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alliecat8Title: Beginnings, Endings, and Everything In Between
Fandom: Lost
Characters: Jack/Sawyer
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,824
Spoilers: Through the Season 5 Finale
A/N: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eponine119 for the oh-so-prompt beta! :D
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
“He didn’t take his wallet,” Jack murmured, sifting through the debris in the drawer of the hotel nightstand. “Who doesn’t take a wallet?”
“You might want to consult with the police, Mr. Shephard,” the manager suggested, and suddenly Jack didn’t even feel as if he was in the hotel room, so strong was his sense of déjà vu. Instead he was in another room, cold stainless steel shining all around him. His back was against a wall and he was crying. Yes, that was right. If he contacted the police, that’s where he’d find himself. And it wouldn’t end well.
Instead he went to the hotel bar and ordered two fingers of scotch. As he sat staring into its contents he noticed a commotion in the doorway. A man in a wheelchair was trying to cross the threshold, and the doctor in Jack jumped up to assist.
“I’ll have what he’s having,” the man told the bartender, “and set him up with another round.” He offered his hand to Jack. “John Locke,” he said.
“Jack Shephard,” Jack said, lifting his glass to Locke in thanks.
“A fellow American,” the man observed. “What brings you to Australia, Mr. Shephard?”
Jack was quiet, sipping his drink. What business was it of this man’s? On the other hand…. He reached into his wallet and pulled out his dad’s photo. “I’m looking for my father. Have you seen him?”
John Locke studied the picture and shook his head. “I take it he’s lost? What was he doing in Australia?”
Jack sighed and stared deeper into his glass. “I have no idea.”
“Hmmmm.” Locke sipped, then said, “I know why some men…shall we say men of a certain age…come here. Sometimes they come here to go walkabout. You know, explore the bush, test their limits. Maybe that’s why your dad came.”
“The only limits my father wanted to test were the limits of his liver,” Jack blurted without thinking.
“Ah,” said John. “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t go walkabout. There are plenty of bars around here, aren’t there?”
That’s right, Jack thought, of course. If his dad had been drunk, too drunk to remember his wallet, he’d probably set out on foot for the nearest bar. Before he involved the police (and that shiny room, he thought with a shiver), he needed to go on a walkabout of his own. He threw a few bills on the bar – enough for himself and the stranger – and left the hotel at a clip.
He knew the first place was wrong the minute he entered the door. Too bright. Too crowded. Too full of what would, back in the states, be called the yuppie crowd. Still he showed the bartender the photo, and wasn’t surprised when he was met with a blank stare and a shrug. He moved on.
The scenario repeated itself in bar after bar for what seemed like miles. Who’d have guessed that Sydney had such a nightlife on a rainy weekday in September?
And then he was standing across the street from it. He knew this place. He’d been here before…more than once. Terrible things had happened here. Blood, he remembered blood. Gunshots? He didn’t think so. Someone had been vomiting blood. But there’d been a gun involved, too. A gun sticking out of someone’s leather jacket. And the alley back behind, he remembered blood there, too. Blood and death. Yeah, he’d been here so many times, he remembered so many different things, that there was no way he could make himself cross the street and enter the place again.
And yet…he’d never been to Sydney before. His mind was playing tricks on him. Ducking his head against the driving rain, he ran for the doorway.
The interior was so dim that at first he thought the place was empty. Then he caught the shadowy reflection of a television screen on the polished glass of the bar, and behind that a man in an apron, wiping down the counter. For some reason he was afraid to approach the man, afraid to show the photograph. Then he noticed another movement, this man’s dark clothes almost invisible in the bar’s dark lighting. He approached the man and held out the picture. “Seen him?” he asked, and the man snorted. “No,” he said without looking.
At this distance Jack could make out the man’s features a bit better. Long-ish blond hair. Slumped shoulders. Eyes that seemed to be seeing the inside of his own head, not what was right in front of them. He was smoking a cigarette.
“Mind if I borrow your lighter?” Jack asked, and reflexively the man tossed it to him.
Jack held the flame up to his father’s face. “Look carefully,” he said, for something about the man seemed familiar. “I think you might know this man. I’ll make it worth your while if you can tell me where he is.”
The man gave the paper another cursory glance, and then he looked startled. And frightened. “Never seen him before in my life,” he growled. “Now beat it.”
Discouraged, certain that he was being lied to, Jack held the photo out to the bartender. “Has he been around here the last couple of days?” he asked.
The bartender looked, then shot a sidewise glance at the only other patron in the room. “Another McCutcheon?” he inquired, and when the man ignored him the bartender said, “Yeah, he was here, not five minutes ago. That one –“ he indicated the dark-clad man,”—bought him a bottle. Your guy took it with him when he snuck out through the service entrance out back.”
Sparing a quick glare for the stoop-shouldered man on the barstool, Jack followed the direction the barkeep had indicated, and he was back in a heartbeat crying, “Someone call an ambulance. He’s had a heart attack!”
As the man behind the counter reached for the phone, the other man, unbelievably, lit up another cigarette, tossed a wad of bills on the counter, and headed for the door. Jack grabbed his sleeve. “I could use some help outside,” he said.
The man glared at him. “What’s he to you?” he hissed.
“My father,” Jack answered, and he watched the other man’s eyes harden. Then he was gone, into the rainy night.
********
“He didn’t take his wallet,” Jack murmured, sifting through the debris in the drawer of the hotel nightstand. “Who doesn’t take a wallet?”
An hour later he found himself on a streetcorner in Sydney, rain pouring so thickly into his eyes that he almost couldn’t see the neon sign on the outside of the bar. Still, he knew this was the place. What place, he had no idea. But he made his way inside regardless.
On his way in the door he was sideswiped, violently, by a man in black. Something about the man looked familiar, smelled familiar. When Jack uttered a startled, “Hey!” the man’s answering “Fuck off” sounded familiar. Jack reached for the man’s sleeve and, though the other guy was obviously strong he was also obviously inebriated, and he stopped, breathing scotch fumes into Jack’s face. Jack handed him the photo.
“Who’s that yahoo?” the man slurred.
“My father.”
Something in the blond man’s eyes seemed to change. “If I say I seen him, will you let go of my goddamn arm?” he demanded. “I got somewhere to be.”
“If you tell me where he is, I’ll drive you where you need to be. I doubt you’ll get yourself there in your condition.”
The man gave a short, bitter laugh. “You’d better run as far and as fast as you can from where I’m goin’, friend.” He nodded at the slip of paper in Jack’s hand. “He’s in the john. Puked his guts up all over the bar, so if I were you I wouldn’t follow him ‘less you wanna get baptized in McCutcheon.”
Jack was off and running without giving the man a second thought. The inside of the men’s room looked like a particularly gory OR scene – blood and scotch and specks of half-digested debris wall-to-wall. No sign of his father, though. Jack left the cramped room and started to turn toward the area where a bartender was busily wiping down furniture, then noticed a small door marked “Exit” at the far end of the hall. On something that felt like more than a hunch, he pushed his way back out into the wind and rain.
At first he thought that the alley was empty of everything but dumpsters and black doorways as nondescript as the one he was standing in now. Then he noticed a dark lump on the ground, butted up against a stoop. He made his way to it, knowing what he’d find. His father, Christian Shephard, lay slumped there, obviously well on his way to his final nap.
Thready pulse, shallow respiration, and Christian’s face looked green even in the silver-black night. Jack reached for his cell phone, then realized that he had no idea what the emergency number was in Australia. His father’s pulse stuttered under his fingers and he had the strong feeling that if he ran back into the bar for assistance, all that would be left to recover would be a dead body. So instead he began to shout one of Jack’s least-favorite words, “Help! HELP!!!!!”
At first he thought he was wasting his breath, but then a car careened around the corner and the driver flung the passenger-side door open, spewing curses. “Knew I shouldn’t’ve left him the whole damn bottle,” he said and then, when Jack just stared, he yelled, “Get him in the backseat and let’s go. Tell me where we’re goin’ first, hospital, hotel, or morgue.”
“Just….” For once Jack was at a loss for words. His rescuer was the same drunk who’d blindsided him in the bar. “Just get out here and help me, will you? I’m a doctor.”
With a put-upon sigh, the man climbed out of the car. He knelt before Christian and observed, “Like father like son, eh?”
Jack was ripping open the buttons of his father’s shirt, but he spared a glance up to ask, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s Chief of Surgery, right? What you chief of, hoss, rain rescues?”
Jack decided that he really, really didn’t like this man, but he couldn’t be ordering him around by some anonymous pronoun so he said, “What’s your name?”
“Sawyer,” the man answered, “and if you expect me to do mouth-to-mouth….”
“Here.” Jack grabbed Sawyer’s hands and a bolt of heat shot from them, in spite of the rain and the cold and the shock of having a nearly-dead body between them. Sawyer glanced up so quickly that Jack knew he’d felt it too. But there was no time to think about that, so Jack said, “Just put your hands here.” He positioned Sawyer’s hands in the correct spot on Christian’s chest. “I’ll blow into his mouth twice, then you give 30 compressions, a little faster than once a second. We’ll keep it up until he starts to breathe.”
When it got right down to it, Sawyer was surprisingly businesslike. Within minutes they’d loaded Christian into Sawyer’s car and, with Jack driving and Sawyer continuing chest compressions, they found the nearest hospital before it was too late.
********
Jack woke later that night sprawled on a green vinyl couch in the ER waiting room. A physician was shaking his arm, and the news was good. Christian was resting comfortably, and he could receive visitors in the morning.
Across the way Jack saw the long-limbed, black-clad man from the bar slouched in a chair. He came to when he felt Jack looking at him. “Everything all right?” he asked groggily.
“I think it will be,” Jack said, his voice full of relief. “We got to him in time. The treating physician said to go home and rest until visiting hours start in the morning.”
Sawyer stood up, stretching. “Can I drop you somewhere, Doc?” he asked.
“I left my rental back at the bar,” Jack said. “It’s probably been towed by now. I’m staying at the Persephone, though, if you don’t mind letting me off there.”
“No problem,” Sawyer said, and something about his tone of voice made Jack ask, “Have you got someplace to go?”
“Got a flight to catch.” Sawyer shrugged. “Seems the Australian authorities ain’t too keen on their Minister of Agriculture buttin’ me in the chin with his head, so they think I’m not fit for their country anymore. They’re deportin’ me.”
He fished the plane ticket out of his wallet and cursed. “Guess I’m in even deeper shit now,” he said. “I already missed the flight. Think they’re lookin’ for me?”
Jack gave it some thought, then sighed. He could escort the man straight to police headquarters, but that didn’t seem like the proper thanks for his help in saving Christian’s life. Besides, there was something under this Sawyer’s tough exterior, something forlorn, maybe even lonely, that touched a nerve with Jack. Weren’t those the same feelings he’d struggled with for months before he’d embarked on this godforsaken trip?
“I’ve got a room with two queen-sized beds,” he said reluctantly. “We can catch a couple hours sleep, then decide what to do.”
As soon as they crossed the threshold into Jack’s room the look Sawyer gave him was almost too readable, because Jack could feel it in his own eyes. “I know you from somewhere, don’t I?” the other man asked.
“Impossible,” Jack said, stripping down to his boxers to prepare for bed. “It’s just been a long night.”
“No.” The other man’s voice was certain. “I know what those tats feel like.”
Now Jack was getting alarmed, wondering what he might’ve inadvertently gotten himself into. “They feel like skin, Sawyer. Goodnight.”
“Hang on.” Sawyer crossed the room and grabbed Jack’s arm, alarming him even more. “Here.” He grabbed Jack’s right hand and brought it to the ink on his left shoulder. “Close your eyes,” he ordered and to his surprise, Jack did.
Sawyer brushed Jack’s fingers across his skin, softly and somehow firmly at the same time, like a teacher showing a student how to read Braille. At first Jack couldn’t feel a difference, then suddenly he could. The colored parts felt different; some warmer, some cooler. And Sawyer didn’t stop, he kept up his motions until Jack could feel more than just the sensations of warm and cool, until he was almost inebriated by the feel of his own skin.
So much so that he hardly noticed when Sawyer replaced Jack’s fingers with his own lips. “See?” Sawyer murmured. Jack looked down at him and saw that his eyes were closed. “That’s blue,” Sawyer said, correctly, then he moved on. “Red. It even tastes red. And yellow, right there.” He stopped licking and gave a light suck on one of the stars, and Jack shuddered and knew, knew that this had happened before. “Who are you?” he gasped.
Sawyer looked up at him with eyes that were blue and green and bewildered and hungry and said, “And just who the hell are you, Jack Shephard?”
After that there were no more questions, only bodies, only voices filled with sighs and longings and the unremembered cries of past days or past lives, who really cared just as long as they’d still be there in the future, somehow. And when they parted, hours later, there were no goodbyes.
********
“Who doesn’t take a wallet?” Jack asked, opening it to count the money within.
“Your dad,” Sawyer said, heading for the door. “If we hurry we can probably catch him before he realizes he’s left it behind.”
Together, they turn to leave. They don’t question which way to go, though neither has any conscious idea where they’re headed. Though their minds don’t know it, their bodies have been through this before, time and time again. There’s a name for such a thing: muscle memory. It means that our bodies remember, even if our minds cannot.
********
On a beach in the Pacific, two men sit in the sand, debating a subject that’s as old as time itself. One says, “They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It aways ends the same.” The other one – part friend, part foe – smiles to himself and answers: “It only ends once. Anything that happens before that....it's just progress.”
Whatever happens, happens. That is, until one of two things occurs. Either we destroy it all completely, leaving a gaping hole in the fabric of our world. Or, we keep repeating it, one way or another, until we get it right. The end is up to us.
Fandom: Lost
Characters: Jack/Sawyer
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,824
Spoilers: Through the Season 5 Finale
A/N: Thanks to
eponine119 for the oh-so-prompt beta! :DDisclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
“He didn’t take his wallet,” Jack murmured, sifting through the debris in the drawer of the hotel nightstand. “Who doesn’t take a wallet?”
“You might want to consult with the police, Mr. Shephard,” the manager suggested, and suddenly Jack didn’t even feel as if he was in the hotel room, so strong was his sense of déjà vu. Instead he was in another room, cold stainless steel shining all around him. His back was against a wall and he was crying. Yes, that was right. If he contacted the police, that’s where he’d find himself. And it wouldn’t end well.
Instead he went to the hotel bar and ordered two fingers of scotch. As he sat staring into its contents he noticed a commotion in the doorway. A man in a wheelchair was trying to cross the threshold, and the doctor in Jack jumped up to assist.
“I’ll have what he’s having,” the man told the bartender, “and set him up with another round.” He offered his hand to Jack. “John Locke,” he said.
“Jack Shephard,” Jack said, lifting his glass to Locke in thanks.
“A fellow American,” the man observed. “What brings you to Australia, Mr. Shephard?”
Jack was quiet, sipping his drink. What business was it of this man’s? On the other hand…. He reached into his wallet and pulled out his dad’s photo. “I’m looking for my father. Have you seen him?”
John Locke studied the picture and shook his head. “I take it he’s lost? What was he doing in Australia?”
Jack sighed and stared deeper into his glass. “I have no idea.”
“Hmmmm.” Locke sipped, then said, “I know why some men…shall we say men of a certain age…come here. Sometimes they come here to go walkabout. You know, explore the bush, test their limits. Maybe that’s why your dad came.”
“The only limits my father wanted to test were the limits of his liver,” Jack blurted without thinking.
“Ah,” said John. “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t go walkabout. There are plenty of bars around here, aren’t there?”
That’s right, Jack thought, of course. If his dad had been drunk, too drunk to remember his wallet, he’d probably set out on foot for the nearest bar. Before he involved the police (and that shiny room, he thought with a shiver), he needed to go on a walkabout of his own. He threw a few bills on the bar – enough for himself and the stranger – and left the hotel at a clip.
He knew the first place was wrong the minute he entered the door. Too bright. Too crowded. Too full of what would, back in the states, be called the yuppie crowd. Still he showed the bartender the photo, and wasn’t surprised when he was met with a blank stare and a shrug. He moved on.
The scenario repeated itself in bar after bar for what seemed like miles. Who’d have guessed that Sydney had such a nightlife on a rainy weekday in September?
And then he was standing across the street from it. He knew this place. He’d been here before…more than once. Terrible things had happened here. Blood, he remembered blood. Gunshots? He didn’t think so. Someone had been vomiting blood. But there’d been a gun involved, too. A gun sticking out of someone’s leather jacket. And the alley back behind, he remembered blood there, too. Blood and death. Yeah, he’d been here so many times, he remembered so many different things, that there was no way he could make himself cross the street and enter the place again.
And yet…he’d never been to Sydney before. His mind was playing tricks on him. Ducking his head against the driving rain, he ran for the doorway.
The interior was so dim that at first he thought the place was empty. Then he caught the shadowy reflection of a television screen on the polished glass of the bar, and behind that a man in an apron, wiping down the counter. For some reason he was afraid to approach the man, afraid to show the photograph. Then he noticed another movement, this man’s dark clothes almost invisible in the bar’s dark lighting. He approached the man and held out the picture. “Seen him?” he asked, and the man snorted. “No,” he said without looking.
At this distance Jack could make out the man’s features a bit better. Long-ish blond hair. Slumped shoulders. Eyes that seemed to be seeing the inside of his own head, not what was right in front of them. He was smoking a cigarette.
“Mind if I borrow your lighter?” Jack asked, and reflexively the man tossed it to him.
Jack held the flame up to his father’s face. “Look carefully,” he said, for something about the man seemed familiar. “I think you might know this man. I’ll make it worth your while if you can tell me where he is.”
The man gave the paper another cursory glance, and then he looked startled. And frightened. “Never seen him before in my life,” he growled. “Now beat it.”
Discouraged, certain that he was being lied to, Jack held the photo out to the bartender. “Has he been around here the last couple of days?” he asked.
The bartender looked, then shot a sidewise glance at the only other patron in the room. “Another McCutcheon?” he inquired, and when the man ignored him the bartender said, “Yeah, he was here, not five minutes ago. That one –“ he indicated the dark-clad man,”—bought him a bottle. Your guy took it with him when he snuck out through the service entrance out back.”
Sparing a quick glare for the stoop-shouldered man on the barstool, Jack followed the direction the barkeep had indicated, and he was back in a heartbeat crying, “Someone call an ambulance. He’s had a heart attack!”
As the man behind the counter reached for the phone, the other man, unbelievably, lit up another cigarette, tossed a wad of bills on the counter, and headed for the door. Jack grabbed his sleeve. “I could use some help outside,” he said.
The man glared at him. “What’s he to you?” he hissed.
“My father,” Jack answered, and he watched the other man’s eyes harden. Then he was gone, into the rainy night.
********
“He didn’t take his wallet,” Jack murmured, sifting through the debris in the drawer of the hotel nightstand. “Who doesn’t take a wallet?”
An hour later he found himself on a streetcorner in Sydney, rain pouring so thickly into his eyes that he almost couldn’t see the neon sign on the outside of the bar. Still, he knew this was the place. What place, he had no idea. But he made his way inside regardless.
On his way in the door he was sideswiped, violently, by a man in black. Something about the man looked familiar, smelled familiar. When Jack uttered a startled, “Hey!” the man’s answering “Fuck off” sounded familiar. Jack reached for the man’s sleeve and, though the other guy was obviously strong he was also obviously inebriated, and he stopped, breathing scotch fumes into Jack’s face. Jack handed him the photo.
“Who’s that yahoo?” the man slurred.
“My father.”
Something in the blond man’s eyes seemed to change. “If I say I seen him, will you let go of my goddamn arm?” he demanded. “I got somewhere to be.”
“If you tell me where he is, I’ll drive you where you need to be. I doubt you’ll get yourself there in your condition.”
The man gave a short, bitter laugh. “You’d better run as far and as fast as you can from where I’m goin’, friend.” He nodded at the slip of paper in Jack’s hand. “He’s in the john. Puked his guts up all over the bar, so if I were you I wouldn’t follow him ‘less you wanna get baptized in McCutcheon.”
Jack was off and running without giving the man a second thought. The inside of the men’s room looked like a particularly gory OR scene – blood and scotch and specks of half-digested debris wall-to-wall. No sign of his father, though. Jack left the cramped room and started to turn toward the area where a bartender was busily wiping down furniture, then noticed a small door marked “Exit” at the far end of the hall. On something that felt like more than a hunch, he pushed his way back out into the wind and rain.
At first he thought that the alley was empty of everything but dumpsters and black doorways as nondescript as the one he was standing in now. Then he noticed a dark lump on the ground, butted up against a stoop. He made his way to it, knowing what he’d find. His father, Christian Shephard, lay slumped there, obviously well on his way to his final nap.
Thready pulse, shallow respiration, and Christian’s face looked green even in the silver-black night. Jack reached for his cell phone, then realized that he had no idea what the emergency number was in Australia. His father’s pulse stuttered under his fingers and he had the strong feeling that if he ran back into the bar for assistance, all that would be left to recover would be a dead body. So instead he began to shout one of Jack’s least-favorite words, “Help! HELP!!!!!”
At first he thought he was wasting his breath, but then a car careened around the corner and the driver flung the passenger-side door open, spewing curses. “Knew I shouldn’t’ve left him the whole damn bottle,” he said and then, when Jack just stared, he yelled, “Get him in the backseat and let’s go. Tell me where we’re goin’ first, hospital, hotel, or morgue.”
“Just….” For once Jack was at a loss for words. His rescuer was the same drunk who’d blindsided him in the bar. “Just get out here and help me, will you? I’m a doctor.”
With a put-upon sigh, the man climbed out of the car. He knelt before Christian and observed, “Like father like son, eh?”
Jack was ripping open the buttons of his father’s shirt, but he spared a glance up to ask, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s Chief of Surgery, right? What you chief of, hoss, rain rescues?”
Jack decided that he really, really didn’t like this man, but he couldn’t be ordering him around by some anonymous pronoun so he said, “What’s your name?”
“Sawyer,” the man answered, “and if you expect me to do mouth-to-mouth….”
“Here.” Jack grabbed Sawyer’s hands and a bolt of heat shot from them, in spite of the rain and the cold and the shock of having a nearly-dead body between them. Sawyer glanced up so quickly that Jack knew he’d felt it too. But there was no time to think about that, so Jack said, “Just put your hands here.” He positioned Sawyer’s hands in the correct spot on Christian’s chest. “I’ll blow into his mouth twice, then you give 30 compressions, a little faster than once a second. We’ll keep it up until he starts to breathe.”
When it got right down to it, Sawyer was surprisingly businesslike. Within minutes they’d loaded Christian into Sawyer’s car and, with Jack driving and Sawyer continuing chest compressions, they found the nearest hospital before it was too late.
********
Jack woke later that night sprawled on a green vinyl couch in the ER waiting room. A physician was shaking his arm, and the news was good. Christian was resting comfortably, and he could receive visitors in the morning.
Across the way Jack saw the long-limbed, black-clad man from the bar slouched in a chair. He came to when he felt Jack looking at him. “Everything all right?” he asked groggily.
“I think it will be,” Jack said, his voice full of relief. “We got to him in time. The treating physician said to go home and rest until visiting hours start in the morning.”
Sawyer stood up, stretching. “Can I drop you somewhere, Doc?” he asked.
“I left my rental back at the bar,” Jack said. “It’s probably been towed by now. I’m staying at the Persephone, though, if you don’t mind letting me off there.”
“No problem,” Sawyer said, and something about his tone of voice made Jack ask, “Have you got someplace to go?”
“Got a flight to catch.” Sawyer shrugged. “Seems the Australian authorities ain’t too keen on their Minister of Agriculture buttin’ me in the chin with his head, so they think I’m not fit for their country anymore. They’re deportin’ me.”
He fished the plane ticket out of his wallet and cursed. “Guess I’m in even deeper shit now,” he said. “I already missed the flight. Think they’re lookin’ for me?”
Jack gave it some thought, then sighed. He could escort the man straight to police headquarters, but that didn’t seem like the proper thanks for his help in saving Christian’s life. Besides, there was something under this Sawyer’s tough exterior, something forlorn, maybe even lonely, that touched a nerve with Jack. Weren’t those the same feelings he’d struggled with for months before he’d embarked on this godforsaken trip?
“I’ve got a room with two queen-sized beds,” he said reluctantly. “We can catch a couple hours sleep, then decide what to do.”
As soon as they crossed the threshold into Jack’s room the look Sawyer gave him was almost too readable, because Jack could feel it in his own eyes. “I know you from somewhere, don’t I?” the other man asked.
“Impossible,” Jack said, stripping down to his boxers to prepare for bed. “It’s just been a long night.”
“No.” The other man’s voice was certain. “I know what those tats feel like.”
Now Jack was getting alarmed, wondering what he might’ve inadvertently gotten himself into. “They feel like skin, Sawyer. Goodnight.”
“Hang on.” Sawyer crossed the room and grabbed Jack’s arm, alarming him even more. “Here.” He grabbed Jack’s right hand and brought it to the ink on his left shoulder. “Close your eyes,” he ordered and to his surprise, Jack did.
Sawyer brushed Jack’s fingers across his skin, softly and somehow firmly at the same time, like a teacher showing a student how to read Braille. At first Jack couldn’t feel a difference, then suddenly he could. The colored parts felt different; some warmer, some cooler. And Sawyer didn’t stop, he kept up his motions until Jack could feel more than just the sensations of warm and cool, until he was almost inebriated by the feel of his own skin.
So much so that he hardly noticed when Sawyer replaced Jack’s fingers with his own lips. “See?” Sawyer murmured. Jack looked down at him and saw that his eyes were closed. “That’s blue,” Sawyer said, correctly, then he moved on. “Red. It even tastes red. And yellow, right there.” He stopped licking and gave a light suck on one of the stars, and Jack shuddered and knew, knew that this had happened before. “Who are you?” he gasped.
Sawyer looked up at him with eyes that were blue and green and bewildered and hungry and said, “And just who the hell are you, Jack Shephard?”
After that there were no more questions, only bodies, only voices filled with sighs and longings and the unremembered cries of past days or past lives, who really cared just as long as they’d still be there in the future, somehow. And when they parted, hours later, there were no goodbyes.
********
“Who doesn’t take a wallet?” Jack asked, opening it to count the money within.
“Your dad,” Sawyer said, heading for the door. “If we hurry we can probably catch him before he realizes he’s left it behind.”
Together, they turn to leave. They don’t question which way to go, though neither has any conscious idea where they’re headed. Though their minds don’t know it, their bodies have been through this before, time and time again. There’s a name for such a thing: muscle memory. It means that our bodies remember, even if our minds cannot.
********
On a beach in the Pacific, two men sit in the sand, debating a subject that’s as old as time itself. One says, “They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It aways ends the same.” The other one – part friend, part foe – smiles to himself and answers: “It only ends once. Anything that happens before that....it's just progress.”
Whatever happens, happens. That is, until one of two things occurs. Either we destroy it all completely, leaving a gaping hole in the fabric of our world. Or, we keep repeating it, one way or another, until we get it right. The end is up to us.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-15 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-15 04:02 pm (UTC)Thanks again for beta-ing! ♥
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Date: 2009-05-15 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-15 04:05 pm (UTC)Thank you so much for reading, darlin'! ♥
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Date: 2009-05-17 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-19 03:33 pm (UTC)I just felt like doing that. Isn't it a beautiful day?
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Date: 2009-05-15 07:28 pm (UTC)I like the progression of the differences each time, and wonder just how many more your lovely mind can come up with :) Loved it!!!
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Date: 2009-05-15 11:07 pm (UTC)I like the theme so much I might try it on different characters just to see how it works. What if Boone had never called Shannon useless? Would she have latched onto Sayid and died, or would there have been a different outcome? Lost has given us a billion what-if scenarios...we could play with 'em all summer!
Thank you so much for reading and feedbacking! *MUAH!*
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Date: 2009-05-16 11:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-16 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-16 08:22 pm (UTC)Scenario.... hmmm....
What if Jack didn't operate on Ben.
What if Sawyer's parents never died.
What if Driveshaft's career really did take off.
What if Jin refused to do what Mr Paik told him.
Or if you want things a little simpler.
What if Shannon didn't speak French when they listened to the recording.
What if Jack refused to let Sayid torture Sawyer for the inhalers.
What if Locke still needed the wheelchair.
Um... I shall go have a longer think if you need more inspiration.
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Date: 2009-05-19 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-19 08:00 pm (UTC)Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Date: 2009-05-16 12:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-16 05:12 pm (UTC)I love you for being brave enough to read all of my crazy ideas. You have no idea how much your feedback means to me!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-17 11:13 pm (UTC)Or maybe you're just working it out until it's perfect!
:D
Sorry to butt in, couldn't resist!
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Date: 2009-05-19 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-17 11:10 pm (UTC)Had to wait to read this. It was worth it. Only a little sad, and very beautiful.
As an aside, can I have Sawyer lick my tattoo some time?
Lovely.
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Date: 2009-05-19 03:39 pm (UTC)I'm so glad you liked the fic! Thank you for reading! ♥
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Date: 2009-05-18 02:03 am (UTC)A small detail, but I like how you referred to the man as "part friend, part foe". I think he'll probably end up being all foe on the show, but your nuanced take on it is more interesting.
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Date: 2009-05-19 03:42 pm (UTC)I agree with you that Jacob and his Nemesis will probably end up being outright foes, but it was interesting how amicable their first interaction was, despite what they were saying. It was almost like they enjoyed the rivalry. Kinda like Jack and Sawyer....
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Date: 2009-05-20 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-22 02:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 10:22 am (UTC)And the tats-licking scene was sexy.
Lovely fic.
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Date: 2009-05-22 02:50 am (UTC)Thank you so much for reading!!! ♥
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Date: 2009-05-27 04:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 04:30 pm (UTC)I have to believe that if the things that happened to them in their pasts really did happen, then *some* part of them would retain those memories, somehow. It just seems like a wrong kind of emptiness for them to lose their memories of each other altogether. I'm so glad you enjoyed the exploration of that...and Sawyer's "exploration" of Jack's tattoos, too. ;) Thank you so much for reading and for the great feedback! :)
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Date: 2009-06-01 08:57 pm (UTC)And yeah, the tat-licking and stuff was kinda hot. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 09:38 pm (UTC)Thank you so much for the lovely feedback! *smooches* and ♥!