(no subject)
Title: Disintegration
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Sawyer, various other characters. Pairings include Sawyer/Kate, Sawyer/Juliet, Sawyer/Cass, and, if you read in between the lines, Sawyer/Jack.
Word Count: 1,677
Rating: R
Author's Notes: I am very, very nervous about this one. Even I might consider it reaching.
Summary: Very, very AU. He cuts them (or maybe it's himself) off one by one.
He cuts them (or maybe it’s himself) off one by one.
---
Year 1
He wakes up to the smell of recently washed sheets (the pillow his face is buried in), coffee (home brewed for once), and her (but not the one he wants).
The walls are white, the linens are white, the curtains that barely cover the glaring sun that filters through the window could be called white if they weren’t so transparent. It’s all so sterile, so clean. Harsh.
Harsh like her.
She slides into bed, faces him, long blonde hair, ever so slightly tanned skin, and not much else. Against those sheets, under these bright lights, you can see everything, every little flaw that makes her not one but two different men’s second choices. She is not soft, she is not perfect; she doesn’t even bother to pretend that she is.
Perhaps that’s why he’s here with her: she doesn’t pretend and he’s losing his taste for that very same game. It’s isn’t a constant guessing game with her, unraveling her past, finding out what makes her tick or what buttons to push. She’s direct enough for him to avoid that. If she wasn’t he’s not sure he would even bother.
Juliet's lips find his, no words, less a gently good morning kiss and more sensual, more of a ‘thanks for last night and by the way here’s what you’ll be missing’. Because he isn’t going to stay. They both know that isn’t what this is about.
She isn’t what this is about.
She doesn’t seem to mind or really care all that much. This is just a good time to her and he can live his own life all he wants because she’s certainly got her own. She doesn’t need him.
That’s what makes this easy; knowing that whether he calls or not, whether they ever do this again or not, doesn’t really matter to her. He’s not trapped; he can leave whenever he wants.
The fact that he kind of feels cheated because of it - well that doesn’t really matter either.
---
Year 2
Six months of Juliet and a lot of carelessness only got him so far in the end. Specifically it got him right back where he started.
With Kate. Remembering why he left in the first place.
They don’t work. Not at all.
She can’t stay in one place; always feels smothered. He tends to revert to his old habits, conning and sleeping with rich women. They wind up wanting to kill each other. Such is life.
However now that he’s tried, tried to overlook all the reasons he deemed this relationship doomed in the first place, he wants out more than ever.
Because every time they kiss he thinks about the way they were on the island, how good they were back then (good compared to this anyway) and wonders why it doesn’t translate here. Perhaps fear really is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
He will leave her. He will leave her before she has the chance to leave him. That’s just the way he is. He is not going to be the one who gets hurt here.
He’d rather live his life regretting not giving them one more chance then stay here with her, trying to figure out where the hell they went wrong.
This ain’t no love story; it sure as hell ain’t going to end like one.
---
Year 3
He does wind up leaving her.
Call it his New Year’s resolution because he packs up his stuff and drives out of the city before 2007 is a week old.
By May he’s back again, thanks to a midnight phone call in which she tearfully pleaded with him to come back, not for her but for Jack. “I can’t handle this anymore,” she says like he could do a much better job at it.
Jack’s apartment smells like a still and Jack himself isn’t much better. He thinks of all the times Jack had claimed he’d never be like his father and then he thinks of the man in the bar in Sydney. Don’t say never.
Really though, he’s not sure what Kate expected him to do to help their fallen hero besides clean him up, clean out most of his stash (drinking it, mind you, not tossing it, because it’s a shame to waste), and apparently keep him off bridges. There’s not a whole hell of a lot anyone can do. Jack’s guilty and he’s probably going to stay that way until he gets either gets back to that godforsaken island (unlikely) or drinks himself to death (much more likely).
He stays with Jack for awhile anyway, if only because he’s in worse shape than Sawyer himself is. Makes his life seem better in comparison.
As soon as Jack figures out that he has someone who isn’t going anywhere no matter what he tries to pull however Jack starts to come out of this. He starts to talk and make sense. He starts to be sober for more than three hours in a row. He stops needing to get on planes once a week and praying they crash.
And just like with the others, Sawyer leaves before Jack can stop needing him.
---
Year 4
He sees them on the street one day.
And he uses the term “them” because at first that’s all they are to him. Them as in those idiot pedestrians he almost ran over with his car. A woman and a kid, maybe six or seven. Doesn’t know, doesn’t care, just wants to get out of there.
Except the woman turns and screams back at him. Short brown hair and a hint of fire in her eyes and through tinted windows he watches her go from a stranger on the street to a very familiar face.
Cass. His Cass. And if he trusts his gut (and if there’s one thing he’s learned…) then he also knows who that little girl is.
He doesn’t know what she screams at him. He can’t hear her through the door, over the radio, over his own thoughts. He can’t hear her, or at the very least can’t process it, because he knows that in this split second he has a decision to make.
He can roll down that window and walk back into their lives or he can keep on going.
As usual, he takes the easy route.
---
Year 5
“You have three messages.”
He wonders how anyone had gotten his number.
“Message 1.”
“I’m in town for a conference so I figured I’d look you up while I’m here. I’m staying at the Marriott until the 25th.”
He skips the rest of it. Even hearing her voice isn’t important enough to keep listening. Juliet is nothing to him but a good lay, four years later.
The 25th has passed anyways. That’s what he gets for ignoring the flashing red light on the machine until he couldn’t take it anymore and curiosity get the better of him.
“Message 2.”
“I thought you’d want to know whoever gave Kate that free pass out of jail...or whatever it was...”
Jack’s voice is heavy, and sober, in more ways than one.
“Anyway it’s been rescinded. And she’s going to jail. I don’t know if you care or if you’re even ever going to listen to this but I just thought you should know.”
He doesn’t press delete, doesn’t press anything, just sits there, let’s that sink in, tries to decide exactly how that makes him feel.
It could’ve been him, he reminds himself, it could’ve been him who got caught.
“Message 3.”
“Hey, I don’t know if you got my last message, I don’t even know if you’re still alive...but she’s been asking for you.”
Jack again, slurring out the words that tug at his heartstrings.
“She’s been asking for you Sawyer and you at least fucking owe her this.”
He can hear the tears in Jack’s voice, he can hear the emotion, and he wants to make it stop but he can’t, he’s too frozen in place.
“Please, please call me when you get this. Call someone.”
A click. Jack hangs up, gives up. The resounding beep of the machine, telling him there aren’t any more messages, the noise not unlike that of a heart monitor as it flat-lines.
This, this knot in his gut, this feeling of loss, this is why he’s been running away from them. This is why he doesn’t answer their calls. This is why he cuts them off.
He wants to disconnect. He doesn’t want to feel anything when he thinks of the survivors of Oceanic 815.
As a con man he did his best not to get involved. When he did he faltered. Cass was a perfect example of that. He applied the same rule to people. Don’t get involved and they can’t hurt you.
He got involved; he faltered. No amount of running and hiding can change that.
Not for Sawyer anyway.
---
Year 8
There is a man named Jeff.
Jeff is a mostly sarcastic, snarky man who happens to have a heart underneath his seemingly heartless exterior.
This man, named Jeff, has a house, and a steady job.
Jeff also has a girlfriend, a feisty brunette who goes by Sam, a product of her self-proclaimed tomboyish childhood.
Jeff lives in a landlocked state. Jeff avoids beaches.
Jeff travels by car, never by plane.
Jeff does not own an answering machine.
Sam, the girlfriend, once asked Jeff, over breakfast one morning, if he ever remembered what happened to that plane that crashed, the one that flew for Oceanic. Jeff said no.
Sam, the overly curious girlfriend, whose father, unbeknownst to Jeff, is a private investigator, is very interested to learn that Jeff didn’t exist up until three years ago.
Jeff lies about that. Jeff is good at lying.
And Sawyer, the man who cons, cheats, lives primarily in hotel rooms, except for that stint where he called an island in the South Pacific home? Well he’s all but disappeared.
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Sawyer, various other characters. Pairings include Sawyer/Kate, Sawyer/Juliet, Sawyer/Cass, and, if you read in between the lines, Sawyer/Jack.
Word Count: 1,677
Rating: R
Author's Notes: I am very, very nervous about this one. Even I might consider it reaching.
Summary: Very, very AU. He cuts them (or maybe it's himself) off one by one.
He cuts them (or maybe it’s himself) off one by one.
---
Year 1
He wakes up to the smell of recently washed sheets (the pillow his face is buried in), coffee (home brewed for once), and her (but not the one he wants).
The walls are white, the linens are white, the curtains that barely cover the glaring sun that filters through the window could be called white if they weren’t so transparent. It’s all so sterile, so clean. Harsh.
Harsh like her.
She slides into bed, faces him, long blonde hair, ever so slightly tanned skin, and not much else. Against those sheets, under these bright lights, you can see everything, every little flaw that makes her not one but two different men’s second choices. She is not soft, she is not perfect; she doesn’t even bother to pretend that she is.
Perhaps that’s why he’s here with her: she doesn’t pretend and he’s losing his taste for that very same game. It’s isn’t a constant guessing game with her, unraveling her past, finding out what makes her tick or what buttons to push. She’s direct enough for him to avoid that. If she wasn’t he’s not sure he would even bother.
Juliet's lips find his, no words, less a gently good morning kiss and more sensual, more of a ‘thanks for last night and by the way here’s what you’ll be missing’. Because he isn’t going to stay. They both know that isn’t what this is about.
She isn’t what this is about.
She doesn’t seem to mind or really care all that much. This is just a good time to her and he can live his own life all he wants because she’s certainly got her own. She doesn’t need him.
That’s what makes this easy; knowing that whether he calls or not, whether they ever do this again or not, doesn’t really matter to her. He’s not trapped; he can leave whenever he wants.
The fact that he kind of feels cheated because of it - well that doesn’t really matter either.
---
Year 2
Six months of Juliet and a lot of carelessness only got him so far in the end. Specifically it got him right back where he started.
With Kate. Remembering why he left in the first place.
They don’t work. Not at all.
She can’t stay in one place; always feels smothered. He tends to revert to his old habits, conning and sleeping with rich women. They wind up wanting to kill each other. Such is life.
However now that he’s tried, tried to overlook all the reasons he deemed this relationship doomed in the first place, he wants out more than ever.
Because every time they kiss he thinks about the way they were on the island, how good they were back then (good compared to this anyway) and wonders why it doesn’t translate here. Perhaps fear really is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
He will leave her. He will leave her before she has the chance to leave him. That’s just the way he is. He is not going to be the one who gets hurt here.
He’d rather live his life regretting not giving them one more chance then stay here with her, trying to figure out where the hell they went wrong.
This ain’t no love story; it sure as hell ain’t going to end like one.
---
Year 3
He does wind up leaving her.
Call it his New Year’s resolution because he packs up his stuff and drives out of the city before 2007 is a week old.
By May he’s back again, thanks to a midnight phone call in which she tearfully pleaded with him to come back, not for her but for Jack. “I can’t handle this anymore,” she says like he could do a much better job at it.
Jack’s apartment smells like a still and Jack himself isn’t much better. He thinks of all the times Jack had claimed he’d never be like his father and then he thinks of the man in the bar in Sydney. Don’t say never.
Really though, he’s not sure what Kate expected him to do to help their fallen hero besides clean him up, clean out most of his stash (drinking it, mind you, not tossing it, because it’s a shame to waste), and apparently keep him off bridges. There’s not a whole hell of a lot anyone can do. Jack’s guilty and he’s probably going to stay that way until he gets either gets back to that godforsaken island (unlikely) or drinks himself to death (much more likely).
He stays with Jack for awhile anyway, if only because he’s in worse shape than Sawyer himself is. Makes his life seem better in comparison.
As soon as Jack figures out that he has someone who isn’t going anywhere no matter what he tries to pull however Jack starts to come out of this. He starts to talk and make sense. He starts to be sober for more than three hours in a row. He stops needing to get on planes once a week and praying they crash.
And just like with the others, Sawyer leaves before Jack can stop needing him.
---
Year 4
He sees them on the street one day.
And he uses the term “them” because at first that’s all they are to him. Them as in those idiot pedestrians he almost ran over with his car. A woman and a kid, maybe six or seven. Doesn’t know, doesn’t care, just wants to get out of there.
Except the woman turns and screams back at him. Short brown hair and a hint of fire in her eyes and through tinted windows he watches her go from a stranger on the street to a very familiar face.
Cass. His Cass. And if he trusts his gut (and if there’s one thing he’s learned…) then he also knows who that little girl is.
He doesn’t know what she screams at him. He can’t hear her through the door, over the radio, over his own thoughts. He can’t hear her, or at the very least can’t process it, because he knows that in this split second he has a decision to make.
He can roll down that window and walk back into their lives or he can keep on going.
As usual, he takes the easy route.
---
Year 5
“You have three messages.”
He wonders how anyone had gotten his number.
“Message 1.”
“I’m in town for a conference so I figured I’d look you up while I’m here. I’m staying at the Marriott until the 25th.”
He skips the rest of it. Even hearing her voice isn’t important enough to keep listening. Juliet is nothing to him but a good lay, four years later.
The 25th has passed anyways. That’s what he gets for ignoring the flashing red light on the machine until he couldn’t take it anymore and curiosity get the better of him.
“Message 2.”
“I thought you’d want to know whoever gave Kate that free pass out of jail...or whatever it was...”
Jack’s voice is heavy, and sober, in more ways than one.
“Anyway it’s been rescinded. And she’s going to jail. I don’t know if you care or if you’re even ever going to listen to this but I just thought you should know.”
He doesn’t press delete, doesn’t press anything, just sits there, let’s that sink in, tries to decide exactly how that makes him feel.
It could’ve been him, he reminds himself, it could’ve been him who got caught.
“Message 3.”
“Hey, I don’t know if you got my last message, I don’t even know if you’re still alive...but she’s been asking for you.”
Jack again, slurring out the words that tug at his heartstrings.
“She’s been asking for you Sawyer and you at least fucking owe her this.”
He can hear the tears in Jack’s voice, he can hear the emotion, and he wants to make it stop but he can’t, he’s too frozen in place.
“Please, please call me when you get this. Call someone.”
A click. Jack hangs up, gives up. The resounding beep of the machine, telling him there aren’t any more messages, the noise not unlike that of a heart monitor as it flat-lines.
This, this knot in his gut, this feeling of loss, this is why he’s been running away from them. This is why he doesn’t answer their calls. This is why he cuts them off.
He wants to disconnect. He doesn’t want to feel anything when he thinks of the survivors of Oceanic 815.
As a con man he did his best not to get involved. When he did he faltered. Cass was a perfect example of that. He applied the same rule to people. Don’t get involved and they can’t hurt you.
He got involved; he faltered. No amount of running and hiding can change that.
Not for Sawyer anyway.
---
Year 8
There is a man named Jeff.
Jeff is a mostly sarcastic, snarky man who happens to have a heart underneath his seemingly heartless exterior.
This man, named Jeff, has a house, and a steady job.
Jeff also has a girlfriend, a feisty brunette who goes by Sam, a product of her self-proclaimed tomboyish childhood.
Jeff lives in a landlocked state. Jeff avoids beaches.
Jeff travels by car, never by plane.
Jeff does not own an answering machine.
Sam, the girlfriend, once asked Jeff, over breakfast one morning, if he ever remembered what happened to that plane that crashed, the one that flew for Oceanic. Jeff said no.
Sam, the overly curious girlfriend, whose father, unbeknownst to Jeff, is a private investigator, is very interested to learn that Jeff didn’t exist up until three years ago.
Jeff lies about that. Jeff is good at lying.
And Sawyer, the man who cons, cheats, lives primarily in hotel rooms, except for that stint where he called an island in the South Pacific home? Well he’s all but disappeared.