Title: Another Life.
Pairing: Sawyer/Desmond.
Disclaimer: Don't own Lost.
Rating: PG-13.
Word Count: Approx. 3000.
Notes: A little dark, which I actually didn’t mean, but hopefully not too depressing. For![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
toestastegood, who asked for "Sawyer/Desmond, post-rescue" in the challenge ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
lost_hohoho. I really hope you enjoy this. :) And thank you for betaing, anthean! Merry Christmas, all!
Summary: Drinking and waiting for something from another life that he’ll never get again.
Sitting in a bar on a quickly dimming evening, alone. A song playing out of a speaker in the corner seems as if it’s depicting the same scene, but he doesn’t know the words to it, nor would appreciate the irony if he did. Every once in a while an airplane engine roars overhead, and Sawyer gives up counting them after the third glass.
The most annoying part about the bar is that it’s too quiet and too miserable, where people stew in their own loneliness and block everything else around out. Sawyer doesn’t do lonely. He feels out of place. Still, he doesn’t leave.
He’s never frequented this bar before, and doesn’t think he will again. Something about it is comfortable, though, despite the vibrations in the air when a plane is just about to touch down. Unconsciously he’s tapping a steady rhythm on the bar counter with a finger, and not for the first time he wonders why he’s here and not at a louder club with busty women in too-short red dresses smiling coyly at him. And he definitely wonders why he’s in LA instead of Tennessee. He comes to the same conclusion, denies it, dismisses it, and finishes his glass.
It’s been two years, and maybe it’s been to the day and maybe it hasn’t. For some reason, it’s a lot more difficult to keep track of dates. It seems too unimportant to be bothered with. Can’t bring himself to care.
Door opens to admit one more individual, doubtlessly one dwelling in their own personal hell rather than ready for night of spontaneous drinking. Sawyer doesn’t look up until the breeze ruffles his jacket, chill working itself into the fabric.
At first he wonders if he’s just seeing things because he wants to, but that doesn’t make sense because he such as hell wouldn’t want to see the island’s crazy Scot instead of some long-legged beauty. And it is, unmistakably, him. Shorter hair, yes, and a brown jacket that looks taken care of, not disheveled, but there’s the same distinct nose and almost cautious way that he holds himself that Sawyer picked up on after a long time. Same eyes, as Desmond scans the bar before entering further, almost as if he knows what he’ll find. Sawyer doesn’t move, even when Desmond’s eyes land, finally, on him.
A frown of uncertainty and then recognition, and he stares at Sawyer and Sawyer stares back at him. He’s as surprised as Sawyer is, but Sawyer’s face is blank—a smirk always there, playing across his mouth, but it doesn’t mean anything. Nothing to interpret.
A flicker of a smile. “Well, hello there, brother.” His accented voice ghosts through the air to fill Sawyer’s ears, and the next plane that rumbles overhead sounds like the roll of waves.
“Howdy, Robinson Crusoe,” Sawyer says lazily back. “Fancy seein’ you here.” He turns away to the bar. Sawyer doesn’t dismiss him, though—he knows that Desmond’s here for a reason, and old, familiar faces will keep them both here longer.
Sure enough, someone slides onto the stool next to him, and without glancing over Sawyer waves the barkeeper over. “Leave the bottle and get another glass,” he says, and the barkeeper obliges.
“You don’t… thank you,” comes the voice to the side of him, sounding surprised. Sawyer ignores it.
“Going somewhere?” Sawyer asks. He rolls his glass in his fingers, and it gleams as light shines into it and reflects back golden.
“Not for a few hours.” Trickle of liquid into a shot glass. His words are tense, shoulders rigid, and he sighs after swallowing the liquid.
Sawyer doesn’t bother to hide his smile.
---------------
“She got married,” says Desmond, after he’s filled his glass for the fourth time. Sawyer used to only count the drinks of people he conned, but old habits die hard.
“Fuck her,” Sawyer says easily back, in between sips. It doesn’t take a genius to know what Desmond’s talking about, even without specifics, and knows from the look on Desmond’s face that it’s the best response.
“She moved out here with him.” He says it almost in a way of explanation, of why he’s here. Sawyer doesn’t care.
“Visiting?” he asks carelessly.
Desmond drops his head a little too quickly, studying the bar surface. “She said she’d wait for me,” he says at last, haltingly.
Sawyer, unsympathetic, snorts. True love lasts forever remains a bullshit term, and he’s glad he’s always borne that in mind in the past… or, at least, remembered it in the end. “You believed her?”
Desmond is silent.
Sawyer can’t tell if he did believe her or he didn’t, and now he’s seen for himself that the smallest hope has been stolen away. He leans back. “I don’t know how long you were legally declared dead, but I had it set for a couple of years. Good amount of time for someone to move on. How many were you on that island before me, captain?”
Desmond is tapping the counter with a rapid-fire tension, distorting the conman’s even pace until Sawyer stops. Sawyer wants to tell him to knock it off, goddamn it, but the thought keeps slipping out of his mind. “Three years.”
He whistles, but it’s a shorter timeframe than he’d thought. Must’ve always been crazy, Sawyer thinks, watching Desmond now, open and unabashed. “Have a gravestone?”
Desmond starts, and gives him a funny, sideways glance. “Yes.”
Sawyer drains his glass. “You see it?”
“No.”
“Mmm. Bet it’s gray granite with a cross on top.” Finishes the glass as another plane goes by overhead. “Don’t think I got one.” The rows of green and brown behind the counter clack together, and it’s funny, somehow, that Sawyer hears not the sound of thick glass but tiny vodka bottles clinking together behind canvas and under sand.
“Maybe,” Desmond says delicately, “the chances of you getting one in the future would increase if you spent time with the people you left behind, brother.”
Sawyer looks up sharply, hazel-green eyes boring into softer brown ones.
From what he remembers, Desmond’s never been a man of many words, except when he was drinking and usually not even then. But when he says something, he knows what he’s doing, and doing that, it’s not appreciated, not wanted in the slightest. Sawyer scowls.
“Thank you, Confucius,” he gets out through gritted teeth, grabbing the bottle again and pouring himself another glass. The liquor doesn’t taste like anything anymore. “I forgot that little party trick you have going. Didn’t go away after you left the island of magic?”
He says it to burn, and knows it does when Desmond doesn’t say anything for a moment. “No magic there,” he says heavily, not looking at him. “All science.” Shot taken again. Sawyer passes the bottle over. “And I don’t need that… party trick,” he says shortly, “to know that.”
Sawyer rolls his eyes. “Hell, I don’t know where people live. Nobody’s my next-door neighbor, and I’ve never gotten a Christmas card.”
Desmond holds his gaze for a moment before dropping it again, shrugging. “With enough money and determination, you can find anyone.” He says it like he’s saying it to someone else.
“I don’t have any money,” Sawyer says grumpily. He doesn’t want to think about that, either. “And maybe I have better things to do then play catch-up with the Doc, Abdul, Calamity Jane, a VH1 reject, and—” Other nicknames eluding him through the alcohol-induced fog, he waved a hand. “—and an alcoholic Scotsman.”
Desmond laughs at him. “If that’s not what you want, then I want to know just what you’re doing, sitting in a bar outside the airport where, five years ago, you were supposed to be. You’re not sentimental, but you’re still waiting for something.” He pauses, apparently thinking over his own words carefully. “Although, you did it and luck of the draw, here I am. Meeting in another life.”
Sawyer stares at him for a long while before smiling. “Well, touché,” he says, turning away and emptying the bottle into his glass without looking at Desmond again. “You’re awfully verbose for someone who’s taken…” Sawyer trails off. Shit, he couldn’t remember how many shots Desmond had had. Less than him? More than him? “However many shots you’ve taken,” Sawyer declares finally. “Let’s go. We can find a bar with women who go for your accent and you can forget about your lady lost.”
The corners of Desmond’s mouth twitch, but he shakes his head.
“C’mon.” The fuse is ignited, and Sawyer smiles, a slow grin that creeps along his face. Infectious is what it is, addictive. It’s like old times, now. Except for the fact that a pretty lady with money now is reduced to a familiar Scotsman and his company. “For old time’s sake,” he wheedles. Two old times, for Sawyer.
“I have a plane to catch.”
“Take the next one,” says Sawyer instantly. This is a fit of spontaneity, he hardly knows what his own mouth is saying and he hardly knows him.
Desmond regards him as carefully as bleary eyes can. Sawyer just waits.
Dimples are a dangerous weapon, and Desmond abruptly sighs, defeated.
“I took a cab. If you have a car…”
Sawyer smiles again. (Caught, and with a flash of teeth another lady loses her money. God, he misses it.)
---------------
Sawyer discovers that Desmond is a backseat driver early on. So, they’re both probably a little more inebriated then Sawyer had originally thought. It’s evening by now. There’s a good amount of people on the road, but hell, it’s LA. People drive like assholes in LA all the time.
Desmond’s voice is a keening whine in his ear. “C’mon, pull over, brother. I don’t feel like killing anyone today.”
“Pff.” Sawyer doesn’t feel like making an argument, and instead swats him away, his hand moving from the wheel resulting in the car jerking several feet into the left lane. “Oops. Stop distracting me or it’s you that’s going to be killed.”
The window’s open, blasting cold wind into the rented car. Sawyer can’t stand being enclosed in cars without at least a window open, now. He was lucky he even survived the plane trip back to civilization, when he continuously got the urge to jump out of his seat and shatter a window, just for openness, just to breathe. Everyone on that island who had been on that plane felt that. The only person who hadn’t was Desmond.
Maybe it was because he’d spent three years of his life underground. Or he wasn’t afraid of planes like they all were.
“You’re the first person I’ve seen from that island in two years,” Sawyer says in the silence, turning the wheel to take a hard right equally abruptly. Desmond only nods.
Sawyer knows what he wants Desmond to say. He wants him to say that he misses the island, that it was like losing a home, that they had it good there. Sawyer believes all of those things, somehow. He’d never had a real, stable home before that, after all, if a tarp and a few suitcases full of someone else’s stuff was considered a home. Hell, even those people there were a decent bunch compared to many he was acquainted with from his old line of work. He hadn’t wanted to leave that island, because it was so much better than the alternative, civilization.
But he also knows Desmond will never say it, because Desmond wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t a survivor from Oceanic Flight 815. He was trapped and imprisoned by responsibility, only driven on by the thought that someday he would see his fiancée or whoever his girl had been again. He’d been there longer, but he doesn’t know the island like Sawyer did. Does.
Somehow, it takes a person there for Sawyer to realize that he’s lonely.
---------------
A few twenty-dollar bills and a good amount of time later, Sawyer’s erratic driving takes them back to his motel. Desmond is humming absently as he leans on the side of the car and Sawyer fumbles with the key in the car lock before finally muttering “Screw it” and stomping off with a waver in his step. Sawyer’s first rule for himself is to not take the conned into where he’s living at the time, but he supposes that his hotel room doesn’t really count as home.
Not that Desmond is really even a conned man. He wishes he’d stop making these connections between Desmond and the expensive women. They don’t really have anything in common.
He pushes the door open with his shoulder where a blank, cheap room waits for him. There’s a suitcase near the window and the bed hasn’t been made by room service. What the hell.
Sawyer turns back and has to put out a hand to lean against the wall in a way that is definitely not because the floor is dipping under his feet. “I’m not going to chauffeur you around,” he says, mangling the pronunciation of the last few words. “You might as well—”
The end of his sentence (“rent a room here”) never comes. He’s not sure how it happens, or who initiated what, but suddenly he’s closer to Desmond then he had been before and they collide. There’s a pressure on his chest and his back hits with the wall. Desmond’s mouth is on his, and it’s like he’s giving and taking away from Sawyer all at once.
The women (there will always, always be women) range from being okay to being able to drive him damn near crazy with their overbright eyes and red lips and butterfly-light kisses. But kissing Desmond is different; it’s firm and solid and definite. He’s lost in it, somehow it’s more sensory than anything Sawyer’s felt in years. He can almost taste the salted ocean air with the undercurrents of alcohol and hear the rustle of jungle branches. Another moment and he’ll be back on the beach with his feet in the sand and sun beating down in the way it never could here. Kissing Desmond is like going home.
Even when Desmond breaks away, the weight on his chest remains, and Sawyer breathes him in deeply. It’s not just a kiss, it’s every dizzying, single thing that connects them together. Skin brushing skin is reminiscent of the cool of jungle shade despite every nerve of his body feeling electrified, each breath a puff of campfire smoke that he can only vaguely smell from his shack down the beach. He could care less if this is all because Desmond is hurt and lonely and drunk and far from home, because goddamn it so is he and that’s why he leans down again to take Desmond’s mouth with his, powerfully, possessively, and he doesn’t want to let this go.
And it goes where it always goes from there, jackets shrugged off shoulders and fumbling hands tugging at shirts and teeth nipping at ears, neck, lips and his mind is delirious because he feels it, feels it somewhere in his bones that he’s close close almost there almost
one more step
He wakes up in the late morning hung over, and it’s only after he’s stumbled to the bathroom to take a long, messy drink directly from the sink tap that he remembers what happened and leans on the counter for a moment.
Desmond’s gone, and there’s no trace that shows he’s ever been there are all. He finds himself irritated that he hadn’t left first, like he always does, but knows that he didn’t leave not because of how much alcohol was in his system, but because he hadn’t wanted to. He ignores the thought, and leaves to find something to eat.
It takes him until that afternoon, when he’s checking that his seat on Oceanic Flight 1684 is still reserved (he wants to reserve a whole damn row just for breathing space, but he doesn’t have the money for that anymore), to see the card. It’s a little business card from the motel, completely blank but for the scrunched handwriting that fills it.
He brings it closer to his nose (his glasses, the same ones the Doc had originally picked out for him, are back in Tennessee) and is met with spiky capital letters. On the top is a series of numbers, and he looks for the usual pattern. None there, but the parentheses and dashes can only mean one thing, and he moves on to the words. The first line is unreadable, black blotches that look like Desmond’s made a dozen failed starts, each word crossed out a little more violently than the last. And then, finally, the draft that he had apparently settled on:
There was a 9:35 AM flight, and hopefully they’ll let me on.
I know Scotland’s far away to call collect, but I have a few more numbers back home and if you ever decide that you do want to play catch up, I can give you a start. If you don’t, then I’ll see you in another life, brother, and I hope yours goes well until we meet again.
Desmond
When he finishes he flips it over, but there’s nothing there. Sawyer’s not surprised.
After a moment of staring at the card cupped in his palm, then sticks it in his wallet. An eternal perhaps. As he does it he remembers the grit of sand beneath fingernails and in book creases, and maybe it’ll be a call that’s better late than never or sooner rather than later. Maybe. Wallet to back pocket and Sawyer circles the room, looking for wadded up clothes and things, things that are lying around that he’s forgotten to pack.
Maybe.
He’s on a plane to Tennessee tomorrow, but he’s not going home.
Pairing: Sawyer/Desmond.
Disclaimer: Don't own Lost.
Rating: PG-13.
Word Count: Approx. 3000.
Notes: A little dark, which I actually didn’t mean, but hopefully not too depressing. For
toestastegood, who asked for "Sawyer/Desmond, post-rescue" in the challenge lost_hohoho. I really hope you enjoy this. :) And thank you for betaing, anthean! Merry Christmas, all! Summary: Drinking and waiting for something from another life that he’ll never get again.
Sitting in a bar on a quickly dimming evening, alone. A song playing out of a speaker in the corner seems as if it’s depicting the same scene, but he doesn’t know the words to it, nor would appreciate the irony if he did. Every once in a while an airplane engine roars overhead, and Sawyer gives up counting them after the third glass.
The most annoying part about the bar is that it’s too quiet and too miserable, where people stew in their own loneliness and block everything else around out. Sawyer doesn’t do lonely. He feels out of place. Still, he doesn’t leave.
He’s never frequented this bar before, and doesn’t think he will again. Something about it is comfortable, though, despite the vibrations in the air when a plane is just about to touch down. Unconsciously he’s tapping a steady rhythm on the bar counter with a finger, and not for the first time he wonders why he’s here and not at a louder club with busty women in too-short red dresses smiling coyly at him. And he definitely wonders why he’s in LA instead of Tennessee. He comes to the same conclusion, denies it, dismisses it, and finishes his glass.
It’s been two years, and maybe it’s been to the day and maybe it hasn’t. For some reason, it’s a lot more difficult to keep track of dates. It seems too unimportant to be bothered with. Can’t bring himself to care.
Door opens to admit one more individual, doubtlessly one dwelling in their own personal hell rather than ready for night of spontaneous drinking. Sawyer doesn’t look up until the breeze ruffles his jacket, chill working itself into the fabric.
At first he wonders if he’s just seeing things because he wants to, but that doesn’t make sense because he such as hell wouldn’t want to see the island’s crazy Scot instead of some long-legged beauty. And it is, unmistakably, him. Shorter hair, yes, and a brown jacket that looks taken care of, not disheveled, but there’s the same distinct nose and almost cautious way that he holds himself that Sawyer picked up on after a long time. Same eyes, as Desmond scans the bar before entering further, almost as if he knows what he’ll find. Sawyer doesn’t move, even when Desmond’s eyes land, finally, on him.
A frown of uncertainty and then recognition, and he stares at Sawyer and Sawyer stares back at him. He’s as surprised as Sawyer is, but Sawyer’s face is blank—a smirk always there, playing across his mouth, but it doesn’t mean anything. Nothing to interpret.
A flicker of a smile. “Well, hello there, brother.” His accented voice ghosts through the air to fill Sawyer’s ears, and the next plane that rumbles overhead sounds like the roll of waves.
“Howdy, Robinson Crusoe,” Sawyer says lazily back. “Fancy seein’ you here.” He turns away to the bar. Sawyer doesn’t dismiss him, though—he knows that Desmond’s here for a reason, and old, familiar faces will keep them both here longer.
Sure enough, someone slides onto the stool next to him, and without glancing over Sawyer waves the barkeeper over. “Leave the bottle and get another glass,” he says, and the barkeeper obliges.
“You don’t… thank you,” comes the voice to the side of him, sounding surprised. Sawyer ignores it.
“Going somewhere?” Sawyer asks. He rolls his glass in his fingers, and it gleams as light shines into it and reflects back golden.
“Not for a few hours.” Trickle of liquid into a shot glass. His words are tense, shoulders rigid, and he sighs after swallowing the liquid.
Sawyer doesn’t bother to hide his smile.
“She got married,” says Desmond, after he’s filled his glass for the fourth time. Sawyer used to only count the drinks of people he conned, but old habits die hard.
“Fuck her,” Sawyer says easily back, in between sips. It doesn’t take a genius to know what Desmond’s talking about, even without specifics, and knows from the look on Desmond’s face that it’s the best response.
“She moved out here with him.” He says it almost in a way of explanation, of why he’s here. Sawyer doesn’t care.
“Visiting?” he asks carelessly.
Desmond drops his head a little too quickly, studying the bar surface. “She said she’d wait for me,” he says at last, haltingly.
Sawyer, unsympathetic, snorts. True love lasts forever remains a bullshit term, and he’s glad he’s always borne that in mind in the past… or, at least, remembered it in the end. “You believed her?”
Desmond is silent.
Sawyer can’t tell if he did believe her or he didn’t, and now he’s seen for himself that the smallest hope has been stolen away. He leans back. “I don’t know how long you were legally declared dead, but I had it set for a couple of years. Good amount of time for someone to move on. How many were you on that island before me, captain?”
Desmond is tapping the counter with a rapid-fire tension, distorting the conman’s even pace until Sawyer stops. Sawyer wants to tell him to knock it off, goddamn it, but the thought keeps slipping out of his mind. “Three years.”
He whistles, but it’s a shorter timeframe than he’d thought. Must’ve always been crazy, Sawyer thinks, watching Desmond now, open and unabashed. “Have a gravestone?”
Desmond starts, and gives him a funny, sideways glance. “Yes.”
Sawyer drains his glass. “You see it?”
“No.”
“Mmm. Bet it’s gray granite with a cross on top.” Finishes the glass as another plane goes by overhead. “Don’t think I got one.” The rows of green and brown behind the counter clack together, and it’s funny, somehow, that Sawyer hears not the sound of thick glass but tiny vodka bottles clinking together behind canvas and under sand.
“Maybe,” Desmond says delicately, “the chances of you getting one in the future would increase if you spent time with the people you left behind, brother.”
Sawyer looks up sharply, hazel-green eyes boring into softer brown ones.
From what he remembers, Desmond’s never been a man of many words, except when he was drinking and usually not even then. But when he says something, he knows what he’s doing, and doing that, it’s not appreciated, not wanted in the slightest. Sawyer scowls.
“Thank you, Confucius,” he gets out through gritted teeth, grabbing the bottle again and pouring himself another glass. The liquor doesn’t taste like anything anymore. “I forgot that little party trick you have going. Didn’t go away after you left the island of magic?”
He says it to burn, and knows it does when Desmond doesn’t say anything for a moment. “No magic there,” he says heavily, not looking at him. “All science.” Shot taken again. Sawyer passes the bottle over. “And I don’t need that… party trick,” he says shortly, “to know that.”
Sawyer rolls his eyes. “Hell, I don’t know where people live. Nobody’s my next-door neighbor, and I’ve never gotten a Christmas card.”
Desmond holds his gaze for a moment before dropping it again, shrugging. “With enough money and determination, you can find anyone.” He says it like he’s saying it to someone else.
“I don’t have any money,” Sawyer says grumpily. He doesn’t want to think about that, either. “And maybe I have better things to do then play catch-up with the Doc, Abdul, Calamity Jane, a VH1 reject, and—” Other nicknames eluding him through the alcohol-induced fog, he waved a hand. “—and an alcoholic Scotsman.”
Desmond laughs at him. “If that’s not what you want, then I want to know just what you’re doing, sitting in a bar outside the airport where, five years ago, you were supposed to be. You’re not sentimental, but you’re still waiting for something.” He pauses, apparently thinking over his own words carefully. “Although, you did it and luck of the draw, here I am. Meeting in another life.”
Sawyer stares at him for a long while before smiling. “Well, touché,” he says, turning away and emptying the bottle into his glass without looking at Desmond again. “You’re awfully verbose for someone who’s taken…” Sawyer trails off. Shit, he couldn’t remember how many shots Desmond had had. Less than him? More than him? “However many shots you’ve taken,” Sawyer declares finally. “Let’s go. We can find a bar with women who go for your accent and you can forget about your lady lost.”
The corners of Desmond’s mouth twitch, but he shakes his head.
“C’mon.” The fuse is ignited, and Sawyer smiles, a slow grin that creeps along his face. Infectious is what it is, addictive. It’s like old times, now. Except for the fact that a pretty lady with money now is reduced to a familiar Scotsman and his company. “For old time’s sake,” he wheedles. Two old times, for Sawyer.
“I have a plane to catch.”
“Take the next one,” says Sawyer instantly. This is a fit of spontaneity, he hardly knows what his own mouth is saying and he hardly knows him.
Desmond regards him as carefully as bleary eyes can. Sawyer just waits.
Dimples are a dangerous weapon, and Desmond abruptly sighs, defeated.
“I took a cab. If you have a car…”
Sawyer smiles again. (Caught, and with a flash of teeth another lady loses her money. God, he misses it.)
Sawyer discovers that Desmond is a backseat driver early on. So, they’re both probably a little more inebriated then Sawyer had originally thought. It’s evening by now. There’s a good amount of people on the road, but hell, it’s LA. People drive like assholes in LA all the time.
Desmond’s voice is a keening whine in his ear. “C’mon, pull over, brother. I don’t feel like killing anyone today.”
“Pff.” Sawyer doesn’t feel like making an argument, and instead swats him away, his hand moving from the wheel resulting in the car jerking several feet into the left lane. “Oops. Stop distracting me or it’s you that’s going to be killed.”
The window’s open, blasting cold wind into the rented car. Sawyer can’t stand being enclosed in cars without at least a window open, now. He was lucky he even survived the plane trip back to civilization, when he continuously got the urge to jump out of his seat and shatter a window, just for openness, just to breathe. Everyone on that island who had been on that plane felt that. The only person who hadn’t was Desmond.
Maybe it was because he’d spent three years of his life underground. Or he wasn’t afraid of planes like they all were.
“You’re the first person I’ve seen from that island in two years,” Sawyer says in the silence, turning the wheel to take a hard right equally abruptly. Desmond only nods.
Sawyer knows what he wants Desmond to say. He wants him to say that he misses the island, that it was like losing a home, that they had it good there. Sawyer believes all of those things, somehow. He’d never had a real, stable home before that, after all, if a tarp and a few suitcases full of someone else’s stuff was considered a home. Hell, even those people there were a decent bunch compared to many he was acquainted with from his old line of work. He hadn’t wanted to leave that island, because it was so much better than the alternative, civilization.
But he also knows Desmond will never say it, because Desmond wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t a survivor from Oceanic Flight 815. He was trapped and imprisoned by responsibility, only driven on by the thought that someday he would see his fiancée or whoever his girl had been again. He’d been there longer, but he doesn’t know the island like Sawyer did. Does.
Somehow, it takes a person there for Sawyer to realize that he’s lonely.
A few twenty-dollar bills and a good amount of time later, Sawyer’s erratic driving takes them back to his motel. Desmond is humming absently as he leans on the side of the car and Sawyer fumbles with the key in the car lock before finally muttering “Screw it” and stomping off with a waver in his step. Sawyer’s first rule for himself is to not take the conned into where he’s living at the time, but he supposes that his hotel room doesn’t really count as home.
Not that Desmond is really even a conned man. He wishes he’d stop making these connections between Desmond and the expensive women. They don’t really have anything in common.
He pushes the door open with his shoulder where a blank, cheap room waits for him. There’s a suitcase near the window and the bed hasn’t been made by room service. What the hell.
Sawyer turns back and has to put out a hand to lean against the wall in a way that is definitely not because the floor is dipping under his feet. “I’m not going to chauffeur you around,” he says, mangling the pronunciation of the last few words. “You might as well—”
The end of his sentence (“rent a room here”) never comes. He’s not sure how it happens, or who initiated what, but suddenly he’s closer to Desmond then he had been before and they collide. There’s a pressure on his chest and his back hits with the wall. Desmond’s mouth is on his, and it’s like he’s giving and taking away from Sawyer all at once.
The women (there will always, always be women) range from being okay to being able to drive him damn near crazy with their overbright eyes and red lips and butterfly-light kisses. But kissing Desmond is different; it’s firm and solid and definite. He’s lost in it, somehow it’s more sensory than anything Sawyer’s felt in years. He can almost taste the salted ocean air with the undercurrents of alcohol and hear the rustle of jungle branches. Another moment and he’ll be back on the beach with his feet in the sand and sun beating down in the way it never could here. Kissing Desmond is like going home.
Even when Desmond breaks away, the weight on his chest remains, and Sawyer breathes him in deeply. It’s not just a kiss, it’s every dizzying, single thing that connects them together. Skin brushing skin is reminiscent of the cool of jungle shade despite every nerve of his body feeling electrified, each breath a puff of campfire smoke that he can only vaguely smell from his shack down the beach. He could care less if this is all because Desmond is hurt and lonely and drunk and far from home, because goddamn it so is he and that’s why he leans down again to take Desmond’s mouth with his, powerfully, possessively, and he doesn’t want to let this go.
And it goes where it always goes from there, jackets shrugged off shoulders and fumbling hands tugging at shirts and teeth nipping at ears, neck, lips and his mind is delirious because he feels it, feels it somewhere in his bones that he’s close close almost there almost
one more step
He wakes up in the late morning hung over, and it’s only after he’s stumbled to the bathroom to take a long, messy drink directly from the sink tap that he remembers what happened and leans on the counter for a moment.
Desmond’s gone, and there’s no trace that shows he’s ever been there are all. He finds himself irritated that he hadn’t left first, like he always does, but knows that he didn’t leave not because of how much alcohol was in his system, but because he hadn’t wanted to. He ignores the thought, and leaves to find something to eat.
It takes him until that afternoon, when he’s checking that his seat on Oceanic Flight 1684 is still reserved (he wants to reserve a whole damn row just for breathing space, but he doesn’t have the money for that anymore), to see the card. It’s a little business card from the motel, completely blank but for the scrunched handwriting that fills it.
He brings it closer to his nose (his glasses, the same ones the Doc had originally picked out for him, are back in Tennessee) and is met with spiky capital letters. On the top is a series of numbers, and he looks for the usual pattern. None there, but the parentheses and dashes can only mean one thing, and he moves on to the words. The first line is unreadable, black blotches that look like Desmond’s made a dozen failed starts, each word crossed out a little more violently than the last. And then, finally, the draft that he had apparently settled on:
There was a 9:35 AM flight, and hopefully they’ll let me on.
I know Scotland’s far away to call collect, but I have a few more numbers back home and if you ever decide that you do want to play catch up, I can give you a start. If you don’t, then I’ll see you in another life, brother, and I hope yours goes well until we meet again.
Desmond
When he finishes he flips it over, but there’s nothing there. Sawyer’s not surprised.
After a moment of staring at the card cupped in his palm, then sticks it in his wallet. An eternal perhaps. As he does it he remembers the grit of sand beneath fingernails and in book creases, and maybe it’ll be a call that’s better late than never or sooner rather than later. Maybe. Wallet to back pocket and Sawyer circles the room, looking for wadded up clothes and things, things that are lying around that he’s forgotten to pack.
Maybe.
He’s on a plane to Tennessee tomorrow, but he’s not going home.
Current Mood: 
hopeful
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