Fic: Broken Record (1/1)
Title: Broken Record
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jack/Juliet
Word Count: 779
Summary: This is not where she’s supposed to be. For missy_useless, who requested “Jack/Juliet” at my Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza and for the 15pairings Prompt #3 - Stormy. Spoilers through 5.16 - The Incident, Parts 1 & 2; Speculative Spoilers for Season 6.
Prompt Table: Here
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For missy_useless: *whispers conspiratorially* I'm not sure that it's any good, but I actually really liked writing Jack/Juliet. *hides*
Broken Record
It’s the sound of traffic, of brakes that squeal against warm pavement that wakes her from her dreams; something so familiar that reminds her that this is not where she’s supposed to be.
She blinks, and the light from the window stings against her pupils; she breathes, and the arm settled against her, wrapped just below her breasts, heaves along - to every action, its reaction; to every consequence, its cause, and she knows one thing, as the sleep drains from her consciousness - she doesn’t know how she knows it, only that she does.
They’d never crashed.
Who ‘they’ are is a mystery; irrelevant. ‘They’ are shadows in her mind as she curls into the sheets, presses farther into the body at her back, lets those biceps shield her, protect her from what cannot be true.
She remembers heat - not the kind between her naked skin and his, the kind the sears, festers, blisters and screams; and she remembers what a gun feels like against the palm of her hand. She knows that there are places where people still speak Latin, and that there are worlds that time’s forgotten just as much as there are places in this world where time pays too much mind. And somehow, she knows that a young boy died somewhere, on an Island she’d never be able to find, his glasses askew on his bruised and beaten body; she knows this because that boy had never been shot in cold blood for the crimes he’d yet to commit, had never been sacrificed to the will of a power higher than himself, had never grown up missing his mother, looking for a woman like her - because he’d never grown up at all. Somewhere in her heart she knows this, and it twists in her gut like shrapnel drawing blood.
In that same nameless place in the hollow of her chest, she remembers.
She’s on a consult in L.A., the first time she’s wrestled herself from under Edmund’s thumb in months or more; he’s a spinal surgeon whose hair’s grown too long to fit beneath his scrub cap. He’d gotten caught up with charts, was late leaving the hospital. She’d stopped to sit on a bench just outside the main entrance, just to check her voicemail - had ended up sitting there, staring off into oblivion until the sun set, until the tears fell; it had been a year - twelve months to the day - since she’d lost her sister, and she’d never stopped feeling as if there were something, something out there, just beyond her reach that she couldn’t, didn’t do to save her. The blood on her hands had never dried, never washed away.
He passes her out of pity, asks her out for a drink; she suggests they go back to his place - it’s not what she does, not who she is, but there’s something about him that makes her feel safe, makes her feel whole in ways her broken heart was sure were beyond its ken. And she knows what his bare chest looks like before he strips to his boxers; knows how his skin shines before they even work up a sweat. She knows what his tattoo means before she reads what it says.
She gasps when he slides between her thighs, inside her heat, trembles like a blushing bride, like someone she wouldn’t recognize in the mirror; but he shakes, too, like their bodies remember what their minds can’t recall - like their hearts know, where his presses against hers between hard nipples and heaving lungs, what time and space could not erase, nor tear asunder.
Somehow, she knows that she is a stronger woman than this. She knows that he’s a stronger man.
He breathes steadily behind her now, steady in ways nothing has been for a very long time, and her pulse shivers against the tendrils of a cold she’s grown to miss, cast away under the rays of a sun so bright, so sharp - electric, magnetic; drawing her in before setting her ablaze. Her eyes slide shut again, as she tries to match the rush of his blood to the rush of the waves, and she tumbles, falls, lands - dies.
The world explodes behind her eyes as sleep draws her under, and his arms around her waist tighten before she drowns, like he knows, like he sees.
Behind bars, beneath the leaves, under the cover of egyptian cotton that’s never touched a woman’s skin before - nothing is what it seems.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jack/Juliet
Word Count: 779
Summary: This is not where she’s supposed to be. For missy_useless, who requested “Jack/Juliet” at my Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza and for the 15pairings Prompt #3 - Stormy. Spoilers through 5.16 - The Incident, Parts 1 & 2; Speculative Spoilers for Season 6.
Prompt Table: Here
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For missy_useless: *whispers conspiratorially* I'm not sure that it's any good, but I actually really liked writing Jack/Juliet. *hides*
Broken Record
It’s the sound of traffic, of brakes that squeal against warm pavement that wakes her from her dreams; something so familiar that reminds her that this is not where she’s supposed to be.
She blinks, and the light from the window stings against her pupils; she breathes, and the arm settled against her, wrapped just below her breasts, heaves along - to every action, its reaction; to every consequence, its cause, and she knows one thing, as the sleep drains from her consciousness - she doesn’t know how she knows it, only that she does.
They’d never crashed.
Who ‘they’ are is a mystery; irrelevant. ‘They’ are shadows in her mind as she curls into the sheets, presses farther into the body at her back, lets those biceps shield her, protect her from what cannot be true.
She remembers heat - not the kind between her naked skin and his, the kind the sears, festers, blisters and screams; and she remembers what a gun feels like against the palm of her hand. She knows that there are places where people still speak Latin, and that there are worlds that time’s forgotten just as much as there are places in this world where time pays too much mind. And somehow, she knows that a young boy died somewhere, on an Island she’d never be able to find, his glasses askew on his bruised and beaten body; she knows this because that boy had never been shot in cold blood for the crimes he’d yet to commit, had never been sacrificed to the will of a power higher than himself, had never grown up missing his mother, looking for a woman like her - because he’d never grown up at all. Somewhere in her heart she knows this, and it twists in her gut like shrapnel drawing blood.
In that same nameless place in the hollow of her chest, she remembers.
She’s on a consult in L.A., the first time she’s wrestled herself from under Edmund’s thumb in months or more; he’s a spinal surgeon whose hair’s grown too long to fit beneath his scrub cap. He’d gotten caught up with charts, was late leaving the hospital. She’d stopped to sit on a bench just outside the main entrance, just to check her voicemail - had ended up sitting there, staring off into oblivion until the sun set, until the tears fell; it had been a year - twelve months to the day - since she’d lost her sister, and she’d never stopped feeling as if there were something, something out there, just beyond her reach that she couldn’t, didn’t do to save her. The blood on her hands had never dried, never washed away.
He passes her out of pity, asks her out for a drink; she suggests they go back to his place - it’s not what she does, not who she is, but there’s something about him that makes her feel safe, makes her feel whole in ways her broken heart was sure were beyond its ken. And she knows what his bare chest looks like before he strips to his boxers; knows how his skin shines before they even work up a sweat. She knows what his tattoo means before she reads what it says.
She gasps when he slides between her thighs, inside her heat, trembles like a blushing bride, like someone she wouldn’t recognize in the mirror; but he shakes, too, like their bodies remember what their minds can’t recall - like their hearts know, where his presses against hers between hard nipples and heaving lungs, what time and space could not erase, nor tear asunder.
Somehow, she knows that she is a stronger woman than this. She knows that he’s a stronger man.
He breathes steadily behind her now, steady in ways nothing has been for a very long time, and her pulse shivers against the tendrils of a cold she’s grown to miss, cast away under the rays of a sun so bright, so sharp - electric, magnetic; drawing her in before setting her ablaze. Her eyes slide shut again, as she tries to match the rush of his blood to the rush of the waves, and she tumbles, falls, lands - dies.
The world explodes behind her eyes as sleep draws her under, and his arms around her waist tighten before she drowns, like he knows, like he sees.
Behind bars, beneath the leaves, under the cover of egyptian cotton that’s never touched a woman’s skin before - nothing is what it seems.