She can see Boone, swimming in her blurry vision as she approaches his face for a kiss. She is dizzy, and confused, and drunk as hell, and she kisses her step-brother. Even now, in this dreamland, she can feel the sickly sweetness in the pit of her stomach, arousal at the touch of a male, and then the precious guilt because she knows she's turning them both into traitors.
Drunken images, feelings, flash through her sleeping mind's eye, Boone nearly ripping her shirt over her head in his desperation and desire, how his body pelt pressed against hers, the scratchy hotel sheets that never even got pulled back, vomiting directly afterwards, the result of too much alcohol consumption and, more hidden, the sudden realization of what she had just done. Boone's face when she told him everything was going back to the way it was, hurt, betrayed, almost lonely.
And before Shannon Rutherford can keep her honor, she's waking with salty tears in Sayid's tent. One simple question rests on her lips, unspoken, untouched. Why?
He is there, at her back, holding her and wiping her tears, and whispering in her ear again and again and again in perfect harmony, so sweet she feels undeserving of his touch, ever. "It's alright, it's alright, it's alright…alright… alright…" She wants to be sick. Now.
She spins to face him, abruptly, so that he startles and tumbles backward, catching himself with a hand. Her voice seems choked with emotion, and she can't breathe with him staring at her like that. Confusion. She finds her only reserve, and speaks.
"I have something to tell you." The words are barely out, and already he looks at her hard, not emoting.
"I had sex with Boone."
And she tells him, manages to spit it out, blunt word by blunt word, choking on her awkward speech every sentence or two. She refuses blatantly to make eye contact with him until every detail is out.
When she looks up, he is now looking away.
Why?
She waits for minutes that seem like years, and finally he meets her pained gaze.
"You said you wanted a new life. Why did you tell me this, then?"
"I had to. You needed to know. I just…" Words fail her as she tries to discover the code of his face, like a complicated mathematical equation, crooked brows, piercing gaze, but a soft mouth to contrast everything sharp about him.
"Everyone has secrets, Shannon. I knew already you weren't untouched. You have that sense about you, the one who is innocent yet knows more than people expect."
Her eyes fill with tears, but they don't fall. Yet. She smiles hesitantly at him, lips quavering.
"I hope you can forgive me?"
He chooses to reply with a different function of those full, coffee brown lips that she watches expectantly. He kisses her. And again. His hands are all over, up her shirt, buried in hair, lighting her things on fire. Shannon smiles a bit wider, her cheek on his chest. Here is a touch that she won't mentally repel, one that won't feel dirty and uncaring. The filth she feels right now slowly comes away in his palms. No more guilt.
Knowing this, she gives herself to him. And she has never been happier. She loves.
Ta.
Shae
