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janie_tangerineWell, I have no excuse except the luau.
Title: Mother In Law
Pairing: Jack/Sawyer, Margo Shephard being a special guest
Word counting: 4000
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: They're not mine and the song I stole from is Springsteen's.
Spoilers: for the S4 finale. Totally AU after that.
Summary: He waits for the small nod he’s sure will come, then turns back and presses his head against the seat before starting up again, trying to remember how exactly has he ended in this fucked up situation, driving Jack’s mom to an employment agency for the last three days. Because right now it seems just surreal, too surreal for him to believe it’s actually happening.
A/N: for Queen![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
invisiblelove at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
lostsquee, who wanted happy Jack/Sawyer. Well, I had had this bunny since forever and it is happy. Please take as your reference the Margo we saw in the finale because if we went on the White Rabbit canon she'd be completely OOC. This was heavily inspired by Bruce Springsteen's Sherry Darling and yes, I'm obsessed. I sort of am. I hope the Queen enjoys!
“Are you really sure? I mean, I know I asked you already and that you already said yes, but well, I do feel awkward and...”
“Ma’am, we already done this. Yesterday and the day before. And I assure you that I ain’t got a problem with it.”
“Oh, thanks. You know, it’s just, I haven’t found anything already and...”
And you never worked a day in your life, you really wanna find a job even if hubby dearest and Jack dearest have all the money you could ever wish for ‘cause you realized that there’s somethin’ missing, especially the driver’s license you never bothered to take. Also, Jack wanted to drive you but...
“... well, it’s just that after what... what’s happened to him, you know, I would rather not have him driving, not really...”
... and it’s really so sweet of me to go through all of this burden to make you a favor...
“... you know, that other friend of Jack’s maybe would have but just once and...”
Sawyer catches the occasion to stop the car at a red light and turns towards the backseat, a hand resting on the empty passenger’s seat, flashing his winning smile with the previous targets’ parents at the doc’s mom, who is sitting there in his three-times used car. She’s a like an off-key note, dressed in her pretty green skirt and matching jacket, her new shoes, a nice summer hat in her hands, among the four or five paperbacks that are scattered there in the back, his jeans jacket, an opened box full of random chocolate snacks for long drives, a box full of tapes for the radio and, well, the part of the backseat where she isn’t sitting, where the seat cover is completely torn.
“Mrs. Shephard, really, don’t worry. That ain’t a problem.”
He waits for the small nod he’s sure will come, then turns back and presses his head against the seat before starting up again, trying to remember how exactly has he ended in this fucked up situation, driving Jack’s mom to an employment agency for the last three days. Because right now it seems just surreal, too surreal for him to believe it’s actually happening.
So. Exactly one year ago, the doc and the other five lost sheep had finally found the Almighty Piece of Rock. Check.
There, a lot of Very Strange Things had happened; things that included stuff that, last time Sawyer checked, was to be found only in the Bible or sci-fi movies, especially the fact that they had been there six months and turns out that it had been two years. Oh well, that wasn’t the problem. Point was, a lot of things happened and for some miracle, everyone had come out of it alive. Check.
They were all back in the mainland; him, Jin, Juliet, Claire (who had emerged from the jungle one day seemingly not remembering a thing since the day Jack called the freighter), Miles, Charlotte and Daniel from the island (Rose and Bernard had stayed, Locke and the bug eyed freak formerly known as Henry Gale did too and Sawyer would rather ignore the issue); the six plus Sun’s girl and Walt who had retrieved his dog from the island. Check.
Now, Kate and Claire had ended up playing Shirley and Laverne version 2.0 or something with Aaron, except that it looked like the doc was the kid’s uncle after all and whatever, he wasn’t allowed to see him until he sobered up. Check.
And that was the matter. Check.
Because while it looked like Hurley and Al Jazeera were trying to work out their issues with a jointed trip somewhere very far, the doc hadn’t opted to go with them. Truth to be told, he was a pretty fucked up mess when he had arrived on the island and was a pretty fucked up mess when they were back. Check.
And since Sawyer, apart from having a couple of talks with Kate that had convinced him of how much it was not going to work and had seemingly developed a taste for masochism at the same time, he had ended up moving in with the doc, trying to assure that at least he didn’t commit suicide accidentally. Check.
After all, Sawyer had managed to do a pretty good job of convincing the doc that it wasn’t just the case to die before hitting his fiftieth year of age, since after nine months he had been in considerably better shape, enough to work as a consultant or something for a free clinic. Check.
Better not think about what exactly had taken to fulfill such a deed. Check.
At one point he had convinced the doc to call his fucking mother, since he seemingly hadn’t done so since much before leaving for the island and for how many guilt issues Jack could have regardings her and Daddy Dearest, at least he fucking had a mother. Not that Sawyer was ever going to tell him that, but anyway. Check.
So she had actually shown up there in tears embracing Jack like her life depended on it, and Sawyer had just picked up his book and went to read in the next room. Check.
So everything was just peachy and while the doc did human hours at the free clinic Sawyer ended up being a part time librarian at the kids’ library near Aaron’s school, which he had lightly taken as just the last coincidences of an endless chain. Check.
And perfect it was, until Margo showed up one day telling Jack that she wanted to find a job.
Which was, in Sawyer’s opinion, perfectly crazy since she had enough money to last her a lifetime. But she had started this rant saying that since Daddy Dearest died and she thought Jack was she hadn’t felt like the same person, that when Jack was back she had reflected about their relationship or shit like that and Sawyer hadn’t really paid attention. Not until the part where she said that having never worked all of her life she realized she felt like dead weight. Which was, in Sawyer’s opinion, even crazier since if there was a reason he was working was ‘cause he wasn’t gonna owe anything to the doc and he was determined to pay his share for the bed he slept on and he didn’t have an Oceanic settlement; but if he could have avoided it, he’d have gladly done so. Check.
Point was, Jack’s mom lived in a residential zone (of course) and didn’t take the bus (of course), but wanted to do things as normal people do (translating: asking at an agency for a job), therefore needed a ride, since she didn’t have a license and didn’t drive. Check.
But, but, but, the doc was in no shape to drive anything. So one evening he had asked Sawyer if he could give her a ride and he had said sure, as long as she doesn’t complain about his car. Because like hell that he was gonna clean up that old wreck of a car just because of that. Check.
She hadn’t complained, true, but she hadn’t found anything for some reasons and had needed another ride. And another. Check.
So now Sawyer is stuck in the traffic with her again, thankful of working only the afternoon hours (hey, kids go to school in the morning. If they skip they go playing football, not in the library. Most of anyway), listening for the third day in a row to exactly the same talking. Check.
He’s almost sure that she’s doing this on fucking purpose because how can someone ask the same damned questions for three days in a row? Anyway, it’s not like he can actually, well, tell her. Right? That would so not be the case, and sincerely, while he could find himself some other place, he likes it where he is enough, especially because the doc’s not that bad of a company when there aren’t women issues in between and well, he figures he’s much too old to start again anew.
“... so there was this secretary thing but there was shorthand needed and...”
You never studied that because you were just about but then you met Daddy Dearest at some student’s shit...
“... and well, you know, things lead to another, we were married in six months so I really haven’t. But am I annoying you? Maybe you just...”
“Ain’t a problem. But we’re here, so we might just continue this evening?”
Because if she didn’t find anything by lunch time she always had a friend living near with whom she could spend the afternoon.
“Oh, yes, sure.”
She doesn’t thank him for the ride but it’s okay, he asked Jack for it specifically. She gets out of the car to her high-class agency and Sawyer figures that he has time to see whether the latest James Ellroy is out on paperback.
--
Of course she doesn’t find the job, but when he’s back home and he tells Jack, the doc just shrugs and tells him that she might have walked a long way, but being content with something that doesn’t live up to her expectations isn’t something his mother will ever do. Sawyer wants to say that maybe he understood the way blood runs in the family but keeps his mouth shut and reads his new paperback while Jack watches the fucking Red Sox game. Sawyer pretty much hates baseball, but ignoring the thing works better than distracting Jack from the game, or trying to. Especially because if he can’t manage it after he managed to get Jack off Oxycodone with only the help of that friend Mark of his and lacking personal knowledge, trying is pretty hopeless.
--
So the next morning he’s back to square one again, not daring to ask Mrs. Doc if she’d like some music. Maybe because he fears her taste is really nothing close to his.
So he gets the whole speech again and he guesses every single line of it until...
“Would you mind if I asked you one thing? Personal, I fear.”
Sawyer doesn’t turn because he’d make an accident, even if he sort of jumps in his seat. Well, she must have got bored always with that same pattern and he answers yes, hoping she hasn’t googled him (if she knows how to use the Internet at all) and that it concerns something along the lines of the reasons why his backseat is an heterogeneous composition of James Ellroy, Stephen King, some pulp fiction he bought for a dollar, Alexandre Dumas and Henry James. Especially because he doesn’t have an answer for it.
“How is that Jack and you became friends?”
Right, now that was the one million dollar question. How the fuck is he ever going to answer that, especially since they might have been called friends now, but if they were in the real sense of the word, it had started the day Jack set foot back on the island.
“That’d be a though question.”
“Well, seems like we’re stuck.”
Fuck yes, we are, he has to admit, since they hadn’t been moving for five minutes.
“We had... quite a rocky relationship.”
“You did?”
If the tables were turned I’d watch you die.
“Well, yeah, pretty much. But you know, at first.”
“Then?”
“Oh, well, then... we could say we sort of respected each other.”
I've got something for you. You're the only one on the raft who knows how to use one.
What do I need a gun for?
Just in case.
“Sort of?”
“It was... complicated.”
“Then?”
“Well, he sort of saved my life. A couple of times. Can’t forget such things, right?”
And he’s feeling pretty uncomfortable now. The traffic is heavy, they moved maybe three feet or so since this conversation started and hell, isn’t she just sharp.
“I guess not. That’s when you became friends so?”
“Quite. Well, there were some other... rocky things. But I considered him one. Sorta.”
Why are you telling me this, Sawyer?
Because you're about the closest thing I've got to a friend, Doc.
“You like sort of.”
“I could always switch to kind of.”, he says, turning slightly and flashing the smile again.
Shit, she really is a off key note on his car.
She laughs and shakes her head.
“Sort of is fine. So what then?”
“Then... well, there was a woman.”
Suddenly there’s silence and he can see her nodding; looks like she understood.
“Guess you know who I’m referrin’ to.”
“Oh, I did. Let me tell you, I never liked her much, but you know. He was alive. I figured I wasn’t going to interfere with his love life, though maybe I’d have done it, well, before.”
Sawyer doesn’t know what the hell is making her play confidant with him of everyone but he just nods, knowing she’s watching the rear view mirror, too.
“Was she with you?”
Saying she had a hard time decidin’ isn’t maybe the best option.
“Well, it was a fling.”
“For her.”
“What?”
He turns and looks at her questioningly, but she shakes her head and as soon as she does the traffic starts to speed up and they’re at the agency two minutes later. That evening they don’t speak and Sawyer is pretty much glad for it, even if she hasn’t found a job and he’s sick of kids saying that playing Nintendo DS is better than reading Treasure Island.
He comes home to find out that Jack has attempted to cook dinner.
The results were sort of disastrous and they order Chinese take-away.
--
A week passes and she still hasn’t found anything. But she doesn’t press on the how did you and Jack become friends issue and it’s pretty much enough. Until one day she comes with a tape, saying that she’d like to hear some music. Sawyer shrugs and puts it in. Beethoven isn’t exactly his cup of tea but that’s fine, if anything it isn’t silence.
Except that she has to ruin that delightful Third Symphony in the best moment, just when he was really digging it, to run the embarrassing route again.
“They couldn’t work.”
“Who?”
“Jack and her. I just had the sensation.”
Like I need to be reminded he was marryin’ her. Right, he doesn’t seem happy to talk about it, but...
“Well, me and her, we ain’t an item either.”
Sawyer wonders whether she knows about Aaron. He doesn’t want to risk though, so he shuts the hell up anyway.
“You know, as soon as I remember, Jack never kept anyone in his house for more than a year.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean... apart from Mark, but that’s another matter... Sarah left after eleven months or so...”
Sarah has to be the ex-wife, he reasoned.
“... at university he never got a roommate I think, with her it was... well, six months or so... I think you’ve beaten every record up to now.”
“I pay him for stayin’.”
“But if you didn’t want to stay, you’d leave.”
Sawyer is really thankful for being at the agency already and for the fact that she isn’t talkative in the evenings. And that particular evening he drags Jack out of the house to an apocalyptic sci-fi marathon including Escape from New York and Escape from Los Angeles just because he knows that Jack hates that kind of movie.
--
Three weeks and she still hasn’t found work; but when one day she sits in Sawyer’s car wearing jeans and a nice white clean shirt he can’t help blinking a couple of times. She just looks at him like nothing is weird and gets in the car, saying that she figured that maybe she would get a better chance with young clothes.
Sawyer shrugs and takes the information; when she starts with the same useless rambling about how he must be annoyed of being her taxi driver he answers the same thing and then she starts saying that she won’t ever find a job related to what she was studying before marrying Daddy Dearest.
When he asks her what was she studying and she says music, he thinks he knows why Jack won’t just give up on playing that piano even if his fingers start to shake after a minute.
--
Then he goes to work and has a talk with his boss, who, being the boss, does absolutely nothing all day while he works and he finds out that he’s wondering to set an hour in the afternoons for children to have music lessons. Turns out that the guy has studied music and was a pretty decent piano player before becoming a librarian, that he’s writing some book about whatever positive effects listening to Mozart’s music has on the brain just for fun and that he’d need someone to be his secretary just for fun.
Sawyer knows that he should keep his mouth shut, but he calls Jack and asks whether he thinks this would work. Jack says that it looks like something she’d do and so Sawyer tells her that evening and leaves his boss’ number.
--
Needless to say, he hires her and wants her in his office, first afternoon, three days each week. Which means that Sawyer is stuck driving her three days a week and he really doesn’t like how Jack seems to have fun with the whole of this situation, but he just lets it go and since the day before he was subjected to the Red Sox and he will be subjected to the doc’s mother for a long time, he drags him out to have Indian even if Jack pretends to hate Indian food. It’s not like he doesn’t eat it anyway.
--
Jack spends three days at Shirley and Laverne’s version 2.0 each month and while Sawyer doesn’t object at all to be around the kid, he doesn’t feel comfortable being around the kid, Jack, Kate and Claire at once and so he knows that he’ll be alone when he comes home after dropping Jack’s mom.
“It’s more than a year, right?”, she asks a good ten minutes before they’re there, and Sawyer just wishes she could shut the fuck up.
“Yeah...”
“... sort of.”
He pretends to laugh at that.
“You know, he’s fine.”
“Jack? Sure he is.”
“I just mean, I never saw him as fine as he is now.”
Sawyer would have his doubts regarding how actually fine Jack is, it ain’t all flowers and birdies singing in the sky for sure, but he lets that go and doesn’t answer.
“Those kids tired you today?”
“Well, try to get ‘em to shut up when they’re inside.”
She laughs and Sawyer hopes she got her hint. He fuckin’ wasn’t in for this package deal.
“I figure you wouldn’t want kids.”
Well, now this is becoming a tad too personal. Hey, he’s her taxi driver and her son’s roommate, she just shouldn’t, but alas, he can’t do a thing about it.
“I’m havin’ enough for the rest of my life.”
Truth to be told, I have one already and I see her once every two months because she lives in fuckin’ New Mexico, even if lately I haven’t been able to go much.
“No girlfriends?”
Are you my fuckin’ mother? , he wants to ask her, but he shuts up as he knows how to.
“No time for one. Don’t really want one either. I ain’t much good at keeping women.”
“Guess you’re better at keeping something else, then?”
They’re there and she leaves the car before Sawyer can ask for an explanation, but before he can sort the thing out and walks into the dark living room, he feels like something’s missing.
When he starts watching the Red Sox game just because he knows that Jack is doing it somewhere else making Aaron extremely happy and both Shirley and Laverne extremely pissed, he understands that something is just not right.
Fuck Jack’s mom and their conversation. Thankfully tomorrow he doesn’t have to drive her.
--
Except that tomorrow is his day off, Jack is still at Laverne and Shirley’s and he spends it watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit, reading the pulp fiction (which sucked), the last Ellroy (which didn’t suck) and ordering Indian take away for lunch. He eats on the couch while finishing the pulp one (and God, if he finished it in two hours it did suck indeed) and he has never felt this way when Jack is in Seventh Heaven.
There’s something wrong indeed, except that when Jack comes in and says everything was fine and he and Kate are actually on speaking terms and well, is there anything wrong here, Sawyer answers no, there isn’t. Not really.
--
The day Jack tells him his mom must really like him, Sawyer answers that it’s just because of the rides. Then Jack says that she really likes him and that she never really liked any of the people he has always shared the house with. She hadn’t even come to his wedding.
Sawyer shrugs and says it’s Southern Charm.
--
The day after isn’t a ride one and Sawyer doesn’t object when Jack asks whether he minds if he watches a tape game; he just stays on the couch and reads. As usual. Just as usual.
Except that at one certain point Jack stops the tape and says that well, he has really been the best person he could have shared the house with, and he pretty damn blushes while saying it; Sawyer doesn’t know how it happens but next thing he knows they’re quite making out on the couch, Jack’s hands grip his shoulder, Sawyer’s go to frame Jack’s face and moans while Jack’s tongue is having a thorough and precise examination of his mouth. He tastes like the double coffee the crazy guy had after dinner, how can someone have coffee after dinner Sawyer doesn’t know, and then he just doesn’t give a shit anymore and doesn’t object when he ends up with his back on the couch and Jack on top of him.
--
The next day Jack’s mom is all smiles and no questions and Sawyer doesn’t really understand how could she have understood, it’s not like Jack called her first thing in the morning, but then he realizes that there’s a visible bite on his neck when they’re at a traffic stop.
Fuck, he mutters. He has to accept the foundation she passes him and applies it while she goes inside the library.
Fuck, indeed.
--
When he’s home that night, he just calls Jack from his mobile and tells him to get the fuck down.
“What’s up now?”, he asks, still in the suit from the hospital.
“See, it’s a while that the only passenger’s this car has seen is your mother. Which ain’t a problem with me really, but see, she’s startin’ to want some variety.”
“Really. So what?”
Sawyer reaches behind his seat and takes a bottle of beer he bought from the first open mini-market he had found.
“It’s night. I’ve got beer and highway’s free. What ‘bout it, Doc?”
Jack smiles just slightly, snatches the beer and looks straight at him.
“As long as you don’t drink and I don’t drive, I’m game.”
“Then get your ass up here.”
When the brief kiss Sawyer figured was going to happen isn’t really brief but threatens to turn into something that would grant them at least a couple of reports from the neighbors, it’s sort of painful to part. But as soon as Sawyer starts the car and drives off to some place in the opposite direction of the one he came from, he can’t help feeling weird with the back seat empty and the radio blasting some good old Rolling Stones and not Liszt or whatever.
He doesn’t mind though. He figures he’ll forget soon enough.
End.
Title: Mother In Law
Pairing: Jack/Sawyer, Margo Shephard being a special guest
Word counting: 4000
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: They're not mine and the song I stole from is Springsteen's.
Spoilers: for the S4 finale. Totally AU after that.
Summary: He waits for the small nod he’s sure will come, then turns back and presses his head against the seat before starting up again, trying to remember how exactly has he ended in this fucked up situation, driving Jack’s mom to an employment agency for the last three days. Because right now it seems just surreal, too surreal for him to believe it’s actually happening.
A/N: for Queen
invisiblelove at lostsquee, who wanted happy Jack/Sawyer. Well, I had had this bunny since forever and it is happy. Please take as your reference the Margo we saw in the finale because if we went on the White Rabbit canon she'd be completely OOC. This was heavily inspired by Bruce Springsteen's Sherry Darling and yes, I'm obsessed. I sort of am. I hope the Queen enjoys!“Are you really sure? I mean, I know I asked you already and that you already said yes, but well, I do feel awkward and...”
“Ma’am, we already done this. Yesterday and the day before. And I assure you that I ain’t got a problem with it.”
“Oh, thanks. You know, it’s just, I haven’t found anything already and...”
And you never worked a day in your life, you really wanna find a job even if hubby dearest and Jack dearest have all the money you could ever wish for ‘cause you realized that there’s somethin’ missing, especially the driver’s license you never bothered to take. Also, Jack wanted to drive you but...
“... well, it’s just that after what... what’s happened to him, you know, I would rather not have him driving, not really...”
... and it’s really so sweet of me to go through all of this burden to make you a favor...
“... you know, that other friend of Jack’s maybe would have but just once and...”
Sawyer catches the occasion to stop the car at a red light and turns towards the backseat, a hand resting on the empty passenger’s seat, flashing his winning smile with the previous targets’ parents at the doc’s mom, who is sitting there in his three-times used car. She’s a like an off-key note, dressed in her pretty green skirt and matching jacket, her new shoes, a nice summer hat in her hands, among the four or five paperbacks that are scattered there in the back, his jeans jacket, an opened box full of random chocolate snacks for long drives, a box full of tapes for the radio and, well, the part of the backseat where she isn’t sitting, where the seat cover is completely torn.
“Mrs. Shephard, really, don’t worry. That ain’t a problem.”
He waits for the small nod he’s sure will come, then turns back and presses his head against the seat before starting up again, trying to remember how exactly has he ended in this fucked up situation, driving Jack’s mom to an employment agency for the last three days. Because right now it seems just surreal, too surreal for him to believe it’s actually happening.
So. Exactly one year ago, the doc and the other five lost sheep had finally found the Almighty Piece of Rock. Check.
There, a lot of Very Strange Things had happened; things that included stuff that, last time Sawyer checked, was to be found only in the Bible or sci-fi movies, especially the fact that they had been there six months and turns out that it had been two years. Oh well, that wasn’t the problem. Point was, a lot of things happened and for some miracle, everyone had come out of it alive. Check.
They were all back in the mainland; him, Jin, Juliet, Claire (who had emerged from the jungle one day seemingly not remembering a thing since the day Jack called the freighter), Miles, Charlotte and Daniel from the island (Rose and Bernard had stayed, Locke and the bug eyed freak formerly known as Henry Gale did too and Sawyer would rather ignore the issue); the six plus Sun’s girl and Walt who had retrieved his dog from the island. Check.
Now, Kate and Claire had ended up playing Shirley and Laverne version 2.0 or something with Aaron, except that it looked like the doc was the kid’s uncle after all and whatever, he wasn’t allowed to see him until he sobered up. Check.
And that was the matter. Check.
Because while it looked like Hurley and Al Jazeera were trying to work out their issues with a jointed trip somewhere very far, the doc hadn’t opted to go with them. Truth to be told, he was a pretty fucked up mess when he had arrived on the island and was a pretty fucked up mess when they were back. Check.
And since Sawyer, apart from having a couple of talks with Kate that had convinced him of how much it was not going to work and had seemingly developed a taste for masochism at the same time, he had ended up moving in with the doc, trying to assure that at least he didn’t commit suicide accidentally. Check.
After all, Sawyer had managed to do a pretty good job of convincing the doc that it wasn’t just the case to die before hitting his fiftieth year of age, since after nine months he had been in considerably better shape, enough to work as a consultant or something for a free clinic. Check.
Better not think about what exactly had taken to fulfill such a deed. Check.
At one point he had convinced the doc to call his fucking mother, since he seemingly hadn’t done so since much before leaving for the island and for how many guilt issues Jack could have regardings her and Daddy Dearest, at least he fucking had a mother. Not that Sawyer was ever going to tell him that, but anyway. Check.
So she had actually shown up there in tears embracing Jack like her life depended on it, and Sawyer had just picked up his book and went to read in the next room. Check.
So everything was just peachy and while the doc did human hours at the free clinic Sawyer ended up being a part time librarian at the kids’ library near Aaron’s school, which he had lightly taken as just the last coincidences of an endless chain. Check.
And perfect it was, until Margo showed up one day telling Jack that she wanted to find a job.
Which was, in Sawyer’s opinion, perfectly crazy since she had enough money to last her a lifetime. But she had started this rant saying that since Daddy Dearest died and she thought Jack was she hadn’t felt like the same person, that when Jack was back she had reflected about their relationship or shit like that and Sawyer hadn’t really paid attention. Not until the part where she said that having never worked all of her life she realized she felt like dead weight. Which was, in Sawyer’s opinion, even crazier since if there was a reason he was working was ‘cause he wasn’t gonna owe anything to the doc and he was determined to pay his share for the bed he slept on and he didn’t have an Oceanic settlement; but if he could have avoided it, he’d have gladly done so. Check.
Point was, Jack’s mom lived in a residential zone (of course) and didn’t take the bus (of course), but wanted to do things as normal people do (translating: asking at an agency for a job), therefore needed a ride, since she didn’t have a license and didn’t drive. Check.
But, but, but, the doc was in no shape to drive anything. So one evening he had asked Sawyer if he could give her a ride and he had said sure, as long as she doesn’t complain about his car. Because like hell that he was gonna clean up that old wreck of a car just because of that. Check.
She hadn’t complained, true, but she hadn’t found anything for some reasons and had needed another ride. And another. Check.
So now Sawyer is stuck in the traffic with her again, thankful of working only the afternoon hours (hey, kids go to school in the morning. If they skip they go playing football, not in the library. Most of anyway), listening for the third day in a row to exactly the same talking. Check.
He’s almost sure that she’s doing this on fucking purpose because how can someone ask the same damned questions for three days in a row? Anyway, it’s not like he can actually, well, tell her. Right? That would so not be the case, and sincerely, while he could find himself some other place, he likes it where he is enough, especially because the doc’s not that bad of a company when there aren’t women issues in between and well, he figures he’s much too old to start again anew.
“... so there was this secretary thing but there was shorthand needed and...”
You never studied that because you were just about but then you met Daddy Dearest at some student’s shit...
“... and well, you know, things lead to another, we were married in six months so I really haven’t. But am I annoying you? Maybe you just...”
“Ain’t a problem. But we’re here, so we might just continue this evening?”
Because if she didn’t find anything by lunch time she always had a friend living near with whom she could spend the afternoon.
“Oh, yes, sure.”
She doesn’t thank him for the ride but it’s okay, he asked Jack for it specifically. She gets out of the car to her high-class agency and Sawyer figures that he has time to see whether the latest James Ellroy is out on paperback.
--
Of course she doesn’t find the job, but when he’s back home and he tells Jack, the doc just shrugs and tells him that she might have walked a long way, but being content with something that doesn’t live up to her expectations isn’t something his mother will ever do. Sawyer wants to say that maybe he understood the way blood runs in the family but keeps his mouth shut and reads his new paperback while Jack watches the fucking Red Sox game. Sawyer pretty much hates baseball, but ignoring the thing works better than distracting Jack from the game, or trying to. Especially because if he can’t manage it after he managed to get Jack off Oxycodone with only the help of that friend Mark of his and lacking personal knowledge, trying is pretty hopeless.
--
So the next morning he’s back to square one again, not daring to ask Mrs. Doc if she’d like some music. Maybe because he fears her taste is really nothing close to his.
So he gets the whole speech again and he guesses every single line of it until...
“Would you mind if I asked you one thing? Personal, I fear.”
Sawyer doesn’t turn because he’d make an accident, even if he sort of jumps in his seat. Well, she must have got bored always with that same pattern and he answers yes, hoping she hasn’t googled him (if she knows how to use the Internet at all) and that it concerns something along the lines of the reasons why his backseat is an heterogeneous composition of James Ellroy, Stephen King, some pulp fiction he bought for a dollar, Alexandre Dumas and Henry James. Especially because he doesn’t have an answer for it.
“How is that Jack and you became friends?”
Right, now that was the one million dollar question. How the fuck is he ever going to answer that, especially since they might have been called friends now, but if they were in the real sense of the word, it had started the day Jack set foot back on the island.
“That’d be a though question.”
“Well, seems like we’re stuck.”
Fuck yes, we are, he has to admit, since they hadn’t been moving for five minutes.
“We had... quite a rocky relationship.”
“You did?”
If the tables were turned I’d watch you die.
“Well, yeah, pretty much. But you know, at first.”
“Then?”
“Oh, well, then... we could say we sort of respected each other.”
I've got something for you. You're the only one on the raft who knows how to use one.
What do I need a gun for?
Just in case.
“Sort of?”
“It was... complicated.”
“Then?”
“Well, he sort of saved my life. A couple of times. Can’t forget such things, right?”
And he’s feeling pretty uncomfortable now. The traffic is heavy, they moved maybe three feet or so since this conversation started and hell, isn’t she just sharp.
“I guess not. That’s when you became friends so?”
“Quite. Well, there were some other... rocky things. But I considered him one. Sorta.”
Why are you telling me this, Sawyer?
Because you're about the closest thing I've got to a friend, Doc.
“You like sort of.”
“I could always switch to kind of.”, he says, turning slightly and flashing the smile again.
Shit, she really is a off key note on his car.
She laughs and shakes her head.
“Sort of is fine. So what then?”
“Then... well, there was a woman.”
Suddenly there’s silence and he can see her nodding; looks like she understood.
“Guess you know who I’m referrin’ to.”
“Oh, I did. Let me tell you, I never liked her much, but you know. He was alive. I figured I wasn’t going to interfere with his love life, though maybe I’d have done it, well, before.”
Sawyer doesn’t know what the hell is making her play confidant with him of everyone but he just nods, knowing she’s watching the rear view mirror, too.
“Was she with you?”
Saying she had a hard time decidin’ isn’t maybe the best option.
“Well, it was a fling.”
“For her.”
“What?”
He turns and looks at her questioningly, but she shakes her head and as soon as she does the traffic starts to speed up and they’re at the agency two minutes later. That evening they don’t speak and Sawyer is pretty much glad for it, even if she hasn’t found a job and he’s sick of kids saying that playing Nintendo DS is better than reading Treasure Island.
He comes home to find out that Jack has attempted to cook dinner.
The results were sort of disastrous and they order Chinese take-away.
--
A week passes and she still hasn’t found anything. But she doesn’t press on the how did you and Jack become friends issue and it’s pretty much enough. Until one day she comes with a tape, saying that she’d like to hear some music. Sawyer shrugs and puts it in. Beethoven isn’t exactly his cup of tea but that’s fine, if anything it isn’t silence.
Except that she has to ruin that delightful Third Symphony in the best moment, just when he was really digging it, to run the embarrassing route again.
“They couldn’t work.”
“Who?”
“Jack and her. I just had the sensation.”
Like I need to be reminded he was marryin’ her. Right, he doesn’t seem happy to talk about it, but...
“Well, me and her, we ain’t an item either.”
Sawyer wonders whether she knows about Aaron. He doesn’t want to risk though, so he shuts the hell up anyway.
“You know, as soon as I remember, Jack never kept anyone in his house for more than a year.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean... apart from Mark, but that’s another matter... Sarah left after eleven months or so...”
Sarah has to be the ex-wife, he reasoned.
“... at university he never got a roommate I think, with her it was... well, six months or so... I think you’ve beaten every record up to now.”
“I pay him for stayin’.”
“But if you didn’t want to stay, you’d leave.”
Sawyer is really thankful for being at the agency already and for the fact that she isn’t talkative in the evenings. And that particular evening he drags Jack out of the house to an apocalyptic sci-fi marathon including Escape from New York and Escape from Los Angeles just because he knows that Jack hates that kind of movie.
--
Three weeks and she still hasn’t found work; but when one day she sits in Sawyer’s car wearing jeans and a nice white clean shirt he can’t help blinking a couple of times. She just looks at him like nothing is weird and gets in the car, saying that she figured that maybe she would get a better chance with young clothes.
Sawyer shrugs and takes the information; when she starts with the same useless rambling about how he must be annoyed of being her taxi driver he answers the same thing and then she starts saying that she won’t ever find a job related to what she was studying before marrying Daddy Dearest.
When he asks her what was she studying and she says music, he thinks he knows why Jack won’t just give up on playing that piano even if his fingers start to shake after a minute.
--
Then he goes to work and has a talk with his boss, who, being the boss, does absolutely nothing all day while he works and he finds out that he’s wondering to set an hour in the afternoons for children to have music lessons. Turns out that the guy has studied music and was a pretty decent piano player before becoming a librarian, that he’s writing some book about whatever positive effects listening to Mozart’s music has on the brain just for fun and that he’d need someone to be his secretary just for fun.
Sawyer knows that he should keep his mouth shut, but he calls Jack and asks whether he thinks this would work. Jack says that it looks like something she’d do and so Sawyer tells her that evening and leaves his boss’ number.
--
Needless to say, he hires her and wants her in his office, first afternoon, three days each week. Which means that Sawyer is stuck driving her three days a week and he really doesn’t like how Jack seems to have fun with the whole of this situation, but he just lets it go and since the day before he was subjected to the Red Sox and he will be subjected to the doc’s mother for a long time, he drags him out to have Indian even if Jack pretends to hate Indian food. It’s not like he doesn’t eat it anyway.
--
Jack spends three days at Shirley and Laverne’s version 2.0 each month and while Sawyer doesn’t object at all to be around the kid, he doesn’t feel comfortable being around the kid, Jack, Kate and Claire at once and so he knows that he’ll be alone when he comes home after dropping Jack’s mom.
“It’s more than a year, right?”, she asks a good ten minutes before they’re there, and Sawyer just wishes she could shut the fuck up.
“Yeah...”
“... sort of.”
He pretends to laugh at that.
“You know, he’s fine.”
“Jack? Sure he is.”
“I just mean, I never saw him as fine as he is now.”
Sawyer would have his doubts regarding how actually fine Jack is, it ain’t all flowers and birdies singing in the sky for sure, but he lets that go and doesn’t answer.
“Those kids tired you today?”
“Well, try to get ‘em to shut up when they’re inside.”
She laughs and Sawyer hopes she got her hint. He fuckin’ wasn’t in for this package deal.
“I figure you wouldn’t want kids.”
Well, now this is becoming a tad too personal. Hey, he’s her taxi driver and her son’s roommate, she just shouldn’t, but alas, he can’t do a thing about it.
“I’m havin’ enough for the rest of my life.”
Truth to be told, I have one already and I see her once every two months because she lives in fuckin’ New Mexico, even if lately I haven’t been able to go much.
“No girlfriends?”
Are you my fuckin’ mother? , he wants to ask her, but he shuts up as he knows how to.
“No time for one. Don’t really want one either. I ain’t much good at keeping women.”
“Guess you’re better at keeping something else, then?”
They’re there and she leaves the car before Sawyer can ask for an explanation, but before he can sort the thing out and walks into the dark living room, he feels like something’s missing.
When he starts watching the Red Sox game just because he knows that Jack is doing it somewhere else making Aaron extremely happy and both Shirley and Laverne extremely pissed, he understands that something is just not right.
Fuck Jack’s mom and their conversation. Thankfully tomorrow he doesn’t have to drive her.
--
Except that tomorrow is his day off, Jack is still at Laverne and Shirley’s and he spends it watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit, reading the pulp fiction (which sucked), the last Ellroy (which didn’t suck) and ordering Indian take away for lunch. He eats on the couch while finishing the pulp one (and God, if he finished it in two hours it did suck indeed) and he has never felt this way when Jack is in Seventh Heaven.
There’s something wrong indeed, except that when Jack comes in and says everything was fine and he and Kate are actually on speaking terms and well, is there anything wrong here, Sawyer answers no, there isn’t. Not really.
--
The day Jack tells him his mom must really like him, Sawyer answers that it’s just because of the rides. Then Jack says that she really likes him and that she never really liked any of the people he has always shared the house with. She hadn’t even come to his wedding.
Sawyer shrugs and says it’s Southern Charm.
--
The day after isn’t a ride one and Sawyer doesn’t object when Jack asks whether he minds if he watches a tape game; he just stays on the couch and reads. As usual. Just as usual.
Except that at one certain point Jack stops the tape and says that well, he has really been the best person he could have shared the house with, and he pretty damn blushes while saying it; Sawyer doesn’t know how it happens but next thing he knows they’re quite making out on the couch, Jack’s hands grip his shoulder, Sawyer’s go to frame Jack’s face and moans while Jack’s tongue is having a thorough and precise examination of his mouth. He tastes like the double coffee the crazy guy had after dinner, how can someone have coffee after dinner Sawyer doesn’t know, and then he just doesn’t give a shit anymore and doesn’t object when he ends up with his back on the couch and Jack on top of him.
--
The next day Jack’s mom is all smiles and no questions and Sawyer doesn’t really understand how could she have understood, it’s not like Jack called her first thing in the morning, but then he realizes that there’s a visible bite on his neck when they’re at a traffic stop.
Fuck, he mutters. He has to accept the foundation she passes him and applies it while she goes inside the library.
Fuck, indeed.
--
When he’s home that night, he just calls Jack from his mobile and tells him to get the fuck down.
“What’s up now?”, he asks, still in the suit from the hospital.
“See, it’s a while that the only passenger’s this car has seen is your mother. Which ain’t a problem with me really, but see, she’s startin’ to want some variety.”
“Really. So what?”
Sawyer reaches behind his seat and takes a bottle of beer he bought from the first open mini-market he had found.
“It’s night. I’ve got beer and highway’s free. What ‘bout it, Doc?”
Jack smiles just slightly, snatches the beer and looks straight at him.
“As long as you don’t drink and I don’t drive, I’m game.”
“Then get your ass up here.”
When the brief kiss Sawyer figured was going to happen isn’t really brief but threatens to turn into something that would grant them at least a couple of reports from the neighbors, it’s sort of painful to part. But as soon as Sawyer starts the car and drives off to some place in the opposite direction of the one he came from, he can’t help feeling weird with the back seat empty and the radio blasting some good old Rolling Stones and not Liszt or whatever.
He doesn’t mind though. He figures he’ll forget soon enough.
End.
