Title: Afraid To Try
Spoilers: up to the end of season two
Summary: Charlie had always been afraid of things he hadn't done before – and he didn't like feeling scared.
Disclaimer: Still isn't mine. Le sigh.
Charlie didn't like feeling scared.
He'd never been a fan of horror movies or ghost stories as a child – they'd always left him nervous about what unknown was around the corner, waiting for him. But he was also a curious child, he had always been so and as much as something might scare him, he still wanted to understand it, to try it, to see what it was really like.
It made things less frightening then.
Heroin had been a terrifying thing to him at first – until he had tried it. It wasn't so frightening now that he knew what it could do and it was this thought that constantly sustained his sanity throughout his addiction – whether he was high or not. He also discovered that breaking rules, the law, the Ten Commandments became a lot less frightening when somebody else was doing it with you.
It also gave you someone to blame.
But then his curiosity took an interesting turn – when his flight had crashed and he had befriended a woman who was so pregnant she could hardly stand up without help. She was the type of person he would never have associated with in the real world – she was everything he wasn't and everything he needed to become. She fascinated him. Captured by her glowing smile and gentle nature, he began to fall for her.
And then she had disappeared.
It was the first time he hadn't been just scared for himself. He had been terrified, terrified that she would never come back, that she had died out there in that never-ending jungle and it would be all his fault. He was surprised to say the least, shocked almost that someone he'd barely known had had such a huge effect on him in such a short time.
But as soon as he had begun planning their reunion, she had returned – only to reveal that she had forgotten him and all they had once had. It had crushed him to know that she didn't remember all the things he had done for her. That first day when he helped with her suitcase, bringing her water, the peanut butter…
The sodding peanut butter. Surely the crowning glory of all the shining moments he had experienced in his life – and their relationship – and she didn't remember it. But as it turned out she did remember it and it seemed that their relationship could go nowhere but up...
Funny that, like a series of ever larger quadratic equations, their relationship was doomed to take another sickening, roller coaster slope back down into the depths of mistrust and sadness once again.
When she wasn't speaking to him, he had plenty of time to stage their second reunion in his minds eye, an endless loop of footage in his head until he wasn't certain whether they were actually talking again or not. Most of them seemed to involve him saving her (or Aaron) from some terrible foe or fate and her being so grateful that she would…
But he never reached the end of his fantasies, unsure of where they would go then. He had been incredibly nervous, coming to her with the vaccine – definitely a lot more nervous than he should have been. He was at a complete loss as to what she would say, how she would react to him, and so he was surprised to find her smiling at him again, laughing a little even, pleased that he seemed to care so much. Her obvious worry about him using the vaccine on himself to make sure it was safe made him glow again – that familiar place inside where her smile had once warmed perked up its head and sniffed the air tentatively. Could this be the beginning of the next upward slope?
From the beginning they had moved slowly, oh so slowly from acquaintances to friends to something without a definition, the place between friends and lovers that so many people find and can't break out from for fear of an uncertain future. He was surprised, to put it mildly, that she reached out to him at the funeral. The touch of her hand had startled him so much that he had actually jumped a little and had to glance down to check and see if it was actually her.
And then…nothing. For the whole next day there was nothing. They didn't even see each other till he came back from the hatch. What made him sit next to her by the fire that night he didn't know but she didn't say anything as he settled down next to her and so he followed her lead, trying to keep a reasonable distance away from her and particularly from Aaron's crib.
It was Claire who took the leap of faith, Charlie was far too afraid. Of rejection, of the future, of whatever would happen next. Her hand touched his hair, brushing his bangs with soft fingertips and sending goosebumps running along his arms. The moment stretched out far too long as she smiled softly at him and his whole body was urging him to lean forwards, to take the lead, begin the first tentative steps that would lead to something more but he found himself frozen instead, his face creased into a soft frown as Claire's fingertips trickled down the side of his face to gently touch his chin. When she leant forward suddenly, pressing her lips gently against his, a soft sigh of relief escaped from his lips and pressed gently against her mouth.
Finally.
He was glad it was Claire and not him who'd taken that final step, done the final deed to seal their future as whatever it was they were, and everything they were about to become.
Charlie had always been scared of things he hadn't tried before.