[Disconnected]

I appreciate what you're trying to get at, but you do have to look at the size of the pot and your position when trying to figure out a play, because it does dictate how/whether you're going to spend your bets (or calls). If you don't want to fold to a flop bet after checking, I'm not sure why you would instead bet. That said, I think there are two ways to look at this flop.

One is that you want to play this hand as cheaply as possible right now. You've got great relative position to try that. You can check, then call a single bet, or if it's bet and raised in front of you, you can get out of the pot. If you're taking the play it as cheaply as possible approach (sounds like you are), then I think check/call beats bet/?, because if you are raised, what are you going to do?

The other way to look at it is that it's an unraised pot, you may have the best hand now, and a bet may fold out some other draws. It's at least a semi-bluff, anyway. If you hit an A, you'll probably have the best hand (it would only make one straight).

I think with the pot this small, I'd take the check/call line. Cheap is good here, and position does matter. But I think a call of a single bet would be fine, since you do have TP outs that are not terrible, in addition to the implied odds you'd get from your gutshot. But if it's 2 bets coming back on the flop, it would be one to let go.

You said that you didn't want to give a LP player a chance to bet a weak Ace. If you think there's a good chance the LP player will bet a weak Ace, isn't that a good reason to check/call? You beat a weak Ace, in this example. You don't have a terrible hand, here, but OTOH, I'm not seeing enough equity to bet out, given the board.

All that said, would it be out of line to raise pre-flop with AT from the SB against 2 limpers?