Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Before Claire found out that Charlie was dead, before she found out about Desmond's visions, she sometimes wondered if he and Desmond were…more than just friends. She didn't know what to call it. But something. Sometimes, Claire had the very distinct idea that Charlie and Desmond were something.
She'd see them sitting together on the beach, looking so serious, staring out over the water, and she never knew what they were talking about.
Claire sometimes asked, but Charlie never offer anything. He never wanted her to worry.
One night when Claire couldn't sleep. Charlie wasn't there, and when she looked out over the beach she saw them again, outlined in firelight, Desmond clutching the back of Charlie's neck hard, their faces close together, and she wondered why no one else saw.
Even after it was all over, she still sometimes doubted whether she really could have seen something that wasn't there at all.
Claire sometimes felt that she didn't understand what people are really telling her. John, Jack, Juliet, even Kate, they spoke a foreign language, a language of leadership and capability, that she could follow but not comprehend. But she thought she understood this.
When Desmond volunteered to go with Charlie, go for a swim, they shared such a look, a look that said they knew something no one else did. And Claire knew this wasn't just a swim for them.
She was right, of course. But she was also wrong.
When Desmond hands her the fragile, damp lump of notebook paper, she doesn't ask what the black smudges on it are. She knows that they were words. Desmond might even be able to tell her what words the black smudges used to be, but she doesn't ask that either.
She finds Charlie's DriveShaft ring in Aaron's crib, fallen to the very bottom under the soft white blanket, and she remembers how Charlie leaned down over Aaron that last day, and told him that he loved him.
Charlie never told Claire that he loved her, and Claire never asked. But she thinks she knows anyway.
xXx
A/N: Woot, LOST fic! I am so excited. I love LOST to the highest degree, but I really didn't have any ideas for fics. Then I rewatched "Greatest Hits" today, and this little almost-drabble happened. It didn't turn out really the way I wanted it to, but they never do, and I'm rather fond of it all the same. I think that's it. Review and tell me what you think.