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alliecat8Title: The Broken and the Holy, Chapter 4
Characters: Jack/Sawyer
Rating: Hard R
Word Count: 1,566
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
A/N: This chapter is for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
slybrunette, who wanted fic inspired by music, and haldoor, who wanted J/S PWP and music, and also inthekeyofd, who wanted J/S and black (I went for a dark, black mood, and black props). Heh, I cheated and wrote plot in the first and third parts, and teh PWP is in the middle…does that count? ;) The song that goes with the fic is Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” – Jeff Buckley’s cover, of course! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AratTMGrHaQ
The chapters are still stand-alone, until I get the O6 back to the island.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Thank you as always to the world's best beta,eponine119
********
Chapter 4
”Your faith was strong, but you needed proof…”
Jack closed the door of his condominium and stood on the cold stone floor of his foyer. He held the mail in his hand but he didn’t look at it; his mind was on another communication, one he’d never expected but had been waiting for ever since the island. He’d felt it in his bones.
They were still alive. (“Of course they’re still alive, Jack,” said a voice in his head, “isn’t that what all this has been for? To keep everyone alive?” )
They were still alive. He’d seen the island disappear with his own eyes (No you didn’t, said the voice. Things don’t just disappear. They have to go somewhere.) and still he’d lied all this time to protect them anyway. Then four days ago proof had appeared at his door: a man calling himself Jeremy Bentham.
“Very bad things have happened,” the man who was really John Locke told him. “You have to go back.”
Hallelujah.
Go back. Locke had given him the order, but, in true John Locke manner, had not given him any instructions for carrying it out. The weight of this new burden was almost too much for Jack to bear. He dropped the mail as his knees buckled and he almost fell, catching himself at the last instant on the edge of his marble hall table. The sound of his near fall echoed, as everything did in this stone cavern he’d carved out for himself.
A new echo to add to the old, the sound of Jack falling. (Almost falling, said the voice, You haven’t fallen yet and you won’t if you hold on. Hold on to me.)
Jack rubbed his eyes, the bridge of his nose, his forehead as if he could physically push the voice away, but he knew he couldn’t. It had always been there, ever since the island. It was just louder now, and so much more insistent.
Jack lurched through the cavernous space of his living room to the cabinet where he kept the liquor. He’d drown the voices, he thought, both the familiar and hated (loved) voice in his head and the echoes of John Locke’s words. It was Sunday night and he’d just arrived home from a long and fruitless trip; he was jetlagged and heartsore and weary of being here; here where he was helpless. He had somewhere to go, but he didn’t know the way.
There was nothing Jack hated more than being lost.
The answer wasn’t in the bottom of the bottle Jack held, but he clutched it as if it was; as if it was his lifeline. His tether to that other world. He wondered, as it burned his throat and began to seep into his tired brain, if he was really trying to drown the voices, or if he was just trying to drown himself. Because he’d rather drown than fail.
*
I heard there was a secret chord, that David played and it pleased the Lord…but you don’t really care for music, do ya? Well it goes like this the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift…the baffled king composing hallelujah.
Jack awoke in his bed, still dressed, and he tightened his fist. The stone dug into his palm and as always, he wondered how it got there, this piece of rock that he didn’t recognize. (You do, insisted the voice.) Sometimes it was black, sometimes it was white, and when he clutched it he felt like the answer was there; he could hear it in his head like something that was once lost, a secret something that had only just found its way home and was rejoicing. But as he woke he uncurled his fist and the stone dropped to the floor, stone against stone and there was no answer to be found there in that cold emptiness.
It was still dark outside and he stripped off his clothes, wanting to go back to sleep. Craving oblivion, but he’d forgotten that without the booze and the pills, oblivion was the very last thing that sleep brought him. Sleep was his only surefire route back to the island. But never the island of the present; no, always the one of the past….
Well there was a time when you let me know, what’s really going on below…but now you never show that to me, do you. But remember when I moved in you, and the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was hallelujah.
It was always violence, between the two of them. They met in violence, Jack pulling Sawyer off Sayid, Sawyer coiled tight and hot in Jack’s arms, and now here they were again, raging.
“This what you wanted Jack?” Sawyer panted in his ear, and the heat of his breath made Jack writhe below him. “This what you wanted all along?” He gave another thrust and Jack keened, long and low. “Say yes, Jack. Tell me what you want.”
Jack didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything, because he had no idea what he wanted. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted this, Sawyer inside of him, making him howl like an animal in the darkness, making him wild. Somewhere in his sex-hazed mind he could hear the echo of his own words, “We’re not savages yet,” and in this moment it seemed he’d lied, that now he was honest, now his wordless cries spoke the truth, they were savages.
And they liked it.
“Tell me what you want,” Sawyer demanded, upping his pace, the force of his strokes getting wild and sweet and too much to bear. He was only tormenting Jack with his words – his body gave and gave and gave because Sawyer was just as hot and hard and ready as Jack was, Sawyer was wild, Sawyer was a savage too, just like him. And in his head there was a harsh disharmony of sound, words over words over words, “I want to go home, I want to kill you, I want to stay where you are, I want to fuck you….”
“I want this,” he said as he thrust his body back against Sawyer’s and they tightened, tightened, both of them, men of stone, until it was too tight and too sweet and too hard and they both cried out, loose and wild and free.
Then it was over, and Jack couldn’t even bring himself to do what he’d come here to do, check Sawyer’s arm, look after the man, this man who drew him into his feral aura and made him wild. No, Jack only rubbed his own shoulder, the pain suddenly unbearable, and he left without a word.
Well maybe there’s a god above, but all I ever learned from love is how to shoot somebody who outdrew you. It’s not a cry that you hear at night, it’s not somebody who’s seen the light,
it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.
Hallelujah, hallelujah….
*
Now Jack lived alone in a stone condominium where, night after night, he woke up thinking he was in the caves, living in the caves like an animal, wild and free. But there was no freedom here, not in the world of surgeries and traffic laws and cages, though Jack embraced this world (you think), because this was order, this was safety. This was sanity.
But so was the wild voice in his head.
He didn’t know which one was real, which one to cling to in the dark, order or chaos but after Locke’s visit all Jack could hear was that voice; all he could see was its face. He couldn’t listen to it, he wouldn’t, because there lay madness (sanity). He drowned it in booze and pills and loud music and when that wasn’t enough he sold his condominium because the voice was too loud there, it echoed.
Baby I’ve been here before, I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor; I used to live alone before I knew you. I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch, but love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.
hallelujah…
He was going back. It was the only way. “That’s what I want,” he said in his small, forlorn room of maps and empty bottles, and something sighed, something settled, something was at peace. And in his hand, a stone, and in his head, no voice, only music. A sequence of notes, one chord to break the silence. But not to break him.
The path was there in front of him, the path back or path forward; that didn’t matter. The path was there, somewhere, and he would find it.
Unbroken still, he waits.
the broken and the holy hallelujah
End
Characters: Jack/Sawyer
Rating: Hard R
Word Count: 1,566
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
A/N: This chapter is for
slybrunette, who wanted fic inspired by music, and haldoor, who wanted J/S PWP and music, and also inthekeyofd, who wanted J/S and black (I went for a dark, black mood, and black props). Heh, I cheated and wrote plot in the first and third parts, and teh PWP is in the middle…does that count? ;) The song that goes with the fic is Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” – Jeff Buckley’s cover, of course! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AratTMGrHaQ The chapters are still stand-alone, until I get the O6 back to the island.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Thank you as always to the world's best beta,
eponine119********
Chapter 4
”Your faith was strong, but you needed proof…”
Jack closed the door of his condominium and stood on the cold stone floor of his foyer. He held the mail in his hand but he didn’t look at it; his mind was on another communication, one he’d never expected but had been waiting for ever since the island. He’d felt it in his bones.
They were still alive. (“Of course they’re still alive, Jack,” said a voice in his head, “isn’t that what all this has been for? To keep everyone alive?” )
They were still alive. He’d seen the island disappear with his own eyes (No you didn’t, said the voice. Things don’t just disappear. They have to go somewhere.) and still he’d lied all this time to protect them anyway. Then four days ago proof had appeared at his door: a man calling himself Jeremy Bentham.
“Very bad things have happened,” the man who was really John Locke told him. “You have to go back.”
Hallelujah.
Go back. Locke had given him the order, but, in true John Locke manner, had not given him any instructions for carrying it out. The weight of this new burden was almost too much for Jack to bear. He dropped the mail as his knees buckled and he almost fell, catching himself at the last instant on the edge of his marble hall table. The sound of his near fall echoed, as everything did in this stone cavern he’d carved out for himself.
A new echo to add to the old, the sound of Jack falling. (Almost falling, said the voice, You haven’t fallen yet and you won’t if you hold on. Hold on to me.)
Jack rubbed his eyes, the bridge of his nose, his forehead as if he could physically push the voice away, but he knew he couldn’t. It had always been there, ever since the island. It was just louder now, and so much more insistent.
Jack lurched through the cavernous space of his living room to the cabinet where he kept the liquor. He’d drown the voices, he thought, both the familiar and hated (loved) voice in his head and the echoes of John Locke’s words. It was Sunday night and he’d just arrived home from a long and fruitless trip; he was jetlagged and heartsore and weary of being here; here where he was helpless. He had somewhere to go, but he didn’t know the way.
There was nothing Jack hated more than being lost.
The answer wasn’t in the bottom of the bottle Jack held, but he clutched it as if it was; as if it was his lifeline. His tether to that other world. He wondered, as it burned his throat and began to seep into his tired brain, if he was really trying to drown the voices, or if he was just trying to drown himself. Because he’d rather drown than fail.
*
I heard there was a secret chord, that David played and it pleased the Lord…but you don’t really care for music, do ya? Well it goes like this the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift…the baffled king composing hallelujah.
Jack awoke in his bed, still dressed, and he tightened his fist. The stone dug into his palm and as always, he wondered how it got there, this piece of rock that he didn’t recognize. (You do, insisted the voice.) Sometimes it was black, sometimes it was white, and when he clutched it he felt like the answer was there; he could hear it in his head like something that was once lost, a secret something that had only just found its way home and was rejoicing. But as he woke he uncurled his fist and the stone dropped to the floor, stone against stone and there was no answer to be found there in that cold emptiness.
It was still dark outside and he stripped off his clothes, wanting to go back to sleep. Craving oblivion, but he’d forgotten that without the booze and the pills, oblivion was the very last thing that sleep brought him. Sleep was his only surefire route back to the island. But never the island of the present; no, always the one of the past….
Well there was a time when you let me know, what’s really going on below…but now you never show that to me, do you. But remember when I moved in you, and the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was hallelujah.
It was always violence, between the two of them. They met in violence, Jack pulling Sawyer off Sayid, Sawyer coiled tight and hot in Jack’s arms, and now here they were again, raging.
“This what you wanted Jack?” Sawyer panted in his ear, and the heat of his breath made Jack writhe below him. “This what you wanted all along?” He gave another thrust and Jack keened, long and low. “Say yes, Jack. Tell me what you want.”
Jack didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything, because he had no idea what he wanted. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted this, Sawyer inside of him, making him howl like an animal in the darkness, making him wild. Somewhere in his sex-hazed mind he could hear the echo of his own words, “We’re not savages yet,” and in this moment it seemed he’d lied, that now he was honest, now his wordless cries spoke the truth, they were savages.
And they liked it.
“Tell me what you want,” Sawyer demanded, upping his pace, the force of his strokes getting wild and sweet and too much to bear. He was only tormenting Jack with his words – his body gave and gave and gave because Sawyer was just as hot and hard and ready as Jack was, Sawyer was wild, Sawyer was a savage too, just like him. And in his head there was a harsh disharmony of sound, words over words over words, “I want to go home, I want to kill you, I want to stay where you are, I want to fuck you….”
“I want this,” he said as he thrust his body back against Sawyer’s and they tightened, tightened, both of them, men of stone, until it was too tight and too sweet and too hard and they both cried out, loose and wild and free.
Then it was over, and Jack couldn’t even bring himself to do what he’d come here to do, check Sawyer’s arm, look after the man, this man who drew him into his feral aura and made him wild. No, Jack only rubbed his own shoulder, the pain suddenly unbearable, and he left without a word.
Well maybe there’s a god above, but all I ever learned from love is how to shoot somebody who outdrew you. It’s not a cry that you hear at night, it’s not somebody who’s seen the light,
it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.
Hallelujah, hallelujah….
*
Now Jack lived alone in a stone condominium where, night after night, he woke up thinking he was in the caves, living in the caves like an animal, wild and free. But there was no freedom here, not in the world of surgeries and traffic laws and cages, though Jack embraced this world (you think), because this was order, this was safety. This was sanity.
But so was the wild voice in his head.
He didn’t know which one was real, which one to cling to in the dark, order or chaos but after Locke’s visit all Jack could hear was that voice; all he could see was its face. He couldn’t listen to it, he wouldn’t, because there lay madness (sanity). He drowned it in booze and pills and loud music and when that wasn’t enough he sold his condominium because the voice was too loud there, it echoed.
Baby I’ve been here before, I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor; I used to live alone before I knew you. I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch, but love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.
hallelujah…
He was going back. It was the only way. “That’s what I want,” he said in his small, forlorn room of maps and empty bottles, and something sighed, something settled, something was at peace. And in his hand, a stone, and in his head, no voice, only music. A sequence of notes, one chord to break the silence. But not to break him.
The path was there in front of him, the path back or path forward; that didn’t matter. The path was there, somewhere, and he would find it.
Unbroken still, he waits.
the broken and the holy hallelujah
End
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-18 03:18 pm (UTC)He has to go back, even if it's not for Sawyer (which in my mind it is..thank you) but for his own sanity, he belongs there, the outside world is slowly killing him..and maybe they weren't animals on that island or even turning into them, but he is now.
LOVE IT and THANK YOU! Most excellent use of the prompt too!!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-18 03:48 pm (UTC)maybe they weren't animals on that island or even turning into them, but he is now.
is so perceptive -- even though he pulled the trigger on Locke, and all the other uncivilized things he did on the island, he was still more civilized there than he is back in the world now.
I'm just so glad you liked this, it made my morning. Thank you, and ♥ ♥ ♥
no subject
Date: 2008-08-18 03:29 pm (UTC)And in his hand, a stone, and in his head, no voice, only music. A sequence of notes, one chord to break the silence. But not to break him.
That seems to encapsulate everything you're doing in this section. Great job!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-18 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-18 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-18 07:54 pm (UTC)I discovered while writing this that my muse is incapable of PWP -- some people just have a PWP-shaped hole in their head, kinda like my kid 1 has an algebra-shaped hole in his head and it doesn't matter how many times he takes the class, he'll never, ever get it. That's me and PWP. I'm babbling, sorry. ;) I should just say thank you for everything, especially for using the word "eroticism," because that's exactly what I was aiming for and I wasn't sure I made it. *SMOOOOOOCH!*
no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 02:53 am (UTC)♥
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 01:47 am (UTC)I loved this! Thank you so much for writing it!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-21 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-21 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-22 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-23 03:57 pm (UTC)