Lost; Thursday Morning; Sawyer/Jack, Sawyer/Kate, Jack/Kate
Fandom: Lost
Title: Thursday Morning
Summary: Sawyer had stopped meeting Jack in airport parking lots long before Kate started.
Pairing: Sawyer/Jack, Sawyer/Kate, Jack/Kate
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don’t own Lost or any of it’s characters, sometimes I just like to make them do what I want.
Notes: My mother listens obsessively to Lost podcasts, and apparently one theory is that Penny's father is evil and behind the group to "rescue" them from the island. This runs with that idea.
Thursday Morning
The first time Sawyer wakes up to find he’s alone it’s a Thursday morning. The fact that it’s a Thursday morning is imperative, because on Wednesday at three o’clock she told him she was unhappy. It’s not just that Thursday itself is important off the island, no, all the days of the week are important to him now that they actually mean something again; on the island days of the week meant nothing, just the number thereof. Kate’s always been restless, but now that she’s back here, Sawyer can tell that she’s itching to get out of her skin, itching to get out of the structure of time and days and lines and traffic and waiting, and maybe that’s when Sawyer started to see that while they’d once suited each other beautifully, suddenly in this life they did not. It doesn’t stop him from loving her, it just makes it harder.
She doesn’t have to run now that Penny’s father’s company took care of it all, to cover up the island and Oceanic flight 815. To bribe them into silence. Running’s all Kate knows, though, so now she’s just left with him, and these days there’s not much motion to him. Now dates and days and hours and minutes are all he has to keep him from forgetting that there’d ever been a time when they meant nothing.
He’s the only one she seems to be running from, and the longest she’s been gone for was exactly eight days, 13 hours, and ten minutes. That time he’d seen her leave instead of waking up to find nothing beside him but the dent she’d left in the bed. Somehow the fact that this time he didn’t know she was leaving made things different, like maybe this time it meant something more. Sawyer never much cared for Thursdays anyway.
This sudden obsession with dates and time and Kate, it’s all because of the island. All the survivors have that thing. For instance, Claire listens to Charlie’s CDs over and over again leaving one to wonder how anyone could possibly listen to “You All Everybody” that many times without being committed. Kate finds things to run from and cleans everything from the house to herself almost compulsively. Jin still likes to eat fish he catches himself. And then there’s Jack, Jack and his newfound obsession with airports.
“You remember how Oceanic gave us unlimited free rides? Unlike us, Jack uses them.” Kate had sighed, looking incredibly tired when she had returned home last Saturday, having been gone for close to five hours. If Sawyer was being honest he would say that it was actually five hours and fifteen minutes, but he’s a confidence man, so if he told someone that he didn’t know exactly how long Kate had been gone for they’d probably believe him. He likes to keep himself on his game a bit by lying a little here and there. Not pathologically or anything, just more than maybe necessary. This was the most Kate had ever spoken about her sporadic meetings with Jack. He’d stopped meeting Jack in airport parking lots before Kate had even started.
“Sounds like Jack.” Sawyer said, somehow wishing the old nickname ‘Doc’ rolled off his tongue the way it used to, without even having thinking about it. These days it took more effort than it was worth to fall into his old patterns of distance and nicknames. In the end he realized that the people he’d been with had meant more to him than a whole lifetime worth of people back home. “What’d he want this time?”
He knew that Kate knew there was no jealousy or anger behind his questions; she knew it was curiosity, perhaps even concern. Because of the things he kept from her-his own, admittedly, rare moments with Jack on the island and the places they’d met off of it-she could never know that they’d become something entirely different than they were when they’d first arrived on the island. Instead of disdain there was now understanding. It was hard to hate someone who knew exactly where you’d been and how you felt about it afterwards.
“Sawyer,” Kate said, and Sawyer could have sworn he saw desperation in her eyes, “he wants to go back. He really thinks there’s a way; I just…” She sat down beside him on the couch and rested her forehead on her hand.
“We all want to go home, Kate. That aint nothing new.” Sawyer rolled his eyes, hoping that if he didn’t get worked up she wouldn’t either.
For some reason this made her smile, and her next words surprised them because they were soft and different than anything she’d said to him in recent months. “I never did figure out when and why you stopped calling me Freckles.”
“What’s that got to do with home?” Sawyer laughed.
“I think that’s part of what made the island home.” She smiled, paused, then rose from the couch, putting the sincerity of the moment behind her. “In any case, I think I’m going to get some sleep. Seeing Jack always makes me tired, but this time was worse, somehow. He was really desperate.”
“Can you blame him?” Sawyer asked quietly.
“No, and I don’t think Locke did either.”
“Jack doesn’t know that; he was the reason we got rescued, he didn’t listen to Locke, and now Locke’s dead.”
“None of us would have listened to Locke in Jack’s place. We all stood there and said nothing.” Kate snapped. “We’re the ones who put Jack in charge-”
“I know that!” Sawyer cut her off irritably before she could get more upset. “It’s Jack who don’t know it.”
This seemed to relax her, and she said with defeat, “I just wish we’d been there. I wish we could have at least paid our respects to him. It’s what we owed him. It’s what he deserved.”
“We all have our reasons.” Sawyer couldn’t quite bring himself to meet her eyes, they mirrored his own too much, and right now he wasn’t in the mood to see his reflection. “Locke had his too. He didn’t want us at his funeral, and you know it.”
Kate opened her mouth to say something more, but then with a shake of the head she turned and walked into their bedroom. If this had been approximately three months earlier, Sawyer would have immediately followed her, made love to her, and comforted her. This is one of those times he wished he had exact dates, numbers and times, that could maybe tell him just when and where they’d lost it.
He held his phone in his hands and stared at it for a long time, his thumb resting over the call button and Jack’s name, but he couldn’t bring himself to press down.
*
“Sawyer, why are there three calendars in the house?” Kate had asked one night as Sawyer made his rounds around the house, checking off the date in three separate locations (the kitchen, the living room, and their bedroom.) “I think one would do just fine.” She teased, holding back laughter. He missed her smile sometimes, and if asked what he thought made her stop, he’d say that she missed the island or something along those lines. The truth, however, was slightly more complicated as truths have a tendency to be. Clarity is important when you’re a con, Sawyer has always believed. It’s vital to upholding a lie, even if you’re not completely sure what the truth is yourself, you have to act like you’re sure and know the ins and outs of your lie. Sawyer is very clear on what he believes to be the truth behind Kate’s lost smile. He has a feeling it doesn’t have to do with her missing the island herself, but the way somebody else in particular misses it and blames himself for their untimely departure from it.
“I’m bad with days.” Sawyer grinned at her, coming over to her and unfolding her arms from around her waist. He held her hands in his, and they were so much smaller and so calloused from the island that all at once he felt protective, wistful, and scared that even though he was holding her she was still managing to slip away. “I need a reminder everywhere I go.”
Dates and days and times made him feel grounded. It kept him here instead of drifting back to a time that didn’t quite feel real anymore, because sometimes he woke up on the floor and forgot that he wasn’t back under his tent on the beach. The furniture in their apartment was sparse and simple, it didn’t matter, it would never quite feel like home.
*
When he first agreed to meet Jack in the airport parking lot, he hadn’t realized how much it would mean to the other man. Sawyer hadn’t wanted to leave his apartment; the air was heavy and thick with humidity. It made him lethargic.
“Thought you’d rather see Kate.” He said when he found Jack.
Jack’s words surprised him, “You’re the one I needed to see.”
At the time he hadn’t understood, hadn’t wanted to understand, because maybe the answer was obvious and somehow unflattering. Later, though, it was clear. Kate was breakable in his mind, he loved her too much, but Sawyer was like him in many ways, and Jack knew he would listen.
In some ways Sawyer was the closest to Kate that Jack could let himself come.
*
Jack had kissed him the fourth time they met. They had sat watching the planes overhead the same way they had the time before and the time before that when Jack’s hand suddenly brushed Sawyer’s cheek. He said what Sawyer had known since day one, “This isn’t right, this isn’t home. I was wrong, Sawyer. We need to go back.” Then softer he said, “I want to go back.”
“You think I don’t?” Sawyer said roughly, and Jack had kissed him.
*
The fifth time they met was at Jack’s apartment. It was in a nice building, well cared for and full of self importance just like the people who lived there. After all, Jack could afford to live the way he did, he was still a well regarded doctor. Sawyer and Kate were still living off their bribe money. Sawyer’s eyes were drawn instantly to the piles and piles of maps and notes on the floor. “What on earth is all this?” He lifted a map off the ground. There were circles drawn on different parts of the ocean, and a line that Sawyer recognized going from Sydney to L.A.
By then Jack already had Sawyer’s hips in both of his hands, and he was backing him up towards his bedroom. Sawyer knew tonight wasn’t the night he was going to get answers from Jack, so he took what he could get. He began to undress Jack in the dark, and he had to bite his lips to keep from crying out when Jack wrapped his hands around his cock.
He never would have guessed that when Jack Shepard touched him he would come so undone. Two lifetimes ago he hadn’t even known this man’s name.
*
The first time he called their apartment, Sawyer thought he was calling for Kate. “I’ll go get her-“ He started to say, but Jack cut him off.
“No, wait.” Jack said, and Sawyer found himself accepting directions to the airport where Jack wanted them to meet.
*
Pretty soon he’s with Jack more and more. Sawyer knows it would have killed Kate to see Jack this way, getting progressively worse. The guilt eats at him every day. He blames himself for so many deaths, on and off the island. He drinks and Sawyer can’t bring himself to make Jack stop, and maybe one tear-filled speech from Kate would have done the trick, and maybe that’s something that Jack couldn’t handle.
Sawyer wonders when Jack will finally break, but he can’t, he can’t anymore. So he stops, and finally Jack begins to call Kate. Sawyer pretends he doesn’t know that she tries, but soon he knows she gives up too. He knew the night she crawled into bed and cried herself to sleep when she thought he couldn’t hear.
She stops returning Jack’s calls.
*
Then they both see the article in the paper, and Sawyer knows that this will be the breaking point. Kate’s the one who goes to him, though. When she comes home she tells him what Jack said and asks why he stopped calling her Freckles. There was something in here eyes that Sawyer couldn’t read, but the next night he figures it out.
At about ten thirty P.M. she comes out of their room, looks at him, and this is somehow the beginning of the end.
“You used to see him too.” She says finally.
Sawyer nods.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because,” Sawyer forces himself to meet her eyes because he owes her that much, “I didn’t want you to see him like that.”
“I wish you hadn’t seen him like that either. I wish no one would ever see him like that.” She comes over to him and kisses him, and they make love that night the way they haven’t since the island.
*
Before she leaves for what may be the last time, she says, “I think it’s about time I stop running from everything and pick a destination.”
He smiles and says, “If you ever want to come back, you just say the word.” And it’s the truth.
“I know.” She kisses him, gently, and it almost feels like it means something again.
“Hey,” He stops her as she turns to go, “Do you still love him?”
“Yeah.” She answers. “But so do you.”
He wonders how long she’s known and maybe if that made her mad, made her pull away. Somehow he doesn’t think so, though. Kate needs to find her own way, and if it brings her back, then it brings her back.
“He loves you too.” Sawyer tells her.
“He loves both of us.” She corrects.
And that is how they say goodbye.
*
The morning after she left, it dawned on Sawyer that there was no reason not to go to Jack. He grabbed a change of clothes, a toothbrush, deodorant, and his reading glasses and threw them into his small duffle bag. He got to Jack by nightfall.
The man who opened the door was beyond recognition. Sawyer felt sick. “Beard doesn’t really suit you.” Was all he said.
Jack smiled, and in a way that made him look more like himself. He took a step back, inviting Sawyer inside. Once in, Sawyer saw that it hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d been there, but now there were empty bottles and the room smelled of alcohol. Jack smelled of alcohol, but he could tell he wasn’t drunk.
“What’s going on here, Jack?” Perhaps if he tried a gentler tactic it would break Jack out of whatever funk he was in.
Jack shrugged.
“Look, I know you feel guilty and all about Locke, but it aint your fault. He couldn’t even stand for us to see him alive. You know how he was about being in the wheelchair in front of us, couldn’t stand for anyone to see him weak. ‘Specially not us, cause we knew him when he was at his best.”
“If I hadn’t-if I hadn’t forced him, everyone, off the island he’s still be walking. Rose wouldn’t have died of cancer…I could have really saved them, Sawyer.” Jack’s voice sounded like it was going to break, like he was on the verge of something Sawyer did not want to see. “I thought I was saving them, but I wasn’t.”
“They thought you were saving them too, Jack. You used to be our hero.” Sawyer whispered angrily, “Our fearless leader, Doc. What the hell happened to you?” But he already knew the answer, it was the same thing that had happened to all of them. Before the island they were all broken, but now they were just fragments, and it was harder to glue those pieces back together.
“I was never cut out for that job. I never asked for that job.” Jack said helplessly, and Sawyer knew there was nothing else he could say to make this better for Jack.
“Come here.” Roughly, Sawyer kissed Jack, his hands grazing the beard and then coming to rest on Jack’s cheeks. Jack returned the kiss hungrily, and pulled Sawyer closer to him. When Sawyer broke the kiss he took Jack’s hand and silently pulled him towards the bathroom.
“Sawyer, what are you doing?” Jack let out a shocked laugh as Sawyer took out shaving cream and began to apply it to Jack’s face.
“I’m cleaning you up, what’s it look like I’m doing?”
Suddenly, Jack was laughing, actually laughing, and for what it was worth Sawyer felt like he was happier than he’d been in weeks. He cleaned Jack up, and then kissed him again, because it was almost just like the Jack he’d known before, the Jack he wanted back. He made love to Jack in the shower, and then again in bed an hour or so later. And this time he didn’t leave when they were done.
*
It was one o’clock, Thursday morning when Sawyer jerked out of sleep to find himself alone. He wondered how far Jack had gone and if this meant goodbye, and whether or not he’d had the decency to maybe leave some sort of note. When Sawyer stepped out of the bedroom, though, he found Jack sitting among the maps and papers that had grown to be a part of the room. Jack was drinking from a bottle of whisky, and his eyes looked red.
For all the good he’d done, as much as Jack resembled the person Sawyer felt was buried somewhere under this cracked, shell of a man, he knew he wasn’t going to be the one to fix Jack, not tonight anyway. So when Jack picked up the bottle of whiskey, and looked right into Sawyer’s eyes as he took a sip, Sawyer found himself gently taking the bottle from Jack’s hands, and eyes never leaving Jack’s, he pressed the bottle to his lips and joined him.
Title: Thursday Morning
Summary: Sawyer had stopped meeting Jack in airport parking lots long before Kate started.
Pairing: Sawyer/Jack, Sawyer/Kate, Jack/Kate
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don’t own Lost or any of it’s characters, sometimes I just like to make them do what I want.
Notes: My mother listens obsessively to Lost podcasts, and apparently one theory is that Penny's father is evil and behind the group to "rescue" them from the island. This runs with that idea.
Thursday Morning
The first time Sawyer wakes up to find he’s alone it’s a Thursday morning. The fact that it’s a Thursday morning is imperative, because on Wednesday at three o’clock she told him she was unhappy. It’s not just that Thursday itself is important off the island, no, all the days of the week are important to him now that they actually mean something again; on the island days of the week meant nothing, just the number thereof. Kate’s always been restless, but now that she’s back here, Sawyer can tell that she’s itching to get out of her skin, itching to get out of the structure of time and days and lines and traffic and waiting, and maybe that’s when Sawyer started to see that while they’d once suited each other beautifully, suddenly in this life they did not. It doesn’t stop him from loving her, it just makes it harder.
She doesn’t have to run now that Penny’s father’s company took care of it all, to cover up the island and Oceanic flight 815. To bribe them into silence. Running’s all Kate knows, though, so now she’s just left with him, and these days there’s not much motion to him. Now dates and days and hours and minutes are all he has to keep him from forgetting that there’d ever been a time when they meant nothing.
He’s the only one she seems to be running from, and the longest she’s been gone for was exactly eight days, 13 hours, and ten minutes. That time he’d seen her leave instead of waking up to find nothing beside him but the dent she’d left in the bed. Somehow the fact that this time he didn’t know she was leaving made things different, like maybe this time it meant something more. Sawyer never much cared for Thursdays anyway.
This sudden obsession with dates and time and Kate, it’s all because of the island. All the survivors have that thing. For instance, Claire listens to Charlie’s CDs over and over again leaving one to wonder how anyone could possibly listen to “You All Everybody” that many times without being committed. Kate finds things to run from and cleans everything from the house to herself almost compulsively. Jin still likes to eat fish he catches himself. And then there’s Jack, Jack and his newfound obsession with airports.
“You remember how Oceanic gave us unlimited free rides? Unlike us, Jack uses them.” Kate had sighed, looking incredibly tired when she had returned home last Saturday, having been gone for close to five hours. If Sawyer was being honest he would say that it was actually five hours and fifteen minutes, but he’s a confidence man, so if he told someone that he didn’t know exactly how long Kate had been gone for they’d probably believe him. He likes to keep himself on his game a bit by lying a little here and there. Not pathologically or anything, just more than maybe necessary. This was the most Kate had ever spoken about her sporadic meetings with Jack. He’d stopped meeting Jack in airport parking lots before Kate had even started.
“Sounds like Jack.” Sawyer said, somehow wishing the old nickname ‘Doc’ rolled off his tongue the way it used to, without even having thinking about it. These days it took more effort than it was worth to fall into his old patterns of distance and nicknames. In the end he realized that the people he’d been with had meant more to him than a whole lifetime worth of people back home. “What’d he want this time?”
He knew that Kate knew there was no jealousy or anger behind his questions; she knew it was curiosity, perhaps even concern. Because of the things he kept from her-his own, admittedly, rare moments with Jack on the island and the places they’d met off of it-she could never know that they’d become something entirely different than they were when they’d first arrived on the island. Instead of disdain there was now understanding. It was hard to hate someone who knew exactly where you’d been and how you felt about it afterwards.
“Sawyer,” Kate said, and Sawyer could have sworn he saw desperation in her eyes, “he wants to go back. He really thinks there’s a way; I just…” She sat down beside him on the couch and rested her forehead on her hand.
“We all want to go home, Kate. That aint nothing new.” Sawyer rolled his eyes, hoping that if he didn’t get worked up she wouldn’t either.
For some reason this made her smile, and her next words surprised them because they were soft and different than anything she’d said to him in recent months. “I never did figure out when and why you stopped calling me Freckles.”
“What’s that got to do with home?” Sawyer laughed.
“I think that’s part of what made the island home.” She smiled, paused, then rose from the couch, putting the sincerity of the moment behind her. “In any case, I think I’m going to get some sleep. Seeing Jack always makes me tired, but this time was worse, somehow. He was really desperate.”
“Can you blame him?” Sawyer asked quietly.
“No, and I don’t think Locke did either.”
“Jack doesn’t know that; he was the reason we got rescued, he didn’t listen to Locke, and now Locke’s dead.”
“None of us would have listened to Locke in Jack’s place. We all stood there and said nothing.” Kate snapped. “We’re the ones who put Jack in charge-”
“I know that!” Sawyer cut her off irritably before she could get more upset. “It’s Jack who don’t know it.”
This seemed to relax her, and she said with defeat, “I just wish we’d been there. I wish we could have at least paid our respects to him. It’s what we owed him. It’s what he deserved.”
“We all have our reasons.” Sawyer couldn’t quite bring himself to meet her eyes, they mirrored his own too much, and right now he wasn’t in the mood to see his reflection. “Locke had his too. He didn’t want us at his funeral, and you know it.”
Kate opened her mouth to say something more, but then with a shake of the head she turned and walked into their bedroom. If this had been approximately three months earlier, Sawyer would have immediately followed her, made love to her, and comforted her. This is one of those times he wished he had exact dates, numbers and times, that could maybe tell him just when and where they’d lost it.
He held his phone in his hands and stared at it for a long time, his thumb resting over the call button and Jack’s name, but he couldn’t bring himself to press down.
*
“Sawyer, why are there three calendars in the house?” Kate had asked one night as Sawyer made his rounds around the house, checking off the date in three separate locations (the kitchen, the living room, and their bedroom.) “I think one would do just fine.” She teased, holding back laughter. He missed her smile sometimes, and if asked what he thought made her stop, he’d say that she missed the island or something along those lines. The truth, however, was slightly more complicated as truths have a tendency to be. Clarity is important when you’re a con, Sawyer has always believed. It’s vital to upholding a lie, even if you’re not completely sure what the truth is yourself, you have to act like you’re sure and know the ins and outs of your lie. Sawyer is very clear on what he believes to be the truth behind Kate’s lost smile. He has a feeling it doesn’t have to do with her missing the island herself, but the way somebody else in particular misses it and blames himself for their untimely departure from it.
“I’m bad with days.” Sawyer grinned at her, coming over to her and unfolding her arms from around her waist. He held her hands in his, and they were so much smaller and so calloused from the island that all at once he felt protective, wistful, and scared that even though he was holding her she was still managing to slip away. “I need a reminder everywhere I go.”
Dates and days and times made him feel grounded. It kept him here instead of drifting back to a time that didn’t quite feel real anymore, because sometimes he woke up on the floor and forgot that he wasn’t back under his tent on the beach. The furniture in their apartment was sparse and simple, it didn’t matter, it would never quite feel like home.
*
When he first agreed to meet Jack in the airport parking lot, he hadn’t realized how much it would mean to the other man. Sawyer hadn’t wanted to leave his apartment; the air was heavy and thick with humidity. It made him lethargic.
“Thought you’d rather see Kate.” He said when he found Jack.
Jack’s words surprised him, “You’re the one I needed to see.”
At the time he hadn’t understood, hadn’t wanted to understand, because maybe the answer was obvious and somehow unflattering. Later, though, it was clear. Kate was breakable in his mind, he loved her too much, but Sawyer was like him in many ways, and Jack knew he would listen.
In some ways Sawyer was the closest to Kate that Jack could let himself come.
*
Jack had kissed him the fourth time they met. They had sat watching the planes overhead the same way they had the time before and the time before that when Jack’s hand suddenly brushed Sawyer’s cheek. He said what Sawyer had known since day one, “This isn’t right, this isn’t home. I was wrong, Sawyer. We need to go back.” Then softer he said, “I want to go back.”
“You think I don’t?” Sawyer said roughly, and Jack had kissed him.
*
The fifth time they met was at Jack’s apartment. It was in a nice building, well cared for and full of self importance just like the people who lived there. After all, Jack could afford to live the way he did, he was still a well regarded doctor. Sawyer and Kate were still living off their bribe money. Sawyer’s eyes were drawn instantly to the piles and piles of maps and notes on the floor. “What on earth is all this?” He lifted a map off the ground. There were circles drawn on different parts of the ocean, and a line that Sawyer recognized going from Sydney to L.A.
By then Jack already had Sawyer’s hips in both of his hands, and he was backing him up towards his bedroom. Sawyer knew tonight wasn’t the night he was going to get answers from Jack, so he took what he could get. He began to undress Jack in the dark, and he had to bite his lips to keep from crying out when Jack wrapped his hands around his cock.
He never would have guessed that when Jack Shepard touched him he would come so undone. Two lifetimes ago he hadn’t even known this man’s name.
*
The first time he called their apartment, Sawyer thought he was calling for Kate. “I’ll go get her-“ He started to say, but Jack cut him off.
“No, wait.” Jack said, and Sawyer found himself accepting directions to the airport where Jack wanted them to meet.
*
Pretty soon he’s with Jack more and more. Sawyer knows it would have killed Kate to see Jack this way, getting progressively worse. The guilt eats at him every day. He blames himself for so many deaths, on and off the island. He drinks and Sawyer can’t bring himself to make Jack stop, and maybe one tear-filled speech from Kate would have done the trick, and maybe that’s something that Jack couldn’t handle.
Sawyer wonders when Jack will finally break, but he can’t, he can’t anymore. So he stops, and finally Jack begins to call Kate. Sawyer pretends he doesn’t know that she tries, but soon he knows she gives up too. He knew the night she crawled into bed and cried herself to sleep when she thought he couldn’t hear.
She stops returning Jack’s calls.
*
Then they both see the article in the paper, and Sawyer knows that this will be the breaking point. Kate’s the one who goes to him, though. When she comes home she tells him what Jack said and asks why he stopped calling her Freckles. There was something in here eyes that Sawyer couldn’t read, but the next night he figures it out.
At about ten thirty P.M. she comes out of their room, looks at him, and this is somehow the beginning of the end.
“You used to see him too.” She says finally.
Sawyer nods.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because,” Sawyer forces himself to meet her eyes because he owes her that much, “I didn’t want you to see him like that.”
“I wish you hadn’t seen him like that either. I wish no one would ever see him like that.” She comes over to him and kisses him, and they make love that night the way they haven’t since the island.
*
Before she leaves for what may be the last time, she says, “I think it’s about time I stop running from everything and pick a destination.”
He smiles and says, “If you ever want to come back, you just say the word.” And it’s the truth.
“I know.” She kisses him, gently, and it almost feels like it means something again.
“Hey,” He stops her as she turns to go, “Do you still love him?”
“Yeah.” She answers. “But so do you.”
He wonders how long she’s known and maybe if that made her mad, made her pull away. Somehow he doesn’t think so, though. Kate needs to find her own way, and if it brings her back, then it brings her back.
“He loves you too.” Sawyer tells her.
“He loves both of us.” She corrects.
And that is how they say goodbye.
*
The morning after she left, it dawned on Sawyer that there was no reason not to go to Jack. He grabbed a change of clothes, a toothbrush, deodorant, and his reading glasses and threw them into his small duffle bag. He got to Jack by nightfall.
The man who opened the door was beyond recognition. Sawyer felt sick. “Beard doesn’t really suit you.” Was all he said.
Jack smiled, and in a way that made him look more like himself. He took a step back, inviting Sawyer inside. Once in, Sawyer saw that it hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d been there, but now there were empty bottles and the room smelled of alcohol. Jack smelled of alcohol, but he could tell he wasn’t drunk.
“What’s going on here, Jack?” Perhaps if he tried a gentler tactic it would break Jack out of whatever funk he was in.
Jack shrugged.
“Look, I know you feel guilty and all about Locke, but it aint your fault. He couldn’t even stand for us to see him alive. You know how he was about being in the wheelchair in front of us, couldn’t stand for anyone to see him weak. ‘Specially not us, cause we knew him when he was at his best.”
“If I hadn’t-if I hadn’t forced him, everyone, off the island he’s still be walking. Rose wouldn’t have died of cancer…I could have really saved them, Sawyer.” Jack’s voice sounded like it was going to break, like he was on the verge of something Sawyer did not want to see. “I thought I was saving them, but I wasn’t.”
“They thought you were saving them too, Jack. You used to be our hero.” Sawyer whispered angrily, “Our fearless leader, Doc. What the hell happened to you?” But he already knew the answer, it was the same thing that had happened to all of them. Before the island they were all broken, but now they were just fragments, and it was harder to glue those pieces back together.
“I was never cut out for that job. I never asked for that job.” Jack said helplessly, and Sawyer knew there was nothing else he could say to make this better for Jack.
“Come here.” Roughly, Sawyer kissed Jack, his hands grazing the beard and then coming to rest on Jack’s cheeks. Jack returned the kiss hungrily, and pulled Sawyer closer to him. When Sawyer broke the kiss he took Jack’s hand and silently pulled him towards the bathroom.
“Sawyer, what are you doing?” Jack let out a shocked laugh as Sawyer took out shaving cream and began to apply it to Jack’s face.
“I’m cleaning you up, what’s it look like I’m doing?”
Suddenly, Jack was laughing, actually laughing, and for what it was worth Sawyer felt like he was happier than he’d been in weeks. He cleaned Jack up, and then kissed him again, because it was almost just like the Jack he’d known before, the Jack he wanted back. He made love to Jack in the shower, and then again in bed an hour or so later. And this time he didn’t leave when they were done.
*
It was one o’clock, Thursday morning when Sawyer jerked out of sleep to find himself alone. He wondered how far Jack had gone and if this meant goodbye, and whether or not he’d had the decency to maybe leave some sort of note. When Sawyer stepped out of the bedroom, though, he found Jack sitting among the maps and papers that had grown to be a part of the room. Jack was drinking from a bottle of whisky, and his eyes looked red.
For all the good he’d done, as much as Jack resembled the person Sawyer felt was buried somewhere under this cracked, shell of a man, he knew he wasn’t going to be the one to fix Jack, not tonight anyway. So when Jack picked up the bottle of whiskey, and looked right into Sawyer’s eyes as he took a sip, Sawyer found himself gently taking the bottle from Jack’s hands, and eyes never leaving Jack’s, he pressed the bottle to his lips and joined him.