Sometimes Sawyer really hated Hugo.
After Kate left, Hugo had started trying to get him to laugh, to play games with him. As if it should hurt less because this wasn't the first time.
One night, Sawyer had had enough and stormed out. Then he'd realized that there was nowhere to go in this damned New Otherton (should have gone with Jack, his mind whispers, wouldn't have lost her), and he ends up at the swing set, sitting on one of the swings, dragging his feet, staring at the dark brown ground.
When he hears footsteps, he's about to cuss out whoever's disturbing him, but when he looks up, it's her. Or at least he thinks it is. Curly dark brown hair, light eyes, jeans, sneakers, and a tank top, and before his brain has time to process, he's on his feet hugging her to him.
She's the one who pulls away. "What are you doing, Sawyer?" she asks, and then he's puling away too, because she isn't Kate and he knows it.
"Sorry, Sheena." he says, and starts off toward his house and Hugo (you had your own tent on the beach, no one to share with except her), but she stops him with a hand on his arm.
"I'm sorry about Kate." Alex says, and when he looks in her eyes, he sees that she isn't falsely sympathetic like Scott (or is it Steve?), or sweetly (too sweetly) reassuring like Claire, or indifferent like John. She knows what it is to lose the person you love, even if Karl didn't leave by choice and Kate did.
"I lie awake every night and listen for footsteps. Every night I expect Ben to come back and take Karl again, or worse, kill him. Every morning I wake up and the first thing I do is look for him, because one morning, I might not be able to find him." She lets go of his arm, and he turns fully to face her. "I love him, and someday, probably soon, he's going to die because of me. Because he loves me back." She starts to cry, and there's nothing Sawyer can do except put his arms around her and let her cry on his chest (like he did with Kate when Ana Lucia and Libby died).
He knows the best thing to do is to walk her back to her house and deposit her in her mother's arms. He knows he should probably tell John about what Alex said, and he knows Danielle should most definitely be told. But when she tilts her head up and their eyes meet again, he knows he isn't going to do any of that. So he isn't surprised when their lips crash together (he doesn't know who started this one). This is what always happens to him. First with Kate, and now with Alex. Kate first kissed him for inhalers, then slept with him because Jack wasn't available and Sawyer was a dead man, and then slept with him again because Jack was with Blondie, and now Alex is kissing him because she doesn't want to kill Karl.
She's kissing him for him too though. She's comforting him in her way, and she isn't fumbling with what to do like Hugo was, she's just doing (Kate kissed him because he asked, slept with him because it was what he wanted). So he kisses Alex back like she's his life raft and she kisses him like he's drowning.
Before he knows it, they've snuck in his back door and into his bed (the one Kate only recently vacated), and his hands are on her ass and she's stroking his cock. "This really what you want, Sheena?" he asks, moving her hand. "I bet Karl wouldn't mind finishing the job we've started" (he'll have to finish with his hand, but that's okay).
Her answer his to put her hand back on his cock, and he gets the message and flips them over, positioning himself on top of her.
She feels nothing like Kate once he's inside, and as he moves, he gets to see and hear how different she and Kate really are.
He smiles to imagine poor Hugo listening to them in the next room.