The Chat – post "Hunting Party" (Kate/Sawyer)

Summary: a midnight chat post "Hunting party".

His fresh sea breeze had turned humid on him, the bastard. Sure the heavy rolling wash of the ocean was dragging it in to shore as always, but tonight the sonnavabitch was hauling in something tropical as well. And it felt like a sauna.

Sawyer twitched stiffly on his homemade banana lounge. His clothes had become a smothering layer of wet chamois, and with his twisting and shifting they were grabbing uncomfortably at his skin. In retrospect he should probably have a) changed clothes before calling it a night, b) grabbed himself a new gun in case Zeke's boys came calling, and c) gotten a weather forecast from Mr Survivalist, but as soon as he had come in sight of his canvas castle the day in the jungle came up and hit him like a Mac truck. His higher brain functions shutdown and it was all he could do to make a controlled landing so that it did not end with him falling face down on the sand like a drunken clown. The goddamned niceties and the Lord of the Flies convention up there on Mt Vesuvius could wait until next year. He had barely felt the back of his head hit the chair.

Now it seemed the hours he'd been out of it had passed in conspiracy and that damned ocean breeze, that he was finally used to, that he had secretly missed whilst hospitalised in the bunker, had turned on him. He huffed, forcing open bleary eyes to glare at the dark swell of untrustworthy water. It didn't help. Goddamn it! The mother load of sticky damp the ocean was dumping on him was unbearable. He twisted again, irritability giving the movement some oomph, and yelped. Something that felt very close lightening suddenly struck at his wounded shoulder, down his arm and across his chest. He shot up from the bed.

"Sonnavabitch!"

"Sawyer?"

"Argh!" He jerked again, almost falling off his perch, and his shoulder exploded into fireworks for a second time. "Goddamn it, Kate!" He grabbed at his arm.

"Sorry." She whispered, materialising like a ghost from the dim recess of his castle.

"What the hell are you doing in there?" He growled, but more quietly. His shoulder felt raw. Maybe he'd torn something? How special. "Don't you got your own home to go to? We may all be in the back end of nowhere, but trespassing is still a – What are you doing now?"

"You're hot." She had a hand pressed to his forehead and it felt like his missing cool breeze, the one that that traitorous ocean should be pulling in from the sea. He found himself leaning into it. And found his mouth on autopilot-

"Well now Freckles, glad you're finally coming around." Her hand moved down to his cheek. He followed the move, unable to stop himself. He suddenly felt light headed with memories of this: flashes of relief from heat and pain; where the only recollections that made any sense come daylight were fractured moments like these, with her. It was a struggle to find the will to keep up his customary front, but 30 years of habit was serving well enough that his mouth continued running the usual line of defence without him. "I told you there were better ways to get a man's attention in the morning than throwing fruit."

"Its night, not morning Sawyer, and your fever is back." She wasn't playing. She sounded like Nurse Battleaxe.

"I don't got a damned fever." He groused, undermining his own macho by following her hand as it withdrew and nearly falling off the bed a second time in as many minutes. "There's a tropical storm or something coming. And you haven't answered my question: what are you doing in my house in the middle of the night?"

She didn't answer, but tugged annoyingly at his shirt, poking at his shoulder. A few moments ago, and if she had her sense of humour on, that might have been fun but now the shirt just rubbed like sandpaper against his shoulder and he slapped her hands away. He was just too hot and too plain exhausted to play anywhere near nice anymore.

"Cut it out."

"Sawyer -" She said with exasperation, and a little bit of hurt. Dammnit, now he felt like a heel and it weren't all that clear just why he should be the one to feel like that. Why was she annoying him at some ungodly hour suddenly wanting to play nurse anyway, and Nurse Brunhilde at that?

"I'm fine. 'Sides, you ain't my nurse, remember? If I got a fever, which I don't, I'll go see the doc." Well now, he didn't need full light to see the twitch when he mentioned the good Doctor, and he wondered again just what had gone down between the two of them whilst he had been ill. Nothing pleasant, that was for sure. Maybe, he thought with some dark delight, the doc didn't do rejection as well as he did his doctoring? Maybe that was it. He squinted in the dark, as if sheer stubborn want would give him night vision and show him what she was thinking. It didn't.

But his ego aside, this midnight visit was about more than that.

His heat fuddled mind grabbed at a memory, the one right before he'd seen his castle and lost track of everything. The look on her face as she stared after Dr Hardass had been one of pure misery, and he'd just swanned on by spouting what had obviously been useless words, mind already fixated on his bed, negotiating the imminent crashlanding and the relief of his cool sea breeze. He'd left her there to stew in her misery, and it looked like no one had damn well picked up his slack. Shit. There Sawyer, he thought, is why you should feel like a heel.

But Kate wasn't waiting for him to play catch up – she had backed off and risen to her feet. The movement was fast and defensive and he realised that if he didn't move swiftly himself this wasn't going to end well. He suddenly found that he really didn't want that to happen. He really, really didn't.

"Kate." He pushed up from the draining humidity, sitting up properly, legs swung over the side of the bed. He forced himself to stand. The thick air made that an effort. "Kate wait. Just wait." She didn't storm off, so far so good, but she didn't turn back all the way either. "Nobody's blaming you for yesterday." He watched her fold her arms across her chest, but she still wasn't walking away. "We all went up there knowing how it could go down and as it happened it all worked out ok."

"How do you figure that?" The question was posed with a bleakness that had barbs, but in its currents was a little desperation too, and that stood out to his practiced ear like red flag. Where there was such misery there was longing for comfort and a mind open to changing if someone knew the right words to say, the right moves to make. And he knew both. This was his game after all, this was his life and he could navigate its currents in his sleep. He was a pro. But this wasn't a game, not anymore.

Just when the hell that had happened?

He stared at her shadowy form. When had he stopped playing The Game with her? He couldn't quite pick the moment. Yet here he was and here was she, both of them waiting for him to pull himself together and help her.

Was that why she'd come to his tent in the middle of the night, with him asleep and useless, and been content to sit alone in the dark? She could have gone to any one of a dozen of their fellow castaways, if not Jack whilst his blood was still up, and found her comfort there, but she hadn't. She had come here instead. She came to him.

Oh shit! He felt light headed again. She could not do that! He was nobody's hero. She knew it. She had seen him at, well maybe not his worst, but pretty damned close to his worst so she had to know that it was his only gift to make bad things so much worse. Everything he touched turned to shit sooner or later.

Wait, was that it? Did she want his anti-midas touch? Did she want him to hand out punishment where Jack would not? Or had she come here out of some desire to rid herself of her guilt by sharing the same space with the one person on the island who appeared not to easily suffer that emotion? Was she trying to soak up his 'natural bastard' by proximity? Or worse, did she think she had destroyed any chance with Dr Halo and was settling for the more tarnished option?

He was surprised by how much any of those alternatives stung. Mere weeks ago he wouldn't have allowed himself to ponder any of this beyond what profitable end he could turn it to. Mere weeks ago his anger would have decided everything and he would have obliged every dark thing she thought she deserved, using her so that he could tell himself that he wasn't weak, that he wasn't really punishing himself through her like some sad-ass SOB. Mere weeks ago he wouldn't have looked upon her as anything more than a tool to that end.

Not anymore. The Great Game had ended the day he looked at her and saw Kate. Now everything was fucked up. He was out of kilter. Everything was off centre and he was suddenly drawing outside the lines. He grimaced and hugged his arm closer to his side. He was turning into the sort of pathetic sap that was his usual prey. Fuck this island! Fuck everyone on it.

For the first time in his life he didn't know what to do with a pretty woman that was standing right in front of him. He didn't know what he should do. But the woman in question was waiting in quiet desperation and he knew what the trickster Sawyer would do. Maybe, if he was real careful he could use those old tricks for better ends. Maybe he could use Sawyer to inch his way into this complicated new thing and understand it. And maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't look like a total ass in the transition.

"Well, hell, four of us went up there and four of us came back, right?" He told her. "Don't know about you, but considering our track record just lately, that's damned miracle."

"They took the weapons Sawyer. If I hadn't -"

"Hadn't what? Hadn't given a damn about Mike? I meant what I said before, about doing the same damn thing in your position. Doc should never have stepped in your way like he did. What did he expect would happen, leaving our best tracker behind? He ain't Chief, he don't have the last say in who does what, though he likes to think he does. So don't you go beating yourself up for nothing.

"'Sides you saved our asses up there and the Doc will come 'round to that eventually. Soon as he cools down. Yeah, you heard me right, and I mean it. If the Clampett's hadn't had you to bargain with they would just have taken one of us instead, or wiped us out 'fore even getting to the talking, or maybe because of the talking I woulda done. And they'd still have taken the damned guns.

"An' before you even start on this one: we will find Mike. If he don't get back here with his kid before we do. We just learned that we can't go charging around this island without thinking. That's all."

He stopped talking then; as much to check his progress as to take a breather. This damned tropical fug was unbearable. Sweat was trickling freely down his back and his shoulder was starting to throb in time with the tremble in his knees.

But, come to think of it, she had helped them learn something else about these "Others" too. They didn't take to mass killing as a first resort, and they didn't seem to want to rush onto the other side of the island and start a war even though they probably had the numbers, the island smarts, to win one. Which could mean that they didn't necessarily want everyone dead or enslaved or whatever, at least not yet, not until they had more weapons? That could be useful. He'd have to go see Locke. Maybe Mohammed as well… Yeah, could be a strategy in there somewhere. Ha! Gonna kick your ass yet, Zeke.

Suddenly she was right in his face. Caught by surprise, he jerked backwards and would have fallen ass over tit over the bed if she hadn't caught his arm. He grabbed back, leaning harder than was manly, and stared down into the ashen smudge of her face. That face stared up at him. And they neither one moved. In fact, they went on staring at each other for so long that he began to wonder, maybe fret too just a little bit, about just what was going on in that stubborn pretty head, what part of his argument was being weighed against which one of hers, and who was winning. But suddenly she seemed to make up her mind.

"Sit down Sawyer. Before you fall down." He thought he could hear the beginnings, if only the smallest of dawnings, of that familiar smile in her voice. He grinned back, relief making it a dopey one (thank Christ for the dark), and let her push him back to sit on the bed. "And you do too have a fever. You should have listened to Jack -"

"Jack my ass! I'm fi-" He started and got a hand slapped over his mouth. For once he figured it was best to stop talking.

Within minutes his not-his-nurse had stripped him of his chamois shirt, shoved him into another that felt more like cotton should feel, poked at his shoulder, ignored his expletives and the colourful suggestions as to what she could do with her questionable nursing degree, poured half an ocean of fresh water down his throat, threatened to sic Jack on to him come morning, and pushed him flat on his back once more. For which he was suddenly grateful. Fatigue was washing over him and he was going under fast despite the heat.

"If this temperature isn't back down by morning, things are going to get interesting Sawyer." She spoke from beside his head, but he didn't have the strength left to turn to look at her.

"'Interesting'? You gonna give me a sponge bath Florence Nightingale?" He threw back at her, grinning despite this bone melting weariness.

"Once again Sawyer: not your nurse. But I wish you and Jack the best!" He could hear the smile back in her voice. Then the sound of the ocean faded away and he floated amongst the quiet stars, weightless as a feather.

"Never wanted you to be my nurse anyway." He said to the twinkling lights.

"You awake again?" Her voice was still near his head. Her fingers, slightly roughened from her love of tree climbing, trailed across his brow and then combed back his hair. The passage of her hand left cool trails across his skin. The effect was ether-like and time slipped away again.

"Leave the nursing to Jack." He said after a while. "You an' me got better things to do."

"I'm going to regret this aren't I, but ok, what things?"

"Our resort. 'Bout two mile south along the coast from here. Five star. Sea views from every room. Beaches. A casino."

"A casino?"

"Yeah, where else we gonna fleece the fat cats, Freckles? Get with the program!

"Could get 'em in the bar I suppose. Gotta have a bar. And those drinks with them little coloured umbrellas." He suddenly yawned so deep it felt like it started around his toes. "And hot barmaids- Oh yeah."

"Sleep! Now, Sawyer. "

Time melted away again. He watched banks of charcoal clouds drift across the darkened sky, hiding and then revealing the stars as they passed overhead. The ocean hissed and foamed nearby. And gradually he felt his cool breeze begin to win the fight with the tropical heat. He sighed.

"Sawyer?" He heard her speaking from a great distance though he knew she was still right next to him. She had to be to have her little fingers threaded through his. He didn't have the power to respond with anything more than a squeeze of his fingers. She squeezed back, and he was asleep.

The End