Fic for ficangel: "Between Rome and Ithaca" 4a
Title: Between Rome and Ithaca, 4a (previous parts here)
Pairing: Jack/Sayid
Summary: Adjusting to life after the island, one day at a time.
Rating: PG-13 for this section Disclaimer: Lost is all ABC’s; no money/ownership here.
Notes: For
ficangel , who has been entirely too nice of me of late.
Comments, feedback, and criticism are always welcome.
He and Sayid rarely argued on the island, at least outside of contexts that involved everyone else there. If an issue wasn’t a matter of staying alive or getting rescued, it was a waste of energy to worry about it, much less argue about it. They’ve had the occasional personal disagreement since getting back on solid ground, nothing terribly significant, nothing beyond the inevitable small clashes of any couple. Life on the island, and especially the mistakes he made there, taught Jack just how much damage he could do by not communicating, by trying to do everything and endure everything alone, silently. He supposes a few failed relationships should have taught him that years earlier, but they didn’t, and there’s no going back in time to change things. Sayid learned better than to shut himself away too. Those lessons have made things a lot smoother between them, Jack thinks; they manage to catch most of their problems before they’ve developed enough to produce any discord.
They’ve been settled in Antelope Valley for a couple of months when they have their first real fight. It started as a quibble over some routine domestic issue and then escalated from an enthusiastic argument into a shouting match, both of them ranting and trying to speak louder than one another, saying things they didn’t mean outside those moments of anger. Jack didn’t mean them, anyway; he can’t speak for Sayid, but he can’t imagine Sayid would stay with Jack if he did. Nothing catastrophic, ultimately; just the worse end of the spectrum of ordinary disagreements.
What’s worrying him is what the island has done to him, how natural it’s become to both him and Sayid to solve problems with their fists. Not on each other; they weren’t so far gone as to mistake one another for Ben or Locke, but on the surfaces of the table, the kitchen counter, the wall. It was when they realized what they were doing that they stopped fighting and both took a few steps back, breathing hard. Jack couldn’t say which one of them came to his senses first. Either way, there was a long moment of hard breathing and the two of them staring at each other and looking away quickly. Sayid mumbled something about the gym and the stable before he whisked himself out the door. Jack wished fervently that he hadn’t risen early and done a particularly intense workout; right now he’d give just about anything to be able to sweat his way into oblivion. As it is, he’s pounding away on the piano, butchering Beethoven’s eighth sonata. He sighs and switches to Debussy’s nocturne. It should be calming and cheering in equal measures, he hopes.
All right. So the island’s made them all into savages. He should’ve known that already - but no. It isn’t that, and that’s not entirely true anyway, not for most of them. He sighs and tries to focus on the music, and finds that he can do so only partially. He resigns himself to providing more fodder for his therapist, but he realizes he’s not being fair there either. Terry Mercer is a hell of a good therapist and, so far as Jack can tell, a decent man. The problem is that Jack can’t reconcile himself to the fact of being someone who needs therapy. That alone should tell him he probably needed it long before the crash.
The contact between his fingers and the keys is harder than it should be. He closes his eyes. The only time he’s ever come close to losing control like that, at least in this kind of argument, was with Achara, and he was miles from sober at the time, little as that excuses his conduct.
This kind of argument. He’s lost more control than that in disputes with his father, or with people on the island, but not with - not the partners in his relationships. Not with women. For once it’s not Sayid in particular who’s playing havoc with his expectations, the good ones and the bad. The problem, Jack thinks, is that doesn’t know how to fight fair with a man who’s neither an enemy nor only a friend, although that’s how he and Sayid refer to each other. He can’t pretend it’s the same as anything he’s used to - the same as with a woman - or that Sayid would argue differently with one, more carefully. He and Shannon had their disagreements; Jack was always amazed at Sayid’s patience with her.
Jack’s about twenty years too old to sit around talking about his relationships, but maybe he’ll have to with Sayid. Jack’s old experiments never ran long enough for him to figure out how to fight fair in - in this kind of a relationship, dammit. Whereas Sayid's had plenty of -
But he hasn’t, not really. I couldn’t ask someone to live with me when I could scarcely live with myself. Sayid didn’t have - well, he didn’t have whatever the hell they are. There were friends and fellows and colleagues, and he slept with some of them. He’s not sure it was all that different, in the end, from the amiable widows and divorcées who liked Sayid’s looks.
Jack gives up on Debussy and on wishing for a workout. All he wants now is a bourbon. He’ll probably feel compelled to talk about that with Dr. Mercer too.
By the time Sayid gets home that evening he’s only managed a few beers. It’s all he keeps around anymore. He’s still entirely too sober for the talk Sayid insists they have, sober enough to know how much baggage that concept entails for Sayid.
They’re both too used to being the protector in their relationships. Sayid is especially, after two years on the island, ensuring people’s safety and well-being more effectively than Jack ever managed, doing what he’d been trying to do, telling himself he was doing, for twelve years before, making strategic decisions with Danielle and making them correctly while Jack’s blunders led them all close to ruin. Jack’s trying not to play the leader of their pair. He’s doing better than he ever has in his life, but he shouldn’t have thought Sayid wouldn’t notice how he’s almost unconsciously been playing guide to a stranger in a strange land. He insisted on accompanying Sayid in setting up bank accounts and insurance and even the boarding agreement for his goddamn horses, wanting to spare Sayid the suspicion he’d surely receive alone. He’s suggested that they avoid certain businesses in town, certain parts of L.A.; of course Sayid would figure out which ones really were badly run or unhygienic or overpriced, and which ones wouldn’t want or dare to give any trouble to Jack if he were with Desmond or Michael instead of Sayid.
And Sayid should have said all this much sooner, shouldn’t have let Jack believe he was getting away with it. It isn’t doing either one of them any good when he tries to hide how homesick he becomes at times, or how much it can hurt him to remember how uprooted he is, how he can never go home and will probably spend the rest of his life a foreigner among people who don’t necessarily welcome him. Or how much he hates the fact that he sometimes needs to be guided, that Jack’s stumbling through Arabic and the only people here who even know the modern form are a handful of third-generation Lebanese-Americans, and sometimes Sayid is homesick for the island, where he didn’t have the luxury of thinking about any of that, where he could insulate himself, sometimes, from a past that held little but pain for him. Not that he wants to escape it, to refuse to confront it, Jack knows that, but Sayid’s habit, almost an instinct by now, is to do his utmost to overlook how much it and how thoroughly it bothers him.
They’ll try to do better. They don’t make any promises other than that.
The sex that follows isn’t the best they’ve had. They’re equally tired, and the whole affair is over-thought and clumsy, with both of them tripping over themselves trying to please each other. For all that, though, there’s something good about, healthy somehow despite the unremarkable quality of the experience itself. Jack feels too exhausted to move when it’s over, but he drags himself out of bed to follow Sayid into the shower. They don’t talk much, or at least not sensibly; Jack gets the impression that Sayid would be as happy as he would to fall asleep standing on the hard floor while the water went cold.
They manage to stay awake long enough to get back to bed, naked and with water still clinging to their bodies. Jack’s vaguely aware of the way they’re lying pressed up against each other as they fall asleep.
(Part B)
**Header by homsar321 at lost-forum.
Pairing: Jack/Sayid
Summary: Adjusting to life after the island, one day at a time.
Rating: PG-13 for this section Disclaimer: Lost is all ABC’s; no money/ownership here.
Notes: For
ficangel , who has been entirely too nice of me of late.
Comments, feedback, and criticism are always welcome.
He and Sayid rarely argued on the island, at least outside of contexts that involved everyone else there. If an issue wasn’t a matter of staying alive or getting rescued, it was a waste of energy to worry about it, much less argue about it. They’ve had the occasional personal disagreement since getting back on solid ground, nothing terribly significant, nothing beyond the inevitable small clashes of any couple. Life on the island, and especially the mistakes he made there, taught Jack just how much damage he could do by not communicating, by trying to do everything and endure everything alone, silently. He supposes a few failed relationships should have taught him that years earlier, but they didn’t, and there’s no going back in time to change things. Sayid learned better than to shut himself away too. Those lessons have made things a lot smoother between them, Jack thinks; they manage to catch most of their problems before they’ve developed enough to produce any discord.
They’ve been settled in Antelope Valley for a couple of months when they have their first real fight. It started as a quibble over some routine domestic issue and then escalated from an enthusiastic argument into a shouting match, both of them ranting and trying to speak louder than one another, saying things they didn’t mean outside those moments of anger. Jack didn’t mean them, anyway; he can’t speak for Sayid, but he can’t imagine Sayid would stay with Jack if he did. Nothing catastrophic, ultimately; just the worse end of the spectrum of ordinary disagreements.
What’s worrying him is what the island has done to him, how natural it’s become to both him and Sayid to solve problems with their fists. Not on each other; they weren’t so far gone as to mistake one another for Ben or Locke, but on the surfaces of the table, the kitchen counter, the wall. It was when they realized what they were doing that they stopped fighting and both took a few steps back, breathing hard. Jack couldn’t say which one of them came to his senses first. Either way, there was a long moment of hard breathing and the two of them staring at each other and looking away quickly. Sayid mumbled something about the gym and the stable before he whisked himself out the door. Jack wished fervently that he hadn’t risen early and done a particularly intense workout; right now he’d give just about anything to be able to sweat his way into oblivion. As it is, he’s pounding away on the piano, butchering Beethoven’s eighth sonata. He sighs and switches to Debussy’s nocturne. It should be calming and cheering in equal measures, he hopes.
All right. So the island’s made them all into savages. He should’ve known that already - but no. It isn’t that, and that’s not entirely true anyway, not for most of them. He sighs and tries to focus on the music, and finds that he can do so only partially. He resigns himself to providing more fodder for his therapist, but he realizes he’s not being fair there either. Terry Mercer is a hell of a good therapist and, so far as Jack can tell, a decent man. The problem is that Jack can’t reconcile himself to the fact of being someone who needs therapy. That alone should tell him he probably needed it long before the crash.
The contact between his fingers and the keys is harder than it should be. He closes his eyes. The only time he’s ever come close to losing control like that, at least in this kind of argument, was with Achara, and he was miles from sober at the time, little as that excuses his conduct.
This kind of argument. He’s lost more control than that in disputes with his father, or with people on the island, but not with - not the partners in his relationships. Not with women. For once it’s not Sayid in particular who’s playing havoc with his expectations, the good ones and the bad. The problem, Jack thinks, is that doesn’t know how to fight fair with a man who’s neither an enemy nor only a friend, although that’s how he and Sayid refer to each other. He can’t pretend it’s the same as anything he’s used to - the same as with a woman - or that Sayid would argue differently with one, more carefully. He and Shannon had their disagreements; Jack was always amazed at Sayid’s patience with her.
Jack’s about twenty years too old to sit around talking about his relationships, but maybe he’ll have to with Sayid. Jack’s old experiments never ran long enough for him to figure out how to fight fair in - in this kind of a relationship, dammit. Whereas Sayid's had plenty of -
But he hasn’t, not really. I couldn’t ask someone to live with me when I could scarcely live with myself. Sayid didn’t have - well, he didn’t have whatever the hell they are. There were friends and fellows and colleagues, and he slept with some of them. He’s not sure it was all that different, in the end, from the amiable widows and divorcées who liked Sayid’s looks.
Jack gives up on Debussy and on wishing for a workout. All he wants now is a bourbon. He’ll probably feel compelled to talk about that with Dr. Mercer too.
By the time Sayid gets home that evening he’s only managed a few beers. It’s all he keeps around anymore. He’s still entirely too sober for the talk Sayid insists they have, sober enough to know how much baggage that concept entails for Sayid.
They’re both too used to being the protector in their relationships. Sayid is especially, after two years on the island, ensuring people’s safety and well-being more effectively than Jack ever managed, doing what he’d been trying to do, telling himself he was doing, for twelve years before, making strategic decisions with Danielle and making them correctly while Jack’s blunders led them all close to ruin. Jack’s trying not to play the leader of their pair. He’s doing better than he ever has in his life, but he shouldn’t have thought Sayid wouldn’t notice how he’s almost unconsciously been playing guide to a stranger in a strange land. He insisted on accompanying Sayid in setting up bank accounts and insurance and even the boarding agreement for his goddamn horses, wanting to spare Sayid the suspicion he’d surely receive alone. He’s suggested that they avoid certain businesses in town, certain parts of L.A.; of course Sayid would figure out which ones really were badly run or unhygienic or overpriced, and which ones wouldn’t want or dare to give any trouble to Jack if he were with Desmond or Michael instead of Sayid.
And Sayid should have said all this much sooner, shouldn’t have let Jack believe he was getting away with it. It isn’t doing either one of them any good when he tries to hide how homesick he becomes at times, or how much it can hurt him to remember how uprooted he is, how he can never go home and will probably spend the rest of his life a foreigner among people who don’t necessarily welcome him. Or how much he hates the fact that he sometimes needs to be guided, that Jack’s stumbling through Arabic and the only people here who even know the modern form are a handful of third-generation Lebanese-Americans, and sometimes Sayid is homesick for the island, where he didn’t have the luxury of thinking about any of that, where he could insulate himself, sometimes, from a past that held little but pain for him. Not that he wants to escape it, to refuse to confront it, Jack knows that, but Sayid’s habit, almost an instinct by now, is to do his utmost to overlook how much it and how thoroughly it bothers him.
They’ll try to do better. They don’t make any promises other than that.
The sex that follows isn’t the best they’ve had. They’re equally tired, and the whole affair is over-thought and clumsy, with both of them tripping over themselves trying to please each other. For all that, though, there’s something good about, healthy somehow despite the unremarkable quality of the experience itself. Jack feels too exhausted to move when it’s over, but he drags himself out of bed to follow Sayid into the shower. They don’t talk much, or at least not sensibly; Jack gets the impression that Sayid would be as happy as he would to fall asleep standing on the hard floor while the water went cold.
They manage to stay awake long enough to get back to bed, naked and with water still clinging to their bodies. Jack’s vaguely aware of the way they’re lying pressed up against each other as they fall asleep.
(Part B)
**Header by homsar321 at lost-forum.