Lost fic: Carrion Comfort [Jack/Sawyer]
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine. Title borrowed. Skymall quoted without permission.
Summary: Distraction at thirty-three thousand feet. Jack/Sawyer. Future fic. Vague spoilers for season two.
Notes: Using for psych_30 #28, free association. Also fanfic100 #60, drink.
Carrion Comfort
by eponine119
September 7, 2006
The plane felt small after so much time spent on the island. Sawyer lay his head against the back of the seat, trying to conjure the sense of vast space around his body, endless ocean before him and jungle behind. All the confined spaces on the island rushed in instead -- the hatch, his shelter, other less pleasant places. His mouth tasted sour and he could feel the tightness pressing in on him from all sides, so he opened his eyes.
He could look up the narrow aisle, and he could look out the window at the concrete runways. It only helped a little. The fuselage still pressed against his shoulder and his knees still rested against the back of the seat in front of him, feet bent back underneath because there was nowhere else for them to go. Armrest digging into his elbow, hands in his lap because there was nowhere else for them to go either.
His uncomfortable shifting caused his seatmate to glance at him disapprovingly. "I feel like Alice in fucking Wonderland," Sawyer said. The man beside him said nothing. The small space compelled him to keep talking, to try to explain. "You know, like --"
"One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small," Jack said, and there was a sigh in his voice.
"Yeah," Sawyer said, and looked out the window again. He was never going to be able to sit here for fifteen hours. He was so restless and they hadn't even left the ground. He reached for items in the seatback pocket, the safety card. Looked at the safety card first, orderly drawings of women taking off their shoes before evacuating a burning plane, cartoons climbing into a raft. He'd been in a plane crash. It was nothing like that.
Jack had a tattered magazine in the pocket in front of him. Sawyer's hand wavered as he reached for it, taking without asking. Jack didn't protest because Jack didn't see. He'd slipped a silk sleep mask over his eyes, shutting Sawyer out. But he felt the brush of Sawyer's arm and spoke. "You going to take my peanuts, too?"
"Maybe," Sawyer said. "You think it's a good idea, blindfoldin' yourself?" Jack didn't reply, but Sawyer watched him press his lips together. Jack couldn't stand to look any more than Sawyer could. "One in a million odds." Sawyer buried his nose in the periodical, which wasn't a magazine at all, but a copy of Skymall, abundant with lush descriptions of useless items.
The engines roared to life and the skin of the plane trembled against his shoulder. Sawyer's fingers tightened on the useless paper in his hand and he fought to draw a deep breath. He'd never been one to blink in a fight, but he closed his eyes now as the plane hurtled itself into the air, rising at an acute angle into the sky. The thrum of the engines repeated in his ear: we are going to die, we are going to die.
Jack's hand closed over his. Sawyer could feel the warm, steady throb of his pulse. Heartbeat. Reassuring life. Sawyer could breathe again. When the plane straightened out and the seatbelt sign went off, Jack's hand slipped away, as though nothing had ever happened.
They left their seatbelts on. Sawyer tightened his, looking out the window at a blanket of white clouds. Then he looked at Jack. Jack was only pretending to be relaxed. Forcing his fingers to hang and his breath to come evenly and his knee to splay loosely into the aisle. Sawyer wasn't fooled.
"Talk to me, doc," Sawyer said.
"Mmm," was all the response he got.
"I know you can hear me. You won't sleep," Sawyer said. None of them would. How could they risk being startled awake by the feeling of falling through darkness, when it happened again.
"What do you want to talk about?" Jack murmured. He turned his face toward Sawyer, mask still on and eyes still closed. Jack's soft breath ruffled Sawyer's hair.
"Anything," Sawyer said, and with such a broad topic they lapsed into silence. He flipped the pages of the magazine, and the sound they made raised the hair on the back of his neck.
"What do you miss?" Jack asked, and Sawyer felt a flash of the old hatred again, as though Jack had bested him by thinking of something to say. Just a flash, quickly fading.
"The ocean," Sawyer said. "The constant noise of it."
"I meant back home," Jack said, and Sawyer shook his hair down into his eyes. Because Sawyer meant back home, too, except he hadn't noticed that somewhere along the way he'd come to think of the island as home. That was the difference between the two of them and always had been. Sawyer took to being in the wild.
"Food."
"Food?"
"Hell yeah, food. Steak and potatoes."
"In & Out Burger," Jack said, his voice dripping with yearning.
"Fuck," Sawyer agreed, with the ache of longing he felt bleeding through in his voice. "This bird makes it back safe and I'll buy."
"You're on," Jack said, and it felt comfortable. "What else?"
Sawyer was quiet, thinking about the real world. Smog and the linen smell of money and lies. "We had it good, Jacko. We had it real good."
Jack turned his face away and Sawyer felt fear creep back in. He glanced out the window and the sky had cleared, leaving nothing but the unreal ocean beneath them. Maybe they were dead already and didn't even know it. Maybe Jack was the blind man steering the ferry boat, taking him to his fate. Sawyer's throat closed and it made a noise when he tried to breathe.
Jack put his hand on Sawyer's again. Human contact was calming. Skin against skin. "How 'bout I say a word and you say the first thing it makes you think of."
"Why?"
Cause I'm going to die if you don't keep talking to me, Sawyer thought. Suffocate right here inside this tin box in the sky. "Maybe I want to get inside your head," is what he said. He waited for Jack to say something, but Jack didn't. The silence grew long as a fuse, just waiting for a spark.
"You first," Jack murmured.
Sawyer startled. So they were playing. His tongue was rough against his lips. "Dog."
"Cat."
"Black."
"White."
Sawyer sighed noisily, and Jack smiled at his frustration. "Hallelujah."
"Choir," Jack said.
"No, I mean hallelujah, doc, the drink cart's on its way." Sawyer thrust with his legs, pushing himself against the back of his seat and up out of his slouch. The tray table smacked his thighs anyway when he pushed aside the latch.
He'd forgotten Jack's hand covering his until the flight attendant looked at it. Jack couldn't see the way she kept her eyes on it, and Sawyer couldn't pull away. Jack groped for his double shot of vodka and while Sawyer sipped his watered-down whiskey, Jack gulped the whole glass down.
Jack's hand turned warm and heavy against Sawyer's, and Sawyer watched the pink flush that crept into Jack's face. It radiated heat, and he knew if Jack took off his ridiculous mask and looked him in the eye, his eyes would be dark and slightly off-focus.
"Island," Sawyer said.
Jack's lips tugged into a smile. "Say that one again."
"Why?"
"You don't say it like anybody I've ever heard."
"Right. You still think I'm a hick, don't you doc?"
"Sensitive," Jack clucked. He nudged Sawyer's shoulder. "Your turn."
No, it was all Jack's turn. So Sawyer repeated it, enunciating more clearly, but all that did was make Jack sigh with the consciousness of it. "Island."
"Loss."
"Stone."
"Swallow."
"Swallow?" Sawyer asked.
"Fucking," Jack said, adding the -ing almost as an afterthought. He let his head slide against the seat until it came to rest, weighty and hard, against Sawyer's shoulder.
"You're a cheap drunk, Jack."
"Runs in the family," Jack replied.
Sawyer thought of the man he'd met in a bar in another life. Couldn't see his face now. Couldn't compare him with his son. "Doc," he said.
"Holiday," Jack replied.
Sawyer wanted to talk, but the dumbass was still playing. After a moment, his irritation faded. Playing was safer than talking. He flicked the pages of the magazine with his free hand. "Dog."
"Bestfriend," Jack murmured.
"Who is your best friend, Jack?" Sawyer asked. "You lookin' forward to seein' him again? Think he'll meet you at the airport?" But Jack didn't reply until Sawyer gave up, rifling the slick, wrinkled pages for another idea for a single word again. "Horse."
"Kate."
Sawyer waited a moment before he said, "Kate."
Jack waited even longer before he replied, "Freckles."
Sawyer felt something warm squeeze in his chest. It was unfamiliar, all love and heartbreak. It would hurt too much to speak, so he didn't.
"More," Jack said, but Sawyer couldn't. There was already a splinter in the glass; he'd crack if he did. It took everything he had to hold it back. "Your voice," Jack said, "is like far-off thunder in the summer. Dark chocolate and earth."
"Love," Sawyer choked out roughly, because he couldn't stand to hear Jack talk about him.
"Hate," Jack said, and it meant something from a man who hated him yet was holding his hand. Sawyer could feel the cool silk of Jack's mask against the skin of his neck and it made his skin prickle. "You should read."
Sawyer did as he was told. Bowed his head silently over the catalog. Tried not to think about Jack leaning against him. "Your voice means we're not dead yet," Jack added.
He was waiting for it too. How could he not be? The island wanted them back. They could both feel it. It wasn't going to let them go so easily. "How do you know?" Sawyer asked.
"I know," Jack said.
"Convince me."
"Read to me," Jack said.
Sawyer couldn't read aloud. His voice went flat and the words came out wrong, because he was back in school when he did, in the slow reader's group with slack-jawed Yankee kids staring at him like he was stupid. The black type of the catalog descriptions danced before his eyes. "How 'bout I tell you a story instead."
"What's it about?" Jack asked. He was fighting sleep, Sawyer could tell. The booze was winning. Sawyer didn't want to think about what would happen when it won.
"Southern boy," Sawyer said. "Nobody you know. Lived a life of crime."
"Sounds nice," Jack murmured.
"Not really," Sawyer replied. As Jack's body grew heavier against him, Sawyer's lean muscles tensed. Something was going to happen when Jack fell asleep. The plane was going to crash, the walls were going to close in, and Sawyer was going to go crazy. He had to make it a good story, he thought, but in the same heartbeat realized it was too late. "Jack?" he asked and there was no response, just shallow, hot breath against his neck.
Sawyer swallowed the rest of his drink and looked out the window. There was a shadow underneath them. Trailing them. Too big to be the plane, and yet too vague to be anything solid. It was like the thing that lived in the jungle and periodically tore someone apart. It was like the vibrating walls and the engine noise that were going to tear Sawyer apart. "Jack, do you think we're dead already?" Sawyer asked, and the sound of his voice was so real that it broke the spell. Sawyer blinked and the vagueness was gone, leaving nothing but ocean below.
With Jack's head against his shoulder and his hand against Sawyer's, suddenly the plane felt just big enough to be safe. It wasn't a trap, a coffin, a sealed tube. It was a cocoon, blankets on a winter night, an embrace. They were alive, and they were free, and they were going home.
Sawyer turned the page and started reading the words to Jack very softly. "…our great looking blanket is designed to protect you…"
End
Summary: Distraction at thirty-three thousand feet. Jack/Sawyer. Future fic. Vague spoilers for season two.
Notes: Using for psych_30 #28, free association. Also fanfic100 #60, drink.
Carrion Comfort
by eponine119
September 7, 2006
The plane felt small after so much time spent on the island. Sawyer lay his head against the back of the seat, trying to conjure the sense of vast space around his body, endless ocean before him and jungle behind. All the confined spaces on the island rushed in instead -- the hatch, his shelter, other less pleasant places. His mouth tasted sour and he could feel the tightness pressing in on him from all sides, so he opened his eyes.
He could look up the narrow aisle, and he could look out the window at the concrete runways. It only helped a little. The fuselage still pressed against his shoulder and his knees still rested against the back of the seat in front of him, feet bent back underneath because there was nowhere else for them to go. Armrest digging into his elbow, hands in his lap because there was nowhere else for them to go either.
His uncomfortable shifting caused his seatmate to glance at him disapprovingly. "I feel like Alice in fucking Wonderland," Sawyer said. The man beside him said nothing. The small space compelled him to keep talking, to try to explain. "You know, like --"
"One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small," Jack said, and there was a sigh in his voice.
"Yeah," Sawyer said, and looked out the window again. He was never going to be able to sit here for fifteen hours. He was so restless and they hadn't even left the ground. He reached for items in the seatback pocket, the safety card. Looked at the safety card first, orderly drawings of women taking off their shoes before evacuating a burning plane, cartoons climbing into a raft. He'd been in a plane crash. It was nothing like that.
Jack had a tattered magazine in the pocket in front of him. Sawyer's hand wavered as he reached for it, taking without asking. Jack didn't protest because Jack didn't see. He'd slipped a silk sleep mask over his eyes, shutting Sawyer out. But he felt the brush of Sawyer's arm and spoke. "You going to take my peanuts, too?"
"Maybe," Sawyer said. "You think it's a good idea, blindfoldin' yourself?" Jack didn't reply, but Sawyer watched him press his lips together. Jack couldn't stand to look any more than Sawyer could. "One in a million odds." Sawyer buried his nose in the periodical, which wasn't a magazine at all, but a copy of Skymall, abundant with lush descriptions of useless items.
The engines roared to life and the skin of the plane trembled against his shoulder. Sawyer's fingers tightened on the useless paper in his hand and he fought to draw a deep breath. He'd never been one to blink in a fight, but he closed his eyes now as the plane hurtled itself into the air, rising at an acute angle into the sky. The thrum of the engines repeated in his ear: we are going to die, we are going to die.
Jack's hand closed over his. Sawyer could feel the warm, steady throb of his pulse. Heartbeat. Reassuring life. Sawyer could breathe again. When the plane straightened out and the seatbelt sign went off, Jack's hand slipped away, as though nothing had ever happened.
They left their seatbelts on. Sawyer tightened his, looking out the window at a blanket of white clouds. Then he looked at Jack. Jack was only pretending to be relaxed. Forcing his fingers to hang and his breath to come evenly and his knee to splay loosely into the aisle. Sawyer wasn't fooled.
"Talk to me, doc," Sawyer said.
"Mmm," was all the response he got.
"I know you can hear me. You won't sleep," Sawyer said. None of them would. How could they risk being startled awake by the feeling of falling through darkness, when it happened again.
"What do you want to talk about?" Jack murmured. He turned his face toward Sawyer, mask still on and eyes still closed. Jack's soft breath ruffled Sawyer's hair.
"Anything," Sawyer said, and with such a broad topic they lapsed into silence. He flipped the pages of the magazine, and the sound they made raised the hair on the back of his neck.
"What do you miss?" Jack asked, and Sawyer felt a flash of the old hatred again, as though Jack had bested him by thinking of something to say. Just a flash, quickly fading.
"The ocean," Sawyer said. "The constant noise of it."
"I meant back home," Jack said, and Sawyer shook his hair down into his eyes. Because Sawyer meant back home, too, except he hadn't noticed that somewhere along the way he'd come to think of the island as home. That was the difference between the two of them and always had been. Sawyer took to being in the wild.
"Food."
"Food?"
"Hell yeah, food. Steak and potatoes."
"In & Out Burger," Jack said, his voice dripping with yearning.
"Fuck," Sawyer agreed, with the ache of longing he felt bleeding through in his voice. "This bird makes it back safe and I'll buy."
"You're on," Jack said, and it felt comfortable. "What else?"
Sawyer was quiet, thinking about the real world. Smog and the linen smell of money and lies. "We had it good, Jacko. We had it real good."
Jack turned his face away and Sawyer felt fear creep back in. He glanced out the window and the sky had cleared, leaving nothing but the unreal ocean beneath them. Maybe they were dead already and didn't even know it. Maybe Jack was the blind man steering the ferry boat, taking him to his fate. Sawyer's throat closed and it made a noise when he tried to breathe.
Jack put his hand on Sawyer's again. Human contact was calming. Skin against skin. "How 'bout I say a word and you say the first thing it makes you think of."
"Why?"
Cause I'm going to die if you don't keep talking to me, Sawyer thought. Suffocate right here inside this tin box in the sky. "Maybe I want to get inside your head," is what he said. He waited for Jack to say something, but Jack didn't. The silence grew long as a fuse, just waiting for a spark.
"You first," Jack murmured.
Sawyer startled. So they were playing. His tongue was rough against his lips. "Dog."
"Cat."
"Black."
"White."
Sawyer sighed noisily, and Jack smiled at his frustration. "Hallelujah."
"Choir," Jack said.
"No, I mean hallelujah, doc, the drink cart's on its way." Sawyer thrust with his legs, pushing himself against the back of his seat and up out of his slouch. The tray table smacked his thighs anyway when he pushed aside the latch.
He'd forgotten Jack's hand covering his until the flight attendant looked at it. Jack couldn't see the way she kept her eyes on it, and Sawyer couldn't pull away. Jack groped for his double shot of vodka and while Sawyer sipped his watered-down whiskey, Jack gulped the whole glass down.
Jack's hand turned warm and heavy against Sawyer's, and Sawyer watched the pink flush that crept into Jack's face. It radiated heat, and he knew if Jack took off his ridiculous mask and looked him in the eye, his eyes would be dark and slightly off-focus.
"Island," Sawyer said.
Jack's lips tugged into a smile. "Say that one again."
"Why?"
"You don't say it like anybody I've ever heard."
"Right. You still think I'm a hick, don't you doc?"
"Sensitive," Jack clucked. He nudged Sawyer's shoulder. "Your turn."
No, it was all Jack's turn. So Sawyer repeated it, enunciating more clearly, but all that did was make Jack sigh with the consciousness of it. "Island."
"Loss."
"Stone."
"Swallow."
"Swallow?" Sawyer asked.
"Fucking," Jack said, adding the -ing almost as an afterthought. He let his head slide against the seat until it came to rest, weighty and hard, against Sawyer's shoulder.
"You're a cheap drunk, Jack."
"Runs in the family," Jack replied.
Sawyer thought of the man he'd met in a bar in another life. Couldn't see his face now. Couldn't compare him with his son. "Doc," he said.
"Holiday," Jack replied.
Sawyer wanted to talk, but the dumbass was still playing. After a moment, his irritation faded. Playing was safer than talking. He flicked the pages of the magazine with his free hand. "Dog."
"Bestfriend," Jack murmured.
"Who is your best friend, Jack?" Sawyer asked. "You lookin' forward to seein' him again? Think he'll meet you at the airport?" But Jack didn't reply until Sawyer gave up, rifling the slick, wrinkled pages for another idea for a single word again. "Horse."
"Kate."
Sawyer waited a moment before he said, "Kate."
Jack waited even longer before he replied, "Freckles."
Sawyer felt something warm squeeze in his chest. It was unfamiliar, all love and heartbreak. It would hurt too much to speak, so he didn't.
"More," Jack said, but Sawyer couldn't. There was already a splinter in the glass; he'd crack if he did. It took everything he had to hold it back. "Your voice," Jack said, "is like far-off thunder in the summer. Dark chocolate and earth."
"Love," Sawyer choked out roughly, because he couldn't stand to hear Jack talk about him.
"Hate," Jack said, and it meant something from a man who hated him yet was holding his hand. Sawyer could feel the cool silk of Jack's mask against the skin of his neck and it made his skin prickle. "You should read."
Sawyer did as he was told. Bowed his head silently over the catalog. Tried not to think about Jack leaning against him. "Your voice means we're not dead yet," Jack added.
He was waiting for it too. How could he not be? The island wanted them back. They could both feel it. It wasn't going to let them go so easily. "How do you know?" Sawyer asked.
"I know," Jack said.
"Convince me."
"Read to me," Jack said.
Sawyer couldn't read aloud. His voice went flat and the words came out wrong, because he was back in school when he did, in the slow reader's group with slack-jawed Yankee kids staring at him like he was stupid. The black type of the catalog descriptions danced before his eyes. "How 'bout I tell you a story instead."
"What's it about?" Jack asked. He was fighting sleep, Sawyer could tell. The booze was winning. Sawyer didn't want to think about what would happen when it won.
"Southern boy," Sawyer said. "Nobody you know. Lived a life of crime."
"Sounds nice," Jack murmured.
"Not really," Sawyer replied. As Jack's body grew heavier against him, Sawyer's lean muscles tensed. Something was going to happen when Jack fell asleep. The plane was going to crash, the walls were going to close in, and Sawyer was going to go crazy. He had to make it a good story, he thought, but in the same heartbeat realized it was too late. "Jack?" he asked and there was no response, just shallow, hot breath against his neck.
Sawyer swallowed the rest of his drink and looked out the window. There was a shadow underneath them. Trailing them. Too big to be the plane, and yet too vague to be anything solid. It was like the thing that lived in the jungle and periodically tore someone apart. It was like the vibrating walls and the engine noise that were going to tear Sawyer apart. "Jack, do you think we're dead already?" Sawyer asked, and the sound of his voice was so real that it broke the spell. Sawyer blinked and the vagueness was gone, leaving nothing but ocean below.
With Jack's head against his shoulder and his hand against Sawyer's, suddenly the plane felt just big enough to be safe. It wasn't a trap, a coffin, a sealed tube. It was a cocoon, blankets on a winter night, an embrace. They were alive, and they were free, and they were going home.
Sawyer turned the page and started reading the words to Jack very softly. "…our great looking blanket is designed to protect you…"
End