When they returned to the table, the four seated there looked at him in concern. The Cooper's dinner had been served while Boone and Shannon were in the men's room.
"Boone?" Andrew started, "Are you okay?"
Anne was startled again that he called his parents by their first names.
He smiled a little wanly at his son and nodded his head, they both took their seats after making sure they weren't intruding, now that the food had arrived.
"You didn't…?" Andrew narrowed his eyes slightly trying to determine if Boone had thrown up again, he was always letting himself get worked up to the point of nausea. The boy was understandably very protective of his father, Shannon could take care of herself, but Boone was a different matter. Sensitive, trusting and more than just a bit naïve, he wasn't as strong as either one of them.
"No, I didn't, I'm okay." He assured the boy, immediately understanding the rest of the unfinished question.
"I'm really sorry Mr. Carlyle; I didn't mean to hurt you." Amy looked upset.
"Please Amy, it's Boone," he corrected her for the third time, "and I know you didn't." Shannon noted that he was very careful not to brush against the girl, not wanting the memories to resurface that her earlier touch had reawakened.
"Andrew's told us a little bit, and Shannon filled in a few details too, before you came over, but we'd really like to hear your whole story, you've heard ours, and we're understandably curious." Tim and Anne were looking at him; Amy was still exchanging shy glances with Andrew.
"Yeah, well, about that, it's not something that we talk about, especially not in public, and you guys just got your food." Boone pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and extracted a business card, he suddenly didn't care that they'd assured them that they weren't intruding; he just needed to get out into the fresh air. "We've got a chalet rented not too far from here, why don't we give you directions," he held out the card. "And here's my cell in case you get lost. Come by for coffee after your dinner."
They agreed, and on the way out of the restaurant, they both noted that Andrew glanced back at Amy a couple of times.
One the walk back, they stopped at a liquor store and a market. Boone wanted coffee and tea for that evening as well as breakfast supplies for the morning. There was no way he was going to let his family eat some greasy super-sized restaurant breakfast and they certainly weren't hitting the slopes on an empty stomach.
Back home they settled in the living room. Boone built a fire, one of the many skills he'd learned on the island that had proven to be useful in real life, and Andrew popped a video game in the console. Boone surprised him when he declined the second controller, instead sitting beside Shannon on the couch, then surprising her by switching positions, lying down with his head in her lap. He took a couple of deep breaths, then closed his eyes, falling quickly into a light sleep.
She stroked his hair gently, though he'd hidden the worst of what he'd experienced after Amy's touch, she knew it had shaken him deeply, and taken more than a bit of wind out of his sails.
She idly watched Andrew playing an R.P.G. and sent calming thoughts to the slumbering Boone. She figured the coming conversation was going to take even more out of him.
When the knock came at the door Shannon sent Andrew to answer it. "I need to wake him up," she explained needlessly, wishing that his cell had rung and they'd called to beg off.
Andrew answered the door, admitting their expected visitors, and showed them where to hang their coats.
When Andrew led the way back into the living room his parents were sitting on the couch kissing. "Oh, I'm sorry," Anne apologized flustered.
As they pulled slowly apart, Andrew shrugged, "Don't sweat it, they do it all the time." He rolled his eyes at Amy, who giggled in response.
Boone stood smiling, "He's right, we do." He snorted a little laugh at just how true that was, then went to get the coffee and tea he'd started when they first got home, coming back in after a few minutes with a tray, including water for the kids.
Everyone had found a place to sit, Andrew a bit too close to Amy on the love seat for Boone's liking though. He offered brandy along with the hot drink, and to Shannon's surprise poured himself one as well. He must have been even more shaken than she'd imagined by his experience earlier, he so rarely drank hard liquor.
They started off with some small talk, what they did for a living, where they were from, which was New Jersey in the case of the Cooper's. Boone breathed a sign of relief at the fact that they were all the way on the other side of the continent, before hearing that they were relocating to Los Angeles in two months. Fan-fucking-tastic Boone thought, glancing again at Andrew and Amy. Okay, he was just getting way too obsessive about this; they were just kids for Christ's sake. Even though he'd loved Shannon since he was ten, those particular kinds of thoughts, the ones he was imagining in his head, hadn't evolved till he was quite a few years older.
"So, how does it happen that a whole family of people with ESP comes about?" Tim finally got to the meat of the matter.
"We weren't born with it, at least I don't think that we were, well…maybe we were, but we didn't know it." Boone started fumbling with the details; he'd been hoping, completely futilely, he realized, that they'd just not pursue the subject.
Shannon frowned at him, "God you're an idiot, could you possibly be any more confusing?" Now that the subject had been broached, she just wanted it over and done with.
Andrew hid a smile, while Tim and Anne looked at each other a little nervously.
"I'm trying, it's just that we've only ever explained it fully to Tom and Heather, Joan just got the bare bones, and I'm not necessarily sure that we understand it." Boone protested; he still felt extremely uncomfortable telling the story to people they'd only just met that night, regardless of the ability of their daughter. He was starting to get a little annoyed with how Andrew had painted them into a corner.
"Oh, just shut it." Shannon shook her head and rolled her eyes. "I'm sorry, my brother's an idiot." She turned to look at him.
They looked at her startled, "Your brother?" Anne was looking incredulous, and a little bit sick.
"My step-brother, whatever, he's not too bright." She answered absently. Shannon was glaring at him, and he was giving it right back to her.
"Aaand now I'm not too bright? You bi…" Boone started.
"Okay, guys, this isn't going well, stop!" Andrew broke in, acting as mediator, a role he found it necessary to adopt all too often.
They relaxed back into the cushions, a bit embarrassed. "Sorry, force of habit, we've fought with each other for over twenty years, it just comes naturally." Shannon apologized.
"Not usually in front of strangers though, right dear?" Boone still held on to a slim thread of anger.
"Drop it, honey," she cautioned.
He took a swig of his brandy, and turned bright red as the booze burned down his throat. Shannon just laughed at him.
"You want me to try?" she asked, he just nodded, trying not to cough, tears in his eyes, his face a truly lovely shade of crimson, she thought.
"Boone's my brother, my step-brother actually. We've known each other since I was eight and he was ten." She proceeded to give them a brief overview of the events that directly lead up to their discovery of their ability, purposely leaving out anything not pertinent. There was a lot that wasn't anybody's business but theirs, and certainly not the concern of almost complete strangers. The Cooper's didn't remember the plane crash at all, which wasn't surprising considering it had been over ten years prior.
"We'd been there maybe five months when I was looking for something in our cave. When I couldn't find it, I was convinced that he'd moved it purposely, just to piss me off. I was cursing him in my head when he turned to me and said 'Nice language,' I knew very well that I hadn't said anything out loud, but he kept insisting that I had. I mean it wasn't like I wouldn't have said it out loud, but I knew damn well that I didn't. Our argument escalated to such a degree that Michael had to come and tell us to tone it down." That was a common occurrence, but she wasn't going to tell them that. "After Michael left, I was sure that I heard him start cursing me, that's when I rounded on him."
"I thought she was going to take my head off." Boone laughed. "It's not really a good idea to incite a woman when she's threatening you with your own walking stick and is five months pregnant, they're kind of grouchy at that point." Shannon punched him, playfully, in the arm. "But then I knew I hadn't actually spoken, so I started wondering about how she'd protested so vehemently earlier."
"After we calmed down, we started experimenting, then we went to Jack, we were sure we were going crazy." Shannon paused to take a mouthful of coffee.
Anne and Tim were convinced at this point that, ESP not withstanding, they were quite possibly the strangest couple they'd ever come across, the mix of hostility and love, the odd nature of their relationship, the traumatic events in their past, truly unsettling.
"He had no idea exactly what trigged it just when it did, but it was just like someone flipped a switch. We went from totally unaware, to living in each others heads to the point of insanity until we learned how to control it." Shannon looked at him, lost in her memories for a second.
"Jack gave me a book, and as I read it, Shan recited the words out loud. It scared the shit out of both of us." Boone recalled.
Shannon continued. "I was about six months in, when we started being aware of Andrew too. It wasn't like he had any real thoughts; it was more just a realization that there was another intelligence sharing our minds with us." She glanced at the boy.
They wrapped up the rest of the story pretty quickly after that, there really wasn't much more to say anyway, and it wasn't like they could actually explain how the island had managed to affect them the way it had. They conveyed that the two of them could only read each other, Andrew, and most of the other survivors to varying degrees, but that Andrew could read anyone, having gotten the ability from both parents, as well as having spent his entire gestation period being moulded by the island's influence.
They talked a while longer, but when the Cooper's started to press them for explanations they didn't have or didn't want to offer, they started to get a little uncomfortable. Andrew, sensing their disquiet, came to their rescue by announcing that he was ready for bed.
As they showed them out, Anne apologized if they'd made them ill at ease. In response Boone just said that they figured that the subject was pretty much closed now, and that, just as they wouldn't reveal their knowledge about Amy, they hoped the consideration would be reciprocated.
Shannon closed the door and leaned back against it, "Okay, is it just me, or was that really, really weird?"
"I imagine they're probably saying the same thing. God we seemed crazy, and Andrew Carlyle, so help me," he turned to his son, "if you ever put us in a situation like that again, I swear I'll lock you in your room for the rest of your life." Boone warned. He opened his mouth to make an excuse. "Shht, I've had enough of you for today, go to bed, now."
The boy hung his head and headed up the stairs.
"Christ, I need a drink." Shannon sighed.
"Good, idea." He agreed.
They sat in silence, sipping their brandies, mulling over the events of the evening, before heading upstairs to bed.
He was already naked and in bed when she slipped in beside him, he'd flipped the switch on the gas fireplace and set the thermostat on it, so that when she turned out the light the comforting flicker of its' flames filled the room.
'Love me?' Shannon phrased it purposefully as a double entendre.
'If you insist, I will,' Boone slid on top of her, immediately grasping the duplicitous intention behind her question, just as she'd meant. 'Still think I'm an idiot?'
'Only if you don't start doing something pretty quickly,' she responded, playfully.
He moved against her, teasingly, kissing her mouth; then moving down her neck, his hand caressing, tickling, arousing. When she was ready, he flipped them over pulling her onto him, and pushed her back, so that she was straddling him. He sat and scooted over to the side of the bed. As he stood she slid her arms over his shoulders, locking her ankles behind his back, not having any idea what he had in mind, but more than willing to go with it.
He headed for the balcony door, pulling a pillow off a chair as he passed.
"You're fucking kidding me, right?" She asked out loud, pulling her head back to look into his eyes.
"No, I want you, outside." He supported her with one arm as he reached for the door handle.
"It's frickin' freezing out there," she pointed out.
"We'll be quick then." He put the cushion on the flat board that topped the wooden railing, he'd check it out earlier, assuring himself that it came to just below his hips, and sat her on it. 'Hold on, I don't want to lose you over the edge.'
'Thanks for the heads up, 'cause I wouldn't have been able to figure it out for myself,' she was already starting to shiver.
What he did next made her forget all about the cold.