Title: Contrast
Rating: PG
Summary: All of Sawyer’s edges are sharp. Jack doesn’t even have to get close to see that.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: For gottalovev. I wanted to get this posted before I go on vacation so you know I didn't forget. ;)



She picked this icon for me to base a ficlet/drabble on:

And here it is:

All of Sawyer’s edges are sharp. Jack doesn’t even have to get close to see that. If anything, the distance makes it easier to see him. See the way he carries himself, the way subtle things change about him when he thinks no one is looking. He’s still hard-edged, permanently on his guard; just in case. It’s a change that no one who wasn’t looking for it would see.

Jack is looking for it. He’s looking for something in Sawyer that isn’t on the surface. Something he doesn’t show anyone. Something more. Because Jack has to believe there is more. That there’s a reason for what he shows and for what he hides.

The change he sees is just a glimpse, just a whisper, the tip of something much bigger. Jack knows it’s there, it has to be there, and whatever it is, he needs to see it. He needs to know that there’s more to Sawyer than meets the eye. Something different. Something better.

Jack waits.

And he waits.

And he waits.

He wonders how many people before him have tried to see changes in Sawyer – not to change Sawyer, because Kate is living proof that the effort is misguided – before him. He wonders how many people have dug deep and been confronted only with more layers.

When they don’t speak – which is often – Jack watches Sawyer, makes sure Sawyer doesn’t see him doing it. He studies how he interacts with people, how he looks when he’s by himself. He waits for the moment when the man will start making sense to him; it appears, as the days and weeks pass on, that moment will not be coming.

Until the day that Jack stops looking for it. He’s walking up the beach to his tent, tired, with the intention of trying to actually make it through a night of sleep. He feels the heat of the sun, the brightness burning his eyes, until something blocks it. That’s when Jack looks up, and abruptly halts.

Sawyer is blocking the sun. Sawyer is nothing but a shadow, but suddenly, Jack can see everything. His edges are soft now, and it makes it easier to see every sigh and the way that his shoulders slump and then square again. He’s nothing but an outline, and, oddly enough, it makes him easier to see. Easier to see without the hard edges in Jack’s way.

Everything is right there, in the contrast.