Lost fic: Obsession [Sawyer, Juliet, 2300 words]
Summary: It's hate at first sight
Obsession
by eponine119
March 21, 2022
Sawyer sits in his chair on the beach with a book in his hand, but he’s not reading. He’s thinking. Observing.
Juliet sits down by the water line, alone. She stares out at the water, the way they all do sometimes. Except, Sawyer thinks, unlike the rest of them, she ain’t been through squat. She didn’t survive a plane crash, or being kidnapped, or shot. They’re supposed to believe she just up and decided to leave the Others’ comfy little village, with backyards and indoor plumbing and ice and beds.
Jack believes it. They left her behind, too he said, like it means anything. Sawyer wonders if Jack still believes in the Easter bunny. Maybe if he socks him in the jaw, the tooth fairy will show up and fly them on out of there with her magic wings.
He sighs. Jack is actually pretty low on his list of people he wants to punch right now. How’s that for progress.
She just sits there, with her posture perfectly straight and hair blowing in the wind. He would grab a fist full of that hair and pull her head back and wipe that smirk right off her lips.
He wanted Sayid to go full torturer on her, but Sayid refused. Sawyer’s fingernails ache with the memory of Sayid’s bamboo. If Sawyer’s going to make her talk - and he is - he’s going to have to do it himself.
He wonders what it would take. He weighs out scenarios, unable to settle on just one. They all have a certain kind of appeal to him. He’d like to tie her up, and then play mind games with her. The kind of mind games they used on him, back on their Other island, but he’d want something more than a trick with a bunny and a watch. She’s pretty smart and she’s gotten this far, he’ll give her that much. It just makes the con more challenging.
She breathes, nice and slow and steady. He watches the rise and fall of her chest in that filthy tank top, smiling a little to himself. His heart is racing with the excitement of his anger, in tune with his thoughts, as they tumble through his mind, all focused on exactly he wants to do to get back at her, reliving all the things he wants to take revenge for.
“You can’t take your eyes off her.”
Kate’s voice startles him. He blinks and looks up at her. She’s standing over him - how long has she been standing there and he didn’t even notice?
“You jealous?” he asks, in a flirty, teasing tone as he lets his eyes roam up and down over Kate’s silhouette. He longs for her to say yes, because he knows she won’t. Even if she was jealous, she wouldn’t admit it, but she isn’t. Not in terms of his attention, anyway, which just adds to the bitter taste in his mouth.
Jack, on the other hand. Jack’s attention. That’s what she’s jealous of. Hell, it’s probably why she came over here. He glances past her to try to spot him. What would she do if Jack was watching? How far would she go? He wonders, since he knows how far she’d go in the privacy of his own tent.
“It’s a tough job, Freckles, but somebody’s got to do it,” he declares, glancing past her again at Juliet, just to make sure she hasn’t moved from her spot. He knows she’s up to something.
“Why?” Kate asks.
“Why?” Sawyer echoes, half-sarcastic, because she ought to know. She was right there in the next cage the whole time.
“She saved us,” Kate points out earnestly.
All he can think about is how the icy blonde pulled the trigger on her fellow Other without so much as a flinch. He remembers her standing there where they’d been breaking rocks, with her gun to Kate’s head, ready to pull the trigger. He guesses he can understand this chick doing a number on the doc, but he doesn’t understand how Kate’s forgotten these things so quickly.
“She saved Claire,” Kate adds.
She saved Claire from something They did to her. All of these were situations they wouldn’t have been in in the first place, if it wasn’t for her and the rest of the Others. His shoulder aches just thinking about it. It might be easy for some, but he’s never been the forgiving type.
“Why are you taking her side?” he asks, glancing up at Kate’s face.
“I’m not taking anybody’s side,” Kate says.
“You one of them too now?” he asks. “Like Jack?”
All he has to do is say the man’s name and he can practically see the little sparks radiating. “Jack’s not one of them,” she says, with her eyes blazing.
“He woulda left you here, Freckles. He woulda left us all.” It comes out more softly than he intends, but he can see it still hits the target.
“He was trying to get us rescued!”
Kate stalks off, in the direction of Sun’s garden, and he watches her go.
Sawyer smiles a little to himself with satisfaction. He’s always known exactly which buttons to press.
But then he redirects his attention, back down the beach, to Juliet. He just needs to find the right buttons. Given the chance, he suspects it could be a real fun time.
She turns her head just then, and looks directly at him, as though she could feel him watching her. He shakes the hair out of his eyes and lowers his head, glaring hard into his book.
…
After dinner, Jack comes up to him.
“Well, well, well,” Sawyer says. “To what do I owe the honor. Surprised you could tear yourself away from your new girlfriend there.”
“Lay off her, Sawyer,” Jack orders.
Sawyer sighs so hard it’s practically a grunt, and half rolls his eyes. “She send you over here to do her dirty work, Doc?”
“No, I’m just sick of it,” Jack informs him.
“I ain’t doin’ nothin’ she don’t deserve,” Sawyer replies. “She can play you like a fiddle, Jack, but the rest of us ain’t gettin’ conned.”
“I guess you’d know something about that… sheriff,” Jack says, and it’s so awkward coming from him that it almost makes Sawyer shudder.
“She tellin’ you all my secrets there?” he bristles, imagining her whispering her poison into Jack’s ear about what a murderer he is. Then he realizes Jack’s talking about that time he conned them all out of the guns and declared himself the new sheriff in town. It makes him feel sheepish, though he was proud enough of it at the time.
“We have better things to talk about than you,” Jack says.
“I just bet you do,” Sawyer says, low, and for a second, he thinks Jack’s going to hit him. It makes him smile, because there’s nothing he’d like more.
“You’re about to get yourself voted off the island, you keep this up.” Sawyer cautions, and watches for the reaction. “Nobody missed you, you know.”
“I know,” Jack says, and his eyes flash with quiet anger. “You didn’t exactly lead the rescue mission, did you?”
It hurts, because they both know Kate went after Jack. She might be in Sawyer’s bed, but if the tables were turned, he knows she wouldn’t come to save him. She’d have herself a nice firelight chat with Jack instead. “Had my hands full here, chief.”
Jack nods, like he doesn’t believe a word of it. “Just lay off, Sawyer,” he orders. “She’s one of us now.” He stalks away to ensure he gets the last word. Sawyer lets him.
…
That night, he has his tent all to himself. He stays awake for awhile, reading, waiting to see if Kate will turn up. He doesn’t want to think about her seeing Jack and Juliet together and making another reactionary beeline back to him, but he figures it’s possible. And much as he hates it, he’s not about to turn her away. He feels pathetic for wanting her any way he can have her. Even if she’s thinking about somebody else the whole time.
After awhile, he can’t keep his attention on his book, so he shuts off his lantern and takes off his glasses, settling into his little nest of airline pillows and seat cushions. Visions of blond hair and blue eyes dance in his head. It’s easier for him to think about her than the confusion of Kate.
He hasn’t really decided what to do. Probably nothing, to be honest. He has to use the weapons he has at hand, which are, as usual, a whole lot of bitter sarcasm and not much else.
He’s got a gun with no bullets in it, which might be enough for a good scare, but she’s firmly entrenched, what with Jack having her back and all. It would take a lot more than that to make her hightail it back to the Others.
A smile crosses his lips as he thinks about throwing a bag over her head and tying her up. She’d struggle against him, and he’d have to hold her hard enough to put purple bruises on that skin of hers that looks like the sun’s never touched it. The paleness of someone who lives in a house instead of cowering in the jungle or sitting on the beach waiting for a rescue that’s not coming. He wonders if she’d scream. If he could make her beg.
He plays through the fantasy a few more times, tweaking it a bit here and there, like the stories he tells himself in order to go to sleep.
He dreams about her. They’re in the jungle, and her hands are tied. He looks down at the rope, and then he looks at her face. A wayward curl has worked its way loose from her ponytail and rests against her cheekbone. She blinks, like it’s in her field of vision, but she’s helpless to do anything about it. He reaches up and brushes the lock of hair back, and he lets his thumb drag against her cheekbone.
He kisses her, tentative and soft in a way he usually isn’t in real life. It’s warm and slow and nice, the way dreams are.
Then his eyes pop open and he’s alone in his tent with the sound of his own harsh breathing. “Son of a bitch,” he moans, to himself, laying back down. He closes his eyes and wills himself back to sleep, in the same way he does when a good dream has been interrupted and he wants to go back to it.
...
He sleeps late the next morning, so by the time he wanders into the kitchen, everyone else has already eaten and moved on to the ways they spend their days here. He dishes up some oatmeal and when he turns around, she’s standing there. It startles him, and the bowl practically jumps out of his hand, landing upside down in the sand.
“Now look what you made me do,” he says, irritated at the waste of perfectly good food, which is her fault.
She just looks at him with those big blue eyes of hers, which seem enhanced by the blue henley shirt she’s wearing. He wonders if she brought it with her, or if she’s helping herself to their clothing supplies now too. There’s a small pause before she says, “I’m sorry I startled you.”
“You don’t scare me,” he informs her, picking up the bowl. He kicks some sand over the oatmeal to cover it up. He glares at her. “Not so tough now without your zapper.”
She nods, like she expected it. “I understand,” she says. “You have plenty of reasons to dislike me.”
“Yeah. I do,” he agrees, and he hates the hint of playfulness he hears in his own voice. He wishes he could stop looking at her stupid blue shirt and thinking about those damn dreams that plagued him. He wonders what kept her up so late that she’s only now eating breakfast too, because he knows it wasn’t Jack.
“The one thing I don’t understand,” she continues, “is why.”
“Why what,” he snaps. Just like she intended him to.
“Why, James,” she says, soft and slow, “you are behaving exactly like an elementary school boy with a crush that he doesn’t know what to do about.”
“Trust me, Nellie, if that were the case, I know exactly what to do,” he informs her, and there’s another sliver inside him that wants to put his hands on her and prove it. “You’re delusional if you think there’s any damn thing about you I like.”
She nods, and looks at him. She’s not smirking now, but god help him, he is pretty sure she’s about to. “You watch. Every. Single. Move I make,” she says slowly.
“Because I don’t trust you,” he says, like she’s stupid.
“Okay,” she says easily. “You can hate me, James.”
“I ain’t askin’ your permission. And stop callin’ me James.”
“I hope it helps,” she continues, as though he hadn’t spoken at all. “Having one person on this island who you hate more than yourself.”
She looks him in the eyes, and for a second he doesn’t know what’s going to happen. Inside, he’s nothing but turmoil. She gives him something that almost passes for a smile, and she walks away.
He watches her. Of course. Because she’s right.
And because there’s only one way she could understand that about him, he thinks, and that’s if she knows the feeling first-hand. That lethal level of self-loathing, that he’s lived with for almost his whole life.
They have something in common. He doesn’t know what to do with that information.
It just makes him more intrigued by her, while that the same time, he knows it’s probably for the same reason he hates himself so much. They are both killers, under the skin. Take away the facade and that’s all that’s left, a pretty little pile of hatred.
(end)
Obsession
by eponine119
March 21, 2022
Sawyer sits in his chair on the beach with a book in his hand, but he’s not reading. He’s thinking. Observing.
Juliet sits down by the water line, alone. She stares out at the water, the way they all do sometimes. Except, Sawyer thinks, unlike the rest of them, she ain’t been through squat. She didn’t survive a plane crash, or being kidnapped, or shot. They’re supposed to believe she just up and decided to leave the Others’ comfy little village, with backyards and indoor plumbing and ice and beds.
Jack believes it. They left her behind, too he said, like it means anything. Sawyer wonders if Jack still believes in the Easter bunny. Maybe if he socks him in the jaw, the tooth fairy will show up and fly them on out of there with her magic wings.
He sighs. Jack is actually pretty low on his list of people he wants to punch right now. How’s that for progress.
She just sits there, with her posture perfectly straight and hair blowing in the wind. He would grab a fist full of that hair and pull her head back and wipe that smirk right off her lips.
He wanted Sayid to go full torturer on her, but Sayid refused. Sawyer’s fingernails ache with the memory of Sayid’s bamboo. If Sawyer’s going to make her talk - and he is - he’s going to have to do it himself.
He wonders what it would take. He weighs out scenarios, unable to settle on just one. They all have a certain kind of appeal to him. He’d like to tie her up, and then play mind games with her. The kind of mind games they used on him, back on their Other island, but he’d want something more than a trick with a bunny and a watch. She’s pretty smart and she’s gotten this far, he’ll give her that much. It just makes the con more challenging.
She breathes, nice and slow and steady. He watches the rise and fall of her chest in that filthy tank top, smiling a little to himself. His heart is racing with the excitement of his anger, in tune with his thoughts, as they tumble through his mind, all focused on exactly he wants to do to get back at her, reliving all the things he wants to take revenge for.
“You can’t take your eyes off her.”
Kate’s voice startles him. He blinks and looks up at her. She’s standing over him - how long has she been standing there and he didn’t even notice?
“You jealous?” he asks, in a flirty, teasing tone as he lets his eyes roam up and down over Kate’s silhouette. He longs for her to say yes, because he knows she won’t. Even if she was jealous, she wouldn’t admit it, but she isn’t. Not in terms of his attention, anyway, which just adds to the bitter taste in his mouth.
Jack, on the other hand. Jack’s attention. That’s what she’s jealous of. Hell, it’s probably why she came over here. He glances past her to try to spot him. What would she do if Jack was watching? How far would she go? He wonders, since he knows how far she’d go in the privacy of his own tent.
“It’s a tough job, Freckles, but somebody’s got to do it,” he declares, glancing past her again at Juliet, just to make sure she hasn’t moved from her spot. He knows she’s up to something.
“Why?” Kate asks.
“Why?” Sawyer echoes, half-sarcastic, because she ought to know. She was right there in the next cage the whole time.
“She saved us,” Kate points out earnestly.
All he can think about is how the icy blonde pulled the trigger on her fellow Other without so much as a flinch. He remembers her standing there where they’d been breaking rocks, with her gun to Kate’s head, ready to pull the trigger. He guesses he can understand this chick doing a number on the doc, but he doesn’t understand how Kate’s forgotten these things so quickly.
“She saved Claire,” Kate adds.
She saved Claire from something They did to her. All of these were situations they wouldn’t have been in in the first place, if it wasn’t for her and the rest of the Others. His shoulder aches just thinking about it. It might be easy for some, but he’s never been the forgiving type.
“Why are you taking her side?” he asks, glancing up at Kate’s face.
“I’m not taking anybody’s side,” Kate says.
“You one of them too now?” he asks. “Like Jack?”
All he has to do is say the man’s name and he can practically see the little sparks radiating. “Jack’s not one of them,” she says, with her eyes blazing.
“He woulda left you here, Freckles. He woulda left us all.” It comes out more softly than he intends, but he can see it still hits the target.
“He was trying to get us rescued!”
Kate stalks off, in the direction of Sun’s garden, and he watches her go.
Sawyer smiles a little to himself with satisfaction. He’s always known exactly which buttons to press.
But then he redirects his attention, back down the beach, to Juliet. He just needs to find the right buttons. Given the chance, he suspects it could be a real fun time.
She turns her head just then, and looks directly at him, as though she could feel him watching her. He shakes the hair out of his eyes and lowers his head, glaring hard into his book.
…
After dinner, Jack comes up to him.
“Well, well, well,” Sawyer says. “To what do I owe the honor. Surprised you could tear yourself away from your new girlfriend there.”
“Lay off her, Sawyer,” Jack orders.
Sawyer sighs so hard it’s practically a grunt, and half rolls his eyes. “She send you over here to do her dirty work, Doc?”
“No, I’m just sick of it,” Jack informs him.
“I ain’t doin’ nothin’ she don’t deserve,” Sawyer replies. “She can play you like a fiddle, Jack, but the rest of us ain’t gettin’ conned.”
“I guess you’d know something about that… sheriff,” Jack says, and it’s so awkward coming from him that it almost makes Sawyer shudder.
“She tellin’ you all my secrets there?” he bristles, imagining her whispering her poison into Jack’s ear about what a murderer he is. Then he realizes Jack’s talking about that time he conned them all out of the guns and declared himself the new sheriff in town. It makes him feel sheepish, though he was proud enough of it at the time.
“We have better things to talk about than you,” Jack says.
“I just bet you do,” Sawyer says, low, and for a second, he thinks Jack’s going to hit him. It makes him smile, because there’s nothing he’d like more.
“You’re about to get yourself voted off the island, you keep this up.” Sawyer cautions, and watches for the reaction. “Nobody missed you, you know.”
“I know,” Jack says, and his eyes flash with quiet anger. “You didn’t exactly lead the rescue mission, did you?”
It hurts, because they both know Kate went after Jack. She might be in Sawyer’s bed, but if the tables were turned, he knows she wouldn’t come to save him. She’d have herself a nice firelight chat with Jack instead. “Had my hands full here, chief.”
Jack nods, like he doesn’t believe a word of it. “Just lay off, Sawyer,” he orders. “She’s one of us now.” He stalks away to ensure he gets the last word. Sawyer lets him.
…
That night, he has his tent all to himself. He stays awake for awhile, reading, waiting to see if Kate will turn up. He doesn’t want to think about her seeing Jack and Juliet together and making another reactionary beeline back to him, but he figures it’s possible. And much as he hates it, he’s not about to turn her away. He feels pathetic for wanting her any way he can have her. Even if she’s thinking about somebody else the whole time.
After awhile, he can’t keep his attention on his book, so he shuts off his lantern and takes off his glasses, settling into his little nest of airline pillows and seat cushions. Visions of blond hair and blue eyes dance in his head. It’s easier for him to think about her than the confusion of Kate.
He hasn’t really decided what to do. Probably nothing, to be honest. He has to use the weapons he has at hand, which are, as usual, a whole lot of bitter sarcasm and not much else.
He’s got a gun with no bullets in it, which might be enough for a good scare, but she’s firmly entrenched, what with Jack having her back and all. It would take a lot more than that to make her hightail it back to the Others.
A smile crosses his lips as he thinks about throwing a bag over her head and tying her up. She’d struggle against him, and he’d have to hold her hard enough to put purple bruises on that skin of hers that looks like the sun’s never touched it. The paleness of someone who lives in a house instead of cowering in the jungle or sitting on the beach waiting for a rescue that’s not coming. He wonders if she’d scream. If he could make her beg.
He plays through the fantasy a few more times, tweaking it a bit here and there, like the stories he tells himself in order to go to sleep.
He dreams about her. They’re in the jungle, and her hands are tied. He looks down at the rope, and then he looks at her face. A wayward curl has worked its way loose from her ponytail and rests against her cheekbone. She blinks, like it’s in her field of vision, but she’s helpless to do anything about it. He reaches up and brushes the lock of hair back, and he lets his thumb drag against her cheekbone.
He kisses her, tentative and soft in a way he usually isn’t in real life. It’s warm and slow and nice, the way dreams are.
Then his eyes pop open and he’s alone in his tent with the sound of his own harsh breathing. “Son of a bitch,” he moans, to himself, laying back down. He closes his eyes and wills himself back to sleep, in the same way he does when a good dream has been interrupted and he wants to go back to it.
...
He sleeps late the next morning, so by the time he wanders into the kitchen, everyone else has already eaten and moved on to the ways they spend their days here. He dishes up some oatmeal and when he turns around, she’s standing there. It startles him, and the bowl practically jumps out of his hand, landing upside down in the sand.
“Now look what you made me do,” he says, irritated at the waste of perfectly good food, which is her fault.
She just looks at him with those big blue eyes of hers, which seem enhanced by the blue henley shirt she’s wearing. He wonders if she brought it with her, or if she’s helping herself to their clothing supplies now too. There’s a small pause before she says, “I’m sorry I startled you.”
“You don’t scare me,” he informs her, picking up the bowl. He kicks some sand over the oatmeal to cover it up. He glares at her. “Not so tough now without your zapper.”
She nods, like she expected it. “I understand,” she says. “You have plenty of reasons to dislike me.”
“Yeah. I do,” he agrees, and he hates the hint of playfulness he hears in his own voice. He wishes he could stop looking at her stupid blue shirt and thinking about those damn dreams that plagued him. He wonders what kept her up so late that she’s only now eating breakfast too, because he knows it wasn’t Jack.
“The one thing I don’t understand,” she continues, “is why.”
“Why what,” he snaps. Just like she intended him to.
“Why, James,” she says, soft and slow, “you are behaving exactly like an elementary school boy with a crush that he doesn’t know what to do about.”
“Trust me, Nellie, if that were the case, I know exactly what to do,” he informs her, and there’s another sliver inside him that wants to put his hands on her and prove it. “You’re delusional if you think there’s any damn thing about you I like.”
She nods, and looks at him. She’s not smirking now, but god help him, he is pretty sure she’s about to. “You watch. Every. Single. Move I make,” she says slowly.
“Because I don’t trust you,” he says, like she’s stupid.
“Okay,” she says easily. “You can hate me, James.”
“I ain’t askin’ your permission. And stop callin’ me James.”
“I hope it helps,” she continues, as though he hadn’t spoken at all. “Having one person on this island who you hate more than yourself.”
She looks him in the eyes, and for a second he doesn’t know what’s going to happen. Inside, he’s nothing but turmoil. She gives him something that almost passes for a smile, and she walks away.
He watches her. Of course. Because she’s right.
And because there’s only one way she could understand that about him, he thinks, and that’s if she knows the feeling first-hand. That lethal level of self-loathing, that he’s lived with for almost his whole life.
They have something in common. He doesn’t know what to do with that information.
It just makes him more intrigued by her, while that the same time, he knows it’s probably for the same reason he hates himself so much. They are both killers, under the skin. Take away the facade and that’s all that’s left, a pretty little pile of hatred.
(end)