Fic: The Girl Who Isn't Kate
Title: The Girl Who Isn't Kate
Pairings: Shannon/Jack/Kate, with J/K/S and mentions of Shannon/Boone
Rating: PG-13 for mostly language
Summary: What Shannon sees when she watches Jack and Kate. Set mid season one. 2400 words.
Note: This is for Queen didibreakit. I've been out of practice lately with the Jack/Kate, so I thought I'd get back into it, even if this turned out to be maybe more Jack/Shannon. It sorta came out a big tangle of triangles, but I hope you like it anyway.
The Girl Who Isn't Kate
Shannon has always been amused watching people, especially when they're attracted to someone. Everyone thinks she's so self-absorbed, but she's actually always attuned to what's going on around her. And she's quite good at reading people. For instance, she's seen Sawyer following Kate around like an eager puppy, even though his movements stay slow and smooth and he pretends not to give a damn if he gets her attention. He reminds her of Boone, acting so much like he doesn't care that it flashes like a neon sign that he does.
Even more amusing to Shannon is the other man on the island inexplicably hell bent on garnering Kate's love and respect. Jack is the self-conscious, nervous sort, and they're the best to watch when they're flirting, especially if in every other area of their lives they're the steady and sure type. At first, she'd thought Jack's tentative flirtation with Kate wasn't anything important. It surely seemed innocent enough, just two attractive people smiling and talking. But then, once she had a little more time to read him, she figured out that he isn't the sort for casual flirtation. He only lights up like that--with his eyes shining, chuckling or even more rarely giggling as if he can't hold it back--if someone really gets under his skin, not just physically but in ways that would count more to him.
Judging from the quiet but slightly mischievous sarcasm he aims at Kate, as well as occasional looks that would set a girl on fire with lust if she were paying close attention--and Kate clearly isn't--he wants her. And, Shannon thinks, like so many men of his sort, he doesn't have a clue how to get her. Maybe even worse: he doesn't think he should. It almost seems funny to her, except it's a little pathetic. Because Jack is also the sort of man who could have any woman he wanted, if he only knew it. He is kind and strong-things most women think they want even if they don't know how to deal with it-and he has enough charm to draw in anyone, along with enough humility to keep them.
That and he's pretty hot. If Shannon's honest with herself, he is at the top of her list as far as fantasy goes. She isn't crazy enough to think that she could have him or would even want him in reality, but she likes the idea of him a lot, almost as much as she likes his dark, serious face and his broad, hairy chest. She's seen him swimming, and he has a really nice body, just the right sort for a man of his build: muscled, but in appropriate places still retaining a little fat on top of thick, hard limbs. Just the type of body to carry you, to pin you to the ground, to envelop you, warm and solid. And for you to sink into as you drift off to sleep.
Kate can't be totally blind to it. Shannon has also been watching her watching Jack, and underneath her cool shield of self-sufficiency is a deep curiosity, and underneath that is an impulse Shannon sees only infrequently, but enough to know it's there. Some part of Kate wants to grab Jack, force their mouths and bodies together, and jolt him out of this slow, simmering lust. But if Jack is thinking about why he shouldn't, so is Kate, and Shannon hasn't quite worked out why just yet. She's either playing the martyr and protecting Jack or protecting herself and running scared from him. Maybe both.
Boredom makes Shannon both playful and impatient. Being on the island and doing absolutely nothing is fine most of the time, but occasionally, she finds herself restless. Seeing Jack and Kate dance around each other makes her extra fidgety. Too many hormones floating free into the atmosphere; too much tension, and not usually the good kind. Like now, as Jack walks toward her, probably to deliver a lecture about something, but he's looking over her shoulder at someone, and she knows it's Kate by the look on his face, and because Sawyer's tent is behind her, and that's where Kate has been spending her time more and more lately. The obvious jealousy that it brings up in Jack--suppressed but rather powerful anyway--should be enough to make him break out of his hesitant flirtation with Kate and actually make a move. But Jack is stubborn, or maybe just too nice for his own good. Shannon has to wonder if a similar sort of jealousy would have a different effect on Kate.
Normally, Shannon stays in her reclined, I-don’t-give-a-shit position when people try to talk to her. Especially Jack. He tends to be inpatient and abrupt, and she knows he gets it out of his system faster if she doesn't put up too much of a fight. That only encourages him to stay around, find reasons to talk to her that always sound like lectures but look like loneliness, or like a man who wants someone to challenge him. Today, Shannon decides that's what he needs, so she stands up to greet him, leaving her magazine on the blanket. For a moment, it seems to almost confuse him, as it does anytime she asserts herself, but he quickly snaps back into that irritating super-serious and focused doctor mode. Really, Shannon's always been sure that his demeanor with her has less to do with the stick up his ass than it does his obvious attraction to her, and how he tries to hide it even more than he does his attraction to Kate. So he looks only at her face, not her body, and passes her a bundle of leaves--eucalyptus, dried and ready to be crushed and mixed with water when she's getting short of breath.
Looking up into his face and seeing him glancing at Kate and Sawyer with a mix of confusion and impatience--which is about to turn, once again, to complete resignation--she wants to do something. She needs to hold him there for a moment longer, just to get him comfortable enough to loosen up and let Kate see him with her, smiling and open. Shannon curses her choice of knee-length shorts; all she can do is pull at the waistband, make it dip a little in the front, down over her hips bones. Thankfully, she's in a tank top, white, which will make her skin glow, tasteful enough to suit Jack's best instincts, but low-cut enough to be interesting. He's a breast man, she's noticed. Doesn't matter whose, he looks. Now, she just has to get him to look at hers while she finds something to say to him that will get his attention. If she knows anything about Jack it's that for him, talk is perhaps even more important than the physical, at least initially. She knows the type, but she doesn't exactly have the time for the long, drawn-out bullshit approach today. So she gets right to the point, in maybe more blunt fashion than she meant to.
"So, why don't you just go over and talk to her?"
"What?" he says, pretending to be distracted, but he knows exactly what she means.
"Kate."
"What about her?"
"You've been staring at her since you walked up. You like her, right?"
"Shannon, I don't see as how it's any of your-"
"Probably not. But, look, I see it. I know. You don’t have to pretend with me."
"I'm not pretending." He regards her like this is an absolutely absurd conversation. Maybe in the real world it is, even for a woman of her characteristic bluntness, but not here on an island that seems smaller and more suffocating every day.
"So, you do like her."
"Sure," he says evenly, trying for nonchalant and failing.
"And you don't like to see her always over there with the asshole."
"What she does is none of-"
"Your business. My business. Yeah, yeah. I get it. But you're wrong. Of course it's your business. You want her, so it should bother you to see her with Sawyer. Just like it should bother her to see you with me. Actually, it's not really about should now, it's about does. I'm sure it does get under her skin."
His face wrinkles in such confusion it's actually sort of adorable. "That's ridiculous. We're just talking."
"But you know what they all think about me." He suddenly refuses to meet her eyes, and it hurts her a little, but not so much that she can't hide it. "It bothers her to see you here."
"What I do is none of her business."
She sighs. All he does it repeat himself, falling back on propriety, as if real, tangible feelings between people can be corralled with words. She knows they can't, just like she knows she's already checked the beach to see if Boone is watching, to find out if he cares that she's talking to the doctor with smiles she rarely shows people, at least not this relatively genuine variety. But Boone isn't there. If he was, he would think he has a right to care, that she's still his business when she never should have been.
Shannon glances behind her. Kate's watching, her head turned slightly away from Sawyer to keep a close eye on Jack. Jack, however, isn't looking at Kate anymore but at Shannon, and she knows he's uncomfortable with the conversation, as well as with her very presence.
Shannon has always hated it when she can see the obvious solution to things, when that solution seems crazy and she can't very well offer it up to rational people that pretend to ignore their needs. Jack stands there trying not to look at her breasts and trying not to look at Kate talking to Sawyer. She stands there trying not to wonder what he would taste like and whether doing what she wanted would actually make things worse instead of better. But, being Shannon, she does it anyway.
She says, "Well, if what you do is none of her business, then she won't mind this."
She slides up to him before he even knows what's happening, and when she pulls his face down to kiss him, he's too startled to protest or do anything but kiss her back, finally letting his hands settle at her waist. With just this level of contact, she can tell he's just as solid as she knew he would be.
She's a good kisser, she knows, one that can draw a man in and make him forget that he has apprehensions or that there's even a world outside of what they're doing, at least for a little while. She has never been sure if Jack would be the type to completely surrender or to collect himself and pull back before things went too far. She doesn't wait to see. Softly, she breaks the kiss, and his reaction is instant: he withdraws his arms and looks at her as though he has no idea what just happened, even though his lips had certainly known what was going on. For someone surprised and not even particularly enamored of her, he had been a good kisser himself, somehow both steady and passionate. Maybe it's because she's been dying for some physical contact, but that short kiss actually leaves her feeling a little flushed. She thinks she can still smell him, the sweat on his skin, and taste the sweet fruit on his lips, and he's suddenly so substantial now, standing there in front of her. Briefly, she wonders what it would be like to be on the receiving end of some of Jack's more serious looks. But then she quickly wipes it from her mind: a distraction, that's all.
He asks her the predictable question: "Why did you do that?" He looks at her eyes, then glances down at her breasts, then back up to her eyes again. Now she's almost certain she's made it worse, not better. For both of them.
She pulls herself together again. "Just to say thank you," she replies serenely, with a warmer version of her blasé magazine-reading face.
His face contorts with incredulity. He's not stupid. But in the end, he simply sighs and says, "Okay. But that's really not necessary."
Shaking her head, she replies, "No, it definitely was." She can't resist a sly but open grin, flirty but assured, the sort of smile that captivates Jack but scares him at the same time.
He starts to say a lot of things, all of which Shannon can guess anyway. Finally, he mumbles, "Let me know when you need more eucalyptus," and slinks off toward the jungle again.
"Thanks, Jack," she calls out behind him.
As he walks away, shaking his head as if to clear it of a kiss that is probably still lingering in his body as it is hers, Shannon turns back to see Kate going off in the other direction, down the beach. To anyone who has spent any time watching her, it looks less like walking and more like stomping away in a huff. Sawyer still stands there outside his tent, and he stares intently at Kate's retreat before finally turning his gaze on her. The man makes her nervous; he's too much like her to worry with propriety or to miss the real meaning of a person's behavior, either Kate's or hers.
He calls out to her, "You wanna come over here and help me make Freckles jealous, too?" She can't believe he thinks he has the right to just do what he always does, telegraphing a real offer under the guise of sarcasm, behind smugness, with that come-fuck-me-darlin' twang. Once, Shannon had thought about taking up with him. He's unreasonably hot and he has a fantastic sense of humor, in line with her own. Even without his fucked-up plea for attention over her inhalers, not to mention beating the shit out of Boone just because he could, she still wouldn't be crazy enough to go for him. He's probably even more difficult to deal with than Jack is, and he's definitely also stuck on Kate. Shannon still doesn't understand that one iota, but she chalks it up to something she knows to be true: people always want the ones they can't have. Isn't that why she has this ridiculous crush on Jack while she's going to turn Sawyer down flat, and while she won't let Boone lay a hand on her?
"They're gone, asshole," she calls out.
"Not for long. They'll come back for more."
That's what scares her. She knows she kissed Jack for reasons maybe she still doesn't completely understand, and it almost makes her fear the other thing she knows: that she's done a tremendous job of getting under Kate's skin, for just the effect she wanted. If she manages to push Jack and Kate together, she'll just be the girl who isn't Kate, like she was today for a short but powerful kiss.
But maybe, she thinks with a smirk that slowly fades, Kate will be the girl who isn't Shannon.
Pairings: Shannon/Jack/Kate, with J/K/S and mentions of Shannon/Boone
Rating: PG-13 for mostly language
Summary: What Shannon sees when she watches Jack and Kate. Set mid season one. 2400 words.
Note: This is for Queen didibreakit. I've been out of practice lately with the Jack/Kate, so I thought I'd get back into it, even if this turned out to be maybe more Jack/Shannon. It sorta came out a big tangle of triangles, but I hope you like it anyway.
The Girl Who Isn't Kate
Shannon has always been amused watching people, especially when they're attracted to someone. Everyone thinks she's so self-absorbed, but she's actually always attuned to what's going on around her. And she's quite good at reading people. For instance, she's seen Sawyer following Kate around like an eager puppy, even though his movements stay slow and smooth and he pretends not to give a damn if he gets her attention. He reminds her of Boone, acting so much like he doesn't care that it flashes like a neon sign that he does.
Even more amusing to Shannon is the other man on the island inexplicably hell bent on garnering Kate's love and respect. Jack is the self-conscious, nervous sort, and they're the best to watch when they're flirting, especially if in every other area of their lives they're the steady and sure type. At first, she'd thought Jack's tentative flirtation with Kate wasn't anything important. It surely seemed innocent enough, just two attractive people smiling and talking. But then, once she had a little more time to read him, she figured out that he isn't the sort for casual flirtation. He only lights up like that--with his eyes shining, chuckling or even more rarely giggling as if he can't hold it back--if someone really gets under his skin, not just physically but in ways that would count more to him.
Judging from the quiet but slightly mischievous sarcasm he aims at Kate, as well as occasional looks that would set a girl on fire with lust if she were paying close attention--and Kate clearly isn't--he wants her. And, Shannon thinks, like so many men of his sort, he doesn't have a clue how to get her. Maybe even worse: he doesn't think he should. It almost seems funny to her, except it's a little pathetic. Because Jack is also the sort of man who could have any woman he wanted, if he only knew it. He is kind and strong-things most women think they want even if they don't know how to deal with it-and he has enough charm to draw in anyone, along with enough humility to keep them.
That and he's pretty hot. If Shannon's honest with herself, he is at the top of her list as far as fantasy goes. She isn't crazy enough to think that she could have him or would even want him in reality, but she likes the idea of him a lot, almost as much as she likes his dark, serious face and his broad, hairy chest. She's seen him swimming, and he has a really nice body, just the right sort for a man of his build: muscled, but in appropriate places still retaining a little fat on top of thick, hard limbs. Just the type of body to carry you, to pin you to the ground, to envelop you, warm and solid. And for you to sink into as you drift off to sleep.
Kate can't be totally blind to it. Shannon has also been watching her watching Jack, and underneath her cool shield of self-sufficiency is a deep curiosity, and underneath that is an impulse Shannon sees only infrequently, but enough to know it's there. Some part of Kate wants to grab Jack, force their mouths and bodies together, and jolt him out of this slow, simmering lust. But if Jack is thinking about why he shouldn't, so is Kate, and Shannon hasn't quite worked out why just yet. She's either playing the martyr and protecting Jack or protecting herself and running scared from him. Maybe both.
Boredom makes Shannon both playful and impatient. Being on the island and doing absolutely nothing is fine most of the time, but occasionally, she finds herself restless. Seeing Jack and Kate dance around each other makes her extra fidgety. Too many hormones floating free into the atmosphere; too much tension, and not usually the good kind. Like now, as Jack walks toward her, probably to deliver a lecture about something, but he's looking over her shoulder at someone, and she knows it's Kate by the look on his face, and because Sawyer's tent is behind her, and that's where Kate has been spending her time more and more lately. The obvious jealousy that it brings up in Jack--suppressed but rather powerful anyway--should be enough to make him break out of his hesitant flirtation with Kate and actually make a move. But Jack is stubborn, or maybe just too nice for his own good. Shannon has to wonder if a similar sort of jealousy would have a different effect on Kate.
Normally, Shannon stays in her reclined, I-don’t-give-a-shit position when people try to talk to her. Especially Jack. He tends to be inpatient and abrupt, and she knows he gets it out of his system faster if she doesn't put up too much of a fight. That only encourages him to stay around, find reasons to talk to her that always sound like lectures but look like loneliness, or like a man who wants someone to challenge him. Today, Shannon decides that's what he needs, so she stands up to greet him, leaving her magazine on the blanket. For a moment, it seems to almost confuse him, as it does anytime she asserts herself, but he quickly snaps back into that irritating super-serious and focused doctor mode. Really, Shannon's always been sure that his demeanor with her has less to do with the stick up his ass than it does his obvious attraction to her, and how he tries to hide it even more than he does his attraction to Kate. So he looks only at her face, not her body, and passes her a bundle of leaves--eucalyptus, dried and ready to be crushed and mixed with water when she's getting short of breath.
Looking up into his face and seeing him glancing at Kate and Sawyer with a mix of confusion and impatience--which is about to turn, once again, to complete resignation--she wants to do something. She needs to hold him there for a moment longer, just to get him comfortable enough to loosen up and let Kate see him with her, smiling and open. Shannon curses her choice of knee-length shorts; all she can do is pull at the waistband, make it dip a little in the front, down over her hips bones. Thankfully, she's in a tank top, white, which will make her skin glow, tasteful enough to suit Jack's best instincts, but low-cut enough to be interesting. He's a breast man, she's noticed. Doesn't matter whose, he looks. Now, she just has to get him to look at hers while she finds something to say to him that will get his attention. If she knows anything about Jack it's that for him, talk is perhaps even more important than the physical, at least initially. She knows the type, but she doesn't exactly have the time for the long, drawn-out bullshit approach today. So she gets right to the point, in maybe more blunt fashion than she meant to.
"So, why don't you just go over and talk to her?"
"What?" he says, pretending to be distracted, but he knows exactly what she means.
"Kate."
"What about her?"
"You've been staring at her since you walked up. You like her, right?"
"Shannon, I don't see as how it's any of your-"
"Probably not. But, look, I see it. I know. You don’t have to pretend with me."
"I'm not pretending." He regards her like this is an absolutely absurd conversation. Maybe in the real world it is, even for a woman of her characteristic bluntness, but not here on an island that seems smaller and more suffocating every day.
"So, you do like her."
"Sure," he says evenly, trying for nonchalant and failing.
"And you don't like to see her always over there with the asshole."
"What she does is none of-"
"Your business. My business. Yeah, yeah. I get it. But you're wrong. Of course it's your business. You want her, so it should bother you to see her with Sawyer. Just like it should bother her to see you with me. Actually, it's not really about should now, it's about does. I'm sure it does get under her skin."
His face wrinkles in such confusion it's actually sort of adorable. "That's ridiculous. We're just talking."
"But you know what they all think about me." He suddenly refuses to meet her eyes, and it hurts her a little, but not so much that she can't hide it. "It bothers her to see you here."
"What I do is none of her business."
She sighs. All he does it repeat himself, falling back on propriety, as if real, tangible feelings between people can be corralled with words. She knows they can't, just like she knows she's already checked the beach to see if Boone is watching, to find out if he cares that she's talking to the doctor with smiles she rarely shows people, at least not this relatively genuine variety. But Boone isn't there. If he was, he would think he has a right to care, that she's still his business when she never should have been.
Shannon glances behind her. Kate's watching, her head turned slightly away from Sawyer to keep a close eye on Jack. Jack, however, isn't looking at Kate anymore but at Shannon, and she knows he's uncomfortable with the conversation, as well as with her very presence.
Shannon has always hated it when she can see the obvious solution to things, when that solution seems crazy and she can't very well offer it up to rational people that pretend to ignore their needs. Jack stands there trying not to look at her breasts and trying not to look at Kate talking to Sawyer. She stands there trying not to wonder what he would taste like and whether doing what she wanted would actually make things worse instead of better. But, being Shannon, she does it anyway.
She says, "Well, if what you do is none of her business, then she won't mind this."
She slides up to him before he even knows what's happening, and when she pulls his face down to kiss him, he's too startled to protest or do anything but kiss her back, finally letting his hands settle at her waist. With just this level of contact, she can tell he's just as solid as she knew he would be.
She's a good kisser, she knows, one that can draw a man in and make him forget that he has apprehensions or that there's even a world outside of what they're doing, at least for a little while. She has never been sure if Jack would be the type to completely surrender or to collect himself and pull back before things went too far. She doesn't wait to see. Softly, she breaks the kiss, and his reaction is instant: he withdraws his arms and looks at her as though he has no idea what just happened, even though his lips had certainly known what was going on. For someone surprised and not even particularly enamored of her, he had been a good kisser himself, somehow both steady and passionate. Maybe it's because she's been dying for some physical contact, but that short kiss actually leaves her feeling a little flushed. She thinks she can still smell him, the sweat on his skin, and taste the sweet fruit on his lips, and he's suddenly so substantial now, standing there in front of her. Briefly, she wonders what it would be like to be on the receiving end of some of Jack's more serious looks. But then she quickly wipes it from her mind: a distraction, that's all.
He asks her the predictable question: "Why did you do that?" He looks at her eyes, then glances down at her breasts, then back up to her eyes again. Now she's almost certain she's made it worse, not better. For both of them.
She pulls herself together again. "Just to say thank you," she replies serenely, with a warmer version of her blasé magazine-reading face.
His face contorts with incredulity. He's not stupid. But in the end, he simply sighs and says, "Okay. But that's really not necessary."
Shaking her head, she replies, "No, it definitely was." She can't resist a sly but open grin, flirty but assured, the sort of smile that captivates Jack but scares him at the same time.
He starts to say a lot of things, all of which Shannon can guess anyway. Finally, he mumbles, "Let me know when you need more eucalyptus," and slinks off toward the jungle again.
"Thanks, Jack," she calls out behind him.
As he walks away, shaking his head as if to clear it of a kiss that is probably still lingering in his body as it is hers, Shannon turns back to see Kate going off in the other direction, down the beach. To anyone who has spent any time watching her, it looks less like walking and more like stomping away in a huff. Sawyer still stands there outside his tent, and he stares intently at Kate's retreat before finally turning his gaze on her. The man makes her nervous; he's too much like her to worry with propriety or to miss the real meaning of a person's behavior, either Kate's or hers.
He calls out to her, "You wanna come over here and help me make Freckles jealous, too?" She can't believe he thinks he has the right to just do what he always does, telegraphing a real offer under the guise of sarcasm, behind smugness, with that come-fuck-me-darlin' twang. Once, Shannon had thought about taking up with him. He's unreasonably hot and he has a fantastic sense of humor, in line with her own. Even without his fucked-up plea for attention over her inhalers, not to mention beating the shit out of Boone just because he could, she still wouldn't be crazy enough to go for him. He's probably even more difficult to deal with than Jack is, and he's definitely also stuck on Kate. Shannon still doesn't understand that one iota, but she chalks it up to something she knows to be true: people always want the ones they can't have. Isn't that why she has this ridiculous crush on Jack while she's going to turn Sawyer down flat, and while she won't let Boone lay a hand on her?
"They're gone, asshole," she calls out.
"Not for long. They'll come back for more."
That's what scares her. She knows she kissed Jack for reasons maybe she still doesn't completely understand, and it almost makes her fear the other thing she knows: that she's done a tremendous job of getting under Kate's skin, for just the effect she wanted. If she manages to push Jack and Kate together, she'll just be the girl who isn't Kate, like she was today for a short but powerful kiss.
But maybe, she thinks with a smirk that slowly fades, Kate will be the girl who isn't Shannon.