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janie_tangerineSince I'm way long from done with the WWII research and I had this one going through my head for a while, I figured I'd go with it. Though I've never really tried anything along these lines before, pairing included.
Title: Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through The Strip
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing: Jack/Sayid
Word counting: around 4700
Disclaimer: didn't happen and they sadly aren't mine.
Spoilers: For Through the Looking Glass and The Economist.
Summary: He never drives. Sayid insists and Jack doesn’t really care for driving right now. They don’t have a destination; the important thing is never to stay in one place for more than two days. Jack doesn’t know why exactly. Sayid had told him that they were being chased, or something like that. Maybe he had also told him who was chasing them, but Jack can’t remember it. There are a lot of things he can’t remember, these days.
A/N: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
12_stories #10, loyalty, 5_loves #5, run and the quote prompt of day 5 hiatus challenge at lostsquee: It was almost noon, and we still had more than a hundred miles to go. They would be tough miles. [...] But there was no going back, and no time to rest. [Hunter S Thompson ~ Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas]. Now, as you have probably seen from the title, everything in this is very Nirvana, including the titles of the sections. Blame FF Jack. It isn't in chronological order. The sex isn't graphic at all, but a section deals also with withdrawal symptoms. The discourse in the second section isn't absolutely of my making, but it's a demonstration I studied in a class of moral philosophy which seemed quite suited.
1. Something In The Way
It is going to get better, Jack. It will never be fine, not until we manage to find a way back there, but it will get better.
Jack can’t really remember when did Sayid exactly say it.
Maybe it was when they were still in his apartment in Los Angeles a life ago.
Maybe it was after the first two days. Maybe after the first week.
Jack doesn’t remember and doesn’t care. Sayid was right. It isn’t fine, but it’s better.
He never drives. Sayid insists and Jack doesn’t really care for driving right now. They don’t have a destination; the important thing is never to stay in one place for more than two days. Jack doesn’t know why exactly. Sayid had told him that they were being chased, or something like that. Maybe he had also told him who was chasing them, but Jack can’t remember it. There are a lot of things he can’t remember, these days.
He remembers that Ben was involved, though. It’s enough. Not like he has a reason not to trust Sayid, but if they’re running from him, it only means that Sayid has to be right. Not like he ever wasn’t.
Sayid takes the decisions now and Jack is fine with it; he has understood that taking decisions is not something he’s cut for, not right now at least. Maybe once he was. In yet another life, one even farther from the one he left five months ago. Or maybe four. He actually has trouble remembering what happened before he managed to clean up decently.
The car is old, the radio only accepts tapes; their clothes are all in three bags stocked in the back. They don’t take hitchhikers. They have another bag with generic medicinals. Nothing else.
Sayid drives, but Jack picks the music and Sayid takes whatever Jack forces on him. Jack doesn’t know how it can be that Sayid hasn’t gotten sick of his four Nirvana tapes, but he seemingly hasn’t, or if he is, he doesn’t say a thing about it. Maybe Sayid is being a glutton for self punishment, Jack thinks sometimes, but in truth he really doesn’t care.
Every four hours, they stop at a service station; every time, Jack gets coffee. It isn’t too much. It’s never too much. And it’s the only safe thing for him to drink, anyway.
He never asks Sayid how long is this going to last. He knows it will until he’s fine enough. Jack knows he isn’t. Sayid isn’t, either, but Jack isn’t because he’s recovering. Sayid isn’t for another whole kind of reasons, but Jack lets him take his time. Jack thinks that maybe it is because Sayid is too busy looking after Jack’s mess to care about his own. He admits he has done fine, until now.
More than that, he has stuck with him. In retrospective, Jack finds it kind of miraculous. He has some idea that even if they keep on sticking together, there are going to be a hell lot more obstacles on the way, though. But at least he’s fine enough not to feel absolutely scared at the bare thought.
2. Scentless Apprentice
“How did he convince you?”
“You mean how could he recruit me?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
Jack sits on a bed in room 217 at some highway motel near Freehold, New Jersey. Sayid sits on the one in front of him, looking at him while he takes off his worn out boots. Seven months on the road and he had never told Jack the whole story before today, in the car. Jack thinks he was right not to; he wasn’t in any condition to understand a thing about it. Now he does, though.
Sayid sighs.
“He told me that lie.”
“I know he did. But I don’t think it would have been enough.”
“You are right. It was not. But it’s a long story and I do not think you’d like it.”
Jack has to agree at that.
“But there had to be something.”
Sayid lays on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. Then he starts speaking and Jack doesn’t really understand what relevance do the things he says have, but he listens anyway.
“Jack, I will ask you a couple of questions. It will make sense, in the end.”
Sayid turns his head in his direction and Jack nods.
“Imagine that you are walking in the countryside, near a railroad. You find yourself near a points from which two lines depart. Five excursionists are walking on the rails on one side, just one on the other. At one point, you hear a train coming and you see that it’s headed on the rail where the five people are. You have two choices. You can do nothing, and the five people die; you can pull the lever at the points, change the direction of the train and then just the one that was walking on the other rail dies. Would you pull the lever?”
“I... I don’t know, Sayid... maybe I would, but...”
”Alright. Now, the situation is more or less the same, only, there is just one rail which runs under a small bridge. The five excursionists are down on the rail, you are on the bridge. There is also another man you don’t know. The train comes and the only thing you can do to save the five excursionists is pushing the man on the bridge down because that would stop the train. Would you push him down?”
“Of course not! Sayid, what kind of mindfuck...”
“But if you pulled the lever or if you pushed the man down, it would be exactly the same thing, Jack. Always killing one man and always for the greater good. If the excursionists were all people you knew and the random man on the rail or on the bridge wasn’t, wouldn’t it be the same?”
Jack can’t find an answer, but then the realization comes.
“Sayid, did he tell you this?”
“Yes, Jack. He did. Of course there was more to it. But I do not think that you need to hear it right now.”
Jack isn’t so messed up not to understand that Sayid is right. He doesn’t need it. There are a lot of things they need that they don't have right now, but this is the best they can do and he knows it.
3. Smells Like Teen Spirit
Jack hasn’t seen Sayid for two years when he knocks at his door. Jack doesn’t open because frankly, he thinks it’s an hallucination.
No one calls him, he doesn’t even call Kate anymore, no one is searching him, no one knocks at his door. Simple as that. And Jack doesn’t surely complain about it.
When the knocking becomes insistent, he stands up with his good share of trouble. He sways a bit before he actually manages to be stable enough to walk to the door.
He opens and Sayid is in front of him.
Jack right now is way wasted and the Jack Daniels bottle empty for a quarter laying near his filthy mattress on the floor testifies it, as a missing Oxycodone pill in the bottle situated in his pocket does.
But he’s not so wasted not to notice that Sayid has changed.
He wears expensive clothes, his hair is straight or something, he’s changed but his eyes aren’t and that’s all Jack needs. He really can’t place his impressions, though. He can’t even see everything clearly.
“Sayid?”, he mutters. “Why are you here?”
“You know the reason as well as I do.”
Jack suddenly feels more sober than he actually is. He raises his head, meeting Sayid’s stare. He doesn’t dare saying it. He told Kate millions of times and every time her reaction managed to make him feel like he was really, really going crazy when he knows he isn’t. But now, the idea that someone might not think he is kind of scares him to death.
“What do you mean?”
“Say it.”
“What?”
“You know, Jack. Please, say it.”
Jack takes a couple of steps backwards, leaning against the nearest wall.
“We... we have to go back.”, he says, his voice trembling, his eyes fixed on the ground, unable to raise his head.
“Yes, we do.”
Jack’s head jerks back up again. He can’t believe that someone is actually agreeing with him.
“We... we do?”
“Yes. But not like this. Jack, this place is outrageous.”
Jack lets out a bitter laugh. He can’t remember the last time he actually cleaned, or that he cooked his dinner, or that he changed the air. Not like he cares. It isn’t important.
“Why, are you planning on staying?”
Sayid, who was looking at his map, shakes his head and reaches him; his hands close around Jack’s arms, a grip which is firm but doesn’t hurt. He looks at Jack, dark brown eyes which seem black in the obscurity of the room, shining with something that Jack can’t really place. Though he sees something close to fear.
“No. And neither are you.”
“What..?”
“Jack. If you want to go back, there is no way you are even starting to think about it in the state you are in. And I... I think there is someone following me.”
“And why the hell..?”
“I will tell you, but not now. Jack, whoever is after me, they want me dead. I think I have a couple of ideas regarding... how to go back. But you need to be alright first. And you are not.”
“So I should just leave everything and go? What would we do? How...”
“Jack. Please.”
Now Sayid sounds desperate and Jack can’t stand it. He’s only aware of the awful smell permeating the room, a mixture of whiskey, trash, stale air and of the burning taste of whiskey making his way through his throat. He wants to throw up. He’s no good here. He knows. And Sayid knows that they have to go back.
If he knows how to, Jack can’t see the harm.
They have to go back, damnit.
“Alright. Alright. I’ll go with you.”
4. Radio Friendly Unit Shifter
He buys the tapes at a service station on their third month on the road. Sayid is having his coffee, Jack already had a double and he is surprised at seeing that someone still sells music tapes. They’ve got the Nirvana basics. The three official records and the unplugged.
Jack buys the tapes and he pays five dollars in total. On the car he leaves them on the dashboard until Sayid says that he can put one in, he doesn’t care about it.
Jack puts Nevermind on and is fairly sure that Sayid hates it. But he doesn’t say anything and Jack is only too happy to have some background, since his only job is staying awake and see if the road is clear. They always take back roads and try to be as low profile as they can, but after Sayid told him the basics of his side of the story a week ago, Jack doesn’t have any trouble believing that someone is after them and will always be until they are on their own.
He closes his hand around the bottle of pills in his pocket. It’s methadone. There are a few left. Jack knows they’ll be on their own for quite some time still.
5. Wish Me Luck, Soothe the Burn, Wake Me Up
They kiss for the first time in another motel near Louisville, Mississippi, six months after Sayid showed up on Jack’s doorstep.
Jack hadn’t expected it, but once it happens he goes along because there’s really nothing off with it. They’ve been sharing a car, a hotel room, the money that Sayid managed to take from Ben's Swiss account and sometimes also a bed for one hundred and eighty days more o less, the bed when there only were doubles available; to Jack, the kissing doesn’t really seem strange.
Six months ago his breath would have been sour with alcohol; it’s probably coffee now, though Jack won’t ever ask Sayid something like this.
Once it starts, it becomes much more messy and frantic than he’d have ever thought; they are on Sayid’s bed, it’s too small, Sayid is on top of him and his hands roam over Jack’s clean, shaved cheeks. Jack’s fingers get entangled in Sayid’s curls (since they left Los Angeles, Sayid always pulled them in a tail and always kept the car window open; in a couple of months they were as messy and curly as they were on the island, even more so when in August they crossed the Louisiana border and humidity did its job), pulling him as close as he can, unable to help it.
Last time, last time it was a life ago. With Juliet. But Juliet is there now and they have to go back and Jack can’t even start to think about it. He isn’t well enough, he knows it. He almost doesn’t remember any more how it is like and he finds himself thinking that Sayid shouldn’t have done it.
Because now he remembers and he won’t be able to stay without. Sayid should have known better than giving him something else he could get addicted to before he’s actually recovered.
Maybe Sayid needs it too, he figures. He doesn’t know. Maybe he does. If he does, Jack can give it to him alright; not more because he still isn’t there, not quite, but this, he can and settles with the kissing, at least for now.
That night, they share the bed. Nothing else, but they share it, small and uncomfortable as it is.
On the next stop, they get a double bed. They always get a double, from then on.
6. I Can't See the End of Me; My Whole Expanse, I Cannot See
Sayid already has the car and seemingly knows a destination. Jack doesn’t remember anything of their first trip, from his house to a motel near Lancaster, California. He just remembers Sayid dragging him in a small room which was thankfully clean enough and forcing him to drink a whole bottle of water. When he was slightly more perceptive, he tried just to crash on the bed and sleep it off, but Sayid had forced him to take a bath. A long one, for that matter. Jack hadn’t felt surprised at finding out that Sayid had bought him new clothes and a pair of pajamas even before knocking at his door until a couple of months later.
The next morning, Sayid had forced him to shave and it had taken too much time for its own good.
Quitting the alcohol cold turkey had been bad enough, which was why he was thankful that Sayid had brought the Oxycodone. There is only one bottle though, and half full; Sayid gives him three other bottles when his own is empty.
Jack reads on the label that the main ingredient is methadone; he asks Sayid where the hell did he get prescriptions for methadone, but Sayid shrugs it and tells him that there are thirty pills in each bottle. He can last three months if he manages to stick to one per day.
It can be as substitutive as it goes, but it isn’t enough.
Spending his day on a car surely doesn’t help the perpetual nausea that starts to plague him about three days after the Oxycodone reserve is over; sometimes they spend three days in a row in the same place because he isn’t able even to stand up.
His stomach is in perpetual pain, his hands twitch and tremble too much for his tastes, he flushes without a reason, he throws up two times per night, he can’t sleep at night, he snaps for everything.
Jack, a few months from now, will wonder how could Sayid take all of it without a complain. He never said a thing when Jack was lashing out at him (and he had done it more times than necessary, thanks to the mood swings), how could he always be at his side when he was kneeling above the toilet and clean the bathroom floor when he wasn’t able to make it to the proper place.
He was there with two extra blankets when Jack couldn’t stop shivering, both in the car and at night, even if it was the middle of July in Louisiana; Jack doesn’t really remember a thing of all the places they’ve been to the first four months. They don’t do tourism, but to him, landscapes are just a blur of highway, desert and trees. At his worst, he has had trouble breathing, more or less two months and a half since when they started.
Four months from when they left, the methadone is over, too, and Jack feels fairly better. He still throws up twice a week, he started drinking coffee every time he can, he can’t stop the twitch in his right hand, he wears dark glasses because the light hurts more often than not, he still has some mood swings, but it’s nothing in comparison.
He stays on the car, the Unplugged in New York.tape playing.
If I had to lose a mile
If I had to touch feelings
I would lose my soul
The way I do
He closes his eyes, resting against the seat; ten seconds later, he opens them again because he hears the driver’s door opening.
Sayid sits there, handing him a paper bag; Jack nods and takes it.
There is a plastic take-away cup, burning. Jack knows it’s coffee, black, without sugar as he always has it. Next to it, wrapped neatly in a couple of napkins, there is a kebab. Jack turns to the service station; he hadn’t noticed that they served kebab and falafel of everything, but there is an advertisement outside. Pretty cheap, too.
I don't have to think
I only have to do it
The results are always perfect
And that's old news
Would you like to hear my voice
sweetened with emotion
Invented at your birth?
“You know, I only need the coffee.”
“No, you also need that. I would eat it, if I were you.”
Sayid starts the car and Jack first drinks the coffee all at once, then unwraps the kebab and takes a bite. If it was for him, he’d probably remember to eat something once per day. He has developed some kind of hostility to the idea of eating for a while. Lately, mainly because of the throwing up. He’s thankful that Sayid remembers for him.
I can't see the end of me
My whole expanse I cannot see
I formulate infinity
And store it deep inside of me
Jack takes another bite, savoring the taste, chewing slowly. He still doesn’t feel alright and he’s far from seeing the end of the road. He knows they have a lot more to go. He glances at Sayid, who is fumbling with his fingers against the driving wheel, seemingly on time with the music. Maybe he doesn’t hate it so much, Jack thinks.
He smiles and takes another bite, bigger, this time.
7. All Apologies
Jack doesn’t know why Sayid has done it, though he has his suppositions.
No one had called him and surely no one had asked him. Now that he’s stone cold sober and that his only addictions are the caffeine during the day and what happens at night when their room’s door is closed, he often finds himself wondering why Sayid had searched for him in the first place.
He must have read some newspaper, Jack guesses. Sayid has told him pretty much everything now; Jack was sure, from the way Sayid looked at him the first time he gave Jack the specifics of his business with Ben, that he was waiting for Jack to stand up and leave. Maybe also to get some disgusted comment, before he did.
Jack hadn’t even thought about leaving. Thing is, if Sayid hadn’t come at his door, he doesn’t know what he would be doing right now; maybe he wouldn’t be doing anything at all. Either way, living in motels across the United States looks like a shiny option, in comparison.
He notices that the more time passes, the more Sayid seems to get wary, like he’s sure that Jack is going to leave every time. Jack knows he won’t.
He doesn’t care if Sayid has fixed him, yeah, because fix is the right word, because he wanted to or because he needed some self punishment after Ben spent two years giving him fifty names or out of pity or out or friendship or because he needed something to fix in order not to think about what he destroyed.
Point of it all is that Sayid has done it and maybe Jack doesn’t show it, Sayid surely hasn’t fixed his bedside manner (which was something that wasn’t there to begin with, for that matter), but Jack is deeply grateful for it.
He knows they could stop running and start planning right now, if it all came down to Jack.
But no, not all comes down to him, not really. It also comes down to Sayid and after nine months on the run with him Jack can safely say that if he is fine enough, Sayid isn’t.
He doesn’t show it, not at all. He looks cool, level-headed, practical as always. But Jack can see that he’s got his issues to work through and that he won’t let Jack do some of the work for him. Not now, not still.
He can see it in the way Sayid looks at himself in the mirror sometimes before they leave the room, like he can’t recognize his reflection or like he hates it; he can see it in the way they kiss when the motel door shuts close, without the urge of the first time but with some kind of strange reverence, like he thinks he doesn’t deserve it. He can see it in the clothes he buys in second-hand shops, worn out jeans, old military jackets, cheap over sized t-shirts, like he wants to hide beneath them. Jack remembers him leaving a bag with all his expensive shoes and trousers and shirts in front of some church when they were passing near Sacramento for the first time. It’s one of the few things he remembers of his first month on the road.
He can hear it in the crack of his voice whenever Jack manages to make him talk about his previous job or about how he managed to leave Ben or about how he found out that no one could really find the island and that he was just protecting Ben’s interests, not protecting their friends back there.
Jack doubts that Sayid’s head is much clear. Before he was focused on getting him back on track; now that Jack is back on track, he can’t avoid it. Jack knows that sooner or later he’s going to tell him about it and then their time on the road will be over and they’ll do what they’re supposed to do. It isn’t time now and Jack is alright with it. He can wait.
He wonders if Sayid asking him expressively to put in the Unplugged in New York one morning means something.
8. Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
The policy of just sharing the bed is over on their eleventh month, in Lancaster, Wisconsin, when one night the kissing doesn’t stop at the usual point and it becomes Jack’s hand unbuttoning Sayid’s jeans and Sayid’s teeth lightly biting Jack’s shoulder.
Jack remembers heat, even if it was the end of March and outside it still was too cold for his tastes and the room’s heating system was broken.
He remembers the feeling of Sayid’s hand caressing the skin over his chest and on his cheeks (he can’t help feeling somewhat naked when his face is touched, he couldn’t help it since he shaved the beard off), he remembers that Sayid’s skin was warm and soft under his fingers, he remembers that it had been slow, kind of painful at the beginning and then in the ending it was a blinding light going with a pleasure so overwhelming that he couldn’t even think. It had been long. Much too long.
He remembers also Sayid’s lips brushing his when it was over. That night something else had come into the equation and he’s perfectly aware of it.
Sometimes he thinks that what happens every night when the door of their room shuts close is helping them both more than they let on. They don’t talk about it. During the day, the closest they come to it is when sometimes they hold hands for a couple of seconds when they head to the highway stop for coffee and lunch before going in. At night is a whole other story though and Jack sometimes thinks he has never felt closer to someone during his whole life.
9. In the Sun I Feel As One
A year after April 20th, 2007, Sayid is driving and Jack is drinking his coffee.
He doesn’t wear sunglasses anymore. The sunshine actually feels warm. Sure, he doesn’t look straight into the sun, but he likes to see the world without dark lens in its true colors.
Sayid is driving and two fingers of his left hand follow the rythm of Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam. Fitting title, Jack thinks.
They have stuck with this a year and Jack is still amazed, thinking about it, though he knows why they’re doing it.
When Sayid will stop the car and tell Jack that they need a plan, they will be doing this because they have to go back and on the island they probably are trusting them to come.
Jack knows that Sayid is one who is loyal to his friends, he wouldn’t have gone as far as he had if he wasn’t; Jack had always wanted to think he was, too. By leaving, he hasn’t been. But it’s never too late, he guesses.
But until Sayid stops the car, they’re doing this merely because they’re being loyal to each other and it’s something Jack doesn’t question. He has to say that it’s something that doesn’t scare him in the least. Sayid has to have understood that he isn’t ever going to take a Greyhound and go back to Los Angeles or whatever. Jack knows that he has feared it, but well, he thinks he has a right to say that he gets what Sayid thinks. Maybe not everything, but quite some. They’re tight, very tight, couldn’t be any other way and he knows that Sayid is worrying about a lot of things. Jack isn’t among them anymore, though.
He looks at his watch. It’s almost noon. He looks at the highway in front of him, stretching endlessly towards the horizon, going south, a sign which says Welcome to Nebraska quickly coming closer, even if it’s really not moving. He knows that soon it’s going to be over and that they’re going to have a very different kind of miles to cross and that there is no going back. It’s fine, just fine.
Jesus doesn’t want me for a sunbeam, sunbeams are not made like me.
How true, he thinks.
“Sayid?”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you one question?”
“Sure.”
“Do you really like this or you’re just putting up with it?”
Sayid’s eyes don’t leave the road, but Jack can see a small smile stretching across his lips.
“At the beginning I hated it.”
“And right now?”
“Right now I could not imagine anything else to listen to when I drive.”
Jack lets out a small laugh, it doesn’t happen often; Sayid does too, and it happens even less often.
It’s warm inside the car, the sun light hitting them from the front.
Jack feels as one with Sayid and he knows that it has to be the same for him. It won’t be long.
End.
Title: Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through The Strip
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing: Jack/Sayid
Word counting: around 4700
Disclaimer: didn't happen and they sadly aren't mine.
Spoilers: For Through the Looking Glass and The Economist.
Summary: He never drives. Sayid insists and Jack doesn’t really care for driving right now. They don’t have a destination; the important thing is never to stay in one place for more than two days. Jack doesn’t know why exactly. Sayid had told him that they were being chased, or something like that. Maybe he had also told him who was chasing them, but Jack can’t remember it. There are a lot of things he can’t remember, these days.
A/N: For
12_stories #10, loyalty, 5_loves #5, run and the quote prompt of day 5 hiatus challenge at lostsquee: It was almost noon, and we still had more than a hundred miles to go. They would be tough miles. [...] But there was no going back, and no time to rest. [Hunter S Thompson ~ Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas]. Now, as you have probably seen from the title, everything in this is very Nirvana, including the titles of the sections. Blame FF Jack. It isn't in chronological order. The sex isn't graphic at all, but a section deals also with withdrawal symptoms. The discourse in the second section isn't absolutely of my making, but it's a demonstration I studied in a class of moral philosophy which seemed quite suited.1. Something In The Way
It is going to get better, Jack. It will never be fine, not until we manage to find a way back there, but it will get better.
Jack can’t really remember when did Sayid exactly say it.
Maybe it was when they were still in his apartment in Los Angeles a life ago.
Maybe it was after the first two days. Maybe after the first week.
Jack doesn’t remember and doesn’t care. Sayid was right. It isn’t fine, but it’s better.
He never drives. Sayid insists and Jack doesn’t really care for driving right now. They don’t have a destination; the important thing is never to stay in one place for more than two days. Jack doesn’t know why exactly. Sayid had told him that they were being chased, or something like that. Maybe he had also told him who was chasing them, but Jack can’t remember it. There are a lot of things he can’t remember, these days.
He remembers that Ben was involved, though. It’s enough. Not like he has a reason not to trust Sayid, but if they’re running from him, it only means that Sayid has to be right. Not like he ever wasn’t.
Sayid takes the decisions now and Jack is fine with it; he has understood that taking decisions is not something he’s cut for, not right now at least. Maybe once he was. In yet another life, one even farther from the one he left five months ago. Or maybe four. He actually has trouble remembering what happened before he managed to clean up decently.
The car is old, the radio only accepts tapes; their clothes are all in three bags stocked in the back. They don’t take hitchhikers. They have another bag with generic medicinals. Nothing else.
Sayid drives, but Jack picks the music and Sayid takes whatever Jack forces on him. Jack doesn’t know how it can be that Sayid hasn’t gotten sick of his four Nirvana tapes, but he seemingly hasn’t, or if he is, he doesn’t say a thing about it. Maybe Sayid is being a glutton for self punishment, Jack thinks sometimes, but in truth he really doesn’t care.
Every four hours, they stop at a service station; every time, Jack gets coffee. It isn’t too much. It’s never too much. And it’s the only safe thing for him to drink, anyway.
He never asks Sayid how long is this going to last. He knows it will until he’s fine enough. Jack knows he isn’t. Sayid isn’t, either, but Jack isn’t because he’s recovering. Sayid isn’t for another whole kind of reasons, but Jack lets him take his time. Jack thinks that maybe it is because Sayid is too busy looking after Jack’s mess to care about his own. He admits he has done fine, until now.
More than that, he has stuck with him. In retrospective, Jack finds it kind of miraculous. He has some idea that even if they keep on sticking together, there are going to be a hell lot more obstacles on the way, though. But at least he’s fine enough not to feel absolutely scared at the bare thought.
2. Scentless Apprentice
“How did he convince you?”
“You mean how could he recruit me?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
Jack sits on a bed in room 217 at some highway motel near Freehold, New Jersey. Sayid sits on the one in front of him, looking at him while he takes off his worn out boots. Seven months on the road and he had never told Jack the whole story before today, in the car. Jack thinks he was right not to; he wasn’t in any condition to understand a thing about it. Now he does, though.
Sayid sighs.
“He told me that lie.”
“I know he did. But I don’t think it would have been enough.”
“You are right. It was not. But it’s a long story and I do not think you’d like it.”
Jack has to agree at that.
“But there had to be something.”
Sayid lays on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. Then he starts speaking and Jack doesn’t really understand what relevance do the things he says have, but he listens anyway.
“Jack, I will ask you a couple of questions. It will make sense, in the end.”
Sayid turns his head in his direction and Jack nods.
“Imagine that you are walking in the countryside, near a railroad. You find yourself near a points from which two lines depart. Five excursionists are walking on the rails on one side, just one on the other. At one point, you hear a train coming and you see that it’s headed on the rail where the five people are. You have two choices. You can do nothing, and the five people die; you can pull the lever at the points, change the direction of the train and then just the one that was walking on the other rail dies. Would you pull the lever?”
“I... I don’t know, Sayid... maybe I would, but...”
”Alright. Now, the situation is more or less the same, only, there is just one rail which runs under a small bridge. The five excursionists are down on the rail, you are on the bridge. There is also another man you don’t know. The train comes and the only thing you can do to save the five excursionists is pushing the man on the bridge down because that would stop the train. Would you push him down?”
“Of course not! Sayid, what kind of mindfuck...”
“But if you pulled the lever or if you pushed the man down, it would be exactly the same thing, Jack. Always killing one man and always for the greater good. If the excursionists were all people you knew and the random man on the rail or on the bridge wasn’t, wouldn’t it be the same?”
Jack can’t find an answer, but then the realization comes.
“Sayid, did he tell you this?”
“Yes, Jack. He did. Of course there was more to it. But I do not think that you need to hear it right now.”
Jack isn’t so messed up not to understand that Sayid is right. He doesn’t need it. There are a lot of things they need that they don't have right now, but this is the best they can do and he knows it.
3. Smells Like Teen Spirit
Jack hasn’t seen Sayid for two years when he knocks at his door. Jack doesn’t open because frankly, he thinks it’s an hallucination.
No one calls him, he doesn’t even call Kate anymore, no one is searching him, no one knocks at his door. Simple as that. And Jack doesn’t surely complain about it.
When the knocking becomes insistent, he stands up with his good share of trouble. He sways a bit before he actually manages to be stable enough to walk to the door.
He opens and Sayid is in front of him.
Jack right now is way wasted and the Jack Daniels bottle empty for a quarter laying near his filthy mattress on the floor testifies it, as a missing Oxycodone pill in the bottle situated in his pocket does.
But he’s not so wasted not to notice that Sayid has changed.
He wears expensive clothes, his hair is straight or something, he’s changed but his eyes aren’t and that’s all Jack needs. He really can’t place his impressions, though. He can’t even see everything clearly.
“Sayid?”, he mutters. “Why are you here?”
“You know the reason as well as I do.”
Jack suddenly feels more sober than he actually is. He raises his head, meeting Sayid’s stare. He doesn’t dare saying it. He told Kate millions of times and every time her reaction managed to make him feel like he was really, really going crazy when he knows he isn’t. But now, the idea that someone might not think he is kind of scares him to death.
“What do you mean?”
“Say it.”
“What?”
“You know, Jack. Please, say it.”
Jack takes a couple of steps backwards, leaning against the nearest wall.
“We... we have to go back.”, he says, his voice trembling, his eyes fixed on the ground, unable to raise his head.
“Yes, we do.”
Jack’s head jerks back up again. He can’t believe that someone is actually agreeing with him.
“We... we do?”
“Yes. But not like this. Jack, this place is outrageous.”
Jack lets out a bitter laugh. He can’t remember the last time he actually cleaned, or that he cooked his dinner, or that he changed the air. Not like he cares. It isn’t important.
“Why, are you planning on staying?”
Sayid, who was looking at his map, shakes his head and reaches him; his hands close around Jack’s arms, a grip which is firm but doesn’t hurt. He looks at Jack, dark brown eyes which seem black in the obscurity of the room, shining with something that Jack can’t really place. Though he sees something close to fear.
“No. And neither are you.”
“What..?”
“Jack. If you want to go back, there is no way you are even starting to think about it in the state you are in. And I... I think there is someone following me.”
“And why the hell..?”
“I will tell you, but not now. Jack, whoever is after me, they want me dead. I think I have a couple of ideas regarding... how to go back. But you need to be alright first. And you are not.”
“So I should just leave everything and go? What would we do? How...”
“Jack. Please.”
Now Sayid sounds desperate and Jack can’t stand it. He’s only aware of the awful smell permeating the room, a mixture of whiskey, trash, stale air and of the burning taste of whiskey making his way through his throat. He wants to throw up. He’s no good here. He knows. And Sayid knows that they have to go back.
If he knows how to, Jack can’t see the harm.
They have to go back, damnit.
“Alright. Alright. I’ll go with you.”
4. Radio Friendly Unit Shifter
He buys the tapes at a service station on their third month on the road. Sayid is having his coffee, Jack already had a double and he is surprised at seeing that someone still sells music tapes. They’ve got the Nirvana basics. The three official records and the unplugged.
Jack buys the tapes and he pays five dollars in total. On the car he leaves them on the dashboard until Sayid says that he can put one in, he doesn’t care about it.
Jack puts Nevermind on and is fairly sure that Sayid hates it. But he doesn’t say anything and Jack is only too happy to have some background, since his only job is staying awake and see if the road is clear. They always take back roads and try to be as low profile as they can, but after Sayid told him the basics of his side of the story a week ago, Jack doesn’t have any trouble believing that someone is after them and will always be until they are on their own.
He closes his hand around the bottle of pills in his pocket. It’s methadone. There are a few left. Jack knows they’ll be on their own for quite some time still.
5. Wish Me Luck, Soothe the Burn, Wake Me Up
They kiss for the first time in another motel near Louisville, Mississippi, six months after Sayid showed up on Jack’s doorstep.
Jack hadn’t expected it, but once it happens he goes along because there’s really nothing off with it. They’ve been sharing a car, a hotel room, the money that Sayid managed to take from Ben's Swiss account and sometimes also a bed for one hundred and eighty days more o less, the bed when there only were doubles available; to Jack, the kissing doesn’t really seem strange.
Six months ago his breath would have been sour with alcohol; it’s probably coffee now, though Jack won’t ever ask Sayid something like this.
Once it starts, it becomes much more messy and frantic than he’d have ever thought; they are on Sayid’s bed, it’s too small, Sayid is on top of him and his hands roam over Jack’s clean, shaved cheeks. Jack’s fingers get entangled in Sayid’s curls (since they left Los Angeles, Sayid always pulled them in a tail and always kept the car window open; in a couple of months they were as messy and curly as they were on the island, even more so when in August they crossed the Louisiana border and humidity did its job), pulling him as close as he can, unable to help it.
Last time, last time it was a life ago. With Juliet. But Juliet is there now and they have to go back and Jack can’t even start to think about it. He isn’t well enough, he knows it. He almost doesn’t remember any more how it is like and he finds himself thinking that Sayid shouldn’t have done it.
Because now he remembers and he won’t be able to stay without. Sayid should have known better than giving him something else he could get addicted to before he’s actually recovered.
Maybe Sayid needs it too, he figures. He doesn’t know. Maybe he does. If he does, Jack can give it to him alright; not more because he still isn’t there, not quite, but this, he can and settles with the kissing, at least for now.
That night, they share the bed. Nothing else, but they share it, small and uncomfortable as it is.
On the next stop, they get a double bed. They always get a double, from then on.
6. I Can't See the End of Me; My Whole Expanse, I Cannot See
Sayid already has the car and seemingly knows a destination. Jack doesn’t remember anything of their first trip, from his house to a motel near Lancaster, California. He just remembers Sayid dragging him in a small room which was thankfully clean enough and forcing him to drink a whole bottle of water. When he was slightly more perceptive, he tried just to crash on the bed and sleep it off, but Sayid had forced him to take a bath. A long one, for that matter. Jack hadn’t felt surprised at finding out that Sayid had bought him new clothes and a pair of pajamas even before knocking at his door until a couple of months later.
The next morning, Sayid had forced him to shave and it had taken too much time for its own good.
Quitting the alcohol cold turkey had been bad enough, which was why he was thankful that Sayid had brought the Oxycodone. There is only one bottle though, and half full; Sayid gives him three other bottles when his own is empty.
Jack reads on the label that the main ingredient is methadone; he asks Sayid where the hell did he get prescriptions for methadone, but Sayid shrugs it and tells him that there are thirty pills in each bottle. He can last three months if he manages to stick to one per day.
It can be as substitutive as it goes, but it isn’t enough.
Spending his day on a car surely doesn’t help the perpetual nausea that starts to plague him about three days after the Oxycodone reserve is over; sometimes they spend three days in a row in the same place because he isn’t able even to stand up.
His stomach is in perpetual pain, his hands twitch and tremble too much for his tastes, he flushes without a reason, he throws up two times per night, he can’t sleep at night, he snaps for everything.
Jack, a few months from now, will wonder how could Sayid take all of it without a complain. He never said a thing when Jack was lashing out at him (and he had done it more times than necessary, thanks to the mood swings), how could he always be at his side when he was kneeling above the toilet and clean the bathroom floor when he wasn’t able to make it to the proper place.
He was there with two extra blankets when Jack couldn’t stop shivering, both in the car and at night, even if it was the middle of July in Louisiana; Jack doesn’t really remember a thing of all the places they’ve been to the first four months. They don’t do tourism, but to him, landscapes are just a blur of highway, desert and trees. At his worst, he has had trouble breathing, more or less two months and a half since when they started.
Four months from when they left, the methadone is over, too, and Jack feels fairly better. He still throws up twice a week, he started drinking coffee every time he can, he can’t stop the twitch in his right hand, he wears dark glasses because the light hurts more often than not, he still has some mood swings, but it’s nothing in comparison.
He stays on the car, the Unplugged in New York.tape playing.
If I had to lose a mile
If I had to touch feelings
I would lose my soul
The way I do
He closes his eyes, resting against the seat; ten seconds later, he opens them again because he hears the driver’s door opening.
Sayid sits there, handing him a paper bag; Jack nods and takes it.
There is a plastic take-away cup, burning. Jack knows it’s coffee, black, without sugar as he always has it. Next to it, wrapped neatly in a couple of napkins, there is a kebab. Jack turns to the service station; he hadn’t noticed that they served kebab and falafel of everything, but there is an advertisement outside. Pretty cheap, too.
I don't have to think
I only have to do it
The results are always perfect
And that's old news
Would you like to hear my voice
sweetened with emotion
Invented at your birth?
“You know, I only need the coffee.”
“No, you also need that. I would eat it, if I were you.”
Sayid starts the car and Jack first drinks the coffee all at once, then unwraps the kebab and takes a bite. If it was for him, he’d probably remember to eat something once per day. He has developed some kind of hostility to the idea of eating for a while. Lately, mainly because of the throwing up. He’s thankful that Sayid remembers for him.
I can't see the end of me
My whole expanse I cannot see
I formulate infinity
And store it deep inside of me
Jack takes another bite, savoring the taste, chewing slowly. He still doesn’t feel alright and he’s far from seeing the end of the road. He knows they have a lot more to go. He glances at Sayid, who is fumbling with his fingers against the driving wheel, seemingly on time with the music. Maybe he doesn’t hate it so much, Jack thinks.
He smiles and takes another bite, bigger, this time.
7. All Apologies
Jack doesn’t know why Sayid has done it, though he has his suppositions.
No one had called him and surely no one had asked him. Now that he’s stone cold sober and that his only addictions are the caffeine during the day and what happens at night when their room’s door is closed, he often finds himself wondering why Sayid had searched for him in the first place.
He must have read some newspaper, Jack guesses. Sayid has told him pretty much everything now; Jack was sure, from the way Sayid looked at him the first time he gave Jack the specifics of his business with Ben, that he was waiting for Jack to stand up and leave. Maybe also to get some disgusted comment, before he did.
Jack hadn’t even thought about leaving. Thing is, if Sayid hadn’t come at his door, he doesn’t know what he would be doing right now; maybe he wouldn’t be doing anything at all. Either way, living in motels across the United States looks like a shiny option, in comparison.
He notices that the more time passes, the more Sayid seems to get wary, like he’s sure that Jack is going to leave every time. Jack knows he won’t.
He doesn’t care if Sayid has fixed him, yeah, because fix is the right word, because he wanted to or because he needed some self punishment after Ben spent two years giving him fifty names or out of pity or out or friendship or because he needed something to fix in order not to think about what he destroyed.
Point of it all is that Sayid has done it and maybe Jack doesn’t show it, Sayid surely hasn’t fixed his bedside manner (which was something that wasn’t there to begin with, for that matter), but Jack is deeply grateful for it.
He knows they could stop running and start planning right now, if it all came down to Jack.
But no, not all comes down to him, not really. It also comes down to Sayid and after nine months on the run with him Jack can safely say that if he is fine enough, Sayid isn’t.
He doesn’t show it, not at all. He looks cool, level-headed, practical as always. But Jack can see that he’s got his issues to work through and that he won’t let Jack do some of the work for him. Not now, not still.
He can see it in the way Sayid looks at himself in the mirror sometimes before they leave the room, like he can’t recognize his reflection or like he hates it; he can see it in the way they kiss when the motel door shuts close, without the urge of the first time but with some kind of strange reverence, like he thinks he doesn’t deserve it. He can see it in the clothes he buys in second-hand shops, worn out jeans, old military jackets, cheap over sized t-shirts, like he wants to hide beneath them. Jack remembers him leaving a bag with all his expensive shoes and trousers and shirts in front of some church when they were passing near Sacramento for the first time. It’s one of the few things he remembers of his first month on the road.
He can hear it in the crack of his voice whenever Jack manages to make him talk about his previous job or about how he managed to leave Ben or about how he found out that no one could really find the island and that he was just protecting Ben’s interests, not protecting their friends back there.
Jack doubts that Sayid’s head is much clear. Before he was focused on getting him back on track; now that Jack is back on track, he can’t avoid it. Jack knows that sooner or later he’s going to tell him about it and then their time on the road will be over and they’ll do what they’re supposed to do. It isn’t time now and Jack is alright with it. He can wait.
He wonders if Sayid asking him expressively to put in the Unplugged in New York one morning means something.
8. Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
The policy of just sharing the bed is over on their eleventh month, in Lancaster, Wisconsin, when one night the kissing doesn’t stop at the usual point and it becomes Jack’s hand unbuttoning Sayid’s jeans and Sayid’s teeth lightly biting Jack’s shoulder.
Jack remembers heat, even if it was the end of March and outside it still was too cold for his tastes and the room’s heating system was broken.
He remembers the feeling of Sayid’s hand caressing the skin over his chest and on his cheeks (he can’t help feeling somewhat naked when his face is touched, he couldn’t help it since he shaved the beard off), he remembers that Sayid’s skin was warm and soft under his fingers, he remembers that it had been slow, kind of painful at the beginning and then in the ending it was a blinding light going with a pleasure so overwhelming that he couldn’t even think. It had been long. Much too long.
He remembers also Sayid’s lips brushing his when it was over. That night something else had come into the equation and he’s perfectly aware of it.
Sometimes he thinks that what happens every night when the door of their room shuts close is helping them both more than they let on. They don’t talk about it. During the day, the closest they come to it is when sometimes they hold hands for a couple of seconds when they head to the highway stop for coffee and lunch before going in. At night is a whole other story though and Jack sometimes thinks he has never felt closer to someone during his whole life.
9. In the Sun I Feel As One
A year after April 20th, 2007, Sayid is driving and Jack is drinking his coffee.
He doesn’t wear sunglasses anymore. The sunshine actually feels warm. Sure, he doesn’t look straight into the sun, but he likes to see the world without dark lens in its true colors.
Sayid is driving and two fingers of his left hand follow the rythm of Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam. Fitting title, Jack thinks.
They have stuck with this a year and Jack is still amazed, thinking about it, though he knows why they’re doing it.
When Sayid will stop the car and tell Jack that they need a plan, they will be doing this because they have to go back and on the island they probably are trusting them to come.
Jack knows that Sayid is one who is loyal to his friends, he wouldn’t have gone as far as he had if he wasn’t; Jack had always wanted to think he was, too. By leaving, he hasn’t been. But it’s never too late, he guesses.
But until Sayid stops the car, they’re doing this merely because they’re being loyal to each other and it’s something Jack doesn’t question. He has to say that it’s something that doesn’t scare him in the least. Sayid has to have understood that he isn’t ever going to take a Greyhound and go back to Los Angeles or whatever. Jack knows that he has feared it, but well, he thinks he has a right to say that he gets what Sayid thinks. Maybe not everything, but quite some. They’re tight, very tight, couldn’t be any other way and he knows that Sayid is worrying about a lot of things. Jack isn’t among them anymore, though.
He looks at his watch. It’s almost noon. He looks at the highway in front of him, stretching endlessly towards the horizon, going south, a sign which says Welcome to Nebraska quickly coming closer, even if it’s really not moving. He knows that soon it’s going to be over and that they’re going to have a very different kind of miles to cross and that there is no going back. It’s fine, just fine.
Jesus doesn’t want me for a sunbeam, sunbeams are not made like me.
How true, he thinks.
“Sayid?”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you one question?”
“Sure.”
“Do you really like this or you’re just putting up with it?”
Sayid’s eyes don’t leave the road, but Jack can see a small smile stretching across his lips.
“At the beginning I hated it.”
“And right now?”
“Right now I could not imagine anything else to listen to when I drive.”
Jack lets out a small laugh, it doesn’t happen often; Sayid does too, and it happens even less often.
It’s warm inside the car, the sun light hitting them from the front.
Jack feels as one with Sayid and he knows that it has to be the same for him. It won’t be long.
End.
