Title: Shed Our Skin, Let the Sun Shine In
Rating: PG
Summary: Harper’s warning still rings in her head, even after all of this time.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: Used for un_love_you, prompt #12: I'm drunk. Set during 'The Other Woman'.



They bob up and down in the ocean, rising and falling with the waves. Juliet holds onto Goodwin’s neck and laughs as he tries to catch his footing on the shallow ocean floor and keeps slipping. They’re not out too far, but their both a bit drunk from the wine.

Juliet, more so. She knows because she had six glasses to his three. She had no intention of getting drunk, but when Goodwin brought up making their relationship public, she suddenly became quite thirsty. Harper’s warning still rings in her head, even after all of this time.

Ben doesn’t seem dangerous, and he’s certainly never threatened her. Maybe he watches her a bit too closely, and maybe she tries to brush that off. What would he do, if he knew? And why would he do anything that Harper would feel the need to warn against?

“Hey,” Goodwin tries to get her attention, and she realizes, then, that she’s been staring into space, her mind racing even though the buzz of the wine. She needs to stop thinking, is what she needs to do. She needs to concentrate on this and on now, because soon, they’ll have to go back and pretend again.

“You sure do stare off into space a lot,” he says, with a smile; the kind of smile she’s all to happy to return. She feels Ben start to lift from her head, from her thoughts, the more she smiles and the more the waves rock them up and down. “What’re you thinking about?”

She tights her arms around his neck, and he tights his arms around her back, lifts her up a bit higher in the water and make her laugh. She shakes her head, smiles wider. “Just you,” she answers, and now, finally, it’s true.