A/N: This story takes place immediately after Hurley hugs the crazy French woman Danielle in Season 1, Episode 18. This archetypal witch-woman of the forest has told Hurley that yes, indeed, he is cursed, and in deep relief he hugs her.

Hold Me

"No one would believe me," he said, throwing himself on the small woman carrying the automatic rifle. She jumped back a little with surprise at his fierce hug, at the overwhelming soft hot embrace, but didn't answer.

Somewhere behind the stillness a rustling started, faint as breath, shimmering with a sharp edge of fear, and then stepped back into the jungle a little, as if deciding whether or not to go away.

He heard the scratchy thump of her gun as it hit the ground. A broken-leaf smell filled the air. The French woman's voice had been soft even when it told of horrible things, but now in his arms she stood perfectly still.

Then her own arms crept up around him and they were shaking, even more than his. When she pillowed her face into his breast the hovering presence in the treetop canopy retreated, and the leaves once more were perfectly still.

The hug went on for a very long time.

He felt her collapse a little as she whispered in her own language words muffled by his flesh, words that he couldn't understand. Why couldn't she have been Spanish? Then at least he would have known what she said. But her words were so low, and her face so sad, that his hand big as a Christmas ham came up of its own accord and stroked her long coarse-looking hair.

She caressed his side all the way down its long full curve, and his knees went weak. Then she half-collapsed in his grip, and down they went together onto the soft fern-carpeted forest floor. He sat and into his lap she crawled, and now he could make out what she said, "Tenez-moi, tenez-moi," although it made no sense.

Her hair smelt a little fishy, and he ran it through his fingers. It wasn't coarse to the touch at all, and he remembered using different creams to tame his own wild mane. Fish oil, that's what it was. She used fish oil on her hair. Then she stopped her little chant and rested quietly in his arms.

Man, my shirt must be gross, he thought, and he wished he'd found his luggage. Sixty-some suitcases so far, but none of them mine. My damn luck again. There had been a new shirt in there, too, red and blue with a black stripe down one side, and he had looked pretty awesome in it when he'd tried it on at the store. For a moment he fiercely wished he had that shirt on, instead of his soggy faded one. The old disquiet started to slink back, with its aching throb of dissatisfaction.

Then she looked up at him, put her own small, rough hand on his cheek, and rubbed it gently with her thumb. "Tellement tendresse ..."

"What?" he said, though he didn't let go. "Lady, I don't understand you."

"That's all right," she said, pulling herself a little closer. "Do you understand me now?"

He fell into the kiss, dizzy with heat and wet, and the blood rushed from his face to everywhere else. At first he was afraid to open his mouth, remembering a girl in high school who squealed, Ewww, yuck, when he'd slipped her some tongue. But this was a woman, not a girl, and when she slid in her own warm tongue, he opened up in return. She tasted a little smoky, a little fishy like her hair, but good, and he let her play softly around his mouth as he rocked her in his arms.

Then she broke off with a gentle motion, pulling with a tiny bite on his lower lip as if savoring it until the next time. She smiled, and a playful light twinkled in her eyes. "Salé," she said.

"Lady, don't do that to me," he said.

"Don't do what?"

"That Frog stuff." He wanted to add, "So, now are you going to knock me out and drag me back to your pad like Sayid?" but it didn't sound cool, it sounded too junior-high school in fact, and anyway she was gently squirming out of his arms, so he stayed quiet and waited to see what she would do next. She slid out of his embrace but didn't leave, and sat very close to him on the soft ground with her hand on his thigh.

"Your friends didn't come to talk to me about the curse of the numbers," she said.

"Man, they have this idea, I think it's kind of crazy myself. They're building this big-ass raft, see." She didn't react, so he went on. "Michael and Jin, with pontoons made of bamboo. Locke told us about the Polynesian dudes in their double-rigged canoes, and said they had as good a chance as them."

Now that he was going to ask her for something, suddenly he didn't want to. The sun had moved a little so that they were in almost full shade, and while he had really liked the weight of her on his lap and against his chest, her hand on his leg wasn't bad at all. It was really fine, in fact, and he feared that if she thought he simply wanted something she would go away.

"A raft," she said slowly. "Why?"

"Well, uh, why else? To get off this island." She didn't say anything. "Hey, like I said, it sounded kind of crazy."

"They'll never let you leave this island."

"What? Who?"

"The others won't let you leave. Don't you think I've tried?"

She sat a little stiff now, apart from him. Suddenly he wanted her back against him, and he was suffused again with desire, but more tender now.

"It wasn't my idea," he said, hoping it didn't sound like an excuse.

"They'll need some way to navigate," she remarked, her hand back on his thigh. In the background, far off, he could hear a faint hum, not so much hear it as feel it through his body and up the back of his neck. He shook his head, as if to shake the low subtle vibration out.

"I dunno, Sayid's going to set up something for them." He didn't want to mention the battery that they didn't have.

Her expression was amused now. "I thought so." She rose to her knees. "Wait here."

"What?" The low vibration had increased. She swam before his eyes, and he blinked rapidly to bring her back into focus.

She leaned forward to kiss him again, only this time there was no rush of desire. Instead, a surge of sleepiness came upon him. Everything moved very slowly, the final soft pull of his tongue through Danielle's mouth, the way she smiled a bit when their mouths parted. Little threads of silver glimmered in her hair. Then sleep came down upon him like a blanket, and he fell heavily backwards.

When he opened his eyes, the sun had moved even farther over the little clearing where they had sat. Stretching out his leg in the laborious process of getting to his feet, he kicked something heavy and hard.

It was a battery, like a car battery, only smaller. Lying atop it was a single long-stemmed red flower, actually a spray of little red flowers in a line. He picked up the blossom and put it into his cargo pocket, and hoisted the battery, surprisingly heavy for its size. He looked around, but he didn't have to. She was gone, her absence in the air like a vacuum. Suddenly he had a strong urge to leave, as if without her presence the jungle suddenly sat at bay no more, but could rush in upon him at any moment.

He moved quickly for a man of his size, pushing through the foliage back the way he came, confused a little by the different slant of the shadows through the trees. Then he heard voices up ahead.

"Jack?"

Jack, Charlie, and Sayid gathered round him, and in the rush of questions and comments he said calmly, "Hey, man, it's just a battery."

Sayid gave him one of those glances that could pierce body armor. "Just a battery? Anything else you want to tell us?"

Hurley smiled. "Danielle says, hey."

Later, back at the settlement on the beach, he lumbered up to Shannon sunning herself. He tried not to look at her long bronze length stretched out on the sand, or the two perfect hills of her buttocks. The round indentations right above the curves looked just like the finger-marks he'd make in cookie dough as a small boy, before his mother slapped his hand away.

"What is it, Hurley?" Shannon said lazily, not looking up at him.

"You're supposed to know that, uh, Frog-speak, right?"

She sighed impatiently and scratched her perfect arm. The sun glinted on the small gold hairs of her lower back. "Oh, God, I am so sick of this. What now?"

"It's just something I heard," he fumbled. He couldn't remember all of what Danielle had said, but one thing stuck with him. "From a CD. 'Ten-ay-moi.' What's it mean?"

"You mean, tenez-moi?" Her diction was as perfect as her skin. Obviously she'd heard the phrase before.

"Yeah," Hurley said, hating this scrutiny, desperately fighting the urge to leave. He didn't even try to repeat the words.

"It means, 'Hold me.'"

"Thanks," he said, and walked off, not seeing her rolled-up eyes or the slight disgusted shake of her head as she rearranged herself once more on the sand.

He followed the curve of the beach back the way they'd come earlier that day. His belly flesh shook as he walked, and he tried to swallow down the perennial embarrassment. Then he stroked his chest from the soaked neck of his shirt downward, finding the spot where Danielle's face had rested.

He finally came to the cable where it rose out of the water, its silver length disappearing into the foliage above the beach. There was no point in following that glittering lure into the jungle anymore. It didn't lead to her. She was gone, somewhere else. He sat where the shore met the sea and touched the useless metal tenderly, as if it were her hand on his face, as if it were not cold and unyielding.

"Tenez-moi," he whispered softly to himself. "Tenez-moi."

(The End)