(no subject)
Title: Tire Tracks and Asphalt Curves
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Sawyer, Claire.
Word Count: 2,979
Rating: R
Author's Notes: This did not go as planned. It was supposed to be Jawyercita, but it didn't want to listen. So it's Jack/Sawyer, with a lot of Claire. Which is okay, because I have a Jawyercita plot bunny in mind.
Summary: AU, post island. "It's a thirteen hour drive, Claire. Thirteen hours."
1.
“How far away do you even live?” She’s watching the open road, because he sure as hell isn’t going to look at her if he keeps driving at this speed. Not that it would matter. It’s been nothing but miles of open highway. They’ve been on the road for an hour.
“Far. Far enough that I shouldn’t have even driven down here.”
“And you expected me to fly?” He gives her a sidelong glance, one that isn’t trying to remind her that he did drag his ass all the way out here to retrieve her. But it does. And if she weren’t so tired, if she weren’t so utterly freakin’ exhausted she might give him so more credit. The credit he deserves. She might not so sound so bitter, so inconvenienced. But Claire, little miss virgin mother, perfect Claire, is done with worrying about how other people see her. “What?”
“It’s a thirteen hour drive Claire. Thirteen hours.”
“Well then why didn’t you just say no?”
“Because then what were you going to do?”
Of course he answers a question with a question. This is starting to become a pattern with them. As long as he doesn’t have to talk about himself. As long as it’s still about her. Everything’s about anyone but him. “You don’t always have to be the hero Jack. This isn’t the island anymore.”
But with her in his car, with her anywhere near him - she’d said that blood ties meant nothing, that man named Christian, that was Jack’s father, not hers - it might as well be.
---
3.
“Have you heard from anyone?” She doesn’t want to talk about herself either. And if they can’t talk about her, and they can’t talk about him, then someone else has got to come up. She can’t sit in the dead silence, and she doesn’t want to listen to the radio fade in and out as they get farther and farther away. They’re calling for nothing but straight sunshine, weather for a state they won’t even be in a few short hours from now. He’s not answering; she prompts him. “Kate?”
“She’s in - “ and it’s almost like he’s forgotten. It’s almost like she should be searching the back of the car, under all that luggage, asking him if he’s had anything to drink and should she be driving. For a moment she thinks this. For a moment she must’ve forgotten that maybe Kate’s not the best person to ask after if she’s trying to bypass putting the focus on him again. Still, he answers. “She’s not in jail.”
“Oh,” she replies, filling space, lost for words and conversation once again. She doesn’t know what his answer is supposed to mean, she doesn’t even know if this is his way of hinting to something. She never was the one who could read between the lines with him. Maybe if she’d known, if she’d known all that she knows now, that they would always be connected one way or another, she would’ve tried harder.
Maybe that’s a few too many maybes.
---
5.
“Thank you, by the way.”
She thinks he might be looking at her again but she’s got her eyes closed, and the steady movement of the car, speeding down the never-ending highway that she has long since grown tired of watching, has lulled her into some sort of half-asleep state. “For?”
“Coming to get me.”
He pauses, thinks of whether or not he even wants to go here, if he even wants to know if the answer is only going to be something bad, and it isn’t, but he doesn’t know that. Curiosity gets the better of him in the end. “Are you going to tell me what was going on that made you need to leave so bad?”
She angles her sunglasses slightly, blocking the sun that’s rising on twelve noon, as she tells him, “I’m tired of waking up in the morning to find cameras outside of my apartment.”
An exhale that confirms her thoughts: he’s relieved. “We all get that.”
“I live in Los Angeles, Jack, anywhere is better than LA when it comes to the media.”
He could point out that it was her own choice to live there. He could but he won’t. She’s the only one taking shots at people today. “How long are you planning on staying?”
She wasn’t planning on staying at all. She didn’t know she could. This was a ride. He’s the getaway car driver in her plan to get away from the flashbulbs that greet her on the streets. They’re plane crash survivors. They were supposed to be dead. Except they’re not. And if they can’t find Kate - she’s a master at running, at hiding, how could they - then she’s their next best. They always go for the pretty faces.
She answers, vaguely, “Not long.”
---
7.
Claire wakes up to the feeling of tires on uneven ground, a patch of highway in the middle of nowhere that’s seen too much wear.
Jack’s eyes are straight ahead, doesn’t even seem to notice that she’s woken up, or maybe even that she fell asleep in the first place. He’s focused, which sure as hell beats him falling asleep at the wheel. She wonders when the last time he slept was.
Up ahead she can see green and blue exit signs, bold white print standing out against them, even hundreds of feet away, the car doing something probably along the lines of sixty. Signs aren’t the only thing along the road though.
A figure. A man.
Blue plaid shirt and dark blonde hair that falls in his face, arm stretched outward, thumb pointed up, universal hitchhiking sign, and she knows before she can get a good look at him, before she can even see his face, she knows who he is.
“Jack, pull over.”
He doesn’t seem to hear that part. “When did you wake up?”
“Jack, stop the car!” She yells it at him, harshly, knowing that he’ll do as he’s told if only because he got scared into it. He can’t focus on the road if she’s screaming at him. He pulls the car off to the side of the road, predictably, and she points ahead. “Do you see him?”
She knows immediately when he does. His jaw sets, and his eyes turn darker, turn cloudier.
“Don’t even think about it.” Because she knows he’s probably thinking of ways to speed past this man without being identified, and it’s sad that he’s even trying to think up these scenarios, much less act them out. “You are not driving off and leaving him here. We are in the middle of nowhere.”
“And he wouldn’t do the same thing?”
“Since when have you been living up to his standards?” She shoots back. Because Jack has always prided himself on being in the right, on being the better person, at least better than Sawyer. It’s a calculated question on her part.
His knuckles turn white, hands gripping the steering wheel, and he lets out a long, slightly annoyed exhale. “Fine.” And she gets about as far as her hand on the release of the door before he puts out a hand of his own to stop her. “I’ll be right back. You stay right here.”
He’s adamant enough that she doesn’t argue with him. She’s content to stay right here in the air-conditioned car anyway.
She watches him walk up along the road, watches him stop within a few feet of Sawyer. She can see Sawyer’s lips turn up in a smirk, as he says something to Jack, something that must not have amused Jack, judging by the way Jack’s hands come up to rest on his hips. It’s just like watching them back on the island.
They converse like that for a minute or two. She can’t hear anything, they’re too far away, but watching their faces, even from this distance, is amusing enough to her.
When Jack finally heads back to the car, Sawyer in tow, he directs him to the back of the car, amid all the luggage. Her presence raises an eyebrow or two out of Sawyer but he uncharacteristically keeps his mouth shut.
Without a word between the three of them, Jack puts the car in gear and they’re back on the road.
---
9.
The tension eases up in the car just in time for Jack to realize that they’re low on gas and take the first exit he can find that leads to a gas station. Not that she minds; she could definitely use the time to stretch her legs. Nine hours in a car is more than enough for her.
The sun is low in the sky now, it’ll be dark soon, and she wanders into the store attached to the station while the boys gas up the car because she really doesn’t want to stand there and watch them give each other looks. She doesn’t know what their issue is, all she knows is it seems like they aren’t going to even try to sort out while she’s present.
When she comes back, they’re nowhere to be found but the car is open. She figures they must have just headed to the bathrooms or something before they get back on the road, so she slides into the back seat, having no interest in being up there, more or less between them, and waits.
Three minutes pass and she starts to get antsy.
Five minutes and she gets out of the car and heads towards the restrooms, not caring about any signs on the doors or rules. She doesn’t know where the hell they are and she’s starting to get worried.
She can hear them before she’s within ten feet of the door.
“I’m not the one who disappeared off the face of the fucking earth.”
“I thought you said it was a one time thing.”
“When have you ever listened to a word I’ve said?”
“And now I’m being blamed for actually listening. I just can’t win with you now can I, Doc?”
It occurs to Claire, with a force similar to being knocked in the head with a 2x4, that she has just walked right into a lovers’ spat.
Jack and Sawyer are having a lovers’ spat.
She can repeat it in her head as many times as she wants but it’s still not making much sense to her.
Part of her wants to run back to the car, wait for them, and forget that she ever heard any of this, since, really, it’s not her business. The other part of her wants to stand here and eavesdrop some more to see if she can find anything else interesting out.
She ends up not having a chance to do either because, probably in the futile process of stalking out, futile because they are going back to the same car, and they’re going to be there for the next few hours, Jack opens the door and ends up face to face with her.
He looks slightly embarrassed, but tries very, very hard to hide it, and she tries not to look like a deer in headlights. Sawyer just snickers in the background.
It ends up being her who has to say something. “I was just, um…I was just looking for you two. You left the car open.”
And it sounds stupid, but it’s a heck of a lot better than ‘I was bored so I came looking for you and is this the reason you didn’t want to talk about Kate?’. She just doesn’t know what to say.
“Yeah, sorry, we’ve just got a long drive back.”
“Yeah, no, of course.”
And if the situation wasn’t awkward before…
---
11.
She’s fairly sure Jack and Sawyer both knew she heard them. She’s fairly sure because Jack hasn’t said a word to either of them, and Sawyer looks incredibly self-satisfied, and he didn’t look like that before the gas station. He likes starting things up; he always has.
She won’t say anything though. She sits in the backseat, hands folded in her lap, and that woman who, just a few short hours ago, was all about what she wanted, who was too tired to care about what others thought, has reverted back to that girl who’s now overtired and confused at that. Now she cares. Now she kind of both wants answers and doesn’t want them and she doesn’t know what to do about them.
All she knows is she can’t sit here, in this car with them, for hours on end, and not say anything. She can’t avoid the topic altogether.
She thinks that ignoring the topic entirely, dancing around it, is somehow more awkward than just bringing it up.
But she just can’t find the words; they’re lost like she was, like she still might be.
“If you two are going to stay this quiet can you at least turn the radio on?”
Jack’s eyes never find Sawyer’s, but the equivalent of an icy glare is in his voice, as he tells him, “Shut up, Sawyer.”
“What? Just because you two don’t want to talk doesn’t mean I can’t.” He leans closer to Jack, lowers his voice to a whisper that, due to close quarters, she can still hear anyway. “She’s not stupid.”
No kidding.
“Would you - “ Jack starts, and really she doesn’t want to hear them go at it again. It only makes everything worse.
She interrupts, before he can finish. “Would you stop whispering. I can hear you, you know.”
Now Sawyer gets the glare.
“It’s not a big deal, really,” she continues, talking to fill space, “I just…didn’t know…I mean, I thought…really, it’s not a big deal. You don’t have to talk about it. I mean unless you want to.”
“Yeah, Doc seems real talkative don’t he?”
“Alright, you want to get out of the car? Because I will pull over and leave your ass on the side of the road again.”
“No you won’t.”
“Want to test that theory?”
“Hey, both of you, enough!” She orders again, feeling significantly inferior yelling at them from the back of the car. Maybe she should’ve rethought these seating arrangements.
“I’m not the one who started it.”
“Oh great, playground logic.”
“Look, if you two aren’t together you should be because you two fight like an old married couple.” She blurts out, without thinking about what she was saying and the manner in which she was saying it in.
This time she’s on the receiving end of glares. From both of them.
“Seriously, I don’t care. It’s not life changing. I just didn’t know that…I mean I didn’t even know you two were even talking much less…” and here’s where she can’t piece an entire sentence together. This time she doesn’t bother trying, she just lets it hang there.
There’s a long pause, and then Jack finally does something other than make threats at Sawyer. “It was a one time thing. I didn’t even mean for it to happen.” Sawyer snorts, face turned to the window, probably so Jack can’t see whatever look is on his face. He’s probably enjoying himself. “Shut it.”
“Did I say anything?”
“Off topic,” she interjects. This discussion wouldn’t be so long if Jack would figure out that Sawyer was only egging him on because he knew Jack couldn’t let anything go.
“I had a lot to drink,” Jack continues.
“Here we go.”
For once, Jack ignores him. Maybe he’s finally learning. “I don’t know how much you heard…”
“Enough. I heard enough.” She tells him, intentionally vague. And really, this is just beyond uncomfortable. “I think I’ve heard enough here too.”
“Yeah.”
“But it’s fine.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, I don’t have a problem with it, it just, like I said, kind of threw me.”
“Yeah.”
“Is that the only word you know?”
“Sawyer -“
---
13.
By some kind of miracle, they make it to Jack’s place alive. Thirteen hours in a car, six of them with Sawyer, and she had figured someone would’ve been left along the side of the road.
But no one was. They were all accounted for. All intact.
She’s been to Jack’s before, knows the house he lives in. She knows the guest bedroom on the left is probably untouched from the one time before that she had stayed there. And as soon as her feet hit pavement she’d grabbed her bags and flown into said room.
When she comes back out of it, two hours later, Sawyer’s still there. He is, and Jack isn’t. Which is odd.
“Where’s Jack?”
He looks up from whatever is on the television screen, in the dimly lit room. “He went out to the store.” She nods, relieved for some reason. Jack almost makes it harder to process things. At least Sawyer is upfront about things. “You’re staying here?”
“That’s why we were on the road in the first place. I was in LA, got tired of seeing my picture all over the place.” She sits, reluctantly, in the armchair. “And I could ask you the same question.”
It takes him a moment to realize what she’s referring to. “That really depends on him.”
“I probably made things worse.”
“Yeah I don’t think he wanted to have that discussion with you anymore than he did with his mother.”
“He doesn’t talk to his mother I don’t think.”
“Exactly.”
And she’s got a lot of things she wants to say, a lot of questions she wants to ask, but none of them feel right on her tongue. So she settles for, “I think I’m going to get some sleep. Goodnight.”
“Yeah. Sweet dreams and all that jazz.”
She doesn’t say goodbye; she doesn’t feel the need to. She has a feeling she’ll be seeing him in the morning anyways.
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Sawyer, Claire.
Word Count: 2,979
Rating: R
Author's Notes: This did not go as planned. It was supposed to be Jawyercita, but it didn't want to listen. So it's Jack/Sawyer, with a lot of Claire. Which is okay, because I have a Jawyercita plot bunny in mind.
Summary: AU, post island. "It's a thirteen hour drive, Claire. Thirteen hours."
1.
“How far away do you even live?” She’s watching the open road, because he sure as hell isn’t going to look at her if he keeps driving at this speed. Not that it would matter. It’s been nothing but miles of open highway. They’ve been on the road for an hour.
“Far. Far enough that I shouldn’t have even driven down here.”
“And you expected me to fly?” He gives her a sidelong glance, one that isn’t trying to remind her that he did drag his ass all the way out here to retrieve her. But it does. And if she weren’t so tired, if she weren’t so utterly freakin’ exhausted she might give him so more credit. The credit he deserves. She might not so sound so bitter, so inconvenienced. But Claire, little miss virgin mother, perfect Claire, is done with worrying about how other people see her. “What?”
“It’s a thirteen hour drive Claire. Thirteen hours.”
“Well then why didn’t you just say no?”
“Because then what were you going to do?”
Of course he answers a question with a question. This is starting to become a pattern with them. As long as he doesn’t have to talk about himself. As long as it’s still about her. Everything’s about anyone but him. “You don’t always have to be the hero Jack. This isn’t the island anymore.”
But with her in his car, with her anywhere near him - she’d said that blood ties meant nothing, that man named Christian, that was Jack’s father, not hers - it might as well be.
---
3.
“Have you heard from anyone?” She doesn’t want to talk about herself either. And if they can’t talk about her, and they can’t talk about him, then someone else has got to come up. She can’t sit in the dead silence, and she doesn’t want to listen to the radio fade in and out as they get farther and farther away. They’re calling for nothing but straight sunshine, weather for a state they won’t even be in a few short hours from now. He’s not answering; she prompts him. “Kate?”
“She’s in - “ and it’s almost like he’s forgotten. It’s almost like she should be searching the back of the car, under all that luggage, asking him if he’s had anything to drink and should she be driving. For a moment she thinks this. For a moment she must’ve forgotten that maybe Kate’s not the best person to ask after if she’s trying to bypass putting the focus on him again. Still, he answers. “She’s not in jail.”
“Oh,” she replies, filling space, lost for words and conversation once again. She doesn’t know what his answer is supposed to mean, she doesn’t even know if this is his way of hinting to something. She never was the one who could read between the lines with him. Maybe if she’d known, if she’d known all that she knows now, that they would always be connected one way or another, she would’ve tried harder.
Maybe that’s a few too many maybes.
---
5.
“Thank you, by the way.”
She thinks he might be looking at her again but she’s got her eyes closed, and the steady movement of the car, speeding down the never-ending highway that she has long since grown tired of watching, has lulled her into some sort of half-asleep state. “For?”
“Coming to get me.”
He pauses, thinks of whether or not he even wants to go here, if he even wants to know if the answer is only going to be something bad, and it isn’t, but he doesn’t know that. Curiosity gets the better of him in the end. “Are you going to tell me what was going on that made you need to leave so bad?”
She angles her sunglasses slightly, blocking the sun that’s rising on twelve noon, as she tells him, “I’m tired of waking up in the morning to find cameras outside of my apartment.”
An exhale that confirms her thoughts: he’s relieved. “We all get that.”
“I live in Los Angeles, Jack, anywhere is better than LA when it comes to the media.”
He could point out that it was her own choice to live there. He could but he won’t. She’s the only one taking shots at people today. “How long are you planning on staying?”
She wasn’t planning on staying at all. She didn’t know she could. This was a ride. He’s the getaway car driver in her plan to get away from the flashbulbs that greet her on the streets. They’re plane crash survivors. They were supposed to be dead. Except they’re not. And if they can’t find Kate - she’s a master at running, at hiding, how could they - then she’s their next best. They always go for the pretty faces.
She answers, vaguely, “Not long.”
---
7.
Claire wakes up to the feeling of tires on uneven ground, a patch of highway in the middle of nowhere that’s seen too much wear.
Jack’s eyes are straight ahead, doesn’t even seem to notice that she’s woken up, or maybe even that she fell asleep in the first place. He’s focused, which sure as hell beats him falling asleep at the wheel. She wonders when the last time he slept was.
Up ahead she can see green and blue exit signs, bold white print standing out against them, even hundreds of feet away, the car doing something probably along the lines of sixty. Signs aren’t the only thing along the road though.
A figure. A man.
Blue plaid shirt and dark blonde hair that falls in his face, arm stretched outward, thumb pointed up, universal hitchhiking sign, and she knows before she can get a good look at him, before she can even see his face, she knows who he is.
“Jack, pull over.”
He doesn’t seem to hear that part. “When did you wake up?”
“Jack, stop the car!” She yells it at him, harshly, knowing that he’ll do as he’s told if only because he got scared into it. He can’t focus on the road if she’s screaming at him. He pulls the car off to the side of the road, predictably, and she points ahead. “Do you see him?”
She knows immediately when he does. His jaw sets, and his eyes turn darker, turn cloudier.
“Don’t even think about it.” Because she knows he’s probably thinking of ways to speed past this man without being identified, and it’s sad that he’s even trying to think up these scenarios, much less act them out. “You are not driving off and leaving him here. We are in the middle of nowhere.”
“And he wouldn’t do the same thing?”
“Since when have you been living up to his standards?” She shoots back. Because Jack has always prided himself on being in the right, on being the better person, at least better than Sawyer. It’s a calculated question on her part.
His knuckles turn white, hands gripping the steering wheel, and he lets out a long, slightly annoyed exhale. “Fine.” And she gets about as far as her hand on the release of the door before he puts out a hand of his own to stop her. “I’ll be right back. You stay right here.”
He’s adamant enough that she doesn’t argue with him. She’s content to stay right here in the air-conditioned car anyway.
She watches him walk up along the road, watches him stop within a few feet of Sawyer. She can see Sawyer’s lips turn up in a smirk, as he says something to Jack, something that must not have amused Jack, judging by the way Jack’s hands come up to rest on his hips. It’s just like watching them back on the island.
They converse like that for a minute or two. She can’t hear anything, they’re too far away, but watching their faces, even from this distance, is amusing enough to her.
When Jack finally heads back to the car, Sawyer in tow, he directs him to the back of the car, amid all the luggage. Her presence raises an eyebrow or two out of Sawyer but he uncharacteristically keeps his mouth shut.
Without a word between the three of them, Jack puts the car in gear and they’re back on the road.
---
9.
The tension eases up in the car just in time for Jack to realize that they’re low on gas and take the first exit he can find that leads to a gas station. Not that she minds; she could definitely use the time to stretch her legs. Nine hours in a car is more than enough for her.
The sun is low in the sky now, it’ll be dark soon, and she wanders into the store attached to the station while the boys gas up the car because she really doesn’t want to stand there and watch them give each other looks. She doesn’t know what their issue is, all she knows is it seems like they aren’t going to even try to sort out while she’s present.
When she comes back, they’re nowhere to be found but the car is open. She figures they must have just headed to the bathrooms or something before they get back on the road, so she slides into the back seat, having no interest in being up there, more or less between them, and waits.
Three minutes pass and she starts to get antsy.
Five minutes and she gets out of the car and heads towards the restrooms, not caring about any signs on the doors or rules. She doesn’t know where the hell they are and she’s starting to get worried.
She can hear them before she’s within ten feet of the door.
“I’m not the one who disappeared off the face of the fucking earth.”
“I thought you said it was a one time thing.”
“When have you ever listened to a word I’ve said?”
“And now I’m being blamed for actually listening. I just can’t win with you now can I, Doc?”
It occurs to Claire, with a force similar to being knocked in the head with a 2x4, that she has just walked right into a lovers’ spat.
Jack and Sawyer are having a lovers’ spat.
She can repeat it in her head as many times as she wants but it’s still not making much sense to her.
Part of her wants to run back to the car, wait for them, and forget that she ever heard any of this, since, really, it’s not her business. The other part of her wants to stand here and eavesdrop some more to see if she can find anything else interesting out.
She ends up not having a chance to do either because, probably in the futile process of stalking out, futile because they are going back to the same car, and they’re going to be there for the next few hours, Jack opens the door and ends up face to face with her.
He looks slightly embarrassed, but tries very, very hard to hide it, and she tries not to look like a deer in headlights. Sawyer just snickers in the background.
It ends up being her who has to say something. “I was just, um…I was just looking for you two. You left the car open.”
And it sounds stupid, but it’s a heck of a lot better than ‘I was bored so I came looking for you and is this the reason you didn’t want to talk about Kate?’. She just doesn’t know what to say.
“Yeah, sorry, we’ve just got a long drive back.”
“Yeah, no, of course.”
And if the situation wasn’t awkward before…
---
11.
She’s fairly sure Jack and Sawyer both knew she heard them. She’s fairly sure because Jack hasn’t said a word to either of them, and Sawyer looks incredibly self-satisfied, and he didn’t look like that before the gas station. He likes starting things up; he always has.
She won’t say anything though. She sits in the backseat, hands folded in her lap, and that woman who, just a few short hours ago, was all about what she wanted, who was too tired to care about what others thought, has reverted back to that girl who’s now overtired and confused at that. Now she cares. Now she kind of both wants answers and doesn’t want them and she doesn’t know what to do about them.
All she knows is she can’t sit here, in this car with them, for hours on end, and not say anything. She can’t avoid the topic altogether.
She thinks that ignoring the topic entirely, dancing around it, is somehow more awkward than just bringing it up.
But she just can’t find the words; they’re lost like she was, like she still might be.
“If you two are going to stay this quiet can you at least turn the radio on?”
Jack’s eyes never find Sawyer’s, but the equivalent of an icy glare is in his voice, as he tells him, “Shut up, Sawyer.”
“What? Just because you two don’t want to talk doesn’t mean I can’t.” He leans closer to Jack, lowers his voice to a whisper that, due to close quarters, she can still hear anyway. “She’s not stupid.”
No kidding.
“Would you - “ Jack starts, and really she doesn’t want to hear them go at it again. It only makes everything worse.
She interrupts, before he can finish. “Would you stop whispering. I can hear you, you know.”
Now Sawyer gets the glare.
“It’s not a big deal, really,” she continues, talking to fill space, “I just…didn’t know…I mean, I thought…really, it’s not a big deal. You don’t have to talk about it. I mean unless you want to.”
“Yeah, Doc seems real talkative don’t he?”
“Alright, you want to get out of the car? Because I will pull over and leave your ass on the side of the road again.”
“No you won’t.”
“Want to test that theory?”
“Hey, both of you, enough!” She orders again, feeling significantly inferior yelling at them from the back of the car. Maybe she should’ve rethought these seating arrangements.
“I’m not the one who started it.”
“Oh great, playground logic.”
“Look, if you two aren’t together you should be because you two fight like an old married couple.” She blurts out, without thinking about what she was saying and the manner in which she was saying it in.
This time she’s on the receiving end of glares. From both of them.
“Seriously, I don’t care. It’s not life changing. I just didn’t know that…I mean I didn’t even know you two were even talking much less…” and here’s where she can’t piece an entire sentence together. This time she doesn’t bother trying, she just lets it hang there.
There’s a long pause, and then Jack finally does something other than make threats at Sawyer. “It was a one time thing. I didn’t even mean for it to happen.” Sawyer snorts, face turned to the window, probably so Jack can’t see whatever look is on his face. He’s probably enjoying himself. “Shut it.”
“Did I say anything?”
“Off topic,” she interjects. This discussion wouldn’t be so long if Jack would figure out that Sawyer was only egging him on because he knew Jack couldn’t let anything go.
“I had a lot to drink,” Jack continues.
“Here we go.”
For once, Jack ignores him. Maybe he’s finally learning. “I don’t know how much you heard…”
“Enough. I heard enough.” She tells him, intentionally vague. And really, this is just beyond uncomfortable. “I think I’ve heard enough here too.”
“Yeah.”
“But it’s fine.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, I don’t have a problem with it, it just, like I said, kind of threw me.”
“Yeah.”
“Is that the only word you know?”
“Sawyer -“
---
13.
By some kind of miracle, they make it to Jack’s place alive. Thirteen hours in a car, six of them with Sawyer, and she had figured someone would’ve been left along the side of the road.
But no one was. They were all accounted for. All intact.
She’s been to Jack’s before, knows the house he lives in. She knows the guest bedroom on the left is probably untouched from the one time before that she had stayed there. And as soon as her feet hit pavement she’d grabbed her bags and flown into said room.
When she comes back out of it, two hours later, Sawyer’s still there. He is, and Jack isn’t. Which is odd.
“Where’s Jack?”
He looks up from whatever is on the television screen, in the dimly lit room. “He went out to the store.” She nods, relieved for some reason. Jack almost makes it harder to process things. At least Sawyer is upfront about things. “You’re staying here?”
“That’s why we were on the road in the first place. I was in LA, got tired of seeing my picture all over the place.” She sits, reluctantly, in the armchair. “And I could ask you the same question.”
It takes him a moment to realize what she’s referring to. “That really depends on him.”
“I probably made things worse.”
“Yeah I don’t think he wanted to have that discussion with you anymore than he did with his mother.”
“He doesn’t talk to his mother I don’t think.”
“Exactly.”
And she’s got a lot of things she wants to say, a lot of questions she wants to ask, but none of them feel right on her tongue. So she settles for, “I think I’m going to get some sleep. Goodnight.”
“Yeah. Sweet dreams and all that jazz.”
She doesn’t say goodbye; she doesn’t feel the need to. She has a feeling she’ll be seeing him in the morning anyways.