Lost by Choice
Welp, this is the Naked and Afraid AU that absolutely no one in the world asked for. I’m trying to get back into writing, and last weekend I watched a lot of Naked & Afraid (I usually watch Investigation Discovery, but was exhausted with murder), and I just couldn’t stop seeing an AU opportunity. I don’t know. Maybe someone out there will appreciate?
Part 1 of 2 Rating: Teen (swearing) Word Count: 2200ish
In retrospect, a televised challenge with a little less dehydration and mosquito bites would have been a smarter choice. Maybe one that didn't involve literal hunting for food and water. But Killian Jones was always one for a challenge. He was a survivor. He had already lived through a thousand different hells (hyperbole); he could live through this one, too. Except he hadn't slept in 3 days, hadn't had clean water (aside from opening his mouth in the rain) in the same amount of time. Oh, and he was slightly in love with his very naked partner who very much despised him.
Yeah, Killian being a survivor and all, he should have chosen to audition for that show. Not Naked and fucking Afraid.
But noooo he'd been determined to prove himself. And to whom? He didn't have anyone around anymore to impress. Liam was dead. Milah was dead. Bae made it perfectly clear Killian should consider him dead. He'd lost everyone and everything and apparently the long-lost emo kid inside him decided he needed to take that metaphor and make it literal and audition for a show where he was cold and he was ashamed, lying broken on the floor.
Wait, no, that wasn't it.
(The delirium had set in.)
Surviving in the worst of conditions had drawn him to this particular (idiotic) challenge, but there was something, too, in the partnership aspect. Being paired with only one other person, just as stranded as you, to finish out the task... maybe it was his complete loneliness or, again, the part of him who couldn't resist a challenge, but it intrigued him. How do you put all of your individual experiences together to form a bond, a team, that would keep them alive for 21 days without another soul?
Then he was paired with Emma fucking Swan.