Lost fic: Trust Exercises [Sawyer/Juliet, 5200 words]
Trust Exercises
by eponine119
November 19, 2021
Sawyer sits in the desk in front of her, in the small one-room Dharma school. Juliet rests her chin in her hand, looking at him. His hair is a thousand different shades of blond and brown sifted together, resting against his neck. And then there are his shoulders, pressed against the back of the seat as he reclines slightly, his long legs kicked under the desk in front of him.
She draws a breath, not quite a sigh. He smells good. It’s some cologne she can’t identify, applied with a light touch. Or maybe it’s his shampoo, vaguely green and spiced and aquatic.
He turns around in his chair, looking at her eagerly. Juliet’s eyes widen as though she’s been caught, and she lifts her head from where it’s been propped.
“Partners?” he asks her, with his eyebrows raised.
She smiles and nods her acceptance.
“We’re doin’ introductions. Supposed to say a fun fact about each other,” he says, with a flash of his dimpled grin. “In case you weren’t paying attention.”
So it was obvious, then. She hopes he doesn’t realize she was staring at him.
“What were you daydreamin’ about so hard, there, Blondie?” he asks.
She just shakes her head, giving him a slight smile that she hopes is more mysterious than obvious.
“Don’t blame you,” Sawyer says, casting a sidelong look at Pierre Chang, who is standing behind the teacher’s desk in his white lab coat. “This whole thing’s a psychological experiment dressed up like a team building exercise. We’re just the lab rats.”
“Of course it is,” Juliet agrees. She looks around the room, at their fellow Dharma Initiative members, and wonder if they realize. Or if they care. They seem to be rather an easygoing bunch, mostly. A lot like her favorite mice in the lab. “I guess informed consent for experimentation comes later.”
“Prob’ly signed it in our welcome packet,” Sawyer says.
“I always hated these things,” she remarks, shifting in the constraints of her plastic and metal chair. Being in a schoolroom, sitting at desks, instead of sitting around a conference table, just adds insult to injury.
“My first time,” Sawyer admit.
“I’ll go easy on you,” she teases, and something in the way he’s looking at her changes. His eyes darken. There’s heat in it.
But it’s gone in a flash. “They start doin’ trust falls, I’m out of here.”
“All right, that’s enough time,” Chang declares. “Let’s get started.”
Sawyer flashes her another grin and starts to turn back around in his chair.
Juliet reaches out and catches a fold of his shirt between her fingers to get his attention. He turns his head back to look at her. “What’s your fun fact?” she asks, since they didn’t get around to doing the actual assignment.
“Make one up,” he says with a toss of his head, then directs his attention back to Chang.
Her heart sinks, wondering what he’s going to say about her. She goes back to staring at the back of his head, thinking about how soft his shirt was beneath her fingertips. Soft and heated from his body.
They go around the room, exposing each other’s fun facts. No less than three members of the Dharma Initiative once appeared in a local commercial, back wherever they came from. One has eleven brothers and sisters. Phil has been to all fifty states. Dr. Chang likes country music.
Then it’s their turn, hers and Sawyer’s. “Juliet here went to Woodstock,” Sawyer says. He gives her a sly look with a bit of a smile.
She gives him her smirk and a bit of the death stare, though she supposes he could have done worse. She wonders if that’s what he thinks of her, that she’s some happy hippie in the mud.
“James…” She should have been thinking of something. “Once won a thousand dollars at poker.” A thousand bucks used to be a lot of money, back in the seventies.
“Won a lot more than that,” Sawyer mutters.
“James,” Phil repeats, as though it surprises him.
“LaFleur to you,” Sawyer growls.
“Two fun facts, then,” Chang says, moving on. He seems like he hates this almost as much as they do.
Sawyer gives Juliet another look, like it’s all right she didn’t call him LaFleur. She feels herself smiling at him.
They finish up, and Chang instructs them to move the desks to the outskirts of the room, leaving the center of the schoolroom an open space.
“Now we’re in for it,” Sawyer says playfully, as he shoves his desk over to one side.
“I wonder what their objective is,” Juliet says, pushing her desk after his, giving one last thought to sitting behind him, staring at him where he can’t see her doing it. It’s better this way, she thinks.
He touches her hand briefly. “Come sit by me,” he says.
It’s all she can do to just nod and not give him a full on grin. She follows him to a spot near the edge and the back of the space in the center of the classroom. They stand there, waiting for whatever is going to come next. Juliet thinks she feels Sawyer looking at her. She glances his way and he doesn’t look away or try to hide it.
It makes her feel a little giddy.
She isn’t sure when she started feeling this way around him. Days, weeks… she’s done her best to ignore it, or only indulge on rare occasions when she knows he won’t notice. When it won’t cause an issue between them, being here. Today is making it very hard to ignore.
“Sit down, back to back, with your partner,” Chang orders. “Criss cross applesauce, hurry up, let’s go.”
He’s so stern, even as he says it, that it’s almost absurd. Juliet catches Sawyer’s eye again and knows he’s thinking the same thing.
She sits down on the floor as instructed, and Sawyer sits down behind her. He leans back, pressing his spine against hers. She knows it’s almost a joke, but it makes her breath catch. She draws herself up, sitting straighter but not stiff. Feeling him against her makes her thoughts go all sorts of other places involving him touching her.
“You will be handed a picture. Do not let your partner see the picture. Your job is to tell them what to draw so they can re-create the picture,” Chang says.
“I can’t draw worth a damn,” Sawyer mutters.
Neither can Juliet, but she accepts the marker and cardboard from Chang when he comes around. The marker is purple, and when she uncaps it, it smells, a scent that takes her right back to childhood.
“You ready?” Sawyer asks.
“As I’ll ever be,” she remarks, poising the marker over the cardboard.
“So it’s a puppy,” Sawyer says. “One-a those sad sack, seventies lookin’ puppies with the big, sad eyes.”
“You cannot ask questions,” Chang informs them.
“It’s layin’ down. Big head, little paws. Brown and white. Brown ears, white face. Little spots on his face,” Sawyer narrates.
The marker squeaks against the paper as Juliet makes the first tentative line. She can picture it in her head, this thing he’s describing. But drawing it, it something else entirely. She listens to Sawyer’s voice, which is low and constant. With him leaning against her, every time he draws a breath, she feels it. She imagines he can feel her, too. The way her arm moves. She wants to close her eyes and just listen to his accent, thinking about his mouth.
“Time’s up,” Chang orders. “How did you do.”
Juliet looks down at the dog she drew. It looks more a blobfish. Sawyer’s back no longer presses against hers as he turns, coming around to sit beside her. He holds out the picture, putting it next to her drawing. They aren’t close at all.
“Artists, hand the marker and the paper to your partner. They are going to draw now. This is about communication. Think about what you needed to know, that would have made your drawing better.”
“How about Picasso’s phone number,” Juliet murmurs.
It earns her a little chuckle from Sawyer. She hands him the marker and the cardboard. He turns the cardboard over, to draw on the back, resting it against his knee. He holds the marker up to his nose and takes a sniff, then looks at her and winks. Then he turns the marker over between his fingers, ready to draw.
“Back to back,” Chang orders as he hands a picture to Juliet.
She scoots into position without letting Sawyer see the picture, though he raises his chin like he’s trying to take a peek. She folds her legs and isn’t sure she’s brave enough to lean back against him. But he leans into her, and it makes her feel warm and happy and relaxed.
Looking down at the picture, she says, “It’s a barn and a horse. The horse is to the left of the barn. The barn is in the lower right, and takes up about two-thirds of the picture. It starts about an inch from the right edge -”
“I’m supposed to know how much an inch is?” he says.
“No talking!” Chang roars.
“Forgot my ruler,” Sawyer murmurs.
Juliet goes on describing the image, being as precise as she can. As she speaks, she thinks about the way Sawyer had instructed her. How different his style was from hers. She hears the noise of the marker moving on the paper and she knows his picture is turning out wrong, too.
“It’s about communication,” Chang says again.
How well do they communicate, Juliet thinks, as she describes the horse. Sure, she and Sawyer talk, and sometimes they even flirt a little, but they never really talk about anything serious, anything that matters.
“Time,” Chang says.
Juliet turns to see Sawyer’s picture, wondering how she did. How they did.
She’s a little disappointed to see how far off it is, and in ways that seemed obvious. He’s drawn the barn long-ways, when the picture shows just the narrow edge of it. A million little details.
“You’re a better artist than me,” she says.
“You did better at describin’ it,” Sawyer says.
She shakes her head a little, still looking down at the drawing. His hand has purple ink smeared along the meaty side of it, from moving back and forth as she described things out of logical order.
“Don’t matter,” he tells her.
She meets his eyes and he gives her a little, encouraging smile. She begrudgingly gives him one back. “I wonder what’s next,” she says.
“Give the man a minute and he’ll tell us,” Sawyer says, and of course he is right.
“For the next exercise, sit facing your partner.”
“Told ya.” Sawyer grins at her and scoots along the floor so he’s sitting directly in front of her. His knees are almost, but not quite, touching hers. There’s nowhere to look except at him.
“Look your partner in the eyes.”
Sawyer meets Juliet’s eyes, and she finds it hard to breathe for a second. He licks his lips and it draws her gaze down for a second, to his mouth. He saw her do it, too. When she meets his eyes again, he tilts his head slightly, like he’s intrigued by her.
The rise and fall of his chest is just as rapid as hers is.
“Now, tell your partner something you’ve never told anyone before.”
Juliet’s heart starts to race, and her mouth goes dry. She wonders if Sawyer can sense her panic, then reminds herself that she is proud of the unbreakable calm she projects. Her mind is completely blank, except for thoughts of him.
“I ain’t got a fun fact,” he says.
She blinks. “What?”
“That’s a thing I never said to anyone before,” he points out.
She’s able to breathe again. “Clever,” she admits.
“You know his next move is gonna have us tell the class. See if we’ll betray our partner’s secrets.”
When he says it, she realizes he’s right.
“Figure most of these sheep will go right along,” he says, looking around the room.
“So what do we say?”
“Depends, do you wanna be a sheep here?”
“It might be easier if we were,” she says. She’s aware of Chang pacing, and that they don’t have much time. She’s not sure this is something she wants Sawyer to improvise. “I stole a pencil once,” she confesses. He looks interested. “The teacher handed them out to good girls and boys. Her words, not mine. I wanted it so badly, but there was always some mistake.”
“Why’d you want it so bad?” he asks, which is the last thing she expects.
Because I wanted it and I couldn’t have it, she thinks, with well-remembered longing washing through her again. But she can’t say that, not while she’s looking into his eyes, which are as blue-green as the sea.
“It had unicorns on it,” she says. “Purple and turquoise glittery ones.”
“Sounds like quite a pencil.” They look at each other. “S’pose you never used it. Out of guilt for wrongdoing.”
“Oh, no, I used it until it was this long.” She indicates with her fingers a length barely longer than an eraser and a pencil point.
“Is that a made up story?” he asks her. “Somethin’ for me to share with the class.”
“No,” she says. It never occurred to her. She has deeper, darker secrets. This was just an easy one to tell. And admitting that - that she didn’t lie to him, didn’t make something up - feels almost as intimate as if she had told him a real secret. “What about you?”
“I stole a lot of things,” he says.
Chang is suddenly standing over them. They both look up. “You two. Talk too much,” he admonishes.
“What can I say,” Sawyer says, beginning to launch into something sarcastic.
“You go first,” Chang interrupts. “Tell the class what you just told each other. The secrets.”
Sawyer glances at Juliet. He was right. A bit of shock and fear washes over the class.
“All righty then,” Sawyer says. He looks at Juliet. Like he’s getting her permission. “We got a thief in our midst,” he announces, theatrically. He waits a beat before adding, “Stole a ten cent pencil off her teacher’s desk in - what grade was it, sweetheart?”
“Fourth.”
“Fourth grade,” he repeats. “Old enough to know better, for sure.”
“Fascinating,” Chang says, like he doesn’t care at all. “You, tell his secret now.”
“No,” Juliet says automatically, without even thinking about it.
There’s a wave of surprise through the classroom, as though it had never occurred to anyone that they didn’t have to comply. But Chang smiles.
“Fine,” he says briskly. “Phil, you’re next.”
“Couldn’t make things up fast enough?” Sawyer whispers.
She thinks of all her possible responses. That she knows his secrets. His real secrets. Or she thinks she does. “I wanted to see what would happen.”
“My little rebel,” he says proudly.
“It was your idea,” she points out.
“Lucky thing for some of these yahoos,” he says, as a couple of people follow her example and refuse to breach their partner’s trust.
“You called me sweetheart,” she says. She wants to hear it again.
“I call a lot of people a lot of things,” he admits, like it doesn’t matter. “It piss you off?”
“No, I liked it,” she admits, and wonders if she should have.
He smiles at her. “That’s two secrets,” he says.
“And you still haven’t told me any,” she points out, not expecting it to change.
He opens his mouth, but she’ll never know whether he was going to tell her something or if it would just be another smart remark.
Because Chang claps his hands. “Last one,” he says, producing a box. From it, he withdraws a handful of neckties. “You and your partner will now work together to retrieve an object.” He puts one of the ties into Sawyer’s hand and then moves on, handing them out. “You must find Horace Goodspeed, who will give you something to bring back to me. One of you will be blindfolded and the other is the guide.”
Sawyer looks down at the tie in his hand.
“Choose which of you will be blindfolded and get moving,” Chang orders.
“I’ll do it,” Juliet offers.
“You sure?” Sawyer asks.
They could get into a debate, but instead she just says, “Yes.”
“Fine,” he says. He stretches the tie out to its full length and then moves toward her with it.
“I can -” she offers, reaching for it, but by then he is behind her. He places the blindfold gently over her eyes, and then ties it securely in the back. His hands are gentle, and he’s careful not to catch her hair in the knot. She closes her eyes, because she can’t see anything anyway.
“Pretty kinky shit,” Sawyer mutters to her. Then he waves his hand in front of her face - she can feel the breeze. “No peeking.”
“Of course not,” she agrees. “How do we do this?”
He takes one of her hands in his and pulls her close against his side. Juliet suddenly feels hot all over. “You ready?” he asks.
“Yeah,” she agrees.
“Three steps then a little right turn,” he coaches, guiding her out of the school.
She can hear the other groups around her. Outside, she senses the change in the air and the sun is warm on her face. But it’s disorienting, not being able to see. “Let me go,” she says.
Instantly Sawyer’s hands are no longer touching her. She misses the feeling, the experience, of having him so close. “You sure?” he says.
“Don’t abandon me,” she says, like it should be obvious. “Stay close.” She takes a step forward, and then another one. She doesn’t want to put her hands out in front of her like some kind of a cliché, but she is a little afraid, even though she’s pretty sure Sawyer would warn her if she was about to walk into something.
“You think you’re going in a straight line?” he asks.
“Aren’t I?”
He chuckles. “No. Wandering all over. Want me to -?” She thinks she can feel his hand lingering an inch above hers.
“Okay,” she says, and he takes her hand again.
He coaches, “’bout five more paces that -”
Her foot hits a bump in the grass and she stumbles forward. It’s disorienting, and she thinks she’s going to fall, except for Sawyer’s hand on hers, keeping her steady. “Hey,” she says.
“Didn’t see it,” he says.
“Me either,” she points out. “I’m trusting you, remember.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says.
But she’s still thinking about trust, and the theme of all the experiments today, regardless of whatever Dharma is attempting to investigate or prove. She turns as though to look at him, even though she can’t see anything. “You haven’t really shared anything with me today,” she observes.
“Neither have you.”
“I told you my secret.”
He huffs out something like a laugh. “That weren’t a secret worth tellin’. If it was even true.”
“I don’t tell lies for fun, James,” she says, aware of his hand on hers. She almost wants to pull away, but she can’t, and at the same time she’s afraid that he will.
“No, you tell ‘em as a means of survival. Same as everybody else.”
It’s an astute observation, she thinks, and she finds it interesting from a man who’s made a career of lying, and who has purported to be proud of it. All those lies throughout his life, they felt like survival to him. And that gives them something in common.
He sighs. “Kinda like it here,” he admits softly. A secret. For her. Wrapped up neatly with a squeeze of his palm against hers, and she knows he could only admit it because she can’t see his face. She feels exposed, suddenly, and very aware of her expression, knowing that he must be looking at her.
“Why?” she asks, simply and with a slight hesitation.
He sighs again, and she thinks he’s not going to tell her. He tugs at her hand, pulling her forward, and she frowns until she notices the sounds of people around them, walking through the soft grass, talking. Some of them must be their fellow classmates, careening about blindfolded.
She’s aware now of how close to him she’s standing now, as though the nerve endings in her skin can pick up the electricity between them and conduct it, letting her feel where they both are in space, relative to each other. It’s weird, and she focuses on it for a moment.
“I don’t trust a lot of people. Women,” he says plainly.
Juliet wonders what the hell a woman ever did to him, beyond fill the role of victim. Maybe he’s expecting a roaring attack of karma. But she knows it’s not that - not just that. He doesn’t trust anyone, because he doesn’t even trust himself. It makes her ache inside, because she understands it. He must have lost his trust as a child; she’s lost hers by degrees over the past several years.
“But I trust you,” he says.
It falls upon her like a weight, something physical pressing the soles of her feet deeper into the soft earth. Her hand is still engulfed in his. She’s aware that he’s holding his breath, waiting for her to say something, but she doesn’t know what to say. She nods, but it isn’t until she squeezes his hand that he exhales.
“So you just let me know when you’re ready for that trust fall, Blondie. I’ll catch you.”
It’s telling, these words, and not just that he’s slid back into his usual-Sawyer persona, rebuilding his walls up to the sky. He’s not offering to be the one who falls, even though he just said he trusted her.
She’s the one blindfolded and dependent on him. She’s only here because of him. And she can take that blindfold off at any time.
She cocks her head, listening. “I hear him.”
“Who?”
“Goodspeed,” she replies. “We’re supposed to get something from him, remember?”
“Right.” Sawyer must be looking around. “Which way?”
She listens. “Left,” she replies.
Sawyer bumps into her as they start off in that direction. “There he is.”
There’s shade as they must step under a tree, stopping. Sawyer lets her go and she instinctively wants to grab his hand again. Even though she is just fine on her own.
Juliet hears Horace’s voice. “Take this back with you,” he says, and he must hand whatever it is to Sawyer.
“That’s it?” Juliet asks. “I thought we would have to switch.”
“Nope,” Horace says. “You can go on back.”
“Do you want to switch?” Sawyer asks. “Chang won’t notice.”
“I’m all right,” Juliet says. She holds out her hand for Sawyer’s, but instead he places an object in her palm. It doesn’t weigh much, and it’s cold. She maneuvers it until she can feel it with her fingers. Metallic, rough-edged - it’s a key. “What does it go to?”
“Who the hell knows,” Sawyer says. “Let’s get back.”
Juliet starts walking.
His hands almost immediately grasp her shoulders, turning her. “It’s that way, Helen Keller.” He keeps his hands on her shoulders, walking behind her and guiding her with different nudges. She imagines this must be how a horse feels. Except a horse can see. And has a bridle in its mouth.
“You ever used to wonder what it’d be like?” he asks.
“Hmm?” He nudges her more toward the right.
“Bein’ blind. You ever go wanderin’ around with your eyes closed to try to see what it was like?”
“You did that as a kid?”
“Of course as a kid,” he bristles.
“I think I wanted to be the helper,” Juliet replies. “Like, I can’t remember if it was in the show or one of her books, but I remember Laura Ingalls saying she would be her sister’s eyes for her now, see the things she couldn’t. And tell her about them.”
“You watched that, too?” Sawyer asks.
“I’m pretty sure everyone watched it, James,” she says. “Well, maybe not the people here. Not yet.” They’ve stopped walking. She wants to turn to face him, but she wouldn’t be able to see him. She does it anyway. He inhales audibly.
She’s reminded of the cliché in movies, where a sightless person tries to “see” someone else’s face with their fingers, exploring.
She wants to be touched, by him, here in the darkness behind the blindfold. But they aren’t alone, as much as he feels like her whole world right now, under the warm sunshine. She hesitates for one more breath and then reaches up, putting her hand on the side of his face. The way she’s seen people do on television. If she couldn’t see, and he wasn’t more than a sexy voice and hands on her arms, what would he look like to her? Feel like.
And she’s wanted to touch him for so long. He doesn’t protest, and he doesn’t pull away, so she continues her exploration, comparing what she feels to the image she has of him in her head. The ridges of his cheekbones and the prominence of his scratchy chin. His forehead is hard and broad and hot. She pinches his nose and he lets out a breath. She traces his eye sockets, wondering if he’s closed his eyes too. Then she touches his lips.
They’re soft, and he groans a little. His clothes whisper as he shifts his weight.
She wants him, and she thinks that he wants her too.
“Juliet,” he says, and she feels her name with her fingers, warm breath flowing over her skin.
Then she pulls her hands away, pushing the blindfold up. She blinks in the suddenly unfamiliar sunlight. He is looking at her very seriously, and she feels like she should explain. But he kisses her before she gets the chance.
His lips are as soft against hers as they were against her fingertips. She presses herself against him, kissing him the way she’s been daydreaming about off and on all day. Longer than that. Maybe since she met him.
There’s a small metallic ping, which she knows immediately is the key falling into the soft grass at their feet.
“Oops,” Sawyer says.
One of her hands rests against his chest. “We should get back.”
“Don’t know why,” he grumbles, leaning down to pick up the key again. “You want to -”
“No,” she answers, pulling the blindfold all the way off and looping it around her wrist.
“Think anybody else ended up makin’ out?” he asks her.
She thinks of their other teammates and their partners. She shrugs; it seems unlikely.
“Think this is what they were goin’ for?”
“I mean, team building,” she agrees. In a way it worked. More than expected, really. But she and Sawyer have been a team for a long time. Since she shot one of the Others in the clearing before they could fire, when she told him she had his back and she meant it, but he didn’t believe her until she proved it.
She looks down at the uneven grass beneath her sneakers. Even before that, before they were stranded on the beach and then lost in time. Back when he still hated her, and she volunteered to go back to the beach with him, to save Sayid and Bernard and Jin from her people. She remembers that long walk back, through the tall grass and the jungle, both of them as silent as they are now, thinking their own thoughts.
She tries not to look guilty as they pass through the doorway back into the school and she removes the blindfold from her wrist to hand to Dr. Chang. He doesn’t look happy with them.
He distributes narrow blue-on-white sheets of paper to everyone. “I haven’t seen a scantron sheet in years.”
“Hate these damn things,” he says, glancing at her. “Test anxiety.”
It’s hard for her to imagine Sawyer ever giving a damn about anything like this enough for it to make him feel anxious. Maybe it’s the setting, but she thinks about what he might have been like in school. Class clown comes to mind. She pictures him as a sexy, brooding outcast sitting in the back row, defiantly reading a paperback. She discards the image just as quickly, but it hits her in the pit of her belly, because wasn’t that her fantasy, in all those years she studied hard and raised her hand and sat in the front row, all the while wishing she could go home and put her feet up and read something horrific and full of anger.
She steals a glance at him, and their eyes accidentally meet. She wonders what he’s thinking.
“Now you will answer the questions in the booklet using the form and your number two pencil. Be sure to make your mark dark…”
“Too bad you ain’t got your fancy unicorn pencil.”
Juliet laughs a little at that, and then she makes quick work of the ovals. The questions evaluate how well she knew her partner before and after. And she’s surprised to realize that while she thought she knew Sawyer pretty well, she feels much closer to him now, even despite not paying attention or doing the exercises half the time. They bonded anyway. Maybe due to their lack of participation rather than because of it.
The framework of a new experiment spirals out in her head, something she can picture all at once. But she closes it down, because she doesn’t do research anymore. She fixes Jeeps and VW buses.
She looks over at Sawyer, who appears to be concentrating intently on coloring in the tiny circles with his pencil. She thinks about kissing him out on the village green and wonders if it’s going to happen again, or if it was just circumstances, the exercise, a hundred other things.
He looks at her suddenly and she realizes he’s thinking the exact same thing.
She gives him one of her mysterious smiles, and he gives her one back. But his dimples are showing, and she can imagine she’s got tells too that she’s not even aware of.
“Once your sheet is complete, turn it in and you are free to go,” Chang says.
Juliet’s the first one up, the way she learned to be in med school. She remembers how she used to sit and agonize and wait until someone else turned in their test, so she wouldn’t be first. She puts the scantron on Chang’s desk and exits the classroom.
Out in the sunlight again, it suddenly all feels overwhelming. Then Sawyer emerges from the school. He looks at her for a minute and she’s afraid he’s going to walk away. But he comes over to her and puts his arm around her. She leans into him, feeling his heat and aware of his scent.
Whatever this is, it’s real.
“Guess it worked,” Sawyer says, like he’s reading her thoughts.
“Yes, James,” she says. “It did.”
(end)
by eponine119
November 19, 2021
Sawyer sits in the desk in front of her, in the small one-room Dharma school. Juliet rests her chin in her hand, looking at him. His hair is a thousand different shades of blond and brown sifted together, resting against his neck. And then there are his shoulders, pressed against the back of the seat as he reclines slightly, his long legs kicked under the desk in front of him.
She draws a breath, not quite a sigh. He smells good. It’s some cologne she can’t identify, applied with a light touch. Or maybe it’s his shampoo, vaguely green and spiced and aquatic.
He turns around in his chair, looking at her eagerly. Juliet’s eyes widen as though she’s been caught, and she lifts her head from where it’s been propped.
“Partners?” he asks her, with his eyebrows raised.
She smiles and nods her acceptance.
“We’re doin’ introductions. Supposed to say a fun fact about each other,” he says, with a flash of his dimpled grin. “In case you weren’t paying attention.”
So it was obvious, then. She hopes he doesn’t realize she was staring at him.
“What were you daydreamin’ about so hard, there, Blondie?” he asks.
She just shakes her head, giving him a slight smile that she hopes is more mysterious than obvious.
“Don’t blame you,” Sawyer says, casting a sidelong look at Pierre Chang, who is standing behind the teacher’s desk in his white lab coat. “This whole thing’s a psychological experiment dressed up like a team building exercise. We’re just the lab rats.”
“Of course it is,” Juliet agrees. She looks around the room, at their fellow Dharma Initiative members, and wonder if they realize. Or if they care. They seem to be rather an easygoing bunch, mostly. A lot like her favorite mice in the lab. “I guess informed consent for experimentation comes later.”
“Prob’ly signed it in our welcome packet,” Sawyer says.
“I always hated these things,” she remarks, shifting in the constraints of her plastic and metal chair. Being in a schoolroom, sitting at desks, instead of sitting around a conference table, just adds insult to injury.
“My first time,” Sawyer admit.
“I’ll go easy on you,” she teases, and something in the way he’s looking at her changes. His eyes darken. There’s heat in it.
But it’s gone in a flash. “They start doin’ trust falls, I’m out of here.”
“All right, that’s enough time,” Chang declares. “Let’s get started.”
Sawyer flashes her another grin and starts to turn back around in his chair.
Juliet reaches out and catches a fold of his shirt between her fingers to get his attention. He turns his head back to look at her. “What’s your fun fact?” she asks, since they didn’t get around to doing the actual assignment.
“Make one up,” he says with a toss of his head, then directs his attention back to Chang.
Her heart sinks, wondering what he’s going to say about her. She goes back to staring at the back of his head, thinking about how soft his shirt was beneath her fingertips. Soft and heated from his body.
They go around the room, exposing each other’s fun facts. No less than three members of the Dharma Initiative once appeared in a local commercial, back wherever they came from. One has eleven brothers and sisters. Phil has been to all fifty states. Dr. Chang likes country music.
Then it’s their turn, hers and Sawyer’s. “Juliet here went to Woodstock,” Sawyer says. He gives her a sly look with a bit of a smile.
She gives him her smirk and a bit of the death stare, though she supposes he could have done worse. She wonders if that’s what he thinks of her, that she’s some happy hippie in the mud.
“James…” She should have been thinking of something. “Once won a thousand dollars at poker.” A thousand bucks used to be a lot of money, back in the seventies.
“Won a lot more than that,” Sawyer mutters.
“James,” Phil repeats, as though it surprises him.
“LaFleur to you,” Sawyer growls.
“Two fun facts, then,” Chang says, moving on. He seems like he hates this almost as much as they do.
Sawyer gives Juliet another look, like it’s all right she didn’t call him LaFleur. She feels herself smiling at him.
They finish up, and Chang instructs them to move the desks to the outskirts of the room, leaving the center of the schoolroom an open space.
“Now we’re in for it,” Sawyer says playfully, as he shoves his desk over to one side.
“I wonder what their objective is,” Juliet says, pushing her desk after his, giving one last thought to sitting behind him, staring at him where he can’t see her doing it. It’s better this way, she thinks.
He touches her hand briefly. “Come sit by me,” he says.
It’s all she can do to just nod and not give him a full on grin. She follows him to a spot near the edge and the back of the space in the center of the classroom. They stand there, waiting for whatever is going to come next. Juliet thinks she feels Sawyer looking at her. She glances his way and he doesn’t look away or try to hide it.
It makes her feel a little giddy.
She isn’t sure when she started feeling this way around him. Days, weeks… she’s done her best to ignore it, or only indulge on rare occasions when she knows he won’t notice. When it won’t cause an issue between them, being here. Today is making it very hard to ignore.
“Sit down, back to back, with your partner,” Chang orders. “Criss cross applesauce, hurry up, let’s go.”
He’s so stern, even as he says it, that it’s almost absurd. Juliet catches Sawyer’s eye again and knows he’s thinking the same thing.
She sits down on the floor as instructed, and Sawyer sits down behind her. He leans back, pressing his spine against hers. She knows it’s almost a joke, but it makes her breath catch. She draws herself up, sitting straighter but not stiff. Feeling him against her makes her thoughts go all sorts of other places involving him touching her.
“You will be handed a picture. Do not let your partner see the picture. Your job is to tell them what to draw so they can re-create the picture,” Chang says.
“I can’t draw worth a damn,” Sawyer mutters.
Neither can Juliet, but she accepts the marker and cardboard from Chang when he comes around. The marker is purple, and when she uncaps it, it smells, a scent that takes her right back to childhood.
“You ready?” Sawyer asks.
“As I’ll ever be,” she remarks, poising the marker over the cardboard.
“So it’s a puppy,” Sawyer says. “One-a those sad sack, seventies lookin’ puppies with the big, sad eyes.”
“You cannot ask questions,” Chang informs them.
“It’s layin’ down. Big head, little paws. Brown and white. Brown ears, white face. Little spots on his face,” Sawyer narrates.
The marker squeaks against the paper as Juliet makes the first tentative line. She can picture it in her head, this thing he’s describing. But drawing it, it something else entirely. She listens to Sawyer’s voice, which is low and constant. With him leaning against her, every time he draws a breath, she feels it. She imagines he can feel her, too. The way her arm moves. She wants to close her eyes and just listen to his accent, thinking about his mouth.
“Time’s up,” Chang orders. “How did you do.”
Juliet looks down at the dog she drew. It looks more a blobfish. Sawyer’s back no longer presses against hers as he turns, coming around to sit beside her. He holds out the picture, putting it next to her drawing. They aren’t close at all.
“Artists, hand the marker and the paper to your partner. They are going to draw now. This is about communication. Think about what you needed to know, that would have made your drawing better.”
“How about Picasso’s phone number,” Juliet murmurs.
It earns her a little chuckle from Sawyer. She hands him the marker and the cardboard. He turns the cardboard over, to draw on the back, resting it against his knee. He holds the marker up to his nose and takes a sniff, then looks at her and winks. Then he turns the marker over between his fingers, ready to draw.
“Back to back,” Chang orders as he hands a picture to Juliet.
She scoots into position without letting Sawyer see the picture, though he raises his chin like he’s trying to take a peek. She folds her legs and isn’t sure she’s brave enough to lean back against him. But he leans into her, and it makes her feel warm and happy and relaxed.
Looking down at the picture, she says, “It’s a barn and a horse. The horse is to the left of the barn. The barn is in the lower right, and takes up about two-thirds of the picture. It starts about an inch from the right edge -”
“I’m supposed to know how much an inch is?” he says.
“No talking!” Chang roars.
“Forgot my ruler,” Sawyer murmurs.
Juliet goes on describing the image, being as precise as she can. As she speaks, she thinks about the way Sawyer had instructed her. How different his style was from hers. She hears the noise of the marker moving on the paper and she knows his picture is turning out wrong, too.
“It’s about communication,” Chang says again.
How well do they communicate, Juliet thinks, as she describes the horse. Sure, she and Sawyer talk, and sometimes they even flirt a little, but they never really talk about anything serious, anything that matters.
“Time,” Chang says.
Juliet turns to see Sawyer’s picture, wondering how she did. How they did.
She’s a little disappointed to see how far off it is, and in ways that seemed obvious. He’s drawn the barn long-ways, when the picture shows just the narrow edge of it. A million little details.
“You’re a better artist than me,” she says.
“You did better at describin’ it,” Sawyer says.
She shakes her head a little, still looking down at the drawing. His hand has purple ink smeared along the meaty side of it, from moving back and forth as she described things out of logical order.
“Don’t matter,” he tells her.
She meets his eyes and he gives her a little, encouraging smile. She begrudgingly gives him one back. “I wonder what’s next,” she says.
“Give the man a minute and he’ll tell us,” Sawyer says, and of course he is right.
“For the next exercise, sit facing your partner.”
“Told ya.” Sawyer grins at her and scoots along the floor so he’s sitting directly in front of her. His knees are almost, but not quite, touching hers. There’s nowhere to look except at him.
“Look your partner in the eyes.”
Sawyer meets Juliet’s eyes, and she finds it hard to breathe for a second. He licks his lips and it draws her gaze down for a second, to his mouth. He saw her do it, too. When she meets his eyes again, he tilts his head slightly, like he’s intrigued by her.
The rise and fall of his chest is just as rapid as hers is.
“Now, tell your partner something you’ve never told anyone before.”
Juliet’s heart starts to race, and her mouth goes dry. She wonders if Sawyer can sense her panic, then reminds herself that she is proud of the unbreakable calm she projects. Her mind is completely blank, except for thoughts of him.
“I ain’t got a fun fact,” he says.
She blinks. “What?”
“That’s a thing I never said to anyone before,” he points out.
She’s able to breathe again. “Clever,” she admits.
“You know his next move is gonna have us tell the class. See if we’ll betray our partner’s secrets.”
When he says it, she realizes he’s right.
“Figure most of these sheep will go right along,” he says, looking around the room.
“So what do we say?”
“Depends, do you wanna be a sheep here?”
“It might be easier if we were,” she says. She’s aware of Chang pacing, and that they don’t have much time. She’s not sure this is something she wants Sawyer to improvise. “I stole a pencil once,” she confesses. He looks interested. “The teacher handed them out to good girls and boys. Her words, not mine. I wanted it so badly, but there was always some mistake.”
“Why’d you want it so bad?” he asks, which is the last thing she expects.
Because I wanted it and I couldn’t have it, she thinks, with well-remembered longing washing through her again. But she can’t say that, not while she’s looking into his eyes, which are as blue-green as the sea.
“It had unicorns on it,” she says. “Purple and turquoise glittery ones.”
“Sounds like quite a pencil.” They look at each other. “S’pose you never used it. Out of guilt for wrongdoing.”
“Oh, no, I used it until it was this long.” She indicates with her fingers a length barely longer than an eraser and a pencil point.
“Is that a made up story?” he asks her. “Somethin’ for me to share with the class.”
“No,” she says. It never occurred to her. She has deeper, darker secrets. This was just an easy one to tell. And admitting that - that she didn’t lie to him, didn’t make something up - feels almost as intimate as if she had told him a real secret. “What about you?”
“I stole a lot of things,” he says.
Chang is suddenly standing over them. They both look up. “You two. Talk too much,” he admonishes.
“What can I say,” Sawyer says, beginning to launch into something sarcastic.
“You go first,” Chang interrupts. “Tell the class what you just told each other. The secrets.”
Sawyer glances at Juliet. He was right. A bit of shock and fear washes over the class.
“All righty then,” Sawyer says. He looks at Juliet. Like he’s getting her permission. “We got a thief in our midst,” he announces, theatrically. He waits a beat before adding, “Stole a ten cent pencil off her teacher’s desk in - what grade was it, sweetheart?”
“Fourth.”
“Fourth grade,” he repeats. “Old enough to know better, for sure.”
“Fascinating,” Chang says, like he doesn’t care at all. “You, tell his secret now.”
“No,” Juliet says automatically, without even thinking about it.
There’s a wave of surprise through the classroom, as though it had never occurred to anyone that they didn’t have to comply. But Chang smiles.
“Fine,” he says briskly. “Phil, you’re next.”
“Couldn’t make things up fast enough?” Sawyer whispers.
She thinks of all her possible responses. That she knows his secrets. His real secrets. Or she thinks she does. “I wanted to see what would happen.”
“My little rebel,” he says proudly.
“It was your idea,” she points out.
“Lucky thing for some of these yahoos,” he says, as a couple of people follow her example and refuse to breach their partner’s trust.
“You called me sweetheart,” she says. She wants to hear it again.
“I call a lot of people a lot of things,” he admits, like it doesn’t matter. “It piss you off?”
“No, I liked it,” she admits, and wonders if she should have.
He smiles at her. “That’s two secrets,” he says.
“And you still haven’t told me any,” she points out, not expecting it to change.
He opens his mouth, but she’ll never know whether he was going to tell her something or if it would just be another smart remark.
Because Chang claps his hands. “Last one,” he says, producing a box. From it, he withdraws a handful of neckties. “You and your partner will now work together to retrieve an object.” He puts one of the ties into Sawyer’s hand and then moves on, handing them out. “You must find Horace Goodspeed, who will give you something to bring back to me. One of you will be blindfolded and the other is the guide.”
Sawyer looks down at the tie in his hand.
“Choose which of you will be blindfolded and get moving,” Chang orders.
“I’ll do it,” Juliet offers.
“You sure?” Sawyer asks.
They could get into a debate, but instead she just says, “Yes.”
“Fine,” he says. He stretches the tie out to its full length and then moves toward her with it.
“I can -” she offers, reaching for it, but by then he is behind her. He places the blindfold gently over her eyes, and then ties it securely in the back. His hands are gentle, and he’s careful not to catch her hair in the knot. She closes her eyes, because she can’t see anything anyway.
“Pretty kinky shit,” Sawyer mutters to her. Then he waves his hand in front of her face - she can feel the breeze. “No peeking.”
“Of course not,” she agrees. “How do we do this?”
He takes one of her hands in his and pulls her close against his side. Juliet suddenly feels hot all over. “You ready?” he asks.
“Yeah,” she agrees.
“Three steps then a little right turn,” he coaches, guiding her out of the school.
She can hear the other groups around her. Outside, she senses the change in the air and the sun is warm on her face. But it’s disorienting, not being able to see. “Let me go,” she says.
Instantly Sawyer’s hands are no longer touching her. She misses the feeling, the experience, of having him so close. “You sure?” he says.
“Don’t abandon me,” she says, like it should be obvious. “Stay close.” She takes a step forward, and then another one. She doesn’t want to put her hands out in front of her like some kind of a cliché, but she is a little afraid, even though she’s pretty sure Sawyer would warn her if she was about to walk into something.
“You think you’re going in a straight line?” he asks.
“Aren’t I?”
He chuckles. “No. Wandering all over. Want me to -?” She thinks she can feel his hand lingering an inch above hers.
“Okay,” she says, and he takes her hand again.
He coaches, “’bout five more paces that -”
Her foot hits a bump in the grass and she stumbles forward. It’s disorienting, and she thinks she’s going to fall, except for Sawyer’s hand on hers, keeping her steady. “Hey,” she says.
“Didn’t see it,” he says.
“Me either,” she points out. “I’m trusting you, remember.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says.
But she’s still thinking about trust, and the theme of all the experiments today, regardless of whatever Dharma is attempting to investigate or prove. She turns as though to look at him, even though she can’t see anything. “You haven’t really shared anything with me today,” she observes.
“Neither have you.”
“I told you my secret.”
He huffs out something like a laugh. “That weren’t a secret worth tellin’. If it was even true.”
“I don’t tell lies for fun, James,” she says, aware of his hand on hers. She almost wants to pull away, but she can’t, and at the same time she’s afraid that he will.
“No, you tell ‘em as a means of survival. Same as everybody else.”
It’s an astute observation, she thinks, and she finds it interesting from a man who’s made a career of lying, and who has purported to be proud of it. All those lies throughout his life, they felt like survival to him. And that gives them something in common.
He sighs. “Kinda like it here,” he admits softly. A secret. For her. Wrapped up neatly with a squeeze of his palm against hers, and she knows he could only admit it because she can’t see his face. She feels exposed, suddenly, and very aware of her expression, knowing that he must be looking at her.
“Why?” she asks, simply and with a slight hesitation.
He sighs again, and she thinks he’s not going to tell her. He tugs at her hand, pulling her forward, and she frowns until she notices the sounds of people around them, walking through the soft grass, talking. Some of them must be their fellow classmates, careening about blindfolded.
She’s aware now of how close to him she’s standing now, as though the nerve endings in her skin can pick up the electricity between them and conduct it, letting her feel where they both are in space, relative to each other. It’s weird, and she focuses on it for a moment.
“I don’t trust a lot of people. Women,” he says plainly.
Juliet wonders what the hell a woman ever did to him, beyond fill the role of victim. Maybe he’s expecting a roaring attack of karma. But she knows it’s not that - not just that. He doesn’t trust anyone, because he doesn’t even trust himself. It makes her ache inside, because she understands it. He must have lost his trust as a child; she’s lost hers by degrees over the past several years.
“But I trust you,” he says.
It falls upon her like a weight, something physical pressing the soles of her feet deeper into the soft earth. Her hand is still engulfed in his. She’s aware that he’s holding his breath, waiting for her to say something, but she doesn’t know what to say. She nods, but it isn’t until she squeezes his hand that he exhales.
“So you just let me know when you’re ready for that trust fall, Blondie. I’ll catch you.”
It’s telling, these words, and not just that he’s slid back into his usual-Sawyer persona, rebuilding his walls up to the sky. He’s not offering to be the one who falls, even though he just said he trusted her.
She’s the one blindfolded and dependent on him. She’s only here because of him. And she can take that blindfold off at any time.
She cocks her head, listening. “I hear him.”
“Who?”
“Goodspeed,” she replies. “We’re supposed to get something from him, remember?”
“Right.” Sawyer must be looking around. “Which way?”
She listens. “Left,” she replies.
Sawyer bumps into her as they start off in that direction. “There he is.”
There’s shade as they must step under a tree, stopping. Sawyer lets her go and she instinctively wants to grab his hand again. Even though she is just fine on her own.
Juliet hears Horace’s voice. “Take this back with you,” he says, and he must hand whatever it is to Sawyer.
“That’s it?” Juliet asks. “I thought we would have to switch.”
“Nope,” Horace says. “You can go on back.”
“Do you want to switch?” Sawyer asks. “Chang won’t notice.”
“I’m all right,” Juliet says. She holds out her hand for Sawyer’s, but instead he places an object in her palm. It doesn’t weigh much, and it’s cold. She maneuvers it until she can feel it with her fingers. Metallic, rough-edged - it’s a key. “What does it go to?”
“Who the hell knows,” Sawyer says. “Let’s get back.”
Juliet starts walking.
His hands almost immediately grasp her shoulders, turning her. “It’s that way, Helen Keller.” He keeps his hands on her shoulders, walking behind her and guiding her with different nudges. She imagines this must be how a horse feels. Except a horse can see. And has a bridle in its mouth.
“You ever used to wonder what it’d be like?” he asks.
“Hmm?” He nudges her more toward the right.
“Bein’ blind. You ever go wanderin’ around with your eyes closed to try to see what it was like?”
“You did that as a kid?”
“Of course as a kid,” he bristles.
“I think I wanted to be the helper,” Juliet replies. “Like, I can’t remember if it was in the show or one of her books, but I remember Laura Ingalls saying she would be her sister’s eyes for her now, see the things she couldn’t. And tell her about them.”
“You watched that, too?” Sawyer asks.
“I’m pretty sure everyone watched it, James,” she says. “Well, maybe not the people here. Not yet.” They’ve stopped walking. She wants to turn to face him, but she wouldn’t be able to see him. She does it anyway. He inhales audibly.
She’s reminded of the cliché in movies, where a sightless person tries to “see” someone else’s face with their fingers, exploring.
She wants to be touched, by him, here in the darkness behind the blindfold. But they aren’t alone, as much as he feels like her whole world right now, under the warm sunshine. She hesitates for one more breath and then reaches up, putting her hand on the side of his face. The way she’s seen people do on television. If she couldn’t see, and he wasn’t more than a sexy voice and hands on her arms, what would he look like to her? Feel like.
And she’s wanted to touch him for so long. He doesn’t protest, and he doesn’t pull away, so she continues her exploration, comparing what she feels to the image she has of him in her head. The ridges of his cheekbones and the prominence of his scratchy chin. His forehead is hard and broad and hot. She pinches his nose and he lets out a breath. She traces his eye sockets, wondering if he’s closed his eyes too. Then she touches his lips.
They’re soft, and he groans a little. His clothes whisper as he shifts his weight.
She wants him, and she thinks that he wants her too.
“Juliet,” he says, and she feels her name with her fingers, warm breath flowing over her skin.
Then she pulls her hands away, pushing the blindfold up. She blinks in the suddenly unfamiliar sunlight. He is looking at her very seriously, and she feels like she should explain. But he kisses her before she gets the chance.
His lips are as soft against hers as they were against her fingertips. She presses herself against him, kissing him the way she’s been daydreaming about off and on all day. Longer than that. Maybe since she met him.
There’s a small metallic ping, which she knows immediately is the key falling into the soft grass at their feet.
“Oops,” Sawyer says.
One of her hands rests against his chest. “We should get back.”
“Don’t know why,” he grumbles, leaning down to pick up the key again. “You want to -”
“No,” she answers, pulling the blindfold all the way off and looping it around her wrist.
“Think anybody else ended up makin’ out?” he asks her.
She thinks of their other teammates and their partners. She shrugs; it seems unlikely.
“Think this is what they were goin’ for?”
“I mean, team building,” she agrees. In a way it worked. More than expected, really. But she and Sawyer have been a team for a long time. Since she shot one of the Others in the clearing before they could fire, when she told him she had his back and she meant it, but he didn’t believe her until she proved it.
She looks down at the uneven grass beneath her sneakers. Even before that, before they were stranded on the beach and then lost in time. Back when he still hated her, and she volunteered to go back to the beach with him, to save Sayid and Bernard and Jin from her people. She remembers that long walk back, through the tall grass and the jungle, both of them as silent as they are now, thinking their own thoughts.
She tries not to look guilty as they pass through the doorway back into the school and she removes the blindfold from her wrist to hand to Dr. Chang. He doesn’t look happy with them.
He distributes narrow blue-on-white sheets of paper to everyone. “I haven’t seen a scantron sheet in years.”
“Hate these damn things,” he says, glancing at her. “Test anxiety.”
It’s hard for her to imagine Sawyer ever giving a damn about anything like this enough for it to make him feel anxious. Maybe it’s the setting, but she thinks about what he might have been like in school. Class clown comes to mind. She pictures him as a sexy, brooding outcast sitting in the back row, defiantly reading a paperback. She discards the image just as quickly, but it hits her in the pit of her belly, because wasn’t that her fantasy, in all those years she studied hard and raised her hand and sat in the front row, all the while wishing she could go home and put her feet up and read something horrific and full of anger.
She steals a glance at him, and their eyes accidentally meet. She wonders what he’s thinking.
“Now you will answer the questions in the booklet using the form and your number two pencil. Be sure to make your mark dark…”
“Too bad you ain’t got your fancy unicorn pencil.”
Juliet laughs a little at that, and then she makes quick work of the ovals. The questions evaluate how well she knew her partner before and after. And she’s surprised to realize that while she thought she knew Sawyer pretty well, she feels much closer to him now, even despite not paying attention or doing the exercises half the time. They bonded anyway. Maybe due to their lack of participation rather than because of it.
The framework of a new experiment spirals out in her head, something she can picture all at once. But she closes it down, because she doesn’t do research anymore. She fixes Jeeps and VW buses.
She looks over at Sawyer, who appears to be concentrating intently on coloring in the tiny circles with his pencil. She thinks about kissing him out on the village green and wonders if it’s going to happen again, or if it was just circumstances, the exercise, a hundred other things.
He looks at her suddenly and she realizes he’s thinking the exact same thing.
She gives him one of her mysterious smiles, and he gives her one back. But his dimples are showing, and she can imagine she’s got tells too that she’s not even aware of.
“Once your sheet is complete, turn it in and you are free to go,” Chang says.
Juliet’s the first one up, the way she learned to be in med school. She remembers how she used to sit and agonize and wait until someone else turned in their test, so she wouldn’t be first. She puts the scantron on Chang’s desk and exits the classroom.
Out in the sunlight again, it suddenly all feels overwhelming. Then Sawyer emerges from the school. He looks at her for a minute and she’s afraid he’s going to walk away. But he comes over to her and puts his arm around her. She leans into him, feeling his heat and aware of his scent.
Whatever this is, it’s real.
“Guess it worked,” Sawyer says, like he’s reading her thoughts.
“Yes, James,” she says. “It did.”
(end)