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Title: “Call It”
Author: uberaeryn
Fandom: Lost
Setting: Smack dab in the middle of the current season.
Spoilers: Kind of. Speculation, mostly.
Pairing: Jack/Sawyer
Rating: Adult
Notes: First time writing ‘Lost’ slash, and I don’t particularly care how good
it is, ‘cause it was FUN and I shall have many yummy dreams tonight.
It was time.
That was all he knew, and it became his whole world, certainty slamming through
him as he heard the call, he knew that it was time, and that he had to be there.
He was ready, had been ready ever since he could remember, and so he ran.
It was time.
***
“Hey, Doc!” Sawyer said cheerfully as Jack ran toward him. He was bored and the
good doctor was always worth a moment’s entertainment. “What’s up?”
Never got old, did it? Sawyer thought, then he sighed. Actually, it did, that’s
why he insisted it on saying it all the time, but he’d have to think of
something new soon, even he was getting sick of it.
The tired jibe got no answer, though, there was just sweat and labored breathing
as Jack struggled through the sand, plowing past Sawyer with his head down and
his eyes empty and black.
. . . it was time . . .
Sawyer’s hand whipped out, catching Jack’s ankle and causing him to fall face
first in the sand, and Sawyer smirked and waited, for a punch or a curse,
anything, but Jack kicked free of Sawyer’s hold and hauled himself to his feet
and ran like hell, not looking back.
“What, not even a dirty look? Come on! Losin’ your touch, there!” Sawyer yelled
after him. “Or maybe I am,” he muttered to himself. “Doc? Doc!”
No answer, just sweat and labored breathing as Jack ran on into the night.
And those eyes. Full of a whole lot a nothin’, Sawyer thought, frowning.
Something made him shudder, and suddenly he was sick to his stomach and he’d
felt it before and he knew.
“Oh, shit,” he hissed and leapt to his feet.
***
She would be waiting, he knew, and he knew exactly where to go, and he had to
hurry because it was time, finally, and he had to be there, and he ran, from the
beach and into the jungle, trees and vines and fallen branches seeming to remove
themselves from his path on their own, and his heart quickened, hammering even
harder in his chest because now he could hear her, smell her, just up ahead.
He stumbled into the clearing and he couldn’t see her but he knew that she was
there, because now everything was scent, rotting leaves and damp and sweet decay
and the ocean and sweat and her, musky and rank, and he closed his eyes
and all he could hear was the roar of blood in his ears, and he fell to his
knees and he waited, she knew what he wanted, and she wanted it, too, and she
was finally going to give it to him, and his shoulders straightened and he
breathed easier, because it was time.
He waited, eyes closed.
Finally he heard movement, rustle of leaves, drops of water falling from them as
she brushed past, and he sighed in relief; he wasn’t too late.
Now he felt her more than he heard her, and he shivered, his eyes still closed
while she moved around him slowly, her musky scent overpowering and
heartbreakingly beautiful and he found that he was crying, and after eternity
ended she sat, finally, in front of him, and he was allowed to open his eyes.
The full moon glinted on silken black fur, and he looked at her, weeping, and
she was so beautiful, more beautiful than he’d ever imagined, and a deep, low
rumble started deep in her chest and her eyes flashed silver when her head moved
and she rose up on all fours and sniffed at him, rubbing her head against his
chest and neck, and now he was allowed to touch her and he did, still weeping,
running his hands down her back and down her flanks, marveling at the feel of
her fur under his fingers, fur that sparked and crackled, and he wrapped his
arms around her neck and pulled her close, and she braced herself with her
enormous front paws on his thighs, claws sinking in deeply, piercing flesh and
muscle, and the familiar scent of blood swirled up and was entwined with the
scent that was her, and he buried his face in her chest and let that deep
vibration and the magic that came with it overtake him and never had he felt so
loved.
Yes. It was time, it was time.
Doctor, do you think we should call it?
No.
Call it, doctor, it’s over.
No.
Jack, stop!
No.
Please, Jack!
No.
Call it, Jack!
No.
CALL IT!
NO!
He pulled back from her, stared at her for a moment, and then he smiled and
looked at his watch, nodded, and called it.
She cuffed him playfully on the side of the face, claws sinking through his
cheek and leaving four long tears in the flesh, his gums and teeth visible
through the wounds, and his tongue darted out, tasting the blood, and then she
knocked him on his back and he laughed, and it seemed like she laughed, too, the
rumble getting louder, then she nuzzled at his neck and he understood, and he
tilted his head back and closed his eyes once more.
She took her time, her mouth so large it almost completely encircled his neck,
and she sank her fangs into his skin slowly and he sighed in relief, finally, he
thought, finally. It seemed to take hours and he lay there and marveled, the
smell of his blood and rotted meat on her breath, the wet and the cool of the
jungle floor beneath him, and he looked up at the sky as she slowly ripped his
out his throat and everything seemed much closer, the stars sharpened, slicing
the tips of his fingers, clouds cold to the touch and smelling of virgin rain,
and again he began weeping, so tired and now, he’d called it, it was over.
***
“Goddammit,” Sawyer muttered, swinging the flashlight back and forth and he
stumbled through the undergrowth. He hated this, hated being out here and he
could fucking feel it, and he wondered if he should give up and haul ass
back to the caves, let the rest of them take up the search, safety in numbers
and all that bullshit, when he thought he heard something and he stilled and
listened.
Crying. The idiot was just up ahead and he was fucking crying.
Sawyer cursed and started to make his way toward the sound and the jungle fought
him every step of the way, branches leaping up to trip him and vines entangling
his arms and he struggled and cursed and then something in the air shifted, that
hated feeling that made him sick dissipating to be replaced by cool, clean damp
air, and suddenly there was an opening in the trees ahead and he plowed through
it.
***
“Jesus fucking Christ!” he muttered as he ran the beam of the flashlight over
Jack’s body. Blood everywhere, covering his face and throat and soaking his
t-shirt, and Sawyer felt a moment of panic, not knowing what the hell to do,
since he obviously couldn’t run to the good doctor for this one, that bastard
Sayid, maybe, soldier, medical training, surely, and as the thoughts tumbled
over one another he stuck the flashlight in his pocket and sank to ground next
to Jack and shook him roughly.
“Doc! Doc!”
***
He was sleeping, and he knew he didn’t have to wake up again, so why this, why
now? He groaned and tried to roll away from the noise and slide back into the
silver black cool.
***
“Jack! You fuckin’ moron, wake up! It got you, didn’t it, Jesus, Jack, dammit,
wake up, if those assholes blame me for you dyin’ out here like the idiot you
are I’ll fuckin’ kill you!”
Sawyer slapped him, hard, over and over again.
***
Rage now. He’d been given his gift and now it was being ripped away.
***
Jack sat up suddenly and Sawyer fell back, startled. “You jackass,” Sawyer
muttered. “You know better than to come out here at night like . . .”
Jack lunged forward, eyes black with fury, and grabbed Sawyer by the shirt
collar. “I CALLED IT, YOU SON OF A BITCH! I FUCKING CALLED IT!”
“Called what?” Sawyer spat, pushing him away and struggling to his feet.
“Fucking called what? Look at yourself, you asshole!”
Jack stared at Sawyer, and then looked down at himself, one hand clenching at
his t-shirt and he watched in fascination as the blood dripped through his
fingers. “I called it,” he whispered.
“You called somethin’, all right, and it damn near killed you, somehow, I don’t
know how, blood all over the place and not a mark on you . . .” Sawyer said, the
fear returning at the sight of the blood.
“She was here . . .” Jack whispered, head whipping around, looking for her.
“Who was here? What did you see?”
Jack hauled himself to his feet and started to stumble off in the direction of
the denser jungle. “Still find her, maybe, finish this . . .” he mumbled.
“No way, Doc,” Sawyer said, grabbing Jack by the shirttail and hauling him back.
“Fuck off, Sawyer!” Jack yelled, shoving at him, and Sawyer grabbed him by the
collar and held him fast.
“You do realize that I just saved your ass, don’t you?” he hissed shoving
his face into Jack’s.
“I know, Sawyer, I know! That’s the whole fucking point, I called it!” Jack
shouted, crying again and struggling against him. “I called it, it was over,
done!”
Sawyer staggered and his eyes narrowed as understanding hit him. “You wanted
this?”
“I wanted . . . God, I don’t know, I’m just so goddamned tired . . . just
to rest, just for a little while, Jesus, I don’t know,” Jack whispered, confused
now, rubbing at his eyes.
Sawyer stared at him. “It gets you at your weakest. C’mon, you can’t go back
like that – folks see that the island got to the good doctor then they’ll all
start seein’ the monsters in the closet,” Sawyer grumbled and started moving
north, dragging Jack with him.
***
“Here,” Sawyer said, and stripped Jack out of his t-shirt and shoved him into
the fresh water pool that was kept full by a small waterfall.
Jack gasped at the chill of the water, and then he found himself sinking
gratefully beneath the surface, scrubbing at his face and neck and chest and it
felt as if he could still feel the wounds, the cold of the water stinging the
bite marks and bruises, cleansing them, and he stayed underneath a long time,
imagining baptism, until he was hauled abruptly to the surface, spluttering.
“Dammit, Sawyer,” he muttered, wiping at his eyes.
“Just makin’ sure you weren’t tryin’ to off yourself again,” Sawyer said, before
diving under himself, and Jack sighed tiredly and dragged himself up on the bank
and fell on to his back and closed his eyes, trembling, head still swimming and
stars spinning silver streaks on black.
He was almost asleep when he heard Sawyer plop down beside him and he jumped,
startled. “Didn’t know this was here,” Jack said quietly, nodding at the
waterfall. “Another one of your secrets?”
“One of ‘em, yeah,” Sawyer said, pushing his wet hair out of his face and
plastering it tight against his head. “You gonna tell me what happened?”
“I don’t . . . do you think we’re okay out here?” Jack asked, peering through
the gloom, not really afraid and wondering why.
“Yeah,” Sawyer said, leaning back on his hands. “It left, I felt it.”
“You don’t think it’ll come back?”
“Nah,” Sawyer said. “The one comes first, and then the other comes behind it.”
Jack stared at him, trying to read his face in the moonlight. “What do you
mean?”
“Good and evil, best as I can describe it. The evil comes first, takes one of
us, fucks us over, then the good comes. Sometimes it gets there in time and
sometimes it doesn’t, just seems to depend.” He sighed. “I know we ain’t best
buddies, Doc, but you gotta tell me what you saw. You can’t tell anyone else,
not Kate, not even Sayid, all of them would flip and you’d have an island full
of panicked morons on your hands, if they find out what happened to you. If they
find out you wanted it to happen, especially.”
“No, I . . .” Jack sighed and threw a forearm across his eyes. Something still
had hold of him, thinking was difficult, forming the right words even harder. “I
didn’t want it . . . at least, it didn’t start out that way – it’s just
that there’ve been so many injuries and so much illness and so much fucking
weirdness, not to mention you.” Jack kicked at Sawyer’s thigh and
Sawyer snorted. “And tonight, just before it happened, Hurley came with a cut on
his foot that he hadn’t told me about, didn’t want to bother me, he said, and
now the idiot has blood poisoning and it’s going to take the rest of the
antibiotics we have to treat him and when I was working on him, I was so tired
and so fucking sick of it all and . . . the last thing I remember is thinking
‘God, I wish I could sleep forever.’ Fuck, I sound like a self-pitying prick,
don’t I?”
Sawyer grinned. “Little bit, yeah. And then?”
“Then I was running. Then she was there and, yeah, right then I did want
it. So I called it.”
“'Called it’. You keep saying that. What does it mean?”
“Called it,” Jack whispered. “Time of death. Mine.” And it was beautiful, he
thought again, and shivered. Still not right, something was not right.
“Jesus,” Sawyer muttered. “And who was ‘she’?”
Jack sighed and closed his eyes. “An animal, a panther, I think, huge. She sank
her teeth into my throat and I could feel my blood spill, smell it, even and I’d
never felt so . . .”
Sawyer shuddered at the image. “Never felt so what?” Sawyer murmured.
Jack was quiet for a long while, thinking. “So loved,” he said finally. “Ever.”
Sawyer wrapped his arms around his knees and ran one thumb across his lower lip.
“Seduction, sounds like,” he said.
“Yeah,” Jack murmured. “That’s it exactly. It offered what I wanted and the
promise of more.”
There was a long period of silence, each man lost in his own thoughts.
“You might not believe this, Doc, but I don’t envy you,” Sawyer said suddenly.
“The work you have to do, the way you have to lead – you tell anybody I said
this and I’ll kill you, but I find it admirable. But there’s no way in hell I’d
want to have to do it, too much responsibility, too much . . .”
“Actual work?” Jack said, scowling. “Easier to sit on your ass all day and
blackmail the rest of us?”
“Well, yeah,” Sawyer said, grinning, and then they both were laughing, long and
hard.
“Oh, fuck,” Jack sighed, wiping at his eyes. “I can’t believe we’re having an
actual conversation.”
“You ain’t the only one. But you realize that you took all that on yourself.
When a man can play God, people will treat him that way, especially out here,
like this."
"I hate it. Sometimes," Jack whispered.
"Too bad. Comes with the territory and you can't get out of it now, not unless
you go back out into that jungle and wait for her again, call it, like you said.
And feelin' sorry for yourself is just gonna make it easier for her, you know,
she'll be back if you keep that up."
Jack sighed. “Yeah, I know." He rubbed at his eyes, trying to clear his head,
which was still full of scent memory and blood and release and freedom "How in
the hell did you find me, anyway?” Jack asked.
“Well, shit, you ran right past me. I yelled at you, tripped you even,” Sawyer
said.
“Big surprise,” Jack said, and then rolled over on to his side. “I don’t
remember any of that, but let me guess, you yelled ‘what’s up, doc?’”
“Dearie me, I’m gettin’ predictable in my old age,” Sawyer said, smiling
slightly. “But it wasn’t exactly ‘what’s up, doc,’ but a variation
thereof.”
“Big words, I’m impressed. Always knew you were smarter than you looked.”
“Don’t be a dick, Doc. I did save your ass tonight, way I figure it, you
owe me one.”
Jack suddenly became serious. “Yeah, you did, Sawyer. Thank you. For that, for
this . . . I needed to let off steam, you know? God knows why, but you’re the
only one I can do that with.”
“It’s because,” Sawyer said, smirking. “My world doesn’t revolve around you,
Doc. Everyone else, yeah, they’d fall apart if you showed any sign of weakness
or if they had any idea what happened to you tonight. I, on the other hand,
could give a shit what happens to you, and so around me you can act however you
want and you know the earth won’t crumble beneath your feet.”
Jack smiled. “So if you don’t give a shit, why did you go to all the trouble
tonight to save my ass?”
Sawyer frowned. “Just feelin’ . . . charitable, I suppose.”
“Yeah, right,” Jack murmured and then moved with lightning speed and pinned
Sawyer to the ground.
Sawyer groaned. “Fuck it, Doc, I ain’t in the mood to duke it out with you right
now, all right? Come on, get off me.”
“No,” Jack said, staring down at him intently. “I still may be fucked up from
what happened, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to get the chance to say this
again so I’m going to say it now. I know now, Sawyer, that you’re smarter than
you pretend to be. I don’t know why you pull the shit that you pull, but I know
that there’s something that you want, you need. From me.”
Sawyer’s face hardened and he started to struggle. "What in the hell are you
doin'?"
“I know that you’re a much better man than you think you are," Jack whispered.
"I know that this asshole act is just that, an act. I know that, if we make it
out of this or if we end up living here happily ever after, you will be
one of the reasons that happens. I think you’re a hidden hero, Sawyer, and
you’re just too lazy, for now, to actually be one,” Jack said, and he leaned in
closer as Sawyer stilled and stiffened beneath him. “And God, Sawyer,” he
murmured, releasing one of Sawyer’s hands so that he could brush Sawyer’s hair
out of his eyes. “You’re fucking beautiful, even with these idiotic glasses.”
Sawyer snarled and suddenly their positions were reversed, Jack flat on his
back, hands pinned above his head and Sawyer shoved his face into Jack’s. "What
in the hell is wrong with you? Talkin' and actin' like that?"
"Don't know," Jack whispered, closing his eyes. "Magic, still there, in my veins
now, silver and black, can't you feel it? I can feel it, smell it even and I
know, now, Sawyer, know you."
Sawyer shuddered because yes, he could feel it, and Jack did know, and he
hated it. “Don’t you go makin’ me into somethin’ I’m not, Doc,” he hissed.
“People have done that before and have been sorely disappointed.”
“I know,” Jack whispered, wrapping his legs around Sawyer tightly and thrusting
up against him. Sawyer’s eyes closed and his breath quickened. “I know you’ll
disappoint me, over and over again. Hurt me. Break my heart. And I don’t care.
Let go of my hands, Sawyer.”
Sawyer stared at him for a long time, and then released Jack’s hands, propping
himself up on his own. Jack reached up and removed his glasses, setting them
aside carefully, then he slid his hands around Sawyer’s neck and tugged him
closer until their mouths were a breath apart.
“Watch it, Doc,” Sawyer whispered. "You don't know what you're doin'."
“Shut up,” Jack murmured and then kissed him, hard, pulling Sawyer tight against
him, tongue deep in his mouth and hips rocking against him, and Sawyer groaned
and ripped his mouth away, resting his forehead against Jack’s as he rubbed his
cock against him, breathing heavily.
“You ever done this before?” he whispered, fumbling at the buttons of his jeans.
“Never,” Jack said, eyes closed.
“Well, I have,” Sawyer hissed, ripping at Jack’s shorts and then grabbing his
hands and wrapping them around both their cocks. “So hang on,” Sawyer whispered
and started thrusting, and Jack groaned and his grip tightened and he bucked up
against Sawyer.
“Fuck,” Sawyer moaned, hips moving furiously.
“God, yes,” Jack whispered, reaching up to suck at Sawyer’s neck. “God, Sawyer,
so fucking long, show me, God, . . .”
“Just move, Jack, just fuckin’ move,” Sawyer whispered and then they were
thrusting frantically against one another, Jack almost howling in need and
Sawyer whispering in his ear, telling Jack all the things he was going to do to
him when he got the chance, and Jack shuddered, head back and eyes closed, and
then he arched up high, coming hard and hot all over his hands.
“Rub it on me, Jack, Jesus,” he hissed and Jack did so, eyes heavy-lidded
locked on Sawyer’s face, and Sawyer’s head flew back and he bit back a groan as
he came, panting. “Fuck,” he whispered, collapsing on top of Jack and
moaning softly as Jack took his mouth again. “You’re a damn idiot, Doc,” he
murmured, nibbling at Jack’s bottom lip.
“So are you, asshole,” Jack whispered, his eyes closing. “And I’m not letting
you out of this, it’s not that big an island, you’ve got nowhere to run . . .”
“Shut up,” Sawyer grumbled. “Go to sleep.”
“Yeah,” Jack murmured, already halfway there, and Sawyer watched him for a long
time, wondering.
Then he stared at the waterfall as he planned. He planned to wake Jack well
before dawn, get him cleaned up, get him back to camp and figure out a cover
story because he was bound to have been missed and then, this thing between them
. . .
Well, he would call it, he told himself firmly. Could never work and he wasn’t
having any of it.
And then his eyes turned to Jack again, who was sleeping peacefully for the
first time in weeks, he knew, and he thought and he wondered and . . .
Maybe he wouldn’t. Call it, that is. He’d have to wait and see.
Through those stupid fucking glasses.
He threw himself back on the ground and sighed in frustration before falling
asleep.
***
End
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