"I don't want to die, Jack," Boone pleaded weakly, looking into the doctor's eyes. "There has to be something else you can do."
In the flickering torchlight, Jack suddenly looked so much paler and older than he usually did. He stared unblinkingly back at Boone, saying nothing for a few long, torturous moments before he finally declared, "There is one more thing I can do. But you have to understand, Boone, you won't be the same as before. There will be consequences."
"Screw the consequences," Boone exclaimed, violently enough that he began to hack up a fresh round of blood and phlegm from his lungs. After the coughing had finally subsided, he used all his remaining energy to lean up, grasp the other man's shirt, and whisper, "Just. do. it." When he saw that Jack still looked hesitant, Boone added a barely audible, "Please," before sinking back once more onto the makeshift operating table.
Jack glanced heavenward for a few seconds, as if asking some higher power for permission or forgiveness, then reached for one of the sea urchin spikes Sun had brought him.
"What are you...going to do?" Boone gasped out, his eyes darting between Jack and the sharp implement in his hand.
"Just relax," Jack said quietly, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder, "This part won't hurt, I promise." With that, he quickly slid the spike into his own arm until blood began to pour from the wound. Then, as Boone gazed on in shock, Jack replaced the bag of blood that had been supplying his patient - taken from the emergency store he had insisted they create soon after the crash - with his own bleeding limb.
After less than a minute, Jack's face began to swim in Boone's field of vision. He tried to grab the doctor's arm, to beg him to hurry, but the most he could manage was lifting his hand a few inches into the air and uttering, "Jack...Jack..." in a weak, hoarse whisper.
His last fleeting impression before the darkness closed in completely was Jack clutching his hand, his voice murmuring soothingly, "It's all right, Boone. You just have to trust me on this. It'll be all right."
Elsewhere, in the wilds of the jungle, John Locke continued to hack his way through the rows of darkened trees until he suddenly found himself once more staring at the skeletal form of the downed Beechcraft, gleaming eerily in the moonlight. He heaved a sigh and made his way toward it, wondering if the island was once again trying to tell us something.
"Feeling a little guilty, are we, John?" came an all-too-familiar voice from the pool of shadow behind him.
"Boone?" he exclaimed in shock, whirling around to find his former companion standing there, shirtless and covered in fresh blood. "My God, Boone, how are you...I mean, what happened?"
"I died, John, that's what happened!" Boone snapped as he emerged from the darkness of the trees, the dark red blood covering his neck and upper torso shimmering a muted crimson in the moonlit clearing.
"Boone, you have to understand," Locke began, passing entirely over the subject of Boone's seemingly miraculous resurrection. "Your death was an important part of something much bigger, much more powerful than either of us. It was a tragedy, I know, but it had to happen. I hope in time you'll grow to understand that."
"You hope that...that I'll understand?" Boone exclaimed incredulously, "My God, I can't believe I was such an idiot to think that you actually cared about me!"
"Now, come on, Boone," Locke cajoled him, "I do care about you."
"No, you don't, John," Boone said slowly, as if fully realizing the fact for the first time. "You never did - you only ever cared about the island. I was too busy trying to make you proud of me to notice before, but now, God, it seems so obvious."
"Boone, you're not being very fair," Locke objected, attempting once more to placate the other man.
"Fair?" Boone shouted, his eyes flashing with new fury. "You want to talk to me about fair, John? Fair would have been telling Jack about the plane from the beginning so he could have had a hope of treating me properly! Fair would have been not leaving me to die alone! Fair? You don't know the goddamn meaning of the word."
John could only stand there and stare in stunned silence at the complete transformation of the man who was once so close to him.
"You're...so different now," Locke marveled, unable to take his eyes from the other man.
"Funny thing about dying, John," Boone said bitterly, "It has a way of changing your perspective on things."
"But don't you see, Boone?" Locke said confidently. "The Island brought you back. I had faith, and so it brought you back to me."
"The Island?" Boone yelled in disbelief. "No, John, you and the Island got me killed - Jack Shepard brought me back. Jack Shepard held my hand when I was lying there, terrified and broken inside. Jack Shepard is twice the friend and twice the man that you will ever be, you arrogant son-of-a-bitch."
"Boone..." Locke started, but the other man quickly cut him off.
"You and I are done, Locke. Finished. If you know what's good for you, you'll stay the hell away from me." He turned swiftly to withdraw once more into the safety of the darkened jungle.
"Whose blood is it?" Locke called after him, causing Boone to pause in his retreat. "Can't be yours, that would have dried hours ago, so tell me, whose is it?"
Boone turned to look at him, his face half shrouded in shadow, and said finally, "Nothing comes without a price, John. You should know that. Like I said, if I were you...I'd stay far away from me." Before Locke could say anything further, Boone was gone, melted into the darkness without even the rustle of a palm frond to indicate his passing, once more leaving Locke with only his guilt for company.
Boone found Jack in the improvised operating room, washing the blood off his hands in a small bowl now full of pink-red water; he looked utterly exhausted.
"Long night, huh, Doc?" he said casually, strolling toward him.
"Boone," Jack said with a relieved exhale, his voice filled with worry, as well as a darker current of emotion Boone couldn't quite place. Jack took in the blood still covering the other man's neck and shoulders and said quietly, "I see you got my note."
"How to be a vampire in five easy steps," Boone said with a sarcastic little laugh, though there was no bite in it. "Yeah, I did - thanks."
"I'm so sorry I couldn't be there to explain it to you in person," Jack said, and Boone could see genuine regret in his eyes. "I remember how scary it was when I...when I was turned."
"You had to help Claire," Boone said, adding sincerely, "I understood."
"God, I shouldn't have even done it in the first place," Jack said vehemently, running a hand through his hair.
"Jack, if you hadn't done it, I'd be dead right now. You saved my life!" Boone insisted.
"Saved you?" Jack asked, guilt written all over his face. "I cursed you! When I became a doctor, I took an oath, Boone: do no harm. Tonight I broke that vow."
"Hey," Boone said softly, shifting to meet Jack's eyes. "Look at me. Do I look harmed? I asked you to do whatever you had to do, and I don't regret it, Jack, not even a little."
Jack's eyes searched Boone's face for a few quiet moments, as if looking for some sort of proof that the other's words had been merely conciliatory. Eventually, he returned to washing his hands in the basin, apparently satisfied with Boone's response, and observed, "You've obviously fed. Animal, I hope?"
"Boar," Boone affirmed. "I followed your advice, and let my instincts take the lead. God, it was like nothing I'd ever felt before. I was filled with this want, this need...is it always going to be like this?"
"It's more intense at the beginning," Jack recollected, "but the need never goes away. You'll find all your senses and desires are much more acute than they used to be - anger, grief, hunger, joy..." He trailed off, leaving his glaring omission hanging in the air between them, unsaid.
"Well, you should probably clean up," Jack said finally with a little cough, throwing a clean rag to Boone. "We don't need the others asking too many questions."
Boone stared at the rag in his hand for a few moments, as if contemplating it, then returned his gaze to Jack as he said quietly, "Seems like a bit of a waste. All this blood just...washed away."
Jack's head snapped up at this, his expression difficult to read in the flickering torchlight.
"I mean, I'm more than sated, but with all that's been going on tonight, you must not have fed in hours." He moved a little in Jack's direction, intending to take only a couple steps toward him, but finding himself mere inches from the other man's face in a single second. "It's the least I can do," he murmured.
Jack's expression conveyed no surprise at Boone's sudden nearness; his eyes, meanwhile, flashed with undisguised hunger, accompanied by a strange reddish sheen that Boone recognized as an attribute of their shared condition. He reached out a hand to lay it on Boone's bare chest, placing it just below the line of still-wet blood splattered across his shoulders.
"I know what you're doing, Boone," Jack said, the calmness in his tone contradicted by the wild hunger still dancing in his eyes. "You've been through so much tonight - you have all these new, intense feelings, and you're focusing them all on me."
"So what if I am?" Boone murmured, "I was dead tonight, Jack. I still am, according to your note. Is it so wrong to want to feel alive?" He trailed a finger slowly up Jack's arm as he added, "To want to make you feel alive?"
A barely detectable shudder ran through Jack's body. "You've had my blood Boone - we have a biological connection," he said less than convincingly. "What you're feeling stems from that."
"Would you stop patronizing me?" Boone's voice crackled with temper. "I want you, because I want you. Since when does it have to be more complicated than that?"
"Since I made it that way, damn it!" Jack exclaimed, his face once again awash with guilt. "I was upset, and I was weak. I promised myself when it happened to me that I would never, ever force it on somebody else."
"Well, why did you, then?" Boone snapped. "If you regret it so much, why did you even turn me in the first place?"
"Because you were in pain!" Jack shouted, his voice tinged with weariness and despair. "Because you were lying there, screaming, trembling, begging me to make it stop, and I couldn't stand by and do nothing for a second longer, all right?"
Boone felt all the anger drain from his body, and he raised a hand to skim across Jack's cheekbone. "I wouldn't have blamed you, you know," he said quietly, "If you'd done it to stop being alone."
"We're on an island with forty other people, what makes you think I'm alone?" Jack asked, attempting a carefree smile and missing by a mile.
"Because you carry your secret like that key around your neck, not letting anyone else share your burden," Boone said, reaching out to toy with the glinting, silver object as he spoke. "If that's not being alone, I don't know what is."
Jack said nothing and continued to stare soulfully into the darkness, compelling Boone to continue, "It doesn't have to be like that, Jack. You and I, we're bonded - by blood, by secrets, by understanding. I mean, when was the last time that someone really, honestly understood you, Jack?"
When Jack finally raised his head, Boone caught a glimpse of the turmoil raging beneath his normally stoic exterior - pain, lust, loneliness, and hunger all battling for dominance. Suddenly, it was as if something inside Jack just snapped, and he was standing mere inches from Boone, his eyes gleaming red, burning with want.
Moving tantalizingly slowly, Jack leaned down to trace his tongue up the side of Boone's neck which, combined with the accompanying scrape of his now projecting fangs, caused a shiver to run through Boone's already cold body, and when Jack finally slid his lips up to meet Boone's, they were covered in blood.
It should have repelled him, ruined the mood; instead it sent a hot bolt straight to his gut, causing Boone to instinctively press his whole body taut against Jack's. Then even that wasn't enough, and soon he was reaching down to pull Jack's shirt over his head, leaving only a single key on a leather string between them.
He maneuvered Jack back and was soon bumping up against the makeshift operating table. As if reading his thoughts, Jack grasped his wrist with a gruffly whispered, "Not here."
Before Boone could fully register what was happening, Jack had tugged him gently out of the tent, and they were hurtling through the jungle at speeds he wouldn't previously have believed possible. What seemed like mere moments later, they were out of the trees and skidding to a stop on a deserted beach, sending white-gold sand flying in all directions.
Boone wrapped his arms around Jack's neck to steady himself, letting out a delirious laugh when Jack spun him in a dizzying circle.
"Any more tricks I should know about?" Boone murmured in Jack's ear as the world slowly stopped spinning.
"Oh, maybe one or two," Jack replied mischievously, shifting back to press his lips against Boone's once more. This muffled the wild laugh Boone let out when Jack slipped his hands under his thighs, lifting him up as if he weighed nothing, and began to direct them back toward a more secluded patch of beach.
Boone wrapped his legs around Jack's waist in a vise-like grip and slid his hands around to the sides of his face, taking control of the kiss.
He was vaguely aware of the sand scraping against his back, the moonlight bleaching the beach bone-white, the stillness in his chest where his heart should have been frantically beating, but soon there was only Jack, just Jack and nothing else.
Boone didn't know if this feeling was merely a side effect of their blood bond, or his newly heightened senses. He wasn't even sure that any of it was even real. All he knew was that right then, at that moment, he never wanted it to end.