Ficlet: Elevator Music (Jack/Desmond)
I hadn't planned to do anything for Lost Riffs (not enough time), but this one came out of nowhere when I read an old prompt, and then it absolutely fit today's. *squee*
Title: Elevator Music
Pairing: Jack/Desmond
Rating: R to be safe
Summary: Two men drunk in an elevator; one's happy and one will become so. Random schmoop, don't scrutinize this one too hard, it's weird. 2000 words
For: Lost Riffs: prompt for day 1 (elevator, hungry) and day 3 (an unexpected way to make someone smile)
Jack was drunk. He hadn't thought it possible, but apparently he'd been on the island (and laying off that vile Dharma wine) long enough that he'd lost some of his tolerance. But he was still the same kind of drunk he'd always been: reserved, contemplative. Too many emotions fighting within him now as languished in this fucking overpriced motel waiting for the Oceanic people to get done lawyering them to death. He wasn't sure if he was perturbed by the prolonging of his exile from the world or glad for it, or simply indifferent because what was another few days on top of a year and a half. But he was overwhelmed with the thoughts swirling through his now hazy brain, and he was doing his best to stay clearly inside his head and keep those thoughts there and in check, rather than wearing them on his sleeve. It was a good time to be contemplative and reserved.
His elevator companion, however, was not, even if that was precisely the demeanor he normally adopted. Jack had only joined Desmond at the bar because he took for granted their moods would match, as they tended to most times. He'd seen Desmond wasted that one time on the island, and he assumed if they had a few shots he would encounter a version of the man that would suit him tonight: a darker, more cynical Desmond than even normal.
What he got instead was a man who talked a lot, and his talk changed the drunker he got, going from cynical to matter-of-fact to vulgar to humorously snarky and back again, finally landing somewhere in the vicinity of entirely random, neither pessimistic nor particularly jovial either. Somewhere squarely in between, in some balance that wasn't a balance, just like Jack's battling responses to being rescued.
Jack hadn't been expecting it, but he found himself strangely charmed by Desmond's rambling. Then again, Desmond charmed him in general. Jack had always thought it was some sense of camaraderie that attracted him to the man, their similarities and easy way of instinctively understanding each other. Not to mention he thought Desmond was actually pretty hot, as far as he let himself think about wanting a man that way. So he'd assumed this slow, barely-burning lust and less hidden fascination was entirely physical or based on their shared propensity for brooding and taking on the world's problems. He hadn't let himself think about it being about Desmond's strange but palpable charm.
Desmond was slumped against the opposite wall in the elevator, riding up to the fifteenth floor with him. A few other passengers had stumbled into the elevator with them at the lobby, and it had slowly deposited them onto their own floors, the last at the eighth. Now it was just the two of them. Jack was still trying to hold himself together, a job thankfully helped along by the numbing alcohol, but Desmond was apparently calm, just singing to the wordless elevator muzak, that lilting voice butchering some awful eighties song, and Jack couldn't even understand the words, because Desmond was almost mumbling them, and he couldn't remember the song's name (as if he'd drifted too far from civilization to remember things like that), and that was bugging the shit out of him, and he was close to hitting the wall with his fist in frustration when he finally caught a phrase and it made him stop cold, not because it was meaningful, but because it was…
"Pat Benetar?"
Desmond's head snapped up, as well as a drunk person's head can handle a straight-line trajectory. In fact, his shoulders rather rolled and his hips shifted. Drunk. Sleepy. "What?"
"The song. It's 'Love is a Battlefield.'"
"I suppose it is. I dunno. I was just singing along. God, it feels good to know I can do that."
"But you're singing Pat Benetar."
He frowned as if in concentration and started to say something, but then he just snorted and said, "You need to loosen up, yeah?" Then he grinned, looking right at Jack as if to challenge him, and sang, off key: "We are young, no one can tell us we're wrong." Jack shook his head at him, but Desmond continued, "Searching our hearts for so lo-o-ong. Both of us knowing…" Then he wagged his eyebrows at Jack and sort of collapsed back against the elevator wall. The door dinged open: floor fifteen. The last line of the song pinged through his head at the sound and along with the ambient background music: Love is a battlefield.
It was ludicrous. Here was his partner in melancholy, arms falling to his sides, chuckling to himself, plainly mocking a song that already mocked itself with being so melodramatic. Sometimes Jack felt like that about the island: it was too serious to really be true, so all they could so was laugh. He'd been watching Sawyer and Charlie and Sayid even across the bar all night, doing just that. Maybe it was too hard to own up to how hard it was. Would all the stress and fear recede into the background now? Would it just be this absurd, dramatic thing that had really been real, now that it was over? No, it had been very real, and they'd lived with it every day. He and Desmond had survived it, together, but now he was beginning to think there were a lot of things about the man he'd never taken the time to really see. There were more sides to him than just the moping and the sarcasm. Maybe Desmond wasn't mocking the song. Maybe he was just singing.
The elevator dinged impatiently now. Neither of them made a move to get off the elevator. Jack couldn't stop staring at the man, and it was like he was seeing him for the first time all night, somehow. Jack felt tossed around by his thoughts, so apprehensive and confused, that emotion threatening to come out, but Desmond was strangely calm, for all his drunken swaying and chuckling.
"You're happy?" Jack said.
Desmond shook his head. "I have no idea, brother. But we're home, right? And I'm so tired of being unhappy. I figure you gotta make it happen. Gotta make your own kind of music, you know?"
A bewildered smile stole across Jack's face and Desmond suddenly laughed, long and hard, and Jack didn't wonder why they were still standing in the elevator. It was 3 a.m. and nobody was calling the elevator from the floors below. Nobody was calling them anywhere but here.
Desmond was still laughing as he laid his head back against the wall again. He said, "Sorry, brother. You have no idea the weird and depressing crap I had to listen to for all those months down there. I would've been fucking ecstatic to have a Pat Benetar album in that collection."
It should've been sad, and maybe it was, but Jack was tired of being sad about the island, everything it had prevented or taken away. Because it had maybe given them things too, if they bothered to see-things that might last longer than the pain and regret. So when Desmond kept laughing to himself, warm and unguarded and his whole posture even open, Jack couldn't help it. He wanted to remember him like this, but he didn't want to let him go with things seeming so unfinished. Really, he didn't want to let him go at all.
It wasn't some deliberate decision, though. He simply found his face lighting into an easy smile, almost a giggle except there wasn't even time for that. He needed to have his hands on him. So he stepped across the elevator and grabbed him by both sides of his neck and kissed him, and he suddenly felt every bit as drunk as he was.
Desmond's body was shoving up and into his instantly, arms circling his waist, pulling him closer but using him for balance too. Jack fought to keep control of the kiss, and that wobbled them again until Desmond's back was thudding against the wall and there was nothing but a long, sinewy body twined into his and a warm, wet mouth taking over, tongue searching and both of them getting hard slowly, almost unexpectedly for Jack, the lust patiently cutting through a haze of alcohol .
Everything smelled like whiskey and soap and felt like too much, but Jack couldn't let go. The kiss went deeper and harder until exhilaration warred with some kind of weary surrender in him and his churning thoughts and emotions threatened to overwhelm him. Then Desmond finally pulled Jack's face back, his thumbs caressing his jaw while his forehead rested there against Jack's as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Sorry," Jack said, without moving a muscle.
"No you're not."
"No I'm not."
"Why now?"
"I couldn't help it," he said with a smile, feeling Desmond's in return.
Desmond's head turned and he pulled Jack forward by the neck until he could say into his ear, he said, "I was wondering if getting you drunk was gonna get me anywhere with you."
Jack just laughed, and it was a nervous laugh, but happy, too. "How long…?"
There was a pause, then Desmond simply said, "Longer than you." For a moment, his whole body seemed to tighten against Jack's, like that last squeeze before a hug ends, but he didn't push him away. It was as if he came to himself suddenly. "Are we riding back down, brother?"
"What?" Then Jack came back to the world again. They were in an elevator.
Desmond nudged him. "Should we maybe get out of the lift?"
He slid out from that space between Jack and the wall, turning with drunken grace and pulling Jack by the hand behind him into the hallway. Desmond weaved a little, but it looked like easiness, the sort of easiness Jack had probably always seen in Desmond, even when they were both brooding and confused. Jack trailed along behind him nervously; nervous because he'd never done this before, and he had no idea if Desmond had either. He watched the pattern in the carpet repeat and repeat as they walked over it, and he didn't know Desmond had stopped until he felt his shoulders hitting the wall and Desmond's body hard up against his again, this time almost too warm and now definitely needy, almost impatient, hungry.
Desmond kissed him hard, making him breathless with the way his mouth seemed to delve farther and farther into his. When he pulled back, his pupils were nearly black, and he said in a deeper, rougher version of his still smooth voice, "You don't have any idea what you did back there, do you?"
"What?"
"I have to have you now," he said serenely, with a wry, almost self-deprecating smile. Then more serious: "Whatever you want to give me tonight, I'll take it, Jack."
"And after tonight?"
Desmond's eyes closed and he smiled. "I'm a right bastard when I'm hung over."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know," he replied softly. "But you know me, don't you? You know what kind of man I am."
"Yeah."
"And I know what kind of man you are." His nose brushed over Jack's neck before nuzzling into the hollow just below his ear. "I'm patient," he said with a nip at Jack's earlobe. "And careful," he added with a warm breath of air over the shell of his ear. Then at his temple, kissing it, he said, "And so are you, as well as gorgeous and strong and such a moody motherfucker, but I think you're gonna let me have my way with you."
"Yeah?"
In answer, Desmond swiftly drew back and kissed him again, softly this time, letting go his lips slowly until he was taking Jack's hand again and leading him down the hallway toward his room.
Title: Elevator Music
Pairing: Jack/Desmond
Rating: R to be safe
Summary: Two men drunk in an elevator; one's happy and one will become so. Random schmoop, don't scrutinize this one too hard, it's weird. 2000 words
For: Lost Riffs: prompt for day 1 (elevator, hungry) and day 3 (an unexpected way to make someone smile)
Jack was drunk. He hadn't thought it possible, but apparently he'd been on the island (and laying off that vile Dharma wine) long enough that he'd lost some of his tolerance. But he was still the same kind of drunk he'd always been: reserved, contemplative. Too many emotions fighting within him now as languished in this fucking overpriced motel waiting for the Oceanic people to get done lawyering them to death. He wasn't sure if he was perturbed by the prolonging of his exile from the world or glad for it, or simply indifferent because what was another few days on top of a year and a half. But he was overwhelmed with the thoughts swirling through his now hazy brain, and he was doing his best to stay clearly inside his head and keep those thoughts there and in check, rather than wearing them on his sleeve. It was a good time to be contemplative and reserved.
His elevator companion, however, was not, even if that was precisely the demeanor he normally adopted. Jack had only joined Desmond at the bar because he took for granted their moods would match, as they tended to most times. He'd seen Desmond wasted that one time on the island, and he assumed if they had a few shots he would encounter a version of the man that would suit him tonight: a darker, more cynical Desmond than even normal.
What he got instead was a man who talked a lot, and his talk changed the drunker he got, going from cynical to matter-of-fact to vulgar to humorously snarky and back again, finally landing somewhere in the vicinity of entirely random, neither pessimistic nor particularly jovial either. Somewhere squarely in between, in some balance that wasn't a balance, just like Jack's battling responses to being rescued.
Jack hadn't been expecting it, but he found himself strangely charmed by Desmond's rambling. Then again, Desmond charmed him in general. Jack had always thought it was some sense of camaraderie that attracted him to the man, their similarities and easy way of instinctively understanding each other. Not to mention he thought Desmond was actually pretty hot, as far as he let himself think about wanting a man that way. So he'd assumed this slow, barely-burning lust and less hidden fascination was entirely physical or based on their shared propensity for brooding and taking on the world's problems. He hadn't let himself think about it being about Desmond's strange but palpable charm.
Desmond was slumped against the opposite wall in the elevator, riding up to the fifteenth floor with him. A few other passengers had stumbled into the elevator with them at the lobby, and it had slowly deposited them onto their own floors, the last at the eighth. Now it was just the two of them. Jack was still trying to hold himself together, a job thankfully helped along by the numbing alcohol, but Desmond was apparently calm, just singing to the wordless elevator muzak, that lilting voice butchering some awful eighties song, and Jack couldn't even understand the words, because Desmond was almost mumbling them, and he couldn't remember the song's name (as if he'd drifted too far from civilization to remember things like that), and that was bugging the shit out of him, and he was close to hitting the wall with his fist in frustration when he finally caught a phrase and it made him stop cold, not because it was meaningful, but because it was…
"Pat Benetar?"
Desmond's head snapped up, as well as a drunk person's head can handle a straight-line trajectory. In fact, his shoulders rather rolled and his hips shifted. Drunk. Sleepy. "What?"
"The song. It's 'Love is a Battlefield.'"
"I suppose it is. I dunno. I was just singing along. God, it feels good to know I can do that."
"But you're singing Pat Benetar."
He frowned as if in concentration and started to say something, but then he just snorted and said, "You need to loosen up, yeah?" Then he grinned, looking right at Jack as if to challenge him, and sang, off key: "We are young, no one can tell us we're wrong." Jack shook his head at him, but Desmond continued, "Searching our hearts for so lo-o-ong. Both of us knowing…" Then he wagged his eyebrows at Jack and sort of collapsed back against the elevator wall. The door dinged open: floor fifteen. The last line of the song pinged through his head at the sound and along with the ambient background music: Love is a battlefield.
It was ludicrous. Here was his partner in melancholy, arms falling to his sides, chuckling to himself, plainly mocking a song that already mocked itself with being so melodramatic. Sometimes Jack felt like that about the island: it was too serious to really be true, so all they could so was laugh. He'd been watching Sawyer and Charlie and Sayid even across the bar all night, doing just that. Maybe it was too hard to own up to how hard it was. Would all the stress and fear recede into the background now? Would it just be this absurd, dramatic thing that had really been real, now that it was over? No, it had been very real, and they'd lived with it every day. He and Desmond had survived it, together, but now he was beginning to think there were a lot of things about the man he'd never taken the time to really see. There were more sides to him than just the moping and the sarcasm. Maybe Desmond wasn't mocking the song. Maybe he was just singing.
The elevator dinged impatiently now. Neither of them made a move to get off the elevator. Jack couldn't stop staring at the man, and it was like he was seeing him for the first time all night, somehow. Jack felt tossed around by his thoughts, so apprehensive and confused, that emotion threatening to come out, but Desmond was strangely calm, for all his drunken swaying and chuckling.
"You're happy?" Jack said.
Desmond shook his head. "I have no idea, brother. But we're home, right? And I'm so tired of being unhappy. I figure you gotta make it happen. Gotta make your own kind of music, you know?"
A bewildered smile stole across Jack's face and Desmond suddenly laughed, long and hard, and Jack didn't wonder why they were still standing in the elevator. It was 3 a.m. and nobody was calling the elevator from the floors below. Nobody was calling them anywhere but here.
Desmond was still laughing as he laid his head back against the wall again. He said, "Sorry, brother. You have no idea the weird and depressing crap I had to listen to for all those months down there. I would've been fucking ecstatic to have a Pat Benetar album in that collection."
It should've been sad, and maybe it was, but Jack was tired of being sad about the island, everything it had prevented or taken away. Because it had maybe given them things too, if they bothered to see-things that might last longer than the pain and regret. So when Desmond kept laughing to himself, warm and unguarded and his whole posture even open, Jack couldn't help it. He wanted to remember him like this, but he didn't want to let him go with things seeming so unfinished. Really, he didn't want to let him go at all.
It wasn't some deliberate decision, though. He simply found his face lighting into an easy smile, almost a giggle except there wasn't even time for that. He needed to have his hands on him. So he stepped across the elevator and grabbed him by both sides of his neck and kissed him, and he suddenly felt every bit as drunk as he was.
Desmond's body was shoving up and into his instantly, arms circling his waist, pulling him closer but using him for balance too. Jack fought to keep control of the kiss, and that wobbled them again until Desmond's back was thudding against the wall and there was nothing but a long, sinewy body twined into his and a warm, wet mouth taking over, tongue searching and both of them getting hard slowly, almost unexpectedly for Jack, the lust patiently cutting through a haze of alcohol .
Everything smelled like whiskey and soap and felt like too much, but Jack couldn't let go. The kiss went deeper and harder until exhilaration warred with some kind of weary surrender in him and his churning thoughts and emotions threatened to overwhelm him. Then Desmond finally pulled Jack's face back, his thumbs caressing his jaw while his forehead rested there against Jack's as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Sorry," Jack said, without moving a muscle.
"No you're not."
"No I'm not."
"Why now?"
"I couldn't help it," he said with a smile, feeling Desmond's in return.
Desmond's head turned and he pulled Jack forward by the neck until he could say into his ear, he said, "I was wondering if getting you drunk was gonna get me anywhere with you."
Jack just laughed, and it was a nervous laugh, but happy, too. "How long…?"
There was a pause, then Desmond simply said, "Longer than you." For a moment, his whole body seemed to tighten against Jack's, like that last squeeze before a hug ends, but he didn't push him away. It was as if he came to himself suddenly. "Are we riding back down, brother?"
"What?" Then Jack came back to the world again. They were in an elevator.
Desmond nudged him. "Should we maybe get out of the lift?"
He slid out from that space between Jack and the wall, turning with drunken grace and pulling Jack by the hand behind him into the hallway. Desmond weaved a little, but it looked like easiness, the sort of easiness Jack had probably always seen in Desmond, even when they were both brooding and confused. Jack trailed along behind him nervously; nervous because he'd never done this before, and he had no idea if Desmond had either. He watched the pattern in the carpet repeat and repeat as they walked over it, and he didn't know Desmond had stopped until he felt his shoulders hitting the wall and Desmond's body hard up against his again, this time almost too warm and now definitely needy, almost impatient, hungry.
Desmond kissed him hard, making him breathless with the way his mouth seemed to delve farther and farther into his. When he pulled back, his pupils were nearly black, and he said in a deeper, rougher version of his still smooth voice, "You don't have any idea what you did back there, do you?"
"What?"
"I have to have you now," he said serenely, with a wry, almost self-deprecating smile. Then more serious: "Whatever you want to give me tonight, I'll take it, Jack."
"And after tonight?"
Desmond's eyes closed and he smiled. "I'm a right bastard when I'm hung over."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know," he replied softly. "But you know me, don't you? You know what kind of man I am."
"Yeah."
"And I know what kind of man you are." His nose brushed over Jack's neck before nuzzling into the hollow just below his ear. "I'm patient," he said with a nip at Jack's earlobe. "And careful," he added with a warm breath of air over the shell of his ear. Then at his temple, kissing it, he said, "And so are you, as well as gorgeous and strong and such a moody motherfucker, but I think you're gonna let me have my way with you."
"Yeah?"
In answer, Desmond swiftly drew back and kissed him again, softly this time, letting go his lips slowly until he was taking Jack's hand again and leading him down the hallway toward his room.