Title: Tarpaulins and Hair Elastics
Spoilers: set after Lockdown but before Three Minutes.
Summary: Claire is having a bad day. A really bad day. And the one person she doesn't want to come and make her feel better? Well he does just that.
Disclaimer: If I could bid for the rights to Lost on eBay, I so would. In the meantime, I don't own Lost, I'm not making any profit and all that jazz. Enjoy!
Authors Note: So I got inspired by finally getting to see the last few episodes of season two. Plus I'm trying to get over my writers block for "the Other"

The day had been a long one filled with cloudy skies and Aaron's never ending fussing and Claire was ready to just pack it all in and sleep until morning so that the day would just be over.

Everything had gone wrong. Her water bottle had cracked and leaked all through her belongings, the fruit she was going to eat for breakfast was too ripe and had squashed everywhere, the weather was miserable, her hair was getting far too long to manage, Aaron had vomited all over one of her only clean tops, she'd caught her knee about a million times on her table and then her tarp had fallen down. For no apparent reason.

Grumbling to herself, Claire reached up on her tiptoes to try and fix the roof of her meagre shelter, Aaron whimpering from his crib.

'Just give mummy a second okay?' she cooed to him as she tied knot after knot. Pushing her hair angrily behind her ears she realised that tying it up in a proper ponytail would probably be a better option than just pushing it away over and over again. With this thought in mind, she let her tarp droop and swept her hair back from her face, searching for a hair elastic with her free hand.

Her small moment of savage triumph in finding the elastic in a side pocket of her bag was lost however when she deftly twisted it around her hair only to feel the soft ping of it snapping against her palm. Slowly, she lowered her hand to look at the broken elastic and quite suddenly found herself howling miserably.

Aaron picked up on her abrupt mood change immediately, joining in with her wails until they were making ten times the noise. Vaguely, Claire wondered why anyone hadn't stopped to ask her what was wrong but then she remembered that quite a few people were taking part in a largely improvised volleyball tournament that somebody had set up a little further down the beach. The rest of them probably just weren't concerned with her – as always.

This thought did little to stem her tears. Collapsing onto the sand next to Aaron's crib, Claire buried her face in her arms, still clutching at the broken hair tie pathetically.

What she really needed right now – although she hardly dared admit it to herself – was someone who would just be there. Someone who would offer her a hand without thought when they saw that she was in trouble. John was hardly reliable at the moment – he was off and about so much that he couldn't be of much use.

Claire's sobs lessened a little as she heard the sound of anxious footsteps crunching through the sand and then a voice spoke, hesitantly, but she recognised it straight away nonetheless.

'Claire? Are you – are you okay?'

'I'm fine,' she mumbled thickly into her arms, hiccoughing loudly. 'Just leave me alone Charlie.'

'You're curled up in a ball, crying your eyes out and your shelter looks like its falling apart. Is that what you call fine?'

Claire glared up at him, wiping away her tears with an angry fist. 'Please Charlie. I don't need this – not today. I've had the worst…'

'Do you want a hand with your tarp or not?' Charlie interjected coolly. 'Because if you're just going to snap at me then I'll clear off.'

For a moment they stared at each other, Claire all too tempted to just snap at him again so that he would leave but then she remembered that Charlie had actually done a lot of work on the construction of her shelter – what had once been their shelter. He would be able to help.

She nodded. Charlie didn't say anything further, just strode forwards and whisked the tarpaulin back into shape, his fingers nothing more than a blur as he tied knot after knot.

'There.' He tested the integrity of his final knot and then turned to Claire, hands pushed deep into his pockets. 'Are you sure you're okay? You were making one helluva racket before…'

'I'm fine,' Claire maintained, sighing. 'It was stupid really…just a trivial little…'

'If it made you cry that hard I doubt it was stupid or trivial.' Charlie squatted down so that he was at her eye level. Claire shifted uncomfortably. 'I know that you hate me right now but if you don't tell me then I'm going to worry myself stupid that you're in some sort of trouble that I need to save you from.'

'I don't hate you,' Claire mumbled, a little intimidated by the intensity of Charlie's gaze.

Charlie smiled thinly. 'Fine. You've been ignoring me because you're secretly in love with me. Tell me what's wrong anyway.'

Claire, feeling more than a little foolish, held out her hand. The broken hair elastic rested innocently on her palm.

Charlie stared at it for a good minute before raising his eyebrows at her.

'You freaked out because your hair elastic broke?'

'It was kind of the straw that broke the camels back,' Claire explained, embarrassed, as her face flushed. 'It's just been a build up of little things all day and then the tarp broke and then the stupid elastic broke and…'

'It's the little things that hit the hardest isn't it?' Charlie interrupted softly, gazing thoughtfully at the piece of black elastic in her hand. 'Something that shouldn't feel familiar but reminds you of something else.'

Claire stared at him but Charlie was already standing up, shaking his head.

'If you run into any more problems with that tarp, give us a yell. I'll come give you a hand okay?'

He hesitated and Claire knew he was waiting for her to say something, to reply, to tell him to sod off or maybe...was he expecting a thank you? He deserved a thank you, really, for helping her. Even if she hadn't really wanted him to.

'Thank you Charlie.'

And then he smiled – a proper smile – and Claire wished she hadn't thanked him because his eyes crinkled up at the corners and he looked like her Charlie again – not the drug addict, the liar, the thief she had been demonising in her head for the past few weeks.

'You're welcome.'