Lost--"Feverish"

Title: Feverish
Author: miladygrey
Subject: Physician, heal thyself, and do no harm
Fandom: Lost
Pairing: Jack/Kate/Sawyer
Rating: Probably R
Spoilers: S2 stuff. Assume everything has happened up through “What Kate Did”.
Disclaimers: None of them are mine, they are JJ’s. But I’ll gladly take Sawyer!
Distribution: Sure! Just ask me first.
Notes: For the bubbleficathon, as per littlehands‘s request. Jack/Kate/Sawyer, slippery soap, and (almost) a cold shower. Thanks be to my perceptive betas, maisfeeka and firiel44. Enjoy!


Feel the fever coming, you’re shaking and twitching
You can scratch all over but that won’t stop the itching…
…can you feel a little love? --Depeche Mode

“Jack.”

He jerked awake out of muddled sleep, his eyes still startled to find shelves of books and appliances after forty-plus days of sand and jungle. Locke, standing expectantly within his sight range, cocked his head and peered at him. “My shift’s over. Going out to hunt, probably with Mr. Eko.”

“Gotcha.” Jack made a deliberate effort to concentrate, but it was hard. Never enough sleep any more. It was like being an intern again. “You think he’s safe to wander around with?”

“Oh, yes.” He seemed quite confident, but Locke always did. “We should be back by sunset, it’s only just after noon now.”

“Where’s--” Too many names to keep straight. He’d kill for a good cup of coffee, but that was one thing the Hanso Foundation had not seen fit to provide. “--everyone else?”

“Lessee. Hurley’s taking a turn with the numbers. Kate’s keeping an eye on Sawyer, Michael took Sayid to see if they can trace any cables through the jungle, Charlie, Claire, and Rose have the new folks in hand, and everyone else is scattered around at the beach and caves. No new crises, just the usual ones.” Locke smiled his abashed smile. “Were you expecting something?”

“There usually is something.” At least nobody else had died yet. That he knew of. Speaking of which. “Kate say anything about Sawyer?”

The older man shrugged. “I haven’t spoken to her. I assume if anything had gone extra wrong or extra right, she’d have told someone.”

So no change. That would be his first order of business, check on the patient. Like a good doctor. “Okay, then.” He sat up and clambered out of the bunk, still feeling fuzzy around the edges. “I am officially here. Go hunt.”

Locke chuckled and vanished down the tunnel, and Jack aimed himself across the bunker towards the other niche of a bedroom where Sawyer had been placed. As he approached, he heard a faint murmuring through the curtain. It was Kate’s voice (he knew her voice, and had no idea when that knowledge had sunk into his brain), rising and falling in a soothing cadence that made the actual words, whatever they were, unimportant. In deference to that, he paused and peered through the gap into the pale-lit little area.

She was touching him. Just a laying-on of hands, her narrow fingers across his forehead and the back of one hand lightly against his stubbled cheek, age-old test for fever and general malaise. Still, she was touching him, and he was smiling at her out of half-closed summer-blue eyes, and Jack’s sleepy irritability flared into edged jealousy just from that alone. No one touched him. Physician, heal thyself, while the smartass con man got attention and devoted care. Just for that, he yanked the curtain aside with a rattle and rustle and tromped inside.

Kate yanked her hands away quickly, and he wondered if she was ashamed to have a gentle side. Claire and Sun were the gentle ones, dealing with babies and plants. Kate had guns and a Past. He deliberately didn’t look at either of them, just somewhere between. Very interesting blanket, with the Dharma symbol embroidered on it. “Any better?”

“You tell me, Doc.” Sawyer’s usual grin was no less annoying, but visibly strained. “Guess this is an improvement over a hole in the ground, but it still hurts like a bitch.”

Medical training took precedence over irrational jealousy. Jack reached across the man’s bare torso and pressed the reddened edges of the wound carefully, and felt an unpleasant give under his fingertips. Sawyer shuddered, taking a brief, harsh breath. Dammit. He thought he’d gotten it all…“The wound’s still got some pockets of infection. It needs to be thoroughly cleaned.” The “again” was clearly implied, he hoped.

Kate bristled, apparently an instinctive reaction whenever she was between him and Sawyer. “You were here, you watched me help clean it when he got here. I did my best--”

“I know. Still, he dug it out with his bare hands, got thrown in a pit, then trekked through the jungle with it still mostly open. A basic washdown wasn’t going to be enough.”

“Hey. You two. I’m still here.” Sawyer snapped his fingers, then grimaced as even that small motion jarred his shoulder. “So I need more than rest and TLC. What else is there? You wouldn’t happen to be an angel of mercy, would you Freckles?”

“I’m not a nurse, no.”

The bitterness in Jack found a tiny, tiny vent. “You’re not? You’re everything else. Tracker, tree-climber, straightshooter, criminal…”

She bit her lip, and he hated that he wondered if it was an act even as he found it cute. “If you think I’m going to kill him on a random impulse, I’ll go.”

“I didn’t say that…” It was not her fault. None of this was her fault, and she was the only help he was going to get, since Hurley would probably flee for sanctuary to the Others if it were suggested that he do anything with a mostly-naked and wounded man. “I’m sorry. I’m tired, and--” Being tired yet and generic anger at the world and the island was not a good excuse. “Ignore everything else I say that doesn’t involve getting him cleaned up and less feverish, okay? That’s the goal.”

“I’m all for that. Now stop talking over me like I’m still unconscious and do something before my arm falls off.”

“Don’t tempt me, Sawyer.” Jack looked around the room (idly considering beating the other man to death with a hardback copy of The Lottery), and stared at the passageway to the bathroom for a minute before it sunk in. “A shower.”

“But we’re--” Kate visibly remembered that they now had a hatch with many useful amenities in it (though they didn’t quite make up for the crazy Irishman and his Numbers), and nodded. “Okay, that’ll cover cleanliness.”

“And a tepid shower, just a little more warm than cool, will help the fever. I don’t want to plunge him into ice water with his weakened system, so lukewarm’s the next best thing. After that, I’ll see what I can find back in storage. Some of the antibiotics in the first-aid kits might not even work, they’ve been here so long…” One problem at a time. “I guess your standing up is clearly out of the question.”

A sigh from the bunk confirmed that. “For a little while, maybe. But probably not long enough for what you‘re thinking.” It clearly galled him to admit the weakness.

“About that,” Kate said unexpectedly, “we could use one of the chairs from the eating area.” No one had called it the kitchen, because it wasn‘t. It had no hominess about it, no character. It was a place for someone to eat. “It’s plain plastic. We could bring it into the shower and he could sit down if he needed to.”

“That would work--” A certain pronoun registered on Jack. “We?”

“We?” Sawyer echoed, grinning again.

She lifted her eyebrows at them both. “You’re a pretty big guy, Sawyer. And even you can’t hold him upright and wash him and try to clean out his shoulder at the same time, Jack.”

“Hell, I should’ve gotten myself shot a long time ago.”

“Behave or I’ll drop you.”

They were bantering. Like this was a romantic comedy or something. Jack exhaled hard and focused. Task at hand. “Fine. Kate, you go get the chair and start up the shower--lukewarm, remember. Try sitting up, Sawyer.”

“Yessir, nosir, three bags full sir,” the man grumbled, moving very cautiously into a vertical position. “If I pass out, I want Freckles to give me mouth-to-mouth.”

“You’re getting a shower with her. Don’t be greedy.” With Sawyer balanced uncertainly on the edge of the bunk, Jack wrapped an arm around his waist and let the unhurt shoulder lean against his. “Up--”

He was still feverish. Not to the point of delirium he had been before, thank God, because trying to manhandle a mostly-unconscious Sawyer would probably have been his breaking point. But the man’s body radiated heat against his, and he could feel muscles quivering as Sawyer worked to stay on his feet even with Jack’s support. They picked their way across the room, clumsily dodging furniture--even so, Jack almost tripped, and Sawyer swore when he barked his shin against the countertop island. “Almost there.”

Sawyer muttered something that might have been “Oh, good,” mostly drowned out by the sound of the shower starting up. Jack pitched his voice above it. “Kate, give us a hand here?”

He just glimpsed her dark hair, then the weight he bore lessened somewhat. “Chair’s straight ahead,” her voice said from somewhere on Sawyer’s other side. “And I got one of the first aid kits out of the storage room. I’ll keep an eye on him if you want to get what you need.”

“Sounds good.” His toe bumped plastic, and he started to carefully ease Sawyer down. “You with me?”

“Don’t want to be.” The response was through gritted teeth. “Head’s spinning around--God, this water’s cold!”

Jack straightened, saw Kate settling Sawyer’s sagging body into the chair. “First aid kit is…?”

“Left-hand corner, out of the water. Go on, I’ve got him.” When he hesitated, she snapped, “I’ve got him. You do what you need to.“

Grudgingly, he backed into the corner with the small collection of possibly-useful items. A tube of some aloe-based gel, a few gauze pads, the generic syringes of antibiotic, a bar of white soap, and a washcloth stolen from the storeroom. After peeling off his shirt (God knew he needed a shower too), he took the soap, rubbing it between his wet hands, and almost swore out loud when it tried to escape. It slipped through his fingers twice more before he managed a secure hold, and he decided to get the washing out of the way first. Blinking water out of his eyelashes, he looked over to see how patient and nurse were getting along.

Sawyer looked like hell. Waterlogged, feverish hell. He was visibly shivering, mouth open in rough, pained breaths, and his whole body was drooping forward, supported by Kate. She was standing in front of him, slim shape canted awkwardly so his head could lean against her shoulder and she could hold him up and smooth his hair back from his flushed face. Her tan hands on his golden-brown skin, so damned intimate it hurt.

“Hey now, hey, hush, hush, it’s okay, you’re okay, hush…” Kate’s whisper blurred into the sounds of the water, and the small hurting noises Sawyer was making subsided. Jack bit back a comment about her being the Asshole Whisperer and concentrated on lathering up the soap without losing it. He might just jam it straight into Sawyer’s shoulder, see if that would help with the disinfecting.

Except he wouldn’t. He was a doctor. Correction, here on the island, he was the Doctor, Doctor Hero Jack, and he was not going to cause any further harm to Sawyer while the man was in need of care. Of course, if he opened his eyes at any point and made some wisecrack, Jack would tie him, gag him, and leave him for the Whatever in the jungle to find.

The bar of soap, while still trying to slip away, had finally foamed up into a lather smelling faintly of some unfamiliar flower or other. He took a minute to breathe as he walked over to them, and looked at Kate‘s face. Not her soaked tank top and jeans. Just her face. “You both all right?”

“Yes. Mostly.” Kate ran a hand through her mass of hair, smoothing it into a sleek line down her back, then replaced it around Sawyer. “He‘s going to have to stand up, isn‘t he?”

“Not for much longer than ten minutes. You need a rest, Sawyer, or should we just do this?”
He was already rising weakly to his feet, still using Kate for support. Wrapping his good arm around her shoulders, he turned and looked at Jack with a ghost of his customary grin. “Sooner we‘re done, sooner I get to go back and be nursed. Doin’ my best.” Sawyer’s drawl rasped a little, and aside from his shivering, he didn‘t move a muscle.

“I’ll be as gentle as I can.” Some of his irritation had melted at the sight of Sawyer’s weakness. Shifting to one side, he bent his head and started brushing away dried blood with one wet hand. The stuff rinsed away easily enough, leaving the dark, ragged edges of the bullet hole and the inflamed flesh around it. “This…is going to hurt. Sorry.”

“Not like I haven’t earned it, Doc. God--” He swallowed a few more words as Jack started rubbing the soap around the wound, and pressed his head hard into Kate’s shoulder, one hand gripping tightly. She kept whispering, stroking his hair and back in small, soothing gestures.

Once Jack was sure that the wound was (at least) cleaner than it had been, he checked for further injuries. The bruises and cuts inflicted by Ana-Lucia were fading, and none of them looked infected. He ran slippery hands down Sawyer’s back, feeling for anything strained or out of place. Nothing, just warm skin and muscle.

A moan came just audible over the water, and Jack looked up sharply. His ingrained doctor training had him checking the man’s body again before the sound fully registered. A moan, yes, but not one of pain. And motion, grind of denim-covered hips. Small, but tangible. One hand still resting between Sawyer’s shoulder blades, he stepped behind him and looked down at him, over at Kate.

It was pure contact on Sawyer‘s part, warmth and wet and friction. Instinctive response, no more than that. Kate eased the pain, so he looked to her for more. Had his head turned into the curve of her shoulder and neck, making those low moans as his hips moved slowly against hers. And she, she had her eyes closed and her lips parted, one hand still in his hair, the other now open wide across his chest. Reading his heart. And leaning, carefully, into him. Rubbing.

He wasn’t angry about it. He was irritated. Raw and bitter than they had something and he had nothing, when he wanted something. So badly. He dragged his hand down Sawyer’s damp back in brief blind frustration, letting his nails score a little. And felt him move, arching in response. Carefully, by degrees, he leaned against Sawyer. Felt sleek wet skin, fever-heat and chilled water droplets. Shivers and tension. Rolled his hips once, experimentally, got a push back and a low noise that warmed the water on his body.

Still looking over Sawyer’s shoulder, he watched Kate. Her eyes flew open at that hungry little sound, and found his. Widened, dark and unsure. Then, cautiously, her hand slid from Sawyer’s tangled blond hair to his brown crop. Touched him. And he ran one soapy hand around Sawyer’s waist and found hers, tracing up from her hip to a hint of skin to the curve of a breast.

He didn’t think about it. There was nothing to think about. Just that for this one time, these few minutes, Sawyer was submissive, and Kate was uncertain, and he--he didn’t have to do anything but touch and be touched. He concentrated on it all. The heat of Sawyer’s back against his chest. Soft weight of flesh in his hand, with cool wet fabric molded around it. A caught breath, a little groan. Taste of clean water on hot skin, and Kate sliding through his soapy fingers as she pressed in close, like she was trying to go through Sawyer’s body to his.

He came, tasting Sawyer and feeling Kate and hearing himself. Wondered if the fever had broken.