Those Star Crossed Lovers Had Nothing on us - Sawyer/Juliet

Jul 31, 2008 14:56

those star crossed lovers had nothing on us
During this time, they would make do with a mix of self taught higher education and carnal pleasure. The best of both of their worlds.
lost. post s4. sawyer/juliet. References to jack/juliet and sawyer/kate.
1590 words. pg-13.

A/N: For slybrunette who requested fic inspired by music for the luau at lostsquee. This oneshot has been playing around in my head ever since I saw the prompt.

Inspiration: Blackbird singing in the dead of night
-- Take these broken wings and learn to fly.

The Prologue

Juliet wakes up in the middle of the night with her eyes glued to the bright red numbers flashing the time (2:38). It's the same subject every night that wakes her up out of a dead sleep, the one that lingers in her dreams and seeps from the subconscious into her conscience.

"That's the problem with you, Jules. You're attracted to peacocks."

"What can I say? I like power," she had replied sarcastically, with a roll of her eyes.

"You can date powerful men. You just need to go for the ones who aren't so blatant about having it."

These are the things that keep her up at night. These conversations that passed between sisters over the Tonight Show and glasses of Merlot. Things she misses and things she never learned from.

She takes a deep breath, a sort of sigh that falls short of its intent to relieve her. The noise is enough to alert her bed partner that she's awake. He rolls over, and her body tenses out of instinct. She's spent far too many nights in the beds of powerful men.

He places butterfly kisses on her shoulder and the tension drains out of her.

"Go to sleep," he murmurs.

It's a subtle command, the type her body is more than akin to respond to.

If any one would have told her three years ago, that this man lying next to her would be the one to break the spell of peacocks, she might have given up dating all together.

Act I. Things She Won't Regret

Ben said, "Make him trust you," and ever since then he had been her little project. Stubborn Jack. A man with good intentions, but naive. Unequipped to play the games the island asked of him. He would fail, over and over. Juliet knew this the minute he took the knife to the Pawn's throat and expected the King to retreat.

Stubborn Jack would keep playing, though. Out of pity, Juliet would teach him how to win. A slow and grueling process. And when he finally stood on his own two feet, she got no thank you from him.

It became a song without a chorus, just strings of words that build and build without a release. A pile of ashes without the spark. She regrets this, among the many other things she never expected.

She could have fixed him, if his eyes weren't glued to his downfall -- that girl who would break his heart sooner and later. His own little project waiting in the wings (We all fall for the ones we'll never fix.).

Juliet was just a pawn in his match with Kate. Only difference between Ben and Kate is that the latter folded.

Maybe Jack was better at this game than she realized.

Act II. Things He Will Regret

It's commonly mistaken that he doesn't like children.

He likes them fine and well. As long their not his own. No one should blame him for this. He watched his father kill two thirds of his own family unit, and he still wonders if he would have joined the body count too if his father had known he was there.

See, it's not children that scare him; it's fathers.

It's coincidences, like pregnant women dying on this island, and him being the one to possibly impregnate Kate. He could see it, as the words tumbled from her mouth. The outcome. The dead look in her eyes and the blood covering her body. The end that would result from his misgiving.

These circumstances make him think history repeats itself.

And maybe she went away thinking that he thought she was unworthy to carry his child; that he thought less of her, and there was a part of him he could never give her. And maybe she was right, or maybe he just wasn’t willing to risk her life to know otherwise.

Someday, he will regret it, when they tell him about Jack playing daddy to Kate's son.

Right now, though, he'll be happy her blood isn't one of the many shades that stain his hands.

Act III. The Interlude

Late at night when he can't sleep, he reads Romeo and Juliet. That, right there, is his darkest secret. It's hard to resent his choice when he spends his nights with a woman named Juliet. He's been through the tattered copy hidden his bottom dresser drawer at least five times now. Each time he comes to the same conclusion.

It was all Rosalind's fault. She ran away from Romeo, teased him with the idea of loving him forever and then took off, hid herself away from the world.

The sixth time he goes to pick it up, there is a post-it note stuck in the back.

'It's actually Romeo's fault, seeing as he fell for her in the first place.'

Trust her to find a way to blame the man.

"Touché," he says when he slides back into bed that night. When he gets there, she's still up skimming her own copy of the book. She tries not to look too satisfied at winning an argument with him.

Act IV. Things We Should Regret, but Don't

They fell into a routine. Dinner discussing Tolstoy and Shakespeare, and whether she burned the roast again. Morning coffee on the porch, watching the others roll in and out of camp. Loud and angry sex in the darkness between.

Sawyer covers their sunshine yellow bedroom with blood red paint, and Juliet changes their sheets three times a week. He gets angry and she has spells of deafening silence. They give each other hell five times out of ten, but the other half of the time, they almost seem content.

He hates her for all the right reasons and loves her for all the wrong ones. Lies he tells himself. Whatever they're engaging in is too clean cut and shallow to deserve such passionate words.

He remembers playing house with the woman who conned him out of the one thing he never knew quite how to guard. He remembers all the times she walked away, and what words like "hate" and "love" really meant. It was a constant tug of war, a push and pull filled with chasms.

He does care, though, even if it’s less passionate a word than Juliet deserves. He lets it known in little touches and worried looks, and calling her by her real name since she hates the nicknames so damn much.

As for her, she will never tell him she loves him because to her life runs in marks of mediocre. The highs and lows were buried a long time ago, and Jack, he was the last straw. The closest she'll get is to call him, "her Romeo." The wry grin that accompanies it negating any true mirth she carries, and he'll pass it off as her way of making due.

This is a stalemate; a peaceful and bitter truce between two lonely souls who want to give up, but choose to cling to each other as proof that there's still something worth living for. The optimistic con artist and pessimistic medical researcher, the odd couple of the island, who saw the worst of life in each other and yet, had to admit they were more and more alike as the days rolled by.

They both lived in an interlude, waiting for eminent returns and glancing over the shoulder at what they had let slip away. During this time, they would make do with a mix of self taught higher education and carnal pleasure. The best of both of their worlds.

Act V. Things We'd Do All over Again

There is no red carpet rolled out when the Oceanic Six return. No trumpets or loud horns either. And there is no reception line for hugs and tears of joy. In fact, Juliet is padding around their bedroom looking for clean socks, and Sawyer is in bed, clad only in a towel and reading Absalom, Absalom out loud when they both hear noises outside. Just the rustling of footsteps and soft murmurs.

It isn't until the murmurs grow louder and angrier that they both take any action. He slips on jeans and slips out the back door as she goes through the front. Both of them armed, because even if these three years have been void of any attack, they can forgive but never forget.

They lower their weapons when they see their guests, but Sawyer keeps his clenched closed like some sort of security blanket. There's the briefest pause in their argument where they all exchange hugs, where they hang on to tight and try not to be the first to shed tears.

But it's not long before Kate and Jack are bickering back and forth again over what's the best course of action, and normally Sawyer would make a smart ass comment about unresolved issues between the two, but instead, he feels his head splitting in two over all the noise. (No one notices Juliet's hand on the center of his back, rubbing a tiny circle, the intuition a gift at the result of three years living with him).

It ends with a compromise; two plans, two separate parties going two separate ways, one to the Temple, and one to the caverns. Jack goes left, and Kate goes right, and they both wait for Juliet and Sawyer to break accordingly.

There is a moment, the briefest second where Sawyer would drag Juliet straight ahead and abstain from this game. Instead, he feels the chains of the past pulling them in polar opposites. He sends her a wink, and she smirks because she feels it too, always knew it was coming.

He goes right. She goes left.

And while they choose to bend with the road, neither of them will forget they actually had the option to keep moving forward instead.

A/N2: I still don't know how the hell this oneshot came out of those Blackbird lyrics, but it did

ship: sawyer/juliet, ship: jack/juliet, ship: sawyer/kate, fic:lost

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