Title: Who Uses That Fish/Sea Metaphor, Anyway?
Pairing: Jack/Boone
Rating: PG
Summary: Jack, Boone, and Jin attempt to fish with disastrous results; Boone reflects on his relationship with Jack.
Notes: I really don't like Jack being in charge, always the hardened, steel-willed go-to guy who has all the knowledge. It makes him so unemotional. So I don't care how OOC you think he might be in this, but I wanted him and Boone to flirt like sixteen-year-olds. So fucking cutesy. I puked several times after writing this. Puked hard. Ahem... those who have not seen "White Rabbit" are swimming into dangerous waters, total pun intended. Away with you.
Disclaimer: I don't own Lost, nor Jin (couldn't understand him if I did), nor Jack and Boone, but I promise that if I did, the show would make you cream your pants for approximately forty-five minutes every week.
The afternoon, Boone would later conclude, had not been a complete and total debacle... not on all counts.
The sun was hanging on a shelf of wispy, pathetic-looking clouds, miles above the froth of the ocean surf where three men wrestled with fish that sometimes turned out to be interestingly-shaped rocks or clumps of seaweed. There would be periods where Jin would begin screaming in strings of rapid, angry Korean and Jack and Boone would just kind of look at each other, which would only make Jin scream louder. The fish were slippery bastards and group morale was even more slippery. The only good things to really come out of that afternoon were the small looks that Jack and Boone would sometimes share while Jin's face turned several different shades of magenta.
It was the same looks they would sometimes share at night by the fire; Jack would glance away from the sky every once in a while, the star-strewn sky which he wrung like a wet sponge for search planes, and exchange this quiet, desperate look with Boone, who would go pink in the face and look at the fire again, then back at Jack, then back at the fire when he realized Jack was still looking at him. When Jack looked back up at the sky, which he always did, his granite face was broken by a small smile. It was a private little game where everyone could win. It made Boone feel like he was back in high school and his third-period chemistry partner, Stacy Zimmerman, was bending over to show him her thong, which he would later take off at her house. Only Jack had less breasts and more hair. And probably no thongs. It was like smoke signals or Morse code, or painting a picture with silent ink. It was definitely the best thing that had happened since the crash. Actually, to Boone, it was the only thing that was making any sense since the crash.
And the game was a water sport today; Jack was skins, dark hair matted to the muscles of his chest in swirly patterns that Boone found himself contemplating more than once. Boone and Jin were shirts. They both ended up completely wet because Jin kept screaming and they would fall into the water laughing; the language barrier was daunting, sure, but it was fun as hell. It was another aspect of the game, and it made Boone tingle in all kinds of places when he saw Jack, naked from the waist-up and laughing quarter notes into the salty air, knees bent slightly and hands poised on his thighs as Jin dove at something shiny that ended up being his own watch. And Jack would look up and they would lock eyes again - (here the tingling was such that it made Boone's stomach hurt) and it was just fucking magical. It was right.
The fact remained that this was the element in which he and Jack had first connected. There in the water, one steamy morning - and steamy made it sound like the opening of some really awful B-movie porn flick (EXT. STEAMY JUNGLE HOT SPRINGS - MORNING) , no sir, this was the literal meaning of the word "steamy," we're talking hot, so hot you could actually see one of the steps of the water cycle materializing in front of your face - one steamy morning the riptide had caught Boone as he was swimming out on a rescue mission to save a girl he knew he'd never be able to save. It wasn't that he was expecting Jack to come out and save him, that would've been stupid of him, but it happened anyway, and at the time he'd wanted to tell Jack to go and rescue the girl. Joanna, her name had been. He wanted to tell Jack that he was good to swim back to shore, the others would surely swim in and help him, go ahead and get the girl, and be careful of the current, will you, it's strong as fuck, but he couldn't manage it somehow. Yes, Boone had just gasped for air and spluttered and mumbled in Jack's arms, feeling warmer than the sickening temperature that was boiling fish scales beneath their feet, but a good kind of warm, not the kind that made you feverish. He'd later regretted this stolen moment in the water, though, as forty-four people looked on, gnashing their teeth and pulling out their hair in the anxiety of the situation - the anxiety coming from the fact that no one gave a rat's ass about Joanna and Boone but about Jack, which oddly made Boone feel even warmer. Everyone looked up to Jack, and Boone knew it. It made the game even more fun to play. Made it secretive, sexy, a little dangerous. Sometimes when they looked at each other there was just nothing else, and people like Kate or Claire or hell, maybe even Sawyer, longed for that kind of a bond with the undisputed leader of the island.
But as mentioned before, Boone had regretted Jack's momentary lapse of judgment, for which he would later beat himself up over while everyone tried to convince him he was still Captain Fucking America - Boone had felt terrible that a woman splashed and screamed a few yards away while they held each other in the water in some kind of anti-adrenaline stasis. He'd yelled at Jack, told him he could take care of himself, for Christ's sake he'd run his own business back in the other world, but Jack had just pushed him aside. Yeah, he couldn't deny he was hurt by it. Jack had really pushed him aside, this wasn't figurative - he'd gone running off dramatically into the jungle, wet shirt flapping in the disgustingly hot wind, and they hadn't really said a word since.
But everything was all right today. Three men flopped around in the water, probably looking more like fish than what they were supposed to be catching, the sun charbroiling their brains. Jin was out of breath by this point and was simply sitting in the tide looking despondent; Boone and Jack were thigh-deep in the water splashing each other and generally acting like fools, which was just another part of the game. Jack would throw in some comment about Boone's fishing technique ("What, were you trying to do the Worm or something?") and they would just sit there and laugh so hard their intestines would curl into little balls, and the sun just... seemed to shine a little brighter. Jin looked at them with his eyebrows knitted in confusion, and eventually picked up the scattered remains of his dignity and went back to camp to remind Sun to button up her shirt. Jack and Boone would not come back until later.
Under the water, their fingers laced together and the resulting electricity might've been enough to wash a few dead fish to shore. This is nice, Boone thought, staring at the sheet of sparkles on the surface of the ocean. And it was nice. The sea was certainly full of plenty of fish, that he could not deny, but the stomach tingling whispered in his ear that maybe this time he'd caught something to show off.