I found him drunk, with a crack pipe beside him, passed out on his couch. I was so very angry and felt so betrayed. I slid to the floor beside the couch and just sobbed.

Of course, Lincoln had used the money I gave him to buy drugs, not to enrol in a program to get off of them. He had binged for a week, and finally collapsed in his apartment.

Numbly, I went to his refrigerator and checked it. There was no food—only sour milk and a few eggs. I threw that out, and went to the grocery store, buying him food and necessities that I knew he would never bother with for himself—he only spent money on drugs and rent these days.

Then I returned and gently stroked his hair and kissed him awake. I wanted to hate him, but I couldn’t. He was my Linc…he was all I knew. And I was so lonely and I wanted affection, desperately needed it. As if in a trance, I reached for him, unzipping his jeans and taking him out. I began stroking him gently.

“Michael? What…?” he mumbled sleepily, coming awake as he hardened in my hand.

“Shhhh…” I whispered, leaning down to kiss him, pushing my tongue into his mouth as he gasped in shock.

He looked at me in dazed confusion—but his body reacted to my touch almost immediately, and soon we were making heated love on the couch in his living room.

I straddled him and rode him, staring down at him intently as I lowered myself down upon his sex, sobbing as I did so, hating myself for wanting this, but needing it all the same. I decided to be selfish for once, and take what I wanted. If all Lincoln could give me was sex, then that was what I would take from him. He had used me, and now I felt no quims about using him…

“What are you doing, Michael?” he asked, “What do you want?”

“Fuck me.” I sobbed, and he grunted, thrusting up into my body like an animal, "Just fuck me…”

Michael…God, you feel so good!” he moaned as he took me, his hips arching upwards.

Lincoln lay beneath me, watching me, his eyes glazed with the haze of drugs. His hands held my hips, as I rose and fell on his erect cock. He was grinding up against me, and moaning, and I whimpered as I came, spilling over my own hand and his belly. Lincoln came a moment later, like freight train, screaming my name in a roar of completion.

I fell against him then, crying and he slid his arms around me and just held me.

“I love you,” he muttered, but I was not in the mood.

“Don’t….please don’t lie to me anymore.” I replied.

“It isn’t a lie, baby boy…” he kissed my hair, as if in apology.

“I hate you,” I whispered defeated and destroyed.

“I know,” Lincoln whispered, just as defeated as I was.

Disgusted by what I had just done, I pulled away from, “I can’t do this anymore,” I muttered, “I…I can’t see you anymore, Lincoln…”

I said similar things over the years countless times, but something inside of me told me that this time, I really meant it.

It wasn’t entirely true, of course. Our lives are real, and not like in the movies—you can’t just completely disown someone who is in your life and part of your past, you can’t just completely cut off a family member, cut them out of your life…. I did still occasionally see Lincoln….he would call me when he locked himself out of his apartment, and I would go over there with the spare key—or I would take LJ to a baseball or basketball game and see Lincoln when I was picking the boy up or dropping him off. We would make polite small talk about the weather and sports—but I slowly began to build a new life from the wreckage of my old one—and this new life did not include Lincoln Burrows.

I missed him. I missed his voice, his laugh…his touch. I missed the man he had been before drugs had destroyed his life, and I missed the man he would never become because of his poor choices and his self-destructiveness—but I slowly moved on.

When I would hear his voice on my answering machine occasionally, my heart would skip a beat and every fibre in my body pulled me towards my telephone to call him back and start the cycle all over again—but I stopped myself each and every time. When I would see him with LJ—or run into him by accident out somewhere, my soul would ache and I would feel so very desperate…I would instinctively want to embrace him, ask him if he needed anything, ask him if he was all right, how he was managing, if he needed money…but I held back. After a while, the pain became less and less and I noticed his absence in my life less and less, until one day I woke up and realised that I had not seen—or missed—Lincoln in almost six months. I allowed myself a small smile, and realised that, perhaps, the worst was behind me.

I tried to hope and believe that Lincoln would get well one day and that then we would be able to have a relationship again. But I told myself that if and when that day came, things would have to be very different. We would have to make sure that our relationship was healthy and not one of co-dependence and enabling that it had once been. And we could never be together sexually again. We would be brothers and nothing more.

Then Veronica came to see me at work and told me that Lincoln had been arrested—and this time, it was for murder. I stood there, staring at her, and feeling as if my life was about to be altered forever—I just knew….the new life I had spent the last year trying to create imploded with her words, and from its ashes rose a new and obsessive devotion to Lincoln on my part that has led me here—to this moment.

I am about to rob a bank. It is part of an elaborate plan to free my brother, who now sits on death row for a crime he did not commit. Yes, he did commit many, many crimes—some of them against me—but he is not a murderer, and he is my brother, my lover…my…everything.

Loving Lincoln is the hardest thing I have ever done.

But I can’t stop.