Title: Fracture
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It’s been a while since he’s had to pick a lock, but luckily for him, it’s like riding a bicycle. Rusty or no, the lock eventually gives and he turns the handle, pushes the door open, and takes a deep breath.
Disclaimer: I don't own Lost. At all. I wish, but alas...
Author's Note: For gemjam, who is leaving for nine weeks. I will miss her dearly. Set after ‘Through the Looking Glass’, so it’s not exactly the happiest of fics. Also used for philosophy_20, prompt #3: ends justify the means.



“Jack, open the godamned door!” Sawyer pounds harder. It’s two in the morning, but he doubts anybody in Jack’s neighborhood is going to come out and complain about the noise. They’re probably all passed out, strung out, hung over. He just hopes that Jack isn’t. History has given him no reason to think he won’t be, but he still hopes. Every second that passes without an answer makes that hope wane.

“You don’t open it, I’m kickin’ it down,” he threatens. He waits. Nothing. Not a sound. He nurses the vain hope that Jack’s just ignoring him, calling his bluff, because shitty neighborhood or not, Sawyer isn’t going to kick down Jack’s door. He isn’t, however, above picking his lock. It wouldn’t even be hard.

“Fine, doc,” he mutters to himself. “Have it your way.”

He’s a little rusty. It’s been a while since he’s had to pick a lock, but luckily for him, it’s like riding a bicycle. Rusty or no, the lock eventually gives and he turns the handle, pushes the door open, and takes a deep breath.

The lights are off, so he turns to his left, finding the switch by memory and flipping it up. The small lamp on the floor is the only thing that lights up, illuminating the space around it. There are maps everywhere, empty liquor bottles, pencils, and other odds and ends. It hasn’t changed a bit.

Sawyer sighs and tugs off his leather jacket, throws it on the back of a chair and walks into the kitchen. He checks the fridge. There are some take out containers, an empty six-pack holder, and something that Sawyer can’t identify as it is mostly mold. He sighs again. Jack can’t live like this. Maybe that’s the point.

He closes the door and walks through the living room, kicking aside papers and pencils as he goes. He doesn’t care about ruining any of this. If this is what Jack feels he needs to do, fine, but damned if Sawyer’s going to make it easy for him. Jack wants to find the island, fix what he did, like he did it, like it can be fixed. If Sawyer steps on a part of a map Jack needs, rips it up, maybe it’s all for the best. Whatever keeps Jack alive and around can’t not be.

The bedroom door is ajar, but only slightly. Sawyer pushes it all of the way open and there he is, in the middle of his bed, which is just really a mattress on a boxspring on the floor, covered with a beige sheet and a thin, threadbare blanket. Jack has the money for more. He doesn’t want more, he’s made that clear.

Well, Sawyer thinks, at least he had the good sense to pass out in bed this time.

He pulls his shirt over his head and throws it on the floor, sits on the edge of the bed and kicks off his boots. Jack doesn’t wake up. He doesn’t move. He just lays there on his stomach. He looks terrible. Sawyer lays down next to him and when he breathes, Sawyer smells booze. Strong booze.

“Welcome home, Sawyer,” he says to no one while he lays on his back and stares up at the ceiling. He may hate Jack’s apartment, but that’s not what he’s talking about.

*

Sawyer wakes up to a sharp jab to his side. He opens his eyes and sees Jack looking down at him like he’s out of his mind. Sawyer returns his gaze with a pissed off look of his own, holding his side as he sits up.

“What are you doing here, Sawyer?” Jack asks, his voice deadly serious. Sawyer rolls his eyes, as he has always had a habit of doing when Jack puts on that tone of voice. He looks over his shoulder and sighs.

“I’m home,” he replies. Jack’s eyes narrow.

“You don’t live here,” he says. Jesus, Jack, why don’t you just kick me in the ribs, Sawyer grumbles to himself. He tries to keep the pain out of his eyes, but Jack looks down and away and he fears that he’s failed.

“Ain’t what I meant,” Sawyer replies, under his breath. “You want me out, say the word.” He gestures to the door to make his point and Jack shakes his head, looks up at him and holds his gaze for just a second before laying down again. Sawyer lays down next to him.

“When’d you get here?” Jack asks.

“ ‘Round two,” Sawyer replies. Jack yawns and pulls a pillow underneath his head.

“In town,” Jack clarifies with an irritated edge. Sawyer sighs and looks down at the bed.

“A week,” Sawyer says. He sees Jack nod out of the corner of his eye, and tells himself not to feel bad about hurting Jack. After all, the second Jack found him in his bed, he had poked him and all but told him he’d worn out his welcome.

“Last time I checked, you were the one that ran out, not me,” Sawyer mutters.

“You weren’t here when I got back.”

Sawyer snorts. “You expect me to wait on you, doc? I got a life, you know.”

“Yeah,” Jack replies, quickly, angrily. “Yeah, I know.”

Sawyer rolls his eyes and rolls away from Jack, lays on his back and stares at the ceiling. Again. “Just go to sleep, doc,” Sawyer tells him. He looks over at the alarm clock sitting on the floor. It’s six a.m. He feels exhausted, and he guess Jack does too. They could both stand to get some more sleep.

He hears Jack sigh, feels him move a few inches closer. “How long’re you gonna stay this time?” he asks. Sawyer sighs.

“That depends a whole hell of a lot on you, Jack, don’t you think?”

Jack sighs again and when Sawyer turns to look at him, his eyes are closed.

*

When Sawyer wakes up, Jack is no longer there. But there’s a post-it note on the bed in his place. There are latitude and longitude numbers scribbled on the bottom and crossed out, repeatedly, but Jack’s quick, messy scrawl takes up the bulk of it.

Sawyer, it says, Went to work. Be back late. Jack.

Not love you, Jack, just Jack. Sawyer sighs and crumbles the paper into a ball in his fist. He’s expecting too much from Jack, he knows, and he’s certainly not giving him anything. Neither of them are in the place for anything real. Not when one of them is always leaving. Not when they’re both so damaged and broken that they only end up damaging and breaking each other more.

But he has to admit, it still hurts. It hurts that Jack can’t say ‘I love you’ as much as it hurts that neither can he. He knows he loves Jack, but he can’t say it. What he doesn’t know is if Jack loves him, and he’s starting to feel like he can’t live without knowing that. So he leaves. And he comes back. And he watches Jack leave him. They’ve danced this dance so many times that Sawyer knows the steps – they both do. He figures he has a week before things go south. More south than they already are.

He lives for those weeks, because, even in their current states, weeks with Jack are still less painful than ones without him.

Through some kind of miracle, Sawyer finds a full bottle of beer behind a couple of atlases on the floor. It takes significantly longer to locate Jack’s bottle opener, but once he does, he pops off the top and takes a seat in Jack’s window. He opens the beat up paperback he keeps stuffed in his jacket pocket to the marked page and starts to read.

He looks up the street every fifteen minutes, waiting to see Jack’s car over the horizon.

*

Three months ago:

“I want you out!” Jack told him from the bedroom, like he expected not to be followed, like Sawyer better not, if he knew what’s good for him. Sawyer never knew what was good for him, so he did follow Jack and that got him a good, solid punch right in the gut. He doubled over and found himself kneeling on the floor at Jack's feet.

“You’ve still got one hell of a right on you,” Sawyer said, laughing ruefully, thinking of all the times Jack's fists had made contact with various parts of his body. Jack wasn’t amused, and continued to stare down at Sawyer, fists balled, face visibly contorted in anger even with that Grizzly Adams beard of his getting in the way.

“I’m serious Sawyer,” he replied, grinding his teeth. “I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to work this out. I want you to go. Now.”

“You set the terms, Jack,” Sawyer told him, standing up, holding the place where Jack had punched him with his hand. “Not my fault you don’t wanna live by ‘em.”

“You’re full of shit,” Jack replied, venom in his voice. He turned away from Sawyer, put his back to him, and leaned with one hand against the far wall of his bedroom. Sawyer looked at him, watched his back as he breathed and tried to get a handle on himself. He looked like he was failing. Sawyer knew the feeling. After all, that was why they were here.

“You can’t keep leavin’ and comin’ back and expect me to always be here for you, waitin’ around like an asshole,” Sawyer told him, yelled at his back like he never could to his face. “And you damn well can’t drunk dial Freckles every night and expect me not to get mighty pissed off.”

“That has nothing to do with you,” Jack replied, angrily, turning to face him again. Sawyer shook his head.

“It sure as fuckin’ hell does,” he retorted. “You gonna tell me you ain’t still hung up on her?”

Jack’s jaw tightened and he stepped closer and closer, and all the while Sawyer prepared himself to take another punch. But Jack just stood in front of him and looked at him and tried to make him feel small. He really didn’t have to bother.

“Even if I were,” Jack said, his voice suddenly, eerily even. “How does that make you fucking some random woman you met in a bar okay? How does it erase the fact that you came here, in the middle of the night, still reeking of her? You wanted me to confront you, Sawyer. You wanted me to know that you fucked her, well, I do. And I want you to leave.”

“This ain’t what I wanted Jack,” Sawyer told him. “None of this is.”

“Well, that works out well for you, then,” Jack replied, crossing his arms over his chest and fixing Sawyer with an angry stare. “Because now you don’t have it.” He leans to his left and grabs a jacket off of the bed, pulls it on and zips it up.

“I don’t care if you lock the door, just don’t be here when I get back,” Jack told him, brushing past him without a second glance and slamming the front door behind him as he left.

Sawyer shut his eyes, tightly, at the sound. His heart dropped out and he realized, in that moment, what he had just done. He tried to remember name. Stacey…Tracey…The woman he’d ruined his relationship for. Was that what it was? A relationship? He didn’t think Jack had thought so. Maybe that was why, after one too many shots of whiskey, he had done this, created this mess. Or maybe it was the voicemail from Kate that he heard on Jack’s cell. It was probably both.

Maybe it had been a relationship. Or maybe Jack just expected to get everything and give nothing.

When it was safe to open his eyes again, when he was sure that tears wouldn’t flow, even though there was no one there to see them, he began searching the room for anything that he might want. Anything that was his. As predicted, there was nothing. He wore Jack's clothes, Jack wore his. He didn't know who's was who's anymore, and he probably wouldn’t have taken them if he did.

Leaving the bedroom empty handed, he walked into the living room, collecting his cigarettes and his lighter from the counter. He shoved them into his pockets and began to wander around, studying the floor and the tops of tables. Nothing there either. He stopped at an old paperback that he had forgotten all about. A Wrinkle in Time. It was Sawyer’s copy. Jack had read it about five times, and Sawyer wondered why. He’d never taken him for a reader. But he had just raised an eyebrow every time he saw Jack with it, studying it like a children’s book held all the world’s secrets. He grabbed it, stuffed it into his pocket as far as it would go, and pulled the door open, slammed it behind him.

He had a five dollar bill in his pocket. That wouldn’t by him a room anywhere, not even in the shittiest of motels. He stuffed it back in with a dejected sigh, and caught sight of a white piece of paper. He unfolded it and found a phone number scribbled in black ink on the inside.

He sighed, disgusted at the low he’d sunk to. Maybe Stacey or Tracey or whatever her name was had a room for him.

*

A month after that:

When Sawyer came back that time, he came back to a very, very drunk Jack. He opened the door, sharply, and stared at Sawyer like he wanted to kill him. But he didn’t. Instead, he grabbed Sawyer by the arm and pulled him inside the apartment. He slammed the door, loudly, behind them and pushed Sawyer against it.

Sawyer hated Jack’s beard. It didn’t suit him. It was too long and too coarse and it hurt like hell kissing the man. Jack had never seemed to care, and time hadn’t seemed to change that.

“Jesus, Jack, slow the hell down,” Sawyer told him when he pulled away. Jack didn’t listen to him, instead yanking at his shirt, and Sawyer pushed his hands away, rid himself of his shirt and went to work on Jack’s. Before Sawyer knew what was happening he was being herded into the bedroom, pushed face-first on the bed, and covered by Jack’s body.

The next hour was a blur, still is in Sawyer’s mind. They had sex two, maybe three times. All Sawyer knows was that he was sore as hell when he woke up in the morning, or mid-afternoon really. Jack wasn’t there. He had a job, Sawyer reminded himself, but he probably didn’t want to be there either.

If the ache in Sawyer’s limbs was any indication, Jack was still angry as hell. But Sawyer wasn’t leaving. Not this time. He wasn’t going to let Jack chase him out the door again. So, he paced the bedroom, and he waited. He catalogued all of the things that Jack had changed since the day he’d left (which were few), and he waited. He drank Jack’s liquor and flipped through his books and found a pair of panties in his bedroom. His heart sank as he wadded them up and threw them back on the floor.

“Guess you had that one coming,” he told himself even though his heart ached.

Jack came back around one in the morning. He smelled like a bar: like beer and smoke and girl. He wasn’t drunk, though. At least not very. And certainly not as drunk as Sawyer had seen him. Even though he obviously wanted to, he couldn’t hide behind the liquor. They were going to have this out.

Or so Sawyer thought.

“So, are you staying, or what?” Jack asked. Sawyer stared at him like he was out of his mind. Then he remembered the panties and suddenly he was angry.

“We’re even now, doc,” he said, bitterly, walking past Jack and into the bedroom. He unbuttoned his shirt along the way, heard Jack follow him, felt his eyes on his back as he slipped it off and threw it on the floor. “So, yeah, I’ll stick around.”

Jack walked up behind him, set his hands in the small of his back. His fingers brushed back and forth over the skin there, tracing the way his flesh dipped in on both sides, parallel, mirrored. He felt Sawyer sigh in appreciation, shift back against those fingers.

“What was her name?” Sawyer asked. Jack’s arms wrapped around his waist and Sawyer leaned back, turned his head on Jack’s shoulder and closed his eyes against his neck.

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I woke up and she was there.” He shrugged a little, like it was nothing. “She was blonde.”

“You keep ‘em hoping I’d find ‘em?” Sawyer asked, opening his eyes and looking at the underwear he’d thrown on the floor hours ago. Jack's gaze followed his, and his eyebrows quirked up.

“I didn’t even know she’d left them,” Jack replied. He turned back to Sawyer. “I didn’t even know you were coming back.”

“Well, now you do,” Sawyer replied. Jack nodded. “This don’t fix anything, does it?”

Jack shrugged. “I’m tired, Sawyer,” he said. “I don’t want to do this any more. So if you want to stay, stay.”

“Do you want me to stay?” Sawyer asked, because it was somehow important that Jack say it, that he hear the words come out of his mouth. Jack sighed and looked away, sat on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. Sawyer took a step back, put his back against the wall.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Jack replied, eventually, lifting his head and shaking it. “That’s something, right?”

Not really, Sawyer thought, but if it’s all that I get…

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s something.”

*

Four weeks after that:

Jack left next. And, fuck him, Sawyer actually cried. And he let Jack see him. He came home with a plane ticket, threw some clothes in a bag, and a few books, atlases, along with it. He’d said he wasn’t going to do this again, and he’d lied. Sawyer didn’t know what to do, so he screamed both at Jack.

Jack cast a forlorn gaze his way and shook his head. “This isn’t about you, Sawyer,” he told him.

“Yeah, you’ve made that pretty damn clear,” Sawyer replied. He sounded choked up and was deeply ashamed of it, even as his voice caught on a few words and his throat tightened.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Jack said it with a sigh, like that wasn’t what he wanted, but what he knew would happen.

“I won’t,” Sawyer promised. Jack gave him a smile and shook his head. He thought he knew Sawyer so well. He thought he had no other place to be, no one else who would take him, even now. It made Sawyer want to punch him, but he didn’t. Not even when Jack gave him the best opportunity he had ever been afforded. He approached Sawyer without reservation, kissed him quickly, softly, like he had any right to be doing so, and readjusted his grip on his duffle bag.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he repeated and left Sawyer standing in his living room.

Sawyer was gone an hour later, but not before leaving a fist-sized hole in Jack’s living room wall.

*

Sawyer has sense enough now not to worry when Jack isn’t home by midnight. He might not be at work, but he wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere either. It hasn’t been that bad for a while. Jack may not want to live every minute of every day, but he no longer actively tries to get himself killed. Sawyer hopes.

Another hour passes before Jack comes home. He looks tired and worn down. Sawyer doesn’t know where he’s been and he doesn’t ask. He just watches Jack as he takes off his jacket and his shirt and sit on the floor against the far wall.

“Is this what you’ve been doing all day?” he asks, gesturing to the window where Sawyer is still sitting. He nods.

“Pretty much,” Sawyer replies. Jack nods. “You just gonna sit there all night?”

“Pretty much,” he answers. He reaches to his side without looking, blindly grabs the first map his hand finds and spreads it out in front of him. So nothing has changed, Sawyer thinks, nothing at all.

“You look like crap,” Sawyer says, standing up.

“Thanks.”

He crosses the room. “You need some sleep.”

Jack doesn’t even look up, so Sawyer stands on his map. That seems to get Jack’s attention, because he puts his back against the wall once more and looks up at Sawyer.

“Stand up,” Sawyer tells him, like he damn well better do what he’s told. Jack returns his gaze defiantly.

“Wanna see who’s taller?” he asks and Sawyer only vaguely recognizes the reference at first. If he wasn’t so pissed off, he might have been proud of Jack. Instead, he reaches down and grabs hold of Jack’s arm, his grip a little tighter than necessary. Jack lets himself be pulled, much to Sawyer’s surprise, and Sawyer takes full advantage, pulling Jack into the bedroom and falling down onto Jack’s bed, taking the man in question with him.

“You gotta stop this, doc,” Sawyer grumbles into his ear. It isn’t going to make an impact, he never has before, but Sawyer doesn’t care. Jack doesn’t move, lays limply, almost lifelessly, on top of Sawyer.

“So you keep telling me,” he eventually replies. Sawyer wraps one arm around Jack’s back, another around his neck, and tightens both. Jack’s beard scrapes against his shoulder, but he doesn’t really care. Not now.

“You ain’t gonna be satisfied ‘til you kill yourself, are you?” Sawyer asks, aloud for the first time, after having thought it a thousand times before. Jack doesn’t reply, but he resettles himself on top of Sawyer, making room for himself between Sawyer’s legs, readjusting his face against Sawyer’s neck.

“Do you want to sleep or do you want to talk?” Jack replies, his voice slightly muffled by Sawyer’s neck. His breath his hot there, his mouth wet, and Sawyer closes his eyes tightly. The hand on Jack’s back squeezes a bit more, pulls him a little bit closer.

“Right now I don’t feel much like doin’ either,” he answers against the top of Jack’s head. It’s not original. In fact, it’s probably the weakest come-on Sawyer has every thought of. It’s amazing to him, though, that even when he’s on such uneven ground with Jack, when he’s frustrated and fed up, the man still has the ability to make his knees weak, make him want to grab him by whatever he can get a hold of. This time is no different.

Jack takes his time raising his body upright, settling himself comfortably on top of Sawyer. Sawyer raises himself up on his elbows and looks up at Jack. God, he hates that beard. But his eyes wander over Jack’s neck and his chest and his stomach, and Sawyer suddenly has a new focus.

Sawyer sits up as Jack pulls on his shirt, throws it across the room and sets his hands on Sawyer’s shoulders. He tries several times to sit up all the way, to kiss Jack, but the hands on his shoulders keep pushing him back, holding him down. He releases a frustrated groan and stops moving all together. The pressure on his shoulders lightens then, and Sawyer lets himself be pushed all the way back onto the bed – but only because Jack follows him mere seconds later.

His arm winds back around Jack’s neck as they kiss, as he runs a hand along Jack's side and up around back.

All they have are moments like this. They barely speak anymore when they’re together. Jack works on his maps or whatever the hell it is that he does sitting on the living room floor. Sawyer reads or watches Jack or drinks. There’s no conversation, no polite small talk. It’s not comfort that causes that. It’s not the kind of silence that exists because nothing needs to be said. It’s the kind of silence bread of secrets and denials and the weakness of the two men who have created them.

The bulk of their time is spent that way, in silence and ignorance. The rest of it is like this, lips and bodies moving, hands roaming, groans and moans exhaled, or, on the better nights, shouted. And then the silence takes over. Sometimes Sawyer tries to fill it, asks Jack questions he won’t answer when he’s sober or when his body isn’t sated and exhaustion hasn’t yet overwhelmed him. Sometimes he doesn’t answer even then.

That fact, however, doesn’t keep Sawyer from trying.

*

“Jack, wake up,” Sawyer orders. Jack’s eyes remain closed. He reaches out and grabs a hold of Jack’s shoulder, shakes it and repeats himself. Jack opens his eyes, and they sag, heavy with sleep as he glares at Sawyer.

“What?” he asks, testily. He rubs at his eyes with the heel of his palm and looks at Sawyer. Sawyer lays on his side with his head resting in the palm of his hand. He looks so young. Like he hasn’t aged a day since they left the island. Jack feels like he’s aged ten years, like it shows in his face and in his body. But Sawyer…Sawyer looks the same as he always did.

“Do you love me?”

Jack’s reaction is immediate. He sits straight up and looks down at Sawyer like he’s out of his mind. “What?” he asks, sharply, and watches Sawyer roll onto his back and look up at him.

“Guess that’s a no, then,” he mutters. Jack continues to stare at him, open-mouthed and in shock, before turning away and running a hand over his face. Sawyer’s hand reaches out, startles Jack, and runs up from the small of his back to his shoulder blades, then back down, over and over. He knows that Sawyer is trying to be soothing, but the contact is putting him even more on-edge. He shrugs off Sawyer’s hand and his attention, and the hand retracts quickly. He turns around to look at Sawyer, and he looks like a kicked puppy.

Jack sighs and lays back down next to Sawyer. He reaches out and runs the tips of two fingers along the curve of his face, beneath silky blonde hair, over coarse stubble, along full lips. He lets out another sigh as he holds Sawyer’s cheek in the palm of his hand, as Sawyer reaches up and holds that hand against his face. He watches Sawyer lean against it, kiss the side of his palm and, for some reason, he feels as though he’s been punched in the gut.

He has in his bed right now a man that obviously loves him. For how long, he has no way to know. The fact that he hasn’t made the time to notice makes him sick. Sawyer has never said it, and neither has he, and they both know that isn’t because it went understood. It was because they were scared. Scared shitless.

But now, Sawyer needs it from him, and Jack…no matter how much of an asshole either of them can be, Jack still can’t deny Sawyer the things that he needs. “Yes,” he answers, watching Sawyer’s eyes open, brilliant blue and sparkling with hope. The ache in his stomach grows even more powerful. “Yes, I love you.”

“I love you too,” Sawyer tells him, steadily, like he’s been waiting forever to say it.

Jack knows, then, why they’ve never said it. Sawyer has been waiting for Jack. Because even now, even having been through all of the things that they’ve been through, seen each other in all ways that they’ve seen each other, Sawyer can’t go out on that limb. He can’t put a voice to feelings he isn’t sure will be returned. If Jack didn’t love him, there was no reason for him to know that Sawyer ever loved him.

“Come here,” Jack says, gently, pulling Sawyer closer even as Sawyer goes willingly. He fits his body along Jack’s, wraps both arms around him and holds on. Jack holds back, relishes the feeling of Sawyer’s stubble brushing against his skin as his forehead settles against Jack’s neck. Jack kisses his bare shoulder and grips his upper back with both hands.

It’s the first night they sleep like this, wrapped around each other, each trying to cover the other with their bodies. Sawyer revels in the warmth, after being cold for so long, savors the connection after constant days and nights spent feeling alone. He feels grounded in Jack’s arms, and, in a round-about way, in his love. He knows now. He knows that Jack loves him, and whatever happens, he has that. That thought, that knowledge, finally allow him to sleep.

*

What little sunlight the thick curtain over the window allows to seep through spills onto Sawyer's back, makes his golden skin glow. Jack watches from the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. He memorizes this moment, this tranquil, calming sight and tucks it away in his mind. Just in case.

Sawyer looks perfect. Perfect and beautiful, and somehow, his.

He approaches the bed and sits on the side. Sawyer won’t wake up. He’s a heavy sleeper. Jack just wants to get a closer look. He reaches out and runs his fingers over the curve of Sawyer's ear, fits some errant strands of hair behind it. He bends down, kisses Sawyer’s cheek, and whispers in his ear, “I love you.”

Sawyer’s body shifts in his sleep, closer to Jack, closer to his voice, and he gives a little, satisfied noise. Jack likes to think that Sawyer heard him. He smiles and wipes a tear away from the corner of his eye, catches it before it has a chance to tumble down his face.

He stands and tucks Sawyer into the bed, covers him with the blanket and smiles forlornly.

“I love you,” he says again, from the doorway this time as he lifts his duffle bag off of the floor and closes the door behind him. He picks up the plane ticket that sits on the kitchen counter, along with his keys and A Wrinkle in Time. He puts them all in his bag and heads to the door before he has a chance to think, before he can change his mind.

On the other side of the bed, Sawyer’s back to it, there sits a post-it note. It reads: Sawyer, I’m sorry. I’ll be back tomorrow. I love you. Jack.