Lost fic: Friendship part 2
Chapter Two
“How’s it going with your new buddy?” Miles asks Sawyer.
Sawyer looks at him, and Miles raises his eyebrows. He knows. “What’re you talking about?” Sawyer asks, trying to play it cool.
“Come on man, she told me,” Miles says.
“She told you,” Sawyer repeats doubtfully.
Miles nods. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I think I want to be friends with Juliet, too.”
“No. You don’t,” Sawyer says, and it falls somewhere between a threat and an order. He’ll shove him into a tree if he has to.
Miles laughs. “You got it so bad for her.”
Sawyer just glares, thinking if he denies it, he’ll make it worse. Because Miles totally has his number. He wonders what Juliet said to him. If she knows, too. But of course she knows. She has to.
“Listen, you gotta go into this with no expectations. Not thinking like you’re going to change her mind. Commit to it,” Miles advises.
Sawyer gives him a doubtful look. Why would he pretend he didn’t want anything more than to be friends, when he doesn’t, except because he has to?
“What would you do if she wasn’t into you. At all,” Miles asks.
“Try harder,” Sawyer replies, as though it should be obvious. He’s used to doing the choosing and then making the mark fall for him. Usually without much of an option. Of course he would try harder.
Miles shakes his head. “You’re in the friend zone now. You gotta accept that.”
“What the hell is the friend zone?” Sawyer demands.
Jin has wandered into the territory they are exploring, and Miles looks at him for assistance. Jin looks blank. Miles rolls his eyes and throws up his hands.
“Maybe I just need more practice,” Sawyer suggests. He’s been thinking about it, anyway.
“On who?” Miles asks.
Sawyer gives him a look.
“Okay, we’re friends now!” Miles cries. “You don’t have to do anything.” He moves so that Jin is between them. “You’re friends with Jin now too.”
Jin’s eyes light up. “Friends,” he repeats, like he means it.
“Well that was easy,” Sawyer grumbles. Wishing it could be so easy with her.
…
“Lookie here, this here must be dinner with a friend,” Sawyer announces upon his arrival outside the cafeteria. Juliet gives him that look, just short of an eye roll, and he shoots her a grin. It works; it always works. She smiles back and he tries to ignore that melty feeling he gets inside. He reaches for the door handle, to pull it open for her.
“I’ve got it, James,” she says.
“Suit yourself,” he says, letting go and stepping back. The door bumps her shoulder and she absorbs the blow. She makes no move to hold the door for him following behind her. He wonders if she’s really committed to this friends thing.
The place is fairly empty, so it doesn’t take long for them to make their way through the line. With loaded up trays, they select a table. “I’d pull your chair out for you, but, well,” Sawyer says, because there are no chairs, just benches fixed to the table. He steps over the bench to sit down.
“I wonder what made them say, ‘yes, picnic tables,’” Juliet says, and sits down across from him.
Sawyer shrugs and looks around. There are some scientists eating solo, shoveling in the grub while theorems undoubtedly dance in their heads. He wonders if they have friends. “You all have somethin’ like this?” he asks, referring to her time with the Others.
Juliet shakes her head, but she gets that pinched look she always has when he brings it up, her prior time in this compound. “All the houses have kitchens,” she says. “We had things to do, but it wasn’t busy like it is here.”
“Busy,” he scoffs.
He still eats like he doesn’t know where the next meal is coming from. He notices her watching him and makes a point to go slower. He sets down his fork and takes a drink of water. He breathes, in and out, looking at her. She just looks back. It makes him toss his hair and then look down at his plate, moving his fork around.
When he glances at her, she’s still looking at him. “What?”
It’s her turn to look away.
“Awful quiet,” he teases.
“What do you want to talk about, James?” she asks in that simple, quiet tone she has.
“Only thing I got in my head is books,” he says, and it’s such a lie she actually laughs.
“Then let’s talk about books,” she agrees. “What have you read lately that’s good?”
“On the beach, I read this book about bunnies,” he says.
“’Tell me about the rabbits, George,’” she quotes, and his heart beats faster.
“Not that one,” he says, fast, but he can’t take his eyes off her. “You know that one?”
Her mischievous grin develops again. “It’s from a cartoon,” she says, but they both know she knows better.
“You ever read it?”
“Ninth grade,” she says.
“You like it?” he asks, hopefully.
“There’s not much in there for a freshman to relate to,” she says. As though she senses his disappointment, she adds, “I should give it another try.”
“I been lookin’ for a copy around here,” he says, and then frowns at himself for such an admission. As though he needs it, a book he’s already read half a dozen times. “Ain’t found one yet.”
“Did you like Watership Down?” she asks.
“Read it twice. On the beach.” He looks at her again. He’s aware he didn’t tell her the name of the bunny book, which means she must have seen him reading it back then and took notice. He’s a little curious about that, but doesn’t know how to ask it. “You?”
“I read it on the beach, too, actually. Different beach.”
“Somethin’ tells me it’s not a happy memory,” he says, when she falls into silence.
“The sun was not kind to me that day,” she says. “My sister called me Stripes for a year.”
He instantly understands that the nickname would have come from the contrast between Juliet’s sunburn and the whiteness of her skin that had been protected under whatever suit she had been wearing while reading on the beach. His thoughts begin to stray to string bikinis, but he reminds himself that they are just friends. It doesn’t work very well.
“What kinda books do you like?” he asks her.
“Thrillers. Horror,” she replies.
“Junk food,” he says.
“Don’t judge.” She frowns.
“I ain’t real picky,” he tells her. “I’ll read whatever’s at hand.”
“Maybe you can elevate my tastes,” she says.
“Or you can drag me down,” he offers, and wishes she would. His imagination provides him an image of her hand holding a fistful of his shirt, yanking on it. He blinks and closes his mouth. He sighs. “I guess you’n Jack were friends. On the beach.”
“I guess we were,” she agrees.
He remembers Juliet kissing Jack. It wasn’t much of a kiss, but still. She didn’t play games with him. She wasn’t playing games, now, either. He wonders what the hell he’s doing here, not for the first time. “What’d you two talk about? Doctor stuff?”
Juliet shrugs and it seems like he’s touched on something else painful. “Jack needed someone to talk to,” she says. “But he never really trusted me.”
“Is that right,” Sawyer says, because from where he was standing it sure looked like Jack did.
She nods exaggeratedly and sets her water glass back down. “He thought I was a terrible doctor.”
“He said that?”
“Not in so many words,” she says. “He asked Bernard to take his appendix out.”
“Bernie the dentist?”
Juliet nods, like that’s all there is to say about it. Jack would rather have a dentist operate on him, than an actual doctor. Her eyes get all big and doubtful. “I mean, he’s not wrong,” she admits, looking up at the ceiling.
Sawyer watches her carefully. He’s intrigued by this. By her. She’s always so calm and sure of herself, except for now. He doesn’t think it’s the mention of Jack. This is about her being a doctor. He remembers her telling him she didn’t want to be a doctor here - not ship’s medic or anything. She doesn’t believe in herself, and he has to wonder why.
“I seem to recall the doc bein’ up and runnin’ around the jungle pretty much the next day so I’d say you did all right,” he says. It’s not enough. It’s not even close to what he wants to say.
The look she gives him is vulnerable, and it kind of horrifies him, because it’s like she trusts him. She’s made a terrible choice, deciding to be friends with him. At least she’s smart enough not to trust him with her heart, he thinks.
“I’d let you cut me open,” he offers.
“You missed the perfect opportunity to suggest we play doctor,” she says.
“Funny,” he allows, because it is. He looks her in the eye and makes his best attempt at sincerity. “But I ain’t hitting on you anymore. Cause we’re friends.”
“Friends,” she repeats, and he wonders who it is she’s doubting - him, or herself? “Do you think men and women can really be friends?”
“Ain’t that a line from a movie?” he asks.
“When Harry Met Sally,” Juliet replies.
He looks at her blankly, because he doesn’t recall it.
“Famous for the scene where Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm in a deli,” Juliet elaborates.
His eyebrows rise, because he does remember that. “Always thought she was sorta cute.”
“Welcome to the human race,” Juliet says, and he frowns at her. “Everyone thinks Meg Ryan is cute. That’s her thing. Being adorable.”
“Not anymore,” he points out, because who the hell has thought of Meg Ryan in the last decade? “Not yet,” he corrects himself. Then he chuckles. “What are we even talking about?”
“Movies?”
“Okay, then, what’s your favorite movie?” he asks her.
Her face lights up, and he thinks it’s going to be something really good, and then she says, “Xanadu.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“I won’t make you watch it,” she promises.
“Not yet you won’t,” he teases. If they wait long enough, it’ll come out. Maybe he’ll be sitting beside her in a movie theater, watching it. He imagines it as a date and then pushes the thoughts away. He looks at her plate and sees she’s finished eating. So has he. “Guess that was dinner with a friend,” he says.
She nods at him, and looks like she wants to say something, but she doesn’t.
“So what do we do next?” he asks.
She shrugs, and he holds up a finger. “Don’t say it,” he warns. She looks confused. “Don’t ask me what I want to do.”
“I was going to say, we can do guy stuff. What did you like to do in your spare time… before?”
“I don’t like guy stuff,” he says. “I like shopping. But since they ain’t turned this island into a damn mall yet-”
“We can shop,” she says.
“How?”
“You’ll see,” she promises, and he gives her a lingering look. It goes on a second or two too long and they can both feel it turning electric.
“Okay then, Stripes. We’ll go shopping,” he says.
“Don’t call me Stripes,” she says, exactly as he knew that she would, and he feels happier than he has been in weeks. Maybe months.
…
Juliet walks into the living room, holding a duffle bag that looks like it is extremely heavy. Sawyer looks over the tops of his glasses at her, then reaches up to remove them as she comes to sit down beside him.
“You knock over the convenience store again?” he asks, but he’s kind of wondering if there are books inside that bag. Wondering and hoping.
“You said you wanted to go shopping,” she says. She leans down to unzip the bag, and her long hair brushes against his leg. He just looks at it, wanting to touch it. She gives him a smile from her awkward, bent-in-half angle, and then lifts the object out of the bag and plops it down on the coffee table, which wobbles under its weight.
“That’s -”
“The Sears catalog,” Juliet says. Her eyes sparkle; she’s extremely proud of herself. There are two more thumps as she unloads the bag and then leans back. She looks like she could use a glass of water.
Sawyer leans forward to examine what else is there. “JC Penney, and Monkey Wards? Not bad.” He hefts the Sears catalog, weighing it with his hands before he flips to the back to see how many pages it is, because it is massive. “There’s an index,” he marvels. Juliet looks at him. “Fifteen hundred pages.”
“That’s longer than the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, or Les Miserables,” Juliet offers up.
He wonders how she has the page count of those three particular works inside that brain of hers. “Lot of stuff,” he says, turning to the plain, black and white pages near the front that contrast the slick, colorful pages of the rest of the book.
“What are you looking for?” she asks, brushing her hair back.
“Naked ladies,” he replies, distracted. Then he glances at her and shoots her a grin.
“Of course, James,” Juliet replies, as though this is something she should have expected. “See anything you like?”
He’s still looking at her. She’s sweaty from hauling the bag of heavy catalogs. He thinks about all he would have to do is lean in a little bit, about how he could taste the salt on her skin. “Ain’t exactly Victoria’s Secret,” he sighs, flipping through the uninspiring pages. “Everything’s real good and covered up.”
She leans in, unbearably close. “Those panties are huge.” She glances at him. “Well, you like using your imagination.”
“Says who,” he scoffs. He flips back to the beginning, where the women’s clothes are. “Oh, I can hear it now.”
“What?” Juliet asks.
He taps his finger against an array of short dresses with large collars. “Here’s the story,” he begins the theme song to the Brady Bunch, and that’s all it takes.
She laughs and leans against him, and his heart starts to swell. “I thought we were shopping for you.” She begins turning the pages rapidly, then flipping over large sections until she finds the men’s clothes and stops, looking doubtful.
“Hope you like plaid, sweetheart.” There are plaid pants, and plaid shirts and plaid suits. Some pages claim to have jeans, but they all appear to be made of skin-tight spandex, not denim.
“We have got to get you a nightgown,” she says, stopping on a page featuring four grown men in nightshirts. One of the nightgowns is patterned with red and white stripes, like Where’s Waldo wears.
“Found him,” Sawyer mutters.
“At least it’s not plaid.” She turns the page, revealing men’s underwear consisting of matching undershirts and briefs in horrifying prints.
“This is a nightmare.”
“Remember Underoos?” she asks. “I wanted the Wonder Woman ones so bad.”
“Before my time,” he says gruffly.
“James. We’re the same age.”
“Are we?”
“I never got them either,” she says, referring back to the superhero underwear. “When’s your birthday?”
Like you don’t know, he thinks darkly. “You gonna buy me a leisure suit and do my zodiac? None of your beeswax.”
“Do you really like shopping?” she asks him.
“Not like this.” He flips to the back, thinking of the Christmastime wishbooks of his childhood, which were generally just that - wishes, unfulfilled. “Damn, no toys.” He closes it and lets the weight rest on his lap. “Where’d this come from, anyway?”
“I asked around,” she says. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Yeah I did.”
She just looks at him. Waiting for him to answer, as she knows that he will.
“I didn’t have a lot of stuff, growing up,” he says. He meets her eyes and then looks back down at the catalog, shaking his head. “What can I say, I like lookin’ good. I got expensive taste.” He senses her looking at him. “What?” he bristles.
“I don’t buy it,” she says.
“We ever get back, I’ll prove it to you,” he promises, and finds he likes the idea of it. “We’ll hit the mall. I’ll show you a good time.”
“I hate shopping,” she says. But she looks like she’s being won over by him, like she’s thinking about spending hours in a bookstore rather than trying to find jeans that fit right. “But I’ll hold you to it,” she offers. “We’ll go to the mall and spend all day, because that’s what best friends do.”
Her words are like an arrow to his heart, like an electrical charge he can feel flowing all the way down his arms and his legs. She looks like she surprised herself, like she wishes she could take it back. But she doesn’t, so he says, “You’re buying at Cinnabon.”
“Of course,” she promises.
He reaches for the Montgomery Ward catalog, engulfed in thinking about returning to the real world, in their own time. He looks at her and finds her lost in thought as well, and he wonders what she’s thinking. Taking Juliet to Waldenbooks makes a better fantasy than the underwear models in the Sears catalog. He never would have believed it.
…
Juliet slings the backpack over her shoulder and then turns to look at him. Sawyer crosses his arms over his chest. She raises her eyebrows to inquire why, or what his problem is.
“You said no hikes.”
“We aren’t going hiking,” she confirms, and opens the front door as though that should be enough for him.
“Then where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” she promises.
He gives her a dark look. “All righty then. I’m trustin’ ya.”
“Thank you,” Juliet says. He strides out into the bright sunlight, and she pulls the door closed behind them. He gestures for her to lead the way, and falls into step behind her.
He tells himself that he’s assessing her outfit as his eyes skim her from head to toe. He tells himself that, but he’s lying. Her ponytail swings slightly between her shoulder blades, and her jeans are maybe a smidge too tight. She glances over her shoulder at him like she knows exactly what he’s looking at. He takes a long stride to catch up so he’s walking next to her.
“So where are we going?” he asks her again. She just gives him a look. “Are we there yet?” he teases, and dodges a swat of her hand. He tips his head back to let his hair fall back out of his eyes and he grins to himself that she’s getting physical with him.
They walk through the trees until they reach a small clearing. Sawyer turns around, examining it from all angles, thinking that something seems off. It doesn’t quite seem like a nice place for a picnic, and besides, he’s pretty sure a picnic crosses the line beyond friendship. He wouldn’t take Jin or Miles on a picnic.
“We’re here,” he says, although he has no idea where here is.
Juliet sets down her pack and kneels beside it, rummaging through. She tosses him a cold can, wrapped in foil to keep it cool. He doesn’t unwrap it, just holds it away from himself as he pulls the tab and takes a drink. He was hoping for beer, but it’s some kind of cola. It still feels good going down.
He drinks and watches her pull several other items out of her pack, a couple of beer cans and several empty tin cans. “Now are you gonna tell me what we’re doing?” he asks. “Cause this don’t look like the recycling center.”
She pulls out a gun.
He puts his hands up, feeling a chill run down his spine. “Whoa! I was just askin’.”
“It’s target practice,” she says, as though it should be obvious. She checks the gun and then tucks it into her waistband while she sets up the cans.
“I know how to shoot,” he tells her.
“That’s not what I heard,” she says.
He glares and throws his empty pop can in her general direction. His face feels hot. Of course Jack had to tell her about that. Of all the things they could have discussed… He sighs.
She picks up the thrown can and places it in the line. “I’ve watched you,” she says. “You hesitate. You’re slow, you’re inaccurate and impulsive, and you lack basic knowledge of human anatomy.” Apparently satisfied with the setup, she walks over to where he’s standing.
“I’m down for anatomy lessons,” he says, falling back into old habits. “Just happen to think there are better places. The shower, for instance.” He gives her an inviting look.
She thoroughly ignores his flirting attempts, and he wonders if touching her would do any good. He could run his fingers along the inside of her upper arm, exposed by the cap-sleeved shirt she’s wearing. He imagines that her mouth would open with surprise, and her eyes would turn dark. Her skin would be impossibly soft, and he -
“James,” she says.
He blinks out of the fantasy. She’s holding the gun out toward him.
He takes it.
“Maybe you should have brought -”
He aims and pulls the trigger.
“Your glasses,” she finishes. They are both aware that none of the cans have a new hole. But there’s a tree that’s undoubtedly having the worst day of its life. “What did I say,” she says, looking frustrated with him.
“I ain’t slow,” he says, like he has to prove himself to her.
She just levels him with an icy look. She puts out her hand and he gives her the gun back. For a moment, he expects her to pack it in, clean up the cans, and head back. Instead, she sights along the gun, just the slightest squinting of her eyes, and then she pulls the trigger. Last night’s soup can will never know what hit it.
“Practice improves accuracy,” she says, giving him the gun back.
He points it at the cans, then stops, putting his head down. He looks at her. “They teach you all this, Ado Annie? Or were you secretly some kinda Rambo type back in the real world?”
She doesn’t flinch, but he knows her well enough by know to know his words touched a nerve. “I’d never held a gun before I came here,” she says, and her voice is icy.
“Lucky for me you took to it like a duck on water.” He pulls the trigger again. The beer can wobbles. He winged it. He sighs, and shifts his gaze to the next one. He works harder to line up the shot, but misses again.
“The good news is we won’t run out of cans anytime soon,” Juliet says. “The bad news is, you’re the head of security.”
“Anything I’d be shootin’ at is bigger than a can,” he points out. He aims for the bigger can and hits it, off center.
Juliet rummages in her backpack for more ammunition.
“I coulda been like him, you know,” Sawyer says, still thinking about the thing with the marshall. How he’d been trying to do the right thing, the thing that needed to be done, that he thought the doc couldn’t do. “Jack,” he clarifies. “If I’d had a different life.” It just makes him feel ashamed, and he hates it, even though he knows she didn’t do it on purpose.
Juliet seems surprised by this. She gives him a hard look. “I’m glad you’re you,” she says.
It should help, but it doesn’t. Thinking about how Jack was always the hero. He wasn’t so great. There were plenty of things Jack couldn’t do.
“You gonna teach me how to track, too?” Sawyer asks Juliet.
“I don’t know how to track,” she says plainly. “But I hear you can talk to Mendoza. He can teach you. Should teach you.”
“What about you?” he asks.
She shrugs. “Then you can teach me.”
He looks at the gun in his hand again, pointed at the ground. Wondering if she’s lying. Why she would lie. Except… she always has lied, hasn’t she? “If you can’t track, then how did you find me. Out in the jungle.” He gives her a sidelong look to make sure she knows what he’s talking about.
She does. They both remember their first meeting. Mostly he remembers how he ended up twitching on the ground and then locked back up in a cage.
She looks surprised, and not very happy. “By accident,” she replies.
“Accident,” he repeats, his tone making clear what he thinks of that.
She nods, and doesn’t look away. “Try again,” she suggests simply, and he’s aware of her watching him as he fires again, at the larger can, putting another hole in it.
“Who taught you to shoot?” she asks.
“I’m a country boy,” he points out, without answering her question.
“James. Who?” she repeats.
He ducks his head, letting his hair fall into his eyes. “Acquaintances,” he says. She raises an eyebrow, and he confirms her suspicion that they were criminals, like him. “Wanted to make sure I could get the job done.”
“Could you?” she asks, and it’s not cold but it’s impartial.
He meets her eyes, remembering how his hand shook behind the shrimp truck. “Yeah.”
She tucks her chin, the barest nod of acknowledgment.
“I wanted my uncle to show me. Asked him for years. Every hunting trip, he left me behind,” Sawyer says. “Refused. Had his reasons, I guess.” Reasons like Sawyer’s father. Reasons like Sawyer himself swearing revenge.
Funny that it wasn’t a gun that took out good old Mr. Sawyer after all. Thinking about it, he still wants to throw up.
“Why aren’t you afraid of guns?” Juliet asks and he feels goosebumps rise on his arms even in the heat.
“I ain’t afraid of anything, sweetheart,” he says.
She’s good enough not to point out he’s a liar. “Do you -” she begins, but doesn’t get to finish her sentence.
Sawyer shoots each can in succession, dead center. He looks at her and finds her frowning as he stomps over and forces the gun into her hand. He’s breathing hard, and he’s fighting to feel anything other than anger. “I shot a polar bear, and probably six or seven Others at this point counting the big guy who took the kid off the raft. And yeah. That guy in Australia. I got plenty of practice.”
He uses the force of handing off the gun to shove her off balance. He glares hard at her, which is a mistake, because the look in her eyes burns into him, deep enough it’ll be hard to forget. He shakes his head and stomps off into the jungle, alone.
He doesn’t hear her trailing after him, but he didn’t expect to.
It rips the deep sucking wound in his heart open just a little bit wider as he struggles against it, the pain and utter despair he feels at missing them - all of them - the other survivors on the beach, who are god knows where if they’re even still alive. Somehow he’s the lucky one in all this, and he doesn’t understand how or why.
He gets good and lost in the jungle before he starts to wind his way back to Dharmaville. It’s for the best, he thinks, because he needed time to cool off. He walks into the house and finds himself looking for her despite himself. “Where’s Juliet?” he asks.
“Thought she was with you,” Jin says. There’s less hesitation now in his speech. They are all learning things here, adapting.
A river of panic flows through him that she’s not back yet, even though he knows she’s more than capable of defending herself. He turns toward the door, thinking he is going to have to go and find her, but it swings open. Juliet walks in, her shoulders tense. “Hey,” she says softly. She won’t meet his eyes, but it’s obvious to him that she’s been crying.
“You okay?” he asks in a gentle voice, fighting the need to add ‘sweetheart’ to the end of it, wanting to pull her against him and hold her to make sure she’s all right.
“Fine.” She nods tightly and slips past him.
He almost reaches for her, but he lets her go. Then he turns to Jin, who gives him a knowing look before he turns away.
end of part 2
“How’s it going with your new buddy?” Miles asks Sawyer.
Sawyer looks at him, and Miles raises his eyebrows. He knows. “What’re you talking about?” Sawyer asks, trying to play it cool.
“Come on man, she told me,” Miles says.
“She told you,” Sawyer repeats doubtfully.
Miles nods. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I think I want to be friends with Juliet, too.”
“No. You don’t,” Sawyer says, and it falls somewhere between a threat and an order. He’ll shove him into a tree if he has to.
Miles laughs. “You got it so bad for her.”
Sawyer just glares, thinking if he denies it, he’ll make it worse. Because Miles totally has his number. He wonders what Juliet said to him. If she knows, too. But of course she knows. She has to.
“Listen, you gotta go into this with no expectations. Not thinking like you’re going to change her mind. Commit to it,” Miles advises.
Sawyer gives him a doubtful look. Why would he pretend he didn’t want anything more than to be friends, when he doesn’t, except because he has to?
“What would you do if she wasn’t into you. At all,” Miles asks.
“Try harder,” Sawyer replies, as though it should be obvious. He’s used to doing the choosing and then making the mark fall for him. Usually without much of an option. Of course he would try harder.
Miles shakes his head. “You’re in the friend zone now. You gotta accept that.”
“What the hell is the friend zone?” Sawyer demands.
Jin has wandered into the territory they are exploring, and Miles looks at him for assistance. Jin looks blank. Miles rolls his eyes and throws up his hands.
“Maybe I just need more practice,” Sawyer suggests. He’s been thinking about it, anyway.
“On who?” Miles asks.
Sawyer gives him a look.
“Okay, we’re friends now!” Miles cries. “You don’t have to do anything.” He moves so that Jin is between them. “You’re friends with Jin now too.”
Jin’s eyes light up. “Friends,” he repeats, like he means it.
“Well that was easy,” Sawyer grumbles. Wishing it could be so easy with her.
…
“Lookie here, this here must be dinner with a friend,” Sawyer announces upon his arrival outside the cafeteria. Juliet gives him that look, just short of an eye roll, and he shoots her a grin. It works; it always works. She smiles back and he tries to ignore that melty feeling he gets inside. He reaches for the door handle, to pull it open for her.
“I’ve got it, James,” she says.
“Suit yourself,” he says, letting go and stepping back. The door bumps her shoulder and she absorbs the blow. She makes no move to hold the door for him following behind her. He wonders if she’s really committed to this friends thing.
The place is fairly empty, so it doesn’t take long for them to make their way through the line. With loaded up trays, they select a table. “I’d pull your chair out for you, but, well,” Sawyer says, because there are no chairs, just benches fixed to the table. He steps over the bench to sit down.
“I wonder what made them say, ‘yes, picnic tables,’” Juliet says, and sits down across from him.
Sawyer shrugs and looks around. There are some scientists eating solo, shoveling in the grub while theorems undoubtedly dance in their heads. He wonders if they have friends. “You all have somethin’ like this?” he asks, referring to her time with the Others.
Juliet shakes her head, but she gets that pinched look she always has when he brings it up, her prior time in this compound. “All the houses have kitchens,” she says. “We had things to do, but it wasn’t busy like it is here.”
“Busy,” he scoffs.
He still eats like he doesn’t know where the next meal is coming from. He notices her watching him and makes a point to go slower. He sets down his fork and takes a drink of water. He breathes, in and out, looking at her. She just looks back. It makes him toss his hair and then look down at his plate, moving his fork around.
When he glances at her, she’s still looking at him. “What?”
It’s her turn to look away.
“Awful quiet,” he teases.
“What do you want to talk about, James?” she asks in that simple, quiet tone she has.
“Only thing I got in my head is books,” he says, and it’s such a lie she actually laughs.
“Then let’s talk about books,” she agrees. “What have you read lately that’s good?”
“On the beach, I read this book about bunnies,” he says.
“’Tell me about the rabbits, George,’” she quotes, and his heart beats faster.
“Not that one,” he says, fast, but he can’t take his eyes off her. “You know that one?”
Her mischievous grin develops again. “It’s from a cartoon,” she says, but they both know she knows better.
“You ever read it?”
“Ninth grade,” she says.
“You like it?” he asks, hopefully.
“There’s not much in there for a freshman to relate to,” she says. As though she senses his disappointment, she adds, “I should give it another try.”
“I been lookin’ for a copy around here,” he says, and then frowns at himself for such an admission. As though he needs it, a book he’s already read half a dozen times. “Ain’t found one yet.”
“Did you like Watership Down?” she asks.
“Read it twice. On the beach.” He looks at her again. He’s aware he didn’t tell her the name of the bunny book, which means she must have seen him reading it back then and took notice. He’s a little curious about that, but doesn’t know how to ask it. “You?”
“I read it on the beach, too, actually. Different beach.”
“Somethin’ tells me it’s not a happy memory,” he says, when she falls into silence.
“The sun was not kind to me that day,” she says. “My sister called me Stripes for a year.”
He instantly understands that the nickname would have come from the contrast between Juliet’s sunburn and the whiteness of her skin that had been protected under whatever suit she had been wearing while reading on the beach. His thoughts begin to stray to string bikinis, but he reminds himself that they are just friends. It doesn’t work very well.
“What kinda books do you like?” he asks her.
“Thrillers. Horror,” she replies.
“Junk food,” he says.
“Don’t judge.” She frowns.
“I ain’t real picky,” he tells her. “I’ll read whatever’s at hand.”
“Maybe you can elevate my tastes,” she says.
“Or you can drag me down,” he offers, and wishes she would. His imagination provides him an image of her hand holding a fistful of his shirt, yanking on it. He blinks and closes his mouth. He sighs. “I guess you’n Jack were friends. On the beach.”
“I guess we were,” she agrees.
He remembers Juliet kissing Jack. It wasn’t much of a kiss, but still. She didn’t play games with him. She wasn’t playing games, now, either. He wonders what the hell he’s doing here, not for the first time. “What’d you two talk about? Doctor stuff?”
Juliet shrugs and it seems like he’s touched on something else painful. “Jack needed someone to talk to,” she says. “But he never really trusted me.”
“Is that right,” Sawyer says, because from where he was standing it sure looked like Jack did.
She nods exaggeratedly and sets her water glass back down. “He thought I was a terrible doctor.”
“He said that?”
“Not in so many words,” she says. “He asked Bernard to take his appendix out.”
“Bernie the dentist?”
Juliet nods, like that’s all there is to say about it. Jack would rather have a dentist operate on him, than an actual doctor. Her eyes get all big and doubtful. “I mean, he’s not wrong,” she admits, looking up at the ceiling.
Sawyer watches her carefully. He’s intrigued by this. By her. She’s always so calm and sure of herself, except for now. He doesn’t think it’s the mention of Jack. This is about her being a doctor. He remembers her telling him she didn’t want to be a doctor here - not ship’s medic or anything. She doesn’t believe in herself, and he has to wonder why.
“I seem to recall the doc bein’ up and runnin’ around the jungle pretty much the next day so I’d say you did all right,” he says. It’s not enough. It’s not even close to what he wants to say.
The look she gives him is vulnerable, and it kind of horrifies him, because it’s like she trusts him. She’s made a terrible choice, deciding to be friends with him. At least she’s smart enough not to trust him with her heart, he thinks.
“I’d let you cut me open,” he offers.
“You missed the perfect opportunity to suggest we play doctor,” she says.
“Funny,” he allows, because it is. He looks her in the eye and makes his best attempt at sincerity. “But I ain’t hitting on you anymore. Cause we’re friends.”
“Friends,” she repeats, and he wonders who it is she’s doubting - him, or herself? “Do you think men and women can really be friends?”
“Ain’t that a line from a movie?” he asks.
“When Harry Met Sally,” Juliet replies.
He looks at her blankly, because he doesn’t recall it.
“Famous for the scene where Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm in a deli,” Juliet elaborates.
His eyebrows rise, because he does remember that. “Always thought she was sorta cute.”
“Welcome to the human race,” Juliet says, and he frowns at her. “Everyone thinks Meg Ryan is cute. That’s her thing. Being adorable.”
“Not anymore,” he points out, because who the hell has thought of Meg Ryan in the last decade? “Not yet,” he corrects himself. Then he chuckles. “What are we even talking about?”
“Movies?”
“Okay, then, what’s your favorite movie?” he asks her.
Her face lights up, and he thinks it’s going to be something really good, and then she says, “Xanadu.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“I won’t make you watch it,” she promises.
“Not yet you won’t,” he teases. If they wait long enough, it’ll come out. Maybe he’ll be sitting beside her in a movie theater, watching it. He imagines it as a date and then pushes the thoughts away. He looks at her plate and sees she’s finished eating. So has he. “Guess that was dinner with a friend,” he says.
She nods at him, and looks like she wants to say something, but she doesn’t.
“So what do we do next?” he asks.
She shrugs, and he holds up a finger. “Don’t say it,” he warns. She looks confused. “Don’t ask me what I want to do.”
“I was going to say, we can do guy stuff. What did you like to do in your spare time… before?”
“I don’t like guy stuff,” he says. “I like shopping. But since they ain’t turned this island into a damn mall yet-”
“We can shop,” she says.
“How?”
“You’ll see,” she promises, and he gives her a lingering look. It goes on a second or two too long and they can both feel it turning electric.
“Okay then, Stripes. We’ll go shopping,” he says.
“Don’t call me Stripes,” she says, exactly as he knew that she would, and he feels happier than he has been in weeks. Maybe months.
…
Juliet walks into the living room, holding a duffle bag that looks like it is extremely heavy. Sawyer looks over the tops of his glasses at her, then reaches up to remove them as she comes to sit down beside him.
“You knock over the convenience store again?” he asks, but he’s kind of wondering if there are books inside that bag. Wondering and hoping.
“You said you wanted to go shopping,” she says. She leans down to unzip the bag, and her long hair brushes against his leg. He just looks at it, wanting to touch it. She gives him a smile from her awkward, bent-in-half angle, and then lifts the object out of the bag and plops it down on the coffee table, which wobbles under its weight.
“That’s -”
“The Sears catalog,” Juliet says. Her eyes sparkle; she’s extremely proud of herself. There are two more thumps as she unloads the bag and then leans back. She looks like she could use a glass of water.
Sawyer leans forward to examine what else is there. “JC Penney, and Monkey Wards? Not bad.” He hefts the Sears catalog, weighing it with his hands before he flips to the back to see how many pages it is, because it is massive. “There’s an index,” he marvels. Juliet looks at him. “Fifteen hundred pages.”
“That’s longer than the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, or Les Miserables,” Juliet offers up.
He wonders how she has the page count of those three particular works inside that brain of hers. “Lot of stuff,” he says, turning to the plain, black and white pages near the front that contrast the slick, colorful pages of the rest of the book.
“What are you looking for?” she asks, brushing her hair back.
“Naked ladies,” he replies, distracted. Then he glances at her and shoots her a grin.
“Of course, James,” Juliet replies, as though this is something she should have expected. “See anything you like?”
He’s still looking at her. She’s sweaty from hauling the bag of heavy catalogs. He thinks about all he would have to do is lean in a little bit, about how he could taste the salt on her skin. “Ain’t exactly Victoria’s Secret,” he sighs, flipping through the uninspiring pages. “Everything’s real good and covered up.”
She leans in, unbearably close. “Those panties are huge.” She glances at him. “Well, you like using your imagination.”
“Says who,” he scoffs. He flips back to the beginning, where the women’s clothes are. “Oh, I can hear it now.”
“What?” Juliet asks.
He taps his finger against an array of short dresses with large collars. “Here’s the story,” he begins the theme song to the Brady Bunch, and that’s all it takes.
She laughs and leans against him, and his heart starts to swell. “I thought we were shopping for you.” She begins turning the pages rapidly, then flipping over large sections until she finds the men’s clothes and stops, looking doubtful.
“Hope you like plaid, sweetheart.” There are plaid pants, and plaid shirts and plaid suits. Some pages claim to have jeans, but they all appear to be made of skin-tight spandex, not denim.
“We have got to get you a nightgown,” she says, stopping on a page featuring four grown men in nightshirts. One of the nightgowns is patterned with red and white stripes, like Where’s Waldo wears.
“Found him,” Sawyer mutters.
“At least it’s not plaid.” She turns the page, revealing men’s underwear consisting of matching undershirts and briefs in horrifying prints.
“This is a nightmare.”
“Remember Underoos?” she asks. “I wanted the Wonder Woman ones so bad.”
“Before my time,” he says gruffly.
“James. We’re the same age.”
“Are we?”
“I never got them either,” she says, referring back to the superhero underwear. “When’s your birthday?”
Like you don’t know, he thinks darkly. “You gonna buy me a leisure suit and do my zodiac? None of your beeswax.”
“Do you really like shopping?” she asks him.
“Not like this.” He flips to the back, thinking of the Christmastime wishbooks of his childhood, which were generally just that - wishes, unfulfilled. “Damn, no toys.” He closes it and lets the weight rest on his lap. “Where’d this come from, anyway?”
“I asked around,” she says. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Yeah I did.”
She just looks at him. Waiting for him to answer, as she knows that he will.
“I didn’t have a lot of stuff, growing up,” he says. He meets her eyes and then looks back down at the catalog, shaking his head. “What can I say, I like lookin’ good. I got expensive taste.” He senses her looking at him. “What?” he bristles.
“I don’t buy it,” she says.
“We ever get back, I’ll prove it to you,” he promises, and finds he likes the idea of it. “We’ll hit the mall. I’ll show you a good time.”
“I hate shopping,” she says. But she looks like she’s being won over by him, like she’s thinking about spending hours in a bookstore rather than trying to find jeans that fit right. “But I’ll hold you to it,” she offers. “We’ll go to the mall and spend all day, because that’s what best friends do.”
Her words are like an arrow to his heart, like an electrical charge he can feel flowing all the way down his arms and his legs. She looks like she surprised herself, like she wishes she could take it back. But she doesn’t, so he says, “You’re buying at Cinnabon.”
“Of course,” she promises.
He reaches for the Montgomery Ward catalog, engulfed in thinking about returning to the real world, in their own time. He looks at her and finds her lost in thought as well, and he wonders what she’s thinking. Taking Juliet to Waldenbooks makes a better fantasy than the underwear models in the Sears catalog. He never would have believed it.
…
Juliet slings the backpack over her shoulder and then turns to look at him. Sawyer crosses his arms over his chest. She raises her eyebrows to inquire why, or what his problem is.
“You said no hikes.”
“We aren’t going hiking,” she confirms, and opens the front door as though that should be enough for him.
“Then where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” she promises.
He gives her a dark look. “All righty then. I’m trustin’ ya.”
“Thank you,” Juliet says. He strides out into the bright sunlight, and she pulls the door closed behind them. He gestures for her to lead the way, and falls into step behind her.
He tells himself that he’s assessing her outfit as his eyes skim her from head to toe. He tells himself that, but he’s lying. Her ponytail swings slightly between her shoulder blades, and her jeans are maybe a smidge too tight. She glances over her shoulder at him like she knows exactly what he’s looking at. He takes a long stride to catch up so he’s walking next to her.
“So where are we going?” he asks her again. She just gives him a look. “Are we there yet?” he teases, and dodges a swat of her hand. He tips his head back to let his hair fall back out of his eyes and he grins to himself that she’s getting physical with him.
They walk through the trees until they reach a small clearing. Sawyer turns around, examining it from all angles, thinking that something seems off. It doesn’t quite seem like a nice place for a picnic, and besides, he’s pretty sure a picnic crosses the line beyond friendship. He wouldn’t take Jin or Miles on a picnic.
“We’re here,” he says, although he has no idea where here is.
Juliet sets down her pack and kneels beside it, rummaging through. She tosses him a cold can, wrapped in foil to keep it cool. He doesn’t unwrap it, just holds it away from himself as he pulls the tab and takes a drink. He was hoping for beer, but it’s some kind of cola. It still feels good going down.
He drinks and watches her pull several other items out of her pack, a couple of beer cans and several empty tin cans. “Now are you gonna tell me what we’re doing?” he asks. “Cause this don’t look like the recycling center.”
She pulls out a gun.
He puts his hands up, feeling a chill run down his spine. “Whoa! I was just askin’.”
“It’s target practice,” she says, as though it should be obvious. She checks the gun and then tucks it into her waistband while she sets up the cans.
“I know how to shoot,” he tells her.
“That’s not what I heard,” she says.
He glares and throws his empty pop can in her general direction. His face feels hot. Of course Jack had to tell her about that. Of all the things they could have discussed… He sighs.
She picks up the thrown can and places it in the line. “I’ve watched you,” she says. “You hesitate. You’re slow, you’re inaccurate and impulsive, and you lack basic knowledge of human anatomy.” Apparently satisfied with the setup, she walks over to where he’s standing.
“I’m down for anatomy lessons,” he says, falling back into old habits. “Just happen to think there are better places. The shower, for instance.” He gives her an inviting look.
She thoroughly ignores his flirting attempts, and he wonders if touching her would do any good. He could run his fingers along the inside of her upper arm, exposed by the cap-sleeved shirt she’s wearing. He imagines that her mouth would open with surprise, and her eyes would turn dark. Her skin would be impossibly soft, and he -
“James,” she says.
He blinks out of the fantasy. She’s holding the gun out toward him.
He takes it.
“Maybe you should have brought -”
He aims and pulls the trigger.
“Your glasses,” she finishes. They are both aware that none of the cans have a new hole. But there’s a tree that’s undoubtedly having the worst day of its life. “What did I say,” she says, looking frustrated with him.
“I ain’t slow,” he says, like he has to prove himself to her.
She just levels him with an icy look. She puts out her hand and he gives her the gun back. For a moment, he expects her to pack it in, clean up the cans, and head back. Instead, she sights along the gun, just the slightest squinting of her eyes, and then she pulls the trigger. Last night’s soup can will never know what hit it.
“Practice improves accuracy,” she says, giving him the gun back.
He points it at the cans, then stops, putting his head down. He looks at her. “They teach you all this, Ado Annie? Or were you secretly some kinda Rambo type back in the real world?”
She doesn’t flinch, but he knows her well enough by know to know his words touched a nerve. “I’d never held a gun before I came here,” she says, and her voice is icy.
“Lucky for me you took to it like a duck on water.” He pulls the trigger again. The beer can wobbles. He winged it. He sighs, and shifts his gaze to the next one. He works harder to line up the shot, but misses again.
“The good news is we won’t run out of cans anytime soon,” Juliet says. “The bad news is, you’re the head of security.”
“Anything I’d be shootin’ at is bigger than a can,” he points out. He aims for the bigger can and hits it, off center.
Juliet rummages in her backpack for more ammunition.
“I coulda been like him, you know,” Sawyer says, still thinking about the thing with the marshall. How he’d been trying to do the right thing, the thing that needed to be done, that he thought the doc couldn’t do. “Jack,” he clarifies. “If I’d had a different life.” It just makes him feel ashamed, and he hates it, even though he knows she didn’t do it on purpose.
Juliet seems surprised by this. She gives him a hard look. “I’m glad you’re you,” she says.
It should help, but it doesn’t. Thinking about how Jack was always the hero. He wasn’t so great. There were plenty of things Jack couldn’t do.
“You gonna teach me how to track, too?” Sawyer asks Juliet.
“I don’t know how to track,” she says plainly. “But I hear you can talk to Mendoza. He can teach you. Should teach you.”
“What about you?” he asks.
She shrugs. “Then you can teach me.”
He looks at the gun in his hand again, pointed at the ground. Wondering if she’s lying. Why she would lie. Except… she always has lied, hasn’t she? “If you can’t track, then how did you find me. Out in the jungle.” He gives her a sidelong look to make sure she knows what he’s talking about.
She does. They both remember their first meeting. Mostly he remembers how he ended up twitching on the ground and then locked back up in a cage.
She looks surprised, and not very happy. “By accident,” she replies.
“Accident,” he repeats, his tone making clear what he thinks of that.
She nods, and doesn’t look away. “Try again,” she suggests simply, and he’s aware of her watching him as he fires again, at the larger can, putting another hole in it.
“Who taught you to shoot?” she asks.
“I’m a country boy,” he points out, without answering her question.
“James. Who?” she repeats.
He ducks his head, letting his hair fall into his eyes. “Acquaintances,” he says. She raises an eyebrow, and he confirms her suspicion that they were criminals, like him. “Wanted to make sure I could get the job done.”
“Could you?” she asks, and it’s not cold but it’s impartial.
He meets her eyes, remembering how his hand shook behind the shrimp truck. “Yeah.”
She tucks her chin, the barest nod of acknowledgment.
“I wanted my uncle to show me. Asked him for years. Every hunting trip, he left me behind,” Sawyer says. “Refused. Had his reasons, I guess.” Reasons like Sawyer’s father. Reasons like Sawyer himself swearing revenge.
Funny that it wasn’t a gun that took out good old Mr. Sawyer after all. Thinking about it, he still wants to throw up.
“Why aren’t you afraid of guns?” Juliet asks and he feels goosebumps rise on his arms even in the heat.
“I ain’t afraid of anything, sweetheart,” he says.
She’s good enough not to point out he’s a liar. “Do you -” she begins, but doesn’t get to finish her sentence.
Sawyer shoots each can in succession, dead center. He looks at her and finds her frowning as he stomps over and forces the gun into her hand. He’s breathing hard, and he’s fighting to feel anything other than anger. “I shot a polar bear, and probably six or seven Others at this point counting the big guy who took the kid off the raft. And yeah. That guy in Australia. I got plenty of practice.”
He uses the force of handing off the gun to shove her off balance. He glares hard at her, which is a mistake, because the look in her eyes burns into him, deep enough it’ll be hard to forget. He shakes his head and stomps off into the jungle, alone.
He doesn’t hear her trailing after him, but he didn’t expect to.
It rips the deep sucking wound in his heart open just a little bit wider as he struggles against it, the pain and utter despair he feels at missing them - all of them - the other survivors on the beach, who are god knows where if they’re even still alive. Somehow he’s the lucky one in all this, and he doesn’t understand how or why.
He gets good and lost in the jungle before he starts to wind his way back to Dharmaville. It’s for the best, he thinks, because he needed time to cool off. He walks into the house and finds himself looking for her despite himself. “Where’s Juliet?” he asks.
“Thought she was with you,” Jin says. There’s less hesitation now in his speech. They are all learning things here, adapting.
A river of panic flows through him that she’s not back yet, even though he knows she’s more than capable of defending herself. He turns toward the door, thinking he is going to have to go and find her, but it swings open. Juliet walks in, her shoulders tense. “Hey,” she says softly. She won’t meet his eyes, but it’s obvious to him that she’s been crying.
“You okay?” he asks in a gentle voice, fighting the need to add ‘sweetheart’ to the end of it, wanting to pull her against him and hold her to make sure she’s all right.
“Fine.” She nods tightly and slips past him.
He almost reaches for her, but he lets her go. Then he turns to Jin, who gives him a knowing look before he turns away.
end of part 2