Title: Safety of Objects
Genre: Angst/Character Exploration/Fluff
Characters: Shannon, Boone
Dedicated to Vilya, written as a drabble for Vilya :)
A/N: I am not a native speaker and this is unbeta'd, so if you spot a mistake, please point it out. Yes, I am still alive, and writing.
Summary: Shannon needs to shave her legs.
Sometimes Shannon is just too tired to fight reality.
She is lost without the safety offered to her in the real world by the knowledge of rules and tricks and humans (or rather men). The Island strips her further, as if she wasn't already naked, raw before coming here. So much had been taken away from her – her health and independence, her father, her money and last not least, influence she had had over her brother. Nevertheless, before coming here, she still possessed an ounce of control over her life. What has she got left here?
No wonder that, for the most part, Shannon clings to anything that even vaguely reminds her of life in the outside world. She sunbathes and she flirts and ignores Boone's disapproving frowns. She notices the way Sayid's not-so-casual glances linger on her body and she basks in what she would have taken for granted just a couple of weeks earlier. She is so far away from her comfort zone. From objects and places she knew, from a world which she understood, which ran in her blood. She wasn't born to live in the bloody wild.
Sometimes she is too tired to fight reality, but usually she manages to ignore the uncomfortable here-and-now and focus on what others see as unimportant, but what to her is life-saving.
This is why she has just spent half a day trying to find anything sharp enough to be of use for shaving her legs.
She sits on the beach, provisory razor in her hand, and lets the routine of upward movements calm the maelstrom of her fears. She escapes, successfully and gladly.
Until reality raises its ugly head in the humiliating form of a long cut. The scrape is just slight, and yet bleeds enough to make her worry about staining her shirt, and the unwelcome pain brings her back to the prose of everyday life of a contemporary Ms Robinson Crusoe. She swears under her breath, standing up to go and search for Jack. She needs some disinfectors, just in case.
Boone is standing just a few metres behind her – he must have been there for a while, she's sure. She hates for him to see her like that – she waits for a scathing remark to come and yet it doesn't. He is not even disapproving, just worried, she can sense it. For some reason that's even worse, he is not doing what she'd expect him to.
"I'll- I'll find Jack, bring you something for the leg, you just stay here."
She wants to tell him she does not need his older-brothering but he's already gone, and she just sits down and listens to the rhythmic sound of waves hitting the beach. It is a beautiful place, she thinks. How can it be so beautiful and yet so deadly?
Boone returns, a tiny bottle in his hand. He touches her shoulder and asks her to follow him to his 'tent', he has band-aids there. She remains silent but does as he says.
His hands on her leg are firm and gentle, and the alcohol stings so much she hisses through clenched teeth, and he looks up at her, as if apologising, then quickly averts his eyes, and for a moment his hair tickles her nose. She turns her head and he goes slightly rigid, and she thinks he wants to say something potentially embarrassing but doesn't dare. His hands remain on her leg just a moment too long and she doesn't mind.
She thinks that perhaps, just perhaps, she does not need to shave her legs, after all. Because perhaps there is a warmer kind of familiarity here.