TITLE: Mr. Grieves
AUTHOR: Niki Blue
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. I swear.
ARCHIVE: Umm, sure? Just ask first.
SUMMARY: Truth was, he didn't remember her name.
SPOILERS: Up through "Everybody Hates Hugo"
PAIRINGS: Mystery Photograph Chick/Desmond
AUTHOR'S NOTES: In exchange for a Firefly fic, I promised my shiny beta Chicafrom3 a Lost/Desmond fic to satisfy her Mysterious!OTP addiction. So here it is.
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Her name was Eva.
He met her at a coffee shop in Paris. "I'm on a solo race around the world," he told her. She smiled and nodded. She didn't understand a word he said. "My name is Desmond," he told her. And she smiled and nodded. She spoke no English and he spoke no French and three hours later they were back in her flat and he was kissing lines down her spine and she was moaning "Mon dieu. Mon dieu."
And he didn't know what she was saying, but he kept kissing anyway.
She had big blue eyes, wide and open. They reminded him of the sky over the flat planes of Indiana where he'd grown up. She had a gap between her front teeth that she poked the tip of her tongue through when she was concentrating.
He stayed with her for almost a year, drinking coffee together in front of the Eiffel tower and making love in every nook and cranny they could find. And he never knew what she was saying, but he didn't care.
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Her name was Kara.
He met her at a support group. She was addicted to porn and ciggarettes and he had a nasty cocaine problem that left him in the fetal position on the bathroom floor for hours every morning; vomiting blood and wondering where his next fix was coming from.
"I'm on a solo race around the world," he told her one night after he'd pounded her mercilessly into the wall. She liked it rough. Her eyes were glazed over and she was twisted up in his bedsheets. The room smelled like inexpensive alcohol, sex and dishes that had been left to sit in the sink for a week.
She didn't say anything, just traced lazy circles on his bare thighs with her fingertips and chainsmoked her fifth Marlboro Menthol Light. The black Bic lighter dangled from her fingertips uselessly.
"I'm on a solo race around the world," he repeated. More to himself this time.
But he couldn't remember where he was running to, or what he was running from.
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Her name was Alyssa.
He met her in Advanced Biology, Junior year. She was quiet and small and when he held her, her body fit perfectly in the curve of his side. He took her to the prom and they lost their virginity together in a tiny hotel room on the highway, her light pink dress crumpled on the stained brown carpeting.
The summer after they graduated, he got down on one knee and proposed to her. "I can't," she whispered, backing up a few steps. And he looked down at his heart in his hand, only, it looked like a diamond ring.
He said, "Why?" and his voice broke. And she didn't answer, just kept backing up until she was halfway out the door, halfway down the street. A tiny speck on the distance. And then she was gone and he just knelt there, staring at the ring like he couldn't understand how it had betrayed him.
He sat down, hard. Whispered, "I'm on a solo race around the world," to nobody in particular and he didn't know what it meant, but he repeated it again anyways.
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The truth?
Truth was, he didn't remember her name.
But he knew that he'd known it once and so he kept the picture tucked in the Bible that he'd never read for the same exact reasons that he sat in the hatch and pushed the button every 108 minutes. For the same reason that he saved the world.
Because it was all he knew how to do.
Sometimes, he'd stare at it. Crimping the edges of the photo paper with his dirty fingers and making up stories about her. Sometimes her name was Mellissa, sometimes she was a nurse. A waitress. His lover or his cousin or his sister. And he wondered which version was the truth. If any of them were the truth.
"I'm on a solo race around the world," he whispered to her. And he didn't know what it meant, but he said it anyway.