Fic: Many Times (Jack/Shannon)
Sorry to further clog the flist today, but this is pertinent to our Appreciation day and I'm a little afraid the tornadoes in the South are going to sweep into Alabama and snap my power lines, preventing me from posting this...
Title: Many Times
Pairing: Jack/Shannon (mentions of Boone/Shannon and Sayid/Shannon)
Rating: PG-13
Note: This is a weird story for me. It runs the emotional gamut, too. Just another deviation from my OTP. And another for my list of weird pairings.
Also: This is for eponine119, without whose suggestion this would never have occurred to me, and without whose valuable comments over the last year or so I would not be as prone to taking these sorts of chances.
Many Times
There was one time when he was helping her breathe that he suddenly felt like a man to her. Not that he hadn’t seemed masculine before, but this time it was different. He was maybe more real, more solid. Shannon rarely understood pragmatism, and she had always found something odd in the way that Jack could use his body, move his body, in any way that he needed it to if it would hold up, hold down, propel, or stop anyone else’s body, anyone else’s need. But when he effortlessly dropped down to the ground beside her, talking out of one side of his mouth to bark orders to someone nearby while the other side of his mouth spoke calm-insistent calm-to her, she was amazed and she understood. His nurturing didn’t seem to suffocate like Boone’s did, and his chest was big, strong, holding her heaving back against it like nothing she could do could ever rattle him, really. Only later did she really begin to process that he’d had her so completely in his arms, sitting with his legs open and her body pulled back into his, and it had nothing to do with her long legs or sharp smile. That was both freeing and frustrating.
*****
There was one time when she was coming out of the ocean in her smallest bikini, and he was staring at her. She almost didn’t notice it because he’d come to deliver a lecture on something, but his eyes weren’t fixing on hers with that almost ridiculous seriousness they usually did. In fact, they would flit all over: shoreline, treeline, other people moving -anywhere but on her body. Finally, after the lecture was over, and she found his behavior so amusing that she smiled at him rather than grimacing in annoyance, she was surprised to find a smile pushing up the corners of his mouth, breathing warmth into those deep brown eyes, and maybe he was even a little sexy as he finally let his eyes drift down to her legs and come back up to settle on her stomach before returning to her face. He made a little small talk, more confident and not so gruff as before, and then he retreated and she found that she was watching his body as he walked away. Fuck, she thought. She squinted into the sun and shook her head, willing it to go away, this mental tickle that somehow always turned into an itch. Not another fucking doctor…
*****
There was a long time when she forgot all about Jack, in a way. There was this strong, gorgeous, absolutely mysterious man in her life that she spent more waking hours than she would admit to studying. Being with Sayid was very hard, from the start. He required more of her and she struggled against giving it, until she was finally finding herself opening up to everything, not just him. The only thing people said was she was nicer. The had no idea how deep it went. There is something about being valued that makes a person who had never felt valuable start to believe she is. It was an odd feeling-full but light-and it spread over her whole life. The behavior took a little longer to change, really, than the attitude did. But at some point, she stopped believing that everyone else around her was worthless too. The funny thing was, it wasn’t really conscious for a while. She simply smiled more and groused less. She volunteered to help Jack one afternoon, and he stopped, cocked his head to one side, raised his eyebrows, and that was the only beat he missed. She kept up the sarcasm, and he actually began to throw it back at her, but it was playful, like it had maybe once been with Boone before things got too complicated. Jack could be so snide. She even said that to Sayid, but it did not occur to her to find that attractive. She couldn’t even see him.
*****
There was one time when Jack told her Boone was dead, but it was a time that replayed itself over and over and over.
*****
There was one time when Kate knocked Jack out with sleeping pills so he would rest, and she left him alone for a few minutes to go get something. Shannon found herself moving toward him, maybe moving toward the last person to see Boone alive, touch him, hear him, hear what he had said, hear that he had only said her name. Jack’s whole body seemed to yield itself to the sand, defeated and weary, and she didn’t hate him for what had happened to Boone. She sometimes thought she couldn’t even fucking feel that Boone was gone. It was easier when she sat there, staring at Jack’s worn face and knowing he was far away, not feeling anything. Could she really envy Boone that? Could she ever have it again for herself?
Part of her wanted to curl herself around Jack’s body, to absorb some of his peace. The man was never peaceful, but here he was, chest rising and falling slowly, arms slack, key hanging sideways and resting warm and light on his collarbone. He was the ultimate contradiction, giving peace but never getting it.
This time, he could do both.
*****
There was one time when Shannon let herself go out to the graveyard. Boone’s grave had yet to grow anything, but it still blended in better than Sayid’s, even if it was only a couple of weeks older. She hadn’t even wanted to shoot Ana Lucia, strangely, not that anyone would give her the opportunity to try. Something about losing Boone had changed her; something about Sayid preventing her from shooting Locke had called for such anger that it couldn’t last; it completely burnt up until it rose like ashes to the sky. She tried to tell that to Jack after she woke up in the bed in the hatch, exhausted and remembering before her eyes even opened that Sayid was dead and she had run fast and far to get to the doctor, the man that made things happen, the arms that fixed things, and all for nothing, because it couldn’t be changed. Not a damn thing that had happened to them could be changed. Maybe Ana Lucia was meant to shoot Sayid. She said that to Jack when she woke up, and he didn’t try to tell her what to feel or how to feel it, but he did tell her, in no uncertain terms, that he wasn’t letting her out of his sight until he was sure she wouldn’t hurt Ana Lucia.
Coldly, calmly, she told him she had no plans to do anything but stay there in that bed and die if need be. Of course she was serious. She was always serious, now. And in this case, she was serious for three weeks. He slept on the couch, and she was too embroiled in her own world of hurt to even notice. Whenever she stirred, which was not often, he stirred, and once or twice, she woke up to find him standing in the doorway watching her sleep, his eyes often more quizzical than concerned, more appraising than contemplative. He told her several times that there were people who cared about her. She didn’t believe it. How could they? She had loved Sayid, and now she couldn’t remember his face. He had been dead to her almost as long as he had been alive. They had only made love twice, and she couldn’t remember what his body felt like because she hadn’t thought to pay that much attention. Someone who had survived a plane crash should be aware of the fleeting nature of life, but she forgot too soon. This time, she couldn’t forget, because all she had of Sayid were things she couldn’t really remember. It hurt, and even if she came to believe Jack had some sort of perverse sympathy for her, she couldn’t believe it was anything more than his cloying stupid stubborn need to be make things better. Some things couldn’t be made better. Some things simply had to be.
So she left after three weeks, and he didn’t follow her. Or she didn’t realize it until she was sitting between the graves of two men, neither of whom she really knew because she never bothered to really try to understand them-she was sitting between them and she saw Jack’s frame as he stood down the beach, close enough to see her but not so close as to intrude. She lay down and she didn’t cry. She never actually did cry over Sayid. The grief moved through her in other ways: in that sleep like death that was only good when Jack gave her the pills and she would fall asleep talking about un-knotting the cord from his neck and taking the key for a charm of hate; in the battle in her mind between swearing she never loved Sayid and telling herself he was the only man she would ever love; in realizing that she had accustomed herself, somehow unconsciously, to the sound of Jack’s footsteps and the feel of his larger hands on her forehead, dying every day in despair because she would forget Sayid and she would love again and if it was Jack, she just might hate herself for it. He, too, wanted to fix her. As desperately as she wanted and needed that, it was not enough.
*****
There was one time when she finally asked him why he was prepared to cut Boone’s leg off to save him. It wasn’t an accusation, just a question, and he couldn’t answer it, really. He just shook his head and said he was sorry, for the four hundredth time, and she couldn’t take it anymore. She said she was only angry with him for not finding her before Boone was already cold and gone. He asked her if she knew about the blood he gave and the stupidity that comes with desperation and the blindness that makes you forget that if you think people are important, then you care about more than fixing bodies, jerry-rigging them to stay upright. You cared about the other things that might scar. She asked him if he was hurt when Boone died, and he asked her if she remembered that he had gone after Locke, too. He almost cried, standing there in front of her, and she was sure the only thing that made him stop was that he didn’t think he deserved to.
*****
There was a time when Jack finally left her alone, trusted her to live. He never failed to smile at her, but he asked no intrusive questions other than about her health, and even those he did rarely. Once, he told her to eat more; she was too thin. She barked that she didn’t want food. He barked back that he didn’t care-she wasn’t after death anymore. She would have to eat. Please, he said, and he retreated from her quickly, his eyes cast down, brow furrowed in worry.
It became a subtle battle of wills, then a vocal one, but never about anything important. Whenever Shannon had a quick retort, Jack was somehow quicker, and at a certain point, when his subtle hints came accompanied with easy smiles that somehow worked into some part of her that still felt things, she would grudgingly go along, not so easily leaving that defense of sarcasm because it had been her only way for so long. But it did leave her, little by little, and, eventually, it got to the point that if anyone wanted Shannon to do anything, they only had to ask Jack.
*****
There was one time when she brought him food in the hatch. Greedily, he popped the slices of fruit into his mouth and smiled quizzically at her. He told her she looked healthy again-like she had a glow about her. She found herself settling into a space on the couch to watch him tinkering unsuccessfully with some machine parts that would be best suited for Sayid’s hands. She talked to him, and for once in her life, she also listened. Occasionally, he would look at her as though he couldn’t believe he was saying what he was saying-at all, to her-but he continued, telling her about his residency and his father and his inability to communicate. When he was done with whatever it was he was taking apart and refitting, and he went toward the shower, she sat there, quiet but hungry for something. She had recently come to the conclusion that she was an adult, finally, and this contentment on the couch matched with some deep longing for something struck her as confusing and strange. But Jack was now not so confusing, and she knew that her desire to climb into the shower with him and scrub the dirt from his hands and his arms would have been strange only four months before. The rest of her desire, to simply feel her skin on his, was never a strange feeling for her, but now she mistrusted it, found it somehow suspicious.
*****
There were many times when she wanted to kiss him. There were many times she could have. But she didn’t, because she thought he was hung up on Kate, and because that was all she’d ever been able to do to interest a man-except Boone, except Sayid. Boone was held with withholding, and Sayid was not held at all-he held. Jack would have to be coaxed and cherished and fought for, and it was exhausting to her to think about even trying to win him. She doubted she even had the slightest idea how to go about it. So she stood too near him and told herself that no matter how strong the physical pull was, he didn’t feel it. If it had only been attraction, it would be easy. But this was something that began to take up some space in her mind until she thought of herself as his before she knew if he even wanted her, above finding her beautiful and trusting her to listen to him.
She was out in the water one day, contemplating how cruel it would be if they never got off the island and all the things she’d learned about herself would go to waste, when he waded out toward her. Her whole body vibrated with the thought that she was still, after everything, living in the past and in some future she was convinced would never be. She asked Jack what he was doing, and he said plainly that he was keeping an eye out for her. She asked him who was keeping an eye out for him. He said, Sometimes, Shannon, you are.
*****
There were many times when Jack kissed Shannon, but none so difficult as the first. They’d been spending a lot of time together, sitting with their legs touching, taking hikes to collect medicine, washing clothes, doing anything they could to be near each other. Finally, one night after the sun had gone down, Jack walked her back from the hatch to the beach. They didn’t say a word to each other, but almost before she could think about it being sudden, her hand slid down along the inside of his forearm, and into his hand, and they never broke their pace or looked at each other. But a few minutes later, he stopped them, pulling her into a kiss that took her breath away because it made perfect sense, so much that it didn’t seem as though it had ever been any other way while at the same time, it felt like something entirely new. As they walked along, she reminded herself that this was how it always felt to be in love, and she cried.
It took her three days to articulate to him why she was crying. When she finally did make him understand, he cried too.
*****
There was one time when Sawyer finally said what everyone thought, that the two of them were crazy and it didn’t make any sense. Shannon just said, Well, what do you know, asshole? Jack choked back a laugh and she realized that this was something she was fiercely protective of. That made it scary, that it was this important. But she planned to enjoy this life she had-to pay attention to it without overanalyzing it-and fuck anybody who didn’t understand that. She stalked off, knowing Jack was smiling, that he was following her with his eyes on her hips and legs, and she was already thinking of the sort of attention she could pay him later.
Title: Many Times
Pairing: Jack/Shannon (mentions of Boone/Shannon and Sayid/Shannon)
Rating: PG-13
Note: This is a weird story for me. It runs the emotional gamut, too. Just another deviation from my OTP. And another for my list of weird pairings.
Also: This is for eponine119, without whose suggestion this would never have occurred to me, and without whose valuable comments over the last year or so I would not be as prone to taking these sorts of chances.
Many Times
There was one time when he was helping her breathe that he suddenly felt like a man to her. Not that he hadn’t seemed masculine before, but this time it was different. He was maybe more real, more solid. Shannon rarely understood pragmatism, and she had always found something odd in the way that Jack could use his body, move his body, in any way that he needed it to if it would hold up, hold down, propel, or stop anyone else’s body, anyone else’s need. But when he effortlessly dropped down to the ground beside her, talking out of one side of his mouth to bark orders to someone nearby while the other side of his mouth spoke calm-insistent calm-to her, she was amazed and she understood. His nurturing didn’t seem to suffocate like Boone’s did, and his chest was big, strong, holding her heaving back against it like nothing she could do could ever rattle him, really. Only later did she really begin to process that he’d had her so completely in his arms, sitting with his legs open and her body pulled back into his, and it had nothing to do with her long legs or sharp smile. That was both freeing and frustrating.
*****
There was one time when she was coming out of the ocean in her smallest bikini, and he was staring at her. She almost didn’t notice it because he’d come to deliver a lecture on something, but his eyes weren’t fixing on hers with that almost ridiculous seriousness they usually did. In fact, they would flit all over: shoreline, treeline, other people moving -anywhere but on her body. Finally, after the lecture was over, and she found his behavior so amusing that she smiled at him rather than grimacing in annoyance, she was surprised to find a smile pushing up the corners of his mouth, breathing warmth into those deep brown eyes, and maybe he was even a little sexy as he finally let his eyes drift down to her legs and come back up to settle on her stomach before returning to her face. He made a little small talk, more confident and not so gruff as before, and then he retreated and she found that she was watching his body as he walked away. Fuck, she thought. She squinted into the sun and shook her head, willing it to go away, this mental tickle that somehow always turned into an itch. Not another fucking doctor…
*****
There was a long time when she forgot all about Jack, in a way. There was this strong, gorgeous, absolutely mysterious man in her life that she spent more waking hours than she would admit to studying. Being with Sayid was very hard, from the start. He required more of her and she struggled against giving it, until she was finally finding herself opening up to everything, not just him. The only thing people said was she was nicer. The had no idea how deep it went. There is something about being valued that makes a person who had never felt valuable start to believe she is. It was an odd feeling-full but light-and it spread over her whole life. The behavior took a little longer to change, really, than the attitude did. But at some point, she stopped believing that everyone else around her was worthless too. The funny thing was, it wasn’t really conscious for a while. She simply smiled more and groused less. She volunteered to help Jack one afternoon, and he stopped, cocked his head to one side, raised his eyebrows, and that was the only beat he missed. She kept up the sarcasm, and he actually began to throw it back at her, but it was playful, like it had maybe once been with Boone before things got too complicated. Jack could be so snide. She even said that to Sayid, but it did not occur to her to find that attractive. She couldn’t even see him.
*****
There was one time when Jack told her Boone was dead, but it was a time that replayed itself over and over and over.
*****
There was one time when Kate knocked Jack out with sleeping pills so he would rest, and she left him alone for a few minutes to go get something. Shannon found herself moving toward him, maybe moving toward the last person to see Boone alive, touch him, hear him, hear what he had said, hear that he had only said her name. Jack’s whole body seemed to yield itself to the sand, defeated and weary, and she didn’t hate him for what had happened to Boone. She sometimes thought she couldn’t even fucking feel that Boone was gone. It was easier when she sat there, staring at Jack’s worn face and knowing he was far away, not feeling anything. Could she really envy Boone that? Could she ever have it again for herself?
Part of her wanted to curl herself around Jack’s body, to absorb some of his peace. The man was never peaceful, but here he was, chest rising and falling slowly, arms slack, key hanging sideways and resting warm and light on his collarbone. He was the ultimate contradiction, giving peace but never getting it.
This time, he could do both.
*****
There was one time when Shannon let herself go out to the graveyard. Boone’s grave had yet to grow anything, but it still blended in better than Sayid’s, even if it was only a couple of weeks older. She hadn’t even wanted to shoot Ana Lucia, strangely, not that anyone would give her the opportunity to try. Something about losing Boone had changed her; something about Sayid preventing her from shooting Locke had called for such anger that it couldn’t last; it completely burnt up until it rose like ashes to the sky. She tried to tell that to Jack after she woke up in the bed in the hatch, exhausted and remembering before her eyes even opened that Sayid was dead and she had run fast and far to get to the doctor, the man that made things happen, the arms that fixed things, and all for nothing, because it couldn’t be changed. Not a damn thing that had happened to them could be changed. Maybe Ana Lucia was meant to shoot Sayid. She said that to Jack when she woke up, and he didn’t try to tell her what to feel or how to feel it, but he did tell her, in no uncertain terms, that he wasn’t letting her out of his sight until he was sure she wouldn’t hurt Ana Lucia.
Coldly, calmly, she told him she had no plans to do anything but stay there in that bed and die if need be. Of course she was serious. She was always serious, now. And in this case, she was serious for three weeks. He slept on the couch, and she was too embroiled in her own world of hurt to even notice. Whenever she stirred, which was not often, he stirred, and once or twice, she woke up to find him standing in the doorway watching her sleep, his eyes often more quizzical than concerned, more appraising than contemplative. He told her several times that there were people who cared about her. She didn’t believe it. How could they? She had loved Sayid, and now she couldn’t remember his face. He had been dead to her almost as long as he had been alive. They had only made love twice, and she couldn’t remember what his body felt like because she hadn’t thought to pay that much attention. Someone who had survived a plane crash should be aware of the fleeting nature of life, but she forgot too soon. This time, she couldn’t forget, because all she had of Sayid were things she couldn’t really remember. It hurt, and even if she came to believe Jack had some sort of perverse sympathy for her, she couldn’t believe it was anything more than his cloying stupid stubborn need to be make things better. Some things couldn’t be made better. Some things simply had to be.
So she left after three weeks, and he didn’t follow her. Or she didn’t realize it until she was sitting between the graves of two men, neither of whom she really knew because she never bothered to really try to understand them-she was sitting between them and she saw Jack’s frame as he stood down the beach, close enough to see her but not so close as to intrude. She lay down and she didn’t cry. She never actually did cry over Sayid. The grief moved through her in other ways: in that sleep like death that was only good when Jack gave her the pills and she would fall asleep talking about un-knotting the cord from his neck and taking the key for a charm of hate; in the battle in her mind between swearing she never loved Sayid and telling herself he was the only man she would ever love; in realizing that she had accustomed herself, somehow unconsciously, to the sound of Jack’s footsteps and the feel of his larger hands on her forehead, dying every day in despair because she would forget Sayid and she would love again and if it was Jack, she just might hate herself for it. He, too, wanted to fix her. As desperately as she wanted and needed that, it was not enough.
*****
There was one time when she finally asked him why he was prepared to cut Boone’s leg off to save him. It wasn’t an accusation, just a question, and he couldn’t answer it, really. He just shook his head and said he was sorry, for the four hundredth time, and she couldn’t take it anymore. She said she was only angry with him for not finding her before Boone was already cold and gone. He asked her if she knew about the blood he gave and the stupidity that comes with desperation and the blindness that makes you forget that if you think people are important, then you care about more than fixing bodies, jerry-rigging them to stay upright. You cared about the other things that might scar. She asked him if he was hurt when Boone died, and he asked her if she remembered that he had gone after Locke, too. He almost cried, standing there in front of her, and she was sure the only thing that made him stop was that he didn’t think he deserved to.
*****
There was a time when Jack finally left her alone, trusted her to live. He never failed to smile at her, but he asked no intrusive questions other than about her health, and even those he did rarely. Once, he told her to eat more; she was too thin. She barked that she didn’t want food. He barked back that he didn’t care-she wasn’t after death anymore. She would have to eat. Please, he said, and he retreated from her quickly, his eyes cast down, brow furrowed in worry.
It became a subtle battle of wills, then a vocal one, but never about anything important. Whenever Shannon had a quick retort, Jack was somehow quicker, and at a certain point, when his subtle hints came accompanied with easy smiles that somehow worked into some part of her that still felt things, she would grudgingly go along, not so easily leaving that defense of sarcasm because it had been her only way for so long. But it did leave her, little by little, and, eventually, it got to the point that if anyone wanted Shannon to do anything, they only had to ask Jack.
*****
There was one time when she brought him food in the hatch. Greedily, he popped the slices of fruit into his mouth and smiled quizzically at her. He told her she looked healthy again-like she had a glow about her. She found herself settling into a space on the couch to watch him tinkering unsuccessfully with some machine parts that would be best suited for Sayid’s hands. She talked to him, and for once in her life, she also listened. Occasionally, he would look at her as though he couldn’t believe he was saying what he was saying-at all, to her-but he continued, telling her about his residency and his father and his inability to communicate. When he was done with whatever it was he was taking apart and refitting, and he went toward the shower, she sat there, quiet but hungry for something. She had recently come to the conclusion that she was an adult, finally, and this contentment on the couch matched with some deep longing for something struck her as confusing and strange. But Jack was now not so confusing, and she knew that her desire to climb into the shower with him and scrub the dirt from his hands and his arms would have been strange only four months before. The rest of her desire, to simply feel her skin on his, was never a strange feeling for her, but now she mistrusted it, found it somehow suspicious.
*****
There were many times when she wanted to kiss him. There were many times she could have. But she didn’t, because she thought he was hung up on Kate, and because that was all she’d ever been able to do to interest a man-except Boone, except Sayid. Boone was held with withholding, and Sayid was not held at all-he held. Jack would have to be coaxed and cherished and fought for, and it was exhausting to her to think about even trying to win him. She doubted she even had the slightest idea how to go about it. So she stood too near him and told herself that no matter how strong the physical pull was, he didn’t feel it. If it had only been attraction, it would be easy. But this was something that began to take up some space in her mind until she thought of herself as his before she knew if he even wanted her, above finding her beautiful and trusting her to listen to him.
She was out in the water one day, contemplating how cruel it would be if they never got off the island and all the things she’d learned about herself would go to waste, when he waded out toward her. Her whole body vibrated with the thought that she was still, after everything, living in the past and in some future she was convinced would never be. She asked Jack what he was doing, and he said plainly that he was keeping an eye out for her. She asked him who was keeping an eye out for him. He said, Sometimes, Shannon, you are.
*****
There were many times when Jack kissed Shannon, but none so difficult as the first. They’d been spending a lot of time together, sitting with their legs touching, taking hikes to collect medicine, washing clothes, doing anything they could to be near each other. Finally, one night after the sun had gone down, Jack walked her back from the hatch to the beach. They didn’t say a word to each other, but almost before she could think about it being sudden, her hand slid down along the inside of his forearm, and into his hand, and they never broke their pace or looked at each other. But a few minutes later, he stopped them, pulling her into a kiss that took her breath away because it made perfect sense, so much that it didn’t seem as though it had ever been any other way while at the same time, it felt like something entirely new. As they walked along, she reminded herself that this was how it always felt to be in love, and she cried.
It took her three days to articulate to him why she was crying. When she finally did make him understand, he cried too.
*****
There was one time when Sawyer finally said what everyone thought, that the two of them were crazy and it didn’t make any sense. Shannon just said, Well, what do you know, asshole? Jack choked back a laugh and she realized that this was something she was fiercely protective of. That made it scary, that it was this important. But she planned to enjoy this life she had-to pay attention to it without overanalyzing it-and fuck anybody who didn’t understand that. She stalked off, knowing Jack was smiling, that he was following her with his eyes on her hips and legs, and she was already thinking of the sort of attention she could pay him later.