Lost fic: Eremitic [for lost_hohoho]
Disclaimer: Lost belongs to ABC, etc., not to me.
Spoilers: Through 2x3, Orientation
Warnings: Rated R for sexual content, including a hint of nonconsensual sex.
Summary: The loneliest kind of lonely.
Written for lost_hohoho. For mimm_, whose request was: Desmond. Sex fantasies about a guy (known or unknown) while he's in the hatch, preferably with a bit of self-loving.
Thanks to hkath and mysticxf for the beta.
Eremitic
by eponine119
November 27, 2005
Discipline was the most vital thing to life inside station 3. Obvious, yeah? What with entering the numbers every 108 minutes, no earlier, no later. Desmond had always been good with discipline.
Couldn’t run a race around the world without discipline, and in some strange way life in the swan station was like running a race. Staying on schedule, always pushing yourself just one minute further, just one little bit harder, no matter how desperately you wanted to give up.
Everything in the hatch was neatly organized. Had to be, in such a compact multi-purpose space. Likewise, everything in Desmond’s day had come to be neatly organized. Every day, he cooked and ate, he cleaned, he exercised and bathed, he read and inoculated himself and slept, all in increments carefully parceled out by the clock.
That the days were all the same made it easier for him to keep going. At first it had bothered him. That film, Groundhog Day? Like that. But after awhile, it was the momentum of the sameness that drove him forward. Like a runner’s high: the rhythm of feet pounding the pavement became the only thing that mattered.
He never curled up with a book and read from the first page to the last, straight through. He never went out for a run -- never went outside at all, not if he could help it. He never slept more than 90 minutes at a time. There were a lot of things Desmond never did anymore. He never had company. No one to talk to, to look at, to be with.
The records had been good for that, at first. He could hear another human voice. It made him feel less isolated. Once he learned all the words, he sang along sometimes. It made certain he didn’t forget the sound of his own voice. Forget how to use it, how it worked. Now the records were just another element in the sameness of his days. They formed a soundtrack for the things he did. Two of them just about filled the space between the numbers.
But no matter the sameness on the outside, he couldn’t keep himself steady and even on the inside. For long stretches of time, yes, but then something would change. He’d wake up in a rage that nothing could soothe; he’d lie awake with tears stinging his eyes.
“Just wish for it and it’ll appear,” Kelvin had said to him once.
"Does that really work?" Desmond had asked, half-teasing.
Kelvin's eyes were intense as they fixed on his. "You're here, aren't you?" he said, in a quiet voice. Desmond couldn't quite breathe until Kelvin turned away.
Now he tried. Wishing. He wished for this ache within him to go away, but it didn't subside. He wished for someone to come. Kelvin's replacement. Anyone at all.
It wasn't just loneliness bottled up inside, not this time. It was something more complex, something deeper. Lust, longing, desire. It had settled over him like a cloud, trailing him wherever he went, until he couldn't bear it anymore.
He stared at the covers of the record albums. Traced eyes and lips with the tip of his finger. Closed his eyes and could almost feel how silken the long hair would feel tangled between his fingers. Turned the volume up until he could hear the inhalations and the sighs between the words, pretending they were something else.
There was no room in his disciplined life for this.
It had been different when Kelvin was alive. He'd still been lonely, but there hadn't been this solitary ache. Kelvin had been a student or a professor or something like that, in another life. His favorite book was Moby Dick, and there was a copy of it on the shelf. He'd read and re-read it endlessly, marking in the margins, carrying it about with him.
"Men at sea," Kelvin would mutter, mostly to himself, when he came to Desmond. Always in the dark, always under the covers. Kelvin's movements were furtive and rough, and in the morning he wouldn't look Desmond in the eye, trying to pretend it had never happened. But it was something they both needed, however silently and secretively, however much they didn't want it.
It wasn't the same, being alone. You missed the unexpected, the lack of control over what your partner might do. You couldn't kiss yourself. There were solutions for most of the rest, but not that.
Desmond had trained himself not to yearn. Not to let his thoughts descend into desire. All it took was discipline.
So it was devastating, this cloud that enveloped him now, without any warning. He hadn't seen it coming, didn't want it at all. There wasn't time, but it was there, with him. On the bike and in the shower, when he was doing the washing-up and when he was trying to sleep. It never left him.
It was when he was trying to sleep that he couldn't keep it out. Just as he hadn't been able to keep Kelvin away, the thoughts intruded when he was lying in the top bunk with his eyes closed. He wanted, desperately, to sleep, but he wanted even more for this ache to go away, so he let the thoughts in.
He thought about kissing. Tried to remember what it was like. The feel of other lips on his, the soft velvet slide of someone else's tongue seducing him. That was what he missed; that was what this ache was. His cock was hard but he could do something about that. He couldn't do anything about the longing for someone else, for breath against his skin or teeth sinking delicately into his earlobe or hands tugging at his hair, except imagine it. Pretend it was happening to him now.
Who would it be, who was it he was longing for? Someone real wouldn't work for a fantasy; he'd be struggling to get the details right. How exactly her fingernails had dug into his back or precisely the way things had occurred. There were always celebrities, the ultra-safe impossibility of Bono or Baby Spice. But they were like watching cartoons when you wanted cinema.
There were people Desmond fantasized about, real people. Real people were dangerous in real life, even if you'd broken it off with your pretty blond girlfriend to run away in a race. In real life, Desmond slept with women, and kept the men for fantasy. The swan station wasn't real life. Kelvin was the only man he'd ever really been with, and those rough encounters weren't anything to fantasize about.
Still, lying there, his mind rolled back to those old stand-bys. Like seeing old friends again, except their faces had faded from his memory over time. There was the Robert Redford type, blond hair and fire in his eyes as he worked the pool table and hustled a couple hundred bucks from Desmond's willing wallet. A doctor with hands so gentle and tender Desmond couldn't take his eyes off them even as he checked him for a sprained ankle. It scarcely mattered Desmond couldn't see his face anymore.
Those doctor's hands would caress his skin, so delicately he'd have to close his eyes. They would wander down, beneath the worn elastic of his shorts, and take his swollen cock in hand. Listening with odd surprise to the way his roughened breathing seemed to echo in the silence, he had to use his own hand as substitute, of course. He tried to touch himself with the dexterity of a surgeon's talented fingers. Exploring to find the sensitive areas, as though it wasn't his own familiar body. It had been so long since he'd let himself do this that he almost could have tricked himself, except for the hot rush of blood pounding through his veins and the red haze of ecstasy he saw as the pleasure overtook him.
In the moments after, he felt guilt. Guilt for indulging himself. For it having been a man, even in a harmless fantasy. For not curing the ache inside him. He was still lonely.
His eyes still closed, he imagined the hustler curled up in bed next to him. Soft kisses from a full, sensuous mouth and dimples when he smiled. His body would be warm and his arms would be solid, holding him, whispering in his ear in accented English. Desmond felt himself relaxing into the imagined embrace. He could almost feel the hot breath against his skin, so close as to ruffle his hair. As long as he didn't open his eyes, it would be real.
I wish someone would come, Desmond thought.
He hadn't really believed Kelvin's words, that you could think of something and it would appear. Half the things Kelvin said to him were rubbish; Kelvin was quite mad by the end.
But one night, Kelvin had turned him over and shoved inside of him and it hurt, hurt more than it usually did, hurt so much Desmond thought so hard and so loud that he thought Kelvin could hear him: I hope you die, brother. The words repeated, over and over in his mind, timed with Kelvin's thrusts, gaining speed and power and force. I hope you die, I hope you die, I hope you die…It didn't stop until Kelvin pushed off and lay next to him, and even then Desmond thought it just once more, for good measure.
The machine started beeping and Kelvin didn't move. Desmond pursed his lips and tended the machine himself. When he got back to the bedroom, Kelvin still hadn't moved. Something went cold inside of him and Desmond did the unthinkable. He turned on the light. Kelvin was dead, one hand pressed to his chest. Heart attack, Desmond told himself, because you couldn't kill someone just with a thought. He knew it wasn't possible. Even if Kelvin told him that you could simply think something and it would happen, that didn't make it true.
I wish someone would come, Desmond thought again, snuggling deeper into the warm covers, into the fantasy of his blond hustler, of his doctor with the gentle hands. But then the machine began to beep. The fantasy evaporated. The longing for companionship didn't. It didn't matter, because it was time for a new day to begin.
He jumped down from the bunk and put the numbers in. He ate and did the washing-up, exercised and did the laundry, he inoculated himself and put on his current favorite record. The loneliest kind of lonely, the bright voice sang to him, as it had on so many other days before. That was why it was his favorite now.
And then it skidded and it stopped as the world shook for a moment, with a bang and a smell and an alarm. There was someone outside, trying to get in.
Someone had finally come.
Desmond was terrified. He wasn't alone anymore.
End.
Feedback, please?
Spoilers: Through 2x3, Orientation
Warnings: Rated R for sexual content, including a hint of nonconsensual sex.
Summary: The loneliest kind of lonely.
Written for lost_hohoho. For mimm_, whose request was: Desmond. Sex fantasies about a guy (known or unknown) while he's in the hatch, preferably with a bit of self-loving.
Thanks to hkath and mysticxf for the beta.
Eremitic
by eponine119
November 27, 2005
Discipline was the most vital thing to life inside station 3. Obvious, yeah? What with entering the numbers every 108 minutes, no earlier, no later. Desmond had always been good with discipline.
Couldn’t run a race around the world without discipline, and in some strange way life in the swan station was like running a race. Staying on schedule, always pushing yourself just one minute further, just one little bit harder, no matter how desperately you wanted to give up.
Everything in the hatch was neatly organized. Had to be, in such a compact multi-purpose space. Likewise, everything in Desmond’s day had come to be neatly organized. Every day, he cooked and ate, he cleaned, he exercised and bathed, he read and inoculated himself and slept, all in increments carefully parceled out by the clock.
That the days were all the same made it easier for him to keep going. At first it had bothered him. That film, Groundhog Day? Like that. But after awhile, it was the momentum of the sameness that drove him forward. Like a runner’s high: the rhythm of feet pounding the pavement became the only thing that mattered.
He never curled up with a book and read from the first page to the last, straight through. He never went out for a run -- never went outside at all, not if he could help it. He never slept more than 90 minutes at a time. There were a lot of things Desmond never did anymore. He never had company. No one to talk to, to look at, to be with.
The records had been good for that, at first. He could hear another human voice. It made him feel less isolated. Once he learned all the words, he sang along sometimes. It made certain he didn’t forget the sound of his own voice. Forget how to use it, how it worked. Now the records were just another element in the sameness of his days. They formed a soundtrack for the things he did. Two of them just about filled the space between the numbers.
But no matter the sameness on the outside, he couldn’t keep himself steady and even on the inside. For long stretches of time, yes, but then something would change. He’d wake up in a rage that nothing could soothe; he’d lie awake with tears stinging his eyes.
“Just wish for it and it’ll appear,” Kelvin had said to him once.
"Does that really work?" Desmond had asked, half-teasing.
Kelvin's eyes were intense as they fixed on his. "You're here, aren't you?" he said, in a quiet voice. Desmond couldn't quite breathe until Kelvin turned away.
Now he tried. Wishing. He wished for this ache within him to go away, but it didn't subside. He wished for someone to come. Kelvin's replacement. Anyone at all.
It wasn't just loneliness bottled up inside, not this time. It was something more complex, something deeper. Lust, longing, desire. It had settled over him like a cloud, trailing him wherever he went, until he couldn't bear it anymore.
He stared at the covers of the record albums. Traced eyes and lips with the tip of his finger. Closed his eyes and could almost feel how silken the long hair would feel tangled between his fingers. Turned the volume up until he could hear the inhalations and the sighs between the words, pretending they were something else.
There was no room in his disciplined life for this.
It had been different when Kelvin was alive. He'd still been lonely, but there hadn't been this solitary ache. Kelvin had been a student or a professor or something like that, in another life. His favorite book was Moby Dick, and there was a copy of it on the shelf. He'd read and re-read it endlessly, marking in the margins, carrying it about with him.
"Men at sea," Kelvin would mutter, mostly to himself, when he came to Desmond. Always in the dark, always under the covers. Kelvin's movements were furtive and rough, and in the morning he wouldn't look Desmond in the eye, trying to pretend it had never happened. But it was something they both needed, however silently and secretively, however much they didn't want it.
It wasn't the same, being alone. You missed the unexpected, the lack of control over what your partner might do. You couldn't kiss yourself. There were solutions for most of the rest, but not that.
Desmond had trained himself not to yearn. Not to let his thoughts descend into desire. All it took was discipline.
So it was devastating, this cloud that enveloped him now, without any warning. He hadn't seen it coming, didn't want it at all. There wasn't time, but it was there, with him. On the bike and in the shower, when he was doing the washing-up and when he was trying to sleep. It never left him.
It was when he was trying to sleep that he couldn't keep it out. Just as he hadn't been able to keep Kelvin away, the thoughts intruded when he was lying in the top bunk with his eyes closed. He wanted, desperately, to sleep, but he wanted even more for this ache to go away, so he let the thoughts in.
He thought about kissing. Tried to remember what it was like. The feel of other lips on his, the soft velvet slide of someone else's tongue seducing him. That was what he missed; that was what this ache was. His cock was hard but he could do something about that. He couldn't do anything about the longing for someone else, for breath against his skin or teeth sinking delicately into his earlobe or hands tugging at his hair, except imagine it. Pretend it was happening to him now.
Who would it be, who was it he was longing for? Someone real wouldn't work for a fantasy; he'd be struggling to get the details right. How exactly her fingernails had dug into his back or precisely the way things had occurred. There were always celebrities, the ultra-safe impossibility of Bono or Baby Spice. But they were like watching cartoons when you wanted cinema.
There were people Desmond fantasized about, real people. Real people were dangerous in real life, even if you'd broken it off with your pretty blond girlfriend to run away in a race. In real life, Desmond slept with women, and kept the men for fantasy. The swan station wasn't real life. Kelvin was the only man he'd ever really been with, and those rough encounters weren't anything to fantasize about.
Still, lying there, his mind rolled back to those old stand-bys. Like seeing old friends again, except their faces had faded from his memory over time. There was the Robert Redford type, blond hair and fire in his eyes as he worked the pool table and hustled a couple hundred bucks from Desmond's willing wallet. A doctor with hands so gentle and tender Desmond couldn't take his eyes off them even as he checked him for a sprained ankle. It scarcely mattered Desmond couldn't see his face anymore.
Those doctor's hands would caress his skin, so delicately he'd have to close his eyes. They would wander down, beneath the worn elastic of his shorts, and take his swollen cock in hand. Listening with odd surprise to the way his roughened breathing seemed to echo in the silence, he had to use his own hand as substitute, of course. He tried to touch himself with the dexterity of a surgeon's talented fingers. Exploring to find the sensitive areas, as though it wasn't his own familiar body. It had been so long since he'd let himself do this that he almost could have tricked himself, except for the hot rush of blood pounding through his veins and the red haze of ecstasy he saw as the pleasure overtook him.
In the moments after, he felt guilt. Guilt for indulging himself. For it having been a man, even in a harmless fantasy. For not curing the ache inside him. He was still lonely.
His eyes still closed, he imagined the hustler curled up in bed next to him. Soft kisses from a full, sensuous mouth and dimples when he smiled. His body would be warm and his arms would be solid, holding him, whispering in his ear in accented English. Desmond felt himself relaxing into the imagined embrace. He could almost feel the hot breath against his skin, so close as to ruffle his hair. As long as he didn't open his eyes, it would be real.
I wish someone would come, Desmond thought.
He hadn't really believed Kelvin's words, that you could think of something and it would appear. Half the things Kelvin said to him were rubbish; Kelvin was quite mad by the end.
But one night, Kelvin had turned him over and shoved inside of him and it hurt, hurt more than it usually did, hurt so much Desmond thought so hard and so loud that he thought Kelvin could hear him: I hope you die, brother. The words repeated, over and over in his mind, timed with Kelvin's thrusts, gaining speed and power and force. I hope you die, I hope you die, I hope you die…It didn't stop until Kelvin pushed off and lay next to him, and even then Desmond thought it just once more, for good measure.
The machine started beeping and Kelvin didn't move. Desmond pursed his lips and tended the machine himself. When he got back to the bedroom, Kelvin still hadn't moved. Something went cold inside of him and Desmond did the unthinkable. He turned on the light. Kelvin was dead, one hand pressed to his chest. Heart attack, Desmond told himself, because you couldn't kill someone just with a thought. He knew it wasn't possible. Even if Kelvin told him that you could simply think something and it would happen, that didn't make it true.
I wish someone would come, Desmond thought again, snuggling deeper into the warm covers, into the fantasy of his blond hustler, of his doctor with the gentle hands. But then the machine began to beep. The fantasy evaporated. The longing for companionship didn't. It didn't matter, because it was time for a new day to begin.
He jumped down from the bunk and put the numbers in. He ate and did the washing-up, exercised and did the laundry, he inoculated himself and put on his current favorite record. The loneliest kind of lonely, the bright voice sang to him, as it had on so many other days before. That was why it was his favorite now.
And then it skidded and it stopped as the world shook for a moment, with a bang and a smell and an alarm. There was someone outside, trying to get in.
Someone had finally come.
Desmond was terrified. He wasn't alone anymore.
End.
Feedback, please?