Fic: Oversoul (1/1)
Title: Oversoul
Rating: R
Pairing: Jack/Sawyer
Word Count: 2,001
Summary: It’s like he knows, but he knows that he shouldn’t. For inthekeyofd, who requested “Jack/Sawyer affection and WHITE” at The lostsquee 2009 Lost Summer Luau, and for the psych_30 Prompt #12 - Collective Unconscious. General Spoilers through Season 5, Post-Island; Season 6 Speculation.
Prompt Table: Here
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For inthekeyofd: It seems that I’m really not cut out for anti-angst - as it turns out, all I can offer you is a really fragmented collection of cliches and observations masquerading as a fic. However, I think it’s kind of sweet and affectionate, in its own way, so hopefully you’ll think so too :)
Oversoul
From the moment their paths cross, shoulders brushing at the end of the concourse as Jack stops for a bottle of Fiji; from that single point in time, Jack feels like he knows this man.
He swallows down a couple of Motrin from the magazine counter in hopes of curbing the ache in his lower back before heading down to baggage claim, and somehow that curtain of blonde bent just so over the suitcases - somehow it drips of salt water, shakes sweat under the setting sun, and as tan hands reach out to grab at the luggage and pull a duffel off the conveyor, Jack knows that those fingers know the feel of a trigger, knows how that hand looks molded around a gun.
He blinks, and thinks the pills may have stuck in his throat for a brief moment in which breathing becomes something of a chore; when he looks up again the man is gone, and there are only three pieces of luggage still snaking around the carousel, each of them painfully familiar. He reaches for his keys, stuffed in the pocket of his Dockers, and he has to stop before remembering that he didn’t leave his car in long-term parking - he hadn’t exactly been thinking clearly when he’d left, and his mother had been the one to drop him off at Departures. He hails a cab, and the driver’s licensure information stares him in the face as he slides across the sterile leather - Dawson. Last name: Dawson. Jack doesn't know why that feels heavy, significant in his gut.
He checks his voice mail from the backseat - one from the hospital, one from his mother, and one from the woman his scrub nurse set him up with last week and he’d had to cancel on. He doesn’t return any of them - not yet; he feels strangely certain that it wouldn’t matter all that much if he never called them back at all. Life would go on, the record would keep playing, singing without his voice - his absence merely a skip in the end-groove.
They come up on his street just as the song on the radio shifts - and Jack feels oddly nostalgic as the sound seeps through the cracked windows as he unloads his luggage and pays his fare; funny, though, because he’d never much cared for Cass Elliot.
It isn’t until he’s unpacking that he realizes he’s grabbed the wrong bag - the goddamn duffel slung across his shoulders, the one Sarah left behind - it isn’t his. And he knows he should be more agitated by the inconvenience of losing half of the clothes he’d brought with him (the dirty half, but still), but he isn’t, not really - instead he trails his fingers across the precarious lines of a razor, sniffs the scent of the aftershave tucked in between shirts because he knows the angle of the cut, knows the tang of the smell, and remembers it in time with the beat of his heart, the crash of the waves.
But he’s never been one for the beach, and when he finds the luggage tag, bent against the inside of the bag and ripped from its lacing, he thinks about the blonde man from the back of his mind - the edges of his thoughts and the echoes of his memories; his bag looked kind of the same.
It’s during rounds three days later that he decides to call the number on the tag, punches the digits out against his cell just outside his office, head bowed like he has something to hide, and when the line connects and the rings turn to a low timbre in greeting, Jack freezes, because he knows that sound, that voice. He knows what that voice sounds like in pain, in joy - he knows the subtle scratch of it when it confesses its sins and promises to watch him suffer and die, knows the strain of it when it screams. He knows, and he knows that he shouldn’t.
“James?”
That’s the name on the tag, scrawled in a slant that looks almost uncomfortable, unsuited for the lines on which it balances so precariously, almost ready to run before eyes can find it, understand it for everything it never spells out, and the fact that, incidentally, Jack’s luggage ID was tucked between the zippers - just as unseen, just as unknowable - is something that’s far too coordinated for chance, but not dressed up enough to merit fate. Not in Jack’s book, at least. Not yet.
He’s staying in a hotel just outside the city proper, and Jack agrees to drop by - Room 712 - as soon as his shift’s over. Jack spends the rest of his day handing his charts over to lesser mortals and trying to figure out why the name “James” doesn’t seem to fit the man he doesn’t, shouldn’t know.
It’s odd, because driving out to switch the bags, Jack feels the absence of his wedding ring, empty space where his finger rubs against the wheel, for the first time in months.
They exchange pleasantries just inside the door of James’s room, and Jack feels a little lightheaded watching him, listening to that drawl that he knows, knows drops like honey off of sardonic nicknames like “Jacko” and “Doc,” and he’s wracking his brain to figure out what movie, what television show he knows those words from, drawn out with such a twang, when James narrows his eyes in Jack’s direction and thanks him for swinging by with his stuff.
“See you around, James,” Jack says, letting regret slide innocently into the lie; he has a feeling this exchange, this farewell has happened before. He moves to walk away, but James is just standing there, silent, and Jack finds it difficult to tear his eyes from the lines of his shoulder blades, stretched full and firm inside the doorframe.
“People call me Sawyer,” he says finally, eyes on the short, clinical carpeting that promises this home is temporary; and that’s it, that’s the name that’s been eluding him.
And for reasons Jack doesn’t understand, he smiles to know it, and he meets those baby blues with a realization of things he’ll never fully grasp; “It suits you.”
He doesn’t know if it’s the smile in return, and the dimples that frame it, or if it’s the fleeting idea that both are rare things, meant to be treasured, that convinces him to ask this man, this Sawyer, if he’d like to get a drink. All he knows is that the question is met with a calculating stare and another soft grin, and whatever the reason, he’s glad that he asked.
___________________
The first time they fall into bed together, nothing happens. They simply exist in one another’s company, and Jack thinks he should be able to trace the line of a scar along the veins of Sawyer’s arm; when he finds that he can’t, he follows the flush of blue to the wrist and traces the beat of his heart instead.
The second time is rougher, breathless, and Jack feels like he’s drowning beneath the waves because this wasn’t planned, only it was - it was written in the stars the same way dippers and belts and life and death could be picked out of the sky at will. He breathes, and he knows the body above him, knows how it cuts through water and beats through the underbrush, knows that while the chest on top of him is heaving desperately against him, it can breathe harder. It’s a knowledge that stirs in his bones, and it’s what keeps him from trembling, keeps him from moaning - keeping him arching up to meet the hips that roll against his own.
The third time, they don’t make it to the bedroom, but Jack counts it because he’s never come inside a woman so hard as he spills down Sawyer’s throat - not once; he’s caught against the wall, and the texture of the wallpaper digs into his shoulders, pliant but harsh, like the bark of a tree. The fourth time is slow, deep and soul-searing, though never quite tender, never quite still; and Jack feels something break between them, something that neither of them knows exists but that Jack feels, like the ghost of another life, bearing down upon them - the shattered glass of the fourth wall slicing through the shallow pretenses that this is just fucking, but obscuring the revelation of exactly what it is, all things considered. The fifth time, Jack tastes like gin and licks the scotch from the tongue sucking on his teeth as he clenches down, muscles tense against the heat that spills inside him, angry and violent and real, his pulse racing, his eyes open, and all he can see is green.
The sixth time, Sawyer stays until morning, and Jack doesn’t remember anything in it - all he knows is that he’s missed feeling warmth from that side of his bed.
___________________
For an admittedly jaded divorcée from L.A., Jack finds that slipping back into a relationship really isn’t all that difficult. Sawyer, he learns, makes one hell of a spinach alfredo, talks with his mouth full of toothpaste, and wears the same briefs that Jack does, only in black. And while sometimes Jack sees strange octagons on the cereal boxes in the morning, like floaters burned against his eyes from the sun; sometimes asks after the breed of a dog bring walked on the street if it looks lean and yellow - while he’s picked up an inexplicable fondness for playing backgammon (which Sayer refuses to indulge without copious amounts of alcohol or sex in exchange), the déjà vu doesn’t plague him like it used to, only settles sometimes like the pre-dawn fog, like morning dew or the dregs of dreams. Jack doesn’t miss them.
They make it a year, to the day, with Jack insisting enthusiastically on dinner to mark the occasion - and Sawyer, in his own way, agrees by notably withholding protest and deigning to wear a tie. They share an appetizer made with ingredients they can’t pronounce from countries they can’t point out on a map, and they order wine more expensive than their monthly lease on the Lexus parked outside, and Jack doesn’t see blood when the Merlot spills, saturates the bright white of the tablecloth - instead, he sees the cream of Sawyer’s skin, luscious and teased beneath his attentions as he runs hands and tongue and teeth across his flesh, leaving trails of red in his wake; he doesn’t see blood, but he thinks somehow that he should. And the shiver that shoots down his spine is so similar to the one he knows by heart, the one prompted by the hand between his thighs and the tongue in his mouth - it’s so similar, and yet so different, and for a moment he loses his appetite, loses all sense of balance and self as he floats, untethered, in the nameless sea of “what-ifs.” He’s falling, soaring, stranded until that shock of blue reaches out to touch, his ocean and his sky and his home and his future without a past - until those painfully blue eyes catch his own and anchor him, weathering out the storm and beating back the whispers, bringing the here and now back to the fore and calming the throb of his heart against his ribs, catching him in a softer rhythm, one that rocks between them like the ebb of the tides, steady and sure and deeper than the tendrils of dreams can ever reach.
And this, Jack knows, is the pulse of a different word, a real world; the only world that matters.
Rating: R
Pairing: Jack/Sawyer
Word Count: 2,001
Summary: It’s like he knows, but he knows that he shouldn’t. For inthekeyofd, who requested “Jack/Sawyer affection and WHITE” at The lostsquee 2009 Lost Summer Luau, and for the psych_30 Prompt #12 - Collective Unconscious. General Spoilers through Season 5, Post-Island; Season 6 Speculation.
Prompt Table: Here
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For inthekeyofd: It seems that I’m really not cut out for anti-angst - as it turns out, all I can offer you is a really fragmented collection of cliches and observations masquerading as a fic. However, I think it’s kind of sweet and affectionate, in its own way, so hopefully you’ll think so too :)
Oversoul
From the moment their paths cross, shoulders brushing at the end of the concourse as Jack stops for a bottle of Fiji; from that single point in time, Jack feels like he knows this man.
He swallows down a couple of Motrin from the magazine counter in hopes of curbing the ache in his lower back before heading down to baggage claim, and somehow that curtain of blonde bent just so over the suitcases - somehow it drips of salt water, shakes sweat under the setting sun, and as tan hands reach out to grab at the luggage and pull a duffel off the conveyor, Jack knows that those fingers know the feel of a trigger, knows how that hand looks molded around a gun.
He blinks, and thinks the pills may have stuck in his throat for a brief moment in which breathing becomes something of a chore; when he looks up again the man is gone, and there are only three pieces of luggage still snaking around the carousel, each of them painfully familiar. He reaches for his keys, stuffed in the pocket of his Dockers, and he has to stop before remembering that he didn’t leave his car in long-term parking - he hadn’t exactly been thinking clearly when he’d left, and his mother had been the one to drop him off at Departures. He hails a cab, and the driver’s licensure information stares him in the face as he slides across the sterile leather - Dawson. Last name: Dawson. Jack doesn't know why that feels heavy, significant in his gut.
He checks his voice mail from the backseat - one from the hospital, one from his mother, and one from the woman his scrub nurse set him up with last week and he’d had to cancel on. He doesn’t return any of them - not yet; he feels strangely certain that it wouldn’t matter all that much if he never called them back at all. Life would go on, the record would keep playing, singing without his voice - his absence merely a skip in the end-groove.
They come up on his street just as the song on the radio shifts - and Jack feels oddly nostalgic as the sound seeps through the cracked windows as he unloads his luggage and pays his fare; funny, though, because he’d never much cared for Cass Elliot.
It isn’t until he’s unpacking that he realizes he’s grabbed the wrong bag - the goddamn duffel slung across his shoulders, the one Sarah left behind - it isn’t his. And he knows he should be more agitated by the inconvenience of losing half of the clothes he’d brought with him (the dirty half, but still), but he isn’t, not really - instead he trails his fingers across the precarious lines of a razor, sniffs the scent of the aftershave tucked in between shirts because he knows the angle of the cut, knows the tang of the smell, and remembers it in time with the beat of his heart, the crash of the waves.
But he’s never been one for the beach, and when he finds the luggage tag, bent against the inside of the bag and ripped from its lacing, he thinks about the blonde man from the back of his mind - the edges of his thoughts and the echoes of his memories; his bag looked kind of the same.
It’s during rounds three days later that he decides to call the number on the tag, punches the digits out against his cell just outside his office, head bowed like he has something to hide, and when the line connects and the rings turn to a low timbre in greeting, Jack freezes, because he knows that sound, that voice. He knows what that voice sounds like in pain, in joy - he knows the subtle scratch of it when it confesses its sins and promises to watch him suffer and die, knows the strain of it when it screams. He knows, and he knows that he shouldn’t.
“James?”
That’s the name on the tag, scrawled in a slant that looks almost uncomfortable, unsuited for the lines on which it balances so precariously, almost ready to run before eyes can find it, understand it for everything it never spells out, and the fact that, incidentally, Jack’s luggage ID was tucked between the zippers - just as unseen, just as unknowable - is something that’s far too coordinated for chance, but not dressed up enough to merit fate. Not in Jack’s book, at least. Not yet.
He’s staying in a hotel just outside the city proper, and Jack agrees to drop by - Room 712 - as soon as his shift’s over. Jack spends the rest of his day handing his charts over to lesser mortals and trying to figure out why the name “James” doesn’t seem to fit the man he doesn’t, shouldn’t know.
It’s odd, because driving out to switch the bags, Jack feels the absence of his wedding ring, empty space where his finger rubs against the wheel, for the first time in months.
They exchange pleasantries just inside the door of James’s room, and Jack feels a little lightheaded watching him, listening to that drawl that he knows, knows drops like honey off of sardonic nicknames like “Jacko” and “Doc,” and he’s wracking his brain to figure out what movie, what television show he knows those words from, drawn out with such a twang, when James narrows his eyes in Jack’s direction and thanks him for swinging by with his stuff.
“See you around, James,” Jack says, letting regret slide innocently into the lie; he has a feeling this exchange, this farewell has happened before. He moves to walk away, but James is just standing there, silent, and Jack finds it difficult to tear his eyes from the lines of his shoulder blades, stretched full and firm inside the doorframe.
“People call me Sawyer,” he says finally, eyes on the short, clinical carpeting that promises this home is temporary; and that’s it, that’s the name that’s been eluding him.
And for reasons Jack doesn’t understand, he smiles to know it, and he meets those baby blues with a realization of things he’ll never fully grasp; “It suits you.”
He doesn’t know if it’s the smile in return, and the dimples that frame it, or if it’s the fleeting idea that both are rare things, meant to be treasured, that convinces him to ask this man, this Sawyer, if he’d like to get a drink. All he knows is that the question is met with a calculating stare and another soft grin, and whatever the reason, he’s glad that he asked.
___________________
The first time they fall into bed together, nothing happens. They simply exist in one another’s company, and Jack thinks he should be able to trace the line of a scar along the veins of Sawyer’s arm; when he finds that he can’t, he follows the flush of blue to the wrist and traces the beat of his heart instead.
The second time is rougher, breathless, and Jack feels like he’s drowning beneath the waves because this wasn’t planned, only it was - it was written in the stars the same way dippers and belts and life and death could be picked out of the sky at will. He breathes, and he knows the body above him, knows how it cuts through water and beats through the underbrush, knows that while the chest on top of him is heaving desperately against him, it can breathe harder. It’s a knowledge that stirs in his bones, and it’s what keeps him from trembling, keeps him from moaning - keeping him arching up to meet the hips that roll against his own.
The third time, they don’t make it to the bedroom, but Jack counts it because he’s never come inside a woman so hard as he spills down Sawyer’s throat - not once; he’s caught against the wall, and the texture of the wallpaper digs into his shoulders, pliant but harsh, like the bark of a tree. The fourth time is slow, deep and soul-searing, though never quite tender, never quite still; and Jack feels something break between them, something that neither of them knows exists but that Jack feels, like the ghost of another life, bearing down upon them - the shattered glass of the fourth wall slicing through the shallow pretenses that this is just fucking, but obscuring the revelation of exactly what it is, all things considered. The fifth time, Jack tastes like gin and licks the scotch from the tongue sucking on his teeth as he clenches down, muscles tense against the heat that spills inside him, angry and violent and real, his pulse racing, his eyes open, and all he can see is green.
The sixth time, Sawyer stays until morning, and Jack doesn’t remember anything in it - all he knows is that he’s missed feeling warmth from that side of his bed.
___________________
For an admittedly jaded divorcée from L.A., Jack finds that slipping back into a relationship really isn’t all that difficult. Sawyer, he learns, makes one hell of a spinach alfredo, talks with his mouth full of toothpaste, and wears the same briefs that Jack does, only in black. And while sometimes Jack sees strange octagons on the cereal boxes in the morning, like floaters burned against his eyes from the sun; sometimes asks after the breed of a dog bring walked on the street if it looks lean and yellow - while he’s picked up an inexplicable fondness for playing backgammon (which Sayer refuses to indulge without copious amounts of alcohol or sex in exchange), the déjà vu doesn’t plague him like it used to, only settles sometimes like the pre-dawn fog, like morning dew or the dregs of dreams. Jack doesn’t miss them.
They make it a year, to the day, with Jack insisting enthusiastically on dinner to mark the occasion - and Sawyer, in his own way, agrees by notably withholding protest and deigning to wear a tie. They share an appetizer made with ingredients they can’t pronounce from countries they can’t point out on a map, and they order wine more expensive than their monthly lease on the Lexus parked outside, and Jack doesn’t see blood when the Merlot spills, saturates the bright white of the tablecloth - instead, he sees the cream of Sawyer’s skin, luscious and teased beneath his attentions as he runs hands and tongue and teeth across his flesh, leaving trails of red in his wake; he doesn’t see blood, but he thinks somehow that he should. And the shiver that shoots down his spine is so similar to the one he knows by heart, the one prompted by the hand between his thighs and the tongue in his mouth - it’s so similar, and yet so different, and for a moment he loses his appetite, loses all sense of balance and self as he floats, untethered, in the nameless sea of “what-ifs.” He’s falling, soaring, stranded until that shock of blue reaches out to touch, his ocean and his sky and his home and his future without a past - until those painfully blue eyes catch his own and anchor him, weathering out the storm and beating back the whispers, bringing the here and now back to the fore and calming the throb of his heart against his ribs, catching him in a softer rhythm, one that rocks between them like the ebb of the tides, steady and sure and deeper than the tendrils of dreams can ever reach.
And this, Jack knows, is the pulse of a different word, a real world; the only world that matters.