"On Being God"
Title: “On Being God”
Fandom: Lost
Pairing: Jack/Sawyer, Jack-centric
Warnings: Adults only; language and sexual situations. I wrote this soon after ‘Do No Harm’ aired; spoilers through S1.
“If a man can play God, Doc, then folks are gonna treat him that way. . ."
Sawyer had said that to him, some night months ago, when he’d been a fool, thinking they would escape, be saved. At least, that’s what Jack had told himself at the time, so that it would be okay to think more about himself than of what it might mean for their supplies when he had sucked down eight tiny bottles of Absolut, and now it echoed through his mind
God.
He’d taken to climbing the rocks on the east side of the bay late every afternoon, and he would lean back, fingers rubbing against the damp grit of the rock, and he would watch as they would all gather to eat, still over forty people, not so bad, he guessed, for nine months trapped, and he would watch them, pick out familiar faces, try to name them all.
He still couldn’t.
He’d treated them all at one time or another, for various things, from dehydration and sunstroke to broken arms and busted ribs, and after nine months he still didn’t know all their names.
The last one who’d died, a woman in her sixties, cancer, undiagnosed but she’d probably had it well before the crash, nothing left with which to treat her, nothing for the pain. He couldn’t remember her name even though he’d known it at the time as he’d sat and held her hand as she died.
Her husband had run, hidden, he’d seen men of that age do that often as their wives lay dying, and Jack hadn’t blamed the man for that, but he had blamed him for forcing Jack to hunt him down and tell him that his wife was dead and then forcing Jack to comfort him, forcing him to say he was sorry, forcing him to lie and say it had been peaceful, no pain. He’d left that man grieving, and Jack himself full of such fury he could hardly see as he’d stormed through the jungle with Sawyer like a ghost ignored, cool and quiet and barely there behind him and watching silently as Jack had raged, blind.
Then Sawyer had touched him, a firm press between his shoulders, nudging him back to camp, and the anger had dissipated and Jack had stumbled back to his bedroll, alone, weeping.
He couldn’t remember the husband’s name, either.
Jack wondered if God did. Remembered their names.
He also wondered if God did this same thing, rested high on his perch and watched from a distance, not knowing their names and not really caring, either, depending upon his mood. Because the act of salvation was, sometimes he thought, more of an ego stroke than an act of mercy, and more often than not Jack was stroking himself but wearing the hair shirt at the same time.
Did God do the same thing? Look at all I have created, now watch as it destroys itself, I will observe from far away and if I get the whim to intervene I shall, otherwise, let the fools kill themselves and each other.
Jack knew this wasn’t his own creation, and he knew he’d intervene no matter the circumstance, and he didn’t think that God sat around and punished himself for his occasional lack of caring, really caring.
He was not God, although he found himself acting like him sometimes, he thought.
***
After the death of the woman with cancer, he’d taken Sun aside and talked to her for a long time. It was bound to happen again, it was inevitable. He and Sun labored diligently to find something that brought death quickly. No more hanging on to the hopeless, they agreed quietly, best to find some way to send them on, an easier way, even if it wasn’t exactly free of pain.
If they couldn’t find something in the wild growth of the jungle, they agreed the easiest thing would be to numb the skin and slit the throat, let the blood flow and hallow the ground, perhaps even chase away the demons.
Recidivism, he wondered. Blood sacrifice in a new society already more ancient than any other on earth.
***
Sawyer’s hair had grown, long now, past his shoulders and bleached almost white by the sun and Jack had laughed one day to come upon him and find him helplessly entangled, hair wound around the branches of a dead tree, and as Jack had worked to free him, Sawyer muttering and cursing, he’d asked why Sawyer didn’t just tie it back, wouldn’t that be easier.
“Like it down,” Sawyer said.
“Why?” Jack asked, carefully unraveling silken knotted hair from roughened crooked branches.
“Because you like it down,” Sawyer said, no hint of guile or seduction or mockery, just truth. Jack had watched him, many times, and Sawyer had noticed, and so Sawyer wore his hair down.
Truth.
“Yeah,” Jack said softly, finally setting him free and brushing Sawyer’s hair back out of his face. “I do.”
Then Jack had walked away.
***
He was not a fag.
The world had told him this time and time again, and he had told himself, as well. Men who watched the NFL religiously and who were so competitive during pick-up basketball games that their teammates sometimes ended up with broken noses due to flying elbows were not fags.
He was a doctor, however, and liberal, because he was supposed to be; it was assumed and therefore fact. And there was nothing wrong with being a fag, they were fine for entertainment, as co-workers and even as friends, you let them into your home and you laughed with them and you treated them as you treated other patients and you voted on the liberal side of the ticket for their rights.
Nothing wrong with being a fag as long as you yourself were not one. He had been taught this, silently, by his father, and not so silently by his friends in high school and college for whom the word ‘fag’ had been the worst insult to be bestowed upon you, and although it had been years since he’d actually uttered the word, it still lurked there, in the back of his mind.
He thought political correctness was a joke, a joke on all of them. People fooled themselves and each other, said the right things and sometimes even did the right things but inside words like ‘nigger’ and ‘spic’ and ‘fag’ and ‘cunt’ tumbled all over each other.
Different than equaled less than.
He wondered if God had meant it to be that way. He must have, because that’s the way things were.
***
Sawyer had taken to following him, lurking, quiet and watching, staring at him with arms crossed, and they never spoke, for some reason, and Jack found that he didn’t mind, Sawyer’s presence was like the sun warm against his back.
And he knew that of all of them Sawyer was, oddly, the least racist and the least homophobic and the least judgmental. He called names and provoked, although not so much lately, but that was for attention, Jack supposed, the one thing that Sawyer really seemed to need and want.
Or it was not so odd, perhaps, that Sawyer saw people as they actually were, because he had seen so very many people and when he sized you up and pronounced that you were an asshole it was because that was the truth, not because of the color of your skin or because you liked to suck dick, but simply because you were an asshole, end of story, although he would toss out slurs still, sometimes, when he was bored.
Jack had seen many people as well, during school, during residency, during practice; but they hadn’t been people, they’d been broken bones and bruised tissue and cries of pain that came packaged with frantic and frightened families who had annoyed and distracted him while he tried to do his work.
They hadn’t been people, they’d been challenges to overcome, battles to win, miracles waiting to be worked.
Jack had no idea who was an asshole and who was not, he’d learned that much at least, because he’d learned that acting like an asshole didn’t necessarily mean a person was an asshole. Jack had no idea who was an asshole or not, except for himself, and he’d decided that most of the time he was.
He compared himself to Sawyer. Education did not equal knowledge. Clichéd, he knew, but that didn’t make it any less true.
He wondered if God was a fag or a spic or a nigger or a cunt.
One thing he was certain of, God was definitely an asshole, and he knew Sawyer would agree.
***
He found himself thinking of Jamison, a fellow intern, 48 hours on and 12 off, both of them hyped up on speed, legal and illegal, and even more so on power, testing their new Godlike abilities as they treated patients and proclaiming themselves miracle workers and laughing like loons on breaks, best friends.
One night to take off the edge that had their hands shaking and their muscles twitching, they’d gone to the bar they had always gone to, drank way too much and laughed even more and as they’d stumbled out of the bar Jack had found himself being shoved into the alley and Jamison was on his knees, sucking Jack off. Jack had closed his eyes and let it happen, never resisting or saying no, and the next day he’d put in for a transfer, which was approved immediately because Jack was the golden boy and the new hospital was eager to have him, and he cleaned out his locker with a mumbled goodbye to Jamison and a promise to keep in touch and he hadn’t talked to him since.
He wondered if Jamison knew what had happened; if, in light of what everyone back home must by now assume to have been Jack’s death, he wondered if Jamison had forgiven him.
***
Death. Could be, he supposed, they were certainly dead to the world back home, and for all intents and purposes everyone back home was also dead, could actually be dead for all Jack knew; more planes flown into skyscrapers, neurotoxins, epidemics, one too many angry words exchanged between nations and bombs finally dropped.
Death all the time, everywhere, and he’d thought he’d given up on wondering what came after, but now he decided that this must be it.
God didn’t care, Jack decided, wherever you were when you died, there you stayed.
He saw Boone often in the jungle, talked to him even, the conversation easygoing, lots of laughter.
Boone was fine, he told Jack so over and over until Jack finally started to believe him, and then Jack started to see him less and less.
He missed him, sometimes.
***
He would watch Kate, too, a lot, and sometimes at night when he was aching and lonely and surrounded by laughing people by the fire, when she moved a certain way or touched her hair just so he was convinced that he loved her.
He wondered why nothing had happened. He couldn’t find a reason, it just hadn’t.
He knew he couldn’t do any of this without her; that much, at least, was truth.
But more and more of late she was not the one touching him in his dreams and offering him liquor, angel and devil combined.
He knew God didn’t dream. There was no point.
***
Every night he would climb, would keep his distant vigil, Sawyer lounging on the beach at the base of the rocks, and Jack supposed they were lucky. Boundaries had been broken and lines had been crossed and things had happened on the island that never would have happened back home, if home was still there. But, except for those occasions when the island roared and the fear was hot and rank among them all, this had not turned into the ‘Lord of the Flies’ as he had first feared, a topic that had been talked to death when they’d first become stranded, everyone saying over and over again that this could not turn into the ‘Lord of the Flies,’ each person seeming to think this was an original thought and worthy of repeating.
And it hadn’t turned into a ‘Lord of the Flies’ scenario, and Jack had been surprised. Things were much different, though, as the boundaries were broken and the lines were crossed; people were pairing off, groups of three or four, even, but it seemed to be working, as much as anything could, out here.
Many women had come to him about birth control and the condoms were long gone, but Sun claimed there was a plant she thought would work well as sort of a morning after remedy and was testing it on herself, without Jin’s knowledge, Jack knew. He’d insisted on waiting at least six months before offering it to the others because of how ill it made her and because they were still unsure if it was actually working and she agreed.
So until he and Sun were convinced of the plant’s efficacy, the best he had to offer was the rhythm method; most of the women who came to him were young and had been depending on the pill since their first period and the rhythm method was something from the dark ages. Some had nodded solemnly and had scratched notes in the sand as he’d talked; others had giggled and blushed as he’d tried to instruct them. This was flirting, he knew, because he was still single, whatever that meant in the current context of island society, and sometimes he was flattered but all the time he was impatient as he told them the safest times to have sex and when to absolutely not. But there was a reason the rhythm method was not the preferred method of birth control and no less than five babies were on the way.
He hated the idea, most of the time. Other times he watched those women who were pregnant and smiled. They were smug, almost, and he knew how they felt. They were creating a new life, a new world, things would be different and better; and he felt the same way and those were the times he stroked himself the hardest, when he claimed himself lord and master of it all, he was God; and after entertaining those thoughts he would be a good boy, a good man, and confess himself unworthy of these people, and punish himself by dreaming of all those he had failed, those whose hearts he’d broken, those he’d disappointed, those who’d died in his arms as he wept and others who’d died as he’d waited impatiently by their bedsides for it to end, finally.
He knew that God didn’t dream, and he knew that God didn’t care about those he’d failed; because God was, from all accounts, lord and master of it all and could stroke himself all he wanted without any guilt at all and sleep the sleep of the all powerful.
***
The books and magazines had made the rounds over and over, stained and torn from numerous hands and numerous readings, and Claire had declared one day that they all be stashed away, because they would be needed later, for all the children, for hers, the firstborn and the first to be taught to read, and everyone had agreed reluctantly and Jack had suddenly found himself keeper of the words.
Every night as he staggered off to bed he would nod at Sawyer, who would follow him and read by torchlight as Jack slept.
***
At nights now there was always music, songs new and old from Charlie; and stories, Michael entertaining all of them by reenacting his favorite movies and television shows; Jin, now more fluent, would tell stories of Korean folklore that them shivering at the sheer beauty of both his voice and the words; and anecdotes exchanged, Sawyer making them laugh and boo and hoot in disbelief at his stories, and Jack found he didn’t care whether they were true or not, as long as Sawyer was smiling that sly smile and winding Sayid up to the point there was almost violence before Sawyer deflated the situation with a wink or a comment, and Sayid would sigh and shake his head at being fooled again.
It became a game between them, theater, almost, with Sawyer playing the prankster and Sayid the hapless victim, and it seemed each time that Sawyer’s stories and Sayid’s reactions became even more exaggerated, and Jack would laugh until he cried at the fierce looks of utter rage Sayid could pull forth, and Sayid would look at Jack and wink before returning his attention to Sawyer and hopping up and down spewing forth threats of death so fearsome as to be ridiculous, so ridiculous that even Sawyer couldn’t keep a straight face.
Sawyer began sitting beside Jack on those nights, lounging on his elbows, his roughened fingers running lightly over Jack’s lower back, and Jack would sigh quietly and lean heavily into Sawyer’s hand as they all waited for the performance to begin.
Jack wondered if God was watching, if God had a sense of humor, because if he did then on those nights God understood that the joke was on God himself.
***
He was surprised to find himself ill-prepared when he delivered the first of the babies. He knew what to expect and he had done it before, but that had been in a sterile setting, anesthesia and nurses and clean towels.
This was dirty and violent and painful and raw and loud, primal, a battering of both mother and child and later, he realized, as he lay shaking on the beach, of doctor as well, but when the baby girl had slid into his hands and he’d carefully laid her at her mother’s breast Jack found himself crying. Something in his chest shifted, moved heavily and then seemed to disappear, and when mother and child, both healthy, had been settled and the rest of the camp had stopped cheering and clapping the father on the back, Jack had snuck down to the beach and lain in the surf and wept, with grief and joy and something he couldn’t identify.
Then he figured it out. This was why he’d become a doctor, encouraging life, not fighting death, and he wept that much harder.
And was he was not surprised when Sawyer appeared out of nowhere, pulling him to a sitting position and plastering himself to Jack’s back, resting his head on Jack’s shoulder and wrapping his arms around Jack’s waist, whispering things that Jack couldn’t hear but that soothed him anyway, and he relaxed to the point that Sawyer had to help him to his bedroll because Jack was already half asleep.
Jack wondered, as he fell asleep to Sawyer’s quiet murmurings, if this is what God had felt like on the day of Creation, because tonight Jack felt he’d been given the secrets of the universe.
If this was what God had felt on the day of Creation, Jack thought, grinning, no wonder God was such an asshole.
***
Jack climbed, and this evening Sawyer followed, for the first time, and moved to stand in front of him and press himself against Jack, his hands pressed flat against the rock behind Jack’s back and his mouth ghosting along Jack’s neck.
Jack felt Sawyer, the heat of him, smelled him, sweat and musk and something earthy. Jack looked at him in wonder and then for some reason he pushed, planting his feet firmly and holding tight to Sawyer’s waist as Sawyer fell back out over the bay, hanging precariously over the water and the rocks below, and Jack watched as Sawyer flung his arms wide and closed his eyes and smiled joyfully, the setting sun glinting off hair whipping in the wind.
Jack hauled him back into his arms suddenly, shaking and holding him tightly. “How did you know I wouldn’t let go?” he whispered.
“I didn’t,” Sawyer said, sliding one hand underneath Jack’s t-shirt. “Just trust you, I suppose, to let me touch the face of God like that,” he whispered and then they were kissing, raw and hard and full of need and Sawyer was walking him backward into the cover of the jungle, his hand sliding into Jack’s shorts and Jack groaned and pulled him tight, sucking hard at his mouth and thrusting against Sawyer’s hand and they fell to the ground, tearing at one another’s clothes and taking each other with their bodies, hungry, devouring one another, taking as much as they could possibly take, glory fulfilled and sin fully realized.
***
It didn’t last long, it had been too long for either of them, and Jack lay breathless on the ground.
“I’m not God,” he whispered.
“No shit,” Sawyer said, snorting. “That’s just a little somethin’ I say when I got a pretty boy’s mouth wrapped around my cock.”
Jack stared at him for a moment and then started laughing, laughing long and hard until he started weeping, and then Sawyer grabbed him firmly by the jaw and looked at him, his eyes hard, and Jack knew he understood.
“How do you know I’m clean, Jack?” Sawyer whispered, eyes searching Jack’s face.
“I don’t,” Jack said, running one thumb along Sawyer’s mouth. “I just trust you, I suppose.”
Sawyer’s eyes widened slightly and then he rolled atop Jack, hungry again, and this time it was longer, and sweeter, and Jack realized that both God and the Devil were in the details.
***
“Sawyer, do you think God is an asshole?”
“Course he is,” Sawyer said, not looking up from his book. “But that’s his job, ain’t it?”
***
More and more the islanders were going to Sun instead of himself and he understood, she was gentler and more patient, although they always ran to him for the major stuff and that was happening less and less, much to his relief.
And he always delivered the babies, always.
He set his back to helping keep them all alive in other ways, hard work that left his body tired and his mind clean, and every night he lay down with Sawyer, and sometimes he would wake himself up praying in gratitude instead of railing at the unfairness of it all, something he hadn’t done in years.
He found that he was referring to everybody by name now, remembering birthdays, even, and all the labels, the politically correct ones and the uglier ones were gone and everyone was simply who they were.
All thoughts of home, already dim, faded further.
He no longer climbed the rocks in the evening. Instead he followed Sawyer out into the jungle and would run his hands through that hair and along that body that both God and the Devil would have envied, would have wanted to touch or taste or posses or become, but Jack had Sawyer all to himself and in that, at least, he was all powerful, and Sawyer owned Jack completely and that was right, as well.
The birth of the fifth baby, a boy, was just as awful and just as amazing as the first four, and he came into the world bellowing as the sun rose, and Jack stared out across the surf with Sawyer’s arms wrapped around him from behind, and apologized, silently, for his presumption.
He wasn’t and didn’t have to be God.
God had been there all along, through the blood and the fear and the death and the rage, intervening when it was right and, more importantly, staying out of the way and letting things unfold as they were supposed to, and it had led them all here, and finally Jack realized that he did have the secrets of the universe and it all came down to this: The sun rising, a baby crying and strong arms wrapped tight around his waist.
Jack sighed. He didn’t envy God his work. And he wouldn’t try to do it anymore, it was time to let it all go.
“Tired?”
“Yeah.”
“C’mon.”
***
End
Still here...2016
Fandom: Lost
Pairing: Jack/Sawyer, Jack-centric
Warnings: Adults only; language and sexual situations. I wrote this soon after ‘Do No Harm’ aired; spoilers through S1.
“If a man can play God, Doc, then folks are gonna treat him that way. . ."
Sawyer had said that to him, some night months ago, when he’d been a fool, thinking they would escape, be saved. At least, that’s what Jack had told himself at the time, so that it would be okay to think more about himself than of what it might mean for their supplies when he had sucked down eight tiny bottles of Absolut, and now it echoed through his mind
God.
He’d taken to climbing the rocks on the east side of the bay late every afternoon, and he would lean back, fingers rubbing against the damp grit of the rock, and he would watch as they would all gather to eat, still over forty people, not so bad, he guessed, for nine months trapped, and he would watch them, pick out familiar faces, try to name them all.
He still couldn’t.
He’d treated them all at one time or another, for various things, from dehydration and sunstroke to broken arms and busted ribs, and after nine months he still didn’t know all their names.
The last one who’d died, a woman in her sixties, cancer, undiagnosed but she’d probably had it well before the crash, nothing left with which to treat her, nothing for the pain. He couldn’t remember her name even though he’d known it at the time as he’d sat and held her hand as she died.
Her husband had run, hidden, he’d seen men of that age do that often as their wives lay dying, and Jack hadn’t blamed the man for that, but he had blamed him for forcing Jack to hunt him down and tell him that his wife was dead and then forcing Jack to comfort him, forcing him to say he was sorry, forcing him to lie and say it had been peaceful, no pain. He’d left that man grieving, and Jack himself full of such fury he could hardly see as he’d stormed through the jungle with Sawyer like a ghost ignored, cool and quiet and barely there behind him and watching silently as Jack had raged, blind.
Then Sawyer had touched him, a firm press between his shoulders, nudging him back to camp, and the anger had dissipated and Jack had stumbled back to his bedroll, alone, weeping.
He couldn’t remember the husband’s name, either.
Jack wondered if God did. Remembered their names.
He also wondered if God did this same thing, rested high on his perch and watched from a distance, not knowing their names and not really caring, either, depending upon his mood. Because the act of salvation was, sometimes he thought, more of an ego stroke than an act of mercy, and more often than not Jack was stroking himself but wearing the hair shirt at the same time.
Did God do the same thing? Look at all I have created, now watch as it destroys itself, I will observe from far away and if I get the whim to intervene I shall, otherwise, let the fools kill themselves and each other.
Jack knew this wasn’t his own creation, and he knew he’d intervene no matter the circumstance, and he didn’t think that God sat around and punished himself for his occasional lack of caring, really caring.
He was not God, although he found himself acting like him sometimes, he thought.
***
After the death of the woman with cancer, he’d taken Sun aside and talked to her for a long time. It was bound to happen again, it was inevitable. He and Sun labored diligently to find something that brought death quickly. No more hanging on to the hopeless, they agreed quietly, best to find some way to send them on, an easier way, even if it wasn’t exactly free of pain.
If they couldn’t find something in the wild growth of the jungle, they agreed the easiest thing would be to numb the skin and slit the throat, let the blood flow and hallow the ground, perhaps even chase away the demons.
Recidivism, he wondered. Blood sacrifice in a new society already more ancient than any other on earth.
***
Sawyer’s hair had grown, long now, past his shoulders and bleached almost white by the sun and Jack had laughed one day to come upon him and find him helplessly entangled, hair wound around the branches of a dead tree, and as Jack had worked to free him, Sawyer muttering and cursing, he’d asked why Sawyer didn’t just tie it back, wouldn’t that be easier.
“Like it down,” Sawyer said.
“Why?” Jack asked, carefully unraveling silken knotted hair from roughened crooked branches.
“Because you like it down,” Sawyer said, no hint of guile or seduction or mockery, just truth. Jack had watched him, many times, and Sawyer had noticed, and so Sawyer wore his hair down.
Truth.
“Yeah,” Jack said softly, finally setting him free and brushing Sawyer’s hair back out of his face. “I do.”
Then Jack had walked away.
***
He was not a fag.
The world had told him this time and time again, and he had told himself, as well. Men who watched the NFL religiously and who were so competitive during pick-up basketball games that their teammates sometimes ended up with broken noses due to flying elbows were not fags.
He was a doctor, however, and liberal, because he was supposed to be; it was assumed and therefore fact. And there was nothing wrong with being a fag, they were fine for entertainment, as co-workers and even as friends, you let them into your home and you laughed with them and you treated them as you treated other patients and you voted on the liberal side of the ticket for their rights.
Nothing wrong with being a fag as long as you yourself were not one. He had been taught this, silently, by his father, and not so silently by his friends in high school and college for whom the word ‘fag’ had been the worst insult to be bestowed upon you, and although it had been years since he’d actually uttered the word, it still lurked there, in the back of his mind.
He thought political correctness was a joke, a joke on all of them. People fooled themselves and each other, said the right things and sometimes even did the right things but inside words like ‘nigger’ and ‘spic’ and ‘fag’ and ‘cunt’ tumbled all over each other.
Different than equaled less than.
He wondered if God had meant it to be that way. He must have, because that’s the way things were.
***
Sawyer had taken to following him, lurking, quiet and watching, staring at him with arms crossed, and they never spoke, for some reason, and Jack found that he didn’t mind, Sawyer’s presence was like the sun warm against his back.
And he knew that of all of them Sawyer was, oddly, the least racist and the least homophobic and the least judgmental. He called names and provoked, although not so much lately, but that was for attention, Jack supposed, the one thing that Sawyer really seemed to need and want.
Or it was not so odd, perhaps, that Sawyer saw people as they actually were, because he had seen so very many people and when he sized you up and pronounced that you were an asshole it was because that was the truth, not because of the color of your skin or because you liked to suck dick, but simply because you were an asshole, end of story, although he would toss out slurs still, sometimes, when he was bored.
Jack had seen many people as well, during school, during residency, during practice; but they hadn’t been people, they’d been broken bones and bruised tissue and cries of pain that came packaged with frantic and frightened families who had annoyed and distracted him while he tried to do his work.
They hadn’t been people, they’d been challenges to overcome, battles to win, miracles waiting to be worked.
Jack had no idea who was an asshole and who was not, he’d learned that much at least, because he’d learned that acting like an asshole didn’t necessarily mean a person was an asshole. Jack had no idea who was an asshole or not, except for himself, and he’d decided that most of the time he was.
He compared himself to Sawyer. Education did not equal knowledge. Clichéd, he knew, but that didn’t make it any less true.
He wondered if God was a fag or a spic or a nigger or a cunt.
One thing he was certain of, God was definitely an asshole, and he knew Sawyer would agree.
***
He found himself thinking of Jamison, a fellow intern, 48 hours on and 12 off, both of them hyped up on speed, legal and illegal, and even more so on power, testing their new Godlike abilities as they treated patients and proclaiming themselves miracle workers and laughing like loons on breaks, best friends.
One night to take off the edge that had their hands shaking and their muscles twitching, they’d gone to the bar they had always gone to, drank way too much and laughed even more and as they’d stumbled out of the bar Jack had found himself being shoved into the alley and Jamison was on his knees, sucking Jack off. Jack had closed his eyes and let it happen, never resisting or saying no, and the next day he’d put in for a transfer, which was approved immediately because Jack was the golden boy and the new hospital was eager to have him, and he cleaned out his locker with a mumbled goodbye to Jamison and a promise to keep in touch and he hadn’t talked to him since.
He wondered if Jamison knew what had happened; if, in light of what everyone back home must by now assume to have been Jack’s death, he wondered if Jamison had forgiven him.
***
Death. Could be, he supposed, they were certainly dead to the world back home, and for all intents and purposes everyone back home was also dead, could actually be dead for all Jack knew; more planes flown into skyscrapers, neurotoxins, epidemics, one too many angry words exchanged between nations and bombs finally dropped.
Death all the time, everywhere, and he’d thought he’d given up on wondering what came after, but now he decided that this must be it.
God didn’t care, Jack decided, wherever you were when you died, there you stayed.
He saw Boone often in the jungle, talked to him even, the conversation easygoing, lots of laughter.
Boone was fine, he told Jack so over and over until Jack finally started to believe him, and then Jack started to see him less and less.
He missed him, sometimes.
***
He would watch Kate, too, a lot, and sometimes at night when he was aching and lonely and surrounded by laughing people by the fire, when she moved a certain way or touched her hair just so he was convinced that he loved her.
He wondered why nothing had happened. He couldn’t find a reason, it just hadn’t.
He knew he couldn’t do any of this without her; that much, at least, was truth.
But more and more of late she was not the one touching him in his dreams and offering him liquor, angel and devil combined.
He knew God didn’t dream. There was no point.
***
Every night he would climb, would keep his distant vigil, Sawyer lounging on the beach at the base of the rocks, and Jack supposed they were lucky. Boundaries had been broken and lines had been crossed and things had happened on the island that never would have happened back home, if home was still there. But, except for those occasions when the island roared and the fear was hot and rank among them all, this had not turned into the ‘Lord of the Flies’ as he had first feared, a topic that had been talked to death when they’d first become stranded, everyone saying over and over again that this could not turn into the ‘Lord of the Flies,’ each person seeming to think this was an original thought and worthy of repeating.
And it hadn’t turned into a ‘Lord of the Flies’ scenario, and Jack had been surprised. Things were much different, though, as the boundaries were broken and the lines were crossed; people were pairing off, groups of three or four, even, but it seemed to be working, as much as anything could, out here.
Many women had come to him about birth control and the condoms were long gone, but Sun claimed there was a plant she thought would work well as sort of a morning after remedy and was testing it on herself, without Jin’s knowledge, Jack knew. He’d insisted on waiting at least six months before offering it to the others because of how ill it made her and because they were still unsure if it was actually working and she agreed.
So until he and Sun were convinced of the plant’s efficacy, the best he had to offer was the rhythm method; most of the women who came to him were young and had been depending on the pill since their first period and the rhythm method was something from the dark ages. Some had nodded solemnly and had scratched notes in the sand as he’d talked; others had giggled and blushed as he’d tried to instruct them. This was flirting, he knew, because he was still single, whatever that meant in the current context of island society, and sometimes he was flattered but all the time he was impatient as he told them the safest times to have sex and when to absolutely not. But there was a reason the rhythm method was not the preferred method of birth control and no less than five babies were on the way.
He hated the idea, most of the time. Other times he watched those women who were pregnant and smiled. They were smug, almost, and he knew how they felt. They were creating a new life, a new world, things would be different and better; and he felt the same way and those were the times he stroked himself the hardest, when he claimed himself lord and master of it all, he was God; and after entertaining those thoughts he would be a good boy, a good man, and confess himself unworthy of these people, and punish himself by dreaming of all those he had failed, those whose hearts he’d broken, those he’d disappointed, those who’d died in his arms as he wept and others who’d died as he’d waited impatiently by their bedsides for it to end, finally.
He knew that God didn’t dream, and he knew that God didn’t care about those he’d failed; because God was, from all accounts, lord and master of it all and could stroke himself all he wanted without any guilt at all and sleep the sleep of the all powerful.
***
The books and magazines had made the rounds over and over, stained and torn from numerous hands and numerous readings, and Claire had declared one day that they all be stashed away, because they would be needed later, for all the children, for hers, the firstborn and the first to be taught to read, and everyone had agreed reluctantly and Jack had suddenly found himself keeper of the words.
Every night as he staggered off to bed he would nod at Sawyer, who would follow him and read by torchlight as Jack slept.
***
At nights now there was always music, songs new and old from Charlie; and stories, Michael entertaining all of them by reenacting his favorite movies and television shows; Jin, now more fluent, would tell stories of Korean folklore that them shivering at the sheer beauty of both his voice and the words; and anecdotes exchanged, Sawyer making them laugh and boo and hoot in disbelief at his stories, and Jack found he didn’t care whether they were true or not, as long as Sawyer was smiling that sly smile and winding Sayid up to the point there was almost violence before Sawyer deflated the situation with a wink or a comment, and Sayid would sigh and shake his head at being fooled again.
It became a game between them, theater, almost, with Sawyer playing the prankster and Sayid the hapless victim, and it seemed each time that Sawyer’s stories and Sayid’s reactions became even more exaggerated, and Jack would laugh until he cried at the fierce looks of utter rage Sayid could pull forth, and Sayid would look at Jack and wink before returning his attention to Sawyer and hopping up and down spewing forth threats of death so fearsome as to be ridiculous, so ridiculous that even Sawyer couldn’t keep a straight face.
Sawyer began sitting beside Jack on those nights, lounging on his elbows, his roughened fingers running lightly over Jack’s lower back, and Jack would sigh quietly and lean heavily into Sawyer’s hand as they all waited for the performance to begin.
Jack wondered if God was watching, if God had a sense of humor, because if he did then on those nights God understood that the joke was on God himself.
***
He was surprised to find himself ill-prepared when he delivered the first of the babies. He knew what to expect and he had done it before, but that had been in a sterile setting, anesthesia and nurses and clean towels.
This was dirty and violent and painful and raw and loud, primal, a battering of both mother and child and later, he realized, as he lay shaking on the beach, of doctor as well, but when the baby girl had slid into his hands and he’d carefully laid her at her mother’s breast Jack found himself crying. Something in his chest shifted, moved heavily and then seemed to disappear, and when mother and child, both healthy, had been settled and the rest of the camp had stopped cheering and clapping the father on the back, Jack had snuck down to the beach and lain in the surf and wept, with grief and joy and something he couldn’t identify.
Then he figured it out. This was why he’d become a doctor, encouraging life, not fighting death, and he wept that much harder.
And was he was not surprised when Sawyer appeared out of nowhere, pulling him to a sitting position and plastering himself to Jack’s back, resting his head on Jack’s shoulder and wrapping his arms around Jack’s waist, whispering things that Jack couldn’t hear but that soothed him anyway, and he relaxed to the point that Sawyer had to help him to his bedroll because Jack was already half asleep.
Jack wondered, as he fell asleep to Sawyer’s quiet murmurings, if this is what God had felt like on the day of Creation, because tonight Jack felt he’d been given the secrets of the universe.
If this was what God had felt on the day of Creation, Jack thought, grinning, no wonder God was such an asshole.
***
Jack climbed, and this evening Sawyer followed, for the first time, and moved to stand in front of him and press himself against Jack, his hands pressed flat against the rock behind Jack’s back and his mouth ghosting along Jack’s neck.
Jack felt Sawyer, the heat of him, smelled him, sweat and musk and something earthy. Jack looked at him in wonder and then for some reason he pushed, planting his feet firmly and holding tight to Sawyer’s waist as Sawyer fell back out over the bay, hanging precariously over the water and the rocks below, and Jack watched as Sawyer flung his arms wide and closed his eyes and smiled joyfully, the setting sun glinting off hair whipping in the wind.
Jack hauled him back into his arms suddenly, shaking and holding him tightly. “How did you know I wouldn’t let go?” he whispered.
“I didn’t,” Sawyer said, sliding one hand underneath Jack’s t-shirt. “Just trust you, I suppose, to let me touch the face of God like that,” he whispered and then they were kissing, raw and hard and full of need and Sawyer was walking him backward into the cover of the jungle, his hand sliding into Jack’s shorts and Jack groaned and pulled him tight, sucking hard at his mouth and thrusting against Sawyer’s hand and they fell to the ground, tearing at one another’s clothes and taking each other with their bodies, hungry, devouring one another, taking as much as they could possibly take, glory fulfilled and sin fully realized.
***
It didn’t last long, it had been too long for either of them, and Jack lay breathless on the ground.
“I’m not God,” he whispered.
“No shit,” Sawyer said, snorting. “That’s just a little somethin’ I say when I got a pretty boy’s mouth wrapped around my cock.”
Jack stared at him for a moment and then started laughing, laughing long and hard until he started weeping, and then Sawyer grabbed him firmly by the jaw and looked at him, his eyes hard, and Jack knew he understood.
“How do you know I’m clean, Jack?” Sawyer whispered, eyes searching Jack’s face.
“I don’t,” Jack said, running one thumb along Sawyer’s mouth. “I just trust you, I suppose.”
Sawyer’s eyes widened slightly and then he rolled atop Jack, hungry again, and this time it was longer, and sweeter, and Jack realized that both God and the Devil were in the details.
***
“Sawyer, do you think God is an asshole?”
“Course he is,” Sawyer said, not looking up from his book. “But that’s his job, ain’t it?”
***
More and more the islanders were going to Sun instead of himself and he understood, she was gentler and more patient, although they always ran to him for the major stuff and that was happening less and less, much to his relief.
And he always delivered the babies, always.
He set his back to helping keep them all alive in other ways, hard work that left his body tired and his mind clean, and every night he lay down with Sawyer, and sometimes he would wake himself up praying in gratitude instead of railing at the unfairness of it all, something he hadn’t done in years.
He found that he was referring to everybody by name now, remembering birthdays, even, and all the labels, the politically correct ones and the uglier ones were gone and everyone was simply who they were.
All thoughts of home, already dim, faded further.
He no longer climbed the rocks in the evening. Instead he followed Sawyer out into the jungle and would run his hands through that hair and along that body that both God and the Devil would have envied, would have wanted to touch or taste or posses or become, but Jack had Sawyer all to himself and in that, at least, he was all powerful, and Sawyer owned Jack completely and that was right, as well.
The birth of the fifth baby, a boy, was just as awful and just as amazing as the first four, and he came into the world bellowing as the sun rose, and Jack stared out across the surf with Sawyer’s arms wrapped around him from behind, and apologized, silently, for his presumption.
He wasn’t and didn’t have to be God.
God had been there all along, through the blood and the fear and the death and the rage, intervening when it was right and, more importantly, staying out of the way and letting things unfold as they were supposed to, and it had led them all here, and finally Jack realized that he did have the secrets of the universe and it all came down to this: The sun rising, a baby crying and strong arms wrapped tight around his waist.
Jack sighed. He didn’t envy God his work. And he wouldn’t try to do it anymore, it was time to let it all go.
“Tired?”
“Yeah.”
“C’mon.”
***
End
Still here...2016