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Title: Lodestar
Author:  zelda_zee
Characters: Jack/Sawyer
Rating: R


They had only been back a few months, and it had not been easy. Jack had gone back to work almost immediately, while Sawyer worked on making an art form of lazing around the house, mixing it up by every once in a while finding his way down the rickety stairs fronting the bluff and lazing around on the beach instead. In fact, his time was spent much as it had been on the island, reading, sleeping, swimming, being a smartass and fucking Jack. There was a time, back before the crash, when that lack of ambition would have been completely unacceptable to Jack, but now it now longer bothered him. He just wanted Sawyer to be happy.

One evening he came home from the hospital, used up and empty and bone tired, and he went straight to the bar and poured himself a double bourbon and, as he raised the glass to his lips, he realized with a start that he felt exactly as he had before the island, the endless exhausting days wearing him down, the discontent only made bearable by a regular dosage of alcohol. The realization settled in his stomach, sour and cold. At least, he thought, he wasn’t back on the pills. But he could feel the addiction nudging at his will, the weakness returning, the need to find something that could blot out the stress and the dissatisfaction, something more numbing than a few moments of blissful forgetfulness with Sawyer.

He put the bourbon down and walked out to the patio. Sawyer was lying on an inflatable raft in the middle of the pool, looking just as sleek and relaxed as he had every day on that nameless beach where they had spent the last five years. He held a Corona loosely in one hand, the other trailing in the water. Jack took his clothes off, leaving them in a pile on the concrete and waded in, the coolness of the water a welcome relief, sighing at how good it felt. No wonder Sawyer spent all his time here, or at the beach.

Sawyer looked up, smiling as Jack approached, and held out his beer. Jack took it and tilted it back, draining it in one long, deep swig. He drew in a breath, exhaled in a huff.

“This isn’t working,” he said.

“What?” asked Sawyer, frowning.

“This,” said Jack, gesturing vaguely around him. “This isn’t what I want.”

Sawyer sat up, straddling the raft, sinking a bit as the ends of it popped up out of the water.

“No?” he said, his voice low and restrained. He picked at the corner of the raft, not meeting Jack’s eyes. “Then what do you want, Jack?”

Jack cursed himself. He should know by now not to just come out and say what was on his mind without running it through his Sawyer filter first. Sawyer always assumed that any dissatisfaction on Jack’s part, any discontent with their life, was due to him. Jack knew that no matter how many times he told Sawyer otherwise, a part of him would always believe that Jack would be better off without him.

“Stop it,” said Jack quietly. “That’s not what I mean, so don’t you even go there. You’re the part of my life that’s exactly the way I want it, it’s everything else that isn’t working.” Sawyer glanced up at him, his eyes unsure, and then gave a little nod. He combed his wet hair back from his face and surveyed their domain, the house, the yard, the pool.

“O-kay,” he said slowly. “So, Doc, what d’you wanna do about it?”

“I think,” ventured Jack, the idea forming in his mind as he said the words, “I think maybe we should try something else.”

“Like what?” asked Sawyer, eyeing him doubtfully.

“Like going away for a while. Traveling. Now that we’ve got the settlement, we could do anything. See the world, go anywhere we want. We could go anywhere.” He paused, skimming his hand back and forth over the surface of the water, his eyes following it.

He heard the squeak of wet plastic as Sawyer shifted on the raft. He tilted his head back to see a jet trail streaking the sky, a single faint star beside it, a pale dot in the cloudless blue.

“I thought you wanted this, Jack. All this was your idea - goin’ back to work, buyin’ this house. You never said you wanted anything different.”

He reached for Sawyer, hooking a hand behind his knee and pulling him closer. His skin was cool and smooth under the water. Jack dug his fingers into the muscle. Sawyer bobbed up and down on the raft, watching his face, waiting.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Jack said. “I couldn’t think what else to do.” He looked at Sawyer. “So I chose what I knew. The old patterns. But it doesn’t feel right. It’s not what I want anymore. Is this what you want, Sawyer? Because if it is, I can work on it. I can make it what I want, too.”

Sawyer slipped off the raft and came to stand in front of Jack, looking at him sternly. “Don’t you do that, Jack, do that martyr crap for me. I don’t give a flyin’ fuck about any of this, and if you think I do, then you still don’t know shit about me.”

Jack stared at him for a moment, and then Sawyer was in his arms, and Jack was kissing him, a hard, breathless kiss, full of promise and gratitude. His hand went to the back of Sawyer’s head, carding through his wet hair, and he backed him up, until his shoulders hit the side of the pool, and then he pressed into him, feeling hot despite the cool water, feeling the heat pooling down low, and Sawyer’s hands went to his ass, pulling him in sharply, his hardening cock rubbing against the folds of Sawyer’s swim trunks. Sawyer opened his mouth with a throaty moan, and Jack’s tongue surged in, rubbing and tickling and tasting, and it never failed, every time he kissed Sawyer, this need came over him, and he felt just as hungry for him as he had the first time.

Sawyer pulled back, breathing fast, and smiled.

“Guess that was the right answer,” he murmured, brushing his lips lightly against Jack’s. The look in his eyes, warm and intent and full of desire, sent a shiver down Jack’s spine.

“So, Chief, where d’you wanna go?” Sawyer asked, his hands still on Jack’s ass, now just ghosting lightly over the skin, then kneading gently, making it difficult for him to remember what they had been talking about.

“Anywhere,” Jack said, gasping as Sawyer slipped a finger between his cheeks, circling his entrance. “I don’t care. You choose.”

“Anywhere?” asked Sawyer, nuzzling his neck, finger pressing inward.

Jack’s eyes fluttered closed, and he tilted his head back, more than willing to let Sawyer decide this time. “Anywhere,” he whispered.

*

At night they wandered the narrow, cobbled streets of the old town, winding around and upward, letting their feet take them where they would, knowing eventually they would find their way back, even if it wasn’t until the sky was lightening with the dawn. They didn’t talk much, but they touched, fingers and arms brushing, and when the streets were quiet, late in the night, they’d walk along the slanting alleys holding hands. More than once they’d found themselves in a dark corner, one or the other of them pushed up against the ancient stones, hands grappling and bodies thrusting, too impatient to wait until they returned to the hotel.

In the morning, they’d lie in bed, letting the sounds of the town below waft in with the breeze through the open windows. The sunlight would cut a bright swath across the tiled floor, until it reached the bed, and then Jack would get up and draw the blinds, climbing back in and pulling Sawyer to him, ignoring his groan of protest, waking him up with hands and lips and tongue. Afterward, they’d stare up into the Moorish patterns on the high ceiling, eyes following the intricate curves and whorls and curlicues, and talk idly about the day’s plans before dropping off to sleep again.

To his surprise, Jack became the lazy one. Often he’d wake in the late morning, to find Sawyer gone, a note on the table to indicate his destination. Sawyer had a predilection for libraries and cathedrals and museums. He seemed to need to see all of them, in any town they visited. Jack was content to sit in the hotel courtyard and read, or venture out to a nearby café and watch the life of the town unfold before him, and then, once Sawyer had seen his fill, he would take Jack to his favorites, places that were usually obscure and out of the way and not even mentioned in the guidebooks.

One morning Jack got up, finding another note from Sawyer on the table, two words, the name of a church. He yawned and stretched and went to the window, opening the blinds and looking out onto the town, spires and ramparts and red tiled roofs, the dark lines of crooked alleys, the shimmering plain in the distance, the sun reflecting off the encircling river. He got dressed and stuffed a map in his pocket, and after a quick inquiry in his broken Spanish with the woman who brewed his café con leche, he set out to find Sawyer.

The church was not hard to find, though it was a bit more work to find Sawyer in it, as he was seated on the flagstones with his back against the wall in the vestibule, across from a large painting and behind a cluster of tourists who were evidently on a walking tour of the town. As the guide detailed the features of the piece, Jack studied Sawyer for a moment, unobserved. His hair had grown so long that it hung down his back and his beard was fuller, no longer just the stubbled jawline that Jack had become so accustomed to. He was wearing a beaded necklace – Jack tried to remember where he’d picked it up, Athens or Istanbul maybe, he wasn’t sure – and a tooled leather cuff on his wrist and rings on almost all his fingers. His wrinkled white shirt was so thin it was almost transparent, and was open perhaps one button too low for what would be considered proper in a Spanish church. His jeans were faded and frayed, held in place by a woven belt that Jack could remember him enthusiastically haggling for in a souk in Tangier, and his tanned feet were shod in brown leather sandals that he bought on the same day. He looked bohemian and beautiful, and Jack still couldn’t believe that he was his.

He sat down beside him, the wall cold and rough against his back. Sawyer looked at him in surprise, a smile lighting his face.

“Hey,” he said, “What’re you doin’ here?”

“I missed you,” Jack said simply.

Sawyer’s smile deepened. He nodded toward the painting across from them. “Whaddya think of that?” he asked.

Jack studied it for a moment.

“It’s overwhelming,” he said.

“Mm-hm,” replied Sawyer. “I been here for a couple hours, I think, and it’s still not falling into place. I’m waitin’ for it to sit right.” His eyes moved back to the painting. “To make sense.”

Jack looked at him. “And how long do you think that’ll take?” he asked.

“It takes as long as it takes, Jack. You can’t predict it.” Sawyer never called him Doc anymore. He was Jack now.

They sat quietly as the tour group filed out, a couple of tourists casting curious glances their way.

“I don’t want to go back,” Jack said suddenly. He stopped, surprised, examining that thought. Sawyer turned to look at him, his eyes deep and dark in the dim light of the church. “I don’t want to go back,” Jack repeated, sure of himself now.

“Ever?” Sawyer asked.

Jack held his eyes and slowly shook his head.

“That’s fine with me, Jack,” Sawyer said. “I don’t need to go back there.”

“Is that crazy?” Jack asked, wondering if he could turn his back on it for good, his profession, his life, everything he’d been before.

Sawyer smiled. “Probably. But crazy’s what we’re good at. We suck at normal.”

Jack chuckled. Sawyer turned his attention back to the painting, so Jack looked at it too, his eyes following the swooping, tumbling frenzy of the heavens, drinking in the golds and grays, the flashes of red, the purple blue of Mary’s cloak, studying the multitude of faces, each one completely unique and filled with a distinctive personality. Most of them were focused on the dead guy in the foreground, but a few looked up, seeming to see past the weight of earthly concerns, into the roiling activity above the clouds.

Sawyer sighed, and stood up, offering Jack a hand. Jack took it, and Sawyer pulled, and for a moment their bodies were close against each other, warm in the slight chill of the alcove. Sawyer lifted a hand and brushed Jack’s hair out of his eyes.

“It’s gettin’ long,” he said. Jack reached up, combing it back with his fingers. “Can’t wait til it’s long enough that I can grab a handful of it and keep you right where I want you.”

Jack smiled. “It’ll be a while still.”

“Sooner than you think, baby” Sawyer stated, grinning at him lasciviously.

“So, did it make sense to you, the painting?” Jack asked, as they emerged into the sunlight.

“Hell, no. That one’s gonna take a while. But we got time, right? Ain’t nowhere we gotta be.”

“Nope,” said Jack. “We've got time.”

*

The afternoon sun slanted through the wooden blinds, the light in the room golden and diffuse. Sawyer writhed beneath him, exhaling breathy moans, the taste of his skin sparkling in Jack’s mouth, salty and rich. He traced a line down his spine with his tongue, concentrating, feeling the dense, coiled energy of the body under him, letting himself merge with it, letting the awareness of his separateness drain away. He reached the graceful dip above the curve of buttock, the sweet symmetry of the indentations, and between them, the three blue stars inked into tanned skin. His tongue followed the outline of his star, curling around the points. He softly kissed the star that was Sawyer’s, sucking, and then licking across it, back and forth. The third star, between the two and slightly above, he painted with his tongue, then blew gently, watching goose bumps rise. He heard Sawyer sigh deeply. He closed his eyes for a moment, just breathing, then lowered his head again to the heated flesh.

Home, he thought, as he moved slowly and purposefully up Sawyer's body, skin sliding against skin. This is home now.

Continue on to Starlight, Starbright