Fic: I Need You
Author:
andibeth82Rating: G
Fandom: LOST
Characters: James/Juliet
Spoilers: Slight spoilers for season 5/The Little Prince
Word Count: 806
Note: Early Dharmaville. Non-weeping fic for propernice! I'm not sure what it says about me that I'm basically gifting you with a fic about drugs, but...hey! Let's roll with it, okay? Okay.
She’s sitting in the middle of the living room when she hears the door open, and her first thought is that she’s going to get in trouble. But before she can get her mind to process the fact that she should hide herself, or that maybe she should hide the joint she’s holding in her right hand, she sees boots in the foyer and hears his voice above her head.
“Juliet Burke.”
She looks up, squinting. “I….wha?”
For a moment, James doesn’t respond. Juliet wonders if he really is angry, but when she sneaks another look at his face she notes that he looks more amused than upset. She wonders why. Has he really never seen her get high before? She considers this for a moment before realizing the answer is probably no.
“Are you high?” James asks the question quietly and calmly, walking over and sitting next to her on the couch. She stares at him and wordlessly holds out the joint in response. He sighs as he takes it from her.
“I’m takin’ that as a yes. Okay. Dare I ask where you got this?”
Juliet feels a smile pull onto her face and realizes being high around him might be a problem at some point in the future. Even though part of her knows she’ll probably forget, she mentally makes a note to tell him how she really feels before she ends up blurting it out one day in a drug-induced haze.
“Amy…she gave it to me.”
“Yeah? That so?”
He doesn’t believe her. She knows that because the woman has never even been late to a dinner party, much less ingested a drug, but she swore that she wouldn’t rat out Miles. Not when he had made her promise. And Juliet wasn’t one to break promises.
She’s climbed into his lap now, not really caring about any supposed boundaries that she might have been hesitant to break if she had been sober, although she can tell he doesn’t mind. Sitting with her head in his lap and her knees against the back of the couch, she lets one of his fingers trail through the messy waves of her hair. She speaks before she can fully map out her thoughts.
“Why did you tell me about Kate that night?”
James looks up, almost surprised. “I…what night?”
“The night…after the storm. Time travel. The canoe,” she says thickly, finding his palm and tracing shapes onto the skin. She watches carefully as his face hardens before relaxing into something that mirrors slight pain. He sighs.
“I…I don’t know. Just trusted you, I guess. Wanted you to know.”
“But you didn’t tell Locke,” she presses, turning over in his lap. Part of her knows that she should really let it go, but she’s got him talking now and doesn’t want to stop the conversation.
“I didn’t tell anyone.” The tone of his response is sharp and it causes her to startle slightly. After a beat that seems too long, his hand finds hers and it occurs to her in that moment that she really doesn’t know what made him open up to her that night. At the time, she hadn’t given it much thought because she never thought he would look at her, much less want her.
“Look, it don’t matter. I told you what I told you that night because I had to. I needed you.”
I needed you. Through her mellowed haze, she realizes it’s the first time he’s actually admitted the words out loud. They had danced around the subject of “I love you” with a lot of “I got your back” comments for months because it seemed to safely imply the same thing without inferring commitment, but this is the first time he’s actually hinted that he needs her as someone more than just a companion.
“I needed you too.”
Shit. What had she told herself about blurting out feelings? Juliet doesn’t know whether or not she’ll regret all of this tomorrow, but she tries not to think about it because right now, things feel pretty good and she can almost forget that she ever cared about him wanting someone else. As she burrows deeper into his body, he leans down and gently lets his lips fall against her cheek. She smiles as the small hints of stubble brush her skin, making her stomach jump in a familiar way.
“Hey, Blondie?” His voice is soft, and she has to strain to hear it above the outside noises that filter through the open living room windows.
“Hmmm?”
“Next time, don’t go off and get high without me.”
The smile around his eyes is the last thing she sees before she nods off, and she can’t help but think that the image is enough to make her happy for the rest of her life.