OK, so, I have never felt the need to write a 'Lost' fanfic (or... any fanfic, really) until the 'LaFleur' episode. I loved Sawyer and Juliet together, but since I know it can't possibly last because no one on that show is allowed to be happy for long ... I decided to write something quick before it all comes crashing down.

For a while they were pretending, and then one day they weren't. She wasn't sure when it happened exactly. It was so easy to lose track of time now that she was surprised whenever she heard the sub was going out again. Another two weeks past, again, already? And he could never be sure of it either--when precisely the tide shifted and they stopped having to fool anyone, especially themselves.

This thing between them was born out of need, and then want, and then back to need again, and neither of them saw it coming but they wouldn't change it for the world. Not this one, and not their old one. Not any.

The first few nights in this weird new version of a place she'd already called home had been spent sleeping on sofas in the rec room. It had made sense; they were temporary guests, just a two week stay. But as the two weeks neared to a close, Horace had beckoned the group to his quarters and told them they could stay on to look for their crew under two conditions. First, they had to become employees of Dharma. Second, they had to limit their search to their own time. In exchange they would be given their own living spaces, food, clothes, specific jobs. They were told they would still be able to leave when they wished, if they decided to give up the search, and Juliet and Sawyer had shot each other doubtful looks. The deeper they got with Dharma, the less likely it seemed that they'd be allowed to leave. But there was no real choice to make-- leaving meant a strange wrong world that could provide no help or assurances, and staying put seemed the only way back to their own reality. Suddenly they were filling out paperwork and Horace was telling them how glad he was to have them on the team, getting someone to take down their sizes so they could get their very own jumpsuits.

Each of them were so used to the surreal by now that the bizarre feeling of filling out a job application for Dharma seemed like the most normal thing that had happened in weeks.

When Horace dismissed them to go see Sheila about housing, Juliet pulled Sawyer aside, away from the others. "I don't want to be a doctor again, James. You can't tell them I'm a doctor." She gripped his arm tightly, face grim, a hard and desperate look in her eyes.

"Alrighty, She-Ra, but what the hell we going to tell them you are? Horace already mentioned something about finding us jobs that fit whatever we were doing on the ship."

She sighed and released his arm, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "I don't know! Tell them I was your navigator or something."

"Is that a real job on a ship?"

"I don't know. I think so. At least it used to be!"

He grunted. "Well, we can't tell them anything that'll get put to the test. For all we know they been waitin' for someone with fancy map skills. Why don't we just tell them you were on the ship 'cause you're my old lady."

She choked out a laugh, but stopped abruptly when she looked into his face and saw he was serious. "Well, don't it make sense? You don't need to make up some bullshit career, and all those Dharma boys I seen eyeballin' you will leave you alone. And I believe that's what they call 'two birds with one stone', ma'am." He looked proud of his little plan.

She stared at him for a second, and he could practically see the wheels turning in her head. "If we did that, we wouldn't need to make excuses for why we need to talk so much …"

"Three birds, then," he smiled.

"OK. Fine," she said, allowing herself a small smile. "Mrs. LaFleur it is."

"Wait, we can't just shack up? We have to be married?"

She punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Make an honest woman out of me, James. I don't want those Dharma boys you spoke of to think they might have a chance …"

"Alright, but I'm expecting my full husbandly privileges in return, wifey." He mockingly leered at her, and she laughed, rolling her eyes at him and walking away. "It's not a joke!" he called after her, and she just shook her head at him.

It felt like a vacation at first--free access to showers and refrigerated food and a soft bed. They settled into an oddly pedestrian routine almost immediately--she did most of the cooking, and he did most of the laundry, and only complained a little. Neither of them ever raised the issue of sharing the only bed in the cabin. The sofa was too short for Sawyer and Juliet would be damned if she was going to sleep anywhere but the bed after all that time on the beach. So they slept side by side from the beginning, careful not to touch, except for the times one of them would wake to find themselves draped over the other and carefully extricated themselves before the other awoke. Sometimes they sat across from each other at the kitchen table and just laughed, because all of it seemed so ridiculous. After months of mortal danger, the helicopter leaving them behind, the shifts back and forth through time, seeing Locke disappear into the earth … eating spaghetti and salad at a table in the house where they were pretending to be married struck them both as hilarious.

After weeks had passed with no sign of Locke or the others, it all started to feel less temporary. They had friendly but heated debates after dinner about books and movies, and talked about what they'd wanted to be when they grew up and who their first crushes were. Months passed. She found out he liked meatloaf and made it for him. He walked into the room one day with his hands behind his back like a little boy, and proudly presented her with a new copy of Little Women that he'd asked one of the submarine crew to get for her. He realized that he liked to make her laugh. She discovered that he liked it when she read him a particularly good passage from whatever book she was reading. They learned to depend on each other.

So the process of falling was gradual, and backwards. She couldn't pinpoint when it happened, because it had happened in so many tiny steps. One day they stopped extricating themselves when they woke up wrapped around each other. One day she found herself thinking about him while she was working in the motor pool, planning dinner and wondering what he might like for dessert. One day he started consulting her about a work problem, finding himself wanting to hear her opinion on everything. There was nothing normal at all about their lives--where they lived, who they were pretending to be--yet they had carved out a bit of normalcy in the middle of it. In spite of living separated by decades and who knew how many miles from the places each of them belonged.

And then: one night after dinner, sitting next to each other in companionable silence with glasses of wine and books, he suddenly tossed his novel down and turned to her. "You ain't still thinking about hitchin' a ride on that submarine, are you?"

She marked her page and laid her book down, thinking for a second before meeting his eyes. He looked worried, his glasses slightly crooked on the bridge of his nose. She weighed her answer, and it surprised her. "I … no, James, I haven't thought about getting on that submarine in weeks." A lie, of sorts -- she was aware of every departure, but found she no longer had the desire to leave. He'd been right--it was 1974 out there in the wide world, and she had no idea where she would go. And the truth of it was, the existence they'd created as the LaFleurs was more like a home than anything she'd had in … maybe ever.

His eyes narrowed slightly, as if he suspected that her words were not the truth, but nodded abruptly and looked away.

"Why do you ask?"

He gave her a lopsided grin. "Well, you know, I'd just hate to have to eat my own cookin'."

She gave him a tiny smile and raised her eyebrows. "That all?"

His smile dropped away suddenly, and she saw something change in his eyes as he looked at her. "Well, no. I'd just … I don't want you to go, is all."

She hadn't expected him to be so direct. She thought he'd make another joke, brush it off, leaving her to guess his real motives for asking. But he told her he didn't want her to go, and held her gaze, green eyes staring into blue ones for a while before she lifted her hands and gently removed those crooked glasses from his face, setting them carefully on the coffee table. When she turned back to him, he reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, trailing his hand down the side of her neck, then running his thumb over her mouth. Their first kiss was tentative, an experiment, but the second was consuming, a hypothesis proved. When they broke apart for air, he smirked at her with a gleam in his eye, and said, "We been wastin' time, Juliet." She nodded once in agreement, a smile stealing across her face, and then they stopped wasting time.

They could pinpoint one thing: the moment each of them figured out they were in love. She made him retell her the story sometimes, because it made her laugh. It was quitting time, on a cool day at the end of their first year there, and after he gave his daily report to the next security shift, he started for home. Halfway there he realized he was whistling--actually whistling--and stopped in his tracks. Just happy to be done with work and on to dinner, he thought. He started walking again, lost in thought, and stopped a couple minutes later when he realized he was humming. "Sonofabitch!" he muttered under his breath. "Prancing around here like a lovesick school boy or somethin'." Ohhhh … he thought. "Well, shit," he said aloud, and when he practically leapt up the steps to the house and flung open the door and saw her turn away from the sink with a smile on her face, a smile meant for him and him alone, he knew he was a goner.

He didn't tell her as much until days later, but when he did, he simply blurted it out after she'd made some silly joke about how he could rock a jumpsuit. "I love you." He looked down, feeling a little embarrassed, and when he looked up after several long, quiet seconds, he saw she had tears in her eyes. She wiped at the them with the back of her hand, and smiled up at him.

"I love you too, James Ford," she said quietly, and he could not seem to stop a silly grin from spreading across his face.

"That come as much a surprise to you as it did to me?"

She nodded, and laughed. "Yeah. I just … realized it right now, so. Yes, it really did."

"I figured something out before you did? Your game is slippin', woman," he said, but she grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him to her and no, her game was not slipping at all.

"Sometimes I forget that we're lying about bein' hitched," he whispered in her ear one night, maybe two years in.

"Sometimes I forget we're stuck in the past on a dangerous mystery island," she replied, laying her head on his chest, running her hand idly over his ribs.

He chuckled, and she smiled into his skin. "I like this game, beautiful. OK, sometimes I forget I got here by dropping out of the sky." He raised his hand up and buried it in her hair, smoothing it down her back.

"Sometimes I forget that we didn't like each other at first."

He snorted. "You didn't like me? Well, I'm hurt. I always thought you were hot, even if you were a bitch."

"Hey!" She lifted her head and looked at him, laughing, pretending to be offended as she leaned over and nipped his ear before settling back down. "I always thought you were hot, too, but I also thought you were an ignorant hick."

"Hey now! You're gonna start a war you ain't gonna be able to finish if you keep talking like that," he growled, and then flipped her over onto her back, holding her arms in place and catching the surprised squeal she gave with his mouth. Later, when she lay in his arms and he thought she was asleep, he murmured, "Sometimes I forget I ever loved anyone else," and she was still for a moment, letting his words drift into the summer air before whispering, "Me, too."

One day they were pretending, and then suddenly, they weren't, and if you'd told either of them three years ago that things were going to play out like this, neither would have believed it for a second. And yet. Sometimes he worried about what would happen if they caught back up to the future, and sometimes she worried about what would happen if the future met them where they were. But here in the meantime, each day felt like the start of something new, and it seemed like what they had was enough to get them through anything. Even monsters. Even shifts through time. Even the return of those they'd given up for dead.