Title: Seven Days - Part One
Rating: PG-13
Summary: They were late. Again. Just once Jack would like to not be the last person to arrive, to not be the one that gets stared at because he wasn’t there early, because he hasn’t had to endure the mindless chit-chat and tiny portions of pretentious food as long as everyone else had.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who offered their advice. I decided, in the end, to obey my muse lest she run off on me again, but let me just say this in no way means I'm giving up on 'A Dull, Aching Pain'. It's just being sluggish these days, and this one, well, it isn't. As well as that, this is another personal, cathartic thing for me, and once you read it, some of you may know why. Oh, and just to be weird and quirky, all of the OCs in this story are named after members of my family. ;)



Part One: Sunday

They were late. Again. Just once Jack would like to not be the last person to arrive, to not be the one that gets stared at because he wasn’t there early, because he hasn’t had to endure the mindless chit-chat and tiny portions of pretentious food as long as everyone else had.

“We don’t have to go, you know,” is what Sawyer always says. Jack just nods, says he knows, but the fact of the matter is, it just isn’t true. He does have to go.

He still remembers the last time he missed a hospital function. Sawyer’d had the flu and Jack hadn’t felt comfortable leaving him home alone or going to the Opera by himself when he didn’t want to go in the first place – at least when Sawyer was there the jokes he whispered in Jack’s ear were enough to combat the endless boredom. The next day when he returned to work, after making sure Sawyer had plenty of medicine in him, his boss, Dan, had asked him if he was alright, and when he had replied that he was just fine, Dan had wondered aloud where he had been the previous night instead of the Opera.

So these things, boring and tedious though they were, were not optional. Not if he didn’t want to hear all about his absence for the next few days – and he most certainly did not.

“Are you almost done?” Jack calls into the bathroom from his place on the edge of the bed. He hates the suit he’s wearing, mostly because he hates suits, and the shoes he’s in the process of tying are incredibly uncomfortable.

Sawyer curses a few times, then grumbles loudly at Jack, “I hate this fuckin’ thing.”

Jack sighs. “Just wear a tie then.”

“I almost got it,” he argues. “Ah, shit.”

He gets up from the bed then, walks into the bathroom to find Sawyer standing in the mirror, still struggling with the bowtie he decided to put on ten minutes ago. Jack smiles at him. Sawyer scowls back.

“Just wear a tie,” he repeats.

“I almost got it,” Sawyer repeats right back.

Jack rolls his eyes, walks out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom. “We’re already late, you know,” he says.

He knows that if he could see Sawyer, he would be rolling his eyes right now. He is, however, able to hear him grumble, “Yeah, yeah.”

Jack thinks he does things like this on purpose, tries to make them late under the guise of being stubborn and difficult, so that the time they spend among people they don’t really know or like is limited, so that they only talk to who they have to talk to. He smiles, hopes Sawyer never figures out the bowtie.

So he just lays on across the middle of the bed with his legs bent over the end, staring up at the ceiling and waiting. His eyes drift open and closed and he really just wants to crawl under the blankets, pull Sawyer with him, and sleep the rest of his weekend away. His mind holds onto the thought and it makes his smile wider.

Until the phone rings, and it all but falls off his face. He groans and rolls over, facing the cordless on the nightstand and scowling at it.

“You gonna get that?” Sawyer calls from the bathroom.

Jack sighs. He doesn’t bother to check the caller ID. “It’s probably Dan calling to ask me if I’m alright,” he says, with as much sarcasm as possible.

“Ignore him then,” Sawyer answers tersely. He hates Dan. He says that it’s one thing for him to give Jack shit, but when other people do it, is pisses him off.

“I can’t,” he replies, even though he would very much like to. He stands, walks around the bed, and pulls the phone from it’s cradle. “Jack Shephard,” he sighs out his name.


Sawyer is fed up. He throws the bowtie in onto the counter, sick of looking at it, of trying to get it on. He’ll just wear a tie. The upside, he figures, is that they’ll be late, that he’ll have to spend just that much less time in the company of Jack’s colleagues, who they both barely knew or liked to begin with.

He pulls the closest tie off of the rack, a charcoal grey one of Jack’s that he thinks will match his suit well enough, and throws it around his loosely neck as he makes his way into the bedroom.

“What time’s it gettin’ to be?” he asks, stopping short when he sees Jack. Suddenly, he’s struggling to breathe.

Jack looks terrible. The phone hangs limply in his hand, forgotten, as he stares at the closed door of their bedroom with an empty expression. His face is like slate, and he’s still and quiet and he looks so unlike himself that Sawyer is instantly scared.

“What happened?” he asks, rounding the bed as quickly has he can and kneeling in front of Jack. He takes the phone from his hand – Jack gives no resistance, scaring Sawyer even more – and puts it on the nightstand. Jack’s eyes wander over the wall, the door, going lower and lower until they settle on Sawyer’s face. Jack’s eyes look hollow.

“My mother…” he says, in a far away voice, a voice so quiet Sawyer wouldn’t have been able to hear him were he not sitting directly in front of him. “My mother had a heart attack.”

Sawyer’s stomach drops out. “Is she alright?” he asks dumbly. He may have hated the woman, but even in his darkest moments, even when he was mad as hell at her for what she put him through, for what she put Jack through, because of him, he had never wished for this. Women like Margo Shephard, he had always figured, were to stubborn to die of anything but old age.

Jack shakes his head, and Sawyer drops his, closes his eyes. “No,” Jack says. The emptiness has spread from his eyes, crept into his voice, made it crack. “She passed away an hour ago.”

He lifted his gaze back, because he had to. He swallows his feelings about Jack’s mother, knowing that isn’t what Jack needs from him now. He’s not sure what he does need, not even losing two parents of his own can tell him that. So he waits. He waits for Jack to tell him.

But Jack doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move, for a long time. He just looks down at Sawyer and Sawyer looks up at him. He can see Jack feels lost, helpless, and he feels it too, so he reaches out, holds Jack’s hands in his. Jack responds by bowing his head so that his eyes are no longer visible, so that his head nearly touches Sawyer’s hands.

“Why don’t you lay down,” Sawyer suggests. Jack doesn’t move, so Sawyer presses, “Come on, Jack, lay down and I’ll get you some water.” He squeezes Jack’s hands and finally gets him to look back up, to nod. Sawyer nods back, pulling off Jack’s suit jacket, his shoes, knowing Jack will just fall back into an uncomfortable heap on the bed if he doesn’t.

His hand finds Jack’s again as he stands. “I’ll be right back, okay?” Jack offers him only another small nod before his hand falls lifelessly from Sawyer’s and lands on the comforter.

Sawyer gives him one last pained glance before he leaves the bedroom, going down the stairs and into the kitchen. On his way to the cupboard to get a cup, he pulls the phone from the wall and quickly dials a familiar number. He rests the phone on his shoulder while he puts the cup on the counter and pours water from a jug in the fridge.

“Dorothy Weaver.”

“Hey Dorothy, it’s me,” Sawyer says, lifelessly.

“Hey Sawyer. You sound like crap,” she replies, giggling. Dorothy has always reminded him a lot of Claire. She’s always bubbly and happy and smiling, and as endearing as it can be, it can also be twice as annoying. Thank god for him, he was smart enough never to say that to her. Or Claire, for that matter.

“Yeah, thanks,” he replies.

“So, where are you guys? This is later than usual for you.”

“That’s why I called you, actually. We ain’t comin’.”

“And you want me to come up with a good excuse for you?” she asks, and Sawyer sighs. She isn’t off base, they’ve done that before – as she was Jack’s secretary, people always tended to believe her. But her good mood is getting on his nerves more than usual.

“We don’t need one,” he says, putting the jug back into the kitchen and leaning heavily against the marble of the kitchen counter. “Jack’s mom died.”

“Oh god.” He can tell from her tone that Dorothy’s mood has instantly changed. He knows the feeling. “Is he okay?”

“What do you think?” Sawyer asks tersely.

“That’s horrible, Sawyer. Tell him I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Will you just tell Dan we ain’t comin’, and if he calls to give Jack shit about it, I’ll kick his ass.”

“You want me to rephrase it a little bit?” she asks.

“Of course I do.”

“I’ll tell him,” she says sadly. “Take care of Jack.”

“Yeah,” Sawyer replies, saying a quick goodbye and hanging up the phone. He places facedown it on the counter, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. This all feels a little too familiar for his tastes, and he’s glad that he’s alone, that he has time to regroup and get control of the situation before he goes back upstairs to Jack.

He pushes himself away from the counter, taking the glass of water with him as he makes his way back up the stairs and to the bedroom door. He pushes it open gently, finding Jack more or less the way he left him, laying on his side, with his back facing the door.

This week is going to be hell, Sawyer thinks, walking around the bed and sitting down on his side. He holds the water out to Jack, but Jack doesn’t move. His face is puffy now and Sawyer knows that Jack had waited until he had left to cry. A part of him is hurt that Jack had tried to hide his pain from him, but another part is grateful, because Sawyer never knows what to do when people cry, least of all Jack.

“Drink it, Jack, you look like hell.” He hates himself for saying it, but he hasn’t seen Jack this grey since the day of Boone’s funeral. He had almost passed out, face first in the sand, that day. Sawyer had gotten him water then, and he was doing it again now.

Jack reaches out, slowly, like his hand is made of lead, before his fingers grasp the glass and bend it toward his lips. He drinks almost half, not realizing how much he needed it until he had it, before he hands the glass back to Sawyer.

Satisfied, Sawyer placed the cup on his nightstand, and turns back, eyeing Jack helplessly. God, he hates this. He is so tired of asking stupid questions, but he doesn’t know what else to do, so he sighs, runs his hands through his hair, and asks, “Anything you need me to do?”

Jack nods, his head heavy, and reaches out his hand again. “Come here?” he asks, almost timidly, almost like when they had first started this, when he didn’t know if he should ask Sawyer to stay with him during the night.

Sawyer went then, and he goes now, letting Jack pull him into his limp arms, burry his heavy head in his neck. Sawyer feels his eyes close against his skin, and his muscles finally begin to relax.

Jack falls asleep within ten minutes, but Sawyer doesn’t. He lays there with his head settled at an uncomfortable angle against his pillow, on top of a blanket that is bunched up underneath him, in a suit that is more than a little uncomfortable. He couldn’t have slept even if he tried. But he doesn’t move, doesn’t pull away from Jack’s body to make his more comfortable. Not even for a moment.

Part Two