Whoo-hoo! I thought I was going to be a whole month late!
TITLE: Best Laid Plans
AUTHOR: Mari
RATING: light R
DISCLAIMER: Not my sandbox, I’m just borrowing the toys in it.
SPOILERS: Con Man missing scene
PAIRINGS: None
A/N: This is for alliecat8, as a very, very (I’m getting caught up!) late birthday present, and because you’re a doll who deserves to be cheered up.
A/N2: I've been thinking about this fic since 'Con Man' aired, but I didn't feel I had a good enough grasp of the character voices when I first entered fandom to do justice by them. Also, I kind of still had that thing where I hated Jack, so the delay might have been for the best. :)
“I’d watch you die.”
Everyone who ever said that confession was good for the soul could fucking take their platitudes and shove them. Sawyer decided this in one great, blinding flash of epiphany, that and a hell of a lot of other things besides, as his hand and his arm throbbed and the edges of his vision began to waver in and out like the reception on his uncle’s shitty television set. Sawyer closed his eyes so that he didn’t have to turn return Jack’s saw-too-much stare any longer and arched his back reflexively to get away from the pain, his legs kicking trails through the dirt. Jack told him sharply to stop moving again, like you try that when you have someone’s thumb wedged into your arm after a hole has been opened up large enough to allow that thumb in the first place, jackass. If Sawyer’s control of his limbs were not spinning away from him at a dizzying rate, he had a certain finger that he would like to introduce Jack to.
“You picked a real prince among men,” Jack said to Kate as Sawyer blearily opened his eyes again, struggling to stay conscious for just a few moments longer.
Kate stared back at him without commenting, the splatters of Sawyer’s own blood on her face standing out in even sharper relief than her freckles. She had gone very pale.
Sawyer had lost this amount of blood only once before, during a bar fight when he took a bottle over the head that didn’t hit him straight on but broke instead, driving a deep gash into the place where the back of his neck met his scalp. He knew that it wasn’t good when random details started jumping out at him.
He still could have told Jack that he was wasting his time if he thought he was going to induce anything like shame in their girl Kate. Sawyer had looked into her eyes, and she would see them both into the ground before she quit surviving. Sawyer thought that that would probably knock the damned knowing look off of Jack’s face, the realization that the man he just tortured knew the would-be damsel more than the hero possibly could. He wasn’t so good that he wasn’t on the verge of spitting it out, either, except that the world chose that moment to do another one of those disturbing lurches. Sawyer found himself hanging onto his consciousness with a white-knuckled grip.
Given that he couldn’t clench his right hand into a fist, Sawyer thought that he could be forgiven for not doing a great job of it. His eyes were rolling back in his head again when Jack noticed and once again called his name.
“Oh, come on,” Sawyer growled, opening his eyes again and meeting Jack’s gaze. Jack stared back at him, all big dark eyes and newly minted remorse, as if he honestly couldn’t understand why Sawyer was angry with him. Jack was doing the goddamned hero thing that Sawyer was willing to bet he had been playing at ever since first grade, he was saving Sawyer’s life, and that…Sawyer didn’t care what he had to trade in order to prevent Jack from making those final few mental leaps.
Sawyer pulled his lips back from his teeth, tasted salt from the split lip that Jack had been so kind as to give him the night before. Jack’s eyes weren’t getting any smaller or less dark, and Sawyer was driven by a sudden (or not a sudden one, but he would be generous) urge to make Jack hurt, wipe that calm and comforting ‘everything will be all right’ look from his face. Sawyer had been a gadfly since the age of sixteen. He knew how to hurt as well as how to seduce. Sawyer split his mouth even further into a grin, until he must have looked like something out of a comic book, and that taste and smell of blood was everything. Sawyer was tempted to spit, but he didn’t think that he had all that much blood left to spare.
“Why you keep thinking that we’re back in the real world is beyond me, Hero,” Sawyer muttered, wishing that he could raise his voice much higher than a whisper. The words echoed around the clearing all the same. “Just pop your thumb on out of there, do what we all know you want to. Hell, Sugar Britches here ain’t gonna tattle on you. She still wants her Ken doll, all pretty and perfect and fake as plastic.” Kate’s face moved at last, that blank lack of affect that she fell into when she was under stress cracking enough to allow a small moue of disgust.
“Shut up, Sawyer,” Jack muttered again, looking up at the sound of approaching footsteps. He did not sound quite as argumentative as he was the first time. Sawyer liked to watch facades crack, and he was an expert at finding the right places to push.
Jack moved slightly to catch the medical bag that Ali had finally gotten off his sweet ass to bring down, jerking the thumb that that was currently preventing nature from taking its proper course. Sawyer discovered abruptly that his voice could still go a hell of a lot higher than a whisper, after all. His legs began kicking through the earth again, independently of any attempt he might make to control them. He could hear Jack swearing above him as he came close to losing his grip.
“Grab his legs and hold him still,” Sawyer heard Jack bark at Ali as the other man settled down onto the earth beside him. By that point, Sawyer’s eyes had rolled so far back into his head that any hope of staying conscious was long gone, and he noticed that Jack was no longer attempting to call him back.
He also noticed that Jack wasn’t letting go.
Sawyer hated it when his plans went off the rails.
*
Sawyer hated the first awakening after a good working over almost more than he hated the beating itself. That pain, at least, was sharp, acute, a promise written into it that it would be over if he could only hang on for long enough. All those aches and pains gathered themselves into one great fucking wallop later that let you know, let you know beyond any shadow of the doubt, that you had been nothing more than a helpless dreamer the day before. That pain was a slow, sullen bitch, settling in and making sure that you understood it was planning on staying for a while. The one woman that Sawyer couldn’t charm.
He shifted on the airplane seat that he had been using as a makeshift bed ever since the doctor had hightailed it for more spacious pastures, feeling a brief moment of disorientation when his hands flexed against fabric rather than jungle. They had moved him; of course. Sawyer couldn’t imagine that it was all that easy for Jack to play the hero out there among the trees, where the only audience was the ones who had helped him cause the mess in the first place.
Sawyer couldn’t seem to drag his mind away from Jack, even if he wanted to. Were it not for Kate’s scent lingering around the tent and the faint, sweet taste of her remaining on his lips when he darted his tongue out to taste of them, that might be cause for a bit of worry on his part.
Hi shifted again, made a soft sound when his head, arm, and hand protested in one long drum roll of pain. Even the suggestion of light crawling through the edges of his tightly closed lids made him ache.
“Sayid didn’t hit you hard enough to give you a concussion.” Jack’s voice sounded reproachful. Sawyer would almost attribute it to guilt. After a few seconds went by with no response from Sawyer, Jack seemed to realize what he had said and sighed. “But I have something for you if your head still hurts.”
“Little more than my head, Jackass,” Sawyer growled, letting his eyes open cautiously at last. The tarp shielded most of the sunlight from reaching him-so there were two bitches that Sawyer could not tame, and he was getting really sick of long that list was growing-but Sawyer still had to squint and turn his eyes away. Another one of those pained, reluctant sounds emerged from his mouth. Jack shifted in response, as if he were finally remembering that he was supposed to be a doctor rather than the island’s wannabe John Wayne. Sawyer thought that he was picking a pretty spectacular time to do it.
“Yeah, well…” Jack began, and trailed off a few seconds later. There was a short rasping noise. Sawyer risked another peek at the sunlight and turned his head to see that Jack had plunked himself right down in the other airline seat, the one that Sawyer thought of as his guest chair and sure as hell hadn’t invited Jack to occupy. Jack at least had the good grace to look as if he knew that he didn’t belong there. As Sawyer watched, Jack rubbed the palms of his hands across the stubble on his cheeks, recreating that rasping sound.
Jack realized that he was being watched and sat back in the seat. His dark eyes assumed their old look, the look that they only seemed to take when they were pointed at Sawyer. It was the look of someone who had read way too many comic books as a kid and had spent so much time around fake heroes that he had no idea how to even begin emulating the real thing, more was the pity for all the rest of them. Jack had not worn that look on the first day, or even the second. Sawyer scowled as he caught himself actually coming close to having a charitable thought about Dudley Do Right. Of all the fucking times, too.
Jack caught Sawyer’s scowl and, misinterpreting it, fired right back with one of his own so that Sawyer at least knew where he stood. “Sayid didn’t hit you hard enough to give you a concussion,” Jack repeated. Sawyer wondered if he had been saying that to himself over and over again like some kind of mantra so that he could believe that what had happened out in those trees was anything other than a deliberate stomping of the Geneva convention, or if he was hoping to deliberately rewind the conversation to a more peaceful place.
Ha. As if Jack and Sawyer had anything between them that could be called peaceful.
“But your arm probably hurts like hell,” Jack continued. Sawyer glanced down at his own bicep, where a clean white bandage hid the wound that had been large enough to accommodate a finger the last time that he had seen it. “I have some pills for you-antibiotics, some painkillers-stop doing that!”
Sawyer glanced up from where he had begun tugging at the bandage to view the messy handiwork underneath, but didn’t stop. Under the clean white of the gauze that Jack had scrounged up from some place he probably wasn’t willing to share with Sawyer, an ugly purple bruise had begun to spread out from a hasty line of stitches set in thick black thread. Looked to Sawyer as if the good doctor had been moving pretty quickly when he put those in, maybe even working himself towards an outright panic. “You sound an awful lot like you’re reading from a script there, Hero,” Sawyer said, putting a special sneer on the final word, because Jack did not let go. “What, having trouble working up some of that doctor-like compassion when the handiwork is yours?”
Something flashed in those eyes, driving the comic book hero far, far away. And Jack had just been getting so good at it, too. Sawyer wondered at the new nerve, raw and pulsing, that had just been presented for him to poke at. He let the opportunity slide by him without comment just this once, though of course he filed it away for another time when it might be useful. That was what the man that Jack though he was would do, and Sawyer did so hate to disappoint.
That crackle of fire that entered Jack’s eyes for a second and made Sawyer’s pulse pound in anticipation of a real fight, as if he didn’t get enough of that earlier, was gone away just as quickly. Jack only looked tired and pissed-off in its place; Sawyer guessed that maybe being the real thing wasn’t nearly so satisfying as just playing at being a hero. Jack heaved a deep sigh instead and launched himself out of Sawyer’s guest chair, grabbing at Sawyer’s hand and wrenching it away so that he could not fiddle with the wound any longer. Sawyer yelped and felt his scowl grow even deeper.
“Knock it off,” Jack commanded him. His voice sounded more authoritative than Sawyer had ever heard it before. Get Jack back on familiar territory, and someday he might even be able to walk the walk. As Sawyer was still frankly amazed when he managed to talk the talk without stuttering, he considered this to be a pretty major concession.
It wasn’t one that eased the blackness of Sawyer’s mood any, either. He settled further back against his seat, feeling the sun-warmed fabric take his shoulders and begin easing tension out of the bruises that Jack and Sayid had been so kind as to place there. It was all that Sawyer could do not to sigh. “Don’t get all worked up on my account, Doc,” Sawyer said, so that Jack would not notice that his entire body had been drawn into one long line of tension. “Might start thinking that you give a damn, and you’re not that good an actor.”
There was that flashing in Jack’s eyes again, swiftly dimmed. He leaned forward and placed a fistful of pills next to Sawyer’s side. “There are some antibiotics in there, to prevent infection,” Jack said slowly. He sounded as if he had rehearsed what he was going to say beforehand and was concentrating very hard on getting it right so that he would not say everything else that was clearly going through his mind. “Since I wasn’t exactly working out of a sterile operating environment.” Sawyer opened his mouth to offer color commentary on that little detail and Jack cut him off, saying, “Shut up,” in a voice so momentarily savage that Sawyer found himself actually doing so.
Jack paused a moment to pinch at the bridge of his nose after he realized what he had done, while Sawyer stared at him with a vaguely shocked silence. He wondered how Jack had figured that this conversation was going to go, if he thought that Sawyer’s brush with death was going to make him into the island’s very own Ebenezer Scrooge come Christmas morning. If he thought that things would be different.
Sawyer would not have turned down the opportunity to kick Jack in the head right about then, if he had had the strength for it.
Jack’s expression had grown even more sour by the time that he looked up again. Sawyer didn’t think that this conversation was going the way that Jack had pictured it at all. He was so sorry that he wasn’t providing the right Hallmark moment, he really was.
“There’s a dose of codeine in there, too,” Jack said, “for your arm, and your hand. You’ll have to switch to aspirin after that wears off. It was all that I could spare.” Jack’s expression suggested that he thought Sawyer had a great deal more aspirin than he himself did, but he wasn’t asking and Sawyer wasn’t telling.
“Sure,” Sawyer said. He palmed the pills into his mouth, wincing at the acrid taste. A cup appeared from out of seeming nowhere, full of water, and Sawyer grabbed at it without thinking. His fingers brushed against Jack’s for a moment before both jerked away.
“Sure,” he repeated when he had washed the taste of the half-dissolved pills out of his mouth. “You must be getting a real kick out of this, getting’ to play the big man in front of everyone.”
A shadow passed over Jack’s eyes before he replied, “I don’t get off on seeing people in pain, no.”
That one was so perfect, that one was so beautiful, that Sawyer could not believe he was passing it by. He parted his lips into a smile that was sick and bloated. “Yeah, back in the real world I’ll just bet your hand would be heavy on that morphine button.”
Jack stood as if to leave, his expression registering disgust. “If we were back in the real world,” he said, “I would have you under a suicide watch.”
Sawyer’s lips slammed shut over his teeth, obliterating any trace of the smile. “Watch where you’re treading, Jack,” he growled.
Jack paused in his step and turned back halfway. If he was registering any surprise at hearing Sawyer once again call him by his real name, it did not register on his face. “You do the same, Sawyer,” he said and, pounding head or not, it was all that Sawyer could do not to jump up and whup Jack’s ass for him then and there. Jack looked troubled for a moment and then, his expression clearing, said, “Whatever it was that you were before the plane crashed, you do realize that you don’t still have to be that, right? It’s up to you.”
Sawyer was curling his lip to sneer at Jack and ask him when he had decided that Locke’s mantle was a comfortable one when Jack turned and abruptly left without saying another word. Sawyer sank back in the silence and felt the codeine start to do its work.
*
Sawyer spun back towards consciousness in the same way that he had left it, brutally and with every ounce of fight that he could muster. Even though he could fell Kate’s presence on the seat that had been occupied by a different form hours before, he found himself calling out, “Jack?” all the same. The name felt strange in his mouth, something that he could never hope to get used to.
End
AUTHOR: Mari
RATING: light R
DISCLAIMER: Not my sandbox, I’m just borrowing the toys in it.
SPOILERS: Con Man missing scene
PAIRINGS: None
A/N: This is for alliecat8, as a very, very (I’m getting caught up!) late birthday present, and because you’re a doll who deserves to be cheered up.
A/N2: I've been thinking about this fic since 'Con Man' aired, but I didn't feel I had a good enough grasp of the character voices when I first entered fandom to do justice by them. Also, I kind of still had that thing where I hated Jack, so the delay might have been for the best. :)
“I’d watch you die.”
Everyone who ever said that confession was good for the soul could fucking take their platitudes and shove them. Sawyer decided this in one great, blinding flash of epiphany, that and a hell of a lot of other things besides, as his hand and his arm throbbed and the edges of his vision began to waver in and out like the reception on his uncle’s shitty television set. Sawyer closed his eyes so that he didn’t have to turn return Jack’s saw-too-much stare any longer and arched his back reflexively to get away from the pain, his legs kicking trails through the dirt. Jack told him sharply to stop moving again, like you try that when you have someone’s thumb wedged into your arm after a hole has been opened up large enough to allow that thumb in the first place, jackass. If Sawyer’s control of his limbs were not spinning away from him at a dizzying rate, he had a certain finger that he would like to introduce Jack to.
“You picked a real prince among men,” Jack said to Kate as Sawyer blearily opened his eyes again, struggling to stay conscious for just a few moments longer.
Kate stared back at him without commenting, the splatters of Sawyer’s own blood on her face standing out in even sharper relief than her freckles. She had gone very pale.
Sawyer had lost this amount of blood only once before, during a bar fight when he took a bottle over the head that didn’t hit him straight on but broke instead, driving a deep gash into the place where the back of his neck met his scalp. He knew that it wasn’t good when random details started jumping out at him.
He still could have told Jack that he was wasting his time if he thought he was going to induce anything like shame in their girl Kate. Sawyer had looked into her eyes, and she would see them both into the ground before she quit surviving. Sawyer thought that that would probably knock the damned knowing look off of Jack’s face, the realization that the man he just tortured knew the would-be damsel more than the hero possibly could. He wasn’t so good that he wasn’t on the verge of spitting it out, either, except that the world chose that moment to do another one of those disturbing lurches. Sawyer found himself hanging onto his consciousness with a white-knuckled grip.
Given that he couldn’t clench his right hand into a fist, Sawyer thought that he could be forgiven for not doing a great job of it. His eyes were rolling back in his head again when Jack noticed and once again called his name.
“Oh, come on,” Sawyer growled, opening his eyes again and meeting Jack’s gaze. Jack stared back at him, all big dark eyes and newly minted remorse, as if he honestly couldn’t understand why Sawyer was angry with him. Jack was doing the goddamned hero thing that Sawyer was willing to bet he had been playing at ever since first grade, he was saving Sawyer’s life, and that…Sawyer didn’t care what he had to trade in order to prevent Jack from making those final few mental leaps.
Sawyer pulled his lips back from his teeth, tasted salt from the split lip that Jack had been so kind as to give him the night before. Jack’s eyes weren’t getting any smaller or less dark, and Sawyer was driven by a sudden (or not a sudden one, but he would be generous) urge to make Jack hurt, wipe that calm and comforting ‘everything will be all right’ look from his face. Sawyer had been a gadfly since the age of sixteen. He knew how to hurt as well as how to seduce. Sawyer split his mouth even further into a grin, until he must have looked like something out of a comic book, and that taste and smell of blood was everything. Sawyer was tempted to spit, but he didn’t think that he had all that much blood left to spare.
“Why you keep thinking that we’re back in the real world is beyond me, Hero,” Sawyer muttered, wishing that he could raise his voice much higher than a whisper. The words echoed around the clearing all the same. “Just pop your thumb on out of there, do what we all know you want to. Hell, Sugar Britches here ain’t gonna tattle on you. She still wants her Ken doll, all pretty and perfect and fake as plastic.” Kate’s face moved at last, that blank lack of affect that she fell into when she was under stress cracking enough to allow a small moue of disgust.
“Shut up, Sawyer,” Jack muttered again, looking up at the sound of approaching footsteps. He did not sound quite as argumentative as he was the first time. Sawyer liked to watch facades crack, and he was an expert at finding the right places to push.
Jack moved slightly to catch the medical bag that Ali had finally gotten off his sweet ass to bring down, jerking the thumb that that was currently preventing nature from taking its proper course. Sawyer discovered abruptly that his voice could still go a hell of a lot higher than a whisper, after all. His legs began kicking through the earth again, independently of any attempt he might make to control them. He could hear Jack swearing above him as he came close to losing his grip.
“Grab his legs and hold him still,” Sawyer heard Jack bark at Ali as the other man settled down onto the earth beside him. By that point, Sawyer’s eyes had rolled so far back into his head that any hope of staying conscious was long gone, and he noticed that Jack was no longer attempting to call him back.
He also noticed that Jack wasn’t letting go.
Sawyer hated it when his plans went off the rails.
*
Sawyer hated the first awakening after a good working over almost more than he hated the beating itself. That pain, at least, was sharp, acute, a promise written into it that it would be over if he could only hang on for long enough. All those aches and pains gathered themselves into one great fucking wallop later that let you know, let you know beyond any shadow of the doubt, that you had been nothing more than a helpless dreamer the day before. That pain was a slow, sullen bitch, settling in and making sure that you understood it was planning on staying for a while. The one woman that Sawyer couldn’t charm.
He shifted on the airplane seat that he had been using as a makeshift bed ever since the doctor had hightailed it for more spacious pastures, feeling a brief moment of disorientation when his hands flexed against fabric rather than jungle. They had moved him; of course. Sawyer couldn’t imagine that it was all that easy for Jack to play the hero out there among the trees, where the only audience was the ones who had helped him cause the mess in the first place.
Sawyer couldn’t seem to drag his mind away from Jack, even if he wanted to. Were it not for Kate’s scent lingering around the tent and the faint, sweet taste of her remaining on his lips when he darted his tongue out to taste of them, that might be cause for a bit of worry on his part.
Hi shifted again, made a soft sound when his head, arm, and hand protested in one long drum roll of pain. Even the suggestion of light crawling through the edges of his tightly closed lids made him ache.
“Sayid didn’t hit you hard enough to give you a concussion.” Jack’s voice sounded reproachful. Sawyer would almost attribute it to guilt. After a few seconds went by with no response from Sawyer, Jack seemed to realize what he had said and sighed. “But I have something for you if your head still hurts.”
“Little more than my head, Jackass,” Sawyer growled, letting his eyes open cautiously at last. The tarp shielded most of the sunlight from reaching him-so there were two bitches that Sawyer could not tame, and he was getting really sick of long that list was growing-but Sawyer still had to squint and turn his eyes away. Another one of those pained, reluctant sounds emerged from his mouth. Jack shifted in response, as if he were finally remembering that he was supposed to be a doctor rather than the island’s wannabe John Wayne. Sawyer thought that he was picking a pretty spectacular time to do it.
“Yeah, well…” Jack began, and trailed off a few seconds later. There was a short rasping noise. Sawyer risked another peek at the sunlight and turned his head to see that Jack had plunked himself right down in the other airline seat, the one that Sawyer thought of as his guest chair and sure as hell hadn’t invited Jack to occupy. Jack at least had the good grace to look as if he knew that he didn’t belong there. As Sawyer watched, Jack rubbed the palms of his hands across the stubble on his cheeks, recreating that rasping sound.
Jack realized that he was being watched and sat back in the seat. His dark eyes assumed their old look, the look that they only seemed to take when they were pointed at Sawyer. It was the look of someone who had read way too many comic books as a kid and had spent so much time around fake heroes that he had no idea how to even begin emulating the real thing, more was the pity for all the rest of them. Jack had not worn that look on the first day, or even the second. Sawyer scowled as he caught himself actually coming close to having a charitable thought about Dudley Do Right. Of all the fucking times, too.
Jack caught Sawyer’s scowl and, misinterpreting it, fired right back with one of his own so that Sawyer at least knew where he stood. “Sayid didn’t hit you hard enough to give you a concussion,” Jack repeated. Sawyer wondered if he had been saying that to himself over and over again like some kind of mantra so that he could believe that what had happened out in those trees was anything other than a deliberate stomping of the Geneva convention, or if he was hoping to deliberately rewind the conversation to a more peaceful place.
Ha. As if Jack and Sawyer had anything between them that could be called peaceful.
“But your arm probably hurts like hell,” Jack continued. Sawyer glanced down at his own bicep, where a clean white bandage hid the wound that had been large enough to accommodate a finger the last time that he had seen it. “I have some pills for you-antibiotics, some painkillers-stop doing that!”
Sawyer glanced up from where he had begun tugging at the bandage to view the messy handiwork underneath, but didn’t stop. Under the clean white of the gauze that Jack had scrounged up from some place he probably wasn’t willing to share with Sawyer, an ugly purple bruise had begun to spread out from a hasty line of stitches set in thick black thread. Looked to Sawyer as if the good doctor had been moving pretty quickly when he put those in, maybe even working himself towards an outright panic. “You sound an awful lot like you’re reading from a script there, Hero,” Sawyer said, putting a special sneer on the final word, because Jack did not let go. “What, having trouble working up some of that doctor-like compassion when the handiwork is yours?”
Something flashed in those eyes, driving the comic book hero far, far away. And Jack had just been getting so good at it, too. Sawyer wondered at the new nerve, raw and pulsing, that had just been presented for him to poke at. He let the opportunity slide by him without comment just this once, though of course he filed it away for another time when it might be useful. That was what the man that Jack though he was would do, and Sawyer did so hate to disappoint.
That crackle of fire that entered Jack’s eyes for a second and made Sawyer’s pulse pound in anticipation of a real fight, as if he didn’t get enough of that earlier, was gone away just as quickly. Jack only looked tired and pissed-off in its place; Sawyer guessed that maybe being the real thing wasn’t nearly so satisfying as just playing at being a hero. Jack heaved a deep sigh instead and launched himself out of Sawyer’s guest chair, grabbing at Sawyer’s hand and wrenching it away so that he could not fiddle with the wound any longer. Sawyer yelped and felt his scowl grow even deeper.
“Knock it off,” Jack commanded him. His voice sounded more authoritative than Sawyer had ever heard it before. Get Jack back on familiar territory, and someday he might even be able to walk the walk. As Sawyer was still frankly amazed when he managed to talk the talk without stuttering, he considered this to be a pretty major concession.
It wasn’t one that eased the blackness of Sawyer’s mood any, either. He settled further back against his seat, feeling the sun-warmed fabric take his shoulders and begin easing tension out of the bruises that Jack and Sayid had been so kind as to place there. It was all that Sawyer could do not to sigh. “Don’t get all worked up on my account, Doc,” Sawyer said, so that Jack would not notice that his entire body had been drawn into one long line of tension. “Might start thinking that you give a damn, and you’re not that good an actor.”
There was that flashing in Jack’s eyes again, swiftly dimmed. He leaned forward and placed a fistful of pills next to Sawyer’s side. “There are some antibiotics in there, to prevent infection,” Jack said slowly. He sounded as if he had rehearsed what he was going to say beforehand and was concentrating very hard on getting it right so that he would not say everything else that was clearly going through his mind. “Since I wasn’t exactly working out of a sterile operating environment.” Sawyer opened his mouth to offer color commentary on that little detail and Jack cut him off, saying, “Shut up,” in a voice so momentarily savage that Sawyer found himself actually doing so.
Jack paused a moment to pinch at the bridge of his nose after he realized what he had done, while Sawyer stared at him with a vaguely shocked silence. He wondered how Jack had figured that this conversation was going to go, if he thought that Sawyer’s brush with death was going to make him into the island’s very own Ebenezer Scrooge come Christmas morning. If he thought that things would be different.
Sawyer would not have turned down the opportunity to kick Jack in the head right about then, if he had had the strength for it.
Jack’s expression had grown even more sour by the time that he looked up again. Sawyer didn’t think that this conversation was going the way that Jack had pictured it at all. He was so sorry that he wasn’t providing the right Hallmark moment, he really was.
“There’s a dose of codeine in there, too,” Jack said, “for your arm, and your hand. You’ll have to switch to aspirin after that wears off. It was all that I could spare.” Jack’s expression suggested that he thought Sawyer had a great deal more aspirin than he himself did, but he wasn’t asking and Sawyer wasn’t telling.
“Sure,” Sawyer said. He palmed the pills into his mouth, wincing at the acrid taste. A cup appeared from out of seeming nowhere, full of water, and Sawyer grabbed at it without thinking. His fingers brushed against Jack’s for a moment before both jerked away.
“Sure,” he repeated when he had washed the taste of the half-dissolved pills out of his mouth. “You must be getting a real kick out of this, getting’ to play the big man in front of everyone.”
A shadow passed over Jack’s eyes before he replied, “I don’t get off on seeing people in pain, no.”
That one was so perfect, that one was so beautiful, that Sawyer could not believe he was passing it by. He parted his lips into a smile that was sick and bloated. “Yeah, back in the real world I’ll just bet your hand would be heavy on that morphine button.”
Jack stood as if to leave, his expression registering disgust. “If we were back in the real world,” he said, “I would have you under a suicide watch.”
Sawyer’s lips slammed shut over his teeth, obliterating any trace of the smile. “Watch where you’re treading, Jack,” he growled.
Jack paused in his step and turned back halfway. If he was registering any surprise at hearing Sawyer once again call him by his real name, it did not register on his face. “You do the same, Sawyer,” he said and, pounding head or not, it was all that Sawyer could do not to jump up and whup Jack’s ass for him then and there. Jack looked troubled for a moment and then, his expression clearing, said, “Whatever it was that you were before the plane crashed, you do realize that you don’t still have to be that, right? It’s up to you.”
Sawyer was curling his lip to sneer at Jack and ask him when he had decided that Locke’s mantle was a comfortable one when Jack turned and abruptly left without saying another word. Sawyer sank back in the silence and felt the codeine start to do its work.
*
Sawyer spun back towards consciousness in the same way that he had left it, brutally and with every ounce of fight that he could muster. Even though he could fell Kate’s presence on the seat that had been occupied by a different form hours before, he found himself calling out, “Jack?” all the same. The name felt strange in his mouth, something that he could never hope to get used to.
End