A quick update because a two weeks hiatus on this fic is FAR too long! Thank you all so much for your continuing reviews and support, I love them and I love hearing what you guys think about this fic! I'll stop jabbering now.
Disclaimer: I still don't own any of it!
Chapter 12.
-Flashback-
She hadn't remained on top of the situation for long. A few seconds of racing heartbeats and that was all. Her smirk was teasing, much like his own, the glint in the depths of her dark eyes flared as she had queried, knowing full well the answer mind you, where exactly they had gotten up to before his conscientious interruption.
No. No way had he been willing to let her 'drive' for their first time and as she had grinned down, sat astride him smugly, he hadn't found it hard to flip her over onto her back and reverse their positions.
Ana hissed as the jolt to her ribs and the surprise came at the same moment and squinted her eyes as she tenderly inspected the bruise emblazoning her torso. A breath escaped out from between the captivity of her clenched and bared teeth but before he could voice any concern for her well being, she glared up at him, cursed him in thick Spanish and shoved him in the shoulder, sending pain flaring up to his brain.
"Ow! Damn it! What the hell was that f-"
He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence nor inspect his own injury before she had reached up, slithering a hand around the back of his neck and twining her fingers through the smooth blonde strands there, and yanked his face down towards hers, rising to meet him halfway.
There was a brief, breathless moment of surprise as the last stings of pain in his shoulder fizzled out, replaced instead by the feel of her lips, mouth hungry and hot and hard against his own, roaring up his nerves. Then he snapped out of his soreness-induced stupor, as she seemed to have done long before him, and returned to the game. Sawyer had never been one to back down from a confrontation and he didn't intend to start now…but her unoccupied hand had slipped to trace lazy patterns at the small of his back, treacherously low on his spine, having found it's way beneath his shirt and he almost surrendered then. So she wanted to play dirty, did she?
Ana smiled up against his lips, as if she sensed her imminent victory, her power over him in that moment, and broke away from him for air and a better look into his suddenly darker blue eyes.
"So that's where we were." she grinned as he leaned his body onto one side and combed his hair back out of the way with his free hand and a toss of his head.
"Like you didn't already know, Hotlips." he responded with mock irritation. "How 'bout we see if we can't take it a little further, huh? You up for takin' a tumble with chance?"
He moved carefully, before she replied, to settle his weight back atop her once more, though he tried to keep as much pressure as he could off her injury by propping himself up with an elbow either side of her, ignoring the ache that this caused in his shoulder.
"We've been anglin' towards this for a long-ass time, you an' I, Darlin'. All I can say it about time!"
Her only response to his words was a wider smirk that he deemed altogether far too smug for her own good and set about wiping from her face with a deeper kiss, if that was at all possible. But she fought back, not about to give into him that easily and melt like some fairy tale princess to her prince. Her tongue forced it's own way past his to curl against the roof of his mouth.
She was apparently intent on driving him insane…or to distraction. Whichever came first.
"Damn it, you're gonna kill me…" he tore his lips from hers and she growled in irritation, not feigned however as his had been prior.
"You talk too much!" she announced, hooking a leg around him only to flip him back over and beneath her once more. "Stop. Talking."
And he did as he was told, snapping his mouth shut and beaming up at her so widely that he felt certain his dimples would wear out soon. She tightened her knees about him as if she expected him to try and turn them over once more, but he was resigned. Besides, his view was a hell of a lot better from his current angle anyway. And so he amused himself, sliding his hands from her knees upwards until he reached her hips and the expanse of tanned skin that her bra and lack of shirt exposed to him. Thumbs hooked into her belt loops. Fingertips danced across the rim of her jeans, flirting with the nakedness there…until he felt it. Something different. Her perfect skin marred by something the size of his thumbnail. A little smaller maybe. So similar in size and shape to the very thing that marked his shoulder…
"What the h-?" he tried to sit up but she pushed him back with a palm forcefully against his chest, slapping his hands away from her waistband with the other.
"Don't." she warned in response, voice taut as she fended his hands away from their inspection a second time. "Just leave it, Sawyer."
"Now hang on, Chica!" he replied firmly, stubbornly, voice rising to match hers and he persisted in scrutinizing her, finding another similar mark higher on her left side. "These are damn bulle-"
She dismounted him before he could finish his sentence, pulling away from his invasive hands and searching for where he had tossed her top in the heat of the moment, settling for the nearest item of clothing, one of his plaid shirts, when she failed in her task.
"Hold on, Sugar." he soothed, reaching towards her but she shrugged him away. "Is this why you said it don't matter 'bout running outta-"
"I said 'leave it', Sawyer." she replied curtly, avoiding his gaze, and he suddenly felt as if he had been doused with a bucket of ice water. All of the heat, the fire between them waning like a flame guttering in the wind. "Maybe this was a bad idea…"
"I'm only curious, Chica." he defended hastily as she yanked the shirt over her head, raising her arms one at a time to do so and inadvertently revealing another scar to his stare. "How'd you get them?"
"Please!" she stopped mid-dress, turning to face him finally with one arm rightly inside the armhole and one still out. "Don't!"
And the look that was on her face was one that he had never before seen upon the features of Ana-Lucia. Pleading. So desperate was she for him to drop the subject that he moved towards her and nodded his head in solemn accordance.
"Alright, Chica. Easy now. I'll shut up if you want me to that bad." he placated and relief flashed across her face making her shoulders sag a little. She obviously wasn't ready to tell him that story quite yet, but he promised himself silently that he'd be there when the time came, if the time came, and she wanted to.
"Thank you." she murmured, closing her eyes and rubbing a hand across her forehead as if it throbbed.
And an awkward silence fell between them as they sat opposite one another, neither daring to move or speak lest the moment be ruined further and slip away from them entirely leaving them cold and resentful even before their relationship had properly begun.
Finally, though, it was Ana who broke their stunned, trance-like state by shifting closer to him once more and, leaping at the chance to make things right again, Sawyer's grin returned and they silently agreed to ignore what had just occurred between them.
"As much as I love seein' you in my clothes, Hot-Stuff, I like seein' you out of 'em more." he teased the edge of the soft, blue plaid material with his fingers as he spoke, inching it slowly back up over her head. "How 'bout I give you a hand outta the rest of your clothes too, huh?"
And to his relief she didn't protest.
-End Flashback-
Sleep surrounded him, thick and dark and strangely comforting amidst all of their current tribulations. A welcome respite from the madness of the island, though he had found it difficult to drift off at first so use to having her warmth at his back and perhaps it was that which had triggered off his memories.
He had been sleeping for hours, perhaps an eternity or maybe a mere scattering of minutes. Either way he felt it was nowhere near a sufficient amount of time when something hard prodded him in the back, drawing him closer to the edge of sleep and waking.
"Listen to me, Sawyer." the prodding continued, digging right between his shoulder blades, accompanied that time by a hissing whisper of desperation and contrasting calmness.
Locke. Damn him, and Sawyer tried to roll over and glare at the older man for waking him only to be prevented from doing so by a harder jab to his spine.
"Keep your eyes closed and don't say a word." the voice of Locke hummed, smooth and low in his ear, almost disappearing into the early morning around them. Into the silence.
A million thoughts raced through Sawyer's brain all in the same helter-skelter instant. What was Locke doing? Had he gone mad? Was it even actually Locke? What if it was one of Them? What if it was one of the Others who had taken Walt? What if it was the One who had shot him in the shoulder!
"It's me, James." Locke continued in his hushed, barely audible tone as if he had guessed Sawyer's thoughts. "Just listen," he repeated. "They're here."
Blood thundered in Sawyer's ears, almost drowning out what Locke was telling him, but somehow he managed to catch it.
"They've come back for Cindy and I need for you to do exactly as I say. If you understand, move the fingers of your left hand."
Slowly, still in a shocked daze, still reeling with adrenalin at the thought that They were here, he wiggled the fingers of his left hand as it rested behind his neck as a makeshift pillow.
"Here's what I want you to do…"
-oOo-
Shannon had demanded rather than asked, that Ana and Jack both remain with her for the remainder of that night in the caves, refusing their suggestions that she would feel more comfortable in her own shelter even when Ana promised to move her blankets in and share it with her.
"I want to be here," she had replied staunchly, jaw set and amber eyes flashing in contestation. "I need to be here in case the come back with another warning. You need to be here too, Ana. you're the one who understood what they were trying to say."
And so, somewhat reluctantly she had agreed and the unlikely trio had bedded down for the few hours left of night, side-by-side, sharing the single plane blanket that was there between them and Ana found herself claustrophobically sandwiched in the middle. Shannon curled up on one of her shoulders, breathing heavily down her ear and Jack coughing relentlessly, tugging at the blankets and inadvertently kicking her with his size tens.
Never again! She swore to herself. Never again would she sleep next to either of them. Not even within a 500 metre radius. And she had though Sawyer's snoring had been bad! Give her Sawyer any day, he was so easy to sleep with compared to Little Miss Gale Force Breath on one side and the Bucking Bronco, who suddenly murmured that 'No, Kate, he didn't want to speak to the goldfish. It was evil and Jin was going to throw it back in the sea', on the other.
'Great!' She thought, scowling at the rocky ceiling, though Jack's words had amused her slightly. 'I'm sleeping with a pair of mental patients! Roll on daybreak!'
-oOo-
Strangely there had only been one of Them. It was all over so fast that Sawyer had barely been able to blink. Why had there only been one of Them? That query niggled away in the back of his mind, tainting his relief.
Eko had moved like a shadow, muscles rippling beneath taut skin as he moved through the trees from where he had apparently been keeping watch the entire night. Barely restraining himself and the fury he felt towards this…Other. This abductor of the innocent.
From what little Ana had told him of Them, he was surprised that Eko had actually been able to catch one off guard. To sneak up behind them and use their own tactics of silence and stealth against them. But he supposed that the Others were human too, if not entirely normal. They made mistakes. They messed up or else why would Cindy been able to escape? Why would the pregnant Claire had been able to for that matter?
The purple bruise now blossoming beneath the Other's right eye was evidence that his theory was correct. The fact that the Other was now tied ruthlessly at the base of a tree trunk was yet more, but something in those dark, glossed over eyes, staring past them and through them dead ahead, contradicted the entire situation. Looking into that devout glare at something past them, Sawyer found himself feeling like the captive.
"Where's my son!" Michael demanded, voice rising with each time he asked it and each smirk and indolent blink that he received in reply as the Other seemingly ignored his presence and yet found his words amusing.
Mike was pacing the length of the camp, like a caged tiger searching for that chink in the fence that would serve as his escape. He had taken to his frantic striding following an outburst, the one that had formed the bruise upon their captive's cheek, and a stern warning from both Locke and Eko that he needed to stay calm and think rationally. Were they likely to get any answers at all if they allowed Michael his rage? No. And begrudgingly, Michael had concurred.
Silence once more met his furious demand and he released a growl of frustration from between clenched teeth and stalked away to where Kate was sitting with Cindy and trying to keep her from bolting away. Fear radiated from the slight stewardess. Her entire body shook as she snatched unwilling glances at the prisoner and pleaded, through her tears, that they not leave her alone.
"You are going to have to give us some answers soon." Sayid mused, crouched a little to the Other's left who ignored him save for the lazy smile, unconcerned of the knife that the Iraqi was using to sharpen bamboo sticks into fine, needle points.
Sawyer almost winced in remembrance of his own dalliance with 'Sayid the Torturer', though he knew that this time the spikes and torture devices were only for show and scare mongering.
"Where are the rest of your group?" Locke added standing directly before the Other who shifted to one side, straining to see around the bald man who was apparently in the way of something. Something important.
Another cat-like grin split the face disturbingly.
"This is bullsht!" Michael roared back across the distance. "I say we kill-"
Amusement now flashed across the dirt streaked, pale face. A brief snort, the only sound to have left those thin, sneering lips as the eyes, dark and hard and shining still stared devotedly into the distance, around Locke's hindrance, straight ahead-
Sawyer paused his thoughts then at the eerie sense that the gaze was not focused on the scenery as they had first thought. Was there more of Them waiting in ambush? Was that the reason for the self-assured, smug smirks? He allowed his own eyes to follow that of the Other's unblinking, glassy-eyed stare. Past Locke, across the camp, through the trees upon the other side of the clearing, stopping finally, and somewhat unnervingly upon-
"Freckles!" Sawyer called to her, earning him curious sideways glances from his companions. "How 'bout you come over here for half a minute?"
Cindy's eyes went wide at that suggestion, though she calmed when Michael placed an arm about her shoulders and turned her away to stare out at the brightening jungle-scape. And Kate cautiously moved towards them, gathered about the base of that one tree, eyes flickering to their captive's, which most definitely watched only her, before skittering away again.
"What's up?" she tried to keep the tremor from her voice, tried to keep it light and not allow her trepidation to show as the coal dark irises studied her every move. She was shaken up, they all were really, by the blur of events that had occurred on top of the night before.
"You try." he murmured to her, nodding his head to the tree. "Go on, try askin' something'."
And even though she opened her mouth to protest, looking to Locke and Eko and Sayid for confirmation that it was a bad idea, she only found them in support of the Southerner's request, eager to see where he was going with it. And she reluctantly nodded, crouching down so that she was eye level with the enemy.
She took a deep breath, steadying herself with one hand to the ground and swallowed.
"What's your name?" she queried, attempting nonchalance, obviously thinking the entire situation fruitless after a long hour of stubborn silence and spine-chilling smiles of flashed white teeth and curled lips.
But she was wrong.
"Nora. My name is Nora Hewmot, and it is so fortunate that you are here, Kate Austen."
-oOo-