fic: the worst-case scenario survival handbook (lost)
the worst-case scenario survival handbook
lost. a plane crashes in the jungle. if no one is alive to hear it, does it make a sound? original characters. rated r. 7860 words.
notes: haha, oh boy. this shall be known as the fic that ate my brain. and yes - original characters in a lost fic. oh, er, original of me? so, you remember that one time nikki and paulo were around and they were supposed to just be two random crash survivors and wound up being the most annoying jewel thieves on the planet? i sort of ran with that idea (minus the jewel thieving) and made two random background characters up and told the story through their eyes? THAT SAID: this is cracky and ridiculous and has zero literary (or fic) merit, haha. basically, i just really love deserted island stories. the end!
will you meet me down on a sandy beach
we can roll up our jeans
so the tide won’t get us below the knees
(colors and the kids, cat power)
Every story has a protagonist. And every protagonist has his sidekicks. Behind the sidekicks stand the aptly named background characters and Molly understands that. She understands that so she stands in the background.
She watches the news. She has read the books. She knows the words they use for people like her.
She’s pretty sure it’s called collateral damage, and she is pretty sure that does not bode too well for whatever future chain of events time and history and god or the island (what-the-fuck-ever) has planned out for her.
On September 22, 2004 her plane crashed.
But you already knew that.
-
Want to know the real problem here? Want to know what’s going to be the wrench in all of this, the thing that blows the train off the tracks and makes this that much sadder and that much bigger of a mess than it already needs to be?
No one ever looks at themselves and thinks white noise. No one ever looks in a mirror and no one ever sits back and calls themselves anything less than the main character. We’re all the main characters in the stories of our lives. That’s how that works. That’s how it has always worked.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern got their own fucking play out of the concept, man.
Molly Brighton won’t get her own but that’s okay too. That doesn’t totally have to suck. She has always thought the theater was for losers anyway.
-
It starts with the words tray tables in their upright position, or maybe that really didn’t happen. Maybe she dreamt it the same way people dream about car crashes and train derailments and the long tumble down an unreal flight of stairs.
Molly can’t remember now, but that might be on account of the large cut on her forehead. It aches like hell, but it really hurts when she wrinkles up her forehead or just, like, moves her eyebrows up and down. Not that she does that a lot. But she’s doing it a lot now, now that she knows it makes the wound wince, which sounds so totally creepy and masochistic and she doesn’t mean it like that, but she’s just curious.
She furrows her brow once and it hurts, and when she furrows her brow again, this time a little deeper, it hurts even more.
“I have a bleeding head wound,” she says out loud, but no one’s really listening. There’s this blonde chick just, like, standing there, screaming her head off but Molly can’t really hear her from where she’s sitting. The propellers are still making noise and everyone seems to just be yelling and screaming, though unlike the blonde they’re all scurrying around. Bees in a hive or ants on a hill or something, and she’s not really sure what any of them are trying to accomplish, running around like that, but whatever. To each his own. She’s just going to sit there, on the beach, far enough away from the fire and the burning jet fuel (which fucking reeks, for the record, she’s never going to get that smell off her skin, out of her hair, out of her nose) and the gentle lap of the ocean.
-
She sits there for awhile.
She thinks they call this shock. She is trying her best to remember everything she ever learned from middle school health classes or that CPR course she took when she was like 16 and worked at the Des Moines Community Center, or, hell, any of those creepy ass medical shows she used to watch on TLC.
Nothing really rings a bell.
Instead she sits in the sand and she’s far enough away that she can’t feel the heat from the still smoldering fires and she can’t really hear the things people are saying and yelling to each other, and that’s okay. She likes the distance. Her forehead has stopped bleeding and she thinks about her boyfriend Donny and whether or not he is still in Sydney and whether or not he has heard about the crash and whether or not they are even still boyfriend and girlfriend after last night. She thinks about New York, she thinks about what all her friends will say when she tells them this story in a couple days. “Our plane fucking crashed,” she would say and they would drink martinis to celebrate awesome things like cheating death and rescue helicopters and being alive and well in New York City. And maybe Donny would forgive her, or, like, fuck Donny, maybe she’d meet someone better, maybe she’d get to go on Oprah and tell her tale of survival and -
“Are you okay?”
Molly looks up. There’s this guy standing above her. She raises a hand and shields her eyes but he’s still backlit too bright against the sun. He’s tall, but then again she’s sitting down, so, like, a Muppet or a midget would probably appear tall to her. Still. She’s pretty sure he’s tall by most standards, sitting or otherwise. He’s young, or at least as young, if not a year or two older, than she is. He has dark hair and he looks like he hasn’t shaved in a day or two and his neck is all caked with dried blood. Gross.
“Sure,” she says. Her throat is really dry and the word makes it hurt.
She stays seated and he stays standing and he looks at her all intently, and great. She’s found the one creeper stalker that was aboard their plane. Awesome.
“Do I know you?” this guy asks her. Molly shakes her head, which was sort of stupid. It makes her neck ache that much more. “You sure?” he asks. Molly’s face sours and she purses her lips. Like, why would she lie about knowing him? He’s not her type at all - his shirt has a collar and his sleeves are rolled and there’s a Jackson Pollock-esque dash of red blood over the breast pocket and his belt matches his shoes and he’s got a face that says fine breeding the same way his shirt says his initials, AFW, over the pocket and the blood and his chest.
“Well,” she says, pauses for effect. “We were just on the same plane. You might know me from there.” She can almost taste the acid of her words on her tongue, and it tastes good and that makes her smile.
His smile in return is cautious and guarded but his teeth are sharp and she sort of likes that too.
“Alec,” he says and extends a hand. “I’m Alec Webb.”
She takes his hand and stands.
“I’m Molly Brighton.”
-
People are already starting to act like this is fucking home now. Home, despite the monster in the jungle that sounds more like a broken piece of machinery than Godzilla, and home, despite the polar bears, whatever the fuck that’s all about. These weirdos seriously start acting like this might be home.
Molly hates these people.
They all take the blue, regulation airline blankets and they try to drape them over glorified twigs and sticks and call it a home. It depresses her.
And, okay. Maybe the main reason this is beyond depressing for her is because back home she could barely even put together the bookcase she bought from Ikea that one time. She is not a fucking carpenter. And trying to build a house all MacGyver-like out of the broken remains of a jumbo jet coupled with, like, foliage and mud isn’t exactly easy.
So she just stares for awhile. She crosses her arms over her chest and stares at the collection of various items before her. Thinks about Gilligan’s Island and HGTV. Neither are proving really all that helpful at the moment.
“Need a hand?”
Molly whirls around and when she does she is defiant. It’s dumb. Whatever. Asking for help is lame and Molly doesn’t want to be lame, but she also doesn’t want to be homeless, so, yeah, hello, crossroad.
It’s that Alec guy from earlier. He’s still dressed like he’s going to meet the good old boys at the club later for a scotch, but like a wrinkled and cranky version of that. Actually, he looks sort of like the morning after version of that scenario with maybe a strip club or two thrown into the mix.
And of course she needs a hand. She just can’t decide if this is the sort of dude you ask for one.
She shrugs.
Alec takes that as a yes.
-
Some dead dude (or chick, she guesses) aboard their plane was a total klepto, because, like, she finds this suitcase filled with all those tiny shampoo and conditioner bottles hotels give you for free. Or maybe he worked for a hotel and sold those little bottles, but she doesn’t think that’s how it works.
But she has shampoo now. So that’s sort of awesome.
Everyone bathes in the ocean here, which is just. Ew. Total Third World country-esque or something nasty and unhygienic.
Molly wanders down the stretch of beach, primarily because she is not a total exhibitionist like some of their former fellow passengers. No one needs to watch you try to wipe yourself down in the ocean. Like, no one.
So she wanders down the beach, wanders far enough down so that no one can see her, but not too far in case, like, Poseidon or some sea monster tries to eat her they’ll all be able to hear her scream. That’s called planning ahead.
She rounds a curve, and oh shit. There is Alec. There is Alec, in the ocean. And sure, the water is up to his waist, but she’s like 99% positive he is totally naked, and yeah. Awkward.
And probably made all the more awkward that Molly, you know, stares at him.
He has a build like a mangy frat boy or something. Like maybe at some point he was really skinny and fit, a runner or whatever, but enough beer or keg stands and Monday night football nacho sessions have had their toll and all that’s left of previous muscle definition are a few lines and a sort of flat stomach and not much else.
Not that it’s a bad thing. No girl really wants to go to bed with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Or at least no girl should want to go to bed with Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his current incarnation or, like, ever.
Not that she wants to go to bed with Alec. That’s not what she’s saying at all. Nope. Not at all.
She turns on her heel and heads in the opposite direction.
She can wash off later.
-
Some people move into the caves. Molly stays on the beach. Alec stays on the beach too.
She sort of hangs out with Alec out of lack of anyone else to talk to. The feeling seems to be mutual because it’s not like he acts like he resents talking to her or whatever. Sometimes he hangs out with Scott or Steve and sometimes she sits around with Shannon, but Shannon’s more of a Debbie Downer than the situation really warrants, so yeah.
“What were you doing in Oz, hm?” he asks her.
“Ew,” she says. “Don’t call it that. You sound super douchey.”
Alec rolls his eyes. “Fine. What were you doing in Australia?” He puts an unnecessary emphasis on the word Australia so he sounds just as douchey and obnoxious as he did the first go round.
“Is this your idea of small talk? Because it sucks. This isn’t the airport lounge or a singles mixer or wherever you seem to think we are.”
“Are you always this charming? Or are you just trying to avoid the question?”
“Fuck off,” she sighs. “I was in Australia because my boyfriend is a DJ and he had a gig there. The end.”
Alec frowns.
“Was he on the plane?” This makes her laugh. And based on Alec’s reaction this is probably not the most appropriate thing she could have done.
“Jesus. No. You think I’d just be chilling out if my boyfriend was missing right now? Or, like, dead?”
“I don’t know,” Alec says. “You don’t strike me as the most sentimental girl I’ve ever met.”
“That’s, like, not even being sentimental. That’s just…I don’t know. Being a human. You don’t think I’m a human?”
He smirks. “No. I happen to be of the opinion that you’re a robot. At the very least.”
Molly glances up at the sun. Sweat drips lazily at the back of her neck and along her spine. She wants to squirm but she doesn’t want to let Alec see that. “Are you waiting for me to rust out here?” she asks.
His mouth is lazy around a smile. “Sure. I think it’ll look good on you,” he says, and fuck, it’s like they’re flirting or something mildly dangerous, or sort of dangerous, but, like, not as dangerous as a plane crash. But almost.
She sighs loudly.
“I left him in Sydney.”
“What?”
“My boyfriend. We, we had a fight the night before and I decided I’d just go back to New York and we could work things out there. So I left. Got on the plane. And I imagine you know the rest.”
He nods his head and smiles this rue smile, and maybe he’s always smiled like that and nothing’s changed for him at all.
“What about you?” she asks and Alec looks confused. “Australia,” she prompts.
“Oh. Bachelor party.”
“In Australia?”
Alec shrugs. “He likes to party hard.”
Molly hums a little in the back of her throat, like maybe what he said makes sense, and in a way it does. She flew all the way to fucking Sydney for a party too.
“Are you from Los Angeles?” she asks. She doesn’t know why she keeps asking questions, but she does know that there is something threatening and all-consuming in the possibility of silence and she doesn’t want that. She wants the noise and she wants people and if that means continually asking this guy questions, then so be it.
“What? No,” he says. “New York. I’m from New York. I live in Manhattan. I, uh, work on Wall Street,” he says. Molly’s smile is genuine.
“Really? Me too. Well, the living in Manhattan part. I definitely do not work on Wall Street,” she says. Alec smiles too, but Alec is always smiling. “I work in a Starbucks. In Manhattan. I mean. I live there now. I was living there, Manhattan. I’m from Iowa originally. My parents still live - ” and she stumbles.
Alec catches the stumble for her.
“My parents have always lived in Manhattan,” he says in this bland sort of way, but he is watching her carefully. He’s watching her like he thinks she is seconds from some sort of massive hysteric breakdown, and fuck him, maybe she is.
“Oh yeah?” she finds herself saying in reply. “I bet that was nice.”
“Yeah,” he says, then pauses. “No. Not really. We were never exactly the happiest of families,” he says. “It was sort of all, trust no one, I guess.”
Molly snorts.
“Dude. That’s, like, totally from The X-Files. ‘Trust no one,’” she mimics. “Was your dad Fox Mulder?”
He narrows his eyes at her. “You watch The X-Files?” Alec says it like it’s a bad thing, or that she should be embarrassed about it, but, like, fuck him.
She twists a lock of hair around her finger and widens her eyes like he’s stupid and an asshole and shouldn’t say such annoying things to her.
“Well. What else do you watch at three in the morning?” And it’s so true, you know. There’s not much on TV at three in the morning. And it’s, like, sad that she watches TV at three in the morning. Taking hits of blow or just downing enough shots to keep her hips swiveling to the music used to make her so fucking horny, but lately it’s just been sort of like who cares. She doesn’t know if it’s the men who have become less attractive or she’s just getting older, but a woman’s libido is supposed to increase as she gets older, right? So that can’t be the problem, and the very thought that she’s bored of sex is just too depressing for words, so whatever. Back to the point. TV and Fox Mulder and Alec Webb and three AM and how her viewing choices do not make her a total, irredeemable loser. Because, like, sure, there are those infomercials about knives, but those are so fucking trippy when you yourself are already tripping, and there’s usually a Sylvester Stallone or Jean Claude Van Damme movie on, but fuck those guys, so she’ll settle on the aliens and the government and David Duchovny.
“I usually just settle for the Ambien,” he drawls, and Molly thinks she might really hate him. She looks to the ocean.
“What is it with your rich people and the whole not sleeping thing?”
Alec laughs a little and it’s unexpected. She draws her knees in to her chest and there is sand stuck to the backs of her legs and the grains smear across her hands and it is so official: she hates the beach.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Isn’t it, like, a proven fact that rich people don’t sleep well? All those medicine cabinets full of sleeping pills or whatever.” Her fingers draw patterns in the sand in the small space between her right hip and his left. “Maybe it’s a trade-off.”
“Hmm?” he hums.
“Maybe it’s, like, because you’re rich and you have all that money and wealth and like eight houses you don’t get to sleep well anymore. Like Faust. You get the whole trade-off. You have to give up a good night’s rest for the riches.”
He snorts.
“Totally worth it,” he says. Alec leans back on his elbows, some sort of portrait of Gatsby-era relaxation, like he’s Robert fucking Redford, but his face mars the image. His mouth is thin and tight, like his teeth are clenched real tight together and he’s grinding them down. That can’t be good for the enamel, Molly thinks. That can’t be good at all.
“Liar,” she sighs.
Alec doesn’t argue with her and she doesn’t know him well enough to know what that means. She has enough presence of mind to imagine it must mean something, and it probably does.
There is sand stuck to her calves and sand stuck into each and every pore of her skin and she hates it. Her body itches and the sun makes her glow tan and she thinks of leather a lot these days, imagines that’s what she’ll come to look like and it is gross and it frightens her a little.
The skies are blue and open and empty here and that scares her too.
-
So, like. Time passes.
It’s not like they get invited on hikes or anything. Or if hikes are really the sort of thing where invites are sent out and RSVPs are expected, but it kind of seems that way here at least. And Molly doesn’t really care. Nature can suck it. She doesn’t like the bugs and the mud and how everything on this damn island sticks in gross, gross places and it’s like she can never get clean (but maybe that’s because she showers in the motherfucking ocean now and fish pee in that same motherfucking ocean and oh Jesus Christ she’s been showering herself in fish piss for the last month, ugh).
It just gives her that much more downtime. And if anything, she has learned that downtime absolutely sucks when there is nothing more to do than pace the same strip of land or try to build a fort out of airplane wreckage or befriend a group of misfit strangers.
The bald old dude and the sort of hot guy with the blue eyes (“My name’s Boone,” he had told her and she had laughed and actually said, “Like Daniel?” and he had rolled his eyes like he gets that one at least once a year) go into the jungle on a sort of daily basis. Or at least the two of them are gone every morning and they come back every evening all Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
The doctor is bossy and boring. There’s the former rock star dude and he’s sometimes good company, same goes for the knocked up chick. It’s just, Molly sort of forgot how big of an effort it can be to make friends.
“I thought making friends was supposed to be all natural and easy,” she tells Alec one evening.
“Well. You are sort of a bitch,” Alec says. And then he smiles and raises both his eyebrows all high like he’s saying, “ah-ha!” only without the words and only his eyebrows instead.
She glares at him. Alec puts down the knife he’s holding (he’s like whittling sticks, what the fuck is this?) and he looks at her all mock serious.
“What? The kids not being nice to you on the playground?”
She rolls her eyes.
“Fuck off. Asshole.” She looks over her shoulder. The Middle Eastern dude is fiddling with something technical looking by the bonfire. Hurley is with him. She likes Hurley. She thinks Hurley likes her too, so that’s nice. Maybe she can count him as friend. So that gets her up to…one? That’s sad. That’s really past the line of pathetic and into crazy cat lady territory.
And, oh, God. It’s like she misses everything right now. She misses skim lattes and she misses that fucking Norah Jones soundtrack Starbucks played all fucking day long while she made drinks she can’t even pronounce let alone comprehend their composition. She misses loud music and strangers and the way New York was always something new, how it didn’t matter where you went but you might see a familiar face, you might not but either way it was home and that always means something.
Her teeth sink into her slice of mango and this is so fucking lame but she’s blinking back tears and how goddamned pathetic is that? Like, at one point she was cool and at one point she might have even been considered badass, but here all she really wants to do is, like, weep, which, ugh. Lame. Lame, lame, lame, she wants to go home.
She turns back to Alec.
“Aren’t you lonely?” she asks. Alec purses his lips together. He’s one of those people with those ridiculously expressive faces. She’s getting that now. “I mean, I have zero friends here. I’m not used to that. I’m used to people. I’m used to company. I’m not…I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
And she doesn’t.
Alec picks up the knife again and then just as quickly he puts it back down. He stares at the knife and the handle and the collection of wood and wood shavings there and Molly is just on the point of asking what the hell he is even doing when he speaks first.
“I’m your friend,” he says. He looks at her directly, and he is way, way better at eye contact than she is. Molly tries but she does a pretty shitty job of maintaining it. She wants to, like, yell at him because really - his face is sort of beyond distracting. It’s just, he’s got those blue eyes and he’s wearing a blue shirt and it’s like the two sort of match and that’s not fair and he’s trying to pin her down with those same blue eyes, and he’s gotten tanner since they’ve been there and it doesn’t look bad on him, and his hair’s still dark and messy and he’s still got the stubble and Jesus Christ she finds Alec attractive. That’s what this is about. She finds this Alec Webb guy attractive. That complicates things a little. It always complicates things at least a little when you find someone attractive. It’s just, well, natural then to start extrapolating things like romantic or maybe just sexual potential and -
“Wait. What?” she says.
He shrugs and he doesn’t even look a little self-conscious. That’s not fair either. He twirls the knife between his fingers.
“I’m your friend.”
Alec is her friend. Molly is his friend.
“Oh.”
“Oh,” she says and Alec looks at her like a lot of things are really obvious, things like this, and well. Okay then.
-
A storm knocks out most of the camp. It’s one of those freak, middle of the night sort of things.
Molly wakes up to thunder and lightning and the roof of her tent caving in on itself and her.
“Great,” she mumbles into the plastic and the rainwater.
The next morning Alec helps her put it back together.
“Jesus Christ,” he mumbles. His hands slip over the wet fabric of her makeshift tent. “I could use a fucking drink,” he says.
Molly snorts.
“A nice cold beer?” she suggests.
“A bourbon on the rocks.”
“A dirty martini.”
“Jack Daniels, straight.”
“A margarita, no salt.”
“A sidecar.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
Alec shrugs.
“I don’t think anyone really does.”
They fix her tent and Molly laughs.
-
For awhile there, they all had something close to normal. There was even a golf course, for Christ’s sake. So they had that. And they had coconuts and mangoes and boar meet that was more akin to beef jerky than anything else.
It was close to normal. And maybe that was the problem. Maybe they all got too complacent, because now, now it’s like everything is bad and sad and scary. That pregnant chick Claire disappeared in the jungle, and then she came back and now apparently she’s giving birth. That guy Boone fell down and now he’s dead, and it’s not like Molly really knew him, but it still makes something sad twist inside of her.
Alec and Molly sit in a tense silence outside of his tent. She watches him, she watches his profile - the sharp bend of his nose and set of his lips, the beard that still threatens to grow in full, and -
“Oh my god,” Molly says.
“What?” Alex mumbles.
“I totally know you,” she says. He looks at her funny and clueless, and she gets that what she said is majorly fucking cryptic, but she’s sort of busy doing that thing in her brain where you connect the dots or arrange the film strip of your life, or whatever.
“Sydney,” she says. “I was there - the club,” she says. “I’m not making any sense.”
“No. No, you’re really not,” he says.
“I saw you at that club in Sydney. The night before the plane and the crash and everything. You were there. I remember you now. I saw you by the men’s bathroom.”
Alec narrows his eyes and then he laughs.
“Jesus Christ. I’ll be damned.” He laughs again, and there is something mocking in the tone of it. “You were the chick getting totally boned by the pay phones?”
“Shut up. I wasn’t getting…boned.”
“It totally looked like you were, man.”
There is a pause.
“I saw your nipple. By the way.”
“What?” she says. This is humiliating. And besides that, who the hell says that? Oh, by the way I saw your nipple, like, a month or so ago while you were macking on some dude. Awesome. Fuck.
“Your right nipple,” Alec says. “Yeah. Definitely saw that while you weren’t busy getting boned.”
“Stop using the word boned,” she snaps.
“Fine. You were that girl with her right tit hanging out while you were not having sexual intercourse outside the men’s bathroom. That better?”
Molly bites her bottom lip.
“Not really. No, actually.”
Alec makes a face as he takes a bite of boar meat. “Fucking sick,” he mutters, and then he looks up at her.
“Was that your boyfriend?” he asks.
“What…”
“The dude and the wall and your boobs - was that your boyfriend?”
“Um,” is all she says, and somehow the embarrassment of all of this just keeps growing, like, exponentially. It defies mathematics and logic and she really just wants to go all ostrich-like and burrow her way under the sand.
Alec smirks. Of course he fucking smirks.
“I thought as much,” he says. Molly sighs.
“Oh my god what does it even matter it’s not like I’m ever going to see him or the other him or any of the hims again anyway.”
Molly takes a deep breath and this is sad. There are a lot of things sad right now. It’s sad that she’s such a slut and sort of had sex with someone that wasn’t Donny and it’s sad that she used to do that shit all the fucking time and it’s so, so sad that this was the time that had to go and break the camel’s back and Donny had to go and scream at her and she had to scream back and it’s sad that it was enough to make her leave, make her buy a plane ticket, make her get on board and it is the fucking saddest thing on the planet that this plane had to go and crash and the last thing Donny ever said to her was that she was a whore and he hated her. Molly doesn’t know what to do with that. Molly doesn’t known, has never known, what do with the serious things life has to offer like people and responsibilities and goodbyes and love and anything really.
“Holy shit,” she says in this quiet, dead, like, robot voice. “They all think I’m dead.”
Alec looks at her funny. Again. But actually, no, his face isn’t that funny. His face is just really sad - another sad thing to add to the list, right there with ‘Claire had a baby in the jungle,’ and ‘that guy Boone went and died’ - and the whole world must think he’s dead too.
It’s like they are ghosts. It’s like they don’t even exist in this world anymore.
“You’re not dead,” Alec says, all firm and authoritative, and that’s stupid. She knows she isn’t dead. “You’re not dead,” he repeats, and the sun is setting all orange and red and yellow behind his head and into the ocean.
“You’re not dead,” he repeats, and it’s earnest and she doesn’t know what that means exactly.
His fingers brush over hers in the sand and she does not move a muscle.
For the first time since meeting him, Molly wonders what it would be like to kiss him. She watches their hands - his over hers - in the sand and her eyes wander to his mouth. She does not look at Alec’s eyes.
She decides that his mouth probably tastes like boar meat and she is glad she does not kiss him. She is glad he does not kiss her.
Sort of.
-
Things go from bad to worse. Like, if that’s possible.
So, this crazy bitch is all French and all, “The Others are coming,” like any of them know what the fuck that means.
The doctor tells them to go to the caves.
So they do.
Molly lays down with a blanket wrapped around her and Alec just sits next to her, his back curved.
“I know how to sail, you know,” he says, like, totally at random.
“Um,” she says. “No. No I didn’t know that.”
Alec doesn’t elaborate. Molly sits up on her elbows.
“Why didn’t you go on the raft then? You could have - you could have left,” she says.
Alec looks at her and Molly is nervous. But, you know. That could be on account of these Others that are supposedly coming or the fact they are sleeping in a fucking cave or maybe just the part where they are stuck on a deserted island. Or maybe it’s none of the above. Maybe she’s nervous because Alec looks at her and for once he isn’t smiling and that’s something new, that’s something different.
“You could have left,” she repeats quietly.
Alec shakes his head.
“No I couldn’t have,” he says.
The Others do not come that night. Which, like, praise Jesus or whatever.
They return to the beach in a couple days time and she returns to her tent and if Alec returns to her tent too, then so what? It’s not like they’re being all scandalous and fucking like rabbits (she will not be another Claire, hell no), but sometimes it’s nice to have company and sometimes it’s nice not to fall asleep alone and it’s nice the way she wakes up in his arms even though she didn’t fall asleep there and -
Yeah. This could be a problem.
(“So, like, you and Alec?” Shannon asks her.
“Whaaaat,” is all Molly says.
Shannon laughs and shrugs at the same time.
“Everyone knows he spends the night in with you.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Right.”
Bitch).
-
Day-to-day routine becomes defined by the existence of this creepy bunker thing that apparently saves the world?
She will never be able to wrap her head around that one. No way in hell.
But she’s on duty sometimes, and as nice as it should be to be surrounded by the trappings of civilization, it’s really sort of not. It’s actually really sort of creepy.
She doesn’t really know what it means that comfort and home or whatever has come to be defined by her tent and the evening and Alec in there with her.
She doesn’t think about it. She presses the button and she tries to make a smoothie with the blender (and fails) and listens to music she has never heard of. She does that, and then:
Sawyer comes back with a bullet and that Korean couple is reunited and Shannon dies, Shannon dies and there are all these people from the backend of the plane and they all walk and talk like ghosts, and it’s then, of course it’s then, that she remembers:
This place is fucking hell.
-
It’s like this: there is a bang or a blast or something really not normal and something potentially, like, fatal. That happens and the sky goes purple. Seriously. Purple.
The air goes funny too, a high-pitched noise all caught up in it and Molly clamps her hands over her ears and hunches over.
Later, it’s a group of them that decide to head into the jungle. It’s a group of them that decides to go looking for Hurley and Jack and Kate and Sawyer and Michael, and in that group is Alec but not Molly.
Later, it’s this:
“I’ll be back,” he says, like it’s nothing, like he’s running to Taco Bell for a fucking chalupa or something. But it’s not nothing, Molly doesn’t say. It’s not nothing - it’s really sort of everything. If he goes into the jungle chances are he won’t come back out. She isn’t stupid. She’s been paying attention. There are things in this jungle and things on this island that eat men alive and take men and don’t give them back, and maybe it’s the green and the jungle itself. Maybe this is motherfucking Jurassic Park and there are angry dinosaurs all pissed at Mother Nature and comets and God for that extinction business, and it’s not even that she likes Alec, but she’s just really not a fan of the idea of him being ripped limb for limb by a pack of vicious velicoraptors or whatever, and that’s totally understandable. You don’t wish death on people, you don’t wish violent dismemberment and gore. Even if you don’t like them and even if they are named Alec Webb and they talk all condescending and like they know shit you’ve never heard of just because they work on Wall Street, but Charlie Sheen did that too and look where it got him.
That’s not the point here. The point is Alec fills his water bottle with the collected rainwater that always manages to taste somehow both stale and sweaty and he says, “I’ll be back,” and shrugs a little. There’s already sweat collected in the center of his chest and the light grey of his t-shirt highlights this as it darkens from the moisture.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” she says. Alec glares and frowns at the same time and, wow, that was really the wrong thing to say, wasn’t it. “That’s not what I mean,” she says quickly.
Alec’s voice is cold when he says: “Then what exactly did you mean?”
Suddenly it’s like Molly can feel everything and it’s too much. The sun is too hot and her hair is too heavy, clinging thick in a ponytail at the back of her neck. There is sweat everywhere and sand everywhere and she is tired, she is really tired because it’s like everything on this little piece of land is such an effort and it’s exhausting after awhile. It’s exhausting, this whole pretending not to care but wanting to survive game they all seem to be playing. And Alec is exhausting. Alec with his stupid grin that scares her more times than not, and it’s not fair that Alec gets to be tall and Alec gets to be strong and that she has to be Molly and she has to wait on the beach, that she has to be afraid all the time. It isn’t fair that she wants him to stay, that she wants him to stay right here with her and she just doesn’t have the voice or the lack of pride to tell him.
It’s so fucking stupid.
Instead of the truth she puts her hands on her hips. Molly puts her hands on her hips and she says two words - “be careful” - and it’s so fucking stupid because it’s all she can say because suddenly she has this knot in her throat that’s not giving up and she wants to cry, but it’s not just Alec, it’s a lot of things, but maybe it’s just Alec too.
-
Alec comes back. Of course Alec comes back, why wouldn’t he?
He comes back and the bottoms of his jeans are soaked clear up to his knees and there is mud, everywhere. There is an angry gash along his collarbone and the blood has dried brown along the slight dip of a V of the collar of his shirt. His beard has grown in a little more. He looks like hell.
“You alright?” she asks him.
“Sure,” Alec says, and his eyes are wide and sort of glazed - like they were dropping acid or smoking blunt after blunt out there in the wildlife. Or then again, maybe not. There’s fear there too, and the knuckles of his left hand are bruised and bloodied.
When he grabs her by the wrist it catches her off guard. His thumb moves back and forth over the jut of bone at the corner of her wrist, like he’s soothing her or something and that’s stupid, she thinks. She’s fine. He’s fine and she’s fine.
When Molly turns her head and raises her chin, when she looks him in the eye, her breath catches in her chest.
“Alec,” she says and the sound is hesitant, unsure, and those are two things she is too. She swallows hard.
And that’s that.
He kisses her.
-
So if she was being rational and if she was being all honest she would say something like, “this was only a matter of time,” because that’s the truth.
He kisses her and she kisses him back and his mouth is hot and so is hers.
The button of his jeans is warm beneath her fingers. The zipper is warm too. All of him is warm and warmer still when she slides his pants down past his hips and lets them catch at the tops of his thighs.
Alec is big. Like, yeah. Big. Bigger than she expected, though it’s not like she’s been sitting around wondering how big his dick is because that would be stupid. And vaguely whorish. You don’t just meet men and then spend time wondering what they look like with their pants off. That’s the polar opposite of ladylike. That’s, like, not even on the same continuum as ladylike. Ladies don’t think about penises. Or at least that’s what Molly’s mother taught her, or, you know, taught her implicitly and without words because, gross.
Alec cups her face with both hands and he kisses her slow, slow like he’s studying her; Molly presses a hand flat low on his abdomen. The muscle tenses and contracts beneath her hand and his tongue is lazy against her own.
That’s not what she expected. If anything, she expected vicious and angry and fast. She expected for him to throw her down and for it all to be over just as quickly as it began and the whole thing would bleed into some sort of bizarre one-time memory and that would be that.
And maybe it will be a bizarre one-time memory. Maybe they’ll both be dead come morning or maybe she’ll wake up in a hospital room back in New York or Sydney or Los Angeles and this was all some horrifying coma-initiated dream. It doesn’t matter. Alec takes his time and her hips fit neatly below his hands and it’s easy to wrap her legs around his hips and arch into him.
If after he was to say, “I love you,” and if Molly was to return the sentiment, then so what?
Stranger shit has happened here.
-
(Her nose brushed against the column of his throat and he had swallowed. She felt it. Molly felt a lot of things like full and loose and tired, scared, content, like, every emotion ever, apparently.
Alec tangled a hand in her hair. His lips brushed against her forehead.
“I love you,” he murmured.
Molly shut her eyes.
“I love you too.”)
-
So, it’s like. Shit happens. Everyone knows that. Shit happens. Cars crash and trains derail and sometimes, and supposedly and statistically not all that often, planes fall out of the sky and your life as you know it ends. Shit happens. And it’s totally like Robert Frost once said -
she thinks it was Robert Frost, but she really can’t remember, college feels like a fucking extinct era ago, man, and it’s not like she can fact check any of this shit, but whatever, she digresses -
about how he can sum up everything he learned about life in three words: it goes on. And the dude was so right. Life does go on. Even though they all look like varying degrees of Tom Hanks from Castaway, life goes on. The big problems are no longer rent and paychecks and morning commutes and the traffic and marriages and relationships that fizzle and fade in the face of everything else. But life goes on. People still fight and people still fear and sometimes people still fall in love, and of course people die but just as some people die some of them live.
Some of them live.
-
The events all spill closer together now:
A woman falls from the sky and tells them that the world thinks they’re all, like, dead;
They hike to the radio tower and Jack promises rescue and there is this wild burst of a second where Molly actually believes him and Alec believes him and Jack talks to people on a boat, somewhere;
Charlie dies and they split - Molly follows Jack and Alec follows Molly and if there is meaning in that, well, then there is meaning in that;
There are gun battles and men in camo and it’s all sort of like a really bad action movie, and Molly doesn’t even like action movies but it’s all just like that, and people come and people go and there is a boat and then there isn’t a boat and it’s like rescue has become the biggest cock-tease on the planet and in the end in the end in the end -
They travel back in time.
What. The. Fuck.
-
So they run.
The jungle is dark but the arrows light their way. The arrows, all embedded in the trunks of trees, all bright with fire and Jesus, it’s like some sort of Indiana Jones bullshit or something, but she runs and he runs and they run together.
They run, they’re going to keep running, they’ll never stop running, she thinks, and if they keep running then they keep living, run to live, run to live, and Alec’s fingers slip and cling against her own and she follows him and she runs and -
(She falls first. She falls face down into the dirt and the loose jungle floor of greens and browns and there is an arrow square between her shoulders. Her shirt catches fire but she doesn’t feel it, and maybe that that’s the most merciful thing to come of any of this.
A plane crashed and she crashed and he crashed and they survived that, they survived a lot, and if she could maybe she would laugh. Right into the heart of the jungle, her cheek pressed against the packed and caked mud she would laugh because for her it ends like this.
The fire consumes her and Alec’s fingers hold tight to her hand and he drags her without meaning to because he keeps running. He keeps running with her.
The arrows fly. They found her and they find him and their story ends).
(Miles and miles away and in another time, in another era, Jack and Kate, Sayid and Sun, Hurley and that orphan baby return to the world they all left behind. Ben moved the island and Locke goes back, Locke brings them back, and as time flips and twists, shifts as only here it is apt to do, Molly Brighton and Alec Webb disappear).
“So fucking unfair,” Molly would maybe have said, once upon a time - New York and the drugs and the beats that skipped instead of soothed.
“So fucking unfair,” she might have said.
But what’s it really matter?
She’s dead, he’s dead, and the story continues on.
(Time skips, it travels backwards, forwards, back again. She took the wrong plane, she used to say. She should have waited, she shouldn’t have taken that plane. But it’s a lie.
There are manipulative things at work like fate. Things happen for a reason - it’s what all the old women of the world say together in unison. These things happen. They’re not all bad.
Molly falls and Alec doesn’t let go).
He doesn’t let go of her hand.
-
fin.
lost. a plane crashes in the jungle. if no one is alive to hear it, does it make a sound? original characters. rated r. 7860 words.
notes: haha, oh boy. this shall be known as the fic that ate my brain. and yes - original characters in a lost fic. oh, er, original of me? so, you remember that one time nikki and paulo were around and they were supposed to just be two random crash survivors and wound up being the most annoying jewel thieves on the planet? i sort of ran with that idea (minus the jewel thieving) and made two random background characters up and told the story through their eyes? THAT SAID: this is cracky and ridiculous and has zero literary (or fic) merit, haha. basically, i just really love deserted island stories. the end!
will you meet me down on a sandy beach
we can roll up our jeans
so the tide won’t get us below the knees
(colors and the kids, cat power)
Every story has a protagonist. And every protagonist has his sidekicks. Behind the sidekicks stand the aptly named background characters and Molly understands that. She understands that so she stands in the background.
She watches the news. She has read the books. She knows the words they use for people like her.
She’s pretty sure it’s called collateral damage, and she is pretty sure that does not bode too well for whatever future chain of events time and history and god or the island (what-the-fuck-ever) has planned out for her.
On September 22, 2004 her plane crashed.
But you already knew that.
-
Want to know the real problem here? Want to know what’s going to be the wrench in all of this, the thing that blows the train off the tracks and makes this that much sadder and that much bigger of a mess than it already needs to be?
No one ever looks at themselves and thinks white noise. No one ever looks in a mirror and no one ever sits back and calls themselves anything less than the main character. We’re all the main characters in the stories of our lives. That’s how that works. That’s how it has always worked.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern got their own fucking play out of the concept, man.
Molly Brighton won’t get her own but that’s okay too. That doesn’t totally have to suck. She has always thought the theater was for losers anyway.
-
It starts with the words tray tables in their upright position, or maybe that really didn’t happen. Maybe she dreamt it the same way people dream about car crashes and train derailments and the long tumble down an unreal flight of stairs.
Molly can’t remember now, but that might be on account of the large cut on her forehead. It aches like hell, but it really hurts when she wrinkles up her forehead or just, like, moves her eyebrows up and down. Not that she does that a lot. But she’s doing it a lot now, now that she knows it makes the wound wince, which sounds so totally creepy and masochistic and she doesn’t mean it like that, but she’s just curious.
She furrows her brow once and it hurts, and when she furrows her brow again, this time a little deeper, it hurts even more.
“I have a bleeding head wound,” she says out loud, but no one’s really listening. There’s this blonde chick just, like, standing there, screaming her head off but Molly can’t really hear her from where she’s sitting. The propellers are still making noise and everyone seems to just be yelling and screaming, though unlike the blonde they’re all scurrying around. Bees in a hive or ants on a hill or something, and she’s not really sure what any of them are trying to accomplish, running around like that, but whatever. To each his own. She’s just going to sit there, on the beach, far enough away from the fire and the burning jet fuel (which fucking reeks, for the record, she’s never going to get that smell off her skin, out of her hair, out of her nose) and the gentle lap of the ocean.
-
She sits there for awhile.
She thinks they call this shock. She is trying her best to remember everything she ever learned from middle school health classes or that CPR course she took when she was like 16 and worked at the Des Moines Community Center, or, hell, any of those creepy ass medical shows she used to watch on TLC.
Nothing really rings a bell.
Instead she sits in the sand and she’s far enough away that she can’t feel the heat from the still smoldering fires and she can’t really hear the things people are saying and yelling to each other, and that’s okay. She likes the distance. Her forehead has stopped bleeding and she thinks about her boyfriend Donny and whether or not he is still in Sydney and whether or not he has heard about the crash and whether or not they are even still boyfriend and girlfriend after last night. She thinks about New York, she thinks about what all her friends will say when she tells them this story in a couple days. “Our plane fucking crashed,” she would say and they would drink martinis to celebrate awesome things like cheating death and rescue helicopters and being alive and well in New York City. And maybe Donny would forgive her, or, like, fuck Donny, maybe she’d meet someone better, maybe she’d get to go on Oprah and tell her tale of survival and -
“Are you okay?”
Molly looks up. There’s this guy standing above her. She raises a hand and shields her eyes but he’s still backlit too bright against the sun. He’s tall, but then again she’s sitting down, so, like, a Muppet or a midget would probably appear tall to her. Still. She’s pretty sure he’s tall by most standards, sitting or otherwise. He’s young, or at least as young, if not a year or two older, than she is. He has dark hair and he looks like he hasn’t shaved in a day or two and his neck is all caked with dried blood. Gross.
“Sure,” she says. Her throat is really dry and the word makes it hurt.
She stays seated and he stays standing and he looks at her all intently, and great. She’s found the one creeper stalker that was aboard their plane. Awesome.
“Do I know you?” this guy asks her. Molly shakes her head, which was sort of stupid. It makes her neck ache that much more. “You sure?” he asks. Molly’s face sours and she purses her lips. Like, why would she lie about knowing him? He’s not her type at all - his shirt has a collar and his sleeves are rolled and there’s a Jackson Pollock-esque dash of red blood over the breast pocket and his belt matches his shoes and he’s got a face that says fine breeding the same way his shirt says his initials, AFW, over the pocket and the blood and his chest.
“Well,” she says, pauses for effect. “We were just on the same plane. You might know me from there.” She can almost taste the acid of her words on her tongue, and it tastes good and that makes her smile.
His smile in return is cautious and guarded but his teeth are sharp and she sort of likes that too.
“Alec,” he says and extends a hand. “I’m Alec Webb.”
She takes his hand and stands.
“I’m Molly Brighton.”
-
People are already starting to act like this is fucking home now. Home, despite the monster in the jungle that sounds more like a broken piece of machinery than Godzilla, and home, despite the polar bears, whatever the fuck that’s all about. These weirdos seriously start acting like this might be home.
Molly hates these people.
They all take the blue, regulation airline blankets and they try to drape them over glorified twigs and sticks and call it a home. It depresses her.
And, okay. Maybe the main reason this is beyond depressing for her is because back home she could barely even put together the bookcase she bought from Ikea that one time. She is not a fucking carpenter. And trying to build a house all MacGyver-like out of the broken remains of a jumbo jet coupled with, like, foliage and mud isn’t exactly easy.
So she just stares for awhile. She crosses her arms over her chest and stares at the collection of various items before her. Thinks about Gilligan’s Island and HGTV. Neither are proving really all that helpful at the moment.
“Need a hand?”
Molly whirls around and when she does she is defiant. It’s dumb. Whatever. Asking for help is lame and Molly doesn’t want to be lame, but she also doesn’t want to be homeless, so, yeah, hello, crossroad.
It’s that Alec guy from earlier. He’s still dressed like he’s going to meet the good old boys at the club later for a scotch, but like a wrinkled and cranky version of that. Actually, he looks sort of like the morning after version of that scenario with maybe a strip club or two thrown into the mix.
And of course she needs a hand. She just can’t decide if this is the sort of dude you ask for one.
She shrugs.
Alec takes that as a yes.
-
Some dead dude (or chick, she guesses) aboard their plane was a total klepto, because, like, she finds this suitcase filled with all those tiny shampoo and conditioner bottles hotels give you for free. Or maybe he worked for a hotel and sold those little bottles, but she doesn’t think that’s how it works.
But she has shampoo now. So that’s sort of awesome.
Everyone bathes in the ocean here, which is just. Ew. Total Third World country-esque or something nasty and unhygienic.
Molly wanders down the stretch of beach, primarily because she is not a total exhibitionist like some of their former fellow passengers. No one needs to watch you try to wipe yourself down in the ocean. Like, no one.
So she wanders down the beach, wanders far enough down so that no one can see her, but not too far in case, like, Poseidon or some sea monster tries to eat her they’ll all be able to hear her scream. That’s called planning ahead.
She rounds a curve, and oh shit. There is Alec. There is Alec, in the ocean. And sure, the water is up to his waist, but she’s like 99% positive he is totally naked, and yeah. Awkward.
And probably made all the more awkward that Molly, you know, stares at him.
He has a build like a mangy frat boy or something. Like maybe at some point he was really skinny and fit, a runner or whatever, but enough beer or keg stands and Monday night football nacho sessions have had their toll and all that’s left of previous muscle definition are a few lines and a sort of flat stomach and not much else.
Not that it’s a bad thing. No girl really wants to go to bed with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Or at least no girl should want to go to bed with Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his current incarnation or, like, ever.
Not that she wants to go to bed with Alec. That’s not what she’s saying at all. Nope. Not at all.
She turns on her heel and heads in the opposite direction.
She can wash off later.
-
Some people move into the caves. Molly stays on the beach. Alec stays on the beach too.
She sort of hangs out with Alec out of lack of anyone else to talk to. The feeling seems to be mutual because it’s not like he acts like he resents talking to her or whatever. Sometimes he hangs out with Scott or Steve and sometimes she sits around with Shannon, but Shannon’s more of a Debbie Downer than the situation really warrants, so yeah.
“What were you doing in Oz, hm?” he asks her.
“Ew,” she says. “Don’t call it that. You sound super douchey.”
Alec rolls his eyes. “Fine. What were you doing in Australia?” He puts an unnecessary emphasis on the word Australia so he sounds just as douchey and obnoxious as he did the first go round.
“Is this your idea of small talk? Because it sucks. This isn’t the airport lounge or a singles mixer or wherever you seem to think we are.”
“Are you always this charming? Or are you just trying to avoid the question?”
“Fuck off,” she sighs. “I was in Australia because my boyfriend is a DJ and he had a gig there. The end.”
Alec frowns.
“Was he on the plane?” This makes her laugh. And based on Alec’s reaction this is probably not the most appropriate thing she could have done.
“Jesus. No. You think I’d just be chilling out if my boyfriend was missing right now? Or, like, dead?”
“I don’t know,” Alec says. “You don’t strike me as the most sentimental girl I’ve ever met.”
“That’s, like, not even being sentimental. That’s just…I don’t know. Being a human. You don’t think I’m a human?”
He smirks. “No. I happen to be of the opinion that you’re a robot. At the very least.”
Molly glances up at the sun. Sweat drips lazily at the back of her neck and along her spine. She wants to squirm but she doesn’t want to let Alec see that. “Are you waiting for me to rust out here?” she asks.
His mouth is lazy around a smile. “Sure. I think it’ll look good on you,” he says, and fuck, it’s like they’re flirting or something mildly dangerous, or sort of dangerous, but, like, not as dangerous as a plane crash. But almost.
She sighs loudly.
“I left him in Sydney.”
“What?”
“My boyfriend. We, we had a fight the night before and I decided I’d just go back to New York and we could work things out there. So I left. Got on the plane. And I imagine you know the rest.”
He nods his head and smiles this rue smile, and maybe he’s always smiled like that and nothing’s changed for him at all.
“What about you?” she asks and Alec looks confused. “Australia,” she prompts.
“Oh. Bachelor party.”
“In Australia?”
Alec shrugs. “He likes to party hard.”
Molly hums a little in the back of her throat, like maybe what he said makes sense, and in a way it does. She flew all the way to fucking Sydney for a party too.
“Are you from Los Angeles?” she asks. She doesn’t know why she keeps asking questions, but she does know that there is something threatening and all-consuming in the possibility of silence and she doesn’t want that. She wants the noise and she wants people and if that means continually asking this guy questions, then so be it.
“What? No,” he says. “New York. I’m from New York. I live in Manhattan. I, uh, work on Wall Street,” he says. Molly’s smile is genuine.
“Really? Me too. Well, the living in Manhattan part. I definitely do not work on Wall Street,” she says. Alec smiles too, but Alec is always smiling. “I work in a Starbucks. In Manhattan. I mean. I live there now. I was living there, Manhattan. I’m from Iowa originally. My parents still live - ” and she stumbles.
Alec catches the stumble for her.
“My parents have always lived in Manhattan,” he says in this bland sort of way, but he is watching her carefully. He’s watching her like he thinks she is seconds from some sort of massive hysteric breakdown, and fuck him, maybe she is.
“Oh yeah?” she finds herself saying in reply. “I bet that was nice.”
“Yeah,” he says, then pauses. “No. Not really. We were never exactly the happiest of families,” he says. “It was sort of all, trust no one, I guess.”
Molly snorts.
“Dude. That’s, like, totally from The X-Files. ‘Trust no one,’” she mimics. “Was your dad Fox Mulder?”
He narrows his eyes at her. “You watch The X-Files?” Alec says it like it’s a bad thing, or that she should be embarrassed about it, but, like, fuck him.
She twists a lock of hair around her finger and widens her eyes like he’s stupid and an asshole and shouldn’t say such annoying things to her.
“Well. What else do you watch at three in the morning?” And it’s so true, you know. There’s not much on TV at three in the morning. And it’s, like, sad that she watches TV at three in the morning. Taking hits of blow or just downing enough shots to keep her hips swiveling to the music used to make her so fucking horny, but lately it’s just been sort of like who cares. She doesn’t know if it’s the men who have become less attractive or she’s just getting older, but a woman’s libido is supposed to increase as she gets older, right? So that can’t be the problem, and the very thought that she’s bored of sex is just too depressing for words, so whatever. Back to the point. TV and Fox Mulder and Alec Webb and three AM and how her viewing choices do not make her a total, irredeemable loser. Because, like, sure, there are those infomercials about knives, but those are so fucking trippy when you yourself are already tripping, and there’s usually a Sylvester Stallone or Jean Claude Van Damme movie on, but fuck those guys, so she’ll settle on the aliens and the government and David Duchovny.
“I usually just settle for the Ambien,” he drawls, and Molly thinks she might really hate him. She looks to the ocean.
“What is it with your rich people and the whole not sleeping thing?”
Alec laughs a little and it’s unexpected. She draws her knees in to her chest and there is sand stuck to the backs of her legs and the grains smear across her hands and it is so official: she hates the beach.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Isn’t it, like, a proven fact that rich people don’t sleep well? All those medicine cabinets full of sleeping pills or whatever.” Her fingers draw patterns in the sand in the small space between her right hip and his left. “Maybe it’s a trade-off.”
“Hmm?” he hums.
“Maybe it’s, like, because you’re rich and you have all that money and wealth and like eight houses you don’t get to sleep well anymore. Like Faust. You get the whole trade-off. You have to give up a good night’s rest for the riches.”
He snorts.
“Totally worth it,” he says. Alec leans back on his elbows, some sort of portrait of Gatsby-era relaxation, like he’s Robert fucking Redford, but his face mars the image. His mouth is thin and tight, like his teeth are clenched real tight together and he’s grinding them down. That can’t be good for the enamel, Molly thinks. That can’t be good at all.
“Liar,” she sighs.
Alec doesn’t argue with her and she doesn’t know him well enough to know what that means. She has enough presence of mind to imagine it must mean something, and it probably does.
There is sand stuck to her calves and sand stuck into each and every pore of her skin and she hates it. Her body itches and the sun makes her glow tan and she thinks of leather a lot these days, imagines that’s what she’ll come to look like and it is gross and it frightens her a little.
The skies are blue and open and empty here and that scares her too.
-
So, like. Time passes.
It’s not like they get invited on hikes or anything. Or if hikes are really the sort of thing where invites are sent out and RSVPs are expected, but it kind of seems that way here at least. And Molly doesn’t really care. Nature can suck it. She doesn’t like the bugs and the mud and how everything on this damn island sticks in gross, gross places and it’s like she can never get clean (but maybe that’s because she showers in the motherfucking ocean now and fish pee in that same motherfucking ocean and oh Jesus Christ she’s been showering herself in fish piss for the last month, ugh).
It just gives her that much more downtime. And if anything, she has learned that downtime absolutely sucks when there is nothing more to do than pace the same strip of land or try to build a fort out of airplane wreckage or befriend a group of misfit strangers.
The bald old dude and the sort of hot guy with the blue eyes (“My name’s Boone,” he had told her and she had laughed and actually said, “Like Daniel?” and he had rolled his eyes like he gets that one at least once a year) go into the jungle on a sort of daily basis. Or at least the two of them are gone every morning and they come back every evening all Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
The doctor is bossy and boring. There’s the former rock star dude and he’s sometimes good company, same goes for the knocked up chick. It’s just, Molly sort of forgot how big of an effort it can be to make friends.
“I thought making friends was supposed to be all natural and easy,” she tells Alec one evening.
“Well. You are sort of a bitch,” Alec says. And then he smiles and raises both his eyebrows all high like he’s saying, “ah-ha!” only without the words and only his eyebrows instead.
She glares at him. Alec puts down the knife he’s holding (he’s like whittling sticks, what the fuck is this?) and he looks at her all mock serious.
“What? The kids not being nice to you on the playground?”
She rolls her eyes.
“Fuck off. Asshole.” She looks over her shoulder. The Middle Eastern dude is fiddling with something technical looking by the bonfire. Hurley is with him. She likes Hurley. She thinks Hurley likes her too, so that’s nice. Maybe she can count him as friend. So that gets her up to…one? That’s sad. That’s really past the line of pathetic and into crazy cat lady territory.
And, oh, God. It’s like she misses everything right now. She misses skim lattes and she misses that fucking Norah Jones soundtrack Starbucks played all fucking day long while she made drinks she can’t even pronounce let alone comprehend their composition. She misses loud music and strangers and the way New York was always something new, how it didn’t matter where you went but you might see a familiar face, you might not but either way it was home and that always means something.
Her teeth sink into her slice of mango and this is so fucking lame but she’s blinking back tears and how goddamned pathetic is that? Like, at one point she was cool and at one point she might have even been considered badass, but here all she really wants to do is, like, weep, which, ugh. Lame. Lame, lame, lame, she wants to go home.
She turns back to Alec.
“Aren’t you lonely?” she asks. Alec purses his lips together. He’s one of those people with those ridiculously expressive faces. She’s getting that now. “I mean, I have zero friends here. I’m not used to that. I’m used to people. I’m used to company. I’m not…I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
And she doesn’t.
Alec picks up the knife again and then just as quickly he puts it back down. He stares at the knife and the handle and the collection of wood and wood shavings there and Molly is just on the point of asking what the hell he is even doing when he speaks first.
“I’m your friend,” he says. He looks at her directly, and he is way, way better at eye contact than she is. Molly tries but she does a pretty shitty job of maintaining it. She wants to, like, yell at him because really - his face is sort of beyond distracting. It’s just, he’s got those blue eyes and he’s wearing a blue shirt and it’s like the two sort of match and that’s not fair and he’s trying to pin her down with those same blue eyes, and he’s gotten tanner since they’ve been there and it doesn’t look bad on him, and his hair’s still dark and messy and he’s still got the stubble and Jesus Christ she finds Alec attractive. That’s what this is about. She finds this Alec Webb guy attractive. That complicates things a little. It always complicates things at least a little when you find someone attractive. It’s just, well, natural then to start extrapolating things like romantic or maybe just sexual potential and -
“Wait. What?” she says.
He shrugs and he doesn’t even look a little self-conscious. That’s not fair either. He twirls the knife between his fingers.
“I’m your friend.”
Alec is her friend. Molly is his friend.
“Oh.”
“Oh,” she says and Alec looks at her like a lot of things are really obvious, things like this, and well. Okay then.
-
A storm knocks out most of the camp. It’s one of those freak, middle of the night sort of things.
Molly wakes up to thunder and lightning and the roof of her tent caving in on itself and her.
“Great,” she mumbles into the plastic and the rainwater.
The next morning Alec helps her put it back together.
“Jesus Christ,” he mumbles. His hands slip over the wet fabric of her makeshift tent. “I could use a fucking drink,” he says.
Molly snorts.
“A nice cold beer?” she suggests.
“A bourbon on the rocks.”
“A dirty martini.”
“Jack Daniels, straight.”
“A margarita, no salt.”
“A sidecar.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
Alec shrugs.
“I don’t think anyone really does.”
They fix her tent and Molly laughs.
-
For awhile there, they all had something close to normal. There was even a golf course, for Christ’s sake. So they had that. And they had coconuts and mangoes and boar meet that was more akin to beef jerky than anything else.
It was close to normal. And maybe that was the problem. Maybe they all got too complacent, because now, now it’s like everything is bad and sad and scary. That pregnant chick Claire disappeared in the jungle, and then she came back and now apparently she’s giving birth. That guy Boone fell down and now he’s dead, and it’s not like Molly really knew him, but it still makes something sad twist inside of her.
Alec and Molly sit in a tense silence outside of his tent. She watches him, she watches his profile - the sharp bend of his nose and set of his lips, the beard that still threatens to grow in full, and -
“Oh my god,” Molly says.
“What?” Alex mumbles.
“I totally know you,” she says. He looks at her funny and clueless, and she gets that what she said is majorly fucking cryptic, but she’s sort of busy doing that thing in her brain where you connect the dots or arrange the film strip of your life, or whatever.
“Sydney,” she says. “I was there - the club,” she says. “I’m not making any sense.”
“No. No, you’re really not,” he says.
“I saw you at that club in Sydney. The night before the plane and the crash and everything. You were there. I remember you now. I saw you by the men’s bathroom.”
Alec narrows his eyes and then he laughs.
“Jesus Christ. I’ll be damned.” He laughs again, and there is something mocking in the tone of it. “You were the chick getting totally boned by the pay phones?”
“Shut up. I wasn’t getting…boned.”
“It totally looked like you were, man.”
There is a pause.
“I saw your nipple. By the way.”
“What?” she says. This is humiliating. And besides that, who the hell says that? Oh, by the way I saw your nipple, like, a month or so ago while you were macking on some dude. Awesome. Fuck.
“Your right nipple,” Alec says. “Yeah. Definitely saw that while you weren’t busy getting boned.”
“Stop using the word boned,” she snaps.
“Fine. You were that girl with her right tit hanging out while you were not having sexual intercourse outside the men’s bathroom. That better?”
Molly bites her bottom lip.
“Not really. No, actually.”
Alec makes a face as he takes a bite of boar meat. “Fucking sick,” he mutters, and then he looks up at her.
“Was that your boyfriend?” he asks.
“What…”
“The dude and the wall and your boobs - was that your boyfriend?”
“Um,” is all she says, and somehow the embarrassment of all of this just keeps growing, like, exponentially. It defies mathematics and logic and she really just wants to go all ostrich-like and burrow her way under the sand.
Alec smirks. Of course he fucking smirks.
“I thought as much,” he says. Molly sighs.
“Oh my god what does it even matter it’s not like I’m ever going to see him or the other him or any of the hims again anyway.”
Molly takes a deep breath and this is sad. There are a lot of things sad right now. It’s sad that she’s such a slut and sort of had sex with someone that wasn’t Donny and it’s sad that she used to do that shit all the fucking time and it’s so, so sad that this was the time that had to go and break the camel’s back and Donny had to go and scream at her and she had to scream back and it’s sad that it was enough to make her leave, make her buy a plane ticket, make her get on board and it is the fucking saddest thing on the planet that this plane had to go and crash and the last thing Donny ever said to her was that she was a whore and he hated her. Molly doesn’t know what to do with that. Molly doesn’t known, has never known, what do with the serious things life has to offer like people and responsibilities and goodbyes and love and anything really.
“Holy shit,” she says in this quiet, dead, like, robot voice. “They all think I’m dead.”
Alec looks at her funny. Again. But actually, no, his face isn’t that funny. His face is just really sad - another sad thing to add to the list, right there with ‘Claire had a baby in the jungle,’ and ‘that guy Boone went and died’ - and the whole world must think he’s dead too.
It’s like they are ghosts. It’s like they don’t even exist in this world anymore.
“You’re not dead,” Alec says, all firm and authoritative, and that’s stupid. She knows she isn’t dead. “You’re not dead,” he repeats, and the sun is setting all orange and red and yellow behind his head and into the ocean.
“You’re not dead,” he repeats, and it’s earnest and she doesn’t know what that means exactly.
His fingers brush over hers in the sand and she does not move a muscle.
For the first time since meeting him, Molly wonders what it would be like to kiss him. She watches their hands - his over hers - in the sand and her eyes wander to his mouth. She does not look at Alec’s eyes.
She decides that his mouth probably tastes like boar meat and she is glad she does not kiss him. She is glad he does not kiss her.
Sort of.
-
Things go from bad to worse. Like, if that’s possible.
So, this crazy bitch is all French and all, “The Others are coming,” like any of them know what the fuck that means.
The doctor tells them to go to the caves.
So they do.
Molly lays down with a blanket wrapped around her and Alec just sits next to her, his back curved.
“I know how to sail, you know,” he says, like, totally at random.
“Um,” she says. “No. No I didn’t know that.”
Alec doesn’t elaborate. Molly sits up on her elbows.
“Why didn’t you go on the raft then? You could have - you could have left,” she says.
Alec looks at her and Molly is nervous. But, you know. That could be on account of these Others that are supposedly coming or the fact they are sleeping in a fucking cave or maybe just the part where they are stuck on a deserted island. Or maybe it’s none of the above. Maybe she’s nervous because Alec looks at her and for once he isn’t smiling and that’s something new, that’s something different.
“You could have left,” she repeats quietly.
Alec shakes his head.
“No I couldn’t have,” he says.
The Others do not come that night. Which, like, praise Jesus or whatever.
They return to the beach in a couple days time and she returns to her tent and if Alec returns to her tent too, then so what? It’s not like they’re being all scandalous and fucking like rabbits (she will not be another Claire, hell no), but sometimes it’s nice to have company and sometimes it’s nice not to fall asleep alone and it’s nice the way she wakes up in his arms even though she didn’t fall asleep there and -
Yeah. This could be a problem.
(“So, like, you and Alec?” Shannon asks her.
“Whaaaat,” is all Molly says.
Shannon laughs and shrugs at the same time.
“Everyone knows he spends the night in with you.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Right.”
Bitch).
-
Day-to-day routine becomes defined by the existence of this creepy bunker thing that apparently saves the world?
She will never be able to wrap her head around that one. No way in hell.
But she’s on duty sometimes, and as nice as it should be to be surrounded by the trappings of civilization, it’s really sort of not. It’s actually really sort of creepy.
She doesn’t really know what it means that comfort and home or whatever has come to be defined by her tent and the evening and Alec in there with her.
She doesn’t think about it. She presses the button and she tries to make a smoothie with the blender (and fails) and listens to music she has never heard of. She does that, and then:
Sawyer comes back with a bullet and that Korean couple is reunited and Shannon dies, Shannon dies and there are all these people from the backend of the plane and they all walk and talk like ghosts, and it’s then, of course it’s then, that she remembers:
This place is fucking hell.
-
It’s like this: there is a bang or a blast or something really not normal and something potentially, like, fatal. That happens and the sky goes purple. Seriously. Purple.
The air goes funny too, a high-pitched noise all caught up in it and Molly clamps her hands over her ears and hunches over.
Later, it’s a group of them that decide to head into the jungle. It’s a group of them that decides to go looking for Hurley and Jack and Kate and Sawyer and Michael, and in that group is Alec but not Molly.
Later, it’s this:
“I’ll be back,” he says, like it’s nothing, like he’s running to Taco Bell for a fucking chalupa or something. But it’s not nothing, Molly doesn’t say. It’s not nothing - it’s really sort of everything. If he goes into the jungle chances are he won’t come back out. She isn’t stupid. She’s been paying attention. There are things in this jungle and things on this island that eat men alive and take men and don’t give them back, and maybe it’s the green and the jungle itself. Maybe this is motherfucking Jurassic Park and there are angry dinosaurs all pissed at Mother Nature and comets and God for that extinction business, and it’s not even that she likes Alec, but she’s just really not a fan of the idea of him being ripped limb for limb by a pack of vicious velicoraptors or whatever, and that’s totally understandable. You don’t wish death on people, you don’t wish violent dismemberment and gore. Even if you don’t like them and even if they are named Alec Webb and they talk all condescending and like they know shit you’ve never heard of just because they work on Wall Street, but Charlie Sheen did that too and look where it got him.
That’s not the point here. The point is Alec fills his water bottle with the collected rainwater that always manages to taste somehow both stale and sweaty and he says, “I’ll be back,” and shrugs a little. There’s already sweat collected in the center of his chest and the light grey of his t-shirt highlights this as it darkens from the moisture.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” she says. Alec glares and frowns at the same time and, wow, that was really the wrong thing to say, wasn’t it. “That’s not what I mean,” she says quickly.
Alec’s voice is cold when he says: “Then what exactly did you mean?”
Suddenly it’s like Molly can feel everything and it’s too much. The sun is too hot and her hair is too heavy, clinging thick in a ponytail at the back of her neck. There is sweat everywhere and sand everywhere and she is tired, she is really tired because it’s like everything on this little piece of land is such an effort and it’s exhausting after awhile. It’s exhausting, this whole pretending not to care but wanting to survive game they all seem to be playing. And Alec is exhausting. Alec with his stupid grin that scares her more times than not, and it’s not fair that Alec gets to be tall and Alec gets to be strong and that she has to be Molly and she has to wait on the beach, that she has to be afraid all the time. It isn’t fair that she wants him to stay, that she wants him to stay right here with her and she just doesn’t have the voice or the lack of pride to tell him.
It’s so fucking stupid.
Instead of the truth she puts her hands on her hips. Molly puts her hands on her hips and she says two words - “be careful” - and it’s so fucking stupid because it’s all she can say because suddenly she has this knot in her throat that’s not giving up and she wants to cry, but it’s not just Alec, it’s a lot of things, but maybe it’s just Alec too.
-
Alec comes back. Of course Alec comes back, why wouldn’t he?
He comes back and the bottoms of his jeans are soaked clear up to his knees and there is mud, everywhere. There is an angry gash along his collarbone and the blood has dried brown along the slight dip of a V of the collar of his shirt. His beard has grown in a little more. He looks like hell.
“You alright?” she asks him.
“Sure,” Alec says, and his eyes are wide and sort of glazed - like they were dropping acid or smoking blunt after blunt out there in the wildlife. Or then again, maybe not. There’s fear there too, and the knuckles of his left hand are bruised and bloodied.
When he grabs her by the wrist it catches her off guard. His thumb moves back and forth over the jut of bone at the corner of her wrist, like he’s soothing her or something and that’s stupid, she thinks. She’s fine. He’s fine and she’s fine.
When Molly turns her head and raises her chin, when she looks him in the eye, her breath catches in her chest.
“Alec,” she says and the sound is hesitant, unsure, and those are two things she is too. She swallows hard.
And that’s that.
He kisses her.
-
So if she was being rational and if she was being all honest she would say something like, “this was only a matter of time,” because that’s the truth.
He kisses her and she kisses him back and his mouth is hot and so is hers.
The button of his jeans is warm beneath her fingers. The zipper is warm too. All of him is warm and warmer still when she slides his pants down past his hips and lets them catch at the tops of his thighs.
Alec is big. Like, yeah. Big. Bigger than she expected, though it’s not like she’s been sitting around wondering how big his dick is because that would be stupid. And vaguely whorish. You don’t just meet men and then spend time wondering what they look like with their pants off. That’s the polar opposite of ladylike. That’s, like, not even on the same continuum as ladylike. Ladies don’t think about penises. Or at least that’s what Molly’s mother taught her, or, you know, taught her implicitly and without words because, gross.
Alec cups her face with both hands and he kisses her slow, slow like he’s studying her; Molly presses a hand flat low on his abdomen. The muscle tenses and contracts beneath her hand and his tongue is lazy against her own.
That’s not what she expected. If anything, she expected vicious and angry and fast. She expected for him to throw her down and for it all to be over just as quickly as it began and the whole thing would bleed into some sort of bizarre one-time memory and that would be that.
And maybe it will be a bizarre one-time memory. Maybe they’ll both be dead come morning or maybe she’ll wake up in a hospital room back in New York or Sydney or Los Angeles and this was all some horrifying coma-initiated dream. It doesn’t matter. Alec takes his time and her hips fit neatly below his hands and it’s easy to wrap her legs around his hips and arch into him.
If after he was to say, “I love you,” and if Molly was to return the sentiment, then so what?
Stranger shit has happened here.
-
(Her nose brushed against the column of his throat and he had swallowed. She felt it. Molly felt a lot of things like full and loose and tired, scared, content, like, every emotion ever, apparently.
Alec tangled a hand in her hair. His lips brushed against her forehead.
“I love you,” he murmured.
Molly shut her eyes.
“I love you too.”)
-
So, it’s like. Shit happens. Everyone knows that. Shit happens. Cars crash and trains derail and sometimes, and supposedly and statistically not all that often, planes fall out of the sky and your life as you know it ends. Shit happens. And it’s totally like Robert Frost once said -
she thinks it was Robert Frost, but she really can’t remember, college feels like a fucking extinct era ago, man, and it’s not like she can fact check any of this shit, but whatever, she digresses -
about how he can sum up everything he learned about life in three words: it goes on. And the dude was so right. Life does go on. Even though they all look like varying degrees of Tom Hanks from Castaway, life goes on. The big problems are no longer rent and paychecks and morning commutes and the traffic and marriages and relationships that fizzle and fade in the face of everything else. But life goes on. People still fight and people still fear and sometimes people still fall in love, and of course people die but just as some people die some of them live.
Some of them live.
-
The events all spill closer together now:
A woman falls from the sky and tells them that the world thinks they’re all, like, dead;
They hike to the radio tower and Jack promises rescue and there is this wild burst of a second where Molly actually believes him and Alec believes him and Jack talks to people on a boat, somewhere;
Charlie dies and they split - Molly follows Jack and Alec follows Molly and if there is meaning in that, well, then there is meaning in that;
There are gun battles and men in camo and it’s all sort of like a really bad action movie, and Molly doesn’t even like action movies but it’s all just like that, and people come and people go and there is a boat and then there isn’t a boat and it’s like rescue has become the biggest cock-tease on the planet and in the end in the end in the end -
They travel back in time.
What. The. Fuck.
-
So they run.
The jungle is dark but the arrows light their way. The arrows, all embedded in the trunks of trees, all bright with fire and Jesus, it’s like some sort of Indiana Jones bullshit or something, but she runs and he runs and they run together.
They run, they’re going to keep running, they’ll never stop running, she thinks, and if they keep running then they keep living, run to live, run to live, and Alec’s fingers slip and cling against her own and she follows him and she runs and -
(She falls first. She falls face down into the dirt and the loose jungle floor of greens and browns and there is an arrow square between her shoulders. Her shirt catches fire but she doesn’t feel it, and maybe that that’s the most merciful thing to come of any of this.
A plane crashed and she crashed and he crashed and they survived that, they survived a lot, and if she could maybe she would laugh. Right into the heart of the jungle, her cheek pressed against the packed and caked mud she would laugh because for her it ends like this.
The fire consumes her and Alec’s fingers hold tight to her hand and he drags her without meaning to because he keeps running. He keeps running with her.
The arrows fly. They found her and they find him and their story ends).
(Miles and miles away and in another time, in another era, Jack and Kate, Sayid and Sun, Hurley and that orphan baby return to the world they all left behind. Ben moved the island and Locke goes back, Locke brings them back, and as time flips and twists, shifts as only here it is apt to do, Molly Brighton and Alec Webb disappear).
“So fucking unfair,” Molly would maybe have said, once upon a time - New York and the drugs and the beats that skipped instead of soothed.
“So fucking unfair,” she might have said.
But what’s it really matter?
She’s dead, he’s dead, and the story continues on.
(Time skips, it travels backwards, forwards, back again. She took the wrong plane, she used to say. She should have waited, she shouldn’t have taken that plane. But it’s a lie.
There are manipulative things at work like fate. Things happen for a reason - it’s what all the old women of the world say together in unison. These things happen. They’re not all bad.
Molly falls and Alec doesn’t let go).
He doesn’t let go of her hand.
-
fin.