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To say that Miles shouldn't be here would be a radical understatement. One that perfectly missed the point, actually.
*
There was this old hippie who used to hang around the skate park when Miles was a kid. In addition to the anti-hemp conspiracy and the suppression of the water car, his favorite topic of conversation was the decades-long effort to weaken THC's potency.
"Back in my day," he would drawl as wisps of smoke escaped his nostrils, "our grass was supremo stuff." Then he'd hack, shoulders hunched up to his ears. When he got his voice back, raspy as it was, he'd finish, "None of this weak-ass pussy shit."
Everything else Miles heard since then about weed indicated just the opposite.
Maybe that guy spent some time with DHARMA.
Or maybe he was just a lonely liar whose life had long since passed him by.
Hell only knows what the island is made of; even Faraday only had guesses -- time and corpses, cords and tangles of EM energy. Whatever it is, whatever else this place is for, it grows some truly brain-breaking weed.
Jerry has a plot a little over half a mile into the jungle and a lean-to where he dries the harvest.
They were out there tonight after afternoon shift, Miles and Jerry and one of the girls from the kitchen, Carrie or Mary or something. They ducked the cameras to evade Phil, built a small fire, played Carrie's transistor radio, danced.
Tonight the radio tuned in what sounded like Spanish rock. Maybe Brazilian. You never knew what you'd get, but this was much better than the evangelical shit or Voice of America propaganda.
Jerry and the girl danced, and made out, and ground their hips together. Miles half-watched. Mostly, he poked the fire. Cinders climbed against the dark, then winked out. He could still feel his skin; he needed to be more stoned.
Several yards further into the jungle, a body asked ¿por qué?. Miles turned up the radio.
Holding her from behind, Jerry buried his face in the girl's hair and cupped her breasts. They swayed on bare feet, their shoulders lifting with giggles. She spun in his arms, her hair fanning out, then falling back, and he dipped her messily.
"You go," Miles told them when they asked him if he were heading back to the barracks. They hung all over each other, draped and clinging as the vegetation around them.
"Don't be a stranger," she called over her shoulder.
Miles lay on his back, pipe on his chest, and watched the stars spin above him. He was circling the drain, whirling faster, falling and falling fast.
The night was humid, close as a kiss. It could swallow him whole.
*
Everyone is a stranger here.
If it's possible, though, he's more of a stranger than anyone. He's about to be conceived, down in the barracks, this month or next.
He's a twinkle in God's fucking eye, a single plump unsuspecting egg about to get speared by a one lucky whip-fast sperm. He's also *here*, silver in his hair and smoke in his lungs, an aching left knee and nothing to show for his sorry life.
He wove his way back to the barracks. He took his time -- and that was a fucking joke, that expression -- and put one foot directly in front of the other. Pretended he was walking the plank, tracking silently like an Indian, balancing on tightrope.
His bunk in the room he shared with Jin would be cold, the mattress thin and narrow. He could see it in his mind's eye, faintly glowing, a slab over an uncertain grave.
Miles swung left instead of right, tripped over his own feet, fell on one knee and felt his stomach heave. His throat constricted, the sweat on his face went cold, and he almost puked.
The backdoor light in the next cabin went on. Miles hid his face, tried to melt into the shadows. He held his breath; it would be just his luck to stumble, stoned and puking, into his own parents' goddamn backyard.
When the light flicked off, he remained still. Nausea kept throbbing around him.
"Miles?" Juliet's voice was quiet as the underside of a leaf. He blinked up at her, saw the long hair, silver against the night, and her shadowed eyes. "C'mon, let's get you in."
She helped him up, kept her arm around his waist, and guided him to the cabin she shared with Jim.
"I'm going to --" He lurched away and vomited into a bush. Juliet kept a hold of him; when he was done, her hand went to his forehead.
"You're cold as ice," she told him.
Miles coughed and tasted his own guts.
"Come on inside," she said when he hesitated. She looked over her shoulder, her expression as patient as ever. She wore one of those Indian tops, light cotton, embroidery around the gathered neck. It floated, just like her hair, pale and ethereal, as she moved, the reverse of a shadow.
She gestured him down the short hall while she went into the kitchen.
"Well, well, what do we have here?" Jim set aside his paperback book and shoved his glasses up his nose. "Looking a little worse for wear there, hermano."
Miles leaned against the wall and patted the sweat on his forehead. "I'm really fucking stoned."
Jim's smile flashed. "I am shocked, *shocked*, to learn that we're toking up in the seventies."
"Fuck you."
"Why, next thing you know, you'll be roller-skating and disco-dancing," Jim said. "Want a Pet Rock?"
With one hand dragging along the wall, Miles made it to the couch and collapsed backward. He tugged open his jumpsuit and pulled his arms free. His undershirt was soaked with sweat.
Juliet reappeared and handed him a tall, frosted-plastic glass of water. "Take it slow," she said when Miles gulped at it and coughed half of it back down his chest. She had this unique ability to sound both patient and amused.
Jim slid onto the couch next to him and moved his fingers back and forth. "See the trails? Watch! It's so *trippy*."
Miles scowled at him and handed the empty glass back to Juliet.
She perched on the couch's arm and rolled the glass between her palms. "Leave him alone, James."
Jim leaned back, hands behind his head, legs falling open, the picture of innocence. He grinned slow and lazy across at her. "Think you can make me, pretty lady?"
Miles leaned back, too, and closed his eyes. He couldn't quite feel the island shuddering beneath him any longer, so that was an improvement. But his skull was still hollow as a bell, his stomach still roiling and sour.
When Juliet slid off the arm of the couch, slotting in next to him, Miles assumed that Sawyer had reached over and tugged her down. He took a deep breath and tried to hold it in his sore lungs. He exhaled as slowly as he could; Juliet's weight next to him was light but consistent, shoulder to knee, while on the other side, Jim was a constantly-shifting, elbow-knocking presence.
Juliet tipped her head against Miles's shoulder. Jim wriggled a little and wormed his arm behind Miles's neck, over to Juliet's head. When he stroked Juliet's hair, Miles's head bobbed; his breath was a little sour against Miles's cheek.
Someone was humming. Miles breathed in time with the half-swallowed tune.
They had slept like this, when they could, when they dared, while trekking through time. Jin always slept alone, Faraday curled up on himself just out of arm's reach, but they tangled together. Juliet's arm was flung across Miles's chest; Miles had his face buried in Jim's chest; and Jim's knuckles went white, holding fast.
Tonight, on the couch, Miles opens his eyes to the ceiling. Jim's snores whistle out his nose and Juliet has brought one fist to her mouth.
He hums some more and doesn't let himself wonder when they're going home.