(Author's Note: I've only just started watching Lost, and I've made it to the fourth season. Any mistakes in plot are due to that.)
There were only a few things Kate and Sayid had in common, and one was hair. Dark curls, his tight, rigid, hers loose, free. So much like him, so much like her. They never had much in common, not their stories, their strengths, their weaknesses, not even sharing a kiss. But there was something detectable, tension palpable between them.
Where Kate was air, Sayid was ground. Kate was bird-like. She was fragile, balancing on branches that she always flew away from. Sayid was more...conscious. He lived by logic, by reasoning. He would always be a solider at heart. So they both existed on different levels. Kate blew in the breeze, while Sayid always stayed grounded. Somewhere between the two, however, there was gravity. An unmistakable pull. Sayid didn't like mysteries-he considered himself perceptive enough to deduce any person's motives. So Kate frustrated him. This was a case he couldn't solve, eyes he couldn't read, truths he couldn't coax. Though Sayid hadn't always done "coaxing".
They had one thing in common. They both weren't proud of the things they had done. Kate had spent her whole life running. Running from her stepfather, the law, her demons. And Sayid ran from what he had done. Ran from the faces that haunted him in his dreams, faces he couldn't always name, ran from the blood that stained his hands. But he was running towards something-his Nadia, and maybe penance for his sins. Kate lacked that direction. Sayid always had a purpose to his escaping, but Kate…she was just running.
And they had in common an attraction. Maybe it was never acted upon, but it was still there. Simmering below the surface, a lust that couldn't be denied. You could blame it on the island. A natural aphrodisiac, with its constant heat causing sweat. Sweat that so longed to be mingled with another's.
And although Kate was air, and Sayid was ground, they had one element in common between the two of them.
Fire.