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“I think I slept in your bed.”
Sawyer’s sitting up reading when it comes to him, and it leaves his mouth before he has a chance to consider that Juliet is next to him trying to fall asleep.
She’s still awake enough to open her eyes and blink up at him in the dim light, as if to say, Where the hell did you think you were sleeping?
“Not this bed,” he clarifies. “Your old one. Back in New Otherton.”
She furrows her brow like she’s thinking, then shakes her head. “Nope. I would have remembered that.”
“Oh, you would have,” Sawyer assures her. “If you’d have been there.”
He doesn’t mention who was there. In hindsight, it’s a damn good thing Kate didn’t want to go all the way — he’s not sure he’d be able to look Juliet in the eye.
“Well,” she says now, propping her head on her hand, “how was it?”
Sawyer chuckles. “Pretty comfy, if I remember right. Took some getting used to after sleeping on the ground for three months.”
He feels like an idiot for not realizing it sooner.
When they first started shacking up together, it was like déjà vu. He put it down to living with a woman, having seen enough mornings-after to be familiar with fluffy pink towels and flowery shampoo.
But there were other things, too. The foods in the refrigerator, how her toothbrush rested across the top of her rinsing cup, the way she arranged the dishes on the drying rack. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d lived with her before.
It shouldn’t have taken him until the damn ‘70s to figure out he’d been in her house. Hell, there was even a light box on the wall for X-rays. Medical books on the shelves. Her name might as well have been painted across every surface.
But she wasn’t on his mind as much those days. Funny how fast things change.
“Remind me when this was?” Juliet asks.
“Back when the family split up. I went with Locke. Bunked with Hugo at the Barracks for a few days, before those sons of bitches from the freighter shot it up.”
They still talk about the people who left, but it’s kind of like dropping something on the floor and waiting to see if the other person picks it up. Sometimes it goes right back where it came from. Other times they pass it back and forth all night and then don’t touch it again for weeks.
Juliet doesn’t say anything now, so Sawyer picks it up and puts it back himself, along with his book and his glasses on the bedside table.
He slides down so they’re face to face. “Guess you didn’t have any pictures on the wall, or I might have known.”
Any pictures of you and your sister is the unspoken version, but it hangs in the air between them regardless. He tries to be careful about that, too. Doesn’t want to upset her with the reminder of what she can’t get back to.
“I had one, tucked away somewhere.” She’s looking past him, at something that’s not there. “Six months didn’t seem like long enough to pack a whole photo album.”
Sawyer flinches a little, thinking about how long she’s been here. How long ago she was supposed to have left. That if she had left after six months, they wouldn’t have even met each other. And he feels guilty for how glad he is that they did.
“I walk past it on my way to the motor pool,” Juliet says now.
It takes him a second to figure out she’s talking about her old house. The house she hasn’t lived in yet. With the bed he hasn’t slept in.
“It’s weird,” she continues. “How different it feels. You’d think it would be like I never left, but most of the time it doesn’t even feel like I’m in the same place.”
“Paint’s fresh,” Sawyer quips, reaching out to brush his fingers through her hair.
He’s heard enough about her old life here to know that different is a good thing.
Three nights might not be the same as three years, but it feels different to him, too. In moments like this, when it’s just the two of them, and he can’t see beyond the blue of her eyes — it’s like he’s somewhere else. Not off the island, exactly, but not quite on it, either.
He spent so long running from one con to the next. Now he’s managed to con his way into staying put. And he’s got no intention of moving any time soon.
“What’d you read?” Juliet asks.
“Hm?”
“In my house. What book did you read?”
“Ah.” It makes him smile, how well she knows him.
He takes a minute to remember. It’s usually not too hard — he can associate most of the books he read back then with some life-or-death crisis that probably made him lose his place.
“The one about the guy on the island,” he says when it finally comes to him. “Y’know, where nothing’s real.”
“The Invention of Morel. Never liked that one. Hit too close to home.”
“What, you saying I ain’t real?”
She brings a hand to his face, thumb stroking his cheek. “I do wonder sometimes.”
Sawyer’s response is to kiss her, long and slow. Like they’ve got all the time in the world — enough to carry them all the way back to whatever the hell year it’s supposed to be.
“How’s that for real?” he asks when they break apart.
Juliet hums. “I’m gonna need a little more convincing.”
“You got it,” he says with a grin. “But first, answer me one thing.”
“Shoot.”
“Xanadu?”
She rolls her eyes. “It was there when I moved in.”
“It’s all right, I’ll get you another copy,” he teases. “If you can wait a few years for it to come out.”
She shuts him up with another kiss, and then another, and it’s not long before Sawyer decides this is the comfiest bed he’s ever slept in.