As the others rested, leaning against a wall, Alan stared at his feet.
“Fuckin' fantastic, Alan!” Jack said, clapping his shoulder. “We killed it out there!”
That particular verb was not what Alan wanted right now.
“Yeah! You made it work!” Sharon said.
Alan would have done his best to ignore the compliment and hide inside his own collar, but since it was Sharon, the real star of the show…
“No, this is on you,” he said.
She blinked. Emotions flashed across her face, and in a moment of sleep-deprived clarity, Alan could read a bit of them. She wasn't used to taking credit. Taking credit was dangerous. It could lead to people seeing her as some kind of attention whore, to being a selfish piece of shit – for exactly what everyone else was doing.
“Y-yeah,” she said.
The briefest sliver of a smile hit the corner of her mouth, and Alan slapped her hand like it had a malaria-ridden mosquito on it.
“You're damn right!” Alan said. He turned to his peers. “Did you see the shit she did? Anyone else would have flubbed it around 24 seconds in, when Steve-” he pointed at the culprit – “fumbled his move.” Steve looked at him, and shrugged.
“All's well that ends well?”
“Yes!” Alan exclaimed. “And who's that on?” He grabbed Sharon's wrist, and lifted her arm into the air. “This fucker right here!”
And with that, the attention was off of him.
Fuck. He just wanted to sleep. The urge was so overpowering… If he'd just close his eyes, if things were just normal, if he could just forget….
A vision of Sawyer flashed in his eyes, and he jolted awake.
No. No sleep until the weekend was over. No matter what happened, no matter what had happened, he'd make it out of here, and deal with it later. Nothing could be so bad that he couldn't deal with it in the aftermath.
Alan-