Chapter 14
I know I'm posting fast, but from here on out it's almost all schmoop and smut, SCHMUT, three chapters of it and then the conclusion, which I want to post on Christmas Eve. After today I'll post every other day til it's done. So, on with the Merry Christmas schmut! And bubbles. :)
Chapter 14
They’re awakened on the morning of New Year’s Eve by a loud bang, followed by the sound of a thundering deluge. Either their house has been transported, Oz-style, to Niagara Falls, or the plumbing has finally given up the ghost. Jack jumps out of bed, cursing, while Sawyer just pulls the pillow over his head. Maybe it’s a dream. Or maybe Jack will handle it. He’s quite the handyman these days, after all.
“Goddammit, Sawyer, get in here,” Jack bellows from the bathroom. “And bring a bucket or something!”
Groaning, Sawyer throws back the quilt and drags himself out of bed. Hasn’t even been a good three hours since Jack had finally had enough and let him go to sleep. Bleary-eyed, he retrieves his boxers from where Jack had tossed them on the floor and pulls them on. Not having a bucket handy, he makes his way to the bathroom to see what new disaster his house has bestowed on them.
Jack is standing by the bathtub, holding the hot-water handle of the bathtub faucet in his hand. Water is pouring, no, gushing out of the hole where the knob used to be. Gallon after gallon of water spills deafeningly into the tub, and Jack waves the handle at Sawyer helplessly. “Do something!”
Sawyer takes a second to assess the situation. There’s no way to plug the hole, the force of the water is too strong. For the moment the water is being contained by the tub, but the drain is slow and the water level in the old claw-footed tub is rising quickly. If something isn’t done soon they’ll have a flood on their hands.
“You get the bucket,” he tells Jack. “Start bailing into the sink if you have to. There’s a cut-off valve out by the road, I’ll go see if I can shut it down.”
Leaving Jack, naked and panicked, to be the bucket brigade, he runs back to the bedroom to pull on jeans and a flannel shirt, and lets himself out of the house, barefoot, into the snowy yard. He tries to remember exactly where the water valve is. He kicks himself mentally for not starting on the plumbing like he’d meant to; Jack had distracted him, Jack had made him complacent and lazy. And really, if he’s honest with himself, he isn’t sorry about that at all.
He finally finds the valve and shuts down the water supply, and he needs to get inside before his feet ice over. But he has to stop for a second to puzzle, once again, at the giant inflatable snowman Jack planted in their front yard. Jack has been worse than a kid on Christmas morning these last few days; Jack has been positively giddy with holiday spirit. “Christmas is over,” Sawyer keeps reminding him, and Jack just laughs and makes yet another trip into Gatlinburg to buy more half-price Christmas junk. Sawyer supposes that next year they’ll have the gaudiest house in town. If it hasn’t washed away in a flood by then, he reminds himself, and hurries inside.
He finds Jack still in the bathroom, still naked, staring into the no-longer-gushing hole in the wall. The tub is filled nearly to the brim but it hasn’t overflowed, and it’s draining slowly. Jack looks at Sawyer with a frown. “What the hell happened?”
Sawyer shrugs. “Valve broke.” He picks the hot-water handle up off the sink and looks it over, then peers into the hole. “Metal fatigue, I’m guessing. House is more’n seventy years old, things are wearin’ out.”
“Oh.” Jack sounds a bit crestfallen. “We better get to work then, huh? I guess the honeymoon’s over.”
Sawyer shakes his hair out of his eyes and laughs. “I was gonna start on the plumbing a week ago, hoss. Then you came along and sidetracked me. Guess this is a sign that we gotta start payin’ attention to stuff again.”
“Yeah,” Jack agrees regretfully. Then he straightens up and wraps his hand around the back of Sawyer’s neck, and pulls him in for a hard, deep kiss. “In a minute.” He kisses him again, and it’s a lot more than a minute before they remember the plumbing.
********
“That oughtta hold it for a while,” Sawyer says, pulling hard on the wrench one last time to secure the handle to the wall. “But tomorrow, day after at the latest, we’re gonna have to start tearin’ out walls and replacin’ stuff piece by piece.”
“You’re the boss.” Jack thinks that, in his own way, Sawyer is like a surgeon. He knows the workings of a house the way that Jack knows the workings of a body. He’d asked Sawyer once how he knew how to repair houses, and Sawyer had told him, “Worked construction full-time from when I was sixteen til I was nineteen.”
“You didn’t finish high school?” Jack had asked, somewhat surprised given Sawyer’s intelligence and obvious book-learning.
“My granddaddy died when I was fifteen. My grandmother didn’t outlive him by more’n three months. They tried me out in foster care, didn’t work out so they sent me to a home for kids with ‘adjustment problems.’” Sawyer snorted. “Go figure, huh. I dropped outta school and went to work so I’d be ready to look after myself the minute the law’d let me.”
Jack thinks back on that conversation now, and he feels his rage rise. Someone would certainly have notified Sawyer’s maternal grandmother when his father’s parents died. She must have deliberately chosen not to take him in. But then he tries to imagine Sawyer living in that house, having the lifestyle that woman lived inflicted upon him, and he can’t. Being a ward of the state had surely gone a long way toward making Sawyer the maladjusted person he’d become, but maybe even that was better than what he might have grown into if he’d been subjected to that woman’s bigotry and hatred. He’d never told Sawyer about his visit to Mississippi and he never will; Sawyer is better off never thinking of his mother’s parents again. Sometimes secrets really do keep you safe.
“When you goin’ back to work full-time?” Sawyer asks as he puts away his tools. Jack has taken a partial leave of absence, claiming a family crisis, a claim that was reinforced by Margo’s frequent attempts to get hold of him at the hospital. Jack had finally stopped avoiding her calls and had told her that the game was over; he knew everything and he’d chosen to be with Sawyer anyway. He'd taken away any power she held over either of them once and for all. She isn’t currently speaking to him, and he knows there are forgiveness issues on both sides to work through and he will work through them, eventually. But right now he has other family that needs him more, because that's what Sawyer is to him now, family. So he cut his hours at work to the bare essentials to spend some much-needed time proving to Sawyer that he is loved.
“When you’re ready for me to, I guess. You know we’ll start driving each other crazy again soon.”
Sawyer reaches out and slides his hand languorously over the denim-covered curve of Jack’s ass. “You’re already drivin’ me crazy, Doc,” he says in his slowest, most evocative molasses-thick drawl. And just like that Jack feels himself harden, nothing more than a touch and a few suggestive though not-very-original words, and his body reacts like that of a horny teenager.
“C’mere,” he says and Sawyer sways into him, just like that, just that easy, and Jack is kissing him like there’s no tomorrow even though there is, there’s tomorrow after tomorrow after tomorrow.
After a couple of minutes he notices that, though his arms are around Sawyer and his hands are already beneath the denim of Sawyer’s jeans, gripping his ass, Sawyer’s hands are still hovering awkwardly in the air behind Jack, an inch or two from his back. “What’s the matter?” he mumbles against Sawyer’s mouth, and Sawyer mumbles back, “Dirty hands.” Jack gives the taut flesh beneath his fingers one last squeeze, a promise of things to come, and then he steps back and looks Sawyer over. He’s got grease smeared on one cheek and his hands and wrists are coated with it, too, as well as some sort of nasty sludge that they’d discovered had built up on the pipes. His shirt, which he’d never bothered to button in the heat of their emergency repair operation, is smeared with goo after Sawyer had wiped his hands on it repeatedly, and Jack sees that he’s got some of it on his chest, too. “You’re a mess,” Jack observes mildly.
“Well, if you were the boss and not just the assistant, you’d be a mess, too. It don’t dirty you up much when all you have to do is hand me the tools.”
Jack is once again reminded of the medical analogy he’d thought about earlier; repairing a broken house is much like an operation and in this job, Jack plays a different role. Sawyer is the surgeon performing an emergency surgery, and Jack is the nurse at his right hand (or in Sawyer's case, left hand), making sure he has everything he needs. He thinks he likes seeing Sawyer in this new light, as the rescuer, the healer, the one in charge. It’s a strange feeling for Jack, but he discovers that it’s a welcome one as well.
He glances at the newly installed handle on the tub. “You sure that thing works?” he asks, though Sawyer appears to be a fairly competent plumber so he knows the answer is yes. “You think maybe we should test it out?”
“Whatcha got in mind, chief?” Sawyer turns his dirty hands over like he’s admiring them. “Since you said ‘we’ and not ‘me,’ that tells me you’ve got somethin’ in mind besides just inspectin’ my work.” His grin is both lecherous and, to Jack’s delight, unguardedly hopeful.
“Well, see, I’ve been learning a lot more from you than just how to fix up a house,” Jack says, grinning back. He starts to unbutton his shirt. “And since I’m not on call and there aren’t any surgeries scheduled today, I only have to go in to make rounds, and none of my patients are critical. They can wait. Now, I know I usually jump out of bed in the morning and hop in the shower, and I never even thought about taking a long, hot bath. But since you’re such a mess and we need to test your handiwork anyway, this seems like the perfect time to try it out.” He shrugs off his shirt and lets it fall to the floor, raising an eyebrow at Sawyer pointedly and waiting for him to do the same.
“You?” Sawyer’s eyes widen. “You want to take a bath? With me.” He slowly starts to strip off his shirt. “Dr. Always-in-a-Hurry who won’t even let me get in the shower with you because you’ve got important places to be? Seriously?”
Jack gives him a big, happy grin. “Got any bubbles?”
********
“Bubbles.” Sawyer keeps repeating the word bemusedly as he makes his way, shirtless and filthy, to the kitchen. Dr. Jackrabbit wants to take a bubble bath. With him.
“No, I ain’t got any bubbles,” he’d snorted, wondering if Jack had lost his mind. “Do I look like somebody who’d use bubble bath?”
Jack had looked at him consideringly, his eyes crinkling at the corners in that way that Sawyer loves, and finally he’d said, “I bet you did when you were a kid.”
“Yeah, so?” It came out less defensively than Sawyer intended it to. After all, Jack was unzipping his jeans.
“So, when you were a kid did you use bubble bath, or something else?”
Sawyer thought back to times in this very tub when nothing so frivolous as bubble bath had ever been on hand, but he’d found a fine substitute in his mamaw’s Ivory dishwashing soap. The same stuff that he and Jack use now to wash their dishes. He’d looked at Jack uncertainly. “Are you serious?”
“Completely,” Jack had said, dropping his pants and reaching for the newly-repaired faucet handle.
Now Sawyer reaches beneath the kitchen sink for the soap and it occurs to him to wonder who that man in the bathroom is and what has he done with Jack? The man waiting for bubbles is relaxed. He’s a tease. He’s downright silly. He’s a man with hardly a care in the world. Sawyer’s never seen this man before the past week…but he thinks he might like him. “Bubbles,” he chuckles, shaking his head, and heads back to the bathroom, and to Jack.
Jack is already naked and submerged in the steaming, half-full bath. He’s lying against the curved back of the porcelain tub, his arms draped along the rim and his legs spread out in the water invitingly. Sawyer is amused and intrigued to see that he’s already fully hard.
“You sure about this?” He stands beside the tub with the bottle of dish soap in his hands, shifting it between his palms. Jack drops one arm into the water and, with the sideways flat of his hand, sends a great wave up into the air, drenching Sawyer.
“Just make me some bubbles and get your ass in here!”
Sawyer gapes at him. “Did you just splash me?”
“Yeah, and I’m gonna do it again if I don’t see bubbles in the next two seconds.”
Sawyer’s right hand flies to the zipper of his jeans while his left squirts a long stream of detergent into the water pouring into the tub. “Oh, now you’ve done it, Doc. Nobody splashes me and gets away with it.”
He climbs over the rim and sinks down into water that’s exactly the right temperature, with his back to Jack’s chest and Jack’s legs on either side of his hips. “You’re in for it now,” he growls, and he turns his head and seizes Jack’s mouth hard with his own, as heat and steam and bubbles rise around them.
********
Jack allows Sawyer’s assault on his mouth for a while, only until he thinks Sawyer’s had his revenge for the splash, only until Sawyer is just as hard and ready as Jack is. Then he reaches up and takes Sawyer’s chin in his hands. “No,” he says as he pulls Sawyer’s head away. “Not like that. If we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do it slow.”
Sawyer looks at him through hazy, lust-smudged eyes, and he groans. He scoots further back in the water and shifts his ass, telling Jack loud and clear that he can feel Jack’s erection pressing against him, that he knows that Jack wants this just as bad as Sawyer does.
“Turn off the water,” Jack tells him. “Then just lie back and let me touch you.”
Sawyer, never one to obey anything at once, leans in and kisses him long and deep one more time. Then he sits up and twists the hot-and-cold water handles to off. “Looks like my fix worked,” he says, and Jack smiles at the unconscious note of pride in his voice.
“You did good,” he tells him. “Now come here and get your reward.”
Sawyer looks back over his shoulder with a leer. “Slow, huh? You sure about that?”
Jack leans his head back against the porcelain and stretches his arms and legs, relaxed in every part of his body but one. “Just c’mere.”
Sawyer scoots back and lets his body sink down against Jack’s. He turns his head and his breath tickles Jack’s ear, and his tongue slips out and touches Jack’s earlobe feather-light before he nips at it with his teeth and pulls it into his mouth, sucking softly. It makes Jack’s whole body shiver, and sends a jolt of arousal straight to his cock. It’s funny how something so simple, so soft and easy and gentle, can be so sensual and erotic if it’s savored slowly. He wraps one arm around Sawyer’s waist and reaches for the soap.
“Mmmm,” Sawyer sighs as Jack begins to rub the bar of soap over his chest and stomach. The sound sends another warm puff of air into Jack’s ear, and he shivers again, tingling all over. As Sawyer’s skin becomes slick with soap Jack lets his free hand roam, marveling anew at how smooth he is. He feels like satin beneath Jack's roaming fingertips, the softness enhanced by the slick slide of the soap, the fine hairs that make a path from his chest to his groin only adding to the softness. The room around them is steamy and bathed in dim yellow light, the air humid and warm and somehow soft like Sawyer’s skin. There’s no sound but their mingled breaths and the low crackle of popping bubbles. Jack scoops up a double handful of water and rinses Sawyer’s chest, the water sluicing over his golden skin, making it shine.
Jack’s hand slides down, down over the glowing flesh and lower still, until his fingers twine in the thicker hair below. They curl there teasingly, and Sawyer gasps and shudders in anticipation of what’s to come. “What do you want, Sawyer?” Jack whispers in his ear.
“Touch,” Sawyer whispers back. “Just keep touching me, Jack. Don’t ever stop.” He lets his arm drift through the water until it meets Jack’s, and he covers Jack’s hand with his own. He applies just the slightest amount of pressure, just enough to uncurl Jack’s fingers and he slides their joined, flattened palms up, across his abdomen. Jack can feel the muscles quiver and tense under their combined caress. “Touch me everywhere,” Sawyer pleads and Jack does, he soaps and strokes and rinses every inch of Sawyer’s body, a body he knows so well but can never get his fill of, never.
And when he’s done he puts both hands on top of Sawyer’s head, linking his fingers together and applying a slow, steady pressure until Sawyer slides down Jack’s chest and disappears under the bubbles. When he comes back up he’s got bubbles in his hair, bubbles on his nose, bubbles covering his closed eyes and Jack giggles and wipes them away. “Havin’ fun, Doc?” Sawyer inquires mildly and Jack kisses him and says, “Yeah.”
How far he’s come, he thinks as he lazily traces Sawyer’s lips with his tongue. How far they both have. To be here, deep in the heart of the mountains, warm and relaxed and playing with one another’s bodies, really playing, like friends, like lovers, like two people who share their hearts and their souls…because that’s just who they are. “I love you,” he murmurs against Sawyer’s mouth and Sawyer opens his eyes and looks into Jack’s and whispers, “I know.”
It’s enough, Jack tells himself. For now it’s enough just to know that Sawyer believes him. It’s a huge step for Sawyer, to let himself be loved. Someday Sawyer will tell Jack that he loves him, too. Jack thinks that before he can do that, he’ll have to love himself, and Sawyer isn’t there yet. But maybe accepting Jack’s love is the first step. For now, Jack is content to just love him with everything he has, and wait.
The water is beginning to cool slightly and the bubbles are no longer big, fluffy clouds on its surface but have settled and spread out around then like a soft blanket of snow. He could add more water, Jack thinks, but the quiet and the relaxation and the slow caresses are making him feel drowsy, and sleep is not what he had in mind. He drops his head to the curve of Sawyer’s shoulder and laves the skin with his tongue before pressing his lips against it and sucking gently. Sawyer groans and shifts his hips, a clear signal to Jack that he’s aching to be touched. Jack wraps one arm around him and lets the other hand trail down, into the water and between Sawyer’s legs, his fingers finding Sawyer stiff and straining against his lower belly. At first he just strokes with his fingertips. He lets them slide lightly over the soft skin, over the ridges and curves, tracing paths he’s memorized by feel but never gets tired of revisiting. Sawyer spreads his legs wider against the confines of Jack’s thighs, opening himself up completely, inviting Jack to do with him what he will.
Jack’s free hand has been absently stroking small circles over Sawyer’s chest but now it drifts through the water until he finds the soap. At the same time he finally wraps his fingers around Sawyer’s cock. Sawyer lifts his hips to encourage him, and Jack squeezes and runs his thumb over the flared tip. Sawyer makes a little noise of appreciation, and Jack turns the bar of soap over and over in his hand. The water impedes friction, reduces the slide of skin on skin, but Jack knows Sawyer’s body so well that he knows how to use pressure and rhythm to build the pleasure instead. Yet there’s one thing about Sawyer’s body that he doesn’t know, one thing they’ve never tried. As open as Sawyer has become, though, Jack doesn’t know if he’s ready to take another step. He doesn’t know if either of them is. But today they’re taking it slow, and maybe if he goes slow and easy, he can figuratively test the waters. When his fingers are coated with soap and Sawyer is rigid and straining in his other hand, Jack snakes his arm around Sawyer’s body and pushes his hand between his thighs, stopping with just the tip of his index finger pushing against the entrance to his ass. He waits.
Sawyer’s head is resting against Jack’s shoulder and Jack has been watching his face, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, small sounds of arousal escaping his lips with every stroke of Jack’s hand. Now he opens his eyes and looks at Jack uncertainly. “I don’t…we ain’t ever gone there before, Jack.”
“I know.” Jack says it quietly, without stopping his rhythm down below. “I’ll take it easy, just like we’re taking everything easy. Just a little at a time, okay, and if you don’t like it just tell me and I’ll stop.”
Sawyer closes his eyes again and shifts his hips closer to Jack’s finger, and Jack takes that as acquiescence. Slowly, he begins to push inside. He probes gently, watching Sawyer’s face, listening to his breathing, waiting for an indication that he’s found what he’s looking for. He curls his finger upward, still stroking, and Sawyer gasps and arches up high, as if he’s suddenly been struck by a jolt of electricity.
“God, Jack,” he chokes, and Jack does it again and then again just to hear that urgent, pleasure-filled half-sob.
A few more strokes and now there’s nothing languid about Sawyer, he’s panting, rolling his head back and forth against Jack’s chest, his hips thrusting against Jack’s hands, first up into his right hand and then down, hard, onto his left. “Oh, fuck Jack, that’s good. I can’t…can’t take much of that, need to come, ah, Jesus don’t stop, right there, right there, oh!” Jack has found his rhythm with both hands now, working Sawyer inside and out, and from Sawyer’s response he knows that “slow” is now out of the question. With just a few slides of his finger he’s already pushed Sawyer to the edge, there’ll be no languorous, steady prep, no mutual consummation of what he’d begun, not this time. This time is going to be all for Sawyer. Ignoring his own neglected and aching erection straining against the crack of Sawyer’s ass, he works Sawyer for all he’s worth.
He stares, fascinated, at Sawyer as the man slides completely out of control. He arches his neck and Jack looks down at his face, cheeks flushed, eyes unseeing, mouth gasping and unable to form coherent words beyond, “Fuck, Jack, oh god, fuck me,” and his hands grip the sides of the tub, white-knuckled. His feet are braced against the tub’s porcelain side and as the first wave hits him his back bows and he pushes himself backward, hard and tight against Jack, until all the breath is pushed out of Jack’s body and he doesn’t even mind, because Sawyer is coming so hard that Jack thinks that he, too, has lost the power to breathe. He stays like that, arched and utterly still but for his hips, which are still thrusting erratically against Jack’s hands, for what seems like an eternity, until finally with a choked gasp he relaxes completely, sinking limp and boneless against Jack as the bubbles swirl and the steam rises around them.
Jack just holds him quietly as he comes down, content to just be still even though he’s maybe the hardest he’s ever been in his life after watching Sawyer lose it so completely. It takes several moments for Sawyer’s breathing so slow, for him to be able to make a sound beyond small, contented moans. Finally he opens his eyes and looks at Jack, and utters a low, stunned-sounding, ”Damn.”
Jack dips his head and kisses him, long and slow and deep. Sawyer accepts Jack’s tongue passively, too sated to do anything but relax into the kiss. Then he shifts in the tub, trying to roll over onto his side. “What’re you doing?” Jack mumbles.
“Your turn, cowboy,” Sawyer answers shakily. “You’re puttin’ a dent in my back with that thing, reckon I oughtta take care of it for you.”
He looks so completely wiped out yet so determined that Jack has to laugh, just a little. “Why don’t we wait a little while, okay? You look like you could use a rest.”
Sawyer flashes a dimple. “Think you wore me out, Doc? That was just the warm up.”
Jack takes his face in his hands and kisses him hard. “All right, stud-boy, let's get out of this tub before everything starts to, uh, shrivel up. We can finish this in bed.”
Sawyer sits up and reaches for the chain that’s attached to the tub’s rubber plug, and water begins to gurgle down the drain. Sawyer grips the sides of the tub and pushes himself into a standing position, and the sight of his wet and glistening body almost makes Jack change his mind about waiting. Dripping, Sawyer climbs out of the tub and reaches for a towel. Jack doesn’t move right away, he’s too busy enjoying the sight of the white towel rubbing over skin that is somehow still bronzed, even in wintertime. He remembers the first time he’d noticed that skin, how he’d stumbled onto a small lagoon their third day on the island and there Sawyer had been, stretched naked on a rock in the sun, looking so relaxed and wild and free, and he remembered how irritated he’d been by that. He’d stared for a long moment, the sight temporarily robbing him of speech, but then he’d finally managed to bark, “Put some clothes on.” He dug in his backpack. “And use this; I don’t want you to come crying to me when you get sun poisoning.” He’d thrown a bottle of sunscreen at Sawyer and started to walk away, but Sawyer just opened his eyes, stretched like a sun-warmed jungle cat, and said, “Hold on a second, Doc.”
Jack had paused and kept his gaze carefully averted, though his eyes kept traitorously trying to stare.
“Water’s great,” Sawyer had told him with a grin and a cocksure wink. “You look like you could use a bath, maybe a little nap in the sunshine. Why don’t you join me for a little while?” He’d picked up the bottle of sunscreen and looked from it to Jack with a leer. “I’ll even rub this on for you…if you’ll do the same for me.”
He remembers how enraged he’d felt at that moment, how mocked. It was one of the most blatant come ons Jack had ever heard. Sawyer knew Jack had been staring, he must, and he was making fun of Jack’s secret fascination with him. Jack knew Sawyer was straight. He’d seen him with Kate. But he must have thought that Jack was gay. There was no way to tell him that Sawyer was the first man Jack had ever wanted to look at, and in that moment Jack admitted to himself, to touch. Jack had stood there, staring blindly into the distance, for another instant, and then he’d turned on his heel and stalked away.
He watches now as Sawyer stands naked in the tiny bathroom, towel-drying his hair. There’d been so many missteps in the dance that had gotten them here, to this point of such natural, easy intimacy. So many miscommunications and misunderstandings, such a push-pull rhythm, and yet in the end they’d still found their harmony. As if to prove it, Sawyer seems to sense his thoughts and he pauses, the towel still pressed against his scalp, and gives Jack a small, questioning smile. “What?”
Jack grabs the edge of the tub and pulls himself out of the water. He’s still half hard, but his body seems to have resigned itself to waiting a while. He grabs a towel and wraps it around his waist. “You know what.” He reaches for Sawyer and pulls him against his body, not holding him, just touching him from head to toe and basking in his nearness. “I’m not going to keep saying it because I think it makes you nervous. But you know.”
Sawyer gives a small, almost-silent laugh that holds no amusement at all, only regret. “I want to, Jack. I want to say it, but I just can’t. Not yet.”
“I know, and it’s okay,” Jack lies. He knows it’s not lack of love, but fear that holds Sawyer back, that keeps him from saying those three words that Jack longs to hear. He doesn’t know what more he can do to get past that wall, to prove to Sawyer that he’s safe. All he can do is keep showing him, every way he can. “Let’s go to bed.”
link to Chapter 15
Chapter 14
They’re awakened on the morning of New Year’s Eve by a loud bang, followed by the sound of a thundering deluge. Either their house has been transported, Oz-style, to Niagara Falls, or the plumbing has finally given up the ghost. Jack jumps out of bed, cursing, while Sawyer just pulls the pillow over his head. Maybe it’s a dream. Or maybe Jack will handle it. He’s quite the handyman these days, after all.
“Goddammit, Sawyer, get in here,” Jack bellows from the bathroom. “And bring a bucket or something!”
Groaning, Sawyer throws back the quilt and drags himself out of bed. Hasn’t even been a good three hours since Jack had finally had enough and let him go to sleep. Bleary-eyed, he retrieves his boxers from where Jack had tossed them on the floor and pulls them on. Not having a bucket handy, he makes his way to the bathroom to see what new disaster his house has bestowed on them.
Jack is standing by the bathtub, holding the hot-water handle of the bathtub faucet in his hand. Water is pouring, no, gushing out of the hole where the knob used to be. Gallon after gallon of water spills deafeningly into the tub, and Jack waves the handle at Sawyer helplessly. “Do something!”
Sawyer takes a second to assess the situation. There’s no way to plug the hole, the force of the water is too strong. For the moment the water is being contained by the tub, but the drain is slow and the water level in the old claw-footed tub is rising quickly. If something isn’t done soon they’ll have a flood on their hands.
“You get the bucket,” he tells Jack. “Start bailing into the sink if you have to. There’s a cut-off valve out by the road, I’ll go see if I can shut it down.”
Leaving Jack, naked and panicked, to be the bucket brigade, he runs back to the bedroom to pull on jeans and a flannel shirt, and lets himself out of the house, barefoot, into the snowy yard. He tries to remember exactly where the water valve is. He kicks himself mentally for not starting on the plumbing like he’d meant to; Jack had distracted him, Jack had made him complacent and lazy. And really, if he’s honest with himself, he isn’t sorry about that at all.
He finally finds the valve and shuts down the water supply, and he needs to get inside before his feet ice over. But he has to stop for a second to puzzle, once again, at the giant inflatable snowman Jack planted in their front yard. Jack has been worse than a kid on Christmas morning these last few days; Jack has been positively giddy with holiday spirit. “Christmas is over,” Sawyer keeps reminding him, and Jack just laughs and makes yet another trip into Gatlinburg to buy more half-price Christmas junk. Sawyer supposes that next year they’ll have the gaudiest house in town. If it hasn’t washed away in a flood by then, he reminds himself, and hurries inside.
He finds Jack still in the bathroom, still naked, staring into the no-longer-gushing hole in the wall. The tub is filled nearly to the brim but it hasn’t overflowed, and it’s draining slowly. Jack looks at Sawyer with a frown. “What the hell happened?”
Sawyer shrugs. “Valve broke.” He picks the hot-water handle up off the sink and looks it over, then peers into the hole. “Metal fatigue, I’m guessing. House is more’n seventy years old, things are wearin’ out.”
“Oh.” Jack sounds a bit crestfallen. “We better get to work then, huh? I guess the honeymoon’s over.”
Sawyer shakes his hair out of his eyes and laughs. “I was gonna start on the plumbing a week ago, hoss. Then you came along and sidetracked me. Guess this is a sign that we gotta start payin’ attention to stuff again.”
“Yeah,” Jack agrees regretfully. Then he straightens up and wraps his hand around the back of Sawyer’s neck, and pulls him in for a hard, deep kiss. “In a minute.” He kisses him again, and it’s a lot more than a minute before they remember the plumbing.
********
“That oughtta hold it for a while,” Sawyer says, pulling hard on the wrench one last time to secure the handle to the wall. “But tomorrow, day after at the latest, we’re gonna have to start tearin’ out walls and replacin’ stuff piece by piece.”
“You’re the boss.” Jack thinks that, in his own way, Sawyer is like a surgeon. He knows the workings of a house the way that Jack knows the workings of a body. He’d asked Sawyer once how he knew how to repair houses, and Sawyer had told him, “Worked construction full-time from when I was sixteen til I was nineteen.”
“You didn’t finish high school?” Jack had asked, somewhat surprised given Sawyer’s intelligence and obvious book-learning.
“My granddaddy died when I was fifteen. My grandmother didn’t outlive him by more’n three months. They tried me out in foster care, didn’t work out so they sent me to a home for kids with ‘adjustment problems.’” Sawyer snorted. “Go figure, huh. I dropped outta school and went to work so I’d be ready to look after myself the minute the law’d let me.”
Jack thinks back on that conversation now, and he feels his rage rise. Someone would certainly have notified Sawyer’s maternal grandmother when his father’s parents died. She must have deliberately chosen not to take him in. But then he tries to imagine Sawyer living in that house, having the lifestyle that woman lived inflicted upon him, and he can’t. Being a ward of the state had surely gone a long way toward making Sawyer the maladjusted person he’d become, but maybe even that was better than what he might have grown into if he’d been subjected to that woman’s bigotry and hatred. He’d never told Sawyer about his visit to Mississippi and he never will; Sawyer is better off never thinking of his mother’s parents again. Sometimes secrets really do keep you safe.
“When you goin’ back to work full-time?” Sawyer asks as he puts away his tools. Jack has taken a partial leave of absence, claiming a family crisis, a claim that was reinforced by Margo’s frequent attempts to get hold of him at the hospital. Jack had finally stopped avoiding her calls and had told her that the game was over; he knew everything and he’d chosen to be with Sawyer anyway. He'd taken away any power she held over either of them once and for all. She isn’t currently speaking to him, and he knows there are forgiveness issues on both sides to work through and he will work through them, eventually. But right now he has other family that needs him more, because that's what Sawyer is to him now, family. So he cut his hours at work to the bare essentials to spend some much-needed time proving to Sawyer that he is loved.
“When you’re ready for me to, I guess. You know we’ll start driving each other crazy again soon.”
Sawyer reaches out and slides his hand languorously over the denim-covered curve of Jack’s ass. “You’re already drivin’ me crazy, Doc,” he says in his slowest, most evocative molasses-thick drawl. And just like that Jack feels himself harden, nothing more than a touch and a few suggestive though not-very-original words, and his body reacts like that of a horny teenager.
“C’mere,” he says and Sawyer sways into him, just like that, just that easy, and Jack is kissing him like there’s no tomorrow even though there is, there’s tomorrow after tomorrow after tomorrow.
After a couple of minutes he notices that, though his arms are around Sawyer and his hands are already beneath the denim of Sawyer’s jeans, gripping his ass, Sawyer’s hands are still hovering awkwardly in the air behind Jack, an inch or two from his back. “What’s the matter?” he mumbles against Sawyer’s mouth, and Sawyer mumbles back, “Dirty hands.” Jack gives the taut flesh beneath his fingers one last squeeze, a promise of things to come, and then he steps back and looks Sawyer over. He’s got grease smeared on one cheek and his hands and wrists are coated with it, too, as well as some sort of nasty sludge that they’d discovered had built up on the pipes. His shirt, which he’d never bothered to button in the heat of their emergency repair operation, is smeared with goo after Sawyer had wiped his hands on it repeatedly, and Jack sees that he’s got some of it on his chest, too. “You’re a mess,” Jack observes mildly.
“Well, if you were the boss and not just the assistant, you’d be a mess, too. It don’t dirty you up much when all you have to do is hand me the tools.”
Jack is once again reminded of the medical analogy he’d thought about earlier; repairing a broken house is much like an operation and in this job, Jack plays a different role. Sawyer is the surgeon performing an emergency surgery, and Jack is the nurse at his right hand (or in Sawyer's case, left hand), making sure he has everything he needs. He thinks he likes seeing Sawyer in this new light, as the rescuer, the healer, the one in charge. It’s a strange feeling for Jack, but he discovers that it’s a welcome one as well.
He glances at the newly installed handle on the tub. “You sure that thing works?” he asks, though Sawyer appears to be a fairly competent plumber so he knows the answer is yes. “You think maybe we should test it out?”
“Whatcha got in mind, chief?” Sawyer turns his dirty hands over like he’s admiring them. “Since you said ‘we’ and not ‘me,’ that tells me you’ve got somethin’ in mind besides just inspectin’ my work.” His grin is both lecherous and, to Jack’s delight, unguardedly hopeful.
“Well, see, I’ve been learning a lot more from you than just how to fix up a house,” Jack says, grinning back. He starts to unbutton his shirt. “And since I’m not on call and there aren’t any surgeries scheduled today, I only have to go in to make rounds, and none of my patients are critical. They can wait. Now, I know I usually jump out of bed in the morning and hop in the shower, and I never even thought about taking a long, hot bath. But since you’re such a mess and we need to test your handiwork anyway, this seems like the perfect time to try it out.” He shrugs off his shirt and lets it fall to the floor, raising an eyebrow at Sawyer pointedly and waiting for him to do the same.
“You?” Sawyer’s eyes widen. “You want to take a bath? With me.” He slowly starts to strip off his shirt. “Dr. Always-in-a-Hurry who won’t even let me get in the shower with you because you’ve got important places to be? Seriously?”
Jack gives him a big, happy grin. “Got any bubbles?”
********
“Bubbles.” Sawyer keeps repeating the word bemusedly as he makes his way, shirtless and filthy, to the kitchen. Dr. Jackrabbit wants to take a bubble bath. With him.
“No, I ain’t got any bubbles,” he’d snorted, wondering if Jack had lost his mind. “Do I look like somebody who’d use bubble bath?”
Jack had looked at him consideringly, his eyes crinkling at the corners in that way that Sawyer loves, and finally he’d said, “I bet you did when you were a kid.”
“Yeah, so?” It came out less defensively than Sawyer intended it to. After all, Jack was unzipping his jeans.
“So, when you were a kid did you use bubble bath, or something else?”
Sawyer thought back to times in this very tub when nothing so frivolous as bubble bath had ever been on hand, but he’d found a fine substitute in his mamaw’s Ivory dishwashing soap. The same stuff that he and Jack use now to wash their dishes. He’d looked at Jack uncertainly. “Are you serious?”
“Completely,” Jack had said, dropping his pants and reaching for the newly-repaired faucet handle.
Now Sawyer reaches beneath the kitchen sink for the soap and it occurs to him to wonder who that man in the bathroom is and what has he done with Jack? The man waiting for bubbles is relaxed. He’s a tease. He’s downright silly. He’s a man with hardly a care in the world. Sawyer’s never seen this man before the past week…but he thinks he might like him. “Bubbles,” he chuckles, shaking his head, and heads back to the bathroom, and to Jack.
Jack is already naked and submerged in the steaming, half-full bath. He’s lying against the curved back of the porcelain tub, his arms draped along the rim and his legs spread out in the water invitingly. Sawyer is amused and intrigued to see that he’s already fully hard.
“You sure about this?” He stands beside the tub with the bottle of dish soap in his hands, shifting it between his palms. Jack drops one arm into the water and, with the sideways flat of his hand, sends a great wave up into the air, drenching Sawyer.
“Just make me some bubbles and get your ass in here!”
Sawyer gapes at him. “Did you just splash me?”
“Yeah, and I’m gonna do it again if I don’t see bubbles in the next two seconds.”
Sawyer’s right hand flies to the zipper of his jeans while his left squirts a long stream of detergent into the water pouring into the tub. “Oh, now you’ve done it, Doc. Nobody splashes me and gets away with it.”
He climbs over the rim and sinks down into water that’s exactly the right temperature, with his back to Jack’s chest and Jack’s legs on either side of his hips. “You’re in for it now,” he growls, and he turns his head and seizes Jack’s mouth hard with his own, as heat and steam and bubbles rise around them.
********
Jack allows Sawyer’s assault on his mouth for a while, only until he thinks Sawyer’s had his revenge for the splash, only until Sawyer is just as hard and ready as Jack is. Then he reaches up and takes Sawyer’s chin in his hands. “No,” he says as he pulls Sawyer’s head away. “Not like that. If we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do it slow.”
Sawyer looks at him through hazy, lust-smudged eyes, and he groans. He scoots further back in the water and shifts his ass, telling Jack loud and clear that he can feel Jack’s erection pressing against him, that he knows that Jack wants this just as bad as Sawyer does.
“Turn off the water,” Jack tells him. “Then just lie back and let me touch you.”
Sawyer, never one to obey anything at once, leans in and kisses him long and deep one more time. Then he sits up and twists the hot-and-cold water handles to off. “Looks like my fix worked,” he says, and Jack smiles at the unconscious note of pride in his voice.
“You did good,” he tells him. “Now come here and get your reward.”
Sawyer looks back over his shoulder with a leer. “Slow, huh? You sure about that?”
Jack leans his head back against the porcelain and stretches his arms and legs, relaxed in every part of his body but one. “Just c’mere.”
Sawyer scoots back and lets his body sink down against Jack’s. He turns his head and his breath tickles Jack’s ear, and his tongue slips out and touches Jack’s earlobe feather-light before he nips at it with his teeth and pulls it into his mouth, sucking softly. It makes Jack’s whole body shiver, and sends a jolt of arousal straight to his cock. It’s funny how something so simple, so soft and easy and gentle, can be so sensual and erotic if it’s savored slowly. He wraps one arm around Sawyer’s waist and reaches for the soap.
“Mmmm,” Sawyer sighs as Jack begins to rub the bar of soap over his chest and stomach. The sound sends another warm puff of air into Jack’s ear, and he shivers again, tingling all over. As Sawyer’s skin becomes slick with soap Jack lets his free hand roam, marveling anew at how smooth he is. He feels like satin beneath Jack's roaming fingertips, the softness enhanced by the slick slide of the soap, the fine hairs that make a path from his chest to his groin only adding to the softness. The room around them is steamy and bathed in dim yellow light, the air humid and warm and somehow soft like Sawyer’s skin. There’s no sound but their mingled breaths and the low crackle of popping bubbles. Jack scoops up a double handful of water and rinses Sawyer’s chest, the water sluicing over his golden skin, making it shine.
Jack’s hand slides down, down over the glowing flesh and lower still, until his fingers twine in the thicker hair below. They curl there teasingly, and Sawyer gasps and shudders in anticipation of what’s to come. “What do you want, Sawyer?” Jack whispers in his ear.
“Touch,” Sawyer whispers back. “Just keep touching me, Jack. Don’t ever stop.” He lets his arm drift through the water until it meets Jack’s, and he covers Jack’s hand with his own. He applies just the slightest amount of pressure, just enough to uncurl Jack’s fingers and he slides their joined, flattened palms up, across his abdomen. Jack can feel the muscles quiver and tense under their combined caress. “Touch me everywhere,” Sawyer pleads and Jack does, he soaps and strokes and rinses every inch of Sawyer’s body, a body he knows so well but can never get his fill of, never.
And when he’s done he puts both hands on top of Sawyer’s head, linking his fingers together and applying a slow, steady pressure until Sawyer slides down Jack’s chest and disappears under the bubbles. When he comes back up he’s got bubbles in his hair, bubbles on his nose, bubbles covering his closed eyes and Jack giggles and wipes them away. “Havin’ fun, Doc?” Sawyer inquires mildly and Jack kisses him and says, “Yeah.”
How far he’s come, he thinks as he lazily traces Sawyer’s lips with his tongue. How far they both have. To be here, deep in the heart of the mountains, warm and relaxed and playing with one another’s bodies, really playing, like friends, like lovers, like two people who share their hearts and their souls…because that’s just who they are. “I love you,” he murmurs against Sawyer’s mouth and Sawyer opens his eyes and looks into Jack’s and whispers, “I know.”
It’s enough, Jack tells himself. For now it’s enough just to know that Sawyer believes him. It’s a huge step for Sawyer, to let himself be loved. Someday Sawyer will tell Jack that he loves him, too. Jack thinks that before he can do that, he’ll have to love himself, and Sawyer isn’t there yet. But maybe accepting Jack’s love is the first step. For now, Jack is content to just love him with everything he has, and wait.
The water is beginning to cool slightly and the bubbles are no longer big, fluffy clouds on its surface but have settled and spread out around then like a soft blanket of snow. He could add more water, Jack thinks, but the quiet and the relaxation and the slow caresses are making him feel drowsy, and sleep is not what he had in mind. He drops his head to the curve of Sawyer’s shoulder and laves the skin with his tongue before pressing his lips against it and sucking gently. Sawyer groans and shifts his hips, a clear signal to Jack that he’s aching to be touched. Jack wraps one arm around him and lets the other hand trail down, into the water and between Sawyer’s legs, his fingers finding Sawyer stiff and straining against his lower belly. At first he just strokes with his fingertips. He lets them slide lightly over the soft skin, over the ridges and curves, tracing paths he’s memorized by feel but never gets tired of revisiting. Sawyer spreads his legs wider against the confines of Jack’s thighs, opening himself up completely, inviting Jack to do with him what he will.
Jack’s free hand has been absently stroking small circles over Sawyer’s chest but now it drifts through the water until he finds the soap. At the same time he finally wraps his fingers around Sawyer’s cock. Sawyer lifts his hips to encourage him, and Jack squeezes and runs his thumb over the flared tip. Sawyer makes a little noise of appreciation, and Jack turns the bar of soap over and over in his hand. The water impedes friction, reduces the slide of skin on skin, but Jack knows Sawyer’s body so well that he knows how to use pressure and rhythm to build the pleasure instead. Yet there’s one thing about Sawyer’s body that he doesn’t know, one thing they’ve never tried. As open as Sawyer has become, though, Jack doesn’t know if he’s ready to take another step. He doesn’t know if either of them is. But today they’re taking it slow, and maybe if he goes slow and easy, he can figuratively test the waters. When his fingers are coated with soap and Sawyer is rigid and straining in his other hand, Jack snakes his arm around Sawyer’s body and pushes his hand between his thighs, stopping with just the tip of his index finger pushing against the entrance to his ass. He waits.
Sawyer’s head is resting against Jack’s shoulder and Jack has been watching his face, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, small sounds of arousal escaping his lips with every stroke of Jack’s hand. Now he opens his eyes and looks at Jack uncertainly. “I don’t…we ain’t ever gone there before, Jack.”
“I know.” Jack says it quietly, without stopping his rhythm down below. “I’ll take it easy, just like we’re taking everything easy. Just a little at a time, okay, and if you don’t like it just tell me and I’ll stop.”
Sawyer closes his eyes again and shifts his hips closer to Jack’s finger, and Jack takes that as acquiescence. Slowly, he begins to push inside. He probes gently, watching Sawyer’s face, listening to his breathing, waiting for an indication that he’s found what he’s looking for. He curls his finger upward, still stroking, and Sawyer gasps and arches up high, as if he’s suddenly been struck by a jolt of electricity.
“God, Jack,” he chokes, and Jack does it again and then again just to hear that urgent, pleasure-filled half-sob.
A few more strokes and now there’s nothing languid about Sawyer, he’s panting, rolling his head back and forth against Jack’s chest, his hips thrusting against Jack’s hands, first up into his right hand and then down, hard, onto his left. “Oh, fuck Jack, that’s good. I can’t…can’t take much of that, need to come, ah, Jesus don’t stop, right there, right there, oh!” Jack has found his rhythm with both hands now, working Sawyer inside and out, and from Sawyer’s response he knows that “slow” is now out of the question. With just a few slides of his finger he’s already pushed Sawyer to the edge, there’ll be no languorous, steady prep, no mutual consummation of what he’d begun, not this time. This time is going to be all for Sawyer. Ignoring his own neglected and aching erection straining against the crack of Sawyer’s ass, he works Sawyer for all he’s worth.
He stares, fascinated, at Sawyer as the man slides completely out of control. He arches his neck and Jack looks down at his face, cheeks flushed, eyes unseeing, mouth gasping and unable to form coherent words beyond, “Fuck, Jack, oh god, fuck me,” and his hands grip the sides of the tub, white-knuckled. His feet are braced against the tub’s porcelain side and as the first wave hits him his back bows and he pushes himself backward, hard and tight against Jack, until all the breath is pushed out of Jack’s body and he doesn’t even mind, because Sawyer is coming so hard that Jack thinks that he, too, has lost the power to breathe. He stays like that, arched and utterly still but for his hips, which are still thrusting erratically against Jack’s hands, for what seems like an eternity, until finally with a choked gasp he relaxes completely, sinking limp and boneless against Jack as the bubbles swirl and the steam rises around them.
Jack just holds him quietly as he comes down, content to just be still even though he’s maybe the hardest he’s ever been in his life after watching Sawyer lose it so completely. It takes several moments for Sawyer’s breathing so slow, for him to be able to make a sound beyond small, contented moans. Finally he opens his eyes and looks at Jack, and utters a low, stunned-sounding, ”Damn.”
Jack dips his head and kisses him, long and slow and deep. Sawyer accepts Jack’s tongue passively, too sated to do anything but relax into the kiss. Then he shifts in the tub, trying to roll over onto his side. “What’re you doing?” Jack mumbles.
“Your turn, cowboy,” Sawyer answers shakily. “You’re puttin’ a dent in my back with that thing, reckon I oughtta take care of it for you.”
He looks so completely wiped out yet so determined that Jack has to laugh, just a little. “Why don’t we wait a little while, okay? You look like you could use a rest.”
Sawyer flashes a dimple. “Think you wore me out, Doc? That was just the warm up.”
Jack takes his face in his hands and kisses him hard. “All right, stud-boy, let's get out of this tub before everything starts to, uh, shrivel up. We can finish this in bed.”
Sawyer sits up and reaches for the chain that’s attached to the tub’s rubber plug, and water begins to gurgle down the drain. Sawyer grips the sides of the tub and pushes himself into a standing position, and the sight of his wet and glistening body almost makes Jack change his mind about waiting. Dripping, Sawyer climbs out of the tub and reaches for a towel. Jack doesn’t move right away, he’s too busy enjoying the sight of the white towel rubbing over skin that is somehow still bronzed, even in wintertime. He remembers the first time he’d noticed that skin, how he’d stumbled onto a small lagoon their third day on the island and there Sawyer had been, stretched naked on a rock in the sun, looking so relaxed and wild and free, and he remembered how irritated he’d been by that. He’d stared for a long moment, the sight temporarily robbing him of speech, but then he’d finally managed to bark, “Put some clothes on.” He dug in his backpack. “And use this; I don’t want you to come crying to me when you get sun poisoning.” He’d thrown a bottle of sunscreen at Sawyer and started to walk away, but Sawyer just opened his eyes, stretched like a sun-warmed jungle cat, and said, “Hold on a second, Doc.”
Jack had paused and kept his gaze carefully averted, though his eyes kept traitorously trying to stare.
“Water’s great,” Sawyer had told him with a grin and a cocksure wink. “You look like you could use a bath, maybe a little nap in the sunshine. Why don’t you join me for a little while?” He’d picked up the bottle of sunscreen and looked from it to Jack with a leer. “I’ll even rub this on for you…if you’ll do the same for me.”
He remembers how enraged he’d felt at that moment, how mocked. It was one of the most blatant come ons Jack had ever heard. Sawyer knew Jack had been staring, he must, and he was making fun of Jack’s secret fascination with him. Jack knew Sawyer was straight. He’d seen him with Kate. But he must have thought that Jack was gay. There was no way to tell him that Sawyer was the first man Jack had ever wanted to look at, and in that moment Jack admitted to himself, to touch. Jack had stood there, staring blindly into the distance, for another instant, and then he’d turned on his heel and stalked away.
He watches now as Sawyer stands naked in the tiny bathroom, towel-drying his hair. There’d been so many missteps in the dance that had gotten them here, to this point of such natural, easy intimacy. So many miscommunications and misunderstandings, such a push-pull rhythm, and yet in the end they’d still found their harmony. As if to prove it, Sawyer seems to sense his thoughts and he pauses, the towel still pressed against his scalp, and gives Jack a small, questioning smile. “What?”
Jack grabs the edge of the tub and pulls himself out of the water. He’s still half hard, but his body seems to have resigned itself to waiting a while. He grabs a towel and wraps it around his waist. “You know what.” He reaches for Sawyer and pulls him against his body, not holding him, just touching him from head to toe and basking in his nearness. “I’m not going to keep saying it because I think it makes you nervous. But you know.”
Sawyer gives a small, almost-silent laugh that holds no amusement at all, only regret. “I want to, Jack. I want to say it, but I just can’t. Not yet.”
“I know, and it’s okay,” Jack lies. He knows it’s not lack of love, but fear that holds Sawyer back, that keeps him from saying those three words that Jack longs to hear. He doesn’t know what more he can do to get past that wall, to prove to Sawyer that he’s safe. All he can do is keep showing him, every way he can. “Let’s go to bed.”
link to Chapter 15