By the time Sawyer woke up, there was light streaming into the room by the curtain less windows. He groaned as it hit his eyes, drawing him out of sleep quickly. The sounds of movement and people talking also filtered in through the window, along with the heavy scent of spices and sugar.
It was that smell that kept him grounded, that reminded him of last night's events because it was so exotic and definitely not something that you'd wake up to in a hotel. He wished he didn't remember what had happened, but he did and so it was with a groan that he opened his eyes.
And found himself face to face with a sleeping Charlie.
And realised that the warmth against him was that of the other's body.
And discovered that his arms were loosely around Charlie.
And that his hand was on Charlie's ass.
His heterosexual hand was on Charlie's extremely male ass.
Well, fuck.
He remedied the situation as quickly as he could - removed the hand, pulled his arms back, rolled over and stared at the ceiling. He realised his heart was pounding. Then he realised, with a sickening jolt, that he was hard. Morning wood, you asshole, he told himself. Morning wood, don't act like it's anything important. Fag.
Right. Nothing to do with Charlie and his hyper energy or his untameable smile when he'd first seen Sawyer out of the Program or the way his body twisted and bent when he was fighting.
Sawyer closed his eyes and swore repeatedly in his mind, because what the hell was this? Had that dumb Iraqi screwed with his head during the transfer?
He looked over of Charlie and saw a flash of (pinning you to the bed and kissing you lazily, in no rush with nothing to do, slipping my hand under your shirt and over your skin and we're still new at this, still young and still innocent, still exploring each others' bodies at a pace that seems so slow, and god, Charlie, you're so fucking pretty, did I ever tell you that?)some long ago memory.
Sawyer pulled his gaze away from Charlie and stared determinedly up at the ceiling, not wanting to even think about what he'd just seen.
His cheeks flaming, he slipped out from under the sheets. There was no way his hard-on was going away by itself for a while yet, no matter how many wrinkly old grannies he tried to think of to turn himself off. That flashing image was still at the front of his mind, with Charlie pinned underneath him, hands roaming.
He shuddered and walked towards the window. Reaching it, he undid the latch and tugged the glass pane up. It caught, briefly, having not been opened for year, but then rattled quickly upwards. He jammed it open. The sounds from the street below became louder, the smells stronger.
Stalls were scattered along the street, hugging the walls, with sacks of herbs, fake Rolexes and ratty clothes being offered to the masses milling past. On the corner opposite their building, there was a small stand offering candy floss and pancakes. It was a frantic scene, the complete opposite of the desert wasteland they'd driven through last night.
The 'wasteland' seemed to have been utilised, in fact -- the broken bricks were used to prop up stalls and weigh down the clothing to protect it from shoplifters and the wind. The 'graffiti' on the walls that last night he'd taken to be gang signs and tags, turned out to be price lists.
Sawyer leaned against the side of the window frame and looked out at the scene. A woman with long brown hair weaved through the crowd, triumphantly clutching a plastic bag containing her most recent purchase. A nearby bald man was haggling down the price of a watch from one of the sellers.
The sellers were a spectacle in themselves - as exotic and varied as the products they were selling. From old fat men in dirty t-shirts that didn't quite cover their beer-bellies to young and enthusiastic women, gossiping together between sales. Charlie and Ana had complained of a corrupt government and extreme poverty, but Sawyer didn't see that here.
"'morning," Charlie murmured sleepily, still lying on the mattress. Sawyer glanced over his shoulder at him, but the sight of Charlie lying wantonly like that made his cock pulse and demand attention, so he quickly turned back around to stare out of the window in horror.
"I need to shower," he said quickly. What he needed was a quiet place to jerk off while thinking of women, with their rounded curves and soft bodies and hips. Not the way Charlie's ass had felt firm under his hand when he'd woken up first that morning.
"Oh, right. Yeah." Charlie sat up and shook the sleep from himself, like a wet dog. "'course. Sorry," he mumbled, crawling over to the end of the bed. He picked a folded t-shirt off the top of the pile of clothing at the end of the mattress. Sawyer tried not to stare as he changed into it.
He failed. A lot.
When Charlie stood up, Sawyer noted that there was a ragged hole near the bottom of his t-shirt that you could see his navel through. "Bathroom's just this way."
He climbed off the mattress with a groaned complained and started to head towards the door. Sawyer turned away from the market scene outside and left the window open as he walked after Charlie. On the way, he had to focus too much to stop his eyes from drifting down.
The shower refused to give him hot water, sticking to lukewarm at best and ice cold at worst, regardless of how he twisted at the handles. He'd eventually given up and made do with what he had. He got rid of his erection as quickly as he could, feeling dirty because of the way it was Charlie that he kept seeing when he closed his eyes. Once he'd finished, he washed himself about five times and still didn't feel clean again. The feel of rough stubble instead of his usual long hair both annoyed and upset him -- the hole in his skin where the IV tube should have been just hurt.
He'd come out of the bathroom, with a towel wrapped around his waist, to find a set of clothes waiting for him outside - nondescript jeans and a white t-shirt. They were still better than the ragged clothes he'd woken up wearing in prison, so he put them on without a word.
Less than an hour later, he found himself being led by Charlie towards 'the Computer Room'. The rest of the apartment was empty, apart from Michael, but Charlie couldn't or wouldn't (Sawyer suspected the latter) tell him where the others had gone.
"It's a little untidy -- Michael practically lives in here - but I thought you'd want to be shown 'round? It might…" Bring your memories back - Charlie didn't have to finish the sentence.
Sawyer nodded, and indicated at the flimsy-looking door. "Let's go, then." He didn't know a damn thing about computers, other than the basic 'point a mouse and click' but he wasn't about to let Charlie realise that.
Charlie opened the door and they entered a musky cave -- no windows, and filled with the scent of BO and aftershave. Tiny green and red lights flashed in the dark, shining out happily from the various machines in the room. Charlie reached for a lamp and switched it on.
The weak light illuminated a laptop on a wooden desk -- on the floor beneath the desk stood a grey box. It was featureless, with nothing about it really standing out. It had a lid: Sawyer could just about make out the line between the lid and the main body of the object.
Charlie must have spotted him looking at it, because he stepped towards it quickly. "That's our scanner. Sayid made it; we had a bloody mental time trying to find all the right parts." He crouched down next to it, and flapped his hand to indicate that Sawyer ought to kneel too.
Sawyer did, cautiously, and dropped to his knees beside Charlie. In this position, he wondered if they were about to start worshipping the box.
Instead Charlie reached out and opened it. As the lid slumped back, flat against the side of the box, bright lights came on inside it – florescent strips along the bottom and up the sides. It was empty at the moment, and just reminded Sawyer of a cool box.
"See, you put stuff in here," Charlie said, hitting the side of the scanner. He then hopped up onto the computer chair by the desk, and switched the laptop on. "And it turns up here. And then you can put it wherever you want. It's how we get stuff into the Program, y'know?" No, Sawyer definitely didn't 'know' at all, but he nodded all the same.
Charlie rolled over on the chair, skidding over the floor towards the corner. "And we've got the suits here. Though 'suits' is kinda the wrong word for it. Couple of visors, wires, gloves. We've got enough to send three people in at once, and that's all you need, really." He bit his lip, then glanced back at Sawyer over his shoulder. "Do you want to try it out?" he asked.
Sawyer didn't answer at first. Did he want to? Virtual reality… he was a little too busy getting use to the real reality – and he hadn't even left this apartment yet.
On the other hand, Charlie looked so excited that Sawyer wasn't sure if he even wanted to say no. He didn't think he was physically able to, and that was something that sent alarm bells ringing cruelly in his ears. He didn't stop to examine it, and instead just grinned. "Sure."
Charlie bounced a little and grinned. "Excellent. I'll go and get Michael to help, then."
Before Sawyer could think about objecting, Charlie had slipped past him out of the room. Michael was supposed to be sleeping and Sawyer got the feeling that the guy didn't do that nearly as often as he should.
Still, Michael appeared soon enough, with only slightly bleary eyes. Charlie was moving excitably along behind him – Sawyer had no idea how he managed to be that hyper all the time, especially after the fight yesterday.
Michael smiled tiredly. "Hey. Charlie said you're ready for your first trip?" he asked, as he pushed the chair back over from where Charlie had abandoned it on the wrong side of the room.
Sawyer shrugged. "Well then, guess I must be." If Charlie said it, it must be true – was that the mentality he'd slipped into already? Christ.
Charlie grabbed his arm and steered him over to the suits, talking about health and safety and who knew what else while helping Sawyer with the equipment. He had to stretch up and get on his toes in order to reach Sawyer's head to put the sensors there, with small pieces of tape that felt like plasters on his stubbly head. Sawyer found himself squatting down to help Charlie get them on, and didn't even feel ridiculous about the positioning.
Charlie slipped the visor over his eyes for him, and everything went blue. Charlie looked like a goofy little alien like this; blue skin and blue hair.
"Here's your gloves," Charlie said as he passed him a pair, think and black that felt heavy. "Well… Technically they're Sayid's, but I think they'll fit, roughly. You should be able to feel something against your fingers? And your palms? Sort of like sandpaper."
Sawyer put them on and flexed his hands. He flinched a little – yeah, that definitely felt like sandpaper over his skin. "Couldn't ol' Sayid have designed them a little better? Feels like he's trying to take my damn hands off."
Charlie tried to look stern, but Sawyer could see the faintest hint of a smile, tinged in blue. It'd take just a little more to get that hint to turn into a full, real smile.
But then Charlie was moving away and quickly adjusting his own wires and putting on his gloves and slipping that odd looking visor onto his face. Sawyer was about to comment on how pathetic they both looked, when Charlie ordered him to slip his feet into the footrests on the floor. Sawyer did so, sceptically. Seconds later, Michael gave them a vague warning, and the whole room disappeared.
Charlie closed his eyes the second Michael said, "Okay." He never left them open while he was 'porting inside the Program. Doing so made him dizzy, and the day's events were already having that effect on him. Being this close to Sawyer but being unable to touch and tease him like he was used to was unbearable. It wasn't the sex he missed, not really. It was Sawyer's arm around his shoulders as they walked anywhere, and brushing Sawyer's arm when they talked, and sitting in his lap in the living room when they made plans.
He brushed the memories away and opened his eyes. They were in a wooded area, in a small clearing. Trees crowded in around them, forming a thick and menacing wall. Between the trees, pitch black shadows stretched into the distance. The darkness in the wood seemed to go on forever, but the clearing they stood in was perfectly lit, as if it belonged in a Disney movie. A clump of white flowers sat to the side, next to a tree stump.
Charlie smiled as he recognized this place – Sawyer used to take him here to get away from all of the chaos on the outside, with the Sleepers and their politics. They'd eat and joke around in the clearing, then Sawyer would lead him into the depths of the forest, shedding their clothes as they went.
Still, there was no need to tell Sawyer that. Charlie cleared his throat hurriedly. "We usually train here. It's also a pretty nice place to come to, to… y'know. Get away for a bit." He walked further into the clearing and spun around to see Sawyer.
To be perfectly honest, Sawyer didn't seem too impressed. "It's a little on the wooden side, isn't it? Where's civilization? I kind of like my alone time with more people around."
Charlie shrugged. "Sorry. We're all anti-social hermits."
"Yeah, right. You're a hermit?" Sawyer rolled his eyes. "Think you can get Mikey up there to give us a change in scenery?"
He'd barely finished the sentence when the forest faded around them. They ended up in a quiet street instead – there was a newsagents at the corner and several small shops in between. A few pedestrians made their slow way up the street, but they weren't real; they weren't going anywhere. Pieces of coding don't have lives. No home to return to, no job to be late for, no children to look after, no boyfriend to meet.
Charlie sighed. "Does this meet your standards, then?" Charlie asked, once the dizziness faded – he'd forgotten to close his eyes.
Sawyer kicked at an empty can that was lying abandoned on the road. "Yeah, I'd say so. Thanks, Mike." Somehow, he was able to make each and every word sound sarcastic.
"Good. Then we can get on with our training."
"Wait, what? I didn't sign up to get trained. You said you were just showing me 'round."
"I lied." Charlie grinned and stepped to the side, sitting on the dusty kerb of the pavement. Sawyer glared at him. "Relax, it's easy."
Sort of, if this worked right. If it didn't, Sawyer was about to get his ass kicked.
He glanced to the left as a faceless figure appeared. It was very simple coding – basically, the 'stick man' of virtual reality – but it made for a good punch bag. It could also quite easily turn the tables on you, if you weren't careful.
Sawyer let out a laugh through his nose as the stick-man moved slowly down the street towards him. "You're serious? This is your version of 'training'?" Sawyer asked, grinning. Charlie nodded seriously. "I'm new at this, but I'm not that new. I can take something weightier than a goddamn stickman."
Charlie smirked. "Alright. Let's bet on it." And maybe he really would let the figure beat Sawyer up. A little. Just enough to let him win the bet. Sawyer looked intrigued by the idea, so Charlie quickly dreamt up some stakes – neither of them had any money to bet with, so that option was out. "If you win against him, I'll wash the group's dishes for a month. If he wins, you have to."
The stickman had frozen mid-step; Michael must have paused him while they were coming to an arrangement. "Alright. And, if I win, I get the bed tonight. If I lose, you do."
Charlie struggled to stay smiling, but it was difficult as he'd more or less forced Sawyer to share the bed last night. "Okay, deal. Shake on it?"
Sawyer nodded and took a few steps over Charlie. They shook hands – Sawyer's grip was firm and commanding, as it had always been. "Hope you like sleeping on the floor," Sawyer said.
"Hope you like washing dishes."
They grinned at each other, and Sawyer held his hand just a second too long, just a little too tight. When Sawyer broke the handshake, Charlie looked up at the cloudy sky above them. "Michael? Let's go."
Sawyer backed up, skimming backwards, as the stick man rushed to life and moved forwards. Sawyer wasn't even back in his starting position when the stickman knocked into him and rugby tackled him to the ground.
He dropped with a grunt and the two skimmed over the tarmac, like throwing stones over a lake. They thudded down to the ground, with Sawyer laughing hysterically.
The laughter stopped when the stickman immediately punched Sawyer in the gut. It was replaced with a pissed off frown. Charlie sat forwards, arms leaning on his legs as he watched. Come on… he thought – he knew that this would lose him the bet, but he still so badly wanted his theory about this to be right. Come on.
Sawyer head-butted the stick-man then pulled his arm back to throw a messy punched at the jaw. It wasn't the clearly defined fighting that Charlie was used to seeing from Sawyer. It was untidy and untrained; it belonged in a bar brawl. Sawyer was still fighting using his new memories.
And that technique was not working. While the punch briefly threw the figure off target, it only lasted for a second. Then it threw a punch of its own, hard and harsh and painful. Charlie could hear the thud from where he sat.
The pure black stump of a hand collided with Sawyer's face. Sawyer's body went limp and Charlie stood up, alarmed and ready to step in. He hadn't meant for this to happen, for Sawyer to get hurt. He'd thought… something. He didn't even know what. Something dumb and stupid and so typically him. No wonder everyone thought he was useless.
Just as he was ready to break up the fight, the tension reappeared in Sawyer's body. He opened his eyes and smirked as the stickman was about to deliver another punch. His hand moved to catch the stickman's wrist on its descent - he caught it and held it back easily. A smile melted onto Charlie's face and he jumped, unable to hold back his excitement.
Using his strength against his opponent, Sawyer flipped them over to pin him down. He held his wrist tightly, and the figure struggled uselessly beneath him. Sawyer grinned.
He could have ended it there and then, but he chose not to – he chose to draw it out and enjoy himself; he let go of the figure's wrist and launched himself backwards. With Michael's quick-fingered help, he remained weightless and soared through the air. A neat flip later, he'd landed lightly on his feet – his eyes were wide and he looked stunned at what he'd just done, but he still managed to give Charlie a cocky wink.
Charlie looked up and said, "Michael? 'Port a stick in." He spoke quietly so presumably Sawyer couldn't hear him. In any case, Sawyer was distracted – exchanging experienced blows with the stick figure.
The focused look on his face fractured, for just a second, but it was long enough for the stick-man to backhand him hard. It left a flushed pink mark behind, which would fade to a bruise if this was the real world.
Grunting in annoyance, Sawyer's hand slipped into his pocket and pulled out the stick that Michael had just scanned in. With an expert thrust of his hand, disguised as a short rabbit punch, the stick was stabbed right into the stick-man's chest. There was a glimpse of black inky blood, then nothing as Sawyer pressed the right button.
He took one step back, two steps, staring at the blank space in shock. He then looked down at the stick in his hand in wonder, at that the splashes of black ink there. Then, and only then, he started laughing.
Chuckling, really, but it spread down into big belly laughs within seconds. Rolling his eyes, he sat down on the edge of the opposite kerb from where Charlie was standing. Charlie smiled indulgently. He'd been right. He'd just known that Sawyer would remember how to fight, given the chance. That sort of skill wasn't just something you forgot.
And Sawyer had remembered; that meant there was still hope.
Sawyer's laughter had faded. He sat there staring at Charlie, completely serious. "You lost the bet."
"Yeah." Charlie grinned and nodded. "Yeah, I guess I did."
He wasn't feeling quite so smug and happy about his loss of the bet when he trudged through to the bedroom, after spending half an hour doing dishes.
And now he had to sleep in that dumb wicker chair. He couldn't even steal someone else's mattress for the night, seeing as everyone, including Michael for once, was asleep (Ana and Michael shared, occasionally, when they had to).
The room was dark and filled with the sound of sleeping breaths. Deep breath in, deep breath out. The lights were off, but he managed to make his way through without stubbing his toe or falling over anyone, so that was a small achievement. He reached the chair and tugged his t-shirt off.
After that, there was nothing left to do but curl up and try to get comfortable.
'Try' being the exact right word.
He shifted and turned and shifted again, but it wasn't until a while later that he realised he was being watched. He hadn't noticed it at first, because the dark had hidden the fact that Sawyer was awake. But he definitely had his eyes open, and he was definitely staring at him.
Charlie froze, as if Sawyer was a dinosaur and would therefore be unable to see him without movement.
Eventually, this theory turned out to be untrue because Sawyer edged over to one side of the mattress and gestured in the dark at the space. "Come on; stop trying to guilt-trip me," he grumbled.
Trying not to look too happy, Charlie moved over and slipped under the covers. "Why would I stop trying, mate? It worked, so it was obviously a bloody good plan."
Sawyer grunted, moodily. "Just keep to your side of the bed, alright?"
Charlie agreed, but neither of them mentioned it when they woke up spooned together the following morning, Sawyer's bare chest against Charlie's back.