(no subject)
Title: Absence Suits You Best
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Clementine, Aaron (there could be implied shippage), other characters
Word Count: 2,249
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: #2 - Daddy Issues for psych_30
Author's Note: This is a future fic. And as far as dates and ages go I suck so I apologize in advance for that.
Summary: Clementine is sick of picking locks and looking for answers behind closed doors.
She spends the bulk of her eighteenth birthday carefully toeing the line between contentment and frustration.
Clementine doesn’t like the whole huge party filled with people she barely knows thing and thus she dashes out of the house and into Aaron’s car a full hour before her mother gets home, ignoring all birthday phone calls and last minute ‘are you sure you don’t want a party’s?’.
“Your mom is going to kill you when she finds out you skipped out of school today.” He hits the gas as soon as she closes the door, headed for the highway.
“She won’t find out.” Momentarily, he shifts his eyes to her, and then back as the light turns a glaring shade of emerald. “College visit. I filled out the sheet after precalc yesterday, forged her signature.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?” She only smiles at him, rolling down the window, letting the breeze and the California sunshine filter inside.
Crazy or not, he seemed to like her enough that he hadn’t even hesitated to be her getaway driver for the night. It would be just the two of them and that’s the way she wanted it. Sometimes it felt like he was the only other person around here who had as many questions, as many holes yet to be filled in about his life, as she did. They had a lot in common, the two of them, other than the school they went to and the things they did, things much deeper.
Neither of them had a dad. She had never known hers - her mother refused to talk about him anyways, but there had been money put into a fund for her that her mother hadn’t acquired, and Aaron’s mom, a woman named Kate, that her mom had told her once knew her dad. Aaron hadn’t known his either, and the closest thing he had to one, his Uncle Jack, had killed himself years ago.
Both of them spent a lot of time snooping around in their mothers’ business. Clementine, more so, but she was always more aggressive than he was, breaking gender roles and all that shit that they never really cared about. If she wanted answers she would find a way to get them. Aaron had questions but he didn’t actively seek out the answers like she did. His way was different, eavesdropping on phone calls, google searches, the time he drove out to the storage unit that housed the rest of his Uncle’s things that they hadn’t gotten rid of, looking through belongings for answers. Neither of them ever really found many.
“So are we still going to that bar?” A friend of hers had mentioned that there was a bar in the next town over that didn’t check ID if you looked over eighteen, and Clementine was always fairly fond of breaking rules, so it drew her. It was a good way to let loose, and they’d decide where to go and what to do from there.
“Definitely.” She reaches down to fiddle with the radio and when he glares at her, she comes back with, “It’s my birthday, humor me.”
He does. She knew he would. He’s good natured, always has been, much more easy-going than his mother. He isn’t anything like his mother. It’s better that way, if you ask her, which no one ever does, but she never shies away from the chance to speak her mind anyways.
“Where does your mom think you’re going?”
“She didn’t ask.” He speeds up just enough for her to deduce that he’s a little annoyed by this. “Sun is in town, so she’s been spending time with her. I told her I’d be fine on my own, so she’s back and forth.”
“Too busy keeping her own secrets to care about yours?”
“Exactly.”
This irks him more than her. She would just look at it as an easy way to do what she wanted without having her mom looking over her shoulder. “Sorry,” she offers.
“No you’re not.”
“You’re right, I’m not.” Another smile breaks out on her face as she pushes a strand of light brown hair behind her ear. “Because that way you get to spend time with me.”
“And be your chauffeur.” He adds, for her.
“Don’t complain. You love it.”
He grins, but doesn’t answer her.
They find the bar in twenty minutes, not without a fight with the GPS system mind you, but they get in with no problem. They look older than they are, which is helpful because she may be eighteen but he isn’t, not quite.
“So again, why the bar?” He asks, whisper in her ear, after she’s ordered.
“I’m sick of picking the lock on the liquor cabinet.” She tells him, equally as quiet as he had been. It’s a lie, somewhat, but he doesn’t have to know that she’s here because five days ago she found out her father was a con man, thanks to a phone call from an old buddy of his named Hibbs, who just happened to be looking for him. Somehow she doubted the man had been an actual friend. She would tell him, at some point, she just hadn’t found the right time. It’s not like he needed to know.
He laughs, and if he doesn’t believe her he’s doing a good job of hiding it, “Right.”
Drinks come and he barely looks at his before she’s half done and she raises an eyebrow, “You do remember how to drink right? You didn’t forget?”
His attention is momentarily drawn back to her. “The man over there is carrying a gun.”
She follows his gaze to the man at the back table, something that might be whiskey in front of him, and she can see his gun very clearly where his leather jacket gapes. It doesn’t scare her. “No shit. I didn’t choose this bar because it was high class.”
“It’s just making me nervous.”
“Why?”
“Blame it on my mother but I’m a bit paranoid.” His eyes are still on that man, a little too obviously, and she thinks that probably isn’t helping matters.
She leans closer to him, “I will blame it on your mother.” One hand comes up to the side of his face, pulling so that he’s forced to look at her. “Lighten up. He’s not going to take out the entire bar. He’s been on that same drink since we got here; he’s in no way drunk enough. Yet.”
“Sometimes I think you like danger a little too much.”
“I do.” She lets go, and he doesn’t move away from her this time. “Now if you want me to be your bodyguard I will, you just have to ask.”
He nudges her with his shoulder, a tiny shove. “Is that your way of calling me a wuss.”
She fakes shock, “Never.”
“Shut up.” He downs his drink in one gulp, defiance, and his face tells her he regrets it, just a bit, as he feels the sting of the liquor. “I’m going to hit the bathroom, I’ll be right back.” She nods, not awfully concerned with anything but a refill and he pauses. “Are you going to be okay?”
He’s protective. It’s cute. In small doses, that is. “I’ll scream if I need you.”
There’s a note of hesitation on his part, but then he starts towards the back of the bar and the restroom, and she sighs, watching the bartender pour her another drink and hand it to her, moving quickly to the next patron. The anonymity was great, she had to admit. Nobody was going to bug them and no one was going to recognize them and that was comforting.
At least she thought so.
On the other side of her, the one in which Aaron had not just vacated, she felt someone sit down next to her, close enough that she could smell leather and smoke. She looked to the man, without a second’s pause, recognizing him as the man with the gun in an instant.
He was older than she had initially thought, on first glance. Up close, even in the dim light, she could tell he was probably in his late 40s, if not older, his hair still a dirty blond, gray at the temples, and in his beard. He looked...rough, she thought, as good a word as any.
The man catches her looking at him, but he definitely doesn’t shy away, looking her dead in the eye, and there’s a bit of a stare off between the two of them, in which she works on formulating some kind of response that makes her seem older and less out of place. “Do you need something?”
“What’s a pretty little girl like you doing here?” There’s a southern drawl in his voice, thick with the kind of charm that does not work on her.
“Same thing you are.” She takes a gulp, for added effect.
“Your boy was staring.”
She frowns, both at the chosen term and the fact that he noticed. “My friend saw your gun. He gets freaked out easily.”
“He ever hear of self-defense?” He nurses what she knows now is definitely whiskey, like someone who has already spent too much of his life drinking and brooding in bars.
Clementine slides her thumb along the rim of her own glass, musing for the moment. “Maybe you’re a cop. Undercover.”
“Do I look like a cop to you?”
She laughs a little, mostly to herself. “No. No you don’t.” She stares at him hard then, studying him in a way that one does not usually do to strangers, particularly ones who are armed and potentially dangerous. But she isn’t frightened, there’s no fear in the pit of her stomach. There’s a voice in her head telling her that she has nothing to worry about and it’s never steered her wrong. What’s life without chatting up random men in bars anyways? “You aren’t like getting yourself good and drunk before you swallow your gun right? Because really, that’s just a waste of money and good alcohol.”
When he smiles, really smiles, she can make out dimples to rival her own. “This is an awful cheap bar for a last hurrah, don’t you think?”
Her eyes find the wooden surface of the bar, and she knows when Aaron comes back out he is going to kill her. She doesn’t care at the moment. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not exactly a regular.”
“What I thought.” And she realizes she just gave away a little too much regarding her age and perhaps that isn’t a good thing. “Ain’t your daddy going to be wondering where you are?”
Yeah, right, wherever he is. “I wouldn’t know that either.”
He nods his head, slowly, looking at her again, a long moment in which she feels like she’s under a microscope, and then back to his drink. “Sure he would be, if he knew.”
“Well then you have more faith in him than I do.” She holds his gaze for a moment, anger in her eyes, no longer able to remain under the surface. She’s angry at him. At her father for abandoning her, for leaving her mother, for making her into nothing more than someone else’s mistake. But she doesn’t have the right to take it out on this man, and so she looks away, forces herself to simmer down, and forget. This isn’t his problem. “I’m having a rough week.”
“I can see that.” Not that she’s looking at him, her eyes remain straight ahead, but she swears she can feel his hand inching closer, hovering just inches away from her hand. But he pulls it back, before, “I think your friend’s coming back. I best be on my way before he gets his panties in a bunch.”
She laughs, looks in the direction Aaron had went and thus was returning from, before looking back to the man to tell him he didn’t have to leave.
He was already gone.
The door swung on its hinges, his empty glass on the bar next to her.
“Everything okay?” Aaron’s smiling at her, she can hear it in his voice even if she isn’t looking at him, and he rests a hand on her shoulder, causing her to snap her attention back to him.
“Yeah, everything’s fine.” It is. She has a sneaking suspicion that she’s missing something, but for all she knows everything is just fine.
His eyes find the empty chair in the back of the room. “What happened to the gun guy? You scare him off?”
It sure looked that way, didn’t it? “I guess so.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
”Yeah.” She pushes a stray strand of her back behind her ear, takes a breath, and grabs her purse. “What do you say we get out of here?”
He almost laughs. “A twenty minute drive just so we could be here for ten minutes. I thought you were tired of picking locks?”
“I am. But it’s not like I can’t come back here.” She grabs hold of his hand, pulling him forward, “Now come on, let’s go.”
Aaron follows her out, without protest, and they’re in the car, laughing and talking, before they even pull out and head back for the highway.
And though Clementine comes back to that bar every now and then, same day, same time, usually without Aaron, she never does find that man again.
Somehow she thinks he has answers she wants.
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Clementine, Aaron (there could be implied shippage), other characters
Word Count: 2,249
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: #2 - Daddy Issues for psych_30
Author's Note: This is a future fic. And as far as dates and ages go I suck so I apologize in advance for that.
Summary: Clementine is sick of picking locks and looking for answers behind closed doors.
She spends the bulk of her eighteenth birthday carefully toeing the line between contentment and frustration.
Clementine doesn’t like the whole huge party filled with people she barely knows thing and thus she dashes out of the house and into Aaron’s car a full hour before her mother gets home, ignoring all birthday phone calls and last minute ‘are you sure you don’t want a party’s?’.
“Your mom is going to kill you when she finds out you skipped out of school today.” He hits the gas as soon as she closes the door, headed for the highway.
“She won’t find out.” Momentarily, he shifts his eyes to her, and then back as the light turns a glaring shade of emerald. “College visit. I filled out the sheet after precalc yesterday, forged her signature.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?” She only smiles at him, rolling down the window, letting the breeze and the California sunshine filter inside.
Crazy or not, he seemed to like her enough that he hadn’t even hesitated to be her getaway driver for the night. It would be just the two of them and that’s the way she wanted it. Sometimes it felt like he was the only other person around here who had as many questions, as many holes yet to be filled in about his life, as she did. They had a lot in common, the two of them, other than the school they went to and the things they did, things much deeper.
Neither of them had a dad. She had never known hers - her mother refused to talk about him anyways, but there had been money put into a fund for her that her mother hadn’t acquired, and Aaron’s mom, a woman named Kate, that her mom had told her once knew her dad. Aaron hadn’t known his either, and the closest thing he had to one, his Uncle Jack, had killed himself years ago.
Both of them spent a lot of time snooping around in their mothers’ business. Clementine, more so, but she was always more aggressive than he was, breaking gender roles and all that shit that they never really cared about. If she wanted answers she would find a way to get them. Aaron had questions but he didn’t actively seek out the answers like she did. His way was different, eavesdropping on phone calls, google searches, the time he drove out to the storage unit that housed the rest of his Uncle’s things that they hadn’t gotten rid of, looking through belongings for answers. Neither of them ever really found many.
“So are we still going to that bar?” A friend of hers had mentioned that there was a bar in the next town over that didn’t check ID if you looked over eighteen, and Clementine was always fairly fond of breaking rules, so it drew her. It was a good way to let loose, and they’d decide where to go and what to do from there.
“Definitely.” She reaches down to fiddle with the radio and when he glares at her, she comes back with, “It’s my birthday, humor me.”
He does. She knew he would. He’s good natured, always has been, much more easy-going than his mother. He isn’t anything like his mother. It’s better that way, if you ask her, which no one ever does, but she never shies away from the chance to speak her mind anyways.
“Where does your mom think you’re going?”
“She didn’t ask.” He speeds up just enough for her to deduce that he’s a little annoyed by this. “Sun is in town, so she’s been spending time with her. I told her I’d be fine on my own, so she’s back and forth.”
“Too busy keeping her own secrets to care about yours?”
“Exactly.”
This irks him more than her. She would just look at it as an easy way to do what she wanted without having her mom looking over her shoulder. “Sorry,” she offers.
“No you’re not.”
“You’re right, I’m not.” Another smile breaks out on her face as she pushes a strand of light brown hair behind her ear. “Because that way you get to spend time with me.”
“And be your chauffeur.” He adds, for her.
“Don’t complain. You love it.”
He grins, but doesn’t answer her.
They find the bar in twenty minutes, not without a fight with the GPS system mind you, but they get in with no problem. They look older than they are, which is helpful because she may be eighteen but he isn’t, not quite.
“So again, why the bar?” He asks, whisper in her ear, after she’s ordered.
“I’m sick of picking the lock on the liquor cabinet.” She tells him, equally as quiet as he had been. It’s a lie, somewhat, but he doesn’t have to know that she’s here because five days ago she found out her father was a con man, thanks to a phone call from an old buddy of his named Hibbs, who just happened to be looking for him. Somehow she doubted the man had been an actual friend. She would tell him, at some point, she just hadn’t found the right time. It’s not like he needed to know.
He laughs, and if he doesn’t believe her he’s doing a good job of hiding it, “Right.”
Drinks come and he barely looks at his before she’s half done and she raises an eyebrow, “You do remember how to drink right? You didn’t forget?”
His attention is momentarily drawn back to her. “The man over there is carrying a gun.”
She follows his gaze to the man at the back table, something that might be whiskey in front of him, and she can see his gun very clearly where his leather jacket gapes. It doesn’t scare her. “No shit. I didn’t choose this bar because it was high class.”
“It’s just making me nervous.”
“Why?”
“Blame it on my mother but I’m a bit paranoid.” His eyes are still on that man, a little too obviously, and she thinks that probably isn’t helping matters.
She leans closer to him, “I will blame it on your mother.” One hand comes up to the side of his face, pulling so that he’s forced to look at her. “Lighten up. He’s not going to take out the entire bar. He’s been on that same drink since we got here; he’s in no way drunk enough. Yet.”
“Sometimes I think you like danger a little too much.”
“I do.” She lets go, and he doesn’t move away from her this time. “Now if you want me to be your bodyguard I will, you just have to ask.”
He nudges her with his shoulder, a tiny shove. “Is that your way of calling me a wuss.”
She fakes shock, “Never.”
“Shut up.” He downs his drink in one gulp, defiance, and his face tells her he regrets it, just a bit, as he feels the sting of the liquor. “I’m going to hit the bathroom, I’ll be right back.” She nods, not awfully concerned with anything but a refill and he pauses. “Are you going to be okay?”
He’s protective. It’s cute. In small doses, that is. “I’ll scream if I need you.”
There’s a note of hesitation on his part, but then he starts towards the back of the bar and the restroom, and she sighs, watching the bartender pour her another drink and hand it to her, moving quickly to the next patron. The anonymity was great, she had to admit. Nobody was going to bug them and no one was going to recognize them and that was comforting.
At least she thought so.
On the other side of her, the one in which Aaron had not just vacated, she felt someone sit down next to her, close enough that she could smell leather and smoke. She looked to the man, without a second’s pause, recognizing him as the man with the gun in an instant.
He was older than she had initially thought, on first glance. Up close, even in the dim light, she could tell he was probably in his late 40s, if not older, his hair still a dirty blond, gray at the temples, and in his beard. He looked...rough, she thought, as good a word as any.
The man catches her looking at him, but he definitely doesn’t shy away, looking her dead in the eye, and there’s a bit of a stare off between the two of them, in which she works on formulating some kind of response that makes her seem older and less out of place. “Do you need something?”
“What’s a pretty little girl like you doing here?” There’s a southern drawl in his voice, thick with the kind of charm that does not work on her.
“Same thing you are.” She takes a gulp, for added effect.
“Your boy was staring.”
She frowns, both at the chosen term and the fact that he noticed. “My friend saw your gun. He gets freaked out easily.”
“He ever hear of self-defense?” He nurses what she knows now is definitely whiskey, like someone who has already spent too much of his life drinking and brooding in bars.
Clementine slides her thumb along the rim of her own glass, musing for the moment. “Maybe you’re a cop. Undercover.”
“Do I look like a cop to you?”
She laughs a little, mostly to herself. “No. No you don’t.” She stares at him hard then, studying him in a way that one does not usually do to strangers, particularly ones who are armed and potentially dangerous. But she isn’t frightened, there’s no fear in the pit of her stomach. There’s a voice in her head telling her that she has nothing to worry about and it’s never steered her wrong. What’s life without chatting up random men in bars anyways? “You aren’t like getting yourself good and drunk before you swallow your gun right? Because really, that’s just a waste of money and good alcohol.”
When he smiles, really smiles, she can make out dimples to rival her own. “This is an awful cheap bar for a last hurrah, don’t you think?”
Her eyes find the wooden surface of the bar, and she knows when Aaron comes back out he is going to kill her. She doesn’t care at the moment. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not exactly a regular.”
“What I thought.” And she realizes she just gave away a little too much regarding her age and perhaps that isn’t a good thing. “Ain’t your daddy going to be wondering where you are?”
Yeah, right, wherever he is. “I wouldn’t know that either.”
He nods his head, slowly, looking at her again, a long moment in which she feels like she’s under a microscope, and then back to his drink. “Sure he would be, if he knew.”
“Well then you have more faith in him than I do.” She holds his gaze for a moment, anger in her eyes, no longer able to remain under the surface. She’s angry at him. At her father for abandoning her, for leaving her mother, for making her into nothing more than someone else’s mistake. But she doesn’t have the right to take it out on this man, and so she looks away, forces herself to simmer down, and forget. This isn’t his problem. “I’m having a rough week.”
“I can see that.” Not that she’s looking at him, her eyes remain straight ahead, but she swears she can feel his hand inching closer, hovering just inches away from her hand. But he pulls it back, before, “I think your friend’s coming back. I best be on my way before he gets his panties in a bunch.”
She laughs, looks in the direction Aaron had went and thus was returning from, before looking back to the man to tell him he didn’t have to leave.
He was already gone.
The door swung on its hinges, his empty glass on the bar next to her.
“Everything okay?” Aaron’s smiling at her, she can hear it in his voice even if she isn’t looking at him, and he rests a hand on her shoulder, causing her to snap her attention back to him.
“Yeah, everything’s fine.” It is. She has a sneaking suspicion that she’s missing something, but for all she knows everything is just fine.
His eyes find the empty chair in the back of the room. “What happened to the gun guy? You scare him off?”
It sure looked that way, didn’t it? “I guess so.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
”Yeah.” She pushes a stray strand of her back behind her ear, takes a breath, and grabs her purse. “What do you say we get out of here?”
He almost laughs. “A twenty minute drive just so we could be here for ten minutes. I thought you were tired of picking locks?”
“I am. But it’s not like I can’t come back here.” She grabs hold of his hand, pulling him forward, “Now come on, let’s go.”
Aaron follows her out, without protest, and they’re in the car, laughing and talking, before they even pull out and head back for the highway.
And though Clementine comes back to that bar every now and then, same day, same time, usually without Aaron, she never does find that man again.
Somehow she thinks he has answers she wants.