He was French braiding her hair, plaiting it into an intricate pattern. It was something Claire had taught him how to do, and it gave him an excuse to touch her. She was sitting on the ground, with her back towards him, playing with the baby on her lap.
"Let's do something today," he suggested.
"What'd you have in mind?" she loved having him play with her hair, but there was no way she was going to tell him that, she kept it as a carefully guarded secret. It was better that he thought she just tolerated it. She loved messing with his head; he made it so damn easy for her to do.
"How about the beach?" he continued weaving her hair.
"Woohoo! Don't you live life on the edge? Yeah, let's go across the street, big outing." she misunderstood his intention.
"No," he shook his head. "I meant the ocean, let's drive out to the coast and spend the day."
She thought that sounded like a reasonable plan. It was still early, so they'd have plenty of time to spend several hours lying in the sun after they got there. "We could call Sayid and Nadia, they could meet us there."
He felt a surge of jealousy at that, unintentionally tugging too hard at her hair. He immediately cursed himself for how he felt, and tried to hide it.
"Ouch," she looked over her shoulder at him and caught the look that flickered in his eyes. "Oh Puhleeze, give me a break! You can't be serious. You can just put that green eyed monster away this second. There's no reason for it. I'm married to you for Christ sakes, although what I was thinking when I said yes, I'll never understand. By now even you must know I'm not going anywhere."
"Sorry, Shan, of course I'm not jealous of Sayid any more. It's just force of habit. I spent so many years watching you with other guys, it's just a knee jerk reaction." He bent down to kiss her neck, "I know you're not going anywhere."
"Oh…now don't you sound all cocky and sure of yourself," God how she loved to tease him. "Okay, just the three of us then."
They gathered up some stuff and loaded it, and themselves, into the car.
During the ride she turned to him, "Boone?"
"What?" he glanced at her. He'd noticed that she'd been unusually quiet and had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get a read on what it was she was thinking about. He figured it couldn't be that important, if he couldn't pick up on it.
"Why don't you ever call me anything other than my name?" she asked.
"What?" What the hell was she talking about, he wondered. "It's your name, what else would I call you? I don't think it likely you'd answer to…oh…I don't know…Donna," he picked a name at random.
"No you idiot. I mean why don't you ever call me honey or baby or something like that?" she was curious. She'd been idly thinking about how he'd been jealous earlier, and the question had, for some reason, been an unexpected result of her musing.
He'd never really noticed that he didn't, but then he realized she never called him anything but Boone, at least he called her Shan, even though she protested that she hated it. So he asked her own question back to her, "Why don't you?"
"Hmmm, I guess I should have thought about that, before I asked," she laughed. "But, seriously, why don't we?"
He shrugged, "I guess it's because you were my sister for a lot longer than you've been my wife. I still call you sis sometimes, which is weird enough, but somehow I don't think it would have been appropriate for your brother to call you honey," especially given that I wanted to, he added silently.
She smiled at that. "Try it now," she commanded.
He looked at her as if she was nuts. "You're kidding, right?"
"Do I look like I'm kidding? What's the big deal, just do it," what was his issue with this?
"Uh, okay…honey?" the last word came out like a question.
"Needs work, definitely needs work." She found his effort lacking.
"Now you," if she was going to make him say it, he felt he deserved the same.
"Baby, if you want me to call you honey, I have no problem with that at all," she made it sound completely natural, reaching over to slide her hand down his leg as she said it.
He felt himself flushing a little red. He liked the sound of it, "You keep talking to me like that, we're not going to be getting to the beach anytime soon."
She laughed at him.
However they did arrive and carried their things to a spot on the sand, then, predictably, Boone left her to set up their stuff as he grabbed Andrew and ran for the water.
Andrew loved the water; Boone had had him in the ocean almost from the day he was born. He'd had to assume primary responsibility for the baby with Shannon falling so gravely ill as a result of his birth. The infection that had almost killed her had left her listless and weak for almost a month. Boone had to be forced to leave her side as she'd laid so close to death. They'd understood why he was completely neglecting himself, not eating or sleeping, but Sun and Jack had reminded him that he had someone else to think about now, Andrew. When she'd felt a bit stronger, Jack had told them both, as gently as he could, that he didn't think she'd ever be able to have any more children.
She'd sobbed quietly against him at that, crying that he deserved better than her. "But, Shan, all I've ever wanted is you. The rest doesn't matter. I love you, only you." He'd tried to reassure her.
"Boone, you've told me so many times, how much you want children, how much you want a large family." She'd tried to dissuade him, feeling like she'd let him down again.
"Shan, it doesn't matter, if you'll just let me love you, it'll be okay. Please?" he'd pleaded with her. She'd felt so bad at disappointing him again.
"Okay." She'd reached up to touch his face. He'd looked so vulnerable, so totally in love with her, how could she not acquiesce? He'd wiped her tears away, brushing his thumbs across her face.
She watched them both now, he was so careful with their son, she couldn't believe he'd been jealous earlier. That he'd actually felt somehow, irrationally, threatened. She reached for a towel and spread it on the ground; grabbing a bottle of water from the cooler he'd packed, she lay back to sun herself.
From the water he looked up at her reclining form. Honey, he repeated to himself, trying to make it feel natural, but only succeeding in picturing a jar of the stuff. Okay then…baby, he looked down at Andrew. Shit! I'm sure I used to be able to do this. He tried to remember his last girlfriend, had he had a pet name for her? He found he could barely remember her given name, let alone any nickname he might have used. He gave it up as a bad job, and focused on Andrew and the ocean.
Tiring eventually of the water, he meandered up the sand. "Shan?" he wasn't sure if she was asleep or not.
"Yeah?" she sat up.
"I really don't think I'm going to be able to do this," he lifted his shoulders in a shrug.
"Do what?" she raised her eyebrows at him. She may have been a mind reader when it came to him, but she had no idea what he was talking about.
"The whole terms of endearment thing," he looked chagrinned; he hated disappointing her.
"Whatever, it wasn't a big deal, just an observation. What you said made sense, about the brother/sister thing. It's not like we have a conventional relationship." She'd already put their earlier conversation behind her.
He had to allow that. What they had certainly hadn't evolved in a regularly acceptable way.
"I'm going to walk down the beach a bit." She rose, taking Andrew from him, and heading across the sand.
He lay down on her towel and closed his eyes. It wasn't long before he felt something blocking the sun. Opening his eyes, he saw that there were two women standing there looking at him. "Hey," one of them said, starting a conversation.
They were still there when Shannon returned. She stopped some distance from them and watched him, talking to the two girls, flashing his dazzling smile at them. She knew he was only being friendly. She thought back to their conversation of that morning and whether she felt jealous or not. She decided she definitely didn't. How funny it was that he felt it, while she didn't, especially when she was so much more materialistic than he was. The more some other woman wanted him, the more satisfied she felt knowing that he was hers. She knew that he had absolutely no idea how attractive he was, the effect he had on women, including her. She waited while the girls became even more mesmerized by his incredible grey eyes, allowing them to think they were getting somewhere with him, before she came forward to reclaim him as her own.
He smiled as he noticed her approaching, "Hey babe," he said. It sounded completely natural.