Debt of Nature [3/3] - Lost - Charlie/Claire, Desmond/Charlie
Title: Debt of Nature [3/3]
Pairing: Charlie/Claire, Desmond/Charlie
Word Count: 2762
Rating: PG-13
A/N: For philosophy_20's 'Time' prompt. AU post-Through The Looking Glass, using the concept from Pushing Daisies.
Previous Parts: One :: Two
Summary: One touch life; second touch death. Claire's not ready to give up on Charlie.
Well-
That was certainly different. Very different.
Charlie's life recently had been a mingled mash of 'very different', but this took it to a whole new level. His eyebrows rose, eyes still open, as he felt the lips of his friend pressed against his in a hurry, the scratch of Desmond's beard and warm fingers under his chin, through his hair. After the stress of a long day - and after the hell that he'd been through in the last few weeks - it was almost comforting.
Only 'almost', though, because Claire was right there and Charlie was certain that when your girlfriend was that close and right within your line of sight you weren't supposed to wander around kissing other blokes. He put a hand on Desmond's chest and pushed him back.
"Uh…" he said, though he was certain that something more constructive should have come to mind. Desmond didn't avoiding looking at him, but his arms crossed over his chest and he seemed frozen on the spot. "You just…"
"Yeah," Desmond confirmed, as if surprised by that himself. "Yeah, I did."
"Right." Charlie nodded, not quite sure what came next. He was almost expecting to be yelled at by someone, but it never came.
"You just kissed him?" Claire asked as she moved towards him, with a hint of shock in her hushed voice. Desmond seemed even more reluctant to answer her than he had been to answer Charlie: his body was tensed and he seemed ready to run at any second - until it became perfectly clear that such a reaction wasn't necessary. "Can you do it again?"
Both men's heads turned at an almost supernatural speed to look at her, eyebrows raised and unbelieving. "What?" Charlie asked, because he was pretty bloody sure that he'd misheard that. He must've.
"Desmond, do it again." An order this time, not a question, but Desmond still didn't shift an inch.
"You're not serious," he said, as if searching for the hidden punch-line or waiting for her to change her mind and start spewing insults.
"Why not?" she said. "I can't do it any more. I can't even touch him. Please."
Yet it was Charlie who took a step back, Charlie who raised a hand to hold Desmond off - not that he even needed to, seeing as Desmond wasn't moving towards him at all - and Charlie who had a thousand second thoughts to contend with. "Back up a second," he said to both of them, nearly tumbling over as he moved backwards. He made sure not to raise his voice, all too aware of the sleeping infant in the crib nearby. "I'm gonna need a second or two to think about this. Okay?"
"Yeah, okay," Claire said, nodding, but her arms crossed and she still looked at him with one arched eyebrow. Christ.
"And by 'a second or two' I apparently actually mean a bit longer."
He looked towards Desmond, trying to read something - anything really - from his expression. What was he thinking about this? Soft brown eyes answered his stare, but they didn't give anything away. The guy must've been a spy in another life, Charlie reckoned, trained to be inscrutable, which didn't help him too much right now.
Fuck, his life - unlife - was weird enough right now without randomly starting to make out with his beardy best mate. "I'm gonna go," he said, though he didn't know where. He didn't have enough of a death wish to go plunging into the jungle at night. Maybe he'd find Hurley and insist that he was allowed to stay in his tent.
Claire seemed ready to stop him, taking a step forward until Desmond placed a hand on her arm. That was so easy for him. He could touch either of them without a second thought; it wasn't fair. Charlie's jealousy zoned in on that hand on Claire's arm, because it wasn't right that Desmond got to touch her when he didn't.
Wasn't right, wasn't fair.
His shoulders hunched and he shrugged; he had no choice other than to back away now, though the idea of letting the two spend the night together alone - even if nothing would happen, even if he knew nothing would happen - made his skin itch. Ignoring Claire's worried call of his name, he walked away for now.
*
Yet a week later, he had Desmond's arm around his shoulders. He should have felt stifled by the proximity, but the weight and the warmth of it was comforting. Right now, 'comforting' was the one thing in the world he'd needed most. Since being brought back - back from the dead - he'd felt like there was something missing, like there was a huge space inside him that was gaping and hollow. Curled in and accepted by Desmond's side, that gap was stopped.
He could feel his pulse as it rushed and thudded; his skin was still pale, though, and no amount of staying out in the sun seemed to alleviate that. He didn't even burn like he usually did. He looked like the dead.
He grinned at himself, as hollow as always, and rested his head against Desmond's shoulder as his eyes settled on Claire and Aaron by their tent. Claire looked so normal, like the perfect woman he'd always dreamt of, yet one touch from her hand could raise the dead or kill him all over again. Everyone had secrets.
The puff of air that escaped from him sounded almost like a laugh. "I'm such a freak now, aren't I?" he said. "The living dead. I belong in a bloody Romero film."
"Not yet," Desmond said, his breath warm by Charlie's ear. "The second you start devouring brains, though…"
"Might happen sooner than you think," Charlie said, his voice more acidic than he meant it to be, "If everyone doesn't stop looking at me like that."
He didn't need to specify what he meant: Sawyer's gaze did it for him, the silent accusation in his eyes. Jack died, he came back. Anyone with half a brain could probably work out that there was a connection there - and he was a poor substitute for the doctor, a really poor substitute.
"No one blames you," Desmond reassured him, like he had a thousand times before.
They both knew that wasn't true.
*
There were times when he just had to get away: when he had to escape from the oppressive silences and forced happiness of the beach camp. Not that there was ever any real escape, death always snapping at his heels. There were nights when he would be afraid to close his eyes, convinced that his life wouldn't still be there when he opened them again. These days, Desmond's warm arms would be there to hold him close and tell him he was safe.
Crouched by one of the many wooden crosses in their graveyard, Charlie felt closer to the death he'd evaded than he did on the beach when he was surrounded by his family. Jack's name was inscribed onto the wooden bar of the grave marker: Charlie wondered if they would have set something like that up for him, or would he have just been forgotten about? Would they have let him slip away into the ocean, forgotten about forever, if Claire hadn't been there to bring him back?
The wind brushed over his skin to keep him company, but staring at that cross the wind just seemed to bring excess guilt with it. This entire state of affairs was just wrong, wasn't it? It was-
"You shouldn't blame yourself," a voice said - but it wasn't Desmond, wasn't Claire, wasn't Hurley, coming to reassure him. Instead there was a smug smile and a bald head, Locke looking down at him with peace in his eyes. "You're not at fault here, Charlie."
Charlie got back to his feet cautiously. "Thought you were out in the jungle, Locke," he said. "Get bored of the 'Lone Ranger' act?"
Locke's smile didn't waver, and he continued to watch Charlie with eyes that saw far too much. All these weeks on the island, Charlie thought… They'd affected Locke more than any of them. "If the island didn't want you to come back, you wouldn't have - and if it didn't want Jack to die, he'd be standing where you are right now."
"Right," Charlie murmured. "'The island'. Suppose it's the island that's stopping our rescue boat from coming too." Locke's face twitched so that his smile was a little wider. "Fuck off, mate. You can't really believe that bullshit."
"It doesn't matter what I believe," Locke said. He looked to the sky. "They aren't coming. The island let you return to us, Charlie, so that we wouldn't go home."
Bullshit.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Yet Locke was smiling, Locke was happy, and Charlie was certain that a happy Locke meant bad things for them all. The man was a sodding lunatic, wasn't he? Blowing up submarines, joining the Others, killing Naomi.
"We're going to be here until you die," Locke asserted. "Rescue can't come with you in the way, Charlie. And as far as I can see, you're not going anywhere in a hurry."
"What are you talking about?"
"You haven't changed since you were brought back, have you?" Locke gestured towards him. "No tan, no scratches. I'd bet your fingernails aren't growing, that your hair's exactly the same, that you haven't gained or lost a single pound. You'll stay the same, Charlie. The island wants you to."
"Screw this," Charlie whispered. He'd thought that he was long done with listening to Locke's inane babblings. Could drive a man to insanity. It had. Look what it had done to Boone, to Eko, even to Desmond for a brief while down in the hatch. Charlie wasn't going to follow those footsteps, even as the grains of truth sent shivers down his spine. His skin was pale, wasn't it? He'd been biting his nails but they hadn't grown back. What if-
No. Nope. No way. Not listening to that, not going down that road, not paying attention.
"You should go back to your jungle, John," he said, hands in his jeans pocket. "'The island' is probably getting lonely with no one to talk to."
Locke remained completely unruffled, watching Charlie with a pleased expression - as if Charlie alone was his personal saviour, as if Charlie had appeared at Christmas to hand him everything he'd ever wanted. "I'll see you soon," he promised, stepping backwards and readjusting the bag he was carrying on his shoulder as he prepared to fade back into the jungle - Charlie made sure to watch him go until he faded from sight, back to wherever the hell it was that he lived these days like a Yeti or Bigfoot.
Crazy bastard, Charlie thought as his gaze finally dropped back to Jack's grave, trying to push those implanted ideas from his mind.
*
He found a black pen and drew a line along the base of nail, colouring over the cuticle as well - and then it was a case of waiting. He wished that Arzt was still around: the rate of nail growth seemed as if it was something that he would've known.
Yet the weeks passed, weeks of reconnecting with Claire, of taking care of Aaron, of growing to long for the touch of Desmond's hands on his skin. It made him feel alive again, really alive, when Desmond's dark eyes looked at him like he wanted to devour him.
Kate's eyes still lingered on him, Sawyer still snarked, Hurley still watched him like he was going to sprout fangs at any minute, but it was okay. He felt normal - but his nails didn't grow.
Not a single millimetre, a micrometre, nanometre, or whatever the hell it was that came after that. Nothing. Nothing at all.
Locke was right.
Charlie stared down at his nails, beating heart hammering, and realised that that was possibly the most terrifying fact in the world.
*
This explanation, as he would have guessed if he'd given himself the time to think about it, didn't actually go down too well with Desmond and Claire. "You're listening to John Locke, Charlie," Desmond argued as he stood next to Claire, the pair of them staring at him as if he'd just sprouted a nice set of extra heads. "He's not exactly what I'd call stable right now."
"So?" Charlie walked back and forth, sand shifting beneath his feet. "That doesn't mean he's wrong about this."
"You think we're not getting rescued because I brought you back?" Claire asked, taking a step forward - but having to keep her distance, not able to touch him. The distance between them seemed to burn. "You sound crazy, Charlie."
"Yeah. Yeah, crazy. Just as crazy as Desmond having visions of me dying and of you being able to prod dead people back to life. And I'm the crazy one."
"You're not thinking clearly," she stated. "What do you think's going to happen? You think you'll die and then the rescue helicopters will suddenly appear?"
"Maybe," he said, but she was right. It was stupid nonsense, but it was right. It made sense. "Desmond's flash said that if I died, you and Aaron would get rescued - but I'm not dead and you haven't. That has to be linked."
"You did die, Charlie," Desmond said, as if that was supposed to be reassuring. "You died and you came back. My flash- Claire undid the consequences, but it still happened. I never said when that rescue would happen, did I? Might not be for years yet."
"No." Charlie shook his head. "Locke said it won't happen while I'm alive."
"So that's your solution? Kill yourself so we can all go home?"
Charlie shrugged and shuffled on the sand. He hadn't really thought that far ahead yet. "It's not exactly 'killing myself' if I'm already dead, is it?"
"Close enough," Desmond said. "We won't let you do it, Charlie. It's insane."
"You could go home, Des," he said. "You could go home and see Penny again - don't you want that? It's been years, mate, and she's still waiting for you, looking for you." He didn't know how Desmond managed to align what they did together with his love for Penny: the uncomfortable brush to Desmond's face said it all. "And, Claire, you could go home. We need to get Aaron off this place - he can't grow up here. It's not right."
"He needs to grow up with his father, Charlie," Claire said. "If that means we stay here, then fine. We stay here. I don't care."
"What if he gets sick again?" Charlie couldn't bear to think about that. "Jack's gone. He's dead, and we don't have a doctor. If he gets sick…"
"There's Juliet."
"Right, 'cause we can definitely trust her," Charlie snorted. "And the others? Sun's pregnant. She shouldn't be here either."
"I managed it." The stubbornness in Claire's eyes showed no sign of flickering away yet. She should have been more desperate than any of them to go home, to escape this place. Charlie looked down to the bare skin of Claire's arm: he could just leap forward now. One brush, skin against skin, and he'd be gone. Rescue would come. Everything would be better for them, for Claire, for his son.
Desmond moved forward, moved between them, blocked the path. "Don't even think about it," he said. "You're sticking around, Charlie. We don't need to be rescued."
Not yet, Charlie thought - but eventually they were going to need supplies that the island couldn't provide them with, they were going to need help, they were going to need rescued even if Claire and Desmond didn't want it.
One touch, he reminded himself as Claire asked Desmond to hold him. One brush of her skin, he thought as he allowed Desmond to wrap his arms around his shoulders. One kiss, he told himself. One kiss and then he was dead. One kiss and the rest would be rescued. Simple as that.
He rested his head against Desmond's shoulder, able to see Claire's worried bright eyes watching them, yearning to be the one in Charlie's arms. He nodded and gave her a twitch of a smile - he could wait. He could hang around and help with Aaron until the situation got dire. Then he'd reach out for her. Then he'd get them rescued.
Then he'd say goodbye.
*
Continued in Debt of Nature: The Kiss by pacejunkie
Pairing: Charlie/Claire, Desmond/Charlie
Word Count: 2762
Rating: PG-13
A/N: For philosophy_20's 'Time' prompt. AU post-Through The Looking Glass, using the concept from Pushing Daisies.
Previous Parts: One :: Two
Summary: One touch life; second touch death. Claire's not ready to give up on Charlie.
Well-
That was certainly different. Very different.
Charlie's life recently had been a mingled mash of 'very different', but this took it to a whole new level. His eyebrows rose, eyes still open, as he felt the lips of his friend pressed against his in a hurry, the scratch of Desmond's beard and warm fingers under his chin, through his hair. After the stress of a long day - and after the hell that he'd been through in the last few weeks - it was almost comforting.
Only 'almost', though, because Claire was right there and Charlie was certain that when your girlfriend was that close and right within your line of sight you weren't supposed to wander around kissing other blokes. He put a hand on Desmond's chest and pushed him back.
"Uh…" he said, though he was certain that something more constructive should have come to mind. Desmond didn't avoiding looking at him, but his arms crossed over his chest and he seemed frozen on the spot. "You just…"
"Yeah," Desmond confirmed, as if surprised by that himself. "Yeah, I did."
"Right." Charlie nodded, not quite sure what came next. He was almost expecting to be yelled at by someone, but it never came.
"You just kissed him?" Claire asked as she moved towards him, with a hint of shock in her hushed voice. Desmond seemed even more reluctant to answer her than he had been to answer Charlie: his body was tensed and he seemed ready to run at any second - until it became perfectly clear that such a reaction wasn't necessary. "Can you do it again?"
Both men's heads turned at an almost supernatural speed to look at her, eyebrows raised and unbelieving. "What?" Charlie asked, because he was pretty bloody sure that he'd misheard that. He must've.
"Desmond, do it again." An order this time, not a question, but Desmond still didn't shift an inch.
"You're not serious," he said, as if searching for the hidden punch-line or waiting for her to change her mind and start spewing insults.
"Why not?" she said. "I can't do it any more. I can't even touch him. Please."
Yet it was Charlie who took a step back, Charlie who raised a hand to hold Desmond off - not that he even needed to, seeing as Desmond wasn't moving towards him at all - and Charlie who had a thousand second thoughts to contend with. "Back up a second," he said to both of them, nearly tumbling over as he moved backwards. He made sure not to raise his voice, all too aware of the sleeping infant in the crib nearby. "I'm gonna need a second or two to think about this. Okay?"
"Yeah, okay," Claire said, nodding, but her arms crossed and she still looked at him with one arched eyebrow. Christ.
"And by 'a second or two' I apparently actually mean a bit longer."
He looked towards Desmond, trying to read something - anything really - from his expression. What was he thinking about this? Soft brown eyes answered his stare, but they didn't give anything away. The guy must've been a spy in another life, Charlie reckoned, trained to be inscrutable, which didn't help him too much right now.
Fuck, his life - unlife - was weird enough right now without randomly starting to make out with his beardy best mate. "I'm gonna go," he said, though he didn't know where. He didn't have enough of a death wish to go plunging into the jungle at night. Maybe he'd find Hurley and insist that he was allowed to stay in his tent.
Claire seemed ready to stop him, taking a step forward until Desmond placed a hand on her arm. That was so easy for him. He could touch either of them without a second thought; it wasn't fair. Charlie's jealousy zoned in on that hand on Claire's arm, because it wasn't right that Desmond got to touch her when he didn't.
Wasn't right, wasn't fair.
His shoulders hunched and he shrugged; he had no choice other than to back away now, though the idea of letting the two spend the night together alone - even if nothing would happen, even if he knew nothing would happen - made his skin itch. Ignoring Claire's worried call of his name, he walked away for now.
*
Yet a week later, he had Desmond's arm around his shoulders. He should have felt stifled by the proximity, but the weight and the warmth of it was comforting. Right now, 'comforting' was the one thing in the world he'd needed most. Since being brought back - back from the dead - he'd felt like there was something missing, like there was a huge space inside him that was gaping and hollow. Curled in and accepted by Desmond's side, that gap was stopped.
He could feel his pulse as it rushed and thudded; his skin was still pale, though, and no amount of staying out in the sun seemed to alleviate that. He didn't even burn like he usually did. He looked like the dead.
He grinned at himself, as hollow as always, and rested his head against Desmond's shoulder as his eyes settled on Claire and Aaron by their tent. Claire looked so normal, like the perfect woman he'd always dreamt of, yet one touch from her hand could raise the dead or kill him all over again. Everyone had secrets.
The puff of air that escaped from him sounded almost like a laugh. "I'm such a freak now, aren't I?" he said. "The living dead. I belong in a bloody Romero film."
"Not yet," Desmond said, his breath warm by Charlie's ear. "The second you start devouring brains, though…"
"Might happen sooner than you think," Charlie said, his voice more acidic than he meant it to be, "If everyone doesn't stop looking at me like that."
He didn't need to specify what he meant: Sawyer's gaze did it for him, the silent accusation in his eyes. Jack died, he came back. Anyone with half a brain could probably work out that there was a connection there - and he was a poor substitute for the doctor, a really poor substitute.
"No one blames you," Desmond reassured him, like he had a thousand times before.
They both knew that wasn't true.
*
There were times when he just had to get away: when he had to escape from the oppressive silences and forced happiness of the beach camp. Not that there was ever any real escape, death always snapping at his heels. There were nights when he would be afraid to close his eyes, convinced that his life wouldn't still be there when he opened them again. These days, Desmond's warm arms would be there to hold him close and tell him he was safe.
Crouched by one of the many wooden crosses in their graveyard, Charlie felt closer to the death he'd evaded than he did on the beach when he was surrounded by his family. Jack's name was inscribed onto the wooden bar of the grave marker: Charlie wondered if they would have set something like that up for him, or would he have just been forgotten about? Would they have let him slip away into the ocean, forgotten about forever, if Claire hadn't been there to bring him back?
The wind brushed over his skin to keep him company, but staring at that cross the wind just seemed to bring excess guilt with it. This entire state of affairs was just wrong, wasn't it? It was-
"You shouldn't blame yourself," a voice said - but it wasn't Desmond, wasn't Claire, wasn't Hurley, coming to reassure him. Instead there was a smug smile and a bald head, Locke looking down at him with peace in his eyes. "You're not at fault here, Charlie."
Charlie got back to his feet cautiously. "Thought you were out in the jungle, Locke," he said. "Get bored of the 'Lone Ranger' act?"
Locke's smile didn't waver, and he continued to watch Charlie with eyes that saw far too much. All these weeks on the island, Charlie thought… They'd affected Locke more than any of them. "If the island didn't want you to come back, you wouldn't have - and if it didn't want Jack to die, he'd be standing where you are right now."
"Right," Charlie murmured. "'The island'. Suppose it's the island that's stopping our rescue boat from coming too." Locke's face twitched so that his smile was a little wider. "Fuck off, mate. You can't really believe that bullshit."
"It doesn't matter what I believe," Locke said. He looked to the sky. "They aren't coming. The island let you return to us, Charlie, so that we wouldn't go home."
Bullshit.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Yet Locke was smiling, Locke was happy, and Charlie was certain that a happy Locke meant bad things for them all. The man was a sodding lunatic, wasn't he? Blowing up submarines, joining the Others, killing Naomi.
"We're going to be here until you die," Locke asserted. "Rescue can't come with you in the way, Charlie. And as far as I can see, you're not going anywhere in a hurry."
"What are you talking about?"
"You haven't changed since you were brought back, have you?" Locke gestured towards him. "No tan, no scratches. I'd bet your fingernails aren't growing, that your hair's exactly the same, that you haven't gained or lost a single pound. You'll stay the same, Charlie. The island wants you to."
"Screw this," Charlie whispered. He'd thought that he was long done with listening to Locke's inane babblings. Could drive a man to insanity. It had. Look what it had done to Boone, to Eko, even to Desmond for a brief while down in the hatch. Charlie wasn't going to follow those footsteps, even as the grains of truth sent shivers down his spine. His skin was pale, wasn't it? He'd been biting his nails but they hadn't grown back. What if-
No. Nope. No way. Not listening to that, not going down that road, not paying attention.
"You should go back to your jungle, John," he said, hands in his jeans pocket. "'The island' is probably getting lonely with no one to talk to."
Locke remained completely unruffled, watching Charlie with a pleased expression - as if Charlie alone was his personal saviour, as if Charlie had appeared at Christmas to hand him everything he'd ever wanted. "I'll see you soon," he promised, stepping backwards and readjusting the bag he was carrying on his shoulder as he prepared to fade back into the jungle - Charlie made sure to watch him go until he faded from sight, back to wherever the hell it was that he lived these days like a Yeti or Bigfoot.
Crazy bastard, Charlie thought as his gaze finally dropped back to Jack's grave, trying to push those implanted ideas from his mind.
*
He found a black pen and drew a line along the base of nail, colouring over the cuticle as well - and then it was a case of waiting. He wished that Arzt was still around: the rate of nail growth seemed as if it was something that he would've known.
Yet the weeks passed, weeks of reconnecting with Claire, of taking care of Aaron, of growing to long for the touch of Desmond's hands on his skin. It made him feel alive again, really alive, when Desmond's dark eyes looked at him like he wanted to devour him.
Kate's eyes still lingered on him, Sawyer still snarked, Hurley still watched him like he was going to sprout fangs at any minute, but it was okay. He felt normal - but his nails didn't grow.
Not a single millimetre, a micrometre, nanometre, or whatever the hell it was that came after that. Nothing. Nothing at all.
Locke was right.
Charlie stared down at his nails, beating heart hammering, and realised that that was possibly the most terrifying fact in the world.
*
This explanation, as he would have guessed if he'd given himself the time to think about it, didn't actually go down too well with Desmond and Claire. "You're listening to John Locke, Charlie," Desmond argued as he stood next to Claire, the pair of them staring at him as if he'd just sprouted a nice set of extra heads. "He's not exactly what I'd call stable right now."
"So?" Charlie walked back and forth, sand shifting beneath his feet. "That doesn't mean he's wrong about this."
"You think we're not getting rescued because I brought you back?" Claire asked, taking a step forward - but having to keep her distance, not able to touch him. The distance between them seemed to burn. "You sound crazy, Charlie."
"Yeah. Yeah, crazy. Just as crazy as Desmond having visions of me dying and of you being able to prod dead people back to life. And I'm the crazy one."
"You're not thinking clearly," she stated. "What do you think's going to happen? You think you'll die and then the rescue helicopters will suddenly appear?"
"Maybe," he said, but she was right. It was stupid nonsense, but it was right. It made sense. "Desmond's flash said that if I died, you and Aaron would get rescued - but I'm not dead and you haven't. That has to be linked."
"You did die, Charlie," Desmond said, as if that was supposed to be reassuring. "You died and you came back. My flash- Claire undid the consequences, but it still happened. I never said when that rescue would happen, did I? Might not be for years yet."
"No." Charlie shook his head. "Locke said it won't happen while I'm alive."
"So that's your solution? Kill yourself so we can all go home?"
Charlie shrugged and shuffled on the sand. He hadn't really thought that far ahead yet. "It's not exactly 'killing myself' if I'm already dead, is it?"
"Close enough," Desmond said. "We won't let you do it, Charlie. It's insane."
"You could go home, Des," he said. "You could go home and see Penny again - don't you want that? It's been years, mate, and she's still waiting for you, looking for you." He didn't know how Desmond managed to align what they did together with his love for Penny: the uncomfortable brush to Desmond's face said it all. "And, Claire, you could go home. We need to get Aaron off this place - he can't grow up here. It's not right."
"He needs to grow up with his father, Charlie," Claire said. "If that means we stay here, then fine. We stay here. I don't care."
"What if he gets sick again?" Charlie couldn't bear to think about that. "Jack's gone. He's dead, and we don't have a doctor. If he gets sick…"
"There's Juliet."
"Right, 'cause we can definitely trust her," Charlie snorted. "And the others? Sun's pregnant. She shouldn't be here either."
"I managed it." The stubbornness in Claire's eyes showed no sign of flickering away yet. She should have been more desperate than any of them to go home, to escape this place. Charlie looked down to the bare skin of Claire's arm: he could just leap forward now. One brush, skin against skin, and he'd be gone. Rescue would come. Everything would be better for them, for Claire, for his son.
Desmond moved forward, moved between them, blocked the path. "Don't even think about it," he said. "You're sticking around, Charlie. We don't need to be rescued."
Not yet, Charlie thought - but eventually they were going to need supplies that the island couldn't provide them with, they were going to need help, they were going to need rescued even if Claire and Desmond didn't want it.
One touch, he reminded himself as Claire asked Desmond to hold him. One brush of her skin, he thought as he allowed Desmond to wrap his arms around his shoulders. One kiss, he told himself. One kiss and then he was dead. One kiss and the rest would be rescued. Simple as that.
He rested his head against Desmond's shoulder, able to see Claire's worried bright eyes watching them, yearning to be the one in Charlie's arms. He nodded and gave her a twitch of a smile - he could wait. He could hang around and help with Aaron until the situation got dire. Then he'd reach out for her. Then he'd get them rescued.
Then he'd say goodbye.
*
Continued in Debt of Nature: The Kiss by pacejunkie