The Scientific Method -- Charladay
Title: The Scientific Method
Rating: Let’s say PG-13, to be safe.
Characters: Daniel/Charlotte, Sun, Miles
Summary: In the 20th century, a hypothetico-deductive model for scientific methods was formulated. One-shot. Playing with canon a little bit, in terms of timing and dates.
Spoilers: Up to 5x05.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Author’s Note: I’m a little hesitant about this one, since it’s my first attempt at a fic with any sexytime. But this plot bunny wouldn’t leave me alone, so here we are. This was actually inspired by some Television Without Pity recaps, where the 'Lost' recapper -- who's hilarious, by the way -- kept making cracks about Dan and Charlotte's "chastest love of all." It got me to wondering whether their relationship was really so chaste after all.
The Scientific Method
i. Use your experience: Consider the problem and try to make sense of it. Look for previous explanations. If this is a new problem to you, then move to step two.
There comes a point when there’s nothing left to do but drink.
Back at camp after a day that felt eons long, the castaways - still training suspicious eyes on their new freighter friends, speaking in clipped, hushed tones and grouping loosely together to talk when they thought Dan and Charlotte were preoccupied - were either heading to their tents to grab a few hours of sleep, or huddled around the campfire with exhaustion etched on their features.
Someone had grabbed a couple bottles of Dharma rum, distributing them through the group. Charlotte and Daniel - still branded the enemy - waste no time moving to their temporarily-assigned tent.
Flopping inside, Daniel sighs and starts to remove his boots. Charlotte follows through the flaps soon after, one arm behind her back and a mischievous grin lighting up her features.
“I’ve got a surprise,” she says, brandishing a bottle of the castaways’ bland-looking alcohol.
“Charlotte,” Dan admonishes, drawing out her name. “I don’t think stealing their supplies is the way we’re going to win them over.”
“Oh, come off it,” she replies, scoffing at his worry. “They’ll all be so bloody pissed in a couple minutes they won’t even notice.”
“Besides” - she shoots a look at Dan, the humour drained from her face - “doubt I’ll be getting any sleep tonight without it.”
Laying a hand on her shoulder, he shrugs his non-committal resignation. “Alright. Let’s have a drink.”
They pass the bottle back and forth, grimacing at the spicy, warm burning sensation the rum provides. With most of it gone and their exhaustion transforming into a heady inebriation, they launch into a juvenile version of ‘Never Have I Ever’.
The questions quickly narrow from broad, life experiences (“Never have I ever ridden a rollercoaster,” Dan shyly admits) to the too-personal (“Never have I ever had sex in the ocean,” Charlotte retorts with a gleam in her eye).
A flush creeping into his cheeks, Daniel suddenly rises.
“I, uh, have to go to the bathroom,” he supplies, rapid-fire. “Yeah - the bathroom.”
He takes a shaky step towards his boots and stumbles, landing ungracefully beside Charlotte on one of the makeshift beds.
Rising up on his elbows, Dan grins at her laughter.
“That … was the rum,” he mumbles, sheepish.
But then the moment lengthens and he can’t pull himself away, feeling the heat between their bodies (a thermostatic mechanism in the hypothalamus, he ruminates, science on his mind even with a beautiful woman beside him). Charlotte smiles down at him, lifting her hand to play aimlessly with his tie.
“Why do you wear this damn thing all the time anyway?” she asks. “We’re in a jungle, for chrissakes.”
“Ah, it makes me feel … more normal?” he offers, feeling stupid and graceless. “More … together?”
Charlotte seems to accept his answer, nodding and wordlessly turning away for a moment. It doesn’t last long, though, and suddenly she has her fingers around the knot, pulling at the material and sliding it from around his neck.
“Maybe it’s a good thing to feel … untogether … every once in a while,” she says, undoing the top button of his shirt and smoothing the collar. Before Daniel can reply, Charlotte’s fingers are at the next button, and the next, mouth set in a firm line of concentration.
Then she glances up at him, playful but looking for a go-head, for permission.
(Can we take it this far? her eyes seem to wonder.)
His soft smile is her answer, and still warm from the rum, Charlotte kisses the spot where the chest and neck meet, feeling the play of muscles and tendons beneath the surface of his skin as he draws in a large gulp of air. Charlotte smiles into his shoulder, tickled at the naked longing and nervousness in his eyes, wondering if he's always been so gentle, so open.
Their lovemaking is clumsy, awkward in the newness and excitement of it all.
"Dan, ow - my hair," she winces suddenly, pulling away from where her flame-coloured curls have become trapped under the crook of his elbow.
"Oh, sorry, sorry!" comes his immediate reply, Daniel scurrying to lift his arm.
Charlotte rights herself, looks up at her - colleague? friend? lover? - and lets a laugh escape her lips at the ridiculousness of the situation. Daniel, still propped up above her, also chuckles and they grin at each other, the shared moment easing away some of the tension.
It also seems to unearth some newfound bravery in Daniel, who - with a gaze so unflinching and intense Charlotte almost feels like one of his experiments - lifts his hand and slowly begins to trace his fingers down the length of her body. Charlotte gasps in pleasure at the feeling of his cool flesh exploring hers, still reeling with the implications of what this togetherness means.
But then his fingers hit just the right spot and she is carried away - from the island. From the questions. From the future.
ii. Form a conjecture: When nothing else is yet known, try to state an explanation, to someone else, or to your notebook.
Sitting on her side of the tent - claimed by a tossed knapsack, a half-empty bottle of water and one soiled, sweaty mess of a T-shirt - Charlotte undoes her boots with a sigh. Every inch of her aches, sore from her rough landing on the island, the tedious hikes, the scuffle with Juliet.
She pinches the back of her neck with one hand, hoping to relieve some of the pain there, and is unhappy at the results.
Allowing herself another self-indulgent groan, Charlotte glances over at Daniel's staked-out territory in the little shelter, taking in the rumpled blankets. She has a quick flash to the night before, her cheeks gaining a flush of red as she thinks about Daniel's pale, reedy body pressed up against hers - both of them, stuck on a tropical island and still so blasted white - the sound of his moans, smothered in the length of her hair ...
The canvas being drawn back shakes her out of her reverie.
Daniel pokes his head in.
"Hey, how are you feeling?" he asks, settling down the ground next to her. His face betrays concern as he gently touches her face, indicating the bruise that’s starting to form there.
"Been better," Charlotte replies wryly, shrugging. "I feel like every muscle in my back is screaming, but I guess we're alive, yea?"
She shifts the wrong way and a nerve flares. Daniel notices her grimace and scoots closer, touching the part of her shoulder she's favouring. The contact makes her want to bellow in pain, but she bites it back.
"Let me," Daniel says, moving further behind her and starting to work her shoulder with his quick hands.
"You're a physicist, Dan, not a GP," Charlotte teases, making a show of good-naturedly rolling her eyes. Daniel makes a decent, if unpracticed masseuse, though, and soon she finds herself relaxing and feeling better.
Several moments later, the sound of her contented sigh makes him pause abruptly, drawing his hands back as if burned. (Too intimate without the liquid courage, maybe, Charlotte wonders.) She turns around his arms, staring up at that boyish, expressive face and - realizing their close, almost-there proximity - barely daring to breath.
Then the electricity between them is too much, and she crushes her lips to his, one hand curling around his face while another grips his shoulder. Daniel returns her fervour in equal amounts, beginning to peel off her shirt as she works furiously at the buttons on his. Charlotte's not sure if it's the exhaustion, the isolation or her hormones, but she feels like her desperate want of Daniel has her bursting at the seams. There's so much she needs, and there's not ever enough - of his smell, of his twitching body, of his soft, gravely voice.
She pushes against him harder, aching for that connection, that anchor.
My anchor, Charlotte thinks as Daniel pauses in their wild scrambling to give her a long, deep kiss. And then another word, one that surprises her with its warmth and familiarity.
(My constant.)
iii. Deduce a prediction from that explanation. If you assume step two is true, what consequences follow?
They steal kisses on the beach when no one is looking, the water lapping up on their bare feet as they chat and lazily draw symbols, figures in the sand. Daniel tries to explain string theory, while Charlotte regales him with tales of the North African desert and the ruins they found there.
Eventually they notice the castaways grouping together in a large bunch, their expressions serious.
“We should go check that out, yea?” Charlotte questions, looking at Dan. “See what’s going on?”
“Yeah,” is his hesitant reply. “I’ll be there in a second.”
Charlotte rises from the sand, brushing the grains off her jeans, and lopes up to the campfire. Her presence isn’t welcome, that’s for sure, but the castaways are willing enough to include her in their plans, their discussion about the future.
A while later, Daniel trots up from behind, lightly placing one hand on Charlotte’s hip to gain her attention. The gesture doesn't go unnoticed by Sun, standing nearby.
"Hey, I'm going to head back to the tent, try and get some rest," he explains, offering a slight smile and goodnight nod to the others grouped around the campfire before setting off.
"Okay, I'll be there soon," Charlotte calls after him, turning back to the flames.
Sun's eyes also follow Daniel's departure, then swing back to the anthropologist.
"So you do know," Sun questions, a smile creeping on her lips.
"Know what?" Charlotte replies, brow furrowed. Then, clarity - "… yeah. Yeah, I guess I do."
Sun's look is gentle, but the moment is ruined as Charlotte recalls Jin's threat, his manipulation of her feelings to save his own. Not that she blames him. Not that she wouldn't do the same.
"I should probably head along too," Charlotte murmurs, noticing Sun's confusion at her darkened expression. As she turns on her heels and makes a beeline for the tent, Charlotte wonders just how well Sun knows her husband.
When she gets back, Daniel is waiting outside.
"Hey!" he smiles warmly, looking not at all ready for bed and rest. He’s endearingly nervous for some reason. "Want to, uh, go for a walk?"
“Sure,” Charlotte grins, grasping his hand and feeling like she’s 16 again, sneaking out to the park with Jake Gillingham, her next-door neighbour and first kiss.
It doesn’t take long before they’re enveloped in dense jungle, and this time Daniel is the one who's hungry, his lips at the nape of her neck and his fingers brushing up past the hem of her T-shirt. Her name seems to spill from his mouth, muttering it again and again into her hair, like a chant. Like a benediction.
And even as they fall back together, the lush jungle leaves soft on their skin and the dirt scraping their backs, Charlotte can't help but let a thought enter her mind -
(This can't end well.)
iv. Test: Look for the opposite of each consequence in order to disprove step two. It is a logical error to seek step three directly as proof of two. This error is called affirming the consequent.
They catch a little sleep in between flashes, dropping their packs wherever they can find some brush and taking five, 10 minutes to nap. It’s just enough to keep their wits about them, but never enough to feel rested or refreshed. It’s the best they can do, though, as they continue trudging towards the Orchid.
Hauling themselves up off the ground yet again - this time in the early dawn light - Charlotte feels an aching exhaustion that seems to penetrate her very core. Her thoughts are blurry and dim while the rising sun is in sharp, grey relief, making a painful contrast. Some blood from her latest nosebleed is still crusted on her chin; she scrubs the heel of her palm against it, then grimaces at the red stuff on her hand.
She feels like shit, frankly, and it’s only getting worse.
Almost more unbearable than the constant, simmering pain in her head are the bleak looks Daniel keeps shooting her. He does it when he thinks she’s not paying attention, but she knows he’s had his eye trained on her non-stop for the past few hours. It worries her more than the lack of answers about her condition.
Her moment to demand some kind of explanation from Dan - anything, really - was interrupted by Miles, then flaming arrows, then kidnapping and now these bloody nosebleeds. Literally, she laughs to herself, feeling strangely silly at her own morbid humour.
She just wants to grab Dan’s shoulders and shake an answer out of him. It hurts Charlotte that he won’t confide in her - especially after his confession of love in the Others’ tent - even if he’s trying to spare her some pain. She’d rather be in the know, have time to prepare or problem-solve or even just fucking fight -
I don’t want to be done yet, she thinks desperately, trying to sound convincing in her own head. Daniel keeps promising a solution, a catch-all key or way out, and she’s praying that somewhere in his jumbled, genius mind there truly is a possibility to fix this. Charlotte wants to believe - stubbornly, naively - their connection will somehow provide that miracle, but her bloody face and fading spirit tell her no. Still, she hopes.
Their never-ending hike continues for hours more, Charlotte only vaguely aware of the leaves brushing past her thighs, the dense, thick humidity of the jungle. She finds her feet dragging more and more, even the gesture of raising a water bottle to her lips demanding. It’s heat and pressure and glare - too bright, she grimaces - and a throbbing pain so deep and intense it seems to obliterate her very self.
When Charlotte collapses for the last time, she knows it. Well, the part of her still registering pain and the blurry faces floating above her does. She thinks Daniel’s slid his pack under her head, that someone’s wiping her face clean. Each sensation feels like nothing and everything; Charlotte can’t tell either way.
Maybe her hand is being held. There’s pressure along her cheek, too. Charlotte’s breathing hitches and tears spill unbidden down her face, mixing with the blood and dirt and sweat. A voice breaks through the haze, and she’s drifting, drifting -
(Daniel…)
(…why wasn’t it enough?)
Then she’s gone - “just meat,” is what Miles would say; just bones, flesh, empty blue eyes - and another flash comes and all that’s left of Charlotte Staples Lewis is a weeping, broken man who never was her answer.