Chapter Text
“Hello? Knock knock? Sawyer, are you-- alive, dude?”
Hurley leans his hands on his knees outside John’s tent, out of breath. He just ran all the way to the beach from the van he found in the woods – it wasn’t too far a distance, but he was trying to keep up with Desmond and Jin, and especially Desmond does not mess around when it comes to running.
He had a good reason to be in a hurry, though. From what he told Hurley, Kate and Sawyer escaped from the Others, and Sawyer had not made it out unscathed. Desmond hadn’t known the specifics but he kind of made it sound like Sawyer had been hit by a truck. Maybe he had. If there are vans on this island, maybe there are trucks, too.
“I’m dead and you’re talkin’ to my ghost,” comes Sawyer’s deadpan reply.
“That’s not funny,” Hurley breathes, his shoulders slumping with relief. “Hey, is it all right if I come in? I wanna see how you’re doing, and stuff.”
“And stuff,” Sawyer echoes, just thoughtfully enough that Hurley knows he’s making fun of him. Probably hasn’t been hit by an actual truck, then, if he’s okay enough to be bullying him. “Yeah, whatever. Come in.”
Hurley lets himself into the tent, eyes narrowed into a squint, and immediately gets on his knees to pull Sawyer into a bear hug. He has to be quick about it; he’s not that great with blood and he knows that if he lets himself spot any blood, the twisting of his stomach will interrupt the happiness he’s feeling right now.
“Glad you’re back, dude,” he says, keeping his eyes squeezed shut as he pats Sawyer’s back. “And Kate, too, ‘course. I totally thought I was never gonna see you guys again.”
Sawyer makes a kind of surprised-strangled noise, and Hurley lets him go and finally looks him over. He looks like he’s been punched in the face a couple of times – the skin underneath his eye and along his jaw is colorfully bruised, and there’s a scab across the bridge of his nose, and his lip is split – but, thankfully, there isn’t really any blood in sight. He looks over and spots bandages around Sawyer’s foot, with the tiniest amount of blood seeping through, but it’s an amount of blood that Hurley can handle.
He looks back to Sawyer’s face, and Sawyer quirks an eyebrow at him. Hurley shakes himself. “Almost forgot,” he says, reaching into the back pocket of his pants. “John said to give you these.”
He holds out a bottle of aspirin. It’d been in his pocket all morning, because he’d figured he, Charlie and Desmond would probably have a headache after how drunk they’d gotten last night. Their hangover had turned out less bad than he’d anticipated, but he’d kept the painkillers in his pocket just in case.
Sawyer tilts his head at the bottle of aspirin. “Ah,” he says, like he just realized something. “Hugo.”
“…yeah,” Hurley replies belatedly, deciding not to ask. “That’s me. Uh. Here.” He holds out the container at Sawyer, and Sawyer takes it.
“You know those were in my stash when I left,” he reacts, though the attempt at arguing is half-hearted at best.
“Yeah, that’s why I’m giving them back to you,” Hurley says. “You’re gonna need them.”
To his surprise, Sawyer stills at that. He narrows his eyes at him. “Is that a threat, Captain Cheesepuff?” he asks, his voice carefully level.
“No?” Hurley replies, cocking his head at him.
“Sure sounded like a threat,” Sawyer insists, not taking his eyes off Hurley.
“No, it’s…” Hurley pauses hesitantly, trying to figure out the right words to un-startle Sawyer. He’s staring at Hurley like a spooked cat that’s one wrong move away from hissing and clawing his face off. “…not a threat,” he settles on eventually. “I just meant you’ll need the painkillers ‘cause you’re hurt. I don’t even know what I would be threatening you for.”
Sawyer looks Hurley over critically, then drops his gaze to the bottle of aspirin in his hand, working his jaw.
“Man,” Hurley says with a laugh, “what’d they do to you while you were gone? You’re being kinda weird.”
“You’re weird,” Sawyer replies absently. He shakes two pills out of the bottle and dry-swallows them one by one. When he sees Hurley watching him, he reacts sharply: “What?”
“Nothing. Just… You dodged my question. Are you all right, dude?”
“I got a hole in my foot,” Sawyer deadpans, “and it hurts.” He rubs a hand across his face. “Also Locke was playin’ mind games and it gave me a killer headache.”
“Yeah, okay. Fair enough. That kinda sucks.”
“Hrm.”
“So, uhm,” Hurley says, “Jin and I found something in the woods that we thought maybe you’d appreciate, but, well, if you’re tired, maybe I should leave you alone. It’s pretty awesome though. But maybe this isn’t the moment--”
“Just spit it out, yeah?” Sawyer replies, exasperated.
Hurley grins at him and turns to poke his head out of the tent. Jin is walking around with a crate, dividing their newfound treasure across anyone who’ll have it. Hurley waves him over, and he jogs across the beach to join them in the tent.
“I think you’re gonna like this,” Hurley tells Sawyer, holding the tent flap to the side to let Jin in.
Jin smiles, wide and excited, at the sight of Sawyer; he exclaims something in Korean and sets the crate down on the ground to hug Sawyer, like Hurley did. Sawyer winces and sighs, and he shakes Jin off with a surprisingly-fond “yeah, yeah, glad to see you too”.
Jin is grinning possibly even wider now, and he bends over the crate to toss Sawyer one of the cans they found. Sawyer catches it and squints at the label.
His eyes widen an almost comical amount; Hurley and Jin share a pleased look. “Holy shit,” Sawyer declares, looking up at them and back at the can and then back at them again. “Fuckin’ beer. Where’d you even find this?”
“Oh, you know,” says Hurley. “Just in a van with a dead guy in it. Like, he was dead dead. Some DHARMA dude named Roger Workman.” He shudders. “Pretty gross. I think the beer’s gross, too – I haven’t had any but Jin’s had two and he kept making weird faces at it. The beer hasn’t killed him, though, so I think it’s probably all right to drink.”
“At this point, I wouldn’t care if it tasted like piss and you found it in a nuclear waste pit,” Sawyer decides, popping his beer open and taking a swig. His face scrunches into roughly the same expression Jin had had earlier. He drinks some more. Jin laughs and opens a beer of his own.
Hurley crosses his legs, settling down. “So,” he says, because the other two are busy drinking and he might as well open the conversation. “You and Kate, huh?”
Sawyer chokes on his beer.
“So, yes?” Jin asks innocently. When Sawyer just glares at him, hacking loudly, Jin reaches over to pat him on the back. He gives Hurley a knowing grin while Sawyer isn’t paying attention to him.
“That’s,” Sawyer manages eventually, sending them both looks that could kill, “none of your business.”
“Ooh, you two are totally together!” Hurley crows. He’s still not fully sure how much Jin is understanding of all of this, but apparently enough: he raises his beer at Sawyer in a “cheers” motion, directing his grin towards him now.
Hurley has been teased by Sawyer maybe a hundred times at this point; he can’t deny that it’s fun to get back at him a little bit. With a huff, Sawyer takes an angry swig of his beer.
“None of your business,” he repeats sharply.
“I hit the nail on the head, didn’t I?” Hurley asks sympathetically. “It was just a guess, you know. It’s always… When scary stuff happens to two people, they get closer. At least that’s how it happens in the movies. And I figured that might’ve happened to you guys.”
Sawyer takes another swig from his beer, looking sulky.
“So, yes,” Jin summarizes.
Sawyer throws one hand into the air, exasperated. “Congratulations,” he says sharply, “you got it right. Except it doesn’t matter, because I pissed her off and now she’s avoidin’ me.”
Jin nods at him slowly, thoughtfully. Seems like he’s cooking up something really insightful, so Hurley lets him think.
Eventually, Jin asks with a sympathetic look, “Divorce?”
“Who taught you that?” Sawyer blurts out, at the same time that Hurley holds out his hands and shushes Jin.
“Okay, now we’ve gone too far,” Hurley decides. “That’s-- too far.” He’s feeling a bit bad about this now; Sawyer genuinely seems kind of upset about the thing with Kate. Hurley turns towards him, fidgeting with his hair. “Sorry about… whatever it was that you and Kate had. What’s she mad about?”
Sawyer huffs a wry laugh. “Now that really is none of your business.”
“That’s fair enough, I guess.” Hurley rubs at his neck. “Don’t worry too much about it, man. You’ve got to remember that she’s still Kate, despite whatever you had going on.”
Sawyer narrows his eyes at him. “Hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means she’s Kate,” he emphasizes. At Sawyer’s frown, he clarifies: “There’s a thousand reasons why she could be avoiding you.”
“That supposed to make me feel better?”
“Well,” Hurley continues, “maybe she’s not that mad at you. Maybe she’s avoiding you ‘cause she’s kind of a badass, and she always needs something important to do. And right now, the most important thing to do is to make sure Jack gets home safe as well. She’ll probably come around when that’s done and you’re the most important thing to--” He stops himself with a wave of his hand. “If that makes any sense?”
“You think she’s going to try and get Jack back?” Sawyer asks. “By herself?”
Hurley shrugs. “Maybe not by herself. She was talking to John when I saw them just now.”
“Well, he’ll keep her from gettin’ herself killed. That’s somethin’, at least.” Sawyer finishes his beer in one go and crumples the can in his fist. “I need to talk to her,” he says.
“Like, now?” Hurley asks. “It’s not like I know that much about it, but it’s probably best to let her talk through the plan with John first. You know, for safety reasons.”
Sawyer considers that with a frown, and it looks like he’s going to argue, but then Jin hands him another beer and he gives a resigned sigh. “Fine,” he decides. “Guess there’s no harm in waitin’ a bit longer. Just open up the tent so I can see if she walks by, yeah?”