A Constant Reminder
A Constant Reminder
Word count: 4,244
Characters: Jack Shephard, Juliet Burke
Rating: NC-17
Timeline: Between “Stranger in a Strange Land” and “Par Avion”. Slight AU.
Warnings: Graphic Sex, curse words galore.
Author’s Notes: With seven pages and a half on MS Word, this is officially the longest shit I’ve ever written for the Lost fandom, perhaps among all my fics. Figures that it’s raw sex.
Disclaimer: This is a fictional, nonprofit work for entertainment purpose only. The copyright in the TV show LOST and its components is owned by "American Broadcast Companies, Inc.", which reserves all rights therein.
He sits by the porch of his house, fresh from the shower, the distant taste of dinner lingering on his tongue. His gaze is far away, at the landscape and at the stars - the last connections he might have with the people on the beach, somehow the only things that don’t seem to be part of a long, strange dream.
Jack turns to his right when he hears the soft steps on the stone path, approaching him. He knows it’s Juliet; it couldn’t have been anybody else.
“Hey”, she says. He answers with a nod of acknowledgement and a fragment of smile. “Stars are beautiful today.” Indeed they are; the sky is clean and most people have already gone to sleep, so the Barracks are as dark as the camp would have been. Darker, perhaps, since the Others don’t need bonfires.
Juliet stops by his side and he notices the two bottles she carries by the neck. The question comes without words, only by the raising of his eyebrows. “You saved my life-”
“Ben saved your life”, Jack corrects.
“Because you asked him to”, she retorts to make her point valid again. “I’m not really sure if I should thank you for it. After all that I…” she sighs, slightly shaking her head. It comes to Jack’s attention that she let her hair down tonight. “Well, I’m sure… I guess you had the best intentions in mind. So thanks.” With that said, she extends one of the bottles to him. It’s cold and humid in his hand.
He strains his eyes to read the label under the moonlight. “Dharma beer, huh”, he concludes with a chuckle.
“People around here have to relax sometimes too”, she tells him as if it were very obvious, sitting by his side on the wooden floor.
“‘Relax’”, Jack repeats, trying to remember whether he knows the meaning of the word. Using the hem of his new shirt, he opens the bottle and takes a long swig, knowing that Juliet is observing with interest the way his Adam’s apple goes up and down. “What else do you guys have, then? Dharma condoms?”
There is an openly flirtatious tone in his voice and in Juliet’s laugh; he doesn’t know where it came from, much less if it should be there at all, but it’s one of those nights in which he’s just too tired to care. He watches how her long white fingers grip the bottle neck, how she cocks her head a bit while she talks. “No, Dharma monthly hormone shots.”
Jack chuckles, less at her comment than at their new dance around each other. There is silence for a short moment.
“How are you feeling?”
He shrugs. “Odd”, he answers, but it’s only the closest word he could find to describe his situation.
Juliet nods. “Finding out the middle of nowhere has tableware, mattresses, clotheslines…”
“A piano.”
“Yeah, I guess I know what it must be like.” Jack wonders if she also had to spend more than a month in the wild before coming in contact with sweet civilization again. He suspects she didn’t. Then again, he doesn’t know a single thing about her. He settles for drinking, but before the bottle reaches his lips Juliet says in her usual blank tone, “Do you want me to stay here tonight?”
It comes unexpectedly. He has recognized the pattern - alcohol, gentle words, laughs, glances - but her sudden straightforwardness makes him uncomfortable. Suspicious. As if something is not right yet again. (Or maybe she simply can’t stand anymore, or even never learned, the games of seduction. But he’s not counting that much on this option.)
“Is this some kind of welcoming tradition among your people, or you just don’t trust the cameras?”
“I just thought we both needed it”, she adds as means of explanation, and then with a half-hearted attempt at humor, “we could always blame the beer.”
Jack doesn’t believe her. She can see it in his eyes; he’s focused on making it plainly clear.
It’s not that he thinks it would be impossible for her to be interested in him. He knows he is quite good-looking, as well as he knows she is quite lonely. He’s also lonely here, probably more than her, perhaps not. Had it been a different situation, a casual meeting in a bar on the real world, he certainly wouldn’t let down a woman like her (she’s gorgeous, he has to admit).
But it’s the island and she’s the enemy, in a way.
Juliet sighs, pulling a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “You must think it’s some sort of plan. It was, originally.” He wonders why she is being so open about it; she seems to be saying the truth. “Ben told you once about how I was supposed to gain your trust, because I look like the kind of person you’d be compelled to get close to. That I could offer you some comfort, some relief. He never specified how I should accomplish that, but I’m sure sex was on the list.”
Jack nods, eyebrows knitted, though he’s not thinking very hard. He’s had enough with thinking, by now. “And you suppose you’re winning me over by telling me this.”
“I don’t have to win you over anymore, Jack.” An outsider wouldn’t notice that there’s a bit of frustration in her voice. “They don’t care if you trust me or not, because they don’t trust me either.” She looks down. “And we're both leaving this place, anyway.”
He watches her for a moment. She drinks like a high-society lady three years after losing her whole fortune on the derby. “I thought you’d be hopeless at this point.”
“I am.”
Jack ponders for a while. His mind is busy searching for something that might sting, because he doesn’t expect explanations anymore. He knows he won’t get answers. He doesn’t believe the ones they gave him up to now. “Did you get a reliever too?”
She looks at him as if she doesn’t understand. He wonders if that’s also part of the act.
“When you came to the island. Did you have someone to offer you relief?” Her face is still turned to him with questioning eyes, but her gaze is directed past him, somewhere in the far horizon. He wonders if he should turn around, but it would be too ridiculous if there was nothing behind him. Since being captured, Jack has quite often considered choosing death over shame.
After a minute, she’s still silent and he’s still breathing. Jack can almost see the proverbial wheels turning inside her head when she finally turns her eyes to her feet and answers with a frown and a whisper.
“Yes.” he realizes she’d never thought of it before. “Yes, there was.”
Juliet doesn’t say more. Neither does Jack. She’s too deep into her own world and he’s too concentrated in watching her. Perhaps he’s grown accustomed to her face already, but he thinks she’s showing some emotion now. Perhaps that - the possible emotion in the corner of her eyes - is what makes him move closer to her, close enough that the heat of her thigh radiates through the fabric of her khakis and his jeans.
But they don’t act further, both afraid of too many things, mainly of themselves. There’s still the uncomfortable silence and the beer, which now they drink slowly because they know there won’t be another excuse once the bottles are empty. (It’s like those plane meals, Jack thinks ironically, when you have to wonder if the soda will last to the end of your sandwich.) His bicep touches her arm when he puts his bottle down - more than half of it gone, hers about three swigs from the bottom - and he holds back on the impulse of reaching for her hands.
Once her beer is over, she waits.
Jack knows it must come from him. She already jumped into the abyss; he is the one hesitating on the edge. It would be so much easier if this was a different kind of place and he was a different kind of man. Much easier if there weren’t consequences, if there wasn’t a catch (for there has to be one). He checks the remaining liquid at the end of the bottle, knowing full well that he could simply tell her to go bother someone else, but his mind doesn’t work and his body doesn’t care.
He finishes his indecision in one gulp. To take it off my system, he tells himself. Then he’ll send her away and the planning will begin. So he leaves his bottle on the floor, grabs the hair behind her neck - she whimpers slightly - and kisses her hard, open-mouthed and uncaring. A drunk kiss, though he’s far from drunk. He’s absolutely conscious. He knows where he’s getting into. He just doesn’t care. Not anymore. If this is defeat, he thinks, let it be defeat. Could always be worse.
It’s not a nice kiss. Their tongues fight for control, her hands push rather than touch his chest, and the position of their legs doesn’t cooperate. It’s not a fairy tale kiss. It’s not a porn movie kiss. It’s a real kiss from real people who have never kissed each other before and it doesn’t magically work. And she - she doesn’t seem to like it. Jack gives up trying to understand and releases her mouth.
“Did you change your mind?” His breath is irregular and that animal part of him is a bit pissed off. She waits until their brains are back to work before putting it plainly, “They’ll use me against you.”
The catch. Right before him. And it’s so simple that it almost makes him laugh.
Looking straight into her eyes, Jack answers with a tinge of sarcasm, “Do you think they won’t if we stop now?”
She ponders for a second, then gives him a smile. He decides this is a true one.
He kisses her again, but this time it’s quite better; their bodies have found a point of comfort, half-turned with one of her legs slightly over his knee, and their lips are on the same rhythm. He puts his hand on the path of skin where waist ends and hip starts, pulls her closer to feel her breast pressing against him (he’s been wondering what they feel like, her breasts; prisoner or not, he is a man). She pulls back again to whisper “Inside?” and he likes the double meaning of the word.
Jack gets up first, then extends a hand to help her. It’s not as much an act of gallantry as it’s a way of pulling her closer, letting her travel her eyes over him on the way up. His hands are still cold from the beer and the night breeze; he pulls the woman (his) to the door, longing for warmth.
There’s a lock in his door. The most ridiculous fake attempt at privacy he’s ever seen. He doesn’t know why he bothers turning the key. Juliet has released his hand once they got into the house; now she backs up against his corridor wall, investigating the angle of the camera installed at his living room. “Blind spot”, she mouths without a sound as Jack places his hands on each side of her head. He nods before capturing her lower lip between his teeth, vaguely unsure about how this blind spot thing is going to work (there are still the mikes; he wonders how loud she can get), his mind already set on skin and pulse and sweat.
It’s nature in charge, and maybe she’s still able to discern things like Others, Dharma and castaways because that’s how women are, but Jack is a man and men are one-track-minded when it comes to sex. Reason and subtext are suspended for now. It’s an automatic motion when he closes the space between their bodies and rubs his erection against her hips; it must be the same instinct that makes her hands go to the small of his back, the same one that makes him grunt and bite her earlobe, to what she responds with a sound of her own.
Juliet’s blue button-up shirt is on the floor and Jack lifts her white tank top to reveal her breasts (her underwear is practical as he thought it would be, no lace; he finds it involuntarily sexy), which he grabs with almost too much greed, feeling her nipples grow rigid under his palms. She’s already breathing hard against his neck, one of her hands running up his back, her fingers finding the hair on his nape. His own hands go down to open her zipper; one of them plunges into her panties while the other pulls her leg around his hip.
She moans when he rubs her clit and hell if he likes that, forcing himself against the back of his own hand, too many layers of clothes on the way - but then when he pushes her real hard against the wall, she flinches and the doctor in him guesses that might not be the perfect position.
“What”, he gasps.
“The mark”, Juliet explains, almost ashamed of herself. “I just-” She just chafed the burn on her lower back against the rugged surface of his corridor wall, that’s what she did. He considers carrying her to his bedroom (who cares for the fucking cameras anyway), but she’s faster and surprisingly strong, inverting their position and pushing him against the wall instead.
Now she’s in apparent control, but it’s not really a problem to him because it serves the situation just fine - he wants her to kiss him roughly on the mouth and jaw, wants her to leave little bite marks over his neck, and most of all he wants her to get down on her knees and suck his dick until he forgets the last four months of his life. It’s just their luck that she seems to have the same idea.
Her fingers work daftly on his zipper and somewhere far away in his mind he’s wondering how much practice she’s had in this (hell, for all he knows she could be some kind of island whore when she’s not putting toothpicks on sandwiches; how much would she charge him?). She nibbles his lower belly over his shirt while running the palm of her hand over the hardness inside his underwear - goddamn tease - and he can’t stop himself from grabbing her hair (silk) and groaning an impatient, low “come on”. Even inside the house, the air feels cold against his cock when she pulls down the waistband of his white briefs.
The back of his head makes a thud against the wall; he doesn’t notice, because right now the only nerves working on his body are the ones that make him feel Juliet’s tongue running over the underside of his cock, from base to tip, then her lips closing around the head and sliding low just a little bit, sucking there as she holds the shaft with both hands.
“Fuck yeah”, he sighs, closing his eyes and biting his lower lip. For a second he enjoys just that, the feeling of warmth and moisture and softness around his dick, contrasting with her cool fingers that now fumble with his pants to try and play with his balls. He forces himself inside her mouth just a bit, more a suggestion than anything else, before looking down at her.
And hell, she likes what she’s doing and that makes him even crazier.
She dares taking him further in (he doubts she’s going to take him all the way in, it would be just too much luck if that woman planned on deep-throating him), finding just the right position and the right rhythm that would free her hands to roam over his thighs and crotch. He knows he’s pulling her hair with strength enough to hurt, but she doesn’t seem to care, so he keeps holding on to it as if that was his very sanity.
He realizes that he won’t last long if she keeps running those little circles around the head of his cock with her tongue. Then he remembers something about hormone shots and he doesn’t want to finish things there on her mouth. “Hang on, uhm, hang on”, he whispers, giving a little yank to her hair. “I wanna…”
“Yeah, yeah”, she nods, kissing him right below the navel and pulling at the legs of his jeans. “Down here, kneel down. It’s…”
He obeys. “Blind spot, huh?” His lips find hers. Her tongue tastes a little salty from their sweat.
“Yeah, it’s the best thing we got in ahGod-” Whatever she wanted to tell him next got lost in a sigh while he slid his hand once again between her legs, his tongue taking possession of her mouth. She grips his arm, the one that disappears inside her panties, holding him in place as she rides his fingers (he slides the middle one in, then another one when she moans something that sounds a lot like “more” against his lips). She wants him and he wants her and it has to be fucking now.
He pulls his fingers out and puts his arms on each side of her, kissing her deep and trying to push her to the floor, but she resists. “Hm, oh-camera”, she whispers almost soundlessly, jerking her head to signal they are on the lens’ range. Jack pulls back closer to the wall and nearly crushes her body against his chest (even though he couldn’t care less about the cameras right now; not after he’s spent a whole week peeing on a bucket and cleaning up with a rag while a blinking red light followed his every move).
“Hang on”, Juliet says, then disentangles herself from his arms and turns her back to him. All the time her eyes are fixed on the electronic device at the far wall. (Jack thinks it’s less about modesty and more about a fetish with playing hide-and-seek. He doesn’t mind, he’s enjoying the game too.) He pulls her closer again, lips and teeth finding the curve of her neck as his hands stumble to pull her trousers and panties down all at once. His knees between hers, the denim of her clothes catches at her mid-thighs and hinders her from opening her legs more - but it’s more than enough when they both know it’s going to be fast.
He rubs the tip of his cock over her entrance and bucks his hips up as she slides down. Half of him is already inside her and she makes a sound between a hiss and a laugh, resting her palms on the wooden floor. “Oh woah, you’re big.”
Jack gives a small laugh at that. “Think you can take it all?”, he whispers playfully in her ear, one hand caressing her left breast while the other goes down to where their bodies are joined.
“Hell yeah I can take it all”, Juliet murmurs, her voice raw. Jack watches in a daze the way she rocks her hips down his cock, taking his whole length inside in an excruciatingly slow move. She rubs back and forth against him, holding the inevitable moans as she searches for that spot just right deep inside. He bucks up again, forcing a loud sigh out of her mouth.
They move in unison, building the rhythm of the thrusts that get harder and deeper as the sensation overwhelms them. “Oh yeah-oh fuck yeah”, she moans between ragged breaths, and of all things it’s her voice that does it for Jack; the way the curse rolls so naturally out of her lips, her low tone almost feral, feline-like, the fact that that for sure was caught by the mikes - it’s all too much for him, it’s been so long since the last time he had a fuck and this one feels so good and so absurdly right. Nothing makes sense anymore as he growls incoherent things against her shoulder, hands holding her in place by the hipbones while he slides in and out as fast and as hard as he can, craving for release, craving for her.
And then white lights explode behind his eyes, he pushes deep one last time (vaguely hearing her grunt), his brain goes into static and he sighs, unable to control his own breathing.
He hasn’t stopped panting yet when she gets off his lap, his spent cock slipping out (all business, his still chaotic mind concludes; he notices she seems to be in a better shape than he is, which in that particular situation he supposes is not an advantage). She gets up on her knees in front of him and pulls up her clothes, a red mark left across her thighs from the waistband of her pants. Almost on instinct he reaches for her, circling her with his arms and leaving lazy kisses on her shoulder.
“That was fast”, he mumbles apologetically. “I… the last few months were, you know.”
“It’s ok”, she whispers sweetly (gone the lioness, comes back the girl-next-door), not seeming to know exactly what to do with her hands now. She settles for playing with the hairs in his arms.
“You ok?”
She nods and smiles at him over her shoulder. “Yeah, I’m great.”
“Sure?” Jack is not the kind of man to be convinced easily. “I could do something”, he murmurs against the wet path his tongue just left on her skin, “If you stand close to the wall I can-”
“Jack.” She turns around in his lap, facing him. It’s funny, how people can feel awkward right after sharing the greatest known level of human intimacy. She kisses him, and this time it’s much lighter, much calmer. “Thanks for the offer,” she gives a shy laugh, smoothing his shirt over his chest and avoiding his eyes, “but I… right now I’m not really into…”
Jack has no idea what the hell she is trying to say. But she looks uncomfortable and a bit emotional, so he’s clever enough to know she needs another slow kiss. “All right.”
She smiles, feeling back in control of her things. “Look, why don’t we… we set that score right once we’re out of this place, ok.”
He shares a laugh with her, but the words remind him that he’s on an island. That there are people wondering about him. That there’s too much at stake. He feels stupid for suddenly feeling guilty. He knows it’s the wrong moment and the wrong thing to say, but it’s there floating around them: “What if we don’t leave in three days?”
She doesn’t answer - just bites her lower lip, looks down and hides her face on the crook of his neck.
“I should go back”, she whispers after a while, “to my place.” He sighs deeply, remembering that was his original plan when it all started, and they get up. She runs a hand over her hair to set it straight and picks up her blue shirt on the floor while he closes the zipper of his jeans.
He doesn’t change his mind by the time they have to kiss goodbye; actually, it was set long before, it just took him a while to convince himself of it. “Stay here. Just tonight.”
She chuckles. “There’s two cameras on your bedroom.”
“I have blankets.”
“Ben’s going to love this when he finds out”, and not even she seems to believe her own feet when they follow Jack inside the house. His room is cold; the window is fully open and the wind blows on his curtains. Tucking themselves under the blankets sounds like a better idea every second he thinks of it again.
“We’ll tell Ben to fuck off when the time comes”, he says, not caring about the mikes anymore. He pulls down the bedcovers and invites her to lie down on the bed, following her afterwards and pulling the blankets over themselves.
Cuddling is hardly a habit for Jack; his shifts and the subsequent crisis on his marriage didn’t leave much room for that. It’s amazing how much disasters and abrupt changes in lifestyle can change someone. He knows they could try to ignore the monitoring altogether and have sex again, but now that the tension is off and the worries came back to the front of their minds, somehow it doesn’t seem right. At that moment all he wants is to feel the warmth of Juliet’s body next to him - just that, just staying close, as if that was any proof at all that they were getting out of the island together, and he would be able to save his people, and everything would be fine.
(Funny that only now he thinks of Kate.)
Juliet shifts by his side, searching for a comfortable position. He leaves his arms around her, trying to will his mind into relaxing. But then he looks out of the window, knowing the people on the beach are watching the same stars he sees there, and those stars will keep reminding him that there are matters left behind. Jack knows he won’t be able to rest. He looks down at Juliet, whose breath is even but her eyes are still open, deep into her own problems. For them both, sex wasn’t enough of a release; for them both, that will be a sleepless night.
Word count: 4,244
Characters: Jack Shephard, Juliet Burke
Rating: NC-17
Timeline: Between “Stranger in a Strange Land” and “Par Avion”. Slight AU.
Warnings: Graphic Sex, curse words galore.
Author’s Notes: With seven pages and a half on MS Word, this is officially the longest shit I’ve ever written for the Lost fandom, perhaps among all my fics. Figures that it’s raw sex.
Disclaimer: This is a fictional, nonprofit work for entertainment purpose only. The copyright in the TV show LOST and its components is owned by "American Broadcast Companies, Inc.", which reserves all rights therein.
He sits by the porch of his house, fresh from the shower, the distant taste of dinner lingering on his tongue. His gaze is far away, at the landscape and at the stars - the last connections he might have with the people on the beach, somehow the only things that don’t seem to be part of a long, strange dream.
Jack turns to his right when he hears the soft steps on the stone path, approaching him. He knows it’s Juliet; it couldn’t have been anybody else.
“Hey”, she says. He answers with a nod of acknowledgement and a fragment of smile. “Stars are beautiful today.” Indeed they are; the sky is clean and most people have already gone to sleep, so the Barracks are as dark as the camp would have been. Darker, perhaps, since the Others don’t need bonfires.
Juliet stops by his side and he notices the two bottles she carries by the neck. The question comes without words, only by the raising of his eyebrows. “You saved my life-”
“Ben saved your life”, Jack corrects.
“Because you asked him to”, she retorts to make her point valid again. “I’m not really sure if I should thank you for it. After all that I…” she sighs, slightly shaking her head. It comes to Jack’s attention that she let her hair down tonight. “Well, I’m sure… I guess you had the best intentions in mind. So thanks.” With that said, she extends one of the bottles to him. It’s cold and humid in his hand.
He strains his eyes to read the label under the moonlight. “Dharma beer, huh”, he concludes with a chuckle.
“People around here have to relax sometimes too”, she tells him as if it were very obvious, sitting by his side on the wooden floor.
“‘Relax’”, Jack repeats, trying to remember whether he knows the meaning of the word. Using the hem of his new shirt, he opens the bottle and takes a long swig, knowing that Juliet is observing with interest the way his Adam’s apple goes up and down. “What else do you guys have, then? Dharma condoms?”
There is an openly flirtatious tone in his voice and in Juliet’s laugh; he doesn’t know where it came from, much less if it should be there at all, but it’s one of those nights in which he’s just too tired to care. He watches how her long white fingers grip the bottle neck, how she cocks her head a bit while she talks. “No, Dharma monthly hormone shots.”
Jack chuckles, less at her comment than at their new dance around each other. There is silence for a short moment.
“How are you feeling?”
He shrugs. “Odd”, he answers, but it’s only the closest word he could find to describe his situation.
Juliet nods. “Finding out the middle of nowhere has tableware, mattresses, clotheslines…”
“A piano.”
“Yeah, I guess I know what it must be like.” Jack wonders if she also had to spend more than a month in the wild before coming in contact with sweet civilization again. He suspects she didn’t. Then again, he doesn’t know a single thing about her. He settles for drinking, but before the bottle reaches his lips Juliet says in her usual blank tone, “Do you want me to stay here tonight?”
It comes unexpectedly. He has recognized the pattern - alcohol, gentle words, laughs, glances - but her sudden straightforwardness makes him uncomfortable. Suspicious. As if something is not right yet again. (Or maybe she simply can’t stand anymore, or even never learned, the games of seduction. But he’s not counting that much on this option.)
“Is this some kind of welcoming tradition among your people, or you just don’t trust the cameras?”
“I just thought we both needed it”, she adds as means of explanation, and then with a half-hearted attempt at humor, “we could always blame the beer.”
Jack doesn’t believe her. She can see it in his eyes; he’s focused on making it plainly clear.
It’s not that he thinks it would be impossible for her to be interested in him. He knows he is quite good-looking, as well as he knows she is quite lonely. He’s also lonely here, probably more than her, perhaps not. Had it been a different situation, a casual meeting in a bar on the real world, he certainly wouldn’t let down a woman like her (she’s gorgeous, he has to admit).
But it’s the island and she’s the enemy, in a way.
Juliet sighs, pulling a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “You must think it’s some sort of plan. It was, originally.” He wonders why she is being so open about it; she seems to be saying the truth. “Ben told you once about how I was supposed to gain your trust, because I look like the kind of person you’d be compelled to get close to. That I could offer you some comfort, some relief. He never specified how I should accomplish that, but I’m sure sex was on the list.”
Jack nods, eyebrows knitted, though he’s not thinking very hard. He’s had enough with thinking, by now. “And you suppose you’re winning me over by telling me this.”
“I don’t have to win you over anymore, Jack.” An outsider wouldn’t notice that there’s a bit of frustration in her voice. “They don’t care if you trust me or not, because they don’t trust me either.” She looks down. “And we're both leaving this place, anyway.”
He watches her for a moment. She drinks like a high-society lady three years after losing her whole fortune on the derby. “I thought you’d be hopeless at this point.”
“I am.”
Jack ponders for a while. His mind is busy searching for something that might sting, because he doesn’t expect explanations anymore. He knows he won’t get answers. He doesn’t believe the ones they gave him up to now. “Did you get a reliever too?”
She looks at him as if she doesn’t understand. He wonders if that’s also part of the act.
“When you came to the island. Did you have someone to offer you relief?” Her face is still turned to him with questioning eyes, but her gaze is directed past him, somewhere in the far horizon. He wonders if he should turn around, but it would be too ridiculous if there was nothing behind him. Since being captured, Jack has quite often considered choosing death over shame.
After a minute, she’s still silent and he’s still breathing. Jack can almost see the proverbial wheels turning inside her head when she finally turns her eyes to her feet and answers with a frown and a whisper.
“Yes.” he realizes she’d never thought of it before. “Yes, there was.”
Juliet doesn’t say more. Neither does Jack. She’s too deep into her own world and he’s too concentrated in watching her. Perhaps he’s grown accustomed to her face already, but he thinks she’s showing some emotion now. Perhaps that - the possible emotion in the corner of her eyes - is what makes him move closer to her, close enough that the heat of her thigh radiates through the fabric of her khakis and his jeans.
But they don’t act further, both afraid of too many things, mainly of themselves. There’s still the uncomfortable silence and the beer, which now they drink slowly because they know there won’t be another excuse once the bottles are empty. (It’s like those plane meals, Jack thinks ironically, when you have to wonder if the soda will last to the end of your sandwich.) His bicep touches her arm when he puts his bottle down - more than half of it gone, hers about three swigs from the bottom - and he holds back on the impulse of reaching for her hands.
Once her beer is over, she waits.
Jack knows it must come from him. She already jumped into the abyss; he is the one hesitating on the edge. It would be so much easier if this was a different kind of place and he was a different kind of man. Much easier if there weren’t consequences, if there wasn’t a catch (for there has to be one). He checks the remaining liquid at the end of the bottle, knowing full well that he could simply tell her to go bother someone else, but his mind doesn’t work and his body doesn’t care.
He finishes his indecision in one gulp. To take it off my system, he tells himself. Then he’ll send her away and the planning will begin. So he leaves his bottle on the floor, grabs the hair behind her neck - she whimpers slightly - and kisses her hard, open-mouthed and uncaring. A drunk kiss, though he’s far from drunk. He’s absolutely conscious. He knows where he’s getting into. He just doesn’t care. Not anymore. If this is defeat, he thinks, let it be defeat. Could always be worse.
It’s not a nice kiss. Their tongues fight for control, her hands push rather than touch his chest, and the position of their legs doesn’t cooperate. It’s not a fairy tale kiss. It’s not a porn movie kiss. It’s a real kiss from real people who have never kissed each other before and it doesn’t magically work. And she - she doesn’t seem to like it. Jack gives up trying to understand and releases her mouth.
“Did you change your mind?” His breath is irregular and that animal part of him is a bit pissed off. She waits until their brains are back to work before putting it plainly, “They’ll use me against you.”
The catch. Right before him. And it’s so simple that it almost makes him laugh.
Looking straight into her eyes, Jack answers with a tinge of sarcasm, “Do you think they won’t if we stop now?”
She ponders for a second, then gives him a smile. He decides this is a true one.
He kisses her again, but this time it’s quite better; their bodies have found a point of comfort, half-turned with one of her legs slightly over his knee, and their lips are on the same rhythm. He puts his hand on the path of skin where waist ends and hip starts, pulls her closer to feel her breast pressing against him (he’s been wondering what they feel like, her breasts; prisoner or not, he is a man). She pulls back again to whisper “Inside?” and he likes the double meaning of the word.
Jack gets up first, then extends a hand to help her. It’s not as much an act of gallantry as it’s a way of pulling her closer, letting her travel her eyes over him on the way up. His hands are still cold from the beer and the night breeze; he pulls the woman (his) to the door, longing for warmth.
There’s a lock in his door. The most ridiculous fake attempt at privacy he’s ever seen. He doesn’t know why he bothers turning the key. Juliet has released his hand once they got into the house; now she backs up against his corridor wall, investigating the angle of the camera installed at his living room. “Blind spot”, she mouths without a sound as Jack places his hands on each side of her head. He nods before capturing her lower lip between his teeth, vaguely unsure about how this blind spot thing is going to work (there are still the mikes; he wonders how loud she can get), his mind already set on skin and pulse and sweat.
It’s nature in charge, and maybe she’s still able to discern things like Others, Dharma and castaways because that’s how women are, but Jack is a man and men are one-track-minded when it comes to sex. Reason and subtext are suspended for now. It’s an automatic motion when he closes the space between their bodies and rubs his erection against her hips; it must be the same instinct that makes her hands go to the small of his back, the same one that makes him grunt and bite her earlobe, to what she responds with a sound of her own.
Juliet’s blue button-up shirt is on the floor and Jack lifts her white tank top to reveal her breasts (her underwear is practical as he thought it would be, no lace; he finds it involuntarily sexy), which he grabs with almost too much greed, feeling her nipples grow rigid under his palms. She’s already breathing hard against his neck, one of her hands running up his back, her fingers finding the hair on his nape. His own hands go down to open her zipper; one of them plunges into her panties while the other pulls her leg around his hip.
She moans when he rubs her clit and hell if he likes that, forcing himself against the back of his own hand, too many layers of clothes on the way - but then when he pushes her real hard against the wall, she flinches and the doctor in him guesses that might not be the perfect position.
“What”, he gasps.
“The mark”, Juliet explains, almost ashamed of herself. “I just-” She just chafed the burn on her lower back against the rugged surface of his corridor wall, that’s what she did. He considers carrying her to his bedroom (who cares for the fucking cameras anyway), but she’s faster and surprisingly strong, inverting their position and pushing him against the wall instead.
Now she’s in apparent control, but it’s not really a problem to him because it serves the situation just fine - he wants her to kiss him roughly on the mouth and jaw, wants her to leave little bite marks over his neck, and most of all he wants her to get down on her knees and suck his dick until he forgets the last four months of his life. It’s just their luck that she seems to have the same idea.
Her fingers work daftly on his zipper and somewhere far away in his mind he’s wondering how much practice she’s had in this (hell, for all he knows she could be some kind of island whore when she’s not putting toothpicks on sandwiches; how much would she charge him?). She nibbles his lower belly over his shirt while running the palm of her hand over the hardness inside his underwear - goddamn tease - and he can’t stop himself from grabbing her hair (silk) and groaning an impatient, low “come on”. Even inside the house, the air feels cold against his cock when she pulls down the waistband of his white briefs.
The back of his head makes a thud against the wall; he doesn’t notice, because right now the only nerves working on his body are the ones that make him feel Juliet’s tongue running over the underside of his cock, from base to tip, then her lips closing around the head and sliding low just a little bit, sucking there as she holds the shaft with both hands.
“Fuck yeah”, he sighs, closing his eyes and biting his lower lip. For a second he enjoys just that, the feeling of warmth and moisture and softness around his dick, contrasting with her cool fingers that now fumble with his pants to try and play with his balls. He forces himself inside her mouth just a bit, more a suggestion than anything else, before looking down at her.
And hell, she likes what she’s doing and that makes him even crazier.
She dares taking him further in (he doubts she’s going to take him all the way in, it would be just too much luck if that woman planned on deep-throating him), finding just the right position and the right rhythm that would free her hands to roam over his thighs and crotch. He knows he’s pulling her hair with strength enough to hurt, but she doesn’t seem to care, so he keeps holding on to it as if that was his very sanity.
He realizes that he won’t last long if she keeps running those little circles around the head of his cock with her tongue. Then he remembers something about hormone shots and he doesn’t want to finish things there on her mouth. “Hang on, uhm, hang on”, he whispers, giving a little yank to her hair. “I wanna…”
“Yeah, yeah”, she nods, kissing him right below the navel and pulling at the legs of his jeans. “Down here, kneel down. It’s…”
He obeys. “Blind spot, huh?” His lips find hers. Her tongue tastes a little salty from their sweat.
“Yeah, it’s the best thing we got in ahGod-” Whatever she wanted to tell him next got lost in a sigh while he slid his hand once again between her legs, his tongue taking possession of her mouth. She grips his arm, the one that disappears inside her panties, holding him in place as she rides his fingers (he slides the middle one in, then another one when she moans something that sounds a lot like “more” against his lips). She wants him and he wants her and it has to be fucking now.
He pulls his fingers out and puts his arms on each side of her, kissing her deep and trying to push her to the floor, but she resists. “Hm, oh-camera”, she whispers almost soundlessly, jerking her head to signal they are on the lens’ range. Jack pulls back closer to the wall and nearly crushes her body against his chest (even though he couldn’t care less about the cameras right now; not after he’s spent a whole week peeing on a bucket and cleaning up with a rag while a blinking red light followed his every move).
“Hang on”, Juliet says, then disentangles herself from his arms and turns her back to him. All the time her eyes are fixed on the electronic device at the far wall. (Jack thinks it’s less about modesty and more about a fetish with playing hide-and-seek. He doesn’t mind, he’s enjoying the game too.) He pulls her closer again, lips and teeth finding the curve of her neck as his hands stumble to pull her trousers and panties down all at once. His knees between hers, the denim of her clothes catches at her mid-thighs and hinders her from opening her legs more - but it’s more than enough when they both know it’s going to be fast.
He rubs the tip of his cock over her entrance and bucks his hips up as she slides down. Half of him is already inside her and she makes a sound between a hiss and a laugh, resting her palms on the wooden floor. “Oh woah, you’re big.”
Jack gives a small laugh at that. “Think you can take it all?”, he whispers playfully in her ear, one hand caressing her left breast while the other goes down to where their bodies are joined.
“Hell yeah I can take it all”, Juliet murmurs, her voice raw. Jack watches in a daze the way she rocks her hips down his cock, taking his whole length inside in an excruciatingly slow move. She rubs back and forth against him, holding the inevitable moans as she searches for that spot just right deep inside. He bucks up again, forcing a loud sigh out of her mouth.
They move in unison, building the rhythm of the thrusts that get harder and deeper as the sensation overwhelms them. “Oh yeah-oh fuck yeah”, she moans between ragged breaths, and of all things it’s her voice that does it for Jack; the way the curse rolls so naturally out of her lips, her low tone almost feral, feline-like, the fact that that for sure was caught by the mikes - it’s all too much for him, it’s been so long since the last time he had a fuck and this one feels so good and so absurdly right. Nothing makes sense anymore as he growls incoherent things against her shoulder, hands holding her in place by the hipbones while he slides in and out as fast and as hard as he can, craving for release, craving for her.
And then white lights explode behind his eyes, he pushes deep one last time (vaguely hearing her grunt), his brain goes into static and he sighs, unable to control his own breathing.
He hasn’t stopped panting yet when she gets off his lap, his spent cock slipping out (all business, his still chaotic mind concludes; he notices she seems to be in a better shape than he is, which in that particular situation he supposes is not an advantage). She gets up on her knees in front of him and pulls up her clothes, a red mark left across her thighs from the waistband of her pants. Almost on instinct he reaches for her, circling her with his arms and leaving lazy kisses on her shoulder.
“That was fast”, he mumbles apologetically. “I… the last few months were, you know.”
“It’s ok”, she whispers sweetly (gone the lioness, comes back the girl-next-door), not seeming to know exactly what to do with her hands now. She settles for playing with the hairs in his arms.
“You ok?”
She nods and smiles at him over her shoulder. “Yeah, I’m great.”
“Sure?” Jack is not the kind of man to be convinced easily. “I could do something”, he murmurs against the wet path his tongue just left on her skin, “If you stand close to the wall I can-”
“Jack.” She turns around in his lap, facing him. It’s funny, how people can feel awkward right after sharing the greatest known level of human intimacy. She kisses him, and this time it’s much lighter, much calmer. “Thanks for the offer,” she gives a shy laugh, smoothing his shirt over his chest and avoiding his eyes, “but I… right now I’m not really into…”
Jack has no idea what the hell she is trying to say. But she looks uncomfortable and a bit emotional, so he’s clever enough to know she needs another slow kiss. “All right.”
She smiles, feeling back in control of her things. “Look, why don’t we… we set that score right once we’re out of this place, ok.”
He shares a laugh with her, but the words remind him that he’s on an island. That there are people wondering about him. That there’s too much at stake. He feels stupid for suddenly feeling guilty. He knows it’s the wrong moment and the wrong thing to say, but it’s there floating around them: “What if we don’t leave in three days?”
She doesn’t answer - just bites her lower lip, looks down and hides her face on the crook of his neck.
“I should go back”, she whispers after a while, “to my place.” He sighs deeply, remembering that was his original plan when it all started, and they get up. She runs a hand over her hair to set it straight and picks up her blue shirt on the floor while he closes the zipper of his jeans.
He doesn’t change his mind by the time they have to kiss goodbye; actually, it was set long before, it just took him a while to convince himself of it. “Stay here. Just tonight.”
She chuckles. “There’s two cameras on your bedroom.”
“I have blankets.”
“Ben’s going to love this when he finds out”, and not even she seems to believe her own feet when they follow Jack inside the house. His room is cold; the window is fully open and the wind blows on his curtains. Tucking themselves under the blankets sounds like a better idea every second he thinks of it again.
“We’ll tell Ben to fuck off when the time comes”, he says, not caring about the mikes anymore. He pulls down the bedcovers and invites her to lie down on the bed, following her afterwards and pulling the blankets over themselves.
Cuddling is hardly a habit for Jack; his shifts and the subsequent crisis on his marriage didn’t leave much room for that. It’s amazing how much disasters and abrupt changes in lifestyle can change someone. He knows they could try to ignore the monitoring altogether and have sex again, but now that the tension is off and the worries came back to the front of their minds, somehow it doesn’t seem right. At that moment all he wants is to feel the warmth of Juliet’s body next to him - just that, just staying close, as if that was any proof at all that they were getting out of the island together, and he would be able to save his people, and everything would be fine.
(Funny that only now he thinks of Kate.)
Juliet shifts by his side, searching for a comfortable position. He leaves his arms around her, trying to will his mind into relaxing. But then he looks out of the window, knowing the people on the beach are watching the same stars he sees there, and those stars will keep reminding him that there are matters left behind. Jack knows he won’t be able to rest. He looks down at Juliet, whose breath is even but her eyes are still open, deep into her own problems. For them both, sex wasn’t enough of a release; for them both, that will be a sleepless night.