On Our Way: An ode to Kara Thrace and Zak Adama. (Part 1/2)
title: On Our Way (Part 1/2)
author:
apodixis
spoilers: All seasons
pairings: kara/zak, brief hints at kara/lee
overall fic rating: NC-17
total word count: 17,700
notes: Not sure if many people are going to be interested in this since I know almost everyone I have added is a die hard Kara/Lee shipper, but here it is anyway. We only got to know Zak Adama through a few flashbacks and a couple conversations in the series. Somewhere along the way I started to love him more than was probably intended and decided to write a piece of the history he shares with Kara. I've tried to incorporate nearly every concrete detail we know about his life, but I've had to make some guesses/take some creative liberties on some points to make sense of it all.
summary: An ode to Kara Thrace and Zak Adama. How they met, who they were, and how they fell in love, told through a series of glimpses into their lives.
other sections: Part 2
The first day Kara’s no longer just a pilot but also a flight instructor, she tries to channel the tough-as-nails Major that had been hers years before. There’ll be no nonsense, she decides, reminding herself that though she’s only a few years older than most of her cadets, they’re not her friends. Never will be. She’s their superior and what she needs to have is their respect. This is the end of the line for her. Her ass still stings from the figurative boot she felt kicking her off the Triton. Though she loves to see how far she can push the rules, the system, or someone else, this time Kara knows she’s gone too far. If she fraks up here, there’s no question that she’ll be dishonorably discharged for a file far too full. Her abilities in the cockpit are the only reason she’s still hanging on by a thread.
She hesitates outside her classroom, and though the door’s closed, she can hear the rumble of raucous voices. They’re all kids still. It was only a few years ago that she was in their place and was the loudest and the worst of them, but she tries to build a wall inside, a way to detach and see them less like her and more like strangers. She tugs on the bottom of the top of her duty blues, straightening it though it doesn’t completely remove the deep and set-in wrinkles that come from sitting in a wrinkled heap in the bottom of her closet instead of dangling from a hanger. ‘Lieutenant Kara Thrace’ she tells herself, takes a deep breath, clutches her folder of papers a little bit tighter, and finally opens the door to step in.
They hardly notice her presence, some in their seats and some with their backs to the doorway as they continue to fool and joke around. For a second she considers letting it go, after all she’s never been the best of students, but she knows it isn’t how she should start her tenure as instructor. Instead, she makes it to her desk and slams the stack of folders down into the bare desktop, the slap of paper and her palm echoing in the room. Without even looking up, she knows she’s got their attention, can catch in the corner of her eye that some are standing and saluting, but without the respect she deserves. “On your feet,” she orders, her best impression of that old Commander of hers from the Triton, Myron Ruth, the person she can blame for being here to begin with. At least that frakker’s good for something.
They obey her orders, but she isn’t happy with it. “At ease,” she says and waits until they’re sitting comfortable. “Now get on your frakking feet and give me a real salute.” The second time is better, and while the faces of her cadets are serious, aware that they’ve already started off on the wrong foot and trying desperately not to draw attention to themselves individually, there’s one who doesn’t wear even the hint of fear on his face. While the others stand tall and somber with eyes dead ahead, he smiles and lets his eyes follow her. Trouble, she thinks. That one’s going to be trouble.
“I’m Lieutenant Thrace, call sign Starbuck, but you can call me God. I’m here to decide who doesn’t have what it take to fly Vipers. Not all of you are going to finish this course. Not all of you are going to pass your final flight test even if you do manage to finish. Some of you may get a second shot at Raptors, and some of you are going to end up mopping the deck. If you think I’m a push over because I’m young,” she smiles to herself, though when her eyes rise she finds them meeting the pair that belong to that student in the front row, her grin returned over his dark features, “I want you to abandon that idea right now.”
“Attendance,” she shuffles through her papers until she finds the list of her students and retrieves a pen from the pocket of her slacks. “…is mandatory. Now, Adama, Zachary?” Her hand is poised, tip of her pen beside the first name on the list.
“Here, God, Sir.”
Kara glances up to put the name to the face and voice, and for the third time, she’s staring back at the fresh-faced cadet with dark brown eyes and a head of hair to match. Definitely trouble.
-
They spend the first few weeks immersed in textbooks and videos, diagrams and protocol. Though there’s nothing more Kara would love than to take them into the simulators on their first day, she knows they need to earn it. Kara’s heard it all already, the complaints are never ending as each of her students pass through various stages of frustration with her. Some have already earned their own call signs from her because of it, and she takes comfort knowing that the reminder of their first few days of basic flight will follow them around for the rest of their careers. An ode to the man who named her Starbuck, perhaps. There’s one she’s never heard a hint of complaint from, though, and at first Kara thinks maybe he’s just the smartest when it comes to not being caught in the act of badmouthing her. In the end, she’s wrong.
He’s one of the last to leave, day after day, and on his way out he stops by her desk to say goodbye on his own. At first, she’s puzzled by it, and files away his face in her head on the list of brown nosers. It doesn’t take long for it to become routine, and on the days when his fellow students have caught him in conversation as they walk out and he can’t escape, he raises his hand to her in silent goodbye. After awhile, she starts to return it.
She’s taking things slow in first introducing each of her cadets to the sims, a contrast to the coming months ahead as they each get used to the controls in front of them. Each cadet reports for their one-on-one meeting with her after their normal class hours, and Kara begins to realize that maybe she just doesn’t have the patience for this kind of gig. She throws out two cocky nuggets before they even get halfway through their first scenarios, and with enough groveling she may give them a second chance. By the end of the week, she’s like a candle burning at both ends and all she wants is to do hit the bar and drink herself into tomorrow afternoon. There’s one left, though, the poor sap who landed the very last time slot and has to spend his Friday night with her rather than out reaching oblivion with the help of a bottle of ambrosia: Zachary Adama, or ‘Zak,’ as she now knows he likes to be called.
He’s early, waiting for her to finish up with the penultimate classmate of his, and Kara finds him sitting on the bench in the hallway, leg nervously bouncing in anticipation.
“Zak?” She asks, holding open the door to the larger room and she can’t help but notice the tension running through him.
His head lifts quickly and for perhaps the first time, there isn’t already a smile there, though he forces one anyway. He’s like a tightly wound spring, not sure when he’s going to just let go. “Ready, Sir,” Zak says, always observing decorum.
“Let’s go, nugget.” They make their way inside, towards the cockpit that looks like it was cannibalized straight from one of the new Mark VIIs, the front nose, tail, and wings missing. Here, they’re not required. “Your flight suit fit okay?” Though they’d all been fitted for them even before finding out who their instructor was, it’s the first time the suits have ever been worn.
“I feel like I’m in a sauna,” he admits, pulling at his collar. His suit’s not even fully zipped and already he’s bordering on heat exhaustion.
Kara barks out a laugh, forgetting for a moment how little she wants to be there. “That feeling of stewing in your own sweat never really goes away.” She’s been in hers most of the day, but grown used to that sticky feeling that coats her skin. He fidgets with the helmet he holds from one hand as they reach their destination, and Kara, without a thought, reaches forward to where his zipper dangles limply at his waist, and tugs it up to his throat. Their eyes catch, and before Zak can say anything else, she fumbles over some words. “Don’t be nervous.”
“Me? Nervous?” He laughs, though it only further hints at the truth and both of them know it. At least now he isn’t thinking just about how little he actually wants to get into that simulator, but instead about the way her fingers had gently brushed over his abdomen as she pulled the zipper up.
It’s alarming to her how she can’t stop from smiling when he’s near, and for a moment she bites at her lower lip as she puts the metal collar around his neck, avoiding his waiting gaze. She catches herself, forces her lips to purse, do anything else but that. Kara knows her body’s unconscious cues, and that-that biting of her bottom lip-indicates the worst. He’s handsome, perhaps not in all the traditional ways, and his coloring is a little too dark all over for her tastes, but there’s a flutter in her stomach at their close proximity. Kara has to step back, put some distance between them.
Zak takes the hint and climbs into the simulator, pulling his own helmet on until it clicks into place. Kara’s there to pull the faux-canopy shut for him, the glass around him made of digital screens that fade into his starting location: an unnamed battlestar somewhere in the deep of space. She pulls her headseat on, connected her to his comm system, and steps a few feet away to where she sits at her computer station. There, she watches the details of his flight as well as a couple computer generated images of his ship from a variety of angles so she can monitor his progress.
The take-off goes smoothly; it’s hard to frak up getting shot out of a launch tube. But out on his own, his ship wobbles unsteadily and though Kara knows she would have yelled out a condescending remark by now to any other student, she holds her tone back. “Use both hands on the stick if you’re having trouble keeping her steady,” she advises. He’s new, he’s nervous, and for him, she suddenly has the patience. Right now, she’ll let him get away with a little extra.
The rest of the session passes, but instead of adjusting to the feel of flying a ship over time, he’s still as stiff as he was at the start. She’s seen it before. By no means is he a natural, and she isn’t sure if there’s even promise in him for him to improve from this kind of beginning.
“Why do you want to fly Vipers, Zak?” She asks afterward, both of them walking out together after locking down the hangar.
His hand at his side tremors, but he swings his arm slightly as they walk so she doesn’t notice. It’s a mix of nerves, fear of what she’s seen in his first test flight, and muscle fatigue from gripping that damn stick so frakking tight for the last hour. “My father’s a pilot. Well… he used to be. Now he’s a Commander.”
“That’s your father? Commander Adama?” Kara asks, ashamed she didn’t put the pieces of it together beforehand. She’s neither met the Commander nor heard much about him, but it’s hard to be a member of the Colonial Fleet and not know the names of those who sit in some of the top positions.
“He was one of the best, flew way back in the cylon war.”
“So it’s a family thing then, father to son?”
“My older brother, too. Lee definitely follows in our Dad’s footsteps.”
Zak’s more sullen than she’s ever seen him, although she can’t miss how he perks up at the mention of his brother.
He stops at the exit, the final doorway before they’re plunged out into the chilly darkness outside. “I bet he’d even give you a run for your money, Starbuck.” Zak uses her call sign, a gamble if he ever made one.
“Nugget, I’d like to see him try. I know for a fact I’ve got most of the sim records, so I hate to break it to you and your hero worship, but your brother’s been beaten by a girl.”
“You’re just as bad as him,” Zak jokes and smiles wide, the seriousness from only a moment before gone.
An hour before, all she’d wanted was to find a quiet corner of a bar, but as her eyes slip down to the glimpse of his chest not hidden by the set of double tanks beneath his open flight suit, she doesn’t care. “You’ve got no idea, kid, no idea.”
He walks her to her car even though the parking lot is in the opposite direction of his housing. In a clearer head, she would think something of it, but for the time being she allows herself to get lost in the conversation that fills the quiet. They’re about to say goodbye for once and for all when Zak disrupts the small talk.
“I know I was frakking pathetic in there, but I’ll get better, all right? Just give me a shot.” He’s heard the stories. A frak up so bad at the start is all it takes sometimes. The fleet isn’t exactly hurting for pilots in the time of peace, so they’ve got the right to be choosy. Already, he knows that his father pulled strings to get him there at all. He can’t bear to stutter and fall just out of the gate.
There’s pain in his voice, and coming from anyone else she would think it’s pathetic. A horribly ploy to get her to go light on him, not that she didn’t already do so on her own. But, she’ll help him, she decides. Go the extra mile and spend her nights beside his simulator if that’s what he needs to get him there. So long as he’s willing to work, Kara will continue to give. Maybe this is the second chance she’d so often wished others had shown her. “We’ll work on it,” she says, such few words for the complexities she feels. “I’ll get you there, Zak. I promise.”
They share a smile together, and his free hand gently rests over hers on the hood of her car. Neither of them want to move, just like neither of them want to acknowledge the touch. “I’ve heard from some of the other guys that they’ve seen you at a couple bars downtown. You’re not going to happen to be at one of those tomorrow, are you?”
It’s more than just a simple question, but she fools herself into playing dumb and lives in denial as he asks. “I might not be at Silversmith’s tomorrow with a couple friends. It might not be at around 2300 hours.”
Zak lets his hand slip from hers and backs away a few steps, never taking his eyes from her. “I won’t see you there then. And I won’t buy you a drink.”
Her head shakes as she glances away to open her car door. When she glances back up he’s further, but still looking to her, his hand raised in the gesture between them that’s become far too familiar.
Kara returns the wave and after a moment of watching his back retreating towards the heart of campus, she heads home.
-
She gets there after midnight, on the arm of a marine she knows from bootcamp. Zak Adama is the last thing on her mind, her body already buzzing from alcohol consumption. Life on Caprica and off a battlestar has some merit. At least here there’s no superior officer breathing down her neck, counting her drinks and goading her into a fight. Still she insists half of those fights she found herself in on the Triton weren’t hers alone, despite the fact that she always ended up in the brig by herself at the end of the night.
Kara returns from the bar with a bottle of something and a couple of shot glasses, laying them out over the table her group has called for themselves. She does one, then two, her laughter loud as she eggs her comrades on for a third. There’s no seats left, so she drapes herself across the lap of the man she came in with, not bothering to swat his hand away when it creeps up the thigh of her jeans and his thumb slips beneath the hem of her shirt, drawing circles over the skin he finds there. It’s familiar to her. The two of them, they’ve done this before, as long ago as when they were both listening to their drill instructor shout at them as they lapped around military property, and as early as the weekend before when Kara had an itch that needed to be scratched and he’d come over on a phone call in the middle of the night.
Her arm loops around his neck when she finally spots Zak across the bar from over the marine’s shoulder. He’s there with friends as well, or at least she thinks so by the company beside him. It doesn’t stop his eyes from rising to her a moment later, and she chooses to believe it’s her head’s cloudiness that makes her not look away, even as the man beneath her starts to kiss and suck at the flesh of her neck. She feigns the necessary noises of pleasure to keep him satisfied as he works, her fingers tangled in his hair, but not once does her eye contact break from the cadet across the crowded room. As always, Zak just smiles, even raises a questioning brow to her, but there’s amusement on his face. He’s the one to turn away from her in the end, laughter on his lips even though she can’t hear it from the distance.
Frak him, she thinks, and shuts her eyes for a second to try to drown herself in her eager little marine. A moment later she reopens them and there’s Zak again, this time cutting through the crowd with a beer in each of his hands, a smirk of satisfaction over his lips. She’s alarmed by it, certain that he’ll turn towards someone else at the last minute, but he doesn’t, just continues on his path towards her, only halting at the edge of their table.
“Kara,” he uses her first name and tilts one of the fresh beers towards her in offering even as the other occupants of the table eye him for his intrusion.
He’s never called her that before, and for a moment she wonders how he knows her first name at all. It can’t be hard to find out, but she sure as shit never told him. She likes it though, likes the way it slips from his tongue like he’s been saying it his whole life. He’s out of uniform, not a surprise since so is she, but still it’s a change from their day to day and Gods, he looks better even dressed like a civilian than he did as the dutiful soldier.
“Zak,” she returns it and pulls away slightly from the marine, who groans beneath her in disappointment. Had it been any one of those other nuggets using her first name, she would have torn them a new one for it. But for some reason she isn’t yet ready to admit, she doesn’t do it to him. Kara accepts the beer and nods her head, tipping the neck of the bottle towards his until they clink, a show of thanks.
“Where do you two know each other from?” The marine asks, irritated.
“Old friends,” Zak answers for her, his voice raised over the volume of music and people talking. He’s covering for both of them. There might not be a specific rule against it, but it’s in neither of their interests to be caught together sharing drinks as instructor and student. The answer seems to satisfy the man she’s come with, but Zak doesn’t back off. “Mind if I steal her away for a bit? Haven’t seen her in years, need to catch up.”
Both sets of eyes are on her and in a moment of panic, Kara just shrugs her shoulders towards the marine and stands quickly from his lap, unsteady on her feet and nearly toppling into Zak. He’s careful, hand on her arm as their chests brush together, and she’s not sure if it’s the drinks in her system or something else that makes her feel lightheaded and like a shock of electricity is tingling over her skin simultaneously. Without a word, Kara waves off the people behind her and follows him off. Gods, what the frak is she doing? Half of her gives a silent warning, a plea to keep the distance, but the other half of her doesn’t give a frak for any manner of sense. She’s got tunnel vision and all she sees is the muscle of his shoulders through the back of his t-shirt.
They find some space at the far end of the bar, a pair of stools recently vacated against the wall. It’s secluded in some ways, the bodies of others around them acting as a shield from the rest of the world, or at least enough of one to Kara’s slightly intoxicated mind.
“Shouldn’t mess with that guy,” she says, referring to the marine he’s stolen her from, “he fights dirty.”
“Oh yeah?” Zak isn’t worried. He turns himself in towards her. Their thighs touch, two bodies fighting for space together.
“I should write you up just for calling me by first name, you know.” There’s no seriousness in her words, and though she tries to make her face stern and threatening, she just breaks into warm laughter that is accompanied by his own. “Can’t let you kids think you can walk all over me.”
“Well I won’t tell anyone.” He takes a long sip from his beer then places it on the counter.
“I’ve been thinking,” she finishes off her own bottle and abandons it on the bar top, next to his. “If you need extra help with getting practice in, need some advice, I could make time-”
“I don’t really want to talk about flying right now, Kara,” he says her name again and it flows from his tongue even smoother than it did before.
“What the hell else is there?” It’s been her life for years now, a replacement for pyramid she lost to a bad knee, something to fill the void left by every other aspect of her disappointing life. She feels his hand stroking over that clothed knee in question, the one that was shattered years before and still bears the scars of all the surgeries done just to give her the ability to walk again. Her heart nearly skips at the touch, body warming to temperatures she’s only ever felt in a flight suit. “Zak…” She starts her protest half-heartedly. It isn’t like her to say no, but she’s trying as hard as she can.
He doesn’t hear her, at least not her words. He hears the pleading behind the way she says his name, like it’s meant to be a warning though it’s closer to begging. It only takes a second, but he leans across the small gap between them and with the eagerness of a teenager-which she reminds herself that he only barely isn’t one anymore-he presses their mouths together.
Kara can’t resist him then, parting her mouth invitingly, feeling his tongue desperate to explore and learn. Learn the way she tastes, the temperature of her mouth, the feel of her full lips against his thinner ones. She grabs into his arm on impact, fingers digging in to his skin as she channels away her urge to tell him to stop. He’s warm and soft, strong but not forceful. Zak started the kiss, but there’s no expectation in it, no demand for more, and for once it’s nice to let things just be what they are.
It’s him who pulls back eventually, just enough to catch her eyes as they lazily open, his hand already cupping her cheek. “I’ve thought about that for weeks.”
It’s a bold confession, and if Kara’s cheeks weren’t already pink, her blushing would be more than apparent. Her tongue slips out, tip of it feeling over her lower lip, savoring the fading feeling of their mouths joined together. This is wrong, so very frakking wrong. She knows it, and even though he acts otherwise, she knows he knows it as well. No good can come of this, but the ache between her legs starts to tell her something different.
“This can’t-”
“Yeah, yeah,” he laughs her words off. “Do you want me to stop?”
He’s so unlike the boy she saw the night before, unsure of himself and asking for a second chance. Even the person he is in class, there’s only a shadow of him with them tonight, and seeing the new side of him makes her pulse feel erratic. She shakes her head to tell him no, and this time she’s the one who leans in, her mouth to his, harsher and deeper than before.
“Got to get out of here,” she barely gets the words out as his mouth slips to her jaw. She’s panting already, feels like a school that’s girl never been touched before.
Zak slips from his stool and seeks out her hand, fingers curling into her own as he tugs her from her seat. They’re out the door in seconds, Kara leading the way though they aren’t very efficient. Every couple of feet one of them pulls the other to a stop, their bodies flush together, and it’s more intense than it was in the bar minutes earlier. She pulls them into the alley between two buildings, certain she’s unable to take anymore of the game they’re playing. Her hands immediately go for his waist, for the belt slipped through the loops of his jeans. He lets her at first, but when she’s about to make any real headway, he takes her hands in his own and presses them up against the rough brick facade of the building at her back. She’ll have a scrape or two there tomorrow, that’s for sure.
“Not here,” he tells her, his voice low.
“I can’t make it back,” she practically begs him as he nips at her neck, the place where the marine had earlier in the night. He’s claiming her for his own. “Just-frak.” Kara curses, frustration evident in her voice.
“We can grab a cab.” He nods into her collarbone, kissing against the sharp cut of flesh.
“No, my place is just a few blocks.” Kara’s breathing is heavy and she’s bucking her hips against his to tempt him. She’s doesn’t know when things took such a sharp turn, she can’t remember much before this moment right here. Zak’s hold on her wrists releases, but he scrambles for her hand again, this time to lead her along, their speed increased from before.
“Bet I can outrun you there!” He yells back at her from the few steps ahead he is. It’s a game to keep her moving, appealing to her competitive side to keep them heading forward.
Even with the alcohol in her system, she rises to the challenge, pulling away and into the lead. They continue like that, their bodies aching and tired by the time they’re four blocks over and in front of her building. Kara slaps her hand into the side of the building, body hunched over, panting and praying to every God she knows that she doesn’t empty her stomach onto the sidewalk. That would really put a damper on the mood.
“For the record,” he takes a gasping breath, “I let you win-you were the only one who knew where we were going.”
“Shut the frak up,” she pushes him weakly, but enough to cause him to stumble, slightly off balance. Their eyes meet when he steadies himself, and for a second Kara wonders if the moment really is gone. Maybe that alley had been their only shot at whatever this is, or maybe the Lords of Kobol are looking down at her, giving her another sign to walk away.
Zak, as it turns out, doesn’t subscribe to their messages and signs, because he hooks his arm around her hip and all of it starts all over again. Once they make it to the door of her apartment, force her keys in the lock together, and seal themselves up inside, Kara’s shedding clothes like only seconds remain. Halfway down the stairs and her t-shirt is gone, flung over the railing to somewhere down below. Her shoes are kicked off at the bottom and Zak does the same, though she’s always a step too far away for him to put out his hand and reach her.
“What are we doing?” Kara muses aloud, even as she unbuttons and unzips her jeans.
“Do you need me to explain how this works?” The corner of his mouth rises, but it disappears, obscured temporarily by the removal of his shirt. He watches her turn away to face the couch and for the first time the whole night, he hesitates. “Kara… if you want me to go, I will.” He doesn’t mean it, doesn’t believe the words as he says them, but he will follow her wishes if she’s absolutely sure.
Kara shakes her head. Once. Twice. “No.”
There’s no space between them after that, and Kara feels the heat of his front against her back, reaching her arm behind her to cup the back of his head. One of his hands travels up to her bra, slipping between the underwire and her skin until the item of clothing is pushed up, freeing both her breasts in the process. He’s gentle and rough at the same time, caressing then squeezing, a distraction while the other slides down the flat plane of her stomach until he encounters the fabric of her underwear, exposed as her jeans hang open and undone. Zak’s fingers are trapped between the cloth and her skin a second later, feeling over the tightly trimmed hair he finds there. Almost like she was hoping for this, he muses. She’s damp, slick with anticipation, and a single finger slides between her folds, giving long strokes from her entrance up towards her clit.
Kara shudders instantly against him. That touch, right there, she’s been waiting for that since she saw him across the bar. It makes her knees weak, but he’s got her, not letting her falter for even a moment.
He continues to stroke, his palm covered in the evidence of her arousal, though his focus has shifted to circle slowly around the swollen bud of nerve endings in particular. Teasing and torturous. When she grinds herself back against his hips, he knows he can’t hold back any longer, and as if she can read his mind, they’re both rushing to push down their briefs and pants in one fell swoop. They step out of their tangle of clothing and he can’t help but notice the way her legs part further, an inviting sign.
She leans slightly over the arm of the couch ahead of them, and Zak pushes himself, hard and aching, inside of her. Together, they both moan out loud into the otherwise silent room. She rocks up onto the balls of her feet for a moment to cut their height difference down by a fraction more, mouth agape at the sensation of fullness he gives her. Zak leans forward, his stomach to her back again, kissing at her shoulder blades in reverence, taking the time to let them both adjust.
He starts moving not long after, pushing into her tight heat slow at first, establishing a rhythm between them. He pulls her back up, palms her breast, pinches a nipple between his fingers until it pebbles. It’s perfect, all of it, especially the sound she lets out every time he slides into her a little quicker and harder. Kara props a knee up on the arm of the couch and he pushes in a fraction of an inch deeper and that is what drives her to orgasm, the fluttering of her clenching him from the inside making it evident. Zak’s hand moves back around to the space between her thighs, seeks out her clitoris again, and he circles around it quickly, hoping to carry out the sensation for her even a second longer.
When she comes down, he’s thrusting into her harder than he was before, but Kara brushes his hand away from between her legs. “Stop, stop,” she insists, the sensation too strong for sensitive parts as she recovers.
“You okay?” He asks, reluctantly coming to a halt altogether, sliding out of her.
Kara glances back over her shoulder, only catching the slightest glimpse of him in the dim lighting. She turns, only to be greeted by the worried expression over his eyes and his brow. Taking his hand in hers, she tugs him around to the front of the couch they’ve been using as their prop, and she takes control, pushing him onto the seat. She reaches behind her and unfastens her bra, still haphazardly and improperly fitted around her, and finally, once and for all, she’s bare before him.
He’s felt her with his hands and thought that was enough, but looking up at her, Zak knows it was never even close. “You’re beautiful.”
“Shut up,” Kara says and straddles him, sitting on his thighs, his erection between them. Her smile is coy, teasing. There’s still the stirring of need for another orgasm within her, but she’s on temporary reprieve for the time being, still aglow in the one she recently left behind.
“That an order?” He isn’t offended, not really, and that’s mostly because of her tone of voice. Suggestive.
Kara bites her lip and nods, a hand snaking between them to stroke over his cock, slick with her own wetness. The look on his face is worth everything, she decides then. Worth the risk of getting caught, of the trouble that could come from this. His brows furrow, forehead creases, lips part like he isn’t sure how much longer he can hang on.
When he opens his eyes, they’re met with her gold and green pair, deep and endless. He could be lost there for days, and more than that, he wants to be. He watches her rise up, and then he’s inside her again. It’s like every girl before has been in preparation for her now, her every move deliberate, every touch distinct. There’s a pressure of her hand on the back of his skull and he follows her direction until his mouth comes in contact with the pink of an areola belonging to one of her full breasts.
“Like that,” she instructs, feeling his tongue run over the hard nub. Their pace has slowed considerably from what it was before, but she doesn’t think he minds. “Now,” she strokes over his hair, “tug on it with your teeth.” Kara lets out a sharp gasp, nearly a shriek, as the twinge of pain as he goes a little too far.
“Sorry.”
“Not me you should be apologizing to.”
His mouth is back at her breast and he repeats, gentler this time, lapping, kissing, and finally sucking against her nipple. All in apology.
“Lords of Kobol,” Kara moans and finally pulls him away from her breast, only to cover his mouth with her own.
She picks up speed in the time following, hips rising and falling, rocking to meet with his. They’re reduced to animal instincts after that, Zak’s arm hooked around her back to keep her close, and Kara nips at his lower lip, losing control of her senses and faculties as she feels him rub roughly against that spot inside her. She’s so close, but Kara doesn’t even care, desperate to feel him get his own. By the way he’s moaning, she knows he’s on that edge, and she clenches him deep inside her a few more times, just enough until Zak’s calling out her name, releasing inside of her.
He’s spent after that, a mix of the time of night, the orgasm, the liquor, and general fatigue, his chest heaving as Kara is wrapped up around him. “You didn’t…? Did you?” He asks.
“Not a second time, no,” she shakes her head against his neck, relishing the saltiness of sweat on his skin.
Zak summons the energy and strength to push his hand between them, desperate to seek out the source of her pleasure again. She doesn’t resist him and he’s more careful this time, feeling her breaths growing deeper as she builds back up towards what she’d been denied. His other hand moves up and down her back, down the notches of her spine to her ass, playfully squeezing.
“Zak,” she moans, quieter than ever before and using his name for the first time since they joined.
In a way it’s more real, not that he doubted the verity of the moans that came earlier. He’s still inside her, her body tightly against his like she’s trying desperately to make them one person. There’ll be bruises tomorrow from where her fingernails dig in at his shoulder, but he doesn’t care. He hopes they show. Again, she breathes out his name, this time more urgent, on the precipice. Kara loses the ability to form words after that, heavy, throaty breaths let out. Finally, she’s coming again, riding his hand until the last ripple of it subsides, leaving her clinging to him.
“Frak me,” he says and laughs softly and satisfied, wiping his hand on her thigh.
When her breathing’s steady, she climbs off of him, the quietest of whines released when she feels that aching emptiness of him no longer inside of her.
Whatever’s just happened, it’s too late in the night to begin considering the ramifications. Instead, she pushes herself to her feet and leaves, heads for the bathroom. By time she finishes using the toilet and wiping away the remains of their frak from between her legs, Zak’s no longer on the couch. He’s gone, she thinks with a mixture of relief and disappointment, but catches the sight of his shoes still abandoned in the middle of her floor. Kara glances towards her bedroom door and through the opening she catches the shape of another human curled up in her bed beneath the sheets.
Tomorrow, she tells herself while there’s the pressure of exhaustion behind her eyes, she’ll worry about this all tomorrow. Kara crawls into bed beside him. Feeling his arm pull around her, she falls asleep.
-
He’s there when she wakes, and despite the pounding headache, the events of the night before are fresh in her mind. For once, she wishes she’d reached that point of blackout drunk so she could blame her actions on the drink rather than herself. It would be nice to have another excuse. Kara slips out of bed, away from his arm draped over her midsection, quiet as she tiptoes towards her dresser and pulls out underwear and a tank top, anything to cover herself up. It feels strangely more like the mornings she’s woken up at someone else’s place, excusing herself before dawn, and she wonders if she just disappears for a few hours, will he let himself out, taking the evidence of the night before with him? It’s a tempting offer, so she goes to the kitchen to contemplate it, shuffling through her cabinets for a coffee filter.
She’s in the middle of folding a napkin for a makeshift replacement when there’s footsteps, and she catches the naked form of her cadet striding towards the portion of her apartment that acts as the living room. Kara can’t help but watch him, especially when she knows he doesn’t see her. It gives her a moment to gawk, to take in the shape of him with a clearer head and light streaming in through the windows across one wall of her place. Like most of the students, he’s in better shape than the vast majority of other specimens of human life on any of the twelve planets that make up the colonies. It’s a benefit to the mandatory physical fitness requirements and survival training trips. He turns as he pulls on his boxer-briefs and Kara averts her eyes, suddenly finding interest in the coffee filter dilemma.
“Paper towel works better.” When he reaches her he tears off a square from the roll on her counter, folds it a few times, and without another word, fits it into the top of the open coffee maker. He pours in enough ground coffee, a no-named brand by the look of the can, for a few cups.
Kara doesn’t miss that little fact, and eyes him dubiously. “Don’t you have to get back to campus?” It isn’t like bootcamp, with officers making the rounds at lights out and morning reveille to make sure the nuggets slept in their beds at night. Still, there’s no reason for him to be with her.
“It’s Sunday,” he says matter of factly and opens her fridge, making himself at home. He’s laughing when he looks back to her. “How are you even alive? There’s no food here.”
She shrugs her shoulder, suddenly self-conscious of the state of her apartment in the daylight. He’s right, there isn’t much to eat but she usually takes her meals at the academy or grabs take out on the weekends. It’s not just the food she now worries over, but the general mess of her place: her clothing strewn about, magazines and papers months old left over her coffee table, blank and painted canvases stacked in a corner.
“You can’t be here,” she finally says, and her eyes lock with his. “Last night was great,” when she says that, it’s usually a line, a way to speed things along, but this time she means it. “But we frakked up.”
Zak understands her worries, nodding along, but he can’t bring it in himself to share her fears. “So what, do people come into your apartment regularly to check if you’re frakking one of your students?”
“You don’t get it.” Kara tears away from the kitchen, picking up his clothing as she goes. She’s got his pants, his shirt, and even one of his socks in her arms. “This didn’t happen. On Monday, there’s no telling your buddies about this or whatever the frak you think you’re gonna do, got it?
“Kara, Lords, calm down. What kind of person do you think I am?” He’s out of her kitchen, a few steps away from her.
“I don’t know. A kid? That’s what you are.”
“I get the feeling you’re not that much older than me.” There’s no way of knowing, she could just have an exceptionally young face, but he’s heard details of her past, knows the age gap can’t be much despite her position of authority.
“You’ve frakked your teacher, fulfilled that fantasy, now move on like nothing’s changed. Not all of us have Commanders for fathers to help us if we get into trouble. Maybe you won’t get discharged if he pulls some strings for you, but me? I’m barely hanging on here. Teaching’s my punishment, Zak, if I frak this up-I’m done.”
The nudge about his father stings. Zak knows Bill Adama’s already done what he could to help him get here with his less than stellar grades and test scores. Would his Dad stick his neck out again for his son? Probably. Kara’s right in that regard. “I’m not,” he emphasizes, “telling anyone about this.”
“Good,” she huffs her word out and approaches him only long enough to transfer the contents of her arms to his. “Now get out.”
The argument’s over, he knows. So as in class, he obeys, tossing his clothing on to the couch to pull each item on one by one. That damn sock’s still missing in the end, though, so he puts on his shoes without it. “If you find a sock,” he says from the foot of the stairs.
“Yeah.”
With that, he finally goes.
-
He doesn’t stop at her desk on his way out anymore, doesn’t hold his hand up in goodbye. Zak doesn’t even smile to her across the classroom. He’s doing exactly what she asked, and yet for some reason she’s wondering why she asked for it at all. There’s logical reasons, a world of them, but none of them count for anything anymore when she’s watching the profile of his face as he leaves the room, her head haunted with the image of him beneath her, the twist of his face as he comes. She’s got a frakking stain on her couch from that encounter.
Their sim sessions are in larger groups the following week, and she interacts with him as little as possible, but keeps enough of an eye on him and his scores to know he’s struggling. She promised she’d help turn him into a pilot by the end of the course, and now through her own mistake she’s done anything but assist in the ways he actually needs. A frak, he could have gotten that anywhere. He’s a good-looking enough guy, and from what she’s seen of him, he has a way when it comes to grabbing the attention of whomever he wants. What he really needs is her help, so when he’s on the way out of his latest sim session, she asks him to stop by her office.
He obliges, interrupting her test grading when he arrives, and sits across from her, eyes blank.
“Your sim scores, test scores-frankly Zak, they all blow.” She watches him shift in his chair, unsure of how to reply. “I said I’d help you, so if we can just… put everything else behind us, I still will.”
“Sir.”
Kara hates the way it sounds coming out of him now that she’s heard him say her name, called it out when he was inside of her.
“I appreciate what you want to do for me, but what if I don’t want to put it behind us?”
She tries to hold her ground. “That’s not an option.”
Zak becomes more animated, sitting on the edge of his seat, his hand resting on her desk. “You can’t tell me no one in the history of the worlds has ever done this before. I’m not going to tell, you’re not going to tell.” It’s like he’s practiced his speech before, prepared a list of reasons why and why not, a counter argument to every defense she can give. “I don’t know about you, but… I don’t just want a repeat of the other night. I want to get to know you.” Then he’s smiling at her, the way he’s done for weeks now, free and unrestrained.
When did she become a sucker for a frakking smile? A quiet laugh? It’s pathetic how little her resolve holds up against him. Before she knows it, she’s biting her lower lip and it’s over. She’s lost the war because of the little creases at the corners of his eyes. “Sims are empty at 2100 hours tonight if you want the practice.”
-
They meet, but he doesn’t log any time in the simulator. He doesn’t even wear his flight suit to keep up the illusion and neither does she. Instead they lock themselves up in the hangar together and Kara finds the Gods again with her back to the wall and him deep inside of her.
-
Time passes and it’s much of the same. Zak’s sim scores steadily improve, but it’s nothing to write home about. If it was anyone else, she would have forced them out of the course by now, but for him she finds the encouragement. Their nights and weekends are usually spent in the private of her apartment, or at a bar on the far end of town, where the locals go and not the military. They spend their time in a corner booth, hiding their faces away from anyone who passes, but it’s a controlled risk at least. Zak knows his roommates have started to raise eyebrows and ask questions. A girl is always the answer to sudden disappearances like his. He just smiles and never answers.
“Will you paint me something one day?” He asks from the living room, looking through the finished pieces that have steadily grown in the time he’s known her.
“Just take whatever one you want.” She returns and sets both bowls of noodles down on the coffee table, taking a seat on the floor as she begins to eat.
Zak shakes his head as he sits beside her and grabs his own bowl. “No, I want you to paint something with me in mind.”
“I’m not that good,” Kara insists, her mouth half full as her chopsticks twist around new strands of noodles she’s preparing to eat.
“In the words of Kara Thrace,” he smiles and looks to her, straightening his form a little like an actor before a performance, “‘Shut the frak up.’”
She giggles, narrowly avoiding choking on her food before she swallows it down. “You make me sound so eloquent when you put it that way.”
Everything’s changed, and Zak isn’t quite sure when or how it did. He knows she sometimes still worries, especially after that time they’d nearly been caught in her office, his hand up her shirt, her mouth on his neck. They haven’t attempted anything on campus since then, and though they both sorely miss the nights in the hangar, it’s a change that he welcomes. It’s not just a frak anymore, and though Kara’s never said it, Zak knows she feels the same.
“Kara?”
“Hm?” She raises a brow and sets her empty dish back on the coffee table, sipping from her beer before she returns that, too.
He knows he should be nervous, but he’s not. “I love you.” It feels like a natural high almost, or as close as he’ll ever get to it without the aid of something to smoke, inject, or ingest.
Her eyes widen, cheeks blushing the warmest she’s ever felt, and she can’t begin to imagine what color they appear to him. This was just supposed to be dinner. Dinner and a night of her helping him study for the exam coming up. Maybe a quick frak if they’re in the mood, though they never aren’t.
“You don’t have to say it back,” he leans in to kiss her hot cheek. “I’ve never said it to someone before. I just wanted you to know.”
For a moment she thinks about how young he is that he’s still having firsts, and then she remembers that she’s never said it and meant it herself. When she was younger, years younger, she’d foolishly said it a few times in the heat of the moment, a false declaration she couldn’t even begun to understand the meaning of. What’s more is that she’s never heard it parroted back. No, this is a first for her as well.
“Why?”
“Because,” he starts and stops, resting his bowl on the floor before looking down to his empty hands then back to her. “I can’t explain it. I just know.” And it’s the surest feeling he’s ever had in his life.
It doesn’t take long for them to get to her bedroom, although it’s started to become his as well with the small accumulation of his clothing and belongings that fill her drawers and closet. Kara’s lying back on the bed, slipping her clothes off as she watches him do the same, fevered anticipation spreading over the surface of her skin. Zak’s over her in no time, kissing at her breasts, her stomach, and hips. He nudges her thighs apart with his hand and kneels between her open legs.
“I’ve never done this before,” he admits and leans down to kiss at the soft skin of her inner thigh.
“Never?” She watches, her head against one of her pillows. Her stomach feels weightless, like she’s stuck at the highpoint of a roller-coaster.
“I want to, though,” Zak insists with a nod of his head. She’s had her mouth around his cock more times than he can remember and he wants to return it, wants to taste her for himself. “Just tell me what you like.”
Kara suddenly feels shy and it’s strange and foreign to her. She’s been on the receiving end of this particular act before, but not regularly, and not as anything but a prelude to sex, something just to warm her up. What it would feel like to have a man learn her that intimately and keep coming back for more, Kara’s never even thought about.
She can feel his warm breath exhale against her, his wet lips trailing nearer and nearer until finally, he kisses to the slit in her flesh. He’s touching nothing directly, but her body reacts anyway, fingers twisting into her sheets to calm herself down.
Zak breathes in the heady scent of her, using his fingers to spread her further apart, and takes his first taste, his tongue stroking upward. On his tongue, her taste is faint, but distinct, far softer a flavor than he ever imagined. So long as he lives he knows he’ll never forget just what it’s like. He lets himself be guided by the sounds she makes, encouragement found in her leg hitched over his shoulder, drawing him closer and nearer to her.
“Your tongue-right there.” She barely gets the words out before she’s moaning, nothing else in the world mattering as the tip of his rigid tongue swirls around her clitoris. Round and round. She can feel her opening stretching, accommodating two of his fingers as they slip inside of her, and her heel digs into his back in response. “Stop!” Kara calls out as his fingers curl upwards inside her towards her stomach and hit that exact point of pleasure for the briefest moment of time. It takes some instruction, but he finds it again, pressing hard. Kara can barely stand it. Her back’s arching, holding on for dear life because she doesn’t want to come, not yet, not ever, doesn’t want to let this feeling go. She wants to die there, with his face buried between her thighs.
She can’t resist forever, however, and finally she breaks. It’s like a wall around her collapsing all at once and the world around comes flooding in. Her hips instinctively press against his face and Zak wisely doesn’t relent until his ears stop ringing with her yelling his name within the four walls of her bedroom.
He kisses her thighs when it’s over, feeling the tremor and twitch of them even when they’re powerless and weak. Zak can hear her pants and soon that’s not the only sound of the room. It’s something much more full of life. She’s laughing, quiet at first, then without control as the seconds tick by. He lifts his head to watch her, smiling proudly as she’s reduced down to pieces in the wake of the orgasm she felt.
“That was…” Kara starts, but doesn’t finish.
“I would’ve done that years ago if I knew that’s how girls reacted to it.” Zak crawls up until he’s above her, his weight on his hands.
“I’m keeping you,” she shakes her head and looks up to him. “I forbid you from doing that to anyone else.”
He loves how playful she can get when her guard’s down, something he’s been seeing with increasing frequency outside of the bedroom. He doesn’t know the story of her life, the things she’s endured, but he knows there’s a whole world to her that he hasn’t seen. One day, he thinks she’ll tell him, and already he’s afraid for what she could admit. Sometimes there’s pain in her eyes when he asks her a question about her past, a pain so severe it sends an ache into his chest to grow there for her. Already he wants to help her bear that burden. If she’ll let him, that is.
“I don’t want anyone else,” Zak says faintly, and means it. “I’m yours, you know that, right?”
Kara nods. Bites her lip. Strokes her hand through his thick, but short hair. Then she takes a leap. “I love you too.” It’s a little late, but somehow she doesn’t think he’ll protest.
Zak crushes his mouth against hers and it’s unlike every time they’ve kissed before. He’s sure he’s felt this way about her since he saw her, even while she kept that hard-ass facade up for the rest of the class. He’d seen through it then, wanted to get to know who she was underneath.
There are tears in the corners of her eyes as they kiss, as she feels him rest his hips between her spread thighs and slides inside of her. Forget everything else. Forget her mother, her father, her tarnished record, the way her hand and knee still ache sometimes when rain’s coming, the fact that she hasn’t really flown in months, every one night stand, each person she’s been with hoping to drown out everything else. This is what matters, she tells herself. Where every gaping hole once was, pieces of her ripped out by the events of her life, Zachary Adama now fills them so fully it’s like there was never anything missing before. He loves her and she knows she’s been waiting her life for him, to find someone that makes her feel complete. Not alone. Loved. Safe.
They’re slow this time around, neither of them wanting to reach that finish, instead just to feel the movement of their bodies together. When they finally do get there, Kara tells him she loves him again and he returns it. It feels even better than the first time.
Continue to Part 2.
author:
apodixis
spoilers: All seasons
pairings: kara/zak, brief hints at kara/lee
overall fic rating: NC-17
total word count: 17,700
notes: Not sure if many people are going to be interested in this since I know almost everyone I have added is a die hard Kara/Lee shipper, but here it is anyway. We only got to know Zak Adama through a few flashbacks and a couple conversations in the series. Somewhere along the way I started to love him more than was probably intended and decided to write a piece of the history he shares with Kara. I've tried to incorporate nearly every concrete detail we know about his life, but I've had to make some guesses/take some creative liberties on some points to make sense of it all.
summary: An ode to Kara Thrace and Zak Adama. How they met, who they were, and how they fell in love, told through a series of glimpses into their lives.
other sections: Part 2
The first day Kara’s no longer just a pilot but also a flight instructor, she tries to channel the tough-as-nails Major that had been hers years before. There’ll be no nonsense, she decides, reminding herself that though she’s only a few years older than most of her cadets, they’re not her friends. Never will be. She’s their superior and what she needs to have is their respect. This is the end of the line for her. Her ass still stings from the figurative boot she felt kicking her off the Triton. Though she loves to see how far she can push the rules, the system, or someone else, this time Kara knows she’s gone too far. If she fraks up here, there’s no question that she’ll be dishonorably discharged for a file far too full. Her abilities in the cockpit are the only reason she’s still hanging on by a thread.
She hesitates outside her classroom, and though the door’s closed, she can hear the rumble of raucous voices. They’re all kids still. It was only a few years ago that she was in their place and was the loudest and the worst of them, but she tries to build a wall inside, a way to detach and see them less like her and more like strangers. She tugs on the bottom of the top of her duty blues, straightening it though it doesn’t completely remove the deep and set-in wrinkles that come from sitting in a wrinkled heap in the bottom of her closet instead of dangling from a hanger. ‘Lieutenant Kara Thrace’ she tells herself, takes a deep breath, clutches her folder of papers a little bit tighter, and finally opens the door to step in.
They hardly notice her presence, some in their seats and some with their backs to the doorway as they continue to fool and joke around. For a second she considers letting it go, after all she’s never been the best of students, but she knows it isn’t how she should start her tenure as instructor. Instead, she makes it to her desk and slams the stack of folders down into the bare desktop, the slap of paper and her palm echoing in the room. Without even looking up, she knows she’s got their attention, can catch in the corner of her eye that some are standing and saluting, but without the respect she deserves. “On your feet,” she orders, her best impression of that old Commander of hers from the Triton, Myron Ruth, the person she can blame for being here to begin with. At least that frakker’s good for something.
They obey her orders, but she isn’t happy with it. “At ease,” she says and waits until they’re sitting comfortable. “Now get on your frakking feet and give me a real salute.” The second time is better, and while the faces of her cadets are serious, aware that they’ve already started off on the wrong foot and trying desperately not to draw attention to themselves individually, there’s one who doesn’t wear even the hint of fear on his face. While the others stand tall and somber with eyes dead ahead, he smiles and lets his eyes follow her. Trouble, she thinks. That one’s going to be trouble.
“I’m Lieutenant Thrace, call sign Starbuck, but you can call me God. I’m here to decide who doesn’t have what it take to fly Vipers. Not all of you are going to finish this course. Not all of you are going to pass your final flight test even if you do manage to finish. Some of you may get a second shot at Raptors, and some of you are going to end up mopping the deck. If you think I’m a push over because I’m young,” she smiles to herself, though when her eyes rise she finds them meeting the pair that belong to that student in the front row, her grin returned over his dark features, “I want you to abandon that idea right now.”
“Attendance,” she shuffles through her papers until she finds the list of her students and retrieves a pen from the pocket of her slacks. “…is mandatory. Now, Adama, Zachary?” Her hand is poised, tip of her pen beside the first name on the list.
“Here, God, Sir.”
Kara glances up to put the name to the face and voice, and for the third time, she’s staring back at the fresh-faced cadet with dark brown eyes and a head of hair to match. Definitely trouble.
-
They spend the first few weeks immersed in textbooks and videos, diagrams and protocol. Though there’s nothing more Kara would love than to take them into the simulators on their first day, she knows they need to earn it. Kara’s heard it all already, the complaints are never ending as each of her students pass through various stages of frustration with her. Some have already earned their own call signs from her because of it, and she takes comfort knowing that the reminder of their first few days of basic flight will follow them around for the rest of their careers. An ode to the man who named her Starbuck, perhaps. There’s one she’s never heard a hint of complaint from, though, and at first Kara thinks maybe he’s just the smartest when it comes to not being caught in the act of badmouthing her. In the end, she’s wrong.
He’s one of the last to leave, day after day, and on his way out he stops by her desk to say goodbye on his own. At first, she’s puzzled by it, and files away his face in her head on the list of brown nosers. It doesn’t take long for it to become routine, and on the days when his fellow students have caught him in conversation as they walk out and he can’t escape, he raises his hand to her in silent goodbye. After awhile, she starts to return it.
She’s taking things slow in first introducing each of her cadets to the sims, a contrast to the coming months ahead as they each get used to the controls in front of them. Each cadet reports for their one-on-one meeting with her after their normal class hours, and Kara begins to realize that maybe she just doesn’t have the patience for this kind of gig. She throws out two cocky nuggets before they even get halfway through their first scenarios, and with enough groveling she may give them a second chance. By the end of the week, she’s like a candle burning at both ends and all she wants is to do hit the bar and drink herself into tomorrow afternoon. There’s one left, though, the poor sap who landed the very last time slot and has to spend his Friday night with her rather than out reaching oblivion with the help of a bottle of ambrosia: Zachary Adama, or ‘Zak,’ as she now knows he likes to be called.
He’s early, waiting for her to finish up with the penultimate classmate of his, and Kara finds him sitting on the bench in the hallway, leg nervously bouncing in anticipation.
“Zak?” She asks, holding open the door to the larger room and she can’t help but notice the tension running through him.
His head lifts quickly and for perhaps the first time, there isn’t already a smile there, though he forces one anyway. He’s like a tightly wound spring, not sure when he’s going to just let go. “Ready, Sir,” Zak says, always observing decorum.
“Let’s go, nugget.” They make their way inside, towards the cockpit that looks like it was cannibalized straight from one of the new Mark VIIs, the front nose, tail, and wings missing. Here, they’re not required. “Your flight suit fit okay?” Though they’d all been fitted for them even before finding out who their instructor was, it’s the first time the suits have ever been worn.
“I feel like I’m in a sauna,” he admits, pulling at his collar. His suit’s not even fully zipped and already he’s bordering on heat exhaustion.
Kara barks out a laugh, forgetting for a moment how little she wants to be there. “That feeling of stewing in your own sweat never really goes away.” She’s been in hers most of the day, but grown used to that sticky feeling that coats her skin. He fidgets with the helmet he holds from one hand as they reach their destination, and Kara, without a thought, reaches forward to where his zipper dangles limply at his waist, and tugs it up to his throat. Their eyes catch, and before Zak can say anything else, she fumbles over some words. “Don’t be nervous.”
“Me? Nervous?” He laughs, though it only further hints at the truth and both of them know it. At least now he isn’t thinking just about how little he actually wants to get into that simulator, but instead about the way her fingers had gently brushed over his abdomen as she pulled the zipper up.
It’s alarming to her how she can’t stop from smiling when he’s near, and for a moment she bites at her lower lip as she puts the metal collar around his neck, avoiding his waiting gaze. She catches herself, forces her lips to purse, do anything else but that. Kara knows her body’s unconscious cues, and that-that biting of her bottom lip-indicates the worst. He’s handsome, perhaps not in all the traditional ways, and his coloring is a little too dark all over for her tastes, but there’s a flutter in her stomach at their close proximity. Kara has to step back, put some distance between them.
Zak takes the hint and climbs into the simulator, pulling his own helmet on until it clicks into place. Kara’s there to pull the faux-canopy shut for him, the glass around him made of digital screens that fade into his starting location: an unnamed battlestar somewhere in the deep of space. She pulls her headseat on, connected her to his comm system, and steps a few feet away to where she sits at her computer station. There, she watches the details of his flight as well as a couple computer generated images of his ship from a variety of angles so she can monitor his progress.
The take-off goes smoothly; it’s hard to frak up getting shot out of a launch tube. But out on his own, his ship wobbles unsteadily and though Kara knows she would have yelled out a condescending remark by now to any other student, she holds her tone back. “Use both hands on the stick if you’re having trouble keeping her steady,” she advises. He’s new, he’s nervous, and for him, she suddenly has the patience. Right now, she’ll let him get away with a little extra.
The rest of the session passes, but instead of adjusting to the feel of flying a ship over time, he’s still as stiff as he was at the start. She’s seen it before. By no means is he a natural, and she isn’t sure if there’s even promise in him for him to improve from this kind of beginning.
“Why do you want to fly Vipers, Zak?” She asks afterward, both of them walking out together after locking down the hangar.
His hand at his side tremors, but he swings his arm slightly as they walk so she doesn’t notice. It’s a mix of nerves, fear of what she’s seen in his first test flight, and muscle fatigue from gripping that damn stick so frakking tight for the last hour. “My father’s a pilot. Well… he used to be. Now he’s a Commander.”
“That’s your father? Commander Adama?” Kara asks, ashamed she didn’t put the pieces of it together beforehand. She’s neither met the Commander nor heard much about him, but it’s hard to be a member of the Colonial Fleet and not know the names of those who sit in some of the top positions.
“He was one of the best, flew way back in the cylon war.”
“So it’s a family thing then, father to son?”
“My older brother, too. Lee definitely follows in our Dad’s footsteps.”
Zak’s more sullen than she’s ever seen him, although she can’t miss how he perks up at the mention of his brother.
He stops at the exit, the final doorway before they’re plunged out into the chilly darkness outside. “I bet he’d even give you a run for your money, Starbuck.” Zak uses her call sign, a gamble if he ever made one.
“Nugget, I’d like to see him try. I know for a fact I’ve got most of the sim records, so I hate to break it to you and your hero worship, but your brother’s been beaten by a girl.”
“You’re just as bad as him,” Zak jokes and smiles wide, the seriousness from only a moment before gone.
An hour before, all she’d wanted was to find a quiet corner of a bar, but as her eyes slip down to the glimpse of his chest not hidden by the set of double tanks beneath his open flight suit, she doesn’t care. “You’ve got no idea, kid, no idea.”
He walks her to her car even though the parking lot is in the opposite direction of his housing. In a clearer head, she would think something of it, but for the time being she allows herself to get lost in the conversation that fills the quiet. They’re about to say goodbye for once and for all when Zak disrupts the small talk.
“I know I was frakking pathetic in there, but I’ll get better, all right? Just give me a shot.” He’s heard the stories. A frak up so bad at the start is all it takes sometimes. The fleet isn’t exactly hurting for pilots in the time of peace, so they’ve got the right to be choosy. Already, he knows that his father pulled strings to get him there at all. He can’t bear to stutter and fall just out of the gate.
There’s pain in his voice, and coming from anyone else she would think it’s pathetic. A horribly ploy to get her to go light on him, not that she didn’t already do so on her own. But, she’ll help him, she decides. Go the extra mile and spend her nights beside his simulator if that’s what he needs to get him there. So long as he’s willing to work, Kara will continue to give. Maybe this is the second chance she’d so often wished others had shown her. “We’ll work on it,” she says, such few words for the complexities she feels. “I’ll get you there, Zak. I promise.”
They share a smile together, and his free hand gently rests over hers on the hood of her car. Neither of them want to move, just like neither of them want to acknowledge the touch. “I’ve heard from some of the other guys that they’ve seen you at a couple bars downtown. You’re not going to happen to be at one of those tomorrow, are you?”
It’s more than just a simple question, but she fools herself into playing dumb and lives in denial as he asks. “I might not be at Silversmith’s tomorrow with a couple friends. It might not be at around 2300 hours.”
Zak lets his hand slip from hers and backs away a few steps, never taking his eyes from her. “I won’t see you there then. And I won’t buy you a drink.”
Her head shakes as she glances away to open her car door. When she glances back up he’s further, but still looking to her, his hand raised in the gesture between them that’s become far too familiar.
Kara returns the wave and after a moment of watching his back retreating towards the heart of campus, she heads home.
-
She gets there after midnight, on the arm of a marine she knows from bootcamp. Zak Adama is the last thing on her mind, her body already buzzing from alcohol consumption. Life on Caprica and off a battlestar has some merit. At least here there’s no superior officer breathing down her neck, counting her drinks and goading her into a fight. Still she insists half of those fights she found herself in on the Triton weren’t hers alone, despite the fact that she always ended up in the brig by herself at the end of the night.
Kara returns from the bar with a bottle of something and a couple of shot glasses, laying them out over the table her group has called for themselves. She does one, then two, her laughter loud as she eggs her comrades on for a third. There’s no seats left, so she drapes herself across the lap of the man she came in with, not bothering to swat his hand away when it creeps up the thigh of her jeans and his thumb slips beneath the hem of her shirt, drawing circles over the skin he finds there. It’s familiar to her. The two of them, they’ve done this before, as long ago as when they were both listening to their drill instructor shout at them as they lapped around military property, and as early as the weekend before when Kara had an itch that needed to be scratched and he’d come over on a phone call in the middle of the night.
Her arm loops around his neck when she finally spots Zak across the bar from over the marine’s shoulder. He’s there with friends as well, or at least she thinks so by the company beside him. It doesn’t stop his eyes from rising to her a moment later, and she chooses to believe it’s her head’s cloudiness that makes her not look away, even as the man beneath her starts to kiss and suck at the flesh of her neck. She feigns the necessary noises of pleasure to keep him satisfied as he works, her fingers tangled in his hair, but not once does her eye contact break from the cadet across the crowded room. As always, Zak just smiles, even raises a questioning brow to her, but there’s amusement on his face. He’s the one to turn away from her in the end, laughter on his lips even though she can’t hear it from the distance.
Frak him, she thinks, and shuts her eyes for a second to try to drown herself in her eager little marine. A moment later she reopens them and there’s Zak again, this time cutting through the crowd with a beer in each of his hands, a smirk of satisfaction over his lips. She’s alarmed by it, certain that he’ll turn towards someone else at the last minute, but he doesn’t, just continues on his path towards her, only halting at the edge of their table.
“Kara,” he uses her first name and tilts one of the fresh beers towards her in offering even as the other occupants of the table eye him for his intrusion.
He’s never called her that before, and for a moment she wonders how he knows her first name at all. It can’t be hard to find out, but she sure as shit never told him. She likes it though, likes the way it slips from his tongue like he’s been saying it his whole life. He’s out of uniform, not a surprise since so is she, but still it’s a change from their day to day and Gods, he looks better even dressed like a civilian than he did as the dutiful soldier.
“Zak,” she returns it and pulls away slightly from the marine, who groans beneath her in disappointment. Had it been any one of those other nuggets using her first name, she would have torn them a new one for it. But for some reason she isn’t yet ready to admit, she doesn’t do it to him. Kara accepts the beer and nods her head, tipping the neck of the bottle towards his until they clink, a show of thanks.
“Where do you two know each other from?” The marine asks, irritated.
“Old friends,” Zak answers for her, his voice raised over the volume of music and people talking. He’s covering for both of them. There might not be a specific rule against it, but it’s in neither of their interests to be caught together sharing drinks as instructor and student. The answer seems to satisfy the man she’s come with, but Zak doesn’t back off. “Mind if I steal her away for a bit? Haven’t seen her in years, need to catch up.”
Both sets of eyes are on her and in a moment of panic, Kara just shrugs her shoulders towards the marine and stands quickly from his lap, unsteady on her feet and nearly toppling into Zak. He’s careful, hand on her arm as their chests brush together, and she’s not sure if it’s the drinks in her system or something else that makes her feel lightheaded and like a shock of electricity is tingling over her skin simultaneously. Without a word, Kara waves off the people behind her and follows him off. Gods, what the frak is she doing? Half of her gives a silent warning, a plea to keep the distance, but the other half of her doesn’t give a frak for any manner of sense. She’s got tunnel vision and all she sees is the muscle of his shoulders through the back of his t-shirt.
They find some space at the far end of the bar, a pair of stools recently vacated against the wall. It’s secluded in some ways, the bodies of others around them acting as a shield from the rest of the world, or at least enough of one to Kara’s slightly intoxicated mind.
“Shouldn’t mess with that guy,” she says, referring to the marine he’s stolen her from, “he fights dirty.”
“Oh yeah?” Zak isn’t worried. He turns himself in towards her. Their thighs touch, two bodies fighting for space together.
“I should write you up just for calling me by first name, you know.” There’s no seriousness in her words, and though she tries to make her face stern and threatening, she just breaks into warm laughter that is accompanied by his own. “Can’t let you kids think you can walk all over me.”
“Well I won’t tell anyone.” He takes a long sip from his beer then places it on the counter.
“I’ve been thinking,” she finishes off her own bottle and abandons it on the bar top, next to his. “If you need extra help with getting practice in, need some advice, I could make time-”
“I don’t really want to talk about flying right now, Kara,” he says her name again and it flows from his tongue even smoother than it did before.
“What the hell else is there?” It’s been her life for years now, a replacement for pyramid she lost to a bad knee, something to fill the void left by every other aspect of her disappointing life. She feels his hand stroking over that clothed knee in question, the one that was shattered years before and still bears the scars of all the surgeries done just to give her the ability to walk again. Her heart nearly skips at the touch, body warming to temperatures she’s only ever felt in a flight suit. “Zak…” She starts her protest half-heartedly. It isn’t like her to say no, but she’s trying as hard as she can.
He doesn’t hear her, at least not her words. He hears the pleading behind the way she says his name, like it’s meant to be a warning though it’s closer to begging. It only takes a second, but he leans across the small gap between them and with the eagerness of a teenager-which she reminds herself that he only barely isn’t one anymore-he presses their mouths together.
Kara can’t resist him then, parting her mouth invitingly, feeling his tongue desperate to explore and learn. Learn the way she tastes, the temperature of her mouth, the feel of her full lips against his thinner ones. She grabs into his arm on impact, fingers digging in to his skin as she channels away her urge to tell him to stop. He’s warm and soft, strong but not forceful. Zak started the kiss, but there’s no expectation in it, no demand for more, and for once it’s nice to let things just be what they are.
It’s him who pulls back eventually, just enough to catch her eyes as they lazily open, his hand already cupping her cheek. “I’ve thought about that for weeks.”
It’s a bold confession, and if Kara’s cheeks weren’t already pink, her blushing would be more than apparent. Her tongue slips out, tip of it feeling over her lower lip, savoring the fading feeling of their mouths joined together. This is wrong, so very frakking wrong. She knows it, and even though he acts otherwise, she knows he knows it as well. No good can come of this, but the ache between her legs starts to tell her something different.
“This can’t-”
“Yeah, yeah,” he laughs her words off. “Do you want me to stop?”
He’s so unlike the boy she saw the night before, unsure of himself and asking for a second chance. Even the person he is in class, there’s only a shadow of him with them tonight, and seeing the new side of him makes her pulse feel erratic. She shakes her head to tell him no, and this time she’s the one who leans in, her mouth to his, harsher and deeper than before.
“Got to get out of here,” she barely gets the words out as his mouth slips to her jaw. She’s panting already, feels like a school that’s girl never been touched before.
Zak slips from his stool and seeks out her hand, fingers curling into her own as he tugs her from her seat. They’re out the door in seconds, Kara leading the way though they aren’t very efficient. Every couple of feet one of them pulls the other to a stop, their bodies flush together, and it’s more intense than it was in the bar minutes earlier. She pulls them into the alley between two buildings, certain she’s unable to take anymore of the game they’re playing. Her hands immediately go for his waist, for the belt slipped through the loops of his jeans. He lets her at first, but when she’s about to make any real headway, he takes her hands in his own and presses them up against the rough brick facade of the building at her back. She’ll have a scrape or two there tomorrow, that’s for sure.
“Not here,” he tells her, his voice low.
“I can’t make it back,” she practically begs him as he nips at her neck, the place where the marine had earlier in the night. He’s claiming her for his own. “Just-frak.” Kara curses, frustration evident in her voice.
“We can grab a cab.” He nods into her collarbone, kissing against the sharp cut of flesh.
“No, my place is just a few blocks.” Kara’s breathing is heavy and she’s bucking her hips against his to tempt him. She’s doesn’t know when things took such a sharp turn, she can’t remember much before this moment right here. Zak’s hold on her wrists releases, but he scrambles for her hand again, this time to lead her along, their speed increased from before.
“Bet I can outrun you there!” He yells back at her from the few steps ahead he is. It’s a game to keep her moving, appealing to her competitive side to keep them heading forward.
Even with the alcohol in her system, she rises to the challenge, pulling away and into the lead. They continue like that, their bodies aching and tired by the time they’re four blocks over and in front of her building. Kara slaps her hand into the side of the building, body hunched over, panting and praying to every God she knows that she doesn’t empty her stomach onto the sidewalk. That would really put a damper on the mood.
“For the record,” he takes a gasping breath, “I let you win-you were the only one who knew where we were going.”
“Shut the frak up,” she pushes him weakly, but enough to cause him to stumble, slightly off balance. Their eyes meet when he steadies himself, and for a second Kara wonders if the moment really is gone. Maybe that alley had been their only shot at whatever this is, or maybe the Lords of Kobol are looking down at her, giving her another sign to walk away.
Zak, as it turns out, doesn’t subscribe to their messages and signs, because he hooks his arm around her hip and all of it starts all over again. Once they make it to the door of her apartment, force her keys in the lock together, and seal themselves up inside, Kara’s shedding clothes like only seconds remain. Halfway down the stairs and her t-shirt is gone, flung over the railing to somewhere down below. Her shoes are kicked off at the bottom and Zak does the same, though she’s always a step too far away for him to put out his hand and reach her.
“What are we doing?” Kara muses aloud, even as she unbuttons and unzips her jeans.
“Do you need me to explain how this works?” The corner of his mouth rises, but it disappears, obscured temporarily by the removal of his shirt. He watches her turn away to face the couch and for the first time the whole night, he hesitates. “Kara… if you want me to go, I will.” He doesn’t mean it, doesn’t believe the words as he says them, but he will follow her wishes if she’s absolutely sure.
Kara shakes her head. Once. Twice. “No.”
There’s no space between them after that, and Kara feels the heat of his front against her back, reaching her arm behind her to cup the back of his head. One of his hands travels up to her bra, slipping between the underwire and her skin until the item of clothing is pushed up, freeing both her breasts in the process. He’s gentle and rough at the same time, caressing then squeezing, a distraction while the other slides down the flat plane of her stomach until he encounters the fabric of her underwear, exposed as her jeans hang open and undone. Zak’s fingers are trapped between the cloth and her skin a second later, feeling over the tightly trimmed hair he finds there. Almost like she was hoping for this, he muses. She’s damp, slick with anticipation, and a single finger slides between her folds, giving long strokes from her entrance up towards her clit.
Kara shudders instantly against him. That touch, right there, she’s been waiting for that since she saw him across the bar. It makes her knees weak, but he’s got her, not letting her falter for even a moment.
He continues to stroke, his palm covered in the evidence of her arousal, though his focus has shifted to circle slowly around the swollen bud of nerve endings in particular. Teasing and torturous. When she grinds herself back against his hips, he knows he can’t hold back any longer, and as if she can read his mind, they’re both rushing to push down their briefs and pants in one fell swoop. They step out of their tangle of clothing and he can’t help but notice the way her legs part further, an inviting sign.
She leans slightly over the arm of the couch ahead of them, and Zak pushes himself, hard and aching, inside of her. Together, they both moan out loud into the otherwise silent room. She rocks up onto the balls of her feet for a moment to cut their height difference down by a fraction more, mouth agape at the sensation of fullness he gives her. Zak leans forward, his stomach to her back again, kissing at her shoulder blades in reverence, taking the time to let them both adjust.
He starts moving not long after, pushing into her tight heat slow at first, establishing a rhythm between them. He pulls her back up, palms her breast, pinches a nipple between his fingers until it pebbles. It’s perfect, all of it, especially the sound she lets out every time he slides into her a little quicker and harder. Kara props a knee up on the arm of the couch and he pushes in a fraction of an inch deeper and that is what drives her to orgasm, the fluttering of her clenching him from the inside making it evident. Zak’s hand moves back around to the space between her thighs, seeks out her clitoris again, and he circles around it quickly, hoping to carry out the sensation for her even a second longer.
When she comes down, he’s thrusting into her harder than he was before, but Kara brushes his hand away from between her legs. “Stop, stop,” she insists, the sensation too strong for sensitive parts as she recovers.
“You okay?” He asks, reluctantly coming to a halt altogether, sliding out of her.
Kara glances back over her shoulder, only catching the slightest glimpse of him in the dim lighting. She turns, only to be greeted by the worried expression over his eyes and his brow. Taking his hand in hers, she tugs him around to the front of the couch they’ve been using as their prop, and she takes control, pushing him onto the seat. She reaches behind her and unfastens her bra, still haphazardly and improperly fitted around her, and finally, once and for all, she’s bare before him.
He’s felt her with his hands and thought that was enough, but looking up at her, Zak knows it was never even close. “You’re beautiful.”
“Shut up,” Kara says and straddles him, sitting on his thighs, his erection between them. Her smile is coy, teasing. There’s still the stirring of need for another orgasm within her, but she’s on temporary reprieve for the time being, still aglow in the one she recently left behind.
“That an order?” He isn’t offended, not really, and that’s mostly because of her tone of voice. Suggestive.
Kara bites her lip and nods, a hand snaking between them to stroke over his cock, slick with her own wetness. The look on his face is worth everything, she decides then. Worth the risk of getting caught, of the trouble that could come from this. His brows furrow, forehead creases, lips part like he isn’t sure how much longer he can hang on.
When he opens his eyes, they’re met with her gold and green pair, deep and endless. He could be lost there for days, and more than that, he wants to be. He watches her rise up, and then he’s inside her again. It’s like every girl before has been in preparation for her now, her every move deliberate, every touch distinct. There’s a pressure of her hand on the back of his skull and he follows her direction until his mouth comes in contact with the pink of an areola belonging to one of her full breasts.
“Like that,” she instructs, feeling his tongue run over the hard nub. Their pace has slowed considerably from what it was before, but she doesn’t think he minds. “Now,” she strokes over his hair, “tug on it with your teeth.” Kara lets out a sharp gasp, nearly a shriek, as the twinge of pain as he goes a little too far.
“Sorry.”
“Not me you should be apologizing to.”
His mouth is back at her breast and he repeats, gentler this time, lapping, kissing, and finally sucking against her nipple. All in apology.
“Lords of Kobol,” Kara moans and finally pulls him away from her breast, only to cover his mouth with her own.
She picks up speed in the time following, hips rising and falling, rocking to meet with his. They’re reduced to animal instincts after that, Zak’s arm hooked around her back to keep her close, and Kara nips at his lower lip, losing control of her senses and faculties as she feels him rub roughly against that spot inside her. She’s so close, but Kara doesn’t even care, desperate to feel him get his own. By the way he’s moaning, she knows he’s on that edge, and she clenches him deep inside her a few more times, just enough until Zak’s calling out her name, releasing inside of her.
He’s spent after that, a mix of the time of night, the orgasm, the liquor, and general fatigue, his chest heaving as Kara is wrapped up around him. “You didn’t…? Did you?” He asks.
“Not a second time, no,” she shakes her head against his neck, relishing the saltiness of sweat on his skin.
Zak summons the energy and strength to push his hand between them, desperate to seek out the source of her pleasure again. She doesn’t resist him and he’s more careful this time, feeling her breaths growing deeper as she builds back up towards what she’d been denied. His other hand moves up and down her back, down the notches of her spine to her ass, playfully squeezing.
“Zak,” she moans, quieter than ever before and using his name for the first time since they joined.
In a way it’s more real, not that he doubted the verity of the moans that came earlier. He’s still inside her, her body tightly against his like she’s trying desperately to make them one person. There’ll be bruises tomorrow from where her fingernails dig in at his shoulder, but he doesn’t care. He hopes they show. Again, she breathes out his name, this time more urgent, on the precipice. Kara loses the ability to form words after that, heavy, throaty breaths let out. Finally, she’s coming again, riding his hand until the last ripple of it subsides, leaving her clinging to him.
“Frak me,” he says and laughs softly and satisfied, wiping his hand on her thigh.
When her breathing’s steady, she climbs off of him, the quietest of whines released when she feels that aching emptiness of him no longer inside of her.
Whatever’s just happened, it’s too late in the night to begin considering the ramifications. Instead, she pushes herself to her feet and leaves, heads for the bathroom. By time she finishes using the toilet and wiping away the remains of their frak from between her legs, Zak’s no longer on the couch. He’s gone, she thinks with a mixture of relief and disappointment, but catches the sight of his shoes still abandoned in the middle of her floor. Kara glances towards her bedroom door and through the opening she catches the shape of another human curled up in her bed beneath the sheets.
Tomorrow, she tells herself while there’s the pressure of exhaustion behind her eyes, she’ll worry about this all tomorrow. Kara crawls into bed beside him. Feeling his arm pull around her, she falls asleep.
-
He’s there when she wakes, and despite the pounding headache, the events of the night before are fresh in her mind. For once, she wishes she’d reached that point of blackout drunk so she could blame her actions on the drink rather than herself. It would be nice to have another excuse. Kara slips out of bed, away from his arm draped over her midsection, quiet as she tiptoes towards her dresser and pulls out underwear and a tank top, anything to cover herself up. It feels strangely more like the mornings she’s woken up at someone else’s place, excusing herself before dawn, and she wonders if she just disappears for a few hours, will he let himself out, taking the evidence of the night before with him? It’s a tempting offer, so she goes to the kitchen to contemplate it, shuffling through her cabinets for a coffee filter.
She’s in the middle of folding a napkin for a makeshift replacement when there’s footsteps, and she catches the naked form of her cadet striding towards the portion of her apartment that acts as the living room. Kara can’t help but watch him, especially when she knows he doesn’t see her. It gives her a moment to gawk, to take in the shape of him with a clearer head and light streaming in through the windows across one wall of her place. Like most of the students, he’s in better shape than the vast majority of other specimens of human life on any of the twelve planets that make up the colonies. It’s a benefit to the mandatory physical fitness requirements and survival training trips. He turns as he pulls on his boxer-briefs and Kara averts her eyes, suddenly finding interest in the coffee filter dilemma.
“Paper towel works better.” When he reaches her he tears off a square from the roll on her counter, folds it a few times, and without another word, fits it into the top of the open coffee maker. He pours in enough ground coffee, a no-named brand by the look of the can, for a few cups.
Kara doesn’t miss that little fact, and eyes him dubiously. “Don’t you have to get back to campus?” It isn’t like bootcamp, with officers making the rounds at lights out and morning reveille to make sure the nuggets slept in their beds at night. Still, there’s no reason for him to be with her.
“It’s Sunday,” he says matter of factly and opens her fridge, making himself at home. He’s laughing when he looks back to her. “How are you even alive? There’s no food here.”
She shrugs her shoulder, suddenly self-conscious of the state of her apartment in the daylight. He’s right, there isn’t much to eat but she usually takes her meals at the academy or grabs take out on the weekends. It’s not just the food she now worries over, but the general mess of her place: her clothing strewn about, magazines and papers months old left over her coffee table, blank and painted canvases stacked in a corner.
“You can’t be here,” she finally says, and her eyes lock with his. “Last night was great,” when she says that, it’s usually a line, a way to speed things along, but this time she means it. “But we frakked up.”
Zak understands her worries, nodding along, but he can’t bring it in himself to share her fears. “So what, do people come into your apartment regularly to check if you’re frakking one of your students?”
“You don’t get it.” Kara tears away from the kitchen, picking up his clothing as she goes. She’s got his pants, his shirt, and even one of his socks in her arms. “This didn’t happen. On Monday, there’s no telling your buddies about this or whatever the frak you think you’re gonna do, got it?
“Kara, Lords, calm down. What kind of person do you think I am?” He’s out of her kitchen, a few steps away from her.
“I don’t know. A kid? That’s what you are.”
“I get the feeling you’re not that much older than me.” There’s no way of knowing, she could just have an exceptionally young face, but he’s heard details of her past, knows the age gap can’t be much despite her position of authority.
“You’ve frakked your teacher, fulfilled that fantasy, now move on like nothing’s changed. Not all of us have Commanders for fathers to help us if we get into trouble. Maybe you won’t get discharged if he pulls some strings for you, but me? I’m barely hanging on here. Teaching’s my punishment, Zak, if I frak this up-I’m done.”
The nudge about his father stings. Zak knows Bill Adama’s already done what he could to help him get here with his less than stellar grades and test scores. Would his Dad stick his neck out again for his son? Probably. Kara’s right in that regard. “I’m not,” he emphasizes, “telling anyone about this.”
“Good,” she huffs her word out and approaches him only long enough to transfer the contents of her arms to his. “Now get out.”
The argument’s over, he knows. So as in class, he obeys, tossing his clothing on to the couch to pull each item on one by one. That damn sock’s still missing in the end, though, so he puts on his shoes without it. “If you find a sock,” he says from the foot of the stairs.
“Yeah.”
With that, he finally goes.
-
He doesn’t stop at her desk on his way out anymore, doesn’t hold his hand up in goodbye. Zak doesn’t even smile to her across the classroom. He’s doing exactly what she asked, and yet for some reason she’s wondering why she asked for it at all. There’s logical reasons, a world of them, but none of them count for anything anymore when she’s watching the profile of his face as he leaves the room, her head haunted with the image of him beneath her, the twist of his face as he comes. She’s got a frakking stain on her couch from that encounter.
Their sim sessions are in larger groups the following week, and she interacts with him as little as possible, but keeps enough of an eye on him and his scores to know he’s struggling. She promised she’d help turn him into a pilot by the end of the course, and now through her own mistake she’s done anything but assist in the ways he actually needs. A frak, he could have gotten that anywhere. He’s a good-looking enough guy, and from what she’s seen of him, he has a way when it comes to grabbing the attention of whomever he wants. What he really needs is her help, so when he’s on the way out of his latest sim session, she asks him to stop by her office.
He obliges, interrupting her test grading when he arrives, and sits across from her, eyes blank.
“Your sim scores, test scores-frankly Zak, they all blow.” She watches him shift in his chair, unsure of how to reply. “I said I’d help you, so if we can just… put everything else behind us, I still will.”
“Sir.”
Kara hates the way it sounds coming out of him now that she’s heard him say her name, called it out when he was inside of her.
“I appreciate what you want to do for me, but what if I don’t want to put it behind us?”
She tries to hold her ground. “That’s not an option.”
Zak becomes more animated, sitting on the edge of his seat, his hand resting on her desk. “You can’t tell me no one in the history of the worlds has ever done this before. I’m not going to tell, you’re not going to tell.” It’s like he’s practiced his speech before, prepared a list of reasons why and why not, a counter argument to every defense she can give. “I don’t know about you, but… I don’t just want a repeat of the other night. I want to get to know you.” Then he’s smiling at her, the way he’s done for weeks now, free and unrestrained.
When did she become a sucker for a frakking smile? A quiet laugh? It’s pathetic how little her resolve holds up against him. Before she knows it, she’s biting her lower lip and it’s over. She’s lost the war because of the little creases at the corners of his eyes. “Sims are empty at 2100 hours tonight if you want the practice.”
-
They meet, but he doesn’t log any time in the simulator. He doesn’t even wear his flight suit to keep up the illusion and neither does she. Instead they lock themselves up in the hangar together and Kara finds the Gods again with her back to the wall and him deep inside of her.
-
Time passes and it’s much of the same. Zak’s sim scores steadily improve, but it’s nothing to write home about. If it was anyone else, she would have forced them out of the course by now, but for him she finds the encouragement. Their nights and weekends are usually spent in the private of her apartment, or at a bar on the far end of town, where the locals go and not the military. They spend their time in a corner booth, hiding their faces away from anyone who passes, but it’s a controlled risk at least. Zak knows his roommates have started to raise eyebrows and ask questions. A girl is always the answer to sudden disappearances like his. He just smiles and never answers.
“Will you paint me something one day?” He asks from the living room, looking through the finished pieces that have steadily grown in the time he’s known her.
“Just take whatever one you want.” She returns and sets both bowls of noodles down on the coffee table, taking a seat on the floor as she begins to eat.
Zak shakes his head as he sits beside her and grabs his own bowl. “No, I want you to paint something with me in mind.”
“I’m not that good,” Kara insists, her mouth half full as her chopsticks twist around new strands of noodles she’s preparing to eat.
“In the words of Kara Thrace,” he smiles and looks to her, straightening his form a little like an actor before a performance, “‘Shut the frak up.’”
She giggles, narrowly avoiding choking on her food before she swallows it down. “You make me sound so eloquent when you put it that way.”
Everything’s changed, and Zak isn’t quite sure when or how it did. He knows she sometimes still worries, especially after that time they’d nearly been caught in her office, his hand up her shirt, her mouth on his neck. They haven’t attempted anything on campus since then, and though they both sorely miss the nights in the hangar, it’s a change that he welcomes. It’s not just a frak anymore, and though Kara’s never said it, Zak knows she feels the same.
“Kara?”
“Hm?” She raises a brow and sets her empty dish back on the coffee table, sipping from her beer before she returns that, too.
He knows he should be nervous, but he’s not. “I love you.” It feels like a natural high almost, or as close as he’ll ever get to it without the aid of something to smoke, inject, or ingest.
Her eyes widen, cheeks blushing the warmest she’s ever felt, and she can’t begin to imagine what color they appear to him. This was just supposed to be dinner. Dinner and a night of her helping him study for the exam coming up. Maybe a quick frak if they’re in the mood, though they never aren’t.
“You don’t have to say it back,” he leans in to kiss her hot cheek. “I’ve never said it to someone before. I just wanted you to know.”
For a moment she thinks about how young he is that he’s still having firsts, and then she remembers that she’s never said it and meant it herself. When she was younger, years younger, she’d foolishly said it a few times in the heat of the moment, a false declaration she couldn’t even begun to understand the meaning of. What’s more is that she’s never heard it parroted back. No, this is a first for her as well.
“Why?”
“Because,” he starts and stops, resting his bowl on the floor before looking down to his empty hands then back to her. “I can’t explain it. I just know.” And it’s the surest feeling he’s ever had in his life.
It doesn’t take long for them to get to her bedroom, although it’s started to become his as well with the small accumulation of his clothing and belongings that fill her drawers and closet. Kara’s lying back on the bed, slipping her clothes off as she watches him do the same, fevered anticipation spreading over the surface of her skin. Zak’s over her in no time, kissing at her breasts, her stomach, and hips. He nudges her thighs apart with his hand and kneels between her open legs.
“I’ve never done this before,” he admits and leans down to kiss at the soft skin of her inner thigh.
“Never?” She watches, her head against one of her pillows. Her stomach feels weightless, like she’s stuck at the highpoint of a roller-coaster.
“I want to, though,” Zak insists with a nod of his head. She’s had her mouth around his cock more times than he can remember and he wants to return it, wants to taste her for himself. “Just tell me what you like.”
Kara suddenly feels shy and it’s strange and foreign to her. She’s been on the receiving end of this particular act before, but not regularly, and not as anything but a prelude to sex, something just to warm her up. What it would feel like to have a man learn her that intimately and keep coming back for more, Kara’s never even thought about.
She can feel his warm breath exhale against her, his wet lips trailing nearer and nearer until finally, he kisses to the slit in her flesh. He’s touching nothing directly, but her body reacts anyway, fingers twisting into her sheets to calm herself down.
Zak breathes in the heady scent of her, using his fingers to spread her further apart, and takes his first taste, his tongue stroking upward. On his tongue, her taste is faint, but distinct, far softer a flavor than he ever imagined. So long as he lives he knows he’ll never forget just what it’s like. He lets himself be guided by the sounds she makes, encouragement found in her leg hitched over his shoulder, drawing him closer and nearer to her.
“Your tongue-right there.” She barely gets the words out before she’s moaning, nothing else in the world mattering as the tip of his rigid tongue swirls around her clitoris. Round and round. She can feel her opening stretching, accommodating two of his fingers as they slip inside of her, and her heel digs into his back in response. “Stop!” Kara calls out as his fingers curl upwards inside her towards her stomach and hit that exact point of pleasure for the briefest moment of time. It takes some instruction, but he finds it again, pressing hard. Kara can barely stand it. Her back’s arching, holding on for dear life because she doesn’t want to come, not yet, not ever, doesn’t want to let this feeling go. She wants to die there, with his face buried between her thighs.
She can’t resist forever, however, and finally she breaks. It’s like a wall around her collapsing all at once and the world around comes flooding in. Her hips instinctively press against his face and Zak wisely doesn’t relent until his ears stop ringing with her yelling his name within the four walls of her bedroom.
He kisses her thighs when it’s over, feeling the tremor and twitch of them even when they’re powerless and weak. Zak can hear her pants and soon that’s not the only sound of the room. It’s something much more full of life. She’s laughing, quiet at first, then without control as the seconds tick by. He lifts his head to watch her, smiling proudly as she’s reduced down to pieces in the wake of the orgasm she felt.
“That was…” Kara starts, but doesn’t finish.
“I would’ve done that years ago if I knew that’s how girls reacted to it.” Zak crawls up until he’s above her, his weight on his hands.
“I’m keeping you,” she shakes her head and looks up to him. “I forbid you from doing that to anyone else.”
He loves how playful she can get when her guard’s down, something he’s been seeing with increasing frequency outside of the bedroom. He doesn’t know the story of her life, the things she’s endured, but he knows there’s a whole world to her that he hasn’t seen. One day, he thinks she’ll tell him, and already he’s afraid for what she could admit. Sometimes there’s pain in her eyes when he asks her a question about her past, a pain so severe it sends an ache into his chest to grow there for her. Already he wants to help her bear that burden. If she’ll let him, that is.
“I don’t want anyone else,” Zak says faintly, and means it. “I’m yours, you know that, right?”
Kara nods. Bites her lip. Strokes her hand through his thick, but short hair. Then she takes a leap. “I love you too.” It’s a little late, but somehow she doesn’t think he’ll protest.
Zak crushes his mouth against hers and it’s unlike every time they’ve kissed before. He’s sure he’s felt this way about her since he saw her, even while she kept that hard-ass facade up for the rest of the class. He’d seen through it then, wanted to get to know who she was underneath.
There are tears in the corners of her eyes as they kiss, as she feels him rest his hips between her spread thighs and slides inside of her. Forget everything else. Forget her mother, her father, her tarnished record, the way her hand and knee still ache sometimes when rain’s coming, the fact that she hasn’t really flown in months, every one night stand, each person she’s been with hoping to drown out everything else. This is what matters, she tells herself. Where every gaping hole once was, pieces of her ripped out by the events of her life, Zachary Adama now fills them so fully it’s like there was never anything missing before. He loves her and she knows she’s been waiting her life for him, to find someone that makes her feel complete. Not alone. Loved. Safe.
They’re slow this time around, neither of them wanting to reach that finish, instead just to feel the movement of their bodies together. When they finally do get there, Kara tells him she loves him again and he returns it. It feels even better than the first time.
Continue to Part 2.