Just a small Jate oneshot I wrote as I struggled with insomnia. Set sometime after The Long Con. Not really fluff, not really angst, just a reaction to Jate withdrawal :p I have not forgotten about my other story, I do intend to update soon.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: They are all mine! Muhahahaha! No seriously, not mine, not profiting, just using for fun. The genius that is LOST belongs to JJ, Damon and the rest of the "brains" behind it.

Too Real

It was that time during the night when the traces of sunset had not completely been lost. Kate saw him sitting there, alone on the beach, staring out to the horizon. It was a rare sight, Jack sitting, doing nothing. Things between them have gone from bad to worse since they had kissed; since she ran. At first he would acknowledge her existence at least, after the incident with the others he stopped talking to her completely and now after Sawyer pulled his con on them, he hasn't even looked at her.

She hated how it was making her feel, she knew that it was up to her to eventually go back to him, open up, explain… apologize.

After a few moments of watching him sink in his own existence, Kate came up to where he sat. Slowly she lowered herself onto the sand a few feet to his right and slightly behind him.

From where he sat, Jack could not see who it was that had settled behind him, but he knew it was her. He just did.

Kate did not say anything. She just sat. She shifted her eyes between Jack and the horizon. With her right hand she traced circles in the sand, while her chin rested on her left arm.

Jack, now resting back on his elbows, could hear her breathing behind him. He remembered how it was before, both of them sitting together on the beach talking about everything and nothing. He knew it was different now. It could change again, he thought, but it will take time.

"I had nothing to do with Sawyer's con, Jack" Kate said abruptly yet softly without looking up.

Jack nodded slightly, after a second he said, "I know, Kate," without looking up.

Kate looked up, taking in the view that was before her, "…just wanted to say… to tell you."

No one spoke for a couple of minutes, but the silence was not awkward. It was relaxing, to both.

"It's only been two months," Jack said, breaking the silence, without shifting his eyes and still not looking at Kate.

"It feels like forever…"

"It feels like a life time…"

Kate and Jack said at the same time. With that, some of the tension that had been building up the past week seemed to lighten. Jack turned his head and looked at Kate. At that moment, their eyes locked for the first time in days. Jack managed a smile, which Kate slowly paralleled.

Kate shifted her position forward, still a few feet away from Jack, but at the same level now.

Jack's eyes remained on Kate as she moved forward. Kate turned to look at Jack just as he took his eyes off of her and looked back towards the horizon.

They fell silent again for a while.

A few moments later Jack spoke again, without taking his eyes off the horizon, "sometimes it feels like… all this is… not real… like it's a dream. I feel like any moment a flight attendant is going to come wake me tell me we are about to land."

Kate watched Jack as he spoke softly, surely and quite emotionally; his eyes fixated as though reading a book which lay on the horizon.

Still looking at Jack, she replied, almost in whisper, "but it is, Jack. It is real." She shook her head slowly.

Jack turned to her, now only a foot apart, as they had been slowly and discretely moving towards each other. He looked deeply into her eyes, resting and searching in those green eyes, which always seemed to have something to say and something to hide.

"I know it's real," he said, still drowning in her gaze, "too real," he said, or rather whispered.

Kate's gaze didn't falter. She looked deeply into Jack's eyes. He was the one person she could not really read, for the first time in her life. She knew that his eyes, his look said and meant more than a thousand words she had heard. Yet there was always something there for her to think about, a mystery. Those eyes, although comforting and warm, kept her wondering if she could ever read him.

It was Jack who first looked away, perhaps he was the one more scared of finding anything deeper at the moment, or revealing anything more, for he knew that if anyone were to break into him, she was the only one capable.

"I miss the day when my worst nightmare was finding myself in OR wearing nothing," Jack chuckled slightly, and as it left his mouth it felt strange, as he realized he hasn't smiled in weeks.

Kate managed a giggle, as she enjoyed his which she had grown to love but has missed recently.

"I wish I was still having nightmares of being recognized in the gas station by a six-foot rabbit," Kate smiled looking out to sea, "not ones of being snatched out of the jungle by a tree-knocking pillar of smoke or being captured by a native tribe of madmen."

That last phrase left them both frozen. It was the nightmare that they both feared the most. Jack had since that day not slept, as the image of Kate gagged, with a gun to her neck kept repeating in his mind twenty-four hours a day.

They were now sitting right next to each other, only an inch of light breeze separating them.

Jack turned to Kate, who was staring down at the sand between her legs.

"Did he do anything to you? Zeke?" he asked, knowing that he should have asked hat days ago.

Kate shook her head without looking up. Jack lowered his head trying to catch her gaze. Sensing his searching eyes, Kate raised her head slightly, looked into his eyes and with a sad smile drawing on her face, she muttered, "I'll be fine."

Kate took one more look into his eyes, and then looked back out to sea.

Without thinking about it, Jack raised his hand and rested it on the top of Kate's back, and with his thumb stared to rub, slowly yet smoothly the bottom of her neck where it met her back. Jack watched her closely as she sank into her thoughts.

His hand on her skin gave her goose bumps all over her body. His one touch seemed to send a shiver down her spine, one she had never felt before. He could by the simple act of putting a hand on her back make her feel that everything was going to be fine.

With his hand sill caressing her back, Jack took his eyes off Kate and stared back at the ocean.

They sat there, silently for a while, until

"Jack! Jack!", someone came running out of the jungle, "quick, someone just bashed open his head."

Within a split second, Jack had stood up and turned back into Dr. Jack. Kate watched him as he transformed and closed up again to become the Dr./leader who should not waver.

Before heading off, Jack looked back at Kate who was still sitting, and whispered, with a smile only she knew and understood,

"too real."