Origin Stories [3/7] - Lost - Kate/Kevin/Sawyer
Title: Origin Stories [3/7]
Pairing: Kate/Kevin/Sawyer (and combinations thereof)
Word Count: 2890
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Superhero!AU. Thank you to babylon_pride for betaing.
Previously: Part One :: Part Two
Summary: By day, Kevin Callis is an unnoticeable police officer, up-holding the law and too committed to his job to hold down a relationship; by night, The Captain emerges to help where the law can't. When he becomes entangled in the plot of a pair of supervillains, the line between his two identities begins to blur.
He stirred from sleep with a painful crick in his neck, blinking as he looked around in a blind attempt to work out what was going on. Light was shining from the top of the stairs, the door open. He could hear two people talking up there: Sawyer and Monica. Talking. Arguing. They sure as hell weren't being quiet about it either. The faint hope stirred in his chest that maybe, just maybe, someone'd hear, someone'd come, someone'd help him to get out of here. He didn't want to be the weak one any more, sure as hell didn't want to be the damsel in distress, but it didn't look as if he had much of a choice in the matter.
"C'mon, Freckles," Sawyer murmured - his voice was easy enough to recognise. "It's not like we need him any more anyhow."
"We can't," she insisted, voice hissed, tone desperate. "We can't. He might lead the police here. He might-"
"They all might do that. And we're not gonna be here anyway. Not if this goes according to plan, and it is gonna go perfectly. We don't need him."
"We..."
Holding his breath, Kevin listened as carefully as he could, desperate for some sign of salvation and some hope that he might be getting out of this place soon. He was so tired, the weight of the last few weeks hanging so heavily on his shoulders. He didn't think that he could stay here much longer: he didn't think he'd be able to handle it and still hang onto his unravelling mind.
"Kate," Sawyer said, so quiet that Kevin could barely hear it. "Kate, I've gotta do this."
"You don't. Damn it, you don't."
"Why're you so keen on keeping him around?" Sawyer asked, changing tact. The heaviness in his voice said that he already knew the answer even if he didn't want to admit it.
The silence stretched out, tense like a piano string pulled taut and ready to snap.
"Yeah," Sawyer said. "Thought as much."
"We're keeping him. All of them," Monica said. "Just for another few days. Just until we're sure."
"Then what?"
"We send a note to the police," she said decisively. "Let them know where to find them."
"That could be days they'd be sitting here. That ain't right."
"It's-" She paused. Kevin could hear movements at the top of the stairs, footsteps on the kitchen floor. "Just take him his food, Sawyer. It's getting cold."
Sawyer snorted, angry and frustrated. Just the sound of it made Kevin real keen to go and find somewhere to hide. "He's your pet, Lightning. You get to feed him."
Footsteps again, fading away through the kitchen, then the slam of a door to punctuate Sawyer's departure. Kevin closed his eyes and wondered when exactly he'd started to think of Sawyer as the better of the two. It seemed to fluctuate daily, really. Both of them were as bad - and as good - as the other. No point in choosing favourites.
The light bulb was turned on above him, fighting back the shadows with an overly hard and brash light. Kevin cringed away from it, looking down at his lap instead.
"Hey, Kevin," Monica said. Her voice sounded so strained, so put upon. He couldn't fight the twinge of pity that found its home within his chest. "How're you doing?"
"Fine," he said. "Just fine. Yourself? Sounded like quite the argument going on up there..."
"You could hear that?"
"Seems like. You left the door open. Just a crack."
Monica looked over her shoulder to the door, still waiting open up at the top of the stairs and she seemed to consider their lax security. "Right. I'll have to make sure we don't do that again."
She smiled at him - and it was such a nice, innocent smile, a smile full of sunshine and laughter. How'd you get like this? he wanted to ask her. How did this happen to you?
She wouldn't answer.
He didn't bother saying it.
"So what d'you think?" he asked. "Am I gonna be getting out of here any time soon? Sawyer said I might."
"Sawyer talks too much," Monica said. "Way too much."
"I'd quite agree. That don't mean that everything he says is nonsense though, now does it?"
"Suppose not." She placed the tray she was carrying down on the floor in front of him, then bit her bottom lip as she looked between it and him. They usually had Sawyer here for this part, here to order him not to try and run as he fed himself. She gave a weary sigh, trying to work out how to accomplish this easily. It wasn't as if he'd be able to escape anyway, even Kevin knew that. Monica was so fast that she'd catch him before he'd even taken half a step, and without his powers to back him up there was no chance of escape.
All he'd be doing would be courting with pain and punishment, asking to be locked down in this basement in the dark again until she worked out what to do to him. "I won't cause any trouble, Monica," he said. "I promise you I won't."
"Thanks." She gave a smile, a little upwards quirk of her mouth. Sweet. Innocent. "But I don't think I can take a promise from you."
Kevin found himself smiling in return. It was better than letting the fear overtake him, than letting it rule his every thought and action. "You saying you can't trust me?"
"I'm saying I shouldn't." She cocked her head curiously at him. "I'd try to run if I were you."
"Good thing you're not me then, now isn't it?"
She shook her head at him all the same and looked down at the tray she was carrying thoughtfully. "We can do this another way," she said decisively, "because I really don't want to have to hurt you."
"Thanks," Kevin answered uncertainly. Was that supposed to be encouraging? "What's for dinner anyhow?"
"It's breakfast," Monica answered with an amused smile. "Cereal and juice."
"It's breakfast?" Kevin looked around the darkened room. There was no hint of natural sunlight anywhere. "Guess I'm losing track of time."
"Guess so." She dragged a chair over to sit next to him, so close that he could almost feel her - he could almost sense the heat of her leg against his. Warm, human contact. It felt too good to possibly be true. "Open up."
He looked down at the spoon in her hand. "You're gonna feed me?" he asked dubiously.
She nodded, before repeating her request with a much stronger tone, softened only by her good-natured smile. Seeing no other option but to do as he was told, Kevin's lips parted. He watched her as she took a spoonful of the bowl's contents, and moments later felt the cold metal of the spoon pressed into his mouth. Milk and cereal. Definitely was breakfast time.
He ate it hungrily, as starving as ever. It seemed that no matter what they gave him it was never enough: the humiliation of having to give over to her was overcome by the hunger that curled insistently within him. Starving, he swallowed as she pulled the spoon from his mouth. "This'd be easier if you'd just untie me," he said.
"Yep," she agreed. "It would."
Didn't happen, though.
He supposed that he couldn't realistically have expected it to. He let her feed him, felt her being so careful and delicate with him. Her hands were small as she wielded the spoon, and her eyes never lost their small sparkle of amusement. She looked so alive and so vibrant, her dark hair tied back loosely from her face. It wasn't right that she was like that - she wasn't right. Not at all; not in the mind.
When he'd eaten enough that he was no longer so desperately starving, he had to ask her. "What happened to you, Monica?"
The sparks in her eyes faded and she looked dangerous again, like she was made from shards of glass. "What do you mean?" she asked, sounding so much more casual than her body language suggested.
"How'd someone like you get to be like this? How'd this work?"
She looked away to him, far into the corner of the room. The need to know was stronger than Kevin knew what to do with. "You can tell me," he urged. "You can trust me."
But she shook her head, a stilted movement. "No. I can't. I really can't."
"Monica--"
At the top of the stairs, the door opened before they could talk any more, before he could talk her around. Sawyer. He was back, walking down the stairs with a pained twist in his expression that Kevin hadn't seen there before. It made him look desperate. Made him look dangerous.
"C'mon, Kate," Sawyer said.
Kate?
"Why don't you go ahead and tell him?" He sat down on the bottom step, his arms resting against his knees as he watched them impassively. "No point in keeping secrets, is there?"
"Kate?" Kevin repeated, not quite ready to move on past that point of the conversation yet. He looked from Sawyer to Monica. "What d'you mean? Kate?"
"Yeah, she hasn't been quite honest with you, champ," Sawyer said, smirking as if he was enjoying this - really enjoying this. "Name's not Monica, for a start."
"What about you, James?" Kate said, teeth clenched. "Have you been honest?"
"This ain't about me, Freckles," Sawyer said, leaning back and lounging, falsely casual. "I never pretended like I was telling the truth, did I?"
She looked down at the half-eaten bowl of cereal sitting on her tray. "You are so full of it, Sawyer."
"Hey now," Kevin said, interjecting while he could. Weren't no point in letting this get too out of hand. If they were fighting each other then they'd sure as hell be less interested in helping him out. He had to get them treating each other nicely before they'd be willing to let him walk free. "How 'bout we all cool off for a minute or two, alright? No use everyone falling out over something like this."
"Keep your mouth closed, Kevin," Sawyer said without casting a glance his way. "The adults are talking now."
Bound by Sawyer's power, Kevin found his lips slamming together, the force unbreakable as his own body worked against him. He breathed through his nose, slowly, as he watched Kate's head hang down, her eyes close, as she tried to remain as calm as she could. Tension whistled through the room, crackling like electricity along his skin.
"Now, sweetheart," Sawyer said. He got to his feet again and moved over to the pair of them, with a smile on his face that held no happiness or amusement in its darkness. "How 'bout we kick things up a notch?"
"Sawyer, don't."
"C'mon. It's what you want, ain't it?"
He moved behind Kevin, out of sight. Kevin could hear him behind him, but his attempts to turn around to get a better look at what was going on brought him nothing but a few sore muscles. He felt it, though, Sawyer's hands on his wrists. Hot skin and rough grasp. There was the metallic sound of a small key slipping into a smaller lock, then the cuffs around his wrists released and his shoulders sagged.
"No running," Sawyer whispered in his ear, his breath hot and filthy on his skin. "You just stay calm."
"Sawyer," Kate insisted. She stood up - and that shouldn't have been threatening, shouldn't have been dangerous at all. Kate was a small woman; with his enhanced strength on his side Kevin would have been able to break her in two without even thinking about it. Even without his gifts, lifting her wouldn't have been a hassle. It weren't her size that was dangerous though, was it? Weren't what she was: it was who she was. It was that big ol' brain of hers, ticking away. Always one step ahead. "That's enough."
He stood up and moved in front of Kevin again, over to where Kate was standing, and placed a hand on her arm. Gritting her teeth, it was clearly an effort for Kate not to pull away from him: smiling softly, at peace with himself, Kevin couldn't help but think that they were the most argumentative couple that he'd ever come across - and in his line of work, he definitely came across a whole lot of people that were the very definition of 'dysfunctional'. He'd have told them as much, but his mouth remained closed just as it was supposed to.
"Go ahead," Sawyer said, nodding towards Kate. "Kiss her."
And he didn't have time to think - not that he could have anyway, not that he'd have wanted to - and she didn't have time to protest. His hands reached out for her, resting against her hips and easing her forward with only the slightest pull. She stepped towards him, and he stretched up from where he sat while she leaned down and their lips met. Closed. Chaste. Innocent and sweet and nothing like what it should have been. Her fingertips rested against his cheek, cold like drops of rain. She tasted sweeter than should have been possible.
"Like you mean it," Sawyer said without moving from where he'd taken his seat on the stairs again. "Really kiss her."
Kevin's eyes fell closed as his lips parted, as his hand moved up from Kate's hip to the side of her face. Deeper and faster and - more. God, more. He needed this, didn't he? Needed it badly, like his whole body would burn up if he didn't get to taste her again, didn't get her kiss imprinted into his mind. She moaned against him, an echoing sound that vibrated through him with the hard pressure of her mouth on his. Nothing felt like that. Nothing had ever felt like that before.
But then it stopped.
Then it ended.
Then he opened his eyes and she was on the other side of the room, even though there was no way, even though that wasn't possible. "What?" Sawyer said. "Isn't this what you wanted, princess?"
She shook her head. "Not like this."
"Like how, then?"
But it was hard to listen to him, hard to listen to anything at all when he was having to fight hard against his own body, trying desperately to stop it from following her over there to kiss her again. His hands clasped onto his chair, clinging onto every scrap of willpower that he had.
Sawyer had the sympathy to glance over to him and recognise his plight. "Oh. Yeah. Sit still, hero."
The need to move left him in an empty flood, even though he could still the gentle memory of Kate's lips against his. He sat in his chair, not moving at all. Keeping quiet. Playing dumb.
"C'mon, Kate," Sawyer sighed, weary and defeated. He'd made his point, whatever it was. He held out his hand for her. "Let's get out of here while we can."
Kate didn't move, barely trembled, but her eyes glanced between him and Sawyer like a cornered animal, a wild horse. Dangerous and all the more beautiful for it. "What about him?" she asked. The hidden strength in her voice was like a velvet-wrapped sword.
"He'll be fine," Sawyer promised. He stood up and walked across the room, over to where Kevin was sitting tight. His hand brushed through Kevin's short hair, pushing it back from his face, and then he took the opportunity to press his lips against Kevin's forehead, lingering there for a moment or two. Cold, dry. He breathed through his nose, soft on Kevin's skin. "Sure gonna miss having you around, hero," he muttered, under his breath.
Kevin looked up at him - and it was so hard to focus on what he was saying, so hard to follow anything that was going on - and frowned as he tried his hardest to understand what he was talking about. What was going on? Where were they going?
He couldn't ask. He wanted to, god he wanted to, but the previous instruction still ruled strong in his mind. He couldn't say a thing.
"Kate, let's go," Sawyer urged, pulling away from Kevin suddenly. He walked in long steps, fast and steady and wasting no time at all, before he reached Kate and took her hand in his larger one. He led her towards the stairs, but they stopped on the bottom step so that he could look back at Kevin, regret heavy in his expression.
"Kevin," he sighed. "Go to sleep. Don't wake up 'til the cops get here."
Kevin shook his head, fighting it even as his eyelids drooped, even as his shoulders went slack, even as his consciousness slipped away from him inch by inch. Couldn't happen like this. They couldn't just leave him, couldn't just walk out like nothing had happened, couldn't pretend that this was normal and that he was going to-
His eyes finished closing. Lost fast in sleep, his body slumped to the side and the chair he was sitting to toppled over with a wooden bounce as it hit the ground. His breath lagged from his chest wearily. Sleep ruled.
*
Part Four
Pairing: Kate/Kevin/Sawyer (and combinations thereof)
Word Count: 2890
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Superhero!AU. Thank you to babylon_pride for betaing.
Previously: Part One :: Part Two
Summary: By day, Kevin Callis is an unnoticeable police officer, up-holding the law and too committed to his job to hold down a relationship; by night, The Captain emerges to help where the law can't. When he becomes entangled in the plot of a pair of supervillains, the line between his two identities begins to blur.
He stirred from sleep with a painful crick in his neck, blinking as he looked around in a blind attempt to work out what was going on. Light was shining from the top of the stairs, the door open. He could hear two people talking up there: Sawyer and Monica. Talking. Arguing. They sure as hell weren't being quiet about it either. The faint hope stirred in his chest that maybe, just maybe, someone'd hear, someone'd come, someone'd help him to get out of here. He didn't want to be the weak one any more, sure as hell didn't want to be the damsel in distress, but it didn't look as if he had much of a choice in the matter.
"C'mon, Freckles," Sawyer murmured - his voice was easy enough to recognise. "It's not like we need him any more anyhow."
"We can't," she insisted, voice hissed, tone desperate. "We can't. He might lead the police here. He might-"
"They all might do that. And we're not gonna be here anyway. Not if this goes according to plan, and it is gonna go perfectly. We don't need him."
"We..."
Holding his breath, Kevin listened as carefully as he could, desperate for some sign of salvation and some hope that he might be getting out of this place soon. He was so tired, the weight of the last few weeks hanging so heavily on his shoulders. He didn't think that he could stay here much longer: he didn't think he'd be able to handle it and still hang onto his unravelling mind.
"Kate," Sawyer said, so quiet that Kevin could barely hear it. "Kate, I've gotta do this."
"You don't. Damn it, you don't."
"Why're you so keen on keeping him around?" Sawyer asked, changing tact. The heaviness in his voice said that he already knew the answer even if he didn't want to admit it.
The silence stretched out, tense like a piano string pulled taut and ready to snap.
"Yeah," Sawyer said. "Thought as much."
"We're keeping him. All of them," Monica said. "Just for another few days. Just until we're sure."
"Then what?"
"We send a note to the police," she said decisively. "Let them know where to find them."
"That could be days they'd be sitting here. That ain't right."
"It's-" She paused. Kevin could hear movements at the top of the stairs, footsteps on the kitchen floor. "Just take him his food, Sawyer. It's getting cold."
Sawyer snorted, angry and frustrated. Just the sound of it made Kevin real keen to go and find somewhere to hide. "He's your pet, Lightning. You get to feed him."
Footsteps again, fading away through the kitchen, then the slam of a door to punctuate Sawyer's departure. Kevin closed his eyes and wondered when exactly he'd started to think of Sawyer as the better of the two. It seemed to fluctuate daily, really. Both of them were as bad - and as good - as the other. No point in choosing favourites.
The light bulb was turned on above him, fighting back the shadows with an overly hard and brash light. Kevin cringed away from it, looking down at his lap instead.
"Hey, Kevin," Monica said. Her voice sounded so strained, so put upon. He couldn't fight the twinge of pity that found its home within his chest. "How're you doing?"
"Fine," he said. "Just fine. Yourself? Sounded like quite the argument going on up there..."
"You could hear that?"
"Seems like. You left the door open. Just a crack."
Monica looked over her shoulder to the door, still waiting open up at the top of the stairs and she seemed to consider their lax security. "Right. I'll have to make sure we don't do that again."
She smiled at him - and it was such a nice, innocent smile, a smile full of sunshine and laughter. How'd you get like this? he wanted to ask her. How did this happen to you?
She wouldn't answer.
He didn't bother saying it.
"So what d'you think?" he asked. "Am I gonna be getting out of here any time soon? Sawyer said I might."
"Sawyer talks too much," Monica said. "Way too much."
"I'd quite agree. That don't mean that everything he says is nonsense though, now does it?"
"Suppose not." She placed the tray she was carrying down on the floor in front of him, then bit her bottom lip as she looked between it and him. They usually had Sawyer here for this part, here to order him not to try and run as he fed himself. She gave a weary sigh, trying to work out how to accomplish this easily. It wasn't as if he'd be able to escape anyway, even Kevin knew that. Monica was so fast that she'd catch him before he'd even taken half a step, and without his powers to back him up there was no chance of escape.
All he'd be doing would be courting with pain and punishment, asking to be locked down in this basement in the dark again until she worked out what to do to him. "I won't cause any trouble, Monica," he said. "I promise you I won't."
"Thanks." She gave a smile, a little upwards quirk of her mouth. Sweet. Innocent. "But I don't think I can take a promise from you."
Kevin found himself smiling in return. It was better than letting the fear overtake him, than letting it rule his every thought and action. "You saying you can't trust me?"
"I'm saying I shouldn't." She cocked her head curiously at him. "I'd try to run if I were you."
"Good thing you're not me then, now isn't it?"
She shook her head at him all the same and looked down at the tray she was carrying thoughtfully. "We can do this another way," she said decisively, "because I really don't want to have to hurt you."
"Thanks," Kevin answered uncertainly. Was that supposed to be encouraging? "What's for dinner anyhow?"
"It's breakfast," Monica answered with an amused smile. "Cereal and juice."
"It's breakfast?" Kevin looked around the darkened room. There was no hint of natural sunlight anywhere. "Guess I'm losing track of time."
"Guess so." She dragged a chair over to sit next to him, so close that he could almost feel her - he could almost sense the heat of her leg against his. Warm, human contact. It felt too good to possibly be true. "Open up."
He looked down at the spoon in her hand. "You're gonna feed me?" he asked dubiously.
She nodded, before repeating her request with a much stronger tone, softened only by her good-natured smile. Seeing no other option but to do as he was told, Kevin's lips parted. He watched her as she took a spoonful of the bowl's contents, and moments later felt the cold metal of the spoon pressed into his mouth. Milk and cereal. Definitely was breakfast time.
He ate it hungrily, as starving as ever. It seemed that no matter what they gave him it was never enough: the humiliation of having to give over to her was overcome by the hunger that curled insistently within him. Starving, he swallowed as she pulled the spoon from his mouth. "This'd be easier if you'd just untie me," he said.
"Yep," she agreed. "It would."
Didn't happen, though.
He supposed that he couldn't realistically have expected it to. He let her feed him, felt her being so careful and delicate with him. Her hands were small as she wielded the spoon, and her eyes never lost their small sparkle of amusement. She looked so alive and so vibrant, her dark hair tied back loosely from her face. It wasn't right that she was like that - she wasn't right. Not at all; not in the mind.
When he'd eaten enough that he was no longer so desperately starving, he had to ask her. "What happened to you, Monica?"
The sparks in her eyes faded and she looked dangerous again, like she was made from shards of glass. "What do you mean?" she asked, sounding so much more casual than her body language suggested.
"How'd someone like you get to be like this? How'd this work?"
She looked away to him, far into the corner of the room. The need to know was stronger than Kevin knew what to do with. "You can tell me," he urged. "You can trust me."
But she shook her head, a stilted movement. "No. I can't. I really can't."
"Monica--"
At the top of the stairs, the door opened before they could talk any more, before he could talk her around. Sawyer. He was back, walking down the stairs with a pained twist in his expression that Kevin hadn't seen there before. It made him look desperate. Made him look dangerous.
"C'mon, Kate," Sawyer said.
Kate?
"Why don't you go ahead and tell him?" He sat down on the bottom step, his arms resting against his knees as he watched them impassively. "No point in keeping secrets, is there?"
"Kate?" Kevin repeated, not quite ready to move on past that point of the conversation yet. He looked from Sawyer to Monica. "What d'you mean? Kate?"
"Yeah, she hasn't been quite honest with you, champ," Sawyer said, smirking as if he was enjoying this - really enjoying this. "Name's not Monica, for a start."
"What about you, James?" Kate said, teeth clenched. "Have you been honest?"
"This ain't about me, Freckles," Sawyer said, leaning back and lounging, falsely casual. "I never pretended like I was telling the truth, did I?"
She looked down at the half-eaten bowl of cereal sitting on her tray. "You are so full of it, Sawyer."
"Hey now," Kevin said, interjecting while he could. Weren't no point in letting this get too out of hand. If they were fighting each other then they'd sure as hell be less interested in helping him out. He had to get them treating each other nicely before they'd be willing to let him walk free. "How 'bout we all cool off for a minute or two, alright? No use everyone falling out over something like this."
"Keep your mouth closed, Kevin," Sawyer said without casting a glance his way. "The adults are talking now."
Bound by Sawyer's power, Kevin found his lips slamming together, the force unbreakable as his own body worked against him. He breathed through his nose, slowly, as he watched Kate's head hang down, her eyes close, as she tried to remain as calm as she could. Tension whistled through the room, crackling like electricity along his skin.
"Now, sweetheart," Sawyer said. He got to his feet again and moved over to the pair of them, with a smile on his face that held no happiness or amusement in its darkness. "How 'bout we kick things up a notch?"
"Sawyer, don't."
"C'mon. It's what you want, ain't it?"
He moved behind Kevin, out of sight. Kevin could hear him behind him, but his attempts to turn around to get a better look at what was going on brought him nothing but a few sore muscles. He felt it, though, Sawyer's hands on his wrists. Hot skin and rough grasp. There was the metallic sound of a small key slipping into a smaller lock, then the cuffs around his wrists released and his shoulders sagged.
"No running," Sawyer whispered in his ear, his breath hot and filthy on his skin. "You just stay calm."
"Sawyer," Kate insisted. She stood up - and that shouldn't have been threatening, shouldn't have been dangerous at all. Kate was a small woman; with his enhanced strength on his side Kevin would have been able to break her in two without even thinking about it. Even without his gifts, lifting her wouldn't have been a hassle. It weren't her size that was dangerous though, was it? Weren't what she was: it was who she was. It was that big ol' brain of hers, ticking away. Always one step ahead. "That's enough."
He stood up and moved in front of Kevin again, over to where Kate was standing, and placed a hand on her arm. Gritting her teeth, it was clearly an effort for Kate not to pull away from him: smiling softly, at peace with himself, Kevin couldn't help but think that they were the most argumentative couple that he'd ever come across - and in his line of work, he definitely came across a whole lot of people that were the very definition of 'dysfunctional'. He'd have told them as much, but his mouth remained closed just as it was supposed to.
"Go ahead," Sawyer said, nodding towards Kate. "Kiss her."
And he didn't have time to think - not that he could have anyway, not that he'd have wanted to - and she didn't have time to protest. His hands reached out for her, resting against her hips and easing her forward with only the slightest pull. She stepped towards him, and he stretched up from where he sat while she leaned down and their lips met. Closed. Chaste. Innocent and sweet and nothing like what it should have been. Her fingertips rested against his cheek, cold like drops of rain. She tasted sweeter than should have been possible.
"Like you mean it," Sawyer said without moving from where he'd taken his seat on the stairs again. "Really kiss her."
Kevin's eyes fell closed as his lips parted, as his hand moved up from Kate's hip to the side of her face. Deeper and faster and - more. God, more. He needed this, didn't he? Needed it badly, like his whole body would burn up if he didn't get to taste her again, didn't get her kiss imprinted into his mind. She moaned against him, an echoing sound that vibrated through him with the hard pressure of her mouth on his. Nothing felt like that. Nothing had ever felt like that before.
But then it stopped.
Then it ended.
Then he opened his eyes and she was on the other side of the room, even though there was no way, even though that wasn't possible. "What?" Sawyer said. "Isn't this what you wanted, princess?"
She shook her head. "Not like this."
"Like how, then?"
But it was hard to listen to him, hard to listen to anything at all when he was having to fight hard against his own body, trying desperately to stop it from following her over there to kiss her again. His hands clasped onto his chair, clinging onto every scrap of willpower that he had.
Sawyer had the sympathy to glance over to him and recognise his plight. "Oh. Yeah. Sit still, hero."
The need to move left him in an empty flood, even though he could still the gentle memory of Kate's lips against his. He sat in his chair, not moving at all. Keeping quiet. Playing dumb.
"C'mon, Kate," Sawyer sighed, weary and defeated. He'd made his point, whatever it was. He held out his hand for her. "Let's get out of here while we can."
Kate didn't move, barely trembled, but her eyes glanced between him and Sawyer like a cornered animal, a wild horse. Dangerous and all the more beautiful for it. "What about him?" she asked. The hidden strength in her voice was like a velvet-wrapped sword.
"He'll be fine," Sawyer promised. He stood up and walked across the room, over to where Kevin was sitting tight. His hand brushed through Kevin's short hair, pushing it back from his face, and then he took the opportunity to press his lips against Kevin's forehead, lingering there for a moment or two. Cold, dry. He breathed through his nose, soft on Kevin's skin. "Sure gonna miss having you around, hero," he muttered, under his breath.
Kevin looked up at him - and it was so hard to focus on what he was saying, so hard to follow anything that was going on - and frowned as he tried his hardest to understand what he was talking about. What was going on? Where were they going?
He couldn't ask. He wanted to, god he wanted to, but the previous instruction still ruled strong in his mind. He couldn't say a thing.
"Kate, let's go," Sawyer urged, pulling away from Kevin suddenly. He walked in long steps, fast and steady and wasting no time at all, before he reached Kate and took her hand in his larger one. He led her towards the stairs, but they stopped on the bottom step so that he could look back at Kevin, regret heavy in his expression.
"Kevin," he sighed. "Go to sleep. Don't wake up 'til the cops get here."
Kevin shook his head, fighting it even as his eyelids drooped, even as his shoulders went slack, even as his consciousness slipped away from him inch by inch. Couldn't happen like this. They couldn't just leave him, couldn't just walk out like nothing had happened, couldn't pretend that this was normal and that he was going to-
His eyes finished closing. Lost fast in sleep, his body slumped to the side and the chair he was sitting to toppled over with a wooden bounce as it hit the ground. His breath lagged from his chest wearily. Sleep ruled.
*
Part Four