My only caution to what you are about to read… this chapter dangerously approaches what some might call fluff. But don't get too comfortable, as this is only a slight reprieve from much more angst that I seem to love to write about for two particular Lostaways. (lowers voice to almost inaudible whisper) And yes, I definitely enjoyed writing this particular section. As always, please read and review!

Chapter Eight: Side Effect

Under any other circumstance, Kate would have struggled fiercely against this sort of closeness. Proximity meant weakness, meant dependency, meant danger; her life on the run had taught her that much. The closer she let herself connect with people, the harder it was to turn her back and let them go. Her conversations with clerks at the Wal-Marts, BPs, Giant Eagles had been kept to a bare minimum amount of necessary words. She'd hurried through ordering at Denny's and Cracker Barrel so the waiter or waitress had to make the fewest returns to her table, and her face. Any lingering attachment was a fugitive's suicide. The second she had thought twice about a miniature replica of a DC-3, her relatively cop-free record turned down a dead-end road.

Then again, this wasn't what anyone would consider routine circumstance.

Maybe it was overwhelming relief from her stay in solitary confinement. Maybe it was sheer exhaustion from the events in the last twenty-four hours. Maybe it was just she didn't have much of a choice being drugged and all. Whatever the reason was, Kate felt strangely at ease lying wrapped in Jack's arms.

Somewhere off to her side, she heard the rapid brushing of jean material and the fairly frequent grumbling told her Sawyer was in one of his moods. Probably because he's trying to convince himself Jack's life story wasn't affecting him in the slightest, although she knew he wasn't fooling anyone. She almost wondered if maybe Jack should've left him tied and gagged for their own sanity.

After giving her a quick but thorough once-over and muttering some sort of threat when he had found the dried blood from the vicious syringes, Jack had pulled her into this somewhat intimate embrace and that's when the silence had taken back control. She knew he had fallen into his protective shell, hoping to shelter himself after being so blatantly exposed in front of the two people he probably wanted to hide from the most.

Kate shifted her gaze back to the spot on the side of the hut she'd been staring at before Sawyer interrupted her reverie. For a moment, the room grew noticeably quiet again and she felt herself concentrating more and more the slow deliberate movement of Jack's fingers along her back. She wondered if the motion was more therapeutic for him or for her, or whether it really mattered.

Long loopy circles alternately traced with the flat of his palm and the backs of his fingers from the curve of her shoulderblade to the small of her back. She could feel the langurous rotation of his muscles at the back of her head and the steady heartbeat thudding against her cheek. One of her arms was trapped, but not uncomfortably so, between her body and his; the other resting across his stomach. She watched it rise and fall in unfaltering rhythm, listening to the enhanced sound of his breathing under her ear.

Before she could build much of a resistance, Kate realized she was fighting a losing battle with sleep. Her vision was beginning to lose focus, her eyelids becoming heavy, and she struggled, mustering enough ambition to blink rapidly against the welcoming fog. It was no use, once the thought of a comfortable sleep had crossed her weary and exhausted mind, that became its main priority.

As she drifted further into oblivion, Kate only then recognized the tingling sensation in the tips of her fingers and toes. It was like the pins and needles feeling she got when trying to revive limbs that had fallen asleep. It took her a moment to feel the by now familiar pang of fear as the realization that her time with them was running out. But at this very second, all she really cared about was maintaining this comforting closeness.

Kate couldn't determine before the darkness shut her eyes for good, whether or not she meant for now or forever.