Title: The Ocean Didn't Want Me Today
Rating: NC-17 for drug use, suicidal thoughts and sex
Pairing: Jack/Juliet
Disclaimer: These characters belong to ABC
Author's Note: Dedicated to N.G, who learned to swim through the rip tide and a big thank you to Richard Ashcroft whose brilliant song inspired this fic and whose music shows there is beauty in the pain.
I'd love to go drowning
And to stay and to stay
A rip tide is raging
And the life guard is away
But the ocean doesn't want me today
-Tom Waits-
Jack stared out from his car window and watched the ocean in the distance. Juliet, next to him, nervously hummed along to the radio.
"Cause it's a bittersweet symphony this life…"
He sighed as the waves rose and fell as he dreamt of sinking down, down, down. But the ocean whispered back, "Not yet, not yet."
"It's time," Juliet said squeezing his knee.
Jack turned to look at her as she pressed her face to the glass, waiting anxiously for the door of the simple brick house to open. It was over in a flash. A woman bustling her young son off to school. Backpack sliding off his tiny shoulders as he ran for the bus.
"Bye Mom," the boy waved.
And with a wave back the woman reentered her home and closed the door.
Juliet's hand lingered for a moment and when she removed it, her fingers left their imprint. Evidence of longing.
"Why don't you just go up to her for once?" Jack asked.
"You know why," she snapped and turned the radio up higher to drown out her sorrow.
"I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me..."
"I'm sorry," Jack sighed and turned the key in the ignition, "I'm sorry it has to be this way."
"It isn't your fault Jack," she said for the hundredth time since he first walked through her door.
He looked at her, searching to see if indeed it wasn't. If there was salvation for him, for her.
"Have you ever been down?..."
"Look, let's go," she said, "We'll score and you'll feel better."
Jack nodded, "But this time I meet the dealer."
"Don't be so stubborn Jack, it's me he knows," she said as he drove through Miami's suburban streets into the downtown core.
"It's dangerous, I'll go," he insisted.
Juliet smiled, some things never changed. For that she was grateful. She squeezed his knee again and let him try to protect her.
….
"I'll get the spoons," she said pushing through the doorway.
"Not yet," Jack said and grabbed her wrist. She flinched slightly but let him pull her to him.
She fell against him as he shut the door behind him, her back to his chest, and for a moment, it all came back. His hand against her throat, his power, his hunger to be free.
"Jack," she said turning around and letting his mouth find hers.
They fucked against the wall, her back chaffing as he thrust hard and fast up into her. Juliet panted, wrapped around him, holding on to him, feeling him, feeling, just feeling.
"Oh god," she cried as they came, Jack's hot breath on her neck.
"Now?" she asked as he put her down gently.
"Yeah," he said and began rolling up his sleeve.
He watched her prepare with a sorrowful eye. She wasn't the woman he knew, he wasn't the man he wanted to be.
"I should have left you behind," he said as he flicked the lighter on, "I shouldn't have insisted they figure a way for you to come back."
Juliet looked up from the melting mixture being absorbed like all their pain and regret, by the cotton ball.
"I would have died trying to get off that island," she said.
"Maybe you'd be better off," Jack simply said before tugging the band around his tattooed bicep with his teeth.
The cruelty of his comment cut her like a knife with its truth but she didn't betray herself.
"What, and leave you here alone?" she said with a cocked smile, "When you're having all this fun?"
At least she hadn't lost her sarcastic sense of humour.
"Yeah, fun," he said before feeling the surge of euphoria enter his veins. Jack sighed and let himself fall against the carpet of her living room floor. For a moment there was nothing but bliss. Everything gone but the floating. He could almost hear the ocean calling out to him, almost feel himself going under.
"Damn it!" Juliet brought him round with her curse. He sat up and looked at her.
"I can't find the vein," she complained.
Jack shuffled up to her and took her arm in his hand. He stretched it out and softly ran his finger up to her elbow before slapping the inside of her wrist hard.
"There," he said and taking the needle from her, injected her.
Juliet's eyes glazed over and her head tilted back. Her mouth opened slightly, tongue going over her lips before slipping back behind her teeth. Jack thought she looked beautiful, the same glowing look she gave him after sex.
"Do you ever pray, now?" he suddenly asked her.
She sighed and tried to focus on him, taking his face in her hands she said, "You're my prayer Jack."
He reached up for her hands and she fell limply into his arms.
"I'm gonna make you cum," he whispered into her ear.
"Yes," she breathed in reply.
He laid her out on her stomach in the middle of the floor. She was naked and high and happily waiting for him to touch her. He didn't know it, didn't believe it, but he still had healing hands. Jack kissed down her spine, revering the mark the Others had branded her with, resting his head there before dipping lower.
Juliet had never had a man eat her out from behind before but she liked it. She spread her legs wider as Jack tongued her, holding her trembling thighs apart so he could get deeper. Her fingernails dug into the fibers of the carpet before screaming his name. Somehow she managed to get to her knees and turn to face him.
"Come here," she said and he drew closer.
Juliet crawled onto his lap, taking him inside her as she held him close. They didn't buck or thrust as much as rock each other to orgasm, both in a sitting position, clinging to each other, foreheads against one another's. This was their hope, each other, hanging onto their feelings, surviving on it until they could figure out a way to truly live.
"Juliet," Jack murmured across her lips when he finally ejaculated. She kissed his face, both eyelids, the bump on his nose, his tear stained cheeks, his mouth.
She remained lying, naked on the floor as the inevitable fall hit her. Jack was sitting cross legged beside her, an atlas on his lap.
"You're not going to find it by staring at a map," she said.
He shot her an annoyed glare from the corner of his eye.
"I'll find it," he said, the old determination creeping its way back into his voice.
"What if you don't?" Juliet questioned.
He closed the book and lay down beside her.
"Juliet," he said barely above a whisper, "I think about dying."
Juliet said nothing as he stared into his eyes.
"I think about the ocean and drowning. Drowning like I should have done that day in September," he said.
"I think about planes crashing, splitting into pieces in the sky," she said, "And I smile."
Jack gave her a tiny grin before she continued.
"I only think about dying when I remember the deal. How I can't touch them, call them, hold them," Juliet said with bitterness.
"Maybe we should stop lying, maybe it's time to talk," Jack said.
"Jack you know what," Juliet said sitting up sharply but he grabbed her arm and stopped her.
"Maybe it's time to contact Ben."