(no subject)
Title: Another White Dash (Part 4/4: North)
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Claire/Sawyer, mentions of other characters
Word Count: 1,435
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: Happy New Year everyone!
Summary: AU, post island. From here she can see Times Square, she can see the glittering shape that must be the ball, ready to drop soon.
She’s in New York City by the middle of November. She finds she likes the city, the fast pace of it, millions of people on their way everywhere and anywhere. No one gives her a look as she passes by them on the way to the job she’s managed to pick up. She’s waitressing again. It’s not much but she doesn’t need the money all that much. She got enough to live on for awhile in the Oceanic Settlement.
She makes friends here too. Not just one or two here and there but a good group. Lisa, one of the girls she waitresses with, her boyfriend Chris, and Tonya, another fellow waitress, this one a huge partier. More often than not, Tonya tries to talk Claire into joining her on night’s out, and she always declines.
Only until New Year’s Eve. Because they’re in New York City, and this is the place to be for New Year’s. They have the ball in Times Square, and all the festivities that go along with it. And there’s snow. That thing she’s been looking for. It’s been falling ever so lightly all day.
Tonya tells her that the guys she knows, the people hosting this party, are fairly wealthy, so formal wear is a must. So Claire gets herself all gussied up, little black dress with sequins that sparkle all different colors when they catch the light. She even buys the matching stiletto heels, even though she’s pretty sure she won’t be able to walk properly in them.
It’s after ten by the time they get there. The snow has lightly dotted their blonde curls, while the cold has flushed their cheeks several shades darker than their blush had even thought about. A man greets them at the door, takes their heavy coats, and Tonya grabs her hand and spends the next half hour dragging her around the party and introducing her to all manner of well-dressed men and woman. It all gets overwhelming.
The booze doesn’t really help.
By eleven she’s had enough in her that people’s names and faces aren’t really connecting and she’s seeing enough familiar faces in the crowd to know that she’s only thinking she’s seeing them. Unless this is actually a reunion for the survivors, which it’s not, but her mind is hallucinating it into one.
She gives up shortly thereafter. She lets Tonya get whisked away by some gorgeous guy with a mischievous smile on his face, and finds her way out the balcony that, at the moment, is relatively empty. From here she can see Times Square, she can see the glittering shape that must be the ball, ready to drop soon.
Claire’s never been afraid of heights, but when she looks down in the darkness at the street below, she feels like she’s a thousand feet up and it’s enough to make her dizzy in those heels. She braces herself against the railing and watches the cars and the people race around beneath her.
“You don’t watch it you’re going to fall off that thing.” She almost does at the sound of that voice. Her hands almost slip off the railing and she almost loses her balance. She regroups, takes in a breath, and turns towards him, wondering if this was her imagination too. His was one face she hadn’t seen in the crowd.
“Sawyer,” she says, matter-of-factly, eyes widening slightly at the sight of him in a suit, hair shorter than she was used to. He looked different.
“You have a death wish?” He asks, not at all put off by the fact that they haven’t seen each other in about a year.
“Why?” She doesn’t say no, even though she doesn’t. The word is meant but it just doesn’t quite come out. That question, for some reason, seems more important.
“You’re dangling over a balcony in heels, and you’re not wearing a jacket despite the fact that it’s below freezing out here. And it’s snowing.” She hadn’t noticed but now that he says it, and she registers the cold, she shivers.
She crosses her arms over herself, to keep out the cold, and leans her back against the railing this time. “What are you doing here?”
“Getting a smoke.” He pulls out the pack in his pocket, takes one out and offers her one, an offer which she declines. He sets it between his lips, the tip of it glowing in the dark, amid all the streetlights.
“I meant what are you doing in New York.” She asks, sure he understood the question, just wanted a way around it. Knowing him the reason is probably rather unsavory.
“Business.” He tells her, and she doesn’t feel like digging any further than that. It would take too many questions to get the specifics. “You?”
“My friend dragged me here.”
“Pretty little blonde thing?” Claire nods. “Saw you two come in.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“Not a whole lot to say.” And that’s true enough. What do you say exactly, in this situation? It’s not a simple ‘hi, how you doing’ kind of thing.
Inside she can hear people making a lot of racket, and the lights in the distance seem to intensify. It must be getting close. “What time is it?”
A quick glance at his watch gets her an, “11:58.”
“New Year, new life.” She mumbles under her breath, thinks that this could be her starting over point. In theory anyway.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I talked to Jack. He said you left in April.” Sawyer says, not for any particular reason she thinks.
“I...wanted to get away.” Claire tells him.
He laughs. “That’s about as far away as you can get without leaving the country.”
“I didn’t mean to end up here. It just sort of...happened.”
“Ain’t that the truth for all of us.” She looks at him strangely, confused. “You think I wanted to end up here? It’s cold and way too holiday for my tastes.”
“I like the snow.”
“Apparently.”
She hears the counting start, knows she’s got approximately ten seconds left of this year that has been nothing but absolute hell for her.
Later, next year, she’ll blame it on the alcohol, that she went towards him, lights sparkling off her dress. She’ll blame the heels for the way she nearly fell into him on her way there. She’ll blame Tonya for bringing her there in the first place when her lips meet his, and her hands come up into his hair. They kiss amid the screams of “Happy New Year”, and the flashing lights and glittering confetti, and it’s perfect, and it’s rushed. It’s perfectly rushed, and she’s never kissed him before so it should seem weird but it doesn’t, it just feels right.
“I always wanted to do that,” she says, as she pulls back, the New Year glaring in the distance, outdoing the moon she can barely see among all the streetlights. She doesn’t go very far from him though; her hand stays on his arm, his still against the small of her back.
“Next time speak up. I would’ve been more than happy to oblige.” Sawyer smirks mischievously, and of course he can’t take her seriously, but he wouldn’t be Sawyer if he could.
She wants to say she would’ve if he hadn’t of been so wrapped up in Kate. She wants to tell him that she would’ve because he she’s always been attracted to him but she was the pregnant girl, the one who didn’t have a shot, and so she took Charlie as a consolation prize and for awhile they were happy. But he’s just that guy who, even though he’s hot, he’s also very aware of it, and that makes him the kind of guy you kiss on New Year’s but not one you stay with. At the time she needed the type of guy she could stay with.
She does neither of those things though. She smiles at with a, “Happy New Year’s, Sawyer”, and then she disentangles herself from his grasp and runs back inside. She runs out the door, down the steps, and out into the fresh air.
And then she disappears into the street.
That’s what drew her to New York those few months ago. The anonymity, the ability to get lost in the crowd. People don’t recognize her here. She’s a new person, a different person. She isn’t a girl from Sydney who got knocked up and proceeded to lose herself altogether. She’s a woman who lives in Manhattan and does the things she’s always wanted to do.
And that is why she’ll stay.
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Claire/Sawyer, mentions of other characters
Word Count: 1,435
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: Happy New Year everyone!
Summary: AU, post island. From here she can see Times Square, she can see the glittering shape that must be the ball, ready to drop soon.
She’s in New York City by the middle of November. She finds she likes the city, the fast pace of it, millions of people on their way everywhere and anywhere. No one gives her a look as she passes by them on the way to the job she’s managed to pick up. She’s waitressing again. It’s not much but she doesn’t need the money all that much. She got enough to live on for awhile in the Oceanic Settlement.
She makes friends here too. Not just one or two here and there but a good group. Lisa, one of the girls she waitresses with, her boyfriend Chris, and Tonya, another fellow waitress, this one a huge partier. More often than not, Tonya tries to talk Claire into joining her on night’s out, and she always declines.
Only until New Year’s Eve. Because they’re in New York City, and this is the place to be for New Year’s. They have the ball in Times Square, and all the festivities that go along with it. And there’s snow. That thing she’s been looking for. It’s been falling ever so lightly all day.
Tonya tells her that the guys she knows, the people hosting this party, are fairly wealthy, so formal wear is a must. So Claire gets herself all gussied up, little black dress with sequins that sparkle all different colors when they catch the light. She even buys the matching stiletto heels, even though she’s pretty sure she won’t be able to walk properly in them.
It’s after ten by the time they get there. The snow has lightly dotted their blonde curls, while the cold has flushed their cheeks several shades darker than their blush had even thought about. A man greets them at the door, takes their heavy coats, and Tonya grabs her hand and spends the next half hour dragging her around the party and introducing her to all manner of well-dressed men and woman. It all gets overwhelming.
The booze doesn’t really help.
By eleven she’s had enough in her that people’s names and faces aren’t really connecting and she’s seeing enough familiar faces in the crowd to know that she’s only thinking she’s seeing them. Unless this is actually a reunion for the survivors, which it’s not, but her mind is hallucinating it into one.
She gives up shortly thereafter. She lets Tonya get whisked away by some gorgeous guy with a mischievous smile on his face, and finds her way out the balcony that, at the moment, is relatively empty. From here she can see Times Square, she can see the glittering shape that must be the ball, ready to drop soon.
Claire’s never been afraid of heights, but when she looks down in the darkness at the street below, she feels like she’s a thousand feet up and it’s enough to make her dizzy in those heels. She braces herself against the railing and watches the cars and the people race around beneath her.
“You don’t watch it you’re going to fall off that thing.” She almost does at the sound of that voice. Her hands almost slip off the railing and she almost loses her balance. She regroups, takes in a breath, and turns towards him, wondering if this was her imagination too. His was one face she hadn’t seen in the crowd.
“Sawyer,” she says, matter-of-factly, eyes widening slightly at the sight of him in a suit, hair shorter than she was used to. He looked different.
“You have a death wish?” He asks, not at all put off by the fact that they haven’t seen each other in about a year.
“Why?” She doesn’t say no, even though she doesn’t. The word is meant but it just doesn’t quite come out. That question, for some reason, seems more important.
“You’re dangling over a balcony in heels, and you’re not wearing a jacket despite the fact that it’s below freezing out here. And it’s snowing.” She hadn’t noticed but now that he says it, and she registers the cold, she shivers.
She crosses her arms over herself, to keep out the cold, and leans her back against the railing this time. “What are you doing here?”
“Getting a smoke.” He pulls out the pack in his pocket, takes one out and offers her one, an offer which she declines. He sets it between his lips, the tip of it glowing in the dark, amid all the streetlights.
“I meant what are you doing in New York.” She asks, sure he understood the question, just wanted a way around it. Knowing him the reason is probably rather unsavory.
“Business.” He tells her, and she doesn’t feel like digging any further than that. It would take too many questions to get the specifics. “You?”
“My friend dragged me here.”
“Pretty little blonde thing?” Claire nods. “Saw you two come in.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“Not a whole lot to say.” And that’s true enough. What do you say exactly, in this situation? It’s not a simple ‘hi, how you doing’ kind of thing.
Inside she can hear people making a lot of racket, and the lights in the distance seem to intensify. It must be getting close. “What time is it?”
A quick glance at his watch gets her an, “11:58.”
“New Year, new life.” She mumbles under her breath, thinks that this could be her starting over point. In theory anyway.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I talked to Jack. He said you left in April.” Sawyer says, not for any particular reason she thinks.
“I...wanted to get away.” Claire tells him.
He laughs. “That’s about as far away as you can get without leaving the country.”
“I didn’t mean to end up here. It just sort of...happened.”
“Ain’t that the truth for all of us.” She looks at him strangely, confused. “You think I wanted to end up here? It’s cold and way too holiday for my tastes.”
“I like the snow.”
“Apparently.”
She hears the counting start, knows she’s got approximately ten seconds left of this year that has been nothing but absolute hell for her.
Later, next year, she’ll blame it on the alcohol, that she went towards him, lights sparkling off her dress. She’ll blame the heels for the way she nearly fell into him on her way there. She’ll blame Tonya for bringing her there in the first place when her lips meet his, and her hands come up into his hair. They kiss amid the screams of “Happy New Year”, and the flashing lights and glittering confetti, and it’s perfect, and it’s rushed. It’s perfectly rushed, and she’s never kissed him before so it should seem weird but it doesn’t, it just feels right.
“I always wanted to do that,” she says, as she pulls back, the New Year glaring in the distance, outdoing the moon she can barely see among all the streetlights. She doesn’t go very far from him though; her hand stays on his arm, his still against the small of her back.
“Next time speak up. I would’ve been more than happy to oblige.” Sawyer smirks mischievously, and of course he can’t take her seriously, but he wouldn’t be Sawyer if he could.
She wants to say she would’ve if he hadn’t of been so wrapped up in Kate. She wants to tell him that she would’ve because he she’s always been attracted to him but she was the pregnant girl, the one who didn’t have a shot, and so she took Charlie as a consolation prize and for awhile they were happy. But he’s just that guy who, even though he’s hot, he’s also very aware of it, and that makes him the kind of guy you kiss on New Year’s but not one you stay with. At the time she needed the type of guy she could stay with.
She does neither of those things though. She smiles at with a, “Happy New Year’s, Sawyer”, and then she disentangles herself from his grasp and runs back inside. She runs out the door, down the steps, and out into the fresh air.
And then she disappears into the street.
That’s what drew her to New York those few months ago. The anonymity, the ability to get lost in the crowd. People don’t recognize her here. She’s a new person, a different person. She isn’t a girl from Sydney who got knocked up and proceeded to lose herself altogether. She’s a woman who lives in Manhattan and does the things she’s always wanted to do.
And that is why she’ll stay.