(no subject)
Title: Cheers Darlin'
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Jack, Shannon
Word Count: 504
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: astra2104 wanted fic with the prompt 'Ice'.
Summary: A bar. Him. Regrets and failures swallow him whole and his hand shakes around his half-empty (and it is always half-empty) glass.
The story begins the same way they all do.
A bar. Him. Regrets and failures swallow him whole and his hand shakes around his half-empty (and it is always half-empty) glass.
The before doesn’t bear repeating. It doesn’t bear remembering, which is what he’s trying to avoid here.
Ice clinks against his glass as the liquid runs down his throat, again as he sets it down on the counter in front of him. It’s background noise and yet it’s all he’s really hearing.
Maybe that’s why he picks up on it from across the room, from down the bar. A woman, blond hair, tan skin, pink dress, sits with her long legs crossed, drink in hand, a smile he can pick up on even from this side-view, even if she’s blurred. It isn’t a friendly smile.
He looks away before she can catch him; goes back to his drink and tries to place her. She carries herself in a way that’s reminiscent of someone and if he wasn’t so inebriated the answer might come quicker.
This is becoming an exercise in what-if’s, and really that’s what he’s here to avoid.
Jack still can’t help sneaking another glance. He regrets it instantly when he both realizes that she’s looking at him and, at the very same time, that he knows exactly who she is.
Shannon stands now, smoothes the hem of her dress over her thighs, a move meant to draw the eyes, and it works, for a second, before he looks back up to her face. Same old Shannon from before, just a little more polished and put-together. Like what she must have been before the island.
She tips her drink back, empties it, and he watches the movement of her throat as she swallows. The ice clinks against the glass. It snaps him back.
He blinks, once, twice, and then she’s gone. The woman who sits where she used to is a curly red-head in jeans. Clearly the alcohol has gone to his head. Or something else has.
She isn’t the first person from the island that he’s seen who hasn’t really been there. She won’t be the last. They’re just visions, his subconscious regrets manifesting themselves in living color. You know, without the living part.
Except she must be more than a vision. More than that, because the next thing he feels is a hand sliding along his arm. “You’re supposed to go back, Jack.” It sounds like someone else’s voice; the manner of speaking is too bland to be her. But even she seems to notice that. “Unless you want them to all die.”
It’s harsh. It’s Shannon. At least that’s something.
He looks up, to meet her eyes, but she’s gone again.
From behind the counter someone fumbles a bottle, someone else pours drinks. Glasses clink against each other, the ice again. The sound suddenly makes his head hurt.
For the first time in a long while Jack leaves the bar before eleven.
He wonders if she’ll follow him home.