fic, Lost: Miracle Drug (Desmond/Charlie), R, for philosophy_20
I swear I'm done writing entries for today, really.
Title: Miracle Drug
Characters/Pairing: Desmond/Charlie aka smack to the future?
Rating: R
Disclaimer: So not mine. The end of S3 wouldn't have been the end of S3 if they were.
Word count: 3601
Spoilers: Up to Flashes Before Your Eyes. Set more or less around Par Avion time.
Summary: If he only could take a trip inside Desmond’s head the way he went on another kind of trips once, he thinks. But Charlie would need a miracle drug for it and he isn’t so sure that such a thing exists.
A/N: For philosophy_20 #4, inertia. So, I had been wanting to write Des/Charlie for months and it didn't want to come together. Then last day I was listening to a U2 song and magically this thing started off alone and it kind of wrote itself. I didn't even know where the hell it was going until the last section or so. Uhm, I guess angst alert? Blatantly ignores everything that happened in S4. Thanks to/for falafel_musings for giving this a look and the encouragement, with this in specific and with the pairing in general ;) Nominated for best slash fic at lost_fic_awards, May 2008.
Charlie sometimes wonders how does it feel.
Or better, he wonders how would it feel.
He realizes it’s sodding morbid, to say the least. Because it’d be far worse than morbid, thinking about it. It would probably be morbid, masochistic and probably also sort of... self-necrophiliac? He doesn’t even know if the word exists. Probably not. Not the point, though.
But he can’t help wondering how would it feel, to be inside Desmond’s head when he has one of those bloody flashes.
He realizes quite well that it would mean seeing his own death take shape in front of his eyes; Desmond never told him how does it feel but from what Charlie gathered, it isn’t anything close to pleasant. Oh, no, it’s something far from pleasant and he can realize it, indeed.
Problem is, it’s kind of fascinating. He just can’t help being curious about it. How is it possible to experience something such as Desmond’s flashes? It may be morbid, masochistic and whatnot, but the idea of being there, in his head, observing the images taking shape and still being disconnected, then see what Desmond sees, hear what Desmond thinks.
Charlie realizes that, other than morbid, masochistic and whatnot, it’s also kind of... well, not very respectful of Desmond’s privacy. Not the part regarding the visions, no, that’s sort of his own business, too. The part in which he hears his thoughts, actually, because yeah, that’d be kind of not very respectful, but it’s something Charlie can’t really help wondering.
Desmond isn’t a very talkative fellow. Charlie understood it from day one and well, it’s not that Charlie has anything against people who don’t like to talk, that’s absolutely right with him. Fact is, if Desmond was a bit more talkative, it wouldn’t do any harm. Charlie thinks he needs to hear what does he think about their situation, what passes through his head when he has a flash, what passes through his head when he doesn’t, whether he has some kind of theory explaining it. He needs to hear all of this and maybe something else, too. Point is, Desmond isn’t a very talkative fellow in general, but especially regarding the flashes subject, he is as silent as a gravestone, for all Charlie manages to get out of him. Sometimes he wonders if it isn’t a blessing though, especially because if Desmond was talkative Charlie would have probably got more answers than he’d have liked in retrospective.
He just wishes he could come to him and tell everything (because it doesn’t take a genius to see that Desmond doesn’t tell Charlie at least half of what’s going on; he tells him only how he’s supposed to die and how he’s going to prevent it and Charlie can’t believe for a second that it all stops there). But he’s also not so naive to think that Desmond is ever going to do such a thing. If he ever did, it wouldn’t be that easy, anyway.
Charlie has figured that Desmond isn’t really taking this well. Not quite. No hard feelings, though; if there was a proof that Desmond wasn’t as crazy as he had seemed to be when he first showed up at camp was that he he wasn’t taking it well. He’d have been a sodding nutjob if he did take it well.
He also knows that the bloke probably has his own fair share of issues to deal with and Charlie isn’t so sure that he’d want to help him with them. Alright, maybe if he was sure that he could do something to help him he would, but thing is, Charlie doesn’t think anyone can. Maybe that Penny of his could. Surely not anyone on that island and not him of everyone. Charlie figures that when you spend three years locked up in a sort of atomic bunker and forty days of said three years alone in there pushing a button every 108 minutes, then spend two weeks alone on a boat going in circles and then blow yourself up with said hatch, you don’t come out of it exactly sane, if you get the drill of it. He also has this idea that Desmond is dangerously close to think that if there’s something that is going to drive him definitely crazy, well, that something is the flashes and for how much Charlie fears for his own safety and wishes Desmond could spill all the beans to him, he can’t actually blame Desmond for not wanting to talk about it.
He has to admit he still feels kind of guilty for how he forced him to tell.
He can see why Desmond didn’t want him to know. He really can see that and sometimes he wishes he had found another way because well, that had been the worst idea he and Hurley ever had in ages. Good intentions, sure, but very bad idea all the same. He kind of regrets it. He knows it was bound to come out sooner or later, you can save a person’s life only so many times before said person actually finds out, but still, he regrets it.
So, Desmond had a kind of crazy reaction to that. Nothing to say about it. A crazy sodding scary reaction, for that matter, because someone who is completely sane doesn’t jump at someone else’s throat even when he’s drunk, if he isn’t a, well, let’s say a bad fellow to begin with. Charlie can safely say that Desmond isn’t a bad fellow to begin with, not really. He’s got his fair share of flaws, sure, but nothing that’d qualify him in the dark side of the force.
Charlie could forgive him the crazy reaction. It is the rest that sort of upsets him, even if maybe upsetting isn’t the actual world. Though it’s the closest, so he guesses it’s fine enough. He had been angry when he had left Desmond there at his tent after he told him, but then again, Charlie had forced it out of the poor guy and he surely wasn’t up for a good time. Though he remembers that the morning after Desmond had one hell of an hangover and Charlie had probably felt sorry for it, even if he was so caught up with the news concerning himself that he hadn’t tried to give a hand. He doesn’t remember who actually gave Desmond a hand, though he’s sure someone did. Maybe Sayid? Probably, since that day Charlie remembers that he had been particularly menacing from mid day on and that he hadn’t been around all morning. But however.
There are a couple of things Charlie can’t shake from his mind.
One is the feeling of Desmond’s body leaning heavily into his while he was carrying him back to the tent.
The very same person that was sort of strangling him thirty seconds before, now was actually letting him carry all of his weight. He remembers that he was the one walking. Desmond was more of dragging his feet along than properly walking. He was warm, Charlie remembers it, too. He doesn’t know why the hell did it stick. But it stuck, indeed.
The second, is the image of Desmond leaning against that tree, his head bent down, a knee half drawn to his chest. Charlie isn’t sure whether he had started crying again or whether he hadn’t, but he never made sure. He just went back to his own tent and then his period of Almighty Brooding Over Himself (as Hurley called it) had started and lasted until they launched that van.
Now he thinks he would have liked to be inside Desmond’s head right then, as he’d like to be inside his head now.
He wants to know what he exactly thinks about this. If he considers Charlie worthy enough of his efforts. Charlie knows that one day he could just not tell him and Charlie wouldn’t even know if he saw anything and then he’d have his mind healthier. He hasn’t done it up to now and Charlie needs to know why.
Sure, there’s also the chance that he won’t like the answer. That’s a likely chance. Quite the most likely, truth to be told. He always tried to look on the bright side of life (and damn it, he had seen way too much Monty Python with Liam, a life ago, even if probably it was just eight years or so) and can’t help doing it now, but well, he realizes that this is probably the only time in which there really isn’t a bright side.
Problem is, he just can’t stand that. It’s a push and pull that’s driving him crazy; every time it’s a different way but it’s always the same and for how much Desmond can postpone it, Charlie can’t shake off the voice in the back of his mind that tells him sooner or later it’s got to end. Either way, Charlie hopes it comes soon because it’s just so still. Not still in the sense that nothing happens, all the contrary.
Still in the sense that it doesn’t change.
Desmond has a vision, he comes, he tells him how it’s supposed to happen, Charlie freaks out until it actually happens and Desmond goes in his place, then he isn’t dead, they postponed it again and then Desmond has another vision and everything starts again.
Charlie thinks he’d give something for this to change someway, even if he couldn’t say how. He doesn’t dare saying that sometimes the idea of just dying and finishing with it seems alluring, but usually three seconds after he wants to smack himself in the head and thinks that he really must be out of his sodding mind to ever think about something like it.
If he only could take a trip inside Desmond’s head the way he went on another kind of trips once, he thinks. But Charlie would need a miracle drug for it and he isn’t so sure that such a thing exists.
--
No matter what, this is going to definitely drive him mad. Desmond doesn’t doubt it one single second.
He does every possible thing to hold unto anything that keeps him sane.
He volunteers to fish, he goes around offering to repair roofs and thankfully most random survivors are more eager to take on his offer than Claire was. He cuts fruit in the kitchen at breakfast in order to offer it to the first random person passing and earning at least a thanks, because it feels good to be thanked for something trivial. He goes hunting, he also went to the caves with the Steve fellow a couple of times to get water, when he is in his small tent he tries to make it look nicer.
He managed to get Sawyer to give him some books; he keeps them in a neat pile in the angle, he spent one afternoon spreading some big leaves across the tent’s floor, if one can call sand and rocks floor, he got a rope where he keeps neatly hanged his few clothes and Penny’s picture is always in a place where he can see it.
He needs all of this because otherwise all he can think about it’s the flashes and if he thinks about the flashes only, he’s bound to cut every thread still connecting him to sanity and he won’t have it, not when he’s just managed to get a life back. Not the life he’d wish for, but a life, which is enough for him since staying close in an hatch is not a life, in Desmond’s book. Anyway, he’s got one back and he won’t let go of it anytime soon.
Yet, for how much he tries to, that’s always where he goes back to.
When he sits in his tent just having time to himself he wishes the first thing his mind went to was Penny, it’d actually bring him some comfort if it did; it almost never does and the first thing he thinks about it’s always, when comes the next?
It’s sort of crazy.
When it happens, he wishes it never did happen; when it doesn’t happen, he wishes for the flash to come because at least he isn’t waiting for it and once it’s there, at least he knows what to do. The worst part of it is not the flash itself and neither is actually saving Charlie; the worst part is that stretch of time between him saving Charlie’s life and the next flash. Because he knows they won’t stop coming. Why? He just knows. And if he doesn’t, no one else does.
He knows when it happened. It happened when he turned that key.
Funny. All of his life he has wished for something heroic to do and as soon as he does it, it brings him the worst possible disgrace it could.
He was sure that he wasn’t ever going to survive, whatever happened. He didn’t have an idea of what could actually happen, truth to be told; he just was sure that he was going to die doing it and it was fine.
It was either everyone including him or him alone; he wasn’t ever going to see Penny again either way. It had been fairly easy to take the decision, everything considered.
He saved all of their lives and they don’t know, but it’s fine like this; the last thing he wants is recognition. He already has enough.
There is really no question; he has those flashes because he blew up the hatch. Simple as that.
He doesn’t know whether he’d still do it again, knowing the outcome.
It’s not only that he doesn’t know how much can it last before he isn’t able to do it anymore; for how is difficult to see the other side of the coin, he isn’t so blind not to think also about Charlie’s situation. Because seeing someone die in front of your eyes repeatedly isn’t something he’d recommend anyone, but knowing that someone sees your death countless times and that said person can’t stop it forever isn’t something Desmond thinks Charlie would recommend, either. He also wonders whether Charlie hates him. He probably would hate himself, if he was in Charlie’s position.
The thing is that everything is just still. Still in the sense that it doesn’t change.
The flash comes, he feels sick for a couple of minutes, he goes to Charlie, tells him, they wait for the circumstances to be right, he does whatever he has to do and then he starts waiting again.
If only something could break the routine, he thinks. Not in the sense that Charlie has to die, God forbid, or that he has to die, or that something bad must happen. The flashes stopping altogether would actually be the best option but he can sense it’s not happening anytime soon.
He just wishes for something to take his mind off it. It feels like being hooked on some drug, but not in the stage where the drug helps you forget what you don’t want to remember; it feels like being hooked on some drug in the stage where you’re so miserable and yearning for it that you can’t think about anything else and when you had your dose you can’t even enjoy it but start thinking immediately about how and when you’re going to secure yourself the next hit.
He’d really need a bloody miracle drug to takes his mind off this, but Desmond doubts such a thing exists.
--
They find out they were both wrong, because maybe it’s not what they had thought about in the first place, but there’s something that breaks the cycle, at one point.
It’s definitely not what they were thinking about, but it works for either of them and while it’s wrong on too many levels to count, it manages to make everything else more bearable and so wrong doesn’t matter.
Claire doesn’t have an idea. Penny sure doesn’t, either (if she’s still thinking about him, Desmond reasons before he stops reasoning). Sure, it’s one of the main reasons for which it’s wrong on that many levels. But it’s really not enough to stop them from it.
It begins when Charlie corners Desmond in his tent asking to explain it to him already and Desmond refusing because he can’t even explain it to himself, let alone to someone else.
Then something else happens, either of them can’t remember exactly what; then Charlie was with his back on the blanket Desmond slept on and Desmond’s lips were on his own, insistent, stopping the river of words flowing from his mouth; so insistent that Charlie didn’t even think about trying to stop it but just brought his hands to Desmond’s shoulders, their bodies melting into one another. The kiss was harsh, nothing tender or slow in it; Charlie remembers tasting blood at some point and then nothing else really.
But the stillness was gone and stayed gone until the morning after, when he woke with Desmond’s arm draped along his hip.
--
In the end, it satisfies all of their needs.
Charlie doesn’t even bother to find an excuse with Claire anymore; he says he moved to Desmond’s tent during the night for practical reasons and she doesn’t suspect anything. Desmond doesn’t talk about it, period; it’s not like he has anyone so close with whom he can share that sort of business.
It never is like that first time. Neither of them have clear memories of it, truth to be told. The ones they have, are not much good either and so they never think about the first time. The second, the third, the sixth, whichever, but not the first.
Desmond can feel positive that Charlie doesn’t hate him after that first time though; you don’t have sex with someone you hate. Right, trying to describe what’s between them would be both impossible and pointless, but it isn’t hate and Desmond is thankful for it because he really couldn’t take that, too.
Charlie can’t exactly capture what Desmond thinks or what flashes in front of his eyes, but he thinks he comes pretty close to it at times. There are moments in which Desmond’s breath is hot on his cheek and and his fingertips dig into Charlie’s hips, in which the air between them is thick and heavy but not with the death that usually hangs in the space between them during the day; in those moments, sometimes Charlie’s eyes meet Desmond’s for a couple of seconds and Charlie can see right through them, going straight in that place where Desmond’s thoughts take shape. Usually, he says that he’s going to go through with this as long as he can, that he’s going to save his life as long as he can, that he’ll try not to fail. Charlie realizes that every time, at least until it’s over, there can’t be failure. Maybe that’s why he finds out he needs this much more than he’d have ever thought.
Desmond doesn’t say any of these things, but there’s no need; Charlie hears them just fine and it’s really everything that matters, isn’t it?
When it happens, there isn’t any sense of time anymore and Desmond is bloody damn grateful for it. He’s come to hate the bare concept of it; seconds, minutes, hours. In his mind, time is a succession of intervals of 108 minutes each. One hour and forty eight minutes; a little less than two hours, 6480 seconds, whatever, he can’t shake that off; there’s an alarm in his head that rings every time an interval is over and the only time it goes away, is when he’s with Charlie.
So every time they make it last as much as they can.
Sometimes Desmond wonders whether Charlie would write a song about everything that happened, were the flashes to stop and were they both to survive; he wonders if scattered lyrics go through his mind while Desmond’s hand is getting him off or when his tongue traces random patterns on Charlie’s chest. He wonders if the low moans of pleasure he forces out of Charlie’s lips have some pattern, if they’re a sort of rudimentary score; then again, it’s probably something Desmond imagines and Charlie would probably want to forget the whole flashes experience. Not to write a song about it, of everything.
The reasons for which this is wrong on way too many levels slowly disappear from their minds soon after it starts; at one point they don’t think even about why they’re together in the first place and just let it happen, night after night, scratches after scratches over the right side of Desmond’s back, bruises after bruises on the pale skin around Charlie’s waist, time after time of coming together surrounded by the heat and that air which is always as thick as it was the first time.
They both realize they found their miracle drug. Charlie had laughed at the bitter irony because he had just let go of one only to find another one, Desmond had welcomed it because while he knew that now his only way of escaping was something he’d have had more than one trouble quitting, it was worth the risk. Just to feel the beating of Charlie’s heart against his chest or the warmth of his skin and his body alive and firm and his ragged breathing against his mouth, it was all worth it. It meant they had still a chance, right?
Quitting never was an option.
End.
Title: Miracle Drug
Characters/Pairing: Desmond/Charlie aka smack to the future?
Rating: R
Disclaimer: So not mine. The end of S3 wouldn't have been the end of S3 if they were.
Word count: 3601
Spoilers: Up to Flashes Before Your Eyes. Set more or less around Par Avion time.
Summary: If he only could take a trip inside Desmond’s head the way he went on another kind of trips once, he thinks. But Charlie would need a miracle drug for it and he isn’t so sure that such a thing exists.
A/N: For philosophy_20 #4, inertia. So, I had been wanting to write Des/Charlie for months and it didn't want to come together. Then last day I was listening to a U2 song and magically this thing started off alone and it kind of wrote itself. I didn't even know where the hell it was going until the last section or so. Uhm, I guess angst alert? Blatantly ignores everything that happened in S4. Thanks to/for falafel_musings for giving this a look and the encouragement, with this in specific and with the pairing in general ;) Nominated for best slash fic at lost_fic_awards, May 2008.
Charlie sometimes wonders how does it feel.
Or better, he wonders how would it feel.
He realizes it’s sodding morbid, to say the least. Because it’d be far worse than morbid, thinking about it. It would probably be morbid, masochistic and probably also sort of... self-necrophiliac? He doesn’t even know if the word exists. Probably not. Not the point, though.
But he can’t help wondering how would it feel, to be inside Desmond’s head when he has one of those bloody flashes.
He realizes quite well that it would mean seeing his own death take shape in front of his eyes; Desmond never told him how does it feel but from what Charlie gathered, it isn’t anything close to pleasant. Oh, no, it’s something far from pleasant and he can realize it, indeed.
Problem is, it’s kind of fascinating. He just can’t help being curious about it. How is it possible to experience something such as Desmond’s flashes? It may be morbid, masochistic and whatnot, but the idea of being there, in his head, observing the images taking shape and still being disconnected, then see what Desmond sees, hear what Desmond thinks.
Charlie realizes that, other than morbid, masochistic and whatnot, it’s also kind of... well, not very respectful of Desmond’s privacy. Not the part regarding the visions, no, that’s sort of his own business, too. The part in which he hears his thoughts, actually, because yeah, that’d be kind of not very respectful, but it’s something Charlie can’t really help wondering.
Desmond isn’t a very talkative fellow. Charlie understood it from day one and well, it’s not that Charlie has anything against people who don’t like to talk, that’s absolutely right with him. Fact is, if Desmond was a bit more talkative, it wouldn’t do any harm. Charlie thinks he needs to hear what does he think about their situation, what passes through his head when he has a flash, what passes through his head when he doesn’t, whether he has some kind of theory explaining it. He needs to hear all of this and maybe something else, too. Point is, Desmond isn’t a very talkative fellow in general, but especially regarding the flashes subject, he is as silent as a gravestone, for all Charlie manages to get out of him. Sometimes he wonders if it isn’t a blessing though, especially because if Desmond was talkative Charlie would have probably got more answers than he’d have liked in retrospective.
He just wishes he could come to him and tell everything (because it doesn’t take a genius to see that Desmond doesn’t tell Charlie at least half of what’s going on; he tells him only how he’s supposed to die and how he’s going to prevent it and Charlie can’t believe for a second that it all stops there). But he’s also not so naive to think that Desmond is ever going to do such a thing. If he ever did, it wouldn’t be that easy, anyway.
Charlie has figured that Desmond isn’t really taking this well. Not quite. No hard feelings, though; if there was a proof that Desmond wasn’t as crazy as he had seemed to be when he first showed up at camp was that he he wasn’t taking it well. He’d have been a sodding nutjob if he did take it well.
He also knows that the bloke probably has his own fair share of issues to deal with and Charlie isn’t so sure that he’d want to help him with them. Alright, maybe if he was sure that he could do something to help him he would, but thing is, Charlie doesn’t think anyone can. Maybe that Penny of his could. Surely not anyone on that island and not him of everyone. Charlie figures that when you spend three years locked up in a sort of atomic bunker and forty days of said three years alone in there pushing a button every 108 minutes, then spend two weeks alone on a boat going in circles and then blow yourself up with said hatch, you don’t come out of it exactly sane, if you get the drill of it. He also has this idea that Desmond is dangerously close to think that if there’s something that is going to drive him definitely crazy, well, that something is the flashes and for how much Charlie fears for his own safety and wishes Desmond could spill all the beans to him, he can’t actually blame Desmond for not wanting to talk about it.
He has to admit he still feels kind of guilty for how he forced him to tell.
He can see why Desmond didn’t want him to know. He really can see that and sometimes he wishes he had found another way because well, that had been the worst idea he and Hurley ever had in ages. Good intentions, sure, but very bad idea all the same. He kind of regrets it. He knows it was bound to come out sooner or later, you can save a person’s life only so many times before said person actually finds out, but still, he regrets it.
So, Desmond had a kind of crazy reaction to that. Nothing to say about it. A crazy sodding scary reaction, for that matter, because someone who is completely sane doesn’t jump at someone else’s throat even when he’s drunk, if he isn’t a, well, let’s say a bad fellow to begin with. Charlie can safely say that Desmond isn’t a bad fellow to begin with, not really. He’s got his fair share of flaws, sure, but nothing that’d qualify him in the dark side of the force.
Charlie could forgive him the crazy reaction. It is the rest that sort of upsets him, even if maybe upsetting isn’t the actual world. Though it’s the closest, so he guesses it’s fine enough. He had been angry when he had left Desmond there at his tent after he told him, but then again, Charlie had forced it out of the poor guy and he surely wasn’t up for a good time. Though he remembers that the morning after Desmond had one hell of an hangover and Charlie had probably felt sorry for it, even if he was so caught up with the news concerning himself that he hadn’t tried to give a hand. He doesn’t remember who actually gave Desmond a hand, though he’s sure someone did. Maybe Sayid? Probably, since that day Charlie remembers that he had been particularly menacing from mid day on and that he hadn’t been around all morning. But however.
There are a couple of things Charlie can’t shake from his mind.
One is the feeling of Desmond’s body leaning heavily into his while he was carrying him back to the tent.
The very same person that was sort of strangling him thirty seconds before, now was actually letting him carry all of his weight. He remembers that he was the one walking. Desmond was more of dragging his feet along than properly walking. He was warm, Charlie remembers it, too. He doesn’t know why the hell did it stick. But it stuck, indeed.
The second, is the image of Desmond leaning against that tree, his head bent down, a knee half drawn to his chest. Charlie isn’t sure whether he had started crying again or whether he hadn’t, but he never made sure. He just went back to his own tent and then his period of Almighty Brooding Over Himself (as Hurley called it) had started and lasted until they launched that van.
Now he thinks he would have liked to be inside Desmond’s head right then, as he’d like to be inside his head now.
He wants to know what he exactly thinks about this. If he considers Charlie worthy enough of his efforts. Charlie knows that one day he could just not tell him and Charlie wouldn’t even know if he saw anything and then he’d have his mind healthier. He hasn’t done it up to now and Charlie needs to know why.
Sure, there’s also the chance that he won’t like the answer. That’s a likely chance. Quite the most likely, truth to be told. He always tried to look on the bright side of life (and damn it, he had seen way too much Monty Python with Liam, a life ago, even if probably it was just eight years or so) and can’t help doing it now, but well, he realizes that this is probably the only time in which there really isn’t a bright side.
Problem is, he just can’t stand that. It’s a push and pull that’s driving him crazy; every time it’s a different way but it’s always the same and for how much Desmond can postpone it, Charlie can’t shake off the voice in the back of his mind that tells him sooner or later it’s got to end. Either way, Charlie hopes it comes soon because it’s just so still. Not still in the sense that nothing happens, all the contrary.
Still in the sense that it doesn’t change.
Desmond has a vision, he comes, he tells him how it’s supposed to happen, Charlie freaks out until it actually happens and Desmond goes in his place, then he isn’t dead, they postponed it again and then Desmond has another vision and everything starts again.
Charlie thinks he’d give something for this to change someway, even if he couldn’t say how. He doesn’t dare saying that sometimes the idea of just dying and finishing with it seems alluring, but usually three seconds after he wants to smack himself in the head and thinks that he really must be out of his sodding mind to ever think about something like it.
If he only could take a trip inside Desmond’s head the way he went on another kind of trips once, he thinks. But Charlie would need a miracle drug for it and he isn’t so sure that such a thing exists.
--
No matter what, this is going to definitely drive him mad. Desmond doesn’t doubt it one single second.
He does every possible thing to hold unto anything that keeps him sane.
He volunteers to fish, he goes around offering to repair roofs and thankfully most random survivors are more eager to take on his offer than Claire was. He cuts fruit in the kitchen at breakfast in order to offer it to the first random person passing and earning at least a thanks, because it feels good to be thanked for something trivial. He goes hunting, he also went to the caves with the Steve fellow a couple of times to get water, when he is in his small tent he tries to make it look nicer.
He managed to get Sawyer to give him some books; he keeps them in a neat pile in the angle, he spent one afternoon spreading some big leaves across the tent’s floor, if one can call sand and rocks floor, he got a rope where he keeps neatly hanged his few clothes and Penny’s picture is always in a place where he can see it.
He needs all of this because otherwise all he can think about it’s the flashes and if he thinks about the flashes only, he’s bound to cut every thread still connecting him to sanity and he won’t have it, not when he’s just managed to get a life back. Not the life he’d wish for, but a life, which is enough for him since staying close in an hatch is not a life, in Desmond’s book. Anyway, he’s got one back and he won’t let go of it anytime soon.
Yet, for how much he tries to, that’s always where he goes back to.
When he sits in his tent just having time to himself he wishes the first thing his mind went to was Penny, it’d actually bring him some comfort if it did; it almost never does and the first thing he thinks about it’s always, when comes the next?
It’s sort of crazy.
When it happens, he wishes it never did happen; when it doesn’t happen, he wishes for the flash to come because at least he isn’t waiting for it and once it’s there, at least he knows what to do. The worst part of it is not the flash itself and neither is actually saving Charlie; the worst part is that stretch of time between him saving Charlie’s life and the next flash. Because he knows they won’t stop coming. Why? He just knows. And if he doesn’t, no one else does.
He knows when it happened. It happened when he turned that key.
Funny. All of his life he has wished for something heroic to do and as soon as he does it, it brings him the worst possible disgrace it could.
He was sure that he wasn’t ever going to survive, whatever happened. He didn’t have an idea of what could actually happen, truth to be told; he just was sure that he was going to die doing it and it was fine.
It was either everyone including him or him alone; he wasn’t ever going to see Penny again either way. It had been fairly easy to take the decision, everything considered.
He saved all of their lives and they don’t know, but it’s fine like this; the last thing he wants is recognition. He already has enough.
There is really no question; he has those flashes because he blew up the hatch. Simple as that.
He doesn’t know whether he’d still do it again, knowing the outcome.
It’s not only that he doesn’t know how much can it last before he isn’t able to do it anymore; for how is difficult to see the other side of the coin, he isn’t so blind not to think also about Charlie’s situation. Because seeing someone die in front of your eyes repeatedly isn’t something he’d recommend anyone, but knowing that someone sees your death countless times and that said person can’t stop it forever isn’t something Desmond thinks Charlie would recommend, either. He also wonders whether Charlie hates him. He probably would hate himself, if he was in Charlie’s position.
The thing is that everything is just still. Still in the sense that it doesn’t change.
The flash comes, he feels sick for a couple of minutes, he goes to Charlie, tells him, they wait for the circumstances to be right, he does whatever he has to do and then he starts waiting again.
If only something could break the routine, he thinks. Not in the sense that Charlie has to die, God forbid, or that he has to die, or that something bad must happen. The flashes stopping altogether would actually be the best option but he can sense it’s not happening anytime soon.
He just wishes for something to take his mind off it. It feels like being hooked on some drug, but not in the stage where the drug helps you forget what you don’t want to remember; it feels like being hooked on some drug in the stage where you’re so miserable and yearning for it that you can’t think about anything else and when you had your dose you can’t even enjoy it but start thinking immediately about how and when you’re going to secure yourself the next hit.
He’d really need a bloody miracle drug to takes his mind off this, but Desmond doubts such a thing exists.
--
They find out they were both wrong, because maybe it’s not what they had thought about in the first place, but there’s something that breaks the cycle, at one point.
It’s definitely not what they were thinking about, but it works for either of them and while it’s wrong on too many levels to count, it manages to make everything else more bearable and so wrong doesn’t matter.
Claire doesn’t have an idea. Penny sure doesn’t, either (if she’s still thinking about him, Desmond reasons before he stops reasoning). Sure, it’s one of the main reasons for which it’s wrong on that many levels. But it’s really not enough to stop them from it.
It begins when Charlie corners Desmond in his tent asking to explain it to him already and Desmond refusing because he can’t even explain it to himself, let alone to someone else.
Then something else happens, either of them can’t remember exactly what; then Charlie was with his back on the blanket Desmond slept on and Desmond’s lips were on his own, insistent, stopping the river of words flowing from his mouth; so insistent that Charlie didn’t even think about trying to stop it but just brought his hands to Desmond’s shoulders, their bodies melting into one another. The kiss was harsh, nothing tender or slow in it; Charlie remembers tasting blood at some point and then nothing else really.
But the stillness was gone and stayed gone until the morning after, when he woke with Desmond’s arm draped along his hip.
--
In the end, it satisfies all of their needs.
Charlie doesn’t even bother to find an excuse with Claire anymore; he says he moved to Desmond’s tent during the night for practical reasons and she doesn’t suspect anything. Desmond doesn’t talk about it, period; it’s not like he has anyone so close with whom he can share that sort of business.
It never is like that first time. Neither of them have clear memories of it, truth to be told. The ones they have, are not much good either and so they never think about the first time. The second, the third, the sixth, whichever, but not the first.
Desmond can feel positive that Charlie doesn’t hate him after that first time though; you don’t have sex with someone you hate. Right, trying to describe what’s between them would be both impossible and pointless, but it isn’t hate and Desmond is thankful for it because he really couldn’t take that, too.
Charlie can’t exactly capture what Desmond thinks or what flashes in front of his eyes, but he thinks he comes pretty close to it at times. There are moments in which Desmond’s breath is hot on his cheek and and his fingertips dig into Charlie’s hips, in which the air between them is thick and heavy but not with the death that usually hangs in the space between them during the day; in those moments, sometimes Charlie’s eyes meet Desmond’s for a couple of seconds and Charlie can see right through them, going straight in that place where Desmond’s thoughts take shape. Usually, he says that he’s going to go through with this as long as he can, that he’s going to save his life as long as he can, that he’ll try not to fail. Charlie realizes that every time, at least until it’s over, there can’t be failure. Maybe that’s why he finds out he needs this much more than he’d have ever thought.
Desmond doesn’t say any of these things, but there’s no need; Charlie hears them just fine and it’s really everything that matters, isn’t it?
When it happens, there isn’t any sense of time anymore and Desmond is bloody damn grateful for it. He’s come to hate the bare concept of it; seconds, minutes, hours. In his mind, time is a succession of intervals of 108 minutes each. One hour and forty eight minutes; a little less than two hours, 6480 seconds, whatever, he can’t shake that off; there’s an alarm in his head that rings every time an interval is over and the only time it goes away, is when he’s with Charlie.
So every time they make it last as much as they can.
Sometimes Desmond wonders whether Charlie would write a song about everything that happened, were the flashes to stop and were they both to survive; he wonders if scattered lyrics go through his mind while Desmond’s hand is getting him off or when his tongue traces random patterns on Charlie’s chest. He wonders if the low moans of pleasure he forces out of Charlie’s lips have some pattern, if they’re a sort of rudimentary score; then again, it’s probably something Desmond imagines and Charlie would probably want to forget the whole flashes experience. Not to write a song about it, of everything.
The reasons for which this is wrong on way too many levels slowly disappear from their minds soon after it starts; at one point they don’t think even about why they’re together in the first place and just let it happen, night after night, scratches after scratches over the right side of Desmond’s back, bruises after bruises on the pale skin around Charlie’s waist, time after time of coming together surrounded by the heat and that air which is always as thick as it was the first time.
They both realize they found their miracle drug. Charlie had laughed at the bitter irony because he had just let go of one only to find another one, Desmond had welcomed it because while he knew that now his only way of escaping was something he’d have had more than one trouble quitting, it was worth the risk. Just to feel the beating of Charlie’s heart against his chest or the warmth of his skin and his body alive and firm and his ragged breathing against his mouth, it was all worth it. It meant they had still a chance, right?
Quitting never was an option.
End.