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Clementine is pressed snugly into her side, soft cheek layered hard against the lattice of her ribs. Juliet relishes it - the warm weight of the nine-year-old little girl, the spill of tawny blonde hair across the arm she has wrapped around her back, the subtle jerk of her body as she fights the fall of sleep.
They had just finished Christmas Eve dinner with the entire family. Rachel and Julian had gone home for the evening, Julian eager to get to bed so Santa would come quick. Cassidy had rushed out to visit a friend she knew in the area, and they decided to end the evening with a Christmas movie before she returned to collect Clementine. But first, it was time to enact a new tradition Juliet had promised James’s daughter.
“Dad is taking forever,” she yawns, wiggling onto her stomach to look up at Juliet.
“Probably just prettying up for you. It’s a special occasion,” Juliet teases, brushing back the girl’s bangs.
Clementine scoffs. “He only pretties up for you.”
“I can hear you!” James calls from behind the closed bathroom door.
“Then hurry up!” Juliet shouts back, while Clementine snickers and pushes up on her bony knees.
“Juliet?” she says, quieter, blue eyes that mirror her father’s lowering to where she toys with the ring on Juliet’s left hand. “Can Christmas be like this next year?”
“We’ll have to talk to your mom first, but I’m sure we’ll work something out,” Juliet assures her, letting her twirl the engagement ring around and around her finger, thumb circling the diamond.
Clementine purses her lips, pensive. “Mom’ll say yes.”
“Yeah?” Juliet hums, figuring as much, but curious about the shy curve of Clementine’s lips, the fidget of her fingers over Juliet’s.
“I like it like this. Bein’ family.” Juliet’s lips twitch at the words and the slightest tease of Clementine’s southern drawl. It is not nearly as prominent as James’s, or Cassidy’s, but the touch of it was always charming. “Mom loves it too. She told me.”
Juliet’s chest blooms with warmth for the little girl and maybe with some relief, too. Cassidy is hardly the easiest to read.
“She likes you and Aunt Rachel. And Julian, she can never stop talking about how he’s real cute,” Clem grins, finally lifting her gaze, aquamarine eyes sparkling back at her. “She even likes Dad. She doesn’t call him names anymore. Much.”
Juliet chuckles and reaches forward, tucking one of the long strands of hair behind Clementine’s ear.
“Well, we all love you, and we’ll always do everything we can to spend Christmas together.”
“As a family,” Clementine adds, her fingers - all bitten down nails and bronze skin - closing just a little tighter around Juliet’s.
“You okay, Clem?” Juliet asks a little softer.
Clementine nods, but that full bottom lip of hers is falling into a pout. “I just hate when it’s over.”
Juliet sits up from the stack of pillows at her back to lean in closer. “When what’s over?”
“A holiday or a visit. Anything. I hate when you leave or we leave or… I dunno, everything feels wrong for a long time after.”
Juliet recalls her life as a child of divorce - the constant back and forth, the oscillating between one parent and the other, the discontent of never feeling settled. Always having to move and travel and wish for more.
“Hey,” Juliet says, spine bowing as she ducks her head close to Clementine’s, like she’s sharing a secret. “I know exactly what you mean. But your dad and I are going to figure something out. Make sure we can be closer, so that these visits don’t require long car rides or plane trips. To make it feel right all the time.”
Clementine stares back at her, pacified but with a sliver of hope in the quirk of her lips, the gapped-tooth smile.
“Promise?”
“Would I ever lie?” Juliet arches an eyebrow.
Clementine mimics the gesture, but she’s still grinning back at her. “Not to me.”
Juliet laughs and drops a quick kiss to the top of Clem’s head just in time for James to emerge from the bedroom’s en suite.
Clementine gasps and climbs to the edge of the bed to witness James in the bright red pajama set that both she and Juliet were already wearing. She claps a hand to her mouth in an attempt to stifle a giggle, but it leaks out between her fingers.
He glares at his daughter. “I look stupid.”
“James,” Juliet chuckles, even as Clementine peels with laughter next to her, flopping backwards onto the mattress.
“Can’t believe you two collaborated against me like this,” he mutters, plucking at the vibrant red fabric of his shirt.
“I can’t wait for mom to see this,” Clementine grins, sitting up with a phone in her hand, the flash illuminating the horror on James’s face.
“Hey!” James lunges for the device, but Clem leaps from the bed, clambering out of the room before he can catch her. “Son of a-”
“Shh,” Juliet hums, but her own smile is a little too wide to contain.
“Damn blackmailing kid,” he curses. “You see what her mother teaches her?”
Juliet shakes her head in amusement, pushing up from the edge of the bed to reach for his offended form, banding her arms around his neck.
“I think you look sweet,” she muses, smoothing down the soft collar of his shirt. “Like a younger, more handsome Santa Claus.”
“You’re losing your touch, baby. Ain’t so good at lyin’ anymore,” he mutters, but she only leans forward to touch her lips to his cheek, feeling him soften.
“Wouldn’t lie to you,” she muses.
“Or Clem,” he adds, turning to catch her eye, let her see his smirk. “Heard y’all chattin’.”
Juliet bites her lip and tries not to mimic Clementine’s fidgeting from earlier, forcing her fingers to remain still over James’s collar. “Did Cassidy text you?”
“She just finished signing the lease. Gonna take Clem by the house tomorrow after they do presents for a little Christmas surprise. Figured we could meet them there.”
Juliet arches on her toes to throw her full weight into embracing him, fighting to keep her elation quiet so that Clementine wouldn’t overhear. James chuckles low into her hair, hugging her so tightly he nearly lifted her off her feet.
“She’s going to be so happy,” Juliet whispers, easing back down to the balls of her feet, her cheeks aching with the smile she can’t seem to wipe from her lips.
“She ain’t the only one,” James grins, lifting his thumb to the upturned corner of her mouth. “Scares me sometimes,” he admits, so quiet she has to hold her breath, strain to make out his words. “How well this is all going.”
Since returning from the island, Clementine has become an increasingly large part of their lives. It had taken them both some time to adjust to the idea of coming ‘home’, back to a modern world they had been grossly excluded from for her six years and his three, but one of the first things they both did was reach out to family.
Rachel and Julian came to her right away, arriving in Los Angeles on a red-eye flight. That reunion alone had been jarring. In a wonderful way, of course, but she hadn’t seen her sister in over six years, hadn’t even met her nephew, and she remains grateful that Rachel was so willing to uproot her own life for three months to spend time with her, to reconnect with her, and to meet James.
Her sister remained endlessly reluctant in those first few months, refusing to accept James as someone she could trust. Juliet couldn’t blame her, but it was the first time in her life that she found herself butting heads so harshly with her sister.
“You’re so different,” Rachel remarked softly one night, the two of them sitting in a rental home kitchen, side by side, steaming mugs of tea in their hands. “I mean, I didn’t expect you to be the same, but you’re so… strong now, Jules.”
Juliet had arched an eyebrow at her. “I don’t feel strong.” She remembers a tired laugh crumbling along her lips. “I feel absolutely decimated, to be honest. Like someone took me apart and put me back together again.”
On the plane, after the island had become invisible behind them and she felt safe enough to finally lift her head from the cove of James’s neck, to meet his eyes, to believe it was real, they had discussed what they would do next. What they would tell people. Who they would tell.
He already knew Rachel would be the first person she sought out, but neither of them knew how to explain her six years of absence, her relationship with him, all that had happened.
“We tell her what we can,” James had murmured, stroking his thumb back and forth along her knuckles. “We take it little by little, piece by piece, Blondie.”
And that was what they had done. At first, Rachel hadn’t even asked questions, the two of them weeping over each other for what felt like days straight. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks had passed that she sought more than the dismissals of “It’s hard to explain” and “James and I met on the island”.
Eventually, she began doling out the information to her sister, little by little, piece by piece. Rachel had always been a good listener, open-minded; Juliet shouldn’t have been surprised by how well she took in each chapter of her story, but even now, she still finds herself amazed, relieved, that Rachel had even believed her.
She doesn’t know if she would have been able to say the same, if she would have been able to trust in the state of her sister’s sanity like Rachel had in hers. It helped that James's story fused with hers so seamlessly, that when she asked him to assist her in explaining certain events, his account only reinforced hers.
There were things she had not shared, of course. Things too unbelievable, too painful, that she felt Rachel did not need to know. The time-travel, the way Ben had essentially used Rachel as blackmail, the brand at the base of her spine.
By the end of her stay in Los Angeles, Rachel remained reluctant of James, skeptical of him like she had always been of Juliet’s boyfriends, but there was a camaraderie between James and her sister that had never existed with anyone else. Rachel trusted him, Juliet realized. Trusted him with her sister’s life.
“You would never fight for anyone else like you fight for him,” Rachel told her once, when Juliet brought it up in a joking manner. “I could drag Ed’s name through the mud, and you would sit there, pursed lips and sad eyes, but James? I’ve never seen you look at someone like that, let alone bite my head off for criticizing his character. And god knows he’d kill for you. Probably has, I’m guessing.”
“What are you talking about?” Juliet recalls chuckling, even as her mind had flashed back to their time on the island, to the fierce way he had always protected her. The way he had killed for her. Just like she killed for him.
“Juliet,” Rachel had deadpanned. “That man looks at you like you hung the moon.”
They had been lounging in the backyard, the two of them relaxing in lawn chairs while James entertained Julian. Another unlikely bond she hadn’t seen coming. But her nephew adored James, running to him first any time Rachel visited, leaping into his arms even as he grew taller and lankier.
“I’m waiting for him to grow tall like a beanstalk the way you did,” Rachel sighed as James swung Julian onto his back.
Rachel and Julian returned to Florida with promises to return, Rachel insisting that she had only stayed in Miami in hopes of Juliet coming home and tossing out ideas of moving closer that caused Juliet’s heart to swell with hope.
Throughout her time with her sister, she had gently prodded James about Cassidy, about Clementine, receiving nothing but resistance at first. The more time he spent around Julian, though, the more she noticed the ache in him spreading wide, like a chasm coming to life inside of him.
Cassidy knew everything - Kate had told him when she initially arrived on the island in the 70s, so at least he didn’t have to explain, try to convince his ex, the mother of his child, that he was not insane or lying. They drove to New Mexico to meet Cassidy and Clementine only a few weeks after Julian and Rachel flew back to Miami, James wary to ever step foot on a plane again.
She was secretly grateful for the hesitation, for the time in an automobile versus the air.
Cassidy had greeted them at her front door with a neutral expression, assessing James with a hard gaze, but her eyes softened ever so slightly for Juliet.
“Kate talked about you,” she mentioned later, while the two of them watched James and Clementine conversing on the couch. “She told me you’re a good person. That you practically turned him into someone new.”
“No,” Juliet denied softly. “We just grew together.”
Cassidy nodded, but her eyes remained on Juliet for a beat longer.
They drove to New Mexico five different times that first year - signing a twelve-month lease on a house in Albuquerque with the excess of funds they had received from Oceanic. Clementine had her father’s wit, his sharp humor and his sly eyes, but she hesitated around him, slow to warm.
Not with Juliet.
She had a lot of time to chat with Cassidy while James and Clementine had some father-daughter time, getting to know the other woman, growing to like her, and enjoying her company. Realizing she had made her first friend post-island. And it seemed that Clementine sensed this ease between the two women, took it as a go-ahead that Juliet was ‘safe’.
On their second visit of the year, Cassidy insisted James, Juliet, and Clementine go out, do something fun. Clementine agreed with a shrug and wordlessly latched onto Juliet’s hand. James had looked at her in surprise, somewhat pleased, somewhat jealous. It did not take so long for her to begin showing her father the same courtesy, for her guard to lower and her affections for James to take root. And once Clementine liked someone, she was all in.
From that first year on, she loved them both as though she had loved them all her life. Hence, why Juliet had worked so hard to make their “first real Christmas together” special.
They had been back in society for two years now and were living in Florida. With neither of them having a special attachment to California, and all of their family existing in the South, it made more sense. Though, all of them - Juliet and James, Rachel, and Cassidy - were constantly throwing around ideas of a way to at least live in the same state so that they were closer together, rather than someone having to always fly or drive across state lines.
Nevertheless, for now, they lived in a two-bedroom, one-story yellow house not far from Rachel. The irony was not lost on her, but there was comfort in some familiarity, even if it was just a paint color.
Clementine had been excited for Christmas Eve with them, excited that her mother was invited for dinner, that Julian would be there to play with her, that they were acting like a real family. Juliet wanted to give her the full experience, every cheesy Christmas tradition she could think of.
But one of Clementine’s top requests?
Matching Christmas pajamas.
The two of them had taken up in James and Juliet’s bed weeks earlier, Juliet’s laptop positioned between them, scrolling through the endless options. Clementine’s head rested on her shoulder, and her sparkly red fingernails tapped against the screen every time she saw a pair she liked. Eventually, they had come to a decision.
And now, it was Christmas Eve, and they were all wearing a classic set of brilliant red pajamas with a white trim and matching buttons. Nothing too crazy, still festive, but something she never imagined James in.
“It scares me too,” Juliet murmurs, curling her fingers at his wrist, thumb to the steady beat of his pulse. “But I wasn’t even supposed to be here-”
His hands tighten at her waist, the mere mention of her cheating death rippling through his entire demeanor.
“So, I’m not questioning it,” she continues, tracing soothing circles along the inside of his wrist with her thumb. “I’m going to enjoy Christmas with my family, with that sweet little girl downstairs, with the man I’m going to marry in sexy Christmas pajamas-”
James scoffs. “Dorky ass Christmas pajamas.”
“Well, I like them,” Juliet picks up, ducking her head to drop a kiss to the edge of a collarbone the fabric doesn’t cover.
James rumbles with approval, burying his face in her hair. “Guess I don’t mind 'em so much on you either, sweetheart.”
“Dad! Juliet!” Clementine yells from downstairs. “Come on!”
“Cassidy will be back in a couple of hours, so let’s go watch a Christmas movie on the couch, and then you and I can celebrate Christmas together,” she murmurs, feeling his fingers skimming the elastic waistband of her pajama pants.
“You got a new tradition for us, Blondie?”
She shrugs, skimming her lips along the bone of his cheek to brush along the shell of his ear. “Just a different set of sleepwear.”