old Lost fic repost #3: The Same, But Different (Jack/Sawyer, NC-17)
[Repost: Originally published at lostfic.com on Aug. 12, 2005. What follows here is untouched, C&Ped as is (except the LJ cut).
BTW, I find my warnings here hilarious. I could get rid of them, but my sense of archival ethics tells me not to. I was apparently feeling rather self-important, especially for some nobody in fandom. Especially seeing that I had the gall to write notes to Megan, not knowing her from Adam, and as if my story could somehow threaten her awesomeness. Also note: I had zero experience with explicit slash back then. Zero.]
Note: This is set from slightly before “The Moth” through a little after “Confidence Man.” I’m giving my own spin to a popular incident in “Lost” fan fiction (without rewriting the events themselves). I’m fudging on Sawyer’s past a bit.
And fair warning -- this is not my usual humorous, smutty, flippant stuff. It’s angsty and borderline sappy in places, and it turns downright dirty. Don’t flame me if you think it’s a crime to write Jack and Sawyer this way.
And a special note for Eponine119, should she read this: I don’t mean to step on the toes of your recently published exploration of Jack’s past (not that I think I am, really). I wrote this before I read your story.
The Same, But Different
Jack couldn’t sleep. This was not the first night he couldn’t sleep. For nearly a week -- or some approximate length of time, since calendars weren’t important anymore -- he’d found himself exhausted but plagued with insomnia. The problem wasn’t physical. He did plenty during the day to tire himself out, and when he lay down at dark, he would feel muscles screaming that he hadn’t known existed, even back when he was doing six hour surgeries. However, they were not what kept him awake. Insomnia, he knew, was sometimes entirely mental.
He thought maybe the problem had to do with his new life. There had been a short time, when he was sixteen, that he wanted nothing more than to grow up to be a normal man -- working with his hands and feeling like he’d accomplished something that the lower end of the social classes would respect him for. Apparently, wanting to escape money and a sure path to a bright future was common enough for someone growing up WASP, whose father was a respected doctor. It had been rebellion, and it was occasioned by an older friend of his. Casey had been the coach’s son who helped out his little league team, and he had taken the frail, apprehensive 9-year-old Jack under his wing. Jack knew him for a long time as this savior figure, but he got to know him as a real person finally when he was just getting his driver’s license and he wanted to know all about his hand-me-down car.
Casey changed oil for a living and worked on cars from his garage for extra cash, and he spent a whole summer educating Jack on the subtleties of an engine. It infuriated his father for him to come home sweaty and dirty from an evening helping Casey, hands stained with oil and grease. But it had made him happy, made his body feel useful and satisfied, and for a few months anyway, he’d dreamed of a life of manual labor. It would have been easier, surely. Casey was only twenty two, and he had friends and a job and he didn’t have to study all the time. In fact, he only did what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it. Or that’s what Jack saw. He was now old enough to see that Casey was no more free than anybody else.
Jack was halfway convinced that his brain kept him awake struggling between worries and re-examinations because he was living that life he’d wanted for that brief time. He now spent his days working with his hands and solving real problems, ones that took a practical ingenuity to figure out. That felt good to him, stretching mental muscles he had long forgotten he had. He was used to effortlessly calculating the dosage of medicines and seeing neural pathways like clear charts his mind. He was not accustomed to sizing up a hulking mass of metal and trying to figure out how three men could get a hold of it to lift it or turning the ripped-out carpeting in the less burnt areas of the plane into a tarp that protected them from the rain. Michael, now he was good at that. He had an excellent sense of the practical combined with a constructive creativity. Sayid was also good at solving physical problems, partly because he had been trained to be. Hurley had bulk enough to be useful, and Jin had sheer strength of will. Charlie was the least useful of them all, but nobody seemed to mind that. They did, however, mind a great deal when Jack, who was physically larger than almost anybody else, with a broad chest and back made for slinging car parts in a factory or hauling lumber, couldn’t be of more help.
Of course, they tried to hide their annoyance -- everyone, that is, except Sawyer. Jack hated to admit it, but Sawyer was good at surviving, even if he downplayed his efforts on anyone else’s behalf. He could bitch and complain and in general make everyone regret his presence on the island, but he was excellent at taking directions and even better at anticipating problems. He would see the middle of the plane’s shell cracking as they carried it; he would point out the places where the water was sure to leak through the shower system they’d all built; he would know exactly where Jack should grip a particular large tree branch, and dammit if Jack wouldn’t follow his orders without question. To his credit, Sawyer didn’t give him too much grief when they were all together, doing whatever it was that needed to be done. But when the crisis was averted or the job completed, he would just smirk at him and sarcastically thank him for his help.
Those smirks were part of what bounced around his head at night. He’d feel the muscles on his arm to see how much stronger he was, how much he’d grown into his bulky, barrel-chested body since he was on the island, and he’d think about the way Casey had squeezed his arms that summer. “You’re starting to look like a good old boy,” Casey said. “I should probably have you over for some beer tonight with Joe and Pablo, because you finally look like a man.” He had beamed at the compliment then, but he could look back on those pictures and know he hadn’t looked like a man until he was almost thirty. He had always had a baby face. But he’d believed Casey, and it was because he wanted to believe him. He wanted Casey to see him as strong and useful and, dammit, old enough to matter. Sometimes, he had the same feelings about Sawyer, who was likely younger than he was but who looked at him like a grizzled veteran of life examining a young, foolish man who just might be worth something one day.
Sawyer almost seemed playful at times, gripping Jack’s arm and making comments about spinal surgeons and the gym, but the levity always quickly vanished, if it had actually existed at all except in Jack’s mind. Whatever Sawyer’s intent, his hand closing around his bicep felt exactly like Casey’s had: hot, heavy, and electric. Jack hadn’t been smart enough to realize his admiration for Casey was more than a younger man’s idolization of an older man, but he was experienced enough to know it now, and to recognize the same feelings for Sawyer. Of course, he wasn’t exactly happy about that. Casey he had liked, and liked well enough to learn how to replace serpentine belts and flush radiators, even if he had long ago forgotten. Casey was calm and patient and steady. He was not prone to a lot of talk, but when he did he revealed himself to be funny, self-deprecating, and observant. Jack wanted to see something in Sawyer that would allow him to nurture this crush in a way he had rarely nurtured a crush on a man, but all he saw was Sawyer being arrogant and violent and mean, those flashes of possible lighthearted wit notwithstanding. So he stayed awake for hours trying to forget following Sawyer’s tanned silhouette through the jungle as he tried not to hang on his every word and gesture. Letting feelings develop wasn’t smart. Sawyer was especially like Casey in one way: he was not interested in men, much less the brainy type that was useless in the real world of brawn and streets smarts.
Of course, all this knowledge about what was wrong with him was forced beneath the surface. He was still trying to believe that his desire to be physical -- both during that summer with Casey and in the face of Sawyer’s smirking -- was from deep within him and not occasioned by the men he was trying to imitate and impress. Deep down, he figured, every man had the capability and the longing to be strong and save the day. So he let his brain wander over everything else that he could possibly think of except the times Sawyer had been right beside him, lifting something with all his might, grunting in a way that said ‘I am powerful and even though I’m an asshole, I’m worth something to these people.’ Jack didn’t sleep at all one night from trying to quiet his brain, because quieting his brain actually meant keeping it occupied so that Sawyer couldn’t get in.
That next day, the crisis came so late in the day they’d all come to think they’d escaped calamity for once. Of course, it did come, and for once since Kate sewed up his shoulder, Jack was the one in need of help. Being trapped in a cave-in was almost preferable to being on the outside. Here he wouldn’t be expected to help; he could only wait for those with abler hands to rescue him. Abler hands turned out to be Charlie, and while he gave Charlie a nice speech about how he wasn’t useless, Jack could only think about how the shortest, least physically imposing man among them -- one sweating and shaking through heroin withdrawal even -- was going to be the one to pop his arm back into socket and in general save the day.
Sawyer hadn’t bothered to help them. He just smugly informed Kate of the cave-in and stayed where he was, unwilling to lift a finger. That made Jack feel even worse, as if he wasn’t worth enough as a person to save, as if Sawyer wasn’t enough of a man to use the arms and back and legs that God gave him to help someone. He was in some ways thankful for the cave-in because it helped him see things clearly. Sawyer wasn’t worth his thoughts or his sleep. That night, he slept soundly for the first time and didn’t think about Sawyer’s body or his resemblance to Casey. Not even the next day, when Sawyer grinned at him in the same way Casey had -- patronizing. With Casey, that was okay. With Sawyer, it made him want to be physically violent with the man.
He got his wish a few days later. He had finally decided the best thing would be to revel in his real role on the island: the medicine man, both in the spiritual and practical sense. No longer trying to be a lumberjack or a tracker, Jack was being the best nurturer and doctor he could. He surreptitiously treated Charlie for his ‘flu’ and went about his days inventorying medicine and thinking about homeopathic remedies he might be able to use instead of the limited pharmacological solutions available to him. If he’d been doing a good job of that, he would have been able to deal more easily with Sawyer’s refusal to hand over the inhalers. Unfortunately, his stupidity at not thinking about much less recognizing eucalyptus was nothing compared to his need to punish Sawyer and reassert his masculinity.
Out at the beach, Kate had broken them up just before Jack threw himself on top of the man, eager to beat him into submission or die trying. An unafraid look had been on Sawyer’s face, and it made him hate him even more. He wasn’t intimidated by Jack; in fact, he seemed like he might enjoy kicking Jack’s ass. When Sawyer nonchalantly wandered into the caves a little later, Jack forgot everything else but how tired he was of being the spiritual and intellectual leader of the group instead of a force to be reckoned with. So he hit Sawyer. It felt so good he did it again. But that didn’t last. He didn’t have the balls to keep hitting Sawyer, especially since it didn’t get him what he wanted. More than anything, it seemed to satisfy Sawyer. So he got Sayid involved.
Watching Sayid torture him was hard. He could only hope that it turned out to be a useful tactic and not just a way for him to make himself suffer because he wasn’t the one with his hands on Sawyer. What he really wanted was to tangle, to grapple with the man and get as good as he gave, but this was nothing like that. It wasn’t fair and it made Jack sick to his stomach. He stopped thinking about Shannon sweating and gasping for air and started to see how much it was costing Sawyer to keep his macho façade intact when he was so helpless. He yelled at Sayid to stop, and he could almost see the knowing grin on Sawyer’s face. Maybe Sawyer had figured it out by then. At the very least, he knew that his own pain was nothing compared to the guilt he could inflict on Jack by suffering the torture stoically or by relishing it. Or the sickening jealousy he could cause by kissing Kate, whether he understood the slant of the jealousy or not.
When Sayid stabbed Sawyer’s arm, Jack finally felt a flicker of satisfaction. It was something real. It had happened when Sawyer was untied and free to challenge his attacker. But the realness of it made his adrenaline pump and made him so glad that he was indeed a doctor and could focus on how to stop the bleeding instead of how afraid he was that this man that he devoted so much energy to would die before he could find out how to live near him without him. Because that’s what he realized in that instant: he would never have Sawyer, but he still wanted him to be there, just as he’d patiently hovered near Casey day after day with no hope of being anything other than a weak but endearing kid in his eyes. As he held his hand over Sawyer’s bicep, gushing blood, and Sawyer made some angry remark about letting him die, that was the furthest thought from his mind. It wasn’t just because he was a doctor. It was because he was staring into a pair of pleading eyes that had stopped being stoic and were now begging for recognition. It was as if Sawyer was articulating something to him.
Only once had he seen Casey’s eyes look like that, and it was the day Jack had sliced his hand open in his garage, and his dirty palm spurted blood everywhere. Casey immediately called his father and did just what his father told him to do. He was firm in dragging him to the old Ford and driving him to the hospital. Only when he’d turned Jack over to his angry father did he give Jack a look that said, ‘Don’t let him take you away from me. Don’t let him believe you aren’t supposed to be the man you want to be.’ The look was fear, the possibility of losing an admirer, a funny kid that hung on his every word, a kid that was in danger of becoming a cold, too cultured man if his father had any say in the matter, a kid that had grown up to be Dr. Jack Sheppard: cerebral, perfectionist, and above all fitting every mold ever placed on him. The look on Sawyer’s face was something similar, but he couldn’t interpret it.
He didn’t even try until he lay down to sleep that night and found the racing thoughts returning, or maybe just one thought, and it was stronger than lust because it was absolutely chilling. Sawyer had lay there, his eyes pleading, but his voice had said, “If the tables were turned, I’d watch you die.” Jack felt like it was the truth. He hadn’t helped them dig Jack out at the cave-in. Maybe he did want Jack dead. Jack just didn’t know why.
He was lying there that night listening to people toss and turn and snore and cough, and he finally got sick of it. Sitting up, he quietly pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and his boots and grabbed a torch they kept prepared in case of nighttime emergencies. He lit it and headed out toward the beach with no idea what he would say or do, only that he needed to have a talk with Sawyer.
The man was lying on the sand outside his shelter wearing nothing but swim trunks. He had tied a shirt around his bandaged arm to keep out the sand, and when he saw Jack’s light approach, he sat up, frowning.
“You make house calls now?”
“Shut up.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said shut up.” Jack planted the torch and sat down beside him, and Sawyer sighed, apparently not in the mood to argue after the day they’d had. “You weren’t sleeping.”
“I don’t much.”
“Neither do I. Lately. Is your arm still bleeding?”
“No. You gonna tell me why you’re here, or am I not allowed to ask questions of my interrogator?”
“I don’t know why I should apologize for what we did when you said yourself you’d like to watch me die.”
“Wouldn’t like to.”
“That’s what you said.”
“No. I said I’d do it. Didn’t say I’d enjoy it.”
“What?”
“I just meant that I’d have the guts to let someone go. You ain’t got as much guts as I do in my pinky finger.”
“I came out here in the middle of the night to pick a fight with you. That’s not guts?”
“No. That’s hoping for an ass kicking. By the way, why is it you act like you wanna have a knock-down-drag-out every time you see me?”
Jack felt a million sarcastic retorts spring up in his mind, but somehow what came out of his mouth was the question he really wanted the answer to. “Why didn’t you come out to the caves when I was trapped?”
“Didn’t want to.”
Jack snorted. Well, he thought, that was his answer. He stood up and said, “Okay. Whatever.”
“You don’t understand anything, do you?”
“No. Not about you.”
“Sit down, okay.” It was command, a mild one, but Jack decided to do what he asked. “I didn’t go out there because I knew two things. One, you had half an army working to get you out, and I figured they’d be successful. Two, I wouldn’t have been any help.”
“Why not? You’re a lot stronger than Charlie, and he managed to get me out.”
“Strength is one thing. You gotta be able to use it right.” Jack just stared at him, so he said, “I give up. When something bad happens, I go full-tilt and screw things up, then I give up. I just let things die.”
“Sawyer…”
“Don’t give me that sad, serious look. And don’t try to understand it, okay. I just know I didn’t want to be there if they ended up getting you out and you were hurt.”
“But you said -- ”
“I’m an excellent liar,” he said, a sardonic smile creeping over his face. “Damn near convince myself sometimes. No, I wouldn’t watch you die. Not if you came up half dead after the crash. Not if Sayid had knifed you instead of me. Not if you had cancer and you were wasting away somewhere. I’d sooner shoot you and put you out of your misery.”
“Is that what you wanted me to do earlier?”
“No. Not really. I wanted you to stop looking at me like you want me.”
“What?” Jack felt his breath catch in his throat, and he was more than a little freaked out by how Sawyer couldn’t meet his eyes anymore.
Sawyer mumbled, “I see it. I’m not blind.”
“I wasn’t -- ”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve been seeing it, and it scares the hell out of me. Didn’t matter what happened to you, I couldn’t take it too well. Whether you died in that cave-in or survived to keep staring at me like you’re trying to see into my soul.”
“You’re really confusing me now.”
“I’m good at that.”
“I know perfectly well that you’re not into men, and I think you know I’d never try anything with you unless I suddenly had a death wish. But what’s this angst about me dying?”
Finally, Sawyer looked at him again. “What do they teach you in college? They teach you to read books and arrange life like it makes sense. I’m here to tell you life doesn’t make sense. You have to live it every day and remember to change when it changes. You’ve got it in your head that I’m straight, and you’ve also got it in your head that me hating your guts has to do with you. Well, I’m at least half queer and I only hate you because it’s easier that way.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t it easier to hate me?”
“I don’t hate you.”
“I think you should try.”
“Is that what all this has been about? Have you been trying to push me away?”
“Not trying. Succeeding.” Sawyer’s eyes shut down then, and the openness he’d displayed all but vanished though he kept the same edge of vulnerable bitterness in his voice. “Why don’t we keep Freckles between us. We can hate each other over her. We can race to see who gets to fuck her first. We can channel all this sexual tension into a constant ass-kicking anger and resentment until one of us is dead.”
As Jack regarded Sawyer for a moment, watching him pull his golden hair back off his face, he suddenly felt like this was the strangest conversation he’d ever had, like he might just wake up and only remember that he’d had a dream in which he wasn’t Jack and Sawyer wasn’t Sawyer. It was almost comically weird, and he finally found a dark humor in the way things were progressing. He replied, “Jesus, you’re depressing.”
“Been known to be.”
“Is your life really that bad?”
“Only when I try to share it with someone.”
“You think I want to share anything with you?”
He snorted. “I think you’ve been looking at me like you want to jump my bones, which is fine with me, if that’s all it is. But you’re not the type.”
“I’m beginning to think neither are you.”
“I can be. But not with you.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just have this voice in my head that tells me to run like hell.”
“Why?”
Sawyer drew his knees up into his chest and looked out toward the dark water as he talked. “I knew this guy once -- Billy Brent. He was my father’s best friend’s son. Billy was smart, real grounded. He ran track after school and he already knew when he was seventeen what he wanted to do with his life. He didn’t backtalk his parents or skip school, and he drove his father crazy because he was this kid from the trailer park and he hated cars and AC/DC and never got into fights about his momma. It was like he didn’t belong in the land of the white trash. He almost had me thinking that I didn’t either. I think he knew how I felt about him, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t like that. He just tried to help me with my algebra and talked to me about getting out of the trailer park. I was a good listener once upon a time. But the end of the story is, he was going to leave me and go away to college, become an archeologist or some shit. He never got the chance because some drunk redneck with a shotgun forgot to unload it before he took it out of his truck and the stray bullet hit him in the head and killed him.”
Jack didn’t say anything, so Sawyer continued, now looking him in the eyes, that same scared-angry-longing look he’d given him when Jack held his bloody arm still.
“And I was glad. Don’t that make me a son of a bitch. I was glad until I sat out here the other night and stopped thinking about how it was good he never got the chance to leave me and started thinking that it wasn’t a mercy killing. This wasn’t me saving the Marshal from a long, slow death. This was a smart, sweet kid that never got to be anything he wanted to be.”
“You didn’t shoot him. It’s not your fault.”
Sawyer was looking away again. “No. But I was happy to see his dreams die. That’s how I love somebody, Doc. I hate them when they aren’t what I want them to be, or when that makes them not want me anymore.”
“Do you hate me?”
“What?” He turned his head and wrinkled his whole face at Jack.
“Do you hate that I’m like him?”
“Shit, Doc. If he wasn’t smart and so damn calm and collected, I’d’ve never paid him any attention. But you’re different from him.”
“How?”
“You hate yourself for things that you don’t have any right to. Billy never worried a bit about my feelings because he didn’t understand them. He had no idea how stupid and useless he made me feel sometimes. But you understand.”
Though he hadn’t meant to be unkind, Jack still reacted with a sour laugh. “Yeah.”
They were sitting so close to each other, and Jack could almost see Sawyer’s hands moving toward him, to slide over his knees, to touch his face. But he didn’t move, and Jack kept the space between them, though it was solid and heavy and it made him want to fidget against it.
Sawyer said, “That’s what makes you and me dangerous. We could make the biggest black hole of low self-esteem and self-pity the world has ever seen.”
“You really believe that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Were you happy when you thought I might die?”
“No.”
“Did you really want me to let you die?”
“No.”
“Did you let us torture you because you wanted me to hurt you?”
“No. Whatever else you believe, I don’t like to be hurt. Sayid, he couldn’t have hurt me if he killed me. But I don’t know what was worse -- knowing you hated me that much or knowing I helped you hate yourself more than you already did.”
Sawyer’s voice was so miserable and sincere that Jack was suddenly all too aware that this was supposed to be a conversation filled with threats and accusations, where he feared for life and limb and learned nothing and regretted it afterward. It wasn’t supposed to reveal a Sawyer that he’d never known existed. So Jack said, “I’m sorry,” knowing that would probably piss Sawyer off. He didn’t like pity.
But Sawyer wasn’t angry when he replied, “Don’t. I’m not. It’s a nice thing for me to remember if I want to keep from letting you in.”
“What if letting me in isn’t terrible?”
“Isn’t it always? You ever known love to feel good?”
It was the second time he’d used that word. “Love?” Jack said, the words almost hanging in his throat.
“Whatever you want to call it.”
“It’s not so much bad as scary.”
“Yep. Now you know the one thing that scares me in this world: giving a damn.”
“Well, I guess you’re entitled to be afraid of whatever you want, but I’ll tell you this: I’d sure as hell rather be scared than be alone and fighting with myself.”
With nothing left to say that wouldn’t just dig the pit deeper, Jack stood up and held his body still through sheer force of will. He had been prepared to hate Sawyer for being callous. He hadn’t been prepared for whatever this was. He grabbed his torch and headed toward the trailhead to the caves, but he stopped when he heard a shuffling behind him.
Sawyer said, “What are you afraid of?”
“Huh?”
“I know why this scares me. But you’re the peace and love and monogamy sort. What’s scaring you so bad about me?”
Jack chuckled bitterly, moved to honesty only because Sawyer had been so rawly honest himself. He walked toward Sawyer so that maybe they wouldn’t wake anyone up and so that no one would hear his answer. He said, “You’re a man.”
Sawyer gave him an utterly confused face.
Jack sighed and said, “I’m only queer in theory.”
Sawyer just looked at him and shook his head. “That’s all? Then I don’t get it.” He laughed softly. “I really don’t.”
“Me either.”
“So you don’t even know if this is something you’d want.”
“No, I don’t. So maybe it would be easier to forget it.”
Jack walked on toward the caves, leaving Sawyer behind. Then he heard his southern drawl, soft now but intense: “Now you’ve got to be the biggest fool I ever saw.”
“What?”
Sawyer was advancing toward him again and Jack watched him move into the arc of torchlight. “Don’t you think one day this will all blow up on us? If we ignore it, one day we might just kill each other. Don’t you think we should at least see if there’s anything to kill each other about?”
“Why? You’d like to forget you want me. You’ve already promised to make my life hell if you fell for me.”
“Jack,” he said, his face visibly changing as he used his name rather than one of the nicknames he resorted to. “Jack, I hate to tell you, but I’ve already fallen. Hard. Hurt like a motherfucker.”
He gave him a doubtful face, saying, “When?”
“When I was fifteen. I just didn’t realize what it was until I met you and you were so much like him, so smart and decent. Except you started being such a bossy prick and I knew that I’d hated some things about Billy. He manipulated me, all condescending. You treat me like I deserve, like I’m mean and cruel and hard but not weak and stupid. It’s like you understand me. That’s why I can’t ignore it. Can you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Only one way to know, really.”
He took the torch from Jack’s hand and planted it in the ground beside them. He studied his face for a moment. He said, “What is it you see in me?”
“It’s a long story.”
“You gonna tell me?”
“Are you gonna keep stalling?”
Jack expected a kiss -- wanted it -- but Sawyer didn’t kiss him. He just slipped his arms around his waist and rested his head on his shoulder. He was actually trembling, and Jack heard a long sigh escape his lips. Sawyer said, “You are so thick. Do you know what kind of things a body like that does to a man?”
Jack just let out a hoarse laugh. Impatient now, he pulled back from Sawyer and lifted his chin, kissing him fiercely as Sawyer clung to him, smashing their bodies together. Sawyer pressed his hard cock into Jack’s groin, and he mumbled an affirmation when he felt Jack’s body respond. Then he held them there, bodies throbbing together, neither one breathing quite evenly.
Sawyer said, “Well, your body doesn’t have problems with me. What about up here?” He tapped Jack’s forehead.
Jack said, “Right now it’s taking its orders from the rest of me. Are you stalling again?”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t.”
So Sawyer began to shift against him and they kissed each other deeply, stifling groans as their hips roughly moved together under the dim moonlight, hip bones knocking and bruising, cocks straining against layers of clothing. Finally, Sawyer said, “Will they miss you if you don’t go home tonight?”
“Not if I tell them I was keeping you alive.”
Sawyer grabbed the torch and ducked toward his shelter, Jack following him. He stopped to smother the torch in the sand, then he pulled Jack’s shirt over his head, dragging him to the blanket-covered floor. Deftly, Sawyer positioned himself between Jack’s legs so they could continue thrusting against each other.
Sawyer’s kissing was fast and intense, nipping and sucking and sloppy, and he was able to do things with his tongue that made Jack want to feel that mouth on his cock instead. When Sawyer took his mouth away to kiss Jack’s neck again, Jack fought him and plastered his own mouth to Sawyer’s jawline, kissing his way up to his ear. He felt Sawyer squirming, bucking against him harder, and he was suddenly tired of the constant friction of jeans and boxers and shorts. He said in Sawyer’s ear, “Will you please get naked already?”
Sawyer sat back and said, “You first,” watching him pull off what remained of his clothes without touching him, though he clearly wanted to. Then he shimmied out of his shorts and Jack pulled him back between his legs again, now rubbing their hot, hard cocks together so that Jack was sure he wouldn’t last thirty seconds like that.
“Oh, fuck, Sawyer, slow down.”
Sawyer just grinned and began to thrust harder, kissing right under Jack’s earlobe, sucking so hard he knew it would leave a hickey. Sawyer was branding him, and somehow Jack didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything but holding back his orgasm until Sawyer pulled back to look at him and a trace of pain flickered over his face. Jack noticed that the shirt on Sawyer’s arm had loosened, and he could see blood coming through the bandage. Almost immediately, Jack held Sawyer’s hips as still as he could and said, “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
“I’m fine.”
“The hell you are.”
Sawyer let out a short, frustrated breath. “Dammit, just stop being the doctor for five minutes. I’ll live.”
Jack didn’t respond, instead forcibly rolling Sawyer onto his back and straddling him, one hand pressed firmly into his chest. He started to say something bossy and serious and mature but Sawyer’s eyes stopped him, darkened as they were with lust. Sawyer mumbled, “Damn, Doc,” and pulled him down to continue thrusting against him. Jack had to hold down Sawyer’s bad arm to keep him from moving it. Sawyer fought him for a moment, but he finally surrendered, saying, “Fuck, Jack. Oh, Jesus, I wanna fuck you.”
Jack whimpered at that, thrusting harder, and suddenly he felt Sawyer roll him back over. “That was way too easy,” he said, chuckling. Then he began to kiss his way down Jack’s torso, tugging at each nipple quickly and stopping at his navel only long enough to position himself in such a way that he could hold himself up with his one good arm. Jack was about to argue with him when he felt Sawyer’s mouth close around his cock and he pulled his hips up, nearly causing Sawyer to collapse on top of him.
He said, “Hold still, dammit.”
He thought, Easy for you to say, but he only mumbled out something incoherent as Sawyer’s mouth was taking him in again. This was nothing nice and playful. This was a man trying to see how quickly he could accomplish his goal, and with what blinding intensity. Jack was already almost there anyway, so a few flicks of the tongue and a few long sucks later and he was coming hard into Sawyer’s mouth, feeling him swallow. He soon had to pull Sawyer’s mouth away, as sensitive as he was, especially now that he could feel Sawyer’s rough beard rubbing his thighs.
Jack watched Sawyer sit up and he realized that Sawyer was still hard and he was moving to stroke himself. Without a word, Jack pulled him down and rolled him onto his back again. He was suddenly able to see clearly just how beautiful he was, especially in the moonlight. When he let his gaze rest on Sawyer’s dripping cock, he felt a surprising new wave of lust going through him. It made him eager and determined to figure out the logistics of giving head, and as quickly as possible. He thought it couldn’t be that difficult. But Sawyer stopped him, holding him back with a hand on his the chest. Quiet and deep, his accent stronger than Jack had ever heard it, he said, “Just your hands. Won’t take much.”
So Jack closed a hand around Sawyer’s cock, spreading the pre-cum over it as he would his own, jerking fast because Sawyer had been so close and he wanted him to finally get his release. Sawyer gasped but managed not to make any sound that would carry into the night. Then Jack saw it coming in his eyes, and he smothered his mouth with a kiss and felt him come wet and hot over his hand, followed closely by a groan into Jack’s mouth and then several frantic, bruising kisses. With a long, hard exhalation, he laid his head on the ground. Jack threw a leg over Sawyer’s thigh and rested his head in the hollow at his collarbone.
“Damn, Doc,” Sawyer mumbled. He finally put his hands on Jack again, one on his lower back and the other absentmindedly rubbing a curling pattern into his scalp.
“Was that…?”
“Didn’t it seem like it to you?”
“I don’t know.” He paused. “I thought it was fucking wonderful.”
He felt Sawyer’s jaw relax and he knew a dimpled grin was spreading over his face. “So shut up already.”
After they lay there quietly for another few seconds, Sawyer suddenly struggled to get free of his embrace and stood up.
“Come on.”
“Where?”
“Water. I can’t sleep all sticky like this.”
“We’re naked.”
“So what? Half of them have seen me naked already. Besides, you think anyone’s awake?”
“If they are…”
“Then they’ve already heard a good show. Anyway, I have a feeling this won’t be something we can hide for long. If this is what I think it is.”
Jack had picked up an undercurrent of uncertainty in Sawyer’s voice, so he chose something vaguely reassuring but teasing: “Just because we’re screwing each other and you’re too chicken to lay here and hold me afterward doesn’t mean they need to see evidence of either fact.”
Sawyer just laughed. “I knew you’d be a cuddler. And a prude. Come on, Doc. What’s a little streaking when you’ve already done the craziest thing on the island.”
“What? You?”
“No,” he said, chuckling. “You let me get a taste of you. You ain’t never gonna get rid of me now.”
Jack just shook his head as he watched Sawyer scramble down the beach toward the ocean. Now that the tension had broken, he was more than a little afraid of what he’d done. Surely he’d just allowed the most unstable, unreliable, unreasonable man on the island to get close to him. He could only take comfort that Sawyer was just as vulnerable and just as freaked out about it. It was far from clear what was going to happen in the days to come. But at least, he thought, I might get some sleep tonight.
After a moment, he peered out of the shelter and then followed Sawyer’s footprints down to the water.
~
BTW, I find my warnings here hilarious. I could get rid of them, but my sense of archival ethics tells me not to. I was apparently feeling rather self-important, especially for some nobody in fandom. Especially seeing that I had the gall to write notes to Megan, not knowing her from Adam, and as if my story could somehow threaten her awesomeness. Also note: I had zero experience with explicit slash back then. Zero.]
Note: This is set from slightly before “The Moth” through a little after “Confidence Man.” I’m giving my own spin to a popular incident in “Lost” fan fiction (without rewriting the events themselves). I’m fudging on Sawyer’s past a bit.
And fair warning -- this is not my usual humorous, smutty, flippant stuff. It’s angsty and borderline sappy in places, and it turns downright dirty. Don’t flame me if you think it’s a crime to write Jack and Sawyer this way.
And a special note for Eponine119, should she read this: I don’t mean to step on the toes of your recently published exploration of Jack’s past (not that I think I am, really). I wrote this before I read your story.
The Same, But Different
Jack couldn’t sleep. This was not the first night he couldn’t sleep. For nearly a week -- or some approximate length of time, since calendars weren’t important anymore -- he’d found himself exhausted but plagued with insomnia. The problem wasn’t physical. He did plenty during the day to tire himself out, and when he lay down at dark, he would feel muscles screaming that he hadn’t known existed, even back when he was doing six hour surgeries. However, they were not what kept him awake. Insomnia, he knew, was sometimes entirely mental.
He thought maybe the problem had to do with his new life. There had been a short time, when he was sixteen, that he wanted nothing more than to grow up to be a normal man -- working with his hands and feeling like he’d accomplished something that the lower end of the social classes would respect him for. Apparently, wanting to escape money and a sure path to a bright future was common enough for someone growing up WASP, whose father was a respected doctor. It had been rebellion, and it was occasioned by an older friend of his. Casey had been the coach’s son who helped out his little league team, and he had taken the frail, apprehensive 9-year-old Jack under his wing. Jack knew him for a long time as this savior figure, but he got to know him as a real person finally when he was just getting his driver’s license and he wanted to know all about his hand-me-down car.
Casey changed oil for a living and worked on cars from his garage for extra cash, and he spent a whole summer educating Jack on the subtleties of an engine. It infuriated his father for him to come home sweaty and dirty from an evening helping Casey, hands stained with oil and grease. But it had made him happy, made his body feel useful and satisfied, and for a few months anyway, he’d dreamed of a life of manual labor. It would have been easier, surely. Casey was only twenty two, and he had friends and a job and he didn’t have to study all the time. In fact, he only did what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it. Or that’s what Jack saw. He was now old enough to see that Casey was no more free than anybody else.
Jack was halfway convinced that his brain kept him awake struggling between worries and re-examinations because he was living that life he’d wanted for that brief time. He now spent his days working with his hands and solving real problems, ones that took a practical ingenuity to figure out. That felt good to him, stretching mental muscles he had long forgotten he had. He was used to effortlessly calculating the dosage of medicines and seeing neural pathways like clear charts his mind. He was not accustomed to sizing up a hulking mass of metal and trying to figure out how three men could get a hold of it to lift it or turning the ripped-out carpeting in the less burnt areas of the plane into a tarp that protected them from the rain. Michael, now he was good at that. He had an excellent sense of the practical combined with a constructive creativity. Sayid was also good at solving physical problems, partly because he had been trained to be. Hurley had bulk enough to be useful, and Jin had sheer strength of will. Charlie was the least useful of them all, but nobody seemed to mind that. They did, however, mind a great deal when Jack, who was physically larger than almost anybody else, with a broad chest and back made for slinging car parts in a factory or hauling lumber, couldn’t be of more help.
Of course, they tried to hide their annoyance -- everyone, that is, except Sawyer. Jack hated to admit it, but Sawyer was good at surviving, even if he downplayed his efforts on anyone else’s behalf. He could bitch and complain and in general make everyone regret his presence on the island, but he was excellent at taking directions and even better at anticipating problems. He would see the middle of the plane’s shell cracking as they carried it; he would point out the places where the water was sure to leak through the shower system they’d all built; he would know exactly where Jack should grip a particular large tree branch, and dammit if Jack wouldn’t follow his orders without question. To his credit, Sawyer didn’t give him too much grief when they were all together, doing whatever it was that needed to be done. But when the crisis was averted or the job completed, he would just smirk at him and sarcastically thank him for his help.
Those smirks were part of what bounced around his head at night. He’d feel the muscles on his arm to see how much stronger he was, how much he’d grown into his bulky, barrel-chested body since he was on the island, and he’d think about the way Casey had squeezed his arms that summer. “You’re starting to look like a good old boy,” Casey said. “I should probably have you over for some beer tonight with Joe and Pablo, because you finally look like a man.” He had beamed at the compliment then, but he could look back on those pictures and know he hadn’t looked like a man until he was almost thirty. He had always had a baby face. But he’d believed Casey, and it was because he wanted to believe him. He wanted Casey to see him as strong and useful and, dammit, old enough to matter. Sometimes, he had the same feelings about Sawyer, who was likely younger than he was but who looked at him like a grizzled veteran of life examining a young, foolish man who just might be worth something one day.
Sawyer almost seemed playful at times, gripping Jack’s arm and making comments about spinal surgeons and the gym, but the levity always quickly vanished, if it had actually existed at all except in Jack’s mind. Whatever Sawyer’s intent, his hand closing around his bicep felt exactly like Casey’s had: hot, heavy, and electric. Jack hadn’t been smart enough to realize his admiration for Casey was more than a younger man’s idolization of an older man, but he was experienced enough to know it now, and to recognize the same feelings for Sawyer. Of course, he wasn’t exactly happy about that. Casey he had liked, and liked well enough to learn how to replace serpentine belts and flush radiators, even if he had long ago forgotten. Casey was calm and patient and steady. He was not prone to a lot of talk, but when he did he revealed himself to be funny, self-deprecating, and observant. Jack wanted to see something in Sawyer that would allow him to nurture this crush in a way he had rarely nurtured a crush on a man, but all he saw was Sawyer being arrogant and violent and mean, those flashes of possible lighthearted wit notwithstanding. So he stayed awake for hours trying to forget following Sawyer’s tanned silhouette through the jungle as he tried not to hang on his every word and gesture. Letting feelings develop wasn’t smart. Sawyer was especially like Casey in one way: he was not interested in men, much less the brainy type that was useless in the real world of brawn and streets smarts.
Of course, all this knowledge about what was wrong with him was forced beneath the surface. He was still trying to believe that his desire to be physical -- both during that summer with Casey and in the face of Sawyer’s smirking -- was from deep within him and not occasioned by the men he was trying to imitate and impress. Deep down, he figured, every man had the capability and the longing to be strong and save the day. So he let his brain wander over everything else that he could possibly think of except the times Sawyer had been right beside him, lifting something with all his might, grunting in a way that said ‘I am powerful and even though I’m an asshole, I’m worth something to these people.’ Jack didn’t sleep at all one night from trying to quiet his brain, because quieting his brain actually meant keeping it occupied so that Sawyer couldn’t get in.
That next day, the crisis came so late in the day they’d all come to think they’d escaped calamity for once. Of course, it did come, and for once since Kate sewed up his shoulder, Jack was the one in need of help. Being trapped in a cave-in was almost preferable to being on the outside. Here he wouldn’t be expected to help; he could only wait for those with abler hands to rescue him. Abler hands turned out to be Charlie, and while he gave Charlie a nice speech about how he wasn’t useless, Jack could only think about how the shortest, least physically imposing man among them -- one sweating and shaking through heroin withdrawal even -- was going to be the one to pop his arm back into socket and in general save the day.
Sawyer hadn’t bothered to help them. He just smugly informed Kate of the cave-in and stayed where he was, unwilling to lift a finger. That made Jack feel even worse, as if he wasn’t worth enough as a person to save, as if Sawyer wasn’t enough of a man to use the arms and back and legs that God gave him to help someone. He was in some ways thankful for the cave-in because it helped him see things clearly. Sawyer wasn’t worth his thoughts or his sleep. That night, he slept soundly for the first time and didn’t think about Sawyer’s body or his resemblance to Casey. Not even the next day, when Sawyer grinned at him in the same way Casey had -- patronizing. With Casey, that was okay. With Sawyer, it made him want to be physically violent with the man.
He got his wish a few days later. He had finally decided the best thing would be to revel in his real role on the island: the medicine man, both in the spiritual and practical sense. No longer trying to be a lumberjack or a tracker, Jack was being the best nurturer and doctor he could. He surreptitiously treated Charlie for his ‘flu’ and went about his days inventorying medicine and thinking about homeopathic remedies he might be able to use instead of the limited pharmacological solutions available to him. If he’d been doing a good job of that, he would have been able to deal more easily with Sawyer’s refusal to hand over the inhalers. Unfortunately, his stupidity at not thinking about much less recognizing eucalyptus was nothing compared to his need to punish Sawyer and reassert his masculinity.
Out at the beach, Kate had broken them up just before Jack threw himself on top of the man, eager to beat him into submission or die trying. An unafraid look had been on Sawyer’s face, and it made him hate him even more. He wasn’t intimidated by Jack; in fact, he seemed like he might enjoy kicking Jack’s ass. When Sawyer nonchalantly wandered into the caves a little later, Jack forgot everything else but how tired he was of being the spiritual and intellectual leader of the group instead of a force to be reckoned with. So he hit Sawyer. It felt so good he did it again. But that didn’t last. He didn’t have the balls to keep hitting Sawyer, especially since it didn’t get him what he wanted. More than anything, it seemed to satisfy Sawyer. So he got Sayid involved.
Watching Sayid torture him was hard. He could only hope that it turned out to be a useful tactic and not just a way for him to make himself suffer because he wasn’t the one with his hands on Sawyer. What he really wanted was to tangle, to grapple with the man and get as good as he gave, but this was nothing like that. It wasn’t fair and it made Jack sick to his stomach. He stopped thinking about Shannon sweating and gasping for air and started to see how much it was costing Sawyer to keep his macho façade intact when he was so helpless. He yelled at Sayid to stop, and he could almost see the knowing grin on Sawyer’s face. Maybe Sawyer had figured it out by then. At the very least, he knew that his own pain was nothing compared to the guilt he could inflict on Jack by suffering the torture stoically or by relishing it. Or the sickening jealousy he could cause by kissing Kate, whether he understood the slant of the jealousy or not.
When Sayid stabbed Sawyer’s arm, Jack finally felt a flicker of satisfaction. It was something real. It had happened when Sawyer was untied and free to challenge his attacker. But the realness of it made his adrenaline pump and made him so glad that he was indeed a doctor and could focus on how to stop the bleeding instead of how afraid he was that this man that he devoted so much energy to would die before he could find out how to live near him without him. Because that’s what he realized in that instant: he would never have Sawyer, but he still wanted him to be there, just as he’d patiently hovered near Casey day after day with no hope of being anything other than a weak but endearing kid in his eyes. As he held his hand over Sawyer’s bicep, gushing blood, and Sawyer made some angry remark about letting him die, that was the furthest thought from his mind. It wasn’t just because he was a doctor. It was because he was staring into a pair of pleading eyes that had stopped being stoic and were now begging for recognition. It was as if Sawyer was articulating something to him.
Only once had he seen Casey’s eyes look like that, and it was the day Jack had sliced his hand open in his garage, and his dirty palm spurted blood everywhere. Casey immediately called his father and did just what his father told him to do. He was firm in dragging him to the old Ford and driving him to the hospital. Only when he’d turned Jack over to his angry father did he give Jack a look that said, ‘Don’t let him take you away from me. Don’t let him believe you aren’t supposed to be the man you want to be.’ The look was fear, the possibility of losing an admirer, a funny kid that hung on his every word, a kid that was in danger of becoming a cold, too cultured man if his father had any say in the matter, a kid that had grown up to be Dr. Jack Sheppard: cerebral, perfectionist, and above all fitting every mold ever placed on him. The look on Sawyer’s face was something similar, but he couldn’t interpret it.
He didn’t even try until he lay down to sleep that night and found the racing thoughts returning, or maybe just one thought, and it was stronger than lust because it was absolutely chilling. Sawyer had lay there, his eyes pleading, but his voice had said, “If the tables were turned, I’d watch you die.” Jack felt like it was the truth. He hadn’t helped them dig Jack out at the cave-in. Maybe he did want Jack dead. Jack just didn’t know why.
He was lying there that night listening to people toss and turn and snore and cough, and he finally got sick of it. Sitting up, he quietly pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and his boots and grabbed a torch they kept prepared in case of nighttime emergencies. He lit it and headed out toward the beach with no idea what he would say or do, only that he needed to have a talk with Sawyer.
The man was lying on the sand outside his shelter wearing nothing but swim trunks. He had tied a shirt around his bandaged arm to keep out the sand, and when he saw Jack’s light approach, he sat up, frowning.
“You make house calls now?”
“Shut up.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said shut up.” Jack planted the torch and sat down beside him, and Sawyer sighed, apparently not in the mood to argue after the day they’d had. “You weren’t sleeping.”
“I don’t much.”
“Neither do I. Lately. Is your arm still bleeding?”
“No. You gonna tell me why you’re here, or am I not allowed to ask questions of my interrogator?”
“I don’t know why I should apologize for what we did when you said yourself you’d like to watch me die.”
“Wouldn’t like to.”
“That’s what you said.”
“No. I said I’d do it. Didn’t say I’d enjoy it.”
“What?”
“I just meant that I’d have the guts to let someone go. You ain’t got as much guts as I do in my pinky finger.”
“I came out here in the middle of the night to pick a fight with you. That’s not guts?”
“No. That’s hoping for an ass kicking. By the way, why is it you act like you wanna have a knock-down-drag-out every time you see me?”
Jack felt a million sarcastic retorts spring up in his mind, but somehow what came out of his mouth was the question he really wanted the answer to. “Why didn’t you come out to the caves when I was trapped?”
“Didn’t want to.”
Jack snorted. Well, he thought, that was his answer. He stood up and said, “Okay. Whatever.”
“You don’t understand anything, do you?”
“No. Not about you.”
“Sit down, okay.” It was command, a mild one, but Jack decided to do what he asked. “I didn’t go out there because I knew two things. One, you had half an army working to get you out, and I figured they’d be successful. Two, I wouldn’t have been any help.”
“Why not? You’re a lot stronger than Charlie, and he managed to get me out.”
“Strength is one thing. You gotta be able to use it right.” Jack just stared at him, so he said, “I give up. When something bad happens, I go full-tilt and screw things up, then I give up. I just let things die.”
“Sawyer…”
“Don’t give me that sad, serious look. And don’t try to understand it, okay. I just know I didn’t want to be there if they ended up getting you out and you were hurt.”
“But you said -- ”
“I’m an excellent liar,” he said, a sardonic smile creeping over his face. “Damn near convince myself sometimes. No, I wouldn’t watch you die. Not if you came up half dead after the crash. Not if Sayid had knifed you instead of me. Not if you had cancer and you were wasting away somewhere. I’d sooner shoot you and put you out of your misery.”
“Is that what you wanted me to do earlier?”
“No. Not really. I wanted you to stop looking at me like you want me.”
“What?” Jack felt his breath catch in his throat, and he was more than a little freaked out by how Sawyer couldn’t meet his eyes anymore.
Sawyer mumbled, “I see it. I’m not blind.”
“I wasn’t -- ”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve been seeing it, and it scares the hell out of me. Didn’t matter what happened to you, I couldn’t take it too well. Whether you died in that cave-in or survived to keep staring at me like you’re trying to see into my soul.”
“You’re really confusing me now.”
“I’m good at that.”
“I know perfectly well that you’re not into men, and I think you know I’d never try anything with you unless I suddenly had a death wish. But what’s this angst about me dying?”
Finally, Sawyer looked at him again. “What do they teach you in college? They teach you to read books and arrange life like it makes sense. I’m here to tell you life doesn’t make sense. You have to live it every day and remember to change when it changes. You’ve got it in your head that I’m straight, and you’ve also got it in your head that me hating your guts has to do with you. Well, I’m at least half queer and I only hate you because it’s easier that way.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t it easier to hate me?”
“I don’t hate you.”
“I think you should try.”
“Is that what all this has been about? Have you been trying to push me away?”
“Not trying. Succeeding.” Sawyer’s eyes shut down then, and the openness he’d displayed all but vanished though he kept the same edge of vulnerable bitterness in his voice. “Why don’t we keep Freckles between us. We can hate each other over her. We can race to see who gets to fuck her first. We can channel all this sexual tension into a constant ass-kicking anger and resentment until one of us is dead.”
As Jack regarded Sawyer for a moment, watching him pull his golden hair back off his face, he suddenly felt like this was the strangest conversation he’d ever had, like he might just wake up and only remember that he’d had a dream in which he wasn’t Jack and Sawyer wasn’t Sawyer. It was almost comically weird, and he finally found a dark humor in the way things were progressing. He replied, “Jesus, you’re depressing.”
“Been known to be.”
“Is your life really that bad?”
“Only when I try to share it with someone.”
“You think I want to share anything with you?”
He snorted. “I think you’ve been looking at me like you want to jump my bones, which is fine with me, if that’s all it is. But you’re not the type.”
“I’m beginning to think neither are you.”
“I can be. But not with you.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just have this voice in my head that tells me to run like hell.”
“Why?”
Sawyer drew his knees up into his chest and looked out toward the dark water as he talked. “I knew this guy once -- Billy Brent. He was my father’s best friend’s son. Billy was smart, real grounded. He ran track after school and he already knew when he was seventeen what he wanted to do with his life. He didn’t backtalk his parents or skip school, and he drove his father crazy because he was this kid from the trailer park and he hated cars and AC/DC and never got into fights about his momma. It was like he didn’t belong in the land of the white trash. He almost had me thinking that I didn’t either. I think he knew how I felt about him, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t like that. He just tried to help me with my algebra and talked to me about getting out of the trailer park. I was a good listener once upon a time. But the end of the story is, he was going to leave me and go away to college, become an archeologist or some shit. He never got the chance because some drunk redneck with a shotgun forgot to unload it before he took it out of his truck and the stray bullet hit him in the head and killed him.”
Jack didn’t say anything, so Sawyer continued, now looking him in the eyes, that same scared-angry-longing look he’d given him when Jack held his bloody arm still.
“And I was glad. Don’t that make me a son of a bitch. I was glad until I sat out here the other night and stopped thinking about how it was good he never got the chance to leave me and started thinking that it wasn’t a mercy killing. This wasn’t me saving the Marshal from a long, slow death. This was a smart, sweet kid that never got to be anything he wanted to be.”
“You didn’t shoot him. It’s not your fault.”
Sawyer was looking away again. “No. But I was happy to see his dreams die. That’s how I love somebody, Doc. I hate them when they aren’t what I want them to be, or when that makes them not want me anymore.”
“Do you hate me?”
“What?” He turned his head and wrinkled his whole face at Jack.
“Do you hate that I’m like him?”
“Shit, Doc. If he wasn’t smart and so damn calm and collected, I’d’ve never paid him any attention. But you’re different from him.”
“How?”
“You hate yourself for things that you don’t have any right to. Billy never worried a bit about my feelings because he didn’t understand them. He had no idea how stupid and useless he made me feel sometimes. But you understand.”
Though he hadn’t meant to be unkind, Jack still reacted with a sour laugh. “Yeah.”
They were sitting so close to each other, and Jack could almost see Sawyer’s hands moving toward him, to slide over his knees, to touch his face. But he didn’t move, and Jack kept the space between them, though it was solid and heavy and it made him want to fidget against it.
Sawyer said, “That’s what makes you and me dangerous. We could make the biggest black hole of low self-esteem and self-pity the world has ever seen.”
“You really believe that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Were you happy when you thought I might die?”
“No.”
“Did you really want me to let you die?”
“No.”
“Did you let us torture you because you wanted me to hurt you?”
“No. Whatever else you believe, I don’t like to be hurt. Sayid, he couldn’t have hurt me if he killed me. But I don’t know what was worse -- knowing you hated me that much or knowing I helped you hate yourself more than you already did.”
Sawyer’s voice was so miserable and sincere that Jack was suddenly all too aware that this was supposed to be a conversation filled with threats and accusations, where he feared for life and limb and learned nothing and regretted it afterward. It wasn’t supposed to reveal a Sawyer that he’d never known existed. So Jack said, “I’m sorry,” knowing that would probably piss Sawyer off. He didn’t like pity.
But Sawyer wasn’t angry when he replied, “Don’t. I’m not. It’s a nice thing for me to remember if I want to keep from letting you in.”
“What if letting me in isn’t terrible?”
“Isn’t it always? You ever known love to feel good?”
It was the second time he’d used that word. “Love?” Jack said, the words almost hanging in his throat.
“Whatever you want to call it.”
“It’s not so much bad as scary.”
“Yep. Now you know the one thing that scares me in this world: giving a damn.”
“Well, I guess you’re entitled to be afraid of whatever you want, but I’ll tell you this: I’d sure as hell rather be scared than be alone and fighting with myself.”
With nothing left to say that wouldn’t just dig the pit deeper, Jack stood up and held his body still through sheer force of will. He had been prepared to hate Sawyer for being callous. He hadn’t been prepared for whatever this was. He grabbed his torch and headed toward the trailhead to the caves, but he stopped when he heard a shuffling behind him.
Sawyer said, “What are you afraid of?”
“Huh?”
“I know why this scares me. But you’re the peace and love and monogamy sort. What’s scaring you so bad about me?”
Jack chuckled bitterly, moved to honesty only because Sawyer had been so rawly honest himself. He walked toward Sawyer so that maybe they wouldn’t wake anyone up and so that no one would hear his answer. He said, “You’re a man.”
Sawyer gave him an utterly confused face.
Jack sighed and said, “I’m only queer in theory.”
Sawyer just looked at him and shook his head. “That’s all? Then I don’t get it.” He laughed softly. “I really don’t.”
“Me either.”
“So you don’t even know if this is something you’d want.”
“No, I don’t. So maybe it would be easier to forget it.”
Jack walked on toward the caves, leaving Sawyer behind. Then he heard his southern drawl, soft now but intense: “Now you’ve got to be the biggest fool I ever saw.”
“What?”
Sawyer was advancing toward him again and Jack watched him move into the arc of torchlight. “Don’t you think one day this will all blow up on us? If we ignore it, one day we might just kill each other. Don’t you think we should at least see if there’s anything to kill each other about?”
“Why? You’d like to forget you want me. You’ve already promised to make my life hell if you fell for me.”
“Jack,” he said, his face visibly changing as he used his name rather than one of the nicknames he resorted to. “Jack, I hate to tell you, but I’ve already fallen. Hard. Hurt like a motherfucker.”
He gave him a doubtful face, saying, “When?”
“When I was fifteen. I just didn’t realize what it was until I met you and you were so much like him, so smart and decent. Except you started being such a bossy prick and I knew that I’d hated some things about Billy. He manipulated me, all condescending. You treat me like I deserve, like I’m mean and cruel and hard but not weak and stupid. It’s like you understand me. That’s why I can’t ignore it. Can you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Only one way to know, really.”
He took the torch from Jack’s hand and planted it in the ground beside them. He studied his face for a moment. He said, “What is it you see in me?”
“It’s a long story.”
“You gonna tell me?”
“Are you gonna keep stalling?”
Jack expected a kiss -- wanted it -- but Sawyer didn’t kiss him. He just slipped his arms around his waist and rested his head on his shoulder. He was actually trembling, and Jack heard a long sigh escape his lips. Sawyer said, “You are so thick. Do you know what kind of things a body like that does to a man?”
Jack just let out a hoarse laugh. Impatient now, he pulled back from Sawyer and lifted his chin, kissing him fiercely as Sawyer clung to him, smashing their bodies together. Sawyer pressed his hard cock into Jack’s groin, and he mumbled an affirmation when he felt Jack’s body respond. Then he held them there, bodies throbbing together, neither one breathing quite evenly.
Sawyer said, “Well, your body doesn’t have problems with me. What about up here?” He tapped Jack’s forehead.
Jack said, “Right now it’s taking its orders from the rest of me. Are you stalling again?”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t.”
So Sawyer began to shift against him and they kissed each other deeply, stifling groans as their hips roughly moved together under the dim moonlight, hip bones knocking and bruising, cocks straining against layers of clothing. Finally, Sawyer said, “Will they miss you if you don’t go home tonight?”
“Not if I tell them I was keeping you alive.”
Sawyer grabbed the torch and ducked toward his shelter, Jack following him. He stopped to smother the torch in the sand, then he pulled Jack’s shirt over his head, dragging him to the blanket-covered floor. Deftly, Sawyer positioned himself between Jack’s legs so they could continue thrusting against each other.
Sawyer’s kissing was fast and intense, nipping and sucking and sloppy, and he was able to do things with his tongue that made Jack want to feel that mouth on his cock instead. When Sawyer took his mouth away to kiss Jack’s neck again, Jack fought him and plastered his own mouth to Sawyer’s jawline, kissing his way up to his ear. He felt Sawyer squirming, bucking against him harder, and he was suddenly tired of the constant friction of jeans and boxers and shorts. He said in Sawyer’s ear, “Will you please get naked already?”
Sawyer sat back and said, “You first,” watching him pull off what remained of his clothes without touching him, though he clearly wanted to. Then he shimmied out of his shorts and Jack pulled him back between his legs again, now rubbing their hot, hard cocks together so that Jack was sure he wouldn’t last thirty seconds like that.
“Oh, fuck, Sawyer, slow down.”
Sawyer just grinned and began to thrust harder, kissing right under Jack’s earlobe, sucking so hard he knew it would leave a hickey. Sawyer was branding him, and somehow Jack didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything but holding back his orgasm until Sawyer pulled back to look at him and a trace of pain flickered over his face. Jack noticed that the shirt on Sawyer’s arm had loosened, and he could see blood coming through the bandage. Almost immediately, Jack held Sawyer’s hips as still as he could and said, “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
“I’m fine.”
“The hell you are.”
Sawyer let out a short, frustrated breath. “Dammit, just stop being the doctor for five minutes. I’ll live.”
Jack didn’t respond, instead forcibly rolling Sawyer onto his back and straddling him, one hand pressed firmly into his chest. He started to say something bossy and serious and mature but Sawyer’s eyes stopped him, darkened as they were with lust. Sawyer mumbled, “Damn, Doc,” and pulled him down to continue thrusting against him. Jack had to hold down Sawyer’s bad arm to keep him from moving it. Sawyer fought him for a moment, but he finally surrendered, saying, “Fuck, Jack. Oh, Jesus, I wanna fuck you.”
Jack whimpered at that, thrusting harder, and suddenly he felt Sawyer roll him back over. “That was way too easy,” he said, chuckling. Then he began to kiss his way down Jack’s torso, tugging at each nipple quickly and stopping at his navel only long enough to position himself in such a way that he could hold himself up with his one good arm. Jack was about to argue with him when he felt Sawyer’s mouth close around his cock and he pulled his hips up, nearly causing Sawyer to collapse on top of him.
He said, “Hold still, dammit.”
He thought, Easy for you to say, but he only mumbled out something incoherent as Sawyer’s mouth was taking him in again. This was nothing nice and playful. This was a man trying to see how quickly he could accomplish his goal, and with what blinding intensity. Jack was already almost there anyway, so a few flicks of the tongue and a few long sucks later and he was coming hard into Sawyer’s mouth, feeling him swallow. He soon had to pull Sawyer’s mouth away, as sensitive as he was, especially now that he could feel Sawyer’s rough beard rubbing his thighs.
Jack watched Sawyer sit up and he realized that Sawyer was still hard and he was moving to stroke himself. Without a word, Jack pulled him down and rolled him onto his back again. He was suddenly able to see clearly just how beautiful he was, especially in the moonlight. When he let his gaze rest on Sawyer’s dripping cock, he felt a surprising new wave of lust going through him. It made him eager and determined to figure out the logistics of giving head, and as quickly as possible. He thought it couldn’t be that difficult. But Sawyer stopped him, holding him back with a hand on his the chest. Quiet and deep, his accent stronger than Jack had ever heard it, he said, “Just your hands. Won’t take much.”
So Jack closed a hand around Sawyer’s cock, spreading the pre-cum over it as he would his own, jerking fast because Sawyer had been so close and he wanted him to finally get his release. Sawyer gasped but managed not to make any sound that would carry into the night. Then Jack saw it coming in his eyes, and he smothered his mouth with a kiss and felt him come wet and hot over his hand, followed closely by a groan into Jack’s mouth and then several frantic, bruising kisses. With a long, hard exhalation, he laid his head on the ground. Jack threw a leg over Sawyer’s thigh and rested his head in the hollow at his collarbone.
“Damn, Doc,” Sawyer mumbled. He finally put his hands on Jack again, one on his lower back and the other absentmindedly rubbing a curling pattern into his scalp.
“Was that…?”
“Didn’t it seem like it to you?”
“I don’t know.” He paused. “I thought it was fucking wonderful.”
He felt Sawyer’s jaw relax and he knew a dimpled grin was spreading over his face. “So shut up already.”
After they lay there quietly for another few seconds, Sawyer suddenly struggled to get free of his embrace and stood up.
“Come on.”
“Where?”
“Water. I can’t sleep all sticky like this.”
“We’re naked.”
“So what? Half of them have seen me naked already. Besides, you think anyone’s awake?”
“If they are…”
“Then they’ve already heard a good show. Anyway, I have a feeling this won’t be something we can hide for long. If this is what I think it is.”
Jack had picked up an undercurrent of uncertainty in Sawyer’s voice, so he chose something vaguely reassuring but teasing: “Just because we’re screwing each other and you’re too chicken to lay here and hold me afterward doesn’t mean they need to see evidence of either fact.”
Sawyer just laughed. “I knew you’d be a cuddler. And a prude. Come on, Doc. What’s a little streaking when you’ve already done the craziest thing on the island.”
“What? You?”
“No,” he said, chuckling. “You let me get a taste of you. You ain’t never gonna get rid of me now.”
Jack just shook his head as he watched Sawyer scramble down the beach toward the ocean. Now that the tension had broken, he was more than a little afraid of what he’d done. Surely he’d just allowed the most unstable, unreliable, unreasonable man on the island to get close to him. He could only take comfort that Sawyer was just as vulnerable and just as freaked out about it. It was far from clear what was going to happen in the days to come. But at least, he thought, I might get some sleep tonight.
After a moment, he peered out of the shelter and then followed Sawyer’s footprints down to the water.
~