(no subject)
back to first part
*****
Sawyer did get up early and start to work, but he was glad that Sayid was a little early himself, because it wasn’t easy going. The roof of the house seemed the most important to him, and he struggled to make it perfect. Sun mostly watched that morning as they crouched and stretched and stumbled and sometimes cursed the rafters. It didn’t make it any easier that he was once again working with his shirt off and Sun was staring at him, not exactly ogling but not bothering to hide the fact that she was examining his back and shoulders and stomach. He knew he was pale, paler than he’d been before he’d spent so long recovering. And he was more out of shape than he’d been in his adult life-not too flabby, but not very tightly muscled anymore. Still, he wasn’t bad to look at, and she certainly seemed to like what she saw. It was enough to nearly completely unnerve him, as if her staring were somehow crossing that invisible physical line they’d drawn, or as if it meant she did want him after all, and not in some purely emotional way.
He was glad when Kate interrupted them at lunch, to survey their progress with amazement-underscored with more than a little amusement-and bring them some pre-packaged Dharma food. He was less glad when she announced that she’d been sent to fetch him and bring him back to the hatch for some problem Jack was having.
“What could he need me for?” he asked her.
“I don’t have any idea. I just know he said he needed you, specifically. This afternoon.”
“Can’t it wait? I’m building a damn house here.”
“He says no.”
He was this short of telling her to tell him to fuck off, but Sayid shot him a look that said humor him while it also seemed interested in what would make Jack seek out Sawyer’s help. Sawyer was more annoyed than interested, but he went anyway, only after pulling Sayid aside and reminding him that he couldn’t let Sun fetch the tarp for the roof, because he had to get it from her own tent, not from Sawyer’s, like she thought. Throwing on his t-shirt, Sawyer half-stomped out into the jungle.
By the time he got to the hatch, the hatred he had for that underground hospital/prison had grown to almost unmanageable proportions, mostly because he wasn’t going there of his own free will, but he swallowed and gritted his teeth and ducked through the doorway. Jack was sitting vacantly at the computer, watching the time count down.
“What the hell do you want?”
Jack sighed. “Nice to see you too.”
“I’m in the middle of something, hotshot. I realize you did save my life and all, but could you go about collecting your favor sometime when I’m not trying to build myself a house.”
Jack smiled. “You mean, when you’re not building a house for Sun.”
“Who told you?”
“Does it matter? I’m sure almost everyone knows by now.”
“Fabulous.”
“It’s not such a bad thing. People think you’re a nice guy now.”
“Shows what they know.”
Jack stood up finally, making a face halfway between rolling his eyes at Sawyer’s predictable self-deprecation and sighing with fatigue. That tired, put-upon face seemed to be the only one Jack knew anymore. “Look, I’m not calling in a favor. I’m just going to the guy who might be the closest thing this island has to an expert.”
“In what?”
“Hiding things.”
“Such as…?”
Jack seemed to ponder what he was asking for a moment, then he sighed and said, “Guns.”
“What?”
Jack walked out of the room, motioning for him to follow. Pausing in front of the door of the armory, and he leaned back against it. “We have a lot of guns.”
“Yeah. A dozen or so.”
“And one of those guns has already killed somebody.”
“Two,” Sawyer said, remembering with pain his nearly unsuccessful attempt to put the Marshall out of his misery.
“I think it’s a bad idea that we’ve got so many guns in places where people can get them.”
“Well, most of them are here in your fancy hatch gun safe. And from what I recall, the others are tucked away in some hidey-hole of yours, locked up tight.” He gestured at the key around his neck.
“And one of those was what nearly killed Locke.”
“Shannon nearly killed Locke, Jack.”
“Well, I moved all my guns but one into this armory, and it isn’t safe anymore.”
“How is a locked door not safe?”
“Too many people know the combination.”
“Like who?”
“Kate, Sayid, Locke, Hurley.”
“Hurley?”
“Don’t ask me. That’s the point. We don’t know who might have the combination.”
“I think you’re being paranoid. Ana Lucia-now, I’d worry about her. I’m not betting you’re actually scared of Kate. I’d even wager that you plan on keeping her in the loop. But I don’t think you have to be scared of Baldy or Sayid either.”
“I just think there are too many people who have access to the guns.”
“And you’re adding one more by telling me.”
“You’ve got a few of them already guns
“Yeah. Plan to keep them, too.”
“I’m not worried about you. You’ve kept yours out of the wrong hands.”
“Have you forgotten that it was a gun Ana Lucia took off me that killed Shannon?”
“No, I haven’t. But that’s beside the point.”
“I don’t see how you figure. And I don’t guess I will ever understand you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you don’t like me, and last time I checked, I was the person you thought most likely to sell my sister for a fifth of J.D. Why in the hell would you trust me to know how to get to the guns?”
“You’re an opportunist, but you always think things through. You know how and when to use a gun, and properly. And if I’m wrong and you wanted to do something stupid, you’d have done it by now.”
“Opportunities come up all the time. And I think really you just know that you ain’t gettin’ my guns and, besides, I’ll find the ones you’re so desperate to hide, so you’re making nice, making like you trust me, so I won’t feel like I have any reason to challenge you. Hell, maybe you’re even gonna ask me to put these guns with mine, in my own hiding place, so you can know all about that too.”
“I told her you’d do this.”
“Freckles?”
“No. Sun.”
“Sun? Jesus. So much for keeping this a damn secret.”
“I told her you’d be suspicious.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said, ‘Yes. I know.’”
For a moment, they stared at each other, unsure of where the conversation was going. Then Sawyer said, “Why are you dragging her into this shit, anyway?”
“I respect her opinion. She’s smart, and she’s got a good heart. But even with her faith in people, she still thinks it’s a good idea to make the guns safer.”
“But she’s not interested in you hiding them from me?”
“No.” He smiled, faintly, then he shook his head, still smiling. “I don’t know what you’ve done to her, but she believes every word you say, and a whole lot of others you probably don’t but she hears anyway.”
It took all he had not to slam Jack into that locked door. Instead, he gritted his teeth and said, “I haven’t done a damn thing to her.”
Jack’s eyes got wide. “I didn’t mean it that way. Besides, what you two do is none of my business.”
At that, Sawyer’s hands did jerk a bit, but he kept them down. “We don’t do anything! So stop fucking thinking like that! She’s my friend, that’s all, and if she trusts me it’s probably because she’s more patient than God and not because I’ve fucking tried to mess with her mind.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t have a goddamn clue what’s going on in my head, so don’t pretend you can predict what I’m gonna do or why I’m gonna do it. I’ve got nothing but respect for her, and it’s obvious you don’t.”
Sawyer chose not to leave, instead staring Jack down, but it was a fatal mistake, because he found himself looking hard into eyes that always seemed half confused but wholly concerned. Jack said, “Look, I didn’t mean anything by it. People are just worried about her.”
He was prepared for a fight, even if he had to hurt his fist on Jack’s hard head, but that comment had disarmed him, brought his thoughts back to protecting Sun and not just his big, stupid, fragile ego. Looking at it from the perspective of the rest of the survivors, Sun must’ve seemed crazy. Didn’t he think that himself?
Quietly, but almost in a growl, he said, “If they’re worried because of me, well maybe they should be.” He paused and took a deep breath, trying not to show Jack just how suddenly and absolutely rattled he was. “Now, aside from how unbelievably self-righteous this plan is, what makes you think it’ll work anyway? You don’t have access to all the guns.”
“I’ll get them.”
“You’re absolutely nuts. You know that, right? You’ve gone completely off the deep end, doctor.”
“Fine. Get out and don’t help me. I’ll find someone who will.” Jack sighed and pushed himself off the door of the armory, heading back into the living room area.
Following behind him, Sawyer said, “No, look, I’m gonna help you if I can, not because I want any part of your stupid-ass power play, but because I owe you.”
“For what?” Jack stopped.
Sawyer just glared at him, his eyes flitting for a second to the doorway that led to the bedroom he planned on never setting foot in again. Jack frowned. “You don’t owe me anything. I was doing my job.”
“We both know that it was more than that, and if you hadn’t been so stubborn, I’d be dead.”
“I don’t know that.”
“I do.”
Jack settled himself on the arm of the couch, looking at the floor for a minute. Then he said, “I don’t know if you realize it, but you were different when you came back.”
Without knowing where it came from, though it must have been true, he replied, “I was different when I left.”
“I know.” He paused. “If you want to look at what I did for you this way, I owed you.”
Sawyer didn’t ask him what he owed him for, which of the two things that had shifted the balance between them-the one that Jack stood by and watched and the other that Sawyer had given of his own volition.
Jack wasn’t looking at him anymore, but the face he was making was startling, mainly because Sawyer never expected Jack to get to this point, at least not so soon. His expression was of a person determined to do something stupid, and it practically begged for those stupid plans to be derailed. So Sawyer said, “Well, that lets me off the hook then, because I don’t want to hide your guns for you. For one, I don’t want to know where they are. And for two, it strikes me as the world’s worst idea to take them out there into the jungle or the camp for anybody, including the Others, to trip over.”
“Fine.” Jack sounded annoyed and defeated all at once, but the slump of his shoulders looked like relief.
“I would change the combo for you, but it wouldn’t take Locke any time to figure it out.”
“I know,” he said with a sigh. “That was my first idea.”
They stood staring at each other for a long time before Jack finally said, “Can you stay here for a while?”
“Why?”
“I need you to watch the button so I can run some errands.”
“What am I, your slave all of a sudden?”
“Just thirty, forty minutes. It’s important.”
“And my house isn’t?”
“Sawyer, Sun’s house is being built without you right now. I’ll tell them where you are, if it’ll make you feel better.”
“Fuck, just go. But you better come back real soon.”
“Eko’s due in less than an hour.”
When Jack disappeared down the exit tunnel, he was amazed to find that instead of feeling calmer, he was actually more tense and even jittery now that he was alone in the hatch. Surely, he thought, I can survive an hour down here. That gave him an hour to decide how to best reveal his surprise to Sun.
*****
When he finally hiked back to the work site and came into the clearing from the jungle, he was taken aback: the roof was already on. He was so shocked that he didn’t even notice that nobody seemed to be around. It was amazing and unexpected, because the roof wasn’t just rigged up-it was done. He didn’t have time to wonder who or why because Sun was coming out of the house, smiling and pulling him by the arm toward the door.
He was too bewildered to fight her, so he simply followed her into the tent. If finding the house done had thrown him for a loop, what he saw inside made him feel like he’d been kicked in the stomach: the house was filled with his own things-all those boxes and bags and other random containers of his hard-won and -kept accumulation of supplies. Of course it was. Of course she’d keep pressing on while he was gone, and she’d move everything by herself. But Sayid should have stopped her. This was not the way it was supposed to happen.
“Do you like it?” she was saying.
“Who did this?”
“You don’t like it?”
“No. No, Sun, it’s nice. I just…when did you get finished?”
“A little while ago.”
“You should have waited for me.”
”I’m sorry. I thought it would be a nice surprise.”
“It is. It’s…”
“It’s the nicest house on the island.”
“It’s the only house on the island.” She frowned, so he added, “But, yeah, nice.”
She began to point out so many things that made it special, and they were mostly all things he’d already known about-planned himself-except the creative ways she’d arranged his things, including a shelf for his books, right near the front door so that people who wanted to borrow them had easy access. She was so happy, but he didn’t want her to get too comfortable with his things being in the house. “Sun, come out here for a second, okay?”
He took her by the hand and led her out, much as she’d led him in, but once they were outside, he let go of her hand, feeling his start to sweat.
She said, “What’s wrong?”
“Sun, I appreciate this. I do. I can’t believe it’s done and I can’t believe what you’ve done with the place. But it wasn’t… Shit, this is not the way this was supposed to go.”
“Sawyer?”
“This wasn’t supposed to be for me. I was building this house for you.”
Somehow, he’d managed to keep his eyes on her as he said it, even if it was a little painful to do that. But her reaction was not at all what he expected. Yes, she did an impressive job of seeming shocked, but not before she let slip this warm, knowing smile. It almost sent his head into a spin, except it couldn’t be what he thought. It couldn’t be that she knew all along and let him carry on like this anyway. He felt his face flush with embarrassment, but underneath that was pure amazement. He began to calculate it all in his head-her questions and her behavior and the mysterious interruption to go see Jack-and he really couldn’t speak for a moment. She had thoroughly conned him, and he couldn’t even process all the emotions that stirred up.
But she was still in the act now, and she said, “Why would you do this for me?”
Not knowing anything else to do, he kept up with the charade. “Because you deserve it. Because your tent is falling apart.”
“It’s not falling anymore. It’s here.” She pointed to the roof, and he now recognized the tell-tale burnt markings on one corner. Sayid had kept up his part of the deal after all.
“So you’ll have to stay here,” he said.
“No.” If nothing else gave it away, that did.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“No. Your things are here. You should stay.”
She wasn’t even doing an adequate job pretending she was shocked and flattered by his gesture. She obviously hoped she could simply convince him, make the con more sinister because he’d never know she knew. He tried to keep his voice from taking on an edge, but he was unsuccessful. “What in the hell is wrong with you? I built this house for you. I want you to live in it. I have a perfectly good tent. You don’t even have your shithole tent anymore.”
“I want to stay at the beach,” she said evenly.
“That’s all you can say? ‘I wanna stay at the beach’?”
“Yes.”
He was suddenly so overwhelmed with frustration that he simply shook his head and turned, walking back into the jungle in the direction he’d come. He could hear her padding along behind him after a long few seconds, but he didn’t turn back. He couldn’t, especially since she had to have known what she was saying wasn’t the least bit believable, was in fact wounding him.
It was clear in her voice when she finally realized it. “Sawyer, please. Talk to me.”
“Ain’t nothing to say. I ain’t never done anything good enough for you. Not even this. You’ve known for days-don’t try and deny it-and you had enough time to decide you didn’t want anything I did for you.”
He expected her to be rebuffed, but apparently she’d already thought ahead to his reaction. She said, “Is that why you didn’t tell me? You thought if you surprised me I’d have to take it?”
“No. Hell no. Fuck, if it’s that bad…”
She hissed out something in Korean, finally coming around in front of him with a heavy stomp. Vehemently, she said, “It’s not bad. It’s good. You could have told me what you were doing.”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
Firmly: “That is why I moved your things this afternoon. I wanted to surprise you.” She took a deep breath, then she stepped closer to him. Smiling sheepishly, she said, “This is not the way it was supposed to go.”
That made him smile, through a good bit of pain. “Ain’t that what I said.”
She reached out a hand and took his, pulling it toward her and cradling it in both of hers. When she spoke again, she was almost talking to his hand instead of his face. That was okay-he was looking at her hands too. She spoke slowly, deliberately. “When I figured out what you were doing, I was surprised and very happy. It is one of the most nice things anyone has done for me. You thought about doing this, and you took time to go through with your plan…” She shook her head. “I started to think about it, and I think that you need the house more than I do. You are starting over.”
He felt like he was stripped open now, standing there with his arm stretched out toward her, helpless, longing to do something, to reach to her with his other hand and smooth it over her face, but he couldn’t even properly look at her, really. He’d just wanted to do something nice for her, and here she was, doing something nice for him, as always. It was as if she would never let him just take care of her like he wanted to.
He replied, “So are you. Starting over. Without Jin.”
“And now the tent we lived in is gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s what was supposed to happen, I think.”
“I still think you need this house more than I do.”
“You’re wrong.” She said it so conclusively that he could only squint at her, shaking his head. “You built it.”
“I built it for you, Sun.”
“And I know that. I will know every time I pass by it or sit inside it. But you built it, the first thing you have put so much energy in since you were sick. You should be living inside it.”
“No.”
“You have more need of the room. You have more things.”
“No.”
She crossed her arms. “I am more stubborn than you.”
He snorted. “No way in hell you’re half as stubborn as me. You have to live here. You don’t have a tent anymore.”
“Yes I do.”
There was a gleam in her eye, and he finally saw that part of the motivation for her deception about the house wasn’t about doing something kind for him; it was about simply putting one over on him, not in a mean way, but to prove to him that she could read him and hold her own with him. She’d done a spectacularly good job. He would have never guessed she could be that deceiving, or that he could be so blind.
They were still standing there, Sawyer’s hand in Sun’s, but he brought up his other hand and took hers in both of his, and he stepped a little closer, just a few inches, but it was enough to see the amusement and joy in her eyes at holding a secret over him. It was almost charming enough to make him forget to be annoyed with her for tricking him and perturbed with her for not letting him have his way. Refocusing on their battle of wills, he said, “You do not have a tent anymore. Yours is in that roof.”
“If you go and look you will see my things are in your old tent. You have no place to live but here.”
He shook his head, smiling despite himself. “You’re gonna live in my old tent?”
“Yes. It’s comfortable. It’s close to my garden, and the beach.”
“It stinks.”
“Not anymore,” she said, holding back a giggle quite unsuccessfully. He had to release her hands then, because it was all too tempting to draw her into his arms. As she seemed to float away from him, she said, “Besides, you said I could do whatever I wanted with your tent. You promised.” She raised her eyebrows. “I told you I am more stubborn than you are.”
“No. I think you’re just a better liar.”
She laughed. “Maybe that is true. I don’t think anyone on the island believed you were building a new house for yourself.”
“Why not? That’s exactly what I’d do. Why do you say that? Because nobody would have helped me unless they knew it was for somebody else?”
“No. If you could see yourself as the rest of us see you now, you would know why it would be hard to believe.”
“Sunshine, I ain’t turned into no selfless human being. And I don’t talk to any of them often enough that they’d have a clue who I am.”
She crossed back over to him, letting her hand slide down his arm, almost playfully but it was a more meaningful touch than taking his hand had been, because this one told him that she wanted to go further but was holding herself back. “You walk different now. You talk different.”
“I’m still the person I’ve always been.”
“I know that. I’m glad. But now you’ve stopped…”
“What?”
“I can’t remember the word. What is it when someone pretends to be another person, for a movie or a play?”
“Acting.”
“Yes. You stopped acting.”
“What do you mean?” She’d said it so seriously, and he felt the truth of it hitting him hard, unexpectedly, although it made so much sense it was surprising he’d just now realized it.
But then Sun’s face was stretching into another grin. “Now, you are very bad at acting.” She giggled.
“Screw you,” he said in a playfully grouchy tone.
“Do you know how I figured it out? You would have offered me your tent if you were serious about moving into this house.”
He grumbled, “You think this is all so funny, don’t you?”
“Yes and no. I like surprises.”
Rolling his eyes, he replied, “Well, I would have liked to do something nice for you, but apparently you want everybody to think I’m a total and complete asshole.”
Her face got serious for a moment. “They don’t think that. And also, what is it you say to Rose when she tries to help you with things? ‘You didn’t take me to raise.’”
“Sun?”
“I am not your respon-- Shit. Responsi-“
“Responsibility? I didn’t mean it that way. You can take care of yourself. I know that. It’s just--”
“I know.” Her face softened, surrendering to something. “Would you like me to tell you why I cannot live in this house?” He simply nodded. “I don’t know how to take things from people when they are this important.”
When he smiled, she looked puzzled, so he said, “Well, me either, sister. And you definitely are my responsibility.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m yours. Now, what I gotta know is, are you always this stubborn about somebody caring about you?”
The words were out of his mouth before he realized that the things he had been thinking for so long and the things he’d allowed himself to say had been almost so radically different that there seemed to be a wide chasm between them. He’d just said something that amounted to throwing down a long plank over that chasm and walking out onto it, and he felt his stomach churn as he waited for her to react, to speak. Her face was unreadable.
“No,” she said. “I like to have people care for me.”
“But you just said…about not taking things…”
“I wish I can explain what I mean, but I don’t think I can. The person is important, and so is the…”
“What?”
“I hate that I cannot remember all these words.” She shook her head. “We should go back and make sure all of your things are where you want them to be.”
He almost laughed then, realizing that she sometimes used the language barrier as an excuse-consciously or not, he didn’t know-to get out of a conversation she didn’t want to be in or couldn’t handle. “I’m sure it’s fine.”
But she was walking back anyway, so Sawyer followed. He was still sulking a bit, disappointed that his grand romantic gesture had been a colossal failure. Not only had it not been a surprise, but he didn’t even have the final product to give her. He tried to focus instead on what this mischievous turn from Sun meant; it utterly complicated his view of her, but he wasn’t sure how just yet.
However, true to form, what his brain kept circling back to was himself-how he’d failed to do the one thing he was good at: pretending. It had been different this time, pulling this disastrous con. He’d suffered through it. He’d been unable to read anything right. It was clear that he had lost his touch, either temporarily or for good. What wasn’t clear was whether he should be angry or not. Should he regret that he was apparently unable to be manipulative anymore? It had served him well. He didn’t particularly know how to live without that aspect of his personality.
Except, he thought, I do. That was maybe the thing that Sun saw. He’d been living without it since he’d returned to the island. Somehow, being on that raft had swept away some of his reserves of bullshit. It should have just been fuel for him, because his lies and tricks were always about survival. However, clinging to a loose bundle of sticks with a bullet in his arm, there was no one to bullshit. He found that he couldn’t even bullshit himself out there.
Self-delusion, though, was a skill he hadn’t entirely lost, because he’d done a thorough job lately of deceiving himself about Sun. He’d let himself get hung up on whether he and Sun were compatible, whether he was capable of really caring about someone, whether he could somehow pay her back for giving a damn about him when he didn’t even give a damn about himself. He’d let his head get clouded with sex and whole lot of other things that weren’t even issues yet-all because he didn’t want to deal with what was underlying everything: need. He needed her. He couldn’t recall needing another human being like this since he was a child. More importantly, he had no template for mixing that need up with want. The last time he’d even come close was Cass, and that crashed and burned spectacularly.
Sun said, “You are quiet.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. But you are not…too angry with me?”
“No. Not angry at all. Just…shocked.”
“You really didn’t know, did you?”
“No.”
“I thought I was being too obvious.”
“You probably were.”
She giggled, then, but it was more of a nervous chuckle. “I thought by now you would be better at understanding me.”
“Well, apparently I’m not,” he mumbled.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think you see what I mean.” Then she stopped, taking hold of his bicep to stop him too. She reached up, pulled his face down toward hers, and her lips were sliding softly over his before he could even think about what they were doing and whether they should be doing it at all. By the time he had his arms around her waist, those familiar movements feeling so novel now, he knew that this was okay, probably better than okay.
She didn’t taste at all like he imagined she would, but he breathed in the scent of her that he’d grown so used to, and her hands on his face and then the back of his neck were hands he knew. Despite the comforting familiarity of her presence, there were so many other things that he could never have guessed or known about Sun until now. He was stunned by how much passion he could feel from her, from just a kiss, their bodies only ghosting against each other. She seemed to invite the kiss deeper, and when he felt her mouth opening wider against his, he tentatively let his tongue probe into her mouth, and she met it with softness and a strange, slow intensity.
She eventually leaned into his body a little, but her hands were working their way into his spiked hair, from the nape of his neck up to the back of his skull, cradling it, with her fingers swirling over his scalp as she seemed to find ways of deepening the kiss again and again. Suddenly, it was as if his mind had finally connected with what his body was doing, and he was now aware of an arousal that spread like heat, radiating out from his torso and down even as far as his toes and his shaking fingers, leaving behind it a heaviness in his stomach and some sort of sweet tension in his groin. Without knowing exactly why, he tried to pull back, but her hands in his hair caught him and held him fast there, the both of them breathing heavily, forehead to forehead, eyes closed as she waited for him to kiss her again. When he didn’t, when he hesitated, not because he was unsure but because he was more than a little overwhelmed, she brushed her lips over his and she captured his bottom lip between hers briefly before she said against his cheek, “Sorry.”
“What?”
She drew back a little, but her arms were still around his neck. “I am too impatient sometimes.”
“Me too. And I ain’t complainin’.”
“That was okay?”
Dazed and more than a little baffled by such a tentative question following such a confident kiss, he managed to say, “Yeah. That was just fine.”
At that, she did withdraw from his arms, and they continued on the trail toward the house. He wanted to take her hand, but it seemed too hard now to bridge that physical gap again. He suddenly felt unreasonably awkward, like he didn’t exactly know how to talk to her or what he could and couldn’t do.
“Sawyer?”
“Yeah?”
“I am very happy you built the house. To me, it means that you want to keep me safe and dry, and I am thankful for that. I believe that you don’t understand what it means to me. You should ask Kate what my first reaction was.”
“She said you’d cry.”
“That was the second day.”
“The first?”
“I was too surprised to cry. I had a hard time even talking.”
When she didn’t clarify that remark, Sawyer welcomed the silence. He had too much to think about. And if he opened his mouth again, he had absolutely no idea what might come out of it. That she could reduce him to a tongue-tied moron was a little distressing, but he was a little too happy to worry about it at the moment.
*****
When Sawyer lay down in his new house that night, the ground felt solid under his back, more solid than the sand ever had. It wasn’t exactly home-not just yet. It did feel somehow purifying, like passing through that door had strained something out of him. Sun had told him Eko blessed the house, and although that made him indistinctly irritated, it also gave him a weird sense of peace.
Still, this failure weighed on him. He had wanted to give Sun something nice, and instead he had only given her his old, smelly tent. But when he imagined Sun lying down for sleep, perhaps putting her mat where his pallet had been, he couldn’t help but smile. Thinking about what she’d said before, about being in a place where someone you care about has been, he knew, with a certainty that defied logic, that she would be comfortable in his tent, and knowing this was true made him feel like he’d given her something after all.
*****
Sawyer did get up early and start to work, but he was glad that Sayid was a little early himself, because it wasn’t easy going. The roof of the house seemed the most important to him, and he struggled to make it perfect. Sun mostly watched that morning as they crouched and stretched and stumbled and sometimes cursed the rafters. It didn’t make it any easier that he was once again working with his shirt off and Sun was staring at him, not exactly ogling but not bothering to hide the fact that she was examining his back and shoulders and stomach. He knew he was pale, paler than he’d been before he’d spent so long recovering. And he was more out of shape than he’d been in his adult life-not too flabby, but not very tightly muscled anymore. Still, he wasn’t bad to look at, and she certainly seemed to like what she saw. It was enough to nearly completely unnerve him, as if her staring were somehow crossing that invisible physical line they’d drawn, or as if it meant she did want him after all, and not in some purely emotional way.
He was glad when Kate interrupted them at lunch, to survey their progress with amazement-underscored with more than a little amusement-and bring them some pre-packaged Dharma food. He was less glad when she announced that she’d been sent to fetch him and bring him back to the hatch for some problem Jack was having.
“What could he need me for?” he asked her.
“I don’t have any idea. I just know he said he needed you, specifically. This afternoon.”
“Can’t it wait? I’m building a damn house here.”
“He says no.”
He was this short of telling her to tell him to fuck off, but Sayid shot him a look that said humor him while it also seemed interested in what would make Jack seek out Sawyer’s help. Sawyer was more annoyed than interested, but he went anyway, only after pulling Sayid aside and reminding him that he couldn’t let Sun fetch the tarp for the roof, because he had to get it from her own tent, not from Sawyer’s, like she thought. Throwing on his t-shirt, Sawyer half-stomped out into the jungle.
By the time he got to the hatch, the hatred he had for that underground hospital/prison had grown to almost unmanageable proportions, mostly because he wasn’t going there of his own free will, but he swallowed and gritted his teeth and ducked through the doorway. Jack was sitting vacantly at the computer, watching the time count down.
“What the hell do you want?”
Jack sighed. “Nice to see you too.”
“I’m in the middle of something, hotshot. I realize you did save my life and all, but could you go about collecting your favor sometime when I’m not trying to build myself a house.”
Jack smiled. “You mean, when you’re not building a house for Sun.”
“Who told you?”
“Does it matter? I’m sure almost everyone knows by now.”
“Fabulous.”
“It’s not such a bad thing. People think you’re a nice guy now.”
“Shows what they know.”
Jack stood up finally, making a face halfway between rolling his eyes at Sawyer’s predictable self-deprecation and sighing with fatigue. That tired, put-upon face seemed to be the only one Jack knew anymore. “Look, I’m not calling in a favor. I’m just going to the guy who might be the closest thing this island has to an expert.”
“In what?”
“Hiding things.”
“Such as…?”
Jack seemed to ponder what he was asking for a moment, then he sighed and said, “Guns.”
“What?”
Jack walked out of the room, motioning for him to follow. Pausing in front of the door of the armory, and he leaned back against it. “We have a lot of guns.”
“Yeah. A dozen or so.”
“And one of those guns has already killed somebody.”
“Two,” Sawyer said, remembering with pain his nearly unsuccessful attempt to put the Marshall out of his misery.
“I think it’s a bad idea that we’ve got so many guns in places where people can get them.”
“Well, most of them are here in your fancy hatch gun safe. And from what I recall, the others are tucked away in some hidey-hole of yours, locked up tight.” He gestured at the key around his neck.
“And one of those was what nearly killed Locke.”
“Shannon nearly killed Locke, Jack.”
“Well, I moved all my guns but one into this armory, and it isn’t safe anymore.”
“How is a locked door not safe?”
“Too many people know the combination.”
“Like who?”
“Kate, Sayid, Locke, Hurley.”
“Hurley?”
“Don’t ask me. That’s the point. We don’t know who might have the combination.”
“I think you’re being paranoid. Ana Lucia-now, I’d worry about her. I’m not betting you’re actually scared of Kate. I’d even wager that you plan on keeping her in the loop. But I don’t think you have to be scared of Baldy or Sayid either.”
“I just think there are too many people who have access to the guns.”
“And you’re adding one more by telling me.”
“You’ve got a few of them already guns
“Yeah. Plan to keep them, too.”
“I’m not worried about you. You’ve kept yours out of the wrong hands.”
“Have you forgotten that it was a gun Ana Lucia took off me that killed Shannon?”
“No, I haven’t. But that’s beside the point.”
“I don’t see how you figure. And I don’t guess I will ever understand you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you don’t like me, and last time I checked, I was the person you thought most likely to sell my sister for a fifth of J.D. Why in the hell would you trust me to know how to get to the guns?”
“You’re an opportunist, but you always think things through. You know how and when to use a gun, and properly. And if I’m wrong and you wanted to do something stupid, you’d have done it by now.”
“Opportunities come up all the time. And I think really you just know that you ain’t gettin’ my guns and, besides, I’ll find the ones you’re so desperate to hide, so you’re making nice, making like you trust me, so I won’t feel like I have any reason to challenge you. Hell, maybe you’re even gonna ask me to put these guns with mine, in my own hiding place, so you can know all about that too.”
“I told her you’d do this.”
“Freckles?”
“No. Sun.”
“Sun? Jesus. So much for keeping this a damn secret.”
“I told her you’d be suspicious.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said, ‘Yes. I know.’”
For a moment, they stared at each other, unsure of where the conversation was going. Then Sawyer said, “Why are you dragging her into this shit, anyway?”
“I respect her opinion. She’s smart, and she’s got a good heart. But even with her faith in people, she still thinks it’s a good idea to make the guns safer.”
“But she’s not interested in you hiding them from me?”
“No.” He smiled, faintly, then he shook his head, still smiling. “I don’t know what you’ve done to her, but she believes every word you say, and a whole lot of others you probably don’t but she hears anyway.”
It took all he had not to slam Jack into that locked door. Instead, he gritted his teeth and said, “I haven’t done a damn thing to her.”
Jack’s eyes got wide. “I didn’t mean it that way. Besides, what you two do is none of my business.”
At that, Sawyer’s hands did jerk a bit, but he kept them down. “We don’t do anything! So stop fucking thinking like that! She’s my friend, that’s all, and if she trusts me it’s probably because she’s more patient than God and not because I’ve fucking tried to mess with her mind.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t have a goddamn clue what’s going on in my head, so don’t pretend you can predict what I’m gonna do or why I’m gonna do it. I’ve got nothing but respect for her, and it’s obvious you don’t.”
Sawyer chose not to leave, instead staring Jack down, but it was a fatal mistake, because he found himself looking hard into eyes that always seemed half confused but wholly concerned. Jack said, “Look, I didn’t mean anything by it. People are just worried about her.”
He was prepared for a fight, even if he had to hurt his fist on Jack’s hard head, but that comment had disarmed him, brought his thoughts back to protecting Sun and not just his big, stupid, fragile ego. Looking at it from the perspective of the rest of the survivors, Sun must’ve seemed crazy. Didn’t he think that himself?
Quietly, but almost in a growl, he said, “If they’re worried because of me, well maybe they should be.” He paused and took a deep breath, trying not to show Jack just how suddenly and absolutely rattled he was. “Now, aside from how unbelievably self-righteous this plan is, what makes you think it’ll work anyway? You don’t have access to all the guns.”
“I’ll get them.”
“You’re absolutely nuts. You know that, right? You’ve gone completely off the deep end, doctor.”
“Fine. Get out and don’t help me. I’ll find someone who will.” Jack sighed and pushed himself off the door of the armory, heading back into the living room area.
Following behind him, Sawyer said, “No, look, I’m gonna help you if I can, not because I want any part of your stupid-ass power play, but because I owe you.”
“For what?” Jack stopped.
Sawyer just glared at him, his eyes flitting for a second to the doorway that led to the bedroom he planned on never setting foot in again. Jack frowned. “You don’t owe me anything. I was doing my job.”
“We both know that it was more than that, and if you hadn’t been so stubborn, I’d be dead.”
“I don’t know that.”
“I do.”
Jack settled himself on the arm of the couch, looking at the floor for a minute. Then he said, “I don’t know if you realize it, but you were different when you came back.”
Without knowing where it came from, though it must have been true, he replied, “I was different when I left.”
“I know.” He paused. “If you want to look at what I did for you this way, I owed you.”
Sawyer didn’t ask him what he owed him for, which of the two things that had shifted the balance between them-the one that Jack stood by and watched and the other that Sawyer had given of his own volition.
Jack wasn’t looking at him anymore, but the face he was making was startling, mainly because Sawyer never expected Jack to get to this point, at least not so soon. His expression was of a person determined to do something stupid, and it practically begged for those stupid plans to be derailed. So Sawyer said, “Well, that lets me off the hook then, because I don’t want to hide your guns for you. For one, I don’t want to know where they are. And for two, it strikes me as the world’s worst idea to take them out there into the jungle or the camp for anybody, including the Others, to trip over.”
“Fine.” Jack sounded annoyed and defeated all at once, but the slump of his shoulders looked like relief.
“I would change the combo for you, but it wouldn’t take Locke any time to figure it out.”
“I know,” he said with a sigh. “That was my first idea.”
They stood staring at each other for a long time before Jack finally said, “Can you stay here for a while?”
“Why?”
“I need you to watch the button so I can run some errands.”
“What am I, your slave all of a sudden?”
“Just thirty, forty minutes. It’s important.”
“And my house isn’t?”
“Sawyer, Sun’s house is being built without you right now. I’ll tell them where you are, if it’ll make you feel better.”
“Fuck, just go. But you better come back real soon.”
“Eko’s due in less than an hour.”
When Jack disappeared down the exit tunnel, he was amazed to find that instead of feeling calmer, he was actually more tense and even jittery now that he was alone in the hatch. Surely, he thought, I can survive an hour down here. That gave him an hour to decide how to best reveal his surprise to Sun.
*****
When he finally hiked back to the work site and came into the clearing from the jungle, he was taken aback: the roof was already on. He was so shocked that he didn’t even notice that nobody seemed to be around. It was amazing and unexpected, because the roof wasn’t just rigged up-it was done. He didn’t have time to wonder who or why because Sun was coming out of the house, smiling and pulling him by the arm toward the door.
He was too bewildered to fight her, so he simply followed her into the tent. If finding the house done had thrown him for a loop, what he saw inside made him feel like he’d been kicked in the stomach: the house was filled with his own things-all those boxes and bags and other random containers of his hard-won and -kept accumulation of supplies. Of course it was. Of course she’d keep pressing on while he was gone, and she’d move everything by herself. But Sayid should have stopped her. This was not the way it was supposed to happen.
“Do you like it?” she was saying.
“Who did this?”
“You don’t like it?”
“No. No, Sun, it’s nice. I just…when did you get finished?”
“A little while ago.”
“You should have waited for me.”
”I’m sorry. I thought it would be a nice surprise.”
“It is. It’s…”
“It’s the nicest house on the island.”
“It’s the only house on the island.” She frowned, so he added, “But, yeah, nice.”
She began to point out so many things that made it special, and they were mostly all things he’d already known about-planned himself-except the creative ways she’d arranged his things, including a shelf for his books, right near the front door so that people who wanted to borrow them had easy access. She was so happy, but he didn’t want her to get too comfortable with his things being in the house. “Sun, come out here for a second, okay?”
He took her by the hand and led her out, much as she’d led him in, but once they were outside, he let go of her hand, feeling his start to sweat.
She said, “What’s wrong?”
“Sun, I appreciate this. I do. I can’t believe it’s done and I can’t believe what you’ve done with the place. But it wasn’t… Shit, this is not the way this was supposed to go.”
“Sawyer?”
“This wasn’t supposed to be for me. I was building this house for you.”
Somehow, he’d managed to keep his eyes on her as he said it, even if it was a little painful to do that. But her reaction was not at all what he expected. Yes, she did an impressive job of seeming shocked, but not before she let slip this warm, knowing smile. It almost sent his head into a spin, except it couldn’t be what he thought. It couldn’t be that she knew all along and let him carry on like this anyway. He felt his face flush with embarrassment, but underneath that was pure amazement. He began to calculate it all in his head-her questions and her behavior and the mysterious interruption to go see Jack-and he really couldn’t speak for a moment. She had thoroughly conned him, and he couldn’t even process all the emotions that stirred up.
But she was still in the act now, and she said, “Why would you do this for me?”
Not knowing anything else to do, he kept up with the charade. “Because you deserve it. Because your tent is falling apart.”
“It’s not falling anymore. It’s here.” She pointed to the roof, and he now recognized the tell-tale burnt markings on one corner. Sayid had kept up his part of the deal after all.
“So you’ll have to stay here,” he said.
“No.” If nothing else gave it away, that did.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“No. Your things are here. You should stay.”
She wasn’t even doing an adequate job pretending she was shocked and flattered by his gesture. She obviously hoped she could simply convince him, make the con more sinister because he’d never know she knew. He tried to keep his voice from taking on an edge, but he was unsuccessful. “What in the hell is wrong with you? I built this house for you. I want you to live in it. I have a perfectly good tent. You don’t even have your shithole tent anymore.”
“I want to stay at the beach,” she said evenly.
“That’s all you can say? ‘I wanna stay at the beach’?”
“Yes.”
He was suddenly so overwhelmed with frustration that he simply shook his head and turned, walking back into the jungle in the direction he’d come. He could hear her padding along behind him after a long few seconds, but he didn’t turn back. He couldn’t, especially since she had to have known what she was saying wasn’t the least bit believable, was in fact wounding him.
It was clear in her voice when she finally realized it. “Sawyer, please. Talk to me.”
“Ain’t nothing to say. I ain’t never done anything good enough for you. Not even this. You’ve known for days-don’t try and deny it-and you had enough time to decide you didn’t want anything I did for you.”
He expected her to be rebuffed, but apparently she’d already thought ahead to his reaction. She said, “Is that why you didn’t tell me? You thought if you surprised me I’d have to take it?”
“No. Hell no. Fuck, if it’s that bad…”
She hissed out something in Korean, finally coming around in front of him with a heavy stomp. Vehemently, she said, “It’s not bad. It’s good. You could have told me what you were doing.”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
Firmly: “That is why I moved your things this afternoon. I wanted to surprise you.” She took a deep breath, then she stepped closer to him. Smiling sheepishly, she said, “This is not the way it was supposed to go.”
That made him smile, through a good bit of pain. “Ain’t that what I said.”
She reached out a hand and took his, pulling it toward her and cradling it in both of hers. When she spoke again, she was almost talking to his hand instead of his face. That was okay-he was looking at her hands too. She spoke slowly, deliberately. “When I figured out what you were doing, I was surprised and very happy. It is one of the most nice things anyone has done for me. You thought about doing this, and you took time to go through with your plan…” She shook her head. “I started to think about it, and I think that you need the house more than I do. You are starting over.”
He felt like he was stripped open now, standing there with his arm stretched out toward her, helpless, longing to do something, to reach to her with his other hand and smooth it over her face, but he couldn’t even properly look at her, really. He’d just wanted to do something nice for her, and here she was, doing something nice for him, as always. It was as if she would never let him just take care of her like he wanted to.
He replied, “So are you. Starting over. Without Jin.”
“And now the tent we lived in is gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s what was supposed to happen, I think.”
“I still think you need this house more than I do.”
“You’re wrong.” She said it so conclusively that he could only squint at her, shaking his head. “You built it.”
“I built it for you, Sun.”
“And I know that. I will know every time I pass by it or sit inside it. But you built it, the first thing you have put so much energy in since you were sick. You should be living inside it.”
“No.”
“You have more need of the room. You have more things.”
“No.”
She crossed her arms. “I am more stubborn than you.”
He snorted. “No way in hell you’re half as stubborn as me. You have to live here. You don’t have a tent anymore.”
“Yes I do.”
There was a gleam in her eye, and he finally saw that part of the motivation for her deception about the house wasn’t about doing something kind for him; it was about simply putting one over on him, not in a mean way, but to prove to him that she could read him and hold her own with him. She’d done a spectacularly good job. He would have never guessed she could be that deceiving, or that he could be so blind.
They were still standing there, Sawyer’s hand in Sun’s, but he brought up his other hand and took hers in both of his, and he stepped a little closer, just a few inches, but it was enough to see the amusement and joy in her eyes at holding a secret over him. It was almost charming enough to make him forget to be annoyed with her for tricking him and perturbed with her for not letting him have his way. Refocusing on their battle of wills, he said, “You do not have a tent anymore. Yours is in that roof.”
“If you go and look you will see my things are in your old tent. You have no place to live but here.”
He shook his head, smiling despite himself. “You’re gonna live in my old tent?”
“Yes. It’s comfortable. It’s close to my garden, and the beach.”
“It stinks.”
“Not anymore,” she said, holding back a giggle quite unsuccessfully. He had to release her hands then, because it was all too tempting to draw her into his arms. As she seemed to float away from him, she said, “Besides, you said I could do whatever I wanted with your tent. You promised.” She raised her eyebrows. “I told you I am more stubborn than you are.”
“No. I think you’re just a better liar.”
She laughed. “Maybe that is true. I don’t think anyone on the island believed you were building a new house for yourself.”
“Why not? That’s exactly what I’d do. Why do you say that? Because nobody would have helped me unless they knew it was for somebody else?”
“No. If you could see yourself as the rest of us see you now, you would know why it would be hard to believe.”
“Sunshine, I ain’t turned into no selfless human being. And I don’t talk to any of them often enough that they’d have a clue who I am.”
She crossed back over to him, letting her hand slide down his arm, almost playfully but it was a more meaningful touch than taking his hand had been, because this one told him that she wanted to go further but was holding herself back. “You walk different now. You talk different.”
“I’m still the person I’ve always been.”
“I know that. I’m glad. But now you’ve stopped…”
“What?”
“I can’t remember the word. What is it when someone pretends to be another person, for a movie or a play?”
“Acting.”
“Yes. You stopped acting.”
“What do you mean?” She’d said it so seriously, and he felt the truth of it hitting him hard, unexpectedly, although it made so much sense it was surprising he’d just now realized it.
But then Sun’s face was stretching into another grin. “Now, you are very bad at acting.” She giggled.
“Screw you,” he said in a playfully grouchy tone.
“Do you know how I figured it out? You would have offered me your tent if you were serious about moving into this house.”
He grumbled, “You think this is all so funny, don’t you?”
“Yes and no. I like surprises.”
Rolling his eyes, he replied, “Well, I would have liked to do something nice for you, but apparently you want everybody to think I’m a total and complete asshole.”
Her face got serious for a moment. “They don’t think that. And also, what is it you say to Rose when she tries to help you with things? ‘You didn’t take me to raise.’”
“Sun?”
“I am not your respon-- Shit. Responsi-“
“Responsibility? I didn’t mean it that way. You can take care of yourself. I know that. It’s just--”
“I know.” Her face softened, surrendering to something. “Would you like me to tell you why I cannot live in this house?” He simply nodded. “I don’t know how to take things from people when they are this important.”
When he smiled, she looked puzzled, so he said, “Well, me either, sister. And you definitely are my responsibility.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m yours. Now, what I gotta know is, are you always this stubborn about somebody caring about you?”
The words were out of his mouth before he realized that the things he had been thinking for so long and the things he’d allowed himself to say had been almost so radically different that there seemed to be a wide chasm between them. He’d just said something that amounted to throwing down a long plank over that chasm and walking out onto it, and he felt his stomach churn as he waited for her to react, to speak. Her face was unreadable.
“No,” she said. “I like to have people care for me.”
“But you just said…about not taking things…”
“I wish I can explain what I mean, but I don’t think I can. The person is important, and so is the…”
“What?”
“I hate that I cannot remember all these words.” She shook her head. “We should go back and make sure all of your things are where you want them to be.”
He almost laughed then, realizing that she sometimes used the language barrier as an excuse-consciously or not, he didn’t know-to get out of a conversation she didn’t want to be in or couldn’t handle. “I’m sure it’s fine.”
But she was walking back anyway, so Sawyer followed. He was still sulking a bit, disappointed that his grand romantic gesture had been a colossal failure. Not only had it not been a surprise, but he didn’t even have the final product to give her. He tried to focus instead on what this mischievous turn from Sun meant; it utterly complicated his view of her, but he wasn’t sure how just yet.
However, true to form, what his brain kept circling back to was himself-how he’d failed to do the one thing he was good at: pretending. It had been different this time, pulling this disastrous con. He’d suffered through it. He’d been unable to read anything right. It was clear that he had lost his touch, either temporarily or for good. What wasn’t clear was whether he should be angry or not. Should he regret that he was apparently unable to be manipulative anymore? It had served him well. He didn’t particularly know how to live without that aspect of his personality.
Except, he thought, I do. That was maybe the thing that Sun saw. He’d been living without it since he’d returned to the island. Somehow, being on that raft had swept away some of his reserves of bullshit. It should have just been fuel for him, because his lies and tricks were always about survival. However, clinging to a loose bundle of sticks with a bullet in his arm, there was no one to bullshit. He found that he couldn’t even bullshit himself out there.
Self-delusion, though, was a skill he hadn’t entirely lost, because he’d done a thorough job lately of deceiving himself about Sun. He’d let himself get hung up on whether he and Sun were compatible, whether he was capable of really caring about someone, whether he could somehow pay her back for giving a damn about him when he didn’t even give a damn about himself. He’d let his head get clouded with sex and whole lot of other things that weren’t even issues yet-all because he didn’t want to deal with what was underlying everything: need. He needed her. He couldn’t recall needing another human being like this since he was a child. More importantly, he had no template for mixing that need up with want. The last time he’d even come close was Cass, and that crashed and burned spectacularly.
Sun said, “You are quiet.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. But you are not…too angry with me?”
“No. Not angry at all. Just…shocked.”
“You really didn’t know, did you?”
“No.”
“I thought I was being too obvious.”
“You probably were.”
She giggled, then, but it was more of a nervous chuckle. “I thought by now you would be better at understanding me.”
“Well, apparently I’m not,” he mumbled.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think you see what I mean.” Then she stopped, taking hold of his bicep to stop him too. She reached up, pulled his face down toward hers, and her lips were sliding softly over his before he could even think about what they were doing and whether they should be doing it at all. By the time he had his arms around her waist, those familiar movements feeling so novel now, he knew that this was okay, probably better than okay.
She didn’t taste at all like he imagined she would, but he breathed in the scent of her that he’d grown so used to, and her hands on his face and then the back of his neck were hands he knew. Despite the comforting familiarity of her presence, there were so many other things that he could never have guessed or known about Sun until now. He was stunned by how much passion he could feel from her, from just a kiss, their bodies only ghosting against each other. She seemed to invite the kiss deeper, and when he felt her mouth opening wider against his, he tentatively let his tongue probe into her mouth, and she met it with softness and a strange, slow intensity.
She eventually leaned into his body a little, but her hands were working their way into his spiked hair, from the nape of his neck up to the back of his skull, cradling it, with her fingers swirling over his scalp as she seemed to find ways of deepening the kiss again and again. Suddenly, it was as if his mind had finally connected with what his body was doing, and he was now aware of an arousal that spread like heat, radiating out from his torso and down even as far as his toes and his shaking fingers, leaving behind it a heaviness in his stomach and some sort of sweet tension in his groin. Without knowing exactly why, he tried to pull back, but her hands in his hair caught him and held him fast there, the both of them breathing heavily, forehead to forehead, eyes closed as she waited for him to kiss her again. When he didn’t, when he hesitated, not because he was unsure but because he was more than a little overwhelmed, she brushed her lips over his and she captured his bottom lip between hers briefly before she said against his cheek, “Sorry.”
“What?”
She drew back a little, but her arms were still around his neck. “I am too impatient sometimes.”
“Me too. And I ain’t complainin’.”
“That was okay?”
Dazed and more than a little baffled by such a tentative question following such a confident kiss, he managed to say, “Yeah. That was just fine.”
At that, she did withdraw from his arms, and they continued on the trail toward the house. He wanted to take her hand, but it seemed too hard now to bridge that physical gap again. He suddenly felt unreasonably awkward, like he didn’t exactly know how to talk to her or what he could and couldn’t do.
“Sawyer?”
“Yeah?”
“I am very happy you built the house. To me, it means that you want to keep me safe and dry, and I am thankful for that. I believe that you don’t understand what it means to me. You should ask Kate what my first reaction was.”
“She said you’d cry.”
“That was the second day.”
“The first?”
“I was too surprised to cry. I had a hard time even talking.”
When she didn’t clarify that remark, Sawyer welcomed the silence. He had too much to think about. And if he opened his mouth again, he had absolutely no idea what might come out of it. That she could reduce him to a tongue-tied moron was a little distressing, but he was a little too happy to worry about it at the moment.
*****
When Sawyer lay down in his new house that night, the ground felt solid under his back, more solid than the sand ever had. It wasn’t exactly home-not just yet. It did feel somehow purifying, like passing through that door had strained something out of him. Sun had told him Eko blessed the house, and although that made him indistinctly irritated, it also gave him a weird sense of peace.
Still, this failure weighed on him. He had wanted to give Sun something nice, and instead he had only given her his old, smelly tent. But when he imagined Sun lying down for sleep, perhaps putting her mat where his pallet had been, he couldn’t help but smile. Thinking about what she’d said before, about being in a place where someone you care about has been, he knew, with a certainty that defied logic, that she would be comfortable in his tent, and knowing this was true made him feel like he’d given her something after all.