never say your name out loud for bubbles91083
Title: never say your name out loud
Author: crickets
Recipient: bubbles91083
Rating: r
Warnings: no specific spoilers, au
pairing: sawyer/claire
Author notes: 2050 words, beta-read by beta-reader elf k. & story supervised by story supervisor elf s.
Summary: "If you never say your name out loud to anyone. They can never ever call you by it."
It's summer's end, dog days, and Claire stands in a phone booth outside some middle-of-nowhere town covered in a blue dress and day-old sweat. She presses sticky keys like a memory, a thought she doesn't have to think. Second-nature.
Sawyer's voice is on the other end. "You okay, Mamacita?"
He already knows it's her.
Who else would it be?
She rattles off the name of a town, the name of a street, and listens as he exhales, heavy, on his end of the world.
"I'm gonna regret this, ain’t I?" he says.
She can sense the defeat in his voice and grins, pink lips cracking. "No you won't."
She hears the song of keys being freed from his pocket.
"Stay," he says, and the line's dead.
Claire hangs up, pushes the graffitied doors open as they squeak and groan in protest, and steps outside. She'll stay of course. She'll stay because he'll come. (And that's a song they have danced around one time too many.)
--
It takes him a day to make the drive, his old truck drinking dollars down like kindling on a fire. But he doesn't turn around. Doesn't even think it.
What he does think about is last September, and even further, back to the day that Claire decided.
She tells him she'll never fly again, says she's tired of people, says she'd go home to Australia if she didn't always get so damn sea sick on boats.
Sawyer leans against the door frame and watches her as she walks back and forth across their room, shoving things into bags: skirts, dresses, his favorite t-shirt, photographs, a painted stone, the souvenirs she keeps of the people they'd grown to love, the people they lost, memories of a family that they never asked for and never wanted, but can't seem to live without.
He knows what she's running from but he doesn't tell her that she's packing them all with her in that bag. Because if Sawyer knows anything, he knows about carrying around old wounds that won't go away no matter how hard you try.
So she gets to the door, bags in hand, and remembers she doesn't have a license, doesn’t have a vehicle to drive away in, kicking up dust as she leaves him behind.
"You'll have to take me," she says.
Sawyer gets his keys.
"I s'pose I will."
--
Sawyer asks her what she's looking for.
"A home," Claire says. "One where no one knows me."
She waits for a scoff, a laugh, a dismissive turn of phrase. But he won’t give her any of that. Instead, the wheels turn beneath them, and he tells her that's just what they'll find.
--
They turn off on every small burrow they find. They look through the local paper, taste the chicken salad at the closest diner, check Main Street for a decent art supply store and a bakery with the good crusty rolls she likes.
They stay in shabby roadside motels, flickering neon vacancy lights, peeling paint on the doors. If the place is anything more than a pit stop, they'll stay someplace nicer, a chain hotel or someplace with a pool -- but not often. They tend to blow right past those towns.
"Too many people," Claire will say, and they'll keep driving.
Claire always insists on separate rooms. Reminds him he's just her ride, that she can't be lured or tempted or tricked into changing her mind. This doesn't stop her from kissing him in dark bars some nights, pressing herself tight against him, his back to itchy, motel bedspreads. She provides just enough friction to make him sweat, get him hard, and then she licks her lips, shakes her head, and slips through the door adjoining their rooms, locking hers behind her on the other side with a firm click.
Sawyer isn't impressed.
But then, he rarely is.
--
August is gone and September's over half done and she still hasn't found herself a suitable rock to crawl under.
One night at dusk they spot a traveling county fair across the road from the station where they stop for gas. Sawyer walks to the window to pay the cashier and Claire leans against the passenger side of the truck, her gaze towards the colored lights. The air is permeated with the smell of corn dogs and haystacks and cheap beer, the drunken sounds of carnival music, rickety rides and the people on them, the hum of electricity.
"I always did love a fair," Claire chimes when Sawyer gets back to the car, and really, that's all it takes.
They ride the ferris wheel and she grips his hand when they pause at the apex of the old machine.
"Do you remember Christmas last year?" He asks, looking down at the lights below.
"No," she lies. She remembers. She remembers buying a tree to surprise him because he hadn't had the time, trying to handle the evergreen herself and sending it crashing through the front room window before she could even get it hooked to the stand. She remembers mistletoe and finding her way to his bed for the first time on that Christmas Eve.
"I do," he smiles. "I do."
He kisses her there, at the top of the black, starlit sky, and she lets him, wants him to, her head tipped back, her lips parted, her fingers twining in his hair. They kiss until the machine kicks into gear again, sending them back down to the earth.
--
She comes to bed with him that night, just sleeps, curled in his arms. It's the first time since the road and he thinks maybe it means something. Maybe she's ready to go home.
It's after three when he feels her slide to the end of the bed, her legs dangling over the edge.
"I've figured it out," she tells him when he stirs.
"C'mere," he says, reaches a hand out to her.
"Wait," she says. "I understand now. As long as you're with me, you'll know where I am."
Sawyer runs a hand over his face. "It's too early," he says, the conversation and its meaning not penetrating through his sleep.
Claire crawls back to the spot next to him, kisses his eyelids. "I'm sorry," she whispers.
"S'okay," he mumbles, his hand draped over her waist. "Just sleep."
In the morning, Claire's gone.
And so too is the fair.
--
Now he's on the road again, driving towards that familiar dance.
It's not the first time since they parted ways. Once, she just needed cash, and he cursed her for not just asking over the phone. Last time, it was her birthday, and she couldn't stand to be alone. Sawyer toasted her to a glass of whiskey, kissed her lips, didn't say the words, Make up your mind, Girl. But this? This is the first time she's sounded desperate, and the weight of that tiny crack in her voice pushes his boot down on the gas pedal just a little bit farther, the needle rising a little bit higher.
--
Claire sleeps in the hotel room, middle of the day, dressed only in her underwear, the air conditioner on full blast, not making too much of a dent.
She's not some wilting flower. At least that's what she thinks she's been trying to prove this whole time. But in those moments when she feels her strongest, the pull to him yanks her back, a whiplash that shows her just how weak she really is.
(She hadn't needed money, just an excuse to see him.)
This is just about as down and out as she's ever been. In fact, she's been sitting pretty in a sweet-smelling apartment about a day's north of here for the past eight months. Her friends there call her Roxy. She tells them stories about the life she's never lived. She even volunteers with a group of friends from work, takes men back to her apartment, owns a goldfish. (She names her Claire.) For now, it's just easier if Sawyer thinks she's still a leaf on the wind. It's easier if he thinks she's not something to be pinned down. So she lies. But at the moment, work is slow. It'll pick back up soon enough, but the world's been beaten something terrible and even she can't stop that tide.
She coughs a dry cough, turns over in the bed, wonders what time it is, reaches for the clock radio. But she hears the truck first, its engine an unmistakable growl over the gravel parking lot.
--
Claire meets him at the door and he stares down at her in her white bra and panties, sheen of sweat across her skin.
"Get in there," he says and leads her back, shuts the door behind them. "This ain't no peep show, girl."
"You came," she says, surprised, like always, wraps her arms around him, like she didn't believe he would. He closes his eyes, lets himself remember what this feels like.
"I'm the idiot once again," he says finally. Steps back to look at her.
She shakes her head in disagreement, but the words she says are, "you must be starving."
"Starving," he nods.
--
"I want you to come back with me," he tells her after dinner when they're back inside her room, finally cool now that night has fallen.
"You can't ask me that," Claire says, but she pulls him in close, presses her lips to his.
Sawyer kisses her back, can feel the goosebumps on her arms when his tongue traces over the roof of her mouth. She moans. "You're kind of sending mixed signals here, Mamacita."
"You can't call me that," she says, starts tugging at his belt buckle. Sawyer pushes her hands away, does the work himself. She yanks his white t-shirt over his head, runs her hands over his shoulders.
He presses her down against the bed, his hands sliding the thin material of her dress over her hips. "What can I do, then?" he asks, pauses with his thumbs over her belly.
"Just," she says, reaches for his neck, crushing their mouths together. "Come here," she manages to whisper between kisses.
Sawyer gives her what she wants, knows she'll probably be gone in the morning. He pushes her panties down her legs, fits his hips between them, bites at her jaw, his hands slipping around her waist and under her back. She cries out when he enters her, and neither of them last, it's been so long. But she kisses him deep and full and lures him into this sense of comfort, where it's okay to close his lids and dream. (As though he's somehow convinced himself into believing he could stop her if he could only stay awake long enough.)
When the sunlight starts to creep through the shades, he doesn't even bother looking for her on the other side of the bed.
He finds a note on his dashboard.
A bit too late, he thinks, tosses it out his window and to the concrete below.
It reads: For the record, I could never forget Christmas.
--
It's December, and Claire hasn't called in months. Sawyer's too busy pretending not to notice to actually not notice.
He's been working a lot, taking up hobbies, building things on the weekends in the backyard. He buys a dog, a brown-and-black mutt with a gimpy leg and something of a mean streak. Sawyer names him Jack. And eventually, he doesn't have to pretend to not notice as much anymore.
On Christmas Eve morning, he wakes to the scent of pine, distinct and unbearable. He opens his eyes to find Claire standing over him waving one of those Christmas-tree-shaped air fresheners for your car.
"Nice to see you too," he groans, covers his nose with his hand.
"They were all out of trees," she says. "There's coffee in the kitchen. It smells better."
Sawyer sits up, pushes the sheets off and swings his legs over the edge of the bed.
"You should change your locks," she muses as she heads toward the hall, "or buy a guard dog."
Sawyer watches Jack bounding after her into the hall, his tail wagging. He didn't think that dog could bound. Or wag his tail.
"Perfect," he says.
-fin
Author: crickets
Recipient: bubbles91083
Rating: r
Warnings: no specific spoilers, au
pairing: sawyer/claire
Author notes: 2050 words, beta-read by beta-reader elf k. & story supervised by story supervisor elf s.
Summary: "If you never say your name out loud to anyone. They can never ever call you by it."
It's summer's end, dog days, and Claire stands in a phone booth outside some middle-of-nowhere town covered in a blue dress and day-old sweat. She presses sticky keys like a memory, a thought she doesn't have to think. Second-nature.
Sawyer's voice is on the other end. "You okay, Mamacita?"
He already knows it's her.
Who else would it be?
She rattles off the name of a town, the name of a street, and listens as he exhales, heavy, on his end of the world.
"I'm gonna regret this, ain’t I?" he says.
She can sense the defeat in his voice and grins, pink lips cracking. "No you won't."
She hears the song of keys being freed from his pocket.
"Stay," he says, and the line's dead.
Claire hangs up, pushes the graffitied doors open as they squeak and groan in protest, and steps outside. She'll stay of course. She'll stay because he'll come. (And that's a song they have danced around one time too many.)
--
It takes him a day to make the drive, his old truck drinking dollars down like kindling on a fire. But he doesn't turn around. Doesn't even think it.
What he does think about is last September, and even further, back to the day that Claire decided.
She tells him she'll never fly again, says she's tired of people, says she'd go home to Australia if she didn't always get so damn sea sick on boats.
Sawyer leans against the door frame and watches her as she walks back and forth across their room, shoving things into bags: skirts, dresses, his favorite t-shirt, photographs, a painted stone, the souvenirs she keeps of the people they'd grown to love, the people they lost, memories of a family that they never asked for and never wanted, but can't seem to live without.
He knows what she's running from but he doesn't tell her that she's packing them all with her in that bag. Because if Sawyer knows anything, he knows about carrying around old wounds that won't go away no matter how hard you try.
So she gets to the door, bags in hand, and remembers she doesn't have a license, doesn’t have a vehicle to drive away in, kicking up dust as she leaves him behind.
"You'll have to take me," she says.
Sawyer gets his keys.
"I s'pose I will."
--
Sawyer asks her what she's looking for.
"A home," Claire says. "One where no one knows me."
She waits for a scoff, a laugh, a dismissive turn of phrase. But he won’t give her any of that. Instead, the wheels turn beneath them, and he tells her that's just what they'll find.
--
They turn off on every small burrow they find. They look through the local paper, taste the chicken salad at the closest diner, check Main Street for a decent art supply store and a bakery with the good crusty rolls she likes.
They stay in shabby roadside motels, flickering neon vacancy lights, peeling paint on the doors. If the place is anything more than a pit stop, they'll stay someplace nicer, a chain hotel or someplace with a pool -- but not often. They tend to blow right past those towns.
"Too many people," Claire will say, and they'll keep driving.
Claire always insists on separate rooms. Reminds him he's just her ride, that she can't be lured or tempted or tricked into changing her mind. This doesn't stop her from kissing him in dark bars some nights, pressing herself tight against him, his back to itchy, motel bedspreads. She provides just enough friction to make him sweat, get him hard, and then she licks her lips, shakes her head, and slips through the door adjoining their rooms, locking hers behind her on the other side with a firm click.
Sawyer isn't impressed.
But then, he rarely is.
--
August is gone and September's over half done and she still hasn't found herself a suitable rock to crawl under.
One night at dusk they spot a traveling county fair across the road from the station where they stop for gas. Sawyer walks to the window to pay the cashier and Claire leans against the passenger side of the truck, her gaze towards the colored lights. The air is permeated with the smell of corn dogs and haystacks and cheap beer, the drunken sounds of carnival music, rickety rides and the people on them, the hum of electricity.
"I always did love a fair," Claire chimes when Sawyer gets back to the car, and really, that's all it takes.
They ride the ferris wheel and she grips his hand when they pause at the apex of the old machine.
"Do you remember Christmas last year?" He asks, looking down at the lights below.
"No," she lies. She remembers. She remembers buying a tree to surprise him because he hadn't had the time, trying to handle the evergreen herself and sending it crashing through the front room window before she could even get it hooked to the stand. She remembers mistletoe and finding her way to his bed for the first time on that Christmas Eve.
"I do," he smiles. "I do."
He kisses her there, at the top of the black, starlit sky, and she lets him, wants him to, her head tipped back, her lips parted, her fingers twining in his hair. They kiss until the machine kicks into gear again, sending them back down to the earth.
--
She comes to bed with him that night, just sleeps, curled in his arms. It's the first time since the road and he thinks maybe it means something. Maybe she's ready to go home.
It's after three when he feels her slide to the end of the bed, her legs dangling over the edge.
"I've figured it out," she tells him when he stirs.
"C'mere," he says, reaches a hand out to her.
"Wait," she says. "I understand now. As long as you're with me, you'll know where I am."
Sawyer runs a hand over his face. "It's too early," he says, the conversation and its meaning not penetrating through his sleep.
Claire crawls back to the spot next to him, kisses his eyelids. "I'm sorry," she whispers.
"S'okay," he mumbles, his hand draped over her waist. "Just sleep."
In the morning, Claire's gone.
And so too is the fair.
--
Now he's on the road again, driving towards that familiar dance.
It's not the first time since they parted ways. Once, she just needed cash, and he cursed her for not just asking over the phone. Last time, it was her birthday, and she couldn't stand to be alone. Sawyer toasted her to a glass of whiskey, kissed her lips, didn't say the words, Make up your mind, Girl. But this? This is the first time she's sounded desperate, and the weight of that tiny crack in her voice pushes his boot down on the gas pedal just a little bit farther, the needle rising a little bit higher.
--
Claire sleeps in the hotel room, middle of the day, dressed only in her underwear, the air conditioner on full blast, not making too much of a dent.
She's not some wilting flower. At least that's what she thinks she's been trying to prove this whole time. But in those moments when she feels her strongest, the pull to him yanks her back, a whiplash that shows her just how weak she really is.
(She hadn't needed money, just an excuse to see him.)
This is just about as down and out as she's ever been. In fact, she's been sitting pretty in a sweet-smelling apartment about a day's north of here for the past eight months. Her friends there call her Roxy. She tells them stories about the life she's never lived. She even volunteers with a group of friends from work, takes men back to her apartment, owns a goldfish. (She names her Claire.) For now, it's just easier if Sawyer thinks she's still a leaf on the wind. It's easier if he thinks she's not something to be pinned down. So she lies. But at the moment, work is slow. It'll pick back up soon enough, but the world's been beaten something terrible and even she can't stop that tide.
She coughs a dry cough, turns over in the bed, wonders what time it is, reaches for the clock radio. But she hears the truck first, its engine an unmistakable growl over the gravel parking lot.
--
Claire meets him at the door and he stares down at her in her white bra and panties, sheen of sweat across her skin.
"Get in there," he says and leads her back, shuts the door behind them. "This ain't no peep show, girl."
"You came," she says, surprised, like always, wraps her arms around him, like she didn't believe he would. He closes his eyes, lets himself remember what this feels like.
"I'm the idiot once again," he says finally. Steps back to look at her.
She shakes her head in disagreement, but the words she says are, "you must be starving."
"Starving," he nods.
--
"I want you to come back with me," he tells her after dinner when they're back inside her room, finally cool now that night has fallen.
"You can't ask me that," Claire says, but she pulls him in close, presses her lips to his.
Sawyer kisses her back, can feel the goosebumps on her arms when his tongue traces over the roof of her mouth. She moans. "You're kind of sending mixed signals here, Mamacita."
"You can't call me that," she says, starts tugging at his belt buckle. Sawyer pushes her hands away, does the work himself. She yanks his white t-shirt over his head, runs her hands over his shoulders.
He presses her down against the bed, his hands sliding the thin material of her dress over her hips. "What can I do, then?" he asks, pauses with his thumbs over her belly.
"Just," she says, reaches for his neck, crushing their mouths together. "Come here," she manages to whisper between kisses.
Sawyer gives her what she wants, knows she'll probably be gone in the morning. He pushes her panties down her legs, fits his hips between them, bites at her jaw, his hands slipping around her waist and under her back. She cries out when he enters her, and neither of them last, it's been so long. But she kisses him deep and full and lures him into this sense of comfort, where it's okay to close his lids and dream. (As though he's somehow convinced himself into believing he could stop her if he could only stay awake long enough.)
When the sunlight starts to creep through the shades, he doesn't even bother looking for her on the other side of the bed.
He finds a note on his dashboard.
A bit too late, he thinks, tosses it out his window and to the concrete below.
It reads: For the record, I could never forget Christmas.
--
It's December, and Claire hasn't called in months. Sawyer's too busy pretending not to notice to actually not notice.
He's been working a lot, taking up hobbies, building things on the weekends in the backyard. He buys a dog, a brown-and-black mutt with a gimpy leg and something of a mean streak. Sawyer names him Jack. And eventually, he doesn't have to pretend to not notice as much anymore.
On Christmas Eve morning, he wakes to the scent of pine, distinct and unbearable. He opens his eyes to find Claire standing over him waving one of those Christmas-tree-shaped air fresheners for your car.
"Nice to see you too," he groans, covers his nose with his hand.
"They were all out of trees," she says. "There's coffee in the kitchen. It smells better."
Sawyer sits up, pushes the sheets off and swings his legs over the edge of the bed.
"You should change your locks," she muses as she heads toward the hall, "or buy a guard dog."
Sawyer watches Jack bounding after her into the hall, his tail wagging. He didn't think that dog could bound. Or wag his tail.
"Perfect," he says.
-fin