Title: "Operators are Standing By"
Author: monimala
Fandom: "Lost"
Rating/Classification: SAC for language, Sawyer/Kate/Sayid-ish.
Disclaimer: BAD Robot!
Summary: Just a filler ficlet for this week's Sayid arc ep.
"You miss him, don'tcha?"
He murmurs it, hot and low, into the nape of her neck and she jumps. He steps back before she can stomp on his foot, chuckling as he licks the faint heat of her skin from his lips.
Her eyes snap with that special annoyance she reserves just for him. "I do not miss Jack, Sawyer. He's here all the time."
Too much, if you ask me, he thinks. "Naw," he dismisses aloud, dropping down onto the ground and patting the empty space beside him. "Not him." He squints out at the water. It's particularly blue this fine morning. "Sayid." He says it "Sigh-eedh," drawing it out like a dirty sex whisper.
This is normally where Kate gives him props for actually being a nice guy and using somebody's real name, but she stays silent, staring out, too. Like the horizon is the most fascinating thing in the world.
'Course...considering what there is to do around here, that might not be a bad bet.
"I kinda miss the bastard, too," he admits, quietly, after a while. And he tells himself it's because the sound of the ocean splishing and crashing and flowing is like some offshoot of Chinese water torture that gets you to admit all kinds of crazy stuff. He could probably ask the Koreans, but that wouldn't be politically correct, now, would it?
"Wh-what?" Kate looks at him like he's got horns and a tail. Which he might. He hasn't looked in a mirror lately. "You? You miss Sayid?"
Both of their gazes fall to the bandage wrapped around his bicep, stark and white and glaring against the tan no booth or bed could replicate.
He grins, wryly. "He keeps things interesting. Ain't nobody else that fun to rile...even if he does get a little slice-and-dicey."
Even as he says it, he pictures a slick guy in a suit with a shit-eating grin--thinks "hey, that used to be me once"--shilling on a late-night infomercial. "For just 39.95, you, too, can have a TurboSayid2000. He slices, he dices, he's the human Cuisinart. And for just four dollars more, we'll send you an invisible murderous monster that'll chomp off your head. Call now! Operators are standing by!"
And now a word from our sponsors..."You're fucked up," Kate mutters.
"Says the woman who's gonna ask Jackass to the Sadie Hawkins Dance when what she really wants is a round of sand tag with the Iron Sheik and some bona fide white trash."
"Sawyer, you're an asshole." It's not so much an insult as a statement of the obvious.
"And you're Mother Teresa, ain't you?"
She doesn't deny his accusation, he notes with smug satisfaction. Either of them. Well, whoopty-doo, Miss Katie's nominating herself for sainthood.
He's not that high-and-mighty. Self-denial isn't his thing. He admits what he wants and he goes after it.
But, sometimes, on alternate Wednesdays, he bides his time until it wakes up and comes to him.
That's what he's doing now. What they're both doing. Standing by.
So, she turns to him, and they kiss again and, this time, it doesn't hurt because his face is bruised...it hurts because neither of them are who they ought to be. It hurts because the only thing Kate will ever cut him with is her tongue and the only kindness he'll ever show her is to smile when he calls her "Freckles."
She pulls away too soon. No...pretty much at the exact right time.
"I miss him. Yes." She says it when she's a good six feet away. When she's facing the other way and she can't catch him gloating.
He nods. He sifts sand through his fingers and listens to her walk off.
All when she can't catch him hoping.
"Sigh-eedh," he hisses, as his arm throbs. "Call now."
--end--
November 19, 2004.