Claire watches them with a childlike curiosity, anxious about getting caught and at the same time fascinated by things she both never has and can’t experience.

She’s watched them fight over Kate for so long she never thought about the idea of them, these two men, fighting over who was the alpha male like a bunch of wild dogs. Sure, the longer they were here the more they seemed to get along but she never saw it going any further than that. Now, now that she knows, it kind of all makes perfect sense.

The night she finds out it’s because she’s the only one still up. She hasn’t been able to sleep, figures a nice moonlight walk on the beach might calm her down and get her mind to stop spinning. She pauses at Sawyer’s tent when she hears a groan, thinking that he must be making noises in his sleep. When she goes to separate the tent flap to look inside she catches a glimpse of Jack’s hand on Sawyer’s cock and somehow manages to jump back and not make a sound.

They don’t notice her anyways. They are far too wrapped up in each other to notice much of anything that’s going on outside of them.

She doesn’t mean to linger but she does. It’s intriguing, watching these two, but not for the same reasons that teenage boys watch porn. It’s not about arousal for her. It’s the idea of it that enthralls her. The idea of them. Two people, who couldn’t be more different and yet somehow so similar, joined together by this situation, loneliness, and now perhaps something else.

If it is something else, she never hears it. No declarations, no spoken feelings, but she’s always felt the unsaid was worth so much more.

No one else ever notices. There are no special smiles or gestures. She’s pretty sure they never tell anyone. But the few glimpses she gets of them every now and then make her acutely aware that, yes, there is something there. Something that isn’t just sexual.

And she knows it’s none of her business, and that what she’s doing is wrong, but she almost can’t help it. It’s like reading a good book where you just have to know how it ends and if the protagonists get together by stories close.

It’s not hurting anyone if no one ever finds out and if she has her way no one ever will.