Title: Collide

Author: Sky Samuelle

Rating: PG13

Pairing: Juliet/James

Status: complete

Summary: Dharma era. Story of how James went from loving Juliet to being in love with her. Beta'ed by lj user="martinigirl15"

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Everything between them seemed to evolve like a slow, natural progression. Left behind by their companions on that god-forsaken island, they went from unlikely allies to appreciated companions to surprisingly well-attuned friends, and then when time travel got them stuck among hippie scientists full of great hopes but meant for certain death, becoming lovers felt like the most sensible path to take.

The shift was always so subtle, and the memory of previous loves tragically lost so haunting that they never really saw it coming until it happened: they fell in love.

There were hints along the way, but James managed to look away from every one of them.

Afterwards, he would look behind and wonder when it had begun, when he had stopped simply 'loving ' Juliet and he had begun to fall for her.

At first it felt weird, having a female friend when for years his life consisted only of targets, hate and diffidence. Juliet grew into a sort of real-life heroine, a treasured creature that lived in that undefined place where bitter reality and ideal met, although James never compared her beauty to Kate's. Those two women existed to him on two utterly different and irreconcilable planes. Often, when he looked at Juliet, he found himself seeing her more as some complex entity -a person, who accidentally happened to be a woman- rather than an attractive girl, while Kate, in his eyes, had always been somehow defined by her femininity.

One thing he liked about Juliet was her persistence in calling him James, constantly reminding him that he couldn't bullshit her about who he really was. She knew every single misdeed, misstep and ugly intention he had been accountable for before the crash, yet she still had his back.

As he came to love his life in Dharmaville – having a steady job, people who respected him, a daily schedule- he came to love the fact that he could share it with her. It was as if Juliet and Juliet alone could validate if that life truly belonged to James Ford, although he masqueraded as Jim LaFleur.

Their first New Year's party in Dharmaville was a milestone.

There was wine and beer, music and dance, a tipsy Pierre Chang who insisted on blurting out lame dirty jokes, Miles forcing Dan and Jin to participate in a poker match with Horace and Phil, a drunken chorus of 'Yellow Submarine', cheers and laughter.

Juliet even wore a dress, and James liked the way it became her, how relaxed she looked in it.

At some point in the night – they were talking with Amy, he remembered- he noticed Phil checking her out, eyes dark with definite intent. It sent a ripple of unease through James, like that was especially offensive to him and that lustful gaze alone could get her dirty.

So he wrapped his arm around her waist and didn't question why it satisfied him so much, when she leant on him, pressing herself against his side.

They weren't as inebriated as they were pretending to be when he walked Juliet back to her place that night, or when he kissed her on her porch and she kissed him back.

He would have questioned why he had done that if she had not whispered against his neck "It's okay, I miss sex too."

She took him to her bed and he discovered that, while Juliet wasn't overt about her sensuality, there was a side of her that possessed a self-aware, unashamed sexuality. She was not the way he had supposed she could be in the sack – the motherly type, who liked to coddle and to be coddled - but she was a purposeful lover, comfortable with what she wanted and what she wanted to give, beautiful and powerful, a lioness.

There was a darkness lurking inside her eyes as they met his, as her nails scratched his back and her thighs squeezed him forcefully. It surprised him, but it wasn't what would keep him coming back for more.

It was the sensation of being inside her, so strange and foreign and sweet. It could not be properly described, but it felt kind of like being forgiven for any and every sin by some arcane and unknown deity James didn't even believe in.

The morning after, he woke to Juliet's attempts at untangling her legs from his. She froze as their gazes met.

He wanted to say something but he felt unusually intimidated by her half-naked figure wrapped in pale sheets, her golden hair spilling over her bare shoulders in a lovely disarray.

Then she shook her head and laughed.

"Way to bruise my ego, Blondie," he growled, realizing he was naked, since the little minx had stolen all the sheets.

"It's just that… this is such a cliché. Getting smashed at an office New Year party, having inappropriate sex and then the awkward morning-after. This is the most normal thing that's happened to me in forever"

"And we are stuck in 1975," James trailed off, grinning as he caught onto the irony.

"Exactly!"

Seeing her giggling put him in a good mood, but not as much as watching her burning her omelet did later.

That evening he decided Juliet wasn't Kate but she didn't need to be, because Jules was formidable on her own and this meant a lot to him.

James grew to love the fact that Juliet would tell him anything if he pestered her hard enough. She trusted him that much. When she caught a certain bug-eyed child staring at her intensely during lunch time, he saw her expression becoming imperceptibly distant, her lips curling briefly downwards before she retreated somewhere deep inside herself and she turned to reply to some comment of Miles'.

Too bad he had the con man instinct to smell untold, heavy truths.

He would question until everything spilled out: Ben's sick obsession, Goodwin, Goodwin's death.

"I saw his wife every day, and every day I got a kick out of knowing that she knew about the affair but would do nothing. I hated the weakness I saw in her because before the island, I used to be her and couldn't forgive myself for it."

James couldn't quite come to terms with this image of Juliet, the cheated wife more alike to his past targets than the proud woman he held in his arms nowadays, but he hated the shame etched in the curving of her shoulders and he hated that his brain could not come up with anything but banalities to comfort her.

In the end, he stayed silent but put his lips to better use. He kissed her forehead, her closed eyelids, her cheekbone and her mouth. Hoping she would understand how special she was, all the more for these dark depths she hid inside herself.

It came down to a slow succession of small things.

Soon James discovered he missed her when she wasn't constantly by his side. Her company made everything more colorful, more pleasant, just plainly better than it was otherwise. He wanted Juliet around all the time.

The smirk never came to his lips so promptly as when he saw her striding before him: she walked like a queen and that queen was his.

When she threw him small affectionate smiles across the room, knowing those smiles were for him alone caused something in his stomach to… flutter, warm and soothing.

Do I have a crush? – he questioned himself. The experience of butterflies was utterly alien to James Ford.

Even as a teenager, rushing into sex and the adult world, he had been spared from them.

Yet there was no denying that Juliet Burke was all it took to bring out the stammering schoolboy in him. The devotion he had to Juliet was a constant contradiction: visceral but so pure, passionate but almost childlike in its innocence.

She was nothing like his type: he used to go for lost, destructive little girls with hearts of steel. Like Kate, like Cassidy, like the poisonous slut who had precociously deflowered him forever ago.

But he was in love with Juliet, and for the first time, love felt wonderful.

Until he began wondering whether she felt the same.

"Jules?"- he murmured it into her ear like a thief into the night, her back against his chest, his arm brushing the underside of her breasts and keeping her close- "Do you love me?"

She didn't say anything, just laid there in his arms quietly shocked by his abrupt broaching of the subject. He allowed her to think, something in his gut aching and waiting impatiently. Juliet was like that: she needed to analyze the situation in order to come to a decisive course of action.

And then she was squirming in his firm hold and straddling him, pinning him under her with her limbs and her intensely blue eyes.

"Yes." – she paused, her lips twitching into a brave smile- "I love you, James"

She said it to him with such calm certainty than it left him undone, helpless.

He was the kind of man a woman like her could love.

He was good enough to be loved by her.

And he had an overwhelming impulse to be worthy of that love; because he was certain he didn't deserve it, whereas she deserved so much more.

"I love you back."

He grinned, and it was the beginning of something wonderful.

End