Title: In Admiration - Part 11

Fandom: Lost

Characters: Jack Shephard, Boone Carlyle

Prompt: #55 If

Author's Notes: Written for the LiveJournal community slash100 (underscore between "slash" and "100" – for some reason FFN deletes it)

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Getting the dream out of his head, Jack realized, was easier said than done. The dreams seemed to be continuing every time he closed his eyes, always starting back at the beginning, but never becoming too heavy, which Jack felt was actually worse than having an all-out wet dream. The ones he was having were ending before things got too interesting, which left Jack with a craving that wasn't being satisfied.

Jack understood stress, but this was reaching an entirely new level. The other survivors weren't helping much, either. This one particularly, Sullivan, kept coming to him for every little nuance. Jack was starting to wonder if Sullivan was on anxiety medications that had just run out.

He went over to a pool of water, splashing some on his face. Jack saw Locke nearby, absent-mindedly sharpening one of his knives. "Going on a hunt, John?"

The other man nodded, running his thumb over the knife blade before putting it away. "I'm waiting for Ethan; he's volunteered to come back out with me. He's a good tracker." Jack hated talking to Locke. He always felt like it was a battle of wills with the other man, like they were both trying to stare each other down. Currently, though, Locke was looking at Jack like he could see his soul, which Jack found highly unnerving. "What did she show you, Jack?"

"What did who show me?"

"The island, Jack." Jack was at a loss for words. Was Locke completely insane? "Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. The last time the island showed you something, you ended up here." John motioned to the surrounding caves, reminding Jack of when he thought he saw his dead father, went running through the jungle, and would have fallen from the cliff if it weren't for Locke. "You haven't been sleeping well. The island uses dreams as a medium to communicate to those who don't listen, so what did she show you?"

Jack was too dumbfounded by Locke's logic to come up with an answer before Ethan showed up, and they left wordlessly, leaving Jack standing there by himself. John's faith involving the island had reached a whole new level of oddity in Jack's mind. The completely illogical and decidedly frustrated part of his brain that Jack was attributing the dreams too, however, seemed all too eager to accept Locke's words as truth. The rest of Jack knew that was insane, though, and that if any aspect of the dreams happened to be true, it had nothing to do with the island.

He grabbed some empty water bottles, filling them up to bring water to the beach. He needed to figure out a way to talk to Boone without risking the chance of freaking him out. A lot of men didn't respond well to being hit on by other men, and Jack had the other disadvantage of being older than Boone. He figured he could handle rejection, but he didn't want to be seen as a pervert that goes after younger men.

Jack needed to figure something out and figure it out fast because all these ifs and maybes were driving him insane.