Three Five Acts ficlets
Title: Terrible love
Characters/Pairings: Charlotte/Daniel
Rating: Hard PG-13/soft R
Summary: She doesn't mean for anything to happen with her and Dan.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to 5x05; references to character death.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for primarycolors92 for the Five Acts meme, for the prompts mistake sex and outdoors. Title from The National.
----
She doesn't mean for anything to happen with her and Dan.
Honestly.
Even though she knows he loves her (is in love with her), she doesn't intend for anything more than a few minutes away from the others, away from the proof the time-travel nonsense they're going through is real (scattered in pieces across the sand, heaved ashore on the beach) and not some bloody nightmare she's bound to wake up from any minute.
(She does that too, when they've stopped for water and no one's looking; wake up, she thinks, desperate, squeezes her eyes shut hard, wake up. It's the first time she's wished for the freighter's cramped, smelly cots or that pathetic excuse for a bedroll they'd used back at the beach camp, but it's always more green -- so much green -- the sky impossibly high over their heads when she opens her eyes. Always. And that's when the pragmatic part of Charlotte's mind -- which is plenty; even with almost-daydreams of yellow houses and mysterious islands she's a realist before anything else -- chimes in, reminds her that there isn't any escape, that she's weaved her own end on this godforsaken place, and that this will be, this place will be, the last thing she ever sees.)
Miles' doom-and-gloom is driving her batty, and Locke keeps marching around like throwing off pronouncements about what the island wants them to do like he's gone completely nutters and Sawyer and Juliet are trapped in their own drama, apparently, so once the commotion over the ship wreck calms down (she doesn't have the time for professional curiousity, not now; her nose runs red again and it's a precious commodity, something finite she can almost see sift through her fingers) Charlotte gets Daniel's attention, steers him away from the group and towards the treeline.
"We're going to need some firewood, yeah?" she says in way of explanation, trodding down the beach and trying to fight off the aching buzz clamping down on her temples. "Don't know about you but I'm freezing."
He looks at her for a long moment, like he can't quite figure out what she's up to (and it's nothing, honestly; there's no time -- again, she can't escape it -- to think about Dan's words to that Alpert bloke in the Hostiles' camp, about why repeating it back made her breath sort of skip, made all kinds of things she doesn't even want to start picking apart swell, warm and bright, in her chest) but nods and follows along anyway, in between trees and along the jungle's edges, starting to collect twigs and branches they drop in a pile in the brush.
That's why she doesn't mean to step too closely while she's reaching to break off a dead branch, doesn't mean to turn against the curve of Dan's arms, into his chest, when they're only a fraction apart and it's like all the jungle's hums and chirps just fall away until all she can hear is her own heartbeat, doesn't mean to watch him lick his bottom lip, nervous and wide-eyed, to tilt her head up and brush her mouth open against his. For him to kiss her back.
When she's got the knot of Dan's tie -- half-soaked and thick with wear, days spent on the beach -- between her fingers, yanking it free, starts at the buttons of his ridiculous dress shirt she's thinking this is a mistake because it is, because it's not fair to have gone there looking for home and to find something else entirely, it's not fair and it's not right that there's blood crusted under her nails and she's always moving closer to the end and this (his teeth scrape just beneath her jawline and she gasps) won't make it easier. They stumble a couple steps back; bark catches against the stretch of her t-shirt, pulls against her skin, starting to scratch when his hands have caught hers, thumbs carving along the insides of her wrists. When he finally pushes inside everything goes white for a second, not like those damn flashes but in a way that's blank, beautiful (not about blood or death or future things written in stone; just them) and at the end it's white again, against her eyelids, Dan's breath hot and frantic along her cheek, the only thing against the jungle's full thrush of sound, the soft humidity cradling their skin.
Daniel's quiet after, his head bowed and resting along her shoulder, hair damp, sweaty against her skin. Eventually he moves away and she wriggles back into her jeans, tank top; both ends of his tie hang loose against the front of his shirt, and "Daniel," she starts, uncertain. "I don't want you to get the ... well, the wrong idea about us. It was sweet, what you said back in the Hostiles' camp, and this ... but I'm not -- I mean, I don't --"
(It's better, Charlotte tells herself, firm, it's better this way.
She doesn't mean it at all.)
But Dan just gives her a gentle smile, seems to hesitate and then steps towards her anyway, brings his hands up to frame her face and kisses her softly, carefully, just seconds and then he smiles again, still close enough she can feel the heat of his breath as he murmurs I know and then moves away. She feels the tears but wipes them away when he's not looking, as they're walking back towards the beach with wood piled under their arms (I know; he's a bloody genius and sometimes she still doesn't give him enough credit) and when she stops to straighten his tie before they round the last of the beach's curves to their friends she doesn't plan to leave her hands lingering against his neck (thank you comes out in a whisper, air still between them), to kiss him again, lightly, longer than she should, before they keep walking through the sand but she does.
(She means it more than anything.)
--
Title: Calling Bluffs
Characters/Pairings: Miles/Juliet
Rating: PG
Summary: Two deserted time travellers and a bottle of wine make for an interesting evening.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to 5x08.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for ozmissage for the Five Acts meme, for the prompts confessions.
----
"You totally like me."
Miles regrets the words half a second after they leave his mouth -- hell, probably half a second before, if they'd even entered his wine-addled brain and he's not sure they actually did -- and Juliet pauses with her glass halfway to her lips (they're practically stained purple and her cheeks are blushing red; it happens every time, she'd moaned earlier, I look like a tomato) and stares him down.
Uh oh.
She doesn't say a thing, just sips delicately at the rest of her drink, watches him over the rim of her wineglass.
Why in in the flying blue fuck is he telling her this again? Oh right, because he makes stupid decisions when he's drunk, and they've got three empty bottles of Dharma-brand chardonnay proving just that point. So he shrugs, takes another gulp of wine and fights through the buzz that's pressing against his temples, figures it can't get any worse, even if they've only been with the hippie scientists for a month and if they're stuck in time for however long (Dan's apparently going for a mumbly weirdo world record and has barely strung a sentence together since they arrived) this could get all kinds of awkward --
"Listen, I know when a chick digs me."
Whatever. Let her call his bluff. He likes her -- that's the thing; he likes that she doesn't take any shit and she looks just as hot as she does badass with a rifle under her arm and the way tucks her hair behind her ear and even that smirk -- and what's the worst that could happen? She'll laugh and they'll open another bottle of wine and if he's lucky it'll get lost in the hangover tomorrow.
The corners of Juliet's lips lift, just barely, into a smile, and she leans forward, lets her glass clink down against the coffeetable.
"You're right."
Miles already has a smartass brush-off ready to go, and he almost stumbles into anyway before what she says filters through the haze; he stutters out an um, freezes up again, finally manages to squint at her with a I am? that sounds way more shocked than he likes.
He has to say it doesn't even compare to a few seconds later, when she rises from the couch and stumbles to the front of his chair, leans down and plants one on him. She tastes like wine, and it's sloppy as hell, but it's pretty much the best damn thing that's happened to him ... well, almost ever, so he's not going to complain. Instead, Miles kisses her back, doesn't say a word when Juliet murmurs don't let it go to your head before she pulls back and reaches for another bottle, grins at him with corkscrew in hand.
He grins too, and yep, he thinks, totally digs me.
----
Title: A wellmade mistake
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Kate; Marc, Aaron
Rating: PG
Summary: As soon as she gets her name cleared, she's gone.
Spoilers/Warnings: AU take on S4, post-the O6 returning.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for angela_weber for the Five Acts meme, for the prompts absence makes the heart grow fonder. Title from Fiona Apple.
--
As soon as she gets her name cleared -- he perjures himself and the orange jumpsuit gets traded in for business casual and there's one parking garage conversation where he doesn't (can't) say what he really means -- she's gone.
Grabs Aaron, drains the rest of her Oceanic settlement money and runs.
He tells himself he's not surprised.
(He is.)
Marc tries for diplomatic when he first hears, mumbles some platitudes, finally hands him a drink -- they're at the bar closest to the hospital, at the end of a bad shift; some little boy that reminds him too much of Aaron who'll never walk again -- and sighs you blew it, man; the kid comes as part of the package.
(Jack doesn't flatter himself by thinking it has anything to do with him at all.)
--
About two weeks after he keeps expecting to see her mug shot flashed across the TV screen, in black and white on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, Jack runs into her lawyer in the cereal aisle at the supermarket. It takes a minute to recognize the guy, out of his thousand-dollar suit and in a wrinkled polo and jeans, but hi, Jack says, squints out a smile, Jack Shephard; I testified for Kate Austen? He'd been grabbing a box of Cheerios (Aaron's favourite; at least that's what Kate had said) right before he'd spotted the guy and now he stands with the cereal halfway into his shopping basket, feeling ridiculous while the lawyer explains (with a stiff upturn of his lips that says I don't get paid enough to deal with the relationship bullshit) that Kate's all settled into her new place, Aaron's adjusting well and the area's nice and quiet --
"Wait, I thought -- I thought she'd be in trouble," Jack counters, still with a grin that's starting to turn hard around the edges. "She jumped parole, didn't she?"
"State of California, Mr. Shephard." The lawyer's already grabbing his own items and pushing his cart further down the aisle, nodding a barely goodbye. "As long as Kate keeps in contact with the local parole office and stays in the state for the next decade, she's in the clear."
It's another ten minutes before Jack finally puts the Cheerios down, leaves the store with nothing at all.
(She'd run, sure. But not that far.
Just far enough away from him.)
--
About two weeks after that, the letters start.
Sometimes they're postcards, stamped from some county in northern California, sometimes they're handwritten on carefully folded paper, postmarked the same but no return address, over months and months and months; mostly about Aaron, never about why she left, always ending with I miss you.
She even sends a picture one time, in an e-mail that comes without words -- his high-speed's on the fritz and the computer slowly chugs out the photograph; it's of Aaron (he's so blonde now, like Claire, and so big) on a swingset, tiny hands wrapped in an uncertain set around the chains, looking so serious. Kate's shadow stretches long, insubstantial lines across the grass (must have been late afternoon, wherever they were; another dot on the map) from behind the camera and that's all he has, all the evidence he's got of her.
He clicks 'reply', types four words.
Where are you?
Please.
The e-mail bounces back; no address found.
--
(When things get really bad -- when his receptionist cancels his appointments because he knows he stinks like whiskey, when he forgets to shave for the third fourth fifth day in a row, when he blacks out and wakes up drooling to a blaring alarm clock, pills spilling onto his bedside table -- that's when he pretends (hopes imagines) they're still back on the island, him and Kate, and that they could be still together, be still and stop running and just be okay. Just be.
One prescription runs out and another gets filled and he doesn't remember if it ever was that simple, but he likes to think it was.)
--
There's another letter, finally, after he gets suspended from the hospital, this time on plain, blue-lined paper, and his hands start to shake as he rips open the envelope, spots the neatly printed address in the top-left corner.
Get clean, it says. Come find us after that.
--
It's pretty clear from the second he rolls past the 'Welcome to Alturas' sign there's not a hell of a lot to the town -- mostly it's scrubby trees and highway, some county buildings in the town centre, a few diners with red neon lighting up their windows. It doesn't take long, either, to find the tidy bungalow off a side road just past the downtown, but when the driveway gravel starts crunching under the rental car's tires he thinks for two seconds about just leaving, like he never even came.
Running.
Instead he slides out of the driver's seat and makes his way up the front walk, and that's when he notices her, hair pulled back and feet bare, that she'd been watching the whole time through the screen door. Waiting to see. When he's close enough she eases the door open, gaze still tracking him. He can hear cartoons blaring in the background. There's a heavy pause while Kate gives him an up-and-down (three months' sober, NA chip tucked into his pants pocket like proof) and then she smiles, hi, Jack, and he hears the tears in her voice before he sees them. Doesn't see them at all, because he's already got his arms around her, face lost in her long hair, and hi, he whispers back as they stand there, perfectly still against each other, hi.
Characters/Pairings: Charlotte/Daniel
Rating: Hard PG-13/soft R
Summary: She doesn't mean for anything to happen with her and Dan.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to 5x05; references to character death.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for primarycolors92 for the Five Acts meme, for the prompts mistake sex and outdoors. Title from The National.
----
She doesn't mean for anything to happen with her and Dan.
Honestly.
Even though she knows he loves her (is in love with her), she doesn't intend for anything more than a few minutes away from the others, away from the proof the time-travel nonsense they're going through is real (scattered in pieces across the sand, heaved ashore on the beach) and not some bloody nightmare she's bound to wake up from any minute.
(She does that too, when they've stopped for water and no one's looking; wake up, she thinks, desperate, squeezes her eyes shut hard, wake up. It's the first time she's wished for the freighter's cramped, smelly cots or that pathetic excuse for a bedroll they'd used back at the beach camp, but it's always more green -- so much green -- the sky impossibly high over their heads when she opens her eyes. Always. And that's when the pragmatic part of Charlotte's mind -- which is plenty; even with almost-daydreams of yellow houses and mysterious islands she's a realist before anything else -- chimes in, reminds her that there isn't any escape, that she's weaved her own end on this godforsaken place, and that this will be, this place will be, the last thing she ever sees.)
Miles' doom-and-gloom is driving her batty, and Locke keeps marching around like throwing off pronouncements about what the island wants them to do like he's gone completely nutters and Sawyer and Juliet are trapped in their own drama, apparently, so once the commotion over the ship wreck calms down (she doesn't have the time for professional curiousity, not now; her nose runs red again and it's a precious commodity, something finite she can almost see sift through her fingers) Charlotte gets Daniel's attention, steers him away from the group and towards the treeline.
"We're going to need some firewood, yeah?" she says in way of explanation, trodding down the beach and trying to fight off the aching buzz clamping down on her temples. "Don't know about you but I'm freezing."
He looks at her for a long moment, like he can't quite figure out what she's up to (and it's nothing, honestly; there's no time -- again, she can't escape it -- to think about Dan's words to that Alpert bloke in the Hostiles' camp, about why repeating it back made her breath sort of skip, made all kinds of things she doesn't even want to start picking apart swell, warm and bright, in her chest) but nods and follows along anyway, in between trees and along the jungle's edges, starting to collect twigs and branches they drop in a pile in the brush.
That's why she doesn't mean to step too closely while she's reaching to break off a dead branch, doesn't mean to turn against the curve of Dan's arms, into his chest, when they're only a fraction apart and it's like all the jungle's hums and chirps just fall away until all she can hear is her own heartbeat, doesn't mean to watch him lick his bottom lip, nervous and wide-eyed, to tilt her head up and brush her mouth open against his. For him to kiss her back.
When she's got the knot of Dan's tie -- half-soaked and thick with wear, days spent on the beach -- between her fingers, yanking it free, starts at the buttons of his ridiculous dress shirt she's thinking this is a mistake because it is, because it's not fair to have gone there looking for home and to find something else entirely, it's not fair and it's not right that there's blood crusted under her nails and she's always moving closer to the end and this (his teeth scrape just beneath her jawline and she gasps) won't make it easier. They stumble a couple steps back; bark catches against the stretch of her t-shirt, pulls against her skin, starting to scratch when his hands have caught hers, thumbs carving along the insides of her wrists. When he finally pushes inside everything goes white for a second, not like those damn flashes but in a way that's blank, beautiful (not about blood or death or future things written in stone; just them) and at the end it's white again, against her eyelids, Dan's breath hot and frantic along her cheek, the only thing against the jungle's full thrush of sound, the soft humidity cradling their skin.
Daniel's quiet after, his head bowed and resting along her shoulder, hair damp, sweaty against her skin. Eventually he moves away and she wriggles back into her jeans, tank top; both ends of his tie hang loose against the front of his shirt, and "Daniel," she starts, uncertain. "I don't want you to get the ... well, the wrong idea about us. It was sweet, what you said back in the Hostiles' camp, and this ... but I'm not -- I mean, I don't --"
(It's better, Charlotte tells herself, firm, it's better this way.
She doesn't mean it at all.)
But Dan just gives her a gentle smile, seems to hesitate and then steps towards her anyway, brings his hands up to frame her face and kisses her softly, carefully, just seconds and then he smiles again, still close enough she can feel the heat of his breath as he murmurs I know and then moves away. She feels the tears but wipes them away when he's not looking, as they're walking back towards the beach with wood piled under their arms (I know; he's a bloody genius and sometimes she still doesn't give him enough credit) and when she stops to straighten his tie before they round the last of the beach's curves to their friends she doesn't plan to leave her hands lingering against his neck (thank you comes out in a whisper, air still between them), to kiss him again, lightly, longer than she should, before they keep walking through the sand but she does.
(She means it more than anything.)
--
Title: Calling Bluffs
Characters/Pairings: Miles/Juliet
Rating: PG
Summary: Two deserted time travellers and a bottle of wine make for an interesting evening.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to 5x08.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for ozmissage for the Five Acts meme, for the prompts confessions.
----
"You totally like me."
Miles regrets the words half a second after they leave his mouth -- hell, probably half a second before, if they'd even entered his wine-addled brain and he's not sure they actually did -- and Juliet pauses with her glass halfway to her lips (they're practically stained purple and her cheeks are blushing red; it happens every time, she'd moaned earlier, I look like a tomato) and stares him down.
Uh oh.
She doesn't say a thing, just sips delicately at the rest of her drink, watches him over the rim of her wineglass.
Why in in the flying blue fuck is he telling her this again? Oh right, because he makes stupid decisions when he's drunk, and they've got three empty bottles of Dharma-brand chardonnay proving just that point. So he shrugs, takes another gulp of wine and fights through the buzz that's pressing against his temples, figures it can't get any worse, even if they've only been with the hippie scientists for a month and if they're stuck in time for however long (Dan's apparently going for a mumbly weirdo world record and has barely strung a sentence together since they arrived) this could get all kinds of awkward --
"Listen, I know when a chick digs me."
Whatever. Let her call his bluff. He likes her -- that's the thing; he likes that she doesn't take any shit and she looks just as hot as she does badass with a rifle under her arm and the way tucks her hair behind her ear and even that smirk -- and what's the worst that could happen? She'll laugh and they'll open another bottle of wine and if he's lucky it'll get lost in the hangover tomorrow.
The corners of Juliet's lips lift, just barely, into a smile, and she leans forward, lets her glass clink down against the coffeetable.
"You're right."
Miles already has a smartass brush-off ready to go, and he almost stumbles into anyway before what she says filters through the haze; he stutters out an um, freezes up again, finally manages to squint at her with a I am? that sounds way more shocked than he likes.
He has to say it doesn't even compare to a few seconds later, when she rises from the couch and stumbles to the front of his chair, leans down and plants one on him. She tastes like wine, and it's sloppy as hell, but it's pretty much the best damn thing that's happened to him ... well, almost ever, so he's not going to complain. Instead, Miles kisses her back, doesn't say a word when Juliet murmurs don't let it go to your head before she pulls back and reaches for another bottle, grins at him with corkscrew in hand.
He grins too, and yep, he thinks, totally digs me.
----
Title: A wellmade mistake
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Kate; Marc, Aaron
Rating: PG
Summary: As soon as she gets her name cleared, she's gone.
Spoilers/Warnings: AU take on S4, post-the O6 returning.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Written for angela_weber for the Five Acts meme, for the prompts absence makes the heart grow fonder. Title from Fiona Apple.
--
As soon as she gets her name cleared -- he perjures himself and the orange jumpsuit gets traded in for business casual and there's one parking garage conversation where he doesn't (can't) say what he really means -- she's gone.
Grabs Aaron, drains the rest of her Oceanic settlement money and runs.
He tells himself he's not surprised.
(He is.)
Marc tries for diplomatic when he first hears, mumbles some platitudes, finally hands him a drink -- they're at the bar closest to the hospital, at the end of a bad shift; some little boy that reminds him too much of Aaron who'll never walk again -- and sighs you blew it, man; the kid comes as part of the package.
(Jack doesn't flatter himself by thinking it has anything to do with him at all.)
--
About two weeks after he keeps expecting to see her mug shot flashed across the TV screen, in black and white on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, Jack runs into her lawyer in the cereal aisle at the supermarket. It takes a minute to recognize the guy, out of his thousand-dollar suit and in a wrinkled polo and jeans, but hi, Jack says, squints out a smile, Jack Shephard; I testified for Kate Austen? He'd been grabbing a box of Cheerios (Aaron's favourite; at least that's what Kate had said) right before he'd spotted the guy and now he stands with the cereal halfway into his shopping basket, feeling ridiculous while the lawyer explains (with a stiff upturn of his lips that says I don't get paid enough to deal with the relationship bullshit) that Kate's all settled into her new place, Aaron's adjusting well and the area's nice and quiet --
"Wait, I thought -- I thought she'd be in trouble," Jack counters, still with a grin that's starting to turn hard around the edges. "She jumped parole, didn't she?"
"State of California, Mr. Shephard." The lawyer's already grabbing his own items and pushing his cart further down the aisle, nodding a barely goodbye. "As long as Kate keeps in contact with the local parole office and stays in the state for the next decade, she's in the clear."
It's another ten minutes before Jack finally puts the Cheerios down, leaves the store with nothing at all.
(She'd run, sure. But not that far.
Just far enough away from him.)
--
About two weeks after that, the letters start.
Sometimes they're postcards, stamped from some county in northern California, sometimes they're handwritten on carefully folded paper, postmarked the same but no return address, over months and months and months; mostly about Aaron, never about why she left, always ending with I miss you.
She even sends a picture one time, in an e-mail that comes without words -- his high-speed's on the fritz and the computer slowly chugs out the photograph; it's of Aaron (he's so blonde now, like Claire, and so big) on a swingset, tiny hands wrapped in an uncertain set around the chains, looking so serious. Kate's shadow stretches long, insubstantial lines across the grass (must have been late afternoon, wherever they were; another dot on the map) from behind the camera and that's all he has, all the evidence he's got of her.
He clicks 'reply', types four words.
Where are you?
Please.
The e-mail bounces back; no address found.
--
(When things get really bad -- when his receptionist cancels his appointments because he knows he stinks like whiskey, when he forgets to shave for the third fourth fifth day in a row, when he blacks out and wakes up drooling to a blaring alarm clock, pills spilling onto his bedside table -- that's when he pretends (hopes imagines) they're still back on the island, him and Kate, and that they could be still together, be still and stop running and just be okay. Just be.
One prescription runs out and another gets filled and he doesn't remember if it ever was that simple, but he likes to think it was.)
--
There's another letter, finally, after he gets suspended from the hospital, this time on plain, blue-lined paper, and his hands start to shake as he rips open the envelope, spots the neatly printed address in the top-left corner.
Get clean, it says. Come find us after that.
--
It's pretty clear from the second he rolls past the 'Welcome to Alturas' sign there's not a hell of a lot to the town -- mostly it's scrubby trees and highway, some county buildings in the town centre, a few diners with red neon lighting up their windows. It doesn't take long, either, to find the tidy bungalow off a side road just past the downtown, but when the driveway gravel starts crunching under the rental car's tires he thinks for two seconds about just leaving, like he never even came.
Running.
Instead he slides out of the driver's seat and makes his way up the front walk, and that's when he notices her, hair pulled back and feet bare, that she'd been watching the whole time through the screen door. Waiting to see. When he's close enough she eases the door open, gaze still tracking him. He can hear cartoons blaring in the background. There's a heavy pause while Kate gives him an up-and-down (three months' sober, NA chip tucked into his pants pocket like proof) and then she smiles, hi, Jack, and he hears the tears in her voice before he sees them. Doesn't see them at all, because he's already got his arms around her, face lost in her long hair, and hi, he whispers back as they stand there, perfectly still against each other, hi.