Whey they went for dinner that night, they were seated at a table with three other couples who stared at them openly, obviously puzzled by their less than stellar attire. Once again they had to justify their presence by explaining that they were from the plane crash, just as they'd had to at the entrance to the place.
Claire and Charlie were looking after Andrew. They'd traded off, Boone and Shannon watching Aaron while the other two had dinner, and now, in exchange, temporarily baby free. He'd pulled her chair out for her when they reached the table; she laughed at how automatic his good manners were, he grinned shyly, a bit embarrassed.
After a round of introductions, they ordered their meal. Shannon excused herself, leaning down to kiss him, more than just perfunctorily, before leaving for the bathroom.
"You kissed her like you thought you'd never see her again." The guy to his left commented.
Boone breathed a little laugh as he turned to the man. "I never knew if I would." He stated simply.
That knocked the guy on his ass a little.
"It couldn't possibly have been that dangerous." Another man scoffed. "From what I've heard it was a deserted jungle paradise."
"We were forty-eight when we crashed; thirty-four of those boarded this ship. Do you want to tell that to the ones who aren't here?" Boone asked calmly.
The man suddenly became fascinated with his salad.
"What did you eat?" one of the women asked.
"Fish, fruit, wild boar, the island provided us with enough to get by." He thought about the endless nights of hunger, when there just wasn't enough to go around, despite their best efforts.
"Wild boar?" The third man questioned, sounding sceptical. "Aren't they pretty big and mean? What did you do, go after them with pointed sticks?" He asked derisively, looking around at the other five, chuckling a bit as he dismissed Boone's claim as absurd.
Boone explained about Locke and his hunting knives, praying that Shannon would come back from the bathroom soon and take control of the conversation, steering it in a different direction, like he knew she could.
"So some of the bigger guys hunted these things?" The man persisted with his line of questioning.
Boone frowned, offended. "No, I hunted them myself." He answered in an aggrieved tone.
"You?" the man responded incredulously, noting the young man's small stature, then did a double take as his wife obviously kicked him under the table.
Boone reached down into his bag, which was hung over the back of his chair, and pulled his knife out of it's sheath and laid it on the table. "Yeah," you fucking jackass, he added silently, "me."
Their eyes all widened at the sight of the huge knife, its' well worn grip moulded to the shape of his hand and stained dark with his sweat, looking so out of place lying on the white linen of the table cloth.
"I, uh, I'm sorry," the guy stammered, understandably unnerved by the seemingly implacable young man with the lethal weapon who he'd just insulted. I just didn't think that…." He paused for a second. "No, I think I'm just going to leave it at I didn't think." The man apologized.
Boone gave the guy a flat stare and put the knife away.
"You ever have to kill anyone with that thing? That is, before tonight?" the man's wife asked giving her husband a pointed stare.
There was no way in hell that he was ever going to answer that question; he could barely admit the truth to himself. He twisted a bit in his chair and looked over his shoulder. "Did anyone see where my sister headed?"
He waited a bit for an answer, then, not receiving one, turned back to the table. They were all staring at him with varying looks of disgust, shock and contempt on their faces. He blanched then asked again "Shannon? Did anyone see where she went?"
"You didn't ask that the first time. You asked where your sister went. The kiss you exchanged with her certainly didn't seem brotherly." One of the women pointed out.
He dropped his head to his hand, wearily, and breathed a sigh. Jesus, if this was what they were going to be up against back in civilisation, they were going to be doing a lot of explaining. He failed to realize that it was his own fault for referring to her as his sister in the first place. "She's not my real sister, just my step sister." He explained, pleading desperately for her return, breathing a sigh of relief at the sense of her just behind him.
She took one glance at the looks on the faces of the people at the table, 'What did you fuck up?'
The next day Jack announced that three rooms had become available. Some members of the crew had volunteered to double up, vacating their quarters in deference to the survivors. He looked over the group, obviously searching for someone, pointing at them when he picked them out. "You two, you get one of the rooms. As much as I'm sure you'd like your privacy, I think we'd all like you to have it even more." They had the grace to look a little ashamed, as there was scattered laughter and applause.
A crewmember headed over to them to show them to their new quarters, they grabbed Andrew and the rest of their stuff, while the man considerately carried the crib for them. He led them through the ship, stopping in front of a door in a decidedly less ostentatious section of the ship. He swiped a key card and opened the door onto a small room, stepping into the entrance. There was a bathroom on their left with a closet beside it. The room beyond had two single beds, a couple of upholstered chairs, a desk and a TV, all in all pretty standard. "Sorry about the single beds," the guy apologized, moving to put the crib on the floor in the corner. "I shared it with another guy, Mike. Uhm, I'm Tom." He introduced himself as he headed back toward them.
"This was your room?" Shannon questioned. He nodded. "Thanks Tom, and thank Mike for us too," she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. He blushed bright red, shoved the key card into Boone's hand and fled quickly out into the corridor, pulling the door closed behind him.
For the first time in a year, more significantly, for the first time since becoming a couple, they were well and truly alone together; and they were suddenly oddly ill at ease. The unaccustomed ordinariness of their surroundings overwhelmed them. There was no undercurrent of the danger they'd become used to facing every minute of every day; it was just them…alone…in a hotel room, not knowing what to do with themselves, the situation so strangely foreign to them. They felt like a couple of underage virgins who'd used fake ID to check into a seedy motel with the intention of having sex for the first time.
An awkward silence settled over the room. They both stared through the smaller passageway created by the closet, and into the main room, neither one understanding the source of their sudden nervousness. Stepping forward simultaneously, their shoulders collided; mumbling apologies they moved back to their original positions.
"After you," Boone gestured. Jesus, I wasn't this skittish on my first date, where the hell is this coming from?
"No, no it's okay, you first," Shannon replied. I feel like a sixteen-year-old girl in some college guy's dorm room, this is Boone for god's sake.
Predictably they both stepped forward again, this time he was a little more forceful than he meant to be and hip checked her into the wall.
"Jeeze Shan," he reached out to help her, "I'm sorry."
"Yeah, it's okay." She shrugged it off. "What's going on here?" she added after a pause. She was staring fixedly at the middle of his chest, unable to meet his eyes.
"I don't know. This is pretty weird. It's like all those times I snuck a girl into my room at home, really awkward and uncomfortable." Boone was still mulling over why this felt so odd.
Shannon looked up at him, surprised. "You snuck girls into your room?" Boone nodded, shrugging. "I never knew. It doesn't seem like you, to do something so, I don't know…normal for most teenage guys, but against the whole 'perfect son' image you had wrapped around yourself."
"Well there you go; something else you didn't know about me." He smiled nervously at her.
She suddenly found something fascinating to stare at on the wall over his left shoulder, all awkward and feeling fourteen again. "Boone, we've shared hotel rooms before, I just don't get this."
"But we weren't having sex when we shared those rooms in the past." He protested. She flicked her eyes back to his, frowning. "I mean with each other." He clarified.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off, "Sydney doesn't count."
They moved back to their original positions, staring at the perfectly ordinary room in front of them.
That's it, he thought, "It's so ordinary. The room, the situation, nothing weird about it," he glanced over at her. "Since we've become a couple, there's not one single ordinary thing we've done. I think this might just be our first dose of the real world."
Shannon tipped her head and gave a nod of understanding. "You're right. This is what real people, a couple on a cruise vacation do. They book passage, they share a room." She checked to make sure he wasn't going to run her into the wall again and walked into the other room, sitting on one of the beds.
Boone followed. After settling Andrew into the crib, he sat beside her. Sitting on the same bed with her felt wrong, he thought, after a moment, and moved to the other bed to face her. They both stared at the floor. She got up and sat beside him again, rocking toward him to bump her shoulder against his. "Come on, this is nuts."
"It may be nuts, but I still feel all awkward." Christ we're fucked up, he thought.
She shifted on the bed, sliding one leg over his to face him, half way on his lap. "Boone, I'm scared. I love you, I really, really do. You know that. It amazes me sometimes, just how much. But I'm suddenly not sure if it's going to be enough. I mean, we're going to face a lot of these moments in the next few weeks. Are we going to melt down like this every time, can our relationship survive, is it strong enough?"
"Shan, if you want to know the future, you're going to have to talk to Claire, I don't have the answer to that." He looked pained, "I love you too, please, god please, let it be enough." He pleaded. "I don't know what I'd do without you. We just need to get through things together, please just hold on to that, hold on to me. We've been through too much," he looked into her eyes, "two near death experiences, and just too many other terrifying things I don't even want to contemplate right now, without breaking apart. I sure hope we'll be able to weather returning home."
"I'm still scared," she repeated, feeling a sudden sinking building in her. 'No,' she thought, 'I'm not scared, I'm panicked.' She looked at him, her eyes wide. "Boone, what's happening?" She suddenly felt close to tears, her terror not having a basis in any real threat. Her breathing got fast as she felt wave after wave of unreasonable fear wash over her.
He reacted immediately by pulling her close, cocooning her in his arms. "Sssssh, it'll pass, I think it's post traumatic stress. I heard Jack talking to Sullivan." He tried to get her to focus on something else. "You know that guy, he's always overplaying everything. Jeeze, he gets a splinter in his finger, and you'd think from listening to him that a polar bear had ripped his arm off." She breathed a nervous laugh in agreement. "Anway, I guess he had a panic attack. Jack told him we'll all probably go through it several times in the next weeks. You think you can hold me like this when it's my turn?"
"I'll take it under consideration." She was still clutching at him, trembling uncontrollably.
"Gee, don't open your shirt, your heart'll fall out." Boone replied sarcastically to her less than generous response. He was amused by her answer; even in the middle of a panic attack she could still muster a smart-ass comeback.
He held her until she calmed down, rubbing her back and rocking her gently, softly breathing the words 'I love you' into her ear.