The island is a pretty lonely place even with forty-some odd people on it. Jack can't put his finger on exactly why. It shouldn't be lonely, but sometimes it is. He compares it to living in an apartment building. Because you know all the people are here, that all these people are living around you, but you still don't know them. You might want to know them, but you don't. They're just… there. But Life on the island isn't bad, per se. There's water, shelter, food, clothes. The fire. Hope isn't dead yet, either. It's flagging, but it's not dead.
Still, Jack is the leader, or at least the resident problem-fixer, so at night he sits outside at the fire where anyone can find him and come and talk to him. So he can listen, or pretend to, and fix their little problem so they can ignore the big ones. It's a system that seems to be working so far. Charlie comes and sits with him by the fire sometimes, blinking owlishly at the fire and holding the guitar in his lap. Sometimes, like tonight, he paints his nails from the bottles he charms out of Shannon.
Jack is grateful for the company. He's had enough of Kate lately, what with her 'you-don't-know-me-you-can't' attitude. He's not asking her to bare her soul; he just wants to know if there's anything inside her at all. He doesn't mind Sayid, but he's on the beach guarding the signal fire. Boone is still there too. Jack doesn't mind Boone. Jack doesn't mind Locke either, come to think of it, but Locke disappears for days at a time. He comes back with boar though, so Jack won't complain. No point to it anyhow.
"You first," Charlie says lazily, and picks up a bottle of dragonfly green.
"Worst moment of your life."
"Used that one last time."
"You used it," Jack corrects, thinking of his terse explanation of his father. "I stole it."
At that Charlie grins. "All right then. S'long as you admit it." He switches from dragonfly green to a light purple that Jack is tempted to call lilac. It takes Charlie two coats to answer the question, but Jack doesn't push him.
"I think it'd have to be the night I started taking the drugs, hands down. Not that the detox was a walk in the park, or the day we crashed here, or that incident with Bulgarian customs… but yeah, that night's the winner."
"The drugs or the night?" Two questions in a row. Rule-breaker, but Jack all ready broke one tonight, so it shouldn't matter too much. And Charlie wouldn't care.
"Little of both. Couldn't really have one without the other."
Why'd you do them? The drugs, I mean?"
"Wrong place, wrong time," he says simply. "I'd hit… well, fucking rock bottom. The drugs were there and no one else was. Funny thing? I'd never done them before. Oh, I might have smoked a little something back in high school, but nothing hard, you know? And then I lost Liam and – "
"Liam?" Jack nearly spits the word out, and he hates that for a second his hands tremble.
Charlie just smiles and applies another coat of paint to his nails. "My brother. Driveshaft… it was Liam and me. Mostly, anyway. He was the singer and I was the bass player, so we had Jesse on drums and Alex on guitar, but… they weren't Driveshaft, you know? They were our mates, but me and Liam, we were Driveshaft. I wrote the songs and he sang them. I dreamed the dreams and he brought them to life." Charlie screws the cap back on the bottle and blows gently across his nails. "Liam was like my other half. My bolder, braver, beautiful other half."
"He was bold and brave and beautiful, huh? Then what were you?"
"I was the quieter one," Charlie admits. "Unsure of myself, not too bright except when I was writing or playing my guitar. Bloody useless, in a manner of speaking."
Jack wants to tell Charlie that he isn't useless, wants to tell him that he's something, a real someone, the kind of person that everyone wants to be like, even if it's just a little bit or a little while. Because Charlie might be the king of babble, even when not under the influence of anything, and he might be a little spastic and a little irresponsible, but not when it came to the important things. He gets under your skin too, in a good way, with his quirky expressions and the songs he sings under his breath, and the way he refuses to lie down and die. After what happened with Claire and Ethan – God, Jack didn't think Charlie was going to make it. At that point he didn't even realize how desperately he needed Charlie to make it.
But he isn't good with words – not good at all, in fact, and when he tries to tell Charlie any of that, Charlie doesn't believe him.
"I'm not good… with losing people," Charlie continues slowly. "I mean, after Liam I became a drug addict, yeah? I went to complete pieces after Claire. Don't know what I'd do if I lost you."
"You're not going to lose me, Charlie." Jack can't count the number of times they've had this conversation either.
"You keep saying that."
"Do you want me to stop saying it?"
"That's something like five questions now, you realize."
"Charlie–"
"No. No, I don't want you to stop saying it."
"Good."
Charlie sighs and carefully places the bottles of nail polish into his guitar case. "Fire's dying down."
"Yup."
"Back to our dismally hard, piss poor excuse for a bed, I suppose?"
"Don't sound so excited about it."
"Can't say I don't miss mattresses. Or showers. When did Michael think he'd have those up and running?"
Fighting back a grin, Jack grabs Charlie's hand and pulls him up. "We're not having sex in the showers, Charlie."
"And why not?" Charlie gasps, clearly disappointed.
"Because anyone could see. Like Sawyer."
Charlie shudders, and his arm slips around Jack's waist. "Point taken. Sex only in the caves."
"I didn't say it had to be only in the caves," Jack says quietly, slipping through the entrance of the cave he and Charlie share.
Charlie gapes after him for a moment, but recovers, and rushes into the cave after him.