(no subject)

[slybrunette]

Title: Easier Said Then Done
Fandom: Lost
Pairing: Kate Austen/Sun Kwon
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 322
Prompt: #26 - Smell for slash_100
Progress: 23/100
Summary: You can never accurately judge the difficulty of a task until you're required to complete it yourself.

You can never truly appreciate the shortness on a belt until you have to fasten it around your own waist.

 

The thought occurs to Sun as she stands in front of the mirror, the belt she bought only seven months ago stretched to its limit in her hands. Almost at the same moment she realizes that statement could be a proverb, or at least a universally applicable metaphor.

 

You can never accurately judge the difficulty of a task until you’re required to complete it yourself.

 

Then she relates it to her own life.

 

She never thought having an affair would be so tricky. There were a million reasons why she might be gone all night, why she wouldn’t have changed her clothes, why she smelled like two different perfumes, why she wouldn’t look him in the eye across the breakfast table. Yet when the time came to voice the lie, to spill forth what she had previously thought would come naturally, she couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it. And something about that was comforting, meant she wasn’t as evil as she had thought adulterers were before Sun became one herself.

 

The rules were simple; don’t call or show your face at each other’s houses, don’t wear dark lipstick because it leaves behind a mark, always a different motel, never real names signed on the check-in sheet. But there was always the smell. Everything else fell away; he forgot the awkward pauses while she searched for excuses, the bed sheets were washed, the smudged makeup was reapplied, but the smell always remained. Days later she still had Kate’s scent, like sex and lies and guilt.

 

Yes, the rules were clear and fixed, but that was where the simplicity began and ended in this whole arrangement.

 

So Sun puts the belt away and grabs another from her closet, fastening it securely around her hips, while wishing all her problems were so easily solved.