Title: Earth
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Sun smells like earth more often than not. When he finds her, after a long day's work for the both of them, she's usually sweating and covered in dirt from her garden. He’ll readily admit he wants her even more then.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: Would you look at that, I can write. This was written for elise_509, who wanted Jack/Sun, gardening in the rain. Also used for psych_30, prompt #25: placebo effect.



Sun smells like earth more often than not. When he finds her, after a long day's work for the both of them, she's usually sweating and covered in dirt from her garden. He’ll readily admit he wants her even more then.

The part of him that feels guilty for what they are doing is often eclipsed by the part of him that can’t keep his hands off of her. Jin is gone, he reminds himself. They aren't really doing anything wrong. But Jin was a friend, a good man, and Sun was his wife. It feels wrong when he takes too much time to think about it, but when he's with her, when they're sleeping and she's curled against him, he can't imagine ever letting anything come of his guilt. He can't imagine her going away, being away from her. And he doesn't want to.

A world without her, without her smile and her voice and her smell is impossible, even painful to think about, so he tries not to. He loses himself in her, in being with her, in breathing her in so that he'll always have her.

He goes to her on a dark afternoon, hoping to find her in the garden, so that the smell of the earth and the plants will surround them, so that it will magnify the scent on her skin a hundred times over.

And she’s there, sure enough, fingers sifting through the earth and burying new seeds, tending to growing plants. He watches from afar for a little while, as she wipes her forehead with her dirty hand and smears it across her porcelain skin. He steps out then, taking off his backpack and discarding it by the side of the garden. She looks up, smiling, and her hand goes to the back of his neck when he kisses her.

“I love the way you smell,” he tells her.

“I’ve noticed,” she replies, turning her attention back to the garden. “I was hoping you would come. You usually wait until I am finished here to find me, but I thought you might come today.”

“Why’s that?”

She shakes her head and looks up at him. “It was just a feeling,” she tells him, as her hands continue to work through the ground, uprooting a few weeds and tossing them aside.

“I like it here,” he tells her, looking around at the canopy of trees above them, at the tall bushes that seemed to insolate the garden. He looks back to her and sees her smiling. She nods.

“So do I.”

“It reminds me of you,” Jack explains. “The smell…I come here sometimes, when I need to be alone.”

She nods. “I know.” He screws up his face, confused, and she lets out a small laugh. “Shoeprints.”

He nods slowly, ducking his head and smiling. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” she replies. “I like that you feel comfortable in this place.”

“I feel comfortable with you,” Jack says. She looks up at him, evenly, considers him for a little while, before shaking the loose earth from her hands and sitting down, facing him.

“I am glad,” she says. He reaches for her hand, holds it on top of her knee, and tugs at it gently. She smiles, slowly, and goes where he pulls, fitting her small body in-between his legs and kissing him. He grunts, softly, when his back connects with the ground, but it doesn’t slow him down. He pulls her closer, hands tight around her small waist.

“Jack,” she says, trying to get his attention. He mistakes her intention, however, and kisses her harder. She takes hold of his face, smearing the dirt from her hands against his skin, and kisses him until they are both breathless, until he is forced to pull away and his attention is restored.

He opens his eyes, smiles at her, and she smiles back. “It’s going to rain,” she tells him. He looks up to the sky, then back to her.

“Should we-” But the rain comes, quickly and before he can finish, pouring down on them and turning the earth beneath their bodies to mud. They sink and their clothes become instantly transparent. Jack thinks that he should be thinking practically, that he should suggest they need to find shelter as soon as possible, but he isn’t and he doesn’t. Instead he pulls Sun’s dripping wet body back to his, and she goes, with something akin to enthusiasm, pulling the sopping wet clothing from his body before turning her now clean hands on her own clothes, tossing her shirt away, and putting her hands on his neck, pulling him up to meet her kiss. And, as always, he goes.

They make love in the garden. The earth molds to their skin as the move, crushing the occasional plant and unearthing the occasional seed. They don't notice, focusing on each other until it's over, until she rolls on top of him, breathless and soaked and, now, naked. He breathes heavily, and the rise and fall of his chest lifts her whole body over and over again until it evens out. They both smile and begin the search for their discarded clothing, noticing, only then, that the rain has stopped.

“We’re filthy,” she tells him.

Jack shrugs. “The ocean isn’t that far, right?”

“We’re too close to the beach,” she replies. “But I know of a place.”

Jack tilts his head at her. “Where?”

*

The spray of the water cast from the waterfall hits the back of his neck every now and then, but it’s the furthest thing from his mind. In the middle of the humid jungle, a cool swim in the lagoon is just what he needed.

“Kate showed me this place,” Sun tells him, her bare arms wrapped around his neck. He runs his hands over the skin of her waist under the water, holding her in his arms, against his body.

“It’s beautiful,” he replies, but he’s looking at her. She smiles and he reaches up, pushing a thick strand of wet hair out of her face. She turns into his hand and her eyes slide closed.

“I love you,” he tells her. Her eyes open, slowly, but her smile is even. She looks him straight in the eyes and he looks back. “Is that wrong?”

“I don’t think that love can be wrong,” she replies. “I did love my husband. But he is gone. I miss him every day, but wallowing in my grief is not the life that he would want for me. He knew, from the very beginning, that you were a good man, and I do not believe that he would hold against you what we have now.” Her arms tighten around his neck and he looks up at her, as the light seeping through the leaves and tree-branches frames her head. “I love you. I am happy with you. And no matter what he has done, the kind of man he could be, I believe that Jin would want me to be happy.”

“Yeah,” Jack replies, but his voice is laced with doubt. Sun sighs and rests her cheek on top of his head, kisses his short, spiky hair.

“Trust me,” she says, but it comes out as more of a question. He nods against her body.

“More than anyone,” he replies.

“Than believe me now.”

He nods again and she pulls away, leaning back against his hands as they return to her waist. She smiles at him, placing her hands on his cheeks and running her thumbs under his eyes.

“I do,” he tells her, before pulling her body against his and kissing her, again and again.