fic: paradigm shift (Lost, Jack/Boone, 1/2)
Finally, finally, we get the Jack/Boone Epic of DOOM. You know, the one that was so impressive at 27 pages before I wrote 26 pages for the Boone ficathon. And really, for me, 27 pages? Still pretty good.
paradigm shift
by Gale
SUMMARY: ”We’re stuck on an island in the South Pacific after a crash that, by all rights, no one should have walked away from. An island, no less, with polar bears and crashed planes from Nigeria, not to mention a half-crazy French woman armed like someone in a militia. I don’t think two guys kissing is gonna cross anyone’s eyes at this point.”
NOTE: Goes AU pretty quickly; set - such as it is - after “Hearts and Minds”. La la la no Black Rock no Others no dead pretty wedding planners messed with the timeline la la la. Fuck off, Abrams.
The courtship period, as Jack calls it in his head, is mercifully brief.
Mercifully, because at the tender age of 34, Jack’s finally found something he’s bad at. He’s never had to work at relationships before; it’s always just sort of…happened. He meets a nice girl, they go out a few times, they have sex, they’re in a relationship, relationship ends. It’s comfortable, but there’s no excitement, no chase. Even with Sarah, things just sort of happened around him. Some days, when he’s feeling honest with himself, he can admit that he went through with the wedding as much because he wanted to *do* something about the relationship as because he loved Sarah.
So when Jack realizes that the first person he’s actually been attracted to - other than Kate, who’s with Sawyer now, and that doesn’t disturb him as much as he thinks it’s supposed to - is A) interested back and B) a man, it’s something of a shock. Because it’s not Nicole, the cute lab tech from Neuro, and it’s not Sarah; it’s Boone, the 12-years-younger guy currently spending most of his days hunting wild boar. This is a whole new playing field, and no one’s ever bothered to teach him the rules. So he gives it a shot.
Calling it a disaster would be being polite.
No one’s ever told him what to do, so he’s horribly obvious, like when he asks if Locke needs any company when he goes out hunting. It earns him a look. “If you want,” Locke says, but the note in his voice clearly says, “Not that this makes any sense, and you’re going to hold us up, but whatever.”
Locke, as it turns out, is right. The part he didn’t say out loud, anyway.
It’s not the walking that does him in, or climbing over things, or ducking under vines and avoiding being smacked in the head by low-hanging branches. It’s all of that combined with total silence, like Boone and Locke are having a conversation that Jack can’t hear. They navigate as if they’ve been doing this for a hundred years instead of not quite two weeks, and while he appreciates when they slow down enough for him to catch up, he’s very aware that they’re taking something like pity on him. It’s like he’s looking for wild pig in the company of mountain goats, and he’s got wheels. Training wheels.
They don’t bring any boar back home that day, needless to say. But Locke and Boone go out the next morning, before Jack wakes up, and come home with a decent-sized sow.
Jack smiles and decides he’ll wait to bang his head against a rock until they’ve gone back out.
*
Okay, so, Plan B: laundry.
It takes a little finagling. Kate’s in charge of laundry this week - she traded off with Sun, for some reason Jack’s not aware of - and he has to talk her into switching him with Charlie. Kate looks at him like he’s a mutant, but she agrees, so at least he’s got that going for him.
Jack’s out there bright and early with an armload and a half of clothes, almost before the sun comes up. He doesn’t mind laundry, really; it’s not so bad, once you get past the strain on your arms and back, and it frees his mind up for other things.
He’s got six pairs of pants and four shirts done when he hears “Jack?” from behind him. He makes himself look mildly surprised and turns around.
”Hey,” he tells Boone, blinking at him. “You’re stuck out here too?”
“For the morning, yeah,” Boone says, dropping down next to him in the surf. They’re dressed basically the same - rattiest shirt possible, cut-off pants, no shoes. Makes no sense to dress up when you’re going to get soaking wet before you’re twenty minutes in. “I never figured you’d be out here. Doctors have to have better things to do with their time than laundry.”
“That’s not the point,” Jack says, scooting over. He finishes another shirt and puts it with the others he’s already got done, then digs out what looks like a pair of shorts. “Everyone does what they can. That’s the only way we can do this and not self-destruct.”
”It sounds right,” Boone says carefully, taking a pair of pants from the pile. “I’m just not sure how effective the experiment’s going to be.” He looks like he wants to say something else, but he shakes his head once and focuses on what he’s doing.
“So what do you do?” Jack asks, after a minute. Boone looks up at him. “Back in the real world, I mean. When you’re not off hunting and gathering.”
Boone shrugs. ”Nothing important.” He scrubs at something on a T-shirt. “Not like practicing medicine, anyway.” He smiles a little, which takes the sting out of it. “I was. um. CEO of Santoro-Carlisle Enterprises, Limited.” Off Jack’s blank look, he adds, “It’s a company my mother owns. Basically a figurehead position, but *you* think of something better to do with a degree in English Literature.”
“You - really?” Jack doesn’t know why that’s so surprising, but it is. “I just - I wasn’t expecting that.”
”Yeah, I know, God doesn’t give with both hands, but.” Boone shrugs again.
Oh, *hell*. “Boone, no, that’s not what I meant. I-” Jack shakes his head. “I need to shut up, is what I need to do,” he mutters.
“Why?” Boone finally looks up at him; after a second, Jack meets his eyes. He doesn’t look upset - or angry, or hurt. More resigned. For some reason, that makes Jack flush. “It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. You’re the boss’s son, she puts you in charge of a company as soon as you graduate…you get used to hearing bullshit about it.”
“Well, it’s still stupid,” Jack mutters. He feels guilty, but he’s not sure why. “It doesn’t mean you’re any more or less qualified to do the job.”
There’s a very long pause. Jack busies himself with a pair of pants. Charlie’s, he thinks; there’s writing on the pants, scrawls of what looks like song lyrics. It seems a shame to wash them away.
”Thank you,” Boone says after a minute, and smiles at him. He doesn’t smile a lot, all things considered. It’s a shame. Of course, Jack also thinks it’s a shame that Boone doesn’t walk around shirtless during daylight hours. It’s possible he’s a little biased.
“So, um.” Jack clears his throat. “I don’t - this is-“ He takes a deep breath. “I was wondering if - if you didn’t have any-“
“JACK!” Michael yells from down the beach, and it’s all Jack can do not to shout “NOT NOW!” back at him. “There’s something wrong with Art, man!” He skids to a stop in the shallow sand and leans over, resting his hands on his haunches. “He’s on the beach. He hurt his ankle, man. It’s already swelling and it’s changing color. It doesn’t look good.”
”Shit,” Jack mutters, reaching for one of the clean shirts. Then he remembers and looks over at Boone.
”It’s fine,” Boone says. There’s been some shift there, something Jack missed - he’s less thoughtful now, more focused. “Go check on Art. I’ve got this.”
”I’ll be back,” Jack promises, and takes off running.
*
Except he’s *not* back, because Art’s ankle is a really, really bad sprain, and Jack’s forte in med school was not taping up ankles. He stays to make sure the swelling goes down, and gives Art - who’s freaked out and in pain, but not panicking or bitching *too* much, and Jack cannot even say how much he appreciates that, especially now - a couple of ibuprofen, and stays with him ‘til nightfall. Hurley gets him water and fruit, and Jack tries not to look too upset that he and Boone were interrupted.
That leaves him with Plan C.
Unfortunately, Jack doesn’t *have* a Plan C. He’d just…sort of expected that either A or B would work. At this point, he’s down to trying to remember what animals did in the wild to attract mates. It’s making him cranky he didn’t pay more attention in that damn sociology class his freshman year.
Hunting didn’t work. Laundry was a bust. Fine. When in doubt, preen.
Except there isn’t a hell of a lot of preening you can do when you’re stuck on a deserted island. They’re almost out of soap; they’ve been out of deodorant for a couple days now. Everyone’s sweaty less than an hour after they wake up, even on cold and rainy days, and even the “good” clothes have stains. It’s not like he has a lot of hair to work with; growing it out will take too long, and he *likes* his hair this short. And it’s not like he can just forego everything he’s supposed to be doing so he can focus on attracting somebody’s eye, so he’ll just have to make do.
Which means he does a lot of things shirtless for the next week.
He does laundry shirtless. He works in the garden shirtless. He sleeps shirtless when he can, though a couple nights it’s cold enough that he gets up and puts one on. He chops wood shirtless.
It’s maybe not the best plan he’s had, but it works, because everyone’s staring at him. Kate keeps blinking at him and having to refocus on his face when they talk. Charlie’s frowning a lot, and he and Hurley keep staring at Jack like he’s suffered a head injury. Claire’s blushing and not meeting his eyes - hell, he even caught Sawyer staring the other day, and that’s not exactly the avenue he was looking at, but a compliment’s a compliment.
It’s great, except the person he *wants* to be staring at him - isn’t. Boone’s been out in the jungle with Locke every day this week, gone before sunrise and back after nightfall, and they’ve been sticking to themselves when they get back.
“Real subtle, Jack,” Kate says on the fifth - no, the sixth night, sitting next to him. She grins and offers him a piece of fruit.
Jack takes it and stares at it. “What do you mean?”
Kate rolls her eyes. “Please. You’ve been showing off for someone for a week now, maybe longer.” She pokes him in the arm. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate it, but I’m pretty sure it’s not for me.”
Flirting is a reflex, like jerking away if someone tickles you. Jack grins back at her. “What makes you so sure-“ he starts, and glances over.
Boone over by Locke, looking at him. Jack can’t read his face from that far away, not by the fading sunlight, but he’s pretty sure it’s nothing he wants to see.
Boone saw Jack and Kate sitting together, eating together, laughing at something. Which means even if he’s seen Jack making an ass out of himself this week, he thinks it’s for-
The grin falls off Jack’s face.
Oh, *crap*.
*
Jack gives Plan C up the next day. The entire thing, he decides, was a mistake from the start, an obvious panicked response to being stuck on a deserted island. It didn’t really explain why said response made him attracted to a guy, but the human brain was complicated on a good day, and in recent weeks his definition of “good day” has dramatically changed.
He stops daydreaming about kissing Boone and goes back to getting on with things. Give it a week, maybe a couple - another month at the most - and it’ll be fine. Like it never happened. He’ll just have to pretend it’s okay ‘til it works around to actually *being* okay. He’s done it before.
The next night, after dinner, as he’s out for a walk, Boone settles in step with him like he’s done it every other time Jack’s gone out. Jack tries not to look surprised.
“Decided to give up hunting?” Boone teases, smiling at him a little. Jack tells himself to ignore how good he looks.
”Not my forte,” Jack says, shrugging. He glances out at the water. “Kind of like you and being a lifeguard.” He knows the words are a mistake as soon as they leave his mouth. “I’m sorry. That was-“
”-rude,” Boone says, “but not untrue.” He looks rueful, not angry. Jack can’t understand that; *he* wants to punch himself, and he’s the one who said it. “No, it’s - believe me, I know the feeling. There was once a time when I went whole *days* without screwing something up.”
Jack glances at him. Still rueful, kind of amused. Still not angry. “Really? Whole days?”
Boone nods. “Weeks, even,” he says gravely. “No tripping, no fights - I once went fourteen years without messing up CPR. I mean, I didn’t *know* CPR, so that might have had something to do with it, but still.” He stops, looks around. “You want to sit down? Once you climb off those rocks over there-“ he points “-it’s a straight shot back to the caves.”
”Sure,” Jack says. Stop it, he tells himself, following Boone a few yards down the beach. He asked if you wanted to sit down, not meet somewhere for drinks.
It’s an easy climb up. Jack settles in next to Boone and looks out at the water. No sentries tonight, not since Charlie shot Ethan. Still, it might be a good idea if-
”Why’d you stop coming around?” Boone suddenly asks.
Jack blinks at him. “What?”
“You’ve been trying to get my attention for, like, two weeks now,” Boone says, not looking at him, staring out at the water like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. “Going out hunting, doing laundry when I am. And then all of a sudden, you’re done. I’d just like to know why.” He tries to look wounded. “I mean, if it’s the smell-“
”It’s not-“ Jack says, and stops. “Okay, yeah, a little, but none of us are Ivory-fresh out here.” He winces and rubs his eyebrow. “Was I that obvious?”
”Sort of,” Boone says, pressing his lips together. It looks a lot like he’s trying not to smile. “The laundry thing, not so much, but going out hunting? Dead giveaway. And the part where you did everything shirtless for, like, a week, but you’ll notice I’m not complaining about that.”
Well, he’d wanted to get noticed. “Yeah, well,” Jack mutters, and doesn’t know why. What is he, fifteen again? The least he can do is admit to the damn crush and get it over with.
“I mean, granted, I still know fuck-all about hunting,” Boone says, finally looking at him, “but even *I* know that you don’t stop chasing the rabbit until you catch it.”
That makes Jack stop in his tracks and look at him. “Oh, so now you’re a rabbit?”
”I have *facets*,” Boone says, sounding wounded. It makes Jack smile. “And it’s been a long day and I’ve never been that good with metaphors anyway, so that’s the best you’re going to get for right now.”
The conversation goes dead for a couple of seconds.
“This is nice,” Jack finally says, looking out at the water. He’s at the edge of the jungle, a fire a couple hundred feet away and the water stretched out half a mile in front of him, and everyone in his makeshift family is warm and eating well. Things could be a hell of a lot worse.
And the best part is, he doesn’t have to tell Boone any of this. Boone already knows.
“I’m going to kiss you in a minute,” Jack says suddenly. “So if you have any problems with that, you should let me know now.”
Boone’s quiet for so long, Jack’s sure he’s trying to come up with a polite way to tell him no thanks, or maybe fuck off. “Except for the fact that you’re straight,” he finally says, “and straight guys don’t kiss other guys, no, no problems.”
”Uh, yeah. About that.” Jack clears his throat.
Boone looks at him for a second, then bursts out laughing. Jack has no idea what’s so funny. It sounds good, though. They’ve all been so somber since the crash. Has he ever really heard *anyone* laugh?
Well, no. Maybe Hurley. Possibly Charlie. Not many others, though.
”Jack,” Boone finally says. “This is - I understand the impulse, but I don’t think I’m so hard up I need a pity-“
Kissing Boone is - different than kissing a woman, and not just because of the stubble. His mouth is a fraction wider than Jack’s used to, and though it takes him a few seconds Boone kisses back with the same force, the same pressure. This isn’t like kissing Nicole, the cute lab tech from Neuro, or even like kissing Sarah. This is kissing Boone, who still has blood in his hair and five-o’clock shadow.
Kissing Boone, Jack is pleasantly surprised to discover, is *better*.
It goes on for a while - maybe a minute, Jack’s not sure - until Boone pulls back, touching his mouth and blinking a lot. He looks dazed, but not in a bad way. He looks a lot like the way Jack feels right now.
”Okay,” he finally says, “so *mostly* straight.”
Jack smiles and leans in to kiss him again. Boone meets him halfway.
*
After that, it’s less scary.
Most of the day is pretty much the same as it had been - Locke and Boone go into the jungle, and Jack‘s back at the caves, doing…whatever needs doing. They don’t actually see each other until after dark, unless Jack makes the effort to wake up early.
Jack makes the effort to wake up early, most days. And it’s worth one less hour of sleep to lock eyes with Boone and get a tiny, private smile in exchange for his own.
Night is a different story, though. At night, around the fire, the island seems less frightening and more - homey. It’s harder to be afraid of invisible monsters and kidnappers when you’re warm and dry and have a belly full of meat or fish.
The last few nights, Jack’s found some excuse to go outside and sit with Boone, who has watch while Locke eats - not that he needs one, because no one asks what he’s doing. Everyone’s still awkward enough around each other that unless the behavior is suspicious, no one really cares what you do or who you do it with. That sort of thing’s going to be a problem eventually, but for now Jack just appreciates it.
But this is still awkward, too, a little, so after a couple of minutes of meaningless small talk - even more meaningless here than back in the real world, which is saying something - Boone says, glancing over at him, “You know, you never talk about yourself.”
”Yes I do,” Jack says, feeling a little stung.
”No you don’t,” Boone says. “Not really. You talk about - about *things*. You tell stories from med school, or you talk about things you did in high school, but you never talk about yourself. You talk *around* yourself, like you’re the elephant in the room or something.” He looks back out at the water. “If you don’t want to talk, I get it, but we could just sit here. This isn’t an uncomfortable silence, Jack. I’ve had those.”
It’s a nice thought. More importantly, it’s a tempting thought. He won’t have to make small talk, which he’s always been good at but hates, and he’ll get to look at Boone, which is no hardship. But for the first time in a long time, he *wants* to talk.
So Jack takes a deep breath and tells Boone everything.
It takes a while, a couple of nights, because he’s never been good at confessing himself and he doesn’t want to talk about it when people are around, so he has to wait, usually for nightfall. He tells Boone about med school, and being an only child - Boone can relate, up to a point - and the people he’s dated before. He’s expecting that to make Boone narrow-eyed and jealous, but he just looks interested.
He tells Boone about that first afternoon on the beach, when all he wanted to do was have someone tell him what to do and instead he got a guy who could have been him in another life, panicking and messing up CPR, which Jack took over automatically but it sure as hell pissed him off; and how no matter what happened he couldn’t get away from that guy, and the mistakes said guy kept making when all he wanted to do was help.
“I hated you a little for that,” Jack admits.
Boone doesn’t look upset, just says “yeah, I figured that out already,” and keeps listening.
He tells Boone about his father, and the expectations he will never be able to live up to. About his mother, who only occasionally needs him and never wants him, and how he’s never been quite sure she actually loves him. He tells Boone about Kitty McCoy and the durnal sac, and counting to five.
He tells him about Sarah, and how much he loved her; and how much it hurt when it ended, but not as much for him and Sarah as it did for everyone around them.
He talks about how scared he is, and how much he can’t show it when everyone’s looking at him like he’s supposed to be the leader. How much he hates it, because it’s a lot like being back at the hospital.
”But I bury it,” Jack says, lowering his voice. He’s running his fingers through the dirt, though he’s not sure why. Something to do, maybe. “I keep it inside, because that’s what I’m supposed to do. I’m in charge. People in charge don’t freak out.”
”Of course they do,” Boone says, rolling his eyes a little. He reaches out and threads his fingers through Jack’s, squeezing them tight. “Maybe not where everyone can see, but you’re not a robot, Jack. You get to have feelings.”
He knows that, of course. But it’s nice to hear.
*
“So,” Shannon says one afternoon, while Jack’s working in the garden, “I hear you’ve got the hots for my brother.”
Startled, Jack looks up at that. Shannon grins at him. “I don’t care,” she says, dropping down to crouch next to him in the dirt. She’s very careful not to get any on her skirt, he notices, followed quickly by the realization that she has fantastic legs. The thought does absolutely nothing for him. Or to him.
“--I’d have been irritated since ninth grade,” Shannon says breezily, and Jack notices she’s still talking. She waves a hand. “Whatever. It’s Bonehead’s business, not mine, and it’ll make Kate’s eyes cross, which is always good for a laugh.” Suddenly she stops talking and looks at him. “Jack?”
She sounds so - so uncharacteristically *serious* that Jack stops what he’s doing and looks at her.
”He’s my brother,” Shannon says flatly. “He can take care of himself. But if you do anything to hurt him, I will make you regret it.”
There’s no joking around in that tone of voice, no teasing smirk. Shannon, Jack knows, is absolutely serious.
”Shannon,” Jack says quietly, “I’m not playing around. And I’m not going to hurt him.”
Shannon gets to her feet and brushes away an imaginary spot of something on her skirt. “Whatever,” she says again, bored all over again, and the world makes sense once more. “Michael was looking for you earlier. You want me to tell him you’re over here?”
Jack shakes his head to snap himself out of it. “If you see him, yeah,” he says, and goes back to his gardening.
*
And then everything almost goes all to shit.
*
”Breathe,” Jack says, and he thinks he should take his own advice, because his heart feels like there’s a band around it. He’s not sure how he’s still talking. “Boone, you - Boone, you have to *breathe*, okay?”
He is, though Jack’s not sure how. Everything’s so fucking *bloody*. Things aren’t in the places they’re supposed to be, and people keep coming up to ask him if Boone’s going to be all right, and if they don’t stop it he’s going to start punching them.
Jack’s not letting himself think about the possibility of infection settling in. He’s just not.
“Jack,” Boone says, and God, he sounds a hundred years old. He’s not worried about the head wound - those always bleed a lot; too many blood vessels in the head - as much as he is the gashes in Boone’s stomach. There are too many things that can be perforated in that area, too many things that can go wrong. And his leg-
”Jack,” Boone says again. “Let me go. We can’t-“ He coughs again. Jack makes himself not notice how red it is. “We shouldn’t waste the drugs.”
There’s this note in his voice, this sense of finality, that Jack’s never heard before, not even from the marshal. And just for a minute, the doctor in Jack wants to listen to it. Let the patient manage his own care, it says, he knows better than you do, people always know when they’re about to die.
Then he remembers a couple of nights before, Boone looking at him like he was some kind of gift, and tells the doctor to fuck off.
Part of Jack wonders if this is how Charlie felt, when Ethan was standing right there and the gun was in his hand. He didn’t understand it, then. He thinks he’s starting to.
Jack closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, counts to five. Doesn’t pray.
Then he opens his eyes and goes back to it.
*
Jack practically has to sit on Boone to keep him from getting up and trying to do something. Shannon tries, once.
“You almost died three days ago,” she snaps. She sounds like she’s crying a little, but she also sounds furious, so things can’t be that bad. If things were really bad again, she’d be crying too hard to talk. “And now you want to go out fucking *hunting*. Christ. You’re Sabrina all over again.”
”Fuck off,” Boone mutters - more like wheezes, actually. He’s not going anywhere, Jack decides, and starts hurrying the last few feet to the cave. “That was totally different-“
”She had a *board meeting*!” Shannon yells, looming perilously close to Boone’s leg. “She checked herself out of the hospital with *pneumonia* for a *board meeting*, and she was gray and looked like shit, and you know what, Boone? You look a hundred times worse than she did when she was on the *ventilator*, so you can shut up and hold still, or I swear to God I’ll get somebody to break your ankles.”
”Nobody’s breaking any ankles,” Jack says mildly, coming in with the water. “But no one’s trying to get up, either.” He looks at Boone. “Are they.”
“I’m *fine*,” Boone says again. Jack and Shannon roll their eyes at the same time. “The stitches-“
”-could pop if you breathe too hard,” Jack says, “so if you think I’m going to let you go out and track down wild pig, I need to up your dosage of antibiotics, because the fever is cooking your brain.” Absently, he knuckles his forehead. Knock on wood.
“He’s been like this since we were kids,” Shannon says, sounding long-suffering. “He didn’t even like to miss *school*.”
Jack smiles at her briefly, but drops next to the makeshift bed and smacks Boone on the hip of his good leg. “How’s it feel?” he asks.
Boone looks irritated. “Not amputated,” he mutters, but relents when he sees the way Jack’s looking at him. “The skin’s still really tight, but I don’t think it’s as dark as it was. I don’t know if the swelling is down or not, but it feels less - I don’t know, terrible.”
The swelling looks a little less, and when Jack tests his reflexes Boone moves, so that’s one less thing for him to worry about. He’s still being careful with the antibiotics, because Boone *is* running a fever, but there’s no sign of gangrene or any red lines signaling infection, so maybe - just maybe - this will not be a total crapshoot.
“It looks a little better,” Jack says - carefully, because that’s usually followed by horrible things, especially around here. “But you’re not going out. You’re not even going to take a piss without someone in here helping you.”
“We have to find him,” Boone says. His eyes are the most awake part of him, burning and as angry as Jack feels. “No one knows this island as well as he does, Jack. He could go to ground, and we wouldn’t see him again. Between me and Sayid, I think we have a shot-“
”Oh, no way,” Shannon says. “You’re not going, and neither is Sayid. I’m not losing-“
She cuts off suddenly and stares at the both of them, crossing her arms over her chest and looking distinctly uncomfortable. But she doesn’t say anything else.
“No one’s going anywhere,” Jack says, unslinging a canteen from around his neck and handing it to Boone. “Shannon, tell Sayid I want to see him, please. I’m going to get any ideas about tracking Locke down out of his head.” Shannon nods and takes off.
”He doesn’t know what happened,” Jack says, checking the stitches. They all seem to be holding, but he’s always been a little paranoid about checking his work. The last time he was this worried about - no, actually, this is *worse* than it was with Sarah. The black humor isn’t lost on him. “He’ll be back, sooner or later, and we’ll talk to him then.”
”Talking isn’t going to work,” Boone says, and hisses when Jack touches one of the wounds on his chest. Jack murmurs an apology, but Boone waves him off. “Jack, he’s…it’s not going to work. If he doesn’t want to tell you, he won’t.”
”Okay.” And this is one of the things Jack hates about being the leader, however nominally, because it feels like an interrogation. “Can you?”
Boone looks at him for a very long minute, then nods.
*
Recovery takes longer than Jack remembers from the hospital; but then, it’s not like they have physio here, and really, every day is outpatient care.
There are a bunch of scars on Boone’s chest, a couple more on his stomach. Most of those will fade with time, but the two biggest are going to scar. The rest will be faint pink lines for a year or two while they heal, then get more and more faint until they vanish.
The leg’s the bad one - *that* scar’s going to be the nasty one, half as long as Jack’s forearm and as thick as his middle and index fingers put together. It takes almost two months to heal, and another month for Boone to get back to normal on it. He doesn’t limp, but he winces when rain’s coming, the way Jack’s grandfather used to after he got his hip replaced, and as much as he tries not to use it, sometimes he needs a walking stick.
The pain takes the edge off Boone’s libido, and between not thinking about how close Boone almost came to dying and checking the baby every day and thinking increasingly murderous thoughts about John Locke, Jack’s not really in any kind of mood, either.
So they talk instead.
“No,” Boone says, laughing, “there’s not - look, you know everything already, okay? There was Melissa in ninth grade, and Jesse and Sara Dominguez my senior year-“
”What, you had a three-year dry spell?” Jack teases.
”We’re talking sex, not dating,” Boone says. It’s hard to imagine that someone could sound prim while talking about sex, but Boone’s doing a pretty good job of it. Though Jack’s understandably distracted by Boone’s hands resting on his thighs, the play of muscles in both. And yeah, he’s *really* not entirely straight.
”Then in college-“ Boone takes a deep breath and looks up and over, starts ticking them off on his fingers. “Angie, Cooper, the blue-haired guy who fronted a bad Bad Religion cover band and lived two floors up from me, Angie again, the bassist for the bad Bad Religion cover band, Jill, Henry, and Nicole.”
Jack gapes a little at the recitation.
”Then, my *sophomore* year-“
Jack gapes more, if that’s possible.
Boone bursts out laughing. “I’m sorry,” he manages to get out, doubling over on himself. “God, the *look* on your face.“
”Oh, yeah, real funny,” Jack says, trying to glare at him. When Boone looks up at him and keeps snickering, he figures he’s not being entirely successful. “Scare the old guy.”
”No, that was it,” Boone says, waving a hand as the giggles taper off. “Actually, Jill, Henry and Nicole were since I graduated.” He sits up. “And since then, it’s been my ex-girlfriend Katie, and that’s it.”
”That’s it?” Jack says. “That’s everyone? No paternity suits you’re forgetting to mention?”
”Carlisles don’t have paternity suits,” Boone says, raising his chin. “We have payoffs.” He stops smiling and glances down at his hands. “There was someone in Sydney,” he admits, lowering his voice. “It was one night, and in the pantheon of stupid sex things I’ve done, this one’s right up there.” He raises his head and shrugs at Jack. “But that’s it, yeah.”
”See?” Jack says. “Not so hard.” Part of him’s arguing about the necessity of having the Other People I’ve Slept With talk out here on a deserted island; it’s not like they have access to antibiotics if one or both of them has something, and condoms are scarce enough that they’re saving them (the ones Sawyer doesn’t have stashed, anyway) for emergencies. There’s no way to be certain, but if a Kinsey researcher stumbled across the island, he or she would probably find the percentages for masturbation and oral sex skyrocketing. But it’s something left over from BC - Before the Crash - and like most people, Jack’s holding onto anything BC as tight as he can. Even this. Especially this.
“Could’ve been worse,” Boone agrees, and looks over at Jack. “Your turn, Doctor Shephard. Start talking.”
*
But as much as they talk about it, even after the pain’s mostly gone and the scars have healed, there’s no sex for a while.
Jack’s too busy kissing Boone for a couple weeks, and the next month is like his junior year of high school all over again, with Jack flat on his back by the end of it, grinning like an idiot and trying to hide it. He doesn’t bother trying to hide his erection, because it nudges Boone’s belly and upper thigh half the damn night. Not that Boone minds; he just grins back, slow and more than a little hot, and arches into Jack’s touch.
Jack doesn’t even try not to think about the noises Boone makes when he slides back to his own pallet and jerks off as quietly as he can. He bites his hand when he comes and lets out a long breath through his nose, and tries not to look too sex-stupid in the morning. From the looks he’s getting over morning fruit, he suspects he’s not good at hiding it.
You’d never tell by looking at Boone, though. He’s the same mostly-silent, dark-eyed guy he’s been the last few months, going out in the morning and coming back in the evening - or earlier, if he’s not hunting that day. He smiles a little more often, and Jack’s caught glimpses of him deep in conversation with Charlie more than once, but it’s mostly the same.
Besides, there’s better things they can do. Jack figures that out when Boone comes over to him in the middle of the night and presses close to him, his mouth to Jack’s ear. “Don’t say anything,” he warns, not murmuring so much as breathing into his ear. “Don’t make a noise.”
”Boone-“ Jack starts, but that earns him a punch to the hip. Jack yelps and shuts up, closes his eyes.
And then Boone’s talking to him - just talking, but it’s enough to make Jack’s fingers tingle. Telling him all sorts of things: how beautiful Jack is, how much Boone wants him, how much *everyone* wants him, but they’re going to have to get in line. “And I’m never moving, so they can shut the fuck up,” Boone adds, raising his voice a little, and when Jack snickers at that he can feel Boone smile against his skin.
Boone never touches him, not once; just keeps his mouth right up against Jack’s ear, talking in that low voice about how sexy Jack is, how hot, how much waiting is driving him crazy. “You’re going to be so good at this, Jack,” he breathes, and Jack can’t help it, he has to slide his hand down his jeans and start stroking his dick, already hard and ready. He should try to breathe a little quieter, he knows, because he must sound like a goddamn bellows or a steam engine or something, but he can’t, because that would mean he’d have to stop listening to Boone for a second and there’s no way he’s doing that.
Jack’s had phone sex before, once or twice; he knows it’s better than a lot of people give it credit for being, because cliché or not, there’s nothing as sexy as someone else’s mind. This is like phone sex, only better, because Boone’s breath is warm on his skin and Jack can smell him if he takes a deep enough breath and phone sex has never gotten him this worked up this fast. Boone’s a lot of that, he thinks, listening to the rhythm and the cadence of the words against his skin. But just his words, because Boone’s being very careful to keep the rest of his body away from Jack’s.
The whole thing’s like a dream, Boone telling him how sexy he is, how hot, how much control it’s taking Boone not to just tackle him and tear his clothes off every day and fuck everyone else who might be staring at them at the time. “It’s going to be so good, Jack,” he breathes, and Jack strokes a little harder, trying not to hyperventilate. “So good, want you so much, I can’t wait to feel your skin pressed against me, your cock, your big hard cock, want it, need it so *bad*--“
It’s all talk, Jack knows, the sort of thing you say to get someone off. But from the way he’s planting his feet against the ground and moving his hips a little, it’s working.
Jack can tell it’s working, because his balls are already drawn up tight, and he can feel from the way the sensation is building in his stomach that it’s going to be soon and he’s going to come hard, the way he hasn’t in a while, and usually not by himself. Boone’s voice in his ear is soft and loud all at once, and he’s breathing a little faster too, so Jack knows he’s not alone in this even if he can’t feel Boone, and oh God he wants to, wants to feel Boone pressed against him, wants to feel Boone’s legs wrapped around his hips while he pants and tries not to make noises because maybe everyone’s not having sex yet but everyone knows that you need to be quiet when you do, because the island’s only so big and noises carry on the water, and the couple of times he’s been brave enough to touch Boone’s dick through his jeans he’s felt slightly above average, and oh God he wants that, too, wants it so bad his vision’s going blurry.
“Fuck me, Jack,” Boone says, and Jack knows he’s not really breathing that loudly but it *feels* like he is, and Jack really does want to say something but he can’t, won’t, because Boone might shut up altogether, and that means he won’t be pressed against Jack, mouth to ear, whispering “God I want to fuck you” in about the dirtiest voice Jack’s ever heard, and suddenly Jack can *see* it, in his head, Boone sliding inside him, sandy and a little dirty and Jack’s legs around his hips, arching into the touch, and it’s enough and it’s too much, and when Jack slides his other hand around to grab Boone’s instead of yelling when he comes, Boone’s voice breaks a little but that’s okay.
It takes Jack a couple minutes to come down from that. Understandably.
“You’ve done that before,” he murmurs, rolling over to look Boone in the eye. Also, it’s easier to talk quietly when you’re looking at someone.
”Once or twice,” Boone says, smiling a little. He looks as wrung out as Jack feels. Jack doesn’t get that until he looks down at Boone’s jeans, and oh, hell, turns out he wasn’t the only one who had a good time.
Boone notices him looking. If anything, he smiles a little wider.
“Did you mean that?” Jack asks, blurting it out. He meant to say something reassuring and sexy, but no, instead he sounds like someone’s insecure older boyfriend. Jesus.
But when Boone leans in to kiss him and says “every word” against Jack’s mouth, Jack decides that maybe Boone won’t mind that so much.
*
Then there’s this week-long gap starting with Dave-from-the-beach throwing up because it turns out he’s allergic to plums, and Zoe runs a fever for three days that clears up just as sudden as it came, and since Locke took off for the jungle Boone’s had to pick up his slack at hunting for food, not to mention keeping an eye out for the guy.
That doesn’t leave a lot of time for any kind of relationship, let alone sex. It’s hard enough for Jack to work up the energy to shave and bathe every day, and Boone’s at least as tired as he is when he and Claire come back in the evenings, which means the only time they get a chance to do more than occasionally make eye contact is at night, when they’re both too tired to do anything more than sleep.
But when Jack wakes up just before sunrise and finds Boone’s head buried in the crook of neck and shoulder, breathing softly against his skin, he figures that’s pretty good, too.
*
“Okay, so, mmmph-“ Boone pulls himself away from Jack long enough to ask, “The back of a *station wagon*?”
”It was her mom’s,” Jack says, breathing hard. Forget track; nothing works the lungs like kissing someone for 45 minutes straight. “It lasted all of ten minutes, and then we went to the dance. We broke up a week later. Why, where did you-“
”The Dakota,” Boone says.
Jack stares at him.
”Melissa’s mom had an apartment there, and she was in Aspen for two weeks with her latest husband, so we figured what the hell.”
Jack stares at him.
”You know, if you’re going to get weird every time I mention coming from money-“
”No, no, it’s just.” Jack shakes his head. “Odd.”
“Two months ago, you were freaked out about the idea of kissing me,” Boone says, and wriggles away just long enough to take his shirt off. The scars are still there, bright pink against pale skin, but they’re healed enough for him to take his clothes off without Jack being afraid of infection setting in. They still make his stomach clench uncomfortably, but he can live with that. “Now you’re freaking out because I’m worth more money than you are. I’d call that an improvement.”
“I’m telling you,” Jack says, and starts working at the buttons on his own shirt. “Baby steps.”
paradigm shift
by Gale
SUMMARY: ”We’re stuck on an island in the South Pacific after a crash that, by all rights, no one should have walked away from. An island, no less, with polar bears and crashed planes from Nigeria, not to mention a half-crazy French woman armed like someone in a militia. I don’t think two guys kissing is gonna cross anyone’s eyes at this point.”
NOTE: Goes AU pretty quickly; set - such as it is - after “Hearts and Minds”. La la la no Black Rock no Others no dead pretty wedding planners messed with the timeline la la la. Fuck off, Abrams.
The courtship period, as Jack calls it in his head, is mercifully brief.
Mercifully, because at the tender age of 34, Jack’s finally found something he’s bad at. He’s never had to work at relationships before; it’s always just sort of…happened. He meets a nice girl, they go out a few times, they have sex, they’re in a relationship, relationship ends. It’s comfortable, but there’s no excitement, no chase. Even with Sarah, things just sort of happened around him. Some days, when he’s feeling honest with himself, he can admit that he went through with the wedding as much because he wanted to *do* something about the relationship as because he loved Sarah.
So when Jack realizes that the first person he’s actually been attracted to - other than Kate, who’s with Sawyer now, and that doesn’t disturb him as much as he thinks it’s supposed to - is A) interested back and B) a man, it’s something of a shock. Because it’s not Nicole, the cute lab tech from Neuro, and it’s not Sarah; it’s Boone, the 12-years-younger guy currently spending most of his days hunting wild boar. This is a whole new playing field, and no one’s ever bothered to teach him the rules. So he gives it a shot.
Calling it a disaster would be being polite.
No one’s ever told him what to do, so he’s horribly obvious, like when he asks if Locke needs any company when he goes out hunting. It earns him a look. “If you want,” Locke says, but the note in his voice clearly says, “Not that this makes any sense, and you’re going to hold us up, but whatever.”
Locke, as it turns out, is right. The part he didn’t say out loud, anyway.
It’s not the walking that does him in, or climbing over things, or ducking under vines and avoiding being smacked in the head by low-hanging branches. It’s all of that combined with total silence, like Boone and Locke are having a conversation that Jack can’t hear. They navigate as if they’ve been doing this for a hundred years instead of not quite two weeks, and while he appreciates when they slow down enough for him to catch up, he’s very aware that they’re taking something like pity on him. It’s like he’s looking for wild pig in the company of mountain goats, and he’s got wheels. Training wheels.
They don’t bring any boar back home that day, needless to say. But Locke and Boone go out the next morning, before Jack wakes up, and come home with a decent-sized sow.
Jack smiles and decides he’ll wait to bang his head against a rock until they’ve gone back out.
*
Okay, so, Plan B: laundry.
It takes a little finagling. Kate’s in charge of laundry this week - she traded off with Sun, for some reason Jack’s not aware of - and he has to talk her into switching him with Charlie. Kate looks at him like he’s a mutant, but she agrees, so at least he’s got that going for him.
Jack’s out there bright and early with an armload and a half of clothes, almost before the sun comes up. He doesn’t mind laundry, really; it’s not so bad, once you get past the strain on your arms and back, and it frees his mind up for other things.
He’s got six pairs of pants and four shirts done when he hears “Jack?” from behind him. He makes himself look mildly surprised and turns around.
”Hey,” he tells Boone, blinking at him. “You’re stuck out here too?”
“For the morning, yeah,” Boone says, dropping down next to him in the surf. They’re dressed basically the same - rattiest shirt possible, cut-off pants, no shoes. Makes no sense to dress up when you’re going to get soaking wet before you’re twenty minutes in. “I never figured you’d be out here. Doctors have to have better things to do with their time than laundry.”
“That’s not the point,” Jack says, scooting over. He finishes another shirt and puts it with the others he’s already got done, then digs out what looks like a pair of shorts. “Everyone does what they can. That’s the only way we can do this and not self-destruct.”
”It sounds right,” Boone says carefully, taking a pair of pants from the pile. “I’m just not sure how effective the experiment’s going to be.” He looks like he wants to say something else, but he shakes his head once and focuses on what he’s doing.
“So what do you do?” Jack asks, after a minute. Boone looks up at him. “Back in the real world, I mean. When you’re not off hunting and gathering.”
Boone shrugs. ”Nothing important.” He scrubs at something on a T-shirt. “Not like practicing medicine, anyway.” He smiles a little, which takes the sting out of it. “I was. um. CEO of Santoro-Carlisle Enterprises, Limited.” Off Jack’s blank look, he adds, “It’s a company my mother owns. Basically a figurehead position, but *you* think of something better to do with a degree in English Literature.”
“You - really?” Jack doesn’t know why that’s so surprising, but it is. “I just - I wasn’t expecting that.”
”Yeah, I know, God doesn’t give with both hands, but.” Boone shrugs again.
Oh, *hell*. “Boone, no, that’s not what I meant. I-” Jack shakes his head. “I need to shut up, is what I need to do,” he mutters.
“Why?” Boone finally looks up at him; after a second, Jack meets his eyes. He doesn’t look upset - or angry, or hurt. More resigned. For some reason, that makes Jack flush. “It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. You’re the boss’s son, she puts you in charge of a company as soon as you graduate…you get used to hearing bullshit about it.”
“Well, it’s still stupid,” Jack mutters. He feels guilty, but he’s not sure why. “It doesn’t mean you’re any more or less qualified to do the job.”
There’s a very long pause. Jack busies himself with a pair of pants. Charlie’s, he thinks; there’s writing on the pants, scrawls of what looks like song lyrics. It seems a shame to wash them away.
”Thank you,” Boone says after a minute, and smiles at him. He doesn’t smile a lot, all things considered. It’s a shame. Of course, Jack also thinks it’s a shame that Boone doesn’t walk around shirtless during daylight hours. It’s possible he’s a little biased.
“So, um.” Jack clears his throat. “I don’t - this is-“ He takes a deep breath. “I was wondering if - if you didn’t have any-“
“JACK!” Michael yells from down the beach, and it’s all Jack can do not to shout “NOT NOW!” back at him. “There’s something wrong with Art, man!” He skids to a stop in the shallow sand and leans over, resting his hands on his haunches. “He’s on the beach. He hurt his ankle, man. It’s already swelling and it’s changing color. It doesn’t look good.”
”Shit,” Jack mutters, reaching for one of the clean shirts. Then he remembers and looks over at Boone.
”It’s fine,” Boone says. There’s been some shift there, something Jack missed - he’s less thoughtful now, more focused. “Go check on Art. I’ve got this.”
”I’ll be back,” Jack promises, and takes off running.
*
Except he’s *not* back, because Art’s ankle is a really, really bad sprain, and Jack’s forte in med school was not taping up ankles. He stays to make sure the swelling goes down, and gives Art - who’s freaked out and in pain, but not panicking or bitching *too* much, and Jack cannot even say how much he appreciates that, especially now - a couple of ibuprofen, and stays with him ‘til nightfall. Hurley gets him water and fruit, and Jack tries not to look too upset that he and Boone were interrupted.
That leaves him with Plan C.
Unfortunately, Jack doesn’t *have* a Plan C. He’d just…sort of expected that either A or B would work. At this point, he’s down to trying to remember what animals did in the wild to attract mates. It’s making him cranky he didn’t pay more attention in that damn sociology class his freshman year.
Hunting didn’t work. Laundry was a bust. Fine. When in doubt, preen.
Except there isn’t a hell of a lot of preening you can do when you’re stuck on a deserted island. They’re almost out of soap; they’ve been out of deodorant for a couple days now. Everyone’s sweaty less than an hour after they wake up, even on cold and rainy days, and even the “good” clothes have stains. It’s not like he has a lot of hair to work with; growing it out will take too long, and he *likes* his hair this short. And it’s not like he can just forego everything he’s supposed to be doing so he can focus on attracting somebody’s eye, so he’ll just have to make do.
Which means he does a lot of things shirtless for the next week.
He does laundry shirtless. He works in the garden shirtless. He sleeps shirtless when he can, though a couple nights it’s cold enough that he gets up and puts one on. He chops wood shirtless.
It’s maybe not the best plan he’s had, but it works, because everyone’s staring at him. Kate keeps blinking at him and having to refocus on his face when they talk. Charlie’s frowning a lot, and he and Hurley keep staring at Jack like he’s suffered a head injury. Claire’s blushing and not meeting his eyes - hell, he even caught Sawyer staring the other day, and that’s not exactly the avenue he was looking at, but a compliment’s a compliment.
It’s great, except the person he *wants* to be staring at him - isn’t. Boone’s been out in the jungle with Locke every day this week, gone before sunrise and back after nightfall, and they’ve been sticking to themselves when they get back.
“Real subtle, Jack,” Kate says on the fifth - no, the sixth night, sitting next to him. She grins and offers him a piece of fruit.
Jack takes it and stares at it. “What do you mean?”
Kate rolls her eyes. “Please. You’ve been showing off for someone for a week now, maybe longer.” She pokes him in the arm. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate it, but I’m pretty sure it’s not for me.”
Flirting is a reflex, like jerking away if someone tickles you. Jack grins back at her. “What makes you so sure-“ he starts, and glances over.
Boone over by Locke, looking at him. Jack can’t read his face from that far away, not by the fading sunlight, but he’s pretty sure it’s nothing he wants to see.
Boone saw Jack and Kate sitting together, eating together, laughing at something. Which means even if he’s seen Jack making an ass out of himself this week, he thinks it’s for-
The grin falls off Jack’s face.
Oh, *crap*.
*
Jack gives Plan C up the next day. The entire thing, he decides, was a mistake from the start, an obvious panicked response to being stuck on a deserted island. It didn’t really explain why said response made him attracted to a guy, but the human brain was complicated on a good day, and in recent weeks his definition of “good day” has dramatically changed.
He stops daydreaming about kissing Boone and goes back to getting on with things. Give it a week, maybe a couple - another month at the most - and it’ll be fine. Like it never happened. He’ll just have to pretend it’s okay ‘til it works around to actually *being* okay. He’s done it before.
The next night, after dinner, as he’s out for a walk, Boone settles in step with him like he’s done it every other time Jack’s gone out. Jack tries not to look surprised.
“Decided to give up hunting?” Boone teases, smiling at him a little. Jack tells himself to ignore how good he looks.
”Not my forte,” Jack says, shrugging. He glances out at the water. “Kind of like you and being a lifeguard.” He knows the words are a mistake as soon as they leave his mouth. “I’m sorry. That was-“
”-rude,” Boone says, “but not untrue.” He looks rueful, not angry. Jack can’t understand that; *he* wants to punch himself, and he’s the one who said it. “No, it’s - believe me, I know the feeling. There was once a time when I went whole *days* without screwing something up.”
Jack glances at him. Still rueful, kind of amused. Still not angry. “Really? Whole days?”
Boone nods. “Weeks, even,” he says gravely. “No tripping, no fights - I once went fourteen years without messing up CPR. I mean, I didn’t *know* CPR, so that might have had something to do with it, but still.” He stops, looks around. “You want to sit down? Once you climb off those rocks over there-“ he points “-it’s a straight shot back to the caves.”
”Sure,” Jack says. Stop it, he tells himself, following Boone a few yards down the beach. He asked if you wanted to sit down, not meet somewhere for drinks.
It’s an easy climb up. Jack settles in next to Boone and looks out at the water. No sentries tonight, not since Charlie shot Ethan. Still, it might be a good idea if-
”Why’d you stop coming around?” Boone suddenly asks.
Jack blinks at him. “What?”
“You’ve been trying to get my attention for, like, two weeks now,” Boone says, not looking at him, staring out at the water like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. “Going out hunting, doing laundry when I am. And then all of a sudden, you’re done. I’d just like to know why.” He tries to look wounded. “I mean, if it’s the smell-“
”It’s not-“ Jack says, and stops. “Okay, yeah, a little, but none of us are Ivory-fresh out here.” He winces and rubs his eyebrow. “Was I that obvious?”
”Sort of,” Boone says, pressing his lips together. It looks a lot like he’s trying not to smile. “The laundry thing, not so much, but going out hunting? Dead giveaway. And the part where you did everything shirtless for, like, a week, but you’ll notice I’m not complaining about that.”
Well, he’d wanted to get noticed. “Yeah, well,” Jack mutters, and doesn’t know why. What is he, fifteen again? The least he can do is admit to the damn crush and get it over with.
“I mean, granted, I still know fuck-all about hunting,” Boone says, finally looking at him, “but even *I* know that you don’t stop chasing the rabbit until you catch it.”
That makes Jack stop in his tracks and look at him. “Oh, so now you’re a rabbit?”
”I have *facets*,” Boone says, sounding wounded. It makes Jack smile. “And it’s been a long day and I’ve never been that good with metaphors anyway, so that’s the best you’re going to get for right now.”
The conversation goes dead for a couple of seconds.
“This is nice,” Jack finally says, looking out at the water. He’s at the edge of the jungle, a fire a couple hundred feet away and the water stretched out half a mile in front of him, and everyone in his makeshift family is warm and eating well. Things could be a hell of a lot worse.
And the best part is, he doesn’t have to tell Boone any of this. Boone already knows.
“I’m going to kiss you in a minute,” Jack says suddenly. “So if you have any problems with that, you should let me know now.”
Boone’s quiet for so long, Jack’s sure he’s trying to come up with a polite way to tell him no thanks, or maybe fuck off. “Except for the fact that you’re straight,” he finally says, “and straight guys don’t kiss other guys, no, no problems.”
”Uh, yeah. About that.” Jack clears his throat.
Boone looks at him for a second, then bursts out laughing. Jack has no idea what’s so funny. It sounds good, though. They’ve all been so somber since the crash. Has he ever really heard *anyone* laugh?
Well, no. Maybe Hurley. Possibly Charlie. Not many others, though.
”Jack,” Boone finally says. “This is - I understand the impulse, but I don’t think I’m so hard up I need a pity-“
Kissing Boone is - different than kissing a woman, and not just because of the stubble. His mouth is a fraction wider than Jack’s used to, and though it takes him a few seconds Boone kisses back with the same force, the same pressure. This isn’t like kissing Nicole, the cute lab tech from Neuro, or even like kissing Sarah. This is kissing Boone, who still has blood in his hair and five-o’clock shadow.
Kissing Boone, Jack is pleasantly surprised to discover, is *better*.
It goes on for a while - maybe a minute, Jack’s not sure - until Boone pulls back, touching his mouth and blinking a lot. He looks dazed, but not in a bad way. He looks a lot like the way Jack feels right now.
”Okay,” he finally says, “so *mostly* straight.”
Jack smiles and leans in to kiss him again. Boone meets him halfway.
*
After that, it’s less scary.
Most of the day is pretty much the same as it had been - Locke and Boone go into the jungle, and Jack‘s back at the caves, doing…whatever needs doing. They don’t actually see each other until after dark, unless Jack makes the effort to wake up early.
Jack makes the effort to wake up early, most days. And it’s worth one less hour of sleep to lock eyes with Boone and get a tiny, private smile in exchange for his own.
Night is a different story, though. At night, around the fire, the island seems less frightening and more - homey. It’s harder to be afraid of invisible monsters and kidnappers when you’re warm and dry and have a belly full of meat or fish.
The last few nights, Jack’s found some excuse to go outside and sit with Boone, who has watch while Locke eats - not that he needs one, because no one asks what he’s doing. Everyone’s still awkward enough around each other that unless the behavior is suspicious, no one really cares what you do or who you do it with. That sort of thing’s going to be a problem eventually, but for now Jack just appreciates it.
But this is still awkward, too, a little, so after a couple of minutes of meaningless small talk - even more meaningless here than back in the real world, which is saying something - Boone says, glancing over at him, “You know, you never talk about yourself.”
”Yes I do,” Jack says, feeling a little stung.
”No you don’t,” Boone says. “Not really. You talk about - about *things*. You tell stories from med school, or you talk about things you did in high school, but you never talk about yourself. You talk *around* yourself, like you’re the elephant in the room or something.” He looks back out at the water. “If you don’t want to talk, I get it, but we could just sit here. This isn’t an uncomfortable silence, Jack. I’ve had those.”
It’s a nice thought. More importantly, it’s a tempting thought. He won’t have to make small talk, which he’s always been good at but hates, and he’ll get to look at Boone, which is no hardship. But for the first time in a long time, he *wants* to talk.
So Jack takes a deep breath and tells Boone everything.
It takes a while, a couple of nights, because he’s never been good at confessing himself and he doesn’t want to talk about it when people are around, so he has to wait, usually for nightfall. He tells Boone about med school, and being an only child - Boone can relate, up to a point - and the people he’s dated before. He’s expecting that to make Boone narrow-eyed and jealous, but he just looks interested.
He tells Boone about that first afternoon on the beach, when all he wanted to do was have someone tell him what to do and instead he got a guy who could have been him in another life, panicking and messing up CPR, which Jack took over automatically but it sure as hell pissed him off; and how no matter what happened he couldn’t get away from that guy, and the mistakes said guy kept making when all he wanted to do was help.
“I hated you a little for that,” Jack admits.
Boone doesn’t look upset, just says “yeah, I figured that out already,” and keeps listening.
He tells Boone about his father, and the expectations he will never be able to live up to. About his mother, who only occasionally needs him and never wants him, and how he’s never been quite sure she actually loves him. He tells Boone about Kitty McCoy and the durnal sac, and counting to five.
He tells him about Sarah, and how much he loved her; and how much it hurt when it ended, but not as much for him and Sarah as it did for everyone around them.
He talks about how scared he is, and how much he can’t show it when everyone’s looking at him like he’s supposed to be the leader. How much he hates it, because it’s a lot like being back at the hospital.
”But I bury it,” Jack says, lowering his voice. He’s running his fingers through the dirt, though he’s not sure why. Something to do, maybe. “I keep it inside, because that’s what I’m supposed to do. I’m in charge. People in charge don’t freak out.”
”Of course they do,” Boone says, rolling his eyes a little. He reaches out and threads his fingers through Jack’s, squeezing them tight. “Maybe not where everyone can see, but you’re not a robot, Jack. You get to have feelings.”
He knows that, of course. But it’s nice to hear.
*
“So,” Shannon says one afternoon, while Jack’s working in the garden, “I hear you’ve got the hots for my brother.”
Startled, Jack looks up at that. Shannon grins at him. “I don’t care,” she says, dropping down to crouch next to him in the dirt. She’s very careful not to get any on her skirt, he notices, followed quickly by the realization that she has fantastic legs. The thought does absolutely nothing for him. Or to him.
“--I’d have been irritated since ninth grade,” Shannon says breezily, and Jack notices she’s still talking. She waves a hand. “Whatever. It’s Bonehead’s business, not mine, and it’ll make Kate’s eyes cross, which is always good for a laugh.” Suddenly she stops talking and looks at him. “Jack?”
She sounds so - so uncharacteristically *serious* that Jack stops what he’s doing and looks at her.
”He’s my brother,” Shannon says flatly. “He can take care of himself. But if you do anything to hurt him, I will make you regret it.”
There’s no joking around in that tone of voice, no teasing smirk. Shannon, Jack knows, is absolutely serious.
”Shannon,” Jack says quietly, “I’m not playing around. And I’m not going to hurt him.”
Shannon gets to her feet and brushes away an imaginary spot of something on her skirt. “Whatever,” she says again, bored all over again, and the world makes sense once more. “Michael was looking for you earlier. You want me to tell him you’re over here?”
Jack shakes his head to snap himself out of it. “If you see him, yeah,” he says, and goes back to his gardening.
*
And then everything almost goes all to shit.
*
”Breathe,” Jack says, and he thinks he should take his own advice, because his heart feels like there’s a band around it. He’s not sure how he’s still talking. “Boone, you - Boone, you have to *breathe*, okay?”
He is, though Jack’s not sure how. Everything’s so fucking *bloody*. Things aren’t in the places they’re supposed to be, and people keep coming up to ask him if Boone’s going to be all right, and if they don’t stop it he’s going to start punching them.
Jack’s not letting himself think about the possibility of infection settling in. He’s just not.
“Jack,” Boone says, and God, he sounds a hundred years old. He’s not worried about the head wound - those always bleed a lot; too many blood vessels in the head - as much as he is the gashes in Boone’s stomach. There are too many things that can be perforated in that area, too many things that can go wrong. And his leg-
”Jack,” Boone says again. “Let me go. We can’t-“ He coughs again. Jack makes himself not notice how red it is. “We shouldn’t waste the drugs.”
There’s this note in his voice, this sense of finality, that Jack’s never heard before, not even from the marshal. And just for a minute, the doctor in Jack wants to listen to it. Let the patient manage his own care, it says, he knows better than you do, people always know when they’re about to die.
Then he remembers a couple of nights before, Boone looking at him like he was some kind of gift, and tells the doctor to fuck off.
Part of Jack wonders if this is how Charlie felt, when Ethan was standing right there and the gun was in his hand. He didn’t understand it, then. He thinks he’s starting to.
Jack closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, counts to five. Doesn’t pray.
Then he opens his eyes and goes back to it.
*
Jack practically has to sit on Boone to keep him from getting up and trying to do something. Shannon tries, once.
“You almost died three days ago,” she snaps. She sounds like she’s crying a little, but she also sounds furious, so things can’t be that bad. If things were really bad again, she’d be crying too hard to talk. “And now you want to go out fucking *hunting*. Christ. You’re Sabrina all over again.”
”Fuck off,” Boone mutters - more like wheezes, actually. He’s not going anywhere, Jack decides, and starts hurrying the last few feet to the cave. “That was totally different-“
”She had a *board meeting*!” Shannon yells, looming perilously close to Boone’s leg. “She checked herself out of the hospital with *pneumonia* for a *board meeting*, and she was gray and looked like shit, and you know what, Boone? You look a hundred times worse than she did when she was on the *ventilator*, so you can shut up and hold still, or I swear to God I’ll get somebody to break your ankles.”
”Nobody’s breaking any ankles,” Jack says mildly, coming in with the water. “But no one’s trying to get up, either.” He looks at Boone. “Are they.”
“I’m *fine*,” Boone says again. Jack and Shannon roll their eyes at the same time. “The stitches-“
”-could pop if you breathe too hard,” Jack says, “so if you think I’m going to let you go out and track down wild pig, I need to up your dosage of antibiotics, because the fever is cooking your brain.” Absently, he knuckles his forehead. Knock on wood.
“He’s been like this since we were kids,” Shannon says, sounding long-suffering. “He didn’t even like to miss *school*.”
Jack smiles at her briefly, but drops next to the makeshift bed and smacks Boone on the hip of his good leg. “How’s it feel?” he asks.
Boone looks irritated. “Not amputated,” he mutters, but relents when he sees the way Jack’s looking at him. “The skin’s still really tight, but I don’t think it’s as dark as it was. I don’t know if the swelling is down or not, but it feels less - I don’t know, terrible.”
The swelling looks a little less, and when Jack tests his reflexes Boone moves, so that’s one less thing for him to worry about. He’s still being careful with the antibiotics, because Boone *is* running a fever, but there’s no sign of gangrene or any red lines signaling infection, so maybe - just maybe - this will not be a total crapshoot.
“It looks a little better,” Jack says - carefully, because that’s usually followed by horrible things, especially around here. “But you’re not going out. You’re not even going to take a piss without someone in here helping you.”
“We have to find him,” Boone says. His eyes are the most awake part of him, burning and as angry as Jack feels. “No one knows this island as well as he does, Jack. He could go to ground, and we wouldn’t see him again. Between me and Sayid, I think we have a shot-“
”Oh, no way,” Shannon says. “You’re not going, and neither is Sayid. I’m not losing-“
She cuts off suddenly and stares at the both of them, crossing her arms over her chest and looking distinctly uncomfortable. But she doesn’t say anything else.
“No one’s going anywhere,” Jack says, unslinging a canteen from around his neck and handing it to Boone. “Shannon, tell Sayid I want to see him, please. I’m going to get any ideas about tracking Locke down out of his head.” Shannon nods and takes off.
”He doesn’t know what happened,” Jack says, checking the stitches. They all seem to be holding, but he’s always been a little paranoid about checking his work. The last time he was this worried about - no, actually, this is *worse* than it was with Sarah. The black humor isn’t lost on him. “He’ll be back, sooner or later, and we’ll talk to him then.”
”Talking isn’t going to work,” Boone says, and hisses when Jack touches one of the wounds on his chest. Jack murmurs an apology, but Boone waves him off. “Jack, he’s…it’s not going to work. If he doesn’t want to tell you, he won’t.”
”Okay.” And this is one of the things Jack hates about being the leader, however nominally, because it feels like an interrogation. “Can you?”
Boone looks at him for a very long minute, then nods.
*
Recovery takes longer than Jack remembers from the hospital; but then, it’s not like they have physio here, and really, every day is outpatient care.
There are a bunch of scars on Boone’s chest, a couple more on his stomach. Most of those will fade with time, but the two biggest are going to scar. The rest will be faint pink lines for a year or two while they heal, then get more and more faint until they vanish.
The leg’s the bad one - *that* scar’s going to be the nasty one, half as long as Jack’s forearm and as thick as his middle and index fingers put together. It takes almost two months to heal, and another month for Boone to get back to normal on it. He doesn’t limp, but he winces when rain’s coming, the way Jack’s grandfather used to after he got his hip replaced, and as much as he tries not to use it, sometimes he needs a walking stick.
The pain takes the edge off Boone’s libido, and between not thinking about how close Boone almost came to dying and checking the baby every day and thinking increasingly murderous thoughts about John Locke, Jack’s not really in any kind of mood, either.
So they talk instead.
“No,” Boone says, laughing, “there’s not - look, you know everything already, okay? There was Melissa in ninth grade, and Jesse and Sara Dominguez my senior year-“
”What, you had a three-year dry spell?” Jack teases.
”We’re talking sex, not dating,” Boone says. It’s hard to imagine that someone could sound prim while talking about sex, but Boone’s doing a pretty good job of it. Though Jack’s understandably distracted by Boone’s hands resting on his thighs, the play of muscles in both. And yeah, he’s *really* not entirely straight.
”Then in college-“ Boone takes a deep breath and looks up and over, starts ticking them off on his fingers. “Angie, Cooper, the blue-haired guy who fronted a bad Bad Religion cover band and lived two floors up from me, Angie again, the bassist for the bad Bad Religion cover band, Jill, Henry, and Nicole.”
Jack gapes a little at the recitation.
”Then, my *sophomore* year-“
Jack gapes more, if that’s possible.
Boone bursts out laughing. “I’m sorry,” he manages to get out, doubling over on himself. “God, the *look* on your face.“
”Oh, yeah, real funny,” Jack says, trying to glare at him. When Boone looks up at him and keeps snickering, he figures he’s not being entirely successful. “Scare the old guy.”
”No, that was it,” Boone says, waving a hand as the giggles taper off. “Actually, Jill, Henry and Nicole were since I graduated.” He sits up. “And since then, it’s been my ex-girlfriend Katie, and that’s it.”
”That’s it?” Jack says. “That’s everyone? No paternity suits you’re forgetting to mention?”
”Carlisles don’t have paternity suits,” Boone says, raising his chin. “We have payoffs.” He stops smiling and glances down at his hands. “There was someone in Sydney,” he admits, lowering his voice. “It was one night, and in the pantheon of stupid sex things I’ve done, this one’s right up there.” He raises his head and shrugs at Jack. “But that’s it, yeah.”
”See?” Jack says. “Not so hard.” Part of him’s arguing about the necessity of having the Other People I’ve Slept With talk out here on a deserted island; it’s not like they have access to antibiotics if one or both of them has something, and condoms are scarce enough that they’re saving them (the ones Sawyer doesn’t have stashed, anyway) for emergencies. There’s no way to be certain, but if a Kinsey researcher stumbled across the island, he or she would probably find the percentages for masturbation and oral sex skyrocketing. But it’s something left over from BC - Before the Crash - and like most people, Jack’s holding onto anything BC as tight as he can. Even this. Especially this.
“Could’ve been worse,” Boone agrees, and looks over at Jack. “Your turn, Doctor Shephard. Start talking.”
*
But as much as they talk about it, even after the pain’s mostly gone and the scars have healed, there’s no sex for a while.
Jack’s too busy kissing Boone for a couple weeks, and the next month is like his junior year of high school all over again, with Jack flat on his back by the end of it, grinning like an idiot and trying to hide it. He doesn’t bother trying to hide his erection, because it nudges Boone’s belly and upper thigh half the damn night. Not that Boone minds; he just grins back, slow and more than a little hot, and arches into Jack’s touch.
Jack doesn’t even try not to think about the noises Boone makes when he slides back to his own pallet and jerks off as quietly as he can. He bites his hand when he comes and lets out a long breath through his nose, and tries not to look too sex-stupid in the morning. From the looks he’s getting over morning fruit, he suspects he’s not good at hiding it.
You’d never tell by looking at Boone, though. He’s the same mostly-silent, dark-eyed guy he’s been the last few months, going out in the morning and coming back in the evening - or earlier, if he’s not hunting that day. He smiles a little more often, and Jack’s caught glimpses of him deep in conversation with Charlie more than once, but it’s mostly the same.
Besides, there’s better things they can do. Jack figures that out when Boone comes over to him in the middle of the night and presses close to him, his mouth to Jack’s ear. “Don’t say anything,” he warns, not murmuring so much as breathing into his ear. “Don’t make a noise.”
”Boone-“ Jack starts, but that earns him a punch to the hip. Jack yelps and shuts up, closes his eyes.
And then Boone’s talking to him - just talking, but it’s enough to make Jack’s fingers tingle. Telling him all sorts of things: how beautiful Jack is, how much Boone wants him, how much *everyone* wants him, but they’re going to have to get in line. “And I’m never moving, so they can shut the fuck up,” Boone adds, raising his voice a little, and when Jack snickers at that he can feel Boone smile against his skin.
Boone never touches him, not once; just keeps his mouth right up against Jack’s ear, talking in that low voice about how sexy Jack is, how hot, how much waiting is driving him crazy. “You’re going to be so good at this, Jack,” he breathes, and Jack can’t help it, he has to slide his hand down his jeans and start stroking his dick, already hard and ready. He should try to breathe a little quieter, he knows, because he must sound like a goddamn bellows or a steam engine or something, but he can’t, because that would mean he’d have to stop listening to Boone for a second and there’s no way he’s doing that.
Jack’s had phone sex before, once or twice; he knows it’s better than a lot of people give it credit for being, because cliché or not, there’s nothing as sexy as someone else’s mind. This is like phone sex, only better, because Boone’s breath is warm on his skin and Jack can smell him if he takes a deep enough breath and phone sex has never gotten him this worked up this fast. Boone’s a lot of that, he thinks, listening to the rhythm and the cadence of the words against his skin. But just his words, because Boone’s being very careful to keep the rest of his body away from Jack’s.
The whole thing’s like a dream, Boone telling him how sexy he is, how hot, how much control it’s taking Boone not to just tackle him and tear his clothes off every day and fuck everyone else who might be staring at them at the time. “It’s going to be so good, Jack,” he breathes, and Jack strokes a little harder, trying not to hyperventilate. “So good, want you so much, I can’t wait to feel your skin pressed against me, your cock, your big hard cock, want it, need it so *bad*--“
It’s all talk, Jack knows, the sort of thing you say to get someone off. But from the way he’s planting his feet against the ground and moving his hips a little, it’s working.
Jack can tell it’s working, because his balls are already drawn up tight, and he can feel from the way the sensation is building in his stomach that it’s going to be soon and he’s going to come hard, the way he hasn’t in a while, and usually not by himself. Boone’s voice in his ear is soft and loud all at once, and he’s breathing a little faster too, so Jack knows he’s not alone in this even if he can’t feel Boone, and oh God he wants to, wants to feel Boone pressed against him, wants to feel Boone’s legs wrapped around his hips while he pants and tries not to make noises because maybe everyone’s not having sex yet but everyone knows that you need to be quiet when you do, because the island’s only so big and noises carry on the water, and the couple of times he’s been brave enough to touch Boone’s dick through his jeans he’s felt slightly above average, and oh God he wants that, too, wants it so bad his vision’s going blurry.
“Fuck me, Jack,” Boone says, and Jack knows he’s not really breathing that loudly but it *feels* like he is, and Jack really does want to say something but he can’t, won’t, because Boone might shut up altogether, and that means he won’t be pressed against Jack, mouth to ear, whispering “God I want to fuck you” in about the dirtiest voice Jack’s ever heard, and suddenly Jack can *see* it, in his head, Boone sliding inside him, sandy and a little dirty and Jack’s legs around his hips, arching into the touch, and it’s enough and it’s too much, and when Jack slides his other hand around to grab Boone’s instead of yelling when he comes, Boone’s voice breaks a little but that’s okay.
It takes Jack a couple minutes to come down from that. Understandably.
“You’ve done that before,” he murmurs, rolling over to look Boone in the eye. Also, it’s easier to talk quietly when you’re looking at someone.
”Once or twice,” Boone says, smiling a little. He looks as wrung out as Jack feels. Jack doesn’t get that until he looks down at Boone’s jeans, and oh, hell, turns out he wasn’t the only one who had a good time.
Boone notices him looking. If anything, he smiles a little wider.
“Did you mean that?” Jack asks, blurting it out. He meant to say something reassuring and sexy, but no, instead he sounds like someone’s insecure older boyfriend. Jesus.
But when Boone leans in to kiss him and says “every word” against Jack’s mouth, Jack decides that maybe Boone won’t mind that so much.
*
Then there’s this week-long gap starting with Dave-from-the-beach throwing up because it turns out he’s allergic to plums, and Zoe runs a fever for three days that clears up just as sudden as it came, and since Locke took off for the jungle Boone’s had to pick up his slack at hunting for food, not to mention keeping an eye out for the guy.
That doesn’t leave a lot of time for any kind of relationship, let alone sex. It’s hard enough for Jack to work up the energy to shave and bathe every day, and Boone’s at least as tired as he is when he and Claire come back in the evenings, which means the only time they get a chance to do more than occasionally make eye contact is at night, when they’re both too tired to do anything more than sleep.
But when Jack wakes up just before sunrise and finds Boone’s head buried in the crook of neck and shoulder, breathing softly against his skin, he figures that’s pretty good, too.
*
“Okay, so, mmmph-“ Boone pulls himself away from Jack long enough to ask, “The back of a *station wagon*?”
”It was her mom’s,” Jack says, breathing hard. Forget track; nothing works the lungs like kissing someone for 45 minutes straight. “It lasted all of ten minutes, and then we went to the dance. We broke up a week later. Why, where did you-“
”The Dakota,” Boone says.
Jack stares at him.
”Melissa’s mom had an apartment there, and she was in Aspen for two weeks with her latest husband, so we figured what the hell.”
Jack stares at him.
”You know, if you’re going to get weird every time I mention coming from money-“
”No, no, it’s just.” Jack shakes his head. “Odd.”
“Two months ago, you were freaked out about the idea of kissing me,” Boone says, and wriggles away just long enough to take his shirt off. The scars are still there, bright pink against pale skin, but they’re healed enough for him to take his clothes off without Jack being afraid of infection setting in. They still make his stomach clench uncomfortably, but he can live with that. “Now you’re freaking out because I’m worth more money than you are. I’d call that an improvement.”
“I’m telling you,” Jack says, and starts working at the buttons on his own shirt. “Baby steps.”