Lost fic: Friendship part 3/3
Chapter Three
He sits up that night, after everyone else has gone to bed. There’s a glass of whiskey on the table beside him, but he hasn’t had much more than a sip.
Juliet emerges from the hall to the bedrooms, bundled up in her robe and a few strands of her hair standing out like flyaways, like she had tried to sleep and failed. She looks at him, like she knew he was out here, and then goes into the kitchen.
He sighs and listens to her do whatever it is she’s doing in there.
She joins him, eventually, sitting down diagonally from him. She has a steaming hot mug in each hand and offers one to him. “I made cocoa. I couldn’t sleep.”
He accepts the mug from her and looks down into it. The ceramic transfers the heat from inside to his hands. He sets it on the coffee table and reaches for his glass. He pours a bit in, then offers it to her. She thinks for a moment before extending her mug for him to pour whiskey into.
He sets it down and then sips the hot chocolate. He leans back. He’s more tired than he realized; his eyes feel like sandpaper and there’s a cold fatigue creeping up his shoulders. She made the cocoa the old fashioned way, with milk, and it’s good, especially with the whiskey kicker. “Mmmm.”
“James, I’m sorry,” she says.
He shakes his head like it doesn’t matter. Because it doesn’t. It’s all just water under the bridge. He smiles at her mildly.
He’s realized a couple of things here. First, that he cares about her. Not just in ‘I’d like to hit that’ kind of way. He cares that their encounter earlier upset her. That she feels bad about how she made him feel, the effect she was able to have on him.
It’s obvious she cares about him, too.
He also knows that she thought target practice would be a fun bonding activity and nothing more. Now he knows he has to be careful with her, and much as he likes to think of himself as impenetrable, she has to be careful with him too.
Someday they’ll talk it out, he imagines, but tonight is not that night.
They sit there almost comfortably in silence, sipping their drinks.
He can see that the milk and the whiskey combined with the late hour have worked their magic. She’s beginning to nod off. He reaches out and takes the mug from her hands and sets it aside. Her eyes reopen, wide, looking at him. “We better get you into bed,” he says, taking her hand and tugging her up to her feet.
She leans against him for a second before she shuffles down the hall. He goes with her, to make sure she gets there all right. He still wants to run a hand over her hair to smooth it down.
They stop at the door to her bedroom and she turns her face up to his. He wonders how the hell she doesn’t feel the same longing that he does, but then he slides his jaw because he knows. It’s him.
“Are we still friends?” she asks in a low voice.
He nods, and she seems visibly relieved. She winds her arms around him and pulls him in for a hug that takes him by surprise. After a second of shock, he strokes her hair the way he’d been wanting to, and holds her tight. Her lips brush his cheek, and even as he’s moving in closer, she’s pulling away again.
“Good night, James,” she says, and disappears into her room, closing the door firmly behind her.
He can only stand there, with the memory of her scent and the feeling of her hair under his hand. Then he shakes his head and turns toward his own room. “Friend zone my ass,” he mutters.
…
Their lives begin to take on a predictability, and Sawyer finds there’s comfort in it. More than that, he thrives.
The day that Horace pulls him aside to talk to him in a low voice, bringing him into ‘the circle of trust,’ Sawyer feels his chest swell with pride. He would slink off and make fun of himself for it, if it didn’t feel so damn good.
He can’t wait for the day to end, so he can tell Juliet about it.
“What are you smiling about?” Miles asks grumpily as they walk across the village green back to their house that afternoon.
“Nothin’,” Sawyer lies, and tries to clear his expression, but he can’t.
“You’re happy,” Miles observes, somewhat incredulously. He gives Sawyer a closer look. “You didn’t eat those brownies Rosie brought around, did you? Cause -”
“Yeah, I know, Enos,” Sawyer says. “No brownies for me.”
“Walking the straight and narrow, and happy,” Miles says. He gives Sawyer another long, measuring look, but Sawyer knows better than to ask him what he’s thinking. “It’s a girl.”
“Ain’t no girl,” Sawyer protests, and then they’re home.
Juliet is in the kitchen, and Sawyer heads straight for her. She gives him something of a startled look, so he changes his path at the last minute and opens the fridge instead. “Want one?” he asks.
“No thanks,” she says.
He straightens up and opens the can. She leans against the counter and gives him the tiniest hint of a smile. He feels that old tug of longing again. He’s gotten used to ignoring it, mostly.
He smiles at her.
“What are you so happy about?” she asks.
He leans in close, lowering his voice so Miles doesn’t hear. “Horace brought me into the circle of trust. It’s a secret.”
“And by telling me, you’re breaking that trust,” Juliet observes.
“Yeah, well, who cares about that,” Sawyer bristles, because she’s right. “He trusts me.”
“I’m happy for you, James,” she says, and touches his shoulder briefly. It burns, and he wants to touch her back. He always wants to. But a second later, that moment between them ends and she redirects her attention to dinner on the stove.
“What’cha making?” he asks, a little flirty.
“It’s just spaghetti,” she says, tasting a little bit of the sauce from the end of the wooden spoon.
“You make the best spaghetti,” Sawyer says. She shoots him a doubtful look. “It’s my favorite.” He would keep going, but he gets what he wanted from her, which was a smile. “Hope you made extra.”
“There’s plenty,” she assures him, and for a moment they stand there smiling at each other.
He sets his beer down on the counter and turns to get cleaned up for dinner. He pauses and turns back. “Keep it hot for me.”
“You know I will,” she promises.
He nods and heads off down the hall.
He showers fast because he really is hungry, then hurries back toward the kitchen. He pauses, though, because he hears Miles and Juliet talking, and he hears his name.
“Should have seen him, rushing back here to tell you all his secrets.”
“They aren’t secrets,” Juliet says. “Something nice happened to him today and he wanted to tell me about it. That’s what friends do.”
Sawyer leans heavily against the wall, because she’s right. It pours over him like cold water, and then he feels hot all over with embarrassment.
He did it. They did it. No sleepovers or hair braiding required.
Friends.
“Then will you make me that chocolate cake again?” Miles is asking Juliet.
“Of course, Miles,” Juliet promises.
Oh.
Friends.
Sawyer wants to stalk away, but there’s nowhere for him to go. So he pushes through it, sailing into the kitchen and reclaiming his beer. Juliet catches his eye and smiles at him, and he forces one back at her, then looks away because he sees her noticing that it’s an act. Pretend long enough, and it becomes reality - didn’t he just prove that?
There’s more pasta on his plate than anyone else’s, and he knows that his words made her happy, and he’s still proud of that. Even if he knows that when she slices that chocolate cake for Miles this weekend, she’ll cut Miles the biggest piece.
Sawyer suddenly isn’t very hungry, but he knows he has to eat all of this, because she trusts him and he wants to keep that. Once he digs in, he finds that he’s starving, and eats heartily and on auto pilot, because he’s thinking.
Is he jealous?
He glances at Juliet, and at Miles, and yes. He is jealous. Even though he knows it isn’t fair, that people get to have more than one friend, most people have lots of friends. Juliet even has other friends here on the compound - there’s some kind of insane sewing circle she belongs to that never does any sewing - but that’s not like this. Not like them. Not like him. Not like he wants to be.
He remembers her saying something when they started all this about how she always had some little girl as a best friend, but that kid always thought Juliet was second best. He wonders if she was jealous back then, or if she just took it in that stoic way she has. Because there’s nothing he can do about this.
Except kiss her, and that’s the real problem, which he shoves back out of his head again, because he can’t. He’s given up on trying to win her over, because she’s been clear that friendship is all she wants.
He wonders if Miles wants to get with her, too. But then his anger flares right up and he pushes it away. He hasn’t really been jealous before this island. Envy, maybe, coveting what other people had that life had denied him. All those women, though, he never really cared. They were a means to an end.
He’s seen the hand of jealousy and it is terrifying to him. He doesn’t need that. Refuses to feel it.
So Miles and Juliet are friends. Good for them. He smiles, showing his teeth. He’s happy for them. He will be. He is.
…
The lure of warm, soft, perfect chocolate chip cookies is too much for either of them to resist.
“Who knew Miles had it in him?” Sawyer remarks as he and Juliet settle in the living room. On the table before them is a plate of cookies that had been left for them. Sawyer’s poured himself a glass of cold, sweet milk. “Gonna start calling him Mr. Fields.”
“Please don’t,” Juliet says. Sawyer shoots her a curious look, and she elaborates, “Then he won’t make them again.”
“Good point.” Sawyer breaks off another piece of cookie and puts it in his mouth. The chocolate melts on his tongue. “Never imagined, when we were sittin’ back on that beach, that we’d end up here.” He means eating fresh baked cookies on the island, but he looks around at the four walls surrounding them, and it goes a lot deeper.
“You can say that again,” Juliet agrees, and in that moment, she looks tired. Sawyer watches her make herself smile and he feels the strange desire to take care of her.
“This ain’t the kind of life you imagined for yourself,” he says, as much of a statement as a question. He watches her as she considers it for a moment, seriously. She looks down at her hands, which now fix the innards of old vans and Jeeps, and shakes her head.
“What were you picturing for yourself there, sweetheart?” he inquires.
Her eyebrows come together for a moment, and he can practically hear her thinking. Then she looks at him, and he can see the trust there shining in her eyes.
She reminds him of his marks, the women that he conned. The smart ones, the ones who should have been able to see through him and maybe sometimes did and ignored it. The ones he thought for a minute he could really fall in love with, before he remembered who he was and why he was there. He swallows hard.
“I wanted to be a brilliant doctor,” she says softly. “I wanted to fall in love, the kind of romance you’d read about in books or see on soap operas, that kind of all encompassing…” She shakes her head. “And I didn’t get it.”
“You still could,” he suggests gently, not just because she seems sad and that’s not what he wanted. He feels like he’s offering, because he’s terrified inside.
Her eyebrows rise. “What kind of brilliant doctor loses every single patient for three years?”
He finds it so interesting that’s what she mentions, and not that dream of a love for the ages.
“That ain’t your fault,” he says. “You didn’t cause that.”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t fix the problem, either.”
“You didn’t lose Jack. You helped Sun,” he says, and he hates that he’s the one defending her from herself.
“But they’re gone,” she says, another nod to the futility of it all. She looks at him. “What about you?”
He shakes his head in the way that makes his hair fall into his eyes, and reaches for another cookie.
“James,” she says, and his name in her mouth is like a touch, it’s like her brushing back his hair to really see him.
“I ain’t the ambitious type,” he says.
“I thought we were being honest with each other,” she says. “You must have wanted something, once.”
“You sound like the career counselor at school,” he cracks. He glances at her, and she’s still looking at him. “I didn’t have a lot of time for daydreamin’.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” she says.
It’s so honest, he laughs, and she smiles at him. She’s still waiting. For him to be honest. His laughter fades, and he has to say something, so he mumbles it out fast. “Wanted to help people.”
She doesn’t say anything, so he has to look at her. Once he does, she nods slowly and kind of sadly, like she understands. He looks down again, and they fall into silence for a moment, eating their cookies.
“How did you want to help them?” Juliet asks.
He shakes his head. When he’s lucky, it’s hard for him to remember. “Kinda wanted to be a cop. Detective. Something like that.” The back of his neck feels hot and prickly. He glances at her and she nods, encouraging him to go on. “When it happened…” He looks at her, wondering if he needs to tell her the whole story, but he can see that he doesn’t, and it kind of turns his stomach. “That night, like, right after it happened, the lady from the county gave me a teddy bear to hold on to. I was too old for it, but I remember, she told me, they were gonna find the guy and they would hold him accountable.”
He can’t look at her. There’s a deep scar like a river in the wood floor underneath the coffee table, and he follows it with his eyes until it blends in with the darkness. “By the time we buried them, it was obvious that wasn’t gonna happen.”
Her hand lands on his shoulder, and he looks at her. The past fades away and he starts feeling like himself again. He nods, and she nods. “Anyway, after that I was more interested in committin’ crimes than solving them.”
He sighs, and eats another cookie, washing it down with the milk. “Maybe we oughta patent this recipe and make millions.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the one from the back of the chocolate chip bag,” Juliet says.
“Is that right,” he says. He’s thinking there’s some kind of feel-good chemicals or hormones in chocolate and sugar. He could ask her and she’d probably know, but instead he asks, “You still want that fairy tale romance?”
“Are you offering?” she shoots back, in a way that makes it obvious she knows he’s not, and not only that, he’s not even capable. She doesn’t expect it from him and maybe even doesn’t want it.
It crushes him a little, because he’s slowly realizing that he would sure as hell like to try.
“You ever been married?” she asks him.
“No ma’am,” he replies, and then casts her a wicked grin. “But I been to prison.”
He’s hoping to shock her, but she goes with it. “Same thing,” she agrees, and he wonders what the hell kind of marriage she had to make her think that.
But she doesn’t elaborate, so he asks, “You gonna tell me about it or what?”
“He wasn’t a very nice man,” she says, and the look on her face tells him everything.
“I’ll kick his ass for you,” Sawyer offers, and he wishes he could. His fingers itch with it.
“He’s dead,” Juliet says flatly.
Sawyer wants to say he’s sorry, a knee-jerk reaction, but he doesn’t. Because he isn’t. “You kill him?” he jokes.
“Kind of?” she admits, her voice rising at the end like she’s not sure.
Sawyer’s heart aches, and he wants to pull her into his arms, but he can’t. He thinks about her now, warm and soft and vulnerable and upset, and contrasts it with the image of her coldly pulling the trigger on the beach. She wasn’t always a killer. Somehow this is a revelation to him.
“They really, really wanted me to come to this island,” she says softly. “And I told them he wouldn’t let me. Isn’t that funny. Ed never did a good thing in his life, and I hated him so much, but if they hadn’t… he wouldn’t have and I wouldn’t ever have come here.”
Sawyer doesn’t know what to say to that, because he’s glad she’s here.
Juliet shoves a whole cookie into her mouth.
“As much as I wish it hadn’t happened,” she says. “That you never had to be in a plane crash, or lose your parents, or that I never…” She shakes her head and then she looks at him. “I’m glad I had the chance to meet you.”
“Me too,” he says, and he means it. It’s not enough. He looks away and notices his glass is empty, and there’s only one cookie left on the plate. “You can have the last one.”
She shakes her head. “I’m full.”
“All righty then,” he says, and takes what he wants.
…
Miles and Jin are busy inventing a Clue-Monopoly board game hybrid that Miles is convinced will net them a fortune. It just makes Sawyer’s head ache, so he closes his book and gets up. Neither one of them notice.
His stomach turns over when Juliet’s door opens as he’s passing by it. He kind of wants to turn around, but Miles and Jin would notice that, and so would she. So he just kind of freezes, looking at her.
“What’s up?” she asks.
“Escapin’ from Murder on Park Place,” Sawyer says. “Before I turn it into murder in Dharmaville.”
“Damn you, Professor Plum!” Miles yells, apparently defeated by the game. “Get back in that thimble!”
“Why don’t you come in?” she asks.
Sawyer hesitates, and he knows she can feel it. He hates that he’s been avoiding her, but he knows he can’t give her what she wants.
“I’ve missed you,” she says.
He doesn’t want to hurt her, so there’s only one thing to do, and that’s the one thing he does best: speak the truth and make it sound like a lie. “Gee, Blondie, I been missin’ you too, livin’ in the same house and all.”
It works. She rolls her eyes at him and goes back into her room. He follows her in and debates whether to close the door behind them. But then Miles yells, “You built hotels in the Conservatory?!” Juliet reaches past Sawyer to push the door shut.
The room is small and sparsely furnished. There’s nowhere to sit except the bed, where the covers are mussed and a book is lying open face-down. Sawyer knows it will be warm from her body, where she was just laying to read, and he heaves himself to the floor with a groan.
Juliet sits down beside him, leaning her head against the mattress, and then she shifts over so she’s more facing him. “I wondered if you were avoiding me.”
His pulse picks up, the way it always does when he’s been caught red-handed. He hates to think he’s been obvious about it. “Why would I do that?”
“You tell me,” she invites flatly.
“I ain’t,” he says, but he can’t look at her, so it’s unconvincing.
“I thought,” she says, and stops. “Maybe it was because of the conversation we had the other night.”
It was, but not in the way she thinks.
“I liked it,” she says. “It made me feel close to you.”
She looks at him and he doesn’t know what to say.
“I know that can be scary,” she continues.
“I ain’t scared,” he declares.
She bites back a smile and he realizes she got him. She said it because she wanted him to react, and he did.
“We don’t have to talk,” she offers.
He shoots her a look, because usually when he hears that - when he says it - it’s followed by something else to keep their mouths busy. But she reaches for her book and he sighs, which stops her.
“I hate this,” he says, and she gets very still. “I don’t want to be your friend.”
Her eyes widen and he sees the hurt there. In a second, that fragility vanishes, swept away again.
“Cause I want more,” he says, finishing the thought. He moves his hands because they feel empty. He wants to touch her, but he can’t. “I’m the kind of guy who goes after what he wants. This is killin’ me.”
“And you want me?”
“Listen, we gave it a good run, tryin’ it, being friends, but I get that you’re not interested in me that way, sweetheart.”
The way her eyes light up when he calls her sweetheart is impossible to miss, but it’s just another dagger in his chest. He wonders, not for the first time, why she would be his friend if he’s not good enough for her to be with. But he knows, deep down, so he’s not going to make her say it, much as he thinks he might enjoy letting her hurt him.
“What if I changed my mind?” she asks.
That freezes him, and all he can hear is the blood rushing in his ears.
“You playin’ games with me?” he asks.
“No, James,” she says. “This was never a game. I wanted - I didn’t want - but now…”
“Damn it, woman, finish a sentence,” he says, and it breaks the tension. She laughs, and he finds himself laughing with her. It starts to die down, and then she looks at him and starts giggling again, and he thinks it’s the happiest sound he’s ever heard in his life.
“I think you better kiss me,” she says.
“You sure you don’t wanna talk about this some more -” he teases.
Her lips against his stop him. It’s barely a kiss, almost more playful. He doesn’t want her to pull away, having accomplished her mission, so he puts his hands on her wrists to pull her in closer, to hold her there. He softens his lips against hers, parting them. His senses are full of her - her softness and her scent, and he groans lightly because he’s wanted this for so long and it feels better than he imagined.
He deepens the kiss, sliding his tongue inside her mouth, tasting her. She kisses him back. One of her hands pulls free of his, to rest against his face. He slides his hand along her spine, holding her, then tangles his fingers through her hair. They kiss for a long time.
They are both breathing hard and fast when it ends. Juliet shifts to cuddle against him, and he puts his arm around her, keeping her tightly in place. He turns his head and brushes his lips against her hair, just because he wants to, because he can. There’s so much more that he wants that it surprises him.
“When did you change your mind?” he asks. Wondering how long he’s been torturing himself and didn’t have to.
She shakes her head, and ruffles her fingers through his hair in a way that makes him want to shiver with the pure delight of it.
“You thinkin’ you want to take it slow?” he asks her.
“Not really,” she says, and smiles at him. “Do you?”
He contemplates it for a moment, even though he knows they can both feel the reality of it, that he’s ready to go now. Everything he wants could take hours, or days, or weeks, and that’s just the purely physical, not counting their very real emotional connection, the one they’ve worked so hard to build. He swallows hard, because maybe that does scare him a little. This is no one-nighter in a motel. He doesn’t want it to be.
“Hell no,” he answers.
She kisses him again. He puts his hands on her shoulders to stop her. She blinks at him, confused. “I’m all for bein’ overcome by passion, but there’s better places to do it than on this floor.”
“You sure about that?” she asks, but she’s teasing.
“Maybe later,” he says. “Floor’s sexy for a fling.”
She looks at him, but she doesn’t ask. She knows that’s not what they’re doing, and so does he. It makes his arms shake a little as he scoops her up and deposits her on the nice, soft bed. He drops down next to her.
He just looks at her and strokes her hair. For a moment, he’s almost overwhelmed - wanting everything at once, he doesn’t know where to begin. Lucky for him, Juliet has some ideas of her own.
Afterward, being held by her and feeling content, he thinks about friendship and he thinks about love. He kind of thinks he loves her, but it’s too early to say it.
Besides, if she ever finds out he’s never been in love before, not really, not for long, he’s not sure what she might do, considering how this all started out.
(end)
He sits up that night, after everyone else has gone to bed. There’s a glass of whiskey on the table beside him, but he hasn’t had much more than a sip.
Juliet emerges from the hall to the bedrooms, bundled up in her robe and a few strands of her hair standing out like flyaways, like she had tried to sleep and failed. She looks at him, like she knew he was out here, and then goes into the kitchen.
He sighs and listens to her do whatever it is she’s doing in there.
She joins him, eventually, sitting down diagonally from him. She has a steaming hot mug in each hand and offers one to him. “I made cocoa. I couldn’t sleep.”
He accepts the mug from her and looks down into it. The ceramic transfers the heat from inside to his hands. He sets it on the coffee table and reaches for his glass. He pours a bit in, then offers it to her. She thinks for a moment before extending her mug for him to pour whiskey into.
He sets it down and then sips the hot chocolate. He leans back. He’s more tired than he realized; his eyes feel like sandpaper and there’s a cold fatigue creeping up his shoulders. She made the cocoa the old fashioned way, with milk, and it’s good, especially with the whiskey kicker. “Mmmm.”
“James, I’m sorry,” she says.
He shakes his head like it doesn’t matter. Because it doesn’t. It’s all just water under the bridge. He smiles at her mildly.
He’s realized a couple of things here. First, that he cares about her. Not just in ‘I’d like to hit that’ kind of way. He cares that their encounter earlier upset her. That she feels bad about how she made him feel, the effect she was able to have on him.
It’s obvious she cares about him, too.
He also knows that she thought target practice would be a fun bonding activity and nothing more. Now he knows he has to be careful with her, and much as he likes to think of himself as impenetrable, she has to be careful with him too.
Someday they’ll talk it out, he imagines, but tonight is not that night.
They sit there almost comfortably in silence, sipping their drinks.
He can see that the milk and the whiskey combined with the late hour have worked their magic. She’s beginning to nod off. He reaches out and takes the mug from her hands and sets it aside. Her eyes reopen, wide, looking at him. “We better get you into bed,” he says, taking her hand and tugging her up to her feet.
She leans against him for a second before she shuffles down the hall. He goes with her, to make sure she gets there all right. He still wants to run a hand over her hair to smooth it down.
They stop at the door to her bedroom and she turns her face up to his. He wonders how the hell she doesn’t feel the same longing that he does, but then he slides his jaw because he knows. It’s him.
“Are we still friends?” she asks in a low voice.
He nods, and she seems visibly relieved. She winds her arms around him and pulls him in for a hug that takes him by surprise. After a second of shock, he strokes her hair the way he’d been wanting to, and holds her tight. Her lips brush his cheek, and even as he’s moving in closer, she’s pulling away again.
“Good night, James,” she says, and disappears into her room, closing the door firmly behind her.
He can only stand there, with the memory of her scent and the feeling of her hair under his hand. Then he shakes his head and turns toward his own room. “Friend zone my ass,” he mutters.
…
Their lives begin to take on a predictability, and Sawyer finds there’s comfort in it. More than that, he thrives.
The day that Horace pulls him aside to talk to him in a low voice, bringing him into ‘the circle of trust,’ Sawyer feels his chest swell with pride. He would slink off and make fun of himself for it, if it didn’t feel so damn good.
He can’t wait for the day to end, so he can tell Juliet about it.
“What are you smiling about?” Miles asks grumpily as they walk across the village green back to their house that afternoon.
“Nothin’,” Sawyer lies, and tries to clear his expression, but he can’t.
“You’re happy,” Miles observes, somewhat incredulously. He gives Sawyer a closer look. “You didn’t eat those brownies Rosie brought around, did you? Cause -”
“Yeah, I know, Enos,” Sawyer says. “No brownies for me.”
“Walking the straight and narrow, and happy,” Miles says. He gives Sawyer another long, measuring look, but Sawyer knows better than to ask him what he’s thinking. “It’s a girl.”
“Ain’t no girl,” Sawyer protests, and then they’re home.
Juliet is in the kitchen, and Sawyer heads straight for her. She gives him something of a startled look, so he changes his path at the last minute and opens the fridge instead. “Want one?” he asks.
“No thanks,” she says.
He straightens up and opens the can. She leans against the counter and gives him the tiniest hint of a smile. He feels that old tug of longing again. He’s gotten used to ignoring it, mostly.
He smiles at her.
“What are you so happy about?” she asks.
He leans in close, lowering his voice so Miles doesn’t hear. “Horace brought me into the circle of trust. It’s a secret.”
“And by telling me, you’re breaking that trust,” Juliet observes.
“Yeah, well, who cares about that,” Sawyer bristles, because she’s right. “He trusts me.”
“I’m happy for you, James,” she says, and touches his shoulder briefly. It burns, and he wants to touch her back. He always wants to. But a second later, that moment between them ends and she redirects her attention to dinner on the stove.
“What’cha making?” he asks, a little flirty.
“It’s just spaghetti,” she says, tasting a little bit of the sauce from the end of the wooden spoon.
“You make the best spaghetti,” Sawyer says. She shoots him a doubtful look. “It’s my favorite.” He would keep going, but he gets what he wanted from her, which was a smile. “Hope you made extra.”
“There’s plenty,” she assures him, and for a moment they stand there smiling at each other.
He sets his beer down on the counter and turns to get cleaned up for dinner. He pauses and turns back. “Keep it hot for me.”
“You know I will,” she promises.
He nods and heads off down the hall.
He showers fast because he really is hungry, then hurries back toward the kitchen. He pauses, though, because he hears Miles and Juliet talking, and he hears his name.
“Should have seen him, rushing back here to tell you all his secrets.”
“They aren’t secrets,” Juliet says. “Something nice happened to him today and he wanted to tell me about it. That’s what friends do.”
Sawyer leans heavily against the wall, because she’s right. It pours over him like cold water, and then he feels hot all over with embarrassment.
He did it. They did it. No sleepovers or hair braiding required.
Friends.
“Then will you make me that chocolate cake again?” Miles is asking Juliet.
“Of course, Miles,” Juliet promises.
Oh.
Friends.
Sawyer wants to stalk away, but there’s nowhere for him to go. So he pushes through it, sailing into the kitchen and reclaiming his beer. Juliet catches his eye and smiles at him, and he forces one back at her, then looks away because he sees her noticing that it’s an act. Pretend long enough, and it becomes reality - didn’t he just prove that?
There’s more pasta on his plate than anyone else’s, and he knows that his words made her happy, and he’s still proud of that. Even if he knows that when she slices that chocolate cake for Miles this weekend, she’ll cut Miles the biggest piece.
Sawyer suddenly isn’t very hungry, but he knows he has to eat all of this, because she trusts him and he wants to keep that. Once he digs in, he finds that he’s starving, and eats heartily and on auto pilot, because he’s thinking.
Is he jealous?
He glances at Juliet, and at Miles, and yes. He is jealous. Even though he knows it isn’t fair, that people get to have more than one friend, most people have lots of friends. Juliet even has other friends here on the compound - there’s some kind of insane sewing circle she belongs to that never does any sewing - but that’s not like this. Not like them. Not like him. Not like he wants to be.
He remembers her saying something when they started all this about how she always had some little girl as a best friend, but that kid always thought Juliet was second best. He wonders if she was jealous back then, or if she just took it in that stoic way she has. Because there’s nothing he can do about this.
Except kiss her, and that’s the real problem, which he shoves back out of his head again, because he can’t. He’s given up on trying to win her over, because she’s been clear that friendship is all she wants.
He wonders if Miles wants to get with her, too. But then his anger flares right up and he pushes it away. He hasn’t really been jealous before this island. Envy, maybe, coveting what other people had that life had denied him. All those women, though, he never really cared. They were a means to an end.
He’s seen the hand of jealousy and it is terrifying to him. He doesn’t need that. Refuses to feel it.
So Miles and Juliet are friends. Good for them. He smiles, showing his teeth. He’s happy for them. He will be. He is.
…
The lure of warm, soft, perfect chocolate chip cookies is too much for either of them to resist.
“Who knew Miles had it in him?” Sawyer remarks as he and Juliet settle in the living room. On the table before them is a plate of cookies that had been left for them. Sawyer’s poured himself a glass of cold, sweet milk. “Gonna start calling him Mr. Fields.”
“Please don’t,” Juliet says. Sawyer shoots her a curious look, and she elaborates, “Then he won’t make them again.”
“Good point.” Sawyer breaks off another piece of cookie and puts it in his mouth. The chocolate melts on his tongue. “Never imagined, when we were sittin’ back on that beach, that we’d end up here.” He means eating fresh baked cookies on the island, but he looks around at the four walls surrounding them, and it goes a lot deeper.
“You can say that again,” Juliet agrees, and in that moment, she looks tired. Sawyer watches her make herself smile and he feels the strange desire to take care of her.
“This ain’t the kind of life you imagined for yourself,” he says, as much of a statement as a question. He watches her as she considers it for a moment, seriously. She looks down at her hands, which now fix the innards of old vans and Jeeps, and shakes her head.
“What were you picturing for yourself there, sweetheart?” he inquires.
Her eyebrows come together for a moment, and he can practically hear her thinking. Then she looks at him, and he can see the trust there shining in her eyes.
She reminds him of his marks, the women that he conned. The smart ones, the ones who should have been able to see through him and maybe sometimes did and ignored it. The ones he thought for a minute he could really fall in love with, before he remembered who he was and why he was there. He swallows hard.
“I wanted to be a brilliant doctor,” she says softly. “I wanted to fall in love, the kind of romance you’d read about in books or see on soap operas, that kind of all encompassing…” She shakes her head. “And I didn’t get it.”
“You still could,” he suggests gently, not just because she seems sad and that’s not what he wanted. He feels like he’s offering, because he’s terrified inside.
Her eyebrows rise. “What kind of brilliant doctor loses every single patient for three years?”
He finds it so interesting that’s what she mentions, and not that dream of a love for the ages.
“That ain’t your fault,” he says. “You didn’t cause that.”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t fix the problem, either.”
“You didn’t lose Jack. You helped Sun,” he says, and he hates that he’s the one defending her from herself.
“But they’re gone,” she says, another nod to the futility of it all. She looks at him. “What about you?”
He shakes his head in the way that makes his hair fall into his eyes, and reaches for another cookie.
“James,” she says, and his name in her mouth is like a touch, it’s like her brushing back his hair to really see him.
“I ain’t the ambitious type,” he says.
“I thought we were being honest with each other,” she says. “You must have wanted something, once.”
“You sound like the career counselor at school,” he cracks. He glances at her, and she’s still looking at him. “I didn’t have a lot of time for daydreamin’.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” she says.
It’s so honest, he laughs, and she smiles at him. She’s still waiting. For him to be honest. His laughter fades, and he has to say something, so he mumbles it out fast. “Wanted to help people.”
She doesn’t say anything, so he has to look at her. Once he does, she nods slowly and kind of sadly, like she understands. He looks down again, and they fall into silence for a moment, eating their cookies.
“How did you want to help them?” Juliet asks.
He shakes his head. When he’s lucky, it’s hard for him to remember. “Kinda wanted to be a cop. Detective. Something like that.” The back of his neck feels hot and prickly. He glances at her and she nods, encouraging him to go on. “When it happened…” He looks at her, wondering if he needs to tell her the whole story, but he can see that he doesn’t, and it kind of turns his stomach. “That night, like, right after it happened, the lady from the county gave me a teddy bear to hold on to. I was too old for it, but I remember, she told me, they were gonna find the guy and they would hold him accountable.”
He can’t look at her. There’s a deep scar like a river in the wood floor underneath the coffee table, and he follows it with his eyes until it blends in with the darkness. “By the time we buried them, it was obvious that wasn’t gonna happen.”
Her hand lands on his shoulder, and he looks at her. The past fades away and he starts feeling like himself again. He nods, and she nods. “Anyway, after that I was more interested in committin’ crimes than solving them.”
He sighs, and eats another cookie, washing it down with the milk. “Maybe we oughta patent this recipe and make millions.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the one from the back of the chocolate chip bag,” Juliet says.
“Is that right,” he says. He’s thinking there’s some kind of feel-good chemicals or hormones in chocolate and sugar. He could ask her and she’d probably know, but instead he asks, “You still want that fairy tale romance?”
“Are you offering?” she shoots back, in a way that makes it obvious she knows he’s not, and not only that, he’s not even capable. She doesn’t expect it from him and maybe even doesn’t want it.
It crushes him a little, because he’s slowly realizing that he would sure as hell like to try.
“You ever been married?” she asks him.
“No ma’am,” he replies, and then casts her a wicked grin. “But I been to prison.”
He’s hoping to shock her, but she goes with it. “Same thing,” she agrees, and he wonders what the hell kind of marriage she had to make her think that.
But she doesn’t elaborate, so he asks, “You gonna tell me about it or what?”
“He wasn’t a very nice man,” she says, and the look on her face tells him everything.
“I’ll kick his ass for you,” Sawyer offers, and he wishes he could. His fingers itch with it.
“He’s dead,” Juliet says flatly.
Sawyer wants to say he’s sorry, a knee-jerk reaction, but he doesn’t. Because he isn’t. “You kill him?” he jokes.
“Kind of?” she admits, her voice rising at the end like she’s not sure.
Sawyer’s heart aches, and he wants to pull her into his arms, but he can’t. He thinks about her now, warm and soft and vulnerable and upset, and contrasts it with the image of her coldly pulling the trigger on the beach. She wasn’t always a killer. Somehow this is a revelation to him.
“They really, really wanted me to come to this island,” she says softly. “And I told them he wouldn’t let me. Isn’t that funny. Ed never did a good thing in his life, and I hated him so much, but if they hadn’t… he wouldn’t have and I wouldn’t ever have come here.”
Sawyer doesn’t know what to say to that, because he’s glad she’s here.
Juliet shoves a whole cookie into her mouth.
“As much as I wish it hadn’t happened,” she says. “That you never had to be in a plane crash, or lose your parents, or that I never…” She shakes her head and then she looks at him. “I’m glad I had the chance to meet you.”
“Me too,” he says, and he means it. It’s not enough. He looks away and notices his glass is empty, and there’s only one cookie left on the plate. “You can have the last one.”
She shakes her head. “I’m full.”
“All righty then,” he says, and takes what he wants.
…
Miles and Jin are busy inventing a Clue-Monopoly board game hybrid that Miles is convinced will net them a fortune. It just makes Sawyer’s head ache, so he closes his book and gets up. Neither one of them notice.
His stomach turns over when Juliet’s door opens as he’s passing by it. He kind of wants to turn around, but Miles and Jin would notice that, and so would she. So he just kind of freezes, looking at her.
“What’s up?” she asks.
“Escapin’ from Murder on Park Place,” Sawyer says. “Before I turn it into murder in Dharmaville.”
“Damn you, Professor Plum!” Miles yells, apparently defeated by the game. “Get back in that thimble!”
“Why don’t you come in?” she asks.
Sawyer hesitates, and he knows she can feel it. He hates that he’s been avoiding her, but he knows he can’t give her what she wants.
“I’ve missed you,” she says.
He doesn’t want to hurt her, so there’s only one thing to do, and that’s the one thing he does best: speak the truth and make it sound like a lie. “Gee, Blondie, I been missin’ you too, livin’ in the same house and all.”
It works. She rolls her eyes at him and goes back into her room. He follows her in and debates whether to close the door behind them. But then Miles yells, “You built hotels in the Conservatory?!” Juliet reaches past Sawyer to push the door shut.
The room is small and sparsely furnished. There’s nowhere to sit except the bed, where the covers are mussed and a book is lying open face-down. Sawyer knows it will be warm from her body, where she was just laying to read, and he heaves himself to the floor with a groan.
Juliet sits down beside him, leaning her head against the mattress, and then she shifts over so she’s more facing him. “I wondered if you were avoiding me.”
His pulse picks up, the way it always does when he’s been caught red-handed. He hates to think he’s been obvious about it. “Why would I do that?”
“You tell me,” she invites flatly.
“I ain’t,” he says, but he can’t look at her, so it’s unconvincing.
“I thought,” she says, and stops. “Maybe it was because of the conversation we had the other night.”
It was, but not in the way she thinks.
“I liked it,” she says. “It made me feel close to you.”
She looks at him and he doesn’t know what to say.
“I know that can be scary,” she continues.
“I ain’t scared,” he declares.
She bites back a smile and he realizes she got him. She said it because she wanted him to react, and he did.
“We don’t have to talk,” she offers.
He shoots her a look, because usually when he hears that - when he says it - it’s followed by something else to keep their mouths busy. But she reaches for her book and he sighs, which stops her.
“I hate this,” he says, and she gets very still. “I don’t want to be your friend.”
Her eyes widen and he sees the hurt there. In a second, that fragility vanishes, swept away again.
“Cause I want more,” he says, finishing the thought. He moves his hands because they feel empty. He wants to touch her, but he can’t. “I’m the kind of guy who goes after what he wants. This is killin’ me.”
“And you want me?”
“Listen, we gave it a good run, tryin’ it, being friends, but I get that you’re not interested in me that way, sweetheart.”
The way her eyes light up when he calls her sweetheart is impossible to miss, but it’s just another dagger in his chest. He wonders, not for the first time, why she would be his friend if he’s not good enough for her to be with. But he knows, deep down, so he’s not going to make her say it, much as he thinks he might enjoy letting her hurt him.
“What if I changed my mind?” she asks.
That freezes him, and all he can hear is the blood rushing in his ears.
“You playin’ games with me?” he asks.
“No, James,” she says. “This was never a game. I wanted - I didn’t want - but now…”
“Damn it, woman, finish a sentence,” he says, and it breaks the tension. She laughs, and he finds himself laughing with her. It starts to die down, and then she looks at him and starts giggling again, and he thinks it’s the happiest sound he’s ever heard in his life.
“I think you better kiss me,” she says.
“You sure you don’t wanna talk about this some more -” he teases.
Her lips against his stop him. It’s barely a kiss, almost more playful. He doesn’t want her to pull away, having accomplished her mission, so he puts his hands on her wrists to pull her in closer, to hold her there. He softens his lips against hers, parting them. His senses are full of her - her softness and her scent, and he groans lightly because he’s wanted this for so long and it feels better than he imagined.
He deepens the kiss, sliding his tongue inside her mouth, tasting her. She kisses him back. One of her hands pulls free of his, to rest against his face. He slides his hand along her spine, holding her, then tangles his fingers through her hair. They kiss for a long time.
They are both breathing hard and fast when it ends. Juliet shifts to cuddle against him, and he puts his arm around her, keeping her tightly in place. He turns his head and brushes his lips against her hair, just because he wants to, because he can. There’s so much more that he wants that it surprises him.
“When did you change your mind?” he asks. Wondering how long he’s been torturing himself and didn’t have to.
She shakes her head, and ruffles her fingers through his hair in a way that makes him want to shiver with the pure delight of it.
“You thinkin’ you want to take it slow?” he asks her.
“Not really,” she says, and smiles at him. “Do you?”
He contemplates it for a moment, even though he knows they can both feel the reality of it, that he’s ready to go now. Everything he wants could take hours, or days, or weeks, and that’s just the purely physical, not counting their very real emotional connection, the one they’ve worked so hard to build. He swallows hard, because maybe that does scare him a little. This is no one-nighter in a motel. He doesn’t want it to be.
“Hell no,” he answers.
She kisses him again. He puts his hands on her shoulders to stop her. She blinks at him, confused. “I’m all for bein’ overcome by passion, but there’s better places to do it than on this floor.”
“You sure about that?” she asks, but she’s teasing.
“Maybe later,” he says. “Floor’s sexy for a fling.”
She looks at him, but she doesn’t ask. She knows that’s not what they’re doing, and so does he. It makes his arms shake a little as he scoops her up and deposits her on the nice, soft bed. He drops down next to her.
He just looks at her and strokes her hair. For a moment, he’s almost overwhelmed - wanting everything at once, he doesn’t know where to begin. Lucky for him, Juliet has some ideas of her own.
Afterward, being held by her and feeling content, he thinks about friendship and he thinks about love. He kind of thinks he loves her, but it’s too early to say it.
Besides, if she ever finds out he’s never been in love before, not really, not for long, he’s not sure what she might do, considering how this all started out.
(end)