* WILD / CARD

SAWYER MCLAREN ( THOMAS DOHERTY ) is an EIGHTEEN year old from CONRAD, MONTANA. HE is known around the island as THE WILD CARD because he is EASYGOING and FREE-SPIRITED but can also be STUBBORN and FOOLHARDY. HE reminds of baseball bats, dog-eared books, and single-malt whiskey.

x

Dash nodded emphatically. It seemed ironic, Dash teaching Sawyer how to do something when the other guy seemed well-equipped with enough skills to survive this shitshow on his own. But Dash would do it. Screw that ‘useless’ comment. He had fuckin’ uses. “Hell yeah. Can do, bud.” he answered. “You name the time and place, I’ll be there to give you all my tips and tricks. It’s a reeeaaal complex thing, mat-weaving.”

When Sawyer looked up, Dash followed his gaze instinctively. It was the same sight each time the sun set, a speckled sky with no end. No flashing lights from planes, no city-induced haziness that fought to hide the stars, and completely devoid of any signs of civilization. It was a little overwhelming some days. “Yeah… kinda funny in that, yunno—not-funny way how shit always hits the fan as soon as we’ve got something good going,” Dash mused, a little miserably even as his mouth twisted wryly. “Someone’s fucking with us, for sure.” His gaze dropped back down to Sawyer, his profile highlighted by the blueish light of the moon. “You sure you’re good?”

at first, sawyer wanted to laugh. not because dash’s question humored him, but because regardless of what sawyer’s answer was – did it matter enough for him to say it aloud ? none of them were really good, and yet it felt...so wrong to have a pity party for one in the water while blue was lost in the jungle, while dash’s side and thigh were trying to mend themselves back together, while liam was bruised and battered, while lukas was at his wit’s end. somehow, by no one’s insistence but his own, sawyer was meant to be the one with his shit together. he could pick up the pieces everyone else dropped and make something out of them, even if it came out a little ugly, a little crooked. and he was so, so tired and so lonely. 

sawyer worked his jaw and dragged his gaze by to dash’s by its toes. selfishly, he wished the other boy could read his mind so that he wouldn’t have to put it into words: i’m not good. i try and i try to be, but i’m not. i’m fucked up, this is fucked up, and it hurts. and maybe that was what he’d wanted all this time. for someone to see him – not just look at him, but see him as something other than the ideas guy, or the funnyman, or the hick. “ i don’t know, ” is what he opted for, instead. it was a whisper. a coward’s admission. “ i don’t think so. ”

x

“Ayy. You got it, doc,” Dash said with a lazy salute. “One last lap and I’m done for the night. That’s a guarantee.” He didn’t want to think on it—and he sure as shit didn’t want to say it aloud—but the complaint that he might not make it on the entire trek stuck with him like a bad aftertaste. The insistence that he tag along was an impulsive gut reaction; he wanted to help, and he hated being talked about like he wasn’t right there. He hated having any decision made for him. And now he just really didn’t want to back down, especially since he had a whole fight over it. But still: it was gonna be a mad ouch. 

Been better, been worse. Dash hummed and nodded. “Yeeeaah, that’s the vibe for sure,” he acknowledged. This had definitely been one of the more whiplash-y of days so far for him, to go from his miserable ass morning to the celebration of the fish haul to the announcement of Blue’s disappearance. Bing bang boom—his ears were still ringing from it all. “Glad you’re still in one piece though, bro.” He looked down the mat, like he’d almost forgotten he had been working on it moments before, and pulled it back into his lap with a grin. “You think? Started it while you were off being our macho provider and shit. I have like, waking nightmares about sand fleas haunting me. Think I’ve got phantom bites.” Dash fiddled with one of the overhanging ends of a stripped palm leaf. The concept was simple, and probably not super impressive, but he had to learn basket weaving at a summer camp at the art museum back in Tampa one year, so. He sort of felt like a pro. “You want one?”

-

“ naw, that’s alright, ” sawyer replied, lowering himself onto the bed of untouched palm leaves they’d laid out on their campgrounds for cushioning. the sand was as good as bedrock as far as having a place to rest went, but somewhere was always better than nowhere. “ wouldn’t mind you teachin’ me, though. get’s fuck-in’ chilly at night. ” growing up in montana, one would never expect an island in the tropics to be chilly – the south was hot and the north was cold, and all the land between was meant to be a healthy mixture of both. these days, you could tell him up was down and he’d believe it. he knew better than to expect anything, anymore.

the lull in conversation drew sawyer’s gaze to the sky, where it always wandered back to. this, he realized, was the only constant in life: the moon, the stars, and silence. he could be anywhere on this earth – even below it – and that’d never change. sawyer’s chest rattled with the shaky sort of exhale that only came after having a good cry. “ beautiful night out, ” he murmured. “ just wish we had more time to appreciate it. ”

x

Dash knew he ought to catch a couple hours of sleep, at least. But between the nervous energy that left his limbs jittery and the fact that he practically napped the entire day away, he couldn’t manage to close his eyes for longer than a few minutes at a time. He had a half-finished palm mat in his lap; he’d started working on it while he hung out with Liam and Kian earlier that day, and the moonlight was proving to be a pretty okay light to work by. He sensed Sawyer’s presence before he heard him drop his bag, and he nodded back in greeting. The guy looked a little rough around the edges. He was sure they all did to varying degrees.

“Yo,” he said, brow furrowing then unfurrowing quickly at the sound of Sawyer’s voice. Instead of drawing attention to it right then, he pushed the mat a little to the side to check out his leg. He bent it at the knee and the gash protested the movement. "Whole thing’s pretty… shit,” he started, comfortable enough to be honest with Sawyer about his pain levels. He stretched his leg out again. “But I dunno, got some steps in earlier and it went okay-ish. Walked around the beach. I’m probably gonna go for another lap sooner or later.” He hesitated to continue, but added on: “Even if it was like, totally chill and pain-free, I’m not sure where my confidence levels’d be.” He looked up from where he test-poked the skin around the injury. “How about you? You disappeared for a sec there. How’re you holding up?”

-

pretty shit. sawyer puffed air from his nose – he reckoned a whole lot of things could be described as pretty shit, at the present moment. his gaze fell to dash’s thigh. the wound, from what he could make of it in the faint moonlight, still looked red and inflamed where the stitches held it together, the skin around it blooming with contusions. on the bright side, there didn’t seem to be any pus or blood...yet. sawyer didn’t know what they’d do if one of their injuries got infected. it almost wasn’t worth thinking about right now. 

“ don’t overexert yourself, ” he says, a faint smile disappearing on his lips as fast as it’d appeared. “ them’s are orders from...doctor mclaren. ” fuck, did that feel dumb to say aloud after everything that’d transpired over the past few hours. sawyer wasn’t a doctor. he didn’t even have his high school diploma, for crying out loud. he was just...a dumb fuckin’ kid trying to convince himself and everyone around him that he knew what he was doing. or that going through the wringer and being spit out on the other side of bumfuck, nowhere made him wise. it didn’t. just made him unstable and loud. he blinked at dash like he couldn’t comprehend the language he was speaking, pushing the saltwater-damp hair back from his face. “ been better. been worse, too. ” a pause. “ s’a nice mat you got, there. you make that bad boy yourself ? ”

it’s probably a couple hours after his meltdown by the water before sawyer trudges back to camp, eyes bloodshot and legs full of lead. might be more. might be less. time moves very strangely on this island – either too quickly or not quickly enough. he stopped keeping track of its passage sometime between warren’s passing and blue’s disappearance. 

the energy here feels the same way it did at dinner: cold and tense. only difference is it’s a lot quieter now. most of the boys seem to be off doing their own thing, squeezing what moments of solitude they can in before they’re waking at the crack of dawn to look for blue...together. the ones that do stay behind don’t talk to each other, and sawyer can’t exactly blame them. things don’t tend to end well for them, he’s learned, when they all try to have an honest conversation about what the fuck is going on and how they feel about it.

as he’s dropping his rucksack into the sand, he meets dash’s eye from a few paces away and gives him a subtle nod. “ hey, ” he begins hoarsely. clears his throat. tries again: “ hey. how’s your leg doin’ ? you feelin’ confident about tomorrow ? ” about being able to walk around in the jungle for hours, that is; none of them are in high spirits about the search, itself. 

he is sixteen years old when he learns, under the florescent lighting of a flickering ceiling lamp, that his brain is not wired the same way as everyone else’s. 

joe mastered the art of self control from a young age. he knew that his action had consequences and affected other people. the switch from i can’t grab this toy because it’s in siobhan’s pile of things and dad would be mad at me to if i look at a boy the wrong was i’m going to hell and everybody would hate me was an easy logical progression. but it was hard to have self-control when you were exhausted and starving on a desert island. the earlier talk of abs you could grate cheese with or use as a washboard were still niggling away at the back of his head. he bit his lip and slightly cocked his head to the side. yeah, kian was right. you could grate cheese with sawyer’s abs. it was unbelievable how chiseled his abs were. were all hick scallies build like that ? what kind of hard labour did he have to do in juvie ? joe finally understood why the creation of adam was painted the way it was. men really could be that beautiful. he was snapped out of his thoughts by sawyer’s drawl. he guiltily drew his eyes upwards to sawyer’s face. this was it. he was going to get his arse beat and all of his nightmares were going to come true. he inhaled in relief when sawyer started talking about his tattoos instead. the kian that squatted in joe’s brain supplied an unhelpful would you bite if i asked nicely but he wasn’t saying that out loud, he was lucky sawyer didn’t think he was a perv. he didn’t want to give him more reasons to be disgusted. “nah mate, i think your tattoos are class. which one did you get first ? i’m too much of a pussy to get tattoos. not because of the pain. it’s more about the regret, you know.”

-

class. sawyer’s gaze crinkled at the corners with amusement. between joe and kian, the brits had the funniest way with words about them; second only to the canucks, who said things like pogey and homo milk – which, much to his disappointment, was not milk that came from gay cows. but sawyer digressed. he ambled over to the fireside and planted his leg on the log next to joe, hiking up the leg of his boxer shorts to reveal the tiny, upside-down smiley face etched into his upper thigh. his own expression lit up to match the one staring joe right in the eye. “ this right here’s the first tat i ever did – had nothin’ but a sewin’ needle and some india. wasn’t ‘til the second eye that i realized it was upsides down. ” in his defense, though, he was fourteen. an impulsive, trigger-happy fourteen-year-old. “ but hey, i don’t regret it one bit. just makes me smile whenever i see it, which is what it was meant to do in the first place, so. mission accomplished. ”

x

Sawyer didn’t say the word ‘brave’ but that’s what Dash heard anyway.  He’d been called some variation of brave sporadically over the past few years, for a reason that had seemed pretty fucking stupid—still did, actually. But he didn’t mind the general sentiment then. Given all his whining and bitching, it was nice that at least one person thought he handled the whole travesty okay. “Well, yunno. I’m one of those real tough dudes,” he explained, letting his voice drop an octave theatrically. “Rubbin’ rock salt in my wounds on the daily, bro, just to prepare for this kinda shit. Like, don’t use conditioner ’cause it’s girly as hell type of tough. Think Bud Lite oughtta be in the same aisle as tampons tough. Haven’t shed a tear since I came flyin’ outta the womb.” He made a swooshing sound, his hand flattened and gliding forward to demonstrate. Truth was he’d probably cry a little later that night, but that wasn’t really something he wanted to admit to Huck Finn. “Stuck the landing, too.”

Dash looked down at the mushy piece of banana still in his other hand and grimaced at the sight. It finally clicked with him that he directly touched the last couple bites with his fingers, still mostly covered in dried blood. It made his stomach turn. Dropping the piece onto the ground, he quickly nudged his boot-clad foot to cover it with sand, and hoped Sawyer was too caught with his work to notice Dash wasting bites of food. And then he thought about him back there in the jungle, jumping into action with a competency that was actually really impressive in retrospect, and how he tried to distract Dash with questions. And then how Dash called him a bitch. He smiled a little to himself. “So, uh. You really never seen The Bee Movie? What about like… Kung Fu Panda?” When he was ten he used the word skadoosh so much that his dad eventually banned it. But that might’ve also been because it always came directly before or after Dash tossed the family dog across the couch and into a pile of pillows or something. “Nah, wait, Ratatouille. Everyone’s seen Ratatouille.” He put on a shitty French accent, accompanied with the misuse of the classic Italian pinched fingers: “A great arteest can come from anywhere.”

-

“ mm. very tough, ” sawyer said, not nearly as successful at keeping the smile out of his voice as he was at keeping it off his face. dash’s macho caricature of a chauvinist was eerily similar to the kind of man sawyer was brought up to be. the kind of man all boys from the backcountry were brought up to be, really: bulky and brawny and emotionally unavailable, speaking with their fists before their words. that was what he admired about dash – all the things he wasn’t. he wore his hair bright flamingo pink and donned tops that showed off his bare midriff and kissed boys in the middle of jungle glades at hot high noon, because he wanted to. because he could. he was the kind of man sawyer used to go to sleep at night wishing he would wake up as in the morning: exuberant. limitless. free.

and then dash was reaching into the depths of sawyer’s shroom-addled brain and pulling out that damn bee movie again, and sawyer couldn’t help but chuckle. conrad only had one theater that played one film at one time every weekend, and very rarely were they recent blockbusters. most folks just ordered the movies they couldn’t already rent at the library online. “ no, negative, and... ” he gave dash an apologetic look ( had to give him points for the french accent ) , inhaling through his teeth, “ i think i’ve heard of it ? i dunno, man, we was raised on looney tunes and scooby doos. my pa – uh, my dad used to tell us sittin’ in front’a the tv for too long would give us brain cancer. ” sawyer squinted an eye shut. hearing himself say it out loud, he could kind of understand why some of the guys thought he was a stupid hick from gopher crotch, montana. “ i don’t...think sittin’ in front of the tv gives you brain cancer, by the way. pro’ly just a headache. ”

ever since sawyer was a kid, he loved taking cold morning showers at the start of his day. his big brother used to tell him that washin’ in the morning was like scrubbing a night’s worth of bad dreams away, and because sawyer was a dumb and nightmare-prone kid, he believed him. now, the nightmares didn’t come as often, but the sentiment remained: you could scrub just about anything troublesome away with a good morning rinse. 

he’d been drying himself off with his trusty sweatshirt at the camp when he noticed someone staring out of the corner of his eye. sawyer paused with his face half-buried in the fleece, blinked, and cast an uneven smile toward the voyeur in question.

x

Dash hummed softly in response, a little distracted as he closed his eyes to the breeze that whipped in from the ocean waves. It felt so good to have them shut that he kept them that way for a few moments. “That sucks,” he said simply. “You think you’ll reach out to ‘em? When we get back home.” He squeezed his eyes shut harder. “‘Cause like, that buddy I told you about? The, uh. The one who got the tattoo with me. God, I haven’t spoken to that guy in… must be a year and a half or something. I keep thinking I oughtta hit him up, yunno? After I get home. Him and a buncha other people, I guess.” Most of his childhood friends, and maybe his mom’s sister who he always thought was a bitch. But she knew his mom better than he ever did, after all. He blinked his eyes open, colorful fuzzy dots spotting his vision, and looked down at the half-eaten banana in his hands. His stomach turned but he knew he had to finish the damn thing if he wanted to be a fraction less miserable in the morning. 

“Whoa,” he sort of half breathed out. Did he accidentally have a profound thought? That, or Sawyer’s slow, honey-coated accent was just mighty proficient at making things sound good. There were definitely a couple dudes on the island that he didn’t feel especially bonded to, but the sentiment held pretty true for the rest. He and Liam were basically bound for life by blood and pig trauma, for example. “Fucked up whims of fate, for sure.” He peeled back the banana further and pulled off a chunk. The word fate sat weirdly with him, or it could’ve just been the dehydration headache. “I’m not gonna say I’m totally on top of my shit when it comes to like, plane crash facts and figures here, but I dunno. Guess I thought, Elon Musk must’ve got a ton of satellites over our heads, right? Figured he’d send in the guys he hired to save those Thai cave kids that one time. Really didn’t think we’d be here so long.”

He popped the piece of banana into his mouth, and chewed on it as he mulled over his thoughts. There was something that pinpricked his hindbrain in the same way all those goofy conspiracy theory YouTube videos did. He couldn’t even remember crashing, just waking up. He absently wondered what Sawyer’s stance on the existence of aliens was. “Maybe I’m just talking shit. Forget it.” Dash shrugged, then broke off another piece of the banana as he swallowed. He just held it between his fingers and mentally plotted out the same movements it took to get it down to his stomach. It felt like a lot to do. “But like, deranged impulse to piss off wild boars aside, guess you’re not a half-bad dude to get endlessly stuck on a hellacious island with.” His pride still felt as bruised as the banana peel, but he definitely couldn’t have done this on his own. “Know how to use a needle and thread, at least.”

-

sawyer frowned thoughtfully and shrugged a shoulder. he wasn’t an expert on satellites and modern search technology – that was more up jj’s alley – but he’d chalked their inability to be rescued thus far up to plain ol’ indifference from the appropriate authorities. like maybe, in their eyes, it weren’t worth spending a bunch of time and resources finding a private jet liner full of rowdy boys and miscreants from the wrong sides of the tracks. but that was probably just him projecting his insecurities onto others again. these were good guys with families who cared about them, friends who worried for their safety...there had to be some other reason they hadn’t been tracked down yet. some unfair, unlucky twist of fate. 

“ nawww, ” he said, really drawing out the vowel on that one, “ in every pile of shit, there’s a turd worth polishin’. ” sawyer was able to hold his serious expression for all of two seconds before he broke out into a shit-eating grin, shedding the odd, doom-and-gloom energy that had threatened to start rolling over him like storm clouds. too easily did sawyer get so far into his own head that he had to be pulled out of it by something or someone else. he wasn’t trying to push that burden onto dash when the poor son-of-a-bitch was lying there with half his midsection split open. “ well, for what it’s worth, ” said sawyer, “ that hog had no idea who she was messin’ with. don’t think i could’ve handled being speared on one of them bad boys with half as much constraint. yeah...would’a been blubberin’ like a baby. ”

Amir,

How’s it going, you sonuvabitch??? Hope you and yours are well. I’m addressing this letter to you on account of you’re the only one I can trust to actually read it, so read it all the way through, you hear??

It is now the 11th day since our plane crashed somewhere in the Pacific. Supplies are starting to run low...food’s not looking too good, either. We’ve been collecting water through holes in the ground and boiling it over a fire in metal bottles – talk about some real Survivor SHIT!! So with food inventory being zilch, me and some of the boys are gonna try our hand at saltwater fishing tomorrow on the bay. Wish it was under different conditions but I’ve been hankering to give the ocean a go since we landed and there ain’t no time better than the present.

I had a couple conversations today that got me to thinking about who I’ve been and who I wanna be going forward. That’s why I’m writing you now, other than I’m running out of addies and can’t get any shuteye. You've always been better than I am at seeing the forest for the trees, as they say. Before I ended up on this wild fuckin ride, I used to think of my life as consisting of two parts: before juvie and after juvie. Now I think I’ll come to look at it as before the island and after the island. Crazy how just 11 days can be a week’s work for one average joe and a life-altering situation for another, ain’t it? 

-

“You’ve got a point,” Sebastian noted, thinking that there were probably entries on the list of thing that were easier than hunting a wolf in the jungle than not.  “-but what are those odds like?” evidently, he still wasn’t convinced that it was going to be a prosperous endeavour, despite Sawyer’s self-proclaimed expertise in angling. “I don’t know how likely they are to come this close to shore but we gotta be careful of poisonous fish,” he spoke, thinking out loud. “At least don’t go into the water without shoes on, if you step on a stone fish or a stargazer, it’s game over. You ever seen those things? They’re incredible,” he allowed himself to gush a little as he folded his arms across his chest. He was genuinely impressed by the work of nature, far more often than he was impressed by the work of his fellows. “You know most poisonous animals are brightly colored, like a poison dart frog- bright blue, bright yellow, even orange and purple- that’s a warning sign. Not these fish though, they lay low and camouflage in the sand. The chance of you spotting one before you step on one is pretty damn slim and we’re definitely not equipped to handle that kind of injury,” there was plenty of toxicity on the island but a sting from a poisonous fish was not within their ability to manage, not by a longshot. 

-

for someone who didn’t like fish, sebastian sure knew a boatload about them. hell, sawyer considered himself a pro in everything but name, and not even he’d heard of a stonefish or a stargazer before. must’ve been one of those indo-pacific breeds he’d only ever seen on deadliest catch. and by the sounds of it – a deadly catch it was, indeed. “ roger that, good buddy. will definitely remember to bring my flippers along, ” sawyer teased, tugging on the hook he’d just tied to the thread to make sure the knot was secure. he’d ended up making more rods than there were boys going out into the ocean to fish...looked like he’d overestimated just how many of the guys would actually be down for a fishing trip. “ so, what’s the dealio with the fish intel, then ? you a covert fan of the discovery channel ? ”

+

Sawyer seemed to be in such high spirits over this whole fishing thing that Callum was almost jealous. The last time he was even close to that happy on this island was when they found the banana trees. “Yeah, Sawyer Fishing Mclaren sure has a neat ring to it,” he joked. You’d think the guy was about to get access to indoor plumbing or something, man.  Dude was way too stoked. Like good for him but Callum wouldn’t be surprised if he found out later that Sawyer fell overboard because he was jumping from excitement on the raft.

“Nah, I’m good, man. You guys go get that… mahi mahi.” Callum’s brows pushed together. He had no idea what that was. It could have been a fish breed or it could have just been weird cowboy slang for fish. Whatever it was, Callum just hoped the ocean crew brought it back because he was aching for some protein and real meat. Snake meat just didn’t hit right. He was begging for some proper chow at this point.

“I’ll bring you back some bacon though. Or fingers crossed we do. Need that axe more than anything. Running into Pumba again’s a plus.”

-

sawyer paused with a pull-tab between his teeth, glancing up at the other boy in dumbfounded silence. were his ears starting to go all wonky from water damage, or did callum just call him by his name ? not texas, not that hick, but his actual, god-given name ? he took the tab out of his mouth and pressed his lips together, doing a piss-poor job at hiding the self-satisfied grin that threatened to cleave his face in two. 

“ boy howdy. slap some canadian bacon on that fish fillet, call it surf and turf. ” not even sawyer could say he wasn’t a little blood-thirsty for revenge on that wild hog after what’d happened in the clearing. even if it was just an animal acting on its base instincts – you didn’t fuck with his own and expect to come away unscathed. it was like...cowboy code. 

-

If Sebastian hadn’t had a headache before, there was no chance in fresh hell that he wasn’t going to have one within the next minute or so if Sawyer insisted on continuing at the same accelerated pace, jamming just about as many words as he knew into every sentence that came out of his mouth. “I don’t eat fish,” he provided rather obtusely, as much to say that no, he hadn’t ever eaten cedar pink whatever the fuck Texas was going on about. “What the hell is Montanada, that’s not a real place,” he insisted, though it could well have been for all he knew. Anywhere that didn’t claim a coast was pretty foreign to him, though he’d hesitate to admit that. “Oh, it’s a portmanteau, I get it,” he realised a moment later.

“Since you’re the expert, you actually think anybody’s gotta chance of catching anything out here?” he questioned curiously. He hadn’t deemed the whole venture totally useless just yet but he also wasn’t all that confident in it either.

-

sawyer chuckled at the blunt confession, brows jumping. he reserved the comment he was tempted to make about new england-ers and their collective affinity for clams – life on the island finally felt like it was turning around for the better, and not even east coast earl could drag his mood down. “ ten-four, my good man. just means more grub for me. ” 

+

“Gills, huh?” It was difficult not to find Sawyer’s optimism about thing just a little bit amusing. Hell, Callum found his lips twisted up at a corner anyway. The guy was like a kid who’d just been told he could whatever he wanted at Tim Hortons. He didn’t think someone could be so excited about fucking around in the ocean under the hot sun all day. The positivity was admirable.

At Sawyer’s reveal of their makeshift fishing rods, Callum had to say: he was impressed. Blinking once, he said, “Wow. Damn, that’s… pretty decent actually.” Maybe Callum was wrong. Maybe the beach crew would prove to everyone at the end of the day that the ocean was a better source for food and they didn’t have to rely on the jungle.

“Looks like you guys are pretty set then. Almost have like… 80% faith we aren’t gonna come back to a total disaster now.” What? Being a bit of a dick was like his trademark. And he meant it in the fun, teasing way anyway. If anything, Sawyer should take it as incentive, a little extra motivation to bring that fish back.

-

pretty decent was a pretty sweet compliment coming from mr. grumpy goose, so sawyer took it in stride. a face-splitting grin slowly crept across sawyer’s lips until the excitement was shining out of him like sunlight, and he clapped a hand atop each of callum’s shoulders, giving him a little jostle. “ buddy. ain’t nothin’ on god’s green earth i know how to do better than trawlin’ and haulin’. fishing’s my middle name. ” he paused. “ well, actually, it’s dean, but in another life – ” sawyer pointed a finger at him as he pulled away, practically bouncing on his feet with self-satisfaction.

...so maybe he’d been a little behind schedule on his addies lately. sue him.

+

Callum was just about to head out for the jungle but he figured he’d check in with the group staying behind to fish just before he did. You know, to make sure they weren’t totally disorganized and had some sort of plan to have food for the rest of the group by the end of the day. He walked up to their huddle just in time to catch Sawyer mention Canada. He was ready to be totally offended so he was glad the guy was saying good things about his home country. He would hate to sock him for saying Canada had shit fish or something.

“‘Course it would, it’s from Canada.” Or near Canada. Whatever. The point was Canada was awesome. “You guys good? Got a plan for the day?”

-

at the sound of callum’s voice, sawyer tipped his head backward to give the other boy an upside-down grin. “ hell yeah, we got a plan. we’re gonna be swimmin’ in so much saltwater fish, we’ll need gills by the time we get through ‘em. ” a bold statement, for sure, but sawyer was confident that with his fishing expertise and jj’s general knowledge of...well, just about everything else, they’d be able to scrap together at least a couple macks before sundown. 

with a grunt, sawyer pushed himself up from the ground to face their own duke caboom. “ look: we made fishin’ rods out of some sticks and leftover thread from dash’s sewing kit. and the hooks are pull-tabs from all them empty soda cans, ” he said, beaming with pride as he showed callum his invention. “ and, uh...yeah ! them’s the works. jj made some nets to cast, said he figured we should cover all our bases. but i got a good feelin’ about this, i really do. ”