Fanfiction #160 - We Could Have Had The World
Title: We Could Have Had The World
Rating/warnings: PG
Genre: romance, angst
Character/s: Charlie, Claire
Spoilers: goes AU after the season three finale. Make of that what you will yeah?
Summary: Charlie can’t sleep but instead of keeping Claire up, he chivalrously decides to go and occupy himself with the piano in the house they have commandeered in Othersville.
Disclaimer: all belongs to ABC and etcetera.
Author’s Note:written for hopelessfangirl’s luau prompt of Charlie/Claire. Special thanks to kellysparrow who managed to kick my muse in the butt with her own wonderful luau offering. Written in one helluva rush and I am definitely rusty after my unexpected fanfiction hiatus so her majesty will have to excuse me if it’s not up to my usual standard!
~*~
Charlie was finding it impossible to sleep at night. He was itching with restlessness, prickling with fear and anticipation, waiting for an imagined doom that never quite came. Rather than keep Claire up all night tossing and turning however he had taken to the piano again, re-teaching his guitar crippled fingers how to play their favourite instrument during the darkest hours of night.
He made sure to play quietly so that he didn’t wake her or Aaron, the lilting strains of the classical songs he had learnt off by heart in his youth. Once upon a time he had grown sick of playing them but now after years of thudding bass and red raw fingertips from the pressure of thick steel strings the piano keys felt cool and welcoming beneath his hands, like an old friend.
He closed his eyes and splayed his fingers over the pale ivory teeth, letting them automatically feel for the right notes that introduced Elvira Madigan. It had been one of his mother’s favourites - soft and romantic and beautiful just like she had been.
Charlie remembered playing it at her funeral. He hadn’t cried during the piece but afterwards he had sobbed silently, his body shaking as he helped the other pallbearers to carry her coffin from the chapel.
He paused mid bar and sighed, withdrawing his hands from the keys for a moment to inhale before replacing his hands and continuing on.
He’d been trying not to think about dying in the past few days but against all his own good advice, his brain was refusing to obey. He couldn’t help it. After so many weeks of being terrified of what lay around the corner, knowing that each step he took could be his last...well a little paranoia was justified wasn’t it?
Coming to the end, Charlie played the final notes and then let them fade into the air until the room was still again. It was amazing really, Charlie mused, how empty the world seemed without music playing. All that ‘nature makes music constantly’ stuff was bollocks. He’d take thrash metal over oceans and waterfalls any day.
“I never knew you could play like that,” came a soft voice.
Charlie whirled, almost upset at being interrupted from his reverie but when he saw the soft expression of awe on Claire’s face he relaxed and managed a tired smile.
“Yeah well,” he gestured at the piano then flexed his fingers. “I’m actually pretty out of practice. My wrists are killing me.”
Claire nodded, hesitated before crossing the room, folding her legs beneath her on the closest chair.
“You’re still not sleeping,”
It wasn’t a question but Charlie nodded anyway before turning back to the piano, pressing the keys until a C-chord stumbled awkwardly into the space between them.
“Are you still worried about Desmond’s flashes?”
“He hasn’t had one since the Looking Glass,” Charlie said curtly. “Why would I be worried?”
“Well I don’t know,” Claire said sharply. “But you’re not yourself.”
“I nearly died,” Charlie turned to her coldly. “A whole bunch of times actually. Can you blame me for being a little bit nutty at the moment?”
Claire opened her mouth, ready to argue back but then she stopped, took a breath and let it go slowly.
“Sorry,” Charlie apologised after a moment, mumbling. “I don’t mean to be a pain. You’ve got Aaron to worry about already - you don’t need to be mothering me as well.”
“Well if I don’t who else will?” Claire’s lips curled at the corners, the beginnings of a smile.
“Yeah well. It’s just as well you like me,” Charlie said dryly. “Anybody else would usually have given up by now.”
“You never gave up on me,”
Charlie gave a mirthless breath of laughter and Claire, encouraged, stood and came to stand before him. He let her take his face in her hands and tilt it up towards her. From there she puzzled down at him, taking in his face but not meeting his eyes as she brushed his fringe back from his eyes.
“Where’s my Charlie gone?” she murmured. “What happened to the guy who used to bring me imaginary peanut butter and took me on picnics and collected shells for Aaron to play with?”
“He’s still in here,” Charlie said, beginning to feel awkward with her hands still on his face. He was so used to brief touches from her, nothing anywhere near this intimate. “Somewhere. Maybe he’s hibernating till spring?”
“Maybe,” Claire said her pale eyes finally meeting his. “I hope he comes back soon though.”
Charlie held his breath.
“I kinda miss him,” Claire finished, her hands finally falling away from his face.
“Yeah,” Charlie dropped his eyes down to where his hands lay clasped in his lap. “Me too.”
After a moment Claire leant down and dropped a kiss on the top of Charlie’s bed-frazzled mop of hair, pausing to curl her fingers into it as she drew back a little. “I’m going back to bed. Are you coming or...?”
“I might join you in a minute or two,” Charlie murmured as her fingers grazed down his cheek and then fell away, disappointed. “I’ll play one more song.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “Don’t stay up too long.”
“I won’t,” he promised.
Claire padded softly back into the bedroom, leaving the door ajar for him and Charlie turned back to the piano and flexed his fingers experimentally before setting them back onto the piano keys, a sudden smile on his lips as he positioned them just so.
He had transposed the melody of this song once onto his guitar merely by memory. He’d been playing a game with Claire where she thought of a word and he thought of a song with that word in the lyrics and then played it. She’d only stumped him once or twice out of twenty or so words when she suddenly blurted out her own name.
“What the hell song has ‘Claire’ in it?” he’d wondered out loud, rather at a loss.
“Well I know one,” Claire had teased him. “Go on. See if you can figure it out.”
“I know one where the title has a ‘Claire’ in it,” he had said, tentatively fingering the fret board on his guitar so that he could play her the opening bars. “But it’s a classical piece and it doesn’t have any words.”
He got the wrong notes several times but when he closed his eyes and concentrated it almost sounded as good as it did on piano. Quite impressive really. Claire was certainly impressed that he had taken a classical piano piece and played it on his guitar without even listening to it first.
“I’m sure Debussy is rolling in his grave,” Charlie joked. “Claire de Lune is probably one of his best known pieces.”
“Claire de Lune,” she repeated the name dreamily to herself. “It sounds like some kind of French dessert. Like Chocolate Éclairs but with white chocolate or something.”
“Aha, you like the chocolat éclairs de la lune?” Charlie affected his best French accent which had Claire in fits of giggles. “Go on then. What other words can you think of?”
When the song had finished itself, Charlie gently shut the lid on the piano and crept back into the bedroom and under the covers where Claire lay, warm and waiting.
“Hey,” she murmured sleepily as he settled down beside her. “You played that classical song.”
“You actually remember that?” Charlie said, utterly dumbfounded. “That was ages ago.”
“I remember that you never guessed the song I was thinking of,” Claire hummed behind her teeth for a moment. “It was ‘Clair’ by Gilbert and Sullivan by the way.”
“Hey...I know that song,” Charlie said, realisation suddenly dawning. “I can’t believe I didn’t remember it!”
“Doesn’t matter,” Claire mumbled, curling up against his side, one hand resting lightly on his chest. “S’a long time ago now. We’ll have to play the game again...sometime...on the...piano...”
“Yeah,” Charlie rolled over until he could put his arm around her waist. Her hair was captured between his cheek and the pillowslip as she too put her arms around him, clumsy and slow within her half sleep.
“’Night Charlie,” she mumbled and her body promptly relaxed into a bone-meltingly deep sleep.
“’Night Claire,” he returned, matching the volume of her muted breathing as his arm tightened just-so around her delicate waist. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
And then he too closed his eyes and he too melted into the oblivion of a long awaited world where nightmares don’t exist.