Following, Part Twenty-Six [Jack/Juliet] [R/NC-17] [WIP]
“I meant what I said, you know,” Jack shifted awkwardly around Juliet in the narrow space of the bathtub, resting one hand against her arm, “I really don’t mind waiting until you’re-”
He stopped speaking when she turned her head. It would not have been unfair to say that she was scowling at him, her mouth forming a shape that-were she anyone but Juliet-he might have called a pout. He tried hard not to smile at the uncharacteristic expression as he drew his fingers over her shoulder and along the curve of her neck. Her skin was still a little grey despite all the scrubbing she had done, but he hardly noticed it: The soapy water was clinging to her shoulders and thighs, and he only had to look for a second before he was automatically bending to touch his mouth to the place where his fingers had been, lowering his hand to cup her breast.
Juliet sighed almost immediately, leaning back into his chest.
“That part-where I squealed in pain when you tried to take off my shirt?” she murmured without opening her eyes, “That wasn’t in my fantasy.”
“That’s a relief," he exhaled, "I was worried I was going to have to change my whole approach.”
She smiled for the first time since the incident in question, cracking her eyes open slowly.
“I may like handcuffs, Jack, but I’m drawing the line at masochism-for now, anyway. The idea of hurting yourself on purpose is a lot less appealing when you already feel like you’ve been run over by the Orange Bowl parade.”
He looked down at her.
“The Orange Bowl parade?”
“Yeah, it’s just-” she laughed, her gaze going a little distant, “just something one of my patients used to say.”
“On the island?”
“No,” Juliet sighed, her lips still curving upward, “In Miami: She was-she was actually-one of the last deliveries I handled, before-before I came here. Francesca. In the third trimester, she was so pregnant,” she smiled, her eyes glowing with the memory, “When she tried to tell me how sore she was, she’d say, ‘Doctor Burke, I feel like I just got run over by the Orange Bowl parade.’ I told Rachel, and she and I used to laugh about it-”
When her eyes focused again, her cheeks were stained pink, all of her features smoothed out with the memory. He lifted his hand to stroke her wet hair away from her face, wanting to look at her.
“You loved working there-at the hospital,” he said, because he could see that it was true without needing to ask.
“Yeah,” she agreed, blinking up at him, “I mean, I liked doing research: I knew how important the work was, and when I found what I needed to help Rachel-” she pressed her lips together resolutely, “I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. But working with patients was always my favorite part of the job. Being able to help people, back when I still could still help them- It was-it was the greatest feeling in the world.”
Her eyes glazed over as if she was trying hard to remember how it felt.
“Juliet,” he began automatically, “You can still-I mean, you are still helping people. I know it’s not exactly the same as delivering babies, but-” he hesitated, “Charlotte-she, uh, she told me-she was so happy about what you did for Daniel. She wanted me to thank you-”
Juliet looked up at him in disbelief.
“She said that?”
“Yeah.”
She lifted her fingers to touch his cheek.
“Then why do you look so upset about it?”
His heart beat irregularly, his tongue catching on the roof of his mouth.
“Because I-” He bit his lip, unsure whether to continue. “I’m glad you helped Daniel-I mean, I’m glad you were able to get him out." He wrapped his fingers around her arm, clutching her, looking down at the soap suds that were floating on the surface of the water, hiding her injuries. “I just-”
“Jack-” she said softly, and for a moment, it seemed as if she was trying to warn him.
“I know I can’t-I can’t tell you what to do, even if I-” He raised his eyes to follow the faint grey streak on her chin, thinking about his father standing before him in the jungle, talking about control. “I know that it’s just selfish for me to-”
“To what?”
He winced.
“To ask you to stop risking your life to help other people, so you’ll be here-to keep helping me.”
“Jack,” her fingers pulled along his jaw until he had no choice but to look at her.
“Fuck, Juliet,” he sighed, his eyes moving over her, “I can’t- I don’t know how to-” and then the words became hopelessly gummed up in his throat, and he gave up on them, bending to kiss her instead.
He was surprised when she didn’t resist, melting into him, opening her mouth to him freely. Everything in him felt tense, uneasy, his body locked around hers, his muscles tight. But she was soft when he sought her breasts under the water, when his fingers curled convulsively against her thigh. When he moved his hand between her legs, she only gasped against his mouth, leaning back into him easily.
“Are you-” he asked breathlessly, “It won’t hurt you, if I-?”
“No,” she breathed, touching the back of his hand with hers.
“Jack,” she sighed as he found her clit, and the soft sound seemed to fray his nerves, work them painfully out from underneath his skin. Her body-her thighs, radiating heat against his hand, the curve of her back where his cock was pressing against her, the hot slide of her flesh under his fingers-was almost too much. His heart began to throb with a kind of ardor that was like panic in its intensity.
He rubbed himself against her back under the water, hardly aware of what he was doing as he kissed her, pressing one, then two fingers inside her. He stroked her on the outside and the inside at once, moving in circles over her clit until she jerked against him with a sharp cry. It was so unexpected that he swallowed the sound she made before he had enough command over himself to pull away. It took him a long, disbelieving moment to realize that she was already coming against his hand.
“Oh,” she breathed, the color of her lips, her cheeks seeming to deepen as he looked at her. Her breasts rose out of the water as she leaned into him, panting against his throat, and he watched the water run over them rivulets, still throbbing against her. It would be so easy just to let go, to come against her back, and yet he hesitated, the frantic feeling that had possessed him when he’d kissed her ebbing into self-consciousness as soon as she looked up at him.
“I’m sorry,” he offered abruptly, looking back at her.
Juliet laughed, grazed his arm with the tips of her fingers.
“You’re sorry?” she echoed, changing the words so that they sounded teasing and warm, and he flushed.
“Well-no,” he admitted, “not about that.” He thoughts grew serious quickly when he tried remember what he’d meant, where he’d left all of the words when he had given up on them. “I just mean-I’m sorry-for-” But he trailed off, no closer than he had been before.
“Jack, it’s okay,” she pressed his arm in reassurance, “Do you-do you want me to-?” He felt the fingers of her other hand moving against his thigh.
“Yeah,” he nodded at her, taking a deep breath, relieved to relinquish the struggle for the time being. He tried to make room for her, shifting backward, but with her cast leg dangling awkwardly over the edge of the tub, she couldn’t move the way she wanted to, and it was difficult for her to put her hand on him comfortably.
“Maybe we should move this to the bedroom,” she suggested after a moment, “I can’t- In this position-”
He was about to agree with her when she paused, her hand gripping his thigh, her lips suddenly parted in surprise.
“What is it?” he asked, taken aback by the way she had frozen against him, “You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”
“No. I- ” she collected herself, looking up at him, “Do you think you could carry me back to the bedroom? I don’t know if I’m up to the crutches yet.”
“Yeah, of course,” he moved carefully to slide away from her, but she interrupted him, grasping his forearm.
“Jack-wait: Get a condom first, ok?” When he looked at her in surprise, she explained, “I have an idea.”
~~
“Hey,” Juliet whispered, pulling her mouth from his, “What’s the matter?”
She ran her hand down his side in what he thought was meant to be a comforting gesture, but her soft, relaxed touch only served to reveal to them both how tense he still was. When his eyes flicked up toward hers, the flushed, embarrassed look on her face surprised him.
“Am I-am I pushing too hard, with the-uh-” she asked uncertainly, looking down at their bodies, “I mean, did you-do you really want to wait-?”
He reached out to cup her face in his hand, trying to force himself to relax.
“God, no, Juliet,” he exhaled, “I don’t know what you have planned, but if we can really do this without hurting you, I-”
“Then what is it?” She interrupted, already convinced. He felt her fingers moving lightly across the scar over his hip.
“I just-I keep thinking about what you said before.”
“What I said?”
“You know, that nothing is safe on this island.” Even now, the words sent a vaguely sick feeling through him: he’d said them quietly, but they stretched through the room anyway like some kind of incantation. For just a moment when he looked out the windows, his voice seemed to warp the space outside, to change its dimensions. “I-Is that how you always think of this place? Like any minute, we’re just going to-”
“It’s not how I think, Jack,” she said softly, seeming even more resigned than she had been before, “That’s the way this place is.” After a few seconds, she sighed, shaking her head, “I mean, of course I forget sometimes: you have to, or you’d go crazy, but-” Then she trailed off suddenly, her hand pausing against his side. “Why don’t you ever worry about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Before Ben locked us in the Temple,” she explained, looking genuinely puzzled, “you never-you never seemed worried about what was going to happen. I mean, even when we had you in the Hydra-you cared more about what was in your file-about what had already happened to you-than what was going to.”
He felt a little bewildered by the sudden leap in time, back to the moment when “we” still meant the Others, and he answered her instinctively.
“It was different then.”
“Different then?” she asked confusedly, “How?”
He swallowed, trying to gather his thoughts, pull them into some kind of order.
“When I came to the island, my father was dead. I didn’t-I didn’t even have his body to bury. And Sarah-she was already gone for good a long time before that,” he said slowly, picturing it before him, remembering the way he’d felt on the plane, just before it had crashed, holding Rose’s hand, his own steady, even when everything else was shaking. He took a deep breath, just as he had then. “I wasn’t worried about what was going to happen to me then because I didn’t have anything else to lose.”
He felt the room come back to him suddenly, and he looked at Juliet as if he’d just remembered her presence next to him. He stroked her cheek, ran his fingers up the side of her face, almost unsure, before he touched her, whether she was real or not.
“Now, I-It’s different now: I-I have something,” he said, feeling a flush begin to creep over his cheeks, “I mean-"
As he trailed off, her eyes caught his: they were shot through with a kindness, a sympathy that seemed to run deep into her, unfathomable, impossible for him to deserve. He bent to kiss her, the pull of her still stronger than everything else, even the fear. He slid his mouth against hers wetly, almost clingingly, and when Juliet made a soft sound in her throat, he brought her as close against him as he could without hurting her.
“You know what you said about going crazy?” he half-whispered against her mouth when he broke away. “Well, I think I am, Juliet. Over the past couple of days, I-I feel like I’m turning into John Locke, seeing things that couldn’t possibly be real.”
He was surprised by the sudden, reassuring squeeze she gave him.
“You’re not crazy,” she insisted seriously, “Believe me: I know the island can make you feel that way. But you have to remember that it’s not you.”
“When you catch me banging on the doors of one of the Dharma stations tomorrow, will you do me a favor and remind me of that?”
She smiled at him again.
“It sounds to me like you’re just a little stressed," she stroked his side soothingly, "Getting locked in a cage will do that to you. Or so I’ve been told.”
It really, really, shouldn’t have been funny, but he felt himself grinning back at her anyway. Then she slid her arms around him, and his expression sobered as she brushed her cheek and then her lips against the side of his face.
“I think you just need to get your mind off the island for a while,” her voice went soft and warm, reminding him unexpectedly of the way she used to talk to him in the Hydra, that indecipherable mixture that was half schoolteacher, half phone sex operator. He knew she was teasing him: he could feel her smirking against his throat, but that didn’t stop the sound from travelling through him like a hot wire anyway.
“You think you can-um, you think you can help me with that?”
“Yeah Jack,” she whispered gently against his throat, “I think I can.”
~~
She was touching him, stroking him with such a perfect amount of pressure that he was having trouble returning her kiss properly. She was only using one hand, and it took him a long moment to realize that that was because she was opening his fingers with the other, sliding her palm against his.
Almost before he knew what was happening, she had slipped the packet that he was holding out of his hand.
“Juliet-” he got out throatily, catching at her arm, “Hold-hold on for a second.”
She looked at him from across the pillow, her eyes pretty, soft, and he had trouble remembering what he’d wanted to say.
“Are you-” he breathed, trying to collect himself, “Do you need me to-”
She smiled and shook her head, curling her fingers around his.
She brought them between her legs, moving them so that they parted her, rubbed just slightly over her core. He bit his lip, groaning at the sudden slickness that covered his fingertips.
“Jack,” she said coaxingly, somehow managing to sound matter-of-fact at the same time, “Do you want to have sex now?”
“Yeah,” he agreed in a half-hypnotized way, only realizing afterward that he still didn’t know exactly what it was that he was agreeing to.
The sound of her tearing through the packet brought him out of his haze. A second later, he felt her hands on him, rolling the condom down methodically but gently. Then, without waiting for him to react, she eased herself onto her side, turning so that her back was facing him. When she stopped moving, he rolled the same way, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
“Like this?” he reached out curiously to draw his hand along her spine.
“Yeah,” she returned over her shoulder, “If it’s ok-”
“Of course-it’s just-I’ve never-uh-”
“Neither have I.”
“Then why-”
“Before I came to the island, I had to advise a lot of very pregnant women about how to have sex. This position-it doesn’t put pressure on the abdominal-” She snorted suddenly in the middle of the explanation. “Jack,” she gasped, “what the hell am I doing?”
“Huh?”
“Lying here, giving you medical explanations when we could be- God, you’re rubbing off on me.” She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the residue of laughter. “Come on,” she bent forward a little, drawing up her knees.
There was something about the way she did it so quickly, opening herself to him almost casually, that went straight to his groin: he could actually feel his eyes dilate, his mouth going dry as his cock hardened against the soft cheek of her ass.
He pressed his body against hers instinctively, spooning her, trying to find the right position, and she giggled like a teenager, sliding against him playfully as his legs tangled with hers. He had trouble deciding whether her intention was to help him or to tease, but she felt so good this way, rubbing up against him, that he no longer cared. He was still trying to concentrate, to be careful, but now he could feel her joy seeping into him, spreading through him until he quivered with the desire to be closer, his open palms trembling against her thighs.
When he finally succeeded in fitting his body against hers, his length slipping between her plump, swollen lips, she stopped moving and gasped. He took a deep breath, his teeth clicking together, his heart pounding against her back.
“Are you-are you okay?” he asked hoarsely, “Can I-?”
“Yeah, Jack. Yeah,” she breathed, and then he didn’t think he could have waited any longer even if he’d wanted to. He moved his hand to guide himself into her, and they both fell silent as the tip of him nudged her opening. Then he rocked his hips forward.
Juliet moaned. Somehow, her hand had found his, and when he penetrated her, she gripped it hard, lacing her fingers through his.
He swallowed convulsively, almost glad for the condom: the hot, silky feel of her around him was dizzying, all the blood in his body seeming to have abandoned his brain at once in pursuit of that one throbbing, aching point between them. He pressed his face into her neck, already sweating against her back, already panting.
“Juliet,” he murmured, bringing her tightly against him. He was pulsing inside her in a way that made it difficult for him to focus on anything else, "You-alright?"
She nodded, her hair shaking against her shoulder.
“Don’t-don’t move for a second, okay?”
She turned her head slightly, covering his forearms with hers.
“I hate to break it to you, Jack, but I don’t really have anywhere to go,” she said a little breathlessly, looking down at them where his arms were wrapped around her, and then paused. “Are you-” she began hesitatingly, as if she was confused by her own question, “Are you ok?”
He laughed, rubbing his cheek against her shoulder.
“Yeah." Her hands were sliding soothingly up and down his arms. “It’s just-It’s been a really long time, and you-God, Juliet, you feel so-” He twitched inside her, and they both gasped.
“Distracting?” she suggested shakily.
“Uh, yeah,” he agreed, only half-aware of what he was saying as his muscles shifted, bunched against her back: The urge to move grew slowly but surely, like an itch that was becoming impossible to ignore. “Juliet,” he pushed out, his hands tightening against her thighs, “I need-I mean, I want to-”
“Stop talking?” she asked, her voice rising so that he wasn’t sure whether she was trying to finish his sentence or to tell him what to do. Slowly, he began to withdraw. Her hips jolted, her pussy contracted around him, and then he drove back into her, a little deeper than before. She sighed and he groaned as he filled her again, buried himself in her softness. He knew even as he began to thrust into her that this wasn’t going to last very long, so he turned his hands over in hers and squeezed them.
“Juliet-”
“What?” she whimpered, her voice wavering a little as he pushed in again.
“I want you to-I want to make you come,” he got out, a flush of pleasure drowning his embarrassment almost as quickly as it arose. He slid his fingers against hers. “Can you-can you show me-”
“Jack,” she turned her face toward his, looking up at him through her lashes, her cheeks glowing, “You already know: You already-”
“Show me-” he insisted, biting his lip, “Should I-” He pulled one of his hands from hers and moved it to her swollen clit, stroking her in gentle circles as he bucked into her. Juliet tensed and tried to arch her body, squeezing her eyes shut. “Like this?” he asked, “Or do you-”
“No, that’s-” she cut him off with a gasp, “just-a little harder, and-” She gripped his other hand and brought it to her breast. The position was awkward until he adjusted his arm, splaying his fingers over her. He began to massage her automatically. It was clumsy, because he was trying to focus on all the other things that he was doing, but she didn’t seem to mind-she squirmed against him, her tight nipple jutting into his palm.
“Oh,” she twisted in his arms, and he kept his eyes open, fascinated by the sight of her, of his hands on her as his body worked into hers, because this was Juliet, and they were really doing this, and she was-God, she was coming around him. It took him by surprise. He could feel her walls begin to flutter, and then she was pulsing all over, milking him. She cried out and he jerked into her mindlessly, lost in a thick haze of pleasure.
It took almost no time for her to pull him over the edge. His vision went white as he clutched her, muffling his groan against her shoulder and squeezing his eyes shut.
When he opened his eyes again, he felt disoriented, exhausted. He was literally stuck to her with sweat, sucking in air as if his lungs had collapsed. Juliet was limp against him, flushed and trembling. He peeled his hand away from her breast to rest it against her belly, and all at once the thick, dark bruises along her ribs caught his eye. They were dim in the low light of Juliet’s bedroom, slowly beginning to yellow along the edges.
On a sudden impulse, he hugged her to him. Juliet made a soft sound of surprise, turning her head toward him, and he could feel something crack and melt in his chest, and then suddenly he couldn’t breathe at all.
“Jack?”
“I love you,” he whispered against her ear.
~~
part 27
He stopped speaking when she turned her head. It would not have been unfair to say that she was scowling at him, her mouth forming a shape that-were she anyone but Juliet-he might have called a pout. He tried hard not to smile at the uncharacteristic expression as he drew his fingers over her shoulder and along the curve of her neck. Her skin was still a little grey despite all the scrubbing she had done, but he hardly noticed it: The soapy water was clinging to her shoulders and thighs, and he only had to look for a second before he was automatically bending to touch his mouth to the place where his fingers had been, lowering his hand to cup her breast.
Juliet sighed almost immediately, leaning back into his chest.
“That part-where I squealed in pain when you tried to take off my shirt?” she murmured without opening her eyes, “That wasn’t in my fantasy.”
“That’s a relief," he exhaled, "I was worried I was going to have to change my whole approach.”
She smiled for the first time since the incident in question, cracking her eyes open slowly.
“I may like handcuffs, Jack, but I’m drawing the line at masochism-for now, anyway. The idea of hurting yourself on purpose is a lot less appealing when you already feel like you’ve been run over by the Orange Bowl parade.”
He looked down at her.
“The Orange Bowl parade?”
“Yeah, it’s just-” she laughed, her gaze going a little distant, “just something one of my patients used to say.”
“On the island?”
“No,” Juliet sighed, her lips still curving upward, “In Miami: She was-she was actually-one of the last deliveries I handled, before-before I came here. Francesca. In the third trimester, she was so pregnant,” she smiled, her eyes glowing with the memory, “When she tried to tell me how sore she was, she’d say, ‘Doctor Burke, I feel like I just got run over by the Orange Bowl parade.’ I told Rachel, and she and I used to laugh about it-”
When her eyes focused again, her cheeks were stained pink, all of her features smoothed out with the memory. He lifted his hand to stroke her wet hair away from her face, wanting to look at her.
“You loved working there-at the hospital,” he said, because he could see that it was true without needing to ask.
“Yeah,” she agreed, blinking up at him, “I mean, I liked doing research: I knew how important the work was, and when I found what I needed to help Rachel-” she pressed her lips together resolutely, “I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. But working with patients was always my favorite part of the job. Being able to help people, back when I still could still help them- It was-it was the greatest feeling in the world.”
Her eyes glazed over as if she was trying hard to remember how it felt.
“Juliet,” he began automatically, “You can still-I mean, you are still helping people. I know it’s not exactly the same as delivering babies, but-” he hesitated, “Charlotte-she, uh, she told me-she was so happy about what you did for Daniel. She wanted me to thank you-”
Juliet looked up at him in disbelief.
“She said that?”
“Yeah.”
She lifted her fingers to touch his cheek.
“Then why do you look so upset about it?”
His heart beat irregularly, his tongue catching on the roof of his mouth.
“Because I-” He bit his lip, unsure whether to continue. “I’m glad you helped Daniel-I mean, I’m glad you were able to get him out." He wrapped his fingers around her arm, clutching her, looking down at the soap suds that were floating on the surface of the water, hiding her injuries. “I just-”
“Jack-” she said softly, and for a moment, it seemed as if she was trying to warn him.
“I know I can’t-I can’t tell you what to do, even if I-” He raised his eyes to follow the faint grey streak on her chin, thinking about his father standing before him in the jungle, talking about control. “I know that it’s just selfish for me to-”
“To what?”
He winced.
“To ask you to stop risking your life to help other people, so you’ll be here-to keep helping me.”
“Jack,” her fingers pulled along his jaw until he had no choice but to look at her.
“Fuck, Juliet,” he sighed, his eyes moving over her, “I can’t- I don’t know how to-” and then the words became hopelessly gummed up in his throat, and he gave up on them, bending to kiss her instead.
He was surprised when she didn’t resist, melting into him, opening her mouth to him freely. Everything in him felt tense, uneasy, his body locked around hers, his muscles tight. But she was soft when he sought her breasts under the water, when his fingers curled convulsively against her thigh. When he moved his hand between her legs, she only gasped against his mouth, leaning back into him easily.
“Are you-” he asked breathlessly, “It won’t hurt you, if I-?”
“No,” she breathed, touching the back of his hand with hers.
“Jack,” she sighed as he found her clit, and the soft sound seemed to fray his nerves, work them painfully out from underneath his skin. Her body-her thighs, radiating heat against his hand, the curve of her back where his cock was pressing against her, the hot slide of her flesh under his fingers-was almost too much. His heart began to throb with a kind of ardor that was like panic in its intensity.
He rubbed himself against her back under the water, hardly aware of what he was doing as he kissed her, pressing one, then two fingers inside her. He stroked her on the outside and the inside at once, moving in circles over her clit until she jerked against him with a sharp cry. It was so unexpected that he swallowed the sound she made before he had enough command over himself to pull away. It took him a long, disbelieving moment to realize that she was already coming against his hand.
“Oh,” she breathed, the color of her lips, her cheeks seeming to deepen as he looked at her. Her breasts rose out of the water as she leaned into him, panting against his throat, and he watched the water run over them rivulets, still throbbing against her. It would be so easy just to let go, to come against her back, and yet he hesitated, the frantic feeling that had possessed him when he’d kissed her ebbing into self-consciousness as soon as she looked up at him.
“I’m sorry,” he offered abruptly, looking back at her.
Juliet laughed, grazed his arm with the tips of her fingers.
“You’re sorry?” she echoed, changing the words so that they sounded teasing and warm, and he flushed.
“Well-no,” he admitted, “not about that.” He thoughts grew serious quickly when he tried remember what he’d meant, where he’d left all of the words when he had given up on them. “I just mean-I’m sorry-for-” But he trailed off, no closer than he had been before.
“Jack, it’s okay,” she pressed his arm in reassurance, “Do you-do you want me to-?” He felt the fingers of her other hand moving against his thigh.
“Yeah,” he nodded at her, taking a deep breath, relieved to relinquish the struggle for the time being. He tried to make room for her, shifting backward, but with her cast leg dangling awkwardly over the edge of the tub, she couldn’t move the way she wanted to, and it was difficult for her to put her hand on him comfortably.
“Maybe we should move this to the bedroom,” she suggested after a moment, “I can’t- In this position-”
He was about to agree with her when she paused, her hand gripping his thigh, her lips suddenly parted in surprise.
“What is it?” he asked, taken aback by the way she had frozen against him, “You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”
“No. I- ” she collected herself, looking up at him, “Do you think you could carry me back to the bedroom? I don’t know if I’m up to the crutches yet.”
“Yeah, of course,” he moved carefully to slide away from her, but she interrupted him, grasping his forearm.
“Jack-wait: Get a condom first, ok?” When he looked at her in surprise, she explained, “I have an idea.”
~~
“Hey,” Juliet whispered, pulling her mouth from his, “What’s the matter?”
She ran her hand down his side in what he thought was meant to be a comforting gesture, but her soft, relaxed touch only served to reveal to them both how tense he still was. When his eyes flicked up toward hers, the flushed, embarrassed look on her face surprised him.
“Am I-am I pushing too hard, with the-uh-” she asked uncertainly, looking down at their bodies, “I mean, did you-do you really want to wait-?”
He reached out to cup her face in his hand, trying to force himself to relax.
“God, no, Juliet,” he exhaled, “I don’t know what you have planned, but if we can really do this without hurting you, I-”
“Then what is it?” She interrupted, already convinced. He felt her fingers moving lightly across the scar over his hip.
“I just-I keep thinking about what you said before.”
“What I said?”
“You know, that nothing is safe on this island.” Even now, the words sent a vaguely sick feeling through him: he’d said them quietly, but they stretched through the room anyway like some kind of incantation. For just a moment when he looked out the windows, his voice seemed to warp the space outside, to change its dimensions. “I-Is that how you always think of this place? Like any minute, we’re just going to-”
“It’s not how I think, Jack,” she said softly, seeming even more resigned than she had been before, “That’s the way this place is.” After a few seconds, she sighed, shaking her head, “I mean, of course I forget sometimes: you have to, or you’d go crazy, but-” Then she trailed off suddenly, her hand pausing against his side. “Why don’t you ever worry about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Before Ben locked us in the Temple,” she explained, looking genuinely puzzled, “you never-you never seemed worried about what was going to happen. I mean, even when we had you in the Hydra-you cared more about what was in your file-about what had already happened to you-than what was going to.”
He felt a little bewildered by the sudden leap in time, back to the moment when “we” still meant the Others, and he answered her instinctively.
“It was different then.”
“Different then?” she asked confusedly, “How?”
He swallowed, trying to gather his thoughts, pull them into some kind of order.
“When I came to the island, my father was dead. I didn’t-I didn’t even have his body to bury. And Sarah-she was already gone for good a long time before that,” he said slowly, picturing it before him, remembering the way he’d felt on the plane, just before it had crashed, holding Rose’s hand, his own steady, even when everything else was shaking. He took a deep breath, just as he had then. “I wasn’t worried about what was going to happen to me then because I didn’t have anything else to lose.”
He felt the room come back to him suddenly, and he looked at Juliet as if he’d just remembered her presence next to him. He stroked her cheek, ran his fingers up the side of her face, almost unsure, before he touched her, whether she was real or not.
“Now, I-It’s different now: I-I have something,” he said, feeling a flush begin to creep over his cheeks, “I mean-"
As he trailed off, her eyes caught his: they were shot through with a kindness, a sympathy that seemed to run deep into her, unfathomable, impossible for him to deserve. He bent to kiss her, the pull of her still stronger than everything else, even the fear. He slid his mouth against hers wetly, almost clingingly, and when Juliet made a soft sound in her throat, he brought her as close against him as he could without hurting her.
“You know what you said about going crazy?” he half-whispered against her mouth when he broke away. “Well, I think I am, Juliet. Over the past couple of days, I-I feel like I’m turning into John Locke, seeing things that couldn’t possibly be real.”
He was surprised by the sudden, reassuring squeeze she gave him.
“You’re not crazy,” she insisted seriously, “Believe me: I know the island can make you feel that way. But you have to remember that it’s not you.”
“When you catch me banging on the doors of one of the Dharma stations tomorrow, will you do me a favor and remind me of that?”
She smiled at him again.
“It sounds to me like you’re just a little stressed," she stroked his side soothingly, "Getting locked in a cage will do that to you. Or so I’ve been told.”
It really, really, shouldn’t have been funny, but he felt himself grinning back at her anyway. Then she slid her arms around him, and his expression sobered as she brushed her cheek and then her lips against the side of his face.
“I think you just need to get your mind off the island for a while,” her voice went soft and warm, reminding him unexpectedly of the way she used to talk to him in the Hydra, that indecipherable mixture that was half schoolteacher, half phone sex operator. He knew she was teasing him: he could feel her smirking against his throat, but that didn’t stop the sound from travelling through him like a hot wire anyway.
“You think you can-um, you think you can help me with that?”
“Yeah Jack,” she whispered gently against his throat, “I think I can.”
~~
She was touching him, stroking him with such a perfect amount of pressure that he was having trouble returning her kiss properly. She was only using one hand, and it took him a long moment to realize that that was because she was opening his fingers with the other, sliding her palm against his.
Almost before he knew what was happening, she had slipped the packet that he was holding out of his hand.
“Juliet-” he got out throatily, catching at her arm, “Hold-hold on for a second.”
She looked at him from across the pillow, her eyes pretty, soft, and he had trouble remembering what he’d wanted to say.
“Are you-” he breathed, trying to collect himself, “Do you need me to-”
She smiled and shook her head, curling her fingers around his.
She brought them between her legs, moving them so that they parted her, rubbed just slightly over her core. He bit his lip, groaning at the sudden slickness that covered his fingertips.
“Jack,” she said coaxingly, somehow managing to sound matter-of-fact at the same time, “Do you want to have sex now?”
“Yeah,” he agreed in a half-hypnotized way, only realizing afterward that he still didn’t know exactly what it was that he was agreeing to.
The sound of her tearing through the packet brought him out of his haze. A second later, he felt her hands on him, rolling the condom down methodically but gently. Then, without waiting for him to react, she eased herself onto her side, turning so that her back was facing him. When she stopped moving, he rolled the same way, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
“Like this?” he reached out curiously to draw his hand along her spine.
“Yeah,” she returned over her shoulder, “If it’s ok-”
“Of course-it’s just-I’ve never-uh-”
“Neither have I.”
“Then why-”
“Before I came to the island, I had to advise a lot of very pregnant women about how to have sex. This position-it doesn’t put pressure on the abdominal-” She snorted suddenly in the middle of the explanation. “Jack,” she gasped, “what the hell am I doing?”
“Huh?”
“Lying here, giving you medical explanations when we could be- God, you’re rubbing off on me.” She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the residue of laughter. “Come on,” she bent forward a little, drawing up her knees.
There was something about the way she did it so quickly, opening herself to him almost casually, that went straight to his groin: he could actually feel his eyes dilate, his mouth going dry as his cock hardened against the soft cheek of her ass.
He pressed his body against hers instinctively, spooning her, trying to find the right position, and she giggled like a teenager, sliding against him playfully as his legs tangled with hers. He had trouble deciding whether her intention was to help him or to tease, but she felt so good this way, rubbing up against him, that he no longer cared. He was still trying to concentrate, to be careful, but now he could feel her joy seeping into him, spreading through him until he quivered with the desire to be closer, his open palms trembling against her thighs.
When he finally succeeded in fitting his body against hers, his length slipping between her plump, swollen lips, she stopped moving and gasped. He took a deep breath, his teeth clicking together, his heart pounding against her back.
“Are you-are you okay?” he asked hoarsely, “Can I-?”
“Yeah, Jack. Yeah,” she breathed, and then he didn’t think he could have waited any longer even if he’d wanted to. He moved his hand to guide himself into her, and they both fell silent as the tip of him nudged her opening. Then he rocked his hips forward.
Juliet moaned. Somehow, her hand had found his, and when he penetrated her, she gripped it hard, lacing her fingers through his.
He swallowed convulsively, almost glad for the condom: the hot, silky feel of her around him was dizzying, all the blood in his body seeming to have abandoned his brain at once in pursuit of that one throbbing, aching point between them. He pressed his face into her neck, already sweating against her back, already panting.
“Juliet,” he murmured, bringing her tightly against him. He was pulsing inside her in a way that made it difficult for him to focus on anything else, "You-alright?"
She nodded, her hair shaking against her shoulder.
“Don’t-don’t move for a second, okay?”
She turned her head slightly, covering his forearms with hers.
“I hate to break it to you, Jack, but I don’t really have anywhere to go,” she said a little breathlessly, looking down at them where his arms were wrapped around her, and then paused. “Are you-” she began hesitatingly, as if she was confused by her own question, “Are you ok?”
He laughed, rubbing his cheek against her shoulder.
“Yeah." Her hands were sliding soothingly up and down his arms. “It’s just-It’s been a really long time, and you-God, Juliet, you feel so-” He twitched inside her, and they both gasped.
“Distracting?” she suggested shakily.
“Uh, yeah,” he agreed, only half-aware of what he was saying as his muscles shifted, bunched against her back: The urge to move grew slowly but surely, like an itch that was becoming impossible to ignore. “Juliet,” he pushed out, his hands tightening against her thighs, “I need-I mean, I want to-”
“Stop talking?” she asked, her voice rising so that he wasn’t sure whether she was trying to finish his sentence or to tell him what to do. Slowly, he began to withdraw. Her hips jolted, her pussy contracted around him, and then he drove back into her, a little deeper than before. She sighed and he groaned as he filled her again, buried himself in her softness. He knew even as he began to thrust into her that this wasn’t going to last very long, so he turned his hands over in hers and squeezed them.
“Juliet-”
“What?” she whimpered, her voice wavering a little as he pushed in again.
“I want you to-I want to make you come,” he got out, a flush of pleasure drowning his embarrassment almost as quickly as it arose. He slid his fingers against hers. “Can you-can you show me-”
“Jack,” she turned her face toward his, looking up at him through her lashes, her cheeks glowing, “You already know: You already-”
“Show me-” he insisted, biting his lip, “Should I-” He pulled one of his hands from hers and moved it to her swollen clit, stroking her in gentle circles as he bucked into her. Juliet tensed and tried to arch her body, squeezing her eyes shut. “Like this?” he asked, “Or do you-”
“No, that’s-” she cut him off with a gasp, “just-a little harder, and-” She gripped his other hand and brought it to her breast. The position was awkward until he adjusted his arm, splaying his fingers over her. He began to massage her automatically. It was clumsy, because he was trying to focus on all the other things that he was doing, but she didn’t seem to mind-she squirmed against him, her tight nipple jutting into his palm.
“Oh,” she twisted in his arms, and he kept his eyes open, fascinated by the sight of her, of his hands on her as his body worked into hers, because this was Juliet, and they were really doing this, and she was-God, she was coming around him. It took him by surprise. He could feel her walls begin to flutter, and then she was pulsing all over, milking him. She cried out and he jerked into her mindlessly, lost in a thick haze of pleasure.
It took almost no time for her to pull him over the edge. His vision went white as he clutched her, muffling his groan against her shoulder and squeezing his eyes shut.
When he opened his eyes again, he felt disoriented, exhausted. He was literally stuck to her with sweat, sucking in air as if his lungs had collapsed. Juliet was limp against him, flushed and trembling. He peeled his hand away from her breast to rest it against her belly, and all at once the thick, dark bruises along her ribs caught his eye. They were dim in the low light of Juliet’s bedroom, slowly beginning to yellow along the edges.
On a sudden impulse, he hugged her to him. Juliet made a soft sound of surprise, turning her head toward him, and he could feel something crack and melt in his chest, and then suddenly he couldn’t breathe at all.
“Jack?”
“I love you,” he whispered against her ear.
~~
part 27