alliecat8 | Spectrum

Title: Spectrum
Characters: Jack/Sawyer
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Through "Man of Science, Man of Faith"
Warning: If you're very, very sensitive, there is a character death, but it's not the focus of the fic and it's not Jack or Sawyer. Or even Kate. ;)
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams

A/N 1: This is very belated birthday fic for

uberaeryn. One of her

lost_hohoho requests tickled my fancy, so I stole it and this is the result. She wanted J/S future fic with Jack running away and Sawyer chasing him. With smut. ;) Sorry my timing's so bad. ♥

A/N 2: Many, many thanks to

eponine119 and

hkath for their excellent beta-ing, and to

halfdutch and

arabella_hope and

themoononastick for technical advice about who-lives-where, and to ALL OF YOU for all of the hand-holding and support you've given me lately, and for your patience. This one was tricky, on several levels.

A/N 3: In this A/U, season 2 and Exodus 2 never happened. The raft sailed, they found the shipping lanes and got rescued, Walt is fine, Ana Lucia never existed. Back on the island, however, they did open the hatch.

A/N 4: If the setting seems familiar, you probably recognize it from Spooks

A/N 5: Every boy who grows up in East Tennessee knows how to fish. It’s like, a law or something. ;)

The beeping wakes him from a dream saturated with verdant green and azure blue and eyes that are a blend of both. Eyes that see far too much. A dream of golden sand and golden skin, and blood that runs red and hot. A dream so vivid, it hurts.

Push the button, Jack thinks groggily, forgetting time for an instant, remembering only the past. He gropes blindly and finds his pager instead, and the world comes back into focus. A real world, not a dream world. The colors begin to fade.

Not bothering to look at the clock – why would it matter if he’s had six hours of sleep or only two? – he untangles his legs from the sheets and gropes for his shoes. He rarely goes home anymore; the hospital is his world, and he sleeps in the on-call room. If it can be called sleeping. Hallucinating is probably more accurate, sucked beneath the surface of reality into an ocean of too-sharp sensations, too-intense emotions, too-haunting memories. Pulled back to a place that no longer exists. A place that he pretends, when he is awake, never did.

He makes his way through colorless halls, past colorless people. The nurse’s pale face tells him that it’s already over, he’s too late. “Did he wake up?” She shakes her head. No closure, then. No chance to say goodbye.

“You don’t just throw people away.”

He’d heard the pain in Kate’s voice when she’d said those words to him, the last time they spoke on the phone. The day before her sentencing.

“Kate, I’m on duty. I’d get away if I could, but –“

“No, you wouldn’t. You won’t return our calls. You only took this one because you know that tomorrow I’ll be gone. Charlie and Claire have been here every day since the trial started, and they told me that you won’t see them or Hurley or Shannon or Locke, even though they all live nearby. The rest of us keep up with each other, Jack. Even Sawyer.”

Jack has had to erase more messages from Sawyer than from any of the rest of them. Yet the calls continue, still, after almost a year.

“I’m sorry,” he’d told Kate, and she’d said, in a lost, resigned voice, “Yeah. Me too.”

Now Kate is gone, locked behind cold gray walls in her own colorless world. No goodbyes, no closure.

Jack looks into the pallid face of the dead man. “You don’t just throw people away.” Kate’s voice echoes in his head, and that must be what makes him reach for his cell phone. He dials the number he’s seen on his caller ID so many times he’s memorized it.

“John Locke died,” he blurts out when Sawyer answers. Not hello, not how have you been. Nothing but the bare, stark truth.

There’s silence, then Sawyer’s guarded answer. “Sorry to hear that, Doc.”

“He was unconscious when they brought him in. He had a spinal cord injury, so they called me in to consult. The injury was….” Jack searches for words, finds none. There is no way to explain what Jack found when he operated on John Locke. “He had a stroke on the operating table. He never regained consciousness.”

There’s conflict in the silence. What to say, after all this time? Finally, Sawyer says, “Damn strange coincidence, John Locke turnin’ up in your hospital, on your table.”

Jack’s jaw tightens and he knows he’s about to start grinding his teeth, a habit he thought he’d left back on the island. “You know what he’d say about that.”

Sawyer snorts softly. “Everything happens for a reason.”

Again, a long tense silence. Jack is suddenly, painfully aware of how impulsive this phone call was, how awkward. Sawyer sighs. “You okay?”

“Probably not.” Jack rubs the bridge of his nose, takes a few agitated steps toward the window, gazes at gray skies, gray buildings. “I called you, didn’t I?”

Sawyer’s voice softens with something that sounds almost like sympathy. “Must’ve been strange, goin’ straight back to your old life after all those weeks on the island, after livin’ the way we did. I tried it. Couldn’t do it.”

Kate had told Jack that Sawyer had been in L.A. for a while, but had finally gone back to where he’d grown up, somewhere in the Smoky Mountains. “It was all right. We weren’t gone long.”

“Gone a fuckin’ lifetime.” There’s a slight hesitation, and then Sawyer clears his throat and says abruptly, “Jack, you ever go fishing? In the real world, I mean?”

Jack doesn’t know whether to laugh at the strangeness of the question or simply end the call. “You still eat fish?”

“Nah. I just catch ‘em and throw ‘em back. Helps me relax. Helps me think.”

“Oh.” Oddly enough, there’s something appealing about the idea. Fishing for fun, not for survival. Having the luxury and the freedom to throw the fish back. “No, can’t say that I’ve tried that.”

“Get your ass up here, Doc.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” There’s a touch of the old Sawyer in his tone. Menacing. He isn’t kidding. “Get on a plane, fly to Knoxville, I’ll meet you at the airport and bring you out here. You need to go fishin’.”

“That’s ridiculous, Sawyer, I –“

“You called me, Jack. You called me, after all this time, and that tells me that you need something. And knowin’ you, you don’t have any goddamn idea what it is you need. So get up here, help me catch some fish, and maybe you’ll figure it out.”

Jack lowers the phone from his ear, stares at it. Looks at Locke’s gray corpse, looks out the window at the monochrome view. Thinks of blue and green and gold.

Somehow, he finds himself on a plane to Tennessee.

***

He’d thought that the Smoky Mountains would be gray. Gray like the Rockies. Gray like smoke. As the plane descends toward the airport in the foothills, he sees instead that they’re flame-colored. Crimson and copper and gold. Lower altitude, he thinks. The Rockies rise above the treeline but the Smokies don’t, so they’re covered with forests right to their peaks. And it’s the first week of November. Fall in all its glory.

Jack half-expects there to be no one at the airport to meet him, but Sawyer’s there, looking remarkably unchanged from his days on the island. Still rough, still unkempt, still a little bit dangerous. He doesn’t smile, just lifts his chin in silent acknowledgement, and Jack says, “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here.”

“Fishing,” Sawyer says, and now he does smile. “We’ll figure the rest of it out later.”

***

The house that Sawyer takes him to sits on the side of a mountain, all alone at the end of a winding gravel road. Jack doesn’t know what he’d expected – a log cabin, maybe – but not this. The house is small and white, its sagging front porch giving it a crooked look. The screens on the porch are torn and the floorboards are rotting, broken in places, but there is evidence of attempts at renovation. Roofing materials are stacked against the bare concrete foundation. Fresh lumber is scattered around the yard. “It ain’t the Four Seasons,” Sawyer shrugs, “but it’s home. Hope a city boy like you can handle roughin’ it for a few days.”

Jack gives him a look. “Oceanic forget to settle up with you?”

“Owed some people.” Sawyer leads Jack into a dim living room that smells of must and cigarette smoke. “Put the rest away so I wouldn’t have to go back to…my old job. This place belonged to my grandparents. I lived here from the time I was seven, held onto it after they died ‘cause I figured nobody’d want to buy it. It seemed like the right place to come back to, after the island. Want a beer?”

“Yeah.” He follows Sawyer into a tiny, tidy kitchen. He has a flash of memory of Sawyer’s messy tent, and he’s amused and a little bit touched to realize that Sawyer must have cleaned house for Jack’s visit. “You don’t have to go out of your way to play host for me, Sawyer. Don’t put yourself out. I can sleep on the couch if you don’t have a spare bed.”

He says it pointedly, and Sawyer knows it. He gives Jack a hard glance. One that says, “We have to talk about it sometime.” But all he does is hand Jack a beer.

***

“You know what today is?” Sawyer squints, casts his line out into the water. It’s an unseasonably warm day. Indian summer, Sawyer had called it. They’d waded out into the river, found a large sun-warmed rock with a wide, flat top. Jack is leaning back on both elbows, feet dangling in the chilly stream, not even trying to fish. Instead he’s watching Sawyer.

“It’s Sunday.” He tilts his head back, takes in the expanse of mountain slopes, foliage glowing with reds and oranges and yellows, the sky above so deeply blue it makes him ache. “Why?”

“Anniversary.” Sawyer leans forward, starts to reel in his line. He’s hooked something, a trout, Jack thinks, and watches Sawyer’s hands as he extricates the wriggling fish and tosses it back into the water. “November 6. Day I got rescued.”

Jack closes his eyes, shutting out the colors. “The day you became a hero.” He tilts his face up toward the sun, feels the warmth on his eyelids, and the slight chill in the breeze that brushes his cheeks.

“Took them eight days to find you. Eight fuckin’ days. And all that time the reporters were houndin’ us, wantin’ to know what happened, and we didn’t know. I kept thinkin’, what if they can’t find you, even now that they know where to look, even with all of their planes and fancy equipment. What if I made it back, and you didn’t?”

“It turned out all right.” Jack doesn’t open his eyes. “We’ve put it behind us.”

“No.” He doesn’t have to see the scowl on Sawyer’s face to know it’s there. He can hear it in his voice. “You ran away.”

Jack sighs, irritated. “I didn’t run anywhere. I went home, Sawyer. I went back to the same house and the same job and the same life I left. How do you interpret that as running away?”

Sawyer is silent for so long that Jack finally opens his eyes, just a little. Sunshine glinting on golden hair. Tense muscles under a heavy plaid flannel shirt. Water and trees and sky. Too much color. He closes them again.

“You’re doin’ it right now.” Jack can feel Sawyer looking at him. He knows he’s being a coward. But if he looks back at Sawyer, if he opens himself up like that, they’re going to talk about it. He isn’t ready to talk about it. And yet, why else would he be here, if not for closure?

“Jack,” Sawyer says sharply, and behind Jack’s closed eyelids there’s a kaleidoscope of memories. Sawyer on his knees in the firelight, bare skin glowing bronze in the flickering red and gold light; Sawyer on his back in the jungle, spread wide and welcoming on the carpet of green foliage; Sawyer in the ocean, his body wrapped around Jack’s, and both of them surrounded by blue water and endless blue sky. His fists clench against the rock, but there’s no fighting it. He feels his body start to react.

There’s a clatter as Sawyer drops the fishing rod onto the rock, and then he’s sliding backward, stretching out on his side next to Jack. “I watched you,” he says. “The first couple of months, back in L.A. When you wouldn’t return my calls I went to your house, waited for you to come home. I went there three times, ready to make you talk to me, whether you wanted to or not. Every damn time, you came home with a different woman. Like you had somethin’ to prove.”

Jack doesn’t answer, doesn’t open his eyes.

“How’d that work out for you, Jack?”

Now he does open them, because he needs to glare at Sawyer. “It worked out fine, thanks. And don’t try to tell me you’ve gone without a woman for a whole year. How’d it work out for you?”

He shouldn’t have looked, because if he hadn’t he wouldn’t have seen the wounded look on Sawyer’s face. But there’s no escaping the rueful note in his voice when he says, “Yeah, I’ve done without. I know what I want. I don’t have anything to prove.”

He shoves his fingers through his hair, pushes it out of his eyes. Then he sighs. “Missed you.” His hand drops to Jack’s thigh and travels up, over the rising bulge in his jeans, and up, under his shirt to rest on the bare skin of Jack’s stomach. “You missed me, too. At least part of you is willin’ to admit it.”

It gets to Jack, this unguarded candor. That was something that had grown on the island, when every day that they were together Sawyer’s defenses had crumbled a little bit more. Animosity had given way to respect. Wounded pride had given way to trust. On the island, it felt like a gift. Here, it terrifies him.

He forces himself to look Sawyer in the eye, knowing he’s going to hurt him again and hating himself for it. “We’ve got to put the island behind us, Sawyer. Nothing that happened there makes sense here. We need to let it go, pick up the pieces of our old lives, move on.”

Sawyer’s eyes narrow. “What’s so fuckin’ special about our old lives?”

“That’s who we are—“

“That’s who we were.” Sawyer’s fingers clench painfully against Jack’s stomach. “My old life, I only wanted two things. Money, and revenge. Thought if I got those two things, I’d finally be worth somethin’. Couldn’t have either one, on the island. Got you instead, and I figured out that I didn’t need any of the rest of it. Long as I was good enough for you, I was good enough.”

“Don’t—“ Jack says, but Sawyer’s eyes burn into his.

“I’m still good enough for you. What’s it gonna take to make you see it?”

“Jesus.” Jack drops his head back, stares at the sky. “Is that what you think? That I don’t think you’re good enough for me?”

“Big city doctor, ladies’ man—“

“Shut the fuck up, Sawyer—“

“Model citizen, perfect son—“

“Before I knock your ass—“

“Everybody’s hero—“

“Off this rock—“

“And I just wouldn’t fit in—“

“EXACTLY.”

They both freeze, staring at each other. Finally, Jack says quietly, “Where would you fit in? I ask myself that, every time the phone rings and I know it’s you. Where would you fit into my life? The answer is, you wouldn’t.”

He waits for that look, that flash of pain in Sawyer’s eyes that always goes through him like a knife, the look that he’s caused too many times. This time it doesn’t come. Instead, Sawyer pins him with a challenging stare and his voice takes on an edge that’s almost a sneer. “I’m gonna ask you again, Doc, what’s so fuckin’ special about your life?”

Jack blinks. He’d always thought that Sawyer looked up to him, that Sawyer admired the kind of life he lived. He’d attributed Sawyer’s occasional snide jabs at his culture to jealousy…but the contempt he hears in Sawyer’s tone now sounds genuine. Disconcerted, he fumbles for words. “It’s…sane. It’s normal. I…ah, I have a job that I’m good at. I have a home, and responsibilities….”

Sawyer’s not having any of it. “Have you got anybody?”

“I have friends,” Jack says, hating the defensive way it comes out. Wondering, as he says the words, if they’re even true.

“I asked around while I was in L.A. Found out you’d already lost everybody you ever cared about before that plane went down.” Jack winces at the harsh reality of Sawyer’s words, and he goes on, “Then you found me. We found each other, and even on the island, even with all hell breakin’ loose around us, when we were together we were happy.” His hand starts to move, making slow, sensuous circles across Jack’s skin. “You happy in L.A., Jack?”

Sawyer’s hand is cool and dry, but it burns as it slides up, over Jack’s stomach to his chest. A slow, familiar liquid pull begins deep in his belly and he sighs, releasing breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “Sawyer, I—“

“I’m guessin’ the answer’s no. Bet it never even dawned on you to ask yourself the question.” He shifts his body, slides one leg over Jack’s. Jack can feel him, already hard against his thigh, and he struggles to sit up. The hand on his chest halts its slow, easy glide and Sawyer pushes, holding him down. He pushes so hard that Jack’s elbows give way and he collapses, flat on his back on the rock. Sawyer seizes the advantage and rolls on top of him, pinning him. “You ain’t goin’ anywhere, Doc.”

“Get off.” It comes out as a strangled gasp rather than the command he means it to be, and Sawyer grins. “That’s just what I had in mind.” The sight of dimples and hungry eyes both infuriates Jack and stokes the fires that have begun to burn in several parts of his body, and he surges up, trying to dislodge the solid weight holding him down. It’s a mistake, because that brings his crotch into closer contact with Sawyer’s, and the feel of hard cock against hard cock only fuels the flames. “This isn’t why I came here, Sawyer—“

“Yeah it is. You just haven’t figured that out yet.” Sawyer lowers his head and his hair falls forward, brushing Jack’s cheek just before Sawyer’s mouth finds his. Jack closes his eyes and groans, first in protest and then, as his body recognizes the familiar taste of Sawyer, as the rough stubble on Sawyer’s chin rasps against his own, as his eyes close and his breath mingles with Sawyer’s and memories of blue and green and gold blaze behind his eyelids, surrender. Too long, he thinks, too damn long, and he opens his mouth and lets Sawyer’s tongue inside. Kissing Sawyer isn’t like kissing anyone else; kissing Sawyer is like fucking, all thrust and heat and greed, and Jack sucks hard on him and wonders, in the part of his mind that can still form thoughts, how he could have fooled himself into believing he’d had enough of this. He’ll never get enough of Sawyer.

He wants the kiss to go on forever, long enough to erase lost time and deep enough to fill the void between them, but the rock is hard against his back and Sawyer is heavy against his front, and he can’t breathe. He reaches up, threads his fingers through Sawyer’s hair and pulls his head back, tries to catch his breath but the sight of Sawyer, eyes gone hazy with need, mouth swollen from the force of their kiss, tangled blond hair spilling over his fingers, makes him lose it all over again. “Let me up.”

Sawyer’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “You gonna try to run away again?”

Jack arches up, thrusting against Sawyer and letting him feel exactly what that kiss accomplished. “Does it feel like I’m in any condition to run?”

Sawyer gives him a long hard look that’s full of promise and threat, and mutters, “You’d better not” as he pushes himself up to kneel between Jack’s knees. His hands go to his belt buckle and Jack sees that they’re shaking. Too much need, after too long apart. They’re both quivering with it. No time to think it through, no time to worry about doing this with any sort of finesse. Jack discovers that he doesn’t want to get up, after all, as Sawyer jerks his zipper down, then frees Jack as well. With a groan of pure lust and pent-up longing, he fists them both.

So much for catching his breath. Jack utters a muffled curse and arches up into Sawyer’s rough palm. He remembers the island and how smooth Sawyer’s skin had been at first and how it had roughened over time, as hard work had worn away the veneer of civilization that, in the beginning, had cloaked them both. He revels in the feel of it now, still rough, still uncivilized. Sawyer knows how to touch him, how much pressure he likes, how to set the pace. But Jack wraps his hand around Sawyer’s anyway, just to feel his skin.

“Did you forget about this?” Sawyer’s voice is hoarse, strained, and he tightens his grip, making Jack gasp and buck up hard against him. “Did you forget how fuckin’ good this feels?”

Jack doesn’t answer; he can’t. The pressure of Sawyer’s hand and feel of his cock, hard and heavy and straining against Jack’s, makes speech far too difficult.

“Did you think about this? Back there in your nice, normal life, did you ever think about me?”

Jack rolls his head from side to side on the rock, trying to deny it, trying to remember the words but what he finally groans is, “Every goddamn night, Sawyer. Every goddamn time I closed my eyes.”

Sawyer leans forward, bracing himself against the rock with his free arm. His hand never slows but his eyes are on Jack’s mouth and Jack knows he’s closing in for a kiss. Jack reaches up between them and slides his hand around the back of Sawyer’s neck, fisting a handful of hair, holding him back. “No,” he says, finally remembering the word. “My eyes aren’t closed now. Stay where I can see you.”

Sawyer’s eyes lock with Jack’s and he nods. “Look at me, then. Look at us. Look at what we do to each other.”

Jack doesn’t want to tear his eyes away from Sawyer’s face, from the look of fierce need and pleasure that he sees there, but after a long moment he lets his gaze travel down Sawyer’s body, over taut muscle and smooth golden skin. Down to their joined hands, to their cocks slick and wet and straining between them. He watches them through a bright haze of need, sparks shooting across his vision as the rhythm changes and their thrusts become harder, more erratic. He’s so, so close and then Sawyer’s thumb slides up, over both swollen tips and his hand tightens convulsively and his cock throbs against Jack’s once, twice, and Sawyer lets out a long, ragged groan and he comes hard, spurt after spurt arcing up between them, coating both of their hands. Now Sawyer’s rough palm is hot and slick and it’s too good, too intense and Jack can’t watch anymore; he’s blinded by a riot of colors that burst before his eyes, red and blue and green and gold.

After a long, bright moment Sawyer’s grip relaxes, his hand slows but doesn’t still as he eases them both out of it, coaxes them through every final shudder, every last sweet throb. When the aftershocks settle and they’ve begun to catch their breath, he zips up both pairs of jeans and slides off of Jack. He fumbles in his shirt pocket, pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lights up with shaky hands. In an aftermath voice that’s low and rough and thick as molasses, he says, “This is the only bad habit I took up again after I got back.” He taps out another cigarette, offers it to Jack. Jack shakes his head, and Sawyer goes on, “Is that what you think I am, Jack? A bad habit?”

An addiction, Jack thinks. A drug he craves. One he can’t quit, no matter how hard he tries. He leans his head back against the rock and closes his eyes.

“You’re lookin’ at it all wrong. You’ve gone a year tryin’ to quit me cold turkey. Tellin’ yourself that I don’t belong in your world and tryin’ to prove to yourself that you do. It’s not me that’s your bad habit. It’s your whole life.”

Jack sighs, watches the blackness behind his lids. “It’s my life, Sawyer. It’s all I know. I wouldn’t know how to change it if I could.”

There’s a long, long silence. All Jack can hear is the sound of water rushing over rocks, the occasional birdcall, and the faint sound of Sawyer’s breathing. It’s so peaceful he starts to drift, thinking vaguely that here, in this world, he’s not afraid to dream. Just as he’s about to let go, Sawyer says quietly, “We have hospitals in Tennessee, you know.”

Jack doesn’t move, doesn’t let on that he’s awake, doesn’t let on that he’s heard. But thoughts begin to swirl in his head. Thoughts of emptiness, of loneliness, of a colorless life. Thoughts of the island, of loss and hardship and fear, yet all of it shot through with passion and vivid, vivid color. Thoughts of the man beside him, of the broken, bitter man he’d been and the fearless, determined one he’s become. A changed man. The island changed him. Jack changed him. And if Sawyer can change….

So can he.

He opens his eyes to a whole new world.

link to Chapter 2

Current Mood: refreshed

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From:

hkath.livejournal.com

You already know I love this, but I need to say it again, just because. It's beautiful, with just enough hope and sexy as hell besides, and I love it.

From:

Thru with accepting limits 'cause someone says they're so

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