(no subject)
Title: Heaven Forbid You End Up Alone
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Alex
Word Count: 1,180
Rating: R
Author's Note: Not the fic I was referring to earlier. This is one dedicated to
do_not_confess
Spoilers: References to "Through The Looking Glass"
Summary: AU. She resurfaces out of nowhere at his door on a rainy Wednesday evening in June. He was expecting takeout; instead he gets a soaking wet girl and a bad case of nostalgia.
She comes back with them. They can’t count her as one of them, there’s no room for her among the Oceanic Six. She’s the forgotten survivor, whisked away from sight by officials who don’t want the public to know there were other people on the island.
It’s not her idea; it’s Rousseau’s but she’s adamant and Alex can’t say she’s wrong. She still has a chance at a normal life.
No one knows where she goes afterwards. Alex just drops off the face of the earth for three and a half years and doesn’t contact a soul. They start to forget she ever came back.
Sooner or later though people are bound to show back up.
---
She resurfaces out of nowhere at his door on a rainy Wednesday evening in June. He was expecting takeout; instead he gets a soaking wet girl and a bad case of nostalgia.
Jack lets her in, wordlessly, like this is normal, and closes the door behind her, as she wanders into his apartment, hugging herself like it provides her some sense of warmth. He’s fairly confident it doesn’t.
She’d be about twenty now, if he’s estimating right, but she doesn’t look any different. Maybe a little sadder, a little more tense. She looks more the same than he does.
“You got rid of your beard.” She comments, the first words she speaks, still standing in his living room.
He nods, feeling no real need for words. He’s not much for conversation these days.
“I saw you on the news a few months ago.” She pauses, then, “Why were you on a bridge in the middle of the night?”
“Car problems.” He lies, although considering how old his car is it wouldn’t be wholly surprising.
“Right.” She nods, but her voice betrays her. She doesn’t believe him. “The island won’t let you die either huh?”
His eyes shift quickly to her, brow furrowed, but she shows no signs of elaborating on her previous statement. It just lingers there and he almost doesn’t want to know why she tacked on an ‘either’. If he doesn’t know he isn’t responsible for it.
“Why are you here?” He finally asks because it’s awkward, standing there in silence with someone he both hasn’t seen in years and was never very close with in the first place. He’d never really said much to her of any importance.
“Nowhere else to go. No one else to go to.” She’s lonely, probably misses her mother or Karl, maybe even Ben. He gets that, he feels that sometimes, but he’s this way by choice. She’s not. She’s in a world she isn’t from, in a place she barely knows, surrounded by people she’s never met. And of everyone from the island he’s probably the only one who would let her in.
Tonight’s one of those nights where he’s lonely too.
“You can sit you know.” He says, gesturing to the furniture. She pulls at her wet clothes, skintight and edging on see-through and he gets it. “I’ll get you something to change into.”
---
An hour later and there’s been food and stilted conversation and it’s weirdly okay because he’s beginning to see the other reason she came to him. She was looking for someone just as screwed up as she is.
She knocked on the right door for that too.
Now she’s curled up on the couch in his shirt and his boxer shorts, half picking at a scab on her leg, half watching him watching her.
After a moment, she asks, “Do you ever want to go back?”
He gets on a plane once a week and prays it crashes. Of course he does. But she doesn’t know that, so he just says, “All the time.”
“I think I would’ve been better off staying. I don’t know anyone and no one knows me and I can’t tell anyone about my life because it’s some big secret.” That spot she was picking at before has begun to bleed now, a small trickle of blood flowing down her smooth skin. “I should’ve stayed.”
“Your mother was just doing what she thought was best.” It sounds blank and practiced.
“I know.” She tells him, looking up at him again. From here he can see just how worn out she really is. He can see the differences in her appearance, in her face, that he was blind to before. “I still should’ve stayed.”
He won’t give her any more than a, “Maybe.”
There’s another long silence, then, “Why did you try to jump off that bridge.”
Their conversations keep turning progressively more morbid and he’s starting to understand that she doesn’t mean to, it’s just all she can think of, so he might as well stop denying it all. “Guilt.”
She nods. “I tried pills once. Sleeping pills. Woke up in the hospital.” She shrugs, mannerisms pointing more towards this conversation being about the weather than much else. “The doctors kept asking me how I felt and all I could tell them was I felt numb.”
Jack doesn’t interrupt, just listens.
“Do you ever feel like that?” Like…empty?”
“Yeah.” On his best days, he thinks but doesn’t say.
She rises then and in the blink of an eye she’s leaning in to kiss him, hands resting on the arm of the chair he sits in.
Inside his head some siren goes off, as the last part of him that still has morals and a concept of right and wrong activates and reminds him that this is not what he should be doing.
He does it anyway. He kind of thinks that’s what she came here for anyways. She feels numb; at least this way she breaks that pattern.
He’s definitely feeling something as she settles onto his lap and kisses more forcefully and his hands grip her arms like he’s going to push her back at any moment, but he doesn’t and she grinds into him, into his hard on, as she catches his lower lip with her teeth and he knows she’s done this before and he’s willing to bet it’s been more recent than she would lead him to believe.
She came here to give herself away and a better man would stop right here but he hasn’t been that man in a long while.
He lets go of her arms, like permission and her fingers find the buttons of his jeans and his the waistband of those boxers and somewhere in there they’re both half naked and rocking and he’s got one hand in her hair and the other on her hips, and there’s a sense of warmth coursing through him that he hasn’t felt in awhile.
When she comes, she collapses against him, all heavy breathing and damp skin and it just reminds him of how young she is. She’s too young to be damaged this badly. His instinct is to try and fix her, put her back together. All he’s doing is making it worse.
He can’t fix her. He can’t save her because he can’t even save himself.
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Alex
Word Count: 1,180
Rating: R
Author's Note: Not the fic I was referring to earlier. This is one dedicated to
do_not_confess
Spoilers: References to "Through The Looking Glass"
Summary: AU. She resurfaces out of nowhere at his door on a rainy Wednesday evening in June. He was expecting takeout; instead he gets a soaking wet girl and a bad case of nostalgia.
She comes back with them. They can’t count her as one of them, there’s no room for her among the Oceanic Six. She’s the forgotten survivor, whisked away from sight by officials who don’t want the public to know there were other people on the island.
It’s not her idea; it’s Rousseau’s but she’s adamant and Alex can’t say she’s wrong. She still has a chance at a normal life.
No one knows where she goes afterwards. Alex just drops off the face of the earth for three and a half years and doesn’t contact a soul. They start to forget she ever came back.
Sooner or later though people are bound to show back up.
---
She resurfaces out of nowhere at his door on a rainy Wednesday evening in June. He was expecting takeout; instead he gets a soaking wet girl and a bad case of nostalgia.
Jack lets her in, wordlessly, like this is normal, and closes the door behind her, as she wanders into his apartment, hugging herself like it provides her some sense of warmth. He’s fairly confident it doesn’t.
She’d be about twenty now, if he’s estimating right, but she doesn’t look any different. Maybe a little sadder, a little more tense. She looks more the same than he does.
“You got rid of your beard.” She comments, the first words she speaks, still standing in his living room.
He nods, feeling no real need for words. He’s not much for conversation these days.
“I saw you on the news a few months ago.” She pauses, then, “Why were you on a bridge in the middle of the night?”
“Car problems.” He lies, although considering how old his car is it wouldn’t be wholly surprising.
“Right.” She nods, but her voice betrays her. She doesn’t believe him. “The island won’t let you die either huh?”
His eyes shift quickly to her, brow furrowed, but she shows no signs of elaborating on her previous statement. It just lingers there and he almost doesn’t want to know why she tacked on an ‘either’. If he doesn’t know he isn’t responsible for it.
“Why are you here?” He finally asks because it’s awkward, standing there in silence with someone he both hasn’t seen in years and was never very close with in the first place. He’d never really said much to her of any importance.
“Nowhere else to go. No one else to go to.” She’s lonely, probably misses her mother or Karl, maybe even Ben. He gets that, he feels that sometimes, but he’s this way by choice. She’s not. She’s in a world she isn’t from, in a place she barely knows, surrounded by people she’s never met. And of everyone from the island he’s probably the only one who would let her in.
Tonight’s one of those nights where he’s lonely too.
“You can sit you know.” He says, gesturing to the furniture. She pulls at her wet clothes, skintight and edging on see-through and he gets it. “I’ll get you something to change into.”
---
An hour later and there’s been food and stilted conversation and it’s weirdly okay because he’s beginning to see the other reason she came to him. She was looking for someone just as screwed up as she is.
She knocked on the right door for that too.
Now she’s curled up on the couch in his shirt and his boxer shorts, half picking at a scab on her leg, half watching him watching her.
After a moment, she asks, “Do you ever want to go back?”
He gets on a plane once a week and prays it crashes. Of course he does. But she doesn’t know that, so he just says, “All the time.”
“I think I would’ve been better off staying. I don’t know anyone and no one knows me and I can’t tell anyone about my life because it’s some big secret.” That spot she was picking at before has begun to bleed now, a small trickle of blood flowing down her smooth skin. “I should’ve stayed.”
“Your mother was just doing what she thought was best.” It sounds blank and practiced.
“I know.” She tells him, looking up at him again. From here he can see just how worn out she really is. He can see the differences in her appearance, in her face, that he was blind to before. “I still should’ve stayed.”
He won’t give her any more than a, “Maybe.”
There’s another long silence, then, “Why did you try to jump off that bridge.”
Their conversations keep turning progressively more morbid and he’s starting to understand that she doesn’t mean to, it’s just all she can think of, so he might as well stop denying it all. “Guilt.”
She nods. “I tried pills once. Sleeping pills. Woke up in the hospital.” She shrugs, mannerisms pointing more towards this conversation being about the weather than much else. “The doctors kept asking me how I felt and all I could tell them was I felt numb.”
Jack doesn’t interrupt, just listens.
“Do you ever feel like that?” Like…empty?”
“Yeah.” On his best days, he thinks but doesn’t say.
She rises then and in the blink of an eye she’s leaning in to kiss him, hands resting on the arm of the chair he sits in.
Inside his head some siren goes off, as the last part of him that still has morals and a concept of right and wrong activates and reminds him that this is not what he should be doing.
He does it anyway. He kind of thinks that’s what she came here for anyways. She feels numb; at least this way she breaks that pattern.
He’s definitely feeling something as she settles onto his lap and kisses more forcefully and his hands grip her arms like he’s going to push her back at any moment, but he doesn’t and she grinds into him, into his hard on, as she catches his lower lip with her teeth and he knows she’s done this before and he’s willing to bet it’s been more recent than she would lead him to believe.
She came here to give herself away and a better man would stop right here but he hasn’t been that man in a long while.
He lets go of her arms, like permission and her fingers find the buttons of his jeans and his the waistband of those boxers and somewhere in there they’re both half naked and rocking and he’s got one hand in her hair and the other on her hips, and there’s a sense of warmth coursing through him that he hasn’t felt in awhile.
When she comes, she collapses against him, all heavy breathing and damp skin and it just reminds him of how young she is. She’s too young to be damaged this badly. His instinct is to try and fix her, put her back together. All he’s doing is making it worse.
He can’t fix her. He can’t save her because he can’t even save himself.