fic, Lost: I Lost It (or four people who lost Boone Carlyle's heart and one who didn't), R
Er. Right. This thing took, like, three months or so and I managed to finish it just because the fix-it challenge made me re-write a good part of it and gave me an idea to actually make it work and well, here it goes.
Title: I Lost It (or four people who lost Boone Carlyle's heart and one who didn't)
Rating: R or something along those lines. There's sex, duh.
Pairings/Characters: Jack/Boone, Boone/Shannon, Boone/Charlie and Sawyer/Boone; Boone, Shannon, Charlie, Sawyer, Locke, Jack.
Words: 6474
Summary: It starts when Boone gets sick of lying and pretending he felt relieved when he never really did; two weeks after his hallucination, he goes to Jack and spills everything, from how they found the hatch to how he and Locke spend their days instead of hunting.
Spoilers: set in S1, none really if you know what the hatch is.
Disclaimer: Ha, not mine. This would have happened.
A/N: So, this is for the lostsquee fix-it challenge because it actually attempts to fix everything I can fix about Boone's story starting with him hooking up with someone who actually would give a damn and telling about the hatch because it'd have been way less problematic if he had. But, this is also for emiliglia who had prompted me with romantic Jack/Boone on island for her birthday *headdesk*. Sorry for making you wait three months. Title stolen from an infamous Lucinda Williams song. And using for un_love_you #30, I trust you (writer's choice), which translates in me finishing that table. Also, the prompt said romantic and well, uhm, I tried. Kinda.
It starts when Boone gets sick of lying and pretending he felt relieved when he never really did; two weeks after his hallucination, he goes to Jack and spills everything, from how they found the hatch to how he and Locke spend their days instead of hunting.
The reaction is the usual, at least as far as he’s concerned; people avoid him because he had lied in the first place and because well, there was that story of the water still hanging in the air. After all, he had already did it once; twice, well, it showed pretty much everything there was to show, didn’t it? It doesn’t exactly matter that while Locke really was the one behind it no one avoids him. Maybe because he does have some use for everyone while Boone never really had much.
Then one day Jack finds him somewhere and says he needs help cataloging the meds. Could he give a hand? Boone says yes and that’s when it starts.
1. Shannon
Thing is, she’s always the first when Boone is concerned and she doubts it’s ever going to change. And not the first in the sense of the priority in his life, because now she isn’t anymore, but to say one, she was the first person who ever was his first priority, if you get the drill.
She was the first person he went on summer camp with back then (they had both hated it, but that had never been the point), she had been the first person he probably bought laced underwear for when their mother wouldn’t allow her, the first for whom he lied to his mother and to other people countless times, the first he shared a bedroom with, probably the first he shared a bed with at all (who hasn’t shared a bed with their siblings once? Even if in their case it really hadn’t been once), the first and only one he really fell for and most important, the first one to really own his heart only to throw it away and lose it somewhere.
If there’s anything Shannon hates, it’s cheesy metaphors; but she can’t find a better phrasing. She had deliberately wanted him to suffer, nothing to say about that; she won’t even try to justify herself here. She had deliberately wanted him to suffer and to pay for what she had lost, which never was fair, and she had known it too and hadn’t cared. That was another thing about Boone, he always paid for what wasn’t his own doing to begin with. Anyway, it hadn’t started in Sydney; she had always known. She hadn’t had an epiphany that day; Shannon had always known that his heart was hers to take, if she had wanted it. She had taken it that night, but lost it in the second when the words back to what it was left her lips.
And what’s fun is that she’s the first and only one to see how it begins. Even if it’s mostly a coincidence.
A couple of weeks after Boone told that crazy story about that hatch she’s in the jungle, kind of searching for him. Even if she feels like it’s a bad idea. But they never really talked since that day at the caves and she hasn’t given a damn until now. She really feels like she should start from scratch and so it goes. Maybe they can still salvage something. She owes him that much.
Thing is, she hadn’t been talking to him since before the hatch business, but practically no one talks to him now except for Jack and while she hasn’t done anything to defend him she thinks it wasn’t exactly fair. And she knows fair, indeed. She doesn’t even know whether she will actually speak to him if she does find him, but then she hears voices. Near enough to distinguish Boone and Jack and far enough not to understand what they’re saying.
So she gets closer, trying to be silent; they’re there alright, in this small clearing, facing each other, Boone leaning against a tree and Jack standing.
“So, what is that you wanted to say?” Boone asks softly, and Jack is looking everywhere but not at him. Which, in Shannon’s experience, usually always is a prelude to…
She bites her tongue hard when Jack suddenly turns, takes a couple of steps, lowers his head and kisses Boone, nothing too daring, just lips against lips, but definitely nothing friendly. Fine. It usually led to that but she hadn’t expected it and…
They part a couple of seconds later and she doesn’t think she has ever seen Boone blushing so hard as he raises his head, looks directly into Jack’s eyes and asks him if it’s a joke. Before Jack can speak, he also adds that it's not like he doesn't trust him, all the contrary actually, but if he’s planning to go back to what it was in six hours then he might as well leave now and she's surprised, somewhat, as something inside her aches. She thought she had known how much that hurt, a month ago, not that hurting him wasn’t the target; only now she realizes exactly the entity of what she had said, but then Jack says that he really wouldn’t do such a thing if he wasn’t sure, especially because it’s not like he is exactly comfortable himself.
She sees Boone move exactly as he had moved that night in Sydney then, except that now it isn’t Jack pushing him as she had pushed him but Boone meeting Jack’s lips halfway and this is a real kiss.
Shannon turns and leaves. She has seen enough. If she had lost his heart back then, she figures it means that Jack found it; she just hopes he’s more careful than she was, because while she’s happy now with Sayid, she really is, Shannon knows she isn’t going to stop regretting her carelessness for a long time.
--
They’re making small talk while cataloging the meds; at one point music is someway brought up and when Jack asks him what’s his favorite song Boone shrugs and thinks about it. He goes for the first one he likes that comes to mind, even if it’s kind of obscure. Jack just nods, but it was pretty much obvious that he didn’t have an idea of what Boone was talking about. He had shrugged, then said he really didn’t know much about music, and Boone had said it was alright. That really wasn’t anything important, after all.
In two days’ time, he catches people gossiping at the main camp and he realizes that the hottest mystery of the island, right now, is why the hell Jack would go ask Charlie who is Little Steven and what’s this I Am A Patriot song about. After all Jack never seemed one interested in music at all and Charlie says that he was ready to bet he liked jazz and stuff, not that he’d be interested in Bruce Springsteen’s former guitarist of everything.
Boone doesn’t really know what to make of it, but as he listens to Arzt telling the story all over again to some poor soul who happened to pass there, he can’t help smiling to himself.
--
2. Charlie
Charlie could have never come up with the heart metaphor, he didn’t know the whole backstory anyway; but thing is, Charlie is the first person on the island who could have had what Shannon had lost.
It didn’t happen, though.
It was just one night, or better, one hour at best.
It had begun after Jack got trapped in that cave and in a moment when he wasn’t exactly out of withdrawal, but at least he wasn’t shaking and his speech pattern was back into normalcy.
Anyway, Boone had come out of sodding nowhere or something and hadn’t been looking at him as he apologized for, well, what happened when he stole the water; Charlie had said it didn’t matter, not really, and then something else he can’t remember and it had ended with Boone’s hand in his jeans, their thighs rubbing against each other and Charlie’s lips biting on Boone’s shoulder in order not to make noise.
It had felt good, really. Especially after that particularly bloody crappy week.
Then Boone had just wiped his hand, looked at Charlie and said that he was going. For a second he had looked at him like he expected Charlie to say something, anything; if he hadn’t been shaking his withdrawal off, Charlie might have seen that Boone was probably hoping for Charlie to stop him. Charlie had just nodded and Boone had left; they hadn’t really talked much after that.
Now, he’s at the caves in order to get some water and bring it to Claire on the beach; but he surely hadn’t expected to see Boone in Jack’s cave, just sitting on some rock while Jack shaves. He stays where he is, suddenly wanting to see what happens; no one else is around. They’re talking, or so it seems, but then Jack puts the razor down, Boone stands up and Charlie blinks more than once when he realizes that Boone’s hands reached Jack’s waist and that one of them is creeping its way inside Jack’s jeans.
He watches, almost in shock, as Jack starts thrusting against Boone’s hand, his own hands on Boone’s hips, his back grinding against Boone’s front. Charlie wonders if this is what they’ve been up to in the last weeks, when Boone had practically moved to the caves and Jack became somewhat harder to find; then again, Jack had been the only person to actually talk to Boone lately and Charlie feels kind of guilty because they had all treated the poor bloke like crap for no real reason. He makes a mental note to apologize later.
Then a strangled noise comes from Jack’s lips as he turns and kisses Boone, almost greedy; Charlie sees tongue, indeed, as Jack turns and Boone wipes his hand on his shirt while they keep on kissing, the pace slowing down, Boone’s hand reaching Jack’s neck.
He’ll ask Hurley or Jin for some water, he decides as he gets back to the beach. He thinks about that night and wonders what would have happened if he had asked Boone to stay. Well, he won’t ever know anyway.
--
It doesn’t really pick up until two days later, when instead of cataloguing meds they’re going through unclaimed luggage to see if they find some other useful stuff and Jack asks him if there’s something he regrets right now. Probably just to make small talk. Boone won’t tell what he exactly regrets right now, too personal, but settles on something which is sadly the truth. Which is, he has waited four years to vote against Bush and now it’s election day and they’re stuck on a fucking island in the middle of nowhere.
Jack looks at him in disbelief for a few seconds, enough for Boone to shyly ask if maybe he was a Republican and maybe he offended him, except that Jack bursts out laughing, says he always voted Democrat and it was just that he never missed an election and now had completely forgot it.
Boone just shrugs and smiles and says it’s normal, it isn’t like they don’t have more pressing matters to take care of; but then Jack says that he just was impressed. Boone lets it go, he doesn’t get why Jack should be impressed (after all he just regrets missing the election and he just hopes that if they ever get rescued he’ll be back in a world where Bush isn’t at the White House), but then before he heads back to the beach Jack asks him whether he’s available to give him a hand tomorrow and by the way, he thinks he understood what’s the deal with that song. Or at least, he never heard the lyrics but only someone whose favorite song has that title would remember the elections while they’re stuck on Craphole Island. And Boone can’t remember feeling so touched lately; surely not since a long time. That’s when things definitely change for the first time.
--
3. Sawyer
Sawyer hadn’t come up with the heart metaphor either, but he sure as hell knew all that was to know about the way things had gone.
It had lasted exactly one week and a half; he remembers every single fucking day. It had been maybe three days since that fucked up torture and Boone had come into his tent. The metro hadn’t looked exactly like he had wanted to be there, but Sawyer had heard him anyway since it wasn’t like with his arm in the conditions it was in he could have pushed him out or anything.
So the metro had gone into a very long, garbled, full-of-pauses and outright boring speech whose point was, in a few words, saying that he loathed torture, that he was sorry and that he shouldn’t have judged the situation so harshly and again, he was sorry.
Sawyer had just shrugged because it wasn’t like he could have said fine, no problem, I’m peachy and now just fuck off. He had teased instead, as usual. He can’t remember the terms, but he remembers indeed how it had ended up; precisely, it had ended up with him on the airport seat and Boone kneeling between his legs, giving Sawyer the best goddamn head he was ever given, those pink, pretty lips taking him in, deeper and deeper and letting Sawyer fuck his mouth until he had come harder than he could care remember coming in the last three years at latest.
He had come the following day, and the next, and the next. And they had done pretty much everything that could be done in their situation, and thankfully someone had brought condoms on that plane (and then the condoms had ended in Sawyer’s stash, of course). Sawyer had found himself surprised mostly at the fact that the metro wasn’t half as passive as he looked and at the fact that he wasn’t one letting Sawyer have control easily, not really, but it had been some pretty incredible fucking. Indeed.
It had started just for sex, but then he had called everything off the day he realized he was looking forward to the metro getting into his tent. And he couldn’t afford to be looking forward to having sex with Boone fucking Carlyle. He can’t remember whether Boone had looked hurt or disappointed when Sawyer told him; he just remembers him nodding and leaving without a word. And he hadn’t really thought about it anymore; after all, it had been just sex which was threatening to become something more and it wasn’t like Sawyer hasn’t built his life on no strings attached. See what happened the time that there were strings attached.
So, Sawyer hasn’t really thought much about it, not until he decides to go take a walk some day around the end of November’s second week, if he has kept the count right. It’s not like he’s following a path when he hears noise, and he recognizes which kind of noise alright; from what he gathers, it’s not even a man and a woman and it’s very interesting. Who would get down to it in the jungle of all places?, he wonders as he carefully approaches, trying to be as silent as possible and thinking about possible combinations. He can easily figure who is one half of the pairing, but he just can’t figure out the other, especially since everyone here either pines for a woman or has more pressing matters; he bites his lip hard enough to almost draw blood when he sees that he was right about the first half and that the second is Jack of everyone.
They’re against a tree, or better, Boone is against a tree, wearing his shirt while his jeans are discarded somewhere as Jack is slowly thrusting inside him as he holds him up; Boone’s fingers are gripping at Jack’s shirt so hard that Sawyer things the fabric might break, his eyes closed, his lips parted and wet, so pink that it’s almost like being punched in the eyes when noticing how much they contrast with the pale skin of his face.
It takes three seconds for Sawyer to notice that things are different from that week in his tent, here; apart from Boone obviously letting Jack lead, which had never happened while with him (or better, Sawyer had always had to fight for it), nothing is like he remembers. He can’t hear what they’re saying, because they’re somewhat speaking but he’s too far, and they’re unusually quiet; he can’t really remember giving a damn about quiet and sure as hell they never sweet-talked each other. Because he recognizes sweet-talking when he sees it, listening to it isn’t really that necessary. He had never fucked Boone so slowly, never touched him like he was some sort of piece of frail glass as Jack is doing now and sincerely, Boone had done everything in his power to avoid it then; well, it looks like he doesn’t want to avoid it now. Kissing was never implied in their arrangement, but now it is; it’s either small feather kisses Boone is leaving on Jack’s neck before reclining his head in pleasure, or long ones, or the extremely long one they share when Jack starts to thrust harder and Boone’s expression becomes somewhat blissed. Sawyer thinks he can hear their moaning dying into each others’ lips as they come seconds apart, both shaking all over.
He turns his back and leaves, not really needing to see much else. The more he thinks about it while he gets back to his tent, the more it somewhat makes sense; anyway, he had noticed that pretty much no one had given a damn about the metro lately and during that week, he was pretty sure that Boone was trying to forget someone. He can’t be sure that said someone was Saint Jack Almighty, he really doubts it considering how things are, but he has indeed noticed that Jack has stepped up to the role just fine. And after all, it’ll be a lot of fun when it comes out in the open. He bites back a laugh when he thinks about Kate’s face when she finds out; well, since they are clearly serious (or else, Boone would have never let Jack fuck him like that), it means that maybe she won’t be so reluctant next time he wants to play I never.
--
Things had changed in the sense that conversation wasn’t much awkward anymore, and at one point Boone gets the idea that while Jack seemingly always needs a hand with something, it’s never anything he couldn’t manage on his own. Sure, maybe he just doesn’t want to deal on his own with everything, but he can’t shake off the impression that most of the help he needs is an excuse to keep him around.
Which sounds completely crazy since it’s not like people have fought to have him around until now, and Boone tries not to think about it. He doesn’t need to self-delude himself into such a stupid thing.
But he can’t help noticing that at least whatever Jack finds for him to do isn’t making him feel as useless as looking at a hatch felt; it can be cataloging meds or searching for those leaves of Sun’s or going through the luggage or whatever, but at least he’s doing something.
He has tried to talk to Locke a couple of times, but after always being bluntly ignored, he just decides to steer clear of the beach as much as possible. He isn’t sorry, not really. At one point it had become too much and while he was still grateful to Locke for having shown some kind of faith in him in the beginning, it had been that against lying to forty-six other people and he wasn’t just wired for it.
He kind of feels let down, though; after all that talking of letting go and purposes and faith and destiny Boone can’t get how Locke could just turn his back on him so easily. He just wonders if he’s ever going to find someone who doesn’t expect anything of that sort out of him and who won’t turn their back on him as soon as he isn’t needed anymore. And he doesn’t dare to think that Jack could be that someone, especially since he had thought he had forgotten that sort of half-crush he got on him after his failed attempt at rescuing that poor woman.
Still, he’s accustomed to sharing his vital space with someone towards whom he feels something he shouldn’t feel; didn’t he have a whole life of practice after all?
--
4. Locke
He’d avoid thinking about Boone as he’s forced to share his hours at the hatch, still trying to open it, with Sayid and Michael at turns; especially since the day they banged on the door out of frustration and a light was turned on, they won’t let him alone for a second and he just can’t help remembering who is that put him into this situation. He doubts it’ll ever get opened now; he can’t shake the feeling that it was meant for him and Boone to open and not for anyone else and now it’s all for nothing, or so he feels like and he can’t shake it out of his head.
If only he hadn’t talked. He doesn’t know what would have happened but he’s sure something was bound to have happened and whatever it was, now it’s all for nothing.
Sometimes he has the notion that the closed door somehow mocks them all, and him more than everyone else. It was his job to open that thing and if he couldn’t even get Boone to keep his mouth shut about it… well, his fault.
He shakes his head when he thinks about the first days. There was some kind of excitement over that hatch, they were both working for something there, and it had been good to, well, be friends with someone. Then sure, after it had become more about the hatch and really, he had had to pull that stunt on Boone because others knowing was something he, they couldn’t afford; he just doesn’t get why did he tell. After all it had seemed they had reached an agreement; he had helped him with his sister, Boone would have helped him with the hatch.
Sincerely, he hadn’t felt sorry at the outcome Boone got out of his good Samaritan's deed.
But then, as Sayid tries to find some hidden switch or as Michael talks endlessly about the materials someone used for that door and how they could just do this and that and this other thing to open it up, he reflects. There was no doubt that Boone was in it because he was feeling useful, that was the first thing he had learned about him (that everybody had learned about him); maybe at one point he just wasn’t anymore. Or maybe feeling relieved hadn’t been enough to convince him. Or maybe he hadn’t felt relieved, or maybe it wasn’t the point. He just doesn’t get it and not getting it isn’t something that sits well with him.
He understands it just a month after Boone turned his back on him. Not so metaphorically speaking.
Or better, he begins to get it a bit before that, when by pure chance he’s at the beach and not too far from Charlie’s tent. Boone is around, too, searching for something in the unclaimed luggage, when Charlie gets out of the tent and goes straight to him and apologizes for having been a bloody arsehole or something along those lines; Locke figures it’s for being one of the forty-odd people who gave him the silence treatment. But Boone’s eyes lighten up for a second before he shakes Charlie’s outstretched hand saying it’s alright. That’s when he sort of starts to get it, in the sense that only now he sees how much exactly Boone needs people to talk to him more than he actually needs a purpose. Charlie seems surprised of how easy it was to patch things up, but Locke isn’t; he’d have been surprised if Boone actually held a grudge.
But he really gets it a week later.
Sayid finds another entrance to the hatch after realizing that if it was an underground bunker it’d have been strange if it had just one way out; and so they don’t even need to open it. Point is, there was someone inside the hatch, a half-crazed guy named Desmond with a Scottish accent who had spent three years in there with the craziest story Locke has ever heard his whole life, even if he doesn’t have a single problem believing it. Anyway, the hatch has also food and a shower, but people stop at the food part of the equation and then Charlie decides they should just have all a proper dinner also to give that poor bastard a hearty welcome because don’t we all have bloody manners around here?. They find a couple of volunteers to press the button (Steve and Tracy or something) and then at dinner something very interesting happens.
As Charlie tries to get Desmond drunk in order to loosen up, he notices Sawyer chuckling. Locke looks the same way and notices that while there was free place to seat next to Kate, Jack had gone straight to a free place to seat next to Boone and Locke can’t exactly see what’s so funny.
Then he notices that Charlie had glanced there for a second, too, before sort of winking at Boone and turning back to his efforts with Desmond. Then he notices Shannon half-smiling in that direction before settling back better against Sayid. Something doesn’t really add here. Then Jack’s arm brushes not too accidentally against Boone’s and Locke can swear that Boone’s cheeks definitely got a bit more flushed.
He spends an hour noticing small gestures which could be purely accidental but look pretty much suspicious; and then Sawyer asks if someone is up for playing I never, most people are and after a couple of harmless rounds (probably in order to get people reasonably drunk), he says, very calmly, I never had sex since the plane crashed. Then he drinks and Charlie drinks, blushing like mad next and looking apologetically at Claire; then Shannon drinks and Locke doesn’t miss how Charlie and Sawyer are staring in the same direction. Then Jack shrugs and drinks; Boone looks at him wide-eyed for a second and then shrugs, too, and takes a long shot.
Suddenly he gets it, just as Kate’s face morphs into a shocked expression and she shakes her head in disbelief; Sawyer rolls his eyes and Charlie is seemingly explaining something to Claire about one night stands before he even knew her well. Jack’s arm goes around Boone’s waist and there’s an awkward silence that lasts about fifteen seconds.
Then Sawyer rolls his eyes and says it was about time and suddenly everyone is more or less congratulating. He doesn’t, stays on the rear and watches; that’s when he realizes that Boone never needed to be part of a bigger picture, never needed to be special or to do anything special or to feel like he had a mission to accomplish. He wants to feel like someone needs him for what he is and not because he’s part of something else. That’s where Locke failed. After all, a purpose can’t need you for what you are, but a real person can.
He also knows when it was that he lost him along the way.
--
He finds out he’s not really that bad at concealing things and so he’s careful; he never looks too much in Jack’s direction, he never gets caught staring, he avoids touching of any kind, he keeps his attitude as friendly as it gets. It works, for a while. The situation gets slightly better, at least now there isn’t the actual silence treatment even if people aren’t exactly too friendly either; he doesn’t even miss Shannon that much, not that he’d go searching for her in Sayid’s tent anyway.
Still, small talk isn’t enough after a while; he really wouldn’t have told Jack about Shannon if it hadn’t just come up like that and he never knew that telling someone straight would have made him feel like a weight was put off his shoulders.
He hadn’t expected to learn why Jack was on the plane. He couldn’t do more than put a shaking hand on Jack’s shoulder when the story was over because, well, what can you actually say?, but Jack had seemed grateful or something. And he had felt like there was no need to say anything at all.
He doesn’t know what it is that shifts, maybe it’s because they’ve told each other the two things they won’t ever come back from; but even with this other shift that brought Jack somewhat closer, he wouldn’t have ever expected Jack to say he needed to talk to him somewhere private and then to kiss him against a tree in some clearing in the middle of that jungle.
Some time later, he won’t remember much of that moment; he will remember just his heart beating wildly as much as when Shannon knocked on his door if not more, he will remember asking Jack about any possible going back to what it was and then he will remember thinking that as long as Jack wanted it he sincerely couldn’t care less if he didn’t know why. Reasons are found out, sooner or later. He will remember how he hadn’t really kissed anyone since Shannon and he will realize that if in Sydney she had been the one doing everything until he relented, in that clearing he and Jack had met halfway. He will figure it meant something after all.
--
5. Jack
The elections were what made Jack realize that there was a lot more to Boone than the pretty face meeting the eye. Mostly because he had never missed a presidential election all his life and since they crashed he hadn’t even thought about what was going to happen in November. No one he had talked to had mentioned it either. It had just impressed him; wanting to know more about what was behind the appearances had come easy.
He had kept on saying he needed help with a lot of things he might as well have done alone. There were good reasons for it. For one, that he wants to be of use not to show off but just because he’s wired that way. Which actually isn’t that different from the way Jack is wired himself, after all; when he learned about Shannon, he had wondered if having messed up family relationships brought people to the same point, then tried to forget it. Also, it wasn’t like he hadn’t noticed that Boone actually did accomplish things when he didn’t try to be the prince charming he wasn’t.
He doesn’t remember when he had started to like the way Boone’s lips curled up in a half smile and sure as hell he doesn’t remember when he decided he wanted to see it more often; he doesn’t even remember how he started looking forward to having Boone around, maybe because things happened so smoothly that he really can’t distinguish more than three or four moments.
He knows he realized it when once Boone had said casually something like thinking that his name wasn’t really that suited. Jack had asked what it meant, he couldn’t recall right then; when Boone had shrugged and answered gift, Jack had to bite his tongue because he had been on the verge of saying that it felt pretty much appropriate and well, he wasn’t exactly talking friendship anymore. He sure never had gone as far as describing anyone in his life as a gift, for that matter. Fine, he had just agreed and in his head only, but still, it had to mean something. Also, when two days later Boone was standing somewhat too close and Jack had started wondering about how would it have felt if he just went and kissed him against the cave’s wall he had decided that there was definitely something more at stake.
But maybe it’s because of the situation, or maybe it’s in spite of it, but easy is the only way he can describe the way things had gone since he stopped thinking about all the cons of the situation and kissed Boone in that clearing, and not in a bad sense. That slight awkwardness that came with closeness, before, was gone just like that; Boone hadn’t changed his attitude much (when they could be seen) if not for the casual touch which was maybe a little too friendly or that half smile that lasted maybe a couple of seconds more than appropriate.
Maybe it was also the reason he had started feeling like keeping everything hidden wasn’t worth the effort; quick encounters in the caves and slightly longer encounters in the jungle were too much in the beginning and too little after three weeks (and he’d have never bet on such craziness to last three weeks, but by that time it really didn’t sound so crazy anymore). That was why he had taken that I never idiotic game as a good chance to just stop it, and considering that he had done it without even asking Boone first it had been taking a leap of faith. Not that he doesn’t think that it wasn’t a good idea, not in the slightest, not when his hand was taken in an iron grip afterwards.
It was a week ago and things haven’t really changed much; there was a lot of gossip in the first three or four days after it came out, there had been a couple of awkward talks with Kate, he has found a couple of packets of condoms in his cave (he thinks he knows whose doing is it), Arzt not exactly being on board with it and that was everything. In five days everyone was already talking about something else and Jack is perfectly fine with it. Jack is perfectly fine with everything actually, and it’s kind of the new experience. Or maybe not exactly new but it isn’t always that everything is just alright; right, they’re stuck on a tropical island, but apart from that… it’s not really that bad.
(The only nasty part had been Arzt complaining that he and Boone were the first step to the road of the hippie commune, but then Shannon had told him that if there really was an hippie commune then he’d have already fucked that Nikki girl around whom he keeps on hovering and that had shut Arzt up for a while. Not to mention that he thinks that after that one she and Boone had actually started talking regularly again and Jack can only be glad of it.)
True, it’s not like this isn’t actually freaking him out at least on some level; he still thinks that taking that first leap of faith had been the craziest thing he did all his life, not that he wouldn’t do it again, beware, all of his relationships had been with women except for some random fooling around with his roommate in med school, there’s the age gap and everything, but… it just doesn’t really matter. They deal with it when things get awkward and when they don’t, it’s still easy. So easy that he has troubles believing it, sometimes. There’s something in the way Boone is around him now that there isn’t nothing to hide, like there’s no other place he’d rather be, and to be honest Jack is of the same opinion. Just seeing the way Boone looks at him when they’re lying on the floor of his cave half-naked makes his heart skip a beat or two because he’s pretty sure the closest someone came to look at him that way was Sarah at his wedding and it still was different. It’s different and he doesn’t dare naming it, but he doesn’t even need to.
One day Shannon comes to search for him and says she’s glad she found him alone. He asks her why. She just shrugs and half-smiles and answers that well, it really isn’t nothing, but just so that he knows, he’s probably the only person who hasn’t fucked around with him for a long time, myself included, and so you should see it stays this way. And then she looks at him very seriously, and he nods at her and says it never was his intention to fuck around with anyone.
“Well, then it’s just his luck that he ended up with the only person on this island who doesn’t know what fucking around means,” she answers, and then half-smiles at him again and leaves. Jack doesn’t want to think about the implications of what she said, most of everything the myself included, but it isn’t like it changes anything. He isn’t the person who gets into such a thing just for fun and he knows it even too well. He perfectly knows what fucking around means though, and he’ll see to rectify whatever Shannon thinks next time he talks to her. Then Boone arrives from the beach in order to fill some bottles of water and while he does he asks him whether Shannon was there before or if he had imagined her as he came.
“She was.”
“Did she tell you something?”
“Yes, but I think it was doctor-patient privilege and everything.”
“Of course. Well, I just hope it wasn’t anything embarrassing.”
“Oh, it wasn’t. Not at all.”
“I guess I’ll have to trust you on this.”
“Why, you usually don’t?” he asks, and Boone is blushing harder than usual as he takes another empty bottle out of his backpack.
“You know I do,” he mutters as he starts filling, and damn, Jack just can’t help it. He gets there and spins Boone around and the bottle falls into the water as they kiss and Jack can’t really have enough.
“Wow,” Boone whispers when it’s over, “was that for something particular?”
“Well… no. Not really. It was… just because.”
And maybe it wasn’t all the truth but as Boone leans into him again, backpack and bottles forgotten, Jack realizes how much exactly he doesn’t want to fuck this up. But for some reason he’s pretty sure he won’t.
End.
Title: I Lost It (or four people who lost Boone Carlyle's heart and one who didn't)
Rating: R or something along those lines. There's sex, duh.
Pairings/Characters: Jack/Boone, Boone/Shannon, Boone/Charlie and Sawyer/Boone; Boone, Shannon, Charlie, Sawyer, Locke, Jack.
Words: 6474
Summary: It starts when Boone gets sick of lying and pretending he felt relieved when he never really did; two weeks after his hallucination, he goes to Jack and spills everything, from how they found the hatch to how he and Locke spend their days instead of hunting.
Spoilers: set in S1, none really if you know what the hatch is.
Disclaimer: Ha, not mine. This would have happened.
A/N: So, this is for the lostsquee fix-it challenge because it actually attempts to fix everything I can fix about Boone's story starting with him hooking up with someone who actually would give a damn and telling about the hatch because it'd have been way less problematic if he had. But, this is also for emiliglia who had prompted me with romantic Jack/Boone on island for her birthday *headdesk*. Sorry for making you wait three months. Title stolen from an infamous Lucinda Williams song. And using for un_love_you #30, I trust you (writer's choice), which translates in me finishing that table. Also, the prompt said romantic and well, uhm, I tried. Kinda.
It starts when Boone gets sick of lying and pretending he felt relieved when he never really did; two weeks after his hallucination, he goes to Jack and spills everything, from how they found the hatch to how he and Locke spend their days instead of hunting.
The reaction is the usual, at least as far as he’s concerned; people avoid him because he had lied in the first place and because well, there was that story of the water still hanging in the air. After all, he had already did it once; twice, well, it showed pretty much everything there was to show, didn’t it? It doesn’t exactly matter that while Locke really was the one behind it no one avoids him. Maybe because he does have some use for everyone while Boone never really had much.
Then one day Jack finds him somewhere and says he needs help cataloging the meds. Could he give a hand? Boone says yes and that’s when it starts.
1. Shannon
Thing is, she’s always the first when Boone is concerned and she doubts it’s ever going to change. And not the first in the sense of the priority in his life, because now she isn’t anymore, but to say one, she was the first person who ever was his first priority, if you get the drill.
She was the first person he went on summer camp with back then (they had both hated it, but that had never been the point), she had been the first person he probably bought laced underwear for when their mother wouldn’t allow her, the first for whom he lied to his mother and to other people countless times, the first he shared a bedroom with, probably the first he shared a bed with at all (who hasn’t shared a bed with their siblings once? Even if in their case it really hadn’t been once), the first and only one he really fell for and most important, the first one to really own his heart only to throw it away and lose it somewhere.
If there’s anything Shannon hates, it’s cheesy metaphors; but she can’t find a better phrasing. She had deliberately wanted him to suffer, nothing to say about that; she won’t even try to justify herself here. She had deliberately wanted him to suffer and to pay for what she had lost, which never was fair, and she had known it too and hadn’t cared. That was another thing about Boone, he always paid for what wasn’t his own doing to begin with. Anyway, it hadn’t started in Sydney; she had always known. She hadn’t had an epiphany that day; Shannon had always known that his heart was hers to take, if she had wanted it. She had taken it that night, but lost it in the second when the words back to what it was left her lips.
And what’s fun is that she’s the first and only one to see how it begins. Even if it’s mostly a coincidence.
A couple of weeks after Boone told that crazy story about that hatch she’s in the jungle, kind of searching for him. Even if she feels like it’s a bad idea. But they never really talked since that day at the caves and she hasn’t given a damn until now. She really feels like she should start from scratch and so it goes. Maybe they can still salvage something. She owes him that much.
Thing is, she hadn’t been talking to him since before the hatch business, but practically no one talks to him now except for Jack and while she hasn’t done anything to defend him she thinks it wasn’t exactly fair. And she knows fair, indeed. She doesn’t even know whether she will actually speak to him if she does find him, but then she hears voices. Near enough to distinguish Boone and Jack and far enough not to understand what they’re saying.
So she gets closer, trying to be silent; they’re there alright, in this small clearing, facing each other, Boone leaning against a tree and Jack standing.
“So, what is that you wanted to say?” Boone asks softly, and Jack is looking everywhere but not at him. Which, in Shannon’s experience, usually always is a prelude to…
She bites her tongue hard when Jack suddenly turns, takes a couple of steps, lowers his head and kisses Boone, nothing too daring, just lips against lips, but definitely nothing friendly. Fine. It usually led to that but she hadn’t expected it and…
They part a couple of seconds later and she doesn’t think she has ever seen Boone blushing so hard as he raises his head, looks directly into Jack’s eyes and asks him if it’s a joke. Before Jack can speak, he also adds that it's not like he doesn't trust him, all the contrary actually, but if he’s planning to go back to what it was in six hours then he might as well leave now and she's surprised, somewhat, as something inside her aches. She thought she had known how much that hurt, a month ago, not that hurting him wasn’t the target; only now she realizes exactly the entity of what she had said, but then Jack says that he really wouldn’t do such a thing if he wasn’t sure, especially because it’s not like he is exactly comfortable himself.
She sees Boone move exactly as he had moved that night in Sydney then, except that now it isn’t Jack pushing him as she had pushed him but Boone meeting Jack’s lips halfway and this is a real kiss.
Shannon turns and leaves. She has seen enough. If she had lost his heart back then, she figures it means that Jack found it; she just hopes he’s more careful than she was, because while she’s happy now with Sayid, she really is, Shannon knows she isn’t going to stop regretting her carelessness for a long time.
--
They’re making small talk while cataloging the meds; at one point music is someway brought up and when Jack asks him what’s his favorite song Boone shrugs and thinks about it. He goes for the first one he likes that comes to mind, even if it’s kind of obscure. Jack just nods, but it was pretty much obvious that he didn’t have an idea of what Boone was talking about. He had shrugged, then said he really didn’t know much about music, and Boone had said it was alright. That really wasn’t anything important, after all.
In two days’ time, he catches people gossiping at the main camp and he realizes that the hottest mystery of the island, right now, is why the hell Jack would go ask Charlie who is Little Steven and what’s this I Am A Patriot song about. After all Jack never seemed one interested in music at all and Charlie says that he was ready to bet he liked jazz and stuff, not that he’d be interested in Bruce Springsteen’s former guitarist of everything.
Boone doesn’t really know what to make of it, but as he listens to Arzt telling the story all over again to some poor soul who happened to pass there, he can’t help smiling to himself.
--
2. Charlie
Charlie could have never come up with the heart metaphor, he didn’t know the whole backstory anyway; but thing is, Charlie is the first person on the island who could have had what Shannon had lost.
It didn’t happen, though.
It was just one night, or better, one hour at best.
It had begun after Jack got trapped in that cave and in a moment when he wasn’t exactly out of withdrawal, but at least he wasn’t shaking and his speech pattern was back into normalcy.
Anyway, Boone had come out of sodding nowhere or something and hadn’t been looking at him as he apologized for, well, what happened when he stole the water; Charlie had said it didn’t matter, not really, and then something else he can’t remember and it had ended with Boone’s hand in his jeans, their thighs rubbing against each other and Charlie’s lips biting on Boone’s shoulder in order not to make noise.
It had felt good, really. Especially after that particularly bloody crappy week.
Then Boone had just wiped his hand, looked at Charlie and said that he was going. For a second he had looked at him like he expected Charlie to say something, anything; if he hadn’t been shaking his withdrawal off, Charlie might have seen that Boone was probably hoping for Charlie to stop him. Charlie had just nodded and Boone had left; they hadn’t really talked much after that.
Now, he’s at the caves in order to get some water and bring it to Claire on the beach; but he surely hadn’t expected to see Boone in Jack’s cave, just sitting on some rock while Jack shaves. He stays where he is, suddenly wanting to see what happens; no one else is around. They’re talking, or so it seems, but then Jack puts the razor down, Boone stands up and Charlie blinks more than once when he realizes that Boone’s hands reached Jack’s waist and that one of them is creeping its way inside Jack’s jeans.
He watches, almost in shock, as Jack starts thrusting against Boone’s hand, his own hands on Boone’s hips, his back grinding against Boone’s front. Charlie wonders if this is what they’ve been up to in the last weeks, when Boone had practically moved to the caves and Jack became somewhat harder to find; then again, Jack had been the only person to actually talk to Boone lately and Charlie feels kind of guilty because they had all treated the poor bloke like crap for no real reason. He makes a mental note to apologize later.
Then a strangled noise comes from Jack’s lips as he turns and kisses Boone, almost greedy; Charlie sees tongue, indeed, as Jack turns and Boone wipes his hand on his shirt while they keep on kissing, the pace slowing down, Boone’s hand reaching Jack’s neck.
He’ll ask Hurley or Jin for some water, he decides as he gets back to the beach. He thinks about that night and wonders what would have happened if he had asked Boone to stay. Well, he won’t ever know anyway.
--
It doesn’t really pick up until two days later, when instead of cataloguing meds they’re going through unclaimed luggage to see if they find some other useful stuff and Jack asks him if there’s something he regrets right now. Probably just to make small talk. Boone won’t tell what he exactly regrets right now, too personal, but settles on something which is sadly the truth. Which is, he has waited four years to vote against Bush and now it’s election day and they’re stuck on a fucking island in the middle of nowhere.
Jack looks at him in disbelief for a few seconds, enough for Boone to shyly ask if maybe he was a Republican and maybe he offended him, except that Jack bursts out laughing, says he always voted Democrat and it was just that he never missed an election and now had completely forgot it.
Boone just shrugs and smiles and says it’s normal, it isn’t like they don’t have more pressing matters to take care of; but then Jack says that he just was impressed. Boone lets it go, he doesn’t get why Jack should be impressed (after all he just regrets missing the election and he just hopes that if they ever get rescued he’ll be back in a world where Bush isn’t at the White House), but then before he heads back to the beach Jack asks him whether he’s available to give him a hand tomorrow and by the way, he thinks he understood what’s the deal with that song. Or at least, he never heard the lyrics but only someone whose favorite song has that title would remember the elections while they’re stuck on Craphole Island. And Boone can’t remember feeling so touched lately; surely not since a long time. That’s when things definitely change for the first time.
--
3. Sawyer
Sawyer hadn’t come up with the heart metaphor either, but he sure as hell knew all that was to know about the way things had gone.
It had lasted exactly one week and a half; he remembers every single fucking day. It had been maybe three days since that fucked up torture and Boone had come into his tent. The metro hadn’t looked exactly like he had wanted to be there, but Sawyer had heard him anyway since it wasn’t like with his arm in the conditions it was in he could have pushed him out or anything.
So the metro had gone into a very long, garbled, full-of-pauses and outright boring speech whose point was, in a few words, saying that he loathed torture, that he was sorry and that he shouldn’t have judged the situation so harshly and again, he was sorry.
Sawyer had just shrugged because it wasn’t like he could have said fine, no problem, I’m peachy and now just fuck off. He had teased instead, as usual. He can’t remember the terms, but he remembers indeed how it had ended up; precisely, it had ended up with him on the airport seat and Boone kneeling between his legs, giving Sawyer the best goddamn head he was ever given, those pink, pretty lips taking him in, deeper and deeper and letting Sawyer fuck his mouth until he had come harder than he could care remember coming in the last three years at latest.
He had come the following day, and the next, and the next. And they had done pretty much everything that could be done in their situation, and thankfully someone had brought condoms on that plane (and then the condoms had ended in Sawyer’s stash, of course). Sawyer had found himself surprised mostly at the fact that the metro wasn’t half as passive as he looked and at the fact that he wasn’t one letting Sawyer have control easily, not really, but it had been some pretty incredible fucking. Indeed.
It had started just for sex, but then he had called everything off the day he realized he was looking forward to the metro getting into his tent. And he couldn’t afford to be looking forward to having sex with Boone fucking Carlyle. He can’t remember whether Boone had looked hurt or disappointed when Sawyer told him; he just remembers him nodding and leaving without a word. And he hadn’t really thought about it anymore; after all, it had been just sex which was threatening to become something more and it wasn’t like Sawyer hasn’t built his life on no strings attached. See what happened the time that there were strings attached.
So, Sawyer hasn’t really thought much about it, not until he decides to go take a walk some day around the end of November’s second week, if he has kept the count right. It’s not like he’s following a path when he hears noise, and he recognizes which kind of noise alright; from what he gathers, it’s not even a man and a woman and it’s very interesting. Who would get down to it in the jungle of all places?, he wonders as he carefully approaches, trying to be as silent as possible and thinking about possible combinations. He can easily figure who is one half of the pairing, but he just can’t figure out the other, especially since everyone here either pines for a woman or has more pressing matters; he bites his lip hard enough to almost draw blood when he sees that he was right about the first half and that the second is Jack of everyone.
They’re against a tree, or better, Boone is against a tree, wearing his shirt while his jeans are discarded somewhere as Jack is slowly thrusting inside him as he holds him up; Boone’s fingers are gripping at Jack’s shirt so hard that Sawyer things the fabric might break, his eyes closed, his lips parted and wet, so pink that it’s almost like being punched in the eyes when noticing how much they contrast with the pale skin of his face.
It takes three seconds for Sawyer to notice that things are different from that week in his tent, here; apart from Boone obviously letting Jack lead, which had never happened while with him (or better, Sawyer had always had to fight for it), nothing is like he remembers. He can’t hear what they’re saying, because they’re somewhat speaking but he’s too far, and they’re unusually quiet; he can’t really remember giving a damn about quiet and sure as hell they never sweet-talked each other. Because he recognizes sweet-talking when he sees it, listening to it isn’t really that necessary. He had never fucked Boone so slowly, never touched him like he was some sort of piece of frail glass as Jack is doing now and sincerely, Boone had done everything in his power to avoid it then; well, it looks like he doesn’t want to avoid it now. Kissing was never implied in their arrangement, but now it is; it’s either small feather kisses Boone is leaving on Jack’s neck before reclining his head in pleasure, or long ones, or the extremely long one they share when Jack starts to thrust harder and Boone’s expression becomes somewhat blissed. Sawyer thinks he can hear their moaning dying into each others’ lips as they come seconds apart, both shaking all over.
He turns his back and leaves, not really needing to see much else. The more he thinks about it while he gets back to his tent, the more it somewhat makes sense; anyway, he had noticed that pretty much no one had given a damn about the metro lately and during that week, he was pretty sure that Boone was trying to forget someone. He can’t be sure that said someone was Saint Jack Almighty, he really doubts it considering how things are, but he has indeed noticed that Jack has stepped up to the role just fine. And after all, it’ll be a lot of fun when it comes out in the open. He bites back a laugh when he thinks about Kate’s face when she finds out; well, since they are clearly serious (or else, Boone would have never let Jack fuck him like that), it means that maybe she won’t be so reluctant next time he wants to play I never.
--
Things had changed in the sense that conversation wasn’t much awkward anymore, and at one point Boone gets the idea that while Jack seemingly always needs a hand with something, it’s never anything he couldn’t manage on his own. Sure, maybe he just doesn’t want to deal on his own with everything, but he can’t shake off the impression that most of the help he needs is an excuse to keep him around.
Which sounds completely crazy since it’s not like people have fought to have him around until now, and Boone tries not to think about it. He doesn’t need to self-delude himself into such a stupid thing.
But he can’t help noticing that at least whatever Jack finds for him to do isn’t making him feel as useless as looking at a hatch felt; it can be cataloging meds or searching for those leaves of Sun’s or going through the luggage or whatever, but at least he’s doing something.
He has tried to talk to Locke a couple of times, but after always being bluntly ignored, he just decides to steer clear of the beach as much as possible. He isn’t sorry, not really. At one point it had become too much and while he was still grateful to Locke for having shown some kind of faith in him in the beginning, it had been that against lying to forty-six other people and he wasn’t just wired for it.
He kind of feels let down, though; after all that talking of letting go and purposes and faith and destiny Boone can’t get how Locke could just turn his back on him so easily. He just wonders if he’s ever going to find someone who doesn’t expect anything of that sort out of him and who won’t turn their back on him as soon as he isn’t needed anymore. And he doesn’t dare to think that Jack could be that someone, especially since he had thought he had forgotten that sort of half-crush he got on him after his failed attempt at rescuing that poor woman.
Still, he’s accustomed to sharing his vital space with someone towards whom he feels something he shouldn’t feel; didn’t he have a whole life of practice after all?
--
4. Locke
He’d avoid thinking about Boone as he’s forced to share his hours at the hatch, still trying to open it, with Sayid and Michael at turns; especially since the day they banged on the door out of frustration and a light was turned on, they won’t let him alone for a second and he just can’t help remembering who is that put him into this situation. He doubts it’ll ever get opened now; he can’t shake the feeling that it was meant for him and Boone to open and not for anyone else and now it’s all for nothing, or so he feels like and he can’t shake it out of his head.
If only he hadn’t talked. He doesn’t know what would have happened but he’s sure something was bound to have happened and whatever it was, now it’s all for nothing.
Sometimes he has the notion that the closed door somehow mocks them all, and him more than everyone else. It was his job to open that thing and if he couldn’t even get Boone to keep his mouth shut about it… well, his fault.
He shakes his head when he thinks about the first days. There was some kind of excitement over that hatch, they were both working for something there, and it had been good to, well, be friends with someone. Then sure, after it had become more about the hatch and really, he had had to pull that stunt on Boone because others knowing was something he, they couldn’t afford; he just doesn’t get why did he tell. After all it had seemed they had reached an agreement; he had helped him with his sister, Boone would have helped him with the hatch.
Sincerely, he hadn’t felt sorry at the outcome Boone got out of his good Samaritan's deed.
But then, as Sayid tries to find some hidden switch or as Michael talks endlessly about the materials someone used for that door and how they could just do this and that and this other thing to open it up, he reflects. There was no doubt that Boone was in it because he was feeling useful, that was the first thing he had learned about him (that everybody had learned about him); maybe at one point he just wasn’t anymore. Or maybe feeling relieved hadn’t been enough to convince him. Or maybe he hadn’t felt relieved, or maybe it wasn’t the point. He just doesn’t get it and not getting it isn’t something that sits well with him.
He understands it just a month after Boone turned his back on him. Not so metaphorically speaking.
Or better, he begins to get it a bit before that, when by pure chance he’s at the beach and not too far from Charlie’s tent. Boone is around, too, searching for something in the unclaimed luggage, when Charlie gets out of the tent and goes straight to him and apologizes for having been a bloody arsehole or something along those lines; Locke figures it’s for being one of the forty-odd people who gave him the silence treatment. But Boone’s eyes lighten up for a second before he shakes Charlie’s outstretched hand saying it’s alright. That’s when he sort of starts to get it, in the sense that only now he sees how much exactly Boone needs people to talk to him more than he actually needs a purpose. Charlie seems surprised of how easy it was to patch things up, but Locke isn’t; he’d have been surprised if Boone actually held a grudge.
But he really gets it a week later.
Sayid finds another entrance to the hatch after realizing that if it was an underground bunker it’d have been strange if it had just one way out; and so they don’t even need to open it. Point is, there was someone inside the hatch, a half-crazed guy named Desmond with a Scottish accent who had spent three years in there with the craziest story Locke has ever heard his whole life, even if he doesn’t have a single problem believing it. Anyway, the hatch has also food and a shower, but people stop at the food part of the equation and then Charlie decides they should just have all a proper dinner also to give that poor bastard a hearty welcome because don’t we all have bloody manners around here?. They find a couple of volunteers to press the button (Steve and Tracy or something) and then at dinner something very interesting happens.
As Charlie tries to get Desmond drunk in order to loosen up, he notices Sawyer chuckling. Locke looks the same way and notices that while there was free place to seat next to Kate, Jack had gone straight to a free place to seat next to Boone and Locke can’t exactly see what’s so funny.
Then he notices that Charlie had glanced there for a second, too, before sort of winking at Boone and turning back to his efforts with Desmond. Then he notices Shannon half-smiling in that direction before settling back better against Sayid. Something doesn’t really add here. Then Jack’s arm brushes not too accidentally against Boone’s and Locke can swear that Boone’s cheeks definitely got a bit more flushed.
He spends an hour noticing small gestures which could be purely accidental but look pretty much suspicious; and then Sawyer asks if someone is up for playing I never, most people are and after a couple of harmless rounds (probably in order to get people reasonably drunk), he says, very calmly, I never had sex since the plane crashed. Then he drinks and Charlie drinks, blushing like mad next and looking apologetically at Claire; then Shannon drinks and Locke doesn’t miss how Charlie and Sawyer are staring in the same direction. Then Jack shrugs and drinks; Boone looks at him wide-eyed for a second and then shrugs, too, and takes a long shot.
Suddenly he gets it, just as Kate’s face morphs into a shocked expression and she shakes her head in disbelief; Sawyer rolls his eyes and Charlie is seemingly explaining something to Claire about one night stands before he even knew her well. Jack’s arm goes around Boone’s waist and there’s an awkward silence that lasts about fifteen seconds.
Then Sawyer rolls his eyes and says it was about time and suddenly everyone is more or less congratulating. He doesn’t, stays on the rear and watches; that’s when he realizes that Boone never needed to be part of a bigger picture, never needed to be special or to do anything special or to feel like he had a mission to accomplish. He wants to feel like someone needs him for what he is and not because he’s part of something else. That’s where Locke failed. After all, a purpose can’t need you for what you are, but a real person can.
He also knows when it was that he lost him along the way.
--
He finds out he’s not really that bad at concealing things and so he’s careful; he never looks too much in Jack’s direction, he never gets caught staring, he avoids touching of any kind, he keeps his attitude as friendly as it gets. It works, for a while. The situation gets slightly better, at least now there isn’t the actual silence treatment even if people aren’t exactly too friendly either; he doesn’t even miss Shannon that much, not that he’d go searching for her in Sayid’s tent anyway.
Still, small talk isn’t enough after a while; he really wouldn’t have told Jack about Shannon if it hadn’t just come up like that and he never knew that telling someone straight would have made him feel like a weight was put off his shoulders.
He hadn’t expected to learn why Jack was on the plane. He couldn’t do more than put a shaking hand on Jack’s shoulder when the story was over because, well, what can you actually say?, but Jack had seemed grateful or something. And he had felt like there was no need to say anything at all.
He doesn’t know what it is that shifts, maybe it’s because they’ve told each other the two things they won’t ever come back from; but even with this other shift that brought Jack somewhat closer, he wouldn’t have ever expected Jack to say he needed to talk to him somewhere private and then to kiss him against a tree in some clearing in the middle of that jungle.
Some time later, he won’t remember much of that moment; he will remember just his heart beating wildly as much as when Shannon knocked on his door if not more, he will remember asking Jack about any possible going back to what it was and then he will remember thinking that as long as Jack wanted it he sincerely couldn’t care less if he didn’t know why. Reasons are found out, sooner or later. He will remember how he hadn’t really kissed anyone since Shannon and he will realize that if in Sydney she had been the one doing everything until he relented, in that clearing he and Jack had met halfway. He will figure it meant something after all.
--
5. Jack
The elections were what made Jack realize that there was a lot more to Boone than the pretty face meeting the eye. Mostly because he had never missed a presidential election all his life and since they crashed he hadn’t even thought about what was going to happen in November. No one he had talked to had mentioned it either. It had just impressed him; wanting to know more about what was behind the appearances had come easy.
He had kept on saying he needed help with a lot of things he might as well have done alone. There were good reasons for it. For one, that he wants to be of use not to show off but just because he’s wired that way. Which actually isn’t that different from the way Jack is wired himself, after all; when he learned about Shannon, he had wondered if having messed up family relationships brought people to the same point, then tried to forget it. Also, it wasn’t like he hadn’t noticed that Boone actually did accomplish things when he didn’t try to be the prince charming he wasn’t.
He doesn’t remember when he had started to like the way Boone’s lips curled up in a half smile and sure as hell he doesn’t remember when he decided he wanted to see it more often; he doesn’t even remember how he started looking forward to having Boone around, maybe because things happened so smoothly that he really can’t distinguish more than three or four moments.
He knows he realized it when once Boone had said casually something like thinking that his name wasn’t really that suited. Jack had asked what it meant, he couldn’t recall right then; when Boone had shrugged and answered gift, Jack had to bite his tongue because he had been on the verge of saying that it felt pretty much appropriate and well, he wasn’t exactly talking friendship anymore. He sure never had gone as far as describing anyone in his life as a gift, for that matter. Fine, he had just agreed and in his head only, but still, it had to mean something. Also, when two days later Boone was standing somewhat too close and Jack had started wondering about how would it have felt if he just went and kissed him against the cave’s wall he had decided that there was definitely something more at stake.
But maybe it’s because of the situation, or maybe it’s in spite of it, but easy is the only way he can describe the way things had gone since he stopped thinking about all the cons of the situation and kissed Boone in that clearing, and not in a bad sense. That slight awkwardness that came with closeness, before, was gone just like that; Boone hadn’t changed his attitude much (when they could be seen) if not for the casual touch which was maybe a little too friendly or that half smile that lasted maybe a couple of seconds more than appropriate.
Maybe it was also the reason he had started feeling like keeping everything hidden wasn’t worth the effort; quick encounters in the caves and slightly longer encounters in the jungle were too much in the beginning and too little after three weeks (and he’d have never bet on such craziness to last three weeks, but by that time it really didn’t sound so crazy anymore). That was why he had taken that I never idiotic game as a good chance to just stop it, and considering that he had done it without even asking Boone first it had been taking a leap of faith. Not that he doesn’t think that it wasn’t a good idea, not in the slightest, not when his hand was taken in an iron grip afterwards.
It was a week ago and things haven’t really changed much; there was a lot of gossip in the first three or four days after it came out, there had been a couple of awkward talks with Kate, he has found a couple of packets of condoms in his cave (he thinks he knows whose doing is it), Arzt not exactly being on board with it and that was everything. In five days everyone was already talking about something else and Jack is perfectly fine with it. Jack is perfectly fine with everything actually, and it’s kind of the new experience. Or maybe not exactly new but it isn’t always that everything is just alright; right, they’re stuck on a tropical island, but apart from that… it’s not really that bad.
(The only nasty part had been Arzt complaining that he and Boone were the first step to the road of the hippie commune, but then Shannon had told him that if there really was an hippie commune then he’d have already fucked that Nikki girl around whom he keeps on hovering and that had shut Arzt up for a while. Not to mention that he thinks that after that one she and Boone had actually started talking regularly again and Jack can only be glad of it.)
True, it’s not like this isn’t actually freaking him out at least on some level; he still thinks that taking that first leap of faith had been the craziest thing he did all his life, not that he wouldn’t do it again, beware, all of his relationships had been with women except for some random fooling around with his roommate in med school, there’s the age gap and everything, but… it just doesn’t really matter. They deal with it when things get awkward and when they don’t, it’s still easy. So easy that he has troubles believing it, sometimes. There’s something in the way Boone is around him now that there isn’t nothing to hide, like there’s no other place he’d rather be, and to be honest Jack is of the same opinion. Just seeing the way Boone looks at him when they’re lying on the floor of his cave half-naked makes his heart skip a beat or two because he’s pretty sure the closest someone came to look at him that way was Sarah at his wedding and it still was different. It’s different and he doesn’t dare naming it, but he doesn’t even need to.
One day Shannon comes to search for him and says she’s glad she found him alone. He asks her why. She just shrugs and half-smiles and answers that well, it really isn’t nothing, but just so that he knows, he’s probably the only person who hasn’t fucked around with him for a long time, myself included, and so you should see it stays this way. And then she looks at him very seriously, and he nods at her and says it never was his intention to fuck around with anyone.
“Well, then it’s just his luck that he ended up with the only person on this island who doesn’t know what fucking around means,” she answers, and then half-smiles at him again and leaves. Jack doesn’t want to think about the implications of what she said, most of everything the myself included, but it isn’t like it changes anything. He isn’t the person who gets into such a thing just for fun and he knows it even too well. He perfectly knows what fucking around means though, and he’ll see to rectify whatever Shannon thinks next time he talks to her. Then Boone arrives from the beach in order to fill some bottles of water and while he does he asks him whether Shannon was there before or if he had imagined her as he came.
“She was.”
“Did she tell you something?”
“Yes, but I think it was doctor-patient privilege and everything.”
“Of course. Well, I just hope it wasn’t anything embarrassing.”
“Oh, it wasn’t. Not at all.”
“I guess I’ll have to trust you on this.”
“Why, you usually don’t?” he asks, and Boone is blushing harder than usual as he takes another empty bottle out of his backpack.
“You know I do,” he mutters as he starts filling, and damn, Jack just can’t help it. He gets there and spins Boone around and the bottle falls into the water as they kiss and Jack can’t really have enough.
“Wow,” Boone whispers when it’s over, “was that for something particular?”
“Well… no. Not really. It was… just because.”
And maybe it wasn’t all the truth but as Boone leans into him again, backpack and bottles forgotten, Jack realizes how much exactly he doesn’t want to fuck this up. But for some reason he’s pretty sure he won’t.
End.