(no subject)
Title: I Like To Keep My Shell Intact
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Charlotte/Sawyer
Word Count: 1,603
Rating: R
Prompt: This is the real reply to superduperkc's day as queen (aka the one I wrote specifically for her). Also for #18 - I Pity You at un_love_you.
Spoilers: Up to "There's No Place Like Home Part 2".
Summary: "You don't actually have a plan do you?" If nothing else she's bold. Bold and harsh and that's something that he can identify with.
They spend exactly five hours on the beach that day, moving around like ghosts, with no direction and no idea what to do next. Five hours after his feet hit the sand once more, crushed hopes and dreams. Just like all of them. Then the color bleeds from the sky and they’re left only with bouncing flames and silence.
That’s when he realizes the looks he’s getting are similar to the ones Jack used to get, that’s when he realizes they’re looking for someone to lead and they seem to have chosen him. He doesn’t want this.
He has it anyways.
“We’ll figure it out in the morning.”
It means I don’t know, but no one says otherwise, and people move on to fake sleep and he sits on the shore most of the night, waiting for something and nothing at the same time.
---
They don’t figure it out in the morning.
In fact no one says anything for a week and a half, partially because the people left behind, aside from Juliet, never really learned how to deal with him. These are people he barely knows names of, people he’s made very little effort to get to know.
Briefly, there’s the thought of going out into the jungle to find Claire, to try again (he still sees her, in dreams, he still hates himself for giving up his search), just tell Juliet she’s in charge and leave. Except he probably wouldn’t come back.
(He doesn’t want to come back. He’d be better off on his own; they’d be better off without him.)
But, in a way, it feels like letting them (Jack, Kate, Hurley, everyone else) down. So he doesn’t.
---
The redhead walks around like she has some kind of chip on her shoulder.
He doesn’t think he likes her (she doesn’t like him either, if he had to guess from the looks she shoots his way) but at least he’s feeling something towards her. For half of the people it’s indifference, he doesn’t care either way, and if he can’t just leave them to fend for themselves, if he can’t do what he wants, then he’s damn well going to pick a fight (if she doesn’t first).
It’s only a matter of time and patience (namely how far his will stretch).
---
She walks right into his tent, unannounced, in such a way that makes some kind of slightly uncalled for remark rise to his lips. Of course she doesn’t actually let him get it out.
“You don’t actually have a plan do you?”
If nothing else she’s bold. Bold and harsh, which he can relate to because he is both of those things. He only asks, “Do you have a problem?”
Clearly, she does. “I think half of the people out there are too scared to bring up the fact that you said we’d,” damn if she doesn’t actually put air-quotes around her next words, “’figure it out in the morning’ two weeks ago, and yet did nothing about it. So do you have a plan or not?”
See, now everyone’s looking for the long term. They need to settle somewhere. They don’t have a way off; they’re not really looking for rescue. He never really was, and with everything that’s happened, every thwarted rescue attempt, it’s starting to become the common sentiment that maybe they aren’t meant to leave. So they need a plan, something concrete and executable, something past let’s all sit here and wait and he just doesn’t know what to say.
“That’s what I thought.” She takes his unsaid as her confirmation.
Sawyer only narrows his eyes at her. “What, you have a better idea?”
“They aren’t all looking to me.” She reminds him, as if he didn’t already know, and then her arms cross (and this is a scene he’s already watched, this is a rerun, because her hair is blowing, just slightly, loose at her shoulders, light filtering in, like some undeserved halo - he knows her next words already) as she says, “I pity you.”
“Yeah?” It’s said exactly as menacing as he intends. However, she doesn’t show any signs of backing down.
“You lost your girlfriend right? Kate or something like that.” She pauses, like she’s waiting for an answer, but she already has an answer, otherwise she wouldn’t be asking in the first place, and it’s just there for drama’s sake. It’s almost like she’s waiting for him to snap at her. “That’s lovely. Very tragic. We’ve all lost people. But most of us would like to continue living and since you seem to have been elected the unofficial leader it might be nice if you started by telling us all exactly what we’re doing here.”
He thinks it has something to do with the hint of mockery in her tone, behind the well-intentioned purpose of her speech (it’s the kick in the ass he thinks he might just need), but he’s on his feet in seconds, rising to his full height. She doesn’t raise her eyes, won’t give him the satisfaction of having her look up at him. It’s a fight to keep his hands at his sides, not to take her face in his hands, force her to meet his eyes. “You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. In case you haven’t noticed no one here trusts you to begin with, so why don’t you take that into consideration before you start trying to call the shots and tell other people what to do.”
“They don’t trust you either.” She hisses from between her teeth, and this time his hands do come up, one under her chin, the other gripping her arm, and her blue eyes are full of defiance. “Not completely. It’s not that they’re so sure that you can handle this; it’s that no one else wants to.”
Sawyer isn’t inclined to think she has a perfect read on everyone - she doesn’t know them at all; she’s been here for three weeks - but she’s getting to him, and she knows it. It very well may be her intentions.
His skin’s on fire as she digs her nails into his arm, the same one holding onto her, a maneuver that either means back the hell off or keep on going. He doesn’t know. He just knows that it stings and still he isn’t backing down (he swears she moves in closer to him, gets in his face, and he’s missed this, he’s missed someone having the balls to challenge him - this is the fight he’s been itching for, it must be).
“Did I touch a nerve?” She breathes, inches from him, and then she attempts to push against him with her free hand, to throw him off of her. He grabs her wrist between his forefinger and thumb, simply holding her there, tight enough to stop any movement but not enough to hurt. And when that doesn’t work, when she can’t get out of his grasp, she tries the exact opposite, something he was, strangely, expecting.
She kisses him, and he’s ready for it, opening his mouth to her, slipping his tongue into hers when she did the same. It’s the kind of rough, forceful kiss that isn’t too damn accurate but it’s something, it’s a way of settling this. It’s the other way to get out anger, the way that doesn’t end with fists flying and blood.
It will end with bruises.
Her hands grasp at his arms, his back, pawing in a way that speaks of desperation (he understands that - he saw her with the guy she came with, the jumpy little physicist, the one who never came back - he’s not an idiot), and he lets her because he feels it too, feels this need to throw down right then and there. His fingers tangle in her hair as he explores her mouth, and she’s pushing against him, till he lets her push them both right down to the ground, to that makeshift bed that’s never been all that comfortable and is less so now, with her on top of him, moving against him.
Neither of them says a word. They’re done talking.
---
They both pull their clothes back on when they’re done. There isn’t any basking. Each minute she spends in here is only going to get them both looked at. It’s not like they were particularly quiet.
She’s the one to find his shirt, balled up behind the cart he’s using to hold the stuff he’s still managed to hoard, tosses it at him, with a, “maybe now you can stop sulking and start figuring out what the hell we do next.”
He should’ve known she’d have the last word.
---
In the end they wind up back at the barracks, salvaging what’s left of them (it’s shelter, it’s got resources, and that’s more than he can say for the beach). Take two. Because they can’t stay on that beach. The beach that stinks of hope and waiting and rescue and the lost. It was once home, for most of them, but they were different people then.
It isn’t what he wants. It isn’t what they want. But they need to move on. They can’t wait here with that damn signal fire that’s been going, in one incarnation or another, since they arrived. They have to think long term.
They have to let go.
From across the beach, as they start their exodus into the jungle once more, Charlotte looks at him out of the corner of her eye and he thinks its respect on her face. Respect and understanding.