(no subject)
Title: Connection
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Claire/Liam, mentions of Claire/Charlie
Prompt: #25 - You Remind Me Of Someone for
un_love_you
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,630
Summary: Post-rescue, Claire attempts to find closure.
Author's Note: I owe the inspiration for this to
bebitched
It’s desperation that makes her seek him out in the first place. She wants-needs-to see this man she knows barely anything about.
He isn’t hard to find. The same photographers that stalk them, the survivors, day in and day out are the same people who follow him. Liam Pace. Lead singer of Driveshaft. Brother of the man who meant more to her than he ever knew.
“Hey,” she shouts across the lawn to the man who sits in his car, camera not far from reach. He startles, then makes to grab for the camera, but she stops him. In her hand is a stack of bills, money from the settlement, and she makes sure it catches his eye right as she asks, “You’re the same one who’s been photographing Liam Pace right? You know where he is?”
He nods. There aren’t many of them who still bother with this story anymore, what with rescue having come and gone two months ago, but the ones who do are fanatics. They know about the survivors and their families than the survivors themselves.
Claire moves the money closer, but pulls back when he reaches for it, making sure he’s interested. “Tell me where he lives.”
---
She has to bring Aaron with her that first time. She pulls up outside of the house the photog told her the rocker was staying at. Here for press, he’d added. They’re coming out with a new album, one to honor Charlie.
She has to knock several times before she gets an answer, but she does eventually. The man who answers wears glasses and is nearly a foot taller than her. His expression is more welcoming than most when faced with a stranger. It’s probably due to the absence of a camera, or a notepad, more than anything, but it’s still a nice touch. “Can I help you?”
“You’re Liam Pace right?” She has to check. For all she’s heard of him, she hasn’t seen him half as much. It’s through the radio that she hears of him most often.
“Yeah,” he answers, and she can tell he’s just a bit surprised by the question. “Do I know you?”
“No,” she replies, with a shake of her head. Aaron tugs at her hand, and she knows he’s confused and uncomfortable. He doesn’t like strangers; it’s a learned behavior from the island, living in fear. He may be young but he’s still picked up on it. “But I knew your brother.”
“Oh,” he frowns. “I suppose you’re here to offer condolences.” He says it like she’s just a groupie or something, come to use mourning as a reason to get in good with the rest of the band.
“Not exactly.” That surprises him too. “I knew him on the island.”
He nods, a sign of recognition flickering over his face. “Do you want to come in?”
---
The house belongs to their new bassist, who also happens to be out at the moment, and she guesses it’s probably better that way. A little girl comes bounding into the living room seconds after Claire enters, and Liam introduces the child as his daughter, Megan. He’s got her while he’s in the states, part of the custody agreement with his ex-wife, and Megan always wanted to see the US. Aaron ends up delighted to see someone close to his own age (three years means nothing to young children) and they run off into what Liam tells her is being used as Megan’s bedroom for the time being.
“So you knew Charlie well I take it?” Liam asks, his voice devoid of the sadness that overtakes hers when she speaks of him. It’s not as fresh in his mind, after all they were supposedly all dead up until two months ago. Nothing changed for him.
“I did,” she tells him, not ready to commit to anything more than that just yet. She isn’t going to pour her heart out to a man who is still foreign to her, despite what she knows of him.
“Whatever he said about me, try not to believe all of it.” He pauses, lost in a memory somewhere for a moment, before coming back. “We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms unfortunately.”
She runs her teeth along her bottom lip, nervously. “He didn’t actually say much about you at all.” It catches Liam off guard, and she thinks maybe she shouldn’t have said it, but there’s no changing that now. If there’s one thing she’s learned it’s that you can’t dwell on what you should and shouldn’t have done or said. “He didn’t talk a lot about the past, except for Driveshaft. And once you got him started on that you couldn’t get him to stop.”
Liam nearly laughs. “That’s Charlie for you. He loved this band more than all the rest of us.” He looks down at his hands. “As well he should’ve. We couldn’t have done it without him.”
She digs in her pocket, producing the ring that she keeps on her nightstand. “That’s what this is for right?” She fingers the letters. “DS. Driveshaft.”
He holds out his hand and she passes it to him. Holding the metal ring, warm from her body heat, a smile plays at his lips. “Dexter Stratton, actually. Our great grandfather. It’s a family heirloom. We named the band after him.”
“He left it in Aaron’s crib before he died. I guess he wanted me to keep it safe.” She begins.
“No,” Liam cuts in before she can really finish. He holds the ring back out, placing it in her small hand, and then closing it around the ring, holding onto her hand a moment longer than necessary, mostly for emphasis. “He meant for you to have it. For your son to have it. He was passing it down.”
She would fight him on this if he didn’t seem so completely okay with it. It’s almost as if he wants her to have it, though really she shouldn’t. Claire puts it back in her pocket anyways.
“Charlie wasn’t just a friend on this island was he?” Liam asks, when her mind wanders and she falls silent.
“Charlie was…” she tries to think of a word, a term that suits what he was to her, but nothing fits, nothing is right. So she just simply says the truth. “Charlie was the only man I ever really loved.”
---
She’s not quite sure what makes him stop by her house two weeks later, but he’s there, and it’s the exact opposite of the last time they saw each other. He claims he was in the neighborhood and Megan had wanted to visit her newfound friend. The little girl backed up the story, but Claire knew that wasn’t the whole truth. She lets them in anyway.
“They seem to like each other don’t they?” He says, accepting the glass that she hands him. The kids are playing in the backyard, visible through the glass, and she nods as she watches her son laugh.
“They do,” she agrees. “Now why are you really here? I mean you can’t possibly have a lot of free time, what with the new album.”
He looks down sheepishly, caught. “My brother didn’t exactly have a lot of people he let in, least of all me. I wasn’t there for him like I should’ve been, I let him down, and he resented that. But you…you really knew him right?”
She shifts somewhat awkwardly in her seat, sensing the turn in the conversation. “I don’t know if it’s possible to ever really, truly no someone. It was only for three months or so before he…we weren’t together for that long.”
“But he was okay, right?” She begins to understand what he’s trying, and failing, to get at. He doesn’t want to say what he means outright in case she is unaware. “There weren’t any issues?”
“If you’re talking about the heroin, then no. He kicked that habit, went through withdrawal on the island.” She can see relief wash over his features. She doesn’t mention her suspicions that he wasn’t so clean at first. There would be no point; she had been wrong after all.
“I just…the last time I saw him he was so strung out on the stuff.” He goes quiet for a minute, contemplating his next words. “I got him into the stuff you know. It was my fault. And I’m the reason he was even on the plane in the first place.” He shakes his head. “If it hadn’t have been for me he might still be here.”
She reaches out a hand to cover his. “Your brother was a big believer in fate you know. He wrote it on the bandages on his fingers when we first crashed.” She can close her eyes and see him writing on them. “I think he believed that his death, everything that happened before it, was all fate.” Claire takes in a deep breath. “I know that doesn’t make it better but I just thought I’d tell you that.”
Liam finds her eyes then, and when she looks at him she can see a bit of Charlie, that gratefulness and that understanding. She knows that this time won’t be the last.
---
Five days later she buys concert tickets without blinking an eye. She ropes Sun into watching Aaron and she goes, the loud music and large crowds reminding her of piercing parlors and raven colored hair dye.
It’s the ring that gets her backstage and she finds Liam in one of the dressing rooms with two twenty-something blondes who seem to hang on him. He looks disinterested, like he’s done it all before, and maybe he’s just getting too old for this. He’s only in his thirties she knows, but that’s not young for the life he lives.
He whispers something to the girl on his right, and she and her friend take off, giggling like teenagers. She suddenly feels very old. He’s on his feet as soon as they’re gone. He’s lost the glasses, and he wears what she sees as traditional rockstar attire, lots of black clothes, and metal thrown in. She’s seen the pictures of Driveshaft’s old gigs, and she knows as strange as it feels to her, this is actually a whole lot tamer than a few years back. “Claire, what are you doing here?”
“I thought I’d see what all the hype was about.” She says, with a small smile, pushing a loose strand of hair back, her other hand playing at the hem of her top, feeling a bit overdressed. She isn’t dressed like a debutante or anything glamorous, but she looks nice, she isn’t like the other girl whose breasts pour over their low cut tops, or the girls who wear the ratty jeans that look well lived in, and possibly not washed since 1999. “You guys were great.”
“Thanks. You All Everybody was off though. Charlie always sang the chorus.” She can tell he misses his brother more now than ever. It’s when he needs him most, standing up on that stage in front of hundreds of people, and that’s when he notices the absence the most. “Never would’ve picked you for the type to go to concerts.”
“I wasn’t always the good girl you know.” She responds with mock offense in her voice.
“Oh really?” He asks, like he doesn’t quite believe her.
“I went through a whole Goth phase in my late teens. Even got a tattoo to prove it.” She adds the last part in to tease him, and she grins when she achieves the desired effect.
He raises his eyebrows. “Let’s see it then.”
“Not on your life.” She says. Its placement isn’t that scandalous but it’s more fun playing with him than just outright revealing it.
“Oh come on, what’s a little skin between friends.” He’s got a devilish grin on his face that matches her own and it’s when he says friends, it’s when she realizes that they do have a bond of sorts, that she also realizes how close he is to her. She hesitates and her eyes dart down. He can’t help but notice, and the flirty moment leaves them. “Something wrong?”
“We’re friends.” Claire repeats his sentiment.
“Well yeah, unless you’ve got a better word for it.” He replies, and he hasn’t quite adjusted to the seriousness in her voice, the tension flooding her body.
The problem is that this doesn’t feel very much like friends. This feels very much like flirting, this feels very much like the same dance she did with Charlie. And there’s something so very wrong with that thought.
“I have to go,” she mumbles, and she leaves before he can try to stop her.
---
She can’t stay away from him for long, and she’s not sure she wants anyway.
“I miss him,” she says, her voice cracking, as she leans up and crushes her lips to his. Her hands grasp at his shirt, trying to keep herself upright, and tears burn her eyes, but she refuses to let them fall. She kisses him with a passion that holds everything she wanted to say to Charlie but never did. It’s a kiss meant for another man, and somehow she can tell by the way he holds her that he gets it.
---
She gets photographed with him one too many times and she ends up in some gossip magazine. A six a.m. phone call isn’t far behind.
“What are you doing Claire?” Kate asks, and Claire wonders what she was doing reading those things in the first place.
“I’m moving on,” Claire decides, phone cord wrapped around her finger, playing with it, distressed. She doesn’t want to deal with this.
“Really? Cause it looks a lot like standing still?” Kate tells her.
Claire hangs up on her, thinking that she really doesn’t need this from Kate of all people. Kate who married to get out of going to prison, yet still keeps close tabs on both Jack and Sawyer. Yeah, she’s done a great job of moving on.
A week later some privileged heiress goes to jail, and the name Claire Littleton isn’t even a blip on the radar.
---
“We’re all each other has of him right?” She asks Liam one night, wrapped in a sheet, and feeling like a cheater. “That’s what this is.”
“What are you getting at?” He sounds less annoyed than his words dictate. The thing with them is they don’t necessarily understand each other. Their only common ground is they are each looking for some type of comfort; anything past that and they tend to lose all ability to deal with the other, to hold a conversation. They are nothing alike.
“Because I’m not the type to sleep around. I need a reason.” Part of her thinks that if she can classify this, then she won’t feel so bad about it. “And it’s him isn’t it? It’s why we met, and it’s why we’re here now. We’re all we have left of him; the only other person who might’ve known what we didn’t.”
She knows as she says it that she’s right. They were looking for answers to questions at first, and now they’ve transitioned to looking for answers to pain.
“And so what if it is?” Liam asks. “What does that change?”
Truthfully it doesn’t change a thing. She isn’t going to stop this - whatever this is, just because of her revelation of sorts, just because she’s finally admitting what she’s known for awhile. Charlie’s still gone, and they’re still here, and they both still hurt.
The only difference, she supposes, is that it feels less like cheating when he’s all she thinks about.
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Claire/Liam, mentions of Claire/Charlie
Prompt: #25 - You Remind Me Of Someone for
un_love_you
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,630
Summary: Post-rescue, Claire attempts to find closure.
Author's Note: I owe the inspiration for this to
bebitched
It’s desperation that makes her seek him out in the first place. She wants-needs-to see this man she knows barely anything about.
He isn’t hard to find. The same photographers that stalk them, the survivors, day in and day out are the same people who follow him. Liam Pace. Lead singer of Driveshaft. Brother of the man who meant more to her than he ever knew.
“Hey,” she shouts across the lawn to the man who sits in his car, camera not far from reach. He startles, then makes to grab for the camera, but she stops him. In her hand is a stack of bills, money from the settlement, and she makes sure it catches his eye right as she asks, “You’re the same one who’s been photographing Liam Pace right? You know where he is?”
He nods. There aren’t many of them who still bother with this story anymore, what with rescue having come and gone two months ago, but the ones who do are fanatics. They know about the survivors and their families than the survivors themselves.
Claire moves the money closer, but pulls back when he reaches for it, making sure he’s interested. “Tell me where he lives.”
---
She has to bring Aaron with her that first time. She pulls up outside of the house the photog told her the rocker was staying at. Here for press, he’d added. They’re coming out with a new album, one to honor Charlie.
She has to knock several times before she gets an answer, but she does eventually. The man who answers wears glasses and is nearly a foot taller than her. His expression is more welcoming than most when faced with a stranger. It’s probably due to the absence of a camera, or a notepad, more than anything, but it’s still a nice touch. “Can I help you?”
“You’re Liam Pace right?” She has to check. For all she’s heard of him, she hasn’t seen him half as much. It’s through the radio that she hears of him most often.
“Yeah,” he answers, and she can tell he’s just a bit surprised by the question. “Do I know you?”
“No,” she replies, with a shake of her head. Aaron tugs at her hand, and she knows he’s confused and uncomfortable. He doesn’t like strangers; it’s a learned behavior from the island, living in fear. He may be young but he’s still picked up on it. “But I knew your brother.”
“Oh,” he frowns. “I suppose you’re here to offer condolences.” He says it like she’s just a groupie or something, come to use mourning as a reason to get in good with the rest of the band.
“Not exactly.” That surprises him too. “I knew him on the island.”
He nods, a sign of recognition flickering over his face. “Do you want to come in?”
---
The house belongs to their new bassist, who also happens to be out at the moment, and she guesses it’s probably better that way. A little girl comes bounding into the living room seconds after Claire enters, and Liam introduces the child as his daughter, Megan. He’s got her while he’s in the states, part of the custody agreement with his ex-wife, and Megan always wanted to see the US. Aaron ends up delighted to see someone close to his own age (three years means nothing to young children) and they run off into what Liam tells her is being used as Megan’s bedroom for the time being.
“So you knew Charlie well I take it?” Liam asks, his voice devoid of the sadness that overtakes hers when she speaks of him. It’s not as fresh in his mind, after all they were supposedly all dead up until two months ago. Nothing changed for him.
“I did,” she tells him, not ready to commit to anything more than that just yet. She isn’t going to pour her heart out to a man who is still foreign to her, despite what she knows of him.
“Whatever he said about me, try not to believe all of it.” He pauses, lost in a memory somewhere for a moment, before coming back. “We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms unfortunately.”
She runs her teeth along her bottom lip, nervously. “He didn’t actually say much about you at all.” It catches Liam off guard, and she thinks maybe she shouldn’t have said it, but there’s no changing that now. If there’s one thing she’s learned it’s that you can’t dwell on what you should and shouldn’t have done or said. “He didn’t talk a lot about the past, except for Driveshaft. And once you got him started on that you couldn’t get him to stop.”
Liam nearly laughs. “That’s Charlie for you. He loved this band more than all the rest of us.” He looks down at his hands. “As well he should’ve. We couldn’t have done it without him.”
She digs in her pocket, producing the ring that she keeps on her nightstand. “That’s what this is for right?” She fingers the letters. “DS. Driveshaft.”
He holds out his hand and she passes it to him. Holding the metal ring, warm from her body heat, a smile plays at his lips. “Dexter Stratton, actually. Our great grandfather. It’s a family heirloom. We named the band after him.”
“He left it in Aaron’s crib before he died. I guess he wanted me to keep it safe.” She begins.
“No,” Liam cuts in before she can really finish. He holds the ring back out, placing it in her small hand, and then closing it around the ring, holding onto her hand a moment longer than necessary, mostly for emphasis. “He meant for you to have it. For your son to have it. He was passing it down.”
She would fight him on this if he didn’t seem so completely okay with it. It’s almost as if he wants her to have it, though really she shouldn’t. Claire puts it back in her pocket anyways.
“Charlie wasn’t just a friend on this island was he?” Liam asks, when her mind wanders and she falls silent.
“Charlie was…” she tries to think of a word, a term that suits what he was to her, but nothing fits, nothing is right. So she just simply says the truth. “Charlie was the only man I ever really loved.”
---
She’s not quite sure what makes him stop by her house two weeks later, but he’s there, and it’s the exact opposite of the last time they saw each other. He claims he was in the neighborhood and Megan had wanted to visit her newfound friend. The little girl backed up the story, but Claire knew that wasn’t the whole truth. She lets them in anyway.
“They seem to like each other don’t they?” He says, accepting the glass that she hands him. The kids are playing in the backyard, visible through the glass, and she nods as she watches her son laugh.
“They do,” she agrees. “Now why are you really here? I mean you can’t possibly have a lot of free time, what with the new album.”
He looks down sheepishly, caught. “My brother didn’t exactly have a lot of people he let in, least of all me. I wasn’t there for him like I should’ve been, I let him down, and he resented that. But you…you really knew him right?”
She shifts somewhat awkwardly in her seat, sensing the turn in the conversation. “I don’t know if it’s possible to ever really, truly no someone. It was only for three months or so before he…we weren’t together for that long.”
“But he was okay, right?” She begins to understand what he’s trying, and failing, to get at. He doesn’t want to say what he means outright in case she is unaware. “There weren’t any issues?”
“If you’re talking about the heroin, then no. He kicked that habit, went through withdrawal on the island.” She can see relief wash over his features. She doesn’t mention her suspicions that he wasn’t so clean at first. There would be no point; she had been wrong after all.
“I just…the last time I saw him he was so strung out on the stuff.” He goes quiet for a minute, contemplating his next words. “I got him into the stuff you know. It was my fault. And I’m the reason he was even on the plane in the first place.” He shakes his head. “If it hadn’t have been for me he might still be here.”
She reaches out a hand to cover his. “Your brother was a big believer in fate you know. He wrote it on the bandages on his fingers when we first crashed.” She can close her eyes and see him writing on them. “I think he believed that his death, everything that happened before it, was all fate.” Claire takes in a deep breath. “I know that doesn’t make it better but I just thought I’d tell you that.”
Liam finds her eyes then, and when she looks at him she can see a bit of Charlie, that gratefulness and that understanding. She knows that this time won’t be the last.
---
Five days later she buys concert tickets without blinking an eye. She ropes Sun into watching Aaron and she goes, the loud music and large crowds reminding her of piercing parlors and raven colored hair dye.
It’s the ring that gets her backstage and she finds Liam in one of the dressing rooms with two twenty-something blondes who seem to hang on him. He looks disinterested, like he’s done it all before, and maybe he’s just getting too old for this. He’s only in his thirties she knows, but that’s not young for the life he lives.
He whispers something to the girl on his right, and she and her friend take off, giggling like teenagers. She suddenly feels very old. He’s on his feet as soon as they’re gone. He’s lost the glasses, and he wears what she sees as traditional rockstar attire, lots of black clothes, and metal thrown in. She’s seen the pictures of Driveshaft’s old gigs, and she knows as strange as it feels to her, this is actually a whole lot tamer than a few years back. “Claire, what are you doing here?”
“I thought I’d see what all the hype was about.” She says, with a small smile, pushing a loose strand of hair back, her other hand playing at the hem of her top, feeling a bit overdressed. She isn’t dressed like a debutante or anything glamorous, but she looks nice, she isn’t like the other girl whose breasts pour over their low cut tops, or the girls who wear the ratty jeans that look well lived in, and possibly not washed since 1999. “You guys were great.”
“Thanks. You All Everybody was off though. Charlie always sang the chorus.” She can tell he misses his brother more now than ever. It’s when he needs him most, standing up on that stage in front of hundreds of people, and that’s when he notices the absence the most. “Never would’ve picked you for the type to go to concerts.”
“I wasn’t always the good girl you know.” She responds with mock offense in her voice.
“Oh really?” He asks, like he doesn’t quite believe her.
“I went through a whole Goth phase in my late teens. Even got a tattoo to prove it.” She adds the last part in to tease him, and she grins when she achieves the desired effect.
He raises his eyebrows. “Let’s see it then.”
“Not on your life.” She says. Its placement isn’t that scandalous but it’s more fun playing with him than just outright revealing it.
“Oh come on, what’s a little skin between friends.” He’s got a devilish grin on his face that matches her own and it’s when he says friends, it’s when she realizes that they do have a bond of sorts, that she also realizes how close he is to her. She hesitates and her eyes dart down. He can’t help but notice, and the flirty moment leaves them. “Something wrong?”
“We’re friends.” Claire repeats his sentiment.
“Well yeah, unless you’ve got a better word for it.” He replies, and he hasn’t quite adjusted to the seriousness in her voice, the tension flooding her body.
The problem is that this doesn’t feel very much like friends. This feels very much like flirting, this feels very much like the same dance she did with Charlie. And there’s something so very wrong with that thought.
“I have to go,” she mumbles, and she leaves before he can try to stop her.
---
She can’t stay away from him for long, and she’s not sure she wants anyway.
“I miss him,” she says, her voice cracking, as she leans up and crushes her lips to his. Her hands grasp at his shirt, trying to keep herself upright, and tears burn her eyes, but she refuses to let them fall. She kisses him with a passion that holds everything she wanted to say to Charlie but never did. It’s a kiss meant for another man, and somehow she can tell by the way he holds her that he gets it.
---
She gets photographed with him one too many times and she ends up in some gossip magazine. A six a.m. phone call isn’t far behind.
“What are you doing Claire?” Kate asks, and Claire wonders what she was doing reading those things in the first place.
“I’m moving on,” Claire decides, phone cord wrapped around her finger, playing with it, distressed. She doesn’t want to deal with this.
“Really? Cause it looks a lot like standing still?” Kate tells her.
Claire hangs up on her, thinking that she really doesn’t need this from Kate of all people. Kate who married to get out of going to prison, yet still keeps close tabs on both Jack and Sawyer. Yeah, she’s done a great job of moving on.
A week later some privileged heiress goes to jail, and the name Claire Littleton isn’t even a blip on the radar.
---
“We’re all each other has of him right?” She asks Liam one night, wrapped in a sheet, and feeling like a cheater. “That’s what this is.”
“What are you getting at?” He sounds less annoyed than his words dictate. The thing with them is they don’t necessarily understand each other. Their only common ground is they are each looking for some type of comfort; anything past that and they tend to lose all ability to deal with the other, to hold a conversation. They are nothing alike.
“Because I’m not the type to sleep around. I need a reason.” Part of her thinks that if she can classify this, then she won’t feel so bad about it. “And it’s him isn’t it? It’s why we met, and it’s why we’re here now. We’re all we have left of him; the only other person who might’ve known what we didn’t.”
She knows as she says it that she’s right. They were looking for answers to questions at first, and now they’ve transitioned to looking for answers to pain.
“And so what if it is?” Liam asks. “What does that change?”
Truthfully it doesn’t change a thing. She isn’t going to stop this - whatever this is, just because of her revelation of sorts, just because she’s finally admitting what she’s known for awhile. Charlie’s still gone, and they’re still here, and they both still hurt.
The only difference, she supposes, is that it feels less like cheating when he’s all she thinks about.