sorrydontsuitme | (no subject)

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After all this time -- all these damn scientific advances -- it figures a guy in 2073 spends his time alone in his room doing the exact same things he did alone in his room in 2004: reading magazines. The magazines of choice at this place are tabloids. Matter of fact, he can't imagine no better headlines than they got here.

SPACE ALIEN FATHERS CHILD!

Wait, here's another;

BATTLE OVER BABY CHIHUAHUA CAUSES SPARKS ON VENUS

That's a new one for him. But then there's this:

FOURTH DUI SPELLS JAIL TIME FOR HOTEL HEIRESS

Yeah, it's 2004 all over again. Figures there ain't nothing new under the sun. Setting the magazines aside, he flicks on the remote. Light from the TV flickers from across the room.

In today's news, famous hotel heiress...

"Son of a bitch." The TV goes off again. "Ain't there nothing to do in this damn place?" There ought to at least be something besides shopping and gambling. Hell, it don't work to run a con on a population of robots.

The lighter in his hand flicks on, flicks off. Bored is bored no matter what damn year it is.

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Kate figures she'd probably come across as a woman with a mission to anyone who happened to cross her path as she makes her trip up the stairs to the room that's supposed to be hers but currently belongs to Sawyer.

She's got the latest of one of his favorite gossip rags in one hand and two bottles of ice-cold Martian beer in the other, and she knocks on the door. If he's not around she's opening one of these beers while she looks for him, but somehow she has a feeling he'll be in.

What else is he going to be doing? As far as she knows, he hasn't been conning anybody around here.

"Hold your damn horses." It ain't like he's expecting no one, but he knows who he hopes it is. A little afternoon delight wouldn't be out of the question; he's sure he could muster the energy for that.

When he looks through the peep-hole he smiles, even though it ain't Mata Hari waiting for him on the other side. It's Freckles and it looks like she brought the beer, and that's just nice and fine by him.

"How do, Ghost Rider? Come on in."

He eyes her: she's pretty, Freckles. Some might take her for sweet, but he knows better. She ain't been sweet a day in her life when she meant it. Beneath that smile and those big puppy dog eyes of hers, she ain't nothing but calculating.

It's a good thing to know about a person.

"Beer for me? You shouldn't have." He doesn't give her the choice: as he ushers her in, he helps himself to one. "If I knew there was gonna be a party, I would have brought the chips. What brings you to my humble abode?"

Ghost Rider? That's a new one. She'd rather no nicknames at all, but she's really starting to have preferences in the ones he uses for her.

"Thought you might be bored, Sawyer."

With a gesture that's almost graceful, she makes a show of presenting the magazine to him. Then she raises her eyebrows and lifts her own beer since he didn't waste any time before taking his.

"And thirsty."

She gives him a matter-of-fact smile. "Am I right?"

"Two for two, Freckles." He touches his beer bottle to hers and takes a nice long sip before taking the magazine into his hands. Shooting her a grin, he nods.

"Well, looky here: another damn scandal in the asteroid belt. You'd think the rich and famous would've learned by now but no, they're just as full of crap now as they are back in our day. Imagine that."

Tilting his head to the table, he moseys on over there, casual as anything. "I sure do appreciate the drop-by, woman. And the beer and the magazine. You bored too? That motorcycle of yours lose its special morning-after glow?"

Stir-crazy ain't too strong a word for how he's been feeling, especially the past few days. If he could get a line on passports, maybe him and her could ditch this place and tour around a little. Then he wouldn't feel so damn cooped up.

With a wry smile, she simply shrugs and helps herself to a seat on the corner of his bed. "Only so far you can ride in this place."

Being a fugitive hasn't been easy, but there's a part of it that she enjoyed. When she was younger, all she wanted to do was to get her license and get out of town, to drive and drive and drive, windows down and radio on and wind in her hair, until she was far away from home.

She enjoyed life on the road even if she didn't enjoy life on the run.

While this is a much nicer cage, until she gets a passport she's just as stuck here on this asteroid as she is back on the island.

And she's had the island on her mind lately.

She takes a swig of her beer, wiping under her bottom lip with the back of her hand. "I've been thinking."

Raising one eyebrow, he sits back down in his chair and stretches out his legs.

"Thinking's kind of a dangerous proposition, sweetheart. You know how it goes: you get one thought, and soon enough, damn, it's spawned another. Then the two of 'em get together and have a kid, and another, and soon you got a whole passel of thoughts hanging around there. And once they're there, ain't no gettin' rid of 'em."

Pulling back on his beer, he shrugs genially enough. "What's on your mind?"

Well, he's got that right.

She curls one leg and tucks it under her, wondering what exactly he'll think of what she has to say. Sometimes she thinks Sawyer will do anything for his own benefit, for his own reputation, or to shake up the status quo when it's not to his liking.

But she's not sure there's any benefit in this for him, and she's less sure of what lengths he'll go to just for his own amusement.

And while she's known from the beginning that he's not all bad under that wolf skin, she knows he can definitely be greedy, stubborn, and unyielding.

"The island. I was thinking about going back for a day or two."

Though she's just as casual as he is, she watches him more carefully than she lets on.

Well, that ain't what he was thinking of doing in his spare time. He's had his fill being stuck there in that craphole; his first inclination goes something like this: she can go all she wants, but he ain't gonna waste his time with it.

But like he said, thoughts are tricky damn things and now she's got him wondering if there's something going on back there he ought to know about, some angle she's playing that'll get him left out if he stays and she goes. Like for instance, what if she goes back and finds his stash of guns?

The look he gives her ain't nothing if it ain't appraising; he takes a slow and long sip of beer before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and smacking his lips. "Funny you should say that, Freckles. I been thinking the same damn thing. How do you like that."

He knows if he goes back, he cedes the medicines to the doc... but that's okay. He knows he can get more 24/7 at the little store on the way to the spaceport.

"Damn near time to test out that computer. See if it works like it's advertised."

Her eyebrows arch but only for a moment, and soon enough she's smiling skeptically.

"You have?"

That's pretty far from being the first answer she expected out of his mouth, and she's not inclined to believe it without a good reason but won't complain about not having to persuade him that it's in his best interest to go along.

"Guess you really are bored then, huh? You starting to miss your position as the new sheriff in town?"

"Yeah, I'm tired of all the damn luxury. I miss me some foraging and fighting. Most of all, I miss the pissing contests with the doc." He shakes his head, but only once. "No, I ain't missing my position as the new sheriff in town, woman. Just thought it'd be a good idea to check up on the place, that's all. See if what they say's right. Time stands still when we're in here, we got nothing to worry about. And if it don't... well, we got a lot of explaining to do, don't we."

If he was a more magnanimous person, he'd consider slipping in a couple bottles of some of these futuristic over-the-counter antibiotics he's seen in the drugstore. But he'll be hard-pressed to ever do something for someone else without them asking first, so he thinks he'll skip on playing Boy Scout.

He ain't never looked good in a uniform anyhow.

Maybe all that's true, but there's just no damn way that's all there is to his willingness to go back.

But whatever the rest of his reasons are, right now she's glad for them. She was ready to have to do some convincing, and she's just fine with not having to. Even though there's probably plenty of trouble Sawyer can get into in just a couple of days back on the island.

She'll deal with whatever she has to whenever it comes up.

"That's right." Smiling again, she takes another drink. "We better hope it stands still or we'll have them all thinking we've been taken. Might want to dirty up before we go, too. You look way too clean."

And assuming time does stand still -- she has no reason to doubt Gren -- she should make a new torch to take back with her.

"And you look way too innocent, Miss I-Got-Me-This-Great-Idea." The smirk on his face is smug, though. "Won't take me too damn long to get all hot and dirty back there. Specially if you want to lend a hand."

Life, he figures, ain't nothing without a daily challenge or two and who better to tangle with than the Boar Expert herself? "You know, Freckles, all we got to do is wait for the rain. I know a great mud pit. Feel like wrestling? Or hell, maybe a wet t-shirt contest?"

But he gives her a wry grin and shakes his head. Honestly, if she hadn't brought it up he wouldn't think of going back to that shit. After all, he was one of the ones who tried to get away on the raft. He knows what people think of him, and he don't much care: never has, never will. Whatever he does -- however he acts -- he's got his reasons. And if Freckles wasn't going back, he wouldn't be all suspicious of why she's going back, and he wouldn't be sitting here wondering what happens to time if they're both here from the same moment and one of them goes back and the other one stays.

He might have dropped out of school in ninth grade but that don't make him stupid. One thing he's always done is read -- a lot -- about everything. Some of the finer mathematical points of quantum physics might elude his grasp, but he gets it conceptually. He knows about vacuums and wormholes and voids. The past sixty or so days of his life back there have been kind of a gigantic void, and he ain't none to eager to spark out of existence because of some flaw in the damn time/space continuum.

"When you want to go?" Hopefully not before he finishes this beer and dirties down a little.

His proposition is as responsible for the way she rolls her eyes and smiles as his claim that she looks way too innocent.

"Your mud pit here on the asteroid or back on the island? I won't have time to get dirty with you there."

Not that she was really planning to get dirty with him here, either. But she wouldn't mind it much if he's got some great idea. The hot part is a lot more unlikely.

And even though they've wrestled over a few things before -- very literally -- she can't see any reason they would now. There's nothing he has that she needs that badly.

"I'd been on my way to the hatch to take a shower. Can't suddenly show up again looking fresh and clean, right?" She raises an eyebrow and smiles. "But why don't we do just what you said and wait until the next rain?"

It'll be the fastest way to get a little dirtier, after all, and it'll get them back sooner than it would if she wanted to waited a few days so her hair looked more like she really could use that shower she wanted when she hurried to catch up with Jack.

She's got a point, Freckles does.

"That's damn practical of you, cupcake." It rains here practically every day right around four, so they ain't got too long to wait. "All we got to do is get back into whatever it is we were wearing when we got here. Then we could just skedaddle on downtown to Island Supplies 'R' Us and pick up a new torch if you need it, and me, I'll carry my little bag of pill bottles I owe the doc. Then we can stand out in the rain like that Richard and Em from Blue Lagoon, get all tropical and nature-boy -- and girl -- again."

The whole idea makes him grin in amusement: he never liked that damn movie in the first place, except the sex part.

"How's about it, Freckles?" Taking a long sip of his beer keeps him from laughing out loud at the notion, but it's a piss-poor way of hiding the glimmer in his eyes.

Kate keeps right on smiling.

"I guess I'm just a practical girl sometimes, Sawyer."

She's seen that look in his eyes enough to be as wary as she is amused, but the smile stays on her face and she points at him with the index finger of the hand wrapped around her beer bottle.

"And I guess you've got yourself a date."

Of sorts. But she can see him enjoying thinking of it that way.

"You want to just meet in the lobby as soon as possible after the rain starts?"

She'll make a new torch in the meantime, and all she'll have to do tomorrow is pull on her island clothes and then get all tropical and nature-girl, as he says.

A date, huh? Now that's something, finally. Another little smile tugs at the corner of his mouth -- he can't help it, not with the thought of her all wet t-shirt dancing through his brain -- and he raises one eyebrow.

"You're gonna have to give me five or ten minutes after it starts raining, Freckles, so I can get all down and dirty first." And so he can put on the same old grubby clothes he wore in the jungle and lose the good reading glasses and make sure the gun's loaded and tucked in his waistband. And get the damn meds, and pretend he ain't ate a decent meal in months.

He knows how to be a convincing little actor when he's got to.

"It's a date, sweetheart."

It sure ain't raining right now, and that means they've got time. Picking up the tabloid, he holds it so they can both see it. "Guess I'm starting to get myself a reputation for preferred reading material, ain't I. Think you got me pegged?"

Back on the island, he's got stashes and stashes of magazines. Most of 'em ain't the kind he'd read in mixed company, though. Amazing what a man can salvage from a downed aircraft.

"I can do you one better than that: I can give you fifteen."

He looks awfully smug -- must be the idea of a date -- but she grins anyway.

"And I'd say you're starting to get a reputation for more than that, but as far as reading material goes, you're not hard to buy for."

She's seen him reading all kinds of things on the island, but since they've been here she finds him reading tabloids more often than not. And one time she caught him watching some awful court show, Judge Proton or something like that.

Yeah, where his preferred reading material is concerned, she thinks she's got him pegged fairly well.

"Yeah?"

There's more than a little bit of challenge in her smile, and damn if he don't like that in a girl.

"So, Marian the Librarian, what's your favorite book? Bet I've read it."

Hell, if there was some damn island library, he'd be its best patron. Might not bring the books back, but he'd sure check 'em out. Taking a long pull on his beer, he sets down the tabloid. "For your information, smartypants, I'd have read more'n just magazines if we had anything worth reading on the island. Besides, a guy can only read Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret so many times."

There's an equal amount of I dare you to her in his own words. She's fun to egg on and he knows she can't pass up a challenge from him if she wants to. Even if it's just a literary one, this has promise.

A lot of promise. Almost as good as another game of I Never.

"Yeah, I know. You need something juicier than that."

What did Sun tell her he said about that one? Not enough sex?

She and Sawyer have talked about a lot of things together without ever really digging too deep. Still, she gets a little laugh out of having a literary conversation with him.

"It's gonna sound like a cop out," she admits after another gulp of beer, "but most of my favorite books to read have been travel guides."

Lifting her chin, she lets her eyes focus on the ceiling for a few seconds.

"I think the last novel I read and liked was On the Road, but I wouldn't say I'm much of a beatnik." She wasn't actually a huge fan of the style of writing, but she was interested in what was going on in the story itself. "What's yours?"

He doesn't even hesitate.

"Watership Down." There's a light dancing in his eyes: she knows damn well that's one of the few precious books on the island. "No, I'm teasing; I don't give a hoot about what happens to a bunch of bunnies. Give me a good hot bunch of hobbits, though, and I'd be real happy."

It's only a little bit of a joke: that damn Tolkien could keep him occupied for days and days. "You know, show the maps to the French chick, drive her crazy. Crazier."

He's still not answering the question, mostly because it's a hard one to answer. Go to prison and when you ain't fighting for privacy or food, you're reading and he's read a lot.

"If I really got to pick, I'm going with some Flannery O'Connor." It's the whole business about the south: she knows it real good and she writes some fine unwitting con-men to boot. "Maybe one of her short story collections. Maybe A Good Man is Hard to Find. You surprised?"

Yeah, reading her's like bundling up the absolute worst of home with the absolute second-worst of home, wrapping it up, and getting it as a present. It ain't what you want, but it sure is familiar.

She laughs right out loud at the idea of him being real happy to read about a bunch of hobbits, but she doesn't doubt he'd read Tolkien if he had the free time and there was some available to him.

Between whatever he salvaged from the plane itself and whatever he's taken from the hatch, he bound to find something he likes.

His answer both surprises her and doesn't, though. On one hand, it's not an unexpected answer, but once she starts thinking about it she can see it pretty well.

"Flannery O'Connor, huh? I guess you didn't find anything by her in the hatch."

She hasn't seen him with any, and they've spent a fair amount of time together.

"No, ma'am." He shakes his head in mock sadness. "And I sure am sick of reading Lord of the Flies and car magazines." He nods to the tabloid she brought in. "Least here, I get something fresh, even if it's the same old crap with new names. I ain't lookin' at the same pages over and over again."

When they do go back, he might even get to finish this thing he found on the plane called Bad Twin, a manuscript, one of a kind. Got about twenty pages into it so far but he's gonna have to reread it now, being away from it for so long. "Course, I got those comic books you gave me. If I didn't know better, Freckles, I'd say you were trying to favor your way into my shorts."

Laughing, he gives her a little half-wink. "Some people are sweet-talkers. You: you're a sweet-reader." Unable to resist, he slides that tabloid over to her. "Come on, cupcake. My old eyes are getting tired. Read to me."

There's just a moment's pause.

"In voices."

Her eyes seek out the far corner of the ceiling, coming dangerously close to rolling.

"I'm not trying to get into your shorts."

If anything like that is going on, the one trying to get into the other's shorts has to be the one who bargained for a kiss even after being tortured.

But taking the magazine, she pushes herself over on the bed until her back's against the headboard. "I'm not reading in voices, either."

She has no doubt he said that just to get a rise out of her.

With that out of the way, though, she opens the magazine, flips through the first few pages, and then launches into the article about Callista Christie, pop singer-turned-actress, who caused quite a scene at the Mars-L.A. premiere of her latest movie.

There's not much sex, but it's got to be juicier than Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret.

Half an hour later she's leaving the room with a grin on her face, having read a few more articles -- in her own voice -- and dodged most of his flirtation the way only a woman so familiar with evasion could.

She's got a torch to put together, and even though she's been told she's going to be coming right back after whatever amount of time she chooses passes, she thinks she's going to go ahead and take a nice long bath tonight.

Just in case.

Damn: no voices. But at least he got her to read to him and he has to admit he likes the sound of her voice, the way it rolls over the words all sweet and sassy.

If it turns out they do get stuck back on Craphole Island, at least he knows he's got some daydreams to occupy his time. Maybe he'll smuggle back just a couple extra magazines anyhow. Tear the dates off the front covers, 'cause at this point, ain't no one gonna scrutinize some old tabloid in the middle of his stash.

That decided, he takes a look in his closet at the grimy shirt, the ripped-up jeans, the don't-fit-me-nohow sneakers he was wearing when he got here. Seems almost a damn shame to put them back on, but he will.

Tomorrow.

And he'll bring the pills and tuck his gun away nice and neat in his waistband.

And tonight, he's going to feast his eyes on the best damn food he can order, and watch as much damn TV as his eyes can stand. Might be a long time till he gets to spend time on those two simple pleasures again.

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