Title: 15 Minutes
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Jack and Sawyer’s relationship hits the newstand.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: I aknowledge this borders on crack!fic (my first, yay!), but I had the idea last night while in insomnia’s tight grip, and I still thought it was fun and amusing come morning. So, crackish? Sure. Fun as hell to write? You bet. :) Used for philosophy_20, prompt #11: extrinsic.



The sound of Jack’s obnoxious cell phone ring always woke Sawyer up. But never Jack. He always, somehow, managed to stay sound asleep, even when the irritating tone, accompanied by Sawyer’s loudest, most pissed off groan, filled the room. It made Sawyer want to shove him awake, and when he checked the caller ID, saw that it was Jack’s sister, he did just that; he shoved his arm, with more force than was necessary, nearly knocked him clear out of their two and a half foot high, king-sized, four-poster bed, and threw the phone at his side even as he grumbled and sputtered and asked Sawyer what the fuck his problem was.

“Answer your phone,” was Sawyer’s only reply before rolling away from Jack, taking his pillow and planting it firmly above his head. He could hear Jack talking, but he couldn’t make out the words (there was a significant amount of cushioning in his way because Jack had bought extra thick pillows along with the bed). He felt weight shifting around on the bed, heard Jack’s footsteps exiting the bedroom and closing the door behind him.

Sawyer lifted the pillow and rolled his body into the middle of the bed, hogging all the space and all the covers, stealing Jack’s pillow, and falling almost immediately back to sleep.

*

When he woke up, the room was much sunnier. The blinds on the far wall across from the bed were open, he noticed. Sawyer blinked a few times, trying to adjust himself, and then turned to his nightstand. It was almost eleven o’clock. On a Tuesday, he might have gotten up. But it was Saturday and he felt like he had a few hours of sleep left in him, so he rolled over, facing the opposite direction, only to find himself staring at Jack’s thigh.

Jack was in bed. On a Saturday. Afternoon. Sawyer looked to Jack’s nightstand, checked for a bottle of aspirin or the thermometer. Neither were there. Just a clock radio and a full box of tissues. He looked up at Jack and found him reading something. Something that Sawyer would have laughed out loud at if he weren’t so damn stunned.

“What in the hell is that?” Sawyer asked, sitting up next to Jack and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, just in case that was the culprit. Jack turned to him, and Sawyer immediately knew something was up. Jack didn’t look embarrassed at all, which either meant that he had grown a strange kind of confidence nearly overnight or he didn’t want to be reading it, he just was.

“It’s an US Weekly,” Jack told him, looking at the thing like he couldn’t believe he was actually holding it. Sawyer rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, I see that,” Sawyer replied. “Why do you have it?”

“I didn’t believe her when she told me,” Jack replied, shaking his head. Sawyer looked at him like he wasn’t making any sense because he wasn't making any sense. “I had to see for myself, so I bought this at a newsstand.”

“See what?” Sawyer demanded, wondering what on earth Jack was going on about.

“We’re in it,” Jack told him. To say Sawyer’s face took on a look of utterly horrified disbelief would be the very least of it. He grabbed at the magazine, ripped a few pages, and lost Jack’s place. He began flipping frantically, hoping Jack and Claire were playing some kind of elaborate prank on him.

“You’re shittin’ me,” he said, in a panic, as he continued to flip through the thin pages. “You’ve gotta be shittin’ me.”

Jack took the magazine from him, with an eerie kind of calm that Sawyer found downright creepy and unwarranted. Panic was warranted, disbelief was warranted. He would guess that Jack had been there, done that, but that would mean that he would have had to entertain the possibility that he wasn’t being lead on, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to do that.

“I wish I were,” Jack replied, turning to a set of pages as if by memory and handing the magazine back to Sawyer. Suddenly, he didn’t want it anymore. He didn’t want to see what was in it, what had Jack so shell-shocked. But he took the stupid magazine – and a deep breath.

Sure enough, there they were. Inside one of those “couple” boxes that the magazine had (Sawyer would admit to reading a few of these things on the island, but only when all other reading material had dried up) They took up half of the page.

It was taken on Jack’s birthday, Sawyer knew that for sure, because it was a picture of them sharing a quick kiss outside of the restaurant that they had dined in that night. It had lasted a second, if that, and now it was preserved forever within the pages of a tabloid magazine that everyone and their mother could buy in the checkout line at the grocery store. It was embarrassing. It was infuriating. And it was also, Sawyer had to admit, funny as hell.

“How in the hell did this happen?” Sawyer asked, throwing down the magazine in disgust and beginning to scowl. He felt Jack shrug, but didn’t see it. He was too busy pouting to watch Jack pout.

“I guess we were wrong when we thought they got bored with us,” Jack replied, like he was still trying to figure it out, like it was all a big mystery that needed solving. Sawyer knew it wasn’t. People were nosy bastards. Mystery solved. They had never been photographed together before, and certainly not like this, but they had all endured their fair share of stalkers with cameras for the first few months after their return from the island. They were all anybody wanted to see, to talk about, and ninety percent of them just wanted to be left alone.

“At least we had the sense to be careful then,” Sawyer grumbled. “The fuck was I thinking, kissing you like that.”

“That there probably wasn’t a photographer in the bushes across the street, that's what,” Jack replied. “And hey! That was a good kiss. It was my birthday for God’s sake!”

“Yeah, yeah, alright, I take it back, you baby,” Sawyer said, hastily. He sighed and leaned back against the headboard, beat his head against it a few times with closed eyes out of frustration. “You know, you’re pretty calm for a man who just got outed to half the country.”

“You really think half the country reads this?” Jack asked, holding up the magazine. Sawyer shrugged.

“It don’t matter,” Sawyer replied. “Any kid, or teenager, or blue-aired grandma could get their hands on this piece of junk. You’re gonna sit here and tell me that don’t bother you?”

“Of course if bothers me, Sawyer,” Jack replied. “But did you really think that it wasn’t going to get out eventually? We live together.”

“I just don’t understand why in the hell anyone would care,” Sawyer said. “They don’t know us. People barely even recognize us on the street anymore. We're old news.”

“I guess it was a slow week then,” Jack said, tossing the magazine out of their bed, onto the floor, just away from them. “Look, it happened. It’s out there. Denise will tease you when you go in for work at the bookstore tomorrow, and I’ll get hell from some of the guys at work with gossipy wives, but in a month, some nineteen year old will go to rehab, or shave her head bald and no one will even remember us. Again.”

“Jesus, I hope you’re right,” Sawyer replied, sinking back to the bed and reaching out his hand to make sure that Jack went with him. Jack rested his head on Sawyer’s chest as Sawyer drummed his fingers along Jack’s back. They sighed a few times, almost in tandem, and Jack turned his head, faced Sawyer.

“You wouldn’t mind if I cut it out, would you?” he asked. Sawyer looked down at Jack, caught somewhere between complete shock and laughing his ass off. He chuckled for a moment before he shook his head.

“For posterity, or somethin’?” Sawyer asked. Jack just smiled, almost shyly, and shrugged, also almost shyly. Sawyer wondered how he did that and still looked so damn hot. Sawyer guessed it might have been because he was watching the way Jack’s muscles flexed when he did it.

“No, I’ll cut the article off, it’s just…” He let the rest of his sentence go unfinished, and now he looked embarrassed. He was a hop, a skip, and a jump from blushing, in fact. Sawyer leaned up a bit, studied Jack, his curiosity more than piqued.

“It’s just what?” Sawyer asked when it became clear that Jack had no intention of continuing without a little bit of prodding. He shrugged again, and Sawyer’s attention was temporarily diverted back to his arms, to the way his shoulders sloped and arched when he shrugged. He shook himself out of it in time to register Jack’s reply.

“It’s just…it’s a really nice picture,” he said.

This time, Sawyer did laugh his ass off. The situation was so invasive, yet still so hilarious that he just couldn’t not anymore. He threw his head back and laughed and once he was sure that Sawyer wasn’t laughing at him, Jack joined him.

When Sawyer's chest hurt from laughing, and Jack had started to cough, he let out a sigh – not quite content, but no longer so upset. He leaned over Jack, dangled himself off of the bed, and retrieved the magazine. It had landed upside down on the exact right page. Didn't that just figure. He handed it to Jack.

“Happy birthday,” he said, with a shrug. Jack just smiled and shook his head, carefully tore out the picture around the edges and left the excerpt that neither of them read – that neither of them would read – inside. He tossed the magazine in the trashcan and set the picture on his nightstand.

“I’ll clean up the edges later,” he said, laying back down next to Sawyer. That was just like Jack. Torn edges just wouldn’t do, even if they were being hidden by a frame. Sawyer knew Jack well enough to know that. What he didn’t know was why Jack was laying back down in bed, why he didn't get up to trim the cut-out immediately, why he wasn't getting on top of the long list of weekend chores he had to do. That wasn’t like Jack at all.

“What now, then?” Sawyer inquired, and Jack’s eyebrows raised. He grabbed a fist-full of Sawyer's tee-shirt and yanked him over, kissed him a few times, barely even making contact, before Sawyer got frustrated and held him still, trapped Jack’s thigh underneath his and held him as close as their bodies could possibly be.

Neither of them had wanted their fifteen minutes of fame in the first place, and they certainly didn’t want it now that it had come back around, but they also figured there was little they could do about it now. And if something like this was what it took to get Jack to slow down, hell, to stop cold and actually stick around for a few minutes…well. Sawyer found it hard to complain. Not that he didn’t go ahead and do it anyway, just…more quietly