today you were far away {jack, sawyer}
Title: Today You Were Far Away
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Jack, Sawyer (shippery if you squint). There are references to Sawyer/Juliet, Jack/Kate, Sawyer/Kate, but none of them really play any part in this.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,481
Author's Note: Don't worry, I don't still write Lost, this was just a fluke, lol.
Summary: Spoilers for 5.13 - Some Like It Hoth. Jack mops floors, and Sawyer watches through the window of an old school, comforted as much as he can be by the knowledge that Jack’s still good at cleaning up other people’s messes.
“When did you stop caring?”
It’s the tail end of a nasty squabble he finds himself immersed in, the roundabout game he plays with Jack, going from calm to fired up straight back down to something like tired and broken-down. Jack’s the only one who can make him feel like that anymore; Sawyer thinks he knows that. The game’s getting just as tired out as the result is, but they’re getting a whole lot more honest.
Jack’s lips twitch, the left corner, down; back to stone-faced a second later. “When did you start?”
He’s the one that leaves.
---
It’s become a pattern with them.
At first - when they first came back - Sawyer would have to push. Tell him to get out. Hold open the door with white knuckled fingers. Then, later, it would be little things, a nod of the head, a certain tone, and he would be out.
Now he doesn’t even need the cues. Now he just does it on his own.
Part of him would like to try the same trick with Freckles, except Kate’s gotten in the ugly habit of not learning and making friends with endless repetition. Same shit, same back and forth, working off her gut reactions and forcing them to change around her.
Even if she would learn he wouldn’t get nearly the same satisfaction from watching her go. Or the same regret.
---
Once, Hurley had threatened to vote him off the island if he didn’t learn to play nice.
Once, Hurley had said he was the one who should lead them.
Once, Hurley had told him the idea came from some off the cuff remark Jack had made and half-meant, weeks, maybe months, before. And then swore him to secrecy about never telling Jack he said anything.
Now:
“Jack was wrong about you.”
It cuts. Deeper than it should.
---
Sawyer spends three days plotting and questioning, faking worry every time he was asked about their missing man, more or less every time he showed his face.
He spends three days listening to the man in the closet trying to scream and shout around his gag, while Juliet knocks him out at night with sleeping pills, just to get some peace and quiet, and very deliberately does not ask ‘what are we going to do now’.
“That boat, James,” she does say, hand tight around the handle of the cream-colored mug, “That first boat out of here. I should’ve been on it. We should’ve been on it.”
---
Sawyer used to think about what would happen when this all fell down. To a degree it was inevitable. A combination of bad luck and karma, he figured, and he’d shrug and tell himself there was no sense dwelling.
After a while he just counted on being gone by now, maybe even secretly though they’d come back. Jack, Kate, the others. It was a pipe dream; he didn’t think about ramifications and consequences.
They came back anyways.
Jack mops floors, and Sawyer watches through the window of an old school, comforted as much as he can be by the knowledge that Jack’s still good at cleaning up other people’s messes.
---
There’s a master key sitting on top of a five-year old copy of Watership Down he’d found in the bookcase, then shoved in his nightstand drawer. The head of security should have it after all, Horace had said, handed it to him, and the string around it had been glaring white, the way that told of lack of use. Nothing stays clean here, after all.
He fingers it, on the fourth night, in the darkness while Juliet sleeps beside him, and decides that maybe that’s about to change.
---
This should feel more awkward, more intimate, than it does.
His fingers ghost along the curve of Jack’s shoulder, coming to rest firmly on his bicep as he mutters the familiar endearment, “Doc.” He hesitates, when Jack doesn’t awaken, knowing he could still back out, that this was his last chance to do so. Still he presses on, actually shaking him this time, “Jack, wake up.”
In the span of about three seconds, Jack manages to open his eyes and push himself up into a sitting position, somehow trapping his hand in the process so that it’s between the bed and Jack’s own warmer one. A moment later, after the other man’s gotten his bearings, blinked sleep away, he asks, “What are you doing here, Sawyer?”
Once, that question used to be ‘what’s wrong?’, back before when Jack bothered to show some amount of concern for everyone, even him. Now it’s blank, maybe edging on annoyed, and the digital clock blinks for a second as the minute slides from ‘22’ to ‘23’. It makes him regret coming here, and it makes him not want to say what he came here for either. He doesn’t want to admit failure, on some level. “Can’t pay an old friend a visit?”
“So now we were friends?” Jack spats, and his eyebrows furrow in such a way that his irritation is front and center. “It’s one in the morning Sawyer, what the hell do you want?”
“I think I need your help.”
He half expects Jack to look he won something, instead he just looks let down once more.
---
“I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
Jack had pulled on his jeans and his t-shirt, shoes without socks, in barely a minute, and then he was leading them back to Sawyer’s house. It was surprising, how easily he could fall back into step with Jack, let Jack be the one who gave orders and made decisions. This is him giving up, for the moment, handing over the reins out of lack of any other choice. It doesn’t bother him, and part of him thinks that if he was meant for this it would.
A lot of things changed in the past three years. Sawyer got old and he got introspective, and god only knows what went on with Jack. He wants to know, but maybe he’s a little too afraid to ask. Maybe he sort of already knows.
“I don’t hold any clout with these people. I’m a janitor.” There’s an absence of the earlier biting remarks; since he’s had a little show and tell about what’s been going on, he’s relegated himself to careful sarcasm and generally neutral expressions.
“Better than a liar,” he says, before he can stop himself, think better of it.
Jack’s laugh, then, is a little melancholy, a little too telling. “We’re all liars.”
---
Somehow, the Jack in his head was supposed to resolve this neatly, cleanly, no bloodshed. And maybe the Jack from before would’ve figured out how to do that, maybe the Jack from before had that amount of patience.
What Sawyer’s finding out though is that the past doesn’t really matter a whole hell of a lot.
The man in the closet screams no longer; Jack rationalizes it with a shake of the head and a solemn, “you didn’t have any other choice.”
It’s the ‘you’ that’s telling.
Live together, die alone left with the wind and the beat of helicopter blades.
---
He never says thank you.
At least that part’s in keeping with old appearances.
---
Sawyer gets his role as leader back but loses his taste for it, just a little. Jack doesn’t look pleased with that either, probably more out of a desire to be as far away from power as possible. He’s grown tired of the responsibility; Sawyer understands that more and more.
“Things change,” Jack says, without prompting, and he can’t tell if Jack’s looking at the scenery or at Kate as she slips back inside of her own house, most likely up to no good. He looks away to the tune of the door swinging shut and Sawyer thinks that’s at least one answer.
“Some of them don’t,” Sawyer replies, and Jack looks at him now, unspoken questions in his eyes, ones that Sawyer can’t decipher anyways, and Sawyer thinks he wants the words to mean more than they do outwardly, but doesn’t know how to get Jack to understand that. He means to say they may have changed, their roles might have reversed, but maybe they can find that semi-happy medium from before, the one that allowed them to go entire stretches of time without biting off hateful words and glares.
It was something like companionship and Sawyer needs all the allies he can get these days.
They stand at opposite ends of the front porch, and maybe Jack nods and says something like “we both know better than that; there’s no such thing as going back”, but he also takes a step forward, small as it is, and Sawyer feels more hope in that than he has since he saw them step out of the van.
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Jack, Sawyer (shippery if you squint). There are references to Sawyer/Juliet, Jack/Kate, Sawyer/Kate, but none of them really play any part in this.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,481
Author's Note: Don't worry, I don't still write Lost, this was just a fluke, lol.
Summary: Spoilers for 5.13 - Some Like It Hoth. Jack mops floors, and Sawyer watches through the window of an old school, comforted as much as he can be by the knowledge that Jack’s still good at cleaning up other people’s messes.
“When did you stop caring?”
It’s the tail end of a nasty squabble he finds himself immersed in, the roundabout game he plays with Jack, going from calm to fired up straight back down to something like tired and broken-down. Jack’s the only one who can make him feel like that anymore; Sawyer thinks he knows that. The game’s getting just as tired out as the result is, but they’re getting a whole lot more honest.
Jack’s lips twitch, the left corner, down; back to stone-faced a second later. “When did you start?”
He’s the one that leaves.
---
It’s become a pattern with them.
At first - when they first came back - Sawyer would have to push. Tell him to get out. Hold open the door with white knuckled fingers. Then, later, it would be little things, a nod of the head, a certain tone, and he would be out.
Now he doesn’t even need the cues. Now he just does it on his own.
Part of him would like to try the same trick with Freckles, except Kate’s gotten in the ugly habit of not learning and making friends with endless repetition. Same shit, same back and forth, working off her gut reactions and forcing them to change around her.
Even if she would learn he wouldn’t get nearly the same satisfaction from watching her go. Or the same regret.
---
Once, Hurley had threatened to vote him off the island if he didn’t learn to play nice.
Once, Hurley had said he was the one who should lead them.
Once, Hurley had told him the idea came from some off the cuff remark Jack had made and half-meant, weeks, maybe months, before. And then swore him to secrecy about never telling Jack he said anything.
Now:
“Jack was wrong about you.”
It cuts. Deeper than it should.
---
Sawyer spends three days plotting and questioning, faking worry every time he was asked about their missing man, more or less every time he showed his face.
He spends three days listening to the man in the closet trying to scream and shout around his gag, while Juliet knocks him out at night with sleeping pills, just to get some peace and quiet, and very deliberately does not ask ‘what are we going to do now’.
“That boat, James,” she does say, hand tight around the handle of the cream-colored mug, “That first boat out of here. I should’ve been on it. We should’ve been on it.”
---
Sawyer used to think about what would happen when this all fell down. To a degree it was inevitable. A combination of bad luck and karma, he figured, and he’d shrug and tell himself there was no sense dwelling.
After a while he just counted on being gone by now, maybe even secretly though they’d come back. Jack, Kate, the others. It was a pipe dream; he didn’t think about ramifications and consequences.
They came back anyways.
Jack mops floors, and Sawyer watches through the window of an old school, comforted as much as he can be by the knowledge that Jack’s still good at cleaning up other people’s messes.
---
There’s a master key sitting on top of a five-year old copy of Watership Down he’d found in the bookcase, then shoved in his nightstand drawer. The head of security should have it after all, Horace had said, handed it to him, and the string around it had been glaring white, the way that told of lack of use. Nothing stays clean here, after all.
He fingers it, on the fourth night, in the darkness while Juliet sleeps beside him, and decides that maybe that’s about to change.
---
This should feel more awkward, more intimate, than it does.
His fingers ghost along the curve of Jack’s shoulder, coming to rest firmly on his bicep as he mutters the familiar endearment, “Doc.” He hesitates, when Jack doesn’t awaken, knowing he could still back out, that this was his last chance to do so. Still he presses on, actually shaking him this time, “Jack, wake up.”
In the span of about three seconds, Jack manages to open his eyes and push himself up into a sitting position, somehow trapping his hand in the process so that it’s between the bed and Jack’s own warmer one. A moment later, after the other man’s gotten his bearings, blinked sleep away, he asks, “What are you doing here, Sawyer?”
Once, that question used to be ‘what’s wrong?’, back before when Jack bothered to show some amount of concern for everyone, even him. Now it’s blank, maybe edging on annoyed, and the digital clock blinks for a second as the minute slides from ‘22’ to ‘23’. It makes him regret coming here, and it makes him not want to say what he came here for either. He doesn’t want to admit failure, on some level. “Can’t pay an old friend a visit?”
“So now we were friends?” Jack spats, and his eyebrows furrow in such a way that his irritation is front and center. “It’s one in the morning Sawyer, what the hell do you want?”
“I think I need your help.”
He half expects Jack to look he won something, instead he just looks let down once more.
---
“I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
Jack had pulled on his jeans and his t-shirt, shoes without socks, in barely a minute, and then he was leading them back to Sawyer’s house. It was surprising, how easily he could fall back into step with Jack, let Jack be the one who gave orders and made decisions. This is him giving up, for the moment, handing over the reins out of lack of any other choice. It doesn’t bother him, and part of him thinks that if he was meant for this it would.
A lot of things changed in the past three years. Sawyer got old and he got introspective, and god only knows what went on with Jack. He wants to know, but maybe he’s a little too afraid to ask. Maybe he sort of already knows.
“I don’t hold any clout with these people. I’m a janitor.” There’s an absence of the earlier biting remarks; since he’s had a little show and tell about what’s been going on, he’s relegated himself to careful sarcasm and generally neutral expressions.
“Better than a liar,” he says, before he can stop himself, think better of it.
Jack’s laugh, then, is a little melancholy, a little too telling. “We’re all liars.”
---
Somehow, the Jack in his head was supposed to resolve this neatly, cleanly, no bloodshed. And maybe the Jack from before would’ve figured out how to do that, maybe the Jack from before had that amount of patience.
What Sawyer’s finding out though is that the past doesn’t really matter a whole hell of a lot.
The man in the closet screams no longer; Jack rationalizes it with a shake of the head and a solemn, “you didn’t have any other choice.”
It’s the ‘you’ that’s telling.
Live together, die alone left with the wind and the beat of helicopter blades.
---
He never says thank you.
At least that part’s in keeping with old appearances.
---
Sawyer gets his role as leader back but loses his taste for it, just a little. Jack doesn’t look pleased with that either, probably more out of a desire to be as far away from power as possible. He’s grown tired of the responsibility; Sawyer understands that more and more.
“Things change,” Jack says, without prompting, and he can’t tell if Jack’s looking at the scenery or at Kate as she slips back inside of her own house, most likely up to no good. He looks away to the tune of the door swinging shut and Sawyer thinks that’s at least one answer.
“Some of them don’t,” Sawyer replies, and Jack looks at him now, unspoken questions in his eyes, ones that Sawyer can’t decipher anyways, and Sawyer thinks he wants the words to mean more than they do outwardly, but doesn’t know how to get Jack to understand that. He means to say they may have changed, their roles might have reversed, but maybe they can find that semi-happy medium from before, the one that allowed them to go entire stretches of time without biting off hateful words and glares.
It was something like companionship and Sawyer needs all the allies he can get these days.
They stand at opposite ends of the front porch, and maybe Jack nods and says something like “we both know better than that; there’s no such thing as going back”, but he also takes a step forward, small as it is, and Sawyer feels more hope in that than he has since he saw them step out of the van.