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“Son of a—”
Another snapping twig, another shifting rock. And as Sawyer stumble-thumped over yet another loosened root, he knew that Juliet was smiling. Even though she didn’t turn. Didn’t make a single sound. Every hair on her head seemed to stay put—the low wisps stuck to her beading neck, the shorter pieces tucked behind her ears.
The mass of her mane that she’d wound into a plait that morning, while they sat at the table finishing their coffee. Slow, languid sips, in honor of the first day they’d off together in several weeks.
If it’d been Sawyer’s turn to pick how they spent it, they would’ve stayed right there—safely and happily inside the familiar four walls of their house. Maybe reading. Maybe making more coffee. Maybe in bed. (Definitely in bed.)
Once upon a time he might have grumbled more about spending his day off doing, in essence, the same sort of sweeping trek through the jungle that he’d done with the security team the day before. But by then he knew better, having learned how eager Juliet would be to make his sacrifice up to him once they returned to those familiar four walls.
Her fingers were as quick and deft as ever, winding that plait—no mirror required. No intermission required, in her head-shaking string of vetoes toward the routes and sights Sawyer pointed out within his topographical map.
“Too muddy, this time of year,” she’d mumble after one. “No—we’ll be walking right into the sun,” after another. Then at last, a sigh. A pleading sort of look, that never meant anything but trouble.
“You know,” she started, in her low, sing-song tone that never meant anything but trouble. “We’ve never gone to the top of the volcano.”
With a gulp Sawyer glanced at the place it was marked on his map. The density of thinly-etched topographical rings, indicating how high that point stood above the rest.
Then he made the mistake of letting his eyes flick to Juliet’s fingers, as she pulled the braid around to the front of her shoulder to finish tying it off.
How the hell she multitasked the way she did, he’d never know. How he could stop by the motor pool while she was in the middle of taking an engine apart piece by piece, and ramble about some problem most of the way under his breath. How she could nod—once, twice—then rattle off one solution. Then another, and another, and another, all without even a moment’s break in her work.
Even just listening to her solutions took more concentration than he had available, while he was transfixed on her busy hands. The way they flew from bearing to rod to camshaft, doing god knew what.
God knew the distant murmur of her own low voice, coupled with the twist-fist-furl of her knuckles around the wrench she kept slung in her belt loop made him jealous, in an upside-down way that made no sense whatsoever.
Maybe it used to, once upon a time. A teeny, tiny bit of twisted sense.
Not now, though, when they’d just passed two years since their first kiss and then some—all of it rushed, then mutually apologetic. Like they’d both been worried they were taking advantage of the other.
Then—in the settled dust of their apologies cancelling each other out—mutually, brutally aware of some threshold that’d been crossed, closing fast and loud behind them like a blast door.
(Sawyer still wasn’t sure which side of the door the explosion would come from. If they’d managed to block it out just in time, or trapped the bomb inside with them.)
No sense being jealous of any other man, beast, or inanimate object Juliet held in her hands, when the routines of their life together had become so reliable that they felt almost boring.
Only almost. Other guys on the security team talked about their own domestic boredom, and Sawyer nodded along. But he didn’t think he could ever get tired of Juliet’s squished-cheek, blanketed stupor, begging him for five more minutes. All the times she started making dinner, only to let out increasingly forlorn-sounding sighs until he took over for her. The way she squeezed her eyes tightly shut whenever they fought, like she had to block him from her sight to remember she was angry with him.
Certainly, not of the version of her he got graced with every time they left the barracks’ bounds. The other prize that made it well worth it, to spend his day off sweaty and thirsty with all his muscles burning.
For out in the jungle Juliet grew slier, smoother. Seeming comfortable in a way she never did inside the sonic fence, as if it had been built to keep her out the same way it did Ol’ Smokey.
Silently she wove round branch and bramble. Predicting turns and obstacles uncannily well, for a path they’d never strode. Never did she trip on loosened roots, or scattered pebbles. The island opened up for her; trunks and brush and swarms parting like stage curtains. Ready for her, ready for the show.
Maybe she really was made of smoke, Sawyer thought to himself. Just as he misjudged the distance to cross a small stream and his foot came down hard, the same way it did when he took the security bunker staircase in the dark. Sure beyond sure that he’d taken the final step, when still one more remained.
“We there yet, Blondie?” he called to her, mostly to distract himself from the unpleasant plummeting feeling in his gut.
At this, she turned. Small smile curling, as she lifted a hand to her forehead to wipe the sweat away. Then in a second, she was facing ahead again, pointing to the thinning treeline ahead where the trail grew steeper.
“We’re close. Ten, fifteen minutes, I think. If you don’t trip and fall again.”
“Didn’t fall,” he huffed. Low enough that maybe she wouldn’t hear, but she snorted.
Her tank top rode up above the button-up she’d shed and tied around her waist, and she reached around to tug it down. Nails scratching inside the hem for a moment, catching on the ridges of her eight-pointed scar.
She’d never once said so, but he knew it still got irritated with the heat, the friction of her clothes.
More than two years, and still she didn’t like for him to see it. Didn’t like for him to be reminded of all she’d endured for his life and limb. Every breath of air steaming into his lungs, as he hauled one foot in front of the other.
More than once she’d saved him. More than twice. More times than he liked to think about, since the hot and swollen feeling it triggered in his chest surpassed simple gratitude. It bordered on pain and suffering, to be protected that way.
If he thought about it for too long, he’d start wishing she’d just let him die. For it bordered on pain and suffering, to be so happy. To be so loved.
Ever the masochist, he had a ring stashed beneath the creaky floorboard in their bedroom. Waiting.
For what, precisely, he couldn’t say. But he’d lived through his family’s demise for the second time a few months before, and came out the other side with a vague sense like maybe it was all for the better. Maybe one family had to die, to leave room for the one he and Juliet were making for themselves.
She quickened her pace as the incline grew less punishing, and let out a sound that was half-whoop, half-sigh when she reached the crest. She stopped short just a yard or so back from the lip of the volcano’s cavernous opening, close enough to make Sawyer’s hands shoot out. As if he meant to grab her, and pull her back.
But he was too far away—still struggling up to the summit while she watched him, beaming. When he reached her at last she slipped away again, circling the ridge until she was pinned between it and the other face of the cliff, that sheared downwards into a vortex of foaming, crashing waves.
He took his requisite look inside the volcano, half-expecting to see hot and bubbling lava even though he knew it was dormant. The sun above glinted off the hardened floes of shining obsidian, making him shield his eyes.
He took his requisite look at the ocean, once again blocking his eyes from the sun’s glare off the turning whitecaps.
Alright, alright—that’s enough of that, screamed his thigh muscles.
With a sigh he sank to the ground and pulled out his canteen. Facing the water, since that scared him the lesser of the two abysses sandwiching him in.
Juliet eyed him with amusement before she joined him there, snapping her hand toward the canteen like a crab claw. He handed it over with a roll of his eyes, even though he’d been about to ask her if she wanted some before he had any himself.
“It’s pretty interesting,” she mused between sips. “All the rock formations.”
“Guess so.”
She took a longer, deeper drink, then opened her mouth with a smacking sound as she handed the canteen back to him.
“What should we put in for?”
“Hm?” Sawyer hummed absently. The sip he took dribbled down the corners of his mouth, and Juliet smirked at him.
“From the sub. It’s coming tomorrow.”
Just then a cloud blew across the brilliant, blinding sun, and Sawyer himself got the same sort of feeling.
He’d told himself he wouldn’t let this happen again. That he’d commit to memory the schedule of the Galaga’s comings and goings, so when Juliet next brought it up like she always did, he wouldn’t be caught on his heels.
“Oh,” he said. At a note far flatter, than just being caught on his heels. Flat like a bug getting pancaked under one of them.
Juliet’s eyebrow arched slightly, but her eager expression didn’t falter.
“I want chocolate. Good chocolate—not Apollo bars. And I think there’s a new Stephen King book, but I can’t remember if it actually comes out next year.” She sighed. “I wish I remembered all the release dates. I’m sick of Horace’s recommendations.”
Another time, he’d tease her right back for her sweet tooth. For all the crappy sci-fi novels she’d put up with the last two and a half years, rather than risk revealing her publishing precognition.
Those rays did what they could to shine through, but the storm of fear the submarine always inspired in him raged on, only growing.
He’d asked Juliet to stay for him, once. He knew that was it—his one big shot. If she decided she wanted to leave again, he’d have no counter. He could beg, but that was it.
She knew everything about him now. Everything he had to offer. Everything she had to endure.
The cloud passed on from the sun above, but the renewed warmth and light didn’t soothe him. Clarity could be horrific, after all. Some things weren’t worth finding out.
Maybe that was why the ring he had under the floor kept waiting. (And waiting.) If he didn’t ask the question, he couldn’t hear the answer.
If only she didn’t keep such close track of the sub schedule.
He fumbled with the canteen a few times, trying to slip it into the pack without pulling it around to his front. Juliet nudged him with her elbow.
“Hello? No requests?”
“I dunno,” he mumbled, jaw working as he kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, over that big wide ocean he couldn't help but curse and thank and equal measure. “’Nother record or two wouldn’t hurt.”
“Same problem, with the release dates. I know that Rumours is out soon. I just don’t know when.”
“We could pick somethin’ older.”
Juliet nodded, and shifted her crossed legs apart to hook her elbows around her knees. Fingers tangling together, as she tugged at her knuckles the way she did when she was troubled.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I miss things being new, though. Really new. New to us, too.”
The wind picked up speed, bringing more clouds across the horizon as the air around them seemed to dim a few degrees, like a light on a switch.
Maybe it was Juliet’s nervous fidgeting that did it. Maybe the effect of the clouding sky had turned over, and brought Sawyer something like the sort of reckless bravery as he got hiding with Juliet during a party, shutting themselves away from the fray in a bedroom or storage closet.
Or as he got pulling the covers over their heads, after a nightmare made one or both of them bolt up in the middle of the night. Gasping for air as they clamored through the sheets for the other.
There was no choice, really. No matter how much something scared him, as soon as it was something Juliet needed—or needed protecting from—he simply had to face it head on.
“I’d come with you, y’know”
Juliet furrowed her brow, mouth parting.
“On the sub,” he said quickly, before she could ask what he meant. Before the wind blew his streak of bravery onward again, scattering it to the wind. “If you wanted to leave, I mean. Plenty of new things back in the real world.”
Her expression softened, and she waited a moment before she answered.
“I don't think that counts. We’ve lived it all before, haven't we?”
He nodded.
“They need you here, anyway.”
He might’ve protested, if she didn’t shoot to her feet so fast. Drawing in a sharp breath through her nose and looking skyward, before she offered him her hand.
“It’s gonna rain,” she said. “Any minute. We should get going.”
He took the help up, but gave a disbelieving shake of his head. “Never starts ‘fore three.”
“I can feel the pressure change.” She crouched down again, re-tying the already-tied laces of her boots. “Like that feeling you get in your ears, before your plane lands.” Her eyes flashed up to him, and her cheeks colored. “Sorry. Bad example.”
He laughed, and took a turn pulling her to her feet. Pulling her close to him, hands wrapping around as much of her as he could reach.
“Good example,” he argued, before he kissed her roughly. Swallowing up whatever her next argument back was meant to be. Groaning back in assent, letting it in. Letting her win.
She kissed him back, with one hand cupping his jaw. Her thumb traced the ridge of his nose, the dip below his eye.
And then from across the sea there came a rumble, and Juliet pulled away looking smug.
“Yeah, yeah,” Sawyer grumbled. “Save it.”
One last smiling kiss, then she cinched the straps of her pack tighter and pushed the hair back from her face, before she made her way toward the trail once more.
“Oh, I plan to.”
As they descended that steep face as fast as they could without losing their footing, their hands interlocked. And for a first split second, Sawyer registered the feel of something hard and smooth on Juliet’s fourth finger. Same sort of golden ridge, as the one he had hidden in a shoebox.
He startled at the thought—eyes widening, stomach dropping—but he didn’t let go. Even though he wanted to. For there came a hot and swollen feeling. Bordering on something.
Not pain, not suffering. A notion unlike anything he’d had before. It made him curious.
He’d never felt curious about himself before. Juliet, sure. Millions of times. Kate too. Jack. Cassidy. Mr. Sawyer himself. Everyone he’d ever been drawn to, for better or worse.
Something about that place might’ve done the trick. The width of the volcano’s slumbering crater, the expanse of water at their backs. How brightly the sun shone so high up, even through the mounting gray. The way the scattered light reflected on Juliet. Making her pretty blue eyes squint one by one as he faced her, alternating so she never had to stop looking at him all the way.
“We should come back here,” he said. Soft, but assured. “Next time we got the day off.”
She peered at him, eyes dancing around the edges of his brow. Sizing him up in that way she did, that made him want to squirm like cells she’d pressed on a microscope slide.
“What’s the catch?”
“Come on,” he scoffed. “Ain’t no catch.”
“You come on. You hate hiking.”
He chuckled, and hoped it didn’t come out sounding as harrowing as it’d been on his tongue. Nerves beyond nerves, quivering below it. A horror story of a laugh, was how it’d tasted.
He thought of them, coming back. Him, getting down on one knee. Her, saying no. Her, saying yes. Whatever came after that.
‘After that’ an open, yawning mouth—bigger than the volcano. Bigger even than the ocean. Ready to swallow him like a tiny, buzzing fly.
After the fly came the spider. After the spider came the bird. After the bird came the cat. After the cat came the dog.
Short film behind his eyes, ending in children older than he was right then and there. All of them weeping over another open mouth, the hole in the ground where he and Juliet lay together one last time. The image filled him up with an aching, gnawing grief, not far from what he’d felt for days and weeks on end that past summer.
Before he’d come out the other side. Well before it felt like there was any way in hell any part of his sad and sorry life could be for the better.
He still fought a shudder remembering the wracked and wretched way he’d wept. Barely did he register anything else—even Juliet’s arms wrapped tight around him. Anything but enough hot and shameful tears to wet the dry season back into the monsoon they were presently scrambling to outrun.
This is how it starts, chided a smooth and buried voice.
(Not so buried. Not far enough for us to call him James.)
Half owed to the man he’d strangled with a rusted iron chain. Half owed to himself.
But maybe he could try to let his own half go. So he grinned at Juliet, and squeezed her hand.
“No catch, Blondie. Swear on my life. ”
She shrugged. Stretched on her toes, and kissed him gently on the cheek.
“Alright, I trust you. I guess.”
She laughed beautifully as she straightened, winking at him. Like she didn’t guess. Like really, she knew.
Clarity could be horrific. But it didn’t have to be.
And that doubt was enough, for Sawyer to wonder if he had what it took.