Part Ten
"Yeah, Sawyer, it's me. Who else did you think?"
The shadow that used Kate's voice settled back against a backdrop of rustling noises and what Sawyer now realized were the sounds of quite a few people moving about in the open caves beyond. There was a note of true worry in her voice. Now that the fog was fleeing from his brain, Sawyer wondered how he ever could have mistaken her for the other one at all.
"I was dreaming, that's all." Sawyer shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position, and then hissed as that turned out to be a mistake. His limbs all felt as if the blood had been siphoned away and replaced with liquid lead, it was agony to draw a breath any deeper than a shallow pant, and his shoulder and side…well, hell. They felt like two bullets had been put in and one freshly pulled out, that's way they felt like.
"I'll get Jack," Kate said quickly. Sawyer heard a noise of fabric moving against itself as she rose to her feet. He waved his hand, unsure if she could even see it in the gloom, and the sound ceased.
"No, I'm fine," Sawyer said. "I don't need to be prodded or cut on any more." He took a deep breath and slowly pushed himself up on his elbows. "Why are you sitting in the dark, anyhow?"
"Oh." Kate sounded embarrassed. "Jack said that you needed to sleep more than you needed anything else. I didn't want to disturb you."
Sawyer put his hand against his chest, where he could still feel his heart hammering away. "Think you missed that goal by an inch or two, Freckles."
"Hang on, I'll get a light." Kate hustled out of the cave and returned a moment later with a torch in her hand. She hacked at the dirt floor with a knife that she seemed to produce from nowhere until she managed to dig a fairly deep hole, placed the torch into it, and then swept the dirt back into place until it managed to stand on its own. As she set the knife to the side, Sawyer could not help but notice that it was one of Locke's.
"Oh, Sawyer," Kate drew his attention back onto her by whispering. She was staring at the bandage on Sawyer's shoulder and the strips of shirt that had been wrapped tightly around his ribs, as well as the purple and green bruises that drew a pattern across the rest of him. Add to that the-Sawyer touched gingerly at his face and neck-truly amazing sunburn that he was sporting and he was willing to bet that he made quite the pretty picture right about now.
"Don't get all cocky, you're not exactly looking like a cover girl yourself." Sawyer gave up on even attempting to sit and lay back so that he could watch the shadows moving across the ceiling. With light and human company, the things that he had seen were already fading until he really could convince himself that all he had done was dream.
"Yeah, but…" Sawyer could fell the air above his ribs move as Kate ghosted her fingers over the skin without quite being able to bring herself to touch him. After a second, she settled back. "This is what the Others did to you?" She laughed softly, apparently realizing how foolish that sounded, and said, "Of course it is, we're all used to you by now. Anyway, you're quite the subject of gossip out there."
"My favorite place to be." Sawyer turned his head to the side so that he could make eye contact with Kate and decided to see if that dazzling grin of his still worked. If the knowing shake of her head that Kate directed at him was any indication, then at the very least it was still recognizable.
Kate had brought with her one of the scraps of metal that they had been using as plates, Sawyer noticed, and piled it high with fruit and…actual boar meat? 'My, ain't luck fickle.' He didn't remember seeing her bringing it back with the torch, and he wondered if she had been sitting in the dark with it the entire time that she had been waiting for him to wake up. Sawyer pulled the plate towards him. His stomach flipped with the last remaining traces of the dream even as he was reminded of how long it had been since he had last eaten. "Sometimes you are one strange lady, Kate." Hot or cold, the boar was delicious.
"I'm a persistent lady." Kate reached out and stole a slice of mango from him. Looking almost shy, she licked a stray drop of juice from her finger and said, "I went down to the beach and picked up a few of your things for you. There wasn't a lot left, actually."
"I buried most of it." Sawyer ignored the huffing noise from Kate that he figured translated to 'Of course you did' and leaned over to see what she had brought for him. A stack of six paperbacks had been tucked back into the shadows so that he had not noticed them before, each one a book that he had not had the chance to read yet. An observant lady as well as a patient one. Sawyer flicked through them and felt himself beginning to smile in spite of everything else. "Freckles, you may have just saved my sanity." He was wondering if it would be worth the headache to crack one open right then and there when Kate dipped her head so that her curls fell down over her face and smiled, an 'I know something you don't know' smile.
"I'm not done yet," she said, and reached behind her. When she held his glasses out to him, Sawyer thought for a moment that he had to be seeing things. He told himself that if his fingers trembled slightly as he reached out to take them from her then it was because he was still exhausted and had just been through an experience that made a mockery of the expression 'hell of a day', not because he badly needed an outlet that could tell him that there was still a difference between reality and fiction.
"Where did you get these?" Sawyer demanded of Kate as he bent his head to examine the glasses in the flickering light. Other than a crack running down the line where the two frames had been soldered together, they were completely undamaged. There was an edge to his voice that made Kate lean back and regard him through puzzled, even hurt, eyes. "Did you go back to where Jin and I washed ashore for these?" When Kate continued to stare at him with that wounded expression without speaking, Sawyer snapped, "Answer me!"
"No," Kate said. "I didn't. For your information, they were still in the pocket of your own stupid shirt. They got tangled up in a loose thread, that's the only reason they didn't fall out." Kate leaned forward. Sawyer saw now that she was wearing that curious expression that she got sometimes, the one that could make even a cat look disinterested, and he swore inwardly. "You've only been asleep for a few hours, Sawyer. To hear Jin and Michael tell it, the place where you washed up is over a day's walk from here." She still wore that gleaming look. "Why don't you want me to go down there, anyway?"
Sawyer touched at the bandages covering his shoulder and side. "'Case you haven't noticed, sweetheart, it's not exactly safe for pretty things like yourself to go wandering around alone any longer." The tilt of Kate's head told him that she wasn't buying it. 'And because the monster that's had us all jumping and twitching on command for the past two weeks lives there,' Sawyer thought, wondering why he couldn't bring himself to just say that instead of feeling the need to put on a show. Maybe because he reckoned he knew Kate well enough by now to know that telling her about the monster's hidey-hole would be a bulletproof way of making her traipse off to see what she could see…and maybe because that knife that she had been using was making an uneasy feeling that Sawyer could neither explain nor shake away spread stealthily through his body.
"So Michael made it back?" he asked after a long pause, hoping to divert Kate away from whatever trail she was on the verge of heading down.
She nodded. "He must have landed right near you guys. It's a wonder that you didn't cross paths."
"And Walt?"
Kate shook her head, her eyes going dark and worried. "No. But we're going to find him."
"Yes," Sawyer said in a tone fierce enough to make Kate blink and lean back in surprise. It surprised him, too. "We are."
Kate reached out and rubbed at Sawyer's knee. "We're making plans right now. You should probably get some more sleep."
Sawyer could feel himself going white, and with it he could see his final chances of getting Kate to release her curiosity going right down the tubes. "Think I've slept enough to last me a good long while, but thanks," he said.
Kate gave him a strange look. "Right. Is it too much of an understatement for me to tell you to feel better?"
"Yeah. But I appreciate it all the same." Sawyer tried to smile as Kate gave his knee a final squeeze and rose to her feet in one graceful movement. Her body was a brief silhouette in the doorway as she was backlit by the fires beyond, and then she was gone. She took Locke's knife with her, Sawyer noticed, but left behind the torch.
"Strange woman," Sawyer muttered again, hearing worry that surprised and even concerned him curling through his voice. He shook it off and finished his food quickly before he went pawing through the books that Kate had brought him. He didn't know why he hadn't just bundled them up and hidden them along with most of the other things that he hadn't taken with him, except that…well, books didn't do anyone a damned bit of good if they were locked away where no one could use them, did they? Even he knew that, and it wasn't as if he could trade them back and forth for useful things while he wasn't there. Even if this play he was having at being a decent human being was new and he wasn't entirely sure that he could make it fit yet, he figured that he could at least do that much.
Kate hadn't brought all of the books that he had been keeping stashed in his tent. There had to be at least a dozen in there that he hadn't touched yet, but she had sifted through to exclude all of the girlish titles, the Danielle Steel and the like, and brought up only the thrillers and the chillers. Sawyer felt a smile drifting back onto his face as he flicked through them. Someone had broken their mold when she popped out into the world.
Sawyer's hand stilled when he came back to the final book of the stack. It was a dark blue paperback bearing an illustration of a house on the cover in which one single upstairs window was lit. Ghost Story, by one Peter Straub. Sawyer had been looking forward to that one. It seemed to have lost some of its luster, now.
"Hello."
Sawyer jumped, swore, and put his hand quickly against his side. When he was sure that there were going to be no leaks of blood or internal organs into places where they didn't belong, he looked up. "Baldy?" Sawyer very nearly demanded, and only changed it to the more sedate, "Locke?" at the very last moment. Of all of the people that he had expected to visit him, the only way that he would have been more surprised would have been if Sayid had greeted him with a bouquet of roses.
Sawyer shoved Ghost Story away from him and propped himself back up onto his elbows. He felt very suddenly that even if he weren't injured it would have been a matter of a farm dog facing a timber wolf. The feeling was gone a second later, leaving Sawyer to wonder where it had come from in the first place. Locke might be a creepy old man with a tendency to lie, but surely his stores of Kool-Aid had been running low after what had happened to Boone. It wasn't as if Sawyer was going to sign on the dotted line to be Locke's newest jungle friend, anyway.
Locke made an 'If you don't mind' gesture and waited for Sawyer's nod before he settled down onto the patch of earth that Kate had so recently vacated. He had to push Sawyer's book out of the way first. "What's the worst thing that you've ever done?" Locke asked softly, staring down at the yellow window on the book's cover, its single point of warmth in what otherwise appeared to be unremitting gloom.
Sawyer jerked, sending several small bombs going off beneath his side and especially his shoulder, and felt several of the stitches that Jack had so painstakingly dropped into the latter pop free. Warm blood began to trickle out to be soaked up by the bandages. Sawyer set his jaw and let several obscenities slide out from between his clenched teeth until the pain had subsided back to a manageable level. Outside of stretching his hand out to touch Sawyer on the shoulder and steady him, Locke watched with a faintly concerned expression but otherwise did not move.
"What did you just say to me?" Sawyer demanded when hew was reasonably sure that none of his limbs were going to fall off within the next few minutes.
"I said, 'What's the worst thing that you have ever done?'" Locke replied, withdrawing his hand and watching Sawyer through shrewd eyes. It occurred to Sawyer that a game was being played here, one that he did not know the rules of but had better learn quick if he wanted to avoid getting his ass handed to him. So far, his team of one wasn't doing so hot. Locke tilted his head towards the book. Sawyer felt his face begin to fill with blood. "It's been a few years since I read it, but if I recall correctly, that seems to be the theme of a lot of Straub's work, the way that the past finds ways to come back. It's a heavily used line."
"Is it now." If anything, Sawyer's urge to read the book shrank to an even lower level. He couldn't reach out and push it any further away from himself without becoming obvious, however. "I'm not really in the mood for horror, I don't think."
"I don't suppose that any of us are right now. I don't think we will be again for some time yet." Locke picked up the book from where it lay in the dirt between them and flipped to a page at random. He smiled at whatever he saw there. "Ah, Stella." Looking back up, he continued. "There are already so many ghosts on this island-" Sawyer did not twitch, not while he could see the way that Locke's eyes were tracking him over the top of the page. "And there are likely to be more before we bring this ugliness to a close." Locke shut the book and set it back down on top of the stack with the others. "I couldn't help but notice how strongly you reacted to that line."
Ah, so here it came. Sawyer's entire body went tense between one moment and the next, hurting like hell even though he couldn't seem to avoid it. Kate or even Jack would have gotten a simple 'Fuck off and mind your own business.' For Locke, Sawyer spared a politician's smile that he knew without needing a mirror made his eyes look that much colder by contrast. "Then you also couldn't help but notice that I haven't exactly spent the past few days in a spa. I reckon that if I want to be a bit twitchy right now, then I'm entitled to it."
Locke nodded. "I'm not disputing that. Stories of what you did on that raft are already being told around nearly every fire out there."
Sawyer wanted to laugh, and only by biting the inside of his cheek hard was he able to prevent himself from bursting into half-crazed mirth right then and there. He realized that Locke's eyes were making note of every he made and, without being able to quite say why, could not shake the feeling that he was both being campaigned to and scoped out as a member of enemy territory. "You're coming across as quite the hero."
"Every legend has to have some grain of truth somewhere, don't it?" Sawyer reached for a bottle of water that Kate had been so kind as to leave behind along with the good. He would have to remember to inspire that woman's domestic side more often. The water was delicious going down his throat, and he had to force himself to obey the doctor's orders and go slow before he made himself sick. When he finally set the bottle to the side, it was to discover that Locke was still watching him.
"I've heard that said," Locke replied. He settled his hands against his thighs, like a grandfather about to impart a story of great wisdom and import onto a gaggle of eager, wide-eyed youngsters. Sawyer found himself leaning forward in spite of himself. "I'm not certain that legends arise out of any relation to the truth, though, but because we need them in order to become better ourselves."
Sawyer made a face. "Thanks."
"What I do believe in," Locke continued as if Sawyer had not spoken, "are ghosts." He ignored Sawyer as he tried to simultaneously roll his eyes and tense up every muscle in his body as one being. "Not in the traditional sense, of course, not like-" He waved his hand towards the Straub novel. "That. But it is possible for a person to carry ghosts with them. This island is full of them, most of which we brought here on the plane with us."
This, finally, was something that Sawyer knew how to deal with. Sawyer narrowed his eyes into slits that he could barely see out of. "Am I going to see a golden retriever come trotting up any time soon?"
"No." Locke rose to his feet in a smooth, lithe movement that made Sawyer think, and not for the first time, that whatever it was that Mr. John Locke had done before their arrival to their happy home, it had been less than strictly legal. At some point they were going to have to round up all of the criminals on the island and sort out who did what. It would make for some hellacious campfire tales, at least.
The look that Locke bestowed upon Sawyer as he moved to exit the caves was not nearly so friendly as any that had come before it. There was a test being administered here, and Sawyer could not shake the feeling that he had failed. "Let me know if you see any boar, though. Kate and I got lucky earlier today. There's no guarantee that we will be again." He left.
Sawyer sank back onto the pallet as soon as he was gone, groaning. He touched at his shoulder, where a red rose had appeared on the bandage and was growing larger.
"Are you all right?"
Sawyer looked up. "Damn, but I'm popular tonight. Gonna have to schedule visiting hours for my own good before this is all over."
Jack made a face and stepped further into the cave. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder, almost certainly wondering what Locke had been doing in there a few minutes before. Jack looked back, not saying anything, but Sawyer could still read every thought going through the doctor's head as it was written across his face. It was a good thing that Jack was so upright and noble, because he couldn't lie worth shit.
"Jealousy is not a good color on you." This earned Sawyer another face, but a touch of the tension ran out of Jack's shoulders. More followed when Sawyer added, "And if you're here to give me a sermon, too, then I reserve the right to kick you right out of my hospital room."
Jack even smiled a little, then, and held up his hands in a mock gesture of surrender. "Just checking up on my patient." He stepped closer into the circle of torchlight, so that Sawyer could see, in spite of the stubble and the dark circles and the general signs that Jack was still trying to be Batman without the utility belt, the doctor was…in spite of everything that was going on, in spite of all the reasons that he had to be turning into the best spokesperson that Prozac ever could have hoped for, Jack was nearly glowing. The smile fell away when he saw Sawyer's shoulder, but the glow remained. Sawyer had the feeling that there were several blanks that were going to have to be filled in for him. "Look at you." He knelt by Sawyer's side and began pulling the bandage away.
"Think I popped some of those stitches that you were so nice as to put in," Sawyer said as he watched Jack work. Jack's fingers were long and slender, and they moved so softly that Sawyer barely felt them brushing across his skin. He exhaled a long stream of air through his nose. "You're good at this."
Jack threw him a bemused glance. "That's why they gave me the shiny degree." He smoothed some of the blood away from Sawyer's shoulder and leaned close so that his breath was a warm fan against the skin.
"And here I thought that it was like a kindergartner's finger painting and only good for tacking up on the refrigerator." Sawyer tilted his head back and grunted as Jack hit a spot that didn't much like being hit.
"How much pain are you in?" Jack's voice floated to him as those fingers continued their soft dance. Sawyer shivered and was glad that Jack would likely take it as a shudder of pain. What the good doctor was doing to his shoulder right about then was inviting way too many thoughts of what else those hands could be doing for Sawyer to stay inconspicuous for much longer.
"On a scale of one to ten?" With his head tilted back as it was, Sawyer felt rather than saw Jack nod. "Get a new scale."
"It's stopped bleeding," Jack said, more to himself than to Sawyer, and rocked back on his heels. "We have a few sedatives left," he began, but Sawyer could see the weight of the world already trying to resettle itself around Jack's shoulders. Sawyer waved him silent before he could complete the sentence.
"Not an emergency any longer, am I?" Sawyer asked, surprising himself by meaning it. 'Even legends…' Well, hell, if it was a chance to prove that creepy old coot wrong, then he would take it and do a little dance as soon as he felt up to it again. "Save it for the next poor bastard who needs his appendix taken out."
Jack ran his eyes over Sawyer's bared chest and abdomen without speaking. Sawyer could not tell if he was making note of the way that all of Sawyer's muscles had gone rigid with the pain or if he was only taking in the view. 'One epiphany at a time, old hoss.' Wasn't his fault if this one in particular was so much more appealing than the ones which had come before it. "Sun could make some more of that tea."
"No!" Sawyer all but shouted, realizing a second later that Jack was staring at him. A deep line of concern had drawn itself between his eyes. "No," Sawyer repeated more calmly. "I don't know what our very own medicine woman put into that witch's brew, but those were some of the most messed-up dreams that I've had for a while."
"Okay. That leaves aspirin as our last option."
"That'll do just fine." Sawyer held out his hand while Jack rummaged about in his pack for the bottle. When Jack shook four white pills into his waiting palm, Sawyer waggled his fingers for more.
Jack arched his eyebrows. "I don't have anything to put your stomach lining back together with if you start puking it up." Sawyer scowled and waggled his fingers again. "Uh-uh."
"I'd like to register my complaint about the bedside manner here." Sawyer popped the pills into his mouth and washed them down with a gulp of water.
"That's what the nurses are for." Jack's words were slightly muffled as he went back to digging through is bag, presumably for the sewing kit.
Sawyer propped himself up on his elbows so that he could watch the line of Jack's back through his shirt. "Surprised you're being so loose with the meds, anyhow. Somethin' you're not telling me, Doc?"
"You're going to outlive us all just for spite." Jack produced the sewing kit and, after a moment's more digging, one final tiny bottle of vodka. Sawyer stared at it and thought of all of the better uses that he could be putting that bottle to. "And maybe you're entitled to the extra aspirin. It's yours." Sawyer's jaw dropped open and he shot Jack a look of mingled shock and outrage. "You don't bury things half as sneakily as you think."
"Son of a bitch!" Sawyer snapped his mouth shut and glared. "I don't think that I like you very much." He paused for a long moment before he added, with great solemnity, "Jackass."
"You like me about as much as you like anyone, which is still more than you want any of them to know." While Sawyer was still mulling this over and wondering when he must have let it slip, Jack unscrewed the lid from the bottle of vodka and quickly doused both his hands and Sawyer's shoulder. He dropped his hand back down to Sawyer's forearm and gave it a brief squeeze when his patient winced. "You pulled out three stitches, looks like. Won't take more than a few seconds to put them back in." Jack readied his needle and thread. "It's going to hurt a little."
"We've already been through this song and dance once today, remember?" Sawyer braced himself. Compared to that impromptu surgery, a few stitches were nothing, and Jack's hands were gentle and quick.
"There," Jack said less than thirty seconds later. "That wasn't so terrible." He snapped off the thread and began redressing the shoulder.
"You keep saying that, and every time you're on the other side of the needle. Can't help but think that that might be affecting your viewpoint just a touch."
"I've had my share of good scrapes." Jack smoothed the fresh bandage down, his breath once more creating a warm breeze over Sawyer's skin, and damned if any pretense of self-control wasn't about to get thrown right out the window. Sawyer made a soft sound that Jack must have interpreted as one of pain, because his face was concerned when he lifted it back up. They were close enough to share one another's breath, and Sawyer only had to lean his face forward a centimeter or two before they were sharing something else entirely.
Jack's lips were warm, parted slightly, and pliant with shock. When he was not immediately showed away, Sawyer parted them further and slid his tongue inside. He waited for a signal from Jack as he explored, any sign at all urging him to either stop or egging him on, but in the few seconds since Sawyer had dipped his head down Jack seemed to have been replaced by a marble statue.
'Come on, Jack,' Sawyer caught himself thinking in a tone so close to pleading that he would never admit it to anyone. 'Haul back and sock me one if you want to, but you have to give me something to work with here.'
As if he had tuned into some secret wavelength that now allowed him to read Sawyer's thoughts, Jack made a slight sighing sound that made Sawyer think some burden had been lifted away, though he could not say how. Jack parted his lips further and brought his hands up to tangle through Sawyer's hair and pull him close with a ferocity that bordered on the painful.
Huh. Somewhere down the line, someone had taken the Captain America that Sawyer knew and loved to antagonize and turned him into a damned good kisser.
They parted at last so that they could breathe and rested the sides of their faces against each other, panting. Jack's stubble made a rasping noise against Sawyer's cheek as he moved. "What the hell." Jack shook his head as if to clear it. "What the hell was that?"
"Brother, I don't know," Sawyer said, and thought a second later that maybe he could have chosen a better endearment. He raised his hand to rub at his mouth, realized that this would look as if were trying to scrub Jack's taste away, and dropped his hand back in his lap. Jack's eyes were wide and nearly panicked. Sawyer could not imagine that he looked much different, and the picture of them staring at one another like a pair of startled owls was nearly enough to send him over the edge and into an absurd peal of laughter. "Jack," Sawyer began, not having much idea of what he even wanted to say. They hadn't punched each other yet, and as far as the two of them went that was a great leap forward in communication.
"You said earlier that you wanted to talk to me," Jack interrupted. "Somehow I don't think that this was what you wanted to talk to me about." His eyes were still wide. Sawyer thought that he was probably on the edge of bolting right then and there.
"No," Sawyer said, and then tried again. "Jack-" He didn't think that he had ever used Jack's name so often in so short a span of time before.
"I need some time to think this over," Jack said. His face was calmer, but he had scooted back several inches. There was a tension thickening the air between them now, different from any that had come before it. "So let's just focus on everything else that's happened today."
"Okay." Sawyer eased himself down off of his elbows. "Jin and I saw the monster."
Within a span of seconds, it was as if Sawyer was looking at a completely different Jack. He braced his hands on his thighs and leaned forward, eyes gleaming. 'Thought I would have a bigger impact than that,' Sawyer groused inwardly before he caught himself and nearly gave in to an absurd peal of laughter again. This did not yet qualify as the worst or even the most bizarre day of his life, but it was creeping higher on the list with every moment that ticked by. "Where?" Jack demanded.
Sawyer waved a hand to indicate that Jack should slow down. "Easy there, cowboy. Gonna tell this story, gotta tell it right." Jack made an irritated huffing noise that Sawyer decided he kind of liked and spoke Sawyer's tone in a warning tone. "Fine, fine. You have no sense of storytelling." Sawyer forced his tone to remain light and easy in spite of the fact that he and Jack were not quite managing to make eye contact. "About a day and a half's walk from here. Only a day if you're not phenomenally screwed up at the same time." Sawyer waved his good arm to indicate the damage done to his shoulder and side.
"What did it look like?" Jack asked. His voice had taken on a dry clinician's tone. Sawyer could imagine Jack turning right around and quizzing him about his prostate without breaking stride.
"Wasn't it, Jack. Was they." When Jack's face showed no glimmer of understanding, Sawyer went on. "They were a swarm of little things, each one maybe the size of one of my thumbs." He shrugged. "You might want to run the physics of it by Michael or Sayid to see if it checks out, but I got to admit that it would answer a lot of questions."
"It wasn't smoke at all," Jack said, half to himself. He only shook his head when Sawyer fixed him with a questioning look. "Did you see whether these…things…were animal or machine?"
"Couldn't tell," Sawyer said. "The opening in the ground that they disappeared into sure wasn't breathing, though." He tilted his head to side as Jack drew his breath in sharply. "Why are you so keen on the animal, vegetable, or mineral side of the equation? Practical guy like you, I'd have figured that you would be more interested in smashing it."
"We'll get to that," Jack said with a low, grim determination coloring his voice that made Sawyer straighten and look at him. "Do you remember any details of the boat that took Walt?"
Sawyer shook his head. "But I don't remember a lot of what happened that night."
Jack nodded as if this was to be understood. "It was modern." He stood up as Sawyer's eyes widened. "Ever since we came to this island, something has been playing with us. I think it's about time that stopped, don't you?" He left the cave without another word, presumably to settle into his bout of thinking. That was all right. Sawyer discovered that he had a lot to think about, too.
--
Most people had begun to drift off to bed in the little family clusters that had started to form, but in spite of the dwindling fires Sun did not think that she could sleep. She sat close beside her husband, holding his hand tightly in her own and resting her head onto his shoulder. Her knuckles had long since begun to ache with the strain, but neither of them as willing to be the first to let go. Every few seconds, Jin would raise his hand and gently comb his fingers through her hair.
"Am I hurting you?" Sun asked in Korean after they had sat for many minutes without speaking, indicating the fearsome burns that covered Jin's face and neck.
"No." Jin returned to stroking her hair. "You are a very good nurse."
"I have not done anything except feed you," Sun protested, feeling a blush crawl up her face. Jin had been able to make her flush with no more than a glance once, she remembered. She had loved those days.
"Yes, you did." Jin ceased stroking her hair long enough to put his arm around her shoulders and pull her close to him again. By splaying her palm against his chest, Sun could feel his heart beating. "You will take Jack's job away from him if he is not careful." He let a beat go by and then said, in a tone which was no longer playful, "I was afraid that I would never see you again."
"Me, too. I was frightened, too." Sun pressed her hand harder into Jin's chest, as if she would graft his heartbeat into her skin by willing it hard enough and keep it safe there. "You were all very lucky to have made it back. Even Michael." This last part Sun said carefully and in a low voice. She and Jin had never discussed the brief, confused attraction that she had felt towards Michael, or the friendship that he and Jin had formed since then. For several months before coming to the island, they had not discussed anything at all.
Jin stared at her for a long moment before he said, "Yes. Even him." He paused, sensing that she was not yet finished and waiting for her to go on.
Sun looked down at the place where their fingers were still intertwined. "I am afraid still," she said. "I am afraid of what is coming, and what may happen to you. Even thought you were only gone for two days, I could not sleep."
"You do not need to be-" Jin began, only to be cut off by Sun's lips meeting his. She kissed him with a ferocity and desperation that she did not believe she had ever felt before, and already she could feel tears rising in her eyes. Jin hesitated for a moment before he began kissing her back, raising his hands so that he could cradle her face. He barely touched her cheeks with the tips of his fingers, as if he thought that with too much pressure she might shatter.
"You do not need to be afraid," Jin said, breaking away so that he could look into her eyes. His hands did not leave her face, and already Sun could feel the blood rushing back into her face. "I will continue to be lucky."
Sun sniffled. She did not realize until Jin moved his thumb through the tear tracks on her face that she had been crying. "You cannot promise to be lucky."
"Yes, I can." Jin leaned forward and kissed her without ever taking his hands away from her face. He had used to kiss her like his on a daily basis in the first years after their marriage. Sun was breathing hard by the time that it was over. Jin gave her a questioning look, reminding her of the other things that they had used to do so frequently. She nodded, grasped her husband's hand, and led him away into the relative privacy just outside of the caves.
--
Sawyer did not know what time it was, only that he had not yet slept and the noises in the main cavern were finally beginning to die down, when a male shape darkened the entry into the infirmary cave. He recognized Jack's silhouette immediately. "You think fast."
"That's also why I have the degree." Jack's knees made a thunking sound as they struck the earth by Sawyer's side. Kate's torch had long since burned away into nothing, so that Sawyer was only aware of Jack's face as a dim, dark shape in the shadows before he was being kissed, kissed hard and kissed well. Jack's hand wound around to the back of Sawyer's head once more and seized a fistful of his hair, pulling Sawyer closer to him. Sawyer was tempted to say that the good doctor had a control fetish, but he hated to state the obvious and the distraction that he was being offered in its stead was much too nice to let his thoughts drift on to other things for long. Jack kissed him like a man who had not been kissed in a very long time or worse, did not expect to be kissed again. Sawyer decided that he liked the second interpretation better, as that way he could save himself the energy of being insulted.
"Don't flatter yourself. Doesn't take a degree to reach that conclusion," Sawyer said once they had broken apart.
"I couldn't sleep," Jack confessed. That wasn't exactly a new condition where the doctor was concerned, and the whole camp knew it. "Sayid's group hasn't come back yet."
It was news to Sawyer that a group had been sent out in the first place, but all right. He had certainly been worse things in his life than someone's pleasant distraction. "And you're looking for…?" His hand found the front of Jack's jeans in the dark.
"No, that's not it at all-" But he was not pulling away. Once Sawyer had undone the front of his jeans and slid his hand inside, he found quite an opposite reaction occurring. Jack cut off his words in favor of a soft sighing sound.
"Shh, don't worry about it." Sawyer spoke to himself almost as much as he did Jack. He had the feeling that this was new territory for the both of them. 'You've brought yourself off hundreds of times. Can't be all that different.' He spit into his palm before getting down to it.
Jack put his hand against Sawyer's good shoulder and squeezed hard as he came, hard enough so that Sawyer thought there might be bruises left behind in the morning. Add those to all of his others, and he wasn't certain that anyone else would even notice. "Better than a glass of warm milk, I'll bet."
He didn't have to see Jack's grimace to know that it was there; the shifting of the air told him so. "Maybe not the best analogy you could be making right now." He remained half-collapsed across Sawyer's body, close enough so that their whiskers were brushing against one another as Jack whispered, "I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what?"
"I'm taking advantage of you."
"Hell, Jack, I ain't exactly running away." They were whispering, and Sawyer was not sure why.
Jack's snorted laugh was no more than a puff of air against the side of Sawyer's neck. "Sawyer, you're not exactly in the shape to be running anywhere right now."
"That's it. Get off of me, you son of a bitch." Sawyer shoved at Jack's chest with his good arm and was not stilled until he heard the zipper of his jeans being drawn down.
Jack's voice was a low rumble against his ear. "Am I still taking advantage of you if we both get off?"
"You tell me." Sawyer arched when Jack found a rhythm and then winced when his bruises and his broken ribs scolded him. "Might have to go easy on me."
"It's what I do." Sawyer put his hand over Jack's, guided him to the rhythm that Sawyer liked best, as Jack put his mouth over Sawyer's again. Jack was a smart man and a quick study, and when Sawyer came a few minutes later, whatever he might have said was lost into Jack's mouth.
Jack rested his head against Sawyer's forehead while Sawyer caught his breath. They couldn't meet one another's eyes in the darkness, and maybe that was just as well. This was the part of the game where Sawyer would find a good exit line and then bolt away into the sunset, usually with a great deal of money that he had done next to nothing to earn riding shotgun with him. Jack was right, though, when he said that Sawyer wasn't in the condition to go running anywhere. That left it to the doctor to make the clever escape, then.
Jack hesitated and remained poised over Sawyer's body for a few seconds longer before he rolled over to the side. "You could use the extra sleep, too," he said at last.
Sawyer snorted. "Not really in the mood, trust me." He could sense Jack watching him with some concern, but both of them were too preoccupied with the moment when one would tell the other to leave to allow for much else. They were still waiting for that moment when Jack's breathing became deep and regular, while Sawyer remained wide awake and watching the dark.
End Part Ten
